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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Helpmate, by May Sinclair
+
+
+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: The Helpmate
+
+
+Author: May Sinclair
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2006  [eBook #17867]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HELPMATE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+THE HELPMATE
+
+by
+
+MAY SINCLAIR
+
+Author of "The Divine Fire," "Superseded," "Audrey Craven," Etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Henry Holt and Company
+1907
+The Quinn & Boden Co. Press
+Rahway, N.J.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+It was four o'clock in the morning. Mrs. Walter Majendie still lay on
+the extreme edge of the bed, with her face turned to the dim line of sea
+discernible through the open window of the hotel bedroom.
+
+Since midnight, when she had gone to bed, she had lain in that
+uncomfortable position, motionless, irremediably awake. Mrs. Walter
+Majendie was thinking.
+
+At first the night had gone by her unperceived, black and timeless. Now
+she could measure time by the dull progress of the dawn among the objects
+in the room. A slow, unhappy thing, born between featureless grey cloud
+and sea, it had travelled from the window, shimmered in the watery square
+of the looking-glass, and was feeling for the chair where her husband had
+laid his clothes down last night. He had thought she was asleep, and had
+gone through his undressing noiselessly, with movements of angelic and
+elaborate gentleness that well-nigh disarmed her thought. He was sleeping
+now. She tried not to hear the sound of his placid breathing. Only the
+other night, their wedding night, she had lain awake at this hour and
+heard it, and had turned her face towards him where he lay in the divine
+unconsciousness of sleep. The childlike, huddled posture of the sleeper
+had then stirred her heart to an unimaginable tenderness.
+
+Now she had got to think, to adjust a new and devastating idea to a
+beloved and divine belief.
+
+Somewhere in the quiet town a church clock clanged to the dawn, and the
+sleeper stretched himself. The five hours' torture of her thinking wrung
+a low sob from the woman at his side.
+
+He woke. His hand searched for her hand. At his touch she drew it away,
+and moved from under her cramped shoulder the thick, warm braid of her
+hair. It tossed a gleam of pale gold to the risen light. She felt his
+drowsy, affectionate fingers pressing and smoothing the springy bosses of
+the braid.
+
+The caress kindled her dull thoughts to a point of flame. She sat up and
+twisted the offending braid into a rigid coil.
+
+"Walter," she said, "_who_ is Lady Cayley?"
+
+She noticed that the name waked him.
+
+"Does it matter now? Can't you forget her?"
+
+"Forget her? I know nothing about her. I want to know."
+
+"Haven't you been told everything that was necessary?"
+
+"I've been told nothing. It was what I heard."
+
+There was a terrible stillness about him. Only his breath came and went
+unsteadily, shaken by the beating of his heart.
+
+She quieted her own heart to listen to it; as if she could gather from
+such involuntary motions the thing she had to know.
+
+"I know," she said, "I oughtn't to have heard it. And I can't believe
+it,--I don't, really."
+
+"Poor child! What is it that you don't believe?"
+
+His calm, assured tones had the force of a denial.
+
+"Walter--if you'd only say it isn't true--"
+
+"What Edith told you?"
+
+"Edith? Your sister? No; about that woman--that you--that she--"
+
+"Why are you bringing all that up again, at this unearthly hour?"
+
+"Then," she said coldly, "it _is_ true."
+
+His silence lay between them like a sword.
+
+She had rehearsed this scene many times in the five hours; but she had
+not prepared herself for this. Her dread had been held captive by her
+belief, her triumphant anticipation of Majendie's denial.
+
+Presently he spoke; and his voice was strange to her as the voice of
+another man.
+
+"Anne," he said, "didn't she tell you? It was before I knew you. And it
+was the only time."
+
+"Don't speak to me," she cried with a sudden passion, and lay shuddering.
+
+She rose, slipped from the bed, and went to a chair that stood by the
+open window. There she sat, with her back to the bed, and her eyes
+staring over the grey parade and out to the eastern sea.
+
+"Anne," said her husband, "what are you doing there?"
+
+Anne made no answer.
+
+"Come back to bed; you'll catch cold."
+
+He waited.
+
+"How long are you going to sit there in that draught?"
+
+She sat on, upright, immovable, in her thin nightgown, raked by the keen
+air of the dawn. Majendie raised himself on his elbow. He could just see
+her where she glimmered, and her braid of hair, uncoiled, hanging to her
+waist. Up till now he had been profoundly unhappy and ashamed, but
+something in the unconquerable obstinacy of her attitude appealed to the
+devil that lived in him, a devil of untimely and disastrous humour. The
+right thing, he felt, was not to appear as angry as he was. He sat up on
+his pillow, and began to talk to her with genial informality.
+
+"See here,--I suppose you want an explanation. But don't you think we'd
+better wait until we're up? Up and dressed, I mean. I can't talk
+seriously before I've had a bath and--and brushed my hair. You see,
+you've taken rather an unfair advantage of me by getting out of bed."
+(He paused for an answer, and still no answer came.)--"Don't imagine I'm
+ignobly lying down all the time, wrapped in a blanket. I'm sitting on my
+pillow. I know there's any amount to be said. But how do you suppose I'm
+going to say it if I've got to stay here, all curled up like a blessed
+Buddha, and you're planted away over there like a monument of all the
+Christian virtues? Are you coming back to bed, or are you not?"
+
+She shivered. To her mind his flippancy, appalling in the circumstances,
+sufficiently revealed the man he was. The man she had known and married
+had never existed. For she had married Walter Majendie believing him to
+be good. The belief had been so rooted in her that nothing but his own
+words or his own silence could have cast it out. She had loved Walter
+Majendie; but it was another man who called to her, and she would not
+listen to him. She felt that she could never go back to that man, never
+sit in the same room, or live in the same house with him again. She would
+have to make up her mind what she would do, eventually. Meanwhile, to get
+away from him, to sit there in the cold, inflexible, insensitive, to
+obtain a sort of spiritual divorce from him, while she martyrised her
+body which was wedded to him, that was the young, despotic instinct she
+obeyed.
+
+"If you won't come," he said, "I suppose it only remains for me to go."
+
+He got up, took Anne's cloak from the door where it hung, and put it
+tenderly about her shoulders.
+
+"Whatever happens or unhappens," he said, "we must be dressed."
+
+He found her slippers, and thrust them on her passive feet. She lay back
+and closed her eyes. From the movements that she heard, she gathered that
+Walter was getting into his clothes. Once, as he struggled with an
+insufficiently subservient shirt, he laughed, from mere miserable
+nervousness. Anne, not recognising the utterance of his helpless
+humanity, put that laugh down to the account of the devil that had
+insulted her. Her heart grew harder.
+
+"I am clothed, and in my right mind," said Majendie, standing before her
+with his hand on the window sill.
+
+She looked up at him, at the face she knew, the face that (oddly, it
+seemed to her) had not changed to suit her new conception of him, that
+maintained its protest. She had loved everything about him, from the
+dark, curling hair of his head to his well-finished feet; she had loved
+his slender, virile body, and the clean red and brown of his face, the
+strong jaw and the mouth that, hidden under the short moustache, she
+divined only to be no less strong. More than these things she had loved
+his eyes, the dark, bright dwelling-places of the "goodness" she had
+loved best of all in him. Used to smiling as they looked at her, they
+smiled even now.
+
+"If you'll take my advice," he said, "you'll go back to your warm bed.
+You shall have the whole place to yourself."
+
+And with that he left her.
+
+She rose, went to the bed, arranged the turned-back blanket so as to hide
+the place where he had lain, and slid on to her knees, supporting herself
+by the bedside.
+
+Never before had Anne hurled herself into the heavenly places in
+turbulence and disarray. It had been her wont to come, punctual to some
+holy, foreappointed hour, with firm hands folded, with a back that, even
+in bowing, preserved its pride; with meek eyes, close-lidded; with
+breathing hushed for the calm passage of her prayer; herself marshalling
+the procession of her dedicated thoughts, virgins all, veiled even before
+their God.
+
+Now she precipitated herself with clutching hands thrown out before her;
+with hot eyes that drank the tears of their own passion; with the shamed
+back and panting mouth of a Magdalen; with memories that scattered the
+veiled procession of the Prayers. They fled before her, the Prayers, in a
+gleaming tumult, a rout of heavenly wings that obscured her heaven. When
+they had vanished a sudden vagueness came upon her.
+
+And then it seemed that the storm that had gone over her had rolled her
+mind out before her, like a sheet of white-hot iron. There was a record
+on it, newly traced, of things that passion makes indiscernible under its
+consuming and aspiring flame. Now, at the falling of the flame, the faint
+characters flashed into sight upon the blank, running in waves, as when
+hot iron changes from white to sullen red. Anne felt that her union with
+Majendie had made her one with that other woman, that she shared her
+memory and her shame. For Majendie's sake she loathed her womanhood that
+was yesterday as sacred to her as her soul. Through him she had conceived
+a thing hitherto unknown to her, a passionate consciousness and hatred of
+her body. She hated the hands that had held him, the feet that had gone
+with him, the lips that had touched him, the eyes that had looked at him
+to love him. Him she detested, not so much on his own account, as because
+he had made her detestable to herself.
+
+Her eyes wandered round the room. Its alien aspect was becoming
+transformed for her, like a scene on a tragic stage. The light had
+established itself in the windows and pier-glasses. The wall-paper was
+flushing in its own pink dawn. And the roses bloomed again on the grey
+ground of the bed-curtains. These things had become familiar, even dear,
+through their three days' association with her happy bridals. Now the
+room and everything in it seemed to have been created for all time to be
+the accomplices and ministers of her degradation. They were well
+acquainted with her and it; they held foreknowledge of her, as the
+pier-glass held her dishonoured and dishevelled image.
+
+She thought of her dead father's house, the ivy-coated Deanery in the
+south, and of the small white bedroom, a girl's bedroom that had once
+known her and would never know her again. She thought of her father and
+mother, and was glad that they were dead. Once she wondered why their
+death had been God's will. Now she saw very clearly why. But why she
+herself should have been sent upon this road, of all roads of suffering,
+was more than Anne could see.
+
+She, whose nature revolted against the despotically human, had schooled
+herself into submission to the divine. Her sense of being supremely
+guided and protected had, before now, enabled her to act with decision
+in turbulent and uncertain situations of another sort. Where other people
+writhed or vacillated, Anne had held on her course, uplifted,
+unimpassioned, and resigned. Now she was driven hither and thither,
+she sank to the very dust and turned in it, she saw no way before her,
+neither her own way nor God's way.
+
+Widowhood would not have left her so abject and so helpless. If her
+husband's body had lain dead before her there, she could have stood
+beside it, and declared herself consoled by the immortal presence of his
+spirit. But to attend this deathbed of her belief and of her love, love
+that had already given itself over, too weak to struggle against
+dissolution, it was as if she had seen some horrible reversal of the
+law of death, spirit returning to earth, the incorruptible putting on
+corruption.
+
+Not only was her house of life made desolate; it was defiled. Dumb and
+ashamed, she abandoned herself like a child to the arms of God, too
+agonised to pray.
+
+An hour passed.
+
+Then slowly, as she knelt, the religious instinct regained possession of
+her. It was as if her soul had been flung adrift, had gone out with the
+ebb of the spiritual sea, and now rocked, poised, waiting for the turn of
+the immortal tide.
+
+Her lips parted, almost mechanically, in the utterance of the divine
+name. Aware of that first motion of her soul, she gathered herself
+together, and concentrated her will upon some familiar prayer for
+guidance. For a little while she prayed thus, grasping at old shadowy
+forms of petition as they went by her, lifting her sunken mind by main
+force from stupefaction; and then, it was as if the urging, steadying
+will withdrew, and her soul, at some heavenly signal, moved on alone into
+the place of peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It was broad daylight outside. A man was putting out the lights one by
+one along the cold little grey parade. A figure, walking slowly, with
+down-bent head, was approaching the hotel from the pier. Anne recognised
+it as that of her husband. Both sights reminded her that her life had to
+be begun all over again, and to go on.
+
+Another hour passed. Majendie had sent up a waitress with breakfast to
+her room. He was always thoughtful for her comfort. It did not occur to
+her to wonder what significance there might be in his thus keeping away
+from her, or what attitude toward her he would now be inclined to take.
+She would not have admitted that he had a right to any attitude at all.
+It was for her, as the profoundly injured person, to decide as to the new
+disposal of their relations.
+
+She was very clear about her grievance. The facts, that her husband had
+been pointed at in the public drawing-room of their hotel; that the
+terrible statement she had overheard had been made and received casually;
+that he had assumed, no less casually, her knowledge of the thing, all
+bore but one interpretation: that Walter Majendie and the scandal he had
+figured in were alike notorious. The marvel was that, staying in the town
+where he lived and was known, she herself had not heard of it before. A
+peculiarly ugly thought visited her. Was it possible that Scarby was the
+very place where the scandal had occurred?
+
+She remembered now that, when she had first proposed that watering-place
+for their honeymoon, he had objected on the ground that Scarby was full
+of people whom he knew. Besides, he had said, she wouldn't like it. But
+whether she would like it or not, Anne, who had her bridal dignity to
+maintain, considered that in the matter of her honeymoon his wishes
+should give way to hers. She was inclined to measure the extent of his
+devotion by that test. Scarby, she said, was not full of people who knew
+_her_. Anne had been insistent and Majendie passive, as he was in most
+unimportant matters, reserving his energies for supremely decisive
+moments.
+
+Anne, bearing her belief in Majendie in her innocent breast, failed at
+first to connect her husband with the remarkable intimations that passed
+between the two newcomers gossiping in the drawing-room before dinner.
+They, for their part, had no clue linking the unapproachably strange lady
+on the neighbouring sofa with the hero of their tale. The case, they
+said, was "infamous." At that point Majendie had put an end to his own
+history and his wife's uncertainty by entering the room. Three words and
+a look, observed by Anne, had established his identity.
+
+Her mind was steadied by its inalienable possession of the facts. She had
+returned through prayer to her normal mood of religious resignation. She
+tried to support herself further by a chain of reasoning. If all things
+were divinely ordered, this sorrow also was the will of God. It was the
+burden she was appointed to take up and bear.
+
+She bathed and dressed herself for the day. She felt so strange
+to herself in these familiar processes that, standing before the
+looking-glass, she was curious to observe what manner of woman she had
+become. The inner upheaval had been so profound that she was surprised
+to find so little record of it in her outward seeming.
+
+Anne was a woman whose beauty was a thing of general effect, and the
+general effect remained uninjured. Nature had bestowed on her a body
+strongly made and superbly fashioned. Having framed her well, she
+coloured her but faintly. She had given her eyes of a light thick grey.
+Her eyebrows, her lashes, and her hair were of a pale gold that had ashen
+undershades in it. They all but matched a skin honey-white with that
+even, sombre, untransparent tone that belongs to a temperament at once
+bilious and robust. For the rest, Nature had aimed nobly at the
+significance of the whole, slurring the details. She had built up the
+forehead low and wide, thrown out the eyebones as a shelter for the
+slightly prominent eyes; saved the short, straight line of the nose by a
+hair's-breadth from a tragic droop. But she had scamped her work in
+modelling the close, narrow nostrils. She had merged the lower lip with
+the line of the chin, missing the classic indentation. The mouth itself
+she had left unfinished. Only a little amber mole, verging on the thin
+rose of the upper lip, foreshortened it, and gave to its low arc the
+emphasis of a curve, the vivacity of a dimple (Anne's under lip was
+straight as the tense string of a bow). When she spoke or smiled Anne's
+mole seemed literally to catch up her lip against its will, on purpose to
+show the small white teeth below. Majendie loved Anne's mole. It was that
+one charming and emphatic fault in her face, he said, that made it human.
+But Anne was ashamed of it.
+
+She surveyed her own reflection in the glass sadly, and sadly went
+through the practised, mechanical motions of her dressing; smoothing the
+back of her irreproachable coat, arranging her delicate laces with a
+deftness no indifference could impair. Yesterday she had had delight in
+that new garment and in her own appearance. She knew that Majendie
+admired her for her distinction and refinement. Now she wondered what he
+could have seen in her--after Lady Cayley. At Lady Cayley's personality
+she had not permitted herself so much as to guess. Enough that the woman
+was notorious--infamous.
+
+There was a knock at the door, the low knock she had come to know, and
+Majendie entered in obedience to her faint call.
+
+The hours had changed him, given his bright face a tragic, submissive
+look, as of a man whipped and hounded to her feet.
+
+He glanced first at the tray, to see if she had eaten her breakfast.
+
+"There are some things I should like to say to you, with your permission.
+But I think we can discuss them better out of doors."
+
+He looked round the disordered room. The associations of the place were
+evidently as painful to him as they were to her.
+
+They went out. The parade was deserted at that early hour, and they found
+an empty seat at the far end of it.
+
+"I, too," she said, "have things that I should like to say."
+
+He looked at her gravely.
+
+"Will you allow me to say mine first?"
+
+"Certainly; but I warn you, they will make no difference."
+
+"To you, possibly not. They make all the difference to me. I'm not going
+to attempt to defend myself. I can see the whole thing from your point of
+view. I've been thinking it over. Didn't you say that what you heard you
+had not heard from Edith?"
+
+"From Edith? Never!"
+
+"When did you hear it, then?"
+
+"Yesterday afternoon."
+
+"From some one in the hotel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"From whom? Not that it matters."
+
+"From those women who came yesterday. I didn't know whom they were
+talking about. They were talking quite loud. They didn't know who I was."
+
+"You say you didn't know whom they were talking about?"
+
+"Not at first--not till you came in. Then I knew."
+
+"I see. That was the first time you had heard of it?"
+
+Her lips parted in assent, but her voice died under the torture.
+
+"Then," he said, "I am profoundly sorry. If I had realised that, I would
+not have spoken to you as I did."
+
+The memory of it stung her.
+
+"That," she said, "was--in any circumstances--unpardonable."
+
+"I know it was. And I repeat, I am profoundly sorry. But, you see, I
+thought you knew all the time, and that you had consented to forget it.
+And I thought, don't you know, it was--well, rather hard on me to have it
+all raked up again like that. Now I see how very hard it was on you,
+dear. Your not knowing makes all the difference."
+
+"It does indeed. If I _had_ known----"
+
+"I understand. You wouldn't have married me?"
+
+"I should not."
+
+"Dear--do you suppose I didn't know that?"
+
+"I know nothing."
+
+"Do you remember the day I asked you why you cared for me, and you said
+it was because you knew I was good?"
+
+Her lip trembled.
+
+"And of course I know it's been an awful shock to you to discover
+that--I--was _not_ so good."
+
+She turned away her face.
+
+"But I never meant you to discover it. Not for yourself, like this. I
+couldn't have forgiven myself--after what you told me. I meant to have
+told you myself--that evening--but my poor little sister promised me that
+she would. She said it would be easier for you to hear it from her. Of
+course I believed her. There _were_ things she could say that I
+couldn't."
+
+"She never said a word."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Perfectly. Except--yes--she _did_ say----"
+
+It was coming back to her now.
+
+"Do you mind telling me exactly what she said?"
+
+"N--no. She made me promise that if I ever found things in you that I
+didn't understand, or that I didn't like----"
+
+"Well--what did she make you promise?"
+
+"That I wouldn't be hard on you. Because, she said, you'd had such a
+miserable life."
+
+"Poor Edith! So that was the nearest she could get to it. Things you
+didn't understand and didn't like!"
+
+"I didn't know what she meant."
+
+"Of course you didn't. Who could? But I'm sorry to say that Edith made me
+pretty well believe you did."
+
+He was silent a while, trying to fathom the reason of his sister's
+strange duplicity. Apparently he gave it up.
+
+"You can't be a brute to a poor little woman with a bad spine," said he;
+"but I'm not going to forgive Edith for that."
+
+Anne flamed through her pallor. "For what?" she said. "For not having had
+more courage than yourself? Think what you put on her."
+
+"I didn't. She took it on herself. Edith's got courage enough for
+anybody. She would never admit that her spine released her from all moral
+obligations. But I suppose she meant well."
+
+The spirit of the grey, cold morning seemed to have settled upon Anne.
+She gazed sternly out over the eastern sea. Preoccupied with what he
+considered Edith's perfidy, he failed to understand his wife's silence
+and her mood.
+
+"Edith's very fond of you. You won't let this make any difference between
+you and her?"
+
+"Between her and me it can make no difference. I am very fond of Edith."
+
+"But the fact remains that you married me under false pretences? Is that
+what you mean?"
+
+"You may certainly put it that way."
+
+"I understand your point of view completely. I wish you could understand
+mine. When Edith said there were things she could have told you that I
+couldn't, she meant that there were extenuating circumstances."
+
+"They would have made no difference."
+
+"Excuse me, they make all the difference. But, of course, there's no
+extenuation for deception. Therefore, if you insist on putting it that
+way--if--if it has made the whole thing intolerable to you, it seems to
+me that perhaps I ought, don't you know, to release you from your
+obligations----"
+
+She looked at him. She knew that he had understood the meaning and the
+depth of her repugnance. She did not know that such understanding is
+rare in the circumstances, nor could she see that in itself it was a
+revelation of a certain capacity for the "goodness" she had once believed
+in. But she did see that she was being treated with a delicacy and
+consideration she had not expected of this man with the strange devil.
+It touched her in spite of her repugnance. It made her own that she had
+expected nothing short of it until yesterday.
+
+"_Do_ you insist?" he went on. "After what I've told you?"
+
+"After what you've told me--no. I'm ready to believe that you did not
+mean to deceive me."
+
+"Doesn't that make any difference?" he asked tenderly.
+
+"Yes. It makes some difference--in my judgment of you."
+
+"You mean you're not--as Edith would say--going to be too hard on me?"
+
+"I hope," said Anne, "I should never be too hard on any one."
+
+"Then," he inquired, eager to be released from the strain of a most
+insupportable situation, "what are we going to do next?"
+
+He had assumed that the supreme issue had been decided by a polite
+evasion; and his question had been innocent of all momentous meaning. He
+merely wished to know how they were going to spend the day that was
+before them, since they had to spend days, and spend them together. But
+Anne's tense mind contemplated nothing short of the supreme issue that,
+for her, was not to be evaded, nor yet to be decided hastily.
+
+"Will you leave me alone," she said, "to think it over? Will you give me
+three hours?"
+
+He stared and turned pale; for, this time, he understood.
+
+"Certainly," he said coldly, rising and taking out his watch. "It's
+twelve now."
+
+"At three, then?"
+
+They met at three o'clock. Anne had spent one hour of bewilderment out of
+doors, two hours of hard praying and harder thinking in her room.
+
+Her mind was made up. However notorious her husband had been, between him
+and her there was to be no open rupture. She was not going to leave him,
+to appeal to him for a separation, to deny him any right. Not that she
+was moved by a profound veneration for the legal claim. Marriage was to
+her a matter of religion even more than of law. And though, at the
+moment, she could no longer discern its sacramental significance through
+the degraded aspect it now wore for her, she surrendered on the religious
+ground. The surrender would be a martyrdom. She was called upon to lay
+down her will, but not to subdue the deep repugnance of her soul.
+
+Protection lay for her in Walter's chivalry, as she well knew. But she
+would not claim it. Chastened and humbled, she would take up her wedded
+life again. There was no vow that she would not keep, no duty she would
+not fulfil. And she would remain in her place of peace, building up
+between them the ramparts of the spiritual life.
+
+Meanwhile she gave him credit for his attitude.
+
+"Things can never be as they were between us," she said. "That you cannot
+expect. But--"
+
+He listened with his eyes fixed on hers, accepting from her his destiny.
+She reddened.
+
+"It was good of you to offer to release me--" He spared her.
+
+"Are you not going to hold me to it, then?"
+
+"I am not." She paused, and then forced herself to it. "I will try to be
+a good wife to you."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+It was impossible for them to stay any longer at Scarby. The place was
+haunted by the presence and the voice of scandalous rumour. Anne had the
+horrible idea that it had been also a haunt of Lady Cayley, of the infamy
+itself.
+
+The week-old honeymoon looked at them out of its clouds with such an
+aged, sinister, and disastrous aspect that they resolved to get away from
+it. For the sake of appearances, they spent another week of aimless
+wandering on the East coast, before returning to the town where an
+unintelligible fate had decided that Majendie should have a business he
+detested, and a house.
+
+Anne had once asked herself what she would do if she were told that
+she would have to spend all her life in Scale on Humber. Scale is
+prevailingly, conspicuously commercial. It is not beautiful. Its streets
+are squalidly flat, its houses meanly rectangular. The colouring of Scale
+is thought by some to be peculiarly abominable. It is built in brown,
+paved and pillared in unclean grey. Its rivers and dykes run brown under
+a grey northeastern sky.
+
+Once a year it yields reluctantly to strange passion, and Spring is
+born in Scale; born in tortures almost human, a relentless immortality
+struggling with visible corruption. The wonder is that it should be born
+at all.
+
+To-day, the day of their return, the March wind had swept the streets
+clean, and the evening had secret gold and sharp silver in its grey. Anne
+remembered how, only last year, she had looked upon such a spring on the
+day when she guessed for the first time that Walter cared for her. She
+was not highly endowed with imagination; still, even she had felt dimly,
+and for once in her life, that sense of mortal tenderness and divine
+uplifting which is the message of Spring to all lovers.
+
+But that emotion, which had had its momentary intensity for Anne
+Fletcher, was over and done with for Anne Majendie. Like some mourner for
+whom superb weather has been provided on the funeral day of his beloved,
+she felt in this young, wantoning, unsympathetic Spring the immortal
+cruelty and irony of Nature. She was bearing her own heart to its burial;
+and each street that they passed, as the slow cab rattled heavily on its
+way from the station, was a stage in the intolerable progress; it brought
+her a little nearer to the grave.
+
+From her companion's respectful silence she gathered that, though lost
+to the extreme funereal significance of their journey, he was not
+indifferent; he shared to some extent her mourning mood. She was grateful
+for that silence of his, because it justified her own.
+
+They were both, by their temperaments, absurdly and diversely,
+almost incompatibly young. At two-and-thirty Majendie, through very
+worldliness, was a boy in his infinite capacity for recoil from trouble.
+Anne had preserved that crude and cloistral youth which belongs to all
+lives passed between walls that protect them from the world. At
+seven-and-twenty she was a girl, with a girl's indestructible innocence.
+She had not yet felt within her the springs of her own womanhood.
+Marriage had not touched the spirit, which had kept itself apart even
+from her happiness, in the days that were given her to be happy in. Her
+suffering was like a child's, and her attitude to it bitterly immature.
+It bounded her; it annihilated the intellectual form of time,
+obliterating the past, and intercepting any view of a future. Only,
+unlike a child, and unlike Majendie, she lacked the power of the
+rebound to joy.
+
+"Dear," said her husband anxiously, as the cab drew up at the door of the
+house in Prior Street, "have you realised that poor Edith is probably
+preparing to receive us with glee? Do you think you could manage to look
+a little less unhappy?"
+
+The words were a shock to her, but they did her the service of a shock
+by recalling her to the realities outside herself. All the courtesies
+and kindnesses she owed to those about her insisted that her bridal
+home-coming must lack no sign of grace. She forced a smile.
+
+"I'm sorry. I didn't know I was looking particularly unhappy."
+
+It struck her that Walter was not looking by any means too happy himself.
+
+"It doesn't matter; only, we don't want to dash her down, first thing, do
+we?"
+
+"No--no. Dear Edith. And there's Nanna--how sweet of her--and Kate, and
+Mary, too."
+
+The old nurse stood on the doorstep to welcome them; her fellow-servants
+were behind her, smiling, at the door. Interested faces appeared at the
+windows of the house opposite. At the moment of alighting Anne was aware
+that the eyes of many people were upon them, and she was thankful that
+she had married a man whose self-possession, at any rate, she could rely
+on. Majendie's manner was perfect. He avoided both the bridegroom's
+offensive assiduity and his no less offensive affectation of
+indifference. It had occurred to him that, in the circumstances, Anne
+might find it peculiarly disagreeable to be stared at.
+
+"Look at Nanna," he whispered, to distract her attention. "There's no
+doubt about her being glad to see you."
+
+Nanna grasped the hands held out to her, hanging her head on one side,
+and smiling her tremorous, bashful smile. The other two, Kate and Mary,
+came forward, affectionate, but more self-contained. Anne realised with a
+curious surprise that she was coming back to a household that she knew,
+that knew her and loved her. In the last week she had forgotten Prior
+Street.
+
+Majendie watched her anxiously. But she, too, had qualities which could
+be relied on. As she passed into the house she had held her head high,
+with an air of flinging back the tragic gloom like a veil from her face.
+She was not a woman to trail a tragedy up and down the staircase. Above
+all, he could trust her trained loyalty to convention.
+
+The servants threw open two doors on the ground floor, and stood back
+expectant. On such an occasion it was proper to look pleased and to give
+praise. Anne was fine in her observance of each propriety as she looked
+into the rooms prepared for her. The house in Prior Street had not lost
+its simple old-world look in beautifying itself for the bride. It had put
+on new blinds and clean paint, and the smell of spring flowers was
+everywhere. The rest was familiar. She had told Majendie that she liked
+the old things best. They appealed to her sense of the fit and the
+refined; they were signs of good taste and good breeding in her husband's
+family and in himself. The house was a survival, a protest against the
+terrible all-invading soul of Scale on Humber.
+
+For another reason, which she could not yet analyse, Anne was glad that
+nothing had been changed for her coming. It was as if she felt that it
+would have been hard on Majendie if he had been put to much expense in
+renovating his house for a woman in whom the spirit of the bride had
+perished. The house in Prior Street was only a place for her body to
+dwell in, for her soul to hide in, only walls around walls, the shell
+of the shell.
+
+She turned to her husband with a smile that flashed defiance to the
+invading pathos of her state. Majendie's eyes brightened with hope,
+beholding her admirable behaviour. He had always thoroughly approved of
+Anne.
+
+Upstairs, in the room that was her own, poor Edith (the cause, as he
+felt, of their calamity) had indeed prepared for them with joy.
+
+Majendie's sister lay on her couch by the window, as they had left her,
+as they would always find her, not like a woman with a hopelessly injured
+spine, but like a lady of the happy world, resting in luxury, a little
+while, from the assault of her own brilliant and fatiguing vitality. The
+flat, dark masses of her hair, laid on the dull red of her cushions, gave
+to her face an abrupt and lustrous whiteness, whiteness that threw into
+vivid relief the features of expression, the fine, full mouth, with its
+temperate sweetness, and the tender eyes, dark as the brows that arched
+them. Edith, in her motionless beauty, propped on her cushions, had
+acquired a dominant yet passionless presence, as of some regal woman of
+the earth surrendered to a heavenly empire. You could see that, however
+sanctified by suffering, Edith had still a placid mundane pleasure in her
+white wrapper of woollen gauze, and in her long lace scarf. She wore them
+with an appearance of being dressed appropriately for a superb occasion.
+
+The sign of her delicacy was in her hands, smoothed and wasted with
+inactivity. Yet they had an energy of their own. The hands and the weak,
+slender arms had a surprising way of leaping up to draw to her all
+beloved persons who bent above her couch. They leapt now to her brother
+and his wife, and sank, fatigued with their effort. Two frail, nervous
+hands embraced Majendie's, till one of them let go, as she remembered
+Anne, and held her, too.
+
+Anne had been vexed, and Majendie angry with her; but anger and vexation
+could not live in sight of the pure, tremulous, eager soul of love that
+looked at them out of Edith's eyes.
+
+"What a skimpy honeymoon you've had," she said. "Why did you go and cut
+it short like that? Was it just because of me?"
+
+In one sense it was because of her. Anne was helpless before her
+question; but Majendie rose to it.
+
+"I say--the conceit of her! No, it wasn't just because of you. Anne
+agreed with me about Scarby. And we're not cutting our honeymoon short,
+we're spinning it out. We're going to have another one, some day, in a
+nicer place."
+
+"Anne didn't like Scarby, after all?"
+
+"No, I knew she wouldn't. And she lived to own that I was right."
+
+"That," said Edith, laughing, "was a bad beginning. If I'd been you,
+Anne, whether I was right or not, I'd never have owned that _he_ was."
+
+"Anne," said Majendie, "is never anything but just. And this time she was
+generous."
+
+Edith's hand was on the sleeve of Majendie's coat, caressing it. She
+looked up at Anne.
+
+"And what," said she, "do you think of my little brother, on the whole?"
+
+"I think he says a great many things he doesn't mean."
+
+"Oh, you've found that out, have you? What else have you discovered?"
+
+The gay question made Anne's eyelids drop like curtains on her tragedy.
+
+"That he means a great many things he doesn't say? Is that it?"
+
+Majendie, becoming restive under the flicker of Edith's cheerful tongue,
+withdrew the arm she cherished. Edith felt the nervousness of the
+movement; her glance turned from her brother's face to Anne's, rested
+there for a tense moment, and then veiled itself.
+
+At that moment they both knew that Edith had abandoned her glad
+assumption of their happiness. The blessings of them all were upon Nanna
+as she came in with the tea-tray.
+
+Nanna was sly and shy and ceremonial in her bearing, but under it there
+lurked the privileged audacity of the old servant, and (as poor Majendie
+perceived) the secret, terrifying gaiety of the hymeneal devotee. The
+faint sound of giggling on the staircase penetrated to the room. It was
+evident that Nanna was preparing some horrid and tremendous rite.
+
+She set her tray in its place by Edith's couch, and cleared a side table
+which she had drawn into a central and conspicuous position. The three,
+as if humouring a child in its play, feigned a profound ignorance of what
+Nanna had in hand.
+
+She disappeared, suppressed the giggling on the stairs, and returned,
+herself in jubilee let loose. She carried an enormous plate, and on the
+plate Anne's wedding-cake with all its white terraces and towers, and (a
+little shattered) the sugar orange blossoms and myrtles of its crown. She
+stood it alone on its table of honour, and withdrew abruptly.
+
+The three were stricken dumb by the presence of the bridal thing. Nanna,
+listening outside the door, attributed their silence to an appreciation
+too profound for utterance.
+
+They looked at it, and it looked at them. Its veil of myrtle, trembling
+yet with the shock of its entrance, gave it the semblance of movement and
+of life. It towered in the majesty of its insistent whiteness. It trailed
+its mystic modesties before them. Its brittle blossoms quivered like
+innocence appalled. The wide cleft at its base betrayed the black and
+formidable heart beneath the fair and sugared surface. These crowding
+symbols, perceptible to Edith's subtler intelligence, massed themselves
+in her companions' minds as one vast sensation of discomfort.
+
+As usual when he was embarrassed, Majendie laughed.
+
+"It's the very spirit of dyspepsia," he said. "A cold and dangerous
+thing. _Must_ we eat it?"
+
+"_You_ must," said Edith; "Nanna would weep if you didn't."
+
+"I don't think I can--possibly," said Anne, who was already reaping her
+sowing to the winds of emotion in a whirlwind of headache.
+
+"Let's all eat it--and die," said Majendie. He hacked, laid a ruin of
+fragments round the evil thing, scattered crumbs on all their plates, and
+buried his own piece in a flower-pot. "Do you think," he said, "that
+Nanna will dig it up again?"
+
+Anne turned white over her tea, pleaded her headache, and begged to be
+taken to her room. Majendie took her there.
+
+"Isn't Anne well?" asked Edith anxiously, when he came back.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing. She's been seedy all day, and the sight of that cake
+finished her off. I don't wonder. It's enough to upset a strong man.
+Let's ring for Nanna to take it away."
+
+He rang. When Nanna appeared Edith was eating her crumbs ostentatiously,
+as if unwilling to leave the last of a delicious thing.
+
+"Oh, Nanna," said she, "that's a heavenly wedding-cake!"
+
+Majendie was reminded of the habitual tender perfidy of that saint, his
+sister. She was always lying to make other people happy, saying that she
+had everything she wanted, when she hadn't, and that her spine didn't
+hurt her, when it did. When Edith was too exhausted to lie, she would
+look at you and smile, with the sweat of her torture on her forehead. He
+knew Edith, and wondered how far she had lied to Anne, and what she had
+done it for. He had a good mind to ask her; but he shrank from "dashing
+her down the first day."
+
+But Edith herself dashed everything down the first five minutes. There
+was nothing that _she_ shrank from.
+
+"I'm sorry for poor Anne," said she; "but it's nice to get you all to
+myself again. Just for once. Only for once. I'm not jealous."
+
+He smiled, and stroked her hair.
+
+"I was jealous--oh, furiously jealous, just at first, for five minutes.
+But I got over it. It was so undignified."
+
+"It didn't show, dear."
+
+"I didn't mean it to. It wouldn't have been pretty. And now, it's all
+over and I like Anne. But I don't like her as much as you."
+
+"You must like her more," he said gravely. "She'll need it--badly."
+
+Edith looked at him. "How can she need it badly, when she has you?"
+
+"You're a good woman, and I'm a mere mortal man. She's found that out
+already, and she doesn't like it."
+
+"Wallie, _dear_, what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean exactly what I say. She's found it out. She's found _me_ out.
+She's found everything out."
+
+"Found out? But how?"
+
+"It doesn't matter how. Edie, why didn't you tell her? You said you
+would."
+
+"Yes--I said I would."
+
+"And you told me you had."
+
+"No. I didn't tell you I had."
+
+"What did you tell me, then?"
+
+"I told you there was nothing to be afraid of, that it was all right."
+
+"And of course I thought you'd told her."
+
+"If I had told her it wouldn't have been all right; for she wouldn't have
+married you."
+
+Majendie scowled, and Edith went on calmly.
+
+"I knew that--she as good as told me so--and I knew _her_."
+
+"Well--what if she hadn't married me?"
+
+"That would have been very bad for both of you. Especially for you."
+
+"For me? And how do you know this isn't going to be worse? For both of
+us. It's generally better to be straight, and face facts, however
+disagreeable. Especially when everybody knows that you've got a skeleton
+in your cupboard."
+
+"Anne didn't, and she was so afraid of skeletons."
+
+"All the more reason why you should have hauled the horrid thing out and
+let her have a good look at it. She mightn't have been afraid of it then.
+Now she's convinced it's a fifty times worse skeleton than it is."
+
+"She wouldn't have lived with it in the house, dear. She said so."
+
+"But I thought you never told her?"
+
+"She was talking about somebody else's skeleton, dear."
+
+"Oh, somebody else's, that's a very different thing."
+
+"She meant--if she'd been the woman. I was testing her, to see how she'd
+take it. Do you think I was very wrong?"
+
+"Well, frankly, dear, I cannot say you were very wise."
+
+"I wonder----"
+
+She lay back wondering. Doubt of her wisdom shook her through all her
+tender being. She had been so sure.
+
+"How would you have liked it," said she, "if Anne had given you up and
+gone away, and you'd never seen her again?"
+
+His face said plainly that he wouldn't have liked it at all.
+
+"Well, that's what she'd have done. And I wanted her to stay and marry
+you."
+
+"Yes, but with her eyes open."
+
+She shook her head, the head that would have been so wise for him.
+
+"No," said she. "Anne's one of those people who see best with their eyes
+shut."
+
+"Well, they're open enough now in all conscience. But there's one thing
+she hasn't found out. She doesn't know how it happened. Can you tell her?
+_I_ can't. I told her there were extenuating circumstances; but of
+course I couldn't go into them."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"She said no circumstances could extenuate facts."
+
+"I can hear her saying it."
+
+"I understand her state of mind," said Majendie. "She couldn't see the
+circumstances for the facts."
+
+"Our Anne is but young. In ten years' time she won't be able to see the
+facts for the circumstances."
+
+"Well--will you tell her?"
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+"Make her see that I'm not necessarily an utter brute just because I----"
+
+"I'll make her see everything."
+
+"Forgive me for bothering you."
+
+"Dear--forgive me for breaking my promise and deceiving you."
+
+He bent to her weak arms.
+
+"I believe," she whispered, "the end will yet justify the means."
+
+"Oh--the end."
+
+He didn't see it; but he was convinced that there could hardly be a worse
+beginning.
+
+He went upstairs, where Anne lay in the agonies of her bilious attack. He
+found comfort, rather than gave it, by holding handkerchiefs steeped in
+eau-de-Cologne to her forehead. It gratified him to find that she would
+let him do it without shrinking from his touch.
+
+But Anne was past that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+For once in his life Majendie was glad that he had a business. Shipping
+(he was a ship-owner) was a distraction from the miserable problem that
+weighed on him at home.
+
+Anne's morning face was cold to him. She lay crushed in her bed. She had
+had a bad night, and he knew himself to be the cause of it.
+
+His pity for her hurt like passion.
+
+"How is she?" asked Edith, as he came into her room before going to the
+office.
+
+"She's a wreck," he said, "a ruin. She's had an awful night. Be kind to
+her, Edie."
+
+Edie was very kind. But she said to herself that if Anne was a ruin that
+was not at all a bad thing.
+
+Edith Majendie was a loving but shrewd observer of the people of her
+world. Lying on her back she saw them at an unusual angle, almost as if
+they moved on a plane invisible to persons who go about upright on their
+legs. The four walls of her room concentrated her vision in bounding it.
+She saw few women and fewer men, but she saw them apart from those
+superficial activities which distract and darken judgment. Faces that
+she was obliged to see bending over her had another aspect for Edith than
+that which they presented to the world at large. Anne Majendie, who had
+come so near to Edith, had always put a certain distance between herself
+and her other friends. While they were chiefly impressed with her superb
+superiority, and saw her forever standing on a pedestal, Edith declared
+that she knew nothing of Anne's austere and impressive attributes. She
+protested against anything so dreary as the other people's view of her.
+They and their absurd pedestals! She refused to regard her sister-in-law
+as an established solemnity, eminent and lonely in the scene. Pedestals
+were all very well at a proper distance, but at a close view they were
+foreshortening to the human figure. Other people might like to see more
+pedestal than Anne; she preferred to see more Anne than pedestal. If they
+didn't know that Anne was dear and sweet, she did. So did Walter.
+
+If they wanted proof of it, why, would any other woman have put up with
+her and her wretched spine? Weren't they all, Anne's friends, sorry for
+Anne just because of it, of her? If you came to think of it, if you
+traced everything back to the beginning, her spine had been the cause
+of all Anne's troubles.
+
+That was how she had always reasoned it out. No suffering had ever
+obscured the lucidity of Edith's mind. She knew that it was her spine
+that had kept her brother from marrying all those years. He couldn't
+leave her alone with it, neither could he ask any woman to share the
+house inhabited, pervaded, dominated by it. Unsafeguarded by marriage, he
+had fallen into evil hands. To Edith, who had plenty of leisure for
+reflection, all this had become terribly clear.
+
+Then Anne had come, the strong woman who could bear Walter's burden for
+him. She had been jealous of Anne at first, for five minutes. Then she
+had blessed her.
+
+But Edith, as she had told her brother, was not a fool. And all the time,
+while her heart leapt to the image of Anne in her dearness and sweetness,
+her brain saw perfectly well that her sister-in-law had not been free
+from the sin of pride (that came, said Edith, of standing on a pedestal.
+It was better to lie on a couch than stand on a pedestal; you knew, at
+any rate, where you were).
+
+Now, as Edith also said, there can be nothing more prostrating to a
+woman's pride than a bad bilious attack. Especially when it exposes you
+to the devoted ministrations of a husband you have made up your mind to
+disapprove of, and compels you to a baffling view of him.
+
+Anne owned herself baffled.
+
+Her attack had chastened her. She had been touched by Walter's kindness,
+by the evidence (if she had needed it) that she was as dear to him in her
+ignominious agony as she had been in the beauty of her triumphal health.
+As he moved about her, he became to her insistent outward sense the man
+she had loved because of his goodness. It was so that she had first seen
+his strong masculine figure moving about Edith on her couch, handling
+her with the supreme gentleness of strength. She had not been two days in
+the house in Prior Street before her memories assailed her. Her new and
+detestable view of Walter contended with her old beloved vision of him.
+The two were equally real, equally vivid, and she could not reconcile
+them. Walter himself, seen again in his old surroundings, was protected
+by an army of associations. The manifestations of his actual presence
+were also such as to appeal to her memory against her judgment. Her
+memory was in league with her. But when the melting mood came over her,
+her conscience resisted and rose against them both.
+
+Edith, watching for the propitious moment, could not tell by what signs
+she would recognise it when it came. Her own hour was the early evening.
+She had always brightened towards six o'clock, the time of her brother's
+home-coming.
+
+To-day he had removed himself, to give her her chance with Anne. She
+could see him pottering about the garden below her window. He had kept
+that garden with care. He had mown and sown, and planted, and weeded,
+and watered it, that Edith might always have something pretty to look at
+from her window. With its green grass plot and gay beds, the tiny oblong
+space defied the extending grime and gloom of Scale. This year he had
+planted it for Anne. He had set a thousand bulbs for her, and many
+thousand flowers were to have sprung up in time to welcome her. But
+something had gone wrong with them. They had suffered by his absence. As
+Edith looked out of the window he was stooping low, on acutely bended
+knees, sorrowfully preoccupied with a broken hyacinth. He had his back to
+them.
+
+To Edith's mind there was something heart-rending in the expression of
+that intent, innocent back, so surrendered to their gaze, so unconscious
+of its own pathetic curve. She wondered if it appealed to Anne in that
+way. She judged from the expression of her sister-in-law's face that it
+did not appeal to her in any way at all.
+
+"Poor dear," said she, "he's still worrying about those blessed bulbs of
+mine--of yours, I mean."
+
+"Don't, Edie. As if I wanted to take your bulbs away from you. I'm not
+jealous."
+
+"No more am I," said Edie. "Let's say both our bulbs. I wish he wouldn't
+garden quite so much, though. It always makes his head ache."
+
+"Why does he do it, then?" asked Anne calmly.
+
+Her calmness irritated Edith.
+
+"Oh, why does Walter do anything? Because he's an angel!"
+
+Anne's silence gave her the opening she was looking for.
+
+"You know, you used to think so, too."
+
+"Of course I did," said Anne evasively.
+
+"And equally of course, you don't, now you've married him?"
+
+"I _have_ married him. What more could I do to prove my appreciation?"
+
+"Oh, heaps more. Mere marrying's nothing. Any woman can do that."
+
+"Do you think so? It seems to me that marrying--mere marrying--may be a
+great deal--about as much as many men have a right to ask."
+
+"Hasn't every man a right to ask for--what shall I say--a little
+understanding--from the woman he cares for?"
+
+"Edith, what has he told you?"
+
+"Nothing, my dear, that I hadn't seen for myself."
+
+"Did he tell you that I 'misunderstood' him?"
+
+"Did he pose as _l'homme incompris_? No, he didn't."
+
+"Still--he told you," Anne insisted.
+
+"Of course he did." She brushed the self-evident aside and returned to
+her point. "He does care for you. That, at least, you can understand."
+
+"No, that's just what I don't understand. I can't understand his caring.
+I can't understand him. I can't understand anything." Her voice shook.
+
+"Poor darling, I know it's hard, sometimes. Still, you do know what he
+is."
+
+"I know what he was--what I thought him. It's hard to reconcile it with
+what he is."
+
+"With what you think him? You can't, of course. I suppose you think him
+something too bad for words?"
+
+Anne broke down weakly.
+
+"Oh, Edith, why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"What? That Wallie was bad?"
+
+"Yes, yes. It would have been better if you'd told me everything."
+
+"Well, dear, whatever I told you, I couldn't have told you that. It
+wouldn't have been true."
+
+"He says himself that everything was true."
+
+"Everything probably is true. But then, the point is that you don't know
+the whole truth, or even half of it. That's just what he couldn't tell
+you. I should have told you. That's where I bungled it. You know he left
+it to me; he said I was to tell you."
+
+"Yes, he told me that. He didn't mean to deceive me."
+
+"No more did I. If my brother had been a bad man, dear, do you suppose
+for a moment I'd have let him marry my dearest friend?"
+
+"You didn't know. We don't know these things, Edith. That's the terrible
+part of it."
+
+"Yes, it's the terrible part of it. But _I_ knew all right. He never kept
+anything from me, not for long."
+
+"But, Edith--how _could_ he? How _could_ he? When the woman--Lady
+Cayley--She was _bad_, wasn't she?"
+
+"Of course she was bad. Bad as they make them--worse. You know she was
+divorced?"
+
+"Yes," said Anne, "that's what I do know."
+
+"Well, she wasn't divorced on Walter's account, my dear. There were
+several others--four, five, goodness knows how many. Poor Walter was a
+mere drop in her ocean."
+
+Anne stared a moment at the expanse presented to her.
+
+"But," said she, "he was in it."
+
+"Oh yes, he was in it. The ocean swallowed him as it swallowed the
+others. But it couldn't keep him. He couldn't live in it, like them."
+
+"But how did she get hold of him?"
+
+"She got hold of him by appealing to his chivalry."
+
+(His chivalry--she knew it.)
+
+"It's what happens, over and over again. He thought her a vilely injured
+woman. He may have thought her good. He certainly thought her pathetic.
+It was the pathos that did it."
+
+"That--did--it?"
+
+"Yes. Did it. She hurled herself at his head--at his knees--at his
+feet---till he _had_ to lift her. And that's how it happened."
+
+Anne's spirit writhed as she contemplated the happening.
+
+"I know it oughtn't to have happened. I know Walter wasn't the holy saint
+he ought to have been. But oh, he was a martyr!" She paused. "And--he was
+very young."
+
+"Edith--when was it?"
+
+"Seven years ago."
+
+Anne pondered. The seven years helped to purify him. Every day helped
+that threw the horror further back in time--separated it from her. If--if
+he had not been steeped too long in it. She wanted to know _how_ long,
+but she was afraid to ask; afraid lest it should be brought nearer to her
+than she could bear. Edith saw her fear.
+
+"It lasted two years. It was all my fault."
+
+"Your fault?"
+
+"Yes, my fault. Because of my horrid spine. You see, it kept him from
+marrying."
+
+"Well, but--"
+
+"Well, but it couldn't have happened if he had married. How _could_ it?
+How could it have happened if you had been there? You would have saved
+him."
+
+She paused on that note, a long, illuminating pause. The note itself was
+a divine inspiration. It rang all golden. It thrilled to the verge of the
+dominant chord in Anne. It touched her soul, the mother of brooding,
+mystic harmonies.
+
+"You would have saved him."
+
+Anne saw herself for one moment as his guardian angel, her mission
+frustrated through a flaw of time. That vision was dashed by another,
+herself as the ideal, the star he should have looked to before its dawn,
+herself dishonoured by his young haste, his passion, his failure to
+foresee.
+
+"He should have waited for me."
+
+"Did you wait for him?"
+
+A quick flush pulsed through the whiteness of Anne's face. She looked
+back seven years to her girlhood in the southern Deanery, her home. She
+had another vision, a vision of a Minor Canon, whom she had loved with
+the pure worship of her youth, a love of which somehow she was now
+ashamed. Ashamed, though it had then seemed to her so spiritual. Her dead
+parents had desired the marriage, but neither she nor they had the power
+to bring it about.
+
+Edith had never heard of the Minor Canon. She had drawn a bow at a
+venture.
+
+"My dear," she said, "why not? It's only the very elect lovers who can
+say to each other, 'I never loved any one but you.'"
+
+"At any rate," said Anne, "I never loved any one else well enough to
+marry him."
+
+For, in her fancy, the Minor Canon, being withdrawn in time, had ceased
+to occupy space; he had become that which he was for her girlhood, a
+disembodied dream. She could not have explained why she was so ashamed
+of him. What ground of comparison was there between that blameless one
+and Lady Cayley?
+
+"Edith," she said suddenly, "did you ever see her?"
+
+"Never," said Edith emphatically.
+
+"You don't know what she was like?"
+
+"I don't. I never wanted to. I dare say there are people in Scale who
+could tell you all about her, only I wouldn't inquire if I were you."
+
+"Did it happen at Scarby?" She was determined to know the worst.
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"Oh--why did I ever go there?"
+
+"He didn't want you to. That was why."
+
+"Where is she now?"
+
+"Nobody knows. She might be anywhere."
+
+"Not here?"
+
+"No, not here. My dear, you mustn't get her on your nerves."
+
+"I'm afraid of meeting her."
+
+"It isn't likely that you ever will. She isn't the sort one does
+meet--now, poor thing."
+
+"Who was she?"
+
+"The wife of Sir Andrew Cayley, a tallow-chandler."
+
+"Oh, how did Walter ever--"
+
+"My dear, one meets all sorts of funny people in Scale. He was a very
+wealthy tallow-chandler. Besides, it wasn't he that Walter did meet,
+naturally."
+
+"How can you joke about it? It makes me sick to think of it."
+
+"It made me sick enough once, dear. But I don't think of it."
+
+"I can't help thinking of it."
+
+"Well, whenever you do, when it does come over you--it will,
+sometimes--think of what Walter's life was before he knew you. Everything
+was spoiled for him because of me. He was sent to a place he detested
+because of me; put into an office which he loathed, shut up here in this
+hateful house, because of me. And he was good to me, good and dear. Even
+at the worst he hardly ever left me if he thought I wanted him--not even
+to go to _her_. But he was young, and it was an awful life for him; you
+don't know how awful. It would have been bad enough for a woman. It was
+intolerable for a man. I was worse then than I am now. I was horribly
+fretful, and I worried him. I think I drove him to her--I know I did. He
+had to get away from it sometimes. Won't you think of that?"
+
+"I'll try to think of it."
+
+"And it won't make you not like him?"
+
+"My dear, I liked him first for your sake, then I liked you for his, now
+I suppose I must like him for yours again."
+
+"No--for his own sake."
+
+"Does it matter which?"
+
+"Not much--so long as you like him. He really is angelic, though you
+mayn't think it."
+
+"I think you are."
+
+Edith was not only angelic, but womanly and full of guile, and she knew
+with whom she had to do. She had humbled Anne with shrewd shafts that
+hit her in all her weak places; now she exalted her. Anne had not her
+likeness in a thousand. She was a woman magnificently planned, of stature
+not to be diminished by the highest pedestal. A figure fit for a throne,
+a niche, a shrine. Edith could see the dear little downy feathers
+sprouting on Anne's shoulder-blades, and the infant aureole playing
+in her hair.
+
+"You're a saint," said Edith.
+
+"I am not," said Anne, while her pale cheek glowed with the flattery.
+
+"Of course you are," said Edith, "or you could never have put up with
+me."
+
+Whereupon Anne kissed her.
+
+"And I may tell Walter what you've said?"
+
+It was thus that she spared Anne's mortal pride. She knew how it would
+shrink from telling him.
+
+Anne went down to Majendie in the garden and sent him to his sister. They
+returned to the house by the open window of his study. A bright fire was
+burning in the room. He looked at her shyly and half in doubt, drew up an
+arm-chair to the hearth, and left her there.
+
+His manner brought back to her the days of their engagement when that
+room had been their refuge. Not that they had often been alone together.
+She could count the times on the fingers of one hand, the times when
+Edith was too ill to be wheeled into her room. It had been nearly always
+in Edith's room that she had seen him, surrounded by all the feminine
+devices, the tender trivialities that were part of the moving pathos of
+the scene. She had so associated him with his sister that it had been
+hard for her to realise that he had any separate life of his own. She
+felt that his love for her had simply grown out of his love for Edith,
+it was the flame, the flower of his tenderness. It was one with his
+goodness, and she had been glad to have it so. There was no jealousy in
+Anne.
+
+It came over her now with a fresh shock, how very little, after all, she
+had known of him. It was through Edith that she really knew him. And yet
+it was impossible that Edith could have absorbed him utterly. Anne had
+not counted his business; for it had not interested her, and to say that
+Walter was a ship-owner did not define him in the very least. What
+remained over of Walter was a secret that this room, his study, must
+partially reveal.
+
+She remembered how she had first come there, and had looked shyly about
+her for intimations of his inner nature, and how it was his pipe-rack and
+his boots that had first suggested that he had a life apart and dealings
+with the outer world. Now she rose and went round the room, searching for
+its secret, and finding no new impressions, only fresh lights on the old.
+If the room told her anything it told her how little Majendie had used
+it, how little he had been able to call anything his own. The things in
+it had no comfortable look of service. He could not have smoked there
+much, the curtains were too innocent. He could not have sat in that
+arm-chair much, the surface was too smooth. He could not have come there
+much at any time, for, though the carpet was faded, there was no
+well-worn passage from the threshold to the hearth. As far as she could
+make out he came there for no earthly purpose but to change his boots
+before going upstairs to Edith.
+
+The bookcase told the same story. It held histories and standard works
+inherited from Majendie's father; the works of Dickens, and Thackeray,
+and Hardy, read over and over again in the days when he had time for
+reading; several poets whom, by his own confession, he could not have
+read in any circumstances. One Meredith, partly uncut, testified to an
+honest effort and a baulked accomplishment. On a shelf apart stood the
+books that he had loved when he was a boy, the Annuals, the tales of
+travel and adventure, and one or two school prizes gorgeously bound.
+
+As she looked at them his boyhood rose before her; its dead innocence
+appealed to her comprehension and compassion.
+
+She knew that he had been disappointed in his ambition. Instead of being
+sent to Oxford he had been sent into business, that he might early
+support himself. He had supported himself. And he had stuck to the
+business that he might the better support Edith.
+
+She could not deny him the virtue of unselfishness.
+
+She remembered one Sunday, three weeks before their wedding-day, when she
+had stood alone with him in this room, at the closing of their happy day.
+It was then that he had asked her why she cared for him, and she had
+answered: "Because you are good. You always have been good."
+
+And he had said (how it came back to her!), "And if I hadn't always?
+Wouldn't you have cared then?"
+
+She had answered, "I would have cared, but I couldn't marry you."
+
+And he had turned away from her, and looked out of the window, keeping
+his back to her, and had stood so without speaking for a moment. She had
+wondered what had come over him.
+
+Now she knew. He had not been good. And she had married him.
+
+At the recollection the thoughts she had quieted stirred again and stung
+her, and again she trampled them down.
+
+She faced the question how she was going to build up the wedded life that
+her knowledge of him had laid low. She told herself that, after all, much
+remained. She had loved Walter for his unhappiness as well as for his
+goodness. He had needed her, and she had felt that there was no other
+woman who could have borne his burden half so well. Edith was too sweet
+to be thought of as a burden, but it could not be denied she weighed. In
+marrying Walter she would lift half the weight. Anne was strong, and she
+glorified in her strength. That was what she was there for.
+
+How much more was she prepared to do? Keeping his house was nothing;
+Nanna had always kept it well. Caring for Edith was nothing; she could
+not help but care for her. She had promised Walter that she would be a
+good wife to him, and she had vowed to herself that she would live her
+spiritual life apart.
+
+Was that being a good wife to him? To divorce her soul, her best self,
+from him? If she confined her duty to the preservation of the mere
+material tie, what would she make of herself? Of him?
+
+It came to her that his need of her was deeper and more spiritual than
+that. She argued that there must be something fine in him, or he never
+would have appreciated _her_. That other woman didn't count; she had
+thrust herself on him. When it came to choosing, he had chosen a
+spiritual woman! (Anne had no doubt that she was what she aspired to be.)
+And since all things were divinely ordered, Walter's choice was really
+God's will. God's hand had led him to her.
+
+It had been a blow to Anne's pride to realise that she had
+married--spiritually--beneath her. Her pride now recovered wonderfully,
+seeing in this very inequality its opportunity. She beheld herself
+superbly seated on an eminence, her spiritual opulence supplying Walter's
+poverty. Spiritually, she said, it might also be more blessed to give
+than to receive.
+
+Their marriage, in this its new, its immaterial consummation, would not
+be unequal. She would raise Walter. That, of course, was what God had
+meant her to do all the time. Never again could she look at her husband
+with eyes of mortal passion. But her love, which had died, was risen
+again; it could still turn to him a glorified and spiritual face; it
+could still know passion, a passion immortal and supreme.
+
+But it was an emotion of which by its very nature she could not bring
+herself to speak. It could mean nothing to Walter in his yet unspiritual
+state. She felt that when he came to her he would insist on some
+satisfaction, and there was no satisfaction that she could give to the
+sort of claim he would make. Therefore she awaited his coming with
+nervous trepidation.
+
+He came in as if nothing had happened. He sank with every symptom of
+comfortable assurance into the opposite arm-chair. And he asked no more
+formidable question than, "How's your headache?"
+
+"Better, thank you."
+
+"That's all right."
+
+He did not look at her, but his eyes were smiling as if at some agreeable
+thought or reminiscence. He had apparently assumed that Anne had
+recovered, not only from her headache, but from its cause. To Anne,
+tingling with the tension of a nervous crisis, this attitude was
+disconcerting. It seemed to reduce her and her crisis to insignificance.
+She had expected him to be tingling too. He had more cause to.
+
+"Do you mind my smoking? Say if you really do."
+
+She really did, but she forbore to say so. Forbearance henceforth was to
+be part of her discipline.
+
+He smoked contentedly, with half-closed eyes; and when he talked, he
+talked of the garden and of bulbs.
+
+Of bulbs, after what he had discussed with Edith upstairs. She would
+rather that he had asked his question, forced her to the issue. That at
+least would have shown some comprehension of her state. But he had taken
+the issue for granted, refused to face the immensity of it all. She had
+had her first taste of sacrificial flames, and her spirit was prepared to
+go through fire to reach him. And he presented himself as already folded
+and protected; satisfied with some inferior and independent secret of his
+own.
+
+She felt that a little perturbation would have become him more than that
+impenetrable peace.
+
+It would make it so difficult to raise him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The bell of St. Saviour's had ceased. Over the open market-place the air
+throbbed with a thousand pulses from the dying heart of sound. The great
+grey body of the Church was still; tower and couchant nave watched in
+their monstrous, motionless dominion, till the music stirred in them like
+a triumphant soul.
+
+As they hurried over the open market-place, Anne realised with some
+annoyance that she was late again for the Wednesday evening service. She
+dearly loved punctuality and order, and disliked to be either checked or
+hastened in her superb movements. She disliked to be late for anything.
+Above all she disliked standing on a mat outside a closed church door, in
+the middle of a General Confession, trying to surrender her spirit to the
+spirit of prayer, while Walter lingered, murmuring profane urbanities
+that claimed her as his own.
+
+He had perceived what he called her innocent design, her transparent
+effort to lead him to her heavenly heights. He had lent himself to
+it, tenderly, gravely, as he would have lent himself to a child's
+heart-rending play. He could not profess to follow the workings of his
+wife's mind, but he did understand her point of view. She had been "let
+in" for something she had not expected, and he was bound to make it up
+to her.
+
+There had been a week of concessions, crowned by his appearance at St.
+Saviour's.
+
+But that was on a Sunday. This was Wednesday, and he drew the line at
+Wednesdays.
+
+Oh yes, he saw her drift. He knew that what she expected of him was
+incessant penitence. But, after all, it was difficult to feel much
+abasement for a fault committed quite a number of years ago and
+sufficiently repented of at the time. He had settled his account, and
+it was hard that he should be made to pay twice over. To-night his mood
+was strangely out of harmony with Lent.
+
+Anne slackened her pace to intimate as much to him. Whereupon he lapsed
+into strange and disturbing legends of his childhood. He told her he had
+early weaned himself from the love of Lenten Services, observing their
+effect upon the unfortunate lady, his aunt, who had brought him up.
+Punctually at twelve o'clock on Palm Sunday, he said, the poor soul,
+exhausted with her endeavours after the Christian life, would fly into
+a passion, and punctually would rise from it at the same hour on Easter
+Day. For quite a long time he had believed that that was why they called
+it Passion Week.
+
+She moaned "Oh, Walter--don't!" as if he had hurt her, while she
+repressed the play of a little, creeping, curling, mundane smile.
+
+If he would only leave her! But, as they crossed to the curbstone, he
+changed over, preserving his proper place. He leaned to her with the
+indestructible attention of a lover. His whole manner was inimitably
+chivalrous, protective, and polite.
+
+Anne hardened her heart against him. At the church gate she turned and
+faced him coldly.
+
+"If you're not going in," said she, "you needn't come any further."
+
+He glanced at the belated group of worshippers gathered before the church
+door, and became more than ever polite and chivalrous and protective.
+
+"I must see you safely in," he said, and took up his stand beside her on
+the mat.
+
+Her eyes rested on him for a second in reproach, then dropped behind the
+veil of their lids. In another moment he would have to go. He had already
+surrendered her prayer-book, tucking it gently under her arm.
+
+"You'll be all right when you get in, won't you?" he said encouragingly.
+
+"Please go," she whispered.
+
+"Do I jar, dear?" he asked sweetly.
+
+"You do, very much."
+
+"I'm so sorry. I won't do it again."
+
+But his whispered vows and promises belied him, battling with her
+consecrated mood. She felt that his innermost spirit remained in its
+profanity, unillumined by her rebuke.
+
+Once more she set her face, and hardened her heart against him, and
+removed herself in the silence and isolation of her prayer.
+
+Through the closed door there came the rich, confused murmur of the
+Confession. He saw her lips curl, flower-like, with emotion, as her
+breath rose and fell in unison with the heaving chant. He watched her
+with a certain reverence, incomprehensibly chastened, till the door
+opened, and she went from him, moving down the lighted aisle with her
+remote, renunciating air.
+
+The door was shut in Majendie's face, and he turned away, intending to
+kill, to murder the next hour at his club.
+
+Anne was self-trained in the habit of detachment. She had only to kneel,
+to close her eyes and cover her face, and her soul slid of its own accord
+into the place of peace. Her very breathing and the beating of her heart
+were stayed. Her mind, emptied in a moment, was in a moment filled,
+brimming over with the thought of God. To her veiled vision that thought
+was like a sheet of blank light let down behind her drooped eyelids, and
+centring in a luminous whorl. It fascinated her. Her prayer shot straight
+to the heart of it, a communion too swift to trouble or divide the
+blessed light.
+
+In that instant her husband, the image and the thought of him, were cast
+into the secular darkness.
+
+She remembered how difficult it had once been thus to renounce him.
+Her trouble, in the days of her engagement, had been that, thrust him
+from her as she would, the idea of his goodness--the goodness that
+justified her through its own appeal--would call up his presence,
+emerging radiant from the outermost abyss. Inferior emotions then mingled
+indistinguishably with her holiest ardours. Spiritually ambitious, she
+had had her young eye on a hard-won crown of glory, and she had found
+that happiness made the spiritual life almost contemptibly easy. It was
+no effort in those days to realise divine mysteries, when the miracle of
+the Incarnation was, as it were, worked for her in her own soul; when she
+heard in her own heart the beating of the heart of God; when his hand
+touched her with a tenderness that warmed her place of peace. She had
+hardly known this flamed and lyric creature for herself. It was as if her
+soul, resting after long flight, had contemplated for the first time the
+silver and fine gold of her wings.
+
+It was the facility of the revelation that had first caused her to
+suspect it. And she had thrown ashes on the flame, and set a watch upon
+her soul, lest she should mistake an earthly for a heavenly content. She
+could not bear to think that she was cheated, that her pulses counted in
+her sense of exaltation and beatitude. She desired, purely, the utmost
+purity in that divine communion, so as to be sure that it was divine.
+
+Now, having suffered, she was completely sure. Her wound was the seal God
+set upon her soul. It was easy enough now for her to achieve detachment,
+oblivion of Walter Majendie, to pour out her whole soul in the prayer for
+light: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and by Thy great
+mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night."
+
+Her hands, as she prayed, were folded close over her eyes. Having
+annihilated her husband, she was disagreeably astonished to find that he
+was there, that he had been there for some time, in the seat beside her.
+
+He was sitting in what he took to be an attitude of extreme reverence,
+his head bowed and resting on his left arm, which was supported by the
+back of the seat in front of him. His right arm embraced, unconsciously,
+Anne's muff. Anne was vividly, painfully aware of him. Over the crook of
+his elbow one eye looked up at her, bright, smiling with inextinguishable
+affection. His lips gave out a sound that was not a prayer, but something
+between a murmur and a moan, distinctly audible. She felt his gaze as a
+gross, tangible thing, as a violent hand, parting the veils of prayer.
+She bowed her head lower and pressed her hands to her face till the blood
+tingled.
+
+The sermon obliged her to sit upright and exposed. It gave him
+iniquitous opportunity. He turned in his seat; his eyes watched her under
+half-closed lids, two slits shining through the thick, dark curtain of
+their lashes. He kept on pulling at his moustache, as if to hide the dumb
+but expressive adoration of his mouth. Anne, who felt that her soul had
+been overtaken, trapped, and bared to the outrage, removed herself by a
+yard's length till the hymn brought them together, linked by the book she
+could not withhold. The music penetrated her soul and healed its hurt.
+
+
+  "Christian, doth thou see them,
+     On the holy ground,
+   How the troops of Midian
+     Prowl and prowl around?"
+
+
+sang Anne in a dulcet pianissimo, obedient to the choir.
+
+Profound abstraction veiled him, a treacherous unspiritual calm. Majendie
+was a man with a baritone voice, which at times possessed him like a
+furious devil. It was sleeping in him now, biding its time, ready, she
+knew, to be roused by the first touch of a _crescendo_. The _crescendo_
+came.
+
+
+  "Christian! Up and fight them!"
+
+
+The voice waked; it leaped from him; and to Anne's terrified nerves it
+seemed to be scattering the voices of the choir before it. It dropped on
+the Amen and died; but in dying it remained triumphant, like the trump of
+an archangel retreating to the uttermost ends of heaven.
+
+Anne's heart pained her with a profane tenderness, and a poignant
+repudiation. Her soul being once more adjusted to the divine, it was
+intolerable to think that this preposterous human voice should have power
+to shake it so.
+
+She sank to her knees and bowed her head to the Benediction.
+
+"Did you like it?" he asked as they emerged together into the open air.
+
+He spoke as if to the child she seemed to him now to be. They had been
+playing together, pretending they were two pilgrims bound for the
+Heavenly City, and he wanted to know if she had had a nice game. He
+nursed the exquisite illusion that this time he had pleased her by
+playing too.
+
+"Of course I liked it."
+
+"So did I," he answered joyously, "I quite enjoyed it. We'll do it again
+some other night."
+
+"What made you come, like that?" said she, appeased by his innocence.
+
+"I couldn't help it. You looked so pretty, dear, and so forlorn. It
+seemed brutal, somehow, to abandon you on the weary road to heaven."
+
+She sighed. That was his chivalry again. He would escort her politely to
+the door of heaven, but would he ever go in with her, would he ever stay
+there?
+
+Still, it was something that he should have gone with her so far. It gave
+her confidence and an idea of what her power might come to be. Not that
+she relied upon herself alone. Her plan for Majendie's salvation was
+liberal and large, it admitted of other methods, other influences. There
+was no narrowness, any more than there was jealousy, in Anne.
+
+"Walter," said she, "I want you to know Mrs. Eliott."
+
+"But I do know her, don't I?"
+
+He called up a vision of the lady whose house had been Anne's home in
+Scale. He was grateful to Mrs. Eliott. But for her slender acquaintance
+with his sister, he would never have known Anne. This made him feel that
+he knew Mrs. Eliott.
+
+"But I want you to know her as I know her."
+
+He laughed. "Is that possible? Does a man ever know a woman as another
+woman knows her?"
+
+Anne felt that she was not only being diverted from her purpose, but led
+by a side tract to an unexplored profundity. On the further side of it
+she discerned, dimly, the undesirable. It was a murky region, haunted
+by still murkier presences, by Lady Cayley and her kind. She persisted
+with a magnificent irrelevance.
+
+"You must know her. You would like her."
+
+He didn't in the least want to know Mrs. Eliott, he didn't think that he
+would like her. But he was soothed, flattered, insanely pleased with
+Anne's assumption that he would. It was as if in her thoughts she were
+drawing him towards her. He felt that she was softening, yielding. His
+approaches were a delicious wooing of an unfamiliar, unwedded Anne.
+
+"I would like her, because you like her, is that it?"
+
+"It wouldn't follow."
+
+"Oh, how you spoil it!"
+
+"Spoil what?"
+
+"My inference. It pleased me. But, as you say, the logic wasn't sound."
+
+Silence being the only dignified course under mystification, Anne was
+silent. Some men had that irritating way with women; Walter's smile
+suggested that he might have it. She was not going to minister to his
+male delight. Unfortunately her silence seemed to please him too.
+
+"Never mind, dear, I do like her; because she likes you."
+
+"You will like her for herself when you know her."
+
+"Will she like me for myself when she knows me? It's extremely doubtful.
+You see, hitherto she has made no ardent sign."
+
+"My dear, she says you've never been near her. You've never come to one
+of her Thursdays."
+
+"Oh, her Thursdays--no, I haven't."
+
+"Well, how can you expect--but you'll go sometimes, now, to please me?"
+
+"Won't Wednesdays do?"
+
+"Wednesdays?"
+
+"Yes. It wasn't half bad to-night. I'll go to every blessed Wednesday, as
+long as they last, if you'll only let me off Thursdays."
+
+"Please don't talk about being 'let off.' I thought you might like to
+know my friends, that's all."
+
+"So I would. I'd like it awfully. By the way, that reminds me. I met
+Hannay at the club to-night, and he asked if his wife might call on you.
+Would you mind very much?"
+
+"Why should I mind, if she's a friend of yours and Edith's?"
+
+"Oh well, you see, she isn't exactly--"
+
+"Isn't exactly what?"
+
+"A friend of Edith's."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+There is a polite and ancient rivalry between Prior Street and Thurston
+Square, a rivalry that dates from the middle of the eighteenth century,
+when Prior Street and Thurston Square were young. Each claims to be the
+aristocratic centre of the town. Each acknowledges the other as its
+solitary peer. If Prior Street were not Prior Street it would be Thurston
+Square. There are a few old families left in Scale. They inhabit either
+Thurston Square or Prior Street. There is nowhere else that they could
+live with any dignity or comfort. In either place they are secure from
+the contamination of low persons engaged in business, and from the wide
+invading foot of the newly rich. These build themselves mansions after
+their kind in the Park, or in the broad flat highways leading into the
+suburbs. They have no sense for the dim undecorated charm of Prior Street
+and Thurston Square.
+
+Nothing could be more distinguished than Prior Street, with its sombre
+symmetry, its air of delicate early Georgian reticence. But its
+atmosphere is a shade too professional; it opens too precipitately on
+the unlovely and unsacred street.
+
+Thurston Square is approached only by unfrequented ancient ways paved
+with cobble stones. It is a place of garden greenness, of seclusion and
+of leisure. It breathes a provincial quietness, a measured, hallowed
+breath as of a cathedral close. Its inhabitants pride themselves on this
+immemorial calm. The older families rely on it for the sustenance of
+their patrician state. They sit by their firesides in dignified
+attitudes, impressively, luxuriously inert. Their whole being is a
+religious protest against the spirit of business.
+
+But the restlessness of the times has seized upon the other families, the
+Pooleys, the Gardners, the Eliotts, younger by a century at least. They
+utilise the perfect peace for the cultivation of their intellects.
+
+Every Thursday, towards half-past three, a wave of agreeable expectation,
+punctual, periodic, mounts on the stillness and stirs it. Thursday is
+Mrs. Eliott's day.
+
+The Eliotts belong to the old high merchant-families, the aristocracy of
+trade, whose wealth is mellowed and beautified by time. Three centuries
+met in Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room, harmonised by the gentle spirit of the
+place. Her frail modern figure moved (with elegance a little dishevelled
+by abstraction) on an early Georgian background, among mid-Victorian
+furniture, surrounded by a multitude of decorative objects. There were
+great jars and idols from China and Japan; inlaid tables; screens and
+cabinets and chairs in Bombay black wood, curiously carved; a splendid
+profusion of painted and embroidered cloths; the spoils of seventy years
+of Eastern trade. And on the top of it all, twenty years or so of recent
+culture. The culture was represented by a well-filled bookcase, a few
+diminished copies of antique sculpture, some modern sketches made in Rome
+and Venice (for the Eliotts had travelled), and an illuminated triptych
+with its saints in glory.
+
+Here, Thursday after Thursday, the same people met each other; they met,
+Thursday after Thursday, the same fervid little company of ideas, of
+aspirations and enthusiasms.
+
+It was five o'clock on one of her Thursdays, and Mrs. Eliott had been
+conversing with great sweetness and fluency ever since half-past three.
+That was the way she and Mrs. Pooley kept it up, and they could have kept
+it up much longer but for the arrival of Miss Proctor.
+
+There was nothing, in Miss Proctor's opinion (if dear Fanny only knew
+it), so provincial as an enthusiasm. As for aspirations (and Mrs. Pooley
+was full of them) what could be more provincial than these efforts to be
+what you were not? Miss Proctor disapproved of Thurston Square's
+preoccupation with its intellect, a thing no well-bred person is ever
+conscious of. She announced that she had come to take dear Fanny down
+from her clouds and humanise her by a little gossip. She ignored Mrs.
+Pooley, since Mrs. Pooley apparently wished to be ignored.
+
+"I want," said she, "the latest news of Anne."
+
+"If you wait, you may get it from herself."
+
+"My dear, do you suppose she'd give it me?"
+
+"It depends," said Mrs. Eliott, "on what you want to know."
+
+"I want to know whether she's happy. I want to know whether, by this
+time, she _knows_."
+
+"You can't ask her."
+
+"Of course I can't. That's why I'm asking you."
+
+"I know nothing. I've hardly seen her."
+
+Miss Proctor looked as if she were seeing her that moment without Fanny
+Eliott's help.
+
+"Poor dear Anne."
+
+Anne Fletcher had been simply dear Anne, Mrs. Walter Majendie was poor
+dear Anne.
+
+Her friends were all sorry for her. They were inclined to be indignant
+with Edith Majendie, who, they declared, had been at the bottom of her
+marriage all along. She was the cause of Anne's original callings in
+Prior Street. If it had not been for Edith, Anne could never have
+penetrated that secret bachelor abode. The engagement had been an
+awkward, unsatisfactory, sinister affair. It was a pity that Mr.
+Majendie's domestic circumstances were such that poor dear Anne appeared
+as having made all the necessary approaches and advances. If Mr. Majendie
+had had a family that family would have had to call on Anne. But Mr.
+Majendie hadn't a family, he had only Edith, which was worse than having
+nobody at all. And then, besides, there was his history.
+
+Mrs. Eliott looked distressed. Mr. Majendie's history could not
+be explained away as too ancient to be interesting. In Scale a
+seven-year-old event is still startlingly, unforgetably modern. Anne's
+marriage had saddled her friends with a difficult responsibility, the
+justification of Anne for that astounding step.
+
+Acquaintances had been made to understand that Mrs. Eliott had had
+nothing to do with it. They went away baffled, but confirmed in their
+impression that she knew; which was, after all, what they wanted to know.
+
+It was not so easy to satisfy the licensed curiosity of Anne's friends.
+They came to-day in quantities, attracted by the news of the Majendies'
+premature return from their honeymoon. Mrs. Eliott felt that Miss Proctor
+and the Gardners were sitting on in the hope of meeting them.
+
+Mrs. Eliott had been obliged to accept Anne's husband, that she might
+retain Anne's affection. In this she did violence to her feelings, which
+were sore on the subject of the marriage. It was not only on account of
+the inglorious clouds he trailed. In any case she would have felt it as a
+slight that her friend should have married without her assistance, and so
+far outside the charmed circle of Thurston Square. She herself was for
+the moment disappointed with Anne. Anne had once taken them all so
+seriously. It was her solemn joy in Mrs. Eliott and her circle that had
+enabled her young superiority to put up so long with the provincial
+hospitalities of Scale on Humber. They, the slender aristocracy of
+Thurston Square, were the best that Scale had to offer her, and they had
+given her of their best. Socially, the step from Thurston Square to Prior
+Street could not be defined as a going down; but, intellectually, it was
+a decline, and morally (to those who knew Fanny Eliott and to Fanny
+Eliott who _knew_) it was, by comparison, a plunge into the abyss. Fanny
+Eliott was the fine flower of Thurston Square. She had satisfied even the
+fastidiousness of Anne.
+
+She owned that Mr. Majendie had satisfied it too. It was not that quality
+in Anne that made her choice so--well, so incomprehensible.
+
+It was Dr. Gardner's word. Dr. Gardner was the President of the Scale
+Literary and Philosophic Society, and in any discussion of the
+incomprehensible his word had weight. Vagueness was his foible, the
+relaxation of an intellect uncomfortably keen. The spirit that looked
+at you through his short-sighted eyes (magnified by enormous glasses)
+seemed to have just returned from a solitary excursion in a dream. In
+that mood the incomprehensible had for him a certain charm.
+
+Mrs. Eliott had too much good taste to criticise Anne Majendie's. They
+had simply got to recognise that Prior Street had more to offer her than
+Thurston Square. That was the way she preferred to put it, effacing
+herself a little ostentatiously.
+
+Miss Proctor maintained that Prior Street had nothing to offer a creature
+of Anne Fletcher's kind. It had everything to take, and it seemed bent on
+taking everything. It was bad enough in the beginning, when she had given
+herself up, body and soul, to the spinal lady; but to go and marry the
+brother, without first disposing of the spinal lady in a comfortable home
+for spines, why, what must the man be like who could let her do it?
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Eliott, "he's a saint, if you're to believe Anne."
+
+Even Dr. Gardner smiled. "I can't say that's exactly what I should call
+him."
+
+"Need we," said Mr. Eliott, "call him anything? So long as she thinks him
+a saint--"
+
+Mr. Eliott--Mr. Johnson Eliott--hovered on the borderland of culture,
+with a spirit purified from commerce by a Platonic passion for the exact
+sciences. He was, therefore, received in Thurston Square on his own as
+well as his wife's merits. He too had his little weaknesses. Almost
+savagely determined in matters of business, at home he liked to sit in
+a chair and fondle the illusion of indifference. There was no part of
+Mr. Eliott's mental furniture that was not a fixture, yet he scorned the
+imputation of conviction. A hunted thing in his wife's drawing-room, Mr.
+Eliott had developed in a quite remarkable degree the protective
+colouring of stupidity.
+
+"How can she?" said Miss Proctor. "She's a saint herself, and she ought
+to know the difference."
+
+"Perhaps," said Dr. Gardner, "that's why she doesn't."
+
+"I'm sure," said Mrs. Eliott, "it was the original attraction. There
+could be no other for Anne."
+
+"The attraction was the opportunity for self-sacrifice. Whatever she's
+makes of Mr. Majendie, she's bent on making a martyr of herself." Miss
+Proctor met the vague eyes of her circle with a glance that was defiance
+to all mystery. "It's quite simple. This marriage is a short cut to
+canonisation, that's all."
+
+Then it was that little Mrs. Gardner spoke. She had been married for a
+year, and her face still wore its bridal look of possession that was
+peace, the look that it would wear when Mrs. Gardner was seventy. Her
+voice had a certain lucid and profound precision.
+
+"Anne was always certain of herself. And since she cares for Mr. Majendie
+enough to accept him and to accept his sister, and the rather _triste_
+life which is all he has to offer her, doesn't it look as if, probably,
+she knew her own business best?"
+
+"I think," said Mr. Eliott firmly, "we may take it that she does."
+
+Miss Proctor's departure was felt as a great liberation of the intellect.
+
+Mrs. Pooley sat up in her corner and revived the conversation interrupted
+by Miss Proctor. Mrs. Pooley had felt that to talk about Mrs. Majendie
+was to waste Mrs. Eliott. Mrs. Majendie apart, Mrs. Pooley had many ideas
+in common with her friend; but, whereas Mrs. Eliott would spend superbly
+on one idea at a time, Mrs. Pooley's intellect entertained promiscuously
+and beyond its means. It was inclined to be hospitable to ideas that had
+never met outside it, whose encounter was a little distressing to
+everybody concerned. Whenever this happened Mrs. Pooley would appeal to
+Mr. Eliott, and Mr. Eliott would say, "Don't ask me. I'm a stupid fellow.
+Don't ask me to decide anything."
+
+Thus did Mr. Eliott wilfully obscure himself.
+
+To-day he was more impregnably concealed than ever. He hadn't any
+opinions of his own. They were too expensive. He borrowed other people's
+when he wanted them. "But," said Mr. Eliott, "it is very seldom that I
+do want an opinion. If you have any facts to give me--well and good." For
+he knew that, at the mention of facts, Mrs. Pooley's intellect would
+retreat behind a cloud and that his wife would pursue it there.
+
+"I suppose," said Mrs. Eliott, "there's such a thing as realising your
+ideals."
+
+Her eyes gleamed and wandered and rested upon Mrs. Gardner. Mrs. Gardner
+had a singularly beautiful intellect which she was known to be shy of
+displaying. People said that Dr. Gardner had fallen in love with it
+years ago, and had only waited for it to mature before he married it.
+Mrs. Gardner had a habit of sitting apart from the discussion and
+untroubled by it, tolerant in her own excess of bliss. It irritated Mrs.
+Eliott, on her Thursdays, to think of the distinguished ideas that Mrs.
+Gardner might have introduced and didn't. She felt Mrs. Gardner's silence
+as a challenge.
+
+"I wonder" (Mrs. Eliott was always wondering) "what becomes of our ideals
+when we've realised them."
+
+The doctor answered. "My dear lady, they cease to be ideals, and we have
+to get some more."
+
+Mrs. Eliott, in her turn, was received into the cloud.
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Pooley, emerging from it joyously, "we must have
+them."
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Eliott vaguely, as her spirit struggled with the
+cloud.
+
+"Of course," said Dr. Gardner. He was careful to array himself for
+tea-parties in all his innocent metaphysical vanities, to scatter
+profundities like epigrams, to flatter the pure intellects of ladies,
+while the solemn vagueness of his manner concealed from them the
+innermost frivolity of his thought. He didn't care whether they
+understood him or not. He knew his wife did. Her wedded spirit moved
+in secret and unsuspected harmony with his.
+
+He had a certain liking for Mrs. Eliott. She seemed to him an apparition
+mainly pathetic. With her attenuated distinction, her hectic ardour, her
+brilliant and pursuing eye, she had the air of some doomed and dedicated
+votress of the pure intellect, haggard, disturbing and disturbed. His
+social self was amused with her enthusiasms, but the real Dr. Gardner
+accounted for them compassionately. It was no wonder, he considered, that
+poor Mrs. Eliott wondered. She had so little else to do. Her nursery
+upstairs was empty, it always had been, always would be empty. Did she
+wonder at that too, at the transcendental carelessness that had left her
+thus frustrated, thus incomplete? Mrs. Eliott would have been scandalised
+if she had known the real Dr. Gardner's opinion of her.
+
+"I wonder," said she, "what will become of Anne's ideal."
+
+"It's safe," said the doctor. "She hasn't realised it."
+
+"I wonder, then, what will become of Anne."
+
+Mrs. Pooley retreated altogether before this gross application of
+transcendent truth. She had not come to Mrs. Eliott's to talk about
+Mrs. Majendie.
+
+Dr. Gardner smiled. "Oh, come," he said, "you _are_ personal."
+
+"I'm not," said Mrs. Eliott, conscious of her lapse and ashamed of it.
+"But, after all, Anne's my friend. I know people blamed me because I
+never told her. How could I tell her?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Gardner soothingly, "how could you?"
+
+"Anne," continued Mrs. Eliott, "was so reticent. The thing was all
+settled before anybody could say a word."
+
+"Well," said Dr. Gardner, "there's no good worrying about it now."
+
+"Isn't it possible," said the little year-old bride, "that Mr. Majendie
+may have told her himself?"
+
+For Dr. Gardner had told her everything the day before he married her,
+confessing to the light loves of his youth, the young lady in the Free
+Library and all. She looked round with eyes widened by their angelic
+candour. Even more beautiful than Mrs. Gardner's intellect were Mrs.
+Gardner's eyes, and the love of them that brought the doctor's home from
+their wanderings in philosophic dream. Nobody but Dr. Gardner knew that
+Mrs. Gardner's intellect had cause to be jealous of her eyes.
+
+"There's one thing," said Mrs. Eliott, suddenly enlightened. "Our not
+having said anything at the time makes it easier for us to receive him
+now."
+
+"Aren't we all talking," said Mrs. Gardner, "rather as if Anne had
+married a monster? After all, have we ever heard anything against
+him--except Lady Cayley?"
+
+"Oh no, never a word, have we, Johnson dear?"
+
+"Never. He's not half a bad fellow, Majendie."
+
+Dr. Gardner rose to go.
+
+"Oh, please--don't go before they come."
+
+Mrs. Gardner hesitated, but the doctor, vague in his approaches,
+displayed a certain energy in his departure.
+
+They passed Mrs. Walter Majendie on the stairs.
+
+She had come alone. That, Mrs. Eliott felt, was a bad beginning. She
+could see that it struck even Johnson's obtuseness as unfavourable, for
+he presently effaced himself.
+
+"Fanny," said Anne, holding her friend's evasive eye with the
+determination of her query, "tell me, who are the Ransomes?"
+
+"The Ransomes? Have they called?"
+
+"Yes, but I was out. I didn't see them."
+
+"Oh, my dear," said Mrs. Eliott, in a tone which implied that when Anne
+_did_ see them----
+
+"Are they very dreadful?"
+
+"Well--they're not your sort."
+
+Anne meditated. "Not--my--sort. And the Lawson Hannays, what sort are
+they?"
+
+"Well, we don't know them. But there are a great many people in Scale one
+doesn't know."
+
+"Are they socially impossible, or what?"
+
+"Oh--socially, they would be considered--in Scale--all right. But he is,
+or was, mixed up with some very queer people."
+
+Anne's cold face intimated that the adjective suggested nothing to her.
+Mrs. Eliott was compelled to be explicit. The word queer was applied in
+Scale to persons of dubious honesty in business; whereas it was not so
+much in business as in pleasure that Mr. Lawson Hannay had been queer.
+
+"Mr. Hannay may be very steady now, but I believe he belonged to a very
+fast set before he married her."
+
+"And she? Is she nice?"
+
+"She may be very nice for all I know."
+
+"I think," said Anne, "she wouldn't call if she wasn't nice, you know."
+
+She meant that if Mrs. Lawson Hannay hadn't been nice Walter would never
+have sanctioned her calling.
+
+"Oh, as for that," said her friend, "you know what Scale is. The less
+nice they are the more they keep on calling. But I should think"--she had
+suddenly perceived where Anne's argument was tending--"she is probably
+all right."
+
+"Do you know anything of Mr. Charlie Gorst?"
+
+"No. But Johnson does. At least I'm sure he's met him."
+
+Mrs. Eliott saw it all. Poor Anne was being besieged, bombarded by her
+husband's set.
+
+"Then he isn't impossible?"
+
+"Oh no, the Gorsts are a very old Lincolnshire family. Quite grand. What
+a number of people you're going to know, my dear. But, your husband isn't
+to take you away from _all_ your old friends."
+
+"He isn't taking me anywhere. I shall stay," said Anne proudly, "exactly
+where I was before."
+
+She was determined that her old friends should never know to what a
+sorrowful place she had been taken.
+
+"You dear," said Mrs. Eliott, holding out a suddenly caressing hand.
+
+Anne trembled a little under the caress. "Fanny," said she, "I want you
+to know him."
+
+"I mean to," said Mrs. Eliott hurriedly.
+
+"And I want him, even more, to know you."
+
+"Then," Mrs. Elliot argued to herself, "she knows nothing; or she never
+could suppose we would be kindred spirits."
+
+But she carried it off triumphantly. "Well," said she, "I hope you're
+free for the fifteenth?"
+
+"The fifteenth?"
+
+"Yes, or any other evening. We want to give a little dinner, dear, to you
+and to your husband--for him to meet all your friends."
+
+Anne tried not to look too grateful.
+
+The upward way, then, was being prepared for him. Beneficent
+intelligences were at work, influences were in the air, helping her
+to raise him.
+
+In her gladness she had failed to see that, considering the very obvious
+nature of the civility, Fanny Eliott was making the least shade too much
+of it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Anne presented herself that evening in her husband's study with a sheaf
+of visiting cards in her hand. She thought it possible that she might
+obtain further illumination by confronting him with them.
+
+"Walter," said she "all these people have called on us. What do you think
+I'd better do?"
+
+"I think you'll have to call on them some day."
+
+"All of them?"
+
+He took the cards from her and glanced through them.
+
+"Let me see. Charlie Gorst--we must be nice to him."
+
+"Is _he_ nice?"
+
+"I think so. Edie's very fond of him."
+
+"And Mrs. Lawson Hannay?"
+
+"Oh, you must call on her."
+
+"Shall I like her."
+
+"Possibly. You needn't see much of her if you don't."
+
+"Is it easy to drop people?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"And what about Mrs. Ransome?"
+
+He frowned. "Has _she_ called?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll find out when she's not at home and let you know. You can call
+then."
+
+A fourth card he tore up and threw into the fire.
+
+"Some people have confounded impudence."
+
+Anne went away confirmed in her impression that Walter had a large
+acquaintance to whom he was by no means anxious to introduce his wife. He
+might, she reflected, have incurred the connection through the misfortune
+of his business. The life of a ship-owner in Scale was fruitful in these
+embarrassments.
+
+But if these disagreeable people indeed belonged to the period she
+mentally referred to as his "past," she was not going to tolerate them
+for an instant. He must give them up.
+
+She judged that he was prepared for so much renunciation. She hoped that
+he would, in time, adopt her friends in place of them. He was inclined,
+after all, to respond amicably to Mrs. Eliott's overtures.
+
+Anne wondered how he would comport himself at the dinner on the
+fifteenth. She owned to a little uneasiness at the prospect. Would he
+indeed yield to the sobering influence of Thurston Square? Or would he
+try to impose his alien, his startling personality on it? She had begun
+to realise how alien he was, how startling he could be. Would he sit
+silent, uninspiring and uninspired? Or would unholy and untimely
+inspirations seize him? Would he scatter to the winds all conversational
+conventions, and riot in his own unintelligible frivolity? What would he
+say to Mrs. Eliott, that priestess of the pure intellect? Was there
+anything in him that could be touched by her uncoloured, immaterial
+charm? Would he see that Mr. Eliott's density was only a mask? Would
+the Gardners bore him? And would he like Miss Proctor? And if he
+didn't, would he show it, and how? His mere manners would, she knew, be
+irreproachable, but she had no security for his spiritual behaviour. He
+impressed her as a creature uncaught, undriven; graceful, but
+immeasurably capricious.
+
+The event surprised her.
+
+For the first five minutes or so, it seemed that Mrs. Eliott and her
+dinner were doomed to failure; so terrible a cloud had fallen on her, and
+on her husband, and on every guest. Never had the poor priestess appeared
+so abstract an essence, so dream-driven and so forlorn. Never had Mr.
+Eliott worn his mask to so extinguishing a purpose. Never had Miss
+Proctor been so obtrusively superior, Mrs. Gardner so silent, Dr. Gardner
+so vague. They were all, she could see, possessed, crushed down by their
+consciousness of Majendie and his monstrous past.
+
+Into this circle, thus stupefied by his presence, Majendie burst with the
+courage of unconsciousness.
+
+Mr. Eliott had started a topic, the conduct of Sir Rigley Barker, the
+ex-member for Scale. A heavy ball of conversation began to roll slowly up
+and down the table, between Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. Majendie snatched
+at it deftly as it passed him, caught it, turned it in his hands till it
+grew golden under his touch. Mr. Eliott thought there wasn't much in poor
+Sir Rigley.
+
+"Not much in him?" said Majendie. "How about that immortal speech of
+his?"
+
+"Immortal--" echoed Mr. Eliott dubiously.
+
+"Indestructible! The poor fellow couldn't end it. It simply coiled and
+uncoiled itself and went off, in great loops, into eternity. It began in
+all innocence--naturally, as it was his maiden speech--when he rose,
+don't you know, to propose an amendment. I take it that speech was so
+maidenly that it shrank from anything in the nature of a proposal. It
+went on in a terrified manner, coyly considering and hesitating--till it
+cleared the House. And he was awfully pleased when we congratulated him
+on his 'maidenly reserve.'"
+
+"How did he ever get elected?" said Miss Proctor.
+
+"My dear lady, it was a glorious stroke of the Opposition. They withdrew
+their candidate when he contested the election. Of course, they felt that
+he'd only got to make a speech and there'd be a dissolution. You simply
+saw Parliament melting away before him. If he'd gone on he'd have worn
+out the British constitution."
+
+Dr. Gardner looked at Mrs. Gardner and their eyes brightened, as Majendie
+continued to unfold the amazing resources of Sir Rigley. He breathed on
+the ex-member like a god, and played with him like a juggler; he tossed
+him into the air and kept him there, a radiant, unsubstantial thing. The
+ex-member disported himself before Mrs. Eliott's dinner-party as he had
+never disported himself in Parliament. Majendie had given him a career,
+endowed him with glorious attributes. The ex-member, as a topic,
+developed capacities unsuspected in him before. The others followed his
+flight breathless, afraid to touch him lest he should break and disappear
+under their hands.
+
+By the time Majendie had done with him, the ex-member had entered on a
+joyous immortality in Scale.
+
+And in the middle of it all Anne laughed.
+
+Miss Proctor was the first to recover from the surprise of it. She leaned
+across the table with a liberal and vivid smile, opulent in appreciation.
+
+"Well, Mr. Majendie, Sir Rigley ought to be grateful to you. If ever
+there was a dull subject dead and buried, it was he, poor man. And now
+the difficulty will be to forget him."
+
+"I don't think," said Majendie gravely, "I shall forget him myself in a
+hurry."
+
+Oh no, he never would forget Sir Rigley. He didn't want to forget him. He
+would be grateful to him as long as he lived. He had made Anne laugh. A
+girl's laugh, young and deliciously uncontrollable, springing from the
+immortal heart of joy.
+
+It was the first time he had heard her laugh so. He didn't know she could
+do it. The hope of hearing her do it again would give him something to
+live for. He would win her yet if he could make her laugh.
+
+Anne was more surprised than anybody, at him and at herself. It was a
+revelation to her, his cleverness, his brilliant social gift. She was
+only intimate with one kind of cleverness, the kind that feeds itself on
+lectures and on books. She had not thought of Walter as clever. She had
+only thought of him as good. That one quality of goodness had swallowed
+up the rest.
+
+Miss Proctor took possession of her where she sat in the drawing-room, as
+it were amid the scattered fragments of the ex-member (he still, among
+the ladies, emitted a feeble radiance). Miss Proctor had always approved
+of Anne. If Anne had no metropolitan distinction to speak of, she was not
+in the least provincial. She was something by herself, superior and rare.
+A little inclined to take herself too seriously, perhaps; but her
+husband's admirable levity would, no doubt, improve her.
+
+"My dear," said Miss Proctor, "I congratulate you. He's brilliant, he's
+charming, he's unique. Why didn't we know of him before? Where has he
+been hiding his talents all this time?"
+
+(A talent that had not bloomed in Thurston Square was a talent pitiably
+wasted.)
+
+Anne smiled a blanched, perfunctory smile. Ah, where had he been hiding
+himself, indeed?
+
+Miss Proctor stood central, radiating the rich afterglow of her
+appreciation. Her gaze was a little critical of her friends' faces, as
+if she were measuring the effect, on a provincial audience, of Majendie's
+conversational technique. She swept down to a seat beside her hostess.
+
+"My dear Fanny," she said, "why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"Tell you--"
+
+"That he was that sort. I didn't know there was such a delightful man in
+Scale. What have you all been dreaming of?"
+
+Mrs. Eliott tried to look both amiable and intelligent. In the presence
+of Mr. Majendie's robust reality it was indeed as if they had all been
+dreaming. Her instinct told her that the spirit of pure comedy was
+destruction to the dreams she dreamed. She tried to be genial to her
+guest's accomplishment; but she felt that if Mr. Majendie's talents were
+let loose in her drawing-room, it would cease to be the place of
+intellectual culture. On the other hand she perceived that Miss Proctor's
+idea was to empty that drawing-room by securing Mr. Majendie for her own.
+Mrs. Eliott remained uncomfortably seated on her dilemma.
+
+Sounds of laughter reached her from below. The men were unusually late in
+returning to the drawing-room. They appeared a little flushed by the
+hilarious festival, as if Majendie had had on them an effect of mild
+intoxication. She could see that even Dr. Gardner was demoralised. He
+wore, under his vagueness, the unmistakable air of surrender to an
+unfamiliar excess. Mr. Eliott too had the happy look of a man who has fed
+loftily after a long fast.
+
+"Anne dear," said Majendie, as they walked back the few yards between
+Thurston Square and Prior Street, "we shan't have to do that very often,
+shall we?"
+
+"Why not? You can't say we didn't have a delightful evening."
+
+"Yes, but it was very exhausting, dear, for me."
+
+"You? You didn't show much sign of exhaustion. I never heard you talk so
+well."
+
+"Did I talk well?"
+
+"Yes. Almost too well."
+
+"Too much, you mean. Well, I had to talk, when nobody else did. Besides,
+I did it for a purpose."
+
+But what his purpose was Majendie did not say.
+
+Anne had been human enough to enjoy a performance so far beyond the range
+of her anticipations. She was glad, above all, that Walter had made
+himself acceptable in Thurston Square. But when she came to think of
+what was, what must be known of him in Scale, she was appalled by his
+incomprehensible ease of attitude. She reflected that this must have been
+the first time he had dined in Thurston Square since the scandal. Was it
+possible that he did not realise the insufferable nature of that
+incident, the efforts it must have cost to tolerate him, the points that
+had been stretched to take him in? She felt that it was impossible to
+exaggerate the essential solemnity of that evening. They had met
+together, as it were, to celebrate Walter's return to the sanctities
+and proprieties he had offended. He had been formally forgiven and
+received by the society which (however Fanny Eliott might explain away
+its action) had most unmistakably cast him out. She had not expected him
+to part with his indomitable self-possession under the ordeal, but she
+could have wished that he had borne himself with a little more modesty.
+He had failed to perceive the redemptive character of the feast, he had
+turned it into an occasion for profane personal display.
+
+Mrs. Eliott's dinner-party had not saved him; on the contrary, he had
+saved the dinner-party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Anne was right. Though Majendie was, as he expressed it, "up to her
+designs upon his unhappy soul," he remained unconscious of the part to be
+played by Mrs. Eliott and her circle in the scheme of his salvation. From
+his observation of the aristocracy of Thurston Square, it would never
+have occurred to him that they were people who could count, whichever way
+you looked at them.
+
+Meanwhile he was a little disturbed by his own appearance as a heavenward
+pilgrim. He was not sure that he had not gone a little too far that way,
+and he felt that it was a shame to allow Anne to take him seriously.
+
+He confided his scruples to Edith.
+
+"Poor dear," he said, "it's quite pathetic. You know, she thinks she's
+saving me."
+
+"And do you mind being saved?"
+
+"Well, no, I don't mind a little of it. But the question is, how long I
+can keep it up."
+
+"You mean, how long she'll keep it up?"
+
+He laughed. "Oh, she'll keep it up for ever. No possible doubt about
+that. She'll never tire. I wonder if I ought to tell her."
+
+"Tell her what?"
+
+"That it won't work. That she can't do it that way. She's wasting my time
+and her own."
+
+"Oh, what's a little time, dear, when you've all eternity in view?"
+
+"But I haven't. I've nothing in view. My view, at present, is entirely
+obscured by Anne."
+
+"Poor Anne! To think she actually stands between you and your Maker."
+
+"Yes, you know--in her very anxiety to introduce us."
+
+They looked at each other. Her sainthood was so accomplished, her union
+with heaven so complete, that she could afford herself these profaner
+sympathies. She was secretly indignant with Anne's view of Walter as
+unpresentable in the circles of the spiritual _elite_.
+
+"It never struck her that you mightn't need an introduction after all;
+that you were in it as much as she. That's the sort of mistake one might
+expect from--from a spiritual parvenu, but not from Anne."
+
+"Oh, come, I don't consider myself her equal by a long chalk."
+
+"Well, say she does belong to the peerage; you're a gentleman, and what
+more can she require?"
+
+"She can't see that I am (If I am. You say so). She considers
+me--spiritually--a bounder of the worst sort."
+
+"That's her mistake. Though I must say you sometimes lend yourself to it
+with your horrible profanity."
+
+"I can't help it, Edie. She's so funny with it. She _makes_ me profane."
+
+"Dear Walter, if you can think Anne funny--"
+
+"I do. I think she's furiously funny, and horribly pathetic. All the
+time, you know, she thinks she's leading me upward. Profanity's my only
+refuge from hypocrisy."
+
+"Oh no, not your only refuge. You say she thinks she's leading you. Don't
+_let_ her think it. Make her think you're leading her."
+
+"Do you think," said Majendie, "she'd enjoy that quite so much?"
+
+"She'd enjoy it more. If you took her the right way. The way I mean."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"You must find out," said she. "I'm not going to tell you everything."
+
+Majendie became thoughtful. "My only fear was that I couldn't keep it up.
+But you really don't think, then, that I should score much if I did?"
+
+"No, my dear, I don't. And as for keeping it up, you never could. And if
+you did she'd never understand what you were doing it for. That's not the
+way to show you're in love with her."
+
+"But that's just what I don't want her to see. That's what she hates so
+much in me. I've always understood that in these matters it's discreeter
+not to show your hand too plainly. You see, it's just as if we'd never
+been married, for all she cares. That's the trouble."
+
+"There's something in that. If she's not in love with you--"
+
+"Look here, Edie, you're a woman, and you know all about them. Do you
+really, honestly think Anne ever was in love with me?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask me. How should I know?"
+
+"No, but," he persisted, "what do you think?"
+
+"I think she _was_ in love."
+
+"But not with me, though?"
+
+"No, no, not with you."
+
+"With whom, then?"
+
+"Darling idiot, there wasn't any who. If there was, do you think I'd give
+her away like that? If you'd asked me _what_ she was in love with--"
+
+"Well, what then?"
+
+"Your goodness. She was head over ears in love with that."
+
+"I see. With something that I wasn't."
+
+"No, with something that you were, that you are, only she doesn't know
+it."
+
+"Then," said Majendie, "you can't get out of it, she's in love with
+_me_."
+
+"Oh no, no, you dear goose, not with you. To be in love with you she'd
+have to be in love with everything you're _not_, as well as everything
+you are; with everything you have been, with everything you never were,
+with everything you will be, with everything you might be, could be,
+should be."
+
+"That's a large order, Edie."
+
+"There's a larger one than that. She might sweep all that overboard, see
+it go by whole pieces (the best pieces) at a time, and still be in love
+with the dear, incomprehensible, indescribable _you_. That," said Edie,
+triumphant in her wisdom, "is what being in love is."
+
+"And do you think she isn't in it?"
+
+"No. Not anywhere near it. But--it's a big but--"
+
+"I don't care how big it is. Don't bother me with it."
+
+"Bother you? Why, it's a beautiful but. As I said, she isn't in love with
+you; but she may be any minute. It's just touch and go with her. It
+depends on _you_."
+
+"Heavens, what am I to do? I've done everything."
+
+"Yes, you have, but she hasn't. She's done nothing. She doesn't know how
+to. You've got to show her."
+
+He shook his head hopelessly. "You're beyond me. I don't understand.
+There isn't anything for me to do. How am I to show her?"
+
+"I mean show her what there is in it. What it means. What it's going to
+be for her as well as you. Just go at it hard, harder than you did before
+you married her."
+
+"_I_ see, I've got to make love to her all over again."
+
+"Exactly. All over again from the very beginning."
+
+"I say!" He took it in, her idea, in all the width and splendour of its
+simplicity. "And do it differently?"
+
+"Oh, very differently."
+
+"I don't quite see where the difference is to come in. What did I do
+before that was so wrong?"
+
+"Nothing. That's just the worst of it. It was all too right. Ever so much
+too right. Don't you see? It's what we've been talking about. You made
+her in love with your goodness. And she was in love with it, not because
+it was _your_ goodness, but because it was her own. That's why she wanted
+to marry it. She couldn't be in love with it for any other reason,
+because she's an egoist."
+
+"No. There you're quite wrong. That's what she isn't."
+
+"Oh, you _are_ in love with her. Of course she's an egoist. All the
+nicest women are. I'm an egoist myself. Do you love me less for it?"
+
+"I don't love you less for anything."
+
+"Well--unless you can make Anne jealous of me--and you can't--you've got
+to love me less, now, dear boy. That's where I come in--to be kept out of
+it."
+
+She had led him breathless on her giddy round; she plunged him back into
+bewilderment. He hadn't a notion where she was taking him to, where they
+would come out; but there was a desperate delight in the impetuous
+journey, the wind of her sudden flight lifted him and carried him on. He
+had always trusted the marvellous inspirations of her heart. She had
+failed him once; but now he could not deny that she had given him lights,
+and he looked for a stupendous illumination at the end of the way.
+
+"Out of it!" he exclaimed. "Why, where should I have been without you?
+You were the beginning of it."
+
+"I was indeed. You've got to take care I'm not the end of it, that's
+all."
+
+"What on earth do you mean?"
+
+"I mean what I say. You don't want Anne to be in love with you for _my_
+sake, do you?"
+
+"N--no. I don't know that I do exactly. At least I should prefer that she
+was in love with me for my own."
+
+"Well, you must make her, then. That's why you've got to leave me out of
+it. I've been too much in it all along. It was through me she conceived
+that unfortunate idea of your goodness. I'm its father and its mother and
+its nurse, I ministered to it every hour. I fed it, I brought it up, I
+brought it _out_, I provided all the opportunity for its display. Nothing
+else had a show beside your goodness, Wallie dear. It was something
+monstrous. It took Anne's affection from you and concentrated it all on
+itself. She worshipped it, she clung to it, she saw nothing else but it,
+and when it went everything went. _You_ went first of all. Well, you must
+just see that that doesn't happen again."
+
+"You mean that I must lead a life of iniquity?"
+
+"You mustn't lead a life of anything."
+
+"Do you mean I mustn't be good any more?"
+
+Majendie's imagination played hilariously with this fantastic, this
+preposterous notion of his goodness.
+
+"Oh yes, be good," said Edith, "but not too good. Above all, not too good
+to me. Concentrate on her, stupid."
+
+"I have concentrated," he moaned, mystified beyond endurance. "Besides,
+you said I couldn't make her jealous."
+
+"No, I wish you could. I mean, don't let her fall in love with your
+devotion to me again. Don't hold her by that one rope. Hold her by all
+your ropes; then, if one goes, it doesn't so much matter."
+
+"I see. You don't trust my goodness."
+
+"Oh, _I_ trust it, so will she again. But don't _you_ trust it. That
+precious goodness of yours is your rival. A bad, dangerous rival. You've
+got to beat it out of the field. Show that you're jealous of it. A little
+judicious jealousy won't hurt." Edith's eyes were still and profound with
+wisdom. "I don't believe you've ever yet made love to Anne properly.
+That's what it all comes to."
+
+"Oh, I say," said he, "what do you know about it?"
+
+"I'm only judging," said Edith, "by the results."
+
+"Oh, that isn't fair."
+
+"Perhaps it isn't," she owned, her wisdom growing by what it fed on.
+
+"You see, she wouldn't let me do it properly."
+
+Edith pondered. "Yes, but how long ago is it? And you've been married
+since."
+
+"What difference does that make?"
+
+"I should say it would make all the difference. Anne was a girl, then.
+She didn't understand. She's a woman now. She does understand. She can be
+appealed to."
+
+He hid his face in his hands.
+
+"I never thought of that," he murmured thickly.
+
+"Of course you didn't."
+
+"Edie," he said, and his face was still hidden, "however did you think of
+it?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I see some things, and then other things come round to
+me. But you mustn't forget that _you've_ got to begin all over again from
+the very beginning. You'll have to be very careful with her, every bit as
+careful as if she were a strange lady you've just met at a dance. Don't
+forget that she's strange, that she's another woman, in fact."
+
+"I see. If there are to be many of these remarkable transformations of
+Anne, I shall have all the excitement of polygamy without its drawbacks."
+
+"You will. And it's the same for her, remember. You're a strange man.
+You've just been introduced, you know--by me--and you're begging for the
+pleasure of the first waltz, and Anne pretends that her programme is
+full, and you look over her shoulder and see that it isn't, and that she
+puts you down for all the nice ones. And you sit out all the rest, and
+you flirt on the stairs, and take her in to supper, and, finally, you
+know, you pull yourself together and you do it--in the conservatory. Oh,
+it'll be so amusing, and so funny to watch. You'll begin by being most
+awfully polite to each other."
+
+"I suppose I may yet be permitted to call this strange young lady Anne?"
+
+"Yes. That's because you remember that you _have_ known her once before,
+a very long time ago, when you were children. You are children, both of
+you. Oh, Walter, I believe you're looking forward to it; I believe you're
+glad you've got to do it all over again."
+
+"Yes, Edie, I positively believe I am."
+
+He rose, laughing, prepared to begin that minute his new wooing of Anne.
+
+"Good-bye," said Edith, "it _is_ good-bye, you know, and good luck to
+you."
+
+This time she knew that she had been wise for him.
+
+Anne would have been horrified if she had known that the situation, so
+terrible for her, was developing for her husband certain possibilities of
+charm. His irrepressible boyishness refused to accept it in all its moral
+gloom. There were, he perceived, advantages in these strained relations.
+They had removed Anne into the mysterious realm her maidenhood had
+inhabited, before marriage had had time to touch her magic. She had
+become once more the unapproachable and unattained. Their first
+courtship, pursued under intolerable restrictions of time and place, had
+been a rather uninspired affair, and its end a foregone conclusion. He
+had been afraid of himself, afraid sometimes of her. For he had not
+brought her the spontaneous, unalarmed, unspoiled spirit of his youth.
+He had come to her with a stain on his imagination and a wound in his
+memory. And she was holy to him. He had held himself in, lest a touch,
+a word, a gesture should recall some insufferable association.
+
+Marriage had delivered him from the tyranny of reminiscence. No
+reminiscence could stand before the force of passion in possession. It
+purified; it destroyed; it built up in three days its own inviolable
+memory.
+
+And Anne, with the best will in the world, had had no power to undo its
+work in him.
+
+In herself, too, below her kindling spiritual consciousness, in the
+unexplored depth and darkness of her, its work remained.
+
+Majendie was unaware how far he had become another man and she another
+woman. He was merely alive to the unusual and agreeable excitement of
+wooing his own wife. There was a piquancy in the experiment that appealed
+to him. Her new coldness called to him like a challenge. Her new
+remoteness waked the adventurous youth in him. His imagination was
+touched as it had not been touched before. He could see that Anne had
+not yet got over her discovery. The shock of it was in her nerves. He
+felt that she shrank from him, and his chivalry still spared her.
+
+He ceased to be her husband and became her very courteous, very distant
+lover. He made no claims, and took nothing for granted. He simply began
+all over again from the very beginning. His conscience was vaguely
+appeased by the illusion of the new leaf, the rejuvenated innocence of
+the blank page. They had never been married (so the illusion suggested).
+There had been no revelations. They met as strangers in their own house,
+at their own table. In support of this pleasing fiction he set about his
+courtship with infinite precautions. He found himself exaggerating Anne's
+distance and the lapse of intimacy. He made his way slowly, through all
+the recognised degrees, from mere acquaintance, through friendship to
+permissible fervour.
+
+And from time to time, with incomparable discretion, he would withhold
+himself that he might make himself more precious. He was hardly aware of
+his own restraint, his refinements of instinct and of mood. It was as if
+he drew, in his desperate necessity, upon unrealised, untried resources.
+There was something in Anne that checked the primitive impulse of swift
+chase, and called forth the curious half-feminine cunning of the
+sophisticated pursuer. She froze at his ardour, but his coldness almost
+kindled her, so that he approached by withdrawals and advanced by
+flights.
+
+He displayed, first of all, a heavenly ignorance, an inspired curiosity
+regarding her. He consulted her tastes, as if he had never known them; he
+started the time-honoured lovers' topics; he talked about books--which
+she preferred and the reasons for her preference.
+
+He did not advance very far that way. Anne was simply annoyed at the
+lapses in his memory.
+
+He then began to buy books on the chance of her liking them, which
+answered better.
+
+He promoted himself by degrees to personalities. He talked to her about
+herself, handling her with religious reticence as a thing of holy and
+incomprehensible mystery.
+
+"I suppose," he said one day, "if I were good enough, I should understand
+you. Why do you sigh like that? Is it because I'm not good enough? Or
+because I don't understand?"
+
+"I think," said she, "it is because I don't understand you."
+
+"My dear" (he allowed himself at this point the more formal endearment),
+"I thought I was disgracefully transparent--I'm limpidity, simplicity
+itself. I've only one idea and one subject of conversation. Ask Edith.
+She understands me."
+
+"Ah, Edith--" said Anne, as if Edith were a very different affair.
+
+The intonation was hopeful, it suggested some slender and refined
+jealousy. (If only he could make her jealous!)
+
+On the strength of it he advanced to the punctual daily offering of
+flowers, flowers for her drawing-room, flowers for her bedroom, flowers
+for her to wear. After that he took to writing her letters from the
+office with increasing frequency and fervour. Anne, too, was courteous
+and distant. She accepted all he had to offer as a becoming tribute to
+her feminine superiority, and evaded dexterously the deeper issue.
+
+Now and then he reported his progress to Edith.
+
+"I rather think," he said, "she's coming round. I'm regarded as a
+distinctly eligible person."
+
+They laughed at his complete adoption of the part and his innocent joy in
+it.
+
+That had always been his way. When he had begun a game there was no
+stopping him. He played it through to the end.
+
+Edith would look up smiling and say: "Well, how goes the affair?" (They
+always called it the affair.) Or: "How did you get on to-day?"
+
+And it would be: "Pretty well."--"Better to-day than yesterday."--"No
+luck to-day."
+
+One Sunday he came to her radiant.
+
+"She really does," said he, "seem interested in what I say."
+
+"What did you talk about?"
+
+"The influence of Christianity on woman. Was that good?"
+
+"Very good."
+
+"I didn't know very much about it, but I got her to tell me things."
+
+"That," said Edith, "was still better."
+
+"But she sticks to it that she doesn't understand me. That's bad."
+
+"No," said Edith, "that's best of all. It shows she's thinking of you.
+She wants to understand. Believe me, the affair marches."
+
+He meditated on that.
+
+In the evening, the better to meditate, he withdrew to his study. It was
+not long before Anne came to him of her own accord. She asked if she
+might read aloud to him.
+
+"I should be honoured," he replied stiffly.
+
+She chose Emerson, "On Compensation." And Majendie did not care for
+Emerson.
+
+But Anne had a charming voice; a voice with tones that penetrated like
+pain, that thrilled like a touch, that clung delicately like a shy
+caress; tones that were as a funeral bell for sadness; tones that rose to
+passion without ever touching it; clear, cool tones that were like water
+to passion's flame. Majendie closed his eyes and let her voice play over
+him.
+
+"Did you like it?" she asked gravely.
+
+"Like it? I love it."
+
+"So do I. I _hoped_ you would."
+
+"My dear, I didn't understand one word of it."
+
+"You can't make me believe you loved it then."
+
+He looked at her.
+
+"I loved the sound of your voice, dear."
+
+"Oh," said she coldly, "is that all?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "isn't it enough?"
+
+"I'd rather--" she began and hesitated.
+
+"You'd rather I understood Emerson?"
+
+Her blood flushed in the honey whiteness of her face. She rose, put the
+book in its place, and left the room.
+
+"Edith," he said, relating the incident afterwards, "I thought she was
+coming round when she wanted to read to me. Why did she get up and go
+like that?"
+
+"She went, dear goose, because she was afraid to stay."
+
+"Why afraid?"
+
+"Because she's fighting you, Wallie. It's all right if she's got to
+fight."
+
+"Yes, but suppose she wins?"
+
+"She can't win fighting--she's a woman. Her only chance is to run away."
+
+That night Anne knelt by her bedside and hid her face and prayed for
+Walter; that he might be purified, so that she might love him without
+sin; that he and she might travel together on the divine way, and
+together be received into the heavenly places.
+
+She had felt that night the stirring of natural affection. It had come
+back to her, a feeble, bruised, humiliated thing. She could not harbour
+it without spiritual justification.
+
+She kept herself awake by saying: "I can't love him, I can't love
+him--unless God makes him fit for me to love."
+
+Sleeping, she dreamed that she was in his arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+It was Anne's birthday. It shone in mid-May like the front of June.
+Anne's bedroom was over Edith's and looked out on the garden. A little
+rain had fallen over night. Through the open window the day greeted
+her with a breath of flowers and earth; a day that came to her all
+golden, ripe and sweet from the south.
+
+Her dressing-table was placed sideways from the window. Anne, fresh from
+her cold bath, in a white muslin gown, with her thick sleek hair coiled
+and burnished, sat before the looking-glass.
+
+There was a knock at the door, not Nanna's bold awakening summons, but a
+shy and gentle sound. Her heart shook her voice as she responded.
+
+"Is it permitted?" said Majendie.
+
+"If you like," she answered quietly.
+
+He presented his customary morning sacrifice of flowers. Hitherto he
+had not presumed so far as to bring it to her room. It waited for her
+decorously at breakfast time, beside her plate.
+
+She took the flowers from him, acknowledged their fragrance by a
+quiver of her delicate nostrils, thanked him, and laid them on the
+dressing-table.
+
+He seated himself on the window-sill, where he could see her with the day
+upon her. She noticed that he had brought with him, beside the flowers, a
+small oblong wooden box. He laid the box on his knee and covered it with
+his hand. He sat very still, looking at her as her firm white hands
+caressed her coiled hair into shape. Once she moved his flowers to find
+her comb, and laid them down again.
+
+"Aren't you going to wear them?" he inquired anxiously.
+
+Her upper lip lifted an instant, caught up, in its fashion, by the pretty
+play of the little sensitive amber mole. Two small white teeth showed and
+were hidden again. It was as if she had been about to smile, or to speak,
+and had thought better of it.
+
+She took up the flowers and tried them, now at her breast, and now at her
+waist.
+
+"Where shall I put them?" said she. "Here? Or here?"
+
+"Just there."
+
+She let them stay there in the hollow of her breast.
+
+He laid the box on the dressing-table close to her hand where it searched
+for pins.
+
+"I've brought you this," he said gently.
+
+She smiled that divine and virgin smile of hers. Anne was big, but her
+smile was small and close and shy.
+
+"You remembered my birthday?"
+
+"Did you think I should forget?"
+
+She opened the lid with cool unhurried fingers. Under the wrappings of
+tissue paper and cotton wool, a shape struck clear and firm and familiar
+to her touch. A sacred thrill ran through her as she felt there the
+presence of the holy thing, the symbol so dear and so desired that it was
+divined before seen.
+
+She lifted from the box an old silver crucifix. It must have been the
+work of some craftsman whose art was pure and fine as the silver he
+had wrought in. But that was not what Anne saw. She had always found
+something painful and repellent in those crucifixes of wood which distort
+and deepen the lines of ivory, or in those of ivory which gives again
+the very pallor of human death. But the precious metal had somehow
+eternalised the symbol of the crucified body. She saw more than the
+torture, the exhaustion, the attenuation. Surely, on the closed eyelids
+there rested the glory and the peace of divine accomplishment?
+
+She stood still, holding it in her hand and looking at it. Majendie stood
+still, also looking at her. He was not quite sure whether she were going
+to accept that gift, whether she would hesitate to take from his profane
+hands a thing so sacred and so supreme. He was aware that his fate
+somehow hung on her acceptance, and he waited in silence, lest a word
+should destroy the work of love in her.
+
+Anne, too (when she could detach her mind from the crucifix), felt that
+the moment was decisive. To accept that gift, of all gifts, was to lay
+her spirit under obligation to him. It was more than a surrender of body,
+heart, or mind. It was to admit him to association with the unspeakably
+sacred acts of prayer and adoration.
+
+If it were possible that that had been his desire; if he had meant his
+gift as a tribute, not to her only, but to the spirit of holiness in her;
+if, in short, he had been serious, then, indeed, she could not hesitate.
+For, if it were so, her prayer was answered.
+
+She laid down the crucifix and turned to him. They searched each other
+with their eyes. She saw, without wholly understanding, the pain in his.
+He saw, also unintelligently, the austerity in hers.
+
+"Are you not going to take it, then?" he said.
+
+"I don't know. Do you realise that you are giving me a very sacred
+thing?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"And that I can't treat it as I would an ordinary present?"
+
+He lowered his eyelids. "I didn't think you'd want to wear it in your
+hair, dear."
+
+She was about to ask him what he did mean then; but some instinct held
+her, told her not to press the sign of grace too hard. She looked at him
+still more intently. His eyes had disconcerted and baffled her, but now
+she was sheltered by their lowered lids. Then she noticed for the first
+time that his face showed the marks of suffering. It was as if it had
+dropped suddenly the brilliant mask it wore for her, and given up its
+secret unaware. He had suffered so that he had not slept. It was plain to
+her in the droop of his eyelids, and in the drawn lines about his eyes
+and mouth and nostrils. She was touched with tenderness and pity, and a
+certain unintelligible awe. And she knew her hour. She knew that if she
+closed her heart now, it would never open to him. She knew that it was
+his hour as well as hers. She felt, reverently, that it was, above all,
+God's hour.
+
+She laid her hand on her husband's gift, saying to herself that if she
+took that crucifix she would be taking him with it into the holy places
+of her heart.
+
+"I will take it." Her voice came shy and inarticulate as a marriage vow.
+
+"Thank you," he said.
+
+He wondered if she would turn to him with some sign of tenderness,
+whether she would stoop to him and touch him with her hand or her lips;
+or whether she looked to him to offer the first caress.
+
+She did nothing. It was as if her intentness, her concentration upon
+her holy purpose held her. While her soul did but turn to him in the
+darkness, it kept and would keep their hands and lips apart.
+
+He divined that she was only half-won. But, though her body yet moved in
+its charmed inviolate circle, he felt dimly that the spiritual barrier
+was down.
+
+She turned from him and went slowly to the door. He opened it and
+followed her. On the stairs she parted from him and went alone into his
+sister's bedroom.
+
+Edith's spine had been hurting her in the night. She lay flat and
+exhausted, and the embrace of her loving arms was slow and frail.
+
+Edith was what she called "dressed," and waiting for her sister-in-law.
+The little table by her bed was strewn with the presents she had bought
+and made for Anne. A birthday was a very serious affair for Edith. She
+was not content to buy (buying was nothing; anybody could buy); she must
+also make, and make beautifully. "I mayn't have any legs that can carry
+me," said Edith; "but I've hands and I _will_ use them. If it wasn't for
+my hands I'd be nothing but a great lumbering, lazy mass of palpitating
+heart." But her making had become every year more and more expensive. Her
+beautiful, pitiful embroideries were paid for in bad nights. And at six
+o'clock that morning she had given her little dismal cry: "Oh, Nanna,
+Nanna, my beast of a spine is going to bother me to-day, and it's Anne's
+birthday!"
+
+"And what else," said Nanna severely, "do you expect, Miss Edith?"
+
+"I didn't expect this. I do believe it's getting worse."
+
+"Worse?" Nanna was contemptuous. "It was worse on Master Walter's
+birthday last year."
+
+(Last year she had made a waistcoat.)
+
+"I can't think," moaned Edith, "why it's always bad on birthdays."
+
+But however badly "it" might behave in the night, it was never permitted
+to destroy the spirit of the day.
+
+Anne looked anxiously at the collapsed, exhausted figure in the bed.
+
+"Yes," said Edith, having smiled at her sister-in-law with magnificent
+mendacity, "you may well look at me. You couldn't make yourself as flat
+as I am if you tried. There are two books for you, and a thingummy-jig,
+and a handkerchief to blow your dear nose with."
+
+"Edie--"
+
+"Do you like them?"
+
+"Like them? Oh, you dear--"
+
+"Why don't you have a birthday oftener? It makes you look so pretty,
+dear."
+
+Anne's heart leaped. Edie's ways, her very words sometimes were like
+Walter's.
+
+"Has Walter seen you?"
+
+Anne's face became instantly solemn, but it was not sad.
+
+"Edie," she said, "do you know what he has given me!"
+
+"Yes," said Edith. Her eyes searched Anne's eyes with pain in them that
+was somehow akin to Walter's pain.
+
+"She knows everything," thought Anne, "and it was her idea, then, not
+his."
+
+"Edith," said she, "was it you who thought of it, or he?"
+
+"I? Never. He didn't say a word about it. He just went and got it. He
+thought it all out by himself, poor dear."
+
+"Can you think why he thought of it?"
+
+"Yes," said Edith gravely, "I can. Can't you?"
+
+Anne was silent.
+
+"It's very simple. He wants you to trust him a little more, that's all."
+
+Anne's mouth trembled, and she tightened it.
+
+"Are you afraid of him?"
+
+"Yes," she said, "I am."
+
+"Because you think he isn't very spiritual?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Oh, but he's on his way there," said Edith. "He's human. You've got to
+be human before you can be spiritual. It's a most important part of the
+process. Don't you omit it."
+
+"Have I omitted it?"
+
+She stroked one of the thin hands that were out-stretched towards her on
+the coverlet, and the other closed on her caress. The touch brought the
+tears into her eyes. She raised her head to keep them from falling.
+
+"Dear," said Edith, and paused and reiterated, "dear, you have about all
+the big things that I haven't. You're splendid. There's only one thing I
+want for you. If you could only see how divinely sacred the human part of
+us is--and how pathetic."
+
+Anne looked at her as she lay there, bright and brave, untroubled by her
+own mortal pathos. In her, humanity, woman's humanity, was reduced to its
+simplest expression of spiritual loving and bodily suffering. Anne was a
+child in her ignorance of the things that had been revealed to Edith
+lying there.
+
+Looking at her, Anne's tears grew heavy and fell.
+
+"It's your birthday," said Edith softly.
+
+And as she heard Majendie's foot on the stairs Anne dried her eyes on the
+birthday pocket handkerchief.
+
+"Here she is," said Edith as he entered. "What are you going to do with
+her? She doesn't have a birthday every day."
+
+"I'm going," he said, "to take her down to breakfast."
+
+Their meals so abounded in occasions for courtesy that they had become
+profoundly formal. This morning Anne's courtesy was coloured by some
+emotion that defied analysis. She wore her new mood like a soft veil
+that heightened her attraction in obscuring it.
+
+He watched her with a baffled preoccupation that kept him unusually
+quiet. His quietness did him good service with Anne in her new mood.
+
+When the meal was over she rose and went to the window. The sedate
+Georgian street was full of the day that shone soberly here from the cool
+clear north.
+
+"What are you thinking of?" said he.
+
+"I'm thinking what a beautiful day it is."
+
+"Yes, isn't it a jolly day?"
+
+"If it's beautiful here, what must it be in the country?"
+
+"The country?" A thought struck him. "I say, would you like to go there?"
+
+"Do you mean to-day?"
+
+Her upper lip lifted, and the two teeth showed again on the pale rose of
+its twin. In spite of the dignity of her proportions, Anne had the look
+of a child contemplating some hardly permissible delight.
+
+"Now, this minute. There's a train to Westleydale at nine fifty."
+
+"It would be very nice. But--how about business?"
+
+"Business be--"
+
+"No, no, _not_ that word."
+
+"But it is, you know; it can't help itself. There's a devil in all the
+offices in Scale at this time of the year."
+
+"Would _you_ like it?"
+
+"I? Rather. I'm on!"
+
+"But--Edith--oh no, we can't."
+
+She turned with a sudden gesture of renunciation, so that she faced him
+where he stood smiling at her. His face grew grave for her.
+
+"Look here," he said, "you mustn't be morbid about Edith. It isn't
+necessary. All the time we're gone, she'll be there, in perfect bliss
+with simply thinking of the good time _we_'re having."
+
+"But her back's bad to-day."
+
+"Then she'll be glad that we're not there to feel it. Her back will add
+to her happiness, if anything."
+
+She drew in a sharp breath, as if he had hurt her.
+
+"Oh, Walter, how can you?"
+
+He replied with emphasis. "How can I? I can, not because I'm a brute, as
+you seem to suppose, but because she's a saint and an angel. I take off
+my hat and go down on my knees when I think of her. Go and put _your_
+hat on."
+
+She felt herself diminished, humbled, and in two ways. It was as if he
+had said: "You are not the saint that Edith is, nor yet the connoisseur
+in saintship that I am."
+
+She knew that she was not the one; but to the other distinction she
+certainly fancied that she had the superior claim. And she had never yet
+come behind him in appreciation of Edith. Besides, she was hurt at being
+spoken to in that way on her birthday.
+
+Her resentment faded when she found him standing at the foot of the
+stairs by Edith's door, waiting for her. He looked up at her as she
+descended, and his eyes brightened with pleasure at the sight.
+
+Edith was charmed with their plan. It might have been conceived as an
+exquisite favour to herself, by the fine style in which she handled it.
+
+They set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket and Anne's coat. He
+had changed, and appeared in the Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and cap
+he had worn at Scarby. The pang that struck her at the sight of them was
+softened by her practical perception of their fitness for the adventure.
+They became him, too, and she had memory of the charm he had once worn
+for her with that open-air attire.
+
+An hour's journey by rail brought them to the little wayside station.
+They turned off the high road, walked for ten minutes across an upland
+field, and came to the bridle-path that led down into the beech-woods of
+Westleydale, in the heart of the hills.
+
+They followed a mossy trail. The shade fell thin, warm, and
+coloured, from leaves so tender that the light passed through their
+half-transparent panes. Overhead there was the delicate scent of green
+things and of sap, and underfoot the deep smell of moss and moistened
+earth.
+
+Anne drew the deep breath of delight. She took off her hat and gloves,
+and moved forward a few steps to a spot where the wood opened and the
+vivid light received her. Majendie hung back to look at her. She turned
+and stood before him, superb and still, shrined in a crescent of tall
+beech stems, column by column, with the light descending on the fine gold
+of her hair. Nothing in Anne even remotely suggested a sylvan and
+primeval creature; but, as she stood there in her temperate and alien
+beauty, she seemed to him to have yielded to a brief enchantment. She
+threw back her head, as if her white throat drank the sweet air like
+wine. She held out her white hands, and let the warmth play over them
+palpably as a touch.
+
+And Majendie longed to take her by those white hands and draw her to him.
+If he could have trusted her; but some instinct plucked him backward,
+saying to him: "Not yet."
+
+A mossy rise under a beech-tree offered itself to Anne as a suitable
+throne for the regal woman that she was. He spread out her coat, and she
+made room for him beside her. He sat for a long time without speaking.
+The powers which were working that day for Majendie gave to him that
+subtle silence. He had, at most times, an inexhaustible capacity for
+keeping still.
+
+Above them, just discernible through the tree-tops, veiled by a gauze of
+dazzling air, the hill brooded in its majestic dream. Its green arms,
+plunging to the valley, gathered them and shut them in.
+
+Majendie's figure was not diminished by the background. The smallest
+nervous movement on his part would have undone him, but he did not move.
+His profound stillness, suggesting an interminable patience, gave him a
+beautiful immensity of his own.
+
+Anne, left in her charmed, inviolate circle, surrendered sweetly to the
+spirit of Westleydale.
+
+The place was peace folded upon the breast of peace.
+
+Presently she spoke, calling his name, as if out of the far-off
+unutterable peace.
+
+"Walter, it was kind of you to bring me here."
+
+"I am so glad you like it."
+
+"I do indeed."
+
+He tried to say more, but his heart choked him.
+
+She closed her eyes, and the peace poured over her, and sank in. Her
+heart beat quietly.
+
+She opened her eyes and turned them on her husband. She knew that it was
+his gaze that had compelled them to open. She smiled to herself, like a
+young girl, shyly but happily aware of him, and turned from him to her
+contemplation of the woods.
+
+Anne had always rather prided herself on her susceptibility to the beauty
+of nature, but it had never before reached her with this poignant touch.
+Hitherto she had drawn it in with her eyes only; now it penetrated her
+through every nerve. She was vaguely but deliciously aware of her own
+body as a part of it, and of her husband's joy in contemplating her.
+
+"He thinks me good-looking," she said to herself, and the thought came to
+her as a revelation.
+
+Then her young memory woke again and thrust at her.
+
+"He thinks me good-looking. That's why he married me."
+
+She longed to find out if it were so.
+
+"Walter," said she, "I want to ask you a question."
+
+"Well--if it's an easy one."
+
+"It isn't--very. What made you want to marry me?"
+
+He paused a moment, searching for the truth.
+
+"Your goodness."
+
+"Is that really true?"
+
+"To the best of my belief, madam, it is."
+
+"But there are so many other women better than me."
+
+"Possibly. I haven't been happy enough to meet them."
+
+"And if you had met them?"
+
+"As far as I can make out, I shouldn't have fallen in love with them.
+I shouldn't have fallen in love with _you_, if it hadn't been for your
+goodness. But I shouldn't have fallen in love with your goodness in any
+other woman."
+
+"Have you known many other women?"
+
+"One way and another, in the course of my life--yes. And what I liked so
+much about you was your difference from those other women. You gave me
+rest from them and their ways. They bored me even when I was half in love
+with them, and made me restless for them even when I wasn't a little bit.
+It was as if they were always expecting something from me--I couldn't
+for the life of me tell what--always on the look out, don't you know, for
+some mysterious moment that never arrived."
+
+She thought she knew. She felt that he was describing vaguely and with
+incomparable innocence the approaches of the ladies who had once designed
+to marry him. He had never seen through them; they (and they must have
+been so obvious, those ladies) had remained for him inscrutable,
+mysterious. He could deal competently with effects, but he was not clever
+at assigning causes.
+
+He seemed conscious of her reflections. "They were quite nice, don't you
+know. Only they couldn't let you alone. You let me alone so perfectly.
+Being with you was peace."
+
+"I see," she said quietly. "It was peace. That was all."
+
+"Oh, was it? That was only the beginning, if you must know how it began."
+
+"It began," she murmured, "in peace. That was what struck you most in me.
+I must have seemed to you at peace, then."
+
+"You did--you did. Weren't you?"
+
+"I must have been. But I've forgotten. It's so long ago. There's peace
+here, though. Why didn't we choose this place instead of Scarby?"
+
+"I wish we had. I say--are you never going to forget that?"
+
+"I've forgiven it. I might forget it if I could only understand."
+
+"Understand _what_?"
+
+"How you could be capable of caring for me--like that--and yet--"
+
+"But the two things are so entirely different. It's impossible to explain
+to you how different. Heaven forbid that you should understand the
+difference."
+
+"I understand enough to know--"
+
+"You understand enough to know nothing. You must simply take my word for
+it. Besides, the one thing's an old thing, over and done with."
+
+"Over and done with. But if the two things are so different, how can you
+be sure?"
+
+"That sounds awfully clever of you, but I'm hanged if I know what you
+mean."
+
+"I mean, how can you tell that it--the old thing--never would come back?"
+
+It _was_ clever of her. He realised that he had to deal now with a more
+complete and complex creature than Anne had been.
+
+"How could it?" he asked.
+
+"If _she_ came back--"
+
+"Never. And if it did--"
+
+"Ah, if it did--"
+
+"It couldn't in this case--my case--your case--"
+
+"Her case--" she whispered.
+
+"Her case? She hasn't got one. She simply doesn't exist. She might come
+back as much as she pleased, and still she wouldn't exist. Is _that_ what
+you've been afraid of all the time?"
+
+"I never was really afraid till now."
+
+"What you're afraid of couldn't happen. You can put that out of your head
+for ever. If I could mention you in the same sentence as that woman you
+should know why I am so certain. As it is, I must ask you again to take
+my word for it."
+
+He paused.
+
+"But, since you have raised the question--and it's interesting, too--I
+knew a man once--not a 'bad' man--to whom that very thing did happen. And
+it didn't mean that he'd left off caring for his wife. On the contrary,
+he was still insanely fond of her."
+
+"What did it mean, then?"
+
+"That she'd left off showing that she cared for him. And he cared more
+for her, that man, after having left her, than he did before. In its way
+it was a sort of test."
+
+"I pray heaven--" said Anne; but she was too greatly shocked by the
+anecdote to shape her prayer.
+
+Majendie, feeling that the time, the place, and her mood were propitious
+for the exposition, went on.
+
+"There's another man I know. He was very fond of Edie. He's fond of her
+still. He'll come and sit for hours playing backgammon with her. And yet
+all his fondness for her hasn't kept him entirely straight. But he'd have
+been as straight as anybody if he could have married her."
+
+"But what does all this prove?"
+
+"It proves nothing," he said almost passionately, "except that these two
+things, just because they're different, are not so incompatible as you
+seem to think."
+
+"Did Edie care for that man?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"Ah, don't you see? There's the difference. What made Edie a saint made
+him a sinner."
+
+"I doubt if Edie would look on it quite in that light. She thinks it was
+uncommonly hard on him."
+
+"Does she know?"
+
+"Oh, there's no end to the things that Edie knows."
+
+"And she loves him in spite of it?"
+
+"Yes. I suppose there's no end to that either."
+
+No end to her loving. That was the secret, then, of Edie's peace.
+
+Anne meditated upon that, and when she spoke again her voice rang on its
+vibrating, sub-passionate note.
+
+"And you said that I gave you rest. You were different."
+
+He made as if he would draw nearer to her, and refrained. The kind heart
+of Nature was in league with his. Nature, having foreknowledge of her own
+hour, warned him that his hour was not yet.
+
+And so he waited, while Nature, mindful of her purpose, began in Anne
+Majendie her holy, beneficent work. The soul of the place was charged
+with memories, with presciences, with prophecies. A thousand woodland
+influences, tender timidities, shy assurances, wooed her from her soul.
+They pleaded sweetly, persistently, till Anne's brooding face wore the
+flush of surrender to the mysteries of earth.
+
+The spell was broken by a squirrel's scurrying flight in the boughs above
+them. Anne looked up, and laughed, and their moment passed them by.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"Are you tired?" he asked.
+
+They had walked about the wood, made themselves hungry, and lunched like
+labourers at high noon.
+
+"No, I'm only thirsty. Do you think there's a cottage anywhere where you
+could get me some water?"
+
+"Yes, there's one somewhere about. I'll try and find it if you'll sit
+here and rest till I come back."
+
+She waited. He came back, but without the water. His eyes sparkled with
+some mysterious, irrepressible delight.
+
+"Can't you find it?"
+
+"Rather. I say, do come and look. There's such a pretty sight."
+
+She rose and went with him. Up a turning in the dell, about fifty yards
+from their tree, a long grassy way cut sheer through a sheet of wild
+hyacinths. It ran as if between two twin borders of blue mist, that
+hemmed it in and closed it by the illusion of their approach. On either
+side the blue mist spread, and drifted away through the inlets of the
+wood, and became a rarer and rarer atmosphere, torn by the tree-trunks
+and the fern. The path led to a small circular clearing, a shaft that
+sucked the daylight down. It was as if the sunshine were being poured in
+one stream from a flooded sky, and danced in the dark cup earth held for
+it. The trees grew close and tall round the clearing. Light dripped from
+their leaves and streamed down their stems, turning their grey to silver.
+The bottom of the cup was a level floor of grass that had soaked in light
+till it shone like emerald. A stone cottage faced the path; so small that
+a laburnum brushed its roof and a may-tree laid a crimson face against
+the grey gable of its side. The patch of garden in front was stuffed with
+wall-flowers and violets. The sun lay warm on them; their breath stirred
+in the cup, like the rich, sweet fragrance of the wine of day.
+
+Majendie grasped Anne's arm and led her forward.
+
+In the middle of the green circle, under the streaming sun, cradled in
+warm grass, a girl baby sat laughing and fondling her naked feet. She
+laughed as she lay on her back and opened one folded, wrinkled foot to
+the sun; she laughed as she threw herself forward and beat her knees with
+the outspread palms of her hands; she laughed as she rocked her soft body
+to and fro from her rosy hips; then she stopped laughing suddenly, and
+began crooning to herself a delicious, unintelligible song.
+
+"Look," said Majendie, "that's what I wanted to show you."
+
+"Oh--oh--oh--" said Anne, and looked, and stood stock-still.
+
+The beatitude of that adorable little figure possessed the scene. Green
+earth and blue sky were so much shelter and illumination to its pure and
+solitary joy.
+
+"Did you ever see anything so heart-rending?" said Majendie. "That
+anything could be so young!"
+
+Anne shook her head, dumb with the fascination.
+
+As they approached again, the little creature rolled on its waist, and
+crawled over the grass to her feet.
+
+"The little lamb--" said she, and stooped, and lifted it.
+
+It turned to her, cuddling. Through the thin muslin of her bodice she
+could feel the pressure of its tender palms.
+
+Majendie stood close to her and tried gently to detach and possess
+himself of the delicate clinging fingers. But his eyes were upon
+Anne's eyes. They drew her; she looked up, her eyes flashed to the
+meeting-point; his widened in one long penetrating gaze.
+
+A sudden pricking pain went through her, there where the pink and flaxen
+thing lay sun-warm and life-warm to her breast.
+
+At first she did not heed it. She stood hushed, attentive to the
+prescience that woke in her; surrendered to the secret, with desire that
+veiled itself to meet its unveiled destiny.
+
+Then the veil fell.
+
+The eyes that looked at her grew tender, and before their tenderness the
+veil, the veil of her desire that had hidden him from her, fell.
+
+Her face burned, and she hid it against the child's face as it burrowed
+into the softness of her breast. When she would have parted the child
+from her, it clung.
+
+She laughed. "Release me." And he undid the clinging arms, and took the
+child from her, and laid it again in the cradling grass.
+
+"It's conceived a violent passion for you," said he.
+
+"They always do," said she serenely.
+
+The door of the cottage was open. The mother stood on the threshold,
+shading her eyes and wondering at them. She gave Anne water, hospitably,
+in an old china cup.
+
+When Anne had drunk she handed the cup to her husband. He drank with his
+eyes fixed on her over the brim, and gave it to her again. He wondered
+whether she would drink from it after him (Anne was excessively
+fastidious). To his intense satisfaction, she drank, draining the last
+drop.
+
+They went back together to their tree. On the way he stopped to gather
+wild hyacinths for her. He gathered slowly, in a grave and happy passion
+of preoccupation. Anne stood erect in the path and watched him, and
+laughed the girl's laugh that he longed to hear.
+
+It was as if she saw him for the first time through Edith's eyes, with
+so tender an intelligence did she take in his attitude, the absurd, the
+infantile intentness of his stooping figure, the still more absurdly
+infantile emotion of his hands. It was the very same attitude which had
+melted Edith, that unhappy day when they had watched him as he walked
+disconsolate in the garden, and she, his wife, had hardened her heart
+against him. She remembered Edith's words to her not two hours ago:
+"If you could only see how unspeakably sacred the human part of us is,
+and how pathetic." Surely she saw.
+
+The deep feeling and enchantment of the woods was upon her. He was sacred
+to her; and for pathos, it seemed to her that there was poured upon his
+stooping body all the pathos of all the living creatures of God.
+
+She saw deeper. In the illumination that rested on him there, she saw the
+significance of that carelessness, that happiness of his which had once
+troubled her. It was simply that his experience, his detestable
+experience, had had no power to harm his soul. Through it all he had
+preserved, or, by some miracle of God, recovered an incorruptible
+innocence. She said to herself: "Why should I not love him? His heart
+must be as pure as the heart of that little blessed child."
+
+The warning voice of the wisdom she had learnt from him whispered: "And
+it rests with you to keep him so."
+
+He led her to her tree, where she seated herself regally as before. He
+poured his sheaves of hyacinths as tribute into her lap. As his hands
+touched hers her cold face flushed again and softened. He stretched
+himself beside her and love stirred in her heart, unforbidden, as in a
+happy dream. He watched the movements of her delicate fingers as they
+played with the tangled hyacinth bells. Her hands were wet with the thick
+streaming juice of the torn stalks; she stretched them out to him
+helplessly. He knelt before her, and spread his handkerchief on his
+knees, and took her hands and wiped them. She let them rest in his for a
+moment, and, with a low, panting cry, he bowed his head and covered them
+with kisses.
+
+At his cry her lips parted. And as her soul had called to him across the
+spiritual ramparts, so her eyes said to him: "Come"; and he knew that
+with all her body and her soul she yearned to him and consented.
+
+He held her tight by the wrists and drew her to him; and she laid her
+arms lightly on his neck and kissed him.
+
+"I'm glad now," she whispered, "that Edith didn't tell me. She knew you.
+Oh, my dear, she knew."
+
+And to herself she said proudly: "It rests with me."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It was October, five months after Anne's birthday. She was not to know
+again the mood which determined her complete surrender. Supreme moods can
+never be recaptured or repeated. The passion that inspires them is
+unique, self-sacrificial, immortal only through fruition; doomed to pass
+and perish in its exaltation. She would know tenderness, but never just
+that tenderness; gladness, but never that gladness; peace, but never the
+peace that possessed her in the woods at Westleydale.
+
+The new soul in her moved steadily, to a rhythm which lacked the diviner
+thrill of the impulse which had given it birth. It was but seldom that
+the moment revived in memory. If Anne had accounted to herself for that
+day, she would have said that they had taken the nine-fifty train to
+Westleydale, that they had had a nice luncheon, that the weather was
+exceptionally fine, and that well, yes, certainly, that day had been the
+beginning of their entirely satisfactory relations. Anne's mind had a
+tendency to lapse into the commonplace when not greatly stirred. Happily
+for her, she had a refuge from it in her communion with the Unseen.
+
+Only at times was she conscious of a certain foiled expectancy. For the
+greater while it seemed to her that she had attained an indestructible
+spiritual content.
+
+She conceived a profound affection for her home. The house in Prior
+Street became the centre of her earthward thoughts, and she seldom left
+it for very long. Her health remained magnificent; her nature being
+adapted to an undisturbed routine, appeased by the well-ordered, even
+passage of her days.
+
+She had made a household religion for herself, and would have suffered in
+departing from it. To be always down before her husband for eight-o'clock
+breakfast; to sit with Edith from twelve till luncheon time, and in the
+early afternoon; to spend her evenings with her husband, reading aloud or
+talking, or sitting silent when silence soothed him; these things had
+become more sacred and imperative than her attendance at St. Saviour's.
+The hours of even-song struck for her no more.
+
+For, above all, she had made a point of always being at home in time for
+Majendie's return from his office. At five o'clock she was ready for him,
+beside her tea-table, irreproachably dressed. Her friends complained that
+they had lost sight of her. Regularly at a quarter to five she would
+forsake the drawing-rooms of Thurston Square. However absorbing Mrs.
+Eliott's conversation, towards the quarter, the tender abstraction of
+Anne's manner showed plainly that her spirit had surrendered to another
+charm. Mrs. Eliott, in letting her go, had the air of a person serenely
+sane, indulgent to a persistent and punctual obsession. Anne divided her
+friends into those who understood and those who didn't. Fanny Eliott
+would never understand. But little Mrs. Gardner, through the immortality
+of her bridal spirit, understood completely. And for Anne Mrs. Gardner's
+understanding of her amounted to an understanding of her husband. Anne's
+heart went out to Mrs. Gardner.
+
+Not that she saw much of her, either. She had grown impatient of
+interests that lay outside her home. Once she had decided to give herself
+up to her husband, other people's claims appeared as an impertinence
+beside that perfection of possession.
+
+She was less vividly aware of her own perfect possession of him. Majendie
+was hardly aware of it himself. His happiness was so profound that he had
+not yet measured it. He, too, had slipped into the same imperturbable
+routine. It was seldom that he kept her waiting past five o'clock. He
+hated the people who made business appointments with him for that hour.
+His old associates saw little of him, and his club knew him no more.
+He preferred Anne's society to that of any other person. They had no more
+fear of each other. He saw that she was beginning to forget.
+
+In one thing only he was disappointed. The trembling woman who had held
+him in her arms at Westleydale had never shown herself to him again. She
+had been called, created, for an end beyond herself. The woman he had
+married again was pure from passion, and of an uncomfortable reluctance
+in the giving and taking of caresses. He forced himself to respect her
+reluctance. He had simply to accept this emotional parsimony as one of
+the many curious facts about Anne. He no longer went to Edith for an
+explanation of them, for the Anne he had known in Westleydale was too
+sacred to be spoken of. An immense reverence possessed him when he
+thought of her. As for the actual present Anne, loyalty was part of the
+large simplicity of his nature, and he could not criticise her.
+Remembering Westleydale, he told himself that her blanched susceptibility
+was tenderness at white heat. If she said little, he argued that (like
+himself) she felt the more. And at times she could say perfect things.
+
+"I wonder, Nancy," he once said to her, "if you know how divinely sweet
+your voice is?"
+
+"I shall begin to think it is, if you think so," said she.
+
+"And would you think yourself beautiful, if I thought so?"
+
+"Very beautiful. At any rate, as beautiful as I want to be."
+
+He could not control the demonstration provoked by that admission, and
+she asked him if he were coming to church with her to-morrow.
+
+His Nancy chose her moments strangely.
+
+But not for worlds would he have admitted that she was deficient in
+a sense of humour. She had her small hilarities that passed for it.
+Keenness in that direction would have done violence to the repose and
+sweetness of her blessed presence. The peace of it remained with him
+during his hours of business.
+
+Anne did not like his business. But, in spite of it, she was proud
+of him, of his appearance, his charm, his distinction, his entire
+superiority to even the aristocracy of Scale.
+
+She no longer resented his indifference to her friends in Thurston
+Square, since it meant that he desired to have her to himself. Of his own
+friends he had seen little, and she nothing. If she had not pressed Fanny
+Eliott on him, he had spared her Mrs. Lawson Hannay and Mrs. Dick
+Ransome. She had been fortunate enough to find both these ladies out when
+she returned their calls. And Majendie had spoken of his most intimate
+friend, Charlie Gorst, as absent on a holiday in Norway.
+
+It was, therefore, in a mood of more than usual concession that she
+proposed to return, now in October, the second advance made to her by
+Mrs. Hannay in July.
+
+Majendie was relieved to think that he would no longer be compelled to
+perjure himself on Anne's account. The Hannays had frequently reproached
+him with his wife's unreadiness in response, and (as he had told her) he
+had exhausted all acceptable explanations of her conduct. He had "worked"
+her headaches "for all they were worth" with Hannay; for weeks he had
+kept Hannay's wife from calling, by the fiction, discreetly presented, of
+a severe facial neuralgia; and his last shameless intimation, that Anne
+was "rather shy, you know," had been received with a respectful
+incredulity that left him with nothing more to say.
+
+Mrs. Hannay was not at home when Anne called, for Anne had deliberately
+avoided her "day." But Mrs. Hannay was irrepressibly forgiving, and Anne
+found herself invited to dine at the Hannays' with her husband early in
+the following week. It was hardly an hour since she had left Mrs.
+Hannay's doorstep when the pressing, the almost alarmingly affectionate
+little note came hurrying after her.
+
+"I'll go, dear, if you really want me to," said she.
+
+"Well--I think, if you don't mind. The Hannays have been awfully good to
+me."
+
+So they went.
+
+"Don't snub the poor little woman too unmercifully," was Edith's parting
+charge.
+
+"I promise you I'll not snub her at all," said Anne.
+
+"You can't," said Majendie. "She's like a soft sofa cushion with lots of
+frills on. You can sit on her, as you sit on a sofa cushion, and she's as
+plump, and soft, and accommodating as ever the next day."
+
+The Hannays lived in the Park.
+
+Majendie talked a great deal on the way there. His supporting and
+attentive manner was not quite the stimulant he had meant it to be. Anne
+gathered that the ordeal would be trying; he was so eager to make it
+appear otherwise.
+
+"Once you're there, it won't be bad, you know, at all. The Hannays are
+really all right. They'll ask the very nicest people they know to meet
+you. They think you're doing them a tremendous honour, you know, and
+they'll rise to it. You'll see how they'll rise."
+
+Mrs. Hannay had every appearance of having risen to it. Anne's entrance
+(she was impressive in her entrances) set the standard high; yet Mrs.
+Hannay rose. When agreeably excited Mrs. Hannay was accustomed to move
+from one end of her drawing-room to the other with the pleasing and
+impalpable velocity of all soft round bodies inspired by gaiety. So
+exuberant was the softness of the little lady and so voluminous her
+flying frills, that at these moments her descent upon her guests appeared
+positively winged like the descent of cherubim. To-night she advanced
+slowly from her hearth-rug with no more than the very slightest swaying
+and rolling of all her softness, the very faintest tremor of her downy
+wings. Mrs. Hannay's face was the round face of innocence, the face of
+a cherub with blown cheeks and lips shaped for the trumpet.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Majendie--at last." She retained Mrs. Majendie's hand for
+the moment of presenting her to her husband. By this gesture she
+appropriated Mrs. Majendie, taking her under her small cherubic wing.
+"Wallie, how d'you do?" Her left hand furtively appropriated Mrs.
+Majendie's husband. Anne marked the familiarity with dismay. It was
+evident that at the Hannays' Walter was in the warm lap of intimacy.
+
+It was evident, too, that Mr. Hannay had married considerably beneath
+him. Anne owned that he had a certain dignity, and that there was
+something rather pleasing in his loose, clean-shaven face. The sharp
+slenderness of youth was now vanishing in a rosy corpulence, corpulence
+to which Mr. Hannay resigned himself without a struggle. But above it the
+delicate arch of his nose attested the original refinement of his type.
+His mouth was not without sweetness, Mr. Hannay being as indulgent to
+other people as he was to himself.
+
+He received Anne with a benign air; he assured her of his delight in
+making her acquaintance; and he refrained from any allusions to the long
+delay of his delight.
+
+Little Mrs. Hannay was rolling softly in another direction.
+
+"Canon Wharton, let me present you to Mrs. Walter Majendie."
+
+She had risen to Canon Wharton. For she had said to her husband: "You
+must get the Canon. She can't think us such a shocking bad lot if we have
+him." Her face expressed triumph in the capture of Canon Wharton, triumph
+in the capture of Mrs. Walter Majendie, triumph in the introduction.
+Owing to the Hannays' determination to rise to it, the dinner-party, in
+being rigidly select, was of necessity extremely small.
+
+"Miss Mildred Wharton--Sir Rigley Barker--Mr. Gorst. Now you all know
+each other."
+
+The last person introduced had lingered with a certain charming
+diffidence at Mrs. Majendie's side. He was a man of about her husband's
+age, or a little younger, fair and slender, with a restless, flushed face
+and brilliant eyes.
+
+"I can't tell you what a pleasure this is, Mrs. Majendie."
+
+He had an engaging voice and a still more engaging smile.
+
+"You may have heard about me from your husband. I was awfully sorry to
+miss you when I called before I went to Norway. I only came back this
+morning, but I _made_ Hannay invite me."
+
+Anne murmured some suitable politeness. She said afterwards that her
+instinct had warned her against Mr. Gorst, with his restlessness and
+brilliance; but, as a matter of fact, her instinct had done nothing of
+the sort, and his manners had prejudiced her in his favour. Fanny Eliott
+had told her that he belonged to a very old Lincolnshire family. There
+was a distinction about him. And he really had a particularly engaging
+smile.
+
+So she received him amiably; so amiably that Majendie, who had been
+observing their encounter with an intent and rather anxious interest,
+appeared finally reassured. He joined them, releasing himself adroitly
+from Sir Rigley Barker.
+
+"How's Edith?" said Mr. Gorst.
+
+His use of the name and something in his intonation made Anne attentive.
+
+"She's better," said Majendie. "Come and see her soon."
+
+"Oh, rather. I'll come round to-morrow. If," he added, "Mrs. Majendie
+will permit me."
+
+"Mrs. Majendie," said her husband, "will be delighted."
+
+Anne smiled assent. Her amiability extended even to Mrs. Hannay, who had
+risen to it, so far, well.
+
+During dinner Anne gave her attention to her right-hand neighbour, Canon
+Wharton; and Mrs. Hannay, looking down from her end of the table, saw her
+selection justified. In rising to the Canon she had risen her highest;
+for the ex-member hardly counted; he was a fallen star. But Canon
+Wharton, the Vicar of All Souls, stood on an eminence, social and
+spiritual, in Scale. He had built himself a church in the new quarter of
+the town, and had filled it to overflowing by the power of his eloquence.
+Lawson Hannay, in a moment of unkind insight, had described the Canon as
+"a speculative builder"; but he lent him money for his building, and
+liked him none the less.
+
+Out of the pulpit the Vicar of All Souls was all things to all men. In
+the pulpit he was nothing but the Vicar of All Souls. He stood there for
+a great light in Scale, "holding," as he said, "the light, carrying the
+light, battling for light in the darkness of that capital of commerce,
+that stronghold of materialism, founded on money, built up in money,
+cemented with money!" He snarled out the word "money," and flung it in
+the face of his fashionable congregation; he gnashed his teeth over it;
+he shook his fist at them; and they rose to his mood, delighting in
+little Tommy Wharton's pluck in "giving it them hot." He was always
+giving it them hot, warming himself at his own fire. And then little
+Tommy Wharton slipped out of his little surplice and his little cassock,
+and into the Hannays' house for whiskey and soda. He could drink peg for
+peg with Lawson Hannay, without turning a hair, while poor Lawson turned
+many hairs, till his little wife ran in and hid the whiskey and shook her
+handkerchief at the little Canon, and "shooed" him merrily away. And
+Lawson, big, good-natured Lawson, would lend him more "money" to build
+his church with.
+
+So the Vicar of All Souls, who aspired to be all things to all men, was
+hand in glove with the Lawson Hannays. He had occasionally been known to
+provide for the tables of the poor, but he dearly loved to sit at the
+tables of the rich; and he justified his predilection by the highest
+example.
+
+Anne, who knew the Canon by his spiritual reputation only, turned to him
+with interest. Her eye, keen to discern these differences, saw at once
+that he was a man of the people. He had the unfinished features, the
+stunted form of an artisan; his body sacrificed, his admirers said, to
+the energies of his mighty brain. His face was a heavy, powerful oval,
+bilious-coloured, scarred with deep lines, and cleft by the wide mouth of
+an orator, a mouth that had acquired the appearance of strength through
+the Canon's habit of bringing his lips together with a snap at the close
+of his periods. His eyes were a strange, opaque grey, but the clever
+Canon made them seem almost uncomfortably penetrating by simply knitting
+his eyebrows in a savage pent-house over them. They now looked forth at
+Anne as if the Canon knew very well that her soul had a secret, and that
+it would not long be hidden from him.
+
+They talked about the Eliotts, for the Canon's catholicity bridged the
+gulf between Thurston Square and vociferous, high-living, fashionable
+Scale. He had lately succeeded (by the power of his eloquence) in winning
+over Mrs. Eliott from St. Saviour's to All Souls. He hoped also to win
+over Mrs. Eliott's distinguished friend. For the Canon was mortal. He had
+yielded to the unspiritual seduction of filling All Souls by emptying
+other men's churches. Lawson Hannay smiled on the parson's success,
+hoping (he said) to see his money back again.
+
+Money or no money, he left him a clear field with Mrs. Majendie. Ladies,
+when they were pretty, appealed to Lawson as part of the appropriate
+decoration of a table; but, much as he loved their charming society, he
+loved his dinner more. He loved it with a certain pure extravagance,
+illuminated by thought and imagination. Mrs. Hannay was one with him in
+this affection. Her heart shared it; her fancy ministered to it, rising
+higher and higher in unwearying flights. It was a link between them;
+almost (so fine was the passion) an intellectual tie. But reticence was
+not in Hannay's nature; and his emotion affected Anne very unpleasantly.
+She missed the high lyric note in it. All epicurean pleasures, even so
+delicate and fantastic a joy as Hannay's in his dinner, appeared gross
+to Anne.
+
+Majendie at the other end of the table caught sight of her detached,
+unhappy look, and became detached and unhappy himself, till Mrs. Hannay
+rallied him on his abstraction.
+
+"If you _are_ in love, my dear Wallie," she whispered, "you needn't show
+it so much. It's barely decent."
+
+"Isn't it? Anyhow, I hope it's quite decently bare," he answered, tempted
+by her folly. They were gay at Mrs. Hannay's end of the table. But Anne,
+who watched her husband intently, looked in vain for that brilliance
+which had distinguished him the other night, when he dined in Thurston
+Square. These Hannays, she said to herself, made him dull.
+
+Now, though Anne didn't in the least want to talk to Mr. Hannay, Mr.
+Hannay displeased her by not wanting to talk more to her. Not that he
+talked very much to anybody. Now and then the Canon's niece, Mildred
+Wharton, the pretty girl on his left, moved him to a high irrelevance, in
+those rare moments when she was not absorbed in Mr. Gorst. Pretty Mildred
+and Mr. Gorst were flirting unabashed behind the roses, and it struck
+Anne that the Canon kept an alarmed and watchful eye upon their
+intercourse.
+
+To Anne the dinner was intolerably long. She tried to be patient with it,
+judging that its length was a measure of the height her hosts had risen
+to. There she did them an injustice; for in the matter of a menu the
+Hannays could not rise; for they lived habitually on a noble elevation.
+
+At the other end of the table Mrs. Hannay called gaily on her guests
+to eat and drink. But, when the wine went round, Anne noticed that she
+whispered to the butler, and after that, the butler only made a feint
+of filling his master's glass, and turned a politely deaf ear to his
+protests. And then her voice rose.
+
+"Lawson, that pineapple ice is delicious. Gould, hand the pineapple ice
+to Mr. Hannay. I adore pineapple ice," said Mrs. Hannay. "Wallie, you're
+drinking nothing. Fill Mr. Majendie's glass, Gould, fill it--fill it."
+She was the immortal soul of hospitality, was Mrs. Hannay.
+
+In the drawing-room Mrs. Hannay again took possession of Anne and led her
+to the sofa. She fairly enthroned her there; she hovered round her; she
+put cushions at her head, and more cushions under her feet; for Mrs.
+Hannay liked to be comfortable herself, and to see every one comfortable
+about her. "You come," said she, "and sit down by me on this sofa,
+and let's have a cosy talk. That's it. Only you want another cushion.
+No?--Do--Won't you really? Then it's four for me," said Mrs. Hannay,
+supporting herself in various postures of experimental comfort, "one for
+my back, two for my fat sides, and one for my head. Now I'm comfy. I
+adore cushions, don't you? My husband says I'm a little down cushion
+myself, so I suppose that's why."
+
+Anne, in her mood, had crushed many innocent vulgarities before now; but
+she owned that she could no more have snubbed Mrs. Hannay effectually
+than you could snub a little down cushion. It would be impossible, she
+thought, to make any impression at all on that yielding surface.
+Impossible to take any impression from her, to say where her gaiety ended
+and her vulgarity began.
+
+"Isn't it funny?" the little lady went on, unconscious of Mrs. Majendie's
+attitude. "My husband's your husband's oldest friend. So I think you and
+I ought to be friends too."
+
+Anne's face intimated that she hardly considered the chain of reasoning
+unbreakable; but Mrs. Hannay continued to play cheerful elaborations on
+the theme of friendship, till her husband appeared with the other three
+men. He had his hand on Majendie's shoulder, and Mrs. Hannay's soft smile
+drew Mrs. Majendie's attention to this manifestation of intimacy. And it
+dawned on Anne that Mrs. Hannay's gaiety would not end here; though it
+was here, with the mixing of the company, that her vulgarity would begin.
+
+"Did you ever see such a pair? I tell Lawson he's fonder of Wallie than
+he is of me. I believe he'd go down on his knees and black his boots for
+nothing, if he asked him. I'd do it myself, only you mustn't tell Lawson
+I said so." She paused. "I think Lawson wants to come and have a little
+talk with you."
+
+Hannay approached heavily, and his wife gave up her place to him,
+cushions and all. He seated himself heavily. His eyes wandered heavily to
+the other side of the room, following Majendie. And as they rested on his
+friend there was a light in them that redeemed their heaviness.
+
+He had come to Mrs. Majendie prepared for weighty utterance.
+
+"That man," said Hannay, "is the best man I know. You've married, dear
+lady, my dearest and most intimate friend. He's a saint--a Bayard." He
+flung the name at her defiantly, and with a gesture he emphasised the
+crescendo of his thought. "A _preux chevalier, sans peur_" said Mr.
+Hannay, "_et sans reproche_."
+
+Having delivered his soul, he sat, still heavily, in silence.
+
+Anne repressed the rising of her indignation. To her it was as if he had
+been defending her husband against some accusation brought by his wife.
+
+And so, indeed, he was. Poor Hannay had been conscious of her
+attitude--conscious under her pure and austere eyes, of his own
+shortcomings, and it struck him that Majendie needed some defence against
+her judgment of his taste in friendship.
+
+When the door closed behind the Majendies, Mr. Gorst was left the last
+lingering guest.
+
+"Poor Wallie," said Mrs. Hannay.
+
+"_Poor_ Wallie," said Mr. Hannay, and sighed.
+
+"What do you think of her?" said the lady to Mr. Gorst.
+
+"Oh, I think she's magnificent."
+
+"Do you think he'll be able to live up to it?"
+
+"Why not?" said Mr. Gorst cheerfully.
+
+"Well, it wasn't very gay for him before he married, and I don't imagine
+it's going to be any gayer now."
+
+"_Now_" said Mr. Hannay, "I understand what's meant by the solemnisation
+of holy matrimony. That woman would solemnise a farce at the Vaudeville,
+with Gwen Richards on."
+
+"She very nearly solemnised my dinner," said Mrs. Hannay.
+
+"She doesn't know," said Mr. Hannay, "what a dinner is. She's got no
+appetite herself, and she tried to take mine away from me. A regular
+dog-in-the-manger of a woman."
+
+"Oh, come, you know," said Gorst. "She can't be as bad as all that.
+Edith's awfully fond of her."
+
+"And _that's_ good enough for you?" said Mrs. Hannay.
+
+"Yes. That's good enough for me. _I_ like her," said Gorst stoutly; and
+Mrs. Hannay hid in her pocket-handkerchief a face quivering with mirth.
+
+But Gorst, as he departed, turned on the doorstep and repeated,
+"Honestly, I like her."
+
+"Well, honestly," said Mr. Hannay, "I don't." And, lost in gloomy
+forebodings for his friend, he sought consolation in whiskey and soda.
+
+Mrs. Hannay took a seat beside him.
+
+"And what did you think of the dinner?" said she.
+
+"It was a dead failure, Pussy."
+
+"You old stupid, I mean the dinner, not the dinner-party."
+
+Mrs. Hannay rubbed her soft, cherubic face against his sleeve, and as she
+did so she gently removed the whiskey from his field of vision. She was a
+woman of exquisite tact.
+
+"Oh, the dinner, my plump Pussy-cat, was a dream--a happy dream."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"There are moments, I admit," said Majendie, "when Hannay saddens me."
+
+Anne had drawn him into discussing at breakfast-time their host and
+hostess of the night before.
+
+"Shall you have to see very much of them?" She had made up her mind that
+she would see very little, or nothing, of the Hannays.
+
+"Well, I haven't, lately, have I?" said he, and she owned that he had
+not.
+
+"How you ever could--" she began, but he stopped her.
+
+"Oh well, we needn't go into that."
+
+It seemed to her that there was something dark and undesirable behind
+those words, something into which she could well conceive he would not
+wish to go. It never struck her that he merely wished to put an end to
+the discussion.
+
+She brooded over it, and became dejected. The great tide of her trouble
+had long ago ebbed out of her sight. Now it was as if it had turned,
+somewhere on the edge of the invisible, and was creeping back again. She
+wished she had never seen or heard of the Hannays--detestable people.
+
+She betrayed something of this feeling to Edith, who was impatient for an
+account of the evening. (It was thus that Edith entered vicariously into
+life.)
+
+"Did you expect me to enjoy it?" she replied to the first eager question.
+
+"No, I don't know that I did. _I_ should have enjoyed it very much
+indeed."
+
+"I don't believe you."
+
+"Was there anybody there that you disliked so much?"
+
+"The Hannays were there. It was enough."
+
+"You liked Mr. Gorst?"
+
+"Yes. He was different."
+
+"Poor Charlie. I'm glad you liked him."
+
+"I don't like him any better for meeting him there, my dear."
+
+"Don't say that to Walter, Nancy."
+
+"I have said it. How Walter can care for those people is a mystery to
+me."
+
+"He ought to be ashamed of himself if he didn't. Lawson Hannay has been a
+good friend to him."
+
+"Do you mean that he's under any obligation to him?"
+
+"Yes. Obligations, my dear, that none of us can ever repay."
+
+"It's intolerable!" said Anne.
+
+"Is it? Wait till you know what the obligations are. That man you dislike
+so much stood by Walter when your friends the Eliotts, my child, turned
+their virtuous backs on him--when none of his own people, even, would
+lend him a helping hand. It was Lawson Hannay who saved him."
+
+"Saved him?"
+
+"Saved him. Moved heaven and earth to get him out of that woman's
+clutches."
+
+Anne shook her head, and put her hands over her eyes to dispel her vision
+of him. Edith laughed.
+
+"You can't see Mr. Hannay moving heaven?"
+
+"No, really I can't."
+
+"Well, _I_ saw him. At least, if he didn't move heaven, he moved earth.
+When nothing else could shake her hold, he bought her off."
+
+"Bought--her--off?"
+
+"Yes, bought her--paid her money to go. And she went."
+
+"He owes him money, then?"
+
+"Money, and a great many other things beside. You don't like it?"
+
+"I can't bear it."
+
+"Of course you can't. It hurts your pride. It hurt mine badly. But my
+pride has had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay."
+
+Anne raised her head as if she refused to lower her pride an inch to him.
+She was trying to put the whole episode behind her, as it had come before
+her. She had nothing whatever to do with it. Edith, of course, had to be
+grateful. _She_ was not bound by the same obligation. But she was
+determined that they should be quit of the Hannays. She would make Walter
+pay back that money.
+
+Meanwhile Edith's eyes filled with tears at the recollection. "Lawson
+Hannay may not have been a very good man himself--I believe at one time
+he wasn't. But he loved his friend, and he didn't want to see him going
+the same way."
+
+"The same way? That means that, if it hadn't been for Mr. Hannay, he
+would never have met her."
+
+"Mr. Hannay did his best to prevent his meeting her. He knew what she
+was, and Walter didn't. He took him off in his yacht for weeks at a time,
+to get him out of her way. When she followed him he brought him back.
+When she persecuted him--well, I've told you what he did."
+
+Anne lifted her hand in supplication, and rose and went to the open
+window, as if, after that recital, she thirsted for fresh air. Edith
+smiled, in spite of herself, at her sister-in-law's repudiation of the
+subject.
+
+"Poor Mr. Hannay," said she, "the worst you can say of him now is that he
+eats and drinks a little more than's good for him."
+
+"And that he's married a wife who sets him the example," said Anne,
+returning from the window-sill refreshed.
+
+"She keeps him straight, dear."
+
+"Edith! I shall never understand you. You're angelically good. But it's
+horrible, the things you take for granted. 'She keeps him straight!'"
+
+"You think I take for granted a natural tendency to crookedness. I
+don't--I don't. What I take for granted is a natural tendency to
+straightness, when it gets its way. It doesn't always get it, though,
+especially in a town like Scale."
+
+"I wish we were out of it."
+
+"So did I, dear, once; but I don't now. We must make the best of it."
+
+"Has Walter paid any of that money back to Mr. Hannay?"
+
+Edith looked up at her sister-in-law, startled by the hardness in her
+voice. She had meant to spare Anne's pride the worst blow, but something
+in her question stirred the fire that slept in Edith.
+
+"No," she said, "he hasn't. He was going to, but Mr. Hannay cancelled the
+debt, in order that he might marry--that he might marry you."
+
+Anne drew back as if Edith had struck her bodily. She, then, had been
+bought, too, with Mr. Hannay's money. Without it, Walter could not have
+afforded to marry her; for she was poor.
+
+She sat silent, until her self-appointed hour with Edith ended; and then,
+still silently, she left the room.
+
+And Edith turned her cheek on her cushions and sobbed weakly to herself.
+"Walter would never forgive me if he knew I'd told her that. It was awful
+of me. But Anne would have provoked the patience of a saint."
+
+Anne owned that Edith was a saint, and that the provocation was extreme.
+
+In the afternoon, Edith, at her own request, was forgiven, and Anne, by
+way of proving and demonstrating her forgiveness, announced her amiable
+intention of calling on Mrs. Hannay on her "day."
+
+The day fell within a week of the dinner. It was agreed that Majendie was
+to meet his wife at the Hannays, and to take her home. There was a good
+mile between Prior Street and the Park; and Anne was a leisurely walker;
+so it happened that she was late, and that Majendie had arrived a few
+minutes before her. She did not notice him there all at once. Mrs. Hannay
+was a sociable little lady; the radius of her circle was rapidly
+increasing, and her "day" drew crowds. The lamps were not yet lit, and as
+Anne entered the room, it was dim to her after the daylight of the open
+air. She had counted on an inconspicuous entrance, and was astonished to
+find that the announcement of her name caused a curious disturbance and
+division in the assembly. A finer ear than Anne's might have detected an
+ominous sound, something like the rustling of leaves before a storm. But
+Anne's self-possession rendered her at times insensible to changes in the
+social atmosphere. In any case the slight commotion was no more than she
+had come prepared for in a whole roomful of ill-bred persons.
+
+"Pussy," said a lady who stood near Mrs. Hannay. Mrs. Hannay had her back
+to the doorway. The lady's voice rang on a low note of warning, and she
+brought her mouth close to Mrs. Hannay's ear.
+
+The hostess started, turned, and came at once towards Mrs. Majendie,
+rolling deftly between the persons who obstructed her perturbed and
+precipitate way. The perfect round of her cheeks had dropped a little; it
+was the face of a poor cherub in vexation and dismay.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Majendie,"--her voice, once so triumphant, had dropped too,
+almost to a husky whisper,--"how very good of you."
+
+She led her to a sofa, the seat of intimacy, set back a little from the
+central throne. (Majendie could be seen fairly immersed in the turmoil,
+struggling desperately through it, with a plate in his hand.)
+
+Mrs. Hannay was followed by her husband, by the other lady, and by
+Gorst. She introduced the other lady as Mrs. Ransome, and they seated
+themselves, one on each side of Anne. The two men drew up in front of
+the sofa, and began to talk very fast, in loud tones and with an
+unnatural gaiety. The women, too, closed in upon her somewhat with their
+knees; they were both a little confused, both more than a little
+frightened, and the manner of both was mysteriously apologetic.
+
+Anne, with her deep, insulating sense of superiority, had no doubt as to
+the secret of the situation. She felt herself suitably protected, guarded
+from contact, screened from view, distinguished very properly from
+persons to whom it was manifestly impossible, even for Mrs. Hannay, to
+introduce her. She was very sorry for poor Mrs. Hannay, she tried to make
+it less difficult for her, by ignoring the elements of confusion and
+fright. But poor Mrs. Hannay kept on being frightened; she refused to
+part with her panic and be natural. So terrified was she, that she hardly
+seemed to take in what Mrs. Majendie was saying.
+
+Anne, however, conversed with the utmost amiability, while her thoughts
+ran thus: "Dear lady, why this agitation? You cannot help being vulgar.
+As for your friends, what do you think I expected?"
+
+The other lady, Mrs. Dick Ransome, could not be held accountable for
+anything but her own private vulgarity; and it struck Anne as odd that
+Mrs. Dick Ransome, who was not responsible for Mrs. Hannay, seemed, if
+anything, more terrified than Mrs. Hannay, who was responsible for her.
+
+Mrs. Dick Ransome did not, at the first blush, inspire confidence. She
+was a woman with a great deal of blonde hair, and a fresh-coloured,
+conspicuously unspiritual face; coarse-grained, thick-necked, ruminantly
+animal, but kind; kind to Mrs. Hannay, kind to Anne, kinder even than
+Mrs. Hannay who was responsible for all the kindness.
+
+Charlie Gorst hurried away to get Mrs. Majendie some tea, and Lawson's
+Hannay's large form moved into the gap thus made, blocking Anne's view of
+the room. He stood looking down upon her with an extraordinary smile of
+mingled apology and protection. Gorst's return was followed by Majendie,
+wandering uneasily with his plate. He smiled at Anne, too; and his smile
+conveyed the same suggestion of desperation and distress. It was as if he
+said to her: "I'm sorry for letting you in for such a crew, but how can
+I help it?" She smiled back at him brightly, as much as to say; "Don't
+mind. It amuses me. I'm taking it all in."
+
+He wandered away, and Anne felt that the women exchanged looks across her
+shoulders.
+
+"I think I'll be going, Pussy dear," said Mrs. Ransome, nodding some
+secret intelligence. She elbowed her way gently across the room, and came
+back again, shaking her head hopelessly and helplessly. "She says I can
+go if I like, but she'll stay," said Mrs. Ransome under her breath.
+
+"Oh-h-h," said Mrs. Hannay under hers.
+
+"What am I to do?" said Mrs. Ransome, flurried into audible speech.
+
+"Stay--stay. It's much better." Mrs. Hannay plucked her husband by the
+sleeve, and he lowered an attentive ear. Mrs. Ransome covered the
+confidence with a high-pitched babble.
+
+"You find Scale a very sociable place, don't you, Mrs. Majendie?" said
+Mrs. Ransome.
+
+"Go," said Mrs. Hannay, "and take her off into the conservatory, or
+somewhere."
+
+"More sociable in the winter-time, of course." (Mrs. Ransome, in her
+agitation, almost screamed it.)
+
+"I can't take her off anywhere, if she won't go," said Mr. Hannay in a
+thick but penetrating whisper. He collapsed into a chair in front of
+Anne, where he seemed to spread himself, sheltering her with his supine,
+benignant gaze.
+
+Mrs. Hannay was beside herself, beholding his invertebrate behaviour.
+"Don't sit down, stupid. Do something--anything."
+
+He went to do it, but evidently, whatever it was, he had no heart for it.
+
+A maid came in and lit a lamp. There was a simultaneous movement of
+departure among the nearer guests.
+
+"Oh, heavens," said Mrs. Hannay, "don't tell me they're all going to go!"
+
+Anne, serenely contemplating these provincial manners, was bewildered by
+the horror in Mrs. Hannay's tone. There was no accounting for provincial
+manners, or she would have supposed that Mrs. Hannay, mortified by the
+presence of her most undesirable acquaintance, would have rejoiced to see
+them go.
+
+Their dispersal cleared a space down the middle of the room to the
+bay-window, and disclosed a figure, a woman's figure, which occupied,
+majestically, a settee. The settee, set far back in the bay of the
+window, was in a direct line with Anne's sofa. That part of the room was
+still unlighted, and the figure, sitting a little sideways, remained
+obscure.
+
+A servant went round lighting lamps.
+
+The first lamp to be lit stood beside Anne's sofa. The effect of the
+illumination was to make the lady in the window turn on her settee.
+Across the space between, her eyes, obscure lights in a face still
+undefined, swept with the turning of her body, and fastened upon Anne's
+face, bared for the first time to their view. They remained fixed, as if
+Anne's face had a peculiar fascination for them.
+
+"Who is the lady sitting in the window?" asked Anne.
+
+"It's my sister." Mrs. Ransome blinked as she answered, and her blood ran
+scarlet to the roots of her blonde hair.
+
+A cherub, discovering a horrible taste in his trumpet, would have looked
+like Mrs. Hannay.
+
+"Do let me give you some more tea, Mrs. Majendie?" said she, while Mrs.
+Ransome signalled to her husband. "Here, Dick, come and make yourself
+useful."
+
+Mr. Ransome, a little stout man with a bald head, a pale puffy face, a
+twinkling eye and a severe moustache, was obedient to her summons.
+
+"Let me see," said she, "have you met Mrs. Majendie?"
+
+"I have not had that pleasure," said Mr. Ransome, and bowed profoundly.
+He waited assiduously on Mrs. Majendie. The Ransomes might have been
+responsible for the whole occasion, they so rallied around and supported
+her.
+
+Hannay and Gorst, Ransome and another man were gathered together in a
+communion with the lady of the settee. There was a general lull, and her
+voice, a voice of sweet but somewhat penetrating quality, was heard.
+
+"Don't talk to me," said she, "about women being jealous of each other.
+Do you suppose I mind another woman being handsome? I don't care how
+handsome she is, so long as she isn't handsome in my style. Of course,
+I don't say I could stand it if she was the very moral of me."
+
+"I say, supposing Toodles met the very moral of herself?"
+
+"Could Toodles have a moral? I doubt it."
+
+"I want to know what she'd do with it."
+
+"Yes, by Jove, what _would_ you do?"
+
+"Do? I should do my worst. I should make her sit somewhere with a good
+strong light on her."
+
+"Hold hard there," said her brother-in-law (the man who called her
+Toodles), "Lady Cayley doesn't want that lamp lit just yet"
+
+In the silence of the rest, the name seemed to leap straight across the
+room to Anne.
+
+The two women beside her heard it, and looked at each other and at her.
+Anne sickened under their eyes, struck suddenly by the meaning of their
+protection and their sympathy. She longed to rise, to sweep them aside
+and go. But she was kept motionless by some superior instinct of disdain.
+
+Outwardly she appeared in no way concerned by this revelation of the
+presence of Lady Cayley. She might never have heard of her, for any
+knowledge that her face betrayed.
+
+Majendie, not far from the settee in the window, was handing cucumber
+sandwiches to an old lady. And Lady Cayley had taken the matches from the
+maid and was lighting the lamp herself, and was saying, "I'm not afraid
+of the light yet, I assure you. There--look at me."
+
+Everybody looked at her, and she looked at everybody, as she sat in the
+lamplight, and let it pour over her. She seemed to be offering herself
+lavishly, recklessly, triumphantly, to the light.
+
+Lady Cayley was a large woman of thirty-seven, who had been a slender and
+a pretty woman at thirty. She would have been pretty still if she had
+been a shade less large. She had tiny upward-tilted features in her large
+white face; but the lines of her jaw and her little round prominent chin
+were already vanishing in a soft enveloping fold, flushed through its
+whiteness with a bloom that was a sleeping colour. Her forehead and
+eyelids were exceedingly white, so white that against them her black
+eyebrows and blue eyes were vivid and emphatic. Her head carried high a
+Gainsborough hat of white felt, with black plumes and a black line round
+its brim. Under its upward and its downward curve her light brown hair
+was tossed up, and curled, and waved, and puffed into an appearance of
+great exuberance and volume. Exuberance and volume were the note of this
+lady, a note subdued a little by the art of her dressmaker. A gown of
+smooth black cloth clung to her vast form without a wrinkle, sombre,
+severe, giving her a kind of slenderness in stoutness. She wore a white
+lace vest and any quantity of lace ruffles, any number of little black
+velvet lines and points set with paste buttons. And every ruffle, every
+line, every point and button was an accent, emphasising some beauty of
+her person.
+
+And Anne looked at Lady Cayley once and no more.
+
+It was enough. The trouble that she had put from her came again upon her,
+no longer in its merciful immensity, faceless and formless (for she had
+shrunk from picturing Lady Cayley), but boldly, abominably defined. She
+grasped it now, the atrocious tragedy, made visible and terrible for her
+in the body of Lady Cayley, the phantom of her own horror made flesh.
+
+A terrible comprehension fell on her of that body, of its power, its
+secret, and its sin.
+
+For the first moment, when she looked from it to her husband, her mind
+refused to associate him with that degradation. Reverence held her, and
+a sudden memory of her passion in the woods at Westleydale. Mercifully,
+they veiled her intelligence, and made it impossible for her to realise
+that he should have sunk so low.
+
+Then she remembered. She had known that it was, that it would be so,
+that, sooner or later, the woman would come back. Her brain conceived a
+curious two-fold intuition of the fact.
+
+It was all foreappointed and foreknown, that she should come to this
+hateful house, and should sit there, and that her eyes should be opened
+and that she should see.
+
+And the woman's voice rose again. "Do I see cucumber sandwiches?" said
+Lady Cayley. "Dick, go and tell Mr. Majendie that if he doesn't want all
+those sandwiches himself, I'll have one."
+
+Ransome gave the message, and Majendie turned to the lady of the settee,
+presenting the plate with the finest air of abstraction. Her large arm
+hovered in selection long enough for her to shoot out one low quick
+speech.
+
+"I only wanted to see if you'd cut me, Wallie. Topsy bet me two to ten
+you wouldn't."
+
+"Why on earth should I?"
+
+"Oh, on earth I know you wouldn't. But didn't I hear just now you'd
+married and gone to heaven?"
+
+"Gone to----?"
+
+"Sh--sh--sh--I'm sure she doesn't let you use those naughty words. You
+needn't say you're not in heaven, for I can see you are. You didn't
+expect to meet me there, did you?"
+
+"I certainly didn't expect to meet you here."
+
+"How can you be so rude? Dick, take that tiresome plate from him, he
+doesn't know what to do with it. Yes. I'll have another before it goes
+away for ever."
+
+Majendie had given up the plate before he realised that he was parting
+with the link that bound him to the outer world. He turned instantly to
+follow it there; but she saw his intention and frustrated it.
+
+"Butter? Ugh! You might hold my cup for me while I take my gloves off."
+
+She peeled two skin-tight gloves from her plump hands, so carefully that
+the operation gave her all the time she wanted.
+
+"I believe you're still afraid of me?" said she.
+
+He was doing his best to look over her head; but she smiled a smile so
+flashing that it drew his eyes to her involuntarily; he felt it as
+positively illuminating their end of the room.
+
+"You're not? Well, prove it."
+
+"Is it possible to prove anything to you?"
+
+Again he was about to break from her impatiently. Nothing, he had told
+himself, would induce him to stay and talk to her. But he saw Anne's
+face across the room; it was pale and hard, fixed in an expression of
+implacable repulsion. And she was not looking at Lady Cayley, but at him.
+
+"You can prove it," said Lady Cayley, "to me and everybody else--they're
+all looking at you--by sitting down quietly for one moment, and trying to
+look a little less as if we compromised each other."
+
+He stayed, to prove his innocence before Anne; and he stood, to prove
+his independence before Lady Cayley. He had longed to get away from the
+woman, to stand by his wife's side--to take her out of the room, out of
+the house, into the open air. And now the perversity that was in him kept
+him where he hated to be.
+
+"That's right. Thank heaven one of us has got some presence of mind."
+
+"Presence of _mind_?"
+
+"Yes. You don't seem to think of _me_," she added softly.
+
+"Why should I?" he replied with a brutality that surprised himself.
+
+She looked at him with blue eyes softly suffused, and the curve of a red
+mouth sweet and tremulous. "Why?" her whisper echoed him. "Because I'm a
+woman."
+
+Her eyelids dropped ever so little, but their dark lashes (following the
+upward trend of her features) curled to such a degree that the veil was
+ineffectual. He saw a large slit of the wonderful, indomitable blue.
+
+"I'm a woman, and you're a man, you see; and the world's on your side, my
+friend, not on mine."
+
+She said it sweetly. If she had been bitter she would have (as she
+expressed it) "choked him off"; but Lady Cayley knew better than to be
+bitter now, at thirty-seven. She had learnt that her power was in her
+sweetness.
+
+His face softened (from the other end of the room Anne saw it soften),
+and Lady Cayley pursued with soundless feet her fugitive advantage.
+
+"Poor Wallie, you needn't look so frightened. I'm quite safe now, or
+soon will be. Didn't I tell you I was going there too? I'm going to be
+married."
+
+"I'm delighted to hear it," he said stiffly.
+
+"To a perfect angel," said she.
+
+"Really? If you're going up to heaven, he, I take it, is not coming down
+to earth."
+
+"Nothing is settled," said Lady Cayley, with such monstrous gravity that
+his stiffness melted, and he laughed outright.
+
+Anne heard him.
+
+"Who, if I may ask, is this celestial, this transcendent being?"
+
+She shook her head. "I can't tell you, yet."
+
+"What, isn't even that settled?"
+
+Majendie was so genuinely diverted at that moment that he would not have
+left her if he could.
+
+She took the sting of it, and flushed, dumbly. Remorse seized him, and he
+sought to soothe her.
+
+"My dear lady, I had a vision of heavenly hosts standing round you in
+such quantities that it might be difficult to make a selection, you
+know."
+
+She rallied finely under the reviving compliment. "My dear, it's a case
+of quality, not quantity--" Her past was so present to them both that he
+almost understood her to say, "this time."
+
+"I see," he said. "The wings. But nothing's settled?"
+
+"It's settled right enough," said she, by which he understood her to
+imply that the "angel's" case was. She had settled him. Majendie could
+see her doing it. His imagination played lightly with the preposterous
+idea. He conceived her in the act of bringing down her bird of heaven,
+actually "winging him."
+
+"But it's not given out yet."
+
+"I see."
+
+"You're the first I've told, except Topsy. Topsy knows it. So you mustn't
+tell anybody else."
+
+"I never tell anybody anything," said he.
+
+He gathered that it was not quite so settled as she wished him to
+suppose, and that Lady Cayley anticipated some possible dashing of the
+cup of matrimony from her lips.
+
+"So I'm not to have panics, in the night, and palpitations, every time
+I think of it?"
+
+"Certainly not, if it rests with me."
+
+"I wanted you to know. But it's so precious, I'm afraid of losing it.
+Nothing," said Lady Cayley, "can make up for the loss of a good man's
+love. Except," she added, "a good woman's."
+
+"Quite so," he assented coldly, with horror at his perception of her
+drift.
+
+His coldness riled her.
+
+"Who," said she with emphasis, "is the lady who keeps making those awful
+eyes at us over Pussy's top-knot?"
+
+"That lady," said Majendie, "as it happens, is my wife."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me that before? That's what comes, you see, of not
+introducing people. I'll tell you one thing, Wallie. She's awfully
+handsome. But you always had good taste. Br-r-r, there's a draught
+cutting my head off. You might shut that window, there's a dear."
+
+He shut it.
+
+"And put my cup down."
+
+He put it down.
+
+Anne saw him. She had seen everything.
+
+"And help me on with my cape."
+
+He lifted the heavy sable thing with two fingers, and helped her
+gingerly. A scent, horrid and thick, and profuse with memories, was
+shaken from her as she turned her shoulder. He hoped she was going. But
+she was not going; not she. Her body swayed towards him sinuously from
+hips obstinately immobile, weighted, literally, with her unshakable
+determination to sit on.
+
+She rewarded him with a smile which seemed to him, if anything, more
+atrociously luminous than the last. "I must keep you up to the mark,"
+said she, as she turned with it. "Your wife's looking at you, and I feel
+responsible for your good behaviour. Don't keep her waiting. Can't you
+see she wants to go?"
+
+"And I want to go, too," said he savagely. And he went.
+
+And as she watched Mrs. Walter Majendie's departure, Lady Cayley smiled
+softly to herself; tasting the first delicious flavour of success.
+
+She had made Mrs. Walter Majendie betray herself; she had made her
+furious; she had made her go.
+
+She had sat Mrs. Walter Majendie out.
+
+If the town of Scale, the mayor and the aldermen, had risen and given her
+an ovation, she could not have celebrated more triumphally her return.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Anne and her husband walked home in silence across the Park, grateful for
+its darkness. Majendie could well imagine that she would not want to
+talk. He made allowance for her repulsion; he respected it and her
+silence as its sign. She had every right to her resentment. He had let
+her in for the Hannays, who had let her in for the inconceivable
+encounter. On the day of her divorce Sarah Cayley had removed herself
+from Scale, and he had shrunk from providing for the supreme
+embarrassment of her return. He had looked on her as definitely,
+consummately departed. She had disappeared, down dingy vistas, into
+unimaginable obscurities. He pictured her as sunk, in Continental
+abysses, beyond all possibility of resurgence. And she had emerged (from
+abominations) smiling that indestructible smile. The incident had been
+unpleasant, so unpleasant that he didn't want to talk about it. All the
+same, he would have done violence to his feelings and apologised for it
+then and there, but that he really judged it better to let well alone. It
+was well, he thought, that Anne was so silent. She might have had a great
+deal to say, and it was kind of her not to say it, to let him off so
+easily.
+
+Anne's interpretation of Majendie's silence was not so favourable. After
+being exposed to the pain and insult of Lady Cayley's presence she had
+expected an immediate apology, and she inferred from its omission an
+unpardonable complicity. Any compliance with the public toleration of
+that person would have been inexcusable, and he had been more than
+compliant, more than tolerant; he had been solicitous, attentive,
+deferent. And deference to such a woman was insolence to his wife. Anne
+was struck dumb by the shameless levity of the proceedings. The two had
+behaved as if nothing had happened, or rather (she bitterly corrected
+herself) as if everything had happened, and might happen any day again
+(she inferred as much from his silence). It would--it would happen. _Her_
+intentions were, to Anne's mind, unmistakable; that was plainly what she
+had come back for. As to his intentions, Anne was not yet clear. She had
+not made up her mind that they were bad; but she shuddered as she said to
+herself that he was "weak." He had come at that woman's call; he had hung
+round her; he had waited on her at her bidding; at her bidding he had sat
+down beside her; he had listened to her, attracted, charmed, delighted;
+he had talked to her in the low voice Anne knew. How could she tell what
+had or had not passed between them there, what intimacies, what
+recognitions, what resurrections of the corrupt, ill-buried past? He had
+been "weak--weak--weak." Henceforth she must reckon with his weakness,
+and reckoning with it, she must keep him from that woman by any method,
+and at any cost! It was something that he had the grace to be ashamed of
+himself (another inference from his silence). No wonder, after that
+communion, if he was ashamed to look at his wife or speak to her.
+
+He went straight to Edith when they reached home, and Anne went upstairs
+to her bedroom.
+
+She had a great desire to be alone. She wanted to pray, as she had
+prayed in that room at Scarby on the morning of her discovery. Not that
+she felt in the least as she had felt then. She was more profoundly
+wounded--wounded beyond passion and beyond tears, calm and self-contained
+in her vision of the inevitable, the fore-ordained reality. She had to
+get rid of her vision; it was impossible to live with it, impossible to
+live through another hour like the last. Her desire to pray was a
+terrible, urgent longing that consumed her, impatient of every minute
+that kept her from her prayer. She controlled it, moving slowly as she
+took off her outdoor clothes and put them decorously away; feeling that
+the force of her prayer gathered and mounted behind these minute
+obstructions and delays.
+
+She knelt down by her bed. She had been used to pray there with her eyes
+fixed upon the crucifix which he had given her. It hung low, almost
+between the pillows of their bed. Now she closed her eyes to shut it from
+her sight. It was then that she realised what had been done to her. With
+the closing of her eyes she opened some back room in her brain, a hot
+room, now dark, and now charged with a red light, vaporous and vivid,
+that ran in furious pulses, as it were the currents of her blood made
+visible. The room thus opened was tenanted by the revolting image of Lady
+Cayley. Now it loomed steadily in the dark, now it leapt quiveringly into
+the red, vaporous light. She could not see her husband, but she had a
+sickening sense that he was there, looming, and that his image, too,
+would leap into sight at some signal of her unwilling thought. She knew
+that that back room would remain, built up indestructibly in the fabric
+of her mind. It would be set apart for ever for the phantom of her
+husband and her husband's mistress. By a tremendous effort of will she
+shut the door on it. There it must be for ever, but wherever she looked,
+she would not look there; much less allow herself to dwell in the unclean
+place. It was not to think of that woman, his mistress, that she had gone
+down on her knees. To think of her was contamination. After all, the
+woman had no power over her inner life. She was not forced to think of
+her. She had her sanctuary and her way of escape.
+
+But before she could get there she had to struggle against the fatigue
+which came of her effort not to think. Once she would have resigned
+herself to this physical lassitude, mistaking it for the sinking of the
+soul in the beatific self-surrender. But Anne's sufferings had brought
+her a little further on her path. She had come to recognise that supine
+state as a great danger to the spiritual life. It was not by lassitude,
+but by concentration that the intense communion was attained. She lifted
+her bowed head as a sign of her exaltation.
+
+And as she lifted it, she caught, as it were, the approach of triumphal
+music. Words gathered, as on wings, from the clean-swept heavenly
+spaces--they went by her like the passing of an immense processional:
+"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting
+doors, and the King of Glory shall come in...." It came on, that heavenly
+invasion, and all her earthly barriers went down before it. And it was as
+if something strong in her, something solitary and pure, had cloven its
+way through the mesh of the throbbing nerves, through the beating
+currents of the blood, through the hot red lights of the brain, and had
+escaped into the peaceful blank. She remained there a moment, in the
+place of bliss, the divine place of the self-surrendered soul, where
+mortal emptiness draws down immortality.
+
+She said to herself, "I have my refuge; no one can take it from me.
+Nothing matters so long as I can get there."
+
+She rose from her knees more calm and self-contained than ever, barely
+conscious of her wound.
+
+So calm and so self-contained was she at dinner that Majendie had an
+agreeable rebound; he supposed that she had recovered from the abominable
+encounter, and had put Lady Cayley out of her head like a sensible woman.
+Edith had received his account of that incident with a gravity that had
+made him profoundly uncomfortable; and his relief was in proportion to
+his embarrassment. Unfortunately it gave him the appearance of
+complacency; and complacency in the circumstances was more than Anne
+could bear. Coming straight from her exaltation and communion, she was
+crushed by the profound, invisible difference that separated them, the
+perpetual loneliness of her unwedded, unsubjugated soul. They lived a
+whole earth and a whole heaven apart. He was untouched by the fires that
+burnt and purified her. The tragic crises that destroyed, the spiritual
+moments that built her up again, passed by him unperceived. If she were
+to tell him how she had attained her present serenity of mind, by what
+vision, by what effort, by what sundering of body and soul, he would not
+understand.
+
+And that was not the worst. She had learnt not to look for that spiritual
+understanding in him. It mattered little that her unique suffering and
+her unique consolation should remain alike ignored. The terrible thing
+was that he should have come out of his own ordeal so smiling and so
+unconcerned; that he could have sinned as he had sinned, and that he
+could meet, after seven years, in his wife's presence, the partner of his
+sin (whose face was a revelation of its grossness)--meet her, and not be
+shaken by the shame of it. It showed how lightly he held it, how low his
+standard was. She recalled, shuddering, the woman's face. Nothing in the
+visions she had so shrunk from could compare with the violent reality.
+For one moment of repulsion she saw him no less gross. She wondered,
+would she have to reckon with that, henceforth, too?
+
+She looked up, and met across the table the engaging innocence that she
+recognised as the habitual expression of his face. He had no idea of what
+dreadful things she was thinking of him. She put her thoughts from her,
+admitting that she had never had to reckon with that, yet. But it was
+terrible to her that, while he forced her to such thinking, he could sit
+there so unconscious, and so unashamed. He sat there, bright-eyed,
+smiling, a little flushed, playing with a light topic in a manner that
+suggested a conscience singularly at ease. He went on sitting there,
+absolutely unembarrassed, eating dessert. The eating of dinner was bad
+enough, it showed complacency. But dessert argued callousness. She had
+wondered how he could have any appetite at all. Her dinner had almost
+choked her.
+
+And she sat waiting for him to finish, hardly looking at him, detached,
+saint-like, and still.
+
+At last her silence struck him as a little ominous. He had distinct
+misgivings as they turned into the study for coffee and his cigarette.
+Anne sat up in her chair, refusing the support and luxury of cushions,
+leaning a little forward with a brooding air.
+
+"Well, Nancy," said he, "are you going to read to me?"
+
+(Better to read than talk.)
+
+"Not now," said she. "I want to talk to you."
+
+He saw that it was not to be avoided. "Won't you let me have my coffee
+and a cigarette first?"
+
+She waited, silent, with a strained air of patience more uncomfortable
+than words.
+
+"Well," said he, lighting a second cigarette, and settling in the
+position that would best enable him to bear it, "out with it, and get it
+over."
+
+"I want to know," said she, "what you are going to do."
+
+"To do?" He was genuinely bewildered.
+
+"Yes, to do."
+
+"But about what?"
+
+"About that woman."
+
+He was so charmed with the angelic absurdity of the question that he
+paused while he took it in, smiling.
+
+"I can't see," he said presently, "that I'm called upon to take action.
+Why should I?"
+
+She drew herself up proudly.
+
+"For my sake."
+
+He was instantly grave. "For your sake, dear, I would do a great deal.
+But"--he smiled again--"what action should I take?"
+
+"Is it for me to say?"
+
+"Well, I hardly know. I should be glad, at any rate, if you'd make a
+suggestion. I can't, for instance, get up and turn the lady out of her
+own sister's house. Do you want me to do that? Would you like me to--to
+take her away in a cab?"
+
+There was a long silence, so awful that he forced himself to speak. "I am
+extremely sorry. It was, of course, outrageous that you should have had
+to sit in the same room with her for five minutes. But what could I do?"
+
+"You could have taken _me_ away."
+
+"I did, as soon as I got the chance."
+
+"Not before you had"--she paused for her phrase--"condoned her
+appearance."
+
+"Condoned her appearance? How?"
+
+"By your whole manner to her."
+
+"Would you have had me uncivil?"
+
+"There are degrees," said she, "between incivility and marked attention."
+
+He coloured. "Marked attention! There was nothing marked about it. What
+could I do? Would you, I say, have had me turn my back on the unfortunate
+woman? That would have been marked attention, if you like."
+
+"I don't know what I would have had you do. One has no rules beforehand
+for inconceivable situations. It was inconceivable that I should have met
+her as I did, in your friend's house. Inconceivable that I should meet
+such people anywhere. What I do ask is that you will not let me be
+exposed in that way again."
+
+"That I certainly will not. The Ransomes did their best to get her out
+of the room to-day. They won't annoy you. I can't conceive why they
+called--except that they have always been rather fond of me. You can't
+hold people accountable for all the doings of all their relations, can
+you?"
+
+"In this case I should say you could--perfectly well."
+
+"Well, I don't, as it happens. But you needn't have anything to do with
+them; not, at least, while she's living in their house."
+
+"It was in the Hannays' house I met her. But I'm not thinking of myself."
+
+"I'm thinking of you, and of nothing else."
+
+"You needn't," said she, cold to his warmth. "I can take care of myself.
+It's you I'm thinking of."
+
+"Me? Why me?"
+
+"Because I'm your wife and have a right to. It's out of the question that
+I should call on Mrs. Hannay or receive her calls. I must also beg of you
+to give up going there, and to the Ransomes, and to every place where you
+will be brought into contact with Lady Cayley."
+
+He stared at her in amazement. "My dear girl, you don't expect me to cut
+the Ransomes because she isn't brute enough to turn her sister out of
+doors?"
+
+"I expect you to give up going to them, and to the Hannays, as long as
+Lady Cayley is in Scale. Promise me."
+
+"I can't promise you anything of the sort. Heaven knows how long she's
+going to stay."
+
+"I ought not to have to explain that by countenancing her you insult me.
+You should see it for yourself."
+
+"I can't see it. In the first place, with all due regard to you, I don't
+insult you by countenancing her, as you call it. In the second place, I
+don't countenance her by going into other people's houses. If I went into
+her house, you might complain. She hasn't got a house, poor lady."
+
+She ignored his pity. "In spite of your regard for me, then, you will
+continue to meet her?"
+
+"I shan't if I can help it. But if I must, I must. I can't be rude to
+people."
+
+"You can be firm."
+
+He laughed. "What have I got to be firm about?"
+
+"Not meeting her."
+
+"What if I do meet her? I sincerely hope I shan't; but what if I do?"
+
+Her mouth trembled; her eyes filled with tears. He sprang up and leaned
+over her, resting his arms on the back of her chair, bringing his face
+close to hers and smiling into her eyes.
+
+"No--no--no!" She drew back her head and shrank away from him. He put out
+his hand and turned her face to him, gazing into her eyes, as if for the
+first time he saw and could fathom the sorrow and the fear in them.
+
+"What if I do?" he repeated.
+
+She tried to push his hand from her, but she could not.
+
+"You stupid child," he said, "do you mean to say that you're still afraid
+of that?"
+
+"It's you who have made me--"
+
+"My sweetheart--"
+
+"No, no. Don't touch me."
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked gravely, still leaning over and looking down
+at her.
+
+"I mean--I mean--I can't bear it!" she cried, gasping for breath under
+the oppression of his nearness.
+
+He realised her repugnance, and removed himself.
+
+"Do you mean," he said, "because of her?"
+
+"Yes," she said, "because of her."
+
+He laughed softly. "Dear child--she doesn't exist. She doesn't exist." He
+swept her out of existence with a gesture of his hand. "Not for me at any
+rate."
+
+The emphasis was lost upon her. "It's all nonsense to talk in that way.
+If she doesn't exist for you, you shouldn't have gone near her, you
+shouldn't have sat talking--to her."
+
+"What do you suppose we were talking about?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't want to know. I saw and heard enough."
+
+"Look here, Anne. You wanted me to be rude to her, didn't you? I _was_
+rude. I was brutal. She had to remind me that she was a woman. By heaven,
+I'd forgotten it. If you're always to be going back on that--"
+
+"I'm not going back. She has come back."
+
+"It doesn't matter. She doesn't exist. What difference does she make?"
+
+She rose for better delivery of what she had to say.
+
+"She makes the whole difference. It's not that I'm afraid of her. I don't
+think I am. I believe that you love me."
+
+"Ah--if you believe that--" He came nearer.
+
+"I do believe it. It's to me that it makes the difference. I must be
+honest with you. It's not that I'm afraid. It is--I think--that I'm
+disgusted."
+
+He lowered his eyes and moved from her uneasily.
+
+"I was horrified enough when I first knew of it, as you know. You know,
+too, that I forgave you, and that I forgot. That was because I didn't
+realise it. I didn't know what it was. I couldn't before I had seen her.
+Now I have seen her, and I know."
+
+"What do you know?" he said coldly.
+
+"The awfulness of it."
+
+"Do you! Do you!"
+
+"Yes--and if you had realised it yourself--But you don't, and your not
+realising it is what shocks me most."
+
+"I don't realise it?" His smile, this time, was grim. "I should think I
+was in a better position for realising it than you."
+
+"You don't realise the shame, the sin of it"
+
+"Oh, don't I?" He turned to her, "Look here, whatever I've done, it's all
+over. I've taken my punishment, and repented in sackcloth and ashes. But
+you can't go on for ever repenting. It wears you out. It seems to me
+that, after all this time, I might be allowed to leave off the sackcloth
+and brush the ashes out of my hair. I want to forget it if I can. But you
+are never--never--going to forget it. And you are going to make me
+remember it every day of my life. Is that it?"
+
+"It is not." She could not see herself thus hard and implacable. She had
+vowed that there was no duty that she would omit; and it was her duty to
+forgive; if possible, to forget. "I am going to try to forget it, as I
+have forgotten it before. But it will be very hard, and you must be
+patient with me. You must not remind me of it more than you can help."
+
+"When have I--?"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"When?" he insisted.
+
+She shook her head and turned away. A sudden impulse roused him, and he
+sprang after her. He grasped her wrist as she laid her hand on the door
+to open it. He drew her to him. "When?" he repeated. "How? Tell me."
+
+She paused, gazing at him. He would have kissed her, hoping thus to make
+his peace with her; but she broke from him.
+
+"Ah," she cried, "you are reminding me of it now."
+
+He opened the door, dumb with amazement, and turned from her as she went
+through.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It was a fine day, early in November, and Anne was walking alone along
+one of the broad flat avenues that lead from Scale into the country
+beyond. Made restless by her trouble, she had acquired this pedestrian
+habit lately, and Majendie encouraged her in it, regarding it less as a
+symptom than as a cure. She had flagged a little in the autumn, and he
+was afraid that the strain of her devotion to Edith was beginning to tell
+upon her health. On Saturdays and Sundays they generally walked together,
+and he did his best to make his companionship desirable. Anne, given now
+to much self-questioning as to their relations, owned, in an access of
+justice, that she enjoyed these expeditions. Whatever else she had found
+her husband, she had never yet found him dull. But it did not occur to
+her, any more than it occurred to Majendie, to consider whether she
+herself were brilliant.
+
+She made a point of never refusing him her society. She had persuaded
+herself that she went with him for his own good. If he wanted to take
+long walks in the country, it was her duty as his wife to accompany him.
+She was sustained perpetually by her consciousness of doing her duty as
+his wife; and she had persuaded herself also that she found her peace in
+it. She kept his hours for him as punctually as ever; she aimed more
+than ever at perfection in her household ways. He should never be able
+to say that there was one thing in which she had failed him.
+
+No; she knew that neither he nor Edith, if they tried, could put their
+finger on any point, and say: There, or there, she had gone wrong. Not
+in her understanding of him. She told herself that she understood him
+completely now, to her own great unhappiness. The unhappiness was the
+price she paid for her understanding.
+
+She was absorbed in these reflections as she turned (in order to be home
+by five o'clock), and walked towards the town. She was awakened from
+them by the trampling of hoofs and the cheerful tootling of a horn. A
+four-in-hand approached and passed her; not so furiously but that she had
+time to recognise Lady Cayley on the box-seat, Mr. Gorst beside her,
+driving, and Mr. Ransome and Mr. Hannay behind amongst a perfect
+horticultural show in millinery.
+
+Anne had no acquaintance with the manners and customs of the Scale and
+Beesly Four-in-hand Club, and her intuition stopped short of recognising
+Miss Gwen Richards, of the Vaudeville, and the others. All the same her
+private arraignment of these ladies refused them whatever benefit they
+were entitled to from any doubt. Not that Anne wasted thought on them.
+In spite of her condemnation, they barely counted; they were mere
+attendants, accessories in the vision of sin presented by Lady Cayley.
+
+Nothing could have been more conspicuous than her appearance, more
+unabashed than the proclamation of her gay approach. Mounted high,
+heralded by the tootling horn, her hair blown, her cheeks bright with
+speed, her head and throat wrapped in a rosy veil that flung two broad
+streamers to the wind (as it were the banners of the red dawn flying and
+fluttering over her), she passed, the supreme figure in the pageant of
+triumphal vice.
+
+Her face was turned to Gorst's face, his to hers. He looked more than
+ever brilliant, charming and charmed, laughing aloud with his companion.
+Hannay and Ransome raised their hats to Mrs. Majendie as they passed.
+Gorst was too much absorbed in Lady Cayley.
+
+Anne shivered, chilled and sick with the resurgence of her old disgust.
+These were her husband's chosen associates and comrades; they stood by
+one another; they were all bound up together in one degrading intimacy.
+His dear friend Mr. Gorst was the dear friend of Lady Cayley. He knew
+what she was, and thought nothing of it. Mr. Ransome, her brother-in-law,
+knew, and thought nothing of it. As for Mr. Hannay, Walter's other dear
+friend, you only had to look at the women he was with to see how much Mr.
+Hannay thought. There could have been nothing very profound in his
+supposed repudiation of Lady Cayley. If it was true that he had once paid
+her money to go, he was doing his best to welcome her, now she had come
+back. But it was Gorst, with his vivid delight in Lady Cayley, who amazed
+her most. Anne had identified him with the man of whom Walter had once
+told her, the man who was "fond of Edith," the man of whom Walter
+admitted that he was not "entirely straight." And this man was always
+calling on Edith.
+
+She was resolved that, if she could prevent it, he should call no more.
+It should not be said that she allowed her house to be open to such
+people. But it required some presence of mind to state her determination.
+Before she could speak with any authority she would have to find out all
+that could be known about Mr. Gorst. She would ask Fanny Eliott, who had
+seemed to know, and to know more than she had cared to say.
+
+Instead of going straight home, she turned aside into Thurston Square;
+and had the good luck to find Fanny Eliott at home.
+
+Fanny Eliott was rejoiced to see her. She looked at her anxiously, and
+observed that she was thin. She spoke of her call as a "coming back"; the
+impression conveyed by Anne's manner was so strikingly that of return
+after the pursuit of an illusion.
+
+Anne smiled wearily, as if it had been a long step from Prior Street to
+Thurston Square.
+
+"I thought," said Mrs. Eliott, "I was never going to see you again."
+
+"You might have known," said Anne.
+
+"Oh yes, I might have known. And you're not going to run away at five
+o'clock?"
+
+"No. I can stay a little--if you're free."
+
+Mrs. Eliott interpreted the condition as a request for privacy, and rang
+the bell to ensure it. She knew something was coming; and it came.
+
+"Fanny, I want you to tell me what you know of Mr. Gorst."
+
+Mrs. Eliott looked exceedingly embarrassed. She avoided gossip as
+inconsistent with the intellectual life. And unpleasant gossip was
+peculiarly distasteful to her. Therefore she hesitated. "My dear, I
+don't know much--"
+
+"Don't put me off like that. You know something. You must tell me."
+
+Mrs. Eliott reflected that Anne had no more love of scandalous histories
+than she had; therefore, if she asked for knowledge, it must be because
+her need was pressing.
+
+"My dear, I only know that Johnson won't have him in the house."
+
+She spoke as if this were nothing, a mere idiosyncrasy of Johnson's.
+
+"Why not?" said Anne. "He has very nice manners."
+
+"I dare say, but Johnson doesn't approve of him." (Another eccentricity
+of Johnson's.)
+
+"And why doesn't he?"
+
+"Well, you know, Mr. Gorst has a very unpleasant reputation. At least he
+goes about with most objectionable people."
+
+"You mean he's the same sort of person as Mr. Hannay?"
+
+"I should say he was, if anything, worse."
+
+"You mean he's a bad man?"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"So bad that you won't have him in the house?"
+
+"Well, dear, you know we are particular." (A singularity that she shared
+with Johnson.)
+
+"So am I," said Anne.
+
+"And this," she said to herself, "is the man whom Edie's fond of,
+Walter's dearest friend. And my friends won't have him in their house."
+
+"Charming, I believe, and delightful," said Mrs. Eliott, "but perhaps a
+little dangerous on that account. And one has to draw the line. I want to
+know about you, dear. You're well, though you're so thin?"
+
+"Oh, very well."
+
+"And happy?" (She ventured on it.)
+
+"Could I be well if I weren't happy? How's Mrs. Gardner?"
+
+The thought of happiness called up a vision of the perpetually radiant
+bride.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Gardner, she's as happy as the day is long. Much too happy, she
+says, to go about paying calls."
+
+"_I_ haven't called much, have I?" said Anne, hoping that her friend
+would draw the suggested inference.
+
+"No, you haven't. _You_ ought to be ashamed of yourself."
+
+"Why I any more than Mrs. Gardner? But I am."
+
+Mrs. Eliott perceived her blunder. "Well, I forgive you, as long as
+you're happy."
+
+Anne kissed her more tenderly than usual as they said good-bye, so
+tenderly that Mrs. Eliott wondered "Is she?"
+
+Majendie was late that afternoon, and Anne had an hour alone with Edith.
+She had made up her mind to speak seriously to her sister-in-law on the
+subject of Mr. Gorst, and she chose this admirable opportunity.
+
+"Edith," said she with the abruptness of extreme embarrassment, "did you
+know that Lady Cayley had come back?"
+
+"Come back?"
+
+"She's here, living in Scale."
+
+There was a pause before Edith answered. Anne judged from the quiet of
+her manner that this was not the first time that she had heard of the
+return.
+
+"Well, dear, after all, if she is, what does it matter? She must live
+somewhere."
+
+"I should have thought that for her own sake it was a pity to have chosen
+a town where she was so well known."
+
+"Oh well, that's her own affair. I suppose she argues that most people
+here know the worst; and that's always a comfort."
+
+"Oh, for all they appear to care--" Her face became tragic, and she lost
+her unnatural control. "I can't understand it. I never saw such people.
+She's received as if nothing had happened."
+
+"By her own people. It's decent of them not to cast her off."
+
+"Oh, as for decency, they don't seem to have a shred of it amongst them.
+And the Hannays are not her own people. I thought I should be safe in
+going there after what you told me. And it was there I met her."
+
+"I know. They were most distressed about it."
+
+"And yet they received her, too, as if nothing had happened."
+
+"Because nothing can happen now. They got rid of her when she was
+dangerous. She isn't dangerous any more. On the contrary, I believe her
+great idea now is to be respectable. I suppose they're trying to give her
+a lift up. You must admit it's nice of them."
+
+"You think them nice?"
+
+"I think _that's_ nice of them. It's the sort of thing they do. They're
+kind people, if they're not the most spiritual I have met."
+
+"You may call it kindness, I call it shocking indifference. They're worse
+than the Ransomes. I don't believe the Ransomes know what's decent. The
+Hannays know, but they don't care. They're all dreadful people; and their
+sympathy with each other is the most dreadful thing about them. They hold
+together and stand up for each other, and are 'kind' to each other,
+because they all like the same low, vulgar, detestable things. That's why
+Mr. Hannay married Mrs. Hannay, and Mr. Ransome married Lady Cayley's
+sister. They're all admirably suited to each other, but not, my dear
+Edie, to you or me."
+
+"They're certainly not your sort, I admit."
+
+"Nor yours either."
+
+"No, nor mine either," said Edith, smiling. "Poor Anne, I'm sorry we've
+let you in for them."
+
+"I'm not thinking only of myself. The terrible thing is that you should
+be let in, too."
+
+"Oh, me--how can they harm me?"
+
+"They have harmed you."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By keeping other people away."
+
+"What people?"
+
+"The nice people you should have known. You were entitled to the very
+best. The Eliotts and the Gardners--those are the people who should have
+been your friends, not the Hannays and the Ransomes; and not, believe me,
+darling, Mr. Gorst."
+
+For a moment Edith unveiled the tragic suffering in her eyes. It passed,
+and left her gaze grave and lucid and serene.
+
+"What do you know of Mr. Gorst?"
+
+"Enough, dear, to see that he isn't fit for you to know."
+
+"Poor Charlie, that's what he's always saying himself. I've known him too
+long, you see, not to know him now. Years and years, my dear, before I
+knew you."
+
+"It was through Mrs. Eliott that I knew you, remember."
+
+"Because you were determined to know me. It was through you that I knew
+Mrs. Eliott. Before that, she never made the smallest attempt to know me
+better or to show me any kindness. Why should she?"
+
+"Well, my dear, if you kept her at arm's length--if you let her see, for
+instance, that you preferred Mr. Gorst's society to hers--"
+
+"Do you think I let her see it?"
+
+"No, I don't. And it wouldn't enter her head. But, considering that she
+can't receive Mr. Gorst into her own house--"
+
+"Why should she?"
+
+"Edie--if she cannot, how can you?"
+
+Edith closed her eyes. "I'll tell you some day, dear, but not now."
+
+Anne did not press her. She had not the courage to discuss Mr. Gorst with
+her, nor the heart to tell her that he was to be received into her house
+no more. She saw Edith growing tender over his very name; she felt that
+there would be tears and entreaties, and she was determined that no
+entreaties and no tears should move her to a base surrender. Her pause
+was meant to banish the idea of Mr. Gorst from Edith's mind, but it only
+served to fix it more securely there.
+
+"Edith," she said presently, "I will keep my promise."
+
+"Which promise?" Edith was mystified. Her mind unwillingly renounced the
+idea of Mr. Gorst, and the promise could not possibly refer to him.
+
+"The promise I made to you about Walter."
+
+"My dear one, I never thought you would break it."
+
+"I shall never break it. I've accepted Walter once for all, and in spite
+of everything. But I will not accept these people you say I've been let
+in for. I will not know them. And I shall have to tell him so."
+
+"Why should you tell him anything? He doesn't want you to take them to
+your bosom. He sees how impossible they are."
+
+"Ah--if he sees that."
+
+"Believe me" (Edith said it wearily), "he sees everything."
+
+"If he does," thought Anne, "it will be easier to convince him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The task was so far unpleasant to her that she was anxious to secure the
+first opportunity and get it over. Her moment would come with the two
+hours after dinner in the study.
+
+It did not come that evening; for Majendie telegraphed that he had been
+detained in town, and would dine at the Club. He did not come home till
+Anne (who sat up till midnight waiting for that opportunity) had gone
+tired to bed.
+
+Her determination gathered strength with the delay, and when her moment
+came with the next evening, it came gloriously. Majendie gave himself
+over into her hands by bringing Gorst, of all people, back with him to
+dine.
+
+The brilliant prodigal approached her with a little embarrassed youthful
+air of humility and charm; the air almost of taking her into his
+confidence over something unfortunate and absurd. He had evidently
+counted on the ten minutes before dinner when he would be left alone with
+her. He selected a chair opposite to her, leaning forward in it at ease,
+his nervousness visible only in the flushed hands clasped loosely on his
+knees, his eyes turned upon his hostess with a look of almost infantile
+candour. It was as if he mutely implored her to forget yesterday's
+encounter, and on no account to mention in what compromising company he
+had been seen. His engaging smile seemed to take for granted that she was
+a lady of pity and understanding, who would never have the heart to give
+a poor prodigal away. His eyes intimated that Mrs. Majendie knew what it
+amounted to, that awful prodigality of his.
+
+But Mrs. Majendie had no illusions concerning sinners with engaging
+smiles and beautiful manners. And with every tick of the clock he
+deepened the impression of his insolence and levity. His very charm
+and the flush and brilliance that were part of it went to swell the
+prodigal's account. The instinct that had wakened in her knew them,
+the lights and colours, the heralding banners and vivid signs, all the
+paraphernalia of triumphant sin. She turned upon her guest the cold eyes
+of a condign destiny.
+
+By the time dinner was served it had dawned on Gorst that he was looking
+in Mrs. Majendie for something that was not there. He might even have had
+some inkling of her resolution; he sat at his friend's table so
+consciously on sufferance, with an oppressed, extinguished air, eating
+his dinner as if it choked him, like the last sad meal in a beloved
+house.
+
+Majendie, too, felt himself drawn in and folded in the gloom cast by his
+wife's protesting presence. The shadow of it wrapped them even after Anne
+had left the dining-room, as though her indignant spirit had remained
+behind to preserve her protest. Gorst had changed his oppression for a
+nervous restlessness intolerable to Majendie.
+
+"My dear fellow," he said, "what is the matter with you?"
+
+"How should I know?" said Gorst with a spurt of ill-temper. "I'm not a
+nerve specialist."
+
+Majendie looked at him attentively. "I say, _you_ mustn't go in for
+nerves, you know; you can't afford it."
+
+"My dear Walter, I can't afford anything, if it comes to that." He paused
+with an obscure air of injury and foreboding. "Not even, it seems, the
+most innocent amusements. At the rate," he added, "I have to pay for
+them." Again he brooded, while Majendie wondered at him, in brotherly
+anxiety. "I suppose," Gorst said suddenly, "I can go up and see Edith,
+can't I?"
+
+He spoke as if he doubted, whether, in the wreck of his world, with all
+his "innocent amusements," that supreme consolation would be still open
+to him.
+
+"Of course you can," said Majendie. "It's the best thing you can do.
+I told her you were coming."
+
+"Thanks," said Gorst, checking the alacrity with which he rose to go to
+Edith.
+
+Oh yes, he knew it was the best thing he could do.
+
+Edith's voice called gladly to him as he tapped at her door. He entered
+noiselessly, wearing the wondering and expectant look with which a new
+worshipper enters a holy place. Perpetual backslidings kept poor Gorst's
+worship perpetually new.
+
+Colour came slowly back into Edith's face and a tender light into her
+eyes, as if from the springing of some deep untroubled well of life. She
+seemed more than ever a creature of imperial vitality, bound by some
+cruel enchantment to her couch. She held out her hands to him; and he
+raised them to his lips and kissed her fingers lightly.
+
+"It's weeks since I've seen you," said she.
+
+"Months, isn't it?" said he.
+
+"Weeks, three weeks, by the calendar."
+
+"I say--tell me--I _am_ to come and see you, just the same?"
+
+"Just the same? Why, what's different?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. But it seems to me, when a man's married, it's bound
+to make a difference."
+
+Edith's colour mounted; she made an effort to control the trembling of
+her mouth, the soft woman's mouth where all that was bodily in her love
+still lingered. But the sweetness deepened in her eyes, which were the
+dwelling-place of the immortal, immaterial power. They met Gorst's eyes
+steadily, laying on his restlessness their peace.
+
+"Are you going to be married, Charlie?" said she, and smiled bravely.
+
+He laughed. "Oh, Lord, no; not I."
+
+"Who is, then?"
+
+"Walter, of course. I mean he is married, don't you know."
+
+"Yes, and is there any difference in him to you?"
+
+"In him? Oh, rather not."
+
+"In whom, then?"
+
+"Well--I don't think, Edie, that Mrs. Walter--I like her--" he stuck
+to it--"I like her, you know, she's charming, but--I don't think she
+particularly cares for _me_."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"How do I know anything? By the way she looks at me."
+
+"Oh, the way Anne looks at people--"
+
+"Well, you know, it's something tremendous, something terrible.
+Unutterable things, you know. She knocks the Inquisition and the day of
+judgment all to pieces. They're simply not in it. It's awfully hard lines
+on me, you see, because I like her."
+
+"I'm glad you like her."
+
+"Oh, I only like her because she likes you, I think."
+
+"And I like her. Please remember that."
+
+"I do remember it. I say, Edie, tell me, is she awfully devoted and all
+that?"
+
+"To Walter? Yes, very devoted."
+
+"That's all right, then. I don't think I mind so much now. As long as
+I can come and see you just the same."
+
+"Of course you'll come and see me, just the same."
+
+He pondered for a long time over that. Seeing Edith was the best thing he
+could do. To-night it seemed the only good thing left for him to do. He
+lived in a state of alternate excitement and fatigue, forever craving his
+innocent amusements, and forever tired of them. None of them were worth
+while. Seeing Edith was the only thing that was worth while. He refused
+to contemplate with any calmness a life in which it would be impossible
+for him to see her. If the poor prodigal had not chosen the most elevated
+situation for the building of his house of life, he was always making
+desperate efforts to leave the insalubrious spot, and return to the high
+and windswept mansions of his youth. To be with Edith was to nourish the
+illusion of return. Return itself seemed possible, when goodness, in the
+person of Edith, looked at him with such tender and alluring eyes. In
+spirit he prostrated himself before it, while he cursed the damnable
+cruelty that had prevented him from marrying her. Through that act of
+adoration he was enabled to live through his alien and separated days.
+It kept him, as he phrased it, "going," which meant that, wherever his
+rebellious feet might carry him, he continued to breathe, through it, the
+diviner air.
+
+And Edith had lain for ten years on her back, and every year the hours
+had gone more lightly, through the hope of seeing him. She had outlived
+her time of torment and rebellion. There was a sense in which her life,
+in spite of its frustration, was complete. The love through which her
+womanhood struggled for victory in defeat had fulfilled itself by gradual
+growth into something like maternal passion. There was no selfishness in
+her attitude to him and his devotion. By accepting it she took his best
+and offered it to God for him. With fragile, dedicated hands she nursed
+and sheltered the undying votive flame. She seemed a saint who had
+foregone heaven and remained on earth to help him. Her womanhood, wrapped
+from him in veil upon veil of her mysterious suffering, had never removed
+itself from him. She held him by all that was indomitable in her own
+nature, and in spite of his lapses, he remained her lover.
+
+She was aware of these lapses and grieved over them and forgave them,
+laying them, as she had laid her brother's sin, to the account of her
+unhappy spine. In Edith's tender fancy her spine had become responsible
+for all the shortcomings of these beloved persons. If Walter could have
+married Anne seven years ago there would have been no dreadful Lady
+Cayley; and if she could have married poor Charlie she would not have had
+to think of him as "poor Charlie" now. It had been hard on him.
+
+That was precisely what poor Charlie was thinking. And if that
+sister-in-law was to come between them, too, it would be harder still.
+But Edith insisted that she would make no difference.
+
+"In fact," said she, "you can come more than ever. For if Walter's
+absorbed in Anne, and Anne's absorbed in Walter--"
+
+He took it up gaily. "Then I may be absorbed in you? So, after all, it
+turns out to my advantage."
+
+"Yes. You can console me. You can console me now, this minute, if you'll
+play to me."
+
+He was always lamenting that he could do nothing for her. Playing to her
+was the one thing he could do, and he did it well.
+
+He rose joyously and went to the piano, removing the dust from the keys
+with his handkerchief. "How will you have it? Sentimental and soporific?
+Or loud and strong?"
+
+"Oh, loud and strong, please. Very strong and very loud."
+
+"Right you are. You shall have it hot and strong, and loud enough to wake
+the dead."
+
+That was his rendering of Chopin's "Grande Polonaise." He let himself
+loose in it, with a rush, a vehemence, a diabolic brilliance and clamour.
+The quiet room shook with the sounds he wrenched out of the little humble
+piano in the corner. And as Edith lay and listened, her spirit, too,
+triumphed, and was free; it rode gloriously on the storm of sound. It
+was, she said, laughing, quite enough to wake the dead. This was the
+miracle that he alone could accomplish for her.
+
+And downstairs in the study, Anne heard his music and started, as the
+dead may start in their sleep. It seemed to her, that Polonaise of
+Chopin, the most immoral music, the music of defiance and revolt. It
+flung abroad the prodigal's prodigality, his insolent and iniquitous
+joy. That was what he, a bad man, made of an innocent thing.
+
+Majendie's face lit up, responsive to the delight and challenge of the
+opening chord. "He's all right," said he, "as long as he can play."
+
+He listened, glancing now and then at Anne with a smile of pride in his
+friend's performance. It was as if he were asking her to own that there
+must be some good in a fellow who could play like that.
+
+Anne was considering in what words she would intimate to him that Mr.
+Gorst's music was never to be heard again in that house. Some instinct
+told her that she was courting danger, but the approval of her conscience
+urged her on. She waited till the Polonaise was over before she spoke.
+
+"You say," said she, "he's all right as long as he can play like that. To
+me, it's the most convincing proof that he's all wrong."
+
+"How do you make that out?"
+
+"I don't want to go into it," said Anne. "I don't approve of Mr. Gorst;
+but I should think better of him if he had only better taste."
+
+"You're the first person who ever accused Gorst of bad taste."
+
+"Do you call it good taste to live as he does, as I know he does, and you
+know he does, and yet to come here, and sit with Edie, and behave as if
+he'd never done anything to be ashamed of? It would be infinitely better
+taste if he kept away."
+
+"Not at all. There are a great many very nice things about Gorst, and his
+caring to come here is one of the nicest. He has been faithful to Edith
+for ten years. That sort of thing isn't so common that one can afford to
+despise it."
+
+"Faithful to her? Poor darling, does she think he is?"
+
+"She doesn't think. She knows."
+
+"Preserve me from such faithfulness."
+
+"You don't know what you're talking about."
+
+"I do know. And you know that I know." In proof of her contention she
+offered him the incident of the four-in-hand.
+
+Majendie made a movement of impatience. "Oh, that's nothing," he said.
+"He doesn't like her. He likes driving, and she likes a front seat at any
+show (I can't see her taking a back one); and if she insisted on climbing
+up beside him, he couldn't very well knock her off, you know. You don't
+seem to realise how difficult it is to knock a woman off any seat she
+takes a fancy to sit on. You simply can't do it."
+
+Anne was silent. She felt weak and helpless before his imperturbable
+levity.
+
+He smoked placidly. "No," he said presently. "Gorst mayn't be a saint,
+but I will acquit him of an unholy passion for poor Sarah."
+
+Anne fired. "He may be a very bad man for all that."
+
+"There again, you show that you don't know what you're talking about. He
+is not a 'very bad man'. You've no discrimination in these things. You
+simply lump us all together as a bad lot. And so we may be, compared with
+the angels and the saints. But there are degrees. If Gorst isn't as good
+as--as Edie, it doesn't necessarily follow that he's bad."
+
+"Please--I would rather not argue the point. But I am not going to have
+anything to do with Mr. Gorst."
+
+"Of course not. You disapprove of him. There's nothing more to be said."
+
+He spoke placably as if he made allowance for her attitude while he
+preserved his own.
+
+"There is a great deal more to be said, dear. And I may as well say it
+now. I disapprove of him so strongly that I cannot have him received in
+this house if I am to remain in it."
+
+Astonishment held him dumb.
+
+"You have no right to expect me to," said she.
+
+"To expect you to remain, or what?"
+
+"To receive a man of Mr. Gorst's character."
+
+"My dear girl, what right have you to expect me to turn him out?"
+
+"My right as your wife."
+
+"My wife has a right to ask me a great many things, but not that."
+
+"I ought not to have to ask you. You should have thought of it yourself.
+You should have had more care for my reputation."
+
+At this he laughed, greatly to his own annoyance and to hers.
+
+"Your reputation? Your reputation, I assure you, is in no danger from
+poor Gorst."
+
+"Is it not? My friends--the Eliotts--will not receive him."
+
+"There's no reason why they should."
+
+"Is there any reason why I should? Do you want me to be less fastidious
+than they are? You forget that I was brought up with very fastidious
+people. My father wouldn't have allowed me to speak to a man like Mr.
+Gorst. Do you want me to accept a lower standard that his, or my
+mother's?"
+
+"Have you considered what my standard would look like if I turned my best
+friend out of the house--a man I've known all my life--just because my
+wife doesn't happen to approve of him? I know nothing about your Eliotts;
+but if Edie can stand him, I should think you might."
+
+"I," said Anne coldly, "am not in love with him."
+
+He frowned, and a dull flush of anger coloured the frown. "I must say,
+your standard is a remarkable one if it permits you to say things like
+that."
+
+"I would not have said it but for what you told me yourself."
+
+"What did I tell you?"
+
+"That Edith cared for him."
+
+He remembered.
+
+"If I did tell you that, it was because I thought you cared for Edie."
+
+"I do care for her."
+
+"You've rather a strange way of showing it. I wonder if you realise how
+much she did care? What it must have meant to her when she got ill? What
+it meant to him? Have you the remotest conception of the infernal
+hardship of it?"
+
+"I know it was hard."
+
+"Forgive me; you don't know, or you wouldn't be so hard on both of them."
+
+"It isn't I who am hard."
+
+"Isn't it? When you're just proposing to stop Gorst's coming here?"
+
+"It's not I that's stopping him. It's his own conduct. He is hard on
+himself, and he is hard on her. There's nobody else to blame."
+
+"Do you mean to say you think I'm actually going to tell him not to come
+any more?"
+
+"My dear, it's the least you can do for me after--"
+
+"After what?"
+
+"After everything."
+
+"After letting you in for marrying me, you mean. And as I suppose poor
+Edie was to blame for that, it's the least _she_ can do for you to give
+him up. Is that it? Seeing him is about the only pleasure that's left to
+her, but that doesn't come into it, does it?"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Well, and what am I to think of you for all this?"
+
+"I cannot _help_ what you think of me," said she with the stress of
+despair.
+
+"Well, I don't think anything, as it happens. But, if you were capable of
+understanding in the least what you're trying to do, I should think you a
+hard, obstinate, cruel woman. What I'm chiefly struck with is your
+extreme simplicity. I suppose I mustn't be surprised at your wanting to
+turn Gorst out; but how you could imagine for one moment that I would do
+it--No, that's beyond me."
+
+"I can only say I shall not receive him. If he comes into the house,
+I shall go out of it."
+
+"Well--" said Majendie judicially, as if she had certainly hit upon a
+wise solution.
+
+"If he dines here I must dine at the Eliotts'."
+
+"Well--and you'll like that, won't you? And I shall like having Gorst,
+and so will Edie, and Gorst will like seeing her, and everybody will be
+pleased."
+
+Overhead Mr. Gorst burst into a dance measure, so hilarious that it
+seemed the very cry of his delight.
+
+"As long as Edie goes on seeing him, he'll think it's all right."
+
+Overhead Mr. Gorst's gay tune proclaimed that indeed he thought so. He
+broke off suddenly, and began another and a better one, till the spirit
+of levity ran riot in immortal sounds.
+
+"So it's all right. She's a good woman. It's the only hold we've got on
+him."
+
+"If all good women were to reason that way--"
+
+"If all good women were to reason your way, what do you think would
+happen?"
+
+"There would be more good men in the world."
+
+"Would there? There would be more good men ruined by bad women. Because,
+don't you see, there'd be no others left for them to speak to."
+
+"If you're thinking of his good--"
+
+"Have you thought of hers?"
+
+"Yes. Supposing he ends by marrying somebody else, what will she do
+then?--poor Edie!"
+
+"If the somebody else is a good woman, poor Edie will fold her dear
+little hands, and offer up a dear little prayer of thankfulness to
+heaven."
+
+Upstairs the music ceased. The prodigal's footsteps were heard crossing
+the room and coming to a halt by Edith's couch.
+
+Majendie rose, placid and benignant.
+
+"I think," said he, "it's time for you to go to bed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Majendie could never be angry with any woman for more than five minutes.
+And this time he understood his wife better than she knew. He had seen,
+as Edith had said, "everything."
+
+But Anne was convinced that he never would see. She said to herself, "He
+thinks me hard, and obstinate, and cruel."
+
+She crept into bed in misery that suggested a defeated thing. The outward
+eye would never have perceived that the pale woman quivering under the
+eider-down was inspired with an indomitable purpose, the salvation of
+a weak man from his weakness. To be sure, she had been worsted in her
+encounter by something that conveyed the illusion of superior moral
+force. But that there was any strength in her husband that could be
+described as moral Anne would not have admitted for a moment. She
+believed herself to be crushed, grossly, by the superior weight of moral
+deadness that he carried.
+
+It was, it always had been, his placidity that caused her most despair.
+But whereas, at the time of their first rupture, it had made him utterly
+impenetrable, she now took it simply as one more sign of his inability to
+understand her. She argued that he would never have remained so calm if
+he had realised the sincerity of her determination to repudiate Mr.
+Gorst. Of course she didn't expect him to appreciate the force and the
+fine quality of her feeling. Still, he might at least have known that, if
+she had found it hard to pardon her own husband his lapses in the past,
+she would not be likely to accept a recent and notorious evildoer.
+
+She tried to forget that in this she herself had been wounded as a woman
+and a wife. It was the offence to heaven that she minded, rather than her
+own mere human hurt. Still, he had asked her to share his house and the
+sad burden of it (her thought touched gently on the sadness and the
+burden); and it was the least he could do to keep it undefiled by such
+presences. He ought to have known what was due to the woman he had
+married. If he did not, she said to herself sorrowfully, he must learn.
+
+She never doubted that he would learn completely when he was once
+persuaded that she had meant what she had said; when he saw that he was
+driving her out of the house by inviting Mr. Gorst into it. To her the
+question was of supreme importance. Whatever happiness was now left to
+them must stand or fall by the expulsion of the prodigal.
+
+If she had examined herself, Anne would have found that she hardly knew
+which she really wished for more: that Majendie would at once surrender
+to her view and leave off inviting Gorst, or that he would invite him at
+once, and thus give her an occasion for her protest. That Majendie was
+peaceable and disinclined to fight she gathered from the fact that he had
+not invited him at once.
+
+At last, one morning, he looked up quietly from his breakfast, and
+remarked that he had invited Gorst (he laid a slightly irritating stress
+upon the name) to dinner on Friday.
+
+The day was Tuesday.
+
+"And is he coming?" said Anne.
+
+"He is," said Majendie.
+
+When Friday came, Anne remarked at breakfast that she was going to dine
+with Mrs. Eliott.
+
+"I thought you would," said Majendie.
+
+She had hoped that he would think she wouldn't.
+
+They dined at seven o'clock in Thurston Square, and at half-past seven in
+Prior Street, so that she would be well out of the house before Gorst
+came into it. It was raining heavily. But Anne looked upon the rain as
+her ally. Walter would be ashamed to think he had driven her out in such
+weather.
+
+He insisted on accompanying her to the Eliotts' door.
+
+"Not a nice evening for turning out," said he as he opened his umbrella
+and held it over her.
+
+"Not at all," said she significantly.
+
+At ten o'clock he came to fetch her in a cab.
+
+Now, the cab, the escort, and the sheltering umbrella somewhat diminished
+the grievance of her enforced withdrawal from her home. And Majendie's
+manner did still more to take the wind out of the proud sails of her
+tragic adventure. But Anne herself was a sufficiently pathetic figure as
+she appeared under his umbrella, descending from the Eliotts' doorstep,
+with delicate slippered feet, gathering her skirts high from the bounding
+rain, and carrying in her hands the boots she had not waited to put on.
+
+Majendie uttered the little tender moan with which he was used to greet a
+pathetic spectacle.
+
+"He sounds," said Anne to herself, "as if he were sorry."
+
+He looked it, too; he seemed the very spirit of contrition, as he sat in
+the cab, with Anne's boots on his knees, guarding them with a caressing
+hand. But she detected an impenitent brilliance in his eye as he stood
+in the lamplight and helped her off with the mackintosh which dripped
+with its passage from the cab to their doorstep.
+
+"I think my feet are wet," said she.
+
+"There's a splendid fire in the study," said he.
+
+He drew up a chair, and made her sit in it, and took off her shoes and
+stockings, and dried them at the fire. He held her cold feet in his hands
+to warm them. Then he stooped down and laid his face against them and
+kissed them. And she heard again his low, tender moan, and took it for
+a cry of contrition. He rose from his knees and laid his hand on her
+shoulder. She looked up, prepared to receive his chivalrous submission,
+to gather into her bosom the full harvest of her protest, and then
+magnanimously forgive.
+
+It was not surrender, certainly not surrender, that she saw in the
+downward gaze that had drawn her to him. His eyes were dancing, dancing
+gaily, to some irresistible measure in his head.
+
+"It was worth while, wasn't it?" said he.
+
+"What was worth while?"
+
+"Getting your feet wet, for the pleasure of not dining with Gorst?"
+
+There were moments, Anne might have owned, when he did not fail in
+sympathy and comprehension. Had she been capable of self-criticism, she
+would have found that her attitude of protest was a moral luxury, and
+that moral luxuries were a necessity to natures such as hers. But Anne
+had a secret, cherishing eye on martyrdom, and it was intolerable to her
+to be reminded in this way that, after all, she was only a spiritual
+voluptuary.
+
+Still more intolerable was the large indulgence of her husband's manner.
+He seemed positively to pander to her curious passion, while preserving
+an attitude of superior purity. He multiplied her opportunities. A week
+had hardly passed before Mr. Gorst dined in Prior Street again, and Anne
+again took refuge in Thurston Square.
+
+This time Majendie made no comment on her action. He seemed to take it
+for granted.
+
+But Anne, standing up heroically for her principle, was sustained by a
+sense of moving in a divine combat. Every time she dined in Thurston
+Square, she felt that she had thrown down her gage; every time that
+Majendie invited Gorst, she felt that he stooped to pick it up. Thus
+unconsciously she breathed hostility, and was suspicious of hostility in
+him.
+
+When she announced, at breakfast one Monday, that she had asked the
+Eliotts, the Gardners, Canon Wharton, and Miss Proctor, for dinner on
+Wednesday, she uttered each name as if it had been a challenge, and
+looked for some irritating maneuver in response. He would, of course,
+proclaim that he was going to dine with the Hannays, or he would effect
+a retreat to Mr. Gorst's rooms, or to his club.
+
+But Majendie lacked her passion and her inspiration. He simply said he
+was delighted to hear it, and that he would make a point of being at
+home. He would have to give up an engagement which he would not have made
+if he had known. But that did not greatly matter.
+
+They came, the Eliotts and the rest, and Miss Proctor again pronounced
+him charming. To be sure, he was not half so amusing as he had been on
+his first appearance in Thurston Square; but it was only becoming that
+he should repress himself a little at his own table and in the presence
+of the Canon. _He_, the Canon, was brilliant, if you like.
+
+For that night the Canon was, as usual, all things to all men, and
+especially to all women. He was the man of the world for Miss Proctor;
+the fine epicure of books for Mrs. Eliott; for Mr. Eliott and Dr.
+Gardner, the broad-minded searcher and enthusiast, the humble
+camp-follower of the conquering sciences. "You are the pioneers,"
+said he; "you go before us on the march. But we keep up, we keep up.
+We can step out--cassock and all."
+
+But he spread out all his spiritual lures for Mrs. Majendie. His eyes
+seemed more than ever to pursue her, to search her, to be gazing
+discreetly at the secret of her soul. They drew her with the clear and
+candid flattery of their understanding. She could feel the clever little
+Canon taking her in and making notes on her. "Sensitive. Unhappy.
+Intensely spiritual nature. Too fine and pure for _him_." And over the
+unhallowed, half-abandoned table, flushed slightly with Majendie's good
+wine, the Canon drew up his chair to his host, and stretched his little
+legs, and let his spirit expand in a rosy, broad humanity. As he had
+charmed the spiritual woman he saw in Anne, so he laid himself out to
+flatter the natural man he saw in Majendie. And Majendie leaned back in
+his chair, and gazed at the Canon, the remarkable, the clever, the
+versatile little Canon, with half-closed eyelids veiling his contemptuous
+eyes. (He confided to Hannay, later on, that the Canon, in his
+after-dinner moments, made him sick.)
+
+Anne heard nothing more of Mr. Gorst for over a fortnight. It was on a
+Saturday, and Majendie asked her suddenly, during luncheon, if she
+thought the Eliotts would be disengaged that evening.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I've asked Gorst" (again that disagreeable emphasis) "to dine
+to-night."
+
+"Very well. I will ask Mrs. Eliott if she can have me."
+
+"Can you?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Oh--and I must prepare you for something quite horrible. Some time, you
+know" (he smiled provokingly), "I shall have to ask the Hannays. Do you
+think you can arrange that?"
+
+"I shall have to," said she.
+
+This time (it was the third) she was obliged to take Mrs. Eliott into her
+confidence. She fairly flung herself on her friend's mercy.
+
+"I feel as if I were making use of you," said she.
+
+"My dear, make any use of me you please. I'm always here. You can come to
+me any time you want to escape."
+
+"To escape?" Anne's face flew a colour that was a flag of defiance to
+any reflection on her husband. She would be loyal to him as long as she
+lived. Not one of her friends should know of her trouble and her fear.
+
+"From your Gorsts and Hannays and people."
+
+"Oh, from them." Anne felt that she was shielding him.
+
+Mrs. Eliott marked the flag of defiance and the attitude of defence. If
+Anne had meant to "give him away," she could not have given him more
+lavishly. Mrs. Elliott's sad inward comment was that there was more in
+all this than met the eye.
+
+And Anne's life now continued on this rather uncomfortable footing. The
+Hannays came to dinner, and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. The Ransomes
+came, and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. Mr. Gorst came (for the fourth
+time in as many weeks), and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. She began to
+wonder whether the Eliotts' hospitality would stand the strain. She also
+wondered whether her other friends in Thurston Square were wondering; and
+what Canon Wharton must think of it. It had not occurred to her to wonder
+what Mr. Gorst would think.
+
+At first he thought nothing of it. When he found that he had not to
+encounter the terrible eyes of Mrs. Majendie, Mr. Gorst's relief was so
+great that it robbed him of reflection. And when he began to think, he
+merely thought that Majendie had asked him because his wife was absent,
+rather than that Majendie's wife was absent because he had been asked.
+Majendie had calculated on this. He was not in the least distressed by
+Anne's absences. He believed that she was thoroughly enjoying both her
+own protest and Mrs. Eliott's society. And the arrangement really solved
+the problem nicely. Otherwise the whole thing was trivial to him. He
+remained unaware of the tremendous spiritual conflict that was being
+waged round the person of the unhappy Gorst.
+
+But Christmas was now at hand and Christmas brought the problem back
+again in a terrific form. For ten years poor Gorst had dined with his
+friends in Prior Street on Christmas Day. His presence was considered
+by Edith to borrow a peculiar significance and sanctity from the
+festival. Did they not celebrate on that day the birth of the Divine
+Humanity, the solemn advent of redeeming love? Punctually on Christmas
+Day the prodigal returned from his farthest wanderings, and made for
+Prior Street as for his home. He had never missed a Christmas. And how
+could they expel him now? His coming was such a sacred and established
+thing, that he had spoken of it to Edith as a certainty. And it was as
+a certainty that Edith spoke of it to Majendie.
+
+She asked him how they were to break the news to Anne.
+
+"Better not break it at all," said he. "Just let him come."
+
+"If he does," said Edith, "she'll walk straight out of the house."
+
+"Oh no, she won't."
+
+"Yes, she will. On principle. I understand her."
+
+"I confess I don't."
+
+"But I believe," said she, "if you explained it all to her, she'd give in
+for once."
+
+Rather against his judgment, he endeavoured to explain, "We simply can't
+not ask him, you know."
+
+"Ask him by all means. But I shall have to put myself on the Gardners, or
+the Proctors, for the Eliotts are away."
+
+"Don't be absurd. You know you won't be allowed to do anything of the
+sort."
+
+"There's nothing else left for me to do."
+
+He looked at her gravely; but his speech was light, for it was not in him
+to be weighty. "Don't you think that, at this holy season, for the sake
+of peace, and good-will, and all the rest of it, you might drop it just
+for once? And let the poor chap have a happy Christmas?"
+
+She seemed to be considering it. "You think me very hard," said she.
+
+"Oh no, no, not hard." But he was wondering for the first time what this
+wife of his was made of.
+
+"Yes, hard. I don't want you to think me hard. If you could understand
+why I cannot meet that man--what it means to me--the effect it has on
+me."
+
+"What," he said, "is the precise effect?" He was really interested. He
+had always been curious to know how different men affected different
+women, and to get his knowledge at first hand.
+
+"It's the effect," said she, "of being brought into contact with
+something terribly painful and repulsive, the effect of intense
+suffering--of unbearable disgust."
+
+He listened with his thoughtful, interested air. "I know. The effect that
+your friend Canon Wharton sometimes has on me."
+
+"I see no resemblance between Canon Wharton and your friend Mr. Gorst."
+
+"And I see no resemblance between my friend Mr. Gorst and Canon Wharton."
+
+She was silent, gathering all her strength to deliver her spirit's last
+appeal.
+
+"Dear," said she (for she wished to be very gentle with him, since he had
+thought her hard), "dear, I wonder if you ever realise what the thing we
+call--purity is?"
+
+He blushed violently.
+
+"I only know it's one of those things one doesn't speak about."
+
+"I must speak," said she.
+
+"You needn't," he said curtly; "I understand all right."
+
+"If you did you wouldn't ask me. All the same, Walter--" She lifted to
+him the set face of a saint surrendered to the torture--"If you compel
+me--"
+
+"Compel you? I can't compel you. Especially if you're going to look like
+that."
+
+"It's no use," he said to Edith. "First she talks of dining with the
+Gardners--"
+
+"She will, too--"
+
+"No. She'll stay--if I compel her."
+
+"Oh, I see. That's worse. She'd let him see it. He wouldn't enjoy his
+Christmas if he came."
+
+"No, poor fellow, I really don't think he would. She's awfully funny
+about him."
+
+"You still think her funny?"
+
+"My dear--it's the only way to take her. I'm sorry, but I can't let
+Charlie spoil her Christmas; nor," he added, "Anne his."
+
+So Mr. Gorst did not come to Prior Street that Christmas. There came
+instead of him whole sheaves and stacks of flowers, Christmas roses and
+white lilies, the sacred flowers which, at that festival, the poor
+prodigal brought as his tribute to his adored and beloved lady.
+
+He spent the greater part of his Christmas Day in the society of Mr. Dick
+Ransome, and the greater part of his Christmas Night in the society of
+pretty Maggie Forrest, the new girl in Evans's shop who had sold him the
+Christmas roses and the lilies. "For," said he, "if I can't go and see
+Edie, I'll go and see Maggie." And he enjoyed seeing Maggie as much as it
+was possible to enjoy anything that was not seeing Edie.
+
+And Edie lay among her Christmas roses and her lilies, and smiled, with
+a high courage, at Nanna, at Majendie, and Anne; and did her best to make
+everybody believe that she was having a very happy Christmas. But at
+night, when it was all over, Majendie held a tremulous and tearful Edie
+in his arms.
+
+"Don't think me a brute, darling," he said. "I would have insisted, only
+if he'd come to-day he'd have found out he wasn't wanted."
+
+"I know; and he never would have come again."
+
+He didn't come. For Canon Wharton enlightened Mrs. Hannay, and Mrs.
+Hannay enlightened Mr. Hannay, and Mr. Hannay enlightened Mr. Gorst.
+
+"Of course," said the prodigal, "if she walks out of the house when
+I walk into it, I can't very well go."
+
+"Well, not at present, perhaps, for the sake of peace," said Hannay. "It
+strikes me poor old Majendie's in a pretty tight place with that wife of
+his."
+
+So, for the sake of peace, Mr. Gorst kept away from Prior Street and his
+Edie, and spent a great deal of time in Evans's shop, cultivating the
+attention of Miss Forrest.
+
+And, for the sake of peace, Majendie kept silence, and his sister
+concealed her trembling and her tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Gloom fell on the house in Prior Street in the weeks that followed
+Christmas. The very servants went heavily in the shadow of it. Anne began
+to have her bad headaches again. Deep lines of worry showed on Majendie's
+face. And on her couch by the window, looking on the blackened winter
+garden, Edith fought day after day a losing battle with her spine.
+
+The slow disease that held her captive there seemed to be quickening its
+pace. In January there came a whole procession of bad nights, without, as
+she pathetically said, "anything to show for it," for her hands could
+make nothing now. She lay flatter than ever; each day she seemed to sink
+deeper into her couch.
+
+Anne, between her headaches, devoted herself to her sister with a kind
+of passion. Her keenest experience of passion came to her through the
+emotion wakened in her by the sight of Edith's suffering. She told
+herself that her love for Edith satisfied her heart completely; that she
+fulfilled herself in it as she never could have fulfilled herself in any
+other way. Nothing could degrade or spoil the spiritual beauty of this
+relation. It served as a standard by which she could better judge her
+relation to her husband. "I love her more than I ever loved him," she
+thought. "I cannot help it. If it had been possible to love him as I love
+her--but I have lowered myself by loving him. I will raise myself by
+loving her."
+
+She was never tired of being with Edith, sewing silently by her fireside,
+or reading aloud to her (for Edith's hands were too tremulous now to hold
+a book), or sitting close up against her couch, nursing her hands in
+hers, as if she would have given them her own strength.
+
+And thus her ardour spent and renewed itself, and left her colder than
+ever to her husband.
+
+At times she mourned, obscurely, the destruction of the new soul that had
+been given her last year, on her birthday, when she had been born again
+to her sweet human destiny. At times she had glimpses of the perfect
+thing it might have been. There was no logical sequence in the events
+that had destroyed it, the return of Lady Cayley and the spectacle of
+her triumph. She could not say that her husband had deteriorated in
+consequence. The change was in herself, and not in him. He was what he
+always had been; only she seemed to see him more completely now. At
+times, when the high spiritual life died down in sleep, she slipped from
+her trouble, and turned, with her arms stretched towards him, where he
+lay. In her dreams he came to her with the low cry she had heard in the
+wood at Westleydale. And in her dreams she was tender; but her waking
+thoughts were sad and hard.
+
+Majendie found it more than ever difficult to realise that she had ever
+shown him kindness, that her arms had opened to him and her pulses beaten
+with his own. Her face and her body were changing with this change of
+soul. Her health suffered. Her eyes became dull, her skin dry; her small,
+reticent mouth had taken on the tragic droop; she was growing austerely
+thin. She had abandoned the pleasing and worldly fashion of her dress,
+and arrayed herself now in straight-cut, sombre garments, very
+serviceable in the sick-room, but mournfully suggestive, to her husband's
+fancy, of her renunciation of the will to please.
+
+On her first appearance in this garb he enquired whether she had embraced
+the religious life.
+
+"I always have embraced it," said she in her ringing voice.
+
+"I believe it's about the only thing you ever wanted to embrace."
+
+"You need not say so," she returned.
+
+"Then why, oh why, do you wear those awful clothes?"
+
+"My clothes are suitable," said she.
+
+"Suitable? My dear girl, they suggest a divorce-suit, Majendie _versus_
+Majendie, if you like. You're a walking prosecution. Your face, with that
+expression on it, is a decree _nisi_ with costs. You don't want to be a
+libel on your husband, do you?"
+
+"How can you say such things?"
+
+"Well--look in the glass, dear, if you don't believe me."
+
+She looked. The dress was certainly not becoming. She greeted the joyless
+apparition with her thin, unwilling smile.
+
+He put his arm around her and drew her to him. He loved her dearly, for
+all her sadness and unsweetness.
+
+"Poor Nancy," he said, "I _am_ a brute. Forgive me."
+
+"I do forgive you."
+
+The words seemed the refrain of her life's sad song.
+
+And as he kissed her he said to himself, "That's all very well; but if I
+only knew what I'm supposed to have done to her! Her friends must think
+me a perfect monster."
+
+And, indeed, there was more truth than Majendie was aware of in his
+extravagant jests. His wife's face was so eloquent of misery that her
+friends were not slow in drawing their conclusions. Thurston Square
+prepared itself to rally round her. Mrs. Eliott was loyal in keeping what
+she supposed to be Anne's secret, but when she found that the Gardners
+also understood that young Mrs. Majendie wasn't very happy with her
+husband, discussion became free in Thurston Square, though it went no
+further.
+
+"The kindest thing we can do is to give her a refuge sometimes from his
+dreadful friends," said Mrs. Eliott. "I have to ask her here every time
+they're there."
+
+Mrs. Gardner declared that she also would ask her gladly. Miss Proctor
+said that she would ask Mr. Majendie and Mr. Gorst, which would come to
+the same thing for Anne, but that she would not have Anne without her
+husband. Miss Proctor could be depended on to take a light view of any
+situation, a view entirely her own.
+
+So the Gardners, as well as the Eliotts, rallied round Mrs. Majendie, and
+offered their house also as her refuge. And thus poor Anne, whose ideal
+was an indestructible loyalty, contrived to build up the most undesirable
+reputation for her husband in Thurston Square. Of this reputation she now
+became aware, and it reacted on her own estimate of him. She said to
+herself, "They don't approve of him. They seem to know something. They
+are sorry for me." And she was humbled in her pride.
+
+The one who seemed to know most, and to be sorriest of all, was Canon
+Wharton. She was always meeting him now. It was positively as if he lay
+in wait for her. His eyes seemed more than ever to have penetrated her
+secret. They held it safe under the pent-house of his brows. They seemed
+to be always making allusions to it, while his tongue preserved a
+delicate reticence. At meeting they said to her, "It doesn't matter if I
+know your secret. Do you suppose it is so evident to everybody? Why, in
+all this town, there is no one--no one, dear lady--capable of discovering
+it but I. It is a spiritual secret." And at parting they said, "When you
+can bear it no longer you must come to me. Sooner or later you will come
+to me."
+
+And the weeks went on towards Lent. Anne longed for the time of
+cleansing, and absolution and communion; for the peace of the week-day
+services; and for the sweet, sharp, grey light of the young Spring at
+evening, a light that recalled, piercingly, the long Lent of her
+girlhood, and the passing of its pure and consecrated days.
+
+She had not yet completely forsaken St. Saviour's for All Souls. She
+loved the grey old church in the market-place. Set in the midst of that
+sordid scene of chaffering and grime, St. Saviour's perpetuated for her
+the ancient beauty and the majesty of her faith. When she desired to
+forget herself, to sink humbly back into the ages, passive to a superb
+tradition, she went to St. Saviour's. When she wished to be stirred and
+strengthened, to realise her spiritual value, to feel the grip of divine
+forces centring on her, she went to All Souls.
+
+On the Sunday before Lent she was fairly possessed by this ardent
+personal mood. In obedience to it she attended Matins at the Canon's
+church.
+
+She had had a scruple about going, for Edith had been worse that morning,
+and more evidently unhappy. She went alone. Majendie had admitted lately
+that he liked going to St. Saviour's, but he refused to accompany her to
+All Souls.
+
+She went in a strange, premonitory mood, expectant of some great
+illumination. It came with the Collect for the day. Anne was deeply moved
+by the Collect. She prayed inaudibly, with parted lips thirsting for the
+sources of her spiritual help. Her light went up with the ascending,
+sentence by sentence, of the prayer.
+
+"Oh, Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are
+nothing worth;
+
+"Send Thy Holy Ghost and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of
+charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues;
+
+"Without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before Thee;
+
+"Grant this for thine only Son, Jesus Christ's sake." The ritual rang
+upon that note. The music of the hymns of charity was part of the light
+that penetrated her, poignant, but tender.
+
+Poignant but tender, too, were the aspect and the mood of the Canon as he
+ascended the pulpit and looked upon his congregation.
+
+There was a rustling, sliding sound as the congregation turned to listen
+to their vicar.
+
+"Though I speak,'" said the Canon, "'with the tongues of men and of
+angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or as a
+tinkling cymbal."
+
+He gripped his hearers with the stress he laid upon certain words,
+"angels," and "cymbal." He bade them mark that it was not by hazard that
+the great prayer for Charity was appointed for the Sunday before Lent.
+"The Church," he said, "has such care for her children that she does
+nothing by hazard. This call is made to us on the eve of the great battle
+against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Why, but that those among us
+who come off victors may have mercy upon those weakly ones who are
+worsted and fallen in the fight. The life of the spirit has its own
+unique temptations. It is against these that we pray to-day. We are all
+prepared to repent, to use abstinence, to mortify the body with its
+corrupt affections. Are we prepared to bear the burden of our brother's
+and our sister's unrepentance? Of their self-indulgence? Of their sin? To
+follow in all things the Divine Example? We are told that the Saviour of
+the world was the friend of publicans and sinners. We accept the
+statement, we have gone on accepting it, year after year, as the
+statement of a somewhat remote, but well-authenticated historical fact.
+Have we yet realised its significance? Have we pictured, are we able to
+picture to ourselves, what company He kept? Among what surroundings His
+divine figure was actually seen? In what purlieus of degenerate
+Jerusalem? In what iniquitous splendours? In what orgies of the Gentiles?
+And who are they to whom He showed most tenderness? Who but the rich
+young man? The woman taken in adultery? And Mary Magdalene with her seven
+devils? Which is the divinest of the divine parables? The parable of the
+prodigal son who devoured his father's living with harlots!"
+
+The Canon's voice rose and fell, and rose again; thrilling, as his breast
+heaved with the immense pathos and burden of the world.
+
+Anne had a vision of the Hannays and the Ransomes, and of the prodigal
+cast out from the house that loved him. And she said to herself for the
+first time: "Have I done right? Have I done what Christ would have me
+do?" The light that went up in her was a light by which her deeds looked
+doubtful. If she had failed in this, in charity? She pondered the
+problem, while the Canon approached, gloriously, his peroration.
+
+"Therefore we pray for charity"--the Canon's voice rang tears--"for
+charity, oh, dear and tender Lord, lest, having known Thy love, we fall,
+ourselves, into the sins of unpity and of pride."
+
+Tears came into Anne's eyes. She was overcome, bowed, shaken by the
+Canon's incomparable pleading. The Canon was shaken by it himself, his
+voice trembled in the benediction that followed. No one had a clearer
+vision of the spiritual city. It was his tragedy that he saw it, and
+could not enter in. Many, remembering that sermon, counted it, long
+afterwards, to him for righteousness. It had conquered Anne. The tongues
+of men and of angels, of all spiritual powers, human and divine, spoke to
+her in that vibrating, indomitable voice.
+
+The problem it had raised remained with her, oppressed, tormented her.
+What she had done had seemed to her so good. But if, after all, she had
+done wrong? If she had failed in charity?
+
+She had come to a turning in her way when she could no longer see for
+herself, or walk alone. She was prepared to surrender, meekly, her own
+judgment. She must ask help of the priest whose voice told her that he
+had suffered, and whose eyes told her that he knew.
+
+She sent a note to All Souls Vicarage, requesting an interview, at Canon
+Wharton's house rather than her own. She did not want Edith or the
+servants to know that she had been closeted with the Canon. The answer
+came that night, making an appointment after early Evensong on the
+morrow.
+
+After early Evensong, Anne found herself in the Canon's library. He did
+not keep her waiting, and, as he entered, he held out to her, literally,
+the hand of help. For the Canon never wasted a gesture. There was no
+detail of social observance to which he could not give some spiritual
+significance. This was partly the secret of his power. His face had lost
+the light that illuminated it in the pulpit, but his eyes gleamed with a
+lambent triumph. They said, "Sooner or later. But rather sooner than I
+had expected."
+
+Anne presented her case in a veiled form, as a situation in the abstract.
+She scrupulously refrained from mentioning any names.
+
+The Canon smiled at her precautions. "We are working in the dark," said
+he. "I think I can help you a little bit more if you'll allow me to come
+down to the concrete. You are speaking, I fancy, of our poor friend, Mr.
+Gorst?"
+
+She looked at him helplessly, startled at his penetration and her own
+betrayal, but appeased by the pitying adjective which brought Gorst into
+the regions of pardonable discussion.
+
+"You needn't be afraid," he said. "I had to be certain before I could
+advise you. I can now tell you with confidence that you are doing right.
+I--know--the--man."
+
+He uttered the phrase with measured emphasis, and closed his teeth upon
+the last words with a snap. It was impossible to convey a stronger effect
+of moral reprobation. "But I see your difficulty," he continued. "I
+understand that he is a rather intimate friend of Miss Majendie."
+
+Anne noticed that he deliberately avoided all mention of her husband.
+
+"She has known him for a very long time."
+
+"Ah yes. And it is your affection, your pity for your sister that makes
+you hesitate. You do not wish to be hard, and at the same time you wish
+to do right. Is it not so?"
+
+She murmured her assent. (How well he understood her!)
+
+"Ah, my dear Mrs. Majendie, we have sometimes to be a little hard, in
+order that we may not be harder. You have thought, perhaps, that you
+should be tender to this friendship? Now, I am an old man, and I have had
+a pretty large experience of men and women, and I tell you that such
+friendships are unwholesome. Unwholesome. Both for the woman and the
+man."
+
+"If I thought that--"
+
+"You may think it. Look at the man--What has it done for him? Has it made
+him any better, any stronger, any purer? Has it made her any happier?"
+
+"I think so. It is all she has--"
+
+"How can you say that, my dear Mrs. Majendie, when she has you?"
+
+"And her brother."
+
+The Canon gave her a keen glance. He seemed to be turning a little extra
+light on to her secret, to see it the better by. And under that light her
+mind conceived again a miserable suspicion.
+
+"He knows something," she thought. "What is it that he knows? They all
+seem to know."
+
+She turned the subject back again to her sister-in-law and Mr. Gorst.
+"She thinks she can save him."
+
+"Her brother?"
+
+It was another turn of the searchlight, but this time the Canon veiled
+his eyes, as if in mercy. He really knew nothing, nothing at all; but, as
+a man of the world, he felt that there was a great deal more than Mr.
+Gorst and Miss Majendie at the back of this discussion, and he was very
+curious to know what it might be.
+
+Anne recoiled from the veiled condemnation of his face more than she had
+from its open intimations. She was not clever enough to see that the
+clever Canon had simply laid a trap for her.
+
+She was now convinced that there was something that he knew. She lifted
+her head in loyal defiance of his knowledge. "No," said she proudly, "Mr.
+Gorst. It was of him I was speaking."
+
+"Ah," said the Canon, as if his mind had come down with difficulty from
+the contemplation of another and more interesting personality; and again
+the significance of his manner was not lost upon Anne.
+
+"I do not know Miss Majendie," he went on, still with the air of forcing
+himself to deal equitably with a subject of minor interest; "but if I am
+not much mistaken, she is, is she not, a little morbid?"
+
+"She is a hopeless invalid."
+
+"I know she is" (his voice dropped pity). "Poor thing--poor thing! And
+she thinks that she can save him? Mark me, I put no limit to the saving
+grace of God, and I would not like to say whom He may not choose as
+His instrument. But before we presume to act for Him, we should be
+very sure about the choice. Judging by the fruits--the fruits of this
+friendship"--he paused, as if seeking for a perfect justice--"Yes. That
+is what we must look at. I imagine Miss Majendie has been morbid on this
+subject. Morbid; and, perhaps, a little weak?"
+
+Anne flushed. She was distressed to think she had given such an
+impression. "Indeed, indeed she isn't. You wouldn't say that if you knew
+her."
+
+"I do not know her. But the strongest of us may be sometimes weak. You
+must be strong for her. And I"--he smiled--"must be strong for you. And I
+tell you that you have been--so far--wise and right. As long as this man
+continues in his evil courses, go on as you are doing. Do not encourage
+him by admitting him to your house and to your friendship. But"--(the
+Canon stood up, both for the better emphasis of his point, and as a
+gentle reminder to Mrs. Majendie that his dinner-hour was now
+approaching)--"but let him repent; let him give up his most objectionable
+companions; let him lead a pure life--and _then_--accept him--welcome
+him--"(the Canon opened his arms, as if he were that moment receiving a
+repentant sinner) "rejoice over him"--(the Canon's face became fairly
+illuminated) "as--as much as you like."
+
+The peroration was rapid, valedictory, complete. He thrust out his hand,
+displaying the whole palm of it as a sign of openness, honesty, and
+good-will.
+
+"God bless you."
+
+The solemn benediction atoned for any little momentary brusquerie.
+
+Anne went away with a conscience wholly satisfied, in an exalted mood,
+fortified by all the ramparts of the spiritual life.
+
+She was very gentle with Edith that evening. She said to herself that her
+love must make up to Edie for the loss her conscience had been compelled
+to inflict. "After all," she said to herself, "it's not as if she hadn't
+me." Measuring her services with those of the disreputable Mr. Gorst, it
+seemed to her that she was amply making up. She had a hatred of moral
+indebtedness, as of any other, and she loved to spend. In reckoning the
+love she had spent so lavishly on Edie, she had not allowed for the
+amount of forgiveness that Edie had spent on her. Forgiveness is a gift
+we have to take, whether we will or no, and Anne was blissfully unaware
+of what she took.
+
+Majendie watched her ministrations curiously. Her tenderness was the
+subtlest lure to the love in him that still watched and waited for its
+hour. That night, in the study, he was silent, nervous, and unhappy. She
+shrank from the unrest and misery in his eyes. They followed or were
+fixed on her, rousing in her an obscure resentment and discomfort. She
+was beginning to be afraid of him. It had come to that.
+
+She left him earlier than usual, and went very miserably to bed. She
+prayed, to-night, with her eyes fixed on the crucifix. It had become for
+her the symbol of her life, and of her marriage, which was nothing to her
+now but a sacrifice, a martyrdom, a vicarious expiation of her husband's
+sin.
+
+As she lay down, the beating of her pulses told her that she was not to
+sleep. She longed for sleep, and tried to win it to her by repeating the
+Psalm which had been her comfort in all times of her depression. "I will
+lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help. My help cometh
+from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."
+
+She closed her eyes under the peace of the beloved words. And as she
+closed them she felt herself once more in the arms of the green hills,
+the folding hills of Westleydale.
+
+She shook off the obsession and prayed another prayer. She longed to be
+alone; but, to her grief, she heard the opening and shutting of a door
+and her husband's feet moving in the room beyond.
+
+A few blessed moments of solitude were left her during Majendie's
+undressing. She devoted them to the final expulsion of all lingering
+illusions. She had long ago lost the illusion of her husband's immaculate
+goodness; and now she cast off, once for all, the dear and pitiful belief
+that had revived in her under her brief enchantment in the wood at
+Westleydale. She told herself that she had married a man who had, not
+only a lower standard than her own, but an entirely different code of
+morals, a man irremediably contaminated, destitute of all perception of
+spiritual values. And she had got to make the best of him, that was all.
+Not quite all; for she had still to make the best of herself; and the two
+things seemed, at moments, incompatible. To guard herself from all
+contact with the invading evil; to take her stand bravely, to raise the
+spiritual ramparts and retire behind them, that was no more than her bare
+duty to herself and him. She must create a standard for him by keeping
+herself for ever high and pure. He loved her still, in his fashion; he
+must also respect her, and, in respecting her, respect goodness--the
+highest goodness--in her.
+
+Accustomed to move in a region of spiritual certainty, Anne was
+untroubled by any misgivings as to the soundness of her attitude. It
+was open to no criticism except the despicable wisdom of the world.
+
+Her chief difficulty was poor Majendie's imperishable affection. She
+tried to protect herself from it to-night by feigning drowsiness. She lay
+still as a stone, stiff with her fear. Once, at midnight, she felt him
+stir, and turn, and raise himself on his elbow. She was conscious through
+all her unhappy being of the adoring tenderness with which he watched her
+sleep.
+
+At last she slept, and sleeping, she dreamed a strange dream. She found
+herself again in Westleydale, walking in green aisles of the holy,
+mystic, cathedral woods. The tall beech-stems were the pillars of the
+temple. A still light came through them, guiding her to the beech-tree
+that she knew. And she saw an angel lying under the beech-tree. It lay on
+its side, with its wings stretched out so that the right wing covered the
+left. As she approached, it raised the covering wing, and in the warm
+hollow of the other she saw that it cradled a little naked child. And at
+the sight there came a thorn in her breast that pricked her. The child
+stirred in its sleep, and crawled to the place of the angel's breast, and
+it fondled it with searching lips and hands. Then it wailed, and as she
+heard its cry the thorn pressed sharper into Anne's breast; and the
+angel's eyes turned to her with an immortal anguish, and pity, and
+despair. She looked, and saw that its breast was as the breast of the
+little child. And she was moved to compassion at the helplessness of them
+both, of the heavenly and of the earthly thing; and she stooped and
+lifted the child, and laid it to her own breast, and nourished it; and
+had peace from her pain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It was the first day in Lent. Anne had come down in a state of
+depression. She was silent during breakfast, and Majendie became absorbed
+in his morning paper. So much wisdom he had learnt. Presently he gave a
+sudden murmur of interest, and looked up with a smile. "I see," said he,
+"your friend Mrs. Gardner has got a little son."
+
+"Has she?" said Anne coldly.
+
+The blood flushed in her cheeks, and a sudden pang went through her and
+rose to her breasts with a pricking pain, such pain as she had felt once
+in her dream, and only once in her waking life before. She thought of
+dear little Mrs. Gardner, and tried to look glad. She failed miserably,
+achieving an expression of more than usual austerity. It was the
+expression that Majendie had come to associate with Lent. He thought he
+saw in it the spiritual woman's abhorrence of her natural destiny. And
+with the provocation of it the devil entered into him.
+
+"Is there anything in poor Mrs. Gardner's conduct to displease you?"
+
+She looked at him in a dull passion of reproach.
+
+"Oh," she said, "how can you be so unkind to me!"
+
+Her breast heaved, her lower lip trembled. She rose suddenly, pressing
+her handkerchief to her mouth, and left the room. He heard the study door
+open hastily and shut again. And he said to himself, as if with a sudden
+lucid freshness, "What an extraordinary woman my wife is. If I only knew
+what I'd done."
+
+As she had left her breakfast unfinished, he waited a judicious interval
+and then went to fetch her back.
+
+He found her standing by the window, holding her hands tight to her
+heaving sides, trying by main force to control the tempest of her sobs.
+He approached her gently.
+
+"Go away," she whispered, through loose lips that shook with every word.
+"Go away. Don't come near me."
+
+"Nancy--what is it?"
+
+She turned from him, and leaned up against the folded window shutter. Her
+emotion was the more terrible to him because she was so seldom given to
+these outbursts. She had seemed to him a woman passionless, and of almost
+superhuman self-possession. He removed himself to the hearth-rug and
+waited for five minutes.
+
+"Poor child," he said at last. "Can't you tell me what it is?"
+
+No answer.
+
+He waited another five minutes, thinking hard.
+
+"Was it--was it what I said about Mrs. Gardner?"
+
+He still waited. Then he conceived a happy idea. He would try to make her
+laugh.
+
+"Just because I said she'd had a little son?"
+
+Her tears fell to answer him.
+
+She gathered herself together with a supreme effort, and steadied her
+lips to speak. "Please leave me. I came here to be alone."
+
+A light broke in on him, and he left her.
+
+He shut himself up in the dining-room with his light. He had pushed his
+breakfast aside, too preoccupied to eat it.
+
+"So that's it?" he said to himself. "That's it. Poor Nancy. That's what
+she's wanted all the time. What a fool I was never to have thought of
+it."
+
+He breathed with an immense relief. He had solved the enigma of Anne with
+all her "funniness." It was not that she had turned against him, nor
+against her destiny. She had been disappointed of her destiny, that was
+all. It was enough. She must have been fretting for months, poor darling,
+and just when she could bear it no longer, Mrs. Gardner, he supposed, had
+come as the last straw. No wonder that she had said he was unkind.
+
+And in that hour of his enlightenment a great chastening fell upon
+Majendie. He told himself that he must be as gentle with her as he knew
+how; gentler than he had ever yet known how. And his heart smote him as
+he thought how he had hurt her, how he might hurt her again unknowingly,
+and how the tenderness of the tenderest male was brutality when applied
+to these wonderful, pitiful, incomprehensible things that women were.
+He accepted the misery of the last three months as a fit punishment for
+his lack of understanding.
+
+His light brought a great longing to him and a great hope. From that
+moment he watched her anxiously. He had never realised till now, after
+three months of misery, quite what she meant to him, how sacred and dear
+she was, and how much he loved her.
+
+The depth of this feeling left him for the most part dumb before her. His
+former levity forsook him, and Anne wondered at this change in him, and
+brooded over the possible cause of his serious and unintelligible
+silences. She attributed them to some deep personal preoccupation of
+which she was not the object.
+
+Meanwhile her days went on much as before, a serene and dignified
+procession to the outward eye. She was thankful that she had so
+established her religion of the household that its services could still
+continue in their punctual order, after the joy of the spirit had
+departed from them. The more she felt that she was losing, hour by hour,
+her love of the house in Prior Street, the more she clung to the
+observances that held her days together. She had become a pale, sad-eyed,
+perfunctory priestess of the home. Majendie protested against what he
+called her base superstition, her wholesale sacrifice to the gods of the
+hearth. He forbade her to stay so much indoors, or to sit so long in
+Edith's room.
+
+One afternoon he came home unexpectedly and found her there, doing
+nothing, but watching Edith, who dozed. He touched her gently, and told
+her to get up and go out for a walk.
+
+"I'm too tired," she whispered.
+
+"Then go upstairs and lie down."
+
+She went; but, instead of lying down, she wandered through the house,
+restless and unsettled. She was possessed by a terrible sense of
+isolation. It came over her that this house of which she was the
+mistress did not in the least belong to her. She had not been consulted
+or thought of in any of its arrangements. There was no place in it that
+appealed to her as her own. She went into the little grave old-fashioned
+drawing-room. It had a beauty she approved of, a dignity that was in
+keeping with her own traditions, but to-day its aspect roused in her
+discontent and irritation. The room had remained unchanged since the days
+when it was inhabited, first by her husband's mother, then by his aunt,
+then by his sister. He had handed it over, just as it stood, to his wife.
+It was full, the whole house was full, of portraits of the Majendies;
+Majendies in oils; Majendies in water-colours; Majendies in crayons, in
+miniatures and silhouettes. She thought of Mrs. Eliott's room in Thurston
+Square, of the bookcases, the bronzes, the triptych with its saints in
+glory, and of how Fanny sat enthroned among these things that reflected
+completely her cultured individuality. Fanny had counted. Her rarity had
+been appreciated by the man who married her; her tastes had been studied,
+consulted, exquisitely indulged. Anne did not want more books, nor
+bronzes, nor a triptych in her drawing-room. But such things were
+symbols. Their absence stood for the immense spiritual want through which
+her marriage had been made void. Brooding on it, she closed her heart to
+her unspiritual husband. She looked round the room with her cold
+disenchanted eyes. Numberless signs of his thought and care for her
+rebuked her, and rebuking, added to her misery. As her restlessness
+increased, it occurred to her that she might find some satisfaction in
+arranging the furniture on an entirely different plan. She rang the bell
+and sent for Walter. He came, and found her sitting on the high-backed
+chair whose cover had been worked by his grandmother. He smiled at the
+uncomfortable figure she presented.
+
+"So that's what you call resting, is it?"
+
+"Walter--do you mind if I move some of the furniture in this room?"
+
+"Move it? Of course I don't. But why?"
+
+"Because I don't very much like the room as it is."
+
+"Why don't you like it?" (He really wanted to know.)
+
+"Because I don't feel comfortable in it."
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear. Perhaps--we'd better have some new things."
+
+"I don't want any new things."
+
+"What do you want, then?" His voice was gentleness itself.
+
+"Just to move all the old ones--to move everything."
+
+She spoke with an almost infantile petulance that appealed to him as
+pathetic. There was something terrible about Anne when armoured in the
+cold steel of her spirituality, taking her stand upon a lofty principle.
+But Anne, sitting on a high-backed chair, uttering tremulous absurdities,
+Anne, protected by the unconscious humour of her own ill-temper, was
+adorable. He loved this humanly captious and capricious, childishly
+unreasonable Anne. And her voice was sweet even in petulance.
+
+"My darling," he said, "you shall turn the whole house upside down if it
+makes you any happier. But"--he looked round the room in quest of its
+deficiencies--"what's wrong with it?"
+
+"Nothing's wrong. You don't understand."
+
+"No, I don't." His eye fell upon the corner where the piano once stood
+that was now in Edith's room.
+
+"There are three things," said he, "that you certainly ought to have. A
+piano, and a reading-stand, and a comfortable sofa. You shall have them."
+
+She threw back her head and closed her eyes to shut out the stupidity,
+and the mockery, and the misery of that idea.
+
+"I--don't--want"--she spoke slowly. Her voice dropped from its high
+petulant pitch, and rounded to its funeral-bell note--"I don't want a
+piano, nor a reading-stand, nor a sofa. I simply want a place that I can
+call my own."
+
+"But, bless you, the whole house is your own, if it comes to that, and
+every mortal thing in it. Everything I've got's yours except my razors
+and my braces, and a few little things of that sort that I'm keeping for
+myself."
+
+She passed her hand over her forehead, as if to brush away the irritating
+impression of his folly.
+
+"Come," he said, "let's begin. What do you want moved first? And where?"
+
+She indicated a cabinet which she desired to have removed from its
+place between the windows to a slanting position in the corner. He was
+delighted to hear her express a preference, still more delighted to be
+able to gratify it by his own exertions. He took off his coat and
+waistcoat, turned up his shirt cuffs, and set to work. For an hour he
+laboured under her directions, struggling with pieces of furniture as
+perverse and obstinate as his wife, but more ultimately amenable.
+
+When it was all over, Anne seated herself on the settee between the
+windows, and surveyed the scene. Majendie, in a rumpled shirt and with
+his hair in disorder, stood beside her, and smiled as he wiped the
+perspiration from his forehead.
+
+"Yes," he said, "it's all altered. There isn't a blessed thing, not a
+chair, or a footstool, or a candlestick, that isn't in some place where
+it wasn't. And the room doesn't look a bit better, and you won't be a bit
+better pleased with it to-morrow."
+
+He put on his coat and sat down beside her. "See here," said he, "you
+don't want me really to believe that that's where the trouble is?"
+
+"The trouble?"
+
+"Yes, Nancy, the trouble. Do you think I'm such a fool that I don't see
+it? It's been coming on a long time. I know you're not happy. You're not
+satisfied with things as they are. As they are, you know, there's a sort
+of incompleteness, something wanting, isn't there?"
+
+She sighed. "It's you who are putting it that way, not I."
+
+"Of course I'm putting it that way. How am I to put it any other way? Let
+me think now--well--of course I know perfectly well that it's not a
+piano, or a reading-stand, or a sofa that you want, any more than I do.
+We want the same thing, sweetheart."
+
+She smiled sadly. "Do we? I should have said the trouble is that we don't
+want the same thing, and never did."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"Nor I you. You think I'm always wanting something. What is it that you
+think I want?"
+
+"Well--do you remember Westleydale?"
+
+She drew back. "Westleydale? What has put that into your head?"
+
+He grew desperate under her evasions, and plunged into his theme. "Well,
+that jolly baby we saw there--in the wood--you looked so happy when you
+grabbed it, and I thought, perhaps--"
+
+"There's no use talking about that," said she. "I don't like it."
+
+"All right--only--it's still a little soon, you know, isn't it, to give
+it up?"
+
+"You're quite mistaken," she said coldly. "It isn't that. It never has
+been. If I want anything, Walter, that you haven't given me, it's
+something that you cannot give me. I've long ago made up my mind to
+that."
+
+"But why make up your mind to anything? How do you know I can't give it
+you--whatever it is--if you won't tell me anything about it? What _do_
+you want, dear?"
+
+"Ah, my dear, I want nothing, except not to have to feel like this."
+
+"What do you feel like?"
+
+"Like what I am. A stranger in my husband's house."
+
+"And is that my fault?" he asked gently.
+
+"It is not mine. But there it is. I feel sometimes as if I'd never been
+married to you. That's why you must never talk to me as you did just
+now."
+
+"Good God, what a thing to say!"
+
+He hid his face in his hands. The pain she had inflicted would have been
+unbearable but for the light that was in him.
+
+He rose to leave her. But before he left, he took one long, scrutinising
+look at her. It struck him that she was not, at the moment, entirely
+responsible for her utterances. And again his light helped him.
+
+"Look here," said he, "I don't think you're feeling very well. This isn't
+exactly a joyous life for you."
+
+"I want no other," said she.
+
+"You don't know what you want. You're overstrained--frightfully--and
+you ought to have a long rest and a change. You're too good, you know,
+to my little sister. I've told you before that I won't allow you to
+sacrifice yourself to her. I shall get some one to come and stay, and I
+shall take you down this week to the south coast, or wherever you like to
+go. It'll do you all the good in the world to get away from this beastly
+place for a month or two."
+
+"It'll do me no good to get away from poor Edie."
+
+"It will, dearest, it will, really."
+
+"It will not. If you go and take me away from Edie I shall get ill
+myself."
+
+"You only think so because you're ill already."
+
+"I am not ill." She turned to him her sombre, tragic face.
+"Walter--whatever you do, don't ask me to leave Edie, for I can't."
+
+"Why not?" he asked gently.
+
+"Because I love her. And it's--it's the only thing."
+
+"I see," he said; and left her.
+
+He went back to Edith. She smiled at his disarray and enquired the cause
+of it. He entertained her with an account of his labours.
+
+"How funny you must both have looked," said Edith, "and, oh, how funny
+the poor drawing-room must feel."
+
+"The fact is," said Majendie gravely, "I don't think she's very well. I
+shall get her to see Gardner."
+
+"I would, if I were you."
+
+He wrote to Dr. Gardner that night and told Anne what he had done. She
+was indignant, and expounded his anxiety as one more instance of his
+failure to understand her nature. But she did not refuse to receive the
+doctor when he called the next morning.
+
+When Majendie came back from the office he found his wife calm, but
+disposed to a terrifying reticence on the subject of her health. "It's
+nothing--nothing," she said; and that was all the answer she would give
+him. In the evening he went round to Thurston Square to get the truth out
+of Gardner.
+
+He stayed there an hour, although a very few words sufficed to tell him
+that his hope had become a certainty. The President of the Scale
+Philosophic Society had cast off all his vagueness. His wandering eyes
+steadied themselves to grip Majendie as they had gripped Majendie's
+wife. To Gardner Majendie, with his consuming innocence and anxiety, was,
+at the moment, by far the more interesting of the two. The doctor brought
+all his grave lucidity to bear on Majendie's case, and sent him away
+unspeakably consoled; giving him a piece of advice to take with him. "If
+I were you," said he, "I wouldn't say anything about it until she speaks
+to you herself. Better not let her know you've consulted me."
+
+In one hour Majendie had learnt more about his wife than he had found out
+in the year he had lived with her; and the doctor had found out more
+about Majendie than he had learnt in the ten years he had been practising
+in Scale.
+
+And upstairs in her drawing-room, little Mrs. Gardner waited impatiently
+for her husband to come back and finish the very interesting conversation
+that Majendie had interrupted.
+
+"Who is the fiend," she said, "who's been keeping you all this time? One
+whole hour he's been."
+
+"The fiend, my dear, is Mr. Majendie." The doctor's face was thoughtful.
+
+"Is he ill?"
+
+"No; but I think he would have been if he hadn't come to me. I've been
+revising my opinion of Majendie to-night. Between you and me, our friend
+the Canon is a very dangerous old woman. Don't you go and believe those
+tales he's told you."
+
+"I don't believe the tales," said Mrs. Gardner, "but I can't help
+believing poor Mrs. Majendie's face. _That_ tells a tale, if you like."
+
+"Poor Mrs. Majendie's face is a face of poor Mrs. Majendie's own making,
+I'm inclined to think."
+
+"I don't think Mrs. Majendie would make faces. I'm sure she isn't happy."
+
+"Are you? Well then, if you're fond of her, I think you'd better try and
+see a little more of her, Rosy. You can help her a good deal better than
+I can now."
+
+Professional honour forbade him to say more than that. He passed to a
+more absorbing topic.
+
+"I must say I can't see the force of this fellow's reasoning. What's
+that?"
+
+"I thought I heard baby crying."
+
+"You didn't. It was the cat. You must learn the difference, my dear.
+Don't you see that these pragmatists are putting the cart before the
+horse? Conduct is one of the things to be explained. How can you take it,
+then, as the ground of the explanation?"
+
+"I don't," said Mrs. Gardner.
+
+"But you do," said Dr. Gardner. It was in such bickerings that they
+lived and moved and had their happy being. Each was the possessor of a
+strenuous soul, made harmless by its extreme simplicity. They were united
+by their love of argument, divided only by their adoration of each other.
+They now plunged with joy into the heart of a vast metaphysical
+contention; and Majendie, his conduct and the explanation of it, were
+forgotten until another cry was heard and, this time, Mrs. Gardner fled.
+
+She came back full of reproach. "Oh, Philip, to think that you can't
+recognise the voice of your little son!"
+
+Dr. Gardner looked guilty. "I really thought," said he, "it was the cat."
+He hated these interruptions.
+
+He looked for Mrs. Gardner to take up the thread of the delicious
+argument where she had dropped it; but something had reminded Mrs.
+Gardner that she must write a note to Mrs. Majendie. She sat down and
+wrote it at once while she remembered. She could think of nothing to say
+but, "When will you come and take tea with me, and see my little son?"
+
+Anne came that week, and saw the little son, and rejoiced over him. She
+kept on coming to see him. She always had been fond of Mrs. Gardner, now
+she was growing fonder of her than ever. In her happy presence she felt
+wonderfully at peace. There had been a time when the spectacle of Mrs.
+Gardner's happiness would have given her sharp pangs of jealousy; but
+that time was over now for Anne. She liked to sit and look at her and
+watch the happiness flowering in Mrs. Gardner's face. She thought Mrs.
+Gardner's face was more beautiful than any woman's she had ever seen,
+except Edie's. Edie's face was perfect; but Mrs. Gardner's was a simple
+oval that sacrificed perfection in the tender amplitude of her chin.
+There were no lines on it; for Mrs. Gardner was never worried, nor
+excited, nor perplexed. How could she be worried when Dr. Gardner was
+well and happy? Or excited, when, having Dr. Gardner, there was nothing
+left to be excited about? Or perplexed, when Dr. Gardner held the
+solution of all problems in his mighty brain?
+
+Mrs. Gardner's bridal aspect had not disappeared with the advent of her
+motherhood. She was not more wrapped up in the baby than she was in Dr.
+Gardner and his metaphysics. She even admitted to Anne that the baby had
+been something of a disappointment. Anne was sitting in the nursery with
+her when Mrs. Gardner ventured on this confidence.
+
+"You know I'd rather have had a little daughter."
+
+Anne confessed that her own yearning was for a little son.
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Gardner, "I wouldn't have him different now. He's going
+to have as happy a life as ever I can give him. I've got so much to make
+up for."
+
+"To make up for?" Anne wondered what little Mrs. Gardner could possibly
+have to make up for.
+
+"Well, you see it's a shocking confession to make; but I didn't care for
+him at all before he came. I didn't want him. I didn't want anybody but
+Philip, and Philip didn't want anybody but me. Are you horrified?"
+
+"I think I am," said Anne. She had difficulty in believing that dear
+little Mrs. Gardner could ever have taken this abnormal, this monstrous
+attitude.
+
+"You see our life was so perfect as it was. And we have so little time
+to be together, because of his tiresome patients. I grudged every minute
+taken from him. And, when I knew that this little creature was coming,
+I sat down and cried with rage. I felt that he was going to spoil
+everything, and keep me from Philip. I hadn't a scrap of tenderness for
+him, poor little darling."
+
+"Oh," said Anne.
+
+"I hadn't really. I was quite happy with my husband." She paused, feeling
+that the ground under her was perilous. "I don't know why I'm telling you
+all this, dear Mrs. Majendie. I've never told another soul. But I
+thought, perhaps, you ought to know."
+
+"Why," Anne wondered, "does she think I ought to know?"
+
+"You see," Mrs. Gardner went on, "_I_ thought I couldn't be any happier
+than I was. But I am. Ten times happier. And I didn't think I _could_
+love my husband more than I did. But I do. Ten times more, and quite
+differently. Just because of this tiny, crying thing, without an idea in
+his little soft head. I've learned things I never should have learned
+without him. He takes up all my time, and keeps me from enjoying Philip;
+and yet I know now that I never was really married till he came."
+
+Mrs. Gardner looked up at Anne with shy, beautiful eyes that begged
+forgiveness if she had said too much. And Anne realised that it was for
+her that the little bride had been singing that hymn of hope, for her
+that she had been laying out the sacred treasures of her mysteriously
+wedded heart.
+
+In the same spirit Mrs. Gardner now laid out her fine store of clothing
+for the little son. And Anne's heart grew soft over the many little
+vests, and the jackets, and the diminutive short-waisted gowns.
+
+She was busy with a pile of such things one evening up in her bedroom
+when Majendie came in. The bed was strewn with the absurd garments, and
+Anne sat beside side it, sorting them, and smiling to herself that small,
+pure, shy smile of hers. Her soft face drew him to her. He thought it was
+his hour. He took up one of the little vests and spanned it with his
+hand. "I'm so glad," he said. "Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Nancy--"
+
+"I can't talk about it."
+
+"Not to me?"
+
+"No," she said. "Not to you."
+
+"I should have thought--"
+
+Her face hardened. "I can't. Please understand that, Walter. I don't
+think I ever can, now. You've made everything so that I can't bear it."
+
+She took the little vest from him and laid it with the rest.
+
+And as he left her his hope grew cold. Her motherhood was only another
+sanctuary from which she shut him out. There was something so humiliating
+in his pain that he would have hidden it even from Edith. But Edith was
+too clever for him.
+
+"Has she said anything to you about it?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. Has she not to you?"
+
+"Not yet. She won't let me speak about it. She's funnier than ever. She
+treats me as if I were some obscene monster just crawled up out of the
+primeval slime."
+
+"Poor Wallie!"
+
+"Well, but it's pretty serious. Do you think she's going to keep it up
+for all eternity?"
+
+"No, I don't, dear. I don't think she'll keep it up at all."
+
+"I'm not so sure. I'm tired out with it. I give her up."
+
+"No, you don't, dear, any more than I do."
+
+"But what can I do? Is it, honestly, Edie, is it in any way my fault?"
+
+"Well--I think, perhaps, if you'd approached her in another spirit at the
+first--she told me that what shocked her more than anything that night at
+Scarby, was, darling, your appalling flippancy. You know, if you'd taken
+that tone when you first spoke to me about it, I think it would have
+killed me. And she's your wife, not your sister. It's worse for her.
+Think of the shock it must have been to her."
+
+"Think of the shock it was to me. She sprang the whole thing on me at
+four o'clock in the morning--before I was awake. What could I do?
+Besides, she got over all that in the summer. And now she goes back to
+it worse than ever, though I haven't done anything in between."
+
+"It was all brought back to her in the autumn, remember."
+
+"Granted that, it's inconceivable how she can keep it up. It isn't as if
+she was a hard woman."
+
+"No. She's softer than any woman I know, in some ways. But she happens to
+be made so that that is the one thing she finds it hardest to forgive.
+Besides, think of her health."
+
+"I wonder if that really accounts for it."
+
+"I think it may."
+
+"I don't know. It began before, and I'm afraid it's come to stay."
+
+"What has come to stay?"
+
+"The dislike she's taken to me."
+
+"I don't believe in her dislike. Give her time."
+
+"Oh, the time I have given her! A year and more."
+
+"What's a year? Wait," said Edith. "Wait."
+
+He waited; and as the months went on, Anne schooled herself, for her
+child's sake, into strength and calm. Her white, brooding face grew full
+and tender; but its tenderness was not for him. He remained shut out from
+the sanctuary where she sat nursing her dream.
+
+He suffered indescribably; but he told himself that Anne had merely taken
+one of those queer morbid aversions of which Gardner had told him. And at
+the birth of their child he looked for it to pass.
+
+The child was born in mid-October. Majendie had sat up all night; and
+very early in the morning he was sent for to her room. He came, stealing
+in on tiptoe, dumb, with his head bowed in terror and a certain awe.
+
+He found Anne lying in the big bed under the crucifix. Her face was dull
+and white, and her arms were stretched out by her sides in utter
+exhaustion. When he bent over her she closed her eyes, but her lips moved
+as if she were trying to speak to him. He felt her breath upon his face,
+but he could hear no words.
+
+"What is it?" he whispered to the nurse who stood beside him. She held in
+one arm the new-born child, hooded and folded in a piece of flannel.
+
+The nurse touched him on the shoulder. "She's trying to tell you to look
+at your little daughter, sir."
+
+He turned and saw something--something queer and red between two folds of
+flannel, something that stirred and drew itself into puckers, and gave
+forth a cry.
+
+And as he touched the child, his strength melted in him, as it melted
+when he laid his hands for the first time upon its mother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+After the birth of her child Anne was restored to her normal poise and
+self-possession. She appeared the large, robust, superb creature she had
+once been. The serenity of her bearing proclaimed that in her motherhood
+her nature was fulfilled. She had given herself up to the child from the
+first moment that she held it to her breast. She had found again her
+tenderness, her gladness, and her peace.
+
+Majendie had waited for this. He believed that if the child made her so
+happy, she could hardly continue to cherish an aversion from its father.
+
+In the months that followed he witnessed the slow destruction of this
+hope. The very fact that Anne had become "normal" made its end more
+certain. There were no longer any affecting moods, any divine caprices
+for him to look to, nor was there much likelihood of a profounder change.
+Such as his wife was now, she always would be.
+
+She had settled down.
+
+And he had accepted the situation.
+
+He had had his illusions. He loved the child. It was white, and weak, and
+sickly, as if it drew a secret bitterness from its mother's breast. It
+kept Anne awake at night with its crying. Once Majendie got up, and came
+to her, and took it from her, and it was suddenly pacified, and fell
+asleep in his arms. He had risen many nights after that to quiet it. It
+had seemed to him then that something passed between them with the small
+tender body his arms took from her and gave to her again. But he had
+abandoned that illusion now. And when he saw her with the child he said
+to himself, "I see. She has got all she wanted. She has no further use
+for me."
+
+Thus the child that should have united separated them. Anne took from
+him whatever small comfort it might have given him. She was disposed to
+ignore those paternal passages in the night-watches, and to combat the
+idea of his devotion to the child. That situation he had accepted, too.
+
+But Anne, in appearing to accept everything, accepted nothing. She was
+conscious of a mute rebellion, even of a certain disloyalty of the
+imagination. She disapproved of Majendie more than ever. She guarded
+her own purity now as her child's inheritance, and her motherhood
+strengthened her spiritual revolt. Her mind turned sometimes to the ideal
+father of her child, evoking visions of the Minor Canon whom her soul had
+loved. Lent brought the image of the Minor Canon nearer to her, and
+towards his perfections she turned the tender face of her dreams, while
+she presented to her husband the stern face of duty. She had never
+swerved from that. There was no reason why she should close her door to
+him, since the material bond was torture to her, and the ramparts of the
+spiritual life rose high. Her marriage was more than ever a martyrdom and
+a sacrifice, redemptive, propitiatory of powers she abhorred and but
+dimly understood.
+
+Majendie was aware that she had now no attitude to him but one of apathy
+touched by repugnance. He accepted the apathy, but the repugnance he
+could not accept. The very tenderness and fineness of his nature held him
+back from that, and Anne found once more her refuge in his chivalry. She
+made no attempt to reconcile it with her estimate of him.
+
+By the time the child was a year old their separation was complete.
+
+As yet their good taste shrank from any acknowledgment of the rupture.
+Majendie did his best to cover it by a certain fineness of transition,
+and by a high smooth courtesy punctiliously applied. Anne responded on
+the same pure note; for, tried by courtesy, her breeding rang golden to
+the test.
+
+She was not a woman (as Majendie had reflected several times already) to
+trail an untidy tragedy through the house; she had never desired to play
+a passionate part; and she was glad to exchange tragedy for the decent
+drama of convention. She was helped both by her weakness and her
+strength. Her soul was satisfied with its secret communion with the
+Unseen; her heart was filled with its profound affection for her child;
+her mind was appeased by appearances, and she had no doubt as to her
+ability to keep them up.
+
+It was Majendie who felt the strain. His mind had an undying contempt for
+appearances; his heart and soul had looked to one woman for satisfaction,
+and could not be appeased with anything but her. Among all the things he
+had accepted, he accepted most of all the fact that she was perfect. Too
+perfect to be the helpmate of his imperfection. He shuddered at the years
+that were in store for him. Always to do without her, always to be
+tortured by the fairness of her presence and the sweetness of her voice;
+always to sit up late and rise up early, in order to get away from the
+thought of them; to come down and find her fairness and sweetness smiling
+politely at him over the teapot; to hunt in the morning-paper for news to
+interest her; to mix with business men all day, and talk business, and to
+return at five o'clock and find her, punctual and perfect, smiling in her
+duty, over another teapot; to rack his brains for something to talk about
+to her; not to be allowed to mention his own friends, but to have to
+feign indestructible interest in the Eliotts and the Gardners; to dine
+with the inspiration drawn again from the paper; and then, perhaps, to be
+read aloud to all evening, till it was time to go to bed again. That was
+how his days went on. The child and Edie were his only accessible sources
+of consolation. But Edie was dying by inches; and he had to suppress his
+affection for the child, as well as his passion for the mother.
+
+For that was the thorn in Anne's side now. The child was content with her
+only when Majendie was not there. The moment he came into the room she
+would struggle from her mother's lap, and crawl frantically to his feet.
+Her tiny face curled in its white, angelic smile as soon as he lifted her
+in his arms. Little Peggy had an adorable way of turning her back on her
+mother and tucking her face away under Majendie's chin. When she was
+cross or ailing she cried for Majendie, and refused to take food or
+medicine from any one but him.
+
+He was sitting one day in the nursery with the little year-old thing on
+his knees, feeding her deftly from a cup of warm milk that she had pushed
+away when presented by her mother. The nurse and Nanna looked kindly on
+the spectacle of Majendie's success, while his wife watched him steadily
+without a word. The nurse, presuming on her privileges, made an
+injudicious remark.
+
+"She won't do anything for anybody but her daddy. I never saw such a
+funny little girl."
+
+"I never saw such a shocking little flirt," said Majendie; "she takes
+after her mother."
+
+"She's the living image of you, ma'am," said Nanna, conscious of the
+other's blunder.
+
+"I wish she had my strength," said Anne, in a voice fine and trenchant as
+a sword.
+
+Nanna and the nurse retired discreetly.
+
+The parents looked at each other over the frail body of the little girl.
+Majendie's face had flushed under his wife's blow. He knew that she was
+thinking of Edith and her fate. The same malady had appeared in more
+than one member of his family, as Anne was well aware. (Her own strain
+was pure.) Instinctively he put his hand to the child's spine. Little
+Peggy sat up straight and strong enough. And another thought passed
+through him. His eyes conveyed it to Anne as plainly as if he had said,
+"I don't know about her mother's strength. She's the child of her
+mother's coldness."
+
+He set the child down on Anne's lap, told her to be good there, and left
+them.
+
+Anne saw how she had hurt him, and was visited with an unfamiliar pang of
+self-reproach. She was very nice to him all that evening. And out of his
+own pain a kinder thought came to him. He had been the cause of great
+unhappiness to Anne. There might be a sense in which the child was
+suffering from her mother's martyrdom. He persuaded himself that the
+least he could do was to leave Anne in supreme possession of her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+What with anxiety about his daughter and his sister, and a hopeless
+attachment to his wife, Majendie's misery became so acute that it told
+upon his health. His friends, Gorst and the Hannays, noticed the change
+and spent themselves in persistent efforts to cheer him. And, at times
+when his need of distraction became imperious, he declined from Anne's
+lofty domesticities upon the Hannays. He liked to go over in the evening,
+and sit with Mrs. Hannay, and talk about his child. Mrs. Hannay was never
+tired of listening. The subject drew her out quite remarkably, so that
+Mrs. Hannay, always soft and kind, showed at her very softest and
+kindest. To talk to her was like resting an aching head upon the down
+cushion to which it was impossible not to compare her. It was the
+Hannays' bitter misfortune that they had no children; but this
+frustration had left them hearts more hospitably open to their friends.
+
+Mrs. Hannay called in Prior Street, at stated intervals, to see Edith and
+the baby. On these occasions Anne, if taken unaware by Mrs. Hannay, was
+always perfect and polite, but when she knew that Mrs. Hannay was coming,
+she contrived adroitly to be out. Her attitude to the Hannays was one of
+the things she undoubtedly meant to keep up. The natural result was that
+Majendie was driven to an increasing friendliness, by way of making up
+for the slights the poor things had to endure from his wife. He was
+always meaning to remonstrate with Anne, and always putting off the
+uncomfortable moment. The subject was so mixed with painful matters that
+he shrank from handling it. But, with the New Year following Peggy's
+first birthday, circumstances forced him to take, once for all, a firm
+stand. Certain entanglements in the affairs of Mr. Gorst had called for
+his intervention. There had been important developments in his own
+business; Majendie was about to enter into partnership with Mr. Hannay.
+And Anne had given him an opportunity for protest by expressing her
+unqualified disapprobation of Mrs. Hannay. Mrs. Hannay had offended
+grossly; she had passed the limits; having no instincts, Anne maintained,
+to tell her where to stop. Mrs. Hannay had a passion for Peggy which she
+was wholly unable to conceal. Moved by a tender impulse of vicarious
+motherhood, she had sent her at Christmas a present of a little coat.
+Anne had acknowledged the gift in a note so frigid that it cut Mrs.
+Hannay to the heart. She had wept over it, and had been found weeping by
+her husband, who mentioned the incident to Majendie.
+
+It was more than Majendie could bear; and that night, in the drawing-room
+(Anne had left off sitting in the study. She said it smelt of smoke), he
+entered on an explanation, full, brief, and clear.
+
+"I must ask you," he said, "to behave a little better to poor Mrs.
+Hannay. You've never known her anything but kind, and sweet, and
+forgiving; and your treatment of her has been simply barbarous."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"I think so. There are reasons why you will have to ask the Hannays to
+dinner next week, and reasons why you will have to be nice to them."
+
+"What reasons?"
+
+"One's enough. I'm going into partnership with Lawson Hannay."
+
+She stared. The announcement was a blow to her.
+
+"Is that a reason why I should make a friend of Mrs. Hannay?"
+
+"It's a reason why you should be civil to her. You will send an
+invitation to Gorst at the same time."
+
+She winced. "That I cannot do."
+
+"You can, dear, and you will. Gorst's in a pretty bad way. I knew he
+would be. He's got entangled now with some wretched girl, and I've got to
+disentangle him. The only way to do it is to get him to come here again."
+
+"And _I_ am to write to him?" Her tone proclaimed the idea preposterous.
+
+"It will come best from you, as it's you who have kept him out of the
+house. You must, please, put your own feelings aside, and simply do what
+I ask you."
+
+He rose and went to the writing-place, and prepared a place for her
+there.
+
+Anne said nothing. She was considering how far it was possible to oppose
+him. It had always been his way to yield greatly in little things; to
+drift and let "things" drift till he created an illusory impression of
+his weakness. Then when "things" had gone too far, he would rise, as
+he had risen now, and take his stand with a strength the more formidable
+because it came as a complete surprise.
+
+"Come," said he, "it's got to be done; and you may as well do it at once
+and get it over."
+
+She gave one glance at him, as if she measured his will against hers.
+Then she obeyed.
+
+She handed the notes to him in silence.
+
+"That's all right," said he, laying down her note to Gorst. "And this
+couldn't be better. I'm glad you've written so charmingly to Mrs.
+Hannay."
+
+"I'm sorry that I ever seemed ungracious to her, Walter. But the other
+note I wrote under compulsion, as you know."
+
+"I don't care how you did it, my dear, so long as it's done." He slipped
+the note to Mrs. Hannay into his pocket.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"I'm going to take this myself to Mrs. Hannay."
+
+"What are you going to say to her?"
+
+"The first thing that comes into my head."
+
+She called him back as he was going. "Walter--have you paid Mr. Hannay
+that money you owed him?"
+
+He stood still, astounded at her knowledge, and inclined for one moment
+to dispute her right to question him.
+
+"I have," he said sternly. "I paid it yesterday."
+
+She breathed freely.
+
+Majendie found Mrs. Hannay by her fireside, alone but cheerful. She gave
+him a little anxious look as she took his hand. "Wallie," said she,
+"you're depressed. What is it?"
+
+He owned to the charge, but declined to give an account of himself.
+
+She settled him comfortably among her cushions; she told him to light his
+pipe; and while he smoked she poured out consolation as she best knew
+how. She drew him on to talk of Peggy.
+
+"That child's going to be a comfort to you, Wallie. See if she isn't.
+I wanted you to have a little son, because I thought he'd be more of
+a companion. But I'm glad now it's been a little daughter."
+
+"So am I. Anne would have fidgeted frightfully about a son. But Peggy'll
+be a help to her."
+
+"And what helps her will help you, my dear; mind that."
+
+"Oh, rather," he said vaguely. "The worst of it is she isn't very strong.
+Peggy, I mean."
+
+"Oh, rubbish," said Mrs. Hannay. "_I_ was a peaky, piny baby, and look at
+me now!"
+
+He looked at her and laughed.
+
+"Sarah's coming in this evening," said she. "I hope you won't mind."
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Why, indeed? Nobody need mind poor Sarah now. I don't know what's
+happened. She went abroad last year, and came back quite chastened. I
+suppose you know it's all come to nothing?"
+
+"What has?"
+
+"Her marriage."
+
+"Oh, her marriage. She has told _you_ about it?"
+
+"My dear, she's told everybody about it. He was an angel; and he's been
+going to marry her for the last four years. I say, Wallie, do you think
+he really was?"
+
+"Do I think he really was an angel? Or do I think he really was going to
+marry her?"
+
+"If he _was_, you know, perhaps he wouldn't."
+
+"Oh no, if he was, he would; because he wouldn't know what he was in
+for. Anyhow the angel has flown, has he? I fancy some rumour must have
+troubled his bright essence."
+
+Mrs. Hannay suppressed her own opinion, which was that the angel, wings
+and all, was merely a stage property in the comedy of respectability that
+poor Sarah had been playing in so long. He was one of many brilliant and
+entertaining fictions which had helped to restore her to her place in
+society. "And you really," she repeated, "don't mind meeting her?"
+
+"I don't think I mind anything very much now."
+
+The entrance of the lady showed him how very little there really was to
+mind. Lady Cayley had (as her looking-glass informed her) both gone off
+and come on quite remarkably in the last three years. Her face presented
+a paler, softer, larger surface to the eye. Her own eye had gained in
+meaning and her mouth in sensuous charm; while her figure had acquired a
+quality to which she herself gave the name of "presence." Other women
+of forty might go about looking like incarnate elegies on their dead
+youth; Lady Cayley's "presence" was as some great ode, celebrating the
+triumph of maturity.
+
+She took the place Mrs. Hannay had vacated, settling down by Majendie
+among the cushions. "How delightfully unexpected," she murmured, "to
+meet _you_ here."
+
+She ignored the occasion of their last meeting, just as she had then
+ignored the circumstances of their last parting. Lady Cayley owed her
+success to her immense capacity for ignoring. In her way, she lived the
+glorious life of fantasy, lapped in the freshest and most beautiful
+illusions. Not but what she saw through every one of them, her own and
+other people's; for Lady Cayley's intelligence was marvellously subtle
+and astute. But the fierce will by which she accomplished her desires
+urged her intelligence to reject and to destroy whatever consideration
+was hostile to the illusion. It was thus that she had achieved
+respectability.
+
+But respectability accomplished had lost all the charm of its young
+appeal to the imagination; and it was not agreeing very well with Lady
+Cayley just at present. The sight of Majendie revived in her memories of
+the happy past.
+
+"Mr. Majendie, why have I not met you here before?"
+
+Some instinct told her that if she wished him to approve of her, she must
+approach him with respect. He had grown terribly unapproachable with
+time.
+
+He smiled in spite of himself. "We did meet, more than three years ago."
+
+"I remember." Lady Cayley's face shone with the illumination of her
+memory. "So we did. Just after you were married?"
+
+She paused discreetly. "You haven't brought Mrs. Majendie with you?"
+
+"N--no--er--she isn't very well. She doesn't go out much at night."
+
+"Indeed? I _did_ hear, didn't I, that you had a little--" She paused, if
+anything, more discreetly than before.
+
+"A little girl. Yes. That history is a year old now."
+
+"Wallie!" cried Mrs. Hannay, "it's a year and three months. And a darling
+she is, too."
+
+"I'm sure she is," said Sarah in the softest voice imaginable. There was
+another pause, the discreetest of them all. "Is she like Mr. Majendie?"
+
+"No, she's like her mother." Mrs. Hannay was instantly transported with
+the blessed vision of Peggy. "She's got blue, blue eyes, Sarah; and the
+dearest little goldy ducks' tails curling over the nape of her neck."
+
+Majendie's sad face brightened under praise of Peggy.
+
+"Sweet," murmured Sarah. "I love them when they're like that." She saw
+how she could flatter him. If he loved to talk about the baby, _she_
+could talk about babies till all was blue. They talked for more than half
+an hour. It was the prettiest, most innocent conversation in which Sarah
+had ever taken part.
+
+When Majendie had left (he seldom kept it up later than ten o'clock), she
+turned to Mrs. Hannay.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" said she. "He looks awful."
+
+"He's married the wrong woman, my dear. That's what's the matter with
+him."
+
+"I knew he would. He was born to do it."
+
+"Thank goodness," said Mrs. Hannay, "he's got the child."
+
+"Oh--the child!"
+
+She intimated by a shrug how much she thought of that consolation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+The new firm of Hannay & Majendie promised to do well. Hannay had a
+genius for business, and Majendie was carried along by the inspiration
+of his senior partner. Hannay was the soul of the firm and Majendie its
+brain. He was, Hannay maintained, an ideal partner, the indefatigable
+master of commercial detail.
+
+The fourth year of his marriage found Majendie supremely miserable at
+home; and established, in his office, before a fair, wide prospect of
+financial prosperity. The office had become his home. He worked there
+early and late, with a dumb, indomitable industry. For the first time in
+his life Majendie was beginning to take an interest in his business.
+Disappointed in the only form of happiness that appealed to him, he
+applied himself gravely and steadily to shipping, finding some personal
+satisfaction in the thought that Anne and Peggy would benefit by this
+devotion. There was Peggy's education to be thought of. When she was
+older they would travel. There would be greater material comfort and a
+wider life for Anne. He himself counted for little in his schemes. At
+thirty-five he found himself, with all his flames extinguished, settling
+down into the dull habits and the sober hopes of middle age.
+
+To the mind of Gorst, the spectacle of Majendie in his office was, as he
+informed him, too sad for words. To Majendie's mind nothing could well be
+sadder than the private affairs of Gorst, to which he was frequently
+required to give his best attention.
+
+The prodigal had been at last admitted to Prior Street on a footing of
+his own. He blossomed out in perpetual previous engagements whenever he
+was asked to dine; but he had made a bargain with Majendie by which he
+claimed unlimited opportunity for seeing Edie as the price of his promise
+to reform. This time Majendie was obliged to intimate to him that his
+reform must be regarded as the price of his admission.
+
+For, this time, in the long year of his exile, the prodigal's prodigality
+had exceeded the measure of all former years. And, to his intense
+surprise, he found that Majendie drew the line somewhere. In consequence
+of this, and of the "entanglement" to which Majendie had once referred,
+the aspect of Gorst's affairs was peculiarly dark and threatening.
+
+In the spring of the year they gathered to their climax. One afternoon
+Gorst appeared in Majendie's office, sat down with a stricken air, and
+appealed to his friend to help him out.
+
+"I thought you _were_ out," said Majendie.
+
+"So I am. It's because I'm so well out that I'm in for it. Evans's have
+turned her off. She's down on her luck--and--well--you see, _now_ she
+wants me to marry her."
+
+"I see. Well--"
+
+"Well, of course I can't. Maggie's a dear little thing, but--you see--I'm
+not the first."
+
+"You're sure of that?"
+
+"Certain. She confessed, poor girl. Besides, I knew it. I'm not a brute.
+I'd marry her if I'd been the first and only one. I'd marry her if I were
+sure I'd be the last. I'd marry her, as it is, if I cared enough for her.
+Always provided I could keep her. But you know--"
+
+"You don't care and you can't keep her. What are you going to do for
+her?"
+
+Gorst in his anguish glared at Majendie.
+
+"I can't do anything. That's the damnedest part of it. I'm simply cleaned
+out, till I get a berth somewhere."
+
+Majendie looked grave. This time the prodigal had devoured his living.
+"You're going to leave her there, then. Is that it?"
+
+"No, it isn't. There's another fellow who'd marry her, if she'd have him,
+but she won't. That's it."
+
+"Because she's fond of you, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know about being fond," said Gorst sulkily. "She's fond of
+anybody."
+
+"And what do you want me to do?"
+
+"I'd be awfully glad if you'd go and see her."
+
+"See her?"
+
+"Yes, and explain the situation. I can't. She won't let me. She goes mad
+when I try. She keeps on worrying at it from morning to night. When I
+don't go, she writes. And it knocks me all to pieces."
+
+"If she's that sort, what good do you suppose I'll do by seeing her?"
+
+"Oh, she'll listen to reason from any one but me. And there are things
+you can say to her that I can't. I say, will you?"
+
+"I will if you like. But I don't suppose it will do one atom of good. It
+never does, you know. Where does the woman live?"
+
+He took down the address on the visiting-card that Gorst gave him.
+
+Between six and seven that evening he presented himself at one of many
+tiny, two-storied, red brick and stucco houses that stood in a long flat
+street, each with a narrow mat of grass laid before its bay-window. It
+was the new quarter of the respectable milliners and clerks; and Majendie
+gathered that the prodigal had taken some pains to lodge his Maggie with
+decent people. He reasoned farther that such an arrangement could only be
+possible, given the complete rupture of their relations.
+
+A clean, kindly woman opened the door. She admitted with some show of
+hesitation that Miss Forrest was at home, and led him to a sitting-room
+on the upper floor. As he followed her he heard a door open; a dress
+rustled on the landing, and another door opened and shut again.
+
+Maggie was not in the room as Majendie entered. From signs of recent
+occupation he gathered that she had risen up and fled at his approach.
+
+The woman went into the adjoining room and returned, politely
+embarrassed. "Miss Forrest is very sorry, sir, but she can't see
+anybody."
+
+He wrote his name on Gorst's card and sent her back with it.
+
+Then Maggie came to him.
+
+He remembered long afterwards the manner of her coming; how he heard her
+blow her poor nose outside the door before she entered; how she stood on
+the threshold and looked at him, and made him a stiff little bow; how she
+approached shyly and slowly, with her arms hanging awkwardly at her
+sides, and her eyes fixed on him in terror, as if she were drawn to him
+against her will; how she held Gorst's card tight in her poor little
+hand; how her eyes had foreknowledge of his errand and besought him to
+spare her; and how in her awkwardness she yet preserved her inimitable
+grace.
+
+He could hardly believe that this was the girl he had once seen in
+Evans's shop when he was buying flowers for Anne. The girl in Evans's
+shop was only a pretty girl. Maggie, at five-and-twenty, living under
+Gorst's "protection," and attired according to his taste, was almost
+(but not quite) a pretty lady. Maggie was neither inhumanly tall, nor
+inhumanly slender; she was simply and supremely feminine. She was dressed
+delicately in black, a choice which made brilliant the beauty of her
+colouring. Her hair was abundant, fawn-dark, laced with gold. Her face
+was a full short oval. Its whiteness was the tinged whiteness of pure
+cream, with a rose in it that flamed, under Maggie's swift emotions, to a
+sudden red. She had soft grey eyes dappled with a tawny green. Her little
+high-arched nose was sensitive to the constant play of her upper lip; and
+that lip was so short that it couldn't always cover the tips of her
+little white teeth. Majendie judged that Maggie's mouth was the prettiest
+feature in her face, and there was something about it that reminded him,
+preposterously, of Anne. The likeness bothered him, till he discovered
+that it lay in that trick of the lifted lip. But the small charm that
+was so brief and divine an accident in Anne was perpetual in Maggie. He
+thought he should get tired of it in time.
+
+Maggie had been crying. Her sobs had left her lips still parted; her
+eyelids were swollen; there were little ashen shades and rosy flecks all
+over her pretty face. Her diminutive muslin handkerchief was limp with
+her tears. As he looked at her he realised that he had a painful and
+disgusting task before him, and that there would be no intelligence in
+the girl to help him out.
+
+He bade her sit down; for poor Maggie stood before him humbly. He told
+her briefly that his friend, Mr. Gorst, had asked him to explain things
+to her, and he was beginning to explain them, very gently, when Maggie
+cut him short.
+
+"It's not that I want to be married," she said sadly. "Mr. Mumford would
+_marry_ me."
+
+"Well--then--" he suggested, but Maggie shook her head. "Isn't he nice to
+you, Mr. Mumford?"
+
+"He's nice enough. But I can't marry 'im. I won't. I don't love 'im. I
+can't--Mr. Magendy--because of Charlie."
+
+She looked at him as if she thought he would compel her to marry Mr.
+Mumford.
+
+"Oh dear--" said Maggie, surprised at herself, as she began to cry again.
+
+She pressed the little muslin handkerchief to her eyes; not making a show
+of her grief; but furtive, rather, and ashamed.
+
+And Majendie took in all the pitifulness of her sweet, predestined
+nature. Pretty Maggie could never have been led astray; she had gone out,
+fervent and swift, dream-drunk, to meet her destiny. She was a creature
+of ardours, of tenderness, and of some perverse instinct that it would be
+crude to call depravity. Where her heart led, her flesh, he judged, had
+followed; that was all. Her brain had been passive in her sad affairs.
+Maggie had never schemed, or calculated, or deliberated. She had only
+felt.
+
+"See here," he said. "Charlie _can't_ marry you. He can't marry anybody."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, for one thing, he's too poor."
+
+"I know he's poor."
+
+"And you wouldn't be happy if he did marry you. He couldn't make you
+happy."
+
+"I'd be unhappy, then."
+
+"Yes. And he'd be unhappy, too. Is that what you want?"
+
+"No--no--no! You don't understand."
+
+"I'll try to. What do you want? Tell me."
+
+"To help him."
+
+"You can't help him," he said softly.
+
+"I couldn't help him if 'e was rich. I can help him if he's poor."
+
+He smiled. "How do you make that out, Maggie?"
+
+"Well--he ought to marry a lady, I know. But he can't marry a lady. She'd
+cost him pounds and pounds. If he married me I'd cost him nothing. I'd
+work for him."
+
+Majendie was startled at this reasoning. Maggie was more intelligent than
+he had thought.
+
+She went on. "I can cook, I can do housework, I can sew. I'm learning
+dressmaking. Look--" She held up a coarse lining she had been stitching
+at when he came. From its appearance he judged that Maggie was as yet a
+novice in her art.
+
+"I'd work my fingers to the bone for him."
+
+"And you think he'd be happy seeing you do that? A gentleman can't let
+his wife work for him. He has to work for her." He paused. "And there's
+another reason, Maggie, why he can't marry you."
+
+Maggie's head drooped. "I know," she said. "But I thought--if he was
+poor--he wouldn't mind so much. They don't, sometimes."
+
+"I don't think you quite know what I mean."
+
+"I do. You mean he's afraid. He won't trust me. He doesn't think I'm very
+good. But I would be--if he married me--I would--I would indeed."
+
+"Of course you would. Whatever happens you're going to be good. That
+wasn't what I meant by the other reason."
+
+Her face flamed. "Has he left off caring for me?"
+
+He was silent, and the flame died in her face.
+
+"Does he care for somebody else?"
+
+"It would be better for you if you could think so."
+
+"_I_ know," she said; "it's the lady he used to send flowers to. I
+thought it was all right. I thought it was funerals."
+
+She sat very still, taking it in.
+
+"Is he going to marry her?"
+
+"No. He isn't going to marry her."
+
+"She's not got enough money, I suppose. _She_ can't help him."
+
+"You must leave him free to marry somebody who can."
+
+He waited to see what she would do. He expected tears, and a storm of
+jealous rage. But all Maggie did was to sit stiller than ever, while her
+tears gathered, and fell, and gathered again.
+
+Majendie rose. "I may tell Mr. Gorst that you accept his explanation?
+That you understand?"
+
+"Am I never to see him again?"
+
+"I'm afraid not."
+
+"Nor write to him?"
+
+"It's better not. It only worries him."
+
+She looked round her, dazed by the destruction of her dream.
+
+"What am I to do, then? Where am I to go to?"
+
+"Stay where you are, if you're comfortable. Your rent will be paid for
+you, and you shall have a small allowance."
+
+"But who's going to give it me?"
+
+"Mr. Gorst would, if he could. As he cannot, I am."
+
+"You mustn't," said she. "I can't take it from you."
+
+He had approached this point with a horrible dread lest she should
+misunderstand him.
+
+"Better to take it from me than from him, or anybody else," he said
+significantly; "if it must be."
+
+But Maggie had not misunderstood.
+
+"I can work," she said. "I can pay a little _now_."
+
+"No, no. Never mind about that. Keep it--keep all you earn."
+
+"I can't keep it. I'll pay you back again. I'll work my fingers to the
+bone."
+
+"Oh, not for me" he said, laughing, as he took up his hat to go.
+
+Maggie lifted her sad head, and faced him with all her candour.
+
+"Yes," she said, "for you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Majendie owned to a pang of shame as he turned from Maggie's door. In
+justice to Gorst it could not be said that he had betrayed the
+passionate, perverted creature. And yet there was a sense in which
+Maggie's betrayal cried to Heaven, like the destruction of an innocent.
+Majendie's finer instinct had surrendered to the charm of her appealing
+and astounding purity, by which he meant her cleanness from the mercenary
+taint. He had seen himself contending, grossly, with a fierce little
+vulgar schemer, who (he had been convinced) would hang on to poor Gorst's
+honour by fingers of a murderous tenacity. His own experience helped him
+to the vision. And Maggie had come to him, helpless as an injured child,
+and feverish from her hurt. He had asked her what she had wanted with
+Gorst, and it seemed that what Maggie wanted was "to help him."
+
+He said to himself that he wouldn't be in Gorst's place for a good deal,
+to have that on his conscience.
+
+As it happened, the prodigal's conscience was by no means easy. He called
+in Prior Street that evening to learn the result of his friend's
+intervention. He submitted humbly to Majendie's judgment of his conduct.
+He agreed that he had been a brute to Maggie, that he might certainly do
+worse than marry her, and that his best reason for not marrying her was
+his knowledge that Maggie was ten times too good for him. He was only
+disposed to be critical of his friend's diplomacy when he learned that
+Majendie had not succeeded in persuading Maggie to marry Mr. Mumford.
+But, in the end, he allowed himself to be convinced of the futility, not
+to say the indecency, of pressing Mr. Mumford upon the girl at the moment
+of her fine renunciation. He admitted that he had known all along that
+Maggie had her own high innocence. And when he realised the extent to
+which Majendie had "got him out of it," his conscience was roused by a
+salutary shock of shame.
+
+But it was to Edith that he presented the perfection of his penitence.
+From his stillness and abasement she gathered that, this time, her
+prodigal had fallen far. That night, before his departure, he confirmed
+her sad suspicions.
+
+"It's awfully good of you," he said stiffly, "to let me come again."
+
+"Good of me? Charlie!" Her eyes and voice reproached him for this
+strained formality.
+
+"Yes. Mrs. Majendie's perfectly right. I've justified her bad opinion of
+me."
+
+"I don't know that you've justified it. I don't know what you've done. No
+more does she, my dear. And you didn't think, did you, that Walter and I
+were going to give you up?"
+
+"I'd have forgiven you if you had."
+
+"I couldn't have forgiven myself, or Walter."
+
+"Oh, Walter--if it hadn't been for him I should have gone to pieces this
+time. He's pulled me out of the tightest place I ever was in."
+
+"I'm sure he was very glad to do it."
+
+"I wish to goodness I could do the same for him."
+
+"Why do you say that, Charlie?"
+
+The prodigal became visibly embarrassed. He seemed to be considering the
+propriety of a perfect frankness.
+
+"I say, you don't mind my asking, do you? Has anything gone wrong with
+him and Mrs. Majendie?"
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Well, you see, I've got a sort of notion that she doesn't understand
+him. She's never realised in the least the stuff he's made of. He's the
+finest man I know on God's earth, and somehow, it strikes me that she
+doesn't see it."
+
+"Not always, I'm afraid."
+
+"Well--see here--you'll tell her, won't you, what he's done for me?
+That ought to open her eyes a bit. You can give me away as much as
+ever you like, if you want to rub it in. Only tell her that I've chucked
+it--chucked it for good. He's made me loathe myself. Tell her that I'm
+not as bad as she thinks me, but that I probably would be if it hadn't
+been for him. And you, Edie, only I'm going to leave you out of it."
+
+"You certainly may."
+
+"It's because she knows all that already; and the point is to get her to
+appreciate him."
+
+Edith smiled. "I see. And I'm to make what I like of you, if I can only
+get her to appreciate him?"
+
+"Yes. Tell her that, as far as I'm concerned, I respect her attitude
+profoundly."
+
+"Very well. I'll tell her just what you've told me."
+
+She spoke of it the next day, when Anne came to read to her in the
+afternoon. Anne was as punctual as ever in her devotion, but the passion
+of it had been transferred to Peggy. The child was with them, playing
+feebly at her mother's knee, and Anne's mood was propitious. She listened
+intently. It was the first time that she had brought any sympathy into a
+discussion of the prodigal.
+
+"Did he tell you," said she, "what Walter did for him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor what had happened?"
+
+"No. I didn't like to ask him. Whatever it was, it has gone very deep
+with him. Something has made a tremendous difference."
+
+"Has it made him change his ways?"
+
+"I believe it has. You see, Nancy, that's what Walter was trying for. He
+always had that sort of hold on him. That was why he was so anxious not
+to have him turned away."
+
+Anne's face was about to harden, when Peggy gave the sad little cry that
+brought her mother's arms about her. Peggy had been trying vainly to
+climb into Anne's lap. She was now lifted up and held there while her
+feet trampled the broad maternal knees, and her hands played with Anne's
+face; stroking and caressing; smoothing her tragic brow to tenderness;
+tracing with soft, attentive fingers the line of her small, close mouth,
+until it smiled.
+
+Anne seized the little hands and kissed them. "My lamb," she said, "what
+are you doing to your poor mother's face?" She did not see, as Edith saw,
+that Peggy, a consummate little sculptor, was moulding her mother's face
+into the face of love.
+
+"I should never have dreamed," said Anne, "of turning him away, if I had
+thought he was really going to reform. Besides, I was afraid he would be
+bad for Walter."
+
+"It didn't strike you that Walter might be good for him?"
+
+"It struck me that I had to be strong for Walter."
+
+"Ah, Walter can be strong for all of us." She paused on that, to let it
+sink in. Anne's face was thoughtful.
+
+"Anne, if you believed that all I've said to you was true, would you
+still object to having Charlie here?"
+
+"Certainly not. I would be the first to welcome him."
+
+"Then, will you write to him of your own accord, and tell him that, if
+what I've told you is true, you'll be glad to see him? He knows why you
+couldn't receive him before, dear, and he respects you for it."
+
+Anne thought better of Mr. Gorst for that respect. It was the proper
+attitude; the attitude she had once vainly expected Majendie to take.
+
+"After all, what have I to do with it? He comes to see you."
+
+"Yes, dear; but I shan't always be here for him to see. And if I thought
+that you would help Walter to look after him--will you?"
+
+"I will do what I can. My little one!"
+
+Anne bowed her head over the soft forehead of her little one. She had a
+glad and solemn vision of herself as the protector of the penitent. It
+was in keeping with all the sanctities and pieties she cherished. She had
+not forgotten that Canon Wharton (a saint if ever there was one) had
+enjoined on her the utmost charity to Mr. Gorst, should he turn from his
+iniquity.
+
+She was better able to admit the likelihood of that repentance because
+Mr. Gorst had never stood in any close relation to her. His iniquity had
+not profoundly affected her. But she found it impossible to realise that
+Majendie's influence could count for anything in his redemption. Where
+her husband was concerned Anne's mind was made up, and it refused to
+acknowledge so fine a merit in so gross a man. She was by this time
+comfortably fixed in her attitude, and any shock to it caused her
+positive uneasiness. Her attitude was sacred; it had become one of the
+pillars of her spiritual life. She was constrained to look for
+justification lest she should put herself wrong with God.
+
+She considered that she had found it in Majendie's habits, his silences,
+his moods, the facility of his decline upon the Hannays and the Ransomes.
+He was determined to deteriorate, to sink to their level.
+
+To-night, when he remarked tentatively that he thought he would dine at
+the Hannays', she made an effort to stop him.
+
+"Must you go?" said she. "You are always dining with them."
+
+"Why?--do you mind?" said he.
+
+"Well--when it's night after night--"
+
+"Is it that you mind my dining with the Hannays, or my leaving you?"
+
+"I mind both."
+
+"Oh--if I'd thought you wanted me to stay--"
+
+She made no answer, but rose and led the way to the dining-room.
+
+He followed. Her arm had touched him as she passed him in the doorway,
+and his heart beat thickly, as he realised the strength of her dominion
+over him. She had only to say "Stay," and he stayed; or "Come," and she
+could always draw him to her. He had never turned away. His very mind was
+faithful to her. It had not even conceived, and it would have had
+difficulty in grasping, the idea of happiness without her.
+
+To-night he was profoundly moved by this intimation of his wife's desire
+to have him with her. His surprise and satisfaction made him curiously
+shy. He sat through two courses without speaking, without lifting his
+eyes from his plate; brooding over their separation. He was wondering
+whether, after all, it had been so inevitable; whether he had
+misunderstood her; whether, if he had had the sense to understand, he
+might not have kept her. It was possible she had been wounded by his
+absences. He had never explained them. He could not tell her that she
+had made him afraid to be alone with her.
+
+The situation, which he had accepted so obediently, had been more than
+a mere mortal man could endure. Especially in the terrible five minutes
+after dinner, before they settled for the evening, when each sat waiting
+to see if the other had anything to say. Sometimes Majendie would take up
+his book and Anne her work. She would sew, and sew, patient, persistent,
+in her tragic silence. And when he could bear it no longer, he would put
+down his book and go quietly away, to relieve the intolerable constraint
+that held her. Sometimes it was Anne who read, while he smoked and
+brooded. Then, in the warm, consenting stillness of the summer evenings
+(they were now in June), her presence seemed to fill the room; he was
+possessed by the sense of it; by the sound of her breathing; by the
+stirring of her body in the chair, or of her fingers on the pages of her
+book; and he would get up suddenly and leave her, dragging his passion
+from the sight of her.
+
+As he considered these things, many perplexities, many tendernesses,
+stirred in him and kept him still.
+
+Anne watched him from the other end of the table, and her thoughts
+debased him. He seemed to her disagreeably incommunicative, and she had
+found an ignoble explanation of his mood. There had been too much salt in
+the soup, and now there was something wrong with the salmon. He had not
+responded to her apology for these accidents, and she supposed that they
+had been enough to spoil his evening with her.
+
+She had come to consider him a creature grossly wedded to material
+things.
+
+"It's a pity you stayed," said she. "Mrs. Hannay would have given you a
+better dinner."
+
+He had nothing to say to so preposterous a charge. His eyes were fixed
+more than ever on his plate. She saw his face flush as he bowed his head
+in eating; she allowed her fancy to rest in its morbid abhorrence of the
+act, and in its suspicion of its grossness. She went on, lashed by her
+fancy. "I cannot understand your liking to go there so much, when you
+might go to the Eliotts or the Gardners. They're always asking you, and
+you haven't been near them for a year."
+
+"Well, you see, the Hannays let me do what I like. They don't bother me."
+
+"Do the Eliotts bother you?"
+
+"They bore me. Horribly."
+
+"And the Gardners?"
+
+"Sometimes--a little."
+
+"And Canon Wharton? No. I needn't ask."
+
+He laughed. "You needn't. _He_ bores me to extinction."
+
+"I'm sorry it is my friends who are so unfortunate."
+
+"It's your husband who's unfortunate. He is not an intellectual person.
+Nor a spiritual one, either, I'm afraid."
+
+He looked up. Anne had finished her morsel, and her fingers played
+irritably with the hand-bell at her side. Poor Majendie's abstraction had
+combined with his appetite to make him deplorably slow over his dinner.
+She still sat watching him, pure from appetite, in resignation that
+veiled her contempt of the male hunger so incomprehensibly prolonged. He
+had come to dread more than anything those attentive, sacrificial eyes.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," he said, "to keep you waiting."
+
+She rang the bell. "Will you have the lamp lit in the drawing-room or the
+study?"
+
+He looked at her. There was no lamp for him in her eyes.
+
+"Whichever you like. I think I shall go over to the Hannays', after all."
+
+He went; and by the lamp in the drawing-room Anne sat and brooded in her
+turn.
+
+She said to herself: "It's no use my trying to keep him from them. It
+only irritates him. He lets me see plainly that he prefers their society
+to mine. I don't wonder. They can flatter him and kow-tow to him, and I
+cannot. He can be a little god to them; and he must know what he is to
+me. We haven't a thought in common--not a feeling--and he cannot bear to
+feel himself inferior. As for me--if I've married beneath me, I must pay
+the penalty."
+
+But there was no penalty for her in these reflections. They satisfied
+her. They were part of the curious mental process by which she justified
+herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Up to that moment when he had looked across the dinner table at Anne,
+Majendie had felt secure in the bonds of his marriage. Anne's repugnance
+had broken the natural tie; but up to that moment he had never doubted
+that the immaterial link still held. If at times her presence was a
+bodily torment, at other times he felt it as a spiritual protection. His
+immense charity made allowance for all the extraordinary attitudes of
+Anne. In his imagination they reduced themselves to one, the attitude of
+inscrutable physical repugnance. He had accepted (as he had told himself
+so often) the situation she had created. It appeared to him, of all
+situations, the crudest and most simple. It had its merciful limits. The
+discomfort of it, once vague, had grown, to his thwarted senses, almost
+brutally defined. He could at least say, "It was here the trouble began,
+and here, therefore, it shall end."
+
+He thought he had sounded the depths of her repugnance, and could measure
+by it his own misery. He said, "At any rate I know where I am"; and he
+believed that if he stayed where he was, if he respected his wife's
+prejudices, her prejudices would be bound to respect him. He could not
+make her love him, but at least he considered that he had justified his
+claim to her respect.
+
+And now she had opened his eyes, and he had looked at her, and seen
+things that had not (till that moment) come into his vision of their
+separation. He saw subtler hostilities, incurable, indestructible
+repugnances, attitudes at which his charity stood aghast. The situation
+(so far from being crude and simple) involved endless refinements and
+complexities of torture. He despaired now of ever reaching her.
+
+Majendie had caught his first clear sight of the spiritual ramparts.
+
+"I'm not good enough for her," he said. She had kept him with her that
+evening, not because she wanted him to stay, but because she wanted him
+to understand.
+
+He had shown her that he understood by going to the friends for whom he
+was good enough, who were good enough for him.
+
+He went more than ever now, sometimes to the Ransomes, oftener to Gorst,
+oftenest of all to Lawson Hannay. He liked more than ever to sit with
+Mrs. Hannay; to lean up against the everlasting soft cushion she
+presented to his soreness. More than ever he liked to talk to her of
+simple things; of their acquaintance; of Edith, who had been a little
+better, certainly no worse, this summer; of Peggy, of Peggy's future and
+her education. He would sit for hours on Mrs. Hannay's sofa, his body
+leaning back, his head bowed forward, his chin sunk on his breast,
+listening attentively, yet with a dazed and rather stupid expression, to
+Mrs. Hannay's conversation. His own was sometimes monotonous and a little
+dull. He was growing even physically heavy. But Mrs. Hannay did not seem
+to mind.
+
+There was a certain justice in Anne's justification. He didn't
+consciously prefer the Hannays' society to hers; but he actually found it
+more agreeable, and for the reasons she suspected. They did worship him;
+and their worship did make him feel superior, perhaps when he was least
+so. They did flatter him; for, as Mrs. Hannay said, "He needed a little
+patting on the back, now and then, poor fellow." And perhaps he was
+really sinking a little to her level; he had so lost his sense of her
+vulgarity.
+
+He used to wonder how it was that she had kept Lawson straight. Perfectly
+straight, Lawson had been, ever since his marriage. Possibly, probably,
+if he had married a wife too inflexibly refined, he would have deviated
+somewhat from that perfect straightness. His tastes had always been a
+little vulgar. But there was no reason why he should go abroad to gratify
+them when he possessed the paragon of amenable vulgarity at home. The
+Gardners, whose union was almost miraculously complete, were not in their
+way more admirably mated. And Lawson's reform must have been a stiff job
+for any woman to tackle at the start.
+
+A woman of marvellous ingenuity and tact. For she had kept Lawson
+straight without his knowing it. She had played off one of Lawson's
+little weaknesses against the other; had set, for instance, his fantastic
+love of eating against his sordid little tendency to drink. Lawson
+was now a model of sobriety.
+
+And as she kept Lawson straight without his knowing it, she helped
+Majendie, too, without his knowing it, to hold his miserable head up. She
+ignored, resolutely, his attitude of dejection. She reminded him that if
+he could make nothing else out of his life he could make money. She
+convinced him that life, the life of a prosperous ship-owner in Scale,
+was worth living, as long as he had Edith and Anne and Peggy to make
+money for, especially Peggy.
+
+And Majendie became more and more absorbed in his business, and more and
+more he found his pleasure in it; in making money, that is to say, for
+the persons whom he loved.
+
+He had come even to find pleasure in making it for a person whom he did
+not love, and hardly knew. He provided himself with one punctual and
+agreeable sensation every week when he sent off the cheque for the small
+sum that was poor Maggie's allowance. Once a week (he had settled it),
+not once a month. For Maggie might (for anything he knew) be thriftless.
+She might feast for three days, and then starve; and so find her sad way
+to the street.
+
+But Maggie was not thriftless. First at irregular intervals, weeks it
+might be, or months, she had sent him various diminutive sums towards the
+payment of her debt. Maggie was strictly honourable. She had got a little
+work, she said, and hoped soon to have it regularly. And soon she began
+to return to him, weekly, the half of her allowance. These sums he put by
+for her, adding the interest. Some day there would be a modest hoard for
+Maggie. He pleased himself, now and then, by wondering what the girl
+would do with it. Buy a wedding-gown perhaps, when she married Mr.
+Mumford. Time, he felt, was Mr. Mumford's best ally. In time, when she
+had forgotten Gorst, Maggie would marry him.
+
+Maggie's small business entailed a correspondence out of all proportion
+to it. He had not yet gone to see her. Some day, he supposed, he would
+have to go, to see whether the girl, as he phrased it vaguely, was
+"really all right." With little creatures like Maggie you never could be
+sure. There would always be the possibility of Gorst's successor, and he
+had no desire to make Maggie's maintenance easier for him. He had made
+her independent of all iniquitous sources of revenue.
+
+At last, suddenly, the postal orders and the letters ceased; for three
+weeks, four, five weeks. Then Majendie began to feel uneasy. He would
+have to look her up.
+
+Then one morning, early in September, a letter was brought to him at the
+office (Maggie's letters were always addressed to the office, never to
+his house). There was no postal order with it. For three weeks Maggie
+had been ill, then she had been very poorly, very weak, too weak to sit
+long at work. And so she had lost what work she had; but she hoped to get
+more when she was strong again. When she was strong the repayments would
+begin again, said Maggie. She hoped Mr. Majendie would forgive her for
+not having sent any for so long. She was very sorry. But, if it wasn't
+too much to ask, she would be very glad if Mr. Majendie would come some
+day and see her.
+
+He sent her an extra remittance by the bearer, and went to see her the
+next day. His conscience reproached him for not having gone before.
+
+Mrs. Morse, the landlady, received him with many appearances of relief.
+In her mind he was evidently responsible for Maggie. He was the guardian,
+the benefactor, the sender of rent.
+
+"She's been very ill, sir," said Mrs. Morse; "but she wouldn't 'ave you
+written to till she was better."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I'm sure I can't say, sir, wot 'er feeling was."
+
+It struck him as strange and pathetic that Maggie could have a feeling.
+He was soon to know that she had little else.
+
+He found her sitting by a fire, wrapped in a shawl. It slipped from her
+as she rose, as she leaped, rather, from her seat like one unnerved by a
+sudden shock. He stooped and picked up the shawl before he spoke, that he
+might give the poor thing time to recover herself.
+
+"Did I startle you?" he said.
+
+Maggie was still breathing hard. "I didn't think you'd come."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't know," she said weakly, and sat down again. Maggie was very
+weak. She was not like the Maggie he remembered, the creature of
+brilliant flesh and blood. Maggie's flesh was worn and limp; it had a
+greenish tint; her blood no longer flowed in the cream rose of her face.
+She had parted with the sources of her radiant youth.
+
+She seemed to him to be suffering from severe anaemia. A horrible thought
+came to him. Had the little thing been starving herself to save enough to
+repay him?
+
+"What have you been doing to yourself, Maggie?" he said brusquely.
+
+Maggie looked frightened. "Nothing," she said.
+
+"Working your fingers to the bone?"
+
+She shook her head. "I was no good at dressmaking. They wouldn't have
+me."
+
+"Well--" he said kindly.
+
+"There are a great many things I can do. I can make wreaths and crosses
+and bookays. I made them at Evans's. I could go back there. Mr. Evans
+would have me. But Mrs. Evans wouldn't." She paused, surveying her
+immense resources. "Or I could do the flowers for people's parties.
+I used to. Do you think--perhaps--they'd have me?"
+
+Maggie's pitiful doubt was always whether "they" would "have" her.
+
+"Yes," he said, smiling at her pathos, "perhaps they would."
+
+"Or I could do embroidery. I learned, years ago, at Madame Ponting's.
+I could go back. Only Madame wouldn't have me." (Maggie was palpably
+foolish; but her folly was adorable.)
+
+"Why wouldn't she have you?"
+
+Maggie reddened, and he forbore to press the unkind inquiry. He gathered
+that Maggie's ways had been not unknown to Madame Ponting, "years ago."
+
+"Would you like to see some of my embroidery?"
+
+He assented gravely. He did not want to turn Maggie from the path of
+industry, which was to her the path of virtue.
+
+She went to a cupboard, and returned with her arms full of little rolls
+and parcels wrapped in paper. She unfolded and spread on the table
+various squares, and strips, and little pieces, silk and woollen stuffs,
+and canvas, exquisitely embroidered. There were flowers in most of the
+patterns--flowers, as it appeared, of Maggie's fancy.
+
+"I say, did you do all that yourself, Maggie?"
+
+"Yes, that's what I _can_ do. I make the patterns out of me head, and
+they're mostly flowers, because I love 'em. It's pretty, isn't it?" said
+Maggie, stroking tenderly a pattern of pansies, blue pansies, such as she
+had never sold in Evans's shop.
+
+"Very pretty--very beautiful."
+
+"I've sold lots--to a lady, before I was ill. See here."
+
+Maggie unfolded something that was pinned in silver paper with a peculiar
+care. It was a small garment, in some faint-coloured silk, embroidered
+with blue pansies (always blue pansies).
+
+"That's a frock," said she, "for a little girl. You've got a little
+girl--a little fair girl."
+
+He reddened. How the devil, he wondered, does she know that I have a
+little fair girl? "I don't think it would fit her," he said.
+
+Maggie reddened now.
+
+"Oh--I don't want you to buy it. I don't want you to buy anything. Only
+to tell people."
+
+So much he promised her. He tried to think of all the people he could
+tell. Mrs. Hannay, Mrs. Ransome, Mrs. Gardner--no, Mrs. Gardner was
+Anne's friend. If Anne had been different he could have told Anne. He
+could have told her everything. As it was--No.
+
+He rose to go, but, instead of going, he stayed and bought several pieces
+of embroidery for Mrs. Hannay, and the frock, not for Peggy, but for Mrs.
+Ransome's little girl. They haggled a good deal over the price, owing
+to Maggie's obstinate attempts to ruin her own market. (She must always
+have been bent on ruining herself, poor child.) Then he tried to go
+again, and Mrs. Morse came in with the tea-tray, and Maggie insisted on
+making him a cup of tea, and of course he had to stay and drink it.
+
+Maggie revived over her tea-tray. Her face flushed and rounded again to
+an orb of jubilant content. And he asked her if she were happy. If she
+liked her work.
+
+She hesitated. "It's this way," she said. "Sometimes I can't think of
+anything else. I can sit and sit at it for weeks on end. I don't want
+anything else. Then, all of a sudden, something comes over me, and I
+can't put in another stitch. Sometimes--when it comes--I'm that tired,
+it's as if I 'ad weights on me arms, and I couldn't 'old them up to sew.
+And sometimes, again, I'm that restless, it's as if you'd lit a fire
+under me feet. I'm frightened," said Maggie, "when I feel it coming. But
+I'm only tired now."
+
+She broke off; but by the expression of her face, he saw that her
+thoughts ran underground. He wondered where they would come out again.
+
+"I haven't seen anybody this time," said Maggie, "for six months."
+
+"Not even Mr. Mumford?"
+
+"Oh, no, not him. I don't want to see him." And her thoughts ran back to
+where they started from.
+
+"It hasn't come lately," said Maggie, "it hasn't come for quite a long
+time."
+
+"What hasn't come?"
+
+"What I've been telling you--what I'm afraid of."
+
+"It won't come, Maggie," he said quickly. (He might have been her father
+or the doctor.)
+
+"If it does, it'll be worse now."
+
+"Why should it be?"
+
+"Because I can't get away from it. I've nowhere to go to. Other girls
+have got their friends. I've got nobody. Why, Mr. Majendie--think--there
+isn't a place in this whole town where I can go to for a cup of tea."
+
+"You'll make friends."
+
+She shook her head, guarding her little air of tragic wisdom.
+
+Mrs. Morse popped her head in at the door, and out again.
+
+"Is that woman kind to you?"
+
+"Yes, very kind."
+
+"She looks after you well?"
+
+"Looks after me? I don't want looking after."
+
+"Takes care of you, I mean. Gives you plenty of nice nourishing things to
+eat?"
+
+"Yes, plenty of nice things. And she comes and sits with me sometimes."
+
+"You like her?"
+
+"I love her."
+
+"That's all right. You see, you _have_ got a friend, after all."
+
+"Yes," said Maggie mournfully; and he saw that her thoughts were with
+Gorst. "But it isn't the same thing, is it?"
+
+Majendie could not honestly say it was; so he smiled, instead.
+
+"It's a shame," said she, "to go on like this when you've been so good to
+me."
+
+"If I wasn't, you couldn't do it, could you? But what you want me to
+understand is that, however good I've been, I haven't made things more
+amusing for you."
+
+"No, no," said Maggie vehemently, "I didn't mean that. Indeed I didn't.
+I only wanted you to know--"
+
+"How good _you_'ve been. Is that it? Well, because you're good, there's
+no reason why you should be dull. Is there?"
+
+"I don't know," said Maggie simply.
+
+"See here, supposing that, instead of sending me all you earn, you keep
+some of it to play with? Get Mrs. What's-her-name to go with you to
+places."
+
+"I don't want to go to places," she said. "I want to send it all to you."
+
+He lapsed again into his formula. "There really is no reason why you
+should."
+
+"I want to. That's a reason, isn't it?" said she. She said it shyly,
+tentatively, solemnly almost, as if it were some point in an infant's
+metaphysics. There was no assurance in her tone, nothing to remind him
+that Maggie had been the spoiled child of pleasure whose wants were
+always reasons; nothing to suggest the perverted consciousness of power.
+
+"Well--" He straightened himself stiffly for departure.
+
+"Are you going?" she said.
+
+"I must."
+
+"Will you--come again?"
+
+"Yes, I'll come, if you want me."
+
+He saw again how piteous, how ill she looked. A pang of compassion went
+through him. And after the pang there came a warm, delicious tremor. It
+recalled the feeling he used to have when he did things for Edith, a
+sensation singularly sweet and singularly pure.
+
+It was consolation in his misery to realise that any one could want him,
+even poor, perverted Maggie.
+
+Maggie said nothing. But the flame rose in her face.
+
+Downstairs Majendie found Mrs. Morse waiting for him at the door. "What's
+been the matter with her?" he asked.
+
+"I don't rightly know, sir. But between you and me, I think she's fretted
+herself ill."
+
+"Well, you've got to see that she doesn't fret, that's all."
+
+He gave into her palm an earnest of the reward of vigilance.
+
+That night he sent off the embroidered pieces to Mrs. Hannay, and the
+embroidered frock to Mrs. Ransome; with a note to each lady recommending
+Maggie, and Maggie's beautiful and innocent art.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+As Majendie declined more and more on his inferior friendships, Anne
+became more and more dependent on the Eliotts and the Gardners. Her
+evenings would have been intolerable without them. Edith no longer
+needed her. Edith, they still said, was growing better, or certainly no
+worse; and Mr. Gorst spent his evenings in Prior Street with Edie. The
+prodigal had made his peace with Anne, and came and went unquestioned. He
+was bent on making up for his long loss of Edie, and for the still longer
+loss of her that had to be. They felt that his brilliant presence kept
+the invading darkness from her door.
+
+Autumn passed, and winter and spring, and in summer Edith was still with
+them.
+
+Anne was no longer a stranger in her husband's house since her child had
+been born in it; but in the long light evenings, after Peggy had been put
+to bed at six o'clock, Peggy's mother was once more alien and alone. It
+was then that she would get up and leave her husband (why not, since he
+left her?) and slip from Prior Street to Thurston Square; then that she
+moved once more superbly in her superior circle. She was proud of her
+circle. It was so well defined; and if the round was small, that only
+meant that there was no room in it for borderlands and other obscure and
+undesirable places. The commercial world, so terrifying in its
+approaches, remained, and always would remain, outside it. Sitting in
+Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room she forgot that the soul of Scale on Humber
+was given over to tallow, and to timber, and Dutch cheeses. But for her
+constant habit of depreciation, she could almost have forgotten that her
+husband was only a ship-owner, and a ship-owner who had gone into a
+horrible partnership with Lawson Hannay. It appeased her to belittle him
+by comparisons. He had no spiritual fineness and fire like Canon Wharton,
+no intellectual interests like Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. She had long
+ago noticed his inability to converse with any brilliance; she was now
+aware of the heaviness, the physical slowness, that was growing on him.
+He was losing the personal distinction that had charmed her once, and
+made her proud to be seen with him at gatherings of the fastidious in
+Thurston Square.
+
+Her fancy, still belittling him, ranked him now with the dull business
+men of Scale. In a few years, she said, he will be like Lawson Hannay.
+
+A change was coming over her. She was no longer apathetic. Now that she
+saw less of her husband she thought more frequently of him, if only to
+his disparagement. At times the process was unconscious; at times, when
+she caught her thoughts dealing thus uncharitably with him, she was
+touched by a pang of contrition and of shame. At times she was pulled up
+in her thinking with a sudden shock. She said to herself that he used to
+be so different, and her heart would turn gently to the man he used to
+be. Then, as in the sad days of her bridal home-coming, the dear immortal
+memory of him rose up before her, and pleaded mercy for the insufferably
+mortal man. She saw him, with the body and the soul that had been once so
+familiar to her, slender, alert, and strong, a creature of appealing
+goodness and tenderness and charm. And she was troubled with a great
+longing for the presence of the thing she had so loved. She yearned even
+for signs of the old brilliant, startling personality, in face of the
+growing dulness that she saw. She found herself recalling with a smile
+sayings of his that had once vexed and now amused her. For Anne was
+softer.
+
+At times she was aware of a new source of uneasiness. She was accustomed
+to judge all things in relation to the spiritual life. She had no other
+measure of their excellence. She had found profit for her soul in its
+divorce from her husband. She had persuaded herself that since she could
+not raise him, she herself would have sunk if she had clung to him or let
+him cling. She had felt that their tragic rupture strengthened the tie
+between her soul and God. But more than once lately, she had experienced
+difficulty in reaching her refuge, her place of peace. Something
+threatened her former inviolable security. The ramparts of the spiritual
+life were shaken. Her prayers, that were once an ascension of flamed and
+winged powers carrying her to heaven, had become mere clamorous
+petitions, drawing down the things of heaven to earth. Night and morning
+the same passionate prayer for herself and her child, the same prayer for
+her husband, painful and perfunctory; but not always now the same sense
+of absolution, of supreme and intimate communion. It was as if a veil,
+opaque but intangible, were drawn between her spirit and the Unseen. She
+thought it had come of living in perpetual contact with Walter's
+deterioration.
+
+Yet Anne was softer.
+
+Her love for Peggy had become more and more an engrossing passion, as
+Majendie left her more and more to the dominion of her motherhood. He had
+seen enough of the effect of rivalry. It was Anne's pleasure to take
+Peggy from her nurse and wash her and dress her, to tend her fine limbs,
+and comb her pale soft hair. It was as if her care for the little tender
+body had taught her patience and gentleness towards flesh and blood; as
+if, through the love it invoked, some veil was torn for her, and she saw,
+wrought in the body of her child, the wonder of the spirit's fellowship
+with earth.
+
+She dreaded the passing of the seasons, as they would take with them each
+some heart-rending charm of Peggy's infancy. Now it would be the ceasing
+of her pretty, helpless cry, as Peggy acquired mastery over things; now
+the repudiation of her delicious play, as Peggy's intellect perceived its
+puerility; and now the leaving off for ever of the speech that was
+Peggy's own, as Peggy adopted the superstition of the English language.
+A few years and Peggy would have cast off pinafores, a very few more, and
+Peggy would be at a boarding-school; and before she left it she would
+have her hair up. There was a pang for Peggy's mother in looking
+backward, and in looking forward pang upon intolerable pang.
+
+But Peggy was in no hurry to grow up. Her delicacy prolonged her babyhood
+and its sweet impunity. The sad state of Peggy's little body accounted
+for all the little sins that weighed on Peggy's mother's soul. You
+couldn't punish Peggy. An untender look made her tremble; at a harsh word
+she cried till she was sick. When Peggy committed sin she ran and told
+her mother, as if it were some wonderful and interesting experience. Anne
+was afraid that she would never teach the child the difference between
+right and wrong.
+
+In this, by some strange irony, Majendie, for all his self-effacement,
+proved more effectual than Anne.
+
+They were all three in the drawing-room one Sunday afternoon at tea-time.
+It was Peggy's hour. And in that hour she had found her moment, when her
+parents' backs were turned to the tea-table. The moment over, she came to
+Majendie, shivering with delight.
+
+"Oh, daddy, daddy," she cried, "I did 'teal some sugar. I did 'teal it my
+own self, and eated it all up."
+
+Peggy had been forbidden to touch the sugar basin ever since one very
+miserable day.
+
+"Oh, Peggy, Peggy," said her mother, "that was very naughty."
+
+"No, mummy, it wasn't. It wasn't naughty 't all."
+
+She pondered, gravely working out her case. "I'd be sorry if it was
+naughty."
+
+Majendie laughed.
+
+"If you laugh every time she's naughty, how am I to make her learn?"
+
+Majendie held out his hand. "Come here, Peggy."
+
+Peggy came and cuddled against him, smiling sidelong mischief at her
+mother.
+
+"Look here, Peggy, if you eat too much sugar, you'll be ill; and if
+you're ill, mummy'll be unhappy. See?"
+
+"I'm sorry, daddy."
+
+Peggy's mouth shook; she turned, and hid her face against his breast.
+
+"There, there," he said, petting her. "Look at mummy; she's happy now."
+
+Peggy's face peeped out, but it was not at her mother that she looked.
+
+"Are you happy, daddy?"
+
+He stooped, and kissed her, and left the room.
+
+And then Peggy said, "I'm sorry, mummy. Why did daddy go away?"
+
+"I don't know, darling."
+
+"Do you think he will come back again?"
+
+"Darling, I don't know."
+
+"You'd like him to come back, wouldn't you, mummy?"
+
+"Of course, Peggy."
+
+"Then I'll go and tell him."
+
+She trotted downstairs to the study, and came back shaking her head
+sadly.
+
+"Daddy isn't coming. Naughty daddy."
+
+"Why do you say that, Peggy?"
+
+"Because he won't come when you want him to."
+
+"Perhaps he's busy."
+
+"Yes," said Peggy thoughtfully. "I fink he's busy." She sat very quiet on
+a footstool, thinking. "I fink," she said presently, "I'd better go and
+tell daddy he isn't naughty, else he'll be dreff'ly unhappy."
+
+And she trotted downstairs and up again.
+
+"Daddy sends his love, mummy, and he _is_ busy. S'all I take your love to
+him?"
+
+That was how it went on, now Peggy was older. That was how she made her
+mother's heart ache.
+
+Anne was in terror for the time when Peggy would begin to see. For that,
+and for her own inability to teach her the stupendous difference between
+right and wrong.
+
+But one day Peggy ran to her mother, crying as if her heart would break.
+
+"Oh, muvver, muvver, kiss me," she sobbed. "I did kick daddy! Kiss me."
+
+She flung her arms round Anne's knees, as if clinging for protection
+against the pursuing vision of her sin.
+
+"Hush, hush, darling," said Anne. "Perhaps daddy didn't mind."
+
+But Peggy howled in agony. "Y-y-yes, he did. I hurted him, I hurted him.
+He minded ever so."
+
+"My little one," said Anne, "my little one!" and clung to her and
+comforted her.
+
+She saw that Peggy's little mind recognised no sin except the sin against
+love; that Peggy's little heart could not conceive that love should
+refuse to forgive her and kiss her.
+
+And Anne did not refuse.
+
+Thus her terror grew. If it was to come to Peggy that way, her knowledge
+of the difference, what was Peggy to think when she grew older? When she
+began to see?
+
+That was how Anne grew soft.
+
+Her very body was changing into the beauty of her motherhood. The
+sweetness of her face, arrested in its hour of blossom, had unfolded and
+flowered again. Her mouth had lost its sad droop, and for Peggy there
+came many times laughter, and many times that lifting of the upper lip,
+the gleam of the white teeth, and the play of the little amber mole that
+Majendie loved and Anne was ashamed of.
+
+She had become for her child that which she had been for her husband
+in her strange, immortal moments of surrender, a woman warmed and
+transfigured by a secret fire. Her new beauty remained, like a brooding
+charm, when the child was not with her.
+
+And as the seasons, passing, made her more and more a woman dear and
+desirable, Majendie's passion for her became almost insane through its
+frustration.
+
+Anne was aware of the insanity without realising its cause. He avoided
+her touch, and she wondered why. Her voice, heard in another room, drew
+his heart after her in longing. At the worst moments, to get away from
+her, he went out of the house. And she wondered where. Hours of
+stupefying depression were followed by fits of irritability that
+frightened her. And then she wished that he would not go to the Hannays,
+and eat things that disagreed with him.
+
+Little Peggy helped to make his misery more unendurable. She was always
+running to and fro between her father and her mother, with questions
+concerning kisses and other endearments, till he, too, wondered what she
+would make of it when she began to see. Everything conspired against him.
+Peggy's formidable innocence was re-enforced by the still more formidable
+innocence of her mother. Anne positively flaunted before him the
+spectacle of her maternal passion. She showered her tendernesses on the
+child, without measuring their effect on him, for whom she had none. She
+did not allow herself to wonder how he felt, when he sat there hungry,
+looking on, while the little creature, greedy for caresses, was given her
+fill of love.
+
+And when he was tortured by headache, she brought him an effervescing
+drink, and considered that she had done her duty.
+
+A worse headache than usual had smitten him one late Sunday afternoon in
+August. A Sunday afternoon that made (but for Majendie and his headache)
+a little sacred idyl, so golden was it, so holy and so happy, with Peggy
+trotting between her father's and mother's knees, and the prodigal,
+burning with penitence, upstairs in Edie's room, singing _Lead, Kindly
+Light_, in a heavenly tenor.
+
+Peggy tugged at Majendie's coat.
+
+"Sing, daddy, sing! Mummy, make daddy sing."
+
+"I can't make him sing, darling," said Anne, who was making soft eyes at
+Peggy, and curling her mouth into the shape it took when it sent kisses
+to her across the room.
+
+Instead of singing, Majendie, with his eyes on Anne, flung his arms round
+Peggy and lifted her up and covered her little face with kisses. The
+child lay across his knees with her head thrown back and her legs
+struggling, and laughed for terror and delight.
+
+Anne spoke with some austerity. "Put her down, Walter; I don't care for
+all this hugging and kissing. It excites the child."
+
+Peggy was put down. But when bed-time came she achieved an inimitable
+revenge. Anne had to pick her up from the floor to carry her to bed. At
+first Peggy refused to be carried; then she surrendered on conditions
+that brought the blood to her mother's face.
+
+From her mother's arms Peggy's head hung down as she struggled to say
+good-night a second time to daddy. He rose, and for a moment he and Anne
+stood linked together by the body of their child.
+
+And Peggy reiterated, "I'll be a good girl, mummy, if you'll kiss daddy."
+
+Anne raised her face to his and closed her eyes, and Majendie felt her
+soft lips touch his forehead without parting.
+
+That night, when he refused his supper, she looked up anxiously.
+
+"Are you not well, Walter?"
+
+"I've got a splitting headache."
+
+"You'd better take some anti-pyrine."
+
+"I'm damned if I'll take any anti-pyrine."
+
+"Well, don't, dear; but you needn't be so violent."
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+He cooled his hands against a jug of iced water, and pressed them to his
+forehead.
+
+She left her place and came and sat beside him. "Come," she said in the
+sweet voice that pierced him, "come and lie down in the study." She laid
+her hand on his shoulder, and he rose and followed her.
+
+She made him lie down on the sofa in the study, and put cushions under
+his head, and brought him the anti-pyrine. She sat beside him and dabbed
+eau-de-cologne all over his forehead, and blew on it with her soft
+breath. She paused, and sat very still, watching him, for a moment that
+seemed eternity. She didn't like the flush on his cheek nor the queer
+burning brilliance in his eyes. She was afraid he was in for a bad
+illness, and fear made her kind.
+
+"Tell me how you feel, dear," she said gently. She was determined to be
+very gentle with him.
+
+"Can't you see how I feel?" he answered.
+
+She laid her firm, cool hand upon his forehead; and he gave a cry, the
+low cry she had once heard and dreamed of afterwards. He flung up his
+arm, and caught at her hand, and dragged it down, and held it close
+against his mouth, and kissed it.
+
+She drew in her breath. Her hand stiffened against his in her effort to
+withdraw it; and when he had let it go, she turned from him and left him
+without a word.
+
+He threw himself face downwards on the cushions, wounded and ashamed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+It was Friday evening, the Friday that followed that Sunday when
+Majendie's hope had risen at the touch of his wife's hand, and died
+again under her repulse.
+
+Friday was the day which Maggie Forrest marked in her calendar sometimes
+with a query and sometimes with a cross. The query stood for "Will he
+come?" The cross meant "He came." To-night there was no cross, though
+Maggie had brushed her hair till it shone again, and put on her best
+dress, and laid out her little table for tea, and sat there waiting, like
+the ladies in those houses where he went; like Mrs. Hannay or Mrs.
+Ransome who bought her embroidery; or like that grand lady with the
+title, who had come with Mrs. Ransome--the lady who had bought more
+embroidery than anybody, the scent on whose clothes was enough, Maggie
+said, to take your breath away.
+
+Maggie loved her tea-table. She embroidered beautiful linen cloths for
+it. Every Friday it was decked as an altar dedicated to the service of a
+god--in case he came.
+
+He hadn't come. It was past eight, yet Maggie left the altar standing
+with the cloth on it, and waited. It would be terrible if the god should
+come and find no altar. Once, even at this late hour, he had come.
+
+The house was very quiet. Mrs. Morse was out marketing, and Maggie was
+alone. Friday was market night in Scale. She wondered if he would
+remember that, and come. Her heart beat violently with the thought that
+he might be beginning to come late. The others had come late when they
+began to love her.
+
+She had forgotten them, or only cared to remember such of their ways as
+threw light on Mr. Majendie's. For he was, as yet, obscure to her.
+
+It seemed to her that a new thing had come to her, a thing marvellously
+and divinely new, this, that she should be waiting, counting hours, and
+marking days on calendars, measuring her own pulses with a hand, now on
+her heart, now on her throbbing forehead, and wondering what could be the
+matter with her. Maggie was six-and-twenty; but ever since she was nine
+she had been waiting and wondering. For there always had been somebody
+whom Maggie loved insanely. First it was the little boy who lived in the
+house opposite, at home. He had abandoned Maggie's society, and broken
+her heart on the day when he "went into trousers." Then it was the big
+boy in her father's shop who gave her chocolates one day and snubbed her
+cruelly the next. Then it was the young man who came to tune the piano
+in the back parlour. Then the arithmetic master in the little
+boarding-school they sent her to. And then (for Maggie's infatuations
+rose rapidly in the social scale) it was one of the young gentlemen who
+"studied" at the Vicarage. He was engaged to Maggie for a whole term; and
+he went away and jilted her, so that Maggie's heart was broken a second
+time. At last, on an evil day for Maggie, it was one of the gentlemen
+(not so young) staying up at "the big house." He watched for Maggie in
+dark lanes, and followed her through the fields at evening, till one
+evening he made her turn and follow her heart and him. And so Maggie went
+on her predestined way.
+
+For after him there was the gentleman who came to Madame Ponting's, and
+after him, Mr. Gorst, who came to Evans's, and after Mr. Gorst--Last year
+Maggie could not have believed that there could be another after him. For
+each of these persons she would willingly have died. To each of them her
+soul leaped up and bowed itself, swept forward like a flame bowed and
+driven by the wind.
+
+As long as each loved her, the flame burned steadily and still. Maggie's
+soul was appeased for a season. As each left her, the flame died out in
+tears, and her pulses beat feebly, and her life languished. Maggie went
+from flame to flame; for the hours when there was nobody to love simply
+dropped into the darkness and were forgotten. She left off living when
+she had to leave off loving. To be sure there was always Mr. Mumford. He
+was a tobacconist, and he lived over the shop in a house fronting the
+pier, a unique and dominant situation. And he was prepared to overlook
+the past and make Maggie his wife and mistress of the house fronting the
+pier. Unfortunately, Maggie did not love him. You couldn't love Mr.
+Mumford. You could only be sorry for him.
+
+But though Maggie went from flame to flame, there were long periods of
+placidity when she loved nothing but her work, and was as good as gold.
+Maggie's father wouldn't believe it. He had never forgiven her, not even
+when the doctor told him that there was no sense in which the poor girl
+could be held responsible; they should have looked after her better, that
+was all. Maggie's father, the grocer, did not deal in smooth, extenuating
+phrases. He called such madness sin. So did Maggie in her hours of peace
+and sanity. She was terrified when she felt it coming on, and hid her
+face from her doom. But when it came she went to meet it, uplifted,
+tremulous, devoted, carrying her poor scorched heart in her hand for
+sacrifice.
+
+Each time that she loved, it was as if her former sins had been blotted
+out; for there came a merciful forgetfulness that renewed, almost, her
+innocence. Her heart had its own perverted constancy. No lover was like
+her last lover, and for him she rejected and repudiated the past.
+
+And each time that she loved she was torn asunder. She gave herself in
+pieces; her heart first, then her soul, then, if it must needs be, her
+body. The finest first, then all that was left of her. That was her
+unique merit, what marked her from the rest.
+
+Majendie, she divined by instinct, had recognised her quality. He was the
+only one who had. And he had asked nothing of her. She would have lived
+miserably for Charlie Gorst. She would have died with joy for Mr.
+Majendie. And Maggie feared death worse than life, however miserable.
+
+But there was something in her love for Majendie that revealed it as a
+thing apart. It had not made her idle. Her passion for Mr. Majendie
+blossomed and flowered, and ran over in beautiful embroidery. That
+industry ministered to it. Her heart was set on having those little sums
+to send him every week; for that was the only way she could hope to
+approach him of her own movement. She loved the curt little notes in
+which Majendie acknowledged the receipt of each postal order. She tied
+them together with white ribbon, and treasured them in a little box under
+lock and key. All the time, she knew he had a wife and child, but her
+fancy refused to recognise Mrs. Majendie's existence. It allowed him to
+have a child, but not a wife. She knew that he spent his Saturdays and
+Sundays with them at his home. He never came, or could come, on a
+Saturday or Sunday, and Maggie refused to consider the significance of
+this. She simply lived from Friday to Friday. No other day in the week
+existed for Maggie. All other days heralded it, or followed in its train.
+The blessed memory of it rested upon Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday and
+Thursday glowed and vibrated with its coming; Mondays and Tuesdays were
+forlorn and grey. Terrible were the days which followed a Friday when he
+had not come.
+
+He had not come last Friday, nor the Friday before that. She had always a
+comfortable little theory to cheat herself with, to account for his not
+coming. He had been ill last Friday; that, of course, was why he had not
+come, Maggie knew. She did not like to think he was ill; but she did like
+to think that only illness could prevent his coming. And she had always
+believed what she liked.
+
+The presumption in Maggie's mind amounted to a certainty that he would
+come to-night.
+
+And at nine o'clock he came.
+
+Her eyes shone as she greeted him. There was nothing about her to remind
+him of the dejected, anaemic girl who had sat shivering over the fire last
+September. Maggie had got all her lights and colours back again. She was
+lifted from her abasement, glorified. And yet, for all her glory, Maggie,
+on her good behaviour, became once more the prim young lady of the lower
+middle class. She sat, as she had been used to sit on long, dull Sunday
+afternoons in the parlour above the village shop, bolt upright on her
+chair, with her meek hands folded in her lap. But her eyes were fixed on
+Majendie, their ardent candour contrasting oddly with the stiff modesty
+of her deportment.
+
+"Have you been ill?" she asked.
+
+"Why should I have been ill?"
+
+"Because you didn't come."
+
+"You mustn't suppose I'm ill every time I don't come. I might be a
+chronic invalid at that rate."
+
+He hadn't realised how often he came. _He_ didn't mark the days with
+crosses in a calendar.
+
+"But you _were_ ill, this time, I know."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+The processes of Maggie's mind amused him. It was such a funny, fugitive,
+burrowing, darting thing, Maggie's mind, transparent and yet secret in
+its ways.
+
+"I know, because I saw--" she hesitated.
+
+"Saw what?"
+
+"The light in your window."
+
+"My window?"
+
+"Yes. The one that looks out on the garden at the back. It was twelve
+o'clock on Sunday night, and on Monday night the light was gone, and I
+knew that you were better."
+
+"As it happens, you saw the light in my sister's room. She's always ill."
+
+"Oh," said Maggie; and her face fell with the fall of her great argument.
+
+"Sometimes," he said, "the light burns all night long."
+
+"Yes," said Maggie, musing; "sometimes it burns all night long. But in
+the room above that room, there's a little soft light that burns all
+night, too. That's your room."
+
+"No, that's my wife's room."
+
+Maggie became thoughtful. "I used to think that was where your little
+girl sleeps, because of the night-light. Then your room's next it."
+Maggie desired to know all about the blessed house that contained him.
+
+"That's the spare room," he said, laughing.
+
+"Goodness! what a lot of rooms. Then yours is the one next the nursery,
+looking on the street. Fancy! That little room."
+
+Again she became thoughtful. So did he.
+
+"I say, Maggie, how did you know those lights burned all night?"
+
+"Because I saw them."
+
+"You can't see them."
+
+"Yes, you can; from the little alley that goes along at the back."
+
+He hadn't thought of the alley. Nobody ever passed that way after dark;
+it ended in a blind wall.
+
+"What were you doing there at twelve o'clock at night?"
+
+He looked for signs of shame and confusion on Maggie's face. But Maggie's
+face was one flame of joy. Her eyes were candid.
+
+"Walking up and down," she said. "I was watching."
+
+"Watching?"
+
+"Your window."
+
+"You mustn't, Maggie. You mustn't watch people's windows. They don't like
+it. It doesn't do."
+
+The flame was troubled; but not the lucid candour of Maggie's eyes. "I
+had to. I thought you were ill. I came to make sure. I was all alone. I
+didn't let anybody see me. And when I saw the light I was frightened. And
+I came again the next night to see. I didn't think you'd mind. It's not
+as if I'd come to the front door, or written letters, was it?"
+
+"No. But you must never do that again, mind. How did you know the house?"
+
+Maggie hung her head. "I saw your little girl go in there."
+
+"Were you 'watching'?"
+
+"N-no. It was an accident."
+
+"How did you know it was my little girl?"
+
+"I saw you walking with her, one Saturday, in the Park. It was an
+accident--really. I was taking my work to that lady who buys from
+me--Mrs. 'Anny."
+
+"I see."
+
+"You're not angry with me, Mr. Magendy?"
+
+"Of course not. What made you think I was?"
+
+"Your face. You would be angry if I followed you. But I wouldn't do such
+a thing. I've never followed any one--never. And I wouldn't do it now,
+not if I was paid," she protested.
+
+"It's all right, Maggie, it's all right."
+
+Maggie clasped her knees and sat thinking. She seemed to know by
+intuition when it was advantageous to be silent, and when to speak. But
+Majendie was thinking, too. He was wondering whether he was not being a
+little too kind to Maggie; whether a little unkindness would not be a
+salutary change for both of them. Why couldn't the girl marry Mr.
+Mumford? He didn't want to profit by the transaction. He would have
+gladly paid Mr. Mumford to marry her, and take her away.
+
+He put his hand over his eyes as a veil for his thoughts; and when he
+took it away again, Maggie had risen and was going on soundless feet
+towards the door.
+
+"Don't go," she said, "I'll be back in a minute."
+
+He flung himself back in the chair and waited. The minutes dragged. He
+had wanted Maggie away; and now she had gone he wanted her back again.
+
+Maggie did not stay away long enough to give him time to discover how
+much he wanted her. She came back, carrying a tray with cups and a
+steaming coffee pot, and set it on the table.
+
+A fragrance of strong coffee filled the room. The service of the god had
+begun.
+
+She stood close against his side, yet humbly, as she handed him his cup.
+"It's nice and strong," she said. "Drink it. It'll do your head good."
+
+And she sat down opposite him, and watched him drink it.
+
+Maggie's watching face was luminous and tender. In her eyes there was the
+look that love gives for his signal--love that, in that moment, was pure
+and sweet as a mother's. She was glad to think that the coffee was
+strong, and would do his head good. She had no other thought in her mind,
+at that moment.
+
+After the coffee she brought matches and cigarettes, which she offered
+shyly. Nature had given her an immortal shyness, born of her extreme
+humility.
+
+"They're all right," she said, "Charlie smoked them." (Charlie was at
+times a useful memory.)
+
+She struck a match and prepared to light the cigarette. This she did
+gravely and efficiently, with no sign of feminine consciousness or
+coquetry. It was part of the solemn evening service of the god. And, as
+he smoked, the devotee retreated to her chair and watched him.
+
+"Maggie," he said, "supposing Mr. Mumford was to come in?"
+
+"He won't. Sunday's _his_ day; or would be, if I let him 'ave a day."
+
+"Why don't you?"
+
+She shook her head. "I've seen nobody."
+
+There was silence for five minutes.
+
+"Mr. Magendy--"
+
+"Majendie, Maggie, Majendie."
+
+"Mr. Mashendy--I'm beginning to be afraid."
+
+"What are you afraid of?"
+
+"What I've always told you about. That awful feeling. It's coming on
+again, I think."
+
+"It won't come, Maggie, it won't come. Don't think about it, and it won't
+come."
+
+He didn't understand very clearly what Maggie was talking about; but he
+remembered that, last September, after her illness, she had been afraid
+of something. And he remembered that he had comforted her with some such
+words as these.
+
+"Yes," said she, "but I feel it coming."
+
+"Maggie, you oughtn't to live alone like this. See here, you ought to
+marry. You ought to marry Mr. Mumford. Why don't you?"
+
+"I don't want to marry anybody. And I don't love him."
+
+"Well, don't think about that other thing. Don't think about it. You'll
+be all right."
+
+"I won't think," said Maggie, and thought profoundly.
+
+"Mr. Majendie," she said suddenly.
+
+"Madam."
+
+"You mustn't be afraid. I shall never do anything I know you wouldn't
+like me to."
+
+"All right. Only don't think too much about that, either."
+
+"I can't help thinking. You've been so good to me."
+
+"I should try and forget that, too, a little more, if I were you. I'm
+only paying some of Mr. Gorst's debts for him."
+
+The name called up no colour to her cheek. Maggie had forgotten Gorst,
+and all _he_ had done for her.
+
+"And you're paying me back."
+
+She shook her head. "I can't ever pay you back."
+
+Poor little girl! Was that what her mind was always running on?
+
+There was silence again between them. And then Majendie looked at Maggie.
+
+She was sitting very still, as if she were waiting for something, and yet
+content. Her eyes were swimming, as if with tears; but there were no
+tears in them. Her face was reddening, as if with shame, but there was no
+shame in it. She seemed to be listening, dazed and enchanted, to her own
+secret, the running whisper of her blood. Her lips were parted, and, as
+he looked at her, they closed and opened again in sympathy with the
+delicate tremors that moved her throat under her rounded chin. In her
+brooding look there was neither reminiscence nor foreboding; it was the
+look of a creature surrendered wholly to her hour.
+
+As he looked at her his nerves sent an arrow of warning, a hot tremor
+darting from heart to brain.
+
+"I must go now, Maggie," he said.
+
+When he stood up, his knees shook under him.
+
+"Not yet," said Maggie. "I'm all alone in the house, and I'm afraid."
+
+"There's nothing to be afraid of," he said roughly. "I've got to go."
+
+He strode towards the door while Maggie stared after him in terror. She
+understood nothing but that he was going to leave her. What had she done
+to drive him away?
+
+"You're ill," she cried, as she followed him, panting in her fright.
+
+He pushed her back gently from the threshold.
+
+"Don't be a little fool, Maggie. I'm not ill."
+
+Out in the street, five yards from Maggie's door, he battled with a
+vision of her that almost drove him back again. "It was I who was a
+fool," he thought. "I shall go back. Why not? She is predestined. Why not
+I as well as anybody else?"
+
+All the way to his own door an insistent, abominable voice kept calling
+to him, "Why not? Why not?"
+
+He went with noiseless footsteps up his own stairs, past the dark doors
+below, past Edith's open door where the lamp still burned brightly beyond
+the threshold. At Anne's door he paused.
+
+It stood ajar in a dim light. He pushed it softly open and went in.
+
+Anne and her child lay asleep under the silver crucifix.
+
+Peggy had been taken into Anne's bed, and had curled herself close up
+against her mother's side. Her arm lay on Anne's breast; one hand
+clutched the border of Anne's nightgown. The long thick braid of Anne's
+hair was flung back on the pillow, framing the child's golden head in
+gold.
+
+His eyes filled with tears as he looked at them. For a moment his heart
+stood still. Why not he as well as anybody else? His heart told him why.
+
+As he turned he sighed. A sigh of longing and tenderness, and of
+thankfulness for a great deliverance. Above all, of thankfulness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+The light burned in Edith's room till morning; for her spine kept sleep
+from her through many nights. They no longer said, "She is better, or
+certainly no worse." They said, "She is worse, or certainly no better."
+The progress of her death could be reckoned by weeks and measured by
+inches. Soon they would be giving her morphia, to make her sleep.
+Meanwhile she was terribly awake.
+
+She heard her brother's soft footsteps as he passed her door. She heard
+him pause on the upper landing and creep into the room overhead. She
+heard him go out again and shut himself up in the little room beyond.
+There came upon her an awful intuition of the truth.
+
+The next day she sent for him.
+
+"What is it, Edie?" he said.
+
+She looked at him with loving eyes, and asked him as Maggie had asked,
+"Are you ill?"
+
+He started. The question brought back to him vividly the scene of the
+night before; brought back to him Maggie with her love and fear.
+
+"What is it? Tell me," she insisted.
+
+He owned to headaches. She knew he often had them.
+
+"It's not a bit of use," she said, "trying to deceive _me_. It's not
+headaches. It's Anne."
+
+"Poor Anne. I think she's all right. After all, she's got the child, you
+know."
+
+"Yes. _She_'s got Peggy. If I could see you all right, too, I should die
+happy."
+
+"Don't worry about me. I'm not worth it."
+
+She gazed at him searchingly, confirmed in her intuition. That was the
+sort of thing poor Charlie used to say.
+
+"It's my fault," she said. "It always has been."
+
+"Angel, if you could lay everybody's sins on your own shoulders, you
+would."
+
+"I mean it. You were right and I was wrong. Ah, how one pays! Only
+_you_'ve had to pay for my untruthfulness. I can see it now. If I'd done
+as you asked me, in the beginning, and told her the truth--"
+
+"She wouldn't have married me. No, Edie. You're assuming that I've lived
+to regret that I married her. I never have regretted it for one single
+moment. Not for myself, that is. For her, yes. Granted that I'm as
+unhappy as you please, I'd rather be unhappy with her than happy without
+her. See?"
+
+"Walter--if you keep true to her, I believe you'll have your happiness
+yet. I don't know how it's coming. It may come very late. But it's bound
+to come. She's good--"
+
+He assented with a groan. "Oh, much _too_ good."
+
+"And the goodness in her must recognise the goodness in you; when she
+understands. I believe she's beginning to understand. She doesn't know
+how much she understands."
+
+"Understands what?"
+
+"Your goodness. She loved you for it. She'll love you for it again."
+
+"My dear Edie, you're the only person who believes in my goodness--you
+and Peggy."
+
+"I and Peggy. And Charlie and the Hannays. And Nanna and the
+Gardners--and God."
+
+"I wish God would give Anne a hint that He thinks well of me."
+
+"Dear--if you keep true to her--He will."
+
+If he kept true to her! It was the second time she had said it. It was
+almost as if she had divined what had so nearly happened.
+
+"I think," she said, "I'd like to talk to Anne, now, while I can talk.
+You see, once they go giving me morphia"--she closed her eyes. "Just let
+me lie still for half an hour, and then bring Anne to me."
+
+She lay still. He watched her for an hour. And he knew that in that hour
+she had prayed.
+
+He found Anne sitting on the nursery floor, playing with Peggy. "Edie
+wants you," he said, loosening Peggy's little hands as they clung about
+his legs.
+
+"Mother must go, darling," said she.
+
+But all Peggy said was, "Daddy'll stay."
+
+He did not stay long. He had to restrain himself, to go carefully with
+Peggy, lest he should help her to make her mother's heart ache.
+
+Anne found Nanna busied about the bed. Nanna was saying, "Is that any
+easier, Miss Edie?"
+
+"It's heavenly, Nanna," said Edie, stifling a moan. "Oh dear, I hope in
+the next world I shan't feel as if my spine were still with me, like
+people when their legs are cut off."
+
+"Miss Edie, what an idea!"
+
+"Well, Nanna, you can't tell whether it mayn't be so. Anne, dear, you've
+got such a nice, pretty body, why have you such a withering contempt for
+it? It behaves so well to you, too. That's more than I can say of mine;
+and yet, I believe I shall quite miss it when it's gone. At any rate, I
+shall be glad that I was decent to the poor thing while it was with me.
+Run away now, please, Nanna, and shut the door."
+
+Nanna thought she knew why Miss Edie wanted the door shut. She, too, had
+her intuitive forebodings. She was aware, the whole household was aware,
+that the mistress cared more for her child than for the husband who had
+given it her. Their master's life was not altogether happy. They wondered
+many times how he was going to stand it.
+
+"Anne" said Edith, "I'm uneasy about Walter."
+
+"You need not be," said Anne.
+
+"Why? Aren't you?"
+
+"I know he hasn't been well lately--"
+
+"How can you expect him to be well when he's so unhappy?"
+
+Anne was silent.
+
+"How long is it going to last, dear? And where is it going to end?"
+
+"Edith, you needn't be afraid. I shall never leave him."
+
+That was not what Edith was afraid of, but she did not say so.
+
+"How can I," Anne went on, "when I believe the Church's doctrine of
+marriage?"
+
+"Do you? Do you believe that love is a provision for the soul's
+redemption of the body? or for the body's redemption of the soul?"
+
+"I believe that, having married Walter, whatever he is or does, I cannot
+leave him without great sin."
+
+"Then you'll be shocked when I tell you that if your husband were a bad
+man, I should be the first to implore you to leave him, though he is my
+brother. Where there can be no love on either side there's no marriage,
+and no sacrament. That's _my_ profane belief."
+
+"And when there's love on one side only?"
+
+"The sacrament is there, offered by the loving person, and refused by the
+unloving. And that refusal, my dear child, may, if you like, be a great
+sin--supposing, of course, that the love is pure and devoted. I hardly
+know which is the worst sin, then, to refuse to give, or to refuse to
+take it; or to take it, and then throw it away. What would you think if
+Peggy hardened her little heart against you?"
+
+"My Peggy!"
+
+"Yes, your Peggy. It's the same thing. You'll see it some day. But I want
+you to see it now, before it's too late."
+
+"Edie, if you'd only tell me where I've failed! If you're thinking of
+our--our separation--"
+
+"I was not. But, since you _have_ mentioned it, I can't help reminding
+you that you fell in love with Walter because you thought he was a saint.
+And so I don't see what's to prevent you now. He's qualifying. He mayn't
+be perfect; but, in some ways, a saint couldn't very well do more. Has it
+never occurred to that you are indulging the virtue that comes easiest to
+you, and exacting from him the virtue that comes hardest? And he has
+stood the test."
+
+"It was his own doing--his own wish."
+
+"Is it? I doubt it--when he's more in love with you than he was before he
+married you."
+
+"That's all over."
+
+"For you. Not for him. He's a man, as you may say, of obstinate
+affections."
+
+"Ah, Edie--you don't know."
+
+"I know," said Edith, "you're perfectly sweet, the way you take my
+scoldings. It's cowardly of me, when I'm lying here safe, and you can't
+scold back again. But I wouldn't do it if I didn't love you."
+
+"I know--I know you love me."
+
+"But I couldn't love you so much, if I didn't love Walter more."
+
+"You well may, Edie. He's been a good brother to you."
+
+"Some day you'll own he's been as good a husband as he's been a brother.
+Better; for it's a more difficult post, my dear. I don't really think my
+body, spine and all, can have tried him more than your spirit."
+
+"What have I done? Tell me--tell me."
+
+"Done? Oh, Nancy, I hate to have to say it to you. What haven't you done?
+There's no way in which you haven't hurt and humiliated him. I'm not
+thinking of your separation--I'm thinking of the way you've treated him,
+and his affection for you and Peggy. You won't let him love you. You
+won't even let him love his little girl."
+
+"Does he say that?"
+
+"Would he say it? People in my peculiar position don't require to have
+things said to them; they _say them_. You see, if I didn't say them now
+I should have to get up out of my grave and do it, and that would be ten
+times more disagreeable for you. It might even be very uncomfortable for
+me."
+
+"Edie, I wish I knew when you were serious."
+
+"Well, if I'm not serious now, when _shall_ I be?"
+
+Anne smiled. "You're very like Walter."
+
+"Yes. He's every bit as serious as I am. And he's getting more and more
+serious every day."
+
+"Oh, Edie, you don't understand. I--I've suffered so terribly."
+
+"I do understand. I've gone through it--every pang of it--and it's all
+come back to me again through your suffering--and I know it's been worse
+for you. I've told him so. It's because I don't want you to suffer more
+that I'm saying these awful things to you."
+
+"Oh! _Am_ I to suffer more?"
+
+"I believe that's the only way your happiness can come to you--through
+great suffering. I'm only afraid that the suffering may come through
+Peggy, if you don't take care."
+
+"Peggy--"
+
+It was her own terror put into words.
+
+"Yes. That child has a terrible capacity for loving. And for her that
+means suffering. She loves you. She loves her father. Do you suppose she
+won't suffer when she sees? Her little heart will be torn in two between
+you."
+
+"Oh, Edith--I cannot bear it."
+
+She hid her face from the anguish.
+
+"You needn't. That's it. It rests with you."
+
+"With me? If you would only tell me how."
+
+"I can't tell you anything. It'll come. Probably in the way you least
+expect it. But--it'll come."
+
+"Edie, I feel as if you held us all together. And when you've gone--"
+
+"You mean when _it's_ gone. When it's 'gone,'" said Edie, smiling. "I
+shall hold you together all the more. You needn't sigh like that."
+
+"Did I sigh?"
+
+As Anne stooped over the bed she sighed again, thinking how Edith's
+loving arms used to leap up and hold her, and how they could never hold
+anything any more.
+
+Of all the things that Edith said to her that afternoon, two remained
+fixed in Anne's memory: how Peggy would suffer through overmuch
+loving--she remembered that saying, because it had confirmed her terror;
+and how love was a provision for the soul's redemption of the body, or
+for the body's redemption of the soul. This she remembered, because she
+did not understand it.
+
+That was in August. Before the month was out they were beginning to give
+Edith morphia.
+
+In September Gorst came to see her for the last time.
+
+In October she died in her brother's arms.
+
+In the days that followed, it was as if her spirit, refusing to depart
+from them, had rested on the sister she had loved. Spirit to spirit,
+she stooped, kindling in Anne her own dedicated flame. In the white
+death-chamber, and through the quiet house, the presence of Anne, moving
+with a hushed footfall, was like the presence of a blessed spirit. Her
+face was as a face long hidden upon the heart of peace. Her very grief
+aspired; it had wings, lifting her towards her sister in her heavenly
+place.
+
+For Anne, in the days that followed, was possessed by a great and burning
+charity. Mrs. Hannay called and was taken into the white room to see
+Edith. And Anne's heart went out to Mrs. Hannay, when she spoke of the
+beauty and goodness of Edith; and to Lawson Hannay, when he pressed her
+hand without speaking; and to Gorst, when she saw him stealing on tiptoe
+from Edith's room, his face swollen and inflamed with grief. Her heart
+went out to all of them, because they had loved Edith.
+
+And to her husband her heart went out with a tenderness born of an
+immense pity and compassion. For the first three days, Majendie gave no
+sign that he was shaken by his sister's death. But on the evening of the
+day they buried her, Anne found him in the study, sitting in his low
+chair by the fire, his head sunk, his body bowed forward over his knees,
+convulsed with a nervous shivering. He started and stared at her
+approach, and straightened himself suddenly. She held out her hand. He
+looked at it dumbly, as if unwilling or afraid to take it.
+
+"My dear," she said softly.
+
+Then she knelt beside him, and drew his head down upon her breast, and
+let it rest there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+It was a Thursday night in October, three weeks after Edith's death. Anne
+was in her room, undressing. She moved noiselessly, with many tender
+precautions, for fear of waking Peggy, and for fear of destroying the
+peace that possessed her own soul like heavenly sleep. It was the mystic
+mood that went before prayer.
+
+In those three weeks Anne felt that she had been brought very near to
+God. She had not known such stillness and content since the days at
+Scarby that had made her life terrible. It was as if Edith's spirit in
+bliss had power given it to help her sister, to draw Anne with it into
+the divine presence.
+
+And the dead woman bound the living to each other also, as she had said.
+How she bound them Anne had not realised until to-day. It was Mrs.
+Elliott's day, her Thursday. Anne had spent half an hour in Thurston
+Square, and had come away with a cold, unsatisfactory feeling towards
+Fanny. Fanny, for the first time, had jarred on her. She had so plainly
+hesitated between condolence and congratulation. She seemed to be
+secretly rejoicing in Edith Majendie's death. Her manner intimated
+clearly that a burden had been removed from her friend's life, and that
+the time had now come for Anne to blossom out and enjoy herself. Anne had
+been glad to get away from Fanny, to come back to the house in Prior
+Street and to find Walter waiting for her. Fanny, in spite of her
+intellectual rarity, lacked the sense that, after all, _he_ had, the
+sense of Edith's spiritual perfection. Strangely, inconsistently,
+incomprehensibly, he had it. He and his wife had that in common, if they
+had nothing else. They were bound to each other by Edith's dear and
+sacred memory, an immaterial, immortal tie. They would always share their
+knowledge of her. Other people might take for granted that her terrible
+illness had loosened, little by little, the bond that held them to her.
+They knew that it was not so. They never found themselves declining on
+the mourner's pitiful commonplaces, "Poor Edie"; "She is released"; "It's
+a mercy she was taken." It was their tribute to Edith's triumphant
+personality that they mourned for her as for one cut off in the fulness
+of a strong, beneficent life.
+
+For those three weeks Anne remained to her husband all that she had been
+on the night of Edith's burial.
+
+And, as she felt that nobody but her husband understood what she had lost
+in Edith, she realised for the first time his kindred to his sister. She
+forced herself to dwell on his many admirable qualities. He was
+unselfish, chivalrous, the soul of honour. On his chivalry, which touched
+her more nearly than his other virtues, she was disposed to put a very
+high interpretation. She felt that, in his way, he acknowledged her
+spiritual perfection, also, and reverenced it. If their relations only
+continued as they were, she believed that she would yet be happy with
+him. To think of him as she had once been obliged to think was to profane
+the sorrow that sanctified him now. She was persuaded that the shock of
+Edith's death had changed him, that he was ennobled by his grief. She
+could not yet see that the change was in herself. She said to herself
+that her prayers for him were answered.
+
+For it was no longer an effort, painful and perfunctory, to pray for her
+husband. Since Edith's death she had prayed for him, as she had prayed in
+the time of reconciliation that followed her first discovery of his sin.
+She was horrified when she realised how in six years her passion of
+redemption had grown cold. It was there that she had failed him, in
+letting go the immaterial hold by which she might have drawn him with her
+into the secret shelter of the Unseen. She perceived that in those years
+her spiritual life had suffered by the invasion of her earthly trouble.
+She had approached the silent shelter with cries of supplication for
+herself and for her child, the sweet mortal thing she had loved above all
+mortal things. Every year had made it harder for her to reach the sources
+of her help, hardest of all to achieve the initiatory state, the
+nakedness, the prostration, the stillness of the dedicated soul. Too many
+miseries cried and strove in her. She could no longer shut to her door,
+and bar the passage to the procession of her thoughts, no longer cleanse
+and empty her spirit's house for the divine thing she desired to dwell
+with her.
+
+And now she was restored to her peace; lifted up and swept, effortless,
+into the place of heavenly help. Anne's soul had no longer to reach out
+her hand and feel her way to God, for it was God who sought for her and
+found her. She heard behind her, as it were, the footsteps of the divine
+pursuing power. Once more, as in the mystic days before her marriage, she
+had only to close her eyes, and the communion was complete. At night,
+when her prayer was ended, she lay motionless in the darkness, till she
+seemed to pass into the ultimate bliss, beyond the reach of prayer. There
+were moments when she felt herself to be close upon the very vision of
+God, the beatitude of the pure.
+
+After these moments Anne found herself contemplating her own inviolate
+sanctity.
+
+There was in Anne an immense sincerity, underlying a perfect tangle of
+minute deceptions and hypocrisies. She was not deceived as to the supreme
+event. She was truly experiencing the great spiritual passion which,
+alone of passions, is destined to an immortal satisfaction. She had all
+but touched the end of the saint's progress. But she was ignorant, both
+of the paths that brought her there, and the paths that had led and might
+again lead, her feet astray.
+
+Each night, when she closed her bedroom door, she felt that she was
+entering into a sanctuary. She was profoundly, tenderly grateful to her
+husband for the renunciation that made that refuge possible to her. She
+accepted her blessed isolation as his gift.
+
+This Thursday had been a day of little lacerating distractions. She had
+gone through it thirsting for the rest and surrender, the healing silence
+of the night.
+
+She undressed slowly, being by nature thorough and deliberate in all her
+movements.
+
+She was standing before her looking-glass, about to unpin her hair, when
+she heard a low knock at her door. Majendie had been detained, and was
+late in coming to take his last look at Peggy before going to bed.
+
+Anne opened the door softly, and signed to him to make no noise. He stole
+on tiptoe to the child's cot, and stood there for a moment. Then he came
+and sat down in the chair by the dressing-table, where Anne was standing
+with her arms raised, unpinning her hair. Majendie had always admired
+that attitude in Anne. It was simple, calm, classic, and superbly
+feminine. Her long white wrapper clothed her more perfectly than any
+dress.
+
+He sat looking at the quick white fingers untwisting the braid of hair.
+It hung divided into three strands, still rippling with the braiding,
+still dull with its folded warmth. She combed the three into one sleek
+sheet that covered her like a veil, drawn close over head and shoulders.
+Her face showed smooth and saint-like between the cloistral bands.
+Majendie thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than that face
+and hair, with their harmonies of dull gold and sombre white.
+
+"I like you," he said; "but isn't the style just a trifle severe?"
+
+Anne said nothing. She was trying to forget his presence while she yet
+permitted it.
+
+"Do you mind my looking at you like this?"
+
+"No."
+
+(They spoke in low voices, for fear of waking the sleeping child.)
+
+She took up her brush, and with a turn of her head swept her hair forward
+over one shoulder. It hung in one mass to her waist. Then she began to
+brush it.
+
+The first strokes of the brush stirred the dull gold that slept in its
+ashen furrows. A shining undulation passed through it, and broke, at the
+ends, as it were, into a curling golden foam. Then Anne stood up and
+tossed it backwards. Her brush went deep and straight, like a
+ploughshare, turning up the rich, smooth swell of the under-gold; it went
+light on the top, till numberless little threads of hair rippled, and
+rose, and knitted themselves, and lay on her head like a fine gold net;
+then, with a few swift swimming movements, upwards and outwards. It
+scattered the whole mass into drifting strands and flying wings and soft
+falling feathers, and, under them, little tender curls of flaxen down.
+With another stroke of the brush and a shake of her head, Anne's hair
+rose in one whorl and fell again, and broke into a shower of woven spray;
+pure gold in every thread.
+
+Majendie held out a shy hand and caught the receding curl of it. Its
+faint fragrance reached him, winging a shaft of memory. His nerves shook
+him, and he looked away.
+
+Anne had been cool and business-like in every motion, unconscious of her
+effect, unconscious almost of him. Now she gathered her hair into one
+mass, and began plaiting it rapidly, desiring thus to hasten his
+departure. She flung back the stiff braid, and laid her finger on the
+extinguisher of the shaded lamp, as a hint for him to go.
+
+"Anne," he whispered, "Anne--"
+
+The whisper struck fear into her.
+
+She faced him calmly, coldly; not unkindly. Unkindness would have given
+him more hope than that pitiless imperturbability.
+
+"Have you anything to say to me?" she said.
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, then, will you be good enough to go?"
+
+"Do you really mean it?"
+
+"I always mean what I say. I haven't said my prayers yet."
+
+"And when you have said them?"
+
+She had turned out the lamp, so that she might not see his unhappy face.
+She did not see it; she only saw her spiritual vision destroyed and
+scattered, and the havoc of dreams, resurgent, profaning heavenly sleep.
+
+"Please," she whispered, "please, if you love me, leave me to myself."
+
+He left her; and her heart turned after him as he went, and blessed him.
+
+"He is good, after all," her heart said.
+
+But Majendie's heart had hardened. He said to himself, "She is too much
+for me." As he lay awake thinking of her, he remembered Maggie. He
+remembered that Maggie loved him, and that he had gone away from her
+and left her, because he loved Anne. And now, because he loved Anne, he
+would go to Maggie. He remembered that it was on Fridays that he used to
+go and see her.
+
+Very well, to-morrow night would be Friday night.
+
+To-morrow night he would go and see her.
+
+And yet, when to-morrow night came, he did not go. He never went until
+December, when Maggie's postal orders left off coming. Then he knew that
+Maggie was ill again. She had been fretting. He knew it; although, this
+time, she had not written to tell him so.
+
+He went, and found Maggie perfectly well. The postal orders had not come,
+because the last lady, the lady with the title, had not paid her. Maggie
+was good as gold again, placid and at peace.
+
+"Why," he asked himself bitterly, "why did I not leave her to her peace?"
+
+And a still more bitter voice answered, "Why not you, as well as anybody
+else?"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Eastward along the Humber, past the brown wharves and the great square
+blocks of the warehouses, past the tall chimneys and the docks with
+their thin pine-forest of masts, there lie the forlorn flat lands of
+Holderness. Field after field, they stretch, lands level as water, only
+raised above the river by a fringe of turf and a belt of silt and sand.
+Earth and water are of one form and of one colour, for, beyond the brown
+belt, the widening river lies like a brown furrowed field, with a clayey
+gleam on the crests of its furrows. When the grey days come, water and
+earth and sky are one, and the river rolls sluggishly, as if shores and
+sky oppressed it, as if it took its motion from the dragging clouds.
+
+Eleven miles from Scale a thin line of red roofs runs for a field's
+length up the shore, marking the neck of the estuary. It is the fishing
+hamlet of Fawlness. Its one street lies on the flat fields low and
+straight as a dyke.
+
+Beyond the hamlet there is a little spit of land, and beyond the spit of
+land a narrow creek.
+
+Half a mile up the creek the path that follows it breaks off into the
+open country, and thins to a track across five fields. It struggles to
+the gateway of a low, red-roofed, red-brick farm, and ends there. The
+farm stands alone, and the fields around it are bare to the skyline.
+Three tall elms stand side by side against it, sheltering it from the
+east, marking its humble place in the desolate land. To the west a broad
+bridle-path joins the road to Fawlness.
+
+Majendie had a small yacht moored in the creek, near where the path
+breaks off to Three Elms Farm. Once, sometimes twice, a week, Majendie
+came to Three Elms Farm. Sometimes he came for the week-end, more often
+for a single night, arriving at six in the evening, and leaving very
+early the next day. In winter he took the train to Hesson, tramped seven
+miles across country, and reached the farm by the Fawlness road. In
+summer the yacht brought him from "Hannay & Majendie's" dock to Fawlness
+creek. At Three Elms Farm he found Maggie waiting for him.
+
+This had been going on, once, sometimes twice a week, for nearly three
+years, ever since he had rented the farm and brought Maggie from Scale to
+live there.
+
+The change had made the details of his life difficult. It called for all
+the qualities in which Majendie was most deficient. It necessitated
+endless vigilance, endless harassing precautions, an unnatural secrecy.
+He had to make Anne believe that he had taken to yachting for his health,
+that he was kept out by wind and weather, that the obligations and
+complexities of business, multiplying, tied him, and claimed his time.
+Maggie had to be hidden away, in a place where no one came, lodged with
+people whose discretion he could trust. Pearson, the captain of his
+yacht, a close-mouthed, close-fisted Yorkshireman, had a wife as reticent
+as himself. Pearson and his wife and their son Steve knew that their
+living depended on their secrecy. And cupidity apart, the three were
+devoted to their master and his mistress. Pearson and his son Steve were
+acquainted with the ways of certain gentlemen of Scale, who sailed their
+yachts from port to port, up and down the Yorkshire coast. Pearson was a
+man who observed life dispassionately. He asked no questions and answered
+none.
+
+It was six o'clock in the evening, early in October, just three years
+after Edith's death. Majendie had left the yacht lying in the creek with
+Pearson, Steve, and the boatswain on board, and was hurrying along the
+field path to Three Elms Farm. A thin rain fell, blurring the distances.
+The house stood humbly, under its three elms. A light was burning in one
+window. Maggie stood at the garden gate in the rain, listening for the
+click of the field gate which was his signal. When it sounded she came
+down the path to meet him. She put her hands upon his shoulders, drew
+down his face and kissed him. He took her arm and led her, half clinging
+to him, into the house and into the lighted room.
+
+A fire burned brightly on the hearth. His chair was set for him beside
+it, and Maggie's chair opposite. The small round table in the middle
+of the room was laid for supper. Maggie had decorated walls and
+chimney-piece and table with chrysanthemums from the garden, and autumn
+leaves and ivy from the hedgerows. The room had a glad light and welcome
+for him.
+
+As he came into the lamplight Maggie gave one quick anxious look at him.
+She had always two thoughts in her little mind between their meetings: Is
+he ill? Is he well?
+
+He was, to the outward seeing eye, superlatively well. Three years of
+life lived in the open air, life lived according to the will of nature,
+had given him back his outward and visible health. At thirty-nine,
+Majendie had once more the strength, the firm, upright slenderness, and
+the brilliance of his youth. His face was keen and brown, fined and
+freshened by wind and weather.
+
+Maggie, waiting humbly on his mood, saw that it was propitious.
+
+"What cold hands," said she. "And no overcoat? You bad boy." She felt his
+clothes all over to feel if they were damp. "Tired?"
+
+"Just a little, Maggie."
+
+She drew up his chair to the fire, and knelt down to unlace his boots.
+
+"No, Maggie, I can't let you take my boots off."
+
+"Yes, you can, and you will. Does _she_ ever take your boots off?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"You don't allow her?"
+
+"No. I don't allow her."
+
+"You allow _me_" said Maggie triumphantly. She was persuaded that (since
+his wife was denied the joy of waiting on him) hers was the truly
+desirable position. Majendie had never had the heart to enlighten her.
+
+She pressed his feet with her soft hands, to feel if his stockings were
+damp, too.
+
+"There's a little hole," she cried. "I shall have to mend that to-night."
+
+She put cushions at his back, and sat down on the floor beside him, and
+laid her head on his knee.
+
+"There's a sole for supper," said she, in a dreamy voice, "and a roast
+chicken. And an apple tart. I made it." Maggie had always been absurdly
+proud of the things that she could do.
+
+"Clever Maggie."
+
+"I made it because I thought you'd like it."
+
+"Kind Maggie."
+
+"You didn't get any of those things yesterday, or the day before, did
+you?"
+
+She was always afraid of giving him what he had had at home. That was one
+of the difficulties, she felt, of a double household.
+
+"I forget," he said, a little wearily, "what I had yesterday."
+
+Maggie noticed the weariness and said no more.
+
+He laid his hand on her head and stroked her hair. He could always keep
+Maggie quiet by stroking her hair. She shifted herself instantly into
+a position easier for his hand. She sat still, only turning to the
+caressing hand, now her forehead, now the nape of her neck, now her
+delicate ear.
+
+Maggie knew all his moods and ministered to them. She knew to-night that,
+if she held her tongue, the peace she had prepared for him would sink
+into him and heal him. He was not very tired. She could tell. She could
+measure his weariness to a degree by the movements of his hand. When he
+was tired she would seize the caressing hand and make it stop. In a few
+minutes supper would be ready, and when he had had supper, she knew, it
+would be time to talk.
+
+Majendie was grateful for her silence. He was grateful to her for many
+things, for her beauty, for her sweetness, for her humility, for her love
+which had given so much and asked so little. Maggie had still the modest
+charm that gave to her and to her affection the illusion of a perfect
+innocence. It had been heightened rather than diminished by their
+intimacy.
+
+Somehow she had managed so that, as long as he was with her, shame was
+impossible for himself or her. As long as he was with her he was wrapped
+in her illusion, the illusion of innocence, of happiness, of all the
+unspoken sanctities of home. He knew that whether he was or was not with
+her, as long as he loved her no other man would come between him and her;
+no other man would cross his threshold and stand upon his hearth. The
+house he came to was holy to her. There were times, so deep was the
+illusion, when he could have believed that Maggie, sitting there at his
+feet, was the pure spouse, the helpmate, and Anne, in the house in Prior
+Street, the unwedded, unacknowledged mistress, the distant, the secret,
+the forbidden. He had never disguised from Maggie the temporary and
+partial nature of the tie that bound them. But the illusion was too
+strong for both of them. It was strong upon him now.
+
+The woman, Mrs. Pearson, came in with supper, moving round the room in
+silence, devoted and discreet.
+
+Majendie was hungry. Maggie was unable to conceal her frank joy in seeing
+him eat and drink. She ate little and talked a great deal, drawn by his
+questions.
+
+"What have you been doing, Maggie?"
+
+Maggie gave an account of her innocent days, of her labours in house and
+farm and garden. She loved all three, she loved her flowers and her
+chickens and her rabbits, and the little young pigs. She loved all things
+that had life. She was proud of her house. Her hands were always busy in
+it. She had stitched all the linen for it. She had made all the
+tablecloths, sofa covers and curtains, and given to them embroidered
+borders. She liked to move about among all these beautiful things and
+feel that they were hers. But she loved those most which Majendie had
+used, or noticed, or admired. After supper she took up her old position
+by his chair.
+
+"How long can you stay?" said she.
+
+"I must go to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, why?"
+
+"I've told you why, dear. It's my little girl's birthday to-morrow."
+
+She remembered.
+
+"Her birthday. How old will she be to-morrow?"
+
+"Seven."
+
+"Seven. What does she do all day long?"
+
+"Oh, she amuses herself. We have a garden."
+
+"How she would love this garden, and the flowers, and the swing, and the
+chickens, and all the animals, wouldn't she?"
+
+"Yes. Yes."
+
+Somehow he didn't like Maggie to talk about his child, but he hadn't the
+heart to stop her.
+
+"Is she as pretty as she was?"
+
+"Prettier."
+
+"And she's not a bit like you."
+
+"Not a bit, not a little bit."
+
+"I'm glad," said Maggie.
+
+"Why on earth are you glad?"
+
+"Because--I couldn't bear _her_ child to be like you."
+
+"You mustn't say those things, Maggie, I don't like it."
+
+"I won't say them. You don't mind my thinking them, do you? I can't help
+thinking."
+
+She thought for a long time; then she got up, and came to him, and put
+her arm round his neck, and bowed her head and whispered.
+
+"Don't whisper. I hate it. Speak out. Say what you've got to say."
+
+"I can't say it."
+
+She said it very low.
+
+He bent forward, freeing himself from her mouth and clinging arm.
+
+"No, Maggie. Never. I told you that in the beginning. You promised me you
+wouldn't think of it. It's bad enough as it is."
+
+"What's bad enough?"
+
+"Everything, my child. I'm bad enough, if you like; but I'm not as bad as
+all that, I can assure you."
+
+"You don't think _me_ bad?"
+
+"You know I don't. You know what I think of you. But you must learn to
+see what's possible and what isn't."
+
+"I do see. Tell me one thing. Is it because you love _her_?"
+
+"We can't go into that, Maggie. Can't you understand that it may be
+because I love _you_?"
+
+"I don't know. But I don't mind so long as I know it isn't only because
+you love _her_."
+
+"You're not to talk about her, Maggie."
+
+"I know. I won't. I don't want to talk about her, I'm sure. I try not to
+think about her more than I can help."
+
+"But you must think of her."
+
+"Oh--must I?"
+
+"At any rate, you must think of me."
+
+"I do think of you. I think of you from morning till night. I don't think
+of anything else. I don't want anything else. I'm contented as long as
+I've got you. It wasn't that."
+
+"What was it, Maggie?"
+
+"Nothing. Only--it's so awfully lonely in between, when you're not here.
+That was why I asked you."
+
+"Poor child, poor Maggie. Is it very bad to bear?"
+
+"Not when I know you're coming."
+
+"See here--if it gets too bad to bear, we must end it."
+
+"End it?"
+
+"Yes, Maggie. _You_ must end it; you must give me up, when you're
+tired--"
+
+"Oh no--no," she cried.
+
+"Give me up," he repeated, "and go back to town."
+
+"To Scale?"
+
+"Well, yes; if it's so lonely here."
+
+"And give you up?"
+
+"Yes, Maggie, you must; if you go back to Scale."
+
+"I shall never go back. Who could I go to? There's nobody who'd 'ave me.
+I've got nobody."
+
+"Nobody?"
+
+"Nobody but you, Wallie. Nobody but you. Have you never thought of that?
+Why, where should _I_ be if I was to give you up?"
+
+"I see, Maggie. _I_ see. _I_ see."
+
+Up till then he had seen nothing. But Maggie, unwise, had put her hand
+through the fine web of illusion. She had seen, and made him see, the
+tragedy of the truth behind it, the real nature of the tie that bound
+them. It was an inconsistent tie, permanent in its impermanence, with all
+its incompleteness terribly complete. He could not give her up; he had
+not thought of giving her up; but neither had he thought of keeping her.
+
+It was all wrong. It was wrong to keep her. It would be wrong to give her
+up. He was all she had. Whatever happened he could not give her up.
+
+And so he said, "_I_ see. _I_ see."
+
+"See here," said she (she had adopted some of his phrases), "when I said
+there was nobody, I meant nobody I'd have anything to do with. If I went
+back to Scale, there are plenty of low girls in the town who'd make
+friends with me, if I'd let 'em. But I won't be seen with them. You
+wouldn't have me seen with them, would you?"
+
+"No, Maggie, not for all the world."
+
+"Well, then, 'ow can you go on talking about my giving you up?"
+
+No. He could not give her up. There was no tie between them but their
+sin, yet he could not break it. Degraded as it was, it saved him from
+deeper degradation.
+
+He loved Anne with his whole soul, with his heart and with his body, and
+he had given his body to Maggie, with as much heart as went with it. In
+the world's sight he loved Maggie and was bound to Anne. In his own sight
+he loved Anne and was bound to Maggie.
+
+It had come to that.
+
+He did not care to look back upon the steps by which it had come. He only
+knew that, seven years ago, he had been sound and whole, a man with one
+aim and one passion and one life. Now he and his life were divided, cut
+clean in two by a line not to be passed or touched upon by either
+sundered half. All of him that Anne had rejected he had given to Maggie.
+
+As far as he could judge he had acted, not grossly, not recklessly, but
+with a kind of passionate deliberation. He knew he would have to pay for
+it. He had not stopped to haggle with his conscience or to ask: how much?
+But he was prepared to pay.
+
+Up to this moment his conscience had not dunned him. But now he foresaw a
+season when the bills would be falling due.
+
+Maggie had torn the veil of illusion, and he looked for the first time
+upon his sin.
+
+Even his conscience admitted that he had not meant it to come to that. He
+had had no ancient private tendency to sin. He wanted nothing but to live
+at home, happy with the wife he loved, and with his child, his children.
+And poor Maggie, she too would have asked no more than to be a good wife
+to the man she loved, and to be the mother of his children.
+
+This life with Maggie, hidden away in Three Elms Farm, in the wilds of
+Holderness, it could not be called dissipation, but it was division.
+Where once he had been whole he was now divided. The sane, strong
+affection that should have knit body and soul together was itself broken
+in two.
+
+And it was she, the helpmate, she who should have kept him whole, who had
+caused him to be thus sundered from himself and her.
+
+They were all wrong, all frustrated, all incomplete. Anne, in her sublime
+infidelity to earth; Maggie, turned from her own sweet use that she might
+give him what Anne could not give; and he, who between them had severed
+his body from his soul.
+
+Thus he brooded.
+
+And Maggie, with her face hidden against his knee, brooded too, piercing
+the illusion.
+
+He tried to win her from her sad thoughts by talking again of the house
+and garden. But Maggie was tired of the house and garden now.
+
+"And do the Pearsons look after you well still?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. Very well."
+
+"And Steve--is he as good to you as ever?"
+
+Maggie brightened and became more communicative.
+
+"Yes, very good. He was all day mending my bicycle, Sunday, and he takes
+me out in the boat sometimes; and he's made such a dear little house for
+the old Angora rabbit."
+
+"Do you like going out in the boat?"
+
+"Yes, very much."
+
+"Do you like going out with him?"
+
+"No," said Maggie, making a little face, half of disgust and half of
+derision. "No. His hands are all dirty, and he smells of fish."
+
+Majendie laughed. "There are drawbacks, I must own, to Steve."
+
+He looked at his watch, an action Maggie hated. It always suggested
+finality, departure.
+
+"Ten o'clock, Maggie. I must be up at six to-morrow. We sail at seven."
+
+"At seven," echoed Maggie in despair.
+
+They were up at six. Maggie went with him to the creek, to see him sail.
+In the garden she picked a chrysanthemum and stuck it in his buttonhole,
+forgetting that he couldn't wear her token. There were so many things
+he couldn't do.
+
+A little rain still fell through a clogging mist. They walked side by
+side, treading the drenched grass, for the track was too narrow for them
+both. Maggie's feet dragged, prolonging the moments.
+
+A white pointed sail showed through the mist, where the little yacht lay
+in the river off the mouth of the creek.
+
+Steve was in the boat close against the creek's bank, waiting to row
+Majendie to the yacht. He touched his cap to Majendie as they appeared on
+the bank, but he did not look at Maggie when her gentle voice called
+good-morning.
+
+Steve's face was close-mouthed and hard set.
+
+She put her hands on Majendie's shoulders and kissed him. Her cheek
+against his face was pure and cold, wet with the rain. Steve did not look
+at them. He never looked at them when they were together.
+
+Majendie dropped into the boat. Steve pushed off from the bank. Maggie
+stood there watching them go. She stood till the boat reached the creek's
+mouth, and Majendie turned, and raised his cap to her; stood till the
+white sail moved slowly up the river and disappeared, rounding the spit
+of land.
+
+Majendie, as he paced the deck and talked to his men of wind and weather,
+turned casually, on his heel, to look at her where she stood alone in the
+level immensity of the land. The world looked empty all around her.
+
+And he was touched with a sudden poignant realisation of her life; its
+sadness, its incompleteness, its isolation.
+
+That was what he had brought her to.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+The rain cleared off, the mist lifted, and at nine o'clock it was a fine
+day for Peggy's birthday. Even Scale, where it stretched its flat avenues
+into the country, showed golden in the warm and brilliant air.
+
+The household in Prior Street had been up early, making preparations for
+the day. Peggy had waked before it was light, to feel her presents which
+lay beside her on her bed; and, by the time Majendie's sail had passed
+Fawlness Point, she was up and dressed, waiting for him.
+
+Anne had to break it to her gently that perhaps he would not be home in
+time for eight-o'clock breakfast. Then the child's mouth trembled, and
+Anne comforted her, half-smiling and half-afraid.
+
+"Ah, Peggy, Peggy," she said, as she rocked her against her breast, "What
+shall I do with you? Your little heart is too big for your little body."
+
+Anne's terror had not left her in three years. It was always with her
+now. The child was bound to suffer. She was a little mass of throbbing
+nerves, of trembling emotions.
+
+Yet Anne herself was happier. The three years had passed smoothly over
+her. Her motherhood had laid its fine, soft, finishing touch upon her.
+Her face, her body, had rounded and ripened, year after slow year, to an
+abiding beauty, born of her tenderness. At thirty-five Anne Majendie had
+reached the perfect moment of her physical maturity.
+
+Her mind was no longer harassed by anxiety about her husband. He seemed
+to have settled down. He had ceased to be uncertain in his temper, by
+turns irritable and depressed. He had parted with the heaviness which had
+once roused her aversion, and had recovered his personal distinction, the
+slender refinement of his youth. She rejoiced in his well-being. She
+attributed it, partly to his open-air habits, partly to the spiritual
+growth begun in him at the time of his sister's death.
+
+She desired no change in their relations, no further understanding, no
+closer intimacy.
+
+To Anne's mind, her husband's attitude to her was perfect. The passion
+that had been her fear had left him. He waited on her hand and foot, with
+humble, heart-rending devotion. He let her see that he adored her with
+discretion, at a distance, as a divinely, incomprehensibly high and holy
+thing.
+
+Her household life had simplified itself. Her days passed in noiseless,
+equable procession. Many hours had been given back to her empty after
+Edith's death. She had filled them with interests outside her home, with
+visiting the poor in the district round All Souls, with evening classes
+for shop-girls, with "Rescue" work. Not an hour of her day was idle. At
+the end of the three years Mrs. Majendie was known in Scale by her broad
+charities and by her saintly life.
+
+She had fallen away a little from her friends in Thurston Square. In
+three years Fanny Eliott and her circle had grown somewhat unreal to her.
+She had been aware of their inefficiency before. There had been a time
+when she felt that Mrs. Eliott's eminence had become a little perilous.
+She herself had placed her on it, and held her there by a somewhat
+fatiguing effort of the will to believe. She had been partly (though she
+did not know it) the dupe of Mrs. Eliott's delight in her, of all the
+sweet and dangerous ministrations of their mutual vanities. Mrs. Eliott
+had been uplifted by Anne's preposterously grave approval. Anne had been
+ravished by her own distinction as the audience of Fanny Eliott's loftier
+and profounder moods. There could be no criticism of these heights and
+depths. To have depreciated Fanny Eliott's rarity by a shade would have
+been to call in question her own.
+
+But all this had ceased long ago, when she married Walter Majendie, and
+his sister became her dearest friend. Fanny Eliott had always looked on
+Edith Majendie as her rival; retreating a little ostentatiously before
+her formidable advance. There should have been no rivalry, for there had
+been no possible ground of comparison. Neither could Edith Majendie be
+said to have advanced. The charm of Edith, or rather, her pathetic claim,
+was that she never could have advanced at all. To Anne's mind, from the
+first, there had been no choice between Edith, lying motionless on her
+sofa by the window, and Fanny at large in the drawing-rooms of her
+acquaintances, scattering her profuse enthusiasms, revolving in her
+intellectual round, the prisoner of her own perfections. To come into
+Edith's room had been to come into thrilling contact with reality; while
+Fanny Eliott was for ever putting you off with some ingenious refinement
+on it. Edith's personality had triumphed over death and time. Fanny
+Eliott, poor thing, still suffered by the contrast.
+
+Of all Anne's friends, the Gardners alone stood the test of time. She had
+never had a doubt of them. They had come later into her life, after the
+perishing of her great illusion. The shock had humbled her senses and
+disposed her to reverence for the things of intellect. Dr. Gardner's
+position, as President of the Scale Literary and Philosophic Society, was
+as a high rock to which she clung. Mrs. Gardner was dear to her for many
+reasons.
+
+The dearness of Mrs. Gardner was significant. It showed that, thanks to
+Peggy, Anne's humanisation was almost complete.
+
+To-day, which was Peggy's birthday, Anne's heart was light and happy.
+She had planned, that, if the day were fine, the festival was to be
+celebrated by a picnic to Westleydale.
+
+And the day was fine. Majendie had promised to be home in time to start
+by the nine-fifty train. Meanwhile they waited. Peggy had helped Mary the
+cook to pack the luncheon basket, and now she felt time heavy on her
+little hands.
+
+Anne suggested that they should go upstairs and help Nanna. Nanna was in
+Majendie's room, turning out his drawers. On his bed there was a pile of
+suits of the year before last, put aside to be given to Anne's poor
+people. When Peggy was tired of fetching and carrying, she watched her
+mother turning over the clothes and sorting them into heaps. Anne's
+methods were rapid and efficient.
+
+"Oh, mummy!" cried Peggy, "don't! You touch daddy's things as if you
+didn't like them."
+
+"Peggy, darling, what do you mean?"
+
+"You're so quick." She laid her face against one of Majendie's coats and
+stroked it. "Must daddy's things go away?"
+
+"Yes, darling. Why don't you want them to go?"
+
+"Because I love them. I love all his little coats and hats and shoes and
+things."
+
+"Oh, Peggy, Peggy, you're a little sentimentalist. Go and see what
+Nanna's got there."
+
+Nanna had given a cry of joyous discovery. "Look, ma'am," said she, "what
+I've found in master's portmanteau."
+
+Nanna came forward, shaking out a child's frock. A frock of pure white
+silk, embroidered round the neck and wrists with a deep border of
+daisies, pink and white and gold.
+
+"Nanna!"
+
+"Oh, mummy, what is it?"
+
+Peggy touched a daisy with her soft forefinger and shrank back shyly. She
+knew it was her birthday, but she did not know whether the frock had
+anything to do with that, or no.
+
+"I wonder," said Anne, "what little girl daddy brought that for."
+
+"Did daddy bring it?"
+
+"Yes, daddy brought it. Do you think he meant it for her birthday,
+Nanna?"
+
+"Well, m'm, he may have meant it for her birthday last year. I found it
+stuffed into 'is portmanteau wot 'e took with him in the yacht a year
+ago. It's bin there--poked away in the cupboard, ever since. I suppose he
+bought it, meaning to give it to Miss Peggy, and put it away and forgot
+all about it. See, m'm"--Nanna measured the frock against Peggy's small
+figure--"it'd 'a' bin too large for her, last birthday. It'll just fit
+her now, m'm."
+
+"Oh, Peggy!" said Anne. "She must put it on. Quick, Nanna. You shall wear
+it, my pet, and surprise daddy."
+
+"What fun!" said Peggy.
+
+"_Is_n't it fun?" Anne was as gay and as happy as Peggy. She was smiling
+her pretty smile.
+
+Peggy was solemnly arrayed in the little frock. The borders of daisies
+showed like a necklace and bracelets against her white skin.
+
+"Well, m'm," said Nanna, "if master did forget, he knew what he was
+about, at the time, anyhow. It's the very frock for her."
+
+"Yes. See, Peggy--it's daisies, marguerites. That's why daddy chose
+it--for your little name, darling, do you see?"
+
+"My name," said Peggy softly, moved by the wonder and beauty of her
+frock.
+
+"There he is, Peggy! Run down and show yourself."
+
+"Oh, muvver," shrieked Peggy, "it will be a surprise for daddy, won't
+it?"
+
+She ran down. They followed, and leaned over the bannisters to listen to
+the surprise. They heard Peggy's laugh as she came to the last flight of
+stairs and showed herself to her father. They heard her shriek "Daddy!
+daddy!" Then there was calm.
+
+Then Peggy's voice dropped from its high joy and broke. "Oh, daddy, are
+you angry with me?"
+
+Anne came downstairs. Majendie had the child in his arms and was kissing
+her.
+
+"Are you angry with me, daddy?" she repeated.
+
+"No, my sweetheart, no." He looked up at Anne. He was very pale, and a
+sweat was on his forehead. "Who put that frock on her?"
+
+"I did," said Anne.
+
+"I think you'd better take it off again," he said quietly.
+
+Anne raised her eyebrows as a sign to him to look at Peggy's miserable
+mouth. "Oh, let her wear it," she said. "It's her birthday."
+
+Majendie wiped his forehead and turned aside into the study.
+
+"Muvver," said Peggy, as they went hand in hand upstairs again; "do you
+think daddy _really meant_ it as a surprise for _me_?"
+
+"I think he must have done, darling."
+
+"Aren't you sorry we spoiled his surprise, mummy?"
+
+"I don't think he minds, Peggy."
+
+"_I_ think he does. Why did he look angry, and say I was to take it off?"
+
+"Perhaps, because it's rather too nice a frock for every day."
+
+"My birthday isn't every day," said Peggy.
+
+So Peggy wore the frock that Maggie had made for her and given to
+Majendie last year. He had hidden it in his portmanteau, meaning to give
+it to Mrs. Ransome at Christmas. And he had thrown the portmanteau into
+the darkest corner of the cupboard, and gone away and forgotten all about
+it.
+
+And now the sight of Maggie's handiwork had given him a shock. For his
+sin was heavy upon him. Every day he went in fear of discovery. Anne
+would ask him where he had got that frock, and he would have to lie to
+her. And it would be no use; for, sooner or later, she would know that he
+had lied; and she would track Maggie down by the frock.
+
+He hated to see his innocent child dressed in the garment which was a
+token and memorial of his sin. He wished he had thrown the damned thing
+into the Humber.
+
+But Anne had no suspicion. Her face was smooth and tranquil as she came
+downstairs. She was calling Peggy her "little treasure," and her eyes
+were smiling as she looked at the frail, small, white and gold creature,
+stepping daintily and shyly in her delicate dress.
+
+Peggy was buttoned into a little white coat to keep her warm; and they
+set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket, and Peggy an enormous
+doll.
+
+Peggy enjoyed the journey. When she was not talking to Majendie she was
+singing a little song to keep the doll quiet, so that the time passed
+very quickly both for her and him. There were other people in the
+carriage, and Anne was afraid they would be annoyed at Peggy's singing.
+But they seemed to like it as much as she and Majendie. Nobody was ever
+annoyed with Peggy.
+
+In Westleydale the beech trees were in golden leaf. It was green
+underfoot and on the folding hills. Overhead it was limitless blue above
+the uplands; and above the woods, among the golden tree-tops, clear films
+and lacing veins and brilliant spots of blue.
+
+Majendie felt Peggy's hand tighten on his hand. Her little body was
+trembling with delight.
+
+They found the beech tree under which he and Anne had once sat. He looked
+at her. And she, remembering, half turned her face from him; and, as she
+stooped and felt for a soft dry place for the child to sit on, she
+smiled, half unconsciously, a shy and tender smile.
+
+Then he saw, beside her half-turned face, the face of another woman,
+smiling, shyly and tenderly, another smile; and his heart smote him with
+the sorrow of his sin.
+
+They sat down, all three, under the beech tree; and Peggy took, first
+Majendie's hand, then Anne's hand, and held them together in her lap.
+
+"Mummy," said she, "aren't you glad that daddy came? It wouldn't be half
+so nice without him, would it?"
+
+"No," said Anne, "it wouldn't."
+
+"Mummy, you don't say that as if you meant it."
+
+"Oh, Peggy, of course I meant it."
+
+"Yes, but you didn't make it sound so."
+
+"Peggy," said Majendie, "you're a terribly observant little person."
+
+"She's a little person who sometimes observes all wrong."
+
+"No, mummy, I don't. You never talk to daddy like you talk to me."
+
+"You're a little girl, dear, and daddy's a big grown-up man."
+
+"That's not what I mean, though. You've got a grown-up voice for me, too.
+I don't mean your grown-up voice. I mean, mummy, you talk to daddy as
+if--as if you hadn't known him a very long time. And you talk to me as if
+you'd known me--oh, ever so long. _Have_ you known me longer than you've
+known daddy?"
+
+Majendie gazed with feigned abstraction at the shoulder of the hill
+visible through the branches of the trees.
+
+"Bless you, sweetheart, I knew daddy long before you were ever thought
+of."
+
+"When was I thought of, mummy?"
+
+"I don't know, darling."
+
+"Do you know, daddy?"
+
+"Yes, Peggy. _I_ know. You were thought of here, in this wood, under this
+tree, on mummy's birthday, between eight and nine years ago."
+
+"Who thought of me?"
+
+"Ah, that's telling."
+
+"Who thought of me, mummy?"
+
+"Daddy and I, dear."
+
+"And you forgot, and daddy remembered."
+
+"Yes. I've got a rather better memory than your mother, dear."
+
+"You forgot my old birthday, daddy."
+
+"I haven't forgotten your mother's old birthday, though."
+
+Peggy was thinking. Her forehead was all wrinkled with the intensity of
+her thought.
+
+"Mummy--am I only seven?"
+
+"Only seven, Peggy."
+
+"Then," said Peggy, "you _did_ think of me before I was born. How did you
+know me before I was born?"
+
+Anne shook her head.
+
+"Daddy, how did you know me before I was born?"
+
+"Peggy, you're a little tease."
+
+"You brought it on yourself, my dear. Peggy, if you'll leave off teasing
+daddy, I'll tell you a story."
+
+"Oh!--"
+
+"Once upon a time" (Anne's voice was very low) "mummy had a dream. She
+dreamed she was in this wood, walking along that little path--just
+there--not thinking of Peggy. And when she came to this tree she saw an
+angel, with big white wings. He was lying under this very tree, on this
+very bit of grass, just there, where daddy's sitting. And one of his
+wings was stretched out on the grass, and it was hollow like a cradle.
+It was all lined with little feathers, like the inside of a swan's wing,
+as soft as soft. And the other wing was stretched over it like the top of
+a cradle. And inside, all among the soft little feathers, there was a
+little baby girl lying, just like Peggy."
+
+"Oh, mummy, was it me?"
+
+"Sh--sh--sh! Whoever it was, the angel saw that mummy loved it, and
+wanted it very much--"
+
+"The little baby girl?"
+
+"Yes. And so he took the baby and gave it to mummy, to be her own little
+girl. That's how Peggy came to mummy."
+
+"And did he give it to daddy, too, to be his little girl?"
+
+"Yes," said Majendie, "I was wondering where I came in."
+
+"Yes. He gave it to daddy to be his little girl, too."
+
+"I'm glad he gave me to daddy. The angel brought me to you in the night,
+like daddy brought me my big dolly. You did bring my big dolly, and put
+her on my bed, didn't you, daddy? Last night?"
+
+Majendie was silent.
+
+"Daddy wasn't at home last night, Peggy."
+
+"Oh, daddy, where were you?"
+
+Majendie felt his forehead getting damp again.
+
+"Daddy was away on business."
+
+"Oh, mummy, don't you wish he'd never go away?"
+
+"I think it's time for lunch," said Majendie.
+
+They ate their lunch; and when it was ended, Majendie went to the cottage
+to find water, for Peggy was thirsty. He returned, carrying water in a
+pitcher, and followed by a red-cheeked, rosy little girl who brought milk
+in a cup for Peggy.
+
+Anne remembered the cup. It was the same cup that she had drunk from
+after her husband. And the child was the same child whom he had found
+sitting in the grass, whom he had shown to her and taken from her arms,
+whose little body, held close to hers, had unsealed in her the first
+springs of her maternal passion. It all came back to her.
+
+The little girl beamed on Peggy with a face like a small red sun, and
+Peggy conceived a sudden yearning for her companionship. It seemed that,
+at the cottage, there were rabbits, and a new baby, and a litter of
+puppies three days old. And all these wonders the little girl offered
+to show to Peggy, if Peggy would go with her.
+
+Peggy begged, and went through the wood, hand in hand with the little
+beaming girl. Majendie and Anne watched them out of sight.
+
+"Look at the two pairs of legs," said Majendie.
+
+Anne sighed. Her Peggy showed very white and frail beside the red,
+lusty-legged daughter of the woods.
+
+"I'm not at all happy about her," said she.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"She gets so terribly tired."
+
+"All children do, don't they?"
+
+Anne shook her head. "Not as she does. It isn't a child's healthy
+tiredness. It doesn't come like that. It came on quite suddenly the other
+day, after she'd been excited; and her little lips turned grey."
+
+"Get Gardner to look at her."
+
+"I'm going to. He says she ought to be more in the open air. I wish we
+could get a cottage somewhere in the country, with a nice garden."
+
+Majendie said nothing. He was thinking of Three Elms Farm, and the garden
+and the orchard, and of the pure wind that blew over them straight from
+the sea. He remembered how Maggie had said that the child would love it.
+
+"You could afford it, Walter, couldn't you, now?"
+
+"Of course I can afford it."
+
+He thought how easily it could be done, if he gave up his yacht and the
+farm. His business was doing better every year. But the double household
+was a drain on his fresh resources. He could not very well afford to take
+another house, and keep the farm too. He had thought of that before. He
+had been thinking of it last night when he spoke to Maggie about giving
+him up. Poor Maggie! Well, he would have to manage somehow. If the worst
+came to the worst they could sell the house in Prior Street. And he would
+sell the yacht.
+
+"I think I shall sell the yacht," he said.
+
+"Oh no, you mustn't do that. You've been so well since you've had it."
+
+"No, it isn't necessary. I shall be better if I take more exercise."
+
+Peggy came back and the subject dropped.
+
+Peggy was very unhappy before the picnic ended. She was tired, so tired
+that she cried piteously, and Majendie had to take her up in his arms and
+carry her all the way to the station. Anne carried the doll.
+
+In the train Peggy fell asleep in her father's arms. She slept with her
+face pressed close against him, and one hand clinging to his breast. Her
+head rested on his arm, and her hair curled over his rough coat-sleeve.
+
+"Look--" he whispered.
+
+Anne looked. "The little lamb--" she said.
+
+Then she was silent, discerning in the man's face, bent over the sleeping
+child, the divine look of love and tenderness. She was silent, held by an
+old enchantment and an older vision; brooding on things dear and secret
+and long-forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+Though Thurston Square saw little of Mrs. Majendie, the glory of Mrs.
+Eliott's Thursdays remained undiminished. The same little procession
+filed through her drawing-room as before. Mrs. Pooley, Miss Proctor, the
+Gardners, and Canon Wharton. Mrs. Eliott was more than ever haggard and
+pursuing; she had more than ever the air of clinging, desperate and
+exhausted, on her precipitous intellectual heights.
+
+But Mrs. Pooley never flagged, possibly because her ideas were vaguer
+and more miscellaneous, and therefore less exhausting. It was she who
+now urged Mrs. Eliott on. This year Mrs. Pooley was going in for
+thought-power, and for mind-control, and had drawn Mrs. Eliott in with
+her. They still kept it up for hours together, and still they dreaded
+the disastrous invasions of Miss Proctor.
+
+Miss Proctor rode roughshod over the thought-power, and trampled
+contemptuously on the mind-control. Mrs. Gardner's attitude was
+mysterious and unsatisfactory. She seemed to stand serenely on the shore
+of the deep sea where Mrs. Eliott and Mrs. Pooley were for ever plunging
+and sinking, and coming up again, bobbing and bubbling, to the surface.
+Her manner implied that she would die rather than go in with them; it
+also suggested that she knew rather more about the thought-power and the
+mind-control than they did; but that she did not wish to talk so much
+about it.
+
+Mr. Eliott, dexterous as ever, and fortified by the exact sciences, took
+refuge from the occult under his covering of profound stupidity. He had a
+secret understanding with Dr. Gardner on the subject. His spirit no
+longer searched for Dr. Gardner's across the welter of his wife's
+drawing-room, knowing that it would find it at the club.
+
+Now, in October, about four o'clock on the Thursday after Peggy's
+birthday, Canon Wharton and Miss Proctor met at Mrs. Eliott's. The Canon
+had watched his opportunity and drawn his hostess apart.
+
+"May I speak with you a moment," he said, "before your other guests
+arrive?"
+
+Mrs. Eliott led him to a secluded sofa. "If you'll sit here," said she,
+"we can leave Johnson to entertain Miss Proctor."
+
+"I am perplexed and distressed," said the Canon, "about our dear Mrs.
+Majendie."
+
+Mrs. Eliott's eyes darkened with anxiety. She clasped her hands. "Oh why?
+What is it? Do you mean about the dear little girl?"
+
+"I know nothing about the little girl. But I hear very unpleasant things
+about her husband."
+
+"What things?"
+
+The Canon's face was reticent and grim. He wished Mrs. Eliott to
+understand that he was no unscrupulous purveyor of gossip; that if he
+spoke, it was under constraint and severe necessity.
+
+"I do not," said the Canon, "usually give heed to disagreeable reports.
+But I am afraid that, where there is such a dense cloud of smoke, there
+must be some fire."
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Eliott, "perhaps they didn't get on very well
+together once. But they seem to have made it up after the sister's death.
+_She_ has been happier these last three years. She has been a different
+woman."
+
+"The same woman, my dear lady, the same woman. Only a better saint. For
+the last three years, they say, he has been living with another woman."
+
+"Oh--it's impossible. Impossible. He is away a great deal--but--"
+
+"He is away a great deal too often. Running up to Scarby every week in
+that yacht of his. In with the Ransomes and all that disreputable set."
+
+"Is Lady Cayley in Scale?"
+
+"Lady Cayley is at Scarby."
+
+"Do you mean to say--"
+
+"I mean," said the Canon, rising, "to say nothing."
+
+Mrs. Eliott detained him with her eyes of anguish.
+
+"Canon Wharton--do you think she knows?"
+
+"I cannot tell you."
+
+The Canon never told. He was far too clever.
+
+Mrs. Eliott wandered to Miss Proctor.
+
+"Do you know," said Miss Proctor, searching Mrs. Eliott's face with an
+inquisitive gaze, "how our friends, the Majendies, are getting on?"
+
+"Oh, as usual. I see very little of her now. Anne is quite taken up with
+her little girl and with her good works."
+
+"Oh! That," said Miss Proctor, "was a most unsuitable marriage."
+
+It was five o'clock. The Canon and Miss Proctor had drunk their two
+cups of tea and departed. Mrs. Pooley had arrived soon after four;
+she lingered, to talk a little more about the thought-power and the
+mind-control. Mrs. Pooley was convinced that she could make things
+happen. That they were, in fact, happening. But Mrs. Eliott was no longer
+interested.
+
+Mrs. Pooley, too, departed, feeling that dear Fanny's Thursday had been a
+disappointment. She had been quite unable to sustain the conversation at
+its usual height.
+
+Mrs. Pooley indubitably gone, Mrs. Eliott wandered down to Johnson in his
+study. There, in perfect confidence, she revealed to him the Canon's
+revelations.
+
+Johnson betrayed no surprise. That story had been going the round of his
+club for the last two years.
+
+"What will Anne do?" said Mrs. Eliott, "when she finds out?"
+
+"I don't suppose she'll do anything."
+
+"Will she get a separation, do you think?"
+
+"How can I tell you?"
+
+"I wonder if she knows."
+
+"She's not likely to tell you, if she does."
+
+"She's bound to know, sooner or later. I wonder if one ought to prepare
+her?"
+
+"Prepare her for what?"
+
+"The shock of it. I'm afraid of her hearing in some horrid way. It would
+be so awful, if she didn't know."
+
+"It can't be pleasant, any way, my dear."
+
+"Do advise me, Johnson. Ought I or ought I not to tell her?"
+
+Mr. Eliott's face told how his nature shrank from the agony of decision.
+But he was touched by her distress.
+
+"Certainly not. Much better let well alone."
+
+"If I were only sure that it _was_ well I was letting alone."
+
+"Can't be sure of anything. Give it the benefit of the doubt."
+
+"Yes--but if you were I?"
+
+"If I were you I should say nothing."
+
+"That only means that I should say nothing if I were you. But I'm not."
+
+"Be thankful, my dear, at any rate, for that."
+
+He took up a book, _The Search for Stellar Parallaxes_, a book that he
+understood and that his wife could not understand. That book was the sole
+refuge open to him when pressed for an opinion. He knew that, when she
+saw him reading it, she would realise that he was her intellectual
+master.
+
+The front doorbell announced the arrival of another caller.
+
+She went away, wondering, as he meant she should, whether he were so very
+undecided, after all. Certainly his indecisions closed a subject more
+effectually than other people's verdicts.
+
+She found Anne in the empty, half-dark drawing-room waiting for her. She
+had chosen the darkest corner, and the darkest hour.
+
+"Fanny," she said, and her voice trembled, "are you alone? Can I speak to
+you a moment?"
+
+"Yes, dear, yes. Just let me leave word with Mason that I'm not at home.
+But no one will come now."
+
+In the interval she heard Anne struggling with the sob that had choked
+her voice. She felt that the decision had been made for her. The terrible
+task had been taken out of her hands. Anne knew.
+
+She sat down beside her friend and put her hand on her shoulder. In that
+moment poor Fanny's intellectual vanities dropped from her, like an
+inappropriate garment, and she became pure woman. She forgot Anne's
+recent disaffection and her coldness, she forgot the years that had
+separated them, and remembered only the time when Anne was the girlfriend
+who had loved her, and had come to her in all her griefs, and had made
+her house her home.
+
+"What is it, dear?" she murmured.
+
+Anne felt for her hand and pressed it. She tried to speak, but no words
+would come.
+
+"Of course," thought Mrs. Eliott, "she cannot tell me. But she knows I
+know."
+
+"My dear," she said, "can I or Johnson help you?"
+
+Anne shook her head; but she pressed her friend's hand tighter.
+
+Wondering what she could do or say to help her, Mrs. Eliott resolved to
+take Anne's knowledge for granted, and act upon it.
+
+"If there's trouble, dear, will you come to us? We want you to look on
+our house as a refuge, any hour of the day or night."
+
+Anne stared at her friend. There was something ominous and dismaying in
+her solemn tenderness, and it roused Anne to wonder, even in her grief.
+
+"You cannot help me, dear," she said. "No one can. Yet I had to come to
+you and tell you--"
+
+"Tell me everything," said Mrs. Eliott, "if you can."
+
+Anne tried to steady her voice to tell her, and failed. Then Fanny had an
+inspiration. She felt that she must divert Anne's thoughts from the grief
+that made her dumb, and get her to talk naturally of other things.
+
+"How's Peggy?" said she. She knew it would be good to remind her that,
+whatever happened, she had still the child.
+
+But at that question, Anne released Mrs. Eliott's hand, and laid her head
+back upon the cushion and cried.
+
+"Dear," whispered Mrs. Eliott, with her inspiration full upon her, "you
+will always have _her_."
+
+Then Anne sat up in her corner, and put away her tears, and controlled
+herself to speak.
+
+"Fanny," she said, "Dr. Gardner has seen her. He says I shall not have
+her very long. Perhaps--a few years--if we take the very greatest
+care--"
+
+"Oh, my dear! What is it?"
+
+"It's her heart. I thought it was her spine, because of Edie. But it
+isn't. She has valvular disease. Oh, Fanny, I didn't think a little child
+could have it."
+
+"Nor I," said Mrs. Eliott, shocked into a great calm. "But surely--if you
+take care--"
+
+"No. He gives no hope. He only says a few years, if we leave Scale and
+take her into the country. She must never be overtired, never excited. We
+must never vex her. He says one violent crying fit might kill her. And
+she cries so easily. She cries sometimes till she's sick."
+
+Mrs. Eliott's face had grown white; she trembled, and was dumb before the
+anguish of Anne's face.
+
+But it was Anne who rose, and put her arms about the childless woman, and
+kissed and comforted her.
+
+It was as if she had said: Thank God you never had one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+The rumour which was going the round of the clubs in due time reached
+Lady Cayley through the Ransomes. It roused in her many violent and
+conflicting emotions.
+
+She sat trembling in the Ransomes' drawing-room. Mrs. Ransome had just
+asked whether there was anything in it; because if there was, she, Mrs.
+Ransome, washed her hands of her. She intimated that it would take a good
+deal of washing to get Sarah off her hands.
+
+Sarah had unveiled the face of horror, the face of outraged virtue, and
+the wrath and writhing of propriety wounded in the uncertain, quivering,
+vital spot. During the unveiling Dick Ransome had come in. He wanted
+to know if Topsy had been bullying poor Toodles. Whereupon Topsy wept
+feebly, and poor Toodles had a moment of monstrous calm.
+
+She wanted to get it quite clear, to make no mistake. They might as well
+give her the details. Majendie had left his wife, had he? Well, she
+wasn't surprised at that. The wonder was that, having married her, he had
+stuck to her so long. He had left his wife, and was living at Scarby, was
+he, with her? Well, she only wanted to get all the details clear.
+
+At this Sarah fell into a fit of laughter very terrifying to see. Since
+her own sister wouldn't take her word for it, she supposed she'd have to
+prove that it was not so.
+
+And, under the horror of her virtue and respectability, there heaved a
+dull, dumb fury, born of her memory that it once was, her belief that
+it might have been again, and her knowledge that it was not so. She
+trembled, shaken by the troubling of the fire that ran underground,
+the immense, unseen, unliberated, primeval fire. She was no longer a
+creature of sophistries, hypocrisies, and wiles. She was the large woman
+of the simple earth, welded by the dark, unspiritual flame.
+
+Dick Ransome turned on his sister-in-law a pale, puffy face in which two
+little dark eyes twinkled with a shrewd, gross humour. Nothing could
+possibly have pleased Dick Ransome more than an exhibition of indignant
+virtue, as achieved by Sarah. He knew a great deal more about Sarah than
+Mrs. Ransome knew, or than Sarah knew herself. To Dick Ransome's mind,
+thus illumined by knowledge, that spectacle swept the whole range of
+human comedy. He sat taking in all the entertainment it presented; and,
+when it was all over, he remarked quietly that Toodles needn't bother
+about her proofs. He had got them too. He knew that it was not so. He
+could tell her that much, but he wasn't going to give Majendie away. No,
+she couldn't get any more out of him than that.
+
+Sarah smiled. She did not need to get anything more out of him. She had
+her proof; or, if it didn't exactly amount to proof, she had her clue.
+She had found it long ago; and she had followed it up, if not to the end,
+at any rate, quite far enough. She reflected that Majendie, like the dear
+fool he always was, had given it to her himself, five years ago.
+
+Men's sins take care of themselves. It is their innocent good deeds that
+start the hounds of destiny. When Majendie sent Maggie Forrest's
+handiwork to Mrs. Ransome, with a kind note recommending the little
+embroideress, by that innocent good deed he woke the sleeping dogs of
+destiny. Mrs. Ransome's sister had tracked poor Maggie down by the long
+trail of her beautiful embroidery. She had been baffled when the
+embroidered clue broke off. Now, after three years, she leaped (and
+it was not a very difficult leap for Lady Cayley) to the firm conclusion.
+Maggie Forrest and her art had disappeared for three years; so, at
+perilous intervals, had Majendie; therefore they had disappeared
+together.
+
+Sarah did not like the look in Dick Ransome's eye. She removed herself
+from it to the seclusion of her bedroom. There she bathed her heated face
+with toilette vinegar, steadied her nerves with a cigarette, lay down
+on a couch and rested, and, pure from passion, revised the situation
+calmly. She was an eminently practical, sensible woman, who knew the
+facts of life, and knew, also, how to turn them to her own advantage.
+
+Seen by the larger, calmer spirit that was Sarah now, the situation was
+not as unpleasant as it had at first appeared. To be sure, the rumour in
+which she had figured was fatal to the matrimonial vision, and to the
+beautiful illusion of propriety in which she had once lived. But Sarah
+had renounced the vision; she had abandoned the pursuit of the fugitive
+propriety. She had long ago seen through the illusion. She might be a
+deceiver, but she had no power to hoodwink her own indestructible
+lucidity. Looking back on her life, after the joyous romances of her
+youth, the years had passed like so many funeral processions, each
+bearing some pleasant scandal to its burial. Then there had come the
+dreary funeral feast, and then the days of mournful rehabilitation. Oh,
+that rehabilitation! There had been three years of it. Three years of
+exhausting struggle for a position in society, three years of crawling,
+and pushing, and scrambling, and climbing. There had been a dubious
+triumph. Then six years of respectable futility, ambiguous courtship,
+and palpable frustration. After all that, there was something flattering
+in the thought that, at forty-five, she should yet find her name still
+coupled with Walter Majendie's in a passionate adventure.
+
+It might easily have been, but for Walter's imbecile, suicidal devotion
+to his wife. He had got nothing out of his marriage. Worse than nothing.
+He was the laughing-stock of all his friends who were in the secret; who
+saw him grovelling at the heels of a disagreeable woman who had made him
+conspicuous by her aversion. Of course, it might easily have been.
+
+Sarah's imagination (for she had an imagination) drew out all the
+sweetness that there was for it in that idea. Then it occurred to her
+sound, prosaic commonsense that a reputation is still a reputation, all
+the more precious if somewhat precariously acquired; that, though you may
+as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, hanging is very poor fun when for
+years you have seen nothing of sheep or lamb either; that, in short, she
+must take steps to save her reputation.
+
+The shortest way to save it was the straight way. She would go straight
+to Mrs. Majendie with her proofs. Her duty to herself justified the
+somewhat unusual step. And, more than her duty, Sarah loved a scene. She
+loved to play with other people's emotions and to exhibit her own. She
+wanted to see how Mrs. Majendie would take it; how the white-faced,
+high-handed lady would look when she was told that her husband had
+consoled himself for her high-handedness. She had always been possessed
+by an ungovernable curiosity with regard to Majendie's wife.
+
+She did not know Majendie's wife, but she knew Majendie. She knew all
+about the separation and its cause. That was where she had come in. She
+divined that Mrs. Majendie had never forgiven her husband for his old
+intimacy with her. It was Mrs. Majendie's jealousy that had driven him
+out of the house, into the arms of pretty Maggie. Where, she wondered,
+would Mrs. Majendie's jealousy of pretty Maggie drive him?
+
+Though Sarah knew Majendie, that was more than she would undertake to
+say. But the more she thought about it, the more she wondered; and the
+more she wondered, the more she desired to know.
+
+She wondered whether Mrs. Majendie had heard the report. From all she
+could gather, it was hardly likely. Neither Mrs. Majendie nor her friends
+mixed in those circles where it went the round. The scandal of the clubs
+and of the Park would never reach her in the high seclusion of the house
+in Prior Street.
+
+Into that house Lady Cayley could not hope to penetrate except by guile.
+Once admitted, straightforwardness would be her method. She must not
+attempt to give the faintest social colour to her visit. She must take
+for granted Mrs. Majendie's view of her impossibility. To be sure Mrs.
+Majendie's prejudices were moral even more than social. But moral
+prejudice could be overcome by cleverness working towards a formidable
+moral effect.
+
+She would call after six o'clock, an hour incompatible with any social
+intention. An hour when she would probably find Mrs. Majendie alone.
+
+She rested all afternoon. At five o'clock she fortified herself with
+strong tea and brandy. Then she made an elaborate and thoughtful
+toilette.
+
+At forty-five Sarah's face was very large and horribly white. She
+restored, discreetly, delicately, the vanished rose. The beautiful,
+flower-like edges of her mouth were blurred. With a thin thread of rouge
+she retraced the once perfect outline. Wrinkles had drawn in the corners
+of the indomitable eyes, and ill-health had dulled their blue. That
+saddest of all changes she repaired by hand-massage, pomade, and
+belladonna. The somewhat unrefined exuberance of her figure she laced in
+an inimitable corset. Next she arrayed herself in a suit of dark blue
+cloth, simple and severely reticent; in a white silk blouse, simpler
+still, sewn with innocent daisies, Maggie's handiwork; in a hat, gay in
+form, austere in colour; and in gloves of immaculate whiteness.
+
+Nobody could have possessed a more irreproachable appearance than Lady
+Cayley when she set out for Prior Street.
+
+At the door she gave neither name nor card. She announced herself as a
+lady who desired to see Mrs. Majendie for a moment on important business.
+
+Kate wondered a little, and admitted her. Ladies did call sometimes on
+important business, ladies who approached Mrs. Majendie on missions of
+charity; and these did not always give their names.
+
+Anne was upstairs in the nursery, superintending the packing of Peggy's
+little trunk. She was taking her away to-morrow to the seaside, by Dr.
+Gardner's orders. She supposed that the nameless lady would be some
+earnest, beneficent person connected with a case for her Rescue
+Committee, who might have excellent reasons for not announcing herself
+by name.
+
+And, at first, coming into the low lit drawing-room, she did not
+recognise her visitor. She advanced innocently, in her perfect manner,
+with a charming smile and an appropriate apology.
+
+The smile died with a sudden rigour of repulsion. She paused before
+seating herself, as an intimation that the occasion was not one that
+could be trusted to explain itself. Lady Cayley rose to it.
+
+"Forgive me for calling at this unconventional hour Mrs. Majendie."
+
+Mrs. Majendie's silence implied that she could not forgive her for
+calling at any hour. Lady Cayley smiled inimitably.
+
+"I wanted to find you at home."
+
+"You did not give me your name Lady Cayley."
+
+Their eyes crossed like swords before the duel.
+
+"I didn't, Mrs. Majendie, _because_ I wanted to find you at home. I can't
+help being unconventional--"
+
+Mrs. Majendie raised her eyebrows.
+
+"It's my nature."
+
+Mrs. Majendie dropped her eyelids, as much as to say that the nature of
+Lady Cayley did not interest her.
+
+"--And I've come on a most unconventional errand."
+
+"Do you mean an unpleasant one?"
+
+"I'm afraid I do, rather. And it's just as unpleasant for me as it is for
+you. Have you any idea, Mrs. Majendie, why I've been obliged to come?
+It'll make it easier for me if you have."
+
+"I assure you I have none. I cannot conceive why you have come, nor how I
+can make anything easier for you."
+
+"I think I mean it would have made it easier for you."
+
+"For me?"
+
+"Well--it would have spared you some painful explanations." Sarah felt
+herself sincere. She really desired to spare Mrs. Majendie. The part
+which she had rehearsed with such ease in her own bedroom was impossible
+in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room. She was charmed by the spirit of the
+place, constrained by its suggestion of fair observances, high decencies,
+and social suavities. She could not sit there and tell Mrs. Majendie that
+her husband had been unfaithful to her. You do not say these things. And
+so subdued was Sarah that she found a certain relief in the reflection
+that, by clearing herself, she would clear Majendie.
+
+"I don't in the least know what you want to say to me," said Mrs.
+Majendie. "But I would rather take everything for granted than have any
+explanations."
+
+"If I thought you would take my innocence for granted--"
+
+"Your innocence? I should be a bad judge of it, Lady Cayley."
+
+"Quite so." Lady Cayley smiled again, and again inimitably. (It was
+extraordinary, the things _she_ took for granted.) "That's why I've come
+to explain."
+
+"One moment. Perhaps I am mistaken. But, if you are referring to--to what
+happened in the past, there need be no explanation. I have put all that
+out of my mind now. I have heard that you, too, have left it far behind
+you; and I am willing to believe it. There is nothing more to be said."
+
+There was such a sweetness and dignity in Mrs. Majendie's voice and
+manner that Lady Cayley was further moved to compete in dignity and
+sweetness. She suppressed the smile that ignored so much and took so much
+for granted.
+
+"Unfortunately a great deal more _has_ been said. Your husband is an
+intimate friend of my sister, Mrs. Ransome, as of course you know."
+
+Mrs. Majendie's face denied all knowledge of the intimacy.
+
+"I might have met him at her house a hundred times, but, I assure you,
+Mrs. Majendie, that, since his marriage, I have not met him more than
+twice, anywhere. The first time was at the Hannays'. You were there.
+You saw all that passed between us."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The second time was at the Hannays', too. Mrs. Hannay was with us all
+the time. What do you suppose he talked to me about? His child. He talked
+about nothing else."
+
+"I suppose," said Mrs. Majendie coldly, "there was nothing else to talk
+about."
+
+"No--but it was so dear and naif of him." She pondered on his naivete
+with down-dropped eyes whose lids sheltered the irresponsibly hilarious
+blue.
+
+"He talked about his child--your child--to _me_. I hadn't seen him for
+two years, and that's all he could talk about. _I_ had to sit and listen
+to _that_."
+
+"It wouldn't hurt you, Lady Cayley."
+
+"It didn't--and I'm sure the little girl is charming--only--it was so
+delicious of your husband, don't you see?"
+
+Her face curled all over with its soft and sensual smile.
+
+"If we'd been two babes unborn there couldn't have been a more innocent
+conversation."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"_Well_, since that night we haven't seen each other for more than five
+years. Ask him if it isn't true. Ask Mrs. Hannay--"
+
+"Lady Cayley, I do not doubt your word--nor my husband's honour. I can't
+think why you're giving yourself all this trouble."
+
+"Why, because they're saying _now_--"
+
+Mrs. Majendie rose. "Excuse me, if you've only come to tell me what
+people are saying, it is useless. I never listen to what people say."
+
+"It isn't likely they'd say it to you."
+
+"Then why should _you_ say it to me?"
+
+"Because it concerns my reputation."
+
+"Forgive me, but--your reputation does not concern me."
+
+"And how about your husband's reputation, Mrs. Majendie?"
+
+"My husband's reputation can take care of itself."
+
+"Not in Scale."
+
+"There's no more scandal talked in Scale than in any other place. I never
+pay any attention to it."
+
+"That's all very well--but you must defend yourself sometimes. And when
+it comes to saying that I've been living with Mr. Majendie in Scarby for
+the last three years--"
+
+Mrs. Majendie was so calm that Lady Cayley fancied that, after all, this
+was not the first time she had heard that rumour.
+
+"Let them say it," said she. "Nobody'll believe it."
+
+"Everybody believes it. I came to you because I was afraid you'd be the
+first."
+
+"To believe it? I assure you, Lady Cayley, I should be the last."
+
+"What was to prevent you? You didn't know me."
+
+"No. But I know my husband."
+
+"So do I."
+
+"Not _now_" said Mrs. Majendie quietly.
+
+Lady Cayley's bosom heaved. She had felt that she had risen to the
+occasion. She had achieved a really magnificent renunciation. With almost
+suicidal generosity, she had handed Majendie over intact, as it were, to
+his insufferable wife. She was wounded in several very sensitive places
+by the married woman's imperious denial of her part in him, by her
+attitude of indestructible and unique possession. If _she_ didn't know
+him she would like to know who did. But up till now she had meant to
+spare Mrs. Majendie her knowledge of him, for she was not ill-natured.
+She was sorry for the poor, inept, unhappy prude.
+
+Even now, seated in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room, she had no impulse to
+wound her mortally. Her instinct was rather to patronise and pity, to
+unfold the long result of a superior experience, to instruct this woman
+who was so incompetent to deal with men, who had spoiled, stupidly, her
+husband's life and her own. In that moment Sarah contemplated nothing
+more outrageous than a little straight talk with Mrs. Majendie.
+
+"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," she said, with an air of finely ungovernable
+impulse, "you're a saint. You know no more about men than your little
+girl does. I'm not a saint, I'm a woman of the world. I think I've had a
+rather larger experience of men--"
+
+Mrs. Majendie cut her short.
+
+"I do not want to hear anything about your experience."
+
+"Dear lady, you shan't hear anything about it. I was only going to tell
+you that, of all the men I've known, there's nobody I know better than
+your husband. My knowledge of him is probably a little different from
+yours."
+
+"That I can well believe."
+
+"You mean you think I wouldn't know a good man if I saw one? My
+experience isn't as bad as all that. I can tell a good woman when I see
+one, too. You're a good woman, Mrs. Majendie, and I've no doubt that
+you've been told I'm a bad one. All I can say is, that Walter Majendie
+was a good man when I first knew him. He was a good man when he left me
+and married you. So my badness can't have hurt him very much. If he's
+gone wrong now, it's that goodness of yours that's done it."
+
+Anne's lips turned white, but their muscles never moved. And the woman
+who watched her wondered in what circumstances Mrs. Majendie would
+display emotion, if she did not display it now.
+
+"What right have you to say these things to me?"
+
+"I've a right to say a good deal more. Your husband was very fond of me.
+He would have married me if his friends hadn't come and bullied me to
+give him up for the good of his morals. I loved him--" She suggested by
+an adroit shrug of her shoulders that her love was a thing that Mrs.
+Majendie could either take for granted or ignore. She didn't expect her
+to understand it--"And I gave him up. I'm not a cold-blooded woman; and
+it was pretty hard for me. But I did it. And" (she faced her) "what was
+the good of it? Which of us has been the best for his morals? You or me?
+He lived with me two years, and he married you, and everybody said how
+virtuous and proper he was. Well, he's been married to you for nine
+years, and he's been living with another woman for the last three."
+
+She had not meant to say it; for (in the presence of the social
+sanctities) you do not say these things. But flesh and blood are stronger
+than all the social sanctities; and flesh and blood had risen and claimed
+their old dominion over Sarah. The unspeakable depths in her had been
+stirred by her vision of the things that might have been. She was filled
+with a passionate hatred of the purity which had captured Majendie, and
+drawn him from her, and made her seem vile in his sight. She rejoiced
+in her power to crush it, to confront it with the proof of its own
+futility.
+
+"I do not believe it," said Mrs. Majendie.
+
+"Of course you don't believe it. You're a good woman." She shook her
+meditative head. "The sort of woman who can live with a man for nine
+years without seeing what he's like. If you'd understood your husband as
+well as I do, you'd have known that he couldn't run his life on your
+lines for six months, let alone nine years."
+
+Mrs. Majendie's chin rose, as if she were lifting her face above the
+reach of the hand that had tried to strike it. Her voice throbbed on one
+deep monotonous note.
+
+"I do not believe a word of what you say. And I cannot think what your
+motive is in saying it."
+
+"Don't worry about my motive. It ought to be pretty clear. Let me tell
+you--you can bring your husband back to-morrow, and you can keep him to
+the end of time, if you choose, Mrs. Majendie. Or you can lose him
+altogether. And you will, if you go on as you're doing. If I were you,
+I should make up my mind whether it's good enough. I shouldn't think it
+was, myself."
+
+Mrs. Majendie was silent. She tried to think of some word that would end
+the intolerable interview. Her lips parted to speak, but her thoughts
+died in her brain unborn.
+
+She felt her face turning white under the woman's face; it hypnotised
+her; it held her dumb.
+
+"Don't you worry," said Lady Cayley soothingly. "You can get your husband
+back from that woman to-morrow, if you choose." She smiled. "Do you see
+my motive now?"
+
+Lady Cayley had not seen it; but she had seen herself for one beautiful
+moment as the benignant and inspired conciliator. She desired Mrs.
+Majendie to see her so. She had gratified her more generous instincts in
+giving the unfortunate lady "the straight tip." She knew, perfectly well,
+that Mrs. Majendie wouldn't take it. She knew, all the time, that
+whatever else her revelation did, it would not move Mrs. Majendie to
+charm her husband back. She could not say precisely what it would do.
+Used to live solely in the voluptuous moment, she had no sense of drama
+beyond the scene she played in.
+
+"Your motive," said Mrs. Majendie, "is of no importance. No motive could
+excuse you."
+
+"You think not." She rose and looked down on the motionless woman. "I've
+told you the truth, Mrs. Majendie, because, sooner or later, you'd have
+had to know it; and other people would have told you worse things that
+aren't true. You can take it from me that there's nothing more to tell.
+I've told you the worst."
+
+"You've told me, and I do not believe it."
+
+"You'd better believe it. But, if you really don't, you can ask your
+husband. Ask him where he goes to every week in that yacht of his. Ask
+him what's become of Maggie Forrest, the pretty work-girl who made the
+embroidered frock for Mrs. Ransome's little girl. Tell him you want one
+like it for your little girl; and see what he looks like."
+
+Anne rose too. Her faint white face frightened Lady Cayley. She had
+wondered how Mrs. Majendie would look if she told her the truth about her
+husband. Now she knew.
+
+"My dear lady," said she, "what on earth did you expect?"
+
+Anne went blindly towards the chimney-piece where the bell was. Lady
+Cayley also turned. She meant to go, but not just yet.
+
+"One moment, Mrs. Majendie, please, before you turn me out. I wouldn't
+break my heart about it, if I were you. He might have done worse things."
+
+"He has done nothing."
+
+"Well--not much. He has done what I've told you. But, after all, what's
+that?"
+
+"Nothing to you, Lady Cayley, certainly," said Anne, as she rang the
+bell.
+
+She moved slowly towards the door. Lady Cayley followed to the threshold,
+and laid her hand delicately on the jamb of the door as Mrs. Majendie
+opened it. She raised to her set face the tender eyes of a suppliant.
+
+"Mrs. Majendie," said she, "don't be hard on poor Wallie. He's never been
+hard on you. He might have been." The latch sprang to under her gentle
+pressure. "Look at it this way. He has kept all his marriage vows--except
+one. You've broken all yours--except one. None of your friends will tell
+you that. That's why _I_ tell you. Because I'm not a good woman, and I
+don't count."
+
+She moved her hand from the door. It opened wide, and Lady Cayley walked
+serenely out.
+
+She had said her say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Anne sat in her chair by the fireside, very still. She had turned out the
+light, for it hurt her eyes and made her head ache. She had felt very
+weak, and her knees shook under her as she crossed the room. Beyond that
+she felt nothing, no amazement, no sorrow, no anger, nor any sort of
+pang. If she had been aware of the trembling of her body, she would have
+attributed it to the agitation of a disagreeable encounter. She shivered.
+She thought there was a draught somewhere; but she did not rouse herself
+to shut the window.
+
+At eight o'clock a telegram from Majendie was brought to her. She was not
+to wait dinner. He would not be home that night. She gave the message in
+a calm voice, and told Kate not to send up dinner. She had a bad headache
+and could not eat anything.
+
+Kate had stood by waiting timidly. She had had a sense of things
+happening. Now she retired with curiosity relieved. Kate was used to her
+mistress's bad headaches. A headache needed no explanation. It explained
+everything.
+
+Anne picked up the telegram and read it over again. Every week, for
+nearly three years, she had received these messages. They had always been
+sent from the same post office in Scale, and the words had always been
+the same: "Don't wait. May not be home to-night."
+
+To-night the telegram struck her as a new thing. It stood for something
+new. But all the other telegrams had meant the same thing. Not a new
+thing. A thing that had been going on for three years; four, five, six
+years, for all she knew. It was six years since their separation; and
+that had been his wish.
+
+She had always known it; and she had always put her knowledge away from
+her, tried not to know more. Her friends had known it too. Canon Wharton,
+and the Gardners, and Fanny. It all came back to her, the words, and the
+looks that had told her more than any words, signs that she had often
+wondered at and refused to understand. They had known all the depths of
+it. It was only the other day that Fanny had offered her house to her as
+a refuge from her own house in its shame. Fanny had supposed that it must
+come to that.
+
+God knew she had been loyal to him in the beginning. She had closed her
+eyes. She had forbidden her senses to take evidence against him. She had
+been loyal all through, loyal to the very end. She had lied for him. If,
+indeed, she _had_ lied. In denying Lady Cayley's statements, she had
+denied her right to make them, that was all.
+
+Her mind, active now, went backwards and forwards over the chain of
+evidence, testing each link in turn. All held. It was all true. She had
+always known it.
+
+Then she remembered that she and Peggy would be going away to-morrow.
+That was well. It was the best thing she could do. Later on, when they
+were home again, it would be time enough to make up her mind as to what
+she could do. If there was anything to be done.
+
+Until then she would not see him. They would be gone to-morrow before he
+could come home. Unless he saw them off at the station. She would avoid
+that by taking an earlier train. Then she would write to him. No; she
+would not write. What they would have to say to each other must be said
+face to face. She did not know what she would say.
+
+She dragged herself upstairs to the nursery, where the packing had been
+begun. The room was empty. Nanna had gone down to her supper.
+
+Anne's heart melted. Peggy had been playing at packing. The little lamb
+had gathered together on the table a heap of her beloved toys, things
+which it would have broken her heart to part from.
+
+Her little trunk lay open on the floor, packed already. The embroidered
+frock lay uppermost, carefully folded, not to be crushed. At the sight of
+it Anne's brain flared in anger.
+
+A bright fire burned in the grate. She picked up the frock; she took a
+pair of scissors and cut it in several places at the neck, then tore it
+to pieces with strong, determined hands. She threw the tatters on the
+fire; she watched them consume; she raked out their ashes with the tongs,
+and tore them again. Then she packed Peggy's toys tenderly in the little
+trunk, her heart melting over them. She closed the lid of the trunk,
+strapped it, and turned the key in the lock.
+
+Then, crawling on slow, quiet feet, she went to bed. Undressing vexed
+her. She, once so careful and punctilious, slipped her clothes like a
+tired Magdalen, and let them fall from her and lie where they fell. Her
+nightgown gaped unbuttoned at her throat. Her long hair lay scattered on
+her pillow, unbrushed, unbraided. Her white face stared to the ceiling.
+She was too spent to pray.
+
+When she lay down, reality gripped her. And, with it, her imagination
+rose up, a thing no longer crude, but full-grown, large-eyed, and
+powerful. It possessed itself of her tragedy. She had lain thus, nearly
+nine years ago, in that room at Scarby, thinking terrible thoughts. Now
+she saw terrible things.
+
+Peggy stirred in her sleep, and crept from her cot into her mother's bed.
+
+"Mummy, I'm so frightened."
+
+"What is it, darling? Have you had a little dream?"
+
+"No. Mummy, let me stay in your bed."
+
+Anne let her stay, glad of the comfort of the little warm body, and
+afraid to vex the child. She drew the blankets round her. "There," she
+said, "go to sleep, pet."
+
+But Peggy was in no mind to sleep.
+
+"Mummy, your hair's all loose," she said; and her fingers began playing
+with her mother's hair.
+
+"Mummy, where's daddy? Is he in his little bed?"
+
+"He's away, darling. Go to sleep."
+
+"Why does he go away? Is he coming back again?"
+
+"Yes, darling." Anne's voice shook.
+
+"Mummy, did you cry when Auntie Edie went away?"
+
+Anne kissed her.
+
+"Auntie Edie's dead."
+
+"Lie still, darling, and let mother go to sleep."
+
+Peggy lay still, and Anne went on thinking.
+
+There was nothing to be done. She would have to take him back again,
+always. Whatever shame he dragged her through, she must take him back
+again, for the child's sake.
+
+Suddenly she remembered Peggy's birthday. It was only last week. Surely
+she had not known then. She must have forgotten for a time.
+
+Then tenderness came, and with it an intolerable anguish. She was smitten
+and was melted; she was torn and melted again. Her throat was shaken,
+convulsed; then her bosom, then her whole body. She locked her teeth,
+lest her sobs should break through and wake the child.
+
+She lay thus tormented, till a memory, sharper than imagination, stung
+her. She saw her husband carrying the sleeping child, and his face
+bending over her with that look of love. She closed her eyes, and let the
+tears rain down her hot cheeks and fall upon her breast and in her hair.
+She tried to stifle the sobs that strangled her, and she choked. That
+instant the child's lips were on her face, tasting her tears.
+
+"Oh, mummy, you're crying."
+
+"No, my pet. Go to sleep."
+
+"Why are you crying?"
+
+Anne made no sound; and Peggy cried out in terror.
+
+"Mummy--is daddy dead?"
+
+Anne folded her in her arms.
+
+"No, my pet, no."
+
+"He is, mummy, I know he is. Daddy! Daddy!"
+
+If Majendie had been in the house she would have carried the child into
+his room, and shown him to her, and relieved her of her terror. She had
+done that once before when she had cried for him.
+
+But now Peggy cried persistently, vehemently; not loud, but in an agony
+that tore and tortured her as she had seen her mother torn and tortured.
+She cried till she was sick; and still her sobs shook her, with a sharp
+mechanical jerk that would not cease.
+
+Gradually she grew drowsy and fell asleep.
+
+All night Anne lay awake beside her, driven to the edge of the bed, that
+she might give breathing space to the little body that pushed, closer and
+closer, to the warm place she made.
+
+Towards dawn Peggy sighed three times, and stretched her limbs, as if
+awakening out of her sleep.
+
+Then Anne turned, and laid her hands on the dead body of her child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+The yacht had lain all night in Fawlness creek. Majendie had slept on
+board. He had sent Steve up to the farm with a message for Maggie. He had
+told her not to expect him that night. He would call and see her very
+early in the morning. That would prepare her for the end. In the morning
+he would call and say good-bye to her.
+
+He had taken that resolution on the night when Gardner had told him about
+Peggy.
+
+He did not sleep. He heard all the sounds of the land, of the river, of
+the night, and of the dawn. He heard the lapping of the creek water
+against the yacht's side; the wash of the steamers passing on the river;
+the stir of wild fowl at daybreak; the swish of wind and water among the
+reeds and grasses of the creek.
+
+All night he thought of Peggy, who would not live, who was the child of
+her father's passion and her mother's grief.
+
+At dawn he got up. It was a perfect day, with the promise of warmth in
+it. Over land and water the white mist was lifting and drifting,
+eastwards towards the risen sun. Inland, over the five fields, the drops
+of fallen mist glittered on the grass. The Farm, guarded by its three
+elms, showed clear, and red, and still, as if painted under an unchanging
+light. A few leaves, loosened by the damp, were falling with a shivering
+sound against the house wall, and lay where they fell, yellow on the
+red-brick path.
+
+Maggie was not at the garden gate. She sat crouched inside, by the
+fender, kindling a fire. Tea had been made and was standing on the table.
+She was waiting.
+
+She rose, with a faint cry, as Majendie entered. She put her arms on his
+shoulders in her old way. He loosened her hands gently and held her by
+them, keeping her from him at arm's length. Her hands were cold, her
+eyes had foreknowledge of the end; but, moved by his touch, her mouth
+curled unaware and shaped itself for kissing.
+
+He did not kiss her. And she knew.
+
+Upstairs in the bedroom overhead, Steve and his mother moved heavily.
+There was a sound of drawers opening and shutting, then a grating sound.
+Something was being dragged from under the bed. Maggie knew that they
+were packing Majendie's portmanteau with the things he had left behind
+him.
+
+They stood together by the hearth, where the fire kindled feebly. He
+thrust out his foot, and struck the woodpile; it fell and put out the
+flame that was struggling to be born.
+
+"I'm sorry, Maggie," he said.
+
+Maggie stooped and built up the pile again and kindled it. She knelt
+there, patient and humble, waiting for the fire to burn.
+
+He did not know whether he was going to have trouble with her. He was
+afraid of her tenderness.
+
+"Why didn't you come last night?" she said.
+
+"I couldn't."
+
+She looked at him with eyes that said, "That is not true."
+
+"You couldn't?"
+
+"I couldn't."
+
+"You came last week."
+
+"Last week--yes. But since then things have happened, do you see?"
+
+"Things have happened," she repeated, under her breath.
+
+"Yes. My little girl is very ill."
+
+"Peggy?" she cried, and covered her face with her hands. Then with her
+hands she made a gesture that swept calamity aside. Maggie would only
+believe what she wanted.
+
+"She will get better," she said.
+
+"Perhaps. But I must be with my wife."
+
+"You weren't with her last night," said Maggie. "You could have come
+then."
+
+"No, Maggie, I couldn't."
+
+"D'you mean--because of the little girl?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I see," she said softly. She had understood.
+
+"She will get better," she said, "and then you can come again."
+
+"No. I've told you. I must be with my wife."
+
+"I thought--" said Maggie.
+
+"Never mind what you thought," he said with a quick, fierce impatience.
+
+"Are you fond of her?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"You know I am," he said; and his voice was kind again. "You've known it
+all the time. I told you that in the beginning."
+
+"But--since then," said Maggie, "you've been fond of me, haven't you?"
+
+"It's not the same thing. I've told you that, too, a great many times.
+I don't want to talk about it. It's different."
+
+"How is it different?"
+
+"I can't tell you."
+
+"You mean--it's different because I'm not good."
+
+"No, my child, I'm afraid it's different because I'm bad. That's as near
+as we can get to it."
+
+She shook her head in persistent, obstinate negation.
+
+"See here, Maggie, we must end it. We can't go on like this any more. We
+must give it up."
+
+"I can't," she moaned. "Don't ask me to do that, Wallie dear. Don't ask
+me."
+
+"I must, Maggie. _I_ must give it up. I told you, dear, before we took
+this place, that it must end, sooner or later, that it couldn't last very
+long. Don't you remember?"
+
+"Yes--I remember."
+
+"And you promised me, didn't you, that when the time came, you
+wouldn't--"
+
+"I know. I said I wouldn't make a fuss."
+
+"Well, dear, we've got to end it now. I only came to talk it over with
+you. There'll have to be arrangements."
+
+"I know. I've got to clear out of this."
+
+She said it sadly, without passion and without resentment.
+
+"No," he said, "not if you'd rather stay. Do you like the farm, Maggie?"
+
+"I love it."
+
+"Do you? I was afraid you didn't. I thought you hated the country."
+
+"I love it. I love it."
+
+"Oh, well then, you shan't leave it. I'll keep on the farm for you. And,
+see here, don't worry about things. I'll look after you, all your life,
+dear."
+
+"Look after me?" Her face brightened, "Like you used to?"
+
+"Provide for you."
+
+"Oh!" she cried. "_That_! I don't want to be provided for. I won't have
+it. I'd rather be let alone and die."
+
+"Maggie, I know it's hard on you. Don't make it harder. Don't make it
+hard for me."
+
+"You?" she sobbed.
+
+"Yes, me. It's all wrong. I'm all wrong. I can't do the right thing,
+whatever I do. It's wrong to stay with you. It's wrong, it's brutally
+wrong to leave you. But that's what I've got to do."
+
+"You said--you only said--just now--you'd got to end it."
+
+"That's it. I've got to end it."
+
+She stood up flaming.
+
+"End it then. End it this minute. Give up the farm. Send me away. I'll go
+anywhere you tell me. Only don't say you won't come and see me."
+
+"See you? Don't you understand, Maggie, that seeing you is what I've got
+to give up? The other things don't matter."
+
+"Ah," she cried, "it's you who don't understand. I mean--I mean--see me
+like you used to. That's all I want, Wallie. Only just to see you. That
+wouldn't be awful, would it? There wouldn't be any sin in that?"
+
+Sin? It was the first time she had ever said the word. The first time, he
+imagined, she had formed the thought.
+
+"Poor little girl," he said. "No, no, dear, it wouldn't do. It sounds
+simple, but it isn't."
+
+"But," she said, bewildered, "I love you."
+
+He smiled. "That's why, Maggie, that's why. You've been very sweet and
+very good to me. And that's why I mustn't see you. That's how you make it
+hard for me."
+
+Maggie sat down and put her elbows on the table and hid her face in her
+hands.
+
+"Will you give me some tea?" he said abruptly.
+
+She rose.
+
+"It's all stewed. I'll make fresh."
+
+"No. That'll do. I can't wait."
+
+She gave him his tea. Before he tasted it he got up and poured out a cup
+for her. She drank a little at his bidding, then pushed the cup from her,
+choking. She sat, not looking at him, but looking away, through the
+window, across the garden and the fields.
+
+"I must go now," he said. "Don't come with me."
+
+She started to her feet.
+
+"Ah, let me come."
+
+"Better not. Much better not."
+
+"I must," she said.
+
+They set out along the field-track. Steve, carrying his master's luggage,
+went in front, at a little distance. He didn't want to see them, still
+less to hear them speak.
+
+But they did not speak.
+
+At the creek's bank Steve was ready with the boat.
+
+Majendie took Maggie's hand and pressed it. She flung herself on him, and
+he had to loose her hold by main force. She swayed, clutching at him to
+steady herself. He heard Steve groan. He put his hand on her shoulder,
+and kept it there a moment, till she stood firm. Her eyes, fixed on his,
+struck tears from them, tears that cut their way like knives under his
+eyelids.
+
+Her body ceased swaying. He felt it grow rigid under his hand.
+
+Then he went from her and stepped into the boat. She stood still, looking
+after him, pressing one hand against her breast, as if to keep down its
+heaving.
+
+Steve pushed off from the bank, and rowed towards the creek's mouth. And
+as he rowed, he turned his head over his right shoulder, away from the
+shore where Maggie stood with her hand upon her breast.
+
+Majendie did not look back. Neither he nor Steve saw that, as they neared
+the mouth of the creek, Maggie had turned, and was going rapidly across
+the field, towards the far side of the spit of land where the yacht lay
+moored out of the current. As they had to round the point, her way by
+land was shorter than theirs by water.
+
+When they rounded the point they saw her standing on the low inner shore,
+watching for them.
+
+She stood on the bank, just above the belt of silt and sand that divided
+it from the river. The two men turned for a moment, and watched her from
+the yacht's deck. She waited till the big mainsail went up, and the
+yacht's head swung round and pointed up stream. Then she began to run
+fast along the shore, close to the river.
+
+At that sight Majendie turned away and set his face toward the
+Lincolnshire side.
+
+He was startled by an oath from Steve and a growl from Steve's father at
+the wheel. "Eh--the--little--!" At the same instant the yacht was pulled
+suddenly inshore and her boom swung violently round.
+
+Steve and the boatswain rushed to the ropes and began hauling down the
+mainsail.
+
+"What the devil are you doing there?" shouted Majendie. But no one
+answered him.
+
+When the sail came down he saw.
+
+"My God," he cried, "she's going in."
+
+Old Pearson, at the wheel, spat quietly over the yacht's side. "Not she,"
+said old Pearson. "She's too much afraid o' cold water."
+
+Maggie was down on the lower bank close to the edge of the river.
+Majendie saw her putting her feet in the water and drawing them out
+again, first one foot, and then the other. Then she ran a little way,
+very fast, like a thing hunted. She stumbled on the slippery, slanting
+ground, fell, picked herself up again, and ran. Then she stood still and
+tried the water again, first one foot and then the other, desperate,
+terrified, determined. She was afraid of life and death.
+
+The belt of sand sloped gently, and the river was shallow for a few feet
+from the shore. She was safe unless she threw herself in.
+
+Majendie and Steve rushed together for the boat. As Majendie pushed
+against him at the gangway, Steve shook him off. There was a brief
+struggle. Old Pearson left the wheel to the boatswain and crossed to the
+gangway, where the two men still struggled. He put his hand on his
+master's sleeve.
+
+"Excuse me, sir, you'd best stay where you are."
+
+He stayed.
+
+The captain went to the wheel again, and the boatswain to the boat.
+Majendie stood stock-still by the gangway. His hands were clenched in his
+pockets: his face was drawn and white. The captain slewed round upon him
+a small vigilant eye. "You'd best leave her to Steve, sir. He's a good
+lad and he'll look after 'er. He'd give his 'ead to marry her. Only she
+wuddn't look at 'im."
+
+Majendie said nothing. And the captain continued his consolation.
+
+"_She's_ only trying it on, sir," said he. "_I_ know 'em. She'll do nowt.
+She'll do nubbut wet 'er feet. She's afeard o' cold water."
+
+But before the boat could put off, Maggie was in again. This time her
+feet struck a shelf of hard mud. She slipped, rolled sideways, and lay,
+half in and half out of the water. There she stayed till the boat reached
+her.
+
+Majendie saw Steve lift her and carry her to the upper bank. He saw
+Maggie struggle from his arms and beat him off. Then he saw Steve seize
+her by force, and drag her back, over the fields, towards Three Elms
+Farm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Majendie landed at the pier and went straight to the office. There he
+found a telegram from Anne telling him of his child's death.
+
+He went to the house. The old nurse opened the door for him. She was
+weeping bitterly. He asked for Anne, and was told that she was lying down
+and could not see him. It was Nanna who told him how Peggy died, and all
+the things he had to know. When she left him, he shut himself up alone in
+his study for the first hour of his grief. He wanted to go to Anne; but
+he was too deeply stupefied to wonder why she would not see him.
+
+Later they met.
+
+He knew by his first glance at her face that he must not speak to her of
+the dead child. He could understand that. He was even glad of it. In this
+she was like him, that deep feeling left her dumb. And yet, there was a
+difference. It was that he could not speak, and she, he felt, would not.
+
+There were things that had to be done. He did them all, sparing her as
+much as possible. Once or twice she had to be consulted. She gave him a
+fact, or an opinion, in a brief methodic manner that set him at a
+distance from her sacred sorrow. She had betrayed more emotion in
+speaking to Dr. Gardner.
+
+But for these things they went through their first day in silence, like
+people who respect each other's grief too profoundly for any speech.
+
+In the evening they sat together in the drawing-room. There was nothing
+more to do.
+
+Then he spoke. He asked to see Peggy. His voice was so low that she did
+not hear him.
+
+"What did you say, Walter?"
+
+He had to say it again. "Where is she? Can I see her?"
+
+His voice was still low, and it was thick and uncertain, but this time
+she understood.
+
+"In Edie's room," she said. "Nanna has the key."
+
+She did not go with him.
+
+When he came back to her she was still cold and torpid. He could
+understand that her grief had frozen her.
+
+At night she parted from him without a word.
+
+So the days went on.
+
+Sometimes he would sit in the study by himself for a little while. His
+racked nerves were soothed by solitude. Then he would think of the woman
+upstairs in the drawing-room, sitting alone. And he would go to her. She
+did not send him away. She did not leave him. She did nothing. She said
+nothing.
+
+He began to be afraid. It would do her good, he said to himself, if she
+could cry. He wondered whether it was wise to leave her to her terrible
+torpor; whether he ought to speak to her. But he could not.
+
+Yet she was kind to him for all her coldness. Once, when his grief was
+heaviest upon him, he thought she looked at him with anxiety, with pity.
+She came to him once, where he sat downstairs, alone. But though she
+came to him, she still kept him from her. And she would not go with him
+into the room where Peggy lay.
+
+Now and then he wondered if she knew. He was not certain. He put the
+thought away from him. He was sure that for nearly three years she had
+not known anything. She had not known anything as long as she had had the
+child, when her knowing would not, he thought, have mattered half so
+much. It would be horrible if she knew now. And yet sometimes her eyes
+seemed to say to him: "Why not now? When nothing matters."
+
+On the night before the funeral, the night they closed the coffin, he
+came to her where she sat upstairs alone. He put his hand on her shoulder
+and spoke her name. She shrank from him with a low cry. And again he
+wondered if she knew.
+
+The day after the funeral she told him that she was going away for a
+month with Mrs. Gardner.
+
+He said he was glad to hear it. It would do her good. It was the best
+thing she could do.
+
+He had meant to take her away himself. She knew it. Yet she had arranged
+to go with Mrs. Gardner.
+
+Then he was certain that she knew.
+
+She went, with Mrs. Gardner, the next day. He and Dr. Gardner saw them
+off at the station. He thanked Mrs. Gardner for her kindness, wondering
+if she knew. The little woman had tears in her eyes. She pressed his hand
+and tried to speak to him, and broke down. He gathered that, whatever
+Anne knew, her friend knew nothing.
+
+The doctor was inscrutable. He might or he might not know. If he did,
+he would keep his knowledge to himself. They walked together from the
+station, and the doctor talked about the weather and the municipal
+elections.
+
+Anne was to be away a month. Majendie wrote to her every week and
+received, every week, a precise, formal little letter in reply. She told
+him, every week, of an improvement in her own health, and appeared
+solicitous for his.
+
+While she was away, he saw a great deal of the Hannays and of Gorst. When
+he was not with the Hannays, Gorst was with him. Gorst was punctilious,
+but a little shy in his inquiries for Mrs. Majendie. The Hannays made no
+allusion to her beyond what decency demanded. They evidently regarded her
+as a painful subject.
+
+About a week before the day fixed for Anne's return, the firm of Hannay &
+Majendie had occasion to consult its solicitor about a mortgage on some
+office buildings. Price was excited and assiduous. Excited and assiduous,
+Hannay thought, beyond all proportion to the trivial affair. Hannay
+noticed that Price took a peculiar and almost morbid interest in the
+junior partner. His manner set Hannay thinking. It suggested the legal
+instinct scenting the divorce-court from afar.
+
+He spoke of it to Mrs. Hannay.
+
+"Do you think she knows?" said Mrs. Hannay.
+
+"Of course she does. Or why should she leave him, at a time when most
+people stick to each other if they've never stuck before?"
+
+"Do you think she'll try for a separation?"
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"I do," said Mrs. Hannay. "Now that the dear little girl's gone."
+
+"Not she. She won't let him off as easily as all that. She'll think of
+the other woman. And she'll live with him and punish him for ever."
+
+He paused pondering. Then he delivered himself of that which was within
+him, his idea of Anne.
+
+"I always said she was a she-dog in the manger."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Anne was not expected home before the middle of November. She wrote to
+her husband, fixing Saturday for the day of her return.
+
+Majendie, therefore, was surprised to find her luggage in the hall when
+he entered the house at six o'clock on Friday evening. Nanna had
+evidently been waiting for the sound of his latchkey. She hurried to
+intercept him.
+
+"The mistress has come home, sir," she said.
+
+"Has she? I hope you've got things comfortable for her."
+
+"Yes, sir. We had a telegram this afternoon. She said she would like to
+see you in the study, sir, as soon as you came in."
+
+He went at once into the study. Anne was sitting there in her chair by
+the hearth. Her hat and jacket were thrown on the writing-table that
+stood near in the middle of the room. She rose as he came in, but made no
+advance to meet him. He stood still for a moment by the closed door, and
+they held each other with their eyes.
+
+"I didn't expect you till to-morrow."
+
+"I sent a telegram," she said.
+
+"If you'd sent it to the office I'd have met you."
+
+"I didn't want anybody to meet me."
+
+He felt that her words had some reference to their loss, and to the
+sadness of her home-coming. A sigh broke from him; but he was unaware
+that he had sighed.
+
+He sat down, not in his accustomed seat by the hearth, opposite to hers,
+but in a nearer chair by the writing-table. He saw that she had been
+writing letters. He pushed them away and turned his chair round so as to
+face her. His heart ached looking at her.
+
+There were deep lines on her forehead; and she was very pale, even her
+small close mouth had no colour in it. She kept her sad eyes half hidden
+under their drooping lids. Her lips were tightly compressed, her narrow
+nostrils white and pinched. It was a face in which all the doors of life
+were closing; where the inner life went on tensely, secretly, behind the
+closing doors.
+
+"Well," he said, "I'm very glad you've come back."
+
+"Walter--have you any idea why I went away?"
+
+"Why you went? Obviously, it was the best thing you could do."
+
+"It was the only thing I could do. And I am glad I did it. My mind has
+become clearer."
+
+"_I_ see. I thought it would."
+
+"It would not have been clear if I had stayed."
+
+"No," he said vaguely, "of course it wouldn't."
+
+"I've seen," she continued, "that there is nothing for me but to come
+back. It is the right thing."
+
+"Did you doubt it?"
+
+"Yes. I even doubted whether it were possible--whether, in the
+circumstances, I could bear to come back, to stay--"
+
+"Do you mean--to--the house?"
+
+"No. I mean--to you."
+
+He turned away. "I understand," he said. "So it came to that?"
+
+"Yes. It came to that. I've been here three hours; and up to the last
+hour, I was not sure whether I would not pack the rest of my things and
+go away. I had written a letter to you. There it is, under your arm."
+
+"Am I to read it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He turned his back on her, and read the letter.
+
+"I see. You say here you want a separation. If you want it you shall have
+it. But hadn't you better hear what I have to say, _first_?"
+
+"I've come back for that. What have you to say?"
+
+He bowed his head upon his breast.
+
+"Not very much, I'm afraid. Except that I'm sorry--and ashamed of
+myself--and--I ask your forgiveness. What more can I say?"
+
+"What more indeed? I'm to understand, then, that everything I was told is
+true?"
+
+"It _was_ true."
+
+"And is not now?"
+
+"No. Whoever told you, omitted to tell you that."
+
+"You mean you have given up living with this woman?"
+
+"Yes. If you call it living with her."
+
+"You have given it up--for how long?"
+
+"About five weeks." His voice was almost inaudible.
+
+She winced. Five weeks back brought her to the date of Peggy's death.
+
+"I dare say," she said. "You could hardly--have done less in the
+circumstances."
+
+"Anne," he said. "I gave it up--I broke it off--before that. I--I broke
+with her that morning--before I heard."
+
+"You were away that night."
+
+"I was not with her."
+
+"Well--And it was going on, all the time, for three years before that?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ever since your sister's death?"
+
+He did not answer.
+
+"Ever since Edie died," she repeated, as if to herself rather than to
+him.
+
+"Not quite. Why don't you say--since you sent me away?"
+
+"When did I ever send you away?"
+
+"That night. When I came to you."
+
+She remembered.
+
+"Then? Walter, that is unforgivable. To bring up a little thing like
+that--"
+
+"You call it a little thing? A little thing?"
+
+"I had forgotten it. And for you to remember it all these years--and to
+cast it up against me--_now_--"
+
+"I haven't cast anything up against you."
+
+"You implied you held me responsible for your sin."
+
+"I don't hold you responsible for anything. Not even for that."
+
+Her face never changed. She did not take in the meaning of his emphasis.
+
+He continued. "And, if you want your separation, you shall have it.
+Though I did hope that you might consider that six years was about enough
+of it."
+
+"I did want it. But I do not want it now. When I wrote that letter I had
+forgotten my promise."
+
+"You shall have your promise back again if you want it. I shall not hold
+you to it, or to anything, if you'd rather not."
+
+"I can never have my promise back--I made it to Edie."
+
+"To Edie?"
+
+"Yes. A short time before she died."
+
+His face brightened.
+
+"What did you promise her?" he said softly.
+
+"That I would never leave you."
+
+"Did she make you promise not to?"
+
+"No. It did not occur to her that I could leave you. She did not think it
+possible."
+
+"But _you_ did?"
+
+"I thought it possible--yes."
+
+"Even then. There was no reason then. I had given you no cause."
+
+"I did not know that."
+
+"Do you mean that you suspected me--then?"
+
+"I never accused you, Walter, even in my thoughts."
+
+"You suspected?"
+
+"I didn't know."
+
+"And--afterwards--did you suspect anything?"
+
+"No. I never suspected anything--afterwards."
+
+"I see. You suspected me when you had no cause. And when I gave you cause
+you suspected nothing. I must say you are a very extraordinary woman."
+
+"I didn't know," she answered.
+
+"Who told you? Or must I not ask that?"
+
+"I cannot tell you. I would rather not. I was not told much. And there
+are some things that I have a right to know."
+
+"Well--"
+
+"Who is this woman?--the girl you've been living with?"
+
+"I've no right to tell you--that. Why do you want to know? It's all
+over."
+
+"I must know, Walter. I have a reason."
+
+"Can you give me your reason?"
+
+"Yes. I want to help her."
+
+"You would--really--help her?"
+
+"If I can. It is my duty."
+
+"It isn't in the least your duty."
+
+"And I want to help you. That also is my duty. I want to undo, as far as
+possible, the consequences of your sin. We cannot let the girl suffer."
+
+Majendie was moved by her charity. He had not looked for charity from
+Anne.
+
+"If you will give me her name, and tell me where to find her, I will see
+that she is provided for."
+
+"She is provided for."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I am keeping on the house for her."
+
+Anne's face flushed.
+
+"What house?"
+
+"A farm, out in the country."
+
+"That house is yours? You were living with her there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Her face hardened. She was thinking of her dead child, who was to have
+gone into the country to get strong.
+
+He was tortured by the same thought. Maggie, his mistress, had grown fat
+and rosy in the pure air of Holderness. Peggy had died in Scale.
+
+In her bitterness she turned on him.
+
+"And what guarantee have I that you will not go to her again?"
+
+"My word. Isn't that sufficient?"
+
+"I don't know, Walter. It would have been once. It isn't now. What proof
+have I of your honour?"
+
+"My--"
+
+"I beg your pardon. I forgot. A man's honour and a woman's honour are two
+very different things."
+
+"They are both things that are usually taken for granted, and not
+mentioned."
+
+"I will try to take it for granted. You must forgive my having mentioned
+it. There is one thing I must know. Has she--that woman--any children?"
+
+"She has none."
+
+Up till that moment, the examination had been conducted with the coolness
+of intense constraint. But for her one burst of feeling, Anne had
+sustained her tone of business-like inquiry, her manner of the woman of
+committees. Now, as she asked her question, her voice shook with the
+beating of her heart. Majendie, as he answered, heard her draw a long,
+deep breath of relief.
+
+"And you propose to keep on this house for her?" she said calmly.
+
+"Yes. She has settled in there, and she will be well looked after."
+
+"Who will look after her?"
+
+"The Pearsons. They're people I can trust."
+
+"And, besides the house, I suppose you will give her money?"
+
+"I _must_ make her a small allowance."
+
+"That is a very unwise arrangement. Whatever help is given her had much
+better come from me."
+
+"From _you_?"
+
+"From a woman. It will be the best safeguard for the girl."
+
+He saw her drift and smiled.
+
+"Am I to understand that you propose to rescue her?"
+
+"It's my duty--my work."
+
+"Your work?"
+
+"You may not realise it; but that is the work I've been doing for the
+last three years. I am doubly responsible for a girl who has suffered
+through my husband's fault."
+
+"What do you want to do with her?"
+
+"I want, if possible, to reclaim her."
+
+He smiled again.
+
+"Do you realise what sort of girl she is?"
+
+"I'm afraid, Walter, she is what you have made her."
+
+"And so you want to reclaim her?"
+
+"I do, indeed."
+
+"You couldn't reclaim her."
+
+"She is very young, isn't she?"
+
+"N--no--She's eight--and--twenty."
+
+"I thought she was a young girl. But, if she's as old as that--and bad--"
+
+"Bad? Bad?"
+
+He rose and looked down on her in anger.
+
+"She's good. You don't know what you're talking about. She isn't a lady,
+but she's as gentle and as modest as you are yourself. She's sweet, and
+kind, and loving. She's the most unworldly and unselfish creature I ever
+met. All the time I've known her she never did a selfish thing. She was
+absolutely devoted. She'd have stripped herself bare of everything she
+possessed if it would have done me any good. Why, the very thing you
+blame the poor little soul for, only proves that she hadn't a thought
+for herself. It would have been better for her if she'd had. And you talk
+of 'reclaiming' a woman like that! You want to turn your preposterous
+committee on to her, to decide whether she's good enough to be taken and
+shut up in one of your beastly institutions! No. On the whole, I think
+she'll be better off if you leave her to me."
+
+"Say at once that you think I'd better leave you to her, since you think
+her perfect."
+
+"She _was_ perfect to me. She gave me all she had to give. She couldn't
+very well do more."
+
+"You mean she helped you to sin. So, of course, you condone her sin."
+
+"I should be an utter brute if I didn't stand up for her, shouldn't I?"
+
+"Yes." She admitted it. "I suppose you feel that you must defend her. Can
+you defend yourself, Walter?"
+
+He was silent.
+
+"I'm not going to remind you of your sin against your wife. _That_ you
+would think nothing of. What have you to say for your sin against her?"
+
+"My sin against her was not caring for her. _You_ needn't call me to
+account for it."
+
+"I am to believe that you did not care for her?"
+
+"I never cared for her. I took everything from her and gave her nothing,
+and I left her like a brute."
+
+"Why did you go to her if you did not care for her?"
+
+"I went to her because I cared for my wife. And I left her for the same
+reason. And she knew it."
+
+"Do you really expect me to believe that you left me for another woman,
+because you cared for me?"
+
+"For no earthly reason except that."
+
+"You deceived me--you lived in deliberate sin with this woman for three
+years--and now you come back to me, because, I suppose, you are tired of
+her--and I am to believe that you cared for me!"
+
+"I don't expect you to believe it. It's the fact, all the same. I
+wouldn't have left you if I hadn't been hopelessly in love with you. You
+mayn't know it, and I don't suppose you'd understand it if you did, but
+that was the trouble. It was the trouble all along, ever since I married
+you. I know I've been unfaithful to you, but I never loved any one but
+you. Consider how we've been living, you and I, for the last six
+years--can you say that I put another woman in your place?"
+
+She looked at him with her sad, uncomprehending eyes; her hands made a
+hopeless, helpless gesture.
+
+"You know what you have done," she said presently. "And you know that it
+was wrong."
+
+"Yes, it was wrong. But the whole thing was wrong. Wrong from the
+beginning. How are we going to make it right?"
+
+"I don't know, Walter. We must do our best."
+
+"Yes, but what are we going to do? What are you going to do?"
+
+"I have told you that I am not going to leave you."
+
+"We are to go on, then, as we did before?"
+
+"Yes--as far as possible."
+
+"Then," he said, "we shall still be all wrong. Can't you see it? Can't
+you see _now_ that it's all wrong?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Our life. Yours and mine. Are you going to begin again like that?"
+
+"Does it rest with me?"
+
+"Yes. It rests with you, I think. You say we must make the best of it.
+What is your notion of the best?"
+
+"I don't know, Walter."
+
+"I _must_ know. You say you'll take me back--you'll never leave me. What
+are you taking me back to? Not to that old misery? It wasn't only bad for
+me, dear. It was bad for both of us."
+
+She sighed, and her sigh shuddered to a sob in her throat. The sound went
+to his heart and stirred in it a passion of pity.
+
+"God knows," he said, "I'd live with you on any terms. And I'll keep
+straight. You needn't be afraid. Only--See here. There's no reason why
+you shouldn't take me back. I wouldn't ask you to if I'd left off caring
+for you. But it wasn't there I went wrong. I can't explain about Maggie.
+You wouldn't understand. But, if you'd only try to, we might get along.
+There's nothing that I won't do for you to make up--"
+
+"You can do nothing. There are things that cannot be made up for."
+
+"I know--I know. But still--we mightn't be so unhappy--perhaps, in
+time--And if we had children--"
+
+"Never," she cried sharply, "never!"
+
+He had not stirred in his chair where he sat bowed and dejected. But she
+drew back, flinching.
+
+"I see," he said. "Then you do not forgive me."
+
+"If you had come to me, and told me of your temptation--of your
+sin--three years ago, I would have forgiven you then. I would have taken
+you back. I cannot now. Not willingly, not with the feeling that I ought
+to have."
+
+She spoke humbly, gently, as if aware that she was giving him pain. Her
+face was averted. He said nothing; and she turned and faced him.
+
+"Of course you can compel me," she said. "You can compel me to anything."
+
+"I have never compelled you, as you know."
+
+"I know. I know you have been good in that way."
+
+"Good? Is that your only notion of goodness?"
+
+"Good to me, Walter. Yes. You were very good. I do not say that I will
+not go back to you; but if I do, you must understand plainly, that it
+will be for one reason only. Because I desire to save you from yourself.
+To save some other woman, perhaps--"
+
+"You can let the other woman take care of herself. As for me, I
+appreciate your generosity, but I decline to be saved on those terms.
+I'm fastidious about a few things, and that's one of them. What you are
+trying to tell me is that you do not care for me."
+
+She lifted her face. "Walter, I have never in all my life deceived you. I
+do not care for you. Not in that way."
+
+He smiled. "Well, I'll be content so long as you care for me in any
+way--your way. I think your way's a mistake; but I won't insist on that.
+I'll do my best to adapt my way to yours, that's all."
+
+Her face was very still. Under their deep lids her eyes brooded, as if
+trying to see the truth inside herself.
+
+"No--no," she moaned. "I haven't told you the truth. I believe there
+is _no_ way in which I can care for you again. Or--well--I can care
+perhaps--I'm caring now--but--"
+
+"I see. You do not love me."
+
+She shook her head. "No. I know what love is, and--I do not love you."
+
+"If you don't love me, of course there's nothing more to be said."
+
+"Yes, there is. There's one thing that I have kept from you."
+
+"Well," he said, "you may as well let me have it. There's no good keeping
+things from me."
+
+"I had meant to spare you."
+
+At that he laughed. "Oh, don't spare me."
+
+She still hesitated.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+She spoke low.
+
+"If you had been here--that night--Peggy would not have died."
+
+He drew a quick breath. "What makes you think that?" he said quietly.
+
+"She overstrained her heart with crying. As you know. She was crying for
+you. And you were not there. Nothing would make her believe that you were
+not dead."
+
+She saw the muscles of his face contract with sudden pain.
+
+He looked at her gravely. The look expressed his large male contempt for
+her woman's cruelty; also a certain luminous compassion.
+
+"Why have you told me this?" he said.
+
+"I've told you, because I think the thought of it may restrain you when
+nothing else will."
+
+"I see. You mean to say, you believe I killed her?"
+
+Anne closed her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+He did not know whether he believed what she had said, nor whether she
+believed it herself, neither could he understand her motive in saying it.
+
+At intervals he was profoundly sorry for her. Pity for her loosened, from
+time to time, the grip of his own pain. He told himself that she must
+have gone through intolerable days and nights of misery before she could
+bring herself to say a thing like that. Her grief excused her. But he
+knew that, if he had been in her place, she in his, he the saint and she
+the sinner, and that, if he had known her through her sin to be
+responsible for the child's death, there was no misery on earth that
+could have made him charge her with it.
+
+Further than that he could not understand her. The suddenness and cruelty
+of the blow had brutalised his imagination.
+
+He got up and stretched himself, to shake off the oppression that weighed
+on him like an unwholesome sleep. As he rose he felt a queer feeling in
+his head, a giddiness, a sense of obstruction in his brain. He went into
+the dining-room, and poured himself out a small quantity of whiskey,
+measuring it with the accuracy of abstemious habit. The dose had become
+necessary since his nerves had been unhinged by worry and the shock of
+Peggy's death. This time he drank it almost undiluted.
+
+He felt better. The stimulant had jogged something in his brain and
+cleared it.
+
+He went back into the study and began to think. He remained thinking for
+some time, consecutively, and with great lucidity. He asked himself what
+he was to do now, and he saw clearly that he could do nothing. If Anne
+had been a passionate woman, hurling her words in a fury of fierce grief,
+he would have thought no more of it. If she had been the tender, tearful
+sort, dropping words in a weak, helpless misery, he would have thought
+no more of it. He could imagine poor little Maggie saying a thing like
+that, not knowing what she said. If it had been poor little Maggie he
+could have drawn her to him and comforted her, and reasoned with her till
+he had made her see the senselessness of her idea. Maggie would have
+listened to reason--his reason. Anne never would.
+
+She had been cold and slow, and implacably deliberate. It was not blind
+instinct, but illuminated reason that had told her what to say and when
+to say it. Nothing he could ever do or say would make her take back her
+words. And if she took back her words, her thought would remain
+indestructible. She would never give it up; she would never approach him
+without it; she would never forget that it was there. It would always
+rise up between them, unburied, unappeased.
+
+His brain swam and clouded again. He went again to the dining-room and
+drank more whiskey. Kate was in the dining-room and she saw him drinking.
+He saw Kate looking at him; but he didn't care. He was past caring for
+what anybody might think of him.
+
+His brain was clearer than ever now. He realised Anne's omnipotence to
+harm him. He saw the hard, imperishable divinity in her. His wife was a
+spiritual woman. He had not always known what that meant. But he knew
+now; and now for the first time in his life he judged her. For the first
+time in his life his heart rose in a savage revolt against her power.
+
+His head grew hot. The air of the study was stifling. He opened the
+window and went out into the cool, dark garden. He paced up and down,
+heedless of where he trod, trampling the flowerless plants down into
+their black beds. At the end of the path a little circle of white stones
+glimmered in the dark. That was Peggy's garden.
+
+An agony of love and grief shook him as he thought of the dead child.
+
+He thought, with his hot brain, of Anne, and his anger flared like hate.
+It was through the child that she had always struck him. She was a fool
+to refuse to have more children, to sacrifice her boundless opportunities
+to strike.
+
+There was a light in the upper window. He thought of Maggie, walking up
+and down in the back alley behind the garden, watching the lights of his
+house burning to the dawn. The little thing had loved him. She had given
+him all she had to give; and he had given her nothing. He had compelled
+her to live childless; and he had cast her off. She had been sacrificed
+to his passion, and to his wife's coldness.
+
+Up there he could see Anne's large shadow moving on the lighted
+window-blind. She was dressing for dinner.
+
+Kate was standing on the step, looking for him. As he came to the study
+window he saw Nanna behind her, going out of the room. His servants had
+been watching him. Kate was frightened. Her voice fluttered in her throat
+as she told him dinner was served.
+
+He sat opposite his wife, with the little oblong table between them.
+Twice, sometimes three times a day, as long as they both lived, they
+would have to sit like that, separated, hostile, horribly conscious of
+each other.
+
+Anne talked about the Gardners, and he stared at her stupidly, with eyes
+that were like heavy burning balls under his aching forehead. He ate
+little and drank a good deal. Half an hour after dinner he followed her
+to the drawing-room, dazed, not knowing clearly where he went.
+
+Anne was seated at her writing-table. The place was strewn with papers.
+She was absorbed in the business of her committee, working off five weeks
+of correspondence in arrears.
+
+He lay on the sofa and dozed, and she took no notice of him. He left the
+room, and she did not hear him go out.
+
+He went to the Hannays. They were out. He went on to the Ransomes and
+found them there. He found Canon Wharton there, too, drinking whiskey and
+soda.
+
+"Here's Wallie," some one said. Mrs. Hannay (it _was_ Mrs. Hannay) gave a
+cry of delight, and made a little rush at him which confused him. Ransome
+poured out more whiskey, and gave it to him and to the Canon. The Canon
+drank peg for peg with them, while he eyed Majendie austerely. He used to
+drink peg for peg with Lawson Hannay, in the days when Hannay drank; now
+he drank peg for peg with Majendie, eyeing him austerely.
+
+Then the Hannays came between them. They closed round Majendie and hemmed
+him in a corner, and kept him there talking to him. He had no clear idea
+what they were saying or what he was saying to them; but their voices
+were kind and they soothed him. Dick Ransome brought him more whiskey. He
+refused it. He had a sort of idea that he had had enough, rather more, in
+fact, than was quite good for him; and ladies were in the room. Ransome
+pressed him, and Lawson Hannay said something to Ransome; he couldn't
+tell what. He was getting drowsy and disinclined to answer when people
+spoke to him. He wished they would let him alone.
+
+Lawson Hannay put his hand on his shoulder, and said, "Come along with
+us, Wallie," and he wished Lawson Hannay would let him alone. Mrs. Hannay
+came and stooped over him and whispered things in his ear, and he tried
+to rouse himself so far as to stare into her face and try to understand
+what she was saying.
+
+She was saying, "Wallie, get up--Come with us, Wallie, dear." And she
+laid her hand on his arm. He took her hand in his, and pressed it, and
+let it drop.
+
+Then Ransome said, "Why can't you let the poor chap alone? Let him stay
+if he likes."
+
+That was what he wanted. Ransome knew what he wanted--to be let alone.
+
+He didn't see the Hannays go. The only thing he saw distinctly was the
+Canon's large grey face, and the eyes in it fixed unpleasantly on him. He
+wished the Canon would let him alone.
+
+He was getting really _too_ sleepy. He would have to rouse himself
+presently and go. With a tremendous effort he dragged himself up and
+went. Ransome walked with him to the club and left him there.
+
+The club-room was in an hotel opposite the pier. He could get a bedroom
+there for the night; and when the night was over he would be able to
+think what he would do. He couldn't go back to Prior Street as he was. He
+was too sleepy to know very much about it, but he knew that. He knew,
+too, that something had happened which might make it impossible for him
+to go back at all.
+
+Ransome had told the manager of the hotel to take care of him. Every now
+and then the manager came and looked at him; and then the drowsiness
+lifted from his brain with a jerk, and he knew that something horrible
+had happened. That was why they kept on looking at him.
+
+At last he dragged himself to his room. He rang the bell and ordered
+more whiskey. This time he drank, not for lucidity, but for blessed
+drunkenness, for kind sleep and pitiful oblivion.
+
+He slept on far into the morning and woke with a headache. At twelve
+Hannay and Ransome called for him. It was a fine warm day with a
+southerly wind blowing and sails on the river. Ransome's yacht lay off
+the pier, with Mrs. Ransome in it. The sails were going up in Ransome's
+yacht. Hannay's yacht rocked beside it. Dick took Majendie by the arm.
+Dick, outside in the morning light, looked paler and puffier than ever,
+but his eyes were kind. He had an idea. Dick's idea was that Majendie
+should run up with him and Mrs. Ransome to Scarby for the week-end.
+Hannay looked troubled as Dick unfolded his idea.
+
+"I wouldn't go, old man," said he, "with that head of yours."
+
+Dick stared. "Head? Just the thing for his head," said Dick. "It'll do
+him all the good in the world."
+
+Hannay took Dick aside. "No, it won't. It won't do him any good at all."
+
+"I say, you know, I don't know what you're driving at, but you might let
+the poor chap have a little peace. Come along, Majendie."
+
+Majendie sent a telegram to Prior Street and went.
+
+The wind blew away his headache and put its own strong, violent, gusty
+life into him. He felt agreeably excited as he paced the slanting deck.
+He stayed there in the wind.
+
+Downstairs in the cabin the Ransomes were quarrelling.
+
+"What on earth," said she, "possessed you to bring him?"
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"Because of Sarah."
+
+"What's she got to do with it?"
+
+"Well, you don't want them to meet again, do you?"
+
+Dick made his face a puffy blank. "Why the devil shouldn't they?" said
+he.
+
+"Well, you know the trouble he's had with his wife already about Sarah."
+
+"It wasn't about Sarah. It was another woman altogether!"
+
+"I know that. But she was the beginning of it."
+
+"Let her be the end of it, then. If you're thinking of _him_. The sooner
+that wife of his gets a separation the better it'll be for him."
+
+"And you want my sister to be mixed up in _that_?"
+
+Mrs. Ransome began to cry.
+
+"She can't be mixed up in it. He's past caring for Sarah, poor old girl."
+
+"She isn't past caring for him. She isn't past anything," sobbed Mrs.
+Ransome.
+
+"Don't be a fool, Topsy. There isn't any harm in poor old Toodles.
+Majendie's a jolly sight safer with Toodles, I can tell you, than he is
+with that wife of his."
+
+"Has she come home, then?"
+
+"She came yesterday afternoon. You saw what he was like last night. If
+I'd left him to himself this morning he'd have drunk himself into a fit.
+When a sober--a fantastically sober man does that--"
+
+"What does it mean?"
+
+"It generally means that he's in a pretty bad way. And," added Dick
+pensively, "they call poor Toodles a dangerous woman."
+
+All night the yacht lay in Scarby harbour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+It was nine o'clock on Sunday evening. Majendie was in Scarby, in the
+hotel on the little grey parade, where he and Anne had stayed on their
+honeymoon.
+
+Lady Cayley was with him. She was with him in the sitting-room which had
+been his and Anne's. They were by themselves. The Ransomes were dining
+with friends in another quarter of the town. He had accepted Sarah's
+invitation to dine with her alone.
+
+The Ransomes had tried to drag him away, and he had refused to go with
+them. He had very nearly quarrelled with the Ransomes. They had been
+irritating him all day, till he had been atrociously rude to them. He had
+told Ransome to go to a place where, as Ransome had remarked, he could
+hardly have taken Mrs. Ransome. Then he had explained gently that he had
+had enough knocking about for one day, that his head ached abominably,
+and that he wished they would leave him alone. It was all he wanted. Then
+they had left him alone, with Sarah. He was glad to be with her. She was
+the only person who seemed to understand that all he wanted was to be let
+alone.
+
+She had been with him all day. She had sat beside him on the deck of the
+yacht as they cruised up and down the coast till sunset. Afterwards, when
+the Ransomes' friends had trooped in, one after another, and filled the
+sitting-room with insufferable sounds, she had taken him into a quiet
+corner and kept him there. He had felt grateful to her for that.
+
+She had been angelic to him during dinner. She had let him eat as little
+and drink as much as he pleased. And she had hardly spoken to him. She
+had wrapped him in a heavenly silence. Only from time to time, out of the
+divine silence, her woman's voice had dropped between them, soothing and
+pleasantly indistinct. He had been drinking hard all day. He had been
+excited, intolerably excited; and she soothed him. He was aware of her
+chiefly as a large, benignant presence, maternal and protecting.
+
+His brain felt brittle, but extraordinarily clear, luminous, transparent,
+the delicate centre of monstrous and destructive energies. It burned
+behind his eyeballs like a fire. His eyes were hot with it, the pupils
+strained, distended, gorged with light.
+
+This monstrous brain of his originated nothing, but ideas presented to
+it became monstrous, too. And their immensity roused no sense of the
+incredible.
+
+The table had been cleared of everything but coffee-cups, glasses, and
+wine. They still sat facing each other. Sarah had her arms on the table,
+propping her chin up with her clenched hands. Her head was tilted back
+slightly, in a way that was familiar to him; so that she looked at him
+from under the worn and wrinkled white lids of her eyes. And as she
+looked at him she smiled slightly; and the smile was familiar, too.
+
+And he sat opposite her, with his chin sunk on his breast. His bright,
+dark, distended eyes seemed to strain upwards towards her, under the
+weight of his flushed forehead.
+
+"Well, Wallie," she said, "I didn't get married, you see, after all."
+
+"Married--married? Why didn't you?"
+
+"I never meant to. I only wanted you to think it."
+
+"Why? Why did you want me to think it?"
+
+He was no longer disinclined to talk. Though his brain lacked
+spontaneity, it responded appropriately to suggestion.
+
+"I didn't want you to think something else."
+
+"What? What should I think?"
+
+His voice was thick and rapid, his eyes burned.
+
+"That you'd made a mess of my life, my dear."
+
+"When did I make a mess of your life?"
+
+"Never mind when. I _might_ have married, only I didn't. That's the
+difference between me and you."
+
+"And that's how I made a mess of your life, is it? I haven't made a
+furious success of my own, have I?"
+
+"I wouldn't have brought it up against you, if you had. The awful thing
+was to stand by, and see you make a sinful muddle of it"
+
+"A sinful muddle?"
+
+"Yes. That's what it's been. A sinful muddle."
+
+"Which is worse, d'you think, a sinful muddle? or a muddling sin?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask me, my dear. I can't see any difference."
+
+"My God--nor I!"
+
+"There's no good talking. You're so obstinate, Wallie, that I believe, if
+you could live your life over again, you'd do just the same."
+
+"I would, probably. Just the same."
+
+"There's nothing you'd alter?"
+
+"Nothing. Except one thing."
+
+"What thing?"
+
+"Never mind what."
+
+"I don't mind, if the one thing wasn't _me_--was it?"
+
+He did not answer.
+
+"Was it?" she insisted, turning the full blue blaze of her eyes on him.
+
+He started. "Of course it wasn't. You don't suppose I'd have said so if
+it had been, do you?"
+
+"A-ah! So, if you could live your life over again, you wouldn't turn me
+out of it? I didn't take up much room, did I? Only two years."
+
+"Two years?"
+
+"That was all. And you'd let me stay in for my two poor little years.
+Well, that's something. It's a great deal. It's more than some women
+get."
+
+"Yes. More than some women get."
+
+"Poor Wallie. I'm afraid you wouldn't live your life again."
+
+"No. I wouldn't."
+
+"I would. I'd live mine, horrors and all. Just for those two little
+years. I say, if we'd keep each other in for those two years, we needn't
+turn each other out now, need we?"
+
+"Oh no, oh no."
+
+His brain followed her lead, originating nothing.
+
+"See here," she said, "if I come in--"
+
+"Yes, yes," he said vaguely.
+
+He was bending forward now, with his hands clasped on the table. She
+stretched out her beautiful white arms and covered his hands with hers,
+and held them. Her eyes were full-orbed, luminous, and tender. They held
+him, too.
+
+"I come in on my own terms, this time, not yours."
+
+"Oh, of course."
+
+"I mean I can't come in on the same terms as before. All that was over
+nine years ago, when you married. You and I are older. We have had
+experience. We've suffered horribly. We know."
+
+"What do we know?"
+
+She let go his hands.
+
+"At least we know the limits--the lines we must draw. Fifteen years ago
+we didn't know anything, either of us. We were innocents. You were an
+innocent when you left me, when you married."
+
+"When I married?"
+
+"Yes, when you married. You were a blessed innocent, or you couldn't have
+done it. You married a good woman."
+
+"I know."
+
+"So do I. Well, I've given one or two men a pretty bad time, but you may
+write it on my tombstone that I never hurt another woman."
+
+"Of course you haven't."
+
+"And I'm not going to hurt your wife, remember."
+
+"I'm stupid, I don't think I understand."
+
+"Can't you understand that I'm not going to make trouble between you and
+her?"
+
+"Me? And her?"
+
+"You and her. You've come back to me as my friend. We'll be better
+friends if you understand that, whatever I let you do, dear, I'm not
+going to let you make love to me."
+
+She drew herself back and faced him with her resolution.
+
+She knew the man with whom she had to deal. His soul must be off its
+guard before she could have any power over his body. In presenting
+herself as unattainable she would make herself desired. She would bring
+him back.
+
+She knew what fires he had passed through on his way to her. She saw that
+she could not bring him back by playing poor, tender Maggie's part. She
+could not move him by appearing as the woman she once was, by falling at
+his feet as she had once fallen. This time, it was he who must fall at
+hers.
+
+Anne Majendie had held her empire, and had made herself for ever
+desirable, by six years of systematic torturings and deceptions and
+denials, by all the infidelities of the saint in love with her own
+sanctity. The woman who was to bring him back now would have to borrow
+for a moment a little of Anne Majendie's spiritual splendour. She saw by
+his flaming face that she had suggested the thing she had forbidden.
+
+"You think," said she, "there isn't any danger? I don't say there is. But
+if there was, you'd never see it. You'd never think of it. You'd be up to
+your neck in it before you knew where you were."
+
+He moved impatiently. "At any rate I know where I am now."
+
+"And I," said she, in response to his movement, "mean that you shall stay
+there." She paused. "I know what you're thinking. You'd like to know what
+right I have to say these things to you."
+
+"Well--I'm awfully stupid--"
+
+"I earned the right fifteen years ago. When a woman gives a man all she
+has to give, and gets nothing, there are very few things she hasn't a
+right to say to him."
+
+"I've no doubt you earned your right."
+
+"I'm not reproaching you, dear. I'm simply justifying the plainness of my
+speech."
+
+He stared at her, but he did not answer.
+
+"Don't think me hard," said she. "I'm saying these things because I care
+for you. Because--" She rose, and flung her arms out with a passionate
+gesture towards him. "Oh, my dear--my heart aches for you so that I can't
+bear it."
+
+She came over to where he sat staring at her, staring half stupefied,
+half inflamed. She stood beside him, and passed her hand lightly over his
+hair.
+
+"I only want to help you."
+
+"You can't help me."
+
+"I know I can't. I can only say hard things to you."
+
+She stooped, and her lips swept his hair. For a moment love gave her back
+her beauty and the enchantment of her youth; it illuminated the house of
+flesh it dwelt in and inspired. And yet she could not reach him. His soul
+was on its guard.
+
+"You've come back," she whispered. "You've come back. But you never came
+till you were driven. That's how I thought you'd come. When you were
+driven. When there was nobody but me."
+
+He heard her speaking, but her words had no significance that pierced his
+thick and swift sensations.
+
+"What have you done that you should have to pay so?"
+
+"What have I done?"
+
+"Or I?" she said.
+
+He did not hear her. There was another sound in his ears.
+
+Her voice ceased. Her eyes only called to him. He pushed back his chair
+and laid his arms on the table, and bowed his head upon them, hiding his
+face from her. She knelt down beside him. Her voice was like a warm wind
+in his ears. He groaned. She drew a short sharp breath, and pressed her
+shoulder to his shoulder, and her face to his hidden face.
+
+At her touch he rose to his feet, violently sobered, loathing himself and
+her. He felt his blood leap like a hot fountain to his brain. When she
+clung he raged, and pushed her from him, not knowing what he did,
+thrusting his hands out, cruelly, against her breasts, so that he wrung
+from her a cry of pain and anger.
+
+But when he would have gone from her his feet were loaded; they were
+heavy weights binding him to the floor. He had a sensation of intolerable
+sickness; then a pain beat like a hammer on one side of his head. He
+staggered, and fell, headlong, at her feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+Anne, left alone at her writing-table, had worked on far into Friday
+night. The trouble in her was appeased by the answering of letters, the
+sorting of papers, the bringing of order into confusion. She had always
+had great practical ability; she had proved herself a good organiser,
+expert in the business of societies and committees.
+
+In her preoccupation she had not noticed that her husband had left the
+house, and that he did not return to it.
+
+In the morning, as she left her room, the old nurse came to her with a
+grave face, and took her into Majendie's room. Nanna pointed out to her
+that his bed had not been slept in. Anne's heart sank. Later on, the
+telegram he sent explained his absence. She supposed that he had slept
+at the Ransomes' or the Hannays', and she thought no more of it. The
+business of the day again absorbed her.
+
+In the afternoon Canon Wharton called on her. It was the recognised visit
+of condolence, delayed till her return. In his manner with Mrs. Majendie
+there was no sign of the adroit little man of the world who had drunk
+whiskey with Mrs. Majendie's husband the night before. His manner was
+reticent, reverential, not obtrusively tender. He abstained from all the
+commonplaces of consolation. He did not speak of the dead child; but
+reminded her of the greater maternal work that God had called upon her
+to do, and told her that the children of many mothers would rise up and
+call her blessed. He bade her believe that her life, which seemed to her
+ended, had in reality only just begun. He said that, if great natures
+were reserved for great sorrows, great afflictions, they were also
+dedicated to great uses. Uses to which their sorrows were the unique and
+perfect training.
+
+He left her strengthened, uplifted, and consoled.
+
+On Sunday morning she attended the service at All Souls. In the afternoon
+she walked to the great flat cemetery of Scale, where Edith's and Peggy's
+graves lay side by side. In the evening she went again to All Souls.
+
+The church services were now the only link left between her soul and
+God. She clung desperately to them, trying to recapture through these
+consecrated public methods the peace that should have been her most
+private personal possession.
+
+For, all the time, now, she was depressed by a sense of separation from
+the Unseen. She struggled for communion; she prostrated herself in
+surrender, and was flung back upon herself, an outcast from the spiritual
+world. She was alone in that alien place of earth where everything had
+been taken from her. She almost rebelled against the cruelty of the
+heavenly hand, that, having smitten her, withheld its healing. She had
+still faith, but she had no joy nor comfort in her faith. Therefore she
+occupied herself incessantly with works; appeasing, putting off the hours
+that waited for her as their prey.
+
+It was at night that her desolation found her most helpless. For then she
+thought of her dead child and of the husband whom she regarded as worse
+than dead.
+
+She had one terrible consolation. She had once doubted the justice of her
+attitude to him. Now she was sure. Her justification was complete.
+
+She was sitting at work again early on Monday morning, in the
+drawing-room that overlooked the street.
+
+About ten o'clock she heard a cab drive up to the door.
+
+She thought it was Majendie come back again, and she was surprised when
+Kate came to her and told her that it was Mr. Hannay, and that he wished
+to speak to her at once.
+
+Hannay was downstairs, in the study; standing with his back to the
+fireplace. He did not come forward to meet her. His rosy, sensual face
+was curiously set. As she approached him, his loose lips moved and closed
+again in a firm fold.
+
+He pressed her hand without speaking. His heaviness and immobility
+alarmed her.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+Her heart was like a wild whirlpool that sucked back her voice and
+suffocated it.
+
+"I've come with very bad news, Mrs. Majendie."
+
+"Tell me," she whispered.
+
+"Walter is ill--very dangerously ill."
+
+"He is dead."
+
+The words seemed to come from her without grief, without any feeling. She
+felt nothing but a dull, dragging pain under her left breast, as if the
+doors of her heart were closed and its chambers full to bursting.
+
+"No. He is not dead."
+
+Her heart beat again.
+
+"He's dying, then."
+
+"They don't know."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"At Scarby."
+
+"Scarby? How much time have I?"
+
+"There's a train at ten-twenty. Can you be ready in five--seven minutes?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She rang the bell.
+
+"Tell Kate where to send my things," she said as she left the room. Her
+mind took possession of her, so that she did not waste a word of her
+lips, or a single motion of her feet. She came back in five minutes,
+ready to start.
+
+"What is it?" she said as they drove to the station.
+
+"Haemorrhage of the brain."
+
+"The brain?"
+
+"Apoplexy."
+
+"Is he unconscious?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She closed her eyes.
+
+"He will not know me," she said.
+
+Hannay was silent. She lay back and kept her eyes closed.
+
+A van blocked the narrow street that led to the East Station. The driver
+reined in his horse. She opened her eyes in terror.
+
+"We shall miss the train--if we stop."
+
+"No, no, we've plenty of time."
+
+They waited.
+
+"Oh, tell him to drive round the other way."
+
+"We shall miss the train if we do _that_."
+
+"Well, make that man in front move on. Make him turn--up there."
+
+The van turned into a side street, and they drove on.
+
+The Scarby train was drawn up along the platform. They had five minutes
+before it started; but she hurried into the nearest compartment. They had
+it to themselves.
+
+The train moved on. It was a two hours' journey to Scarby.
+
+A strong wind blew through the open window and she shivered. She had
+brought no warm wrap with her. Hannay laid his overcoat over her knees
+and about her body. His large hands moved gently, wrapping it close.
+She thanked him and tried to smile. And when he saw her smile, Hannay was
+sorry for the things he had thought and said of her. His voice when he
+spoke to her vibrated tenderly. She resigned herself to his hands. Grief
+made her passive now.
+
+Hannay sank back in the far corner and left her to her grief. He covered
+his eyes with his hands that he might not see her. Poor Hannay hoped
+that, if he removed his painful presence, she would allow herself the
+relief of tears.
+
+But no tears fell from under her closed eyelids. Her soul was withdrawn
+behind them into the darkness where the body's pang ceased, and there was
+help. She started when the train stopped at Scarby Station.
+
+As they stopped at the hotel there came upon her that reminiscence which
+is foreknowledge and the sense of destiny.
+
+A woman was coming down the staircase as they entered. She did not see
+her at first. She would not have seen her at all if Hannay had not taken
+her arm and drawn her aside into the shelter of a doorway. Then, as the
+woman passed out, she saw that it was Lady Cayley.
+
+She looked helplessly at Hannay. Her eyes said, "Where is he?" She
+wondered where, in what room, she should find her husband.
+
+She found him upstairs in the room that had been their bridal chamber. He
+lay on their bridal bed, motionless and senseless. There was a deep flush
+on one side of his face, one corner of his mouth was slightly drawn, and
+one eyelid drooped. He was paralysed down his left side.
+
+His lips moved mechanically as he breathed, and his breath came with a
+deep grating sound. His left arm was stretched outside, upon the blanket.
+A nurse stood at the head of the bed. She moved as Anne entered and gave
+place to her. Anne put out her hand and touched his arm, caressing it.
+
+The nurse said, "There has been no change." She lifted his arm by the
+wrist and laid it in his wife's hand that she might see that he was
+paralysed.
+
+And Anne sat still by the bedside, staring at her husband's face, and
+holding his heavy arm in her hand, as if she could thus help him to bear
+the weight of it.
+
+Hannay gave one look at her as she sat there. He said something to the
+nurse and went out of the room. The woman followed him.
+
+After they went Anne bowed her head and laid it on the pillow beside her
+husband's, with her cheek against his cheek. She stayed so for a moment.
+Then she lifted her head and looked about her. Her eyes took note of
+trifles. She saw that the blankets were drawn straight over his body, as
+if over the body of a dead man. The pillow-cases and the end of the
+sheet, which was turned down over the blankets, were clean and
+creaseless.
+
+He could not move. He was paralysed. They had not told her that.
+
+She saw that he wore a clean white nightshirt of coarse cotton. It must
+have been lent by one of the people of the hotel. His illness must have
+come upon him last night, when he was still up and dressed. They must
+have carried him in here, and laid him in the clean bed. Everything about
+him was very white and clean. She was glad.
+
+She sat there till the nurse came back again. She had to move away from
+him then. It hurt her to see the woman bending over his bed, looking at
+him, to see, her hands touching him.
+
+A bell rang somewhere in the hotel. Hannay came in and told her that
+there was luncheon in the sitting-room. She shook her head. He put his
+hand on her shoulder and spoke to her as if she had been a child. She
+must eat, he said; she would be no good if she did not eat. She got up
+and followed him. She ate and drank whatever he gave her. Then she went
+back to her husband, and watched beside him while the nurse went to her
+meal. The terrible thing was that she could do nothing for him. She could
+only wait and watch. The nurse came back in half an hour, and they sat
+there together, all the afternoon, one on each side of the bed, waiting
+and watching.
+
+Towards evening the doctor, who had come at midnight and in the morning,
+came again. He looked at Anne keenly and kindly, and his manner seemed
+to her to say that there was no hope. He made experiments. He brought
+a lighted candle and held it to the patient's eyes, and said that the
+pupils were still contracted. The nurse said nothing. She looked at Anne
+and she looked at the doctor, and when he went away, she made a sign to
+Anne to keep back while she followed him. Anne heard them talking
+together in low voices outside the door, and her heart ached with fear
+of what he would say to her presently.
+
+He sent for her, and she came to him in the sitting-room. He said, "There
+is no change." Her brain reeled and righted itself. She had thought he
+was going to say "There is no hope."
+
+"Will he get better?" she said.
+
+"I cannot tell you."
+
+The doctor seated himself and prepared to deal long and leisurely with
+the case.
+
+"It's impossible to say. He _may_ get better. He may even get well. But
+I should do wrong if I let you hope too much for that."
+
+"You can give _no_ hope?" she said, thinking that she uttered his real
+thought.
+
+"I don't say that. I only say that the chances are not--exclusively--in
+favour of recovery."
+
+"The chances?"
+
+"Yes. The chances." The doctor looked at her, considering whether she
+were a woman who could bear the truth. Her eyes assured him that she
+could. "I don't say he won't recover. It's this way," said he. "There's
+a clot somewhere on the brain. If it absorbs completely he may get
+well--perfectly well."
+
+"And if it does not absorb?"
+
+"He may remain as he is, paralysed down the left side. The paralysis may
+be only partial. He may recover the use of one limb and not the other.
+But he will be paralysed. Partially or completely."
+
+She pictured it.
+
+"Ah--but," she said, laying hold on hope again, "he will not die?"
+
+"Well--there may be further lesions--in which case--"
+
+"He will die?"
+
+"He may die. He may die any moment."
+
+She accepted it, abandoning hope.
+
+"Will there be any return of consciousness? Will he know me?"
+
+"I'm afraid not. If consciousness returns we may begin to hope. As it
+is, I don't want you to make up your mind to the worst. There are two
+things in his favour. He has evidently a sound constitution. And he has
+lived--up till now--Mr. Hannay tells me, a rather unusually temperate
+life. That is so?"
+
+"Yes. He was most abstemious. Always--always. Why?"
+
+The doctor recalled his eyes from their examination of Mrs. Majendie's
+face. It was evident that there were some truths which she could not
+bear.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Majendie, there is no _why_, of course. That is in his
+favour. There seems to have been nothing in his previous history which
+would predispose to the attack."
+
+"Would a shock--predispose him?"
+
+"A shock?"
+
+"Any very strong emotion--"
+
+"It might. Certainly. If it was recent. Mr. Hannay told me that he--that
+you--had had a sudden bereavement. How long ago was that?"
+
+"A month--nearly five weeks."
+
+"Ah--so long ago as that? No, I think it would hardly be likely. If there
+had been any recent violent emotion--"
+
+"It would account for it?"
+
+"Yes, yes, it might account for it."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+He was touched by her look of agony. "If there is anything else I can--"
+
+"No. Thank you very much. That is all I wanted to know."
+
+She went back into the sick-room. She stayed there all evening, and they
+brought her food to her there. She stayed, watching for the sign of
+consciousness that would give hope. But there was no sign.
+
+The nurse went to bed at nine o'clock. Anne had insisted on sitting up
+that night. Hannay slept in the next room, on a sofa, within call.
+
+When they had left her alone with her husband, she knelt down beside his
+bedside and prayed. And as she knelt, with her bowed head near to that
+body sleeping its strange and terrible sleep, she remembered nothing but
+that she had once loved him; she was certain of nothing but that she
+loved him still. His body was once more dear and sacred to her as in her
+bridal hour. She did not ask herself whether it were paying the penalty
+of its sin; her compassion had purged him of his sin. She had no memory
+for the past. It seemed to her that all her life and all her suffering
+were crowded into this one hour while she prayed that his soul might come
+back and speak to her, and that his body might not die. The hour trampled
+under it that other hour when she had knelt by the loathed bridal bed,
+wrestling for her own spiritual life. She had no life of her own to pray
+for now. She prayed only that he might live.
+
+And though she knew not whether her prayer were answered she knew that it
+was heard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+It was the evening of the third day. There was no change in Majendie.
+
+Dr. Gardner had been sent for. He had come and gone. He had confirmed the
+Scarby doctor's opinion, with a private leaning to the side of hope.
+Hannay, who had waited to hear his verdict, was going back to Scale
+early the next morning. Mrs. Majendie had been in her husband's room all
+day, and he had seen little of her.
+
+He was sitting alone by the fire after dinner, trying to read a paper,
+when she came in. Her approach was so gentle that he was unaware of it
+till she stood beside him. He started to his feet, mumbling an apology
+for his bewilderment. He pulled up an arm-chair to the fire for her,
+wandered uneasily about the room for a minute or two, and would have left
+it, had she not called him back to her.
+
+"Don't go, Mr. Hannay. I want to speak to you."
+
+He turned, with an air of frustrated evasion, and remained, a supremely
+uncomfortable presence.
+
+"Have you time?" she asked.
+
+"Plenty. All my time is at your disposal."
+
+"You have been very kind--"
+
+"My dear Mrs. Majendie--"
+
+"I want you to be kinder still. I want you to tell me the truth."
+
+"The truth--" Hannay tried to tighten his loose face into an expression
+of judicial reserve.
+
+"Yes, the truth. There's no kindness in keeping things from me."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Majendie, I'm keeping nothing from you, I assure you. The
+doctors have told me no more than they have told you."
+
+"I know. It's not that."
+
+"What is it that's troubling you?"
+
+"Did you see Walter before he came here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you see him on Friday night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was he perfectly well then?"
+
+"Er--yes--he was well. Quite well."
+
+Anne turned her sorrowful eyes upon him.
+
+"No. There was something wrong. What was it?"
+
+"If there was he didn't tell me."
+
+"No. He wouldn't. Why did you hesitate just now?"
+
+"Did I hesitate?"
+
+"When I asked you if he was well."
+
+"I thought you meant did I notice any signs of his illness coming on. I
+didn't. But of course, as you know, he was very much shaken by---by your
+little girl's death."
+
+"You noticed that while I was away?"
+
+"Y-es. But I certainly noticed it more on the night you were speaking
+of."
+
+"You would have said, then, that he must have received a severe shock?"
+
+"Certainly--certainly I would."
+
+Hannay responded quite cheerfully in his immense relief.
+
+It was what they were all trying for, to make poor Mrs. Majendie believe
+that her husband's illness was to be attributed solely to the shock of
+the child's death.
+
+"Do you think that shock could have had anything to do with his illness?"
+
+"Of course I do. At least, I should say it was indirectly responsible for
+it."
+
+She put her hand up to hide her face. He saw that in some way
+incomprehensible to him, so far from shielding her, he had struck a blow.
+
+"Dr. Gardner told you that much," said he. He felt easier, somehow, in
+halving the responsibility with Gardner.
+
+"Yes. He told me that. But he had not seen him since October. You saw him
+on Friday, the day I came home."
+
+Hannay was confirmed in his suspicion that on Friday there had been a
+scene. He now saw that Mrs. Majendie was tortured by the remembrance of
+her part in it.
+
+"Oh well," he said consolingly. "He hadn't been himself for a long time
+before that."
+
+"I know. I know. That only makes it worse."
+
+She wept slowly, silently, then stopped suddenly and held herself in a
+restraint that was ten times more pitiful to see. Hannay was unspeakably
+distressed.
+
+"Perhaps," said he, "if you could tell me what's on your mind, I might be
+able to relieve you."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Come," he said kindly, "what is it, really? What do you imagine makes it
+worse?"
+
+"I said something to him that I didn't mean."
+
+"Of course you did," said Hannay, smiling cheerfully. "We all say things
+to each other that we don't mean. That wouldn't hurt him."
+
+"But it did. I told him he was responsible for Peggy's death. I didn't
+know what I was saying. I let him think he killed her."
+
+"He wouldn't think it."
+
+"He did. There was nothing else he could think. If he dies I shall have
+killed him."
+
+"You will have done nothing of the sort. He wouldn't think twice about
+what a woman said in her anger or her grief. He wouldn't believe it. He's
+got too much sense. You can put that idea out of your head for ever."
+
+"I cannot put it out. I had to tell you--lest you should think--"
+
+"Lest I should think--what?"
+
+"That it was something else that caused his illness."
+
+"But, my dear lady--it _was_ something else. I haven't a doubt about it."
+
+"I know what you mean," she said quickly. "He had been drinking--poor
+dear."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"The doctor asked me. He asked me if he had been in the habit of taking
+too much."
+
+Hannay heaved a deep sigh of discomfort and disappointment.
+
+"It's no good," said she, "trying to keep things from me. And there's
+another thing that I must know."
+
+"You're distressing yourself most needlessly. There is nothing more to
+know."
+
+"I know that woman was here. I do not know whether he came here to meet
+her."
+
+"Ah well--that I can assure you he did not."
+
+"Still--he must have met her. She was here."
+
+"How do you know that she was here?"
+
+"You saw her yourself, coming out of the hotel. You were horrified, and
+you pulled me back so that I shouldn't see her."
+
+"There's nothing in that, nothing whatever."
+
+"If you'd seen your own face, Mr. Hannay, you would have said there was
+everything in it."
+
+"My face, dear Mrs. Majendie, does not prove that they met. Or that there
+was any reason why they shouldn't meet. It only proves my fear lest Lady
+Cayley should stop and speak to you. A thing she wouldn't be very likely
+to do if they had met--as you suppose."
+
+"There is nothing that woman wouldn't do."
+
+"She wouldn't do that. She wouldn't do that."
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"No. You don't know. So you're bound to give her the benefit of the
+doubt. I advise you to do it. For your own peace of mind's sake. And for
+your husband's sake."
+
+"It was for his sake that I asked you for the truth. Because--"
+
+"You wanted me to clear him?"
+
+"Yes. Or to tell me if there is anything I should forgive."
+
+"I can assure you he didn't come here to see Sarah Cayley. As to
+forgiveness--you haven't got to forgive him that; and if you only
+understood, you'd find that there was precious little you ever had to
+forgive."
+
+"If I only understood. You think I don't understand, even yet?"
+
+"I'm sure you don't. You never did."
+
+"I would give everything if I could understand now."
+
+"Yes, if you could. But can you?"
+
+"I've tried very hard. I've prayed to God to make me understand."
+
+Poor Hannay was embarrassed at the name of God. He fell to contemplating
+his waistcoat buttons in profound abstraction for a while. Then he spoke.
+
+"Look here, Mrs. Majendie. Poor Walter always said you were much too good
+for him. If you'll pardon my saying so, I never believed that until now.
+Now, upon my soul, I do believe it. And I believe that's where the
+trouble's been all along. There are things about a man that a woman like
+you cannot understand. She doesn't try to understand them. She doesn't
+want to. She'd die rather than know. So--well--the whole thing's wrapped
+up in mystery, and she thinks it's something awful and iniquitous,
+something incomprehensible."
+
+"Yes. If she thinks about it at all."
+
+"My dear lady, very often she thinks about it a great deal more than is
+good for her, and she thinks wrong. She's bound to, being what she is.
+Now, when an ordinary man marries that sort of woman there's certain to
+be trouble."
+
+He paused, pondering. "My wife's a dear, good, little woman," he said
+presently; "she's the best little woman in the world for me; but I dare
+say to outsiders, she's a very ordinary little woman. Well, you know, I
+don't call myself a remarkably good man, even now, and I wasn't a good
+man at all before she married me. D'you mind my talking about myself like
+this?"
+
+"No." She tried to keep herself sincere. "No. I don't think I do."
+
+"You do, I'm afraid. I don't much like it myself. But, you see, I'm
+trying to help you. You said you wanted to understand, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes. I want to understand."
+
+"Well, then, I'm not a good man, and your husband is. And yet, I'd no
+more think of leaving my dear little wife for another woman than I would
+of committing a murder. But, if she'd been 'too good' for me, there's
+no knowing what I mightn't have done. D'you see?"
+
+"I see. You're trying to tell me that it was my fault that my husband
+left me."
+
+"Your fault? No. It was hardly your _fault_, Mrs. Majendie."
+
+He meditated. "There's another thing. You good women are apt to run away
+with the idea that--that this sort of thing is so tremendously important
+to us. It isn't. It isn't."
+
+"Then why behave as if it were?"
+
+"We don't. That's your mistake. Ten to one, when a man's once married
+and happy, he doesn't think about it at all. Of course, if he isn't
+happy--but, even then, he doesn't go thinking about it all day long. The
+ordinary man doesn't. He's got other things to attend to--his business,
+his profession, his religion, anything you like. Those are _the_
+important things, the things he thinks about, the things that take up
+his time."
+
+"I see. I see. The woman doesn't count."
+
+"Of course she counts. But she counts in another way. Bless you, the
+woman may _be_ his religion, his superstition. In your husband's case it
+certainly was so."
+
+Her face quivered.
+
+"Of course," he said, "what beats you is--how a man can love his wife
+with his whole heart and soul, and yet be unfaithful to her."
+
+"Yes. If I could understand that, I should understand everything. Once,
+long ago, Walter said the same thing to me, and I couldn't understand."
+
+"Well--well, it depends on what one calls unfaithfulness. Some men are
+brutes, but we're not talking about them. We're talking about Walter."
+
+"Yes. We're talking about Walter."
+
+"And Walter is my dearest friend, so dear that I hardly know how to talk
+to you about him."
+
+"Try," she said.
+
+"Well, I suppose I know more about him than anybody else. And I never
+knew a man freer from any weakness for women. He was always so awfully
+sorry for them, don't you know. Sarah Cayley could never have fastened
+herself on him if he hadn't been sorry for her. No more could that
+girl--Maggie Forrest."
+
+"How did he come to know her?"
+
+"Oh, some fellow he knew had behaved pretty badly to her, and Walter had
+been paying for her keep, years before there was anything between them.
+She got dependent on him, and he on her. We are pathetically dependent
+creatures, Mrs. Majendie."
+
+"What was she like?"
+
+"She? Oh, a soft, simple, clinging little thing. And instead of shaking
+her off, he let her cling. That's how it all began. Then, of course, the
+rest followed. I'm not excusing him, mind you. Only--" Poor Hannay became
+shy and unhappy. He hid his face in his hands and lifted it from them,
+red, as if with shame. "The fact is," he said, "I'm a clumsy fellow, Mrs.
+Majendie. I want to help you, but I'm afraid of hurting you."
+
+"Nothing can hurt me now."
+
+"Well--" He pondered again. "If you want to get down to the root of it,
+it's as simple as hunger and thirst."
+
+"Hunger and thirst," she murmured.
+
+"It's what I've been trying to tell you. When you're not thirsty you
+don't think about drinking. When you are thirsty, you do. When you're
+driven mad with thirst, you think of nothing else. And sometimes--not
+always--when you can't get clean water, you drink water that's--not
+so clean. Though you may be very particular. Walter was--morally--the
+most particular man I ever knew."
+
+"I know. I know."
+
+"Mind you, the more particular a man is, the thirstier he'll be. And
+supposing he can never get a drop of water at home, and every time he
+goes out, some kind person offers him a drink--can you blame him very
+much if, some day, he takes it?"
+
+"No," she said. She said it very low, and turned her face from him.
+
+"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," he said, "you know _why_ I'm saying all
+this."
+
+"To help me," she said humbly.
+
+"And to help him. Neither you nor I know whether he's going to live or
+die. And I've told you all this so that, if he does die, you mayn't have
+to judge him harshly, and if he doesn't die, you may feel that he's--he's
+given back to you. D'you see?"
+
+"Yes, I see," she said softly.
+
+She saw that there were depths in this man that she had not suspected.
+She had despised Lawson Hannay. She had detested him. She had thought him
+coarse in grain, gross, unsufferably unspiritual. She had denied him any
+existence in the world of desirable persons. She had refused to see any
+good in him. She had wondered how Edith could tolerate him for an
+instant. Now she knew.
+
+She remembered that Edith was a proud woman, and that she had said that
+her pride had had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay. And now
+she, too, was humbled before him. He had beaten down all her pride. He
+had been kind; but he had not spared her. He had not spared her; but the
+gentlest woman could not have been more kind.
+
+She rose and looked at him with a strange reverence and admiration.
+"Whether he lives or dies," she said, "you will have given him back to
+me."
+
+She took up her third night's watch.
+
+The nurse rose as she entered, gave her some directions, and went to her
+own punctual sleep.
+
+There was no change in the motionless body, in the drawn face, and in the
+sightless eyes.
+
+Anne sat by her husband's side and kept her hand upon his arm to feel the
+life in it. She was consoled by contact, even while she told herself that
+she had no right to touch him.
+
+She knew what she had done to him. She had ruined him as surely as if she
+had been a bad woman. He had loved her, and she had cast him from her,
+and sent him to his sin. There was no humiliation and no pain that she
+had spared him. Even the bad women sometimes spare. They have their pity
+for the men they ruin; they have their poor, disastrous love. She had
+been merciless where she owed most mercy.
+
+Three people had tried to make her see it. Edith, who was a saint, and
+that woman, who was a sinner; and Lawson Hannay. They had all taken the
+same view of her. They had all told her the same thing.
+
+She was a good woman, and her goodness had been her husband's ruin.
+
+Of the three, Edith alone understood the true nature of the wrong she had
+done him. The others had only seen one side of it, the material, tangible
+side that weighed with them. Through her very goodness, she saw that that
+was the least part of it; she knew that it had been the least part of it
+with him.
+
+Where she had wronged him most had been in the pitiless refusals of her
+soul. And even there she had wronged him less by the things she had
+refused to give than by the things that she had refused to take. There
+were sanctities and charities, unspeakable tendernesses, holy and
+half-spiritual things in him, that she had shut her eyes to. She had
+shut her eyes that she might justify herself.
+
+Her fault was there, in that perpetual justification and salvation of
+herself; in her indestructible, implacable spiritual pride.
+
+And she had shut her ears as she had shut her eyes. She had not listened
+to her sister's voice, nor to her husband's voice, nor to her little
+child's voice, nor to the voice of God in her own heart. Then, that she
+might be humbled, she had had to take God's message from the persons
+whom she had most detested and despised.
+
+She had not loved well. And she saw now that men and women only counted
+by their power of loving. She had despised and detested poor little Mrs.
+Hannay; yet it might be that Mrs. Hannay was nearer to God than she had
+been, by her share of that one godlike thing.
+
+She, through her horror of one sin, had come to look upon flesh and
+blood, on the dear human heart, and the sacred, mysterious human body, as
+things repellent to her spirituality, fine only in their sacrifice to the
+hungry, solitary flame. She had known nothing of their larger and diviner
+uses, their secret and profound subservience to the flame. She had come
+near to knowing through her motherhood, and yet she had not known.
+
+And as she looked with anguish on the helpless body, shamed, and
+humiliated, and destroyed by her, she realised that now she knew.
+
+Edith's words came back to her, "Love is a provision for the soul's
+redemption of the body. Or, may be, for the body's redemption of the
+soul." She understood them now. She saw that Edith had spoken to her of
+the miracle of miracles. She saw that the path of all spirits going
+upward is by acceptance of that miracle. She, who had sinned the
+spiritual sin, could find salvation only by that way.
+
+It was there that she had been led, all the while, if she had but known
+it. But she had turned aside, and had been sent back, over and over
+again, to find the way. Now she had found it; and there could be no more
+turning back.
+
+She saw it all. She saw a purity greater than her own, a strong and
+tender virtue, walking in the ways of earth and cleansing them. She saw
+love as a divine spirit, going down into the courses of the blood and
+into the chambers of the heart, moving mortal things to immortality.
+She saw that there is no spirituality worthy of the name that has not
+been proven in the house of flesh.
+
+She had failed in spirituality. She had fixed the spiritual life away
+from earth, beyond the ramparts. She saw that the spiritual life is here.
+
+And more than this, she saw that in her husband's nature hidden deep down
+under the perversities that bewildered and estranged her, there was a
+sense of these things, of the sanctity of their life. She saw what they
+might have made of it together; what she had actually made of it, and of
+herself and him. She thought of his patience, his chivalry and
+forbearance, and of his deep and tender love for her and for their child.
+
+God had given him to her to love; and she had not loved him. God had
+given her to him for his help and his protection; and she had not helped,
+she had not protected him.
+
+God had dealt justly with her. She had loved God; but God had rejected a
+love that was owing to her husband. Looking back, she saw that she had
+been nearest to God in the days when she had been nearest to her husband.
+The days of her separation had been the days of her separation from God.
+And she had not seen it.
+
+All the love that was in her she had given to her child. Her child had
+been born that she might see that the love which was given to her was
+holy; and she had not seen it. So God had taken her child from her that
+she might see.
+
+And seeing that, she saw herself aright. That passion of motherhood was
+not all the love that was in her. The love that was in her had sprung up,
+full-grown, in a single night. And it had grown to the stature of the
+diviner love she saw. And as she felt that great springing up of love,
+with all its strong endurances and charities, she saw herself redeemed by
+her husband's sin.
+
+There she paused, trembling. It was a great and terrible mystery, that
+the sin of his body should be the saving of her soul. And as she thought
+of the price paid for her, she humbled herself once more in her shame.
+
+She was no longer afraid that he would die. Something told her that he
+would live, that he would be given back to her. She dared not think how.
+He might be given back paralysed, helpless, and with a ruined mind. Her
+punishment might be the continual reproach of his presence, her only
+consolation the tending of the body she had tortured, humiliated, and
+destroyed. She prayed God to be merciful and spare her that.
+
+And on the morning of the fifth day Majendie woke from his terrible
+sleep. He could see light. Towards evening his breathing softened and
+grew soundless. And on the dawn of the sixth day he called her name,
+"Nancy."
+
+Then she knew that for a little time he would be given back to her. And,
+as she nursed him, love in her moved with a new ardour and a new
+surrender. For more than seven years her pulses had been proof against
+his passion and his strength. Now, at the touch of his helpless body,
+they stirred with a strange, adoring tenderness. But as yet she went
+humbly, in her fear of the punishment that might be measured to her. She
+told herself it was enough that he was aware of her, of her touch, of her
+voice, of her face as it bent over him. She hushed the new-born hope in
+her heart, lest its cry should wake the angel of the divine retribution.
+
+Then, week by week, slowly, a little joy came to her, as she saw the
+gradual return of power to the paralysed body and clearness to the
+flooded brain. She wondered, when he would begin to remember, whether
+her face would recall to him their last interview, her cruelty, her
+repudiation.
+
+At last she knew that he remembered. She dared not ask herself "How
+much?" It was borne in on her that it was this way that her punishment
+would come.
+
+For, as he gradually recovered, his manner to her became more
+constrained; notwithstanding his helpless dependence on her. He was shy
+and humble; grateful for the things she did for him; grateful with a
+heart-rending, pitiful surprise. It was as if he had looked to come back
+to the heartless woman he had known, and was puzzled at finding another
+woman in her place.
+
+As the weeks wore on, and her hands had less to do for him, she felt that
+his awakened spirit guarded itself from her, fenced itself more and more
+with that inviolable constraint. And she bowed her head to the
+punishment.
+
+When he was well enough to be moved she took him to the south coast.
+There he recovered power rapidly. By the end of February he showed no
+trace of his terrible illness.
+
+They were to return to Scale in the beginning of March.
+
+Then, at their home-coming, she would know whether he remembered. There
+would be things that they would have to say to each other.
+
+Sometimes she thought that she could never say them; that her life was
+secure only within some pure, charmed circle of inviolate silence; that
+her wisdom lay in simply trusting him to understand her. She _could_
+trust him. After all, she had been most marvellously "let off"; she had
+not had to pay the extreme penalty; she had been allowed, oh, divinely
+allowed, to prove her love for him. He could not doubt it now; it
+possessed her, body and soul; it was manifest to him in her eyes, and
+in her voice, and in the service of her hands.
+
+And if he said nothing, surely it would mean that he, too, trusted her to
+understand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+They had come back. They had spent their first evening together in the
+house in Prior Street. Anne had dreaded the return; for the house
+remembered its sad secrets. She had dreaded it more on her husband's
+account than on her own.
+
+She had passed before him through the doorway of the study; and her heart
+had ached as she thought that it was in that room that she had struck at
+him and put him from her. As he entered, she had turned, and closed the
+door behind them, and lifted her face to his and kissed him. He had
+looked at her with his kind, sad smile, but he had said nothing. All that
+evening they had sat by their hearth, silent as watchers by the dead.
+
+From time to time she had been aware of his eyes resting on her in their
+profound and tragic scrutiny. She had been reminded then of the things
+that yet remained unsaid.
+
+At night he had risen at her signal; and she had waited while he put the
+light out; and he had followed her upstairs. At her door she had stopped,
+and kissed him, and said good-night, and she had turned her head to look
+after him as he went. Surely, she had thought, he will come back and
+speak to me.
+
+And now she was still waiting after her undressing. She said to herself,
+"We have come home. But he will not come to me. He has nothing to say to
+me. There is nothing that can be said. If I could only speak to him."
+
+She longed to go to him, to kneel at his feet and beg him to forgive her
+and take her back again, as if it had been she who had sinned. But she
+could not.
+
+She stood for a moment before the couch at the foot of the bed, ready to
+slip off her long white dressing-gown. She paused. Her eyes rested on the
+silver crucifix, the beloved symbol of redemption. She remembered how he
+had given it to her. She had not understood him even then; but she
+understood him now. She longed to tell him that she understood. But she
+could not.
+
+She turned suddenly as she heard his low knock at her door. She had been
+afraid to hear it once; now it made her heart beat hard with longing and
+another fear. He came in. He stood by the closed door, gazing at her with
+the dumb look that she knew.
+
+She went to meet him, with her hands out-stretched to him, her face
+glowing.
+
+"Oh, my dear," she said, "you've come back to me. You've come back."
+
+He looked down on her with miserable eyes. She put her arms about him.
+His face darkened and was stern to her. He held her by her arms and put
+her from him, and she trembled in all her body, humiliated and rebuked.
+
+"No. Not that," he said. "Not now. I can't ask you to take me back now."
+
+"Need you ask me--now?"
+
+"You don't understand," he said. "You don't know. Darling, you don't
+know."
+
+At the word of love she turned to him, beseeching him with her tender
+eyes.
+
+"Sit down," he said. "I want to talk to you."
+
+She sat down on the couch, and made room for him beside her.
+
+"I don't want," she said, "to know more than I do."
+
+"I'm afraid you must know. When you do know you won't talk about taking
+me back."
+
+"I have taken you back."
+
+"Not yet. I'd no business to come back at all, without telling you."
+
+"Tell me, then," she said.
+
+"I can't. I don't know how."
+
+She put her hand on his.
+
+"Don't," he said, "don't. I'd rather you didn't touch me."
+
+She looked at him and smiled, and her smile cut him to the heart.
+
+"Walter," she said, "are you afraid of me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You needn't be."
+
+"I am. I'm afraid of your goodness."
+
+She smiled again.
+
+"Do you think I'm good?"
+
+"I know you are."
+
+"You don't know how you're hurting me."
+
+"I've always hurt you. And I'm going to hurt you more."
+
+"You only hurt me when you talk about my goodness. I'm not good. I never
+was. And I never can be, dear, if you're afraid of me. What is it that I
+_must know_?"
+
+His voice sank.
+
+"I've been unfaithful to you. Again."
+
+"With whom?" she whispered.
+
+"I can't tell you. Only--it wasn't Maggie."
+
+"When was it?"
+
+"I think it was that Sunday--at Scarby."
+
+"Why do you say you think?" she said gently. "Don't you know?"
+
+"No. I don't know much about it. I didn't know what I was doing."
+
+"You can't remember?"
+
+"No. I can't remember."
+
+"Then--are you sure you _were_--?"
+
+"Yes. I think so. I don't know. That's the horrible part of it. I don't
+know, I can't remember anything about it. I must have been drinking."
+
+She took his hand in hers again. "Walter, dear, don't think about it.
+Don't think it was possible. Just put it all out of your head and forget
+about it."
+
+"How can I when I don't know?" He rose. "See here--I oughtn't to look at
+you--I oughtn't to touch you--I oughtn't to live with you, as long as I
+don't know. You don't know, either."
+
+"No," she said quietly. "I don't know. Does that matter so very much when
+I understand?"
+
+"Ah, if you could understand. But you never could."
+
+"I do. Supposing I had known, do you think I should not have forgiven
+you?"
+
+"I'm certain you wouldn't. You couldn't. Not that."
+
+"But," she said, "I did know."
+
+His mouth twitched. His eyelids dropped before her gaze.
+
+"At least," she said, "I thought--"
+
+"You thought _that_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What made you think it?"
+
+"I saw her there."
+
+"You saw her? You thought that, and yet--you would have let me come back
+to you?"
+
+"Yes. I thought that."
+
+As he stood before her, shamed, and uncertain, and unhappy, the new
+soul that had been born in her pleaded for him and assured her of his
+innocence.
+
+"But," she said again, "I do not think it now."
+
+"You--you don't believe it?"
+
+"No. I believe in you."
+
+"You believe in me? After everything?"
+
+"After everything."
+
+"And you would have forgiven me that?"
+
+"I did forgive you. I forgave you all the time I thought it. There's
+nothing that I wouldn't forgive you now. You know it."
+
+"I thought you might forgive me. But I never thought you'd let me come
+back--after that."
+
+"You haven't. You haven't. You never left me. It's I who have come back
+to you."
+
+"Nancy--" he whispered.
+
+"It's I who need forgiveness. Forgive me. Forgive me."
+
+"Forgive you? You?"
+
+"Yes, me."
+
+Her voice died and rose again, throbbing to her confession.
+
+"I was unfaithful to you."
+
+"You don't know what you're saying, dear. You couldn't have been
+unfaithful to me."
+
+"If I had been, would you have forgiven me?"
+
+He looked at her a long time.
+
+"Yes," he said simply.
+
+"You could have forgiven me that?"
+
+"I could have forgiven you anything."
+
+She knew it. There was no limit to his chivalry, his charity. "Well," she
+said, "you have worse things to forgive me."
+
+"What have I to forgive?"
+
+"Everything. If I had forgiven you in the beginning, you would not have
+had to ask for forgiveness now."
+
+"Perhaps not, Nancy. But that wasn't your fault."
+
+"It was my fault. It was all my fault, from the beginning to the end."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"Yes, yes. Mr. Hannay knew that. He told me so."
+
+"When?"
+
+"At Scarby."
+
+Majendie scowled as he cursed Hannay in his heart.
+
+"He was a brute," he said, "to tell you that."
+
+"He wasn't. He was kind. He knew."
+
+"What did he know?"
+
+"That I would rather think that I was bad than that you were."
+
+"And would you?"
+
+"Yes I would--now. Mr. Hannay spared me all he could. He didn't tell me
+that if you had died at Scarby it would have been my fault. But it would
+have been."
+
+He groaned.
+
+"Darling--you couldn't say that if you knew anything about it."
+
+"I know all about it."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Listen, Walter. You've been unfaithful to me--once, years after I gave
+you cause. I've been unfaithful to you ever since I married you. And your
+unfaithfulness was nothing to mine. A woman once told me that. She said
+you'd only broken one of your marriage vows, and I had broken all of
+them, except one. It was true."
+
+"Who said that to you?"
+
+"Never mind who. It needed saying. It was true. I sinned against the
+light. I knew what you were. You were good and you loved me. You were
+unhappy through loving me, and I shut my eyes to it. I've done more harm
+to you than that poor girl--Maggie. You would never have gone to her if I
+hadn't driven you. You loved me."
+
+"Yes, I loved you."
+
+She turned to him again; and her eyes searched his for absolution. "I
+didn't know what I was doing. I didn't understand."
+
+"No. A woman doesn't, dear. Not when she's as good as you."
+
+At that a sob shook her. In the passion of her abasement she had cast off
+all her beautiful spiritual apparel. Now she would have laid down her
+crown, her purity, at his feet.
+
+"I thought I was so good. And I sinned against my husband more that he
+ever sinned against me."
+
+He took her hands and tried to draw her to him, but she broke away, and
+slid to the floor and knelt there, bowing her head upon his knee. Her
+hair fell, loosened, upon her shoulders, veiling her.
+
+He stooped and raised her. His hand smoothed back the hair that hid her
+face. Her eyes were closed.
+
+Her drenched eyelids felt his lips upon them. They opened; and in her
+eyes he saw love risen to immortality through mortal tears. She looked at
+him, and she knew him as she knew her own soul.
+
+
+The End
+
+
+
+
+
+By MAY SINCLAIR
+
+THE HELPMATE
+
+_The Literary Digest_ says: "The novels of May Sinclair make waste paper
+of most of the fiction of a season." This new story, the first written
+since "The Divine Fire," will strengthen the author's reputation.
+It has been serialized in _The Atlantic Monthly_, and _The New York Sun_
+says of an early instalment:
+
+"Miss Sinclair's new novel, 'The Helpmate,' is attracting much attention.
+It is a miniature painting of delicacy and skill, reproducing few
+characters in a small space, with fine sincerity,--the invalid sister,
+the man with a past, and the wife with strict convictions. The riddle is
+to find which one of the women is the helpmate. In the vital situation
+thus far developed the sister is leading in the race."
+
+As the plot develops the canvas is filled in with other characters as
+finely drawn. The story grips the reader. Lovers of good literature and
+of a good story will delight in its development.
+
+
+THE DIVINE FIRE
+
+The story of the regeneration of a London poet and the degeneration of a
+London critic. 15th printing.
+
+
+MARY MOSS in the _Atlantic Monthly_: "Certain it is that in all
+our new fiction I have found nothing worthy to compare with 'The Divine
+Fire,' nothing even remotely approaching the same class."
+
+
+AUDREY CRAVEN
+
+The story of a pretty little woman with the soul of a spoiled child, who
+had a fatal fascination for most men.
+
+_Literary Digest_: "Humor is of the spontaneous sort and rings true, and
+the lancet of her wit and epigram, tho keen, is never cruel.... An author
+whose novels may be said to make waste paper of most of the fiction of a
+season."
+
+
+SUPERSEDED
+
+The story of two highly contrasted teachers in a girls' school.
+
+_New York Sun_: "It makes one wonder if in future years the quiet little
+English woman may not be recognized as a new Jane Austen."
+
+
+THE TYSONS
+
+(MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON)
+
+_Chicago Record-Herald_: "Maintains a clinging grip upon the
+mind and senses, compelling one to acknowledge the author's
+genius."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HELPMATE***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 17867.txt or 17867.zip *******
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