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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lamp of Fate, by Margaret Pedler
+
+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 Lamp of Fate
+
+Author: Margaret Pedler
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2006 [EBook #3824]
+Last Updated: November 18, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAMP OF FATE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LAMP OF FATE
+
+
+By Margaret Pedler
+
+
+     Then to the rolling Heav’n itself I cried,
+     Asking, “What Lamp of Destiny to guide
+        Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?”
+      And--“A blind Understanding!” Heaven replied.
+     The “Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyam.
+
+
+To AUDREY HEATH
+
+DEAR AUDREY: I always feel that you have played the part of Fairy
+Godmother in a very special and delightful way to all my stories, and
+in particular to this one, the plot of which I outlined to you one
+afternoon in an old summer-house. So will you let me dedicate it to you?
+Yours always,
+
+MARGARET PEDLER.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LAMP OF FATE
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE NINTH GENERATION
+
+The house was very silent. An odour of disinfectants pervaded the
+atmosphere. Upstairs hushed, swift steps moved to and fro.
+
+Hugh Vallincourt stood at the window of his study, staring out with
+unseeing eyes at the smooth, shaven lawns and well-kept paths with their
+background of leafless trees. It seemed to him that he had been standing
+thus for hours, waiting--waiting for someone to come and tell him that a
+son and heir was born to him.
+
+He never doubted that it would be a son. By some freak of chance
+the first-born of the Vallincourts of Coverdale had been, for eight
+successive generations, a boy. Indeed, by this time, the thing had
+become so much a habit that no doubts or apprehensions concerning the
+sex of the eldest child were ever entertained. It was accepted as a
+foregone conclusion, and in the eyes of the family there was a certain
+gratifying propriety about such regularity. It was like a hall-mark of
+heavenly approval.
+
+Hugh Vallincourt, therefore, was conscious at this critical moment of
+no questionings on that particular score. He was merely a prey to the
+normal tremors and agitations of a husband and prospective father.
+
+For an ageless period, it seemed to him, his thoughts had clung about
+that upstairs room where his wife lay battling for her own life and
+another’s. Suddenly they swung back to the time, a year ago, when he
+had first met her--an elusive feminine thing still reckoning her age in
+teens--beneath the glorious blue and gold canopy of the skies of Italy.
+
+Their meeting and brief courtship had been pure romance--romance such
+as is bred in that land of mellow warmth and colour, where the flower of
+passion sometimes buds and blooms within the span of a single day.
+
+In like manner had sprung to life the love between Hugh Vallincourt
+and Diane Wielitzska, and rarely has the web of love enmeshed two more
+dissimilar and ill-matched people--Hugh, a man of seven-and-thirty, the
+strict and somewhat self-conscious head of a conspicuously devout old
+English family, and Diane, a beautiful dancer of mixed origin, the
+illegitimate offspring of a Russian grand-duke and of a French artist’s
+model of the Latin Quarter.
+
+The three dread Sisters who determine the fate of men must have laughed
+amongst themselves at such an obvious mismating, knowing well how
+inevitably it would tangle the threads of many other lives than the two
+immediately concerned.
+
+Vallincourt had been brought up on severely conventional lines, reared
+in the narrow tenets of a family whose salient characteristics were
+an overweening pride of race and a religious zeal amounting almost to
+fanaticism, while Diane had had no up-bringing worth speaking of. As for
+religious views, she hadn’t any.
+
+Yet neither the one nor the other had counted in the scale when the
+crucial moment came.
+
+Perhaps it was by way of an ironical set-off against his environment
+that Fate had dowered Hugh with his crop of ruddy hair--and with the
+ardent temperament which usually accompanies the type. Be that as it
+may, he was swept completely off his feet by the dancer’s magic beauty.
+The habits and training of a lifetime went by the board, and nothing
+was allowed to impede the swift (not to say violent) course of his
+love-making. Within a month from the day of their first meeting, he and
+Diane were man and wife.
+
+The consequences were almost inevitable, and Hugh found that his married
+life speedily resolved itself into an endless struggle between the
+dictates of inclination and conscience. Everything that was man in him
+responded passionately to the appeal and charm of Diane’s personality,
+whilst everything that was narrow and censorious disapproved her total
+inability to conform to the ingrained prejudices of the Vallincourts.
+
+Not that Diane was in any sense of the word a bad woman. She was merely
+beautiful and irresponsible--a typical _cigale_ of the stage--lovable
+and kind-hearted and pagan, and possessing but the haziest notions of
+self-control and self-discipline. Even so, left to themselves, husband
+and wife might ultimately have found the road to happiness across the
+bridge of their great love for one another.
+
+But such freedom was denied them. Always at Hugh’s elbow stood his
+sister, Catherine, a rigidly austere woman, in herself an epitome of all
+that Vallincourts had ever stood for.
+
+Since the death of their parents, twenty years previously, Catherine had
+shared her brother’s home, managing his house--and, on the strength of
+her four years’ seniority in age, himself as well--with an iron hand.
+Nor had she seen fit to relinquish the reins of government when he
+married.
+
+Privately, Hugh had hoped she might consider the propriety of
+withdrawing to the dower house attached to the Coverdale estates, but if
+the idea had occurred to her, she had never given it utterance, and Hugh
+himself had lacked the courage to propose such an innovation.
+
+So it followed that Catherine was ever at hand to criticise and condemn.
+She disapproved of her brother’s marriage wholly and consistently. In
+her eyes, he had committed an unpardonable sin in allying himself with
+Diane Wielitzska. It was his duty to have married a woman of the type
+conventionally termed “good,” whose blood--and religious outlook--were
+alike unimpeachable; and since he had lamentably failed in this respect,
+she never ceased to reproach him. Diane she regarded with chronic
+disapprobation, exaggerating all her faults and opposing her joy-loving,
+butterfly nature with an aloofly puritanical disdain.
+
+Amid the glacial atmosphere of disapproval into which marriage had
+thrust her, Diane found her only solace in Virginie, a devoted French
+servant who had formerly been her nurse, and who literally worshipped
+the ground she walked on. Conversely, Virginie’s attitude towards Miss
+Vallincourt was one of frank hostility. And deep in the hearts of
+both Diane and Virginie lurked a confirmed belief that the birth of a
+child--a son--would serve to bring about a better understanding between
+husband and wife, and in the end assure Diane her rightful place as
+mistress of the house.
+
+“_Vois-tu_, Virginie,” the latter would say hopefully. “When I have a
+little baby, I shall have done my duty as the wife of a great
+English milord. Even Miss Catherine will no longer regard me as of no
+importance.”
+
+And Virginie would reply with infinite satisfaction:
+
+“Of a certainty, when madame has a little son, Ma’moiselle Catherine
+will be returned to her place.”
+
+And now at last the great moment had arrived, and upstairs Catherine and
+Virginie were in attendance--both ousted from what each considered her
+own rightful place of authority by a slim, capable, and apparently quite
+unconcerned piece of femininity equipped against rebellion in all the
+starched panoply of a nurse’s uniform, while downstairs Hugh stared
+dumbly out at the frosted lawns, with their background of bare, brown
+trees swaying to the wind from the north.
+
+The door behind him opened suddenly. Hugh whirled round. He was a
+tall man with a certain rather formal air of stateliness about him,
+a suggestion of the _grand seigneur_, and the unwontedly impulsive
+movement was significant of the strain under which he was labouring.
+
+Catherine was standing on the threshold of the room with something in
+her arms--something almost indistinguishable amid the downy, fleecy
+froth of whiteness amid which it lay.
+
+Hugh was conscious of a new and strange sensation deep down inside
+himself. He felt rather as though all the blood in his body had rushed
+to one place--somewhere in the middle of it--and were pounding there
+against his ribs.
+
+He tried to speak, failed, then instinctively stretched out his arms for
+the tiny, orris-scented bundle which Catherine carried.
+
+The next thing of which he was conscious was Catherine’s voice as she
+placed his child in his arms--very quiet, yet rasping across the tender
+silence of the room like a file.
+
+“Here, Hugh, is the living seal which God Himself has set upon the sin
+of your marriage.”
+
+Hugh’s eyes, bent upon the pink, crumpled features of the scrap of
+humanity nestled amid the bunchy whiteness in his arms, sought his
+sister’s face. It was a thin, hard face, sharply cut like carved ivory;
+the eyes a light, cold blue, ablaze with hostility; the pale obstinate
+lips, usually folded so impassively one above the other, working
+spasmodically.
+
+For a moment brother and sister stared at each other in silence. Then,
+all at once, Catherine’s rigidly enforced composure snapped.
+
+“A girl child, Hugh!” she jeered violently. “A _girl_--when you prayed
+for a boy!”
+
+“A girl?”
+
+Hugh stared stupidly at the babe in his arms.
+
+“Ay, a girl!” taunted Catherine, her voice cracking with rising
+hysteria. “_A girl!_ . . . For eight generations the first-born has been
+a son. And the ninth is a girl! The daughter of a foreign dancing-woman!
+. . . God has indeed taken your punishment into His own Hands!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE WIDENING GULF
+
+The birth of a daughter came upon Hugh in the light of an almost
+overwhelming shock. He was quite silent when, in response to Catherine’s
+imperative gesture, he surrendered the child into her arms once more.
+As she took it from him he noticed that those thin, angular arms of hers
+seemed to close round the little swaddled body in an almost jealously
+possessive clasp. But there was none of the tender possessiveness of
+love about it. In some oddly repugnant way it reminded him of the motion
+of a bird of prey at last gripping triumphantly in its talons a victim
+that has hitherto eluded pursuit.
+
+He turned back dully to his contemplation of the wintry garden, nor, in
+his absorption, did he hear the whimpering cry--almost of protest--that
+issued from the lips of his first-born as Catherine bore the child away.
+
+For a space it seemed as though his mind were a blank, every thought and
+feeling wiped out of it by the stupendous, nullifying fact that his wife
+had given birth to a daughter. Then, with a rush as torturing as the
+return of blood to benumbed limbs, emotions crowded in upon him.
+
+Catherine’s incessant denunciations of his “sin” in marrying Diane
+Wielitzska--poured upon him without stint throughout this first year of
+his marriage--seemed to din in his ears anew. Such phrases as “selling
+your soul,” “putting a woman of that type in our sainted mother’s
+place,” “mingling the blood of a foreign dancing-woman with our own,”
+ jangled against each other in his mind.
+
+Had he really been guilty of a sin against his conscience--satisfied his
+desires irrespective of all sense of duty?
+
+He began to think he had, and to wonder in a disturbed fashion if God
+thought so too. What was it Catherine had said? _“God has indeed taken
+your punishment into His own Hands.”_
+
+Hugh was only too well aware of the facts which gave the speech its
+trenchant significance. He himself had inherited owing to the death of
+an elder brother in early childhood. But there was no younger brother
+to step into his own shoes, and failing an heir in the direct line of
+succession the title and entailed estate would of necessity go to Rupert
+Vallincourt, a cousin--a gay and debonair young rake of much charm of
+manner and equal absence of virtue. From both Catherine’s and Hugh’s
+point of view he was the last man in the world fitted to become the head
+of the family. Hence the eagerness with which they had anticipated the
+arrival of a son and heir.
+
+And now, prompted by Catherine’s bitter taunt, the birth of a daughter
+as his first-born--the first happening of the kind for eight successive
+generations--appeared to Hugh in the light of a direct manifestation of
+God’s intention that no son born of Diane Wielitzska should be dowered
+with such influence as the heir to the Vallincourts must necessarily
+wield.
+
+Better, even, that the title and estates should go to Rupert! Bad as
+his reputation might be, good blood ran in his veins on either side--an
+inherited tradition of right-doing which was bound to assert itself in
+succeeding generations. Whereas in the offspring of Diane heaven alone
+knew what hidden inherited tendencies towards evil might lie fallow, to
+develop later and work incalculable mischief in the world.
+
+Hugh felt crushed by the unexpected blow which had befallen him. Since
+his marriage, he had opposed a forced indifference to his sister’s
+irreconcilable attitude, finding compensation in the glowing moments of
+his passion for Diane. Nevertheless--since living in an atmosphere of
+disapproval tends to fray the strongest nerves--his temper had worn a
+little fine beneath the strain; and with Diane’s faults and failings
+thrust continually on his notice he had unconsciously grown more
+critical of her.
+
+And now, all at once, it seemed as though scales had been torn from his
+eyes. He saw his marriage for the first time from the same standpoint as
+Catherine saw it, and in the unlooked-for birth of a daughter he thought
+he recognised the Hand of God, sternly uprooting his most cherished
+hopes and minimising, as much as possible, the inevitable evil
+consequences of his weakness in marrying Diane.
+
+He was conscious of a rising feeling of resentment against his wife.
+Words from an old Book flashed into his mind: _“The woman tempted me.”_
+
+With the immediate instinct of a weak nature--the very narrowness
+and rigidity of his views was a manifestation of weakness, had he but
+realised it--he was already looking for someone with whom to share the
+blame for his lapse from the Vallincourt standard of conduct, and in
+that handful of wayward charm, red lips, and soft, beguiling eyes which
+was Diane he found what he sought.
+
+
+
+Again the room door opened. This time, instead of putting a longed-for
+end to a blank period of suspense, the little quiet clicking of the
+latch cut almost aggressively across the conflict of Hugh’s thoughts. He
+turned round irritably.
+
+“What is it?” he demanded.
+
+A uniformed nurse was standing in the doorway. At the sound of his
+curtly-spoken question she glanced at him with a certain contemplative
+curiosity in her eyes. They might have held surprise as well as
+curiosity had she not lately stood beside that huge, canopied bed
+upstairs, listening pitifully to a woman’s secret fears and longings,
+unveiled in the delirium of pain.
+
+“I know you sometimes wish you hadn’t married me. . . . I’m not good
+enough. And Catherine hates me. Yes, she does, she does! And she’ll make
+you hate me too! But you won’t hate me when my baby comes, will you,
+Hugh? You want a little son . . . a little son . . .”
+
+Nurse Maynard could hear again the weary, complaining voice, trailing
+off at last in the silence of exhaustion, and an impulse of indignation
+added a sharp edge to her tone as she responded to Hugh’s query.
+
+“Her ladyship is asking to see you, Sir Hugh. She ought to rest now, but
+she is too excited. She has been expecting you.”
+
+There was no mistaking the implied rebuke in the last sentence, and
+Hugh’s face darkened.
+
+“I’ll come,” he said, briefly, and followed the crisp starched figure
+up the stairs and into a half-darkened room, smelling faintly of
+antiseptics.
+
+Vaguely the white counterpane outlined the slim figure of Diane upon the
+bed. The nurse raised the blind a little, and the light of the westering
+sun fell across the pillow, revealing a small, dark head which turned
+eagerly at the sound of Hugh’s entrance.
+
+“Hugh!” The voice from the bed came faintly.
+
+Hugh looked down at his wife. Probably never had Diane looked more
+beautiful.
+
+The little worldly, sophisticated expression common to her features had
+been temporarily obliterated by the holy suffering of motherhood, and
+the face of the “foreign dancing-woman,” born and bred in a quarter of
+the world where virtue is a cheap commodity, was as pure and serene as
+the face of a Madonna.
+
+She held out her hands to her husband, her lips curving into a smile
+that was all love and tenderness.
+
+“Hugh--_mon adore!_”
+
+The lover in him sent him swiftly to her side, and as he drew her
+into his arms she let her head fall back against his shoulder with a
+tremulous sigh of infinite content.
+
+And then, from the firelit corner of the room, came the sound of a
+feeble wailing. Hugh started as though stung, and his eyes left his
+wife’s face and riveted themselves upon the figure in the low chair by
+the hearth--Virginie, rocking a little as she sat, and crooning a Breton
+lullaby to the baby in her arms.
+
+In a moment remembrance rushed upon him, cutting in twain as though
+with a dividing sword this exquisite moment of reunion with his wife.
+Insensibly his arms relaxed their clasp of the frail body they held, and
+Diane, sensing their slackening, looked up startled and disconcerted.
+
+Her eyes followed the direction of his glance, then, coming back to
+his face, searched it wildly. Instantly she knew the meaning of that
+suddenly limp clasp and all that it implied.
+
+“Hugh!” The throbbing tenderness had gone out of her voice, leaving it
+dry and toneless. “Hugh! You don’t mean . . . you’re _angry_ that it’s a
+girl?”
+
+He looked down at her--at the frightened eyes, the lovely face fined by
+recent pain, and all his instinct was to reassure and comfort her. But
+something held him back. The old, narrow creed in which he had been
+reared, whose shackles he had broken through when he had recklessly
+followed the bidding of his heart and married Diane, was once more
+mastering him--bidding him resist the natural human impulses of love and
+kindliness evoked by his wife’s appeal.
+
+_“God Himself has taken your punishment into His own Hands.”_
+
+Again he seemed to hear Catherine’s accusing tones, and the fanatical
+strain inbred in him answered like a boat to its helm. There must be no
+more compromise, no longer any evasion of the issues of right and wrong.
+He had sinned, and both he and the woman for whose sake he had defied
+his own creed, and that of his fathers before him, must make atonement.
+He drew himself up, and stood stiff and unbending beside the bed. In his
+light-grey eyes there shone that same indomitable ardour of the zealot
+which had shone in Catherine’s.
+
+“No,” he said. “I am not angry that the child is a girl. I accept it as
+a just retribution.”
+
+No man possessed of the ordinary instincts of common humanity would have
+so greeted his wife just when she had emerged, spent and exhausted,
+from woman’s supreme conflict with death. But the fanatic loses sight of
+normal values, and Hugh, obsessed by his newly conceived idea of atoning
+for the sin of his marriage, was utterly oblivious of the enormity of
+his conduct as viewed through unbiased eyes.
+
+The woman who had just fought her way through the Valley of the Shadow
+stared at him uncomprehendingly.
+
+“Retribution?” she repeated blankly.
+
+“For my marriage--our marriage.”
+
+Diane’s breath came faster.
+
+“What--what do you mean?” she asked falteringly. Suddenly a look of
+sheer terror leaped into her eyes, and she clutched at Hugh’s sleeve.
+“Oh, you’re not going to be like Catherine? Say you’re not! Hugh, you’ve
+always said she was crazy to call our marriage a sin. . . . _A sin!_”
+ She tried to laugh, but the laugh stuck in her throat, caught and pinned
+there by the terror that gripped her.
+
+“Yes, I’ve said that. I’ve said it because I wanted to think it,” he
+returned remorselessly, “not because I really thought it.”
+
+Diane dragged herself up on to her elbow.
+
+“I don’t understand. You’ve not changed?” Then, as he made no answer:
+“Hugh, you’re frightening me! What do you mean? What has Catherine been
+saying to you?”
+
+Her voice rose excitedly. A patch of feverish colour appeared on either
+cheek. Old Virginie sprung up from her chair by the fire, alarmed.
+
+“You excite madame!”
+
+Hugh turned to leave the room.
+
+“We’ll discuss this another time, Diane,” he said.
+
+Diane moved her head fretfully.
+
+“No. Now--now! Don’t go! Hugh!”
+
+Her voice rose almost to a scream and simultaneously the nurse came
+hurrying in from the adjoining room. She threw one glance at the
+patient, huddled flushed and excited against the pillows, then without
+more ado she marched up to Hugh and, taking him by the shoulders with
+her small, capable hands, she pushed him out of the room.
+
+“Do you want to _kill_ your wife?” she demanded in a low voice of
+concentrated anger. “If so, you’re going the right way about it.”
+
+The next moment the door closed behind her, and Hugh found himself
+standing alone on the landing outside it.
+
+
+
+Although the scene with her husband did not kill Diane, it went very
+near it. For some time she was dangerously ill, but at last the combined
+efforts of doctor and nurse restored her once more to a frail hold upon
+life, and the resiliency of youth accomplished the rest.
+
+Curiously enough, the remembrance of Hugh’s brief visit to her bedside
+held for her no force of reality. When the fever which had ensued
+abated, she described the whole scene in detail to Virginie and the
+nurse as an evil dream which she had had--and pitifully they let her
+continue in this belief.
+
+Even Hugh himself had been compelled, under protest, to take part in
+this deception. The doctor, a personal friend of his, had not minced
+matters.
+
+“You’ve acted the part of an unmitigated coward, Vallincourt--salving
+your own fool conscience at your wife’s expense. Even if you no longer
+love her--”
+
+“But I do love her,” protested Hugh. “I--I _worship_ her!”
+
+Jim Lancaster stared. In common with most medical men he was more or
+less used to the odd vagaries of human nature, but Hugh’s attitude
+struck him as altogether incomprehensible.
+
+“Then what in the name of thunder have you been getting at?” he
+demanded.
+
+“I both love and hate her,” declared Hugh wretchedly.
+
+“That’s rot,” retorted the other. “It’s impossible.”
+
+“It’s not impossible.”
+
+Hugh rose and began pacing backwards and forwards. Lancaster’s eyes
+rested on him thoughtfully. The man had altered during the last few
+weeks--altered incredibly. He was a stone lighter to start with, and
+his blond, clear-cut face had the worn look born of mental conflict. His
+eyes were red-rimmed as though from insufficient sleep.
+
+“It’s not impossible.” Hugh paused in his restless pacing to and fro. “I
+love her because I can’t help myself. I hate her because I ought never
+to have married her--never made a woman of her type the mother of my
+child.”
+
+“All mothers are sacred,” suggested the doctor quietly.
+
+Hugh seemed not to hear him.
+
+“How long is this pretence to go on, Lancaster?” he demanded irritably.
+
+“What pretence?”
+
+“This pretence that nothing is changed--nothing altered--between my wife
+and myself?”
+
+“For ever, I hope. So that, after all, there will have been no
+pretence.”
+
+But the appeal of the speech was ineffectual. Hugh looked at the other
+man unmoved.
+
+“It’s no use hoping that you and I can see things from the same
+standpoint,” he added stubbornly. “I’ve made my decision--laid down
+the lines of our future life together. I’m only waiting till you, as a
+medical man, tell me that Diane’s health is sufficiently restored for me
+to inform her.”
+
+“No woman is ever in such health that you can break her heart with
+impunity.”
+
+Hugh’s light-grey eyes gleamed like steel.
+
+“Will you answer my question?” he said curtly.
+
+Lancaster sprang up.
+
+“Diane is in as good health now as ever she was,” he said violently. And
+strode out of the room.
+
+
+
+During the period of her convalescence Diane, attended by Nurse Maynard,
+had occupied rooms situated in a distant wing of the house, where the
+invalid was not likely to be disturbed by the coming and going of other
+members of the household, and it was with almost the excitement of
+a schoolgirl coming home for the holidays that, when she was at last
+released from the doctor’s supervision, she retook possession of her
+own room. She superintended joyously the restoration to their accustomed
+place her various little personal possessions, and finally peeped into
+her husband’s adjoining room, thinking she heard him moving there.
+
+On the threshold she paused irresolutely, conscious of an odd sense of
+confusion. The room was vacant. But, beyond that, its whole aspect was
+different somehow, unfamiliar. Her eyes wandered to the dressing-table.
+Instead of holding its usual array of silver-backed brushes and polished
+shaving tackle, winking in the sunshine, it was empty. She stared at
+it blankly. Then her glance travelled slowly round the room. It had a
+strangely untenanted look. There was no sign of masculine attire left
+carelessly about--not a chair or table was a hairbreadth out of its
+appointed place.
+
+Her hand, resting lightly on the door-handle, gripped it with a sudden
+tensity. The next moment she had crossed the room and torn open the
+doors of the great armoire where Hugh kept his clothes. This, too, was
+empty--shelves and hanger alike. Impulsively she rang the bell and,
+when a maid appeared in response, demanded to know the meaning of the
+alteration.
+
+The girl glanced at her with the veiled curiosity of her class.
+
+“It was made by Sir Hugh’s orders, my lady.”
+
+With an effort, Diane hid the sudden tumult of bewilderment and fear
+that filled her. Her dream! Had it been only a dream? Or had it been
+an actual happening--that terrible little scene with her husband when,
+standing rigid and unbending beside her bed, he had told her that the
+birth of their daughter was a just retribution for a union he regarded
+as a sin?
+
+Memories of their brief year of marriage came surging over her in a
+torrent--Catherine’s narrow-minded opposition and disapproval, Hugh’s
+own moodiness and irritability and, latterly, his not infrequent
+censure. There had been times when Diane--rebuked incessantly--had
+fancied she must be the Scarlet Woman herself, or at least a very near
+relative. And then had come moments when Hugh, carried away by his
+ardour, had once more played the lover as he alone knew how, with all
+the warmth and abandon of those days when he had wooed her in Italy, and
+Diane would forget her unhappiness and fears in the sure knowledge that
+she was a passionately beloved woman.
+
+But always she was subconsciously aware of a sense of strife--of
+struggle, as though Hugh loved her in spite of himself, in defiance of
+some inner mandate of conscience which accused him.
+
+And now, fear mastered her. Her dream had been a reality. And this--this
+sweeping away from what had been his room of every familiar little
+personal possession--was the symbol of some new and terribly changed
+relation between them.
+
+Forcing herself to move composedly while the maid still watched her,
+she walked slowly out of the room, but the instant the door had closed
+behind her she flew downstairs to her husband’s study and, not pausing
+to comply with the unwritten law which forbade entrance there without
+express permission, broke in upon him as he sat at his desk, busily
+occupied with his morning mail.
+
+“Diane!”
+
+Hugh turned towards her with a cold light of astonished disapproval in
+his eyes.
+
+“You know I don’t like to be interrupted----”
+
+“I know, I know. But I _had_ to come. Something’s happened. There’s been
+a mistake. . . . Hugh, they’ve taken everything out of your room. All
+your things.”
+
+She stood beside him breathlessly awaiting his reply--her passionate
+dark eyes fixed on his face, two patches of brilliant colour showing on
+the high cheek-bones that bore witness to her Russian origin.
+
+They made a curious contrast--husband and wife. She, a slender thing of
+fire and flame, hands clenched, lips quivering--woman every inch of her;
+he, immaculate and composed, his face coldly expressionless, yet with
+a hint of something warmer, a suppressed glow, beneath the deliberately
+chill glance of those curious light-grey eyes--the man and bigoted
+fanatic fighting for supremacy within him.
+
+“Hugh! Answer me! Don’t sit staring at me like that!” Diane’s voice held
+a sharpened sound.
+
+At last he spoke, very slowly and carefully.
+
+“There has been no mistake, Diane. Everything that has been done has
+been with my sanction--by my order. Our marriage has been a culpable
+mistake. Catherine realised it from the beginning. I only realise
+my full guilt now that I am punished. But whatever I can do in
+atonement--reparation, that I have made up my mind to do. The first--the
+chief thing--is that our married life is at an end.”
+
+She heard him with a curious absence of surprise. Somehow, from the
+instant she had seen his dismantled room she had known, known surely,
+that the long fight between herself and Catherine was over. And that
+Catherine had won.
+
+“At an end? Hugh, what do you mean? What are you going to do? You’re
+not, you’re not going to send me away?”
+
+“No, not that. I’ve no right to punish you. You’ve been guilty of no
+fault--”
+
+“Except the fault of being myself,” she flung back bitterly.
+
+“But I ought never to have married you. I did it, knowing you were not
+fit--suitable”--he corrected himself hastily. “So I alone am to blame.
+You will retain your position here as my wife--mistress of my home.”
+ Diane, remembering Catherine’s despotic rule, smiled mirthlessly. “But
+henceforth you will be my wife in name only. I shall have no wife.”
+
+Diane caught that note of dull endurance in his voice, and seized upon
+it. He still cared!
+
+“Hugh, you’ve listened to Catherine till you’ve lost all sense of
+truth.” She spoke gently, pleadingly. “Don’t do this thing. We’ve been
+guilty of no sin that needs atonement. It isn’t wrong to love.”
+
+But he was implacable.
+
+“No,” he returned. “It isn’t wrong to love--but sometimes love should be
+denied.”
+
+Diane drew nearer to him, and laid her hand on his arm.
+
+“Not ours, Hugh,” she whispered. “Not love like ours--”
+
+“Be silent!”
+
+Hugh sprang to his feet, his eyes ablaze, his voice hoarse and shaking.
+
+“Don’t tempt me! Do you think I’ve found it easy to decide on this? When
+every fibre of my body is calling out for you? My God, no!”
+
+“Then don’t do it! Hugh--dearest--”
+
+With sudden violence he caught her by the arms.
+
+“Be silent, I tell you! Don’t tempt me! I’ll make my penance, accept the
+burden laid on me--that my first-born should be a girl!”
+
+Diane clung to him, resisting his attempt to thrust her from him.
+
+“Hugh! Ah, wait! Listen to me! . . . Dear, some day there may be a
+little son, yours and mine--”
+
+He flung her from him violently.
+
+“There shall never be a son of ours! Never! It is the Will of God.”
+
+With an immense effort he checked the rising frenzy within him--the
+ecstasy of the martyr embracing the stake to which he shall be bound. He
+moved across to the door and held it open for her.
+
+“And now, will you please go? That is my last word on the matter.”
+
+Diane turned hesitatingly towards the doorway, then paused.
+
+“Hugh----”
+
+There was an infinite appeal in her voice. Her eyes were those of a
+frightened, bewildered child.
+
+“Go, please,” he repeated mechanically.
+
+A convulsive sob tore its way through her throat. She stepped blindly
+forward. The next moment the door closed inexorably between husband and
+wife.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SAINT-MICHAEL AND THE WONDER-CHILD
+
+Day by day her husband’s complete estrangement from her was rendered
+additionally bitter to Diane by Catherine’s complacent air of triumph.
+The latter knew that she had won, severed the tie which bound her
+brother to “the foreign dancing-woman,” and she did not scruple to let
+Diane see that she openly rejoiced in the fact.
+
+At first Diane imagined that Catherine might rest content with what she
+had accomplished, but the grim, hard-featured woman still continued to
+exhibit the same self-righteous disapproval towards her brother’s wife
+as hitherto.
+
+Diane endured it in resentful silence for a time, but one day, stung by
+some more than usually acid speech of Catherine’s, she turned on her,
+demanding passionately why she seemed to hate her even more since the
+birth of the child.
+
+“I nearly gave my life for her,” she protested with fierce simplicity.
+“I could do no more! Is it because _le bon dieu_ has sent me a little
+daughter instead of a little son that you hate me so much?”
+
+And Catherine had answered her in a voice of quiet, concentrated
+animosity:
+
+“If you had died then--_died childless_--I should have thanked God day
+and night.”
+
+Diane, isolated and unhappy, turned to her baby for consolation. It was
+all that was left to her out of the wreck of her life, and the very fact
+that both Hugh and Catherine seemed to regard the little daughter with
+abhorrence only served to strengthen the passionate worship which she
+herself lavished upon her.
+
+The child--they had called her Magda--was an odd little creature, as
+might have been expected from the violently opposing characteristics of
+her parents.
+
+She was slenderly made--built on the same lithe lines as her mother--and
+almost as soon as she was able to walk she manifested an amazing balance
+and suppleness of limb. By the time she was four years old she was
+trying to imitate, with uncertain little feet and dimpled, aimlessly
+waving arms, the movements of her mother, when to amuse the child, she
+would sometimes dance for her.
+
+However big a tragedy had occurred in Magda’s small world--whether it
+were a crack across the insipid china face of a favourite doll or the
+death of an adored Persian kitten--there was still balm in Gilead if
+_“petite maman”_ would but dance for her. The tears shining in big drops
+on her cheeks, her small chest still heaving with the sobs that were
+a passionate protest against unkind fate, Magda would sit on the floor
+entranced, watching with adoring eyes every swift, graceful motion of
+the dancer, and murmuring in the quaint shibboleth of French and English
+she had imbibed from old Virginie.
+
+On one of these occasions Hugh came upon the two unexpectedly and
+brought the performance to a summary conclusion.
+
+“That will do, Diane,” he said icily. “I should have thought you would
+have had more self-respect than to dance--in that fashion--in front of a
+child.”
+
+“It is, then, a sin to dance--as it is to be married?” demanded Diane
+bitterly, abruptly checked in an exquisite spring-flower dance of her
+own invention.
+
+“I forbid it; that is sufficient,” replied Hugh sternly.
+
+His assumption of arrogant superiority was unbearable. Diane’s
+self-control wavered under it and broke. She turned and upbraided him
+despairingly, alternately pleading and reproaching, battering all her
+slender forces uselessly against his inflexible determination.
+
+“This is a waste of time, Diane--mine, anyway,” he told her. And left
+her shaken with grief and anger.
+
+Driven by a sense of utter revolt, she stormed her way to Catherine, who
+was composedly sorting sheets in the linen room.
+
+“I will not bear it!” she burst out at her furiously. “What have I done
+that I should be treated as an outcast--a pariah?”
+
+Catherine regarded the tense, quivering little figure with chill
+dislike.
+
+“You married my brother,” she replied imperturbably.
+
+“And you have separated us! But for you, we should be happy together--he
+and baby and I! But you have spoilt it all. I suppose”--a hint of the
+Latin Quarter element in her asserting itself--“I suppose you think no
+one good enough to marry into your precious family!”
+
+Catherine paused on her way to the cupboard, a pile of fine linen
+pillowslips in her hands.
+
+“Yes,” she said quietly. “It is I who have separated you--spoilt your
+happiness, if you like. And I am glad of it. I can’t expect anyone like
+you to understand”--there was the familiar flavour of disparagement in
+her tones--“but I am thankful that my brother has seen the wickedness of
+his marriage with you, that he has repented of it, and that he is making
+the only atonement possible!”
+
+She turned and composedly laid the pile of pillowslips in their
+appointed place on the shelf. A faint fragrance of dried lavender
+drifted out from the dark depths of the cupboard. Diane always
+afterwards associated the smell of lavender with her memories of
+Catherine Vallincourt, and the sweet, clean scent of it was spoiled for
+her henceforward.
+
+“I hate you!” she exclaimed in a low voice of helpless rage. “I hate
+you--and I wish to God Hugh had never had a sister!”
+
+“Well”--composedly--“he will not have one much longer.”
+
+Diane stared.
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean that as far as our life together is concerned, it is very nearly
+over.”
+
+“Do you mean”--Diane bent towards her breathlessly--“do you mean that
+you are _going away_--going away from Coverdale?”
+
+“Yes. I am entering a sisterhood--that of the Sisters of Penitence, a
+community Hugh is endowing with money that is urgently needed.”
+
+“Endowing?”
+
+“As part of the penance he has set himself to perform.” Catherine’s
+steely glance met and held the younger woman’s. “Thanks to you, the
+remainder of his life will be passed in expiation.”
+
+Diane shook her head carelessly. Such side-issues were of relatively
+small importance compared with the one outstanding, amazing fact:
+Catherine was going away! Going away from Coverdale--for ever!
+
+“Yes”--Catherine read her thoughts shrewdly--“yes, you will be rid of
+me. I shall not be here much longer.”
+
+Diane struck her hands together. For once, not even the fear of
+Catherine’s gibing tongue could hold her silent.
+
+“I’m glad--glad--_glad_ you’re going away!” she exclaimed passionately.
+“When you are gone I will win back my husband.”
+
+“Do you think so?” was all she said.
+
+But to Diane’s keyed-up consciousness it was as though the four short
+words contained a threat--the germ of future disaster.
+
+
+
+In due time Catherine quitted Coverdale for the austere seclusion of
+the sisterhood, and a very few weeks sufficed to convince Diane that her
+forebodings had been only too well founded.
+
+Catherine had long been anxious to enter a community, restrained from
+doing so solely by Hugh’s need of her as mistress of his house, and
+now that her wish was an accomplished fact, it seemed as though he
+were spurred on to increasing effort by the example of his sister’s
+renunciation of the world. He withdrew himself even more completely from
+his wife, sometimes avoiding her company for days at a time, and adopted
+a stringently ascetic mode of life, denying himself all pleasure,
+fasting frequently, and praying and meditating for hours at a stretch
+in the private chapel which was attached to Coverdale. As far as it was
+possible, without actually entering a community, his existence resembled
+that of a monk, and Diane came to believe that he had voluntarily vowed
+himself to a certain form of penance and expiation for the marriage
+which the bigotry of his nature had led him to regard as a sin.
+
+His life only impinged upon his wife’s in so far as the upbringing of
+their child was concerned. He was unnecessarily severe with her, and,
+since Diane opposed his strict ruling at every opportunity, Magda’s
+early life was passed in an atmosphere of fierce contradictions.
+
+The child inherited her mother’s beauty to the full, and, as she
+developed, exhibited an extraordinary faculty for getting her own way.
+Servants, playmates, and governesses all succumbed to the nameless charm
+she possessed, while her mother and old Virginie frankly worshipped her.
+
+The love of dancing was instinctive with her, and this, unknown to Hugh,
+her mother cultivated assiduously, fostering in her everything that
+was imaginative and delicately fanciful. Magda believed firmly in
+the existence of fairies and regarded flowers as each possessed of
+a separate entity with personal characteristics of its own. The
+originality of the dances she invented for her own amusement was the
+outcome.
+
+But, side by side with this love of all that was beautiful, she absorbed
+from her mother a certain sophisticated understanding of life which was
+somewhat startling in one of her tender years, and this, too, betrayed
+itself in her dancing. For it is an immutable law that everything--good,
+bad, and indifferent--which lies in the soul of an artist ultimately
+reveals itself in his work.
+
+And Magda, inheriting the underlying ardour of her father’s temperament
+and the gutter-child’s sharp sense of values which was her mother’s
+Latin Quarter garnering, at the age of eight danced, with all the
+beguilement and seductiveness of a trained and experienced dancer.
+
+Even Hugh himself was not proof against the elusive lure of it. He
+chanced upon her one day, dancing in her nursery, and was so carried
+away by the charm of the performance that for the moment he forgot that
+she was transgressing one of his most rigid rules.
+
+In the child’s gracious, alluring gestures he was reminded of the first
+time that he had seen her mother dance, and of how it had thrilled him.
+Beneath the veneer with which his self-enforced austerity had overlaid
+his emotions, he felt his pulses leap, and was bitterly chagrined at
+being thus attracted.
+
+He found himself brought up forcibly once more against the inevitable
+consequences of his marriage with Diane, and reasoned that through his
+weakness in making such a woman his wife, he had let loose on the
+world a feminine thing dowered with the seductiveness of a Delilah and
+backed--here came in the exaggerated family pride ingrained in
+him--by all the added weight and influence of her social position as a
+Vallincourt.
+
+“Never let me see you dance again, Magda,” he told her. “It is
+forbidden. If you disobey you will be severely punished.”
+
+Magda regarded him curiously out of a pair of long dark eyes the colour
+of black smoke. With that precociously sophisticated instinct of hers
+she realised that the man had been emotionally stirred, and divined in
+her funny child’s mind that it was her dancing which had so stirred him.
+It gave her a curious sense of power.
+
+“Sieur Hugh is _afraid_ because he likes me to dance,” she told her
+mother, with an impish little grin of enjoyment.
+
+(On one occasion Hugh had narrated for her benefit the history of an
+ancestor, one Sieur Hugues de Vallincourt, whose effigy in stone adorned
+the church, and she had ever afterwards persisted in referring to her
+father as “Sieur Hugh”--considerably to his annoyance, since he regarded
+it as both disrespectful and unseemly.)
+
+From this time onwards Magda seemed to take a diabolical delight
+in shocking her father--experimenting on him, as it were. In some
+mysterious way she had become conscious of her power to allure. Young
+as she was, the instinct of conquest was awakened within her, and she
+proceeded to “experiment” on certain of her father’s friends--to their
+huge delight and Hugh’s intense disgust. Once, in an outburst of fury,
+he epitomised her ruthlessly.
+
+“The child has the soul of a courtesan!”
+
+If this were so, Hugh had no knowledge of how to cope with it. His
+fulminations on the subject of dancing affected her not at all, and a
+few days after he had rebuked her with all the energy at his command he
+discovered her dancing on a table--this time for the delectation of an
+enraptured butler and staff in the servants’ hall.
+
+Without more ado Hugh lifted her down and carried her to his study,
+where he administered a sound smacking. The result astonished him
+considerably.
+
+“Do you think you can stop me from dancing by beating me?”
+
+Magda arraigned him with passionate scorn.
+
+“I do,” he returned grimly. “If you hurt people enough you can stop them
+from committing sin. That is the meaning of remedial punishment.”
+
+“I don’t believe it!” she stormed at him. “You might hurt me till I
+_died_ of hurting, but you couldn’t make me good--not if I hated your
+hurting me all the time! Because it isn’t good to hate,” she added out
+of the depths of some instinctive wisdom.
+
+“Then you’d better learn to like being punished--if that will make you
+good,” retorted Hugh.
+
+Magda sped out into the woods. Hugh’s hand had been none too light,
+and she was feeling physically and spiritually sore. Her small soul was
+aflame with fierce revolt.
+
+Just to assure herself of the liberty of the individual and of the fact
+that “hurting couldn’t make her good,” she executed a solitary little
+dance on the green, mossy sward beneath the trees. It was rather a
+painful process, since certain portions of her anatomy still tingled
+from the retributive strokes of justice, but she set her teeth and
+accomplished the dance with a consciousness of unholy glee that added
+appreciably to the quality of the performance.
+
+“Are you the Fairy Queen?”
+
+The voice came suddenly out of the dim, enfolding silence of the woods,
+and Magda paused in the midst of a final pirouette. A man was standing
+leaning against the trunk of a tree, watching her with whimsical grey
+eyes. Behind him, set up in the middle of a clearing amongst the trees,
+an easel and stool evidenced his recent occupation.
+
+Magda returned the scrutiny of the grey eyes. She was no whit
+embarrassed and slowly lowered her foot--she had been toe-dancing--to
+its normal position while she surveyed the newcomer with interest.
+
+He was a tall, lean specimen of mankind, and the sunlight, quivering
+between the interlacing boughs above his head, flickered on to kinky
+fair hair that looked almost absurdly golden contrasted with the brown
+tan of the face beneath it. It was a nice face, Magda decided, with a
+dogged, squarish jaw that appealed to a certain tenacity of spirit which
+was one of her own unchildish characteristics, and the keen dark-grey
+eyes she encountered were so unlike the cold light-grey of her father’s
+that it seemed ridiculous the English language could only supply the one
+word “grey” to describe things that were so totally dissimilar.
+
+“They’re like eyes with little fires behind them,” Magda told herself.
+Then smiled at their owner radiantly.
+
+“Are you the Fairy Queen?” he repeated gravely.
+
+She regarded him with increasing approval.
+
+“Yes,” she assented graciously. “These are my woods.”
+
+“Then I’m afraid I’ve been trespassing in your majesty’s domain,”
+ admitted the grey-eyed man. “But your woods are so beautiful I simply
+had to try and make a sketch of them.”
+
+Magda came back to earth with promptitude.
+
+“Oh, are you an artist?” she demanded eagerly.
+
+He nodded, smiling.
+
+“I’m trying to be.”
+
+“Let me look.” She flashed past him and planted herself in front of the
+easel.
+
+“_Mais, c’est bon!_” she commented coolly. “Me, I know. We have good
+pictures at home. This is a good picture.”
+
+The man with the grey eyes looked suitably impressed.
+
+“I’m glad you find it so,” he replied meekly. “I think it wants just one
+thing more. If”--he spoke abstractly--“if the Fairy Queen were resting
+just there”--his finger indicated the exact point on the canvas--“tired,
+you know, because she had been dancing to one of the Mortals--lucky
+beggar, wasn’t he?--why, I think the picture would be complete.”
+
+Magda shot him a swift glance of comprehension. Then, without a word,
+she moved towards the bole of a tree and flung herself down with all the
+supple grace of a young faun. The artist snatched up his palette; the
+pose she had assumed without a hint from him was inimitable--the slender
+limbs relaxed and drooping exactly as though from sheer fatigue. He
+painted furiously, blocking in the limp little figure with swift, sure
+strokes of his brush.
+
+When at last he desisted he flung a question at her.
+
+“Who taught you to pose--and to dance like that, you wonder-child?”
+
+Magda surveyed him with that mixture of saint and devil in her long,
+suddenly narrow eyes which, when she grew to womanhood, was the measure
+of her charm and the curse of her tempestuous life.
+
+“_Le bon dieu_,” she responded demurely.
+
+The man smiled and shook his head. It was a crooked little smile, oddly
+humorous and attractive.
+
+“No,” he said with conviction. “No. I don’t think so.”
+
+The daylight was beginning to fade, and he started to pack up his
+belongings.
+
+“What’s your name?” asked Magda suddenly.
+
+“Michael.”
+
+She looked at him with sudden awe.
+
+“Not--not _Saint Michel_?” she asked breathlessly.
+
+Virginie had told her all about “_Saint Michel_.” He was a very great
+angel indeed. It would be tremendously exciting to find she had been
+talking to him all this time without knowing it! And the grey-eyed man
+had fair hair; it shone in the glinting sunset-light _almost_ like a
+halo!
+
+He quenched her hopes with that brief, one-sided smile of his.
+
+“No,” he said. “I’m not Saint Michael. I’m only a poor devil of a
+painter who’s got his way to make in the world. Perhaps, you’ve helped
+me, Fairy Queen.”
+
+And seeing that “The Repose of Titania” was the first of his paintings
+to bring Michael Quarrington that meed of praise and recognition which
+was later his in such full measure, perhaps she had.
+
+“I think I’m glad you’re not a saint, after all,” remarked Magda
+thoughtfully. “Saint’s are dreadfully dull and superior.”
+
+He smiled down at her.
+
+“Are they? How do you know?”
+
+“Because Sieur Hugh is preparing to be one. At least Virginie says
+so--and she sniffs when she says it. So you see, I know all about it.”
+
+“I see,” he replied seriously. “And who are Sieur Hugh and Virginie?”
+
+“Sieur Hugh is my father. And Virginie is next best to _petite maman_.
+Me, I love Virginie.”
+
+“Lucky Virginie!”
+
+Magda made no answer, but she stood looking at him with an odd,
+unchildlike deviltry in her sombre eyes.
+
+“Fairy Queen, I should like to kiss you,” said the man suddenly. Then he
+jerked his head back. “No, I wouldn’t!” he added quickly to himself. “By
+Jove, it’s uncanny!”
+
+Magda remained motionless, still staring at him with those long dark
+eyes of hers. He noticed that just at the outer corners they slanted
+upwards a little, giving her small, thin face a curiously Eastern look.
+
+At last--
+
+“Please kiss me, Saint Michael,” she said.
+
+For a moment he hesitated, a half-rueful, half-whimsical smile on his
+lips, rather as though he were laughing at himself. Then, with a shrug
+of his shoulders, he stooped quickly and kissed her.
+
+“Witch-child!” he muttered as he strode away through the woods.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SEED OF EVIL
+
+Diane sat in the twilight, brooding. Winter had come round again,
+gripping the world with icy fingers, and she shivered a little as she
+crouched in front of the fire.
+
+She felt cold--cold in body and soul. The passage of time had brought no
+cheery warmth of love or loving-kindness to her starved heart, and the
+estrangement between herself and Hugh was as definite and absolute as
+it had been the day Catherine quitted Coverdale for the Sisterhood of
+Penitence.
+
+But the years which had elapsed since then had taken their inevitable
+toll. Hugh had continued along the lines he had laid down for himself,
+rigidly ascetic and austere, and his mode of life now revealed itself
+unmistakably in his thin, emaciated face and eyes ablaze with fanatical
+fervour.
+
+Diane, thrust into a compulsory isolation utterly foreign to her
+temperament, debarred the fulfilment of her womanhood which her
+spontaneous, impetuous nature craved, had drooped and pined, gradually
+losing both her buoyant spirit and her health in the loveless atmosphere
+to which her husband had condemned her.
+
+She had so counted on the prospect that a better understanding between
+herself and Hugh would ensue after Catherine’s departure that the
+downfall of her hopes had come upon her as a bitter disappointment. Once
+she had stifled her pride and begged him to live no longer as a stranger
+to her. But he had repulsed her harshly, refusing her pleading with an
+inexorable decision there was no combating.
+
+Afterwards she had given herself up to despair, and gradually--almost
+imperceptibly at first--her health had declined until finally, at the
+urgent representations of Virginie, Hugh had called in Dr. Lancaster.
+
+“There is no specific disease,” he had said. “But none the
+less”--looking very directly at Hugh--“your wife is dying, Vallincourt.”
+
+Diane had been told the first part of the doctor’s pronouncement, and
+recommended by her husband to “rouse herself” out of her apathetic
+state.
+
+“‘No specific disease!’” she repeated bitterly, as she sat brooding in
+the firelight. “No--only this death in life which I have had to endure.
+Well, it will be over soon--and the sooner the better.”
+
+The door burst open suddenly and Magda came in to the room, checking
+abruptly, with a child’s stumbling consciousness of pain, as she caught
+sight of her mother curled up in front of the fire, staring mutely into
+its glowing heart.
+
+“_Maman_?” she begin timidly. “_Petite maman_?”
+
+Diane turned round.
+
+“Cherie, is it thou?”
+
+She kneeled up on the hearthrug and, taking the child in her arms,
+searched her face with dry, bright eyes.
+
+“Baby,” she said. “Listen! And when thou art older, remember always what
+I have said.”
+
+Magda stared at her, listening intently.
+
+“Never, never give your heart to any man,” continued Diane. “If you
+do, he will only break it for you--break it into little pieces like the
+glass scent-bottle which you dropped yesterday. Take everything. But do
+not give--anything--in return. Will you remember?”
+
+And Magda answered her gravely.
+
+“_Oui, maman_, I will remember.”
+
+What happened after that remained always a confused blur in Magda’s
+memory--a series of pictures standing out against a dark background of
+haste and confusion, and whispered fears.
+
+Suddenly her mother gave a sharp little cry and her hands went up to
+her breast, while for a moment her eyes, dilated and frightened-looking,
+stared agonisingly ahead. Then she toppled over sideways and lay in a
+little heap on the great bearskin rung in front of the fire.
+
+After that Virginie came running, followed by a drove of scared-looking
+servants and, last of all, by Hugh himself, his face very white and
+working strangely.
+
+The car was sent off in frantic haste in search of Dr. Lancaster, and
+later in the day two white-capped nurses appeared on the scene. Then
+followed hours of hushed uncertainty, when people went to and fro
+with hurried, muffled footsteps and spoke together in whispers, while
+Virginie’s face grew yellow and drawn-looking, and the tears trickled
+down her wrinkled-apple cheeks whenever one spoke to her.
+
+Last of all someone told Magda that “_petite maman_” had gone away--and
+on further inquiry Virginie vouchsafed that she had gone to somewhere
+called Paradise to be with the blessed saints.
+
+“When will she come back again?” demanded Magda practically.
+
+Upon which Virginie had made an unpleasant choking noise in her throat
+and declared:
+
+“Never!”
+
+Magda was frankly incredulous. _Petite maman_ would never go away like
+that and leave her behind! Of that she felt convinced, and said so.
+Gulping back her sobs, Virginie explained that in this case madame had
+been given no choice, but added that if Magda comported herself like a
+good little girl, she would one day go to be with her in Paradise. Magda
+found it all very puzzling.
+
+But when, later, she was taken into her mother’s room and saw the
+slender, sheeted figure lying straight and still on the great bed,
+hands meekly crossed upon the young, motionless breast, while tall white
+candles burned at head and foot, the knowledge that _petite maman_ had
+really gone from her seemed all at once to penetrate her childish mind.
+
+That aloofly silent figure could not be her gay, pretty _petite
+maman_--the one who had played and laughed with her and danced so
+exquisitely that sometimes Magda’s small soul had ached with the sheer
+beauty and loveliness of it. . . .
+
+She met Dr. Lancaster as she came out from the candle-lit room and
+clutched him convulsively by the hand.
+
+“Is that--being dead?” she whispered, pointing to the room she had just
+quitted.
+
+Very gently he tried to explain things to her. Afterwards Magda
+overheard the family lawyer asking him in appropriately shocked tones of
+what complaint Lady Vallincourt had died, and there had been a curious
+grim twist to Lancaster’s mouth as he made answer.
+
+“Heart,” he said tersely.
+
+“Ah! Very sad. Very sad indeed,” rejoined the lawyer feelingly. “These
+heart complaints are very obscure sometimes, I believe?”
+
+“Sometimes,” said Lancaster. “Not always.”
+
+
+
+The next happening that impressed itself on Magda’s cognisance as an
+event was the coming of Lady Arabella Winter. She arrived on a day of
+heavy snow, and Magda’s first impression of her, as she came into the
+hall muffled up to the tip of her patrician nose in a magnificent sable
+wrap, was of a small, alert-eyed bird huddled into its nest.
+
+But when the newcomer had laid aside her furs Magda’s impression
+qualified itself. Lady Arabella was not in the least of the “small
+bird” type, but rather suggested a hawk endowed with a grim sense
+of humour--quick and decisive in movement, with eyes that held an
+incalculable wisdom and laughed a thought cynically because they saw so
+clearly.
+
+Her hair was perfectly white, as white as the snow outside, but her
+complexion was soft and fine-grained as that of a girl of sixteen--pink
+and white like summer roses. She had the manner of an empress with
+extremely modern ideas.
+
+Magda was instructed that this great little personage was her godmother
+and that she would in future live with her instead of at Coverdale.
+She accepted the information without surprise though with considerable
+interest.
+
+“Think you’ll like it?” Lady Arabella shot at her keenly.
+
+“Yes,” Magda replied unhesitatingly. “But why am I going to live with
+you? Sieur Hugh isn’t dead, too, is he?”--with impersonal interest.
+
+“And who in the name of fortune is Sieur Hugh?”
+
+Lady Arabella looked around helplessly, and Virginia, who was hovering
+in the background, hastened to explain the relationship.
+
+“Then, no,” replied Lady Arabella. “Sieur Hugh is not dead--though to be
+sure he’s the next thing to it!”
+
+Magda eyed her solemnly.
+
+“Is he very ill?” she asked.
+
+“No, merely cranky like all the Vallincourts. He’s in a community,
+joined a brotherhood, you know, and proposes to spend the rest of
+his days repenting his sins and making his peace with heaven. I’ve no
+patience with the fool!” continued the old lady irascibly. “He marries
+to please himself and then hasn’t the pluck of a rabbit to see the thing
+through decently. So you’re to be my responsibility in future--and a
+pretty big one, too, to judge by the look of you.”
+
+Magda hardly comprehended the full meaning of this speech. Still she
+gathered that her father had left her--though not quite in the same way
+as _petite maman_ had done--and that henceforth this autocratic old lady
+with the hawk’s eyes and quick, darting movements was to be the arbiter
+of her fate. She also divined, beneath Lady Arabella’s prickly exterior,
+a humanness and ability to understand which had been totally lacking in
+Sieur Hugh. She proceeded to put it to the test.
+
+“Will you let me dance?” she asked.
+
+“Tchah!” snorted the old woman. “So the Wielitzska blood is coming
+out after all!” She turned to Virginia. “Can she dance?” she demanded
+abruptly.
+
+“Mais oui, madame!” cried Virginie, clasping her hands ecstatically.
+“Like a veritable angel!”
+
+“I shouldn’t have thought it,” commented her ladyship drily.
+
+Her shrewd eyes swept the child’s tense little face with its long,
+Eastern eyes and the mouth that showed so vividly scarlet against its
+unchildish pallor.
+
+“Less like an angel than anything, I should imagine,” muttered the old
+woman to herself with a wicked little grin. Then aloud: “Show me what
+you can do, then, child.”
+
+“Very well.” Magda paused, reflecting. Then she ran forward and laid
+her hand lightly on Lady Arabella’s knee. “Look! This is the story of
+a Fairy who came to earth and lost her way in the woods. She met one of
+the Mortals, and he loved her so much that he wouldn’t show her the way
+back to Fairyland. So”--abruptly--“she died.”
+
+Lady Arabella watched the child dance in astonished silence. Technique,
+of course, was lacking, but the interpretation, the telling of the
+story, was amazing. It was all there--the Fairy’s first wonder and
+delight in finding herself in the woods, then her realisation that she
+was lost and her frantic efforts to find the way back to Fairyland.
+Followed her meeting with the Mortal and supplication to him to guide
+her, and finally the Fairy’s despair and death. Magda’s slight little
+figure sank to the ground, drooping slowly like a storm-bent snowdrop,
+and lay still.
+
+Lady Arabella sat up with a jerk.
+
+“Good gracious! The child’s a born dancer! Lydia Tchinova must see her.
+She’ll have to train. Poor Hugh!” She chuckled enjoyably. “This will be
+the last straw! He’ll be compelled to invent a new penance.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FLOWERING
+
+“You’re very trying, Magda. Everyone is talking about you, and I’m tired
+of trying to explain you to people.”
+
+Lady Arabella paused in her knitting and spoke petulantly, but a secret
+gleam of admiration in her sharp old eyes as they rested upon her
+god-daughter belied the irritation of her tones.
+
+Magda leaned back negligently against the big black velvet cushions in
+her chair and lit a cigarette.
+
+“I _want_ everyone to talk about me,” she returned composedly. Her voice
+was oddly attractive--low-pitched and with a faint blur of huskiness
+about it that caught the ear with a distinctive charm. “It increases
+the box-office receipts. And there’s no reason in the world for you to
+‘explain’ me to people.”
+
+Her godmother regarded her with increasing irritation, yet at the same
+time acutely conscious of the arresting quality of the young, vividly
+alive face that gleamed at her from its black-velvet background.
+
+Ten years had only served to emphasise the unusual characteristics
+of the child Magda. Her skin was wonderful, of a smooth, creamy-white
+texture which gave to the sharply angled face something of the pale,
+exotic perfection of a stephanotis bloom. Her eyes were long, the colour
+of black pansies--black with a suggestion of purple in their depths.
+They slanted upwards a little at the outer corners, and this together
+with the high cheek-bones, alone would have betrayed her Russian
+ancestry. When Lady Arabella wanted to be particularly obnoxious
+she told her that she had Mongolian eyes, and Magda would shrug her
+shoulders and, thrusting out a foot which was so perfect in shape that
+a painting of it by a certain famous artist had been the most talked-of
+picture of the year, would reply placidly: “Well, thank heaven, _that’s_
+not English, anyway!”
+
+“It certainly required some explanation when you chose to leave me
+and go off and live by yourself,” pursued Lady Arabella, resuming her
+knitting. “A girl of twenty! Of course people have talked. Especially as
+half the men in town imagine themselves in love with you.”
+
+“Well, I’m perfectly respectable now. I’ve engaged a nice, tame
+pussy-cat person to take charge of my morals and chaperon me
+generally. Not--like you, Marraine--an Early Victorian autocrat with a
+twentieth-century tongue.”
+
+“If you mean Mrs. Grey, she doesn’t give me the least impression of
+being a ‘nice, tame pussy-cat,’” retorted Lady Arabella. “You’ll find
+that out, my dear.”
+
+Magda regarded her thoughtfully.
+
+“Do you think so?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“Oh, Gillian is all right,” affirmed Magda, dismissing the matter
+airily. “She’s a gorgeous accompanist, anyway--almost as good as Davilof
+himself. Which reminds me--I must go home and rehearse my solo dance in
+the _Swan-Maiden_. I told Davilof I’d be ready for him at four o’clock;
+and it’s half-past three now. I shall never get back to Hampstead
+through this ghastly fog in half an hour.” She glanced towards the
+window through which was visible a discouraging fog of the “pea-soup”
+ variety.
+
+Lady Arabella sniffed.
+
+“You’d better be careful for once in your life, Magda. Davilof is in
+love with you.”
+
+“Pouf! What if he is?”
+
+Magda rose, and picking up her big black hat set it on her head at
+precisely the right angle, and proceeded to spear it through with a
+wonderful black-and-gold hatpin of Chinese workmanship.
+
+Lady Arabella shot a swift glance at her.
+
+“He’s just one of a crowd?” she suggested tartly.
+
+Magda assented indifferently.
+
+“You’re wrong--quite wrong,” returned her godmother crisply. “Antoine
+Davilof is not one of a crowd--never will be! He’s half a Pole,
+remember.”
+
+Magda smiled.
+
+“And I’m half a Russian. It must be a case of deep calling to deep,” she
+suggested mockingly.
+
+Lady Arabella’s shining needles clicked as they came to an abrupt stop.
+
+“Does that mean you’re in love with him?” she asked.
+
+Magda stared.
+
+“Good gracious, no! I’m never in love. You know that.”
+
+“That doesn’t prevent my hoping you may develop--some day--into a normal
+God-fearing woman,” retorted the other.
+
+“And learn to thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love?” Magda
+laughed lightly. “I shan’t. At least, I hope not. Judging from my
+friends and acquaintances, the condition of being in love is a most
+unpleasant one--reduces a woman to a humiliating sense of her own
+unworthiness and keeps her in a see-saw state of emotional uncertainty.
+No, thank you! No man is worth it!”
+
+Lady Arabella looked away. Her hard, bright old eyes held a sudden
+wistfulness foreign to them.
+
+“My dear--one man is. One man in every woman’s life is worth it. Only we
+don’t always find it out in time.”
+
+“Why, Marraine--you don’t mean--you weren’t ever----”
+
+Lady Arabella rose suddenly and came across to where Magda stood by the
+fire, one narrow foot extended to the cheerful warmth.
+
+“Never mind what I mean,” she said, and her voice sounded a little
+uncertain. “Only, if it comes your way, don’t miss the best thing this
+queer old world of ours has to offer. If it brings you nothing else,
+love at least leaves you memories. Even that’s something.”
+
+Magda glanced at her curiously. Somehow she had never imagined that
+behind the worldly-wise old woman’s sharp speeches and grim, ironic
+humour there lay the half-buried memory of some far-distant romance. Yet
+now in the uneven tones of her voice she recognised the throb of an old
+wound.
+
+“And meanwhile”--Lady Arabella suddenly resumed in her usual curt
+manner--“meanwhile you might play fair with one or two of those boys you
+have trailing around--Kit Raynham for instance.”
+
+“I don’t understand,” began Magda.
+
+“You understand perfectly. A man of the world’s fair game. He can
+look after himself--and probably sizes you up for what you are--a
+phenomenally successful dancer, who regards her little court of admirers
+as one of the commonplaces of existence--like her morning cup of tea.
+But these boys--they look upon you as a woman, even a possible wife. And
+then they proceed to fall in love with you!”
+
+Magda’s foot tapped impatiently on the floor.
+
+“What’s this all leading up to?”
+
+Lady Arabella met her glance squarely.
+
+“I want you to leave Kit Raynham alone. His mother has been to
+me--Magda, I’m sick of having their mothers come to me!--and begged
+me to interfere. She says you’re ruining the boy’s prospects. He’s a
+brilliant lad, and they expect him to do something rather special. And
+now he’s slacking completely. He’s always on your doorstep. If you care
+about him--do you, Magda?--tell him so. But, if you don’t, for goodness’
+sake send him about his business.”
+
+She waited quietly for an answer. Magda slipped into a big fur-coat and
+caught up her gloves. Then she turned to her godmother abruptly.
+
+“Lady Raynham is absurd. I can’t prevent Kit’s making a fool of himself
+if he wants to. And--and”--rather helplessly--“I can’t help it if I
+don’t fall in love to order.” She kissed her godmother lightly. “So
+that’s that.”
+
+A minute later Lady Arabella’s butler had swung open the front door, and
+Magda crossed the pavement and entered her waiting car.
+
+Outside, the fog hung like a thick pall over London--thick enough to
+curtain the windows of the car with a blank, grey veil and to make
+progress through the streets a difficult and somewhat dangerous process.
+Magda snuggled into her furs and leant back against the padded cushions.
+All sight of the outside world was cut off from her, except for the
+blurred gleam of an occasional street-lamp or the menacing shape of a
+motor-bus looming suddenly alongside, and she yielded herself to the
+train of thought provoked by her talk with Lady Arabella.
+
+In a detached sort of way she felt sorry about Kit Raynham--principally
+because Lady Arabella, of whom she was exceedingly fond, seemed vexed
+about the matter. It had not taken her long to discover, when as a child
+she had come to live with her godmother, the warm heart that concealed
+itself beneath the old lady’s somewhat shrewish exterior. And to
+Lady Arabella the advent of her god-child had been a matter for pure
+rejoicing.
+
+Having no children of her own, she lavished a pent-up wealth of
+affection upon Magda of which few would have thought her capable, and
+though she was by no means niggardly in her blame of Hugh Vallincourt
+for his method of shelving his responsibilities, she was grateful that
+his withdrawal into the monastic life had been the means of throwing
+Magda into her care. Five years later, when death claimed him, she found
+he had appointed her the child’s sole guardian.
+
+True to her intention, she had asked the opinion of Lydia Tchinova, the
+famous dancer, and under Madame Tchinova’s guidance Magda had received
+such training that when she came to make her debut she leaped into fame
+at once. Hers was one of those rare cases where the initial drudgery and
+patient waiting that attends so many careers was practically eliminated,
+and at the age of twenty she was probably the most talked-of woman in
+London.
+
+She had discarded the family surname for professional purposes, and
+appeared in public under the name of Wielitzska--“to save the reigning
+Vallincourts from a soul convulsion,” as she observed with a twinkle.
+During the last year, influenced by the growing demands of her vocation,
+she had quitted her godmother’s hospitable roof and established herself
+in a house of her own.
+
+Nor had Lady Arabella sought to dissuade her. Although she and Magda
+were the best of friends, she had latterly found the onus of chaperoning
+her god-child an increasingly heavy burden. As she herself remarked:
+“You might as well attempt to chaperon a comet!”
+
+It was almost inevitable that Magda, starred and feted wherever she
+went, should develop into a rather erratic and self-willed young person,
+but on the whole she had remained singularly unspoilt. Side by side with
+her gift for dancing she had also inherited something of her mother’s
+sweetness and wholesomeness of nature. There was nothing petty or mean
+about her, and many a struggling member of her own profession had had
+good cause to thank “the Wielitzska” for a helping hand.
+
+Women found in her a good pal; men, an elusive, provocative personality
+that bewitched and angered them in the same breath, coolly accepting all
+they had to offer of love and headlong worship--and giving nothing in
+return.
+
+It was not in the least that Magda deliberately set herself to wile a
+man’s heart out of his body. She seemed unable to help it! Apart from
+everything else, her dancing had taught her the whole magic of the art
+of charming by every look and gesture, and the passage of time had only
+added to the extraordinary physical allure which had been hers even as a
+child.
+
+Yet for all the apparent warmth and ardour of her temperament, to which
+the men she knew succumbed in spite of themselves, she herself seemed
+untouched by any deeper emotion than that of a faintly amused desire
+to attract. The lessons of her early days, the tragedy of her mother’s
+married life, had permeated her whole being, and her ability to
+remain emotionally unstirred was due to an instinctive reserve and
+self-withdrawal--an inherent distrust of the passion of love.
+
+_“Take everything. But do not give--anything--in return.”_
+Subconsciously Diane’s words, wrested from her at a moment of poignant
+mental anguish, formed the credo of her daughter’s life.
+
+No man, so far, had ever actually counted for anything in Magda’s scheme
+of existence, and as she drove slowly home from Lady Arabella’s house in
+Park Lane she sincerely hoped none ever would. Certainly--she smiled a
+little at the bare idea--Kit Raynham was not destined to be the man!
+He was clever, and enthusiastic, and adoring, and she liked him quite a
+lot, but his hot-headed passion failed to waken in her breast the least
+spark of responsive emotion.
+
+Her thoughts drifted idly backward, recalling this or that man who had
+wanted her. It was odd, but of all the men she had met the memory of one
+alone was still provocative of a genuine thrill of interest--and
+that was the unknown artist whom she had encountered in the woods at
+Coverdale.
+
+Even now, after the lapse of ten years, she could remember the young,
+lean, square-jawed face with the grey eyes, “like eyes with little fires
+behind them,” and hear again the sudden jerky note in the man’s voice as
+he muttered, “Witch-child!”
+
+That brief adventure with “Saint Michel”--she remembered calling
+him “Saint Michel”--stood out as one of the clearest memories of her
+childhood. That, and the memory of her mother, kneeling on the big
+bearskin rug and saying in a hard, dry voice: “Never give your heart to
+any man. Take everything. But do not give--anything--in return.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OUT OF THE FOG
+
+A sudden warning shout, the transient glare of fog-blurred headlights,
+then a crash and a staggering blow on the car’s near side which sent
+it reeling like a drunken thing, bonnet foremost, straight into a
+motor-omnibus.
+
+Magda felt herself pitched violently forward off the seat, striking her
+head as she fell, and while the car yet rocked with the force of its
+collision with the motor-bus another vehicle drove blindly into it
+from the rear. It lurched sickeningly and jammed at a precarious angle,
+canted up on two wheels.
+
+Shouts and cries, the frenzied hooting of horns, the grinding of brakes
+and clash of splintered glass combined into a pandemonium of terrifying
+hubbub.
+
+Magda, half-dazed with shock, crouched on the floor of the car where she
+had been flung. She could see the lights appearing and disappearing in
+the fog like baleful eyes opening and shutting spasmodically. A tumult
+of hoarse cries, cursing and bellowing instructions, crossed by the thin
+scream of women’s cries, battered against her ears.
+
+Then out of the medley of raucous noise came a cool, assured voice:
+
+“Don’t be frightened. I’ll get you out.”
+
+Magda was conscious of a sudden reaction from the numbed sense of
+bewildered terror which had overwhelmed her. The sound of that unknown
+voice--quiet, commanding, and infinitely reassuring--was like a hand
+laid on her heart and stilling its terrified throbbing.
+
+She heard someone tugging at the handle of the door. There came a
+moment’s pause while the strained woodwork resisted the pull, then with
+a scrape of jarring fittings the door jerked open and a man’s figure
+loomed in the aperture.
+
+“Where are you?” he asked, peering through the dense gloom. “Ah!” She
+felt his outstretched hands close on her shoulders as she knelt huddled
+on the floor. “Can you get up? Or are you hurt?”
+
+Magda tested her limbs cautiously, to discover that no bones were
+broken, though her head ached horribly, so that she felt sick and giddy
+with the pain.
+
+“No, I’m not hurt,” she answered.
+
+“Then come along. The car’s heeled up a bit, but I’ll lift you out if
+you can get to the door.”
+
+She stumbled forward obediently, groping her way towards the vague panel
+of lighter grey revealed by the open door.
+
+Once more, out of the swathing fog, hands touched her.
+
+“There you are! That’s right. Now lean forward.”
+
+She found herself clasped by arms like steel--so strong, so sure, that
+she felt as safe and secure as when Vladimir Ravinski, the amazingly
+clever young Russian who partnered her in several of her dances,
+sometimes lifted her, lightly and easily as a feather, and bore her
+triumphantly off the stage aloft on his shoulder.
+
+“You’re very strong,” she murmured, as the unknown owner of the arms
+swung her down from the tilted car.
+
+“You’re not very heavy,” came the answer. There was a kind of laughter
+in the voice.
+
+As the man spoke he set her down on her feet, and then, just as Magda
+was opening her lips to thank him, the fog seemed to grow suddenly
+denser, swirling round her in great murky waves and surging in her ears
+with a noise like the boom of the ocean. Higher and higher rose the
+waves, a resistless sea of blackness, and at last they swept right over
+her head and she sank into the utter darkness of oblivion.
+
+
+
+“Drink this!”
+
+Someone was holding a glass to her lips and the pungent smell of sal
+volatile pricked her nostrils. Magda shrank back, her eyes still shut,
+and pressed her head further into the cushions against which it rested.
+She detested the smell of sal volatile.
+
+“Drink it! Do you hear?”
+
+The voice seemed to drive at her with its ring of command. She opened
+her eyes and looked straight up into other eyes--dark-grey ones,
+these--that were bent on her intently. To her confused consciousness
+they appeared to blaze down at her.
+
+“No,” she muttered, feebly trying to push the glass away.
+
+The effort of moving her arm seemed stupendous. Her head swam with it.
+The sea of fog came rolling back again, and this time she sank under it
+at once.
+
+Then--after an immensity of time, she was sure--she felt herself
+struggling up to the surface once more. She was lying rocking gently on
+the top of the waves now; the sensation was very peaceful and pleasant.
+A little breeze played across her face. She drew in deep breaths of the
+cool air, but she did not open her eyes. Presently a murmur of voices
+penetrated her consciousness.
+
+“She’s coming round again.” A man was speaking. “Go on fanning her.”
+
+“Poor young thing! She’s had a shaking up and no mistake!” This in a
+woman’s voice, very kindly and commiserating. A hand lightly smoothed
+the fur of her coat-sleeve. “Looks as if she was a rich young lady. Her
+people must be anxious about her.”
+
+Someone laughed a little, softly.
+
+“Oh, yes, she’s a rich enough young lady, Mrs. Braithwaite. Don’t you
+know who it is we’ve rescued?”
+
+“I, sir? No. How should I?”
+
+“Then I’ll tell you. This is Mademoiselle Wielitzska, the famous
+dancer.”
+
+“Never, sir! Well, I do declare----”
+
+“Now, drink this at once, please.” The man’s voice cut sharply across
+the impending flow of garrulous interest, and Magda, who had not
+gathered the actual sense of the murmured conversation, felt an arm pass
+behind her head, raising it a little, while once more that hateful glass
+of sal volatile was held to her lips.
+
+Her eyes unclosed fretfully.
+
+“Take it away,” she was beginning.
+
+“Drink it! Do you hear? Do as you’re told!”
+
+The sharp, authoritative tones startled her into sudden compliance. She
+opened her mouth and swallowed the contents of the glass with a gulp.
+Then she looked resentfully at the man whose curt command she had obeyed
+in such unexpected fashion. Magda Wielitzska was more used to giving
+orders than to taking them.
+
+“There, that’s better,” he observed, regarding the empty glass with
+satisfaction. “No, lie still”--as she attempted to rise. “You’ll feel
+better in a few minutes.”
+
+“I’m better now,” declared Magda sulkily.
+
+Her head was growing clearer every minute. She was even able to feel an
+intense irritation against this man who had just compelled her to drink
+the sal volatile.
+
+He looked at her unperturbedly.
+
+“Are you? That’s good. Still, you’ll stay where you are till I tell you
+that you may get up.” He turned to a comfortable-looking woman who was
+standing at the foot of the couch on which Magda lay--a housekeeper of
+the nice old-fashioned black-satin kind. “Now, Mrs. Braithwaite, I think
+this lady will be glad of a cup of tea by the time you can have one
+ready.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+With a last, admiring glance at the slender figure on the couch the
+good woman bustled away, leaving Magda alone with her unknown host and
+burning with indignation at the cool way in which he had ordered her to
+remain where she was.
+
+He had his back to her for the moment, having turned to poke up the
+fire, and Magda raised herself on her elbow, preparatory to getting off
+the couch. He swung round instantly.
+
+“I told you to stay where you were,” he said peremptorily.
+
+“I don’t always do as I’m told,” she retorted with spirit.
+
+“You will in this instance, though,” he rejoined, crossing the room
+swiftly towards her.
+
+But quick though he was, she was still quicker. Her eyes blazing
+defiance, she slipped from the couch and stood up before he could reach
+her side. She took a step forward.
+
+“There!” she began defiantly. The next moment the whole room seemed to
+swim round her as she tottered weakly and would have fallen had he not
+caught her.
+
+“What did I tell you?” he said sharply. “You’re not fit to stand.”
+
+Without more ado he lifted her up in his arms and deposited her again on
+the couch.
+
+“I--I only turned a little giddy,” she protested feebly.
+
+“Precisely. Just as I thought you would. Another time, perhaps, you’ll
+obey orders.”
+
+He stood looking down at her with curiously brilliant grey eyes. Magda
+almost winced under their penetrating glance. She felt as though they
+could see into her very soul, and she summoned up all her courage to
+combat the man’s strange force.
+
+“I’m not used to obeying orders,” she said impatiently.
+
+“No?”--with complete indifference. “Then it will be a salutary
+experience for you. Now, lie still until tea comes. I have a letter to
+write.”
+
+He walked away and, seating himself at a desk in the window, appeared to
+forget all about her, while his pen travelled swiftly over the sheet of
+notepaper he had drawn towards him.
+
+Magda watched him with rebellious eyes. Gradually, however, the
+rebellion died out of them, replaced by a puzzled look of interest.
+There was something vaguely familiar about the man. Had she ever seen
+him before? Or was it merely one of those chance resemblances which one
+comes across occasionally? That fair hair with its crisp wave, the lean,
+square-jawed face, above all, the dark-grey eyes with their bright,
+penetrating glance--why did she feel as though every detail of the face
+were already known to her?
+
+She failed to place the resemblance, however, and finally, with a little
+sigh of fatigue, she gave up the attempt. Her brain still felt muddled
+and confused from the blow she had received. Perhaps later she would be
+able to think things out more clearly.
+
+Meanwhile she lay still, her eyes resting languidly on the face that
+so puzzled her. It was not precisely a handsome face, but there was a
+certain rugged fineness in its lines that lifted it altogether out
+of the ruck of the ordinary. It held its contradictions, too.
+Notwithstanding the powerful, determined jaw, the mouth had a sensitive
+upward curve at the corners which gave it an expression of singular
+sweetness, and beneath the eyes were little lines which qualified their
+dominating glance with a hint of whimsical humour.
+
+The clock ticked on solemnly. Presently Mrs. Braithwaite bustled in
+with the tea and withdrew again. But the man remained absorbed in his
+writing, apparently oblivious of everything else.
+
+Magda, who was rapidly recovering, eyed the teapot longingly. She was
+just wondering whether she dared venture to draw his attention to its
+arrival or whether he would snap her head off if she did, when he looked
+up suddenly with that swift, hawk-like glance of his.
+
+“Ready for some tea?” he queried.
+
+She nodded.
+
+“Yes. Am I”--sarcastically--“allowed to get up now?”
+
+He surveyed her consideringly.
+
+“No, I think not,” he said at last. “But as the mountain can’t go to
+Mahomet, Mahomet shall come to the mountain.”
+
+He crossed the room and, while Magda was still wondering what he
+proposed to do, he stooped and dexterously wheeled the couch with its
+light burden close up to the tea-table.
+
+“Now, I’ll fix these cushions,” he said. And with deft hands he
+rearranged the cushions so that they should support her comfortably
+while she drank her tea.
+
+“You would make a very good nurse, I should think,” commented Magda,
+somewhat mollified.
+
+“Thanks,” was all he vouchsafed in answer.
+
+He busied himself pouring out tea, then brought her cup and placed it
+beside her on a quaint little table of Chinese Chippendale.
+
+“Mrs. Braithwaite--my housekeeper--is looking after your chauffeur in
+the kitchen,” he observed presently. “Possibly you may be interested to
+hear”--sarcastically--“that he wasn’t hurt in the smash-up.”
+
+Magda felt herself flushing a little under the implied rebuke--as much
+with annoyance as anything else. She knew that she was not really the
+heartless type of woman he inferred her to be, to whom the fate of
+her dependents was only of importance in so far as it affected her own
+personal comfort, and she resented the injustice of his assumption that
+she was.
+
+She had been so bewildered and dazed by the suddenness of the accident
+and by the blow she herself had received that she had hardly
+yet collected her thoughts sufficiently to envisage the possible
+consequences to others.
+
+With feminine perverseness she promptly decided that nothing would
+induce her to explain matters. If this detestably superior individual
+chose to think her utterly heartless and selfish--why, let him think so!
+
+“And the car?” she asked in a tone of deliberate indifference. “That’s
+quite as important as the chauffeur.”
+
+“More so, surely?”--with polite irony. “The car, I am sorry to say, will
+take a good deal of repairing. At present it’s still in the middle of
+the street with red lights fore and aft. It can’t be moved till the fog
+lifts.”
+
+“What a nuisance! How on earth am I to get home?”
+
+“There are such things as taxis”--suggestively. “Later, when it clears a
+bit, I’ll send out for one.”
+
+“Thanks. I’m afraid I’m giving you a lot of trouble.”
+
+He did not hastily disclaim the idea as most men would have done.
+
+“That can’t be helped,” he returned bluntly.
+
+Magda felt herself colouring again. This man was insufferable!
+
+“Evidently the role of knight-errant is new to you,” she observed.
+
+“Quite true. I’m not in the habit of rescuing damsels in distress. But
+how did you guess?”--with interest.
+
+“Because you do it with such a very bad grace,” she flashed at him.
+
+He smiled--and once more Magda was aware of the sense of familiarity
+even with that whimsical, crooked smile.
+
+“I see,” he replied composedly. “Then you think I ought to have
+been overwhelmed with delight that your car cannoned into my
+bus--incidentally I barked my shins badly in the general mix-up--and
+that I had to haul you out and bring you round from a faint and so on?”
+
+The question--without trimmings--was unanswerable. But to Magda,
+London’s spoiled child, conscious that there were men who would have
+given half their fortune for the chance to render a like service, and
+then counted themselves amply rewarded by the subsequent hour or two
+alone with her, the question was merely provocative.
+
+“Some men would have been,” she returned calmly.
+
+“Ah! Just because you are the Wielitzska, I suppose?”
+
+She stared at him in blank astonishment.
+
+“You knew--you knew who I was all the time?” she gasped.
+
+“Certainly I knew.”
+
+“Then--then----”
+
+“Then why wasn’t I suitably impressed?” he suggested drily.
+
+She sprang to her feet.
+
+“Oh! you are intolerable!” she exclaimed hotly. “You know I didn’t mean
+that!”
+
+He regarded her quite placidly.
+
+“You did. That is precisely what you were thinking. Only you funked
+putting it into plain words.”
+
+He got up and came to her side and stood looking down at her.
+
+“Isn’t it a fact?” he insisted. “Isn’t it?”
+
+Magda looked up, tried to answer in the negative and failed. He had
+spoken the simple truth and she knew it. But none the less she hated him
+for it--hated him for driving her up into a corner and trying to force
+an acknowledgment from her. She remained obstinately silent.
+
+He turned away with a short, amused laugh.
+
+“So you haven’t even the courage of your convictions,” he commented.
+
+Magda clenched her hands, driving the nails hard into the soft palms of
+them. He was an absolute boor, this man who had come to her rescue in
+the fog! He was taking a brutal advantage of their relative positions to
+speak to her as no man had ever dared to speak to her before. Or woman
+either! Even old Lady Arabella would hardly have thrust the naked truth
+so savagely under her eyes.
+
+And now he had as good as told her that she was a coward! Well, at least
+he should not have the satisfaction of finding he was right in that
+respect. She walked straight up to him, her small head held high, in her
+dark eyes a smouldering fire of fierce resentment.
+
+“So that is what you think, is it?” she said in a low voice of bitter
+anger. “Well, I _have_ the courage of my convictions.” She paused. Then,
+with an effort: “Yes, I did think you weren’t ‘suitably impressed,’ as
+you put it. You are perfectly right.”
+
+He threw her a swift glance of surprise. Presumably he hadn’t
+anticipated such a candid acknowledgment, but even so he showed no
+disposition to lay down the probe.
+
+“You didn’t think it possible that anyone could meet the Wielitzska
+without regarding the event as a piece of stupendous good luck and being
+appropriately overjoyed, did you?” he pursued relentlessly.
+
+Magda pressed her lips together. Then, with an effort:
+
+“No,” she admitted.
+
+“And so, just because I treated you as I would any other woman, and made
+no pretence of fatuous delight over your presence here, you supposed I
+must be ignorant of your identity? Was that it?”
+
+Magda writhed under the cool, ironical questioning with its undercurrent
+of keen contempt. Each word stung like the flick of a lash on bare
+flesh. But she forced herself to answer--and to answer honestly.
+
+“Yes,” she said very low. “That was it.”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
+
+“Comment is superfluous, I think.”
+
+She made an impulsive step towards him.
+
+For some unfathomable reason she minded--minded intensely--that this
+man should hold her in such poor esteem. She wanted to put herself right
+with him, to justify her attitude in his eyes.
+
+“Have you ever seen me dance?” she asked abruptly.
+
+Surely if he had ever seen that wonderful artistry which she knew
+was hers, witnessed the half-crazy enthusiasm with which her audience
+received her, he would make allowance, judge her a little less harshly
+for what was, after all, a very natural assumption on the part of a
+stage favourite.
+
+An expression of unwilling admiration came into his eyes.
+
+“Have I seen you dance?” he repeated. “Yes, I have. Several times.”
+
+He did not add--which would have been no more than the truth--that
+during her last winter’s season at the Imperial Theatre he had hardly
+missed a dozen performances.
+
+“Then--then----” Magda spoke with a kind of incredulous appeal. “Can’t
+you understand--just a little?”
+
+“Oh, I understand. I understand perfectly. You’ve been spoilt and
+idolised to such an extent that it seems incredible to you to find a man
+who doesn’t immediately fall down and worship you.”
+
+Magda twisted her hands together. Once more he was thrusting at her with
+the rapier of truth. And it hurt--hurt inexplicably.
+
+“Yes, I believe that’s--almost true,” she acknowledged falteringly.
+“But if you understand so well, couldn’t you--can’t you”--with a swift
+supplicating smile--“be a little more merciful?”
+
+“No. I--I _hate_ your type of woman!”
+
+There was an undertone of passion in his voice. It was almost as though
+he were fighting against some impulse within himself and the fierceness
+of the struggle had wrung from him that quick, unvarnished protest.
+
+“Then you despise dancers?”
+
+“Despise? On the contrary, I revere a dancer--the dancer who is
+a genuine artist.” He paused, then went on speaking thoughtfully.
+“Dancing, to my mind, is one of the most consistent expressions of
+beauty. It’s the sheer symmetry and grace of that body which was made in
+God’s own likeness developed to the utmost limit of human perfection.
+. . . And the dancer who desecrates the temple of his body is punished
+proportionately. No art is a harder taskmistress than the art of
+dancing.”
+
+Magda listened breathlessly. This man understood--oh, he understood!
+Then why did he “hate her type of woman”?
+
+Almost as though he had read her thoughts he pursued:
+
+“As a dancer, an artist--I acknowledge the Wielitzska to be supreme. But
+as a woman----”
+
+“Yes? As a woman? Go on. What do you know about me as a woman?”
+
+He laughed disagreeably.
+
+“I’d judge that in the making of you your soul got left out,” he said
+drily.
+
+Magda forced a smile.
+
+“I’m afraid I’m very stupid. Do you mind explaining?”
+
+“Does it need explanation?”
+
+“Oh--please!”
+
+“Then--one of my best pals was a man who loved you.”
+
+Magda threw him a glance of veiled mockery from beneath her long white
+lids.
+
+“Surely that should be a recommendation--something in my favour?”
+
+His eyes hardened.
+
+“If you had dealt honestly with him, it might have been. But you drew
+him on, _made_ him care for you in spite of himself. And then, when
+he was yours, body and soul, you turned him down! Turned him
+down--pretended you were surprised--you’d never meant anything! All the
+old rotten excuses a woman offers when she has finished playing with a
+man and got bored with him. . . . I’ve no place for your kind of woman.
+I tell you”--his tone deepening in intensity--“the wife of any common
+labourer, who cooks and washes and sews for her man day in, day out,
+is worth a dozen of you! She knows that love’s worth having and worth
+working for. And she works. You don’t. Women like you take a man’s soul
+and play with it, and when you’ve defiled and defaced it out of all
+likeness to the soul God gave him, you hand it back to him and think you
+clear yourself by saying you ‘didn’t mean it’!”
+
+The bitter speech, harsh with the deeply rooted pain and resentment
+which had prompted it, battered through Magda’s weak defences and found
+her helpless and unarmed. Once she had uttered a faint cry of protest,
+tried to check him, but he had not heeded it. After that she had
+listened with bent head, her breath coming and going unevenly.
+
+When he had finished, the face she lifted to him was white as milk and
+her mouth trembled.
+
+“Thanks. Well, I’ve heard my character now,” she said unsteadily. “I--I
+didn’t know anyone thought of me--like that.”
+
+He stared at her--at the drooping lines of her figure, the quivering
+lips, at the half-stunned expression of the dark eyes. And suddenly
+realisation of the enormity of all he had said seemed to come to him.
+But he did not appear to be at all overwhelmed by it.
+
+“I’m afraid I’ve transgressed beyond forgiveness now,” he said curtly.
+“But--you rather asked for it, you know, didn’t you?”
+
+“Yes,” she admitted. “I think I did--ask for it.” Suddenly she threw up
+her head and faced him. “If--if it’s any satisfaction to you to know
+it, I think you’ve paid off at least some of your friend’s score.” She
+looked at him with a curious, almost piteous surprise. “You--you’ve hurt
+me!” she whispered passionately. She turned to the door. “I’ll go now.”
+
+“No!” He stopped her with a hand on her arm, and she obeyed his touch
+submissively. For a moment he stood looking down at her with an oddly
+conflicting expression on his face. It was as though he were arguing out
+some point with himself. All at once he seemed to come to a decision.
+
+“Look, you can’t go till the fog clears a bit. Suppose we call a truce?
+Sit down here”--pulling forward a big easy-chair--“and for the rest of
+your visit let’s behave as though we didn’t heartily disapprove of one
+another.”
+
+Magda sank into the chair with that supple grace of limb which made it
+sheer delight to watch her movements.
+
+“I never said I disapproved of you,” she remarked.
+
+He seated himself opposite her, on the other side of the hearth, and
+regarded her quizzically.
+
+“No. But you do, all the same. Naturally, you would after my candour!
+And I’d rather you did, too,” he added abruptly. “But at least you’ve no
+more devoted admirer of your art. You know, dancing appeals to me in a
+way that nothing else does. My job’s painting--”
+
+“House-painting?” interpolated Magda with a smile. Her spirits were
+rising a little under his new kindliness of manner.
+
+He laughed with sudden boyishness and nodded gaily.
+
+“Why, yes--so long as people continue to cover their wall-space with
+portraits of themselves.”
+
+Magda wondered whether he was possibly a well-known painter. But he gave
+her no chance to find out, for he continued speaking almost at once.
+
+“I love my art--but a still, flat canvas, however beautifully painted,
+isn’t comparable with the moving, living interpretation of beauty
+possible to a dancer. I remember, years ago--ten years, quite--seeing
+a kiddy dancing in a wood.” Magda leaned forward. “It was the
+prettiest thing imaginable. She was all by herself, a little, thin,
+black-and-white wisp of a thing, with a small, tense face and eyes like
+black smudges. And she danced as though it were more natural to her than
+walking. I got her to pose for me at the foot of a tree. The picture
+of her was my first real success. So you see, I’ve good reason to be
+grateful to one dancer!”
+
+Magda caught her breath. She knew now why the man’s face had seemed so
+familiar! He was the artist she had met in the wood at Coverdale the day
+Sieur Hugh had beaten her--her _“Saint Michel”_! She was conscious of a
+queer little thrill of excitement as the truth dawned upon her.
+
+“What was the picture called?” she asked, forcing herself to speak
+composedly.
+
+“‘The Repose of Titania.’”
+
+She nodded. The picture was a very well-known one. Everybody knew by
+whom it had been painted.
+
+“Then you must be Michael Quarrington?”
+
+“Yes. So now, we’ve been introduced, haven’t we?”
+
+It seemed almost as if he had repented of his former churlish manner,
+and were endeavouring to atone for it. He talked to her about his work
+a little, then slid easily into the allied topics of music and books.
+Finally he took her into an adjoining room, and showed her a small,
+beloved collection of coloured prints which he had gathered together,
+recounting various amusing little incidents which had attended the
+acquisition of this or that one among them with much gusto and a certain
+quaint humour that she was beginning to recognise as characteristic.
+
+Magda, to whom the study of old prints was by no means an unknown
+territory, was thoroughly entertained. She found herself enthusing,
+discussing, arguing points, in a happy spirit of _camaraderie_ with her
+host which, half an hour earlier, she would have believed impossible.
+
+The end came abruptly. Quarrington chanced to glance out of the window
+where the street lamps were now glimmering serenely through a clear
+dusk. The fog had lifted.
+
+“Perhaps it’s just as well,” he said shortly. “I was beginning--” He
+checked himself and glanced at her with a sudden stormy light in his
+eyes.
+
+“Beginning--what?” she asked a little breathlessly. The atmosphere had
+all at once grown tense with some unlooked-for stress of emotion.
+
+“Shall I tell you?”
+
+“Yes--tell me!”
+
+“I was beginning to forget that you’re the ‘type of woman I hate,’” he
+said. And strode out of the room, leaving her startled and unaccountably
+shaken.
+
+When he came back he had completely reassumed his former non-committal
+manner.
+
+“There’s a taxi waiting for you,” he announced. “It’s perfectly clear
+outside now, so I think you will be spared any further adventures on
+your way home.”
+
+He accompanied her into the hall, and as they shook hands she murmured a
+little diffidently:
+
+“Perhaps we shall meet again some time?”
+
+He drew back sharply.
+
+“No, we shan’t meet again.” There was something purposeful, almost
+vehemently so, in the curtly spoken words. “If I had thought that----”
+
+“Yes?” she prompted. “If you had?”
+
+“If I’d thought that,” he said quietly, “I shouldn’t have dared to risk
+this last half-hour.”
+
+A momentary silence fell between them. Then, with a shrug, he added
+lightly:
+
+“But we shan’t meet again. I’m leaving England next week. That settles
+it.”
+
+Without giving her time to make any rejoinder he opened the street-door
+and stood aside for her to pass out. A minute later she was in the taxi,
+and he was standing bare-headed on the pavement beside it.
+
+“Good-bye,” she said. “Good-bye--_Saint Michel_.”
+
+His hand closed round hers in a grip that almost crushed the slender
+fingers.
+
+“_You_!” he cried hoarsely. There was a note of sudden, desperate
+recognition in his voice. “_You_!”
+
+As Magda smiled into his startled eyes--the grey eyes that had burned
+their way into her memory ten years ago--the taxi slid away into the
+lamp-lit dusk.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+FRIARS’ HOLM
+
+With a grinding of brakes the taxi slowed up and came to a standstill at
+Friars’ Holm, the quaint old Queen Anne house which Magda had acquired
+in north London.
+
+Once within the high wall enclosing the old-world garden in which it
+stood, it was easy enough to imagine oneself a hundred miles from town.
+Fir and cedar sentinelled the house, and in the centre of the garden
+there was a lawn of wonderful old turf, hedged round in summer by a
+riot of roses so that it gleamed like a great square emerald set in a
+jewelled frame.
+
+Magda entered the house and, crossing the cheerfully lit hall, threw
+open the door of a room whence issued the sound of someone--obviously a
+first-rate musician--playing the piano.
+
+As she opened the door the twilight, shot by quivering spears of light
+from the fire’s dancing flames, seemed to rush out at her, bearing
+with it the mournful, heart-shaking music of some Russian melody. Magda
+uttered a soft, half-amused exclamation of impatience and switched on
+the lights.
+
+“All in the dark, Davilof?” she asked in a practical tone of voice
+calculated to disintegrate any possible fabric of romance woven of
+firelight and fifths.
+
+The flood of electric light revealed a large, lofty room, devoid of
+furniture except for a few comfortable chairs grouped together at one
+end of it, and for a magnificent grand piano at the other. The room
+appeared doubly large by reason of the fact that the whole of one wall
+was taken up by four immense panels of looking-glass, cleverly fitted
+together so that in effect the entire wall was composed of a single
+enormous mirror. It was in front of this mirror that Magda practised.
+The remaining three walls were hung with priceless old tapestry woven of
+sombre green and greys.
+
+As she entered the room a man rose quickly from the piano and came
+forward to meet her. There was a kind of repressed eagerness in the
+action, as though he had been waiting with impatience for her coming.
+
+He was a striking-looking man, tall, and built with the slender-limbed
+grace of a foreigner. Golden-brown hair, worn rather longer than fashion
+dictates, waved crisply over his head, and the moustache and small
+Vandyck beard which partially concealed the lower part of his face were
+of the same warmly golden colour.
+
+The word “musician” was written all over him--in the supple, capable
+hands, in the careless stoop of his loosely knit shoulders, and, more
+than all, in the imaginative hazel eyes with their curious mixture of
+abstraction and fire. They rather suggested lightning playing over some
+dreaming pool.
+
+Magda shook hands with him carelessly.
+
+“We shall have to postpone the practice as I’m so late, Davilof,” she
+said. “I had a smash-up in the fog. My car ran into a bus--”
+
+“And you are hurt?” Davilof broke in sharply, his voice edged with fear.
+
+“No, no. I was stunned for a minute and then afterwards I fainted, but
+I’m quite intact otherwise.”
+
+“You are sure--sure?”
+
+“Quite.” Hearing the keen anxiety in his tone she smiled at him
+reassuringly and held out a friendly hand. “I’m all right--really,
+Antoine.”
+
+He took the hand in both his.
+
+“Thank God!” he said fervently.
+
+Antoine Davilof had lived so long in England that he spoke without trace
+of accent, though he sometimes gave an unEnglish twist to the phrasing
+of a sentence, but his quick emotion and the simplicity with which he
+made no effort to conceal it stamped him unmistakably as a foreigner.
+
+A little touched, Magda allowed her hand to remain in his.
+
+“Why, Davilof!” She chided him laughingly. “You’re quite absurdly upset
+about it.”
+
+“I could not have borne it if you had been hurt,” he declared
+vehemently. “You ought not to go about by yourself. It’s horrible to
+think of _you_--in a street accident--alone!”
+
+“But I wasn’t alone. A man who was in the other half of the
+accident--the motor-bus half--played the good Samaritan and carried me
+into his house, which happened to be close by. He looked after me very
+well, I assure you.”
+
+Davilof released her hand abruptly. His face darkened.
+
+“And this man? Who was he?” he demanded jealously. “I hate to think of
+any man--a stranger--touching you.”
+
+“Nonsense! Would you have preferred me to remain lying in the middle of
+the road?”
+
+“You know I would not. But I’d rather some woman had looked after you.
+Do you know who the man was?”
+
+“I did not--at first.”
+
+“But you do now. Who was it?”
+
+“No one you know, I think,” she answered provokingly. His eyes flashed.
+
+“Why are you making a mystery about it?” he asked suspiciously. “You’re
+keeping something from me! Who was this man? Tell me his name.”
+
+Magda froze.
+
+“My dear Antoine! Why this air of high tragedy?” she said lightly. “And
+what on earth has it to do with you who the man was?”
+
+“You know what it has to do with me----”
+
+“With my accompanist?”--raising her brows delicately.
+
+“No!”--with sudden violence--“With the man who loves you! I’m that--and
+you know it, Magda! Could I play for you as I do if I did not understand
+your every mood and emotion? You know I couldn’t! And then you ask what
+it matters to me when some unknown man has held you in his arms,
+carried you into his house--kissed you, perhaps, while you were
+unconscious!”--his imagination running suddenly riot.
+
+“Stop! You’re going too far!” Magda checked him sharply. “You’re always
+telling me you love me. I don’t want to hear it.” She paused, then added
+cruelly: “I want you for playing my accompaniments, Davilof. That’s all.
+Do you understand?”
+
+His eyes blazed. With a quick movement he stepped in front of her.
+
+“I’m a man--as well as an accompanist,” he said hoarsely. “One day
+you’ll have to reckon with the man, Magda!”
+
+There was a new, unaccustomed quality in his voice. Hitherto she had not
+taken his ardour very seriously. He was a Pole and a musician, with all
+the temperament that might be expected from such a combination, and she
+had let it go at that, pushing his love aside with the careless hand of
+a woman to whom the incense of men’s devotion has been so freely offered
+as to have become commonplace. But now the new ring of determination,
+of something unexpectedly dogged in his voice, poignantly recalled the
+warning uttered by Lady Arabella earlier in the day.
+
+Magda’s nerve wavered. A momentary panic assailed her. Then she
+intuitively struck the right note.
+
+“Ah, Davilof, don’t worry me now--not to-night!” she said appealingly.
+“I’m tired. It’s been a bit of a strain--the accident and--and----”
+
+“Forgive me!” In a moment he was all penitence--overwhelmed with
+compunction. “Forget it! I’ve behaved like a brute. I ought to have seen
+that you were worn out.”
+
+He was beside himself with remorse.
+
+“It’s all right, Antoine.” She smiled forgiveness at him. “Only I
+felt--I felt I couldn’t stand any more to-night. I suppose it’s taken it
+out of me more than I knew--the shock, and fainting like that.”
+
+“Of course it has. You ought to rest. I wish Mrs. Grey were in.”
+
+“Is she not?”
+
+“No. The maid told me she was out when I came, and she hasn’t returned
+yet.”
+
+“She’s been held up by the fog, I expect,” answered Magda. “Never mind.
+I’ll sit here--in this big chair--and you shall switch off these glaring
+lights and play to me, Antoine. That will rest me better than anything.”
+
+She was a little sorry for the man--trying to make up to him for
+the pain she knew she had inflicted a moment before, and there was a
+dangerous sweetness in her voice.
+
+Davilof’s eyes kindled. He stooped swiftly and kissed her hand.
+
+“You are too good to me!” he said huskily.
+
+Then, while she lay back restfully in a chair which he heaped with
+cushions for her, he played to her, improvising as he played--slow,
+dreaming melodies that soothed and lulled but held always an undertone
+of passionate appeal. The man himself spoke in his music; his love
+pleaded with her in its soft, beseeching cadences.
+
+But Magda failed to hear it. Her thoughts were elsewhere--back with the
+man who, that afternoon, had first rescued her and afterwards treated
+her with blunt candour that had been little less than brutal. She felt
+sore and resentful--smarting under the same dismayed sense of surprise
+and injustice as a child may feel who receives a blow instead of an
+anticipated caress.
+
+Indulged and flattered by everyone with whom she came in contact, it had
+been like a slap in the face to find someone--more particularly someone
+of the masculine persuasion--who, far from bestowing the admiration and
+homage she had learned to look for as a right, quite openly regarded her
+with contemptuous disapproval--and made no bones about telling her so.
+
+His indictment of her had left nothing to the imagination. She felt
+stunned, and, for the first time in her life, a little unwilling doubt
+of herself assaulted her. Was she really anything at all like the
+woman Michael Quarrington had pictured? A woman without heart or
+conscience--the “kind of woman he had no place for”?
+
+She winced a little at the thought. It was strange how much she minded
+his opinion--the opinion of a man whom she had only met by chance and
+whom she was very unlikely ever to meet again. He himself had certainly
+evinced no anxiety to renew the acquaintance. And this, too, fretted her
+in some unaccountable way.
+
+She could not analyse her own emotions. She felt hurt and angry and
+ashamed in the same breath--and all because an unknown man, an absolute
+stranger, had told her in no measured terms exactly what he thought of
+her!
+
+Only--he was not really quite a stranger! He was the “Saint Michel” of
+her childhood days, the man with whom she had unconsciously compared
+those other men whom the passing years had brought into her life--and
+always to their disadvantage.
+
+The first time she had seen him in the woods at Coverdale was the day
+when Hugh Vallincourt had beaten her; she had been smarting with the
+physical pain and humiliation of it. And now, this second time they
+had met, she had been once more forced to endure that strange and
+unaccustomed experience called pain. Only this time she felt as though
+her soul had been beaten, and it was Saint Michel himself who had
+scourged her.
+
+The door at the far end of the room opened suddenly and a welcome voice
+broke cheerfully across the bitter current of her thoughts.
+
+“Well, here I am at last! Has Magda arrived home yet?”
+
+Davilof ceased playing abruptly and the speaker paused on the threshold
+of the room, peering into the dusk. Magda rose from her seat by the fire
+and switched on one of the electric burners.
+
+“Yes, here I am,” she said. “Did you get held up by the fog, Gillian?”
+
+The newcomer advanced into the circle of light. She was a small, slight
+woman, though the furs she was wearing served to conceal the slenderness
+of her figure. Someone had once said of her that “Mrs. Grey was a
+charming study in sepia.” The description was not inapt. Eyes and hair
+were brown as a beechnut, and a scattering of golden-brown freckles
+emphasised the warm tints of a skin as soft as velvet.
+
+“Did I get held up?” she repeated. “My dear, I walked miles--miles, I
+tell you!--in that hideous fog. And then found I’d been walking entirely
+in the wrong direction! I fetched up somewhere down Notting Hill Gate
+way, and at last by the help of heaven and a policeman discovered the
+Tube station. So here I am. But if I could have come across a taxi I’d
+have been ready to _buy_ it, I was so tired!”
+
+“Poor dear!” Magda was duly sympathetic. “We’ll have some tea. You’ll
+stay, Davilof?”
+
+“I think not, thanks. I’m dining out”--with a glance at his watch. “And
+I shan’t have too much time to get home and change as it is.”
+
+Magda held out her hand.
+
+“Good-bye, then. Thank you for keeping me company till Gillian came.”
+
+There was a sudden sweetness of gratitude in the glance she threw at him
+which fired his blood. He caught her hand and carried it to his lips.
+
+“The thanks are mine,” he said in a stifled voice. And swinging round on
+his heel he left the room abruptly, quite omitting to make his farewells
+to Mrs. Grey.
+
+The latter looked across at Magda with a gleam of mirth in her brown
+eyes. Then she shook her head reprovingly.
+
+“Will you never learn wisdom, Magda?” she asked, subsiding into a chair
+and extending a pair of neatly shod feet to the fire’s warmth.
+
+Magda laughed a little.
+
+“Well, it won’t be the fault of my friends if I don’t!” she returned
+ruefully. “Marraine expended a heap of eloquence over my misdeeds this
+afternoon.”
+
+“Lady Arabella? I’m glad to hear it. Though she has about as much chance
+of producing any permanent result as the gentleman who occupied his
+leisure time in rolling a stone uphill.”
+
+“Cat!” Magda made a small grimace at her. “Ah, here’s some tea!”
+ Melrose, known among Magda’s friends as “the perfect butler,” had come
+noiselessly into the room and was arranging the tea paraphernalia with
+the reverential precision of one making preparation for some mystic
+rite. “Perhaps when you’ve had a cup you’ll feel more amiable--that is,
+if I give you lots of sugar.”
+
+“What was the text of Lady Arabella’s homily?” inquired Gillian
+presently, as she sipped her tea.
+
+“Oh, that boy, Kit Raynham,” replied Magda impatiently. “It appears I’m
+blighting his young prospects--his professional ones, I mean. Though I
+don’t quite see why an attack of calf-love for me should wreck his work
+as an architect!”
+
+“I do--if he spends his time sketching ‘the Wielitzska’ in half a dozen
+different poses instead of making plans for a garden city.”
+
+Magda smiled involuntarily.
+
+“Does he do that?” she said. “But how ridiculous of him!”
+
+“It’s merely indicative of his state of mind,” returned Gillian. She
+gazed meditatively into the fire. “You know, Magda, I think it will mean
+the end of our friendship when Coppertop reaches years of discretion.”
+
+Coppertop was Gillian’s small son, a young person of seven, who owed his
+cognomen to the crop of flaming red curls which adorned his round button
+of a head.
+
+Magda laughed.
+
+“Pouf! By the time that happens I shall be quite old--and harmless.”
+
+Gillian shook her head.
+
+“Your type is never harmless, my dear. Unless you fall in love, you’ll
+be an unexploded mine till the day of your death.”
+
+“That nearly occurred to-day, by the way,” vouchsafed Magda tranquilly.
+“In which case,”--smiling--“you’d have been spared any further anxiety
+on Coppertop’s account.”
+
+“What do you mean?” demanded Gillian, startled.
+
+“I mean that I’ve had an adventure this afternoon. We got smashed up in
+the fog.”
+
+“Oh, my dear! How dreadful! How did it happen?”
+
+“Something collided with the car and shot us bang into a motor-bus, and
+then, almost at the same moment, something else charged into us from
+behind. So there was a pretty fair mix-up.”
+
+“Why didn’t you tell me before! Was anyone badly hurt? And how did you
+get home?” Gillian’s questions poured out excitedly.
+
+“No, no one was badly hurt. I got a blow on the head, and fainted. So a
+man who’d been inside the bus we ran into performed the rescuing stunt.
+His house was close by, and he carried me in there and proceeded to dose
+me with sal volatile first and tea afterwards. He wound up by presenting
+me with an unvarnished summary of his opinion of the likes of me.”
+
+There was an unwontedly hard note in Magda’s voice as she detailed the
+afternoon’s events, and Gillian glanced at her sharply.
+
+“I don’t understand. Was he a strait-laced prig who disapproved of
+dancing, do you mean?”
+
+“Nothing of the sort. He had a most comprehensive appreciation of
+the art of dancing. His disapproval was entirely concentrated on
+me--personally.”
+
+“But how could it be--since he didn’t know you?”
+
+Magda gave a little grin.
+
+“You mean it would have been quite comprehensible if he _had_ known me?”
+ she observed ironically.
+
+The other laughed.
+
+“Don’t be so provoking! You know perfectly well what I meant! You
+deserve that I should answer ‘yes’ to that question.”
+
+“Do, if you like.”
+
+“I would--only I happen to know you a good deal better than you know
+yourself.”
+
+“What do you know about me, then, that I don’t?”
+
+Gillian’s nice brown eyes smiled across at her.
+
+“I know that, somewhere inside you, you’ve got the capacity for being as
+sweet and kind and tender and self-sacrificing as any woman living--if
+only something would happen to make it worth while. I wish--I wish to
+heaven you’d fall in love!”
+
+“I’m not likely to. I’m in love with my art. It gives you a better
+return than love for any man.”
+
+“No,” answered Gillian quietly. “No. You’re wrong. Tony died when we’d
+only been married a year. But that year was worth the whole rest of life
+put together. And--I’ve got Coppertop.”
+
+Magda leaned forward suddenly and kissed her.
+
+“Dear Gillyflower!” she said. “I’m so glad you feel like that--bless
+you! I wish I could. But I never shall. I was soured in the making, I
+think”--laughing rather forlornly. “I don’t trust love. It’s the thing
+that hurts and tortures and breaks a woman--as my mother was hurt and
+tortured and broken.” She paused. “No, preserve me from falling in
+love!” she added more lightly. “‘A Loaf of Bread, and Thou beside me in
+the Wilderness’ doesn’t appeal to me in the least.”
+
+“It will one day,” retorted Gillian oracularly. “In the meantime you
+might go on telling me about the man who fished you out of the smash.
+Was he young? And good-looking? Perhaps he is destined to be your fate.”
+
+“He was rather over thirty, I should think. And good-looking--quite. But
+he ‘hates my type of woman,’ you’ll be interested to know. So that you
+can put your high hopes back on the top shelf again.”
+
+“Not at all,” declared Gillian briskly. “There’s nothing like beginning
+with a little aversion.”
+
+Magda smiled reminiscently.
+
+“If you’d been present at our interview, you’d realise that ‘a little
+aversion’ is a cloying euphemism for the feeling exhibited by my late
+preserver.”
+
+“What was he like, then?”
+
+“At first, because I wouldn’t take the sal volatile--you know how I
+detest the stuff!--and sit still where he’d put me like a good little
+girl, he ordered me about as though I were a child of six. He absolutely
+bullied me! Then it apparently occurred to him to take my moral welfare
+in hand, and I should judge he considered that Jezebel and Delilah were
+positively provincial in their methods as compared with me.”
+
+“Nonsense! If he didn’t know you, why should he suppose himself
+competent to form any opinion about you at all--good, bad, or
+indifferent?”
+
+“I don’t know,” replied Magda slowly. Then, speaking with sudden
+defiance: “Yes, I do know! A pal of his had--had cared about me some
+time or other, and I’d turned him down. That’s why.”
+
+“Oh, Magda!” There was both reproach and understanding in Gillian’s
+voice.
+
+Magda shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“Well, if he wanted to pay off old scores on his pal’s behalf, he
+succeeded,” she said mirthlessly.
+
+Gillian looked at her in surprise. She had never seen Magda quite like
+this before; her sombre eyes held a curious strained look like those of
+some wild thing of the forest caught in a trap and in pain.
+
+“And you don’t know who he was--I mean the man who came to your help and
+then lectured you?”
+
+“Yes, I do. It was Michael Quarrington, the artist.”
+
+“Michael Quarrington? Why, he has the reputation of being a most
+charming man!”
+
+Magda stared into the fire.
+
+“I dare say he might have a great deal of charm if he cared to exert it.
+Apparently, however, he didn’t think I was worth the effort.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN THE MIRROR ROOM
+
+Shouts of mirth came jubilantly from the Mirror Room as Davilof made his
+way thither one afternoon a few days later. The shrill peal of a child’s
+laughter rose gaily above the lower note of women’s voices, and when
+the accompanist opened the door it was to discover Magda completely
+engrossed in giving Coppertop a first dancing lesson, while Gillian sat
+stitching busily away at some small nether garments afflicted with rents
+and tears in sundry places. Every now and again she glanced up with
+softly amused eyes to watch her son’s somewhat unsteady efforts in the
+Terpsichorean art.
+
+Coppertop, a slim young reed in his bright green knitted jersey, was
+clinging with one hand to a wooden bar attached to the wall which served
+Magda for the “bar practice” which constitutes part of every dancer’s
+daily work, while Magda, holding his other hand in hers, essayed to
+instruct him in the principle of “turning out”--that flexible turning of
+the knees towards the side which gives so much facility of movement.
+
+“Point your toes sideways--so,” directed Magda. “This one towards
+me--like that.” She stooped and placed his foot in position. “Now, kick
+out! Try to kick me!”
+
+Coppertop tried--and succeeded, greeting his accomplishment with shrieks
+of delight.
+
+It was just at this moment that Davilof appeared on the scene, pausing
+abruptly in the doorway as he caught sight of Magda’s laughing face
+bent above the fiery red head. There was something very charming in her
+expression of eager, light-hearted abandonment to the fun of the moment.
+
+At the sound of the opening door Coppertop wriggled out of her grasp
+like an eel, twisting his lithe young body round to see who the new
+arrival might be. His face fell woefully as he caught sight of Davilof.
+
+“Oh, you can’t _never_ have come already to play for the Fairy Lady!” he
+exclaimed in accents of dire disappointment.
+
+“Fairy Lady” was the name he had bestowed upon Magda when, very early
+in their acquaintance, she had performed for his sole and particular
+benefit a maturer edition of the dance she had evolved as a child--the
+dance with which she had so much astonished Lady Arabella. Nowadays
+it figured prominently on her programmes as “The Hamadryad,” and was
+enormously popular.
+
+“It’s not never three o’clock!” wailed Coppertop disconsolately, as
+Davilof dangled his watch in front of him.
+
+“I think it is, small son,” interpolated Gillian, gathering together her
+sewing materials. “Come along. We must leave the Fairy Lady to practise
+now, because she’s got to dance to half the people in London to-morrow.”
+
+“Must I really go?” appealed Coppertop, beseeching Magda with a pair of
+melting green eyes.
+
+She dropped a light kiss on the top of his red curls.
+
+“‘Fraid so, Coppertop,” she said. “You wouldn’t want Fairy Lady to dance
+badly and tumble down, would you?”
+
+But Coppertop was not to be taken in so easily.
+
+“Huh!” he scoffed. “You _couldn’t_ tumble down--not never!”
+
+“Still, you mustn’t be greedy, Topkins,” urged Magda persuasively.
+“Remember all the grown-up people who want me to dance to them! I
+can’t keep it all for one little boy.” He stared at her for a moment in
+silence. Suddenly he flung his arms round her slender hips, clutching
+her tightly, and hid his face against her skirt.
+
+“Oh, Fairy Lady, you are so booful--_so booful_!” he whispered in a
+smothered voice. Then, with a big sigh: “But one little boy won’t be
+greedy.” He turned to his mother. “Come along, mummie!” he commanded
+superbly. And trotted out of the room beside her with his small head
+well up.
+
+Left alone, Davilof and Magda smiled across at one another.
+
+“Funny little person, isn’t he?” she said.
+
+The musician nodded.
+
+“Grown-ups might possibly envy the freedom of speech permitted to
+childhood,” he said quietly. Then, still more quietly: “‘Fairy Lady, you
+are so beautiful!’”
+
+“But you’re not a child, so don’t poach Coppertop’s preserves!” retorted
+Magda swiftly. “Let’s get to work, Antoine. I’ll just change into my
+practice-kit and then I want to run through the ‘Swan-Maiden’s’ dance.
+You fix the lighting.”
+
+She vanished into an adjoining room, while Davilof proceeded to switch
+off most of the burners, leaving only those which illumined the space in
+front of the great mirror. The remainder of the big room receded into a
+grey twilight encircling the patch of luminance.
+
+Presently Magda reappeared wearing a loose tunic of some white silken
+material, girdled at the waist, but yet leaving her with perfect freedom
+of limb.
+
+Davilof watched her as she came down the long room with the
+feather-light, floating walk of the trained dancer, and something leaped
+into his eyes that was very different from mere admiration--something
+that, taken in conjunction with Lady Arabella’s caustic comments of a
+few days ago, might have warned Magda had she seen it.
+
+But with her thoughts preoccupied by the work in hand she failed to
+notice it, and, advancing till she faced the great mirror, she executed
+a few steps in front of it, humming the motif of _The Swan-Maiden_ music
+under her breath.
+
+“Play, Antoine,” she threw at him over her shoulder.
+
+Davilof hesitated, made a movement towards her, then wheeled round
+abruptly and went to the piano. A moment later the exquisite, smoothly
+rippling music which he had himself written for the Swan-Maiden dance
+purled out into the room.
+
+The story of the Swan-Maiden had been taken from an old legend which
+told of a beautiful maiden and the youth who loved her.
+
+According to the narrative, the pair were unfortunate enough to incur
+the displeasure of the evil fairy Ritmagar, and the latter, in order to
+punish them, transformed the maiden into a white swan, thus separating
+the hapless lovers for ever. Afterwards, the disconsolate youth,
+bemoaning the cruelty of fate, used to wander daily along the shores of
+the lake where the maiden was compelled to dwell in her guise of a swan,
+and eventually Ritmagar, apparently touched to a limited compassion,
+permitted the Swan-Maiden to resume her human form once a day during the
+hour immediately preceding sunset. But the condition was attached that
+she must always return to the lake ere the sun sank below the horizon,
+when she would be compelled to reassume her shape of a swan. Should
+she fail to return by the appointed time, death would be the inevitable
+consequence.
+
+Every reader of fairy tales--and certainly anyone who knows anything
+at all about being in love--can guess the sequel. Comes a day when the
+lovers, absorbed in their love-making, forget the flight of time, so
+that the unhappy maiden returns to the shore of the lake to find that
+the sun has already dipped below the horizon. She falls on her knees,
+beseeching the witch Ritmagar for mercy, but no answer is vouchsafed,
+and gradually the Swan-Maiden finds herself growing weaker and weaker,
+until at last death claims her.
+
+A dance, based upon this legend, had been devised for Magda in
+conjunction with Vladimir Ravinski, the brilliant Russian dancer, he
+taking the lover’s part, and the whole tragic little drama was designed
+to terminate with a solo dance by Magda as the dying Swan-Maiden.
+Davilof had written the music for it, and the dance was to be performed
+at the Imperial Theatre for the first time the following week.
+
+Davilof played ever more and more softly as the dance drew to its
+close. The note of lament sounded with increasing insistence through the
+slowing ripple of the accompaniment, and at last, as Magda sank to the
+ground in a piteous attitude that somehow suggested both the drooping
+grace of a dying swan and the innocence and helplessness of the hapless
+maiden, the music died away into silence.
+
+There was a little pause. Then Davilof sprang to this feet.
+
+“By God, Magda! You’re magnificent!” he exclaimed with the spontaneous
+appreciation of one genuine artist for another.
+
+Magda raised her head and looked up at him with vague, startled eyes.
+She still preserved the pose on which the dance had ceased, and had
+hardly yet returned to the world of reality from that magic world into
+which her art had transported her.
+
+The burning enthusiasm in Davilof’s excited tones recalled her abruptly.
+
+“Was it good--was it really good?” she asked a little shakily.
+
+“Good?” he said. “It was superb!”
+
+He held out his hands and she laid hers in them without thinking,
+allowing him to draw her to her feet beside him.
+
+She stood quite still, breathing rather quickly from her recent
+exertions and supported by the close clasp of his hands on hers. Her
+lips were a little parted, her slight breast rose and fell unevenly, and
+a faint rose-colour glowed beneath the ivory pallor of her skin.
+
+Suddenly Davilof’s grip tightened.
+
+“You beautiful thing!” he exclaimed huskily. “Magda----”
+
+The next moment, with a swift, ungoverned movement, he caught her to him
+and was crushing her in his arms.
+
+“Antoine! . . . Let me go!”
+
+But the pressure of her soft, pulsing body against his own sent the
+blood racing through his veins. He smothered the words with his mouth
+on hers, kissing her breathless with a headlong passion that defied
+restraint--slaking his longing for her as a man denied water may at last
+slake his thirst at some suddenly discovered pool.
+
+Magda felt herself powerless as a leaf caught up in a whirlwind--swept
+suddenly into the hot vehemence of a man’s desire while she was yet
+unstrung and quivering from the emotional strain of the Swan-Maiden’s
+dance, every nerve of her quickened to a tingling sentience by the
+underlying passion of the music.
+
+With an effort she wrenched herself out of his arms and ran from him
+blindly into the furthest corner of the room. She had no clear idea of
+making for the door, but only of getting away--anywhere--heedless of
+direction. An instant later she was standing with her back to the wall,
+leaning helplessly against the ancient tapestry that clothed it. In
+that dim corner of the vast room her slim figure showed faintly limned
+against its blurred greens and greys like that of some pallid statue.
+
+“Go . . . go away!” she gasped.
+
+Davilof laughed triumphantly. Nothing could hold him now. The barriers
+of use and habit were down irrevocably.
+
+“Go away?” he said. “No, I’m not going away.”
+
+He strode straight across the space that intervened between them. She
+watched his coming with dilated eyes. Her hands, palms downwards, were
+pressed hard against the woven surface of the tapestry on either side of
+her.
+
+As he approached she shrank back, her whole body taut and straining
+against the wall. Then she bent her head and flung up her arms, curving
+them to shield her face. Davilof could just see the rounded whiteness
+of them, glimmering like pale pearl next the satin sheen of night-black
+hair.
+
+With a stifled cry he sprang forward and gripped them in his strong,
+supple hands, drawing them down inexorably.
+
+“Kiss me!” he demanded fiercely. “Magda, kiss me!”
+
+She shook her head, struggling for speech.
+
+“No!” she gasped. “No!”
+
+She glanced desperately round, but he had her hemmed in, prisoned
+against the wall.
+
+“Kiss me!” he repeated unsteadily. “You--you’d better, Magda.”
+
+“And if I don’t?” she forced the words through her stiff lips.
+
+“But you will!” he said hoarsely. “You will!”
+
+There was a dangerous note in his voice. The man had got beyond the
+stage to be played with. In the silence of the room Magda could hear his
+laboured breathing, feel his heart leaping against her own soft breast
+crushed against his. It frightened her.
+
+“You’ll let me go if I do?” The words seemed to run into each other in
+her helpless haste.
+
+“I’ll let you go.”
+
+“Very well.”
+
+Slowly, reluctantly she lifted her face to his and kissed him. But the
+touch of her lips on his scattered the last vestige of his self-control.
+
+“My beloved . . . Beloved!”
+
+He seized her roughly in his arms. She felt his kisses overwhelming her,
+burning against her closed eyelids, bruising her soft mouth and throat.
+
+“I love you . . . worship you----”
+
+“Let me go!” she cried shrilly, struggling against him. “Let me go--you
+promised it!”
+
+He released her, drawing slowly back, his arms falling unwillingly away
+from her.
+
+“Oh, yes,” he muttered confusedly. “I did promise.”
+
+The instant she felt his grip relax, Magda sprang forward and switched
+on the centre burners, flooding the room with a blaze of light, and in
+the sudden glare she and Davilof stood staring silently at each other.
+
+With the springing up of the lights it was as though a spell had broken.
+The strained, hunted expression left Magda’s face. She wasn’t frightened
+any longer. Davilof was no more the man whose sudden passion had surged
+about her, threatening to break down all defences and overwhelm her.
+He was just Davilof, her accompanist, who, like half the men of her
+acquaintance, was more or less in love with her and who had overstepped
+the boundary which she had very definitely marked out between herself
+and him.
+
+She regarded him stormily.
+
+“Have you gone mad?” she asked contemptuously.
+
+He returned her look, his eyes curiously brilliant. Then he laughed
+suddenly.
+
+“Mad?” he said. “Yes, I think I _am_ mad. Mad with love for you!
+Magda”--he came and stood close beside her--“don’t send me away! Don’t
+say you can’t care for me! You don’t love me now--but I could teach
+you.” His voice deepened. “I love you so much. Oh, sweetest!--_Soul_ of
+me! Love is so beautiful. Let me teach you how beautiful it is!”
+
+Magda drew back.
+
+“No,” she said. The brief negative fell clear and distinct as a bell.
+
+“I won’t take no,” he returned hotly. “I won’t take no. I want you.
+Good God! Don’t you understand? My love for you isn’t just a boy’s
+infatuation that you can dismiss with a word. It’s all of me. I worship
+you! Haven’t I been with you day after day, worked with you, followed
+your every mood--shared your very soul with you? You’re mine! Mine,
+because I understand you. You’ve shown me all you thought, all you felt.
+You couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t meant something to you.”
+
+“Certainly you meant something to me. You meant an almost perfect
+accompanist. Why should you have imagined you meant more? I gave you no
+reason to think so.”
+
+“_No reason_?”
+
+It was as though the two short words were the key which unlocked the
+floodgates of some raging torrent. Magda could never afterwards recall
+the words he used. She only knew they beat upon her with the cruel,
+lancinating sharpness of hail driven by the wind.
+
+She had treated him much as other men, evoking the love of his ardent
+temperament by that subtle witchery which was second nature to her and
+which can be such a potent weapon in the hands of a woman whose own
+emotions remain untouched. And now the thwarted passion of the lover and
+the savage anger of a man who felt himself deceived and duped broke over
+her in a resistless storm--an outburst so bitter and so trenchant
+that for the moment she remained speechless before it, buffeted into
+helpless, resentful silence. When he ceased, he had stripped her of
+every rag of feminine defence.
+
+“Have you finished?” she asked in a stifled voice.
+
+She made no attempt to palliate matters or to refute anything he had
+said. In his present frame of mind it would have been useless pointing
+out to him that she had treated him no differently from other men. He
+was a Pole, and he had caught fire where others would merely have glowed
+smoulderingly.
+
+“Yes,” he rejoined sullenly. “I’ve finished.”
+
+“So much the better.”
+
+He regarded her speculatively.
+
+“What are you made of, I wonder? Does it mean nothing to you that a man
+has given you his very best--all that he has?”
+
+She appeared to reflect a moment.
+
+“I’m afraid it doesn’t. There’s only one thing really means much to
+me--and that is my art. And Lady Arabella,” she added after a pause.
+“She’ll always mean a good deal.”
+
+She sat down by the fire and held out her hands to its warmth. The
+slender fingers seemed almost transparent, glowing rosily in the
+firelight. Davilof turned to go.
+
+“Good-bye, then,” he said curtly.
+
+“Good-bye.” Magda nodded indifferently. Then, carelessly: “I shall want
+you to-morrow, Davilof--same time.”
+
+He swung round.
+
+“I will never play for you again. Did you imagine I should?”
+
+She smiled at him--that slow, subtle smile of hers with its hint of
+mockery.
+
+“You won’t be able to keep away,” she replied.
+
+“I will never play for you again,” he repeated. “Never! I will teach
+myself to hate you.”
+
+She shook her head lightly.
+
+“Impossible, Davilof.”
+
+“It’s not impossible. There’s very little difference between love and
+hate--sometimes. And I want all or nothing.”
+
+“I’m afraid it must be nothing, then.”
+
+“We shall see. But if I can’t have you, _I_ swear no other man shall!”
+
+She glanced up at him, lifting her brows a little.
+
+“Aren’t you going too far, Antoine? You can hate me, if you like, or
+love me--it’s a matter of indifference to me which you do. But I don’t
+propose to allow you to arrange my life for me. And in any case”--after
+a moment--“I’m not likely to fall in love--with you or anyone else.”
+
+“You think not?” He stood looking down at her sombrely. “You’ll fall in
+love right enough some day. And when you do it will be all or nothing
+with you, too. You’re that kind. Love will take you--and break you,
+Magda.”
+
+He spoke slowly, with an odd kind of tensity. To Magda it seemed almost
+as if his quiet speech held the gravity of prophecy, and she shivered a
+little.
+
+“And when that time comes, then you’ll come back to me,” he added.
+
+Magda threw up her head, defying him.
+
+“You propose to be waiting round to pick up the pieces, then?” she
+suggested nonchalantly.
+
+But only the sound of the closing door answered her. Davilof had gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE SWAN-MAIDEN
+
+Lady Arabella was in her element. She had two brilliant and unattached
+young men dining with her--one, Michael Quarrington, a lion in the
+artistic world, and the other, Antoine Davilof, who showed unmistakable
+symptoms of developing sooner or later into a lion in the musical world.
+
+It was Davilof who was responsible for the artist’s presence at Lady
+Arabella’s dinner table. She had expressed--in her usual autocratic
+manner--a wish that he should be presented to her, and had determined
+upon the evening of the first performance of _The Swan-Maiden_ as the
+appointed time.
+
+Davilof appeared doubtful, and declared that Quarrington was leaving
+England and had already fixed the date of his departure.
+
+“He’s crossing from Dover the very day before the one you want him to
+dine with you,” he told her.
+
+But Lady Arabella swept his objections aside with regal indifference.
+
+“Crossing, is he?” she snapped. “Well, tell him I want him to dine here
+and go to the show with us afterwards. He’ll cross the day _after_,
+you’ll find--if he crosses at all!” she wound up enigmatically.
+
+So it came about that her two lions, the last-arrived artist and the
+soon-to-arrive musician, were both dining with her on the appointed
+evening.
+
+Lady Arabella adored lions. Also, notwithstanding her seventy years, she
+retained as much original Eve in her composition as a girl of seventeen,
+and she adored young men.
+
+In particular, she decided that she approved of Michael Quarrington. She
+liked the clean English build of him. She liked his lean, square jaw and
+the fair hair with the unruly kink in it which reminded her of a certain
+other young man--who had been young when she was young--and to whom
+she had bade farewell at her parents’ inflexible decree more than fifty
+years ago. Above all, she liked the artist’s eyes--those grey, steady
+eyes with their look of reticence so characteristic of the man himself.
+
+Reticence was an asset in her ladyship’s estimation. It showed good
+sense--and it offered provocative opportunities for a battle of wits
+such as her soul loved.
+
+“Have you seen my god-daughter dance, Mr. Quarrington?” she asked him.
+
+“Yes, several times.”
+
+His tone was non-committal and she eyed him sharply.
+
+“Don’t admire dancing, do you?” she threw at him.
+
+Quarrington regarded her with a humorous twinkle.
+
+“And I an artist? How can you ask, Lady Arabella?”
+
+“Well, you sounded supremely detached,” she grumbled.
+
+“I think Mademoiselle Wielitzska’s dancing the loveliest thing I have
+ever seen,” he returned simply.
+
+The old woman vouchsafed him a smile.
+
+“Thank you,” she answered. “I enjoyed that quite as much as I used to
+enjoy being told I’d a pretty dimple when I was a girl.”
+
+“You have now,” rejoined Quarrington audaciously.
+
+Lady Arabella’s eyes sparkled. She loved a neatly turned compliment.
+
+“Thank you again. But it’s a pity to waste your pretty speeches on an
+old woman of seventy.”
+
+“I don’t,” retorted the artist gravely. “I reserve them for the young
+people I know of that age.”
+
+She laughed delightedly. Then, turning to Davilof, she drew him into the
+conversation and the talk became general.
+
+Later, as they were all three standing in the hall preparatory to
+departure, she flashed another of her sudden remarks at Quarrington.
+
+“I understand you came to my god-daughter’s rescue in that bad fog last
+week?”
+
+The quiet grey eyes revealed nothing.
+
+“I was privileged to be some little use,” he replied lightly.
+
+“I hardly gathered you regarded it as a privilege,” observed her
+ladyship drily.
+
+The shaft went home. A fleeting light gleamed for a moment in the grey
+eyes. Davilof was standing a few paces away, being helped into his coat
+by a man-servant, and Quarrington spoke low and quickly.
+
+“She told you?” he said. There was astonishment--resentment, almost--in
+his voice.
+
+“No, no.” Lady Arabella, smiling to herself, reassured him hastily. “It
+was a shot in the dark on my part. Magda never confides details. She
+hands you out an unadorned slice of fact and leaves you to interpret it
+as you choose. But if you know her rather well--as I do--and can add two
+and two together and make five or any unlikely number of them, why, then
+you can fill in some of the blanks for yourself.”
+
+She glanced at him with impish amusement as she moved towards the door.
+
+“Come along, Davilof,” she said. “I suppose you want to hear your own
+music--even if Magda’s dancing no longer interests you?”
+
+Davilof gave her his arm down the steps.
+
+“What do you mean, miladi?” he asked. “There is no more beautiful
+dancing in the world.”
+
+“Then why have you jacked up your job of accompanist? Shoes beginning to
+pinch a little, eh?”--shrewdly.
+
+“You mean I grow too big for my boots? No, madame. If I were the
+greatest musician in Europe, instead of being merely Antoine Davilof,
+it could only be a source of pride to be asked to accompany the
+Wielitzska.”
+
+Lady Arabella paused on the pavement, her foot on the step of the
+limousine.
+
+“Then how is it that Mrs. Grey accompanies her now? She was playing for
+her at the Duchess of Lichbrooke’s the other evening.
+
+“Magda didn’t tell you, then?”
+
+“No, she didn’t; or I’d not be wasting my breath in asking you. I asked
+her, and she said you had taken to playing wrong notes.”
+
+A faint smile curved the lips above the small golden beard.
+
+“Then it must be true. Undoubtedly I played wrong notes, miladi.”
+
+“Very careless of you, I’m sure.” Under the garish light of a
+neighbouring street-lamp her keen old eyes met his significantly.
+“Or--very imprudent, Davilof. You need the tact of the whole Diplomatic
+Service to deal with Magda. And you ought to know it.”
+
+“True, miladi. But I was not designed for diplomacy, and a man can only
+use the weapons heaven has given him.”
+
+“I wouldn’t have suggested heaven as invariably the source of your
+inspirations,” retorted Lady Arabella. And hopped into the car.
+
+They arrived at the Imperial Theatre to find Mrs. Grey already seated in
+Lady Arabella’s box. Someone else was there, too--old Virginie, with her
+withered-apple cheeks and bright brown, bird-like eyes, still active
+and erect and very little altered from the Virginie of ten years before.
+Just as she had devoted herself to Diane, so now she devoted herself
+to Diane’s daughter, and no first performance of a new dance of the
+Wielitzska’s took place without Virginie’s presence somewhere in the
+house. To-night, Lady Arabella had invited her into her box and Virginie
+was a quivering bundle of excitement. She rose from her seat at the back
+of the box as the newcomers entered.
+
+“Sit down, Virginie.” Lady Arabella nodded kindly to the Frenchwoman.
+“And pull your chair forward. You’ll see nothing back there, and there
+is plenty of room for us all.”
+
+“_Merci, madame. Madame est bien gentille._” Virginie’s voice was
+fervent with ecstatic gratitude as she resumed her seat and waited
+expectantly for Magda’s appearance.
+
+Other dances, performed principally by lesser lights of the company and
+affording only a briefly tantalising glimpse of Magda herself, preceded
+the chief event of the evening. But at last the next item on the
+programme read as _The Swan-Maiden (adapted from an Old Legend)_, and
+a tremour of excitement, a sudden hush of eager anticipation, rippled
+through the audience like wind over grass.
+
+Slowly the heavy silken curtains drew to either side of the stage,
+revealing a sunlit glade. In the background glimmered the still waters
+of a lake, while at the foot of a tree, in an attitude of tranquil
+repose, lay the Swan-Maiden--Magda. One white, naked arm was curved
+behind her head, pillowing it, the other lay lightly across her body,
+palm upward, with the rosy-tipped fingers curled inwards a little, like
+a sleeping child’s. She looked infinitely young as she lay there, her
+slender, pliant limbs relaxed in untroubled slumber.
+
+Lady Arabella, with Quarrington sitting next to her in the box, heard
+the quick intake of his breath as he leaned suddenly forward.
+
+“Yes, it has quite a familiar look,” she observed. “Reminds me of your
+‘Repose of Titania.’”
+
+His eyes flickered inquiringly over her face, but it was evident that
+hers had been merely a chance remark. The old lady had obviously no idea
+as to who it was who had posed for the Titania of the picture. That was
+one of the “slices of fact” which Magda had omitted to hand out when
+recounting her adventure in the fog to her godmother. Quarrington leaned
+back in his chair satisfied.
+
+“It’s not unlike,” he agreed carelessly.
+
+Then the entrance of Vladimir Ravinski, the lovelorn youth of the
+legend, riveted his attention on the stage.
+
+The dance which followed was exquisite. The Russian was a beautiful
+youth, like a sun-god with his flying yellow locks and glorious symmetry
+of body, and the _pas de deux_ between him and Magda was a thing to
+marvel at--sweeping through the whole gamut of love’s emotion, from
+the first shy, delicate hesitancy of worshipping boy and girl to the
+rapturous abandon of mated lovers.
+
+Then across the vibrant, pulsating scene fell the deadly shadow of the
+witch Ritmagar. The stage darkened, the violins in the orchestra skirled
+eerily in chromatic showers of notes, and the hunched figure of Ritmagar
+approaching menaced the lovers. A wild dance followed, the lovers now
+kneeling and beseeching the evil fairy to have pity on them, now rushing
+despairingly into each other’s arms, while the witch’s own dancing held
+all of threat and malevolence that superb artistry could infuse into it.
+
+The tale unfolded itself with the inevitableness of preordained
+catastrophe.
+
+Ritmagar declines to be appeased. She raises her claw-like hand,
+pointing a crooked finger at the lovers, and with a clash of brazen
+sound and the dull thrumming of drums the whole scene dissolves into
+absolute darkness. When the darkness lifts once more, the stage is
+empty save for a pure white swan which sails slowly down the lake and
+disappears. . . . Followed a solo dance by Ravinski in which he gave
+full vent to the anguish of the bereft lover, while now and again the
+swan swam statelily by him. At length the witch appeared once more and,
+yielding to his impassioned entreaties, declared that the Swan-Maiden
+might reassume her human form during the hour preceding sunset,
+and Magda--the Swan-Maiden released from enchantment for the time
+being--came running in on the stage.
+
+This love-duet was resumed and presently, when the lovers had made their
+exit, Ritmagar was seen gleefully watching while the red sun dropped
+slowly down the sky, sinking at last below the rim of the lake.
+
+Then a low rumble of drums muttered as she stole from the stage,
+the personification of vindictive triumph, and all at once the great
+concourse of people in the auditorium seemed to strain forward,
+conscious that the climax of the evening, the wonderful solo dance by
+the Wielitzska, was about to begin.
+
+The moon rose on the left, and Magda, a slim white figure in her dress
+which cleverly suggested the plumage of a swan, floated on to the
+stage with that exquisite, ethereal lightness of movement which
+only toe-dancing--and toe-dancing of the most perfectly finished
+quality--seems able to convey. It was as though her feet were not
+touching the solid earth at all. The feather-light drifting of blown
+petals; the swaying grace of a swan as it glides along the surface of
+the water; the quivering, spirit-like flight of a butterfly--it seemed
+as though all these had been caught and blended together by the dancer.
+
+The heavier instruments of the orchestra were silenced, but the rippling
+music of the strings wove and interwove a dreaming melody, unutterably
+sweet and appealing, as the Swan-Maiden, bathed in pallid moonlight,
+besought the invisible Ritmagar for mercy, praying that she might not
+die even though the sun had set. . . . But there comes no answer to
+her prayers. A sombre note of stern denial sounds in the music, and the
+Swan-Maiden yields to utter despair, drooping slowly to earth. Just
+as Death himself claims her, her lover, demented with anguish, comes
+rushing to her side, and turning towards him as she lies dying upon
+the ground, she yields to his embrace with a last gesture of passionate
+surrender.
+
+
+
+Slowly the heavy curtains swung together, hiding the limp, lifeless body
+of the Swan-Maiden and the despairing figure of her lover as he knelt
+beside her, and after a breathless pause, the great audience, carried
+away by the tragic drama of the dance, its passion and its pathos, broke
+into a thunder of applause that rolled and reverberated through the
+theatre.
+
+Again and again Magda and her partner were called before the curtain,
+the former laden with the sheafs of flowers which had been handed up
+on to the stage. But the audience refused to be satisfied until at last
+Magda appeared alone, standing very white and slender under the blaze
+of lights, a faint suggestion of fatigue in the poise of her lissome
+figure.
+
+Instantly the applause broke out anew--thunderous, overwhelming. Magda
+smiled, then held out her arms in a little disarming gesture of appeal,
+touching in its absolute simplicity. It was as though she said: “Dear
+people, I love you all for being so pleased, but I’m very, very tired.
+Please, won’t you let me go?”
+
+So they let her go, with one final round of cheers and clapping, and
+then, as the curtains fell together once more and the orchestra slid
+unobtrusively into the _entr’acte_ music, a buzz of conversation arose.
+
+Michael Quarrington turned and spoke to Davilof as they stood together.
+
+“This will be my last memory of England for some time to come.
+Mademoiselle Wielitzska is very wonderful. As much actress as
+dancer--and both rather superlatively.”
+
+There was an odd note in Quarrington’s voice, as if he were forcibly
+repressing some less measured form of words.
+
+Davilof glanced at him sharply.
+
+“You think so?” he said curtly.
+
+The musician’s hazel eyes were burning feverishly. One hand was clenched
+on the back of the chair from which he had just risen; the other hung at
+his side, the fingers opening and shutting nervously.
+
+Quarrington smiled.
+
+“Don’t you?”
+
+The eyes of the two men met, and Michael became suddenly conscious that
+the other was struggling in the grip of some strong emotion. He could
+even sense its atmosphere of antagonism towards himself.
+
+“I think”--Davilof spoke with slow intensity--“I think she’s a soulless
+piece of devil’s mechanism.” And turning abruptly, he swung out of the
+box, slamming the door behind him.
+
+Quarrington frowned. With his keen perceptions it was not difficult for
+him to divine what lay at the back of Davilof’s bitter criticism. The
+man was in love--hopelessly in love with the Wielitzska. Probably she
+had turned him down, as she had turned down better men than he, but he
+had been unable to resist the bitter-sweet temptation of watching her
+dance, and throughout the evening had almost certainly been suffering
+the torments of the damned.
+
+The artist smiled a little grimly to himself, remembering the many
+evenings he, too, had spent at the Imperial Theatre, drawn thither by
+the magnetism of a white, slender woman with night-black hair, whose
+long, dark eyes haunted him perpetually, even coming between him and his
+work.
+
+And then, just as he had made up his mind to go away, first to Paris and
+afterwards to Spain or perhaps even further afield, and thus set as many
+miles of sea and land as he could betwixt himself and the “kind of woman
+he had no place for,” fate had played him a trick and sent her out of
+the obscurity of the fog-ridden street straight to his very hearth and
+home, so that the fragrance and sweetness and charm of her must needs
+linger there to torment him.
+
+He thought he could make a pretty accurate guess at the state of
+Davilof’s feelings, and was ironically conscious of a sense of
+fellowship with him.
+
+Lady Arabella’s sharp voice cut across his reflections.
+
+“I don’t care for this next thing,” she said, flicking at her programme.
+“Mrs. Grey and I are going round to see Magda. Will you come with us?”
+
+Quarrington had every intention of politely excusing himself. Instead of
+which he found himself replying:
+
+“With pleasure--if Mademoiselle Wielitzska won’t think I’m intruding.”
+
+Lady Arabella chuckled.
+
+“Well, she intruded on you that day in the fog, didn’t she? So you’ll
+be quits.” She glanced impatiently round the box. “Where on earth has
+Davilof vanished to? Has he gone up in flame?”
+
+Michael laughed involuntarily.
+
+“Something of the kind, I fancy,” he replied. “Anyway, he departed
+rather hurriedly.”
+
+“Poor Antoine!” Gillian spoke with a kind of humorous compassion. “He
+has a temperament. I’m glad I haven’t.”
+
+“You have the best of all temperaments, Mrs. Grey,” answered Michael, as
+they both followed Lady Arabella out of the box.
+
+She looked at him inquiringly.
+
+“The temperament that understands other people’s temperaments,” he
+added.
+
+“How do you know?” she asked, smiling.
+
+Lady Arabella was prancing on ahead down the corridor, and for the
+moment Michael and Gillian were alone.
+
+“We artists learn to look for what lies below the surface. If your work
+is sincere, you find when you’ve finished a portrait that the soul of
+the sitter has revealed itself unmistakably.”
+
+Gillian nodded.
+
+“I’ve been told you’ve an almost diabolical genius for expressing
+just what a man or woman is really like--in character, I mean--in your
+portraits.”
+
+“I can’t help it,” he said simply. “It comes--it reveals itself--if you
+paint sincerely.”
+
+“And do you--always paint sincerely?”
+
+He laughed.
+
+“I try to. Though once I got hauled over the coals pretty sharply for
+doing so. My sitter happened to be a pretty society woman, possessed
+of about as much soul as would cover a threepenny-bit, and when I’d
+finished her portrait she simply turned and rent me. ‘I wanted a taking
+picture,’ she informed me indignantly, ‘not the bones of my personality
+laid bare for public inspection.’”
+
+They were outside Magda’s dressing-room by this time, and Virginie, who
+had flown to her nurseling the moment the dance was at an end, opened
+the door in response to Lady Arabella’s preemptory knock. Gillian paused
+a moment before entering the room.
+
+“Yours is a wonderful gift of perception,” she said quietly. “It ought
+to make you--very merciful.”
+
+Michael looked at her swiftly. Her eyes seemed to be asking something
+of him--entreating. But before he could speak Lady Arabella’s voice
+interposed remorselessly.
+
+“Come in, you two; and for goodness’ sake shut the door. There’s draught
+enough to waft one to heaven.”
+
+There was no choice but to obey, and silently Quarrington followed Mrs.
+Grey into the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MICHAEL CHANGES HIS MIND
+
+Magda’s dressing-room at the Imperial Theatre was something rather
+special in the way of dressing-rooms. It had been designed expressly
+for her by the management, and boasted a beautifully appointed bathroom
+adjoining it where she could luxuriate in a refreshing dip immediately
+after the strain and fatigue of her work on the stage.
+
+She had been very firm about the bathroom, airily dismissing a plaintive
+murmur from the manager to the effect that they were “somewhat crowded
+for space at the Imperial.”
+
+“Then take another theatre, my dear man,” she had told him. “Or build!
+Or give the _corps de ballet_ one less dressing-room amongst them.
+But if you want _me_, I must have a bathroom. If I dance, I bathe
+afterwards. If not, I don’t dance.”
+
+Being a star of the first magnitude, the Wielitzska could dictate her
+own terms, and accordingly a bathroom she had.
+
+She had just emerged from its white-tiled, silver-tapped luxury a
+few minutes before Lady Arabella, together with Gillian and Michael
+Quarrington, presented themselves at her dressing-room door, and they
+found her ensconced in an easy-chair by the fire, sipping a cup of
+steaming hot tea.
+
+“I’ve brought Mr. Quarrington to see you,” announced Lady Arabella. “I
+thought perhaps you’d like some other congratulations besides family
+ones.”
+
+“Am I permitted?” asked Quarrington, taking the hand Magda held out to
+him. “Or are you too tired to be bothered with an outsider?”
+
+Magda looked up at him.
+
+“I’ve very glad to see you,” she said quietly.
+
+She appeared unwontedly sweet and girlish as she sat there, clad in a
+negligee of some soft silken stuff that clung about the lissom lines of
+her figure, and with her satiny hair coiled in a simple knot at the nape
+of her neck. There was little or nothing about her to remind one of the
+successful ballerina, and Michael found himself poignantly recalling
+the innocent, appealing charm of the Swan-Maiden. It was difficult to
+associate this woman with that other who had so unconsciously turned
+down his pal--the man who had loved her.
+
+“Well? Did it go all right?”
+
+Magda’s eyes sought Gillian’s eagerly as she put the question.
+
+“Did it go?” Mrs. Grey’s voice held all the unqualified enthusiasm any
+artiste could desire.
+
+“Oh, Magda! It was wonderful! The most wonderful, beautiful dance I’ve
+ever seen.”
+
+“And you know it as well as we do,” interpolated Lady Arabella tartly,
+but smiling pridefully in spite of herself.
+
+“Still, of course, she likes to hear us _say_ it.” Gillian championed
+her friend stoutly.
+
+“The whole world will be saying it to-morrow,” observed Quarrington
+quietly.
+
+Here Virginie created a diversion by handing round cups of freshly
+brewed tea.
+
+“You’ll get nerves--drinking tea at this hour of the night,” commented
+Lady Arabella, accepting a cup with alacrity, nevertheless.
+
+“I take it very weak,” protested Magda, smiling faintly. “It’s the only
+thing I like after dancing.”
+
+But Lady Arabella was already deep in conversation with Gillian and
+Virginie--a conversation which resolved itself chiefly into a laudatory
+chorus regarding the evening’s performance. In the background Magda’s
+maid moved quietly to and fro, carefully putting away her mistress’s
+dancing dresses. For the moment Michael and Magda were to all intents
+and purposes alone.
+
+“I shall not easily forget to-night,” he said rather low, drawing a
+chair up beside her.
+
+“You liked it, then?” she asked hesitatingly--almost shyly.
+
+“‘Like’ is hardly the word.”
+
+Magda flashed him a swift glance.
+
+“And yet,” she said slowly, “I’m the ‘type of woman you hate.’”
+
+“You make it rather difficult to maintain the point of view,” he
+admitted.
+
+She was silent a moment.
+
+“You were very unkind to me that day,” she said at last.
+
+Their eyes met and in hers was something soft and dangerously disarming.
+Quarrington got up suddenly from his chair.
+
+“Perhaps I was unkind to you so that I might not be unkind to myself,”
+ he replied curtly.
+
+Magda’s soft laugh rippled out.
+
+“But how selfish! And--and aren’t you being rather mysterious?”
+
+“Am I?” he returned pointedly. “Surely self-preservation is the first
+instinct of the human species?”
+
+She picked up the challenge and tossed it lightly back to him.
+
+“Is the danger, then, very great?”
+
+“I think it is. So, like a wise man, I propose to avoid it.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Why, by quitting the danger zone. I go to Paris to-morrow.”
+
+“To Paris?”
+
+Magda experienced a sudden feeling of blankness. It was inexplicable,
+but somehow the knowledge that Quarrington was going away seemed to take
+all the savour out of things. It was only by a supreme effort that she
+contrived to keep her tone as light and unconcerned as his own as she
+continued:
+
+“And then--after Paris?”
+
+“After Paris? Oh, Spain possibly. Or the Antipodes!”--with a short
+laugh.
+
+“Who’s talking about the Antipodes?” suddenly chimed in Lady Arabella.
+“Home to bed’s my next move. Gillian, you come with me--the car can take
+you on to Hampstead after dropping me in Park Lane. And Virginie can
+drive back with Magda.”
+
+“Yes, do go with Marraine,” said Magda, nodding acquiescence in reply to
+Gillian’s glance of interrogation. “I have to dress yet.”
+
+There was a general move towards the door.
+
+“Good-bye”--Magda’s slim hand lay for a moment in Quarrington’s. “I--I’m
+sorry you’re going away, Saint Michel.”
+
+Only Michael heard the last two words, uttered in that _trainante_,
+slightly husky voice that held so much of music and appeal. He turned
+abruptly and made his way out of the room in the wake of Gillian and
+Lady Arabella.
+
+“You’d better postpone your visit to the Antipodes, Mr. Quarrington,”
+ said the latter, as presently they all three stood together in the
+vestibule, halted by the stream of people pouring out from the theatre.
+“I’m giving a dinner-party next week, with a ‘crush’ to follow. Stay and
+come to it.”
+
+“It’s awfully kind of you, Lady Arabella, but I’m afraid it’s
+impossible.”
+
+“Fiddlesticks! You’re a free agent, aren’t you?”--looking at him keenly.
+
+A whimsical light gleamed for an instant in the grey eyes.
+
+“I sometimes wonder if I am,” he returned.
+
+“There’s only one cord I know of that can’t be either unknotted--or cut.
+And that’s lack of money. That’s not your complaint”--significantly.
+
+“No.”
+
+“So you’ll come?”
+
+“I’m afraid not.”
+
+“Magda has promised to dance for me,” proceeded Lady Arabella, entirely
+disregarding his quietly uttered negative. “They’re not giving _The
+Swan-Maiden_ that night at the Imperial. She can’t dine, of course, poor
+dear. Really, dancers have a lot to put up with--or rather, to put up
+_without_! Magda never dares to enjoy a good square meal. Afraid of
+getting fat, of course! After all, a dancer’s figure’s her fortune.”
+
+Like a low, insistent undertone beneath the rattle of Lady Arabella’s
+volubility Michael could hear again the murmur of a soft, dragging
+voice: “I’m sorry you’re going away, Saint Michel.”
+
+It seemed almost as though Lady Arabella, with that uncanny shrewdness
+of hers, divined it.
+
+“You’ll come, then?” She smiled at him over her shoulder, moving forward
+as the crush in the vestibule lessened a little.
+
+And Michael, with an odd expression in his eyes, answered suddenly:
+
+“Yes, I’ll come.”
+
+
+
+Later, as Lady Arabella and Gillian drove home together, the former
+laughed quietly. There was an element of pride and triumph in the
+laughter. Probably the hen who has reared a duckling and sees it sail
+off into the water experiences, alongside her natural apprehension and
+astonishment, a somewhat similar pride in the startling proclivities
+evinced by her nurseling.
+
+“That nice artist-man is in love with Magda,” crowed Lady Arabella
+contentedly.
+
+Gillian smiled.
+
+“Do you think so?”
+
+“I do. Only it’s very much against his will, for some reason or other.
+Crossing from Dover to-morrow, forsooth!”--with a broad smile. “Not he!
+He’ll be at my party--and asking Magda to marry him before the week’s
+out, bar accidents! . . . After all, it’s not surprising that the men
+are falling over each other to marry her. She’s really rather wonderful.
+Where do you think she gets it all from, Gillian, my dear? Not from the
+Vallincourts, I’ll swear!”--chuckling.
+
+Mrs. Grey shook her head.
+
+“I don’t know. But I think Magda is a standing argument in favour of the
+doctrine of reincarnation! She always seems to me to be a kind of modern
+embodiment of Helen of Troy or Cleopatra.”
+
+“Only without the capacity for falling in love! She’s as chilly as an
+iceberg and yet somehow gives you the idea she’s all fire and passion.
+No wonder the men get misled, poor lambs!”
+
+“She’s not cold, really,” asserted Gillian positively. “Of that I’m
+sure. No one could dance as she does--and be an iceberg.”
+
+Lady Arabella chuckled again, wickedly.
+
+“A woman who can dance like that ought to be preceded through life by
+a red flag. She positively stirs my old blood--that’s been at a
+comfortably tepid temperature for the last thirty years!”
+
+“Some day,” said Gillian, “she’ll fall in love. And then--”
+
+“Then there’ll be fireworks.”
+
+Lady Arabella completed the sentence briskly just as the car pulled up
+in front of her house. She skipped nimbly out on to the pavement.
+
+“Fireworks, my dear,” she repeated emphatically. “And a very fine
+display, too! Good-night.”
+
+The car slid away north with Gillian inside it reflecting rather
+ruefully upon the very great amount of probability contained in Lady
+Arabella’s parting comment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE GARDEN OF EDEN
+
+Lady Arabella’s big rooms were filling rapidly. The dinner to which only
+a few of the elect had been bidden was over, and now those who had been
+invited to the less exclusive reception which was to follow were eagerly
+wending their way towards Park Lane.
+
+The programme for the evening promised to be an attractive one. A solo
+from Antoine Davilof, Lady Arabella’s pet lion-cub of the moment; a song
+from the leading operatic tenor; and afterwards a single dance by the
+Wielitzska--who could never be persuaded to perform at any other private
+houses than those of her godmother and the Duchess of Lichbrooke--the
+former’s half sister. So, in this respect, Lady Arabella enjoyed almost
+a monopoly, and such occasions as the present were enthusiastically
+sought after by her friends and acquaintances. Later, when the artistes
+had concluded their programme, there was to be a dance. The ballroom,
+the further end of which boasted a fair-sized stage, had been
+temporarily arranged with chairs to accommodate an audience, and in one
+of the anterooms Virginie, with loving, skilful fingers, was putting the
+finishing touches to Magda’s toilette.
+
+Magda submitted passively to her ministrations. She was thinking of
+Michael Quarrington, the man who had come into her life by such strange
+chance and who had so deliberately gone out of it again. By the very
+manner of his going he had succeeded in impressing himself on her mind
+as no other man had ever done. Other men did not shun her like the
+plague, she reflected bitterly!
+
+But from the very beginning he had shown her that he disapproved of her
+fundamentally. She was the “type of woman he hated!” Night and day that
+curt little phrase had bitten into her thoughts, stinging her with its
+quiet contempt.
+
+She felt irritated that she should care anything about his opinion.
+But if she were candid with herself she had to admit that she did care,
+intensely. More than that, his departure from England had left her
+conscious of an insistent and unaccountable little ache. The knowledge
+that there could be no more chance meetings, that he had gone right out
+of her ken, seemed like the sudden closing of a door which had just been
+opening to her. It had somehow taken the zest out of things.
+
+“Voila!” Virginie drew back to survey the results of her labours,
+turning for approval to Gillian, who was in attendance in her capacity
+of accompanist. “Is it not that mademoiselle looks ravishing?”
+
+“Quite ravishing, Virginie,” agreed Gillian. “Did you expect her to look
+anything else by the time you had finished decking her out?” she added
+teasingly.
+
+“It is nothing that I do,” responded the old Frenchwoman seriously.
+“Mademoiselle cannot help but be beautiful to the eye--_le bon dieu_ has
+created her like that.”
+
+“I believe He has,” assented Gillian, smiling.
+
+As she spoke the bell of the telephone instrument on the table beside
+her rang imperatively and she lifted the receiver. Magda, watching her
+face as she took the message, saw it suddenly blanch.
+
+“Coppertop! . . . He’s ill!” she gasped.
+
+“Ill?” Magda could hardly credit it. Two hours ago they had left the
+child in perfect health.
+
+“Yes.” Gillian swallowed, moistening her dry lips. “They’ve sent for the
+doctor. It’s croup. Oh!”--despairingly, and letting the receiver fall
+unheeded from her grasp--“What am I to do? What am I to do?”
+
+Magda stepped forward, the filmy draperies of the dress in which she
+was to dance floating cloudily about her as she moved. She picked up the
+receiver as it hung dangling aimlessly from the stand and replaced it on
+its clip.
+
+“Do?” she said quietly. “Why, you’ll go straight home, of course. As
+quickly as the car can take you. Virginie”--turning to the maid--“fly
+and order the car round at once.”
+
+Gillian looked at her distractedly.
+
+“But you? Who’ll play for you? I can’t go! I can’t leave you!” Her voice
+was shaken by sobs. “Oh, Coppertop!”
+
+Magda slipped a comforting arm round her shoulder.
+
+“Of course you’ll go--and at once, too. See, here’s your coat”--lifting
+it up from the back of the chair where Gillian had thrown it. “Put it
+on.”
+
+Hardly conscious of what was happening, Gillian allowed herself to be
+helped into the coat. Suddenly recollection returned.
+
+“But your dance--your dance, Magda? You’ve forgotten!”
+
+Magda shook her head.
+
+“No. It will be all right,” she said soothingly. “Don’t worry,
+Gillyflower. _You’ve_ forgotten that Davilof is playing here to-night.”
+
+“Antoine?” Gillian stared at her incredulously. “But you can’t ask him
+to play for you! You’d hate asking him a favour after--after his refusal
+to accompany you any more.”
+
+Magda smiled at her reassuringly.
+
+“My dear,” she said, and there was an unaffected kindliness in her voice
+which few people ever heard. “My dear, I’m not going to let a little bit
+of cheap pride keep you away from Coppertop.”
+
+She bent suddenly and kissed Gillian’s white, miserable face just as
+Virginie reappeared in the doorway to announce that the car was waiting.
+
+“There, run along. Look, would you like to take Virginie with you?”
+
+“No, no.” Gillian shook her head decidedly. “I shall be quite all right.
+Oh, Magda!”--impulsively drawing the slender figure close into her arms
+a moment. “You are _good_!”
+
+Magda laughed a trifle bitterly.
+
+“That would be news to the world at large!” she replied. Then
+cheerfully: “Now, don’t worry, Gillyflower. Remember they’ve got a
+doctor there. And ‘phone me presently about Coppertop. If he’s worse,
+I’ll come home as early as I can get away. Send the car straight back
+here.”
+
+As soon as Gillian had gone, Magda flung a loose wrap over her
+diaphanous draperies and turned to Virginie.
+
+“Where is Monsieur Davilof? Do you know?”
+
+“_Mais oui, mademoiselle_! I saw him through the doorway as I came from
+ordering the car. He is in the library.”
+
+“Alone?”
+
+“_Oui, mademoiselle_!” Virginie nodded eloquently. “He smokes a
+cigarette--to steady the nerves, I suppose.”
+
+Magda went swiftly out of the room. She reached the hall by way of
+an unfrequented passage and slipped into the library closing the door
+behind her.
+
+“Antoine!”
+
+At the sound of her voice Davilof, who had been standing by the fire,
+wheeled round.
+
+“You!” he exclaimed violently. “You!” And then remained silent, staring
+at her.
+
+“You knew I was dancing here to-night,” she said chidingly. “Why are you
+so startled? We were bound to meet, weren’t we?”
+
+“No, we were not. I proposed leaving the house the moment my solo was
+over.”
+
+Magda laughed a little.
+
+“So afraid of me, Antoine?” she mocked gently.
+
+He made no answer, but his hands, hanging at his sides, clenched
+suddenly.
+
+Magda advanced a few steps towards him and paused.
+
+“Davilof,” she said quietly. “Will you play for me to-night?”
+
+He looked at her, puzzled.
+
+“Play for you?” he repeated. “But you have Mrs. Grey.”
+
+“No. She can’t accompany me this evening.”
+
+“And you ask me?” His voice held blank amazement.
+
+“Yes. Will you do it?”
+
+“Do you remember what I told you the last time we met? That I would
+never play for you again?”
+
+Magda drew her breath slowly. It was hurting her pride far more than
+Gillian knew or could imagine to ask a favour of this man. And he wasn’t
+going to make it easy for her, either--that was evident. But she must
+ask it, nevertheless. For Gillian’s sake; for the sake of poor little
+Coppertop fighting for breath and with no “mummie” at hand to help and
+comfort him; and for the sake of Lady Arabella, too. After promising to
+dance for her she couldn’t let her godmother down by crying off at the
+last moment, when all the world and his wife had come crowding to her
+house on the strength of that promise.
+
+So she bent her head in response to Davilof’s contemptuous question.
+
+“Yes, I remember,” she said quietly.
+
+“And you still ask me to play for you?”
+
+“I still ask you.”
+
+Davilof laughed.
+
+“You amaze me! And supposing I reply by saying I refuse?”
+
+“But you won’t,” dared Magda.
+
+Davilof’s eyes held something of cruelty in their hazel depths as he
+answered quietly:
+
+“On the contrary--I do refuse.”
+
+Her hand went up to her throat. It was going to be more difficult than
+she had anticipated!
+
+“There is no one else who can play for me as you do,” she suggested.
+
+“No,” fiercely. “Because no one loves you as I do.”
+
+“What is the use of saying you love me when you won’t do the one
+little thing I ask?” she retorted. “It is not often that I ask favours.
+And--and no one has ever refused me a request before.”
+
+Davilof could hear the note of proud resentment in her voice, and he
+realised to the full that, in view of all that had passed between them
+in the Mirror Room, it must have been a difficult matter for a woman of
+Magda’s temperament to bring herself to ask his help.
+
+But he had no intention of sparing her. None but himself knew how
+bitterly she had hurt him, how cruelly she had stung his pride, when she
+had flung him that contemptuous command: “I shall want you to-morrow,
+Davilof!--same time.” He had unveiled his very soul before her--and in
+return she had tossed him an order as though he were a lackey who had
+taken a liberty. All his pain and brooding resentment came boiling up to
+the surface.
+
+“If I meant anything to you,” he said slowly, “if you had even looked
+upon me as a friend, you could have asked what you liked of me. But you
+showed me once--very clearly--that in your eyes I was nothing more than
+your paid accompanist. Very well, then! Pay me--and I’ll play for you
+to-night.”
+
+“Pay you?”
+
+“Oh, not in money”--with a short laugh.
+
+“Then--then what do you mean?” Her face had whitened a little.
+
+“It’s quite simple. Later on there is a dance. Give me a dance with
+you!”
+
+Magda hesitated. In other circumstances she would have refused
+point-blank. Davilof had offended her--and more than that, the
+revelation of the upsettingly vehement order of his passion for her
+that day in the Mirror Room had frightened her not a little. There was
+something stormy and elemental about it. To the caloric Pole, love was
+love, and the fulfilment of his passion for the adored woman the supreme
+necessity of life.
+
+Realising that she had to withstand an ardour essentially unEnglish in
+its violently inflammable quality, Magda was loth to add fuel to the
+flame. And if she promised to dance with Davilof she must let him hold
+her in his arms, risk that dangerous proximity which, she knew now,
+would set the man’s wild pulses racing unsteadily and probably serve as
+the preliminary to another tempestuous scene.
+
+“Well?” Davilof broke in upon her self-communings. “Have I asked too
+high a price?”
+
+Time was flying. She must decide, and decide quickly. She took her
+courage in both hands.
+
+“No,” she returned quickly. “I will dance with you, Antoine.”
+
+He bowed.
+
+“Our bargain is complete, then,” he said ironically. “I shall be charmed
+to play for you, mademoiselle.”
+
+
+
+An hour or so later the last burst of applause had died away, and
+the well-dressed crowd which had sat in enthralled silence while
+the Wielitzska danced emerged chattering and laughing from the great
+ballroom.
+
+Their place was immediately taken by deft, felt-slippered men, who
+proceeded swiftly to clear away the seats and the drugget which had been
+laid to protect the surface of the dancing floor. In the twinkling of
+an eye, as it were, they transformed what had been to all intents and
+purposes a concert-hall into a flower-decked ballroom, while the members
+of the band engaged for the dance began climbing agilely into their
+allotted places on the raised platform preparatory to tuning up for the
+evening’s work.
+
+Magda, released at last from Virginie’s worshipfully careful hands,
+came slowly down the main staircase. She was in black, diaphanous and
+elusive, from which her flower-pale face and shoulders emerged like a
+water-lily starring the dark pool on which it floats. A crimson rose
+glowed just above her heart--that and her softly scarlet lips the only
+touches of colour against the rare black-and-white loveliness of her.
+
+She was descending the stairs reluctantly, mentally occupied in screwing
+up courage to fulfil her promise to Davilof. A ‘phone message from
+Friars’ Holm had come through saying that Coppertop was better. All
+danger was passed and there was no longer any need for her to return
+early. So it remained, now, for her to keep her pact with the musician.
+
+As she rounded the last bend in the staircase, she saw that a man was
+standing with bent head at the foot of the stairs, apparently waiting
+for someone, and she threw a quick, nervous glance in the direction of
+the motionless figure, thinking it might be Davilof himself. It would be
+like his eager impatience to await her coming there. Then, as the lights
+gleamed on fair, crisply waving hair she realised that the man was
+Michael--Michael, whom she believed to be on his way to Spain!
+
+Perhaps it was merely chance, or perhaps it was at the direct
+inspiration of Lady Arabella, but, whatever may have been the cause,
+Gillian had not confided to Magda that Quarrington was to be at her
+godmother’s reception. The sudden, totally unexpected meeting with
+him--with this man who had contrived to dominate her thoughts so
+inexplicably--startled a little cry of surprise from her lips. She drew
+back abruptly, and then--quite how it happened she could not tell--but
+she missed her footing and fell.
+
+For the fraction of a second she experienced a horrible sensation of
+utter helplessness to save herself; then Michael’s arms closed round her
+as he caught her before she reached the ground.
+
+The shock of the fall stupefied her for a moment. She lay against his
+breast like a terrified child, clinging to him convulsively.
+
+“It’s all right,” he murmured soothingly. “You’re quite safe.”
+
+Unconsciously his arms tightened round her. His breath quickened. The
+satin-soft hair had brushed his cheek as she fell; the pale, exquisite
+face and warm white throat lay close beneath his lips--all the fragrant
+beauty of her gathered unresisting against his heart. He had only to
+stoop his head----
+
+With a stifled exclamation he jerked himself backward, squaring his
+shoulders, and released her, though he still steadied her with a hand
+beneath her arm.
+
+“There, you are all right,” he said reassuringly. “No bones broken.”
+
+The commonplace words helped to restore her poise.
+
+“Oh! Thank you!” The words came a little gaspingly still. “I--I don’t
+know how I came to fall like that. I think you startled me--I didn’t
+expect to see you here.”
+
+“I didn’t expect to be,” he returned, smiling a little.
+
+Magda did not ask how it had come to pass. For the moment it was
+enough for her that he _was_ there--that he had not gone away! She was
+conscious of a sudden incomprehensible sense of tumult within her.
+
+“It was lucky for me you happened to be standing just at the foot of the
+stairs,” she said a little unsteadily.
+
+“I didn’t ‘happen.’ I was there of _malice prepense_”--the familiar
+crooked smile flashed out--“waiting for you.”
+
+“Waiting for me?”
+
+“Yes. Lady Arabella asked me to shepherd you into the supper-room and
+see that you had a glass of champagne and a sandwich before the dancing
+begins.”
+
+“Orders from headquarters?”--smiling up at him.
+
+“Exactly.”
+
+He held out his arm and they moved away together. As they passed through
+the crowded rooms one man murmured ironically to another:
+
+“Quarrington’s got it badly, I should say.”
+
+The second man glanced after the pair with amused eyes.
+
+“So he’s the latest victim, is he? I head young Raynham’s nose was out
+of joint.”
+
+“You don’t mean she’s fired him?”
+
+The other nodded.
+
+“Got the push the day before yesterday,” he answered tersely.
+
+“Poor devil! He’ll take it hard. He’s a hotheaded youngster. Just the
+sort to go off and blow his brains out.”
+
+Meanwhile Quarrington had established Magda at a corner table in the
+empty supper-room and was seeing to it that Lady Arabella’s commands
+were obeyed, in spite of Magda’s assurances that she was not in the
+least hungry.
+
+“Then you ought to be,” he replied. “After dancing. Besides, unlike the
+rest of us, you had no dinner.”
+
+“Oh, I had a light meal at six o’clock. But naturally, you can’t consume
+a solid dinner just before giving a performance.”
+
+“I’m not going to pay you compliments about your dancing,” he
+observed quietly, after a pause. “You must receive a surfeit of them.
+But”--looking at her with those direct grey eyes of his--“I’m glad I
+didn’t leave England when I intended to.”
+
+“Why didn’t you?” she asked impulsively.
+
+He laughed.
+
+“Because it’s so much easier to yield to temptation than to resist,” he
+answered, not taking his eyes from her face.
+
+She flushed a little.
+
+“What was the temptation?” she asked uncertainly.
+
+He waited an instant, then answered with deliberation:
+
+“The temptation of seeing you again.”
+
+“I should have thought you disapproved of me far too much for that to be
+the case! Saint Michel, don’t you think you’re rather hard on me?”
+
+“Am I? I had an old-fashioned mother, you see. Perhaps my ideas about
+women are out of date.”
+
+“Tell me them.”
+
+He regarded her reflectively.
+
+“Shall I? Well, I like to think of a woman as something sweet and
+fragrant, infinitely tender and compassionate--not as a marauder and
+despoiler. Wherever she comes, the place should be the happier for her
+coming--not bereft by it. She should be the helper and healer in this
+battered old world. That’s the sort of woman I should want my wife to
+be; that’s the sort of woman my mother was.”
+
+“And you think I’m--not like that? I’m the marauder, I suppose?”
+
+He remained silent, and Magda sat with her bent head, fingering the stem
+of her wine-glass restlessly.
+
+“You like my dancing?” she said at last.
+
+“You know I do.”
+
+“Well”--she looked at him with a mixture of defiance and appeal. “My
+dancing is me--the real me.”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“You’re not the ‘Swan-Maiden,’ whose love was so great that she forgot
+everything except the man she loved--and paid for it with her life.”
+
+“The process doesn’t sound exactly encouraging,” she retorted with a
+flash of dry humour. “But how do you know I’m not--like that?”
+
+“How do I know? Because, if you knew anything at all about love, you
+couldn’t play with it as you do. Even the love you’ve no use for is the
+biggest thing the poor devil who loves you has to offer you; you’ve no
+right to play battledore and shuttlecock with it.”
+
+He spoke lightly, but Magda could hear the stern accusation that
+underlay the words. She rose from the table abruptly.
+
+“I think,” she said, “I think I’m afraid of love.”
+
+As she spoke, she made a movement as though to quit the supper-room,
+but, either by accident or design, Michael barred her way.
+
+“Love,” he said, watching her face intently, “means
+sacrifice--surrender.”
+
+“And you believe I’m not capable of it?”
+
+“I think,” he replied slowly, drawing aside to let her pass, “I think
+I’m afraid to believe.”
+
+Something in the deep tones of his voice sent a thrill of consciousness
+through her. She felt her breath come and go unevenly and, afraid
+to trust herself to speak, she moved forward without response in the
+direction of the door. A moment later they were drawn into the stream of
+people wending their way by twos and threes towards the ballroom.
+
+As they entered, Antoine Davilof broke away from a little group of men
+with whom he had been conversing and came to Magda’s side.
+
+“The next dance is just beginning,” he said. “Are you engaged? Or may I
+have it?”
+
+“No, I’m not engaged,” she answered.
+
+She spoke flurriedly. She was dreading this dance with Antoine. She
+felt as though the evening had drained her of her strength and left her
+unequal to a battle of wills should Antoine prove to be in one of his
+hotheaded moods.
+
+She glanced round her with a hint of desperation in her eyes. If only
+Michael had asked her to dance with him instead! But he had bowed and
+left her as soon as the musician joined them, so that there was no
+escape to be hoped for that way.
+
+Davilof was watching her curiously.
+
+“I believe,” he said, “that you’re afraid to dance with me!”
+
+On an impulse she answered him with perfect candour.
+
+“I believe I am.”
+
+“Then why did you promise? You did promise, you know.”
+
+“I know. I promised. I promised because Coppertop had croup and they had
+telephoned down for his mother to go to him. And you wouldn’t accompany
+me unless I gave you this dance. So I promised it.”
+
+Davilof’s eyes held a curiously concentrated expression.
+
+“And you did this so that Mrs. Grey could go to her little boy--to nurse
+him?”
+
+Magda inclined her head.
+
+“Yes,” she said simply.
+
+“But you hated asking me--_loathed_ it!”
+
+“Yes,” she said again.
+
+He was silent for a moment. Then he drew back from her. “That was kind.
+Extraordinarily kind,” he commented slowly. His expression was one of
+frank amazement. “I did not believe you could be so kind--so womanly.”
+
+“Womanly?” she queried, puzzled.
+
+“Yes. For is not a woman--a good woman--always ready to sacrifice
+herself for those she loves?”
+
+Magda almost jumped. It was as though she were listening to an echo of
+Quarrington’s own words.
+
+“And you sacrificed yourself,” continued Davilof. “Sacrificed your
+pride--crushed it down for the sake of Mrs. Grey and little Coppertop.
+Mademoiselle”--he bowed gravely--“I kiss your hands. And see, I too, I
+can be generous. I release you from your promise. I do not claim that
+dance.”
+
+If any single thing could have astonished Magda more than another, it
+was that Davilof should voluntarily, in the circumstances, renounce the
+dance she had promised him. It argued a fineness of perception and a
+generosity for which she would never have given him credit. She felt a
+little warm rush of gratitude towards him.
+
+“No, no!” she cried impulsively, “you shan’t give up your dance.” Then,
+as he still hesitated: “I should _like_ to dance with you--really I
+should, Antoine. You’ve been so--so _decent_.”
+
+Davilof’s face lit up. He looked radiant--like a child that has been
+patted on the back and told it is good.
+
+“No wonder we are all in love with you!” he exclaimed in low, vehement
+tones; adding quickly, as he detected a flicker of apprehension in
+Magda’s eyes: “But you need not fear to dance with me. I will be as your
+brother--I will go on being ‘decent.’”
+
+And he was. He danced as perfectly as any of his music-loving
+nationality can dance, but there was a restraint, a punctilious
+deference about him that, even while it amazed, availed to reassure
+Magda and restore her shaken confidence in the man.
+
+She did not realise or suspect that just those two simple actions of
+hers--the good turn she had done Gillian at some considerable cost to
+herself in the matter of personal pride, and her quick recognition of
+the musician’s sense of fair play in renouncing his dance with her when
+he knew the circumstances which had impelled her to promise it--these
+two things had sufficed to turn Davilof’s heady, emotional devotion into
+something more enduring and perhaps more dangerous, an abiding, deeply
+rooted love and passion for her which was stronger than the man himself.
+
+He left the house immediately after the conclusion of his dance with
+her, and Magda was speedily surrounded by a crowd of would-be partners.
+But she felt disinclined to dance again, and, always chary of her
+favours in this respect, she remained watching the dancing in preference
+to taking any part in it, exchanging small-talk with the men who,
+finding she could not be induced to reconsider her decision, clustered
+round her chair like bees round a honey-pot.
+
+It was towards the end of the evening that Michael Quarrington finally
+joined the group. Magda’s eyes rested on him with a mixture of annoyance
+and approval--annoyance because she had expected him to ask her for a
+dance quite early in the course of the programme and he had failed to do
+so, and approval because he was of that clean-cut, fair-haired type
+of man who invariably contrives to look particularly well-groomed and
+thoroughbred in evening kit.
+
+She had no intention of permitting him to request a dance at this late
+hour, however, and rose from her seat as he approached.
+
+“Ah! You, Mr. Quarrington?” she said gaily. “I am just going home. It’s
+been a charming evening, hasn’t it?”
+
+“Charming,” he rejoined courteously. “May I see you to your car?”
+
+He offered his arm and Magda, dismissing her little court of disgruntled
+admirers with a small gracious nod, laid her slim hand on his sleeve. As
+they moved away together the orchestra broke into the swinging seductive
+rhythm of a waltz.
+
+Quarrington paused abruptly.
+
+“Don’t go yet!” he said. “Dance this with me.”
+
+His voice sounded strained and uneven. It was as though the words were
+dragged from him without his own volition.
+
+For an instant the two pairs of eyes met--the long, dark ones with their
+slumbrous fire brooding beneath white lids, and the keen, hawk-like grey
+ones. Then:
+
+“Very well,” she answered a trifle breathlessly.
+
+She was almost glad when the waltz came to an end. They had danced it
+in utter silence--a tense, packed silence, vibrant with significances
+half-hidden, half-understood, and she found herself quivering with a
+strange uncertainty and nervousness as she and Quarrington together made
+their way into the dim-lit quiet of the winter-garden opening off the
+ballroom.
+
+Overhead the green, shining leaves of stephanotis spread a canopy, pale
+clusters of its white, heavy-scented bloom gleaming star-like in the
+faint light of Chinese lanterns swung from the leaf-clad roof. From
+somewhere near at hand came the silvery, showering plash of a fountain
+playing--a delicate and aerial little sound against the robust harmonies
+of the band, like the notes of a harp.
+
+It seemed to Magda as though she and Michael had left the world behind
+them and were quite alone, enfolded in the sweet-scented, tender silence
+of some Garden of Eden.
+
+They stood together without speaking. In every tingling nerve of her she
+was acutely conscious of his proximity and of some rapidly rising tide
+of emotion mounting within him. She knew the barrier against which it
+beat and a little cry escaped her, forced from her by some impulse that
+was stronger than herself.
+
+“Oh, Saint Michel! Can’t you--can’t you believe in me?”
+
+He swung round at the sound of her voice and the next moment she was
+crushed against his breast, his mouth on hers, his kisses burning their
+way to her very heart. . . .
+
+Then voices, quick, light footsteps--someone else had discovered the
+Eden of the winter-garden, and Michael released her abruptly.
+
+
+
+Behind the chimneystacks the grey fingers of dawn were creeping up in
+the sky as Magda drove home. In the wan light her face looked unusually
+pale, and beneath the soft lace at her breast her heart throbbed
+unevenly.
+
+Five minutes ago Michael had held her in his arms and she had felt
+herself stirred to a sudden passionate surrender and response that
+frightened her.
+
+Was this love--the love against which Diane had warned her? It had all
+happened so suddenly--that last, unpremeditated dance, those tense,
+vibrant moments in the winter-garden, then the jarring interruption
+of other couples seeking its fragrant coolness. And she and Michael
+suddenly apart.
+
+Afterwards, only the barest conventionalities had passed between them.
+Nothing else had seemed possible. Their solitude had been ruthlessly
+destroyed; the outside world had thrust itself upon them without
+warning, jerking them back to the self-consciousness of suddenly
+arrested emotion.
+
+“I must be going.” The stilted, banal little phrase had fallen awkwardly
+from Magda’s lips, and Quarrington had assented without comment.
+
+She felt confused and bewildered. What had he meant? Had he meant
+anything at all? Was it possible that he believed in her now--trusted
+her? It had been in answer to that low, imploring cry of hers--“_Saint
+Michel, can’t you believe in me?_”--that he had taken her in his arms.
+
+Looking out through the mist-blurred window at the pale streamers of
+dawnlight penciling the sky, Magda’s eyes grew wistful--wonderingly
+questioning the future. Was she, too, only waiting for the revelation of
+dawn--the dawn of that mysterious thing called love which can transmute
+this everyday old world of ours into heaven or hell?
+
+
+
+Gillian was at the door to welcome her when at length the car pulled up
+at Friars’ Holm. She looked rather white and there were purple shadows
+under her eyes, but her lips smiled happily.
+
+“Coppertop? How is he?” asked Magda quickly.
+
+“Sleeping, thank God! He’s safe now! But--oh, Magda! It’s been awful!”
+
+And quite suddenly Gillian, who had faced Death and fought him with a
+dogged courage and determination that had won the grave-eyed doctor’s
+rare approval, broke down and burst into tears.
+
+Magda petted and soothed her, until at last her sobs ceased and she
+smiled through her tears.
+
+“I _am_ a fool!” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a moist, screwed-up
+ball of something that had once been a cambric handkerchief. “But I’ve
+quite recovered now--really. Come and tell me about everything. Did
+Davilof play for you all right? And did you enjoy the dance afterwards?
+And, oh, I forgot! There’s a letter for you on the mantelpiece. It was
+delivered by hand while we were both at Lady Arabella’s.”
+
+Mechanically, as she responded to Gillian’s rapid fire of questions,
+Magda picked up the square envelope propped against the clock and slit
+open the flap. It was probably only some note of urgent invitation--she
+received dozens of them. An instant later a half-stifled cry broke from
+her. Gillian turned swiftly.
+
+“What is it?” she asked, a note of apprehension sharpening her voice.
+
+Magda stared at her dumbly. Then she held out the letter.
+
+“Read it,” she said flatly. “It’s from Kit Raynham’s mother.”
+
+Gillian’s eyes flew along the two brief lines of writing:
+
+
+“Kit has disappeared. Do you know where he is?--ALICIA RAYNHAM.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE FIRST REAPING
+
+At breakfast, some hours later, Magda was in a curiously petulant and
+uncertain mood. To some extent her fractiousness was due to natural
+reaction after the emotional excitement of the previous evening.
+Granted the discovery of the Garden of Eden, and add to this the almost
+immediate intrusion of outsiders therein--for everybody else is an
+“outsider” to the pair in possession--and any woman might be forgiven
+for suffering from slightly frayed nerves the following day. And
+in Magda’s case she had been already rather keyed up by finding the
+preceding few days punctuated by unwelcome and unaccustomed happenings.
+
+They all dated from the day of the accident which had befallen her in
+the fog. It almost seemed as though that grey curtain of fog had been
+a symbol of the shadow which was beginning to dog her footsteps--the
+shadow which stern moralists designate “unpleasant consequences.”
+
+First there had been Michael Quarrington’s plain and candid utterance of
+his opinion of her. Then had followed Davilof’s headlong wooing and
+his refusal, when thwarted, to play for her again. He, too, had not
+precisely glossed things over in that tirade of accusation and reproach
+which he had levelled at her!
+
+And now, just when it seemed as though she had put these other ugly
+happenings behind her, Kit Raynham, who for the last six months had been
+one of the little court of admirers which surrounded her, had seen
+fit to complicate matters by vanishing without explanation; while his
+mother, in an absurd maternal flurry of anxiety as to what had become of
+him, must needs write to her as though it inevitably followed that she
+was responsible for his disappearance!
+
+Magda was conscious of an irritated sense of injury, which Gillian’s
+rather apprehensive little comments on the absence of further news
+concerning young Raynham scarcely tended to allay.
+
+“Oh, don’t be tiresome, Gillian!” she exclaimed. “The boy’s all right. I
+expect he’s been having a joy-day--which has prolonged itself a bit.”
+
+“It seems he hasn’t been seen or heard of since the day before
+yesterday,” responded Gillian gravely. “They’re afraid he may--may have
+committed suicide”--she brought out the word with a rush. “They’ve been
+dragging the lake at his home.”
+
+Magda flared.
+
+“Where did you hear all this--this nonsense? You said nothing about it
+last night.”
+
+“Lady Raynham told me. She rang up half an hour ago--before you were
+down--to ask if by any chance we had had any news of him,” replied
+Gillian gently.
+
+Magda pushed away her plate and, leaving her breakfast unfinished, moved
+restlessly across to the window.
+
+“There’s nothing about it in this morning’s paper, is there?” she asked.
+Her tone sounded apprehensive.
+
+Gillian’s eyes grew suddenly compassionate.
+
+“Yes. There is--something,” she returned, laying her hand quickly over
+the newspaper as though to withhold it.
+
+But Magda swung round and snatched it from her. Gillian half rose from
+her chair.
+
+“Don’t look--don’t read it, Magda!” she entreated hastily.
+
+The other made no response. Instead, she deliberately searched the
+columns of the paper until she found a paragraph headed: Disappearance
+of the Honourable Kit Raynham.
+
+No exception could reasonably be taken to the paragraph in question. It
+gave a brief resume of Kit Raynham’s short life up to date, referred
+to the distinguished career which had been predicted for him, and, in
+mentioning that he was one of the set of brilliant young folks of whom
+Magda Wielitzska, the well-known dancer, was the acknowledged leader,
+it conveyed a very slightly veiled hint that he, in particular, was
+accounted one of her most devoted satellites. The sting of the paragraph
+lay in its tail:
+
+
+“It will be tragic indeed if it should eventually transpire that a young
+life so full of exceptional promise has foundered in seas that only a
+seasoned swimmer should essay.”
+
+
+It was easy enough for Magda to read between the lines. If anything had
+happened to Kit Raynham--if it were ultimately found that he had taken
+his own life--society at large was prepared to censure her as more or
+less responsible for the catastrophe!
+
+Side by side with this paragraph was another--a panegyric on the
+perfection of Wielitzska’s dancing as a whole, and dwelling particularly
+upon her brilliant performance in _The Swan-Maiden_.
+
+To Magda, the juxtaposition of the two paragraphs was almost
+unendurable. That this supreme success should be marred and overshadowed
+by a possible tragedy! She flung the newspaper to the ground.
+
+“I think--I think the world’s going mad!” she exclaimed in a choked
+voice.
+
+Gillian looked across at her. Intuitively she apprehended the mental
+conflict through which her friend was passing--the nervous apprehension
+and resentment of the artiste that any extraneous happening should
+infringe upon her success contending with the genuine regret she would
+feel if some untoward accident had really befallen Kit Raynham. And
+behind both these that strange, aloof detachment which seemed part of
+the very fibre of her nature, and which Gillian knew would render it
+almost impossible for her to admit or even realise that she was in any
+way responsible for Kit Raynham’s fate--whatever it might be.
+
+Of what had taken place in the winter-garden at Lady Arabella’s Gillian
+was, of course, in ignorance, and she had therefore no idea that the
+intrusion of Kit Raynham’s affairs at this particular juncture was
+doubly unwelcome. But she could easily see that Magda was shaken out of
+her customary sang-froid.
+
+“Don’t worry, Magda.” The words sprang consolingly to her lips, but
+before she could give them utterance Melrose opened the door and
+announced that Lady Raynham was in the library. Would Mademoiselle
+Wielitzska see her?
+
+The old man’s face wore a look of concern. They had heard all about the
+disappearance of Lady Raynham’s son in the servants’ hall--the evening
+papers had had it. Moreover, it always seems as though there exists
+a species of wireless telepathy by which the domestic staff of any
+household, great or small, speedily becomes acquainted with everything
+good, bad, or indifferent--and particularly bad!--which affects the
+folks “above-stairs.”
+
+A brief uncomfortable pause succeeded Melrose’s announcement; then Magda
+walked quietly out of the room into the library.
+
+Lady Raynham rose from a low chair near the fire. She was a little,
+insignificant woman, rather unfashionably attired, with neat grey
+hair and an entirely undistinguished face, but as she stood there,
+motionless, waiting for Magda to come up to her, she was quite
+unconsciously impressive--transformed by that tragic dignity with which
+great sorrow invests even the most commonplace of people.
+
+Her thin, middle-aged features looked drawn and puckered by long hours
+of strain. Her eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness. They searched
+Magda’s face accusingly before she spoke.
+
+“What have you done to my son?”
+
+“Where is he?” Magda’s answering question came in almost breathless
+haste.
+
+“You don’t know!”
+
+Lady Raynham sat down suddenly. Her legs were trembling beneath her--had
+been trembling uncontrollably even as she nerved herself to stand and
+confront the woman at whose door she laid the ruin of her son. But now
+the spurt of nervous energy was exhausted, and she sank back into her
+chair, thankful for its support.
+
+“I don’t know where he is,” she said tonelessly. “I don’t even know
+whether he is alive or dead.”
+
+She fumbled in the wrist-bag she carried, and withdrawing a crumpled
+sheet of notepaper held it out. Magda took it from her mechanically,
+recognising, with a queer tightening of the muscles of her throat, the
+boyish handwriting which sprawled across it.
+
+“You want me to read this?” she asked.
+
+“You’ve _got_ to read it,” replied the other harshly. “It is written to
+you. I found it--after he’d gone.”
+
+Her gaze fastened on Magda’s face and clung there unwaveringly while she
+read the letter.
+
+It was a wild, incoherent outpouring--the headlong confession of a
+boy’s half-crazed infatuation for a beautiful woman. A pathetic
+enough document in its confused medley of passionate demand and boyish
+humbleness. The tragic significance of it was summed up in a few lines
+at the end--lines which seemed to burn themselves into Magda’s brain:
+
+
+“I suppose it was cheek my hoping you could ever care, but you were so
+sweet to me you made me think you did. I know now that you don’t--that
+you never really cared a brass farthing, and I’m going right away. The
+same world can’t hold us both any longer. So I’m going out of it.”
+
+
+Magda looked up from the scrawled page and met the gaze of the sad,
+merciless eyes that were fixed on her.
+
+“Couldn’t you have left him alone?” Lady Raynham spoke in a low,
+difficult voice. “You have men enough to pay you compliments and run
+your errands. I’d only Kit. Couldn’t you have let me keep him? What did
+you want with my boy’s love. You’d nothing to give him in return?”
+
+“I had!” protested Magda indignantly. “You’re wrong. I was very fond of
+Kit. I gave him my friendship.”
+
+Her indignation was perfectly sincere. To her, it seemed that Lady
+Raynham was taking up a most unwarrantable attitude.
+
+“Friendship?” repeated the latter with bitter scorn. “Friendship? Then
+God help the boys to whom you give it! Before Kit ever met you he was
+the best and dearest son a woman could have had. He was keen on his
+work--wild to get on. And he was so gifted it looked as if there were
+nothing in his profession that he might not do. . . . Then you came! You
+turned his head, filled his thoughts to the exclusion of all else--work,
+duty, everything that matters to a lad of two-and-twenty. You spoilt
+his chances--spoilt his whole life. And now I’ve lost him. I don’t know
+where he is--whether he is dead or alive.” She paused. “I think he’s
+dead,” she said dully.
+
+“I’m sorry if--”
+
+“Sorry!” Lady Raynham interrupted hysterically. Her composure was giving
+way under the strain of the interview. “Sorry if my son has taken his
+own life--”
+
+“He hasn’t,” asserted Magda desperately. “He was far too sensible
+and--and ordinary.”
+
+“Yes. Till you turned his head!”
+
+Lady Raynham rose and walked towards the door as though she had said all
+she came to say. Magda sprang to her feet.
+
+“I won’t--I won’t be blamed like this!” she exclaimed rebelliously.
+“It’s unfair! Can I help it if your son chose to fall in love with
+me? You--you might as well hold me responsible because he is tall or
+short--or good or bad!”
+
+The other stopped suddenly on her way to the door as though arrested by
+that last defiant phrase.
+
+“I do,” she said sternly. “It’s women like you who are responsible
+whether men are good--or bad.”
+
+In silence Magda watched the small, unassuming figure disappear through
+the doorway. She felt powerless to frame a reply, nor had Lady Raynham
+waited for one. If her boy were indeed dead--dead by his own hand--she
+had at least cleared his memory, laid the burden of the mad, rash act he
+had committed on the shoulders that deserved to bear it.
+
+Normally a shy, retiring kind of woman, loathing anything in the nature
+of a scene, the tragedy which had befallen her son had inspired Alicia
+Raynham with the reckless courage of a tigress defending its young.
+And now that the strain was over and she found herself once more in her
+brougham, driving homeward with the familiar clip-clop of the fat old
+carriage-horse’s hoofs in her ears, she shrank back against the cushions
+marvelling at the temerity which had swept her into the Wielitzska’s
+presence and endowed her with words that cut like a two-edged sword.
+
+Like a two-edged sword in very truth! Lady Raynham’s final thrust,
+stabbing at her with its stern denunciation, brought back vividly to
+Magda Michael Quarrington’s bitter speech--“I’ve no place for your kind
+of woman.”
+
+Side by side with the recollection came a sudden dart of fear. How would
+all this stir about Kit Raynham--the impending gossip and censure
+which seemed likely to be accorded her--affect him? Would he judge her
+again--as he had judged her before?
+
+She was conscious of a fresh impulse of anger against Lady Raynham. She
+wanted to forget the past--blot it all out of her memory--and out of the
+memory of the man whose contempt had hurt her more than anything in her
+whole life before. And now it seemed as though everything were combining
+to emphasise those very things which had earned his scorn.
+
+But, apart from a certain apprehension as to how the whole affair might
+appear in Michael’s eyes, she was characteristically unimpressed by her
+interview with Lady Raynham.
+
+“I don’t see,” she told Gillian indignantly, “that I’m to blame because
+the boy lost his head. His mother was--stupid.”
+
+Gillian regarded her consideringly. To her, the whole pitiful tragedy
+was so clear. She could envisage the point of view of Kit’s mother only
+too well, and sympathise with it. Yet, understanding Magda better than
+most people did, she realised that the dancer was hardly as culpable as
+Lady Raynham thought her.
+
+Homage and admiration were as natural to Magda as the air she breathed,
+and it made very little impression on her whether a man more or less
+lost his heart to her or not. Moreover, as Gillian recognised it was
+almost inevitable that this should be the case. The influences by
+which Magda had been surrounded during the first ten plastic years of
+childhood had all tended to imbue her with the idea that men were only
+to be regarded as playthings, and that from the simple standpoint of
+self-defence it was wiser not to take them seriously. If you did,
+they invariably showed a disposition to become tyrants. Gillian made
+allowance for this; nevertheless she had no intention of letting Magda
+down lightly.
+
+“I believe you were created without a soul,” she informed her candidly.
+
+Magda smiled a little.
+
+“Do you know you’re the second person to tell me that?” she said. “The
+idea’s not a bit original. Michael Quarrington told me the same thing in
+other words. Perhaps, perhaps it’s true.”
+
+“Of course, it’s not true!” Gillian contradicted her warmly. “I only
+said it because I was so out of patience with you.”
+
+“Everybody seems to be hating me rather badly just now.” Magda spoke
+somewhat forlornly. “And yet--I don’t think I’m any different from
+usual.”
+
+“I don’t think you are,” retorted Gillian. “But it’s your ‘usual’
+that’s so disastrous. You go sailing through life like a beautiful cold
+star--perfectly impassive and heartless.”
+
+“I’m not heartless. I love you--and Marraine. You surely don’t blame me
+because I don’t ‘fall in love’? . . . I don’t _want_ to fall in love,”
+ she added with sudden vehemence.
+
+“I wish to goodness you would!” exclaimed Gillian impatiently. “If only
+you cared enough about anybody to do something really outrageous--run
+off with another woman’s husband, even--I believe I should respect you
+more than I do now.”
+
+Magda laughed.
+
+“Gillyflower, I’m afraid you’ve no morals. And you here in the capacity
+of watchdog and duenna, too!”
+
+“It’s all very well to make a joke of everything. But I know--I’m sure
+this business about Kit Raynham is going to be more serious than you
+think. It’s bound to affect you.”
+
+Magda stared at her blankly.
+
+“What nonsense! Affect me--why should it? How can it?”
+
+“How can it?”--with bitterness. “Everyone will talk--more than usual!
+You can’t smash up people’s only sons--not lovable, popular boys like
+Kit--without there being a fuss. You--you should have left a kid like
+that alone.”
+
+And she went out of the room, banging the door behind her like a big
+full-stop.
+
+
+
+Gillian’s prophecy proved only too accurate. People did talk. Kit
+Raynham had been a general favourite in society, and his disappearance,
+taken in conjunction with the well-known fact of his infatuation for
+Magda, created a sensation.
+
+Even when the theory of suicide was finally disproved by his mother’s
+receiving a letter from Australia, whither it appeared, the boy
+had betaken himself and his disappointment, people seemed at first
+disinclined to overlook Magda’s share in the matter. For a time even
+her immense prestige as a dancer suffered some eclipse, but this, with a
+performer of her supreme artistry, was bound to be only a passing phase.
+
+The world will always condone where it wants to be amused. And--now
+that the gloom of young Raynham’s supposed suicide was lifted from the
+affair--there was a definite aroma of romance about it which was not
+without its appeal to the younger generation.
+
+So that gradually the pendulum swung back and Magda’s audiences
+were once again as big and enthusiastic as ever. Perhaps even more
+enthusiastic, since the existence of a romantic and dramatic attachment
+sheds a certain glamour about any well-known artiste.
+
+All of which affected Magda herself comparatively little--though it
+irritated her that her actions should be criticised. What did affect
+her, however, absorbing her thoughts to the exclusion of all other
+matters, was that since the night of Lady Arabella’s reception she had
+received neither word nor sign from Michael Quarrington.
+
+She could not understand it. Had he been a different type of man she
+might have credited him with having yielded to a sudden impulse, kissing
+her as some men will kiss women--lightly and without giving or asking
+more than the moment’s caress.
+
+But Quarrington was essentially not the man to be carried away by a
+passing fancy. That he had cared for her against his will, against his
+better judgment, Magda could not but realise. _But he had cared!_ She
+was sure of it. And he was the only man for whom her own pulses had ever
+beaten one whit the faster.
+
+His touch, the sound of his voice, the swift, hawk-like glance of those
+grey eyes of his, had power to wake in her a vague tumult of emotion at
+once sweet and frightening; and in that brief moment in the “Garden of
+Eden,” when he had held her in his arms, she had been tremulously ready
+to yield--to surrender to the love which claimed her.
+
+But the days had multiplied to weeks and still the silence which had
+followed remained unbroken. As far as Magda was concerned, Michael
+seemed to have walked straight out of her life, and she was too
+proud--and too much hurt--to inquire amongst her friends for news of
+him. It was her godmother who finally tersely enlightened her as to his
+whereabouts.
+
+Characteristically, Lady Arabella had withheld her judgment regarding
+the Kit Raynham affair until it was found that he had betaken himself
+off to Australia. But when the whole of the facts were evident, she
+allowed nothing--neither the romantic dreams of the episode nor her
+own warm affection for her god-daughter--to obscure her clear-sighted
+vision.
+
+Magda twisted her slim shoulders irritably when taken to task.
+
+“I think I’m tired of being blamed for Kit Raynham’s idiocy,” she said,
+a note of resentment in her voice. “No one seems to consider my side of
+the question! I was merely nice to him in an ordinary sort of way, and
+there wasn’t the least need for him to have chucked up everything and
+rushed off to the other side of the world like that. _I_ couldn’t help
+it!”
+
+Lady Arabella made a gesture of despair.
+
+“I don’t believe you could,” she acknowledged helplessly. “I’m really
+beginning to have a sneaking sympathy with poor Hugh for shelving the
+responsibility of having brought you into the world. But at least you
+might refrain from baby-snatching!” she added wrathfully.
+
+Magda protested.
+
+“Marraine! You’re abominable! Kit is four-and-twenty if he’s a day. And
+I’m barely twenty.”
+
+“That has nothing whatever to do with it,” retorted Lady Arabella
+incisively. “Kit is a babe in arms, while you--you’re as old as Eve.”
+ She paused. “Anyway, you’ve broken his heart and driven him to the ends
+of the earth.”
+
+“Where he’ll probably paste together the pieces and offer the repaired
+article to someone else.”
+
+Lady Arabella looked up sharply. Cynicism was usually far enough away
+from Magda. She was too full of the joy of life and of the genuine
+delight an artist finds in his art to have place for it. Egoist she
+might be, with the unthinking egotism of youth, irresponsible in her
+gay acceptance of the love and admiration showered on her, but there
+was nothing bitter or sour in her composition. Lady Arabella, seeking
+an explanation for the unwonted, cast her mind back on the events of the
+last few weeks--and smiled to herself.
+
+“I suppose you know you’ve driven someone else out of England besides
+Kit Raynham?” she said.
+
+“Whom do you mean?”
+
+Magda spoke mechanically. A faint colour crept up under her white skin,
+and she avoided her godmother’s keen gaze.
+
+“That charming artist-man--Michael Quarrington.”
+
+“Has--he left England?” Magda’s throat felt suddenly parched. Then
+with an effort she went on: “You’re surely not going to put the entire
+steamship’s passenger list down to me, Marraine?”
+
+“Only those names for which I happen to know you’re responsible.”
+
+“You don’t know about Saint Mi--about Mr. Quarrington. It’s mere
+guesswork on your part.”
+
+“Most of the things we really know in life are mere guesswork,” replied
+Lady Arabella sagely. “But in this case----”
+
+“Yes. In this case?”
+
+There was a long pause. Then Lady Arabella answered slowly:
+
+“In this case I’m speaking from first-hand information.”
+
+Magda’s slender figure tautened. She moistened her lips.
+
+“Do you mean that Mr. Quarrington told you he was leaving England on my
+account?” she asked.
+
+“I don’t often meddle, Magda--not really meddle.” Lady Arabella’s voice
+sounded unusually deprecating. “But I did in this instance. Because--oh,
+my dear, he’s the only man I’ve ever seen to whom I’d be glad to give
+you up. He’d--he’d manage you, Magda.”
+
+Magda’s head was turned away, but the sudden scarlet flush that flew up
+into her face surged over even the white nape of her neck.
+
+“And he loves you,” went on Lady Arabella, her voice softening
+incredibly. “It’s only a man here or there who really _loves_ a woman,
+my dear. Most of them whip up a hotch-potch of quite commonplace
+feelings with a dash of passion and call it love, while all they
+actually want is a good housekeeper and presentable hostess and someone
+to carry on the name.”
+
+No answer came from Magda, unless a stifled murmur could be regarded as
+such, and after a few minutes Lady Arabella spoke again, irritably.
+
+“Why couldn’t you have left Kit alone?”
+
+Magda raised her head.
+
+“What has that to do with it?”
+
+“Everything”--succinctly. “I told you I meddled. Michael Quarrington
+came to see me before he went away--and I know precisely why he left
+England. I asked him to go and see you before he sailed.”
+
+“What did he say?” The words were almost inaudible.
+
+Lady Arabella hesitated. Then she quoted quickly: “‘There is no need.
+She will understand.’”
+
+To Magda the brief sentence held all the finality of the bolting and
+barring of a door. So Quarrington, like everyone else, had heard the
+story of Kit Raynham! And he had judged and sentenced her.
+
+That night in the winter-garden he had been on the verge of trusting
+her, ready to believe in her, and she had vowed to herself that she
+would prove worthy of his trust. She had meant never to fall short of
+all that Michael demanded in the woman he loved. And now, before she had
+had a chance to justify his hardly-won belief, the past had risen up to
+destroy her, surging over her like a great tidal wave and sweeping away
+the whole fabric of the happiness she had visioned.
+
+She had not wholly realised before that she loved. But she knew now. As
+the empty weeks dragged along she learned what it meant to long for the
+beloved one’s presence--the sound and touch of voice or hand--with an
+aching, unassuagable longing that seems to fuse body and soul into a
+single entity of pain.
+
+Outwardly she appeared unchanged. Her pride was indomitable, and
+exactly how much Michael’s going had meant to her not even Gillian
+suspected--though the latter was too sensitive and sympathetic not to
+realise that Magda had passed through some experience which had touched
+her keenly. Ignorant of the incidents that had occurred on the night of
+Lady Arabella’s party, she was disposed to assign the soreness of spirit
+she discerned in her friend to the general happenings which had followed
+from the Raynham episode. And amongst these she gave a certain definite
+place to the abrupt withdrawal of Quarrington’s friendship, and
+resented it. She felt curiously disappointed in the man. With such fine
+perceptive faculty as he possessed she would have expected him to be
+more tolerant--more merciful in his judgment.
+
+Once she had tentatively approached the subject, but Magda had clearly
+indicated that she had no intention of discussing it.
+
+Not even to Gillian, whom she had gradually come to look upon as her
+closest friend, could Magda unveil the wound to her pride. No one, no
+one in the whole world, should know that she had been ready to give
+her love--and that the offering had been silently, but none the less
+decisively, rejected.
+
+Diane’s warning now found its echo in her own heart: “Never give your
+heart to any man. If you do he will only break it for you--break it into
+little pieces like the glass scent-bottle which you dropped yesterday.”
+
+“She was right,” Magda told herself bitterly. “A thousand times right!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BACK OF BEYOND
+
+The season was drawing to its close. London lay sweltering under a
+heat-wave which had robbed the trees in the Park of their fresh June
+greenness and converted the progress of foot-passengers along its sultry
+pavements into something which called to mind the mediaeval ordeal of
+walking over hot ploughshares.
+
+Even the garden at Friars’ Holm, usually a coolly green oasis in the
+midst of the surrounding streets, seemed as airless as any back court or
+alley, and Coppertop, who had been romping ever more and more flaggingly
+with a fox-terrier puppy he had recently acquired, finally gave up the
+effort and flung himself down, red-faced and panting, on the lawn where
+his mother and Magda were sitting.
+
+“Isn’t it nearly time for us to go to the seaside, mummie?” he inquired
+plaintively.
+
+Magda smiled down at the small wistful face.
+
+“How would you like to go to the country instead, Topkins?” she asked.
+“To a farm where they have pigs and horses and cows, and heaps of
+cream--”
+
+“And strawberries?” interpolated Coppertop pertinently.
+
+“Oh, of course. Or, no--they’ll be over by the time we get there. But
+there’ll be raspberries. That’s just as good, isn’t it?”
+
+Gillian looked up, smiling a little.
+
+“It’s settled we’re going ‘there,’ then--wherever it is?” she said.
+
+“Do you think you’d like it, Gillyflower?” asked Magda. “It’s a farm
+I’ve heard of in Devonshire, where they want to take paying-guests for
+the summer.”
+
+Gillian, guessing from Magda’s manner that the whole matter was
+practically arranged, nodded acquiescence.
+
+“I’m sure I should. But will _you_?”--whimsically. She glanced at the
+sophisticated simplicity of Magda’s white gown, at the narrow suede
+shoes and filmy stockings--every detail of her dress and person
+breathing the expensiveness and luxury and highly specialised
+civilisation of the city. “Somehow I can’t imagine you--on a farm in the
+depths of the country! I believe you’ll hate it.”
+
+“I shall like it.” Magda got up restlessly. “I’m sick of society and the
+theatre and the eternal gossip that goes on in London. I--I want to get
+away from it all!”
+
+Gillian’s thoughts turned back to the happenings of the last few months.
+She thought she understood what lay behind Magda’s sudden decision to
+bury herself in the country.
+
+“Have you taken rooms at this farm?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, I have”--shortly. Then, with one of those sudden flashes of
+affectionate insight which were part of her essential lovableness, she
+went on: “Gilly, are you sure you don’t mind? I ought to have asked you
+first”--remorsefully. “I expect you’ll be bored to death. Perhaps you’d
+rather not come?”
+
+Gillian’s quiet brown eyes smiled at her reassuringly.
+
+“‘Where thou goest--’” she quoted. “Of course I want to come. I’ve never
+been to Devonshire. And I know Coppertop will adore the pigs and cows--”
+
+“And cream,” put in Coppertop ruminatively.
+
+“Tell me about the place,” said Gillian. “How did you hear of it?”
+
+“Through the prosaic columns of the _Daily Post_,” replied Magda. “I
+didn’t want a place recommended by anyone I knew. That doesn’t cut the
+connecting line one bit. Probably the people who’ve recommended it
+to you decide to look you up in their car, just when you think you’re
+safely buried, and disinter you. I don’t _want_ to be disinterred. I
+propose to get right away into the country, out of reach of everybody
+we know, for two months. I shan’t give our address to anyone except
+Melrose, and he can forward on all letters.” A small amused smile
+crossed her lips. “Then we can answer them or not, exactly as we feel
+disposed. It will be heavenly.”
+
+“Still I don’t know where this particular paradise is which you’ve
+selected,” returned Gillian patiently.
+
+“It’s at the back of beyond--a tiny village in Devonshire called
+Ashencombe. I just managed to find it on the Ordnance map with a
+magnifying glass! The farm itself is called Stockleigh and is owned and
+farmed by some people named Storran. The answer to my letter was signed
+Dan Storran. Hasn’t it a nice sound--Storran of Stockleigh?”
+
+“And did you engage the rooms on those grounds, may I ask? Because the
+proprietor’s name ‘had a nice sound’?”
+
+Magda regarded her seriously.
+
+“Do you know, I really believe that had a lot to do with it,” she
+acknowledged.
+
+Gillian went off into a little gale of laughter.
+
+“How like you!” she exclaimed.
+
+
+
+The train steamed fussily out of Ashencombe station, leaving Magda,
+Gillian, and Coppertop, together with sundry trunks and suitcases, in
+undisputed possession of the extremely amateurish-looking platform.
+Magda glanced about her with amusement.
+
+“What a ridiculous little wayside place!” she exclaimed. “It has a kind
+of ‘home-made’ appearance, hasn’t it? You’d hardly expect a real bona
+fide train to stop here!”
+
+“This your luggage, miss?”
+
+A porter--or, to be accurate, _the_ porter, since Ashencombe boasted but
+one--addressed her abruptly. From a certain inimical gleam in his eye
+Magda surmised that he had overheard her criticism.
+
+“Yes.” She nodded smilingly. “Is there a trap of any kind to meet us?”
+
+Being a man as well as a porter he melted at once under Magda’s
+disarming smile, and replied with a sudden accession of amiability.
+
+“Be you going to Stockleigh?” he asked. The soft sing-song intonation
+common to all Devon voices fell very pleasantly on ears accustomed to
+the Cockney twang of London streets.
+
+“Yes, to Storran of Stockleigh,” announced Coppertop importantly.
+
+The porter’s mouth widened into an appreciative grin.
+
+“That’s right, young master, and there’s the wagonette from the Crown
+and Bells waiting to take you there.”
+
+A few minutes later, the luggage precariously piled up on the box-seat
+beside the driver, they were ambling through the leafy Devon lanes at
+an unhurried pace apparently dictated by the somewhat ancient quadruped
+between the shafts. The driver swished his whip negligently above the
+animal’s broad back, but presumably more with the idea of keeping off
+the flies than with any hope of accelerating his speed. There would be
+no other train to meet at Ashencombe until the down mail, due four
+hours later, so why hurry? No one ever appears to be in a hurry in the
+leisurely West Country--a refreshing characteristic in a world elsewhere
+so perforated by tubes and shaken by the ubiquitous motor-bus.
+
+Magda leaned back in the wagonette with a sigh of pleasure. The drowsy,
+sunshiny peace of the July afternoon seemed very far removed from the
+torrid rush and roar of the previous day in London.
+
+It was almost like entering another world. Instead of the crowded,
+wood-paved streets, redolent of petrol, this winding ribbon of a lane
+where the brambles and tufted grass leaned down from close-set hedges to
+brush the wheels of the carriage as it passed. Overhead, a restful sky
+of misty blue flecked with wisps of white cloud, while each inconsequent
+turn of the narrow twisting road revealed a sudden glimpse of distant
+purple hills, or a small friendly cottage built of cob and crowned with
+yellow thatch, or high-hedged fields of standing corn, deepening to gold
+and quiveringly still as the sea on a windless afternoon.
+
+At last the wagonette swung round an incredibly sharp turn and rumbled
+between two granite posts--long since denuded of the gate which had once
+swung between them--pulling up in front of a low, two-storied house,
+which seemed to convey a pleasant sense of welcome, as some houses do.
+
+The casement windows stood wide open and through them you caught
+glimpses of white curtains looped back with lavender ribbons. Roses,
+pink and white and red, nodded their heads to you from the walls, even
+peering out impertinently to catch the sun from beneath the eaves of the
+roof, whose thatch had mellowed to a somber brown with wind and weather.
+Above the doorway trails of budding honeysuckle challenged the supremacy
+of more roses in their summer prime, and just within, in the cool shadow
+of the porch, stood a woman’s slender figure.
+
+Gillian never forgot that first glimpse of June Storran. She looked
+very simple and girlish as she stood there, framed in the rose-covered
+trellis of the porch, waiting with a slight stir of nervousness to
+receive the travellers. The sunlight, filtering between the leaves of
+the honeysuckle, dappled her ash-blond hair with hovering flecks of
+gold, and a faint, shy smile curved her lips as she came forward, a
+little hesitatingly, to greet them.
+
+“I am so glad to see you,” she said. “Dan--my husband had to go to
+Exeter to-day. He was sorry he could not meet you himself at the
+station.”
+
+As she and Magda stood side by side the contrast between them was
+curiously marked--the one in her obviously homemade cotton frock, with
+her total absence of poise and her look of extreme youth hardly seeming
+the married woman that she was, the other gowned with the simplicity of
+line and detailed finish achieved only by a great dressmaker, her quiet
+assurance and distinctive little air of _savoir vivre_ setting her
+worlds apart from Dan Storran’s young wife.
+
+“Will you come in? The man will see to your luggage.”
+
+June was speaking again, still shyly but with her shyness tempered by
+a sensitive instinct of hospitality. She led the way into the house
+and they followed her through a big, low-raftered living-room and up a
+flight of slippery oak stairs.
+
+“These are your rooms,” said June, pausing at last at the end of a
+rambling passage-way. “I hope”--she flushed a little anxiously--“I do
+hope you will like them. I’ve made them as nice as I could. But, of
+course”--she glanced at Magda deprecatingly--“you will find them very
+different from London rooms.”
+
+Magda flashed her a charming smile.
+
+“I’m sure we shall love them,” she answered, glancing about her with
+genuine appreciation.
+
+The rooms were very simply furnished, but sweet and fresh with chintz
+and flowers, and the whitewashed ceilings, sloping at odd, unexpected
+angles, gave them a quaint attractiveness. The somewhat coarse but
+spotless bed-linen exhaled a faint fragrance of lavender.
+
+“You ought to charge extra for the view alone,” observed Gillian, going
+to one of the open lattice windows and looking across the rise and fall
+of hill and valley to where the distant slopes of Dartmoor, its craggy
+tors veiled in a grey-blue haze, rimmed the horizon.
+
+“I hope you didn’t think the terms too high?” said June. “You see, I--we
+never had paying-guests before, and I really didn’t know what would be
+considered fair. I do hope you’ll be happy and comfortable here,” she
+added timidly.
+
+There was something very appealing in her ingenuousness and wistful
+desire to please, and Magda reassured her quickly.
+
+“I haven’t any doubt about it,” she said, smiling. “This is such a
+charming house”--glancing about her--“so dear and old-fashioned. I think
+it’s very good of you to let us share your home for a little while. It
+will be a lovely holiday for us.”
+
+June Storran had no possibility of knowing that this dark, slender woman
+to whom she had let her rooms was the famous dancer, Magda Wielitzska,
+since the rooms had been engaged in the name of Miss Vallincourt, but
+she responded to Magda’s unfailing charm as a flower to the sun.
+
+“It will be lovely for us, too,” she replied. “Do you know, we were so
+frightened about putting in that advertisement you answered! Dan was
+terribly against it.” A troubled little frown knitted her level brows.
+“But we’ve had such bad luck on the farm since we were married--the rain
+spoilt all our crops last year and we lost several valuable animals--so
+I thought it would help a bit if we took paying-guests this summer. But
+Dan didn’t really approve.”
+
+“I can quite understand,” said Gillian. “Naturally he wanted to keep
+his home to himself--an Englishman’s home is his castle, you know! And I
+expect”--smilingly--“you haven’t been married very long.”
+
+Mrs. Storran flushed rosily. She was evidently a sensitive little
+person, and the blood came and went quickly under her clear skin at the
+least provocation.
+
+“Not very long,” she acknowledged. “But we’ve been very happy--in spite
+of our bad luck on the farm! After all, that’s what matters, isn’t it?”
+
+“It’s the only thing that really matters at all,” said Gillian. Her eyes
+had grown suddenly soft with some tender recollection of the past. “But
+you mustn’t let us give you a lot of trouble while we’re here. You don’t
+look over-strong.” Her glance rested kindly on her hostess’s young
+face. In spite of its dewy blue eyes and clear skin with the tinge
+of wild-rose pink in the cheeks, it conveyed a certain impression of
+fragility. She looked almost as though a vigorous puff of wind might
+blow her away.
+
+“Oh, I’m quite well. Of course I found looking after a farmhouse rather
+heavy work--just at first. I hadn’t been used to it, and we can’t afford
+to keep a servant. You see, I married Dan against the wishes of my
+people, so of course we couldn’t accept any help from them, though they
+have offered it.”
+
+“I don’t see why not,” objected Magda. “They can’t feel very badly about
+it if they are willing to help you.”
+
+“Oh, no--they would, gladly. But Dan would hate it in the circumstances.
+You can understand that, can’t you?”--appealingly. “He wants to justify
+himself--to prove that he can keep his own wife. He’d be too proud to
+let me take anything from them.”
+
+“Storran of Stockleigh appears to be considerably less attractive than
+his name,” summed up Gillian, as, half an hour later, she and Magda
+and Coppertop were seated round a rustic wooden table in the garden
+partaking of a typical Devonshire tea with its concomitants of jam and
+clotted cream.
+
+“Apparently,” she continued, “he has married ‘above him.’ Little Mrs.
+Storran obviously comes of good stock, while I expect he himself is just
+an ordinary sort of farmer and doesn’t half appreciate her. Anyway, he
+doesn’t seem to consider her much.”
+
+Magda made no answer. Characteristically her interest in June Storran
+had evaporated, pushed aside by something of more personal concern.
+
+“This is the most restful, peaceful spot I’ve ever struck,” she said,
+leaning back with a sigh of pleasure. “Isn’t it lovely, Gilly? There’s
+something homelike and friendly about the whole landscape--a sort of
+_intimate_ feeling. I feel as if I’d known it all for years--and should
+like to know it for years more! Don’t they say Devon folk always want to
+come home to die? I’m not surprised.”
+
+“Yes, it’s very beautiful,” agreed Gillian, her gaze resting contentedly
+on the gracious curves of green and golden fields, broken here and there
+by stretches of ploughed land glowing warmly red between the ripening
+corn and short-cropped pasture.
+
+“I believe I could be quite good here, Gillyflower,” pursued Magda
+reflectively. “Just live happily from one day to the next, breathing
+this glorious air, and eating plain, simple food, and feeding those
+adorable fluffy yellow balls Mrs. Storran calls chickens, and churning
+butter and--”
+
+Gillian’s ringing, whole-hearted laughter checked this enthusiastic
+epitome of the simple life.
+
+“Never, Magda!” she asserted, shaking her head. “I’m quite expecting
+you to get bored in about a week and to rush me off to Deauville or
+somewhere of that ilk. And as to being ‘good’--why, it isn’t in you!”
+
+“I’m not so sure.” Magda rose and together they strolled over the grass
+towards the house, Coppertop skirmishing happily behind them. “I really
+think I might be good here--if only for the sole reason that there’s no
+temptation to be anything else”--drily.
+
+As she spoke a gate clicked close at hand. Followed the sound of quick,
+striding steps, and the next moment a man’s figure rounded the tall yew
+hedge which skirted the foot of the garden and came towards them.
+
+He was a big giant of a man--at least six foot two in his socks, and
+proportionately broad and muscular in build. There was something free
+and bold in his swinging gait that seemed to challenge the whole world.
+It suggested an almost fierce independence of spirit that would give or
+take as it chose, but would never brook dictation from any man--or woman
+either.
+
+Instinctively Magda and Gillian paused, and Magda held out a slim hand,
+smiling, as he overtook them.
+
+“I’m sure you must be Mr. Storran,” she said.
+
+He halted abruptly and snatched off his cap, revealing a crop of crinkly
+dark-brown hair thatching a lean sunburnt face, out of which gleamed a
+pair of eyes as vividly blue as periwinkles.
+
+“Yes, I’m Dan Storran,” he said simply. “Is it Miss Vallincourt?”
+
+Magda nodded and proceeded to introduce Gillian. But Storran’s glance
+only rested cursorily on Gillian’s soft, pretty face, returning at once
+to Magda’s as though drawn thither by a magnet.
+
+“I’m sorry I couldn’t meet your train myself to-day,” he said, a note of
+eager apology in his voice.
+
+Magda smiled at him.
+
+“So am I,” she answered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+FOREBODINGS
+
+Gillian was sitting alone in the yew-hedged garden, her slim fingers
+busy repairing the holes which appeared with unfailing regularity in
+the heels of Coppertop’s stockings. From the moment he had come
+to Stockleigh the number and size of the said holes had increased
+appreciably, for, although five weeks had elapsed since the day of
+arrival, Coppertop was still revelling whole-heartedly in the incredible
+daily delights which, from the viewpoint of six years old, attach to a
+farm.
+
+Day after day found him trotting contentedly in the wake of the
+stockman, one Ned Honeycott, whom he had adopted as guide, philosopher,
+and friend, and whom he regarded as a veritable fount of knowledge and
+the provider of unlimited adventure and entertainment.
+
+It was Honeycott who lifted Coppertop on to the broad back of the
+steadiest cart-horse; who had taught him how to feed calves by dipping
+his chubby little hand into a pail of milk and then letting them suck
+the milk from off his fingers; who beneficently contrived that hardly
+a load of hay was driven to the great rick without Coppertop’s small
+person perched proudly aloft thereon, his slim legs dangling and his
+shrill voice joining with that of the carter in an encouraging “Come-up,
+Blossom,” to the bay mare as she plodded forward between the shafts.
+
+Gillian experienced no anxiety with regard to Coppertop’s safety
+while he was in Ned Honeycott’s charge, but she missed the childish
+companionship, the more so as she found herself frequently alone these
+days. June Storran was naturally occupied about her house and dairy,
+while Magda, under Dan Storran’s tutelage, appeared smitten with an
+extraordinary interest in farm management.
+
+It seemed to Gillian that Magda and Dan were in each other’s company the
+greater part of the time. Every day Dan had some suggestion or other to
+make for Miss Vallincourt’s amusement. Either it was: “Would you care to
+see the hay-loader at work?” Or: “I’ve just bought a couple of pedigree
+Devon cows I’d like to show you, Miss Vallincourt.” Or, as yesterday:
+“There’s a pony fair to be held to-morrow at Pennaway Bridge. Would you
+care to drive in it?” And to each and all of Storran’s suggestions Magda
+had yielded a ready assent.
+
+So this morning had seen the two of them setting out for Pennaway
+in Dan’s high dog-cart, while Gillian and June stood together in the
+rose-covered porch and watched them depart.
+
+“Wouldn’t you like to have gone?” Gillian asked on a sudden impulse.
+
+She regretted the question the instant it had passed her lips, for in
+the wide-apart blue eyes June turned upon her there was something of the
+mute, puzzled misery of a dog that has received an unexpected blow.
+
+“I couldn’t spare the time,” she answered hastily. “You see”--the
+sensitive colour as usual coming and going quickly in her face--“Miss
+Vallincourt is on a holiday.”
+
+She turned and went quickly into the house, leaving Gillian conscious of
+a sudden uneasiness--that queer “trouble ahead” feeling which descends
+upon us sometimes, without warning and without our being able to assign
+any very definite cause for it.
+
+She was thinking over the little incident now, as she sat sewing in the
+evening light, and meditating whether she should give Magda a hint that
+it might be kinder of her not to monopolise so much of Dan’s society.
+And then the crisp sound of a horse trotting on the hard, dry road came
+to her ears, and almost immediately the high dog-cart swung between the
+granite gateposts and clattered into the yard.
+
+Dan tossed the reins on to the horse’s neck and, springing to the
+ground, came round to help Magda down from the cart.
+
+“It’s rather a steep step. Let me lift you down,” he said.
+
+“Very well.”
+
+Magda stood up in the trap and looked down at him with smiling eyes,
+unconsciously delighting in his sheer physical good looks. He was a
+magnificent specimen of manhood, and the good yeoman blood in him,
+which had come down through the generations of the same sturdy stock,
+proclaimed itself in his fine physique and splendid virility.
+
+A moment later he had swung her down as easily as though she were a
+child, and she was standing beside him.
+
+She laughed up at him.
+
+“Oh, ‘girt Jan Ridd’!” she exclaimed softly.
+
+He laughed back, well pleased. (Was there ever a man who failed to be
+ridiculously flattered by a feminine tribute to his physical strength?)
+Nor did his hands release her quite at once.
+
+“You’re as light as a feather! I could carry you all day and--”
+
+“Not know it!” concluded Magda gaily.
+
+His hands fell away from her slim body abruptly.
+
+“Oh, I should know it right enough!” he said jerkily.
+
+His eyes kindled, and Magda, conscious of something suddenly disturbing
+and electric in the atmosphere, turned quickly and, leaving Storran to
+unharness the horse, made her way to where she espied Gillian sitting.
+
+The latter looked up from her sewing.
+
+“So you’ve got back? Did you have a good time?”
+
+“Yes. It was quite amusing. There were heaps and heaps of ponies--some
+of them wild, unbroken colts which had been brought straight off the
+Moor. They were rearing and plunging all over the place. I loved them!
+By the way, I’m gong to learn riding, Gillyflower. Mr. Storran has
+offered to teach me. He says he has a nice quiet mare I could start on.”
+
+A small frown puckered Gillian’s brows.
+
+“Do you think Mrs. Storran will like it?”
+
+Magda started.
+
+“Why on earth shouldn’t she?”
+
+“Well,”--Gillian spoke with a vague discomfort. “He’s her husband!”
+
+“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” replied Magda. “We’re staying
+here and, of course, the Storrans want to make it as nice as they can
+for us. Anyway, I’m going to take such goods as the gods provide.”
+
+She got up abruptly and went in the direction of the house, leaving
+Gillian to digest as best she might the hint that her interference was
+not likely to be either welcomed or effective.
+
+Left to herself, Gillian sighed unhappily. Almost she wished they
+had never come to Stockleigh, only that it was pure joy to her to see
+Coppertop’s rather thin little cheeks filling out and growing sunburnt
+and rosy. He had not picked up strength very readily after his attack of
+croup, and subsequently the intense heat in London had tried him a good
+deal.
+
+But she was gradually becoming apprehensive that disturbing consequences
+might accrue from Magda’s stay at Stockleigh Farm. A woman of her
+elusive charm, equipped with all the subtle lore that her environment
+had taught her, must almost inevitably hold for a man of Storran’s
+primitive way of life the fascination of something new and rather
+wonderful. To contrast his wife with her was to contrast a field-flower
+with some rare, exotic bloom, and Gillian was conscious of a sudden rush
+of sympathy for June’s unarmoured youth and inexperience.
+
+Magda’s curiously uncertain moods of late, too, had worried her not a
+little. She was unlike herself--at times brooding and introspective, at
+other times strung up to a species of forced gaiety--a gaiety which had
+the cold sparkle of frost or diamonds. With all her faults Magda had
+ever been lovably devoid of bitterness, but now it seemed as though she
+were developing a certain new quality of hardness.
+
+It puzzled Gillian, ignorant of that sudden discovery and immediate loss
+of the Garden of Eden. It might have been less of an enigma to old Lady
+Arabella, to whom the jigsaw puzzle of human motives and impulses was
+always a matter of absorbing interest, and who, as more or less an
+onlooker at life during the last thirty years, had become an adept in
+the art of fitting the pieces of the puzzle together.
+
+Magda herself was only conscious of an intense restlessness and
+dissatisfaction with existence in general. She reflected bitterly that
+she had been a fool to let slip her hold of herself--as she had done the
+night of Lady Arabella’s reception--even for a moment.
+
+It had been thoroughly drilled into her both by precept and example--her
+mother’s precept and her father’s example--that to let a man count for
+anything much in her life was the biggest mistake a woman could make,
+and Michael’s treatment of her had driven home the truth of all the
+warnings Diane had instilled.
+
+He had hurt her as she had never been hurt before, and all that she
+craved now was change. Change and amusement to drug her mind so that
+she need not think. Whether anyone else got hurt in the process was a
+question that never presented itself to her.
+
+She had not expected to find amusement at Stockleigh. She had been
+driven there by an overmastering desire to escape from London--for a
+few weeks, at least, to get right away from her accustomed life and from
+everyone who knew her. And at Stockleigh she had found Dan Storran.
+
+The homage that had leaped into his eyes the first moment they had
+rested on her, and which had slowly deepened as the days slipped by, had
+somehow soothed her, restoring her feminine poise which Michael’s sudden
+defection had shaken.
+
+She knew--as every woman always does know when a man is attracted by
+her--that she had the power to stir this big, primitive countryman,
+whose way of life had never before brought him into contact with her
+type of woman, just as she had stirred other men. And she carelessly
+accepted the fact, without a thought that in playing with Dan Storran’s
+emotions she was dealing with a man who knew none of the moves of
+the game, to whom the art of love-making as a pastime was an unknown
+quantity, and whose fierce, elemental passions, once aroused, might
+prove difficult to curb. He amused her and kept her thoughts off recent
+happenings, and for the moment that was all that mattered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+STORRAN OF STOCKLEIGH
+
+It was a glorious morning. The sun blazed like a great golden shield out
+of a cloudless sky, and hardly a breath of air stirred the foliage of
+the trees.
+
+Magda, to content an insatiable Coppertop, had good-naturally suffered
+herself to be dragged over the farm. They had visited the pigs--a new
+and numerous litter of fascinating black ones having recently made their
+debut into this world of sin--and had watched the cows being milked,
+and been chased by the irascible gander, and finally, laughing and
+breathless, they had made good their escape into the garden where
+Gillian sat sewing, and had flung themselves down exhaustedly on the
+grass at her feet.
+
+“I’m in a state of mental and moral collapse, Gilly,” declared Magda,
+fanning herself vigorously with a cabbage leaf. “Whew! It is hot! As
+soon as I can generate enough energy, I propose to bathe. Will you
+come?”
+
+Gillian shook her head lazily.
+
+“I think not to-day. I want to finish this overall for Coppertop. And
+it’s such a long trudge from here down to the river.”
+
+“Yes, I know.” Magda nodded. “It’s three interminable fields away--and
+the thistles and things prick one’s ankles abominably. Still, it’s
+lovely when you _do_ get there! I think I’ll go now”--springing up from
+the velvet turf--“before I get too lazy to move.”
+
+Gillian’s eyes followed her thoughtfully as she made her way into the
+house. She had never seen Magda so restless--she seemed unable to keep
+still a moment.
+
+Half an hour later Magda emerged from the house wrapped in a cloak,
+a little scarlet bathing-cap turbanning her dark hair, and a pair of
+sandals on the slim supple feet that had danced their way into the
+hearts of half of Europe.
+
+“Good-bye!” she called gaily, waving her hand. And went out by the
+wicket gate leading into the fields.
+
+There was not a soul in sight. Only the cows, their red, burnished
+coats gleaming like the skin of a horse-chestnut in the hot sun,
+cast ruminative glances at her white-cloaked figure as it passed, and
+occasionally a peacefully grazing sheep emitted an astonished bleat at
+the unusual vision and skedaddled away in a hurry.
+
+Magda emulated Agag in her progress across the field which intervened
+between the house and the river, now and then giving vent to a little
+cry of protest as a particularly prickly thistle or hidden trail of
+bramble whipped against her bare ankles.
+
+At last from somewhere near at hand came the cool gurgle of running
+water and, bending her steps in the direction of the sound, two minutes’
+further walking brought her to the brink of the river. Further up
+it came tumbling through the valley, leaping the rocks in a churning
+torrent of foam, a cloud of delicate up-flung spray feathering the air
+above it; but here there were long stretches of deep, smooth water
+where no boulder broke the surface into spume, and quiet pools where fat
+little trout heedlessly squandered the joyous moments of a precarious
+existence.
+
+Magda threw off her wrapper and, picking her way across the moss-grown
+rocks, paused for an instant on the bank, her slender figure, clad in
+its close-fitting scarlet bathing-suit, vividly outlined against the
+surrounding green of the landscape. Then she plunged in and struck out
+downstream, swimming with long, even strokes, the soft moorland water
+laving her throat like the touch of a satin-smooth hand.
+
+She was heading for a spot she knew of, a quarter of a mile below,
+where a wooden bridge spanned the river and the sun’s heat poured down
+unchecked by sheltering trees. Here she proposed to scramble out and
+bask in the golden warmth.
+
+She had just established herself on a big, sun-warmed boulder when
+a familiar step sounded on the bridge and Dan Storran’s tall figure
+emerged into view. He pulled up sharply as he caught sight of her, his
+face taking on a schoolboy look of embarrassment. Deauville _plage_,
+where people bathed in companionable parties and strolled in and out of
+the water as seemed good to them, was something altogether outside Dan’s
+ken.
+
+“Oh, I’m sorry,” he began, flushing uncomfortably.
+
+Magda waved to him airily.
+
+“You needn’t be. I’m having a sun-bath. You can stay and talk to me if
+you like. Or are you too busy farming this morning?”
+
+“No, I’m not too busy,” he said slowly.
+
+There was a curious dazzled look in his eyes as they rested on her.
+Sheathed in the stockingette bathing-suit she wore, every line and curve
+of her supple body was revealed. Her wet, white limbs gleamed pearl-like
+in the quivering sunlight. The beauty of her ran through his veins like
+wine.
+
+“Then come and amuse me!” Magda patted the warm surface of the rock
+beside her invitingly. “You can give me a cigarette to begin with.”
+
+Storran sat down and pulled out his case. As he held a match for her to
+light up from, his hand brushed hers and he drew it away sharply. It was
+trembling absurdly.
+
+He sat silent for a moment or two; then he said with an odd abruptness:
+
+“I suppose you find it frightfully dull down here?”
+
+Magda laughed a little.
+
+“Is that because I told you to come and amuse me? . . . No, I don’t find
+it dull. Change is never really dull.”
+
+“Well, you must find it change enough here from the sort of life you’ve
+been accustomed to lead.”
+
+“How do you know what sort of life I lead?”--teasingly.
+
+“I can guess. One has only to look at you. You’re different--different
+from everyone about here. The way you move--you’re like a thoroughbred
+amongst cart-horses.” He spoke with a kind of sullen bitterness.
+
+Magda drew her feet up on to the rock and clasped her hands round her
+knees.
+
+“Now you’re talking nonsense, you know,” she said amusedly. “Frankly,
+I like it down here immensely. I happened to be--rather worried when
+I came away from London, and there’s something very soothing and
+comforting about the country--particularly your lovely Devon country.”
+
+“Worried?” Storran’s face darkened. “Who’d been worrying you?”
+
+“Oh”--vaguely. “All sorts of things. Men--and women. But don’t let’s
+talk about worries to-day. This glorious sunshine makes me feel as
+though there weren’t any such things in the world.”
+
+She leaned back, stretching her arms luxuriously above her head with
+the lithe, sensuous grace of movement which her training had made second
+nature. Storran’s eyes dwelt on her with a queer tensity of expression.
+Every gesture, every tone of her curiously attractive voice, held for
+him a disturbing allure which he could not analyse and against which he
+was fighting blindly.
+
+He had never doubted his love for his wife. Quite honestly he had
+believed her the one woman in the world when he married her. Yet now he
+was beginning to find every hour a blank that did not bring him sight
+or sound of this other woman--this woman with her slender limbs and skin
+like a stephanotis petal, and her long Eastern eyes with the subtle lure
+which seemed to lie in their depths. Beside her June’s young peach-bloom
+prettiness faded into something colourless and insignificant.
+
+“It must be nice to be you”--Magda nodded at him. “With no vague,
+indefinable sort of things to worry you.”
+
+He smiled reluctantly.
+
+“How do you know I haven’t?”
+
+“Oh, because I do.”
+
+“A woman’s reason!”
+
+“Quite. But women’s reasons are generally very sound--we were endowed
+with a sixth sense, you know! Besides--it’s obvious, isn’t it? Here you
+are--you and June--living a simple, primitive kind of existence, all to
+yourselves, like Adam and Eve. And if you do have a worry it’s a real
+definite one--as when a cow inconveniently goes and dies or your root
+crop fails. Nothing intangible and uncertain about that!”
+
+“Have you forgotten that the serpent intruded even upon Adam and Eve?”
+ he asked quietly.
+
+She laughed.
+
+“Is that a hit at Gillian and me? I know--June told us--that you were
+horribly opposed to anyone’s coming here for the summer. I thought that
+you had got over that by now?”
+
+“So I have”--bluntly.
+
+“Then we’re not--not unwelcome visitors any longer?” the soft,
+tantalising voice went on. The low cadence of it seemed to tug at his
+very heartstrings.
+
+He leaned nearer to her and, catching both her hands in his, twisted her
+round so that she faced him.
+
+“Why do you ask?” he demanded, his voice suddenly roughened and uneven.
+
+“Because I wanted to know--of course!”--lightly.
+
+“Then--you’re not an unwelcome visitor. You never have been! From the
+moment you came the place was different somehow. When you go----”
+
+He stopped as though startled by the sound of his own words--struck by
+the full significance of them.
+
+“When you go!” he repeated blankly. His grip of her slight hands
+tightened till it was almost painful. “But you won’t go! I can’t let you
+go now! Magda--”
+
+The situation was threatening to get out of hand. Magda drew quickly
+away from him, springing to her feet.
+
+“Don’t talk like that,” she said hastily. “You don’t mean it, you know.”
+
+With a sudden, unexpected movement she slipped from his side and ran
+down to the river’s edge. He caught a flashing glimpse of scarlet, heard
+the splash as her slim body cleaved the water, and a moment later all he
+could see was the red of her turban cap, bobbing like a scarlet poppy
+on the surface of the river, and the glimmer of a moon-white arm and
+shoulder as a smooth overhand stroke bore her swiftly away from him.
+
+He stood staring after her, conscious of a sudden bewildered sense of
+check and thwarting. The blood seemed leaping in his veins. His heart
+thudded against his ribs. He stepped forward impetuously as though to
+plunge in after the receding gleam of scarlet still flickering betwixt
+the branches which overhung the river.
+
+Then, with a stifled exclamation, he drew back, brushing his hand across
+his eyes as though to clear their vision. What mad impulse was this
+urging him on to say and do such things as he had never before conceived
+himself saying or doing?
+
+Magda had checked him on the brink of telling her--what? The sweat broke
+out on his forehead as the realisation surged over him.
+
+“God!” he muttered. “God!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE LATEST NEWS
+
+Magda hardly knew what impulse had bidden her save Dan Storran from
+himself--check the hot utterance to which he had so nearly given voice
+and which to a certain extent she had herself provoked. Driven by the
+bitterness of spirit which Michael’s treatment of her had engendered,
+she knew that she had flirted outrageously with Dan ever since she
+had come to Stockleigh. She had bestowed no thought on June--pretty,
+helpless June, watching with distressed, bewildered eyes while Dan
+unaccountably changed towards her, his moods alternating from sullen
+unresponsiveness to a kind of forced and contrite tenderness which she
+had found almost more difficult to meet and understand.
+
+It was indeed something altogether apart from any sympathy for June
+which had prompted Magda to leave Storran before he uttered words that
+he might regret, but which no power on earth could ever recall. Still
+beneath the resentment and wounded pride which Michael’s going had
+caused her flickered the spark of an ideal utterly at variance with the
+whole tenor of the teaching of poor Diane’s last embittered days--the
+ideal of womanhood which had been Michael’s. And the impulse which had
+bade her leave Storran so abruptly was born of the one-time resolution
+she had made to become the sort of woman Michael would wish his wife to
+be.
+
+She felt oddly perturbed when at last she reached the seclusion of her
+chintzy bedroom underneath the sloping roof. A vague sense of shame
+assailed her. The game, as between herself and Dan, was hardly a
+fair one, after all, and she could well picture the cold contempt in
+Michael’s eyes had he been looking on at it.
+
+Though he had no right to disapprove of her now! He had forfeited
+that right--if he had ever had it--when he went away without a word
+of farewell--without giving her even the chance to appeal against the
+judgment which, by his very going, he had silently pronounced against
+her.
+
+For months, now, she had been a prey to a conflicting jumble of
+emotions--the pain and hurt pride which Michael’s departure had
+occasioned her, the craving for anything that might serve to distract
+her thoughts and keep them from straying back to those few vibrant
+meetings with him, and deep down within her an aching, restless wonder
+as to whether she would ever see him again.
+
+With an effort she dismissed the fresh tangle of thought provoked by
+the morning’s brief scene with Dan Storran, and, dressing quickly,
+went downstairs to the mid-day dinner which was the order of things at
+Stockleigh.
+
+At first the solid repast, with its plentitude of good farmhouse fare
+partaken of during the hottest hour of the day, had somewhat appalled
+Magda. But now she had grown quite accustomed to the appearance of a
+roast joint or of a smoking, home-cured ham, attended by a variety of
+country vegetables and followed by fruit tart and clotted cream.
+
+Although she herself, as befitted a woman whose “figure was her
+fortune” according to Lady Arabella, partook extremely sparingly of this
+hospitable meal, it somehow pleased her to see big Dan Storran come in
+from his work in the fields and do full justice to the substantial
+fare. To Magda, ultra-modern and over-civilised as she was, there was
+something refreshing in the simple and primitive usages of Stockleigh
+Farm and its master--this man who toiled, and satisfied his hunger, and
+rested from toil, just as his fathers had done before him, literally
+fulfilling the law: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.
+
+And perhaps if Magda had never crossed his path Dan Storran might have
+gone his way contentedly, toiling from sun-up to sun-down till all his
+days were finished.
+
+Even although she had crossed it, she might still have left him pretty
+much as she found him--unawakened to the deeps of his own nature--if
+she had remained in her present ambiguous mood, half-remorseful, half
+indifferent. But it was precisely at this particular juncture that it
+pleased Fate to give a fresh twist to her swiftly turning wheel.
+
+Storran did not come in until dinner was half over, and when finally he
+appeared he was somewhat taciturn and avoided meeting Magda’s eyes. June
+got up from the table and went dutifully into the kitchen to fetch the
+joint of meat and vegetables which she had been keeping hot for him
+there. Abruptly Dan followed her.
+
+“Sorry I’m late, June,” he said awkwardly. “Here, give the tray to me;
+I’ll carry it in.”
+
+June paused in the middle of the kitchen, flushing right up to the soft
+tendrils of hair that curled about her forehead. It was weeks since Dan
+had offered to relieve her of any of her housewifely tasks, although at
+one time he had been wont to hurry home, if he could manage to do so, on
+purpose to help her. Dozens of times they had laid the table together,
+punctuating the process with jokes and gay little bursts of laughter and
+an odd kiss or two thrown in to sweeten the work. But not lately--not
+since the visitors from London had come to Stockleigh Farm.
+
+So June blushed and looked at her husband with eyes that were suddenly
+sweet and questioning. She knew, though she had not told him yet, that
+there was a reason now why he should try to save her when his greater
+strength could do so, and for a moment she wondered shyly if he had
+guessed.
+
+“Why, Dan, Dan----” she stammered.
+
+His face darkened. Her obvious surprise irritated him, pricking his
+conscience.
+
+“It’s not very complimentary of you to look so taken aback when I offer
+to carry something for you,” he said. “Anyone might think I never did
+wait on my wife.”
+
+The blood drained away from June’s face as suddenly as it had rushed
+there.
+
+“Well, you don’t often, do you?” she returned shortly.
+
+They re-entered the sitting-room together and Magda glanced up, smiling
+approval. She, too, was feeling somewhat conscience-stricken, and to see
+Dan helping his wife in this everyday, intimate sort of fashion seemed
+to minimise the significance of that little incident which had occurred
+by the river’s edge.
+
+“What a nice, polite husband!” she commented gaily. “Mr. Storran, you
+really out to come up to London and give classes--‘Manners for Men,’ you
+know. Very few of them wait on their wives these days.”
+
+June upset the salt and busied herself spooning it up again from the
+cloth. There was no answering smile on her face. She was not quite clear
+_why_ Dan had followed her out into the kitchen so unexpectedly, but she
+sensed that it was not the old, quick impulse to wait upon her which had
+actuated him.
+
+Had she but known it, it was the same instinct, more primitively
+manifested, which induces a man whose conscience is not altogether clear
+respecting his loyalty towards his wife to bring her home an unexpected
+gift of jewellery.
+
+The disturbing memory of a lithe, scarlet-sheathed figure had been with
+Dan all morning as he went about his work, and he was sullenly ashamed
+of the riot which the vision occasioned within him and of his own utter
+helplessness to master it. It--it was damnable! So he accompanied his
+wife to the kitchen and offered to carry in the joint.
+
+Following upon this incident the atmosphere seemed to become all at once
+constrained and difficult. June sat very silent, her eyes holding that
+expression of pain and bewilderment which was growing habitual to them,
+while Storran hurried through his meal in the shortest possible time.
+As soon as he had finished he pushed back his chair abruptly and, with
+a muttered apology, quitted the room and went out again on to the farm.
+June rose and began clearing the table mechanically.
+
+“Can’t I help you?” Gillian paused as she was about to follow Magda out
+of the room. “You look so tired to-day.”
+
+June’s lip quivered sensitively. She was in the state of nerves when a
+little unexpected sympathy is the most upsetting thing imaginable.
+
+“Oh, I can’t let you!” she answered hastily. “No--really!”--as Gillian
+calmly took the tray she was carrying out of her hands.
+
+“Supposing you go and lie down for a little while,” suggested Gillian
+practically. “And leave the washing-up to Coppertop and me!”
+
+The tears suddenly brimmed up into the wide-open blue eyes.
+
+“Oh, I couldn’t!”
+
+“Wouldn’t you like a little rest?” urged Gillian persuasively. “I
+believe you’d be asleep in two minutes!”
+
+“I believe I should,” acknowledged June faintly. “I--I haven’t been
+sleeping very well lately.”
+
+A little shudder ran through her as she recalled those long hours each
+night when she lay at Dan’s side, staring wide-eyed into the darkness
+and wondering dully what it was that had come between herself and her
+husband--come just at the time when, with his unborn child beneath her
+heart, they two should have been drawn together in to the most wonderful
+and blessed comradeship and understanding. Only Dan didn’t know
+this--didn’t know that before the snowdrops lifted their white heads
+again from the green carpet of spring there would be a little son--June
+was sure it would be a son, to grow up tall and strong like Dan
+himself!--born of the love which had once been so sweet and untroubled
+by any creeping doubts.
+
+“I assure you”--Gillian broke in on the miserable thoughts that were
+chasing each other through June’s tired brain--“I assure you, Coppertop
+and I are very competent people. We won’t break a single dish!”
+
+“But you’ve never been used to that kind of thing--washing-up!”
+ protested June, glancing significantly at Gillian’s white hands and
+soft, pretty frock of hyacinth muslin.
+
+“Haven’t I?” Gillian laughed gaily. “I haven’t always been as well off
+as I am not, and I expect I know quite as much about doing ‘chores’ as
+you! Come now!” She waited expectantly.
+
+“Dan would be awfully angry if he knew--it’s my duty, you see,” objected
+June, visibly weakening.
+
+“If he knew! But what a husband doesn’t know his heart doesn’t grieve
+over,” replied Gillian sagely. “There, that’s settled. Come along
+upstairs and let me tuck you up in your bed, and leave the rest to
+Coppertop and me.”
+
+And June, with her heart suddenly warmed and comforted in the way in
+which an unexpected kindness does warm and comfort, went very willingly
+and, tired out in body and mind, fell asleep in ten minutes.
+
+Meanwhile Magda had established herself in the hammock slung from the
+boughs of one of the great elms which shaded the garden. She had brought
+a book with her, since her thoughts were none too pleasant company just
+at the moment, and was speedily absorbed in its contents.
+
+It was very soothing and tranquil out there in the noonday heat. The
+gnats hovered in the sunlight, dancing and whirling in little transient
+clusters; now and again a ladybird flickered by or a swallow swooped so
+near that his darting shadow fell across her book; while all about her
+sounded the pleasant hum of a summer’s day--the soft susurration of the
+pleasant hum of a thousand insect voices blending into an indefinite,
+murmurous vibration of the air.
+
+Occasionally the whir of a motor-car sweeping along the adjacent road
+broke harshly across the peaceful quiet. Magda glanced up with some
+annoyance as the first one sped by, dragging her back to an unwilling
+sense of civilisation. Then she bent her head resolutely above her
+book and declined to be distracted any further, finally losing herself
+completely in the story she was reading.
+
+So it came about that when a long, low, dust-powdered car curved in
+between the granite gateposts of Stockleigh Farm and came abruptly to a
+standstill, she remained entirely oblivious of its advent. Nor did
+she see the tall, slender-limbed man who had been driving, and whose
+questing hazel eyes had descried her almost immediately, slip from his
+seat behind the steering-wheel and come across the grass towards her.
+
+“_Antoine!_”
+
+The book fell from her hand and she sat up suddenly in the hammock.
+
+“What on earth are you doing here?” she demanded. There was no welcome
+in her tone.
+
+For a moment Davilof remained watching her, the sunshine, slanting
+between the leaves of the trees, throwing queer little flickering lights
+into the hazel eyes and glinting on his golden-brown hair and beard.
+
+“What are you doing here?” she repeated.
+
+“I came--to see you,” he said simply.
+
+There was something disarming in the very simplicity of his reply. It
+seemed to imply an almost child-like wonder that she should ask--that
+there could possibly be any other reason for his presence.
+
+But it failed to propitiate Magda in the slightest degree. She felt
+intensely annoyed that anyone from the outside world--from her world of
+London--should have intruded upon her seclusion at Ashencombe, nor could
+she imagine how Davilof had discovered her retreat.
+
+“How did you learn I was here?” she asked.
+
+“From Melrose.”
+
+Magda’s eyes darkened sombrely.
+
+“Do you mean you bribed him?” she asked quickly. “Oh, but surely
+not!”--in dismayed tones. “Melrose would go to the stake sooner than
+accept a bribe!”
+
+Davilof’s mouth twisted in a rueful smile.
+
+“I’m sure he would! I tried him, but he wouldn’t look at a bribe of any
+sort. So I had to resort to strategy. It was one evening, when he was
+taking your letters to post, and I waited for him at the pillar-box.
+I came up very quietly behind him and just nipped one of the letters,
+readdressed to you, out of his hand. I read the address and then posted
+the letter for him. It was very simple.”
+
+He recounted the incident with a little swaggering air of bravado,
+boyishly delighted at the success of his small ruse. Vexed as she
+was Magda could hardly refrain from smiling; the whole thing was so
+eminently un-English--so exactly like Davilof!
+
+“Well, now that you have seen me, will you please go away again?” she
+said coolly, reopening her book as though to end the conversation.
+
+He regarded her with unqualified reproach.
+
+“Won’t you even ask me to tea?” he said plaintively.
+
+“Certainly not,” Magda was beginning. But precisely as she spoke June
+Storran, looking more herself again after her short sleep, came towards
+them from the house.
+
+Her face brightened as she caught sight of Davilof. Even to June’s
+inexperienced eyes it was quite obvious that he admired the woman
+with whom he was talking. The very way he looked at her told her
+that. Presumably he was one of her London friends who had motored
+to Devonshire to see her. No man--within the limited scope of June’s
+knowledge of men--did that deliciously absurd, extravagant kind of thing
+unless he was tremendously in love. Nor would any nice woman let a man
+take such a journey on her behalf unless she reciprocated his feelings.
+Of this June--whose notions were old-fashioned--felt assured. So her
+spirits rose accordingly. Since, if these two were on the verge of
+becoming engaged, the mere fact would clear away the indefinable shadows
+which seemed to have been menacing her own happiness from the time Miss
+Vallincourt had come to Stockleigh.
+
+“Tea is just ready,” she announced, approaching. “Will you come in? And
+perhaps your friend will have tea with us?” she added shyly.
+
+Davilof was presented and June repeated her invitation. He shot a glance
+of triumph at Magda.
+
+“I shall be delighted, madame,” he said, giving June one of his quaint
+little foreign bows. “But--the sun is shining so gloriously--might we
+not have it out here?”
+
+June looked round her doubtfully. As is often the case with people born
+and bred in the country, it never occurred to the Storrans to have the
+family meals out-of-doors, and June felt considerable misgiving as to
+whether Dan would appreciate the innovation.
+
+“Ah, please, madame!” pleaded Davilof persuasively. “Let us have it
+here--under this tree. Why, the tree grows here expressly for the
+purpose!”
+
+Davilof had all the charm of his nationality, and June capitulated,
+retreating to make the necessary arrangements.
+
+“I don’t fancy Dan Storran will at all approve of the alteration from
+his usual customs which you’ve engineered,” observed Magda when they
+were again alone.
+
+“Dan Storran?” Davilof’s glance flashed over her face, searching,
+questioning.
+
+“The owner of the place. He’s been teaching me to ride,” she added
+inconsequently.
+
+“Who is he?”--with swift jealousy. “The little fair-haired lady’s
+brother?”
+
+“No, her husband. I said _Mrs._ Storran.”
+
+Davilof’s interest waned suddenly.
+
+“Did you?”--indifferently. “I didn’t notice. She’s a pretty little
+person.”
+
+Magda agreed absently. A fresh difficulty had occurred to her; Davilof
+might chance to give away to the Storrans the secret of her identity.
+
+“Oh, by the way,” she said hurriedly. “They don’t know me here as Magda
+Wielitzska. I’m plain Miss Vallincourt to them--enjoying the privileges
+of being a nobody! You’ll be sure to remember, won’t you?” He nodded,
+and she pursued more lightly: “And now, as you insist on having your tea
+here, you might begin to earn it by telling me the latest London gossip.
+We hear nothing at all down here. We don’t even get a London newspaper.
+
+“I don’t think there is much news. There never is at this time of the
+year. Everybody’s out of town.”
+
+He vouchsafed one or two items concerning mutual friends--an engagement
+here, a forthcoming divorce there. So-and-so was in Italy and Mrs.
+Somebody Else was said to have eloped with a well-known actor-manager
+to America--all the odds and ends of gossip that runs like wildfire over
+the social prairie.
+
+“Oh, by the way,” he went on, “your artist friend--”
+
+“Which artist friend?” Magda interrupted almost rudely. She was moved by
+a perfectly irrational impulse to stop him, to delay what he had to say.
+
+“Why, Quarrington--Michael Quarrington. It seems he has married a
+Spanish woman--a rather lovely person who had been sitting to him for
+one of his pictures. That’s the latest bit of news.”
+
+For an instant it seemed to Magda as though the whole world stood
+still--gripped in a strange, soundless stillness like the catastrophic
+pause which for an infinitesimal space of time succeeds a bad accident.
+Then she heard herself saying:
+
+“Really? Where did you hear that?”
+
+“Oh, there’ve been several rumours of a beautiful Spaniard whom he has
+been using as a model. The Arlingtons were travelling in Spain and saw
+her. Mrs. A. said she was a glorious creature--a dancer. And the other
+day I saw in one of the papers--the _Weekly Gossip_ I think it was--that
+he’d married her.”
+
+The carelessly spoken words drove at Magda with the force of utter
+certainty. It was true, then--quite true! The fact that the Spaniard
+had been a dancer gave an irrefutable reality to the tale; Michael so
+worshipped every form of dancing.
+
+“Never give your heart to any man.” Her mother’s last cynical warning
+beat in Magda’s brain with a dull iteration that almost maddened her.
+She put her hand up to her throat, feeling as if she were choking.
+
+Then, dimly, as though from a great way off, she heard Antoine’s voice
+again:
+
+“I’m glad Quarrington’s married. He was the man who saved you in the
+fog--you remember?--and I’ve always been afraid you might get to care
+for him.”
+
+Magda was conscious of one thing and one thing only--that somewhere,
+deep down inside her, everything had turned to ice. She knew she would
+never feel anything again--much. . . . She thought death must come like
+that sometimes--just one thrust of incredible, immeasurable agony, and
+then a dull, numbed sense of finality.
+
+“. . . afraid you might get to care for him.” The meaning of Antoine’s
+last words slowly penetrated her mind. She gave a hard little laugh.
+
+“Why should I? Does one ‘get to care’ for a man just because he does the
+only obvious thing there is to do in an emergency?”
+
+She was surprised to hear how perfectly natural her voice sounded. It
+was quite steady. Reassured, she went on, shrugging her shoulders:
+
+“Besides--do I ever care?”
+
+Antoine, sitting on the grass at her feet, suddenly raised himself a
+little and put his hand over hers as they lay very still and folded on
+her lap.
+
+“You shall care--some time,” he said in a low, tense voice. “I swear
+it!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+DAN STORRAN’S AWAKENING
+
+“Fairy Lady, we’re going to have a picnic tea!”
+
+Coppertop’s excited voice, shrilling across the garden as he came racing
+over the grass, put an abrupt end to a scene that was threatening to
+develop along the familiar tempestuous lines dictated by Antoine’s
+temperament.
+
+The child’s advent was somewhat differently received--by Magda with
+unmixed relief, by Antoine with a baulked gesture of annoyance. However,
+he recovered himself almost immediately, and when, a moment later, June
+reappeared, laden with the paraphernalia for tea, he rushed forward with
+his usual charming manners to assist her.
+
+Presently Gillian joined them, exclaiming with surprise as she perceived
+who was the visitor.
+
+“Why, this is like a bit of London appearing in our very midst,” she
+declared, shaking hands with Davilof. “Where have you hailed from? I
+heard the car but never suspected you were the arrival.”
+
+“I’m on holiday,” he replied. “And it struck me”--his hazel eyes smiled
+straight into hers--“that Devonshire might be a very delightful place in
+which to spend my holiday.”
+
+Magda looked up suddenly from stirring her tea.
+
+“I think you’ve made a mistake, Davilof,” she said curtly. “You’re not
+likely to enjoy a holiday in Devonshire.”
+
+June, innocently unaware of any double entente in Magda’s speech,
+glanced across at her in astonishment.
+
+“Oh, but why not, Miss Vallincourt? Devon is a lovely county; most
+people like it so much. But perhaps you don’t care for the country,
+Mr.--Mr. Davilof?” She stumbled a little over the foreign name.
+
+“I think it would depend upon who my neighbours were--whether I liked it
+or nor,” he returned, meeting Magda’s glance challengingly over the top
+of June’s head, bent above the teacups. “I feel sure I should like it
+here. And there is a charming little inn at Ashencombe where one might
+stop.”
+
+Gillian divined that a veiled passage of arms between Magda and the
+musician underlay the light discussion. Moreover--though she had no
+clue to the cause--she was sensitively conscious that the former was
+not quite herself. She had seen that white, set look on her face before.
+Something had distressed her, and Gillian felt apprehensive lest Davilof
+had been the bearer of unwelcome tidings. It was either that, or else
+he must have succeeded in frictioning Magda in some way himself, since,
+beyond flinging an occasional double-edged sentence in his direction,
+she seemed absent and disinclined to take part in the conversation.
+
+It was almost a relief to Gillian when Dan Storran appeared, although
+the recollection of the strained atmosphere which had attended the
+previous meal did not hold out much promise of better things to come.
+His face was still clouded and he glowered at the tea-table under the
+elms with dissatisfied eyes.
+
+“What on earth’s the meaning of this?” he demanded ungraciously of his
+wife. “Is it some newfangled notion that’s got you?”
+
+June coloured up nervously, and was about to falter an explanation of
+the innovation when Magda suddenly took the matter out of her hands.
+
+“There’s nothing newfangled about tea out-of-doors, on a glorious day
+like this,” she said. “It’s the only sensible thing to do. You don’t
+really mind, do you?”
+
+She smiled up at him provocatively and his sombre face lightened.
+
+“Not if you like it,” he replied shortly.
+
+“Well, I do. So sit down and be pleased--instead of looking like a
+thundercloud, please.” The softness in her voice robbed the speech of
+its sharpness. “I have a friend here--and we’re having tea outside in
+his honour.”
+
+She introduced the two men, who exchanged a few commonplace words--each,
+meanwhile, taking the measure of the other through eyes that were
+frankly hostile. They were of such dissimilar type that there was
+practically no common ground upon which they could meet, and with the
+swift, unerring intuition of the lover each had recognised the other as
+standing in some relationship to Magda which premised a just cause for
+jealousy. Both men endeavoured to secure her undivided attention and,
+failing lamentably, their mutual antagonism deepened, smouldering
+visibly beneath the stiff platitudes they exchanged with one another.
+
+Gillian, thrust rather into the position of an onlooker, watched
+the proceedings with amused eyes--her amusement only tempered by the
+slightly apprehensive feeling concerning Magda of which she had been
+vaguely conscious from the first moment she had found her in Davilof’s
+company, and which continued to obsess her.
+
+True, she no longer wore that set, still look which Gillian had observed
+on her face prior to Dan Storran’s appearance upon the scene. But even
+when she smiled and talked, playing the men off one against the other
+with a deft skill that was inimitable, there seemed a curious new
+hardness underlying it all--a certain reckless deviltry for which
+Gillian was at a loss to account.
+
+June watched, too, with troubled eyes. Half an hour ago she had been
+feeling ridiculously happy, comfortably assured in her own mind that
+this tall, rather exquisite foreigner and the woman whose presence
+in her home had occasioned so much bitter heart-burning were only
+hesitating, as it were, on the brink of matrimony. And now--now she did
+not know what to think! Miss Vallincourt was treating Davilof with an
+airy negligence that to June’s honest and candid soul seemed altogether
+incompatible with such circumstances.
+
+Meanwhile, with her own ears attuned to catch each varying shade of
+Dan’s beloved voice, she could not but perceive its change of quality,
+slight, but unmistakable, when he spoke to Magda--the sudden deepening
+of it--and the unconscious self-betrayal of his glance as it rested
+on her. It was a relief when at last he got up and moved off, excusing
+himself on the plea that he had some work he must attend to. As he shook
+hands with Davilof the eyes of the two men met, hard as steel and as
+hostile.
+
+Storran’s departure was the signal for the breaking-up of the party.
+June returned to the house, while Gillian allowed herself to be carried
+off by Coppertop to visit the calves, which were a never-failing source
+of interest to him.
+
+Left alone, an awkward pause ensued between Davilof and Magda, backwash
+of the obvious clash of antagonism between the two men.
+
+“So!” commented Davilof, at last. “It looks as though there might be
+another Raynham episode down here before long.”
+
+The colour rushed up into Magda’s face.
+
+“Don’t you think that remark is in rather bad taste?” she replied icily.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Perhaps it was. But the men who love you get rather beyond considering
+the matter of good or bad taste.”
+
+She made a petulant gesture.
+
+“Oh, don’t begin that old subject again. We’ve had it all out before.
+It’s finished.”
+
+“It’s not finished.”
+
+There was a clipped, curt force about the brief denial. The
+good-humoured, big-child mood in which Davilof had joyously narrated to
+her how he had circumvented the unfortunate Melrose had passed, leaving
+the man--turbulent and passionately demanding as of old.
+
+“It’s not finished,” he repeated. “It never will be--till you’re my
+wife.”
+
+Magda laughed lightly.
+
+“Then I’m afraid it will have to remain unfinished--a
+continued-in-our-next kind of thing. For I certainly haven’t the least
+intention of becoming your wife. Do understand that I _mean_ it. And
+please go away. You had no business to come down here at all.”
+
+A smouldering fire lit itself in his eyes.
+
+“No!” he said, taking a step nearer her. “No! I’m not going. I came
+because I can’t bear it any longer without you. Since you went away I’ve
+been half-mad, I think. I can’t eat or sleep! I can’t even play!”--he
+flung out his sensitive musician’s hands in a gesture of despair.
+
+Magda glanced at him quickly. It was true. The man looked as though
+he had been suffering. She had not noticed it before. His face had
+altered--worn a trifle fine; the line from chin to cheek-bone had
+hollowed somewhat and his eyes held a certain feverish brightness. But
+although she could see the alteration, it did not move her in the least.
+She felt perfectly indifferent. It was as though the band of ice
+which seemed to have clasped itself about her heart when she heard of
+Michael’s marriage had frozen her capacity for feeling anything at all.
+
+“I thought once”--Davilof was speaking again--“I thought once that you
+had said ‘no’ to me because of Quarrington. But now I know you never
+cared for him----”
+
+“How do you know?”
+
+The question sprang from her lips before she was aware.
+
+“How do I know?” Davilof laughed harshly. “Why, because the man who was
+loved by Magda Wielitzska wouldn’t marry any other woman. There would be
+no other woman in the world for him. . . . There’s no other woman in the
+world for me.” His control was rapidly deserting him. “Magda, I can’t
+live without you! I’ve told you--I can neither eat nor sleep. I burn for
+you! If you refuse to give yourself to me, you destroy me!”
+
+Swept by an emotion stronger than himself, his acquired Englishisms went
+by the board. He was all Pole in the picturesque ardour of his speech.
+
+Magda regarded him calmly.
+
+“My dear Davilof,” she said quietly. “What weight do you suppose such an
+argument would have with me?”
+
+The cool, ironic little question, with its insolent indifference,
+checked him like the flick of a lash across the face. He turned away.
+
+“None, I suppose,” he admitted bitterly. “You are fire and flame--but
+within, you are ice.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, almost as though to herself. “Within, I’m ice. I
+believe that’s true.”
+
+“True!” he repeated. “Of course it’s true. If it were not----”
+
+A slight smile tilted her mouth.
+
+“Well?” she echoed. “If it were not?”
+
+He swung round. With a quick stride he was beside her. His eyes blazing
+with a sudden fury of passion and resentment, he caught her by the
+shoulders, forcing her to face him.
+
+“God!” he muttered thickly. “What are you made of? You make men go
+through hell for you! Even here--here in this little country place--you
+do it! Storran’s wife--one can see her heart breaks, and it is you who
+are breaking it. Yet nothing touches you! You’ve no conscience like
+other women--no heart--”
+
+Magda pulled herself out of his grasp.
+
+“Oh, do forget that I’m a woman, Davilof! I’m a dancer. Nothing else
+matters. I don’t want to be troubled with a heart. And--and I think they
+left out my soul.”
+
+“Yes,” he agreed with intense bitterness. “I think they did. One day,
+Magda some man will kill you. You’ll try him too far.”
+
+“Indeed? Is that what you contemplate doing when you finally lose
+patience with me?”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“I shall not lose patience--until you are another man’s wife,” he said
+quietly. “And I don’t intend you to be that.”
+
+
+
+An hour later, Gillian, having dispatched her small son to bed and seen
+him safely tucked up between the lavender-scented sheets, discovered
+Magda alone in the low-raftered sitting-room. She was lying back idly in
+a chair, her hands resting on the arms, in her eyes a curious abstracted
+look as though she were communing with herself.
+
+Apparently she was too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice Gillian’s
+entrance, for she did not speak.
+
+“What are you thinking about? Planning a new dance that shall out-vie
+_The Swan-Maiden_?” asked Gillian at last, for the sake of something to
+say. The silence and Magda’s strange aloofness frightened her in some
+way.
+
+It was quite a moment before Magda made any answer. When she did, it was
+to say with a bitter kind of wonder in her voice:
+
+“What centuries ago it seems since the first night of _The
+Swan-Maiden_!”
+
+“It’s not very long,” began Gillian, then checked herself and asked
+quickly: “Is there anything the matter, Magda? Did Antoine bring you bad
+news of some kind?”
+
+“He brought me the offering of his hand and heart. That’s no news, is
+it?”
+
+The opening was too good to be lost. With the remembrance of June’s
+wistful face before her eyes, Gillian plunged in recklessly.
+
+“Apropos of such offerings--don’t you think it would be wiser if you
+weren’t quite so nice to Dan Storran?”
+
+“Am I nice to him?”
+
+“Too much so for my peace of mind--or his! It worries me, Magda--really.
+You’ll play with fire once too often.”
+
+“My dear Gillian, I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself. Do you
+imagine”--with a small, fine smile--“that I’m in danger of losing my
+heart to a son of the soil?”
+
+Gillian could have shaken her.
+
+“_You?_ You don’t suppose I’m afraid for you! It’s Dan Storran who isn’t
+able to look after himself.” She stooped over Magda’s chair and slipped
+an arm persuasively round her shoulders. “Come away, Magda. Let’s leave
+Stockleigh--go home to London.”
+
+“Certainly not.” Magda stood up suddenly. “I’m quite well amused down
+here. I don’t propose to leave till our time is up.”
+
+She spoke with unmistakable decision, and Gillian, feeling that it would
+be useless to urge her further at the moment, went slowly out of the
+room and upstairs. As she went she could hear Dan’s footstep in the
+passage below. It sounded tired--quite unlike his usual swinging stride
+with its suggestion of impetuous force.
+
+But it was not work that had tired Dan Storran that afternoon. When he
+had quitted the little party gathered beneath the elms, he had started
+off across the fields, unheeding where he went, and for hours he had
+been tramping, deaf and blind to the world around him, immersed in the
+thoughts that had driven him forth.
+
+The full significance of the last few weeks had suddenly come home to
+him. Till now he had been drifting--drifting unthinkingly, conscious
+only that life had become extraordinarily full of interest and of a
+breathless kind of happiness, half sweet, half bitter. Bitter when Magda
+was not with him, sweet with a maddening sweetness when she was.
+
+He had not stopped to consider what it all meant--why the dull,
+monotonous round of existence on the farm to which he had long grown
+accustomed should all at once have come alive--grown vibrant and quick
+with some new impulse.
+
+But the happenings of to-day had suddenly shown him where he stood. That
+revealing moment by the river’s edge with Magda, the swift, unreasoning
+jealousy of Davilof which had run like fire through his veins--jealousy
+because the other man was so evidently an old acquaintance with prior
+rights in her which seemed to set him, Dan Storran, quite outside the
+circle of their intimacy--had startled him into recognition of how far
+he had drifted.
+
+He loved her--craved for her with every fibre of his being. She was his
+woman, and beside the tumultuous demand for her of all his lusty manhood
+the quiet, unexacting affection which he bore his wife was as water is
+to wine.
+
+And since in Dan’s simple code of ethics a man’s loyalty to his wife
+occupied a very definite and unassailable position, the realisation came
+to him fraught with the acme of bitterness and self-contempt. Nor did
+he propose to yield to the madness in his blood. Hour after hour, as he
+tramped blindly across country, he thrashed the matter out. This love
+which had come to him was a forbidden thing--a thing which must be
+fought and thrust outside his life. For the sake of June he must see no
+more of Magda. She must go--leave Stockleigh. Afterwards he would tear
+the very memory of her out of his heart.
+
+Dan was a very direct person. Having taken his decision he did not stop
+to count the cost. That could come afterwards. Dimly he apprehended that
+it might be a very heavy one. But he was strong, now--strong to do
+the only possible thing. As he stood with his hand on the latch of the
+living-room door, he wondered whether what he had to say would mean
+to Magda all, or even a part, of what it meant to him--wondered with
+a sudden uncontrollable leaping of his pulses. . . . The latch grated
+raucously as he jerked it up and flung open the door. Magda was standing
+by the window, the soft glow of the westering sun falling about her.
+Dan’s eyes rested hungrily on the small dark head outlined against the
+tender light.
+
+“Why--Dan----” She faltered into tremulous silence before the look on
+his face--the aching demand of it.
+
+The huskily sweet voice robbed him of his strength. He strode forward
+and caught her in his arms, staring down at her with burning eyes. Then,
+almost violently, he thrust her away from him, unkissed, although the
+soft curved lips had for a moment lain so maddeningly near his own.
+
+“When can you and Mrs. Grey make it convenient to leave Stockleigh
+Farm?” he asked, his voice like iron.
+
+The crudeness of it whipped her pride--that pride which Michael had torn
+down and trampled on--into fresh, indignant life.
+
+“To leave? Why should we leave?”
+
+Storran’s face was white under his tan.
+
+“Because,” he said hoarsely, “because you’re coming between me and my
+wife. That’s why.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE MOONLIT GARDEN
+
+The chintzy bedroom under the sloping roof was very still and quiet.
+The moonlight, streaming in through the open casement, revealed the bed
+unoccupied, its top-sheet neatly folded back just as when June had made
+her final round of the house some hours earlier, leaving everything in
+order for the night.
+
+Magda, crouched by the window, glanced back at it indifferently. She did
+not want to go to bed. If she went, she knew she would not sleep. She
+felt as though she would never sleep again.
+
+She had no idea of the time. She might have been there half an hour or
+half eternity--she did not know which. The little sounds of movement in
+the different bedrooms had gradually died down into silence, until at
+least the profound tranquillity and peace of night enshrouded the whole
+house. Only for her there was neither tranquility nor peace.
+
+She was alone now, face to face with the news which Davilof had brought
+her--the news of Michael’s marriage. Throughout the rest of the day,
+after Davilof had gone, she had forced the matter into the background of
+her thoughts, and during supper she had kept up a light-hearted ripple
+of talk and laughter which had deceived even Gillian, convincing her
+that her apprehensions of the afternoon were unfounded.
+
+Perhaps she was helped by the fact that Dan failed to put in
+an appearance at the supper-table. It was easier to scintillate
+successfully for the sole benefit of a couple of other women than under
+the eyes of a man who had just ordered you out of his life. But when at
+last she was alone in her own room, the sparkle was suddenly quenched.
+There was no longer any need to pretend.
+
+Michael was married! Married! And the bitterness which she had been
+strenuously keeping at bay since the day, months ago now, when she had
+learned from Lady Arabella that he had deliberately left England without
+seeing her again swept over her in a black flood.
+
+It had hurt her badly enough when he had gone away, but somewhere in the
+depths of her consciousness there had always lurked a little fugitive
+hope that he would come back--that she would be given another chance.
+Now she knew that he would never come back--that one isn’t always given
+a second chance in this world.
+
+And beneath the sick anguish of the realisation she was aware of a
+fierce resentment--a bitter, rebellious anger that any man could make
+her suffer as she was suffering now. It was unjust--a burden that
+had been forced upon her unfairly. She could not help her own
+character--that was a heritage with which one comes into the world--and
+now she was being punished for simply having been herself!
+
+An hour--two hours crept by. Hours of black, stark misery. The clock
+in the hall struck one--a single, bell-like stroke that reverberated
+through the silent house. It penetrated the numbed confusion of her
+mind, rousing her to a sudden recognition of the fact that she had been
+crouched so long in one position that her limbs were stiff and aching.
+
+She drew herself up to her feet, stretching her cramped muscles. The
+night was warm and the room felt stiflingly hot. She looked longingly
+through the window to where the garden lay drenched in moonlight, with
+cool-looking alleyways of moon-washed paths threading the black gloom of
+overhanging trees, ebony-edged in the silver light.
+
+She felt as though she could hardly breathe in the confined space of
+the room. Its low, sloping roof, which she had thought so quaintly
+attractive, seemed to press down on her like the lid of a box. She
+must get out--out into the black and silver night which beckoned to her
+through the open window. She could not stay in this room--this little
+room, alone with her thoughts.
+
+She glanced down dubiously at the soft, chiffony negligee which she
+had slipped on in place of a frock. Her feet, too, were bare. She had
+stripped off her shoes and stockings first thing upon coming upstairs,
+for the sake of coolness. Certainly her attire was not quite suitable
+for out-of-doors. . . . But there would be no one to see her. Ashencombe
+folk did not take their walks abroad at that hour of the night. And she
+longed to feel the cool touch of the dewy grass against her feet.
+
+Very quietly she opened her door and stole out into the passage.
+The house was strangely, wonderfully still. Only the ticking of the
+hall-clock broke the silence. So lightly that not a board creaked
+beneath her step, Magda flitted down the old stairway, and, crossing the
+hall, felt gingerly for the massive bolt which barred the heavy oaken
+door. She wondered if it would slide back quietly; she rather doubted
+it. She remembered often enough having heard it grate into its place
+as Storran went his nightly round, locking up the house. But, as her
+slender, seeking fingers came in contact with the knob, she realised
+that to-night by some oversight he had forgotten to shoot the bolt and,
+noiselessly lifting the iron latch, she opened the door and slipped out
+into the moonlit garden. Down the paths she went and across the lawns,
+the touch of the earth coming clean and cool to her bare feet. Now and
+again she paused to draw a long breath of the night air, fresh and sweet
+with the lingering scents of the day’s blooming.
+
+An arch of rambler roses led into the distant part of the garden towards
+which she was wending her way, its powdering of tiny blossoms gleaming
+like star clusters borrowed from the Milky Way. Magda stooped as
+she passed beneath it to avoid an overhanging branch. Then, as she
+straightened herself, lifting her head once more, she stood still,
+suddenly arrested. On a stone bench, barely twenty yards away, sat Dan
+Storran!
+
+Against the pallid ghost-white of the bench his motionless figure showed
+black and sombre like some sable statue. His big shoulders were bowed,
+his hands hung loosely clasped between his knees, the white mask of
+his face, mercilessly revealed in the clear moonlight, was twisted into
+harsh lines of mental conflict. A certain grim triumph manifested itself
+in the set of his mouth and out-thrust jaw.
+
+He did not see the slight figure standing just within the shade of the
+rose-twined arch, and Magda remained for a moment or two watching him in
+silence. The unbarred door was explained now. Storran had not come in
+at all that night. She guessed the struggle which had sent him forth
+to seek the utter solitude of the garden. Almost she thought she could
+divine the processes of thought which had closed his lips in that
+strange line of ironic triumph. He had told her to go--when every nerve
+of him ached to bid her stay. And he was glad that the strength in him
+had won.
+
+A bitter smile flitted across her face. Men were all the same! They
+idolised a woman just because she was beautiful--for her lips and eyes
+and hair and the nameless charm that was in her--and set her up on an
+altar at which they could kneel becomingly. Then, when they found she
+was merely an ordinary human being like themselves, with her bundle
+of faults and failings, hereditary and acquired, the prig in them was
+appropriately shocked--and they went away!
+
+An unhappy woman is very often a bitter one. And Magda had been slowly
+learning the meaning of unhappiness for the first time in her life--a
+life that had been hitherto roses and laurel all the way.
+
+The devils that lie in wait for our weak moments prompted her then. The
+bitterness faded from her lips and they curved in a smile that subtly
+challenged the stern decision in Dan Storran’s face. She hesitated an
+instant. Then, with feet that scarcely seemed to brush the grass, she
+glided forward, swaying, bending to some rhythmic measure, floating
+spirit-like across the lawn.
+
+With a great cry Dan leaped to his feet and stared at her, transfixed.
+At the sound of his voice she paused, poised on one bare foot, leaning
+a little towards him with curving, outstretched arms. Then, before he
+could touch her, she drew away, step by step, and Dan Storran, standing
+there in tense, breathless silence, beheld what no one else had ever
+seen--the Wielitzska dancing in the moonlight as she alone could dance.
+
+He knew nothing of art, nor of the supreme technique which went to make
+each supple movement a thing of sheer perfection, instinct with rhythm
+and significance. But he was a man, and a man in love, fighting the
+strongest instincts of his nature; and the bewildering beauty of her as
+she danced, the languorous, ethereal allure, delicately sensuous as the
+fragrance of a La France rose, sent the hot blood rioting through his
+veins. . . . She was going--slowly retreating from him. The primal
+man in him, the innate hunter who took his mate by capture, swept him
+headlong. With a bound he sprang past the dusky shrubbery that hedged
+the lawn and overtook her, catching her in his arms. She did not
+struggle. He felt her yield, and strained the soft, panting body closer
+to him. Beneath his hand he could feel the hurrying beat of her heart.
+Her breath, quickened by the exertion of the dance, came unevenly
+between her lips as she smiled at him.
+
+“Do you still want me to go away, Dan Storran?”
+
+There was a note of half-amused, half-triumphant mockery in her voice.
+The last bonds that held him snapped suddenly: “Yes!” he cried hoarsely.
+“Yes, I do. To go away with me!”
+
+He crushed his mouth down on hers, draining the sweetness of her in
+burning kisses he had thwarted through all these weeks that they had
+been together, pouring out his love in disjointed, stumbling phrases
+which halted by very reason of the force of passion which evoked them.
+
+Frightened by the tempest of emotion she had aroused she strained away
+from him. But she was powerless against his huge strength, helpless to
+resist him.
+
+At length the fierce tensity of his grip relaxed, though his arms still
+clasped her.
+
+“Tell me,” he commanded triumphantly. “Tell me you love me. I want to
+hear it!” His voice vibrated and his eyes sought her face hungrily.
+
+She summoned up all her forces to deny him--to deny him in such a manner
+that he should realise his mistake absolutely and at once. “But I don’t!
+I don’t love you! If you thought that, you misunderstood me.”
+
+His hands released their hold of her and fell heavily to his sides.
+“Misunderstood?” he muttered. The glad triumph went suddenly out of his
+voice. “Misunderstood?” he repeated dully.
+
+“Yes. Misunderstood me altogether.”
+
+“I don’t believe it!”
+
+“But you _must_ believe it,” she insisted. “It’s the truth!”
+
+He stared at her.
+
+“Then what have you meant all these weeks?”
+
+“I’ve not meant anything.”
+
+“It’s a lie!” he gave back savagely. “Unless”--he came closer to
+her--“unless--is it that man, that damned foreigner, who was here
+to-day?”
+
+“Antoine? No. Oh, Dan”--she forced an uncertain little laugh to her
+lips--“if you knew me better you’d know that I never _do_--‘mean
+anything’!”
+
+The bitter intonation in her voice--the gibe at her own poor ruins of
+love fallen about her--was lost on him. He was in total ignorance of
+her friendship with Quarrington. But the plain significance of her words
+came home to him clearly enough. He did not speak for a minute or two.
+Then: “You’ve been playing with me, then--fooling me?” he said heavily.
+
+Magda remained silent. The heavy, laboured speech seemed to hold
+something minatory in it--the sullen lowering which precedes a tempest.
+
+“Answer me!” he persisted. “Was that it?”
+
+“I--I suppose it was,” she faltered.
+
+He drew still closer and instinctively she shrank away. A consciousness
+of repressed violence communicated itself to her. She half expected him
+to strike her.
+
+“And you don’t love me? You’re quite sure?”
+
+There was an ominous kind of patience in the persistent questioning. It
+was as though he were deliberately giving her every possible chance to
+clear herself. Her nerves frayed a little.
+
+“Of course I’m sure--perfectly sure,” she said with nervous asperity. “I
+wish you’d believe me, Dan!”
+
+“I only wanted to make sure,” he returned.
+
+Something in the careful precision of his answer struck her with a swift
+sense of apprehension. She looked up at him and what she saw made her
+catch her breath convulsively. His face was ashen, the veins in his
+forehead standing out like weals, and his eyes gleamed like blue
+flame--mad eyes. His hands, hanging at his sides, twitched curiously.
+
+“I’m sure now,” he said. “Sure. . . . Do you know what you’ve done?
+You’ve smashed up my life. Smashed it. June and I were happy enough till
+you came. Now we’ll never be happy again. I expect you’ve smashed other
+lives, too. But you won’t do it any more. I’m the last. Women like you
+are better dead!”
+
+His great arms swung out and gripped her.
+
+“No, don’t struggle. It wouldn’t be any good, you know.” He went on
+speaking very carefully and quietly, and while he spoke she felt his
+left arm tighten round her, binding her own arms down to her sides as
+might a thong, while his right hand slid up to the base of her throat.
+She writhed, twisting her body desperately in his grip. “Keep still.
+I’ve kissed you. And now I’m going to kill you. You’ll be better dead.”
+
+There was implacable purpose in his strangely quiet, unhurried accents.
+Magda recognised it--recognised that death was very close to her. It
+would be useless to scream. Before help could come--if anyone heard her
+cries, which was unlikely--Dan would have accomplished what he meant to
+do.
+
+In the last fraction of time these thoughts flashed through her mind.
+Her brain seemed to be working with abnormal clarity and speed. This was
+death, then--unavoidable, inevitable.
+
+She felt Dan’s hand creep upward, closing round her throat. Quite
+suddenly she ceased to struggle and lay still in his grasp. After all,
+she didn’t know that she would much mind dying. Life was not so sweet.
+There would be pain, she supposed . . . a moment’s agony. . . .
+
+All at once, Storran’s hands fell away from her passive, silent body and
+he stepped back. “I can’t do it!” he muttered hoarsely. “I can’t do it!”
+
+For a moment the suddenness of her release left Magda swaying dizzily
+on her feet. Then her brain clearing, she looked across to where Dan
+Storran’s big figure faced her. The nonchalance with which she usually
+met life, and with which a few moments earlier she had been prepared to
+face inevitable death, stood by her now. A faint, quizzical smile tilted
+her mouth.
+
+“So you couldn’t do it after all, Dan?” The familiar note of
+half-indifferent mockery sounded in her voice.
+
+Storran stared at her. “By God! I don’t believe you are a woman!” he
+exclaimed thickly.
+
+She regarded him contemplatively, her hands lightly touching the red
+marks scored by his fingers on the whiteness of her throat.
+
+“Do you know,” she replied dispassionately, “I sometimes wonder if I am?
+I don’t seem to have--feelings, like other women. It doesn’t matter
+to me, really, a bit that I’ve--what was it you said?--smashed up your
+life. I don’t know that it would have mattered much if you had strangled
+me.” She paused, then stepped towards him. “Now you know the truth. Do
+you still want to kill me, Dan Storran! . . . Or may I go?”
+
+He swung aside from her.
+
+“Go!” he muttered sullenly. “Go to _hell_!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE DAY AFTER
+
+“Magda, how could you?” Gillian’s voice was full of blank dismay. “You
+ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself!”
+
+Magda perched on the foot of Gillian’s bed, her hands clasped round her
+knees, nodded.
+
+“Yes, I suppose I ought. I don’t know what made me do it--except
+that he’d suggested I should leave Stockleigh! I’m not used to
+being--shunted!”
+
+“Heaven knows you’re not!” agreed Gillian ruefully. “It would be a
+wholesome tonic for you if you were. I told you only yesterday that it
+would be better if we left here. And on top of that you must needs go
+and dance in the moonlight, of all things, while Dan Storran looks on!
+What ordinary man is going to keep his head in such circumstances, do
+you suppose? Especially when he was more than half in love with you to
+start with. . . . Oh, I should like to shake you!”
+
+“Well, I’ll leave now--as soon as ever you like,” replied Magda,
+slipping down from the bed. She was unwontedly meek, from which Gillian
+judged that for once she felt herself unable to cope with the situation
+she had created. “Will you arrange it?”
+
+Gillian shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“I suppose so,” she returned resignedly. “As usual, you break the
+crockery and someone else has to sweep up the pieces.”
+
+Magda bent down and kissed her.
+
+“You’re such a dear, Gillyflower,” she said with that impulsive, lovable
+charm of manner which it was so difficult to resist. “Still”--her voice
+hardening a little--“perhaps there are a few odd bits that I’ll have to
+sweep up myself.”
+
+And she departed to her own room to complete her morning toilette,
+leaving Gillian wondering rather anxiously what she could have meant.
+
+When, half an hour later, the two girls descended for breakfast, Dan
+Storran was not visible. He had gone off early to work, June explained,
+and Magda experienced a sensation of distinct relief. She had dreaded
+meeting Dan this morning. The mad, bizarre scene of the night before,
+with sudden unleashing of savage and ungoverned passions, had shaken
+even her insouciant poise, though she was very far from seeing it in its
+true proportions.
+
+June received Gillian’s intimation that they proposed leaving Stockleigh
+Farm that day without comment. She was very quiet and self-contained,
+and busied herself in making the necessary arrangements for their
+departure, sending a boy into Ashencombe to order the wagonette from
+the Crown and Bells to take them to the station whilst she herself
+laboriously made out the account that was owing. When she presented the
+latter, with a perfectly composed and business-like air, and proceeded
+conscientiously to stamp and receipt it, no one could have guessed how
+bitter a thing it was to her to accept Miss Vallincourt’s money. Within
+herself she recognised that every penny of it had been earned at the
+cost of her own happiness.
+
+But as she stood at the gate, watching the ancient vehicle from the
+Crown and Bells bearing the London visitors towards the station, a
+little quiver of hope stirred in her heart. Early that morning Dan
+himself had said to her before starting out to his work: “Get those
+people away! They must be out of the house before I come into it again.
+Pay them a week’s money instead of notice if necessary. We can afford
+it.” So it was evident that he, too, had realised the danger of their
+happiness--hers and his--if Miss Vallincourt remained at Stockleigh any
+longer.
+
+He did not come in till late in the evening, when June was sitting in
+the lamplight, adding delicate stitchery to some tiny garments upon
+which she was at work. She hid them hastily at the sound of his
+footsteps, substituting one of his own socks that stood in need of
+repair. Not yet could she share with him that wonderful secret joy which
+was hers. There must be a clearer understanding between them first. They
+must get back to where they were before Miss Vallincourt came between
+them, so that nothing might mar the sweetness of the telling.
+
+Presently Dan came into the room and sat down heavily. June looked
+across at him.
+
+“She has gone, Dan,” she said quietly. She did not use the word “they.”
+ Those others did not count as far as she was concerned. Her use of the
+pronoun sounded significantly in Storran’s ears.
+
+“You know, then?” he said dully. Adding, after a moment’s pause. “Did
+she tell you?”
+
+“Tell me?” repeated June doubtfully. “Tell me what?”
+
+“That she’s robbed you of all that belongs to you.”
+
+Her face blanched. “What do you mean, Dan?” she asked falteringly. “I
+don’t think I understand.”
+
+Her wide, questioning blue eyes, with that softness and depth of
+expression dawning in them which motherhood gives to women’s eyes,
+searched his face. The innocent appeal of them cut him to the heart.
+He had loved his wife; and now he had to tell her that he loved her no
+longer.
+
+“You’ve got to understand,” he said roughly. His hatred of being
+compelled to hurt her made him almost brutal. “I--everything is changed
+between us, June.” He stopped, not knowing how to go on.
+
+“Changed? How, Dan?” Her voice sharpened with apprehension. “Do you
+mean--that you don’t--care any longer?”
+
+“Yes. It’s that. It’s Magda--Oh, good God! Can’t you understand?”
+
+“You love Miss Vallincourt?” June spoke in carefully measured accents.
+She felt that if she did not speak very quietly indeed she should
+scream. She wanted to laugh, too. It sounded so absurd to be asking her
+husband if he loved Miss Vallincourt!
+
+Dan’s eyes met her own.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “I love her.” He paused a moment, then added: “I asked
+her to go away with me.”
+
+June stared at him dumbly. The whole thing seemed unreal. She could
+not feel as though what Dan was saying had any relation to herself, any
+bearing on their life together. At last:
+
+“Why didn’t you go, then?” she heard herself say--at least, she supposed
+she must be saying it, although the voice didn’t sound a bit like her
+own.
+
+Dan turned on her with sudden savagery. His nerves were raw.
+
+“You speak as though you were disappointed,” he said roughly.
+
+“No. But if you care for Miss Vallincourt and she cares for you, I’m
+wondering what stopped you.”
+
+“She doesn’t care for me”--shortly.
+
+June felt a thrill of pure joy. If Magda didn’t care, then she could win
+him back--win back her husband! Within her she was instinctively aware
+that if Magda _had_ cared, no power of hers could have won back Dan’s
+allegiance. A faint doubt assailed her.
+
+“She--she _seemed_ as if she cared?” she ventured.
+
+Dan nodded indifferently.
+
+“Yes. I was a summer holiday’s amusement for her.”
+
+“And--was that all?”
+
+As June spoke, her direct gaze sought her husband’s face. He met it fair
+and square, unflinchingly.
+
+“That’s all,” he replied quietly.
+
+She crossed the room swiftly to his side.
+
+“Then, if that’s all, Dan, we--we won’t speak of it again--ever,” she
+said steadily. “It--it was just a mistake. It need never come
+between us. You’ll get over it, and I”--her small head reared itself
+bravely--“I’ll forget it.”
+
+The pathetic courage of her! Storran turned away with a groan.
+
+“No,” he answered. “I shan’t ‘get over it.’ When a man loves a woman as
+I love Magda he doesn’t ‘get over it.’ That’s what I meant when I told
+you she had robbed you.”
+
+“You _will_ get over it, Dan,” she persisted. “I’ll help you.”
+
+“You can’t,” he returned doggedly. “You, least of all! Every touch of
+your hand--I should be thinking what her touch would have meant! The
+sound of your step--I’d be listening for hers!”
+
+He saw her wince. He wanted to kick himself for hurting her like this.
+But he knew what he intended doing; and sooner or later she must know
+too. It would be better for her in the long run to face it now than to
+be endlessly waiting and hoping and longing for what he knew could never
+be.
+
+“Dan, I’ll be very patient. Don’t you think--if you tried--you could
+conquer this love of yours for Miss Vallincourt?”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“It’s conquered me, June. It’s--it’s torture!”
+
+“It will be easier now she’s gone away,” she suggested.
+
+“Gone away? . . . Aye, as far as London! And in five hours I could be
+with her--see her again----”
+
+He broke off. At the bare thought his heart was pounding against his
+ribs, his breath labouring in his throat.
+
+“Won’t you try, Dan?” Even to herself June’s voice sounded faint and far
+away.
+
+“It would be useless.” He got up and strode aimlessly back and forth,
+coming at last to a standstill in front of her. “A man knows his own
+limits, June. And I’ve reached mine. England can’t hold the two of us.”
+
+June gave a little stifled cry.
+
+“What do you mean? You’re not--you’re not going to leave me? To go
+abroad--now?”
+
+There would be need for him in England soon--in a few months. But of
+course he couldn’t know that. Should she tell him. Tell him why he _must
+not_ leave her now? Keep him with her by a sure and certain chain--the
+knowledge that she was soon to be the mother of his child?
+
+She debated the question wildly in her mind, tempted to tell him, yet
+feeling that even if then he stayed with her it would not be because he
+loved her or had ceased to care for Miss Vallincourt, but only because
+he was impelled by a sense of duty. And her pride rebelled against
+holding him by that.
+
+His voice broke in upon her conflicting thoughts.
+
+“Yes. I’m going abroad. It’s the only thing, June. I can’t stay in
+England--and keep away from her.”
+
+June was silent a moment. Then she said in a very low voice, almost as
+though speaking to herself:
+
+“I wonder if--if you ever loved me.”
+
+He wheeled round, and the desperate misery in his eyes hurt her almost
+physically.
+
+“Yes,” he said harshly. “I did love you. In a way, I do now. But it’s
+nothing--nothing to the madness in my blood! I’m a brute to leave you.
+But I’m going to do it. No civilised country can hold me now!”
+
+So that was to be the end of it! June recognised the bitter truth at
+last. Magda had indeed robbed her of everything she possessed. And
+robbed her wantonly, seeing that she herself set no value on Dan’s
+love--had, in fact, tossed it aside like an outworn plaything.
+
+June ceased to plead with Dan then. She would not wish to hold him
+by any other chain than his love for her. And if that chain had
+snapped--broken irrevocably--then the child born of what had once
+been love would only be an encumbrance in his eyes, an unwelcome tie,
+shackling him to a duty from which he longed to escape.
+
+So she let him go--let him go in silence. . . .
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+WHAT LADY ARABELLA KNEW
+
+Lady Arabella might disapprove of her god-daughter from every point of
+the compass, but she was nevertheless amazingly fond of her, so that
+when Gillian appeared on her spotless Park Lane doorstep one afternoon
+with the information that she and Magda had returned from Devonshire,
+she hailed the announcement with enthusiasm.
+
+“But where is Magda? Why didn’t she come with you?” she demanded
+impatiently.
+
+“Her manager rang up to know if he could see her about various things in
+connection with this next winter’s season, so there’s a great council
+in progress. But she’s coming to see you to-morrow. Won’t I do”--Gillian
+wrinkled her brows whimsically--“for to-day?”
+
+“Bless the child! Of course you will! Come along and tell me all about
+your Devonshire trip. I suppose,” she went on, “you heard the news of
+Michael Quarrington’s marriage? Or didn’t you get any newspapers down in
+your benighted village?”
+
+“No, we had no London papers,” replied Gillian doubtfully. “But--I
+don’t understand. Mr. Quarrington isn’t married, is he? I thought--I
+thought----”
+
+“You thought he was in love with Magda. So he was. The announcement
+startled everybody, I can tell you! And Davilof promptly decided that a
+motoring trip would benefit his health and shot off to Devonshire at
+top speed. Of course he wanted to impart the news to Magda. He must have
+felt a pretty fool since!” And Lady Arabella gave one of her enjoyable
+chuckles.
+
+“Yes. Antoine came down to see us,” replied Gillian in puzzled tones.
+“But Magda never confided anything special he had said. I suppose he
+_must_ have told her----” She broke off as all at once illumination
+penetrated the darkness. “That explains it, then! Explains everything!”
+ she exclaimed.
+
+“What explains what?” demanded Lady Arabella bluntly.
+
+“Why----” And Gillian proceeded to recount the events which had led up
+to the abrupt termination of the visit to Stockleigh Farm.
+
+“She was in a very odd kind of mood after Antoine had gone. I even asked
+her if he had brought any bad news, but I couldn’t get any sensible
+answer out of her. And that night she proceeded to dance in the
+moonlight with Dan Storran for audience--out of sheer devilment, of
+course!”
+
+“Or sheer heartsickness,” suggested Lady Arabella, with one of those
+quick flashes of tender insight which combined so incongruously with the
+rest of her personality.
+
+“Do you think she--cared, then?” asked Gillian.
+
+“For Quarrington? Of course I do. Oh, well it will all come right in
+the end, I hope. And, anyway”--with a wicked little grin--“Davilof won’t
+have quite such a clear coast as he anticipated.”
+
+“But if Michael Quarrington is married--”
+
+“He isn’t,” interrupted Lady Arabella briskly. “It was contradicted in
+the papers the very next morning. Only I suppose Davilof hustled off to
+Devonshire in such a hurry that he never saw it.
+
+“Contradicted? But how did such a mistake arise?”
+
+“Oh, whoever supplied that particular tidbit of news got the
+names mixed. It ought really to have been _Warrington_, not
+Quarrington--Mortrake Warrington, the sculptor, you know. It seems he
+and Michael were both using the same woman as a model--only Warrington
+married her! Spoiled Michael’s picture--or his temper--when he ran off
+with her for a honeymoon, I expect!”
+
+On her return to Friars’ Holm Gillian hastened to retail for Magda’s
+benefit the information she had acquired from Lady Arabella, and was
+rewarded by the immediate change in her which became apparent. The
+haunted, feverish look in her eyes was replaced by a more tranquil
+shining, the intense restlessness she had evinced of late seemed to fall
+away from her, and she ceased to pepper her conversation with the bitter
+speeches which had worried Gillian more than a little, recognising in
+them, as she did, the outcrop of some inward and spiritual turmoil.
+
+To Magda, the fact that Michael was not married, after all, seemed to
+re-create the whole world. It left hope still at the bottom of the box
+of life’s possibilities. Looking backward, she realised now how strongly
+she had clung to the belief that some day he would come back to her. It
+had been the one gleam of light through all those dark months which had
+followed his abrupt departure; and the intolerable pain of the hours
+that had succeeded Davilof’s announcement of his marriage to the Spanish
+woman had taught her how much Michael meant to her.
+
+She was beginning to appreciate, too, the tangle of convictions and
+emotions which had driven him from her side. His original attitude
+toward her, based on the treatment she had accorded to his friend who
+had loved her, had been one of plain censure and distrust, strengthened
+and intensified by that strong “partisan” feeling of one man for
+another--fruit of the ineradicable sex antagonism which so often colours
+the judgments men pass on women and women on men. Then had come love,
+against which he had striven in vain, and gradually, out of love,
+had grown a new tentative belief which the pitiful culmination of the
+Raynham episode had suddenly and very completely shattered.
+
+Of late, circumstances had combined to impress on Magda an altogether
+new point of view--the viewpoint from which other people might
+conceivably regard her actions. She had never troubled about such a
+thing before, nor was she finding the experience at all a pleasant one.
+But it helped her to understand to a certain extent--though still
+only in a very modified degree--the influences which had sent Michael
+Quarrington out of England.
+
+And now, in the passionate relief bred of the knowledge that he was
+still free, that he had not gone straight from her to another woman,
+much of the resentful hardness which had embittered her during the
+last few months melted away, and she became once more the nonchalant,
+tantalising but withal lovable and charming personality of former days.
+
+She was even conscious of a certain compunction for her behaviour at
+Stockleigh. She had been bitterly hurt herself, and since, for the
+moment, to experiment with a new and, to her, quite unknown type of man
+had amused her and helped to distract her thoughts, she had not paused
+to consider the possible resultant consequences to the subject of the
+experiment.
+
+She endeavoured to solace herself with the belief that after she had
+gone he would instinctively turn to June once more, and that life on the
+farm would probably resume the even tenor of its way. Gradually, with
+the passage of time, her thoughts reverted less and less often to the
+happenings at Stockleigh, and the prickings of conscience--which beset
+her return to London--grew considerably fainter and more infrequent.
+
+It was almost inevitable that this should be so. With the autumn came
+the stir and hustle of the season, with its thousand-and-one claims upon
+her thought and time. The management of the Imperial Theatre was
+nothing if not enterprising, and designed to present a series of ballets
+throughout the course of the winter, in the greater number of which
+Magda would be the bright and particular star. And in the absorption
+of work and the sheer joy she found in the art which she loved, the
+recollection of her holiday at Stockleigh slipped by degrees into the
+background of her mind. Fraught with such immense significance and
+catastrophe to those others, Dan and June--to Magda it soon came to
+occupy no more than an incidental niche in her memory.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+CROSS CURRENTS
+
+Winter had slipped away, pushed from his place by the tender, resistless
+hands of spring. And now spring had given place to summer, and June,
+arms filled with flowers, was converting the earth into a garden of
+roses.
+
+Magda’s car, purring its way southward along the great road from London,
+sped between fields that still gleamed with the first freshness of their
+young green, while through the open window drifted vagrant little puffs
+of clean country air, coming delicately to her nostrils, fragrant of
+leaf and bloom.
+
+She was motoring to Netherway, a delightfully small and insignificant
+place on the Hampshire coast where Lady Arabella had what it pleased her
+to term her “cottage in the country,” a charming old place, Elizabethan
+in character--the type of “cottage” which boasted a score or so of rooms
+and every convenience which an imaginative estate agent, sustained by
+the knowledge that his client regarded money as a means and not an end,
+could devise.
+
+Summer invitations to the Hermitage--as the place was quite inaptly
+called, since no one could be less akin to a hermit than its gregarious
+owner--were much sought after by the younger generation of Lady
+Arabella’s set. The beautifully wooded park, with its green aisles of
+shady solitude sloping down from the house to the very edge of the blue
+waters of the Solent, was an ideal spot in which to bring to a safe
+and happy conclusion a love affair that might seem to have hung fire
+a trifle during the hurly-burly of the London season. And if further
+inducement were needed, it was to be found in the fact that Lady
+Arabella herself constituted the most desirable of chaperons, remaining
+considerately inconspicuous until the moment when her congratulations
+were requested.
+
+This year a considerable amount of disappointment had been occasioned by
+the fact that she had left town quite early during the season, and later
+on had apparently limited her invitations exclusively to the trio at
+Friars’ Holm. She declared that the number of matrimonial ventures
+for which the Hermitage was responsible was beginning to weigh on her
+conscience. Also, she wanted a quiet holiday and she proposed to take
+one.
+
+And now Magda was on her way to join her, Gillian remaining behind in
+order to close up the house at Hampstead and settle the servants on
+board wages. It had been arranged that she and Coppertop should come on
+to Netherway immediately this was accomplished.
+
+Magda could hardly believe that only a year had elapsed since last the
+roses beckoned her out of London. It seemed far longer since that hot
+summer’s day when she had rushed away to Devonshire, vainly seeking a
+narcotic for the new and bewildering turmoil of pain that was besetting
+her.
+
+She had learned now that you carry a heartache with you, and that no
+change of scenery makes up for the beloved face you can no longer see.
+For Michael had not come back. He had remained abroad and had never by
+sign or letter acknowledged that he even remembered her existence. Magda
+had come to accept it as a fact now that he had gone out of her life
+entirely.
+
+A whiff of air tinged with the salt tang of the sea blew in at the
+window, and she came suddenly out of her musings to find that the car
+was winding its way up the hill upon which the Hermitage was perched.
+
+A long, low house, clothed in creeper, it stood just below the hill’s
+brow, sheltered to the rear by a great belt of woods, and overlooking a
+sea which sparkled in the sunlight as though strewn with diamond-dust.
+
+Lady Arabella was waiting in the porch when the car drew up and welcomed
+her god-daughter with delight. She seemed bubbling over with good
+spirits, and there was a half-mischievous, half-guilty twinkle in her
+keen old eyes which suggested that there might be some ulterior cause
+for her effervescence.
+
+“If you were poor I should say you’d just come into a fortune,”
+ commented Magda, regarding her judicially. “As you’re not, I should like
+to know why you’re looking as pleased as a child with a new toy. Own up,
+now, Marraine! What’s the secret you’ve got up your sleeve?”
+
+“Yes, there is a secret,” acknowledged Lady Arabella gleefully. “Come
+along and I’ll show it you.”
+
+Magda smiled and followed her across the long hall and into a room at
+the further end of which stood a big easel. On the easel, just nearing
+completion, rested a portrait of her godmother. It was rather a
+wonderful portrait. The artist seemed to have penetrated beyond the mere
+physical lineaments of his sitter into the very crannies of her soul. It
+was all there--the thoroughly worldly shrewdness, the mordant, somewhat
+cynical humour, and the genuine kindness of heart which went to make up
+Lady Arabella’s personality as her world knew it. And something more.
+Behind all these one sensed the glamour of a long-past romance, the
+unquenched spark of a faith that, as Lady Arabella had herself once put
+it in a rare moment of self-revelation, “love is the best thing this
+queer old world of ours has to offer.” The portrait on the easel was
+that of a woman who had visioned the miracle of love only to be robbed
+of its fulfilment.
+
+Magda stood silently in front of the picture, marvelling at its keen
+perceptive powers. And then quite suddenly she realised who must have
+painted it. It almost seemed to her as though she had really known it
+from the first moment her eyes had rested on the canvas. The brushwork,
+and that uncannily clever characterisation, were unmistakable.
+
+“Good likeness, don’t you think?”
+
+Lady Arabella’s snapping speech broke the silence.
+
+“It’s rather more than that, isn’t it?” said Magda. “How did you seduce
+Michael Quarrington? I thought”--for an instant her voice wavered, then
+steadied again--“I thought he was abroad.”
+
+“He was. At the present moment he’s at the Hermitage.”
+
+“_Here_?”
+
+Magda turned her head aside so that Lady Arabella might not see the
+wave of scarlet which flooded her face and then receded, leaving it
+milk-white. Michael . . . _here_! She felt her heart beating in great
+suffocating throbs, and the room seemed to swim round her. If he were
+here, knowing that she was to be his fellow-guest, surely he could not
+hate her so badly! She was conscious of a sudden wild uprush of hope.
+Perhaps--perhaps happiness was not so far away, after all!
+
+And then she heard Lady Arabella’s voice breaking across the riot of
+emotion which stirred within her.
+
+“Yes, he has been here the last three weeks painting my portrait. It’s
+for you, the portrait. I thought you’d like to have it when you haven’t
+got the original any longer.”
+
+Magda turned to her suddenly, her affection for her godmother alertly
+apprehensive.
+
+“What do you mean?” she said anxiously. “You’re--you’re not ill,
+Marraine?”
+
+“Ill? No. But I’m over seventy. And after seventy you’ve had your
+allotted span, you know. Anything beyond that’s an extra. And whether
+fate gives me a bit more rope or not, I’ve nothing to grumble at. I’ve
+_lived_, not vegetated--and I’ve had a very good time, too.” She paused,
+then added slowly: “Though I’ve missed the best.”
+
+Magda slipped her hand into the old woman’s thin, wrinkled one with a
+quick gesture of understanding, and a little sympathetic silence fell
+between them.
+
+“Then you’ll find the hanging-room for the portrait at Friars’ Holm?”
+ queried Lady Arabella, breaking it at last in practical tones.
+
+“You know we’d love to have it,” replied Magda warmly. In a studiously
+casual voice she pursued: “By the way, does Mr. Quarrington know I’m
+here?”
+
+Lady Arabella nodded. Secretly she was congratulating herself on having
+successfully tided over the awkwardness of explaining Michael’s presence
+at the Hermitage. She had been somewhat apprehensive as to how Magda
+would take it. It was quite on the cards that she might have ordered her
+car round again and driven straight back to London!
+
+But she had accepted the fact with apparent composure--one’s mental
+states, fortunately, being invisible to the curious eyes of the outside
+world!--and Lady Arabella felt proportionately relieved. Nor had
+Quarrington himself evinced any particular emotion, either of
+dissatisfaction or otherwise, when she had confided to him the fact that
+she was expecting her god-daughter. And although the extreme composure
+exhibited by both Michael and Magda was a trifle baffling, Lady Arabella
+was fain to comfort herself with her confirmed belief in propinquity as
+the resolution of most lovers’ problems and misunderstandings.
+
+She was fully determined to bring these two together once more if it
+were in any way possible, and the commission to paint her portrait had
+been merely part of her scheme. Her three score years and ten had had
+little enough to do with it. They weighed extremely lightly on her erect
+old shoulders, and her spirit was as unquenchable as it had been twenty
+years ago. It seemed more than likely that fate was preparing to allow
+her quite a good deal of rope.
+
+As for Quarrington, he would probably have refused to return to England
+at this juncture to please anyone other than Lady Arabella. But somehow
+no one ever did refuse Lady Arabella anything that she particularly set
+her heart upon. Moreover, as he reflected upon receipt of her assured
+little missive commissioning him to paint her portrait, he would be
+obliged to return to England sooner or later, and by now he felt he
+had himself sufficiently in hand to risk the contingency of a possible
+meeting with Magda. But he had hardly counted upon finding himself
+actually under the same roof with her for days together, and, although
+outwardly unmoved, he was somewhat taken aback when halfway through
+his visit to the Hermitage, Lady Arabella cheerfully communicated the
+prospect to him.
+
+He could read between the lines and guess her purpose, and it afforded
+him a certain sardonic amusement. It was like Lady Arabella’s
+temerity, he reflected! No other woman, knowing as much of the special
+circumstances as she did, would have ventured so far.
+
+Well, she would soon realise that her attempt to bridge matters over
+between himself and her god-daughter was foredoomed to failure. He would
+never trust Magda, or any other woman, again. From the moment he had
+left England he had made up his mind that henceforth no woman should
+have any place in his life, and certain subsequent occurrences had
+confirmed him in this determination.
+
+At the same time he was not going to run away. He would stay and face it
+out. He would remain at the Hermitage until he had finished the portrait
+upon which he was at work, and then he would pack up and depart.
+
+So that when finally he and Magda met in the sun-filled South Parlour at
+the Hermitage each of them was prepared to treat the other with a cool
+detachment.
+
+But Magda found it difficult to maintain her pose after her first glance
+at his face. The alteration in it sent a swift pang to her heart. It had
+hardened--hardened into lines of a grim self-control that spoke of long
+mental conflict. The mouth, too, had learned to close in a new line
+of bitterness, and in the grey eyes as they rested on her there lay a
+certain cynical indifference which seemed to set her as far away from
+him as the north is from the south. She realised that the gulf between
+them was almost as wide and impassable as though he were in very truth
+the Spanish dancer’s husband. This man proposed to give her neither love
+nor forgiveness. Only the feminine instinct of pride--the pride of woman
+who must be sought and never the seeker--carried her through the ordeal
+of the first meeting. Nor did he seek to make it easier for her.
+
+“It is a long time since you were in England,” she remarked after the
+first interchange of civilities.
+
+“Very long,” agreed Quarrington politely. “It would probably have been
+still longer if Lady Arabella had not tempted me. But her portrait was
+too interesting a commission to refuse.”
+
+“It sounds banal to say how good I think it. You never paint anything
+that _isn’t_ good, do you?”
+
+“I paint what I see.”
+
+“In that case quite a lot of people might be afraid to have their
+portraits painted by you--beauty being so much in the eye of the
+beholder!” returned Magda with the flippancy that is so often only the
+defence behind which a woman takes refuge.
+
+“I don’t think so. As a matter of fact I have no objection to painting a
+plain face--provided there’s a beautiful soul behind it.”
+
+“But I suppose a beautiful soul in a beautiful body would satisfy you
+better?”
+
+“It might, if such a combination existed.”
+
+Magda flushed a little.
+
+“You don’t think it does?”
+
+The grey, contemptuous eyes swept her face suddenly.
+
+“My experience has not led me to think so.”
+
+There was an almost calculated insolence in the careless answer. It was
+as though he had tossed her an epitome of his opinion of her. Magda’s
+spirit rose in opposition.
+
+“Perhaps your experience has been somewhat limited,” she observed.
+
+“Perhaps it has. If so, I have no wish to extend it.”
+
+In spite of Michael’s taciturnity--or perhaps, more truly, on account of
+it--Magda’s spirits lightened curiously after that first interview with
+him. The mere fact of his presence had stilled the incessant ache at
+her heart--the ache to see him again and hear his voice. And the morose
+cynicism of his thrusts at her was just so much proof that, although he
+had forced himself to remain out of England for a year and a half, yet
+he had not thereby achieved either peace of mind or indifference. Magda
+was too true a daughter of Eve not to know that a man doesn’t expend
+powder and shot on a woman to whom he is completely indifferent.
+
+The next day or two were not without their difficulties, as Lady
+Arabella speedily realised. A triangular party, when two out of the
+three share certain poignant memories, is by no means the easiest thing
+to stage-manage. There were inevitable awkward moments that could only
+be surmounted by the exercise of considerable tact, and the hours which
+Lady Arabella passed sitting to Quarrington for her portrait, while
+Magda wandered alone through the woods or sculled a solitary boat up the
+river, helped to minimize the strain considerably.
+
+Nevertheless, it was a relief to everyone concerned when Gillian and
+Coppertop were added to the party. A strained atmosphere was somewhat
+difficult of accomplishment anywhere within the joyous vicinity of the
+latter, while Gillian’s tranquil and happy nature reacted on the whole
+household.
+
+“That’s an extraordinary friendship,” commented Quarrington one day
+as he and his hostess stood at the window watching Gillian and Magda,
+returned from shopping in the village, approaching up the drive.
+“Mrs. Grey is so simple and--to use an overworked word--so essentially
+womanly.”
+
+“And Magda?”
+
+The hard look deepened in Michael’s eyes.
+
+“Essentially--feminine,” he answered curtly. “A quite different thing.”
+
+“She hasn’t found her soul yet,” said Lady Arabella. Adding with sudden
+daring: “Suppose you find it for her, Michael?”
+
+“I don’t think the search would interest me,” he returned coolly. “I
+haven’t the instinct of the prospector.” He paused, then went on slowly
+and as though making the admission almost against his will: “But I’d
+like to paint her.”
+
+“A portrait of her?”
+
+“No, not a portrait.”
+
+“Then you mean you want her to sit for your ‘Circe’?”
+
+Lady Arabella knew all about the important picture he had in mind to
+paint. They had often discussed it together during the progress of the
+sittings she had been giving him, and she was aware that so far he had
+been unable to find a suitable model.
+
+“Yes,” he said slowly. “She is the perfect model for such a
+subject--body and soul.”
+
+Lady Arabella ignored the sneer.
+
+“Then why not ask her to sit for you?”
+
+Quarrington’s brows drew together.
+
+“You know the answer to that, I think, Lady Arabella,” he answered
+curtly.
+
+“Oh, you men! I’ve no patience with you!” exclaimed the old lady
+testily. “_I_ shall ask her, then!”
+
+Gillian and Magda, laden with parcels, entered the room as she spoke,
+and, before Quarrington could prevent her, she had flashed round on her
+god-daughter.
+
+“Magda, here’s Michael in need of a model for the best picture he’s ever
+likely to paint, and it seems you exactly fit the bill. Will you sit for
+him?”
+
+Followed an astonished silence. Gillian glanced apprehensively towards
+Magda. She felt as though Lady Arabella had suddenly let off a firework
+in their midst. Magda halted in the process of unwrapping a small
+parcel.
+
+“What is the subject of the picture?”
+
+There was a perceptible pause. Then Lady Arabella took the bull by the
+horns.
+
+“Circe,” she said tersely.
+
+“Oh!” Magda seemed to reflect. “She turned men into swine, didn’t she?”
+ She looked across at Quarrington. “And I’m to understand you think I’d
+make a suitable model for that particular subject?”
+
+“She was a very beautiful person,” suggested Gillian hastily.
+
+“Mr. Quarrington hasn’t answered my question,” persisted Magda.
+
+He met her glance with cool defiance.
+
+“Then, yes,” he returned with a little bow. “As Mrs. Grey has just
+remarked--Circe was very beautiful.”
+
+“You score,” observed Magda demurely. There was a glint of amusement in
+her eyes.
+
+“Yes, I think he does,” agreed Lady Arabella, who was deriving an
+impish, pixie-like enjoyment from the situation. Then, recognising that
+it might be more diplomatic not to press the matter any further at the
+moment, she skilfully drew the conversation into other channels.
+
+It was not until evening, after dinner, that she reverted to the
+subject. They had all four been partaking of coffee and cigarettes
+on the verandah, and subsequently she had proposed a stroll in the
+garden--a suggestion to which Gillian responded with alacrity. Magda,
+her slim length extended on a comfortably cushioned wicker lunge, shook
+her head.
+
+“I’m too comfortable to stir,” she declared idly.
+
+Lady Arabella paused at the edge of the verandah and contemplated her
+critically. Something in the girl’s pose and in the long, lithe lines of
+her recumbent figure was responsible for her next remark.
+
+“I can see you as Circe,” she commented, “quite well.” She tucked her
+arm into Gillian’s and, as they moved away together, threw back over her
+shoulder: “By the way, have you two settled the vexed question of the
+model for the picture yet?”
+
+Quarrington blew a thin stream of smoke into the air before replying.
+Then, looking quizzically across at Magda, he asked: “Have we?”
+
+“Have we what?”
+
+“Decided whether you will sit for my picture of Circe?”
+
+Magda lifted her long white lids and met his glance.
+
+“Why should I?” she asked lazily.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with apparent unconcern.
+
+“No reason in the world--unless you feel inclined to do a good turn.”
+
+His indifference was maddening.
+
+“I don’t make a habit of doing good turns,” she retorted sharply.
+
+“So I should imagine.”
+
+The contemptuous edge to his voice roused her to indignation. As always,
+she found herself stung to the quick by the man’s coolly critical
+attitude towards her. She was back once more in the atmosphere of their
+first meeting on the day he had come to her assistance in the fog.
+It seemed almost incredible that all that followed had ever taken
+place--incredible that he had ever cared for her or taught her to
+care for him. At least he was making it very clear to her now that he
+intended to cut those intervening memories out of his life.
+
+It was a sheer challenge to her femininity, and everything that was
+woman in her rose to meet it.
+
+She smiled across at him engagingly.
+
+“I might--perhaps--make an exception.”
+
+For a moment there was silence. Quarrington’s gaze was riveted on her
+slim, supple figure with its perfect symmetry and rare grace of limb.
+It was difficult to interpret his expression. Magda wondered if he were
+going to reject her offer. He seemed to be fighting something out with
+himself--pulled two ways--the artist in him combating the man’s impulse
+to resist her.
+
+Suddenly the artist triumphed. He rose and, coming to her side, stood
+looking down at her.
+
+“Will you?” he said. “_Will you_?”
+
+Something more than the artist spoke in his voice. It held a note of
+passionate eagerness, a clipped tensity that set all her pulses racing.
+
+She turned her head aside.
+
+“Yes,” she answered, a little breathlessly. “Yes--if you want me to.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A READJUSTMENT OF IDEAS
+
+Magda glanced from the divan covered with a huge tiger-skin to Michael,
+wheeling his easel into place. A week’s hard work on the part of the
+artist had witnessed the completion of Lady Arabella’s portrait, and
+to-day he proposed to make some preliminary sketches for “Circe.”
+
+Magda felt oddly nervous and unsure of herself. This last fortnight
+passed in daily companionship with Quarrington had proved a considerable
+strain. Not withstanding that she had consented to sit for his picture
+of Circe, he had not deviated from the attitude which he had
+apparently determined upon from the first moment of her arrival at
+the Hermitage--an attitude of aloof indifference to which was added a
+bitterness of speech that continually thrust at her with its trenchant
+cynicism. It was as though he had erected a high wall between them which
+Magda found no effort of hers could break down, and she was beginning
+to ask herself whether he could ever really have cared for her at all.
+Surely no man who had once cared could be so hard--so implacably hard!
+
+And now, alone with him in the big room which had been converted into a
+temporary studio, she found herself overwhelmed by a feeling of intense
+self-consciousness. She felt it would be impossible to bear the
+coolly neutral gaze of those grey eyes for hours at a time. She wished
+fervently that she had never consented to sit for the picture at all.
+
+“How do you want me to pose?” she inquired at last, endeavouring to
+speak with her usual detachment and conscious that she was failing
+miserably. “You haven’t told me yet.”
+
+He laughed a little.
+
+“I haven’t the least intention of telling you,” he replied. “‘The
+Wielitzska’ doesn’t need advice as to how to pose.”
+
+Magda looked at him uncertainly.
+
+“But you’ve given me no idea of what you want,” she protested. “I must
+have some idea to start from!”
+
+“I want a recumbent Circe,” he vouchsafed at last. “Hence the divan.
+Here is the goblet”--he held it out--“supposed to contain the fatal
+potion which transformed men into swine. I leave the rest to you. You
+posed very successfully for me some years ago--without my issuing any
+stage directions. Afterwards you played the part of a youthful Circe, I
+remember. You should be more experienced now.”
+
+She flushed under the cool, satirical tone. It seemed as though he
+neglected no opportunity of impressing on her the poor estimation in
+which he held her. Her thoughts flew back to a sunlit glade in a wood
+and to the grey-eyed, boyish-looking painter who had kissed her and
+called her “Witch-child!”
+
+“You--you were kinder in those days,” she said suddenly. She made a few
+steps towards him and stood looking up at him, her hands hanging loosely
+clasped in front of her, like a penitent school-girl.
+
+“Saint Michel”--and at the sound of her old childish name for him he
+winced. “Saint Michel, I don’t think I can sit for you if--if you’re
+going to be unkind. I thought I could, but--but--I can’t!”
+
+“Unkind?” he muttered.
+
+“Yes,” she said desperately. “Since I came here you’ve said a good many
+hard things to me. I--I dare say I’ve deserved them. But”--smiling up
+at him rather wanly--“it isn’t always easy to accept one’s deserts.”
+ She paused, then spoke quickly: “Couldn’t we--while we’re here
+together--behave like friends? Just friends? It’s only for a short
+time.”
+
+His face had whitened while she was speaking. He was silent for a little
+and his hand, grasping the side of the big easel, slowly tightened its
+grip till the knuckles showed white like bone. At last he answered her.
+
+“Very well--friends, then! So be it.”
+
+Impulsively she held out her hand. He took it in his and held it a
+moment, looking down at its slim whiteness. Then he bent his head and
+she felt his lips hot against her soft palm.
+
+A little shaken, she drew away from him and moved towards the divan. She
+paused beside it and glanced down reflectively at the goblet she still
+carried in her hand, mentally formulating her conception of Circe before
+she posed. An instant later and her voice roused Quarrington from the
+momentary reverie into which he had fallen.
+
+“How would this do?”
+
+He looked up, and as his gaze absorbed the picture before him an eager
+light of pure aesthetic satisfaction leaped into his eyes.
+
+“Hold that!” he exclaimed quickly. “Don’t move, please!” And, snatching
+up a stick of charcoal, he began to sketch rapidly with swift, sure
+strokes.
+
+The pose she had assumed was matchless. She was half-sitting, half-lying
+on the divan, the swathing draperies of her tunic outlining the
+wonderful modelling of her limbs. The upper part of her body, twisting a
+little from the waist, was thrown back as she leaned upon one arm, hand
+pressed palm downward on the tiger-skin. In her other hand she held a
+golden goblet, proffering the fatal draught, and her tilted face with
+its strange, enigmatic smile and narrowed lids held all the seductive
+entreaty and beguilement, and the deep, cynical knowledge of mankind,
+which are the garnerings of the Circes of this world.
+
+At length Quarrington laid down his charcoal.
+
+“It’s a splendid pose,” he said enthusiastically. “That sideways bend
+you’ve given to your body--it’s wonderful! But can you stand it, do you
+think? Of course I’ll give you rests as often as I can, but even so it
+will be a very trying pose to hold.”
+
+Magda sat up, letting her feet slide slowly over the edge of the divan.
+The “feet of Aurora” someone had once called them--white and arched,
+with rosy-tipped toes curved like the petals of a flower.
+
+“I can hold it for a good while, I think,” she answered evasively.
+
+She did not tell him that even to her trained muscles the preservation
+of this particular pose, with its sinuous twist of the body, was likely
+to prove somewhat of a strain. If the pose was so exactly what he wanted
+for his Circe, he should have it, whatever the cost to herself.
+
+And without knowing it, yielding to an impulse which she hardly
+recognised, Magda had taken the first step along the pathway of service
+and sacrifice trodden by those who love.
+
+
+
+“It seems as though you were destined to be the model of my two
+‘turning-point’ pictures,” commented Quarrington some days later, during
+one of the intervals when Magda was taking a brief rest. “It was the
+‘Repose of Titania’ which first established my reputation, you know.”
+
+“But this can’t be a ‘turning-point,’” objected Magda. “When you’ve
+reached the top of the pinnacle of fame, so to speak, there isn’t any
+‘turning-point’--unless”--laughing--“you’re going to turn round and
+climb down again!”
+
+“There’s no top to the pinnacle of work--of achievement,” he answered
+quietly. “At least, there shouldn’t be. One just goes on--slipping back
+a bit, sometimes, then scrambling on again.” His glance returned to the
+picture and Magda watched the ardour of the creative artist light itself
+anew in his eyes. “That”--he nodded towards the canvas--“is going to be
+the best bit of work I’ve done.”
+
+“What made you”--she hesitated a moment--“what made you choose Circe as
+the subject?”
+
+His face clouded over.
+
+“The experience of a friend of mine.”
+
+Magda caught her breath.
+
+“Not--you don’t mean-----”
+
+“Oh, no”--divining her thought--“not the friend of whom you know--who
+loved the dancer. She hurt him”--looking at her significantly--“but
+she didn’t injure him to that extent. Circe turned men into swine,
+you remember. My friend was too fine a character for her to spoil like
+that.”
+
+“I’m glad.” Magda spoke very low, her head bent. She felt unable to meet
+his eyes. After a short silence she asked: “Then what inspired--this
+picture?”
+
+Was it some woman-episode that had occurred while he was abroad which
+had scored those new lines on his face, embittering the mouth and
+implanting that sternly sad expression in the grey eyes? She must
+know--at all hazards, she must know!
+
+Quarrington lit a cigarette.
+
+“It’s not a pretty story,” he remarked harshly.
+
+Magda glanced towards the picture. The enchanting, tilted face smiled at
+her from the canvas, faintly derisive.
+
+“Tell it me,” was all she said.
+
+“There’s very little to tell,” he answered briefly. “There was a man
+and his wife--and another woman. Till the latter came along they were
+absolutely happy together--sufficient unto each other. The other woman
+was one of the Circe type, and she broke the man. Broke him utterly. I
+happened to be in Paris at the time, and he came to see me there on his
+way out to South America. He’d left his wife, left his work--everything.
+Just _quitted_! Since then I believe ‘Frisco has seen more of him than
+any other place. A man I know ran across him there and told me he’d gone
+under--utterly.”
+
+“And the wife?”
+
+“Dead”--shortly. “She’d no heart to go on living--no wish to. She died
+when their first child was born--she and the child together--a few
+months after her husband had left her.”
+
+Magda uttered a stifled cry of pity, but Quarrington seemed not to hear
+it.
+
+“That woman was a twentieth-century Circe.” He paused, then added with
+grim conviction: “There’s no forgiveness for a woman like that.”
+
+“Ah! Don’t say that!”
+
+The words broke impulsively from Magda’s lips. The recollection of the
+summer she had spent at Stockleigh rushed over her accusingly--and she
+realised that actually she had come between Dan Storran and his wife
+very much as the Circe woman of Michael’s story had come between some
+other husband and wife.
+
+A deep compassion for that unknown woman surged up within her. Surely
+her burden of remorse must be almost more than she could endure! And
+Magda--to whom penalties and consequences had hitherto been but very
+unimportant factors with which she concerned herself as little as
+possible--was all at once conscious of an intense thankfulness that
+she had not been thus punished, that she had quitted Stockleigh leaving
+husband and wife still together. Together, they would find the way back
+into each other’s hearts!
+
+“Don’t say that!” she repeated imploringly. “It sounds so hard--so
+relentless!”
+
+“I don’t think that it is a case for relenting. But I oughtn’t to have
+told you about it. After all, neither the husband nor wife were friends
+of yours. And you’re looking quite upset over it. I didn’t imagine that
+you were so easily moved to sympathy.”
+
+She looked away. Of late she had been puzzled herself at the new and
+unwonted emotions which stirred her.
+
+“I don’t think--I used to be,” she said at last, uncertainly.
+
+“Well, please don’t take the matter too much to heart or you won’t be
+able to assume the personality of Circe again when you’ve rested. I
+don’t want to paint the picture of a model of propriety!”
+
+It seemed as though he were anxious to restore the conversation to a
+lighter vein, and Magda responded gladly.
+
+“I’m quite rested now. Shall I pose again?” she suggested a few minutes
+later.
+
+Michael assented and, picking up his palette, began squeezing out fresh
+shining little worms of paint on to it while Magda reassumed her pose.
+For a while he chatted intermittently, but presently he fell silent,
+becoming more and more deeply absorbed in his work. Finally, when some
+remark of hers repeated a second time still remained unanswered, she
+realised that he had completely forgotten her existence. As far as he
+was concerned she was no longer Magda Wielitzska, posing for him, but
+Circe, the enchantress, whose amazing beauty he was transferring to
+his canvas in glowing brushstrokes. As with all genius, the impulse of
+creative work had seized him suddenly and was driving him on regardless
+of everything exterior to his art.
+
+Time had ceased to matter to him, and Magda, with little nervous pains
+shooting first through one limb, then another, was wondering how much
+longer she could maintain the pose. She was determined not to give in,
+not to check him while that fervour of creation was upon him.
+
+The pain was increasing. She felt as though she were being stabbed with
+red-hot knives. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, and her
+breath came gaspingly between her lips.
+
+All at once the big easel at which Michael was standing receded out of
+sight, and when it reappeared again it was quite close to her, swaying
+and nodding like a mandarin. Instinctively she put out her hand to
+steady it, but it leaned nearer and nearer and finally gave a huge lurch
+and swooped down on top of her, and the studio and everything in it
+faded out of sight. . . .
+
+
+
+The metallic tinkle of the gold goblet as it fell from her hand and
+rolled along the floor startled Michael out of his absorption. With
+a sharp exclamation he flung down his brush and palette and strode
+hurriedly to the divan. Magda was lying half across it in a little
+crumpled heap, unconscious.
+
+His first impulse to lift her up was arrested by something in her
+attitude, and he stood quite still, looking down at her, his face
+suddenly drawn and very weary.
+
+In the limp figure with its upturned face and the purple shadows which
+fatigue had painted below the closed eyelids, there was an irresistible
+appeal. She looked so young, so helpless, and the knowledge that she had
+done this for him--forced her limbs into agonised subjection until at
+last conscious endurance had failed her--moved him indescribably.
+
+Surely this was a new Magda! Or else he had never known her. Had he
+been too hard--hard to her and pitilessly hard to himself--when he had
+allowed the ugly facts of her flirtation with Kit Raynham to drive him
+from her?
+
+Eighteen months ago! And in all those eighteen months no word of gossip,
+no lightest breath of scandal against her, had reached his ears. Had
+he been merely a self-righteous Pharisee, enforcing the penalty of old
+sins, bygone failings? A grim smile twisted his lips. If so, and he had
+made her suffer, he had at least suffered equally himself!
+
+He stooped over the prone figure on the divan. Lower, lower still, till
+a tendril of dark hair that had strayed across her forehead quivered
+beneath his breath. Then suddenly he drew back, jerking himself upright.
+Striding across the room he pealed the bell and, when a neat maidservant
+appeared in response, ordered sharply:
+
+“Bring some brandy--quick! And ask Mrs. Grey to come here. Mademoiselle
+Wielitzska has fainted.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AT THE END OF THE STORM
+
+“This is very nice--but it won’t exactly contribute towards finishing
+the picture!”
+
+As she spoke Magda leaned back luxuriously against her cushions and
+glanced smilingly across at Michael where he sat with his hand on
+the tiller of the _Bella Donna_, the little sailing-yacht which Lady
+Arabella kept for the amusement of her guests rather than for her own
+enjoyment, since she herself could rarely be induced to go on board.
+
+It had been what Magda called a “blue day”--the sky overhead a deep
+unbroken azure, the dimpling, dancing waters of the Solent flinging
+back a blue almost as vivid--and she and Quarrington had put out from
+Netherway harbour in the morning and crossed to Cowes.
+
+Here they had lunched and Magda had purchased one or two of the
+necessities of life (from a feminine point of view) not procurable in
+the village emporia at Netherway. Afterwards, as there was still ample
+time before they need think of returning home, Michael had suggested an
+hour’s run down towards the Needles.
+
+The _Bella Donna_ sped gaily before the wind, and neither of its
+occupants, engrossed in conversation, noticed that away to windward a
+bank of sullen cloud was creeping forward, slowly but surely eating up
+the blue of the sky.
+
+“Of course it will contribute towards finishing the picture.”
+ Quarrington answered Magda’s laughing comment composedly. “A blow like
+this will have done you all the good in the world, and I shan’t have you
+collapsing on my hands again as you did a week ago.”
+
+“Oh, then, you brought me out on hygienic grounds alone?” derided Magda.
+
+She was feeling unaccountably happy and light-hearted. Since the day
+when she had fainted during the sitting Michael seemed to have changed.
+He no longer gave utterance to those sudden, gibing speeches which had
+so often hurt her intolerably. That sense of his aloofness, as though
+a great wall rose between them, was gone. Somehow she felt that he had
+drawn nearer to her, and once or twice those grey, compelling eyes had
+glowed with a smothered fire that had set her heart racing unsteadily
+within her.
+
+“Haven’t you enjoyed to-day, then?” he inquired, responding to her
+question with another.
+
+“I’ve loved it,” she answered simply. “I think if I’d been a man I
+should have chosen to be a sailor.”
+
+“Then it’s a good thing heaven saw to it that you were a woman. The
+world couldn’t have done without its Wielitzska.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know”--half-indifferently, half-wistfully. “It’s
+astonishing how little necessary anyone really is in this world. If
+I were drowned this afternoon the Imperial management would soon find
+someone to take my place.”
+
+“But your friends wouldn’t,” he said quietly.
+
+Magda laughed a little uncertainly.
+
+“Well, I won’t suggest we put them to the test, so please take me home
+safely.”
+
+As she spoke a big drop of rain splashed down on to her hand. Then
+another and another. Simultaneously she and Michael glanced upwards to
+the sky overhead, startlingly transformed from an arch of quivering blue
+into a monotonous expanse of grey, across which came sweeping drifts of
+black cloud, heavy with storm.
+
+“By Jove! We’re in for it!” muttered Quarrington.
+
+His voice held a sudden gravity. He knew the danger of those unexpected
+squalls which trap the unwary in the Solent, and inwardly he cursed
+himself for not having observed the swift alteration in the weather.
+
+The _Bella Donna_, too, was by no means the safest of craft in which to
+meet rough weather. She was slipping along very fast now, and Michael’s
+keen glance swept the gray landscape to where, at the mouth of the
+channel, the treacherous Needles sentinelled the open sea.
+
+“We must bring her round--quick!” he said sharply, springing up. “Can
+you take the tiller? Do you know how to steer?”
+
+Magda caught the note of urgency in his voice.
+
+“I can do what you tell me,” she said quietly.
+
+“Do you know port from starboard?” he asked grimly.
+
+“Yes. I know that.”
+
+Even while they had been speaking the wind had increased, churning the
+sea into foam-flecked billows that swirled and broke only to gather
+anew.
+
+It was ticklish work bringing the _Bella Donna_ to the wind. Twice she
+refused to come, lurching sickeningly as she rolled broadside on to
+the race of wind-driven waves. The third time she heeled over till her
+canvas almost brushed the surface of the water and it seemed as though
+she must inevitably capsize. There was an instant’s agonised suspense.
+Then she righted herself, the mainsail bellied out as the boom swung
+over, and the tense moment passed.
+
+“Frightened?” queried Quarrington when he had made fast the mainsheet.
+
+Magda smiled straight into his eyes.
+
+“No. We almost capsized then, didn’t we?”
+
+“It was a near shave,” he answered bluntly.
+
+They did not speak much after that. They had enough to do to catch
+the wind which seemed to bluster from all quarters at once, coming in
+violent, gusty spurts that shook the frail little vessel from stem to
+stern. Time after time the waves broke over her bows, flooding the deck
+and drenching them both with stinging spray.
+
+Magda sat very still, maintaining her grip of the wet and slippery
+tiller with all the strength of her small, determined hands. Her limbs
+ached with cold. The piercing wind and rain seemed to penetrate
+through her thin summer clothing to her very skin. But unwaveringly she
+responded to Michael’s orders as they reached her through the bellowing
+of the gale. Her eyes were like stars and her lips closed in a scarlet
+line of courage.
+
+“Port your helm! _Hard_! . . . Hold on!”
+
+Then the thudding swing of the boom as the _Bella Donna_ slewed round on
+a fresh tack.
+
+The hurly-burly of the storm was bewildering. In the last hour or so
+the entire aspect of things had altered, and Magda was conscious of
+a freakish sense of the unreality of it all. With the ridiculous
+inconsequence of thought that so often accompanies moments of acute
+anxiety she reflected that Noah probably experienced a somewhat similar
+astonishment when he woke up one morning to find that the Flood had
+actually begun.
+
+It seemed as though the storm had reached out long arms and drawn the
+whole world of land and sea and sky into its turbulent embrace. Driving
+sheets of rain blurred the coastline on either hand, while the wind
+caught up the grey waters into tossing, crested billows and flung them
+down again in a smother of angry spume.
+
+Overhead, it screamed through the rigging of the little craft like a
+tormented devil, tearing at the straining canvas with devouring fingers
+while the slender mast groaned beneath its force.
+
+Suddenly a terrific gust of wind seemed to strike the boat like an
+actual blow. Magda saw Michael leap aside, and in the same instant came
+a splitting, shattering report as the mast snapped in half and a tangled
+mass of wood and cordage and canvas fell crash on to the deck where he
+had been standing.
+
+Magda uttered a cry and sprang to her feet. For an instant her heart
+seemed to stop beating as she visioned him beneath the mass of tackle.
+Or had he been swept off his feet--overboard into the welter of grey,
+surging waters that clamoured round the boat?
+
+The moment of uncertainty seemed endless, immeasurable. Then Michael
+appeared, stepping across the wreckage, and came towards her. The relief
+was almost unendurable. She stretched out shaking hands.
+
+“Oh, Michael! . . . Michael!” she cried sobbingly.
+
+And all at once she was in his arms. She felt them close about her,
+strong as steel and tender as love itself. In the rocking, helpless
+boat, with the storm beating up around them and death a sudden, imminent
+hazard, she had come at last into haven.
+
+An hour later the storm had completely died away. It had begun to abate
+in violence almost immediately after the breaking of the _Bella Donna’s_
+mast. It was as though, having wreaked its fury and executed all the
+damage possible short of absolute destruction, it was satisfied. With
+the same suddenness with which it had arisen it sank away, leaving a
+sulky, sunless sky brooding above a sullen sea still heaving restlessly
+with the aftermath of tempest.
+
+The yacht had drifted gradually out of mid-channel shorewards, and after
+one or two unsuccessful efforts Quarrington at last succeeded in
+casting anchor. Then he turned to Magda, who had been assisting in the
+operation, with a smile.
+
+“That’s about all we can do,” he said. “We’re perfectly helpless till
+some tug or steamer comes along.”
+
+“Probably they’ll run us down,” she suggested. “We’re in the fairway,
+aren’t we?”
+
+“Yes--which is about our best hope of getting picked up before night.”
+ Then, laying his hand on her arm: “Are you very cold and wet?”
+
+Magda laughed--laughed out of sheer happiness. What did being cold
+matter, or wet either, if Michael loved her? And she was sure now
+that he did, though there had been but the one moment’s brief embrace.
+Afterwards he had had his hands full endeavouring to keep the _Bella
+Donna_ afloat.
+
+“I think the wind has blown my things dry,” she said. “How about you?”
+
+“Oh, I’m all right--men’s clothing being adapted for use, not ornament!
+But I must find something to wrap you up in. We may be here for hours
+and the frock you’re wearing has about as much warming capacity as a
+spider’s web.”
+
+He disappeared below into the tiny, single-berthed cabin, and presently
+returned armed with a couple of blankets, one of which he proceeded to
+wrap about Magda’s shoulders, tucking the other over her knees where she
+sat in the stern of the boat.
+
+“I don’t want them both,” she protested, resisting. “You take one.”
+
+There was something rather delightful in this unconventional comradeship
+of discomfort.
+
+“You’ll obey orders,” replied Michael firmly. “Especially as you’re
+going to be my wife so soon.”
+
+A warm flush dyed her face from brow to throat. He regarded her
+with quizzical eyes. Behind their tender mockery lurked something
+else--something strong and passionate and imperious, momentarily held in
+leash. But she knew it was there--could feel the essential, imperative
+demand of it.
+
+“Well? Does the prospect alarm you?”
+
+Magda forced herself to meet his glance.
+
+“So soon?” she repeated hesitantly.
+
+“Yes. As soon as it can be accomplished,” he said triumphantly.
+
+He seated himself beside her and took her in his arms, blankets and all.
+
+“Did you think I’d be willing to wait?” he said.
+
+“I didn’t think you wanted to marry me at all!” returned Magda, the
+words coming out with a little rush. “I thought you--you disapproved of
+me too much!”
+
+His mouth twisted queerly.
+
+“So I did. I’m scrapping the beliefs of half a lifetime because I love
+you. I’ve fought against it--tried not to love you--kept away from you!
+But it was stronger than I.”
+
+“Saint Michel, I’m so glad--glad it was stronger,” she said tremulously,
+a little break in her voice.
+
+He bent his head and kissed her lips, and with the kiss she gave him
+back she surrendered her very self into his keeping. She felt his arms
+strain about her, and the fierce pressure of their clasp taught her the
+exquisite joy of pain that is born of love.
+
+She yielded resistlessly, every fibre of her being quivering responsive
+to the overwhelming passion of love which had at last stormed and broken
+down all barriers--both the man’s will to resist and her own defences.
+
+Somewhere at the back of her consciousness Diane’s urgent warning:
+_“Never give your heart to any man. Take everything, but do not give!”_
+tinkled feebly like the notes of a worn-out instrument. But even had
+she paused to listen to it she would only have laughed at it. She knew
+better.
+
+Love was the most wonderful thing in the world. If it meant anything at
+all, it meant giving. And she was ready to give Michael everything she
+had--to surrender body, soul, and spirit, the threefold gift that a man
+demands of his mate.
+
+She drew herself out of his arms and slipped to her knees beside him.
+
+“Saint Michel, do you believe in me now?”
+
+“Believe in you? I don’t know whether I believe in you or not. But I
+know I love you! . . . That’s all that matters. I love you!”
+
+“No, no!” She resisted his arms that sought to draw her back into his
+embrace. “I want more than that. I’m beginning to realise things. There
+must be trust in love. . . . Michael, I’m not really hard--and selfish,
+as they say. I’ve been foolish and thoughtless, perhaps. But I’ve
+never done any harm. Not real harm. I’ve never”--she laughed a little
+brokenly--“I’ve never turned men into swine, Michael. . . . I’ve hurt
+people, sometimes, by letting them love me. But, I didn’t know, then!
+Now--now I know what love is, I shall be different. Quite different.
+Saint Michel, I know now--love is self-surrender.”
+
+The tremulous sweetness of her, the humble submissiveness of her appeal,
+could not but win their way. Michael’s lingering disbelief wavered and
+broke. She had been foolish, spoilt and thoughtless, but she had never
+done any real harm. Men had loved her--but how could it be otherwise?
+And perhaps, after all, they were none the worse for having loved her.
+
+Deliberately Michael flung the past behind him and with it his last
+doubt of her. He drew her back into his arms, against his heart, and
+their lips met in a kiss that held not only love but utter faith and
+confidence--a pledge for all time.
+
+“Beloved!” he whispered. “My beloved!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+NIGHT
+
+Michael and Magda stood together on the deck of the crippled yacht which
+now rocked idly on a quite placid sea. Dusk was falling. That first
+glorious, irrecoverable hour when love had come into its own was past,
+and the consideration of things mundane was forcing itself on their
+notice--more especially consideration of their particular plight.
+
+“It looks rather as though we may have to spend the night here,”
+ observed Quarrington, his eyes scanning the channel void of any welcome
+sight of sail or funnel.
+
+Magda’s brows drew together in a little troubled frown.
+
+“Marraine and Gillian will be frightfully worried and anxious,” she said
+uneasily. It was significant of the gradual alteration in her outlook
+that this solicitude for others should have rushed first of anything to
+her lips.
+
+“Yes.” He spoke with a curious abruptness. “Besides, that’s not the only
+point. There’s--Mrs. Grundy.”
+
+Magda shrugged her shoulders and laughed.
+
+“Well, if it’s to come to a choice between Mrs. Grundy and Davy Jones, I
+think I should decide to face Mrs. Grundy! Anyway, people can’t say much
+more--or much worse--things about me than they’ve said already.”
+
+Quarrington frowned moodily.
+
+“I’d like to kick myself for bringing you out to-day and landing you
+into this mess. I can’t stand the idea of people gossiping about you.”
+
+“They’ve left me very little reputation at any time. A little less can’t
+hurt me.”
+
+His eyes grew stormy.
+
+“Don’t!” he said sharply. “I hate to hear you talk like that.”
+
+“But it’s true! No public woman gets a fair chance.”
+
+“_You_ will--when you’re my wife,” he said between his teeth. “I’ll see
+to that.”
+
+Magda glanced at him swiftly.
+
+“Then you don’t want me to--to give up dancing after we’re married?”
+
+“Certainly I don’t. I shall want you to do just as you like. I’ve no
+place for the man who asks his wife to ‘give up’ things in order to
+marry him. I’ve no more right to ask you to give up dancing than you
+have to ask me to stop painting.”
+
+Magda smiled at him radiantly.
+
+“Saint Michel, you’re really rather nice,” she observed impertinently.
+“So few men are as sensible as that. I shall call you the ‘Wise Man,’ I
+think.”
+
+“In spite of to-day?” he queried whimsically, with a rueful glance at
+the debris of mast and canvas huddled on the deck.
+
+“_Because_ of to-day,” she amended softly. “It’s--it’s very wise to be
+in love, Michael.”
+
+He drew her into his arms and his lips found hers.
+
+“I think it is,” he agreed.
+
+Another hour went by, and still there came no sign of any passing
+vessel.
+
+“Why the devil isn’t there a single tug passing up and down just when
+we happen to want one?” demanded Quarrington irately of the unresponsive
+universe. He swung round on Magda. “I suppose you’re starving?” he went
+on, in his voice a species of savage discontent--that unreasonable fury
+to which masculine temperament is prone when confronted with an obstacle
+which declines to yield either to force or persuasion.
+
+Magda laughed outright.
+
+“I’ll admit to being hungry. Aren’t you? . . . It’s horribly unromantic
+of us, Michael,” she added regretfully.
+
+Quarrington grinned.
+
+“It is,” he assented. “All the same, I believe I could consume a tin of
+bully beef and feel humbly grateful for it at the present moment!”
+
+Magda had a sudden inspiration.
+
+“Michael! Let’s forage in the locker! There’s almost sure to be some
+biscuits or chocolate there. Marraine nearly always has things like that
+put on board. And there may be something left from the last supply.”
+
+A brief search brought to light a half-tin of biscuits and some plain
+chocolate, and off these, with the addition of a bottle of soda-water,
+also discovered, they proceeded to make an impromptu meal. It was a
+somewhat thin substitute for the perfectly appointed little dinner of
+which they would have partaken in the ordinary course of events at the
+Hermitage, but when you have been a good many hours without food of any
+description, and spent the greater part of the time in “saving your own
+life at sea,” as Michael put it, even biscuits and chocolate have their
+uses.
+
+When the improvised feast was over, Quarrington explored the recesses of
+the tiny hold and unearthed a lantern, which he proceeded to light and
+attach to the broken mast. It burned with a flickering, uncertain light,
+momentarily threatening to go out altogether.
+
+“We’re not precisely well-equipped with lights,” he remarked grimly.
+“But at least that’s a precaution--as long as it lasts! It may--or may
+not--save us from being run down.”
+
+Twilight deepened slowly into dark. The lights of Yarmouth sprang into
+being, a cluster of lambent orange points studding the dim coast of the
+Island. One by one the stars twinkled out in the dusky sky, and a waning
+moon, thin and frail like a worn sickle, flung a quivering ribbon of
+silver across the sea.
+
+It was strangely still and quiet. Now and again the idle rudder creaked
+as the boat swung to the current. Once there came the long-drawn hoot
+of a distant siren. Beyond these fitful sounds only the gurgle of water
+lapping the sides of the boat broke the silence.
+
+“We’re here till morning,” said Quarrington at last. “You may as well go
+to bed.”
+
+“To bed?”
+
+“Well, there’s a cabin, isn’t there?”--smiling. “And a more or less
+uncomfortable bunk. Come down and see what you can make of it as an
+abiding-place for the night.”
+
+“And--and you? Can’t we rig up anything for you?” Magda looked round her
+vaguely.
+
+“I shan’t sleep. I’ll do sentry-go on deck”--laughing. “It wouldn’t
+do for us both to go comfortably asleep and get run down without even
+having a shot at making our presence known!”
+
+“Then I’ll keep watch with you,” said Magda.
+
+“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ll go down to the cabin and sleep.”
+
+“Let me stay, Michael. I couldn’t bear to think of your watching all
+through the night while I slept comfortably below.”
+
+“You won’t sleep _comfortably_--if my estimate of the look of that bunk
+is correct. But you’ll be out of the cold. Come, be sensible, Magda.
+You’re not suitably attired for a night watch. You’d be perished with
+cold before morning.”
+
+“Well, let us take it in turns, then,” she suggested. “I’ll sleep four
+hours and then I’ll keep a look-out while you have a rest.”
+
+“No,” he said quietly.
+
+“Then we’ll both watch,” she asserted. Through the starlit dark he could
+just discern her small head turned defiantly away from him.
+
+“Has it occurred to you,” he asked incisively, “what a night spent in
+the open might mean to you? Rheumatism is not precisely the kind of
+thing a dancer wants to cultivate.”
+
+“Well, I’m not going below, anyway.”
+
+She sat down firmly and Quarrington regarded her a moment in silence.
+
+“You baby!” he said at last in an amused voice.
+
+And the next moment she felt herself picked up as easily as though she
+were in very truth the baby he had called her and carried swiftly
+down the few steps into the cabin. The recollection of that day of
+her accident in the fog, when he had carried her from the wrenched and
+twisted car into his own house, rushed over her. Now, as then, she could
+feel the strength of his arms clasped about her, the masterful purpose
+of the man that bore her whither he wished regardless of whether she
+wanted to go or not.
+
+He laid her down on the bunk and, bending over her, kept his hands on
+her shoulders.
+
+“Now,” he demanded, “are you going to stay there?”
+
+A faint rebellion still stirred within her.
+
+“Supposing I say ‘no’!”--irresolutely.
+
+“I’m not supposing anything so unlikely,” he assured her. “I’m merely
+waiting to hear you say ‘yes.’”
+
+She recognised the utter futility of trying to pit her will against the
+indomitable will of the man beside her.
+
+“Michael, you are a bully!” she protested indignantly, half angry with
+him.
+
+“Then you’ll stay there?” he persisted.
+
+“You don’t give me much choice”--twisting her shoulders restlessly
+beneath his hands.
+
+He laughed a little.
+
+“You haven’t answered me.”
+
+“Well, then--yes!”
+
+She almost flung the word at him, and instantly she felt him lift his
+hands from her shoulders and heard his footsteps as he tramped out of
+the cabin and up on to the deck. Presently he returned, carrying the
+blankets which he had wrapped round her earlier in the course of their
+vigil. Magda accepted them with becoming docility.
+
+“Thank you, Wise Man,” she said meekly.
+
+He stood looking down at her in the faint moonlight that slanted in
+through the open door of the cabin, and all at once something in the
+intentness of his gaze awakened her to a sudden vivid consciousness of
+the situation--of the hour and of her absolute aloneness with him.
+Their solitude was as complete as though they had been cast on a desert
+island.
+
+Magda felt her pulses throb unevenly. The whole atmosphere seemed
+sentient and athrill with the surge of some deep-lying emotion. She
+could feel it beating up against her--the clamorous demand of something
+hardly curbed and straining for release.
+
+“Michael----” The word stammered past her lips.
+
+The sound of her voice snapped the iron control he had been forcing on
+himself. With a hoarse, half-strangled exclamation he caught her up
+from where she lay, crushing her slim, soft body in a grip that almost
+stifled her, kissing her fiercely on eyes and lips and throat. Then
+abruptly he released her and, without a word, without a backward look,
+strode out of the cabin and up on to the deck.
+
+Magda sank down weakly on the edge of the narrow bunk. The storm of his
+passion had swept through her as the wind sweeps through a tree, leaving
+her spent and trembling. Sleep was an impossibility. Ten minutes, twenty
+passed--she could not have told how long it was. Then she heard him
+coming back, and as he gained the threshold she sprang to her feet and
+faced him, nervously on the defensive. In the pale, elusive moonlight,
+and with that startled poise of figure, she might well have been the
+hamadryad at bay of one of her most famous dances.
+
+Michael looked rather white and there was a grim repression about
+the set of his lips. As he caught sight of her face with its mute
+apprehension and dilated eyes, he spoke quickly.
+
+“You should be resting,” he said. “Let me tuck you up and then try to go
+to sleep.”
+
+There was something infinitely reassuring in the steady tones of his
+voice. It held nothing but kindness--just comradeship and kindness. He
+was master of himself once more. For her sake he had fought back the
+rising tide of passion. It had no place while they two were here alone
+on the wide waters.
+
+He stooped and picked up the blankets, laying them over her with
+a tenderness that seemed in some subtle way to be part of his very
+strength. Her taut nerves relaxed. She smiled up at him.
+
+“Good-night, Saint Michel,” she said simply. “Take care of me.”
+
+He stooped and kissed the slim hand lying outside the blanket.
+
+“Now and always,” he answered gravely.
+
+
+
+When Magda awoke, seven hours later, the sunlight was streaming into the
+cabin. She could hear Michael moving about the deck, and she sprang
+up and proceeded to make such toilette as was possible in the
+circumstances, taking down her hair and dressing it afresh at the tiny
+looking-glass hung on the wall. She had barely completed the operation
+when she heard Michael give a shout.
+
+“Ahoy! Ahoy there!”
+
+She ran up on deck. Approaching them was a small steam-tug, and once
+again Quarrington sent his voice ringing lustily across the water, while
+he flourished a large white handkerchief in the endeavour to attract the
+attention of those on board.
+
+Suddenly the tug saw them and, altering her course, came fussing up
+alongside. Quarrington briefly explained their predicament--in the face
+of the _Bella Donna’s_ battered appearance a lengthy explanation was
+hardly necessary--and a few minutes later the tug was steaming for
+Netherway harbour, towing the crippled yacht behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE OTHER MAN
+
+“Please, Marraine, will you give us your blessing?”
+
+The joyous excitement and relief incidental to the safe return of the
+voyagers had spent itself at last, and now, refreshed and invigorated
+by a hot bath and by a meal of more varied constituents than biscuit
+and plain chocolate, Magda propounded her question, a gleam of mirth
+glancing in her eyes.
+
+Lady Arabella glanced doubtfully from one to the other. Then a look of
+undisguised satisfaction dawned in her face.
+
+“Do you mean----” she began eagerly.
+
+“We’ve been and gone and got engaged,” explained Quarrington.
+
+“My dears!” Lady Arabella jumped up with the agility of twenty rather
+than seventy and proceeded to pour out her felicitations. Incidentally
+she kissed everybody all round, including Quarrington, and her keen old
+hawk’s eyes grew all soft and luminous like a girl’s.
+
+Coppertop was hugely excited.
+
+“Will the wedding be to-morrow?” he asked hopefully. “And shall I be a
+page and carry the Fairy Lady’s train?”
+
+Magda smiled at him.
+
+“Of course you shall be a page, Topkins. But the wedding won’t be quite
+as soon as to-morrow,” she told him.
+
+“Why not?” insinuated Quarrington calmly. “There are such things as
+special licences, you know.”
+
+“Don’t be silly,” replied Magda scathingly. “I’ve only just been saved
+from drowning, and I don’t propose to take on such a risk as matrimony
+till I’ve had time to recover my nerve.”
+
+Lady Arabella surveyed them both with a species of irritated approval.
+
+“And to think,” she burst out at last, indignantly, “of all the hours
+I’ve spent having my silly portrait painted and getting cramp in my
+stiff old joints, and that even then it needed Providence to threaten
+you both with a watery grave to bring you up to the scratch!”
+
+“Well, we’re engaged now,” submitted Magda meekly.
+
+Lady Arabella chuckled sardonically.
+
+“If you weren’t, you’d have to be--after last night!” she commented
+drily.
+
+“No one need know about last night,” retorted Magda.
+
+“Huh!” Lady Arabella snorted. “Half Netherway will know the tale by
+midday. And you may be sure your best enemy will hear of it. They always
+do.”
+
+“Never mind. It will make an excellent advertisement,” observed Magda
+philosophically. “Can’t you see it in all the papers?--‘NARROW ESCAPE OF
+THE WIELITZSKA.’ In big capitals.”
+
+They all laughed, realising the great amount of probability contained
+in her forecast. And, thanks to an enterprising young journalist who
+chanced to be prowling about Netherway on that particular day, the
+London newspapers flared out into large headlines, accompanied by vivid
+and picturesque details of the narrow escape while yachting of the
+famous dancer and of the well-known artist, Michael Quarrington--who,
+in some of the cheaper papers, was credited with having saved the
+Wielitzska’s life by swimming ashore with her.
+
+The immediate result was an augmented post-bag for the Hermitage, and
+Gillian had to waste the better part of a couple of sunshiny days
+in writing round to Magda’s friends assuring them of her continued
+existence and wellbeing, and thanking them for their kind inquiries.
+
+It was decided to keep the engagement private for the present, and life
+at the Hermitage resumed the even tenor of its way, Magda continuing to
+sit daily for the picture of Circe which Michael was anxious to complete
+before she returned to London for the autumn season.
+
+“It’s _our_ picture now, Saint Michel,” she told him, with a happy,
+possessive pride in his work.
+
+In this new atmosphere of tranquil happiness Magda bloomed like a flower
+in the sun. To the nameless natural charm which was always hers there
+was added a fresh sweetness and appeal, and the full revelation of
+her love for him startled even Michael. He had not realised the deep
+capacity for love which had lain hidden beneath her nonchalance.
+
+It seemed as though her whole nature had undergone a change. Alone with
+him she was no longer the assured woman of the world, the spoilt and
+feted dancer, but just a simple, unaffected girl, sometimes a little
+shy, almost diffident, at others frank and spontaneous with the splendid
+candour and simplicity of a woman who knows no fear of love, but goes
+courageously to meet it and all that it demands of her.
+
+She was fugitively sweet and tender with Coppertop, and now and then her
+eyes would shine with a quiet, dreaming light as though she visioned a
+future wherein someone like Coppertop, only littler, might lie in the
+crook of her arm.
+
+Often during these tranquil summer days the two were to be found
+together, Magda recounting the most gorgeous stories of knights and
+dragons such as Coppertop’s small soul delighted in. On one such
+occasion, at the end of a particularly thrilling narrative, he sat back
+on his heels and regarded her with a certain wistful anxiety.
+
+“I suppose,” he asked rather forlornly, “when you’re married they’ll
+give you a little boy like me, Fairy Lady, won’t they?”
+
+The clear, warm colour ran up swiftly beneath her skin.
+
+“Perhaps so, Topkins,” she answered very low.
+
+He heaved a big sigh. “He’ll be a very _lucky_ little boy,” he said
+plaintively. “If Mummie couldn’t have been my mummie, I’d have choosed
+you.”
+
+And so, in this tender atmosphere of peace and contentment, the summer
+slipped by until it was time for Magda to think of going back to London.
+The utter content and happiness of these weeks almost frightened her
+sometimes.
+
+“It can’t last, Gilly,” she confided to Gillian one day, caught by an
+access of superstitious fear. “It simply _can’t_ last! No one was meant
+to be as happy as I am!”
+
+“I think we were all meant to be happy,” replied Gillian simply. “Happy
+and good!” she added, laughing.
+
+“Yes. But I haven’t been particularly good. I’ve just done whatever it
+occurred to me to do without considering the consequences. I expect I
+shall be made to take my consequences all in a heap together one day.”
+
+Gillian smiled.
+
+“Then I suppose we shall all of us have to rally round and get you out
+of them,” she said cheerfully.
+
+“Perhaps--perhaps you wouldn’t be able to.”
+
+There was a strange note of foreboding in Magda’s voice--an accent of
+fatality, and despite herself Gillian experienced a reflex sense of
+uneasiness.
+
+“Nonsense!” she said brusquely. “What on earth has put all these
+ridiculous notions into your head?”
+
+Magda smiled at her. “I think it was four lines I read in a book
+yesterday. They set me thinking.”
+
+“More’s the pity then!” grumbled Gillian. “What were they?”
+
+Magda was silent a moment, looking out over the sea with abstracted
+eyes. It was so blue to-day--all blue and gold in the dancing sunlight.
+But she knew that self-same sea could be grey--grey and chill as death.
+
+Her glance came slowly back to Gillian’s face as she quoted the fragment
+of verse which had persisted in her thoughts:
+
+     “To-day and all the still unborn To-morrows
+     Have sprung from Yesterday. For Woe or Weal
+     The Soul is weighted by the Burden of Dead Days--
+     Bound to the unremitting Past with Ropes of Steel.”
+
+After a moment she added:
+
+“Even you couldn’t cut through ‘ropes of steel,’ my Gillyflower.”
+
+Gillian tried to shrug away this fanciful depression of the moment.
+
+“Well, by way of a counterblast to your dejection of spirit, I propose
+to send an announcement of your engagement to the _Morning Post_. You’re
+not meaning to keep it private after we get back to town, are you?”
+
+“Oh, no. It was only that I didn’t want to be pestered with
+congratulations while we were down here. I suppose they’ll have to come
+some day”--with a small grimace of disgust.
+
+“You’ll be snowed under with them,” Gillian assured her encouragingly.
+
+The public announcement of the engagement preceded Magda’s return from
+Netherway by a few days, so that by the time the Hermitage house-party
+actually broke up, its various members returning to town, all London was
+fairly humming with the news. The papers were full of it. Portraits
+of the fiances appeared side by side, together with brief histories
+of their respective careers up to date, and accompanied by refreshing
+details concerning their personal tastes.
+
+“Dear me, I never knew Michael had a passion for raw meat before,”
+ remarked Magda, after reading various extracts from the different
+accounts aloud for Gillian’s edification.
+
+“Has he?” Gillian was arranging flowers and spoke somewhat indistinctly,
+owing to the fact that she had the stem of a chrysanthemum between her
+lips.
+
+“Yes, he must have. Listen to this, ‘Mr. Quarrington’s wonderful
+creations are evidently not entirely the fruit of the spirit, since
+we understand that his staple breakfast dish consists of a couple of
+underdone cutlets--so lightly cooked, in fact, as to be almost raw.’
+I’m glad I’ve learned that,” pursued Magda earnestly. “It seems to me an
+important thing for a wife to know. Don’t you think so, Gillian?”
+
+Gillian shouted with delight.
+
+“Of course I do! Do let’s ask Michael to lunch and offer him a couple of
+raw cutlets on a charger.”
+
+“No,” insisted Magda firmly. “I shall keep a splendid treat like that
+for him till after we’re married. Even at a strictly conservative
+estimate it should be worth a new hat to me.”
+
+“Or a dose of arsenic in your next cup of tea,” suggested Gillian,
+giggling.
+
+The following evening was the occasion of Magda’s first appearance at
+the Imperial after the publication of her engagement, and the theatre
+was packed from floor to ceiling. “House Full” boards were exhibited
+outside at quite an early hour, and when Magda appeared on the stage she
+was received with such enthusiasm that for a time it was impossible
+to proceed with the ballet. When finally the curtain fell on what the
+critics characterised next day as “the most appealing performance of
+_The Swan-Maiden_ which Mademoiselle Wielitzska has yet given us,”
+ she received an absolute ovation. The audience went half-crazy with
+excitement, applauding deliriously, while the front of the stage
+speedily became converted into a veritable bank of flowers, from amidst
+which Magda bowed and smiled her thanks.
+
+She enjoyed every moment of it, every handclap. She was radiantly happy,
+and this spontaneous sharing in her happiness by the big public which
+idolised her served but to intensify it. She was almost crying as she
+returned to her dressing-room after taking a dozen or more calls, and
+when, as usual, Virginie met her on the threshold, she dropped the
+great sheaf of lilies she was carrying and flung her arms round the old
+woman’s neck.
+
+“Oh, the dears!” she exclaimed. “The blessed _dears_! Virginie, I
+believe I’m the happiest woman alive!”
+
+“And who should be, _mon petite chou_, if not thou?” returned the old
+woman with conviction. “Of course they love thee! _Mais bien sur_!
+Doest thou not dance for them as none else can dance and give them angel
+visions that they could not imagine for themselves?” She paused. Then
+thrusting her hand suddenly into the pocket of her apron and producing
+a card: “_Tiens_! I forgot! Monsieur Davilof waits. Will mademoiselle
+receive him?”
+
+Magda nodded. She had not seen Antoine since her return from Netherway.
+He had been away in Poland, visiting his mother whom, by the way, he
+adored. But as her engagement to Michael was now public she was anxious
+to get her first meeting with the musician over. He would probably
+rave a little, despairing in the picturesque and dramatic fashion
+characteristic of him, and the sooner he “got it out of his system,” as
+Gillian had observed on one occasion, the better for everyone concerned.
+So Magda braced herself for the interview, and prepared to receive a
+tragical and despondent Davilof.
+
+But she was not in the least prepared for the man as he appeared when
+Virginie ushered him into the dressing-room and retired, discreetly
+closing the door behind her. Magda, her hand outstretched to greet him,
+paused in sheer dismay, her arm falling slowly to her side.
+
+She had never seen so great a change in any man. His face was grey--grey
+and lined like the face of a man who has had no sleep for days. His
+shoulders stooped a little as though he were too weary to hold himself
+upright, and there was a curiously rigid look about his features,
+particularly the usually mobile mouth. The only live thing about him
+seemed to be his eyes. They blazed with a burning brightness that made
+her think of flame. With it all, he was as immaculately groomed, his
+small golden beard as perfectly trimmed, as ever.
+
+“Antoine!” His name faltered from Magda’s lips. The man’s face, its
+beauty all marred by some terrible turmoil of the soul, shocked her.
+
+He vouchsafed no greeting, but came swiftly to her side.
+
+“Is it true?” he demanded imperiously.
+
+She shrank back from him. There was a dynamic force about him that
+startled her.
+
+“Is what true?”
+
+“Is it true that you’re engaged to Quarrington?”
+
+“Of course it is. It was in all the papers. Didn’t you see it?”
+
+“Yes, I saw it. I didn’t believe it. I was in Poland when I heard and I
+started for England at once. But I was taken ill on the journey. Since
+then I’ve been travelling night and day.” He paused, adding in a tone of
+finality: “You must break it off.”
+
+“Break it off? Are you crazy, Antoine?”
+
+“No, I’m not crazy. But you’re mine. You’re meant for me. And no other
+man shall have you.”
+
+Magda’s first impulse was to order him out of the room. But the man’s
+haggard face was so pitifully eloquent of the agony he had been enduring
+that she had not the heart. Instead, she temporised persuasively.
+
+“Don’t talk like that, Antoine.” She spoke very gently. “You don’t mean
+it, you know. If--if you do care for me as you say, you’d like me to be
+happy, wouldn’t you?”
+
+“I’d make you happy,” he said hoarsely.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“No,” she answered. “You couldn’t make me happy. Only Michael can do
+that. So you must let me go to him. . . . Antoine, I’d rather go with
+your good wishes. Won’t you give them to me? We’ve been friends so
+long--”
+
+“_Friends_?” he broke in fiercely. “No! We’ve never been ‘friends.’ I’ve
+been your lover from the first moment I saw you, and shall be your lover
+till I die!”
+
+Magda retreated before his vehemence. She was still wearing her costume
+of the Swan-Maiden, and there was something frailly virginal and elusive
+about her as she drew away from him that set the hot, foreign blood in
+him on fire. In two strides he was at her side, his hands gripping her
+bare arms with a savage clasp that hurt her.
+
+“_Mon adoree_!”
+
+His voice was harsh with the tensity of passion, and the cry that
+struggled from her throat for utterance was smothered by his lips on
+hers. The burning kisses seemed to scorch her--consuming, overwhelming
+her. When at last he took his mouth from hers she tried unavailingly to
+free herself. But his clasp of her only tightened.
+
+“Now you know how I love you,” he said grimly. He was breathing
+rather fast, but in some curious way he seemed to have regained his
+self-control. It was as though he had only slipped the leash of passion
+so that she might, as he said, comprehend his love for her. “Do you
+think I’ll give you up? I tell you I’d rather kill you than see you
+Quarrington’s wife.”
+
+Once more she made an effort to release herself.
+
+“Oh, you’re mad, you’re mad!” she cried. “Let me go, Davilof! At once!”
+
+“No,” he said in a measured voice. “Don’t struggle. I’m not going to let
+you go. Not yet. I’ve reached my limit. You shall go when you promise to
+marry me. Me, not Quarrington.”
+
+She had not been frightened by the storm of passion which had carried
+him headlong. That had merely roused her to anger. But this quiet,
+purposeful composure which had succeeded it filled her with an odd kind
+of misgiving.
+
+“It’s absurd to talk like that,” she said, holding on desperately to
+her self-possession. “It’s silly--and melodramatic, and only makes me
+realise how glad I am I shall be Michael’s wife and not yours.”
+
+“You will never be Quarrington’s wife.”
+
+He spoke with conviction. Magda called up all her courage to defy him.
+
+“And do you propose to prevent it?” she asked contemptuously.
+
+“Yes.” Then, suddenly: “_Adoree_, don’t force me to do it! I don’t
+want to. Because it will hurt you horribly. And it will all be saved if
+you’ll promise to marry me.”
+
+He spoke appealingly, with an earnestness that was unmistakable. But
+Magda’s nerve was gradually returning.
+
+“You don’t seem to understand that you can’t prevent my marrying
+Michael--or anyone else,” she said coolly. “You haven’t the power.”
+
+“I can prevent your marrying Michael”--doggedly.
+
+She was silent a moment.
+
+“I suppose,” she said at last, “you think that because he once thought
+badly of me you can make him think the same again. Well, you can’t.
+Michael and I trust each other--absolutely!”
+
+Her face was transfigured. Michael trusted her now! Nothing could
+really hurt her while he believed in her. She could afford to laugh at
+Antoine’s threat.
+
+“And now,” she said quietly, “will you please release me?”
+
+Slowly, reluctantly Davilof’s hands dropped from her arms, revealing red
+weals where the grip of his fingers had crushed the soft, white flesh.
+He uttered a stifled exclamation as his eyes fell on the angry-looking
+marks.
+
+“_Mon dieu_! I’ve hurt you--”
+
+“No!” Magda faced him with a defiance that was rather splendid. “No!
+_You can’t_ hurt me, Davilof. Only the man I love can do that.”
+
+He flinched at the proud significance of the words--denying him even
+the power to hurt her. It was almost as though she had struck him,
+contemptuously disdainful of his toy weapons--the weapons of the man who
+didn’t count.
+
+There was a long silence. At last he spoke.
+
+“You’ll be sorry for that,” he said in a voice of concentrated anger.
+“Damned sorry. Because it isn’t true. I _can_ hurt you. And by God,
+if you won’t marry me, I will! . . . Magda----” With one of the
+swift changes so characteristic of the man he softened suddenly into
+passionate supplication. “Have a little mercy! God! If you knew how I
+love you, you couldn’t turn me away. Wait! Think again--”
+
+“That will do.” She checked him imperiously. “I don’t want your love.
+And for the future please understand that you won’t even be a friend. I
+don’t wish to see or speak to you again!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE ROPES OF STEEL
+
+Magda sat gazing idly into the fire, watching with abstracted eyes the
+flames leap up and curl gleefully round the fresh logs with which she
+had just fed it. She was thinking about nothing in particular--merely
+revelling in the pleasant warmth and comfort of the room and in the
+prospect of a lazy evening spent at home, since to-night she was not due
+to appear in any of the ballets to be given at the Imperial Theatre.
+
+Outside, the snow was falling steadily in feathery flakes, hiding the
+grime of London beneath a garment of shimmering white and transforming
+the commonplace houses built of brick and mortar, each capped with its
+ugly chimneystack, into glittering fairy palaces, crowned with silver
+towers and minarets.
+
+The bitter weather served to emphasise the easy comfort of the room, and
+Magda curled up into her chair luxuriously. She was expecting Michael
+to dinner at Friars’ Holm this evening. They had not seen each other for
+three whole days, so that there was an added edge to her enjoyment of
+the prospect. She would have so much to tell him! About the triumphant
+reception she had had the other night down at the theatre--he had been
+prevented from being present--and about the unwarrantable attitude
+Davilof had adopted, which had been worrying her not a little. He would
+sympathise with her over that--the effortless sympathy of the man in
+possession!
+
+Then the unwelcome thought obtruded itself that if the snow continued
+falling Michael might be weather-bound and unable to get out to
+Hampstead. She uncurled herself from her chair and ran to the window.
+The sky stretched sombrely away in every direction. No sign of a break
+in the lowering, snow-filled clouds! She drummed on the window with
+impatient fingers; and then, drowning the little tapping noise they
+made, came the sound of an opening door and Melrose’s placid voice
+announcing:
+
+“Mr. Quarrington.”
+
+Magda whirled round from the window.
+
+“Michael!” she exclaimed joyfully. “I was just wondering if you would
+be able to get over this evening. I suppose you came while you
+could!”--laughing. “I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if you were
+snowed up here. Shall you mind--dreadfully--if you are?”
+
+But Michael made no response to the tenderly mocking question, nor
+did her smile draw from him any answering smile. She looked at him
+waveringly. He had been in the room quite long enough to take her in his
+arms and kiss her. And he hadn’t done it.
+
+“Michael----” She faltered a little. “How queer you are! Have
+you--brought bad news?” A sudden dread rushed through her. “It’s
+not--Marraine?”
+
+“No, no.” He spoke hastily, answering the startled apprehension in her
+eyes. “It’s not that.”
+
+Her mind, alertly prescient, divined significance in the mere wording of
+the phrase.
+
+“Then there is--something?”
+
+“Yes, there is something.”
+
+His voice sounded forced, and Magda waited with a strange feeling of
+tension for him to continue.
+
+“I want to ask you a question,” he went on in the same
+carefully measured accents. “Did you ever stay at a place called
+Stockleigh--Stockleigh Farm at Ashencombe?”
+
+Stockleigh! At the sound of the word it seemed to Magda as though a hand
+closed suddenly round her heart, squeezing it so tightly that she could
+not breathe.
+
+“I--yes, I stayed there,” she managed to say at last.
+
+“Ah-h!” It was no more than a suddenly checked breath. “When were you
+there?” The question came swiftly, like the thrust of a sword. With it,
+it seemed to Magda that she could feel the first almost imperceptible
+pull of the “ropes of steel.”
+
+“I was there--the summer before last,” she said slowly.
+
+Michael made no answer. Only in the silence that followed she saw his
+face change. Something that had been hope--a fighting hope--died out of
+his eyes and his jaw seemed to set itself with a curious inflexibility.
+
+She waited for him to speak--waited with a keyed-up intensity of
+longing that was almost physically painful. At last, unable to bear the
+continued silence, she spoke again. Her voice cracked a little.
+
+“Why--why do you ask, Michael?”
+
+He looked at her and a sudden cynical amusement gleamed in his eyes--an
+amusement so bitterly unmirthful that there seemed something almost
+brutal about it. Her hand went up to her face as though to screen out
+the sight of it.
+
+“You can’t guess, I suppose?” he said with dry, harsh irony. Then, after
+a moment: “Why did you never tell me you were there? You never spoke of
+it. . . . Wasn’t it curious you should never speak of it?”
+
+She made a step towards him. She could not endure this torturing
+suspense another instant. It was racking her. She must know what
+Stockleigh signified to him.
+
+“What do you mean? Tell me what you mean!” she asked desperately.
+
+“Do you remember the story I told you down at Netherway--of a man and
+his wife and another woman?”
+
+“Yes, I remember”--almost whispering.
+
+“That was the story of my sister, June, and her husband, Dan Storran.
+You--were the other woman.”
+
+She felt his eyes--those eyes out of which all hope had died--fixed on
+her.
+
+“June--your sister? Your sister? Are you sure?” she stammered stupidly.
+
+It couldn’t be true! Not even God could have thought of a punishment so
+cruel, so awful as this. That June--the woman who had died just because
+she “had no heart to go on living”--should be Michael’s sister! Oh, it
+was a crazy tangling of the threads--mad! Like some macabre invention
+sprung from a disordered brain. She wanted to laugh, and she knew if she
+began to laugh she should never stop. She felt she was losing her hold
+over herself. With a violent effort she clutched at her self-control.
+
+“Will you say it all over again, please?” she said in a flat voice. “I
+don’t think I understand.”
+
+“Nor did I till to-day,” he replied shortly. “Davilof made me
+understand--this morning.”
+
+“Davilof?” The word seemed to drag itself from her throat. . . .
+Davilof--who had been at Stockleigh that summer! Then it was all going
+to be true, after all.
+
+“Yes, Davilof. He had chanced on the fact that June was my sister.
+Very few people knew it, because, when she married, it was against
+our father’s wishes, and she had cut herself adrift from the family. I
+wanted to help her, but she would never let me.” He paused, then went
+on tonelessly: “It’s all quite clear, isn’t it? You know everything
+that happened while you were at Stockleigh. I’ve told you what happened
+afterwards. Storran cleared out of the country at once, and June had
+nothing left to live for. The only thing I didn’t know was the name of
+the woman who had smashed up both their lives. I saw Dan in Paris . . .
+He came to me at my studio. But he was a white man. He never gave away
+the name of the woman who had ruined him. I only knew she had spent
+that particular summer at Stockleigh. It was Davilof who told me who the
+woman was.”
+
+_“I can prevent your marrying Quarrington!”_ Magda could hear again the
+quiet conviction of Antoine’s utterance. So he had known, then, when he
+threatened her, that June was Michael’s sister! She wondered dully how
+long he had been aware of the fact--how he had first stumbled across it
+and realised its value as a hammer with which to crush her happiness.
+Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered any more. The main fact was that
+he _had_ known.
+
+June was dead! Amid the confused welter of emotions which seemed to have
+utterly submerged her during the last few minutes, Magda had almost lost
+sight of this as a fact by itself--as distinct from its identity with
+the fact that Michael’s sister was dead. She felt vaguely sorry for
+June.
+
+Since the day she and Gillian had left Ashencombe she had heard nothing
+of Storran or his wife. No least scrap of news relating to them had come
+her way. In the ordinary course of events it was hardly likely that it
+would. The circles of their respective lives did not overlap each other.
+And Magda had made no effort to discover what had happened at Stockleigh
+after she had left there. She had been glad to shut the door on that
+episode in her life. She was not proud of it.
+
+There were other incidents, too, which she could have wished were
+blotted out--the Raynham incident amongst them. With the new insight
+which love had brought her she was beginning to rate these things at
+their true value, to realise how little she had understood of all love’s
+exquisite significance when she played with it as lightly as a child
+might play with a trinket. She had learned better now--learned that love
+was of the spirit as well as of the body, and that in playing at love
+she had played with men’s souls.
+
+She believed she had put that part of her life behind her--all those
+unrecognising days before love came to her. And now, without warning,
+sudden as an Eastern night, the past had risen up and confronted her.
+The implacable ropes of steel held her in bondage.
+
+“Michael . . . can’t you--forgive me?”
+
+Her voice wavered and broke as she realised the utter futility of her
+question. Between them, now and always, there must lie the young, dead
+body of June Storran.
+
+“Forgive you?” Michael’s voice was harsh with an immeasurable
+bitterness. “Good God! What are you made of that you can even ask me?
+It’s women like you who turn this world into plain hell! . . . Look
+back! Have you ever looked back, I wonder?” He paused, and she knew
+his eyes were searching her--those keen, steady eyes, hard, now, like
+flint--searching the innermost recesses of her being. She felt as though
+he were dragging the soul out of her body, stripping it naked to the
+merciless lash of truth.
+
+“June--my little sister, the happiest of mortals--dead, through you.
+And Storran--he was a big man, white all through--down and out. And God
+knows who else has had their sun put out by you. . . . You’re like a
+blight--spreading disease and corruption wherever you go.”
+
+A little moan broke from her lips. For a moment it was a physical
+impossibility for her to speak. She could only shrink, mute and
+quivering, beneath the flail of his scorn.
+
+At last: “Is--is that what you think of me?” she almost whispered.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She winced at the harsh monosyllable. There was a finality about
+it--definite, unalterable. She looked at him dry-eyed, her face
+tragically beautiful in its agony. But he seemed impervious to either
+its beauty or its suffering. There was no hint of softening in him.
+Without another word he swung round on his heel and turned to leave her.
+
+“Michael . . . don’t go!” The lovely voice was a mere thread of
+sound--hoarse and strangulated. “Don’t go! . . . Oh, be a little
+merciful!”
+
+She laid an imploring hand on his arm, and at the touch of her his iron
+composure shook a little. For a moment the hardness in his eyes was
+wiped out by a look of intolerable pain. Then, with a quiet, inexorable
+movement he released himself from her straining clasp.
+
+“There’s no question of mercy,” he said inflexibly. “I’m not judging
+you, or punishing you. It’s simply that I can’t marry you. . . . You
+must see that June’s death--my sister’s death--lies at your door.”
+
+“No,” she said. “No. I suppose you can’t marry me--now.”
+
+Her breath came in short, painful gasps. Her face seemed to have grown
+smaller--shrunk. There was a pinched look about the nostrils and
+every drop of blood had drained away, leaving even her lips a curious
+greyish-white. She leaned forward, swaying a little.
+
+“I suppose,” she said in a clear, dry voice, “you don’t even love me any
+more?”
+
+His hands clenched and he took a sudden impetuous step towards her.
+
+“Not love you?” he said. And at last the man’s own agony broke through
+his enforced calm, shaking his voice so that it was hoarse and terrible.
+“Not love you? I love you now as I loved you the day I first saw you.
+God in heaven! Did you think love could be killed so easily? Does it
+die--just because it’s forbidden by every decent instinct that a man
+possesses? If so, nine-tenths of us would find the world an easier place
+to live in!”
+
+“And there is--no forgiveness, Michael?” The lovely grief-wrung face was
+uplifted to his beseechingly.
+
+“Don’t ask me!” he said hoarsely. “You know there can be none.”
+
+He turned and strode to the door. He did not look back even when his
+name tore itself like a cry between her lips. The next moment the sound
+of a door’s closing came dully to her ears.
+
+She looked vaguely round the room. The fire was dying, the charred logs
+sinking down on to a bed of smouldering cinders. A touch would scatter
+them from their semblance of logs into a heap of grey, formless ash.
+Outside the window the snow still fell monotonously, wrapping the world
+in a passionless, chill winding-sheet.
+
+With a little broken cry she stumbled forward on to her knees, her arms
+outflung across the table.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ACCOUNT RENDERED
+
+The long, interminable night was over at last. Never afterwards, all
+the days of her life, could Magda look back on the black horror of those
+hours without a shudder. She felt as though she had been through hell
+and come out on the other side, to find stretching before her only the
+blank grey desolation of chaos.
+
+She was stripped of everything--of love, of happiness, even of hope.
+There was nothing in the whole world to look forward to. There never
+would be again. And when she looked back it was with eyes that had been
+vouchsafed a terrible enlightenment.
+
+Phrases which had fallen from Michael’s lips scourged her anew
+throughout the long hours of the night. “Women like you make this world
+into plain hell,” he had said. “You’re like a blight--spreading disease
+and corruption wherever you go.” And the essential truth which each
+sentence held left her writhing.
+
+It was all true--horribly, hideously true. The magical, mysterious power
+of beauty which had been given her, which might have helped to lighten
+the burden of the sad old world wherever she passed, she had used to
+destroy and deface and mutilate. The debt against her--the debt of all
+the pain and grief which she had brought to others--had been mounting
+up, higher and higher through the years. And now the time had come when
+payment was to be exacted.
+
+
+
+Quite simply and directly, without seeking in any way to exculpate
+herself, she had told Gillian the bare facts of what had happened--that
+her engagement was broken off and the reason why. But she had checked
+all comment and the swift, understanding sympathy which Gillian would
+have given. Criticism or sympathy would equally have been more than she
+could bear.
+
+“There is nothing to be said or done about it,” she maintained. “I’ve
+sinned, and now I’m to be punished for my sins. That’s all.”
+
+The child of Hugh Vallincourt spoke in that impassive summing up of the
+situation and Lady Arabella, with her intimate knowledge of both Hugh
+and his sister Catherine, would have ascribed it instantly to the
+Vallincourt strain in her god-daughter. To Gillian, however, to whom the
+Vallincourts were nothing more than a name, the strange submissiveness
+of it was incomprehensible. As the days passed, she tried to rouse
+Magda from the apathy into which she seemed to have fallen, but without
+success.
+
+“It’s no use, Gillyflower,” she would reply with a weary little smile.
+“There _is_ no way out. Do you remember I once said I was too happy for
+it to last? It was quite true. . . . Have you told Marraine?” she asked
+suddenly.
+
+“Yes. And she wants to see you.”
+
+“I don’t think I want to see her--or anyone just at present. I’ve got to
+think--to think things out.”
+
+“What do you mean? What are you going to do?”
+
+“I--don’t know--yet.”
+
+Gillian regarded her with some anxiety. That Magda, usually so
+unreserved and spontaneous, should shut her out of her confidence
+thoroughly disquieted her. She felt afraid. It seemed to her as though
+the girl were more or less stunned by the enormity of the blow which
+had befallen her. She went about with a curious absence of interest in
+anything--composed, quiet, absorbed in her own thoughts, only rousing
+herself to appear at the Imperial as usual. Probably her work at the
+theatre was the one thing that saved her from utter collapse.
+
+As far as Gillian knew she had not shed a single tear. Only her face
+seemed to grow daily more strained-looking, and her eyes held a curious
+expression that was difficult to interpret.
+
+There were days which she spent entirely in the seclusion of her own
+room, and then Virginie alone was allowed entrance. The old Frenchwoman
+would come in with some special little dish she had cooked with her own
+hands, hoping to tempt her beloved mistress’s appetite--which in these
+days had dwindled to such insignificant proportions that Virginie was in
+despair.
+
+“Thou must eat,” she would say.
+
+“I don’t want anything--really, Virginie,” Magda would insist.
+
+“And wherefore not?” demanded Virginie indignantly one day. “Thou art
+not one of the Sisters of Penitence that thou must needs deny thyself
+the good things of life.”
+
+Magda looked up with a sudden flash of interest.
+
+“The Sisters of Penitence, Virginie? Who are they? Tell me about them.”
+
+Virginie set a plate containing an epicurean omelet triumphantly in
+front of her.
+
+“Eat that, then, _cherie_, while I tell thee of them,” she replied with
+masterly diplomacy. “It is good, the omelet. Virginie made it for thee
+with her own hands.”
+
+Magda laughed faintly in spite of herself and began upon the omelet
+obediently.
+
+“Very well, then. Tell me about the Sisters of Penitence. Are they
+always being sorry for what they’ve done?”
+
+“It is a sisterhood, _mademoiselle cherie_, for those who would withdraw
+themselves from the world. They are very strict, I believe, the sisters,
+and mortify the flesh exceedingly. Me, I cannot see why we should leave
+the beautiful world the _bon dieu_ has put us into. For certain, He
+would not have put us in if He had not meant us to stay there!”
+
+“Perhaps--they are happier--out of the world, Virginia,” suggested Magda
+slowly.
+
+“But my niece, who was in the sisterhood a year, was glad to come out
+again. Though, of course, she left her sins behind her, and that was
+good. It is always good to get rid of one’s sins, _n’est-ce pas_?”
+
+“Get rid of your sins? But how can you?”
+
+“If one does penance day and night, day and night, for a whole long
+year, one surely expiates them! And then”--with calm certainty--“of
+course one has got rid of them. They are wiped off the slate and one
+begins again. At least, it was so with my niece. For when she came out
+of the sisterhood, the man who had betrayed her married her, and they
+have three--no, four _bebes_ now. So that it is evident _le bon dieu_
+was pleased with her penance and rewarded her accordingly.”
+
+Magda repressed an inclination to smile at the naive simplicity of
+Virginie’s creed. Life would indeed be an easy affair if one could “get
+rid of one’s sins” on such an ingenuous principal of quid pro quo!
+
+But Virginie came of French peasant stock, and to her untutored mind
+such a process of wiping the slate clean seemed extremely reasonable.
+She continued with enthusiasm:
+
+“She but took the Vow of Penitence for a year. It is a rule of the
+sisterhood. If one has sinned greatly, one can take a vow of penitence
+for a year and expiate the sin. Some remain altogether and take the
+final vows. But my niece--no! She sinned and she paid. And then she
+came back into the world again. She is a good girl, my niece Suzette.
+Mademoiselle has enjoyed her omelet? Yes?”
+
+Magda nodded.
+
+“Yes, Virginie, I’ve enjoyed it. And I think your niece was certainly a
+brave _fille_. I’m glad she’s happy now.”
+
+For long after Virginie had left her, Magda sat quietly thinking. The
+story of the old Frenchwoman’s niece had caught hold of her imagination.
+Like herself she had sinned, though differently. Within her own mind
+Magda wondered whether she or Suzette were in reality the greater sinner
+of the two. Suzette had at least given all, without thought of self,
+whereas she had only taken--taken with both hands, giving nothing in
+return.
+
+Probably Suzette had been an attractive little person--of the same
+type of brown-eyed, vivacious youth which must have been Virginie’s
+five-and-thirty years ago--and her prettiness had caused her downfall.
+Magda glanced towards the mirror. It was through her beauty she herself
+had sinned. It had given her so much power, that exquisite, perfect body
+of hers, and she had pitifully misused the power it had bestowed. The
+real difference between herself and Suzette lay in the fact that
+the little French girl had paid the uttermost farthing of the price
+demanded--had submitted herself to discipline till she had surely
+expiated all the evil she had done. What if she, likewise, were to seek
+some such discipline?
+
+The idea had presented itself to her at precisely the moment when she
+was in the grip of an agony of recoil from her former way of life. Like
+her father, she had been suddenly brought up short and forced to survey
+her actions through the eyes of someone else, to look at all that she
+had done from another’s angle of vision. And coincidentally, just as
+in the case of her father, the abrupt downfall of her hopes, the
+sudden shattering of her happiness, seemed as though it were due to the
+intervention of an angry God.
+
+The fanatical Vallincourt blood which ran in Magda’s veins caused her
+to respond instinctively to this aspect of the matter. But the strain
+of her passionate, joy-loving mother which crossed with it tempered the
+tendency toward quite such drastic self-immolation as had appealed to
+Hugh Vallincourt.
+
+To Magda, Michael had come to mean the beginning and end of
+everything--the pivot upon which her whole existence hung. So that
+if Michael shut her out of his life for ever, that existence would no
+longer hold either value or significance. From her point of view, then,
+the primary object of any kind of self-discipline would be that it might
+make her more fit to be the wife of “Saint Michel.”
+
+He despised her now. The evil she had done stood between them like
+a high wall. But if she were to make atonement--as Suzette had
+atoned--surely, when the wickedness had been purged out of her by pain
+and discipline, Michael would relent!
+
+The idea lodged in her mind. It went with her by day and coloured her
+thoughts by night, and it was still working within her like yeast when
+she at last nerved herself to go and see her godmother.
+
+Lady Arabella, as might have been anticipated, concealed her own
+sore-heartedness under a manner that was rather more militant than
+usual, if that were possible.
+
+“Why you hadn’t more sense than to spend your time fooling with a sort
+of cave-man from the backwoods, I can’t conceive,” she scolded. “You
+must have known how it would end.”
+
+“I didn’t. I never thought about it. I was just sick with Michael
+because he had gone abroad, and then, when I heard that he was married,
+it was the last straw. I don’t think--that night--I should have much
+cared what happened.”
+
+Lady Arabella nodded.
+
+“Women like you make it heaven or hell for the men who love you.”
+
+“And hell, without the choice of heaven, for ourselves,” returned Magda.
+
+The bitterness in her voice wrung the old woman’s heart. She sighed,
+then straightened her back defiantly.
+
+“We have to bear the burden of our blunders, my dear.”
+
+There was a reminiscent look in the keen old eyes. Lady Arabella had had
+her own battles to fight. “And, after all, who should pay the price if
+not we ourselves?”
+
+“But if the price is outrageous, Marraine? What then?”
+
+“Still you’ve got to pay.”
+
+Magda returned home with those words ringing in her ears. They fitted
+into the thoughts which had been obsessing her with a curious precision.
+It was true, then. You had to pay, one way or another. Lady Arabella
+knew it. Little Suzette had somehow found it out.
+
+That night a note left Friars’ Holm addressed to the Mother Superior of
+the Sisters of Penitence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+GILLIAN INTERCEDES
+
+It was a bald, austere-looking room. Magda glanced about her
+curiously--at the plain, straight-backed chairs, at the meticulously
+tidy desk and bare, polished floor. Everything was scrupulously clean,
+but the total absence of anything remotely resembling luxury struck
+poignantly on eyes accustomed to all the ease and beauty of surroundings
+which unlimited money can procure.
+
+By contrast with the severity of the room Magda felt uncomfortably
+conscious of her own attire. The exquisite gown she was wearing, the big
+velvet hat with its drooping plume, the French shoes with their buckles
+and curved Louis heels--all seemed acutely out of place in this austere,
+formal-looking chamber.
+
+Her glance came back to the woman sitting opposite her, the Mother
+Superior of the Sisters of Penitence--tall, thin, undeniably impressive,
+with a stern, colourless face as clean-cut as a piece of ivory, out of
+which gleamed cold blue eyes that seemed to regard the dancer with a
+strange mixture of fervour and hostility.
+
+Magda could imagine no reason for the antagonism which she sensed in the
+steady scrutiny of those light-blue eyes. As far as she was concerned,
+the Mother Superior was an entire stranger, without incentive either to
+like or dislike her.
+
+But to the woman who, while she had been in the world, had been known as
+Catherine Vallincourt, the name of Magda Wielitzska was as familiar as
+her own. In the dark, slender girl before her, whose pale, beautiful
+face called to mind some rare and delicate flower, she recognised the
+living embodiment of her brother’s transgression--that brother who had
+made Diane Wielitzska his wife and the mother of his child.
+
+All she had anticipated of evil consequence at the time of the
+marriage had crystallised into hard fact. The child of the “foreign
+dancing-woman”--the being for whose existence Hugh’s mad passion for
+Diane had been responsible--had on her own confession worked precisely
+such harm in the world as she, Catherine, had foreseen. And now, the
+years which had raised Catherine to the position of Mother Superior of
+the community she had entered had brought that child to her doors as a
+penitent waveringly willing to make expiation.
+
+Catherine was conscious of a strange elevation of spirit. She felt
+ecstatically uplifted at the thought that it might be given to her to
+purge from Hugh’s daughter, by severity of discipline and penance, the
+evil born within her. In some measure she would thus be instrumental in
+neutralising her brother’s sin.
+
+She was supremely conscious that to a certain extent--though by no means
+altogether--her zealous ardour had its origin in her rooted antipathy to
+Hugh’s wife and hence to the child of the marriage. But, since beneath
+her sable habit there beat the heart of just an ordinary, natural
+woman, with many faults and failings still unconquered in spite of
+the austerities of her chosen life, a certain very human element of
+satisfaction mingled itself with her fervour for Magda’s regeneration.
+
+With a curious impassivity that masked the intensity of her desire
+she had told Magda that, by the rules of the community, penitents who
+desired to make expiation were admitted there, but that if once the step
+were taken, and the year’s vow of penitence voluntarily assumed,
+there could be no return to the world until the expiration of the time
+appointed.
+
+Somehow the irrevocability of such a vow, undertaken voluntarily, had
+not struck her in its full significance until Catherine had quietly,
+almost tonelessly, in the flat, level voice not infrequently acquired by
+the religious, affirmed it.
+
+“Supposing”--Magda looked round the rigidly bare room with a new sense
+of apprehension--“supposing I felt I simply couldn’t stand it any
+longer? Do you mean to say, _then_, that I should not be allowed to
+leave here?”
+
+“No, you would not be permitted to. Vows are not toys to be broken at
+will.”
+
+“A year is a long time,” murmured Magda.
+
+The eyes beneath the coifed brow with its fine network of wrinkles were
+adamant.
+
+“The body must be crucified that the soul may live,” returned the cold
+voice unflinchingly.
+
+Magda’s thoughts drew her this way and that. A year! It was an eternity!
+And yet, if only she could emerge purified, a woman worthy to be
+Michael’s wife, she felt she would be willing to go through with it.
+
+It was as though the white-faced, passionless woman beside her read her
+thoughts.
+
+“If you would be purified,” said Catherine, “if you would cast out the
+devil that is within you, you will have to abide meekly by such penance
+as is ordained. You must submit yourself to pain.”
+
+At the words a memory of long ago stirred in Magda’s mind. She
+remembered that when her father had beaten her as a child he had said:
+“If you hurt people enough you can stop them from committing sin.”
+
+Groping dimly for some light that might elucidate the problems which
+bewildered her, Magda clutched at the words as though they were a
+revelation. They seemed to point to the only way by which she might
+repair the past.
+
+Catherine, watching closely the changes on the pale, sensitive face,
+spoke again.
+
+“Of course, if you feel you have not the strength of will to keep your
+vow, you must not take it.”
+
+The words acted like a spur. Instantly, Magda’s decision was taken.
+
+“If I take the vow, I shall have strength of mind to keep it,” she said.
+
+The following evening Magda composedly informed Gillian that she
+proposed to take a vow of expiation and retire into the community of
+the Sisters of Penitence for a year. Gillian was frankly aghast; she
+had never dreamed of any such upshot to the whole miserable business of
+Magda’s broken engagement.
+
+“But it is madness!” she protested. “You would hate it!”
+
+Magda nodded.
+
+“That’s just it. I’ve done what I liked all my life. And you know what
+the result has been! Now I propose to do what I _don’t_ like for a
+year.”
+
+Neither persuasion nor exhortation availed to shake her resolution,
+and in despair Gillian referred the matter to Lady Arabella, hoping she
+might induce Magda to change her mind.
+
+Lady Arabella accepted the news with unexpected composure.
+
+“It is just what one might expect from the child of Hugh Vallincourt,”
+ she said thoughtfully. “It’s the swing of the pendulum. There’s always
+been that tendency in the Vallincourts--the tendency towards
+atonement by some sort of violent self-immolation. They are invariably
+_excessive_--either excessively bad like the present man, Rupert, or
+excessively devout like Hugh and Catherine! By the way, the Sisters of
+Penitence is the community Catherine first joined. I wonder if she is
+there still? Probably she’s dead by now, though. I remember hearing some
+years ago that she was seriously ill--somewhere about the time of Hugh’s
+death. That’s the last I ever heard of her. I’ve been out of touch with
+the whole Vallincourt family for so many years now that I don’t know
+what has become of them.”
+
+“You don’t mean to say that you’re going to _let_ Magda do what she
+proposes?” exclaimed Gillian, in dismayed astonishment.
+
+“There’s never much question of ‘letting’ Magda do things, is
+there?” retorted Lady Arabella. “If she’s made up her mind to be
+penitential--penitential she’ll be! I dare say it won’t do her any
+harm.”
+
+“I don’t see how it can do her any good,” protested Gillian. “Magda
+isn’t cut out for a sisterhood.”
+
+“That’s just why it may be good for her.”
+
+“I don’t believe in mortification of the flesh and all that sort of
+thing, either,” continued Gillian obstinately.
+
+“My dear, we must all work out our own salvation--each in his own way.
+Prayer and fasting would never be my method. But for some people it’s
+the only way. I believe it is for the Vallincourts. In any case, it’s
+only for a year. And a year is very little time out of life.”
+
+Nevertheless, at Gillian’s urgent request, Lady Arabella made an effort
+to dissuade Magda from her intention.
+
+“If you live long enough, my dear,” she told her crispy, “providence
+will see to it that you get your deserts. You needn’t be so anxious to
+make sure of them. Retribution is a very sure-footed traveller.”
+
+“It isn’t only retribution, punishment, I’m looking for,” returned
+Magda. “It is--I can’t quite explain it, Marraine, but even though
+Michael never sees me or speaks to me again, I’d like to feel I’d made
+myself into the sort of woman he _would_ speak to.”
+
+From that standpoint she refused to move, declining even to discuss
+the matter further, but proceeded quietly and unswervingly with her
+arrangements. The failure to complete her contract at the Imperial
+Theatre involved her in a large sum of money by way of forfeit, but this
+she paid ungrudgingly, feeling as though it were the first step along
+the new road of renunciation she designed to tread.
+
+To the manager she offered no further explanation than that she proposed
+to give up dancing, “at any rate for a year or so,” and although he was
+nearly distracted over the idea, he found his arguments and persuasions
+were no more effective than those King Canute optimistically addressed
+to the encroaching waves. The utmost concession he could extract from
+Magda was her assent to giving a farewell appearance--for which occasion
+the astute manager privately decided to quadruple the price of the
+seats. He only wished it were possible to quadruple the seating capacity
+of the theatre as well!
+
+Meanwhile Gillian, whose normal, healthy young mind recoiled from the
+idea of Magda’s self-imposed year of discipline, had secretly resolved
+upon making a final desperate venture in the hope of straightening out
+the tangle of her friend’s life. She would go herself and see Michael
+and plead with him. Surely, if he loved Magda as he had once seemed to
+do, he would not remain obdurate when he realised how bitterly she had
+repented--and how much she loved him!
+
+It was not easy for Gillian to come to this decision. She held very
+strong opinions on the subject of the rights of the individual to manage
+his own affairs without interference, and as she passed out of the busy
+main street into the quiet little old-world court where Michael had his
+rooms and studio she felt as guilty as a small boy caught trespassing in
+an orchard.
+
+The landlady who opened the door in response to her somewhat timid ring
+regarded her with a curiously surprised expression when she inquired if
+Mr. Quarrington were in.
+
+“I’ll see, miss,” she answered non-committally, “if you’ll step inside.”
+
+The unusual appearance of the big double studio where she was left to
+wait puzzled Gillian. All the familiar tapestries and cushions and
+rare knick-knacks which wontedly converted the further end of it into
+a charming reception room were gone. The chairs were covered in plain
+holland, the piano sheeted. But the big easel, standing like a tall
+cross in the cold north light, was swathed in a dust-sheet. Gillian’s
+heart misgave her. Was she too late? Had Michael--gone away?
+
+A moment later a quick, resolute footstep reassured her. The door opened
+and Michael himself came in. He paused on the threshold as he perceived
+who his visitor was, then came forward and shook hands with his usual
+grave courtesy. After that, he seemed to wait as though for some
+explanation of her visit.
+
+Gillian found herself nervously unready. All the little opening speeches
+she had prepared for the interview deserted her suddenly, driven away by
+her shocked realisation of the transformation which the few days since
+she had last seen him had wrought in the man beside her.
+
+His face was lined and worn. The grey eyes were sunken and burned with a
+strange, bitter brilliance. Only the dogged, out-thrust jaw remained the
+same as ever--obstinate and unconquerable. Twice she essayed to speak
+and twice failed. The third time the words came stumblingly.
+
+“Michael, what--what does it mean--all this?” She indicated the
+holland-sheeted studio with a gesture.
+
+“It means that I’m going away,” he replied. “I’m packing now. I leave
+England to-morrow.”
+
+“You mustn’t go!”
+
+The words broke from her imperatively, like a mandate.
+
+He glanced at her quickly and into his eyes came a look of
+comprehension.
+
+“You’re a good friend,” he said quietly. “But I must go.”
+
+“No, no, you mustn’t! Listen--”
+
+“Nothing can alter my decision,” he interrupted in a tone of absolute
+finality. “Nothing you could say, Gillian--so don’t say it.”
+
+“But I must!” she insisted. “Oh, Michael, I’m not going to pretend that
+Magda hasn’t been to blame--that it isn’t all terrible! But if you saw
+her--now--you’d _have_ to forgive her and love her again.” She spoke
+with a simple sincerity that was infinitely appealing.
+
+“I’ve never ceased to love her,” he replied, still in that quiet voice
+of repressed determination.
+
+“Then if you love, her, can’t you forgive her? She’s had everything
+against her from the beginning, both temperament and upbringing, and
+on top of that there’s been the wild success she’s had as a dancer. You
+can’t judge her by ordinary standards of conduct. You _can’t_! It isn’t
+fair.”
+
+“I don’t presume to judge her”--icily. “I simply say I can’t marry her.”
+
+“If you could see her now, Michael----” Her voice shook a little. “It
+hurts me to see Magda--like that. She’s broken----”
+
+“And my sister, June, is dead,” he said in level, unemotional tones.
+
+Gillian wrung her hands.
+
+“But even so----! Magda didn’t kill her, Michael. She couldn’t tell--she
+didn’t know that June----” She halted, faltering into silence.
+
+“That June was soon to have a child?” Michael finished her sentence for
+her. “No. But she knew she loved her husband. And she stole him from
+her. When I think of it all, of June . . . little June! . . . And
+Storran--gone under! Oh, what’s the use of talking?”--savagely. “You
+know--and I know--that there’s nothing left. Nothing!”
+
+“If you loved her, Michael--”
+
+“If I loved her!” he broke out stormily. “You’re not a man, and you
+don’t know what it means to want the woman you love night and day, to
+ache for her with every fibre of your body--and to know that you can’t
+have her and keep your self-respect!”
+
+“Oh--self-respect!” There was a note of contempt in Gillian’s voice. “If
+you set your ‘self-respect’ above your love--”
+
+“You don’t understand!” he interrupted violently. “You’re a woman and
+you can’t understand! I must honour the woman I love--it’s the kernel of
+the whole thing. I must look up to her--not down!”
+
+Gillian clasped her hands.
+
+“Oh!” she said in a low, vehement voice. “I don’t think we women _want_
+to be ‘looked up to.’ It sets us so far away. We’re not goddesses. We’re
+only women, Michael, with all our little weaknesses just the same as
+men. And we want the men who love us to be comrades--not worshippers.
+Good pals, who’ll forgive us and help us up when we tumble down, just as
+we’d be ready to forgive them and help them up. Can’t you--can’t you do
+that for Magda?”
+
+“No,” he said shortly. “I can’t.”
+
+Gillian was at the end of her resources. She would not tell him that
+Magda proposed joining the Sisters of Penitence for a year. Somehow she
+felt she would not wish him to know this or to be influenced by it.
+
+She had made her appeal to Michael himself, to his sheer love for the
+woman he had intended to make his wife. And she had failed because
+the man was too bitter, too sore, to see clearly through the pain that
+blinded him.
+
+His voice, curt and clipped, broke the silence which had fallen.
+
+“Have you said all you came to say?” he asked with frigid politeness.
+
+“All,” she returned sadly.
+
+He moved slowly towards the door.
+
+“Good-bye,” she said, holding out her hand.
+
+He took it and held it in his. For a moment the hard eyes softened a
+little.
+
+“I’m sorry I can’t do what you ask,” he said abruptly.
+
+Gillian opened her lips to speak, but no words came. Instead, a sudden
+lump rose in her throat, choking her into silence, at the sight of the
+man’s wrung face, with its bitter, pain-ridden eyes and the jaw that
+was squared implacably against love and forgiveness, and against his own
+overwhelming desire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+“CHILDREN STUMBLING IN THE DARK”
+
+As Gillian mingled once more with the throng on the pavements she felt
+curiously unwilling to return home. She had set out from Friars’ Holm
+so full of hope in her errand! It had seemed impossible that she could
+fail, and she had been almost unconsciously looking forward to seeing
+Magda’s wan, strained face relax into half-incredulous delight as she
+confided in her the news that Michael was as eager and longing for a
+reconciliation as she herself.
+
+And instead--this! This utter, hopeless failure to move him one jot.
+Only the memory of the man’s stern, desperately unhappy eyes curbed the
+hot tide of her anger against him for his iron refusal.
+
+He still loved Magda, so he said. And, indeed, Gillian believed
+it. But--love! It was not love as she and Tony Grey had understood
+it--simple, forgiving, and wholly trustful. It seemed to her as
+though Michael and Magda were both wandering in a dim twilight of
+misunderstanding, neither of them able to see that there was only one
+thing for them to do if they were ever to find happiness again. They
+must thrust the past behind them--with all its bitterness and failures
+and mistakes, and go forward, hand in hand, in search of the light. Love
+would surely lead them to it eventually.
+
+Yet this was the last thing either of them seemed able to think of
+doing. Magda was determined to spend the sweetness of her youth in
+making reparation for the past, while Michael was torn by bitterly
+conflicting feelings--his passionate love for Magda warring with his
+innate recoil from all that she had done and with his loyalty to his
+dead sister.
+
+Gillian sighed as she threaded her way slowly along the crowded street.
+The lights of a well-known tea-shop beckoned invitingly and, only too
+willing to postpone the moment of her return home, she turned in between
+its plate-glass doors.
+
+They swung together behind her, dulling the rumble of the traffic, while
+all around uprose the gay hum of conversation and the chink of cups and
+saucers mingling with the rhythmic melodies that issued from a cleverly
+concealed orchestra.
+
+The place was very crowded. For a moment it seemed to Gillian as though
+there were no vacant seat. Then she espied an empty table for two in a
+distant corner and hastily made her way thither. She had barely given
+her order to the waitress when the swing doors parted again to admit
+someone else--a man this time.
+
+The new arrival paused, as Gillian herself had done, to search out a
+seat. Then, noting the empty place at her table, he came quickly towards
+it.
+
+Gillian was idly scanning the list of marvellous little cakes furnished
+by the menu, and her first cognisance of the new-comer’s approach was
+the vision of a strong, masculine hand gripping the back of the chair
+opposite her preparatory to pulling it out from under the table.
+
+“I’m afraid there’s no other vacant seat,” he was beginning
+apologetically. But at the sound of his voice Gillian’s eyes flew up
+from that virile-looking hand to the face of its owner, and a low cry of
+surprise broke from her lips.
+
+“Dan Storran!”
+
+Simultaneously the man gave utterance to her own name.
+
+Gillian stared at him stupidly. Could this really be Dan
+Storran--Storran of Stockleigh?
+
+The alteration in him was immense. He looked ten years older. An
+habitual stoop had lessened his apparent height and the dark, kinky hair
+was streaked with grey. The golden-tan bestowed by an English sun had
+been exchanged for the sallow skin of a man who has lived hard in a
+hot country, and the face was thin and heavily lined. Only the eyes of
+periwinkle-blue remained to remind Gillian of the splendid young giant
+she had known at Ashencombe--and even they were changed and held the
+cynical weariness of a man who has eaten of Dead Sea fruit and found it
+bitter to the taste.
+
+There were other changes, too. Storran of Stockleigh was as civilised,
+his clothes and general appearance as essentially “right,” as those of
+the men around him. All suggestion of the “cave-man from the backwoods,”
+ as Lady Arabella had termed him, was gone.
+
+“I didn’t know you were in England,” said Gillian at last.
+
+“I landed yesterday.”
+
+“You’ve been in South America, haven’t you?”
+
+She spoke mechanically. There seemed something forced and artificial
+about this exchange of platitudes between herself and the man who had
+figured so disastrously in Magda’s life. Without warning he brought the
+conversation suddenly back to the realities.
+
+“Yes. I was in ‘Frisco when my wife died. Since then I’ve been half over
+the world.”
+
+Behind the harshly uttered statement Gillian could sense the unspeakable
+bitterness of the man’s soul. It hurt her, calling forth her quick
+sympathy just as the sight of some maimed and wounded animal would have
+done.
+
+“Oh!” she said, a sensitive quiver in her voice. “I was so sorry--so
+terribly sorry--to hear about June. We hadn’t heard--we only knew quite
+recently.” Her face clouded as she reflected on the tragic happenings
+with which the news had been accompanied.
+
+At this moment a waitress paused at Storran’s side and he gave his
+order. Then, looking curiously at Gillian, he said:
+
+“What did you hear? Just that she died when our child was born, I
+suppose?”
+
+Gillian’s absolute honesty of soul could not acquiesce, though it would
+have been infinitely the easier course.
+
+“No,” she said, flushing a little and speaking very low. “We heard that
+she might have lived if--if she had only been--happier.”
+
+He nodded silently, rather as though this was the answer he had
+anticipated. Presently he spoke abruptly:
+
+“Does Miss Vallincourt know that?”
+
+Gillian hesitated. Then, taking her courage in both hands she told
+him quickly and composedly the whole story of the engagement and its
+rupture, and let him understand just precisely what June’s death, owing
+to the special circumstances in which it had occurred, had meant for
+Magda of retribution and of heartbreak.
+
+Storran listened without comment, in his eyes an odd look of
+concentration. The waitress dexterously slid a tray in front of him and
+he poured himself out a cup of tea mechanically, but he made no attempt
+to drink it. When Gillian ceased, his face showed no sign of softening.
+It looked hard and very weary. His strong fingers moved restlessly,
+crumbling one of the small cakes on the plate in front of him.
+
+“‘Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding
+small,’” he quoted at last, quietly.
+
+Gillian met his harshly cynical glance with one of brave defiance.
+
+“I don’t think God’s mills have anything to do with it,” she said
+swiftly. “He’d understand all the excuses and allowances that should
+be made for her better even than I do. And I shouldn’t want to punish
+Magda. I’d make her--happy. She’s never known what it means to be really
+happy. Success and gaiety aren’t _happiness_.”
+
+“And you?” he asked quickly.
+
+There was a soft and wonderful shining in the brown eyes that were
+lifted to his.
+
+“I had one year of utter happiness,” she answered gently. “And I’ve got
+Coppertop--so I can’t ever be quite unhappy.”
+
+“If there were more women like you----” he began abruptly.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“No, no,” she said, smiling a little. “If there were more men like Tony!
+You men are so hard--so cruelly hard.”
+
+He looked at her very directly.
+
+“Haven’t I the right to be?” he demanded bitterly.
+
+“Ah! Forgive me!” Gillian spoke with an accent of self-reproach. “I’d
+forgotten you still--care.”
+
+“For Magda?” He laughed shortly. “No. That’s dead, thank God! I killed
+it. Worked it out of my system in ‘Frisco”--with exceeding bitterness.
+“Then I got the news of June’s death. Her sister wrote me. Told me she
+died because she’d no longer any wish to live. That sobered me-brought
+me back to my sense. There was a good deal more to the letter--my
+sister-in-law didn’t let me down lightly. I’ve had to pay for that
+summer at Stockleigh. And now Magda’s paying. . . . Well, that seems to
+square things somehow.”
+
+“Oh, you are brutal!” broke out Gillian.
+
+His eyes, hard as steel and as unyielding, met hers.
+
+“Am I?”--indifferently. “Perhaps I am.”
+
+This was a very different Dan from the impetuous, hot-headed Dan
+of former times. Gillian found his calm ruthlessness difficult to
+understand, and yet, realising all that he had suffered, she could not
+but condone it to a certain extent.
+
+When at last she rose to go, he detained her a moment.
+
+“I am remaining in England now. I should like to see you sometimes. May
+I?”
+
+She hesitated. Then something that appealed in the tired eyes impelled
+her answer.
+
+“If you wish,” she said gently.
+
+
+
+Back once more in the street she made her way as quickly as possible to
+the nearest tube station, in order to reach it before the usual
+evening crowd of homeward-wending clerks and typists poured into the
+thoroughfares from a thousand open office doors. But as soon as she
+was safely seated in the train her thoughts reverted to the two strange
+interviews in which she had taken part that afternoon.
+
+She felt very low-spirited. Since she had seen and talked with the two
+men in whose lives Magda had played so big a part, she was oppressed
+with a sense of the utter hopelessness of trying to put matters right.
+Things must take their course--drive on to whatever end, bitter or
+sweet, lay hidden in the womb of fate.
+
+She had tried to stem the current of affairs, but she had proved as
+powerless to deflect it as a dried stick tossed on to a river in
+spate. And now, whether the end were ultimate happiness or hopeless,
+irretrievable disaster, Michael and Magda must still fight their way
+towards it, each alone, by the dim light of that “blind Understanding”
+ which is all that Destiny vouchsafes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+FAREWELL
+
+The curtains swung together for the last time, the orchestra struck
+up the National Anthem, and the great audience which had come from
+all parts to witness the Wielitzska’s farewell performance began to
+disperse.
+
+A curious quietness attended its departure. It was as though a pall
+of gravity hung over the big assemblage. Public announcements of the
+performance had explained that the famous dancer proposed taking a long
+rest for reasons of health. “But,” as everyone declared, “you know what
+that means! She’s probably broken down--heart or something. We shall
+never see her dance again.” And so, beneath the tremendous reception
+which they gave her, there throbbed an element of sadness, behind all
+the cheers and the clapping an insistent minor note which carried across
+the footlights to where Magda stood bowing her thanks, and smiling
+through the mist of tears which filled her eyes.
+
+The dance which she had chosen for her last appearance was the
+_Swan-Maiden_. There had seemed a strange applicability in the choice,
+and to those who had eyes to see there was a new quality in the
+Wielitzska’s dancing--a depth of significance and a spirituality of
+interpretation which was commented upon in the Press the next day.
+
+It had been quite unmistakable. She had gripped her audience so that
+throughout the final scene of the ballet no word was spoken. The big
+crowd, drawn from all classes, sat tense and silent, sensitive to every
+movement, every exquisite, appealing gesture of the Swan-Maiden. And
+when at last she had lain, limp in death, in her lover’s embrace,
+and the music had quivered into silence, there followed a vibrant
+pause--almost it seemed as though a sigh of mingled ecstasy and regret
+went up--before the thunderous applause roared through the auditorium.
+
+The insatiable few were still clapping and stamping assiduously when
+Magda, after taking innumerable calls, at last came off the stage. It
+had been a wonderful night of triumph, and as she made her way towards
+her dressing-room she was conscious of a sudden breathless realisation
+of all that she was sacrificing. For a moment she felt as though she
+must rush back on to the stage and tell everybody that she couldn’t do
+it, that it was all a mistake--that this was not a farewell! But she set
+her teeth and moved resolutely towards her dressing-room.
+
+As her fingers closed round the handle of the door, someone stepped out
+from the shadows of the passage and spoke:
+
+“Magda!”
+
+The voice, wrung and urgent, was Antoine Davilof’s.
+
+Her first impulse was to hurry forward and put the dressing-room door
+betwixt herself and him. She had not seen him since that night when he
+had come down to the theatre and implored her to be his wife, warning
+her that he would prevent her marriage with Michael. He had carried out
+his threat with a completeness that had wrecked her life, and although,
+since the breaking-off of her engagement, he had both written and
+telephoned, begging her to see him, she had steadfastly refused. Once
+he had come to Friars’ Holm, but had been met with an inexorable “Not at
+home!” from Melrose.
+
+“Magda! For God’s sake, give me a moment!”
+
+Something in the strained tones moved her to an unexpected feeling
+of compassion. It was the voice of a man in the extremity of mental
+anguish.
+
+Silently she opened the door of the dressing-room and signed to him to
+follow her.
+
+“Well,” she said, facing him, “what is it? Why have you come?”
+
+The impulse of compassion died out suddenly. His was the hand that had
+destroyed her happiness. The sight of him roused her to a fierce anger
+and resentment.
+
+“Well?” she repeated. “What do you want? To know the result of your
+handiwork?”--bitterly. “You’ve been quite as successful as even you
+could have wished.”
+
+“Don’t,” he said unevenly. “Magda, I can’t bear it. You can’t give
+up--all this. Your dancing--it’s your life! I shall never forgive myself
+. . . I’ll see Quarrington and tell him--”
+
+“You can’t see him. He’s gone away.”
+
+“Then I’ll find him.”
+
+“If you found him, nothing you could say would make any difference,”
+ she answered unemotionally. “It’s the facts that matter. You can’t
+alter--facts.”
+
+Davilof made a gesture of despair.
+
+“Is it true you’re going into some sisterhood?” he asked hoarsely.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And it is I--I who have driven you to this! _Dieu_! I’ve been
+mad--mad!”
+
+His hands were clenched, his face working painfully. The hazel
+eyes--those poet’s eyes of his which she had seen sometimes soft with
+dreams and sometimes blazing with love’s fire--were blurred by misery.
+They reminded her of the contrite, tortured eyes of a dog which,
+maddened by pain, has bitten the hand of a beloved master. Her anger
+died away in the face of that overwhelming remorse. She herself had
+learned to know the illimitable bitterness of self-reproach.
+
+“Antoine----” Her voice had grown very gentle.
+
+He swung round on her.
+
+“And I can’t undo it!” he exclaimed desperately. “I can’t undo it! . . .
+Magda, will you believe me--will you _try_ to believe that, if my life
+could undo the harm I’ve done, I’d give it gladly?”
+
+“I believe you would, Antoine,” she replied simply.
+
+With a stifled exclamation he turned away and, dropping into a chair,
+leaned his arms on the table and hid his face. Once, twice she heard
+the sound of a man’s hard-drawn sob, and the dry agony of it wrung her
+heart. All that was sweet and compassionate in her--the potential mother
+that lies in every woman--responded to his need. She ran to him and,
+kneeling at his side, laid a kind little hand on his shoulder.
+
+“Don’t Antoine!” she said pitifully. “Ah, don’t, my dear!”
+
+He caught the hand and held it against his cheek.
+
+“It’s unforgivable!” he muttered.
+
+“No, no. I do forgive you.”
+
+“You can’t forgive! . . . Impossible!”
+
+“I think I can, Antoine. You see, I need forgiveness so badly myself.
+I wouldn’t want to keep anyone else without it. Besides, Michael would
+have been bound to learn--what you told him--sooner or later.” She rose
+to her feet, pushing back the hair from her forehead rather wearily.
+“It’s better as it is--that he should know now. It--it would have been
+unbearable if it had come later--when I was his wife.”
+
+Antoine stumbled to his feet. His beautiful face was marred with grief.
+
+“I wish I were dead!”
+
+The words broke from him like an exceeding bitter cry. To Magda they
+seemed to hold some terrible import.
+
+“Not that, Antoine!” she answered in a frightened voice. “You’re not
+thinking--you’re not meaning----”
+
+He shook his head, smiling faintly.
+
+“No,” he said quietly. “The Davilofs have never been cowards. I shan’t
+take that way out. You need have no fears, Magda.” The sudden tension
+in her face relaxed. “But I shall not stay in England. England--without
+you--would be hell. A hell of memories.”
+
+“What shall you do, then, Antoine? You won’t give up playing?”
+
+He made a fierce gesture of distaste.
+
+“I couldn’t play in public! Not now. Not for a time. I think I shall go
+to my mother. She always wants me, and she sees me very little.”
+
+Magda nodded. Her eyes were wistful.
+
+“Yes, go to her. I think mothers must understand--as other people can’t
+ever understand. She will be glad to have you with her, Antoine.”
+
+He was silent for a moment, his eyes dwelling on her face as though
+he sought to learn each line of it, so that when she would be no more
+beside him he might carry the memory of it in his heart for ever.
+
+“Then it is good-bye,” he said at last.
+
+Magda held out her hands and, taking them in his, he drew her close to
+him.
+
+“I love you,” he said, “and I have brought you only pain.” There was a
+tragic simplicity in the statement.
+
+“No,” she answered steadily. “Never think that. I spoiled my own life.
+And--love is a big gift, Antoine.”
+
+She lifted her face to his and very tenderly, almost reverently, he
+kissed her. She knew that in that last kiss there was no disloyalty to
+Michael. It held renunciation. It accepted forgiveness.
+
+
+
+“Did you know that Dan Storran was in front to-night?” asked Gillian,
+as half an hour later she and Magda were driving back to Hampstead
+together. She had already confided the fact of her former meeting with
+him in the tea-shop.
+
+Magda’s eyes widened a little.
+
+“No,” she said quietly. “I think I’m glad I didn’t know.”
+
+She was very silent throughout the remainder of the drive home and
+Gillian made no effort to distract her. She herself felt disinclined to
+talk. She was oppressed by the knowledge that this was the last night
+she and Magda would have with each other. To-morrow Magda would be gone
+and one chapter of their lives together ended. The gates of the Sisters
+of Penitence would close upon her and Friars’ Holm would be empty of her
+presence.
+
+Everything had been said that could be said, every persuasion used. But
+to each and all Magda had only answered: “I know it’s the only thing for
+me to do. It probably wouldn’t be for you, or for anyone else. But it is
+for me. So you must let me go, Gillyflower.”
+
+Gillian dreaded the morrow with its inevitable moment of farewell. As
+for Virginie, she had done little else but weep for the last three days,
+and although Lady Arabella had said very little, she had kissed her
+god-daughter good-bye with a brusqueness that veiled an inexpressible
+grief and tenderness. Gillian foresaw that betwixt administering comfort
+to Lady Arabella and Virginie, and setting Magda’s personal affairs in
+order after her departure, she would have little time for the indulgence
+of her own individual sorrow. Perhaps it was just as well that these
+tasks should devolve on her. They would serve to occupy her thoughts.
+
+
+
+The morning sunlight, goldenly gay, was streaming in through the windows
+as Magda, wrapped in a soft silken peignoir, made her way into the
+bathroom. Virginie, her eyes reddened from a night’s weeping, was
+kneeling beside the sunken bath of green-veined marble, stirring
+sweet-smelling salts in to the steaming water. Their fragrance permeated
+the atmosphere like incense.
+
+“My tub ready, Virginie?” asked Magda, cheerfully.
+
+Virginie scrambled to her feet.
+
+“_Mais oui, mademoiselle_. The bath is ready.”
+
+Then, her face puckering up suddenly, she burst into tears and ran
+out of the room. Magda smiled and sighed, then busied herself with her
+morning ablutions--prolonging them a little as she realised that this
+was the last occasion for a whole year when she would step down into a
+bath prepared and perfumed for her in readiness by her maid.
+
+A year! It was a long time to look forward to. So much can happen in a
+year. And no one can foresee what the end may bring.
+
+Presently she emerged from her bath, her skin gleaming like wet ivory,
+her dark hair sparkling with the drops of water that had splashed on to
+it. As she stepped up from its green-veined depths, she caught a glimpse
+of herself in a panel mirror hung against the wall, and for a moment she
+was aware of the familiar thrill of delight in her own beauty--in the
+gleaming, glowing radiance of perfectly formed, perfectly groomed flesh
+and blood.
+
+Then, with a revulsion of feeling, came the sudden realisation that
+it was this very perfection of body which had been her undoing--like a
+bitter blight, leaving in its wake a trail of havoc and desolation. She
+was even conscious of a fierce eagerness for the period of penance to
+begin. Almost ecstatically she contemplated the giving of her body to
+whatever discipline might be appointed.
+
+To anyone hitherto as spoiled and imperious as Magda, whose body had
+been the actual temple of her art, and so, almost inevitably, of her
+worship, this utter renouncing of physical self-government was the
+supremest expiation she could make. As with Hugh Vallincourt, whose
+blood ran in her veins, the idea of personal renunciation made a curious
+appeal to her emotional temperament, and she was momentarily filled with
+something of the martyr’s ecstasy.
+
+
+
+Gillian’s arms clung round Magda’s neck convulsively as she kissed her
+at the great gates of Friars’ Holm a few hours later.
+
+“Good-bye! . . . Ah, Magda! Come back to me!”
+
+“I shall come back.”
+
+One more lingering kiss, and then Magda stepped into the open car.
+Virginie made a rush forward before the door closed and, dropping on
+to her knees on the footboard, convulsively snatched her adored young
+mistress’s hand between her two old worn ones and covered it with
+kisses.
+
+“Oh, mademoiselle, thy old Virginie will die without thee!” she sobbed
+brokenly.
+
+And then the car slid away and Magda’s last glimpse was of the open
+gates of Friars’ Holm with its old-world garden, stately and formal, in
+the background; and of Virginie weeping unrestrainedly, her snowy apron
+flung up over her head; and of Gillian standing erect, her brown eyes
+very wide and winking away the tears that welled up despite herself, and
+her hand on Coppertop’s small manful shoulder, gripping it hard.
+
+As the car passed through the streets many people, recognising its
+occupant, stopped and turned to follow it with their eyes. One or two
+women waved their hands, and a small errand-boy--who had saved up
+his pennies and squeezed into the gallery of the Imperial Theatre the
+previous evening--threw up his hat and shouted “Hooray!”
+
+Once, at a crossing, the chauffeur was compelled to pull up to allow the
+traffic to pass, and a flower-girl with a big basket of early violets on
+her arm, recognising the famous dancer, tossed a bunch lightly into the
+car. They fell on Magda’s lap. She picked them up and, brushing them
+with her lips, smiled at the girl and fastened the violets against the
+furs at her breast. The flower-girl treasured the smile of the great
+Wielitzska in her memory for many a long day, while in the arid
+months that were to follow Magda treasured the sweet fragrance of that
+spontaneous gift.
+
+Half an hour later the doors of the grey house where the Sisters
+of Penitence dwelt apart from the world opened to receive Magda
+Vallincourt, and closed again behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE GREY VEIL
+
+Magda felt a sudden stab of fear. The sound of the latch clicking into
+its place brought home to her the irrevocability of the step she had
+taken. That tall, self-locking door stood henceforth betwixt her and the
+dear, familiar world she had known--the world of laughter and luxury and
+success. But beyond, on the far horizon, there was Michael--her “Saint
+Michel.” If these months of discipline brought her nearer him, then she
+would never grudge them.
+
+The serene eyes of the Sister who received her--Sister
+Bernardine--helped to steady her quivering pulses.
+
+There was something in Sister Bernardine that was altogether lacking in
+Catherine Vallincourt--a delightfully human understanding and charity
+for all human weakness, whether of the soul or body.
+
+It was she who reassured Magda when a sudden appalling and unforeseen
+idea presented itself to her.
+
+“My hair!” she exclaimed breathlessly, her hand going swiftly to the
+heavy, smoke-black tresses. “Will they cut off my hair?”
+
+As Sister Bernardine comfortingly explained that only those who joined
+the community as sisters had their heads shaven, a strange expression
+flickered for an instant in her eyes, a fleeting reminiscence of that
+day, five-and-twenty years ago, when the shears had cropped their
+ruthless way through the glory of hair which had once been hers.
+
+And afterwards, as time went on and Magda, wearing the grey veil and
+grey serge dress of a voluntary penitent, found herself absorbed into
+the daily life of the community, it was often only the recollection
+of Sister Bernardine’s serene, kind eyes which helped her to hold
+out. Somehow, somewhere out of this drastic, self-denying life Sister
+Bernardine had drawn peace and tranquillity of soul, and Magda clung to
+this thought when the hard rules of the sisterhood, the distastefulness
+of the tasks appointed her, and the frequent fasts ordained, chafed
+and fretted her until sometimes her whole soul seemed to rise up in
+rebellion against the very discipline she had craved.
+
+Most of her tasks were performed under the lynx eyes of Sister
+Agnetia, an elderly and sour-visaged sister to whom Magda had taken
+an instinctive dislike from the outset. The Mother Superior she could
+tolerate. She was severe and uncompromising. But she was at least
+honest. There was no doubting the bedrock genuineness of her
+disciplinary ardour, harsh and merciless though it might appear. But
+with Sister Agnetia, Magda was always sensible of the personal venom of
+a little mind vested with authority beyond its deserts, and she resented
+her dictation accordingly. And equally accordingly, it seemed to fall
+always to her lot to work under Sister Agnetia’s supervision.
+
+Catherine had been quick enough to detect Magda’s detestation of this
+particular sister and to use it as a further means of discipline. It was
+necessary that Magda’s pride and vanity should be humbled, and Catherine
+saw to it that they were. It was assuredly by the Will of Heaven that
+the child of Diane Wielitzska had been led to her very doors, and to
+the subject of her chastening Catherine brought much thought and
+discrimination. _“If you hurt people enough you can make them good.”_
+It had been her brother’s bitter creed and it was hers. Pain, in
+Catherine’s idea, was the surest means of chastening, and Magda was
+to remember her year at the sisterhood by two things--by the deadly,
+unbearable monotony of its daily routine and by her first acquaintance
+with actual bodily pain.
+
+Her health had always been magnificent, and--with the exception of the
+trivial punishments of childhood and those few moments when she was
+sitting for the picture of Circe--physical suffering was unknown to her.
+The penances, therefore, which Catherine appointed her--to kneel for
+a stated length of time until it seemed as though every muscle she
+possessed were stretched to breaking-point, to fast when her whole
+healthy young body craved for food, to be chastened with flagellum, a
+scourge of knotted cords--all these grew to be a torment almost beyond
+endurance.
+
+Almost! . . . Yet in the beginning the thought of Michael sustained her
+triumphantly.
+
+
+
+It was a curious sensation--that first stroke of the flagellum.
+
+As Magda, unversed in physical suffering, felt the cords shock against
+her flesh, she was conscious of a strange uplifting of spirit. This,
+then, this smarting, blinding thing called pain, was the force that
+would drive the will to do evil out of her soul.
+
+She waited expectantly--almost exultantly--for the second fall of the
+thongs. The interval between seemed endless. Sister Agnetia was very
+deliberate, pausing between each stroke. She knew to a nicety the value
+of anticipation as a remedial force in punishment.
+
+Again the cords descended on the bared shoulders. Magda winced away from
+them, shivering. For a moment Sister Agnetia’s arm hung flaccid, the
+cords of the flagellum pendant and still.
+
+“Are you submitting to the discipline, Sister Penitentia?” came her
+voice. It was an unpleasant voice, suggestive of a knife that has been
+dipped in oil.
+
+Magda caught her breath.
+
+“Yes . . . yes . . . I submit myself.”
+
+Dimly she felt that by means of this endurance she would win back
+Michael, cleanse herself to receive his love.
+
+“I submit,” she repeated in a rapt whisper of self-surrender.
+
+Sister Agnetia’s voice swam unctuously into her consciousness once more.
+
+“I thought you tried to avoid that last stroke. If you flinch from
+punishment it is not submission, but rebellion.”
+
+Magda gripped her hands together and pressed her knees into the hard
+stone floor, her muscles taut with anticipation as she heard the soft
+whistle of the thongs cleaving the air.
+
+This time she bore the pang of anguish motionless, but the vision of
+Michael went out suddenly in a throbbing darkness of swift agony. Her
+shoulders felt red-hot. The pain shot up into her brain like fingers
+of flame. It clasped her whole body in a torment, and the ecstasy of
+self-surrender was lost in a sick groping after sheer endurance.
+
+The next stroke, crushing across that fever of intolerable suffering,
+wrung a hoarse moan from her dry lips. Her hands locked together till
+she felt as though their bones must crack with the strain as she waited
+for the next inexorable stroke.
+
+One moment! . . . Two! An eternity of waiting!
+
+“Go on!” she breathed. “Oh! . . . Be quick . . .” Her voice panted.
+
+No movement answered her. Unable to endure the suspense, she
+straightened her bowed shoulders and turned in convulsive appeal to
+where she had glimpsed the flail-like rise and fall of Sister Agnetia’s
+serge-clad arm.
+
+There was no one there! The bare, cell-like chamber was empty, save
+for herself. Sister Agnetia had stolen away, completing the penance of
+physical pain by the refinement of anguish embodied in those hideous
+moments of mental dread.
+
+Magda almost fancied she could hear an oily chuckle outside the door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THOSE THAT WERE LEFT BEHIND
+
+For the first month or two after Magda’s departure Gillian found that
+she had her hands full in settling up various business and personal
+matters which had been left with loose ends. She was frankly glad
+to discover that there were so many matters requiring her attention;
+otherwise the blank occasioned in her life by Magda’s absence would have
+been almost unendurable.
+
+The two girls had grown very much into each other’s hearts during the
+years they had shared together, and when friends part, no matter how big
+a wrench the separation may mean to the one who goes, there is a special
+kind of sadness reserved for the one who is left behind. For the one who
+sets out there are fresh faces, new activities in store. Even though
+the new life adventured upon may not prove to be precisely a bed of
+thornless roses, the pricking of the thorns provides distraction to the
+mind from the sheer, undiluted pain of separation.
+
+But for Gillian, left behind at Friars’ Holm, there remained nothing
+but an hourly sense of loss added to that crushing, inevitable flatness
+which succeeds a crisis of any kind.
+
+Nor did a forlorn Coppertop’s reiterated inquiries as to how soon the
+Fairy Lady might be expected back again help to mend matters.
+
+Lady Arabella’s grief was expressed in a characteristically prickly
+fashion.
+
+“Young people don’t seem to know the first thing about love nowadays,”
+ she observed with the customary scathing contempt of one age for
+another.
+
+In _my_ young days! Ah! there will never be times like those again! We
+are all quite sure of it as our young days recede into the misty past.
+
+“If you loved, you loved,” pursued Lady Arabella crisply. “And the death
+of half a dozen sisters wouldn’t have been allowed to interfere with the
+proceedings.”
+
+Gillian smiled a little.
+
+“It wasn’t only that. It was Michael’s bitter disappointment in Magda,
+I think, quite as much as the fact that, indirectly, he held her
+responsible for June’s death.”
+
+“It’s ridiculous to try and foist Mrs. Storran’s death on to Magda,”
+ fumed Lady Arabella restively. “If she hadn’t the physical health to
+have a good, hearty baby successfully, she shouldn’t have attempted
+it. That’s all! . . . And then those two idiots--Magda and Michael! Of
+course he must needs shoot off abroad, and equally of course she must
+be out of the way in a sisterhood when he comes rushing back--as he will
+do!”--with a grim smile.
+
+“He hasn’t done yet,” Gillian pointed out.
+
+“I give him precisely six months, my dear, before he finds out that,
+sister or no sister, he can’t live without Magda. Michael Quarrington’s
+got too much good red blood in his veins to live the life of a
+hermit. He’s a man, thank goodness, not a mystical dreamer like Hugh
+Vallincourt. And he’ll come back to his mate as surely as the sun will
+rise to-morrow.”
+
+“I wish I felt as confident as you do.”
+
+“I wish I could make sure of putting my hand on Magda when he comes,”
+ grumbled Lady Arabella. “That’s the hitch I’m afraid of! If only she
+hadn’t been so precipitate--only waited a bit for him to come back to
+her.”
+
+“I don’t agree with you,” rapped out Gillian smartly. “Women are much
+too ready to do the patient Griselda stunt. I think”--with a vicious
+little nod of her brown head--“it would do Michael all the good in
+the world to come back and want Magda--want her _badly_. And find he
+couldn’t get her! So there!”
+
+Lady Arabella regarded her with astonishment, then broke into a
+delighted chuckle.
+
+“Upon my word! If a tame dove had suddenly turned round and pecked at
+me, I couldn’t have been more surprised! I didn’t know you had so much
+of the leaven of malice and wickedness in you, Gillian!”
+
+Gillian, a little flushed and feeling, in truth, rather surprised at
+herself for her sudden heat, smiled back at her.
+
+“But I should have thought your opinion would have been very much the
+same as mine. I never expected you’d want Magda to sit down and twiddle
+her thumbs till Michael chose to come back to her.”
+
+Lady Arabella sighed.
+
+“I don’t. Not really. Only I want them to be happy,” she said a little
+sadly. “Love is such a rare thing--love like theirs. And it’s hard that
+Magda should lose the beauty and happiness of it all because of mistakes
+she made before she found herself, so to speak.”
+
+Gillian nodded soberly. Lady Arabella had voiced precisely her own
+feeling in the matter. It _was_ hard! And yet it was only the fulfilment
+of the immutable law: _Who breaks, pays_.
+
+Gillian’s thoughts tried to pierce the dim horizon. Perhaps all the pain
+and mistakes and misunderstandings of which this workaday world is so
+full are, after all, only a part of the beautiful tapestry which the
+patient Fingers of God are weaving--a dark and sombre warp, giving value
+to the gold and silver and jewelled threads of the weft which shall
+cross it. When the ultimate fabric is woven, and the tissue released
+from the loom, there will surely be no meaningless thread, sable or
+silver, in the consummated pattern.
+
+A few weeks after Magda’s departure Gillian received a letter from Dan
+Storran, reminding her of her promise to let him see her and asking if
+she would lunch with him somewhere in town.
+
+It was with somewhat mixed feelings that she met him again. He was much
+altered--so changed from the hot-headed, primitive countryman she
+had first known. Some chance remark of hers enlightened him as to her
+confused sense of the difference in him, and he smiled across at her.
+
+“I’ve been through the mill, you see,” he explained quietly, “since the
+Stockleigh days.”
+
+The words seemed almost like a key unlocking the door that stands fast
+shut between one soul and another. He talked to her quite simply and
+frankly after that, telling her how, after he had left England, the
+madness in his blood had driven him whither it listed. There had been
+no depths to which he had not sunk, no wild living from which he had
+recoiled.
+
+And then had come the news of June’s death. Not tenderly conveyed, but
+charged to his account by her sister with a fierce bitterness that
+had suddenly torn the veil from his eyes. Followed days and nights of
+agonised remorse, and after that the slow, steady, infinitely difficult
+climb back from the depths into which he had allowed himself to sink
+to a plane of life where, had June still lived, he would not have been
+ashamed to meet her eyes nor utterly unworthy to take her hand.
+
+“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” he ended. “But she would
+have wished it. I can never tell her now how I regret, never ask her
+forgiveness. And this was the only thing I could do to atone.”
+
+Gillian’s eyes were very soft as she answered:
+
+“I expect she knows, Dan, and is glad.”
+
+After a moment she went on thoughtfully.
+
+“It’s rather the same kind of feeling that has driven Magda into a
+sisterhood, I think--the desire to do something definite, something
+tangible, as a sort of reparation. And a woman is much more limited that
+way than a man.”
+
+Storran’s mouth hardened. Any mention of Magda would bring that look of
+concentrated hardness into his face, and as the months went on, giving
+Gillian a closer insight into the man, she began to realise that he
+had never forgiven Magda for her share in the ruin of his life. On this
+point he was as hard as nether millstone. He even seemed to derive a
+certain satisfaction from the knowledge that she was paying, and paying
+heavily, for all the harm she had wrought.
+
+It troubled Gillian--this incalculable hardness in Dan’s nature
+towards one woman. She found him kindly and tolerant in his outlook
+on life--with the understanding tolerance of the man who has dragged
+himself out of the pit by his own sheer force of will, and who, knowing
+the power of temptation, is ready to give a helping hand to others who
+may have fallen by the way. So that his relentlessness towards Magda was
+the more inexplicable.
+
+More than once she tried to soften his attitude, tried to make him
+realise something of the conflicting influences both of temperament and
+environment which had helped to make Magda what she was. But he remained
+stubbornly unmoved.
+
+“No punishment is too severe for a woman who has done what Magda
+Vallincourt has done. She has wrecked lives simply in order to gratify
+her vanity and insensate instinct for conquest.”
+
+Gillian shook her head.
+
+“No, you’re wrong. You _won’t_ understand! It’s all that went
+before--her parents’ mistakes--that should be blamed for half she’s
+done. I think you’re very merciless, Dan.”
+
+“Perhaps I am--in this case. Frankly, if I could lessen her punishment
+by lifting my little finger--I wouldn’t do it.”
+
+Yet this same man when, as often happened, he took Gillian and Coppertop
+for a run into the country in his car, was as simple and considerate
+and kindly as a man could be. Coppertop adored him, and, as Gillian
+reflected, the love of children is rarely misplaced. Some instinct leads
+them to divine unfailingly which is gold and which dross.
+
+The car was a recent acquisition. As Storran himself expressed it,
+rather bitterly: “Now that I can’t buy a ha’p’orth of happiness with the
+money, my luck has turned.” He explained to Gillian that after he
+had left England he had sold his farm in Devonshire, and that a
+lucky investment of the capital thus realised had turned him into a
+comparatively rich man.
+
+“Even when I was making ducks and drakes of my life generally, I didn’t
+seem to make a mistake over money matters. If I played cards, I won; if
+I backed a horse, he romped in first; it I bought shares, they jumped up
+immediately.”
+
+“What a pity!” replied Gillian ingenuously. “If only your financial
+affairs hadn’t prospered, you’d have had to settle down and
+_work_--instead of--of----”
+
+“Playing the fool,” he supplemented. “No, I don’t suppose I should.
+I hadn’t learned--then--that work is the only panacea, the one big
+remedy.”
+
+“And now?”
+
+“I’ve learned a lot of things in the last two years,” quietly. “And I’m
+still learning.”
+
+As the months went on, Dan’s friendship began to mean a good deal
+to Gillian. It had come into her life just at a time when she was
+intolerably lonely, and quite unconsciously she was learning to turn to
+him for advice on all the large and small affairs of daily life as they
+came cropping up.
+
+She was infinitely glad of his counsel with regard to Coppertop, who was
+growing to the age when the want of a father--of a man’s broad outlook
+and a man’s restraining hand--became an acute lack in a boy’s life. And
+to Gillian, who had gallantly faced the world alone since the day
+when death had abruptly ended her “year of utter happiness,” it was
+inexpressibly sweet to be once more shielded and helped in all the
+big and little ways in which a man--even if he was only a staunch
+man-friend--can shield and help a woman.
+
+It seemed as though Dan Storran always contrived to interpose his big
+person betwixt her and the sharp corners of life, and she began to
+wonder, with a faint, indefinable dread, what must become of their
+friendship when Magda returned to Friars’ Holm. Feeling as he did
+towards the dancer, it would be impossible for him to come there any
+more, and somehow a snatched hour here and there--a lunch together, or
+a motor-spin into the country--would be a very poor substitute for his
+almost daily visits to the old Queen Anne house tucked away behind its
+high walls at Hampstead.
+
+Once she broached the subject to him rather diffidently.
+
+“My dear”--he had somehow dropped into the use of the little term of
+endearment, and Gillian found that she liked it and knew that she would
+miss it if it were suddenly erased from his speech--“my dear, why cross
+bridges till we come to them? Perhaps, when the time comes, there’ll be
+no bridge to cross.”
+
+Gillian glanced at him swiftly.
+
+“Do you mean that she--that you’re feeling less bitter towards her,
+Dan?” she asked eagerly.
+
+He smiled down at her whimsically.
+
+“I don’t quite know. But I know one thing--it’s very difficult to be a
+lot with you and keep one’s anger strictly up to concert pitch.”
+
+Gillian made no answer. She was too wise--with that intuitive wisdom of
+woman--to force the pace. If Dan were beginning to relent ever so little
+towards Magda--why, then, her two best friends might yet come together
+in comradeship and learn to forget the bitter past. The gentle hand
+of Time would be laid on old wounds and its touch would surely bring
+healing. But Gillian would no more have thought of trying to hasten
+matters than she would have tried to force open the close-curled petals
+of a flower in bud.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE RETURN
+
+Magda slipped through the tall doorway in the wall which marked the
+abode of the Sisters of Penitence and stood once more on the pavement of
+the busy street. The year was over, and just as once before the clicking
+of the latch had seemed to signify the end of everything, so now it
+sounded a quite different note--of new beginnings, of release--freedom!
+
+Three months prior to the completion of her allotted span at the
+sisterhood Magda had had a serious attack of illness. The hard and
+rigorous life had told upon her physically, while the unaccustomed
+restrictions, the constant obedience exacted, had gone far towards
+assisting in the utter collapse of nerves already frayed by the strain
+of previous happenings.
+
+Probably her fierce determination to go through with her self-elected
+expiation, no matter what the cost, had a good deal to do with her
+ultimate breakdown. With unswerving resolution she had forced herself to
+obedience, to the performance of her appointed tasks in spite of their
+distastefulness; and behind the daily work and discipline there had been
+all the time the ceaseless, aching longing for the man who had loved her
+and who had gone away.
+
+It was not surprising, therefore, that the tired body and nerves at last
+gave way, and in the delirium of brain fever Magda revealed the whole
+pitiful story of the mistakes and misunderstandings which had brought
+her in desperation to the Sisters of Penitence.
+
+Fortunately it was upon Sister Bernardine that the major part of the
+nursing devolved, and it was into her gentle ears that Magda unwittingly
+poured out the history of the past. Bit by bit, from the ramblings of
+delirium, Sister Bernardine pieced together the story, and her shy,
+virginal heart found itself throbbing in overflowing sympathy--a
+sympathy that sought expression in the tender care she gave her patient.
+
+During the long, slow days of convalescence Magda, very helpless and
+dependent, had gradually learned to love the soft-footed little Sister
+who came and went throughout her illness--to love her as she would not,
+at one time, have believed it possible she could grow to love anyone
+behind the high grey walls which encircled the sisterhood.
+
+If the past year had taught her nothing else, it had at least taught
+her that goodness and badness are very evenly distributed. She had found
+both good and bad behind those tall grey walls just as she had found
+them in the great free world outside.
+
+Her last memory, as her first, was of Sister Bernardine’s kind eyes.
+
+“Some of us find happiness in the world,” the little Sister had said at
+parting, “and some of us out of it. I think you were meant to find yours
+in the world.”
+
+It was Magda’s own choice to leave the sisterhood on foot. She had
+nothing to take with her in the way of luggage, and she smiled a little
+as she realised that, for the moment, she possessed actually nothing but
+the clothes she stood up in--the same in which she had quitted Friars’
+Holm a year ago, and which, on departure, she had substituted for the
+grey veil and habit she was discarding.
+
+At first, as she made her way along the street, she found the continuous
+ebb and flow of the crowded thoroughfare somewhat confusing after the
+absolute calm and quiet of the preceding months, but very soon the
+Londoner’s familiar love of London and of its ceaseless, kaleidoscopic
+movement returned to her, and with it the requisite poise to thread her
+way through the throngs that trod the pavements.
+
+Then her eyes turned to the shop windows--Catherine’s stern discipline
+had completely failed to stamp out the eternal feminine in her
+niece--and as they absorbed the silken stuffs and rainbow colours that
+gleamed and glowed behind the thick plateglass, she became suddenly
+conscious of her own attire--of its cut and style. When last she had
+worn it, it had been the final word in fashionable raiment. Now it was
+out of date. The Wielitzska, whose clothes the newspapers had loved to
+chronicle, in a frock in which any one of the “young ladies” behind the
+counters of these self-same shops into which she was gazing would have
+declined to appear! She almost laughed out loud. And then, quick on the
+heels of her desire to laugh, came a revulsion of feeling. This little
+incident, just the disparity between the fashion of her own clothes and
+the fashion prevailing at the moment, served to make her realise, with
+a curious clarity of vision, the irrevocable passage of time. A year--a
+slice out of her life! What other differences would it ultimately show?
+
+Something else was already making itself apparent--the fact that none
+of the passers-by seemed to recognise her. In the old days, when she had
+been dancing constantly at the Imperial Theatre, she had grown so used
+to seeing the sudden look of interest and recognition spring into
+the eyes of one or another, to the little eager gesture that nudged
+a companion, pointing out the famous dancer as she passed along the
+street, that she had thought nothing of it--had hardly consciously
+noticed it. Now she missed it--missed it extraordinarily.
+
+A sudden sense of intense loneliness swept over her--the loneliness
+of the man who has been cast on a desert island, only returning to
+his fellows after many weary months of absence. She felt she could not
+endure to waste another moment before she saw again the beloved faces of
+Gillian and Virginie and felt once more the threads of the old familiar
+life quiver and vibrate between her fingers.
+
+With a quick, imperative gesture she hailed a taxi and was whirled away
+towards Hampstead.
+
+
+
+The first excited greetings and embraces were over. The flurry of
+broken, scattered phrases, half-tearfully, half-smilingly welcoming her
+back, had spent themselves, and now old Virginie, drawing away, regarded
+her with bewildered, almost frightened eyes.
+
+“_Mais, mon dieu_!” she muttered. “_Mon dieu_!” Then with a sudden cry:
+“Cherie! Cherie! What have they done to thee? What have they done?”
+
+“Done to me?” repeated Magda in puzzled tones. “Oh, I see! I’m thinner.
+I’ve been ill, you know.”
+
+“It is not--that! Hast thou looked in the glass? Oh, my poor----” And
+the old Frenchwoman incontinently began to weep.
+
+A glass! Magda had not seen her own reflection in a looking-glass since
+the day she left Friars’ Holm. There were no mirrors hanging on the
+walls of the house where the Sisters of Penitence dwelt. Filled with a
+nameless, inexplicable terror, she turned and walked out of the room.
+There was an old Chippendale mirror hanging at the further end, but she
+avoided it. Something in the askance expression of Virginie’s eyes had
+frightened her so that she dared not challenge what the mirror might
+give back until she was alone.
+
+Once outside the door she flew upstairs to her own room and, locking the
+door, went to the glass. A stifled exclamation of dismay escaped her.
+She had not dreamed a year could compass such an alteration! Then, very
+deliberately, she removed her hat and, standing where the light fell
+full upon her, she examined her reflection. After a long moment she
+spoke, whisperingly, beneath her breath.
+
+“Why--why--it isn’t me, at all. I’m ugly. Ugly----”
+
+With a quick movement she lifted her arm, screening her face against it
+for a moment.
+
+Her startled eyes had exaggerated the change absurdly. Nevertheless,
+that a change had taken place was palpable. The arresting radiance, the
+vivid physical perfection of her, had gone. She was thin, and with the
+thinness had come lines--lines of fatigue, and other, more lasting lines
+born of endurance and self-control. The pliant symmetry of her figure,
+too, was marred. She stooped a little; the gay, free carriage of her
+shoulders was gone. The heavy manual work at the sisterhood, of which,
+in common with the others, she had done her share, had taken its toll
+of her suppleness and grace, and the hands she extended in front of her,
+regarding them distastefully, were roughened and worn by the unwonted
+usage to which they had been subjected. Her hair, so long, hidden from
+the light and air by the veil she had worn, was flaccid and lustreless.
+Only her eyes remained unchangedly beautiful. Splendid and miserable,
+they stared back at the reflection which the mirror yielded.
+
+
+
+It was a long time before Magda reappeared downstairs, so long, indeed,
+that Gillian was beginning to grow nervously uneasy. When at last she
+came, she was curiously quiet and responded to all Gillian’s attempts
+at conversation with a dull, flat indifference that was strangely at
+variance with the spontaneously happy excitement which had attended the
+first few moments after her arrival.
+
+Gillian was acutely conscious of the difference in her manner, but even
+she, with all her intuition, failed to attribute it to its rightful
+cause. To her, Magda was so indubitably, essentially the Magda she loved
+that she was hardly sensible of that shadowing of her radiant beauty
+which had revealed itself with a merciless clarity to the dancer
+herself. And such change as she observed she ascribed to recent illness.
+
+Meanwhile Magda got through that first evening at Friars’ Holm as best
+she might. The hours seemed interminable. She was aching for night to
+come, so that she might be alone with her thoughts--alone to realise and
+face this new thing which had befallen her.
+
+She had lost her beauty! The one precious gift she had to give Michael,
+that lover of all beauty! . . . The knowledge seemed to beat against her
+brain, throbbing and pulsing like a wound, while she made a pretence
+at doing justice to the little dinner party, which had been especially
+concocted for her under Virginie’s watchful eye, and responded in some
+sort to Coppertop’s periodic outbreaks of jubilation over her return.
+
+But the moment of release came at length. A final good-night kiss
+to Gillian on the landing outside her bedroom door, and then a
+nerve-racking hour while Virginie fussed over her, undressing her and
+preparing her for bed with the same tender care she had devoted to the
+_bebe_ she had nursed and tended more than twenty years ago.
+
+It was over at last.
+
+“Sleep well!” And Virginie switched off the electric light as she
+pattered out of the room, leaving Magda alone in the cool dark, with the
+silken softness of crepe de chine once more caressing her slender limbs,
+and the fineness of lavender-scented linen smooth against her cheek.
+
+The ease, and comfort, and wellbeing of it all! Yet this first
+night, passed in the familiar luxury which had lapped her round since
+childhood, was a harder, more bitter night than any of the preceding
+three hundred and sixty-five she had spent tossing weary, aching limbs
+on a lumpy straw mattress with a coarse brown woollen blanket drawn up
+beneath her chin, vexing her satin skin.
+
+For each of those nights had counted as a step onwards along the hard
+road that was to lead her back eventually to Michael. Now she knew that
+they had all been endured in vain. Spiritually her self-elected year of
+discipline might have fitted her to be the wife of “Saint Michel.”
+ But the undimmed physical beauty and charm which Michael, the man and
+artist, would crave in the woman he loved was gone.
+
+The recognition of these things rushed over her, overwhelming her with a
+sense of blank and utter failure. It meant the end of everything. As
+far as she was concerned, life henceforward held nothing more. There
+was nothing to hope for in the future--except to hope that Michael might
+never see her again! At least, she would like to feel that his memory
+of her--of the Wielitzska whose lithe grace and beauty had swept him
+headlong even against the tide of his convictions--would remain for ever
+unmarred.
+
+It was a rather touching human little weakness--the weakness and
+prayer of many a woman who has lost her lover. . . . Let him remember
+her--always--as she was before the radiance of youth faded, before grief
+or pain blurred the perfection that had been hers!
+
+Perhaps for Magda the wish was even stronger, more insistent by reason
+of the fact that her beauty had been of so fine and rare a quality,
+setting her in a way apart from other women.
+
+With the instinct of the wounded wild creature she longed to hide--to
+hide herself from Michael, so that she might never see in his eyes that
+look of quickly veiled disappointment which she knew would spring into
+them as he realised the change in her. She felt she could not bear that.
+It would be like a sword-thrust through her heart. . . . Better if she
+had never left the sisterhood!
+
+Suddenly every nerve of her tautened. Supposing--supposing she returned
+there, never to emerge again? No chance encounter could ever then bring
+her within sight or sound of Michael. She would be spared watching
+the old, eager look of admiration fade suddenly from the grey eyes she
+loved.
+
+Hour after hour she lay there, dry-eyed, staring into the darkness. And
+with the dawn her decision was taken.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+AN UNANSWERED LETTER
+
+“You shan’t do it!”
+
+When first Magda had bruited her idea of rejoining the sisterhood--the
+decision which had crystallised out of the long black hours of the night
+of her return to Friars’ Holm--Gillian had merely laughed the notion
+aside, attaching little importance to it. But now, a week later, when
+Magda reverted to the subject with a certain purposeful definiteness,
+she grew suddenly frightened.
+
+“Do you want to throw away every possibility of happiness?” she demanded
+indignantly. “Just because Michael isn’t here, waiting for you on the
+doorstep, so to speak, you decide to rush off and make it impossible for
+him ever to see you again!”
+
+Magda kept her head bent, refusing to meet the other’s eyes.
+
+“I don’t want him to see me now,” she said shrinkingly. “I’m not--not
+the Magda he knew any longer.”
+
+“That’s an absurd exaggeration. You’re not looking very well, that’s
+all,” retorted Gillian with her usual practical common sense. “You can’t
+suppose that would make any difference to Michael! It didn’t make any to
+me. I’m only too glad to have you back at any price!”
+
+Magda’s faint responsive smile was touched with that bitter knowledge
+which is the heritage of the woman who has been much loved for her
+beauty.
+
+“You’re a woman, Gillyflower,” she said. “And Michael is not only a
+man--but an artist. Men don’t want you when the bloom has been brushed
+off. And you know how Michael worships beauty! He’s bound to--being an
+artist.”
+
+“I think you’re morbidly self-conscious,” declared Gillian firmly. “I
+suppose it’s the result of being out of the world for so long. You’ve
+lost all sense of proportion. You’re quite lovely enough, now, to
+satisfy most people. You only look rather tired and worn out.”
+
+But Magda’s face remained clouded.
+
+“But even that isn’t--all,” she answered. “It’s--oh, it’s a heap of
+things! Somehow I thought when I came back I should see the road clear.
+But it isn’t. It’s all shadowed--just as it was before. I thought I
+should have so much to give Michael now. And I haven’t anything. I don’t
+think I ever quite realised before that, however much you try to atone,
+you can never _undo_ the harm you’ve done. But I’ve had time to think
+things out while I was with the Sisters.”
+
+“And if you go back to them you’ll have time to do nothing but think for
+the rest of your life!” flashed back Gillian.
+
+“Oh, no!” Magda spoke quickly. “I shouldn’t return under a vow of
+penitence. There are working sisters attached to the community who go
+about amongst the sick and poor in the slums. I should join as a working
+sister if I went back.”
+
+Gillian stared at her in amazement. Magda devoting her life to good
+works seemed altogether out of the picture! She began to feel that
+the whole affair was getting too complicated for her to handle, and as
+usual, when in a difficulty, she put the matter up to Lady Arabella.
+
+The latter, with her accumulated wisdom of seventy years, saw more
+clearly than the younger woman, although even she hardly understood
+that sense of the deadly emptiness and failure of her life which had
+overwhelmed Magda since her return to Friars’ Holm. But the old woman
+realised that she had passed through a long period of strain, and that,
+now the reaction had come, the Vallincourt blood in her might drive her
+into almost any extreme of conduct.
+
+“If only Michael were on the spot!” she burst out irritably. “I own I’m
+disappointed in the man! I was so sure six months would bring him to his
+senses.”
+
+“I know,” assented Gillian miserably. “It’s--it’s--the most hopeless
+state of things imaginable!”
+
+Lady Arabella’s interview with Magda herself proved unproductive.
+
+“Have you written to Michael?” she demanded.
+
+“Written to him?” A flash of the old defiant spirit sounded in Magda’s
+voice. “No, nor shall I.”
+
+“Don’t be a fool, child. He’s probably learned something during this
+last twelve months--as well as you. Don’t let pride get in your way
+now.”
+
+“It’s not pride. Marraine, I never knew--I never thought----Look at me!
+What have I to give Michael now? Have you forgotten that he’s an artist
+and that beauty means everything to him?”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“‘Well!’” Magda held out her hands. “Can’t you see that I’m changed?
+. . . Michael wouldn’t want me to pose for him as Circe now!”
+
+“He wanted you for a wife--not a model, my dear. You can buy models at
+so much the hour.”
+
+“Oh, Marraine! You won’t understand----”
+
+Lady Arabella took the slender, work-roughened hands in hers.
+
+“Perhaps I understand better than you think,” she said quietly. “There
+are other ways of assessing life than merely in terms of beauty. And
+you can believe this, too: you’ve lost nothing from the point of view
+of looks that a few months of normal healthy life won’t set right.
+Moreover, if you’d grown as plain as a pikestaff, I don’t think Michael
+would care twopence! He’s an artist, I know. He can’t help that, but
+he’s a man first. And he’s a man who knows how to love. Promise me
+one thing,” she went on insistently. “Promise that you’ll do nothing
+definite--yet. Not, at least, without consulting me.”
+
+Magda hesitated.
+
+“Very well. I’ll do nothing without--telling you--first.”
+
+That was the utmost concession she would make, and with that her
+godmother had to be content.
+
+The same evening a letter in Lady Arabella’s spirited, angular
+handwriting sped on its way to Paris.
+
+
+“If you’re not absolutely determined to ruin both your own and Magda’s
+lives, my dear Michael, put your pride and your ridiculous principles
+in your pocket and come back to England. I don’t happen to be a
+grandmother, but I’m quite old enough for the job, so you might pay my
+advice due respect by taking it.”
+
+
+
+“I thought I was shelved altogether.”
+
+Thus Dan Storran, rather crossly, when, a day or two later, he met
+Gillian by appointment for lunch at their favourite little restaurant in
+Soho. It was the first time she had been able to fix up a meeting with
+him since Magda’s return, as naturally his customary visits to Friars’
+Holm were out of the question now.
+
+“Well, you expected my time to be pretty well occupied the first week or
+two after Magda came back, didn’t you?” countered Gillian.
+
+She smiled as she spoke and proceeded leisurely to draw off her gloves,
+while Storran signalled to a waiter.
+
+She was really very glad to see him again. There was something so solid
+and dependable about him, and she felt it would be very comforting to
+confide in him her anxieties concerning Magda. Not that she anticipated
+he would have any particular compassion to bestow upon the latter.
+But she was femininely aware that inasmuch as Magda’s affairs were
+disturbing her peace of mind, he would listen to them with sympathetic
+attention and probably, out of the depths of his man’s consciousness,
+produce some quite sound and serviceable advice.
+
+Being a wise woman, however, she did not launch out into immediate
+explanation, but waited for him to work off his own individual grumble
+at not having seen her recently, trusting to the perfectly cooked little
+lunch to exercise a tranquillising effect.
+
+It was not until they had reached the cigarette and coffee stage of the
+proceedings that she allowed a small, well-considered sigh to escape her
+and drift away into the silence that had fallen between them. Storran
+glanced across at her with suddenly observant eyes.
+
+“What is it?” he asked quickly. “You look worried. Are you?”
+
+She nodded silently.
+
+“And here I’ve been grousing away about my own affairs all the time! Why
+didn’t you stop me?”
+
+“You know I’m interested in your affairs.”
+
+“And I’m interested in yours. What’s bothering you, Gillian? Tell me.”
+
+“Magda,” said Gillian simply.
+
+She was rather surprised to observe that Dan’s face did not, as usual,
+darken at the mere mention of Magda’s name.
+
+“I saw her the other day,” he said quickly. “I was in the Park and she
+drove by.”
+
+Gillian felt that there was something more to come. She waited in
+silence.
+
+“She has altered very much,” he went on bluntly. Then, after a moment:
+“I felt--sorry for her.”
+
+“_You_ did, Dan?” Gillian’s face lit up. “I’m glad. I’ve always hated
+your being so down on her.”
+
+With an abrupt movement he jabbed the glowing stub of his cigarette on
+to an ash-tray, pressing it down until it went out. Then, taking out his
+case, he lit another before replying.
+
+“I shan’t be ‘down on her’ any more,” he said at last. “I never guessed
+she’d felt things--like that.”
+
+“No. No one did. I don’t suppose even Magda herself knew she could ever
+go through all she has done just for an ideal.”
+
+Then very quietly, very simply and touchingly, she told him the story of
+all that had happened, of Magda’s final intention of becoming a working
+member of the sisterhood, and of Lady Arabella’s letter summoning
+Michael back to England.
+
+“But even when he comes,” added Gillian, “unless he is very
+careful--unless he loves her in the biggest way a man can love, so that
+_nothing else matters_, he’ll lose her. He’ll have to convince her that
+she means just that to him.”
+
+Storran was silent for a long time, and when at last he spoke it was
+with an obvious effort.
+
+“Listen,” he said. “There’s something you don’t know. Perhaps when I’ve
+told you, you won’t have anything more to say to me--I don’t know.”
+
+Gillian opened her lips in quick disclaimer, but he motioned her to be
+silent.
+
+“Wait,” he said. “Wait till you’ve heard what I have to say. You think,
+and Magda thinks, that June died of a broken heart--at least, that the
+shock of all that miserable business down at Stockleigh helped to kill
+her.”
+
+“Yes.” Gillian assented mechanically when he paused.
+
+“I thought so, too, once. It was what June’s sister told me--told
+everyone. But it wasn’t true. She believed it, I know--probably believes
+it to this day. But, thank God, it wasn’t true!”
+
+“How can you tell? All that strain and heart-break just at a time when
+she wasn’t strong. Oh, Dan! We can never be sure--_sure_!”
+
+“I _am_ sure. Quite sure,” he said steadily. “When I came to my senses
+out there in ‘Frisco, I couldn’t rest under that letter from June’s
+sister. It burned into me like a red-hot iron. I was half-mad with
+pain, I think. I wrote to the doctor who had attended her, but I got no
+answer. Then I sailed for England, determined to find and see the man
+for myself. I found him--my letter had miscarried somehow--and he told
+me that June could not have lived. There were certain complications in
+her case which made it impossible. In fact, if she had been so happy
+that she had longed to live--and _tried_ to--it would only have made it
+harder for her, a rougher journey to travel. As it was, she went easily,
+without fighting death--letting go, without any effort, her hold on
+life.”
+
+He ceased, and after a moment’s silence Gillian spoke in strained,
+horror-stricken tones.
+
+“And you never told us! Oh! It was cruel of you, Dan! You would have
+spared Magda an infinity of self-reproach!”
+
+“I didn’t want to spare her. I left her in ignorance on purpose. I
+wanted her to be punished--to suffer as she had made me suffer.”
+
+There were tears in Gillian’s eyes. It was terrible to her that Dan
+could be so bitter--so vengefully cruel. Yet she recognised that it had
+been but the natural outcome of the man’s primitive nature to pay back
+good for good and evil for evil.
+
+“Then why do you tell me now?” she asked at last.
+
+“Why--because you’ve beaten me--you with your sweetness and courage and
+tolerance. You’ve taught me that retribution and punishment are best
+left in--more merciful Hands than ours.”
+
+Gillian’s hand went out to meet his.
+
+“Oh, Dan, I’m so glad!” she said simply.
+
+He kept her hand in his a moment, then released it gently.
+
+“Well, you can tell her now,” he said awkwardly.
+
+“I?” Gillian smiled a little. “No. I want you to tell her. Don’t you
+see, Dan”--as she sensed his impulse to refuse--“it will make all the
+difference in Magda if you and she are--are square with each other?
+She’s overweighted. She’s been carrying a bigger burden than she can
+bear. Michael comes first, of course, but there’s been her treatment of
+you, as well. June, too. And--and other things. And it’s crushing her.
+. . . No, you must tell her.”
+
+“I will--if you say I must. But she won’t forgive me easily.”
+
+“I think she will. I think she’ll understand just what made you do it.
+So now we’ll go back to Friars’ Holm together.”
+
+An hour later Storran came slowly downstairs from the little room where
+he and Magda had met again for the first time since that moonlight night
+at Stockleigh--met, not as lovers, but as a man and woman who have
+each sinned and each learned, out of their sinning, how to pardon and
+forgive.
+
+Storran was very quiet and grave when presently he found himself alone
+with Gillian.
+
+“We men will never understand women,” he said. “There’s an angel hidden
+away somewhere in every one of you.” His mouth curved into a smile,
+half-sad, half-whimsical. “I’ve just found Magda’s.”
+
+
+
+Lady Arabella and Gillian, both feeling rather like conspirators, waited
+anxiously for a reply to the former’s letter to Quarrington. But none
+came. The time slipped by until a fortnight had elapsed, and with the
+passage of each day their hearts sank lower.
+
+Neither of them believed that Michael would have utterly disregarded
+the letter, had he received it, but they feared that it might have
+miscarried, or that he might be travelling and so not receive it in
+time to prevent Magda’s carrying out her avowed intention of becoming a
+working member of the sisterhood.
+
+Even though she knew now that at least June Storran’s death need no
+longer be added to her account, she still adhered to her decision. As
+she had told Dan with a weary simplicity: “I’m glad. But it won’t make
+any difference--to Michael and me. Too much water has run under the
+bridge. Love that is dead doesn’t come to life again.”
+
+Each day was hardening her resolve, and both Lady Arabella and
+Gillian--those two whose unselfish happiness was bound up in her
+own--were beginning to realise that it would be a race against time
+if she was to be saved from taking a step that would divide her from
+Michael as long as they both should live.
+
+At the end of a fortnight Gillian, driven to desperation, despatched a
+telegram to his Paris address: “Did you receive communication from Lady
+Arabella?” But it shared the fate of the letter, failing to elicit any
+reply. She allowed sufficient time to elapse to cover any ordinary delay
+in transit, then, unknown to Magda, taxied down to the house in Park
+Lane.
+
+“I want you to invite Magda to stay with you, please,” she informed Lady
+Arabella abruptly.
+
+“Of course I will,” she replied. “But why? You’ve got a reason.”
+
+Gillian nodded.
+
+“Yes,” she acknowledged quietly. “I’m going to Paris--to find Michael.”
+
+Lady Arabella, whose high spirits had wilted a little in the face of
+the double disappointment regarding any answer from Quarrington, beamed
+satisfaction.
+
+“You blessed child!” she exclaimed. “I’d have gone myself, but my old
+body is so stiff with rheumatism that I don’t believe they’d get me on
+board the boat except in an ambulance!”
+
+“Well, I’m going,” said Gillian. “Only the point is, Magda mustn’t know.
+If she thought I was going off in pursuit of Michael I believe she’d
+lock me up in the cellar. She intends never to let him see her again.
+Melrose will manage about the letters, and somehow you’ve got to prevent
+Magda from coming to Friars’ Holm and finding out that I’m not there.”
+
+“I’ll take her away with me,” declared Lady Arabella.
+“Rheumatism--Harrogate. It’s quite simple.”
+
+Gillian heaved a sigh of relief.
+
+“Yes. That would be a good plan,” she agreed. “Then I’d let you know
+when we should arrive--”
+
+“‘We?’”
+
+“Michael and I. I’m not coming back without him. And you could bring
+Magda straight back to town with you.”
+
+Lady Arabella’s keen old eyes searched her face.
+
+“You sound very certain of success. Supposing you find Michael still
+unforgiving--and he refuses to return with you?”
+
+“I believe in Michael,” replied Gillian steadily. “He’s made mistakes.
+People in love do. But when he knows all that Magda has endured--for his
+sake, really--why, he’ll come back. I’m sure of it.”
+
+“I don’t know, my dear. _I_ was sure he would come back within six
+months. But, you see, I was wrong. Men are kittle cattle--and often
+very slow to arrive at the intrinsic value and significance of things.
+A woman jumps to it while a man is crawling round on his hands and knees
+in the dark, looking for it with a match.”
+
+Gillian laughed and got up to go, and Lady Arabella--whose rheumatism
+was quite real at the moment--rose rather painfully and hobbled down the
+room beside her, her thin, delicate old hand resting on the silver knob
+of a tall, ebony walking-stick.
+
+“Now, remember,” urged Gillian. “Magda mustn’t have the least suspicion
+Michael may be coming back--or she’d be off into her slums before you
+could stop her. _Whatever happens_, you’ve got to prevent her rushing
+back to the Sisters of Penitence.”
+
+“Only over my dead body, my dear,” Lady Arabella assured her
+determinedly. “She shan’t go any other way.”
+
+So Gillian returned to Friars’ Holm bearing with her a note from Lady
+Arabella in which she asked her god-daughter to pay her a visit. In it,
+however, the wily old lady made no mention of her further idea of going
+to Harrogate, lest it should militate against an acceptance of the
+invitation. Magda demurred a little at first, but Gillian, suddenly
+endowed with diplomacy worthy of a Machiavelli, pointed out that if she
+really had any intention of ultimately withdrawing into a community the
+least she could do was to give her godmother the happiness of spending a
+few days with her.
+
+“She will only urge me to give up the idea all the time,” protested
+Magda. “And I’ve quite made up my mind. The sooner I can get away
+from--from everything”--looking round her with desperate, haunted
+eyes--“the better it will be.”
+
+Gillian’s impulse to combat her decision to rejoin the sisterhood died
+on her lips stillborn. It was useless to argue the matter. There was
+only one person in the world who could save Magda from herself, and that
+was Michael. The main point was to concentrate on getting him back to
+England, rather than waste her energies upon what she knew beforehand
+must prove a fruitless argument.
+
+“I’ll go to Marraine for a couple of nights, anyway,” said Magda at
+last. “After that, I want to make arrangements for my reception into the
+sisterhood.”
+
+Gillian returned no answer. She felt her heart contract at the quiet
+decision in Magda’s voice, but she pinned her faith on Lady Arabella’s
+ability to hold her, somehow, till she herself had accomplished her
+errand to Paris.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+AGAINST TIME
+
+Gillian, dashing headlong into Victoria Station, encountered Storran
+sauntering leisurely out of it, a newspaper under his arm.
+
+“Where are you off to?” he demanded, stopping abruptly. “You look as if
+you were in a hurry.”
+
+“I am. Don’t stop me. I’m catching the boat-train.”
+
+Storran pulled out his watch as he turned and fell into step beside her.
+
+“Then you’ve got a good half-hour to spare. No hurry,” he returned
+placidly.
+
+Gillian glanced at the watch on her wrist.
+
+“Are you sure?” she asked doubtfully. “If so, my watch must be
+altogether wrong!”
+
+“Unbeliever! Come and look at the clock. And, incidentally, give me that
+suit-case.”
+
+She yielded up the case obediently and, having verified the time,
+proceeded towards the platform at a more reasonable gait.
+
+Storran, his long legs leisurely keeping pace with her shorter ones,
+smiled down at her.
+
+“And now, for the second time of asking, where are you off to?”
+
+“I’m going to France--to fetch Michael.”
+
+He gave a quick exclamation--whether of surprise or disapproval she was
+not quite sure.
+
+“You haven’t heard from him, then?”
+
+“No. And unless something happens _quick_, it will be too late.”
+
+“But if he were at his studio he would surely have answered Lady
+Arabella’s letter.”
+
+“Yes, I suppose so,” replied Gillian absently, her eyes following the
+queue of passengers passing through the gate on the platform. By mutual
+consent they had come to a standstill outside it.
+
+“Then if he isn’t there, what’s the use of your rushing over to Paris?”
+ protested Storran. “It’s absurd--an absolute wild-goose chase. You can’t
+go!”
+
+Gillian’s brown eyes came back to his face.
+
+“But I’m going,” she said calmly.
+
+He frowned.
+
+“If Michael’s not at his studio he may be--anywhere!”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“I know. If so, I shall follow--anywhere.”
+
+Storran looked down at her and read the quiet determination in her face.
+
+“Then let me come too,” he said. “Sort of courier, you know. I’d just be
+at hand in case of a tangle.”
+
+“Oh, no! I couldn’t let you. There’s not the least need. Good heavens,
+I’m not a baby!”
+
+There was a curious softness in Dan’s blue eyes as they rested on her.
+
+“No. I think you’re--a very good friend,” he said. “But I don’t see why
+you should have the monopoly! Let me show I know how to be a good pal,
+too, if I want to.”
+
+“No--no.” Gillian still protested, but her tone betrayed signs of
+weakening.
+
+“We’ll be as conventional as you like,” urged Dan, twinkling. “I’d stop
+at different hotels.”
+
+“Well, but--”
+
+“Say ‘yes’!” he insisted.
+
+Gillian smiled.
+
+“You obstinate person! Yes, then!”
+
+“Thank you. Then I’ll go along and buy a ticket.”
+
+He turned and went towards the booking-office, while Gillian, inwardly
+much relieved, awaited his return. She could not but acknowledge that
+in the “wild-goose chase” upon which she was embarking it would be an
+enormous comfort to have Storran at hand in case of an emergency. As to
+the proprieties--well, Gillian was far too honest and independent a soul
+to worry about them in the circumstances. Her friend’s happiness was
+at stake. And whether people chose to talk because she and Dan Storran
+travelled to Paris together--or to Timbuctoo, for the matter of that, if
+Michael had chanced to depart thither--troubled her not at all.
+
+When Storran rejoined her a much more practical consideration presented
+itself to her mind.
+
+“But, my dear man, you can’t fly with me to Paris without even a
+tooth-brush! I’d forgotten you’d no luggage!”
+
+Her face fell as she spoke. But Storran dismissed the matter with a
+smile.
+
+“Oh, I can buy clean collars and shirts as I go along,” he replied,
+entirely unruffled. “The dickens was to get on to the train at all!
+They assured me there wasn’t a seat. However, I make a point of never
+believing official statements--on principle.”
+
+And as a consequence of such well-directed incredulity, Storran
+accompanied Gillian to Dover and thence to Calais.
+
+They had a good crossing--sun up and blue sky. Looking back, afterwards,
+it always seemed to Gillian as though the short time it occupied
+had been a merciful breathing space--a tranquil interval, specially
+vouchsafed, in which she was able to brace herself for the coming race
+against time. Just so long as they were on board, nothing she could do
+was of any importance whatever, either to help or hinder the fulfilment
+of her errand. She could not quicken the speed of the boat by a single
+throb of its engine. So, like a sensible woman, she sat on deck with Dan
+and enjoyed herself amazingly.
+
+Afterwards, in quick succession, came the stir and bustle of landing and
+the journey to Paris. They arrived too late to make any inquiries that
+night, but ten o’clock the following morning found them outside the
+building where Michael had his apartment.
+
+“Oh, Dan!”--Gillian was seized with sudden panic. “Supposing he is here,
+after all, and has _deliberately_ not answered Lady Arabella’s letter?”
+
+“I shouldn’t suppose anything so foolish. Michael may be many kinds of
+a fool--artists very often are, I believe. It’s part of the temperament.
+But whatever he proposed to do regarding Magda, there’s no reason in the
+world to suppose he wouldn’t answer Lady Arabella’s letter.”
+
+“No--no. Perhaps not,” agreed Gillian hurriedly. But it was in rather
+a shaky voice that she asked to see Mr. Quarrington when finally they
+found themselves confronted by the concierge.
+
+“Monsieur Quarrington?” Hands, shoulders, and eyebrows all seemed to
+gesticulate at once as madame la concierge made answer. “But he has been
+gone from here two--no, three months. Perhaps madame did not know?”
+
+“No,” said Gillian. “I didn’t know. But I thought he might possibly be
+away, because I--I have had no answer to a letter I wrote him.”
+
+“What misfortune!”
+
+The concierge regarded Gillian with a pair of shrewd, gimlet eyes while
+a stream of inquiry and comment issued from her lips. Madame was the
+sister of monsieur, perhaps? Truly, they resembled each other! One could
+see at a glance. No, not a sister? Ah, a friend, then? And there had
+been no answer to a letter! But monsieur had left an address. Oh, yes.
+And all letters were forwarded. She herself saw to that.
+
+At last Gillian managed to stem the torrent of garrulity and interposed
+a question concerning the telegram she had sent.
+
+A telegram! Now that was another affair altogether. Yes, the concierge
+remembered the telegram. She had opened it to see if it were of life or
+death importance, in which case she would have, of course, telegraphed
+its contents to monsieur at his present address.
+
+Gillian was nearly crying with impatience as the woman’s voluble tongue
+ran on complacently.
+
+“Then you did send it on?” she managed to interpolate at last.
+
+The letter--yes. Not, of course, the telegram. That would have been a
+needless expense seeing that monsieur would already have had the letter,
+since all the letters were sent on. _All!_ She, Madame Ribot, could
+vouch for that.
+
+At the end of half an hour Gillian succeeded in extracting Michael’s
+address from amid the plethora of words and, bidding the voluble
+concierge _bon jour_, she and Storran beat a masterly retreat.
+
+It appeared that Michael had been commissioned to paint the portrait of
+some Italian society beauty and had gone to Rome. Gillian screwed up her
+small face resolutely.
+
+“I shall go to Rome!” she announced succinctly. There was a definite
+defiance in her tone, and Storran concealed a smile.
+
+“Of course you will,” he replied composedly. “Just as well I came with
+you, isn’t it?” he added with great cheerfulness.
+
+Her expression relaxed.
+
+“You really are rather a nice person, Dan,” she allowed graciously. “I
+was horribly afraid you’d suggest wiring Michael again, or something
+silly like that. I’m not going to trust to anything of that kind.”
+
+Accordingly, the only wire despatched was one to Lady Arabella,
+informing her as to their movements, and a few hours later found Dan
+and Gillian rushing across Europe as fast as the thunderous whirl of the
+express could take them. They travelled day and night, and it was a
+very weary Gillian who at last opened her eyes to the golden sunshine of
+Italy.
+
+At the hotel whither Madame Ribot had directed them, fresh
+disappointment awaited them. The manager--when he found that the
+two dusty and somewhat dishevelled-looking travellers who presented
+themselves at the inquiry bureau were actually friends of Signor
+Quarrington, the famous English artist who had stayed at his hotel--was
+desolated, but the signor had departed a month ago! Had he the address?
+But assuredly. He would write it down for the signora.
+
+“He’s in Normandy!” exclaimed Gillian in tones of bitter disappointment.
+“At--what’s the name of the place?--Armanches. Oh, Dan! We’ve got to go
+right back to Paris again and then on to the coast.”
+
+Her face was full of anxiety. This would mean at least a delay of
+several days before they could possibly see Michael, and meanwhile it
+was a moot question as to how much longer Lady Arabella could restrain
+Magda from taking definite steps with regard to joining the sisterhood.
+
+Storran nodded.
+
+“Yes,” he said quietly. “But all the same, you’ll not start back till
+to-morrow--”
+
+“Oh, but I must!” interrupted Gillian. “We can’t afford to waste a
+moment.”
+
+He glanced down at her and shook his head. Her face was white and drawn,
+and there were deep violet shadows underneath her eyes. Suspense and her
+anxious impatience had told upon her, and she had slept but little on
+the journey. And now, with the addition of this last, totally unexpected
+disappointment, she looked as though she could not stand much more.
+
+“We can afford to waste a single day better than we can afford the three
+or four which it would cost us if you collapsed en route,” said Storran.
+
+“I shan’t collapse,” she protested with white lips.
+
+“So much the better. But all the same, you’ll stay here till to-morrow
+and get a good night’s rest.”
+
+“I shouldn’t sleep,” she urged. “Let’s go right on, Dan. Let’s go----”
+
+But the sentence was never finished. Quite suddenly she swayed,
+stretching out her hands with a blind, groping movement. Dan was just in
+time to catch her in his arms as she toppled over in a dead faint.
+
+It was a week later when, in the early morning, a rather wan and
+white-faced Gillian sprang up from her seat as the train ran into
+Bayeux.
+
+“Thank goodness we’re here at last!” she exclaimed.
+
+Storran put out his hand to steady her as the train jolted to a
+standstill.
+
+“Yes, we’re here at last,” he said. “Now to find a vehicle of some
+description to take us out to Armanches.”
+
+As he had suggested it would, Gillian’s collapse had delayed them some
+time. Probably she had caught a slight chill while travelling, and that,
+together with the fatigue from which she was suffering, combined to keep
+her in bed at the hotel in Rome for a couple of days.
+
+When the slight feverishness had abated, she slept the greater part of
+the time, her weary body exacting the price for all those wakeful hours
+she had passed on the train. But it was not until four days had elapsed
+that Dan would agree to a resumption of the journey. Even then, consent
+was only wrung from him by the fear that she would fret herself ill over
+any further delay. He did not consider her by any means fit to travel.
+But Gillian was game to the core, and they had reached Bayeux without
+further _contretemps_.
+
+“The thing that puzzles me,” she said as they started on the long drive
+from Bayeux to Armanches, “is why Michael didn’t send his Normandy
+address to Madame Ribot. We should have been saved all that long journey
+to Rome if he had.”
+
+“Perhaps he intended to, and forgot,” suggested Dan. “Artists are
+proverbially absent-minded.”
+
+But Gillian shook her head with a dissatisfied air. Michael was not of
+the absent-minded type.
+
+Armanches was a tiny place on the Normandy coast, in reality not
+much more than a fishing village, but its possession of a beautiful
+_plage_--smooth, fine, golden sands--brought many visitors to the
+old-fashioned hostelry it boasted.
+
+The landlady, a smiling, rosy-cheeked woman, with a chubby little
+brown-faced son hiding shy embarrassment behind her ample skirts,
+greeted the travellers hospitably. But when they mentioned Quarrington’s
+name a look of sympathetic concern overspread her comely face.
+
+Yes, he was there. And of course madame could not know, but he had
+been ill, seriously ill with _la grippe_--taken ill the very day he had
+arrived, nearly a month ago. He had a nurse. Oh, yes! One had come from
+Bayeux. But this influenza! It was a veritable scourge. One was here
+to-day and gone to-morrow. However, Michael Quarrington was recovering,
+the saints be praised! Monsieur and madame wished to see him? The good
+woman looked doubtful. She would inquire. What name? Grey? But there was
+a telegram awaiting madame!
+
+Gillian’s face blanched as the landlady bustled away in search of the
+wire. Had Magda already----Oh, but that was impossible! Lady Arabella
+was in charge at that end, and Gillian had a great belief in Lady
+Arabella’s capacity to deal with any crisis that might arise.
+Nevertheless, they had wired her the Normandy address from Rome, in case
+of necessity. The next moment Gillian had torn open the telegram and she
+and Dan were reading it together.
+
+
+“Magda insists we return to London on Wednesday. She has completed
+preliminary arrangements to join sisterhood and goes there Thursday.
+Impossible to dissuade her.--ARABELLA WINTER.”
+
+
+Gillian’s mouth set itself in a straight line of determination as her
+eyes raced along the score or so of pregnant words. She was silent a
+moment. Then she met Storran’s questioning glance.
+
+“We can just do it,” she said sternly. “To-day is Wednesday. By crossing
+to Southampton to-night, we can make London to-morrow.”
+
+Without waiting for his reply she entered the inn and ran quickly up the
+stairs which the landlady had already ascended.
+
+“But, madame, I am not sure that monsieur will receive anyone,”
+ protested the astonished woman, turning round as Gillian caught up with
+her.
+
+“I must see him,” asserted Gillian quietly.
+
+Perhaps something in the tense young face touched a sympathetic chord
+in the Frenchwoman’s honest heart. She scented romance, and when she
+emerged from the invalid’s bedroom her face was wreathed in smiles.
+
+“It is all arranged. Will madame please to enter?”
+
+A moment later Gillian found herself standing in front of a tall, gaunt
+figure of a man, whose coat hung loosely from his shoulders and whose
+face was worn and haggard with something more than _la grippe_ alone.
+
+“Oh, Michael!”
+
+A little, stricken cry broke from her lips. What men and women make each
+other suffer! She realised it as she met the stark, bitter misery of
+the grey eyes that burned at her out of the thin face and remembered the
+look on Magda’s own face when she had last seen her.
+
+She went straight to the point without a word of greeting or of
+explanation. There was no time for explanations, except the only one
+that mattered.
+
+“Michael, why didn’t you answer Lady Arabella’s letter?”
+
+He stared at her. Then he passed his hand wearily across his forehead.
+
+“Letter? I don’t remember any letter.”
+
+“She wrote to you about a month ago. I know the letter was forwarded on
+to Rome. It must have followed you here.”
+
+“A month ago?” he repeated.
+
+Then a light broke over his face. He turned and crossed the room to
+where a small pile of letters lay on a table, dusty and forgotten.
+
+“Perhaps it’s here,” he said. “I was taken ill directly I arrived. I
+never even sent this address to the concierge at Paris. I believe I
+was off my head part of the time--‘flue plays the deuce with you. But I
+remember now. The nurse told me there were some letters which had come
+while I was ill. I--didn’t bother about them.”
+
+While he spoke he was turning over the envelopes, one by one, in a
+desultory fashion.
+
+“Yes. This is Lady Arabella’s writing.” He paused and looked across at
+Gillian.
+
+“Will you read it, please?” she said. “And--oh, you ought to sit down!
+You don’t look very strong yet.”
+
+He smiled a little.
+
+“I’m not quite such a crock as I look. But won’t you sit down yourself
+while I read this letter? Is it of importance?”
+
+“Oh! Please read it!” exclaimed Gillian with sudden nervous impatience.
+
+It seemed to her an eternity while he read the letter. But at last he
+looked up from its perusal.
+
+“Well?” she asked under her breath.
+
+Very deliberately he refolded the sheet of notepaper and slipped it back
+into its envelope.
+
+“It would have made no difference if I had received it earlier,” he said
+composedly.
+
+“No difference”
+
+“None. Because, you see, this letter--asking me to go back to Magda--is
+written under a misapprehension.
+
+“How? What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean--that Magda has--no further use for me.”
+
+Gillian leaned forward.
+
+“You’re wrong,” she said tersely--“quite wrong.”
+
+“No.” He shook his head. “I’m not blaming her. Looking back, I’m not
+even very much surprised. But still, the fact remains, she has no
+further use for me.”
+
+“Will you tell me what makes you think that?” With an effort Gillian
+forced herself to speak quietly and composedly.
+
+He was silent a moment, staring out of the window at the gay blue sea
+beyond, sparkling in the morning sunlight. All at once he swung round on
+her, his face wrung with a sudden agony.
+
+“I _know_,” he said in a roughened voice. “I know, because I wrote to
+her--six months ago. I was hard, I know, brutally hard to her that last
+day at Friars’ Holm. But--God! I paid for it afterwards! And I wrote
+to her--bared my very soul to her. . . . Wrote so that if she had ever
+cared she must at least have answered me.”
+
+He stopped abruptly, his face working.
+
+“And she didn’t answer?”
+
+A wry smile twisted his lips.
+
+“I got my own letter back,” he said quietly. “After all, that was an
+answer--a conclusive one.”
+
+Gillian was thinking rapidly. Six months ago! A momentary flash of
+recollection came to her. So Lady Arabella, that wise old citizen of the
+world, had been quite right after all! She had given Michael six
+months to find out his imperative need of Magda. And he had found it.
+Only--something had gone wrong.
+
+“Magda never had that letter,” she said quietly at last.
+
+She was gradually beginning to piece together the separate parts of the
+puzzle. All letters that came for Magda had been forwarded on to the
+sisterhood, and had she herself readdressed this of Michael’s she would
+have recognised the handwriting. But probably she had been away from
+home, or had chanced to be out at post time, in which case Melrose, or
+old Virginie, would have readdressed the envelope and dropped it in the
+pillar box at the corner of the road.
+
+Then--as was the case with any correspondence addressed to one of the
+Sisters of Penitence--the letter would be read by the Mother Superior
+and passed on to its destined recipient if she thought good. If not----
+
+Gillian had learned a great deal about Catherine Vallincourt by now,
+both from Lady Arabella and from Magda herself, who, before leaving
+the community, had discovered the identity of its head. And she
+could visualise the stern, fanatical woman, obsessed by her idea of
+disciplining Magda and of counteracting the effects of her brother’s
+marriage with Diane Wielitzska, opening the letter and, after perusal,
+calmly sealing it up in its envelope again and returning it to the
+sender.
+
+“Magda never had that letter, Michael,” she repeated. “Listen!” And
+then, without preamble, but with every word vibrant with pity for the
+whole tragedy, she poured out the story of Magda’s passionate repentance
+and atonement, of her impetuous adoption of her father’s remorseless
+theory, mistaken though it might be, that pain is the remedy for sin,
+and of the utter, hopeless despair which had overwhelmed her now that
+she believed it had all proved unavailing.
+
+“She has come to believe that you don’t want her--never could want her,
+Michael--because she has failed so much.”
+
+There was more than one reproach mingled with the story, but Michael
+made no protest. It was only when she had finished that Gillian could
+read in his tortured eyes all that her narrative had cost him.
+
+“Yes,” he said at last. “It’s true. I wanted the impossible. I was
+looking for a goddess--not a woman. . . . But now I want--just a woman,
+Gillian.”
+
+“Then, if you want her, you must save her from herself. You’ve just
+twenty-four hours to do it in. To-morrow she’s still Magda. The next day
+she’ll be Sister Somebody. And you’ll have lost her.”
+
+Half an hour later, when Michael’s nurse returned, she found her patient
+packing a suit-case with the assistance of a pretty, brown-haired girl
+whose eyes shone with the unmistakable brightness of recent tears.
+
+“But you’re not fit to travel!” she protested in horrified dismay. “You
+mustn’t think of it, Mr. Quarrington.”
+
+But Michael only laughed at her, defying her good-humouredly.
+
+“If the man you loved were waiting for you in England, nurse, you know
+you’d go--and you wouldn’t care a hang whether you were fit to travel or
+not!”
+
+The nurse smiled in spite of herself.
+
+“No,” she admitted. “I suppose I shouldn’t.”
+
+As the Havre-Southampton boat steamed through the moonlit night, Dan and
+Gillian were pacing the deck together.
+
+“I’m so glad Michael is going back to Magda without knowing--about
+June,” said Gillian, coming to a standstill beside the deck-rail. “Going
+back just because his love is too big for anything else to matter now.”
+
+“Haven’t you told him?”--Storran’s voice held surprise.
+
+“No. I decided not to. I should like Magda to tell him that herself.”
+
+They were both silent for a little while. Gillian bent over the
+rail, looking down at the phosphorescent water breaking away from the
+steamer’s bow. Suddenly a big hand covered hers.
+
+“I think I’m--lonely,” said Storran.
+
+“Gillian,” he went on, his voice deepening. “Gillian . . . dear. We’re
+two rather lonely people. We shall be lonelier still when Michael and
+Magda are married. Couldn’t we be lonely--in company?”
+
+Gillian’s hand moved a little beneath his, then stayed still.
+
+“Why, Dan--Dan----” she stammered.
+
+“Yes,” went on the strong, tender voice. “I’m asking you to marry me,
+Gillian, I’d never expect too much of you. We both know all that’s
+in the past of each of us. But we might help each other to be less
+lonely--good comrades together, Gillian.”
+
+And suddenly Gillian realised how good it would be to rest once more in
+the shelter of a man’s affection and good comradeship--to have someone
+to laugh with or to be sorry with. There’s a tender magic in the word
+“together.” And she, too, had something to give in return--sympathy, and
+understanding, and a warm friendship. . . . She would not be going to
+him empty-handed.
+
+“Is it yes, Gillian?”
+
+She bent her head.
+
+“Yes, Dan.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE EDGE OF THE DAWN
+
+Magda paused outside the closed door of the room. She knew whom she
+would see within. Lady Arabella had told her he was there waiting for
+her.
+
+Her first impulse had been to refuse to meet him. Then the temptation
+to see him again--just once more--before she passed out of his life
+altogether, rushed over her like the surge of some resistless sea,
+sweeping everything before it.
+
+Very quietly she opened the door and went into the room.
+
+“Magda!”
+
+She never knew whether he really uttered her name or whether it was
+only the voiceless, clamorous cry of his whole consciousness--of a man’s
+passionate demand for the woman who is mate of his soul and body.
+
+But she answered its appeal, her innermost being responding to the claim
+of it. All recollection of self, of the dimming of her beauty, even of
+the great gulf of months that lay between them, crowded with mistakes
+and failure, was burned away in the white-hot flame of love that blazed
+up within her.
+
+She ran to him, and that white, searing flame found its expression in
+the dear human tenderness of the little cry that broke from her as he
+turned his gaunt face towards her.
+
+“Oh, Saint Michel! Saint Michel! How dreadfully ill you look! Oh, my
+dear--sit down! You’re not fit to stand!”
+
+But when that first instinctive cry had left her lips, memory came
+flooding over her once more. She shrank back from him, covering her face
+with her hands, agonisingly conscious of the change in herself--of that
+shadowing of her beauty which the sensitiveness of a woman in love had
+so piteously magnified.
+
+Then, drawing her hands slowly down, she braced herself to say what must
+be said.
+
+“You are free of me, Michael.” She spoke in a curious, still voice. “I
+know Marraine and Gillian between them have brought you back. But you
+are free of me. As you see--I shall never do any more harm. No other man
+will come to grief for the sake of the Wielitzska. . . . I determined
+that as I had made others pay, so I would pay. I think”--suddenly moving
+towards the window and standing full in the brilliant sunlight--“I think
+you’ll agree I’ve settled the bill.”
+
+Michael came to her side.
+
+“I want you for my wife,” he said simply.
+
+She held out her work-roughened hands, while the keen-edged sunlight
+pitilessly revealed the hollowed line of cheek and throat, the
+lustreless dark hair, the fine lines that Pain, the great Sculptor, had
+graved about her mouth.
+
+“You are an artist before everything, Michael,” she said. “Look--look
+well!”
+
+He took the two work-worn hands in his and drew her nearer him.
+
+“I’m your lover before everything,” he answered. “When will you come to
+me, Magda?”
+
+“No, no,” she said whisperingly. “I mustn’t come. You’ll never--never
+quite forgive me. Some day the past would come between us again--you’ll
+never forget it all.”
+
+“No,” he replied steadily. “Perhaps not. Consequences _cannot_ be
+evaded. There are things that can’t be forgotten. But one forgives. And
+I love you--love you, Magda, so that I can’t face life without you.” His
+voice vibrated. “The past must always lie like a shadow on our love. But
+you’re my woman--my soul! And if you’ve sinned, then it must be my sin,
+too----”
+
+She leaned away from him.
+
+“Do you mean--June?” she asked.
+
+He nodded with set lips.
+
+“Then--then you don’t know--you haven’t heard?”
+
+His expression answered her and her face changed--grew suddenly radiant,
+transfigured. “Oh, Saint Michel--Saint Michel! Then there is one thing I
+can do, one gift I have still left to give! Oh, my dear, I can take away
+the shadow!” Her voice breathless and shaken, she told him how June had
+died--all that Dan Storran had learned from the doctor who had attended
+her.
+
+“I know I hurt her--hurt her without thinking. But oh, Michael! Thank
+God, it wasn’t through me that she died!”
+
+And Michael, as he folded his arms about her, knew that the shadow which
+had lain between him and the woman he loved was there no longer. They
+were free--freed from those “ropes of steel” which had held them bound.
+Free to go together and find once more their Garden of Eden.
+
+
+Presently, when those first perfect moments of reunion were past, Magda
+gave utterance to the doubts and perplexities that still vexed her soul.
+
+“Pain may purify,” she said slowly. “But it spoils, Michael, and blots,
+and ruins. I think, after all, pain is meaningless.”
+
+Michael’s grey, steady eyes met her troubled ones.
+
+“I don’t think pain--just as pain--purifies,” he answered quickly.
+“Pain is merely horrible. It is the _willingness to suffer_ that shrives
+us--not the pain itself.”
+
+Later still, the essential woman in her came into its own again. “I
+shall never be able to sit for you any more, Saint Michel,” she said
+regretfully. “I’m nobody’s model--now!”
+
+She could see only her lost beauty--the unthinking, radiant beauty of
+mere youth. But Michael could see all that her voluntary renunciation
+and atonement had bestowed in its stead of more enduring significance.
+
+He took her by the hand and led her to the mirror.
+
+“There,” he said, a great content in his voice, “is the model for the
+greatest picture I shall ever paint--the model for my ‘Madonna.’”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lamp of Fate, by Margaret Pedler
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diff --git a/3824-0.zip b/3824-0.zip
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Lamp of Fate, by Margaret Pedler
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lamp of Fate, by Margaret Pedler
+
+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 Lamp of Fate
+
+Author: Margaret Pedler
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2006 [EBook #3824]
+Last Updated: November 18, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAMP OF FATE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE LAMP OF FATE
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Margaret Pedler
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Then to the rolling Heav&rsquo;n itself I cried,
+     Asking, &ldquo;What Lamp of Destiny to guide
+        Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?&rdquo;
+      And&mdash;&ldquo;A blind Understanding!&rdquo; Heaven replied.
+     The &ldquo;Rubaiyat&rdquo; of Omar Khayyam.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        To AUDREY HEATH <br /><br /> DEAR AUDREY: I always feel that you have
+        played the part of Fairy <br /> Godmother in a very special and
+        delightful way to all my stories, and <br /> in particular to this one,
+        the plot of which I outlined to you one <br /> afternoon in an old
+        summer-house. So will you let me dedicate it to you? <br /><br /> Yours
+        always, <br /> <br /> MARGARET PEDLER.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> THE LAMP OF FATE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART"> <b>PART ONE</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PART2"> <b>PART TWO</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER XXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER XXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER XXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER XXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER XXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER XXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER XXX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER XXXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER XXXII </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE LAMP OF FATE
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART ONE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE NINTH GENERATION
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The house was very silent. An odour of disinfectants pervaded the
+      atmosphere. Upstairs hushed, swift steps moved to and fro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Vallincourt stood at the window of his study, staring out with
+      unseeing eyes at the smooth, shaven lawns and well-kept paths with their
+      background of leafless trees. It seemed to him that he had been standing
+      thus for hours, waiting&mdash;waiting for someone to come and tell him
+      that a son and heir was born to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He never doubted that it would be a son. By some freak of chance the
+      first-born of the Vallincourts of Coverdale had been, for eight successive
+      generations, a boy. Indeed, by this time, the thing had become so much a
+      habit that no doubts or apprehensions concerning the sex of the eldest
+      child were ever entertained. It was accepted as a foregone conclusion, and
+      in the eyes of the family there was a certain gratifying propriety about
+      such regularity. It was like a hall-mark of heavenly approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Vallincourt, therefore, was conscious at this critical moment of no
+      questionings on that particular score. He was merely a prey to the normal
+      tremors and agitations of a husband and prospective father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an ageless period, it seemed to him, his thoughts had clung about that
+      upstairs room where his wife lay battling for her own life and another&rsquo;s.
+      Suddenly they swung back to the time, a year ago, when he had first met
+      her&mdash;an elusive feminine thing still reckoning her age in teens&mdash;beneath
+      the glorious blue and gold canopy of the skies of Italy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their meeting and brief courtship had been pure romance&mdash;romance such
+      as is bred in that land of mellow warmth and colour, where the flower of
+      passion sometimes buds and blooms within the span of a single day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In like manner had sprung to life the love between Hugh Vallincourt and
+      Diane Wielitzska, and rarely has the web of love enmeshed two more
+      dissimilar and ill-matched people&mdash;Hugh, a man of seven-and-thirty,
+      the strict and somewhat self-conscious head of a conspicuously devout old
+      English family, and Diane, a beautiful dancer of mixed origin, the
+      illegitimate offspring of a Russian grand-duke and of a French artist&rsquo;s
+      model of the Latin Quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three dread Sisters who determine the fate of men must have laughed
+      amongst themselves at such an obvious mismating, knowing well how
+      inevitably it would tangle the threads of many other lives than the two
+      immediately concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vallincourt had been brought up on severely conventional lines, reared in
+      the narrow tenets of a family whose salient characteristics were an
+      overweening pride of race and a religious zeal amounting almost to
+      fanaticism, while Diane had had no up-bringing worth speaking of. As for
+      religious views, she hadn&rsquo;t any.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet neither the one nor the other had counted in the scale when the
+      crucial moment came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it was by way of an ironical set-off against his environment that
+      Fate had dowered Hugh with his crop of ruddy hair&mdash;and with the
+      ardent temperament which usually accompanies the type. Be that as it may,
+      he was swept completely off his feet by the dancer&rsquo;s magic beauty. The
+      habits and training of a lifetime went by the board, and nothing was
+      allowed to impede the swift (not to say violent) course of his
+      love-making. Within a month from the day of their first meeting, he and
+      Diane were man and wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The consequences were almost inevitable, and Hugh found that his married
+      life speedily resolved itself into an endless struggle between the
+      dictates of inclination and conscience. Everything that was man in him
+      responded passionately to the appeal and charm of Diane&rsquo;s personality,
+      whilst everything that was narrow and censorious disapproved her total
+      inability to conform to the ingrained prejudices of the Vallincourts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not that Diane was in any sense of the word a bad woman. She was merely
+      beautiful and irresponsible&mdash;a typical <i>cigale</i> of the stage&mdash;lovable
+      and kind-hearted and pagan, and possessing but the haziest notions of
+      self-control and self-discipline. Even so, left to themselves, husband and
+      wife might ultimately have found the road to happiness across the bridge
+      of their great love for one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But such freedom was denied them. Always at Hugh&rsquo;s elbow stood his sister,
+      Catherine, a rigidly austere woman, in herself an epitome of all that
+      Vallincourts had ever stood for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the death of their parents, twenty years previously, Catherine had
+      shared her brother&rsquo;s home, managing his house&mdash;and, on the strength
+      of her four years&rsquo; seniority in age, himself as well&mdash;with an iron
+      hand. Nor had she seen fit to relinquish the reins of government when he
+      married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Privately, Hugh had hoped she might consider the propriety of withdrawing
+      to the dower house attached to the Coverdale estates, but if the idea had
+      occurred to her, she had never given it utterance, and Hugh himself had
+      lacked the courage to propose such an innovation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it followed that Catherine was ever at hand to criticise and condemn.
+      She disapproved of her brother&rsquo;s marriage wholly and consistently. In her
+      eyes, he had committed an unpardonable sin in allying himself with Diane
+      Wielitzska. It was his duty to have married a woman of the type
+      conventionally termed &ldquo;good,&rdquo; whose blood&mdash;and religious outlook&mdash;were
+      alike unimpeachable; and since he had lamentably failed in this respect,
+      she never ceased to reproach him. Diane she regarded with chronic
+      disapprobation, exaggerating all her faults and opposing her joy-loving,
+      butterfly nature with an aloofly puritanical disdain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amid the glacial atmosphere of disapproval into which marriage had thrust
+      her, Diane found her only solace in Virginie, a devoted French servant who
+      had formerly been her nurse, and who literally worshipped the ground she
+      walked on. Conversely, Virginie&rsquo;s attitude towards Miss Vallincourt was
+      one of frank hostility. And deep in the hearts of both Diane and Virginie
+      lurked a confirmed belief that the birth of a child&mdash;a son&mdash;would
+      serve to bring about a better understanding between husband and wife, and
+      in the end assure Diane her rightful place as mistress of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Vois-tu</i>, Virginie,&rdquo; the latter would say hopefully. &ldquo;When I have a
+      little baby, I shall have done my duty as the wife of a great English
+      milord. Even Miss Catherine will no longer regard me as of no importance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Virginie would reply with infinite satisfaction:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of a certainty, when madame has a little son, Ma&rsquo;moiselle Catherine will
+      be returned to her place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now at last the great moment had arrived, and upstairs Catherine and
+      Virginie were in attendance&mdash;both ousted from what each considered
+      her own rightful place of authority by a slim, capable, and apparently
+      quite unconcerned piece of femininity equipped against rebellion in all
+      the starched panoply of a nurse&rsquo;s uniform, while downstairs Hugh stared
+      dumbly out at the frosted lawns, with their background of bare, brown
+      trees swaying to the wind from the north.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door behind him opened suddenly. Hugh whirled round. He was a tall man
+      with a certain rather formal air of stateliness about him, a suggestion of
+      the <i>grand seigneur</i>, and the unwontedly impulsive movement was
+      significant of the strain under which he was labouring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Catherine was standing on the threshold of the room with something in her
+      arms&mdash;something almost indistinguishable amid the downy, fleecy froth
+      of whiteness amid which it lay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh was conscious of a new and strange sensation deep down inside
+      himself. He felt rather as though all the blood in his body had rushed to
+      one place&mdash;somewhere in the middle of it&mdash;and were pounding
+      there against his ribs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to speak, failed, then instinctively stretched out his arms for
+      the tiny, orris-scented bundle which Catherine carried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next thing of which he was conscious was Catherine&rsquo;s voice as she
+      placed his child in his arms&mdash;very quiet, yet rasping across the
+      tender silence of the room like a file.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Hugh, is the living seal which God Himself has set upon the sin of
+      your marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh&rsquo;s eyes, bent upon the pink, crumpled features of the scrap of
+      humanity nestled amid the bunchy whiteness in his arms, sought his
+      sister&rsquo;s face. It was a thin, hard face, sharply cut like carved ivory;
+      the eyes a light, cold blue, ablaze with hostility; the pale obstinate
+      lips, usually folded so impassively one above the other, working
+      spasmodically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment brother and sister stared at each other in silence. Then, all
+      at once, Catherine&rsquo;s rigidly enforced composure snapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A girl child, Hugh!&rdquo; she jeered violently. &ldquo;A <i>girl</i>&mdash;when you
+      prayed for a boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh stared stupidly at the babe in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, a girl!&rdquo; taunted Catherine, her voice cracking with rising hysteria.
+      &ldquo;<i>A girl!</i> . . . For eight generations the first-born has been a son.
+      And the ninth is a girl! The daughter of a foreign dancing-woman! . . .
+      God has indeed taken your punishment into His own Hands!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE WIDENING GULF
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The birth of a daughter came upon Hugh in the light of an almost
+      overwhelming shock. He was quite silent when, in response to Catherine&rsquo;s
+      imperative gesture, he surrendered the child into her arms once more. As
+      she took it from him he noticed that those thin, angular arms of hers
+      seemed to close round the little swaddled body in an almost jealously
+      possessive clasp. But there was none of the tender possessiveness of love
+      about it. In some oddly repugnant way it reminded him of the motion of a
+      bird of prey at last gripping triumphantly in its talons a victim that has
+      hitherto eluded pursuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned back dully to his contemplation of the wintry garden, nor, in
+      his absorption, did he hear the whimpering cry&mdash;almost of protest&mdash;that
+      issued from the lips of his first-born as Catherine bore the child away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a space it seemed as though his mind were a blank, every thought and
+      feeling wiped out of it by the stupendous, nullifying fact that his wife
+      had given birth to a daughter. Then, with a rush as torturing as the
+      return of blood to benumbed limbs, emotions crowded in upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Catherine&rsquo;s incessant denunciations of his &ldquo;sin&rdquo; in marrying Diane
+      Wielitzska&mdash;poured upon him without stint throughout this first year
+      of his marriage&mdash;seemed to din in his ears anew. Such phrases as
+      &ldquo;selling your soul,&rdquo; &ldquo;putting a woman of that type in our sainted mother&rsquo;s
+      place,&rdquo; &ldquo;mingling the blood of a foreign dancing-woman with our own,&rdquo;
+       jangled against each other in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had he really been guilty of a sin against his conscience&mdash;satisfied
+      his desires irrespective of all sense of duty?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to think he had, and to wonder in a disturbed fashion if God
+      thought so too. What was it Catherine had said? <i>&ldquo;God has indeed taken
+      your punishment into His own Hands.&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh was only too well aware of the facts which gave the speech its
+      trenchant significance. He himself had inherited owing to the death of an
+      elder brother in early childhood. But there was no younger brother to step
+      into his own shoes, and failing an heir in the direct line of succession
+      the title and entailed estate would of necessity go to Rupert Vallincourt,
+      a cousin&mdash;a gay and debonair young rake of much charm of manner and
+      equal absence of virtue. From both Catherine&rsquo;s and Hugh&rsquo;s point of view he
+      was the last man in the world fitted to become the head of the family.
+      Hence the eagerness with which they had anticipated the arrival of a son
+      and heir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, prompted by Catherine&rsquo;s bitter taunt, the birth of a daughter as
+      his first-born&mdash;the first happening of the kind for eight successive
+      generations&mdash;appeared to Hugh in the light of a direct manifestation
+      of God&rsquo;s intention that no son born of Diane Wielitzska should be dowered
+      with such influence as the heir to the Vallincourts must necessarily
+      wield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Better, even, that the title and estates should go to Rupert! Bad as his
+      reputation might be, good blood ran in his veins on either side&mdash;an
+      inherited tradition of right-doing which was bound to assert itself in
+      succeeding generations. Whereas in the offspring of Diane heaven alone
+      knew what hidden inherited tendencies towards evil might lie fallow, to
+      develop later and work incalculable mischief in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh felt crushed by the unexpected blow which had befallen him. Since his
+      marriage, he had opposed a forced indifference to his sister&rsquo;s
+      irreconcilable attitude, finding compensation in the glowing moments of
+      his passion for Diane. Nevertheless&mdash;since living in an atmosphere of
+      disapproval tends to fray the strongest nerves&mdash;his temper had worn a
+      little fine beneath the strain; and with Diane&rsquo;s faults and failings
+      thrust continually on his notice he had unconsciously grown more critical
+      of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, all at once, it seemed as though scales had been torn from his
+      eyes. He saw his marriage for the first time from the same standpoint as
+      Catherine saw it, and in the unlooked-for birth of a daughter he thought
+      he recognised the Hand of God, sternly uprooting his most cherished hopes
+      and minimising, as much as possible, the inevitable evil consequences of
+      his weakness in marrying Diane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was conscious of a rising feeling of resentment against his wife. Words
+      from an old Book flashed into his mind: <i>&ldquo;The woman tempted me.&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the immediate instinct of a weak nature&mdash;the very narrowness and
+      rigidity of his views was a manifestation of weakness, had he but realised
+      it&mdash;he was already looking for someone with whom to share the blame
+      for his lapse from the Vallincourt standard of conduct, and in that
+      handful of wayward charm, red lips, and soft, beguiling eyes which was
+      Diane he found what he sought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the room door opened. This time, instead of putting a longed-for end
+      to a blank period of suspense, the little quiet clicking of the latch cut
+      almost aggressively across the conflict of Hugh&rsquo;s thoughts. He turned
+      round irritably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A uniformed nurse was standing in the doorway. At the sound of his
+      curtly-spoken question she glanced at him with a certain contemplative
+      curiosity in her eyes. They might have held surprise as well as curiosity
+      had she not lately stood beside that huge, canopied bed upstairs,
+      listening pitifully to a woman&rsquo;s secret fears and longings, unveiled in
+      the delirium of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you sometimes wish you hadn&rsquo;t married me. . . . I&rsquo;m not good
+      enough. And Catherine hates me. Yes, she does, she does! And she&rsquo;ll make
+      you hate me too! But you won&rsquo;t hate me when my baby comes, will you, Hugh?
+      You want a little son . . . a little son . . .&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nurse Maynard could hear again the weary, complaining voice, trailing off
+      at last in the silence of exhaustion, and an impulse of indignation added
+      a sharp edge to her tone as she responded to Hugh&rsquo;s query.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her ladyship is asking to see you, Sir Hugh. She ought to rest now, but
+      she is too excited. She has been expecting you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no mistaking the implied rebuke in the last sentence, and Hugh&rsquo;s
+      face darkened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come,&rdquo; he said, briefly, and followed the crisp starched figure up
+      the stairs and into a half-darkened room, smelling faintly of antiseptics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vaguely the white counterpane outlined the slim figure of Diane upon the
+      bed. The nurse raised the blind a little, and the light of the westering
+      sun fell across the pillow, revealing a small, dark head which turned
+      eagerly at the sound of Hugh&rsquo;s entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh!&rdquo; The voice from the bed came faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh looked down at his wife. Probably never had Diane looked more
+      beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little worldly, sophisticated expression common to her features had
+      been temporarily obliterated by the holy suffering of motherhood, and the
+      face of the &ldquo;foreign dancing-woman,&rdquo; born and bred in a quarter of the
+      world where virtue is a cheap commodity, was as pure and serene as the
+      face of a Madonna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out her hands to her husband, her lips curving into a smile that
+      was all love and tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh&mdash;<i>mon adore!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lover in him sent him swiftly to her side, and as he drew her into his
+      arms she let her head fall back against his shoulder with a tremulous sigh
+      of infinite content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, from the firelit corner of the room, came the sound of a feeble
+      wailing. Hugh started as though stung, and his eyes left his wife&rsquo;s face
+      and riveted themselves upon the figure in the low chair by the hearth&mdash;Virginie,
+      rocking a little as she sat, and crooning a Breton lullaby to the baby in
+      her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment remembrance rushed upon him, cutting in twain as though with a
+      dividing sword this exquisite moment of reunion with his wife. Insensibly
+      his arms relaxed their clasp of the frail body they held, and Diane,
+      sensing their slackening, looked up startled and disconcerted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes followed the direction of his glance, then, coming back to his
+      face, searched it wildly. Instantly she knew the meaning of that suddenly
+      limp clasp and all that it implied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh!&rdquo; The throbbing tenderness had gone out of her voice, leaving it dry
+      and toneless. &ldquo;Hugh! You don&rsquo;t mean . . . you&rsquo;re <i>angry</i> that it&rsquo;s a
+      girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked down at her&mdash;at the frightened eyes, the lovely face fined
+      by recent pain, and all his instinct was to reassure and comfort her. But
+      something held him back. The old, narrow creed in which he had been
+      reared, whose shackles he had broken through when he had recklessly
+      followed the bidding of his heart and married Diane, was once more
+      mastering him&mdash;bidding him resist the natural human impulses of love
+      and kindliness evoked by his wife&rsquo;s appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;God Himself has taken your punishment into His own Hands.&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he seemed to hear Catherine&rsquo;s accusing tones, and the fanatical
+      strain inbred in him answered like a boat to its helm. There must be no
+      more compromise, no longer any evasion of the issues of right and wrong.
+      He had sinned, and both he and the woman for whose sake he had defied his
+      own creed, and that of his fathers before him, must make atonement. He
+      drew himself up, and stood stiff and unbending beside the bed. In his
+      light-grey eyes there shone that same indomitable ardour of the zealot
+      which had shone in Catherine&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am not angry that the child is a girl. I accept it as a
+      just retribution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No man possessed of the ordinary instincts of common humanity would have
+      so greeted his wife just when she had emerged, spent and exhausted, from
+      woman&rsquo;s supreme conflict with death. But the fanatic loses sight of normal
+      values, and Hugh, obsessed by his newly conceived idea of atoning for the
+      sin of his marriage, was utterly oblivious of the enormity of his conduct
+      as viewed through unbiased eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman who had just fought her way through the Valley of the Shadow
+      stared at him uncomprehendingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Retribution?&rdquo; she repeated blankly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For my marriage&mdash;our marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane&rsquo;s breath came faster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&mdash;what do you mean?&rdquo; she asked falteringly. Suddenly a look of
+      sheer terror leaped into her eyes, and she clutched at Hugh&rsquo;s sleeve. &ldquo;Oh,
+      you&rsquo;re not going to be like Catherine? Say you&rsquo;re not! Hugh, you&rsquo;ve always
+      said she was crazy to call our marriage a sin. . . . <i>A sin!</i>&rdquo; She
+      tried to laugh, but the laugh stuck in her throat, caught and pinned there
+      by the terror that gripped her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve said that. I&rsquo;ve said it because I wanted to think it,&rdquo; he
+      returned remorselessly, &ldquo;not because I really thought it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane dragged herself up on to her elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand. You&rsquo;ve not changed?&rdquo; Then, as he made no answer:
+      &ldquo;Hugh, you&rsquo;re frightening me! What do you mean? What has Catherine been
+      saying to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice rose excitedly. A patch of feverish colour appeared on either
+      cheek. Old Virginie sprung up from her chair by the fire, alarmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You excite madame!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh turned to leave the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll discuss this another time, Diane,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane moved her head fretfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Now&mdash;now! Don&rsquo;t go! Hugh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice rose almost to a scream and simultaneously the nurse came
+      hurrying in from the adjoining room. She threw one glance at the patient,
+      huddled flushed and excited against the pillows, then without more ado she
+      marched up to Hugh and, taking him by the shoulders with her small,
+      capable hands, she pushed him out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to <i>kill</i> your wife?&rdquo; she demanded in a low voice of
+      concentrated anger. &ldquo;If so, you&rsquo;re going the right way about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment the door closed behind her, and Hugh found himself
+      standing alone on the landing outside it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although the scene with her husband did not kill Diane, it went very near
+      it. For some time she was dangerously ill, but at last the combined
+      efforts of doctor and nurse restored her once more to a frail hold upon
+      life, and the resiliency of youth accomplished the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Curiously enough, the remembrance of Hugh&rsquo;s brief visit to her bedside
+      held for her no force of reality. When the fever which had ensued abated,
+      she described the whole scene in detail to Virginie and the nurse as an
+      evil dream which she had had&mdash;and pitifully they let her continue in
+      this belief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Hugh himself had been compelled, under protest, to take part in this
+      deception. The doctor, a personal friend of his, had not minced matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve acted the part of an unmitigated coward, Vallincourt&mdash;salving
+      your own fool conscience at your wife&rsquo;s expense. Even if you no longer
+      love her&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I do love her,&rdquo; protested Hugh. &ldquo;I&mdash;I <i>worship</i> her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim Lancaster stared. In common with most medical men he was more or less
+      used to the odd vagaries of human nature, but Hugh&rsquo;s attitude struck him
+      as altogether incomprehensible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what in the name of thunder have you been getting at?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I both love and hate her,&rdquo; declared Hugh wretchedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s rot,&rdquo; retorted the other. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh rose and began pacing backwards and forwards. Lancaster&rsquo;s eyes rested
+      on him thoughtfully. The man had altered during the last few weeks&mdash;altered
+      incredibly. He was a stone lighter to start with, and his blond, clear-cut
+      face had the worn look born of mental conflict. His eyes were red-rimmed
+      as though from insufficient sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not impossible.&rdquo; Hugh paused in his restless pacing to and fro. &ldquo;I
+      love her because I can&rsquo;t help myself. I hate her because I ought never to
+      have married her&mdash;never made a woman of her type the mother of my
+      child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All mothers are sacred,&rdquo; suggested the doctor quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh seemed not to hear him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long is this pretence to go on, Lancaster?&rdquo; he demanded irritably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What pretence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This pretence that nothing is changed&mdash;nothing altered&mdash;between
+      my wife and myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For ever, I hope. So that, after all, there will have been no pretence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the appeal of the speech was ineffectual. Hugh looked at the other man
+      unmoved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use hoping that you and I can see things from the same
+      standpoint,&rdquo; he added stubbornly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve made my decision&mdash;laid down
+      the lines of our future life together. I&rsquo;m only waiting till you, as a
+      medical man, tell me that Diane&rsquo;s health is sufficiently restored for me
+      to inform her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No woman is ever in such health that you can break her heart with
+      impunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh&rsquo;s light-grey eyes gleamed like steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you answer my question?&rdquo; he said curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lancaster sprang up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Diane is in as good health now as ever she was,&rdquo; he said violently. And
+      strode out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the period of her convalescence Diane, attended by Nurse Maynard,
+      had occupied rooms situated in a distant wing of the house, where the
+      invalid was not likely to be disturbed by the coming and going of other
+      members of the household, and it was with almost the excitement of a
+      schoolgirl coming home for the holidays that, when she was at last
+      released from the doctor&rsquo;s supervision, she retook possession of her own
+      room. She superintended joyously the restoration to their accustomed place
+      her various little personal possessions, and finally peeped into her
+      husband&rsquo;s adjoining room, thinking she heard him moving there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the threshold she paused irresolutely, conscious of an odd sense of
+      confusion. The room was vacant. But, beyond that, its whole aspect was
+      different somehow, unfamiliar. Her eyes wandered to the dressing-table.
+      Instead of holding its usual array of silver-backed brushes and polished
+      shaving tackle, winking in the sunshine, it was empty. She stared at it
+      blankly. Then her glance travelled slowly round the room. It had a
+      strangely untenanted look. There was no sign of masculine attire left
+      carelessly about&mdash;not a chair or table was a hairbreadth out of its
+      appointed place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hand, resting lightly on the door-handle, gripped it with a sudden
+      tensity. The next moment she had crossed the room and torn open the doors
+      of the great armoire where Hugh kept his clothes. This, too, was empty&mdash;shelves
+      and hanger alike. Impulsively she rang the bell and, when a maid appeared
+      in response, demanded to know the meaning of the alteration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl glanced at her with the veiled curiosity of her class.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was made by Sir Hugh&rsquo;s orders, my lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With an effort, Diane hid the sudden tumult of bewilderment and fear that
+      filled her. Her dream! Had it been only a dream? Or had it been an actual
+      happening&mdash;that terrible little scene with her husband when, standing
+      rigid and unbending beside her bed, he had told her that the birth of
+      their daughter was a just retribution for a union he regarded as a sin?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Memories of their brief year of marriage came surging over her in a
+      torrent&mdash;Catherine&rsquo;s narrow-minded opposition and disapproval, Hugh&rsquo;s
+      own moodiness and irritability and, latterly, his not infrequent censure.
+      There had been times when Diane&mdash;rebuked incessantly&mdash;had
+      fancied she must be the Scarlet Woman herself, or at least a very near
+      relative. And then had come moments when Hugh, carried away by his ardour,
+      had once more played the lover as he alone knew how, with all the warmth
+      and abandon of those days when he had wooed her in Italy, and Diane would
+      forget her unhappiness and fears in the sure knowledge that she was a
+      passionately beloved woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But always she was subconsciously aware of a sense of strife&mdash;of
+      struggle, as though Hugh loved her in spite of himself, in defiance of
+      some inner mandate of conscience which accused him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, fear mastered her. Her dream had been a reality. And this&mdash;this
+      sweeping away from what had been his room of every familiar little
+      personal possession&mdash;was the symbol of some new and terribly changed
+      relation between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forcing herself to move composedly while the maid still watched her, she
+      walked slowly out of the room, but the instant the door had closed behind
+      her she flew downstairs to her husband&rsquo;s study and, not pausing to comply
+      with the unwritten law which forbade entrance there without express
+      permission, broke in upon him as he sat at his desk, busily occupied with
+      his morning mail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Diane!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh turned towards her with a cold light of astonished disapproval in his
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know I don&rsquo;t like to be interrupted&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know. But I <i>had</i> to come. Something&rsquo;s happened. There&rsquo;s
+      been a mistake. . . . Hugh, they&rsquo;ve taken everything out of your room. All
+      your things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood beside him breathlessly awaiting his reply&mdash;her passionate
+      dark eyes fixed on his face, two patches of brilliant colour showing on
+      the high cheek-bones that bore witness to her Russian origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They made a curious contrast&mdash;husband and wife. She, a slender thing
+      of fire and flame, hands clenched, lips quivering&mdash;woman every inch
+      of her; he, immaculate and composed, his face coldly expressionless, yet
+      with a hint of something warmer, a suppressed glow, beneath the
+      deliberately chill glance of those curious light-grey eyes&mdash;the man
+      and bigoted fanatic fighting for supremacy within him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh! Answer me! Don&rsquo;t sit staring at me like that!&rdquo; Diane&rsquo;s voice held a
+      sharpened sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he spoke, very slowly and carefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There has been no mistake, Diane. Everything that has been done has been
+      with my sanction&mdash;by my order. Our marriage has been a culpable
+      mistake. Catherine realised it from the beginning. I only realise my full
+      guilt now that I am punished. But whatever I can do in atonement&mdash;reparation,
+      that I have made up my mind to do. The first&mdash;the chief thing&mdash;is
+      that our married life is at an end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard him with a curious absence of surprise. Somehow, from the
+      instant she had seen his dismantled room she had known, known surely, that
+      the long fight between herself and Catherine was over. And that Catherine
+      had won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At an end? Hugh, what do you mean? What are you going to do? You&rsquo;re not,
+      you&rsquo;re not going to send me away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not that. I&rsquo;ve no right to punish you. You&rsquo;ve been guilty of no fault&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Except the fault of being myself,&rdquo; she flung back bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I ought never to have married you. I did it, knowing you were not fit&mdash;suitable&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      corrected himself hastily. &ldquo;So I alone am to blame. You will retain your
+      position here as my wife&mdash;mistress of my home.&rdquo; Diane, remembering
+      Catherine&rsquo;s despotic rule, smiled mirthlessly. &ldquo;But henceforth you will be
+      my wife in name only. I shall have no wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane caught that note of dull endurance in his voice, and seized upon it.
+      He still cared!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh, you&rsquo;ve listened to Catherine till you&rsquo;ve lost all sense of truth.&rdquo;
+       She spoke gently, pleadingly. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t do this thing. We&rsquo;ve been guilty of
+      no sin that needs atonement. It isn&rsquo;t wrong to love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was implacable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t wrong to love&mdash;but sometimes love should
+      be denied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane drew nearer to him, and laid her hand on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not ours, Hugh,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Not love like ours&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be silent!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh sprang to his feet, his eyes ablaze, his voice hoarse and shaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tempt me! Do you think I&rsquo;ve found it easy to decide on this? When
+      every fibre of my body is calling out for you? My God, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then don&rsquo;t do it! Hugh&mdash;dearest&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With sudden violence he caught her by the arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be silent, I tell you! Don&rsquo;t tempt me! I&rsquo;ll make my penance, accept the
+      burden laid on me&mdash;that my first-born should be a girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane clung to him, resisting his attempt to thrust her from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh! Ah, wait! Listen to me! . . . Dear, some day there may be a little
+      son, yours and mine&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flung her from him violently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There shall never be a son of ours! Never! It is the Will of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With an immense effort he checked the rising frenzy within him&mdash;the
+      ecstasy of the martyr embracing the stake to which he shall be bound. He
+      moved across to the door and held it open for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, will you please go? That is my last word on the matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane turned hesitatingly towards the doorway, then paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an infinite appeal in her voice. Her eyes were those of a
+      frightened, bewildered child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go, please,&rdquo; he repeated mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A convulsive sob tore its way through her throat. She stepped blindly
+      forward. The next moment the door closed inexorably between husband and
+      wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SAINT-MICHAEL AND THE WONDER-CHILD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Day by day her husband&rsquo;s complete estrangement from her was rendered
+      additionally bitter to Diane by Catherine&rsquo;s complacent air of triumph. The
+      latter knew that she had won, severed the tie which bound her brother to
+      &ldquo;the foreign dancing-woman,&rdquo; and she did not scruple to let Diane see that
+      she openly rejoiced in the fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first Diane imagined that Catherine might rest content with what she
+      had accomplished, but the grim, hard-featured woman still continued to
+      exhibit the same self-righteous disapproval towards her brother&rsquo;s wife as
+      hitherto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane endured it in resentful silence for a time, but one day, stung by
+      some more than usually acid speech of Catherine&rsquo;s, she turned on her,
+      demanding passionately why she seemed to hate her even more since the
+      birth of the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I nearly gave my life for her,&rdquo; she protested with fierce simplicity. &ldquo;I
+      could do no more! Is it because <i>le bon dieu</i> has sent me a little
+      daughter instead of a little son that you hate me so much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Catherine had answered her in a voice of quiet, concentrated
+      animosity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had died then&mdash;<i>died childless</i>&mdash;I should have
+      thanked God day and night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane, isolated and unhappy, turned to her baby for consolation. It was
+      all that was left to her out of the wreck of her life, and the very fact
+      that both Hugh and Catherine seemed to regard the little daughter with
+      abhorrence only served to strengthen the passionate worship which she
+      herself lavished upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child&mdash;they had called her Magda&mdash;was an odd little
+      creature, as might have been expected from the violently opposing
+      characteristics of her parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was slenderly made&mdash;built on the same lithe lines as her mother&mdash;and
+      almost as soon as she was able to walk she manifested an amazing balance
+      and suppleness of limb. By the time she was four years old she was trying
+      to imitate, with uncertain little feet and dimpled, aimlessly waving arms,
+      the movements of her mother, when to amuse the child, she would sometimes
+      dance for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However big a tragedy had occurred in Magda&rsquo;s small world&mdash;whether it
+      were a crack across the insipid china face of a favourite doll or the
+      death of an adored Persian kitten&mdash;there was still balm in Gilead if
+      <i>&ldquo;petite maman&rdquo;</i> would but dance for her. The tears shining in big
+      drops on her cheeks, her small chest still heaving with the sobs that were
+      a passionate protest against unkind fate, Magda would sit on the floor
+      entranced, watching with adoring eyes every swift, graceful motion of the
+      dancer, and murmuring in the quaint shibboleth of French and English she
+      had imbibed from old Virginie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On one of these occasions Hugh came upon the two unexpectedly and brought
+      the performance to a summary conclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will do, Diane,&rdquo; he said icily. &ldquo;I should have thought you would
+      have had more self-respect than to dance&mdash;in that fashion&mdash;in
+      front of a child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, then, a sin to dance&mdash;as it is to be married?&rdquo; demanded Diane
+      bitterly, abruptly checked in an exquisite spring-flower dance of her own
+      invention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forbid it; that is sufficient,&rdquo; replied Hugh sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His assumption of arrogant superiority was unbearable. Diane&rsquo;s
+      self-control wavered under it and broke. She turned and upbraided him
+      despairingly, alternately pleading and reproaching, battering all her
+      slender forces uselessly against his inflexible determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a waste of time, Diane&mdash;mine, anyway,&rdquo; he told her. And left
+      her shaken with grief and anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Driven by a sense of utter revolt, she stormed her way to Catherine, who
+      was composedly sorting sheets in the linen room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not bear it!&rdquo; she burst out at her furiously. &ldquo;What have I done
+      that I should be treated as an outcast&mdash;a pariah?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Catherine regarded the tense, quivering little figure with chill dislike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You married my brother,&rdquo; she replied imperturbably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have separated us! But for you, we should be happy together&mdash;he
+      and baby and I! But you have spoilt it all. I suppose&rdquo;&mdash;a hint of the
+      Latin Quarter element in her asserting itself&mdash;&ldquo;I suppose you think
+      no one good enough to marry into your precious family!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Catherine paused on her way to the cupboard, a pile of fine linen
+      pillowslips in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;It is I who have separated you&mdash;spoilt your
+      happiness, if you like. And I am glad of it. I can&rsquo;t expect anyone like
+      you to understand&rdquo;&mdash;there was the familiar flavour of disparagement
+      in her tones&mdash;&ldquo;but I am thankful that my brother has seen the
+      wickedness of his marriage with you, that he has repented of it, and that
+      he is making the only atonement possible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned and composedly laid the pile of pillowslips in their appointed
+      place on the shelf. A faint fragrance of dried lavender drifted out from
+      the dark depths of the cupboard. Diane always afterwards associated the
+      smell of lavender with her memories of Catherine Vallincourt, and the
+      sweet, clean scent of it was spoiled for her henceforward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hate you!&rdquo; she exclaimed in a low voice of helpless rage. &ldquo;I hate you&mdash;and
+      I wish to God Hugh had never had a sister!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&rdquo;&mdash;composedly&mdash;&ldquo;he will not have one much longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane stared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that as far as our life together is concerned, it is very nearly
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean&rdquo;&mdash;Diane bent towards her breathlessly&mdash;&ldquo;do you mean
+      that you are <i>going away</i>&mdash;going away from Coverdale?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I am entering a sisterhood&mdash;that of the Sisters of Penitence, a
+      community Hugh is endowing with money that is urgently needed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Endowing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As part of the penance he has set himself to perform.&rdquo; Catherine&rsquo;s steely
+      glance met and held the younger woman&rsquo;s. &ldquo;Thanks to you, the remainder of
+      his life will be passed in expiation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane shook her head carelessly. Such side-issues were of relatively small
+      importance compared with the one outstanding, amazing fact: Catherine was
+      going away! Going away from Coverdale&mdash;for ever!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&rdquo;&mdash;Catherine read her thoughts shrewdly&mdash;&ldquo;yes, you will be
+      rid of me. I shall not be here much longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane struck her hands together. For once, not even the fear of
+      Catherine&rsquo;s gibing tongue could hold her silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad&mdash;glad&mdash;<i>glad</i> you&rsquo;re going away!&rdquo; she exclaimed
+      passionately. &ldquo;When you are gone I will win back my husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think so?&rdquo; was all she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to Diane&rsquo;s keyed-up consciousness it was as though the four short
+      words contained a threat&mdash;the germ of future disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In due time Catherine quitted Coverdale for the austere seclusion of the
+      sisterhood, and a very few weeks sufficed to convince Diane that her
+      forebodings had been only too well founded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Catherine had long been anxious to enter a community, restrained from
+      doing so solely by Hugh&rsquo;s need of her as mistress of his house, and now
+      that her wish was an accomplished fact, it seemed as though he were
+      spurred on to increasing effort by the example of his sister&rsquo;s
+      renunciation of the world. He withdrew himself even more completely from
+      his wife, sometimes avoiding her company for days at a time, and adopted a
+      stringently ascetic mode of life, denying himself all pleasure, fasting
+      frequently, and praying and meditating for hours at a stretch in the
+      private chapel which was attached to Coverdale. As far as it was possible,
+      without actually entering a community, his existence resembled that of a
+      monk, and Diane came to believe that he had voluntarily vowed himself to a
+      certain form of penance and expiation for the marriage which the bigotry
+      of his nature had led him to regard as a sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His life only impinged upon his wife&rsquo;s in so far as the upbringing of
+      their child was concerned. He was unnecessarily severe with her, and,
+      since Diane opposed his strict ruling at every opportunity, Magda&rsquo;s early
+      life was passed in an atmosphere of fierce contradictions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child inherited her mother&rsquo;s beauty to the full, and, as she
+      developed, exhibited an extraordinary faculty for getting her own way.
+      Servants, playmates, and governesses all succumbed to the nameless charm
+      she possessed, while her mother and old Virginie frankly worshipped her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The love of dancing was instinctive with her, and this, unknown to Hugh,
+      her mother cultivated assiduously, fostering in her everything that was
+      imaginative and delicately fanciful. Magda believed firmly in the
+      existence of fairies and regarded flowers as each possessed of a separate
+      entity with personal characteristics of its own. The originality of the
+      dances she invented for her own amusement was the outcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, side by side with this love of all that was beautiful, she absorbed
+      from her mother a certain sophisticated understanding of life which was
+      somewhat startling in one of her tender years, and this, too, betrayed
+      itself in her dancing. For it is an immutable law that everything&mdash;good,
+      bad, and indifferent&mdash;which lies in the soul of an artist ultimately
+      reveals itself in his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Magda, inheriting the underlying ardour of her father&rsquo;s temperament
+      and the gutter-child&rsquo;s sharp sense of values which was her mother&rsquo;s Latin
+      Quarter garnering, at the age of eight danced, with all the beguilement
+      and seductiveness of a trained and experienced dancer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Hugh himself was not proof against the elusive lure of it. He chanced
+      upon her one day, dancing in her nursery, and was so carried away by the
+      charm of the performance that for the moment he forgot that she was
+      transgressing one of his most rigid rules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the child&rsquo;s gracious, alluring gestures he was reminded of the first
+      time that he had seen her mother dance, and of how it had thrilled him.
+      Beneath the veneer with which his self-enforced austerity had overlaid his
+      emotions, he felt his pulses leap, and was bitterly chagrined at being
+      thus attracted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found himself brought up forcibly once more against the inevitable
+      consequences of his marriage with Diane, and reasoned that through his
+      weakness in making such a woman his wife, he had let loose on the world a
+      feminine thing dowered with the seductiveness of a Delilah and backed&mdash;here
+      came in the exaggerated family pride ingrained in him&mdash;by all the
+      added weight and influence of her social position as a Vallincourt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never let me see you dance again, Magda,&rdquo; he told her. &ldquo;It is forbidden.
+      If you disobey you will be severely punished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda regarded him curiously out of a pair of long dark eyes the colour of
+      black smoke. With that precociously sophisticated instinct of hers she
+      realised that the man had been emotionally stirred, and divined in her
+      funny child&rsquo;s mind that it was her dancing which had so stirred him. It
+      gave her a curious sense of power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sieur Hugh is <i>afraid</i> because he likes me to dance,&rdquo; she told her
+      mother, with an impish little grin of enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (On one occasion Hugh had narrated for her benefit the history of an
+      ancestor, one Sieur Hugues de Vallincourt, whose effigy in stone adorned
+      the church, and she had ever afterwards persisted in referring to her
+      father as &ldquo;Sieur Hugh&rdquo;&mdash;considerably to his annoyance, since he
+      regarded it as both disrespectful and unseemly.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this time onwards Magda seemed to take a diabolical delight in
+      shocking her father&mdash;experimenting on him, as it were. In some
+      mysterious way she had become conscious of her power to allure. Young as
+      she was, the instinct of conquest was awakened within her, and she
+      proceeded to &ldquo;experiment&rdquo; on certain of her father&rsquo;s friends&mdash;to
+      their huge delight and Hugh&rsquo;s intense disgust. Once, in an outburst of
+      fury, he epitomised her ruthlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child has the soul of a courtesan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If this were so, Hugh had no knowledge of how to cope with it. His
+      fulminations on the subject of dancing affected her not at all, and a few
+      days after he had rebuked her with all the energy at his command he
+      discovered her dancing on a table&mdash;this time for the delectation of
+      an enraptured butler and staff in the servants&rsquo; hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without more ado Hugh lifted her down and carried her to his study, where
+      he administered a sound smacking. The result astonished him considerably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think you can stop me from dancing by beating me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda arraigned him with passionate scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do,&rdquo; he returned grimly. &ldquo;If you hurt people enough you can stop them
+      from committing sin. That is the meaning of remedial punishment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it!&rdquo; she stormed at him. &ldquo;You might hurt me till I <i>died</i>
+      of hurting, but you couldn&rsquo;t make me good&mdash;not if I hated your
+      hurting me all the time! Because it isn&rsquo;t good to hate,&rdquo; she added out of
+      the depths of some instinctive wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;d better learn to like being punished&mdash;if that will make
+      you good,&rdquo; retorted Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda sped out into the woods. Hugh&rsquo;s hand had been none too light, and
+      she was feeling physically and spiritually sore. Her small soul was aflame
+      with fierce revolt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just to assure herself of the liberty of the individual and of the fact
+      that &ldquo;hurting couldn&rsquo;t make her good,&rdquo; she executed a solitary little
+      dance on the green, mossy sward beneath the trees. It was rather a painful
+      process, since certain portions of her anatomy still tingled from the
+      retributive strokes of justice, but she set her teeth and accomplished the
+      dance with a consciousness of unholy glee that added appreciably to the
+      quality of the performance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you the Fairy Queen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice came suddenly out of the dim, enfolding silence of the woods,
+      and Magda paused in the midst of a final pirouette. A man was standing
+      leaning against the trunk of a tree, watching her with whimsical grey
+      eyes. Behind him, set up in the middle of a clearing amongst the trees, an
+      easel and stool evidenced his recent occupation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda returned the scrutiny of the grey eyes. She was no whit embarrassed
+      and slowly lowered her foot&mdash;she had been toe-dancing&mdash;to its
+      normal position while she surveyed the newcomer with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a tall, lean specimen of mankind, and the sunlight, quivering
+      between the interlacing boughs above his head, flickered on to kinky fair
+      hair that looked almost absurdly golden contrasted with the brown tan of
+      the face beneath it. It was a nice face, Magda decided, with a dogged,
+      squarish jaw that appealed to a certain tenacity of spirit which was one
+      of her own unchildish characteristics, and the keen dark-grey eyes she
+      encountered were so unlike the cold light-grey of her father&rsquo;s that it
+      seemed ridiculous the English language could only supply the one word
+      &ldquo;grey&rdquo; to describe things that were so totally dissimilar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;re like eyes with little fires behind them,&rdquo; Magda told herself.
+      Then smiled at their owner radiantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you the Fairy Queen?&rdquo; he repeated gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She regarded him with increasing approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she assented graciously. &ldquo;These are my woods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;m afraid I&rsquo;ve been trespassing in your majesty&rsquo;s domain,&rdquo; admitted
+      the grey-eyed man. &ldquo;But your woods are so beautiful I simply had to try
+      and make a sketch of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda came back to earth with promptitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, are you an artist?&rdquo; she demanded eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m trying to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me look.&rdquo; She flashed past him and planted herself in front of the
+      easel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Mais, c&rsquo;est bon!</i>&rdquo; she commented coolly. &ldquo;Me, I know. We have good
+      pictures at home. This is a good picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the grey eyes looked suitably impressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you find it so,&rdquo; he replied meekly. &ldquo;I think it wants just one
+      thing more. If&rdquo;&mdash;he spoke abstractly&mdash;&ldquo;if the Fairy Queen were
+      resting just there&rdquo;&mdash;his finger indicated the exact point on the
+      canvas&mdash;&ldquo;tired, you know, because she had been dancing to one of the
+      Mortals&mdash;lucky beggar, wasn&rsquo;t he?&mdash;why, I think the picture
+      would be complete.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda shot him a swift glance of comprehension. Then, without a word, she
+      moved towards the bole of a tree and flung herself down with all the
+      supple grace of a young faun. The artist snatched up his palette; the pose
+      she had assumed without a hint from him was inimitable&mdash;the slender
+      limbs relaxed and drooping exactly as though from sheer fatigue. He
+      painted furiously, blocking in the limp little figure with swift, sure
+      strokes of his brush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at last he desisted he flung a question at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who taught you to pose&mdash;and to dance like that, you wonder-child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda surveyed him with that mixture of saint and devil in her long,
+      suddenly narrow eyes which, when she grew to womanhood, was the measure of
+      her charm and the curse of her tempestuous life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Le bon dieu</i>,&rdquo; she responded demurely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man smiled and shook his head. It was a crooked little smile, oddly
+      humorous and attractive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said with conviction. &ldquo;No. I don&rsquo;t think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The daylight was beginning to fade, and he started to pack up his
+      belongings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s your name?&rdquo; asked Magda suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with sudden awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not&mdash;not <i>Saint Michel</i>?&rdquo; she asked breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Virginie had told her all about &ldquo;<i>Saint Michel</i>.&rdquo; He was a very great
+      angel indeed. It would be tremendously exciting to find she had been
+      talking to him all this time without knowing it! And the grey-eyed man had
+      fair hair; it shone in the glinting sunset-light <i>almost</i> like a
+      halo!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He quenched her hopes with that brief, one-sided smile of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not Saint Michael. I&rsquo;m only a poor devil of a painter
+      who&rsquo;s got his way to make in the world. Perhaps, you&rsquo;ve helped me, Fairy
+      Queen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And seeing that &ldquo;The Repose of Titania&rdquo; was the first of his paintings to
+      bring Michael Quarrington that meed of praise and recognition which was
+      later his in such full measure, perhaps she had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;re not a saint, after all,&rdquo; remarked Magda
+      thoughtfully. &ldquo;Saint&rsquo;s are dreadfully dull and superior.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they? How do you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because Sieur Hugh is preparing to be one. At least Virginie says so&mdash;and
+      she sniffs when she says it. So you see, I know all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he replied seriously. &ldquo;And who are Sieur Hugh and Virginie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sieur Hugh is my father. And Virginie is next best to <i>petite maman</i>.
+      Me, I love Virginie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucky Virginie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda made no answer, but she stood looking at him with an odd,
+      unchildlike deviltry in her sombre eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fairy Queen, I should like to kiss you,&rdquo; said the man suddenly. Then he
+      jerked his head back. &ldquo;No, I wouldn&rsquo;t!&rdquo; he added quickly to himself. &ldquo;By
+      Jove, it&rsquo;s uncanny!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda remained motionless, still staring at him with those long dark eyes
+      of hers. He noticed that just at the outer corners they slanted upwards a
+      little, giving her small, thin face a curiously Eastern look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please kiss me, Saint Michael,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he hesitated, a half-rueful, half-whimsical smile on his
+      lips, rather as though he were laughing at himself. Then, with a shrug of
+      his shoulders, he stooped quickly and kissed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Witch-child!&rdquo; he muttered as he strode away through the woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SEED OF EVIL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Diane sat in the twilight, brooding. Winter had come round again, gripping
+      the world with icy fingers, and she shivered a little as she crouched in
+      front of the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt cold&mdash;cold in body and soul. The passage of time had brought
+      no cheery warmth of love or loving-kindness to her starved heart, and the
+      estrangement between herself and Hugh was as definite and absolute as it
+      had been the day Catherine quitted Coverdale for the Sisterhood of
+      Penitence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the years which had elapsed since then had taken their inevitable
+      toll. Hugh had continued along the lines he had laid down for himself,
+      rigidly ascetic and austere, and his mode of life now revealed itself
+      unmistakably in his thin, emaciated face and eyes ablaze with fanatical
+      fervour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane, thrust into a compulsory isolation utterly foreign to her
+      temperament, debarred the fulfilment of her womanhood which her
+      spontaneous, impetuous nature craved, had drooped and pined, gradually
+      losing both her buoyant spirit and her health in the loveless atmosphere
+      to which her husband had condemned her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had so counted on the prospect that a better understanding between
+      herself and Hugh would ensue after Catherine&rsquo;s departure that the downfall
+      of her hopes had come upon her as a bitter disappointment. Once she had
+      stifled her pride and begged him to live no longer as a stranger to her.
+      But he had repulsed her harshly, refusing her pleading with an inexorable
+      decision there was no combating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards she had given herself up to despair, and gradually&mdash;almost
+      imperceptibly at first&mdash;her health had declined until finally, at the
+      urgent representations of Virginie, Hugh had called in Dr. Lancaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no specific disease,&rdquo; he had said. &ldquo;But none the less&rdquo;&mdash;looking
+      very directly at Hugh&mdash;&ldquo;your wife is dying, Vallincourt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane had been told the first part of the doctor&rsquo;s pronouncement, and
+      recommended by her husband to &ldquo;rouse herself&rdquo; out of her apathetic state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;No specific disease!&rsquo;&rdquo; she repeated bitterly, as she sat brooding in the
+      firelight. &ldquo;No&mdash;only this death in life which I have had to endure.
+      Well, it will be over soon&mdash;and the sooner the better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door burst open suddenly and Magda came in to the room, checking
+      abruptly, with a child&rsquo;s stumbling consciousness of pain, as she caught
+      sight of her mother curled up in front of the fire, staring mutely into
+      its glowing heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Maman</i>?&rdquo; she begin timidly. &ldquo;<i>Petite maman</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane turned round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cherie, is it thou?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She kneeled up on the hearthrug and, taking the child in her arms,
+      searched her face with dry, bright eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Baby,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Listen! And when thou art older, remember always what I
+      have said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda stared at her, listening intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, never give your heart to any man,&rdquo; continued Diane. &ldquo;If you do, he
+      will only break it for you&mdash;break it into little pieces like the
+      glass scent-bottle which you dropped yesterday. Take everything. But do
+      not give&mdash;anything&mdash;in return. Will you remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Magda answered her gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Oui, maman</i>, I will remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What happened after that remained always a confused blur in Magda&rsquo;s memory&mdash;a
+      series of pictures standing out against a dark background of haste and
+      confusion, and whispered fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly her mother gave a sharp little cry and her hands went up to her
+      breast, while for a moment her eyes, dilated and frightened-looking,
+      stared agonisingly ahead. Then she toppled over sideways and lay in a
+      little heap on the great bearskin rung in front of the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that Virginie came running, followed by a drove of scared-looking
+      servants and, last of all, by Hugh himself, his face very white and
+      working strangely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The car was sent off in frantic haste in search of Dr. Lancaster, and
+      later in the day two white-capped nurses appeared on the scene. Then
+      followed hours of hushed uncertainty, when people went to and fro with
+      hurried, muffled footsteps and spoke together in whispers, while
+      Virginie&rsquo;s face grew yellow and drawn-looking, and the tears trickled down
+      her wrinkled-apple cheeks whenever one spoke to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Last of all someone told Magda that &ldquo;<i>petite maman</i>&rdquo; had gone away&mdash;and
+      on further inquiry Virginie vouchsafed that she had gone to somewhere
+      called Paradise to be with the blessed saints.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When will she come back again?&rdquo; demanded Magda practically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon which Virginie had made an unpleasant choking noise in her throat and
+      declared:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda was frankly incredulous. <i>Petite maman</i> would never go away
+      like that and leave her behind! Of that she felt convinced, and said so.
+      Gulping back her sobs, Virginie explained that in this case madame had
+      been given no choice, but added that if Magda comported herself like a
+      good little girl, she would one day go to be with her in Paradise. Magda
+      found it all very puzzling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when, later, she was taken into her mother&rsquo;s room and saw the slender,
+      sheeted figure lying straight and still on the great bed, hands meekly
+      crossed upon the young, motionless breast, while tall white candles burned
+      at head and foot, the knowledge that <i>petite maman</i> had really gone
+      from her seemed all at once to penetrate her childish mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That aloofly silent figure could not be her gay, pretty <i>petite maman</i>&mdash;the
+      one who had played and laughed with her and danced so exquisitely that
+      sometimes Magda&rsquo;s small soul had ached with the sheer beauty and
+      loveliness of it. . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She met Dr. Lancaster as she came out from the candle-lit room and
+      clutched him convulsively by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that&mdash;being dead?&rdquo; she whispered, pointing to the room she had
+      just quitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very gently he tried to explain things to her. Afterwards Magda overheard
+      the family lawyer asking him in appropriately shocked tones of what
+      complaint Lady Vallincourt had died, and there had been a curious grim
+      twist to Lancaster&rsquo;s mouth as he made answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heart,&rdquo; he said tersely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Very sad. Very sad indeed,&rdquo; rejoined the lawyer feelingly. &ldquo;These
+      heart complaints are very obscure sometimes, I believe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; said Lancaster. &ldquo;Not always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next happening that impressed itself on Magda&rsquo;s cognisance as an event
+      was the coming of Lady Arabella Winter. She arrived on a day of heavy
+      snow, and Magda&rsquo;s first impression of her, as she came into the hall
+      muffled up to the tip of her patrician nose in a magnificent sable wrap,
+      was of a small, alert-eyed bird huddled into its nest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the newcomer had laid aside her furs Magda&rsquo;s impression qualified
+      itself. Lady Arabella was not in the least of the &ldquo;small bird&rdquo; type, but
+      rather suggested a hawk endowed with a grim sense of humour&mdash;quick
+      and decisive in movement, with eyes that held an incalculable wisdom and
+      laughed a thought cynically because they saw so clearly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hair was perfectly white, as white as the snow outside, but her
+      complexion was soft and fine-grained as that of a girl of sixteen&mdash;pink
+      and white like summer roses. She had the manner of an empress with
+      extremely modern ideas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda was instructed that this great little personage was her godmother
+      and that she would in future live with her instead of at Coverdale. She
+      accepted the information without surprise though with considerable
+      interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think you&rsquo;ll like it?&rdquo; Lady Arabella shot at her keenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Magda replied unhesitatingly. &ldquo;But why am I going to live with you?
+      Sieur Hugh isn&rsquo;t dead, too, is he?&rdquo;&mdash;with impersonal interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who in the name of fortune is Sieur Hugh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella looked around helplessly, and Virginia, who was hovering in
+      the background, hastened to explain the relationship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, no,&rdquo; replied Lady Arabella. &ldquo;Sieur Hugh is not dead&mdash;though to
+      be sure he&rsquo;s the next thing to it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda eyed her solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he very ill?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, merely cranky like all the Vallincourts. He&rsquo;s in a community, joined
+      a brotherhood, you know, and proposes to spend the rest of his days
+      repenting his sins and making his peace with heaven. I&rsquo;ve no patience with
+      the fool!&rdquo; continued the old lady irascibly. &ldquo;He marries to please himself
+      and then hasn&rsquo;t the pluck of a rabbit to see the thing through decently.
+      So you&rsquo;re to be my responsibility in future&mdash;and a pretty big one,
+      too, to judge by the look of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda hardly comprehended the full meaning of this speech. Still she
+      gathered that her father had left her&mdash;though not quite in the same
+      way as <i>petite maman</i> had done&mdash;and that henceforth this
+      autocratic old lady with the hawk&rsquo;s eyes and quick, darting movements was
+      to be the arbiter of her fate. She also divined, beneath Lady Arabella&rsquo;s
+      prickly exterior, a humanness and ability to understand which had been
+      totally lacking in Sieur Hugh. She proceeded to put it to the test.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you let me dance?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tchah!&rdquo; snorted the old woman. &ldquo;So the Wielitzska blood is coming out
+      after all!&rdquo; She turned to Virginia. &ldquo;Can she dance?&rdquo; she demanded
+      abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mais oui, madame!&rdquo; cried Virginie, clasping her hands ecstatically. &ldquo;Like
+      a veritable angel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t have thought it,&rdquo; commented her ladyship drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her shrewd eyes swept the child&rsquo;s tense little face with its long, Eastern
+      eyes and the mouth that showed so vividly scarlet against its unchildish
+      pallor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Less like an angel than anything, I should imagine,&rdquo; muttered the old
+      woman to herself with a wicked little grin. Then aloud: &ldquo;Show me what you
+      can do, then, child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well.&rdquo; Magda paused, reflecting. Then she ran forward and laid her
+      hand lightly on Lady Arabella&rsquo;s knee. &ldquo;Look! This is the story of a Fairy
+      who came to earth and lost her way in the woods. She met one of the
+      Mortals, and he loved her so much that he wouldn&rsquo;t show her the way back
+      to Fairyland. So&rdquo;&mdash;abruptly&mdash;&ldquo;she died.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella watched the child dance in astonished silence. Technique, of
+      course, was lacking, but the interpretation, the telling of the story, was
+      amazing. It was all there&mdash;the Fairy&rsquo;s first wonder and delight in
+      finding herself in the woods, then her realisation that she was lost and
+      her frantic efforts to find the way back to Fairyland. Followed her
+      meeting with the Mortal and supplication to him to guide her, and finally
+      the Fairy&rsquo;s despair and death. Magda&rsquo;s slight little figure sank to the
+      ground, drooping slowly like a storm-bent snowdrop, and lay still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella sat up with a jerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious! The child&rsquo;s a born dancer! Lydia Tchinova must see her.
+      She&rsquo;ll have to train. Poor Hugh!&rdquo; She chuckled enjoyably. &ldquo;This will be
+      the last straw! He&rsquo;ll be compelled to invent a new penance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART TWO
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE FLOWERING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very trying, Magda. Everyone is talking about you, and I&rsquo;m tired
+      of trying to explain you to people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella paused in her knitting and spoke petulantly, but a secret
+      gleam of admiration in her sharp old eyes as they rested upon her
+      god-daughter belied the irritation of her tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda leaned back negligently against the big black velvet cushions in her
+      chair and lit a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>want</i> everyone to talk about me,&rdquo; she returned composedly. Her
+      voice was oddly attractive&mdash;low-pitched and with a faint blur of
+      huskiness about it that caught the ear with a distinctive charm. &ldquo;It
+      increases the box-office receipts. And there&rsquo;s no reason in the world for
+      you to &lsquo;explain&rsquo; me to people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her godmother regarded her with increasing irritation, yet at the same
+      time acutely conscious of the arresting quality of the young, vividly
+      alive face that gleamed at her from its black-velvet background.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten years had only served to emphasise the unusual characteristics of the
+      child Magda. Her skin was wonderful, of a smooth, creamy-white texture
+      which gave to the sharply angled face something of the pale, exotic
+      perfection of a stephanotis bloom. Her eyes were long, the colour of black
+      pansies&mdash;black with a suggestion of purple in their depths. They
+      slanted upwards a little at the outer corners, and this together with the
+      high cheek-bones, alone would have betrayed her Russian ancestry. When
+      Lady Arabella wanted to be particularly obnoxious she told her that she
+      had Mongolian eyes, and Magda would shrug her shoulders and, thrusting out
+      a foot which was so perfect in shape that a painting of it by a certain
+      famous artist had been the most talked-of picture of the year, would reply
+      placidly: &ldquo;Well, thank heaven, <i>that&rsquo;s</i> not English, anyway!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It certainly required some explanation when you chose to leave me and go
+      off and live by yourself,&rdquo; pursued Lady Arabella, resuming her knitting.
+      &ldquo;A girl of twenty! Of course people have talked. Especially as half the
+      men in town imagine themselves in love with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m perfectly respectable now. I&rsquo;ve engaged a nice, tame pussy-cat
+      person to take charge of my morals and chaperon me generally. Not&mdash;like
+      you, Marraine&mdash;an Early Victorian autocrat with a twentieth-century
+      tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean Mrs. Grey, she doesn&rsquo;t give me the least impression of being
+      a &lsquo;nice, tame pussy-cat,&rsquo;&rdquo; retorted Lady Arabella. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find that out,
+      my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda regarded her thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Gillian is all right,&rdquo; affirmed Magda, dismissing the matter airily.
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a gorgeous accompanist, anyway&mdash;almost as good as Davilof
+      himself. Which reminds me&mdash;I must go home and rehearse my solo dance
+      in the <i>Swan-Maiden</i>. I told Davilof I&rsquo;d be ready for him at four
+      o&rsquo;clock; and it&rsquo;s half-past three now. I shall never get back to Hampstead
+      through this ghastly fog in half an hour.&rdquo; She glanced towards the window
+      through which was visible a discouraging fog of the &ldquo;pea-soup&rdquo; variety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella sniffed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better be careful for once in your life, Magda. Davilof is in love
+      with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pouf! What if he is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda rose, and picking up her big black hat set it on her head at
+      precisely the right angle, and proceeded to spear it through with a
+      wonderful black-and-gold hatpin of Chinese workmanship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella shot a swift glance at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s just one of a crowd?&rdquo; she suggested tartly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda assented indifferently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re wrong&mdash;quite wrong,&rdquo; returned her godmother crisply. &ldquo;Antoine
+      Davilof is not one of a crowd&mdash;never will be! He&rsquo;s half a Pole,
+      remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m half a Russian. It must be a case of deep calling to deep,&rdquo; she
+      suggested mockingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella&rsquo;s shining needles clicked as they came to an abrupt stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does that mean you&rsquo;re in love with him?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda stared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good gracious, no! I&rsquo;m never in love. You know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t prevent my hoping you may develop&mdash;some day&mdash;into
+      a normal God-fearing woman,&rdquo; retorted the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And learn to thank heaven, fasting, for a good man&rsquo;s love?&rdquo; Magda laughed
+      lightly. &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t. At least, I hope not. Judging from my friends and
+      acquaintances, the condition of being in love is a most unpleasant one&mdash;reduces
+      a woman to a humiliating sense of her own unworthiness and keeps her in a
+      see-saw state of emotional uncertainty. No, thank you! No man is worth
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella looked away. Her hard, bright old eyes held a sudden
+      wistfulness foreign to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear&mdash;one man is. One man in every woman&rsquo;s life is worth it. Only
+      we don&rsquo;t always find it out in time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Marraine&mdash;you don&rsquo;t mean&mdash;you weren&rsquo;t ever&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella rose suddenly and came across to where Magda stood by the
+      fire, one narrow foot extended to the cheerful warmth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind what I mean,&rdquo; she said, and her voice sounded a little
+      uncertain. &ldquo;Only, if it comes your way, don&rsquo;t miss the best thing this
+      queer old world of ours has to offer. If it brings you nothing else, love
+      at least leaves you memories. Even that&rsquo;s something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda glanced at her curiously. Somehow she had never imagined that behind
+      the worldly-wise old woman&rsquo;s sharp speeches and grim, ironic humour there
+      lay the half-buried memory of some far-distant romance. Yet now in the
+      uneven tones of her voice she recognised the throb of an old wound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And meanwhile&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Arabella suddenly resumed in her usual curt
+      manner&mdash;&ldquo;meanwhile you might play fair with one or two of those boys
+      you have trailing around&mdash;Kit Raynham for instance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; began Magda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You understand perfectly. A man of the world&rsquo;s fair game. He can look
+      after himself&mdash;and probably sizes you up for what you are&mdash;a
+      phenomenally successful dancer, who regards her little court of admirers
+      as one of the commonplaces of existence&mdash;like her morning cup of tea.
+      But these boys&mdash;they look upon you as a woman, even a possible wife.
+      And then they proceed to fall in love with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s foot tapped impatiently on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s this all leading up to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella met her glance squarely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to leave Kit Raynham alone. His mother has been to me&mdash;Magda,
+      I&rsquo;m sick of having their mothers come to me!&mdash;and begged me to
+      interfere. She says you&rsquo;re ruining the boy&rsquo;s prospects. He&rsquo;s a brilliant
+      lad, and they expect him to do something rather special. And now he&rsquo;s
+      slacking completely. He&rsquo;s always on your doorstep. If you care about him&mdash;do
+      you, Magda?&mdash;tell him so. But, if you don&rsquo;t, for goodness&rsquo; sake send
+      him about his business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited quietly for an answer. Magda slipped into a big fur-coat and
+      caught up her gloves. Then she turned to her godmother abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Raynham is absurd. I can&rsquo;t prevent Kit&rsquo;s making a fool of himself if
+      he wants to. And&mdash;and&rdquo;&mdash;rather helplessly&mdash;&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help it
+      if I don&rsquo;t fall in love to order.&rdquo; She kissed her godmother lightly. &ldquo;So
+      that&rsquo;s that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A minute later Lady Arabella&rsquo;s butler had swung open the front door, and
+      Magda crossed the pavement and entered her waiting car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, the fog hung like a thick pall over London&mdash;thick enough to
+      curtain the windows of the car with a blank, grey veil and to make
+      progress through the streets a difficult and somewhat dangerous process.
+      Magda snuggled into her furs and leant back against the padded cushions.
+      All sight of the outside world was cut off from her, except for the
+      blurred gleam of an occasional street-lamp or the menacing shape of a
+      motor-bus looming suddenly alongside, and she yielded herself to the train
+      of thought provoked by her talk with Lady Arabella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a detached sort of way she felt sorry about Kit Raynham&mdash;principally
+      because Lady Arabella, of whom she was exceedingly fond, seemed vexed
+      about the matter. It had not taken her long to discover, when as a child
+      she had come to live with her godmother, the warm heart that concealed
+      itself beneath the old lady&rsquo;s somewhat shrewish exterior. And to Lady
+      Arabella the advent of her god-child had been a matter for pure rejoicing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having no children of her own, she lavished a pent-up wealth of affection
+      upon Magda of which few would have thought her capable, and though she was
+      by no means niggardly in her blame of Hugh Vallincourt for his method of
+      shelving his responsibilities, she was grateful that his withdrawal into
+      the monastic life had been the means of throwing Magda into her care. Five
+      years later, when death claimed him, she found he had appointed her the
+      child&rsquo;s sole guardian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      True to her intention, she had asked the opinion of Lydia Tchinova, the
+      famous dancer, and under Madame Tchinova&rsquo;s guidance Magda had received
+      such training that when she came to make her debut she leaped into fame at
+      once. Hers was one of those rare cases where the initial drudgery and
+      patient waiting that attends so many careers was practically eliminated,
+      and at the age of twenty she was probably the most talked-of woman in
+      London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had discarded the family surname for professional purposes, and
+      appeared in public under the name of Wielitzska&mdash;&ldquo;to save the
+      reigning Vallincourts from a soul convulsion,&rdquo; as she observed with a
+      twinkle. During the last year, influenced by the growing demands of her
+      vocation, she had quitted her godmother&rsquo;s hospitable roof and established
+      herself in a house of her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor had Lady Arabella sought to dissuade her. Although she and Magda were
+      the best of friends, she had latterly found the onus of chaperoning her
+      god-child an increasingly heavy burden. As she herself remarked: &ldquo;You
+      might as well attempt to chaperon a comet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was almost inevitable that Magda, starred and feted wherever she went,
+      should develop into a rather erratic and self-willed young person, but on
+      the whole she had remained singularly unspoilt. Side by side with her gift
+      for dancing she had also inherited something of her mother&rsquo;s sweetness and
+      wholesomeness of nature. There was nothing petty or mean about her, and
+      many a struggling member of her own profession had had good cause to thank
+      &ldquo;the Wielitzska&rdquo; for a helping hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Women found in her a good pal; men, an elusive, provocative personality
+      that bewitched and angered them in the same breath, coolly accepting all
+      they had to offer of love and headlong worship&mdash;and giving nothing in
+      return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not in the least that Magda deliberately set herself to wile a
+      man&rsquo;s heart out of his body. She seemed unable to help it! Apart from
+      everything else, her dancing had taught her the whole magic of the art of
+      charming by every look and gesture, and the passage of time had only added
+      to the extraordinary physical allure which had been hers even as a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet for all the apparent warmth and ardour of her temperament, to which
+      the men she knew succumbed in spite of themselves, she herself seemed
+      untouched by any deeper emotion than that of a faintly amused desire to
+      attract. The lessons of her early days, the tragedy of her mother&rsquo;s
+      married life, had permeated her whole being, and her ability to remain
+      emotionally unstirred was due to an instinctive reserve and
+      self-withdrawal&mdash;an inherent distrust of the passion of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;Take everything. But do not give&mdash;anything&mdash;in return.&rdquo;</i>
+      Subconsciously Diane&rsquo;s words, wrested from her at a moment of poignant
+      mental anguish, formed the credo of her daughter&rsquo;s life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man, so far, had ever actually counted for anything in Magda&rsquo;s scheme
+      of existence, and as she drove slowly home from Lady Arabella&rsquo;s house in
+      Park Lane she sincerely hoped none ever would. Certainly&mdash;she smiled
+      a little at the bare idea&mdash;Kit Raynham was not destined to be the
+      man! He was clever, and enthusiastic, and adoring, and she liked him quite
+      a lot, but his hot-headed passion failed to waken in her breast the least
+      spark of responsive emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her thoughts drifted idly backward, recalling this or that man who had
+      wanted her. It was odd, but of all the men she had met the memory of one
+      alone was still provocative of a genuine thrill of interest&mdash;and that
+      was the unknown artist whom she had encountered in the woods at Coverdale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even now, after the lapse of ten years, she could remember the young,
+      lean, square-jawed face with the grey eyes, &ldquo;like eyes with little fires
+      behind them,&rdquo; and hear again the sudden jerky note in the man&rsquo;s voice as
+      he muttered, &ldquo;Witch-child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That brief adventure with &ldquo;Saint Michel&rdquo;&mdash;she remembered calling him
+      &ldquo;Saint Michel&rdquo;&mdash;stood out as one of the clearest memories of her
+      childhood. That, and the memory of her mother, kneeling on the big
+      bearskin rug and saying in a hard, dry voice: &ldquo;Never give your heart to
+      any man. Take everything. But do not give&mdash;anything&mdash;in return.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OUT OF THE FOG
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A sudden warning shout, the transient glare of fog-blurred headlights,
+      then a crash and a staggering blow on the car&rsquo;s near side which sent it
+      reeling like a drunken thing, bonnet foremost, straight into a
+      motor-omnibus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda felt herself pitched violently forward off the seat, striking her
+      head as she fell, and while the car yet rocked with the force of its
+      collision with the motor-bus another vehicle drove blindly into it from
+      the rear. It lurched sickeningly and jammed at a precarious angle, canted
+      up on two wheels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shouts and cries, the frenzied hooting of horns, the grinding of brakes
+      and clash of splintered glass combined into a pandemonium of terrifying
+      hubbub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda, half-dazed with shock, crouched on the floor of the car where she
+      had been flung. She could see the lights appearing and disappearing in the
+      fog like baleful eyes opening and shutting spasmodically. A tumult of
+      hoarse cries, cursing and bellowing instructions, crossed by the thin
+      scream of women&rsquo;s cries, battered against her ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then out of the medley of raucous noise came a cool, assured voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be frightened. I&rsquo;ll get you out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda was conscious of a sudden reaction from the numbed sense of
+      bewildered terror which had overwhelmed her. The sound of that unknown
+      voice&mdash;quiet, commanding, and infinitely reassuring&mdash;was like a
+      hand laid on her heart and stilling its terrified throbbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard someone tugging at the handle of the door. There came a moment&rsquo;s
+      pause while the strained woodwork resisted the pull, then with a scrape of
+      jarring fittings the door jerked open and a man&rsquo;s figure loomed in the
+      aperture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you?&rdquo; he asked, peering through the dense gloom. &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; She felt
+      his outstretched hands close on her shoulders as she knelt huddled on the
+      floor. &ldquo;Can you get up? Or are you hurt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda tested her limbs cautiously, to discover that no bones were broken,
+      though her head ached horribly, so that she felt sick and giddy with the
+      pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not hurt,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then come along. The car&rsquo;s heeled up a bit, but I&rsquo;ll lift you out if you
+      can get to the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stumbled forward obediently, groping her way towards the vague panel
+      of lighter grey revealed by the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more, out of the swathing fog, hands touched her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are! That&rsquo;s right. Now lean forward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She found herself clasped by arms like steel&mdash;so strong, so sure,
+      that she felt as safe and secure as when Vladimir Ravinski, the amazingly
+      clever young Russian who partnered her in several of her dances, sometimes
+      lifted her, lightly and easily as a feather, and bore her triumphantly off
+      the stage aloft on his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very strong,&rdquo; she murmured, as the unknown owner of the arms swung
+      her down from the tilted car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not very heavy,&rdquo; came the answer. There was a kind of laughter in
+      the voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the man spoke he set her down on her feet, and then, just as Magda was
+      opening her lips to thank him, the fog seemed to grow suddenly denser,
+      swirling round her in great murky waves and surging in her ears with a
+      noise like the boom of the ocean. Higher and higher rose the waves, a
+      resistless sea of blackness, and at last they swept right over her head
+      and she sank into the utter darkness of oblivion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drink this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Someone was holding a glass to her lips and the pungent smell of sal
+      volatile pricked her nostrils. Magda shrank back, her eyes still shut, and
+      pressed her head further into the cushions against which it rested. She
+      detested the smell of sal volatile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drink it! Do you hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice seemed to drive at her with its ring of command. She opened her
+      eyes and looked straight up into other eyes&mdash;dark-grey ones, these&mdash;that
+      were bent on her intently. To her confused consciousness they appeared to
+      blaze down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she muttered, feebly trying to push the glass away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effort of moving her arm seemed stupendous. Her head swam with it. The
+      sea of fog came rolling back again, and this time she sank under it at
+      once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then&mdash;after an immensity of time, she was sure&mdash;she felt herself
+      struggling up to the surface once more. She was lying rocking gently on
+      the top of the waves now; the sensation was very peaceful and pleasant. A
+      little breeze played across her face. She drew in deep breaths of the cool
+      air, but she did not open her eyes. Presently a murmur of voices
+      penetrated her consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s coming round again.&rdquo; A man was speaking. &ldquo;Go on fanning her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor young thing! She&rsquo;s had a shaking up and no mistake!&rdquo; This in a
+      woman&rsquo;s voice, very kindly and commiserating. A hand lightly smoothed the
+      fur of her coat-sleeve. &ldquo;Looks as if she was a rich young lady. Her people
+      must be anxious about her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Someone laughed a little, softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, she&rsquo;s a rich enough young lady, Mrs. Braithwaite. Don&rsquo;t you know
+      who it is we&rsquo;ve rescued?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, sir? No. How should I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll tell you. This is Mademoiselle Wielitzska, the famous dancer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, sir! Well, I do declare&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, drink this at once, please.&rdquo; The man&rsquo;s voice cut sharply across the
+      impending flow of garrulous interest, and Magda, who had not gathered the
+      actual sense of the murmured conversation, felt an arm pass behind her
+      head, raising it a little, while once more that hateful glass of sal
+      volatile was held to her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes unclosed fretfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it away,&rdquo; she was beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drink it! Do you hear? Do as you&rsquo;re told!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sharp, authoritative tones startled her into sudden compliance. She
+      opened her mouth and swallowed the contents of the glass with a gulp. Then
+      she looked resentfully at the man whose curt command she had obeyed in
+      such unexpected fashion. Magda Wielitzska was more used to giving orders
+      than to taking them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, that&rsquo;s better,&rdquo; he observed, regarding the empty glass with
+      satisfaction. &ldquo;No, lie still&rdquo;&mdash;as she attempted to rise. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll feel
+      better in a few minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m better now,&rdquo; declared Magda sulkily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head was growing clearer every minute. She was even able to feel an
+      intense irritation against this man who had just compelled her to drink
+      the sal volatile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her unperturbedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you? That&rsquo;s good. Still, you&rsquo;ll stay where you are till I tell you
+      that you may get up.&rdquo; He turned to a comfortable-looking woman who was
+      standing at the foot of the couch on which Magda lay&mdash;a housekeeper
+      of the nice old-fashioned black-satin kind. &ldquo;Now, Mrs. Braithwaite, I
+      think this lady will be glad of a cup of tea by the time you can have one
+      ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a last, admiring glance at the slender figure on the couch the good
+      woman bustled away, leaving Magda alone with her unknown host and burning
+      with indignation at the cool way in which he had ordered her to remain
+      where she was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had his back to her for the moment, having turned to poke up the fire,
+      and Magda raised herself on her elbow, preparatory to getting off the
+      couch. He swung round instantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you to stay where you were,&rdquo; he said peremptorily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t always do as I&rsquo;m told,&rdquo; she retorted with spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will in this instance, though,&rdquo; he rejoined, crossing the room
+      swiftly towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But quick though he was, she was still quicker. Her eyes blazing defiance,
+      she slipped from the couch and stood up before he could reach her side.
+      She took a step forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; she began defiantly. The next moment the whole room seemed to
+      swim round her as she tottered weakly and would have fallen had he not
+      caught her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo; he said sharply. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not fit to stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without more ado he lifted her up in his arms and deposited her again on
+      the couch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I only turned a little giddy,&rdquo; she protested feebly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely. Just as I thought you would. Another time, perhaps, you&rsquo;ll
+      obey orders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood looking down at her with curiously brilliant grey eyes. Magda
+      almost winced under their penetrating glance. She felt as though they
+      could see into her very soul, and she summoned up all her courage to
+      combat the man&rsquo;s strange force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not used to obeying orders,&rdquo; she said impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No?&rdquo;&mdash;with complete indifference. &ldquo;Then it will be a salutary
+      experience for you. Now, lie still until tea comes. I have a letter to
+      write.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked away and, seating himself at a desk in the window, appeared to
+      forget all about her, while his pen travelled swiftly over the sheet of
+      notepaper he had drawn towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda watched him with rebellious eyes. Gradually, however, the rebellion
+      died out of them, replaced by a puzzled look of interest. There was
+      something vaguely familiar about the man. Had she ever seen him before? Or
+      was it merely one of those chance resemblances which one comes across
+      occasionally? That fair hair with its crisp wave, the lean, square-jawed
+      face, above all, the dark-grey eyes with their bright, penetrating glance&mdash;why
+      did she feel as though every detail of the face were already known to her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She failed to place the resemblance, however, and finally, with a little
+      sigh of fatigue, she gave up the attempt. Her brain still felt muddled and
+      confused from the blow she had received. Perhaps later she would be able
+      to think things out more clearly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile she lay still, her eyes resting languidly on the face that so
+      puzzled her. It was not precisely a handsome face, but there was a certain
+      rugged fineness in its lines that lifted it altogether out of the ruck of
+      the ordinary. It held its contradictions, too. Notwithstanding the
+      powerful, determined jaw, the mouth had a sensitive upward curve at the
+      corners which gave it an expression of singular sweetness, and beneath the
+      eyes were little lines which qualified their dominating glance with a hint
+      of whimsical humour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock ticked on solemnly. Presently Mrs. Braithwaite bustled in with
+      the tea and withdrew again. But the man remained absorbed in his writing,
+      apparently oblivious of everything else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda, who was rapidly recovering, eyed the teapot longingly. She was just
+      wondering whether she dared venture to draw his attention to its arrival
+      or whether he would snap her head off if she did, when he looked up
+      suddenly with that swift, hawk-like glance of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ready for some tea?&rdquo; he queried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Am I&rdquo;&mdash;sarcastically&mdash;&ldquo;allowed to get up now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He surveyed her consideringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I think not,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;But as the mountain can&rsquo;t go to
+      Mahomet, Mahomet shall come to the mountain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He crossed the room and, while Magda was still wondering what he proposed
+      to do, he stooped and dexterously wheeled the couch with its light burden
+      close up to the tea-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, I&rsquo;ll fix these cushions,&rdquo; he said. And with deft hands he rearranged
+      the cushions so that they should support her comfortably while she drank
+      her tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would make a very good nurse, I should think,&rdquo; commented Magda,
+      somewhat mollified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; was all he vouchsafed in answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He busied himself pouring out tea, then brought her cup and placed it
+      beside her on a quaint little table of Chinese Chippendale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Braithwaite&mdash;my housekeeper&mdash;is looking after your
+      chauffeur in the kitchen,&rdquo; he observed presently. &ldquo;Possibly you may be
+      interested to hear&rdquo;&mdash;sarcastically&mdash;&ldquo;that he wasn&rsquo;t hurt in the
+      smash-up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda felt herself flushing a little under the implied rebuke&mdash;as
+      much with annoyance as anything else. She knew that she was not really the
+      heartless type of woman he inferred her to be, to whom the fate of her
+      dependents was only of importance in so far as it affected her own
+      personal comfort, and she resented the injustice of his assumption that
+      she was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been so bewildered and dazed by the suddenness of the accident and
+      by the blow she herself had received that she had hardly yet collected her
+      thoughts sufficiently to envisage the possible consequences to others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With feminine perverseness she promptly decided that nothing would induce
+      her to explain matters. If this detestably superior individual chose to
+      think her utterly heartless and selfish&mdash;why, let him think so!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the car?&rdquo; she asked in a tone of deliberate indifference. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s
+      quite as important as the chauffeur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More so, surely?&rdquo;&mdash;with polite irony. &ldquo;The car, I am sorry to say,
+      will take a good deal of repairing. At present it&rsquo;s still in the middle of
+      the street with red lights fore and aft. It can&rsquo;t be moved till the fog
+      lifts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a nuisance! How on earth am I to get home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are such things as taxis&rdquo;&mdash;suggestively. &ldquo;Later, when it
+      clears a bit, I&rsquo;ll send out for one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks. I&rsquo;m afraid I&rsquo;m giving you a lot of trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not hastily disclaim the idea as most men would have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That can&rsquo;t be helped,&rdquo; he returned bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda felt herself colouring again. This man was insufferable!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Evidently the role of knight-errant is new to you,&rdquo; she observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite true. I&rsquo;m not in the habit of rescuing damsels in distress. But how
+      did you guess?&rdquo;&mdash;with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you do it with such a very bad grace,&rdquo; she flashed at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled&mdash;and once more Magda was aware of the sense of familiarity
+      even with that whimsical, crooked smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he replied composedly. &ldquo;Then you think I ought to have been
+      overwhelmed with delight that your car cannoned into my bus&mdash;incidentally
+      I barked my shins badly in the general mix-up&mdash;and that I had to haul
+      you out and bring you round from a faint and so on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question&mdash;without trimmings&mdash;was unanswerable. But to Magda,
+      London&rsquo;s spoiled child, conscious that there were men who would have given
+      half their fortune for the chance to render a like service, and then
+      counted themselves amply rewarded by the subsequent hour or two alone with
+      her, the question was merely provocative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some men would have been,&rdquo; she returned calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Just because you are the Wielitzska, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stared at him in blank astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew&mdash;you knew who I was all the time?&rdquo; she gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly I knew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;then&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why wasn&rsquo;t I suitably impressed?&rdquo; he suggested drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you are intolerable!&rdquo; she exclaimed hotly. &ldquo;You know I didn&rsquo;t mean
+      that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He regarded her quite placidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did. That is precisely what you were thinking. Only you funked
+      putting it into plain words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up and came to her side and stood looking down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it a fact?&rdquo; he insisted. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda looked up, tried to answer in the negative and failed. He had spoken
+      the simple truth and she knew it. But none the less she hated him for it&mdash;hated
+      him for driving her up into a corner and trying to force an acknowledgment
+      from her. She remained obstinately silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away with a short, amused laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you haven&rsquo;t even the courage of your convictions,&rdquo; he commented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda clenched her hands, driving the nails hard into the soft palms of
+      them. He was an absolute boor, this man who had come to her rescue in the
+      fog! He was taking a brutal advantage of their relative positions to speak
+      to her as no man had ever dared to speak to her before. Or woman either!
+      Even old Lady Arabella would hardly have thrust the naked truth so
+      savagely under her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now he had as good as told her that she was a coward! Well, at least
+      he should not have the satisfaction of finding he was right in that
+      respect. She walked straight up to him, her small head held high, in her
+      dark eyes a smouldering fire of fierce resentment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that is what you think, is it?&rdquo; she said in a low voice of bitter
+      anger. &ldquo;Well, I <i>have</i> the courage of my convictions.&rdquo; She paused.
+      Then, with an effort: &ldquo;Yes, I did think you weren&rsquo;t &lsquo;suitably impressed,&rsquo;
+      as you put it. You are perfectly right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw her a swift glance of surprise. Presumably he hadn&rsquo;t anticipated
+      such a candid acknowledgment, but even so he showed no disposition to lay
+      down the probe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t think it possible that anyone could meet the Wielitzska
+      without regarding the event as a piece of stupendous good luck and being
+      appropriately overjoyed, did you?&rdquo; he pursued relentlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda pressed her lips together. Then, with an effort:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she admitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so, just because I treated you as I would any other woman, and made
+      no pretence of fatuous delight over your presence here, you supposed I
+      must be ignorant of your identity? Was that it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda writhed under the cool, ironical questioning with its undercurrent
+      of keen contempt. Each word stung like the flick of a lash on bare flesh.
+      But she forced herself to answer&mdash;and to answer honestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said very low. &ldquo;That was it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Comment is superfluous, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made an impulsive step towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some unfathomable reason she minded&mdash;minded intensely&mdash;that
+      this man should hold her in such poor esteem. She wanted to put herself
+      right with him, to justify her attitude in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever seen me dance?&rdquo; she asked abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surely if he had ever seen that wonderful artistry which she knew was
+      hers, witnessed the half-crazy enthusiasm with which her audience received
+      her, he would make allowance, judge her a little less harshly for what
+      was, after all, a very natural assumption on the part of a stage
+      favourite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An expression of unwilling admiration came into his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I seen you dance?&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;Yes, I have. Several times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not add&mdash;which would have been no more than the truth&mdash;that
+      during her last winter&rsquo;s season at the Imperial Theatre he had hardly
+      missed a dozen performances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;then&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; Magda spoke with a kind of incredulous
+      appeal. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you understand&mdash;just a little?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I understand. I understand perfectly. You&rsquo;ve been spoilt and idolised
+      to such an extent that it seems incredible to you to find a man who
+      doesn&rsquo;t immediately fall down and worship you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda twisted her hands together. Once more he was thrusting at her with
+      the rapier of truth. And it hurt&mdash;hurt inexplicably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I believe that&rsquo;s&mdash;almost true,&rdquo; she acknowledged falteringly.
+      &ldquo;But if you understand so well, couldn&rsquo;t you&mdash;can&rsquo;t you&rdquo;&mdash;with a
+      swift supplicating smile&mdash;&ldquo;be a little more merciful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I&mdash;I <i>hate</i> your type of woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an undertone of passion in his voice. It was almost as though he
+      were fighting against some impulse within himself and the fierceness of
+      the struggle had wrung from him that quick, unvarnished protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you despise dancers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Despise? On the contrary, I revere a dancer&mdash;the dancer who is a
+      genuine artist.&rdquo; He paused, then went on speaking thoughtfully. &ldquo;Dancing,
+      to my mind, is one of the most consistent expressions of beauty. It&rsquo;s the
+      sheer symmetry and grace of that body which was made in God&rsquo;s own likeness
+      developed to the utmost limit of human perfection. . . . And the dancer
+      who desecrates the temple of his body is punished proportionately. No art
+      is a harder taskmistress than the art of dancing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda listened breathlessly. This man understood&mdash;oh, he understood!
+      Then why did he &ldquo;hate her type of woman&rdquo;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost as though he had read her thoughts he pursued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a dancer, an artist&mdash;I acknowledge the Wielitzska to be supreme.
+      But as a woman&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes? As a woman? Go on. What do you know about me as a woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed disagreeably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d judge that in the making of you your soul got left out,&rdquo; he said
+      drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda forced a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I&rsquo;m very stupid. Do you mind explaining?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it need explanation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;please!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;one of my best pals was a man who loved you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda threw him a glance of veiled mockery from beneath her long white
+      lids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely that should be a recommendation&mdash;something in my favour?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes hardened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had dealt honestly with him, it might have been. But you drew him
+      on, <i>made</i> him care for you in spite of himself. And then, when he
+      was yours, body and soul, you turned him down! Turned him down&mdash;pretended
+      you were surprised&mdash;you&rsquo;d never meant anything! All the old rotten
+      excuses a woman offers when she has finished playing with a man and got
+      bored with him. . . . I&rsquo;ve no place for your kind of woman. I tell you&rdquo;&mdash;his
+      tone deepening in intensity&mdash;&ldquo;the wife of any common labourer, who
+      cooks and washes and sews for her man day in, day out, is worth a dozen of
+      you! She knows that love&rsquo;s worth having and worth working for. And she
+      works. You don&rsquo;t. Women like you take a man&rsquo;s soul and play with it, and
+      when you&rsquo;ve defiled and defaced it out of all likeness to the soul God
+      gave him, you hand it back to him and think you clear yourself by saying
+      you &lsquo;didn&rsquo;t mean it&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bitter speech, harsh with the deeply rooted pain and resentment which
+      had prompted it, battered through Magda&rsquo;s weak defences and found her
+      helpless and unarmed. Once she had uttered a faint cry of protest, tried
+      to check him, but he had not heeded it. After that she had listened with
+      bent head, her breath coming and going unevenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had finished, the face she lifted to him was white as milk and her
+      mouth trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks. Well, I&rsquo;ve heard my character now,&rdquo; she said unsteadily. &ldquo;I&mdash;I
+      didn&rsquo;t know anyone thought of me&mdash;like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her&mdash;at the drooping lines of her figure, the quivering
+      lips, at the half-stunned expression of the dark eyes. And suddenly
+      realisation of the enormity of all he had said seemed to come to him. But
+      he did not appear to be at all overwhelmed by it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I&rsquo;ve transgressed beyond forgiveness now,&rdquo; he said curtly.
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;you rather asked for it, you know, didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she admitted. &ldquo;I think I did&mdash;ask for it.&rdquo; Suddenly she threw
+      up her head and faced him. &ldquo;If&mdash;if it&rsquo;s any satisfaction to you to
+      know it, I think you&rsquo;ve paid off at least some of your friend&rsquo;s score.&rdquo;
+       She looked at him with a curious, almost piteous surprise. &ldquo;You&mdash;you&rsquo;ve
+      hurt me!&rdquo; she whispered passionately. She turned to the door. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; He stopped her with a hand on her arm, and she obeyed his touch
+      submissively. For a moment he stood looking down at her with an oddly
+      conflicting expression on his face. It was as though he were arguing out
+      some point with himself. All at once he seemed to come to a decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look, you can&rsquo;t go till the fog clears a bit. Suppose we call a truce?
+      Sit down here&rdquo;&mdash;pulling forward a big easy-chair&mdash;&ldquo;and for the
+      rest of your visit let&rsquo;s behave as though we didn&rsquo;t heartily disapprove of
+      one another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda sank into the chair with that supple grace of limb which made it
+      sheer delight to watch her movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never said I disapproved of you,&rdquo; she remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seated himself opposite her, on the other side of the hearth, and
+      regarded her quizzically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. But you do, all the same. Naturally, you would after my candour! And
+      I&rsquo;d rather you did, too,&rdquo; he added abruptly. &ldquo;But at least you&rsquo;ve no more
+      devoted admirer of your art. You know, dancing appeals to me in a way that
+      nothing else does. My job&rsquo;s painting&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;House-painting?&rdquo; interpolated Magda with a smile. Her spirits were rising
+      a little under his new kindliness of manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed with sudden boyishness and nodded gaily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes&mdash;so long as people continue to cover their wall-space with
+      portraits of themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda wondered whether he was possibly a well-known painter. But he gave
+      her no chance to find out, for he continued speaking almost at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love my art&mdash;but a still, flat canvas, however beautifully
+      painted, isn&rsquo;t comparable with the moving, living interpretation of beauty
+      possible to a dancer. I remember, years ago&mdash;ten years, quite&mdash;seeing
+      a kiddy dancing in a wood.&rdquo; Magda leaned forward. &ldquo;It was the prettiest
+      thing imaginable. She was all by herself, a little, thin, black-and-white
+      wisp of a thing, with a small, tense face and eyes like black smudges. And
+      she danced as though it were more natural to her than walking. I got her
+      to pose for me at the foot of a tree. The picture of her was my first real
+      success. So you see, I&rsquo;ve good reason to be grateful to one dancer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda caught her breath. She knew now why the man&rsquo;s face had seemed so
+      familiar! He was the artist she had met in the wood at Coverdale the day
+      Sieur Hugh had beaten her&mdash;her <i>&ldquo;Saint Michel&rdquo;</i>! She was
+      conscious of a queer little thrill of excitement as the truth dawned upon
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the picture called?&rdquo; she asked, forcing herself to speak
+      composedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The Repose of Titania.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded. The picture was a very well-known one. Everybody knew by whom
+      it had been painted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you must be Michael Quarrington?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. So now, we&rsquo;ve been introduced, haven&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed almost as if he had repented of his former churlish manner, and
+      were endeavouring to atone for it. He talked to her about his work a
+      little, then slid easily into the allied topics of music and books.
+      Finally he took her into an adjoining room, and showed her a small,
+      beloved collection of coloured prints which he had gathered together,
+      recounting various amusing little incidents which had attended the
+      acquisition of this or that one among them with much gusto and a certain
+      quaint humour that she was beginning to recognise as characteristic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda, to whom the study of old prints was by no means an unknown
+      territory, was thoroughly entertained. She found herself enthusing,
+      discussing, arguing points, in a happy spirit of <i>camaraderie</i> with
+      her host which, half an hour earlier, she would have believed impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The end came abruptly. Quarrington chanced to glance out of the window
+      where the street lamps were now glimmering serenely through a clear dusk.
+      The fog had lifted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps it&rsquo;s just as well,&rdquo; he said shortly. &ldquo;I was beginning&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      checked himself and glanced at her with a sudden stormy light in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beginning&mdash;what?&rdquo; she asked a little breathlessly. The atmosphere
+      had all at once grown tense with some unlooked-for stress of emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;tell me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was beginning to forget that you&rsquo;re the &lsquo;type of woman I hate,&rsquo;&rdquo; he
+      said. And strode out of the room, leaving her startled and unaccountably
+      shaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came back he had completely reassumed his former non-committal
+      manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a taxi waiting for you,&rdquo; he announced. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s perfectly clear
+      outside now, so I think you will be spared any further adventures on your
+      way home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He accompanied her into the hall, and as they shook hands she murmured a
+      little diffidently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps we shall meet again some time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew back sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, we shan&rsquo;t meet again.&rdquo; There was something purposeful, almost
+      vehemently so, in the curtly spoken words. &ldquo;If I had thought that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; she prompted. &ldquo;If you had?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I&rsquo;d thought that,&rdquo; he said quietly, &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t have dared to risk
+      this last half-hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A momentary silence fell between them. Then, with a shrug, he added
+      lightly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we shan&rsquo;t meet again. I&rsquo;m leaving England next week. That settles
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without giving her time to make any rejoinder he opened the street-door
+      and stood aside for her to pass out. A minute later she was in the taxi,
+      and he was standing bare-headed on the pavement beside it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Good-bye&mdash;<i>Saint Michel</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hand closed round hers in a grip that almost crushed the slender
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>You</i>!&rdquo; he cried hoarsely. There was a note of sudden, desperate
+      recognition in his voice. &ldquo;<i>You</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Magda smiled into his startled eyes&mdash;the grey eyes that had burned
+      their way into her memory ten years ago&mdash;the taxi slid away into the
+      lamp-lit dusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      FRIARS&rsquo; HOLM
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      With a grinding of brakes the taxi slowed up and came to a standstill at
+      Friars&rsquo; Holm, the quaint old Queen Anne house which Magda had acquired in
+      north London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once within the high wall enclosing the old-world garden in which it
+      stood, it was easy enough to imagine oneself a hundred miles from town.
+      Fir and cedar sentinelled the house, and in the centre of the garden there
+      was a lawn of wonderful old turf, hedged round in summer by a riot of
+      roses so that it gleamed like a great square emerald set in a jewelled
+      frame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda entered the house and, crossing the cheerfully lit hall, threw open
+      the door of a room whence issued the sound of someone&mdash;obviously a
+      first-rate musician&mdash;playing the piano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she opened the door the twilight, shot by quivering spears of light
+      from the fire&rsquo;s dancing flames, seemed to rush out at her, bearing with it
+      the mournful, heart-shaking music of some Russian melody. Magda uttered a
+      soft, half-amused exclamation of impatience and switched on the lights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All in the dark, Davilof?&rdquo; she asked in a practical tone of voice
+      calculated to disintegrate any possible fabric of romance woven of
+      firelight and fifths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flood of electric light revealed a large, lofty room, devoid of
+      furniture except for a few comfortable chairs grouped together at one end
+      of it, and for a magnificent grand piano at the other. The room appeared
+      doubly large by reason of the fact that the whole of one wall was taken up
+      by four immense panels of looking-glass, cleverly fitted together so that
+      in effect the entire wall was composed of a single enormous mirror. It was
+      in front of this mirror that Magda practised. The remaining three walls
+      were hung with priceless old tapestry woven of sombre green and greys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she entered the room a man rose quickly from the piano and came forward
+      to meet her. There was a kind of repressed eagerness in the action, as
+      though he had been waiting with impatience for her coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a striking-looking man, tall, and built with the slender-limbed
+      grace of a foreigner. Golden-brown hair, worn rather longer than fashion
+      dictates, waved crisply over his head, and the moustache and small Vandyck
+      beard which partially concealed the lower part of his face were of the
+      same warmly golden colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The word &ldquo;musician&rdquo; was written all over him&mdash;in the supple, capable
+      hands, in the careless stoop of his loosely knit shoulders, and, more than
+      all, in the imaginative hazel eyes with their curious mixture of
+      abstraction and fire. They rather suggested lightning playing over some
+      dreaming pool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda shook hands with him carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall have to postpone the practice as I&rsquo;m so late, Davilof,&rdquo; she
+      said. &ldquo;I had a smash-up in the fog. My car ran into a bus&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are hurt?&rdquo; Davilof broke in sharply, his voice edged with fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no. I was stunned for a minute and then afterwards I fainted, but I&rsquo;m
+      quite intact otherwise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are sure&mdash;sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite.&rdquo; Hearing the keen anxiety in his tone she smiled at him
+      reassuringly and held out a friendly hand. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m all right&mdash;really,
+      Antoine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the hand in both his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God!&rdquo; he said fervently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Antoine Davilof had lived so long in England that he spoke without trace
+      of accent, though he sometimes gave an unEnglish twist to the phrasing of
+      a sentence, but his quick emotion and the simplicity with which he made no
+      effort to conceal it stamped him unmistakably as a foreigner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little touched, Magda allowed her hand to remain in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Davilof!&rdquo; She chided him laughingly. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re quite absurdly upset
+      about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not have borne it if you had been hurt,&rdquo; he declared vehemently.
+      &ldquo;You ought not to go about by yourself. It&rsquo;s horrible to think of <i>you</i>&mdash;in
+      a street accident&mdash;alone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I wasn&rsquo;t alone. A man who was in the other half of the accident&mdash;the
+      motor-bus half&mdash;played the good Samaritan and carried me into his
+      house, which happened to be close by. He looked after me very well, I
+      assure you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof released her hand abruptly. His face darkened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this man? Who was he?&rdquo; he demanded jealously. &ldquo;I hate to think of any
+      man&mdash;a stranger&mdash;touching you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense! Would you have preferred me to remain lying in the middle of
+      the road?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know I would not. But I&rsquo;d rather some woman had looked after you. Do
+      you know who the man was?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not&mdash;at first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you do now. Who was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one you know, I think,&rdquo; she answered provokingly. His eyes flashed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you making a mystery about it?&rdquo; he asked suspiciously. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re
+      keeping something from me! Who was this man? Tell me his name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda froze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Antoine! Why this air of high tragedy?&rdquo; she said lightly. &ldquo;And
+      what on earth has it to do with you who the man was?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what it has to do with me&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With my accompanist?&rdquo;&mdash;raising her brows delicately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;&mdash;with sudden violence&mdash;&ldquo;With the man who loves you! I&rsquo;m
+      that&mdash;and you know it, Magda! Could I play for you as I do if I did
+      not understand your every mood and emotion? You know I couldn&rsquo;t! And then
+      you ask what it matters to me when some unknown man has held you in his
+      arms, carried you into his house&mdash;kissed you, perhaps, while you were
+      unconscious!&rdquo;&mdash;his imagination running suddenly riot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop! You&rsquo;re going too far!&rdquo; Magda checked him sharply. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re always
+      telling me you love me. I don&rsquo;t want to hear it.&rdquo; She paused, then added
+      cruelly: &ldquo;I want you for playing my accompaniments, Davilof. That&rsquo;s all.
+      Do you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes blazed. With a quick movement he stepped in front of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a man&mdash;as well as an accompanist,&rdquo; he said hoarsely. &ldquo;One day
+      you&rsquo;ll have to reckon with the man, Magda!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a new, unaccustomed quality in his voice. Hitherto she had not
+      taken his ardour very seriously. He was a Pole and a musician, with all
+      the temperament that might be expected from such a combination, and she
+      had let it go at that, pushing his love aside with the careless hand of a
+      woman to whom the incense of men&rsquo;s devotion has been so freely offered as
+      to have become commonplace. But now the new ring of determination, of
+      something unexpectedly dogged in his voice, poignantly recalled the
+      warning uttered by Lady Arabella earlier in the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s nerve wavered. A momentary panic assailed her. Then she
+      intuitively struck the right note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Davilof, don&rsquo;t worry me now&mdash;not to-night!&rdquo; she said
+      appealingly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m tired. It&rsquo;s been a bit of a strain&mdash;the accident
+      and&mdash;and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me!&rdquo; In a moment he was all penitence&mdash;overwhelmed with
+      compunction. &ldquo;Forget it! I&rsquo;ve behaved like a brute. I ought to have seen
+      that you were worn out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was beside himself with remorse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, Antoine.&rdquo; She smiled forgiveness at him. &ldquo;Only I felt&mdash;I
+      felt I couldn&rsquo;t stand any more to-night. I suppose it&rsquo;s taken it out of me
+      more than I knew&mdash;the shock, and fainting like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it has. You ought to rest. I wish Mrs. Grey were in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. The maid told me she was out when I came, and she hasn&rsquo;t returned
+      yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s been held up by the fog, I expect,&rdquo; answered Magda. &ldquo;Never mind.
+      I&rsquo;ll sit here&mdash;in this big chair&mdash;and you shall switch off these
+      glaring lights and play to me, Antoine. That will rest me better than
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a little sorry for the man&mdash;trying to make up to him for the
+      pain she knew she had inflicted a moment before, and there was a dangerous
+      sweetness in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof&rsquo;s eyes kindled. He stooped swiftly and kissed her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too good to me!&rdquo; he said huskily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, while she lay back restfully in a chair which he heaped with
+      cushions for her, he played to her, improvising as he played&mdash;slow,
+      dreaming melodies that soothed and lulled but held always an undertone of
+      passionate appeal. The man himself spoke in his music; his love pleaded
+      with her in its soft, beseeching cadences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Magda failed to hear it. Her thoughts were elsewhere&mdash;back with
+      the man who, that afternoon, had first rescued her and afterwards treated
+      her with blunt candour that had been little less than brutal. She felt
+      sore and resentful&mdash;smarting under the same dismayed sense of
+      surprise and injustice as a child may feel who receives a blow instead of
+      an anticipated caress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indulged and flattered by everyone with whom she came in contact, it had
+      been like a slap in the face to find someone&mdash;more particularly
+      someone of the masculine persuasion&mdash;who, far from bestowing the
+      admiration and homage she had learned to look for as a right, quite openly
+      regarded her with contemptuous disapproval&mdash;and made no bones about
+      telling her so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His indictment of her had left nothing to the imagination. She felt
+      stunned, and, for the first time in her life, a little unwilling doubt of
+      herself assaulted her. Was she really anything at all like the woman
+      Michael Quarrington had pictured? A woman without heart or conscience&mdash;the
+      &ldquo;kind of woman he had no place for&rdquo;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She winced a little at the thought. It was strange how much she minded his
+      opinion&mdash;the opinion of a man whom she had only met by chance and
+      whom she was very unlikely ever to meet again. He himself had certainly
+      evinced no anxiety to renew the acquaintance. And this, too, fretted her
+      in some unaccountable way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not analyse her own emotions. She felt hurt and angry and
+      ashamed in the same breath&mdash;and all because an unknown man, an
+      absolute stranger, had told her in no measured terms exactly what he
+      thought of her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only&mdash;he was not really quite a stranger! He was the &ldquo;Saint Michel&rdquo;
+       of her childhood days, the man with whom she had unconsciously compared
+      those other men whom the passing years had brought into her life&mdash;and
+      always to their disadvantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first time she had seen him in the woods at Coverdale was the day when
+      Hugh Vallincourt had beaten her; she had been smarting with the physical
+      pain and humiliation of it. And now, this second time they had met, she
+      had been once more forced to endure that strange and unaccustomed
+      experience called pain. Only this time she felt as though her soul had
+      been beaten, and it was Saint Michel himself who had scourged her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door at the far end of the room opened suddenly and a welcome voice
+      broke cheerfully across the bitter current of her thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, here I am at last! Has Magda arrived home yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof ceased playing abruptly and the speaker paused on the threshold of
+      the room, peering into the dusk. Magda rose from her seat by the fire and
+      switched on one of the electric burners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, here I am,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Did you get held up by the fog, Gillian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The newcomer advanced into the circle of light. She was a small, slight
+      woman, though the furs she was wearing served to conceal the slenderness
+      of her figure. Someone had once said of her that &ldquo;Mrs. Grey was a charming
+      study in sepia.&rdquo; The description was not inapt. Eyes and hair were brown
+      as a beechnut, and a scattering of golden-brown freckles emphasised the
+      warm tints of a skin as soft as velvet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I get held up?&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;My dear, I walked miles&mdash;miles, I
+      tell you!&mdash;in that hideous fog. And then found I&rsquo;d been walking
+      entirely in the wrong direction! I fetched up somewhere down Notting Hill
+      Gate way, and at last by the help of heaven and a policeman discovered the
+      Tube station. So here I am. But if I could have come across a taxi I&rsquo;d
+      have been ready to <i>buy</i> it, I was so tired!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor dear!&rdquo; Magda was duly sympathetic. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have some tea. You&rsquo;ll
+      stay, Davilof?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think not, thanks. I&rsquo;m dining out&rdquo;&mdash;with a glance at his watch.
+      &ldquo;And I shan&rsquo;t have too much time to get home and change as it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda held out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, then. Thank you for keeping me company till Gillian came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a sudden sweetness of gratitude in the glance she threw at him
+      which fired his blood. He caught her hand and carried it to his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thanks are mine,&rdquo; he said in a stifled voice. And swinging round on
+      his heel he left the room abruptly, quite omitting to make his farewells
+      to Mrs. Grey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter looked across at Magda with a gleam of mirth in her brown eyes.
+      Then she shook her head reprovingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you never learn wisdom, Magda?&rdquo; she asked, subsiding into a chair
+      and extending a pair of neatly shod feet to the fire&rsquo;s warmth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda laughed a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it won&rsquo;t be the fault of my friends if I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; she returned
+      ruefully. &ldquo;Marraine expended a heap of eloquence over my misdeeds this
+      afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Arabella? I&rsquo;m glad to hear it. Though she has about as much chance
+      of producing any permanent result as the gentleman who occupied his
+      leisure time in rolling a stone uphill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cat!&rdquo; Magda made a small grimace at her. &ldquo;Ah, here&rsquo;s some tea!&rdquo; Melrose,
+      known among Magda&rsquo;s friends as &ldquo;the perfect butler,&rdquo; had come noiselessly
+      into the room and was arranging the tea paraphernalia with the reverential
+      precision of one making preparation for some mystic rite. &ldquo;Perhaps when
+      you&rsquo;ve had a cup you&rsquo;ll feel more amiable&mdash;that is, if I give you
+      lots of sugar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the text of Lady Arabella&rsquo;s homily?&rdquo; inquired Gillian presently,
+      as she sipped her tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that boy, Kit Raynham,&rdquo; replied Magda impatiently. &ldquo;It appears I&rsquo;m
+      blighting his young prospects&mdash;his professional ones, I mean. Though
+      I don&rsquo;t quite see why an attack of calf-love for me should wreck his work
+      as an architect!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do&mdash;if he spends his time sketching &lsquo;the Wielitzska&rsquo; in half a
+      dozen different poses instead of making plans for a garden city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled involuntarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he do that?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But how ridiculous of him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s merely indicative of his state of mind,&rdquo; returned Gillian. She gazed
+      meditatively into the fire. &ldquo;You know, Magda, I think it will mean the end
+      of our friendship when Coppertop reaches years of discretion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Coppertop was Gillian&rsquo;s small son, a young person of seven, who owed his
+      cognomen to the crop of flaming red curls which adorned his round button
+      of a head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pouf! By the time that happens I shall be quite old&mdash;and harmless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your type is never harmless, my dear. Unless you fall in love, you&rsquo;ll be
+      an unexploded mine till the day of your death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That nearly occurred to-day, by the way,&rdquo; vouchsafed Magda tranquilly.
+      &ldquo;In which case,&rdquo;&mdash;smiling&mdash;&ldquo;you&rsquo;d have been spared any further
+      anxiety on Coppertop&rsquo;s account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; demanded Gillian, startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that I&rsquo;ve had an adventure this afternoon. We got smashed up in
+      the fog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear! How dreadful! How did it happen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something collided with the car and shot us bang into a motor-bus, and
+      then, almost at the same moment, something else charged into us from
+      behind. So there was a pretty fair mix-up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you tell me before! Was anyone badly hurt? And how did you get
+      home?&rdquo; Gillian&rsquo;s questions poured out excitedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no one was badly hurt. I got a blow on the head, and fainted. So a
+      man who&rsquo;d been inside the bus we ran into performed the rescuing stunt.
+      His house was close by, and he carried me in there and proceeded to dose
+      me with sal volatile first and tea afterwards. He wound up by presenting
+      me with an unvarnished summary of his opinion of the likes of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an unwontedly hard note in Magda&rsquo;s voice as she detailed the
+      afternoon&rsquo;s events, and Gillian glanced at her sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand. Was he a strait-laced prig who disapproved of
+      dancing, do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing of the sort. He had a most comprehensive appreciation of the art
+      of dancing. His disapproval was entirely concentrated on me&mdash;personally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how could it be&mdash;since he didn&rsquo;t know you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda gave a little grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean it would have been quite comprehensible if he <i>had</i> known
+      me?&rdquo; she observed ironically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be so provoking! You know perfectly well what I meant! You deserve
+      that I should answer &lsquo;yes&rsquo; to that question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would&mdash;only I happen to know you a good deal better than you know
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you know about me, then, that I don&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s nice brown eyes smiled across at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that, somewhere inside you, you&rsquo;ve got the capacity for being as
+      sweet and kind and tender and self-sacrificing as any woman living&mdash;if
+      only something would happen to make it worth while. I wish&mdash;I wish to
+      heaven you&rsquo;d fall in love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not likely to. I&rsquo;m in love with my art. It gives you a better return
+      than love for any man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Gillian quietly. &ldquo;No. You&rsquo;re wrong. Tony died when we&rsquo;d
+      only been married a year. But that year was worth the whole rest of life
+      put together. And&mdash;I&rsquo;ve got Coppertop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda leaned forward suddenly and kissed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Gillyflower!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so glad you feel like that&mdash;bless
+      you! I wish I could. But I never shall. I was soured in the making, I
+      think&rdquo;&mdash;laughing rather forlornly. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t trust love. It&rsquo;s the
+      thing that hurts and tortures and breaks a woman&mdash;as my mother was
+      hurt and tortured and broken.&rdquo; She paused. &ldquo;No, preserve me from falling
+      in love!&rdquo; she added more lightly. &ldquo;&lsquo;A Loaf of Bread, and Thou beside me in
+      the Wilderness&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t appeal to me in the least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will one day,&rdquo; retorted Gillian oracularly. &ldquo;In the meantime you might
+      go on telling me about the man who fished you out of the smash. Was he
+      young? And good-looking? Perhaps he is destined to be your fate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was rather over thirty, I should think. And good-looking&mdash;quite.
+      But he &lsquo;hates my type of woman,&rsquo; you&rsquo;ll be interested to know. So that you
+      can put your high hopes back on the top shelf again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; declared Gillian briskly. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing like beginning
+      with a little aversion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled reminiscently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;d been present at our interview, you&rsquo;d realise that &lsquo;a little
+      aversion&rsquo; is a cloying euphemism for the feeling exhibited by my late
+      preserver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was he like, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At first, because I wouldn&rsquo;t take the sal volatile&mdash;you know how I
+      detest the stuff!&mdash;and sit still where he&rsquo;d put me like a good little
+      girl, he ordered me about as though I were a child of six. He absolutely
+      bullied me! Then it apparently occurred to him to take my moral welfare in
+      hand, and I should judge he considered that Jezebel and Delilah were
+      positively provincial in their methods as compared with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense! If he didn&rsquo;t know you, why should he suppose himself competent
+      to form any opinion about you at all&mdash;good, bad, or indifferent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; replied Magda slowly. Then, speaking with sudden defiance:
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do know! A pal of his had&mdash;had cared about me some time or
+      other, and I&rsquo;d turned him down. That&rsquo;s why.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Magda!&rdquo; There was both reproach and understanding in Gillian&rsquo;s voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda shrugged her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if he wanted to pay off old scores on his pal&rsquo;s behalf, he
+      succeeded,&rdquo; she said mirthlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian looked at her in surprise. She had never seen Magda quite like
+      this before; her sombre eyes held a curious strained look like those of
+      some wild thing of the forest caught in a trap and in pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you don&rsquo;t know who he was&mdash;I mean the man who came to your help
+      and then lectured you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do. It was Michael Quarrington, the artist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael Quarrington? Why, he has the reputation of being a most charming
+      man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda stared into the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say he might have a great deal of charm if he cared to exert it.
+      Apparently, however, he didn&rsquo;t think I was worth the effort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN THE MIRROR ROOM
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Shouts of mirth came jubilantly from the Mirror Room as Davilof made his
+      way thither one afternoon a few days later. The shrill peal of a child&rsquo;s
+      laughter rose gaily above the lower note of women&rsquo;s voices, and when the
+      accompanist opened the door it was to discover Magda completely engrossed
+      in giving Coppertop a first dancing lesson, while Gillian sat stitching
+      busily away at some small nether garments afflicted with rents and tears
+      in sundry places. Every now and again she glanced up with softly amused
+      eyes to watch her son&rsquo;s somewhat unsteady efforts in the Terpsichorean
+      art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coppertop, a slim young reed in his bright green knitted jersey, was
+      clinging with one hand to a wooden bar attached to the wall which served
+      Magda for the &ldquo;bar practice&rdquo; which constitutes part of every dancer&rsquo;s
+      daily work, while Magda, holding his other hand in hers, essayed to
+      instruct him in the principle of &ldquo;turning out&rdquo;&mdash;that flexible turning
+      of the knees towards the side which gives so much facility of movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Point your toes sideways&mdash;so,&rdquo; directed Magda. &ldquo;This one towards me&mdash;like
+      that.&rdquo; She stooped and placed his foot in position. &ldquo;Now, kick out! Try to
+      kick me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Coppertop tried&mdash;and succeeded, greeting his accomplishment with
+      shrieks of delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was just at this moment that Davilof appeared on the scene, pausing
+      abruptly in the doorway as he caught sight of Magda&rsquo;s laughing face bent
+      above the fiery red head. There was something very charming in her
+      expression of eager, light-hearted abandonment to the fun of the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of the opening door Coppertop wriggled out of her grasp like
+      an eel, twisting his lithe young body round to see who the new arrival
+      might be. His face fell woefully as he caught sight of Davilof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you can&rsquo;t <i>never</i> have come already to play for the Fairy Lady!&rdquo;
+       he exclaimed in accents of dire disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fairy Lady&rdquo; was the name he had bestowed upon Magda when, very early in
+      their acquaintance, she had performed for his sole and particular benefit
+      a maturer edition of the dance she had evolved as a child&mdash;the dance
+      with which she had so much astonished Lady Arabella. Nowadays it figured
+      prominently on her programmes as &ldquo;The Hamadryad,&rdquo; and was enormously
+      popular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not never three o&rsquo;clock!&rdquo; wailed Coppertop disconsolately, as
+      Davilof dangled his watch in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is, small son,&rdquo; interpolated Gillian, gathering together her
+      sewing materials. &ldquo;Come along. We must leave the Fairy Lady to practise
+      now, because she&rsquo;s got to dance to half the people in London to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must I really go?&rdquo; appealed Coppertop, beseeching Magda with a pair of
+      melting green eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped a light kiss on the top of his red curls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Fraid so, Coppertop,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t want Fairy Lady to dance
+      badly and tumble down, would you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Coppertop was not to be taken in so easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; he scoffed. &ldquo;You <i>couldn&rsquo;t</i> tumble down&mdash;not never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, you mustn&rsquo;t be greedy, Topkins,&rdquo; urged Magda persuasively.
+      &ldquo;Remember all the grown-up people who want me to dance to them! I can&rsquo;t
+      keep it all for one little boy.&rdquo; He stared at her for a moment in silence.
+      Suddenly he flung his arms round her slender hips, clutching her tightly,
+      and hid his face against her skirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Fairy Lady, you are so booful&mdash;<i>so booful</i>!&rdquo; he whispered
+      in a smothered voice. Then, with a big sigh: &ldquo;But one little boy won&rsquo;t be
+      greedy.&rdquo; He turned to his mother. &ldquo;Come along, mummie!&rdquo; he commanded
+      superbly. And trotted out of the room beside her with his small head well
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left alone, Davilof and Magda smiled across at one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Funny little person, isn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The musician nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grown-ups might possibly envy the freedom of speech permitted to
+      childhood,&rdquo; he said quietly. Then, still more quietly: &ldquo;&lsquo;Fairy Lady, you
+      are so beautiful!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re not a child, so don&rsquo;t poach Coppertop&rsquo;s preserves!&rdquo; retorted
+      Magda swiftly. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s get to work, Antoine. I&rsquo;ll just change into my
+      practice-kit and then I want to run through the &lsquo;Swan-Maiden&rsquo;s&rsquo; dance. You
+      fix the lighting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She vanished into an adjoining room, while Davilof proceeded to switch off
+      most of the burners, leaving only those which illumined the space in front
+      of the great mirror. The remainder of the big room receded into a grey
+      twilight encircling the patch of luminance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Magda reappeared wearing a loose tunic of some white silken
+      material, girdled at the waist, but yet leaving her with perfect freedom
+      of limb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof watched her as she came down the long room with the feather-light,
+      floating walk of the trained dancer, and something leaped into his eyes
+      that was very different from mere admiration&mdash;something that, taken
+      in conjunction with Lady Arabella&rsquo;s caustic comments of a few days ago,
+      might have warned Magda had she seen it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with her thoughts preoccupied by the work in hand she failed to notice
+      it, and, advancing till she faced the great mirror, she executed a few
+      steps in front of it, humming the motif of <i>The Swan-Maiden</i> music
+      under her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Play, Antoine,&rdquo; she threw at him over her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof hesitated, made a movement towards her, then wheeled round
+      abruptly and went to the piano. A moment later the exquisite, smoothly
+      rippling music which he had himself written for the Swan-Maiden dance
+      purled out into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story of the Swan-Maiden had been taken from an old legend which told
+      of a beautiful maiden and the youth who loved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to the narrative, the pair were unfortunate enough to incur the
+      displeasure of the evil fairy Ritmagar, and the latter, in order to punish
+      them, transformed the maiden into a white swan, thus separating the
+      hapless lovers for ever. Afterwards, the disconsolate youth, bemoaning the
+      cruelty of fate, used to wander daily along the shores of the lake where
+      the maiden was compelled to dwell in her guise of a swan, and eventually
+      Ritmagar, apparently touched to a limited compassion, permitted the
+      Swan-Maiden to resume her human form once a day during the hour
+      immediately preceding sunset. But the condition was attached that she must
+      always return to the lake ere the sun sank below the horizon, when she
+      would be compelled to reassume her shape of a swan. Should she fail to
+      return by the appointed time, death would be the inevitable consequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every reader of fairy tales&mdash;and certainly anyone who knows anything
+      at all about being in love&mdash;can guess the sequel. Comes a day when
+      the lovers, absorbed in their love-making, forget the flight of time, so
+      that the unhappy maiden returns to the shore of the lake to find that the
+      sun has already dipped below the horizon. She falls on her knees,
+      beseeching the witch Ritmagar for mercy, but no answer is vouchsafed, and
+      gradually the Swan-Maiden finds herself growing weaker and weaker, until
+      at last death claims her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dance, based upon this legend, had been devised for Magda in conjunction
+      with Vladimir Ravinski, the brilliant Russian dancer, he taking the
+      lover&rsquo;s part, and the whole tragic little drama was designed to terminate
+      with a solo dance by Magda as the dying Swan-Maiden. Davilof had written
+      the music for it, and the dance was to be performed at the Imperial
+      Theatre for the first time the following week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof played ever more and more softly as the dance drew to its close.
+      The note of lament sounded with increasing insistence through the slowing
+      ripple of the accompaniment, and at last, as Magda sank to the ground in a
+      piteous attitude that somehow suggested both the drooping grace of a dying
+      swan and the innocence and helplessness of the hapless maiden, the music
+      died away into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little pause. Then Davilof sprang to this feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By God, Magda! You&rsquo;re magnificent!&rdquo; he exclaimed with the spontaneous
+      appreciation of one genuine artist for another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda raised her head and looked up at him with vague, startled eyes. She
+      still preserved the pose on which the dance had ceased, and had hardly yet
+      returned to the world of reality from that magic world into which her art
+      had transported her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The burning enthusiasm in Davilof&rsquo;s excited tones recalled her abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it good&mdash;was it really good?&rdquo; she asked a little shakily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It was superb!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held out his hands and she laid hers in them without thinking, allowing
+      him to draw her to her feet beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood quite still, breathing rather quickly from her recent exertions
+      and supported by the close clasp of his hands on hers. Her lips were a
+      little parted, her slight breast rose and fell unevenly, and a faint
+      rose-colour glowed beneath the ivory pallor of her skin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Davilof&rsquo;s grip tightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You beautiful thing!&rdquo; he exclaimed huskily. &ldquo;Magda&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment, with a swift, ungoverned movement, he caught her to him
+      and was crushing her in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Antoine! . . . Let me go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the pressure of her soft, pulsing body against his own sent the blood
+      racing through his veins. He smothered the words with his mouth on hers,
+      kissing her breathless with a headlong passion that defied restraint&mdash;slaking
+      his longing for her as a man denied water may at last slake his thirst at
+      some suddenly discovered pool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda felt herself powerless as a leaf caught up in a whirlwind&mdash;swept
+      suddenly into the hot vehemence of a man&rsquo;s desire while she was yet
+      unstrung and quivering from the emotional strain of the Swan-Maiden&rsquo;s
+      dance, every nerve of her quickened to a tingling sentience by the
+      underlying passion of the music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an effort she wrenched herself out of his arms and ran from him
+      blindly into the furthest corner of the room. She had no clear idea of
+      making for the door, but only of getting away&mdash;anywhere&mdash;heedless
+      of direction. An instant later she was standing with her back to the wall,
+      leaning helplessly against the ancient tapestry that clothed it. In that
+      dim corner of the vast room her slim figure showed faintly limned against
+      its blurred greens and greys like that of some pallid statue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go . . . go away!&rdquo; she gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof laughed triumphantly. Nothing could hold him now. The barriers of
+      use and habit were down irrevocably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go away?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He strode straight across the space that intervened between them. She
+      watched his coming with dilated eyes. Her hands, palms downwards, were
+      pressed hard against the woven surface of the tapestry on either side of
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he approached she shrank back, her whole body taut and straining
+      against the wall. Then she bent her head and flung up her arms, curving
+      them to shield her face. Davilof could just see the rounded whiteness of
+      them, glimmering like pale pearl next the satin sheen of night-black hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a stifled cry he sprang forward and gripped them in his strong,
+      supple hands, drawing them down inexorably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kiss me!&rdquo; he demanded fiercely. &ldquo;Magda, kiss me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head, struggling for speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced desperately round, but he had her hemmed in, prisoned against
+      the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kiss me!&rdquo; he repeated unsteadily. &ldquo;You&mdash;you&rsquo;d better, Magda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I don&rsquo;t?&rdquo; she forced the words through her stiff lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you will!&rdquo; he said hoarsely. &ldquo;You will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a dangerous note in his voice. The man had got beyond the stage
+      to be played with. In the silence of the room Magda could hear his
+      laboured breathing, feel his heart leaping against her own soft breast
+      crushed against his. It frightened her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll let me go if I do?&rdquo; The words seemed to run into each other in her
+      helpless haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll let you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly, reluctantly she lifted her face to his and kissed him. But the
+      touch of her lips on his scattered the last vestige of his self-control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My beloved . . . Beloved!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seized her roughly in his arms. She felt his kisses overwhelming her,
+      burning against her closed eyelids, bruising her soft mouth and throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love you . . . worship you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go!&rdquo; she cried shrilly, struggling against him. &ldquo;Let me go&mdash;you
+      promised it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He released her, drawing slowly back, his arms falling unwillingly away
+      from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he muttered confusedly. &ldquo;I did promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The instant she felt his grip relax, Magda sprang forward and switched on
+      the centre burners, flooding the room with a blaze of light, and in the
+      sudden glare she and Davilof stood staring silently at each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the springing up of the lights it was as though a spell had broken.
+      The strained, hunted expression left Magda&rsquo;s face. She wasn&rsquo;t frightened
+      any longer. Davilof was no more the man whose sudden passion had surged
+      about her, threatening to break down all defences and overwhelm her. He
+      was just Davilof, her accompanist, who, like half the men of her
+      acquaintance, was more or less in love with her and who had overstepped
+      the boundary which she had very definitely marked out between herself and
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She regarded him stormily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you gone mad?&rdquo; she asked contemptuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He returned her look, his eyes curiously brilliant. Then he laughed
+      suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mad?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Yes, I think I <i>am</i> mad. Mad with love for you!
+      Magda&rdquo;&mdash;he came and stood close beside her&mdash;&ldquo;don&rsquo;t send me away!
+      Don&rsquo;t say you can&rsquo;t care for me! You don&rsquo;t love me now&mdash;but I could
+      teach you.&rdquo; His voice deepened. &ldquo;I love you so much. Oh, sweetest!&mdash;<i>Soul</i>
+      of me! Love is so beautiful. Let me teach you how beautiful it is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda drew back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said. The brief negative fell clear and distinct as a bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t take no,&rdquo; he returned hotly. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t take no. I want you. Good
+      God! Don&rsquo;t you understand? My love for you isn&rsquo;t just a boy&rsquo;s infatuation
+      that you can dismiss with a word. It&rsquo;s all of me. I worship you! Haven&rsquo;t I
+      been with you day after day, worked with you, followed your every mood&mdash;shared
+      your very soul with you? You&rsquo;re mine! Mine, because I understand you.
+      You&rsquo;ve shown me all you thought, all you felt. You couldn&rsquo;t have done that
+      if I hadn&rsquo;t meant something to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly you meant something to me. You meant an almost perfect
+      accompanist. Why should you have imagined you meant more? I gave you no
+      reason to think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>No reason</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as though the two short words were the key which unlocked the
+      floodgates of some raging torrent. Magda could never afterwards recall the
+      words he used. She only knew they beat upon her with the cruel,
+      lancinating sharpness of hail driven by the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had treated him much as other men, evoking the love of his ardent
+      temperament by that subtle witchery which was second nature to her and
+      which can be such a potent weapon in the hands of a woman whose own
+      emotions remain untouched. And now the thwarted passion of the lover and
+      the savage anger of a man who felt himself deceived and duped broke over
+      her in a resistless storm&mdash;an outburst so bitter and so trenchant
+      that for the moment she remained speechless before it, buffeted into
+      helpless, resentful silence. When he ceased, he had stripped her of every
+      rag of feminine defence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you finished?&rdquo; she asked in a stifled voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made no attempt to palliate matters or to refute anything he had said.
+      In his present frame of mind it would have been useless pointing out to
+      him that she had treated him no differently from other men. He was a Pole,
+      and he had caught fire where others would merely have glowed
+      smoulderingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he rejoined sullenly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve finished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He regarded her speculatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you made of, I wonder? Does it mean nothing to you that a man
+      has given you his very best&mdash;all that he has?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She appeared to reflect a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid it doesn&rsquo;t. There&rsquo;s only one thing really means much to me&mdash;and
+      that is my art. And Lady Arabella,&rdquo; she added after a pause. &ldquo;She&rsquo;ll
+      always mean a good deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down by the fire and held out her hands to its warmth. The slender
+      fingers seemed almost transparent, glowing rosily in the firelight.
+      Davilof turned to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, then,&rdquo; he said curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye.&rdquo; Magda nodded indifferently. Then, carelessly: &ldquo;I shall want
+      you to-morrow, Davilof&mdash;same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will never play for you again. Did you imagine I should?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled at him&mdash;that slow, subtle smile of hers with its hint of
+      mockery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t be able to keep away,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will never play for you again,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;Never! I will teach
+      myself to hate you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible, Davilof.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not impossible. There&rsquo;s very little difference between love and hate&mdash;sometimes.
+      And I want all or nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid it must be nothing, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall see. But if I can&rsquo;t have you, <i>I</i> swear no other man
+      shall!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced up at him, lifting her brows a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you going too far, Antoine? You can hate me, if you like, or love
+      me&mdash;it&rsquo;s a matter of indifference to me which you do. But I don&rsquo;t
+      propose to allow you to arrange my life for me. And in any case&rdquo;&mdash;after
+      a moment&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not likely to fall in love&mdash;with you or anyone
+      else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think not?&rdquo; He stood looking down at her sombrely. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll fall in
+      love right enough some day. And when you do it will be all or nothing with
+      you, too. You&rsquo;re that kind. Love will take you&mdash;and break you,
+      Magda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke slowly, with an odd kind of tensity. To Magda it seemed almost as
+      if his quiet speech held the gravity of prophecy, and she shivered a
+      little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when that time comes, then you&rsquo;ll come back to me,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda threw up her head, defying him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You propose to be waiting round to pick up the pieces, then?&rdquo; she
+      suggested nonchalantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But only the sound of the closing door answered her. Davilof had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SWAN-MAIDEN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella was in her element. She had two brilliant and unattached
+      young men dining with her&mdash;one, Michael Quarrington, a lion in the
+      artistic world, and the other, Antoine Davilof, who showed unmistakable
+      symptoms of developing sooner or later into a lion in the musical world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Davilof who was responsible for the artist&rsquo;s presence at Lady
+      Arabella&rsquo;s dinner table. She had expressed&mdash;in her usual autocratic
+      manner&mdash;a wish that he should be presented to her, and had determined
+      upon the evening of the first performance of <i>The Swan-Maiden</i> as the
+      appointed time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof appeared doubtful, and declared that Quarrington was leaving
+      England and had already fixed the date of his departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s crossing from Dover the very day before the one you want him to dine
+      with you,&rdquo; he told her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lady Arabella swept his objections aside with regal indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crossing, is he?&rdquo; she snapped. &ldquo;Well, tell him I want him to dine here
+      and go to the show with us afterwards. He&rsquo;ll cross the day <i>after</i>,
+      you&rsquo;ll find&mdash;if he crosses at all!&rdquo; she wound up enigmatically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it came about that her two lions, the last-arrived artist and the
+      soon-to-arrive musician, were both dining with her on the appointed
+      evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella adored lions. Also, notwithstanding her seventy years, she
+      retained as much original Eve in her composition as a girl of seventeen,
+      and she adored young men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In particular, she decided that she approved of Michael Quarrington. She
+      liked the clean English build of him. She liked his lean, square jaw and
+      the fair hair with the unruly kink in it which reminded her of a certain
+      other young man&mdash;who had been young when she was young&mdash;and to
+      whom she had bade farewell at her parents&rsquo; inflexible decree more than
+      fifty years ago. Above all, she liked the artist&rsquo;s eyes&mdash;those grey,
+      steady eyes with their look of reticence so characteristic of the man
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reticence was an asset in her ladyship&rsquo;s estimation. It showed good sense&mdash;and
+      it offered provocative opportunities for a battle of wits such as her soul
+      loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen my god-daughter dance, Mr. Quarrington?&rdquo; she asked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, several times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His tone was non-committal and she eyed him sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t admire dancing, do you?&rdquo; she threw at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quarrington regarded her with a humorous twinkle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I an artist? How can you ask, Lady Arabella?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you sounded supremely detached,&rdquo; she grumbled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think Mademoiselle Wielitzska&rsquo;s dancing the loveliest thing I have ever
+      seen,&rdquo; he returned simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman vouchsafed him a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I enjoyed that quite as much as I used to
+      enjoy being told I&rsquo;d a pretty dimple when I was a girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have now,&rdquo; rejoined Quarrington audaciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella&rsquo;s eyes sparkled. She loved a neatly turned compliment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you again. But it&rsquo;s a pity to waste your pretty speeches on an old
+      woman of seventy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; retorted the artist gravely. &ldquo;I reserve them for the young
+      people I know of that age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed delightedly. Then, turning to Davilof, she drew him into the
+      conversation and the talk became general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later, as they were all three standing in the hall preparatory to
+      departure, she flashed another of her sudden remarks at Quarrington.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand you came to my god-daughter&rsquo;s rescue in that bad fog last
+      week?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The quiet grey eyes revealed nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was privileged to be some little use,&rdquo; he replied lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly gathered you regarded it as a privilege,&rdquo; observed her ladyship
+      drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shaft went home. A fleeting light gleamed for a moment in the grey
+      eyes. Davilof was standing a few paces away, being helped into his coat by
+      a man-servant, and Quarrington spoke low and quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She told you?&rdquo; he said. There was astonishment&mdash;resentment, almost&mdash;in
+      his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no.&rdquo; Lady Arabella, smiling to herself, reassured him hastily. &ldquo;It
+      was a shot in the dark on my part. Magda never confides details. She hands
+      you out an unadorned slice of fact and leaves you to interpret it as you
+      choose. But if you know her rather well&mdash;as I do&mdash;and can add
+      two and two together and make five or any unlikely number of them, why,
+      then you can fill in some of the blanks for yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced at him with impish amusement as she moved towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, Davilof,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I suppose you want to hear your own
+      music&mdash;even if Magda&rsquo;s dancing no longer interests you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof gave her his arm down the steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, miladi?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;There is no more beautiful dancing
+      in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why have you jacked up your job of accompanist? Shoes beginning to
+      pinch a little, eh?&rdquo;&mdash;shrewdly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean I grow too big for my boots? No, madame. If I were the greatest
+      musician in Europe, instead of being merely Antoine Davilof, it could only
+      be a source of pride to be asked to accompany the Wielitzska.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella paused on the pavement, her foot on the step of the
+      limousine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then how is it that Mrs. Grey accompanies her now? She was playing for
+      her at the Duchess of Lichbrooke&rsquo;s the other evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magda didn&rsquo;t tell you, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she didn&rsquo;t; or I&rsquo;d not be wasting my breath in asking you. I asked
+      her, and she said you had taken to playing wrong notes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint smile curved the lips above the small golden beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it must be true. Undoubtedly I played wrong notes, miladi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very careless of you, I&rsquo;m sure.&rdquo; Under the garish light of a neighbouring
+      street-lamp her keen old eyes met his significantly. &ldquo;Or&mdash;very
+      imprudent, Davilof. You need the tact of the whole Diplomatic Service to
+      deal with Magda. And you ought to know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, miladi. But I was not designed for diplomacy, and a man can only
+      use the weapons heaven has given him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t have suggested heaven as invariably the source of your
+      inspirations,&rdquo; retorted Lady Arabella. And hopped into the car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They arrived at the Imperial Theatre to find Mrs. Grey already seated in
+      Lady Arabella&rsquo;s box. Someone else was there, too&mdash;old Virginie, with
+      her withered-apple cheeks and bright brown, bird-like eyes, still active
+      and erect and very little altered from the Virginie of ten years before.
+      Just as she had devoted herself to Diane, so now she devoted herself to
+      Diane&rsquo;s daughter, and no first performance of a new dance of the
+      Wielitzska&rsquo;s took place without Virginie&rsquo;s presence somewhere in the
+      house. To-night, Lady Arabella had invited her into her box and Virginie
+      was a quivering bundle of excitement. She rose from her seat at the back
+      of the box as the newcomers entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down, Virginie.&rdquo; Lady Arabella nodded kindly to the Frenchwoman. &ldquo;And
+      pull your chair forward. You&rsquo;ll see nothing back there, and there is
+      plenty of room for us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Merci, madame. Madame est bien gentille.</i>&rdquo; Virginie&rsquo;s voice was
+      fervent with ecstatic gratitude as she resumed her seat and waited
+      expectantly for Magda&rsquo;s appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other dances, performed principally by lesser lights of the company and
+      affording only a briefly tantalising glimpse of Magda herself, preceded
+      the chief event of the evening. But at last the next item on the programme
+      read as <i>The Swan-Maiden (adapted from an Old Legend)</i>, and a tremour
+      of excitement, a sudden hush of eager anticipation, rippled through the
+      audience like wind over grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly the heavy silken curtains drew to either side of the stage,
+      revealing a sunlit glade. In the background glimmered the still waters of
+      a lake, while at the foot of a tree, in an attitude of tranquil repose,
+      lay the Swan-Maiden&mdash;Magda. One white, naked arm was curved behind
+      her head, pillowing it, the other lay lightly across her body, palm
+      upward, with the rosy-tipped fingers curled inwards a little, like a
+      sleeping child&rsquo;s. She looked infinitely young as she lay there, her
+      slender, pliant limbs relaxed in untroubled slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella, with Quarrington sitting next to her in the box, heard the
+      quick intake of his breath as he leaned suddenly forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it has quite a familiar look,&rdquo; she observed. &ldquo;Reminds me of your
+      &lsquo;Repose of Titania.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes flickered inquiringly over her face, but it was evident that hers
+      had been merely a chance remark. The old lady had obviously no idea as to
+      who it was who had posed for the Titania of the picture. That was one of
+      the &ldquo;slices of fact&rdquo; which Magda had omitted to hand out when recounting
+      her adventure in the fog to her godmother. Quarrington leaned back in his
+      chair satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not unlike,&rdquo; he agreed carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the entrance of Vladimir Ravinski, the lovelorn youth of the legend,
+      riveted his attention on the stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dance which followed was exquisite. The Russian was a beautiful youth,
+      like a sun-god with his flying yellow locks and glorious symmetry of body,
+      and the <i>pas de deux</i> between him and Magda was a thing to marvel at&mdash;sweeping
+      through the whole gamut of love&rsquo;s emotion, from the first shy, delicate
+      hesitancy of worshipping boy and girl to the rapturous abandon of mated
+      lovers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then across the vibrant, pulsating scene fell the deadly shadow of the
+      witch Ritmagar. The stage darkened, the violins in the orchestra skirled
+      eerily in chromatic showers of notes, and the hunched figure of Ritmagar
+      approaching menaced the lovers. A wild dance followed, the lovers now
+      kneeling and beseeching the evil fairy to have pity on them, now rushing
+      despairingly into each other&rsquo;s arms, while the witch&rsquo;s own dancing held
+      all of threat and malevolence that superb artistry could infuse into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tale unfolded itself with the inevitableness of preordained
+      catastrophe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ritmagar declines to be appeased. She raises her claw-like hand, pointing
+      a crooked finger at the lovers, and with a clash of brazen sound and the
+      dull thrumming of drums the whole scene dissolves into absolute darkness.
+      When the darkness lifts once more, the stage is empty save for a pure
+      white swan which sails slowly down the lake and disappears. . . . Followed
+      a solo dance by Ravinski in which he gave full vent to the anguish of the
+      bereft lover, while now and again the swan swam statelily by him. At
+      length the witch appeared once more and, yielding to his impassioned
+      entreaties, declared that the Swan-Maiden might reassume her human form
+      during the hour preceding sunset, and Magda&mdash;the Swan-Maiden released
+      from enchantment for the time being&mdash;came running in on the stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This love-duet was resumed and presently, when the lovers had made their
+      exit, Ritmagar was seen gleefully watching while the red sun dropped
+      slowly down the sky, sinking at last below the rim of the lake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a low rumble of drums muttered as she stole from the stage, the
+      personification of vindictive triumph, and all at once the great concourse
+      of people in the auditorium seemed to strain forward, conscious that the
+      climax of the evening, the wonderful solo dance by the Wielitzska, was
+      about to begin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moon rose on the left, and Magda, a slim white figure in her dress
+      which cleverly suggested the plumage of a swan, floated on to the stage
+      with that exquisite, ethereal lightness of movement which only toe-dancing&mdash;and
+      toe-dancing of the most perfectly finished quality&mdash;seems able to
+      convey. It was as though her feet were not touching the solid earth at
+      all. The feather-light drifting of blown petals; the swaying grace of a
+      swan as it glides along the surface of the water; the quivering,
+      spirit-like flight of a butterfly&mdash;it seemed as though all these had
+      been caught and blended together by the dancer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavier instruments of the orchestra were silenced, but the rippling
+      music of the strings wove and interwove a dreaming melody, unutterably
+      sweet and appealing, as the Swan-Maiden, bathed in pallid moonlight,
+      besought the invisible Ritmagar for mercy, praying that she might not die
+      even though the sun had set. . . . But there comes no answer to her
+      prayers. A sombre note of stern denial sounds in the music, and the
+      Swan-Maiden yields to utter despair, drooping slowly to earth. Just as
+      Death himself claims her, her lover, demented with anguish, comes rushing
+      to her side, and turning towards him as she lies dying upon the ground,
+      she yields to his embrace with a last gesture of passionate surrender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly the heavy curtains swung together, hiding the limp, lifeless body
+      of the Swan-Maiden and the despairing figure of her lover as he knelt
+      beside her, and after a breathless pause, the great audience, carried away
+      by the tragic drama of the dance, its passion and its pathos, broke into a
+      thunder of applause that rolled and reverberated through the theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again and again Magda and her partner were called before the curtain, the
+      former laden with the sheafs of flowers which had been handed up on to the
+      stage. But the audience refused to be satisfied until at last Magda
+      appeared alone, standing very white and slender under the blaze of lights,
+      a faint suggestion of fatigue in the poise of her lissome figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly the applause broke out anew&mdash;thunderous, overwhelming.
+      Magda smiled, then held out her arms in a little disarming gesture of
+      appeal, touching in its absolute simplicity. It was as though she said:
+      &ldquo;Dear people, I love you all for being so pleased, but I&rsquo;m very, very
+      tired. Please, won&rsquo;t you let me go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they let her go, with one final round of cheers and clapping, and then,
+      as the curtains fell together once more and the orchestra slid
+      unobtrusively into the <i>entr&rsquo;acte</i> music, a buzz of conversation
+      arose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael Quarrington turned and spoke to Davilof as they stood together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This will be my last memory of England for some time to come.
+      Mademoiselle Wielitzska is very wonderful. As much actress as dancer&mdash;and
+      both rather superlatively.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an odd note in Quarrington&rsquo;s voice, as if he were forcibly
+      repressing some less measured form of words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof glanced at him sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think so?&rdquo; he said curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The musician&rsquo;s hazel eyes were burning feverishly. One hand was clenched
+      on the back of the chair from which he had just risen; the other hung at
+      his side, the fingers opening and shutting nervously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quarrington smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The eyes of the two men met, and Michael became suddenly conscious that
+      the other was struggling in the grip of some strong emotion. He could even
+      sense its atmosphere of antagonism towards himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think&rdquo;&mdash;Davilof spoke with slow intensity&mdash;&ldquo;I think she&rsquo;s a
+      soulless piece of devil&rsquo;s mechanism.&rdquo; And turning abruptly, he swung out
+      of the box, slamming the door behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quarrington frowned. With his keen perceptions it was not difficult for
+      him to divine what lay at the back of Davilof&rsquo;s bitter criticism. The man
+      was in love&mdash;hopelessly in love with the Wielitzska. Probably she had
+      turned him down, as she had turned down better men than he, but he had
+      been unable to resist the bitter-sweet temptation of watching her dance,
+      and throughout the evening had almost certainly been suffering the
+      torments of the damned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The artist smiled a little grimly to himself, remembering the many
+      evenings he, too, had spent at the Imperial Theatre, drawn thither by the
+      magnetism of a white, slender woman with night-black hair, whose long,
+      dark eyes haunted him perpetually, even coming between him and his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, just as he had made up his mind to go away, first to Paris and
+      afterwards to Spain or perhaps even further afield, and thus set as many
+      miles of sea and land as he could betwixt himself and the &ldquo;kind of woman
+      he had no place for,&rdquo; fate had played him a trick and sent her out of the
+      obscurity of the fog-ridden street straight to his very hearth and home,
+      so that the fragrance and sweetness and charm of her must needs linger
+      there to torment him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought he could make a pretty accurate guess at the state of Davilof&rsquo;s
+      feelings, and was ironically conscious of a sense of fellowship with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella&rsquo;s sharp voice cut across his reflections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care for this next thing,&rdquo; she said, flicking at her programme.
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Grey and I are going round to see Magda. Will you come with us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Quarrington had every intention of politely excusing himself. Instead of
+      which he found himself replying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With pleasure&mdash;if Mademoiselle Wielitzska won&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m
+      intruding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella chuckled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she intruded on you that day in the fog, didn&rsquo;t she? So you&rsquo;ll be
+      quits.&rdquo; She glanced impatiently round the box. &ldquo;Where on earth has Davilof
+      vanished to? Has he gone up in flame?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael laughed involuntarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something of the kind, I fancy,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Anyway, he departed rather
+      hurriedly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Antoine!&rdquo; Gillian spoke with a kind of humorous compassion. &ldquo;He has
+      a temperament. I&rsquo;m glad I haven&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have the best of all temperaments, Mrs. Grey,&rdquo; answered Michael, as
+      they both followed Lady Arabella out of the box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The temperament that understands other people&rsquo;s temperaments,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo; she asked, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella was prancing on ahead down the corridor, and for the moment
+      Michael and Gillian were alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We artists learn to look for what lies below the surface. If your work is
+      sincere, you find when you&rsquo;ve finished a portrait that the soul of the
+      sitter has revealed itself unmistakably.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been told you&rsquo;ve an almost diabolical genius for expressing just
+      what a man or woman is really like&mdash;in character, I mean&mdash;in
+      your portraits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help it,&rdquo; he said simply. &ldquo;It comes&mdash;it reveals itself&mdash;if
+      you paint sincerely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you&mdash;always paint sincerely?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I try to. Though once I got hauled over the coals pretty sharply for
+      doing so. My sitter happened to be a pretty society woman, possessed of
+      about as much soul as would cover a threepenny-bit, and when I&rsquo;d finished
+      her portrait she simply turned and rent me. &lsquo;I wanted a taking picture,&rsquo;
+      she informed me indignantly, &lsquo;not the bones of my personality laid bare
+      for public inspection.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were outside Magda&rsquo;s dressing-room by this time, and Virginie, who
+      had flown to her nurseling the moment the dance was at an end, opened the
+      door in response to Lady Arabella&rsquo;s preemptory knock. Gillian paused a
+      moment before entering the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yours is a wonderful gift of perception,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;It ought to
+      make you&mdash;very merciful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael looked at her swiftly. Her eyes seemed to be asking something of
+      him&mdash;entreating. But before he could speak Lady Arabella&rsquo;s voice
+      interposed remorselessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, you two; and for goodness&rsquo; sake shut the door. There&rsquo;s draught
+      enough to waft one to heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no choice but to obey, and silently Quarrington followed Mrs.
+      Grey into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      MICHAEL CHANGES HIS MIND
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s dressing-room at the Imperial Theatre was something rather special
+      in the way of dressing-rooms. It had been designed expressly for her by
+      the management, and boasted a beautifully appointed bathroom adjoining it
+      where she could luxuriate in a refreshing dip immediately after the strain
+      and fatigue of her work on the stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been very firm about the bathroom, airily dismissing a plaintive
+      murmur from the manager to the effect that they were &ldquo;somewhat crowded for
+      space at the Imperial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then take another theatre, my dear man,&rdquo; she had told him. &ldquo;Or build! Or
+      give the <i>corps de ballet</i> one less dressing-room amongst them. But
+      if you want <i>me</i>, I must have a bathroom. If I dance, I bathe
+      afterwards. If not, I don&rsquo;t dance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Being a star of the first magnitude, the Wielitzska could dictate her own
+      terms, and accordingly a bathroom she had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had just emerged from its white-tiled, silver-tapped luxury a few
+      minutes before Lady Arabella, together with Gillian and Michael
+      Quarrington, presented themselves at her dressing-room door, and they
+      found her ensconced in an easy-chair by the fire, sipping a cup of
+      steaming hot tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve brought Mr. Quarrington to see you,&rdquo; announced Lady Arabella. &ldquo;I
+      thought perhaps you&rsquo;d like some other congratulations besides family
+      ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I permitted?&rdquo; asked Quarrington, taking the hand Magda held out to
+      him. &ldquo;Or are you too tired to be bothered with an outsider?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda looked up at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve very glad to see you,&rdquo; she said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She appeared unwontedly sweet and girlish as she sat there, clad in a
+      negligee of some soft silken stuff that clung about the lissom lines of
+      her figure, and with her satiny hair coiled in a simple knot at the nape
+      of her neck. There was little or nothing about her to remind one of the
+      successful ballerina, and Michael found himself poignantly recalling the
+      innocent, appealing charm of the Swan-Maiden. It was difficult to
+      associate this woman with that other who had so unconsciously turned down
+      his pal&mdash;the man who had loved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well? Did it go all right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s eyes sought Gillian&rsquo;s eagerly as she put the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did it go?&rdquo; Mrs. Grey&rsquo;s voice held all the unqualified enthusiasm any
+      artiste could desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Magda! It was wonderful! The most wonderful, beautiful dance I&rsquo;ve
+      ever seen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you know it as well as we do,&rdquo; interpolated Lady Arabella tartly, but
+      smiling pridefully in spite of herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, of course, she likes to hear us <i>say</i> it.&rdquo; Gillian championed
+      her friend stoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whole world will be saying it to-morrow,&rdquo; observed Quarrington
+      quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Virginie created a diversion by handing round cups of freshly brewed
+      tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll get nerves&mdash;drinking tea at this hour of the night,&rdquo;
+       commented Lady Arabella, accepting a cup with alacrity, nevertheless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take it very weak,&rdquo; protested Magda, smiling faintly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the only
+      thing I like after dancing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lady Arabella was already deep in conversation with Gillian and
+      Virginie&mdash;a conversation which resolved itself chiefly into a
+      laudatory chorus regarding the evening&rsquo;s performance. In the background
+      Magda&rsquo;s maid moved quietly to and fro, carefully putting away her
+      mistress&rsquo;s dancing dresses. For the moment Michael and Magda were to all
+      intents and purposes alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not easily forget to-night,&rdquo; he said rather low, drawing a chair
+      up beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You liked it, then?&rdquo; she asked hesitatingly&mdash;almost shyly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Like&rsquo; is hardly the word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda flashed him a swift glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; she said slowly, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m the &lsquo;type of woman you hate.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You make it rather difficult to maintain the point of view,&rdquo; he admitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were very unkind to me that day,&rdquo; she said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met and in hers was something soft and dangerously disarming.
+      Quarrington got up suddenly from his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I was unkind to you so that I might not be unkind to myself,&rdquo; he
+      replied curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s soft laugh rippled out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how selfish! And&mdash;and aren&rsquo;t you being rather mysterious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I?&rdquo; he returned pointedly. &ldquo;Surely self-preservation is the first
+      instinct of the human species?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She picked up the challenge and tossed it lightly back to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the danger, then, very great?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is. So, like a wise man, I propose to avoid it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, by quitting the danger zone. I go to Paris to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To Paris?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda experienced a sudden feeling of blankness. It was inexplicable, but
+      somehow the knowledge that Quarrington was going away seemed to take all
+      the savour out of things. It was only by a supreme effort that she
+      contrived to keep her tone as light and unconcerned as his own as she
+      continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then&mdash;after Paris?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After Paris? Oh, Spain possibly. Or the Antipodes!&rdquo;&mdash;with a short
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s talking about the Antipodes?&rdquo; suddenly chimed in Lady Arabella.
+      &ldquo;Home to bed&rsquo;s my next move. Gillian, you come with me&mdash;the car can
+      take you on to Hampstead after dropping me in Park Lane. And Virginie can
+      drive back with Magda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, do go with Marraine,&rdquo; said Magda, nodding acquiescence in reply to
+      Gillian&rsquo;s glance of interrogation. &ldquo;I have to dress yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a general move towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye&rdquo;&mdash;Magda&rsquo;s slim hand lay for a moment in Quarrington&rsquo;s. &ldquo;I&mdash;I&rsquo;m
+      sorry you&rsquo;re going away, Saint Michel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Only Michael heard the last two words, uttered in that <i>trainante</i>,
+      slightly husky voice that held so much of music and appeal. He turned
+      abruptly and made his way out of the room in the wake of Gillian and Lady
+      Arabella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better postpone your visit to the Antipodes, Mr. Quarrington,&rdquo; said
+      the latter, as presently they all three stood together in the vestibule,
+      halted by the stream of people pouring out from the theatre. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m giving a
+      dinner-party next week, with a &lsquo;crush&rsquo; to follow. Stay and come to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s awfully kind of you, Lady Arabella, but I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fiddlesticks! You&rsquo;re a free agent, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;&mdash;looking at him
+      keenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A whimsical light gleamed for an instant in the grey eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sometimes wonder if I am,&rdquo; he returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one cord I know of that can&rsquo;t be either unknotted&mdash;or
+      cut. And that&rsquo;s lack of money. That&rsquo;s not your complaint&rdquo;&mdash;significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you&rsquo;ll come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magda has promised to dance for me,&rdquo; proceeded Lady Arabella, entirely
+      disregarding his quietly uttered negative. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re not giving <i>The
+      Swan-Maiden</i> that night at the Imperial. She can&rsquo;t dine, of course,
+      poor dear. Really, dancers have a lot to put up with&mdash;or rather, to
+      put up <i>without</i>! Magda never dares to enjoy a good square meal.
+      Afraid of getting fat, of course! After all, a dancer&rsquo;s figure&rsquo;s her
+      fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a low, insistent undertone beneath the rattle of Lady Arabella&rsquo;s
+      volubility Michael could hear again the murmur of a soft, dragging voice:
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry you&rsquo;re going away, Saint Michel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed almost as though Lady Arabella, with that uncanny shrewdness of
+      hers, divined it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll come, then?&rdquo; She smiled at him over her shoulder, moving forward
+      as the crush in the vestibule lessened a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Michael, with an odd expression in his eyes, answered suddenly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ll come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Later, as Lady Arabella and Gillian drove home together, the former
+      laughed quietly. There was an element of pride and triumph in the
+      laughter. Probably the hen who has reared a duckling and sees it sail off
+      into the water experiences, alongside her natural apprehension and
+      astonishment, a somewhat similar pride in the startling proclivities
+      evinced by her nurseling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That nice artist-man is in love with Magda,&rdquo; crowed Lady Arabella
+      contentedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do. Only it&rsquo;s very much against his will, for some reason or other.
+      Crossing from Dover to-morrow, forsooth!&rdquo;&mdash;with a broad smile. &ldquo;Not
+      he! He&rsquo;ll be at my party&mdash;and asking Magda to marry him before the
+      week&rsquo;s out, bar accidents! . . . After all, it&rsquo;s not surprising that the
+      men are falling over each other to marry her. She&rsquo;s really rather
+      wonderful. Where do you think she gets it all from, Gillian, my dear? Not
+      from the Vallincourts, I&rsquo;ll swear!&rdquo;&mdash;chuckling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Grey shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. But I think Magda is a standing argument in favour of the
+      doctrine of reincarnation! She always seems to me to be a kind of modern
+      embodiment of Helen of Troy or Cleopatra.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only without the capacity for falling in love! She&rsquo;s as chilly as an
+      iceberg and yet somehow gives you the idea she&rsquo;s all fire and passion. No
+      wonder the men get misled, poor lambs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s not cold, really,&rdquo; asserted Gillian positively. &ldquo;Of that I&rsquo;m sure.
+      No one could dance as she does&mdash;and be an iceberg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella chuckled again, wickedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman who can dance like that ought to be preceded through life by a
+      red flag. She positively stirs my old blood&mdash;that&rsquo;s been at a
+      comfortably tepid temperature for the last thirty years!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day,&rdquo; said Gillian, &ldquo;she&rsquo;ll fall in love. And then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there&rsquo;ll be fireworks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella completed the sentence briskly just as the car pulled up in
+      front of her house. She skipped nimbly out on to the pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fireworks, my dear,&rdquo; she repeated emphatically. &ldquo;And a very fine display,
+      too! Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The car slid away north with Gillian inside it reflecting rather ruefully
+      upon the very great amount of probability contained in Lady Arabella&rsquo;s
+      parting comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE GARDEN OF EDEN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella&rsquo;s big rooms were filling rapidly. The dinner to which only a
+      few of the elect had been bidden was over, and now those who had been
+      invited to the less exclusive reception which was to follow were eagerly
+      wending their way towards Park Lane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The programme for the evening promised to be an attractive one. A solo
+      from Antoine Davilof, Lady Arabella&rsquo;s pet lion-cub of the moment; a song
+      from the leading operatic tenor; and afterwards a single dance by the
+      Wielitzska&mdash;who could never be persuaded to perform at any other
+      private houses than those of her godmother and the Duchess of Lichbrooke&mdash;the
+      former&rsquo;s half sister. So, in this respect, Lady Arabella enjoyed almost a
+      monopoly, and such occasions as the present were enthusiastically sought
+      after by her friends and acquaintances. Later, when the artistes had
+      concluded their programme, there was to be a dance. The ballroom, the
+      further end of which boasted a fair-sized stage, had been temporarily
+      arranged with chairs to accommodate an audience, and in one of the
+      anterooms Virginie, with loving, skilful fingers, was putting the
+      finishing touches to Magda&rsquo;s toilette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda submitted passively to her ministrations. She was thinking of
+      Michael Quarrington, the man who had come into her life by such strange
+      chance and who had so deliberately gone out of it again. By the very
+      manner of his going he had succeeded in impressing himself on her mind as
+      no other man had ever done. Other men did not shun her like the plague,
+      she reflected bitterly!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But from the very beginning he had shown her that he disapproved of her
+      fundamentally. She was the &ldquo;type of woman he hated!&rdquo; Night and day that
+      curt little phrase had bitten into her thoughts, stinging her with its
+      quiet contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt irritated that she should care anything about his opinion. But if
+      she were candid with herself she had to admit that she did care,
+      intensely. More than that, his departure from England had left her
+      conscious of an insistent and unaccountable little ache. The knowledge
+      that there could be no more chance meetings, that he had gone right out of
+      her ken, seemed like the sudden closing of a door which had just been
+      opening to her. It had somehow taken the zest out of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Voila!&rdquo; Virginie drew back to survey the results of her labours, turning
+      for approval to Gillian, who was in attendance in her capacity of
+      accompanist. &ldquo;Is it not that mademoiselle looks ravishing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite ravishing, Virginie,&rdquo; agreed Gillian. &ldquo;Did you expect her to look
+      anything else by the time you had finished decking her out?&rdquo; she added
+      teasingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is nothing that I do,&rdquo; responded the old Frenchwoman seriously.
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle cannot help but be beautiful to the eye&mdash;<i>le bon dieu</i>
+      has created her like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe He has,&rdquo; assented Gillian, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke the bell of the telephone instrument on the table beside her
+      rang imperatively and she lifted the receiver. Magda, watching her face as
+      she took the message, saw it suddenly blanch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coppertop! . . . He&rsquo;s ill!&rdquo; she gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ill?&rdquo; Magda could hardly credit it. Two hours ago they had left the child
+      in perfect health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Gillian swallowed, moistening her dry lips. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve sent for the
+      doctor. It&rsquo;s croup. Oh!&rdquo;&mdash;despairingly, and letting the receiver fall
+      unheeded from her grasp&mdash;&ldquo;What am I to do? What am I to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda stepped forward, the filmy draperies of the dress in which she was
+      to dance floating cloudily about her as she moved. She picked up the
+      receiver as it hung dangling aimlessly from the stand and replaced it on
+      its clip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do?&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;Why, you&rsquo;ll go straight home, of course. As
+      quickly as the car can take you. Virginie&rdquo;&mdash;turning to the maid&mdash;&ldquo;fly
+      and order the car round at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian looked at her distractedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you? Who&rsquo;ll play for you? I can&rsquo;t go! I can&rsquo;t leave you!&rdquo; Her voice
+      was shaken by sobs. &ldquo;Oh, Coppertop!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda slipped a comforting arm round her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you&rsquo;ll go&mdash;and at once, too. See, here&rsquo;s your coat&rdquo;&mdash;lifting
+      it up from the back of the chair where Gillian had thrown it. &ldquo;Put it on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly conscious of what was happening, Gillian allowed herself to be
+      helped into the coat. Suddenly recollection returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your dance&mdash;your dance, Magda? You&rsquo;ve forgotten!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It will be all right,&rdquo; she said soothingly. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry,
+      Gillyflower. <i>You&rsquo;ve</i> forgotten that Davilof is playing here
+      to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Antoine?&rdquo; Gillian stared at her incredulously. &ldquo;But you can&rsquo;t ask him to
+      play for you! You&rsquo;d hate asking him a favour after&mdash;after his refusal
+      to accompany you any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled at her reassuringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; she said, and there was an unaffected kindliness in her voice
+      which few people ever heard. &ldquo;My dear, I&rsquo;m not going to let a little bit
+      of cheap pride keep you away from Coppertop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She bent suddenly and kissed Gillian&rsquo;s white, miserable face just as
+      Virginie reappeared in the doorway to announce that the car was waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, run along. Look, would you like to take Virginie with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no.&rdquo; Gillian shook her head decidedly. &ldquo;I shall be quite all right.
+      Oh, Magda!&rdquo;&mdash;impulsively drawing the slender figure close into her
+      arms a moment. &ldquo;You are <i>good</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda laughed a trifle bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be news to the world at large!&rdquo; she replied. Then cheerfully:
+      &ldquo;Now, don&rsquo;t worry, Gillyflower. Remember they&rsquo;ve got a doctor there. And
+      &lsquo;phone me presently about Coppertop. If he&rsquo;s worse, I&rsquo;ll come home as
+      early as I can get away. Send the car straight back here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as Gillian had gone, Magda flung a loose wrap over her diaphanous
+      draperies and turned to Virginie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Monsieur Davilof? Do you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Mais oui, mademoiselle</i>! I saw him through the doorway as I came
+      from ordering the car. He is in the library.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Oui, mademoiselle</i>!&rdquo; Virginie nodded eloquently. &ldquo;He smokes a
+      cigarette&mdash;to steady the nerves, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda went swiftly out of the room. She reached the hall by way of an
+      unfrequented passage and slipped into the library closing the door behind
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Antoine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of her voice Davilof, who had been standing by the fire,
+      wheeled round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he exclaimed violently. &ldquo;You!&rdquo; And then remained silent, staring at
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew I was dancing here to-night,&rdquo; she said chidingly. &ldquo;Why are you
+      so startled? We were bound to meet, weren&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, we were not. I proposed leaving the house the moment my solo was
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda laughed a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So afraid of me, Antoine?&rdquo; she mocked gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no answer, but his hands, hanging at his sides, clenched suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda advanced a few steps towards him and paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Davilof,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;Will you play for me to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her, puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Play for you?&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;But you have Mrs. Grey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. She can&rsquo;t accompany me this evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you ask me?&rdquo; His voice held blank amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Will you do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember what I told you the last time we met? That I would never
+      play for you again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda drew her breath slowly. It was hurting her pride far more than
+      Gillian knew or could imagine to ask a favour of this man. And he wasn&rsquo;t
+      going to make it easy for her, either&mdash;that was evident. But she must
+      ask it, nevertheless. For Gillian&rsquo;s sake; for the sake of poor little
+      Coppertop fighting for breath and with no &ldquo;mummie&rdquo; at hand to help and
+      comfort him; and for the sake of Lady Arabella, too. After promising to
+      dance for her she couldn&rsquo;t let her godmother down by crying off at the
+      last moment, when all the world and his wife had come crowding to her
+      house on the strength of that promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So she bent her head in response to Davilof&rsquo;s contemptuous question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember,&rdquo; she said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you still ask me to play for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I still ask you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You amaze me! And supposing I reply by saying I refuse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you won&rsquo;t,&rdquo; dared Magda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof&rsquo;s eyes held something of cruelty in their hazel depths as he
+      answered quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary&mdash;I do refuse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hand went up to her throat. It was going to be more difficult than she
+      had anticipated!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no one else who can play for me as you do,&rdquo; she suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; fiercely. &ldquo;Because no one loves you as I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the use of saying you love me when you won&rsquo;t do the one little
+      thing I ask?&rdquo; she retorted. &ldquo;It is not often that I ask favours. And&mdash;and
+      no one has ever refused me a request before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof could hear the note of proud resentment in her voice, and he
+      realised to the full that, in view of all that had passed between them in
+      the Mirror Room, it must have been a difficult matter for a woman of
+      Magda&rsquo;s temperament to bring herself to ask his help.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had no intention of sparing her. None but himself knew how bitterly
+      she had hurt him, how cruelly she had stung his pride, when she had flung
+      him that contemptuous command: &ldquo;I shall want you to-morrow, Davilof!&mdash;same
+      time.&rdquo; He had unveiled his very soul before her&mdash;and in return she
+      had tossed him an order as though he were a lackey who had taken a
+      liberty. All his pain and brooding resentment came boiling up to the
+      surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I meant anything to you,&rdquo; he said slowly, &ldquo;if you had even looked upon
+      me as a friend, you could have asked what you liked of me. But you showed
+      me once&mdash;very clearly&mdash;that in your eyes I was nothing more than
+      your paid accompanist. Very well, then! Pay me&mdash;and I&rsquo;ll play for you
+      to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pay you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not in money&rdquo;&mdash;with a short laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;then what do you mean?&rdquo; Her face had whitened a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s quite simple. Later on there is a dance. Give me a dance with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda hesitated. In other circumstances she would have refused
+      point-blank. Davilof had offended her&mdash;and more than that, the
+      revelation of the upsettingly vehement order of his passion for her that
+      day in the Mirror Room had frightened her not a little. There was
+      something stormy and elemental about it. To the caloric Pole, love was
+      love, and the fulfilment of his passion for the adored woman the supreme
+      necessity of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Realising that she had to withstand an ardour essentially unEnglish in its
+      violently inflammable quality, Magda was loth to add fuel to the flame.
+      And if she promised to dance with Davilof she must let him hold her in his
+      arms, risk that dangerous proximity which, she knew now, would set the
+      man&rsquo;s wild pulses racing unsteadily and probably serve as the preliminary
+      to another tempestuous scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; Davilof broke in upon her self-communings. &ldquo;Have I asked too high
+      a price?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Time was flying. She must decide, and decide quickly. She took her courage
+      in both hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she returned quickly. &ldquo;I will dance with you, Antoine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our bargain is complete, then,&rdquo; he said ironically. &ldquo;I shall be charmed
+      to play for you, mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour or so later the last burst of applause had died away, and the
+      well-dressed crowd which had sat in enthralled silence while the
+      Wielitzska danced emerged chattering and laughing from the great ballroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their place was immediately taken by deft, felt-slippered men, who
+      proceeded swiftly to clear away the seats and the drugget which had been
+      laid to protect the surface of the dancing floor. In the twinkling of an
+      eye, as it were, they transformed what had been to all intents and
+      purposes a concert-hall into a flower-decked ballroom, while the members
+      of the band engaged for the dance began climbing agilely into their
+      allotted places on the raised platform preparatory to tuning up for the
+      evening&rsquo;s work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda, released at last from Virginie&rsquo;s worshipfully careful hands, came
+      slowly down the main staircase. She was in black, diaphanous and elusive,
+      from which her flower-pale face and shoulders emerged like a water-lily
+      starring the dark pool on which it floats. A crimson rose glowed just
+      above her heart&mdash;that and her softly scarlet lips the only touches of
+      colour against the rare black-and-white loveliness of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was descending the stairs reluctantly, mentally occupied in screwing
+      up courage to fulfil her promise to Davilof. A &lsquo;phone message from Friars&rsquo;
+      Holm had come through saying that Coppertop was better. All danger was
+      passed and there was no longer any need for her to return early. So it
+      remained, now, for her to keep her pact with the musician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she rounded the last bend in the staircase, she saw that a man was
+      standing with bent head at the foot of the stairs, apparently waiting for
+      someone, and she threw a quick, nervous glance in the direction of the
+      motionless figure, thinking it might be Davilof himself. It would be like
+      his eager impatience to await her coming there. Then, as the lights
+      gleamed on fair, crisply waving hair she realised that the man was Michael&mdash;Michael,
+      whom she believed to be on his way to Spain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it was merely chance, or perhaps it was at the direct inspiration
+      of Lady Arabella, but, whatever may have been the cause, Gillian had not
+      confided to Magda that Quarrington was to be at her godmother&rsquo;s reception.
+      The sudden, totally unexpected meeting with him&mdash;with this man who
+      had contrived to dominate her thoughts so inexplicably&mdash;startled a
+      little cry of surprise from her lips. She drew back abruptly, and then&mdash;quite
+      how it happened she could not tell&mdash;but she missed her footing and
+      fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the fraction of a second she experienced a horrible sensation of utter
+      helplessness to save herself; then Michael&rsquo;s arms closed round her as he
+      caught her before she reached the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shock of the fall stupefied her for a moment. She lay against his
+      breast like a terrified child, clinging to him convulsively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; he murmured soothingly. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re quite safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Unconsciously his arms tightened round her. His breath quickened. The
+      satin-soft hair had brushed his cheek as she fell; the pale, exquisite
+      face and warm white throat lay close beneath his lips&mdash;all the
+      fragrant beauty of her gathered unresisting against his heart. He had only
+      to stoop his head&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a stifled exclamation he jerked himself backward, squaring his
+      shoulders, and released her, though he still steadied her with a hand
+      beneath her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, you are all right,&rdquo; he said reassuringly. &ldquo;No bones broken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The commonplace words helped to restore her poise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Thank you!&rdquo; The words came a little gaspingly still. &ldquo;I&mdash;I don&rsquo;t
+      know how I came to fall like that. I think you startled me&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t
+      expect to see you here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t expect to be,&rdquo; he returned, smiling a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda did not ask how it had come to pass. For the moment it was enough
+      for her that he <i>was</i> there&mdash;that he had not gone away! She was
+      conscious of a sudden incomprehensible sense of tumult within her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was lucky for me you happened to be standing just at the foot of the
+      stairs,&rdquo; she said a little unsteadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t &lsquo;happen.&rsquo; I was there of <i>malice prepense</i>&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      familiar crooked smile flashed out&mdash;&ldquo;waiting for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waiting for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Lady Arabella asked me to shepherd you into the supper-room and see
+      that you had a glass of champagne and a sandwich before the dancing
+      begins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Orders from headquarters?&rdquo;&mdash;smiling up at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held out his arm and they moved away together. As they passed through
+      the crowded rooms one man murmured ironically to another:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quarrington&rsquo;s got it badly, I should say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The second man glanced after the pair with amused eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So he&rsquo;s the latest victim, is he? I head young Raynham&rsquo;s nose was out of
+      joint.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean she&rsquo;s fired him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got the push the day before yesterday,&rdquo; he answered tersely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor devil! He&rsquo;ll take it hard. He&rsquo;s a hotheaded youngster. Just the sort
+      to go off and blow his brains out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Quarrington had established Magda at a corner table in the empty
+      supper-room and was seeing to it that Lady Arabella&rsquo;s commands were
+      obeyed, in spite of Magda&rsquo;s assurances that she was not in the least
+      hungry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you ought to be,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;After dancing. Besides, unlike the
+      rest of us, you had no dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I had a light meal at six o&rsquo;clock. But naturally, you can&rsquo;t consume a
+      solid dinner just before giving a performance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not going to pay you compliments about your dancing,&rdquo; he observed
+      quietly, after a pause. &ldquo;You must receive a surfeit of them. But&rdquo;&mdash;looking
+      at her with those direct grey eyes of his&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad I didn&rsquo;t leave
+      England when I intended to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; she asked impulsively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it&rsquo;s so much easier to yield to temptation than to resist,&rdquo; he
+      answered, not taking his eyes from her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the temptation?&rdquo; she asked uncertainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited an instant, then answered with deliberation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The temptation of seeing you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought you disapproved of me far too much for that to be
+      the case! Saint Michel, don&rsquo;t you think you&rsquo;re rather hard on me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I? I had an old-fashioned mother, you see. Perhaps my ideas about
+      women are out of date.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He regarded her reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I? Well, I like to think of a woman as something sweet and
+      fragrant, infinitely tender and compassionate&mdash;not as a marauder and
+      despoiler. Wherever she comes, the place should be the happier for her
+      coming&mdash;not bereft by it. She should be the helper and healer in this
+      battered old world. That&rsquo;s the sort of woman I should want my wife to be;
+      that&rsquo;s the sort of woman my mother was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think I&rsquo;m&mdash;not like that? I&rsquo;m the marauder, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained silent, and Magda sat with her bent head, fingering the stem
+      of her wine-glass restlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You like my dancing?&rdquo; she said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&rdquo;&mdash;she looked at him with a mixture of defiance and appeal. &ldquo;My
+      dancing is me&mdash;the real me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not the &lsquo;Swan-Maiden,&rsquo; whose love was so great that she forgot
+      everything except the man she loved&mdash;and paid for it with her life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The process doesn&rsquo;t sound exactly encouraging,&rdquo; she retorted with a flash
+      of dry humour. &ldquo;But how do you know I&rsquo;m not&mdash;like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do I know? Because, if you knew anything at all about love, you
+      couldn&rsquo;t play with it as you do. Even the love you&rsquo;ve no use for is the
+      biggest thing the poor devil who loves you has to offer you; you&rsquo;ve no
+      right to play battledore and shuttlecock with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke lightly, but Magda could hear the stern accusation that underlay
+      the words. She rose from the table abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m afraid of love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke, she made a movement as though to quit the supper-room, but,
+      either by accident or design, Michael barred her way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Love,&rdquo; he said, watching her face intently, &ldquo;means sacrifice&mdash;surrender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you believe I&rsquo;m not capable of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; he replied slowly, drawing aside to let her pass, &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m
+      afraid to believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in the deep tones of his voice sent a thrill of consciousness
+      through her. She felt her breath come and go unevenly and, afraid to trust
+      herself to speak, she moved forward without response in the direction of
+      the door. A moment later they were drawn into the stream of people wending
+      their way by twos and threes towards the ballroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they entered, Antoine Davilof broke away from a little group of men
+      with whom he had been conversing and came to Magda&rsquo;s side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The next dance is just beginning,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Are you engaged? Or may I
+      have it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not engaged,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke flurriedly. She was dreading this dance with Antoine. She felt
+      as though the evening had drained her of her strength and left her unequal
+      to a battle of wills should Antoine prove to be in one of his hotheaded
+      moods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced round her with a hint of desperation in her eyes. If only
+      Michael had asked her to dance with him instead! But he had bowed and left
+      her as soon as the musician joined them, so that there was no escape to be
+      hoped for that way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof was watching her curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you&rsquo;re afraid to dance with me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On an impulse she answered him with perfect candour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why did you promise? You did promise, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. I promised. I promised because Coppertop had croup and they had
+      telephoned down for his mother to go to him. And you wouldn&rsquo;t accompany me
+      unless I gave you this dance. So I promised it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof&rsquo;s eyes held a curiously concentrated expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you did this so that Mrs. Grey could go to her little boy&mdash;to
+      nurse him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda inclined her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you hated asking me&mdash;<i>loathed</i> it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a moment. Then he drew back from her. &ldquo;That was kind.
+      Extraordinarily kind,&rdquo; he commented slowly. His expression was one of
+      frank amazement. &ldquo;I did not believe you could be so kind&mdash;so
+      womanly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Womanly?&rdquo; she queried, puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. For is not a woman&mdash;a good woman&mdash;always ready to
+      sacrifice herself for those she loves?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda almost jumped. It was as though she were listening to an echo of
+      Quarrington&rsquo;s own words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you sacrificed yourself,&rdquo; continued Davilof. &ldquo;Sacrificed your pride&mdash;crushed
+      it down for the sake of Mrs. Grey and little Coppertop. Mademoiselle&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      bowed gravely&mdash;&ldquo;I kiss your hands. And see, I too, I can be generous.
+      I release you from your promise. I do not claim that dance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If any single thing could have astonished Magda more than another, it was
+      that Davilof should voluntarily, in the circumstances, renounce the dance
+      she had promised him. It argued a fineness of perception and a generosity
+      for which she would never have given him credit. She felt a little warm
+      rush of gratitude towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; she cried impulsively, &ldquo;you shan&rsquo;t give up your dance.&rdquo; Then, as
+      he still hesitated: &ldquo;I should <i>like</i> to dance with you&mdash;really I
+      should, Antoine. You&rsquo;ve been so&mdash;so <i>decent</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof&rsquo;s face lit up. He looked radiant&mdash;like a child that has been
+      patted on the back and told it is good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No wonder we are all in love with you!&rdquo; he exclaimed in low, vehement
+      tones; adding quickly, as he detected a flicker of apprehension in Magda&rsquo;s
+      eyes: &ldquo;But you need not fear to dance with me. I will be as your brother&mdash;I
+      will go on being &lsquo;decent.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he was. He danced as perfectly as any of his music-loving nationality
+      can dance, but there was a restraint, a punctilious deference about him
+      that, even while it amazed, availed to reassure Magda and restore her
+      shaken confidence in the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not realise or suspect that just those two simple actions of hers&mdash;the
+      good turn she had done Gillian at some considerable cost to herself in the
+      matter of personal pride, and her quick recognition of the musician&rsquo;s
+      sense of fair play in renouncing his dance with her when he knew the
+      circumstances which had impelled her to promise it&mdash;these two things
+      had sufficed to turn Davilof&rsquo;s heady, emotional devotion into something
+      more enduring and perhaps more dangerous, an abiding, deeply rooted love
+      and passion for her which was stronger than the man himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He left the house immediately after the conclusion of his dance with her,
+      and Magda was speedily surrounded by a crowd of would-be partners. But she
+      felt disinclined to dance again, and, always chary of her favours in this
+      respect, she remained watching the dancing in preference to taking any
+      part in it, exchanging small-talk with the men who, finding she could not
+      be induced to reconsider her decision, clustered round her chair like bees
+      round a honey-pot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was towards the end of the evening that Michael Quarrington finally
+      joined the group. Magda&rsquo;s eyes rested on him with a mixture of annoyance
+      and approval&mdash;annoyance because she had expected him to ask her for a
+      dance quite early in the course of the programme and he had failed to do
+      so, and approval because he was of that clean-cut, fair-haired type of man
+      who invariably contrives to look particularly well-groomed and
+      thoroughbred in evening kit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no intention of permitting him to request a dance at this late
+      hour, however, and rose from her seat as he approached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! You, Mr. Quarrington?&rdquo; she said gaily. &ldquo;I am just going home. It&rsquo;s
+      been a charming evening, hasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charming,&rdquo; he rejoined courteously. &ldquo;May I see you to your car?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He offered his arm and Magda, dismissing her little court of disgruntled
+      admirers with a small gracious nod, laid her slim hand on his sleeve. As
+      they moved away together the orchestra broke into the swinging seductive
+      rhythm of a waltz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quarrington paused abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go yet!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Dance this with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice sounded strained and uneven. It was as though the words were
+      dragged from him without his own volition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant the two pairs of eyes met&mdash;the long, dark ones with
+      their slumbrous fire brooding beneath white lids, and the keen, hawk-like
+      grey ones. Then:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; she answered a trifle breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was almost glad when the waltz came to an end. They had danced it in
+      utter silence&mdash;a tense, packed silence, vibrant with significances
+      half-hidden, half-understood, and she found herself quivering with a
+      strange uncertainty and nervousness as she and Quarrington together made
+      their way into the dim-lit quiet of the winter-garden opening off the
+      ballroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Overhead the green, shining leaves of stephanotis spread a canopy, pale
+      clusters of its white, heavy-scented bloom gleaming star-like in the faint
+      light of Chinese lanterns swung from the leaf-clad roof. From somewhere
+      near at hand came the silvery, showering plash of a fountain playing&mdash;a
+      delicate and aerial little sound against the robust harmonies of the band,
+      like the notes of a harp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to Magda as though she and Michael had left the world behind
+      them and were quite alone, enfolded in the sweet-scented, tender silence
+      of some Garden of Eden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood together without speaking. In every tingling nerve of her she
+      was acutely conscious of his proximity and of some rapidly rising tide of
+      emotion mounting within him. She knew the barrier against which it beat
+      and a little cry escaped her, forced from her by some impulse that was
+      stronger than herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Saint Michel! Can&rsquo;t you&mdash;can&rsquo;t you believe in me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung round at the sound of her voice and the next moment she was
+      crushed against his breast, his mouth on hers, his kisses burning their
+      way to her very heart. . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then voices, quick, light footsteps&mdash;someone else had discovered the
+      Eden of the winter-garden, and Michael released her abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind the chimneystacks the grey fingers of dawn were creeping up in the
+      sky as Magda drove home. In the wan light her face looked unusually pale,
+      and beneath the soft lace at her breast her heart throbbed unevenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five minutes ago Michael had held her in his arms and she had felt herself
+      stirred to a sudden passionate surrender and response that frightened her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was this love&mdash;the love against which Diane had warned her? It had
+      all happened so suddenly&mdash;that last, unpremeditated dance, those
+      tense, vibrant moments in the winter-garden, then the jarring interruption
+      of other couples seeking its fragrant coolness. And she and Michael
+      suddenly apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards, only the barest conventionalities had passed between them.
+      Nothing else had seemed possible. Their solitude had been ruthlessly
+      destroyed; the outside world had thrust itself upon them without warning,
+      jerking them back to the self-consciousness of suddenly arrested emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must be going.&rdquo; The stilted, banal little phrase had fallen awkwardly
+      from Magda&rsquo;s lips, and Quarrington had assented without comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt confused and bewildered. What had he meant? Had he meant anything
+      at all? Was it possible that he believed in her now&mdash;trusted her? It
+      had been in answer to that low, imploring cry of hers&mdash;&ldquo;<i>Saint
+      Michel, can&rsquo;t you believe in me?</i>&rdquo;&mdash;that he had taken her in his
+      arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking out through the mist-blurred window at the pale streamers of
+      dawnlight penciling the sky, Magda&rsquo;s eyes grew wistful&mdash;wonderingly
+      questioning the future. Was she, too, only waiting for the revelation of
+      dawn&mdash;the dawn of that mysterious thing called love which can
+      transmute this everyday old world of ours into heaven or hell?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian was at the door to welcome her when at length the car pulled up at
+      Friars&rsquo; Holm. She looked rather white and there were purple shadows under
+      her eyes, but her lips smiled happily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coppertop? How is he?&rdquo; asked Magda quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleeping, thank God! He&rsquo;s safe now! But&mdash;oh, Magda! It&rsquo;s been
+      awful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And quite suddenly Gillian, who had faced Death and fought him with a
+      dogged courage and determination that had won the grave-eyed doctor&rsquo;s rare
+      approval, broke down and burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda petted and soothed her, until at last her sobs ceased and she smiled
+      through her tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>am</i> a fool!&rdquo; she said, dabbing at her eyes with a moist,
+      screwed-up ball of something that had once been a cambric handkerchief.
+      &ldquo;But I&rsquo;ve quite recovered now&mdash;really. Come and tell me about
+      everything. Did Davilof play for you all right? And did you enjoy the
+      dance afterwards? And, oh, I forgot! There&rsquo;s a letter for you on the
+      mantelpiece. It was delivered by hand while we were both at Lady
+      Arabella&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mechanically, as she responded to Gillian&rsquo;s rapid fire of questions, Magda
+      picked up the square envelope propped against the clock and slit open the
+      flap. It was probably only some note of urgent invitation&mdash;she
+      received dozens of them. An instant later a half-stifled cry broke from
+      her. Gillian turned swiftly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she asked, a note of apprehension sharpening her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda stared at her dumbly. Then she held out the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read it,&rdquo; she said flatly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s from Kit Raynham&rsquo;s mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s eyes flew along the two brief lines of writing:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kit has disappeared. Do you know where he is?&mdash;ALICIA RAYNHAM.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE FIRST REAPING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      At breakfast, some hours later, Magda was in a curiously petulant and
+      uncertain mood. To some extent her fractiousness was due to natural
+      reaction after the emotional excitement of the previous evening. Granted
+      the discovery of the Garden of Eden, and add to this the almost immediate
+      intrusion of outsiders therein&mdash;for everybody else is an &ldquo;outsider&rdquo;
+       to the pair in possession&mdash;and any woman might be forgiven for
+      suffering from slightly frayed nerves the following day. And in Magda&rsquo;s
+      case she had been already rather keyed up by finding the preceding few
+      days punctuated by unwelcome and unaccustomed happenings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all dated from the day of the accident which had befallen her in the
+      fog. It almost seemed as though that grey curtain of fog had been a symbol
+      of the shadow which was beginning to dog her footsteps&mdash;the shadow
+      which stern moralists designate &ldquo;unpleasant consequences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      First there had been Michael Quarrington&rsquo;s plain and candid utterance of
+      his opinion of her. Then had followed Davilof&rsquo;s headlong wooing and his
+      refusal, when thwarted, to play for her again. He, too, had not precisely
+      glossed things over in that tirade of accusation and reproach which he had
+      levelled at her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, just when it seemed as though she had put these other ugly
+      happenings behind her, Kit Raynham, who for the last six months had been
+      one of the little court of admirers which surrounded her, had seen fit to
+      complicate matters by vanishing without explanation; while his mother, in
+      an absurd maternal flurry of anxiety as to what had become of him, must
+      needs write to her as though it inevitably followed that she was
+      responsible for his disappearance!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda was conscious of an irritated sense of injury, which Gillian&rsquo;s
+      rather apprehensive little comments on the absence of further news
+      concerning young Raynham scarcely tended to allay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t be tiresome, Gillian!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;The boy&rsquo;s all right. I
+      expect he&rsquo;s been having a joy-day&mdash;which has prolonged itself a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems he hasn&rsquo;t been seen or heard of since the day before yesterday,&rdquo;
+       responded Gillian gravely. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re afraid he may&mdash;may have committed
+      suicide&rdquo;&mdash;she brought out the word with a rush. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve been
+      dragging the lake at his home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda flared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you hear all this&mdash;this nonsense? You said nothing about
+      it last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Raynham told me. She rang up half an hour ago&mdash;before you were
+      down&mdash;to ask if by any chance we had had any news of him,&rdquo; replied
+      Gillian gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda pushed away her plate and, leaving her breakfast unfinished, moved
+      restlessly across to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing about it in this morning&rsquo;s paper, is there?&rdquo; she asked.
+      Her tone sounded apprehensive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s eyes grew suddenly compassionate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. There is&mdash;something,&rdquo; she returned, laying her hand quickly
+      over the newspaper as though to withhold it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Magda swung round and snatched it from her. Gillian half rose from her
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t look&mdash;don&rsquo;t read it, Magda!&rdquo; she entreated hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other made no response. Instead, she deliberately searched the columns
+      of the paper until she found a paragraph headed: Disappearance of the
+      Honourable Kit Raynham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No exception could reasonably be taken to the paragraph in question. It
+      gave a brief resume of Kit Raynham&rsquo;s short life up to date, referred to
+      the distinguished career which had been predicted for him, and, in
+      mentioning that he was one of the set of brilliant young folks of whom
+      Magda Wielitzska, the well-known dancer, was the acknowledged leader, it
+      conveyed a very slightly veiled hint that he, in particular, was accounted
+      one of her most devoted satellites. The sting of the paragraph lay in its
+      tail:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be tragic indeed if it should eventually transpire that a young
+      life so full of exceptional promise has foundered in seas that only a
+      seasoned swimmer should essay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was easy enough for Magda to read between the lines. If anything had
+      happened to Kit Raynham&mdash;if it were ultimately found that he had
+      taken his own life&mdash;society at large was prepared to censure her as
+      more or less responsible for the catastrophe!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Side by side with this paragraph was another&mdash;a panegyric on the
+      perfection of Wielitzska&rsquo;s dancing as a whole, and dwelling particularly
+      upon her brilliant performance in <i>The Swan-Maiden</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Magda, the juxtaposition of the two paragraphs was almost unendurable.
+      That this supreme success should be marred and overshadowed by a possible
+      tragedy! She flung the newspaper to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think&mdash;I think the world&rsquo;s going mad!&rdquo; she exclaimed in a choked
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian looked across at her. Intuitively she apprehended the mental
+      conflict through which her friend was passing&mdash;the nervous
+      apprehension and resentment of the artiste that any extraneous happening
+      should infringe upon her success contending with the genuine regret she
+      would feel if some untoward accident had really befallen Kit Raynham. And
+      behind both these that strange, aloof detachment which seemed part of the
+      very fibre of her nature, and which Gillian knew would render it almost
+      impossible for her to admit or even realise that she was in any way
+      responsible for Kit Raynham&rsquo;s fate&mdash;whatever it might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of what had taken place in the winter-garden at Lady Arabella&rsquo;s Gillian
+      was, of course, in ignorance, and she had therefore no idea that the
+      intrusion of Kit Raynham&rsquo;s affairs at this particular juncture was doubly
+      unwelcome. But she could easily see that Magda was shaken out of her
+      customary sang-froid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry, Magda.&rdquo; The words sprang consolingly to her lips, but before
+      she could give them utterance Melrose opened the door and announced that
+      Lady Raynham was in the library. Would Mademoiselle Wielitzska see her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man&rsquo;s face wore a look of concern. They had heard all about the
+      disappearance of Lady Raynham&rsquo;s son in the servants&rsquo; hall&mdash;the
+      evening papers had had it. Moreover, it always seems as though there
+      exists a species of wireless telepathy by which the domestic staff of any
+      household, great or small, speedily becomes acquainted with everything
+      good, bad, or indifferent&mdash;and particularly bad!&mdash;which affects
+      the folks &ldquo;above-stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A brief uncomfortable pause succeeded Melrose&rsquo;s announcement; then Magda
+      walked quietly out of the room into the library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Raynham rose from a low chair near the fire. She was a little,
+      insignificant woman, rather unfashionably attired, with neat grey hair and
+      an entirely undistinguished face, but as she stood there, motionless,
+      waiting for Magda to come up to her, she was quite unconsciously
+      impressive&mdash;transformed by that tragic dignity with which great
+      sorrow invests even the most commonplace of people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her thin, middle-aged features looked drawn and puckered by long hours of
+      strain. Her eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness. They searched Magda&rsquo;s
+      face accusingly before she spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you done to my son?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is he?&rdquo; Magda&rsquo;s answering question came in almost breathless haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Raynham sat down suddenly. Her legs were trembling beneath her&mdash;had
+      been trembling uncontrollably even as she nerved herself to stand and
+      confront the woman at whose door she laid the ruin of her son. But now the
+      spurt of nervous energy was exhausted, and she sank back into her chair,
+      thankful for its support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know where he is,&rdquo; she said tonelessly. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t even know
+      whether he is alive or dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She fumbled in the wrist-bag she carried, and withdrawing a crumpled sheet
+      of notepaper held it out. Magda took it from her mechanically,
+      recognising, with a queer tightening of the muscles of her throat, the
+      boyish handwriting which sprawled across it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want me to read this?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve <i>got</i> to read it,&rdquo; replied the other harshly. &ldquo;It is written
+      to you. I found it&mdash;after he&rsquo;d gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her gaze fastened on Magda&rsquo;s face and clung there unwaveringly while she
+      read the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a wild, incoherent outpouring&mdash;the headlong confession of a
+      boy&rsquo;s half-crazed infatuation for a beautiful woman. A pathetic enough
+      document in its confused medley of passionate demand and boyish
+      humbleness. The tragic significance of it was summed up in a few lines at
+      the end&mdash;lines which seemed to burn themselves into Magda&rsquo;s brain:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it was cheek my hoping you could ever care, but you were so
+      sweet to me you made me think you did. I know now that you don&rsquo;t&mdash;that
+      you never really cared a brass farthing, and I&rsquo;m going right away. The
+      same world can&rsquo;t hold us both any longer. So I&rsquo;m going out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda looked up from the scrawled page and met the gaze of the sad,
+      merciless eyes that were fixed on her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you have left him alone?&rdquo; Lady Raynham spoke in a low, difficult
+      voice. &ldquo;You have men enough to pay you compliments and run your errands.
+      I&rsquo;d only Kit. Couldn&rsquo;t you have let me keep him? What did you want with my
+      boy&rsquo;s love. You&rsquo;d nothing to give him in return?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had!&rdquo; protested Magda indignantly. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re wrong. I was very fond of
+      Kit. I gave him my friendship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her indignation was perfectly sincere. To her, it seemed that Lady Raynham
+      was taking up a most unwarrantable attitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friendship?&rdquo; repeated the latter with bitter scorn. &ldquo;Friendship? Then God
+      help the boys to whom you give it! Before Kit ever met you he was the best
+      and dearest son a woman could have had. He was keen on his work&mdash;wild
+      to get on. And he was so gifted it looked as if there were nothing in his
+      profession that he might not do. . . . Then you came! You turned his head,
+      filled his thoughts to the exclusion of all else&mdash;work, duty,
+      everything that matters to a lad of two-and-twenty. You spoilt his chances&mdash;spoilt
+      his whole life. And now I&rsquo;ve lost him. I don&rsquo;t know where he is&mdash;whether
+      he is dead or alive.&rdquo; She paused. &ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s dead,&rdquo; she said dully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry!&rdquo; Lady Raynham interrupted hysterically. Her composure was giving
+      way under the strain of the interview. &ldquo;Sorry if my son has taken his own
+      life&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; asserted Magda desperately. &ldquo;He was far too sensible and&mdash;and
+      ordinary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Till you turned his head!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Raynham rose and walked towards the door as though she had said all
+      she came to say. Magda sprang to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t&mdash;I won&rsquo;t be blamed like this!&rdquo; she exclaimed rebelliously.
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s unfair! Can I help it if your son chose to fall in love with me? You&mdash;you
+      might as well hold me responsible because he is tall or short&mdash;or
+      good or bad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other stopped suddenly on her way to the door as though arrested by
+      that last defiant phrase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do,&rdquo; she said sternly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s women like you who are responsible whether
+      men are good&mdash;or bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In silence Magda watched the small, unassuming figure disappear through
+      the doorway. She felt powerless to frame a reply, nor had Lady Raynham
+      waited for one. If her boy were indeed dead&mdash;dead by his own hand&mdash;she
+      had at least cleared his memory, laid the burden of the mad, rash act he
+      had committed on the shoulders that deserved to bear it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Normally a shy, retiring kind of woman, loathing anything in the nature of
+      a scene, the tragedy which had befallen her son had inspired Alicia
+      Raynham with the reckless courage of a tigress defending its young. And
+      now that the strain was over and she found herself once more in her
+      brougham, driving homeward with the familiar clip-clop of the fat old
+      carriage-horse&rsquo;s hoofs in her ears, she shrank back against the cushions
+      marvelling at the temerity which had swept her into the Wielitzska&rsquo;s
+      presence and endowed her with words that cut like a two-edged sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a two-edged sword in very truth! Lady Raynham&rsquo;s final thrust,
+      stabbing at her with its stern denunciation, brought back vividly to Magda
+      Michael Quarrington&rsquo;s bitter speech&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no place for your kind of
+      woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Side by side with the recollection came a sudden dart of fear. How would
+      all this stir about Kit Raynham&mdash;the impending gossip and censure
+      which seemed likely to be accorded her&mdash;affect him? Would he judge
+      her again&mdash;as he had judged her before?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was conscious of a fresh impulse of anger against Lady Raynham. She
+      wanted to forget the past&mdash;blot it all out of her memory&mdash;and
+      out of the memory of the man whose contempt had hurt her more than
+      anything in her whole life before. And now it seemed as though everything
+      were combining to emphasise those very things which had earned his scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, apart from a certain apprehension as to how the whole affair might
+      appear in Michael&rsquo;s eyes, she was characteristically unimpressed by her
+      interview with Lady Raynham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see,&rdquo; she told Gillian indignantly, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;m to blame because
+      the boy lost his head. His mother was&mdash;stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian regarded her consideringly. To her, the whole pitiful tragedy was
+      so clear. She could envisage the point of view of Kit&rsquo;s mother only too
+      well, and sympathise with it. Yet, understanding Magda better than most
+      people did, she realised that the dancer was hardly as culpable as Lady
+      Raynham thought her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Homage and admiration were as natural to Magda as the air she breathed,
+      and it made very little impression on her whether a man more or less lost
+      his heart to her or not. Moreover, as Gillian recognised it was almost
+      inevitable that this should be the case. The influences by which Magda had
+      been surrounded during the first ten plastic years of childhood had all
+      tended to imbue her with the idea that men were only to be regarded as
+      playthings, and that from the simple standpoint of self-defence it was
+      wiser not to take them seriously. If you did, they invariably showed a
+      disposition to become tyrants. Gillian made allowance for this;
+      nevertheless she had no intention of letting Magda down lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you were created without a soul,&rdquo; she informed her candidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know you&rsquo;re the second person to tell me that?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The
+      idea&rsquo;s not a bit original. Michael Quarrington told me the same thing in
+      other words. Perhaps, perhaps it&rsquo;s true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, it&rsquo;s not true!&rdquo; Gillian contradicted her warmly. &ldquo;I only said
+      it because I was so out of patience with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody seems to be hating me rather badly just now.&rdquo; Magda spoke
+      somewhat forlornly. &ldquo;And yet&mdash;I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m any different from
+      usual.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think you are,&rdquo; retorted Gillian. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s your &lsquo;usual&rsquo; that&rsquo;s
+      so disastrous. You go sailing through life like a beautiful cold star&mdash;perfectly
+      impassive and heartless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not heartless. I love you&mdash;and Marraine. You surely don&rsquo;t blame
+      me because I don&rsquo;t &lsquo;fall in love&rsquo;? . . . I don&rsquo;t <i>want</i> to fall in
+      love,&rdquo; she added with sudden vehemence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to goodness you would!&rdquo; exclaimed Gillian impatiently. &ldquo;If only
+      you cared enough about anybody to do something really outrageous&mdash;run
+      off with another woman&rsquo;s husband, even&mdash;I believe I should respect
+      you more than I do now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gillyflower, I&rsquo;m afraid you&rsquo;ve no morals. And you here in the capacity of
+      watchdog and duenna, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all very well to make a joke of everything. But I know&mdash;I&rsquo;m
+      sure this business about Kit Raynham is going to be more serious than you
+      think. It&rsquo;s bound to affect you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda stared at her blankly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What nonsense! Affect me&mdash;why should it? How can it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can it?&rdquo;&mdash;with bitterness. &ldquo;Everyone will talk&mdash;more than
+      usual! You can&rsquo;t smash up people&rsquo;s only sons&mdash;not lovable, popular
+      boys like Kit&mdash;without there being a fuss. You&mdash;you should have
+      left a kid like that alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she went out of the room, banging the door behind her like a big
+      full-stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s prophecy proved only too accurate. People did talk. Kit Raynham
+      had been a general favourite in society, and his disappearance, taken in
+      conjunction with the well-known fact of his infatuation for Magda, created
+      a sensation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even when the theory of suicide was finally disproved by his mother&rsquo;s
+      receiving a letter from Australia, whither it appeared, the boy had
+      betaken himself and his disappointment, people seemed at first disinclined
+      to overlook Magda&rsquo;s share in the matter. For a time even her immense
+      prestige as a dancer suffered some eclipse, but this, with a performer of
+      her supreme artistry, was bound to be only a passing phase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world will always condone where it wants to be amused. And&mdash;now
+      that the gloom of young Raynham&rsquo;s supposed suicide was lifted from the
+      affair&mdash;there was a definite aroma of romance about it which was not
+      without its appeal to the younger generation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So that gradually the pendulum swung back and Magda&rsquo;s audiences were once
+      again as big and enthusiastic as ever. Perhaps even more enthusiastic,
+      since the existence of a romantic and dramatic attachment sheds a certain
+      glamour about any well-known artiste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of which affected Magda herself comparatively little&mdash;though it
+      irritated her that her actions should be criticised. What did affect her,
+      however, absorbing her thoughts to the exclusion of all other matters, was
+      that since the night of Lady Arabella&rsquo;s reception she had received neither
+      word nor sign from Michael Quarrington.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not understand it. Had he been a different type of man she might
+      have credited him with having yielded to a sudden impulse, kissing her as
+      some men will kiss women&mdash;lightly and without giving or asking more
+      than the moment&rsquo;s caress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Quarrington was essentially not the man to be carried away by a
+      passing fancy. That he had cared for her against his will, against his
+      better judgment, Magda could not but realise. <i>But he had cared!</i> She
+      was sure of it. And he was the only man for whom her own pulses had ever
+      beaten one whit the faster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His touch, the sound of his voice, the swift, hawk-like glance of those
+      grey eyes of his, had power to wake in her a vague tumult of emotion at
+      once sweet and frightening; and in that brief moment in the &ldquo;Garden of
+      Eden,&rdquo; when he had held her in his arms, she had been tremulously ready to
+      yield&mdash;to surrender to the love which claimed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the days had multiplied to weeks and still the silence which had
+      followed remained unbroken. As far as Magda was concerned, Michael seemed
+      to have walked straight out of her life, and she was too proud&mdash;and
+      too much hurt&mdash;to inquire amongst her friends for news of him. It was
+      her godmother who finally tersely enlightened her as to his whereabouts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Characteristically, Lady Arabella had withheld her judgment regarding the
+      Kit Raynham affair until it was found that he had betaken himself off to
+      Australia. But when the whole of the facts were evident, she allowed
+      nothing&mdash;neither the romantic dreams of the episode nor her own warm
+      affection for her god-daughter&mdash;to obscure her clear-sighted vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda twisted her slim shoulders irritably when taken to task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m tired of being blamed for Kit Raynham&rsquo;s idiocy,&rdquo; she said, a
+      note of resentment in her voice. &ldquo;No one seems to consider my side of the
+      question! I was merely nice to him in an ordinary sort of way, and there
+      wasn&rsquo;t the least need for him to have chucked up everything and rushed off
+      to the other side of the world like that. <i>I</i> couldn&rsquo;t help it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella made a gesture of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe you could,&rdquo; she acknowledged helplessly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m really
+      beginning to have a sneaking sympathy with poor Hugh for shelving the
+      responsibility of having brought you into the world. But at least you
+      might refrain from baby-snatching!&rdquo; she added wrathfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marraine! You&rsquo;re abominable! Kit is four-and-twenty if he&rsquo;s a day. And
+      I&rsquo;m barely twenty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That has nothing whatever to do with it,&rdquo; retorted Lady Arabella
+      incisively. &ldquo;Kit is a babe in arms, while you&mdash;you&rsquo;re as old as Eve.&rdquo;
+       She paused. &ldquo;Anyway, you&rsquo;ve broken his heart and driven him to the ends of
+      the earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where he&rsquo;ll probably paste together the pieces and offer the repaired
+      article to someone else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella looked up sharply. Cynicism was usually far enough away from
+      Magda. She was too full of the joy of life and of the genuine delight an
+      artist finds in his art to have place for it. Egoist she might be, with
+      the unthinking egotism of youth, irresponsible in her gay acceptance of
+      the love and admiration showered on her, but there was nothing bitter or
+      sour in her composition. Lady Arabella, seeking an explanation for the
+      unwonted, cast her mind back on the events of the last few weeks&mdash;and
+      smiled to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you know you&rsquo;ve driven someone else out of England besides Kit
+      Raynham?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda spoke mechanically. A faint colour crept up under her white skin,
+      and she avoided her godmother&rsquo;s keen gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That charming artist-man&mdash;Michael Quarrington.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has&mdash;he left England?&rdquo; Magda&rsquo;s throat felt suddenly parched. Then
+      with an effort she went on: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re surely not going to put the entire
+      steamship&rsquo;s passenger list down to me, Marraine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only those names for which I happen to know you&rsquo;re responsible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know about Saint Mi&mdash;about Mr. Quarrington. It&rsquo;s mere
+      guesswork on your part.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most of the things we really know in life are mere guesswork,&rdquo; replied
+      Lady Arabella sagely. &ldquo;But in this case&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. In this case?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long pause. Then Lady Arabella answered slowly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this case I&rsquo;m speaking from first-hand information.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s slender figure tautened. She moistened her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that Mr. Quarrington told you he was leaving England on my
+      account?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t often meddle, Magda&mdash;not really meddle.&rdquo; Lady Arabella&rsquo;s
+      voice sounded unusually deprecating. &ldquo;But I did in this instance. Because&mdash;oh,
+      my dear, he&rsquo;s the only man I&rsquo;ve ever seen to whom I&rsquo;d be glad to give you
+      up. He&rsquo;d&mdash;he&rsquo;d manage you, Magda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s head was turned away, but the sudden scarlet flush that flew up
+      into her face surged over even the white nape of her neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he loves you,&rdquo; went on Lady Arabella, her voice softening incredibly.
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s only a man here or there who really <i>loves</i> a woman, my dear.
+      Most of them whip up a hotch-potch of quite commonplace feelings with a
+      dash of passion and call it love, while all they actually want is a good
+      housekeeper and presentable hostess and someone to carry on the name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer came from Magda, unless a stifled murmur could be regarded as
+      such, and after a few minutes Lady Arabella spoke again, irritably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why couldn&rsquo;t you have left Kit alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda raised her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has that to do with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything&rdquo;&mdash;succinctly. &ldquo;I told you I meddled. Michael Quarrington
+      came to see me before he went away&mdash;and I know precisely why he left
+      England. I asked him to go and see you before he sailed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; The words were almost inaudible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella hesitated. Then she quoted quickly: &ldquo;&lsquo;There is no need. She
+      will understand.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To Magda the brief sentence held all the finality of the bolting and
+      barring of a door. So Quarrington, like everyone else, had heard the story
+      of Kit Raynham! And he had judged and sentenced her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night in the winter-garden he had been on the verge of trusting her,
+      ready to believe in her, and she had vowed to herself that she would prove
+      worthy of his trust. She had meant never to fall short of all that Michael
+      demanded in the woman he loved. And now, before she had had a chance to
+      justify his hardly-won belief, the past had risen up to destroy her,
+      surging over her like a great tidal wave and sweeping away the whole
+      fabric of the happiness she had visioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not wholly realised before that she loved. But she knew now. As
+      the empty weeks dragged along she learned what it meant to long for the
+      beloved one&rsquo;s presence&mdash;the sound and touch of voice or hand&mdash;with
+      an aching, unassuagable longing that seems to fuse body and soul into a
+      single entity of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outwardly she appeared unchanged. Her pride was indomitable, and exactly
+      how much Michael&rsquo;s going had meant to her not even Gillian suspected&mdash;though
+      the latter was too sensitive and sympathetic not to realise that Magda had
+      passed through some experience which had touched her keenly. Ignorant of
+      the incidents that had occurred on the night of Lady Arabella&rsquo;s party, she
+      was disposed to assign the soreness of spirit she discerned in her friend
+      to the general happenings which had followed from the Raynham episode. And
+      amongst these she gave a certain definite place to the abrupt withdrawal
+      of Quarrington&rsquo;s friendship, and resented it. She felt curiously
+      disappointed in the man. With such fine perceptive faculty as he possessed
+      she would have expected him to be more tolerant&mdash;more merciful in his
+      judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once she had tentatively approached the subject, but Magda had clearly
+      indicated that she had no intention of discussing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not even to Gillian, whom she had gradually come to look upon as her
+      closest friend, could Magda unveil the wound to her pride. No one, no one
+      in the whole world, should know that she had been ready to give her love&mdash;and
+      that the offering had been silently, but none the less decisively,
+      rejected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diane&rsquo;s warning now found its echo in her own heart: &ldquo;Never give your
+      heart to any man. If you do he will only break it for you&mdash;break it
+      into little pieces like the glass scent-bottle which you dropped
+      yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was right,&rdquo; Magda told herself bitterly. &ldquo;A thousand times right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE BACK OF BEYOND
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The season was drawing to its close. London lay sweltering under a
+      heat-wave which had robbed the trees in the Park of their fresh June
+      greenness and converted the progress of foot-passengers along its sultry
+      pavements into something which called to mind the mediaeval ordeal of
+      walking over hot ploughshares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the garden at Friars&rsquo; Holm, usually a coolly green oasis in the midst
+      of the surrounding streets, seemed as airless as any back court or alley,
+      and Coppertop, who had been romping ever more and more flaggingly with a
+      fox-terrier puppy he had recently acquired, finally gave up the effort and
+      flung himself down, red-faced and panting, on the lawn where his mother
+      and Magda were sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it nearly time for us to go to the seaside, mummie?&rdquo; he inquired
+      plaintively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled down at the small wistful face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would you like to go to the country instead, Topkins?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;To
+      a farm where they have pigs and horses and cows, and heaps of cream&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And strawberries?&rdquo; interpolated Coppertop pertinently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course. Or, no&mdash;they&rsquo;ll be over by the time we get there. But
+      there&rsquo;ll be raspberries. That&rsquo;s just as good, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian looked up, smiling a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s settled we&rsquo;re going &lsquo;there,&rsquo; then&mdash;wherever it is?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think you&rsquo;d like it, Gillyflower?&rdquo; asked Magda. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a farm I&rsquo;ve
+      heard of in Devonshire, where they want to take paying-guests for the
+      summer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian, guessing from Magda&rsquo;s manner that the whole matter was
+      practically arranged, nodded acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I should. But will <i>you</i>?&rdquo;&mdash;whimsically. She glanced
+      at the sophisticated simplicity of Magda&rsquo;s white gown, at the narrow suede
+      shoes and filmy stockings&mdash;every detail of her dress and person
+      breathing the expensiveness and luxury and highly specialised civilisation
+      of the city. &ldquo;Somehow I can&rsquo;t imagine you&mdash;on a farm in the depths of
+      the country! I believe you&rsquo;ll hate it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall like it.&rdquo; Magda got up restlessly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sick of society and the
+      theatre and the eternal gossip that goes on in London. I&mdash;I want to
+      get away from it all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s thoughts turned back to the happenings of the last few months.
+      She thought she understood what lay behind Magda&rsquo;s sudden decision to bury
+      herself in the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you taken rooms at this farm?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have&rdquo;&mdash;shortly. Then, with one of those sudden flashes of
+      affectionate insight which were part of her essential lovableness, she
+      went on: &ldquo;Gilly, are you sure you don&rsquo;t mind? I ought to have asked you
+      first&rdquo;&mdash;remorsefully. &ldquo;I expect you&rsquo;ll be bored to death. Perhaps
+      you&rsquo;d rather not come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s quiet brown eyes smiled at her reassuringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Where thou goest&mdash;&lsquo;&rdquo; she quoted. &ldquo;Of course I want to come. I&rsquo;ve
+      never been to Devonshire. And I know Coppertop will adore the pigs and
+      cows&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And cream,&rdquo; put in Coppertop ruminatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me about the place,&rdquo; said Gillian. &ldquo;How did you hear of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Through the prosaic columns of the <i>Daily Post</i>,&rdquo; replied Magda. &ldquo;I
+      didn&rsquo;t want a place recommended by anyone I knew. That doesn&rsquo;t cut the
+      connecting line one bit. Probably the people who&rsquo;ve recommended it to you
+      decide to look you up in their car, just when you think you&rsquo;re safely
+      buried, and disinter you. I don&rsquo;t <i>want</i> to be disinterred. I propose
+      to get right away into the country, out of reach of everybody we know, for
+      two months. I shan&rsquo;t give our address to anyone except Melrose, and he can
+      forward on all letters.&rdquo; A small amused smile crossed her lips. &ldquo;Then we
+      can answer them or not, exactly as we feel disposed. It will be heavenly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still I don&rsquo;t know where this particular paradise is which you&rsquo;ve
+      selected,&rdquo; returned Gillian patiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s at the back of beyond&mdash;a tiny village in Devonshire called
+      Ashencombe. I just managed to find it on the Ordnance map with a
+      magnifying glass! The farm itself is called Stockleigh and is owned and
+      farmed by some people named Storran. The answer to my letter was signed
+      Dan Storran. Hasn&rsquo;t it a nice sound&mdash;Storran of Stockleigh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And did you engage the rooms on those grounds, may I ask? Because the
+      proprietor&rsquo;s name &lsquo;had a nice sound&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda regarded her seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know, I really believe that had a lot to do with it,&rdquo; she
+      acknowledged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian went off into a little gale of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How like you!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The train steamed fussily out of Ashencombe station, leaving Magda,
+      Gillian, and Coppertop, together with sundry trunks and suitcases, in
+      undisputed possession of the extremely amateurish-looking platform. Magda
+      glanced about her with amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a ridiculous little wayside place!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;It has a kind of
+      &lsquo;home-made&rsquo; appearance, hasn&rsquo;t it? You&rsquo;d hardly expect a real bona fide
+      train to stop here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This your luggage, miss?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A porter&mdash;or, to be accurate, <i>the</i> porter, since Ashencombe
+      boasted but one&mdash;addressed her abruptly. From a certain inimical
+      gleam in his eye Magda surmised that he had overheard her criticism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; She nodded smilingly. &ldquo;Is there a trap of any kind to meet us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Being a man as well as a porter he melted at once under Magda&rsquo;s disarming
+      smile, and replied with a sudden accession of amiability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be you going to Stockleigh?&rdquo; he asked. The soft sing-song intonation
+      common to all Devon voices fell very pleasantly on ears accustomed to the
+      Cockney twang of London streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, to Storran of Stockleigh,&rdquo; announced Coppertop importantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The porter&rsquo;s mouth widened into an appreciative grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s right, young master, and there&rsquo;s the wagonette from the Crown and
+      Bells waiting to take you there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes later, the luggage precariously piled up on the box-seat
+      beside the driver, they were ambling through the leafy Devon lanes at an
+      unhurried pace apparently dictated by the somewhat ancient quadruped
+      between the shafts. The driver swished his whip negligently above the
+      animal&rsquo;s broad back, but presumably more with the idea of keeping off the
+      flies than with any hope of accelerating his speed. There would be no
+      other train to meet at Ashencombe until the down mail, due four hours
+      later, so why hurry? No one ever appears to be in a hurry in the leisurely
+      West Country&mdash;a refreshing characteristic in a world elsewhere so
+      perforated by tubes and shaken by the ubiquitous motor-bus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda leaned back in the wagonette with a sigh of pleasure. The drowsy,
+      sunshiny peace of the July afternoon seemed very far removed from the
+      torrid rush and roar of the previous day in London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was almost like entering another world. Instead of the crowded,
+      wood-paved streets, redolent of petrol, this winding ribbon of a lane
+      where the brambles and tufted grass leaned down from close-set hedges to
+      brush the wheels of the carriage as it passed. Overhead, a restful sky of
+      misty blue flecked with wisps of white cloud, while each inconsequent turn
+      of the narrow twisting road revealed a sudden glimpse of distant purple
+      hills, or a small friendly cottage built of cob and crowned with yellow
+      thatch, or high-hedged fields of standing corn, deepening to gold and
+      quiveringly still as the sea on a windless afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the wagonette swung round an incredibly sharp turn and rumbled
+      between two granite posts&mdash;long since denuded of the gate which had
+      once swung between them&mdash;pulling up in front of a low, two-storied
+      house, which seemed to convey a pleasant sense of welcome, as some houses
+      do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The casement windows stood wide open and through them you caught glimpses
+      of white curtains looped back with lavender ribbons. Roses, pink and white
+      and red, nodded their heads to you from the walls, even peering out
+      impertinently to catch the sun from beneath the eaves of the roof, whose
+      thatch had mellowed to a somber brown with wind and weather. Above the
+      doorway trails of budding honeysuckle challenged the supremacy of more
+      roses in their summer prime, and just within, in the cool shadow of the
+      porch, stood a woman&rsquo;s slender figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian never forgot that first glimpse of June Storran. She looked very
+      simple and girlish as she stood there, framed in the rose-covered trellis
+      of the porch, waiting with a slight stir of nervousness to receive the
+      travellers. The sunlight, filtering between the leaves of the honeysuckle,
+      dappled her ash-blond hair with hovering flecks of gold, and a faint, shy
+      smile curved her lips as she came forward, a little hesitatingly, to greet
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so glad to see you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Dan&mdash;my husband had to go to
+      Exeter to-day. He was sorry he could not meet you himself at the station.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she and Magda stood side by side the contrast between them was
+      curiously marked&mdash;the one in her obviously homemade cotton frock,
+      with her total absence of poise and her look of extreme youth hardly
+      seeming the married woman that she was, the other gowned with the
+      simplicity of line and detailed finish achieved only by a great
+      dressmaker, her quiet assurance and distinctive little air of <i>savoir
+      vivre</i> setting her worlds apart from Dan Storran&rsquo;s young wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you come in? The man will see to your luggage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      June was speaking again, still shyly but with her shyness tempered by a
+      sensitive instinct of hospitality. She led the way into the house and they
+      followed her through a big, low-raftered living-room and up a flight of
+      slippery oak stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These are your rooms,&rdquo; said June, pausing at last at the end of a
+      rambling passage-way. &ldquo;I hope&rdquo;&mdash;she flushed a little anxiously&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      do hope you will like them. I&rsquo;ve made them as nice as I could. But, of
+      course&rdquo;&mdash;she glanced at Magda deprecatingly&mdash;&ldquo;you will find them
+      very different from London rooms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda flashed her a charming smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure we shall love them,&rdquo; she answered, glancing about her with
+      genuine appreciation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rooms were very simply furnished, but sweet and fresh with chintz and
+      flowers, and the whitewashed ceilings, sloping at odd, unexpected angles,
+      gave them a quaint attractiveness. The somewhat coarse but spotless
+      bed-linen exhaled a faint fragrance of lavender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to charge extra for the view alone,&rdquo; observed Gillian, going to
+      one of the open lattice windows and looking across the rise and fall of
+      hill and valley to where the distant slopes of Dartmoor, its craggy tors
+      veiled in a grey-blue haze, rimmed the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you didn&rsquo;t think the terms too high?&rdquo; said June. &ldquo;You see, I&mdash;we
+      never had paying-guests before, and I really didn&rsquo;t know what would be
+      considered fair. I do hope you&rsquo;ll be happy and comfortable here,&rdquo; she
+      added timidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something very appealing in her ingenuousness and wistful desire
+      to please, and Magda reassured her quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t any doubt about it,&rdquo; she said, smiling. &ldquo;This is such a
+      charming house&rdquo;&mdash;glancing about her&mdash;&ldquo;so dear and old-fashioned.
+      I think it&rsquo;s very good of you to let us share your home for a little
+      while. It will be a lovely holiday for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      June Storran had no possibility of knowing that this dark, slender woman
+      to whom she had let her rooms was the famous dancer, Magda Wielitzska,
+      since the rooms had been engaged in the name of Miss Vallincourt, but she
+      responded to Magda&rsquo;s unfailing charm as a flower to the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be lovely for us, too,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;Do you know, we were so
+      frightened about putting in that advertisement you answered! Dan was
+      terribly against it.&rdquo; A troubled little frown knitted her level brows.
+      &ldquo;But we&rsquo;ve had such bad luck on the farm since we were married&mdash;the
+      rain spoilt all our crops last year and we lost several valuable animals&mdash;so
+      I thought it would help a bit if we took paying-guests this summer. But
+      Dan didn&rsquo;t really approve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can quite understand,&rdquo; said Gillian. &ldquo;Naturally he wanted to keep his
+      home to himself&mdash;an Englishman&rsquo;s home is his castle, you know! And I
+      expect&rdquo;&mdash;smilingly&mdash;&ldquo;you haven&rsquo;t been married very long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Storran flushed rosily. She was evidently a sensitive little person,
+      and the blood came and went quickly under her clear skin at the least
+      provocation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very long,&rdquo; she acknowledged. &ldquo;But we&rsquo;ve been very happy&mdash;in
+      spite of our bad luck on the farm! After all, that&rsquo;s what matters, isn&rsquo;t
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the only thing that really matters at all,&rdquo; said Gillian. Her eyes
+      had grown suddenly soft with some tender recollection of the past. &ldquo;But
+      you mustn&rsquo;t let us give you a lot of trouble while we&rsquo;re here. You don&rsquo;t
+      look over-strong.&rdquo; Her glance rested kindly on her hostess&rsquo;s young face.
+      In spite of its dewy blue eyes and clear skin with the tinge of wild-rose
+      pink in the cheeks, it conveyed a certain impression of fragility. She
+      looked almost as though a vigorous puff of wind might blow her away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m quite well. Of course I found looking after a farmhouse rather
+      heavy work&mdash;just at first. I hadn&rsquo;t been used to it, and we can&rsquo;t
+      afford to keep a servant. You see, I married Dan against the wishes of my
+      people, so of course we couldn&rsquo;t accept any help from them, though they
+      have offered it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why not,&rdquo; objected Magda. &ldquo;They can&rsquo;t feel very badly about
+      it if they are willing to help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no&mdash;they would, gladly. But Dan would hate it in the
+      circumstances. You can understand that, can&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;&mdash;appealingly. &ldquo;He
+      wants to justify himself&mdash;to prove that he can keep his own wife.
+      He&rsquo;d be too proud to let me take anything from them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Storran of Stockleigh appears to be considerably less attractive than his
+      name,&rdquo; summed up Gillian, as, half an hour later, she and Magda and
+      Coppertop were seated round a rustic wooden table in the garden partaking
+      of a typical Devonshire tea with its concomitants of jam and clotted
+      cream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apparently,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;he has married &lsquo;above him.&rsquo; Little Mrs.
+      Storran obviously comes of good stock, while I expect he himself is just
+      an ordinary sort of farmer and doesn&rsquo;t half appreciate her. Anyway, he
+      doesn&rsquo;t seem to consider her much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda made no answer. Characteristically her interest in June Storran had
+      evaporated, pushed aside by something of more personal concern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the most restful, peaceful spot I&rsquo;ve ever struck,&rdquo; she said,
+      leaning back with a sigh of pleasure. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it lovely, Gilly? There&rsquo;s
+      something homelike and friendly about the whole landscape&mdash;a sort of
+      <i>intimate</i> feeling. I feel as if I&rsquo;d known it all for years&mdash;and
+      should like to know it for years more! Don&rsquo;t they say Devon folk always
+      want to come home to die? I&rsquo;m not surprised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it&rsquo;s very beautiful,&rdquo; agreed Gillian, her gaze resting contentedly
+      on the gracious curves of green and golden fields, broken here and there
+      by stretches of ploughed land glowing warmly red between the ripening corn
+      and short-cropped pasture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe I could be quite good here, Gillyflower,&rdquo; pursued Magda
+      reflectively. &ldquo;Just live happily from one day to the next, breathing this
+      glorious air, and eating plain, simple food, and feeding those adorable
+      fluffy yellow balls Mrs. Storran calls chickens, and churning butter and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s ringing, whole-hearted laughter checked this enthusiastic
+      epitome of the simple life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, Magda!&rdquo; she asserted, shaking her head. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m quite expecting you
+      to get bored in about a week and to rush me off to Deauville or somewhere
+      of that ilk. And as to being &lsquo;good&rsquo;&mdash;why, it isn&rsquo;t in you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure.&rdquo; Magda rose and together they strolled over the grass
+      towards the house, Coppertop skirmishing happily behind them. &ldquo;I really
+      think I might be good here&mdash;if only for the sole reason that there&rsquo;s
+      no temptation to be anything else&rdquo;&mdash;drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke a gate clicked close at hand. Followed the sound of quick,
+      striding steps, and the next moment a man&rsquo;s figure rounded the tall yew
+      hedge which skirted the foot of the garden and came towards them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a big giant of a man&mdash;at least six foot two in his socks, and
+      proportionately broad and muscular in build. There was something free and
+      bold in his swinging gait that seemed to challenge the whole world. It
+      suggested an almost fierce independence of spirit that would give or take
+      as it chose, but would never brook dictation from any man&mdash;or woman
+      either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instinctively Magda and Gillian paused, and Magda held out a slim hand,
+      smiling, as he overtook them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you must be Mr. Storran,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He halted abruptly and snatched off his cap, revealing a crop of crinkly
+      dark-brown hair thatching a lean sunburnt face, out of which gleamed a
+      pair of eyes as vividly blue as periwinkles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m Dan Storran,&rdquo; he said simply. &ldquo;Is it Miss Vallincourt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda nodded and proceeded to introduce Gillian. But Storran&rsquo;s glance only
+      rested cursorily on Gillian&rsquo;s soft, pretty face, returning at once to
+      Magda&rsquo;s as though drawn thither by a magnet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry I couldn&rsquo;t meet your train myself to-day,&rdquo; he said, a note of
+      eager apology in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      FOREBODINGS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Gillian was sitting alone in the yew-hedged garden, her slim fingers busy
+      repairing the holes which appeared with unfailing regularity in the heels
+      of Coppertop&rsquo;s stockings. From the moment he had come to Stockleigh the
+      number and size of the said holes had increased appreciably, for, although
+      five weeks had elapsed since the day of arrival, Coppertop was still
+      revelling whole-heartedly in the incredible daily delights which, from the
+      viewpoint of six years old, attach to a farm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Day after day found him trotting contentedly in the wake of the stockman,
+      one Ned Honeycott, whom he had adopted as guide, philosopher, and friend,
+      and whom he regarded as a veritable fount of knowledge and the provider of
+      unlimited adventure and entertainment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Honeycott who lifted Coppertop on to the broad back of the
+      steadiest cart-horse; who had taught him how to feed calves by dipping his
+      chubby little hand into a pail of milk and then letting them suck the milk
+      from off his fingers; who beneficently contrived that hardly a load of hay
+      was driven to the great rick without Coppertop&rsquo;s small person perched
+      proudly aloft thereon, his slim legs dangling and his shrill voice joining
+      with that of the carter in an encouraging &ldquo;Come-up, Blossom,&rdquo; to the bay
+      mare as she plodded forward between the shafts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian experienced no anxiety with regard to Coppertop&rsquo;s safety while he
+      was in Ned Honeycott&rsquo;s charge, but she missed the childish companionship,
+      the more so as she found herself frequently alone these days. June Storran
+      was naturally occupied about her house and dairy, while Magda, under Dan
+      Storran&rsquo;s tutelage, appeared smitten with an extraordinary interest in
+      farm management.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to Gillian that Magda and Dan were in each other&rsquo;s company the
+      greater part of the time. Every day Dan had some suggestion or other to
+      make for Miss Vallincourt&rsquo;s amusement. Either it was: &ldquo;Would you care to
+      see the hay-loader at work?&rdquo; Or: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just bought a couple of pedigree
+      Devon cows I&rsquo;d like to show you, Miss Vallincourt.&rdquo; Or, as yesterday:
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a pony fair to be held to-morrow at Pennaway Bridge. Would you
+      care to drive in it?&rdquo; And to each and all of Storran&rsquo;s suggestions Magda
+      had yielded a ready assent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So this morning had seen the two of them setting out for Pennaway in Dan&rsquo;s
+      high dog-cart, while Gillian and June stood together in the rose-covered
+      porch and watched them depart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t you like to have gone?&rdquo; Gillian asked on a sudden impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She regretted the question the instant it had passed her lips, for in the
+      wide-apart blue eyes June turned upon her there was something of the mute,
+      puzzled misery of a dog that has received an unexpected blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t spare the time,&rdquo; she answered hastily. &ldquo;You see&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      sensitive colour as usual coming and going quickly in her face&mdash;&ldquo;Miss
+      Vallincourt is on a holiday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned and went quickly into the house, leaving Gillian conscious of a
+      sudden uneasiness&mdash;that queer &ldquo;trouble ahead&rdquo; feeling which descends
+      upon us sometimes, without warning and without our being able to assign
+      any very definite cause for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was thinking over the little incident now, as she sat sewing in the
+      evening light, and meditating whether she should give Magda a hint that it
+      might be kinder of her not to monopolise so much of Dan&rsquo;s society. And
+      then the crisp sound of a horse trotting on the hard, dry road came to her
+      ears, and almost immediately the high dog-cart swung between the granite
+      gateposts and clattered into the yard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan tossed the reins on to the horse&rsquo;s neck and, springing to the ground,
+      came round to help Magda down from the cart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s rather a steep step. Let me lift you down,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda stood up in the trap and looked down at him with smiling eyes,
+      unconsciously delighting in his sheer physical good looks. He was a
+      magnificent specimen of manhood, and the good yeoman blood in him, which
+      had come down through the generations of the same sturdy stock, proclaimed
+      itself in his fine physique and splendid virility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later he had swung her down as easily as though she were a child,
+      and she was standing beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed up at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, &lsquo;girt Jan Ridd&rsquo;!&rdquo; she exclaimed softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed back, well pleased. (Was there ever a man who failed to be
+      ridiculously flattered by a feminine tribute to his physical strength?)
+      Nor did his hands release her quite at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re as light as a feather! I could carry you all day and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not know it!&rdquo; concluded Magda gaily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His hands fell away from her slim body abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I should know it right enough!&rdquo; he said jerkily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes kindled, and Magda, conscious of something suddenly disturbing
+      and electric in the atmosphere, turned quickly and, leaving Storran to
+      unharness the horse, made her way to where she espied Gillian sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter looked up from her sewing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you&rsquo;ve got back? Did you have a good time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. It was quite amusing. There were heaps and heaps of ponies&mdash;some
+      of them wild, unbroken colts which had been brought straight off the Moor.
+      They were rearing and plunging all over the place. I loved them! By the
+      way, I&rsquo;m gong to learn riding, Gillyflower. Mr. Storran has offered to
+      teach me. He says he has a nice quiet mare I could start on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A small frown puckered Gillian&rsquo;s brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think Mrs. Storran will like it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why on earth shouldn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo;&mdash;Gillian spoke with a vague discomfort. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s her husband!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see what that has to do with it,&rdquo; replied Magda. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re staying
+      here and, of course, the Storrans want to make it as nice as they can for
+      us. Anyway, I&rsquo;m going to take such goods as the gods provide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She got up abruptly and went in the direction of the house, leaving Gillian
+      to digest as best she might the hint that her interference was not likely
+      to be either welcomed or effective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left to herself, Gillian sighed unhappily. Almost she wished they had
+      never come to Stockleigh, only that it was pure joy to her to see
+      Coppertop&rsquo;s rather thin little cheeks filling out and growing sunburnt and
+      rosy. He had not picked up strength very readily after his attack of
+      croup, and subsequently the intense heat in London had tried him a good
+      deal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was gradually becoming apprehensive that disturbing consequences
+      might accrue from Magda&rsquo;s stay at Stockleigh Farm. A woman of her elusive
+      charm, equipped with all the subtle lore that her environment had taught
+      her, must almost inevitably hold for a man of Storran&rsquo;s primitive way of
+      life the fascination of something new and rather wonderful. To contrast
+      his wife with her was to contrast a field-flower with some rare, exotic
+      bloom, and Gillian was conscious of a sudden rush of sympathy for June&rsquo;s
+      unarmoured youth and inexperience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s curiously uncertain moods of late, too, had worried her not a
+      little. She was unlike herself&mdash;at times brooding and introspective,
+      at other times strung up to a species of forced gaiety&mdash;a gaiety
+      which had the cold sparkle of frost or diamonds. With all her faults Magda
+      had ever been lovably devoid of bitterness, but now it seemed as though
+      she were developing a certain new quality of hardness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It puzzled Gillian, ignorant of that sudden discovery and immediate loss
+      of the Garden of Eden. It might have been less of an enigma to old Lady
+      Arabella, to whom the jigsaw puzzle of human motives and impulses was
+      always a matter of absorbing interest, and who, as more or less an
+      onlooker at life during the last thirty years, had become an adept in the
+      art of fitting the pieces of the puzzle together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda herself was only conscious of an intense restlessness and
+      dissatisfaction with existence in general. She reflected bitterly that she
+      had been a fool to let slip her hold of herself&mdash;as she had done the
+      night of Lady Arabella&rsquo;s reception&mdash;even for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been thoroughly drilled into her both by precept and example&mdash;her
+      mother&rsquo;s precept and her father&rsquo;s example&mdash;that to let a man count
+      for anything much in her life was the biggest mistake a woman could make,
+      and Michael&rsquo;s treatment of her had driven home the truth of all the
+      warnings Diane had instilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had hurt her as she had never been hurt before, and all that she craved
+      now was change. Change and amusement to drug her mind so that she need not
+      think. Whether anyone else got hurt in the process was a question that
+      never presented itself to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not expected to find amusement at Stockleigh. She had been driven
+      there by an overmastering desire to escape from London&mdash;for a few
+      weeks, at least, to get right away from her accustomed life and from
+      everyone who knew her. And at Stockleigh she had found Dan Storran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The homage that had leaped into his eyes the first moment they had rested
+      on her, and which had slowly deepened as the days slipped by, had somehow
+      soothed her, restoring her feminine poise which Michael&rsquo;s sudden defection
+      had shaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew&mdash;as every woman always does know when a man is attracted by
+      her&mdash;that she had the power to stir this big, primitive countryman,
+      whose way of life had never before brought him into contact with her type
+      of woman, just as she had stirred other men. And she carelessly accepted
+      the fact, without a thought that in playing with Dan Storran&rsquo;s emotions
+      she was dealing with a man who knew none of the moves of the game, to whom
+      the art of love-making as a pastime was an unknown quantity, and whose
+      fierce, elemental passions, once aroused, might prove difficult to curb.
+      He amused her and kept her thoughts off recent happenings, and for the
+      moment that was all that mattered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      STORRAN OF STOCKLEIGH
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was a glorious morning. The sun blazed like a great golden shield out
+      of a cloudless sky, and hardly a breath of air stirred the foliage of the
+      trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda, to content an insatiable Coppertop, had good-naturally suffered
+      herself to be dragged over the farm. They had visited the pigs&mdash;a new
+      and numerous litter of fascinating black ones having recently made their
+      debut into this world of sin&mdash;and had watched the cows being milked,
+      and been chased by the irascible gander, and finally, laughing and
+      breathless, they had made good their escape into the garden where Gillian
+      sat sewing, and had flung themselves down exhaustedly on the grass at her
+      feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in a state of mental and moral collapse, Gilly,&rdquo; declared Magda,
+      fanning herself vigorously with a cabbage leaf. &ldquo;Whew! It is hot! As soon
+      as I can generate enough energy, I propose to bathe. Will you come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian shook her head lazily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think not to-day. I want to finish this overall for Coppertop. And it&rsquo;s
+      such a long trudge from here down to the river.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know.&rdquo; Magda nodded. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s three interminable fields away&mdash;and
+      the thistles and things prick one&rsquo;s ankles abominably. Still, it&rsquo;s lovely
+      when you <i>do</i> get there! I think I&rsquo;ll go now&rdquo;&mdash;springing up from
+      the velvet turf&mdash;&ldquo;before I get too lazy to move.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s eyes followed her thoughtfully as she made her way into the
+      house. She had never seen Magda so restless&mdash;she seemed unable to
+      keep still a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later Magda emerged from the house wrapped in a cloak, a
+      little scarlet bathing-cap turbanning her dark hair, and a pair of sandals
+      on the slim supple feet that had danced their way into the hearts of half
+      of Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye!&rdquo; she called gaily, waving her hand. And went out by the wicket
+      gate leading into the fields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was not a soul in sight. Only the cows, their red, burnished coats
+      gleaming like the skin of a horse-chestnut in the hot sun, cast ruminative
+      glances at her white-cloaked figure as it passed, and occasionally a
+      peacefully grazing sheep emitted an astonished bleat at the unusual vision
+      and skedaddled away in a hurry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda emulated Agag in her progress across the field which intervened
+      between the house and the river, now and then giving vent to a little cry
+      of protest as a particularly prickly thistle or hidden trail of bramble
+      whipped against her bare ankles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last from somewhere near at hand came the cool gurgle of running water
+      and, bending her steps in the direction of the sound, two minutes&rsquo; further
+      walking brought her to the brink of the river. Further up it came tumbling
+      through the valley, leaping the rocks in a churning torrent of foam, a
+      cloud of delicate up-flung spray feathering the air above it; but here
+      there were long stretches of deep, smooth water where no boulder broke the
+      surface into spume, and quiet pools where fat little trout heedlessly
+      squandered the joyous moments of a precarious existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda threw off her wrapper and, picking her way across the moss-grown
+      rocks, paused for an instant on the bank, her slender figure, clad in its
+      close-fitting scarlet bathing-suit, vividly outlined against the
+      surrounding green of the landscape. Then she plunged in and struck out
+      downstream, swimming with long, even strokes, the soft moorland water
+      laving her throat like the touch of a satin-smooth hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was heading for a spot she knew of, a quarter of a mile below, where a
+      wooden bridge spanned the river and the sun&rsquo;s heat poured down unchecked
+      by sheltering trees. Here she proposed to scramble out and bask in the
+      golden warmth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had just established herself on a big, sun-warmed boulder when a
+      familiar step sounded on the bridge and Dan Storran&rsquo;s tall figure emerged
+      into view. He pulled up sharply as he caught sight of her, his face taking
+      on a schoolboy look of embarrassment. Deauville <i>plage</i>, where people
+      bathed in companionable parties and strolled in and out of the water as
+      seemed good to them, was something altogether outside Dan&rsquo;s ken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; he began, flushing uncomfortably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda waved to him airily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t be. I&rsquo;m having a sun-bath. You can stay and talk to me if you
+      like. Or are you too busy farming this morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not too busy,&rdquo; he said slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a curious dazzled look in his eyes as they rested on her.
+      Sheathed in the stockingette bathing-suit she wore, every line and curve
+      of her supple body was revealed. Her wet, white limbs gleamed pearl-like
+      in the quivering sunlight. The beauty of her ran through his veins like
+      wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then come and amuse me!&rdquo; Magda patted the warm surface of the rock beside
+      her invitingly. &ldquo;You can give me a cigarette to begin with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran sat down and pulled out his case. As he held a match for her to
+      light up from, his hand brushed hers and he drew it away sharply. It was
+      trembling absurdly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat silent for a moment or two; then he said with an odd abruptness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you find it frightfully dull down here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda laughed a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that because I told you to come and amuse me? . . . No, I don&rsquo;t find
+      it dull. Change is never really dull.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you must find it change enough here from the sort of life you&rsquo;ve
+      been accustomed to lead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know what sort of life I lead?&rdquo;&mdash;teasingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can guess. One has only to look at you. You&rsquo;re different&mdash;different
+      from everyone about here. The way you move&mdash;you&rsquo;re like a
+      thoroughbred amongst cart-horses.&rdquo; He spoke with a kind of sullen
+      bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda drew her feet up on to the rock and clasped her hands round her
+      knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you&rsquo;re talking nonsense, you know,&rdquo; she said amusedly. &ldquo;Frankly, I
+      like it down here immensely. I happened to be&mdash;rather worried when I
+      came away from London, and there&rsquo;s something very soothing and comforting
+      about the country&mdash;particularly your lovely Devon country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worried?&rdquo; Storran&rsquo;s face darkened. &ldquo;Who&rsquo;d been worrying you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&rdquo;&mdash;vaguely. &ldquo;All sorts of things. Men&mdash;and women. But don&rsquo;t
+      let&rsquo;s talk about worries to-day. This glorious sunshine makes me feel as
+      though there weren&rsquo;t any such things in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned back, stretching her arms luxuriously above her head with the
+      lithe, sensuous grace of movement which her training had made second
+      nature. Storran&rsquo;s eyes dwelt on her with a queer tensity of expression.
+      Every gesture, every tone of her curiously attractive voice, held for him
+      a disturbing allure which he could not analyse and against which he was
+      fighting blindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had never doubted his love for his wife. Quite honestly he had believed
+      her the one woman in the world when he married her. Yet now he was
+      beginning to find every hour a blank that did not bring him sight or sound
+      of this other woman&mdash;this woman with her slender limbs and skin like
+      a stephanotis petal, and her long Eastern eyes with the subtle lure which
+      seemed to lie in their depths. Beside her June&rsquo;s young peach-bloom
+      prettiness faded into something colourless and insignificant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be nice to be you&rdquo;&mdash;Magda nodded at him. &ldquo;With no vague,
+      indefinable sort of things to worry you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled reluctantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know I haven&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, because I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman&rsquo;s reason!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite. But women&rsquo;s reasons are generally very sound&mdash;we were endowed
+      with a sixth sense, you know! Besides&mdash;it&rsquo;s obvious, isn&rsquo;t it? Here
+      you are&mdash;you and June&mdash;living a simple, primitive kind of
+      existence, all to yourselves, like Adam and Eve. And if you do have a
+      worry it&rsquo;s a real definite one&mdash;as when a cow inconveniently goes and
+      dies or your root crop fails. Nothing intangible and uncertain about
+      that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you forgotten that the serpent intruded even upon Adam and Eve?&rdquo; he
+      asked quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that a hit at Gillian and me? I know&mdash;June told us&mdash;that you
+      were horribly opposed to anyone&rsquo;s coming here for the summer. I thought
+      that you had got over that by now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I have&rdquo;&mdash;bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we&rsquo;re not&mdash;not unwelcome visitors any longer?&rdquo; the soft,
+      tantalising voice went on. The low cadence of it seemed to tug at his very
+      heartstrings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned nearer to her and, catching both her hands in his, twisted her
+      round so that she faced him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you ask?&rdquo; he demanded, his voice suddenly roughened and uneven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I wanted to know&mdash;of course!&rdquo;&mdash;lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;you&rsquo;re not an unwelcome visitor. You never have been! From the
+      moment you came the place was different somehow. When you go&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped as though startled by the sound of his own words&mdash;struck
+      by the full significance of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you go!&rdquo; he repeated blankly. His grip of her slight hands tightened
+      till it was almost painful. &ldquo;But you won&rsquo;t go! I can&rsquo;t let you go now!
+      Magda&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The situation was threatening to get out of hand. Magda drew quickly away
+      from him, springing to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk like that,&rdquo; she said hastily. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean it, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sudden, unexpected movement she slipped from his side and ran down
+      to the river&rsquo;s edge. He caught a flashing glimpse of scarlet, heard the
+      splash as her slim body cleaved the water, and a moment later all he could
+      see was the red of her turban cap, bobbing like a scarlet poppy on the
+      surface of the river, and the glimmer of a moon-white arm and shoulder as
+      a smooth overhand stroke bore her swiftly away from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood staring after her, conscious of a sudden bewildered sense of
+      check and thwarting. The blood seemed leaping in his veins. His heart
+      thudded against his ribs. He stepped forward impetuously as though to
+      plunge in after the receding gleam of scarlet still flickering betwixt the
+      branches which overhung the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, with a stifled exclamation, he drew back, brushing his hand across
+      his eyes as though to clear their vision. What mad impulse was this urging
+      him on to say and do such things as he had never before conceived himself
+      saying or doing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda had checked him on the brink of telling her&mdash;what? The sweat
+      broke out on his forehead as the realisation surged over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God!&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE LATEST NEWS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Magda hardly knew what impulse had bidden her save Dan Storran from
+      himself&mdash;check the hot utterance to which he had so nearly given
+      voice and which to a certain extent she had herself provoked. Driven by
+      the bitterness of spirit which Michael&rsquo;s treatment of her had engendered,
+      she knew that she had flirted outrageously with Dan ever since she had
+      come to Stockleigh. She had bestowed no thought on June&mdash;pretty,
+      helpless June, watching with distressed, bewildered eyes while Dan
+      unaccountably changed towards her, his moods alternating from sullen
+      unresponsiveness to a kind of forced and contrite tenderness which she had
+      found almost more difficult to meet and understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was indeed something altogether apart from any sympathy for June which
+      had prompted Magda to leave Storran before he uttered words that he might
+      regret, but which no power on earth could ever recall. Still beneath the
+      resentment and wounded pride which Michael&rsquo;s going had caused her
+      flickered the spark of an ideal utterly at variance with the whole tenor
+      of the teaching of poor Diane&rsquo;s last embittered days&mdash;the ideal of
+      womanhood which had been Michael&rsquo;s. And the impulse which had bade her
+      leave Storran so abruptly was born of the one-time resolution she had made
+      to become the sort of woman Michael would wish his wife to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt oddly perturbed when at last she reached the seclusion of her
+      chintzy bedroom underneath the sloping roof. A vague sense of shame
+      assailed her. The game, as between herself and Dan, was hardly a fair one,
+      after all, and she could well picture the cold contempt in Michael&rsquo;s eyes
+      had he been looking on at it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though he had no right to disapprove of her now! He had forfeited that
+      right&mdash;if he had ever had it&mdash;when he went away without a word
+      of farewell&mdash;without giving her even the chance to appeal against the
+      judgment which, by his very going, he had silently pronounced against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For months, now, she had been a prey to a conflicting jumble of emotions&mdash;the
+      pain and hurt pride which Michael&rsquo;s departure had occasioned her, the
+      craving for anything that might serve to distract her thoughts and keep
+      them from straying back to those few vibrant meetings with him, and deep
+      down within her an aching, restless wonder as to whether she would ever
+      see him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an effort she dismissed the fresh tangle of thought provoked by the
+      morning&rsquo;s brief scene with Dan Storran, and, dressing quickly, went
+      downstairs to the mid-day dinner which was the order of things at
+      Stockleigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the solid repast, with its plentitude of good farmhouse fare
+      partaken of during the hottest hour of the day, had somewhat appalled
+      Magda. But now she had grown quite accustomed to the appearance of a roast
+      joint or of a smoking, home-cured ham, attended by a variety of country
+      vegetables and followed by fruit tart and clotted cream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although she herself, as befitted a woman whose &ldquo;figure was her fortune&rdquo;
+       according to Lady Arabella, partook extremely sparingly of this hospitable
+      meal, it somehow pleased her to see big Dan Storran come in from his work
+      in the fields and do full justice to the substantial fare. To Magda,
+      ultra-modern and over-civilised as she was, there was something refreshing
+      in the simple and primitive usages of Stockleigh Farm and its master&mdash;this
+      man who toiled, and satisfied his hunger, and rested from toil, just as
+      his fathers had done before him, literally fulfilling the law: In the
+      sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And perhaps if Magda had never crossed his path Dan Storran might have
+      gone his way contentedly, toiling from sun-up to sun-down till all his
+      days were finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even although she had crossed it, she might still have left him pretty
+      much as she found him&mdash;unawakened to the deeps of his own nature&mdash;if
+      she had remained in her present ambiguous mood, half-remorseful, half
+      indifferent. But it was precisely at this particular juncture that it
+      pleased Fate to give a fresh twist to her swiftly turning wheel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran did not come in until dinner was half over, and when finally he
+      appeared he was somewhat taciturn and avoided meeting Magda&rsquo;s eyes. June
+      got up from the table and went dutifully into the kitchen to fetch the
+      joint of meat and vegetables which she had been keeping hot for him there.
+      Abruptly Dan followed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry I&rsquo;m late, June,&rdquo; he said awkwardly. &ldquo;Here, give the tray to me;
+      I&rsquo;ll carry it in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      June paused in the middle of the kitchen, flushing right up to the soft
+      tendrils of hair that curled about her forehead. It was weeks since Dan
+      had offered to relieve her of any of her housewifely tasks, although at
+      one time he had been wont to hurry home, if he could manage to do so, on
+      purpose to help her. Dozens of times they had laid the table together,
+      punctuating the process with jokes and gay little bursts of laughter and
+      an odd kiss or two thrown in to sweeten the work. But not lately&mdash;not
+      since the visitors from London had come to Stockleigh Farm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So June blushed and looked at her husband with eyes that were suddenly
+      sweet and questioning. She knew, though she had not told him yet, that
+      there was a reason now why he should try to save her when his greater
+      strength could do so, and for a moment she wondered shyly if he had
+      guessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Dan, Dan&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; she stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face darkened. Her obvious surprise irritated him, pricking his
+      conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not very complimentary of you to look so taken aback when I offer to
+      carry something for you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Anyone might think I never did wait on
+      my wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood drained away from June&rsquo;s face as suddenly as it had rushed
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you don&rsquo;t often, do you?&rdquo; she returned shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They re-entered the sitting-room together and Magda glanced up, smiling
+      approval. She, too, was feeling somewhat conscience-stricken, and to see
+      Dan helping his wife in this everyday, intimate sort of fashion seemed to
+      minimise the significance of that little incident which had occurred by
+      the river&rsquo;s edge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a nice, polite husband!&rdquo; she commented gaily. &ldquo;Mr. Storran, you
+      really out to come up to London and give classes&mdash;&lsquo;Manners for Men,&rsquo;
+      you know. Very few of them wait on their wives these days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      June upset the salt and busied herself spooning it up again from the
+      cloth. There was no answering smile on her face. She was not quite clear
+      <i>why</i> Dan had followed her out into the kitchen so unexpectedly, but
+      she sensed that it was not the old, quick impulse to wait upon her which
+      had actuated him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had she but known it, it was the same instinct, more primitively
+      manifested, which induces a man whose conscience is not altogether clear
+      respecting his loyalty towards his wife to bring her home an unexpected
+      gift of jewellery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The disturbing memory of a lithe, scarlet-sheathed figure had been with
+      Dan all morning as he went about his work, and he was sullenly ashamed of
+      the riot which the vision occasioned within him and of his own utter
+      helplessness to master it. It&mdash;it was damnable! So he accompanied his
+      wife to the kitchen and offered to carry in the joint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Following upon this incident the atmosphere seemed to become all at once
+      constrained and difficult. June sat very silent, her eyes holding that
+      expression of pain and bewilderment which was growing habitual to them,
+      while Storran hurried through his meal in the shortest possible time. As
+      soon as he had finished he pushed back his chair abruptly and, with a
+      muttered apology, quitted the room and went out again on to the farm. June
+      rose and began clearing the table mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t I help you?&rdquo; Gillian paused as she was about to follow Magda out of
+      the room. &ldquo;You look so tired to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      June&rsquo;s lip quivered sensitively. She was in the state of nerves when a
+      little unexpected sympathy is the most upsetting thing imaginable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can&rsquo;t let you!&rdquo; she answered hastily. &ldquo;No&mdash;really!&rdquo;&mdash;as
+      Gillian calmly took the tray she was carrying out of her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Supposing you go and lie down for a little while,&rdquo; suggested Gillian
+      practically. &ldquo;And leave the washing-up to Coppertop and me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tears suddenly brimmed up into the wide-open blue eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I couldn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t you like a little rest?&rdquo; urged Gillian persuasively. &ldquo;I believe
+      you&rsquo;d be asleep in two minutes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe I should,&rdquo; acknowledged June faintly. &ldquo;I&mdash;I haven&rsquo;t been
+      sleeping very well lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little shudder ran through her as she recalled those long hours each
+      night when she lay at Dan&rsquo;s side, staring wide-eyed into the darkness and
+      wondering dully what it was that had come between herself and her husband&mdash;come
+      just at the time when, with his unborn child beneath her heart, they two
+      should have been drawn together in to the most wonderful and blessed
+      comradeship and understanding. Only Dan didn&rsquo;t know this&mdash;didn&rsquo;t know
+      that before the snowdrops lifted their white heads again from the green
+      carpet of spring there would be a little son&mdash;June was sure it would
+      be a son, to grow up tall and strong like Dan himself!&mdash;born of the
+      love which had once been so sweet and untroubled by any creeping doubts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you&rdquo;&mdash;Gillian broke in on the miserable thoughts that were
+      chasing each other through June&rsquo;s tired brain&mdash;&ldquo;I assure you,
+      Coppertop and I are very competent people. We won&rsquo;t break a single dish!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you&rsquo;ve never been used to that kind of thing&mdash;washing-up!&rdquo;
+       protested June, glancing significantly at Gillian&rsquo;s white hands and soft,
+      pretty frock of hyacinth muslin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t I?&rdquo; Gillian laughed gaily. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t always been as well off as
+      I am not, and I expect I know quite as much about doing &lsquo;chores&rsquo; as you!
+      Come now!&rdquo; She waited expectantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dan would be awfully angry if he knew&mdash;it&rsquo;s my duty, you see,&rdquo;
+       objected June, visibly weakening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he knew! But what a husband doesn&rsquo;t know his heart doesn&rsquo;t grieve
+      over,&rdquo; replied Gillian sagely. &ldquo;There, that&rsquo;s settled. Come along upstairs
+      and let me tuck you up in your bed, and leave the rest to Coppertop and
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And June, with her heart suddenly warmed and comforted in the way in which
+      an unexpected kindness does warm and comfort, went very willingly and,
+      tired out in body and mind, fell asleep in ten minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Magda had established herself in the hammock slung from the
+      boughs of one of the great elms which shaded the garden. She had brought a
+      book with her, since her thoughts were none too pleasant company just at
+      the moment, and was speedily absorbed in its contents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very soothing and tranquil out there in the noonday heat. The gnats
+      hovered in the sunlight, dancing and whirling in little transient
+      clusters; now and again a ladybird flickered by or a swallow swooped so
+      near that his darting shadow fell across her book; while all about her
+      sounded the pleasant hum of a summer&rsquo;s day&mdash;the soft susurration of
+      the pleasant hum of a thousand insect voices blending into an indefinite,
+      murmurous vibration of the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally the whir of a motor-car sweeping along the adjacent road
+      broke harshly across the peaceful quiet. Magda glanced up with some
+      annoyance as the first one sped by, dragging her back to an unwilling
+      sense of civilisation. Then she bent her head resolutely above her book
+      and declined to be distracted any further, finally losing herself
+      completely in the story she was reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it came about that when a long, low, dust-powdered car curved in
+      between the granite gateposts of Stockleigh Farm and came abruptly to a
+      standstill, she remained entirely oblivious of its advent. Nor did she see
+      the tall, slender-limbed man who had been driving, and whose questing
+      hazel eyes had descried her almost immediately, slip from his seat behind
+      the steering-wheel and come across the grass towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Antoine!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The book fell from her hand and she sat up suddenly in the hammock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth are you doing here?&rdquo; she demanded. There was no welcome in
+      her tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Davilof remained watching her, the sunshine, slanting between
+      the leaves of the trees, throwing queer little flickering lights into the
+      hazel eyes and glinting on his golden-brown hair and beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; she repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came&mdash;to see you,&rdquo; he said simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something disarming in the very simplicity of his reply. It
+      seemed to imply an almost child-like wonder that she should ask&mdash;that
+      there could possibly be any other reason for his presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it failed to propitiate Magda in the slightest degree. She felt
+      intensely annoyed that anyone from the outside world&mdash;from her world
+      of London&mdash;should have intruded upon her seclusion at Ashencombe, nor
+      could she imagine how Davilof had discovered her retreat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you learn I was here?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From Melrose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s eyes darkened sombrely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean you bribed him?&rdquo; she asked quickly. &ldquo;Oh, but surely not!&rdquo;&mdash;in
+      dismayed tones. &ldquo;Melrose would go to the stake sooner than accept a
+      bribe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof&rsquo;s mouth twisted in a rueful smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure he would! I tried him, but he wouldn&rsquo;t look at a bribe of any
+      sort. So I had to resort to strategy. It was one evening, when he was
+      taking your letters to post, and I waited for him at the pillar-box. I
+      came up very quietly behind him and just nipped one of the letters,
+      readdressed to you, out of his hand. I read the address and then posted
+      the letter for him. It was very simple.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He recounted the incident with a little swaggering air of bravado,
+      boyishly delighted at the success of his small ruse. Vexed as she was
+      Magda could hardly refrain from smiling; the whole thing was so eminently
+      un-English&mdash;so exactly like Davilof!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now that you have seen me, will you please go away again?&rdquo; she said
+      coolly, reopening her book as though to end the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He regarded her with unqualified reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you even ask me to tea?&rdquo; he said plaintively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not,&rdquo; Magda was beginning. But precisely as she spoke June
+      Storran, looking more herself again after her short sleep, came towards
+      them from the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face brightened as she caught sight of Davilof. Even to June&rsquo;s
+      inexperienced eyes it was quite obvious that he admired the woman with
+      whom he was talking. The very way he looked at her told her that.
+      Presumably he was one of her London friends who had motored to Devonshire
+      to see her. No man&mdash;within the limited scope of June&rsquo;s knowledge of
+      men&mdash;did that deliciously absurd, extravagant kind of thing unless he
+      was tremendously in love. Nor would any nice woman let a man take such a
+      journey on her behalf unless she reciprocated his feelings. Of this June&mdash;whose
+      notions were old-fashioned&mdash;felt assured. So her spirits rose
+      accordingly. Since, if these two were on the verge of becoming engaged,
+      the mere fact would clear away the indefinable shadows which seemed to
+      have been menacing her own happiness from the time Miss Vallincourt had
+      come to Stockleigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tea is just ready,&rdquo; she announced, approaching. &ldquo;Will you come in? And
+      perhaps your friend will have tea with us?&rdquo; she added shyly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof was presented and June repeated her invitation. He shot a glance
+      of triumph at Magda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be delighted, madame,&rdquo; he said, giving June one of his quaint
+      little foreign bows. &ldquo;But&mdash;the sun is shining so gloriously&mdash;might
+      we not have it out here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      June looked round her doubtfully. As is often the case with people born
+      and bred in the country, it never occurred to the Storrans to have the
+      family meals out-of-doors, and June felt considerable misgiving as to
+      whether Dan would appreciate the innovation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, please, madame!&rdquo; pleaded Davilof persuasively. &ldquo;Let us have it here&mdash;under
+      this tree. Why, the tree grows here expressly for the purpose!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof had all the charm of his nationality, and June capitulated,
+      retreating to make the necessary arrangements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t fancy Dan Storran will at all approve of the alteration from his
+      usual customs which you&rsquo;ve engineered,&rdquo; observed Magda when they were
+      again alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dan Storran?&rdquo; Davilof&rsquo;s glance flashed over her face, searching,
+      questioning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The owner of the place. He&rsquo;s been teaching me to ride,&rdquo; she added
+      inconsequently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo;&mdash;with swift jealousy. &ldquo;The little fair-haired lady&rsquo;s
+      brother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, her husband. I said <i>Mrs.</i> Storran.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof&rsquo;s interest waned suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you?&rdquo;&mdash;indifferently. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t notice. She&rsquo;s a pretty little
+      person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda agreed absently. A fresh difficulty had occurred to her; Davilof
+      might chance to give away to the Storrans the secret of her identity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, by the way,&rdquo; she said hurriedly. &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t know me here as Magda
+      Wielitzska. I&rsquo;m plain Miss Vallincourt to them&mdash;enjoying the
+      privileges of being a nobody! You&rsquo;ll be sure to remember, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; He
+      nodded, and she pursued more lightly: &ldquo;And now, as you insist on having
+      your tea here, you might begin to earn it by telling me the latest London
+      gossip. We hear nothing at all down here. We don&rsquo;t even get a London
+      newspaper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think there is much news. There never is at this time of the
+      year. Everybody&rsquo;s out of town.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He vouchsafed one or two items concerning mutual friends&mdash;an
+      engagement here, a forthcoming divorce there. So-and-so was in Italy and
+      Mrs. Somebody Else was said to have eloped with a well-known actor-manager
+      to America&mdash;all the odds and ends of gossip that runs like wildfire
+      over the social prairie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, by the way,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;your artist friend&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which artist friend?&rdquo; Magda interrupted almost rudely. She was moved by a
+      perfectly irrational impulse to stop him, to delay what he had to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Quarrington&mdash;Michael Quarrington. It seems he has married a
+      Spanish woman&mdash;a rather lovely person who had been sitting to him for
+      one of his pictures. That&rsquo;s the latest bit of news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant it seemed to Magda as though the whole world stood still&mdash;gripped
+      in a strange, soundless stillness like the catastrophic pause which for an
+      infinitesimal space of time succeeds a bad accident. Then she heard
+      herself saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really? Where did you hear that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there&rsquo;ve been several rumours of a beautiful Spaniard whom he has
+      been using as a model. The Arlingtons were travelling in Spain and saw
+      her. Mrs. A. said she was a glorious creature&mdash;a dancer. And the
+      other day I saw in one of the papers&mdash;the <i>Weekly Gossip</i> I
+      think it was&mdash;that he&rsquo;d married her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The carelessly spoken words drove at Magda with the force of utter
+      certainty. It was true, then&mdash;quite true! The fact that the Spaniard
+      had been a dancer gave an irrefutable reality to the tale; Michael so
+      worshipped every form of dancing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never give your heart to any man.&rdquo; Her mother&rsquo;s last cynical warning beat
+      in Magda&rsquo;s brain with a dull iteration that almost maddened her. She put
+      her hand up to her throat, feeling as if she were choking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, dimly, as though from a great way off, she heard Antoine&rsquo;s voice
+      again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad Quarrington&rsquo;s married. He was the man who saved you in the fog&mdash;you
+      remember?&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve always been afraid you might get to care for
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda was conscious of one thing and one thing only&mdash;that somewhere,
+      deep down inside her, everything had turned to ice. She knew she would
+      never feel anything again&mdash;much. . . . She thought death must come
+      like that sometimes&mdash;just one thrust of incredible, immeasurable
+      agony, and then a dull, numbed sense of finality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;. . . afraid you might get to care for him.&rdquo; The meaning of Antoine&rsquo;s
+      last words slowly penetrated her mind. She gave a hard little laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I? Does one &lsquo;get to care&rsquo; for a man just because he does the
+      only obvious thing there is to do in an emergency?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was surprised to hear how perfectly natural her voice sounded. It was
+      quite steady. Reassured, she went on, shrugging her shoulders:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides&mdash;do I ever care?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Antoine, sitting on the grass at her feet, suddenly raised himself a
+      little and put his hand over hers as they lay very still and folded on her
+      lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall care&mdash;some time,&rdquo; he said in a low, tense voice. &ldquo;I swear
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      DAN STORRAN&rsquo;S AWAKENING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fairy Lady, we&rsquo;re going to have a picnic tea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Coppertop&rsquo;s excited voice, shrilling across the garden as he came racing
+      over the grass, put an abrupt end to a scene that was threatening to
+      develop along the familiar tempestuous lines dictated by Antoine&rsquo;s
+      temperament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child&rsquo;s advent was somewhat differently received&mdash;by Magda with
+      unmixed relief, by Antoine with a baulked gesture of annoyance. However,
+      he recovered himself almost immediately, and when, a moment later, June
+      reappeared, laden with the paraphernalia for tea, he rushed forward with
+      his usual charming manners to assist her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Gillian joined them, exclaiming with surprise as she perceived
+      who was the visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, this is like a bit of London appearing in our very midst,&rdquo; she
+      declared, shaking hands with Davilof. &ldquo;Where have you hailed from? I heard
+      the car but never suspected you were the arrival.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m on holiday,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;And it struck me&rdquo;&mdash;his hazel eyes
+      smiled straight into hers&mdash;&ldquo;that Devonshire might be a very
+      delightful place in which to spend my holiday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda looked up suddenly from stirring her tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;ve made a mistake, Davilof,&rdquo; she said curtly. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not
+      likely to enjoy a holiday in Devonshire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      June, innocently unaware of any double entente in Magda&rsquo;s speech, glanced
+      across at her in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but why not, Miss Vallincourt? Devon is a lovely county; most people
+      like it so much. But perhaps you don&rsquo;t care for the country, Mr.&mdash;Mr.
+      Davilof?&rdquo; She stumbled a little over the foreign name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it would depend upon who my neighbours were&mdash;whether I liked
+      it or nor,&rdquo; he returned, meeting Magda&rsquo;s glance challengingly over the top
+      of June&rsquo;s head, bent above the teacups. &ldquo;I feel sure I should like it
+      here. And there is a charming little inn at Ashencombe where one might
+      stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian divined that a veiled passage of arms between Magda and the
+      musician underlay the light discussion. Moreover&mdash;though she had no
+      clue to the cause&mdash;she was sensitively conscious that the former was
+      not quite herself. She had seen that white, set look on her face before.
+      Something had distressed her, and Gillian felt apprehensive lest Davilof
+      had been the bearer of unwelcome tidings. It was either that, or else he
+      must have succeeded in frictioning Magda in some way himself, since,
+      beyond flinging an occasional double-edged sentence in his direction, she
+      seemed absent and disinclined to take part in the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was almost a relief to Gillian when Dan Storran appeared, although the
+      recollection of the strained atmosphere which had attended the previous
+      meal did not hold out much promise of better things to come. His face was
+      still clouded and he glowered at the tea-table under the elms with
+      dissatisfied eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth&rsquo;s the meaning of this?&rdquo; he demanded ungraciously of his
+      wife. &ldquo;Is it some newfangled notion that&rsquo;s got you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      June coloured up nervously, and was about to falter an explanation of the
+      innovation when Magda suddenly took the matter out of her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing newfangled about tea out-of-doors, on a glorious day like
+      this,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the only sensible thing to do. You don&rsquo;t really
+      mind, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled up at him provocatively and his sombre face lightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if you like it,&rdquo; he replied shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I do. So sit down and be pleased&mdash;instead of looking like a
+      thundercloud, please.&rdquo; The softness in her voice robbed the speech of its
+      sharpness. &ldquo;I have a friend here&mdash;and we&rsquo;re having tea outside in his
+      honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She introduced the two men, who exchanged a few commonplace words&mdash;each,
+      meanwhile, taking the measure of the other through eyes that were frankly
+      hostile. They were of such dissimilar type that there was practically no
+      common ground upon which they could meet, and with the swift, unerring
+      intuition of the lover each had recognised the other as standing in some
+      relationship to Magda which premised a just cause for jealousy. Both men
+      endeavoured to secure her undivided attention and, failing lamentably,
+      their mutual antagonism deepened, smouldering visibly beneath the stiff
+      platitudes they exchanged with one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian, thrust rather into the position of an onlooker, watched the
+      proceedings with amused eyes&mdash;her amusement only tempered by the
+      slightly apprehensive feeling concerning Magda of which she had been
+      vaguely conscious from the first moment she had found her in Davilof&rsquo;s
+      company, and which continued to obsess her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      True, she no longer wore that set, still look which Gillian had observed
+      on her face prior to Dan Storran&rsquo;s appearance upon the scene. But even
+      when she smiled and talked, playing the men off one against the other with
+      a deft skill that was inimitable, there seemed a curious new hardness
+      underlying it all&mdash;a certain reckless deviltry for which Gillian was
+      at a loss to account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      June watched, too, with troubled eyes. Half an hour ago she had been
+      feeling ridiculously happy, comfortably assured in her own mind that this
+      tall, rather exquisite foreigner and the woman whose presence in her home
+      had occasioned so much bitter heart-burning were only hesitating, as it
+      were, on the brink of matrimony. And now&mdash;now she did not know what
+      to think! Miss Vallincourt was treating Davilof with an airy negligence
+      that to June&rsquo;s honest and candid soul seemed altogether incompatible with
+      such circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, with her own ears attuned to catch each varying shade of Dan&rsquo;s
+      beloved voice, she could not but perceive its change of quality, slight,
+      but unmistakable, when he spoke to Magda&mdash;the sudden deepening of it&mdash;and
+      the unconscious self-betrayal of his glance as it rested on her. It was a
+      relief when at last he got up and moved off, excusing himself on the plea
+      that he had some work he must attend to. As he shook hands with Davilof
+      the eyes of the two men met, hard as steel and as hostile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran&rsquo;s departure was the signal for the breaking-up of the party. June
+      returned to the house, while Gillian allowed herself to be carried off by
+      Coppertop to visit the calves, which were a never-failing source of
+      interest to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left alone, an awkward pause ensued between Davilof and Magda, backwash of
+      the obvious clash of antagonism between the two men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So!&rdquo; commented Davilof, at last. &ldquo;It looks as though there might be
+      another Raynham episode down here before long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The colour rushed up into Magda&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think that remark is in rather bad taste?&rdquo; she replied icily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps it was. But the men who love you get rather beyond considering
+      the matter of good or bad taste.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a petulant gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t begin that old subject again. We&rsquo;ve had it all out before. It&rsquo;s
+      finished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not finished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a clipped, curt force about the brief denial. The good-humoured,
+      big-child mood in which Davilof had joyously narrated to her how he had
+      circumvented the unfortunate Melrose had passed, leaving the man&mdash;turbulent
+      and passionately demanding as of old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not finished,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;It never will be&mdash;till you&rsquo;re my
+      wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda laughed lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;m afraid it will have to remain unfinished&mdash;a
+      continued-in-our-next kind of thing. For I certainly haven&rsquo;t the least
+      intention of becoming your wife. Do understand that I <i>mean</i> it. And
+      please go away. You had no business to come down here at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A smouldering fire lit itself in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; he said, taking a step nearer her. &ldquo;No! I&rsquo;m not going. I came
+      because I can&rsquo;t bear it any longer without you. Since you went away I&rsquo;ve
+      been half-mad, I think. I can&rsquo;t eat or sleep! I can&rsquo;t even play!&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      flung out his sensitive musician&rsquo;s hands in a gesture of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda glanced at him quickly. It was true. The man looked as though he had
+      been suffering. She had not noticed it before. His face had altered&mdash;worn
+      a trifle fine; the line from chin to cheek-bone had hollowed somewhat and
+      his eyes held a certain feverish brightness. But although she could see
+      the alteration, it did not move her in the least. She felt perfectly
+      indifferent. It was as though the band of ice which seemed to have clasped
+      itself about her heart when she heard of Michael&rsquo;s marriage had frozen her
+      capacity for feeling anything at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought once&rdquo;&mdash;Davilof was speaking again&mdash;&ldquo;I thought once
+      that you had said &lsquo;no&rsquo; to me because of Quarrington. But now I know you
+      never cared for him&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question sprang from her lips before she was aware.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do I know?&rdquo; Davilof laughed harshly. &ldquo;Why, because the man who was
+      loved by Magda Wielitzska wouldn&rsquo;t marry any other woman. There would be
+      no other woman in the world for him. . . . There&rsquo;s no other woman in the
+      world for me.&rdquo; His control was rapidly deserting him. &ldquo;Magda, I can&rsquo;t live
+      without you! I&rsquo;ve told you&mdash;I can neither eat nor sleep. I burn for
+      you! If you refuse to give yourself to me, you destroy me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Swept by an emotion stronger than himself, his acquired Englishisms went
+      by the board. He was all Pole in the picturesque ardour of his speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda regarded him calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Davilof,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;What weight do you suppose such an
+      argument would have with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cool, ironic little question, with its insolent indifference, checked
+      him like the flick of a lash across the face. He turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None, I suppose,&rdquo; he admitted bitterly. &ldquo;You are fire and flame&mdash;but
+      within, you are ice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, almost as though to herself. &ldquo;Within, I&rsquo;m ice. I believe
+      that&rsquo;s true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True!&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;Of course it&rsquo;s true. If it were not&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A slight smile tilted her mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; she echoed. &ldquo;If it were not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung round. With a quick stride he was beside her. His eyes blazing
+      with a sudden fury of passion and resentment, he caught her by the
+      shoulders, forcing her to face him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God!&rdquo; he muttered thickly. &ldquo;What are you made of? You make men go through
+      hell for you! Even here&mdash;here in this little country place&mdash;you
+      do it! Storran&rsquo;s wife&mdash;one can see her heart breaks, and it is you
+      who are breaking it. Yet nothing touches you! You&rsquo;ve no conscience like
+      other women&mdash;no heart&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda pulled herself out of his grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do forget that I&rsquo;m a woman, Davilof! I&rsquo;m a dancer. Nothing else
+      matters. I don&rsquo;t want to be troubled with a heart. And&mdash;and I think
+      they left out my soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he agreed with intense bitterness. &ldquo;I think they did. One day,
+      Magda some man will kill you. You&rsquo;ll try him too far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed? Is that what you contemplate doing when you finally lose patience
+      with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not lose patience&mdash;until you are another man&rsquo;s wife,&rdquo; he
+      said quietly. &ldquo;And I don&rsquo;t intend you to be that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later, Gillian, having dispatched her small son to bed and seen
+      him safely tucked up between the lavender-scented sheets, discovered Magda
+      alone in the low-raftered sitting-room. She was lying back idly in a
+      chair, her hands resting on the arms, in her eyes a curious abstracted
+      look as though she were communing with herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently she was too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice Gillian&rsquo;s
+      entrance, for she did not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you thinking about? Planning a new dance that shall out-vie <i>The
+      Swan-Maiden</i>?&rdquo; asked Gillian at last, for the sake of something to say.
+      The silence and Magda&rsquo;s strange aloofness frightened her in some way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite a moment before Magda made any answer. When she did, it was
+      to say with a bitter kind of wonder in her voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What centuries ago it seems since the first night of <i>The Swan-Maiden</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not very long,&rdquo; began Gillian, then checked herself and asked
+      quickly: &ldquo;Is there anything the matter, Magda? Did Antoine bring you bad
+      news of some kind?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He brought me the offering of his hand and heart. That&rsquo;s no news, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The opening was too good to be lost. With the remembrance of June&rsquo;s
+      wistful face before her eyes, Gillian plunged in recklessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apropos of such offerings&mdash;don&rsquo;t you think it would be wiser if you
+      weren&rsquo;t quite so nice to Dan Storran?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I nice to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too much so for my peace of mind&mdash;or his! It worries me, Magda&mdash;really.
+      You&rsquo;ll play with fire once too often.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Gillian, I&rsquo;m perfectly capable of looking after myself. Do you
+      imagine&rdquo;&mdash;with a small, fine smile&mdash;&ldquo;that I&rsquo;m in danger of
+      losing my heart to a son of the soil?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian could have shaken her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>You?</i> You don&rsquo;t suppose I&rsquo;m afraid for you! It&rsquo;s Dan Storran who
+      isn&rsquo;t able to look after himself.&rdquo; She stooped over Magda&rsquo;s chair and
+      slipped an arm persuasively round her shoulders. &ldquo;Come away, Magda. Let&rsquo;s
+      leave Stockleigh&mdash;go home to London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not.&rdquo; Magda stood up suddenly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m quite well amused down
+      here. I don&rsquo;t propose to leave till our time is up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke with unmistakable decision, and Gillian, feeling that it would
+      be useless to urge her further at the moment, went slowly out of the room
+      and upstairs. As she went she could hear Dan&rsquo;s footstep in the passage
+      below. It sounded tired&mdash;quite unlike his usual swinging stride with
+      its suggestion of impetuous force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not work that had tired Dan Storran that afternoon. When he had
+      quitted the little party gathered beneath the elms, he had started off
+      across the fields, unheeding where he went, and for hours he had been
+      tramping, deaf and blind to the world around him, immersed in the thoughts
+      that had driven him forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The full significance of the last few weeks had suddenly come home to him.
+      Till now he had been drifting&mdash;drifting unthinkingly, conscious only
+      that life had become extraordinarily full of interest and of a breathless
+      kind of happiness, half sweet, half bitter. Bitter when Magda was not with
+      him, sweet with a maddening sweetness when she was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not stopped to consider what it all meant&mdash;why the dull,
+      monotonous round of existence on the farm to which he had long grown
+      accustomed should all at once have come alive&mdash;grown vibrant and
+      quick with some new impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the happenings of to-day had suddenly shown him where he stood. That
+      revealing moment by the river&rsquo;s edge with Magda, the swift, unreasoning
+      jealousy of Davilof which had run like fire through his veins&mdash;jealousy
+      because the other man was so evidently an old acquaintance with prior
+      rights in her which seemed to set him, Dan Storran, quite outside the
+      circle of their intimacy&mdash;had startled him into recognition of how
+      far he had drifted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He loved her&mdash;craved for her with every fibre of his being. She was
+      his woman, and beside the tumultuous demand for her of all his lusty
+      manhood the quiet, unexacting affection which he bore his wife was as
+      water is to wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And since in Dan&rsquo;s simple code of ethics a man&rsquo;s loyalty to his wife
+      occupied a very definite and unassailable position, the realisation came
+      to him fraught with the acme of bitterness and self-contempt. Nor did he
+      propose to yield to the madness in his blood. Hour after hour, as he
+      tramped blindly across country, he thrashed the matter out. This love
+      which had come to him was a forbidden thing&mdash;a thing which must be
+      fought and thrust outside his life. For the sake of June he must see no
+      more of Magda. She must go&mdash;leave Stockleigh. Afterwards he would
+      tear the very memory of her out of his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan was a very direct person. Having taken his decision he did not stop to
+      count the cost. That could come afterwards. Dimly he apprehended that it
+      might be a very heavy one. But he was strong, now&mdash;strong to do the
+      only possible thing. As he stood with his hand on the latch of the
+      living-room door, he wondered whether what he had to say would mean to
+      Magda all, or even a part, of what it meant to him&mdash;wondered with a
+      sudden uncontrollable leaping of his pulses. . . . The latch grated
+      raucously as he jerked it up and flung open the door. Magda was standing
+      by the window, the soft glow of the westering sun falling about her. Dan&rsquo;s
+      eyes rested hungrily on the small dark head outlined against the tender
+      light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;Dan&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She faltered into tremulous silence before
+      the look on his face&mdash;the aching demand of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The huskily sweet voice robbed him of his strength. He strode forward and
+      caught her in his arms, staring down at her with burning eyes. Then,
+      almost violently, he thrust her away from him, unkissed, although the soft
+      curved lips had for a moment lain so maddeningly near his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When can you and Mrs. Grey make it convenient to leave Stockleigh Farm?&rdquo;
+       he asked, his voice like iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crudeness of it whipped her pride&mdash;that pride which Michael had
+      torn down and trampled on&mdash;into fresh, indignant life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To leave? Why should we leave?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran&rsquo;s face was white under his tan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; he said hoarsely, &ldquo;because you&rsquo;re coming between me and my
+      wife. That&rsquo;s why.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE MOONLIT GARDEN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The chintzy bedroom under the sloping roof was very still and quiet. The
+      moonlight, streaming in through the open casement, revealed the bed
+      unoccupied, its top-sheet neatly folded back just as when June had made
+      her final round of the house some hours earlier, leaving everything in
+      order for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda, crouched by the window, glanced back at it indifferently. She did
+      not want to go to bed. If she went, she knew she would not sleep. She felt
+      as though she would never sleep again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no idea of the time. She might have been there half an hour or
+      half eternity&mdash;she did not know which. The little sounds of movement
+      in the different bedrooms had gradually died down into silence, until at
+      least the profound tranquillity and peace of night enshrouded the whole
+      house. Only for her there was neither tranquility nor peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was alone now, face to face with the news which Davilof had brought
+      her&mdash;the news of Michael&rsquo;s marriage. Throughout the rest of the day,
+      after Davilof had gone, she had forced the matter into the background of
+      her thoughts, and during supper she had kept up a light-hearted ripple of
+      talk and laughter which had deceived even Gillian, convincing her that her
+      apprehensions of the afternoon were unfounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps she was helped by the fact that Dan failed to put in an appearance
+      at the supper-table. It was easier to scintillate successfully for the
+      sole benefit of a couple of other women than under the eyes of a man who
+      had just ordered you out of his life. But when at last she was alone in
+      her own room, the sparkle was suddenly quenched. There was no longer any
+      need to pretend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael was married! Married! And the bitterness which she had been
+      strenuously keeping at bay since the day, months ago now, when she had
+      learned from Lady Arabella that he had deliberately left England without
+      seeing her again swept over her in a black flood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had hurt her badly enough when he had gone away, but somewhere in the
+      depths of her consciousness there had always lurked a little fugitive hope
+      that he would come back&mdash;that she would be given another chance. Now
+      she knew that he would never come back&mdash;that one isn&rsquo;t always given a
+      second chance in this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And beneath the sick anguish of the realisation she was aware of a fierce
+      resentment&mdash;a bitter, rebellious anger that any man could make her
+      suffer as she was suffering now. It was unjust&mdash;a burden that had
+      been forced upon her unfairly. She could not help her own character&mdash;that
+      was a heritage with which one comes into the world&mdash;and now she was
+      being punished for simply having been herself!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour&mdash;two hours crept by. Hours of black, stark misery. The clock
+      in the hall struck one&mdash;a single, bell-like stroke that reverberated
+      through the silent house. It penetrated the numbed confusion of her mind,
+      rousing her to a sudden recognition of the fact that she had been crouched
+      so long in one position that her limbs were stiff and aching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew herself up to her feet, stretching her cramped muscles. The night
+      was warm and the room felt stiflingly hot. She looked longingly through
+      the window to where the garden lay drenched in moonlight, with
+      cool-looking alleyways of moon-washed paths threading the black gloom of
+      overhanging trees, ebony-edged in the silver light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt as though she could hardly breathe in the confined space of the
+      room. Its low, sloping roof, which she had thought so quaintly attractive,
+      seemed to press down on her like the lid of a box. She must get out&mdash;out
+      into the black and silver night which beckoned to her through the open
+      window. She could not stay in this room&mdash;this little room, alone with
+      her thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced down dubiously at the soft, chiffony negligee which she had
+      slipped on in place of a frock. Her feet, too, were bare. She had stripped
+      off her shoes and stockings first thing upon coming upstairs, for the sake
+      of coolness. Certainly her attire was not quite suitable for out-of-doors.
+      . . . But there would be no one to see her. Ashencombe folk did not take
+      their walks abroad at that hour of the night. And she longed to feel the
+      cool touch of the dewy grass against her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very quietly she opened her door and stole out into the passage. The house
+      was strangely, wonderfully still. Only the ticking of the hall-clock broke
+      the silence. So lightly that not a board creaked beneath her step, Magda
+      flitted down the old stairway, and, crossing the hall, felt gingerly for
+      the massive bolt which barred the heavy oaken door. She wondered if it
+      would slide back quietly; she rather doubted it. She remembered often
+      enough having heard it grate into its place as Storran went his nightly
+      round, locking up the house. But, as her slender, seeking fingers came in
+      contact with the knob, she realised that to-night by some oversight he had
+      forgotten to shoot the bolt and, noiselessly lifting the iron latch, she
+      opened the door and slipped out into the moonlit garden. Down the paths
+      she went and across the lawns, the touch of the earth coming clean and
+      cool to her bare feet. Now and again she paused to draw a long breath of
+      the night air, fresh and sweet with the lingering scents of the day&rsquo;s
+      blooming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An arch of rambler roses led into the distant part of the garden towards
+      which she was wending her way, its powdering of tiny blossoms gleaming
+      like star clusters borrowed from the Milky Way. Magda stooped as she
+      passed beneath it to avoid an overhanging branch. Then, as she
+      straightened herself, lifting her head once more, she stood still,
+      suddenly arrested. On a stone bench, barely twenty yards away, sat Dan
+      Storran!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Against the pallid ghost-white of the bench his motionless figure showed
+      black and sombre like some sable statue. His big shoulders were bowed, his
+      hands hung loosely clasped between his knees, the white mask of his face,
+      mercilessly revealed in the clear moonlight, was twisted into harsh lines
+      of mental conflict. A certain grim triumph manifested itself in the set of
+      his mouth and out-thrust jaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not see the slight figure standing just within the shade of the
+      rose-twined arch, and Magda remained for a moment or two watching him in
+      silence. The unbarred door was explained now. Storran had not come in at
+      all that night. She guessed the struggle which had sent him forth to seek
+      the utter solitude of the garden. Almost she thought she could divine the
+      processes of thought which had closed his lips in that strange line of
+      ironic triumph. He had told her to go&mdash;when every nerve of him ached
+      to bid her stay. And he was glad that the strength in him had won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A bitter smile flitted across her face. Men were all the same! They
+      idolised a woman just because she was beautiful&mdash;for her lips and
+      eyes and hair and the nameless charm that was in her&mdash;and set her up
+      on an altar at which they could kneel becomingly. Then, when they found
+      she was merely an ordinary human being like themselves, with her bundle of
+      faults and failings, hereditary and acquired, the prig in them was
+      appropriately shocked&mdash;and they went away!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An unhappy woman is very often a bitter one. And Magda had been slowly
+      learning the meaning of unhappiness for the first time in her life&mdash;a
+      life that had been hitherto roses and laurel all the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The devils that lie in wait for our weak moments prompted her then. The
+      bitterness faded from her lips and they curved in a smile that subtly
+      challenged the stern decision in Dan Storran&rsquo;s face. She hesitated an
+      instant. Then, with feet that scarcely seemed to brush the grass, she
+      glided forward, swaying, bending to some rhythmic measure, floating
+      spirit-like across the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a great cry Dan leaped to his feet and stared at her, transfixed. At
+      the sound of his voice she paused, poised on one bare foot, leaning a
+      little towards him with curving, outstretched arms. Then, before he could
+      touch her, she drew away, step by step, and Dan Storran, standing there in
+      tense, breathless silence, beheld what no one else had ever seen&mdash;the
+      Wielitzska dancing in the moonlight as she alone could dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew nothing of art, nor of the supreme technique which went to make
+      each supple movement a thing of sheer perfection, instinct with rhythm and
+      significance. But he was a man, and a man in love, fighting the strongest
+      instincts of his nature; and the bewildering beauty of her as she danced,
+      the languorous, ethereal allure, delicately sensuous as the fragrance of a
+      La France rose, sent the hot blood rioting through his veins. . . . She
+      was going&mdash;slowly retreating from him. The primal man in him, the
+      innate hunter who took his mate by capture, swept him headlong. With a
+      bound he sprang past the dusky shrubbery that hedged the lawn and overtook
+      her, catching her in his arms. She did not struggle. He felt her yield,
+      and strained the soft, panting body closer to him. Beneath his hand he
+      could feel the hurrying beat of her heart. Her breath, quickened by the
+      exertion of the dance, came unevenly between her lips as she smiled at
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you still want me to go away, Dan Storran?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a note of half-amused, half-triumphant mockery in her voice. The
+      last bonds that held him snapped suddenly: &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; he cried hoarsely. &ldquo;Yes,
+      I do. To go away with me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He crushed his mouth down on hers, draining the sweetness of her in
+      burning kisses he had thwarted through all these weeks that they had been
+      together, pouring out his love in disjointed, stumbling phrases which
+      halted by very reason of the force of passion which evoked them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Frightened by the tempest of emotion she had aroused she strained away
+      from him. But she was powerless against his huge strength, helpless to
+      resist him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length the fierce tensity of his grip relaxed, though his arms still
+      clasped her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; he commanded triumphantly. &ldquo;Tell me you love me. I want to hear
+      it!&rdquo; His voice vibrated and his eyes sought her face hungrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She summoned up all her forces to deny him&mdash;to deny him in such a
+      manner that he should realise his mistake absolutely and at once. &ldquo;But I
+      don&rsquo;t! I don&rsquo;t love you! If you thought that, you misunderstood me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hands released their hold of her and fell heavily to his sides.
+      &ldquo;Misunderstood?&rdquo; he muttered. The glad triumph went suddenly out of his
+      voice. &ldquo;Misunderstood?&rdquo; he repeated dully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Misunderstood me altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you <i>must</i> believe it,&rdquo; she insisted. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the truth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what have you meant all these weeks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not meant anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a lie!&rdquo; he gave back savagely. &ldquo;Unless&rdquo;&mdash;he came closer to her&mdash;&ldquo;unless&mdash;is
+      it that man, that damned foreigner, who was here to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Antoine? No. Oh, Dan&rdquo;&mdash;she forced an uncertain little laugh to her
+      lips&mdash;&ldquo;if you knew me better you&rsquo;d know that I never <i>do</i>&mdash;&lsquo;mean
+      anything&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bitter intonation in her voice&mdash;the gibe at her own poor ruins of
+      love fallen about her&mdash;was lost on him. He was in total ignorance of
+      her friendship with Quarrington. But the plain significance of her words
+      came home to him clearly enough. He did not speak for a minute or two.
+      Then: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been playing with me, then&mdash;fooling me?&rdquo; he said
+      heavily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda remained silent. The heavy, laboured speech seemed to hold something
+      minatory in it&mdash;the sullen lowering which precedes a tempest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Answer me!&rdquo; he persisted. &ldquo;Was that it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I suppose it was,&rdquo; she faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew still closer and instinctively she shrank away. A consciousness of
+      repressed violence communicated itself to her. She half expected him to
+      strike her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you don&rsquo;t love me? You&rsquo;re quite sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an ominous kind of patience in the persistent questioning. It
+      was as though he were deliberately giving her every possible chance to
+      clear herself. Her nerves frayed a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;m sure&mdash;perfectly sure,&rdquo; she said with nervous asperity.
+      &ldquo;I wish you&rsquo;d believe me, Dan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only wanted to make sure,&rdquo; he returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in the careful precision of his answer struck her with a swift
+      sense of apprehension. She looked up at him and what she saw made her
+      catch her breath convulsively. His face was ashen, the veins in his
+      forehead standing out like weals, and his eyes gleamed like blue flame&mdash;mad
+      eyes. His hands, hanging at his sides, twitched curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Sure. . . . Do you know what you&rsquo;ve done? You&rsquo;ve
+      smashed up my life. Smashed it. June and I were happy enough till you
+      came. Now we&rsquo;ll never be happy again. I expect you&rsquo;ve smashed other lives,
+      too. But you won&rsquo;t do it any more. I&rsquo;m the last. Women like you are better
+      dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His great arms swung out and gripped her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t struggle. It wouldn&rsquo;t be any good, you know.&rdquo; He went on
+      speaking very carefully and quietly, and while he spoke she felt his left
+      arm tighten round her, binding her own arms down to her sides as might a
+      thong, while his right hand slid up to the base of her throat. She
+      writhed, twisting her body desperately in his grip. &ldquo;Keep still. I&rsquo;ve
+      kissed you. And now I&rsquo;m going to kill you. You&rsquo;ll be better dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was implacable purpose in his strangely quiet, unhurried accents.
+      Magda recognised it&mdash;recognised that death was very close to her. It
+      would be useless to scream. Before help could come&mdash;if anyone heard
+      her cries, which was unlikely&mdash;Dan would have accomplished what he
+      meant to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the last fraction of time these thoughts flashed through her mind. Her
+      brain seemed to be working with abnormal clarity and speed. This was
+      death, then&mdash;unavoidable, inevitable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt Dan&rsquo;s hand creep upward, closing round her throat. Quite suddenly
+      she ceased to struggle and lay still in his grasp. After all, she didn&rsquo;t
+      know that she would much mind dying. Life was not so sweet. There would be
+      pain, she supposed . . . a moment&rsquo;s agony. . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once, Storran&rsquo;s hands fell away from her passive, silent body and
+      he stepped back. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do it!&rdquo; he muttered hoarsely. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the suddenness of her release left Magda swaying dizzily on
+      her feet. Then her brain clearing, she looked across to where Dan
+      Storran&rsquo;s big figure faced her. The nonchalance with which she usually met
+      life, and with which a few moments earlier she had been prepared to face
+      inevitable death, stood by her now. A faint, quizzical smile tilted her
+      mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you couldn&rsquo;t do it after all, Dan?&rdquo; The familiar note of
+      half-indifferent mockery sounded in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran stared at her. &ldquo;By God! I don&rsquo;t believe you are a woman!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed thickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She regarded him contemplatively, her hands lightly touching the red marks
+      scored by his fingers on the whiteness of her throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; she replied dispassionately, &ldquo;I sometimes wonder if I am? I
+      don&rsquo;t seem to have&mdash;feelings, like other women. It doesn&rsquo;t matter to
+      me, really, a bit that I&rsquo;ve&mdash;what was it you said?&mdash;smashed up
+      your life. I don&rsquo;t know that it would have mattered much if you had
+      strangled me.&rdquo; She paused, then stepped towards him. &ldquo;Now you know the
+      truth. Do you still want to kill me, Dan Storran! . . . Or may I go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung aside from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go!&rdquo; he muttered sullenly. &ldquo;Go to <i>hell</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE DAY AFTER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magda, how could you?&rdquo; Gillian&rsquo;s voice was full of blank dismay. &ldquo;You
+      ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda perched on the foot of Gillian&rsquo;s bed, her hands clasped round her
+      knees, nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I suppose I ought. I don&rsquo;t know what made me do it&mdash;except that
+      he&rsquo;d suggested I should leave Stockleigh! I&rsquo;m not used to being&mdash;shunted!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven knows you&rsquo;re not!&rdquo; agreed Gillian ruefully. &ldquo;It would be a
+      wholesome tonic for you if you were. I told you only yesterday that it
+      would be better if we left here. And on top of that you must needs go and
+      dance in the moonlight, of all things, while Dan Storran looks on! What
+      ordinary man is going to keep his head in such circumstances, do you
+      suppose? Especially when he was more than half in love with you to start
+      with. . . . Oh, I should like to shake you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll leave now&mdash;as soon as ever you like,&rdquo; replied Magda,
+      slipping down from the bed. She was unwontedly meek, from which Gillian
+      judged that for once she felt herself unable to cope with the situation
+      she had created. &ldquo;Will you arrange it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian shrugged her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; she returned resignedly. &ldquo;As usual, you break the crockery
+      and someone else has to sweep up the pieces.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda bent down and kissed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re such a dear, Gillyflower,&rdquo; she said with that impulsive, lovable
+      charm of manner which it was so difficult to resist. &ldquo;Still&rdquo;&mdash;her
+      voice hardening a little&mdash;&ldquo;perhaps there are a few odd bits that I&rsquo;ll
+      have to sweep up myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she departed to her own room to complete her morning toilette, leaving
+      Gillian wondering rather anxiously what she could have meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, half an hour later, the two girls descended for breakfast, Dan
+      Storran was not visible. He had gone off early to work, June explained,
+      and Magda experienced a sensation of distinct relief. She had dreaded
+      meeting Dan this morning. The mad, bizarre scene of the night before, with
+      sudden unleashing of savage and ungoverned passions, had shaken even her
+      insouciant poise, though she was very far from seeing it in its true
+      proportions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      June received Gillian&rsquo;s intimation that they proposed leaving Stockleigh
+      Farm that day without comment. She was very quiet and self-contained, and
+      busied herself in making the necessary arrangements for their departure,
+      sending a boy into Ashencombe to order the wagonette from the Crown and
+      Bells to take them to the station whilst she herself laboriously made out
+      the account that was owing. When she presented the latter, with a
+      perfectly composed and business-like air, and proceeded conscientiously to
+      stamp and receipt it, no one could have guessed how bitter a thing it was
+      to her to accept Miss Vallincourt&rsquo;s money. Within herself she recognised
+      that every penny of it had been earned at the cost of her own happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as she stood at the gate, watching the ancient vehicle from the Crown
+      and Bells bearing the London visitors towards the station, a little quiver
+      of hope stirred in her heart. Early that morning Dan himself had said to
+      her before starting out to his work: &ldquo;Get those people away! They must be
+      out of the house before I come into it again. Pay them a week&rsquo;s money
+      instead of notice if necessary. We can afford it.&rdquo; So it was evident that
+      he, too, had realised the danger of their happiness&mdash;hers and his&mdash;if
+      Miss Vallincourt remained at Stockleigh any longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not come in till late in the evening, when June was sitting in the
+      lamplight, adding delicate stitchery to some tiny garments upon which she
+      was at work. She hid them hastily at the sound of his footsteps,
+      substituting one of his own socks that stood in need of repair. Not yet
+      could she share with him that wonderful secret joy which was hers. There
+      must be a clearer understanding between them first. They must get back to
+      where they were before Miss Vallincourt came between them, so that nothing
+      might mar the sweetness of the telling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Dan came into the room and sat down heavily. June looked across
+      at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has gone, Dan,&rdquo; she said quietly. She did not use the word &ldquo;they.&rdquo;
+       Those others did not count as far as she was concerned. Her use of the
+      pronoun sounded significantly in Storran&rsquo;s ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, then?&rdquo; he said dully. Adding, after a moment&rsquo;s pause. &ldquo;Did she
+      tell you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me?&rdquo; repeated June doubtfully. &ldquo;Tell me what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That she&rsquo;s robbed you of all that belongs to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face blanched. &ldquo;What do you mean, Dan?&rdquo; she asked falteringly. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t think I understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her wide, questioning blue eyes, with that softness and depth of
+      expression dawning in them which motherhood gives to women&rsquo;s eyes,
+      searched his face. The innocent appeal of them cut him to the heart. He
+      had loved his wife; and now he had to tell her that he loved her no
+      longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to understand,&rdquo; he said roughly. His hatred of being compelled
+      to hurt her made him almost brutal. &ldquo;I&mdash;everything is changed between
+      us, June.&rdquo; He stopped, not knowing how to go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Changed? How, Dan?&rdquo; Her voice sharpened with apprehension. &ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;that
+      you don&rsquo;t&mdash;care any longer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. It&rsquo;s that. It&rsquo;s Magda&mdash;Oh, good God! Can&rsquo;t you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You love Miss Vallincourt?&rdquo; June spoke in carefully measured accents. She
+      felt that if she did not speak very quietly indeed she should scream. She
+      wanted to laugh, too. It sounded so absurd to be asking her husband if he
+      loved Miss Vallincourt!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan&rsquo;s eyes met her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I love her.&rdquo; He paused a moment, then added: &ldquo;I asked her
+      to go away with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      June stared at him dumbly. The whole thing seemed unreal. She could not
+      feel as though what Dan was saying had any relation to herself, any
+      bearing on their life together. At last:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you go, then?&rdquo; she heard herself say&mdash;at least, she
+      supposed she must be saying it, although the voice didn&rsquo;t sound a bit like
+      her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan turned on her with sudden savagery. His nerves were raw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak as though you were disappointed,&rdquo; he said roughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. But if you care for Miss Vallincourt and she cares for you, I&rsquo;m
+      wondering what stopped you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t care for me&rdquo;&mdash;shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      June felt a thrill of pure joy. If Magda didn&rsquo;t care, then she could win
+      him back&mdash;win back her husband! Within her she was instinctively
+      aware that if Magda <i>had</i> cared, no power of hers could have won back
+      Dan&rsquo;s allegiance. A faint doubt assailed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&mdash;she <i>seemed</i> as if she cared?&rdquo; she ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan nodded indifferently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I was a summer holiday&rsquo;s amusement for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;was that all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As June spoke, her direct gaze sought her husband&rsquo;s face. He met it fair
+      and square, unflinchingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all,&rdquo; he replied quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She crossed the room swiftly to his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, if that&rsquo;s all, Dan, we&mdash;we won&rsquo;t speak of it again&mdash;ever,&rdquo;
+       she said steadily. &ldquo;It&mdash;it was just a mistake. It need never come
+      between us. You&rsquo;ll get over it, and I&rdquo;&mdash;her small head reared itself
+      bravely&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll forget it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pathetic courage of her! Storran turned away with a groan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t &lsquo;get over it.&rsquo; When a man loves a woman as I
+      love Magda he doesn&rsquo;t &lsquo;get over it.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s what I meant when I told you
+      she had robbed you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>will</i> get over it, Dan,&rdquo; she persisted. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he returned doggedly. &ldquo;You, least of all! Every touch of your
+      hand&mdash;I should be thinking what her touch would have meant! The sound
+      of your step&mdash;I&rsquo;d be listening for hers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw her wince. He wanted to kick himself for hurting her like this. But
+      he knew what he intended doing; and sooner or later she must know too. It
+      would be better for her in the long run to face it now than to be
+      endlessly waiting and hoping and longing for what he knew could never be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dan, I&rsquo;ll be very patient. Don&rsquo;t you think&mdash;if you tried&mdash;you
+      could conquer this love of yours for Miss Vallincourt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s conquered me, June. It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s torture!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be easier now she&rsquo;s gone away,&rdquo; she suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone away? . . . Aye, as far as London! And in five hours I could be with
+      her&mdash;see her again&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off. At the bare thought his heart was pounding against his ribs,
+      his breath labouring in his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you try, Dan?&rdquo; Even to herself June&rsquo;s voice sounded faint and far
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be useless.&rdquo; He got up and strode aimlessly back and forth,
+      coming at last to a standstill in front of her. &ldquo;A man knows his own
+      limits, June. And I&rsquo;ve reached mine. England can&rsquo;t hold the two of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      June gave a little stifled cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean? You&rsquo;re not&mdash;you&rsquo;re not going to leave me? To go
+      abroad&mdash;now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There would be need for him in England soon&mdash;in a few months. But of
+      course he couldn&rsquo;t know that. Should she tell him. Tell him why he <i>must
+      not</i> leave her now? Keep him with her by a sure and certain chain&mdash;the
+      knowledge that she was soon to be the mother of his child?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She debated the question wildly in her mind, tempted to tell him, yet
+      feeling that even if then he stayed with her it would not be because he
+      loved her or had ceased to care for Miss Vallincourt, but only because he
+      was impelled by a sense of duty. And her pride rebelled against holding
+      him by that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice broke in upon her conflicting thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I&rsquo;m going abroad. It&rsquo;s the only thing, June. I can&rsquo;t stay in England&mdash;and
+      keep away from her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      June was silent a moment. Then she said in a very low voice, almost as
+      though speaking to herself:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if&mdash;if you ever loved me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He wheeled round, and the desperate misery in his eyes hurt her almost
+      physically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said harshly. &ldquo;I did love you. In a way, I do now. But it&rsquo;s
+      nothing&mdash;nothing to the madness in my blood! I&rsquo;m a brute to leave
+      you. But I&rsquo;m going to do it. No civilised country can hold me now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So that was to be the end of it! June recognised the bitter truth at last.
+      Magda had indeed robbed her of everything she possessed. And robbed her
+      wantonly, seeing that she herself set no value on Dan&rsquo;s love&mdash;had, in
+      fact, tossed it aside like an outworn plaything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      June ceased to plead with Dan then. She would not wish to hold him by any
+      other chain than his love for her. And if that chain had snapped&mdash;broken
+      irrevocably&mdash;then the child born of what had once been love would
+      only be an encumbrance in his eyes, an unwelcome tie, shackling him to a
+      duty from which he longed to escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So she let him go&mdash;let him go in silence. . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      WHAT LADY ARABELLA KNEW
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella might disapprove of her god-daughter from every point of the
+      compass, but she was nevertheless amazingly fond of her, so that when
+      Gillian appeared on her spotless Park Lane doorstep one afternoon with the
+      information that she and Magda had returned from Devonshire, she hailed
+      the announcement with enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where is Magda? Why didn&rsquo;t she come with you?&rdquo; she demanded
+      impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her manager rang up to know if he could see her about various things in
+      connection with this next winter&rsquo;s season, so there&rsquo;s a great council in
+      progress. But she&rsquo;s coming to see you to-morrow. Won&rsquo;t I do&rdquo;&mdash;Gillian
+      wrinkled her brows whimsically&mdash;&ldquo;for to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless the child! Of course you will! Come along and tell me all about
+      your Devonshire trip. I suppose,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;you heard the news of
+      Michael Quarrington&rsquo;s marriage? Or didn&rsquo;t you get any newspapers down in
+      your benighted village?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, we had no London papers,&rdquo; replied Gillian doubtfully. &ldquo;But&mdash;I
+      don&rsquo;t understand. Mr. Quarrington isn&rsquo;t married, is he? I thought&mdash;I
+      thought&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You thought he was in love with Magda. So he was. The announcement
+      startled everybody, I can tell you! And Davilof promptly decided that a
+      motoring trip would benefit his health and shot off to Devonshire at top
+      speed. Of course he wanted to impart the news to Magda. He must have felt
+      a pretty fool since!&rdquo; And Lady Arabella gave one of her enjoyable
+      chuckles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Antoine came down to see us,&rdquo; replied Gillian in puzzled tones. &ldquo;But
+      Magda never confided anything special he had said. I suppose he <i>must</i>
+      have told her&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She broke off as all at once illumination
+      penetrated the darkness. &ldquo;That explains it, then! Explains everything!&rdquo;
+       she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What explains what?&rdquo; demanded Lady Arabella bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; And Gillian proceeded to recount the events which had
+      led up to the abrupt termination of the visit to Stockleigh Farm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was in a very odd kind of mood after Antoine had gone. I even asked
+      her if he had brought any bad news, but I couldn&rsquo;t get any sensible answer
+      out of her. And that night she proceeded to dance in the moonlight with
+      Dan Storran for audience&mdash;out of sheer devilment, of course!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or sheer heartsickness,&rdquo; suggested Lady Arabella, with one of those quick
+      flashes of tender insight which combined so incongruously with the rest of
+      her personality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think she&mdash;cared, then?&rdquo; asked Gillian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Quarrington? Of course I do. Oh, well it will all come right in the
+      end, I hope. And, anyway&rdquo;&mdash;with a wicked little grin&mdash;&ldquo;Davilof
+      won&rsquo;t have quite such a clear coast as he anticipated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if Michael Quarrington is married&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; interrupted Lady Arabella briskly. &ldquo;It was contradicted in the
+      papers the very next morning. Only I suppose Davilof hustled off to
+      Devonshire in such a hurry that he never saw it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Contradicted? But how did such a mistake arise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, whoever supplied that particular tidbit of news got the names mixed.
+      It ought really to have been <i>Warrington</i>, not Quarrington&mdash;Mortrake
+      Warrington, the sculptor, you know. It seems he and Michael were both
+      using the same woman as a model&mdash;only Warrington married her! Spoiled
+      Michael&rsquo;s picture&mdash;or his temper&mdash;when he ran off with her for a
+      honeymoon, I expect!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On her return to Friars&rsquo; Holm Gillian hastened to retail for Magda&rsquo;s
+      benefit the information she had acquired from Lady Arabella, and was
+      rewarded by the immediate change in her which became apparent. The
+      haunted, feverish look in her eyes was replaced by a more tranquil
+      shining, the intense restlessness she had evinced of late seemed to fall
+      away from her, and she ceased to pepper her conversation with the bitter
+      speeches which had worried Gillian more than a little, recognising in
+      them, as she did, the outcrop of some inward and spiritual turmoil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Magda, the fact that Michael was not married, after all, seemed to
+      re-create the whole world. It left hope still at the bottom of the box of
+      life&rsquo;s possibilities. Looking backward, she realised now how strongly she
+      had clung to the belief that some day he would come back to her. It had
+      been the one gleam of light through all those dark months which had
+      followed his abrupt departure; and the intolerable pain of the hours that
+      had succeeded Davilof&rsquo;s announcement of his marriage to the Spanish woman
+      had taught her how much Michael meant to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was beginning to appreciate, too, the tangle of convictions and
+      emotions which had driven him from her side. His original attitude toward
+      her, based on the treatment she had accorded to his friend who had loved
+      her, had been one of plain censure and distrust, strengthened and
+      intensified by that strong &ldquo;partisan&rdquo; feeling of one man for another&mdash;fruit
+      of the ineradicable sex antagonism which so often colours the judgments
+      men pass on women and women on men. Then had come love, against which he
+      had striven in vain, and gradually, out of love, had grown a new tentative
+      belief which the pitiful culmination of the Raynham episode had suddenly
+      and very completely shattered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of late, circumstances had combined to impress on Magda an altogether new
+      point of view&mdash;the viewpoint from which other people might
+      conceivably regard her actions. She had never troubled about such a thing
+      before, nor was she finding the experience at all a pleasant one. But it
+      helped her to understand to a certain extent&mdash;though still only in a
+      very modified degree&mdash;the influences which had sent Michael
+      Quarrington out of England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, in the passionate relief bred of the knowledge that he was still
+      free, that he had not gone straight from her to another woman, much of the
+      resentful hardness which had embittered her during the last few months
+      melted away, and she became once more the nonchalant, tantalising but
+      withal lovable and charming personality of former days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was even conscious of a certain compunction for her behaviour at
+      Stockleigh. She had been bitterly hurt herself, and since, for the moment,
+      to experiment with a new and, to her, quite unknown type of man had amused
+      her and helped to distract her thoughts, she had not paused to consider
+      the possible resultant consequences to the subject of the experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She endeavoured to solace herself with the belief that after she had gone
+      he would instinctively turn to June once more, and that life on the farm
+      would probably resume the even tenor of its way. Gradually, with the
+      passage of time, her thoughts reverted less and less often to the
+      happenings at Stockleigh, and the prickings of conscience&mdash;which
+      beset her return to London&mdash;grew considerably fainter and more
+      infrequent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was almost inevitable that this should be so. With the autumn came the
+      stir and hustle of the season, with its thousand-and-one claims upon her
+      thought and time. The management of the Imperial Theatre was nothing if
+      not enterprising, and designed to present a series of ballets throughout
+      the course of the winter, in the greater number of which Magda would be
+      the bright and particular star. And in the absorption of work and the
+      sheer joy she found in the art which she loved, the recollection of her
+      holiday at Stockleigh slipped by degrees into the background of her mind.
+      Fraught with such immense significance and catastrophe to those others,
+      Dan and June&mdash;to Magda it soon came to occupy no more than an
+      incidental niche in her memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      CROSS CURRENTS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Winter had slipped away, pushed from his place by the tender, resistless
+      hands of spring. And now spring had given place to summer, and June, arms
+      filled with flowers, was converting the earth into a garden of roses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s car, purring its way southward along the great road from London,
+      sped between fields that still gleamed with the first freshness of their
+      young green, while through the open window drifted vagrant little puffs of
+      clean country air, coming delicately to her nostrils, fragrant of leaf and
+      bloom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was motoring to Netherway, a delightfully small and insignificant
+      place on the Hampshire coast where Lady Arabella had what it pleased her
+      to term her &ldquo;cottage in the country,&rdquo; a charming old place, Elizabethan in
+      character&mdash;the type of &ldquo;cottage&rdquo; which boasted a score or so of rooms
+      and every convenience which an imaginative estate agent, sustained by the
+      knowledge that his client regarded money as a means and not an end, could
+      devise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Summer invitations to the Hermitage&mdash;as the place was quite inaptly
+      called, since no one could be less akin to a hermit than its gregarious
+      owner&mdash;were much sought after by the younger generation of Lady
+      Arabella&rsquo;s set. The beautifully wooded park, with its green aisles of
+      shady solitude sloping down from the house to the very edge of the blue
+      waters of the Solent, was an ideal spot in which to bring to a safe and
+      happy conclusion a love affair that might seem to have hung fire a trifle
+      during the hurly-burly of the London season. And if further inducement
+      were needed, it was to be found in the fact that Lady Arabella herself
+      constituted the most desirable of chaperons, remaining considerately
+      inconspicuous until the moment when her congratulations were requested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This year a considerable amount of disappointment had been occasioned by
+      the fact that she had left town quite early during the season, and later
+      on had apparently limited her invitations exclusively to the trio at
+      Friars&rsquo; Holm. She declared that the number of matrimonial ventures for
+      which the Hermitage was responsible was beginning to weigh on her
+      conscience. Also, she wanted a quiet holiday and she proposed to take one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now Magda was on her way to join her, Gillian remaining behind in
+      order to close up the house at Hampstead and settle the servants on board
+      wages. It had been arranged that she and Coppertop should come on to
+      Netherway immediately this was accomplished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda could hardly believe that only a year had elapsed since last the
+      roses beckoned her out of London. It seemed far longer since that hot
+      summer&rsquo;s day when she had rushed away to Devonshire, vainly seeking a
+      narcotic for the new and bewildering turmoil of pain that was besetting
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had learned now that you carry a heartache with you, and that no
+      change of scenery makes up for the beloved face you can no longer see. For
+      Michael had not come back. He had remained abroad and had never by sign or
+      letter acknowledged that he even remembered her existence. Magda had come
+      to accept it as a fact now that he had gone out of her life entirely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A whiff of air tinged with the salt tang of the sea blew in at the window,
+      and she came suddenly out of her musings to find that the car was winding
+      its way up the hill upon which the Hermitage was perched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long, low house, clothed in creeper, it stood just below the hill&rsquo;s
+      brow, sheltered to the rear by a great belt of woods, and overlooking a
+      sea which sparkled in the sunlight as though strewn with diamond-dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella was waiting in the porch when the car drew up and welcomed
+      her god-daughter with delight. She seemed bubbling over with good spirits,
+      and there was a half-mischievous, half-guilty twinkle in her keen old eyes
+      which suggested that there might be some ulterior cause for her
+      effervescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you were poor I should say you&rsquo;d just come into a fortune,&rdquo; commented
+      Magda, regarding her judicially. &ldquo;As you&rsquo;re not, I should like to know why
+      you&rsquo;re looking as pleased as a child with a new toy. Own up, now,
+      Marraine! What&rsquo;s the secret you&rsquo;ve got up your sleeve?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there is a secret,&rdquo; acknowledged Lady Arabella gleefully. &ldquo;Come
+      along and I&rsquo;ll show it you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled and followed her across the long hall and into a room at the
+      further end of which stood a big easel. On the easel, just nearing
+      completion, rested a portrait of her godmother. It was rather a wonderful
+      portrait. The artist seemed to have penetrated beyond the mere physical
+      lineaments of his sitter into the very crannies of her soul. It was all
+      there&mdash;the thoroughly worldly shrewdness, the mordant, somewhat
+      cynical humour, and the genuine kindness of heart which went to make up
+      Lady Arabella&rsquo;s personality as her world knew it. And something more.
+      Behind all these one sensed the glamour of a long-past romance, the
+      unquenched spark of a faith that, as Lady Arabella had herself once put it
+      in a rare moment of self-revelation, &ldquo;love is the best thing this queer
+      old world of ours has to offer.&rdquo; The portrait on the easel was that of a
+      woman who had visioned the miracle of love only to be robbed of its
+      fulfilment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda stood silently in front of the picture, marvelling at its keen
+      perceptive powers. And then quite suddenly she realised who must have
+      painted it. It almost seemed to her as though she had really known it from
+      the first moment her eyes had rested on the canvas. The brushwork, and
+      that uncannily clever characterisation, were unmistakable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good likeness, don&rsquo;t you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella&rsquo;s snapping speech broke the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s rather more than that, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; said Magda. &ldquo;How did you seduce
+      Michael Quarrington? I thought&rdquo;&mdash;for an instant her voice wavered,
+      then steadied again&mdash;&ldquo;I thought he was abroad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was. At the present moment he&rsquo;s at the Hermitage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Here</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda turned her head aside so that Lady Arabella might not see the wave
+      of scarlet which flooded her face and then receded, leaving it milk-white.
+      Michael . . . <i>here</i>! She felt her heart beating in great suffocating
+      throbs, and the room seemed to swim round her. If he were here, knowing
+      that she was to be his fellow-guest, surely he could not hate her so
+      badly! She was conscious of a sudden wild uprush of hope. Perhaps&mdash;perhaps
+      happiness was not so far away, after all!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she heard Lady Arabella&rsquo;s voice breaking across the riot of
+      emotion which stirred within her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he has been here the last three weeks painting my portrait. It&rsquo;s for
+      you, the portrait. I thought you&rsquo;d like to have it when you haven&rsquo;t got
+      the original any longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda turned to her suddenly, her affection for her godmother alertly
+      apprehensive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; she said anxiously. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re&mdash;you&rsquo;re not ill,
+      Marraine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ill? No. But I&rsquo;m over seventy. And after seventy you&rsquo;ve had your allotted
+      span, you know. Anything beyond that&rsquo;s an extra. And whether fate gives me
+      a bit more rope or not, I&rsquo;ve nothing to grumble at. I&rsquo;ve <i>lived</i>, not
+      vegetated&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve had a very good time, too.&rdquo; She paused, then
+      added slowly: &ldquo;Though I&rsquo;ve missed the best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda slipped her hand into the old woman&rsquo;s thin, wrinkled one with a
+      quick gesture of understanding, and a little sympathetic silence fell
+      between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll find the hanging-room for the portrait at Friars&rsquo; Holm?&rdquo;
+       queried Lady Arabella, breaking it at last in practical tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know we&rsquo;d love to have it,&rdquo; replied Magda warmly. In a studiously
+      casual voice she pursued: &ldquo;By the way, does Mr. Quarrington know I&rsquo;m
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella nodded. Secretly she was congratulating herself on having
+      successfully tided over the awkwardness of explaining Michael&rsquo;s presence
+      at the Hermitage. She had been somewhat apprehensive as to how Magda would
+      take it. It was quite on the cards that she might have ordered her car
+      round again and driven straight back to London!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she had accepted the fact with apparent composure&mdash;one&rsquo;s mental
+      states, fortunately, being invisible to the curious eyes of the outside
+      world!&mdash;and Lady Arabella felt proportionately relieved. Nor had
+      Quarrington himself evinced any particular emotion, either of
+      dissatisfaction or otherwise, when she had confided to him the fact that
+      she was expecting her god-daughter. And although the extreme composure
+      exhibited by both Michael and Magda was a trifle baffling, Lady Arabella
+      was fain to comfort herself with her confirmed belief in propinquity as
+      the resolution of most lovers&rsquo; problems and misunderstandings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was fully determined to bring these two together once more if it were
+      in any way possible, and the commission to paint her portrait had been
+      merely part of her scheme. Her three score years and ten had had little
+      enough to do with it. They weighed extremely lightly on her erect old
+      shoulders, and her spirit was as unquenchable as it had been twenty years
+      ago. It seemed more than likely that fate was preparing to allow her quite
+      a good deal of rope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Quarrington, he would probably have refused to return to England at
+      this juncture to please anyone other than Lady Arabella. But somehow no
+      one ever did refuse Lady Arabella anything that she particularly set her
+      heart upon. Moreover, as he reflected upon receipt of her assured little
+      missive commissioning him to paint her portrait, he would be obliged to
+      return to England sooner or later, and by now he felt he had himself
+      sufficiently in hand to risk the contingency of a possible meeting with
+      Magda. But he had hardly counted upon finding himself actually under the
+      same roof with her for days together, and, although outwardly unmoved, he
+      was somewhat taken aback when halfway through his visit to the Hermitage,
+      Lady Arabella cheerfully communicated the prospect to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could read between the lines and guess her purpose, and it afforded him
+      a certain sardonic amusement. It was like Lady Arabella&rsquo;s temerity, he
+      reflected! No other woman, knowing as much of the special circumstances as
+      she did, would have ventured so far.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, she would soon realise that her attempt to bridge matters over
+      between himself and her god-daughter was foredoomed to failure. He would
+      never trust Magda, or any other woman, again. From the moment he had left
+      England he had made up his mind that henceforth no woman should have any
+      place in his life, and certain subsequent occurrences had confirmed him in
+      this determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same time he was not going to run away. He would stay and face it
+      out. He would remain at the Hermitage until he had finished the portrait
+      upon which he was at work, and then he would pack up and depart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So that when finally he and Magda met in the sun-filled South Parlour at
+      the Hermitage each of them was prepared to treat the other with a cool
+      detachment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Magda found it difficult to maintain her pose after her first glance
+      at his face. The alteration in it sent a swift pang to her heart. It had
+      hardened&mdash;hardened into lines of a grim self-control that spoke of
+      long mental conflict. The mouth, too, had learned to close in a new line
+      of bitterness, and in the grey eyes as they rested on her there lay a
+      certain cynical indifference which seemed to set her as far away from him
+      as the north is from the south. She realised that the gulf between them
+      was almost as wide and impassable as though he were in very truth the
+      Spanish dancer&rsquo;s husband. This man proposed to give her neither love nor
+      forgiveness. Only the feminine instinct of pride&mdash;the pride of woman
+      who must be sought and never the seeker&mdash;carried her through the
+      ordeal of the first meeting. Nor did he seek to make it easier for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a long time since you were in England,&rdquo; she remarked after the
+      first interchange of civilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very long,&rdquo; agreed Quarrington politely. &ldquo;It would probably have been
+      still longer if Lady Arabella had not tempted me. But her portrait was too
+      interesting a commission to refuse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sounds banal to say how good I think it. You never paint anything that
+      <i>isn&rsquo;t</i> good, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I paint what I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case quite a lot of people might be afraid to have their
+      portraits painted by you&mdash;beauty being so much in the eye of the
+      beholder!&rdquo; returned Magda with the flippancy that is so often only the
+      defence behind which a woman takes refuge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so. As a matter of fact I have no objection to painting a
+      plain face&mdash;provided there&rsquo;s a beautiful soul behind it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I suppose a beautiful soul in a beautiful body would satisfy you
+      better?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might, if such a combination existed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda flushed a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think it does?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The grey, contemptuous eyes swept her face suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My experience has not led me to think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an almost calculated insolence in the careless answer. It was as
+      though he had tossed her an epitome of his opinion of her. Magda&rsquo;s spirit
+      rose in opposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps your experience has been somewhat limited,&rdquo; she observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps it has. If so, I have no wish to extend it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of Michael&rsquo;s taciturnity&mdash;or perhaps, more truly, on account
+      of it&mdash;Magda&rsquo;s spirits lightened curiously after that first interview
+      with him. The mere fact of his presence had stilled the incessant ache at
+      her heart&mdash;the ache to see him again and hear his voice. And the
+      morose cynicism of his thrusts at her was just so much proof that,
+      although he had forced himself to remain out of England for a year and a
+      half, yet he had not thereby achieved either peace of mind or
+      indifference. Magda was too true a daughter of Eve not to know that a man
+      doesn&rsquo;t expend powder and shot on a woman to whom he is completely
+      indifferent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day or two were not without their difficulties, as Lady Arabella
+      speedily realised. A triangular party, when two out of the three share
+      certain poignant memories, is by no means the easiest thing to
+      stage-manage. There were inevitable awkward moments that could only be
+      surmounted by the exercise of considerable tact, and the hours which Lady
+      Arabella passed sitting to Quarrington for her portrait, while Magda
+      wandered alone through the woods or sculled a solitary boat up the river,
+      helped to minimize the strain considerably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, it was a relief to everyone concerned when Gillian and
+      Coppertop were added to the party. A strained atmosphere was somewhat
+      difficult of accomplishment anywhere within the joyous vicinity of the
+      latter, while Gillian&rsquo;s tranquil and happy nature reacted on the whole
+      household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s an extraordinary friendship,&rdquo; commented Quarrington one day as he
+      and his hostess stood at the window watching Gillian and Magda, returned
+      from shopping in the village, approaching up the drive. &ldquo;Mrs. Grey is so
+      simple and&mdash;to use an overworked word&mdash;so essentially womanly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Magda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hard look deepened in Michael&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Essentially&mdash;feminine,&rdquo; he answered curtly. &ldquo;A quite different
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She hasn&rsquo;t found her soul yet,&rdquo; said Lady Arabella. Adding with sudden
+      daring: &ldquo;Suppose you find it for her, Michael?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think the search would interest me,&rdquo; he returned coolly. &ldquo;I
+      haven&rsquo;t the instinct of the prospector.&rdquo; He paused, then went on slowly
+      and as though making the admission almost against his will: &ldquo;But I&rsquo;d like
+      to paint her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A portrait of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not a portrait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you mean you want her to sit for your &lsquo;Circe&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella knew all about the important picture he had in mind to
+      paint. They had often discussed it together during the progress of the
+      sittings she had been giving him, and she was aware that so far he had
+      been unable to find a suitable model.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;She is the perfect model for such a subject&mdash;body
+      and soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella ignored the sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why not ask her to sit for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Quarrington&rsquo;s brows drew together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know the answer to that, I think, Lady Arabella,&rdquo; he answered curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you men! I&rsquo;ve no patience with you!&rdquo; exclaimed the old lady testily.
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i> shall ask her, then!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian and Magda, laden with parcels, entered the room as she spoke, and,
+      before Quarrington could prevent her, she had flashed round on her
+      god-daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magda, here&rsquo;s Michael in need of a model for the best picture he&rsquo;s ever
+      likely to paint, and it seems you exactly fit the bill. Will you sit for
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Followed an astonished silence. Gillian glanced apprehensively towards
+      Magda. She felt as though Lady Arabella had suddenly let off a firework in
+      their midst. Magda halted in the process of unwrapping a small parcel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the subject of the picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a perceptible pause. Then Lady Arabella took the bull by the
+      horns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Circe,&rdquo; she said tersely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Magda seemed to reflect. &ldquo;She turned men into swine, didn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo;
+       She looked across at Quarrington. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m to understand you think I&rsquo;d
+      make a suitable model for that particular subject?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was a very beautiful person,&rdquo; suggested Gillian hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Quarrington hasn&rsquo;t answered my question,&rdquo; persisted Magda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He met her glance with cool defiance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, yes,&rdquo; he returned with a little bow. &ldquo;As Mrs. Grey has just
+      remarked&mdash;Circe was very beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You score,&rdquo; observed Magda demurely. There was a glint of amusement in
+      her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I think he does,&rdquo; agreed Lady Arabella, who was deriving an impish,
+      pixie-like enjoyment from the situation. Then, recognising that it might
+      be more diplomatic not to press the matter any further at the moment, she
+      skilfully drew the conversation into other channels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not until evening, after dinner, that she reverted to the subject.
+      They had all four been partaking of coffee and cigarettes on the verandah,
+      and subsequently she had proposed a stroll in the garden&mdash;a
+      suggestion to which Gillian responded with alacrity. Magda, her slim
+      length extended on a comfortably cushioned wicker lunge, shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m too comfortable to stir,&rdquo; she declared idly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella paused at the edge of the verandah and contemplated her
+      critically. Something in the girl&rsquo;s pose and in the long, lithe lines of
+      her recumbent figure was responsible for her next remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can see you as Circe,&rdquo; she commented, &ldquo;quite well.&rdquo; She tucked her arm
+      into Gillian&rsquo;s and, as they moved away together, threw back over her
+      shoulder: &ldquo;By the way, have you two settled the vexed question of the
+      model for the picture yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Quarrington blew a thin stream of smoke into the air before replying.
+      Then, looking quizzically across at Magda, he asked: &ldquo;Have we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have we what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Decided whether you will sit for my picture of Circe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda lifted her long white lids and met his glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I?&rdquo; she asked lazily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged his shoulders with apparent unconcern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No reason in the world&mdash;unless you feel inclined to do a good turn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His indifference was maddening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t make a habit of doing good turns,&rdquo; she retorted sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I should imagine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The contemptuous edge to his voice roused her to indignation. As always,
+      she found herself stung to the quick by the man&rsquo;s coolly critical attitude
+      towards her. She was back once more in the atmosphere of their first
+      meeting on the day he had come to her assistance in the fog. It seemed
+      almost incredible that all that followed had ever taken place&mdash;incredible
+      that he had ever cared for her or taught her to care for him. At least he
+      was making it very clear to her now that he intended to cut those
+      intervening memories out of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a sheer challenge to her femininity, and everything that was woman
+      in her rose to meet it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled across at him engagingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might&mdash;perhaps&mdash;make an exception.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment there was silence. Quarrington&rsquo;s gaze was riveted on her
+      slim, supple figure with its perfect symmetry and rare grace of limb. It
+      was difficult to interpret his expression. Magda wondered if he were going
+      to reject her offer. He seemed to be fighting something out with himself&mdash;pulled
+      two ways&mdash;the artist in him combating the man&rsquo;s impulse to resist
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the artist triumphed. He rose and, coming to her side, stood
+      looking down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;<i>Will you</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something more than the artist spoke in his voice. It held a note of
+      passionate eagerness, a clipped tensity that set all her pulses racing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her head aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered, a little breathlessly. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;if you want me to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A READJUSTMENT OF IDEAS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Magda glanced from the divan covered with a huge tiger-skin to Michael,
+      wheeling his easel into place. A week&rsquo;s hard work on the part of the
+      artist had witnessed the completion of Lady Arabella&rsquo;s portrait, and
+      to-day he proposed to make some preliminary sketches for &ldquo;Circe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda felt oddly nervous and unsure of herself. This last fortnight passed
+      in daily companionship with Quarrington had proved a considerable strain.
+      Not withstanding that she had consented to sit for his picture of Circe,
+      he had not deviated from the attitude which he had apparently determined
+      upon from the first moment of her arrival at the Hermitage&mdash;an
+      attitude of aloof indifference to which was added a bitterness of speech
+      that continually thrust at her with its trenchant cynicism. It was as
+      though he had erected a high wall between them which Magda found no effort
+      of hers could break down, and she was beginning to ask herself whether he
+      could ever really have cared for her at all. Surely no man who had once
+      cared could be so hard&mdash;so implacably hard!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, alone with him in the big room which had been converted into a
+      temporary studio, she found herself overwhelmed by a feeling of intense
+      self-consciousness. She felt it would be impossible to bear the coolly
+      neutral gaze of those grey eyes for hours at a time. She wished fervently
+      that she had never consented to sit for the picture at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you want me to pose?&rdquo; she inquired at last, endeavouring to speak
+      with her usual detachment and conscious that she was failing miserably.
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t told me yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the least intention of telling you,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;&lsquo;The
+      Wielitzska&rsquo; doesn&rsquo;t need advice as to how to pose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda looked at him uncertainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you&rsquo;ve given me no idea of what you want,&rdquo; she protested. &ldquo;I must
+      have some idea to start from!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want a recumbent Circe,&rdquo; he vouchsafed at last. &ldquo;Hence the divan. Here
+      is the goblet&rdquo;&mdash;he held it out&mdash;&ldquo;supposed to contain the fatal
+      potion which transformed men into swine. I leave the rest to you. You
+      posed very successfully for me some years ago&mdash;without my issuing any
+      stage directions. Afterwards you played the part of a youthful Circe, I
+      remember. You should be more experienced now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She flushed under the cool, satirical tone. It seemed as though he
+      neglected no opportunity of impressing on her the poor estimation in which
+      he held her. Her thoughts flew back to a sunlit glade in a wood and to the
+      grey-eyed, boyish-looking painter who had kissed her and called her
+      &ldquo;Witch-child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;you were kinder in those days,&rdquo; she said suddenly. She made a
+      few steps towards him and stood looking up at him, her hands hanging
+      loosely clasped in front of her, like a penitent school-girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saint Michel&rdquo;&mdash;and at the sound of her old childish name for him he
+      winced. &ldquo;Saint Michel, I don&rsquo;t think I can sit for you if&mdash;if you&rsquo;re
+      going to be unkind. I thought I could, but&mdash;but&mdash;I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unkind?&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said desperately. &ldquo;Since I came here you&rsquo;ve said a good many
+      hard things to me. I&mdash;I dare say I&rsquo;ve deserved them. But&rdquo;&mdash;smiling
+      up at him rather wanly&mdash;&ldquo;it isn&rsquo;t always easy to accept one&rsquo;s
+      deserts.&rdquo; She paused, then spoke quickly: &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t we&mdash;while we&rsquo;re
+      here together&mdash;behave like friends? Just friends? It&rsquo;s only for a
+      short time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face had whitened while she was speaking. He was silent for a little
+      and his hand, grasping the side of the big easel, slowly tightened its
+      grip till the knuckles showed white like bone. At last he answered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well&mdash;friends, then! So be it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Impulsively she held out her hand. He took it in his and held it a moment,
+      looking down at its slim whiteness. Then he bent his head and she felt his
+      lips hot against her soft palm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little shaken, she drew away from him and moved towards the divan. She
+      paused beside it and glanced down reflectively at the goblet she still
+      carried in her hand, mentally formulating her conception of Circe before
+      she posed. An instant later and her voice roused Quarrington from the
+      momentary reverie into which he had fallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would this do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked up, and as his gaze absorbed the picture before him an eager
+      light of pure aesthetic satisfaction leaped into his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold that!&rdquo; he exclaimed quickly. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t move, please!&rdquo; And, snatching up
+      a stick of charcoal, he began to sketch rapidly with swift, sure strokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pose she had assumed was matchless. She was half-sitting, half-lying
+      on the divan, the swathing draperies of her tunic outlining the wonderful
+      modelling of her limbs. The upper part of her body, twisting a little from
+      the waist, was thrown back as she leaned upon one arm, hand pressed palm
+      downward on the tiger-skin. In her other hand she held a golden goblet,
+      proffering the fatal draught, and her tilted face with its strange,
+      enigmatic smile and narrowed lids held all the seductive entreaty and
+      beguilement, and the deep, cynical knowledge of mankind, which are the
+      garnerings of the Circes of this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length Quarrington laid down his charcoal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a splendid pose,&rdquo; he said enthusiastically. &ldquo;That sideways bend
+      you&rsquo;ve given to your body&mdash;it&rsquo;s wonderful! But can you stand it, do
+      you think? Of course I&rsquo;ll give you rests as often as I can, but even so it
+      will be a very trying pose to hold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda sat up, letting her feet slide slowly over the edge of the divan.
+      The &ldquo;feet of Aurora&rdquo; someone had once called them&mdash;white and arched,
+      with rosy-tipped toes curved like the petals of a flower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can hold it for a good while, I think,&rdquo; she answered evasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not tell him that even to her trained muscles the preservation of
+      this particular pose, with its sinuous twist of the body, was likely to
+      prove somewhat of a strain. If the pose was so exactly what he wanted for
+      his Circe, he should have it, whatever the cost to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And without knowing it, yielding to an impulse which she hardly
+      recognised, Magda had taken the first step along the pathway of service
+      and sacrifice trodden by those who love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems as though you were destined to be the model of my two
+      &lsquo;turning-point&rsquo; pictures,&rdquo; commented Quarrington some days later, during
+      one of the intervals when Magda was taking a brief rest. &ldquo;It was the
+      &lsquo;Repose of Titania&rsquo; which first established my reputation, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this can&rsquo;t be a &lsquo;turning-point,&rsquo;&rdquo; objected Magda. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;ve
+      reached the top of the pinnacle of fame, so to speak, there isn&rsquo;t any
+      &lsquo;turning-point&rsquo;&mdash;unless&rdquo;&mdash;laughing&mdash;&ldquo;you&rsquo;re going to turn
+      round and climb down again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no top to the pinnacle of work&mdash;of achievement,&rdquo; he answered
+      quietly. &ldquo;At least, there shouldn&rsquo;t be. One just goes on&mdash;slipping
+      back a bit, sometimes, then scrambling on again.&rdquo; His glance returned to
+      the picture and Magda watched the ardour of the creative artist light
+      itself anew in his eyes. &ldquo;That&rdquo;&mdash;he nodded towards the canvas&mdash;&ldquo;is
+      going to be the best bit of work I&rsquo;ve done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What made you&rdquo;&mdash;she hesitated a moment&mdash;&ldquo;what made you choose
+      Circe as the subject?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face clouded over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The experience of a friend of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda caught her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not&mdash;you don&rsquo;t mean&mdash;&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no&rdquo;&mdash;divining her thought&mdash;&ldquo;not the friend of whom you know&mdash;who
+      loved the dancer. She hurt him&rdquo;&mdash;looking at her significantly&mdash;&ldquo;but
+      she didn&rsquo;t injure him to that extent. Circe turned men into swine, you
+      remember. My friend was too fine a character for her to spoil like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad.&rdquo; Magda spoke very low, her head bent. She felt unable to meet
+      his eyes. After a short silence she asked: &ldquo;Then what inspired&mdash;this
+      picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it some woman-episode that had occurred while he was abroad which had
+      scored those new lines on his face, embittering the mouth and implanting
+      that sternly sad expression in the grey eyes? She must know&mdash;at all
+      hazards, she must know!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quarrington lit a cigarette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a pretty story,&rdquo; he remarked harshly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda glanced towards the picture. The enchanting, tilted face smiled at
+      her from the canvas, faintly derisive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell it me,&rdquo; was all she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s very little to tell,&rdquo; he answered briefly. &ldquo;There was a man and
+      his wife&mdash;and another woman. Till the latter came along they were
+      absolutely happy together&mdash;sufficient unto each other. The other
+      woman was one of the Circe type, and she broke the man. Broke him utterly.
+      I happened to be in Paris at the time, and he came to see me there on his
+      way out to South America. He&rsquo;d left his wife, left his work&mdash;everything.
+      Just <i>quitted</i>! Since then I believe &lsquo;Frisco has seen more of him
+      than any other place. A man I know ran across him there and told me he&rsquo;d
+      gone under&mdash;utterly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead&rdquo;&mdash;shortly. &ldquo;She&rsquo;d no heart to go on living&mdash;no wish to.
+      She died when their first child was born&mdash;she and the child together&mdash;a
+      few months after her husband had left her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda uttered a stifled cry of pity, but Quarrington seemed not to hear
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That woman was a twentieth-century Circe.&rdquo; He paused, then added with
+      grim conviction: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no forgiveness for a woman like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Don&rsquo;t say that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words broke impulsively from Magda&rsquo;s lips. The recollection of the
+      summer she had spent at Stockleigh rushed over her accusingly&mdash;and
+      she realised that actually she had come between Dan Storran and his wife
+      very much as the Circe woman of Michael&rsquo;s story had come between some
+      other husband and wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep compassion for that unknown woman surged up within her. Surely her
+      burden of remorse must be almost more than she could endure! And Magda&mdash;to
+      whom penalties and consequences had hitherto been but very unimportant
+      factors with which she concerned herself as little as possible&mdash;was
+      all at once conscious of an intense thankfulness that she had not been
+      thus punished, that she had quitted Stockleigh leaving husband and wife
+      still together. Together, they would find the way back into each other&rsquo;s
+      hearts!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that!&rdquo; she repeated imploringly. &ldquo;It sounds so hard&mdash;so
+      relentless!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think that it is a case for relenting. But I oughtn&rsquo;t to have
+      told you about it. After all, neither the husband nor wife were friends of
+      yours. And you&rsquo;re looking quite upset over it. I didn&rsquo;t imagine that you
+      were so easily moved to sympathy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked away. Of late she had been puzzled herself at the new and
+      unwonted emotions which stirred her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think&mdash;I used to be,&rdquo; she said at last, uncertainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, please don&rsquo;t take the matter too much to heart or you won&rsquo;t be able
+      to assume the personality of Circe again when you&rsquo;ve rested. I don&rsquo;t want
+      to paint the picture of a model of propriety!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed as though he were anxious to restore the conversation to a
+      lighter vein, and Magda responded gladly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m quite rested now. Shall I pose again?&rdquo; she suggested a few minutes
+      later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael assented and, picking up his palette, began squeezing out fresh
+      shining little worms of paint on to it while Magda reassumed her pose. For
+      a while he chatted intermittently, but presently he fell silent, becoming
+      more and more deeply absorbed in his work. Finally, when some remark of
+      hers repeated a second time still remained unanswered, she realised that
+      he had completely forgotten her existence. As far as he was concerned she
+      was no longer Magda Wielitzska, posing for him, but Circe, the
+      enchantress, whose amazing beauty he was transferring to his canvas in
+      glowing brushstrokes. As with all genius, the impulse of creative work had
+      seized him suddenly and was driving him on regardless of everything
+      exterior to his art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time had ceased to matter to him, and Magda, with little nervous pains
+      shooting first through one limb, then another, was wondering how much
+      longer she could maintain the pose. She was determined not to give in, not
+      to check him while that fervour of creation was upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pain was increasing. She felt as though she were being stabbed with
+      red-hot knives. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, and her
+      breath came gaspingly between her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once the big easel at which Michael was standing receded out of
+      sight, and when it reappeared again it was quite close to her, swaying and
+      nodding like a mandarin. Instinctively she put out her hand to steady it,
+      but it leaned nearer and nearer and finally gave a huge lurch and swooped
+      down on top of her, and the studio and everything in it faded out of
+      sight. . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The metallic tinkle of the gold goblet as it fell from her hand and rolled
+      along the floor startled Michael out of his absorption. With a sharp
+      exclamation he flung down his brush and palette and strode hurriedly to
+      the divan. Magda was lying half across it in a little crumpled heap,
+      unconscious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His first impulse to lift her up was arrested by something in her
+      attitude, and he stood quite still, looking down at her, his face suddenly
+      drawn and very weary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the limp figure with its upturned face and the purple shadows which
+      fatigue had painted below the closed eyelids, there was an irresistible
+      appeal. She looked so young, so helpless, and the knowledge that she had
+      done this for him&mdash;forced her limbs into agonised subjection until at
+      last conscious endurance had failed her&mdash;moved him indescribably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surely this was a new Magda! Or else he had never known her. Had he been
+      too hard&mdash;hard to her and pitilessly hard to himself&mdash;when he
+      had allowed the ugly facts of her flirtation with Kit Raynham to drive him
+      from her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eighteen months ago! And in all those eighteen months no word of gossip,
+      no lightest breath of scandal against her, had reached his ears. Had he
+      been merely a self-righteous Pharisee, enforcing the penalty of old sins,
+      bygone failings? A grim smile twisted his lips. If so, and he had made her
+      suffer, he had at least suffered equally himself!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped over the prone figure on the divan. Lower, lower still, till a
+      tendril of dark hair that had strayed across her forehead quivered beneath
+      his breath. Then suddenly he drew back, jerking himself upright. Striding
+      across the room he pealed the bell and, when a neat maidservant appeared
+      in response, ordered sharply:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring some brandy&mdash;quick! And ask Mrs. Grey to come here.
+      Mademoiselle Wielitzska has fainted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AT THE END OF THE STORM
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is very nice&mdash;but it won&rsquo;t exactly contribute towards finishing
+      the picture!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke Magda leaned back luxuriously against her cushions and
+      glanced smilingly across at Michael where he sat with his hand on the
+      tiller of the <i>Bella Donna</i>, the little sailing-yacht which Lady
+      Arabella kept for the amusement of her guests rather than for her own
+      enjoyment, since she herself could rarely be induced to go on board.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been what Magda called a &ldquo;blue day&rdquo;&mdash;the sky overhead a deep
+      unbroken azure, the dimpling, dancing waters of the Solent flinging back a
+      blue almost as vivid&mdash;and she and Quarrington had put out from
+      Netherway harbour in the morning and crossed to Cowes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here they had lunched and Magda had purchased one or two of the
+      necessities of life (from a feminine point of view) not procurable in the
+      village emporia at Netherway. Afterwards, as there was still ample time
+      before they need think of returning home, Michael had suggested an hour&rsquo;s
+      run down towards the Needles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Bella Donna</i> sped gaily before the wind, and neither of its
+      occupants, engrossed in conversation, noticed that away to windward a bank
+      of sullen cloud was creeping forward, slowly but surely eating up the blue
+      of the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it will contribute towards finishing the picture.&rdquo; Quarrington
+      answered Magda&rsquo;s laughing comment composedly. &ldquo;A blow like this will have
+      done you all the good in the world, and I shan&rsquo;t have you collapsing on my
+      hands again as you did a week ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, then, you brought me out on hygienic grounds alone?&rdquo; derided Magda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was feeling unaccountably happy and light-hearted. Since the day when
+      she had fainted during the sitting Michael seemed to have changed. He no
+      longer gave utterance to those sudden, gibing speeches which had so often
+      hurt her intolerably. That sense of his aloofness, as though a great wall
+      rose between them, was gone. Somehow she felt that he had drawn nearer to
+      her, and once or twice those grey, compelling eyes had glowed with a
+      smothered fire that had set her heart racing unsteadily within her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you enjoyed to-day, then?&rdquo; he inquired, responding to her
+      question with another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve loved it,&rdquo; she answered simply. &ldquo;I think if I&rsquo;d been a man I should
+      have chosen to be a sailor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it&rsquo;s a good thing heaven saw to it that you were a woman. The world
+      couldn&rsquo;t have done without its Wielitzska.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know&rdquo;&mdash;half-indifferently, half-wistfully. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      astonishing how little necessary anyone really is in this world. If I were
+      drowned this afternoon the Imperial management would soon find someone to
+      take my place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your friends wouldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda laughed a little uncertainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I won&rsquo;t suggest we put them to the test, so please take me home
+      safely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke a big drop of rain splashed down on to her hand. Then another
+      and another. Simultaneously she and Michael glanced upwards to the sky
+      overhead, startlingly transformed from an arch of quivering blue into a
+      monotonous expanse of grey, across which came sweeping drifts of black
+      cloud, heavy with storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove! We&rsquo;re in for it!&rdquo; muttered Quarrington.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice held a sudden gravity. He knew the danger of those unexpected
+      squalls which trap the unwary in the Solent, and inwardly he cursed
+      himself for not having observed the swift alteration in the weather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Bella Donna</i>, too, was by no means the safest of craft in which
+      to meet rough weather. She was slipping along very fast now, and Michael&rsquo;s
+      keen glance swept the gray landscape to where, at the mouth of the
+      channel, the treacherous Needles sentinelled the open sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must bring her round&mdash;quick!&rdquo; he said sharply, springing up. &ldquo;Can
+      you take the tiller? Do you know how to steer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda caught the note of urgency in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can do what you tell me,&rdquo; she said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know port from starboard?&rdquo; he asked grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even while they had been speaking the wind had increased, churning the sea
+      into foam-flecked billows that swirled and broke only to gather anew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was ticklish work bringing the <i>Bella Donna</i> to the wind. Twice
+      she refused to come, lurching sickeningly as she rolled broadside on to
+      the race of wind-driven waves. The third time she heeled over till her
+      canvas almost brushed the surface of the water and it seemed as though she
+      must inevitably capsize. There was an instant&rsquo;s agonised suspense. Then
+      she righted herself, the mainsail bellied out as the boom swung over, and
+      the tense moment passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frightened?&rdquo; queried Quarrington when he had made fast the mainsheet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled straight into his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. We almost capsized then, didn&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a near shave,&rdquo; he answered bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They did not speak much after that. They had enough to do to catch the
+      wind which seemed to bluster from all quarters at once, coming in violent,
+      gusty spurts that shook the frail little vessel from stem to stern. Time
+      after time the waves broke over her bows, flooding the deck and drenching
+      them both with stinging spray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda sat very still, maintaining her grip of the wet and slippery tiller
+      with all the strength of her small, determined hands. Her limbs ached with
+      cold. The piercing wind and rain seemed to penetrate through her thin
+      summer clothing to her very skin. But unwaveringly she responded to
+      Michael&rsquo;s orders as they reached her through the bellowing of the gale.
+      Her eyes were like stars and her lips closed in a scarlet line of courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Port your helm! <i>Hard</i>! . . . Hold on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the thudding swing of the boom as the <i>Bella Donna</i> slewed round
+      on a fresh tack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hurly-burly of the storm was bewildering. In the last hour or so the
+      entire aspect of things had altered, and Magda was conscious of a freakish
+      sense of the unreality of it all. With the ridiculous inconsequence of
+      thought that so often accompanies moments of acute anxiety she reflected
+      that Noah probably experienced a somewhat similar astonishment when he
+      woke up one morning to find that the Flood had actually begun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed as though the storm had reached out long arms and drawn the
+      whole world of land and sea and sky into its turbulent embrace. Driving
+      sheets of rain blurred the coastline on either hand, while the wind caught
+      up the grey waters into tossing, crested billows and flung them down again
+      in a smother of angry spume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Overhead, it screamed through the rigging of the little craft like a
+      tormented devil, tearing at the straining canvas with devouring fingers
+      while the slender mast groaned beneath its force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a terrific gust of wind seemed to strike the boat like an actual
+      blow. Magda saw Michael leap aside, and in the same instant came a
+      splitting, shattering report as the mast snapped in half and a tangled
+      mass of wood and cordage and canvas fell crash on to the deck where he had
+      been standing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda uttered a cry and sprang to her feet. For an instant her heart
+      seemed to stop beating as she visioned him beneath the mass of tackle. Or
+      had he been swept off his feet&mdash;overboard into the welter of grey,
+      surging waters that clamoured round the boat?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment of uncertainty seemed endless, immeasurable. Then Michael
+      appeared, stepping across the wreckage, and came towards her. The relief
+      was almost unendurable. She stretched out shaking hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Michael! . . . Michael!&rdquo; she cried sobbingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all at once she was in his arms. She felt them close about her, strong
+      as steel and tender as love itself. In the rocking, helpless boat, with
+      the storm beating up around them and death a sudden, imminent hazard, she
+      had come at last into haven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later the storm had completely died away. It had begun to abate in
+      violence almost immediately after the breaking of the <i>Bella Donna&rsquo;s</i>
+      mast. It was as though, having wreaked its fury and executed all the
+      damage possible short of absolute destruction, it was satisfied. With the
+      same suddenness with which it had arisen it sank away, leaving a sulky,
+      sunless sky brooding above a sullen sea still heaving restlessly with the
+      aftermath of tempest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The yacht had drifted gradually out of mid-channel shorewards, and after
+      one or two unsuccessful efforts Quarrington at last succeeded in casting
+      anchor. Then he turned to Magda, who had been assisting in the operation,
+      with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s about all we can do,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re perfectly helpless till some
+      tug or steamer comes along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Probably they&rsquo;ll run us down,&rdquo; she suggested. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re in the fairway,
+      aren&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;which is about our best hope of getting picked up before
+      night.&rdquo; Then, laying his hand on her arm: &ldquo;Are you very cold and wet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda laughed&mdash;laughed out of sheer happiness. What did being cold
+      matter, or wet either, if Michael loved her? And she was sure now that he
+      did, though there had been but the one moment&rsquo;s brief embrace. Afterwards
+      he had had his hands full endeavouring to keep the <i>Bella Donna</i>
+      afloat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think the wind has blown my things dry,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;How about you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m all right&mdash;men&rsquo;s clothing being adapted for use, not
+      ornament! But I must find something to wrap you up in. We may be here for
+      hours and the frock you&rsquo;re wearing has about as much warming capacity as a
+      spider&rsquo;s web.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He disappeared below into the tiny, single-berthed cabin, and presently
+      returned armed with a couple of blankets, one of which he proceeded to
+      wrap about Magda&rsquo;s shoulders, tucking the other over her knees where she
+      sat in the stern of the boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want them both,&rdquo; she protested, resisting. &ldquo;You take one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something rather delightful in this unconventional comradeship
+      of discomfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll obey orders,&rdquo; replied Michael firmly. &ldquo;Especially as you&rsquo;re going
+      to be my wife so soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A warm flush dyed her face from brow to throat. He regarded her with
+      quizzical eyes. Behind their tender mockery lurked something else&mdash;something
+      strong and passionate and imperious, momentarily held in leash. But she
+      knew it was there&mdash;could feel the essential, imperative demand of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well? Does the prospect alarm you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda forced herself to meet his glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So soon?&rdquo; she repeated hesitantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. As soon as it can be accomplished,&rdquo; he said triumphantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seated himself beside her and took her in his arms, blankets and all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you think I&rsquo;d be willing to wait?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t think you wanted to marry me at all!&rdquo; returned Magda, the words
+      coming out with a little rush. &ldquo;I thought you&mdash;you disapproved of me
+      too much!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His mouth twisted queerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I did. I&rsquo;m scrapping the beliefs of half a lifetime because I love
+      you. I&rsquo;ve fought against it&mdash;tried not to love you&mdash;kept away
+      from you! But it was stronger than I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saint Michel, I&rsquo;m so glad&mdash;glad it was stronger,&rdquo; she said
+      tremulously, a little break in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent his head and kissed her lips, and with the kiss she gave him back
+      she surrendered her very self into his keeping. She felt his arms strain
+      about her, and the fierce pressure of their clasp taught her the exquisite
+      joy of pain that is born of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She yielded resistlessly, every fibre of her being quivering responsive to
+      the overwhelming passion of love which had at last stormed and broken down
+      all barriers&mdash;both the man&rsquo;s will to resist and her own defences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhere at the back of her consciousness Diane&rsquo;s urgent warning: <i>&ldquo;Never
+      give your heart to any man. Take everything, but do not give!&rdquo;</i> tinkled
+      feebly like the notes of a worn-out instrument. But even had she paused to
+      listen to it she would only have laughed at it. She knew better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Love was the most wonderful thing in the world. If it meant anything at
+      all, it meant giving. And she was ready to give Michael everything she had&mdash;to
+      surrender body, soul, and spirit, the threefold gift that a man demands of
+      his mate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew herself out of his arms and slipped to her knees beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saint Michel, do you believe in me now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe in you? I don&rsquo;t know whether I believe in you or not. But I know
+      I love you! . . . That&rsquo;s all that matters. I love you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; She resisted his arms that sought to draw her back into his
+      embrace. &ldquo;I want more than that. I&rsquo;m beginning to realise things. There
+      must be trust in love. . . . Michael, I&rsquo;m not really hard&mdash;and
+      selfish, as they say. I&rsquo;ve been foolish and thoughtless, perhaps. But I&rsquo;ve
+      never done any harm. Not real harm. I&rsquo;ve never&rdquo;&mdash;she laughed a little
+      brokenly&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never turned men into swine, Michael. . . . I&rsquo;ve hurt
+      people, sometimes, by letting them love me. But, I didn&rsquo;t know, then! Now&mdash;now
+      I know what love is, I shall be different. Quite different. Saint Michel,
+      I know now&mdash;love is self-surrender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tremulous sweetness of her, the humble submissiveness of her appeal,
+      could not but win their way. Michael&rsquo;s lingering disbelief wavered and
+      broke. She had been foolish, spoilt and thoughtless, but she had never
+      done any real harm. Men had loved her&mdash;but how could it be otherwise?
+      And perhaps, after all, they were none the worse for having loved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deliberately Michael flung the past behind him and with it his last doubt
+      of her. He drew her back into his arms, against his heart, and their lips
+      met in a kiss that held not only love but utter faith and confidence&mdash;a
+      pledge for all time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beloved!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;My beloved!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      NIGHT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Michael and Magda stood together on the deck of the crippled yacht which
+      now rocked idly on a quite placid sea. Dusk was falling. That first
+      glorious, irrecoverable hour when love had come into its own was past, and
+      the consideration of things mundane was forcing itself on their notice&mdash;more
+      especially consideration of their particular plight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It looks rather as though we may have to spend the night here,&rdquo; observed
+      Quarrington, his eyes scanning the channel void of any welcome sight of
+      sail or funnel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s brows drew together in a little troubled frown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marraine and Gillian will be frightfully worried and anxious,&rdquo; she said
+      uneasily. It was significant of the gradual alteration in her outlook that
+      this solicitude for others should have rushed first of anything to her
+      lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; He spoke with a curious abruptness. &ldquo;Besides, that&rsquo;s not the only
+      point. There&rsquo;s&mdash;Mrs. Grundy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda shrugged her shoulders and laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if it&rsquo;s to come to a choice between Mrs. Grundy and Davy Jones, I
+      think I should decide to face Mrs. Grundy! Anyway, people can&rsquo;t say much
+      more&mdash;or much worse&mdash;things about me than they&rsquo;ve said already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Quarrington frowned moodily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to kick myself for bringing you out to-day and landing you into
+      this mess. I can&rsquo;t stand the idea of people gossiping about you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve left me very little reputation at any time. A little less can&rsquo;t
+      hurt me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes grew stormy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; he said sharply. &ldquo;I hate to hear you talk like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s true! No public woman gets a fair chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>You</i> will&mdash;when you&rsquo;re my wife,&rdquo; he said between his teeth.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll see to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda glanced at him swiftly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t want me to&mdash;to give up dancing after we&rsquo;re married?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly I don&rsquo;t. I shall want you to do just as you like. I&rsquo;ve no place
+      for the man who asks his wife to &lsquo;give up&rsquo; things in order to marry him.
+      I&rsquo;ve no more right to ask you to give up dancing than you have to ask me
+      to stop painting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled at him radiantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saint Michel, you&rsquo;re really rather nice,&rdquo; she observed impertinently. &ldquo;So
+      few men are as sensible as that. I shall call you the &lsquo;Wise Man,&rsquo; I
+      think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In spite of to-day?&rdquo; he queried whimsically, with a rueful glance at the
+      debris of mast and canvas huddled on the deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Because</i> of to-day,&rdquo; she amended softly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s very wise
+      to be in love, Michael.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew her into his arms and his lips found hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is,&rdquo; he agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another hour went by, and still there came no sign of any passing vessel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why the devil isn&rsquo;t there a single tug passing up and down just when we
+      happen to want one?&rdquo; demanded Quarrington irately of the unresponsive
+      universe. He swung round on Magda. &ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re starving?&rdquo; he went
+      on, in his voice a species of savage discontent&mdash;that unreasonable
+      fury to which masculine temperament is prone when confronted with an
+      obstacle which declines to yield either to force or persuasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda laughed outright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll admit to being hungry. Aren&rsquo;t you? . . . It&rsquo;s horribly unromantic of
+      us, Michael,&rdquo; she added regretfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quarrington grinned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is,&rdquo; he assented. &ldquo;All the same, I believe I could consume a tin of
+      bully beef and feel humbly grateful for it at the present moment!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda had a sudden inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael! Let&rsquo;s forage in the locker! There&rsquo;s almost sure to be some
+      biscuits or chocolate there. Marraine nearly always has things like that
+      put on board. And there may be something left from the last supply.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A brief search brought to light a half-tin of biscuits and some plain
+      chocolate, and off these, with the addition of a bottle of soda-water,
+      also discovered, they proceeded to make an impromptu meal. It was a
+      somewhat thin substitute for the perfectly appointed little dinner of
+      which they would have partaken in the ordinary course of events at the
+      Hermitage, but when you have been a good many hours without food of any
+      description, and spent the greater part of the time in &ldquo;saving your own
+      life at sea,&rdquo; as Michael put it, even biscuits and chocolate have their
+      uses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the improvised feast was over, Quarrington explored the recesses of
+      the tiny hold and unearthed a lantern, which he proceeded to light and
+      attach to the broken mast. It burned with a flickering, uncertain light,
+      momentarily threatening to go out altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not precisely well-equipped with lights,&rdquo; he remarked grimly. &ldquo;But
+      at least that&rsquo;s a precaution&mdash;as long as it lasts! It may&mdash;or
+      may not&mdash;save us from being run down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Twilight deepened slowly into dark. The lights of Yarmouth sprang into
+      being, a cluster of lambent orange points studding the dim coast of the
+      Island. One by one the stars twinkled out in the dusky sky, and a waning
+      moon, thin and frail like a worn sickle, flung a quivering ribbon of
+      silver across the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was strangely still and quiet. Now and again the idle rudder creaked as
+      the boat swung to the current. Once there came the long-drawn hoot of a
+      distant siren. Beyond these fitful sounds only the gurgle of water lapping
+      the sides of the boat broke the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;re here till morning,&rdquo; said Quarrington at last. &ldquo;You may as well go
+      to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s a cabin, isn&rsquo;t there?&rdquo;&mdash;smiling. &ldquo;And a more or less
+      uncomfortable bunk. Come down and see what you can make of it as an
+      abiding-place for the night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;and you? Can&rsquo;t we rig up anything for you?&rdquo; Magda looked round
+      her vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t sleep. I&rsquo;ll do sentry-go on deck&rdquo;&mdash;laughing. &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t
+      do for us both to go comfortably asleep and get run down without even
+      having a shot at making our presence known!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll keep watch with you,&rdquo; said Magda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll do nothing of the sort. You&rsquo;ll go down to the cabin and sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me stay, Michael. I couldn&rsquo;t bear to think of your watching all
+      through the night while I slept comfortably below.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t sleep <i>comfortably</i>&mdash;if my estimate of the look of
+      that bunk is correct. But you&rsquo;ll be out of the cold. Come, be sensible,
+      Magda. You&rsquo;re not suitably attired for a night watch. You&rsquo;d be perished
+      with cold before morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let us take it in turns, then,&rdquo; she suggested. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll sleep four
+      hours and then I&rsquo;ll keep a look-out while you have a rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we&rsquo;ll both watch,&rdquo; she asserted. Through the starlit dark he could
+      just discern her small head turned defiantly away from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has it occurred to you,&rdquo; he asked incisively, &ldquo;what a night spent in the
+      open might mean to you? Rheumatism is not precisely the kind of thing a
+      dancer wants to cultivate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m not going below, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down firmly and Quarrington regarded her a moment in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You baby!&rdquo; he said at last in an amused voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the next moment she felt herself picked up as easily as though she
+      were in very truth the baby he had called her and carried swiftly down the
+      few steps into the cabin. The recollection of that day of her accident in
+      the fog, when he had carried her from the wrenched and twisted car into
+      his own house, rushed over her. Now, as then, she could feel the strength
+      of his arms clasped about her, the masterful purpose of the man that bore
+      her whither he wished regardless of whether she wanted to go or not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid her down on the bunk and, bending over her, kept his hands on her
+      shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he demanded, &ldquo;are you going to stay there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint rebellion still stirred within her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Supposing I say &lsquo;no&rsquo;!&rdquo;&mdash;irresolutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not supposing anything so unlikely,&rdquo; he assured her. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m merely
+      waiting to hear you say &lsquo;yes.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She recognised the utter futility of trying to pit her will against the
+      indomitable will of the man beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael, you are a bully!&rdquo; she protested indignantly, half angry with
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll stay there?&rdquo; he persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t give me much choice&rdquo;&mdash;twisting her shoulders restlessly
+      beneath his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t answered me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She almost flung the word at him, and instantly she felt him lift his
+      hands from her shoulders and heard his footsteps as he tramped out of the
+      cabin and up on to the deck. Presently he returned, carrying the blankets
+      which he had wrapped round her earlier in the course of their vigil. Magda
+      accepted them with becoming docility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Wise Man,&rdquo; she said meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood looking down at her in the faint moonlight that slanted in
+      through the open door of the cabin, and all at once something in the
+      intentness of his gaze awakened her to a sudden vivid consciousness of the
+      situation&mdash;of the hour and of her absolute aloneness with him. Their
+      solitude was as complete as though they had been cast on a desert island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda felt her pulses throb unevenly. The whole atmosphere seemed sentient
+      and athrill with the surge of some deep-lying emotion. She could feel it
+      beating up against her&mdash;the clamorous demand of something hardly
+      curbed and straining for release.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; The word stammered past her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of her voice snapped the iron control he had been forcing on
+      himself. With a hoarse, half-strangled exclamation he caught her up from
+      where she lay, crushing her slim, soft body in a grip that almost stifled
+      her, kissing her fiercely on eyes and lips and throat. Then abruptly he
+      released her and, without a word, without a backward look, strode out of
+      the cabin and up on to the deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda sank down weakly on the edge of the narrow bunk. The storm of his
+      passion had swept through her as the wind sweeps through a tree, leaving
+      her spent and trembling. Sleep was an impossibility. Ten minutes, twenty
+      passed&mdash;she could not have told how long it was. Then she heard him
+      coming back, and as he gained the threshold she sprang to her feet and
+      faced him, nervously on the defensive. In the pale, elusive moonlight, and
+      with that startled poise of figure, she might well have been the hamadryad
+      at bay of one of her most famous dances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael looked rather white and there was a grim repression about the set
+      of his lips. As he caught sight of her face with its mute apprehension and
+      dilated eyes, he spoke quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should be resting,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Let me tuck you up and then try to go
+      to sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something infinitely reassuring in the steady tones of his
+      voice. It held nothing but kindness&mdash;just comradeship and kindness.
+      He was master of himself once more. For her sake he had fought back the
+      rising tide of passion. It had no place while they two were here alone on
+      the wide waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped and picked up the blankets, laying them over her with a
+      tenderness that seemed in some subtle way to be part of his very strength.
+      Her taut nerves relaxed. She smiled up at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, Saint Michel,&rdquo; she said simply. &ldquo;Take care of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped and kissed the slim hand lying outside the blanket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now and always,&rdquo; he answered gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Magda awoke, seven hours later, the sunlight was streaming into the
+      cabin. She could hear Michael moving about the deck, and she sprang up and
+      proceeded to make such toilette as was possible in the circumstances,
+      taking down her hair and dressing it afresh at the tiny looking-glass hung
+      on the wall. She had barely completed the operation when she heard Michael
+      give a shout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ahoy! Ahoy there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran up on deck. Approaching them was a small steam-tug, and once again
+      Quarrington sent his voice ringing lustily across the water, while he
+      flourished a large white handkerchief in the endeavour to attract the
+      attention of those on board.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the tug saw them and, altering her course, came fussing up
+      alongside. Quarrington briefly explained their predicament&mdash;in the
+      face of the <i>Bella Donna&rsquo;s</i> battered appearance a lengthy explanation
+      was hardly necessary&mdash;and a few minutes later the tug was steaming
+      for Netherway harbour, towing the crippled yacht behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE OTHER MAN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, Marraine, will you give us your blessing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The joyous excitement and relief incidental to the safe return of the
+      voyagers had spent itself at last, and now, refreshed and invigorated by a
+      hot bath and by a meal of more varied constituents than biscuit and plain
+      chocolate, Magda propounded her question, a gleam of mirth glancing in her
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella glanced doubtfully from one to the other. Then a look of
+      undisguised satisfaction dawned in her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; she began eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been and gone and got engaged,&rdquo; explained Quarrington.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dears!&rdquo; Lady Arabella jumped up with the agility of twenty rather than
+      seventy and proceeded to pour out her felicitations. Incidentally she
+      kissed everybody all round, including Quarrington, and her keen old hawk&rsquo;s
+      eyes grew all soft and luminous like a girl&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coppertop was hugely excited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will the wedding be to-morrow?&rdquo; he asked hopefully. &ldquo;And shall I be a
+      page and carry the Fairy Lady&rsquo;s train?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you shall be a page, Topkins. But the wedding won&rsquo;t be quite as
+      soon as to-morrow,&rdquo; she told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; insinuated Quarrington calmly. &ldquo;There are such things as
+      special licences, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be silly,&rdquo; replied Magda scathingly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve only just been saved
+      from drowning, and I don&rsquo;t propose to take on such a risk as matrimony
+      till I&rsquo;ve had time to recover my nerve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella surveyed them both with a species of irritated approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to think,&rdquo; she burst out at last, indignantly, &ldquo;of all the hours I&rsquo;ve
+      spent having my silly portrait painted and getting cramp in my stiff old
+      joints, and that even then it needed Providence to threaten you both with
+      a watery grave to bring you up to the scratch!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;re engaged now,&rdquo; submitted Magda meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella chuckled sardonically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you weren&rsquo;t, you&rsquo;d have to be&mdash;after last night!&rdquo; she commented
+      drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one need know about last night,&rdquo; retorted Magda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; Lady Arabella snorted. &ldquo;Half Netherway will know the tale by
+      midday. And you may be sure your best enemy will hear of it. They always
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind. It will make an excellent advertisement,&rdquo; observed Magda
+      philosophically. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you see it in all the papers?&mdash;&lsquo;NARROW ESCAPE
+      OF THE WIELITZSKA.&rsquo; In big capitals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They all laughed, realising the great amount of probability contained in
+      her forecast. And, thanks to an enterprising young journalist who chanced
+      to be prowling about Netherway on that particular day, the London
+      newspapers flared out into large headlines, accompanied by vivid and
+      picturesque details of the narrow escape while yachting of the famous
+      dancer and of the well-known artist, Michael Quarrington&mdash;who, in
+      some of the cheaper papers, was credited with having saved the
+      Wielitzska&rsquo;s life by swimming ashore with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The immediate result was an augmented post-bag for the Hermitage, and
+      Gillian had to waste the better part of a couple of sunshiny days in
+      writing round to Magda&rsquo;s friends assuring them of her continued existence
+      and wellbeing, and thanking them for their kind inquiries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was decided to keep the engagement private for the present, and life at
+      the Hermitage resumed the even tenor of its way, Magda continuing to sit
+      daily for the picture of Circe which Michael was anxious to complete
+      before she returned to London for the autumn season.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s <i>our</i> picture now, Saint Michel,&rdquo; she told him, with a happy,
+      possessive pride in his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this new atmosphere of tranquil happiness Magda bloomed like a flower
+      in the sun. To the nameless natural charm which was always hers there was
+      added a fresh sweetness and appeal, and the full revelation of her love
+      for him startled even Michael. He had not realised the deep capacity for
+      love which had lain hidden beneath her nonchalance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed as though her whole nature had undergone a change. Alone with
+      him she was no longer the assured woman of the world, the spoilt and feted
+      dancer, but just a simple, unaffected girl, sometimes a little shy, almost
+      diffident, at others frank and spontaneous with the splendid candour and
+      simplicity of a woman who knows no fear of love, but goes courageously to
+      meet it and all that it demands of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was fugitively sweet and tender with Coppertop, and now and then her
+      eyes would shine with a quiet, dreaming light as though she visioned a
+      future wherein someone like Coppertop, only littler, might lie in the
+      crook of her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often during these tranquil summer days the two were to be found together,
+      Magda recounting the most gorgeous stories of knights and dragons such as
+      Coppertop&rsquo;s small soul delighted in. On one such occasion, at the end of a
+      particularly thrilling narrative, he sat back on his heels and regarded
+      her with a certain wistful anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; he asked rather forlornly, &ldquo;when you&rsquo;re married they&rsquo;ll give
+      you a little boy like me, Fairy Lady, won&rsquo;t they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The clear, warm colour ran up swiftly beneath her skin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps so, Topkins,&rdquo; she answered very low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He heaved a big sigh. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be a very <i>lucky</i> little boy,&rdquo; he said
+      plaintively. &ldquo;If Mummie couldn&rsquo;t have been my mummie, I&rsquo;d have choosed
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, in this tender atmosphere of peace and contentment, the summer
+      slipped by until it was time for Magda to think of going back to London.
+      The utter content and happiness of these weeks almost frightened her
+      sometimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can&rsquo;t last, Gilly,&rdquo; she confided to Gillian one day, caught by an
+      access of superstitious fear. &ldquo;It simply <i>can&rsquo;t</i> last! No one was
+      meant to be as happy as I am!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we were all meant to be happy,&rdquo; replied Gillian simply. &ldquo;Happy
+      and good!&rdquo; she added, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. But I haven&rsquo;t been particularly good. I&rsquo;ve just done whatever it
+      occurred to me to do without considering the consequences. I expect I
+      shall be made to take my consequences all in a heap together one day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I suppose we shall all of us have to rally round and get you out of
+      them,&rdquo; she said cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps&mdash;perhaps you wouldn&rsquo;t be able to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a strange note of foreboding in Magda&rsquo;s voice&mdash;an accent of
+      fatality, and despite herself Gillian experienced a reflex sense of
+      uneasiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; she said brusquely. &ldquo;What on earth has put all these
+      ridiculous notions into your head?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda smiled at her. &ldquo;I think it was four lines I read in a book
+      yesterday. They set me thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More&rsquo;s the pity then!&rdquo; grumbled Gillian. &ldquo;What were they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda was silent a moment, looking out over the sea with abstracted eyes.
+      It was so blue to-day&mdash;all blue and gold in the dancing sunlight. But
+      she knew that self-same sea could be grey&mdash;grey and chill as death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her glance came slowly back to Gillian&rsquo;s face as she quoted the fragment
+      of verse which had persisted in her thoughts:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;To-day and all the still unborn To-morrows
+     Have sprung from Yesterday. For Woe or Weal
+     The Soul is weighted by the Burden of Dead Days&mdash;
+     Bound to the unremitting Past with Ropes of Steel.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      After a moment she added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even you couldn&rsquo;t cut through &lsquo;ropes of steel,&rsquo; my Gillyflower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian tried to shrug away this fanciful depression of the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, by way of a counterblast to your dejection of spirit, I propose to
+      send an announcement of your engagement to the <i>Morning Post</i>. You&rsquo;re
+      not meaning to keep it private after we get back to town, are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no. It was only that I didn&rsquo;t want to be pestered with
+      congratulations while we were down here. I suppose they&rsquo;ll have to come
+      some day&rdquo;&mdash;with a small grimace of disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be snowed under with them,&rdquo; Gillian assured her encouragingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The public announcement of the engagement preceded Magda&rsquo;s return from
+      Netherway by a few days, so that by the time the Hermitage house-party
+      actually broke up, its various members returning to town, all London was
+      fairly humming with the news. The papers were full of it. Portraits of the
+      fiances appeared side by side, together with brief histories of their
+      respective careers up to date, and accompanied by refreshing details
+      concerning their personal tastes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, I never knew Michael had a passion for raw meat before,&rdquo;
+       remarked Magda, after reading various extracts from the different accounts
+      aloud for Gillian&rsquo;s edification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he?&rdquo; Gillian was arranging flowers and spoke somewhat indistinctly,
+      owing to the fact that she had the stem of a chrysanthemum between her
+      lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he must have. Listen to this, &lsquo;Mr. Quarrington&rsquo;s wonderful creations
+      are evidently not entirely the fruit of the spirit, since we understand
+      that his staple breakfast dish consists of a couple of underdone cutlets&mdash;so
+      lightly cooked, in fact, as to be almost raw.&rsquo; I&rsquo;m glad I&rsquo;ve learned
+      that,&rdquo; pursued Magda earnestly. &ldquo;It seems to me an important thing for a
+      wife to know. Don&rsquo;t you think so, Gillian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian shouted with delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do! Do let&rsquo;s ask Michael to lunch and offer him a couple of
+      raw cutlets on a charger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; insisted Magda firmly. &ldquo;I shall keep a splendid treat like that for
+      him till after we&rsquo;re married. Even at a strictly conservative estimate it
+      should be worth a new hat to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or a dose of arsenic in your next cup of tea,&rdquo; suggested Gillian,
+      giggling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following evening was the occasion of Magda&rsquo;s first appearance at the
+      Imperial after the publication of her engagement, and the theatre was
+      packed from floor to ceiling. &ldquo;House Full&rdquo; boards were exhibited outside
+      at quite an early hour, and when Magda appeared on the stage she was
+      received with such enthusiasm that for a time it was impossible to proceed
+      with the ballet. When finally the curtain fell on what the critics
+      characterised next day as &ldquo;the most appealing performance of <i>The
+      Swan-Maiden</i> which Mademoiselle Wielitzska has yet given us,&rdquo; she
+      received an absolute ovation. The audience went half-crazy with
+      excitement, applauding deliriously, while the front of the stage speedily
+      became converted into a veritable bank of flowers, from amidst which Magda
+      bowed and smiled her thanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She enjoyed every moment of it, every handclap. She was radiantly happy,
+      and this spontaneous sharing in her happiness by the big public which
+      idolised her served but to intensify it. She was almost crying as she
+      returned to her dressing-room after taking a dozen or more calls, and
+      when, as usual, Virginie met her on the threshold, she dropped the great
+      sheaf of lilies she was carrying and flung her arms round the old woman&rsquo;s
+      neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the dears!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;The blessed <i>dears</i>! Virginie, I
+      believe I&rsquo;m the happiest woman alive!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who should be, <i>mon petite chou</i>, if not thou?&rdquo; returned the old
+      woman with conviction. &ldquo;Of course they love thee! <i>Mais bien sur</i>!
+      Doest thou not dance for them as none else can dance and give them angel
+      visions that they could not imagine for themselves?&rdquo; She paused. Then
+      thrusting her hand suddenly into the pocket of her apron and producing a
+      card: &ldquo;<i>Tiens</i>! I forgot! Monsieur Davilof waits. Will mademoiselle
+      receive him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda nodded. She had not seen Antoine since her return from Netherway. He
+      had been away in Poland, visiting his mother whom, by the way, he adored.
+      But as her engagement to Michael was now public she was anxious to get her
+      first meeting with the musician over. He would probably rave a little,
+      despairing in the picturesque and dramatic fashion characteristic of him,
+      and the sooner he &ldquo;got it out of his system,&rdquo; as Gillian had observed on
+      one occasion, the better for everyone concerned. So Magda braced herself
+      for the interview, and prepared to receive a tragical and despondent
+      Davilof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was not in the least prepared for the man as he appeared when
+      Virginie ushered him into the dressing-room and retired, discreetly
+      closing the door behind her. Magda, her hand outstretched to greet him,
+      paused in sheer dismay, her arm falling slowly to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never seen so great a change in any man. His face was grey&mdash;grey
+      and lined like the face of a man who has had no sleep for days. His
+      shoulders stooped a little as though he were too weary to hold himself
+      upright, and there was a curiously rigid look about his features,
+      particularly the usually mobile mouth. The only live thing about him
+      seemed to be his eyes. They blazed with a burning brightness that made her
+      think of flame. With it all, he was as immaculately groomed, his small
+      golden beard as perfectly trimmed, as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Antoine!&rdquo; His name faltered from Magda&rsquo;s lips. The man&rsquo;s face, its beauty
+      all marred by some terrible turmoil of the soul, shocked her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He vouchsafed no greeting, but came swiftly to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true?&rdquo; he demanded imperiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shrank back from him. There was a dynamic force about him that
+      startled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is what true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true that you&rsquo;re engaged to Quarrington?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it is. It was in all the papers. Didn&rsquo;t you see it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw it. I didn&rsquo;t believe it. I was in Poland when I heard and I
+      started for England at once. But I was taken ill on the journey. Since
+      then I&rsquo;ve been travelling night and day.&rdquo; He paused, adding in a tone of
+      finality: &ldquo;You must break it off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Break it off? Are you crazy, Antoine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not crazy. But you&rsquo;re mine. You&rsquo;re meant for me. And no other man
+      shall have you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s first impulse was to order him out of the room. But the man&rsquo;s
+      haggard face was so pitifully eloquent of the agony he had been enduring
+      that she had not the heart. Instead, she temporised persuasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk like that, Antoine.&rdquo; She spoke very gently. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean
+      it, you know. If&mdash;if you do care for me as you say, you&rsquo;d like me to
+      be happy, wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d make you happy,&rdquo; he said hoarsely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t make me happy. Only Michael can do that.
+      So you must let me go to him. . . . Antoine, I&rsquo;d rather go with your good
+      wishes. Won&rsquo;t you give them to me? We&rsquo;ve been friends so long&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Friends</i>?&rdquo; he broke in fiercely. &ldquo;No! We&rsquo;ve never been &lsquo;friends.&rsquo;
+      I&rsquo;ve been your lover from the first moment I saw you, and shall be your
+      lover till I die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda retreated before his vehemence. She was still wearing her costume of
+      the Swan-Maiden, and there was something frailly virginal and elusive
+      about her as she drew away from him that set the hot, foreign blood in him
+      on fire. In two strides he was at her side, his hands gripping her bare
+      arms with a savage clasp that hurt her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Mon adoree</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was harsh with the tensity of passion, and the cry that
+      struggled from her throat for utterance was smothered by his lips on hers.
+      The burning kisses seemed to scorch her&mdash;consuming, overwhelming her.
+      When at last he took his mouth from hers she tried unavailingly to free
+      herself. But his clasp of her only tightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you know how I love you,&rdquo; he said grimly. He was breathing rather
+      fast, but in some curious way he seemed to have regained his self-control.
+      It was as though he had only slipped the leash of passion so that she
+      might, as he said, comprehend his love for her. &ldquo;Do you think I&rsquo;ll give
+      you up? I tell you I&rsquo;d rather kill you than see you Quarrington&rsquo;s wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more she made an effort to release herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re mad, you&rsquo;re mad!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Let me go, Davilof! At once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said in a measured voice. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t struggle. I&rsquo;m not going to let
+      you go. Not yet. I&rsquo;ve reached my limit. You shall go when you promise to
+      marry me. Me, not Quarrington.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not been frightened by the storm of passion which had carried him
+      headlong. That had merely roused her to anger. But this quiet, purposeful
+      composure which had succeeded it filled her with an odd kind of misgiving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s absurd to talk like that,&rdquo; she said, holding on desperately to her
+      self-possession. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s silly&mdash;and melodramatic, and only makes me
+      realise how glad I am I shall be Michael&rsquo;s wife and not yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will never be Quarrington&rsquo;s wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke with conviction. Magda called up all her courage to defy him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you propose to prevent it?&rdquo; she asked contemptuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Then, suddenly: &ldquo;<i>Adoree</i>, don&rsquo;t force me to do it! I don&rsquo;t
+      want to. Because it will hurt you horribly. And it will all be saved if
+      you&rsquo;ll promise to marry me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke appealingly, with an earnestness that was unmistakable. But
+      Magda&rsquo;s nerve was gradually returning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t seem to understand that you can&rsquo;t prevent my marrying Michael&mdash;or
+      anyone else,&rdquo; she said coolly. &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t the power.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can prevent your marrying Michael&rdquo;&mdash;doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; she said at last, &ldquo;you think that because he once thought
+      badly of me you can make him think the same again. Well, you can&rsquo;t.
+      Michael and I trust each other&mdash;absolutely!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face was transfigured. Michael trusted her now! Nothing could really
+      hurt her while he believed in her. She could afford to laugh at Antoine&rsquo;s
+      threat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; she said quietly, &ldquo;will you please release me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly, reluctantly Davilof&rsquo;s hands dropped from her arms, revealing red
+      weals where the grip of his fingers had crushed the soft, white flesh. He
+      uttered a stifled exclamation as his eyes fell on the angry-looking marks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Mon dieu</i>! I&rsquo;ve hurt you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; Magda faced him with a defiance that was rather splendid. &ldquo;No! <i>You
+      can&rsquo;t</i> hurt me, Davilof. Only the man I love can do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flinched at the proud significance of the words&mdash;denying him even
+      the power to hurt her. It was almost as though she had struck him,
+      contemptuously disdainful of his toy weapons&mdash;the weapons of the man
+      who didn&rsquo;t count.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long silence. At last he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be sorry for that,&rdquo; he said in a voice of concentrated anger.
+      &ldquo;Damned sorry. Because it isn&rsquo;t true. I <i>can</i> hurt you. And by God,
+      if you won&rsquo;t marry me, I will! . . . Magda&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; With one of the
+      swift changes so characteristic of the man he softened suddenly into
+      passionate supplication. &ldquo;Have a little mercy! God! If you knew how I love
+      you, you couldn&rsquo;t turn me away. Wait! Think again&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will do.&rdquo; She checked him imperiously. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want your love. And
+      for the future please understand that you won&rsquo;t even be a friend. I don&rsquo;t
+      wish to see or speak to you again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE ROPES OF STEEL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Magda sat gazing idly into the fire, watching with abstracted eyes the
+      flames leap up and curl gleefully round the fresh logs with which she had
+      just fed it. She was thinking about nothing in particular&mdash;merely
+      revelling in the pleasant warmth and comfort of the room and in the
+      prospect of a lazy evening spent at home, since to-night she was not due
+      to appear in any of the ballets to be given at the Imperial Theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, the snow was falling steadily in feathery flakes, hiding the
+      grime of London beneath a garment of shimmering white and transforming the
+      commonplace houses built of brick and mortar, each capped with its ugly
+      chimneystack, into glittering fairy palaces, crowned with silver towers
+      and minarets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bitter weather served to emphasise the easy comfort of the room, and
+      Magda curled up into her chair luxuriously. She was expecting Michael to
+      dinner at Friars&rsquo; Holm this evening. They had not seen each other for
+      three whole days, so that there was an added edge to her enjoyment of the
+      prospect. She would have so much to tell him! About the triumphant
+      reception she had had the other night down at the theatre&mdash;he had
+      been prevented from being present&mdash;and about the unwarrantable
+      attitude Davilof had adopted, which had been worrying her not a little. He
+      would sympathise with her over that&mdash;the effortless sympathy of the
+      man in possession!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the unwelcome thought obtruded itself that if the snow continued
+      falling Michael might be weather-bound and unable to get out to Hampstead.
+      She uncurled herself from her chair and ran to the window. The sky
+      stretched sombrely away in every direction. No sign of a break in the
+      lowering, snow-filled clouds! She drummed on the window with impatient
+      fingers; and then, drowning the little tapping noise they made, came the
+      sound of an opening door and Melrose&rsquo;s placid voice announcing:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Quarrington.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda whirled round from the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael!&rdquo; she exclaimed joyfully. &ldquo;I was just wondering if you would be
+      able to get over this evening. I suppose you came while you could!&rdquo;&mdash;laughing.
+      &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t be in the least surprised if you were snowed up here. Shall
+      you mind&mdash;dreadfully&mdash;if you are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Michael made no response to the tenderly mocking question, nor did her
+      smile draw from him any answering smile. She looked at him waveringly. He
+      had been in the room quite long enough to take her in his arms and kiss
+      her. And he hadn&rsquo;t done it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She faltered a little. &ldquo;How queer you are! Have
+      you&mdash;brought bad news?&rdquo; A sudden dread rushed through her. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not&mdash;Marraine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no.&rdquo; He spoke hastily, answering the startled apprehension in her
+      eyes. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her mind, alertly prescient, divined significance in the mere wording of
+      the phrase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there is&mdash;something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there is something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice sounded forced, and Magda waited with a strange feeling of
+      tension for him to continue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to ask you a question,&rdquo; he went on in the same carefully measured
+      accents. &ldquo;Did you ever stay at a place called Stockleigh&mdash;Stockleigh
+      Farm at Ashencombe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stockleigh! At the sound of the word it seemed to Magda as though a hand
+      closed suddenly round her heart, squeezing it so tightly that she could
+      not breathe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;yes, I stayed there,&rdquo; she managed to say at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah-h!&rdquo; It was no more than a suddenly checked breath. &ldquo;When were you
+      there?&rdquo; The question came swiftly, like the thrust of a sword. With it, it
+      seemed to Magda that she could feel the first almost imperceptible pull of
+      the &ldquo;ropes of steel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was there&mdash;the summer before last,&rdquo; she said slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael made no answer. Only in the silence that followed she saw his face
+      change. Something that had been hope&mdash;a fighting hope&mdash;died out
+      of his eyes and his jaw seemed to set itself with a curious inflexibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited for him to speak&mdash;waited with a keyed-up intensity of
+      longing that was almost physically painful. At last, unable to bear the
+      continued silence, she spoke again. Her voice cracked a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;why do you ask, Michael?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her and a sudden cynical amusement gleamed in his eyes&mdash;an
+      amusement so bitterly unmirthful that there seemed something almost brutal
+      about it. Her hand went up to her face as though to screen out the sight
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t guess, I suppose?&rdquo; he said with dry, harsh irony. Then, after a
+      moment: &ldquo;Why did you never tell me you were there? You never spoke of it.
+      . . . Wasn&rsquo;t it curious you should never speak of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a step towards him. She could not endure this torturing suspense
+      another instant. It was racking her. She must know what Stockleigh
+      signified to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean? Tell me what you mean!&rdquo; she asked desperately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember the story I told you down at Netherway&mdash;of a man and
+      his wife and another woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I remember&rdquo;&mdash;almost whispering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was the story of my sister, June, and her husband, Dan Storran. You&mdash;were
+      the other woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt his eyes&mdash;those eyes out of which all hope had died&mdash;fixed
+      on her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;June&mdash;your sister? Your sister? Are you sure?&rdquo; she stammered
+      stupidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It couldn&rsquo;t be true! Not even God could have thought of a punishment so
+      cruel, so awful as this. That June&mdash;the woman who had died just
+      because she &ldquo;had no heart to go on living&rdquo;&mdash;should be Michael&rsquo;s
+      sister! Oh, it was a crazy tangling of the threads&mdash;mad! Like some
+      macabre invention sprung from a disordered brain. She wanted to laugh, and
+      she knew if she began to laugh she should never stop. She felt she was
+      losing her hold over herself. With a violent effort she clutched at her
+      self-control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you say it all over again, please?&rdquo; she said in a flat voice. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t think I understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor did I till to-day,&rdquo; he replied shortly. &ldquo;Davilof made me understand&mdash;this
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Davilof?&rdquo; The word seemed to drag itself from her throat. . . . Davilof&mdash;who
+      had been at Stockleigh that summer! Then it was all going to be true,
+      after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Davilof. He had chanced on the fact that June was my sister. Very
+      few people knew it, because, when she married, it was against our father&rsquo;s
+      wishes, and she had cut herself adrift from the family. I wanted to help
+      her, but she would never let me.&rdquo; He paused, then went on tonelessly:
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all quite clear, isn&rsquo;t it? You know everything that happened while
+      you were at Stockleigh. I&rsquo;ve told you what happened afterwards. Storran
+      cleared out of the country at once, and June had nothing left to live for.
+      The only thing I didn&rsquo;t know was the name of the woman who had smashed up
+      both their lives. I saw Dan in Paris . . . He came to me at my studio. But
+      he was a white man. He never gave away the name of the woman who had
+      ruined him. I only knew she had spent that particular summer at
+      Stockleigh. It was Davilof who told me who the woman was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;I can prevent your marrying Quarrington!&rdquo;</i> Magda could hear again
+      the quiet conviction of Antoine&rsquo;s utterance. So he had known, then, when
+      he threatened her, that June was Michael&rsquo;s sister! She wondered dully how
+      long he had been aware of the fact&mdash;how he had first stumbled across
+      it and realised its value as a hammer with which to crush her happiness.
+      Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered any more. The main fact was that he
+      <i>had</i> known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      June was dead! Amid the confused welter of emotions which seemed to have
+      utterly submerged her during the last few minutes, Magda had almost lost
+      sight of this as a fact by itself&mdash;as distinct from its identity with
+      the fact that Michael&rsquo;s sister was dead. She felt vaguely sorry for June.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the day she and Gillian had left Ashencombe she had heard nothing of
+      Storran or his wife. No least scrap of news relating to them had come her
+      way. In the ordinary course of events it was hardly likely that it would.
+      The circles of their respective lives did not overlap each other. And
+      Magda had made no effort to discover what had happened at Stockleigh after
+      she had left there. She had been glad to shut the door on that episode in
+      her life. She was not proud of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were other incidents, too, which she could have wished were blotted
+      out&mdash;the Raynham incident amongst them. With the new insight which
+      love had brought her she was beginning to rate these things at their true
+      value, to realise how little she had understood of all love&rsquo;s exquisite
+      significance when she played with it as lightly as a child might play with
+      a trinket. She had learned better now&mdash;learned that love was of the
+      spirit as well as of the body, and that in playing at love she had played
+      with men&rsquo;s souls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She believed she had put that part of her life behind her&mdash;all those
+      unrecognising days before love came to her. And now, without warning,
+      sudden as an Eastern night, the past had risen up and confronted her. The
+      implacable ropes of steel held her in bondage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael . . . can&rsquo;t you&mdash;forgive me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice wavered and broke as she realised the utter futility of her
+      question. Between them, now and always, there must lie the young, dead
+      body of June Storran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive you?&rdquo; Michael&rsquo;s voice was harsh with an immeasurable bitterness.
+      &ldquo;Good God! What are you made of that you can even ask me? It&rsquo;s women like
+      you who turn this world into plain hell! . . . Look back! Have you ever
+      looked back, I wonder?&rdquo; He paused, and she knew his eyes were searching
+      her&mdash;those keen, steady eyes, hard, now, like flint&mdash;searching
+      the innermost recesses of her being. She felt as though he were dragging
+      the soul out of her body, stripping it naked to the merciless lash of
+      truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;June&mdash;my little sister, the happiest of mortals&mdash;dead, through
+      you. And Storran&mdash;he was a big man, white all through&mdash;down and
+      out. And God knows who else has had their sun put out by you. . . . You&rsquo;re
+      like a blight&mdash;spreading disease and corruption wherever you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little moan broke from her lips. For a moment it was a physical
+      impossibility for her to speak. She could only shrink, mute and quivering,
+      beneath the flail of his scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last: &ldquo;Is&mdash;is that what you think of me?&rdquo; she almost whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She winced at the harsh monosyllable. There was a finality about it&mdash;definite,
+      unalterable. She looked at him dry-eyed, her face tragically beautiful in
+      its agony. But he seemed impervious to either its beauty or its suffering.
+      There was no hint of softening in him. Without another word he swung round
+      on his heel and turned to leave her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael . . . don&rsquo;t go!&rdquo; The lovely voice was a mere thread of sound&mdash;hoarse
+      and strangulated. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go! . . . Oh, be a little merciful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid an imploring hand on his arm, and at the touch of her his iron
+      composure shook a little. For a moment the hardness in his eyes was wiped
+      out by a look of intolerable pain. Then, with a quiet, inexorable movement
+      he released himself from her straining clasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no question of mercy,&rdquo; he said inflexibly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not judging you,
+      or punishing you. It&rsquo;s simply that I can&rsquo;t marry you. . . . You must see
+      that June&rsquo;s death&mdash;my sister&rsquo;s death&mdash;lies at your door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;No. I suppose you can&rsquo;t marry me&mdash;now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her breath came in short, painful gasps. Her face seemed to have grown
+      smaller&mdash;shrunk. There was a pinched look about the nostrils and
+      every drop of blood had drained away, leaving even her lips a curious
+      greyish-white. She leaned forward, swaying a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; she said in a clear, dry voice, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t even love me any
+      more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hands clenched and he took a sudden impetuous step towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not love you?&rdquo; he said. And at last the man&rsquo;s own agony broke through his
+      enforced calm, shaking his voice so that it was hoarse and terrible. &ldquo;Not
+      love you? I love you now as I loved you the day I first saw you. God in
+      heaven! Did you think love could be killed so easily? Does it die&mdash;just
+      because it&rsquo;s forbidden by every decent instinct that a man possesses? If
+      so, nine-tenths of us would find the world an easier place to live in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there is&mdash;no forgiveness, Michael?&rdquo; The lovely grief-wrung face
+      was uplifted to his beseechingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ask me!&rdquo; he said hoarsely. &ldquo;You know there can be none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and strode to the door. He did not look back even when his name
+      tore itself like a cry between her lips. The next moment the sound of a
+      door&rsquo;s closing came dully to her ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked vaguely round the room. The fire was dying, the charred logs
+      sinking down on to a bed of smouldering cinders. A touch would scatter
+      them from their semblance of logs into a heap of grey, formless ash.
+      Outside the window the snow still fell monotonously, wrapping the world in
+      a passionless, chill winding-sheet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a little broken cry she stumbled forward on to her knees, her arms
+      outflung across the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ACCOUNT RENDERED
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The long, interminable night was over at last. Never afterwards, all the
+      days of her life, could Magda look back on the black horror of those hours
+      without a shudder. She felt as though she had been through hell and come
+      out on the other side, to find stretching before her only the blank grey
+      desolation of chaos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was stripped of everything&mdash;of love, of happiness, even of hope.
+      There was nothing in the whole world to look forward to. There never would
+      be again. And when she looked back it was with eyes that had been
+      vouchsafed a terrible enlightenment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Phrases which had fallen from Michael&rsquo;s lips scourged her anew throughout
+      the long hours of the night. &ldquo;Women like you make this world into plain
+      hell,&rdquo; he had said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re like a blight&mdash;spreading disease and
+      corruption wherever you go.&rdquo; And the essential truth which each sentence
+      held left her writhing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all true&mdash;horribly, hideously true. The magical, mysterious
+      power of beauty which had been given her, which might have helped to
+      lighten the burden of the sad old world wherever she passed, she had used
+      to destroy and deface and mutilate. The debt against her&mdash;the debt of
+      all the pain and grief which she had brought to others&mdash;had been
+      mounting up, higher and higher through the years. And now the time had
+      come when payment was to be exacted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite simply and directly, without seeking in any way to exculpate
+      herself, she had told Gillian the bare facts of what had happened&mdash;that
+      her engagement was broken off and the reason why. But she had checked all
+      comment and the swift, understanding sympathy which Gillian would have
+      given. Criticism or sympathy would equally have been more than she could
+      bear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is nothing to be said or done about it,&rdquo; she maintained. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+      sinned, and now I&rsquo;m to be punished for my sins. That&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child of Hugh Vallincourt spoke in that impassive summing up of the
+      situation and Lady Arabella, with her intimate knowledge of both Hugh and
+      his sister Catherine, would have ascribed it instantly to the Vallincourt
+      strain in her god-daughter. To Gillian, however, to whom the Vallincourts
+      were nothing more than a name, the strange submissiveness of it was
+      incomprehensible. As the days passed, she tried to rouse Magda from the
+      apathy into which she seemed to have fallen, but without success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use, Gillyflower,&rdquo; she would reply with a weary little smile.
+      &ldquo;There <i>is</i> no way out. Do you remember I once said I was too happy
+      for it to last? It was quite true. . . . Have you told Marraine?&rdquo; she
+      asked suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. And she wants to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I want to see her&mdash;or anyone just at present. I&rsquo;ve got
+      to think&mdash;to think things out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean? What are you going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;don&rsquo;t know&mdash;yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian regarded her with some anxiety. That Magda, usually so unreserved
+      and spontaneous, should shut her out of her confidence thoroughly
+      disquieted her. She felt afraid. It seemed to her as though the girl were
+      more or less stunned by the enormity of the blow which had befallen her.
+      She went about with a curious absence of interest in anything&mdash;composed,
+      quiet, absorbed in her own thoughts, only rousing herself to appear at the
+      Imperial as usual. Probably her work at the theatre was the one thing that
+      saved her from utter collapse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As far as Gillian knew she had not shed a single tear. Only her face
+      seemed to grow daily more strained-looking, and her eyes held a curious
+      expression that was difficult to interpret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were days which she spent entirely in the seclusion of her own room,
+      and then Virginie alone was allowed entrance. The old Frenchwoman would
+      come in with some special little dish she had cooked with her own hands,
+      hoping to tempt her beloved mistress&rsquo;s appetite&mdash;which in these days
+      had dwindled to such insignificant proportions that Virginie was in
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou must eat,&rdquo; she would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want anything&mdash;really, Virginie,&rdquo; Magda would insist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And wherefore not?&rdquo; demanded Virginie indignantly one day. &ldquo;Thou art not
+      one of the Sisters of Penitence that thou must needs deny thyself the good
+      things of life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda looked up with a sudden flash of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Sisters of Penitence, Virginie? Who are they? Tell me about them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Virginie set a plate containing an epicurean omelet triumphantly in front
+      of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eat that, then, <i>cherie</i>, while I tell thee of them,&rdquo; she replied
+      with masterly diplomacy. &ldquo;It is good, the omelet. Virginie made it for
+      thee with her own hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda laughed faintly in spite of herself and began upon the omelet
+      obediently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then. Tell me about the Sisters of Penitence. Are they always
+      being sorry for what they&rsquo;ve done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a sisterhood, <i>mademoiselle cherie</i>, for those who would
+      withdraw themselves from the world. They are very strict, I believe, the
+      sisters, and mortify the flesh exceedingly. Me, I cannot see why we should
+      leave the beautiful world the <i>bon dieu</i> has put us into. For
+      certain, He would not have put us in if He had not meant us to stay
+      there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps&mdash;they are happier&mdash;out of the world, Virginia,&rdquo;
+       suggested Magda slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my niece, who was in the sisterhood a year, was glad to come out
+      again. Though, of course, she left her sins behind her, and that was good.
+      It is always good to get rid of one&rsquo;s sins, <i>n&rsquo;est-ce pas</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get rid of your sins? But how can you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If one does penance day and night, day and night, for a whole long year,
+      one surely expiates them! And then&rdquo;&mdash;with calm certainty&mdash;&ldquo;of
+      course one has got rid of them. They are wiped off the slate and one
+      begins again. At least, it was so with my niece. For when she came out of
+      the sisterhood, the man who had betrayed her married her, and they have
+      three&mdash;no, four <i>bebes</i> now. So that it is evident <i>le bon
+      dieu</i> was pleased with her penance and rewarded her accordingly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda repressed an inclination to smile at the naive simplicity of
+      Virginie&rsquo;s creed. Life would indeed be an easy affair if one could &ldquo;get
+      rid of one&rsquo;s sins&rdquo; on such an ingenuous principal of quid pro quo!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Virginie came of French peasant stock, and to her untutored mind such
+      a process of wiping the slate clean seemed extremely reasonable. She
+      continued with enthusiasm:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She but took the Vow of Penitence for a year. It is a rule of the
+      sisterhood. If one has sinned greatly, one can take a vow of penitence for
+      a year and expiate the sin. Some remain altogether and take the final
+      vows. But my niece&mdash;no! She sinned and she paid. And then she came
+      back into the world again. She is a good girl, my niece Suzette.
+      Mademoiselle has enjoyed her omelet? Yes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Virginie, I&rsquo;ve enjoyed it. And I think your niece was certainly a
+      brave <i>fille</i>. I&rsquo;m glad she&rsquo;s happy now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For long after Virginie had left her, Magda sat quietly thinking. The
+      story of the old Frenchwoman&rsquo;s niece had caught hold of her imagination.
+      Like herself she had sinned, though differently. Within her own mind Magda
+      wondered whether she or Suzette were in reality the greater sinner of the
+      two. Suzette had at least given all, without thought of self, whereas she
+      had only taken&mdash;taken with both hands, giving nothing in return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably Suzette had been an attractive little person&mdash;of the same
+      type of brown-eyed, vivacious youth which must have been Virginie&rsquo;s
+      five-and-thirty years ago&mdash;and her prettiness had caused her
+      downfall. Magda glanced towards the mirror. It was through her beauty she
+      herself had sinned. It had given her so much power, that exquisite,
+      perfect body of hers, and she had pitifully misused the power it had
+      bestowed. The real difference between herself and Suzette lay in the fact
+      that the little French girl had paid the uttermost farthing of the price
+      demanded&mdash;had submitted herself to discipline till she had surely
+      expiated all the evil she had done. What if she, likewise, were to seek
+      some such discipline?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea had presented itself to her at precisely the moment when she was
+      in the grip of an agony of recoil from her former way of life. Like her
+      father, she had been suddenly brought up short and forced to survey her
+      actions through the eyes of someone else, to look at all that she had done
+      from another&rsquo;s angle of vision. And coincidentally, just as in the case of
+      her father, the abrupt downfall of her hopes, the sudden shattering of her
+      happiness, seemed as though it were due to the intervention of an angry
+      God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fanatical Vallincourt blood which ran in Magda&rsquo;s veins caused her to
+      respond instinctively to this aspect of the matter. But the strain of her
+      passionate, joy-loving mother which crossed with it tempered the tendency
+      toward quite such drastic self-immolation as had appealed to Hugh
+      Vallincourt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Magda, Michael had come to mean the beginning and end of everything&mdash;the
+      pivot upon which her whole existence hung. So that if Michael shut her out
+      of his life for ever, that existence would no longer hold either value or
+      significance. From her point of view, then, the primary object of any kind
+      of self-discipline would be that it might make her more fit to be the wife
+      of &ldquo;Saint Michel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He despised her now. The evil she had done stood between them like a high
+      wall. But if she were to make atonement&mdash;as Suzette had atoned&mdash;surely,
+      when the wickedness had been purged out of her by pain and discipline,
+      Michael would relent!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea lodged in her mind. It went with her by day and coloured her
+      thoughts by night, and it was still working within her like yeast when she
+      at last nerved herself to go and see her godmother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella, as might have been anticipated, concealed her own
+      sore-heartedness under a manner that was rather more militant than usual,
+      if that were possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why you hadn&rsquo;t more sense than to spend your time fooling with a sort of
+      cave-man from the backwoods, I can&rsquo;t conceive,&rdquo; she scolded. &ldquo;You must
+      have known how it would end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t. I never thought about it. I was just sick with Michael because
+      he had gone abroad, and then, when I heard that he was married, it was the
+      last straw. I don&rsquo;t think&mdash;that night&mdash;I should have much cared
+      what happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women like you make it heaven or hell for the men who love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And hell, without the choice of heaven, for ourselves,&rdquo; returned Magda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bitterness in her voice wrung the old woman&rsquo;s heart. She sighed, then
+      straightened her back defiantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have to bear the burden of our blunders, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a reminiscent look in the keen old eyes. Lady Arabella had had
+      her own battles to fight. &ldquo;And, after all, who should pay the price if not
+      we ourselves?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if the price is outrageous, Marraine? What then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still you&rsquo;ve got to pay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda returned home with those words ringing in her ears. They fitted into
+      the thoughts which had been obsessing her with a curious precision. It was
+      true, then. You had to pay, one way or another. Lady Arabella knew it.
+      Little Suzette had somehow found it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night a note left Friars&rsquo; Holm addressed to the Mother Superior of
+      the Sisters of Penitence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      GILLIAN INTERCEDES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was a bald, austere-looking room. Magda glanced about her curiously&mdash;at
+      the plain, straight-backed chairs, at the meticulously tidy desk and bare,
+      polished floor. Everything was scrupulously clean, but the total absence
+      of anything remotely resembling luxury struck poignantly on eyes
+      accustomed to all the ease and beauty of surroundings which unlimited
+      money can procure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By contrast with the severity of the room Magda felt uncomfortably
+      conscious of her own attire. The exquisite gown she was wearing, the big
+      velvet hat with its drooping plume, the French shoes with their buckles
+      and curved Louis heels&mdash;all seemed acutely out of place in this
+      austere, formal-looking chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her glance came back to the woman sitting opposite her, the Mother
+      Superior of the Sisters of Penitence&mdash;tall, thin, undeniably
+      impressive, with a stern, colourless face as clean-cut as a piece of
+      ivory, out of which gleamed cold blue eyes that seemed to regard the
+      dancer with a strange mixture of fervour and hostility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda could imagine no reason for the antagonism which she sensed in the
+      steady scrutiny of those light-blue eyes. As far as she was concerned, the
+      Mother Superior was an entire stranger, without incentive either to like
+      or dislike her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to the woman who, while she had been in the world, had been known as
+      Catherine Vallincourt, the name of Magda Wielitzska was as familiar as her
+      own. In the dark, slender girl before her, whose pale, beautiful face
+      called to mind some rare and delicate flower, she recognised the living
+      embodiment of her brother&rsquo;s transgression&mdash;that brother who had made
+      Diane Wielitzska his wife and the mother of his child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All she had anticipated of evil consequence at the time of the marriage
+      had crystallised into hard fact. The child of the &ldquo;foreign dancing-woman&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      being for whose existence Hugh&rsquo;s mad passion for Diane had been
+      responsible&mdash;had on her own confession worked precisely such harm in
+      the world as she, Catherine, had foreseen. And now, the years which had
+      raised Catherine to the position of Mother Superior of the community she
+      had entered had brought that child to her doors as a penitent waveringly
+      willing to make expiation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Catherine was conscious of a strange elevation of spirit. She felt
+      ecstatically uplifted at the thought that it might be given to her to
+      purge from Hugh&rsquo;s daughter, by severity of discipline and penance, the
+      evil born within her. In some measure she would thus be instrumental in
+      neutralising her brother&rsquo;s sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was supremely conscious that to a certain extent&mdash;though by no
+      means altogether&mdash;her zealous ardour had its origin in her rooted
+      antipathy to Hugh&rsquo;s wife and hence to the child of the marriage. But,
+      since beneath her sable habit there beat the heart of just an ordinary,
+      natural woman, with many faults and failings still unconquered in spite of
+      the austerities of her chosen life, a certain very human element of
+      satisfaction mingled itself with her fervour for Magda&rsquo;s regeneration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a curious impassivity that masked the intensity of her desire she had
+      told Magda that, by the rules of the community, penitents who desired to
+      make expiation were admitted there, but that if once the step were taken,
+      and the year&rsquo;s vow of penitence voluntarily assumed, there could be no
+      return to the world until the expiration of the time appointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow the irrevocability of such a vow, undertaken voluntarily, had not
+      struck her in its full significance until Catherine had quietly, almost
+      tonelessly, in the flat, level voice not infrequently acquired by the
+      religious, affirmed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Supposing&rdquo;&mdash;Magda looked round the rigidly bare room with a new
+      sense of apprehension&mdash;&ldquo;supposing I felt I simply couldn&rsquo;t stand it
+      any longer? Do you mean to say, <i>then</i>, that I should not be allowed
+      to leave here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you would not be permitted to. Vows are not toys to be broken at
+      will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A year is a long time,&rdquo; murmured Magda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eyes beneath the coifed brow with its fine network of wrinkles were
+      adamant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The body must be crucified that the soul may live,&rdquo; returned the cold
+      voice unflinchingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s thoughts drew her this way and that. A year! It was an eternity!
+      And yet, if only she could emerge purified, a woman worthy to be Michael&rsquo;s
+      wife, she felt she would be willing to go through with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as though the white-faced, passionless woman beside her read her
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you would be purified,&rdquo; said Catherine, &ldquo;if you would cast out the
+      devil that is within you, you will have to abide meekly by such penance as
+      is ordained. You must submit yourself to pain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words a memory of long ago stirred in Magda&rsquo;s mind. She remembered
+      that when her father had beaten her as a child he had said: &ldquo;If you hurt
+      people enough you can stop them from committing sin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Groping dimly for some light that might elucidate the problems which
+      bewildered her, Magda clutched at the words as though they were a
+      revelation. They seemed to point to the only way by which she might repair
+      the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Catherine, watching closely the changes on the pale, sensitive face, spoke
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, if you feel you have not the strength of will to keep your
+      vow, you must not take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words acted like a spur. Instantly, Magda&rsquo;s decision was taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I take the vow, I shall have strength of mind to keep it,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following evening Magda composedly informed Gillian that she proposed
+      to take a vow of expiation and retire into the community of the Sisters of
+      Penitence for a year. Gillian was frankly aghast; she had never dreamed of
+      any such upshot to the whole miserable business of Magda&rsquo;s broken
+      engagement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is madness!&rdquo; she protested. &ldquo;You would hate it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just it. I&rsquo;ve done what I liked all my life. And you know what the
+      result has been! Now I propose to do what I <i>don&rsquo;t</i> like for a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither persuasion nor exhortation availed to shake her resolution, and in
+      despair Gillian referred the matter to Lady Arabella, hoping she might
+      induce Magda to change her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella accepted the news with unexpected composure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is just what one might expect from the child of Hugh Vallincourt,&rdquo; she
+      said thoughtfully. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the swing of the pendulum. There&rsquo;s always been
+      that tendency in the Vallincourts&mdash;the tendency towards atonement by
+      some sort of violent self-immolation. They are invariably <i>excessive</i>&mdash;either
+      excessively bad like the present man, Rupert, or excessively devout like
+      Hugh and Catherine! By the way, the Sisters of Penitence is the community
+      Catherine first joined. I wonder if she is there still? Probably she&rsquo;s
+      dead by now, though. I remember hearing some years ago that she was
+      seriously ill&mdash;somewhere about the time of Hugh&rsquo;s death. That&rsquo;s the
+      last I ever heard of her. I&rsquo;ve been out of touch with the whole
+      Vallincourt family for so many years now that I don&rsquo;t know what has become
+      of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say that you&rsquo;re going to <i>let</i> Magda do what she
+      proposes?&rdquo; exclaimed Gillian, in dismayed astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s never much question of &lsquo;letting&rsquo; Magda do things, is there?&rdquo;
+       retorted Lady Arabella. &ldquo;If she&rsquo;s made up her mind to be penitential&mdash;penitential
+      she&rsquo;ll be! I dare say it won&rsquo;t do her any harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how it can do her any good,&rdquo; protested Gillian. &ldquo;Magda isn&rsquo;t
+      cut out for a sisterhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just why it may be good for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe in mortification of the flesh and all that sort of thing,
+      either,&rdquo; continued Gillian obstinately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, we must all work out our own salvation&mdash;each in his own
+      way. Prayer and fasting would never be my method. But for some people it&rsquo;s
+      the only way. I believe it is for the Vallincourts. In any case, it&rsquo;s only
+      for a year. And a year is very little time out of life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, at Gillian&rsquo;s urgent request, Lady Arabella made an effort to
+      dissuade Magda from her intention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you live long enough, my dear,&rdquo; she told her crispy, &ldquo;providence will
+      see to it that you get your deserts. You needn&rsquo;t be so anxious to make
+      sure of them. Retribution is a very sure-footed traveller.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t only retribution, punishment, I&rsquo;m looking for,&rdquo; returned Magda.
+      &ldquo;It is&mdash;I can&rsquo;t quite explain it, Marraine, but even though Michael
+      never sees me or speaks to me again, I&rsquo;d like to feel I&rsquo;d made myself into
+      the sort of woman he <i>would</i> speak to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From that standpoint she refused to move, declining even to discuss the
+      matter further, but proceeded quietly and unswervingly with her
+      arrangements. The failure to complete her contract at the Imperial Theatre
+      involved her in a large sum of money by way of forfeit, but this she paid
+      ungrudgingly, feeling as though it were the first step along the new road
+      of renunciation she designed to tread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the manager she offered no further explanation than that she proposed
+      to give up dancing, &ldquo;at any rate for a year or so,&rdquo; and although he was
+      nearly distracted over the idea, he found his arguments and persuasions
+      were no more effective than those King Canute optimistically addressed to
+      the encroaching waves. The utmost concession he could extract from Magda
+      was her assent to giving a farewell appearance&mdash;for which occasion
+      the astute manager privately decided to quadruple the price of the seats.
+      He only wished it were possible to quadruple the seating capacity of the
+      theatre as well!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Gillian, whose normal, healthy young mind recoiled from the idea
+      of Magda&rsquo;s self-imposed year of discipline, had secretly resolved upon
+      making a final desperate venture in the hope of straightening out the
+      tangle of her friend&rsquo;s life. She would go herself and see Michael and
+      plead with him. Surely, if he loved Magda as he had once seemed to do, he
+      would not remain obdurate when he realised how bitterly she had repented&mdash;and
+      how much she loved him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not easy for Gillian to come to this decision. She held very strong
+      opinions on the subject of the rights of the individual to manage his own
+      affairs without interference, and as she passed out of the busy main
+      street into the quiet little old-world court where Michael had his rooms
+      and studio she felt as guilty as a small boy caught trespassing in an
+      orchard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The landlady who opened the door in response to her somewhat timid ring
+      regarded her with a curiously surprised expression when she inquired if
+      Mr. Quarrington were in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll see, miss,&rdquo; she answered non-committally, &ldquo;if you&rsquo;ll step inside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unusual appearance of the big double studio where she was left to wait
+      puzzled Gillian. All the familiar tapestries and cushions and rare
+      knick-knacks which wontedly converted the further end of it into a
+      charming reception room were gone. The chairs were covered in plain
+      holland, the piano sheeted. But the big easel, standing like a tall cross
+      in the cold north light, was swathed in a dust-sheet. Gillian&rsquo;s heart
+      misgave her. Was she too late? Had Michael&mdash;gone away?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later a quick, resolute footstep reassured her. The door opened
+      and Michael himself came in. He paused on the threshold as he perceived
+      who his visitor was, then came forward and shook hands with his usual
+      grave courtesy. After that, he seemed to wait as though for some
+      explanation of her visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian found herself nervously unready. All the little opening speeches
+      she had prepared for the interview deserted her suddenly, driven away by
+      her shocked realisation of the transformation which the few days since she
+      had last seen him had wrought in the man beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face was lined and worn. The grey eyes were sunken and burned with a
+      strange, bitter brilliance. Only the dogged, out-thrust jaw remained the
+      same as ever&mdash;obstinate and unconquerable. Twice she essayed to speak
+      and twice failed. The third time the words came stumblingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael, what&mdash;what does it mean&mdash;all this?&rdquo; She indicated the
+      holland-sheeted studio with a gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It means that I&rsquo;m going away,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m packing now. I leave
+      England to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words broke from her imperatively, like a mandate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at her quickly and into his eyes came a look of comprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a good friend,&rdquo; he said quietly. &ldquo;But I must go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, you mustn&rsquo;t! Listen&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing can alter my decision,&rdquo; he interrupted in a tone of absolute
+      finality. &ldquo;Nothing you could say, Gillian&mdash;so don&rsquo;t say it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I must!&rdquo; she insisted. &ldquo;Oh, Michael, I&rsquo;m not going to pretend that
+      Magda hasn&rsquo;t been to blame&mdash;that it isn&rsquo;t all terrible! But if you
+      saw her&mdash;now&mdash;you&rsquo;d <i>have</i> to forgive her and love her
+      again.&rdquo; She spoke with a simple sincerity that was infinitely appealing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never ceased to love her,&rdquo; he replied, still in that quiet voice of
+      repressed determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you love, her, can&rsquo;t you forgive her? She&rsquo;s had everything
+      against her from the beginning, both temperament and upbringing, and on
+      top of that there&rsquo;s been the wild success she&rsquo;s had as a dancer. You can&rsquo;t
+      judge her by ordinary standards of conduct. You <i>can&rsquo;t</i>! It isn&rsquo;t
+      fair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t presume to judge her&rdquo;&mdash;icily. &ldquo;I simply say I can&rsquo;t marry
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you could see her now, Michael&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; Her voice shook a
+      little. &ldquo;It hurts me to see Magda&mdash;like that. She&rsquo;s broken&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my sister, June, is dead,&rdquo; he said in level, unemotional tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian wrung her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But even so&mdash;&mdash;! Magda didn&rsquo;t kill her, Michael. She couldn&rsquo;t
+      tell&mdash;she didn&rsquo;t know that June&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She halted, faltering
+      into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That June was soon to have a child?&rdquo; Michael finished her sentence for
+      her. &ldquo;No. But she knew she loved her husband. And she stole him from her.
+      When I think of it all, of June . . . little June! . . . And Storran&mdash;gone
+      under! Oh, what&rsquo;s the use of talking?&rdquo;&mdash;savagely. &ldquo;You know&mdash;and
+      I know&mdash;that there&rsquo;s nothing left. Nothing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you loved her, Michael&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I loved her!&rdquo; he broke out stormily. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not a man, and you don&rsquo;t
+      know what it means to want the woman you love night and day, to ache for
+      her with every fibre of your body&mdash;and to know that you can&rsquo;t have
+      her and keep your self-respect!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;self-respect!&rdquo; There was a note of contempt in Gillian&rsquo;s voice.
+      &ldquo;If you set your &lsquo;self-respect&rsquo; above your love&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand!&rdquo; he interrupted violently. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a woman and you
+      can&rsquo;t understand! I must honour the woman I love&mdash;it&rsquo;s the kernel of
+      the whole thing. I must look up to her&mdash;not down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian clasped her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said in a low, vehement voice. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think we women <i>want</i>
+      to be &lsquo;looked up to.&rsquo; It sets us so far away. We&rsquo;re not goddesses. We&rsquo;re
+      only women, Michael, with all our little weaknesses just the same as men.
+      And we want the men who love us to be comrades&mdash;not worshippers. Good
+      pals, who&rsquo;ll forgive us and help us up when we tumble down, just as we&rsquo;d
+      be ready to forgive them and help them up. Can&rsquo;t you&mdash;can&rsquo;t you do
+      that for Magda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said shortly. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian was at the end of her resources. She would not tell him that Magda
+      proposed joining the Sisters of Penitence for a year. Somehow she felt she
+      would not wish him to know this or to be influenced by it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had made her appeal to Michael himself, to his sheer love for the
+      woman he had intended to make his wife. And she had failed because the man
+      was too bitter, too sore, to see clearly through the pain that blinded
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice, curt and clipped, broke the silence which had fallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you said all you came to say?&rdquo; he asked with frigid politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All,&rdquo; she returned sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved slowly towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; she said, holding out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took it and held it in his. For a moment the hard eyes softened a
+      little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry I can&rsquo;t do what you ask,&rdquo; he said abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian opened her lips to speak, but no words came. Instead, a sudden
+      lump rose in her throat, choking her into silence, at the sight of the
+      man&rsquo;s wrung face, with its bitter, pain-ridden eyes and the jaw that was
+      squared implacably against love and forgiveness, and against his own
+      overwhelming desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;CHILDREN STUMBLING IN THE DARK&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      As Gillian mingled once more with the throng on the pavements she felt
+      curiously unwilling to return home. She had set out from Friars&rsquo; Holm so
+      full of hope in her errand! It had seemed impossible that she could fail,
+      and she had been almost unconsciously looking forward to seeing Magda&rsquo;s
+      wan, strained face relax into half-incredulous delight as she confided in
+      her the news that Michael was as eager and longing for a reconciliation as
+      she herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And instead&mdash;this! This utter, hopeless failure to move him one jot.
+      Only the memory of the man&rsquo;s stern, desperately unhappy eyes curbed the
+      hot tide of her anger against him for his iron refusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He still loved Magda, so he said. And, indeed, Gillian believed it. But&mdash;love!
+      It was not love as she and Tony Grey had understood it&mdash;simple,
+      forgiving, and wholly trustful. It seemed to her as though Michael and
+      Magda were both wandering in a dim twilight of misunderstanding, neither
+      of them able to see that there was only one thing for them to do if they
+      were ever to find happiness again. They must thrust the past behind them&mdash;with
+      all its bitterness and failures and mistakes, and go forward, hand in
+      hand, in search of the light. Love would surely lead them to it
+      eventually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet this was the last thing either of them seemed able to think of doing.
+      Magda was determined to spend the sweetness of her youth in making
+      reparation for the past, while Michael was torn by bitterly conflicting
+      feelings&mdash;his passionate love for Magda warring with his innate
+      recoil from all that she had done and with his loyalty to his dead sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian sighed as she threaded her way slowly along the crowded street.
+      The lights of a well-known tea-shop beckoned invitingly and, only too
+      willing to postpone the moment of her return home, she turned in between
+      its plate-glass doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They swung together behind her, dulling the rumble of the traffic, while
+      all around uprose the gay hum of conversation and the chink of cups and
+      saucers mingling with the rhythmic melodies that issued from a cleverly
+      concealed orchestra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place was very crowded. For a moment it seemed to Gillian as though
+      there were no vacant seat. Then she espied an empty table for two in a
+      distant corner and hastily made her way thither. She had barely given her
+      order to the waitress when the swing doors parted again to admit someone
+      else&mdash;a man this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new arrival paused, as Gillian herself had done, to search out a seat.
+      Then, noting the empty place at her table, he came quickly towards it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian was idly scanning the list of marvellous little cakes furnished by
+      the menu, and her first cognisance of the new-comer&rsquo;s approach was the
+      vision of a strong, masculine hand gripping the back of the chair opposite
+      her preparatory to pulling it out from under the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid there&rsquo;s no other vacant seat,&rdquo; he was beginning
+      apologetically. But at the sound of his voice Gillian&rsquo;s eyes flew up from
+      that virile-looking hand to the face of its owner, and a low cry of
+      surprise broke from her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dan Storran!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simultaneously the man gave utterance to her own name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian stared at him stupidly. Could this really be Dan Storran&mdash;Storran
+      of Stockleigh?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The alteration in him was immense. He looked ten years older. An habitual
+      stoop had lessened his apparent height and the dark, kinky hair was
+      streaked with grey. The golden-tan bestowed by an English sun had been
+      exchanged for the sallow skin of a man who has lived hard in a hot
+      country, and the face was thin and heavily lined. Only the eyes of
+      periwinkle-blue remained to remind Gillian of the splendid young giant she
+      had known at Ashencombe&mdash;and even they were changed and held the
+      cynical weariness of a man who has eaten of Dead Sea fruit and found it
+      bitter to the taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were other changes, too. Storran of Stockleigh was as civilised, his
+      clothes and general appearance as essentially &ldquo;right,&rdquo; as those of the men
+      around him. All suggestion of the &ldquo;cave-man from the backwoods,&rdquo; as Lady
+      Arabella had termed him, was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know you were in England,&rdquo; said Gillian at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I landed yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been in South America, haven&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke mechanically. There seemed something forced and artificial about
+      this exchange of platitudes between herself and the man who had figured so
+      disastrously in Magda&rsquo;s life. Without warning he brought the conversation
+      suddenly back to the realities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I was in &lsquo;Frisco when my wife died. Since then I&rsquo;ve been half over
+      the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind the harshly uttered statement Gillian could sense the unspeakable
+      bitterness of the man&rsquo;s soul. It hurt her, calling forth her quick
+      sympathy just as the sight of some maimed and wounded animal would have
+      done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said, a sensitive quiver in her voice. &ldquo;I was so sorry&mdash;so
+      terribly sorry&mdash;to hear about June. We hadn&rsquo;t heard&mdash;we only
+      knew quite recently.&rdquo; Her face clouded as she reflected on the tragic
+      happenings with which the news had been accompanied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment a waitress paused at Storran&rsquo;s side and he gave his order.
+      Then, looking curiously at Gillian, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you hear? Just that she died when our child was born, I
+      suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s absolute honesty of soul could not acquiesce, though it would
+      have been infinitely the easier course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, flushing a little and speaking very low. &ldquo;We heard that
+      she might have lived if&mdash;if she had only been&mdash;happier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded silently, rather as though this was the answer he had
+      anticipated. Presently he spoke abruptly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does Miss Vallincourt know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian hesitated. Then, taking her courage in both hands she told him
+      quickly and composedly the whole story of the engagement and its rupture,
+      and let him understand just precisely what June&rsquo;s death, owing to the
+      special circumstances in which it had occurred, had meant for Magda of
+      retribution and of heartbreak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran listened without comment, in his eyes an odd look of
+      concentration. The waitress dexterously slid a tray in front of him and he
+      poured himself out a cup of tea mechanically, but he made no attempt to
+      drink it. When Gillian ceased, his face showed no sign of softening. It
+      looked hard and very weary. His strong fingers moved restlessly, crumbling
+      one of the small cakes on the plate in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small,&rsquo;&rdquo;
+       he quoted at last, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian met his harshly cynical glance with one of brave defiance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think God&rsquo;s mills have anything to do with it,&rdquo; she said swiftly.
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;d understand all the excuses and allowances that should be made for
+      her better even than I do. And I shouldn&rsquo;t want to punish Magda. I&rsquo;d make
+      her&mdash;happy. She&rsquo;s never known what it means to be really happy.
+      Success and gaiety aren&rsquo;t <i>happiness</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you?&rdquo; he asked quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a soft and wonderful shining in the brown eyes that were lifted
+      to his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had one year of utter happiness,&rdquo; she answered gently. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ve got
+      Coppertop&mdash;so I can&rsquo;t ever be quite unhappy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If there were more women like you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he began abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; she said, smiling a little. &ldquo;If there were more men like Tony!
+      You men are so hard&mdash;so cruelly hard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her very directly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t I the right to be?&rdquo; he demanded bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Forgive me!&rdquo; Gillian spoke with an accent of self-reproach. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d
+      forgotten you still&mdash;care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Magda?&rdquo; He laughed shortly. &ldquo;No. That&rsquo;s dead, thank God! I killed it.
+      Worked it out of my system in &lsquo;Frisco&rdquo;&mdash;with exceeding bitterness.
+      &ldquo;Then I got the news of June&rsquo;s death. Her sister wrote me. Told me she
+      died because she&rsquo;d no longer any wish to live. That sobered me-brought me
+      back to my sense. There was a good deal more to the letter&mdash;my
+      sister-in-law didn&rsquo;t let me down lightly. I&rsquo;ve had to pay for that summer
+      at Stockleigh. And now Magda&rsquo;s paying. . . . Well, that seems to square
+      things somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you are brutal!&rdquo; broke out Gillian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes, hard as steel and as unyielding, met hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I?&rdquo;&mdash;indifferently. &ldquo;Perhaps I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a very different Dan from the impetuous, hot-headed Dan of former
+      times. Gillian found his calm ruthlessness difficult to understand, and
+      yet, realising all that he had suffered, she could not but condone it to a
+      certain extent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at last she rose to go, he detained her a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am remaining in England now. I should like to see you sometimes. May
+      I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated. Then something that appealed in the tired eyes impelled her
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you wish,&rdquo; she said gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back once more in the street she made her way as quickly as possible to
+      the nearest tube station, in order to reach it before the usual evening
+      crowd of homeward-wending clerks and typists poured into the thoroughfares
+      from a thousand open office doors. But as soon as she was safely seated in
+      the train her thoughts reverted to the two strange interviews in which she
+      had taken part that afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt very low-spirited. Since she had seen and talked with the two men
+      in whose lives Magda had played so big a part, she was oppressed with a
+      sense of the utter hopelessness of trying to put matters right. Things
+      must take their course&mdash;drive on to whatever end, bitter or sweet,
+      lay hidden in the womb of fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had tried to stem the current of affairs, but she had proved as
+      powerless to deflect it as a dried stick tossed on to a river in spate.
+      And now, whether the end were ultimate happiness or hopeless,
+      irretrievable disaster, Michael and Magda must still fight their way
+      towards it, each alone, by the dim light of that &ldquo;blind Understanding&rdquo;
+       which is all that Destiny vouchsafes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      FAREWELL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The curtains swung together for the last time, the orchestra struck up the
+      National Anthem, and the great audience which had come from all parts to
+      witness the Wielitzska&rsquo;s farewell performance began to disperse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A curious quietness attended its departure. It was as though a pall of
+      gravity hung over the big assemblage. Public announcements of the
+      performance had explained that the famous dancer proposed taking a long
+      rest for reasons of health. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; as everyone declared, &ldquo;you know what
+      that means! She&rsquo;s probably broken down&mdash;heart or something. We shall
+      never see her dance again.&rdquo; And so, beneath the tremendous reception which
+      they gave her, there throbbed an element of sadness, behind all the cheers
+      and the clapping an insistent minor note which carried across the
+      footlights to where Magda stood bowing her thanks, and smiling through the
+      mist of tears which filled her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dance which she had chosen for her last appearance was the <i>Swan-Maiden</i>.
+      There had seemed a strange applicability in the choice, and to those who
+      had eyes to see there was a new quality in the Wielitzska&rsquo;s dancing&mdash;a
+      depth of significance and a spirituality of interpretation which was
+      commented upon in the Press the next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had been quite unmistakable. She had gripped her audience so that
+      throughout the final scene of the ballet no word was spoken. The big
+      crowd, drawn from all classes, sat tense and silent, sensitive to every
+      movement, every exquisite, appealing gesture of the Swan-Maiden. And when
+      at last she had lain, limp in death, in her lover&rsquo;s embrace, and the music
+      had quivered into silence, there followed a vibrant pause&mdash;almost it
+      seemed as though a sigh of mingled ecstasy and regret went up&mdash;before
+      the thunderous applause roared through the auditorium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The insatiable few were still clapping and stamping assiduously when
+      Magda, after taking innumerable calls, at last came off the stage. It had
+      been a wonderful night of triumph, and as she made her way towards her
+      dressing-room she was conscious of a sudden breathless realisation of all
+      that she was sacrificing. For a moment she felt as though she must rush
+      back on to the stage and tell everybody that she couldn&rsquo;t do it, that it
+      was all a mistake&mdash;that this was not a farewell! But she set her
+      teeth and moved resolutely towards her dressing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As her fingers closed round the handle of the door, someone stepped out
+      from the shadows of the passage and spoke:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magda!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice, wrung and urgent, was Antoine Davilof&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her first impulse was to hurry forward and put the dressing-room door
+      betwixt herself and him. She had not seen him since that night when he had
+      come down to the theatre and implored her to be his wife, warning her that
+      he would prevent her marriage with Michael. He had carried out his threat
+      with a completeness that had wrecked her life, and although, since the
+      breaking-off of her engagement, he had both written and telephoned,
+      begging her to see him, she had steadfastly refused. Once he had come to
+      Friars&rsquo; Holm, but had been met with an inexorable &ldquo;Not at home!&rdquo; from
+      Melrose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magda! For God&rsquo;s sake, give me a moment!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in the strained tones moved her to an unexpected feeling of
+      compassion. It was the voice of a man in the extremity of mental anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silently she opened the door of the dressing-room and signed to him to
+      follow her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, facing him, &ldquo;what is it? Why have you come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The impulse of compassion died out suddenly. His was the hand that had
+      destroyed her happiness. The sight of him roused her to a fierce anger and
+      resentment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;What do you want? To know the result of your
+      handiwork?&rdquo;&mdash;bitterly. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been quite as successful as even you
+      could have wished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he said unevenly. &ldquo;Magda, I can&rsquo;t bear it. You can&rsquo;t give up&mdash;all
+      this. Your dancing&mdash;it&rsquo;s your life! I shall never forgive myself . .
+      . I&rsquo;ll see Quarrington and tell him&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t see him. He&rsquo;s gone away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll find him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you found him, nothing you could say would make any difference,&rdquo; she
+      answered unemotionally. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the facts that matter. You can&rsquo;t alter&mdash;facts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davilof made a gesture of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true you&rsquo;re going into some sisterhood?&rdquo; he asked hoarsely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is I&mdash;I who have driven you to this! <i>Dieu</i>! I&rsquo;ve been
+      mad&mdash;mad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hands were clenched, his face working painfully. The hazel eyes&mdash;those
+      poet&rsquo;s eyes of his which she had seen sometimes soft with dreams and
+      sometimes blazing with love&rsquo;s fire&mdash;were blurred by misery. They
+      reminded her of the contrite, tortured eyes of a dog which, maddened by
+      pain, has bitten the hand of a beloved master. Her anger died away in the
+      face of that overwhelming remorse. She herself had learned to know the
+      illimitable bitterness of self-reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Antoine&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; Her voice had grown very gentle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He swung round on her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I can&rsquo;t undo it!&rdquo; he exclaimed desperately. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t undo it! . . .
+      Magda, will you believe me&mdash;will you <i>try</i> to believe that, if
+      my life could undo the harm I&rsquo;ve done, I&rsquo;d give it gladly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you would, Antoine,&rdquo; she replied simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a stifled exclamation he turned away and, dropping into a chair,
+      leaned his arms on the table and hid his face. Once, twice she heard the
+      sound of a man&rsquo;s hard-drawn sob, and the dry agony of it wrung her heart.
+      All that was sweet and compassionate in her&mdash;the potential mother
+      that lies in every woman&mdash;responded to his need. She ran to him and,
+      kneeling at his side, laid a kind little hand on his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t Antoine!&rdquo; she said pitifully. &ldquo;Ah, don&rsquo;t, my dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught the hand and held it against his cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s unforgivable!&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no. I do forgive you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t forgive! . . . Impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I can, Antoine. You see, I need forgiveness so badly myself. I
+      wouldn&rsquo;t want to keep anyone else without it. Besides, Michael would have
+      been bound to learn&mdash;what you told him&mdash;sooner or later.&rdquo; She
+      rose to her feet, pushing back the hair from her forehead rather wearily.
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s better as it is&mdash;that he should know now. It&mdash;it would
+      have been unbearable if it had come later&mdash;when I was his wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Antoine stumbled to his feet. His beautiful face was marred with grief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I were dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words broke from him like an exceeding bitter cry. To Magda they
+      seemed to hold some terrible import.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that, Antoine!&rdquo; she answered in a frightened voice. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not
+      thinking&mdash;you&rsquo;re not meaning&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head, smiling faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said quietly. &ldquo;The Davilofs have never been cowards. I shan&rsquo;t
+      take that way out. You need have no fears, Magda.&rdquo; The sudden tension in
+      her face relaxed. &ldquo;But I shall not stay in England. England&mdash;without
+      you&mdash;would be hell. A hell of memories.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shall you do, then, Antoine? You won&rsquo;t give up playing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a fierce gesture of distaste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t play in public! Not now. Not for a time. I think I shall go to
+      my mother. She always wants me, and she sees me very little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda nodded. Her eyes were wistful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, go to her. I think mothers must understand&mdash;as other people
+      can&rsquo;t ever understand. She will be glad to have you with her, Antoine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a moment, his eyes dwelling on her face as though he
+      sought to learn each line of it, so that when she would be no more beside
+      him he might carry the memory of it in his heart for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is good-bye,&rdquo; he said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda held out her hands and, taking them in his, he drew her close to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I have brought you only pain.&rdquo; There was a
+      tragic simplicity in the statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered steadily. &ldquo;Never think that. I spoiled my own life. And&mdash;love
+      is a big gift, Antoine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her face to his and very tenderly, almost reverently, he kissed
+      her. She knew that in that last kiss there was no disloyalty to Michael.
+      It held renunciation. It accepted forgiveness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you know that Dan Storran was in front to-night?&rdquo; asked Gillian, as
+      half an hour later she and Magda were driving back to Hampstead together.
+      She had already confided the fact of her former meeting with him in the
+      tea-shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s eyes widened a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m glad I didn&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was very silent throughout the remainder of the drive home and Gillian
+      made no effort to distract her. She herself felt disinclined to talk. She
+      was oppressed by the knowledge that this was the last night she and Magda
+      would have with each other. To-morrow Magda would be gone and one chapter
+      of their lives together ended. The gates of the Sisters of Penitence would
+      close upon her and Friars&rsquo; Holm would be empty of her presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything had been said that could be said, every persuasion used. But to
+      each and all Magda had only answered: &ldquo;I know it&rsquo;s the only thing for me
+      to do. It probably wouldn&rsquo;t be for you, or for anyone else. But it is for
+      me. So you must let me go, Gillyflower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian dreaded the morrow with its inevitable moment of farewell. As for
+      Virginie, she had done little else but weep for the last three days, and
+      although Lady Arabella had said very little, she had kissed her
+      god-daughter good-bye with a brusqueness that veiled an inexpressible
+      grief and tenderness. Gillian foresaw that betwixt administering comfort
+      to Lady Arabella and Virginie, and setting Magda&rsquo;s personal affairs in
+      order after her departure, she would have little time for the indulgence
+      of her own individual sorrow. Perhaps it was just as well that these tasks
+      should devolve on her. They would serve to occupy her thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning sunlight, goldenly gay, was streaming in through the windows
+      as Magda, wrapped in a soft silken peignoir, made her way into the
+      bathroom. Virginie, her eyes reddened from a night&rsquo;s weeping, was kneeling
+      beside the sunken bath of green-veined marble, stirring sweet-smelling
+      salts in to the steaming water. Their fragrance permeated the atmosphere
+      like incense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My tub ready, Virginie?&rdquo; asked Magda, cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Virginie scrambled to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Mais oui, mademoiselle</i>. The bath is ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, her face puckering up suddenly, she burst into tears and ran out of
+      the room. Magda smiled and sighed, then busied herself with her morning
+      ablutions&mdash;prolonging them a little as she realised that this was the
+      last occasion for a whole year when she would step down into a bath
+      prepared and perfumed for her in readiness by her maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A year! It was a long time to look forward to. So much can happen in a
+      year. And no one can foresee what the end may bring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently she emerged from her bath, her skin gleaming like wet ivory, her
+      dark hair sparkling with the drops of water that had splashed on to it. As
+      she stepped up from its green-veined depths, she caught a glimpse of
+      herself in a panel mirror hung against the wall, and for a moment she was
+      aware of the familiar thrill of delight in her own beauty&mdash;in the
+      gleaming, glowing radiance of perfectly formed, perfectly groomed flesh
+      and blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, with a revulsion of feeling, came the sudden realisation that it was
+      this very perfection of body which had been her undoing&mdash;like a
+      bitter blight, leaving in its wake a trail of havoc and desolation. She
+      was even conscious of a fierce eagerness for the period of penance to
+      begin. Almost ecstatically she contemplated the giving of her body to
+      whatever discipline might be appointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To anyone hitherto as spoiled and imperious as Magda, whose body had been
+      the actual temple of her art, and so, almost inevitably, of her worship,
+      this utter renouncing of physical self-government was the supremest
+      expiation she could make. As with Hugh Vallincourt, whose blood ran in her
+      veins, the idea of personal renunciation made a curious appeal to her
+      emotional temperament, and she was momentarily filled with something of
+      the martyr&rsquo;s ecstasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s arms clung round Magda&rsquo;s neck convulsively as she kissed her at
+      the great gates of Friars&rsquo; Holm a few hours later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye! . . . Ah, Magda! Come back to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One more lingering kiss, and then Magda stepped into the open car.
+      Virginie made a rush forward before the door closed and, dropping on to
+      her knees on the footboard, convulsively snatched her adored young
+      mistress&rsquo;s hand between her two old worn ones and covered it with kisses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mademoiselle, thy old Virginie will die without thee!&rdquo; she sobbed
+      brokenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the car slid away and Magda&rsquo;s last glimpse was of the open gates
+      of Friars&rsquo; Holm with its old-world garden, stately and formal, in the
+      background; and of Virginie weeping unrestrainedly, her snowy apron flung
+      up over her head; and of Gillian standing erect, her brown eyes very wide
+      and winking away the tears that welled up despite herself, and her hand on
+      Coppertop&rsquo;s small manful shoulder, gripping it hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the car passed through the streets many people, recognising its
+      occupant, stopped and turned to follow it with their eyes. One or two
+      women waved their hands, and a small errand-boy&mdash;who had saved up his
+      pennies and squeezed into the gallery of the Imperial Theatre the previous
+      evening&mdash;threw up his hat and shouted &ldquo;Hooray!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once, at a crossing, the chauffeur was compelled to pull up to allow the
+      traffic to pass, and a flower-girl with a big basket of early violets on
+      her arm, recognising the famous dancer, tossed a bunch lightly into the
+      car. They fell on Magda&rsquo;s lap. She picked them up and, brushing them with
+      her lips, smiled at the girl and fastened the violets against the furs at
+      her breast. The flower-girl treasured the smile of the great Wielitzska in
+      her memory for many a long day, while in the arid months that were to
+      follow Magda treasured the sweet fragrance of that spontaneous gift.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later the doors of the grey house where the Sisters of
+      Penitence dwelt apart from the world opened to receive Magda Vallincourt,
+      and closed again behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE GREY VEIL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Magda felt a sudden stab of fear. The sound of the latch clicking into its
+      place brought home to her the irrevocability of the step she had taken.
+      That tall, self-locking door stood henceforth betwixt her and the dear,
+      familiar world she had known&mdash;the world of laughter and luxury and
+      success. But beyond, on the far horizon, there was Michael&mdash;her
+      &ldquo;Saint Michel.&rdquo; If these months of discipline brought her nearer him, then
+      she would never grudge them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The serene eyes of the Sister who received her&mdash;Sister Bernardine&mdash;helped
+      to steady her quivering pulses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something in Sister Bernardine that was altogether lacking in
+      Catherine Vallincourt&mdash;a delightfully human understanding and charity
+      for all human weakness, whether of the soul or body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was she who reassured Magda when a sudden appalling and unforeseen idea
+      presented itself to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My hair!&rdquo; she exclaimed breathlessly, her hand going swiftly to the
+      heavy, smoke-black tresses. &ldquo;Will they cut off my hair?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Sister Bernardine comfortingly explained that only those who joined the
+      community as sisters had their heads shaven, a strange expression
+      flickered for an instant in her eyes, a fleeting reminiscence of that day,
+      five-and-twenty years ago, when the shears had cropped their ruthless way
+      through the glory of hair which had once been hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And afterwards, as time went on and Magda, wearing the grey veil and grey
+      serge dress of a voluntary penitent, found herself absorbed into the daily
+      life of the community, it was often only the recollection of Sister
+      Bernardine&rsquo;s serene, kind eyes which helped her to hold out. Somehow,
+      somewhere out of this drastic, self-denying life Sister Bernardine had
+      drawn peace and tranquillity of soul, and Magda clung to this thought when
+      the hard rules of the sisterhood, the distastefulness of the tasks
+      appointed her, and the frequent fasts ordained, chafed and fretted her
+      until sometimes her whole soul seemed to rise up in rebellion against the
+      very discipline she had craved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of her tasks were performed under the lynx eyes of Sister Agnetia, an
+      elderly and sour-visaged sister to whom Magda had taken an instinctive
+      dislike from the outset. The Mother Superior she could tolerate. She was
+      severe and uncompromising. But she was at least honest. There was no
+      doubting the bedrock genuineness of her disciplinary ardour, harsh and
+      merciless though it might appear. But with Sister Agnetia, Magda was
+      always sensible of the personal venom of a little mind vested with
+      authority beyond its deserts, and she resented her dictation accordingly.
+      And equally accordingly, it seemed to fall always to her lot to work under
+      Sister Agnetia&rsquo;s supervision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Catherine had been quick enough to detect Magda&rsquo;s detestation of this
+      particular sister and to use it as a further means of discipline. It was
+      necessary that Magda&rsquo;s pride and vanity should be humbled, and Catherine
+      saw to it that they were. It was assuredly by the Will of Heaven that the
+      child of Diane Wielitzska had been led to her very doors, and to the
+      subject of her chastening Catherine brought much thought and
+      discrimination. <i>&ldquo;If you hurt people enough you can make them good.&rdquo;</i>
+      It had been her brother&rsquo;s bitter creed and it was hers. Pain, in
+      Catherine&rsquo;s idea, was the surest means of chastening, and Magda was to
+      remember her year at the sisterhood by two things&mdash;by the deadly,
+      unbearable monotony of its daily routine and by her first acquaintance
+      with actual bodily pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her health had always been magnificent, and&mdash;with the exception of
+      the trivial punishments of childhood and those few moments when she was
+      sitting for the picture of Circe&mdash;physical suffering was unknown to
+      her. The penances, therefore, which Catherine appointed her&mdash;to kneel
+      for a stated length of time until it seemed as though every muscle she
+      possessed were stretched to breaking-point, to fast when her whole healthy
+      young body craved for food, to be chastened with flagellum, a scourge of
+      knotted cords&mdash;all these grew to be a torment almost beyond
+      endurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost! . . . Yet in the beginning the thought of Michael sustained her
+      triumphantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a curious sensation&mdash;that first stroke of the flagellum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Magda, unversed in physical suffering, felt the cords shock against her
+      flesh, she was conscious of a strange uplifting of spirit. This, then,
+      this smarting, blinding thing called pain, was the force that would drive
+      the will to do evil out of her soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited expectantly&mdash;almost exultantly&mdash;for the second fall
+      of the thongs. The interval between seemed endless. Sister Agnetia was
+      very deliberate, pausing between each stroke. She knew to a nicety the
+      value of anticipation as a remedial force in punishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the cords descended on the bared shoulders. Magda winced away from
+      them, shivering. For a moment Sister Agnetia&rsquo;s arm hung flaccid, the cords
+      of the flagellum pendant and still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you submitting to the discipline, Sister Penitentia?&rdquo; came her voice.
+      It was an unpleasant voice, suggestive of a knife that has been dipped in
+      oil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda caught her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes . . . yes . . . I submit myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dimly she felt that by means of this endurance she would win back Michael,
+      cleanse herself to receive his love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I submit,&rdquo; she repeated in a rapt whisper of self-surrender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Agnetia&rsquo;s voice swam unctuously into her consciousness once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you tried to avoid that last stroke. If you flinch from
+      punishment it is not submission, but rebellion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda gripped her hands together and pressed her knees into the hard stone
+      floor, her muscles taut with anticipation as she heard the soft whistle of
+      the thongs cleaving the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time she bore the pang of anguish motionless, but the vision of
+      Michael went out suddenly in a throbbing darkness of swift agony. Her
+      shoulders felt red-hot. The pain shot up into her brain like fingers of
+      flame. It clasped her whole body in a torment, and the ecstasy of
+      self-surrender was lost in a sick groping after sheer endurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next stroke, crushing across that fever of intolerable suffering,
+      wrung a hoarse moan from her dry lips. Her hands locked together till she
+      felt as though their bones must crack with the strain as she waited for
+      the next inexorable stroke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One moment! . . . Two! An eternity of waiting!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; she breathed. &ldquo;Oh! . . . Be quick . . .&rdquo; Her voice panted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No movement answered her. Unable to endure the suspense, she straightened
+      her bowed shoulders and turned in convulsive appeal to where she had
+      glimpsed the flail-like rise and fall of Sister Agnetia&rsquo;s serge-clad arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no one there! The bare, cell-like chamber was empty, save for
+      herself. Sister Agnetia had stolen away, completing the penance of
+      physical pain by the refinement of anguish embodied in those hideous
+      moments of mental dread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda almost fancied she could hear an oily chuckle outside the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THOSE THAT WERE LEFT BEHIND
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      For the first month or two after Magda&rsquo;s departure Gillian found that she
+      had her hands full in settling up various business and personal matters
+      which had been left with loose ends. She was frankly glad to discover that
+      there were so many matters requiring her attention; otherwise the blank
+      occasioned in her life by Magda&rsquo;s absence would have been almost
+      unendurable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two girls had grown very much into each other&rsquo;s hearts during the
+      years they had shared together, and when friends part, no matter how big a
+      wrench the separation may mean to the one who goes, there is a special
+      kind of sadness reserved for the one who is left behind. For the one who
+      sets out there are fresh faces, new activities in store. Even though the
+      new life adventured upon may not prove to be precisely a bed of thornless
+      roses, the pricking of the thorns provides distraction to the mind from
+      the sheer, undiluted pain of separation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for Gillian, left behind at Friars&rsquo; Holm, there remained nothing but
+      an hourly sense of loss added to that crushing, inevitable flatness which
+      succeeds a crisis of any kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor did a forlorn Coppertop&rsquo;s reiterated inquiries as to how soon the
+      Fairy Lady might be expected back again help to mend matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella&rsquo;s grief was expressed in a characteristically prickly
+      fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young people don&rsquo;t seem to know the first thing about love nowadays,&rdquo; she
+      observed with the customary scathing contempt of one age for another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In <i>my</i> young days! Ah! there will never be times like those again!
+      We are all quite sure of it as our young days recede into the misty past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you loved, you loved,&rdquo; pursued Lady Arabella crisply. &ldquo;And the death
+      of half a dozen sisters wouldn&rsquo;t have been allowed to interfere with the
+      proceedings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian smiled a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t only that. It was Michael&rsquo;s bitter disappointment in Magda, I
+      think, quite as much as the fact that, indirectly, he held her responsible
+      for June&rsquo;s death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s ridiculous to try and foist Mrs. Storran&rsquo;s death on to Magda,&rdquo; fumed
+      Lady Arabella restively. &ldquo;If she hadn&rsquo;t the physical health to have a
+      good, hearty baby successfully, she shouldn&rsquo;t have attempted it. That&rsquo;s
+      all! . . . And then those two idiots&mdash;Magda and Michael! Of course he
+      must needs shoot off abroad, and equally of course she must be out of the
+      way in a sisterhood when he comes rushing back&mdash;as he will do!&rdquo;&mdash;with
+      a grim smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t done yet,&rdquo; Gillian pointed out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I give him precisely six months, my dear, before he finds out that,
+      sister or no sister, he can&rsquo;t live without Magda. Michael Quarrington&rsquo;s
+      got too much good red blood in his veins to live the life of a hermit.
+      He&rsquo;s a man, thank goodness, not a mystical dreamer like Hugh Vallincourt.
+      And he&rsquo;ll come back to his mate as surely as the sun will rise to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I felt as confident as you do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could make sure of putting my hand on Magda when he comes,&rdquo;
+       grumbled Lady Arabella. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the hitch I&rsquo;m afraid of! If only she
+      hadn&rsquo;t been so precipitate&mdash;only waited a bit for him to come back to
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t agree with you,&rdquo; rapped out Gillian smartly. &ldquo;Women are much too
+      ready to do the patient Griselda stunt. I think&rdquo;&mdash;with a vicious
+      little nod of her brown head&mdash;&ldquo;it would do Michael all the good in
+      the world to come back and want Magda&mdash;want her <i>badly</i>. And
+      find he couldn&rsquo;t get her! So there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella regarded her with astonishment, then broke into a delighted
+      chuckle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word! If a tame dove had suddenly turned round and pecked at me,
+      I couldn&rsquo;t have been more surprised! I didn&rsquo;t know you had so much of the
+      leaven of malice and wickedness in you, Gillian!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian, a little flushed and feeling, in truth, rather surprised at
+      herself for her sudden heat, smiled back at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I should have thought your opinion would have been very much the same
+      as mine. I never expected you&rsquo;d want Magda to sit down and twiddle her
+      thumbs till Michael chose to come back to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t. Not really. Only I want them to be happy,&rdquo; she said a little
+      sadly. &ldquo;Love is such a rare thing&mdash;love like theirs. And it&rsquo;s hard
+      that Magda should lose the beauty and happiness of it all because of
+      mistakes she made before she found herself, so to speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian nodded soberly. Lady Arabella had voiced precisely her own feeling
+      in the matter. It <i>was</i> hard! And yet it was only the fulfilment of
+      the immutable law: <i>Who breaks, pays</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s thoughts tried to pierce the dim horizon. Perhaps all the pain
+      and mistakes and misunderstandings of which this workaday world is so full
+      are, after all, only a part of the beautiful tapestry which the patient
+      Fingers of God are weaving&mdash;a dark and sombre warp, giving value to
+      the gold and silver and jewelled threads of the weft which shall cross it.
+      When the ultimate fabric is woven, and the tissue released from the loom,
+      there will surely be no meaningless thread, sable or silver, in the
+      consummated pattern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few weeks after Magda&rsquo;s departure Gillian received a letter from Dan
+      Storran, reminding her of her promise to let him see her and asking if she
+      would lunch with him somewhere in town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with somewhat mixed feelings that she met him again. He was much
+      altered&mdash;so changed from the hot-headed, primitive countryman she had
+      first known. Some chance remark of hers enlightened him as to her confused
+      sense of the difference in him, and he smiled across at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been through the mill, you see,&rdquo; he explained quietly, &ldquo;since the
+      Stockleigh days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words seemed almost like a key unlocking the door that stands fast
+      shut between one soul and another. He talked to her quite simply and
+      frankly after that, telling her how, after he had left England, the
+      madness in his blood had driven him whither it listed. There had been no
+      depths to which he had not sunk, no wild living from which he had
+      recoiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then had come the news of June&rsquo;s death. Not tenderly conveyed, but
+      charged to his account by her sister with a fierce bitterness that had
+      suddenly torn the veil from his eyes. Followed days and nights of agonised
+      remorse, and after that the slow, steady, infinitely difficult climb back
+      from the depths into which he had allowed himself to sink to a plane of
+      life where, had June still lived, he would not have been ashamed to meet
+      her eyes nor utterly unworthy to take her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the hardest thing I&rsquo;ve ever had to do,&rdquo; he ended. &ldquo;But she would
+      have wished it. I can never tell her now how I regret, never ask her
+      forgiveness. And this was the only thing I could do to atone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s eyes were very soft as she answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect she knows, Dan, and is glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a moment she went on thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s rather the same kind of feeling that has driven Magda into a
+      sisterhood, I think&mdash;the desire to do something definite, something
+      tangible, as a sort of reparation. And a woman is much more limited that
+      way than a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran&rsquo;s mouth hardened. Any mention of Magda would bring that look of
+      concentrated hardness into his face, and as the months went on, giving
+      Gillian a closer insight into the man, she began to realise that he had
+      never forgiven Magda for her share in the ruin of his life. On this point
+      he was as hard as nether millstone. He even seemed to derive a certain
+      satisfaction from the knowledge that she was paying, and paying heavily,
+      for all the harm she had wrought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It troubled Gillian&mdash;this incalculable hardness in Dan&rsquo;s nature
+      towards one woman. She found him kindly and tolerant in his outlook on
+      life&mdash;with the understanding tolerance of the man who has dragged
+      himself out of the pit by his own sheer force of will, and who, knowing
+      the power of temptation, is ready to give a helping hand to others who may
+      have fallen by the way. So that his relentlessness towards Magda was the
+      more inexplicable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than once she tried to soften his attitude, tried to make him realise
+      something of the conflicting influences both of temperament and
+      environment which had helped to make Magda what she was. But he remained
+      stubbornly unmoved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No punishment is too severe for a woman who has done what Magda
+      Vallincourt has done. She has wrecked lives simply in order to gratify her
+      vanity and insensate instinct for conquest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you&rsquo;re wrong. You <i>won&rsquo;t</i> understand! It&rsquo;s all that went before&mdash;her
+      parents&rsquo; mistakes&mdash;that should be blamed for half she&rsquo;s done. I think
+      you&rsquo;re very merciless, Dan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I am&mdash;in this case. Frankly, if I could lessen her
+      punishment by lifting my little finger&mdash;I wouldn&rsquo;t do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet this same man when, as often happened, he took Gillian and Coppertop
+      for a run into the country in his car, was as simple and considerate and
+      kindly as a man could be. Coppertop adored him, and, as Gillian reflected,
+      the love of children is rarely misplaced. Some instinct leads them to
+      divine unfailingly which is gold and which dross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The car was a recent acquisition. As Storran himself expressed it, rather
+      bitterly: &ldquo;Now that I can&rsquo;t buy a ha&rsquo;p&rsquo;orth of happiness with the money,
+      my luck has turned.&rdquo; He explained to Gillian that after he had left
+      England he had sold his farm in Devonshire, and that a lucky investment of
+      the capital thus realised had turned him into a comparatively rich man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even when I was making ducks and drakes of my life generally, I didn&rsquo;t
+      seem to make a mistake over money matters. If I played cards, I won; if I
+      backed a horse, he romped in first; it I bought shares, they jumped up
+      immediately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a pity!&rdquo; replied Gillian ingenuously. &ldquo;If only your financial
+      affairs hadn&rsquo;t prospered, you&rsquo;d have had to settle down and <i>work</i>&mdash;instead
+      of&mdash;of&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Playing the fool,&rdquo; he supplemented. &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t suppose I should. I
+      hadn&rsquo;t learned&mdash;then&mdash;that work is the only panacea, the one big
+      remedy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve learned a lot of things in the last two years,&rdquo; quietly. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m
+      still learning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As the months went on, Dan&rsquo;s friendship began to mean a good deal to
+      Gillian. It had come into her life just at a time when she was intolerably
+      lonely, and quite unconsciously she was learning to turn to him for advice
+      on all the large and small affairs of daily life as they came cropping up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was infinitely glad of his counsel with regard to Coppertop, who was
+      growing to the age when the want of a father&mdash;of a man&rsquo;s broad
+      outlook and a man&rsquo;s restraining hand&mdash;became an acute lack in a boy&rsquo;s
+      life. And to Gillian, who had gallantly faced the world alone since the
+      day when death had abruptly ended her &ldquo;year of utter happiness,&rdquo; it was
+      inexpressibly sweet to be once more shielded and helped in all the big and
+      little ways in which a man&mdash;even if he was only a staunch man-friend&mdash;can
+      shield and help a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed as though Dan Storran always contrived to interpose his big
+      person betwixt her and the sharp corners of life, and she began to wonder,
+      with a faint, indefinable dread, what must become of their friendship when
+      Magda returned to Friars&rsquo; Holm. Feeling as he did towards the dancer, it
+      would be impossible for him to come there any more, and somehow a snatched
+      hour here and there&mdash;a lunch together, or a motor-spin into the
+      country&mdash;would be a very poor substitute for his almost daily visits
+      to the old Queen Anne house tucked away behind its high walls at
+      Hampstead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once she broached the subject to him rather diffidently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear&rdquo;&mdash;he had somehow dropped into the use of the little term of
+      endearment, and Gillian found that she liked it and knew that she would
+      miss it if it were suddenly erased from his speech&mdash;&ldquo;my dear, why
+      cross bridges till we come to them? Perhaps, when the time comes, there&rsquo;ll
+      be no bridge to cross.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian glanced at him swiftly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that she&mdash;that you&rsquo;re feeling less bitter towards her,
+      Dan?&rdquo; she asked eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled down at her whimsically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite know. But I know one thing&mdash;it&rsquo;s very difficult to be
+      a lot with you and keep one&rsquo;s anger strictly up to concert pitch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian made no answer. She was too wise&mdash;with that intuitive wisdom
+      of woman&mdash;to force the pace. If Dan were beginning to relent ever so
+      little towards Magda&mdash;why, then, her two best friends might yet come
+      together in comradeship and learn to forget the bitter past. The gentle
+      hand of Time would be laid on old wounds and its touch would surely bring
+      healing. But Gillian would no more have thought of trying to hasten
+      matters than she would have tried to force open the close-curled petals of
+      a flower in bud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE RETURN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Magda slipped through the tall doorway in the wall which marked the abode
+      of the Sisters of Penitence and stood once more on the pavement of the
+      busy street. The year was over, and just as once before the clicking of
+      the latch had seemed to signify the end of everything, so now it sounded a
+      quite different note&mdash;of new beginnings, of release&mdash;freedom!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three months prior to the completion of her allotted span at the
+      sisterhood Magda had had a serious attack of illness. The hard and
+      rigorous life had told upon her physically, while the unaccustomed
+      restrictions, the constant obedience exacted, had gone far towards
+      assisting in the utter collapse of nerves already frayed by the strain of
+      previous happenings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably her fierce determination to go through with her self-elected
+      expiation, no matter what the cost, had a good deal to do with her
+      ultimate breakdown. With unswerving resolution she had forced herself to
+      obedience, to the performance of her appointed tasks in spite of their
+      distastefulness; and behind the daily work and discipline there had been
+      all the time the ceaseless, aching longing for the man who had loved her
+      and who had gone away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not surprising, therefore, that the tired body and nerves at last
+      gave way, and in the delirium of brain fever Magda revealed the whole
+      pitiful story of the mistakes and misunderstandings which had brought her
+      in desperation to the Sisters of Penitence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately it was upon Sister Bernardine that the major part of the
+      nursing devolved, and it was into her gentle ears that Magda unwittingly
+      poured out the history of the past. Bit by bit, from the ramblings of
+      delirium, Sister Bernardine pieced together the story, and her shy,
+      virginal heart found itself throbbing in overflowing sympathy&mdash;a
+      sympathy that sought expression in the tender care she gave her patient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the long, slow days of convalescence Magda, very helpless and
+      dependent, had gradually learned to love the soft-footed little Sister who
+      came and went throughout her illness&mdash;to love her as she would not,
+      at one time, have believed it possible she could grow to love anyone
+      behind the high grey walls which encircled the sisterhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the past year had taught her nothing else, it had at least taught her
+      that goodness and badness are very evenly distributed. She had found both
+      good and bad behind those tall grey walls just as she had found them in
+      the great free world outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her last memory, as her first, was of Sister Bernardine&rsquo;s kind eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of us find happiness in the world,&rdquo; the little Sister had said at
+      parting, &ldquo;and some of us out of it. I think you were meant to find yours
+      in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Magda&rsquo;s own choice to leave the sisterhood on foot. She had nothing
+      to take with her in the way of luggage, and she smiled a little as she
+      realised that, for the moment, she possessed actually nothing but the
+      clothes she stood up in&mdash;the same in which she had quitted Friars&rsquo;
+      Holm a year ago, and which, on departure, she had substituted for the grey
+      veil and habit she was discarding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first, as she made her way along the street, she found the continuous
+      ebb and flow of the crowded thoroughfare somewhat confusing after the
+      absolute calm and quiet of the preceding months, but very soon the
+      Londoner&rsquo;s familiar love of London and of its ceaseless, kaleidoscopic
+      movement returned to her, and with it the requisite poise to thread her
+      way through the throngs that trod the pavements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then her eyes turned to the shop windows&mdash;Catherine&rsquo;s stern
+      discipline had completely failed to stamp out the eternal feminine in her
+      niece&mdash;and as they absorbed the silken stuffs and rainbow colours
+      that gleamed and glowed behind the thick plateglass, she became suddenly
+      conscious of her own attire&mdash;of its cut and style. When last she had
+      worn it, it had been the final word in fashionable raiment. Now it was out
+      of date. The Wielitzska, whose clothes the newspapers had loved to
+      chronicle, in a frock in which any one of the &ldquo;young ladies&rdquo; behind the
+      counters of these self-same shops into which she was gazing would have
+      declined to appear! She almost laughed out loud. And then, quick on the
+      heels of her desire to laugh, came a revulsion of feeling. This little
+      incident, just the disparity between the fashion of her own clothes and
+      the fashion prevailing at the moment, served to make her realise, with a
+      curious clarity of vision, the irrevocable passage of time. A year&mdash;a
+      slice out of her life! What other differences would it ultimately show?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something else was already making itself apparent&mdash;the fact that none
+      of the passers-by seemed to recognise her. In the old days, when she had
+      been dancing constantly at the Imperial Theatre, she had grown so used to
+      seeing the sudden look of interest and recognition spring into the eyes of
+      one or another, to the little eager gesture that nudged a companion,
+      pointing out the famous dancer as she passed along the street, that she
+      had thought nothing of it&mdash;had hardly consciously noticed it. Now she
+      missed it&mdash;missed it extraordinarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden sense of intense loneliness swept over her&mdash;the loneliness
+      of the man who has been cast on a desert island, only returning to his
+      fellows after many weary months of absence. She felt she could not endure
+      to waste another moment before she saw again the beloved faces of Gillian
+      and Virginie and felt once more the threads of the old familiar life
+      quiver and vibrate between her fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a quick, imperative gesture she hailed a taxi and was whirled away
+      towards Hampstead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first excited greetings and embraces were over. The flurry of broken,
+      scattered phrases, half-tearfully, half-smilingly welcoming her back, had
+      spent themselves, and now old Virginie, drawing away, regarded her with
+      bewildered, almost frightened eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Mais, mon dieu</i>!&rdquo; she muttered. &ldquo;<i>Mon dieu</i>!&rdquo; Then with a
+      sudden cry: &ldquo;Cherie! Cherie! What have they done to thee? What have they
+      done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done to me?&rdquo; repeated Magda in puzzled tones. &ldquo;Oh, I see! I&rsquo;m thinner.
+      I&rsquo;ve been ill, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not&mdash;that! Hast thou looked in the glass? Oh, my poor&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       And the old Frenchwoman incontinently began to weep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A glass! Magda had not seen her own reflection in a looking-glass since
+      the day she left Friars&rsquo; Holm. There were no mirrors hanging on the walls
+      of the house where the Sisters of Penitence dwelt. Filled with a nameless,
+      inexplicable terror, she turned and walked out of the room. There was an
+      old Chippendale mirror hanging at the further end, but she avoided it.
+      Something in the askance expression of Virginie&rsquo;s eyes had frightened her
+      so that she dared not challenge what the mirror might give back until she
+      was alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once outside the door she flew upstairs to her own room and, locking the
+      door, went to the glass. A stifled exclamation of dismay escaped her. She
+      had not dreamed a year could compass such an alteration! Then, very
+      deliberately, she removed her hat and, standing where the light fell full
+      upon her, she examined her reflection. After a long moment she spoke,
+      whisperingly, beneath her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;why&mdash;it isn&rsquo;t me, at all. I&rsquo;m ugly. Ugly&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a quick movement she lifted her arm, screening her face against it
+      for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her startled eyes had exaggerated the change absurdly. Nevertheless, that
+      a change had taken place was palpable. The arresting radiance, the vivid
+      physical perfection of her, had gone. She was thin, and with the thinness
+      had come lines&mdash;lines of fatigue, and other, more lasting lines born
+      of endurance and self-control. The pliant symmetry of her figure, too, was
+      marred. She stooped a little; the gay, free carriage of her shoulders was
+      gone. The heavy manual work at the sisterhood, of which, in common with
+      the others, she had done her share, had taken its toll of her suppleness
+      and grace, and the hands she extended in front of her, regarding them
+      distastefully, were roughened and worn by the unwonted usage to which they
+      had been subjected. Her hair, so long, hidden from the light and air by
+      the veil she had worn, was flaccid and lustreless. Only her eyes remained
+      unchangedly beautiful. Splendid and miserable, they stared back at the
+      reflection which the mirror yielded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long time before Magda reappeared downstairs, so long, indeed,
+      that Gillian was beginning to grow nervously uneasy. When at last she
+      came, she was curiously quiet and responded to all Gillian&rsquo;s attempts at
+      conversation with a dull, flat indifference that was strangely at variance
+      with the spontaneously happy excitement which had attended the first few
+      moments after her arrival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian was acutely conscious of the difference in her manner, but even
+      she, with all her intuition, failed to attribute it to its rightful cause.
+      To her, Magda was so indubitably, essentially the Magda she loved that she
+      was hardly sensible of that shadowing of her radiant beauty which had
+      revealed itself with a merciless clarity to the dancer herself. And such
+      change as she observed she ascribed to recent illness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Magda got through that first evening at Friars&rsquo; Holm as best she
+      might. The hours seemed interminable. She was aching for night to come, so
+      that she might be alone with her thoughts&mdash;alone to realise and face
+      this new thing which had befallen her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had lost her beauty! The one precious gift she had to give Michael,
+      that lover of all beauty! . . . The knowledge seemed to beat against her
+      brain, throbbing and pulsing like a wound, while she made a pretence at
+      doing justice to the little dinner party, which had been especially
+      concocted for her under Virginie&rsquo;s watchful eye, and responded in some
+      sort to Coppertop&rsquo;s periodic outbreaks of jubilation over her return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the moment of release came at length. A final good-night kiss to
+      Gillian on the landing outside her bedroom door, and then a nerve-racking
+      hour while Virginie fussed over her, undressing her and preparing her for
+      bed with the same tender care she had devoted to the <i>bebe</i> she had
+      nursed and tended more than twenty years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was over at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleep well!&rdquo; And Virginie switched off the electric light as she pattered
+      out of the room, leaving Magda alone in the cool dark, with the silken
+      softness of crepe de chine once more caressing her slender limbs, and the
+      fineness of lavender-scented linen smooth against her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ease, and comfort, and wellbeing of it all! Yet this first night,
+      passed in the familiar luxury which had lapped her round since childhood,
+      was a harder, more bitter night than any of the preceding three hundred
+      and sixty-five she had spent tossing weary, aching limbs on a lumpy straw
+      mattress with a coarse brown woollen blanket drawn up beneath her chin,
+      vexing her satin skin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For each of those nights had counted as a step onwards along the hard road
+      that was to lead her back eventually to Michael. Now she knew that they
+      had all been endured in vain. Spiritually her self-elected year of
+      discipline might have fitted her to be the wife of &ldquo;Saint Michel.&rdquo; But the
+      undimmed physical beauty and charm which Michael, the man and artist,
+      would crave in the woman he loved was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The recognition of these things rushed over her, overwhelming her with a
+      sense of blank and utter failure. It meant the end of everything. As far
+      as she was concerned, life henceforward held nothing more. There was
+      nothing to hope for in the future&mdash;except to hope that Michael might
+      never see her again! At least, she would like to feel that his memory of
+      her&mdash;of the Wielitzska whose lithe grace and beauty had swept him
+      headlong even against the tide of his convictions&mdash;would remain for
+      ever unmarred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a rather touching human little weakness&mdash;the weakness and
+      prayer of many a woman who has lost her lover. . . . Let him remember her&mdash;always&mdash;as
+      she was before the radiance of youth faded, before grief or pain blurred
+      the perfection that had been hers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps for Magda the wish was even stronger, more insistent by reason of
+      the fact that her beauty had been of so fine and rare a quality, setting
+      her in a way apart from other women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the instinct of the wounded wild creature she longed to hide&mdash;to
+      hide herself from Michael, so that she might never see in his eyes that
+      look of quickly veiled disappointment which she knew would spring into
+      them as he realised the change in her. She felt she could not bear that.
+      It would be like a sword-thrust through her heart. . . . Better if she had
+      never left the sisterhood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly every nerve of her tautened. Supposing&mdash;supposing she
+      returned there, never to emerge again? No chance encounter could ever then
+      bring her within sight or sound of Michael. She would be spared watching
+      the old, eager look of admiration fade suddenly from the grey eyes she
+      loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hour after hour she lay there, dry-eyed, staring into the darkness. And
+      with the dawn her decision was taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AN UNANSWERED LETTER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shan&rsquo;t do it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When first Magda had bruited her idea of rejoining the sisterhood&mdash;the
+      decision which had crystallised out of the long black hours of the night
+      of her return to Friars&rsquo; Holm&mdash;Gillian had merely laughed the notion
+      aside, attaching little importance to it. But now, a week later, when
+      Magda reverted to the subject with a certain purposeful definiteness, she
+      grew suddenly frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to throw away every possibility of happiness?&rdquo; she demanded
+      indignantly. &ldquo;Just because Michael isn&rsquo;t here, waiting for you on the
+      doorstep, so to speak, you decide to rush off and make it impossible for
+      him ever to see you again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda kept her head bent, refusing to meet the other&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want him to see me now,&rdquo; she said shrinkingly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not&mdash;not
+      the Magda he knew any longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s an absurd exaggeration. You&rsquo;re not looking very well, that&rsquo;s all,&rdquo;
+       retorted Gillian with her usual practical common sense. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t suppose
+      that would make any difference to Michael! It didn&rsquo;t make any to me. I&rsquo;m
+      only too glad to have you back at any price!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda&rsquo;s faint responsive smile was touched with that bitter knowledge
+      which is the heritage of the woman who has been much loved for her beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a woman, Gillyflower,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And Michael is not only a man&mdash;but
+      an artist. Men don&rsquo;t want you when the bloom has been brushed off. And you
+      know how Michael worships beauty! He&rsquo;s bound to&mdash;being an artist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re morbidly self-conscious,&rdquo; declared Gillian firmly. &ldquo;I
+      suppose it&rsquo;s the result of being out of the world for so long. You&rsquo;ve lost
+      all sense of proportion. You&rsquo;re quite lovely enough, now, to satisfy most
+      people. You only look rather tired and worn out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Magda&rsquo;s face remained clouded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But even that isn&rsquo;t&mdash;all,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s&mdash;oh, it&rsquo;s a heap
+      of things! Somehow I thought when I came back I should see the road clear.
+      But it isn&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s all shadowed&mdash;just as it was before. I thought I
+      should have so much to give Michael now. And I haven&rsquo;t anything. I don&rsquo;t
+      think I ever quite realised before that, however much you try to atone,
+      you can never <i>undo</i> the harm you&rsquo;ve done. But I&rsquo;ve had time to think
+      things out while I was with the Sisters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if you go back to them you&rsquo;ll have time to do nothing but think for
+      the rest of your life!&rdquo; flashed back Gillian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; Magda spoke quickly. &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t return under a vow of
+      penitence. There are working sisters attached to the community who go
+      about amongst the sick and poor in the slums. I should join as a working
+      sister if I went back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian stared at her in amazement. Magda devoting her life to good works
+      seemed altogether out of the picture! She began to feel that the whole
+      affair was getting too complicated for her to handle, and as usual, when
+      in a difficulty, she put the matter up to Lady Arabella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter, with her accumulated wisdom of seventy years, saw more clearly
+      than the younger woman, although even she hardly understood that sense of
+      the deadly emptiness and failure of her life which had overwhelmed Magda
+      since her return to Friars&rsquo; Holm. But the old woman realised that she had
+      passed through a long period of strain, and that, now the reaction had
+      come, the Vallincourt blood in her might drive her into almost any extreme
+      of conduct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If only Michael were on the spot!&rdquo; she burst out irritably. &ldquo;I own I&rsquo;m
+      disappointed in the man! I was so sure six months would bring him to his
+      senses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; assented Gillian miserably. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s&mdash;the most
+      hopeless state of things imaginable!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella&rsquo;s interview with Magda herself proved unproductive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you written to Michael?&rdquo; she demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Written to him?&rdquo; A flash of the old defiant spirit sounded in Magda&rsquo;s
+      voice. &ldquo;No, nor shall I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be a fool, child. He&rsquo;s probably learned something during this last
+      twelve months&mdash;as well as you. Don&rsquo;t let pride get in your way now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not pride. Marraine, I never knew&mdash;I never thought&mdash;&mdash;Look
+      at me! What have I to give Michael now? Have you forgotten that he&rsquo;s an
+      artist and that beauty means everything to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Well!&rsquo;&rdquo; Magda held out her hands. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you see that I&rsquo;m changed? . . .
+      Michael wouldn&rsquo;t want me to pose for him as Circe now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wanted you for a wife&mdash;not a model, my dear. You can buy models
+      at so much the hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Marraine! You won&rsquo;t understand&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella took the slender, work-roughened hands in hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I understand better than you think,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;There are
+      other ways of assessing life than merely in terms of beauty. And you can
+      believe this, too: you&rsquo;ve lost nothing from the point of view of looks
+      that a few months of normal healthy life won&rsquo;t set right. Moreover, if
+      you&rsquo;d grown as plain as a pikestaff, I don&rsquo;t think Michael would care
+      twopence! He&rsquo;s an artist, I know. He can&rsquo;t help that, but he&rsquo;s a man
+      first. And he&rsquo;s a man who knows how to love. Promise me one thing,&rdquo; she
+      went on insistently. &ldquo;Promise that you&rsquo;ll do nothing definite&mdash;yet.
+      Not, at least, without consulting me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Magda hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well. I&rsquo;ll do nothing without&mdash;telling you&mdash;first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the utmost concession she would make, and with that her godmother
+      had to be content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same evening a letter in Lady Arabella&rsquo;s spirited, angular handwriting
+      sped on its way to Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re not absolutely determined to ruin both your own and Magda&rsquo;s
+      lives, my dear Michael, put your pride and your ridiculous principles in
+      your pocket and come back to England. I don&rsquo;t happen to be a grandmother,
+      but I&rsquo;m quite old enough for the job, so you might pay my advice due
+      respect by taking it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I was shelved altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Dan Storran, rather crossly, when, a day or two later, he met Gillian
+      by appointment for lunch at their favourite little restaurant in Soho. It
+      was the first time she had been able to fix up a meeting with him since
+      Magda&rsquo;s return, as naturally his customary visits to Friars&rsquo; Holm were out
+      of the question now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you expected my time to be pretty well occupied the first week or
+      two after Magda came back, didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; countered Gillian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled as she spoke and proceeded leisurely to draw off her gloves,
+      while Storran signalled to a waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was really very glad to see him again. There was something so solid
+      and dependable about him, and she felt it would be very comforting to
+      confide in him her anxieties concerning Magda. Not that she anticipated he
+      would have any particular compassion to bestow upon the latter. But she
+      was femininely aware that inasmuch as Magda&rsquo;s affairs were disturbing her
+      peace of mind, he would listen to them with sympathetic attention and
+      probably, out of the depths of his man&rsquo;s consciousness, produce some quite
+      sound and serviceable advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being a wise woman, however, she did not launch out into immediate
+      explanation, but waited for him to work off his own individual grumble at
+      not having seen her recently, trusting to the perfectly cooked little
+      lunch to exercise a tranquillising effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not until they had reached the cigarette and coffee stage of the
+      proceedings that she allowed a small, well-considered sigh to escape her
+      and drift away into the silence that had fallen between them. Storran
+      glanced across at her with suddenly observant eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he asked quickly. &ldquo;You look worried. Are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded silently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And here I&rsquo;ve been grousing away about my own affairs all the time! Why
+      didn&rsquo;t you stop me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know I&rsquo;m interested in your affairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m interested in yours. What&rsquo;s bothering you, Gillian? Tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magda,&rdquo; said Gillian simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was rather surprised to observe that Dan&rsquo;s face did not, as usual,
+      darken at the mere mention of Magda&rsquo;s name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw her the other day,&rdquo; he said quickly. &ldquo;I was in the Park and she
+      drove by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian felt that there was something more to come. She waited in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has altered very much,&rdquo; he went on bluntly. Then, after a moment: &ldquo;I
+      felt&mdash;sorry for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>You</i> did, Dan?&rdquo; Gillian&rsquo;s face lit up. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad. I&rsquo;ve always hated
+      your being so down on her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With an abrupt movement he jabbed the glowing stub of his cigarette on to
+      an ash-tray, pressing it down until it went out. Then, taking out his
+      case, he lit another before replying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t be &lsquo;down on her&rsquo; any more,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;I never guessed
+      she&rsquo;d felt things&mdash;like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. No one did. I don&rsquo;t suppose even Magda herself knew she could ever go
+      through all she has done just for an ideal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then very quietly, very simply and touchingly, she told him the story of
+      all that had happened, of Magda&rsquo;s final intention of becoming a working
+      member of the sisterhood, and of Lady Arabella&rsquo;s letter summoning Michael
+      back to England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But even when he comes,&rdquo; added Gillian, &ldquo;unless he is very careful&mdash;unless
+      he loves her in the biggest way a man can love, so that <i>nothing else
+      matters</i>, he&rsquo;ll lose her. He&rsquo;ll have to convince her that she means
+      just that to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran was silent for a long time, and when at last he spoke it was with
+      an obvious effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s something you don&rsquo;t know. Perhaps when I&rsquo;ve
+      told you, you won&rsquo;t have anything more to say to me&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian opened her lips in quick disclaimer, but he motioned her to be
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Wait till you&rsquo;ve heard what I have to say. You think,
+      and Magda thinks, that June died of a broken heart&mdash;at least, that
+      the shock of all that miserable business down at Stockleigh helped to kill
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Gillian assented mechanically when he paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so, too, once. It was what June&rsquo;s sister told me&mdash;told
+      everyone. But it wasn&rsquo;t true. She believed it, I know&mdash;probably
+      believes it to this day. But, thank God, it wasn&rsquo;t true!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you tell? All that strain and heart-break just at a time when she
+      wasn&rsquo;t strong. Oh, Dan! We can never be sure&mdash;<i>sure</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>am</i> sure. Quite sure,&rdquo; he said steadily. &ldquo;When I came to my
+      senses out there in &lsquo;Frisco, I couldn&rsquo;t rest under that letter from June&rsquo;s
+      sister. It burned into me like a red-hot iron. I was half-mad with pain, I
+      think. I wrote to the doctor who had attended her, but I got no answer.
+      Then I sailed for England, determined to find and see the man for myself.
+      I found him&mdash;my letter had miscarried somehow&mdash;and he told me
+      that June could not have lived. There were certain complications in her
+      case which made it impossible. In fact, if she had been so happy that she
+      had longed to live&mdash;and <i>tried</i> to&mdash;it would only have made
+      it harder for her, a rougher journey to travel. As it was, she went
+      easily, without fighting death&mdash;letting go, without any effort, her
+      hold on life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He ceased, and after a moment&rsquo;s silence Gillian spoke in strained,
+      horror-stricken tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you never told us! Oh! It was cruel of you, Dan! You would have
+      spared Magda an infinity of self-reproach!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want to spare her. I left her in ignorance on purpose. I wanted
+      her to be punished&mdash;to suffer as she had made me suffer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There were tears in Gillian&rsquo;s eyes. It was terrible to her that Dan could
+      be so bitter&mdash;so vengefully cruel. Yet she recognised that it had
+      been but the natural outcome of the man&rsquo;s primitive nature to pay back
+      good for good and evil for evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why do you tell me now?&rdquo; she asked at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;because you&rsquo;ve beaten me&mdash;you with your sweetness and
+      courage and tolerance. You&rsquo;ve taught me that retribution and punishment
+      are best left in&mdash;more merciful Hands than ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s hand went out to meet his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Dan, I&rsquo;m so glad!&rdquo; she said simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept her hand in his a moment, then released it gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you can tell her now,&rdquo; he said awkwardly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I?&rdquo; Gillian smiled a little. &ldquo;No. I want you to tell her. Don&rsquo;t you see,
+      Dan&rdquo;&mdash;as she sensed his impulse to refuse&mdash;&ldquo;it will make all the
+      difference in Magda if you and she are&mdash;are square with each other?
+      She&rsquo;s overweighted. She&rsquo;s been carrying a bigger burden than she can bear.
+      Michael comes first, of course, but there&rsquo;s been her treatment of you, as
+      well. June, too. And&mdash;and other things. And it&rsquo;s crushing her. . . .
+      No, you must tell her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will&mdash;if you say I must. But she won&rsquo;t forgive me easily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she will. I think she&rsquo;ll understand just what made you do it. So
+      now we&rsquo;ll go back to Friars&rsquo; Holm together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later Storran came slowly downstairs from the little room where he
+      and Magda had met again for the first time since that moonlight night at
+      Stockleigh&mdash;met, not as lovers, but as a man and woman who have each
+      sinned and each learned, out of their sinning, how to pardon and forgive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran was very quiet and grave when presently he found himself alone
+      with Gillian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We men will never understand women,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s an angel hidden
+      away somewhere in every one of you.&rdquo; His mouth curved into a smile,
+      half-sad, half-whimsical. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just found Magda&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella and Gillian, both feeling rather like conspirators, waited
+      anxiously for a reply to the former&rsquo;s letter to Quarrington. But none
+      came. The time slipped by until a fortnight had elapsed, and with the
+      passage of each day their hearts sank lower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of them believed that Michael would have utterly disregarded the
+      letter, had he received it, but they feared that it might have miscarried,
+      or that he might be travelling and so not receive it in time to prevent
+      Magda&rsquo;s carrying out her avowed intention of becoming a working member of
+      the sisterhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even though she knew now that at least June Storran&rsquo;s death need no longer
+      be added to her account, she still adhered to her decision. As she had
+      told Dan with a weary simplicity: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad. But it won&rsquo;t make any
+      difference&mdash;to Michael and me. Too much water has run under the
+      bridge. Love that is dead doesn&rsquo;t come to life again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Each day was hardening her resolve, and both Lady Arabella and Gillian&mdash;those
+      two whose unselfish happiness was bound up in her own&mdash;were beginning
+      to realise that it would be a race against time if she was to be saved
+      from taking a step that would divide her from Michael as long as they both
+      should live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of a fortnight Gillian, driven to desperation, despatched a
+      telegram to his Paris address: &ldquo;Did you receive communication from Lady
+      Arabella?&rdquo; But it shared the fate of the letter, failing to elicit any
+      reply. She allowed sufficient time to elapse to cover any ordinary delay
+      in transit, then, unknown to Magda, taxied down to the house in Park Lane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to invite Magda to stay with you, please,&rdquo; she informed Lady
+      Arabella abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I will,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;But why? You&rsquo;ve got a reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she acknowledged quietly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to Paris&mdash;to find
+      Michael.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella, whose high spirits had wilted a little in the face of the
+      double disappointment regarding any answer from Quarrington, beamed
+      satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You blessed child!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d have gone myself, but my old body
+      is so stiff with rheumatism that I don&rsquo;t believe they&rsquo;d get me on board
+      the boat except in an ambulance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m going,&rdquo; said Gillian. &ldquo;Only the point is, Magda mustn&rsquo;t know.
+      If she thought I was going off in pursuit of Michael I believe she&rsquo;d lock
+      me up in the cellar. She intends never to let him see her again. Melrose
+      will manage about the letters, and somehow you&rsquo;ve got to prevent Magda
+      from coming to Friars&rsquo; Holm and finding out that I&rsquo;m not there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take her away with me,&rdquo; declared Lady Arabella. &ldquo;Rheumatism&mdash;Harrogate.
+      It&rsquo;s quite simple.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian heaved a sigh of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. That would be a good plan,&rdquo; she agreed. &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;d let you know when
+      we should arrive&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;We?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael and I. I&rsquo;m not coming back without him. And you could bring Magda
+      straight back to town with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Arabella&rsquo;s keen old eyes searched her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sound very certain of success. Supposing you find Michael still
+      unforgiving&mdash;and he refuses to return with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe in Michael,&rdquo; replied Gillian steadily. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s made mistakes.
+      People in love do. But when he knows all that Magda has endured&mdash;for
+      his sake, really&mdash;why, he&rsquo;ll come back. I&rsquo;m sure of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, my dear. <i>I</i> was sure he would come back within six
+      months. But, you see, I was wrong. Men are kittle cattle&mdash;and often
+      very slow to arrive at the intrinsic value and significance of things. A
+      woman jumps to it while a man is crawling round on his hands and knees in
+      the dark, looking for it with a match.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian laughed and got up to go, and Lady Arabella&mdash;whose rheumatism
+      was quite real at the moment&mdash;rose rather painfully and hobbled down
+      the room beside her, her thin, delicate old hand resting on the silver
+      knob of a tall, ebony walking-stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, remember,&rdquo; urged Gillian. &ldquo;Magda mustn&rsquo;t have the least suspicion
+      Michael may be coming back&mdash;or she&rsquo;d be off into her slums before you
+      could stop her. <i>Whatever happens</i>, you&rsquo;ve got to prevent her rushing
+      back to the Sisters of Penitence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only over my dead body, my dear,&rdquo; Lady Arabella assured her determinedly.
+      &ldquo;She shan&rsquo;t go any other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Gillian returned to Friars&rsquo; Holm bearing with her a note from Lady
+      Arabella in which she asked her god-daughter to pay her a visit. In it,
+      however, the wily old lady made no mention of her further idea of going to
+      Harrogate, lest it should militate against an acceptance of the
+      invitation. Magda demurred a little at first, but Gillian, suddenly
+      endowed with diplomacy worthy of a Machiavelli, pointed out that if she
+      really had any intention of ultimately withdrawing into a community the
+      least she could do was to give her godmother the happiness of spending a
+      few days with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will only urge me to give up the idea all the time,&rdquo; protested Magda.
+      &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ve quite made up my mind. The sooner I can get away from&mdash;from
+      everything&rdquo;&mdash;looking round her with desperate, haunted eyes&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      better it will be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s impulse to combat her decision to rejoin the sisterhood died on
+      her lips stillborn. It was useless to argue the matter. There was only one
+      person in the world who could save Magda from herself, and that was
+      Michael. The main point was to concentrate on getting him back to England,
+      rather than waste her energies upon what she knew beforehand must prove a
+      fruitless argument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to Marraine for a couple of nights, anyway,&rdquo; said Magda at last.
+      &ldquo;After that, I want to make arrangements for my reception into the
+      sisterhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian returned no answer. She felt her heart contract at the quiet
+      decision in Magda&rsquo;s voice, but she pinned her faith on Lady Arabella&rsquo;s
+      ability to hold her, somehow, till she herself had accomplished her errand
+      to Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AGAINST TIME
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Gillian, dashing headlong into Victoria Station, encountered Storran
+      sauntering leisurely out of it, a newspaper under his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are you off to?&rdquo; he demanded, stopping abruptly. &ldquo;You look as if
+      you were in a hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am. Don&rsquo;t stop me. I&rsquo;m catching the boat-train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran pulled out his watch as he turned and fell into step beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve got a good half-hour to spare. No hurry,&rdquo; he returned
+      placidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian glanced at the watch on her wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo; she asked doubtfully. &ldquo;If so, my watch must be altogether
+      wrong!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unbeliever! Come and look at the clock. And, incidentally, give me that
+      suit-case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She yielded up the case obediently and, having verified the time,
+      proceeded towards the platform at a more reasonable gait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran, his long legs leisurely keeping pace with her shorter ones,
+      smiled down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, for the second time of asking, where are you off to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to France&mdash;to fetch Michael.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a quick exclamation&mdash;whether of surprise or disapproval she
+      was not quite sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t heard from him, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. And unless something happens <i>quick</i>, it will be too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if he were at his studio he would surely have answered Lady
+      Arabella&rsquo;s letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I suppose so,&rdquo; replied Gillian absently, her eyes following the
+      queue of passengers passing through the gate on the platform. By mutual
+      consent they had come to a standstill outside it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if he isn&rsquo;t there, what&rsquo;s the use of your rushing over to Paris?&rdquo;
+       protested Storran. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s absurd&mdash;an absolute wild-goose chase. You
+      can&rsquo;t go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s brown eyes came back to his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m going,&rdquo; she said calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Michael&rsquo;s not at his studio he may be&mdash;anywhere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. If so, I shall follow&mdash;anywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran looked down at her and read the quiet determination in her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let me come too,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Sort of courier, you know. I&rsquo;d just be
+      at hand in case of a tangle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! I couldn&rsquo;t let you. There&rsquo;s not the least need. Good heavens, I&rsquo;m
+      not a baby!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a curious softness in Dan&rsquo;s blue eyes as they rested on her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I think you&rsquo;re&mdash;a very good friend,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t see
+      why you should have the monopoly! Let me show I know how to be a good pal,
+      too, if I want to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;no.&rdquo; Gillian still protested, but her tone betrayed signs of
+      weakening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll be as conventional as you like,&rdquo; urged Dan, twinkling. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d stop at
+      different hotels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say &lsquo;yes&rsquo;!&rdquo; he insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You obstinate person! Yes, then!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you. Then I&rsquo;ll go along and buy a ticket.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and went towards the booking-office, while Gillian, inwardly
+      much relieved, awaited his return. She could not but acknowledge that in
+      the &ldquo;wild-goose chase&rdquo; upon which she was embarking it would be an
+      enormous comfort to have Storran at hand in case of an emergency. As to
+      the proprieties&mdash;well, Gillian was far too honest and independent a
+      soul to worry about them in the circumstances. Her friend&rsquo;s happiness was
+      at stake. And whether people chose to talk because she and Dan Storran
+      travelled to Paris together&mdash;or to Timbuctoo, for the matter of that,
+      if Michael had chanced to depart thither&mdash;troubled her not at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Storran rejoined her a much more practical consideration presented
+      itself to her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear man, you can&rsquo;t fly with me to Paris without even a
+      tooth-brush! I&rsquo;d forgotten you&rsquo;d no luggage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face fell as she spoke. But Storran dismissed the matter with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can buy clean collars and shirts as I go along,&rdquo; he replied,
+      entirely unruffled. &ldquo;The dickens was to get on to the train at all! They
+      assured me there wasn&rsquo;t a seat. However, I make a point of never believing
+      official statements&mdash;on principle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as a consequence of such well-directed incredulity, Storran
+      accompanied Gillian to Dover and thence to Calais.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had a good crossing&mdash;sun up and blue sky. Looking back,
+      afterwards, it always seemed to Gillian as though the short time it
+      occupied had been a merciful breathing space&mdash;a tranquil interval,
+      specially vouchsafed, in which she was able to brace herself for the
+      coming race against time. Just so long as they were on board, nothing she
+      could do was of any importance whatever, either to help or hinder the
+      fulfilment of her errand. She could not quicken the speed of the boat by a
+      single throb of its engine. So, like a sensible woman, she sat on deck
+      with Dan and enjoyed herself amazingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterwards, in quick succession, came the stir and bustle of landing and
+      the journey to Paris. They arrived too late to make any inquiries that
+      night, but ten o&rsquo;clock the following morning found them outside the
+      building where Michael had his apartment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Dan!&rdquo;&mdash;Gillian was seized with sudden panic. &ldquo;Supposing he is
+      here, after all, and has <i>deliberately</i> not answered Lady Arabella&rsquo;s
+      letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t suppose anything so foolish. Michael may be many kinds of a
+      fool&mdash;artists very often are, I believe. It&rsquo;s part of the
+      temperament. But whatever he proposed to do regarding Magda, there&rsquo;s no
+      reason in the world to suppose he wouldn&rsquo;t answer Lady Arabella&rsquo;s letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;no. Perhaps not,&rdquo; agreed Gillian hurriedly. But it was in rather
+      a shaky voice that she asked to see Mr. Quarrington when finally they
+      found themselves confronted by the concierge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Quarrington?&rdquo; Hands, shoulders, and eyebrows all seemed to
+      gesticulate at once as madame la concierge made answer. &ldquo;But he has been
+      gone from here two&mdash;no, three months. Perhaps madame did not know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Gillian. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know. But I thought he might possibly be
+      away, because I&mdash;I have had no answer to a letter I wrote him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What misfortune!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The concierge regarded Gillian with a pair of shrewd, gimlet eyes while a
+      stream of inquiry and comment issued from her lips. Madame was the sister
+      of monsieur, perhaps? Truly, they resembled each other! One could see at a
+      glance. No, not a sister? Ah, a friend, then? And there had been no answer
+      to a letter! But monsieur had left an address. Oh, yes. And all letters
+      were forwarded. She herself saw to that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Gillian managed to stem the torrent of garrulity and interposed a
+      question concerning the telegram she had sent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A telegram! Now that was another affair altogether. Yes, the concierge
+      remembered the telegram. She had opened it to see if it were of life or
+      death importance, in which case she would have, of course, telegraphed its
+      contents to monsieur at his present address.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian was nearly crying with impatience as the woman&rsquo;s voluble tongue
+      ran on complacently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you did send it on?&rdquo; she managed to interpolate at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter&mdash;yes. Not, of course, the telegram. That would have been a
+      needless expense seeing that monsieur would already have had the letter,
+      since all the letters were sent on. <i>All!</i> She, Madame Ribot, could
+      vouch for that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of half an hour Gillian succeeded in extracting Michael&rsquo;s
+      address from amid the plethora of words and, bidding the voluble concierge
+      <i>bon jour</i>, she and Storran beat a masterly retreat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It appeared that Michael had been commissioned to paint the portrait of
+      some Italian society beauty and had gone to Rome. Gillian screwed up her
+      small face resolutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall go to Rome!&rdquo; she announced succinctly. There was a definite
+      defiance in her tone, and Storran concealed a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you will,&rdquo; he replied composedly. &ldquo;Just as well I came with
+      you, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; he added with great cheerfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her expression relaxed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You really are rather a nice person, Dan,&rdquo; she allowed graciously. &ldquo;I was
+      horribly afraid you&rsquo;d suggest wiring Michael again, or something silly
+      like that. I&rsquo;m not going to trust to anything of that kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly, the only wire despatched was one to Lady Arabella, informing
+      her as to their movements, and a few hours later found Dan and Gillian
+      rushing across Europe as fast as the thunderous whirl of the express could
+      take them. They travelled day and night, and it was a very weary Gillian
+      who at last opened her eyes to the golden sunshine of Italy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the hotel whither Madame Ribot had directed them, fresh disappointment
+      awaited them. The manager&mdash;when he found that the two dusty and
+      somewhat dishevelled-looking travellers who presented themselves at the
+      inquiry bureau were actually friends of Signor Quarrington, the famous
+      English artist who had stayed at his hotel&mdash;was desolated, but the
+      signor had departed a month ago! Had he the address? But assuredly. He
+      would write it down for the signora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s in Normandy!&rdquo; exclaimed Gillian in tones of bitter disappointment.
+      &ldquo;At&mdash;what&rsquo;s the name of the place?&mdash;Armanches. Oh, Dan! We&rsquo;ve
+      got to go right back to Paris again and then on to the coast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face was full of anxiety. This would mean at least a delay of several
+      days before they could possibly see Michael, and meanwhile it was a moot
+      question as to how much longer Lady Arabella could restrain Magda from
+      taking definite steps with regard to joining the sisterhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said quietly. &ldquo;But all the same, you&rsquo;ll not start back till
+      to-morrow&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but I must!&rdquo; interrupted Gillian. &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t afford to waste a
+      moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced down at her and shook his head. Her face was white and drawn,
+      and there were deep violet shadows underneath her eyes. Suspense and her
+      anxious impatience had told upon her, and she had slept but little on the
+      journey. And now, with the addition of this last, totally unexpected
+      disappointment, she looked as though she could not stand much more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can afford to waste a single day better than we can afford the three
+      or four which it would cost us if you collapsed en route,&rdquo; said Storran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t collapse,&rdquo; she protested with white lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the better. But all the same, you&rsquo;ll stay here till to-morrow and
+      get a good night&rsquo;s rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t sleep,&rdquo; she urged. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go right on, Dan. Let&rsquo;s go&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the sentence was never finished. Quite suddenly she swayed, stretching
+      out her hands with a blind, groping movement. Dan was just in time to
+      catch her in his arms as she toppled over in a dead faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a week later when, in the early morning, a rather wan and
+      white-faced Gillian sprang up from her seat as the train ran into Bayeux.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank goodness we&rsquo;re here at last!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Storran put out his hand to steady her as the train jolted to a
+      standstill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we&rsquo;re here at last,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now to find a vehicle of some
+      description to take us out to Armanches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he had suggested it would, Gillian&rsquo;s collapse had delayed them some
+      time. Probably she had caught a slight chill while travelling, and that,
+      together with the fatigue from which she was suffering, combined to keep
+      her in bed at the hotel in Rome for a couple of days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the slight feverishness had abated, she slept the greater part of the
+      time, her weary body exacting the price for all those wakeful hours she
+      had passed on the train. But it was not until four days had elapsed that
+      Dan would agree to a resumption of the journey. Even then, consent was
+      only wrung from him by the fear that she would fret herself ill over any
+      further delay. He did not consider her by any means fit to travel. But
+      Gillian was game to the core, and they had reached Bayeux without further
+      <i>contretemps</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing that puzzles me,&rdquo; she said as they started on the long drive
+      from Bayeux to Armanches, &ldquo;is why Michael didn&rsquo;t send his Normandy address
+      to Madame Ribot. We should have been saved all that long journey to Rome
+      if he had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he intended to, and forgot,&rdquo; suggested Dan. &ldquo;Artists are
+      proverbially absent-minded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Gillian shook her head with a dissatisfied air. Michael was not of the
+      absent-minded type.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armanches was a tiny place on the Normandy coast, in reality not much more
+      than a fishing village, but its possession of a beautiful <i>plage</i>&mdash;smooth,
+      fine, golden sands&mdash;brought many visitors to the old-fashioned
+      hostelry it boasted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The landlady, a smiling, rosy-cheeked woman, with a chubby little
+      brown-faced son hiding shy embarrassment behind her ample skirts, greeted
+      the travellers hospitably. But when they mentioned Quarrington&rsquo;s name a
+      look of sympathetic concern overspread her comely face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, he was there. And of course madame could not know, but he had been
+      ill, seriously ill with <i>la grippe</i>&mdash;taken ill the very day he
+      had arrived, nearly a month ago. He had a nurse. Oh, yes! One had come
+      from Bayeux. But this influenza! It was a veritable scourge. One was here
+      to-day and gone to-morrow. However, Michael Quarrington was recovering,
+      the saints be praised! Monsieur and madame wished to see him? The good
+      woman looked doubtful. She would inquire. What name? Grey? But there was a
+      telegram awaiting madame!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s face blanched as the landlady bustled away in search of the
+      wire. Had Magda already&mdash;&mdash;Oh, but that was impossible! Lady
+      Arabella was in charge at that end, and Gillian had a great belief in Lady
+      Arabella&rsquo;s capacity to deal with any crisis that might arise.
+      Nevertheless, they had wired her the Normandy address from Rome, in case
+      of necessity. The next moment Gillian had torn open the telegram and she
+      and Dan were reading it together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magda insists we return to London on Wednesday. She has completed
+      preliminary arrangements to join sisterhood and goes there Thursday.
+      Impossible to dissuade her.&mdash;ARABELLA WINTER.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s mouth set itself in a straight line of determination as her eyes
+      raced along the score or so of pregnant words. She was silent a moment.
+      Then she met Storran&rsquo;s questioning glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can just do it,&rdquo; she said sternly. &ldquo;To-day is Wednesday. By crossing
+      to Southampton to-night, we can make London to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without waiting for his reply she entered the inn and ran quickly up the
+      stairs which the landlady had already ascended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, madame, I am not sure that monsieur will receive anyone,&rdquo; protested
+      the astonished woman, turning round as Gillian caught up with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must see him,&rdquo; asserted Gillian quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps something in the tense young face touched a sympathetic chord in
+      the Frenchwoman&rsquo;s honest heart. She scented romance, and when she emerged
+      from the invalid&rsquo;s bedroom her face was wreathed in smiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all arranged. Will madame please to enter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later Gillian found herself standing in front of a tall, gaunt
+      figure of a man, whose coat hung loosely from his shoulders and whose face
+      was worn and haggard with something more than <i>la grippe</i> alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Michael!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little, stricken cry broke from her lips. What men and women make each
+      other suffer! She realised it as she met the stark, bitter misery of the
+      grey eyes that burned at her out of the thin face and remembered the look
+      on Magda&rsquo;s own face when she had last seen her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went straight to the point without a word of greeting or of
+      explanation. There was no time for explanations, except the only one that
+      mattered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michael, why didn&rsquo;t you answer Lady Arabella&rsquo;s letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her. Then he passed his hand wearily across his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Letter? I don&rsquo;t remember any letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wrote to you about a month ago. I know the letter was forwarded on to
+      Rome. It must have followed you here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A month ago?&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a light broke over his face. He turned and crossed the room to where
+      a small pile of letters lay on a table, dusty and forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps it&rsquo;s here,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was taken ill directly I arrived. I never
+      even sent this address to the concierge at Paris. I believe I was off my
+      head part of the time&mdash;&lsquo;flue plays the deuce with you. But I remember
+      now. The nurse told me there were some letters which had come while I was
+      ill. I&mdash;didn&rsquo;t bother about them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he spoke he was turning over the envelopes, one by one, in a
+      desultory fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. This is Lady Arabella&rsquo;s writing.&rdquo; He paused and looked across at
+      Gillian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you read it, please?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And&mdash;oh, you ought to sit
+      down! You don&rsquo;t look very strong yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not quite such a crock as I look. But won&rsquo;t you sit down yourself
+      while I read this letter? Is it of importance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Please read it!&rdquo; exclaimed Gillian with sudden nervous impatience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to her an eternity while he read the letter. But at last he
+      looked up from its perusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; she asked under her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very deliberately he refolded the sheet of notepaper and slipped it back
+      into its envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would have made no difference if I had received it earlier,&rdquo; he said
+      composedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No difference&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None. Because, you see, this letter&mdash;asking me to go back to Magda&mdash;is
+      written under a misapprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How? What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean&mdash;that Magda has&mdash;no further use for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian leaned forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re wrong,&rdquo; she said tersely&mdash;&ldquo;quite wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo; He shook his head. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not blaming her. Looking back, I&rsquo;m not even
+      very much surprised. But still, the fact remains, she has no further use
+      for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you tell me what makes you think that?&rdquo; With an effort Gillian
+      forced herself to speak quietly and composedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent a moment, staring out of the window at the gay blue sea
+      beyond, sparkling in the morning sunlight. All at once he swung round on
+      her, his face wrung with a sudden agony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>know</i>,&rdquo; he said in a roughened voice. &ldquo;I know, because I wrote to
+      her&mdash;six months ago. I was hard, I know, brutally hard to her that
+      last day at Friars&rsquo; Holm. But&mdash;God! I paid for it afterwards! And I
+      wrote to her&mdash;bared my very soul to her. . . . Wrote so that if she
+      had ever cared she must at least have answered me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped abruptly, his face working.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she didn&rsquo;t answer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A wry smile twisted his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got my own letter back,&rdquo; he said quietly. &ldquo;After all, that was an
+      answer&mdash;a conclusive one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian was thinking rapidly. Six months ago! A momentary flash of
+      recollection came to her. So Lady Arabella, that wise old citizen of the
+      world, had been quite right after all! She had given Michael six months to
+      find out his imperative need of Magda. And he had found it. Only&mdash;something
+      had gone wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magda never had that letter,&rdquo; she said quietly at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was gradually beginning to piece together the separate parts of the
+      puzzle. All letters that came for Magda had been forwarded on to the
+      sisterhood, and had she herself readdressed this of Michael&rsquo;s she would
+      have recognised the handwriting. But probably she had been away from home,
+      or had chanced to be out at post time, in which case Melrose, or old
+      Virginie, would have readdressed the envelope and dropped it in the pillar
+      box at the corner of the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then&mdash;as was the case with any correspondence addressed to one of the
+      Sisters of Penitence&mdash;the letter would be read by the Mother Superior
+      and passed on to its destined recipient if she thought good. If not&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian had learned a great deal about Catherine Vallincourt by now, both
+      from Lady Arabella and from Magda herself, who, before leaving the
+      community, had discovered the identity of its head. And she could
+      visualise the stern, fanatical woman, obsessed by her idea of disciplining
+      Magda and of counteracting the effects of her brother&rsquo;s marriage with
+      Diane Wielitzska, opening the letter and, after perusal, calmly sealing it
+      up in its envelope again and returning it to the sender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magda never had that letter, Michael,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; And then,
+      without preamble, but with every word vibrant with pity for the whole
+      tragedy, she poured out the story of Magda&rsquo;s passionate repentance and
+      atonement, of her impetuous adoption of her father&rsquo;s remorseless theory,
+      mistaken though it might be, that pain is the remedy for sin, and of the
+      utter, hopeless despair which had overwhelmed her now that she believed it
+      had all proved unavailing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has come to believe that you don&rsquo;t want her&mdash;never could want
+      her, Michael&mdash;because she has failed so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was more than one reproach mingled with the story, but Michael made
+      no protest. It was only when she had finished that Gillian could read in
+      his tortured eyes all that her narrative had cost him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said at last. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s true. I wanted the impossible. I was looking
+      for a goddess&mdash;not a woman. . . . But now I want&mdash;just a woman,
+      Gillian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, if you want her, you must save her from herself. You&rsquo;ve just
+      twenty-four hours to do it in. To-morrow she&rsquo;s still Magda. The next day
+      she&rsquo;ll be Sister Somebody. And you&rsquo;ll have lost her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour later, when Michael&rsquo;s nurse returned, she found her patient
+      packing a suit-case with the assistance of a pretty, brown-haired girl
+      whose eyes shone with the unmistakable brightness of recent tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re not fit to travel!&rdquo; she protested in horrified dismay. &ldquo;You
+      mustn&rsquo;t think of it, Mr. Quarrington.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Michael only laughed at her, defying her good-humouredly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the man you loved were waiting for you in England, nurse, you know
+      you&rsquo;d go&mdash;and you wouldn&rsquo;t care a hang whether you were fit to travel
+      or not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The nurse smiled in spite of herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she admitted. &ldquo;I suppose I shouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Havre-Southampton boat steamed through the moonlit night, Dan and
+      Gillian were pacing the deck together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m so glad Michael is going back to Magda without knowing&mdash;about
+      June,&rdquo; said Gillian, coming to a standstill beside the deck-rail. &ldquo;Going
+      back just because his love is too big for anything else to matter now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you told him?&rdquo;&mdash;Storran&rsquo;s voice held surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I decided not to. I should like Magda to tell him that herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were both silent for a little while. Gillian bent over the rail,
+      looking down at the phosphorescent water breaking away from the steamer&rsquo;s
+      bow. Suddenly a big hand covered hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m&mdash;lonely,&rdquo; said Storran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gillian,&rdquo; he went on, his voice deepening. &ldquo;Gillian . . . dear. We&rsquo;re two
+      rather lonely people. We shall be lonelier still when Michael and Magda
+      are married. Couldn&rsquo;t we be lonely&mdash;in company?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillian&rsquo;s hand moved a little beneath his, then stayed still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Dan&mdash;Dan&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; she stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; went on the strong, tender voice. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m asking you to marry me,
+      Gillian, I&rsquo;d never expect too much of you. We both know all that&rsquo;s in the
+      past of each of us. But we might help each other to be less lonely&mdash;good
+      comrades together, Gillian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And suddenly Gillian realised how good it would be to rest once more in
+      the shelter of a man&rsquo;s affection and good comradeship&mdash;to have
+      someone to laugh with or to be sorry with. There&rsquo;s a tender magic in the
+      word &ldquo;together.&rdquo; And she, too, had something to give in return&mdash;sympathy,
+      and understanding, and a warm friendship. . . . She would not be going to
+      him empty-handed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it yes, Gillian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She bent her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Dan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXXII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE EDGE OF THE DAWN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Magda paused outside the closed door of the room. She knew whom she would
+      see within. Lady Arabella had told her he was there waiting for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her first impulse had been to refuse to meet him. Then the temptation to
+      see him again&mdash;just once more&mdash;before she passed out of his life
+      altogether, rushed over her like the surge of some resistless sea,
+      sweeping everything before it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very quietly she opened the door and went into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magda!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She never knew whether he really uttered her name or whether it was only
+      the voiceless, clamorous cry of his whole consciousness&mdash;of a man&rsquo;s
+      passionate demand for the woman who is mate of his soul and body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she answered its appeal, her innermost being responding to the claim
+      of it. All recollection of self, of the dimming of her beauty, even of the
+      great gulf of months that lay between them, crowded with mistakes and
+      failure, was burned away in the white-hot flame of love that blazed up
+      within her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran to him, and that white, searing flame found its expression in the
+      dear human tenderness of the little cry that broke from her as he turned
+      his gaunt face towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Saint Michel! Saint Michel! How dreadfully ill you look! Oh, my dear&mdash;sit
+      down! You&rsquo;re not fit to stand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when that first instinctive cry had left her lips, memory came
+      flooding over her once more. She shrank back from him, covering her face
+      with her hands, agonisingly conscious of the change in herself&mdash;of
+      that shadowing of her beauty which the sensitiveness of a woman in love
+      had so piteously magnified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, drawing her hands slowly down, she braced herself to say what must
+      be said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are free of me, Michael.&rdquo; She spoke in a curious, still voice. &ldquo;I
+      know Marraine and Gillian between them have brought you back. But you are
+      free of me. As you see&mdash;I shall never do any more harm. No other man
+      will come to grief for the sake of the Wielitzska. . . . I determined that
+      as I had made others pay, so I would pay. I think&rdquo;&mdash;suddenly moving
+      towards the window and standing full in the brilliant sunlight&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      think you&rsquo;ll agree I&rsquo;ve settled the bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael came to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you for my wife,&rdquo; he said simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out her work-roughened hands, while the keen-edged sunlight
+      pitilessly revealed the hollowed line of cheek and throat, the lustreless
+      dark hair, the fine lines that Pain, the great Sculptor, had graved about
+      her mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are an artist before everything, Michael,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Look&mdash;look
+      well!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the two work-worn hands in his and drew her nearer him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m your lover before everything,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;When will you come to
+      me, Magda?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; she said whisperingly. &ldquo;I mustn&rsquo;t come. You&rsquo;ll never&mdash;never
+      quite forgive me. Some day the past would come between us again&mdash;you&rsquo;ll
+      never forget it all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he replied steadily. &ldquo;Perhaps not. Consequences <i>cannot</i> be
+      evaded. There are things that can&rsquo;t be forgotten. But one forgives. And I
+      love you&mdash;love you, Magda, so that I can&rsquo;t face life without you.&rdquo;
+       His voice vibrated. &ldquo;The past must always lie like a shadow on our love.
+      But you&rsquo;re my woman&mdash;my soul! And if you&rsquo;ve sinned, then it must be
+      my sin, too&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned away from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;June?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded with set lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;then you don&rsquo;t know&mdash;you haven&rsquo;t heard?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His expression answered her and her face changed&mdash;grew suddenly
+      radiant, transfigured. &ldquo;Oh, Saint Michel&mdash;Saint Michel! Then there is
+      one thing I can do, one gift I have still left to give! Oh, my dear, I can
+      take away the shadow!&rdquo; Her voice breathless and shaken, she told him how
+      June had died&mdash;all that Dan Storran had learned from the doctor who
+      had attended her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I hurt her&mdash;hurt her without thinking. But oh, Michael! Thank
+      God, it wasn&rsquo;t through me that she died!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Michael, as he folded his arms about her, knew that the shadow which
+      had lain between him and the woman he loved was there no longer. They were
+      free&mdash;freed from those &ldquo;ropes of steel&rdquo; which had held them bound.
+      Free to go together and find once more their Garden of Eden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, when those first perfect moments of reunion were past, Magda
+      gave utterance to the doubts and perplexities that still vexed her soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pain may purify,&rdquo; she said slowly. &ldquo;But it spoils, Michael, and blots,
+      and ruins. I think, after all, pain is meaningless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael&rsquo;s grey, steady eyes met her troubled ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think pain&mdash;just as pain&mdash;purifies,&rdquo; he answered
+      quickly. &ldquo;Pain is merely horrible. It is the <i>willingness to suffer</i>
+      that shrives us&mdash;not the pain itself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Later still, the essential woman in her came into its own again. &ldquo;I shall
+      never be able to sit for you any more, Saint Michel,&rdquo; she said
+      regretfully. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m nobody&rsquo;s model&mdash;now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could see only her lost beauty&mdash;the unthinking, radiant beauty of
+      mere youth. But Michael could see all that her voluntary renunciation and
+      atonement had bestowed in its stead of more enduring significance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took her by the hand and led her to the mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; he said, a great content in his voice, &ldquo;is the model for the
+      greatest picture I shall ever paint&mdash;the model for my &lsquo;Madonna.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lamp of Fate, by Margaret Pedler
+
+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 Lamp of Fate
+
+Author: Margaret Pedler
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2006 [EBook #3824]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAMP OF FATE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LAMP OF FATE
+
+
+By Margaret Pedler
+
+
+     Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried,
+     Asking, "What Lamp of Destiny to guide
+        Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?"
+     And--"A blind Understanding!" Heaven replied.
+     The "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam.
+
+
+To AUDREY HEATH
+
+DEAR AUDREY: I always feel that you have played the part of Fairy
+Godmother in a very special and delightful way to all my stories, and
+in particular to this one, the plot of which I outlined to you one
+afternoon in an old summer-house. So will you let me dedicate it to you?
+Yours always,
+
+MARGARET PEDLER.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LAMP OF FATE
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE NINTH GENERATION
+
+The house was very silent. An odour of disinfectants pervaded the
+atmosphere. Upstairs hushed, swift steps moved to and fro.
+
+Hugh Vallincourt stood at the window of his study, staring out with
+unseeing eyes at the smooth, shaven lawns and well-kept paths with their
+background of leafless trees. It seemed to him that he had been standing
+thus for hours, waiting--waiting for someone to come and tell him that a
+son and heir was born to him.
+
+He never doubted that it would be a son. By some freak of chance
+the first-born of the Vallincourts of Coverdale had been, for eight
+successive generations, a boy. Indeed, by this time, the thing had
+become so much a habit that no doubts or apprehensions concerning the
+sex of the eldest child were ever entertained. It was accepted as a
+foregone conclusion, and in the eyes of the family there was a certain
+gratifying propriety about such regularity. It was like a hall-mark of
+heavenly approval.
+
+Hugh Vallincourt, therefore, was conscious at this critical moment of
+no questionings on that particular score. He was merely a prey to the
+normal tremors and agitations of a husband and prospective father.
+
+For an ageless period, it seemed to him, his thoughts had clung about
+that upstairs room where his wife lay battling for her own life and
+another's. Suddenly they swung back to the time, a year ago, when he
+had first met her--an elusive feminine thing still reckoning her age in
+teens--beneath the glorious blue and gold canopy of the skies of Italy.
+
+Their meeting and brief courtship had been pure romance--romance such
+as is bred in that land of mellow warmth and colour, where the flower of
+passion sometimes buds and blooms within the span of a single day.
+
+In like manner had sprung to life the love between Hugh Vallincourt
+and Diane Wielitzska, and rarely has the web of love enmeshed two more
+dissimilar and ill-matched people--Hugh, a man of seven-and-thirty, the
+strict and somewhat self-conscious head of a conspicuously devout old
+English family, and Diane, a beautiful dancer of mixed origin, the
+illegitimate offspring of a Russian grand-duke and of a French artist's
+model of the Latin Quarter.
+
+The three dread Sisters who determine the fate of men must have laughed
+amongst themselves at such an obvious mismating, knowing well how
+inevitably it would tangle the threads of many other lives than the two
+immediately concerned.
+
+Vallincourt had been brought up on severely conventional lines, reared
+in the narrow tenets of a family whose salient characteristics were
+an overweening pride of race and a religious zeal amounting almost to
+fanaticism, while Diane had had no up-bringing worth speaking of. As for
+religious views, she hadn't any.
+
+Yet neither the one nor the other had counted in the scale when the
+crucial moment came.
+
+Perhaps it was by way of an ironical set-off against his environment
+that Fate had dowered Hugh with his crop of ruddy hair--and with the
+ardent temperament which usually accompanies the type. Be that as it
+may, he was swept completely off his feet by the dancer's magic beauty.
+The habits and training of a lifetime went by the board, and nothing
+was allowed to impede the swift (not to say violent) course of his
+love-making. Within a month from the day of their first meeting, he and
+Diane were man and wife.
+
+The consequences were almost inevitable, and Hugh found that his married
+life speedily resolved itself into an endless struggle between the
+dictates of inclination and conscience. Everything that was man in him
+responded passionately to the appeal and charm of Diane's personality,
+whilst everything that was narrow and censorious disapproved her total
+inability to conform to the ingrained prejudices of the Vallincourts.
+
+Not that Diane was in any sense of the word a bad woman. She was merely
+beautiful and irresponsible--a typical _cigale_ of the stage--lovable
+and kind-hearted and pagan, and possessing but the haziest notions of
+self-control and self-discipline. Even so, left to themselves, husband
+and wife might ultimately have found the road to happiness across the
+bridge of their great love for one another.
+
+But such freedom was denied them. Always at Hugh's elbow stood his
+sister, Catherine, a rigidly austere woman, in herself an epitome of all
+that Vallincourts had ever stood for.
+
+Since the death of their parents, twenty years previously, Catherine had
+shared her brother's home, managing his house--and, on the strength of
+her four years' seniority in age, himself as well--with an iron hand.
+Nor had she seen fit to relinquish the reins of government when he
+married.
+
+Privately, Hugh had hoped she might consider the propriety of
+withdrawing to the dower house attached to the Coverdale estates, but if
+the idea had occurred to her, she had never given it utterance, and Hugh
+himself had lacked the courage to propose such an innovation.
+
+So it followed that Catherine was ever at hand to criticise and condemn.
+She disapproved of her brother's marriage wholly and consistently. In
+her eyes, he had committed an unpardonable sin in allying himself with
+Diane Wielitzska. It was his duty to have married a woman of the type
+conventionally termed "good," whose blood--and religious outlook--were
+alike unimpeachable; and since he had lamentably failed in this respect,
+she never ceased to reproach him. Diane she regarded with chronic
+disapprobation, exaggerating all her faults and opposing her joy-loving,
+butterfly nature with an aloofly puritanical disdain.
+
+Amid the glacial atmosphere of disapproval into which marriage had
+thrust her, Diane found her only solace in Virginie, a devoted French
+servant who had formerly been her nurse, and who literally worshipped
+the ground she walked on. Conversely, Virginie's attitude towards Miss
+Vallincourt was one of frank hostility. And deep in the hearts of
+both Diane and Virginie lurked a confirmed belief that the birth of a
+child--a son--would serve to bring about a better understanding between
+husband and wife, and in the end assure Diane her rightful place as
+mistress of the house.
+
+"_Vois-tu_, Virginie," the latter would say hopefully. "When I have a
+little baby, I shall have done my duty as the wife of a great
+English milord. Even Miss Catherine will no longer regard me as of no
+importance."
+
+And Virginie would reply with infinite satisfaction:
+
+"Of a certainty, when madame has a little son, Ma'moiselle Catherine
+will be returned to her place."
+
+And now at last the great moment had arrived, and upstairs Catherine and
+Virginie were in attendance--both ousted from what each considered her
+own rightful place of authority by a slim, capable, and apparently quite
+unconcerned piece of femininity equipped against rebellion in all the
+starched panoply of a nurse's uniform, while downstairs Hugh stared
+dumbly out at the frosted lawns, with their background of bare, brown
+trees swaying to the wind from the north.
+
+The door behind him opened suddenly. Hugh whirled round. He was a
+tall man with a certain rather formal air of stateliness about him,
+a suggestion of the _grand seigneur_, and the unwontedly impulsive
+movement was significant of the strain under which he was labouring.
+
+Catherine was standing on the threshold of the room with something in
+her arms--something almost indistinguishable amid the downy, fleecy
+froth of whiteness amid which it lay.
+
+Hugh was conscious of a new and strange sensation deep down inside
+himself. He felt rather as though all the blood in his body had rushed
+to one place--somewhere in the middle of it--and were pounding there
+against his ribs.
+
+He tried to speak, failed, then instinctively stretched out his arms for
+the tiny, orris-scented bundle which Catherine carried.
+
+The next thing of which he was conscious was Catherine's voice as she
+placed his child in his arms--very quiet, yet rasping across the tender
+silence of the room like a file.
+
+"Here, Hugh, is the living seal which God Himself has set upon the sin
+of your marriage."
+
+Hugh's eyes, bent upon the pink, crumpled features of the scrap of
+humanity nestled amid the bunchy whiteness in his arms, sought his
+sister's face. It was a thin, hard face, sharply cut like carved ivory;
+the eyes a light, cold blue, ablaze with hostility; the pale obstinate
+lips, usually folded so impassively one above the other, working
+spasmodically.
+
+For a moment brother and sister stared at each other in silence. Then,
+all at once, Catherine's rigidly enforced composure snapped.
+
+"A girl child, Hugh!" she jeered violently. "A _girl_--when you prayed
+for a boy!"
+
+"A girl?"
+
+Hugh stared stupidly at the babe in his arms.
+
+"Ay, a girl!" taunted Catherine, her voice cracking with rising
+hysteria. "_A girl!_ . . . For eight generations the first-born has been
+a son. And the ninth is a girl! The daughter of a foreign dancing-woman!
+. . . God has indeed taken your punishment into His own Hands!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE WIDENING GULF
+
+The birth of a daughter came upon Hugh in the light of an almost
+overwhelming shock. He was quite silent when, in response to Catherine's
+imperative gesture, he surrendered the child into her arms once more.
+As she took it from him he noticed that those thin, angular arms of hers
+seemed to close round the little swaddled body in an almost jealously
+possessive clasp. But there was none of the tender possessiveness of
+love about it. In some oddly repugnant way it reminded him of the motion
+of a bird of prey at last gripping triumphantly in its talons a victim
+that has hitherto eluded pursuit.
+
+He turned back dully to his contemplation of the wintry garden, nor, in
+his absorption, did he hear the whimpering cry--almost of protest--that
+issued from the lips of his first-born as Catherine bore the child away.
+
+For a space it seemed as though his mind were a blank, every thought and
+feeling wiped out of it by the stupendous, nullifying fact that his wife
+had given birth to a daughter. Then, with a rush as torturing as the
+return of blood to benumbed limbs, emotions crowded in upon him.
+
+Catherine's incessant denunciations of his "sin" in marrying Diane
+Wielitzska--poured upon him without stint throughout this first year of
+his marriage--seemed to din in his ears anew. Such phrases as "selling
+your soul," "putting a woman of that type in our sainted mother's
+place," "mingling the blood of a foreign dancing-woman with our own,"
+jangled against each other in his mind.
+
+Had he really been guilty of a sin against his conscience--satisfied his
+desires irrespective of all sense of duty?
+
+He began to think he had, and to wonder in a disturbed fashion if God
+thought so too. What was it Catherine had said? _"God has indeed taken
+your punishment into His own Hands."_
+
+Hugh was only too well aware of the facts which gave the speech its
+trenchant significance. He himself had inherited owing to the death of
+an elder brother in early childhood. But there was no younger brother
+to step into his own shoes, and failing an heir in the direct line of
+succession the title and entailed estate would of necessity go to Rupert
+Vallincourt, a cousin--a gay and debonair young rake of much charm of
+manner and equal absence of virtue. From both Catherine's and Hugh's
+point of view he was the last man in the world fitted to become the head
+of the family. Hence the eagerness with which they had anticipated the
+arrival of a son and heir.
+
+And now, prompted by Catherine's bitter taunt, the birth of a daughter
+as his first-born--the first happening of the kind for eight successive
+generations--appeared to Hugh in the light of a direct manifestation of
+God's intention that no son born of Diane Wielitzska should be dowered
+with such influence as the heir to the Vallincourts must necessarily
+wield.
+
+Better, even, that the title and estates should go to Rupert! Bad as
+his reputation might be, good blood ran in his veins on either side--an
+inherited tradition of right-doing which was bound to assert itself in
+succeeding generations. Whereas in the offspring of Diane heaven alone
+knew what hidden inherited tendencies towards evil might lie fallow, to
+develop later and work incalculable mischief in the world.
+
+Hugh felt crushed by the unexpected blow which had befallen him. Since
+his marriage, he had opposed a forced indifference to his sister's
+irreconcilable attitude, finding compensation in the glowing moments of
+his passion for Diane. Nevertheless--since living in an atmosphere of
+disapproval tends to fray the strongest nerves--his temper had worn a
+little fine beneath the strain; and with Diane's faults and failings
+thrust continually on his notice he had unconsciously grown more
+critical of her.
+
+And now, all at once, it seemed as though scales had been torn from his
+eyes. He saw his marriage for the first time from the same standpoint as
+Catherine saw it, and in the unlooked-for birth of a daughter he thought
+he recognised the Hand of God, sternly uprooting his most cherished
+hopes and minimising, as much as possible, the inevitable evil
+consequences of his weakness in marrying Diane.
+
+He was conscious of a rising feeling of resentment against his wife.
+Words from an old Book flashed into his mind: _"The woman tempted me."_
+
+With the immediate instinct of a weak nature--the very narrowness
+and rigidity of his views was a manifestation of weakness, had he but
+realised it--he was already looking for someone with whom to share the
+blame for his lapse from the Vallincourt standard of conduct, and in
+that handful of wayward charm, red lips, and soft, beguiling eyes which
+was Diane he found what he sought.
+
+
+
+Again the room door opened. This time, instead of putting a longed-for
+end to a blank period of suspense, the little quiet clicking of the
+latch cut almost aggressively across the conflict of Hugh's thoughts. He
+turned round irritably.
+
+"What is it?" he demanded.
+
+A uniformed nurse was standing in the doorway. At the sound of his
+curtly-spoken question she glanced at him with a certain contemplative
+curiosity in her eyes. They might have held surprise as well as
+curiosity had she not lately stood beside that huge, canopied bed
+upstairs, listening pitifully to a woman's secret fears and longings,
+unveiled in the delirium of pain.
+
+"I know you sometimes wish you hadn't married me. . . . I'm not good
+enough. And Catherine hates me. Yes, she does, she does! And she'll make
+you hate me too! But you won't hate me when my baby comes, will you,
+Hugh? You want a little son . . . a little son . . ."
+
+Nurse Maynard could hear again the weary, complaining voice, trailing
+off at last in the silence of exhaustion, and an impulse of indignation
+added a sharp edge to her tone as she responded to Hugh's query.
+
+"Her ladyship is asking to see you, Sir Hugh. She ought to rest now, but
+she is too excited. She has been expecting you."
+
+There was no mistaking the implied rebuke in the last sentence, and
+Hugh's face darkened.
+
+"I'll come," he said, briefly, and followed the crisp starched figure
+up the stairs and into a half-darkened room, smelling faintly of
+antiseptics.
+
+Vaguely the white counterpane outlined the slim figure of Diane upon the
+bed. The nurse raised the blind a little, and the light of the westering
+sun fell across the pillow, revealing a small, dark head which turned
+eagerly at the sound of Hugh's entrance.
+
+"Hugh!" The voice from the bed came faintly.
+
+Hugh looked down at his wife. Probably never had Diane looked more
+beautiful.
+
+The little worldly, sophisticated expression common to her features had
+been temporarily obliterated by the holy suffering of motherhood, and
+the face of the "foreign dancing-woman," born and bred in a quarter of
+the world where virtue is a cheap commodity, was as pure and serene as
+the face of a Madonna.
+
+She held out her hands to her husband, her lips curving into a smile
+that was all love and tenderness.
+
+"Hugh--_mon adore!_"
+
+The lover in him sent him swiftly to her side, and as he drew her
+into his arms she let her head fall back against his shoulder with a
+tremulous sigh of infinite content.
+
+And then, from the firelit corner of the room, came the sound of a
+feeble wailing. Hugh started as though stung, and his eyes left his
+wife's face and riveted themselves upon the figure in the low chair by
+the hearth--Virginie, rocking a little as she sat, and crooning a Breton
+lullaby to the baby in her arms.
+
+In a moment remembrance rushed upon him, cutting in twain as though
+with a dividing sword this exquisite moment of reunion with his wife.
+Insensibly his arms relaxed their clasp of the frail body they held, and
+Diane, sensing their slackening, looked up startled and disconcerted.
+
+Her eyes followed the direction of his glance, then, coming back to
+his face, searched it wildly. Instantly she knew the meaning of that
+suddenly limp clasp and all that it implied.
+
+"Hugh!" The throbbing tenderness had gone out of her voice, leaving it
+dry and toneless. "Hugh! You don't mean . . . you're _angry_ that it's a
+girl?"
+
+He looked down at her--at the frightened eyes, the lovely face fined by
+recent pain, and all his instinct was to reassure and comfort her. But
+something held him back. The old, narrow creed in which he had been
+reared, whose shackles he had broken through when he had recklessly
+followed the bidding of his heart and married Diane, was once more
+mastering him--bidding him resist the natural human impulses of love and
+kindliness evoked by his wife's appeal.
+
+_"God Himself has taken your punishment into His own Hands."_
+
+Again he seemed to hear Catherine's accusing tones, and the fanatical
+strain inbred in him answered like a boat to its helm. There must be no
+more compromise, no longer any evasion of the issues of right and wrong.
+He had sinned, and both he and the woman for whose sake he had defied
+his own creed, and that of his fathers before him, must make atonement.
+He drew himself up, and stood stiff and unbending beside the bed. In his
+light-grey eyes there shone that same indomitable ardour of the zealot
+which had shone in Catherine's.
+
+"No," he said. "I am not angry that the child is a girl. I accept it as
+a just retribution."
+
+No man possessed of the ordinary instincts of common humanity would have
+so greeted his wife just when she had emerged, spent and exhausted,
+from woman's supreme conflict with death. But the fanatic loses sight of
+normal values, and Hugh, obsessed by his newly conceived idea of atoning
+for the sin of his marriage, was utterly oblivious of the enormity of
+his conduct as viewed through unbiased eyes.
+
+The woman who had just fought her way through the Valley of the Shadow
+stared at him uncomprehendingly.
+
+"Retribution?" she repeated blankly.
+
+"For my marriage--our marriage."
+
+Diane's breath came faster.
+
+"What--what do you mean?" she asked falteringly. Suddenly a look of
+sheer terror leaped into her eyes, and she clutched at Hugh's sleeve.
+"Oh, you're not going to be like Catherine? Say you're not! Hugh, you've
+always said she was crazy to call our marriage a sin. . . . _A sin!_"
+She tried to laugh, but the laugh stuck in her throat, caught and pinned
+there by the terror that gripped her.
+
+"Yes, I've said that. I've said it because I wanted to think it," he
+returned remorselessly, "not because I really thought it."
+
+Diane dragged herself up on to her elbow.
+
+"I don't understand. You've not changed?" Then, as he made no answer:
+"Hugh, you're frightening me! What do you mean? What has Catherine been
+saying to you?"
+
+Her voice rose excitedly. A patch of feverish colour appeared on either
+cheek. Old Virginie sprung up from her chair by the fire, alarmed.
+
+"You excite madame!"
+
+Hugh turned to leave the room.
+
+"We'll discuss this another time, Diane," he said.
+
+Diane moved her head fretfully.
+
+"No. Now--now! Don't go! Hugh!"
+
+Her voice rose almost to a scream and simultaneously the nurse came
+hurrying in from the adjoining room. She threw one glance at the
+patient, huddled flushed and excited against the pillows, then without
+more ado she marched up to Hugh and, taking him by the shoulders with
+her small, capable hands, she pushed him out of the room.
+
+"Do you want to _kill_ your wife?" she demanded in a low voice of
+concentrated anger. "If so, you're going the right way about it."
+
+The next moment the door closed behind her, and Hugh found himself
+standing alone on the landing outside it.
+
+
+
+Although the scene with her husband did not kill Diane, it went very
+near it. For some time she was dangerously ill, but at last the combined
+efforts of doctor and nurse restored her once more to a frail hold upon
+life, and the resiliency of youth accomplished the rest.
+
+Curiously enough, the remembrance of Hugh's brief visit to her bedside
+held for her no force of reality. When the fever which had ensued
+abated, she described the whole scene in detail to Virginie and the
+nurse as an evil dream which she had had--and pitifully they let her
+continue in this belief.
+
+Even Hugh himself had been compelled, under protest, to take part in
+this deception. The doctor, a personal friend of his, had not minced
+matters.
+
+"You've acted the part of an unmitigated coward, Vallincourt--salving
+your own fool conscience at your wife's expense. Even if you no longer
+love her--"
+
+"But I do love her," protested Hugh. "I--I _worship_ her!"
+
+Jim Lancaster stared. In common with most medical men he was more or
+less used to the odd vagaries of human nature, but Hugh's attitude
+struck him as altogether incomprehensible.
+
+"Then what in the name of thunder have you been getting at?" he
+demanded.
+
+"I both love and hate her," declared Hugh wretchedly.
+
+"That's rot," retorted the other. "It's impossible."
+
+"It's not impossible."
+
+Hugh rose and began pacing backwards and forwards. Lancaster's eyes
+rested on him thoughtfully. The man had altered during the last few
+weeks--altered incredibly. He was a stone lighter to start with, and
+his blond, clear-cut face had the worn look born of mental conflict. His
+eyes were red-rimmed as though from insufficient sleep.
+
+"It's not impossible." Hugh paused in his restless pacing to and fro. "I
+love her because I can't help myself. I hate her because I ought never
+to have married her--never made a woman of her type the mother of my
+child."
+
+"All mothers are sacred," suggested the doctor quietly.
+
+Hugh seemed not to hear him.
+
+"How long is this pretence to go on, Lancaster?" he demanded irritably.
+
+"What pretence?"
+
+"This pretence that nothing is changed--nothing altered--between my wife
+and myself?"
+
+"For ever, I hope. So that, after all, there will have been no
+pretence."
+
+But the appeal of the speech was ineffectual. Hugh looked at the other
+man unmoved.
+
+"It's no use hoping that you and I can see things from the same
+standpoint," he added stubbornly. "I've made my decision--laid down
+the lines of our future life together. I'm only waiting till you, as a
+medical man, tell me that Diane's health is sufficiently restored for me
+to inform her."
+
+"No woman is ever in such health that you can break her heart with
+impunity."
+
+Hugh's light-grey eyes gleamed like steel.
+
+"Will you answer my question?" he said curtly.
+
+Lancaster sprang up.
+
+"Diane is in as good health now as ever she was," he said violently. And
+strode out of the room.
+
+
+
+During the period of her convalescence Diane, attended by Nurse Maynard,
+had occupied rooms situated in a distant wing of the house, where the
+invalid was not likely to be disturbed by the coming and going of other
+members of the household, and it was with almost the excitement of
+a schoolgirl coming home for the holidays that, when she was at last
+released from the doctor's supervision, she retook possession of her
+own room. She superintended joyously the restoration to their accustomed
+place her various little personal possessions, and finally peeped into
+her husband's adjoining room, thinking she heard him moving there.
+
+On the threshold she paused irresolutely, conscious of an odd sense of
+confusion. The room was vacant. But, beyond that, its whole aspect was
+different somehow, unfamiliar. Her eyes wandered to the dressing-table.
+Instead of holding its usual array of silver-backed brushes and polished
+shaving tackle, winking in the sunshine, it was empty. She stared at
+it blankly. Then her glance travelled slowly round the room. It had a
+strangely untenanted look. There was no sign of masculine attire left
+carelessly about--not a chair or table was a hairbreadth out of its
+appointed place.
+
+Her hand, resting lightly on the door-handle, gripped it with a sudden
+tensity. The next moment she had crossed the room and torn open the
+doors of the great armoire where Hugh kept his clothes. This, too, was
+empty--shelves and hanger alike. Impulsively she rang the bell and,
+when a maid appeared in response, demanded to know the meaning of the
+alteration.
+
+The girl glanced at her with the veiled curiosity of her class.
+
+"It was made by Sir Hugh's orders, my lady."
+
+With an effort, Diane hid the sudden tumult of bewilderment and fear
+that filled her. Her dream! Had it been only a dream? Or had it been
+an actual happening--that terrible little scene with her husband when,
+standing rigid and unbending beside her bed, he had told her that the
+birth of their daughter was a just retribution for a union he regarded
+as a sin?
+
+Memories of their brief year of marriage came surging over her in a
+torrent--Catherine's narrow-minded opposition and disapproval, Hugh's
+own moodiness and irritability and, latterly, his not infrequent
+censure. There had been times when Diane--rebuked incessantly--had
+fancied she must be the Scarlet Woman herself, or at least a very near
+relative. And then had come moments when Hugh, carried away by his
+ardour, had once more played the lover as he alone knew how, with all
+the warmth and abandon of those days when he had wooed her in Italy, and
+Diane would forget her unhappiness and fears in the sure knowledge that
+she was a passionately beloved woman.
+
+But always she was subconsciously aware of a sense of strife--of
+struggle, as though Hugh loved her in spite of himself, in defiance of
+some inner mandate of conscience which accused him.
+
+And now, fear mastered her. Her dream had been a reality. And this--this
+sweeping away from what had been his room of every familiar little
+personal possession--was the symbol of some new and terribly changed
+relation between them.
+
+Forcing herself to move composedly while the maid still watched her,
+she walked slowly out of the room, but the instant the door had closed
+behind her she flew downstairs to her husband's study and, not pausing
+to comply with the unwritten law which forbade entrance there without
+express permission, broke in upon him as he sat at his desk, busily
+occupied with his morning mail.
+
+"Diane!"
+
+Hugh turned towards her with a cold light of astonished disapproval in
+his eyes.
+
+"You know I don't like to be interrupted----"
+
+"I know, I know. But I _had_ to come. Something's happened. There's been
+a mistake. . . . Hugh, they've taken everything out of your room. All
+your things."
+
+She stood beside him breathlessly awaiting his reply--her passionate
+dark eyes fixed on his face, two patches of brilliant colour showing on
+the high cheek-bones that bore witness to her Russian origin.
+
+They made a curious contrast--husband and wife. She, a slender thing of
+fire and flame, hands clenched, lips quivering--woman every inch of her;
+he, immaculate and composed, his face coldly expressionless, yet with
+a hint of something warmer, a suppressed glow, beneath the deliberately
+chill glance of those curious light-grey eyes--the man and bigoted
+fanatic fighting for supremacy within him.
+
+"Hugh! Answer me! Don't sit staring at me like that!" Diane's voice held
+a sharpened sound.
+
+At last he spoke, very slowly and carefully.
+
+"There has been no mistake, Diane. Everything that has been done has
+been with my sanction--by my order. Our marriage has been a culpable
+mistake. Catherine realised it from the beginning. I only realise
+my full guilt now that I am punished. But whatever I can do in
+atonement--reparation, that I have made up my mind to do. The first--the
+chief thing--is that our married life is at an end."
+
+She heard him with a curious absence of surprise. Somehow, from the
+instant she had seen his dismantled room she had known, known surely,
+that the long fight between herself and Catherine was over. And that
+Catherine had won.
+
+"At an end? Hugh, what do you mean? What are you going to do? You're
+not, you're not going to send me away?"
+
+"No, not that. I've no right to punish you. You've been guilty of no
+fault--"
+
+"Except the fault of being myself," she flung back bitterly.
+
+"But I ought never to have married you. I did it, knowing you were not
+fit--suitable"--he corrected himself hastily. "So I alone am to blame.
+You will retain your position here as my wife--mistress of my home."
+Diane, remembering Catherine's despotic rule, smiled mirthlessly. "But
+henceforth you will be my wife in name only. I shall have no wife."
+
+Diane caught that note of dull endurance in his voice, and seized upon
+it. He still cared!
+
+"Hugh, you've listened to Catherine till you've lost all sense of
+truth." She spoke gently, pleadingly. "Don't do this thing. We've been
+guilty of no sin that needs atonement. It isn't wrong to love."
+
+But he was implacable.
+
+"No," he returned. "It isn't wrong to love--but sometimes love should be
+denied."
+
+Diane drew nearer to him, and laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"Not ours, Hugh," she whispered. "Not love like ours--"
+
+"Be silent!"
+
+Hugh sprang to his feet, his eyes ablaze, his voice hoarse and shaking.
+
+"Don't tempt me! Do you think I've found it easy to decide on this? When
+every fibre of my body is calling out for you? My God, no!"
+
+"Then don't do it! Hugh--dearest--"
+
+With sudden violence he caught her by the arms.
+
+"Be silent, I tell you! Don't tempt me! I'll make my penance, accept the
+burden laid on me--that my first-born should be a girl!"
+
+Diane clung to him, resisting his attempt to thrust her from him.
+
+"Hugh! Ah, wait! Listen to me! . . . Dear, some day there may be a
+little son, yours and mine--"
+
+He flung her from him violently.
+
+"There shall never be a son of ours! Never! It is the Will of God."
+
+With an immense effort he checked the rising frenzy within him--the
+ecstasy of the martyr embracing the stake to which he shall be bound. He
+moved across to the door and held it open for her.
+
+"And now, will you please go? That is my last word on the matter."
+
+Diane turned hesitatingly towards the doorway, then paused.
+
+"Hugh----"
+
+There was an infinite appeal in her voice. Her eyes were those of a
+frightened, bewildered child.
+
+"Go, please," he repeated mechanically.
+
+A convulsive sob tore its way through her throat. She stepped blindly
+forward. The next moment the door closed inexorably between husband and
+wife.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SAINT-MICHAEL AND THE WONDER-CHILD
+
+Day by day her husband's complete estrangement from her was rendered
+additionally bitter to Diane by Catherine's complacent air of triumph.
+The latter knew that she had won, severed the tie which bound her
+brother to "the foreign dancing-woman," and she did not scruple to let
+Diane see that she openly rejoiced in the fact.
+
+At first Diane imagined that Catherine might rest content with what she
+had accomplished, but the grim, hard-featured woman still continued to
+exhibit the same self-righteous disapproval towards her brother's wife
+as hitherto.
+
+Diane endured it in resentful silence for a time, but one day, stung by
+some more than usually acid speech of Catherine's, she turned on her,
+demanding passionately why she seemed to hate her even more since the
+birth of the child.
+
+"I nearly gave my life for her," she protested with fierce simplicity.
+"I could do no more! Is it because _le bon dieu_ has sent me a little
+daughter instead of a little son that you hate me so much?"
+
+And Catherine had answered her in a voice of quiet, concentrated
+animosity:
+
+"If you had died then--_died childless_--I should have thanked God day
+and night."
+
+Diane, isolated and unhappy, turned to her baby for consolation. It was
+all that was left to her out of the wreck of her life, and the very fact
+that both Hugh and Catherine seemed to regard the little daughter with
+abhorrence only served to strengthen the passionate worship which she
+herself lavished upon her.
+
+The child--they had called her Magda--was an odd little creature, as
+might have been expected from the violently opposing characteristics of
+her parents.
+
+She was slenderly made--built on the same lithe lines as her mother--and
+almost as soon as she was able to walk she manifested an amazing balance
+and suppleness of limb. By the time she was four years old she was
+trying to imitate, with uncertain little feet and dimpled, aimlessly
+waving arms, the movements of her mother, when to amuse the child, she
+would sometimes dance for her.
+
+However big a tragedy had occurred in Magda's small world--whether it
+were a crack across the insipid china face of a favourite doll or the
+death of an adored Persian kitten--there was still balm in Gilead if
+_"petite maman"_ would but dance for her. The tears shining in big drops
+on her cheeks, her small chest still heaving with the sobs that were
+a passionate protest against unkind fate, Magda would sit on the floor
+entranced, watching with adoring eyes every swift, graceful motion of
+the dancer, and murmuring in the quaint shibboleth of French and English
+she had imbibed from old Virginie.
+
+On one of these occasions Hugh came upon the two unexpectedly and
+brought the performance to a summary conclusion.
+
+"That will do, Diane," he said icily. "I should have thought you would
+have had more self-respect than to dance--in that fashion--in front of a
+child."
+
+"It is, then, a sin to dance--as it is to be married?" demanded Diane
+bitterly, abruptly checked in an exquisite spring-flower dance of her
+own invention.
+
+"I forbid it; that is sufficient," replied Hugh sternly.
+
+His assumption of arrogant superiority was unbearable. Diane's
+self-control wavered under it and broke. She turned and upbraided him
+despairingly, alternately pleading and reproaching, battering all her
+slender forces uselessly against his inflexible determination.
+
+"This is a waste of time, Diane--mine, anyway," he told her. And left
+her shaken with grief and anger.
+
+Driven by a sense of utter revolt, she stormed her way to Catherine, who
+was composedly sorting sheets in the linen room.
+
+"I will not bear it!" she burst out at her furiously. "What have I done
+that I should be treated as an outcast--a pariah?"
+
+Catherine regarded the tense, quivering little figure with chill
+dislike.
+
+"You married my brother," she replied imperturbably.
+
+"And you have separated us! But for you, we should be happy together--he
+and baby and I! But you have spoilt it all. I suppose"--a hint of the
+Latin Quarter element in her asserting itself--"I suppose you think no
+one good enough to marry into your precious family!"
+
+Catherine paused on her way to the cupboard, a pile of fine linen
+pillowslips in her hands.
+
+"Yes," she said quietly. "It is I who have separated you--spoilt your
+happiness, if you like. And I am glad of it. I can't expect anyone like
+you to understand"--there was the familiar flavour of disparagement in
+her tones--"but I am thankful that my brother has seen the wickedness of
+his marriage with you, that he has repented of it, and that he is making
+the only atonement possible!"
+
+She turned and composedly laid the pile of pillowslips in their
+appointed place on the shelf. A faint fragrance of dried lavender
+drifted out from the dark depths of the cupboard. Diane always
+afterwards associated the smell of lavender with her memories of
+Catherine Vallincourt, and the sweet, clean scent of it was spoiled for
+her henceforward.
+
+"I hate you!" she exclaimed in a low voice of helpless rage. "I hate
+you--and I wish to God Hugh had never had a sister!"
+
+"Well"--composedly--"he will not have one much longer."
+
+Diane stared.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that as far as our life together is concerned, it is very nearly
+over."
+
+"Do you mean"--Diane bent towards her breathlessly--"do you mean that
+you are _going away_--going away from Coverdale?"
+
+"Yes. I am entering a sisterhood--that of the Sisters of Penitence, a
+community Hugh is endowing with money that is urgently needed."
+
+"Endowing?"
+
+"As part of the penance he has set himself to perform." Catherine's
+steely glance met and held the younger woman's. "Thanks to you, the
+remainder of his life will be passed in expiation."
+
+Diane shook her head carelessly. Such side-issues were of relatively
+small importance compared with the one outstanding, amazing fact:
+Catherine was going away! Going away from Coverdale--for ever!
+
+"Yes"--Catherine read her thoughts shrewdly--"yes, you will be rid of
+me. I shall not be here much longer."
+
+Diane struck her hands together. For once, not even the fear of
+Catherine's gibing tongue could hold her silent.
+
+"I'm glad--glad--_glad_ you're going away!" she exclaimed passionately.
+"When you are gone I will win back my husband."
+
+"Do you think so?" was all she said.
+
+But to Diane's keyed-up consciousness it was as though the four short
+words contained a threat--the germ of future disaster.
+
+
+
+In due time Catherine quitted Coverdale for the austere seclusion of
+the sisterhood, and a very few weeks sufficed to convince Diane that her
+forebodings had been only too well founded.
+
+Catherine had long been anxious to enter a community, restrained from
+doing so solely by Hugh's need of her as mistress of his house, and
+now that her wish was an accomplished fact, it seemed as though he
+were spurred on to increasing effort by the example of his sister's
+renunciation of the world. He withdrew himself even more completely from
+his wife, sometimes avoiding her company for days at a time, and adopted
+a stringently ascetic mode of life, denying himself all pleasure,
+fasting frequently, and praying and meditating for hours at a stretch
+in the private chapel which was attached to Coverdale. As far as it was
+possible, without actually entering a community, his existence resembled
+that of a monk, and Diane came to believe that he had voluntarily vowed
+himself to a certain form of penance and expiation for the marriage
+which the bigotry of his nature had led him to regard as a sin.
+
+His life only impinged upon his wife's in so far as the upbringing of
+their child was concerned. He was unnecessarily severe with her, and,
+since Diane opposed his strict ruling at every opportunity, Magda's
+early life was passed in an atmosphere of fierce contradictions.
+
+The child inherited her mother's beauty to the full, and, as she
+developed, exhibited an extraordinary faculty for getting her own way.
+Servants, playmates, and governesses all succumbed to the nameless charm
+she possessed, while her mother and old Virginie frankly worshipped her.
+
+The love of dancing was instinctive with her, and this, unknown to Hugh,
+her mother cultivated assiduously, fostering in her everything that
+was imaginative and delicately fanciful. Magda believed firmly in
+the existence of fairies and regarded flowers as each possessed of
+a separate entity with personal characteristics of its own. The
+originality of the dances she invented for her own amusement was the
+outcome.
+
+But, side by side with this love of all that was beautiful, she absorbed
+from her mother a certain sophisticated understanding of life which was
+somewhat startling in one of her tender years, and this, too, betrayed
+itself in her dancing. For it is an immutable law that everything--good,
+bad, and indifferent--which lies in the soul of an artist ultimately
+reveals itself in his work.
+
+And Magda, inheriting the underlying ardour of her father's temperament
+and the gutter-child's sharp sense of values which was her mother's
+Latin Quarter garnering, at the age of eight danced, with all the
+beguilement and seductiveness of a trained and experienced dancer.
+
+Even Hugh himself was not proof against the elusive lure of it. He
+chanced upon her one day, dancing in her nursery, and was so carried
+away by the charm of the performance that for the moment he forgot that
+she was transgressing one of his most rigid rules.
+
+In the child's gracious, alluring gestures he was reminded of the first
+time that he had seen her mother dance, and of how it had thrilled him.
+Beneath the veneer with which his self-enforced austerity had overlaid
+his emotions, he felt his pulses leap, and was bitterly chagrined at
+being thus attracted.
+
+He found himself brought up forcibly once more against the inevitable
+consequences of his marriage with Diane, and reasoned that through his
+weakness in making such a woman his wife, he had let loose on the
+world a feminine thing dowered with the seductiveness of a Delilah and
+backed--here came in the exaggerated family pride ingrained in
+him--by all the added weight and influence of her social position as a
+Vallincourt.
+
+"Never let me see you dance again, Magda," he told her. "It is
+forbidden. If you disobey you will be severely punished."
+
+Magda regarded him curiously out of a pair of long dark eyes the colour
+of black smoke. With that precociously sophisticated instinct of hers
+she realised that the man had been emotionally stirred, and divined in
+her funny child's mind that it was her dancing which had so stirred him.
+It gave her a curious sense of power.
+
+"Sieur Hugh is _afraid_ because he likes me to dance," she told her
+mother, with an impish little grin of enjoyment.
+
+(On one occasion Hugh had narrated for her benefit the history of an
+ancestor, one Sieur Hugues de Vallincourt, whose effigy in stone adorned
+the church, and she had ever afterwards persisted in referring to her
+father as "Sieur Hugh"--considerably to his annoyance, since he regarded
+it as both disrespectful and unseemly.)
+
+From this time onwards Magda seemed to take a diabolical delight
+in shocking her father--experimenting on him, as it were. In some
+mysterious way she had become conscious of her power to allure. Young
+as she was, the instinct of conquest was awakened within her, and she
+proceeded to "experiment" on certain of her father's friends--to their
+huge delight and Hugh's intense disgust. Once, in an outburst of fury,
+he epitomised her ruthlessly.
+
+"The child has the soul of a courtesan!"
+
+If this were so, Hugh had no knowledge of how to cope with it. His
+fulminations on the subject of dancing affected her not at all, and a
+few days after he had rebuked her with all the energy at his command he
+discovered her dancing on a table--this time for the delectation of an
+enraptured butler and staff in the servants' hall.
+
+Without more ado Hugh lifted her down and carried her to his study,
+where he administered a sound smacking. The result astonished him
+considerably.
+
+"Do you think you can stop me from dancing by beating me?"
+
+Magda arraigned him with passionate scorn.
+
+"I do," he returned grimly. "If you hurt people enough you can stop them
+from committing sin. That is the meaning of remedial punishment."
+
+"I don't believe it!" she stormed at him. "You might hurt me till I
+_died_ of hurting, but you couldn't make me good--not if I hated your
+hurting me all the time! Because it isn't good to hate," she added out
+of the depths of some instinctive wisdom.
+
+"Then you'd better learn to like being punished--if that will make you
+good," retorted Hugh.
+
+Magda sped out into the woods. Hugh's hand had been none too light,
+and she was feeling physically and spiritually sore. Her small soul was
+aflame with fierce revolt.
+
+Just to assure herself of the liberty of the individual and of the fact
+that "hurting couldn't make her good," she executed a solitary little
+dance on the green, mossy sward beneath the trees. It was rather a
+painful process, since certain portions of her anatomy still tingled
+from the retributive strokes of justice, but she set her teeth and
+accomplished the dance with a consciousness of unholy glee that added
+appreciably to the quality of the performance.
+
+"Are you the Fairy Queen?"
+
+The voice came suddenly out of the dim, enfolding silence of the woods,
+and Magda paused in the midst of a final pirouette. A man was standing
+leaning against the trunk of a tree, watching her with whimsical grey
+eyes. Behind him, set up in the middle of a clearing amongst the trees,
+an easel and stool evidenced his recent occupation.
+
+Magda returned the scrutiny of the grey eyes. She was no whit
+embarrassed and slowly lowered her foot--she had been toe-dancing--to
+its normal position while she surveyed the newcomer with interest.
+
+He was a tall, lean specimen of mankind, and the sunlight, quivering
+between the interlacing boughs above his head, flickered on to kinky
+fair hair that looked almost absurdly golden contrasted with the brown
+tan of the face beneath it. It was a nice face, Magda decided, with a
+dogged, squarish jaw that appealed to a certain tenacity of spirit which
+was one of her own unchildish characteristics, and the keen dark-grey
+eyes she encountered were so unlike the cold light-grey of her father's
+that it seemed ridiculous the English language could only supply the one
+word "grey" to describe things that were so totally dissimilar.
+
+"They're like eyes with little fires behind them," Magda told herself.
+Then smiled at their owner radiantly.
+
+"Are you the Fairy Queen?" he repeated gravely.
+
+She regarded him with increasing approval.
+
+"Yes," she assented graciously. "These are my woods."
+
+"Then I'm afraid I've been trespassing in your majesty's domain,"
+admitted the grey-eyed man. "But your woods are so beautiful I simply
+had to try and make a sketch of them."
+
+Magda came back to earth with promptitude.
+
+"Oh, are you an artist?" she demanded eagerly.
+
+He nodded, smiling.
+
+"I'm trying to be."
+
+"Let me look." She flashed past him and planted herself in front of the
+easel.
+
+"_Mais, c'est bon!_" she commented coolly. "Me, I know. We have good
+pictures at home. This is a good picture."
+
+The man with the grey eyes looked suitably impressed.
+
+"I'm glad you find it so," he replied meekly. "I think it wants just one
+thing more. If"--he spoke abstractly--"if the Fairy Queen were resting
+just there"--his finger indicated the exact point on the canvas--"tired,
+you know, because she had been dancing to one of the Mortals--lucky
+beggar, wasn't he?--why, I think the picture would be complete."
+
+Magda shot him a swift glance of comprehension. Then, without a word,
+she moved towards the bole of a tree and flung herself down with all the
+supple grace of a young faun. The artist snatched up his palette; the
+pose she had assumed without a hint from him was inimitable--the slender
+limbs relaxed and drooping exactly as though from sheer fatigue. He
+painted furiously, blocking in the limp little figure with swift, sure
+strokes of his brush.
+
+When at last he desisted he flung a question at her.
+
+"Who taught you to pose--and to dance like that, you wonder-child?"
+
+Magda surveyed him with that mixture of saint and devil in her long,
+suddenly narrow eyes which, when she grew to womanhood, was the measure
+of her charm and the curse of her tempestuous life.
+
+"_Le bon dieu_," she responded demurely.
+
+The man smiled and shook his head. It was a crooked little smile, oddly
+humorous and attractive.
+
+"No," he said with conviction. "No. I don't think so."
+
+The daylight was beginning to fade, and he started to pack up his
+belongings.
+
+"What's your name?" asked Magda suddenly.
+
+"Michael."
+
+She looked at him with sudden awe.
+
+"Not--not _Saint Michel_?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+Virginie had told her all about "_Saint Michel_." He was a very great
+angel indeed. It would be tremendously exciting to find she had been
+talking to him all this time without knowing it! And the grey-eyed man
+had fair hair; it shone in the glinting sunset-light _almost_ like a
+halo!
+
+He quenched her hopes with that brief, one-sided smile of his.
+
+"No," he said. "I'm not Saint Michael. I'm only a poor devil of a
+painter who's got his way to make in the world. Perhaps, you've helped
+me, Fairy Queen."
+
+And seeing that "The Repose of Titania" was the first of his paintings
+to bring Michael Quarrington that meed of praise and recognition which
+was later his in such full measure, perhaps she had.
+
+"I think I'm glad you're not a saint, after all," remarked Magda
+thoughtfully. "Saint's are dreadfully dull and superior."
+
+He smiled down at her.
+
+"Are they? How do you know?"
+
+"Because Sieur Hugh is preparing to be one. At least Virginie says
+so--and she sniffs when she says it. So you see, I know all about it."
+
+"I see," he replied seriously. "And who are Sieur Hugh and Virginie?"
+
+"Sieur Hugh is my father. And Virginie is next best to _petite maman_.
+Me, I love Virginie."
+
+"Lucky Virginie!"
+
+Magda made no answer, but she stood looking at him with an odd,
+unchildlike deviltry in her sombre eyes.
+
+"Fairy Queen, I should like to kiss you," said the man suddenly. Then he
+jerked his head back. "No, I wouldn't!" he added quickly to himself. "By
+Jove, it's uncanny!"
+
+Magda remained motionless, still staring at him with those long dark
+eyes of hers. He noticed that just at the outer corners they slanted
+upwards a little, giving her small, thin face a curiously Eastern look.
+
+At last--
+
+"Please kiss me, Saint Michael," she said.
+
+For a moment he hesitated, a half-rueful, half-whimsical smile on his
+lips, rather as though he were laughing at himself. Then, with a shrug
+of his shoulders, he stooped quickly and kissed her.
+
+"Witch-child!" he muttered as he strode away through the woods.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SEED OF EVIL
+
+Diane sat in the twilight, brooding. Winter had come round again,
+gripping the world with icy fingers, and she shivered a little as she
+crouched in front of the fire.
+
+She felt cold--cold in body and soul. The passage of time had brought no
+cheery warmth of love or loving-kindness to her starved heart, and the
+estrangement between herself and Hugh was as definite and absolute as
+it had been the day Catherine quitted Coverdale for the Sisterhood of
+Penitence.
+
+But the years which had elapsed since then had taken their inevitable
+toll. Hugh had continued along the lines he had laid down for himself,
+rigidly ascetic and austere, and his mode of life now revealed itself
+unmistakably in his thin, emaciated face and eyes ablaze with fanatical
+fervour.
+
+Diane, thrust into a compulsory isolation utterly foreign to her
+temperament, debarred the fulfilment of her womanhood which her
+spontaneous, impetuous nature craved, had drooped and pined, gradually
+losing both her buoyant spirit and her health in the loveless atmosphere
+to which her husband had condemned her.
+
+She had so counted on the prospect that a better understanding between
+herself and Hugh would ensue after Catherine's departure that the
+downfall of her hopes had come upon her as a bitter disappointment. Once
+she had stifled her pride and begged him to live no longer as a stranger
+to her. But he had repulsed her harshly, refusing her pleading with an
+inexorable decision there was no combating.
+
+Afterwards she had given herself up to despair, and gradually--almost
+imperceptibly at first--her health had declined until finally, at the
+urgent representations of Virginie, Hugh had called in Dr. Lancaster.
+
+"There is no specific disease," he had said. "But none the
+less"--looking very directly at Hugh--"your wife is dying, Vallincourt."
+
+Diane had been told the first part of the doctor's pronouncement, and
+recommended by her husband to "rouse herself" out of her apathetic
+state.
+
+"'No specific disease!'" she repeated bitterly, as she sat brooding in
+the firelight. "No--only this death in life which I have had to endure.
+Well, it will be over soon--and the sooner the better."
+
+The door burst open suddenly and Magda came in to the room, checking
+abruptly, with a child's stumbling consciousness of pain, as she caught
+sight of her mother curled up in front of the fire, staring mutely into
+its glowing heart.
+
+"_Maman_?" she begin timidly. "_Petite maman_?"
+
+Diane turned round.
+
+"Cherie, is it thou?"
+
+She kneeled up on the hearthrug and, taking the child in her arms,
+searched her face with dry, bright eyes.
+
+"Baby," she said. "Listen! And when thou art older, remember always what
+I have said."
+
+Magda stared at her, listening intently.
+
+"Never, never give your heart to any man," continued Diane. "If you
+do, he will only break it for you--break it into little pieces like the
+glass scent-bottle which you dropped yesterday. Take everything. But do
+not give--anything--in return. Will you remember?"
+
+And Magda answered her gravely.
+
+"_Oui, maman_, I will remember."
+
+What happened after that remained always a confused blur in Magda's
+memory--a series of pictures standing out against a dark background of
+haste and confusion, and whispered fears.
+
+Suddenly her mother gave a sharp little cry and her hands went up to
+her breast, while for a moment her eyes, dilated and frightened-looking,
+stared agonisingly ahead. Then she toppled over sideways and lay in a
+little heap on the great bearskin rung in front of the fire.
+
+After that Virginie came running, followed by a drove of scared-looking
+servants and, last of all, by Hugh himself, his face very white and
+working strangely.
+
+The car was sent off in frantic haste in search of Dr. Lancaster, and
+later in the day two white-capped nurses appeared on the scene. Then
+followed hours of hushed uncertainty, when people went to and fro
+with hurried, muffled footsteps and spoke together in whispers, while
+Virginie's face grew yellow and drawn-looking, and the tears trickled
+down her wrinkled-apple cheeks whenever one spoke to her.
+
+Last of all someone told Magda that "_petite maman_" had gone away--and
+on further inquiry Virginie vouchsafed that she had gone to somewhere
+called Paradise to be with the blessed saints.
+
+"When will she come back again?" demanded Magda practically.
+
+Upon which Virginie had made an unpleasant choking noise in her throat
+and declared:
+
+"Never!"
+
+Magda was frankly incredulous. _Petite maman_ would never go away like
+that and leave her behind! Of that she felt convinced, and said so.
+Gulping back her sobs, Virginie explained that in this case madame had
+been given no choice, but added that if Magda comported herself like a
+good little girl, she would one day go to be with her in Paradise. Magda
+found it all very puzzling.
+
+But when, later, she was taken into her mother's room and saw the
+slender, sheeted figure lying straight and still on the great bed,
+hands meekly crossed upon the young, motionless breast, while tall white
+candles burned at head and foot, the knowledge that _petite maman_ had
+really gone from her seemed all at once to penetrate her childish mind.
+
+That aloofly silent figure could not be her gay, pretty _petite
+maman_--the one who had played and laughed with her and danced so
+exquisitely that sometimes Magda's small soul had ached with the sheer
+beauty and loveliness of it. . . .
+
+She met Dr. Lancaster as she came out from the candle-lit room and
+clutched him convulsively by the hand.
+
+"Is that--being dead?" she whispered, pointing to the room she had just
+quitted.
+
+Very gently he tried to explain things to her. Afterwards Magda
+overheard the family lawyer asking him in appropriately shocked tones of
+what complaint Lady Vallincourt had died, and there had been a curious
+grim twist to Lancaster's mouth as he made answer.
+
+"Heart," he said tersely.
+
+"Ah! Very sad. Very sad indeed," rejoined the lawyer feelingly. "These
+heart complaints are very obscure sometimes, I believe?"
+
+"Sometimes," said Lancaster. "Not always."
+
+
+
+The next happening that impressed itself on Magda's cognisance as an
+event was the coming of Lady Arabella Winter. She arrived on a day of
+heavy snow, and Magda's first impression of her, as she came into the
+hall muffled up to the tip of her patrician nose in a magnificent sable
+wrap, was of a small, alert-eyed bird huddled into its nest.
+
+But when the newcomer had laid aside her furs Magda's impression
+qualified itself. Lady Arabella was not in the least of the "small
+bird" type, but rather suggested a hawk endowed with a grim sense
+of humour--quick and decisive in movement, with eyes that held an
+incalculable wisdom and laughed a thought cynically because they saw so
+clearly.
+
+Her hair was perfectly white, as white as the snow outside, but her
+complexion was soft and fine-grained as that of a girl of sixteen--pink
+and white like summer roses. She had the manner of an empress with
+extremely modern ideas.
+
+Magda was instructed that this great little personage was her godmother
+and that she would in future live with her instead of at Coverdale.
+She accepted the information without surprise though with considerable
+interest.
+
+"Think you'll like it?" Lady Arabella shot at her keenly.
+
+"Yes," Magda replied unhesitatingly. "But why am I going to live with
+you? Sieur Hugh isn't dead, too, is he?"--with impersonal interest.
+
+"And who in the name of fortune is Sieur Hugh?"
+
+Lady Arabella looked around helplessly, and Virginia, who was hovering
+in the background, hastened to explain the relationship.
+
+"Then, no," replied Lady Arabella. "Sieur Hugh is not dead--though to be
+sure he's the next thing to it!"
+
+Magda eyed her solemnly.
+
+"Is he very ill?" she asked.
+
+"No, merely cranky like all the Vallincourts. He's in a community,
+joined a brotherhood, you know, and proposes to spend the rest of
+his days repenting his sins and making his peace with heaven. I've no
+patience with the fool!" continued the old lady irascibly. "He marries
+to please himself and then hasn't the pluck of a rabbit to see the thing
+through decently. So you're to be my responsibility in future--and a
+pretty big one, too, to judge by the look of you."
+
+Magda hardly comprehended the full meaning of this speech. Still she
+gathered that her father had left her--though not quite in the same way
+as _petite maman_ had done--and that henceforth this autocratic old lady
+with the hawk's eyes and quick, darting movements was to be the arbiter
+of her fate. She also divined, beneath Lady Arabella's prickly exterior,
+a humanness and ability to understand which had been totally lacking in
+Sieur Hugh. She proceeded to put it to the test.
+
+"Will you let me dance?" she asked.
+
+"Tchah!" snorted the old woman. "So the Wielitzska blood is coming
+out after all!" She turned to Virginia. "Can she dance?" she demanded
+abruptly.
+
+"Mais oui, madame!" cried Virginie, clasping her hands ecstatically.
+"Like a veritable angel!"
+
+"I shouldn't have thought it," commented her ladyship drily.
+
+Her shrewd eyes swept the child's tense little face with its long,
+Eastern eyes and the mouth that showed so vividly scarlet against its
+unchildish pallor.
+
+"Less like an angel than anything, I should imagine," muttered the old
+woman to herself with a wicked little grin. Then aloud: "Show me what
+you can do, then, child."
+
+"Very well." Magda paused, reflecting. Then she ran forward and laid
+her hand lightly on Lady Arabella's knee. "Look! This is the story of
+a Fairy who came to earth and lost her way in the woods. She met one of
+the Mortals, and he loved her so much that he wouldn't show her the way
+back to Fairyland. So"--abruptly--"she died."
+
+Lady Arabella watched the child dance in astonished silence. Technique,
+of course, was lacking, but the interpretation, the telling of the
+story, was amazing. It was all there--the Fairy's first wonder and
+delight in finding herself in the woods, then her realisation that she
+was lost and her frantic efforts to find the way back to Fairyland.
+Followed her meeting with the Mortal and supplication to him to guide
+her, and finally the Fairy's despair and death. Magda's slight little
+figure sank to the ground, drooping slowly like a storm-bent snowdrop,
+and lay still.
+
+Lady Arabella sat up with a jerk.
+
+"Good gracious! The child's a born dancer! Lydia Tchinova must see her.
+She'll have to train. Poor Hugh!" She chuckled enjoyably. "This will be
+the last straw! He'll be compelled to invent a new penance."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FLOWERING
+
+"You're very trying, Magda. Everyone is talking about you, and I'm tired
+of trying to explain you to people."
+
+Lady Arabella paused in her knitting and spoke petulantly, but a secret
+gleam of admiration in her sharp old eyes as they rested upon her
+god-daughter belied the irritation of her tones.
+
+Magda leaned back negligently against the big black velvet cushions in
+her chair and lit a cigarette.
+
+"I _want_ everyone to talk about me," she returned composedly. Her voice
+was oddly attractive--low-pitched and with a faint blur of huskiness
+about it that caught the ear with a distinctive charm. "It increases
+the box-office receipts. And there's no reason in the world for you to
+'explain' me to people."
+
+Her godmother regarded her with increasing irritation, yet at the same
+time acutely conscious of the arresting quality of the young, vividly
+alive face that gleamed at her from its black-velvet background.
+
+Ten years had only served to emphasise the unusual characteristics
+of the child Magda. Her skin was wonderful, of a smooth, creamy-white
+texture which gave to the sharply angled face something of the pale,
+exotic perfection of a stephanotis bloom. Her eyes were long, the colour
+of black pansies--black with a suggestion of purple in their depths.
+They slanted upwards a little at the outer corners, and this together
+with the high cheek-bones, alone would have betrayed her Russian
+ancestry. When Lady Arabella wanted to be particularly obnoxious
+she told her that she had Mongolian eyes, and Magda would shrug her
+shoulders and, thrusting out a foot which was so perfect in shape that
+a painting of it by a certain famous artist had been the most talked-of
+picture of the year, would reply placidly: "Well, thank heaven, _that's_
+not English, anyway!"
+
+"It certainly required some explanation when you chose to leave me
+and go off and live by yourself," pursued Lady Arabella, resuming her
+knitting. "A girl of twenty! Of course people have talked. Especially as
+half the men in town imagine themselves in love with you."
+
+"Well, I'm perfectly respectable now. I've engaged a nice, tame
+pussy-cat person to take charge of my morals and chaperon me
+generally. Not--like you, Marraine--an Early Victorian autocrat with a
+twentieth-century tongue."
+
+"If you mean Mrs. Grey, she doesn't give me the least impression of
+being a 'nice, tame pussy-cat,'" retorted Lady Arabella. "You'll find
+that out, my dear."
+
+Magda regarded her thoughtfully.
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Oh, Gillian is all right," affirmed Magda, dismissing the matter
+airily. "She's a gorgeous accompanist, anyway--almost as good as Davilof
+himself. Which reminds me--I must go home and rehearse my solo dance in
+the _Swan-Maiden_. I told Davilof I'd be ready for him at four o'clock;
+and it's half-past three now. I shall never get back to Hampstead
+through this ghastly fog in half an hour." She glanced towards the
+window through which was visible a discouraging fog of the "pea-soup"
+variety.
+
+Lady Arabella sniffed.
+
+"You'd better be careful for once in your life, Magda. Davilof is in
+love with you."
+
+"Pouf! What if he is?"
+
+Magda rose, and picking up her big black hat set it on her head at
+precisely the right angle, and proceeded to spear it through with a
+wonderful black-and-gold hatpin of Chinese workmanship.
+
+Lady Arabella shot a swift glance at her.
+
+"He's just one of a crowd?" she suggested tartly.
+
+Magda assented indifferently.
+
+"You're wrong--quite wrong," returned her godmother crisply. "Antoine
+Davilof is not one of a crowd--never will be! He's half a Pole,
+remember."
+
+Magda smiled.
+
+"And I'm half a Russian. It must be a case of deep calling to deep," she
+suggested mockingly.
+
+Lady Arabella's shining needles clicked as they came to an abrupt stop.
+
+"Does that mean you're in love with him?" she asked.
+
+Magda stared.
+
+"Good gracious, no! I'm never in love. You know that."
+
+"That doesn't prevent my hoping you may develop--some day--into a normal
+God-fearing woman," retorted the other.
+
+"And learn to thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love?" Magda
+laughed lightly. "I shan't. At least, I hope not. Judging from my
+friends and acquaintances, the condition of being in love is a most
+unpleasant one--reduces a woman to a humiliating sense of her own
+unworthiness and keeps her in a see-saw state of emotional uncertainty.
+No, thank you! No man is worth it!"
+
+Lady Arabella looked away. Her hard, bright old eyes held a sudden
+wistfulness foreign to them.
+
+"My dear--one man is. One man in every woman's life is worth it. Only we
+don't always find it out in time."
+
+"Why, Marraine--you don't mean--you weren't ever----"
+
+Lady Arabella rose suddenly and came across to where Magda stood by the
+fire, one narrow foot extended to the cheerful warmth.
+
+"Never mind what I mean," she said, and her voice sounded a little
+uncertain. "Only, if it comes your way, don't miss the best thing this
+queer old world of ours has to offer. If it brings you nothing else,
+love at least leaves you memories. Even that's something."
+
+Magda glanced at her curiously. Somehow she had never imagined that
+behind the worldly-wise old woman's sharp speeches and grim, ironic
+humour there lay the half-buried memory of some far-distant romance. Yet
+now in the uneven tones of her voice she recognised the throb of an old
+wound.
+
+"And meanwhile"--Lady Arabella suddenly resumed in her usual curt
+manner--"meanwhile you might play fair with one or two of those boys you
+have trailing around--Kit Raynham for instance."
+
+"I don't understand," began Magda.
+
+"You understand perfectly. A man of the world's fair game. He can
+look after himself--and probably sizes you up for what you are--a
+phenomenally successful dancer, who regards her little court of admirers
+as one of the commonplaces of existence--like her morning cup of tea.
+But these boys--they look upon you as a woman, even a possible wife. And
+then they proceed to fall in love with you!"
+
+Magda's foot tapped impatiently on the floor.
+
+"What's this all leading up to?"
+
+Lady Arabella met her glance squarely.
+
+"I want you to leave Kit Raynham alone. His mother has been to
+me--Magda, I'm sick of having their mothers come to me!--and begged
+me to interfere. She says you're ruining the boy's prospects. He's a
+brilliant lad, and they expect him to do something rather special. And
+now he's slacking completely. He's always on your doorstep. If you care
+about him--do you, Magda?--tell him so. But, if you don't, for goodness'
+sake send him about his business."
+
+She waited quietly for an answer. Magda slipped into a big fur-coat and
+caught up her gloves. Then she turned to her godmother abruptly.
+
+"Lady Raynham is absurd. I can't prevent Kit's making a fool of himself
+if he wants to. And--and"--rather helplessly--"I can't help it if I
+don't fall in love to order." She kissed her godmother lightly. "So
+that's that."
+
+A minute later Lady Arabella's butler had swung open the front door, and
+Magda crossed the pavement and entered her waiting car.
+
+Outside, the fog hung like a thick pall over London--thick enough to
+curtain the windows of the car with a blank, grey veil and to make
+progress through the streets a difficult and somewhat dangerous process.
+Magda snuggled into her furs and leant back against the padded cushions.
+All sight of the outside world was cut off from her, except for the
+blurred gleam of an occasional street-lamp or the menacing shape of a
+motor-bus looming suddenly alongside, and she yielded herself to the
+train of thought provoked by her talk with Lady Arabella.
+
+In a detached sort of way she felt sorry about Kit Raynham--principally
+because Lady Arabella, of whom she was exceedingly fond, seemed vexed
+about the matter. It had not taken her long to discover, when as a child
+she had come to live with her godmother, the warm heart that concealed
+itself beneath the old lady's somewhat shrewish exterior. And to
+Lady Arabella the advent of her god-child had been a matter for pure
+rejoicing.
+
+Having no children of her own, she lavished a pent-up wealth of
+affection upon Magda of which few would have thought her capable, and
+though she was by no means niggardly in her blame of Hugh Vallincourt
+for his method of shelving his responsibilities, she was grateful that
+his withdrawal into the monastic life had been the means of throwing
+Magda into her care. Five years later, when death claimed him, she found
+he had appointed her the child's sole guardian.
+
+True to her intention, she had asked the opinion of Lydia Tchinova, the
+famous dancer, and under Madame Tchinova's guidance Magda had received
+such training that when she came to make her debut she leaped into fame
+at once. Hers was one of those rare cases where the initial drudgery and
+patient waiting that attends so many careers was practically eliminated,
+and at the age of twenty she was probably the most talked-of woman in
+London.
+
+She had discarded the family surname for professional purposes, and
+appeared in public under the name of Wielitzska--"to save the reigning
+Vallincourts from a soul convulsion," as she observed with a twinkle.
+During the last year, influenced by the growing demands of her vocation,
+she had quitted her godmother's hospitable roof and established herself
+in a house of her own.
+
+Nor had Lady Arabella sought to dissuade her. Although she and Magda
+were the best of friends, she had latterly found the onus of chaperoning
+her god-child an increasingly heavy burden. As she herself remarked:
+"You might as well attempt to chaperon a comet!"
+
+It was almost inevitable that Magda, starred and feted wherever she
+went, should develop into a rather erratic and self-willed young person,
+but on the whole she had remained singularly unspoilt. Side by side with
+her gift for dancing she had also inherited something of her mother's
+sweetness and wholesomeness of nature. There was nothing petty or mean
+about her, and many a struggling member of her own profession had had
+good cause to thank "the Wielitzska" for a helping hand.
+
+Women found in her a good pal; men, an elusive, provocative personality
+that bewitched and angered them in the same breath, coolly accepting all
+they had to offer of love and headlong worship--and giving nothing in
+return.
+
+It was not in the least that Magda deliberately set herself to wile a
+man's heart out of his body. She seemed unable to help it! Apart from
+everything else, her dancing had taught her the whole magic of the art
+of charming by every look and gesture, and the passage of time had only
+added to the extraordinary physical allure which had been hers even as a
+child.
+
+Yet for all the apparent warmth and ardour of her temperament, to which
+the men she knew succumbed in spite of themselves, she herself seemed
+untouched by any deeper emotion than that of a faintly amused desire
+to attract. The lessons of her early days, the tragedy of her mother's
+married life, had permeated her whole being, and her ability to
+remain emotionally unstirred was due to an instinctive reserve and
+self-withdrawal--an inherent distrust of the passion of love.
+
+_"Take everything. But do not give--anything--in return."_
+Subconsciously Diane's words, wrested from her at a moment of poignant
+mental anguish, formed the credo of her daughter's life.
+
+No man, so far, had ever actually counted for anything in Magda's scheme
+of existence, and as she drove slowly home from Lady Arabella's house in
+Park Lane she sincerely hoped none ever would. Certainly--she smiled a
+little at the bare idea--Kit Raynham was not destined to be the man!
+He was clever, and enthusiastic, and adoring, and she liked him quite a
+lot, but his hot-headed passion failed to waken in her breast the least
+spark of responsive emotion.
+
+Her thoughts drifted idly backward, recalling this or that man who had
+wanted her. It was odd, but of all the men she had met the memory of one
+alone was still provocative of a genuine thrill of interest--and
+that was the unknown artist whom she had encountered in the woods at
+Coverdale.
+
+Even now, after the lapse of ten years, she could remember the young,
+lean, square-jawed face with the grey eyes, "like eyes with little fires
+behind them," and hear again the sudden jerky note in the man's voice as
+he muttered, "Witch-child!"
+
+That brief adventure with "Saint Michel"--she remembered calling
+him "Saint Michel"--stood out as one of the clearest memories of her
+childhood. That, and the memory of her mother, kneeling on the big
+bearskin rug and saying in a hard, dry voice: "Never give your heart to
+any man. Take everything. But do not give--anything--in return."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OUT OF THE FOG
+
+A sudden warning shout, the transient glare of fog-blurred headlights,
+then a crash and a staggering blow on the car's near side which sent
+it reeling like a drunken thing, bonnet foremost, straight into a
+motor-omnibus.
+
+Magda felt herself pitched violently forward off the seat, striking her
+head as she fell, and while the car yet rocked with the force of its
+collision with the motor-bus another vehicle drove blindly into it
+from the rear. It lurched sickeningly and jammed at a precarious angle,
+canted up on two wheels.
+
+Shouts and cries, the frenzied hooting of horns, the grinding of brakes
+and clash of splintered glass combined into a pandemonium of terrifying
+hubbub.
+
+Magda, half-dazed with shock, crouched on the floor of the car where she
+had been flung. She could see the lights appearing and disappearing in
+the fog like baleful eyes opening and shutting spasmodically. A tumult
+of hoarse cries, cursing and bellowing instructions, crossed by the thin
+scream of women's cries, battered against her ears.
+
+Then out of the medley of raucous noise came a cool, assured voice:
+
+"Don't be frightened. I'll get you out."
+
+Magda was conscious of a sudden reaction from the numbed sense of
+bewildered terror which had overwhelmed her. The sound of that unknown
+voice--quiet, commanding, and infinitely reassuring--was like a hand
+laid on her heart and stilling its terrified throbbing.
+
+She heard someone tugging at the handle of the door. There came a
+moment's pause while the strained woodwork resisted the pull, then with
+a scrape of jarring fittings the door jerked open and a man's figure
+loomed in the aperture.
+
+"Where are you?" he asked, peering through the dense gloom. "Ah!" She
+felt his outstretched hands close on her shoulders as she knelt huddled
+on the floor. "Can you get up? Or are you hurt?"
+
+Magda tested her limbs cautiously, to discover that no bones were
+broken, though her head ached horribly, so that she felt sick and giddy
+with the pain.
+
+"No, I'm not hurt," she answered.
+
+"Then come along. The car's heeled up a bit, but I'll lift you out if
+you can get to the door."
+
+She stumbled forward obediently, groping her way towards the vague panel
+of lighter grey revealed by the open door.
+
+Once more, out of the swathing fog, hands touched her.
+
+"There you are! That's right. Now lean forward."
+
+She found herself clasped by arms like steel--so strong, so sure, that
+she felt as safe and secure as when Vladimir Ravinski, the amazingly
+clever young Russian who partnered her in several of her dances,
+sometimes lifted her, lightly and easily as a feather, and bore her
+triumphantly off the stage aloft on his shoulder.
+
+"You're very strong," she murmured, as the unknown owner of the arms
+swung her down from the tilted car.
+
+"You're not very heavy," came the answer. There was a kind of laughter
+in the voice.
+
+As the man spoke he set her down on her feet, and then, just as Magda
+was opening her lips to thank him, the fog seemed to grow suddenly
+denser, swirling round her in great murky waves and surging in her ears
+with a noise like the boom of the ocean. Higher and higher rose the
+waves, a resistless sea of blackness, and at last they swept right over
+her head and she sank into the utter darkness of oblivion.
+
+
+
+"Drink this!"
+
+Someone was holding a glass to her lips and the pungent smell of sal
+volatile pricked her nostrils. Magda shrank back, her eyes still shut,
+and pressed her head further into the cushions against which it rested.
+She detested the smell of sal volatile.
+
+"Drink it! Do you hear?"
+
+The voice seemed to drive at her with its ring of command. She opened
+her eyes and looked straight up into other eyes--dark-grey ones,
+these--that were bent on her intently. To her confused consciousness
+they appeared to blaze down at her.
+
+"No," she muttered, feebly trying to push the glass away.
+
+The effort of moving her arm seemed stupendous. Her head swam with it.
+The sea of fog came rolling back again, and this time she sank under it
+at once.
+
+Then--after an immensity of time, she was sure--she felt herself
+struggling up to the surface once more. She was lying rocking gently on
+the top of the waves now; the sensation was very peaceful and pleasant.
+A little breeze played across her face. She drew in deep breaths of the
+cool air, but she did not open her eyes. Presently a murmur of voices
+penetrated her consciousness.
+
+"She's coming round again." A man was speaking. "Go on fanning her."
+
+"Poor young thing! She's had a shaking up and no mistake!" This in a
+woman's voice, very kindly and commiserating. A hand lightly smoothed
+the fur of her coat-sleeve. "Looks as if she was a rich young lady. Her
+people must be anxious about her."
+
+Someone laughed a little, softly.
+
+"Oh, yes, she's a rich enough young lady, Mrs. Braithwaite. Don't you
+know who it is we've rescued?"
+
+"I, sir? No. How should I?"
+
+"Then I'll tell you. This is Mademoiselle Wielitzska, the famous
+dancer."
+
+"Never, sir! Well, I do declare----"
+
+"Now, drink this at once, please." The man's voice cut sharply across
+the impending flow of garrulous interest, and Magda, who had not
+gathered the actual sense of the murmured conversation, felt an arm pass
+behind her head, raising it a little, while once more that hateful glass
+of sal volatile was held to her lips.
+
+Her eyes unclosed fretfully.
+
+"Take it away," she was beginning.
+
+"Drink it! Do you hear? Do as you're told!"
+
+The sharp, authoritative tones startled her into sudden compliance. She
+opened her mouth and swallowed the contents of the glass with a gulp.
+Then she looked resentfully at the man whose curt command she had obeyed
+in such unexpected fashion. Magda Wielitzska was more used to giving
+orders than to taking them.
+
+"There, that's better," he observed, regarding the empty glass with
+satisfaction. "No, lie still"--as she attempted to rise. "You'll feel
+better in a few minutes."
+
+"I'm better now," declared Magda sulkily.
+
+Her head was growing clearer every minute. She was even able to feel an
+intense irritation against this man who had just compelled her to drink
+the sal volatile.
+
+He looked at her unperturbedly.
+
+"Are you? That's good. Still, you'll stay where you are till I tell you
+that you may get up." He turned to a comfortable-looking woman who was
+standing at the foot of the couch on which Magda lay--a housekeeper of
+the nice old-fashioned black-satin kind. "Now, Mrs. Braithwaite, I think
+this lady will be glad of a cup of tea by the time you can have one
+ready."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+With a last, admiring glance at the slender figure on the couch the
+good woman bustled away, leaving Magda alone with her unknown host and
+burning with indignation at the cool way in which he had ordered her to
+remain where she was.
+
+He had his back to her for the moment, having turned to poke up the
+fire, and Magda raised herself on her elbow, preparatory to getting off
+the couch. He swung round instantly.
+
+"I told you to stay where you were," he said peremptorily.
+
+"I don't always do as I'm told," she retorted with spirit.
+
+"You will in this instance, though," he rejoined, crossing the room
+swiftly towards her.
+
+But quick though he was, she was still quicker. Her eyes blazing
+defiance, she slipped from the couch and stood up before he could reach
+her side. She took a step forward.
+
+"There!" she began defiantly. The next moment the whole room seemed to
+swim round her as she tottered weakly and would have fallen had he not
+caught her.
+
+"What did I tell you?" he said sharply. "You're not fit to stand."
+
+Without more ado he lifted her up in his arms and deposited her again on
+the couch.
+
+"I--I only turned a little giddy," she protested feebly.
+
+"Precisely. Just as I thought you would. Another time, perhaps, you'll
+obey orders."
+
+He stood looking down at her with curiously brilliant grey eyes. Magda
+almost winced under their penetrating glance. She felt as though they
+could see into her very soul, and she summoned up all her courage to
+combat the man's strange force.
+
+"I'm not used to obeying orders," she said impatiently.
+
+"No?"--with complete indifference. "Then it will be a salutary
+experience for you. Now, lie still until tea comes. I have a letter to
+write."
+
+He walked away and, seating himself at a desk in the window, appeared to
+forget all about her, while his pen travelled swiftly over the sheet of
+notepaper he had drawn towards him.
+
+Magda watched him with rebellious eyes. Gradually, however, the
+rebellion died out of them, replaced by a puzzled look of interest.
+There was something vaguely familiar about the man. Had she ever seen
+him before? Or was it merely one of those chance resemblances which one
+comes across occasionally? That fair hair with its crisp wave, the lean,
+square-jawed face, above all, the dark-grey eyes with their bright,
+penetrating glance--why did she feel as though every detail of the face
+were already known to her?
+
+She failed to place the resemblance, however, and finally, with a little
+sigh of fatigue, she gave up the attempt. Her brain still felt muddled
+and confused from the blow she had received. Perhaps later she would be
+able to think things out more clearly.
+
+Meanwhile she lay still, her eyes resting languidly on the face that
+so puzzled her. It was not precisely a handsome face, but there was a
+certain rugged fineness in its lines that lifted it altogether out
+of the ruck of the ordinary. It held its contradictions, too.
+Notwithstanding the powerful, determined jaw, the mouth had a sensitive
+upward curve at the corners which gave it an expression of singular
+sweetness, and beneath the eyes were little lines which qualified their
+dominating glance with a hint of whimsical humour.
+
+The clock ticked on solemnly. Presently Mrs. Braithwaite bustled in
+with the tea and withdrew again. But the man remained absorbed in his
+writing, apparently oblivious of everything else.
+
+Magda, who was rapidly recovering, eyed the teapot longingly. She was
+just wondering whether she dared venture to draw his attention to its
+arrival or whether he would snap her head off if she did, when he looked
+up suddenly with that swift, hawk-like glance of his.
+
+"Ready for some tea?" he queried.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Yes. Am I"--sarcastically--"allowed to get up now?"
+
+He surveyed her consideringly.
+
+"No, I think not," he said at last. "But as the mountain can't go to
+Mahomet, Mahomet shall come to the mountain."
+
+He crossed the room and, while Magda was still wondering what he
+proposed to do, he stooped and dexterously wheeled the couch with its
+light burden close up to the tea-table.
+
+"Now, I'll fix these cushions," he said. And with deft hands he
+rearranged the cushions so that they should support her comfortably
+while she drank her tea.
+
+"You would make a very good nurse, I should think," commented Magda,
+somewhat mollified.
+
+"Thanks," was all he vouchsafed in answer.
+
+He busied himself pouring out tea, then brought her cup and placed it
+beside her on a quaint little table of Chinese Chippendale.
+
+"Mrs. Braithwaite--my housekeeper--is looking after your chauffeur in
+the kitchen," he observed presently. "Possibly you may be interested to
+hear"--sarcastically--"that he wasn't hurt in the smash-up."
+
+Magda felt herself flushing a little under the implied rebuke--as much
+with annoyance as anything else. She knew that she was not really the
+heartless type of woman he inferred her to be, to whom the fate of
+her dependents was only of importance in so far as it affected her own
+personal comfort, and she resented the injustice of his assumption that
+she was.
+
+She had been so bewildered and dazed by the suddenness of the accident
+and by the blow she herself had received that she had hardly
+yet collected her thoughts sufficiently to envisage the possible
+consequences to others.
+
+With feminine perverseness she promptly decided that nothing would
+induce her to explain matters. If this detestably superior individual
+chose to think her utterly heartless and selfish--why, let him think so!
+
+"And the car?" she asked in a tone of deliberate indifference. "That's
+quite as important as the chauffeur."
+
+"More so, surely?"--with polite irony. "The car, I am sorry to say, will
+take a good deal of repairing. At present it's still in the middle of
+the street with red lights fore and aft. It can't be moved till the fog
+lifts."
+
+"What a nuisance! How on earth am I to get home?"
+
+"There are such things as taxis"--suggestively. "Later, when it clears a
+bit, I'll send out for one."
+
+"Thanks. I'm afraid I'm giving you a lot of trouble."
+
+He did not hastily disclaim the idea as most men would have done.
+
+"That can't be helped," he returned bluntly.
+
+Magda felt herself colouring again. This man was insufferable!
+
+"Evidently the role of knight-errant is new to you," she observed.
+
+"Quite true. I'm not in the habit of rescuing damsels in distress. But
+how did you guess?"--with interest.
+
+"Because you do it with such a very bad grace," she flashed at him.
+
+He smiled--and once more Magda was aware of the sense of familiarity
+even with that whimsical, crooked smile.
+
+"I see," he replied composedly. "Then you think I ought to have
+been overwhelmed with delight that your car cannoned into my
+bus--incidentally I barked my shins badly in the general mix-up--and
+that I had to haul you out and bring you round from a faint and so on?"
+
+The question--without trimmings--was unanswerable. But to Magda,
+London's spoiled child, conscious that there were men who would have
+given half their fortune for the chance to render a like service, and
+then counted themselves amply rewarded by the subsequent hour or two
+alone with her, the question was merely provocative.
+
+"Some men would have been," she returned calmly.
+
+"Ah! Just because you are the Wielitzska, I suppose?"
+
+She stared at him in blank astonishment.
+
+"You knew--you knew who I was all the time?" she gasped.
+
+"Certainly I knew."
+
+"Then--then----"
+
+"Then why wasn't I suitably impressed?" he suggested drily.
+
+She sprang to her feet.
+
+"Oh! you are intolerable!" she exclaimed hotly. "You know I didn't mean
+that!"
+
+He regarded her quite placidly.
+
+"You did. That is precisely what you were thinking. Only you funked
+putting it into plain words."
+
+He got up and came to her side and stood looking down at her.
+
+"Isn't it a fact?" he insisted. "Isn't it?"
+
+Magda looked up, tried to answer in the negative and failed. He had
+spoken the simple truth and she knew it. But none the less she hated him
+for it--hated him for driving her up into a corner and trying to force
+an acknowledgment from her. She remained obstinately silent.
+
+He turned away with a short, amused laugh.
+
+"So you haven't even the courage of your convictions," he commented.
+
+Magda clenched her hands, driving the nails hard into the soft palms of
+them. He was an absolute boor, this man who had come to her rescue in
+the fog! He was taking a brutal advantage of their relative positions to
+speak to her as no man had ever dared to speak to her before. Or woman
+either! Even old Lady Arabella would hardly have thrust the naked truth
+so savagely under her eyes.
+
+And now he had as good as told her that she was a coward! Well, at least
+he should not have the satisfaction of finding he was right in that
+respect. She walked straight up to him, her small head held high, in her
+dark eyes a smouldering fire of fierce resentment.
+
+"So that is what you think, is it?" she said in a low voice of bitter
+anger. "Well, I _have_ the courage of my convictions." She paused. Then,
+with an effort: "Yes, I did think you weren't 'suitably impressed,' as
+you put it. You are perfectly right."
+
+He threw her a swift glance of surprise. Presumably he hadn't
+anticipated such a candid acknowledgment, but even so he showed no
+disposition to lay down the probe.
+
+"You didn't think it possible that anyone could meet the Wielitzska
+without regarding the event as a piece of stupendous good luck and being
+appropriately overjoyed, did you?" he pursued relentlessly.
+
+Magda pressed her lips together. Then, with an effort:
+
+"No," she admitted.
+
+"And so, just because I treated you as I would any other woman, and made
+no pretence of fatuous delight over your presence here, you supposed I
+must be ignorant of your identity? Was that it?"
+
+Magda writhed under the cool, ironical questioning with its undercurrent
+of keen contempt. Each word stung like the flick of a lash on bare
+flesh. But she forced herself to answer--and to answer honestly.
+
+"Yes," she said very low. "That was it."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
+
+"Comment is superfluous, I think."
+
+She made an impulsive step towards him.
+
+For some unfathomable reason she minded--minded intensely--that this
+man should hold her in such poor esteem. She wanted to put herself right
+with him, to justify her attitude in his eyes.
+
+"Have you ever seen me dance?" she asked abruptly.
+
+Surely if he had ever seen that wonderful artistry which she knew
+was hers, witnessed the half-crazy enthusiasm with which her audience
+received her, he would make allowance, judge her a little less harshly
+for what was, after all, a very natural assumption on the part of a
+stage favourite.
+
+An expression of unwilling admiration came into his eyes.
+
+"Have I seen you dance?" he repeated. "Yes, I have. Several times."
+
+He did not add--which would have been no more than the truth--that
+during her last winter's season at the Imperial Theatre he had hardly
+missed a dozen performances.
+
+"Then--then----" Magda spoke with a kind of incredulous appeal. "Can't
+you understand--just a little?"
+
+"Oh, I understand. I understand perfectly. You've been spoilt and
+idolised to such an extent that it seems incredible to you to find a man
+who doesn't immediately fall down and worship you."
+
+Magda twisted her hands together. Once more he was thrusting at her with
+the rapier of truth. And it hurt--hurt inexplicably.
+
+"Yes, I believe that's--almost true," she acknowledged falteringly.
+"But if you understand so well, couldn't you--can't you"--with a swift
+supplicating smile--"be a little more merciful?"
+
+"No. I--I _hate_ your type of woman!"
+
+There was an undertone of passion in his voice. It was almost as though
+he were fighting against some impulse within himself and the fierceness
+of the struggle had wrung from him that quick, unvarnished protest.
+
+"Then you despise dancers?"
+
+"Despise? On the contrary, I revere a dancer--the dancer who is
+a genuine artist." He paused, then went on speaking thoughtfully.
+"Dancing, to my mind, is one of the most consistent expressions of
+beauty. It's the sheer symmetry and grace of that body which was made in
+God's own likeness developed to the utmost limit of human perfection.
+. . . And the dancer who desecrates the temple of his body is punished
+proportionately. No art is a harder taskmistress than the art of
+dancing."
+
+Magda listened breathlessly. This man understood--oh, he understood!
+Then why did he "hate her type of woman"?
+
+Almost as though he had read her thoughts he pursued:
+
+"As a dancer, an artist--I acknowledge the Wielitzska to be supreme. But
+as a woman----"
+
+"Yes? As a woman? Go on. What do you know about me as a woman?"
+
+He laughed disagreeably.
+
+"I'd judge that in the making of you your soul got left out," he said
+drily.
+
+Magda forced a smile.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm very stupid. Do you mind explaining?"
+
+"Does it need explanation?"
+
+"Oh--please!"
+
+"Then--one of my best pals was a man who loved you."
+
+Magda threw him a glance of veiled mockery from beneath her long white
+lids.
+
+"Surely that should be a recommendation--something in my favour?"
+
+His eyes hardened.
+
+"If you had dealt honestly with him, it might have been. But you drew
+him on, _made_ him care for you in spite of himself. And then, when
+he was yours, body and soul, you turned him down! Turned him
+down--pretended you were surprised--you'd never meant anything! All the
+old rotten excuses a woman offers when she has finished playing with a
+man and got bored with him. . . . I've no place for your kind of woman.
+I tell you"--his tone deepening in intensity--"the wife of any common
+labourer, who cooks and washes and sews for her man day in, day out,
+is worth a dozen of you! She knows that love's worth having and worth
+working for. And she works. You don't. Women like you take a man's soul
+and play with it, and when you've defiled and defaced it out of all
+likeness to the soul God gave him, you hand it back to him and think you
+clear yourself by saying you 'didn't mean it'!"
+
+The bitter speech, harsh with the deeply rooted pain and resentment
+which had prompted it, battered through Magda's weak defences and found
+her helpless and unarmed. Once she had uttered a faint cry of protest,
+tried to check him, but he had not heeded it. After that she had
+listened with bent head, her breath coming and going unevenly.
+
+When he had finished, the face she lifted to him was white as milk and
+her mouth trembled.
+
+"Thanks. Well, I've heard my character now," she said unsteadily. "I--I
+didn't know anyone thought of me--like that."
+
+He stared at her--at the drooping lines of her figure, the quivering
+lips, at the half-stunned expression of the dark eyes. And suddenly
+realisation of the enormity of all he had said seemed to come to him.
+But he did not appear to be at all overwhelmed by it.
+
+"I'm afraid I've transgressed beyond forgiveness now," he said curtly.
+"But--you rather asked for it, you know, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," she admitted. "I think I did--ask for it." Suddenly she threw up
+her head and faced him. "If--if it's any satisfaction to you to know
+it, I think you've paid off at least some of your friend's score." She
+looked at him with a curious, almost piteous surprise. "You--you've hurt
+me!" she whispered passionately. She turned to the door. "I'll go now."
+
+"No!" He stopped her with a hand on her arm, and she obeyed his touch
+submissively. For a moment he stood looking down at her with an oddly
+conflicting expression on his face. It was as though he were arguing out
+some point with himself. All at once he seemed to come to a decision.
+
+"Look, you can't go till the fog clears a bit. Suppose we call a truce?
+Sit down here"--pulling forward a big easy-chair--"and for the rest of
+your visit let's behave as though we didn't heartily disapprove of one
+another."
+
+Magda sank into the chair with that supple grace of limb which made it
+sheer delight to watch her movements.
+
+"I never said I disapproved of you," she remarked.
+
+He seated himself opposite her, on the other side of the hearth, and
+regarded her quizzically.
+
+"No. But you do, all the same. Naturally, you would after my candour!
+And I'd rather you did, too," he added abruptly. "But at least you've no
+more devoted admirer of your art. You know, dancing appeals to me in a
+way that nothing else does. My job's painting--"
+
+"House-painting?" interpolated Magda with a smile. Her spirits were
+rising a little under his new kindliness of manner.
+
+He laughed with sudden boyishness and nodded gaily.
+
+"Why, yes--so long as people continue to cover their wall-space with
+portraits of themselves."
+
+Magda wondered whether he was possibly a well-known painter. But he gave
+her no chance to find out, for he continued speaking almost at once.
+
+"I love my art--but a still, flat canvas, however beautifully painted,
+isn't comparable with the moving, living interpretation of beauty
+possible to a dancer. I remember, years ago--ten years, quite--seeing
+a kiddy dancing in a wood." Magda leaned forward. "It was the
+prettiest thing imaginable. She was all by herself, a little, thin,
+black-and-white wisp of a thing, with a small, tense face and eyes like
+black smudges. And she danced as though it were more natural to her than
+walking. I got her to pose for me at the foot of a tree. The picture
+of her was my first real success. So you see, I've good reason to be
+grateful to one dancer!"
+
+Magda caught her breath. She knew now why the man's face had seemed so
+familiar! He was the artist she had met in the wood at Coverdale the day
+Sieur Hugh had beaten her--her _"Saint Michel"_! She was conscious of a
+queer little thrill of excitement as the truth dawned upon her.
+
+"What was the picture called?" she asked, forcing herself to speak
+composedly.
+
+"'The Repose of Titania.'"
+
+She nodded. The picture was a very well-known one. Everybody knew by
+whom it had been painted.
+
+"Then you must be Michael Quarrington?"
+
+"Yes. So now, we've been introduced, haven't we?"
+
+It seemed almost as if he had repented of his former churlish manner,
+and were endeavouring to atone for it. He talked to her about his work
+a little, then slid easily into the allied topics of music and books.
+Finally he took her into an adjoining room, and showed her a small,
+beloved collection of coloured prints which he had gathered together,
+recounting various amusing little incidents which had attended the
+acquisition of this or that one among them with much gusto and a certain
+quaint humour that she was beginning to recognise as characteristic.
+
+Magda, to whom the study of old prints was by no means an unknown
+territory, was thoroughly entertained. She found herself enthusing,
+discussing, arguing points, in a happy spirit of _camaraderie_ with her
+host which, half an hour earlier, she would have believed impossible.
+
+The end came abruptly. Quarrington chanced to glance out of the window
+where the street lamps were now glimmering serenely through a clear
+dusk. The fog had lifted.
+
+"Perhaps it's just as well," he said shortly. "I was beginning--" He
+checked himself and glanced at her with a sudden stormy light in his
+eyes.
+
+"Beginning--what?" she asked a little breathlessly. The atmosphere had
+all at once grown tense with some unlooked-for stress of emotion.
+
+"Shall I tell you?"
+
+"Yes--tell me!"
+
+"I was beginning to forget that you're the 'type of woman I hate,'" he
+said. And strode out of the room, leaving her startled and unaccountably
+shaken.
+
+When he came back he had completely reassumed his former non-committal
+manner.
+
+"There's a taxi waiting for you," he announced. "It's perfectly clear
+outside now, so I think you will be spared any further adventures on
+your way home."
+
+He accompanied her into the hall, and as they shook hands she murmured a
+little diffidently:
+
+"Perhaps we shall meet again some time?"
+
+He drew back sharply.
+
+"No, we shan't meet again." There was something purposeful, almost
+vehemently so, in the curtly spoken words. "If I had thought that----"
+
+"Yes?" she prompted. "If you had?"
+
+"If I'd thought that," he said quietly, "I shouldn't have dared to risk
+this last half-hour."
+
+A momentary silence fell between them. Then, with a shrug, he added
+lightly:
+
+"But we shan't meet again. I'm leaving England next week. That settles
+it."
+
+Without giving her time to make any rejoinder he opened the street-door
+and stood aside for her to pass out. A minute later she was in the taxi,
+and he was standing bare-headed on the pavement beside it.
+
+"Good-bye," she said. "Good-bye--_Saint Michel_."
+
+His hand closed round hers in a grip that almost crushed the slender
+fingers.
+
+"_You_!" he cried hoarsely. There was a note of sudden, desperate
+recognition in his voice. "_You_!"
+
+As Magda smiled into his startled eyes--the grey eyes that had burned
+their way into her memory ten years ago--the taxi slid away into the
+lamp-lit dusk.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+FRIARS' HOLM
+
+With a grinding of brakes the taxi slowed up and came to a standstill at
+Friars' Holm, the quaint old Queen Anne house which Magda had acquired
+in north London.
+
+Once within the high wall enclosing the old-world garden in which it
+stood, it was easy enough to imagine oneself a hundred miles from town.
+Fir and cedar sentinelled the house, and in the centre of the garden
+there was a lawn of wonderful old turf, hedged round in summer by a
+riot of roses so that it gleamed like a great square emerald set in a
+jewelled frame.
+
+Magda entered the house and, crossing the cheerfully lit hall, threw
+open the door of a room whence issued the sound of someone--obviously a
+first-rate musician--playing the piano.
+
+As she opened the door the twilight, shot by quivering spears of light
+from the fire's dancing flames, seemed to rush out at her, bearing
+with it the mournful, heart-shaking music of some Russian melody. Magda
+uttered a soft, half-amused exclamation of impatience and switched on
+the lights.
+
+"All in the dark, Davilof?" she asked in a practical tone of voice
+calculated to disintegrate any possible fabric of romance woven of
+firelight and fifths.
+
+The flood of electric light revealed a large, lofty room, devoid of
+furniture except for a few comfortable chairs grouped together at one
+end of it, and for a magnificent grand piano at the other. The room
+appeared doubly large by reason of the fact that the whole of one wall
+was taken up by four immense panels of looking-glass, cleverly fitted
+together so that in effect the entire wall was composed of a single
+enormous mirror. It was in front of this mirror that Magda practised.
+The remaining three walls were hung with priceless old tapestry woven of
+sombre green and greys.
+
+As she entered the room a man rose quickly from the piano and came
+forward to meet her. There was a kind of repressed eagerness in the
+action, as though he had been waiting with impatience for her coming.
+
+He was a striking-looking man, tall, and built with the slender-limbed
+grace of a foreigner. Golden-brown hair, worn rather longer than fashion
+dictates, waved crisply over his head, and the moustache and small
+Vandyck beard which partially concealed the lower part of his face were
+of the same warmly golden colour.
+
+The word "musician" was written all over him--in the supple, capable
+hands, in the careless stoop of his loosely knit shoulders, and, more
+than all, in the imaginative hazel eyes with their curious mixture of
+abstraction and fire. They rather suggested lightning playing over some
+dreaming pool.
+
+Magda shook hands with him carelessly.
+
+"We shall have to postpone the practice as I'm so late, Davilof," she
+said. "I had a smash-up in the fog. My car ran into a bus--"
+
+"And you are hurt?" Davilof broke in sharply, his voice edged with fear.
+
+"No, no. I was stunned for a minute and then afterwards I fainted, but
+I'm quite intact otherwise."
+
+"You are sure--sure?"
+
+"Quite." Hearing the keen anxiety in his tone she smiled at him
+reassuringly and held out a friendly hand. "I'm all right--really,
+Antoine."
+
+He took the hand in both his.
+
+"Thank God!" he said fervently.
+
+Antoine Davilof had lived so long in England that he spoke without trace
+of accent, though he sometimes gave an unEnglish twist to the phrasing
+of a sentence, but his quick emotion and the simplicity with which he
+made no effort to conceal it stamped him unmistakably as a foreigner.
+
+A little touched, Magda allowed her hand to remain in his.
+
+"Why, Davilof!" She chided him laughingly. "You're quite absurdly upset
+about it."
+
+"I could not have borne it if you had been hurt," he declared
+vehemently. "You ought not to go about by yourself. It's horrible to
+think of _you_--in a street accident--alone!"
+
+"But I wasn't alone. A man who was in the other half of the
+accident--the motor-bus half--played the good Samaritan and carried me
+into his house, which happened to be close by. He looked after me very
+well, I assure you."
+
+Davilof released her hand abruptly. His face darkened.
+
+"And this man? Who was he?" he demanded jealously. "I hate to think of
+any man--a stranger--touching you."
+
+"Nonsense! Would you have preferred me to remain lying in the middle of
+the road?"
+
+"You know I would not. But I'd rather some woman had looked after you.
+Do you know who the man was?"
+
+"I did not--at first."
+
+"But you do now. Who was it?"
+
+"No one you know, I think," she answered provokingly. His eyes flashed.
+
+"Why are you making a mystery about it?" he asked suspiciously. "You're
+keeping something from me! Who was this man? Tell me his name."
+
+Magda froze.
+
+"My dear Antoine! Why this air of high tragedy?" she said lightly. "And
+what on earth has it to do with you who the man was?"
+
+"You know what it has to do with me----"
+
+"With my accompanist?"--raising her brows delicately.
+
+"No!"--with sudden violence--"With the man who loves you! I'm that--and
+you know it, Magda! Could I play for you as I do if I did not understand
+your every mood and emotion? You know I couldn't! And then you ask what
+it matters to me when some unknown man has held you in his arms,
+carried you into his house--kissed you, perhaps, while you were
+unconscious!"--his imagination running suddenly riot.
+
+"Stop! You're going too far!" Magda checked him sharply. "You're always
+telling me you love me. I don't want to hear it." She paused, then added
+cruelly: "I want you for playing my accompaniments, Davilof. That's all.
+Do you understand?"
+
+His eyes blazed. With a quick movement he stepped in front of her.
+
+"I'm a man--as well as an accompanist," he said hoarsely. "One day
+you'll have to reckon with the man, Magda!"
+
+There was a new, unaccustomed quality in his voice. Hitherto she had not
+taken his ardour very seriously. He was a Pole and a musician, with all
+the temperament that might be expected from such a combination, and she
+had let it go at that, pushing his love aside with the careless hand of
+a woman to whom the incense of men's devotion has been so freely offered
+as to have become commonplace. But now the new ring of determination,
+of something unexpectedly dogged in his voice, poignantly recalled the
+warning uttered by Lady Arabella earlier in the day.
+
+Magda's nerve wavered. A momentary panic assailed her. Then she
+intuitively struck the right note.
+
+"Ah, Davilof, don't worry me now--not to-night!" she said appealingly.
+"I'm tired. It's been a bit of a strain--the accident and--and----"
+
+"Forgive me!" In a moment he was all penitence--overwhelmed with
+compunction. "Forget it! I've behaved like a brute. I ought to have seen
+that you were worn out."
+
+He was beside himself with remorse.
+
+"It's all right, Antoine." She smiled forgiveness at him. "Only I
+felt--I felt I couldn't stand any more to-night. I suppose it's taken it
+out of me more than I knew--the shock, and fainting like that."
+
+"Of course it has. You ought to rest. I wish Mrs. Grey were in."
+
+"Is she not?"
+
+"No. The maid told me she was out when I came, and she hasn't returned
+yet."
+
+"She's been held up by the fog, I expect," answered Magda. "Never mind.
+I'll sit here--in this big chair--and you shall switch off these glaring
+lights and play to me, Antoine. That will rest me better than anything."
+
+She was a little sorry for the man--trying to make up to him for
+the pain she knew she had inflicted a moment before, and there was a
+dangerous sweetness in her voice.
+
+Davilof's eyes kindled. He stooped swiftly and kissed her hand.
+
+"You are too good to me!" he said huskily.
+
+Then, while she lay back restfully in a chair which he heaped with
+cushions for her, he played to her, improvising as he played--slow,
+dreaming melodies that soothed and lulled but held always an undertone
+of passionate appeal. The man himself spoke in his music; his love
+pleaded with her in its soft, beseeching cadences.
+
+But Magda failed to hear it. Her thoughts were elsewhere--back with the
+man who, that afternoon, had first rescued her and afterwards treated
+her with blunt candour that had been little less than brutal. She felt
+sore and resentful--smarting under the same dismayed sense of surprise
+and injustice as a child may feel who receives a blow instead of an
+anticipated caress.
+
+Indulged and flattered by everyone with whom she came in contact, it had
+been like a slap in the face to find someone--more particularly someone
+of the masculine persuasion--who, far from bestowing the admiration and
+homage she had learned to look for as a right, quite openly regarded her
+with contemptuous disapproval--and made no bones about telling her so.
+
+His indictment of her had left nothing to the imagination. She felt
+stunned, and, for the first time in her life, a little unwilling doubt
+of herself assaulted her. Was she really anything at all like the
+woman Michael Quarrington had pictured? A woman without heart or
+conscience--the "kind of woman he had no place for"?
+
+She winced a little at the thought. It was strange how much she minded
+his opinion--the opinion of a man whom she had only met by chance and
+whom she was very unlikely ever to meet again. He himself had certainly
+evinced no anxiety to renew the acquaintance. And this, too, fretted her
+in some unaccountable way.
+
+She could not analyse her own emotions. She felt hurt and angry and
+ashamed in the same breath--and all because an unknown man, an absolute
+stranger, had told her in no measured terms exactly what he thought of
+her!
+
+Only--he was not really quite a stranger! He was the "Saint Michel" of
+her childhood days, the man with whom she had unconsciously compared
+those other men whom the passing years had brought into her life--and
+always to their disadvantage.
+
+The first time she had seen him in the woods at Coverdale was the day
+when Hugh Vallincourt had beaten her; she had been smarting with the
+physical pain and humiliation of it. And now, this second time they
+had met, she had been once more forced to endure that strange and
+unaccustomed experience called pain. Only this time she felt as though
+her soul had been beaten, and it was Saint Michel himself who had
+scourged her.
+
+The door at the far end of the room opened suddenly and a welcome voice
+broke cheerfully across the bitter current of her thoughts.
+
+"Well, here I am at last! Has Magda arrived home yet?"
+
+Davilof ceased playing abruptly and the speaker paused on the threshold
+of the room, peering into the dusk. Magda rose from her seat by the fire
+and switched on one of the electric burners.
+
+"Yes, here I am," she said. "Did you get held up by the fog, Gillian?"
+
+The newcomer advanced into the circle of light. She was a small, slight
+woman, though the furs she was wearing served to conceal the slenderness
+of her figure. Someone had once said of her that "Mrs. Grey was a
+charming study in sepia." The description was not inapt. Eyes and hair
+were brown as a beechnut, and a scattering of golden-brown freckles
+emphasised the warm tints of a skin as soft as velvet.
+
+"Did I get held up?" she repeated. "My dear, I walked miles--miles, I
+tell you!--in that hideous fog. And then found I'd been walking entirely
+in the wrong direction! I fetched up somewhere down Notting Hill Gate
+way, and at last by the help of heaven and a policeman discovered the
+Tube station. So here I am. But if I could have come across a taxi I'd
+have been ready to _buy_ it, I was so tired!"
+
+"Poor dear!" Magda was duly sympathetic. "We'll have some tea. You'll
+stay, Davilof?"
+
+"I think not, thanks. I'm dining out"--with a glance at his watch. "And
+I shan't have too much time to get home and change as it is."
+
+Magda held out her hand.
+
+"Good-bye, then. Thank you for keeping me company till Gillian came."
+
+There was a sudden sweetness of gratitude in the glance she threw at him
+which fired his blood. He caught her hand and carried it to his lips.
+
+"The thanks are mine," he said in a stifled voice. And swinging round on
+his heel he left the room abruptly, quite omitting to make his farewells
+to Mrs. Grey.
+
+The latter looked across at Magda with a gleam of mirth in her brown
+eyes. Then she shook her head reprovingly.
+
+"Will you never learn wisdom, Magda?" she asked, subsiding into a chair
+and extending a pair of neatly shod feet to the fire's warmth.
+
+Magda laughed a little.
+
+"Well, it won't be the fault of my friends if I don't!" she returned
+ruefully. "Marraine expended a heap of eloquence over my misdeeds this
+afternoon."
+
+"Lady Arabella? I'm glad to hear it. Though she has about as much chance
+of producing any permanent result as the gentleman who occupied his
+leisure time in rolling a stone uphill."
+
+"Cat!" Magda made a small grimace at her. "Ah, here's some tea!"
+Melrose, known among Magda's friends as "the perfect butler," had come
+noiselessly into the room and was arranging the tea paraphernalia with
+the reverential precision of one making preparation for some mystic
+rite. "Perhaps when you've had a cup you'll feel more amiable--that is,
+if I give you lots of sugar."
+
+"What was the text of Lady Arabella's homily?" inquired Gillian
+presently, as she sipped her tea.
+
+"Oh, that boy, Kit Raynham," replied Magda impatiently. "It appears I'm
+blighting his young prospects--his professional ones, I mean. Though I
+don't quite see why an attack of calf-love for me should wreck his work
+as an architect!"
+
+"I do--if he spends his time sketching 'the Wielitzska' in half a dozen
+different poses instead of making plans for a garden city."
+
+Magda smiled involuntarily.
+
+"Does he do that?" she said. "But how ridiculous of him!"
+
+"It's merely indicative of his state of mind," returned Gillian. She
+gazed meditatively into the fire. "You know, Magda, I think it will mean
+the end of our friendship when Coppertop reaches years of discretion."
+
+Coppertop was Gillian's small son, a young person of seven, who owed his
+cognomen to the crop of flaming red curls which adorned his round button
+of a head.
+
+Magda laughed.
+
+"Pouf! By the time that happens I shall be quite old--and harmless."
+
+Gillian shook her head.
+
+"Your type is never harmless, my dear. Unless you fall in love, you'll
+be an unexploded mine till the day of your death."
+
+"That nearly occurred to-day, by the way," vouchsafed Magda tranquilly.
+"In which case,"--smiling--"you'd have been spared any further anxiety
+on Coppertop's account."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Gillian, startled.
+
+"I mean that I've had an adventure this afternoon. We got smashed up in
+the fog."
+
+"Oh, my dear! How dreadful! How did it happen?"
+
+"Something collided with the car and shot us bang into a motor-bus, and
+then, almost at the same moment, something else charged into us from
+behind. So there was a pretty fair mix-up."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me before! Was anyone badly hurt? And how did you
+get home?" Gillian's questions poured out excitedly.
+
+"No, no one was badly hurt. I got a blow on the head, and fainted. So a
+man who'd been inside the bus we ran into performed the rescuing stunt.
+His house was close by, and he carried me in there and proceeded to dose
+me with sal volatile first and tea afterwards. He wound up by presenting
+me with an unvarnished summary of his opinion of the likes of me."
+
+There was an unwontedly hard note in Magda's voice as she detailed the
+afternoon's events, and Gillian glanced at her sharply.
+
+"I don't understand. Was he a strait-laced prig who disapproved of
+dancing, do you mean?"
+
+"Nothing of the sort. He had a most comprehensive appreciation of
+the art of dancing. His disapproval was entirely concentrated on
+me--personally."
+
+"But how could it be--since he didn't know you?"
+
+Magda gave a little grin.
+
+"You mean it would have been quite comprehensible if he _had_ known me?"
+she observed ironically.
+
+The other laughed.
+
+"Don't be so provoking! You know perfectly well what I meant! You
+deserve that I should answer 'yes' to that question."
+
+"Do, if you like."
+
+"I would--only I happen to know you a good deal better than you know
+yourself."
+
+"What do you know about me, then, that I don't?"
+
+Gillian's nice brown eyes smiled across at her.
+
+"I know that, somewhere inside you, you've got the capacity for being as
+sweet and kind and tender and self-sacrificing as any woman living--if
+only something would happen to make it worth while. I wish--I wish to
+heaven you'd fall in love!"
+
+"I'm not likely to. I'm in love with my art. It gives you a better
+return than love for any man."
+
+"No," answered Gillian quietly. "No. You're wrong. Tony died when we'd
+only been married a year. But that year was worth the whole rest of life
+put together. And--I've got Coppertop."
+
+Magda leaned forward suddenly and kissed her.
+
+"Dear Gillyflower!" she said. "I'm so glad you feel like that--bless
+you! I wish I could. But I never shall. I was soured in the making, I
+think"--laughing rather forlornly. "I don't trust love. It's the thing
+that hurts and tortures and breaks a woman--as my mother was hurt and
+tortured and broken." She paused. "No, preserve me from falling in
+love!" she added more lightly. "'A Loaf of Bread, and Thou beside me in
+the Wilderness' doesn't appeal to me in the least."
+
+"It will one day," retorted Gillian oracularly. "In the meantime you
+might go on telling me about the man who fished you out of the smash.
+Was he young? And good-looking? Perhaps he is destined to be your fate."
+
+"He was rather over thirty, I should think. And good-looking--quite. But
+he 'hates my type of woman,' you'll be interested to know. So that you
+can put your high hopes back on the top shelf again."
+
+"Not at all," declared Gillian briskly. "There's nothing like beginning
+with a little aversion."
+
+Magda smiled reminiscently.
+
+"If you'd been present at our interview, you'd realise that 'a little
+aversion' is a cloying euphemism for the feeling exhibited by my late
+preserver."
+
+"What was he like, then?"
+
+"At first, because I wouldn't take the sal volatile--you know how I
+detest the stuff!--and sit still where he'd put me like a good little
+girl, he ordered me about as though I were a child of six. He absolutely
+bullied me! Then it apparently occurred to him to take my moral welfare
+in hand, and I should judge he considered that Jezebel and Delilah were
+positively provincial in their methods as compared with me."
+
+"Nonsense! If he didn't know you, why should he suppose himself
+competent to form any opinion about you at all--good, bad, or
+indifferent?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Magda slowly. Then, speaking with sudden
+defiance: "Yes, I do know! A pal of his had--had cared about me some
+time or other, and I'd turned him down. That's why."
+
+"Oh, Magda!" There was both reproach and understanding in Gillian's
+voice.
+
+Magda shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Well, if he wanted to pay off old scores on his pal's behalf, he
+succeeded," she said mirthlessly.
+
+Gillian looked at her in surprise. She had never seen Magda quite like
+this before; her sombre eyes held a curious strained look like those of
+some wild thing of the forest caught in a trap and in pain.
+
+"And you don't know who he was--I mean the man who came to your help and
+then lectured you?"
+
+"Yes, I do. It was Michael Quarrington, the artist."
+
+"Michael Quarrington? Why, he has the reputation of being a most
+charming man!"
+
+Magda stared into the fire.
+
+"I dare say he might have a great deal of charm if he cared to exert it.
+Apparently, however, he didn't think I was worth the effort."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN THE MIRROR ROOM
+
+Shouts of mirth came jubilantly from the Mirror Room as Davilof made his
+way thither one afternoon a few days later. The shrill peal of a child's
+laughter rose gaily above the lower note of women's voices, and when
+the accompanist opened the door it was to discover Magda completely
+engrossed in giving Coppertop a first dancing lesson, while Gillian sat
+stitching busily away at some small nether garments afflicted with rents
+and tears in sundry places. Every now and again she glanced up with
+softly amused eyes to watch her son's somewhat unsteady efforts in the
+Terpsichorean art.
+
+Coppertop, a slim young reed in his bright green knitted jersey, was
+clinging with one hand to a wooden bar attached to the wall which served
+Magda for the "bar practice" which constitutes part of every dancer's
+daily work, while Magda, holding his other hand in hers, essayed to
+instruct him in the principle of "turning out"--that flexible turning of
+the knees towards the side which gives so much facility of movement.
+
+"Point your toes sideways--so," directed Magda. "This one towards
+me--like that." She stooped and placed his foot in position. "Now, kick
+out! Try to kick me!"
+
+Coppertop tried--and succeeded, greeting his accomplishment with shrieks
+of delight.
+
+It was just at this moment that Davilof appeared on the scene, pausing
+abruptly in the doorway as he caught sight of Magda's laughing face
+bent above the fiery red head. There was something very charming in her
+expression of eager, light-hearted abandonment to the fun of the moment.
+
+At the sound of the opening door Coppertop wriggled out of her grasp
+like an eel, twisting his lithe young body round to see who the new
+arrival might be. His face fell woefully as he caught sight of Davilof.
+
+"Oh, you can't _never_ have come already to play for the Fairy Lady!" he
+exclaimed in accents of dire disappointment.
+
+"Fairy Lady" was the name he had bestowed upon Magda when, very early
+in their acquaintance, she had performed for his sole and particular
+benefit a maturer edition of the dance she had evolved as a child--the
+dance with which she had so much astonished Lady Arabella. Nowadays
+it figured prominently on her programmes as "The Hamadryad," and was
+enormously popular.
+
+"It's not never three o'clock!" wailed Coppertop disconsolately, as
+Davilof dangled his watch in front of him.
+
+"I think it is, small son," interpolated Gillian, gathering together her
+sewing materials. "Come along. We must leave the Fairy Lady to practise
+now, because she's got to dance to half the people in London to-morrow."
+
+"Must I really go?" appealed Coppertop, beseeching Magda with a pair of
+melting green eyes.
+
+She dropped a light kiss on the top of his red curls.
+
+"'Fraid so, Coppertop," she said. "You wouldn't want Fairy Lady to dance
+badly and tumble down, would you?"
+
+But Coppertop was not to be taken in so easily.
+
+"Huh!" he scoffed. "You _couldn't_ tumble down--not never!"
+
+"Still, you mustn't be greedy, Topkins," urged Magda persuasively.
+"Remember all the grown-up people who want me to dance to them! I
+can't keep it all for one little boy." He stared at her for a moment in
+silence. Suddenly he flung his arms round her slender hips, clutching
+her tightly, and hid his face against her skirt.
+
+"Oh, Fairy Lady, you are so booful--_so booful_!" he whispered in a
+smothered voice. Then, with a big sigh: "But one little boy won't be
+greedy." He turned to his mother. "Come along, mummie!" he commanded
+superbly. And trotted out of the room beside her with his small head
+well up.
+
+Left alone, Davilof and Magda smiled across at one another.
+
+"Funny little person, isn't he?" she said.
+
+The musician nodded.
+
+"Grown-ups might possibly envy the freedom of speech permitted to
+childhood," he said quietly. Then, still more quietly: "'Fairy Lady, you
+are so beautiful!'"
+
+"But you're not a child, so don't poach Coppertop's preserves!" retorted
+Magda swiftly. "Let's get to work, Antoine. I'll just change into my
+practice-kit and then I want to run through the 'Swan-Maiden's' dance.
+You fix the lighting."
+
+She vanished into an adjoining room, while Davilof proceeded to switch
+off most of the burners, leaving only those which illumined the space in
+front of the great mirror. The remainder of the big room receded into a
+grey twilight encircling the patch of luminance.
+
+Presently Magda reappeared wearing a loose tunic of some white silken
+material, girdled at the waist, but yet leaving her with perfect freedom
+of limb.
+
+Davilof watched her as she came down the long room with the
+feather-light, floating walk of the trained dancer, and something leaped
+into his eyes that was very different from mere admiration--something
+that, taken in conjunction with Lady Arabella's caustic comments of a
+few days ago, might have warned Magda had she seen it.
+
+But with her thoughts preoccupied by the work in hand she failed to
+notice it, and, advancing till she faced the great mirror, she executed
+a few steps in front of it, humming the motif of _The Swan-Maiden_ music
+under her breath.
+
+"Play, Antoine," she threw at him over her shoulder.
+
+Davilof hesitated, made a movement towards her, then wheeled round
+abruptly and went to the piano. A moment later the exquisite, smoothly
+rippling music which he had himself written for the Swan-Maiden dance
+purled out into the room.
+
+The story of the Swan-Maiden had been taken from an old legend which
+told of a beautiful maiden and the youth who loved her.
+
+According to the narrative, the pair were unfortunate enough to incur
+the displeasure of the evil fairy Ritmagar, and the latter, in order to
+punish them, transformed the maiden into a white swan, thus separating
+the hapless lovers for ever. Afterwards, the disconsolate youth,
+bemoaning the cruelty of fate, used to wander daily along the shores of
+the lake where the maiden was compelled to dwell in her guise of a swan,
+and eventually Ritmagar, apparently touched to a limited compassion,
+permitted the Swan-Maiden to resume her human form once a day during the
+hour immediately preceding sunset. But the condition was attached that
+she must always return to the lake ere the sun sank below the horizon,
+when she would be compelled to reassume her shape of a swan. Should
+she fail to return by the appointed time, death would be the inevitable
+consequence.
+
+Every reader of fairy tales--and certainly anyone who knows anything
+at all about being in love--can guess the sequel. Comes a day when the
+lovers, absorbed in their love-making, forget the flight of time, so
+that the unhappy maiden returns to the shore of the lake to find that
+the sun has already dipped below the horizon. She falls on her knees,
+beseeching the witch Ritmagar for mercy, but no answer is vouchsafed,
+and gradually the Swan-Maiden finds herself growing weaker and weaker,
+until at last death claims her.
+
+A dance, based upon this legend, had been devised for Magda in
+conjunction with Vladimir Ravinski, the brilliant Russian dancer, he
+taking the lover's part, and the whole tragic little drama was designed
+to terminate with a solo dance by Magda as the dying Swan-Maiden.
+Davilof had written the music for it, and the dance was to be performed
+at the Imperial Theatre for the first time the following week.
+
+Davilof played ever more and more softly as the dance drew to its
+close. The note of lament sounded with increasing insistence through the
+slowing ripple of the accompaniment, and at last, as Magda sank to the
+ground in a piteous attitude that somehow suggested both the drooping
+grace of a dying swan and the innocence and helplessness of the hapless
+maiden, the music died away into silence.
+
+There was a little pause. Then Davilof sprang to this feet.
+
+"By God, Magda! You're magnificent!" he exclaimed with the spontaneous
+appreciation of one genuine artist for another.
+
+Magda raised her head and looked up at him with vague, startled eyes.
+She still preserved the pose on which the dance had ceased, and had
+hardly yet returned to the world of reality from that magic world into
+which her art had transported her.
+
+The burning enthusiasm in Davilof's excited tones recalled her abruptly.
+
+"Was it good--was it really good?" she asked a little shakily.
+
+"Good?" he said. "It was superb!"
+
+He held out his hands and she laid hers in them without thinking,
+allowing him to draw her to her feet beside him.
+
+She stood quite still, breathing rather quickly from her recent
+exertions and supported by the close clasp of his hands on hers. Her
+lips were a little parted, her slight breast rose and fell unevenly, and
+a faint rose-colour glowed beneath the ivory pallor of her skin.
+
+Suddenly Davilof's grip tightened.
+
+"You beautiful thing!" he exclaimed huskily. "Magda----"
+
+The next moment, with a swift, ungoverned movement, he caught her to him
+and was crushing her in his arms.
+
+"Antoine! . . . Let me go!"
+
+But the pressure of her soft, pulsing body against his own sent the
+blood racing through his veins. He smothered the words with his mouth
+on hers, kissing her breathless with a headlong passion that defied
+restraint--slaking his longing for her as a man denied water may at last
+slake his thirst at some suddenly discovered pool.
+
+Magda felt herself powerless as a leaf caught up in a whirlwind--swept
+suddenly into the hot vehemence of a man's desire while she was yet
+unstrung and quivering from the emotional strain of the Swan-Maiden's
+dance, every nerve of her quickened to a tingling sentience by the
+underlying passion of the music.
+
+With an effort she wrenched herself out of his arms and ran from him
+blindly into the furthest corner of the room. She had no clear idea of
+making for the door, but only of getting away--anywhere--heedless of
+direction. An instant later she was standing with her back to the wall,
+leaning helplessly against the ancient tapestry that clothed it. In
+that dim corner of the vast room her slim figure showed faintly limned
+against its blurred greens and greys like that of some pallid statue.
+
+"Go . . . go away!" she gasped.
+
+Davilof laughed triumphantly. Nothing could hold him now. The barriers
+of use and habit were down irrevocably.
+
+"Go away?" he said. "No, I'm not going away."
+
+He strode straight across the space that intervened between them. She
+watched his coming with dilated eyes. Her hands, palms downwards, were
+pressed hard against the woven surface of the tapestry on either side of
+her.
+
+As he approached she shrank back, her whole body taut and straining
+against the wall. Then she bent her head and flung up her arms, curving
+them to shield her face. Davilof could just see the rounded whiteness
+of them, glimmering like pale pearl next the satin sheen of night-black
+hair.
+
+With a stifled cry he sprang forward and gripped them in his strong,
+supple hands, drawing them down inexorably.
+
+"Kiss me!" he demanded fiercely. "Magda, kiss me!"
+
+She shook her head, struggling for speech.
+
+"No!" she gasped. "No!"
+
+She glanced desperately round, but he had her hemmed in, prisoned
+against the wall.
+
+"Kiss me!" he repeated unsteadily. "You--you'd better, Magda."
+
+"And if I don't?" she forced the words through her stiff lips.
+
+"But you will!" he said hoarsely. "You will!"
+
+There was a dangerous note in his voice. The man had got beyond the
+stage to be played with. In the silence of the room Magda could hear his
+laboured breathing, feel his heart leaping against her own soft breast
+crushed against his. It frightened her.
+
+"You'll let me go if I do?" The words seemed to run into each other in
+her helpless haste.
+
+"I'll let you go."
+
+"Very well."
+
+Slowly, reluctantly she lifted her face to his and kissed him. But the
+touch of her lips on his scattered the last vestige of his self-control.
+
+"My beloved . . . Beloved!"
+
+He seized her roughly in his arms. She felt his kisses overwhelming her,
+burning against her closed eyelids, bruising her soft mouth and throat.
+
+"I love you . . . worship you----"
+
+"Let me go!" she cried shrilly, struggling against him. "Let me go--you
+promised it!"
+
+He released her, drawing slowly back, his arms falling unwillingly away
+from her.
+
+"Oh, yes," he muttered confusedly. "I did promise."
+
+The instant she felt his grip relax, Magda sprang forward and switched
+on the centre burners, flooding the room with a blaze of light, and in
+the sudden glare she and Davilof stood staring silently at each other.
+
+With the springing up of the lights it was as though a spell had broken.
+The strained, hunted expression left Magda's face. She wasn't frightened
+any longer. Davilof was no more the man whose sudden passion had surged
+about her, threatening to break down all defences and overwhelm her.
+He was just Davilof, her accompanist, who, like half the men of her
+acquaintance, was more or less in love with her and who had overstepped
+the boundary which she had very definitely marked out between herself
+and him.
+
+She regarded him stormily.
+
+"Have you gone mad?" she asked contemptuously.
+
+He returned her look, his eyes curiously brilliant. Then he laughed
+suddenly.
+
+"Mad?" he said. "Yes, I think I _am_ mad. Mad with love for you!
+Magda"--he came and stood close beside her--"don't send me away! Don't
+say you can't care for me! You don't love me now--but I could teach
+you." His voice deepened. "I love you so much. Oh, sweetest!--_Soul_ of
+me! Love is so beautiful. Let me teach you how beautiful it is!"
+
+Magda drew back.
+
+"No," she said. The brief negative fell clear and distinct as a bell.
+
+"I won't take no," he returned hotly. "I won't take no. I want you.
+Good God! Don't you understand? My love for you isn't just a boy's
+infatuation that you can dismiss with a word. It's all of me. I worship
+you! Haven't I been with you day after day, worked with you, followed
+your every mood--shared your very soul with you? You're mine! Mine,
+because I understand you. You've shown me all you thought, all you felt.
+You couldn't have done that if I hadn't meant something to you."
+
+"Certainly you meant something to me. You meant an almost perfect
+accompanist. Why should you have imagined you meant more? I gave you no
+reason to think so."
+
+"_No reason_?"
+
+It was as though the two short words were the key which unlocked the
+floodgates of some raging torrent. Magda could never afterwards recall
+the words he used. She only knew they beat upon her with the cruel,
+lancinating sharpness of hail driven by the wind.
+
+She had treated him much as other men, evoking the love of his ardent
+temperament by that subtle witchery which was second nature to her and
+which can be such a potent weapon in the hands of a woman whose own
+emotions remain untouched. And now the thwarted passion of the lover and
+the savage anger of a man who felt himself deceived and duped broke over
+her in a resistless storm--an outburst so bitter and so trenchant
+that for the moment she remained speechless before it, buffeted into
+helpless, resentful silence. When he ceased, he had stripped her of
+every rag of feminine defence.
+
+"Have you finished?" she asked in a stifled voice.
+
+She made no attempt to palliate matters or to refute anything he had
+said. In his present frame of mind it would have been useless pointing
+out to him that she had treated him no differently from other men. He
+was a Pole, and he had caught fire where others would merely have glowed
+smoulderingly.
+
+"Yes," he rejoined sullenly. "I've finished."
+
+"So much the better."
+
+He regarded her speculatively.
+
+"What are you made of, I wonder? Does it mean nothing to you that a man
+has given you his very best--all that he has?"
+
+She appeared to reflect a moment.
+
+"I'm afraid it doesn't. There's only one thing really means much to
+me--and that is my art. And Lady Arabella," she added after a pause.
+"She'll always mean a good deal."
+
+She sat down by the fire and held out her hands to its warmth. The
+slender fingers seemed almost transparent, glowing rosily in the
+firelight. Davilof turned to go.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he said curtly.
+
+"Good-bye." Magda nodded indifferently. Then, carelessly: "I shall want
+you to-morrow, Davilof--same time."
+
+He swung round.
+
+"I will never play for you again. Did you imagine I should?"
+
+She smiled at him--that slow, subtle smile of hers with its hint of
+mockery.
+
+"You won't be able to keep away," she replied.
+
+"I will never play for you again," he repeated. "Never! I will teach
+myself to hate you."
+
+She shook her head lightly.
+
+"Impossible, Davilof."
+
+"It's not impossible. There's very little difference between love and
+hate--sometimes. And I want all or nothing."
+
+"I'm afraid it must be nothing, then."
+
+"We shall see. But if I can't have you, _I_ swear no other man shall!"
+
+She glanced up at him, lifting her brows a little.
+
+"Aren't you going too far, Antoine? You can hate me, if you like, or
+love me--it's a matter of indifference to me which you do. But I don't
+propose to allow you to arrange my life for me. And in any case"--after
+a moment--"I'm not likely to fall in love--with you or anyone else."
+
+"You think not?" He stood looking down at her sombrely. "You'll fall in
+love right enough some day. And when you do it will be all or nothing
+with you, too. You're that kind. Love will take you--and break you,
+Magda."
+
+He spoke slowly, with an odd kind of tensity. To Magda it seemed almost
+as if his quiet speech held the gravity of prophecy, and she shivered a
+little.
+
+"And when that time comes, then you'll come back to me," he added.
+
+Magda threw up her head, defying him.
+
+"You propose to be waiting round to pick up the pieces, then?" she
+suggested nonchalantly.
+
+But only the sound of the closing door answered her. Davilof had gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE SWAN-MAIDEN
+
+Lady Arabella was in her element. She had two brilliant and unattached
+young men dining with her--one, Michael Quarrington, a lion in the
+artistic world, and the other, Antoine Davilof, who showed unmistakable
+symptoms of developing sooner or later into a lion in the musical world.
+
+It was Davilof who was responsible for the artist's presence at Lady
+Arabella's dinner table. She had expressed--in her usual autocratic
+manner--a wish that he should be presented to her, and had determined
+upon the evening of the first performance of _The Swan-Maiden_ as the
+appointed time.
+
+Davilof appeared doubtful, and declared that Quarrington was leaving
+England and had already fixed the date of his departure.
+
+"He's crossing from Dover the very day before the one you want him to
+dine with you," he told her.
+
+But Lady Arabella swept his objections aside with regal indifference.
+
+"Crossing, is he?" she snapped. "Well, tell him I want him to dine here
+and go to the show with us afterwards. He'll cross the day _after_,
+you'll find--if he crosses at all!" she wound up enigmatically.
+
+So it came about that her two lions, the last-arrived artist and the
+soon-to-arrive musician, were both dining with her on the appointed
+evening.
+
+Lady Arabella adored lions. Also, notwithstanding her seventy years, she
+retained as much original Eve in her composition as a girl of seventeen,
+and she adored young men.
+
+In particular, she decided that she approved of Michael Quarrington. She
+liked the clean English build of him. She liked his lean, square jaw and
+the fair hair with the unruly kink in it which reminded her of a certain
+other young man--who had been young when she was young--and to whom
+she had bade farewell at her parents' inflexible decree more than fifty
+years ago. Above all, she liked the artist's eyes--those grey, steady
+eyes with their look of reticence so characteristic of the man himself.
+
+Reticence was an asset in her ladyship's estimation. It showed good
+sense--and it offered provocative opportunities for a battle of wits
+such as her soul loved.
+
+"Have you seen my god-daughter dance, Mr. Quarrington?" she asked him.
+
+"Yes, several times."
+
+His tone was non-committal and she eyed him sharply.
+
+"Don't admire dancing, do you?" she threw at him.
+
+Quarrington regarded her with a humorous twinkle.
+
+"And I an artist? How can you ask, Lady Arabella?"
+
+"Well, you sounded supremely detached," she grumbled.
+
+"I think Mademoiselle Wielitzska's dancing the loveliest thing I have
+ever seen," he returned simply.
+
+The old woman vouchsafed him a smile.
+
+"Thank you," she answered. "I enjoyed that quite as much as I used to
+enjoy being told I'd a pretty dimple when I was a girl."
+
+"You have now," rejoined Quarrington audaciously.
+
+Lady Arabella's eyes sparkled. She loved a neatly turned compliment.
+
+"Thank you again. But it's a pity to waste your pretty speeches on an
+old woman of seventy."
+
+"I don't," retorted the artist gravely. "I reserve them for the young
+people I know of that age."
+
+She laughed delightedly. Then, turning to Davilof, she drew him into the
+conversation and the talk became general.
+
+Later, as they were all three standing in the hall preparatory to
+departure, she flashed another of her sudden remarks at Quarrington.
+
+"I understand you came to my god-daughter's rescue in that bad fog last
+week?"
+
+The quiet grey eyes revealed nothing.
+
+"I was privileged to be some little use," he replied lightly.
+
+"I hardly gathered you regarded it as a privilege," observed her
+ladyship drily.
+
+The shaft went home. A fleeting light gleamed for a moment in the grey
+eyes. Davilof was standing a few paces away, being helped into his coat
+by a man-servant, and Quarrington spoke low and quickly.
+
+"She told you?" he said. There was astonishment--resentment, almost--in
+his voice.
+
+"No, no." Lady Arabella, smiling to herself, reassured him hastily. "It
+was a shot in the dark on my part. Magda never confides details. She
+hands you out an unadorned slice of fact and leaves you to interpret it
+as you choose. But if you know her rather well--as I do--and can add two
+and two together and make five or any unlikely number of them, why, then
+you can fill in some of the blanks for yourself."
+
+She glanced at him with impish amusement as she moved towards the door.
+
+"Come along, Davilof," she said. "I suppose you want to hear your own
+music--even if Magda's dancing no longer interests you?"
+
+Davilof gave her his arm down the steps.
+
+"What do you mean, miladi?" he asked. "There is no more beautiful
+dancing in the world."
+
+"Then why have you jacked up your job of accompanist? Shoes beginning to
+pinch a little, eh?"--shrewdly.
+
+"You mean I grow too big for my boots? No, madame. If I were the
+greatest musician in Europe, instead of being merely Antoine Davilof,
+it could only be a source of pride to be asked to accompany the
+Wielitzska."
+
+Lady Arabella paused on the pavement, her foot on the step of the
+limousine.
+
+"Then how is it that Mrs. Grey accompanies her now? She was playing for
+her at the Duchess of Lichbrooke's the other evening.
+
+"Magda didn't tell you, then?"
+
+"No, she didn't; or I'd not be wasting my breath in asking you. I asked
+her, and she said you had taken to playing wrong notes."
+
+A faint smile curved the lips above the small golden beard.
+
+"Then it must be true. Undoubtedly I played wrong notes, miladi."
+
+"Very careless of you, I'm sure." Under the garish light of a
+neighbouring street-lamp her keen old eyes met his significantly.
+"Or--very imprudent, Davilof. You need the tact of the whole Diplomatic
+Service to deal with Magda. And you ought to know it."
+
+"True, miladi. But I was not designed for diplomacy, and a man can only
+use the weapons heaven has given him."
+
+"I wouldn't have suggested heaven as invariably the source of your
+inspirations," retorted Lady Arabella. And hopped into the car.
+
+They arrived at the Imperial Theatre to find Mrs. Grey already seated in
+Lady Arabella's box. Someone else was there, too--old Virginie, with her
+withered-apple cheeks and bright brown, bird-like eyes, still active
+and erect and very little altered from the Virginie of ten years before.
+Just as she had devoted herself to Diane, so now she devoted herself
+to Diane's daughter, and no first performance of a new dance of the
+Wielitzska's took place without Virginie's presence somewhere in the
+house. To-night, Lady Arabella had invited her into her box and Virginie
+was a quivering bundle of excitement. She rose from her seat at the back
+of the box as the newcomers entered.
+
+"Sit down, Virginie." Lady Arabella nodded kindly to the Frenchwoman.
+"And pull your chair forward. You'll see nothing back there, and there
+is plenty of room for us all."
+
+"_Merci, madame. Madame est bien gentille._" Virginie's voice was
+fervent with ecstatic gratitude as she resumed her seat and waited
+expectantly for Magda's appearance.
+
+Other dances, performed principally by lesser lights of the company and
+affording only a briefly tantalising glimpse of Magda herself, preceded
+the chief event of the evening. But at last the next item on the
+programme read as _The Swan-Maiden (adapted from an Old Legend)_, and
+a tremour of excitement, a sudden hush of eager anticipation, rippled
+through the audience like wind over grass.
+
+Slowly the heavy silken curtains drew to either side of the stage,
+revealing a sunlit glade. In the background glimmered the still waters
+of a lake, while at the foot of a tree, in an attitude of tranquil
+repose, lay the Swan-Maiden--Magda. One white, naked arm was curved
+behind her head, pillowing it, the other lay lightly across her body,
+palm upward, with the rosy-tipped fingers curled inwards a little, like
+a sleeping child's. She looked infinitely young as she lay there, her
+slender, pliant limbs relaxed in untroubled slumber.
+
+Lady Arabella, with Quarrington sitting next to her in the box, heard
+the quick intake of his breath as he leaned suddenly forward.
+
+"Yes, it has quite a familiar look," she observed. "Reminds me of your
+'Repose of Titania.'"
+
+His eyes flickered inquiringly over her face, but it was evident that
+hers had been merely a chance remark. The old lady had obviously no idea
+as to who it was who had posed for the Titania of the picture. That was
+one of the "slices of fact" which Magda had omitted to hand out when
+recounting her adventure in the fog to her godmother. Quarrington leaned
+back in his chair satisfied.
+
+"It's not unlike," he agreed carelessly.
+
+Then the entrance of Vladimir Ravinski, the lovelorn youth of the
+legend, riveted his attention on the stage.
+
+The dance which followed was exquisite. The Russian was a beautiful
+youth, like a sun-god with his flying yellow locks and glorious symmetry
+of body, and the _pas de deux_ between him and Magda was a thing to
+marvel at--sweeping through the whole gamut of love's emotion, from
+the first shy, delicate hesitancy of worshipping boy and girl to the
+rapturous abandon of mated lovers.
+
+Then across the vibrant, pulsating scene fell the deadly shadow of the
+witch Ritmagar. The stage darkened, the violins in the orchestra skirled
+eerily in chromatic showers of notes, and the hunched figure of Ritmagar
+approaching menaced the lovers. A wild dance followed, the lovers now
+kneeling and beseeching the evil fairy to have pity on them, now rushing
+despairingly into each other's arms, while the witch's own dancing held
+all of threat and malevolence that superb artistry could infuse into it.
+
+The tale unfolded itself with the inevitableness of preordained
+catastrophe.
+
+Ritmagar declines to be appeased. She raises her claw-like hand,
+pointing a crooked finger at the lovers, and with a clash of brazen
+sound and the dull thrumming of drums the whole scene dissolves into
+absolute darkness. When the darkness lifts once more, the stage is
+empty save for a pure white swan which sails slowly down the lake and
+disappears. . . . Followed a solo dance by Ravinski in which he gave
+full vent to the anguish of the bereft lover, while now and again the
+swan swam statelily by him. At length the witch appeared once more and,
+yielding to his impassioned entreaties, declared that the Swan-Maiden
+might reassume her human form during the hour preceding sunset,
+and Magda--the Swan-Maiden released from enchantment for the time
+being--came running in on the stage.
+
+This love-duet was resumed and presently, when the lovers had made their
+exit, Ritmagar was seen gleefully watching while the red sun dropped
+slowly down the sky, sinking at last below the rim of the lake.
+
+Then a low rumble of drums muttered as she stole from the stage,
+the personification of vindictive triumph, and all at once the great
+concourse of people in the auditorium seemed to strain forward,
+conscious that the climax of the evening, the wonderful solo dance by
+the Wielitzska, was about to begin.
+
+The moon rose on the left, and Magda, a slim white figure in her dress
+which cleverly suggested the plumage of a swan, floated on to the
+stage with that exquisite, ethereal lightness of movement which
+only toe-dancing--and toe-dancing of the most perfectly finished
+quality--seems able to convey. It was as though her feet were not
+touching the solid earth at all. The feather-light drifting of blown
+petals; the swaying grace of a swan as it glides along the surface of
+the water; the quivering, spirit-like flight of a butterfly--it seemed
+as though all these had been caught and blended together by the dancer.
+
+The heavier instruments of the orchestra were silenced, but the rippling
+music of the strings wove and interwove a dreaming melody, unutterably
+sweet and appealing, as the Swan-Maiden, bathed in pallid moonlight,
+besought the invisible Ritmagar for mercy, praying that she might not
+die even though the sun had set. . . . But there comes no answer to
+her prayers. A sombre note of stern denial sounds in the music, and the
+Swan-Maiden yields to utter despair, drooping slowly to earth. Just
+as Death himself claims her, her lover, demented with anguish, comes
+rushing to her side, and turning towards him as she lies dying upon
+the ground, she yields to his embrace with a last gesture of passionate
+surrender.
+
+
+
+Slowly the heavy curtains swung together, hiding the limp, lifeless body
+of the Swan-Maiden and the despairing figure of her lover as he knelt
+beside her, and after a breathless pause, the great audience, carried
+away by the tragic drama of the dance, its passion and its pathos, broke
+into a thunder of applause that rolled and reverberated through the
+theatre.
+
+Again and again Magda and her partner were called before the curtain,
+the former laden with the sheafs of flowers which had been handed up
+on to the stage. But the audience refused to be satisfied until at last
+Magda appeared alone, standing very white and slender under the blaze
+of lights, a faint suggestion of fatigue in the poise of her lissome
+figure.
+
+Instantly the applause broke out anew--thunderous, overwhelming. Magda
+smiled, then held out her arms in a little disarming gesture of appeal,
+touching in its absolute simplicity. It was as though she said: "Dear
+people, I love you all for being so pleased, but I'm very, very tired.
+Please, won't you let me go?"
+
+So they let her go, with one final round of cheers and clapping, and
+then, as the curtains fell together once more and the orchestra slid
+unobtrusively into the _entr'acte_ music, a buzz of conversation arose.
+
+Michael Quarrington turned and spoke to Davilof as they stood together.
+
+"This will be my last memory of England for some time to come.
+Mademoiselle Wielitzska is very wonderful. As much actress as
+dancer--and both rather superlatively."
+
+There was an odd note in Quarrington's voice, as if he were forcibly
+repressing some less measured form of words.
+
+Davilof glanced at him sharply.
+
+"You think so?" he said curtly.
+
+The musician's hazel eyes were burning feverishly. One hand was clenched
+on the back of the chair from which he had just risen; the other hung at
+his side, the fingers opening and shutting nervously.
+
+Quarrington smiled.
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+The eyes of the two men met, and Michael became suddenly conscious that
+the other was struggling in the grip of some strong emotion. He could
+even sense its atmosphere of antagonism towards himself.
+
+"I think"--Davilof spoke with slow intensity--"I think she's a soulless
+piece of devil's mechanism." And turning abruptly, he swung out of the
+box, slamming the door behind him.
+
+Quarrington frowned. With his keen perceptions it was not difficult for
+him to divine what lay at the back of Davilof's bitter criticism. The
+man was in love--hopelessly in love with the Wielitzska. Probably she
+had turned him down, as she had turned down better men than he, but he
+had been unable to resist the bitter-sweet temptation of watching her
+dance, and throughout the evening had almost certainly been suffering
+the torments of the damned.
+
+The artist smiled a little grimly to himself, remembering the many
+evenings he, too, had spent at the Imperial Theatre, drawn thither by
+the magnetism of a white, slender woman with night-black hair, whose
+long, dark eyes haunted him perpetually, even coming between him and his
+work.
+
+And then, just as he had made up his mind to go away, first to Paris and
+afterwards to Spain or perhaps even further afield, and thus set as many
+miles of sea and land as he could betwixt himself and the "kind of woman
+he had no place for," fate had played him a trick and sent her out of
+the obscurity of the fog-ridden street straight to his very hearth and
+home, so that the fragrance and sweetness and charm of her must needs
+linger there to torment him.
+
+He thought he could make a pretty accurate guess at the state of
+Davilof's feelings, and was ironically conscious of a sense of
+fellowship with him.
+
+Lady Arabella's sharp voice cut across his reflections.
+
+"I don't care for this next thing," she said, flicking at her programme.
+"Mrs. Grey and I are going round to see Magda. Will you come with us?"
+
+Quarrington had every intention of politely excusing himself. Instead of
+which he found himself replying:
+
+"With pleasure--if Mademoiselle Wielitzska won't think I'm intruding."
+
+Lady Arabella chuckled.
+
+"Well, she intruded on you that day in the fog, didn't she? So you'll
+be quits." She glanced impatiently round the box. "Where on earth has
+Davilof vanished to? Has he gone up in flame?"
+
+Michael laughed involuntarily.
+
+"Something of the kind, I fancy," he replied. "Anyway, he departed
+rather hurriedly."
+
+"Poor Antoine!" Gillian spoke with a kind of humorous compassion. "He
+has a temperament. I'm glad I haven't."
+
+"You have the best of all temperaments, Mrs. Grey," answered Michael, as
+they both followed Lady Arabella out of the box.
+
+She looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"The temperament that understands other people's temperaments," he
+added.
+
+"How do you know?" she asked, smiling.
+
+Lady Arabella was prancing on ahead down the corridor, and for the
+moment Michael and Gillian were alone.
+
+"We artists learn to look for what lies below the surface. If your work
+is sincere, you find when you've finished a portrait that the soul of
+the sitter has revealed itself unmistakably."
+
+Gillian nodded.
+
+"I've been told you've an almost diabolical genius for expressing
+just what a man or woman is really like--in character, I mean--in your
+portraits."
+
+"I can't help it," he said simply. "It comes--it reveals itself--if you
+paint sincerely."
+
+"And do you--always paint sincerely?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I try to. Though once I got hauled over the coals pretty sharply for
+doing so. My sitter happened to be a pretty society woman, possessed
+of about as much soul as would cover a threepenny-bit, and when I'd
+finished her portrait she simply turned and rent me. 'I wanted a taking
+picture,' she informed me indignantly, 'not the bones of my personality
+laid bare for public inspection.'"
+
+They were outside Magda's dressing-room by this time, and Virginie, who
+had flown to her nurseling the moment the dance was at an end, opened
+the door in response to Lady Arabella's preemptory knock. Gillian paused
+a moment before entering the room.
+
+"Yours is a wonderful gift of perception," she said quietly. "It ought
+to make you--very merciful."
+
+Michael looked at her swiftly. Her eyes seemed to be asking something
+of him--entreating. But before he could speak Lady Arabella's voice
+interposed remorselessly.
+
+"Come in, you two; and for goodness' sake shut the door. There's draught
+enough to waft one to heaven."
+
+There was no choice but to obey, and silently Quarrington followed Mrs.
+Grey into the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MICHAEL CHANGES HIS MIND
+
+Magda's dressing-room at the Imperial Theatre was something rather
+special in the way of dressing-rooms. It had been designed expressly
+for her by the management, and boasted a beautifully appointed bathroom
+adjoining it where she could luxuriate in a refreshing dip immediately
+after the strain and fatigue of her work on the stage.
+
+She had been very firm about the bathroom, airily dismissing a plaintive
+murmur from the manager to the effect that they were "somewhat crowded
+for space at the Imperial."
+
+"Then take another theatre, my dear man," she had told him. "Or build!
+Or give the _corps de ballet_ one less dressing-room amongst them.
+But if you want _me_, I must have a bathroom. If I dance, I bathe
+afterwards. If not, I don't dance."
+
+Being a star of the first magnitude, the Wielitzska could dictate her
+own terms, and accordingly a bathroom she had.
+
+She had just emerged from its white-tiled, silver-tapped luxury a
+few minutes before Lady Arabella, together with Gillian and Michael
+Quarrington, presented themselves at her dressing-room door, and they
+found her ensconced in an easy-chair by the fire, sipping a cup of
+steaming hot tea.
+
+"I've brought Mr. Quarrington to see you," announced Lady Arabella. "I
+thought perhaps you'd like some other congratulations besides family
+ones."
+
+"Am I permitted?" asked Quarrington, taking the hand Magda held out to
+him. "Or are you too tired to be bothered with an outsider?"
+
+Magda looked up at him.
+
+"I've very glad to see you," she said quietly.
+
+She appeared unwontedly sweet and girlish as she sat there, clad in a
+negligee of some soft silken stuff that clung about the lissom lines of
+her figure, and with her satiny hair coiled in a simple knot at the nape
+of her neck. There was little or nothing about her to remind one of the
+successful ballerina, and Michael found himself poignantly recalling
+the innocent, appealing charm of the Swan-Maiden. It was difficult to
+associate this woman with that other who had so unconsciously turned
+down his pal--the man who had loved her.
+
+"Well? Did it go all right?"
+
+Magda's eyes sought Gillian's eagerly as she put the question.
+
+"Did it go?" Mrs. Grey's voice held all the unqualified enthusiasm any
+artiste could desire.
+
+"Oh, Magda! It was wonderful! The most wonderful, beautiful dance I've
+ever seen."
+
+"And you know it as well as we do," interpolated Lady Arabella tartly,
+but smiling pridefully in spite of herself.
+
+"Still, of course, she likes to hear us _say_ it." Gillian championed
+her friend stoutly.
+
+"The whole world will be saying it to-morrow," observed Quarrington
+quietly.
+
+Here Virginie created a diversion by handing round cups of freshly
+brewed tea.
+
+"You'll get nerves--drinking tea at this hour of the night," commented
+Lady Arabella, accepting a cup with alacrity, nevertheless.
+
+"I take it very weak," protested Magda, smiling faintly. "It's the only
+thing I like after dancing."
+
+But Lady Arabella was already deep in conversation with Gillian and
+Virginie--a conversation which resolved itself chiefly into a laudatory
+chorus regarding the evening's performance. In the background Magda's
+maid moved quietly to and fro, carefully putting away her mistress's
+dancing dresses. For the moment Michael and Magda were to all intents
+and purposes alone.
+
+"I shall not easily forget to-night," he said rather low, drawing a
+chair up beside her.
+
+"You liked it, then?" she asked hesitatingly--almost shyly.
+
+"'Like' is hardly the word."
+
+Magda flashed him a swift glance.
+
+"And yet," she said slowly, "I'm the 'type of woman you hate.'"
+
+"You make it rather difficult to maintain the point of view," he
+admitted.
+
+She was silent a moment.
+
+"You were very unkind to me that day," she said at last.
+
+Their eyes met and in hers was something soft and dangerously disarming.
+Quarrington got up suddenly from his chair.
+
+"Perhaps I was unkind to you so that I might not be unkind to myself,"
+he replied curtly.
+
+Magda's soft laugh rippled out.
+
+"But how selfish! And--and aren't you being rather mysterious?"
+
+"Am I?" he returned pointedly. "Surely self-preservation is the first
+instinct of the human species?"
+
+She picked up the challenge and tossed it lightly back to him.
+
+"Is the danger, then, very great?"
+
+"I think it is. So, like a wise man, I propose to avoid it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Why, by quitting the danger zone. I go to Paris to-morrow."
+
+"To Paris?"
+
+Magda experienced a sudden feeling of blankness. It was inexplicable,
+but somehow the knowledge that Quarrington was going away seemed to take
+all the savour out of things. It was only by a supreme effort that she
+contrived to keep her tone as light and unconcerned as his own as she
+continued:
+
+"And then--after Paris?"
+
+"After Paris? Oh, Spain possibly. Or the Antipodes!"--with a short
+laugh.
+
+"Who's talking about the Antipodes?" suddenly chimed in Lady Arabella.
+"Home to bed's my next move. Gillian, you come with me--the car can take
+you on to Hampstead after dropping me in Park Lane. And Virginie can
+drive back with Magda."
+
+"Yes, do go with Marraine," said Magda, nodding acquiescence in reply to
+Gillian's glance of interrogation. "I have to dress yet."
+
+There was a general move towards the door.
+
+"Good-bye"--Magda's slim hand lay for a moment in Quarrington's. "I--I'm
+sorry you're going away, Saint Michel."
+
+Only Michael heard the last two words, uttered in that _trainante_,
+slightly husky voice that held so much of music and appeal. He turned
+abruptly and made his way out of the room in the wake of Gillian and
+Lady Arabella.
+
+"You'd better postpone your visit to the Antipodes, Mr. Quarrington,"
+said the latter, as presently they all three stood together in the
+vestibule, halted by the stream of people pouring out from the theatre.
+"I'm giving a dinner-party next week, with a 'crush' to follow. Stay and
+come to it."
+
+"It's awfully kind of you, Lady Arabella, but I'm afraid it's
+impossible."
+
+"Fiddlesticks! You're a free agent, aren't you?"--looking at him keenly.
+
+A whimsical light gleamed for an instant in the grey eyes.
+
+"I sometimes wonder if I am," he returned.
+
+"There's only one cord I know of that can't be either unknotted--or cut.
+And that's lack of money. That's not your complaint"--significantly.
+
+"No."
+
+"So you'll come?"
+
+"I'm afraid not."
+
+"Magda has promised to dance for me," proceeded Lady Arabella, entirely
+disregarding his quietly uttered negative. "They're not giving _The
+Swan-Maiden_ that night at the Imperial. She can't dine, of course, poor
+dear. Really, dancers have a lot to put up with--or rather, to put up
+_without_! Magda never dares to enjoy a good square meal. Afraid of
+getting fat, of course! After all, a dancer's figure's her fortune."
+
+Like a low, insistent undertone beneath the rattle of Lady Arabella's
+volubility Michael could hear again the murmur of a soft, dragging
+voice: "I'm sorry you're going away, Saint Michel."
+
+It seemed almost as though Lady Arabella, with that uncanny shrewdness
+of hers, divined it.
+
+"You'll come, then?" She smiled at him over her shoulder, moving forward
+as the crush in the vestibule lessened a little.
+
+And Michael, with an odd expression in his eyes, answered suddenly:
+
+"Yes, I'll come."
+
+
+
+Later, as Lady Arabella and Gillian drove home together, the former
+laughed quietly. There was an element of pride and triumph in the
+laughter. Probably the hen who has reared a duckling and sees it sail
+off into the water experiences, alongside her natural apprehension and
+astonishment, a somewhat similar pride in the startling proclivities
+evinced by her nurseling.
+
+"That nice artist-man is in love with Magda," crowed Lady Arabella
+contentedly.
+
+Gillian smiled.
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I do. Only it's very much against his will, for some reason or other.
+Crossing from Dover to-morrow, forsooth!"--with a broad smile. "Not he!
+He'll be at my party--and asking Magda to marry him before the week's
+out, bar accidents! . . . After all, it's not surprising that the men
+are falling over each other to marry her. She's really rather wonderful.
+Where do you think she gets it all from, Gillian, my dear? Not from the
+Vallincourts, I'll swear!"--chuckling.
+
+Mrs. Grey shook her head.
+
+"I don't know. But I think Magda is a standing argument in favour of the
+doctrine of reincarnation! She always seems to me to be a kind of modern
+embodiment of Helen of Troy or Cleopatra."
+
+"Only without the capacity for falling in love! She's as chilly as an
+iceberg and yet somehow gives you the idea she's all fire and passion.
+No wonder the men get misled, poor lambs!"
+
+"She's not cold, really," asserted Gillian positively. "Of that I'm
+sure. No one could dance as she does--and be an iceberg."
+
+Lady Arabella chuckled again, wickedly.
+
+"A woman who can dance like that ought to be preceded through life by
+a red flag. She positively stirs my old blood--that's been at a
+comfortably tepid temperature for the last thirty years!"
+
+"Some day," said Gillian, "she'll fall in love. And then--"
+
+"Then there'll be fireworks."
+
+Lady Arabella completed the sentence briskly just as the car pulled up
+in front of her house. She skipped nimbly out on to the pavement.
+
+"Fireworks, my dear," she repeated emphatically. "And a very fine
+display, too! Good-night."
+
+The car slid away north with Gillian inside it reflecting rather
+ruefully upon the very great amount of probability contained in Lady
+Arabella's parting comment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE GARDEN OF EDEN
+
+Lady Arabella's big rooms were filling rapidly. The dinner to which only
+a few of the elect had been bidden was over, and now those who had been
+invited to the less exclusive reception which was to follow were eagerly
+wending their way towards Park Lane.
+
+The programme for the evening promised to be an attractive one. A solo
+from Antoine Davilof, Lady Arabella's pet lion-cub of the moment; a song
+from the leading operatic tenor; and afterwards a single dance by the
+Wielitzska--who could never be persuaded to perform at any other private
+houses than those of her godmother and the Duchess of Lichbrooke--the
+former's half sister. So, in this respect, Lady Arabella enjoyed almost
+a monopoly, and such occasions as the present were enthusiastically
+sought after by her friends and acquaintances. Later, when the artistes
+had concluded their programme, there was to be a dance. The ballroom,
+the further end of which boasted a fair-sized stage, had been
+temporarily arranged with chairs to accommodate an audience, and in one
+of the anterooms Virginie, with loving, skilful fingers, was putting the
+finishing touches to Magda's toilette.
+
+Magda submitted passively to her ministrations. She was thinking of
+Michael Quarrington, the man who had come into her life by such strange
+chance and who had so deliberately gone out of it again. By the very
+manner of his going he had succeeded in impressing himself on her mind
+as no other man had ever done. Other men did not shun her like the
+plague, she reflected bitterly!
+
+But from the very beginning he had shown her that he disapproved of her
+fundamentally. She was the "type of woman he hated!" Night and day that
+curt little phrase had bitten into her thoughts, stinging her with its
+quiet contempt.
+
+She felt irritated that she should care anything about his opinion.
+But if she were candid with herself she had to admit that she did care,
+intensely. More than that, his departure from England had left her
+conscious of an insistent and unaccountable little ache. The knowledge
+that there could be no more chance meetings, that he had gone right out
+of her ken, seemed like the sudden closing of a door which had just been
+opening to her. It had somehow taken the zest out of things.
+
+"Voila!" Virginie drew back to survey the results of her labours,
+turning for approval to Gillian, who was in attendance in her capacity
+of accompanist. "Is it not that mademoiselle looks ravishing?"
+
+"Quite ravishing, Virginie," agreed Gillian. "Did you expect her to look
+anything else by the time you had finished decking her out?" she added
+teasingly.
+
+"It is nothing that I do," responded the old Frenchwoman seriously.
+"Mademoiselle cannot help but be beautiful to the eye--_le bon dieu_ has
+created her like that."
+
+"I believe He has," assented Gillian, smiling.
+
+As she spoke the bell of the telephone instrument on the table beside
+her rang imperatively and she lifted the receiver. Magda, watching her
+face as she took the message, saw it suddenly blanch.
+
+"Coppertop! . . . He's ill!" she gasped.
+
+"Ill?" Magda could hardly credit it. Two hours ago they had left the
+child in perfect health.
+
+"Yes." Gillian swallowed, moistening her dry lips. "They've sent for the
+doctor. It's croup. Oh!"--despairingly, and letting the receiver fall
+unheeded from her grasp--"What am I to do? What am I to do?"
+
+Magda stepped forward, the filmy draperies of the dress in which she
+was to dance floating cloudily about her as she moved. She picked up the
+receiver as it hung dangling aimlessly from the stand and replaced it on
+its clip.
+
+"Do?" she said quietly. "Why, you'll go straight home, of course. As
+quickly as the car can take you. Virginie"--turning to the maid--"fly
+and order the car round at once."
+
+Gillian looked at her distractedly.
+
+"But you? Who'll play for you? I can't go! I can't leave you!" Her voice
+was shaken by sobs. "Oh, Coppertop!"
+
+Magda slipped a comforting arm round her shoulder.
+
+"Of course you'll go--and at once, too. See, here's your coat"--lifting
+it up from the back of the chair where Gillian had thrown it. "Put it
+on."
+
+Hardly conscious of what was happening, Gillian allowed herself to be
+helped into the coat. Suddenly recollection returned.
+
+"But your dance--your dance, Magda? You've forgotten!"
+
+Magda shook her head.
+
+"No. It will be all right," she said soothingly. "Don't worry,
+Gillyflower. _You've_ forgotten that Davilof is playing here to-night."
+
+"Antoine?" Gillian stared at her incredulously. "But you can't ask him
+to play for you! You'd hate asking him a favour after--after his refusal
+to accompany you any more."
+
+Magda smiled at her reassuringly.
+
+"My dear," she said, and there was an unaffected kindliness in her voice
+which few people ever heard. "My dear, I'm not going to let a little bit
+of cheap pride keep you away from Coppertop."
+
+She bent suddenly and kissed Gillian's white, miserable face just as
+Virginie reappeared in the doorway to announce that the car was waiting.
+
+"There, run along. Look, would you like to take Virginie with you?"
+
+"No, no." Gillian shook her head decidedly. "I shall be quite all right.
+Oh, Magda!"--impulsively drawing the slender figure close into her arms
+a moment. "You are _good_!"
+
+Magda laughed a trifle bitterly.
+
+"That would be news to the world at large!" she replied. Then
+cheerfully: "Now, don't worry, Gillyflower. Remember they've got a
+doctor there. And 'phone me presently about Coppertop. If he's worse,
+I'll come home as early as I can get away. Send the car straight back
+here."
+
+As soon as Gillian had gone, Magda flung a loose wrap over her
+diaphanous draperies and turned to Virginie.
+
+"Where is Monsieur Davilof? Do you know?"
+
+"_Mais oui, mademoiselle_! I saw him through the doorway as I came from
+ordering the car. He is in the library."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"_Oui, mademoiselle_!" Virginie nodded eloquently. "He smokes a
+cigarette--to steady the nerves, I suppose."
+
+Magda went swiftly out of the room. She reached the hall by way of
+an unfrequented passage and slipped into the library closing the door
+behind her.
+
+"Antoine!"
+
+At the sound of her voice Davilof, who had been standing by the fire,
+wheeled round.
+
+"You!" he exclaimed violently. "You!" And then remained silent, staring
+at her.
+
+"You knew I was dancing here to-night," she said chidingly. "Why are you
+so startled? We were bound to meet, weren't we?"
+
+"No, we were not. I proposed leaving the house the moment my solo was
+over."
+
+Magda laughed a little.
+
+"So afraid of me, Antoine?" she mocked gently.
+
+He made no answer, but his hands, hanging at his sides, clenched
+suddenly.
+
+Magda advanced a few steps towards him and paused.
+
+"Davilof," she said quietly. "Will you play for me to-night?"
+
+He looked at her, puzzled.
+
+"Play for you?" he repeated. "But you have Mrs. Grey."
+
+"No. She can't accompany me this evening."
+
+"And you ask me?" His voice held blank amazement.
+
+"Yes. Will you do it?"
+
+"Do you remember what I told you the last time we met? That I would
+never play for you again?"
+
+Magda drew her breath slowly. It was hurting her pride far more than
+Gillian knew or could imagine to ask a favour of this man. And he wasn't
+going to make it easy for her, either--that was evident. But she must
+ask it, nevertheless. For Gillian's sake; for the sake of poor little
+Coppertop fighting for breath and with no "mummie" at hand to help and
+comfort him; and for the sake of Lady Arabella, too. After promising to
+dance for her she couldn't let her godmother down by crying off at the
+last moment, when all the world and his wife had come crowding to her
+house on the strength of that promise.
+
+So she bent her head in response to Davilof's contemptuous question.
+
+"Yes, I remember," she said quietly.
+
+"And you still ask me to play for you?"
+
+"I still ask you."
+
+Davilof laughed.
+
+"You amaze me! And supposing I reply by saying I refuse?"
+
+"But you won't," dared Magda.
+
+Davilof's eyes held something of cruelty in their hazel depths as he
+answered quietly:
+
+"On the contrary--I do refuse."
+
+Her hand went up to her throat. It was going to be more difficult than
+she had anticipated!
+
+"There is no one else who can play for me as you do," she suggested.
+
+"No," fiercely. "Because no one loves you as I do."
+
+"What is the use of saying you love me when you won't do the one
+little thing I ask?" she retorted. "It is not often that I ask favours.
+And--and no one has ever refused me a request before."
+
+Davilof could hear the note of proud resentment in her voice, and he
+realised to the full that, in view of all that had passed between them
+in the Mirror Room, it must have been a difficult matter for a woman of
+Magda's temperament to bring herself to ask his help.
+
+But he had no intention of sparing her. None but himself knew how
+bitterly she had hurt him, how cruelly she had stung his pride, when she
+had flung him that contemptuous command: "I shall want you to-morrow,
+Davilof!--same time." He had unveiled his very soul before her--and in
+return she had tossed him an order as though he were a lackey who had
+taken a liberty. All his pain and brooding resentment came boiling up to
+the surface.
+
+"If I meant anything to you," he said slowly, "if you had even looked
+upon me as a friend, you could have asked what you liked of me. But you
+showed me once--very clearly--that in your eyes I was nothing more than
+your paid accompanist. Very well, then! Pay me--and I'll play for you
+to-night."
+
+"Pay you?"
+
+"Oh, not in money"--with a short laugh.
+
+"Then--then what do you mean?" Her face had whitened a little.
+
+"It's quite simple. Later on there is a dance. Give me a dance with
+you!"
+
+Magda hesitated. In other circumstances she would have refused
+point-blank. Davilof had offended her--and more than that, the
+revelation of the upsettingly vehement order of his passion for her
+that day in the Mirror Room had frightened her not a little. There was
+something stormy and elemental about it. To the caloric Pole, love was
+love, and the fulfilment of his passion for the adored woman the supreme
+necessity of life.
+
+Realising that she had to withstand an ardour essentially unEnglish in
+its violently inflammable quality, Magda was loth to add fuel to the
+flame. And if she promised to dance with Davilof she must let him hold
+her in his arms, risk that dangerous proximity which, she knew now,
+would set the man's wild pulses racing unsteadily and probably serve as
+the preliminary to another tempestuous scene.
+
+"Well?" Davilof broke in upon her self-communings. "Have I asked too
+high a price?"
+
+Time was flying. She must decide, and decide quickly. She took her
+courage in both hands.
+
+"No," she returned quickly. "I will dance with you, Antoine."
+
+He bowed.
+
+"Our bargain is complete, then," he said ironically. "I shall be charmed
+to play for you, mademoiselle."
+
+
+
+An hour or so later the last burst of applause had died away, and
+the well-dressed crowd which had sat in enthralled silence while
+the Wielitzska danced emerged chattering and laughing from the great
+ballroom.
+
+Their place was immediately taken by deft, felt-slippered men, who
+proceeded swiftly to clear away the seats and the drugget which had been
+laid to protect the surface of the dancing floor. In the twinkling of
+an eye, as it were, they transformed what had been to all intents and
+purposes a concert-hall into a flower-decked ballroom, while the members
+of the band engaged for the dance began climbing agilely into their
+allotted places on the raised platform preparatory to tuning up for the
+evening's work.
+
+Magda, released at last from Virginie's worshipfully careful hands,
+came slowly down the main staircase. She was in black, diaphanous and
+elusive, from which her flower-pale face and shoulders emerged like a
+water-lily starring the dark pool on which it floats. A crimson rose
+glowed just above her heart--that and her softly scarlet lips the only
+touches of colour against the rare black-and-white loveliness of her.
+
+She was descending the stairs reluctantly, mentally occupied in screwing
+up courage to fulfil her promise to Davilof. A 'phone message from
+Friars' Holm had come through saying that Coppertop was better. All
+danger was passed and there was no longer any need for her to return
+early. So it remained, now, for her to keep her pact with the musician.
+
+As she rounded the last bend in the staircase, she saw that a man was
+standing with bent head at the foot of the stairs, apparently waiting
+for someone, and she threw a quick, nervous glance in the direction of
+the motionless figure, thinking it might be Davilof himself. It would be
+like his eager impatience to await her coming there. Then, as the lights
+gleamed on fair, crisply waving hair she realised that the man was
+Michael--Michael, whom she believed to be on his way to Spain!
+
+Perhaps it was merely chance, or perhaps it was at the direct
+inspiration of Lady Arabella, but, whatever may have been the cause,
+Gillian had not confided to Magda that Quarrington was to be at her
+godmother's reception. The sudden, totally unexpected meeting with
+him--with this man who had contrived to dominate her thoughts so
+inexplicably--startled a little cry of surprise from her lips. She drew
+back abruptly, and then--quite how it happened she could not tell--but
+she missed her footing and fell.
+
+For the fraction of a second she experienced a horrible sensation of
+utter helplessness to save herself; then Michael's arms closed round her
+as he caught her before she reached the ground.
+
+The shock of the fall stupefied her for a moment. She lay against his
+breast like a terrified child, clinging to him convulsively.
+
+"It's all right," he murmured soothingly. "You're quite safe."
+
+Unconsciously his arms tightened round her. His breath quickened. The
+satin-soft hair had brushed his cheek as she fell; the pale, exquisite
+face and warm white throat lay close beneath his lips--all the fragrant
+beauty of her gathered unresisting against his heart. He had only to
+stoop his head----
+
+With a stifled exclamation he jerked himself backward, squaring his
+shoulders, and released her, though he still steadied her with a hand
+beneath her arm.
+
+"There, you are all right," he said reassuringly. "No bones broken."
+
+The commonplace words helped to restore her poise.
+
+"Oh! Thank you!" The words came a little gaspingly still. "I--I don't
+know how I came to fall like that. I think you startled me--I didn't
+expect to see you here."
+
+"I didn't expect to be," he returned, smiling a little.
+
+Magda did not ask how it had come to pass. For the moment it was
+enough for her that he _was_ there--that he had not gone away! She was
+conscious of a sudden incomprehensible sense of tumult within her.
+
+"It was lucky for me you happened to be standing just at the foot of the
+stairs," she said a little unsteadily.
+
+"I didn't 'happen.' I was there of _malice prepense_"--the familiar
+crooked smile flashed out--"waiting for you."
+
+"Waiting for me?"
+
+"Yes. Lady Arabella asked me to shepherd you into the supper-room and
+see that you had a glass of champagne and a sandwich before the dancing
+begins."
+
+"Orders from headquarters?"--smiling up at him.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+He held out his arm and they moved away together. As they passed through
+the crowded rooms one man murmured ironically to another:
+
+"Quarrington's got it badly, I should say."
+
+The second man glanced after the pair with amused eyes.
+
+"So he's the latest victim, is he? I head young Raynham's nose was out
+of joint."
+
+"You don't mean she's fired him?"
+
+The other nodded.
+
+"Got the push the day before yesterday," he answered tersely.
+
+"Poor devil! He'll take it hard. He's a hotheaded youngster. Just the
+sort to go off and blow his brains out."
+
+Meanwhile Quarrington had established Magda at a corner table in the
+empty supper-room and was seeing to it that Lady Arabella's commands
+were obeyed, in spite of Magda's assurances that she was not in the
+least hungry.
+
+"Then you ought to be," he replied. "After dancing. Besides, unlike the
+rest of us, you had no dinner."
+
+"Oh, I had a light meal at six o'clock. But naturally, you can't consume
+a solid dinner just before giving a performance."
+
+"I'm not going to pay you compliments about your dancing," he
+observed quietly, after a pause. "You must receive a surfeit of them.
+But"--looking at her with those direct grey eyes of his--"I'm glad I
+didn't leave England when I intended to."
+
+"Why didn't you?" she asked impulsively.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Because it's so much easier to yield to temptation than to resist," he
+answered, not taking his eyes from her face.
+
+She flushed a little.
+
+"What was the temptation?" she asked uncertainly.
+
+He waited an instant, then answered with deliberation:
+
+"The temptation of seeing you again."
+
+"I should have thought you disapproved of me far too much for that to be
+the case! Saint Michel, don't you think you're rather hard on me?"
+
+"Am I? I had an old-fashioned mother, you see. Perhaps my ideas about
+women are out of date."
+
+"Tell me them."
+
+He regarded her reflectively.
+
+"Shall I? Well, I like to think of a woman as something sweet and
+fragrant, infinitely tender and compassionate--not as a marauder and
+despoiler. Wherever she comes, the place should be the happier for her
+coming--not bereft by it. She should be the helper and healer in this
+battered old world. That's the sort of woman I should want my wife to
+be; that's the sort of woman my mother was."
+
+"And you think I'm--not like that? I'm the marauder, I suppose?"
+
+He remained silent, and Magda sat with her bent head, fingering the stem
+of her wine-glass restlessly.
+
+"You like my dancing?" she said at last.
+
+"You know I do."
+
+"Well"--she looked at him with a mixture of defiance and appeal. "My
+dancing is me--the real me."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"You're not the 'Swan-Maiden,' whose love was so great that she forgot
+everything except the man she loved--and paid for it with her life."
+
+"The process doesn't sound exactly encouraging," she retorted with a
+flash of dry humour. "But how do you know I'm not--like that?"
+
+"How do I know? Because, if you knew anything at all about love, you
+couldn't pay with it as you do. Even the love you've no use for is the
+biggest thing the poor devil who loves you has to offer you; you've no
+right to play battledore and shuttlecock with it."
+
+He spoke lightly, but Magda could hear the stern accusation that
+underlay the words. She rose from the table abruptly.
+
+"I think," she said, "I think I'm afraid of love."
+
+As she spoke, she made a movement as though to quit the supper-room,
+but, either by accident or design, Michael barred her way.
+
+"Love," he said, watching her face intently, "means
+sacrifice--surrender."
+
+"And you believe I'm not capable of it?"
+
+"I think," he replied slowly, drawing aside to let her pass, "I think
+I'm afraid to believe."
+
+Something in the deep tones of his voice sent a thrill of consciousness
+through her. She felt her breath come and go unevenly and, afraid
+to trust herself to speak, she moved forward without response in the
+direction of the door. A moment later they were drawn into the stream of
+people wending their way by twos and threes towards the ballroom.
+
+As they entered, Antoine Davilof broke away from a little group of men
+with whom he had been conversing and came to Magda's side.
+
+"The next dance is just beginning," he said. "Are you engaged? Or may I
+have it?"
+
+"No, I'm not engaged," she answered.
+
+She spoke flurriedly. She was dreading this dance with Antoine. She
+felt as though the evening had drained her of her strength and left her
+unequal to a battle of wills should Antoine prove to be in one of his
+hotheaded moods.
+
+She glanced round her with a hint of desperation in her eyes. If only
+Michael had asked her to dance with him instead! But he had bowed and
+left her as soon as the musician joined them, so that there was no
+escape to be hoped for that way.
+
+Davilof was watching her curiously.
+
+"I believe," he said, "that you're afraid to dance with me!"
+
+On an impulse she answered him with perfect candour.
+
+"I believe I am."
+
+"Then why did you promise? You did promise, you know."
+
+"I know. I promised. I promised because Coppertop had croup and they had
+telephoned down for his mother to go to him. And you wouldn't accompany
+me unless I gave you this dance. So I promised it."
+
+Davilof's eyes held a curiously concentrated expression.
+
+"And you did this so that Mrs. Grey could go to her little boy--to nurse
+him?"
+
+Magda inclined her head.
+
+"Yes," she said simply.
+
+"But you hated asking me--_loathed_ it!"
+
+"Yes," she said again.
+
+He was silent for a moment. Then he drew back from her. "That was kind.
+Extraordinarily kind," he commented slowly. His expression was one of
+frank amazement. "I did not believe you could be so kind--so womanly."
+
+"Womanly?" she queried, puzzled.
+
+"Yes. For is not a woman--a good woman--always ready to sacrifice
+herself for those she loves?"
+
+Magda almost jumped. It was as though she were listening to an echo of
+Quarrington's own words.
+
+"And you sacrificed yourself," continued Davilof. "Sacrificed your
+pride--crushed it down for the sake of Mrs. Grey and little Coppertop.
+Mademoiselle"--he bowed gravely--"I kiss your hands. And see, I too, I
+can be generous. I release you from your promise. I do not claim that
+dance."
+
+If any single thing could have astonished Magda more than another, it
+was that Davilof should voluntarily, in the circumstances, renounce the
+dance she had promised him. It argued a fineness of perception and a
+generosity for which she would never have given him credit. She felt a
+little warm rush of gratitude towards him.
+
+"No, no!" she cried impulsively, "you shan't give up your dance." Then,
+as he still hesitated: "I should _like_ to dance with you--really I
+should, Antoine. You've been so--so _decent_."
+
+Davilof's face lit up. He looked radiant--like a child that has been
+patted on the back and told it is good.
+
+"No wonder we are all in love with you!" he exclaimed in low, vehement
+tones; adding quickly, as he detected a flicker of apprehension in
+Magda's eyes: "But you need not fear to dance with me. I will be as your
+brother--I will go on being 'decent.'"
+
+And he was. He danced as perfectly as any of his music-loving
+nationality can dance, but there was a restraint, a punctilious
+deference about him that, even while it amazed, availed to reassure
+Magda and restore her shaken confidence in the man.
+
+She did not realise or suspect that just those two simple actions of
+hers--the good turn she had done Gillian at some considerable cost to
+herself in the matter of personal pride, and her quick recognition of
+the musician's sense of fair play in renouncing his dance with her when
+he knew the circumstances which had impelled her to promise it--these
+two things had sufficed to turn Davilof's heady, emotional devotion into
+something more enduring and perhaps more dangerous, an abiding, deeply
+rooted love and passion for her which was stronger than the man himself.
+
+He left the house immediately after the conclusion of his dance with
+her, and Magda was speedily surrounded by a crowd of would-be partners.
+But she felt disinclined to dance again, and, always chary of her
+favours in this respect, she remained watching the dancing in preference
+to taking any part in it, exchanging small-talk with the men who,
+finding she could not be induced to reconsider her decision, clustered
+round her chair like bees round a honey-pot.
+
+It was towards the end of the evening that Michael Quarrington finally
+joined the group. Magda's eyes rested on him with a mixture of annoyance
+and approval--annoyance because she had expected him to ask her for a
+dance quite early in the course of the programme and he had failed to do
+so, and approval because he was of that clean-cut, fair-haired type
+of man who invariably contrives to look particularly well-groomed and
+thoroughbred in evening kit.
+
+She had no intention of permitting him to request a dance at this late
+hour, however, and rose from her seat as he approached.
+
+"Ah! You, Mr. Quarrington?" she said gaily. "I am just going home. It's
+been a charming evening, hasn't it?"
+
+"Charming," he rejoined courteously. "May I see you to your car?"
+
+He offered his arm and Magda, dismissing her little court of disgruntled
+admirers with a small gracious nod, laid her slim hand on his sleeve. As
+they moved away together the orchestra broke into the swinging seductive
+rhythm of a waltz.
+
+Quarrington paused abruptly.
+
+"Don't go yet!" he said. "Dance this with me."
+
+His voice sounded strained and uneven. It was as though the words were
+dragged from him without his own volition.
+
+For an instant the two pairs of eyes met--the long, dark ones with their
+slumbrous fire brooding beneath white lids, and the keen, hawk-like grey
+ones. Then:
+
+"Very well," she answered a trifle breathlessly.
+
+She was almost glad when the waltz came to an end. They had danced it
+in utter silence--a tense, packed silence, vibrant with significances
+half-hidden, half-understood, and she found herself quivering with a
+strange uncertainty and nervousness as she and Quarrington together made
+their way into the dim-lit quiet of the winter-garden opening off the
+ballroom.
+
+Overhead the green, shining leaves of stephanotis spread a canopy, pale
+clusters of its white, heavy-scented bloom gleaming star-like in the
+faint light of Chinese lanterns swung from the leaf-clad roof. From
+somewhere near at hand came the silvery, showering plash of a fountain
+playing--a delicate and aerial little sound against the robust harmonies
+of the band, like the notes of a harp.
+
+It seemed to Magda as though she and Michael had left the world behind
+them and were quite alone, enfolded in the sweet-scented, tender silence
+of some Garden of Eden.
+
+They stood together without speaking. In every tingling nerve of her she
+was acutely conscious of his proximity and of some rapidly rising tide
+of emotion mounting within him. She knew the barrier against which it
+beat and a little cry escaped her, forced from her by some impulse that
+was stronger than herself.
+
+"Oh, Saint Michel! Can't you--can't you believe in me?"
+
+He swung round at the sound of her voice and the next moment she was
+crushed against his breast, his mouth on hers, his kisses burning their
+way to her very heart. . . .
+
+Then voices, quick, light footsteps--someone else had discovered the
+Eden of the winter-garden, and Michael released her abruptly.
+
+
+
+Behind the chimneystacks the grey fingers of dawn were creeping up in
+the sky as Magda drove home. In the wan light her face looked unusually
+pale, and beneath the soft lace at her breast her heart throbbed
+unevenly.
+
+Five minutes ago Michael had held her in his arms and she had felt
+herself stirred to a sudden passionate surrender and response that
+frightened her.
+
+Was this love--the love against which Diane had warned her? It had all
+happened so suddenly--that last, unpremeditated dance, those tense,
+vibrant moments in the winter-garden, then the jarring interruption
+of other couples seeking its fragrant coolness. And she and Michael
+suddenly apart.
+
+Afterwards, only the barest conventionalities had passed between them.
+Nothing else had seemed possible. Their solitude had been ruthlessly
+destroyed; the outside world had thrust itself upon them without
+warning, jerking them back to the self-consciousness of suddenly
+arrested emotion.
+
+"I must be going." The stilted, banal little phrase had fallen awkwardly
+from Magda's lips, and Quarrington had assented without comment.
+
+She felt confused and bewildered. What had he meant? Had he meant
+anything at all? Was it possible that he believed in her now--trusted
+her? It had been in answer to that low, imploring cry of hers--"_Saint
+Michel, can't you believe in me?_"--that he had taken her in his arms.
+
+Looking out through the mist-blurred window at the pale streamers of
+dawnlight penciling the sky, Magda's eyes grew wistful--wonderingly
+questioning the future. Was she, too, only waiting for the revelation of
+dawn--the dawn of that mysterious thing called love which can transmute
+this everyday old world of ours into heaven or hell?
+
+
+
+Gillian was at the door to welcome her when at length the car pulled up
+at Friars' Holm. She looked rather white and there were purple shadows
+under her eyes, but her lips smiled happily.
+
+"Coppertop? How is he?" asked Magda quickly.
+
+"Sleeping, thank God! He's safe now! But--oh, Magda! It's been awful!"
+
+And quite suddenly Gillian, who had faced Death and fought him with a
+dogged courage and determination that had won the grave-eyed doctor's
+rare approval, broke down and burst into tears.
+
+Magda petted and soothed her, until at last her sobs ceased and she
+smiled through her tears.
+
+"I _am_ a fool!" she said, dabbing at her eyes with a moist, screwed-up
+ball of something that had once been a cambric handkerchief. "But I've
+quite recovered now--really. Come and tell me about everything. Did
+Davilof play for you all right? And did you enjoy the dance afterwards?
+And, oh, I forgot! There's a letter for you on the mantelpiece. It was
+delivered by hand while we were both at Lady Arabella's."
+
+Mechanically, as she responded to Gillian's rapid fire of questions,
+Magda picked up the square envelope propped against the clock and slit
+open the flap. It was probably only some note of urgent invitation--she
+received dozens of them. An instant later a half-stifled cry broke from
+her. Gillian turned swiftly.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, a note of apprehension sharpening her voice.
+
+Magda stared at her dumbly. Then she held out the letter.
+
+"Read it," she said flatly. "It's from Kit Raynham's mother."
+
+Gillian's eyes flew along the two brief lines of writing:
+
+
+"Kit has disappeared. Do you know where he is?--ALICIA RAYNHAM."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE FIRST REAPING
+
+At breakfast, some hours later, Magda was in a curiously petulant and
+uncertain mood. To some extent her fractiousness was due to natural
+reaction after the emotional excitement of the previous evening.
+Granted the discovery of the Garden of Eden, and add to this the almost
+immediate intrusion of outsiders therein--for everybody else is an
+"outsider" to the pair in possession--and any woman might be forgiven
+for suffering from slightly frayed nerves the following day. And
+in Magda's case she had been already rather keyed up by finding the
+preceding few days punctuated by unwelcome and unaccustomed happenings.
+
+They all dated from the day of the accident which had befallen her in
+the fog. It almost seemed as though that grey curtain of fog had been
+a symbol of the shadow which was beginning to dog her footsteps--the
+shadow which stern moralists designate "unpleasant consequences."
+
+First there had been Michael Quarrington's plain and candid utterance of
+his opinion of her. Then had followed Davilof's headlong wooing and
+his refusal, when thwarted, to play for her again. He, too, had not
+precisely glossed things over in that tirade of accusation and reproach
+which he had levelled at her!
+
+And now, just when it seemed as though she had put these other ugly
+happenings behind her, Kit Raynham, who for the last six months had been
+one of the little court of admirers which surrounded her, had seen
+fit to complicate matters by vanishing without explanation; while his
+mother, in an absurd maternal flurry of anxiety as to what had become of
+him, must needs write to her as though it inevitably followed that she
+was responsible for his disappearance!
+
+Magda was conscious of an irritated sense of injury, which Gillian's
+rather apprehensive little comments on the absence of further news
+concerning young Raynham scarcely tended to allay.
+
+"Oh, don't be tiresome, Gillian!" she exclaimed. "The boy's all right. I
+expect he's been having a joy-day--which has prolonged itself a bit."
+
+"It seems he hasn't been seen or heard of since the day before
+yesterday," responded Gillian gravely. "They're afraid he may--may have
+committed suicide"--she brought out the word with a rush. "They've been
+dragging the lake at his home."
+
+Magda flared.
+
+"Where did you hear all this--this nonsense? You said nothing about it
+last night."
+
+"Lady Raynham told me. She rang up half an hour ago--before you were
+down--to ask if by any chance we had had any news of him," replied
+Gillian gently.
+
+Magda pushed away her plate and, leaving her breakfast unfinished, moved
+restlessly across to the window.
+
+"There's nothing about it in this morning's paper, is there?" she asked.
+Her tone sounded apprehensive.
+
+Gillian's eyes grew suddenly compassionate.
+
+"Yes. There is--something," she returned, laying her hand quickly over
+the newspaper as though to withhold it.
+
+But Magda swung round and snatched it from her. Gillian half rose from
+her chair.
+
+"Don't look--don't read it, Magda!" she entreated hastily.
+
+The other made no response. Instead, she deliberately searched the
+columns of the paper until she found a paragraph headed: Disappearance
+of the Honourable Kit Raynham.
+
+No exception could reasonably be taken to the paragraph in question. It
+gave a brief resume of Kit Raynham's short life up to date, referred
+to the distinguished career which had been predicted for him, and, in
+mentioning that he was one of the set of brilliant young folks of whom
+Magda Wielitzska, the well-known dancer, was the acknowledged leader,
+it conveyed a very slightly veiled hint that he, in particular, was
+accounted one of her most devoted satellites. The sting of the paragraph
+lay in its tail:
+
+
+"It will be tragic indeed if it should eventually transpire that a young
+life so full of exceptional promise has foundered in seas that only a
+seasoned swimmer should essay."
+
+
+It was easy enough for Magda to read between the lines. If anything had
+happened to Kit Raynham--if it were ultimately found that he had taken
+his own life--society at large was prepared to censure her as more or
+less responsible for the catastrophe!
+
+Side by side with this paragraph was another--a panegyric on the
+perfection of Wielitzska's dancing as a whole, and dwelling particularly
+upon her brilliant performance in _The Swan-Maiden_.
+
+To Magda, the juxtaposition of the two paragraphs was almost
+unendurable. That this supreme success should be marred and overshadowed
+by a possible tragedy! She flung the newspaper to the ground.
+
+"I think--I think the world's going mad!" she exclaimed in a choked
+voice.
+
+Gillian looked across at her. Intuitively she apprehended the mental
+conflict through which her friend was passing--the nervous apprehension
+and resentment of the artiste that any extraneous happening should
+infringe upon her success contending with the genuine regret she would
+feel if some untoward accident had really befallen Kit Raynham. And
+behind both these that strange, aloof detachment which seemed part of
+the very fibre of her nature, and which Gillian knew would render it
+almost impossible for her to admit or even realise that she was in any
+way responsible for Kit Raynham's fate--whatever it might be.
+
+Of what had taken place in the winter-garden at Lady Arabella's Gillian
+was, of course, in ignorance, and she had therefore no idea that the
+intrusion of Kit Raynham's affairs at this particular juncture was
+doubly unwelcome. But she could easily see that Magda was shaken out of
+her customary sang-froid.
+
+"Don't worry, Magda." The words sprang consolingly to her lips, but
+before she could give them utterance Melrose opened the door and
+announced that Lady Raynham was in the library. Would Mademoiselle
+Wielitzska see her?
+
+The old man's face wore a look of concern. They had heard all about the
+disappearance of Lady Raynham's son in the servants' hall--the evening
+papers had had it. Moreover, it always seems as though there exists
+a species of wireless telepathy by which the domestic staff of any
+household, great or small, speedily becomes acquainted with everything
+good, bad, or indifferent--and particularly bad!--which affects the
+folks "above-stairs."
+
+A brief uncomfortable pause succeeded Melrose's announcement; then Magda
+walked quietly out of the room into the library.
+
+Lady Raynham rose from a low chair near the fire. She was a little,
+insignificant woman, rather unfashionably attired, with neat grey
+hair and an entirely undistinguished face, but as she stood there,
+motionless, waiting for Magda to come up to her, she was quite
+unconsciously impressive--transformed by that tragic dignity with which
+great sorrow invests even the most commonplace of people.
+
+Her thin, middle-aged features looked drawn and puckered by long hours
+of strain. Her eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness. They searched
+Magda's face accusingly before she spoke.
+
+"What have you done to my son?"
+
+"Where is he?" Magda's answering question came in almost breathless
+haste.
+
+"You don't know!"
+
+Lady Raynham sat down suddenly. Her legs were trembling beneath her--had
+been trembling uncontrollably even as she nerved herself to stand and
+confront the woman at whose door she laid the ruin of her son. But now
+the spurt of nervous energy was exhausted, and she sank back into her
+chair, thankful for its support.
+
+"I don't know where he is," she said tonelessly. "I don't even know
+whether he is alive or dead."
+
+She fumbled in the wrist-bag she carried, and withdrawing a crumpled
+sheet of notepaper held it out. Magda took it from her mechanically,
+recognising, with a queer tightening of the muscles of her throat, the
+boyish handwriting which sprawled across it.
+
+"You want me to read this?" she asked.
+
+"You've _got_ to read it," replied the other harshly. "It is written to
+you. I found it--after he'd gone."
+
+Her gaze fastened on Magda's face and clung there unwaveringly while she
+read the letter.
+
+It was a wild, incoherent outpouring--the headlong confession of a
+boy's half-crazed infatuation for a beautiful woman. A pathetic
+enough document in its confused medley of passionate demand and boyish
+humbleness. The tragic significance of it was summed up in a few lines
+at the end--lines which seemed to burn themselves into Magda's brain:
+
+
+"I suppose it was cheek my hoping you could ever care, but you were so
+sweet to me you made me think you did. I know now that you don't--that
+you never really cared a brass farthing, and I'm going right away. The
+same world can't hold us both any longer. So I'm going out of it."
+
+
+Magda looked up from the scrawled page and met the gaze of the sad,
+merciless eyes that were fixed on her.
+
+"Couldn't you have left him alone?" Lady Raynham spoke in a low,
+difficult voice. "You have men enough to pay you compliments and run
+your errands. I'd only Kit. Couldn't you have let me keep him? What did
+you want with my boy's love. You'd nothing to give him in return?"
+
+"I had!" protested Magda indignantly. "You're wrong. I was very fond of
+Kit. I gave him my friendship."
+
+Her indignation was perfectly sincere. To her, it seemed that Lady
+Raynham was taking up a most unwarrantable attitude.
+
+"Friendship?" repeated the latter with bitter scorn. "Friendship? Then
+God help the boys to whom you give it! Before Kit ever met you he was
+the best and dearest son a woman could have had. He was keen on his
+work--wild to get on. And he was so gifted it looked as if there were
+nothing in his profession that he might not do. . . . Then you came! You
+turned his head, filled his thoughts to the exclusion of all else--work,
+duty, everything that matters to a lad of two-and-twenty. You spoilt
+his chances--spoilt his whole life. And now I've lost him. I don't know
+where he is--whether he is dead or alive." She paused. "I think he's
+dead," she said dully.
+
+"I'm sorry if--"
+
+"Sorry!" Lady Raynham interrupted hysterically. Her composure was giving
+way under the strain of the interview. "Sorry if my son has taken his
+own life--"
+
+"He hasn't," asserted Magda desperately. "He was far too sensible
+and--and ordinary."
+
+"Yes. Till you turned his head!"
+
+Lady Raynham rose and walked towards the door as though she had said all
+she came to say. Magda sprang to her feet.
+
+"I won't--I won't be blamed like this!" she exclaimed rebelliously.
+"It's unfair! Can I help it if your son chose to fall in love with
+me? You--you might as well hold me responsible because he is tall or
+short--or good or bad!"
+
+The other stopped suddenly on her way to the door as though arrested by
+that last defiant phrase.
+
+"I do," she said sternly. "It's women like you who are responsible
+whether men are good--or bad."
+
+In silence Magda watched the small, unassuming figure disappear through
+the doorway. She felt powerless to frame a reply, nor had Lady Raynham
+waited for one. If her boy were indeed dead--dead by his own hand--she
+had at least cleared his memory, laid the burden of the mad, rash act he
+had committed on the shoulders that deserved to bear it.
+
+Normally a shy, retiring kind of woman, loathing anything in the nature
+of a scene, the tragedy which had befallen her son had inspired Alicia
+Raynham with the reckless courage of a tigress defending its young.
+And now that the strain was over and she found herself once more in her
+brougham, driving homeward with the familiar clip-clop of the fat old
+carriage-horse's hoofs in her ears, she shrank back against the cushions
+marvelling at the temerity which had swept her into the Wielitzska's
+presence and endowed her with words that cut like a two-edged sword.
+
+Like a two-edged sword in very truth! Lady Raynham's final thrust,
+stabbing at her with its stern denunciation, brought back vividly to
+Magda Michael Quarrington's bitter speech--"I've no place for your kind
+of woman."
+
+Side by side with the recollection came a sudden dart of fear. How would
+all this stir about Kit Raynham--the impending gossip and censure
+which seemed likely to be accorded her--affect him? Would he judge her
+again--as he had judged her before?
+
+She was conscious of a fresh impulse of anger against Lady Raynham. She
+wanted to forget the past--blot it all out of her memory--and out of the
+memory of the man whose contempt had hurt her more than anything in her
+whole life before. And now it seemed as though everything were combining
+to emphasise those very things which had earned his scorn.
+
+But, apart from a certain apprehension as to how the whole affair might
+appear in Michael's eyes, she was characteristically unimpressed by her
+interview with Lady Raynham.
+
+"I don't see," she told Gillian indignantly, "that I'm to blame because
+the boy lost his head. His mother was--stupid."
+
+Gillian regarded her consideringly. To her, the whole pitiful tragedy
+was so clear. She could envisage the point of view of Kit's mother only
+too well, and sympathise with it. Yet, understanding Magda better than
+most people did, she realised that the dancer was hardly as culpable as
+Lady Raynham thought her.
+
+Homage and admiration were as natural to Magda as the air she breathed,
+and it made very little impression on her whether a man more or less
+lost his heart to her or not. Moreover, as Gillian recognised it was
+almost inevitable that this should be the case. The influences by
+which Magda had been surrounded during the first ten plastic years of
+childhood had all tended to imbue her with the idea that men were only
+to be regarded as playthings, and that from the simple standpoint of
+self-defence it was wiser not to take them seriously. If you did,
+they invariably showed a disposition to become tyrants. Gillian made
+allowance for this; nevertheless she had no intention of letting Magda
+down lightly.
+
+"I believe you were created without a soul," she informed her candidly.
+
+Magda smiled a little.
+
+"Do you know you're the second person to tell me that?" she said. "The
+idea's not a bit original. Michael Quarrington told me the same thing in
+other words. Perhaps, perhaps it's true."
+
+"Of course, it's not true!" Gillian contradicted her warmly. "I only
+said it because I was so out of patience with you."
+
+"Everybody seems to be hating me rather badly just now." Magda spoke
+somewhat forlornly. "And yet--I don't think I'm any different from
+usual."
+
+"I don't think you are," retorted Gillian. "But it's your 'usual'
+that's so disastrous. You go sailing through life like a beautiful cold
+star--perfectly impassive and heartless."
+
+"I'm not heartless. I love you--and Marraine. You surely don't blame me
+because I don't 'fall in love'? . . . I don't _want_ to fall in love,"
+she added with sudden vehemence.
+
+"I wish to goodness you would!" exclaimed Gillian impatiently. "If only
+you cared enough about anybody to do something really outrageous--run
+off with another woman's husband, even--I believe I should respect you
+more than I do now."
+
+Magda laughed.
+
+"Gillyflower, I'm afraid you've no morals. And you here in the capacity
+of watchdog and duenna, too!"
+
+"It's all very well to make a joke of everything. But I know--I'm sure
+this business about Kit Raynham is going to be more serious than you
+think. It's bound to affect you."
+
+Magda stared at her blankly.
+
+"What nonsense! Affect me--why should it? How can it?"
+
+"How can it?"--with bitterness. "Everyone will talk--more than usual!
+You can't smash up people's only sons--not lovable, popular boys like
+Kit--without there being a fuss. You--you should have left a kid like
+that alone."
+
+And she went out of the room, banging the door behind her like a big
+full-stop.
+
+
+
+Gillian's prophecy proved only too accurate. People did talk. Kit
+Raynham had been a general favourite in society, and his disappearance,
+taken in conjunction with the well-known fact of his infatuation for
+Magda, created a sensation.
+
+Even when the theory of suicide was finally disproved by his mother's
+receiving a letter from Australia, whither it appeared, the boy
+had betaken himself and his disappointment, people seemed at first
+disinclined to overlook Magda's share in the matter. For a time even
+her immense prestige as a dancer suffered some eclipse, but this, with a
+performer of her supreme artistry, was bound to be only a passing phase.
+
+The world will always condone where it wants to be amused. And--now
+that the gloom of young Raynham's supposed suicide was lifted from the
+affair--there was a definite aroma of romance about it which was not
+without its appeal to the younger generation.
+
+So that gradually the pendulum swung back and Magda's audiences
+were once again as big and enthusiastic as ever. Perhaps even more
+enthusiastic, since the existence of a romantic and dramatic attachment
+sheds a certain glamour about any well-known artiste.
+
+All of which affected Magda herself comparatively little--though it
+irritated her that her actions should be criticised. What did affect
+her, however, absorbing her thoughts to the exclusion of all other
+matters, was that since the night of Lady Arabella's reception she had
+received neither word nor sign from Michael Quarrington.
+
+She could not understand it. Had he been a different type of man she
+might have credited him with having yielded to a sudden impulse, kissing
+her as some men will kiss women--lightly and without giving or asking
+more than the moment's caress.
+
+But Quarrington was essentially not the man to be carried away by a
+passing fancy. That he had cared for her against his will, against his
+better judgment, Magda could not but realise. _But he had cared!_ She
+was sure of it. And he was the only man for whom her own pulses had ever
+beaten one whit the faster.
+
+His touch, the sound of his voice, the swift, hawk-like glance of those
+grey eyes of his, had power to wake in her a vague tumult of emotion at
+once sweet and frightening; and in that brief moment in the "Garden of
+Eden," when he had held her in his arms, she had been tremulously ready
+to yield--to surrender to the love which claimed her.
+
+But the days had multiplied to weeks and still the silence which had
+followed remained unbroken. As far as Magda was concerned, Michael
+seemed to have walked straight out of her life, and she was too
+proud--and too much hurt--to inquire amongst her friends for news of
+him. It was her godmother who finally tersely enlightened her as to his
+whereabouts.
+
+Characteristically, Lady Arabella had withheld her judgment regarding
+the Kit Raynham affair until it was found that he had betaken himself
+off to Australia. But when the whole of the facts were evident, she
+allowed nothing--neither the romantic dreams of the episode nor her
+own warm affection for her god-daughter--to obscure her clear-sighted
+vision.
+
+Magda twisted her slim shoulders irritably when taken to task.
+
+"I think I'm tired of being blamed for Kit Raynham's idiocy," she said,
+a note of resentment in her voice. "No one seems to consider my side of
+the question! I was merely nice to him in an ordinary sort of way, and
+there wasn't the least need for him to have chucked up everything and
+rushed off to the other side of the world like that. _I_ couldn't help
+it!"
+
+Lady Arabella made a gesture of despair.
+
+"I don't believe you could," she acknowledged helplessly. "I'm really
+beginning to have a sneaking sympathy with poor Hugh for shelving the
+responsibility of having brought you into the world. But at least you
+might refrain from baby-snatching!" she added wrathfully.
+
+Magda protested.
+
+"Marraine! You're abominable! Kit is four-and-twenty if he's a day. And
+I'm barely twenty."
+
+"That has nothing whatever to do with it," retorted Lady Arabella
+incisively. "Kit is a babe in arms, while you--you're as old as Eve."
+She paused. "Anyway, you've broken his heart and driven him to the ends
+of the earth."
+
+"Where he'll probably paste together the pieces and offer the repaired
+article to someone else."
+
+Lady Arabella looked up sharply. Cynicism was usually far enough away
+from Magda. She was too full of the joy of life and of the genuine
+delight an artist finds in his art to have place for it. Egoist she
+might be, with the unthinking egotism of youth, irresponsible in her
+gay acceptance of the love and admiration showered on her, but there
+was nothing bitter or sour in her composition. Lady Arabella, seeking
+an explanation for the unwonted, cast her mind back on the events of the
+last few weeks--and smiled to herself.
+
+"I suppose you know you've driven someone else out of England besides
+Kit Raynham?" she said.
+
+"Whom do you mean?"
+
+Magda spoke mechanically. A faint colour crept up under her white skin,
+and she avoided her godmother's keen gaze.
+
+"That charming artist-man--Michael Quarrington."
+
+"Has--he left England?" Magda's throat felt suddenly parched. Then
+with an effort she went on: "You're surely not going to put the entire
+steamship's passenger list down to me, Marraine?"
+
+"Only those names for which I happen to know you're responsible."
+
+"You don't know about Saint Mi--about Mr. Quarrington. It's mere
+guesswork on your part."
+
+"Most of the things we really know in life are mere guesswork," replied
+Lady Arabella sagely. "But in this case----"
+
+"Yes. In this case?"
+
+There was a long pause. Then Lady Arabella answered slowly:
+
+"In this case I'm speaking from first-hand information."
+
+Magda's slender figure tautened. She moistened her lips.
+
+"Do you mean that Mr. Quarrington told you he was leaving England on my
+account?" she asked.
+
+"I don't often meddle, Magda--not really meddle." Lady Arabella's voice
+sounded unusually deprecating. "But I did in this instance. Because--oh,
+my dear, he's the only man I've ever seen to whom I'd be glad to give
+you up. He'd--he'd manage you, Magda."
+
+Magda's head was turned away, but the sudden scarlet flush that flew up
+into her face surged over even the white nape of her neck.
+
+"And he loves you," went on Lady Arabella, her voice softening
+incredibly. "It's only a man here or there who really _loves_ a woman,
+my dear. Most of them whip up a hotch-potch of quite commonplace
+feelings with a dash of passion and call it love, while all they
+actually want is a good housekeeper and presentable hostess and someone
+to carry on the name."
+
+No answer came from Magda, unless a stifled murmur could be regarded as
+such, and after a few minutes Lady Arabella spoke again, irritably.
+
+"Why couldn't you have left Kit alone?"
+
+Magda raised her head.
+
+"What has that to do with it?"
+
+"Everything"--succinctly. "I told you I meddled. Michael Quarrington
+came to see me before he went away--and I know precisely why he left
+England. I asked him to go and see you before he sailed."
+
+"What did he say?" The words were almost inaudible.
+
+Lady Arabella hesitated. Then she quoted quickly: "'There is no need.
+She will understand.'"
+
+To Magda the brief sentence held all the finality of the bolting and
+barring of a door. So Quarrington, like everyone else, had heard the
+story of Kit Raynham! And he had judged and sentenced her.
+
+That night in the winter-garden he had been on the verge of trusting
+her, ready to believe in her, and she had vowed to herself that she
+would prove worthy of his trust. She had meant never to fall short of
+all that Michael demanded in the woman he loved. And now, before she had
+had a chance to justify his hardly-won belief, the past had risen up to
+destroy her, surging over her like a great tidal wave and sweeping away
+the whole fabric of the happiness she had visioned.
+
+She had not wholly realised before that she loved. But she knew now. As
+the empty weeks dragged along she learned what it meant to long for the
+beloved one's presence--the sound and touch of voice or hand--with an
+aching, unassuagable longing that seems to fuse body and soul into a
+single entity of pain.
+
+Outwardly she appeared unchanged. Her pride was indomitable, and
+exactly how much Michael's going had meant to her not even Gillian
+suspected--though the latter was too sensitive and sympathetic not to
+realise that Magda had passed through some experience which had touched
+her keenly. Ignorant of the incidents that had occurred on the night of
+Lady Arabella's party, she was disposed to assign the soreness of spirit
+she discerned in her friend to the general happenings which had followed
+from the Raynham episode. And amongst these she gave a certain definite
+place to the abrupt withdrawal of Quarrington's friendship, and
+resented it. She felt curiously disappointed in the man. With such fine
+perceptive faculty as he possessed she would have expected him to be
+more tolerant--more merciful in his judgment.
+
+Once she had tentatively approached the subject, but Magda had clearly
+indicated that she had no intention of discussing it.
+
+Not even to Gillian, whom she had gradually come to look upon as her
+closest friend, could Magda unveil the wound to her pride. No one, no
+one in the whole world, should know that she had been ready to give
+her love--and that the offering had been silently, but none the less
+decisively, rejected.
+
+Diane's warning now found its echo in her own heart: "Never give your
+heart to any man. If you do he will only break it for you--break it into
+little pieces like the glass scent-bottle which you dropped yesterday."
+
+"She was right," Magda told herself bitterly. "A thousand times right!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BACK OF BEYOND
+
+The season was drawing to its close. London lay sweltering under a
+heat-wave which had robbed the trees in the Park of their fresh June
+greenness and converted the progress of foot-passengers along its sultry
+pavements into something which called to mind the mediaeval ordeal of
+walking over hot ploughshares.
+
+Even the garden at Friars' Holm, usually a coolly green oasis in the
+midst of the surrounding streets, seemed as airless as any back court or
+alley, and Coppertop, who had been romping ever more and more flaggingly
+with a fox-terrier puppy he had recently acquired, finally gave up the
+effort and flung himself down, red-faced and panting, on the lawn where
+his mother and Magda were sitting.
+
+"Isn't it nearly time for us to go to the seaside, mummie?" he inquired
+plaintively.
+
+Magda smiled down at the small wistful face.
+
+"How would you like to go to the country instead, Topkins?" she asked.
+"To a farm where they have pigs and horses and cows, and heaps of
+cream--"
+
+"And strawberries?" interpolated Coppertop pertinently.
+
+"Oh, of course. Or, no--they'll be over by the time we get there. But
+there'll be raspberries. That's just as good, isn't it?"
+
+Gillian looked up, smiling a little.
+
+"It's settled we're going 'there,' then--wherever it is?" she said.
+
+"Do you think you'd like it, Gillyflower?" asked Magda. "It's a farm
+I've heard of in Devonshire, where they want to take paying-guests for
+the summer."
+
+Gillian, guessing from Magda's manner that the whole matter was
+practically arranged, nodded acquiescence.
+
+"I'm sure I should. But will _you_?"--whimsically. She glanced at the
+sophisticated simplicity of Magda's white gown, at the narrow suede
+shoes and filmy stockings--every detail of her dress and person
+breathing the expensiveness and luxury and highly specialised
+civilisation of the city. "Somehow I can't imagine you--on a farm in the
+depths of the country! I believe you'll hate it."
+
+"I shall like it." Magda got up restlessly. "I'm sick of society and the
+theatre and the eternal gossip that goes on in London. I--I want to get
+away from it all!"
+
+Gillian's thoughts turned back to the happenings of the last few months.
+She thought she understood what lay behind Magda's sudden decision to
+bury herself in the country.
+
+"Have you taken rooms at this farm?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I have"--shortly. Then, with one of those sudden flashes of
+affectionate insight which were part of her essential lovableness, she
+went on: "Gilly, are you sure you don't mind? I ought to have asked you
+first"--remorsefully. "I expect you'll be bored to death. Perhaps you'd
+rather not come?"
+
+Gillian's quiet brown eyes smiled at her reassuringly.
+
+"'Where thou goest--'" she quoted. "Of course I want to come. I've never
+been to Devonshire. And I know Coppertop will adore the pigs and cows--"
+
+"And cream," put in Coppertop ruminatively.
+
+"Tell me about the place," said Gillian. "How did you hear of it?"
+
+"Through the prosaic columns of the _Daily Post_," replied Magda. "I
+didn't want a place recommended by anyone I knew. That doesn't cut the
+connecting line one bit. Probably the people who've recommended it
+to you decide to look you up in their car, just when you think you're
+safely buried, and disinter you. I don't _want_ to be disinterred. I
+propose to get right away into the country, out of reach of everybody
+we know, for two months. I shan't give our address to anyone except
+Melrose, and he can forward on all letters." A small amused smile
+crossed her lips. "Then we can answer them or not, exactly as we feel
+disposed. It will be heavenly."
+
+"Still I don't know where this particular paradise is which you've
+selected," returned Gillian patiently.
+
+"It's at the back of beyond--a tiny village in Devonshire called
+Ashencombe. I just managed to find it on the Ordnance map with a
+magnifying glass! The farm itself is called Stockleigh and is owned and
+farmed by some people named Storran. The answer to my letter was signed
+Dan Storran. Hasn't it a nice sound--Storran of Stockleigh?"
+
+"And did you engage the rooms on those grounds, may I ask? Because the
+proprietor's name 'had a nice sound'?"
+
+Magda regarded her seriously.
+
+"Do you know, I really believe that had a lot to do with it," she
+acknowledged.
+
+Gillian went off into a little gale of laughter.
+
+"How like you!" she exclaimed.
+
+
+
+The train steamed fussily out of Ashencombe station, leaving Magda,
+Gillian, and Coppertop, together with sundry trunks and suitcases, in
+undisputed possession of the extremely amateurish-looking platform.
+Magda glanced about her with amusement.
+
+"What a ridiculous little wayside place!" she exclaimed. "It has a kind
+of 'home-made' appearance, hasn't it? You'd hardly expect a real bona
+fide train to stop here!"
+
+"This your luggage, miss?"
+
+A porter--or, to be accurate, _the_ porter, since Ashencombe boasted but
+one--addressed her abruptly. From a certain inimical gleam in his eye
+Magda surmised that he had overheard her criticism.
+
+"Yes." She nodded smilingly. "Is there a trap of any kind to meet us?"
+
+Being a man as well as a porter he melted at once under Magda's
+disarming smile, and replied with a sudden accession of amiability.
+
+"Be you going to Stockleigh?" he asked. The soft sing-song intonation
+common to all Devon voices fell very pleasantly on ears accustomed to
+the Cockney twang of London streets.
+
+"Yes, to Storran of Stockleigh," announced Coppertop importantly.
+
+The porter's mouth widened into an appreciative grin.
+
+"That's right, young master, and there's the wagonette from the Crown
+and Bells waiting to take you there."
+
+A few minutes later, the luggage precariously piled up on the box-seat
+beside the driver, they were ambling through the leafy Devon lanes at
+an unhurried pace apparently dictated by the somewhat ancient quadruped
+between the shafts. The driver swished his whip negligently above the
+animal's broad back, but presumably more with the idea of keeping off
+the flies than with any hope of accelerating his speed. There would be
+no other train to meet at Ashencombe until the down mail, due four
+hours later, so why hurry? No one ever appears to be in a hurry in the
+leisurely West Country--a refreshing characteristic in a world elsewhere
+so perforated by tubes and shaken by the ubiquitous motor-bus.
+
+Magda leaned back in the wagonette with a sigh of pleasure. The drowsy,
+sunshiny peace of the July afternoon seemed very far removed from the
+torrid rush and roar of the previous day in London.
+
+It was almost like entering another world. Instead of the crowded,
+wood-paved streets, redolent of petrol, this winding ribbon of a lane
+where the brambles and tufted grass leaned down from close-set hedges to
+brush the wheels of the carriage as it passed. Overhead, a restful sky
+of misty blue flecked with wisps of white cloud, while each inconsequent
+turn of the narrow twisting road revealed a sudden glimpse of distant
+purple hills, or a small friendly cottage built of cob and crowned with
+yellow thatch, or high-hedged fields of standing corn, deepening to gold
+and quiveringly still as the sea on a windless afternoon.
+
+At last the wagonette swung round an incredibly sharp turn and rumbled
+between two granite posts--long since denuded of the gate which had once
+swung between them--pulling up in front of a low, two-storied house,
+which seemed to convey a pleasant sense of welcome, as some houses do.
+
+The casement windows stood wide open and through them you caught
+glimpses of white curtains looped back with lavender ribbons. Roses,
+pink and white and red, nodded their heads to you from the walls, even
+peering out impertinently to catch the sun from beneath the eaves of the
+roof, whose thatch had mellowed to a somber brown with wind and weather.
+Above the doorway trails of budding honeysuckle challenged the supremacy
+of more roses in their summer prime, and just within, in the cool shadow
+of the porch, stood a woman's slender figure.
+
+Gillian never forgot that first glimpse of June Storran. She looked
+very simple and girlish as she stood there, framed in the rose-covered
+trellis of the porch, waiting with a slight stir of nervousness to
+receive the travellers. The sunlight, filtering between the leaves of
+the honeysuckle, dappled her ash-blond hair with hovering flecks of
+gold, and a faint, shy smile curved her lips as she came forward, a
+little hesitatingly, to greet them.
+
+"I am so glad to see you," she said. "Dan--my husband had to go to
+Exeter to-day. He was sorry he could not meet you himself at the
+station."
+
+As she and Magda stood side by side the contrast between them was
+curiously marked--the one in her obviously homemade cotton frock, with
+her total absence of poise and her look of extreme youth hardly seeming
+the married woman that she was, the other gowned with the simplicity of
+line and detailed finish achieved only by a great dressmaker, her quiet
+assurance and distinctive little air of _savoir vivre_ setting her
+worlds apart from Dan Storran's young wife.
+
+"Will you come in? The man will see to your luggage."
+
+June was speaking again, still shyly but with her shyness tempered by
+a sensitive instinct of hospitality. She led the way into the house
+and they followed her through a big, low-raftered living-room and up a
+flight of slippery oak stairs.
+
+"These are your rooms," said June, pausing at last at the end of a
+rambling passage-way. "I hope"--she flushed a little anxiously--"I do
+hope you will like them. I've made them as nice as I could. But, of
+course"--she glanced at Magda deprecatingly--"you will find them very
+different from London rooms."
+
+Magda flashed her a charming smile.
+
+"I'm sure we shall love them," she answered, glancing about her with
+genuine appreciation.
+
+The rooms were very simply furnished, but sweet and fresh with chintz
+and flowers, and the whitewashed ceilings, sloping at odd, unexpected
+angles, gave them a quaint attractiveness. The somewhat coarse but
+spotless bed-linen exhaled a faint fragrance of lavender.
+
+"You ought to charge extra for the view alone," observed Gillian, going
+to one of the open lattice windows and looking across the rise and fall
+of hill and valley to where the distant slopes of Dartmoor, its craggy
+tors veiled in a grey-blue haze, rimmed the horizon.
+
+"I hope you didn't think the terms too high?" said June. "You see, I--we
+never had paying-guests before, and I really didn't know what would be
+considered fair. I do hope you'll be happy and comfortable here," she
+added timidly.
+
+There was something very appealing in her ingenuousness and wistful
+desire to please, and Magda reassured her quickly.
+
+"I haven't any doubt about it," she said, smiling. "This is such a
+charming house"--glancing about her--"so dear and old-fashioned. I think
+it's very good of you to let us share your home for a little while. It
+will be a lovely holiday for us."
+
+June Storran had no possibility of knowing that this dark, slender woman
+to whom she had let her rooms was the famous dancer, Magda Wielitzska,
+since the rooms had been engaged in the name of Miss Vallincourt, but
+she responded to Magda's unfailing charm as a flower to the sun.
+
+"It will be lovely for us, too," she replied. "Do you know, we were so
+frightened about putting in that advertisement you answered! Dan was
+terribly against it." A troubled little frown knitted her level brows.
+"But we've had such bad luck on the farm since we were married--the rain
+spoilt all our crops last year and we lost several valuable animals--so
+I thought it would help a bit if we took paying-guests this summer. But
+Dan didn't really approve."
+
+"I can quite understand," said Gillian. "Naturally he wanted to keep
+his home to himself--an Englishman's home is his castle, you know! And I
+expect"--smilingly--"you haven't been married very long."
+
+Mrs. Storran flushed rosily. She was evidently a sensitive little
+person, and the blood came and went quickly under her clear skin at the
+least provocation.
+
+"Not very long," she acknowledged. "But we've been very happy--in spite
+of our bad luck on the farm! After all, that's what matters, isn't it?"
+
+"It's the only thing that really matters at all," said Gillian. Her eyes
+had grown suddenly soft with some tender recollection of the past. "But
+you mustn't let us give you a lot of trouble while we're here. You don't
+look over-strong." Her glance rested kindly on her hostess's young
+face. In spite of its dewy blue eyes and clear skin with the tinge
+of wild-rose pink in the cheeks, it conveyed a certain impression of
+fragility. She looked almost as though a vigorous puff of wind might
+blow her away.
+
+"Oh, I'm quite well. Of course I found looking after a farmhouse rather
+heavy work--just at first. I hadn't been used to it, and we can't afford
+to keep a servant. You see, I married Dan against the wishes of my
+people, so of course we couldn't accept any help from them, though they
+have offered it."
+
+"I don't see why not," objected Magda. "They can't feel very badly about
+it if they are willing to help you."
+
+"Oh, no--they would, gladly. But Dan would hate it in the circumstances.
+You can understand that, can't you?"--appealingly. "He wants to justify
+himself--to prove that he can keep his own wife. He'd be too proud to
+let me take anything from them."
+
+"Storran of Stockleigh appears to be considerably less attractive than
+his name," summed up Gillian, as, half an hour later, she and Magda
+and Coppertop were seated round a rustic wooden table in the garden
+partaking of a typical Devonshire tea with its concomitants of jam and
+clotted cream.
+
+"Apparently," she continued, "he has married 'above him.' Little Mrs.
+Storran obviously comes of good stock, while I expect he himself is just
+an ordinary sort of farmer and doesn't half appreciate her. Anyway, he
+doesn't seem to consider her much."
+
+Magda made no answer. Characteristically her interest in June Storran
+had evaporated, pushed aside by something of more personal concern.
+
+"This is the most restful, peaceful spot I've ever struck," she said,
+leaning back with a sigh of pleasure. "Isn't it lovely, Gilly? There's
+something homelike and friendly about the whole landscape--a sort of
+_intimate_ feeling. I feel as if I'd known it all for years--and should
+like to know it for years more! Don't they say Devon folk always want to
+come home to die? I'm not surprised."
+
+"Yes, it's very beautiful," agreed Gillian, her gaze resting contentedly
+on the gracious curves of green and golden fields, broken here and there
+by stretches of ploughed land glowing warmly red between the ripening
+corn and short-cropped pasture.
+
+"I believe I could be quite good here, Gillyflower," pursued Magda
+reflectively. "Just live happily from one day to the next, breathing
+this glorious air, and eating plain, simple food, and feeding those
+adorable fluffy yellow balls Mrs. Storran calls chickens, and churning
+butter and--"
+
+Gillian's ringing, whole-hearted laughter checked this enthusiastic
+epitome of the simple life.
+
+"Never, Magda!" she asserted, shaking her head. "I'm quite expecting
+you to get bored in about a week and to rush me off to Deauville or
+somewhere of that ilk. And as to being 'good'--why, it isn't in you!"
+
+"I'm not so sure." Magda rose and together they strolled over the grass
+towards the house, Coppertop skirmishing happily behind them. "I really
+think I might be good here--if only for the sole reason that there's no
+temptation to be anything else"--drily.
+
+As she spoke a gate clicked close at hand. Followed the sound of quick,
+striding steps, and the next moment a man's figure rounded the tall yew
+hedge which skirted the foot of the garden and came towards them.
+
+He was a big giant of a man--at least six foot two in his socks, and
+proportionately broad and muscular in build. There was something free
+and bold in his swinging gait that seemed to challenge the whole world.
+It suggested an almost fierce independence of spirit that would give or
+take as it chose, but would never brook dictation from any man--or woman
+either.
+
+Instinctively Magda and Gillian paused, and Magda held out a slim hand,
+smiling, as he overtook them.
+
+"I'm sure you must be Mr. Storran," she said.
+
+He halted abruptly and snatched off his cap, revealing a crop of crinkly
+dark-brown hair thatching a lean sunburnt face, out of which gleamed a
+pair of eyes as vividly blue as periwinkles.
+
+"Yes, I'm Dan Storran," he said simply. "Is it Miss Vallincourt?"
+
+Magda nodded and proceeded to introduce Gillian. But Storran's glance
+only rested cursorily on Gillian's soft, pretty face, returning at once
+to Magda's as though drawn thither by a magnet.
+
+"I'm sorry I couldn't meet your train myself to-day," he said, a note of
+eager apology in his voice.
+
+Magda smiled at him.
+
+"So am I," she answered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+FOREBODINGS
+
+Gillian was sitting alone in the yew-hedged garden, her slim fingers
+busy repairing the holes which appeared with unfailing regularity in
+the heels of Coppertop's stockings. From the moment he had come
+to Stockleigh the number and size of the said holes had increased
+appreciably, for, although five weeks had elapsed since the day of
+arrival, Coppertop was still revelling whole-heartedly in the incredible
+daily delights which, from the viewpoint of six years old, attach to a
+farm.
+
+Day after day found him trotting contentedly in the wake of the
+stockman, one Ned Honeycott, whom he had adopted as guide, philosopher,
+and friend, and whom he regarded as a veritable fount of knowledge and
+the provider of unlimited adventure and entertainment.
+
+It was Honeycott who lifted Coppertop on to the broad back of the
+steadiest cart-horse; who had taught him how to feed calves by dipping
+his chubby little hand into a pail of milk and then letting them suck
+the milk from off his fingers; who beneficently contrived that hardly
+a load of hay was driven to the great rick without Coppertop's small
+person perched proudly aloft thereon, his slim legs dangling and his
+shrill voice joining with that of the carter in an encouraging "Come-up,
+Blossom," to the bay mare as she plodded forward between the shafts.
+
+Gillian experienced no anxiety with regard to Coppertop's safety
+while he was in Ned Honeycott's charge, but she missed the childish
+companionship, the more so as she found herself frequently alone these
+days. June Storran was naturally occupied about her house and dairy,
+while Magda, under Dan Storran's tutelage, appeared smitten with an
+extraordinary interest in farm management.
+
+It seemed to Gillian that Magda and Dan were in each other's company the
+greater part of the time. Every day Dan had some suggestion or other to
+make for Miss Vallincourt's amusement. Either it was: "Would you care to
+see the hay-loader at work?" Or: "I've just bought a couple of pedigree
+Devon cows I'd like to show you, Miss Vallincourt." Or, as yesterday:
+"There's a pony fair to be held to-morrow at Pennaway Bridge. Would you
+care to drive in it?" And to each and all of Storran's suggestions Magda
+had yielded a ready assent.
+
+So this morning had seen the two of them setting out for Pennaway
+in Dan's high dog-cart, while Gillian and June stood together in the
+rose-covered porch and watched them depart.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to have gone?" Gillian asked on a sudden impulse.
+
+She regretted the question the instant it had passed her lips, for in
+the wide-apart blue eyes June turned upon her there was something of the
+mute, puzzled misery of a dog that has received an unexpected blow.
+
+"I couldn't spare the time," she answered hastily. "You see"--the
+sensitive colour as usual coming and going quickly in her face--"Miss
+Vallincourt is on a holiday."
+
+She turned and went quickly into the house, leaving Gillian conscious of
+a sudden uneasiness--that queer "trouble ahead" feeling which descends
+upon us sometimes, without warning and without our being able to assign
+any very definite cause for it.
+
+She was thinking over the little incident now, as she sat sewing in the
+evening light, and meditating whether she should give Magda a hint that
+it might be kinder of her not to monopolise so much of Dan's society.
+And then the crisp sound of a horse trotting on the hard, dry road came
+to her ears, and almost immediately the high dog-cart swung between the
+granite gateposts and clattered into the yard.
+
+Dan tossed the reins on to the horse's neck and, springing to the
+ground, came round to help Magda down from the cart.
+
+"It's rather a steep step. Let me lift you down," he said.
+
+"Very well."
+
+Magda stood up in the trap and looked down at him with smiling eyes,
+unconsciously delighting in his sheer physical good looks. He was a
+magnificent specimen of manhood, and the good yeoman blood in him,
+which had come down through the generations of the same sturdy stock,
+proclaimed itself in his fine physique and splendid virility.
+
+A moment later he had swung her down as easily as though she were a
+child, and she was standing beside him.
+
+She laughed up at him.
+
+"Oh, 'girt Jan Ridd'!" she exclaimed softly.
+
+He laughed back, well pleased. (Was there ever a man who failed to be
+ridiculously flattered by a feminine tribute to his physical strength?)
+Nor did his hands release her quite at once.
+
+"You're as light as a feather! I could carry you all day and--"
+
+"Not know it!" concluded Magda gaily.
+
+His hands fell away from her slim body abruptly.
+
+"Oh, I should know it right enough!" he said jerkily.
+
+His eyes kindled, and Magda, conscious of something suddenly disturbing
+and electric in the atmosphere, turned quickly and, leaving Storran to
+unharness the horse, made her way to where she espied Gillian sitting.
+
+The latter looked up from her sewing.
+
+"So you've got back? Did you have a good time?"
+
+"Yes. It was quite amusing. There were heaps and heaps of ponies--some
+of them wild, unbroken colts which had been brought straight off the
+Moor. They were rearing and plunging all over the place. I loved them!
+By the way, I'm gong to learn riding, Gillyflower. Mr. Storran has
+offered to teach me. He says he has a nice quiet mare I could start on."
+
+A small frown puckered Gillian's brows.
+
+"Do you think Mrs. Storran will like it?"
+
+Magda started.
+
+"Why on earth shouldn't she?"
+
+"Well,"--Gillian spoke with a vague discomfort. "He's her husband!"
+
+"I don't see what that has to do with it," replied Magda. "We're staying
+here and, of course, the Storrans want to make it as nice as they can
+for us. Anyway, I'm going to take such goods as the gods provide."
+
+She got up abruptly and went in the direction of the house, leaving
+Gillian to digest as best she might the hint that her interference was
+not likely to be either welcomed or effective.
+
+Left to herself, Gillian sighed unhappily. Almost she wished they
+had never come to Stockleigh, only that it was pure joy to her to see
+Coppertop's rather thin little cheeks filling out and growing sunburnt
+and rosy. He had not picked up strength very readily after his attack of
+croup, and subsequently the intense heat in London had tried him a good
+deal.
+
+But she was gradually becoming apprehensive that disturbing consequences
+might accrue from Magda's stay at Stockleigh Farm. A woman of her
+elusive charm, equipped with all the subtle lore that her environment
+had taught her, must almost inevitably hold for a man of Storran's
+primitive way of life the fascination of something new and rather
+wonderful. To contrast his wife with her was to contrast a field-flower
+with some rare, exotic bloom, and Gillian was conscious of a sudden rush
+of sympathy for June's unarmoured youth and inexperience.
+
+Magda's curiously uncertain moods of late, too, had worried her not a
+little. She was unlike herself--at times brooding and introspective, at
+other times strung up to a species of forced gaiety--a gaiety which had
+the cold sparkle of frost or diamonds. With all her faults Magda had
+ever been lovably devoid of bitterness, but now it seemed as though she
+were developing a certain new quality of hardness.
+
+It puzzled Gillian, ignorant of that sudden discovery and immediate loss
+of the Garden of Eden. It might have been less of an enigma to old Lady
+Arabella, to whom the jigsaw puzzle of human motives and impulses was
+always a matter of absorbing interest, and who, as more or less an
+onlooker at life during the last thirty years, had become an adept in
+the art of fitting the pieces of the puzzle together.
+
+Magda herself was only conscious of an intense restlessness and
+dissatisfaction with existence in general. She reflected bitterly that
+she had been a fool to let slip her hold of herself--as she had done the
+night of Lady Arabella's reception--even for a moment.
+
+It had been thoroughly drilled into her both by precept and example--her
+mother's precept and her father's example--that to let a man count for
+anything much in her life was the biggest mistake a woman could make,
+and Michael's treatment of her had driven home the truth of all the
+warnings Diane had instilled.
+
+He had hurt her as she had never been hurt before, and all that she
+craved now was change. Change and amusement to drug her mind so that
+she need not think. Whether anyone else got hurt in the process was a
+question that never presented itself to her.
+
+She had not expected to find amusement at Stockleigh. She had been
+driven there by an overmastering desire to escape from London--for a
+few weeks, at least, to get right away from her accustomed life and from
+everyone who knew her. And at Stockleigh she had found Dan Storran.
+
+The homage that had leaped into his eyes the first moment they had
+rested on her, and which had slowly deepened as the days slipped by, had
+somehow soothed her, restoring her feminine poise which Michael's sudden
+defection had shaken.
+
+She knew--as every woman always does know when a man is attracted by
+her--that she had the power to stir this big, primitive countryman,
+whose way of life had never before brought him into contact with her
+type of woman, just as she had stirred other men. And she carelessly
+accepted the fact, without a thought that in playing with Dan Storran's
+emotions she was dealing with a man who knew none of the moves of
+the game, to whom the art of love-making as a pastime was an unknown
+quantity, and whose fierce, elemental passions, once aroused, might
+prove difficult to curb. He amused her and kept her thoughts off recent
+happenings, and for the moment that was all that mattered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+STORRAN OF STOCKLEIGH
+
+It was a glorious morning. The sun blazed like a great golden shield out
+of a cloudless sky, and hardly a breath of air stirred the foliage of
+the trees.
+
+Magda, to content an insatiable Coppertop, had good-naturally suffered
+herself to be dragged over the farm. They had visited the pigs--a new
+and numerous litter of fascinating black ones having recently made their
+debut into this world of sin--and had watched the cows being milked,
+and been chased by the irascible gander, and finally, laughing and
+breathless, they had made good their escape into the garden where
+Gillian sat sewing, and had flung themselves down exhaustedly on the
+grass at her feet.
+
+"I'm in a state of mental and moral collapse, Gilly," declared Magda,
+fanning herself vigorously with a cabbage leaf. "Whew! It is hot! As
+soon as I can generate enough energy, I propose to bathe. Will you
+come?"
+
+Gillian shook her head lazily.
+
+"I think not to-day. I want to finish this overall for Coppertop. And
+it's such a long trudge from here down to the river."
+
+"Yes, I know." Magda nodded. "It's three interminable fields away--and
+the thistles and things prick one's ankles abominably. Still, it's
+lovely when you _do_ get there! I think I'll go now"--springing up from
+the velvet turf--"before I get too lazy to move."
+
+Gillian's eyes followed her thoughtfully as she made her way into the
+house. She had never seen Magda so restless--she seemed unable to keep
+still a moment.
+
+Half an hour later Magda emerged from the house wrapped in a cloak,
+a little scarlet bathing-cap turbanning her dark hair, and a pair of
+sandals on the slim supple feet that had danced their way into the
+hearts of half of Europe.
+
+"Good-bye!" she called gaily, waving her hand. And went out by the
+wicket gate leading into the fields.
+
+There was not a soul in sight. Only the cows, their red, burnished
+coats gleaming like the skin of a horse-chestnut in the hot sun,
+cast ruminative glances at her white-cloaked figure as it passed, and
+occasionally a peacefully grazing sheep emitted an astonished bleat at
+the unusual vision and skedaddled away in a hurry.
+
+Magda emulated Agag in her progress across the field which intervened
+between the house and the river, now and then giving vent to a little
+cry of protest as a particularly prickly thistle or hidden trail of
+bramble whipped against her bare ankles.
+
+At last from somewhere near at hand came the cool gurgle of running
+water and, bending her steps in the direction of the sound, two minutes'
+further walking brought her to the brink of the river. Further up
+it came tumbling through the valley, leaping the rocks in a churning
+torrent of foam, a cloud of delicate up-flung spray feathering the air
+above it; but here there were long stretches of deep, smooth water
+where no boulder broke the surface into spume, and quiet pools where fat
+little trout heedlessly squandered the joyous moments of a precarious
+existence.
+
+Magda threw off her wrapper and, picking her way across the moss-grown
+rocks, paused for an instant on the bank, her slender figure, clad in
+its close-fitting scarlet bathing-suit, vividly outlined against the
+surrounding green of the landscape. Then she plunged in and struck out
+downstream, swimming with long, even strokes, the soft moorland water
+laving her throat like the touch of a satin-smooth hand.
+
+She was heading for a spot she knew of, a quarter of a mile below,
+where a wooden bridge spanned the river and the sun's heat poured down
+unchecked by sheltering trees. Here she proposed to scramble out and
+bask in the golden warmth.
+
+She had just established herself on a big, sun-warmed boulder when
+a familiar step sounded on the bridge and Dan Storran's tall figure
+emerged into view. He pulled up sharply as he caught sight of her, his
+face taking on a schoolboy look of embarrassment. Deauville _plage_,
+where people bathed in companionable parties and strolled in and out of
+the water as seemed good to them, was something altogether outside Dan's
+ken.
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry," he began, flushing uncomfortably.
+
+Magda waved to him airily.
+
+"You needn't be. I'm having a sun-bath. You can stay and talk to me if
+you like. Or are you too busy farming this morning?"
+
+"No, I'm not too busy," he said slowly.
+
+There was a curious dazzled look in his eyes as they rested on her.
+Sheathed in the stockingette bathing-suit she wore, every line and curve
+of her supple body was revealed. Her wet, white limbs gleamed pearl-like
+in the quivering sunlight. The beauty of her ran through his veins like
+wine.
+
+"Then come and amuse me!" Magda patted the warm surface of the rock
+beside her invitingly. "You can give me a cigarette to begin with."
+
+Storran sat down and pulled out his case. As he held a match for her to
+light up from, his hand brushed hers and he drew it away sharply. It was
+trembling absurdly.
+
+He sat silent for a moment or two; then he said with an odd abruptness:
+
+"I suppose you find it frightfully dull down here?"
+
+Magda laughed a little.
+
+"Is that because I told you to come and amuse me? . . . No, I don't find
+it dull. Change is never really dull."
+
+"Well, you must find it change enough here from the sort of life you've
+been accustomed to lead."
+
+"How do you know what sort of life I lead?"--teasingly.
+
+"I can guess. One has only to look at you. You're different--different
+from everyone about here. The way you move--you're like a thoroughbred
+amongst cart-horses." He spoke with a kind of sullen bitterness.
+
+Magda drew her feet up on to the rock and clasped her hands round her
+knees.
+
+"Now you're talking nonsense, you know," she said amusedly. "Frankly,
+I like it down here immensely. I happened to be--rather worried when
+I came away from London, and there's something very soothing and
+comforting about the country--particularly your lovely Devon country."
+
+"Worried?" Storran's face darkened. "Who'd been worrying you?"
+
+"Oh"--vaguely. "All sorts of things. Men--and women. But don't let's
+talk about worries to-day. This glorious sunshine makes me feel as
+though there weren't any such things in the world."
+
+She leaned back, stretching her arms luxuriously above her head with
+the lithe, sensuous grace of movement which her training had made second
+nature. Storran's eyes dwelt on her with a queer tensity of expression.
+Every gesture, every tone of her curiously attractive voice, held for
+him a disturbing allure which he could not analyse and against which he
+was fighting blindly.
+
+He had never doubted his love for his wife. Quite honestly he had
+believed her the one woman in the world when he married her. Yet now he
+was beginning to find every hour a blank that did not bring him sight
+or sound of this other woman--this woman with her slender limbs and skin
+like a stephanotis petal, and her long Eastern eyes with the subtle lure
+which seemed to lie in their depths. Beside her June's young peach-bloom
+prettiness faded into something colourless and insignificant.
+
+"It must be nice to be you"--Magda nodded at him. "With no vague,
+indefinable sort of things to worry you."
+
+He smiled reluctantly.
+
+"How do you know I haven't?"
+
+"Oh, because I do."
+
+"A woman's reason!"
+
+"Quite. But women's reasons are generally very sound--we were endowed
+with a sixth sense, you know! Besides--it's obvious, isn't it? Here you
+are--you and June--living a simple, primitive kind of existence, all to
+yourselves, like Adam and Eve. And if you do have a worry it's a real
+definite one--as when a cow inconveniently goes and dies or your root
+crop fails. Nothing intangible and uncertain about that!"
+
+"Have you forgotten that the serpent intruded even upon Adam and Eve?"
+he asked quietly.
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Is that a hit at Gillian and me? I know--June told us--that you were
+horribly opposed to anyone's coming here for the summer. I thought that
+you had got over that by now?"
+
+"So I have"--bluntly.
+
+"Then we're not--not unwelcome visitors any longer?" the soft,
+tantalising voice went on. The low cadence of it seemed to tug at his
+very heartstrings.
+
+He leaned nearer to her and, catching both her hands in his, twisted her
+round so that she faced him.
+
+"Why do you ask?" he demanded, his voice suddenly roughened and uneven.
+
+"Because I wanted to know--of course!"--lightly.
+
+"Then--you're not an unwelcome visitor. You never have been! From the
+moment you came the place was different somehow. When you go----"
+
+He stopped as though startled by the sound of his own words--struck by
+the full significance of them.
+
+"When you go!" he repeated blankly. His grip of her slight hands
+tightened till it was almost painful. "But you won't go! I can't let you
+go now! Magda--"
+
+The situation was threatening to get out of hand. Magda drew quickly
+away from him, springing to her feet.
+
+"Don't talk like that," she said hastily. "You don't mean it, you know."
+
+With a sudden, unexpected movement she slipped from his side and ran
+down to the river's edge. He caught a flashing glimpse of scarlet, heard
+the splash as her slim body cleaved the water, and a moment later all he
+could see was the red of her turban cap, bobbing like a scarlet poppy
+on the surface of the river, and the glimmer of a moon-white arm and
+shoulder as a smooth overhand stroke bore her swiftly away from him.
+
+He stood staring after her, conscious of a sudden bewildered sense of
+check and thwarting. The blood seemed leaping in his veins. His heart
+thudded against his ribs. He stepped forward impetuously as though to
+plunge in after the receding gleam of scarlet still flickering betwixt
+the branches which overhung the river.
+
+Then, with a stifled exclamation, he drew back, brushing his hand across
+his eyes as though to clear their vision. What mad impulse was this
+urging him on to say and do such things as he had never before conceived
+himself saying or doing?
+
+Magda had checked him on the brink of telling her--what? The sweat broke
+out on his forehead as the realisation surged over him.
+
+"God!" he muttered. "God!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE LATEST NEWS
+
+Magda hardly knew what impulse had bidden her save Dan Storran from
+himself--check the hot utterance to which he had so nearly given voice
+and which to a certain extent she had herself provoked. Driven by the
+bitterness of spirit which Michael's treatment of her had engendered,
+she knew that she had flirted outrageously with Dan ever since she
+had come to Stockleigh. She had bestowed no thought on June--pretty,
+helpless June, watching with distressed, bewildered eyes while Dan
+unaccountably changed towards her, his moods alternating from sullen
+unresponsiveness to a kind of forced and contrite tenderness which she
+had found almost more difficult to meet and understand.
+
+It was indeed something altogether apart from any sympathy for June
+which had prompted Magda to leave Storran before he uttered words that
+he might regret, but which no power on earth could ever recall. Still
+beneath the resentment and wounded pride which Michael's going had
+caused her flickered the spark of an ideal utterly at variance with the
+whole tenor of the teaching of poor Diane's last embittered days--the
+ideal of womanhood which had been Michael's. And the impulse which had
+bade her leave Storran so abruptly was born of the one-time resolution
+she had made to become the sort of woman Michael would wish his wife to
+be.
+
+She felt oddly perturbed when at last she reached the seclusion of her
+chintzy bedroom underneath the sloping roof. A vague sense of shame
+assailed her. The game, as between herself and Dan, was hardly a
+fair one, after all, and she could well picture the cold contempt in
+Michael's eyes had he been looking on at it.
+
+Though he had no right to disapprove of her now! He had forfeited
+that right--if he had ever had it--when he went away without a word
+of farewell--without giving her even the chance to appeal against the
+judgment which, by his very going, he had silently pronounced against
+her.
+
+For months, now, she had been a prey to a conflicting jumble of
+emotions--the pain and hurt pride which Michael's departure had
+occasioned her, the craving for anything that might serve to distract
+her thoughts and keep them from straying back to those few vibrant
+meetings with him, and deep down within her an aching, restless wonder
+as to whether she would ever see him again.
+
+With an effort she dismissed the fresh tangle of thought provoked by
+the morning's brief scene with Dan Storran, and, dressing quickly,
+went downstairs to the mid-day dinner which was the order of things at
+Stockleigh.
+
+At first the solid repast, with its plentitude of good farmhouse fare
+partaken of during the hottest hour of the day, had somewhat appalled
+Magda. But now she had grown quite accustomed to the appearance of a
+roast joint or of a smoking, home-cured ham, attended by a variety of
+country vegetables and followed by fruit tart and clotted cream.
+
+Although she herself, as befitted a woman whose "figure was her
+fortune" according to Lady Arabella, partook extremely sparingly of this
+hospitable meal, it somehow pleased her to see big Dan Storran come in
+from his work in the fields and do full justice to the substantial
+fare. To Magda, ultra-modern and over-civilised as she was, there was
+something refreshing in the simple and primitive usages of Stockleigh
+Farm and its master--this man who toiled, and satisfied his hunger, and
+rested from toil, just as his fathers had done before him, literally
+fulfilling the law: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.
+
+And perhaps if Magda had never crossed his path Dan Storran might have
+gone his way contentedly, toiling from sun-up to sun-down till all his
+days were finished.
+
+Even although she had crossed it, she might still have left him pretty
+much as she found him--unawakened to the deeps of his own nature--if
+she had remained in her present ambiguous mood, half-remorseful, half
+indifferent. But it was precisely at this particular juncture that it
+pleased Fate to give a fresh twist to her swiftly turning wheel.
+
+Storran did not come in until dinner was half over, and when finally he
+appeared he was somewhat taciturn and avoided meeting Magda's eyes. June
+got up from the table and went dutifully into the kitchen to fetch the
+joint of meat and vegetables which she had been keeping hot for him
+there. Abruptly Dan followed her.
+
+"Sorry I'm late, June," he said awkwardly. "Here, give the tray to me;
+I'll carry it in."
+
+June paused in the middle of the kitchen, flushing right up to the soft
+tendrils of hair that curled about her forehead. It was weeks since Dan
+had offered to relieve her of any of her housewifely tasks, although at
+one time he had been wont to hurry home, if he could manage to do so, on
+purpose to help her. Dozens of times they had laid the table together,
+punctuating the process with jokes and gay little bursts of laughter and
+an odd kiss or two thrown in to sweeten the work. But not lately--not
+since the visitors from London had come to Stockleigh Farm.
+
+So June blushed and looked at her husband with eyes that were suddenly
+sweet and questioning. She knew, though she had not told him yet, that
+there was a reason now why he should try to save her when his greater
+strength could do so, and for a moment she wondered shyly if he had
+guessed.
+
+"Why, Dan, Dan----" she stammered.
+
+His face darkened. Her obvious surprise irritated him, pricking his
+conscience.
+
+"It's not very complimentary of you to look so taken aback when I offer
+to carry something for you," he said. "Anyone might think I never did
+wait on my wife."
+
+The blood drained away from June's face as suddenly as it had rushed
+there.
+
+"Well, you don't often, do you?" she returned shortly.
+
+They re-entered the sitting-room together and Magda glanced up, smiling
+approval. She, too, was feeling somewhat conscience-stricken, and to see
+Dan helping his wife in this everyday, intimate sort of fashion seemed
+to minimise the significance of that little incident which had occurred
+by the river's edge.
+
+"What a nice, polite husband!" she commented gaily. "Mr. Storran, you
+really out to come up to London and give classes--'Manners for Men,' you
+know. Very few of them wait on their wives these days."
+
+June upset the salt and busied herself spooning it up again from the
+cloth. There was no answering smile on her face. She was not quite clear
+_why_ Dan had followed her out into the kitchen so unexpectedly, but she
+sensed that it was not the old, quick impulse to wait upon her which had
+actuated him.
+
+Had she but known it, it was the same instinct, more primitively
+manifested, which induces a man whose conscience is not altogether clear
+respecting his loyalty towards his wife to bring her home an unexpected
+gift of jewellery.
+
+The disturbing memory of a lithe, scarlet-sheathed figure had been with
+Dan all morning as he went about his work, and he was sullenly ashamed
+of the riot which the vision occasioned within him and of his own utter
+helplessness to master it. It--it was damnable! So he accompanied his
+wife to the kitchen and offered to carry in the joint.
+
+Following upon this incident the atmosphere seemed to become all at once
+constrained and difficult. June sat very silent, her eyes holding that
+expression of pain and bewilderment which was growing habitual to them,
+while Storran hurried through his meal in the shortest possible time.
+As soon as he had finished he pushed back his chair abruptly and, with
+a muttered apology, quitted the room and went out again on to the farm.
+June rose and began clearing the table mechanically.
+
+"Can't I help you?" Gillian paused as she was about to follow Magda out
+of the room. "You look so tired to-day."
+
+June's lip quivered sensitively. She was in the state of nerves when a
+little unexpected sympathy is the most upsetting thing imaginable.
+
+"Oh, I can't let you!" she answered hastily. "No--really!"--as Gillian
+calmly took the tray she was carrying out of her hands.
+
+"Supposing you go and lie down for a little while," suggested Gillian
+practically. "And leave the washing-up to Coppertop and me!"
+
+The tears suddenly brimmed up into the wide-open blue eyes.
+
+"Oh, I couldn't!"
+
+"Wouldn't you like a little rest?" urged Gillian persuasively. "I
+believe you'd be asleep in two minutes!"
+
+"I believe I should," acknowledged June faintly. "I--I haven't been
+sleeping very well lately."
+
+A little shudder ran through her as she recalled those long hours each
+night when she lay at Dan's side, staring wide-eyed into the darkness
+and wondering dully what it was that had come between herself and her
+husband--come just at the time when, with his unborn child beneath her
+heart, they two should have been drawn together in to the most wonderful
+and blessed comradeship and understanding. Only Dan didn't know
+this--didn't know that before the snowdrops lifted their white heads
+again from the green carpet of spring there would be a little son--June
+was sure it would be a son, to grow up tall and strong like Dan
+himself!--born of the love which had once been so sweet and untroubled
+by any creeping doubts.
+
+"I assure you"--Gillian broke in on the miserable thoughts that were
+chasing each other through June's tired brain--"I assure you, Coppertop
+and I are very competent people. We won't break a single dish!"
+
+"But you've never been used to that kind of thing--washing-up!"
+protested June, glancing significantly at Gillian's white hands and
+soft, pretty frock of hyacinth muslin.
+
+"Haven't I?" Gillian laughed gaily. "I haven't always been as well off
+as I am not, and I expect I know quite as much about doing 'chores' as
+you! Come now!" She waited expectantly.
+
+"Dan would be awfully angry if he knew--it's my duty, you see," objected
+June, visibly weakening.
+
+"If he knew! But what a husband doesn't know his heart doesn't grieve
+over," replied Gillian sagely. "There, that's settled. Come along
+upstairs and let me tuck you up in your bed, and leave the rest to
+Coppertop and me."
+
+And June, with her heart suddenly warmed and comforted in the way in
+which an unexpected kindness does warm and comfort, went very willingly
+and, tired out in body and mind, fell asleep in ten minutes.
+
+Meanwhile Magda had established herself in the hammock slung from the
+boughs of one of the great elms which shaded the garden. She had brought
+a book with her, since her thoughts were none too pleasant company just
+at the moment, and was speedily absorbed in its contents.
+
+It was very soothing and tranquil out there in the noonday heat. The
+gnats hovered in the sunlight, dancing and whirling in little transient
+clusters; now and again a ladybird flickered by or a swallow swooped so
+near that his darting shadow fell across her book; while all about her
+sounded the pleasant hum of a summer's day--the soft susurration of the
+pleasant hum of a thousand insect voices blending into an indefinite,
+murmurous vibration of the air.
+
+Occasionally the whir of a motor-car sweeping along the adjacent road
+broke harshly across the peaceful quiet. Magda glanced up with some
+annoyance as the first one sped by, dragging her back to an unwilling
+sense of civilisation. Then she bent her head resolutely above her
+book and declined to be distracted any further, finally losing herself
+completely in the story she was reading.
+
+So it came about that when a long, low, dust-powdered car curved in
+between the granite gateposts of Stockleigh Farm and came abruptly to a
+standstill, she remained entirely oblivious of its advent. Nor did
+she see the tall, slender-limbed man who had been driving, and whose
+questing hazel eyes had descried her almost immediately, slip from his
+seat behind the steering-wheel and come across the grass towards her.
+
+"_Antoine!_"
+
+The book fell from her hand and she sat up suddenly in the hammock.
+
+"What on earth are you doing here?" she demanded. There was no welcome
+in her tone.
+
+For a moment Davilof remained watching her, the sunshine, slanting
+between the leaves of the trees, throwing queer little flickering lights
+into the hazel eyes and glinting on his golden-brown hair and beard.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she repeated.
+
+"I came--to see you," he said simply.
+
+There was something disarming in the very simplicity of his reply. It
+seemed to imply an almost child-like wonder that she should ask--that
+there could possibly be any other reason for his presence.
+
+But it failed to propitiate Magda in the slightest degree. She felt
+intensely annoyed that anyone from the outside world--from her world of
+London--should have intruded upon her seclusion at Ashencombe, nor could
+she imagine how Davilof had discovered her retreat.
+
+"How did you learn I was here?" she asked.
+
+"From Melrose."
+
+Magda's eyes darkened sombrely.
+
+"Do you mean you bribed him?" she asked quickly. "Oh, but surely
+not!"--in dismayed tones. "Melrose would go to the stake sooner than
+accept a bribe!"
+
+Davilof's mouth twisted in a rueful smile.
+
+"I'm sure he would! I tried him, but he wouldn't look at a bribe of any
+sort. So I had to resort to strategy. It was one evening, when he was
+taking your letters to post, and I waited for him at the pillar-box.
+I came up very quietly behind him and just nipped one of the letters,
+readdressed to you, out of his hand. I read the address and then posted
+the letter for him. It was very simple."
+
+He recounted the incident with a little swaggering air of bravado,
+boyishly delighted at the success of his small ruse. Vexed as she
+was Magda could hardly refrain from smiling; the whole thing was so
+eminently un-English--so exactly like Davilof!
+
+"Well, now that you have seen me, will you please go away again?" she
+said coolly, reopening her book as though to end the conversation.
+
+He regarded her with unqualified reproach.
+
+"Won't you even ask me to tea?" he said plaintively.
+
+"Certainly not," Magda was beginning. But precisely as she spoke June
+Storran, looking more herself again after her short sleep, came towards
+them from the house.
+
+Her face brightened as she caught sight of Davilof. Even to June's
+inexperienced eyes it was quite obvious that he admired the woman
+with whom he was talking. The very way he looked at her told her
+that. Presumably he was one of her London friends who had motored
+to Devonshire to see her. No man--within the limited scope of June's
+knowledge of men--did that deliciously absurd, extravagant kind of thing
+unless he was tremendously in love. Nor would any nice woman let a man
+take such a journey on her behalf unless she reciprocated his feelings.
+Of this June--whose notions were old-fashioned--felt assured. So her
+spirits rose accordingly. Since, if these two were on the verge of
+becoming engaged, the mere fact would clear away the indefinable shadows
+which seemed to have been menacing her own happiness from the time Miss
+Vallincourt had come to Stockleigh.
+
+"Tea is just ready," she announced, approaching. "Will you come in? And
+perhaps your friend will have tea with us?" she added shyly.
+
+Davilof was presented and June repeated her invitation. He shot a glance
+of triumph at Magda.
+
+"I shall be delighted, madame," he said, giving June one of his quaint
+little foreign bows. "But--the sun is shining so gloriously--might we
+not have it out here?"
+
+June looked round her doubtfully. As is often the case with people born
+and bred in the country, it never occurred to the Storrans to have the
+family meals out-of-doors, and June felt considerable misgiving as to
+whether Dan would appreciate the innovation.
+
+"Ah, please, madame!" pleaded Davilof persuasively. "Let us have it
+here--under this tree. Why, the tree grows here expressly for the
+purpose!"
+
+Davilof had all the charm of his nationality, and June capitulated,
+retreating to make the necessary arrangements.
+
+"I don't fancy Dan Storran will at all approve of the alteration from
+his usual customs which you've engineered," observed Magda when they
+were again alone.
+
+"Dan Storran?" Davilof's glance flashed over her face, searching,
+questioning.
+
+"The owner of the place. He's been teaching me to ride," she added
+inconsequently.
+
+"Who is he?"--with swift jealousy. "The little fair-haired lady's
+brother?"
+
+"No, her husband. I said _Mrs._ Storran."
+
+Davilof's interest waned suddenly.
+
+"Did you?"--indifferently. "I didn't notice. She's a pretty little
+person."
+
+Magda agreed absently. A fresh difficulty had occurred to her; Davilof
+might chance to give away to the Storrans the secret of her identity.
+
+"Oh, by the way," she said hurriedly. "They don't know me here as Magda
+Wielitzska. I'm plain Miss Vallincourt to them--enjoying the privileges
+of being a nobody! You'll be sure to remember, won't you?" He nodded,
+and she pursued more lightly: "And now, as you insist on having your tea
+here, you might begin to earn it by telling me the latest London gossip.
+We hear nothing at all down here. We don't even get a London newspaper.
+
+"I don't think there is much news. There never is at this time of the
+year. Everybody's out of town."
+
+He vouchsafed one or two items concerning mutual friends--an engagement
+here, a forthcoming divorce there. So-and-so was in Italy and Mrs.
+Somebody Else was said to have eloped with a well-known actor-manager
+to America--all the odds and ends of gossip that runs like wildfire over
+the social prairie.
+
+"Oh, by the way," he went on, "your artist friend--"
+
+"Which artist friend?" Magda interrupted almost rudely. She was moved by
+a perfectly irrational impulse to stop him, to delay what he had to say.
+
+"Why, Quarrington--Michael Quarrington. It seems he has married a
+Spanish woman--a rather lovely person who had been sitting to him for
+one of his pictures. That's the latest bit of news."
+
+For an instant it seemed to Magda as though the whole world stood
+still--gripped in a strange, soundless stillness like the catastrophic
+pause which for an infinitesimal space of time succeeds a bad accident.
+Then she heard herself saying:
+
+"Really? Where did you hear that?"
+
+"Oh, there've been several rumours of a beautiful Spaniard whom he has
+been using as a model. The Arlingtons were travelling in Spain and saw
+her. Mrs. A. said she was a glorious creature--a dancer. And the other
+day I saw in one of the papers--the _Weekly Gossip_ I think it was--that
+he'd married her."
+
+The carelessly spoken words drove at Magda with the force of utter
+certainty. It was true, then--quite true! The fact that the Spaniard
+had been a dancer gave an irrefutable reality to the tale; Michael so
+worshipped every form of dancing.
+
+"Never give your heart to any man." Her mother's last cynical warning
+beat in Magda's brain with a dull iteration that almost maddened her.
+She put her hand up to her throat, feeling as if she were choking.
+
+Then, dimly, as though from a great way off, she heard Antoine's voice
+again:
+
+"I'm glad Quarrington's married. He was the man who saved you in the
+fog--you remember?--and I've always been afraid you might get to care
+for him."
+
+Magda was conscious of one thing and one thing only--that somewhere,
+deep down inside her, everything had turned to ice. She knew she would
+never feel anything again--much. . . . She thought death must come like
+that sometimes--just one thrust of incredible, immeasurable agony, and
+then a dull, numbed sense of finality.
+
+". . . afraid you might get to care for him." The meaning of Antoine's
+last words slowly penetrated her mind. She gave a hard little laugh.
+
+"Why should I? Does one 'get to care' for a man just because he does the
+only obvious thing there is to do in an emergency?"
+
+She was surprised to hear how perfectly natural her voice sounded. It
+was quite steady. Reassured, she went on, shrugging her shoulders:
+
+"Besides--do I ever care?"
+
+Antoine, sitting on the grass at her feet, suddenly raised himself a
+little and put his hand over hers as they lay very still and folded on
+her lap.
+
+"You shall care--some time," he said in a low, tense voice. "I swear
+it!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+DAN STORRAN'S AWAKENING
+
+"Fairy Lady, we're going to have a picnic tea!"
+
+Coppertop's excited voice, shrilling across the garden as he came racing
+over the grass, put an abrupt end to a scene that was threatening to
+develop along the familiar tempestuous lines dictated by Antoine's
+temperament.
+
+The child's advent was somewhat differently received--by Magda with
+unmixed relief, by Antoine with a baulked gesture of annoyance. However,
+he recovered himself almost immediately, and when, a moment later, June
+reappeared, laden with the paraphernalia for tea, he rushed forward with
+his usual charming manners to assist her.
+
+Presently Gillian joined them, exclaiming with surprise as she perceived
+who was the visitor.
+
+"Why, this is like a bit of London appearing in our very midst," she
+declared, shaking hands with Davilof. "Where have you hailed from? I
+heard the car but never suspected you were the arrival."
+
+"I'm on holiday," he replied. "And it struck me"--his hazel eyes smiled
+straight into hers--"that Devonshire might be a very delightful place in
+which to spend my holiday."
+
+Magda looked up suddenly from stirring her tea.
+
+"I think you've made a mistake, Davilof," she said curtly. "You're not
+likely to enjoy a holiday in Devonshire."
+
+June, innocently unaware of any double entente in Magda's speech,
+glanced across at her in astonishment.
+
+"Oh, but why not, Miss Vallincourt? Devon is a lovely county; most
+people like it so much. But perhaps you don't care for the country,
+Mr.--Mr. Davilof?" She stumbled a little over the foreign name.
+
+"I think it would depend upon who my neighbours were--whether I liked it
+or nor," he returned, meeting Magda's glance challengingly over the top
+of June's head, bent above the teacups. "I feel sure I should like it
+here. And there is a charming little inn at Ashencombe where one might
+stop."
+
+Gillian divined that a veiled passage of arms between Magda and the
+musician underlay the light discussion. Moreover--though she had no
+clue to the cause--she was sensitively conscious that the former was
+not quite herself. She had seen that white, set look on her face before.
+Something had distressed her, and Gillian felt apprehensive lest Davilof
+had been the bearer of unwelcome tidings. It was either that, or else
+he must have succeeded in frictioning Magda in some way himself, since,
+beyond flinging an occasional double-edged sentence in his direction,
+she seemed absent and disinclined to take part in the conversation.
+
+It was almost a relief to Gillian when Dan Storran appeared, although
+the recollection of the strained atmosphere which had attended the
+previous meal did not hold out much promise of better things to come.
+His face was still clouded and he glowered at the tea-table under the
+elms with dissatisfied eyes.
+
+"What on earth's the meaning of this?" he demanded ungraciously of his
+wife. "Is it some newfangled notion that's got you?"
+
+June coloured up nervously, and was about to falter an explanation of
+the innovation when Magda suddenly took the matter out of her hands.
+
+"There's nothing newfangled about tea out-of-doors, on a glorious day
+like this," she said. "It's the only sensible thing to do. You don't
+really mind, do you?"
+
+She smiled up at him provocatively and his sombre face lightened.
+
+"Not if you like it," he replied shortly.
+
+"Well, I do. So sit down and be pleased--instead of looking like a
+thundercloud, please." The softness in her voice robbed the speech of
+its sharpness. "I have a friend here--and we're having tea outside in
+his honour."
+
+She introduced the two men, who exchanged a few commonplace words--each,
+meanwhile, taking the measure of the other through eyes that were
+frankly hostile. They were of such dissimilar type that there was
+practically no common ground upon which they could meet, and with the
+swift, unerring intuition of the lover each had recognised the other as
+standing in some relationship to Magda which premised a just cause for
+jealousy. Both men endeavoured to secure her undivided attention and,
+failing lamentably, their mutual antagonism deepened, smouldering
+visibly beneath the stiff platitudes they exchanged with one another.
+
+Gillian, thrust rather into the position of an onlooker, watched
+the proceedings with amused eyes--her amusement only tempered by the
+slightly apprehensive feeling concerning Magda of which she had been
+vaguely conscious from the first moment she had found her in Davilof's
+company, and which continued to obsess her.
+
+True, she no longer wore that set, still look which Gillian had observed
+on her face prior to Dan Storran's appearance upon the scene. But even
+when she smiled and talked, playing the men off one against the other
+with a deft skill that was inimitable, there seemed a curious new
+hardness underlying it all--a certain reckless deviltry for which
+Gillian was at a loss to account.
+
+June watched, too, with troubled eyes. Half an hour ago she had been
+feeling ridiculously happy, comfortably assured in her own mind that
+this tall, rather exquisite foreigner and the woman whose presence
+in her home had occasioned so much bitter heart-burning were only
+hesitating, as it were, on the brink of matrimony. And now--now she did
+not know what to think! Miss Vallincourt was treating Davilof with an
+airy negligence that to June's honest and candid soul seemed altogether
+incompatible with such circumstances.
+
+Meanwhile, with her own ears attuned to catch each varying shade of
+Dan's beloved voice, she could not but perceive its change of quality,
+slight, but unmistakable, when he spoke to Magda--the sudden deepening
+of it--and the unconscious self-betrayal of his glance as it rested
+on her. It was a relief when at last he got up and moved off, excusing
+himself on the plea that he had some work he must attend to. As he shook
+hands with Davilof the eyes of the two men met, hard as steel and as
+hostile.
+
+Storran's departure was the signal for the breaking-up of the party.
+June returned to the house, while Gillian allowed herself to be carried
+off by Coppertop to visit the calves, which were a never-failing source
+of interest to him.
+
+Left alone, an awkward pause ensued between Davilof and Magda, backwash
+of the obvious clash of antagonism between the two men.
+
+"So!" commented Davilof, at last. "It looks as though there might be
+another Raynham episode down here before long."
+
+The colour rushed up into Magda's face.
+
+"Don't you think that remark is in rather bad taste?" she replied icily.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Perhaps it was. But the men who love you get rather beyond considering
+the matter of good or bad taste."
+
+She made a petulant gesture.
+
+"Oh, don't begin that old subject again. We've had it all out before.
+It's finished."
+
+"It's not finished."
+
+There was a clipped, curt force about the brief denial. The
+good-humoured, big-child mood in which Davilof had joyously narrated to
+her how he had circumvented the unfortunate Melrose had passed, leaving
+the man--turbulent and passionately demanding as of old.
+
+"It's not finished," he repeated. "It never will be--till you're my
+wife."
+
+Magda laughed lightly.
+
+"Then I'm afraid it will have to remain unfinished--a
+continued-in-our-next kind of thing. For I certainly haven't the least
+intention of becoming your wife. Do understand that I _mean_ it. And
+please go away. You had no business to come down here at all."
+
+A smouldering fire lit itself in his eyes.
+
+"No!" he said, taking a step nearer her. "No! I'm not going. I came
+because I can't bear it any longer without you. Since you went away I've
+been half-mad, I think. I can't eat or sleep! I can't even play!"--he
+flung out his sensitive musician's hands in a gesture of despair.
+
+Magda glanced at him quickly. It was true. The man looked as though
+he had been suffering. She had not noticed it before. His face had
+altered--worn a trifle fine; the line from chin to cheek-bone had
+hollowed somewhat and his eyes held a certain feverish brightness. But
+although she could see the alteration, it did not move her in the least.
+She felt perfectly indifferent. It was as though the band of ice
+which seemed to have clasped itself about her heart when she heard of
+Michael's marriage had frozen her capacity for feeling anything at all.
+
+"I thought once"--Davilof was speaking again--"I thought once that you
+had said 'no' to me because of Quarrington. But now I know you never
+cared for him----"
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+The question sprang from her lips before she was aware.
+
+"How do I know?" Davilof laughed harshly. "Why, because the man who was
+loved by Magda Wielitzska wouldn't marry any other woman. There would be
+no other woman in the world for him. . . . There's no other woman in the
+world for me." His control was rapidly deserting him. "Magda, I can't
+live without you! I've told you--I can neither eat nor sleep. I burn for
+you! If you refuse to give yourself to me, you destroy me!"
+
+Swept by an emotion stronger than himself, his acquired Englishisms went
+by the board. He was all Pole in the picturesque ardour of his speech.
+
+Magda regarded him calmly.
+
+"My dear Davilof," she said quietly. "What weight do you suppose such an
+argument would have with me?"
+
+The cool, ironic little question, with its insolent indifference,
+checked him like the flick of a lash across the face. He turned away.
+
+"None, I suppose," he admitted bitterly. "You are fire and flame--but
+within, you are ice."
+
+"Yes," she said, almost as though to herself. "Within, I'm ice. I
+believe that's true."
+
+"True!" he repeated. "Of course it's true. If it were not----"
+
+A slight smile tilted her mouth.
+
+"Well?" she echoed. "If it were not?"
+
+He swung round. With a quick stride he was beside her. His eyes blazing
+with a sudden fury of passion and resentment, he caught her by the
+shoulders, forcing her to face him.
+
+"God!" he muttered thickly. "What are you made of? You make men go
+through hell for you! Even here--here in this little country place--you
+do it! Storran's wife--one can see her heart breaks, and it is you who
+are breaking it. Yet nothing touches you! You've no conscience like
+other women--no heart--"
+
+Magda pulled herself out of his grasp.
+
+"Oh, do forget that I'm a woman, Davilof! I'm a dancer. Nothing else
+matters. I don't want to be troubled with a heart. And--and I think they
+left out my soul."
+
+"Yes," he agreed with intense bitterness. "I think they did. One day,
+Magda some man will kill you. You'll try him too far."
+
+"Indeed? Is that what you contemplate doing when you finally lose
+patience with me?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I shall not lose patience--until you are another man's wife," he said
+quietly. "And I don't intend you to be that."
+
+
+
+An hour later, Gillian, having dispatched her small son to bed and seen
+him safely tucked up between the lavender-scented sheets, discovered
+Magda alone in the low-raftered sitting-room. She was lying back idly in
+a chair, her hands resting on the arms, in her eyes a curious abstracted
+look as though she were communing with herself.
+
+Apparently she was too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice Gillian's
+entrance, for she did not speak.
+
+"What are you thinking about? Planning a new dance that shall out-vie
+_The Swan-Maiden_?" asked Gillian at last, for the sake of something to
+say. The silence and Magda's strange aloofness frightened her in some
+way.
+
+It was quite a moment before Magda made any answer. When she did, it was
+to say with a bitter kind of wonder in her voice:
+
+"What centuries ago it seems since the first night of _The
+Swan-Maiden_!"
+
+"It's not very long," began Gillian, then checked herself and asked
+quickly: "Is there anything the matter, Magda? Did Antoine bring you bad
+news of some kind?"
+
+"He brought me the offering of his hand and heart. That's no news, is
+it?"
+
+The opening was too good to be lost. With the remembrance of June's
+wistful face before her eyes, Gillian plunged in recklessly.
+
+"Apropos of such offerings--don't you think it would be wiser if you
+weren't quite so nice to Dan Storran?"
+
+"Am I nice to him?"
+
+"Too much so for my peace of mind--or his! It worries me, Magda--really.
+You'll play with fire once too often."
+
+"My dear Gillian, I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself. Do you
+imagine"--with a small, fine smile--"that I'm in danger of losing my
+heart to a son of the soil?"
+
+Gillian could have shaken her.
+
+"_You?_ You don't suppose I'm afraid for you! It's Dan Storran who isn't
+able to look after himself." She stooped over Magda's chair and slipped
+an arm persuasively round her shoulders. "Come away, Magda. Let's leave
+Stockleigh--go home to London."
+
+"Certainly not." Magda stood up suddenly. "I'm quite well amused down
+here. I don't propose to leave till our time is up."
+
+She spoke with unmistakable decision, and Gillian, feeling that it would
+be useless to urge her further at the moment, went slowly out of the
+room and upstairs. As she went she could hear Dan's footstep in the
+passage below. It sounded tired--quite unlike his usual swinging stride
+with its suggestion of impetuous force.
+
+But it was not work that had tired Dan Storran that afternoon. When he
+had quitted the little party gathered beneath the elms, he had started
+off across the fields, unheeding where he went, and for hours he had
+been tramping, deaf and blind to the world around him, immersed in the
+thoughts that had driven him forth.
+
+The full significance of the last few weeks had suddenly come home to
+him. Till now he had been drifting--drifting unthinkingly, conscious
+only that life had become extraordinarily full of interest and of a
+breathless kind of happiness, half sweet, half bitter. Bitter when Magda
+was not with him, sweet with a maddening sweetness when she was.
+
+He had not stopped to consider what it all meant--why the dull,
+monotonous round of existence on the farm to which he had long grown
+accustomed should all at once have come alive--grown vibrant and quick
+with some new impulse.
+
+But the happenings of to-day had suddenly shown him where he stood. That
+revealing moment by the river's edge with Magda, the swift, unreasoning
+jealousy of Davilof which had run like fire through his veins--jealousy
+because the other man was so evidently an old acquaintance with prior
+rights in her which seemed to set him, Dan Storran, quite outside the
+circle of their intimacy--had startled him into recognition of how far
+he had drifted.
+
+He loved her--craved for her with every fibre of his being. She was his
+woman, and beside the tumultuous demand for her of all his lusty manhood
+the quiet, unexacting affection which he bore his wife was as water is
+to wine.
+
+And since in Dan's simple code of ethics a man's loyalty to his wife
+occupied a very definite and unassailable position, the realisation came
+to him fraught with the acme of bitterness and self-contempt. Nor did
+he propose to yield to the madness in his blood. Hour after hour, as he
+tramped blindly across country, he thrashed the matter out. This love
+which had come to him was a forbidden thing--a thing which must be
+fought and thrust outside his life. For the sake of June he must see no
+more of Magda. She must go--leave Stockleigh. Afterwards he would tear
+the very memory of her out of his heart.
+
+Dan was a very direct person. Having taken his decision he did not stop
+to count the cost. That could come afterwards. Dimly he apprehended that
+it might be a very heavy one. But he was strong, now--strong to do
+the only possible thing. As he stood with his hand on the latch of the
+living-room door, he wondered whether what he had to say would mean
+to Magda all, or even a part, of what it meant to him--wondered with
+a sudden uncontrollable leaping of his pulses. . . . The latch grated
+raucously as he jerked it up and flung open the door. Magda was standing
+by the window, the soft glow of the westering sun falling about her.
+Dan's eyes rested hungrily on the small dark head outlined against the
+tender light.
+
+"Why--Dan----" She faltered into tremulous silence before the look on
+his face--the aching demand of it.
+
+The huskily sweet voice robbed him of his strength. He strode forward
+and caught her in his arms, staring down at her with burning eyes. Then,
+almost violently, he thrust her away from him, unkissed, although the
+soft curved lips had for a moment lain so maddeningly near his own.
+
+"When can you and Mrs. Grey make it convenient to leave Stockleigh
+Farm?" he asked, his voice like iron.
+
+The crudeness of it whipped her pride--that pride which Michael had torn
+down and trampled on--into fresh, indignant life.
+
+"To leave? Why should we leave?"
+
+Storran's face was white under his tan.
+
+"Because," he said hoarsely, "because you're coming between me and my
+wife. That's why."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE MOONLIT GARDEN
+
+The chintzy bedroom under the sloping roof was very still and quiet.
+The moonlight, streaming in through the open casement, revealed the bed
+unoccupied, its top-sheet neatly folded back just as when June had made
+her final round of the house some hours earlier, leaving everything in
+order for the night.
+
+Magda, crouched by the window, glanced back at it indifferently. She did
+not want to go to bed. If she went, she knew she would not sleep. She
+felt as though she would never sleep again.
+
+She had no idea of the time. She might have been there half an hour or
+half eternity--she did not know which. The little sounds of movement in
+the different bedrooms had gradually died down into silence, until at
+least the profound tranquillity and peace of night enshrouded the whole
+house. Only for her there was neither tranquility nor peace.
+
+She was alone now, face to face with the news which Davilof had brought
+her--the news of Michael's marriage. Throughout the rest of the day,
+after Davilof had gone, she had forced the matter into the background of
+her thoughts, and during supper she had kept up a light-hearted ripple
+of talk and laughter which had deceived even Gillian, convincing her
+that her apprehensions of the afternoon were unfounded.
+
+Perhaps she was helped by the fact that Dan failed to put in
+an appearance at the supper-table. It was easier to scintillate
+successfully for the sole benefit of a couple of other women than under
+the eyes of a man who had just ordered you out of his life. But when at
+last she was alone in her own room, the sparkle was suddenly quenched.
+There was no longer any need to pretend.
+
+Michael was married! Married! And the bitterness which she had been
+strenuously keeping at bay since the day, months ago now, when she had
+learned from Lady Arabella that he had deliberately left England without
+seeing her again swept over her in a black flood.
+
+It had hurt her badly enough when he had gone away, but somewhere in the
+depths of her consciousness there had always lurked a little fugitive
+hope that he would come back--that she would be given another chance.
+Now she knew that he would never come back--that one isn't always given
+a second chance in this world.
+
+And beneath the sick anguish of the realisation she was aware of a
+fierce resentment--a bitter, rebellious anger that any man could make
+her suffer as she was suffering now. It was unjust--a burden that
+had been forced upon her unfairly. She could not help her own
+character--that was a heritage with which one comes into the world--and
+now she was being punished for simply having been herself!
+
+An hour--two hours crept by. Hours of black, stark misery. The clock
+in the hall struck one--a single, bell-like stroke that reverberated
+through the silent house. It penetrated the numbed confusion of her
+mind, rousing her to a sudden recognition of the fact that she had been
+crouched so long in one position that her limbs were stiff and aching.
+
+She drew herself up to her feet, stretching her cramped muscles. The
+night was warm and the room felt stiflingly hot. She looked longingly
+through the window to where the garden lay drenched in moonlight, with
+cool-looking alleyways of moon-washed paths threading the black gloom of
+overhanging trees, ebony-edged in the silver light.
+
+She felt as though she could hardly breathe in the confined space of
+the room. Its low, sloping roof, which she had thought so quaintly
+attractive, seemed to press down on her like the lid of a box. She
+must get out--out into the black and silver night which beckoned to her
+through the open window. She could not stay in this room--this little
+room, alone with her thoughts.
+
+She glanced down dubiously at the soft, chiffony negligee which she
+had slipped on in place of a frock. Her feet, too, were bare. She had
+stripped off her shoes and stockings first thing upon coming upstairs,
+for the sake of coolness. Certainly her attire was not quite suitable
+for out-of-doors. . . . But there would be no one to see her. Ashencombe
+folk did not take their walks abroad at that hour of the night. And she
+longed to feel the cool touch of the dewy grass against her feet.
+
+Very quietly she opened her door and stole out into the passage.
+The house was strangely, wonderfully still. Only the ticking of the
+hall-clock broke the silence. So lightly that not a board creaked
+beneath her step, Magda flitted down the old stairway, and, crossing the
+hall, felt gingerly for the massive bolt which barred the heavy oaken
+door. She wondered if it would slide back quietly; she rather doubted
+it. She remembered often enough having heard it grate into its place
+as Storran went his nightly round, locking up the house. But, as her
+slender, seeking fingers came in contact with the knob, she realised
+that to-night by some oversight he had forgotten to shoot the bolt and,
+noiselessly lifting the iron latch, she opened the door and slipped out
+into the moonlit garden. Down the paths she went and across the lawns,
+the touch of the earth coming clean and cool to her bare feet. Now and
+again she paused to draw a long breath of the night air, fresh and sweet
+with the lingering scents of the day's blooming.
+
+An arch of rambler roses led into the distant part of the garden towards
+which she was wending her way, its powdering of tiny blossoms gleaming
+like star clusters borrowed from the Milky Way. Magda stooped as
+she passed beneath it to avoid an overhanging branch. Then, as she
+straightened herself, lifting her head once more, she stood still,
+suddenly arrested. On a stone bench, barely twenty yards away, sat Dan
+Storran!
+
+Against the pallid ghost-white of the bench his motionless figure showed
+black and sombre like some sable statue. His big shoulders were bowed,
+his hands hung loosely clasped between his knees, the white mask of
+his face, mercilessly revealed in the clear moonlight, was twisted into
+harsh lines of mental conflict. A certain grim triumph manifested itself
+in the set of his mouth and out-thrust jaw.
+
+He did not see the slight figure standing just within the shade of the
+rose-twined arch, and Magda remained for a moment or two watching him in
+silence. The unbarred door was explained now. Storran had not come in
+at all that night. She guessed the struggle which had sent him forth
+to seek the utter solitude of the garden. Almost she thought she could
+divine the processes of thought which had closed his lips in that
+strange line of ironic triumph. He had told her to go--when every nerve
+of him ached to bid her stay. And he was glad that the strength in him
+had won.
+
+A bitter smile flitted across her face. Men were all the same! They
+idolised a woman just because she was beautiful--for her lips and eyes
+and hair and the nameless charm that was in her--and set her up on an
+altar at which they could kneel becomingly. Then, when they found she
+was merely an ordinary human being like themselves, with her bundle
+of faults and failings, hereditary and acquired, the prig in them was
+appropriately shocked--and they went away!
+
+An unhappy woman is very often a bitter one. And Magda had been slowly
+learning the meaning of unhappiness for the first time in her life--a
+life that had been hitherto roses and laurel all the way.
+
+The devils that lie in wait for our weak moments prompted her then. The
+bitterness faded from her lips and they curved in a smile that subtly
+challenged the stern decision in Dan Storran's face. She hesitated an
+instant. Then, with feet that scarcely seemed to brush the grass, she
+glided forward, swaying, bending to some rhythmic measure, floating
+spirit-like across the lawn.
+
+With a great cry Dan leaped to his feet and stared at her, transfixed.
+At the sound of his voice she paused, poised on one bare foot, leaning
+a little towards him with curving, outstretched arms. Then, before he
+could touch her, she drew away, step by step, and Dan Storran, standing
+there in tense, breathless silence, beheld what no one else had ever
+seen--the Wielitzska dancing in the moonlight as she alone could dance.
+
+He knew nothing of art, nor of the supreme technique which went to make
+each supple movement a thing of sheer perfection, instinct with rhythm
+and significance. But he was a man, and a man in love, fighting the
+strongest instincts of his nature; and the bewildering beauty of her as
+she danced, the languorous, ethereal allure, delicately sensuous as the
+fragrance of a La France rose, sent the hot blood rioting through his
+veins. . . . She was going--slowly retreating from him. The primal
+man in him, the innate hunter who took his mate by capture, swept him
+headlong. With a bound he sprang past the dusky shrubbery that hedged
+the lawn and overtook her, catching her in his arms. She did not
+struggle. He felt her yield, and strained the soft, panting body closer
+to him. Beneath his hand he could feel the hurrying beat of her heart.
+Her breath, quickened by the exertion of the dance, came unevenly
+between her lips as she smiled at him.
+
+"Do you still want me to go away, Dan Storran?"
+
+There was a note of half-amused, half-triumphant mockery in her voice.
+The last bonds that held him snapped suddenly: "Yes!" he cried hoarsely.
+"Yes, I do. To go away with me!"
+
+He crushed his mouth down on hers, draining the sweetness of her in
+burning kisses he had thwarted through all these weeks that they had
+been together, pouring out his love in disjointed, stumbling phrases
+which halted by very reason of the force of passion which evoked them.
+
+Frightened by the tempest of emotion she had aroused she strained away
+from him. But she was powerless against his huge strength, helpless to
+resist him.
+
+At length the fierce tensity of his grip relaxed, though his arms still
+clasped her.
+
+"Tell me," he commanded triumphantly. "Tell me you love me. I want to
+hear it!" His voice vibrated and his eyes sought her face hungrily.
+
+She summoned up all her forces to deny him--to deny him in such a manner
+that he should realise his mistake absolutely and at once. "But I don't!
+I don't love you! If you thought that, you misunderstood me."
+
+His hands released their hold of her and fell heavily to his sides.
+"Misunderstood?" he muttered. The glad triumph went suddenly out of his
+voice. "Misunderstood?" he repeated dully.
+
+"Yes. Misunderstood me altogether."
+
+"I don't believe it!"
+
+"But you _must_ believe it," she insisted. "It's the truth!"
+
+He stared at her.
+
+"Then what have you meant all these weeks?"
+
+"I've not meant anything."
+
+"It's a lie!" he gave back savagely. "Unless"--he came closer to
+her--"unless--is it that man, that damned foreigner, who was here
+to-day?"
+
+"Antoine? No. Oh, Dan"--she forced an uncertain little laugh to her
+lips--"if you knew me better you'd know that I never _do_--'mean
+anything'!"
+
+The bitter intonation in her voice--the gibe at her own poor ruins of
+love fallen about her--was lost on him. He was in total ignorance of
+her friendship with Quarrington. But the plain significance of her words
+came home to him clearly enough. He did not speak for a minute or two.
+Then: "You've been playing with me, then--fooling me?" he said heavily.
+
+Magda remained silent. The heavy, laboured speech seemed to hold
+something minatory in it--the sullen lowering which precedes a tempest.
+
+"Answer me!" he persisted. "Was that it?"
+
+"I--I suppose it was," she faltered.
+
+He drew still closer and instinctively she shrank away. A consciousness
+of repressed violence communicated itself to her. She half expected him
+to strike her.
+
+"And you don't love me? You're quite sure?"
+
+There was an ominous kind of patience in the persistent questioning. It
+was as though he were deliberately giving her every possible chance to
+clear herself. Her nerves frayed a little.
+
+"Of course I'm sure--perfectly sure," she said with nervous asperity. "I
+wish you'd believe me, Dan!"
+
+"I only wanted to make sure," he returned.
+
+Something in the careful precision of his answer struck her with a swift
+sense of apprehension. She looked up at him and what she saw made her
+catch her breath convulsively. His face was ashen, the veins in his
+forehead standing out like weals, and his eyes gleamed like blue
+flame--mad eyes. His hands, hanging at his sides, twitched curiously.
+
+"I'm sure now," he said. "Sure. . . . Do you know what you've done?
+You've smashed up my life. Smashed it. June and I were happy enough till
+you came. Now we'll never be happy again. I expect you've smashed other
+lives, too. But you won't do it any more. I'm the last. Women like you
+are better dead!"
+
+His great arms swung out and gripped her.
+
+"No, don't struggle. It wouldn't be any good, you know." He went on
+speaking very carefully and quietly, and while he spoke she felt his
+left arm tighten round her, binding her own arms down to her sides as
+might a thong, while his right hand slid up to the base of her throat.
+She writhed, twisting her body desperately in his grip. "Keep still.
+I've kissed you. And now I'm going to kill you. You'll be better dead."
+
+There was implacable purpose in his strangely quiet, unhurried accents.
+Magda recognised it--recognised that death was very close to her. It
+would be useless to scream. Before help could come--if anyone heard her
+cries, which was unlikely--Dan would have accomplished what he meant to
+do.
+
+In the last fraction of time these thoughts flashed through her mind.
+Her brain seemed to be working with abnormal clarity and speed. This was
+death, then--unavoidable, inevitable.
+
+She felt Dan's hand creep upward, closing round her throat. Quite
+suddenly she ceased to struggle and lay still in his grasp. After all,
+she didn't know that she would much mind dying. Life was not so sweet.
+There would be pain, she supposed . . . a moment's agony. . . .
+
+All at once, Storran's hands fell away from her passive, silent body and
+he stepped back. "I can't do it!" he muttered hoarsely. "I can't do it!"
+
+For a moment the suddenness of her release left Magda swaying dizzily
+on her feet. Then her brain clearing, she looked across to where Dan
+Storran's big figure faced her. The nonchalance with which she usually
+met life, and with which a few moments earlier she had been prepared to
+face inevitable death, stood by her now. A faint, quizzical smile tilted
+her mouth.
+
+"So you couldn't do it after all, Dan?" The familiar note of
+half-indifferent mockery sounded in her voice.
+
+Storran stared at her. "By God! I don't believe you are a woman!" he
+exclaimed thickly.
+
+She regarded him contemplatively, her hands lightly touching the red
+marks scored by his fingers on the whiteness of her throat.
+
+"Do you know," she replied dispassionately, "I sometimes wonder if I am?
+I don't seem to have--feelings, like other women. It doesn't matter
+to me, really, a bit that I've--what was it you said?--smashed up your
+life. I don't know that it would have mattered much if you had strangled
+me." She paused, then stepped towards him. "Now you know the truth. Do
+you still want to kill me, Dan Storran! . . . Or may I go?"
+
+He swung aside from her.
+
+"Go!" he muttered sullenly. "Go to _hell_!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE DAY AFTER
+
+"Magda, how could you?" Gillian's voice was full of blank dismay. "You
+ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself!"
+
+Magda perched on the foot of Gillian's bed, her hands clasped round her
+knees, nodded.
+
+"Yes, I suppose I ought. I don't know what made me do it--except
+that he'd suggested I should leave Stockleigh! I'm not used to
+being--shunted!"
+
+"Heaven knows you're not!" agreed Gillian ruefully. "It would be a
+wholesome tonic for you if you were. I told you only yesterday that it
+would be better if we left here. And on top of that you must needs go
+and dance in the moonlight, of all things, while Dan Storran looks on!
+What ordinary man is going to keep his head in such circumstances, do
+you suppose? Especially when he was more than half in love with you to
+start with. . . . Oh, I should like to shake you!"
+
+"Well, I'll leave now--as soon as ever you like," replied Magda,
+slipping down from the bed. She was unwontedly meek, from which Gillian
+judged that for once she felt herself unable to cope with the situation
+she had created. "Will you arrange it?"
+
+Gillian shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I suppose so," she returned resignedly. "As usual, you break the
+crockery and someone else has to sweep up the pieces."
+
+Magda bent down and kissed her.
+
+"You're such a dear, Gillyflower," she said with that impulsive, lovable
+charm of manner which it was so difficult to resist. "Still"--her voice
+hardening a little--"perhaps there are a few odd bits that I'll have to
+sweep up myself."
+
+And she departed to her own room to complete her morning toilette,
+leaving Gillian wondering rather anxiously what she could have meant.
+
+When, half an hour later, the two girls descended for breakfast, Dan
+Storran was not visible. He had gone off early to work, June explained,
+and Magda experienced a sensation of distinct relief. She had dreaded
+meeting Dan this morning. The mad, bizarre scene of the night before,
+with sudden unleashing of savage and ungoverned passions, had shaken
+even her insouciant poise, though she was very far from seeing it in its
+true proportions.
+
+June received Gillian's intimation that they proposed leaving Stockleigh
+Farm that day without comment. She was very quiet and self-contained,
+and busied herself in making the necessary arrangements for their
+departure, sending a boy into Ashencombe to order the wagonette from
+the Crown and Bells to take them to the station whilst she herself
+laboriously made out the account that was owing. When she presented the
+latter, with a perfectly composed and business-like air, and proceeded
+conscientiously to stamp and receipt it, no one could have guessed how
+bitter a thing it was to her to accept Miss Vallincourt's money. Within
+herself she recognised that every penny of it had been earned at the
+cost of her own happiness.
+
+But as she stood at the gate, watching the ancient vehicle from the
+Crown and Bells bearing the London visitors towards the station, a
+little quiver of hope stirred in her heart. Early that morning Dan
+himself had said to her before starting out to his work: "Get those
+people away! They must be out of the house before I come into it again.
+Pay them a week's money instead of notice if necessary. We can afford
+it." So it was evident that he, too, had realised the danger of their
+happiness--hers and his--if Miss Vallincourt remained at Stockleigh any
+longer.
+
+He did not come in till late in the evening, when June was sitting in
+the lamplight, adding delicate stitchery to some tiny garments upon
+which she was at work. She hid them hastily at the sound of his
+footsteps, substituting one of his own socks that stood in need of
+repair. Not yet could she share with him that wonderful secret joy which
+was hers. There must be a clearer understanding between them first. They
+must get back to where they were before Miss Vallincourt came between
+them, so that nothing might mar the sweetness of the telling.
+
+Presently Dan came into the room and sat down heavily. June looked
+across at him.
+
+"She has gone, Dan," she said quietly. She did not use the word "they."
+Those others did not count as far as she was concerned. Her use of the
+pronoun sounded significantly in Storran's ears.
+
+"You know, then?" he said dully. Adding, after a moment's pause. "Did
+she tell you?"
+
+"Tell me?" repeated June doubtfully. "Tell me what?"
+
+"That she's robbed you of all that belongs to you."
+
+Her face blanched. "What do you mean, Dan?" she asked falteringly. "I
+don't think I understand."
+
+Her wide, questioning blue eyes, with that softness and depth of
+expression dawning in them which motherhood gives to women's eyes,
+searched his face. The innocent appeal of them cut him to the heart.
+He had loved his wife; and now he had to tell her that he loved her no
+longer.
+
+"You've got to understand," he said roughly. His hatred of being
+compelled to hurt her made him almost brutal. "I--everything is changed
+between us, June." He stopped, not knowing how to go on.
+
+"Changed? How, Dan?" Her voice sharpened with apprehension. "Do you
+mean--that you don't--care any longer?"
+
+"Yes. It's that. It's Magda--Oh, good God! Can't you understand?"
+
+"You love Miss Vallincourt?" June spoke in carefully measured accents.
+She felt that if she did not speak very quietly indeed she should
+scream. She wanted to laugh, too. It sounded so absurd to be asking her
+husband if he loved Miss Vallincourt!
+
+Dan's eyes met her own.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I love her." He paused a moment, then added: "I asked
+her to go away with me."
+
+June stared at him dumbly. The whole thing seemed unreal. She could
+not feel as though what Dan was saying had any relation to herself, any
+bearing on their life together. At last:
+
+"Why didn't you go, then?" she heard herself say--at least, she supposed
+she must be saying it, although the voice didn't sound a bit like her
+own.
+
+Dan turned on her with sudden savagery. His nerves were raw.
+
+"You speak as though you were disappointed," he said roughly.
+
+"No. But if you care for Miss Vallincourt and she cares for you, I'm
+wondering what stopped you."
+
+"She doesn't care for me"--shortly.
+
+June felt a thrill of pure joy. If Magda didn't care, then she could win
+him back--win back her husband! Within her she was instinctively aware
+that if Magda _had_ cared, no power of hers could have won back Dan's
+allegiance. A faint doubt assailed her.
+
+"She--she _seemed_ as if she cared?" she ventured.
+
+Dan nodded indifferently.
+
+"Yes. I was a summer holiday's amusement for her."
+
+"And--was that all?"
+
+As June spoke, her direct gaze sought her husband's face. He met it fair
+and square, unflinchingly.
+
+"That's all," he replied quietly.
+
+She crossed the room swiftly to his side.
+
+"Then, if that's all, Dan, we--we won't speak of it again--ever," she
+said steadily. "It--it was just a mistake. It need never come
+between us. You'll get over it, and I"--her small head reared itself
+bravely--"I'll forget it."
+
+The pathetic courage of her! Storran turned away with a groan.
+
+"No," he answered. "I shan't 'get over it.' When a man loves a woman as
+I love Magda he doesn't 'get over it.' That's what I meant when I told
+you she had robbed you."
+
+"You _will_ get over it, Dan," she persisted. "I'll help you."
+
+"You can't," he returned doggedly. "You, least of all! Every touch of
+your hand--I should be thinking what her touch would have meant! The
+sound of your step--I'd be listening for hers!"
+
+He saw her wince. He wanted to kick himself for hurting her like this.
+But he knew what he intended doing; and sooner or later she must know
+too. It would be better for her in the long run to face it now than to
+be endlessly waiting and hoping and longing for what he knew could never
+be.
+
+"Dan, I'll be very patient. Don't you think--if you tried--you could
+conquer this love of yours for Miss Vallincourt?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"It's conquered me, June. It's--it's torture!"
+
+"It will be easier now she's gone away," she suggested.
+
+"Gone away? . . . Aye, as far as London! And in five hours I could be
+with her--see her again----"
+
+He broke off. At the bare thought his heart was pounding against his
+ribs, his breath labouring in his throat.
+
+"Won't you try, Dan?" Even to herself June's voice sounded faint and far
+away.
+
+"It would be useless." He got up and strode aimlessly back and forth,
+coming at last to a standstill in front of her. "A man knows his own
+limits, June. And I've reached mine. England can't hold the two of us."
+
+June gave a little stifled cry.
+
+"What do you mean? You're not--you're not going to leave me? To go
+abroad--now?"
+
+There would be need for him in England soon--in a few months. But of
+course he couldn't know that. Should she tell him. Tell him why he _must
+not_ leave her now? Keep him with her by a sure and certain chain--the
+knowledge that she was soon to be the mother of his child?
+
+She debated the question wildly in her mind, tempted to tell him, yet
+feeling that even if then he stayed with her it would not be because he
+loved her or had ceased to care for Miss Vallincourt, but only because
+he was impelled by a sense of duty. And her pride rebelled against
+holding him by that.
+
+His voice broke in upon her conflicting thoughts.
+
+"Yes. I'm going abroad. It's the only thing, June. I can't stay in
+England--and keep away from her."
+
+June was silent a moment. Then she said in a very low voice, almost as
+though speaking to herself:
+
+"I wonder if--if you ever loved me."
+
+He wheeled round, and the desperate misery in his eyes hurt her almost
+physically.
+
+"Yes," he said harshly. "I did love you. In a way, I do now. But it's
+nothing--nothing to the madness in my blood! I'm a brute to leave you.
+But I'm going to do it. No civilised country can hold me now!"
+
+So that was to be the end of it! June recognised the bitter truth at
+last. Magda had indeed robbed her of everything she possessed. And
+robbed her wantonly, seeing that she herself set no value on Dan's
+love--had, in fact, tossed it aside like an outworn plaything.
+
+June ceased to plead with Dan then. She would not wish to hold him
+by any other chain than his love for her. And if that chain had
+snapped--broken irrevocably--then the child born of what had once
+been love would only be an encumbrance in his eyes, an unwelcome tie,
+shackling him to a duty from which he longed to escape.
+
+So she let him go--let him go in silence. . . .
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+WHAT LADY ARABELLA KNEW
+
+Lady Arabella might disapprove of her god-daughter from every point of
+the compass, but she was nevertheless amazingly fond of her, so that
+when Gillian appeared on her spotless Park Lane doorstep one afternoon
+with the information that she and Magda had returned from Devonshire,
+she hailed the announcement with enthusiasm.
+
+"But where is Magda? Why didn't she come with you?" she demanded
+impatiently.
+
+"Her manager rang up to know if he could see her about various things in
+connection with this next winter's season, so there's a great council
+in progress. But she's coming to see you to-morrow. Won't I do"--Gillian
+wrinkled her brows whimsically--"for to-day?"
+
+"Bless the child! Of course you will! Come along and tell me all about
+your Devonshire trip. I suppose," she went on, "you heard the news of
+Michael Quarrington's marriage? Or didn't you get any newspapers down in
+your benighted village?"
+
+"No, we had no London papers," replied Gillian doubtfully. "But--I
+don't understand. Mr. Quarrington isn't married, is he? I thought--I
+thought----"
+
+"You thought he was in love with Magda. So he was. The announcement
+startled everybody, I can tell you! And Davilof promptly decided that a
+motoring trip would benefit his health and shot off to Devonshire at
+top speed. Of course he wanted to impart the news to Magda. He must have
+felt a pretty fool since!" And Lady Arabella gave one of her enjoyable
+chuckles.
+
+"Yes. Antoine came down to see us," replied Gillian in puzzled tones.
+"But Magda never confided anything special he had said. I suppose he
+_must_ have told her----" She broke off as all at once illumination
+penetrated the darkness. "That explains it, then! Explains everything!"
+she exclaimed.
+
+"What explains what?" demanded Lady Arabella bluntly.
+
+"Why----" And Gillian proceeded to recount the events which had led up
+to the abrupt termination of the visit to Stockleigh Farm.
+
+"She was in a very odd kind of mood after Antoine had gone. I even asked
+her if he had brought any bad news, but I couldn't get any sensible
+answer out of her. And that night she proceeded to dance in the
+moonlight with Dan Storran for audience--out of sheer devilment, of
+course!"
+
+"Or sheer heartsickness," suggested Lady Arabella, with one of those
+quick flashes of tender insight which combined so incongruously with the
+rest of her personality.
+
+"Do you think she--cared, then?" asked Gillian.
+
+"For Quarrington? Of course I do. Oh, well it will all come right in
+the end, I hope. And, anyway"--with a wicked little grin--"Davilof won't
+have quite such a clear coast as he anticipated."
+
+"But if Michael Quarrington is married--"
+
+"He isn't," interrupted Lady Arabella briskly. "It was contradicted in
+the papers the very next morning. Only I suppose Davilof hustled off to
+Devonshire in such a hurry that he never saw it.
+
+"Contradicted? But how did such a mistake arise?"
+
+"Oh, whoever supplied that particular tidbit of news got the
+names mixed. It ought really to have been _Warrington_, not
+Quarrington--Mortrake Warrington, the sculptor, you know. It seems he
+and Michael were both using the same woman as a model--only Warrington
+married her! Spoiled Michael's picture--or his temper--when he ran off
+with her for a honeymoon, I expect!"
+
+On her return to Friars' Holm Gillian hastened to retail for Magda's
+benefit the information she had acquired from Lady Arabella, and was
+rewarded by the immediate change in her which became apparent. The
+haunted, feverish look in her eyes was replaced by a more tranquil
+shining, the intense restlessness she had evinced of late seemed to fall
+away from her, and she ceased to pepper her conversation with the bitter
+speeches which had worried Gillian more than a little, recognising in
+them, as she did, the outcrop of some inward and spiritual turmoil.
+
+To Magda, the fact that Michael was not married, after all, seemed to
+re-create the whole world. It left hope still at the bottom of the box
+of life's possibilities. Looking backward, she realised now how strongly
+she had clung to the belief that some day he would come back to her. It
+had been the one gleam of light through all those dark months which had
+followed his abrupt departure; and the intolerable pain of the hours
+that had succeeded Davilof's announcement of his marriage to the Spanish
+woman had taught her how much Michael meant to her.
+
+She was beginning to appreciate, too, the tangle of convictions and
+emotions which had driven him from her side. His original attitude
+toward her, based on the treatment she had accorded to his friend who
+had loved her, had been one of plain censure and distrust, strengthened
+and intensified by that strong "partisan" feeling of one man for
+another--fruit of the ineradicable sex antagonism which so often colours
+the judgments men pass on women and women on men. Then had come love,
+against which he had striven in vain, and gradually, out of love,
+had grown a new tentative belief which the pitiful culmination of the
+Raynham episode had suddenly and very completely shattered.
+
+Of late, circumstances had combined to impress on Magda an altogether
+new point of view--the viewpoint from which other people might
+conceivably regard her actions. She had never troubled about such a
+thing before, nor was she finding the experience at all a pleasant one.
+But it helped her to understand to a certain extent--though still
+only in a very modified degree--the influences which had sent Michael
+Quarrington out of England.
+
+And now, in the passionate relief bred of the knowledge that he was
+still free, that he had not gone straight from her to another woman,
+much of the resentful hardness which had embittered her during the
+last few months melted away, and she became once more the nonchalant,
+tantalising but withal lovable and charming personality of former days.
+
+She was even conscious of a certain compunction for her behaviour at
+Stockleigh. She had been bitterly hurt herself, and since, for the
+moment, to experiment with a new and, to her, quite unknown type of man
+had amused her and helped to distract her thoughts, she had not paused
+to consider the possible resultant consequences to the subject of the
+experiment.
+
+She endeavoured to solace herself with the belief that after she had
+gone he would instinctively turn to June once more, and that life on the
+farm would probably resume the even tenor of its way. Gradually, with
+the passage of time, her thoughts reverted less and less often to the
+happenings at Stockleigh, and the prickings of conscience--which beset
+her return to London--grew considerably fainter and more infrequent.
+
+It was almost inevitable that this should be so. With the autumn came
+the stir and hustle of the season, with its thousand-and-one claims upon
+her thought and time. The management of the Imperial Theatre was
+nothing if not enterprising, and designed to present a series of ballets
+throughout the course of the winter, in the greater number of which
+Magda would be the bright and particular star. And in the absorption
+of work and the sheer joy she found in the art which she loved, the
+recollection of her holiday at Stockleigh slipped by degrees into the
+background of her mind. Fraught with such immense significance and
+catastrophe to those others, Dan and June--to Magda it soon came to
+occupy no more than an incidental niche in her memory.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+CROSS CURRENTS
+
+Winter had slipped away, pushed from his place by the tender, resistless
+hands of spring. And now spring had given place to summer, and June,
+arms filled with flowers, was converting the earth into a garden of
+roses.
+
+Magda's car, purring its way southward along the great road from London,
+sped between fields that still gleamed with the first freshness of their
+young green, while through the open window drifted vagrant little puffs
+of clean country air, coming delicately to her nostrils, fragrant of
+leaf and bloom.
+
+She was motoring to Netherway, a delightfully small and insignificant
+place on the Hampshire coast where Lady Arabella had what it pleased her
+to term her "cottage in the country," a charming old place, Elizabethan
+in character--the type of "cottage" which boasted a score or so of rooms
+and every convenience which an imaginative estate agent, sustained by
+the knowledge that his client regarded money as a means and not an end,
+could devise.
+
+Summer invitations to the Hermitage--as the place was quite inaptly
+called, since no one could be less akin to a hermit than its gregarious
+owner--were much sought after by the younger generation of Lady
+Arabella's set. The beautifully wooded park, with its green aisles of
+shady solitude sloping down from the house to the very edge of the blue
+waters of the Solent, was an ideal spot in which to bring to a safe
+and happy conclusion a love affair that might seem to have hung fire
+a trifle during the hurly-burly of the London season. And if further
+inducement were needed, it was to be found in the fact that Lady
+Arabella herself constituted the most desirable of chaperons, remaining
+considerately inconspicuous until the moment when her congratulations
+were requested.
+
+This year a considerable amount of disappointment had been occasioned by
+the fact that she had left town quite early during the season, and later
+on had apparently limited her invitations exclusively to the trio at
+Friars' Holm. She declared that the number of matrimonial ventures
+for which the Hermitage was responsible was beginning to weigh on her
+conscience. Also, she wanted a quiet holiday and she proposed to take
+one.
+
+And now Magda was on her way to join her, Gillian remaining behind in
+order to close up the house at Hampstead and settle the servants on
+board wages. It had been arranged that she and Coppertop should come on
+to Netherway immediately this was accomplished.
+
+Magda could hardly believe that only a year had elapsed since last the
+roses beckoned her out of London. It seemed far longer since that hot
+summer's day when she had rushed away to Devonshire, vainly seeking a
+narcotic for the new and bewildering turmoil of pain that was besetting
+her.
+
+She had learned now that you carry a heartache with you, and that no
+change of scenery makes up for the beloved face you can no longer see.
+For Michael had not come back. He had remained abroad and had never by
+sign or letter acknowledged that he even remembered her existence. Magda
+had come to accept it as a fact now that he had gone out of her life
+entirely.
+
+A whiff of air tinged with the salt tang of the sea blew in at the
+window, and she came suddenly out of her musings to find that the car
+was winding its way up the hill upon which the Hermitage was perched.
+
+A long, low house, clothed in creeper, it stood just below the hill's
+brow, sheltered to the rear by a great belt of woods, and overlooking a
+sea which sparkled in the sunlight as though strewn with diamond-dust.
+
+Lady Arabella was waiting in the porch when the car drew up and welcomed
+her god-daughter with delight. She seemed bubbling over with good
+spirits, and there was a half-mischievous, half-guilty twinkle in her
+keen old eyes which suggested that there might be some ulterior cause
+for her effervescence.
+
+"If you were poor I should say you'd just come into a fortune,"
+commented Magda, regarding her judicially. "As you're not, I should like
+to know why you're looking as pleased as a child with a new toy. Own up,
+now, Marraine! What's the secret you've got up your sleeve?"
+
+"Yes, there is a secret," acknowledged Lady Arabella gleefully. "Come
+along and I'll show it you."
+
+Magda smiled and followed her across the long hall and into a room at
+the further end of which stood a big easel. On the easel, just nearing
+completion, rested a portrait of her godmother. It was rather a
+wonderful portrait. The artist seemed to have penetrated beyond the mere
+physical lineaments of his sitter into the very crannies of her soul. It
+was all there--the thoroughly worldly shrewdness, the mordant, somewhat
+cynical humour, and the genuine kindness of heart which went to make up
+Lady Arabella's personality as her world knew it. And something more.
+Behind all these one sensed the glamour of a long-past romance, the
+unquenched spark of a faith that, as Lady Arabella had herself once put
+it in a rare moment of self-revelation, "love is the best thing this
+queer old world of ours has to offer." The portrait on the easel was
+that of a woman who had visioned the miracle of love only to be robbed
+of its fulfilment.
+
+Magda stood silently in front of the picture, marvelling at its keen
+perceptive powers. And then quite suddenly she realised who must have
+painted it. It almost seemed to her as though she had really known it
+from the first moment her eyes had rested on the canvas. The brushwork,
+and that uncannily clever characterisation, were unmistakable.
+
+"Good likeness, don't you think?"
+
+Lady Arabella's snapping speech broke the silence.
+
+"It's rather more than that, isn't it?" said Magda. "How did you seduce
+Michael Quarrington? I thought"--for an instant her voice wavered, then
+steadied again--"I thought he was abroad."
+
+"He was. At the present moment he's at the Hermitage."
+
+"_Here_?"
+
+Magda turned her head aside so that Lady Arabella might not see the
+wave of scarlet which flooded her face and then receded, leaving it
+milk-white. Michael . . . _here_! She felt her heart beating in great
+suffocating throbs, and the room seemed to swim round her. If he were
+here, knowing that she was to be his fellow-guest, surely he could not
+hate her so badly! She was conscious of a sudden wild uprush of hope.
+Perhaps--perhaps happiness was not so far away, after all!
+
+And then she heard Lady Arabella's voice breaking across the riot of
+emotion which stirred within her.
+
+"Yes, he has been here the last three weeks painting my portrait. It's
+for you, the portrait. I thought you'd like to have it when you haven't
+got the original any longer."
+
+Magda turned to her suddenly, her affection for her godmother alertly
+apprehensive.
+
+"What do you mean?" she said anxiously. "You're--you're not ill,
+Marraine?"
+
+"Ill? No. But I'm over seventy. And after seventy you've had your
+allotted span, you know. Anything beyond that's an extra. And whether
+fate gives me a bit more rope or not, I've nothing to grumble at. I've
+_lived_, not vegetated--and I've had a very good time, too." She paused,
+then added slowly: "Though I've missed the best."
+
+Magda slipped her hand into the old woman's thin, wrinkled one with a
+quick gesture of understanding, and a little sympathetic silence fell
+between them.
+
+"Then you'll find the hanging-room for the portrait at Friars' Holm?"
+queried Lady Arabella, breaking it at last in practical tones.
+
+"You know we'd love to have it," replied Magda warmly. In a studiously
+casual voice she pursued: "By the way, does Mr. Quarrington know I'm
+here?"
+
+Lady Arabella nodded. Secretly she was congratulating herself on having
+successfully tided over the awkwardness of explaining Michael's presence
+at the Hermitage. She had been somewhat apprehensive as to how Magda
+would take it. It was quite on the cards that she might have ordered her
+car round again and driven straight back to London!
+
+But she had accepted the fact with apparent composure--one's mental
+states, fortunately, being invisible to the curious eyes of the outside
+world!--and Lady Arabella felt proportionately relieved. Nor had
+Quarrington himself evinced any particular emotion, either of
+dissatisfaction or otherwise, when she had confided to him the fact that
+she was expecting her god-daughter. And although the extreme composure
+exhibited by both Michael and Magda was a trifle baffling, Lady Arabella
+was fain to comfort herself with her confirmed belief in propinquity as
+the resolution of most lovers' problems and misunderstandings.
+
+She was fully determined to bring these two together once more if it
+were in any way possible, and the commission to paint her portrait had
+been merely part of her scheme. Her three score years and ten had had
+little enough to do with it. They weighed extremely lightly on her erect
+old shoulders, and her spirit was as unquenchable as it had been twenty
+years ago. It seemed more than likely that fate was preparing to allow
+her quite a good deal of rope.
+
+As for Quarrington, he would probably have refused to return to England
+at this juncture to please anyone other than Lady Arabella. But somehow
+no one ever did refuse Lady Arabella anything that she particularly set
+her heart upon. Moreover, as he reflected upon receipt of her assured
+little missive commissioning him to paint her portrait, he would be
+obliged to return to England sooner or later, and by now he felt he
+had himself sufficiently in hand to risk the contingency of a possible
+meeting with Magda. But he had hardly counted upon finding himself
+actually under the same roof with her for days together, and, although
+outwardly unmoved, he was somewhat taken aback when halfway through
+his visit to the Hermitage, Lady Arabella cheerfully communicated the
+prospect to him.
+
+He could read between the lines and guess her purpose, and it afforded
+him a certain sardonic amusement. It was like Lady Arabella's
+temerity, he reflected! No other woman, knowing as much of the special
+circumstances as she did, would have ventured so far.
+
+Well, she would soon realise that her attempt to bridge matters over
+between himself and her god-daughter was foredoomed to failure. He would
+never trust Magda, or any other woman, again. From the moment he had
+left England he had made up his mind that henceforth no woman should
+have any place in his life, and certain subsequent occurrences had
+confirmed him in this determination.
+
+At the same time he was not going to run away. He would stay and face it
+out. He would remain at the Hermitage until he had finished the portrait
+upon which he was at work, and then he would pack up and depart.
+
+So that when finally he and Magda met in the sun-filled South Parlour at
+the Hermitage each of them was prepared to treat the other with a cool
+detachment.
+
+But Magda found it difficult to maintain her pose after her first glance
+at his face. The alteration in it sent a swift pang to her heart. It had
+hardened--hardened into lines of a grim self-control that spoke of long
+mental conflict. The mouth, too, had learned to close in a new line
+of bitterness, and in the grey eyes as they rested on her there lay a
+certain cynical indifference which seemed to set her as far away from
+him as the north is from the south. She realised that the gulf between
+them was almost as wide and impassable as though he were in very truth
+the Spanish dancer's husband. This man proposed to give her neither love
+nor forgiveness. Only the feminine instinct of pride--the pride of woman
+who must be sought and never the seeker--carried her through the ordeal
+of the first meeting. Nor did he seek to make it easier for her.
+
+"It is a long time since you were in England," she remarked after the
+first interchange of civilities.
+
+"Very long," agreed Quarrington politely. "It would probably have been
+still longer if Lady Arabella had not tempted me. But her portrait was
+too interesting a commission to refuse."
+
+"It sounds banal to say how good I think it. You never paint anything
+that _isn't_ good, do you?"
+
+"I paint what I see."
+
+"In that case quite a lot of people might be afraid to have their
+portraits painted by you--beauty being so much in the eye of the
+beholder!" returned Magda with the flippancy that is so often only the
+defence behind which a woman takes refuge.
+
+"I don't think so. As a matter of fact I have no objection to painting a
+plain face--provided there's a beautiful soul behind it."
+
+"But I suppose a beautiful soul in a beautiful body would satisfy you
+better?"
+
+"It might, if such a combination existed."
+
+Magda flushed a little.
+
+"You don't think it does?"
+
+The grey, contemptuous eyes swept her face suddenly.
+
+"My experience has not led me to think so."
+
+There was an almost calculated insolence in the careless answer. It was
+as though he had tossed her an epitome of his opinion of her. Magda's
+spirit rose in opposition.
+
+"Perhaps your experience has been somewhat limited," she observed.
+
+"Perhaps it has. If so, I have no wish to extend it."
+
+In spite of Michael's taciturnity--or perhaps, more truly, on account of
+it--Magda's spirits lightened curiously after that first interview with
+him. The mere fact of his presence had stilled the incessant ache at
+her heart--the ache to see him again and hear his voice. And the morose
+cynicism of his thrusts at her was just so much proof that, although he
+had forced himself to remain out of England for a year and a half, yet
+he had not thereby achieved either peace of mind or indifference. Magda
+was too true a daughter of Eve not to know that a man doesn't expend
+powder and shot on a woman to whom he is completely indifferent.
+
+The next day or two were not without their difficulties, as Lady
+Arabella speedily realised. A triangular party, when two out of the
+three share certain poignant memories, is by no means the easiest thing
+to stage-manage. There were inevitable awkward moments that could only
+be surmounted by the exercise of considerable tact, and the hours which
+Lady Arabella passed sitting to Quarrington for her portrait, while
+Magda wandered alone through the woods or sculled a solitary boat up the
+river, helped to minimize the strain considerably.
+
+Nevertheless, it was a relief to everyone concerned when Gillian and
+Coppertop were added to the party. A strained atmosphere was somewhat
+difficult of accomplishment anywhere within the joyous vicinity of the
+latter, while Gillian's tranquil and happy nature reacted on the whole
+household.
+
+"That's an extraordinary friendship," commented Quarrington one day
+as he and his hostess stood at the window watching Gillian and Magda,
+returned from shopping in the village, approaching up the drive.
+"Mrs. Grey is so simple and--to use an overworked word--so essentially
+womanly."
+
+"And Magda?"
+
+The hard look deepened in Michael's eyes.
+
+"Essentially--feminine," he answered curtly. "A quite different thing."
+
+"She hasn't found her soul yet," said Lady Arabella. Adding with sudden
+daring: "Suppose you find it for her, Michael?"
+
+"I don't think the search would interest me," he returned coolly. "I
+haven't the instinct of the prospector." He paused, then went on slowly
+and as though making the admission almost against his will: "But I'd
+like to paint her."
+
+"A portrait of her?"
+
+"No, not a portrait."
+
+"Then you mean you want her to sit for your 'Circe'?"
+
+Lady Arabella knew all about the important picture he had in mind to
+paint. They had often discussed it together during the progress of the
+sittings she had been giving him, and she was aware that so far he had
+been unable to find a suitable model.
+
+"Yes," he said slowly. "She is the perfect model for such a
+subject--body and soul."
+
+Lady Arabella ignored the sneer.
+
+"Then why not ask her to sit for you?"
+
+Quarrington's brows drew together.
+
+"You know the answer to that, I think, Lady Arabella," he answered
+curtly.
+
+"Oh, you men! I've no patience with you!" exclaimed the old lady
+testily. "_I_ shall ask her, then!"
+
+Gillian and Magda, laden with parcels, entered the room as she spoke,
+and, before Quarrington could prevent her, she had flashed round on her
+god-daughter.
+
+"Magda, here's Michael in need of a model for the best picture he's ever
+likely to paint, and it seems you exactly fit the bill. Will you sit for
+him?"
+
+Followed an astonished silence. Gillian glanced apprehensively towards
+Magda. She felt as though Lady Arabella had suddenly let off a firework
+in their midst. Magda halted in the process of unwrapping a small
+parcel.
+
+"What is the subject of the picture?"
+
+There was a perceptible pause. Then Lady Arabella took the bull by the
+horns.
+
+"Circe," she said tersely.
+
+"Oh!" Magda seemed to reflect. "She turned men into swine, didn't she?"
+She looked across at Quarrington. "And I'm to understand you think I'd
+make a suitable model for that particular subject?"
+
+"She was a very beautiful person," suggested Gillian hastily.
+
+"Mr. Quarrington hasn't answered my question," persisted Magda.
+
+He met her glance with cool defiance.
+
+"Then, yes," he returned with a little bow. "As Mrs. Grey has just
+remarked--Circle was very beautiful."
+
+"You score," observed Magda demurely. There was a glint of amusement in
+her eyes.
+
+"Yes, I think he does," agreed Lady Arabella, who was deriving an
+impish, pixie-like enjoyment from the situation. Then, recognising that
+it might be more diplomatic not to press the matter any further at the
+moment, she skilfully drew the conversation into other channels.
+
+It was not until evening, after dinner, that she reverted to the
+subject. They had all four been partaking of coffee and cigarettes
+on the verandah, and subsequently she had proposed a stroll in the
+garden--a suggestion to which Gillian responded with alacrity. Magda,
+her slim length extended on a comfortably cushioned wicker lunge, shook
+her head.
+
+"I'm too comfortable to stir," she declared idly.
+
+Lady Arabella paused at the edge of the verandah and contemplated her
+critically. Something in the girl's pose and in the long, lithe lines of
+her recumbent figure was responsible for her next remark.
+
+"I can see you as Circe," she commented, "quite well." She tucked her
+arm into Gillian's and, as they moved away together, threw back over her
+shoulder: "By the way, have you two settled the vexed question of the
+model for the picture yet?"
+
+Quarrington blew a thin stream of smoke into the air before replying.
+Then, looking quizzically across at Magda, he asked: "Have we?"
+
+"Have we what?"
+
+"Decided whether you will sit for my picture of Circe?"
+
+Magda lifted her long white lids and met his glance.
+
+"Why should I?" she asked lazily.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with apparent unconcern.
+
+"No reason in the world--unless you feel inclined to do a good turn."
+
+His indifference was maddening.
+
+"I don't make a habit of doing good turns," she retorted sharply.
+
+"So I should imagine."
+
+The contemptuous edge to his voice roused her to indignation. As always,
+she found herself stung to the quick by the man's coolly critical
+attitude towards her. She was back once more in the atmosphere of their
+first meeting on the day he had come to her assistance in the fog.
+It seemed almost incredible that all that followed had ever taken
+place--incredible that he had ever cared for her or taught her to
+care for him. At least he was making it very clear to her now that he
+intended to cut those intervening memories out of his life.
+
+It was a sheer challenge to her femininity, and everything that was
+woman in her rose to meet it.
+
+She smiled across at him engagingly.
+
+"I might--perhaps--make an exception."
+
+For a moment there was silence. Quarrington's gaze was riveted on her
+slim, supple figure with its perfect symmetry and rare grace of limb.
+It was difficult to interpret his expression. Magda wondered if he were
+going to reject her offer. He seemed to be fighting something out with
+himself--pulled two ways--the artist in him combating the man's impulse
+to resist her.
+
+Suddenly the artist triumphed. He rose and, coming to her side, stood
+looking down at her.
+
+"Will you?" he said. "_Will you_?"
+
+Something more than the artist spoke in his voice. It held a note of
+passionate eagerness, a clipped tensity that set all her pulses racing.
+
+She turned her head aside.
+
+"Yes," she answered, a little breathlessly. "Yes--if you want me to."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A READJUSTMENT OF IDEAS
+
+Magda glanced from the divan covered with a huge tiger-skin to Michael,
+wheeling his easel into place. A week's hard work on the part of the
+artist had witnessed the completion of Lady Arabella's portrait, and
+to-day he proposed to make some preliminary sketches for "Circe."
+
+Magda felt oddly nervous and unsure of herself. This last fortnight
+passed in daily companionship with Quarrington had proved a considerable
+strain. Not withstanding that she had consented to sit for his picture
+of Circe, he had not deviated from the attitude which he had
+apparently determined upon from the first moment of her arrival at
+the Hermitage--an attitude of aloof indifference to which was added a
+bitterness of speech that continually thrust at her with its trenchant
+cynicism. It was as though he had erected a high wall between them which
+Magda found no effort of hers could break down, and she was beginning
+to ask herself whether he could ever really have cared for her at all.
+Surely no man who had once cared could be so hard--so implacably hard!
+
+And now, alone with him in the big room which had been converted into a
+temporary studio, she found herself overwhelmed by a feeling of intense
+self-consciousness. She felt it would be impossible to bear the
+coolly neutral gaze of those grey eyes for hours at a time. She wished
+fervently that she had never consented to sit for the picture at all.
+
+"How do you want me to pose?" she inquired at last, endeavouring to
+speak with her usual detachment and conscious that she was failing
+miserably. "You haven't told me yet."
+
+He laughed a little.
+
+"I haven't the least intention of telling you," he replied. "'The
+Wielitzska' doesn't need advice as to how to pose."
+
+Magda looked at him uncertainly.
+
+"But you've given me no idea of what you want," she protested. "I must
+have some idea to start from!"
+
+"I want a recumbent Circe," he vouchsafed at last. "Hence the divan.
+Here is the goblet"--he held it out--"supposed to contain the fatal
+potion which transformed men into swine. I leave the rest to you. You
+posed very successfully for me some years ago--without my issuing any
+stage directions. Afterwards you played the part of a youthful Circe, I
+remember. You should be more experienced now."
+
+She flushed under the cool, satirical tone. It seemed as though he
+neglected no opportunity of impressing on her the poor estimation in
+which he held her. Her thoughts flew back to a sunlit glade in a wood
+and to the grey-eyed, boyish-looking painter who had kissed her and
+called her "Witch-child!"
+
+"You--you were kinder in those days," she said suddenly. She made a few
+steps towards him and stood looking up at him, her hands hanging loosely
+clasped in front of her, like a penitent school-girl.
+
+"Saint Michel"--and at the sound of her old childish name for him he
+winced. "Saint Michel, I don't think I can sit for you if--if you're
+going to be unkind. I thought I could, but--but--I can't!"
+
+"Unkind?" he muttered.
+
+"Yes," she said desperately. "Since I came here you've said a good many
+hard things to me. I--I dare say I've deserved them. But"--smiling up
+at him rather wanly--"it isn't always easy to accept one's deserts."
+She paused, then spoke quickly: "Couldn't we--while we're here
+together--behave like friends? Just friends? It's only for a short
+time."
+
+His face had whitened while she was speaking. He was silent for a little
+and his hand, grasping the side of the big easel, slowly tightened its
+grip till the knuckles showed white like bone. At last he answered her.
+
+"Very well--friends, then! So be it."
+
+Impulsively she held out her hand. He took it in his and held it a
+moment, looking down at its slim whiteness. Then he bent his head and
+she felt his lips hot against her soft palm.
+
+A little shaken, she drew away from him and moved towards the divan. She
+paused beside it and glanced down reflectively at the goblet she still
+carried in her hand, mentally formulating her conception of Circe before
+she posed. An instant later and her voice roused Quarrington from the
+momentary reverie into which he had fallen.
+
+"How would this do?"
+
+He looked up, and as his gaze absorbed the picture before him an eager
+light of pure aesthetic satisfaction leaped into his eyes.
+
+"Hold that!" he exclaimed quickly. "Don't move, please!" And, snatching
+up a stick of charcoal, he began to sketch rapidly with swift, sure
+strokes.
+
+The pose she had assumed was matchless. She was half-sitting, half-lying
+on the divan, the swathing draperies of her tunic outlining the
+wonderful modelling of her limbs. The upper part of her body, twisting a
+little from the waist, was thrown back as she leaned upon one arm, hand
+pressed palm downward on the tiger-skin. In her other hand she held a
+golden goblet, proffering the fatal draught, and her tilted face with
+its strange, enigmatic smile and narrowed lids held all the seductive
+entreaty and beguilement, and the deep, cynical knowledge of mankind,
+which are the garnerings of the Circes of this world.
+
+At length Quarrington laid down his charcoal.
+
+"It's a splendid pose," he said enthusiastically. "That sideways bend
+you've given to your body--it's wonderful! But can you stand it, do you
+think? Of course I'll give you rests as often as I can, but even so it
+will be a very trying pose to hold."
+
+Magda sat up, letting her feet slide slowly over the edge of the divan.
+The "feet of Aurora" someone had once called them--white and arched,
+with rosy-tipped toes curved like the petals of a flower.
+
+"I can hold it for a good while, I think," she answered evasively.
+
+She did not tell him that even to her trained muscles the preservation
+of this particular pose, with its sinuous twist of the body, was likely
+to prove somewhat of a strain. If the pose was so exactly what he wanted
+for his Circe, he should have it, whatever the cost to herself.
+
+And without knowing it, yielding to an impulse which she hardly
+recognised, Magda had taken the first step along the pathway of service
+and sacrifice trodden by those who love.
+
+
+
+"It seems as though you were destined to be the model of my two
+'turning-point' pictures," commented Quarrington some days later, during
+one of the intervals when Magda was taking a brief rest. "It was the
+'Repose of Titania' which first established my reputation, you know."
+
+"But this can't be a 'turning-point,'" objected Magda. "When you've
+reached the top of the pinnacle of fame, so to speak, there isn't any
+'turning-point'--unless"--laughing--"you're going to turn round and
+climb down again!"
+
+"There's no top to the pinnacle of work--of achievement," he answered
+quietly. "At least, there shouldn't be. One just goes on--slipping back
+a bit, sometimes, then scrambling on again." His glance returned to the
+picture and Magda watched the ardour of the creative artist light itself
+anew in his eyes. "That"--he nodded towards the canvas--"is going to be
+the best bit of work I've done."
+
+"What made you"--she hesitated a moment--"what made you choose Circe as
+the subject?"
+
+His face clouded over.
+
+"The experience of a friend of mine."
+
+Magda caught her breath.
+
+"Not--you don't mean-----"
+
+"Oh, no"--divining her thought--"not the friend of whom you know--who
+loved the dancer. She hurt him"--looking at her significantly--"but
+she didn't injure him to that extent. Circe turned men into swine,
+you remember. My friend was too fine a character for her to spoil like
+that."
+
+"I'm glad." Magda spoke very low, her head bent. She felt unable to meet
+his eyes. After a short silence she asked: "Then what inspired--this
+picture?"
+
+Was it some woman-episode that had occurred while he was abroad which
+had scored those new lines on his face, embittering the mouth and
+implanting that sternly sad expression in the grey eyes? She must
+know--at all hazards, she must know!
+
+Quarrington lit a cigarette.
+
+"It's not a pretty story," he remarked harshly.
+
+Magda glanced towards the picture. The enchanting, tilted face smiled at
+her from the canvas, faintly derisive.
+
+"Tell it me," was all she said.
+
+"There's very little to tell," he answered briefly. "There was a man
+and his wife--and another woman. Till the latter came along they were
+absolutely happy together--sufficient unto each other. The other woman
+was one of the Circe type, and she broke the man. Broke him utterly. I
+happened to be in Paris at the time, and he came to see me there on his
+way out to South America. He'd left his wife, left his work--everything.
+Just _quitted_! Since then I believe 'Frisco has seen more of him than
+any other place. A man I know ran across him there and told me he'd gone
+under--utterly."
+
+"And the wife?"
+
+"Dead"--shortly. "She'd no heart to go on living--no wish to. She died
+when their first child was born--she and the child together--a few
+months after her husband had left her."
+
+Magda uttered a stifled cry of pity, but Quarrington seemed not to hear
+it.
+
+"That woman was a twentieth-century Circe." He paused, then added with
+grim conviction: "There's no forgiveness for a woman like that."
+
+"Ah! Don't say that!"
+
+The words broke impulsively from Magda's lips. The recollection of the
+summer she had spent at Stockleigh rushed over her accusingly--and she
+realised that actually she had come between Dan Storran and his wife
+very much as the Circe woman of Michael's story had come between some
+other husband and wife.
+
+A deep compassion for that unknown woman surged up within her. Surely
+her burden of remorse must be almost more than she could endure! And
+Magda--to whom penalties and consequences had hitherto been but very
+unimportant factors with which she concerned herself as little as
+possible--was all at once conscious of an intense thankfulness that
+she had not been thus punished, that she had quitted Stockleigh leaving
+husband and wife still together. Together, they would find the way back
+into each other's hearts!
+
+"Don't say that!" she repeated imploringly. "It sounds so hard--so
+relentless!"
+
+"I don't think that it is a case for relenting. But I oughtn't to have
+told you about it. After all, neither the husband nor wife were friends
+of yours. And you're looking quite upset over it. I didn't imagine that
+you were so easily moved to sympathy."
+
+She looked away. Of late she had been puzzled herself at the new and
+unwonted emotions which stirred her.
+
+"I don't think--I used to be," she said at last, uncertainly.
+
+"Well, please don't take the matter too much to heart or you won't be
+able to assume the personality of Circe again when you've rested. I
+don't want to paint the picture of a model of propriety!"
+
+It seemed as though he were anxious to restore the conversation to a
+lighter vein, and Magda responded gladly.
+
+"I'm quite rested now. Shall I pose again?" she suggested a few minutes
+later.
+
+Michael assented and, picking up his palette, began squeezing out fresh
+shining little worms of paint on to it while Magda reassumed her pose.
+For a while he chatted intermittently, but presently he fell silent,
+becoming more and more deeply absorbed in his work. Finally, when some
+remark of hers repeated a second time still remained unanswered, she
+realised that he had completely forgotten her existence. As far as he
+was concerned she was no longer Magda Wielitzska, posing for him, but
+Circe, the enchantress, whose amazing beauty he was transferring to
+his canvas in glowing brushstrokes. As with all genius, the impulse of
+creative work had seized him suddenly and was driving him on regardless
+of everything exterior to his art.
+
+Time had ceased to matter to him, and Magda, with little nervous pains
+shooting first through one limb, then another, was wondering how much
+longer she could maintain the pose. She was determined not to give in,
+not to check him while that fervour of creation was upon him.
+
+The pain was increasing. She felt as though she were being stabbed with
+red-hot knives. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, and her
+breath came gaspingly between her lips.
+
+All at once the big easel at which Michael was standing receded out of
+sight, and when it reappeared again it was quite close to her, swaying
+and nodding like a mandarin. Instinctively she put out her hand to
+steady it, but it leaned nearer and nearer and finally gave a huge lurch
+and swooped down on top of her, and the studio and everything in it
+faded out of sight. . . .
+
+
+
+The metallic tinkle of the gold goblet as it fell from her hand and
+rolled along the floor startled Michael out of his absorption. With
+a sharp exclamation he flung down his brush and palette and strode
+hurriedly to the divan. Magda was lying half across it in a little
+crumpled heap, unconscious.
+
+His first impulse to lift her up was arrested by something in her
+attitude, and he stood quite still, looking down at her, his face
+suddenly drawn and very weary.
+
+In the limp figure with its upturned face and the purple shadows which
+fatigue had painted below the closed eyelids, there was an irresistible
+appeal. She looked so young, so helpless, and the knowledge that she had
+done this for him--forced her limbs into agonised subjection until at
+last conscious endurance had failed her--moved him indescribably.
+
+Surely this was a new Magda! Or else he had never known her. Had he
+been too hard--hard to her and pitilessly hard to himself--when he had
+allowed the ugly facts of her flirtation with Kit Raynham to drive him
+from her?
+
+Eighteen months ago! And in all those eighteen months no word of gossip,
+no lightest breath of scandal against her, had reached his ears. Had
+he been merely a self-righteous Pharisee, enforcing the penalty of old
+sins, bygone failings? A grim smile twisted his lips. If so, and he had
+made her suffer, he had at least suffered equally himself!
+
+He stooped over the prone figure on the divan. Lower, lower still, till
+a tendril of dark hair that had strayed across her forehead quivered
+beneath his breath. Then suddenly he drew back, jerking himself upright.
+Striding across the room he pealed the bell and, when a neat maidservant
+appeared in response, ordered sharply:
+
+"Bring some brandy--quick! And ask Mrs. Grey to come here. Mademoiselle
+Wielitzska has fainted."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AT THE END OF THE STORM
+
+"This is very nice--but it won't exactly contribute towards finishing
+the picture!"
+
+As she spoke Magda leaned back luxuriously against her cushions and
+glanced smilingly across at Michael where he sat with his hand on
+the tiller of the _Bella Donna_, the little sailing-yacht which Lady
+Arabella kept for the amusement of her guests rather than for her own
+enjoyment, since she herself could rarely be induced to go on board.
+
+It had been what Magda called a "blue day"--the sky overhead a deep
+unbroken azure, the dimpling, dancing waters of the Solent flinging
+back a blue almost as vivid--and she and Quarrington had put out from
+Netherway harbour in the morning and crossed to Cowes.
+
+Here they had lunched and Magda had purchased one or two of the
+necessities of life (from a feminine point of view) not procurable in
+the village emporia at Netherway. Afterwards, as there was still ample
+time before they need think of returning home, Michael had suggested an
+hour's run down towards the Needles.
+
+The _Bella Donna_ sped gaily before the wind, and neither of its
+occupants, engrossed in conversation, noticed that away to windward a
+bank of sullen cloud was creeping forward, slowly but surely eating up
+the blue of the sky.
+
+"Of course it will contribute towards finishing the picture."
+Quarrington answered Magda's laughing comment composedly. "A blow like
+this will have done you all the good in the world, and I shan't have you
+collapsing on my hands again as you did a week ago."
+
+"Oh, then, you brought me out on hygienic grounds alone?" derided Magda.
+
+She was feeling unaccountably happy and light-hearted. Since the day
+when she had fainted during the sitting Michael seemed to have changed.
+He no longer gave utterance to those sudden, gibing speeches which had
+so often hurt her intolerably. That sense of his aloofness, as though
+a great wall rose between them, was gone. Somehow she felt that he had
+drawn nearer to her, and once or twice those grey, compelling eyes had
+glowed with a smothered fire that had set her heart racing unsteadily
+within her.
+
+"Haven't you enjoyed to-day, then?" he inquired, responding to her
+question with another.
+
+"I've loved it," she answered simply. "I think if I'd been a man I
+should have chosen to be a sailor."
+
+"Then it's a good thing heaven saw to it that you were a woman. The
+world couldn't have done without its Wielitzska."
+
+"Oh, I don't know"--half-indifferently, half-wistfully. "It's
+astonishing how little necessary anyone really is in this world. If
+I were drowned this afternoon the Imperial management would soon find
+someone to take my place."
+
+"But your friends wouldn't," he said quietly.
+
+Magda laughed a little uncertainly.
+
+"Well, I won't suggest we put them to the test, so please take me home
+safely."
+
+As she spoke a big drop of rain splashed down on to her hand. Then
+another and another. Simultaneously she and Michael glanced upwards to
+the sky overhead, startlingly transformed from an arch of quivering blue
+into a monotonous expanse of grey, across which came sweeping drifts of
+black cloud, heavy with storm.
+
+"By Jove! We're in for it!" muttered Quarrington.
+
+His voice held a sudden gravity. He knew the danger of those unexpected
+squalls which trap the unwary in the Solent, and inwardly he cursed
+himself for not having observed the swift alteration in the weather.
+
+The _Bella Donna_, too, was by no means the safest of craft in which to
+meet rough weather. She was slipping along very fast now, and Michael's
+keen glance swept the gray landscape to where, at the mouth of the
+channel, the treacherous Needles sentinelled the open sea.
+
+"We must bring her round--quick!" he said sharply, springing up. "Can
+you take the tiller? Do you know how to steer?"
+
+Magda caught the note of urgency in his voice.
+
+"I can do what you tell me," she said quietly.
+
+"Do you know port from starboard?" he asked grimly.
+
+"Yes. I know that."
+
+Even while they had been speaking the wind had increased, churning the
+sea into foam-flecked billows that swirled and broke only to gather
+anew.
+
+It was ticklish work bringing the _Bella Donna_ to the wind. Twice she
+refused to come, lurching sickeningly as she rolled broadside on to
+the race of wind-driven waves. The third time she heeled over till her
+canvas almost brushed the surface of the water and it seemed as though
+she must inevitably capsize. There was an instant's agonised suspense.
+Then she righted herself, the mainsail bellied out as the boom swung
+over, and the tense moment passed.
+
+"Frightened?" queried Quarrington when he had made fast the mainsheet.
+
+Magda smiled straight into his eyes.
+
+"No. We almost capsized then, didn't we?"
+
+"It was a near shave," he answered bluntly.
+
+They did not speak much after that. They had enough to do to catch
+the wind which seemed to bluster from all quarters at once, coming in
+violent, gusty spurts that shook the frail little vessel from stem to
+stern. Time after time the waves broke over her bows, flooding the deck
+and drenching them both with stinging spray.
+
+Magda sat very still, maintaining her grip of the wet and slippery
+tiller with all the strength of her small, determined hands. Her limbs
+ached with cold. The piercing wind and rain seemed to penetrate
+through her thin summer clothing to her very skin. But unwaveringly she
+responded to Michael's orders as they reached her through the bellowing
+of the gale. Her eyes were like stars and her lips closed in a scarlet
+line of courage.
+
+"Port your helm! _Hard_! . . . Hold on!"
+
+Then the thudding swing of the boom as the _Bella Donna_ slewed round on
+a fresh tack.
+
+The hurly-burly of the storm was bewildering. In the last hour or so
+the entire aspect of things had altered, and Magda was conscious of
+a freakish sense of the unreality of it all. With the ridiculous
+inconsequence of thought that so often accompanies moments of acute
+anxiety she reflected that Noah probably experienced a somewhat similar
+astonishment when he woke up one morning to find that the Flood had
+actually begun.
+
+It seemed as though the storm had reached out long arms and drawn the
+whole world of land and sea and sky into its turbulent embrace. Driving
+sheets of rain blurred the coastline on either hand, while the wind
+caught up the grey waters into tossing, crested billows and flung them
+down again in a smother of angry spume.
+
+Overhead, it screamed through the rigging of the little craft like a
+tormented devil, tearing at the straining canvas with devouring fingers
+while the slender mast groaned beneath its force.
+
+Suddenly a terrific gust of wind seemed to strike the boat like an
+actual blow. Magda saw Michael leap aside, and in the same instant came
+a splitting, shattering report as the mast snapped in half and a tangled
+mass of wood and cordage and canvas fell crash on to the deck where he
+had been standing.
+
+Magda uttered a cry and sprang to her feet. For an instant her heart
+seemed to stop beating as she visioned him beneath the mass of tackle.
+Or had he been swept off his feet--overboard into the welter of grey,
+surging waters that clamoured round the boat?
+
+The moment of uncertainty seemed endless, immeasurable. Then Michael
+appeared, stepping across the wreckage, and came towards her. The relief
+was almost unendurable. She stretched out shaking hands.
+
+"Oh, Michael! . . . Michael!" she cried sobbingly.
+
+And all at once she was in his arms. She felt them close about her,
+strong as steel and tender as love itself. In the rocking, helpless
+boat, with the storm beating up around them and death a sudden, imminent
+hazard, she had come at last into haven.
+
+An hour later the storm had completely died away. It had begun to abate
+in violence almost immediately after the breaking of the _Bella Donna's_
+mast. It was as though, having wreaked its fury and executed all the
+damage possible short of absolute destruction, it was satisfied. With
+the same suddenness with which it had arisen it sank away, leaving a
+sulky, sunless sky brooding above a sullen sea still heaving restlessly
+with the aftermath of tempest.
+
+The yacht had drifted gradually out of mid-channel shorewards, and after
+one or two unsuccessful efforts Quarrington at last succeeded in
+casting anchor. Then he turned to Magda, who had been assisting in the
+operation, with a smile.
+
+"That's about all we can do," he said. "We're perfectly helpless till
+some tug or steamer comes along."
+
+"Probably they'll run us down," she suggested. "We're in the fairway,
+aren't we?"
+
+"Yes--which is about our best hope of getting picked up before night."
+Then, laying his hand on her arm: "Are you very cold and wet?"
+
+Magda laughed--laughed out of sheer happiness. What did being cold
+matter, or wet either, if Michael loved her? And she was sure now
+that he did, though there had been but the one moment's brief embrace.
+Afterwards he had had his hands full endeavouring to keep the _Bella
+Donna_ afloat.
+
+"I think the wind has blown my things dry," she said. "How about you?"
+
+"Oh, I'm all right--men's clothing being adapted for use, not ornament!
+But I must find something to wrap you up in. We may be here for hours
+and the frock you're wearing has about as much warming capacity as a
+spider's web."
+
+He disappeared below into the tiny, single-berthed cabin, and presently
+returned armed with a couple of blankets, one of which he proceeded to
+wrap about Magda's shoulders, tucking the other over her knees where she
+sat in the stern of the boat.
+
+"I don't want them both," she protested, resisting. "You take one."
+
+There was something rather delightful in this unconventional comradeship
+of discomfort.
+
+"You'll obey orders," replied Michael firmly. "Especially as you're
+going to be my wife so soon."
+
+A warm flush dyed her face from brow to throat. He regarded her
+with quizzical eyes. Behind their tender mockery lurked something
+else--something strong and passionate and imperious, momentarily held in
+leash. But she knew it was there--could feel the essential, imperative
+demand of it.
+
+"Well? Does the prospect alarm you?"
+
+Magda forced herself to meet his glance.
+
+"So soon?" she repeated hesitantly.
+
+"Yes. As soon as it can be accomplished," he said triumphantly.
+
+He seated himself beside her and took her in his arms, blankets and all.
+
+"Did you think I'd be willing to wait?" he said.
+
+"I didn't think you wanted to marry me at all!" returned Magda, the
+words coming out with a little rush. "I thought you--you disapproved of
+me too much!"
+
+His mouth twisted queerly.
+
+"So I did. I'm scrapping the beliefs of half a lifetime because I love
+you. I've fought against it--tried not to love you--kept away from you!
+But it was stronger than I."
+
+"Saint Michel, I'm so glad--glad it was stronger," she said tremulously,
+a little break in her voice.
+
+He bent his head and kissed her lips, and with the kiss she gave him
+back she surrendered her very self into his keeping. She felt his arms
+strain about her, and the fierce pressure of their clasp taught her the
+exquisite joy of pain that is born of love.
+
+She yielded resistlessly, every fibre of her being quivering responsive
+to the overwhelming passion of love which had at last stormed and broken
+down all barriers--both the man's will to resist and her own defences.
+
+Somewhere at the back of her consciousness Diane's urgent warning:
+_"Never give your heart to any man. Take everything, but do not give!"_
+tinkled feebly like the notes of a worn-out instrument. But even had
+she paused to listen to it she would only have laughed at it. She knew
+better.
+
+Love was the most wonderful thing in the world. If it meant anything at
+all, it meant giving. And she was ready to give Michael everything she
+had--to surrender body, soul, and spirit, the threefold gift that a man
+demands of his mate.
+
+She drew herself out of his arms and slipped to her knees beside him.
+
+"Saint Michel, do you believe in me now?"
+
+"Believe in you? I don't know whether I believe in you or not. But I
+know I love you! . . . That's all that matters. I love you!"
+
+"No, no!" She resisted his arms that sought to draw her back into his
+embrace. "I want more than that. I'm beginning to realise things. There
+must be trust in love. . . . Michael, I'm not really hard--and selfish,
+as they say. I've been foolish and thoughtless, perhaps. But I've
+never done any harm. Not real harm. I've never"--she laughed a little
+brokenly--"I've never turned men into swine, Michael. . . . I've hurt
+people, sometimes, by letting them love me. But, I didn't know, then!
+Now--now I know what love is, I shall be different. Quite different.
+Saint Michel, I know now--love is self-surrender."
+
+The tremulous sweetness of her, the humble submissiveness of her appeal,
+could not but win their way. Michael's lingering disbelief wavered and
+broke. She had been foolish, spoilt and thoughtless, but she had never
+done any real harm. Men had loved her--but how could it be otherwise?
+And perhaps, after all, they were none the worse for having loved her.
+
+Deliberately Michael flung the past behind him and with it his last
+doubt of her. He drew her back into his arms, against his heart, and
+their lips met in a kiss that held not only love but utter faith and
+confidence--a pledge for all time.
+
+"Beloved!" he whispered. "My beloved!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+NIGHT
+
+Michael and Magda stood together on the deck of the crippled yacht which
+now rocked idly on a quite placid sea. Dusk was falling. That first
+glorious, irrecoverable hour when love had come into its own was past,
+and the consideration of things mundane was forcing itself on their
+notice--more especially consideration of their particular plight.
+
+"It looks rather as though we may have to spend the night here,"
+observed Quarrington, his eyes scanning the channel void of any welcome
+sight of sail or funnel.
+
+Magda's brows drew together in a little troubled frown.
+
+"Marraine and Gillian will be frightfully worried and anxious," she said
+uneasily. It was significant of the gradual alteration in her outlook
+that this solicitude for others should have rushed first of anything to
+her lips.
+
+"Yes." He spoke with a curious abruptness. "Besides, that's not the only
+point. There's--Mrs. Grundy."
+
+Magda shrugged her shoulders and laughed.
+
+"Well, if it's to come to a choice between Mrs. Grundy and Davy Jones, I
+think I should decide to face Mrs. Grundy! Anyway, people can't say much
+more--or much worse--things about me than they've said already."
+
+Quarrington frowned moodily.
+
+"I'd like to kick myself for bringing you out to-day and landing you
+into this mess. I can't stand the idea of people gossiping about you."
+
+"They've left me very little reputation at any time. A little less can't
+hurt me."
+
+His eyes grew stormy.
+
+"Don't!" he said sharply. "I hate to hear you talk like that."
+
+"But it's true! No public woman gets a fair chance."
+
+"_You_ will--when you're my wife," he said between his teeth. "I'll see
+to that."
+
+Magda glanced at him swiftly.
+
+"Then you don't want me to--to give up dancing after we're married?"
+
+"Certainly I don't. I shall want you to do just as you like. I've no
+place for the man who asks his wife to 'give up' things in order to
+marry him. I've no more right to ask you to give up dancing than you
+have to ask me to stop painting."
+
+Magda smiled at him radiantly.
+
+"Saint Michel, you're really rather nice," she observed impertinently.
+"So few men are as sensible as that. I shall call you the 'Wise Man,' I
+think."
+
+"In spite of to-day?" he queried whimsically, with a rueful glance at
+the debris of mast and canvas huddled on the deck.
+
+"_Because_ of to-day," she amended softly. "It's--it's very wise to be
+in love, Michael."
+
+He drew her into his arms and his lips found hers.
+
+"I think it is," he agreed.
+
+Another hour went by, and still there came no sign of any passing
+vessel.
+
+"Why the devil isn't there a single tug passing up and down just when
+we happen to want one?" demanded Quarrington irately of the unresponsive
+universe. He swung round on Magda. "I suppose you're starving?" he went
+on, in his voice a species of savage discontent--that unreasonable fury
+to which masculine temperament is prone when confronted with an obstacle
+which declines to yield either to force or persuasion.
+
+Magda laughed outright.
+
+"I'll admit to being hungry. Aren't you? . . . It's horribly unromantic
+of us, Michael," she added regretfully.
+
+Quarrington grinned.
+
+"It is," he assented. "All the same, I believe I could consume a tin of
+bully beef and feel humbly grateful for it at the present moment!"
+
+Magda had a sudden inspiration.
+
+"Michael! Let's forage in the locker! There's almost sure to be some
+biscuits or chocolate there. Marraine nearly always has things like that
+put on board. And there may be something left from the last supply."
+
+A brief search brought to light a half-tin of biscuits and some plain
+chocolate, and off these, with the addition of a bottle of soda-water,
+also discovered, they proceeded to make an impromptu meal. It was a
+somewhat thin substitute for the perfectly appointed little dinner of
+which they would have partaken in the ordinary course of events at the
+Hermitage, but when you have been a good many hours without food of any
+description, and spent the greater part of the time in "saving your own
+life at sea," as Michael put it, even biscuits and chocolate have their
+uses.
+
+When the improvised feast was over, Quarrington explored the recesses of
+the tiny hold and unearthed a lantern, which he proceeded to light and
+attach to the broken mast. It burned with a flickering, uncertain light,
+momentarily threatening to go out altogether.
+
+"We're not precisely well-equipped with lights," he remarked grimly.
+"But at least that's a precaution--as long as it lasts! It may--or may
+not--save us from being run down."
+
+Twilight deepened slowly into dark. The lights of Yarmouth sprang into
+being, a cluster of lambent orange points studding the dim coast of the
+Island. One by one the stars twinkled out in the dusky sky, and a waning
+moon, thin and frail like a worn sickle, flung a quivering ribbon of
+silver across the sea.
+
+It was strangely still and quiet. Now and again the idle rudder creaked
+as the boat swung to the current. Once there came the long-drawn hoot
+of a distant siren. Beyond these fitful sounds only the gurgle of water
+lapping the sides of the boat broke the silence.
+
+"We're here till morning," said Quarrington at last. "You may as well go
+to bed."
+
+"To bed?"
+
+"Well, there's a cabin, isn't there?"--smiling. "And a more or less
+uncomfortable bunk. Come down and see what you can make of it as an
+abiding-place for the night."
+
+"And--and you? Can't we rig up anything for you?" Magda looked round her
+vaguely.
+
+"I shan't sleep. I'll do sentry-go on deck"--laughing. "It wouldn't
+do for us both to go comfortably asleep and get run down without even
+having a shot at making our presence known!"
+
+"Then I'll keep watch with you," said Magda.
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort. You'll go down to the cabin and sleep."
+
+"Let me stay, Michael. I couldn't bear to think of your watching all
+through the night while I slept comfortably below."
+
+"You won't sleep _comfortably_--if my estimate of the look of that bunk
+is correct. But you'll be out of the cold. Come, be sensible, Magda.
+You're not suitably attired for a night watch. You'd be perished with
+cold before morning."
+
+"Well, let us take it in turns, then," she suggested. "I'll sleep four
+hours and then I'll keep a look-out while you have a rest."
+
+"No," he said quietly.
+
+"Then we'll both watch," she asserted. Through the starlit dark he could
+just discern her small head turned defiantly away from him.
+
+"Has it occurred to you," he asked incisively, "what a night spent in
+the open might mean to you? Rheumatism is not precisely the kind of
+thing a dancer wants to cultivate."
+
+"Well, I'm not going below, anyway."
+
+She sat down firmly and Quarrington regarded her a moment in silence.
+
+"You baby!" he said at last in an amused voice.
+
+And the next moment she felt herself picked up as easily as though she
+were in very truth the baby he had called her and carried swiftly
+down the few steps into the cabin. The recollection of that day of
+her accident in the fog, when he had carried her from the wrenched and
+twisted car into his own house, rushed over her. Now, as then, she could
+feel the strength of his arms clasped about her, the masterful purpose
+of the man that bore her whither he wished regardless of whether she
+wanted to go or not.
+
+He laid her down on the bunk and, bending over her, kept his hands on
+her shoulders.
+
+"Now," he demanded, "are you going to stay there?"
+
+A faint rebellion still stirred within her.
+
+"Supposing I say 'no'!"--irresolutely.
+
+"I'm not supposing anything so unlikely," he assured her. "I'm merely
+waiting to hear you say 'yes.'"
+
+She recognised the utter futility of trying to pit her will against the
+indomitable will of the man beside her.
+
+"Michael, you are a bully!" she protested indignantly, half angry with
+him.
+
+"Then you'll stay there?" he persisted.
+
+"You don't give me much choice"--twisting her shoulders restlessly
+beneath his hands.
+
+He laughed a little.
+
+"You haven't answered me."
+
+"Well, then--yes!"
+
+She almost flung the word at him, and instantly she felt him lift his
+hands from her shoulders and heard his footsteps as he tramped out of
+the cabin and up on to the deck. Presently he returned, carrying the
+blankets which he had wrapped round her earlier in the course of their
+vigil. Magda accepted them with becoming docility.
+
+"Thank you, Wise Man," she said meekly.
+
+He stood looking down at her in the faint moonlight that slanted in
+through the open door of the cabin, and all at once something in the
+intentness of his gaze awakened her to a sudden vivid consciousness of
+the situation--of the hour and of her absolute aloneness with him.
+Their solitude was as complete as though they had been cast on a desert
+island.
+
+Magda felt her pulses throb unevenly. The whole atmosphere seemed
+sentient and athrill with the surge of some deep-lying emotion. She
+could feel it beating up against her--the clamorous demand of something
+hardly curbed and straining for release.
+
+"Michael----" The word stammered past her lips.
+
+The sound of her voice snapped the iron control he had been forcing on
+himself. With a hoarse, half-strangled exclamation he caught her up
+from where she lay, crushing her slim, soft body in a grip that almost
+stifled her, kissing her fiercely on eyes and lips and throat. Then
+abruptly he released her and, without a word, without a backward look,
+strode out of the cabin and up on to the deck.
+
+Magda sank down weakly on the edge of the narrow bunk. The storm of his
+passion had swept through her as the wind sweeps through a tree, leaving
+her spent and trembling. Sleep was an impossibility. Ten minutes, twenty
+passed--she could not have told how long it was. Then she heard him
+coming back, and as he gained the threshold she sprang to her feet and
+faced him, nervously on the defensive. In the pale, elusive moonlight,
+and with that startled poise of figure, she might well have been the
+hamadryad at bay of one of her most famous dances.
+
+Michael looked rather white and there was a grim repression about
+the set of his lips. As he caught sight of her face with its mute
+apprehension and dilated eyes, he spoke quickly.
+
+"You should be resting," he said. "Let me tuck you up and then try to go
+to sleep."
+
+There was something infinitely reassuring in the steady tones of his
+voice. It held nothing but kindness--just comradeship and kindness. He
+was master of himself once more. For her sake he had fought back the
+rising tide of passion. It had no place while they two were here alone
+on the wide waters.
+
+He stooped and picked up the blankets, laying them over her with
+a tenderness that seemed in some subtle way to be part of his very
+strength. Her taut nerves relaxed. She smiled up at him.
+
+"Good-night, Saint Michel," she said simply. "Take care of me."
+
+He stooped and kissed the slim hand lying outside the blanket.
+
+"Now and always," he answered gravely.
+
+
+
+When Magda awoke, seven hours later, the sunlight was streaming into the
+cabin. She could hear Michael moving about the deck, and she sprang
+up and proceeded to make such toilette as was possible in the
+circumstances, taking down her hair and dressing it afresh at the tiny
+looking-glass hung on the wall. She had barely completed the operation
+when she heard Michael give a shout.
+
+"Ahoy! Ahoy there!"
+
+She ran up on deck. Approaching them was a small steam-tug, and once
+again Quarrington sent his voice ringing lustily across the water, while
+he flourished a large white handkerchief in the endeavour to attract the
+attention of those on board.
+
+Suddenly the tug saw them and, altering her course, came fussing up
+alongside. Quarrington briefly explained their predicament--in the face
+of the _Bella Donna's_ battered appearance a lengthy explanation was
+hardly necessary--and a few minutes later the tug was steaming for
+Netherway harbour, towing the crippled yacht behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE OTHER MAN
+
+"Please, Marraine, will you give us your blessing?"
+
+The joyous excitement and relief incidental to the safe return of the
+voyagers had spent itself at last, and now, refreshed and invigorated
+by a hot bath and by a meal of more varied constituents than biscuit
+and plain chocolate, Magda propounded her question, a gleam of mirth
+glancing in her eyes.
+
+Lady Arabella glanced doubtfully from one to the other. Then a look of
+undisguised satisfaction dawned in her face.
+
+"Do you mean----" she began eagerly.
+
+"We've been and gone and got engaged," explained Quarrington.
+
+"My dears!" Lady Arabella jumped up with the agility of twenty rather
+than seventy and proceeded to pour out her felicitations. Incidentally
+she kissed everybody all round, including Quarrington, and her keen old
+hawk's eyes grew all soft and luminous like a girl's.
+
+Coppertop was hugely excited.
+
+"Will the wedding be to-morrow?" he asked hopefully. "And shall I be a
+page and carry the Fairy Lady's train?"
+
+Magda smiled at him.
+
+"Of course you shall be a page, Topkins. But the wedding won't be quite
+as soon as to-morrow," she told him.
+
+"Why not?" insinuated Quarrington calmly. "There are such things as
+special licences, you know."
+
+"Don't be silly," replied Magda scathingly. "I've only just been saved
+from drowning, and I don't propose to take on such a risk as matrimony
+till I've had time to recover my nerve."
+
+Lady Arabella surveyed them both with a species of irritated approval.
+
+"And to think," she burst out at last, indignantly, "of all the hours
+I've spent having my silly portrait painted and getting cramp in my
+stiff old joints, and that even then it needed Providence to threaten
+you both with a watery grave to bring you up to the scratch!"
+
+"Well, we're engaged now," submitted Magda meekly.
+
+Lady Arabella chuckled sardonically.
+
+"If you weren't, you'd have to be--after last night!" she commented
+drily.
+
+"No one need know about last night," retorted Magda.
+
+"Huh!" Lady Arabella snorted. "Half Netherway will know the tale by
+midday. And you may be sure your best enemy will hear of it. They always
+do."
+
+"Never mind. It will make an excellent advertisement," observed Magda
+philosophically. "Can't you see it in all the papers?--'NARROW ESCAPE OF
+THE WIELITZSKA.' In big capitals."
+
+They all laughed, realising the great amount of probability contained
+in her forecast. And, thanks to an enterprising young journalist who
+chanced to be prowling about Netherway on that particular day, the
+London newspapers flared out into large headlines, accompanied by vivid
+and picturesque details of the narrow escape while yachting of the
+famous dancer and of the well-known artist, Michael Quarrington--who,
+in some of the cheaper papers, was credited with having saved the
+Wielitzska's life by swimming ashore with her.
+
+The immediate result was an augmented post-bag for the Hermitage, and
+Gillian had to waste the better part of a couple of sunshiny days
+in writing round to Magda's friends assuring them of her continued
+existence and wellbeing, and thanking them for their kind inquiries.
+
+It was decided to keep the engagement private for the present, and life
+at the Hermitage resumed the even tenor of its way, Magda continuing to
+sit daily for the picture of Circe which Michael was anxious to complete
+before she returned to London for the autumn season.
+
+"It's _our_ picture now, Saint Michel," she told him, with a happy,
+possessive pride in his work.
+
+In this new atmosphere of tranquil happiness Magda bloomed like a flower
+in the sun. To the nameless natural charm which was always hers there
+was added a fresh sweetness and appeal, and the full revelation of
+her love for him startled even Michael. He had not realised the deep
+capacity for love which had lain hidden beneath her nonchalance.
+
+It seemed as though her whole nature had undergone a change. Alone with
+him she was no longer the assured woman of the world, the spoilt and
+feted dancer, but just a simple, unaffected girl, sometimes a little
+shy, almost diffident, at others frank and spontaneous with the splendid
+candour and simplicity of a woman who knows no fear of love, but goes
+courageously to meet it and all that it demands of her.
+
+She was fugitively sweet and tender with Coppertop, and now and then her
+eyes would shine with a quiet, dreaming light as though she visioned a
+future wherein someone like Coppertop, only littler, might lie in the
+crook of her arm.
+
+Often during these tranquil summer days the two were to be found
+together, Magda recounting the most gorgeous stories of knights and
+dragons such as Coppertop's small soul delighted in. On one such
+occasion, at the end of a particularly thrilling narrative, he sat back
+on his heels and regarded her with a certain wistful anxiety.
+
+"I suppose," he asked rather forlornly, "when you're married they'll
+give you a little boy like me, Fairy Lady, won't they?"
+
+The clear, warm colour ran up swiftly beneath her skin.
+
+"Perhaps so, Topkins," she answered very low.
+
+He heaved a big sigh. "He'll be a very _lucky_ little boy," he said
+plaintively. "If Mummie couldn't have been my mummie, I'd have choosed
+you."
+
+And so, in this tender atmosphere of peace and contentment, the summer
+slipped by until it was time for Magda to think of going back to London.
+The utter content and happiness of these weeks almost frightened her
+sometimes.
+
+"It can't last, Gilly," she confided to Gillian one day, caught by an
+access of superstitious fear. "It simply _can't_ last! No one was meant
+to be as happy as I am!"
+
+"I think we were all meant to be happy," replied Gillian simply. "Happy
+and good!" she added, laughing.
+
+"Yes. But I haven't been particularly good. I've just done whatever it
+occurred to me to do without considering the consequences. I expect I
+shall be made to take my consequences all in a heap together one day."
+
+Gillian smiled.
+
+"Then I suppose we shall all of us have to rally round and get you out
+of them," she said cheerfully.
+
+"Perhaps--perhaps you wouldn't be able to."
+
+There was a strange note of foreboding in Magda's voice--an accent of
+fatality, and despite herself Gillian experienced a reflex sense of
+uneasiness.
+
+"Nonsense!" she said brusquely. "What on earth has put all these
+ridiculous notions into your head?"
+
+Magda smiled at her. "I think it was four lines I read in a book
+yesterday. They set me thinking."
+
+"More's the pity then!" grumbled Gillian. "What were they?"
+
+Magda was silent a moment, looking out over the sea with abstracted
+eyes. It was so blue to-day--all blue and gold in the dancing sunlight.
+But she knew that self-same sea could be grey--grey and chill as death.
+
+Her glance came slowly back to Gillian's face as she quoted the fragment
+of verse which had persisted in her thoughts:
+
+     "To-day and all the still unborn To-morrows
+     Have sprung from Yesterday. For Woe or Weal
+     The Soul is weighted by the Burden of Dead Days--
+     Bound to the unremitting Past with Ropes of Steel."
+
+After a moment she added:
+
+"Even you couldn't cut through 'ropes of steel,' my Gillyflower."
+
+Gillian tried to shrug away this fanciful depression of the moment.
+
+"Well, by way of a counterblast to your dejection of spirit, I propose
+to send an announcement of your engagement to the _Morning Post_. You're
+not meaning to keep it private after we get back to town, are you?"
+
+"Oh, no. It was only that I didn't want to be pestered with
+congratulations while we were down here. I suppose they'll have to come
+some day"--with a small grimace of disgust.
+
+"You'll be snowed under with them," Gillian assured her encouragingly.
+
+The public announcement of the engagement preceded Magda's return from
+Netherway by a few days, so that by the time the Hermitage house-party
+actually broke up, its various members returning to town, all London was
+fairly humming with the news. The papers were full of it. Portraits
+of the fiances appeared side by side, together with brief histories
+of their respective careers up to date, and accompanied by refreshing
+details concerning their personal tastes.
+
+"Dear me, I never knew Michael had a passion for raw meat before,"
+remarked Magda, after reading various extracts from the different
+accounts aloud for Gillian's edification.
+
+"Has he?" Gillian was arranging flowers and spoke somewhat indistinctly,
+owing to the fact that she had the stem of a chrysanthemum between her
+lips.
+
+"Yes, he must have. Listen to this, 'Mr. Quarrington's wonderful
+creations are evidently not entirely the fruit of the spirit, since
+we understand that his staple breakfast dish consists of a couple of
+underdone cutlets--so lightly cooked, in fact, as to be almost raw.'
+I'm glad I've learned that," pursued Magda earnestly. "It seems to me an
+important thing for a wife to know. Don't you think so, Gillian?"
+
+Gillian shouted with delight.
+
+"Of course I do! Do let's ask Michael to lunch and offer him a couple of
+raw cutlets on a charger."
+
+"No," insisted Magda firmly. "I shall keep a splendid treat like that
+for him till after we're married. Even at a strictly conservative
+estimate it should be worth a new hat to me."
+
+"Or a dose of arsenic in your next cup of tea," suggested Gillian,
+giggling.
+
+The following evening was the occasion of Magda's first appearance at
+the Imperial after the publication of her engagement, and the theatre
+was packed from floor to ceiling. "House Full" boards were exhibited
+outside at quite an early hour, and when Magda appeared on the stage she
+was received with such enthusiasm that for a time it was impossible
+to proceed with the ballet. When finally the curtain fell on what the
+critics characterised next day as "the most appealing performance of
+_The Swan-Maiden_ which Mademoiselle Wielitzska has yet given us,"
+she received an absolute ovation. The audience went half-crazy with
+excitement, applauding deliriously, while the front of the stage
+speedily became converted into a veritable bank of flowers, from amidst
+which Magda bowed and smiled her thanks.
+
+She enjoyed every moment of it, every handclap. She was radiantly happy,
+and this spontaneous sharing in her happiness by the big public which
+idolised her served but to intensify it. She was almost crying as she
+returned to her dressing-room after taking a dozen or more calls, and
+when, as usual, Virginie met her on the threshold, she dropped the
+great sheaf of lilies she was carrying and flung her arms round the old
+woman's neck.
+
+"Oh, the dears!" she exclaimed. "The blessed _dears_! Virginie, I
+believe I'm the happiest woman alive!"
+
+"And who should be, _mon petite chou_, if not thou?" returned the old
+woman with conviction. "Of course they love thee! _Mais bien sur_!
+Doest thou not dance for them as none else can dance and give them angel
+visions that they could not imagine for themselves?" She paused. Then
+thrusting her hand suddenly into the pocket of her apron and producing
+a card: "_Tiens_! I forgot! Monsieur Davilof waits. Will mademoiselle
+receive him?"
+
+Magda nodded. She had not seen Antoine since her return from Netherway.
+He had been away in Poland, visiting his mother whom, by the way, he
+adored. But as her engagement to Michael was now public she was anxious
+to get her first meeting with the musician over. He would probably
+rave a little, despairing in the picturesque and dramatic fashion
+characteristic of him, and the sooner he "got it out of his system," as
+Gillian had observed on one occasion, the better for everyone concerned.
+So Magda braced herself for the interview, and prepared to receive a
+tragical and despondent Davilof.
+
+But she was not in the least prepared for the man as he appeared when
+Virginie ushered him into the dressing-room and retired, discreetly
+closing the door behind her. Magda, her hand outstretched to greet him,
+paused in sheer dismay, her arm falling slowly to her side.
+
+She had never seen so great a change in any man. His face was grey--grey
+and lined like the face of a man who has had no sleep for days. His
+shoulders stooped a little as though he were too weary to hold himself
+upright, and there was a curiously rigid look about his features,
+particularly the usually mobile mouth. The only live thing about him
+seemed to be his eyes. They blazed with a burning brightness that made
+her think of flame. With it all, he was as immaculately groomed, his
+small golden beard as perfectly trimmed, as ever.
+
+"Antoine!" His name faltered from Magda's lips. The man's face, its
+beauty all marred by some terrible turmoil of the soul, shocked her.
+
+He vouchsafed no greeting, but came swiftly to her side.
+
+"Is it true?" he demanded imperiously.
+
+She shrank back from him. There was a dynamic force about him that
+startled her.
+
+"Is what true?"
+
+"Is it true that you're engaged to Quarrington?"
+
+"Of course it is. It was in all the papers. Didn't you see it?"
+
+"Yes, I saw it. I didn't believe it. I was in Poland when I heard and I
+started for England at once. But I was taken ill on the journey. Since
+then I've been travelling night and day." He paused, adding in a tone of
+finality: "You must break it off."
+
+"Break it off? Are you crazy, Antoine?"
+
+"No, I'm not crazy. But you're mine. You're meant for me. And no other
+man shall have you."
+
+Magda's first impulse was to order him out of the room. But the man's
+haggard face was so pitifully eloquent of the agony he had been enduring
+that she had not the heart. Instead, she temporised persuasively.
+
+"Don't talk like that, Antoine." She spoke very gently. "You don't mean
+it, you know. If--if you do care for me as you say, you'd like me to be
+happy, wouldn't you?"
+
+"I'd make you happy," he said hoarsely.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No," she answered. "You couldn't make me happy. Only Michael can do
+that. So you must let me go to him. . . . Antoine, I'd rather go with
+your good wishes. Won't you give them to me? We've been friends so
+long--"
+
+"_Friends_?" he broke in fiercely. "No! We've never been 'friends.' I've
+been your lover from the first moment I saw you, and shall be your lover
+till I die!"
+
+Magda retreated before his vehemence. She was still wearing her costume
+of the Swan-Maiden, and there was something frailly virginal and elusive
+about her as she drew away from him that set the hot, foreign blood in
+him on fire. In two strides he was at her side, his hands gripping her
+bare arms with a savage clasp that hurt her.
+
+"_Mon adoree_!"
+
+His voice was harsh with the tensity of passion, and the cry that
+struggled from her throat for utterance was smothered by his lips on
+hers. The burning kisses seemed to scorch her--consuming, overwhelming
+her. When at last he took his mouth from hers she tried unavailingly to
+free herself. But his clasp of her only tightened.
+
+"Now you know how I love you," he said grimly. He was breathing
+rather fast, but in some curious way he seemed to have regained his
+self-control. It was as though he had only slipped the leash of passion
+so that she might, as he said, comprehend his love for her. "Do you
+think I'll give you up? I tell you I'd rather kill you than see you
+Quarrington's wife."
+
+Once more she made an effort to release herself.
+
+"Oh, you're mad, you're mad!" she cried. "Let me go, Davilof! At once!"
+
+"No," he said in a measured voice. "Don't struggle. I'm not going to let
+you go. Not yet. I've reached my limit. You shall go when you promise to
+marry me. Me, not Quarrington."
+
+She had not been frightened by the storm of passion which had carried
+him headlong. That had merely roused her to anger. But this quiet,
+purposeful composure which had succeeded it filled her with an odd kind
+of misgiving.
+
+"It's absurd to talk like that," she said, holding on desperately to
+her self-possession. "It's silly--and melodramatic, and only makes me
+realise how glad I am I shall be Michael's wife and not yours."
+
+"You will never be Quarrington's wife."
+
+He spoke with conviction. Magda called up all her courage to defy him.
+
+"And do you propose to prevent it?" she asked contemptuously.
+
+"Yes." Then, suddenly: "_Adoree_, don't force me to do it! I don't
+want to. Because it will hurt you horribly. And it will all be saved if
+you'll promise to marry me."
+
+He spoke appealingly, with an earnestness that was unmistakable. But
+Magda's nerve was gradually returning.
+
+"You don't seem to understand that you can't prevent my marrying
+Michael--or anyone else," she said coolly. "You haven't the power."
+
+"I can prevent your marrying Michael"--doggedly.
+
+She was silent a moment.
+
+"I suppose," she said at last, "you think that because he once thought
+badly of me you can make him think the same again. Well, you can't.
+Michael and I trust each other--absolutely!"
+
+Her face was transfigured. Michael trusted her now! Nothing could
+really hurt her while he believed in her. She could afford to laugh at
+Antoine's threat.
+
+"And now," she said quietly, "will you please release me?"
+
+Slowly, reluctantly Davilof's hands dropped from her arms, revealing red
+weals where the grip of his fingers had crushed the soft, white flesh.
+He uttered a stifled exclamation as his eyes fell on the angry-looking
+marks.
+
+"_Mon dieu_! I've hurt you--"
+
+"No!" Magda faced him with a defiance that was rather splendid. "No!
+_You can't_ hurt me, Davilof. Only the man I love can do that."
+
+He flinched at the proud significance of the words--denying him even
+the power to hurt her. It was almost as though she had struck him,
+contemptuously disdainful of his toy weapons--the weapons of the man who
+didn't count.
+
+There was a long silence. At last he spoke.
+
+"You'll be sorry for that," he said in a voice of concentrated anger.
+"Damned sorry. Because it isn't true. I _can_ hurt you. And by God,
+if you won't marry me, I will! . . . Magda----" With one of the
+swift changes so characteristic of the man he softened suddenly into
+passionate supplication. "Have a little mercy! God! If you knew how I
+love you, you couldn't turn me away. Wait! Think again--"
+
+"That will do." She checked him imperiously. "I don't want your love.
+And for the future please understand that you won't even be a friend. I
+don't wish to see or speak to you again!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE ROPES OF STEEL
+
+Magda sat gazing idly into the fire, watching with abstracted eyes the
+flames leap up and curl gleefully round the fresh logs with which she
+had just fed it. She was thinking about nothing in particular--merely
+revelling in the pleasant warmth and comfort of the room and in the
+prospect of a lazy evening spent at home, since to-night she was not due
+to appear in any of the ballets to be given at the Imperial Theatre.
+
+Outside, the snow was falling steadily in feathery flakes, hiding the
+grime of London beneath a garment of shimmering white and transforming
+the commonplace houses built of brick and mortar, each capped with its
+ugly chimneystack, into glittering fairy palaces, crowned with silver
+towers and minarets.
+
+The bitter weather served to emphasise the easy comfort of the room, and
+Magda curled up into her chair luxuriously. She was expecting Michael
+to dinner at Friars' Holm this evening. They had not seen each other for
+three whole days, so that there was an added edge to her enjoyment of
+the prospect. She would have so much to tell him! About the triumphant
+reception she had had the other night down at the theatre--he had been
+prevented from being present--and about the unwarrantable attitude
+Davilof had adopted, which had been worrying her not a little. He would
+sympathise with her over that--the effortless sympathy of the man in
+possession!
+
+Then the unwelcome thought obtruded itself that if the snow continued
+falling Michael might be weather-bound and unable to get out to
+Hampstead. She uncurled herself from her chair and ran to the window.
+The sky stretched sombrely away in every direction. No sign of a break
+in the lowering, snow-filled clouds! She drummed on the window with
+impatient fingers; and then, drowning the little tapping noise they
+made, came the sound of an opening door and Melrose's placid voice
+announcing:
+
+"Mr. Quarrington."
+
+Magda whirled round from the window.
+
+"Michael!" she exclaimed joyfully. "I was just wondering if you would
+be able to get over this evening. I suppose you came while you
+could!"--laughing. "I shouldn't be in the least surprised if you were
+snowed up here. Shall you mind--dreadfully--if you are?"
+
+But Michael made no response to the tenderly mocking question, nor
+did her smile draw from him any answering smile. She looked at him
+waveringly. He had been in the room quite long enough to take her in his
+arms and kiss her. And he hadn't done it.
+
+"Michael----" She faltered a little. "How queer you are! Have
+you--brought bad news?" A sudden dread rushed through her. "It's
+not--Marraine?"
+
+"No, no." He spoke hastily, answering the startled apprehension in her
+eyes. "It's not that."
+
+Her mind, alertly prescient, divined significance in the mere wording of
+the phrase.
+
+"Then there is--something?"
+
+"Yes, there is something."
+
+His voice sounded forced, and Magda waited with a strange feeling of
+tension for him to continue.
+
+"I want to ask you a question," he went on in the same
+carefully measured accents. "Did you ever stay at a place called
+Stockleigh--Stockleigh Farm at Ashencombe?"
+
+Stockleigh! At the sound of the word it seemed to Magda as though a hand
+closed suddenly round her heart, squeezing it so tightly that she could
+not breathe.
+
+"I--yes, I stayed there," she managed to say at last.
+
+"Ah-h!" It was no more than a suddenly checked breath. "When were you
+there?" The question came swiftly, like the thrust of a sword. With it,
+it seemed to Magda that she could feel the first almost imperceptible
+pull of the "ropes of steel."
+
+"I was there--the summer before last," she said slowly.
+
+Michael made no answer. Only in the silence that followed she saw his
+face change. Something that had been hope--a fighting hope--died out of
+his eyes and his jaw seemed to set itself with a curious inflexibility.
+
+She waited for him to speak--waited with a keyed-up intensity of
+longing that was almost physically painful. At last, unable to bear the
+continued silence, she spoke again. Her voice cracked a little.
+
+"Why--why do you ask, Michael?"
+
+He looked at her and a sudden cynical amusement gleamed in his eyes--an
+amusement so bitterly unmirthful that there seemed something almost
+brutal about it. Her hand went up to her face as though to screen out
+the sight of it.
+
+"You can't guess, I suppose?" he said with dry, harsh irony. Then, after
+a moment: "Why did you never tell me you were there? You never spoke of
+it. . . . Wasn't it curious you should never speak of it?"
+
+She made a step towards him. She could not endure this torturing
+suspense another instant. It was racking her. She must know what
+Stockleigh signified to him.
+
+"What do you mean? Tell me what you mean!" she asked desperately.
+
+"Do you remember the story I told you down at Netherway--of a man and
+his wife and another woman?"
+
+"Yes, I remember"--almost whispering.
+
+"That was the story of my sister, June, and her husband, Dan Storran.
+You--were the other woman."
+
+She felt his eyes--those eyes out of which all hope had died--fixed on
+her.
+
+"June--your sister? Your sister? Are you sure?" she stammered stupidly.
+
+It couldn't be true! Not even God could have thought of a punishment so
+cruel, so awful as this. That June--the woman who had died just because
+she "had no heart to go on living"--should be Michael's sister! Oh, it
+was a crazy tangling of the threads--mad! Like some macabre invention
+sprung from a disordered brain. She wanted to laugh, and she knew if she
+began to laugh she should never stop. She felt she was losing her hold
+over herself. With a violent effort she clutched at her self-control.
+
+"Will you say it all over again, please?" she said in a flat voice. "I
+don't think I understand."
+
+"Nor did I till to-day," he replied shortly. "Davilof made me
+understand--this morning."
+
+"Davilof?" The word seemed to drag itself from her throat. . . .
+Davilof--who had been at Stockleigh that summer! Then it was all going
+to be true, after all.
+
+"Yes, Davilof. He had chanced on the fact that June was my sister.
+Very few people knew it, because, when she married, it was against
+our father's wishes, and she had cut herself adrift from the family. I
+wanted to help her, but she would never let me." He paused, then went
+on tonelessly: "It's all quite clear, isn't it? You know everything
+that happened while you were at Stockleigh. I've told you what happened
+afterwards. Storran cleared out of the country at once, and June had
+nothing left to live for. The only thing I didn't know was the name of
+the woman who had smashed up both their lives. I saw Dan in Paris . . .
+He came to me at my studio. But he was a white man. He never gave away
+the name of the woman who had ruined him. I only knew she had spent
+that particular summer at Stockleigh. It was Davilof who told me who the
+woman was."
+
+_"I can prevent your marrying Quarrington!"_ Magda could hear again the
+quiet conviction of Antoine's utterance. So he had known, then, when he
+threatened her, that June was Michael's sister! She wondered dully how
+long he had been aware of the fact--how he had first stumbled across it
+and realised its value as a hammer with which to crush her happiness.
+Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered any more. The main fact was that
+he _had_ known.
+
+June was dead! Amid the confused welter of emotions which seemed to have
+utterly submerged her during the last few minutes, Magda had almost lost
+sight of this as a fact by itself--as distinct from its identity with
+the fact that Michael's sister was dead. She felt vaguely sorry for
+June.
+
+Since the day she and Gillian had left Ashencombe she had heard nothing
+of Storran or his wife. No least scrap of news relating to them had come
+her way. In the ordinary course of events it was hardly likely that it
+would. The circles of their respective lives did not overlap each other.
+And Magda had made no effort to discover what had happened at Stockleigh
+after she had left there. She had been glad to shut the door on that
+episode in her life. She was not proud of it.
+
+There were other incidents, too, which she could have wished were
+blotted out--the Raynham incident amongst them. With the new insight
+which love had brought her she was beginning to rate these things at
+their true value, to realise how little she had understood of all love's
+exquisite significance when she played with it as lightly as a child
+might play with a trinket. She had learned better now--learned that love
+was of the spirit as well as of the body, and that in playing at love
+she had played with men's souls.
+
+She believed she had put that part of her life behind her--all those
+unrecognising days before love came to her. And now, without warning,
+sudden as an Eastern night, the past had risen up and confronted her.
+The implacable ropes of steel held her in bondage.
+
+"Michael . . . can't you--forgive me?"
+
+Her voice wavered and broke as she realised the utter futility of her
+question. Between them, now and always, there must lie the young, dead
+body of June Storran.
+
+"Forgive you?" Michael's voice was harsh with an immeasurable
+bitterness. "Good God! What are you made of that you can even ask me?
+It's women like you who turn this world into plain hell! . . . Look
+back! Have you ever looked back, I wonder?" He paused, and she knew
+his eyes were searching her--those keen, steady eyes, hard, now, like
+flint--searching the innermost recesses of her being. She felt as though
+he were dragging the soul out of her body, stripping it naked to the
+merciless lash of truth.
+
+"June--my little sister, the happiest of mortals--dead, through you.
+And Storran--he was a big man, white all through--down and out. And God
+knows who else has had their sun put out by you. . . . You're like a
+blight--spreading disease and corruption wherever you go."
+
+A little moan broke from her lips. For a moment it was a physical
+impossibility for her to speak. She could only shrink, mute and
+quivering, beneath the flail of his scorn.
+
+At last: "Is--is that what you think of me?" she almost whispered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+She winced at the harsh monosyllable. There was a finality about
+it--definite, unalterable. She looked at him dry-eyed, her face
+tragically beautiful in its agony. But he seemed impervious to either
+its beauty or its suffering. There was no hint of softening in him.
+Without another word he swung round on his heel and turned to leave her.
+
+"Michael . . . don't go!" The lovely voice was a mere thread of
+sound--hoarse and strangulated. "Don't go! . . . Oh, be a little
+merciful!"
+
+She laid an imploring hand on his arm, and at the touch of her his iron
+composure shook a little. For a moment the hardness in his eyes was
+wiped out by a look of intolerable pain. Then, with a quiet, inexorable
+movement he released himself from her straining clasp.
+
+"There's no question of mercy," he said inflexibly. "I'm not judging
+you, or punishing you. It's simply that I can't marry you. . . . You
+must see that June's death--my sister's death--lies at your door."
+
+"No," she said. "No. I suppose you can't marry me--now."
+
+Her breath came in short, painful gasps. Her face seemed to have grown
+smaller--shrunk. There was a pinched look about the nostrils and
+every drop of blood had drained away, leaving even her lips a curious
+greyish-white. She leaned forward, swaying a little.
+
+"I suppose," she said in a clear, dry voice, "you don't even love me any
+more?"
+
+His hands clenched and he took a sudden impetuous step towards her.
+
+"Not love you?" he said. And at last the man's own agony broke through
+his enforced calm, shaking his voice so that it was hoarse and terrible.
+"Not love you? I love you now as I loved you the day I first saw you.
+God in heaven! Did you think love could be killed so easily? Does it
+die--just because it's forbidden by every decent instinct that a man
+possesses? If so, nine-tenths of us would find the world an easier place
+to live in!"
+
+"And there is--no forgiveness, Michael?" The lovely grief-wrung face was
+uplifted to his beseechingly.
+
+"Don't ask me!" he said hoarsely. "You know there can be none."
+
+He turned and strode to the door. He did not look back even when his
+name tore itself like a cry between her lips. The next moment the sound
+of a door's closing came dully to her ears.
+
+She looked vaguely round the room. The fire was dying, the charred logs
+sinking down on to a bed of smouldering cinders. A touch would scatter
+them from their semblance of logs into a heap of grey, formless ash.
+Outside the window the snow still fell monotonously, wrapping the world
+in a passionless, chill winding-sheet.
+
+With a little broken cry she stumbled forward on to her knees, her arms
+outflung across the table.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ACCOUNT RENDERED
+
+The long, interminable night was over at last. Never afterwards, all
+the days of her life, could Magda look back on the black horror of those
+hours without a shudder. She felt as though she had been through hell
+and come out on the other side, to find stretching before her only the
+blank grey desolation of chaos.
+
+She was stripped of everything--of love, of happiness, even of hope.
+There was nothing in the whole world to look forward to. There never
+would be again. And when she looked back it was with eyes that had been
+vouchsafed a terrible enlightenment.
+
+Phrases which had fallen from Michael's lips scourged her anew
+throughout the long hours of the night. "Women like you make this world
+into plain hell," he had said. "You're like a blight--spreading disease
+and corruption wherever you go." And the essential truth which each
+sentence held left her writhing.
+
+It was all true--horribly, hideously true. The magical, mysterious power
+of beauty which had been given her, which might have helped to lighten
+the burden of the sad old world wherever she passed, she had used to
+destroy and deface and mutilate. The debt against her--the debt of all
+the pain and grief which she had brought to others--had been mounting
+up, higher and higher through the years. And now the time had come when
+payment was to be exacted.
+
+
+
+Quite simply and directly, without seeking in any way to exculpate
+herself, she had told Gillian the bare facts of what had happened--that
+her engagement was broken off and the reason why. But she had checked
+all comment and the swift, understanding sympathy which Gillian would
+have given. Criticism or sympathy would equally have been more than she
+could bear.
+
+"There is nothing to be said or done about it," she maintained. "I've
+sinned, and now I'm to be punished for my sins. That's all."
+
+The child of Hugh Vallincourt spoke in that impassive summing up of the
+situation and Lady Arabella, with her intimate knowledge of both Hugh
+and his sister Catherine, would have ascribed it instantly to the
+Vallincourt strain in her god-daughter. To Gillian, however, to whom the
+Vallincourts were nothing more than a name, the strange submissiveness
+of it was incomprehensible. As the days passed, she tried to rouse
+Magda from the apathy into which she seemed to have fallen, but without
+success.
+
+"It's no use, Gillyflower," she would reply with a weary little smile.
+"There _is_ no way out. Do you remember I once said I was too happy for
+it to last? It was quite true. . . . Have you told Marraine?" she asked
+suddenly.
+
+"Yes. And she wants to see you."
+
+"I don't think I want to see her--or anyone just at present. I've got to
+think--to think things out."
+
+"What do you mean? What are you going to do?"
+
+"I--don't know--yet."
+
+Gillian regarded her with some anxiety. That Magda, usually so
+unreserved and spontaneous, should shut her out of her confidence
+thoroughly disquieted her. She felt afraid. It seemed to her as though
+the girl were more or less stunned by the enormity of the blow which
+had befallen her. She went about with a curious absence of interest in
+anything--composed, quiet, absorbed in her own thoughts, only rousing
+herself to appear at the Imperial as usual. Probably her work at the
+theatre was the one thing that saved her from utter collapse.
+
+As far as Gillian knew she had not shed a single tear. Only her face
+seemed to grow daily more strained-looking, and her eyes held a curious
+expression that was difficult to interpret.
+
+There were days which she spent entirely in the seclusion of her own
+room, and then Virginie alone was allowed entrance. The old Frenchwoman
+would come in with some special little dish she had cooked with her own
+hands, hoping to tempt her beloved mistress's appetite--which in these
+days had dwindled to such insignificant proportions that Virginie was in
+despair.
+
+"Thou must eat," she would say.
+
+"I don't want anything--really, Virginie," Magda would insist.
+
+"And wherefore not?" demanded Virginie indignantly one day. "Thou art
+not one of the Sisters of Penitence that thou must needs deny thyself
+the good things of life."
+
+Magda looked up with a sudden flash of interest.
+
+"The Sisters of Penitence, Virginie? Who are they? Tell me about them."
+
+Virginie set a plate containing an epicurean omelet triumphantly in
+front of her.
+
+"Eat that, then, _cherie_, while I tell thee of them," she replied with
+masterly diplomacy. "It is good, the omelet. Virginie made it for thee
+with her own hands."
+
+Magda laughed faintly in spite of herself and began upon the omelet
+obediently.
+
+"Very well, then. Tell me about the Sisters of Penitence. Are they
+always being sorry for what they've done?"
+
+"It is a sisterhood, _mademoiselle cherie_, for those who would withdraw
+themselves from the world. They are very strict, I believe, the sisters,
+and mortify the flesh exceedingly. Me, I cannot see why we should leave
+the beautiful world the _bon dieu_ has put us into. For certain, He
+would not have put us in if He had not meant us to stay there!"
+
+"Perhaps--they are happier--out of the world, Virginia," suggested Magda
+slowly.
+
+"But my niece, who was in the sisterhood a year, was glad to come out
+again. Though, of course, she left her sins behind her, and that was
+good. It is always good to get rid of one's sins, _n'est-ce pas_?"
+
+"Get rid of your sins? But how can you?"
+
+"If one does penance day and night, day and night, for a whole long
+year, one surely expiates them! And then"--with calm certainty--"of
+course one has got rid of them. They are wiped off the slate and one
+begins again. At least, it was so with my niece. For when she came out
+of the sisterhood, the man who had betrayed her married her, and they
+have three--no, four _bebes_ now. So that it is evident _le bon dieu_
+was pleased with her penance and rewarded her accordingly."
+
+Magda repressed an inclination to smile at the naive simplicity of
+Virginie's creed. Life would indeed be an easy affair if one could "get
+rid of one's sins" on such an ingenuous principal of quid pro quo!
+
+But Virginie came of French peasant stock, and to her untutored mind
+such a process of wiping the slate clean seemed extremely reasonable.
+She continued with enthusiasm:
+
+"She but took the Vow of Penitence for a year. It is a rule of the
+sisterhood. If one has sinned greatly, one can take a vow of penitence
+for a year and expiate the sin. Some remain altogether and take the
+final vows. But my niece--no! She sinned and she paid. And then she
+came back into the world again. She is a good girl, my niece Suzette.
+Mademoiselle has enjoyed her omelet? Yes?"
+
+Magda nodded.
+
+"Yes, Virginie, I've enjoyed it. And I think your niece was certainly a
+brave _fille_. I'm glad she's happy now."
+
+For long after Virginie had left her, Magda sat quietly thinking. The
+story of the old Frenchwoman's niece had caught hold of her imagination.
+Like herself she had sinned, though differently. Within her own mind
+Magda wondered whether she or Suzette were in reality the greater sinner
+of the two. Suzette had at least given all, without thought of self,
+whereas she had only taken--taken with both hands, giving nothing in
+return.
+
+Probably Suzette had been an attractive little person--of the same
+type of brown-eyed, vivacious youth which must have been Virginie's
+five-and-thirty years ago--and her prettiness had caused her downfall.
+Magda glanced towards the mirror. It was through her beauty she herself
+had sinned. It had given her so much power, that exquisite, perfect body
+of hers, and she had pitifully misused the power it had bestowed. The
+real difference between herself and Suzette lay in the fact that
+the little French girl had paid the uttermost farthing of the price
+demanded--had submitted herself to discipline till she had surely
+expiated all the evil she had done. What if she, likewise, were to seek
+some such discipline?
+
+The idea had presented itself to her at precisely the moment when she
+was in the grip of an agony of recoil from her former way of life. Like
+her father, she had been suddenly brought up short and forced to survey
+her actions through the eyes of someone else, to look at all that she
+had done from another's angle of vision. And coincidentally, just as
+in the case of her father, the abrupt downfall of her hopes, the
+sudden shattering of her happiness, seemed as though it were due to the
+intervention of an angry God.
+
+The fanatical Vallincourt blood which ran in Magda's veins caused her
+to respond instinctively to this aspect of the matter. But the strain
+of her passionate, joy-loving mother which crossed with it tempered the
+tendency toward quite such drastic self-immolation as had appealed to
+Hugh Vallincourt.
+
+To Magda, Michael had come to mean the beginning and end of
+everything--the pivot upon which her whole existence hung. So that
+if Michael shut her out of his life for ever, that existence would no
+longer hold either value or significance. From her point of view, then,
+the primary object of any kind of self-discipline would be that it might
+make her more fit to be the wife of "Saint Michel."
+
+He despised her now. The evil she had done stood between them like
+a high wall. But if she were to make atonement--as Suzette had
+atoned--surely, when the wickedness had been purged out of her by pain
+and discipline, Michael would relent!
+
+The idea lodged in her mind. It went with her by day and coloured her
+thoughts by night, and it was still working within her like yeast when
+she at last nerved herself to go and see her godmother.
+
+Lady Arabella, as might have been anticipated, concealed her own
+sore-heartedness under a manner that was rather more militant than
+usual, if that were possible.
+
+"Why you hadn't more sense than to spend your time fooling with a sort
+of cave-man from the backwoods, I can't conceive," she scolded. "You
+must have known how it would end."
+
+"I didn't. I never thought about it. I was just sick with Michael
+because he had gone abroad, and then, when I heard that he was married,
+it was the last straw. I don't think--that night--I should have much
+cared what happened."
+
+Lady Arabella nodded.
+
+"Women like you make it heaven or hell for the men who love you."
+
+"And hell, without the choice of heaven, for ourselves," returned Magda.
+
+The bitterness in her voice wrung the old woman's heart. She sighed,
+then straightened her back defiantly.
+
+"We have to bear the burden of our blunders, my dear."
+
+There was a reminiscent look in the keen old eyes. Lady Arabella had had
+her own battles to fight. "And, after all, who should pay the price if
+not we ourselves?"
+
+"But if the price is outrageous, Marraine? What then?"
+
+"Still you've got to pay."
+
+Magda returned home with those words ringing in her ears. They fitted
+into the thoughts which had been obsessing her with a curious precision.
+It was true, then. You had to pay, one way or another. Lady Arabella
+knew it. Little Suzette had somehow found it out.
+
+That night a note left Friars' Holm addressed to the Mother Superior of
+the Sisters of Penitence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+GILLIAN INTERCEDES
+
+It was a bald, austere-looking room. Magda glanced about her
+curiously--at the plain, straight-backed chairs, at the meticulously
+tidy desk and bare, polished floor. Everything was scrupulously clean,
+but the total absence of anything remotely resembling luxury struck
+poignantly on eyes accustomed to all the ease and beauty of surroundings
+which unlimited money can procure.
+
+By contrast with the severity of the room Magda felt uncomfortably
+conscious of her own attire. The exquisite gown she was wearing, the big
+velvet hat with its drooping plume, the French shoes with their buckles
+and curved Louis heels--all seemed acutely out of place in this austere,
+formal-looking chamber.
+
+Her glance came back to the woman sitting opposite her, the Mother
+Superior of the Sisters of Penitence--tall, thin, undeniably impressive,
+with a stern, colourless face as clean-cut as a piece of ivory, out of
+which gleamed cold blue eyes that seemed to regard the dancer with a
+strange mixture of fervour and hostility.
+
+Magda could imagine no reason for the antagonism which she sensed in the
+steady scrutiny of those light-blue eyes. As far as she was concerned,
+the Mother Superior was an entire stranger, without incentive either to
+like or dislike her.
+
+But to the woman who, while she had been in the world, had been known as
+Catherine Vallincourt, the name of Magda Wielitzska was as familiar as
+her own. In the dark, slender girl before her, whose pale, beautiful
+face called to mind some rare and delicate flower, she recognised the
+living embodiment of her brother's transgression--that brother who had
+made Diane Wielitzska his wife and the mother of his child.
+
+All she had anticipated of evil consequence at the time of the
+marriage had crystallised into hard fact. The child of the "foreign
+dancing-woman"--the being for whose existence Hugh's mad passion for
+Diane had been responsible--had on her own confession worked precisely
+such harm in the world as she, Catherine, had foreseen. And now, the
+years which had raised Catherine to the position of Mother Superior of
+the community she had entered had brought that child to her doors as a
+penitent waveringly willing to make expiation.
+
+Catherine was conscious of a strange elevation of spirit. She felt
+ecstatically uplifted at the thought that it might be given to her to
+purge from Hugh's daughter, by severity of discipline and penance, the
+evil born within her. In some measure she would thus be instrumental in
+neutralising her brother's sin.
+
+She was supremely conscious that to a certain extent--though by no means
+altogether--her zealous ardour had its origin in her rooted antipathy to
+Hugh's wife and hence to the child of the marriage. But, since beneath
+her sable habit there beat the heart of just an ordinary, natural
+woman, with many faults and failings still unconquered in spite of
+the austerities of her chosen life, a certain very human element of
+satisfaction mingled itself with her fervour for Magda's regeneration.
+
+With a curious impassivity that masked the intensity of her desire
+she had told Magda that, by the rules of the community, penitents who
+desired to make expiation were admitted there, but that if once the step
+were taken, and the year's vow of penitence voluntarily assumed,
+there could be no return to the world until the expiration of the time
+appointed.
+
+Somehow the irrevocability of such a vow, undertaken voluntarily, had
+not struck her in its full significance until Catherine had quietly,
+almost tonelessly, in the flat, level voice not infrequently acquired by
+the religious, affirmed it.
+
+"Supposing"--Magda looked round the rigidly bare room with a new sense
+of apprehension--"supposing I felt I simply couldn't stand it any
+longer? Do you mean to say, _then_, that I should not be allowed to
+leave here?"
+
+"No, you would not be permitted to. Vows are not toys to be broken at
+will."
+
+"A year is a long time," murmured Magda.
+
+The eyes beneath the coifed brow with its fine network of wrinkles were
+adamant.
+
+"The body must be crucified that the soul may live," returned the cold
+voice unflinchingly.
+
+Magda's thoughts drew her this way and that. A year! It was an eternity!
+And yet, if only she could emerge purified, a woman worthy to be
+Michael's wife, she felt she would be willing to go through with it.
+
+It was as though the white-faced, passionless woman beside her read her
+thoughts.
+
+"If you would be purified," said Catherine, "if you would cast out the
+devil that is within you, you will have to abide meekly by such penance
+as is ordained. You must submit yourself to pain."
+
+At the words a memory of long ago stirred in Magda's mind. She
+remembered that when her father had beaten her as a child he had said:
+"If you hurt people enough you can stop them from committing sin."
+
+Groping dimly for some light that might elucidate the problems which
+bewildered her, Magda clutched at the words as though they were a
+revelation. They seemed to point to the only way by which she might
+repair the past.
+
+Catherine, watching closely the changes on the pale, sensitive face,
+spoke again.
+
+"Of course, if you feel you have not the strength of will to keep your
+vow, you must not take it."
+
+The words acted like a spur. Instantly, Magda's decision was taken.
+
+"If I take the vow, I shall have strength of mind to keep it," she said.
+
+The following evening Magda composedly informed Gillian that she
+proposed to take a vow of expiation and retire into the community of
+the Sisters of Penitence for a year. Gillian was frankly aghast; she
+had never dreamed of any such upshot to the whole miserable business of
+Magda's broken engagement.
+
+"But it is madness!" she protested. "You would hate it!"
+
+Magda nodded.
+
+"That's just it. I've done what I liked all my life. And you know what
+the result has been! Now I propose to do what I _don't_ like for a
+year."
+
+Neither persuasion nor exhortation availed to shake her resolution,
+and in despair Gillian referred the matter to Lady Arabella, hoping she
+might induce Magda to change her mind.
+
+Lady Arabella accepted the news with unexpected composure.
+
+"It is just what one might expect from the child of Hugh Vallincourt,"
+she said thoughtfully. "It's the swing of the pendulum. There's always
+been that tendency in the Vallincourts--the tendency towards
+atonement by some sort of violent self-immolation. They are invariably
+_excessive_--either excessively bad like the present man, Rupert, or
+excessively devout like Hugh and Catherine! By the way, the Sisters of
+Penitence is the community Catherine first joined. I wonder if she is
+there still? Probably she's dead by now, though. I remember hearing some
+years ago that she was seriously ill--somewhere about the time of Hugh's
+death. That's the last I ever heard of her. I've been out of touch with
+the whole Vallincourt family for so many years now that I don't know
+what has become of them."
+
+"You don't mean to say that you're going to _let_ Magda do what she
+proposes?" exclaimed Gillian, in dismayed astonishment.
+
+"There's never much question of 'letting' Magda do things, is
+there?" retorted Lady Arabella. "If she's made up her mind to be
+penitential--penitential she'll be! I dare say it won't do her any
+harm."
+
+"I don't see how it can do her any good," protested Gillian. "Magda
+isn't cut out for a sisterhood."
+
+"That's just why it may be good for her."
+
+"I don't believe in mortification of the flesh and all that sort of
+thing, either," continued Gillian obstinately.
+
+"My dear, we must all work out our own salvation--each in his own way.
+Prayer and fasting would never be my method. But for some people it's
+the only way. I believe it is for the Vallincourts. In any case, it's
+only for a year. And a year is very little time out of life."
+
+Nevertheless, at Gillian's urgent request, Lady Arabella made an effort
+to dissuade Magda from her intention.
+
+"If you live long enough, my dear," she told her crispy, "providence
+will see to it that you get your deserts. You needn't be so anxious to
+make sure of them. Retribution is a very sure-footed traveller."
+
+"It isn't only retribution, punishment, I'm looking for," returned
+Magda. "It is--I can't quite explain it, Marraine, but even though
+Michael never sees me or speaks to me again, I'd like to feel I'd made
+myself into the sort of woman he _would_ speak to."
+
+From that standpoint she refused to move, declining even to discuss
+the matter further, but proceeded quietly and unswervingly with her
+arrangements. The failure to complete her contract at the Imperial
+Theatre involved her in a large sum of money by way of forfeit, but this
+she paid ungrudgingly, feeling as though it were the first step along
+the new road of renunciation she designed to tread.
+
+To the manager she offered no further explanation than that she proposed
+to give up dancing, "at any rate for a year or so," and although he was
+nearly distracted over the idea, he found his arguments and persuasions
+were no more effective than those King Canute optimistically addressed
+to the encroaching waves. The utmost concession he could extract from
+Magda was her assent to giving a farewell appearance--for which occasion
+the astute manager privately decided to quadruple the price of the
+seats. He only wished it were possible to quadruple the seating capacity
+of the theatre as well!
+
+Meanwhile Gillian, whose normal, healthy young mind recoiled from the
+idea of Magda's self-imposed year of discipline, had secretly resolved
+upon making a final desperate venture in the hope of straightening out
+the tangle of her friend's life. She would go herself and see Michael
+and plead with him. Surely, if he loved Magda as he had once seemed to
+do, he would not remain obdurate when he realised how bitterly she had
+repented--and how much she loved him!
+
+It was not easy for Gillian to come to this decision. She held very
+strong opinions on the subject of the rights of the individual to manage
+his own affairs without interference, and as she passed out of the busy
+main street into the quiet little old-world court where Michael had his
+rooms and studio she felt as guilty as a small boy caught trespassing in
+an orchard.
+
+The landlady who opened the door in response to her somewhat timid ring
+regarded her with a curiously surprised expression when she inquired if
+Mr. Quarrington were in.
+
+"I'll see, miss," she answered non-committally, "if you'll step inside."
+
+The unusual appearance of the big double studio where she was left to
+wait puzzled Gillian. All the familiar tapestries and cushions and
+rare knick-knacks which wontedly converted the further end of it into
+a charming reception room were gone. The chairs were covered in plain
+holland, the piano sheeted. But the big easel, standing like a tall
+cross in the cold north light, was swathed in a dust-sheet. Gillian's
+heart misgave her. Was she too late? Had Michael--gone away?
+
+A moment later a quick, resolute footstep reassured her. The door opened
+and Michael himself came in. He paused on the threshold as he perceived
+who his visitor was, then came forward and shook hands with his usual
+grave courtesy. After that, he seemed to wait as though for some
+explanation of her visit.
+
+Gillian found herself nervously unready. All the little opening speeches
+she had prepared for the interview deserted her suddenly, driven away by
+her shocked realisation of the transformation which the few days since
+she had last seen him had wrought in the man beside her.
+
+His face was lined and worn. The grey eyes were sunken and burned with a
+strange, bitter brilliance. Only the dogged, out-thrust jaw remained the
+same as ever--obstinate and unconquerable. Twice she essayed to speak
+and twice failed. The third time the words came stumblingly.
+
+"Michael, what--what does it mean--all this?" She indicated the
+holland-sheeted studio with a gesture.
+
+"It means that I'm going away," he replied. "I'm packing now. I leave
+England to-morrow."
+
+"You mustn't go!"
+
+The words broke from her imperatively, like a mandate.
+
+He glanced at her quickly and into his eyes came a look of
+comprehension.
+
+"You're a good friend," he said quietly. "But I must go."
+
+"No, no, you mustn't! Listen--"
+
+"Nothing can alter my decision," he interrupted in a tone of absolute
+finality. "Nothing you could say, Gillian--so don't say it."
+
+"But I must!" she insisted. "Oh, Michael, I'm not going to pretend that
+Magda hasn't been to blame--that it isn't all terrible! But if you saw
+her--now--you'd _have_ to forgive her and love her again." She spoke
+with a simple sincerity that was infinitely appealing.
+
+"I've never ceased to love her," he replied, still in that quiet voice
+of repressed determination.
+
+"Then if you love, her, can't you forgive her? She's had everything
+against her from the beginning, both temperament and upbringing, and
+on top of that there's been the wild success she's had as a dancer. You
+can't judge her by ordinary standards of conduct. You _can't_! It isn't
+fair."
+
+"I don't presume to judge her"--icily. "I simply say I can't marry her."
+
+"If you could see her now, Michael----" Her voice shook a little. "It
+hurts me to see Magda--like that. She's broken----"
+
+"And my sister, June, is dead," he said in level, unemotional tones.
+
+Gillian wrung her hands.
+
+"But even so----! Magda didn't kill her, Michael. She couldn't tell--she
+didn't know that June----" She halted, faltering into silence.
+
+"That June was soon to have a child?" Michael finished her sentence for
+her. "No. But she knew she loved her husband. And she stole him from
+her. When I think of it all, of June . . . little June! . . . And
+Storran--gone under! Oh, what's the use of talking?"--savagely. "You
+know--and I know--that there's nothing left. Nothing!"
+
+"If you loved her, Michael--"
+
+"If I loved her!" he broke out stormily. "You're not a man, and you
+don't know what it means to want the woman you love night and day, to
+ache for her with every fibre of your body--and to know that you can't
+have her and keep your self-respect!"
+
+"Oh--self-respect!" There was a note of contempt in Gillian's voice. "If
+you set your 'self-respect' above your love--"
+
+"You don't understand!" he interrupted violently. "You're a woman and
+you can't understand! I must honour the woman I love--it's the kernel of
+the whole thing. I must look up to her--not down!"
+
+Gillian clasped her hands.
+
+"Oh!" she said in a low, vehement voice. "I don't think we women _want_
+to be 'looked up to.' It sets us so far away. We're not goddesses. We're
+only women, Michael, with all our little weaknesses just the same as
+men. And we want the men who love us to be comrades--not worshippers.
+Good pals, who'll forgive us and help us up when we tumble down, just as
+we'd be ready to forgive them and help them up. Can't you--can't you do
+that for Magda?"
+
+"No," he said shortly. "I can't."
+
+Gillian was at the end of her resources. She would not tell him that
+Magda proposed joining the Sisters of Penitence for a year. Somehow she
+felt she would not wish him to know this or to be influenced by it.
+
+She had made her appeal to Michael himself, to his sheer love for the
+woman he had intended to make his wife. And she had failed because
+the man was too bitter, too sore, to see clearly through the pain that
+blinded him.
+
+His voice, curt and clipped, broke the silence which had fallen.
+
+"Have you said all you came to say?" he asked with frigid politeness.
+
+"All," she returned sadly.
+
+He moved slowly towards the door.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand.
+
+He took it and held it in his. For a moment the hard eyes softened a
+little.
+
+"I'm sorry I can't do what you ask," he said abruptly.
+
+Gillian opened her lips to speak, but no words came. Instead, a sudden
+lump rose in her throat, choking her into silence, at the sight of the
+man's wrung face, with its bitter, pain-ridden eyes and the jaw that
+was squared implacably against love and forgiveness, and against his own
+overwhelming desire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+"CHILDREN STUMBLING IN THE DARK"
+
+As Gillian mingled once more with the throng on the pavements she felt
+curiously unwilling to return home. She had set out from Friars' Holm
+so full of hope in her errand! It had seemed impossible that she could
+fail, and she had been almost unconsciously looking forward to seeing
+Magda's wan, strained face relax into half-incredulous delight as she
+confided in her the news that Michael was as eager and longing for a
+reconciliation as she herself.
+
+And instead--this! This utter, hopeless failure to move him one jot.
+Only the memory of the man's stern, desperately unhappy eyes curbed the
+hot tide of her anger against him for his iron refusal.
+
+He still loved Magda, so he said. And, indeed, Gillian believed
+it. But--love! It was not love as she and Tony Grey had understood
+it--simple, forgiving, and wholly trustful. It seemed to her as
+though Michael and Magda were both wandering in a dim twilight of
+misunderstanding, neither of them able to see that there was only one
+thing for them to do if they were ever to find happiness again. They
+must thrust the past behind them--with all its bitterness and failures
+and mistakes, and go forward, hand in hand, in search of the light. Love
+would surely lead them to it eventually.
+
+Yet this was the last thing either of them seemed able to think of
+doing. Magda was determined to spend the sweetness of her youth in
+making reparation for the past, while Michael was torn by bitterly
+conflicting feelings--his passionate love for Magda warring with his
+innate recoil from all that she had done and with his loyalty to his
+dead sister.
+
+Gillian sighed as she threaded her way slowly along the crowded street.
+The lights of a well-known tea-shop beckoned invitingly and, only too
+willing to postpone the moment of her return home, she turned in between
+its plate-glass doors.
+
+They swung together behind her, dulling the rumble of the traffic, while
+all around uprose the gay hum of conversation and the chink of cups and
+saucers mingling with the rhythmic melodies that issued from a cleverly
+concealed orchestra.
+
+The place was very crowded. For a moment it seemed to Gillian as though
+there were no vacant seat. Then she espied an empty table for two in a
+distant corner and hastily made her way thither. She had barely given
+her order to the waitress when the swing doors parted again to admit
+someone else--a man this time.
+
+The new arrival paused, as Gillian herself had done, to search out a
+seat. Then, noting the empty place at her table, he came quickly towards
+it.
+
+Gillian was idly scanning the list of marvellous little cakes furnished
+by the menu, and her first cognisance of the new-comer's approach was
+the vision of a strong, masculine hand gripping the back of the chair
+opposite her preparatory to pulling it out from under the table.
+
+"I'm afraid there's no other vacant seat," he was beginning
+apologetically. But at the sound of his voice Gillian's eyes flew up
+from that virile-looking hand to the face of its owner, and a low cry of
+surprise broke from her lips.
+
+"Dan Storran!"
+
+Simultaneously the man gave utterance to her own name.
+
+Gillian stared at him stupidly. Could this really be Dan
+Storran--Storran of Stockleigh?
+
+The alteration in him was immense. He looked ten years older. An
+habitual stoop had lessened his apparent height and the dark, kinky hair
+was streaked with grey. The golden-tan bestowed by an English sun had
+been exchanged for the sallow skin of a man who has lived hard in a
+hot country, and the face was thin and heavily lined. Only the eyes of
+periwinkle-blue remained to remind Gillian of the splendid young giant
+she had known at Ashencombe--and even they were changed and held the
+cynical weariness of a man who has eaten of Dead Sea fruit and found it
+bitter to the taste.
+
+There were other changes, too. Storran of Stockleigh was as civilised,
+his clothes and general appearance as essentially "right," as those of
+the men around him. All suggestion of the "cave-man from the backwoods,"
+as Lady Arabella had termed him, was gone.
+
+"I didn't know you were in England," said Gillian at last.
+
+"I landed yesterday."
+
+"You've been in South America, haven't you?"
+
+She spoke mechanically. There seemed something forced and artificial
+about this exchange of platitudes between herself and the man who had
+figured so disastrously in Magda's life. Without warning he brought the
+conversation suddenly back to the realities.
+
+"Yes. I was in 'Frisco when my wife died. Since then I've been half over
+the world."
+
+Behind the harshly uttered statement Gillian could sense the unspeakable
+bitterness of the man's soul. It hurt her, calling forth her quick
+sympathy just as the sight of some maimed and wounded animal would have
+done.
+
+"Oh!" she said, a sensitive quiver in her voice. "I was so sorry--so
+terribly sorry--to hear about June. We hadn't heard--we only knew quite
+recently." Her face clouded as she reflected on the tragic happenings
+with which the news had been accompanied.
+
+At this moment a waitress paused at Storran's side and he gave his
+order. Then, looking curiously at Gillian, he said:
+
+"What did you hear? Just that she died when our child was born, I
+suppose?"
+
+Gillian's absolute honesty of soul could not acquiesce, though it would
+have been infinitely the easier course.
+
+"No," she said, flushing a little and speaking very low. "We heard that
+she might have lived if--if she had only been--happier."
+
+He nodded silently, rather as though this was the answer he had
+anticipated. Presently he spoke abruptly:
+
+"Does Miss Vallincourt know that?"
+
+Gillian hesitated. Then, taking her courage in both hands she told
+him quickly and composedly the whole story of the engagement and its
+rupture, and let him understand just precisely what June's death, owing
+to the special circumstances in which it had occurred, had meant for
+Magda of retribution and of heartbreak.
+
+Storran listened without comment, in his eyes an odd look of
+concentration. The waitress dexterously slid a tray in front of him and
+he poured himself out a cup of tea mechanically, but he made no attempt
+to drink it. When Gillian ceased, his face showed no sign of softening.
+It looked hard and very weary. His strong fingers moved restlessly,
+crumbling one of the small cakes on the plate in front of him.
+
+"'Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding
+small,'" he quoted at last, quietly.
+
+Gillian met his harshly cynical glance with one of brave defiance.
+
+"I don't think God's mills have anything to do with it," she said
+swiftly. "He'd understand all the excuses and allowances that should
+be made for her better even than I do. And I shouldn't want to punish
+Magda. I'd make her--happy. She's never known what it means to be really
+happy. Success and gaiety aren't _happiness_."
+
+"And you?" he asked quickly.
+
+There was a soft and wonderful shining in the brown eyes that were
+lifted to his.
+
+"I had one year of utter happiness," she answered gently. "And I've got
+Coppertop--so I can't ever be quite unhappy."
+
+"If there were more women like you----" he began abruptly.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No, no," she said, smiling a little. "If there were more men like Tony!
+You men are so hard--so cruelly hard."
+
+He looked at her very directly.
+
+"Haven't I the right to be?" he demanded bitterly.
+
+"Ah! Forgive me!" Gillian spoke with an accent of self-reproach. "I'd
+forgotten you still--care."
+
+"For Magda?" He laughed shortly. "No. That's dead, thank God! I killed
+it. Worked it out of my system in 'Frisco"--with exceeding bitterness.
+"Then I got the news of June's death. Her sister wrote me. Told me she
+died because she'd no longer any wish to live. That sobered me-brought
+me back to my sense. There was a good deal more to the letter--my
+sister-in-law didn't let me down lightly. I've had to pay for that
+summer at Stockleigh. And now Magda's paying. . . . Well, that seems to
+square things somehow."
+
+"Oh, you are brutal!" broke out Gillian.
+
+His eyes, hard as steel and as unyielding, met hers.
+
+"Am I?"--indifferently. "Perhaps I am."
+
+This was a very different Dan from the impetuous, hot-headed Dan
+of former times. Gillian found his calm ruthlessness difficult to
+understand, and yet, realising all that he had suffered, she could not
+but condone it to a certain extent.
+
+When at last she rose to go, he detained her a moment.
+
+"I am remaining in England now. I should like to see you sometimes. May
+I?"
+
+She hesitated. Then something that appealed in the tired eyes impelled
+her answer.
+
+"If you wish," she said gently.
+
+
+
+Back once more in the street she made her way as quickly as possible to
+the nearest tube station, in order to reach it before the usual
+evening crowd of homeward-wending clerks and typists poured into the
+thoroughfares from a thousand open office doors. But as soon as she
+was safely seated in the train her thoughts reverted to the two strange
+interviews in which she had taken part that afternoon.
+
+She felt very low-spirited. Since she had seen and talked with the two
+men in whose lives Magda had played so big a part, she was oppressed
+with a sense of the utter hopelessness of trying to put matters right.
+Things must take their course--drive on to whatever end, bitter or
+sweet, lay hidden in the womb of fate.
+
+She had tried to stem the current of affairs, but she had proved as
+powerless to deflect it as a dried stick tossed on to a river in
+spate. And now, whether the end were ultimate happiness or hopeless,
+irretrievable disaster, Michael and Magda must still fight their way
+towards it, each alone, by the dim light of that "blind Understanding"
+which is all that Destiny vouchsafes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+FAREWELL
+
+The curtains swung together for the last time, the orchestra struck
+up the National Anthem, and the great audience which had come from
+all parts to witness the Wielitzska's farewell performance began to
+disperse.
+
+A curious quietness attended its departure. It was as though a pall
+of gravity hung over the big assemblage. Public announcements of the
+performance had explained that the famous dancer proposed taking a long
+rest for reasons of health. "But," as everyone declared, "you know what
+that means! She's probably broken down--heart or something. We shall
+never see her dance again." And so, beneath the tremendous reception
+which they gave her, there throbbed an element of sadness, behind all
+the cheers and the clapping an insistent minor note which carried across
+the footlights to where Magda stood bowing her thanks, and smiling
+through the mist of tears which filled her eyes.
+
+The dance which she had chosen for her last appearance was the
+_Swan-Maiden_. There had seemed a strange applicability in the choice,
+and to those who had eyes to see there was a new quality in the
+Wielitzska's dancing--a depth of significance and a spirituality of
+interpretation which was commented upon in the Press the next day.
+
+It had been quite unmistakable. She had gripped her audience so that
+throughout the final scene of the ballet no word was spoken. The big
+crowd, drawn from all classes, sat tense and silent, sensitive to every
+movement, every exquisite, appealing gesture of the Swan-Maiden. And
+when at last she had lain, limp in death, in her lover's embrace,
+and the music had quivered into silence, there followed a vibrant
+pause--almost it seemed as though a sigh of mingled ecstasy and regret
+went up--before the thunderous applause roared through the auditorium.
+
+The insatiable few were still clapping and stamping assiduously when
+Magda, after taking innumerable calls, at last came off the stage. It
+had been a wonderful night of triumph, and as she made her way towards
+her dressing-room she was conscious of a sudden breathless realisation
+of all that she was sacrificing. For a moment she felt as though she
+must rush back on to the stage and tell everybody that she couldn't do
+it, that it was all a mistake--that this was not a farewell! But she set
+her teeth and moved resolutely towards her dressing-room.
+
+As her fingers closed round the handle of the door, someone stepped out
+from the shadows of the passage and spoke:
+
+"Magda!"
+
+The voice, wrung and urgent, was Antoine Davilof's.
+
+Her first impulse was to hurry forward and put the dressing-room door
+betwixt herself and him. She had not seen him since that night when he
+had come down to the theatre and implored her to be his wife, warning
+her that he would prevent her marriage with Michael. He had carried out
+his threat with a completeness that had wrecked her life, and although,
+since the breaking-off of her engagement, he had both written and
+telephoned, begging her to see him, she had steadfastly refused. Once
+he had come to Friars' Holm, but had been met with an inexorable "Not at
+home!" from Melrose.
+
+"Magda! For God's sake, give me a moment!"
+
+Something in the strained tones moved her to an unexpected feeling
+of compassion. It was the voice of a man in the extremity of mental
+anguish.
+
+Silently she opened the door of the dressing-room and signed to him to
+follow her.
+
+"Well," she said, facing him, "what is it? Why have you come?"
+
+The impulse of compassion died out suddenly. His was the hand that had
+destroyed her happiness. The sight of him roused her to a fierce anger
+and resentment.
+
+"Well?" she repeated. "What do you want? To know the result of your
+handiwork?"--bitterly. "You've been quite as successful as even you
+could have wished."
+
+"Don't," he said unevenly. "Magda, I can't bear it. You can't give
+up--all this. Your dancing--it's your life! I shall never forgive myself
+. . . I'll see Quarrington and tell him--"
+
+"You can't see him. He's gone away."
+
+"Then I'll find him."
+
+"If you found him, nothing you could say would make any difference,"
+she answered unemotionally. "It's the facts that matter. You can't
+alter--facts."
+
+Davilof made a gesture of despair.
+
+"Is it true you're going into some sisterhood?" he asked hoarsely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And it is I--I who have driven you to this! _Dieu_! I've been
+mad--mad!"
+
+His hands were clenched, his face working painfully. The hazel
+eyes--those poet's eyes of his which she had seen sometimes soft with
+dreams and sometimes blazing with love's fire--were blurred by misery.
+They reminded her of the contrite, tortured eyes of a dog which,
+maddened by pain, has bitten the hand of a beloved master. Her anger
+died away in the face of that overwhelming remorse. She herself had
+learned to know the illimitable bitterness of self-reproach.
+
+"Antoine----" Her voice had grown very gentle.
+
+He swung round on her.
+
+"And I can't undo it!" he exclaimed desperately. "I can't undo it! . . .
+Magda, will you believe me--will you _try_ to believe that, if my life
+could undo the harm I've done, I'd give it gladly?"
+
+"I believe you would, Antoine," she replied simply.
+
+With a stifled exclamation he turned away and, dropping into a chair,
+leaned his arms on the table and hid his face. Once, twice she heard
+the sound of a man's hard-drawn sob, and the dry agony of it wrung her
+heart. All that was sweet and compassionate in her--the potential mother
+that lies in every woman--responded to his need. She ran to him and,
+kneeling at his side, laid a kind little hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Don't Antoine!" she said pitifully. "Ah, don't, my dear!"
+
+He caught the hand and held it against his cheek.
+
+"It's unforgivable!" he muttered.
+
+"No, no. I do forgive you."
+
+"You can't forgive! . . . Impossible!"
+
+"I think I can, Antoine. You see, I need forgiveness so badly myself.
+I wouldn't want to keep anyone else without it. Besides, Michael would
+have been bound to learn--what you told him--sooner or later." She rose
+to her feet, pushing back the hair from her forehead rather wearily.
+"It's better as it is--that he should know now. It--it would have been
+unbearable if it had come later--when I was his wife."
+
+Antoine stumbled to his feet. His beautiful face was marred with grief.
+
+"I wish I were dead!"
+
+The words broke from him like an exceeding bitter cry. To Magda they
+seemed to hold some terrible import.
+
+"Not that, Antoine!" she answered in a frightened voice. "You're not
+thinking--you're not meaning----"
+
+He shook his head, smiling faintly.
+
+"No," he said quietly. "The Davilofs have never been cowards. I shan't
+take that way out. You need have no fears, Magda." The sudden tension
+in her face relaxed. "But I shall not stay in England. England--without
+you--would be hell. A hell of memories."
+
+"What shall you do, then, Antoine? You won't give up playing?"
+
+He made a fierce gesture of distaste.
+
+"I couldn't play in public! Not now. Not for a time. I think I shall go
+to my mother. She always wants me, and she sees me very little."
+
+Magda nodded. Her eyes were wistful.
+
+"Yes, go to her. I think mothers must understand--as other people can't
+ever understand. She will be glad to have you with her, Antoine."
+
+He was silent for a moment, his eyes dwelling on her face as though
+he sought to learn each line of it, so that when she would be no more
+beside him he might carry the memory of it in his heart for ever.
+
+"Then it is good-bye," he said at last.
+
+Magda held out her hands and, taking them in his, he drew her close to
+him.
+
+"I love you," he said, "and I have brought you only pain." There was a
+tragic simplicity in the statement.
+
+"No," she answered steadily. "Never think that. I spoiled my own life.
+And--love is a big gift, Antoine."
+
+She lifted her face to his and very tenderly, almost reverently, he
+kissed her. She knew that in that last kiss there was no disloyalty to
+Michael. It held renunciation. It accepted forgiveness.
+
+
+
+"Did you know that Dan Storran was in front to-night?" asked Gillian,
+as half an hour later she and Magda were driving back to Hampstead
+together. She had already confided the fact of her former meeting with
+him in the tea-shop.
+
+Magda's eyes widened a little.
+
+"No," she said quietly. "I think I'm glad I didn't know."
+
+She was very silent throughout the remainder of the drive home and
+Gillian made no effort to distract her. She herself felt disinclined to
+talk. She was oppressed by the knowledge that this was the last night
+she and Magda would have with each other. To-morrow Magda would be gone
+and one chapter of their lives together ended. The gates of the Sisters
+of Penitence would close upon her and Friars' Holm would be empty of her
+presence.
+
+Everything had been said that could be said, every persuasion used. But
+to each and all Magda had only answered: "I know it's the only thing for
+me to do. It probably wouldn't be for you, or for anyone else. But it is
+for me. So you must let me go, Gillyflower."
+
+Gillian dreaded the morrow with its inevitable moment of farewell. As
+for Virginie, she had done little else but weep for the last three days,
+and although Lady Arabella had said very little, she had kissed her
+god-daughter good-bye with a brusqueness that veiled an inexpressible
+grief and tenderness. Gillian foresaw that betwixt administering comfort
+to Lady Arabella and Virginie, and setting Magda's personal affairs in
+order after her departure, she would have little time for the indulgence
+of her own individual sorrow. Perhaps it was just as well that these
+tasks should devolve on her. They would serve to occupy her thoughts.
+
+
+
+The morning sunlight, goldenly gay, was streaming in through the windows
+as Magda, wrapped in a soft silken peignoir, made her way into the
+bathroom. Virginie, her eyes reddened from a night's weeping, was
+kneeling beside the sunken bath of green-veined marble, stirring
+sweet-smelling salts in to the steaming water. Their fragrance permeated
+the atmosphere like incense.
+
+"My tub ready, Virginie?" asked Magda, cheerfully.
+
+Virginie scrambled to her feet.
+
+"_Mais oui, mademoiselle_. The bath is ready."
+
+Then, her face puckering up suddenly, she burst into tears and ran
+out of the room. Magda smiled and sighed, then busied herself with her
+morning ablutions--prolonging them a little as she realised that this
+was the last occasion for a whole year when she would step down into a
+bath prepared and perfumed for her in readiness by her maid.
+
+A year! It was a long time to look forward to. So much can happen in a
+year. And no one can foresee what the end may bring.
+
+Presently she emerged from her bath, her skin gleaming like wet ivory,
+her dark hair sparkling with the drops of water that had splashed on to
+it. As she stepped up from its green-veined depths, she caught a glimpse
+of herself in a panel mirror hung against the wall, and for a moment she
+was aware of the familiar thrill of delight in her own beauty--in the
+gleaming, glowing radiance of perfectly formed, perfectly groomed flesh
+and blood.
+
+Then, with a revulsion of feeling, came the sudden realisation that
+it was this very perfection of body which had been her undoing--like a
+bitter blight, leaving in its wake a trail of havoc and desolation. She
+was even conscious of a fierce eagerness for the period of penance to
+begin. Almost ecstatically she contemplated the giving of her body to
+whatever discipline might be appointed.
+
+To anyone hitherto as spoiled and imperious as Magda, whose body had
+been the actual temple of her art, and so, almost inevitably, of her
+worship, this utter renouncing of physical self-government was the
+supremest expiation she could make. As with Hugh Vallincourt, whose
+blood ran in her veins, the idea of personal renunciation made a curious
+appeal to her emotional temperament, and she was momentarily filled with
+something of the martyr's ecstasy.
+
+
+
+Gillian's arms clung round Magda's neck convulsively as she kissed her
+at the great gates of Friars' Holm a few hours later.
+
+"Good-bye! . . . Ah, Magda! Come back to me!"
+
+"I shall come back."
+
+One more lingering kiss, and then Magda stepped into the open car.
+Virginie made a rush forward before the door closed and, dropping on
+to her knees on the footboard, convulsively snatched her adored young
+mistress's hand between her two old worn ones and covered it with
+kisses.
+
+"Oh, mademoiselle, thy old Virginie will die without thee!" she sobbed
+brokenly.
+
+And then the car slid away and Magda's last glimpse was of the open
+gates of Friars' Holm with its old-world garden, stately and formal, in
+the background; and of Virginie weeping unrestrainedly, her snowy apron
+flung up over her head; and of Gillian standing erect, her brown eyes
+very wide and winking away the tears that welled up despite herself, and
+her hand on Coppertop's small manful shoulder, gripping it hard.
+
+As the car passed through the streets many people, recognising its
+occupant, stopped and turned to follow it with their eyes. One or two
+women waved their hands, and a small errand-boy--who had saved up
+his pennies and squeezed into the gallery of the Imperial Theatre the
+previous evening--threw up his hat and shouted "Hooray!"
+
+Once, at a crossing, the chauffeur was compelled to pull up to allow the
+traffic to pass, and a flower-girl with a big basket of early violets on
+her arm, recognising the famous dancer, tossed a bunch lightly into the
+car. They fell on Magda's lap. She picked them up and, brushing them
+with her lips, smiled at the girl and fastened the violets against the
+furs at her breast. The flower-girl treasured the smile of the great
+Wielitzska in her memory for many a long day, while in the arid
+months that were to follow Magda treasured the sweet fragrance of that
+spontaneous gift.
+
+Half an hour later the doors of the grey house where the Sisters
+of Penitence dwelt apart from the world opened to receive Magda
+Vallincourt, and closed again behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE GREY VEIL
+
+Magda felt a sudden stab of fear. The sound of the latch clicking into
+its place brought home to her the irrevocability of the step she had
+taken. That tall, self-locking door stood henceforth betwixt her and the
+dear, familiar world she had known--the world of laughter and luxury and
+success. But beyond, on the far horizon, there was Michael--her "Saint
+Michel." If these months of discipline brought her nearer him, then she
+would never grudge them.
+
+The serene eyes of the Sister who received her--Sister
+Bernardine--helped to steady her quivering pulses.
+
+There was something in Sister Bernardine that was altogether lacking in
+Catherine Vallincourt--a delightfully human understanding and charity
+for all human weakness, whether of the soul or body.
+
+It was she who reassured Magda when a sudden appalling and unforeseen
+idea presented itself to her.
+
+"My hair!" she exclaimed breathlessly, her hand going swiftly to the
+heavy, smoke-black tresses. "Will they cut off my hair?"
+
+As Sister Bernardine comfortingly explained that only those who joined
+the community as sisters had their heads shaven, a strange expression
+flickered for an instant in her eyes, a fleeting reminiscence of that
+day, five-and-twenty years ago, when the shears had cropped their
+ruthless way through the glory of hair which had once been hers.
+
+And afterwards, as time went on and Magda, wearing the grey veil and
+grey serge dress of a voluntary penitent, found herself absorbed into
+the daily life of the community, it was often only the recollection
+of Sister Bernardine's serene, kind eyes which helped her to hold
+out. Somehow, somewhere out of this drastic, self-denying life Sister
+Bernardine had drawn peace and tranquillity of soul, and Magda clung to
+this thought when the hard rules of the sisterhood, the distastefulness
+of the tasks appointed her, and the frequent fasts ordained, chafed
+and fretted her until sometimes her whole soul seemed to rise up in
+rebellion against the very discipline she had craved.
+
+Most of her tasks were performed under the lynx eyes of Sister
+Agnetia, an elderly and sour-visaged sister to whom Magda had taken
+an instinctive dislike from the outset. The Mother Superior she could
+tolerate. She was severe and uncompromising. But she was at least
+honest. There was no doubting the bedrock genuineness of her
+disciplinary ardour, harsh and merciless though it might appear. But
+with Sister Agnetia, Magda was always sensible of the personal venom of
+a little mind vested with authority beyond its deserts, and she resented
+her dictation accordingly. And equally accordingly, it seemed to fall
+always to her lot to work under Sister Agnetia's supervision.
+
+Catherine had been quick enough to detect Magda's detestation of this
+particular sister and to use it as a further means of discipline. It was
+necessary that Magda's pride and vanity should be humbled, and Catherine
+saw to it that they were. It was assuredly by the Will of Heaven that
+the child of Diane Wielitzska had been led to her very doors, and to
+the subject of her chastening Catherine brought much thought and
+discrimination. _"If you hurt people enough you can make them good."_
+It had been her brother's bitter creed and it was hers. Pain, in
+Catherine's idea, was the surest means of chastening, and Magda was
+to remember her year at the sisterhood by two things--by the deadly,
+unbearable monotony of its daily routine and by her first acquaintance
+with actual bodily pain.
+
+Her health had always been magnificent, and--with the exception of the
+trivial punishments of childhood and those few moments when she was
+sitting for the picture of Circe--physical suffering was unknown to her.
+The penances, therefore, which Catherine appointed her--to kneel for
+a stated length of time until it seemed as though every muscle she
+possessed were stretched to breaking-point, to fast when her whole
+healthy young body craved for food, to be chastened with flagellum, a
+scourge of knotted cords--all these grew to be a torment almost beyond
+endurance.
+
+Almost! . . . Yet in the beginning the thought of Michael sustained her
+triumphantly.
+
+
+
+It was a curious sensation--that first stroke of the flagellum.
+
+As Magda, unversed in physical suffering, felt the cords shock against
+her flesh, she was conscious of a strange uplifting of spirit. This,
+then, this smarting, blinding thing called pain, was the force that
+would drive the will to do evil out of her soul.
+
+She waited expectantly--almost exultantly--for the second fall of the
+thongs. The interval between seemed endless. Sister Agnetia was very
+deliberate, pausing between each stroke. She knew to a nicety the value
+of anticipation as a remedial force in punishment.
+
+Again the cords descended on the bared shoulders. Magda winced away from
+them, shivering. For a moment Sister Agnetia's arm hung flaccid, the
+cords of the flagellum pendant and still.
+
+"Are you submitting to the discipline, Sister Penitentia?" came her
+voice. It was an unpleasant voice, suggestive of a knife that has been
+dipped in oil.
+
+Magda caught her breath.
+
+"Yes . . . yes . . . I submit myself."
+
+Dimly she felt that by means of this endurance she would win back
+Michael, cleanse herself to receive his love.
+
+"I submit," she repeated in a rapt whisper of self-surrender.
+
+Sister Agnetia's voice swam unctuously into her consciousness once more.
+
+"I thought you tried to avoid that last stroke. If you flinch from
+punishment it is not submission, but rebellion."
+
+Magda gripped her hands together and pressed her knees into the hard
+stone floor, her muscles taut with anticipation as she heard the soft
+whistle of the thongs cleaving the air.
+
+This time she bore the pang of anguish motionless, but the vision of
+Michael went out suddenly in a throbbing darkness of swift agony. Her
+shoulders felt red-hot. The pain shot up into her brain like fingers
+of flame. It clasped her whole body in a torment, and the ecstasy of
+self-surrender was lost in a sick groping after sheer endurance.
+
+The next stroke, crushing across that fever of intolerable suffering,
+wrung a hoarse moan from her dry lips. Her hands locked together till
+she felt as though their bones must crack with the strain as she waited
+for the next inexorable stroke.
+
+One moment! . . . Two! An eternity of waiting!
+
+"Go on!" she breathed. "Oh! . . . Be quick . . ." Her voice panted.
+
+No movement answered her. Unable to endure the suspense, she
+straightened her bowed shoulders and turned in convulsive appeal to
+where she had glimpsed the flail-like rise and fall of Sister Agnetia's
+serge-clad arm.
+
+There was no one there! The bare, cell-like chamber was empty, save
+for herself. Sister Agnetia had stolen away, completing the penance of
+physical pain by the refinement of anguish embodied in those hideous
+moments of mental dread.
+
+Magda almost fancied she could hear an oily chuckle outside the door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THOSE THAT WERE LEFT BEHIND
+
+For the first month or two after Magda's departure Gillian found that
+she had her hands full in settling up various business and personal
+matters which had been left with loose ends. She was frankly glad
+to discover that there were so many matters requiring her attention;
+otherwise the blank occasioned in her life by Magda's absence would have
+been almost unendurable.
+
+The two girls had grown very much into each other's hearts during the
+years they had shared together, and when friends part, no matter how big
+a wrench the separation may mean to the one who goes, there is a special
+kind of sadness reserved for the one who is left behind. For the one who
+sets out there are fresh faces, new activities in store. Even though
+the new life adventured upon may not prove to be precisely a bed of
+thornless roses, the pricking of the thorns provides distraction to the
+mind from the sheer, undiluted pain of separation.
+
+But for Gillian, left behind at Friars' Holm, there remained nothing
+but an hourly sense of loss added to that crushing, inevitable flatness
+which succeeds a crisis of any kind.
+
+Nor did a forlorn Coppertop's reiterated inquiries as to how soon the
+Fairy Lady might be expected back again help to mend matters.
+
+Lady Arabella's grief was expressed in a characteristically prickly
+fashion.
+
+"Young people don't seem to know the first thing about love nowadays,"
+she observed with the customary scathing contempt of one age for
+another.
+
+In _my_ young days! Ah! there will never be times like those again! We
+are all quite sure of it as our young days recede into the misty past.
+
+"If you loved, you loved," pursued Lady Arabella crisply. "And the death
+of half a dozen sisters wouldn't have been allowed to interfere with the
+proceedings."
+
+Gillian smiled a little.
+
+"It wasn't only that. It was Michael's bitter disappointment in Magda,
+I think, quite as much as the fact that, indirectly, he held her
+responsible for June's death."
+
+"It's ridiculous to try and foist Mrs. Storran's death on to Magda,"
+fumed Lady Arabella restively. "If she hadn't the physical health to
+have a good, hearty baby successfully, she shouldn't have attempted
+it. That's all! . . . And then those two idiots--Magda and Michael! Of
+course he must needs shoot off abroad, and equally of course she must
+be out of the way in a sisterhood when he comes rushing back--as he will
+do!"--with a grim smile.
+
+"He hasn't done yet," Gillian pointed out.
+
+"I give him precisely six months, my dear, before he finds out that,
+sister or no sister, he can't live without Magda. Michael Quarrington's
+got too much good red blood in his veins to live the life of a
+hermit. He's a man, thank goodness, not a mystical dreamer like Hugh
+Vallincourt. And he'll come back to his mate as surely as the sun will
+rise to-morrow."
+
+"I wish I felt as confident as you do."
+
+"I wish I could make sure of putting my hand on Magda when he comes,"
+grumbled Lady Arabella. "That's the hitch I'm afraid of! If only she
+hadn't been so precipitate--only waited a bit for him to come back to
+her."
+
+"I don't agree with you," rapped out Gillian smartly. "Women are much
+too ready to do the patient Griselda stunt. I think"--with a vicious
+little nod of her brown head--"it would do Michael all the good in
+the world to come back and want Magda--want her _badly_. And find he
+couldn't get her! So there!"
+
+Lady Arabella regarded her with astonishment, then broke into a
+delighted chuckle.
+
+"Upon my word! If a tame dove had suddenly turned round and pecked at
+me, I couldn't have been more surprised! I didn't know you had so much
+of the leaven of malice and wickedness in you, Gillian!"
+
+Gillian, a little flushed and feeling, in truth, rather surprised at
+herself for her sudden heat, smiled back at her.
+
+"But I should have thought your opinion would have been very much the
+same as mine. I never expected you'd want Magda to sit down and twiddle
+her thumbs till Michael chose to come back to her."
+
+Lady Arabella sighed.
+
+"I don't. Not really. Only I want them to be happy," she said a little
+sadly. "Love is such a rare thing--love like theirs. And it's hard that
+Magda should lose the beauty and happiness of it all because of mistakes
+she made before she found herself, so to speak."
+
+Gillian nodded soberly. Lady Arabella had voiced precisely her own
+feeling in the matter. It _was_ hard! And yet it was only the fulfilment
+of the immutable law: _Who breaks, pays_.
+
+Gillian's thoughts tried to pierce the dim horizon. Perhaps all the pain
+and mistakes and misunderstandings of which this workaday world is so
+full are, after all, only a part of the beautiful tapestry which the
+patient Fingers of God are weaving--a dark and sombre warp, giving value
+to the gold and silver and jewelled threads of the weft which shall
+cross it. When the ultimate fabric is woven, and the tissue released
+from the loom, there will surely be no meaningless thread, sable or
+silver, in the consummated pattern.
+
+A few weeks after Magda's departure Gillian received a letter from Dan
+Storran, reminding her of her promise to let him see her and asking if
+she would lunch with him somewhere in town.
+
+It was with somewhat mixed feelings that she met him again. He was much
+altered--so changed from the hot-headed, primitive countryman she
+had first known. Some chance remark of hers enlightened him as to her
+confused sense of the difference in him, and he smiled across at her.
+
+"I've been through the mill, you see," he explained quietly, "since the
+Stockleigh days."
+
+The words seemed almost like a key unlocking the door that stands fast
+shut between one soul and another. He talked to her quite simply and
+frankly after that, telling her how, after he had left England, the
+madness in his blood had driven him whither it listed. There had been
+no depths to which he had not sunk, no wild living from which he had
+recoiled.
+
+And then had come the news of June's death. Not tenderly conveyed, but
+charged to his account by her sister with a fierce bitterness that
+had suddenly torn the veil from his eyes. Followed days and nights of
+agonised remorse, and after that the slow, steady, infinitely difficult
+climb back from the depths into which he had allowed himself to sink
+to a plane of life where, had June still lived, he would not have been
+ashamed to meet her eyes nor utterly unworthy to take her hand.
+
+"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," he ended. "But she would
+have wished it. I can never tell her now how I regret, never ask her
+forgiveness. And this was the only thing I could do to atone."
+
+Gillian's eyes were very soft as she answered:
+
+"I expect she knows, Dan, and is glad."
+
+After a moment she went on thoughtfully.
+
+"It's rather the same kind of feeling that has driven Magda into a
+sisterhood, I think--the desire to do something definite, something
+tangible, as a sort of reparation. And a woman is much more limited that
+way than a man."
+
+Storran's mouth hardened. Any mention of Magda would bring that look of
+concentrated hardness into his face, and as the months went on, giving
+Gillian a closer insight into the man, she began to realise that he
+had never forgiven Magda for her share in the ruin of his life. On this
+point he was as hard as nether millstone. He even seemed to derive a
+certain satisfaction from the knowledge that she was paying, and paying
+heavily, for all the harm she had wrought.
+
+It troubled Gillian--this incalculable hardness in Dan's nature
+towards one woman. She found him kindly and tolerant in his outlook
+on life--with the understanding tolerance of the man who has dragged
+himself out of the pit by his own sheer force of will, and who, knowing
+the power of temptation, is ready to give a helping hand to others who
+may have fallen by the way. So that his relentlessness towards Magda was
+the more inexplicable.
+
+More than once she tried to soften his attitude, tried to make him
+realise something of the conflicting influences both of temperament and
+environment which had helped to make Magda what she was. But he remained
+stubbornly unmoved.
+
+"No punishment is too severe for a woman who has done what Magda
+Vallincourt has done. She has wrecked lives simply in order to gratify
+her vanity and insensate instinct for conquest."
+
+Gillian shook her head.
+
+"No, you're wrong. You _won't_ understand! It's all that went
+before--her parents' mistakes--that should be blamed for half she's
+done. I think you're very merciless, Dan."
+
+"Perhaps I am--in this case. Frankly, if I could lessen her punishment
+by lifting my little finger--I wouldn't do it."
+
+Yet this same man when, as often happened, he took Gillian and Coppertop
+for a run into the country in his car, was as simple and considerate
+and kindly as a man could be. Coppertop adored him, and, as Gillian
+reflected, the love of children is rarely misplaced. Some instinct leads
+them to divine unfailingly which is gold and which dross.
+
+The car was a recent acquisition. As Storran himself expressed it,
+rather bitterly: "Now that I can't buy a ha'p'orth of happiness with the
+money, my luck has turned." He explained to Gillian that after he
+had left England he had sold his farm in Devonshire, and that a
+lucky investment of the capital thus realised had turned him into a
+comparatively rich man.
+
+"Even when I was making ducks and drakes of my life generally, I didn't
+seem to make a mistake over money matters. If I played cards, I won; if
+I backed a horse, he romped in first; it I bought shares, they jumped up
+immediately."
+
+"What a pity!" replied Gillian ingenuously. "If only your financial
+affairs hadn't prospered, you'd have had to settle down and
+_work_--instead of--of----"
+
+"Playing the fool," he supplemented. "No, I don't suppose I should.
+I hadn't learned--then--that work is the only panacea, the one big
+remedy."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"I've learned a lot of things in the last two years," quietly. "And I'm
+still learning."
+
+As the months went on, Dan's friendship began to mean a good deal
+to Gillian. It had come into her life just at a time when she was
+intolerably lonely, and quite unconsciously she was learning to turn to
+him for advice on all the large and small affairs of daily life as they
+came cropping up.
+
+She was infinitely glad of his counsel with regard to Coppertop, who was
+growing to the age when the want of a father--of a man's broad outlook
+and a man's restraining hand--became an acute lack in a boy's life. And
+to Gillian, who had gallantly faced the world alone since the day
+when death had abruptly ended her "year of utter happiness," it was
+inexpressibly sweet to be once more shielded and helped in all the
+big and little ways in which a man--even if he was only a staunch
+man-friend--can shield and help a woman.
+
+It seemed as though Dan Storran always contrived to interpose his big
+person betwixt her and the sharp corners of life, and she began to
+wonder, with a faint, indefinable dread, what must become of their
+friendship when Magda returned to Friars' Holm. Feeling as he did
+towards the dancer, it would be impossible for him to come there any
+more, and somehow a snatched hour here and there--a lunch together, or
+a motor-spin into the country--would be a very poor substitute for his
+almost daily visits to the old Queen Anne house tucked away behind its
+high walls at Hampstead.
+
+Once she broached the subject to him rather diffidently.
+
+"My dear"--he had somehow dropped into the use of the little term of
+endearment, and Gillian found that she liked it and knew that she would
+miss it if it were suddenly erased from his speech--"my dear, why cross
+bridges till we come to them? Perhaps, when the time comes, there'll be
+no bridge to cross."
+
+Gillian glanced at him swiftly.
+
+"Do you mean that she--that you're feeling less bitter towards her,
+Dan?" she asked eagerly.
+
+He smiled down at her whimsically.
+
+"I don't quite know. But I know one thing--it's very difficult to be a
+lot with you and keep one's anger strictly up to concert pitch."
+
+Gillian made no answer. She was too wise--with that intuitive wisdom of
+woman--to force the pace. If Dan were beginning to relent ever so little
+towards Magda--why, then, her two best friends might yet come together
+in comradeship and learn to forget the bitter past. The gentle hand
+of Time would be laid on old wounds and its touch would surely bring
+healing. But Gillian would no more have thought of trying to hasten
+matters than she would have tried to force open the close-curled petals
+of a flower in bud.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE RETURN
+
+Magda slipped through the tall doorway in the wall which marked the
+abode of the Sisters of Penitence and stood once more on the pavement of
+the busy street. The year was over, and just as once before the clicking
+of the latch had seemed to signify the end of everything, so now it
+sounded a quite different note--of new beginnings, of release--freedom!
+
+Three months prior to the completion of her allotted span at the
+sisterhood Magda had had a serious attack of illness. The hard and
+rigorous life had told upon her physically, while the unaccustomed
+restrictions, the constant obedience exacted, had gone far towards
+assisting in the utter collapse of nerves already frayed by the strain
+of previous happenings.
+
+Probably her fierce determination to go through with her self-elected
+expiation, no matter what the cost, had a good deal to do with her
+ultimate breakdown. With unswerving resolution she had forced herself to
+obedience, to the performance of her appointed tasks in spite of their
+distastefulness; and behind the daily work and discipline there had been
+all the time the ceaseless, aching longing for the man who had loved her
+and who had gone away.
+
+It was not surprising, therefore, that the tired body and nerves at last
+gave way, and in the delirium of brain fever Magda revealed the whole
+pitiful story of the mistakes and misunderstandings which had brought
+her in desperation to the Sisters of Penitence.
+
+Fortunately it was upon Sister Bernardine that the major part of the
+nursing devolved, and it was into her gentle ears that Magda unwittingly
+poured out the history of the past. Bit by bit, from the ramblings of
+delirium, Sister Bernardine pieced together the story, and her shy,
+virginal heart found itself throbbing in overflowing sympathy--a
+sympathy that sought expression in the tender care she gave her patient.
+
+During the long, slow days of convalescence Magda, very helpless and
+dependent, had gradually learned to love the soft-footed little Sister
+who came and went throughout her illness--to love her as she would not,
+at one time, have believed it possible she could grow to love anyone
+behind the high grey walls which encircled the sisterhood.
+
+If the past year had taught her nothing else, it had at least taught
+her that goodness and badness are very evenly distributed. She had found
+both good and bad behind those tall grey walls just as she had found
+them in the great free world outside.
+
+Her last memory, as her first, was of Sister Bernardine's kind eyes.
+
+"Some of us find happiness in the world," the little Sister had said at
+parting, "and some of us out of it. I think you were meant to find yours
+in the world."
+
+It was Magda's own choice to leave the sisterhood on foot. She had
+nothing to take with her in the way of luggage, and she smiled a little
+as she realised that, for the moment, she possessed actually nothing but
+the clothes she stood up in--the same in which she had quitted Friars'
+Holm a year ago, and which, on departure, she had substituted for the
+grey veil and habit she was discarding.
+
+At first, as she made her way along the street, she found the continuous
+ebb and flow of the crowded thoroughfare somewhat confusing after the
+absolute calm and quiet of the preceding months, but very soon the
+Londoner's familiar love of London and of its ceaseless, kaleidoscopic
+movement returned to her, and with it the requisite poise to thread her
+way through the throngs that trod the pavements.
+
+Then her eyes turned to the shop windows--Catherine's stern discipline
+had completely failed to stamp out the eternal feminine in her
+niece--and as they absorbed the silken stuffs and rainbow colours that
+gleamed and glowed behind the thick plateglass, she became suddenly
+conscious of her own attire--of its cut and style. When last she had
+worn it, it had been the final word in fashionable raiment. Now it was
+out of date. The Wielitzska, whose clothes the newspapers had loved to
+chronicle, in a frock in which any one of the "young ladies" behind the
+counters of these self-same shops into which she was gazing would have
+declined to appear! She almost laughed out loud. And then, quick on the
+heels of her desire to laugh, came a revulsion of feeling. This little
+incident, just the disparity between the fashion of her own clothes and
+the fashion prevailing at the moment, served to make her realise, with
+a curious clarity of vision, the irrevocable passage of time. A year--a
+slice out of her life! What other differences would it ultimately show?
+
+Something else was already making itself apparent--the fact that none
+of the passers-by seemed to recognise her. In the old days, when she had
+been dancing constantly at the Imperial Theatre, she had grown so used
+to seeing the sudden look of interest and recognition spring into
+the eyes of one or another, to the little eager gesture that nudged
+a companion, pointing out the famous dancer as she passed along the
+street, that she had thought nothing of it--had hardly consciously
+noticed it. Now she missed it--missed it extraordinarily.
+
+A sudden sense of intense loneliness swept over her--the loneliness
+of the man who has been cast on a desert island, only returning to
+his fellows after many weary months of absence. She felt she could not
+endure to waste another moment before she saw again the beloved faces of
+Gillian and Virginie and felt once more the threads of the old familiar
+life quiver and vibrate between her fingers.
+
+With a quick, imperative gesture she hailed a taxi and was whirled away
+towards Hampstead.
+
+
+
+The first excited greetings and embraces were over. The flurry of
+broken, scattered phrases, half-tearfully, half-smilingly welcoming her
+back, had spent themselves, and now old Virginie, drawing away, regarded
+her with bewildered, almost frightened eyes.
+
+"_Mais, mon dieu_!" she muttered. "_Mon dieu_!" Then with a sudden cry:
+"Cherie! Cherie! What have they done to thee? What have they done?"
+
+"Done to me?" repeated Magda in puzzled tones. "Oh, I see! I'm thinner.
+I've been ill, you know."
+
+"It is not--that! Hast thou looked in the glass? Oh, my poor----" And
+the old Frenchwoman incontinently began to weep.
+
+A glass! Magda had not seen her own reflection in a looking-glass since
+the day she left Friars' Holm. There were no mirrors hanging on the
+walls of the house where the Sisters of Penitence dwelt. Filled with a
+nameless, inexplicable terror, she turned and walked out of the room.
+There was an old Chippendale mirror hanging at the further end, but she
+avoided it. Something in the askance expression of Virginie's eyes had
+frightened her so that she dared not challenge what the mirror might
+give back until she was alone.
+
+Once outside the door she flew upstairs to her own room and, locking the
+door, went to the glass. A stifled exclamation of dismay escaped her.
+She had not dreamed a year could compass such an alteration! Then, very
+deliberately, she removed her hat and, standing where the light fell
+full upon her, she examined her reflection. After a long moment she
+spoke, whisperingly, beneath her breath.
+
+"Why--why--it isn't me, at all. I'm ugly. Ugly----"
+
+With a quick movement she lifted her arm, screening her face against it
+for a moment.
+
+Her startled eyes had exaggerated the change absurdly. Nevertheless,
+that a change had taken place was palpable. The arresting radiance, the
+vivid physical perfection of her, had gone. She was thin, and with the
+thinness had come lines--lines of fatigue, and other, more lasting lines
+born of endurance and self-control. The pliant symmetry of her figure,
+too, was marred. She stooped a little; the gay, free carriage of her
+shoulders was gone. The heavy manual work at the sisterhood, of which,
+in common with the others, she had done her share, had taken its toll
+of her suppleness and grace, and the hands she extended in front of her,
+regarding them distastefully, were roughened and worn by the unwonted
+usage to which they had been subjected. Her hair, so long, hidden from
+the light and air by the veil she had worn, was flaccid and lustreless.
+Only her eyes remained unchangedly beautiful. Splendid and miserable,
+they stared back at the reflection which the mirror yielded.
+
+
+
+It was a long time before Magda reappeared downstairs, so long, indeed,
+that Gillian was beginning to grow nervously uneasy. When at last she
+came, she was curiously quiet and responded to all Gillian's attempts
+at conversation with a dull, flat indifference that was strangely at
+variance with the spontaneously happy excitement which had attended the
+first few moments after her arrival.
+
+Gillian was acutely conscious of the difference in her manner, but even
+she, with all her intuition, failed to attribute it to its rightful
+cause. To her, Magda was so indubitably, essentially the Magda she loved
+that she was hardly sensible of that shadowing of her radiant beauty
+which had revealed itself with a merciless clarity to the dancer
+herself. And such change as she observed she ascribed to recent illness.
+
+Meanwhile Magda got through that first evening at Friars' Holm as best
+she might. The hours seemed interminable. She was aching for night to
+come, so that she might be alone with her thoughts--alone to realise and
+face this new thing which had befallen her.
+
+She had lost her beauty! The one precious gift she had to give Michael,
+that lover of all beauty! . . . The knowledge seemed to beat against her
+brain, throbbing and pulsing like a wound, while she made a pretence
+at doing justice to the little dinner party, which had been especially
+concocted for her under Virginie's watchful eye, and responded in some
+sort to Coppertop's periodic outbreaks of jubilation over her return.
+
+But the moment of release came at length. A final good-night kiss
+to Gillian on the landing outside her bedroom door, and then a
+nerve-racking hour while Virginie fussed over her, undressing her and
+preparing her for bed with the same tender care she had devoted to the
+_bebe_ she had nursed and tended more than twenty years ago.
+
+It was over at last.
+
+"Sleep well!" And Virginie switched off the electric light as she
+pattered out of the room, leaving Magda alone in the cool dark, with the
+silken softness of crepe de chine once more caressing her slender limbs,
+and the fineness of lavender-scented linen smooth against her cheek.
+
+The ease, and comfort, and wellbeing of it all! Yet this first
+night, passed in the familiar luxury which had lapped her round since
+childhood, was a harder, more bitter night than any of the preceding
+three hundred and sixty-five she had spent tossing weary, aching limbs
+on a lumpy straw mattress with a coarse brown woollen blanket drawn up
+beneath her chin, vexing her satin skin.
+
+For each of those nights had counted as a step onwards along the hard
+road that was to lead her back eventually to Michael. Now she knew that
+they had all been endured in vain. Spiritually her self-elected year of
+discipline might have fitted her to be the wife of "Saint Michel."
+But the undimmed physical beauty and charm which Michael, the man and
+artist, would crave in the woman he loved was gone.
+
+The recognition of these things rushed over her, overwhelming her with a
+sense of blank and utter failure. It meant the end of everything. As
+far as she was concerned, life henceforward held nothing more. There
+was nothing to hope for in the future--except to hope that Michael might
+never see her again! At least, she would like to feel that his memory
+of her--of the Wielitzska whose lithe grace and beauty had swept him
+headlong even against the tide of his convictions--would remain for ever
+unmarred.
+
+It was a rather touching human little weakness--the weakness and
+prayer of many a woman who has lost her lover. . . . Let him remember
+her--always--as she was before the radiance of youth faded, before grief
+or pain blurred the perfection that had been hers!
+
+Perhaps for Magda the wish was even stronger, more insistent by reason
+of the fact that her beauty had been of so fine and rare a quality,
+setting her in a way apart from other women.
+
+With the instinct of the wounded wild creature she longed to hide--to
+hide herself from Michael, so that she might never see in his eyes that
+look of quickly veiled disappointment which she knew would spring into
+them as he realised the change in her. She felt she could not bear that.
+It would be like a sword-thrust through her heart. . . . Better if she
+had never left the sisterhood!
+
+Suddenly every nerve of her tautened. Supposing--supposing she returned
+there, never to emerge again? No chance encounter could ever then bring
+her within sight or sound of Michael. She would be spared watching
+the old, eager look of admiration fade suddenly from the grey eyes she
+loved.
+
+Hour after hour she lay there, dry-eyed, staring into the darkness. And
+with the dawn her decision was taken.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+AN UNANSWERED LETTER
+
+"You shan't do it!"
+
+When first Magda had bruited her idea of rejoining the sisterhood--the
+decision which had crystallised out of the long black hours of the night
+of her return to Friars' Holm--Gillian had merely laughed the notion
+aside, attaching little importance to it. But now, a week later, when
+Magda reverted to the subject with a certain purposeful definiteness,
+she grew suddenly frightened.
+
+"Do you want to throw away every possibility of happiness?" she demanded
+indignantly. "Just because Michael isn't here, waiting for you on the
+doorstep, so to speak, you decide to rush off and make it impossible for
+him ever to see you again!"
+
+Magda kept her head bent, refusing to meet the other's eyes.
+
+"I don't want him to see me now," she said shrinkingly. "I'm not--not
+the Magda he knew any longer."
+
+"That's an absurd exaggeration. You're not looking very well, that's
+all," retorted Gillian with her usual practical common sense. "You can't
+suppose that would make any difference to Michael! It didn't make any to
+me. I'm only too glad to have you back at any price!"
+
+Magda's faint responsive smile was touched with that bitter knowledge
+which is the heritage of the woman who has been much loved for her
+beauty.
+
+"You're a woman, Gillyflower," she said. "And Michael is not only a
+man--but an artist. Men don't want you when the bloom has been brushed
+off. And you know how Michael worships beauty! He's bound to--being an
+artist."
+
+"I think you're morbidly self-conscious," declared Gillian firmly. "I
+suppose it's the result of being out of the world for so long. You've
+lost all sense of proportion. You're quite lovely enough, now, to
+satisfy most people. You only look rather tired and worn out."
+
+But Magda's face remained clouded.
+
+"But even that isn't--all," she answered. "It's--oh, it's a heap of
+things! Somehow I thought when I came back I should see the road clear.
+But it isn't. It's all shadowed--just as it was before. I thought I
+should have so much to give Michael now. And I haven't anything. I don't
+think I ever quite realised before that, however much you try to atone,
+you can never _undo_ the harm you've done. But I've had time to think
+things out while I was with the Sisters."
+
+"And if you go back to them you'll have time to do nothing but think for
+the rest of your life!" flashed back Gillian.
+
+"Oh, no!" Magda spoke quickly. "I shouldn't return under a vow of
+penitence. There are working sisters attached to the community who go
+about amongst the sick and poor in the slums. I should join as a working
+sister if I went back."
+
+Gillian stared at her in amazement. Magda devoting her life to good
+works seemed altogether out of the picture! She began to feel that
+the whole affair was getting too complicated for her to handle, and as
+usual, when in a difficulty, she put the matter up to Lady Arabella.
+
+The latter, with her accumulated wisdom of seventy years, saw more
+clearly than the younger woman, although even she hardly understood
+that sense of the deadly emptiness and failure of her life which had
+overwhelmed Magda since her return to Friars' Holm. But the old woman
+realised that she had passed through a long period of strain, and that,
+now the reaction had come, the Vallincourt blood in her might drive her
+into almost any extreme of conduct.
+
+"If only Michael were on the spot!" she burst out irritably. "I own I'm
+disappointed in the man! I was so sure six months would bring him to his
+senses."
+
+"I know," assented Gillian miserably. "It's--it's--the most hopeless
+state of things imaginable!"
+
+Lady Arabella's interview with Magda herself proved unproductive.
+
+"Have you written to Michael?" she demanded.
+
+"Written to him?" A flash of the old defiant spirit sounded in Magda's
+voice. "No, nor shall I."
+
+"Don't be a fool, child. He's probably learned something during this
+last twelve months--as well as you. Don't let pride get in your way
+now."
+
+"It's not pride. Marraine, I never knew--I never thought----Look at me!
+What have I to give Michael now? Have you forgotten that he's an artist
+and that beauty means everything to him?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"'Well!'" Magda held out her hands. "Can't you see that I'm changed?
+. . . Michael wouldn't want me to pose for him as Circe now!"
+
+"He wanted you for a wife--not a model, my dear. You can buy models at
+so much the hour."
+
+"Oh, Marraine! You won't understand----"
+
+Lady Arabella took the slender, work-roughened hands in hers.
+
+"Perhaps I understand better than you think," she said quietly. "There
+are other ways of assessing life than merely in terms of beauty. And
+you can believe this, too: you've lost nothing from the point of view
+of looks that a few months of normal healthy life won't set right.
+Moreover, if you'd grown as plain as a pikestaff, I don't think Michael
+would care twopence! He's an artist, I know. He can't help that, but
+he's a man first. And he's a man who knows how to love. Promise me
+one thing," she went on insistently. "Promise that you'll do nothing
+definite--yet. Not, at least, without consulting me."
+
+Magda hesitated.
+
+"Very well. I'll do nothing without--telling you--first."
+
+That was the utmost concession she would make, and with that her
+godmother had to be content.
+
+The same evening a letter in Lady Arabella's spirited, angular
+handwriting sped on its way to Paris.
+
+
+"If you're not absolutely determined to ruin both your own and Magda's
+lives, my dear Michael, put your pride and your ridiculous principles
+in your pocket and come back to England. I don't happen to be a
+grandmother, but I'm quite old enough for the job, so you might pay my
+advice due respect by taking it."
+
+
+
+"I thought I was shelved altogether."
+
+Thus Dan Storran, rather crossly, when, a day or two later, he met
+Gillian by appointment for lunch at their favourite little restaurant in
+Soho. It was the first time she had been able to fix up a meeting with
+him since Magda's return, as naturally his customary visits to Friars'
+Holm were out of the question now.
+
+"Well, you expected my time to be pretty well occupied the first week or
+two after Magda came back, didn't you?" countered Gillian.
+
+She smiled as she spoke and proceeded leisurely to draw off her gloves,
+while Storran signalled to a waiter.
+
+She was really very glad to see him again. There was something so solid
+and dependable about him, and she felt it would be very comforting to
+confide in him her anxieties concerning Magda. Not that she anticipated
+he would have any particular compassion to bestow upon the latter.
+But she was femininely aware that inasmuch as Magda's affairs were
+disturbing her peace of mind, he would listen to them with sympathetic
+attention and probably, out of the depths of his man's consciousness,
+produce some quite sound and serviceable advice.
+
+Being a wise woman, however, she did not launch out into immediate
+explanation, but waited for him to work off his own individual grumble
+at not having seen her recently, trusting to the perfectly cooked little
+lunch to exercise a tranquillising effect.
+
+It was not until they had reached the cigarette and coffee stage of the
+proceedings that she allowed a small, well-considered sigh to escape her
+and drift away into the silence that had fallen between them. Storran
+glanced across at her with suddenly observant eyes.
+
+"What is it?" he asked quickly. "You look worried. Are you?"
+
+She nodded silently.
+
+"And here I've been grousing away about my own affairs all the time! Why
+didn't you stop me?"
+
+"You know I'm interested in your affairs."
+
+"And I'm interested in yours. What's bothering you, Gillian? Tell me."
+
+"Magda," said Gillian simply.
+
+She was rather surprised to observe that Dan's face did not, as usual,
+darken at the mere mention of Magda's name.
+
+"I saw her the other day," he said quickly. "I was in the Park and she
+drove by."
+
+Gillian felt that there was something more to come. She waited in
+silence.
+
+"She has altered very much," he went on bluntly. Then, after a moment:
+"I felt--sorry for her."
+
+"_You_ did, Dan?" Gillian's face lit up. "I'm glad. I've always hated
+your being so down on her."
+
+With an abrupt movement he jabbed the glowing stub of his cigarette on
+to an ash-tray, pressing it down until it went out. Then, taking out his
+case, he lit another before replying.
+
+"I shan't be 'down on her' any more," he said at last. "I never guessed
+she'd felt things--like that."
+
+"No. No one did. I don't suppose even Magda herself knew she could ever
+go through all she has done just for an ideal."
+
+Then very quietly, very simply and touchingly, she told him the story of
+all that had happened, of Magda's final intention of becoming a working
+member of the sisterhood, and of Lady Arabella's letter summoning
+Michael back to England.
+
+"But even when he comes," added Gillian, "unless he is very
+careful--unless he loves her in the biggest way a man can love, so that
+_nothing else matters_, he'll lose her. He'll have to convince her that
+she means just that to him."
+
+Storran was silent for a long time, and when at last he spoke it was
+with an obvious effort.
+
+"Listen," he said. "There's something you don't know. Perhaps when I've
+told you, you won't have anything more to say to me--I don't know."
+
+Gillian opened her lips in quick disclaimer, but he motioned her to be
+silent.
+
+"Wait," he said. "Wait till you've heard what I have to say. You think,
+and Magda thinks, that June died of a broken heart--at least, that the
+shock of all that miserable business down at Stockleigh helped to kill
+her."
+
+"Yes." Gillian assented mechanically when he paused.
+
+"I thought so, too, once. It was what June's sister told me--told
+everyone. But it wasn't true. She believed it, I know--probably believes
+it to this day. But, thank God, it wasn't true!"
+
+"How can you tell? All that strain and heart-break just at a time when
+she wasn't strong. Oh, Dan! We can never be sure--_sure_!"
+
+"I _am_ sure. Quite sure," he said steadily. "When I came to my senses
+out there in 'Frisco, I couldn't rest under that letter from June's
+sister. It burned into me like a red-hot iron. I was half-mad with
+pain, I think. I wrote to the doctor who had attended her, but I got no
+answer. Then I sailed for England, determined to find and see the man
+for myself. I found him--my letter had miscarried somehow--and he told
+me that June could not have lived. There were certain complications in
+her case which made it impossible. In fact, if she had been so happy
+that she had longed to live--and _tried_ to--it would only have made it
+harder for her, a rougher journey to travel. As it was, she went easily,
+without fighting death--letting go, without any effort, her hold on
+life."
+
+He ceased, and after a moment's silence Gillian spoke in strained,
+horror-stricken tones.
+
+"And you never told us! Oh! It was cruel of you, Dan! You would have
+spared Magda an infinity of self-reproach!"
+
+"I didn't want to spare her. I left her in ignorance on purpose. I
+wanted her to be punished--to suffer as she had made me suffer."
+
+There were tears in Gillian's eyes. It was terrible to her that Dan
+could be so bitter--so vengefully cruel. Yet she recognised that it had
+been but the natural outcome of the man's primitive nature to pay back
+good for good and evil for evil.
+
+"Then why do you tell me now?" she asked at last.
+
+"Why--because you've beaten me--you with your sweetness and courage and
+tolerance. You've taught me that retribution and punishment are best
+left in--more merciful Hands than ours."
+
+Gillian's hand went out to meet his.
+
+"Oh, Dan, I'm so glad!" she said simply.
+
+He kept her hand in his a moment, then released it gently.
+
+"Well, you can tell her now," he said awkwardly.
+
+"I?" Gillian smiled a little. "No. I want you to tell her. Don't you
+see, Dan"--as she sensed his impulse to refuse--"it will make all the
+difference in Magda if you and she are--are square with each other?
+She's overweighted. She's been carrying a bigger burden than she can
+bear. Michael comes first, of course, but there's been her treatment of
+you, as well. June, too. And--and other things. And it's crushing her.
+. . . No, you must tell her."
+
+"I will--if you say I must. But she won't forgive me easily."
+
+"I think she will. I think she'll understand just what made you do it.
+So now we'll go back to Friars' Holm together."
+
+An hour later Storran came slowly downstairs from the little room where
+he and Magda had met again for the first time since that moonlight night
+at Stockleigh--met, not as lovers, but as a man and woman who have
+each sinned and each learned, out of their sinning, how to pardon and
+forgive.
+
+Storran was very quiet and grave when presently he found himself alone
+with Gillian.
+
+"We men will never understand women," he said. "There's an angel hidden
+away somewhere in every one of you." His mouth curved into a smile,
+half-sad, half-whimsical. "I've just found Magda's."
+
+
+
+Lady Arabella and Gillian, both feeling rather like conspirators, waited
+anxiously for a reply to the former's letter to Quarrington. But none
+came. The time slipped by until a fortnight had elapsed, and with the
+passage of each day their hearts sank lower.
+
+Neither of them believed that Michael would have utterly disregarded
+the letter, had he received it, but they feared that it might have
+miscarried, or that he might be travelling and so not receive it in
+time to prevent Magda's carrying out her avowed intention of becoming a
+working member of the sisterhood.
+
+Even though she knew now that at least June Storran's death need no
+longer be added to her account, she still adhered to her decision. As
+she had told Dan with a weary simplicity: "I'm glad. But it won't make
+any difference--to Michael and me. Too much water has run under the
+bridge. Love that is dead doesn't come to life again."
+
+Each day was hardening her resolve, and both Lady Arabella and
+Gillian--those two whose unselfish happiness was bound up in her
+own--were beginning to realise that it would be a race against time
+if she was to be saved from taking a step that would divide her from
+Michael as long as they both should live.
+
+At the end of a fortnight Gillian, driven to desperation, despatched a
+telegram to his Paris address: "Did you receive communication from Lady
+Arabella?" But it shared the fate of the letter, failing to elicit any
+reply. She allowed sufficient time to elapse to cover any ordinary delay
+in transit, then, unknown to Magda, taxied down to the house in Park
+Lane.
+
+"I want you to invite Magda to stay with you, please," she informed Lady
+Arabella abruptly.
+
+"Of course I will," she replied. "But why? You've got a reason."
+
+Gillian nodded.
+
+"Yes," she acknowledged quietly. "I'm going to Paris--to find Michael."
+
+Lady Arabella, whose high spirits had wilted a little in the face of
+the double disappointment regarding any answer from Quarrington, beamed
+satisfaction.
+
+"You blessed child!" she exclaimed. "I'd have gone myself, but my old
+body is so stiff with rheumatism that I don't believe they'd get me on
+board the boat except in an ambulance!"
+
+"Well, I'm going," said Gillian. "Only the point is, Magda mustn't know.
+If she thought I was going off in pursuit of Michael I believe she'd
+lock me up in the cellar. She intends never to let him see her again.
+Melrose will manage about the letters, and somehow you've got to prevent
+Magda from coming to Friars' Holm and finding out that I'm not there."
+
+"I'll take her away with me," declared Lady Arabella.
+"Rheumatism--Harrogate. It's quite simple."
+
+Gillian heaved a sigh of relief.
+
+"Yes. That would be a good plan," she agreed. "Then I'd let you know
+when we should arrive--"
+
+"'We?'"
+
+"Michael and I. I'm not coming back without him. And you could bring
+Magda straight back to town with you."
+
+Lady Arabella's keen old eyes searched her face.
+
+"You sound very certain of success. Supposing you find Michael still
+unforgiving--and he refuses to return with you?"
+
+"I believe in Michael," replied Gillian steadily. "He's made mistakes.
+People in love do. But when he knows all that Magda has endured--for his
+sake, really--why, he'll come back. I'm sure of it."
+
+"I don't know, my dear. _I_ was sure he would come back within six
+months. But, you see, I was wrong. Men are kittle cattle--and often
+very slow to arrive at the intrinsic value and significance of things.
+A woman jumps to it while a man is crawling round on his hands and knees
+in the dark, looking for it with a match."
+
+Gillian laughed and got up to go, and Lady Arabella--whose rheumatism
+was quite real at the moment--rose rather painfully and hobbled down the
+room beside her, her thin, delicate old hand resting on the silver knob
+of a tall, ebony walking-stick.
+
+"Now, remember," urged Gillian. "Magda mustn't have the least suspicion
+Michael may be coming back--or she'd be off into her slums before you
+could stop her. _Whatever happens_, you've got to prevent her rushing
+back to the Sisters of Penitence."
+
+"Only over my dead body, my dear," Lady Arabella assured her
+determinedly. "She shan't go any other way."
+
+So Gillian returned to Friars' Holm bearing with her a note from Lady
+Arabella in which she asked her god-daughter to pay her a visit. In it,
+however, the wily old lady made no mention of her further idea of going
+to Harrogate, lest it should militate against an acceptance of the
+invitation. Magda demurred a little at first, but Gillian, suddenly
+endowed with diplomacy worthy of a Machiavelli, pointed out that if she
+really had any intention of ultimately withdrawing into a community the
+least she could do was to give her godmother the happiness of spending a
+few days with her.
+
+"She will only urge me to give up the idea all the time," protested
+Magda. "And I've quite made up my mind. The sooner I can get away
+from--from everything"--looking round her with desperate, haunted
+eyes--"the better it will be."
+
+Gillian's impulse to combat her decision to rejoin the sisterhood died
+on her lips stillborn. It was useless to argue the matter. There was
+only one person in the world who could save Magda from herself, and that
+was Michael. The main point was to concentrate on getting him back to
+England, rather than waste her energies upon what she knew beforehand
+must prove a fruitless argument.
+
+"I'll go to Marraine for a couple of nights, anyway," said Magda at
+last. "After that, I want to make arrangements for my reception into the
+sisterhood."
+
+Gillian returned no answer. She felt her heart contract at the quiet
+decision in Magda's voice, but she pinned her faith on Lady Arabella's
+ability to hold her, somehow, till she herself had accomplished her
+errand to Paris.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+AGAINST TIME
+
+Gillian, dashing headlong into Victoria Station, encountered Storran
+sauntering leisurely out of it, a newspaper under his arm.
+
+"Where are you off to?" he demanded, stopping abruptly. "You look as if
+you were in a hurry."
+
+"I am. Don't stop me. I'm catching the boat-train."
+
+Storran pulled out his watch as he turned and fell into step beside her.
+
+"Then you've got a good half-hour to spare. No hurry," he returned
+placidly.
+
+Gillian glanced at the watch on her wrist.
+
+"Are you sure?" she asked doubtfully. "If so, my watch must be
+altogether wrong!"
+
+"Unbeliever! Come and look at the clock. And, incidentally, give me that
+suit-case."
+
+She yielded up the case obediently and, having verified the time,
+proceeded towards the platform at a more reasonable gait.
+
+Storran, his long legs leisurely keeping pace with her shorter ones,
+smiled down at her.
+
+"And now, for the second time of asking, where are you off to?"
+
+"I'm going to France--to fetch Michael."
+
+He gave a quick exclamation--whether of surprise or disapproval she was
+not quite sure.
+
+"You haven't heard from him, then?"
+
+"No. And unless something happens _quick_, it will be too late."
+
+"But if he were at his studio he would surely have answered Lady
+Arabella's letter."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so," replied Gillian absently, her eyes following the
+queue of passengers passing through the gate on the platform. By mutual
+consent they had come to a standstill outside it.
+
+"Then if he isn't there, what's the use of your rushing over to Paris?"
+protested Storran. "It's absurd--an absolute wild-goose chase. You can't
+go!"
+
+Gillian's brown eyes came back to his face.
+
+"But I'm going," she said calmly.
+
+He frowned.
+
+"If Michael's not at his studio he may be--anywhere!"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I know. If so, I shall follow--anywhere."
+
+Storran looked down at her and read the quiet determination in her face.
+
+"Then let me come too," he said. "Sort of courier, you know. I'd just be
+at hand in case of a tangle."
+
+"Oh, no! I couldn't let you. There's not the least need. Good heavens,
+I'm not a baby!"
+
+There was a curious softness in Dan's blue eyes as they rested on her.
+
+"No. I think you're--a very good friend," he said. "But I don't see why
+you should have the monopoly! Let me show I know how to be a good pal,
+too, if I want to."
+
+"No--no." Gillian still protested, but her tone betrayed signs of
+weakening.
+
+"We'll be as conventional as you like," urged Dan, twinkling. "I'd stop
+at different hotels."
+
+"Well, but--"
+
+"Say 'yes'!" he insisted.
+
+Gillian smiled.
+
+"You obstinate person! Yes, then!"
+
+"Thank you. Then I'll go along and buy a ticket."
+
+He turned and went towards the booking-office, while Gillian, inwardly
+much relieved, awaited his return. She could not but acknowledge that
+in the "wild-goose chase" upon which she was embarking it would be an
+enormous comfort to have Storran at hand in case of an emergency. As to
+the proprieties--well, Gillian was far too honest and independent a soul
+to worry about them in the circumstances. Her friend's happiness was
+at stake. And whether people chose to talk because she and Dan Storran
+travelled to Paris together--or to Timbuctoo, for the matter of that, if
+Michael had chanced to depart thither--troubled her not at all.
+
+When Storran rejoined her a much more practical consideration presented
+itself to her mind.
+
+"But, my dear man, you can't fly with me to Paris without even a
+tooth-brush! I'd forgotten you'd no luggage!"
+
+Her face fell as she spoke. But Storran dismissed the matter with a
+smile.
+
+"Oh, I can buy clean collars and shirts as I go along," he replied,
+entirely unruffled. "The dickens was to get on to the train at all!
+They assured me there wasn't a seat. However, I make a point of never
+believing official statements--on principle."
+
+And as a consequence of such well-directed incredulity, Storran
+accompanied Gillian to Dover and thence to Calais.
+
+They had a good crossing--sun up and blue sky. Looking back, afterwards,
+it always seemed to Gillian as though the short time it occupied
+had been a merciful breathing space--a tranquil interval, specially
+vouchsafed, in which she was able to brace herself for the coming race
+against time. Just so long as they were on board, nothing she could do
+was of any importance whatever, either to help or hinder the fulfilment
+of her errand. She could not quicken the speed of the boat by a single
+throb of its engine. So, like a sensible woman, she sat on deck with Dan
+and enjoyed herself amazingly.
+
+Afterwards, in quick succession, came the stir and bustle of landing and
+the journey to Paris. They arrived too late to make any inquiries that
+night, but ten o'clock the following morning found them outside the
+building where Michael had his apartment.
+
+"Oh, Dan!"--Gillian was seized with sudden panic. "Supposing he is here,
+after all, and has _deliberately_ not answered Lady Arabella's letter?"
+
+"I shouldn't suppose anything so foolish. Michael may be many kinds of
+a fool--artists very often are, I believe. It's part of the temperament.
+But whatever he proposed to do regarding Magda, there's no reason in the
+world to suppose he wouldn't answer Lady Arabella's letter."
+
+"No--no. Perhaps not," agreed Gillian hurriedly. But it was in rather
+a shaky voice that she asked to see Mr. Quarrington when finally they
+found themselves confronted by the concierge.
+
+"Monsieur Quarrington?" Hands, shoulders, and eyebrows all seemed to
+gesticulate at once as madame la concierge made answer. "But he has been
+gone from here two--no, three months. Perhaps madame did not know?"
+
+"No," said Gillian. "I didn't know. But I thought he might possibly be
+away, because I--I have had no answer to a letter I wrote him."
+
+"What misfortune!"
+
+The concierge regarded Gillian with a pair of shrewd, gimlet eyes while
+a stream of inquiry and comment issued from her lips. Madame was the
+sister of monsieur, perhaps? Truly, they resembled each other! One could
+see at a glance. No, not a sister? Ah, a friend, then? And there had
+been no answer to a letter! But monsieur had left an address. Oh, yes.
+And all letters were forwarded. She herself saw to that.
+
+At last Gillian managed to stem the torrent of garrulity and interposed
+a question concerning the telegram she had sent.
+
+A telegram! Now that was another affair altogether. Yes, the concierge
+remembered the telegram. She had opened it to see if it were of life or
+death importance, in which case she would have, of course, telegraphed
+its contents to monsieur at his present address.
+
+Gillian was nearly crying with impatience as the woman's voluble tongue
+ran on complacently.
+
+"Then you did send it on?" she managed to interpolate at last.
+
+The letter--yes. Not, of course, the telegram. That would have been a
+needless expense seeing that monsieur would already have had the letter,
+since all the letters were sent on. _All!_ She, Madame Ribot, could
+vouch for that.
+
+At the end of half an hour Gillian succeeded in extracting Michael's
+address from amid the plethora of words and, bidding the voluble
+concierge _bon jour_, she and Storran beat a masterly retreat.
+
+It appeared that Michael had been commissioned to paint the portrait of
+some Italian society beauty and had gone to Rome. Gillian screwed up her
+small face resolutely.
+
+"I shall go to Rome!" she announced succinctly. There was a definite
+defiance in her tone, and Storran concealed a smile.
+
+"Of course you will," he replied composedly. "Just as well I came with
+you, isn't it?" he added with great cheerfulness.
+
+Her expression relaxed.
+
+"You really are rather a nice person, Dan," she allowed graciously. "I
+was horribly afraid you'd suggest wiring Michael again, or something
+silly like that. I'm not going to trust to anything of that kind."
+
+Accordingly, the only wire despatched was one to Lady Arabella,
+informing her as to their movements, and a few hours later found Dan
+and Gillian rushing across Europe as fast as the thunderous whirl of the
+express could take them. They travelled day and night, and it was a
+very weary Gillian who at last opened her eyes to the golden sunshine of
+Italy.
+
+At the hotel whither Madame Ribot had directed them, fresh
+disappointment awaited them. The manager--when he found that the
+two dusty and somewhat dishevelled-looking travellers who presented
+themselves at the inquiry bureau were actually friends of Signor
+Quarrington, the famous English artist who had stayed at his hotel--was
+desolated, but the signor had departed a month ago! Had he the address?
+But assuredly. He would write it down for the signora.
+
+"He's in Normandy!" exclaimed Gillian in tones of bitter disappointment.
+"At--what's the name of the place?--Armanches. Oh, Dan! We've got to go
+right back to Paris again and then on to the coast."
+
+Her face was full of anxiety. This would mean at least a delay of
+several days before they could possibly see Michael, and meanwhile it
+was a moot question as to how much longer Lady Arabella could restrain
+Magda from taking definite steps with regard to joining the sisterhood.
+
+Storran nodded.
+
+"Yes," he said quietly. "But all the same, you'll not start back till
+to-morrow--"
+
+"Oh, but I must!" interrupted Gillian. "We can't afford to waste a
+moment."
+
+He glanced down at her and shook his head. Her face was white and drawn,
+and there were deep violet shadows underneath her eyes. Suspense and her
+anxious impatience had told upon her, and she had slept but little on
+the journey. And now, with the addition of this last, totally unexpected
+disappointment, she looked as though she could not stand much more.
+
+"We can afford to waste a single day better than we can afford the three
+or four which it would cost us if you collapsed en route," said Storran.
+
+"I shan't collapse," she protested with white lips.
+
+"So much the better. But all the same, you'll stay here till to-morrow
+and get a good night's rest."
+
+"I shouldn't sleep," she urged. "Let's go right on, Dan. Let's go----"
+
+But the sentence was never finished. Quite suddenly she swayed,
+stretching out her hands with a blind, groping movement. Dan was just in
+time to catch her in his arms as she toppled over in a dead faint.
+
+It was a week later when, in the early morning, a rather wan and
+white-faced Gillian sprang up from her seat as the train ran into
+Bayeux.
+
+"Thank goodness we're here at last!" she exclaimed.
+
+Storran put out his hand to steady her as the train jolted to a
+standstill.
+
+"Yes, we're here at last," he said. "Now to find a vehicle of some
+description to take us out to Armanches."
+
+As he had suggested it would, Gillian's collapse had delayed them some
+time. Probably she had caught a slight chill while travelling, and that,
+together with the fatigue from which she was suffering, combined to keep
+her in bed at the hotel in Rome for a couple of days.
+
+When the slight feverishness had abated, she slept the greater part of
+the time, her weary body exacting the price for all those wakeful hours
+she had passed on the train. But it was not until four days had elapsed
+that Dan would agree to a resumption of the journey. Even then, consent
+was only wrung from him by the fear that she would fret herself ill over
+any further delay. He did not consider her by any means fit to travel.
+But Gillian was game to the core, and they had reached Bayeux without
+further _contretemps_.
+
+"The thing that puzzles me," she said as they started on the long drive
+from Bayeux to Armanches, "is why Michael didn't send his Normandy
+address to Madame Ribot. We should have been saved all that long journey
+to Rome if he had."
+
+"Perhaps he intended to, and forgot," suggested Dan. "Artists are
+proverbially absent-minded."
+
+But Gillian shook her head with a dissatisfied air. Michael was not of
+the absent-minded type.
+
+Armanches was a tiny place on the Normandy coast, in reality not
+much more than a fishing village, but its possession of a beautiful
+_plage_--smooth, fine, golden sands--brought many visitors to the
+old-fashioned hostelry it boasted.
+
+The landlady, a smiling, rosy-cheeked woman, with a chubby little
+brown-faced son hiding shy embarrassment behind her ample skirts,
+greeted the travellers hospitably. But when they mentioned Quarrington's
+name a look of sympathetic concern overspread her comely face.
+
+Yes, he was there. And of course madame could not know, but he had
+been ill, seriously ill with _la grippe_--taken ill the very day he had
+arrived, nearly a month ago. He had a nurse. Oh, yes! One had come from
+Bayeux. But this influenza! It was a veritable scourge. One was here
+to-day and gone to-morrow. However, Michael Quarrington was recovering,
+the saints be praised! Monsieur and madame wished to see him? The good
+woman looked doubtful. She would inquire. What name? Grey? But there was
+a telegram awaiting madame!
+
+Gillian's face blanched as the landlady bustled away in search of the
+wire. Had Magda already----Oh, but that was impossible! Lady Arabella
+was in charge at that end, and Gillian had a great belief in Lady
+Arabella's capacity to deal with any crisis that might arise.
+Nevertheless, they had wired her the Normandy address from Rome, in case
+of necessity. The next moment Gillian had torn open the telegram and she
+and Dan were reading it together.
+
+
+"Magda insists we return to London on Wednesday. She has completed
+preliminary arrangements to join sisterhood and goes there Thursday.
+Impossible to dissuade her.--ARABELLA WINTER."
+
+
+Gillian's mouth set itself in a straight line of determination as her
+eyes raced along the score or so of pregnant words. She was silent a
+moment. Then she met Storran's questioning glance.
+
+"We can just do it," she said sternly. "To-day is Wednesday. By crossing
+to Southampton to-night, we can make London to-morrow."
+
+Without waiting for his reply she entered the inn and ran quickly up the
+stairs which the landlady had already ascended.
+
+"But, madame, I am not sure that monsieur will receive anyone,"
+protested the astonished woman, turning round as Gillian caught up with
+her.
+
+"I must see him," asserted Gillian quietly.
+
+Perhaps something in the tense young face touched a sympathetic chord
+in the Frenchwoman's honest heart. She scented romance, and when she
+emerged from the invalid's bedroom her face was wreathed in smiles.
+
+"It is all arranged. Will madame please to enter?"
+
+A moment later Gillian found herself standing in front of a tall, gaunt
+figure of a man, whose coat hung loosely from his shoulders and whose
+face was worn and haggard with something more than _la grippe_ alone.
+
+"Oh, Michael!"
+
+A little, stricken cry broke from her lips. What men and women make each
+other suffer! She realised it as she met the stark, bitter misery of
+the grey eyes that burned at her out of the thin face and remembered the
+look on Magda's own face when she had last seen her.
+
+She went straight to the point without a word of greeting or of
+explanation. There was no time for explanations, except the only one
+that mattered.
+
+"Michael, why didn't you answer Lady Arabella's letter?"
+
+He stared at her. Then he passed his hand wearily across his forehead.
+
+"Letter? I don't remember any letter."
+
+"She wrote to you about a month ago. I know the letter was forwarded on
+to Rome. It must have followed you here."
+
+"A month ago?" he repeated.
+
+Then a light broke over his face. He turned and crossed the room to
+where a small pile of letters lay on a table, dusty and forgotten.
+
+"Perhaps it's here," he said. "I was taken ill directly I arrived. I
+never even sent this address to the concierge at Paris. I believe I
+was off my head part of the time--'flue plays the deuce with you. But I
+remember now. The nurse told me there were some letters which had come
+while I was ill. I--didn't bother about them."
+
+While he spoke he was turning over the envelopes, one by one, in a
+desultory fashion.
+
+"Yes. This is Lady Arabella's writing." He paused and looked across at
+Gillian.
+
+"Will you read it, please?" she said. "And--oh, you ought to sit down!
+You don't look very strong yet."
+
+He smiled a little.
+
+"I'm not quite such a crock as I look. But won't you sit down yourself
+while I read this letter? Is it of importance?"
+
+"Oh! Please read it!" exclaimed Gillian with sudden nervous impatience.
+
+It seemed to her an eternity while he read the letter. But at last he
+looked up from its perusal.
+
+"Well?" she asked under her breath.
+
+Very deliberately he refolded the sheet of notepaper and slipped it back
+into its envelope.
+
+"It would have made no difference if I had received it earlier," he said
+composedly.
+
+"No difference"
+
+"None. Because, you see, this letter--asking me to go back to Magda--is
+written under a misapprehension.
+
+"How? What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean--that Magda has--no further use for me."
+
+Gillian leaned forward.
+
+"You're wrong," she said tersely--"quite wrong."
+
+"No." He shook his head. "I'm not blaming her. Looking back, I'm not
+even very much surprised. But still, the fact remains, she has no
+further use for me."
+
+"Will you tell me what makes you think that?" With an effort Gillian
+forced herself to speak quietly and composedly.
+
+He was silent a moment, staring out of the window at the gay blue sea
+beyond, sparkling in the morning sunlight. All at once he swung round on
+her, his face wrung with a sudden agony.
+
+"I _know_," he said in a roughened voice. "I know, because I wrote to
+her--six months ago. I was hard, I know, brutally hard to her that last
+day at Friars' Holm. But--God! I paid for it afterwards! And I wrote
+to her--bared my very soul to her. . . . Wrote so that if she had ever
+cared she must at least have answered me."
+
+He stopped abruptly, his face working.
+
+"And she didn't answer?"
+
+A wry smile twisted his lips.
+
+"I got my own letter back," he said quietly. "After all, that was an
+answer--a conclusive one."
+
+Gillian was thinking rapidly. Six months ago! A momentary flash of
+recollection came to her. So Lady Arabella, that wise old citizen of the
+world, had been quite right after all! She had given Michael six
+months to find out his imperative need of Magda. And he had found it.
+Only--something had gone wrong.
+
+"Magda never had that letter," she said quietly at last.
+
+She was gradually beginning to piece together the separate parts of the
+puzzle. All letters that came for Magda had been forwarded on to the
+sisterhood, and had she herself readdressed this of Michael's she would
+have recognised the handwriting. But probably she had been away from
+home, or had chanced to be out at post time, in which case Melrose, or
+old Virginie, would have readdressed the envelope and dropped it in the
+pillar box at the corner of the road.
+
+Then--as was the case with any correspondence addressed to one of the
+Sisters of Penitence--the letter would be read by the Mother Superior
+and passed on to its destined recipient if she thought good. If not----
+
+Gillian had learned a great deal about Catherine Vallincourt by now,
+both from Lady Arabella and from Magda herself, who, before leaving
+the community, had discovered the identity of its head. And she
+could visualise the stern, fanatical woman, obsessed by her idea of
+disciplining Magda and of counteracting the effects of her brother's
+marriage with Diane Wielitzska, opening the letter and, after perusal,
+calmly sealing it up in its envelope again and returning it to the
+sender.
+
+"Magda never had that letter, Michael," she repeated. "Listen!" And
+then, without preamble, but with every word vibrant with pity for the
+whole tragedy, she poured out the story of Magda's passionate repentance
+and atonement, of her impetuous adoption of her father's remorseless
+theory, mistaken though it might be, that pain is the remedy for sin,
+and of the utter, hopeless despair which had overwhelmed her now that
+she believed it had all proved unavailing.
+
+"She has come to believe that you don't want her--never could want her,
+Michael--because she has failed so much."
+
+There was more than one reproach mingled with the story, but Michael
+made no protest. It was only when she had finished that Gillian could
+read in his tortured eyes all that her narrative had cost him.
+
+"Yes," he said at last. "It's true. I wanted the impossible. I was
+looking for a goddess--not a woman. . . . But now I want--just a woman,
+Gillian."
+
+"Then, if you want her, you must save her from herself. You've just
+twenty-four hours to do it in. To-morrow she's still Magda. The next day
+she'll be Sister Somebody. And you'll have lost her."
+
+Half an hour later, when Michael's nurse returned, she found her patient
+packing a suit-case with the assistance of a pretty, brown-haired girl
+whose eyes shone with the unmistakable brightness of recent tears.
+
+"But you're not fit to travel!" she protested in horrified dismay. "You
+mustn't think of it, Mr. Quarrington."
+
+But Michael only laughed at her, defying her good-humouredly.
+
+"If the man you loved were waiting for you in England, nurse, you know
+you'd go--and you wouldn't care a hang whether you were fit to travel or
+not!"
+
+The nurse smiled in spite of herself.
+
+"No," she admitted. "I suppose I shouldn't."
+
+As the Havre-Southampton boat steamed through the moonlit night, Dan and
+Gillian were pacing the deck together.
+
+"I'm so glad Michael is going back to Magda without knowing--about
+June," said Gillian, coming to a standstill beside the deck-rail. "Going
+back just because his love is too big for anything else to matter now."
+
+"Haven't you told him?"--Storran's voice held surprise.
+
+"No. I decided not to. I should like Magda to tell him that herself."
+
+They were both silent for a little while. Gillian bent over the
+rail, looking down at the phosphorescent water breaking away from the
+steamer's bow. Suddenly a big hand covered hers.
+
+"I think I'm--lonely," said Storran.
+
+"Gillian," he went on, his voice deepening. "Gillian . . . dear. We're
+two rather lonely people. We shall be lonelier still when Michael and
+Magda are married. Couldn't we be lonely--in company?"
+
+Gillian's hand moved a little beneath his, then stayed still.
+
+"Why, Dan--Dan----" she stammered.
+
+"Yes," went on the strong, tender voice. "I'm asking you to marry me,
+Gillian, I'd never expect too much of you. We both know all that's
+in the past of each of us. But we might help each other to be less
+lonely--good comrades together, Gillian."
+
+And suddenly Gillian realised how good it would be to rest once more in
+the shelter of a man's affection and good comradeship--to have someone
+to laugh with or to be sorry with. There's a tender magic in the word
+"together." And she, too, had something to give in return--sympathy, and
+understanding, and a warm friendship. . . . She would not be going to
+him empty-handed.
+
+"Is it yes, Gillian?"
+
+She bent her head.
+
+"Yes, Dan."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE EDGE OF THE DAWN
+
+Magda paused outside the closed door of the room. She knew whom she
+would see within. Lady Arabella had told her he was there waiting for
+her.
+
+Her first impulse had been to refuse to meet him. Then the temptation
+to see him again--just once more--before she passed out of his life
+altogether, rushed over her like the surge of some resistless sea,
+sweeping everything before it.
+
+Very quietly she opened the door and went into the room.
+
+"Magda!"
+
+She never knew whether he really uttered her name or whether it was
+only the voiceless, clamorous cry of his whole consciousness--of a man's
+passionate demand for the woman who is mate of his soul and body.
+
+But she answered its appeal, her innermost being responding to the claim
+of it. All recollection of self, of the dimming of her beauty, even of
+the great gulf of months that lay between them, crowded with mistakes
+and failure, was burned away in the white-hot flame of love that blazed
+up within her.
+
+She ran to him, and that white, searing flame found its expression in
+the dear human tenderness of the little cry that broke from her as he
+turned his gaunt face towards her.
+
+"Oh, Saint Michel! Saint Michel! How dreadfully ill you look! Oh, my
+dear--sit down! You're not fit to stand!"
+
+But when that first instinctive cry had left her lips, memory came
+flooding over her once more. She shrank back from him, covering her face
+with her hands, agonisingly conscious of the change in herself--of that
+shadowing of her beauty which the sensitiveness of a woman in love had
+so piteously magnified.
+
+Then, drawing her hands slowly down, she braced herself to say what must
+be said.
+
+"You are free of me, Michael." She spoke in a curious, still voice. "I
+know Marraine and Gillian between them have brought you back. But you
+are free of me. As you see--I shall never do any more harm. No other man
+will come to grief for the sake of the Wielitzska. . . . I determined
+that as I had made others pay, so I would pay. I think"--suddenly moving
+towards the window and standing full in the brilliant sunlight--"I think
+you'll agree I've settled the bill."
+
+Michael came to her side.
+
+"I want you for my wife," he said simply.
+
+She held out her work-roughened hands, while the keen-edged sunlight
+pitilessly revealed the hollowed line of cheek and throat, the
+lustreless dark hair, the fine lines that Pain, the great Sculptor, had
+graved about her mouth.
+
+"You are an artist before everything, Michael," she said. "Look--look
+well!"
+
+He took the two work-worn hands in his and drew her nearer him.
+
+"I'm your lover before everything," he answered. "When will you come to
+me, Magda?"
+
+"No, no," she said whisperingly. "I mustn't come. You'll never--never
+quite forgive me. Some day the past would come between us again--you'll
+never forget it all."
+
+"No," he replied steadily. "Perhaps not. Consequences _cannot_ be
+evaded. There are things that can't be forgotten. But one forgives. And
+I love you--love you, Magda, so that I can't face life without you." His
+voice vibrated. "The past must always lie like a shadow on our love. But
+you're my woman--my soul! And if you've sinned, then it must be my sin,
+too----"
+
+She leaned away from him.
+
+"Do you mean--June?" she asked.
+
+He nodded with set lips.
+
+"Then--then you don't know--you haven't heard?"
+
+His expression answered her and her face changed--grew suddenly radiant,
+transfigured. "Oh, Saint Michel--Saint Michel! Then there is one thing I
+can do, one gift I have still left to give! Oh, my dear, I can take away
+the shadow!" Her voice breathless and shaken, she told him how June had
+died--all that Dan Storran had learned from the doctor who had attended
+her.
+
+"I know I hurt her--hurt her without thinking. But oh, Michael! Thank
+God, it wasn't through me that she died!"
+
+And Michael, as he folded his arms about her, knew that the shadow which
+had lain between him and the woman he loved was there no longer. They
+were free--freed from those "ropes of steel" which had held them bound.
+Free to go together and find once more their Garden of Eden.
+
+
+Presently, when those first perfect moments of reunion were past, Magda
+gave utterance to the doubts and perplexities that still vexed her soul.
+
+"Pain may purify," she said slowly. "But it spoils, Michael, and blots,
+and ruins. I think, after all, pain is meaningless."
+
+Michael's grey, steady eyes met her troubled ones.
+
+"I don't think pain--just as pain--purifies," he answered quickly.
+"Pain is merely horrible. It is the _willingness to suffer_ that shrives
+us--not the pain itself."
+
+Later still, the essential woman in her came into its own again. "I
+shall never be able to sit for you any more, Saint Michel," she said
+regretfully. "I'm nobody's model--now!"
+
+She could see only her lost beauty--the unthinking, radiant beauty of
+mere youth. But Michael could see all that her voluntary renunciation
+and atonement had bestowed in its stead of more enduring significance.
+
+He took her by the hand and led her to the mirror.
+
+"There," he said, a great content in his voice, "is the model for the
+greatest picture I shall ever paint--the model for my 'Madonna.'"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lamp of Fate, by Margaret Pedler
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+Title: The Lamp of Fate
+
+Author: Margaret Pedler
+
+Release Date: March, 2003  [Etext #3824]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 9/29/01]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Lamp of Fate, by Margaret Pedler
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+Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+              and John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
+
+
+
+THE LAMP OF FATE
+
+BY 
+
+MARGARET PEDLER
+
+
+
+  Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried,
+  Asking, "What Lamp of Destiny to guide
+    Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?"
+  And--"A blind Understanding!" Heaven replied.
+                The "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam.
+
+
+
+  To AUDREY HEATH
+
+  DEAR AUDREY: I always feel that you have played the part of Fairy
+  Godmother in a very special and delightful way to all my stories,
+  and in particular to this one, the plot of which I outlined to you
+  one afternoon in an old summer-house. So will you let me dedicate
+  it to you?
+                                           Yours always,
+                                                MARGARET PEDLER.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LAMP OF FATE
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE NINTH GENERATION
+
+The house was very silent. An odour of disinfectants pervaded the
+atmosphere. Upstairs hushed, swift steps moved to and fro.
+
+Hugh Vallincourt stood at the window of his study, staring out with
+unseeing eyes at the smooth, shaven lawns and well-kept paths with
+their background of leafless trees. It seemed to him that he had been
+standing thus for hours, waiting--waiting for someone to come and tell
+him that a son and heir was born to him.
+
+He never doubted that it would be a son. By some freak of chance the
+first-born of the Vallincourts of Coverdale had been, for eight
+successive generations, a boy. Indeed, by this time, the thing had
+become so much a habit that no doubts or apprehensions concerning the
+sex of the eldest child were ever entertained. It was accepted as a
+foregone conclusion, and in the eyes of the family there was a certain
+gratifying propriety about such regularity. It was like a hall-mark of
+heavenly approval.
+
+Hugh Vallincourt, therefore, was conscious at this critical moment of
+no questionings on that particular score. He was merely a prey to the
+normal tremors and agitations of a husband and prospective father.
+
+For an ageless period, it seemed to him, his thoughts had clung about
+that upstairs room where his wife lay battling for her own life and
+another's. Suddenly they swung back to the time, a year ago, when he
+had first met her--an elusive feminine thing still reckoning her age
+in teens--beneath the glorious blue and gold canopy of the skies of
+Italy.
+
+Their meeting and brief courtship had been pure romance--romance such
+as is bred in that land of mellow warmth and colour, where the flower
+of passion sometimes buds and blooms within the span of a single day.
+
+In like manner had sprung to life the love between Hugh Vallincourt
+and Diane Wielitzska, and rarely has the web of love enmeshed two more
+dissimilar and ill-matched people--Hugh, a man of seven-and-thirty,
+the strict and somewhat self-conscious head of a conspicuously devout
+old English family, and Diane, a beautiful dancer of mixed origin, the
+illegitimate offspring of a Russian grand-duke and of a French
+artist's model of the Latin Quarter.
+
+The three dread Sisters who determine the fate of men must have
+laughed amongst themselves at such an obvious mismating, knowing well
+how inevitably it would tangle the threads of many other lives than
+the two immediately concerned.
+
+Vallincourt had been brought up on severely conventional lines, reared
+in the narrow tenets of a family whose salient characteristics were an
+overweening pride of race and a religious zeal amounting almost to
+fanaticism, while Diane had had no up-bringing worth speaking of. As
+for religious views, she hadn't any.
+
+Yet neither the one nor the other had counted in the scale when the
+crucial moment came.
+
+Perhaps it was by way of an ironical set-off against his environment
+that Fate had dowered Hugh with his crop of ruddy hair--and with the
+ardent temperament which usually accompanies the type. Be that as it
+may, he was swept completely off his feet by the dancer's magic
+beauty. The habits and training of a lifetime went by the board, and
+nothing was allowed to impede the swift (not to say violent) course of
+his love-making. Within a month from the day of their first meeting,
+he and Diane were man and wife.
+
+The consequences were almost inevitable, and Hugh found that his
+married life speedily resolved itself into an endless struggle between
+the dictates of inclination and conscience. Everything that was man in
+him responded passionately to the appeal and charm of Diane's
+personality, whilst everything that was narrow and censorious
+disapproved her total inability to conform to the ingrained prejudices
+of the Vallincourts.
+
+Not that Diane was in any sense of the word a bad woman. She was
+merely beautiful and irresponsible--a typical /cigale/ of the stage--
+lovable and kind-hearted and pagan, and possessing but the haziest
+notions of self-control and self-discipline. Even so, left to
+themselves, husband and wife might ultimately have found the road to
+happiness across the bridge of their great love for one another.
+
+But such freedom was denied them. Always at Hugh's elbow stood his
+sister, Catherine, a rigidly austere woman, in herself an epitome of
+all that Vallincourts had ever stood for.
+
+Since the death of their parents, twenty years previously, Catherine
+had shared her brother's home, managing his house--and, on the
+strength of her four years' seniority in age, himself as well--with an
+iron hand. Nor had she seen fit to relinquish the reins of government
+when he married.
+
+Privately, Hugh had hoped she might consider the propriety of
+withdrawing to the dower house attached to the Coverdale estates, but
+if the idea had occurred to her, she had never given it utterance, and
+Hugh himself had lacked the courage to propose such an innovation.
+
+So it followed that Catherine was ever at hand to criticise and
+condemn. She disapproved of her brother's marriage wholly and
+consistently. In her eyes, he had committed an unpardonable sin in
+allying himself with Diane Wielitzska. It was his duty to have married
+a woman of the type conventionally termed "good," whose blood--and
+religious outlook--were alike unimpeachable; and since he had
+lamentably failed in this respect, she never ceased to reproach him.
+Diane she regarded with chronic disapprobation, exaggerating all her
+faults and opposing her joy-loving, butterfly nature with an aloofly
+puritanical disdain.
+
+Amid the glacial atmosphere of disapproval into which marriage had
+thrust her, Diane found her only solace in Virginie, a devoted French
+servant who had formerly been her nurse, and who literally worshipped
+the ground she walked on. Conversely, Virginie's attitude towards Miss
+Vallincourt was one of frank hostility. And deep in the hearts of both
+Diane and Virginie lurked a confirmed belief that the birth of a child
+--a son--would serve to bring about a better understanding between
+husband and wife, and in the end assure Diane her rightful place as
+mistress of the house.
+
+"/Vois-tu/, Virginie," the latter would say hopefully. "When I have a
+little baby, I shall have done my duty as the wife of a great English
+milord. Even Miss Catherine will no longer regard me as of no
+importance."
+
+And Virginie would reply with infinite satisfaction:
+
+"Of a certainty, when madame has a little son, Ma'moiselle Catherine
+will be returned to her place."
+
+And now at last the great moment had arrived, and upstairs Catherine
+and Virginie were in attendance--both ousted from what each considered
+her own rightful place of authority by a slim, capable, and apparently
+quite unconcerned piece of femininity equipped against rebellion in
+all the starched panoply of a nurse's uniform, while downstairs Hugh
+stared dumbly out at the frosted lawns, with their background of bare,
+brown trees swaying to the wind from the north.
+
+The door behind him opened suddenly. Hugh whirled round. He was a tall
+man with a certain rather formal air of stateliness about him, a
+suggestion of the /grand seigneur/, and the unwontedly impulsive
+movement was significant of the strain under which he was labouring.
+
+Catherine was standing on the threshold of the room with something in
+her arms--something almost indistinguishable amid the downy, fleecy
+froth of whiteness amid which it lay.
+
+Hugh was conscious of a new and strange sensation deep down inside
+himself. He felt rather as though all the blood in his body had rushed
+to one place--somewhere in the middle of it--and were pounding there
+against his ribs.
+
+He tried to speak, failed, then instinctively stretched out his arms
+for the tiny, orris-scented bundle which Catherine carried.
+
+The next thing of which he was conscious was Catherine's voice as she
+placed his child in his arms--very quiet, yet rasping across the
+tender silence of the room like a file.
+
+"Here, Hugh, is the living seal which God Himself has set upon the sin
+of your marriage."
+
+Hugh's eyes, bent upon the pink, crumpled features of the scrap of
+humanity nestled amid the bunchy whiteness in his arms, sought his
+sister's face. It was a thin, hard face, sharply cut like carved
+ivory; the eyes a light, cold blue, ablaze with hostility; the pale
+obstinate lips, usually folded so impassively one above the other,
+working spasmodically.
+
+For a moment brother and sister stared at each other in silence. Then,
+all at once, Catherine's rigidly enforced composure snapped.
+
+"A girl child, Hugh!" she jeered violently. "A /girl/--when you prayed
+for a boy!"
+
+"A girl?"
+
+Hugh stared stupidly at the babe in his arms.
+
+"Ay, a girl!" taunted Catherine, her voice cracking with rising
+hysteria. "/A girl!/ . . . For eight generations the first-born has
+been a son. And the ninth is a girl! The daughter of a foreign
+dancing-woman! . . . God has indeed taken your punishment into His own
+Hands!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE WIDENING GULF
+
+The birth of a daughter came upon Hugh in the light of an almost
+overwhelming shock. He was quite silent when, in response to
+Catherine's imperative gesture, he surrendered the child into her arms
+once more. As she took it from him he noticed that those thin, angular
+arms of hers seemed to close round the little swaddled body in an
+almost jealously possessive clasp. But there was none of the tender
+possessiveness of love about it. In some oddly repugnant way it
+reminded him of the motion of a bird of prey at last gripping
+triumphantly in its talons a victim that has hitherto eluded pursuit.
+
+He turned back dully to his contemplation of the wintry garden, nor,
+in his absorption, did he hear the whimpering cry--almost of protest--
+that issued from the lips of his first-born as Catherine bore the
+child away.
+
+For a space it seemed as though his mind were a blank, every thought
+and feeling wiped out of it by the stupendous, nullifying fact that
+his wife had given birth to a daughter. Then, with a rush as torturing
+as the return of blood to benumbed limbs, emotions crowded in upon
+him.
+
+Catherine's incessant denunciations of his "sin" in marrying Diane
+Wielitzska--poured upon him without stint throughout this first year
+of his marriage--seemed to din in his ears anew. Such phrases as
+"selling your soul," "putting a woman of that type in our sainted
+mother's place," "mingling the blood of a foreign dancing-woman with
+our own," jangled against each other in his mind.
+
+Had he really been guilty of a sin against his conscience--satisfied
+his desires irrespective of all sense of duty?
+
+He began to think he had, and to wonder in a disturbed fashion if God
+thought so too. What was it Catherine had said? /"God has indeed taken
+your punishment into His own Hands."/
+
+Hugh was only too well aware of the facts which gave the speech its
+trenchant significance. He himself had inherited owing to the death of
+an elder brother in early childhood. But there was no younger brother
+to step into his own shoes, and failing an heir in the direct line of
+succession the title and entailed estate would of necessity go to
+Rupert Vallincourt, a cousin--a gay and debonair young rake of much
+charm of manner and equal absence of virtue. From both Catherine's and
+Hugh's point of view he was the last man in the world fitted to become
+the head of the family. Hence the eagerness with which they had
+anticipated the arrival of a son and heir.
+
+And now, prompted by Catherine's bitter taunt, the birth of a daughter
+as his first-born--the first happening of the kind for eight
+successive generations--appeared to Hugh in the light of a direct
+manifestation of God's intention that no son born of Diane Wielitzska
+should be dowered with such influence as the heir to the Vallincourts
+must necessarily wield.
+
+Better, even, that the title and estates should go to Rupert! Bad as
+his reputation might be, good blood ran in his veins on either side--
+an inherited tradition of right-doing which was bound to assert itself
+in succeeding generations. Whereas in the offspring of Diane heaven
+alone knew what hidden inherited tendencies towards evil might lie
+fallow, to develop later and work incalculable mischief in the world.
+
+Hugh felt crushed by the unexpected blow which had befallen him. Since
+his marriage, he had opposed a forced indifference to his sister's
+irreconcilable attitude, finding compensation in the glowing moments
+of his passion for Diane. Nevertheless--since living in an atmosphere
+of disapproval tends to fray the strongest nerves--his temper had worn
+a little fine beneath the strain; and with Diane's faults and failings
+thrust continually on his notice he had unconsciously grown more
+critical of her.
+
+And now, all at once, it seemed as though scales had been torn from
+his eyes. He saw his marriage for the first time from the same
+standpoint as Catherine saw it, and in the unlooked-for birth of a
+daughter he thought he recognised the Hand of God, sternly uprooting
+his most cherished hopes and minimising, as much as possible, the
+inevitable evil consequences of his weakness in marrying Diane.
+
+He was conscious of a rising feeling of resentment against his wife.
+Words from an old Book flashed into his mind: /"The woman tempted
+me."/
+
+With the immediate instinct of a weak nature--the very narrowness and
+rigidity of his views was a manifestation of weakness, had he but
+realised it--he was already looking for someone with whom to share the
+blame for his lapse from the Vallincourt standard of conduct, and in
+that handful of wayward charm, red lips, and soft, beguiling eyes
+which was Diane he found what he sought.
+
+
+
+Again the room door opened. This time, instead of putting a longed-for
+end to a blank period of suspense, the little quiet clicking of the
+latch cut almost aggressively across the conflict of Hugh's thoughts.
+He turned round irritably.
+
+"What is it?" he demanded.
+
+A uniformed nurse was standing in the doorway. At the sound of his
+curtly-spoken question she glanced at him with a certain contemplative
+curiosity in her eyes. They might have held surprise as well as
+curiosity had she not lately stood beside that huge, canopied bed
+upstairs, listening pitifully to a woman's secret fears and longings,
+unveiled in the delirium of pain.
+
+"I know you sometimes wish you hadn't married me. . . . I'm not good
+enough. And Catherine hates me. Yes, she does, she does! And she'll
+make you hate me too! But you won't hate me when my baby comes, will
+you, Hugh? You want a little son . . . a little son . . ."
+
+Nurse Maynard could hear again the weary, complaining voice, trailing
+off at last in the silence of exhaustion, and an impulse of
+indignation added a sharp edge to her tone as she responded to Hugh's
+query.
+
+"Her ladyship is asking to see you, Sir Hugh. She ought to rest now,
+but she is too excited. She has been expecting you."
+
+There was no mistaking the implied rebuke in the last sentence, and
+Hugh's face darkened.
+
+"I'll come," he said, briefly, and followed the crisp starched figure
+up the stairs and into a half-darkened room, smelling faintly of
+antiseptics.
+
+Vaguely the white counterpane outlined the slim figure of Diane upon
+the bed. The nurse raised the blind a little, and the light of the
+westering sun fell across the pillow, revealing a small, dark head
+which turned eagerly at the sound of Hugh's entrance.
+
+"Hugh!" The voice from the bed came faintly.
+
+Hugh looked down at his wife. Probably never had Diane looked more
+beautiful.
+
+The little worldly, sophisticated expression common to her features
+had been temporarily obliterated by the holy suffering of motherhood,
+and the face of the "foreign dancing-woman," born and bred in a
+quarter of the world where virtue is a cheap commodity, was as pure
+and serene as the face of a Madonna.
+
+She held out her hands to her husband, her lips curving into a smile
+that was all love and tenderness.
+
+"Hugh--/mon adore!/"
+
+The lover in him sent him swiftly to her side, and as he drew her into
+his arms she let her head fall back against his shoulder with a
+tremulous sigh of infinite content.
+
+And then, from the firelit corner of the room, came the sound of a
+feeble wailing. Hugh started as though stung, and his eyes left his
+wife's face and riveted themselves upon the figure in the low chair by
+the hearth--Virginie, rocking a little as she sat, and crooning a
+Breton lullaby to the baby in her arms.
+
+In a moment remembrance rushed upon him, cutting in twain as though
+with a dividing sword this exquisite moment of reunion with his wife.
+Insensibly his arms relaxed their clasp of the frail body they held,
+and Diane, sensing their slackening, looked up startled and
+disconcerted.
+
+Her eyes followed the direction of his glance, then, coming back to
+his face, searched it wildly. Instantly she knew the meaning of that
+suddenly limp clasp and all that it implied.
+
+"Hugh!" The throbbing tenderness had gone out of her voice, leaving it
+dry and toneless. "Hugh! You don't mean . . . you're /angry/ that it's
+a girl?"
+
+He looked down at her--at the frightened eyes, the lovely face fined
+by recent pain, and all his instinct was to reassure and comfort her.
+But something held him back. The old, narrow creed in which he had
+been reared, whose shackles he had broken through when he had
+recklessly followed the bidding of his heart and married Diane, was
+once more mastering him--bidding him resist the natural human impulses
+of love and kindliness evoked by his wife's appeal.
+
+/"God Himself has taken your punishment into His own Hands."/
+
+Again he seemed to hear Catherine's accusing tones, and the fanatical
+strain inbred in him answered like a boat to its helm. There must be
+no more compromise, no longer any evasion of the issues of right and
+wrong. He had sinned, and both he and the woman for whose sake he had
+defied his own creed, and that of his fathers before him, must make
+atonement. He drew himself up, and stood stiff and unbending beside
+the bed. In his light-grey eyes there shone that same indomitable
+ardour of the zealot which had shone in Catherine's.
+
+"No," he said. "I am not angry that the child is a girl. I accept it
+as a just retribution."
+
+No man possessed of the ordinary instincts of common humanity would
+have so greeted his wife just when she had emerged, spent and
+exhausted, from woman's supreme conflict with death. But the fanatic
+loses sight of normal values, and Hugh, obsessed by his newly
+conceived idea of atoning for the sin of his marriage, was utterly
+oblivious of the enormity of his conduct as viewed through unbiased
+eyes.
+
+The woman who had just fought her way through the Valley of the Shadow
+stared at him uncomprehendingly.
+
+"Retribution?" she repeated blankly.
+
+"For my marriage--our marriage."
+
+Diane's breath came faster.
+
+"What--what do you mean?" she asked falteringly. Suddenly a look of
+sheer terror leaped into her eyes, and she clutched at Hugh's sleeve.
+"Oh, you're not going to be like Catherine? Say you're not! Hugh,
+you've always said she was crazy to call our marriage a sin. . . . /A
+sin!/" She tried to laugh, but the laugh stuck in her throat, caught
+and pinned there by the terror that gripped her.
+
+"Yes, I've said that. I've said it because I wanted to think it," he
+returned remorselessly, "not because I really thought it."
+
+Diane dragged herself up on to her elbow.
+
+"I don't understand. You've not changed?" Then, as he made no answer:
+"Hugh, you're frightening me! What do you mean? What has Catherine
+been saying to you?"
+
+Her voice rose excitedly. A patch of feverish colour appeared on
+either cheek. Old Virginie sprung up from her chair by the fire,
+alarmed.
+
+"You excite madame!"
+
+Hugh turned to leave the room.
+
+"We'll discuss this another time, Diane," he said.
+
+Diane moved her head fretfully.
+
+"No. Now--now! Don't go! Hugh!"
+
+Her voice rose almost to a scream and simultaneously the nurse came
+hurrying in from the adjoining room. She threw one glance at the
+patient, huddled flushed and excited against the pillows, then without
+more ado she marched up to Hugh and, taking him by the shoulders with
+her small, capable hands, she pushed him out of the room.
+
+"Do you want to /kill/ your wife?" she demanded in a low voice of
+concentrated anger. "If so, you're going the right way about it."
+
+The next moment the door closed behind her, and Hugh found himself
+standing alone on the landing outside it.
+
+
+
+Although the scene with her husband did not kill Diane, it went very
+near it. For some time she was dangerously ill, but at last the
+combined efforts of doctor and nurse restored her once more to a frail
+hold upon life, and the resiliency of youth accomplished the rest.
+
+Curiously enough, the remembrance of Hugh's brief visit to her bedside
+held for her no force of reality. When the fever which had ensued
+abated, she described the whole scene in detail to Virginie and the
+nurse as an evil dream which she had had--and pitifully they let her
+continue in this belief.
+
+Even Hugh himself had been compelled, under protest, to take part in
+this deception. The doctor, a personal friend of his, had not minced
+matters.
+
+"You've acted the part of an unmitigated coward, Vallincourt--salving
+your own fool conscience at your wife's expense. Even if you no longer
+love her--"
+
+"But I do love her," protested Hugh. "I--I /worship/ her!"
+
+Jim Lancaster stared. In common with most medical men he was more or
+less used to the odd vagaries of human nature, but Hugh's attitude
+struck him as altogether incomprehensible.
+
+"Then what in the name of thunder have you been getting at?" he
+demanded.
+
+"I both love and hate her," declared Hugh wretchedly.
+
+"That's rot," retorted the other. "It's impossible."
+
+"It's not impossible."
+
+Hugh rose and began pacing backwards and forwards. Lancaster's eyes
+rested on him thoughtfully. The man had altered during the last few
+weeks--altered incredibly. He was a stone lighter to start with, and
+his blond, clear-cut face had the worn look born of mental conflict.
+His eyes were red-rimmed as though from insufficient sleep.
+
+"It's not impossible." Hugh paused in his restless pacing to and fro.
+"I love her because I can't help myself. I hate her because I ought
+never to have married her--never made a woman of her type the mother
+of my child."
+
+"All mothers are sacred," suggested the doctor quietly.
+
+Hugh seemed not to hear him.
+
+"How long is this pretence to go on, Lancaster?" he demanded
+irritably.
+
+"What pretence?"
+
+"This pretence that nothing is changed--nothing altered--between my
+wife and myself?"
+
+"For ever, I hope. So that, after all, there will have been no
+pretence."
+
+But the appeal of the speech was ineffectual. Hugh looked at the other
+man unmoved.
+
+"It's no use hoping that you and I can see things from the same
+standpoint," he added stubbornly. "I've made my decision--laid down
+the lines of our future life together. I'm only waiting till you, as a
+medical man, tell me that Diane's health is sufficiently restored for
+me to inform her."
+
+"No woman is ever in such health that you can break her heart with
+impunity."
+
+Hugh's light-grey eyes gleamed like steel.
+
+"Will you answer my question?" he said curtly.
+
+Lancaster sprang up.
+
+"Diane is in as good health now as ever she was," he said violently.
+And strode out of the room.
+
+
+
+During the period of her convalescence Diane, attended by Nurse
+Maynard, had occupied rooms situated in a distant wing of the house,
+where the invalid was not likely to be disturbed by the coming and
+going of other members of the household, and it was with almost the
+excitement of a schoolgirl coming home for the holidays that, when she
+was at last released from the doctor's supervision, she retook
+possession of her own room. She superintended joyously the restoration
+to their accustomed place her various little personal possessions, and
+finally peeped into her husband's adjoining room, thinking she heard
+him moving there.
+
+On the threshold she paused irresolutely, conscious of an odd sense of
+confusion. The room was vacant. But, beyond that, its whole aspect was
+different somehow, unfamiliar. Her eyes wandered to the dressing-
+table. Instead of holding its usual array of silver-backed brushes and
+polished shaving tackle, winking in the sunshine, it was empty. She
+stared at it blankly. Then her glance travelled slowly round the room.
+It had a strangely untenanted look. There was no sign of masculine
+attire left carelessly about--not a chair or table was a hairbreadth
+out of its appointed place.
+
+Her hand, resting lightly on the door-handle, gripped it with a sudden
+tensity. The next moment she had crossed the room and torn open the
+doors of the great armoire where Hugh kept his clothes. This, too, was
+empty--shelves and hanger alike. Impulsively she rang the bell and,
+when a maid appeared in response, demanded to know the meaning of the
+alteration.
+
+The girl glanced at her with the veiled curiosity of her class.
+
+"It was made by Sir Hugh's orders, my lady."
+
+With an effort, Diane hid the sudden tumult of bewilderment and fear
+that filled her. Her dream! Had it been only a dream? Or had it been
+an actual happening--that terrible little scene with her husband when,
+standing rigid and unbending beside her bed, he had told her that the
+birth of their daughter was a just retribution for a union he regarded
+as a sin?
+
+Memories of their brief year of marriage came surging over her in a
+torrent--Catherine's narrow-minded opposition and disapproval, Hugh's
+own moodiness and irritability and, latterly, his not infrequent
+censure. There had been times when Diane--rebuked incessantly--had
+fancied she must be the Scarlet Woman herself, or at least a very near
+relative. And then had come moments when Hugh, carried away by his
+ardour, had once more played the lover as he alone knew how, with all
+the warmth and abandon of those days when he had wooed her in Italy,
+and Diane would forget her unhappiness and fears in the sure knowledge
+that she was a passionately beloved woman.
+
+But always she was subconsciously aware of a sense of strife--of
+struggle, as though Hugh loved her in spite of himself, in defiance of
+some inner mandate of conscience which accused him.
+
+And now, fear mastered her. Her dream had been a reality. And this--
+this sweeping away from what had been his room of every familiar
+little personal possession--was the symbol of some new and terribly
+changed relation between them.
+
+Forcing herself to move composedly while the maid still watched her,
+she walked slowly out of the room, but the instant the door had closed
+behind her she flew downstairs to her husband's study and, not pausing
+to comply with the unwritten law which forbade entrance there without
+express permission, broke in upon him as he sat at his desk, busily
+occupied with his morning mail.
+
+"Diane!"
+
+Hugh turned towards her with a cold light of astonished disapproval in
+his eyes.
+
+"You know I don't like to be interrupted----"
+
+"I know, I know. But I /had/ to come. Something's happened. There's
+been a mistake. . . . Hugh, they've taken everything out of your room.
+All your things."
+
+She stood beside him breathlessly awaiting his reply--her passionate
+dark eyes fixed on his face, two patches of brilliant colour showing
+on the high cheek-bones that bore witness to her Russian origin.
+
+They made a curious contrast--husband and wife. She, a slender thing
+of fire and flame, hands clenched, lips quivering--woman every inch of
+her; he, immaculate and composed, his face coldly expressionless, yet
+with a hint of something warmer, a suppressed glow, beneath the
+deliberately chill glance of those curious light-grey eyes--the man
+and bigoted fanatic fighting for supremacy within him.
+
+"Hugh! Answer me! Don't sit staring at me like that!" Diane's voice
+held a sharpened sound.
+
+At last he spoke, very slowly and carefully.
+
+"There has been no mistake, Diane. Everything that has been done has
+been with my sanction--by my order. Our marriage has been a culpable
+mistake. Catherine realised it from the beginning. I only realise my
+full guilt now that I am punished. But whatever I can do in atonement
+--reparation, that I have made up my mind to do. The first--the chief
+thing--is that our married life is at an end."
+
+She heard him with a curious absence of surprise. Somehow, from the
+instant she had seen his dismantled room she had known, known surely,
+that the long fight between herself and Catherine was over. And that
+Catherine had won.
+
+"At an end? Hugh, what do you mean? What are you going to do? You're
+not, you're not going to send me away?"
+
+"No, not that. I've no right to punish you. You've been guilty of no
+fault--"
+
+"Except the fault of being myself," she flung back bitterly.
+
+"But I ought never to have married you. I did it, knowing you were not
+fit--suitable"--he corrected himself hastily. "So I alone am to blame.
+You will retain your position here as my wife--mistress of my home."
+Diane, remembering Catherine's despotic rule, smiled mirthlessly. "But
+henceforth you will be my wife in name only. I shall have no wife."
+
+Diane caught that note of dull endurance in his voice, and seized upon
+it. He still cared!
+
+"Hugh, you've listened to Catherine till you've lost all sense of
+truth." She spoke gently, pleadingly. "Don't do this thing. We've been
+guilty of no sin that needs atonement. It isn't wrong to love."
+
+But he was implacable.
+
+"No," he returned. "It isn't wrong to love--but sometimes love should
+be denied."
+
+Diane drew nearer to him, and laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"Not ours, Hugh," she whispered. "Not love like ours--"
+
+"Be silent!"
+
+Hugh sprang to his feet, his eyes ablaze, his voice hoarse and
+shaking.
+
+"Don't tempt me! Do you think I've found it easy to decide on this?
+When every fibre of my body is calling out for you? My God, no!"
+
+"Then don't do it! Hugh--dearest--"
+
+With sudden violence he caught her by the arms.
+
+"Be silent, I tell you! Don't tempt me! I'll make my penance, accept
+the burden laid on me--that my first-born should be a girl!"
+
+Diane clung to him, resisting his attempt to thrust her from him.
+
+"Hugh! Ah, wait! Listen to me! . . . Dear, some day there may be a
+little son, yours and mine--"
+
+He flung her from him violently.
+
+"There shall never be a son of ours! Never! It is the Will of God."
+
+With an immense effort he checked the rising frenzy within him--the
+ecstasy of the martyr embracing the stake to which he shall be bound.
+He moved across to the door and held it open for her.
+
+"And now, will you please go? That is my last word on the matter."
+
+Diane turned hesitatingly towards the doorway, then paused.
+
+"Hugh----"
+
+There was an infinite appeal in her voice. Her eyes were those of a
+frightened, bewildered child.
+
+"Go, please," he repeated mechanically.
+
+A convulsive sob tore its way through her throat. She stepped blindly
+forward. The next moment the door closed inexorably between husband
+and wife.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SAINT-MICHAEL AND THE WONDER-CHILD
+
+Day by day her husband's complete estrangement from her was rendered
+additionally bitter to Diane by Catherine's complacent air of triumph.
+The latter knew that she had won, severed the tie which bound her
+brother to "the foreign dancing-woman," and she did not scruple to let
+Diane see that she openly rejoiced in the fact.
+
+At first Diane imagined that Catherine might rest content with what
+she had accomplished, but the grim, hard-featured woman still
+continued to exhibit the same self-righteous disapproval towards her
+brother's wife as hitherto.
+
+Diane endured it in resentful silence for a time, but one day, stung
+by some more than usually acid speech of Catherine's, she turned on
+her, demanding passionately why she seemed to hate her even more since
+the birth of the child.
+
+"I nearly gave my life for her," she protested with fierce simplicity.
+"I could do no more! Is it because /le bon dieu/ has sent me a little
+daughter instead of a little son that you hate me so much?"
+
+And Catherine had answered her in a voice of quiet, concentrated
+animosity:
+
+"If you had died then--/died childless/--I should have thanked God day
+and night."
+
+Diane, isolated and unhappy, turned to her baby for consolation. It
+was all that was left to her out of the wreck of her life, and the
+very fact that both Hugh and Catherine seemed to regard the little
+daughter with abhorrence only served to strengthen the passionate
+worship which she herself lavished upon her.
+
+The child--they had called her Magda--was an odd little creature, as
+might have been expected from the violently opposing characteristics
+of her parents.
+
+She was slenderly made--built on the same lithe lines as her mother--
+and almost as soon as she was able to walk she manifested an amazing
+balance and suppleness of limb. By the time she was four years old she
+was trying to imitate, with uncertain little feet and dimpled,
+aimlessly waving arms, the movements of her mother, when to amuse the
+child, she would sometimes dance for her.
+
+However big a tragedy had occurred in Magda's small world--whether it
+were a crack across the insipid china face of a favourite doll or the
+death of an adored Persian kitten--there was still balm in Gilead if
+/"petite maman"/ would but dance for her. The tears shining in big
+drops on her cheeks, her small chest still heaving with the sobs that
+were a passionate protest against unkind fate, Magda would sit on the
+floor entranced, watching with adoring eyes every swift, graceful
+motion of the dancer, and murmuring in the quaint shibboleth of French
+and English she had imbibed from old Virginie.
+
+On one of these occasions Hugh came upon the two unexpectedly and
+brought the performance to a summary conclusion.
+
+"That will do, Diane," he said icily. "I should have thought you would
+have had more self-respect than to dance--in that fashion--in front of
+a child."
+
+"It is, then, a sin to dance--as it is to be married?" demanded Diane
+bitterly, abruptly checked in an exquisite spring-flower dance of her
+own invention.
+
+"I forbid it; that is sufficient," replied Hugh sternly.
+
+His assumption of arrogant superiority was unbearable. Diane's self-
+control wavered under it and broke. She turned and upbraided him
+despairingly, alternately pleading and reproaching, battering all her
+slender forces uselessly against his inflexible determination.
+
+"This is a waste of time, Diane--mine, anyway," he told her. And left
+her shaken with grief and anger.
+
+Driven by a sense of utter revolt, she stormed her way to Catherine,
+who was composedly sorting sheets in the linen room.
+
+"I will not bear it!" she burst out at her furiously. "What have I
+done that I should be treated as an outcast--a pariah?"
+
+Catherine regarded the tense, quivering little figure with chill
+dislike.
+
+"You married my brother," she replied imperturbably.
+
+"And you have separated us! But for you, we should be happy together--
+he and baby and I! But you have spoilt it all. I suppose"--a hint of
+the Latin Quarter element in her asserting itself--"I suppose you
+think no one good enough to marry into your precious family!"
+
+Catherine paused on her way to the cupboard, a pile of fine linen
+pillowslips in her hands.
+
+"Yes," she said quietly. "It is I who have separated you--spoilt your
+happiness, if you like. And I am glad of it. I can't expect anyone
+like you to understand"--there was the familiar flavour of
+disparagement in her tones--"but I am thankful that my brother has
+seen the wickedness of his marriage with you, that he has repented of
+it, and that he is making the only atonement possible!"
+
+She turned and composedly laid the pile of pillowslips in their
+appointed place on the shelf. A faint fragrance of dried lavender
+drifted out from the dark depths of the cupboard. Diane always
+afterwards associated the smell of lavender with her memories of
+Catherine Vallincourt, and the sweet, clean scent of it was spoiled
+for her henceforward.
+
+"I hate you!" she exclaimed in a low voice of helpless rage. "I hate
+you--and I wish to God Hugh had never had a sister!"
+
+"Well"--composedly--"he will not have one much longer."
+
+Diane stared.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that as far as our life together is concerned, it is very
+nearly over."
+
+"Do you mean"--Diane bent towards her breathlessly--"do you mean that
+you are /going away/--going away from Coverdale?"
+
+"Yes. I am entering a sisterhood--that of the Sisters of Penitence, a
+community Hugh is endowing with money that is urgently needed."
+
+"Endowing?"
+
+"As part of the penance he has set himself to perform." Catherine's
+steely glance met and held the younger woman's. "Thanks to you, the
+remainder of his life will be passed in expiation."
+
+Diane shook her head carelessly. Such side-issues were of relatively
+small importance compared with the one outstanding, amazing fact:
+Catherine was going away! Going away from Coverdale--for ever!
+
+"Yes"--Catherine read her thoughts shrewdly--"yes, you will be rid of
+me. I shall not be here much longer."
+
+Diane struck her hands together. For once, not even the fear of
+Catherine's gibing tongue could hold her silent.
+
+"I'm glad--glad--/glad/ you're going away!" she exclaimed
+passionately. "When you are gone I will win back my husband."
+
+"Do you think so?" was all she said.
+
+But to Diane's keyed-up consciousness it was as though the four short
+words contained a threat--the germ of future disaster.
+
+
+
+In due time Catherine quitted Coverdale for the austere seclusion of
+the sisterhood, and a very few weeks sufficed to convince Diane that
+her forebodings had been only too well founded.
+
+Catherine had long been anxious to enter a community, restrained from
+doing so solely by Hugh's need of her as mistress of his house, and
+now that her wish was an accomplished fact, it seemed as though he
+were spurred on to increasing effort by the example of his sister's
+renunciation of the world. He withdrew himself even more completely
+from his wife, sometimes avoiding her company for days at a time, and
+adopted a stringently ascetic mode of life, denying himself all
+pleasure, fasting frequently, and praying and meditating for hours at
+a stretch in the private chapel which was attached to Coverdale. As
+far as it was possible, without actually entering a community, his
+existence resembled that of a monk, and Diane came to believe that he
+had voluntarily vowed himself to a certain form of penance and
+expiation for the marriage which the bigotry of his nature had led him
+to regard as a sin.
+
+His life only impinged upon his wife's in so far as the upbringing of
+their child was concerned. He was unnecessarily severe with her, and,
+since Diane opposed his strict ruling at every opportunity, Magda's
+early life was passed in an atmosphere of fierce contradictions.
+
+The child inherited her mother's beauty to the full, and, as she
+developed, exhibited an extraordinary faculty for getting her own way.
+Servants, playmates, and governesses all succumbed to the nameless
+charm she possessed, while her mother and old Virginie frankly
+worshipped her.
+
+The love of dancing was instinctive with her, and this, unknown to
+Hugh, her mother cultivated assiduously, fostering in her everything
+that was imaginative and delicately fanciful. Magda believed firmly in
+the existence of fairies and regarded flowers as each possessed of a
+separate entity with personal characteristics of its own. The
+originality of the dances she invented for her own amusement was the
+outcome.
+
+But, side by side with this love of all that was beautiful, she
+absorbed from her mother a certain sophisticated understanding of life
+which was somewhat startling in one of her tender years, and this,
+too, betrayed itself in her dancing. For it is an immutable law that
+everything--good, bad, and indifferent--which lies in the soul of an
+artist ultimately reveals itself in his work.
+
+And Magda, inheriting the underlying ardour of her father's
+temperament and the gutter-child's sharp sense of values which was her
+mother's Latin Quarter garnering, at the age of eight danced, with all
+the beguilement and seductiveness of a trained and experienced dancer.
+
+Even Hugh himself was not proof against the elusive lure of it. He
+chanced upon her one day, dancing in her nursery, and was so carried
+away by the charm of the performance that for the moment he forgot
+that she was transgressing one of his most rigid rules.
+
+In the child's gracious, alluring gestures he was reminded of the
+first time that he had seen her mother dance, and of how it had
+thrilled him. Beneath the veneer with which his self-enforced
+austerity had overlaid his emotions, he felt his pulses leap, and was
+bitterly chagrined at being thus attracted.
+
+He found himself brought up forcibly once more against the inevitable
+consequences of his marriage with Diane, and reasoned that through his
+weakness in making such a woman his wife, he had let loose on the
+world a feminine thing dowered with the seductiveness of a Delilah and
+backed--here came in the exaggerated family pride ingrained in him--by
+all the added weight and influence of her social position as a
+Vallincourt.
+
+"Never let me see you dance again, Magda," he told her. "It is
+forbidden. If you disobey you will be severely punished."
+
+Magda regarded him curiously out of a pair of long dark eyes the
+colour of black smoke. With that precociously sophisticated instinct
+of hers she realised that the man had been emotionally stirred, and
+divined in her funny child's mind that it was her dancing which had so
+stirred him. It gave her a curious sense of power.
+
+"Sieur Hugh is /afraid/ because he likes me to dance," she told her
+mother, with an impish little grin of enjoyment.
+
+(On one occasion Hugh had narrated for her benefit the history of an
+ancestor, one Sieur Hugues de Vallincourt, whose effigy in stone
+adorned the church, and she had ever afterwards persisted in referring
+to her father as "Sieur Hugh"--considerably to his annoyance, since he
+regarded it as both disrespectful and unseemly.)
+
+From this time onwards Magda seemed to take a diabolical delight in
+shocking her father--experimenting on him, as it were. In some
+mysterious way she had become conscious of her power to allure. Young
+as she was, the instinct of conquest was awakened within her, and she
+proceeded to "experiment" on certain of her father's friends--to their
+huge delight and Hugh's intense disgust. Once, in an outburst of fury,
+he epitomised her ruthlessly.
+
+"The child has the soul of a courtesan!"
+
+If this were so, Hugh had no knowledge of how to cope with it. His
+fulminations on the subject of dancing affected her not at all, and a
+few days after he had rebuked her with all the energy at his command
+he discovered her dancing on a table--this time for the delectation of
+an enraptured butler and staff in the servants' hall.
+
+Without more ado Hugh lifted her down and carried her to his study,
+where he administered a sound smacking. The result astonished him
+considerably.
+
+"Do you think you can stop me from dancing by beating me?"
+
+Magda arraigned him with passionate scorn.
+
+"I do," he returned grimly. "If you hurt people enough you can stop
+them from committing sin. That is the meaning of remedial punishment."
+
+"I don't believe it!" she stormed at him. "You might hurt me till I
+/died/ of hurting, but you couldn't make me good--not if I hated your
+hurting me all the time! Because it isn't good to hate," she added out
+of the depths of some instinctive wisdom.
+
+"Then you'd better learn to like being punished--if that will make you
+good," retorted Hugh.
+
+Magda sped out into the woods. Hugh's hand had been none too light,
+and she was feeling physically and spiritually sore. Her small soul
+was aflame with fierce revolt.
+
+Just to assure herself of the liberty of the individual and of the
+fact that "hurting couldn't make her good," she executed a solitary
+little dance on the green, mossy sward beneath the trees. It was
+rather a painful process, since certain portions of her anatomy still
+tingled from the retributive strokes of justice, but she set her teeth
+and accomplished the dance with a consciousness of unholy glee that
+added appreciably to the quality of the performance.
+
+"Are you the Fairy Queen?"
+
+The voice came suddenly out of the dim, enfolding silence of the
+woods, and Magda paused in the midst of a final pirouette. A man was
+standing leaning against the trunk of a tree, watching her with
+whimsical grey eyes. Behind him, set up in the middle of a clearing
+amongst the trees, an easel and stool evidenced his recent occupation.
+
+Magda returned the scrutiny of the grey eyes. She was no whit
+embarrassed and slowly lowered her foot--she had been toe-dancing--to
+its normal position while she surveyed the newcomer with interest.
+
+He was a tall, lean specimen of mankind, and the sunlight, quivering
+between the interlacing boughs above his head, flickered on to kinky
+fair hair that looked almost absurdly golden contrasted with the brown
+tan of the face beneath it. It was a nice face, Magda decided, with a
+dogged, squarish jaw that appealed to a certain tenacity of spirit
+which was one of her own unchildish characteristics, and the keen
+dark-grey eyes she encountered were so unlike the cold light-grey of
+her father's that it seemed ridiculous the English language could only
+supply the one word "grey" to describe things that were so totally
+dissimilar.
+
+"They're like eyes with little fires behind them," Magda told herself.
+Then smiled at their owner radiantly.
+
+"Are you the Fairy Queen?" he repeated gravely.
+
+She regarded him with increasing approval.
+
+"Yes," she assented graciously. "These are my woods."
+
+"Then I'm afraid I've been trespassing in your majesty's domain,"
+admitted the grey-eyed man. "But your woods are so beautiful I simply
+had to try and make a sketch of them."
+
+Magda came back to earth with promptitude.
+
+"Oh, are you an artist?" she demanded eagerly.
+
+He nodded, smiling.
+
+"I'm trying to be."
+
+"Let me look." She flashed past him and planted herself in front of
+the easel.
+
+"/Mais, c'est bon!/" she commented coolly. "Me, I know. We have good
+pictures at home. This is a good picture."
+
+The man with the grey eyes looked suitably impressed.
+
+"I'm glad you find it so," he replied meekly. "I think it wants just
+one thing more. If"--he spoke abstractly--"if the Fairy Queen were
+resting just there"--his finger indicated the exact point on the
+canvas--"tired, you know, because she had been dancing to one of the
+Mortals--lucky beggar, wasn't he?--why, I think the picture would be
+complete."
+
+Magda shot him a swift glance of comprehension. Then, without a word,
+she moved towards the bole of a tree and flung herself down with all
+the supple grace of a young faun. The artist snatched up his palette;
+the pose she had assumed without a hint from him was inimitable--the
+slender limbs relaxed and drooping exactly as though from sheer
+fatigue. He painted furiously, blocking in the limp little figure with
+swift, sure strokes of his brush.
+
+When at last he desisted he flung a question at her.
+
+"Who taught you to pose--and to dance like that, you wonder-child?"
+
+Magda surveyed him with that mixture of saint and devil in her long,
+suddenly narrow eyes which, when she grew to womanhood, was the
+measure of her charm and the curse of her tempestuous life.
+
+"/Le bon dieu/," she responded demurely.
+
+The man smiled and shook his head. It was a crooked little smile,
+oddly humorous and attractive.
+
+"No," he said with conviction. "No. I don't think so."
+
+The daylight was beginning to fade, and he started to pack up his
+belongings.
+
+"What's your name?" asked Magda suddenly.
+
+"Michael."
+
+She looked at him with sudden awe.
+
+"Not--not /Saint Michel/?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+Virginie had told her all about "/Saint Michel/." He was a very great
+angel indeed. It would be tremendously exciting to find she had been
+talking to him all this time without knowing it! And the grey-eyed man
+had fair hair; it shone in the glinting sunset-light /almost/ like a
+halo!
+
+He quenched her hopes with that brief, one-sided smile of his.
+
+"No," he said. "I'm not Saint Michael. I'm only a poor devil of a
+painter who's got his way to make in the world. Perhaps, you've helped
+me, Fairy Queen."
+
+And seeing that "The Repose of Titania" was the first of his paintings
+to bring Michael Quarrington that meed of praise and recognition which
+was later his in such full measure, perhaps she had.
+
+"I think I'm glad you're not a saint, after all," remarked Magda
+thoughtfully. "Saint's are dreadfully dull and superior."
+
+He smiled down at her.
+
+"Are they? How do you know?"
+
+"Because Sieur Hugh is preparing to be one. At least Virginie says so
+--and she sniffs when she says it. So you see, I know all about it."
+
+"I see," he replied seriously. "And who are Sieur Hugh and Virginie?"
+
+"Sieur Hugh is my father. And Virginie is next best to /petite maman/.
+Me, I love Virginie."
+
+"Lucky Virginie!"
+
+Magda made no answer, but she stood looking at him with an odd,
+unchildlike deviltry in her sombre eyes.
+
+"Fairy Queen, I should like to kiss you," said the man suddenly. Then
+he jerked his head back. "No, I wouldn't!" he added quickly to
+himself. "By Jove, it's uncanny!"
+
+Magda remained motionless, still staring at him with those long dark
+eyes of hers. He noticed that just at the outer corners they slanted
+upwards a little, giving her small, thin face a curiously Eastern
+look.
+
+At last--
+
+"Please kiss me, Saint Michael," she said.
+
+For a moment he hesitated, a half-rueful, half-whimsical smile on his
+lips, rather as though he were laughing at himself. Then, with a shrug
+of his shoulders, he stooped quickly and kissed her.
+
+"Witch-child!" he muttered as he strode away through the woods.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SEED OF EVIL
+
+Diane sat in the twilight, brooding. Winter had come round again,
+gripping the world with icy fingers, and she shivered a little as she
+crouched in front of the fire.
+
+She felt cold--cold in body and soul. The passage of time had brought
+no cheery warmth of love or loving-kindness to her starved heart, and
+the estrangement between herself and Hugh was as definite and absolute
+as it had been the day Catherine quitted Coverdale for the Sisterhood
+of Penitence.
+
+But the years which had elapsed since then had taken their inevitable
+toll. Hugh had continued along the lines he had laid down for himself,
+rigidly ascetic and austere, and his mode of life now revealed itself
+unmistakably in his thin, emaciated face and eyes ablaze with
+fanatical fervour.
+
+Diane, thrust into a compulsory isolation utterly foreign to her
+temperament, debarred the fulfilment of her womanhood which her
+spontaneous, impetuous nature craved, had drooped and pined, gradually
+losing both her buoyant spirit and her health in the loveless
+atmosphere to which her husband had condemned her.
+
+She had so counted on the prospect that a better understanding between
+herself and Hugh would ensue after Catherine's departure that the
+downfall of her hopes had come upon her as a bitter disappointment.
+Once she had stifled her pride and begged him to live no longer as a
+stranger to her. But he had repulsed her harshly, refusing her
+pleading with an inexorable decision there was no combating.
+
+Afterwards she had given herself up to despair, and gradually--almost
+imperceptibly at first--her health had declined until finally, at the
+urgent representations of Virginie, Hugh had called in Dr. Lancaster.
+
+"There is no specific disease," he had said. "But none the less"--
+looking very directly at Hugh--"your wife is dying, Vallincourt."
+
+Diane had been told the first part of the doctor's pronouncement, and
+recommended by her husband to "rouse herself" out of her apathetic
+state.
+
+"'No specific disease!'" she repeated bitterly, as she sat brooding in
+the firelight. "No--only this death in life which I have had to
+endure. Well, it will be over soon--and the sooner the better."
+
+The door burst open suddenly and Magda came in to the room, checking
+abruptly, with a child's stumbling consciousness of pain, as she
+caught sight of her mother curled up in front of the fire, staring
+mutely into its glowing heart.
+
+"/Maman/?" she begin timidly. "/Petite maman/?"
+
+Diane turned round.
+
+"Cherie, is it thou?"
+
+She kneeled up on the hearthrug and, taking the child in her arms,
+searched her face with dry, bright eyes.
+
+"Baby," she said. "Listen! And when thou art older, remember always
+what I have said."
+
+Magda stared at her, listening intently.
+
+"Never, never give your heart to any man," continued Diane. "If you
+do, he will only break it for you--break it into little pieces like
+the glass scent-bottle which you dropped yesterday. Take everything.
+But do not give--anything--in return. Will you remember?"
+
+And Magda answered her gravely.
+
+"/Oui, maman/, I will remember."
+
+What happened after that remained always a confused blur in Magda's
+memory--a series of pictures standing out against a dark background of
+haste and confusion, and whispered fears.
+
+Suddenly her mother gave a sharp little cry and her hands went up to
+her breast, while for a moment her eyes, dilated and frightened-
+looking, stared agonisingly ahead. Then she toppled over sideways and
+lay in a little heap on the great bearskin rung in front of the fire.
+
+After that Virginie came running, followed by a drove of scared-
+looking servants and, last of all, by Hugh himself, his face very
+white and working strangely.
+
+The car was sent off in frantic haste in search of Dr. Lancaster, and
+later in the day two white-capped nurses appeared on the scene. Then
+followed hours of hushed uncertainty, when people went to and fro with
+hurried, muffled footsteps and spoke together in whispers, while
+Virginie's face grew yellow and drawn-looking, and the tears trickled
+down her wrinkled-apple cheeks whenever one spoke to her.
+
+Last of all someone told Magda that "/petite maman/" had gone away--
+and on further inquiry Virginie vouchsafed that she had gone to
+somewhere called Paradise to be with the blessed saints.
+
+"When will she come back again?" demanded Magda practically.
+
+Upon which Virginie had made an unpleasant choking noise in her throat
+and declared:
+
+"Never!"
+
+Magda was frankly incredulous. /Petite maman/ would never go away like
+that and leave her behind! Of that she felt convinced, and said so.
+Gulping back her sobs, Virginie explained that in this case madame had
+been given no choice, but added that if Magda comported herself like a
+good little girl, she would one day go to be with her in Paradise.
+Magda found it all very puzzling.
+
+But when, later, she was taken into her mother's room and saw the
+slender, sheeted figure lying straight and still on the great bed,
+hands meekly crossed upon the young, motionless breast, while tall
+white candles burned at head and foot, the knowledge that /petite
+maman/ had really gone from her seemed all at once to penetrate her
+childish mind.
+
+That aloofly silent figure could not be her gay, pretty /petite maman/
+--the one who had played and laughed with her and danced so
+exquisitely that sometimes Magda's small soul had ached with the sheer
+beauty and loveliness of it. . . .
+
+She met Dr. Lancaster as she came out from the candle-lit room and
+clutched him convulsively by the hand.
+
+"Is that--being dead?" she whispered, pointing to the room she had
+just quitted.
+
+Very gently he tried to explain things to her. Afterwards Magda
+overheard the family lawyer asking him in appropriately shocked tones
+of what complaint Lady Vallincourt had died, and there had been a
+curious grim twist to Lancaster's mouth as he made answer.
+
+"Heart," he said tersely.
+
+"Ah! Very sad. Very sad indeed," rejoined the lawyer feelingly. "These
+heart complaints are very obscure sometimes, I believe?"
+
+"Sometimes," said Lancaster. "Not always."
+
+
+
+The next happening that impressed itself on Magda's cognisance as an
+event was the coming of Lady Arabella Winter. She arrived on a day of
+heavy snow, and Magda's first impression of her, as she came into the
+hall muffled up to the tip of her patrician nose in a magnificent
+sable wrap, was of a small, alert-eyed bird huddled into its nest.
+
+But when the newcomer had laid aside her furs Magda's impression
+qualified itself. Lady Arabella was not in the least of the "small
+bird" type, but rather suggested a hawk endowed with a grim sense of
+humour--quick and decisive in movement, with eyes that held an
+incalculable wisdom and laughed a thought cynically because they saw
+so clearly.
+
+Her hair was perfectly white, as white as the snow outside, but her
+complexion was soft and fine-grained as that of a girl of sixteen--
+pink and white like summer roses. She had the manner of an empress
+with extremely modern ideas.
+
+Magda was instructed that this great little personage was her
+godmother and that she would in future live with her instead of at
+Coverdale. She accepted the information without surprise though with
+considerable interest.
+
+"Think you'll like it?" Lady Arabella shot at her keenly.
+
+"Yes," Magda replied unhesitatingly. "But why am I going to live with
+you? Sieur Hugh isn't dead, too, is he?"--with impersonal interest.
+
+"And who in the name of fortune is Sieur Hugh?"
+
+Lady Arabella looked around helplessly, and Virginia, who was hovering
+in the background, hastened to explain the relationship.
+
+"Then, no," replied Lady Arabella. "Sieur Hugh is not dead--though to
+be sure he's the next thing to it!"
+
+Magda eyed her solemnly.
+
+"Is he very ill?" she asked.
+
+"No, merely cranky like all the Vallincourts. He's in a community,
+joined a brotherhood, you know, and proposes to spend the rest of his
+days repenting his sins and making his peace with heaven. I've no
+patience with the fool!" continued the old lady irascibly. "He marries
+to please himself and then hasn't the pluck of a rabbit to see the
+thing through decently. So you're to be my responsibility in future--
+and a pretty big one, too, to judge by the look of you."
+
+Magda hardly comprehended the full meaning of this speech. Still she
+gathered that her father had left her--though not quite in the same
+way as /petite maman/ had done--and that henceforth this autocratic
+old lady with the hawk's eyes and quick, darting movements was to be
+the arbiter of her fate. She also divined, beneath Lady Arabella's
+prickly exterior, a humanness and ability to understand which had been
+totally lacking in Sieur Hugh. She proceeded to put it to the test.
+
+"Will you let me dance?" she asked.
+
+"Tchah!" snorted the old woman. "So the Wielitzska blood is coming out
+after all!" She turned to Virginia. "Can she dance?" she demanded
+abruptly.
+
+"Mais oui, madame!" cried Virginie, clasping her hands ecstatically.
+"Like a veritable angel!"
+
+"I shouldn't have thought it," commented her ladyship drily.
+
+Her shrewd eyes swept the child's tense little face with its long,
+Eastern eyes and the mouth that showed so vividly scarlet against its
+unchildish pallor.
+
+"Less like an angel than anything, I should imagine," muttered the old
+woman to herself with a wicked little grin. Then aloud: "Show me what
+you can do, then, child."
+
+"Very well." Magda paused, reflecting. Then she ran forward and laid
+her hand lightly on Lady Arabella's knee. "Look! This is the story of
+a Fairy who came to earth and lost her way in the woods. She met one
+of the Mortals, and he loved her so much that he wouldn't show her the
+way back to Fairyland. So"--abruptly--"she died."
+
+Lady Arabella watched the child dance in astonished silence.
+Technique, of course, was lacking, but the interpretation, the telling
+of the story, was amazing. It was all there--the Fairy's first wonder
+and delight in finding herself in the woods, then her realisation that
+she was lost and her frantic efforts to find the way back to
+Fairyland. Followed her meeting with the Mortal and supplication to
+him to guide her, and finally the Fairy's despair and death. Magda's
+slight little figure sank to the ground, drooping slowly like a storm-
+bent snowdrop, and lay still.
+
+Lady Arabella sat up with a jerk.
+
+"Good gracious! The child's a born dancer! Lydia Tchinova must see
+her. She'll have to train. Poor Hugh!" She chuckled enjoyably. "This
+will be the last straw! He'll be compelled to invent a new penance."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FLOWERING
+
+"You're very trying, Magda. Everyone is talking about you, and I'm
+tired of trying to explain you to people."
+
+Lady Arabella paused in her knitting and spoke petulantly, but a
+secret gleam of admiration in her sharp old eyes as they rested upon
+her god-daughter belied the irritation of her tones.
+
+Magda leaned back negligently against the big black velvet cushions in
+her chair and lit a cigarette.
+
+"I /want/ everyone to talk about me," she returned composedly. Her
+voice was oddly attractive--low-pitched and with a faint blur of
+huskiness about it that caught the ear with a distinctive charm. "It
+increases the box-office receipts. And there's no reason in the world
+for you to 'explain' me to people."
+
+Her godmother regarded her with increasing irritation, yet at the same
+time acutely conscious of the arresting quality of the young, vividly
+alive face that gleamed at her from its black-velvet background.
+
+Ten years had only served to emphasise the unusual characteristics of
+the child Magda. Her skin was wonderful, of a smooth, creamy-white
+texture which gave to the sharply angled face something of the pale,
+exotic perfection of a stephanotis bloom. Her eyes were long, the
+colour of black pansies--black with a suggestion of purple in their
+depths. They slanted upwards a little at the outer corners, and this
+together with the high cheek-bones, alone would have betrayed her
+Russian ancestry. When Lady Arabella wanted to be particularly
+obnoxious she told her that she had Mongolian eyes, and Magda would
+shrug her shoulders and, thrusting out a foot which was so perfect in
+shape that a painting of it by a certain famous artist had been the
+most talked-of picture of the year, would reply placidly: "Well, thank
+heaven, /that's/ not English, anyway!"
+
+"It certainly required some explanation when you chose to leave me and
+go off and live by yourself," pursued Lady Arabella, resuming her
+knitting. "A girl of twenty! Of course people have talked. Especially
+as half the men in town imagine themselves in love with you."
+
+"Well, I'm perfectly respectable now. I've engaged a nice, tame pussy-
+cat person to take charge of my morals and chaperon me generally. Not
+--like you, Marraine--an Early Victorian autocrat with a twentieth-
+century tongue."
+
+"If you mean Mrs. Grey, she doesn't give me the least impression of
+being a 'nice, tame pussy-cat,'" retorted Lady Arabella. "You'll find
+that out, my dear."
+
+Magda regarded her thoughtfully.
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Oh, Gillian is all right," affirmed Magda, dismissing the matter
+airily. "She's a gorgeous accompanist, anyway--almost as good as
+Davilof himself. Which reminds me--I must go home and rehearse my solo
+dance in the /Swan-Maiden/. I told Davilof I'd be ready for him at
+four o'clock; and it's half-past three now. I shall never get back to
+Hampstead through this ghastly fog in half an hour." She glanced
+towards the window through which was visible a discouraging fog of the
+"pea-soup" variety.
+
+Lady Arabella sniffed.
+
+"You'd better be careful for once in your life, Magda. Davilof is in
+love with you."
+
+"Pouf! What if he is?"
+
+Magda rose, and picking up her big black hat set it on her head at
+precisely the right angle, and proceeded to spear it through with a
+wonderful black-and-gold hatpin of Chinese workmanship.
+
+Lady Arabella shot a swift glance at her.
+
+"He's just one of a crowd?" she suggested tartly.
+
+Magda assented indifferently.
+
+"You're wrong--quite wrong," returned her godmother crisply. "Antoine
+Davilof is not one of a crowd--never will be! He's half a Pole,
+remember."
+
+Magda smiled.
+
+"And I'm half a Russian. It must be a case of deep calling to deep,"
+she suggested mockingly.
+
+Lady Arabella's shining needles clicked as they came to an abrupt
+stop.
+
+"Does that mean you're in love with him?" she asked.
+
+Magda stared.
+
+"Good gracious, no! I'm never in love. You know that."
+
+"That doesn't prevent my hoping you may develop--some day--into a
+normal God-fearing woman," retorted the other.
+
+"And learn to thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love?" Magda
+laughed lightly. "I shan't. At least, I hope not. Judging from my
+friends and acquaintances, the condition of being in love is a most
+unpleasant one--reduces a woman to a humiliating sense of her own
+unworthiness and keeps her in a see-saw state of emotional
+uncertainty. No, thank you! No man is worth it!"
+
+Lady Arabella looked away. Her hard, bright old eyes held a sudden
+wistfulness foreign to them.
+
+"My dear--one man is. One man in every woman's life is worth it. Only
+we don't always find it out in time."
+
+"Why, Marraine--you don't mean--you weren't ever----"
+
+Lady Arabella rose suddenly and came across to where Magda stood by
+the fire, one narrow foot extended to the cheerful warmth.
+
+"Never mind what I mean," she said, and her voice sounded a little
+uncertain. "Only, if it comes your way, don't miss the best thing this
+queer old world of ours has to offer. If it brings you nothing else,
+love at least leaves you memories. Even that's something."
+
+Magda glanced at her curiously. Somehow she had never imagined that
+behind the worldly-wise old woman's sharp speeches and grim, ironic
+humour there lay the half-buried memory of some far-distant romance.
+Yet now in the uneven tones of her voice she recognised the throb of
+an old wound.
+
+"And meanwhile"--Lady Arabella suddenly resumed in her usual curt
+manner--"meanwhile you might play fair with one or two of those boys
+you have trailing around--Kit Raynham for instance."
+
+"I don't understand," began Magda.
+
+"You understand perfectly. A man of the world's fair game. He can look
+after himself--and probably sizes you up for what you are--a
+phenomenally successful dancer, who regards her little court of
+admirers as one of the commonplaces of existence--like her morning cup
+of tea. But these boys--they look upon you as a woman, even a possible
+wife. And then they proceed to fall in love with you!"
+
+Magda's foot tapped impatiently on the floor.
+
+"What's this all leading up to?"
+
+Lady Arabella met her glance squarely.
+
+"I want you to leave Kit Raynham alone. His mother has been to me--
+Magda, I'm sick of having their mothers come to me!--and begged me to
+interfere. She says you're ruining the boy's prospects. He's a
+brilliant lad, and they expect him to do something rather special. And
+now he's slacking completely. He's always on your doorstep. If you
+care about him--do you, Magda?--tell him so. But, if you don't, for
+goodness' sake send him about his business."
+
+She waited quietly for an answer. Magda slipped into a big fur-coat
+and caught up her gloves. Then she turned to her godmother abruptly.
+
+"Lady Raynham is absurd. I can't prevent Kit's making a fool of
+himself if he wants to. And--and"--rather helplessly--"I can't help it
+if I don't fall in love to order." She kissed her godmother lightly.
+"So that's that."
+
+A minute later Lady Arabella's butler had swung open the front door,
+and Magda crossed the pavement and entered her waiting car.
+
+Outside, the fog hung like a thick pall over London--thick enough to
+curtain the windows of the car with a blank, grey veil and to make
+progress through the streets a difficult and somewhat dangerous
+process. Magda snuggled into her furs and leant back against the
+padded cushions. All sight of the outside world was cut off from her,
+except for the blurred gleam of an occasional street-lamp or the
+menacing shape of a motor-bus looming suddenly alongside, and she
+yielded herself to the train of thought provoked by her talk with Lady
+Arabella.
+
+In a detached sort of way she felt sorry about Kit Raynham--
+principally because Lady Arabella, of whom she was exceedingly fond,
+seemed vexed about the matter. It had not taken her long to discover,
+when as a child she had come to live with her godmother, the warm
+heart that concealed itself beneath the old lady's somewhat shrewish
+exterior. And to Lady Arabella the advent of her god-child had been a
+matter for pure rejoicing.
+
+Having no children of her own, she lavished a pent-up wealth of
+affection upon Magda of which few would have thought her capable, and
+though she was by no means niggardly in her blame of Hugh Vallincourt
+for his method of shelving his responsibilities, she was grateful that
+his withdrawal into the monastic life had been the means of throwing
+Magda into her care. Five years later, when death claimed him, she
+found he had appointed her the child's sole guardian.
+
+True to her intention, she had asked the opinion of Lydia Tchinova,
+the famous dancer, and under Madame Tchinova's guidance Magda had
+received such training that when she came to make her debut she leaped
+into fame at once. Hers was one of those rare cases where the initial
+drudgery and patient waiting that attends so many careers was
+practically eliminated, and at the age of twenty she was probably the
+most talked-of woman in London.
+
+She had discarded the family surname for professional purposes, and
+appeared in public under the name of Wielitzska--"to save the reigning
+Vallincourts from a soul convulsion," as she observed with a twinkle.
+During the last year, influenced by the growing demands of her
+vocation, she had quitted her godmother's hospitable roof and
+established herself in a house of her own.
+
+Nor had Lady Arabella sought to dissuade her. Although she and Magda
+were the best of friends, she had latterly found the onus of
+chaperoning her god-child an increasingly heavy burden. As she herself
+remarked: "You might as well attempt to chaperon a comet!"
+
+It was almost inevitable that Magda, starred and feted wherever she
+went, should develop into a rather erratic and self-willed young
+person, but on the whole she had remained singularly unspoilt. Side by
+side with her gift for dancing she had also inherited something of her
+mother's sweetness and wholesomeness of nature. There was nothing
+petty or mean about her, and many a struggling member of her own
+profession had had good cause to thank "the Wielitzska" for a helping
+hand.
+
+Women found in her a good pal; men, an elusive, provocative
+personality that bewitched and angered them in the same breath, coolly
+accepting all they had to offer of love and headlong worship--and
+giving nothing in return.
+
+It was not in the least that Magda deliberately set herself to wile a
+man's heart out of his body. She seemed unable to help it! Apart from
+everything else, her dancing had taught her the whole magic of the art
+of charming by every look and gesture, and the passage of time had
+only added to the extraordinary physical allure which had been hers
+even as a child.
+
+Yet for all the apparent warmth and ardour of her temperament, to
+which the men she knew succumbed in spite of themselves, she herself
+seemed untouched by any deeper emotion than that of a faintly amused
+desire to attract. The lessons of her early days, the tragedy of her
+mother's married life, had permeated her whole being, and her ability
+to remain emotionally unstirred was due to an instinctive reserve and
+self-withdrawal--an inherent distrust of the passion of love.
+
+/"Take everything. But do not give--anything--in return."/
+Subconsciously Diane's words, wrested from her at a moment of poignant
+mental anguish, formed the credo of her daughter's life.
+
+No man, so far, had ever actually counted for anything in Magda's
+scheme of existence, and as she drove slowly home from Lady Arabella's
+house in Park Lane she sincerely hoped none ever would. Certainly--she
+smiled a little at the bare idea--Kit Raynham was not destined to be
+the man! He was clever, and enthusiastic, and adoring, and she liked
+him quite a lot, but his hot-headed passion failed to waken in her
+breast the least spark of responsive emotion.
+
+Her thoughts drifted idly backward, recalling this or that man who had
+wanted her. It was odd, but of all the men she had met the memory of
+one alone was still provocative of a genuine thrill of interest--and
+that was the unknown artist whom she had encountered in the woods at
+Coverdale.
+
+Even now, after the lapse of ten years, she could remember the young,
+lean, square-jawed face with the grey eyes, "like eyes with little
+fires behind them," and hear again the sudden jerky note in the man's
+voice as he muttered, "Witch-child!"
+
+That brief adventure with "Saint Michel"--she remembered calling him
+"Saint Michel"--stood out as one of the clearest memories of her
+childhood. That, and the memory of her mother, kneeling on the big
+bearskin rug and saying in a hard, dry voice: "Never give your heart
+to any man. Take everything. But do not give--anything--in return."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OUT OF THE FOG
+
+A sudden warning shout, the transient glare of fog-blurred headlights,
+then a crash and a staggering blow on the car's near side which sent
+it reeling like a drunken thing, bonnet foremost, straight into a
+motor-omnibus.
+
+Magda felt herself pitched violently forward off the seat, striking
+her head as she fell, and while the car yet rocked with the force of
+its collision with the motor-bus another vehicle drove blindly into it
+from the rear. It lurched sickeningly and jammed at a precarious
+angle, canted up on two wheels.
+
+Shouts and cries, the frenzied hooting of horns, the grinding of
+brakes and clash of splintered glass combined into a pandemonium of
+terrifying hubbub.
+
+Magda, half-dazed with shock, crouched on the floor of the car where
+she had been flung. She could see the lights appearing and
+disappearing in the fog like baleful eyes opening and shutting
+spasmodically. A tumult of hoarse cries, cursing and bellowing
+instructions, crossed by the thin scream of women's cries, battered
+against her ears.
+
+Then out of the medley of raucous noise came a cool, assured voice:
+
+"Don't be frightened. I'll get you out."
+
+Magda was conscious of a sudden reaction from the numbed sense of
+bewildered terror which had overwhelmed her. The sound of that unknown
+voice--quiet, commanding, and infinitely reassuring--was like a hand
+laid on her heart and stilling its terrified throbbing.
+
+She heard someone tugging at the handle of the door. There came a
+moment's pause while the strained woodwork resisted the pull, then
+with a scrape of jarring fittings the door jerked open and a man's
+figure loomed in the aperture.
+
+"Where are you?" he asked, peering through the dense gloom. "Ah!" She
+felt his outstretched hands close on her shoulders as she knelt
+huddled on the floor. "Can you get up? Or are you hurt?"
+
+Magda tested her limbs cautiously, to discover that no bones were
+broken, though her head ached horribly, so that she felt sick and
+giddy with the pain.
+
+"No, I'm not hurt," she answered.
+
+"Then come along. The car's heeled up a bit, but I'll lift you out if
+you can get to the door."
+
+She stumbled forward obediently, groping her way towards the vague
+panel of lighter grey revealed by the open door.
+
+Once more, out of the swathing fog, hands touched her.
+
+"There you are! That's right. Now lean forward."
+
+She found herself clasped by arms like steel--so strong, so sure, that
+she felt as safe and secure as when Vladimir Ravinski, the amazingly
+clever young Russian who partnered her in several of her dances,
+sometimes lifted her, lightly and easily as a feather, and bore her
+triumphantly off the stage aloft on his shoulder.
+
+"You're very strong," she murmured, as the unknown owner of the arms
+swung her down from the tilted car.
+
+"You're not very heavy," came the answer. There was a kind of laughter
+in the voice.
+
+As the man spoke he set her down on her feet, and then, just as Magda
+was opening her lips to thank him, the fog seemed to grow suddenly
+denser, swirling round her in great murky waves and surging in her
+ears with a noise like the boom of the ocean. Higher and higher rose
+the waves, a resistless sea of blackness, and at last they swept right
+over her head and she sank into the utter darkness of oblivion.
+
+
+
+"Drink this!"
+
+Someone was holding a glass to her lips and the pungent smell of sal
+volatile pricked her nostrils. Magda shrank back, her eyes still shut,
+and pressed her head further into the cushions against which it
+rested. She detested the smell of sal volatile.
+
+"Drink it! Do you hear?"
+
+The voice seemed to drive at her with its ring of command. She opened
+her eyes and looked straight up into other eyes--dark-grey ones, these
+--that were bent on her intently. To her confused consciousness they
+appeared to blaze down at her.
+
+"No," she muttered, feebly trying to push the glass away.
+
+The effort of moving her arm seemed stupendous. Her head swam with it.
+The sea of fog came rolling back again, and this time she sank under
+it at once.
+
+Then--after an immensity of time, she was sure--she felt herself
+struggling up to the surface once more. She was lying rocking gently
+on the top of the waves now; the sensation was very peaceful and
+pleasant. A little breeze played across her face. She drew in deep
+breaths of the cool air, but she did not open her eyes. Presently a
+murmur of voices penetrated her consciousness.
+
+"She's coming round again." A man was speaking. "Go on fanning her."
+
+"Poor young thing! She's had a shaking up and no mistake!" This in a
+woman's voice, very kindly and commiserating. A hand lightly smoothed
+the fur of her coat-sleeve. "Looks as if she was a rich young lady.
+Her people must be anxious about her."
+
+Someone laughed a little, softly.
+
+"Oh, yes, she's a rich enough young lady, Mrs. Braithwaite. Don't you
+know who it is we've rescued?"
+
+"I, sir? No. How should I?"
+
+"Then I'll tell you. This is Mademoiselle Wielitzska, the famous
+dancer."
+
+"Never, sir! Well, I do declare----"
+
+"Now, drink this at once, please." The man's voice cut sharply across
+the impending flow of garrulous interest, and Magda, who had not
+gathered the actual sense of the murmured conversation, felt an arm
+pass behind her head, raising it a little, while once more that
+hateful glass of sal volatile was held to her lips.
+
+Her eyes unclosed fretfully.
+
+"Take it away," she was beginning.
+
+"Drink it! Do you hear? Do as you're told!"
+
+The sharp, authoritative tones startled her into sudden compliance.
+She opened her mouth and swallowed the contents of the glass with a
+gulp. Then she looked resentfully at the man whose curt command she
+had obeyed in such unexpected fashion. Magda Wielitzska was more used
+to giving orders than to taking them.
+
+"There, that's better," he observed, regarding the empty glass with
+satisfaction. "No, lie still"--as she attempted to rise. "You'll feel
+better in a few minutes."
+
+"I'm better now," declared Magda sulkily.
+
+Her head was growing clearer every minute. She was even able to feel
+an intense irritation against this man who had just compelled her to
+drink the sal volatile.
+
+He looked at her unperturbedly.
+
+"Are you? That's good. Still, you'll stay where you are till I tell
+you that you may get up." He turned to a comfortable-looking woman who
+was standing at the foot of the couch on which Magda lay--a
+housekeeper of the nice old-fashioned black-satin kind. "Now, Mrs.
+Braithwaite, I think this lady will be glad of a cup of tea by the
+time you can have one ready."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+With a last, admiring glance at the slender figure on the couch the
+good woman bustled away, leaving Magda alone with her unknown host and
+burning with indignation at the cool way in which he had ordered her
+to remain where she was.
+
+He had his back to her for the moment, having turned to poke up the
+fire, and Magda raised herself on her elbow, preparatory to getting
+off the couch. He swung round instantly.
+
+"I told you to stay where you were," he said peremptorily.
+
+"I don't always do as I'm told," she retorted with spirit.
+
+"You will in this instance, though," he rejoined, crossing the room
+swiftly towards her.
+
+But quick though he was, she was still quicker. Her eyes blazing
+defiance, she slipped from the couch and stood up before he could
+reach her side. She took a step forward.
+
+"There!" she began defiantly. The next moment the whole room seemed to
+swim round her as she tottered weakly and would have fallen had he not
+caught her.
+
+"What did I tell you?" he said sharply. "You're not fit to stand."
+
+Without more ado he lifted her up in his arms and deposited her again
+on the couch.
+
+"I--I only turned a little giddy," she protested feebly.
+
+"Precisely. Just as I thought you would. Another time, perhaps, you'll
+obey orders."
+
+He stood looking down at her with curiously brilliant grey eyes. Magda
+almost winced under their penetrating glance. She felt as though they
+could see into her very soul, and she summoned up all her courage to
+combat the man's strange force.
+
+"I'm not used to obeying orders," she said impatiently.
+
+"No?"--with complete indifference. "Then it will be a salutary
+experience for you. Now, lie still until tea comes. I have a letter to
+write."
+
+He walked away and, seating himself at a desk in the window, appeared
+to forget all about her, while his pen travelled swiftly over the
+sheet of notepaper he had drawn towards him.
+
+Magda watched him with rebellious eyes. Gradually, however, the
+rebellion died out of them, replaced by a puzzled look of interest.
+There was something vaguely familiar about the man. Had she ever seen
+him before? Or was it merely one of those chance resemblances which
+one comes across occasionally? That fair hair with its crisp wave, the
+lean, square-jawed face, above all, the dark-grey eyes with their
+bright, penetrating glance--why did she feel as though every detail of
+the face were already known to her?
+
+She failed to place the resemblance, however, and finally, with a
+little sigh of fatigue, she gave up the attempt. Her brain still felt
+muddled and confused from the blow she had received. Perhaps later she
+would be able to think things out more clearly.
+
+Meanwhile she lay still, her eyes resting languidly on the face that
+so puzzled her. It was not precisely a handsome face, but there was a
+certain rugged fineness in its lines that lifted it altogether out of
+the ruck of the ordinary. It held its contradictions, too.
+Notwithstanding the powerful, determined jaw, the mouth had a
+sensitive upward curve at the corners which gave it an expression of
+singular sweetness, and beneath the eyes were little lines which
+qualified their dominating glance with a hint of whimsical humour.
+
+The clock ticked on solemnly. Presently Mrs. Braithwaite bustled in
+with the tea and withdrew again. But the man remained absorbed in his
+writing, apparently oblivious of everything else.
+
+Magda, who was rapidly recovering, eyed the teapot longingly. She was
+just wondering whether she dared venture to draw his attention to its
+arrival or whether he would snap her head off if she did, when he
+looked up suddenly with that swift, hawk-like glance of his.
+
+"Ready for some tea?" he queried.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Yes. Am I"--sarcastically--"allowed to get up now?"
+
+He surveyed her consideringly.
+
+"No, I think not," he said at last. "But as the mountain can't go to
+Mahomet, Mahomet shall come to the mountain."
+
+He crossed the room and, while Magda was still wondering what he
+proposed to do, he stooped and dexterously wheeled the couch with its
+light burden close up to the tea-table.
+
+"Now, I'll fix these cushions," he said. And with deft hands he
+rearranged the cushions so that they should support her comfortably
+while she drank her tea.
+
+"You would make a very good nurse, I should think," commented Magda,
+somewhat mollified.
+
+"Thanks," was all he vouchsafed in answer.
+
+He busied himself pouring out tea, then brought her cup and placed it
+beside her on a quaint little table of Chinese Chippendale.
+
+"Mrs. Braithwaite--my housekeeper--is looking after your chauffeur in
+the kitchen," he observed presently. "Possibly you may be interested
+to hear"--sarcastically--"that he wasn't hurt in the smash-up."
+
+Magda felt herself flushing a little under the implied rebuke--as much
+with annoyance as anything else. She knew that she was not really the
+heartless type of woman he inferred her to be, to whom the fate of her
+dependents was only of importance in so far as it affected her own
+personal comfort, and she resented the injustice of his assumption
+that she was.
+
+She had been so bewildered and dazed by the suddenness of the accident
+and by the blow she herself had received that she had hardly yet
+collected her thoughts sufficiently to envisage the possible
+consequences to others.
+
+With feminine perverseness she promptly decided that nothing would
+induce her to explain matters. If this detestably superior individual
+chose to think her utterly heartless and selfish--why, let him think
+so!
+
+"And the car?" she asked in a tone of deliberate indifference. "That's
+quite as important as the chauffeur."
+
+"More so, surely?"--with polite irony. "The car, I am sorry to say,
+will take a good deal of repairing. At present it's still in the
+middle of the street with red lights fore and aft. It can't be moved
+till the fog lifts."
+
+"What a nuisance! How on earth am I to get home?"
+
+"There are such things as taxis"--suggestively. "Later, when it clears
+a bit, I'll send out for one."
+
+"Thanks. I'm afraid I'm giving you a lot of trouble."
+
+He did not hastily disclaim the idea as most men would have done.
+
+"That can't be helped," he returned bluntly.
+
+Magda felt herself colouring again. This man was insufferable!
+
+"Evidently the role of knight-errant is new to you," she observed.
+
+"Quite true. I'm not in the habit of rescuing damsels in distress. But
+how did you guess?"--with interest.
+
+"Because you do it with such a very bad grace," she flashed at him.
+
+He smiled--and once more Magda was aware of the sense of familiarity
+even with that whimsical, crooked smile.
+
+"I see," he replied composedly. "Then you think I ought to have been
+overwhelmed with delight that your car cannoned into my bus--
+incidentally I barked my shins badly in the general mix-up--and that I
+had to haul you out and bring you round from a faint and so on?"
+
+The question--without trimmings--was unanswerable. But to Magda,
+London's spoiled child, conscious that there were men who would have
+given half their fortune for the chance to render a like service, and
+then counted themselves amply rewarded by the subsequent hour or two
+alone with her, the question was merely provocative.
+
+"Some men would have been," she returned calmly.
+
+"Ah! Just because you are the Wielitzska, I suppose?"
+
+She stared at him in blank astonishment.
+
+"You knew--you knew who I was all the time?" she gasped.
+
+"Certainly I knew."
+
+"Then--then----"
+
+"Then why wasn't I suitably impressed?" he suggested drily.
+
+She sprang to her feet.
+
+"Oh! you are intolerable!" she exclaimed hotly. "You know I didn't
+mean that!"
+
+He regarded her quite placidly.
+
+"You did. That is precisely what you were thinking. Only you funked
+putting it into plain words."
+
+He got up and came to her side and stood looking down at her.
+
+"Isn't it a fact?" he insisted. "Isn't it?"
+
+Magda looked up, tried to answer in the negative and failed. He had
+spoken the simple truth and she knew it. But none the less she hated
+him for it--hated him for driving her up into a corner and trying to
+force an acknowledgment from her. She remained obstinately silent.
+
+He turned away with a short, amused laugh.
+
+"So you haven't even the courage of your convictions," he commented.
+
+Magda clenched her hands, driving the nails hard into the soft palms
+of them. He was an absolute boor, this man who had come to her rescue
+in the fog! He was taking a brutal advantage of their relative
+positions to speak to her as no man had ever dared to speak to her
+before. Or woman either! Even old Lady Arabella would hardly have
+thrust the naked truth so savagely under her eyes.
+
+And now he had as good as told her that she was a coward! Well, at
+least he should not have the satisfaction of finding he was right in
+that respect. She walked straight up to him, her small head held high,
+in her dark eyes a smouldering fire of fierce resentment.
+
+"So that is what you think, is it?" she said in a low voice of bitter
+anger. "Well, I /have/ the courage of my convictions." She paused.
+Then, with an effort: "Yes, I did think you weren't 'suitably
+impressed,' as you put it. You are perfectly right."
+
+He threw her a swift glance of surprise. Presumably he hadn't
+anticipated such a candid acknowledgment, but even so he showed no
+disposition to lay down the probe.
+
+"You didn't think it possible that anyone could meet the Wielitzska
+without regarding the event as a piece of stupendous good luck and
+being appropriately overjoyed, did you?" he pursued relentlessly.
+
+Magda pressed her lips together. Then, with an effort:
+
+"No," she admitted.
+
+"And so, just because I treated you as I would any other woman, and
+made no pretence of fatuous delight over your presence here, you
+supposed I must be ignorant of your identity? Was that it?"
+
+Magda writhed under the cool, ironical questioning with its
+undercurrent of keen contempt. Each word stung like the flick of a
+lash on bare flesh. But she forced herself to answer--and to answer
+honestly.
+
+"Yes," she said very low. "That was it."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
+
+"Comment is superfluous, I think."
+
+She made an impulsive step towards him.
+
+For some unfathomable reason she minded--minded intensely--that this
+man should hold her in such poor esteem. She wanted to put herself
+right with him, to justify her attitude in his eyes.
+
+"Have you ever seen me dance?" she asked abruptly.
+
+Surely if he had ever seen that wonderful artistry which she knew was
+hers, witnessed the half-crazy enthusiasm with which her audience
+received her, he would make allowance, judge her a little less harshly
+for what was, after all, a very natural assumption on the part of a
+stage favourite.
+
+An expression of unwilling admiration came into his eyes.
+
+"Have I seen you dance?" he repeated. "Yes, I have. Several times."
+
+He did not add--which would have been no more than the truth--that
+during her last winter's season at the Imperial Theatre he had hardly
+missed a dozen performances.
+
+"Then--then----" Magda spoke with a kind of incredulous appeal. "Can't
+you understand--just a little?"
+
+"Oh, I understand. I understand perfectly. You've been spoilt and
+idolised to such an extent that it seems incredible to you to find a
+man who doesn't immediately fall down and worship you."
+
+Magda twisted her hands together. Once more he was thrusting at her
+with the rapier of truth. And it hurt--hurt inexplicably.
+
+"Yes, I believe that's--almost true," she acknowledged falteringly.
+"But if you understand so well, couldn't you--can't you"--with a swift
+supplicating smile--"be a little more merciful?"
+
+"No. I--I /hate/ your type of woman!"
+
+There was an undertone of passion in his voice. It was almost as
+though he were fighting against some impulse within himself and the
+fierceness of the struggle had wrung from him that quick, unvarnished
+protest.
+
+"Then you despise dancers?"
+
+"Despise? On the contrary, I revere a dancer--the dancer who is a
+genuine artist." He paused, then went on speaking thoughtfully.
+"Dancing, to my mind, is one of the most consistent expressions of
+beauty. It's the sheer symmetry and grace of that body which was made
+in God's own likeness developed to the utmost limit of human
+perfection. . . . And the dancer who desecrates the temple of his body
+is punished proportionately. No art is a harder taskmistress than the
+art of dancing."
+
+Magda listened breathlessly. This man understood--oh, he understood!
+Then why did he "hate her type of woman"?
+
+Almost as though he had read her thoughts he pursued:
+
+"As a dancer, an artist--I acknowledge the Wielitzska to be supreme.
+But as a woman----"
+
+"Yes? As a woman? Go on. What do you know about me as a woman?"
+
+He laughed disagreeably.
+
+"I'd judge that in the making of you your soul got left out," he said
+drily.
+
+Magda forced a smile.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm very stupid. Do you mind explaining?"
+
+"Does it need explanation?"
+
+"Oh--please!"
+
+"Then--one of my best pals was a man who loved you."
+
+Magda threw him a glance of veiled mockery from beneath her long white
+lids.
+
+"Surely that should be a recommendation--something in my favour?"
+
+His eyes hardened.
+
+"If you had dealt honestly with him, it might have been. But you drew
+him on, /made/ him care for you in spite of himself. And then, when he
+was yours, body and soul, you turned him down! Turned him down--
+pretended you were surprised--you'd never meant anything! All the old
+rotten excuses a woman offers when she has finished playing with a man
+and got bored with him. . . . I've no place for your kind of woman. I
+tell you"--his tone deepening in intensity--"the wife of any common
+labourer, who cooks and washes and sews for her man day in, day out,
+is worth a dozen of you! She knows that love's worth having and worth
+working for. And she works. You don't. Women like you take a man's
+soul and play with it, and when you've defiled and defaced it out of
+all likeness to the soul God gave him, you hand it back to him and
+think you clear yourself by saying you 'didn't mean it'!"
+
+The bitter speech, harsh with the deeply rooted pain and resentment
+which had prompted it, battered through Magda's weak defences and
+found her helpless and unarmed. Once she had uttered a faint cry of
+protest, tried to check him, but he had not heeded it. After that she
+had listened with bent head, her breath coming and going unevenly.
+
+When he had finished, the face she lifted to him was white as milk and
+her mouth trembled.
+
+"Thanks. Well, I've heard my character now," she said unsteadily. "I--
+I didn't know anyone thought of me--like that."
+
+He stared at her--at the drooping lines of her figure, the quivering
+lips, at the half-stunned expression of the dark eyes. And suddenly
+realisation of the enormity of all he had said seemed to come to him.
+But he did not appear to be at all overwhelmed by it.
+
+"I'm afraid I've transgressed beyond forgiveness now," he said curtly.
+"But--you rather asked for it, you know, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," she admitted. "I think I did--ask for it." Suddenly she threw
+up her head and faced him. "If--if it's any satisfaction to you to
+know it, I think you've paid off at least some of your friend's
+score." She looked at him with a curious, almost piteous surprise.
+"You--you've hurt me!" she whispered passionately. She turned to the
+door. "I'll go now."
+
+"No!" He stopped her with a hand on her arm, and she obeyed his touch
+submissively. For a moment he stood looking down at her with an oddly
+conflicting expression on his face. It was as though he were arguing
+out some point with himself. All at once he seemed to come to a
+decision.
+
+"Look, you can't go till the fog clears a bit. Suppose we call a
+truce? Sit down here"--pulling forward a big easy-chair--"and for the
+rest of your visit let's behave as though we didn't heartily
+disapprove of one another."
+
+Magda sank into the chair with that supple grace of limb which made it
+sheer delight to watch her movements.
+
+"I never said I disapproved of you," she remarked.
+
+He seated himself opposite her, on the other side of the hearth, and
+regarded her quizzically.
+
+"No. But you do, all the same. Naturally, you would after my candour!
+And I'd rather you did, too," he added abruptly. "But at least you've
+no more devoted admirer of your art. You know, dancing appeals to me
+in a way that nothing else does. My job's painting--"
+
+"House-painting?" interpolated Magda with a smile. Her spirits were
+rising a little under his new kindliness of manner.
+
+He laughed with sudden boyishness and nodded gaily.
+
+"Why, yes--so long as people continue to cover their wall-space with
+portraits of themselves."
+
+Magda wondered whether he was possibly a well-known painter. But he
+gave her no chance to find out, for he continued speaking almost at
+once.
+
+"I love my art--but a still, flat canvas, however beautifully painted,
+isn't comparable with the moving, living interpretation of beauty
+possible to a dancer. I remember, years ago--ten years, quite--seeing
+a kiddy dancing in a wood." Magda leaned forward. "It was the
+prettiest thing imaginable. She was all by herself, a little, thin,
+black-and-white wisp of a thing, with a small, tense face and eyes
+like black smudges. And she danced as though it were more natural to
+her than walking. I got her to pose for me at the foot of a tree. The
+picture of her was my first real success. So you see, I've good reason
+to be grateful to one dancer!"
+
+Magda caught her breath. She knew now why the man's face had seemed so
+familiar! He was the artist she had met in the wood at Coverdale the
+day Sieur Hugh had beaten her--her /"Saint Michel"/! She was conscious
+of a queer little thrill of excitement as the truth dawned upon her.
+
+"What was the picture called?" she asked, forcing herself to speak
+composedly.
+
+"'The Repose of Titania.'"
+
+She nodded. The picture was a very well-known one. Everybody knew by
+whom it had been painted.
+
+"Then you must be Michael Quarrington?"
+
+"Yes. So now, we've been introduced, haven't we?"
+
+It seemed almost as if he had repented of his former churlish manner,
+and were endeavouring to atone for it. He talked to her about his work
+a little, then slid easily into the allied topics of music and books.
+Finally he took her into an adjoining room, and showed her a small,
+beloved collection of coloured prints which he had gathered together,
+recounting various amusing little incidents which had attended the
+acquisition of this or that one among them with much gusto and a
+certain quaint humour that she was beginning to recognise as
+characteristic.
+
+Magda, to whom the study of old prints was by no means an unknown
+territory, was thoroughly entertained. She found herself enthusing,
+discussing, arguing points, in a happy spirit of /camaraderie/ with
+her host which, half an hour earlier, she would have believed
+impossible.
+
+The end came abruptly. Quarrington chanced to glance out of the window
+where the street lamps were now glimmering serenely through a clear
+dusk. The fog had lifted.
+
+"Perhaps it's just as well," he said shortly. "I was beginning--" He
+checked himself and glanced at her with a sudden stormy light in his
+eyes.
+
+"Beginning--what?" she asked a little breathlessly. The atmosphere had
+all at once grown tense with some unlooked-for stress of emotion.
+
+"Shall I tell you?"
+
+"Yes--tell me!"
+
+"I was beginning to forget that you're the 'type of woman I hate,'"
+he said. And strode out of the room, leaving her startled and
+unaccountably shaken.
+
+When he came back he had completely reassumed his former non-committal
+manner.
+
+"There's a taxi waiting for you," he announced. "It's perfectly clear
+outside now, so I think you will be spared any further adventures on
+your way home."
+
+He accompanied her into the hall, and as they shook hands she murmured
+a little diffidently:
+
+"Perhaps we shall meet again some time?"
+
+He drew back sharply.
+
+"No, we shan't meet again." There was something purposeful, almost
+vehemently so, in the curtly spoken words. "If I had thought that----"
+
+"Yes?" she prompted. "If you had?"
+
+"If I'd thought that," he said quietly, "I shouldn't have dared to
+risk this last half-hour."
+
+A momentary silence fell between them. Then, with a shrug, he added
+lightly:
+
+"But we shan't meet again. I'm leaving England next week. That settles
+it."
+
+Without giving her time to make any rejoinder he opened the street-
+door and stood aside for her to pass out. A minute later she was in
+the taxi, and he was standing bare-headed on the pavement beside it.
+
+"Good-bye," she said. "Good-bye--/Saint Michel/."
+
+His hand closed round hers in a grip that almost crushed the slender
+fingers.
+
+"/You/!" he cried hoarsely. There was a note of sudden, desperate
+recognition in his voice. "/You/!"
+
+As Magda smiled into his startled eyes--the grey eyes that had burned
+their way into her memory ten years ago--the taxi slid away into the
+lamp-lit dusk.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+FRIARS' HOLM
+
+With a grinding of brakes the taxi slowed up and came to a standstill
+at Friars' Holm, the quaint old Queen Anne house which Magda had
+acquired in north London.
+
+Once within the high wall enclosing the old-world garden in which it
+stood, it was easy enough to imagine oneself a hundred miles from
+town. Fir and cedar sentinelled the house, and in the centre of the
+garden there was a lawn of wonderful old turf, hedged round in summer
+by a riot of roses so that it gleamed like a great square emerald set
+in a jewelled frame.
+
+Magda entered the house and, crossing the cheerfully lit hall, threw
+open the door of a room whence issued the sound of someone--obviously
+a first-rate musician--playing the piano.
+
+As she opened the door the twilight, shot by quivering spears of light
+from the fire's dancing flames, seemed to rush out at her, bearing
+with it the mournful, heart-shaking music of some Russian melody.
+Magda uttered a soft, half-amused exclamation of impatience and
+switched on the lights.
+
+"All in the dark, Davilof?" she asked in a practical tone of voice
+calculated to disintegrate any possible fabric of romance woven of
+firelight and fifths.
+
+The flood of electric light revealed a large, lofty room, devoid of
+furniture except for a few comfortable chairs grouped together at one
+end of it, and for a magnificent grand piano at the other. The room
+appeared doubly large by reason of the fact that the whole of one wall
+was taken up by four immense panels of looking-glass, cleverly fitted
+together so that in effect the entire wall was composed of a single
+enormous mirror. It was in front of this mirror that Magda practised.
+The remaining three walls were hung with priceless old tapestry woven
+of sombre green and greys.
+
+As she entered the room a man rose quickly from the piano and came
+forward to meet her. There was a kind of repressed eagerness in the
+action, as though he had been waiting with impatience for her coming.
+
+He was a striking-looking man, tall, and built with the slender-limbed
+grace of a foreigner. Golden-brown hair, worn rather longer than
+fashion dictates, waved crisply over his head, and the moustache and
+small Vandyck beard which partially concealed the lower part of his
+face were of the same warmly golden colour.
+
+The word "musician" was written all over him--in the supple, capable
+hands, in the careless stoop of his loosely knit shoulders, and, more
+than all, in the imaginative hazel eyes with their curious mixture of
+abstraction and fire. They rather suggested lightning playing over
+some dreaming pool.
+
+Magda shook hands with him carelessly.
+
+"We shall have to postpone the practice as I'm so late, Davilof," she
+said. "I had a smash-up in the fog. My car ran into a bus--"
+
+"And you are hurt?" Davilof broke in sharply, his voice edged with
+fear.
+
+"No, no. I was stunned for a minute and then afterwards I fainted, but
+I'm quite intact otherwise."
+
+"You are sure--sure?"
+
+"Quite." Hearing the keen anxiety in his tone she smiled at him
+reassuringly and held out a friendly hand. "I'm all right--really,
+Antoine."
+
+He took the hand in both his.
+
+"Thank God!" he said fervently.
+
+Antoine Davilof had lived so long in England that he spoke without
+trace of accent, though he sometimes gave an unEnglish twist to the
+phrasing of a sentence, but his quick emotion and the simplicity with
+which he made no effort to conceal it stamped him unmistakably as a
+foreigner.
+
+A little touched, Magda allowed her hand to remain in his.
+
+"Why, Davilof!" She chided him laughingly. "You're quite absurdly
+upset about it."
+
+"I could not have borne it if you had been hurt," he declared
+vehemently. "You ought not to go about by yourself. It's horrible to
+think of /you/--in a street accident--alone!"
+
+"But I wasn't alone. A man who was in the other half of the accident--
+the motor-bus half--played the good Samaritan and carried me into his
+house, which happened to be close by. He looked after me very well, I
+assure you."
+
+Davilof released her hand abruptly. His face darkened.
+
+"And this man? Who was he?" he demanded jealously. "I hate to think of
+any man--a stranger--touching you."
+
+"Nonsense! Would you have preferred me to remain lying in the middle
+of the road?"
+
+"You know I would not. But I'd rather some woman had looked after you.
+Do you know who the man was?"
+
+"I did not--at first."
+
+"But you do now. Who was it?"
+
+"No one you know, I think," she answered provokingly. His eyes
+flashed.
+
+"Why are you making a mystery about it?" he asked suspiciously.
+"You're keeping something from me! Who was this man? Tell me his
+name."
+
+Magda froze.
+
+"My dear Antoine! Why this air of high tragedy?" she said lightly.
+"And what on earth has it to do with you who the man was?"
+
+"You know what it has to do with me----"
+
+"With my accompanist?"--raising her brows delicately.
+
+"No!"--with sudden violence--"With the man who loves you! I'm that--
+and you know it, Magda! Could I play for you as I do if I did not
+understand your every mood and emotion? You know I couldn't! And then
+you ask what it matters to me when some unknown man has held you in
+his arms, carried you into his house--kissed you, perhaps, while you
+were unconscious!"--his imagination running suddenly riot.
+
+"Stop! You're going too far!" Magda checked him sharply. "You're
+always telling me you love me. I don't want to hear it." She paused,
+then added cruelly: "I want you for playing my accompaniments,
+Davilof. That's all. Do you understand?"
+
+His eyes blazed. With a quick movement he stepped in front of her.
+
+"I'm a man--as well as an accompanist," he said hoarsely. "One day
+you'll have to reckon with the man, Magda!"
+
+There was a new, unaccustomed quality in his voice. Hitherto she had
+not taken his ardour very seriously. He was a Pole and a musician,
+with all the temperament that might be expected from such a
+combination, and she had let it go at that, pushing his love aside
+with the careless hand of a woman to whom the incense of men's
+devotion has been so freely offered as to have become commonplace. But
+now the new ring of determination, of something unexpectedly dogged in
+his voice, poignantly recalled the warning uttered by Lady Arabella
+earlier in the day.
+
+Magda's nerve wavered. A momentary panic assailed her. Then she
+intuitively struck the right note.
+
+"Ah, Davilof, don't worry me now--not to-night!" she said appealingly.
+"I'm tired. It's been a bit of a strain--the accident and--and----"
+
+"Forgive me!" In a moment he was all penitence--overwhelmed with
+compunction. "Forget it! I've behaved like a brute. I ought to have
+seen that you were worn out."
+
+He was beside himself with remorse.
+
+"It's all right, Antoine." She smiled forgiveness at him. "Only I felt
+--I felt I couldn't stand any more to-night. I suppose it's taken it
+out of me more than I knew--the shock, and fainting like that."
+
+"Of course it has. You ought to rest. I wish Mrs. Grey were in."
+
+"Is she not?"
+
+"No. The maid told me she was out when I came, and she hasn't returned
+yet."
+
+"She's been held up by the fog, I expect," answered Magda. "Never
+mind. I'll sit here--in this big chair--and you shall switch off these
+glaring lights and play to me, Antoine. That will rest me better than
+anything."
+
+She was a little sorry for the man--trying to make up to him for the
+pain she knew she had inflicted a moment before, and there was a
+dangerous sweetness in her voice.
+
+Davilof's eyes kindled. He stooped swiftly and kissed her hand.
+
+"You are too good to me!" he said huskily.
+
+Then, while she lay back restfully in a chair which he heaped with
+cushions for her, he played to her, improvising as he played--slow,
+dreaming melodies that soothed and lulled but held always an undertone
+of passionate appeal. The man himself spoke in his music; his love
+pleaded with her in its soft, beseeching cadences.
+
+But Magda failed to hear it. Her thoughts were elsewhere--back with
+the man who, that afternoon, had first rescued her and afterwards
+treated her with blunt candour that had been little less than brutal.
+She felt sore and resentful--smarting under the same dismayed sense of
+surprise and injustice as a child may feel who receives a blow instead
+of an anticipated caress.
+
+Indulged and flattered by everyone with whom she came in contact, it
+had been like a slap in the face to find someone--more particularly
+someone of the masculine persuasion--who, far from bestowing the
+admiration and homage she had learned to look for as a right, quite
+openly regarded her with contemptuous disapproval--and made no bones
+about telling her so.
+
+His indictment of her had left nothing to the imagination. She felt
+stunned, and, for the first time in her life, a little unwilling doubt
+of herself assaulted her. Was she really anything at all like the
+woman Michael Quarrington had pictured? A woman without heart or
+conscience--the "kind of woman he had no place for"?
+
+She winced a little at the thought. It was strange how much she minded
+his opinion--the opinion of a man whom she had only met by chance and
+whom she was very unlikely ever to meet again. He himself had
+certainly evinced no anxiety to renew the acquaintance. And this, too,
+fretted her in some unaccountable way.
+
+She could not analyse her own emotions. She felt hurt and angry and
+ashamed in the same breath--and all because an unknown man, an
+absolute stranger, had told her in no measured terms exactly what he
+thought of her!
+
+Only--he was not really quite a stranger! He was the "Saint Michel" of
+her childhood days, the man with whom she had unconsciously compared
+those other men whom the passing years had brought into her life--and
+always to their disadvantage.
+
+The first time she had seen him in the woods at Coverdale was the day
+when Hugh Vallincourt had beaten her; she had been smarting with the
+physical pain and humiliation of it. And now, this second time they
+had met, she had been once more forced to endure that strange and
+unaccustomed experience called pain. Only this time she felt as though
+her soul had been beaten, and it was Saint Michel himself who had
+scourged her.
+
+The door at the far end of the room opened suddenly and a welcome
+voice broke cheerfully across the bitter current of her thoughts.
+
+"Well, here I am at last! Has Magda arrived home yet?"
+
+Davilof ceased playing abruptly and the speaker paused on the
+threshold of the room, peering into the dusk. Magda rose from her seat
+by the fire and switched on one of the electric burners.
+
+"Yes, here I am," she said. "Did you get held up by the fog, Gillian?"
+
+The newcomer advanced into the circle of light. She was a small,
+slight woman, though the furs she was wearing served to conceal the
+slenderness of her figure. Someone had once said of her that "Mrs.
+Grey was a charming study in sepia." The description was not inapt.
+Eyes and hair were brown as a beechnut, and a scattering of golden-
+brown freckles emphasised the warm tints of a skin as soft as velvet.
+
+"Did I get held up?" she repeated. "My dear, I walked miles--miles, I
+tell you!--in that hideous fog. And then found I'd been walking
+entirely in the wrong direction! I fetched up somewhere down Notting
+Hill Gate way, and at last by the help of heaven and a policeman
+discovered the Tube station. So here I am. But if I could have come
+across a taxi I'd have been ready to /buy/ it, I was so tired!"
+
+"Poor dear!" Magda was duly sympathetic. "We'll have some tea. You'll
+stay, Davilof?"
+
+"I think not, thanks. I'm dining out"--with a glance at his watch.
+"And I shan't have too much time to get home and change as it is."
+
+Magda held out her hand.
+
+"Good-bye, then. Thank you for keeping me company till Gillian came."
+
+There was a sudden sweetness of gratitude in the glance she threw at
+him which fired his blood. He caught her hand and carried it to his
+lips.
+
+"The thanks are mine," he said in a stifled voice. And swinging round
+on his heel he left the room abruptly, quite omitting to make his
+farewells to Mrs. Grey.
+
+The latter looked across at Magda with a gleam of mirth in her brown
+eyes. Then she shook her head reprovingly.
+
+"Will you never learn wisdom, Magda?" she asked, subsiding into a
+chair and extending a pair of neatly shod feet to the fire's warmth.
+
+Magda laughed a little.
+
+"Well, it won't be the fault of my friends if I don't!" she returned
+ruefully. "Marraine expended a heap of eloquence over my misdeeds this
+afternoon."
+
+"Lady Arabella? I'm glad to hear it. Though she has about as much
+chance of producing any permanent result as the gentleman who occupied
+his leisure time in rolling a stone uphill."
+
+"Cat!" Magda made a small grimace at her. "Ah, here's some tea!"
+Melrose, known among Magda's friends as "the perfect butler," had come
+noiselessly into the room and was arranging the tea paraphernalia with
+the reverential precision of one making preparation for some mystic
+rite. "Perhaps when you've had a cup you'll feel more amiable--that
+is, if I give you lots of sugar."
+
+"What was the text of Lady Arabella's homily?" inquired Gillian
+presently, as she sipped her tea.
+
+"Oh, that boy, Kit Raynham," replied Magda impatiently. "It appears
+I'm blighting his young prospects--his professional ones, I mean.
+Though I don't quite see why an attack of calf-love for me should
+wreck his work as an architect!"
+
+"I do--if he spends his time sketching 'the Wielitzska' in half a
+dozen different poses instead of making plans for a garden city."
+
+Magda smiled involuntarily.
+
+"Does he do that?" she said. "But how ridiculous of him!"
+
+"It's merely indicative of his state of mind," returned Gillian. She
+gazed meditatively into the fire. "You know, Magda, I think it will
+mean the end of our friendship when Coppertop reaches years of
+discretion."
+
+Coppertop was Gillian's small son, a young person of seven, who owed
+his cognomen to the crop of flaming red curls which adorned his round
+button of a head.
+
+Magda laughed.
+
+"Pouf! By the time that happens I shall be quite old--and harmless."
+
+Gillian shook her head.
+
+"Your type is never harmless, my dear. Unless you fall in love, you'll
+be an unexploded mine till the day of your death."
+
+"That nearly occurred to-day, by the way," vouchsafed Magda
+tranquilly. "In which case,"--smiling--"you'd have been spared any
+further anxiety on Coppertop's account."
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Gillian, startled.
+
+"I mean that I've had an adventure this afternoon. We got smashed up
+in the fog."
+
+"Oh, my dear! How dreadful! How did it happen?"
+
+"Something collided with the car and shot us bang into a motor-bus,
+and then, almost at the same moment, something else charged into us
+from behind. So there was a pretty fair mix-up."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me before! Was anyone badly hurt? And how did you
+get home?" Gillian's questions poured out excitedly.
+
+"No, no one was badly hurt. I got a blow on the head, and fainted. So
+a man who'd been inside the bus we ran into performed the rescuing
+stunt. His house was close by, and he carried me in there and
+proceeded to dose me with sal volatile first and tea afterwards. He
+wound up by presenting me with an unvarnished summary of his opinion
+of the likes of me."
+
+There was an unwontedly hard note in Magda's voice as she detailed the
+afternoon's events, and Gillian glanced at her sharply.
+
+"I don't understand. Was he a strait-laced prig who disapproved of
+dancing, do you mean?"
+
+"Nothing of the sort. He had a most comprehensive appreciation of the
+art of dancing. His disapproval was entirely concentrated on me--
+personally."
+
+"But how could it be--since he didn't know you?"
+
+Magda gave a little grin.
+
+"You mean it would have been quite comprehensible if he /had/ known
+me?" she observed ironically.
+
+The other laughed.
+
+"Don't be so provoking! You know perfectly well what I meant! You
+deserve that I should answer 'yes' to that question."
+
+"Do, if you like."
+
+"I would--only I happen to know you a good deal better than you know
+yourself."
+
+"What do you know about me, then, that I don't?"
+
+Gillian's nice brown eyes smiled across at her.
+
+"I know that, somewhere inside you, you've got the capacity for being
+as sweet and kind and tender and self-sacrificing as any woman living
+--if only something would happen to make it worth while. I wish--I
+wish to heaven you'd fall in love!"
+
+"I'm not likely to. I'm in love with my art. It gives you a better
+return than love for any man."
+
+"No," answered Gillian quietly. "No. You're wrong. Tony died when we'd
+only been married a year. But that year was worth the whole rest of
+life put together. And--I've got Coppertop."
+
+Magda leaned forward suddenly and kissed her.
+
+"Dear Gillyflower!" she said. "I'm so glad you feel like that--bless
+you! I wish I could. But I never shall. I was soured in the making, I
+think"--laughing rather forlornly. "I don't trust love. It's the thing
+that hurts and tortures and breaks a woman--as my mother was hurt and
+tortured and broken." She paused. "No, preserve me from falling in
+love!" she added more lightly. "'A Loaf of Bread, and Thou beside me
+in the Wilderness' doesn't appeal to me in the least."
+
+"It will one day," retorted Gillian oracularly. "In the meantime you
+might go on telling me about the man who fished you out of the smash.
+Was he young? And good-looking? Perhaps he is destined to be your
+fate."
+
+"He was rather over thirty, I should think. And good-looking--quite.
+But he 'hates my type of woman,' you'll be interested to know. So that
+you can put your high hopes back on the top shelf again."
+
+"Not at all," declared Gillian briskly. "There's nothing like
+beginning with a little aversion."
+
+Magda smiled reminiscently.
+
+"If you'd been present at our interview, you'd realise that 'a little
+aversion' is a cloying euphemism for the feeling exhibited by my late
+preserver."
+
+"What was he like, then?"
+
+"At first, because I wouldn't take the sal volatile--you know how I
+detest the stuff!--and sit still where he'd put me like a good little
+girl, he ordered me about as though I were a child of six. He
+absolutely bullied me! Then it apparently occurred to him to take my
+moral welfare in hand, and I should judge he considered that Jezebel
+and Delilah were positively provincial in their methods as compared
+with me."
+
+"Nonsense! If he didn't know you, why should he suppose himself
+competent to form any opinion about you at all--good, bad, or
+indifferent?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Magda slowly. Then, speaking with sudden
+defiance: "Yes, I do know! A pal of his had--had cared about me some
+time or other, and I'd turned him down. That's why."
+
+"Oh, Magda!" There was both reproach and understanding in Gillian's
+voice.
+
+Magda shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Well, if he wanted to pay off old scores on his pal's behalf, he
+succeeded," she said mirthlessly.
+
+Gillian looked at her in surprise. She had never seen Magda quite like
+this before; her sombre eyes held a curious strained look like those
+of some wild thing of the forest caught in a trap and in pain.
+
+"And you don't know who he was--I mean the man who came to your help
+and then lectured you?"
+
+"Yes, I do. It was Michael Quarrington, the artist."
+
+"Michael Quarrington? Why, he has the reputation of being a most
+charming man!"
+
+Magda stared into the fire.
+
+"I dare say he might have a great deal of charm if he cared to exert
+it. Apparently, however, he didn't think I was worth the effort."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN THE MIRROR ROOM
+
+Shouts of mirth came jubilantly from the Mirror Room as Davilof made
+his way thither one afternoon a few days later. The shrill peal of a
+child's laughter rose gaily above the lower note of women's voices,
+and when the accompanist opened the door it was to discover Magda
+completely engrossed in giving Coppertop a first dancing lesson, while
+Gillian sat stitching busily away at some small nether garments
+afflicted with rents and tears in sundry places. Every now and again
+she glanced up with softly amused eyes to watch her son's somewhat
+unsteady efforts in the Terpsichorean art.
+
+Coppertop, a slim young reed in his bright green knitted jersey, was
+clinging with one hand to a wooden bar attached to the wall which
+served Magda for the "bar practice" which constitutes part of every
+dancer's daily work, while Magda, holding his other hand in hers,
+essayed to instruct him in the principle of "turning out"--that
+flexible turning of the knees towards the side which gives so much
+facility of movement.
+
+"Point your toes sideways--so," directed Magda. "This one towards me--
+like that." She stooped and placed his foot in position. "Now, kick
+out! Try to kick me!"
+
+Coppertop tried--and succeeded, greeting his accomplishment with
+shrieks of delight.
+
+It was just at this moment that Davilof appeared on the scene, pausing
+abruptly in the doorway as he caught sight of Magda's laughing face
+bent above the fiery red head. There was something very charming in
+her expression of eager, light-hearted abandonment to the fun of the
+moment.
+
+At the sound of the opening door Coppertop wriggled out of her grasp
+like an eel, twisting his lithe young body round to see who the new
+arrival might be. His face fell woefully as he caught sight of
+Davilof.
+
+"Oh, you can't /never/ have come already to play for the Fairy Lady!"
+he exclaimed in accents of dire disappointment.
+
+"Fairy Lady" was the name he had bestowed upon Magda when, very early
+in their acquaintance, she had performed for his sole and particular
+benefit a maturer edition of the dance she had evolved as a child--the
+dance with which she had so much astonished Lady Arabella. Nowadays it
+figured prominently on her programmes as "The Hamadryad," and was
+enormously popular.
+
+"It's not never three o'clock!" wailed Coppertop disconsolately, as
+Davilof dangled his watch in front of him.
+
+"I think it is, small son," interpolated Gillian, gathering together
+her sewing materials. "Come along. We must leave the Fairy Lady to
+practise now, because she's got to dance to half the people in London
+to-morrow."
+
+"Must I really go?" appealed Coppertop, beseeching Magda with a pair
+of melting green eyes.
+
+She dropped a light kiss on the top of his red curls.
+
+"'Fraid so, Coppertop," she said. "You wouldn't want Fairy Lady to
+dance badly and tumble down, would you?"
+
+But Coppertop was not to be taken in so easily.
+
+"Huh!" he scoffed. "You /couldn't/ tumble down--not never!"
+
+"Still, you mustn't be greedy, Topkins," urged Magda persuasively.
+"Remember all the grown-up people who want me to dance to them! I
+can't keep it all for one little boy." He stared at her for a moment
+in silence. Suddenly he flung his arms round her slender hips,
+clutching her tightly, and hid his face against her skirt.
+
+"Oh, Fairy Lady, you are so booful--/so booful/!" he whispered in a
+smothered voice. Then, with a big sigh: "But one little boy won't be
+greedy." He turned to his mother. "Come along, mummie!" he commanded
+superbly. And trotted out of the room beside her with his small head
+well up.
+
+Left alone, Davilof and Magda smiled across at one another.
+
+"Funny little person, isn't he?" she said.
+
+The musician nodded.
+
+"Grown-ups might possibly envy the freedom of speech permitted to
+childhood," he said quietly. Then, still more quietly: "'Fairy Lady,
+you are so beautiful!'"
+
+"But you're not a child, so don't poach Coppertop's preserves!"
+retorted Magda swiftly. "Let's get to work, Antoine. I'll just change
+into my practice-kit and then I want to run through the 'Swan-
+Maiden's' dance. You fix the lighting."
+
+She vanished into an adjoining room, while Davilof proceeded to switch
+off most of the burners, leaving only those which illumined the space
+in front of the great mirror. The remainder of the big room receded
+into a grey twilight encircling the patch of luminance.
+
+Presently Magda reappeared wearing a loose tunic of some white silken
+material, girdled at the waist, but yet leaving her with perfect
+freedom of limb.
+
+Davilof watched her as she came down the long room with the feather-
+light, floating walk of the trained dancer, and something leaped into
+his eyes that was very different from mere admiration--something that,
+taken in conjunction with Lady Arabella's caustic comments of a few
+days ago, might have warned Magda had she seen it.
+
+But with her thoughts preoccupied by the work in hand she failed to
+notice it, and, advancing till she faced the great mirror, she
+executed a few steps in front of it, humming the motif of /The Swan-
+Maiden/ music under her breath.
+
+"Play, Antoine," she threw at him over her shoulder.
+
+Davilof hesitated, made a movement towards her, then wheeled round
+abruptly and went to the piano. A moment later the exquisite, smoothly
+rippling music which he had himself written for the Swan-Maiden dance
+purled out into the room.
+
+The story of the Swan-Maiden had been taken from an old legend which
+told of a beautiful maiden and the youth who loved her.
+
+According to the narrative, the pair were unfortunate enough to incur
+the displeasure of the evil fairy Ritmagar, and the latter, in order
+to punish them, transformed the maiden into a white swan, thus
+separating the hapless lovers for ever. Afterwards, the disconsolate
+youth, bemoaning the cruelty of fate, used to wander daily along the
+shores of the lake where the maiden was compelled to dwell in her
+guise of a swan, and eventually Ritmagar, apparently touched to a
+limited compassion, permitted the Swan-Maiden to resume her human form
+once a day during the hour immediately preceding sunset. But the
+condition was attached that she must always return to the lake ere the
+sun sank below the horizon, when she would be compelled to reassume
+her shape of a swan. Should she fail to return by the appointed time,
+death would be the inevitable consequence.
+
+Every reader of fairy tales--and certainly anyone who knows anything
+at all about being in love--can guess the sequel. Comes a day when the
+lovers, absorbed in their love-making, forget the flight of time, so
+that the unhappy maiden returns to the shore of the lake to find that
+the sun has already dipped below the horizon. She falls on her knees,
+beseeching the witch Ritmagar for mercy, but no answer is vouchsafed,
+and gradually the Swan-Maiden finds herself growing weaker and weaker,
+until at last death claims her.
+
+A dance, based upon this legend, had been devised for Magda in
+conjunction with Vladimir Ravinski, the brilliant Russian dancer, he
+taking the lover's part, and the whole tragic little drama was
+designed to terminate with a solo dance by Magda as the dying Swan-
+Maiden. Davilof had written the music for it, and the dance was to be
+performed at the Imperial Theatre for the first time the following
+week.
+
+Davilof played ever more and more softly as the dance drew to its
+close. The note of lament sounded with increasing insistence through
+the slowing ripple of the accompaniment, and at last, as Magda sank to
+the ground in a piteous attitude that somehow suggested both the
+drooping grace of a dying swan and the innocence and helplessness of
+the hapless maiden, the music died away into silence.
+
+There was a little pause. Then Davilof sprang to this feet.
+
+"By God, Magda! You're magnificent!" he exclaimed with the spontaneous
+appreciation of one genuine artist for another.
+
+Magda raised her head and looked up at him with vague, startled eyes.
+She still preserved the pose on which the dance had ceased, and had
+hardly yet returned to the world of reality from that magic world into
+which her art had transported her.
+
+The burning enthusiasm in Davilof's excited tones recalled her
+abruptly.
+
+"Was it good--was it really good?" she asked a little shakily.
+
+"Good?" he said. "It was superb!"
+
+He held out his hands and she laid hers in them without thinking,
+allowing him to draw her to her feet beside him.
+
+She stood quite still, breathing rather quickly from her recent
+exertions and supported by the close clasp of his hands on hers. Her
+lips were a little parted, her slight breast rose and fell unevenly,
+and a faint rose-colour glowed beneath the ivory pallor of her skin.
+
+Suddenly Davilof's grip tightened.
+
+"You beautiful thing!" he exclaimed huskily. "Magda----"
+
+The next moment, with a swift, ungoverned movement, he caught her to
+him and was crushing her in his arms.
+
+"Antoine! . . . Let me go!"
+
+But the pressure of her soft, pulsing body against his own sent the
+blood racing through his veins. He smothered the words with his mouth
+on hers, kissing her breathless with a headlong passion that defied
+restraint--slaking his longing for her as a man denied water may at
+last slake his thirst at some suddenly discovered pool.
+
+Magda felt herself powerless as a leaf caught up in a whirlwind--swept
+suddenly into the hot vehemence of a man's desire while she was yet
+unstrung and quivering from the emotional strain of the Swan-Maiden's
+dance, every nerve of her quickened to a tingling sentience by the
+underlying passion of the music.
+
+With an effort she wrenched herself out of his arms and ran from him
+blindly into the furthest corner of the room. She had no clear idea of
+making for the door, but only of getting away--anywhere--heedless of
+direction. An instant later she was standing with her back to the
+wall, leaning helplessly against the ancient tapestry that clothed it.
+In that dim corner of the vast room her slim figure showed faintly
+limned against its blurred greens and greys like that of some pallid
+statue.
+
+"Go . . . go away!" she gasped.
+
+Davilof laughed triumphantly. Nothing could hold him now. The barriers
+of use and habit were down irrevocably.
+
+"Go away?" he said. "No, I'm not going away."
+
+He strode straight across the space that intervened between them. She
+watched his coming with dilated eyes. Her hands, palms downwards, were
+pressed hard against the woven surface of the tapestry on either side
+of her.
+
+As he approached she shrank back, her whole body taut and straining
+against the wall. Then she bent her head and flung up her arms,
+curving them to shield her face. Davilof could just see the rounded
+whiteness of them, glimmering like pale pearl next the satin sheen of
+night-black hair.
+
+With a stifled cry he sprang forward and gripped them in his strong,
+supple hands, drawing them down inexorably.
+
+"Kiss me!" he demanded fiercely. "Magda, kiss me!"
+
+She shook her head, struggling for speech.
+
+"No!" she gasped. "No!"
+
+She glanced desperately round, but he had her hemmed in, prisoned
+against the wall.
+
+"Kiss me!" he repeated unsteadily. "You--you'd better, Magda."
+
+"And if I don't?" she forced the words through her stiff lips.
+
+"But you will!" he said hoarsely. "You will!"
+
+There was a dangerous note in his voice. The man had got beyond the
+stage to be played with. In the silence of the room Magda could hear
+his laboured breathing, feel his heart leaping against her own soft
+breast crushed against his. It frightened her.
+
+"You'll let me go if I do?" The words seemed to run into each other in
+her helpless haste.
+
+"I'll let you go."
+
+"Very well."
+
+Slowly, reluctantly she lifted her face to his and kissed him. But the
+touch of her lips on his scattered the last vestige of his self-
+control.
+
+"My beloved . . . Beloved!"
+
+He seized her roughly in his arms. She felt his kisses overwhelming
+her, burning against her closed eyelids, bruising her soft mouth and
+throat.
+
+"I love you . . . worship you----"
+
+"Let me go!" she cried shrilly, struggling against him. "Let me go--
+you promised it!"
+
+He released her, drawing slowly back, his arms falling unwillingly
+away from her.
+
+"Oh, yes," he muttered confusedly. "I did promise."
+
+The instant she felt his grip relax, Magda sprang forward and switched
+on the centre burners, flooding the room with a blaze of light, and in
+the sudden glare she and Davilof stood staring silently at each other.
+
+With the springing up of the lights it was as though a spell had
+broken. The strained, hunted expression left Magda's face. She wasn't
+frightened any longer. Davilof was no more the man whose sudden
+passion had surged about her, threatening to break down all defences
+and overwhelm her. He was just Davilof, her accompanist, who, like
+half the men of her acquaintance, was more or less in love with her
+and who had overstepped the boundary which she had very definitely
+marked out between herself and him.
+
+She regarded him stormily.
+
+"Have you gone mad?" she asked contemptuously.
+
+He returned her look, his eyes curiously brilliant. Then he laughed
+suddenly.
+
+"Mad?" he said. "Yes, I think I /am/ mad. Mad with love for you!
+Magda"--he came and stood close beside her--"don't send me away! Don't
+say you can't care for me! You don't love me now--but I could teach
+you." His voice deepened. "I love you so much. Oh, sweetest!--/Soul/
+of me! Love is so beautiful. Let me teach you how beautiful it is!"
+
+Magda drew back.
+
+"No," she said. The brief negative fell clear and distinct as a bell.
+
+"I won't take no," he returned hotly. "I won't take no. I want you.
+Good God! Don't you understand? My love for you isn't just a boy's
+infatuation that you can dismiss with a word. It's all of me. I
+worship you! Haven't I been with you day after day, worked with you,
+followed your every mood--shared your very soul with you? You're mine!
+Mine, because I understand you. You've shown me all you thought, all
+you felt. You couldn't have done that if I hadn't meant something to
+you."
+
+"Certainly you meant something to me. You meant an almost perfect
+accompanist. Why should you have imagined you meant more? I gave you
+no reason to think so."
+
+"/No reason/?"
+
+It was as though the two short words were the key which unlocked the
+floodgates of some raging torrent. Magda could never afterwards recall
+the words he used. She only knew they beat upon her with the cruel,
+lancinating sharpness of hail driven by the wind.
+
+She had treated him much as other men, evoking the love of his ardent
+temperament by that subtle witchery which was second nature to her and
+which can be such a potent weapon in the hands of a woman whose own
+emotions remain untouched. And now the thwarted passion of the lover
+and the savage anger of a man who felt himself deceived and duped
+broke over her in a resistless storm--an outburst so bitter and so
+trenchant that for the moment she remained speechless before it,
+buffeted into helpless, resentful silence. When he ceased, he had
+stripped her of every rag of feminine defence.
+
+"Have you finished?" she asked in a stifled voice.
+
+She made no attempt to palliate matters or to refute anything he had
+said. In his present frame of mind it would have been useless pointing
+out to him that she had treated him no differently from other men. He
+was a Pole, and he had caught fire where others would merely have
+glowed smoulderingly.
+
+"Yes," he rejoined sullenly. "I've finished."
+
+"So much the better."
+
+He regarded her speculatively.
+
+"What are you made of, I wonder? Does it mean nothing to you that a
+man has given you his very best--all that he has?"
+
+She appeared to reflect a moment.
+
+"I'm afraid it doesn't. There's only one thing really means much to me
+--and that is my art. And Lady Arabella," she added after a pause.
+"She'll always mean a good deal."
+
+She sat down by the fire and held out her hands to its warmth. The
+slender fingers seemed almost transparent, glowing rosily in the
+firelight. Davilof turned to go.
+
+"Good-bye, then," he said curtly.
+
+"Good-bye." Magda nodded indifferently. Then, carelessly: "I shall
+want you to-morrow, Davilof--same time."
+
+He swung round.
+
+"I will never play for you again. Did you imagine I should?"
+
+She smiled at him--that slow, subtle smile of hers with its hint of
+mockery.
+
+"You won't be able to keep away," she replied.
+
+"I will never play for you again," he repeated. "Never! I will teach
+myself to hate you."
+
+She shook her head lightly.
+
+"Impossible, Davilof."
+
+"It's not impossible. There's very little difference between love and
+hate--sometimes. And I want all or nothing."
+
+"I'm afraid it must be nothing, then."
+
+"We shall see. But if I can't have you, /I/ swear no other man shall!"
+
+She glanced up at him, lifting her brows a little.
+
+"Aren't you going too far, Antoine? You can hate me, if you like, or
+love me--it's a matter of indifference to me which you do. But I don't
+propose to allow you to arrange my life for me. And in any case"--
+after a moment--"I'm not likely to fall in love--with you or anyone
+else."
+
+"You think not?" He stood looking down at her sombrely. "You'll fall
+in love right enough some day. And when you do it will be all or
+nothing with you, too. You're that kind. Love will take you--and break
+you, Magda."
+
+He spoke slowly, with an odd kind of tensity. To Magda it seemed
+almost as if his quiet speech held the gravity of prophecy, and she
+shivered a little.
+
+"And when that time comes, then you'll come back to me," he added.
+
+Magda threw up her head, defying him.
+
+"You propose to be waiting round to pick up the pieces, then?" she
+suggested nonchalantly.
+
+But only the sound of the closing door answered her. Davilof had gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE SWAN-MAIDEN
+
+Lady Arabella was in her element. She had two brilliant and unattached
+young men dining with her--one, Michael Quarrington, a lion in the
+artistic world, and the other, Antoine Davilof, who showed
+unmistakable symptoms of developing sooner or later into a lion in the
+musical world.
+
+It was Davilof who was responsible for the artist's presence at Lady
+Arabella's dinner table. She had expressed--in her usual autocratic
+manner--a wish that he should be presented to her, and had determined
+upon the evening of the first performance of /The Swan-Maiden/ as the
+appointed time.
+
+Davilof appeared doubtful, and declared that Quarrington was leaving
+England and had already fixed the date of his departure.
+
+"He's crossing from Dover the very day before the one you want him to
+dine with you," he told her.
+
+But Lady Arabella swept his objections aside with regal indifference.
+
+"Crossing, is he?" she snapped. "Well, tell him I want him to dine
+here and go to the show with us afterwards. He'll cross the day
+/after/, you'll find--if he crosses at all!" she wound up
+enigmatically.
+
+So it came about that her two lions, the last-arrived artist and the
+soon-to-arrive musician, were both dining with her on the appointed
+evening.
+
+Lady Arabella adored lions. Also, notwithstanding her seventy years,
+she retained as much original Eve in her composition as a girl of
+seventeen, and she adored young men.
+
+In particular, she decided that she approved of Michael Quarrington.
+She liked the clean English build of him. She liked his lean, square
+jaw and the fair hair with the unruly kink in it which reminded her of
+a certain other young man--who had been young when she was young--and
+to whom she had bade farewell at her parents' inflexible decree more
+than fifty years ago. Above all, she liked the artist's eyes--those
+grey, steady eyes with their look of reticence so characteristic of
+the man himself.
+
+Reticence was an asset in her ladyship's estimation. It showed good
+sense--and it offered provocative opportunities for a battle of wits
+such as her soul loved.
+
+"Have you seen my god-daughter dance, Mr. Quarrington?" she asked him.
+
+"Yes, several times."
+
+His tone was non-committal and she eyed him sharply.
+
+"Don't admire dancing, do you?" she threw at him.
+
+Quarrington regarded her with a humorous twinkle.
+
+"And I an artist? How can you ask, Lady Arabella?"
+
+"Well, you sounded supremely detached," she grumbled.
+
+"I think Mademoiselle Wielitzska's dancing the loveliest thing I have
+ever seen," he returned simply.
+
+The old woman vouchsafed him a smile.
+
+"Thank you," she answered. "I enjoyed that quite as much as I used to
+enjoy being told I'd a pretty dimple when I was a girl."
+
+"You have now," rejoined Quarrington audaciously.
+
+Lady Arabella's eyes sparkled. She loved a neatly turned compliment.
+
+"Thank you again. But it's a pity to waste your pretty speeches on an
+old woman of seventy."
+
+"I don't," retorted the artist gravely. "I reserve them for the young
+people I know of that age."
+
+She laughed delightedly. Then, turning to Davilof, she drew him into
+the conversation and the talk became general.
+
+Later, as they were all three standing in the hall preparatory to
+departure, she flashed another of her sudden remarks at Quarrington.
+
+"I understand you came to my god-daughter's rescue in that bad fog
+last week?"
+
+The quiet grey eyes revealed nothing.
+
+"I was privileged to be some little use," he replied lightly.
+
+"I hardly gathered you regarded it as a privilege," observed her
+ladyship drily.
+
+The shaft went home. A fleeting light gleamed for a moment in the grey
+eyes. Davilof was standing a few paces away, being helped into his
+coat by a man-servant, and Quarrington spoke low and quickly.
+
+"She told you?" he said. There was astonishment--resentment, almost--
+in his voice.
+
+"No, no." Lady Arabella, smiling to herself, reassured him hastily.
+"It was a shot in the dark on my part. Magda never confides details.
+She hands you out an unadorned slice of fact and leaves you to
+interpret it as you choose. But if you know her rather well--as I do--
+and can add two and two together and make five or any unlikely number
+of them, why, then you can fill in some of the blanks for yourself."
+
+She glanced at him with impish amusement as she moved towards the
+door.
+
+"Come along, Davilof," she said. "I suppose you want to hear your own
+music--even if Magda's dancing no longer interests you?"
+
+Davilof gave her his arm down the steps.
+
+"What do you mean, miladi?" he asked. "There is no more beautiful
+dancing in the world."
+
+"Then why have you jacked up your job of accompanist? Shoes beginning
+to pinch a little, eh?"--shrewdly.
+
+"You mean I grow too big for my boots? No, madame. If I were the
+greatest musician in Europe, instead of being merely Antoine Davilof,
+it could only be a source of pride to be asked to accompany the
+Wielitzska."
+
+Lady Arabella paused on the pavement, her foot on the step of the
+limousine.
+
+"Then how is it that Mrs. Grey accompanies her now? She was playing
+for her at the Duchess of Lichbrooke's the other evening.
+
+"Magda didn't tell you, then?"
+
+"No, she didn't; or I'd not be wasting my breath in asking you. I
+asked her, and she said you had taken to playing wrong notes."
+
+A faint smile curved the lips above the small golden beard.
+
+"Then it must be true. Undoubtedly I played wrong notes, miladi."
+
+"Very careless of you, I'm sure." Under the garish light of a
+neighbouring street-lamp her keen old eyes met his significantly. "Or
+--very imprudent, Davilof. You need the tact of the whole Diplomatic
+Service to deal with Magda. And you ought to know it."
+
+"True, miladi. But I was not designed for diplomacy, and a man can
+only use the weapons heaven has given him."
+
+"I wouldn't have suggested heaven as invariably the source of your
+inspirations," retorted Lady Arabella. And hopped into the car.
+
+They arrived at the Imperial Theatre to find Mrs. Grey already seated
+in Lady Arabella's box. Someone else was there, too--old Virginie,
+with her withered-apple cheeks and bright brown, bird-like eyes, still
+active and erect and very little altered from the Virginie of ten
+years before. Just as she had devoted herself to Diane, so now she
+devoted herself to Diane's daughter, and no first performance of a new
+dance of the Wielitzska's took place without Virginie's presence
+somewhere in the house. To-night, Lady Arabella had invited her into
+her box and Virginie was a quivering bundle of excitement. She rose
+from her seat at the back of the box as the newcomers entered.
+
+"Sit down, Virginie." Lady Arabella nodded kindly to the Frenchwoman.
+"And pull your chair forward. You'll see nothing back there, and there
+is plenty of room for us all."
+
+"/Merci, madame. Madame est bien gentille./" Virginie's voice was
+fervent with ecstatic gratitude as she resumed her seat and waited
+expectantly for Magda's appearance.
+
+Other dances, performed principally by lesser lights of the company
+and affording only a briefly tantalising glimpse of Magda herself,
+preceded the chief event of the evening. But at last the next item on
+the programme read as /The Swan-Maiden (adapted from an Old Legend)/,
+and a tremour of excitement, a sudden hush of eager anticipation,
+rippled through the audience like wind over grass.
+
+Slowly the heavy silken curtains drew to either side of the stage,
+revealing a sunlit glade. In the background glimmered the still waters
+of a lake, while at the foot of a tree, in an attitude of tranquil
+repose, lay the Swan-Maiden--Magda. One white, naked arm was curved
+behind her head, pillowing it, the other lay lightly across her body,
+palm upward, with the rosy-tipped fingers curled inwards a little,
+like a sleeping child's. She looked infinitely young as she lay there,
+her slender, pliant limbs relaxed in untroubled slumber.
+
+Lady Arabella, with Quarrington sitting next to her in the box, heard
+the quick intake of his breath as he leaned suddenly forward.
+
+"Yes, it has quite a familiar look," she observed. "Reminds me of your
+'Repose of Titania.'"
+
+His eyes flickered inquiringly over her face, but it was evident that
+hers had been merely a chance remark. The old lady had obviously no
+idea as to who it was who had posed for the Titania of the picture.
+That was one of the "slices of fact" which Magda had omitted to hand
+out when recounting her adventure in the fog to her godmother.
+Quarrington leaned back in his chair satisfied.
+
+"It's not unlike," he agreed carelessly.
+
+Then the entrance of Vladimir Ravinski, the lovelorn youth of the
+legend, riveted his attention on the stage.
+
+The dance which followed was exquisite. The Russian was a beautiful
+youth, like a sun-god with his flying yellow locks and glorious
+symmetry of body, and the /pas de deux/ between him and Magda was a
+thing to marvel at--sweeping through the whole gamut of love's
+emotion, from the first shy, delicate hesitancy of worshipping boy and
+girl to the rapturous abandon of mated lovers.
+
+Then across the vibrant, pulsating scene fell the deadly shadow of the
+witch Ritmagar. The stage darkened, the violins in the orchestra
+skirled eerily in chromatic showers of notes, and the hunched figure
+of Ritmagar approaching menaced the lovers. A wild dance followed, the
+lovers now kneeling and beseeching the evil fairy to have pity on
+them, now rushing despairingly into each other's arms, while the
+witch's own dancing held all of threat and malevolence that superb
+artistry could infuse into it.
+
+The tale unfolded itself with the inevitableness of preordained
+catastrophe.
+
+Ritmagar declines to be appeased. She raises her claw-like hand,
+pointing a crooked finger at the lovers, and with a clash of brazen
+sound and the dull thrumming of drums the whole scene dissolves into
+absolute darkness. When the darkness lifts once more, the stage is
+empty save for a pure white swan which sails slowly down the lake and
+disappears. . . . Followed a solo dance by Ravinski in which he gave
+full vent to the anguish of the bereft lover, while now and again the
+swan swam statelily by him. At length the witch appeared once more
+and, yielding to his impassioned entreaties, declared that the Swan-
+Maiden might reassume her human form during the hour preceding sunset,
+and Magda--the Swan-Maiden released from enchantment for the time
+being--came running in on the stage.
+
+This love-duet was resumed and presently, when the lovers had made
+their exit, Ritmagar was seen gleefully watching while the red sun
+dropped slowly down the sky, sinking at last below the rim of the
+lake.
+
+Then a low rumble of drums muttered as she stole from the stage, the
+personification of vindictive triumph, and all at once the great
+concourse of people in the auditorium seemed to strain forward,
+conscious that the climax of the evening, the wonderful solo dance by
+the Wielitzska, was about to begin.
+
+The moon rose on the left, and Magda, a slim white figure in her dress
+which cleverly suggested the plumage of a swan, floated on to the
+stage with that exquisite, ethereal lightness of movement which only
+toe-dancing--and toe-dancing of the most perfectly finished quality--
+seems able to convey. It was as though her feet were not touching the
+solid earth at all. The feather-light drifting of blown petals; the
+swaying grace of a swan as it glides along the surface of the water;
+the quivering, spirit-like flight of a butterfly--it seemed as though
+all these had been caught and blended together by the dancer.
+
+The heavier instruments of the orchestra were silenced, but the
+rippling music of the strings wove and interwove a dreaming melody,
+unutterably sweet and appealing, as the Swan-Maiden, bathed in pallid
+moonlight, besought the invisible Ritmagar for mercy, praying that she
+might not die even though the sun had set. . . . But there comes no
+answer to her prayers. A sombre note of stern denial sounds in the
+music, and the Swan-Maiden yields to utter despair, drooping slowly to
+earth. Just as Death himself claims her, her lover, demented with
+anguish, comes rushing to her side, and turning towards him as she
+lies dying upon the ground, she yields to his embrace with a last
+gesture of passionate surrender.
+
+
+
+Slowly the heavy curtains swung together, hiding the limp, lifeless
+body of the Swan-Maiden and the despairing figure of her lover as he
+knelt beside her, and after a breathless pause, the great audience,
+carried away by the tragic drama of the dance, its passion and its
+pathos, broke into a thunder of applause that rolled and reverberated
+through the theatre.
+
+Again and again Magda and her partner were called before the curtain,
+the former laden with the sheafs of flowers which had been handed up
+on to the stage. But the audience refused to be satisfied until at
+last Magda appeared alone, standing very white and slender under the
+blaze of lights, a faint suggestion of fatigue in the poise of her
+lissome figure.
+
+Instantly the applause broke out anew--thunderous, overwhelming. Magda
+smiled, then held out her arms in a little disarming gesture of
+appeal, touching in its absolute simplicity. It was as though she
+said: "Dear people, I love you all for being so pleased, but I'm very,
+very tired. Please, won't you let me go?"
+
+So they let her go, with one final round of cheers and clapping, and
+then, as the curtains fell together once more and the orchestra slid
+unobtrusively into the /entr'acte/ music, a buzz of conversation
+arose.
+
+Michael Quarrington turned and spoke to Davilof as they stood
+together.
+
+"This will be my last memory of England for some time to come.
+Mademoiselle Wielitzska is very wonderful. As much actress as dancer--
+and both rather superlatively."
+
+There was an odd note in Quarrington's voice, as if he were forcibly
+repressing some less measured form of words.
+
+Davilof glanced at him sharply.
+
+"You think so?" he said curtly.
+
+The musician's hazel eyes were burning feverishly. One hand was
+clenched on the back of the chair from which he had just risen; the
+other hung at his side, the fingers opening and shutting nervously.
+
+Quarrington smiled.
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+The eyes of the two men met, and Michael became suddenly conscious
+that the other was struggling in the grip of some strong emotion. He
+could even sense its atmosphere of antagonism towards himself.
+
+"I think"--Davilof spoke with slow intensity--"I think she's a
+soulless piece of devil's mechanism." And turning abruptly, he swung
+out of the box, slamming the door behind him.
+
+Quarrington frowned. With his keen perceptions it was not difficult
+for him to divine what lay at the back of Davilof's bitter criticism.
+The man was in love--hopelessly in love with the Wielitzska. Probably
+she had turned him down, as she had turned down better men than he,
+but he had been unable to resist the bitter-sweet temptation of
+watching her dance, and throughout the evening had almost certainly
+been suffering the torments of the damned.
+
+The artist smiled a little grimly to himself, remembering the many
+evenings he, too, had spent at the Imperial Theatre, drawn thither by
+the magnetism of a white, slender woman with night-black hair, whose
+long, dark eyes haunted him perpetually, even coming between him and
+his work.
+
+And then, just as he had made up his mind to go away, first to Paris
+and afterwards to Spain or perhaps even further afield, and thus set
+as many miles of sea and land as he could betwixt himself and the
+"kind of woman he had no place for," fate had played him a trick and
+sent her out of the obscurity of the fog-ridden street straight to his
+very hearth and home, so that the fragrance and sweetness and charm of
+her must needs linger there to torment him.
+
+He thought he could make a pretty accurate guess at the state of
+Davilof's feelings, and was ironically conscious of a sense of
+fellowship with him.
+
+Lady Arabella's sharp voice cut across his reflections.
+
+"I don't care for this next thing," she said, flicking at her
+programme. "Mrs. Grey and I are going round to see Magda. Will you
+come with us?"
+
+Quarrington had every intention of politely excusing himself. Instead
+of which he found himself replying:
+
+"With pleasure--if Mademoiselle Wielitzska won't think I'm intruding."
+
+Lady Arabella chuckled.
+
+"Well, she intruded on you that day in the fog, didn't she? So you'll
+be quits." She glanced impatiently round the box. "Where on earth has
+Davilof vanished to? Has he gone up in flame?"
+
+Michael laughed involuntarily.
+
+"Something of the kind, I fancy," he replied. "Anyway, he departed
+rather hurriedly."
+
+"Poor Antoine!" Gillian spoke with a kind of humorous compassion. "He
+has a temperament. I'm glad I haven't."
+
+"You have the best of all temperaments, Mrs. Grey," answered Michael,
+as they both followed Lady Arabella out of the box.
+
+She looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"The temperament that understands other people's temperaments," he
+added.
+
+"How do you know?" she asked, smiling.
+
+Lady Arabella was prancing on ahead down the corridor, and for the
+moment Michael and Gillian were alone.
+
+"We artists learn to look for what lies below the surface. If your
+work is sincere, you find when you've finished a portrait that the
+soul of the sitter has revealed itself unmistakably."
+
+Gillian nodded.
+
+"I've been told you've an almost diabolical genius for expressing just
+what a man or woman is really like--in character, I mean--in your
+portraits."
+
+"I can't help it," he said simply. "It comes--it reveals itself--if
+you paint sincerely."
+
+"And do you--always paint sincerely?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I try to. Though once I got hauled over the coals pretty sharply for
+doing so. My sitter happened to be a pretty society woman, possessed
+of about as much soul as would cover a threepenny-bit, and when I'd
+finished her portrait she simply turned and rent me. 'I wanted a
+taking picture,' she informed me indignantly, 'not the bones of my
+personality laid bare for public inspection.'"
+
+They were outside Magda's dressing-room by this time, and Virginie,
+who had flown to her nurseling the moment the dance was at an end,
+opened the door in response to Lady Arabella's preemptory knock.
+Gillian paused a moment before entering the room.
+
+"Yours is a wonderful gift of perception," she said quietly. "It ought
+to make you--very merciful."
+
+Michael looked at her swiftly. Her eyes seemed to be asking something
+of him--entreating. But before he could speak Lady Arabella's voice
+interposed remorselessly.
+
+"Come in, you two; and for goodness' sake shut the door. There's
+draught enough to waft one to heaven."
+
+There was no choice but to obey, and silently Quarrington followed
+Mrs. Grey into the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MICHAEL CHANGES HIS MIND
+
+Magda's dressing-room at the Imperial Theatre was something rather
+special in the way of dressing-rooms. It had been designed expressly
+for her by the management, and boasted a beautifully appointed
+bathroom adjoining it where she could luxuriate in a refreshing dip
+immediately after the strain and fatigue of her work on the stage.
+
+She had been very firm about the bathroom, airily dismissing a
+plaintive murmur from the manager to the effect that they were
+"somewhat crowded for space at the Imperial."
+
+"Then take another theatre, my dear man," she had told him. "Or build!
+Or give the /corps de ballet/ one less dressing-room amongst them. But
+if you want /me/, I must have a bathroom. If I dance, I bathe
+afterwards. If not, I don't dance."
+
+Being a star of the first magnitude, the Wielitzska could dictate her
+own terms, and accordingly a bathroom she had.
+
+She had just emerged from its white-tiled, silver-tapped luxury a few
+minutes before Lady Arabella, together with Gillian and Michael
+Quarrington, presented themselves at her dressing-room door, and they
+found her ensconced in an easy-chair by the fire, sipping a cup of
+steaming hot tea.
+
+"I've brought Mr. Quarrington to see you," announced Lady Arabella. "I
+thought perhaps you'd like some other congratulations besides family
+ones."
+
+"Am I permitted?" asked Quarrington, taking the hand Magda held out to
+him. "Or are you too tired to be bothered with an outsider?"
+
+Magda looked up at him.
+
+"I've very glad to see you," she said quietly.
+
+She appeared unwontedly sweet and girlish as she sat there, clad in a
+negligee of some soft silken stuff that clung about the lissom lines
+of her figure, and with her satiny hair coiled in a simple knot at the
+nape of her neck. There was little or nothing about her to remind one
+of the successful ballerina, and Michael found himself poignantly
+recalling the innocent, appealing charm of the Swan-Maiden. It was
+difficult to associate this woman with that other who had so
+unconsciously turned down his pal--the man who had loved her.
+
+"Well? Did it go all right?"
+
+Magda's eyes sought Gillian's eagerly as she put the question.
+
+"Did it go?" Mrs. Grey's voice held all the unqualified enthusiasm any
+artiste could desire.
+
+"Oh, Magda! It was wonderful! The most wonderful, beautiful dance I've
+ever seen."
+
+"And you know it as well as we do," interpolated Lady Arabella tartly,
+but smiling pridefully in spite of herself.
+
+"Still, of course, she likes to hear us /say/ it." Gillian championed
+her friend stoutly.
+
+"The whole world will be saying it to-morrow," observed Quarrington
+quietly.
+
+Here Virginie created a diversion by handing round cups of freshly
+brewed tea.
+
+"You'll get nerves--drinking tea at this hour of the night," commented
+Lady Arabella, accepting a cup with alacrity, nevertheless.
+
+"I take it very weak," protested Magda, smiling faintly. "It's the
+only thing I like after dancing."
+
+But Lady Arabella was already deep in conversation with Gillian and
+Virginie--a conversation which resolved itself chiefly into a
+laudatory chorus regarding the evening's performance. In the
+background Magda's maid moved quietly to and fro, carefully putting
+away her mistress's dancing dresses. For the moment Michael and Magda
+were to all intents and purposes alone.
+
+"I shall not easily forget to-night," he said rather low, drawing a
+chair up beside her.
+
+"You liked it, then?" she asked hesitatingly--almost shyly.
+
+"'Like' is hardly the word."
+
+Magda flashed him a swift glance.
+
+"And yet," she said slowly, "I'm the 'type of woman you hate.'"
+
+"You make it rather difficult to maintain the point of view," he
+admitted.
+
+She was silent a moment.
+
+"You were very unkind to me that day," she said at last.
+
+Their eyes met and in hers was something soft and dangerously
+disarming. Quarrington got up suddenly from his chair.
+
+"Perhaps I was unkind to you so that I might not be unkind to myself,"
+he replied curtly.
+
+Magda's soft laugh rippled out.
+
+"But how selfish! And--and aren't you being rather mysterious?"
+
+"Am I?" he returned pointedly. "Surely self-preservation is the first
+instinct of the human species?"
+
+She picked up the challenge and tossed it lightly back to him.
+
+"Is the danger, then, very great?"
+
+"I think it is. So, like a wise man, I propose to avoid it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Why, by quitting the danger zone. I go to Paris to-morrow."
+
+"To Paris?"
+
+Magda experienced a sudden feeling of blankness. It was inexplicable,
+but somehow the knowledge that Quarrington was going away seemed to
+take all the savour out of things. It was only by a supreme effort
+that she contrived to keep her tone as light and unconcerned as his
+own as she continued:
+
+"And then--after Paris?"
+
+"After Paris? Oh, Spain possibly. Or the Antipodes!"--with a short
+laugh.
+
+"Who's talking about the Antipodes?" suddenly chimed in Lady Arabella.
+"Home to bed's my next move. Gillian, you come with me--the car can
+take you on to Hampstead after dropping me in Park Lane. And Virginie
+can drive back with Magda."
+
+"Yes, do go with Marraine," said Magda, nodding acquiescence in reply
+to Gillian's glance of interrogation. "I have to dress yet."
+
+There was a general move towards the door.
+
+"Good-bye"--Magda's slim hand lay for a moment in Quarrington's. "I--
+I'm sorry you're going away, Saint Michel."
+
+Only Michael heard the last two words, uttered in that /trainante/,
+slightly husky voice that held so much of music and appeal. He turned
+abruptly and made his way out of the room in the wake of Gillian and
+Lady Arabella.
+
+"You'd better postpone your visit to the Antipodes, Mr. Quarrington,"
+said the latter, as presently they all three stood together in the
+vestibule, halted by the stream of people pouring out from the
+theatre. "I'm giving a dinner-party next week, with a 'crush' to
+follow. Stay and come to it."
+
+"It's awfully kind of you, Lady Arabella, but I'm afraid it's
+impossible."
+
+"Fiddlesticks! You're a free agent, aren't you?"--looking at him
+keenly.
+
+A whimsical light gleamed for an instant in the grey eyes.
+
+"I sometimes wonder if I am," he returned.
+
+"There's only one cord I know of that can't be either unknotted--or
+cut. And that's lack of money. That's not your complaint"--
+significantly.
+
+"No."
+
+"So you'll come?"
+
+"I'm afraid not."
+
+"Magda has promised to dance for me," proceeded Lady Arabella,
+entirely disregarding his quietly uttered negative. "They're not
+giving /The Swan-Maiden/ that night at the Imperial. She can't dine,
+of course, poor dear. Really, dancers have a lot to put up with--or
+rather, to put up /without/! Magda never dares to enjoy a good square
+meal. Afraid of getting fat, of course! After all, a dancer's figure's
+her fortune."
+
+Like a low, insistent undertone beneath the rattle of Lady Arabella's
+volubility Michael could hear again the murmur of a soft, dragging
+voice: "I'm sorry you're going away, Saint Michel."
+
+It seemed almost as though Lady Arabella, with that uncanny shrewdness
+of hers, divined it.
+
+"You'll come, then?" She smiled at him over her shoulder, moving
+forward as the crush in the vestibule lessened a little.
+
+And Michael, with an odd expression in his eyes, answered suddenly:
+
+"Yes, I'll come."
+
+
+
+Later, as Lady Arabella and Gillian drove home together, the former
+laughed quietly. There was an element of pride and triumph in the
+laughter. Probably the hen who has reared a duckling and sees it sail
+off into the water experiences, alongside her natural apprehension and
+astonishment, a somewhat similar pride in the startling proclivities
+evinced by her nurseling.
+
+"That nice artist-man is in love with Magda," crowed Lady Arabella
+contentedly.
+
+Gillian smiled.
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I do. Only it's very much against his will, for some reason or other.
+Crossing from Dover to-morrow, forsooth!"--with a broad smile. "Not
+he! He'll be at my party--and asking Magda to marry him before the
+week's out, bar accidents! . . . After all, it's not surprising that
+the men are falling over each other to marry her. She's really rather
+wonderful. Where do you think she gets it all from, Gillian, my dear?
+Not from the Vallincourts, I'll swear!"--chuckling.
+
+Mrs. Grey shook her head.
+
+"I don't know. But I think Magda is a standing argument in favour of
+the doctrine of reincarnation! She always seems to me to be a kind of
+modern embodiment of Helen of Troy or Cleopatra."
+
+"Only without the capacity for falling in love! She's as chilly as an
+iceberg and yet somehow gives you the idea she's all fire and passion.
+No wonder the men get misled, poor lambs!"
+
+"She's not cold, really," asserted Gillian positively. "Of that I'm
+sure. No one could dance as she does--and be an iceberg."
+
+Lady Arabella chuckled again, wickedly.
+
+"A woman who can dance like that ought to be preceded through life by
+a red flag. She positively stirs my old blood--that's been at a
+comfortably tepid temperature for the last thirty years!"
+
+"Some day," said Gillian, "she'll fall in love. And then--"
+
+"Then there'll be fireworks."
+
+Lady Arabella completed the sentence briskly just as the car pulled up
+in front of her house. She skipped nimbly out on to the pavement.
+
+"Fireworks, my dear," she repeated emphatically. "And a very fine
+display, too! Good-night."
+
+The car slid away north with Gillian inside it reflecting rather
+ruefully upon the very great amount of probability contained in Lady
+Arabella's parting comment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE GARDEN OF EDEN
+
+Lady Arabella's big rooms were filling rapidly. The dinner to which
+only a few of the elect had been bidden was over, and now those who
+had been invited to the less exclusive reception which was to follow
+were eagerly wending their way towards Park Lane.
+
+The programme for the evening promised to be an attractive one. A solo
+from Antoine Davilof, Lady Arabella's pet lion-cub of the moment; a
+song from the leading operatic tenor; and afterwards a single dance by
+the Wielitzska--who could never be persuaded to perform at any other
+private houses than those of her godmother and the Duchess of
+Lichbrooke--the former's half sister. So, in this respect, Lady
+Arabella enjoyed almost a monopoly, and such occasions as the present
+were enthusiastically sought after by her friends and acquaintances.
+Later, when the artistes had concluded their programme, there was to
+be a dance. The ballroom, the further end of which boasted a fair-
+sized stage, had been temporarily arranged with chairs to accommodate
+an audience, and in one of the anterooms Virginie, with loving,
+skilful fingers, was putting the finishing touches to Magda's
+toilette.
+
+Magda submitted passively to her ministrations. She was thinking of
+Michael Quarrington, the man who had come into her life by such
+strange chance and who had so deliberately gone out of it again. By
+the very manner of his going he had succeeded in impressing himself on
+her mind as no other man had ever done. Other men did not shun her
+like the plague, she reflected bitterly!
+
+But from the very beginning he had shown her that he disapproved of
+her fundamentally. She was the "type of woman he hated!" Night and day
+that curt little phrase had bitten into her thoughts, stinging her
+with its quiet contempt.
+
+She felt irritated that she should care anything about his opinion.
+But if she were candid with herself she had to admit that she did
+care, intensely. More than that, his departure from England had left
+her conscious of an insistent and unaccountable little ache. The
+knowledge that there could be no more chance meetings, that he had
+gone right out of her ken, seemed like the sudden closing of a door
+which had just been opening to her. It had somehow taken the zest out
+of things.
+
+"Voila!" Virginie drew back to survey the results of her labours,
+turning for approval to Gillian, who was in attendance in her capacity
+of accompanist. "Is it not that mademoiselle looks ravishing?"
+
+"Quite ravishing, Virginie," agreed Gillian. "Did you expect her to
+look anything else by the time you had finished decking her out?" she
+added teasingly.
+
+"It is nothing that I do," responded the old Frenchwoman seriously.
+"Mademoiselle cannot help but be beautiful to the eye--/le bon dieu/
+has created her like that."
+
+"I believe He has," assented Gillian, smiling.
+
+As she spoke the bell of the telephone instrument on the table beside
+her rang imperatively and she lifted the receiver. Magda, watching her
+face as she took the message, saw it suddenly blanch.
+
+"Coppertop! . . . He's ill!" she gasped.
+
+"Ill?" Magda could hardly credit it. Two hours ago they had left the
+child in perfect health.
+
+"Yes." Gillian swallowed, moistening her dry lips. "They've sent for
+the doctor. It's croup. Oh!"--despairingly, and letting the receiver
+fall unheeded from her grasp--"What am I to do? What am I to do?"
+
+Magda stepped forward, the filmy draperies of the dress in which she
+was to dance floating cloudily about her as she moved. She picked up
+the receiver as it hung dangling aimlessly from the stand and replaced
+it on its clip.
+
+"Do?" she said quietly. "Why, you'll go straight home, of course. As
+quickly as the car can take you. Virginie"--turning to the maid--"fly
+and order the car round at once."
+
+Gillian looked at her distractedly.
+
+"But you? Who'll play for you? I can't go! I can't leave you!" Her
+voice was shaken by sobs. "Oh, Coppertop!"
+
+Magda slipped a comforting arm round her shoulder.
+
+"Of course you'll go--and at once, too. See, here's your coat"--
+lifting it up from the back of the chair where Gillian had thrown it.
+"Put it on."
+
+Hardly conscious of what was happening, Gillian allowed herself to be
+helped into the coat. Suddenly recollection returned.
+
+"But your dance--your dance, Magda? You've forgotten!"
+
+Magda shook her head.
+
+"No. It will be all right," she said soothingly. "Don't worry,
+Gillyflower. /You've/ forgotten that Davilof is playing here
+to-night."
+
+"Antoine?" Gillian stared at her incredulously. "But you can't ask him
+to play for you! You'd hate asking him a favour after--after his
+refusal to accompany you any more."
+
+Magda smiled at her reassuringly.
+
+"My dear," she said, and there was an unaffected kindliness in her
+voice which few people ever heard. "My dear, I'm not going to let a
+little bit of cheap pride keep you away from Coppertop."
+
+She bent suddenly and kissed Gillian's white, miserable face just as
+Virginie reappeared in the doorway to announce that the car was
+waiting.
+
+"There, run along. Look, would you like to take Virginie with you?"
+
+"No, no." Gillian shook her head decidedly. "I shall be quite all
+right. Oh, Magda!"--impulsively drawing the slender figure close into
+her arms a moment. "You are /good/!"
+
+Magda laughed a trifle bitterly.
+
+"That would be news to the world at large!" she replied. Then
+cheerfully: "Now, don't worry, Gillyflower. Remember they've got a
+doctor there. And 'phone me presently about Coppertop. If he's worse,
+I'll come home as early as I can get away. Send the car straight back
+here."
+
+As soon as Gillian had gone, Magda flung a loose wrap over her
+diaphanous draperies and turned to Virginie.
+
+"Where is Monsieur Davilof? Do you know?"
+
+"/Mais oui, mademoiselle/! I saw him through the doorway as I came
+from ordering the car. He is in the library."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"/Oui, mademoiselle/!" Virginie nodded eloquently. "He smokes a
+cigarette--to steady the nerves, I suppose."
+
+Magda went swiftly out of the room. She reached the hall by way of an
+unfrequented passage and slipped into the library closing the door
+behind her.
+
+"Antoine!"
+
+At the sound of her voice Davilof, who had been standing by the fire,
+wheeled round.
+
+"You!" he exclaimed violently. "You!" And then remained silent,
+staring at her.
+
+"You knew I was dancing here to-night," she said chidingly. "Why are
+you so startled? We were bound to meet, weren't we?"
+
+"No, we were not. I proposed leaving the house the moment my solo was
+over."
+
+Magda laughed a little.
+
+"So afraid of me, Antoine?" she mocked gently.
+
+He made no answer, but his hands, hanging at his sides, clenched
+suddenly.
+
+Magda advanced a few steps towards him and paused.
+
+"Davilof," she said quietly. "Will you play for me to-night?"
+
+He looked at her, puzzled.
+
+"Play for you?" he repeated. "But you have Mrs. Grey."
+
+"No. She can't accompany me this evening."
+
+"And you ask me?" His voice held blank amazement.
+
+"Yes. Will you do it?"
+
+"Do you remember what I told you the last time we met? That I would
+never play for you again?"
+
+Magda drew her breath slowly. It was hurting her pride far more than
+Gillian knew or could imagine to ask a favour of this man. And he
+wasn't going to make it easy for her, either--that was evident. But
+she must ask it, nevertheless. For Gillian's sake; for the sake of
+poor little Coppertop fighting for breath and with no "mummie" at hand
+to help and comfort him; and for the sake of Lady Arabella, too. After
+promising to dance for her she couldn't let her godmother down by
+crying off at the last moment, when all the world and his wife had
+come crowding to her house on the strength of that promise.
+
+So she bent her head in response to Davilof's contemptuous question.
+
+"Yes, I remember," she said quietly.
+
+"And you still ask me to play for you?"
+
+"I still ask you."
+
+Davilof laughed.
+
+"You amaze me! And supposing I reply by saying I refuse?"
+
+"But you won't," dared Magda.
+
+Davilof's eyes held something of cruelty in their hazel depths as he
+answered quietly:
+
+"On the contrary--I do refuse."
+
+Her hand went up to her throat. It was going to be more difficult than
+she had anticipated!
+
+"There is no one else who can play for me as you do," she suggested.
+
+"No," fiercely. "Because no one loves you as I do."
+
+"What is the use of saying you love me when you won't do the one
+little thing I ask?" she retorted. "It is not often that I ask
+favours. And--and no one has ever refused me a request before."
+
+Davilof could hear the note of proud resentment in her voice, and he
+realised to the full that, in view of all that had passed between them
+in the Mirror Room, it must have been a difficult matter for a woman
+of Magda's temperament to bring herself to ask his help.
+
+But he had no intention of sparing her. None but himself knew how
+bitterly she had hurt him, how cruelly she had stung his pride, when
+she had flung him that contemptuous command: "I shall want you
+to-morrow, Davilof!--same time." He had unveiled his very soul before
+her--and in return she had tossed him an order as though he were a
+lackey who had taken a liberty. All his pain and brooding resentment
+came boiling up to the surface.
+
+"If I meant anything to you," he said slowly, "if you had even looked
+upon me as a friend, you could have asked what you liked of me. But
+you showed me once--very clearly--that in your eyes I was nothing more
+than your paid accompanist. Very well, then! Pay me--and I'll play for
+you to-night."
+
+"Pay you?"
+
+"Oh, not in money"--with a short laugh.
+
+"Then--then what do you mean?" Her face had whitened a little.
+
+"It's quite simple. Later on there is a dance. Give me a dance with
+you!"
+
+Magda hesitated. In other circumstances she would have refused point-
+blank. Davilof had offended her--and more than that, the revelation of
+the upsettingly vehement order of his passion for her that day in the
+Mirror Room had frightened her not a little. There was something
+stormy and elemental about it. To the caloric Pole, love was love, and
+the fulfilment of his passion for the adored woman the supreme
+necessity of life.
+
+Realising that she had to withstand an ardour essentially unEnglish in
+its violently inflammable quality, Magda was loth to add fuel to the
+flame. And if she promised to dance with Davilof she must let him hold
+her in his arms, risk that dangerous proximity which, she knew now,
+would set the man's wild pulses racing unsteadily and probably serve
+as the preliminary to another tempestuous scene.
+
+"Well?" Davilof broke in upon her self-communings. "Have I asked too
+high a price?"
+
+Time was flying. She must decide, and decide quickly. She took her
+courage in both hands.
+
+"No," she returned quickly. "I will dance with you, Antoine."
+
+He bowed.
+
+"Our bargain is complete, then," he said ironically. "I shall be
+charmed to play for you, mademoiselle."
+
+
+
+An hour or so later the last burst of applause had died away, and the
+well-dressed crowd which had sat in enthralled silence while the
+Wielitzska danced emerged chattering and laughing from the great
+ballroom.
+
+Their place was immediately taken by deft, felt-slippered men, who
+proceeded swiftly to clear away the seats and the drugget which had
+been laid to protect the surface of the dancing floor. In the
+twinkling of an eye, as it were, they transformed what had been to all
+intents and purposes a concert-hall into a flower-decked ballroom,
+while the members of the band engaged for the dance began climbing
+agilely into their allotted places on the raised platform preparatory
+to tuning up for the evening's work.
+
+Magda, released at last from Virginie's worshipfully careful hands,
+came slowly down the main staircase. She was in black, diaphanous and
+elusive, from which her flower-pale face and shoulders emerged like a
+water-lily starring the dark pool on which it floats. A crimson rose
+glowed just above her heart--that and her softly scarlet lips the only
+touches of colour against the rare black-and-white loveliness of her.
+
+She was descending the stairs reluctantly, mentally occupied in
+screwing up courage to fulfil her promise to Davilof. A 'phone message
+from Friars' Holm had come through saying that Coppertop was better.
+All danger was passed and there was no longer any need for her to
+return early. So it remained, now, for her to keep her pact with the
+musician.
+
+As she rounded the last bend in the staircase, she saw that a man was
+standing with bent head at the foot of the stairs, apparently waiting
+for someone, and she threw a quick, nervous glance in the direction of
+the motionless figure, thinking it might be Davilof himself. It would
+be like his eager impatience to await her coming there. Then, as the
+lights gleamed on fair, crisply waving hair she realised that the man
+was Michael--Michael, whom she believed to be on his way to Spain!
+
+Perhaps it was merely chance, or perhaps it was at the direct
+inspiration of Lady Arabella, but, whatever may have been the cause,
+Gillian had not confided to Magda that Quarrington was to be at her
+godmother's reception. The sudden, totally unexpected meeting with
+him--with this man who had contrived to dominate her thoughts so
+inexplicably--startled a little cry of surprise from her lips. She
+drew back abruptly, and then--quite how it happened she could not
+tell--but she missed her footing and fell.
+
+For the fraction of a second she experienced a horrible sensation of
+utter helplessness to save herself; then Michael's arms closed round
+her as he caught her before she reached the ground.
+
+The shock of the fall stupefied her for a moment. She lay against his
+breast like a terrified child, clinging to him convulsively.
+
+"It's all right," he murmured soothingly. "You're quite safe."
+
+Unconsciously his arms tightened round her. His breath quickened. The
+satin-soft hair had brushed his cheek as she fell; the pale, exquisite
+face and warm white throat lay close beneath his lips--all the
+fragrant beauty of her gathered unresisting against his heart. He had
+only to stoop his head----
+
+With a stifled exclamation he jerked himself backward, squaring his
+shoulders, and released her, though he still steadied her with a hand
+beneath her arm.
+
+"There, you are all right," he said reassuringly. "No bones broken."
+
+The commonplace words helped to restore her poise.
+
+"Oh! Thank you!" The words came a little gaspingly still. "I--I don't
+know how I came to fall like that. I think you startled me--I didn't
+expect to see you here."
+
+"I didn't expect to be," he returned, smiling a little.
+
+Magda did not ask how it had come to pass. For the moment it was
+enough for her that he /was/ there--that he had not gone away! She was
+conscious of a sudden incomprehensible sense of tumult within her.
+
+"It was lucky for me you happened to be standing just at the foot of
+the stairs," she said a little unsteadily.
+
+"I didn't 'happen.' I was there of /malice prepense/"--the familiar
+crooked smile flashed out--"waiting for you."
+
+"Waiting for me?"
+
+"Yes. Lady Arabella asked me to shepherd you into the supper-room and
+see that you had a glass of champagne and a sandwich before the
+dancing begins."
+
+"Orders from headquarters?"--smiling up at him.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+He held out his arm and they moved away together. As they passed
+through the crowded rooms one man murmured ironically to another:
+
+"Quarrington's got it badly, I should say."
+
+The second man glanced after the pair with amused eyes.
+
+"So he's the latest victim, is he? I head young Raynham's nose was out
+of joint."
+
+"You don't mean she's fired him?"
+
+The other nodded.
+
+"Got the push the day before yesterday," he answered tersely.
+
+"Poor devil! He'll take it hard. He's a hotheaded youngster. Just the
+sort to go off and blow his brains out."
+
+Meanwhile Quarrington had established Magda at a corner table in the
+empty supper-room and was seeing to it that Lady Arabella's commands
+were obeyed, in spite of Magda's assurances that she was not in the
+least hungry.
+
+"Then you ought to be," he replied. "After dancing. Besides, unlike
+the rest of us, you had no dinner."
+
+"Oh, I had a light meal at six o'clock. But naturally, you can't
+consume a solid dinner just before giving a performance."
+
+"I'm not going to pay you compliments about your dancing," he observed
+quietly, after a pause. "You must receive a surfeit of them. But"--
+looking at her with those direct grey eyes of his--"I'm glad I didn't
+leave England when I intended to."
+
+"Why didn't you?" she asked impulsively.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Because it's so much easier to yield to temptation than to resist,"
+he answered, not taking his eyes from her face.
+
+She flushed a little.
+
+"What was the temptation?" she asked uncertainly.
+
+He waited an instant, then answered with deliberation:
+
+"The temptation of seeing you again."
+
+"I should have thought you disapproved of me far too much for that to
+be the case! Saint Michel, don't you think you're rather hard on me?"
+
+"Am I? I had an old-fashioned mother, you see. Perhaps my ideas about
+women are out of date."
+
+"Tell me them."
+
+He regarded her reflectively.
+
+"Shall I? Well, I like to think of a woman as something sweet and
+fragrant, infinitely tender and compassionate--not as a marauder and
+despoiler. Wherever she comes, the place should be the happier for her
+coming--not bereft by it. She should be the helper and healer in this
+battered old world. That's the sort of woman I should want my wife to
+be; that's the sort of woman my mother was."
+
+"And you think I'm--not like that? I'm the marauder, I suppose?"
+
+He remained silent, and Magda sat with her bent head, fingering the
+stem of her wine-glass restlessly.
+
+"You like my dancing?" she said at last.
+
+"You know I do."
+
+"Well"--she looked at him with a mixture of defiance and appeal. "My
+dancing is me--the real me."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"You're not the 'Swan-Maiden,' whose love was so great that she forgot
+everything except the man she loved--and paid for it with her life."
+
+"The process doesn't sound exactly encouraging," she retorted with a
+flash of dry humour. "But how do you know I'm not--like that?"
+
+"How do I know? Because, if you knew anything at all about love, you
+couldn't pay with it as you do. Even the love you've no use for is the
+biggest thing the poor devil who loves you has to offer you; you've no
+right to play battledore and shuttlecock with it."
+
+He spoke lightly, but Magda could hear the stern accusation that
+underlay the words. She rose from the table abruptly.
+
+"I think," she said, "I think I'm afraid of love."
+
+As she spoke, she made a movement as though to quit the supper-room,
+but, either by accident or design, Michael barred her way.
+
+"Love," he said, watching her face intently, "means sacrifice--
+surrender."
+
+"And you believe I'm not capable of it?"
+
+"I think," he replied slowly, drawing aside to let her pass, "I think
+I'm afraid to believe."
+
+Something in the deep tones of his voice sent a thrill of
+consciousness through her. She felt her breath come and go unevenly
+and, afraid to trust herself to speak, she moved forward without
+response in the direction of the door. A moment later they were drawn
+into the stream of people wending their way by twos and threes towards
+the ballroom.
+
+As they entered, Antoine Davilof broke away from a little group of men
+with whom he had been conversing and came to Magda's side.
+
+"The next dance is just beginning," he said. "Are you engaged? Or may
+I have it?"
+
+"No, I'm not engaged," she answered.
+
+She spoke flurriedly. She was dreading this dance with Antoine. She
+felt as though the evening had drained her of her strength and left
+her unequal to a battle of wills should Antoine prove to be in one of
+his hotheaded moods.
+
+She glanced round her with a hint of desperation in her eyes. If only
+Michael had asked her to dance with him instead! But he had bowed and
+left her as soon as the musician joined them, so that there was no
+escape to be hoped for that way.
+
+Davilof was watching her curiously.
+
+"I believe," he said, "that you're afraid to dance with me!"
+
+On an impulse she answered him with perfect candour.
+
+"I believe I am."
+
+"Then why did you promise? You did promise, you know."
+
+"I know. I promised. I promised because Coppertop had croup and they
+had telephoned down for his mother to go to him. And you wouldn't
+accompany me unless I gave you this dance. So I promised it."
+
+Davilof's eyes held a curiously concentrated expression.
+
+"And you did this so that Mrs. Grey could go to her little boy--to
+nurse him?"
+
+Magda inclined her head.
+
+"Yes," she said simply.
+
+"But you hated asking me--/loathed/ it!"
+
+"Yes," she said again.
+
+He was silent for a moment. Then he drew back from her. "That was
+kind. Extraordinarily kind," he commented slowly. His expression was
+one of frank amazement. "I did not believe you could be so kind--so
+womanly."
+
+"Womanly?" she queried, puzzled.
+
+"Yes. For is not a woman--a good woman--always ready to sacrifice
+herself for those she loves?"
+
+Magda almost jumped. It was as though she were listening to an echo of
+Quarrington's own words.
+
+"And you sacrificed yourself," continued Davilof. "Sacrificed your
+pride--crushed it down for the sake of Mrs. Grey and little Coppertop.
+Mademoiselle"--he bowed gravely--"I kiss your hands. And see, I too, I
+can be generous. I release you from your promise. I do not claim that
+dance."
+
+If any single thing could have astonished Magda more than another, it
+was that Davilof should voluntarily, in the circumstances, renounce
+the dance she had promised him. It argued a fineness of perception and
+a generosity for which she would never have given him credit. She felt
+a little warm rush of gratitude towards him.
+
+"No, no!" she cried impulsively, "you shan't give up your dance."
+Then, as he still hesitated: "I should /like/ to dance with you--
+really I should, Antoine. You've been so--so /decent/."
+
+Davilof's face lit up. He looked radiant--like a child that has been
+patted on the back and told it is good.
+
+"No wonder we are all in love with you!" he exclaimed in low, vehement
+tones; adding quickly, as he detected a flicker of apprehension in
+Magda's eyes: "But you need not fear to dance with me. I will be as
+your brother--I will go on being 'decent.'"
+
+And he was. He danced as perfectly as any of his music-loving
+nationality can dance, but there was a restraint, a punctilious
+deference about him that, even while it amazed, availed to reassure
+Magda and restore her shaken confidence in the man.
+
+She did not realise or suspect that just those two simple actions of
+hers--the good turn she had done Gillian at some considerable cost to
+herself in the matter of personal pride, and her quick recognition of
+the musician's sense of fair play in renouncing his dance with her
+when he knew the circumstances which had impelled her to promise it--
+these two things had sufficed to turn Davilof's heady, emotional
+devotion into something more enduring and perhaps more dangerous, an
+abiding, deeply rooted love and passion for her which was stronger
+than the man himself.
+
+He left the house immediately after the conclusion of his dance with
+her, and Magda was speedily surrounded by a crowd of would-be
+partners. But she felt disinclined to dance again, and, always chary
+of her favours in this respect, she remained watching the dancing in
+preference to taking any part in it, exchanging small-talk with the
+men who, finding she could not be induced to reconsider her decision,
+clustered round her chair like bees round a honey-pot.
+
+It was towards the end of the evening that Michael Quarrington finally
+joined the group. Magda's eyes rested on him with a mixture of
+annoyance and approval--annoyance because she had expected him to ask
+her for a dance quite early in the course of the programme and he had
+failed to do so, and approval because he was of that clean-cut, fair-
+haired type of man who invariably contrives to look particularly well-
+groomed and thoroughbred in evening kit.
+
+She had no intention of permitting him to request a dance at this late
+hour, however, and rose from her seat as he approached.
+
+"Ah! You, Mr. Quarrington?" she said gaily. "I am just going home.
+It's been a charming evening, hasn't it?"
+
+"Charming," he rejoined courteously. "May I see you to your car?"
+
+He offered his arm and Magda, dismissing her little court of
+disgruntled admirers with a small gracious nod, laid her slim hand on
+his sleeve. As they moved away together the orchestra broke into the
+swinging seductive rhythm of a waltz.
+
+Quarrington paused abruptly.
+
+"Don't go yet!" he said. "Dance this with me."
+
+His voice sounded strained and uneven. It was as though the words were
+dragged from him without his own volition.
+
+For an instant the two pairs of eyes met--the long, dark ones with
+their slumbrous fire brooding beneath white lids, and the keen, hawk-
+like grey ones. Then:
+
+"Very well," she answered a trifle breathlessly.
+
+She was almost glad when the waltz came to an end. They had danced it
+in utter silence--a tense, packed silence, vibrant with significances
+half-hidden, half-understood, and she found herself quivering with a
+strange uncertainty and nervousness as she and Quarrington together
+made their way into the dim-lit quiet of the winter-garden opening off
+the ballroom.
+
+Overhead the green, shining leaves of stephanotis spread a canopy,
+pale clusters of its white, heavy-scented bloom gleaming star-like in
+the faint light of Chinese lanterns swung from the leaf-clad roof.
+From somewhere near at hand came the silvery, showering plash of a
+fountain playing--a delicate and aerial little sound against the
+robust harmonies of the band, like the notes of a harp.
+
+It seemed to Magda as though she and Michael had left the world behind
+them and were quite alone, enfolded in the sweet-scented, tender
+silence of some Garden of Eden.
+
+They stood together without speaking. In every tingling nerve of her
+she was acutely conscious of his proximity and of some rapidly rising
+tide of emotion mounting within him. She knew the barrier against
+which it beat and a little cry escaped her, forced from her by some
+impulse that was stronger than herself.
+
+"Oh, Saint Michel! Can't you--can't you believe in me?"
+
+He swung round at the sound of her voice and the next moment she was
+crushed against his breast, his mouth on hers, his kisses burning
+their way to her very heart. . . .
+
+Then voices, quick, light footsteps--someone else had discovered the
+Eden of the winter-garden, and Michael released her abruptly.
+
+
+
+Behind the chimneystacks the grey fingers of dawn were creeping up in
+the sky as Magda drove home. In the wan light her face looked
+unusually pale, and beneath the soft lace at her breast her heart
+throbbed unevenly.
+
+Five minutes ago Michael had held her in his arms and she had felt
+herself stirred to a sudden passionate surrender and response that
+frightened her.
+
+Was this love--the love against which Diane had warned her? It had all
+happened so suddenly--that last, unpremeditated dance, those tense,
+vibrant moments in the winter-garden, then the jarring interruption of
+other couples seeking its fragrant coolness. And she and Michael
+suddenly apart.
+
+Afterwards, only the barest conventionalities had passed between them.
+Nothing else had seemed possible. Their solitude had been ruthlessly
+destroyed; the outside world had thrust itself upon them without
+warning, jerking them back to the self-consciousness of suddenly
+arrested emotion.
+
+"I must be going." The stilted, banal little phrase had fallen
+awkwardly from Magda's lips, and Quarrington had assented without
+comment.
+
+She felt confused and bewildered. What had he meant? Had he meant
+anything at all? Was it possible that he believed in her now--trusted
+her? It had been in answer to that low, imploring cry of hers--"/Saint
+Michel, can't you believe in me?/"--that he had taken her in his arms.
+
+Looking out through the mist-blurred window at the pale streamers of
+dawnlight penciling the sky, Magda's eyes grew wistful--wonderingly
+questioning the future. Was she, too, only waiting for the revelation
+of dawn--the dawn of that mysterious thing called love which can
+transmute this everyday old world of ours into heaven or hell?
+
+
+
+Gillian was at the door to welcome her when at length the car pulled
+up at Friars' Holm. She looked rather white and there were purple
+shadows under her eyes, but her lips smiled happily.
+
+"Coppertop? How is he?" asked Magda quickly.
+
+"Sleeping, thank God! He's safe now! But--oh, Magda! It's been awful!"
+
+And quite suddenly Gillian, who had faced Death and fought him with a
+dogged courage and determination that had won the grave-eyed doctor's
+rare approval, broke down and burst into tears.
+
+Magda petted and soothed her, until at last her sobs ceased and she
+smiled through her tears.
+
+"I /am/ a fool!" she said, dabbing at her eyes with a moist, screwed-
+up ball of something that had once been a cambric handkerchief. "But
+I've quite recovered now--really. Come and tell me about everything.
+Did Davilof play for you all right? And did you enjoy the dance
+afterwards? And, oh, I forgot! There's a letter for you on the
+mantelpiece. It was delivered by hand while we were both at Lady
+Arabella's."
+
+Mechanically, as she responded to Gillian's rapid fire of questions,
+Magda picked up the square envelope propped against the clock and slit
+open the flap. It was probably only some note of urgent invitation--
+she received dozens of them. An instant later a half-stifled cry broke
+from her. Gillian turned swiftly.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, a note of apprehension sharpening her voice.
+
+Magda stared at her dumbly. Then she held out the letter.
+
+"Read it," she said flatly. "It's from Kit Raynham's mother."
+
+Gillian's eyes flew along the two brief lines of writing:
+
+
+ "Kit has disappeared. Do you know where he is?--
+    ALICIA RAYNHAM."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE FIRST REAPING
+
+At breakfast, some hours later, Magda was in a curiously petulant and
+uncertain mood. To some extent her fractiousness was due to natural
+reaction after the emotional excitement of the previous evening.
+Granted the discovery of the Garden of Eden, and add to this the
+almost immediate intrusion of outsiders therein--for everybody else is
+an "outsider" to the pair in possession--and any woman might be
+forgiven for suffering from slightly frayed nerves the following day.
+And in Magda's case she had been already rather keyed up by finding
+the preceding few days punctuated by unwelcome and unaccustomed
+happenings.
+
+They all dated from the day of the accident which had befallen her in
+the fog. It almost seemed as though that grey curtain of fog had been
+a symbol of the shadow which was beginning to dog her footsteps--the
+shadow which stern moralists designate "unpleasant consequences."
+
+First there had been Michael Quarrington's plain and candid utterance
+of his opinion of her. Then had followed Davilof's headlong wooing and
+his refusal, when thwarted, to play for her again. He, too, had not
+precisely glossed things over in that tirade of accusation and
+reproach which he had levelled at her!
+
+And now, just when it seemed as though she had put these other ugly
+happenings behind her, Kit Raynham, who for the last six months had
+been one of the little court of admirers which surrounded her, had
+seen fit to complicate matters by vanishing without explanation; while
+his mother, in an absurd maternal flurry of anxiety as to what had
+become of him, must needs write to her as though it inevitably
+followed that she was responsible for his disappearance!
+
+Magda was conscious of an irritated sense of injury, which Gillian's
+rather apprehensive little comments on the absence of further news
+concerning young Raynham scarcely tended to allay.
+
+"Oh, don't be tiresome, Gillian!" she exclaimed. "The boy's all right.
+I expect he's been having a joy-day--which has prolonged itself a
+bit."
+
+"It seems he hasn't been seen or heard of since the day before
+yesterday," responded Gillian gravely. "They're afraid he may--may
+have committed suicide"--she brought out the word with a rush.
+"They've been dragging the lake at his home."
+
+Magda flared.
+
+"Where did you hear all this--this nonsense? You said nothing about it
+last night."
+
+"Lady Raynham told me. She rang up half an hour ago--before you were
+down--to ask if by any chance we had had any news of him," replied
+Gillian gently.
+
+Magda pushed away her plate and, leaving her breakfast unfinished,
+moved restlessly across to the window.
+
+"There's nothing about it in this morning's paper, is there?" she
+asked. Her tone sounded apprehensive.
+
+Gillian's eyes grew suddenly compassionate.
+
+"Yes. There is--something," she returned, laying her hand quickly over
+the newspaper as though to withhold it.
+
+But Magda swung round and snatched it from her. Gillian half rose from
+her chair.
+
+"Don't look--don't read it, Magda!" she entreated hastily.
+
+The other made no response. Instead, she deliberately searched the
+columns of the paper until she found a paragraph headed: Disappearance
+of the Honourable Kit Raynham.
+
+No exception could reasonably be taken to the paragraph in question.
+It gave a brief resume of Kit Raynham's short life up to date,
+referred to the distinguished career which had been predicted for him,
+and, in mentioning that he was one of the set of brilliant young folks
+of whom Magda Wielitzska, the well-known dancer, was the acknowledged
+leader, it conveyed a very slightly veiled hint that he, in
+particular, was accounted one of her most devoted satellites. The
+sting of the paragraph lay in its tail:
+
+
+ "It will be tragic indeed if it should eventually transpire that a
+  young life so full of exceptional promise has foundered in seas
+  that only a seasoned swimmer should essay."
+
+
+It was easy enough for Magda to read between the lines. If anything
+had happened to Kit Raynham--if it were ultimately found that he had
+taken his own life--society at large was prepared to censure her as
+more or less responsible for the catastrophe!
+
+Side by side with this paragraph was another--a panegyric on the
+perfection of Wielitzska's dancing as a whole, and dwelling
+particularly upon her brilliant performance in /The Swan-Maiden/.
+
+To Magda, the juxtaposition of the two paragraphs was almost
+unendurable. That this supreme success should be marred and
+overshadowed by a possible tragedy! She flung the newspaper to the
+ground.
+
+"I think--I think the world's going mad!" she exclaimed in a choked
+voice.
+
+Gillian looked across at her. Intuitively she apprehended the mental
+conflict through which her friend was passing--the nervous
+apprehension and resentment of the artiste that any extraneous
+happening should infringe upon her success contending with the genuine
+regret she would feel if some untoward accident had really befallen
+Kit Raynham. And behind both these that strange, aloof detachment
+which seemed part of the very fibre of her nature, and which Gillian
+knew would render it almost impossible for her to admit or even
+realise that she was in any way responsible for Kit Raynham's fate--
+whatever it might be.
+
+Of what had taken place in the winter-garden at Lady Arabella's
+Gillian was, of course, in ignorance, and she had therefore no idea
+that the intrusion of Kit Raynham's affairs at this particular
+juncture was doubly unwelcome. But she could easily see that Magda was
+shaken out of her customary sang-froid.
+
+"Don't worry, Magda." The words sprang consolingly to her lips, but
+before she could give them utterance Melrose opened the door and
+announced that Lady Raynham was in the library. Would Mademoiselle
+Wielitzska see her?
+
+The old man's face wore a look of concern. They had heard all about
+the disappearance of Lady Raynham's son in the servants' hall--the
+evening papers had had it. Moreover, it always seems as though there
+exists a species of wireless telepathy by which the domestic staff of
+any household, great or small, speedily becomes acquainted with
+everything good, bad, or indifferent--and particularly bad!--which
+affects the folks "above-stairs."
+
+A brief uncomfortable pause succeeded Melrose's announcement; then
+Magda walked quietly out of the room into the library.
+
+Lady Raynham rose from a low chair near the fire. She was a little,
+insignificant woman, rather unfashionably attired, with neat grey hair
+and an entirely undistinguished face, but as she stood there,
+motionless, waiting for Magda to come up to her, she was quite
+unconsciously impressive--transformed by that tragic dignity with
+which great sorrow invests even the most commonplace of people.
+
+Her thin, middle-aged features looked drawn and puckered by long hours
+of strain. Her eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness. They searched
+Magda's face accusingly before she spoke.
+
+"What have you done to my son?"
+
+"Where is he?" Magda's answering question came in almost breathless
+haste.
+
+"You don't know!"
+
+Lady Raynham sat down suddenly. Her legs were trembling beneath her--
+had been trembling uncontrollably even as she nerved herself to stand
+and confront the woman at whose door she laid the ruin of her son. But
+now the spurt of nervous energy was exhausted, and she sank back into
+her chair, thankful for its support.
+
+"I don't know where he is," she said tonelessly. "I don't even know
+whether he is alive or dead."
+
+She fumbled in the wrist-bag she carried, and withdrawing a crumpled
+sheet of notepaper held it out. Magda took it from her mechanically,
+recognising, with a queer tightening of the muscles of her throat, the
+boyish handwriting which sprawled across it.
+
+"You want me to read this?" she asked.
+
+"You've /got/ to read it," replied the other harshly. "It is written
+to you. I found it--after he'd gone."
+
+Her gaze fastened on Magda's face and clung there unwaveringly while
+she read the letter.
+
+It was a wild, incoherent outpouring--the headlong confession of a
+boy's half-crazed infatuation for a beautiful woman. A pathetic enough
+document in its confused medley of passionate demand and boyish
+humbleness. The tragic significance of it was summed up in a few lines
+at the end--lines which seemed to burn themselves into Magda's brain:
+
+
+ "I suppose it was cheek my hoping you could ever care, but you were
+  so sweet to me you made me think you did. I know now that you
+  don't--that you never really cared a brass farthing, and I'm going
+  right away. The same world can't hold us both any longer. So I'm
+  going out of it."
+
+
+Magda looked up from the scrawled page and met the gaze of the sad,
+merciless eyes that were fixed on her.
+
+"Couldn't you have left him alone?" Lady Raynham spoke in a low,
+difficult voice. "You have men enough to pay you compliments and run
+your errands. I'd only Kit. Couldn't you have let me keep him? What
+did you want with my boy's love. You'd nothing to give him in return?"
+
+"I had!" protested Magda indignantly. "You're wrong. I was very fond
+of Kit. I gave him my friendship."
+
+Her indignation was perfectly sincere. To her, it seemed that Lady
+Raynham was taking up a most unwarrantable attitude.
+
+"Friendship?" repeated the latter with bitter scorn. "Friendship? Then
+God help the boys to whom you give it! Before Kit ever met you he was
+the best and dearest son a woman could have had. He was keen on his
+work--wild to get on. And he was so gifted it looked as if there were
+nothing in his profession that he might not do. . . . Then you came!
+You turned his head, filled his thoughts to the exclusion of all else
+--work, duty, everything that matters to a lad of two-and-twenty. You
+spoilt his chances--spoilt his whole life. And now I've lost him. I
+don't know where he is--whether he is dead or alive." She paused. "I
+think he's dead," she said dully.
+
+"I'm sorry if--"
+
+"Sorry!" Lady Raynham interrupted hysterically. Her composure was
+giving way under the strain of the interview. "Sorry if my son has
+taken his own life--"
+
+"He hasn't," asserted Magda desperately. "He was far too sensible and
+--and ordinary."
+
+"Yes. Till you turned his head!"
+
+Lady Raynham rose and walked towards the door as though she had said
+all she came to say. Magda sprang to her feet.
+
+"I won't--I won't be blamed like this!" she exclaimed rebelliously.
+"It's unfair! Can I help it if your son chose to fall in love with me?
+You--you might as well hold me responsible because he is tall or
+short--or good or bad!"
+
+The other stopped suddenly on her way to the door as though arrested
+by that last defiant phrase.
+
+"I do," she said sternly. "It's women like you who are responsible
+whether men are good--or bad."
+
+In silence Magda watched the small, unassuming figure disappear
+through the doorway. She felt powerless to frame a reply, nor had Lady
+Raynham waited for one. If her boy were indeed dead--dead by his own
+hand--she had at least cleared his memory, laid the burden of the mad,
+rash act he had committed on the shoulders that deserved to bear it.
+
+Normally a shy, retiring kind of woman, loathing anything in the
+nature of a scene, the tragedy which had befallen her son had inspired
+Alicia Raynham with the reckless courage of a tigress defending its
+young. And now that the strain was over and she found herself once
+more in her brougham, driving homeward with the familiar clip-clop of
+the fat old carriage-horse's hoofs in her ears, she shrank back
+against the cushions marvelling at the temerity which had swept her
+into the Wielitzska's presence and endowed her with words that cut
+like a two-edged sword.
+
+Like a two-edged sword in very truth! Lady Raynham's final thrust,
+stabbing at her with its stern denunciation, brought back vividly to
+Magda Michael Quarrington's bitter speech--"I've no place for your
+kind of woman."
+
+Side by side with the recollection came a sudden dart of fear. How
+would all this stir about Kit Raynham--the impending gossip and
+censure which seemed likely to be accorded her--affect him? Would he
+judge her again--as he had judged her before?
+
+She was conscious of a fresh impulse of anger against Lady Raynham.
+She wanted to forget the past--blot it all out of her memory--and out
+of the memory of the man whose contempt had hurt her more than
+anything in her whole life before. And now it seemed as though
+everything were combining to emphasise those very things which had
+earned his scorn.
+
+But, apart from a certain apprehension as to how the whole affair
+might appear in Michael's eyes, she was characteristically unimpressed
+by her interview with Lady Raynham.
+
+"I don't see," she told Gillian indignantly, "that I'm to blame
+because the boy lost his head. His mother was--stupid."
+
+Gillian regarded her consideringly. To her, the whole pitiful tragedy
+was so clear. She could envisage the point of view of Kit's mother
+only too well, and sympathise with it. Yet, understanding Magda better
+than most people did, she realised that the dancer was hardly as
+culpable as Lady Raynham thought her.
+
+Homage and admiration were as natural to Magda as the air she
+breathed, and it made very little impression on her whether a man more
+or less lost his heart to her or not. Moreover, as Gillian recognised
+it was almost inevitable that this should be the case. The influences
+by which Magda had been surrounded during the first ten plastic years
+of childhood had all tended to imbue her with the idea that men were
+only to be regarded as playthings, and that from the simple standpoint
+of self-defence it was wiser not to take them seriously. If you did,
+they invariably showed a disposition to become tyrants. Gillian made
+allowance for this; nevertheless she had no intention of letting Magda
+down lightly.
+
+"I believe you were created without a soul," she informed her
+candidly.
+
+Magda smiled a little.
+
+"Do you know you're the second person to tell me that?" she said. "The
+idea's not a bit original. Michael Quarrington told me the same thing
+in other words. Perhaps, perhaps it's true."
+
+"Of course, it's not true!" Gillian contradicted her warmly. "I only
+said it because I was so out of patience with you."
+
+"Everybody seems to be hating me rather badly just now." Magda spoke
+somewhat forlornly. "And yet--I don't think I'm any different from
+usual."
+
+"I don't think you are," retorted Gillian. "But it's your 'usual'
+that's so disastrous. You go sailing through life like a beautiful
+cold star--perfectly impassive and heartless."
+
+"I'm not heartless. I love you--and Marraine. You surely don't blame
+me because I don't 'fall in love'? . . . I don't /want/ to fall in
+love," she added with sudden vehemence.
+
+"I wish to goodness you would!" exclaimed Gillian impatiently. "If
+only you cared enough about anybody to do something really outrageous
+--run off with another woman's husband, even--I believe I should
+respect you more than I do now."
+
+Magda laughed.
+
+"Gillyflower, I'm afraid you've no morals. And you here in the
+capacity of watchdog and duenna, too!"
+
+"It's all very well to make a joke of everything. But I know--I'm sure
+this business about Kit Raynham is going to be more serious than you
+think. It's bound to affect you."
+
+Magda stared at her blankly.
+
+"What nonsense! Affect me--why should it? How can it?"
+
+"How can it?"--with bitterness. "Everyone will talk--more than usual!
+You can't smash up people's only sons--not lovable, popular boys like
+Kit--without there being a fuss. You--you should have left a kid like
+that alone."
+
+And she went out of the room, banging the door behind her like a big
+full-stop.
+
+
+
+Gillian's prophecy proved only too accurate. People did talk. Kit
+Raynham had been a general favourite in society, and his
+disappearance, taken in conjunction with the well-known fact of his
+infatuation for Magda, created a sensation.
+
+Even when the theory of suicide was finally disproved by his mother's
+receiving a letter from Australia, whither it appeared, the boy had
+betaken himself and his disappointment, people seemed at first
+disinclined to overlook Magda's share in the matter. For a time even
+her immense prestige as a dancer suffered some eclipse, but this, with
+a performer of her supreme artistry, was bound to be only a passing
+phase.
+
+The world will always condone where it wants to be amused. And--now
+that the gloom of young Raynham's supposed suicide was lifted from the
+affair--there was a definite aroma of romance about it which was not
+without its appeal to the younger generation.
+
+So that gradually the pendulum swung back and Magda's audiences were
+once again as big and enthusiastic as ever. Perhaps even more
+enthusiastic, since the existence of a romantic and dramatic
+attachment sheds a certain glamour about any well-known artiste.
+
+All of which affected Magda herself comparatively little--though it
+irritated her that her actions should be criticised. What did affect
+her, however, absorbing her thoughts to the exclusion of all other
+matters, was that since the night of Lady Arabella's reception she had
+received neither word nor sign from Michael Quarrington.
+
+She could not understand it. Had he been a different type of man she
+might have credited him with having yielded to a sudden impulse,
+kissing her as some men will kiss women--lightly and without giving or
+asking more than the moment's caress.
+
+But Quarrington was essentially not the man to be carried away by a
+passing fancy. That he had cared for her against his will, against his
+better judgment, Magda could not but realise. /But he had cared!/ She
+was sure of it. And he was the only man for whom her own pulses had
+ever beaten one whit the faster.
+
+His touch, the sound of his voice, the swift, hawk-like glance of
+those grey eyes of his, had power to wake in her a vague tumult of
+emotion at once sweet and frightening; and in that brief moment in the
+"Garden of Eden," when he had held her in his arms, she had been
+tremulously ready to yield--to surrender to the love which claimed
+her.
+
+But the days had multiplied to weeks and still the silence which had
+followed remained unbroken. As far as Magda was concerned, Michael
+seemed to have walked straight out of her life, and she was too proud
+--and too much hurt--to inquire amongst her friends for news of him.
+It was her godmother who finally tersely enlightened her as to his
+whereabouts.
+
+Characteristically, Lady Arabella had withheld her judgment regarding
+the Kit Raynham affair until it was found that he had betaken himself
+off to Australia. But when the whole of the facts were evident, she
+allowed nothing--neither the romantic dreams of the episode nor her
+own warm affection for her god-daughter--to obscure her clear-sighted
+vision.
+
+Magda twisted her slim shoulders irritably when taken to task.
+
+"I think I'm tired of being blamed for Kit Raynham's idiocy," she
+said, a note of resentment in her voice. "No one seems to consider my
+side of the question! I was merely nice to him in an ordinary sort of
+way, and there wasn't the least need for him to have chucked up
+everything and rushed off to the other side of the world like that.
+/I/ couldn't help it!"
+
+Lady Arabella made a gesture of despair.
+
+"I don't believe you could," she acknowledged helplessly. "I'm really
+beginning to have a sneaking sympathy with poor Hugh for shelving the
+responsibility of having brought you into the world. But at least you
+might refrain from baby-snatching!" she added wrathfully.
+
+Magda protested.
+
+"Marraine! You're abominable! Kit is four-and-twenty if he's a day.
+And I'm barely twenty."
+
+"That has nothing whatever to do with it," retorted Lady Arabella
+incisively. "Kit is a babe in arms, while you--you're as old as Eve."
+She paused. "Anyway, you've broken his heart and driven him to the
+ends of the earth."
+
+"Where he'll probably paste together the pieces and offer the repaired
+article to someone else."
+
+Lady Arabella looked up sharply. Cynicism was usually far enough away
+from Magda. She was too full of the joy of life and of the genuine
+delight an artist finds in his art to have place for it. Egoist she
+might be, with the unthinking egotism of youth, irresponsible in her
+gay acceptance of the love and admiration showered on her, but there
+was nothing bitter or sour in her composition. Lady Arabella, seeking
+an explanation for the unwonted, cast her mind back on the events of
+the last few weeks--and smiled to herself.
+
+"I suppose you know you've driven someone else out of England besides
+Kit Raynham?" she said.
+
+"Whom do you mean?"
+
+Magda spoke mechanically. A faint colour crept up under her white
+skin, and she avoided her godmother's keen gaze.
+
+"That charming artist-man--Michael Quarrington."
+
+"Has--he left England?" Magda's throat felt suddenly parched. Then
+with an effort she went on: "You're surely not going to put the entire
+steamship's passenger list down to me, Marraine?"
+
+"Only those names for which I happen to know you're responsible."
+
+"You don't know about Saint Mi--about Mr. Quarrington. It's mere
+guesswork on your part."
+
+"Most of the things we really know in life are mere guesswork,"
+replied Lady Arabella sagely. "But in this case----"
+
+"Yes. In this case?"
+
+There was a long pause. Then Lady Arabella answered slowly:
+
+"In this case I'm speaking from first-hand information."
+
+Magda's slender figure tautened. She moistened her lips.
+
+"Do you mean that Mr. Quarrington told you he was leaving England on
+my account?" she asked.
+
+"I don't often meddle, Magda--not really meddle." Lady Arabella's
+voice sounded unusually deprecating. "But I did in this instance.
+Because--oh, my dear, he's the only man I've ever seen to whom I'd be
+glad to give you up. He'd--he'd manage you, Magda."
+
+Magda's head was turned away, but the sudden scarlet flush that flew
+up into her face surged over even the white nape of her neck.
+
+"And he loves you," went on Lady Arabella, her voice softening
+incredibly. "It's only a man here or there who really /loves/ a woman,
+my dear. Most of them whip up a hotch-potch of quite commonplace
+feelings with a dash of passion and call it love, while all they
+actually want is a good housekeeper and presentable hostess and
+someone to carry on the name."
+
+No answer came from Magda, unless a stifled murmur could be regarded
+as such, and after a few minutes Lady Arabella spoke again, irritably.
+
+"Why couldn't you have left Kit alone?"
+
+Magda raised her head.
+
+"What has that to do with it?"
+
+"Everything"--succinctly. "I told you I meddled. Michael Quarrington
+came to see me before he went away--and I know precisely why he left
+England. I asked him to go and see you before he sailed."
+
+"What did he say?" The words were almost inaudible.
+
+Lady Arabella hesitated. Then she quoted quickly: "'There is no need.
+She will understand.'"
+
+To Magda the brief sentence held all the finality of the bolting and
+barring of a door. So Quarrington, like everyone else, had heard the
+story of Kit Raynham! And he had judged and sentenced her.
+
+That night in the winter-garden he had been on the verge of trusting
+her, ready to believe in her, and she had vowed to herself that she
+would prove worthy of his trust. She had meant never to fall short of
+all that Michael demanded in the woman he loved. And now, before she
+had had a chance to justify his hardly-won belief, the past had risen
+up to destroy her, surging over her like a great tidal wave and
+sweeping away the whole fabric of the happiness she had visioned.
+
+She had not wholly realised before that she loved. But she knew now.
+As the empty weeks dragged along she learned what it meant to long for
+the beloved one's presence--the sound and touch of voice or hand--with
+an aching, unassuagable longing that seems to fuse body and soul into
+a single entity of pain.
+
+Outwardly she appeared unchanged. Her pride was indomitable, and
+exactly how much Michael's going had meant to her not even Gillian
+suspected--though the latter was too sensitive and sympathetic not to
+realise that Magda had passed through some experience which had
+touched her keenly. Ignorant of the incidents that had occurred on the
+night of Lady Arabella's party, she was disposed to assign the
+soreness of spirit she discerned in her friend to the general
+happenings which had followed from the Raynham episode. And amongst
+these she gave a certain definite place to the abrupt withdrawal of
+Quarrington's friendship, and resented it. She felt curiously
+disappointed in the man. With such fine perceptive faculty as he
+possessed she would have expected him to be more tolerant--more
+merciful in his judgment.
+
+Once she had tentatively approached the subject, but Magda had clearly
+indicated that she had no intention of discussing it.
+
+Not even to Gillian, whom she had gradually come to look upon as her
+closest friend, could Magda unveil the wound to her pride. No one, no
+one in the whole world, should know that she had been ready to give
+her love--and that the offering had been silently, but none the less
+decisively, rejected.
+
+Diane's warning now found its echo in her own heart: "Never give your
+heart to any man. If you do he will only break it for you--break it
+into little pieces like the glass scent-bottle which you dropped
+yesterday."
+
+"She was right," Magda told herself bitterly. "A thousand times
+right!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BACK OF BEYOND
+
+The season was drawing to its close. London lay sweltering under a
+heat-wave which had robbed the trees in the Park of their fresh June
+greenness and converted the progress of foot-passengers along its
+sultry pavements into something which called to mind the mediaeval
+ordeal of walking over hot ploughshares.
+
+Even the garden at Friars' Holm, usually a coolly green oasis in the
+midst of the surrounding streets, seemed as airless as any back court
+or alley, and Coppertop, who had been romping ever more and more
+flaggingly with a fox-terrier puppy he had recently acquired, finally
+gave up the effort and flung himself down, red-faced and panting, on
+the lawn where his mother and Magda were sitting.
+
+"Isn't it nearly time for us to go to the seaside, mummie?" he
+inquired plaintively.
+
+Magda smiled down at the small wistful face.
+
+"How would you like to go to the country instead, Topkins?" she asked.
+"To a farm where they have pigs and horses and cows, and heaps of
+cream--"
+
+"And strawberries?" interpolated Coppertop pertinently.
+
+"Oh, of course. Or, no--they'll be over by the time we get there. But
+there'll be raspberries. That's just as good, isn't it?"
+
+Gillian looked up, smiling a little.
+
+"It's settled we're going 'there,' then--wherever it is?" she said.
+
+"Do you think you'd like it, Gillyflower?" asked Magda. "It's a farm
+I've heard of in Devonshire, where they want to take paying-guests for
+the summer."
+
+Gillian, guessing from Magda's manner that the whole matter was
+practically arranged, nodded acquiescence.
+
+"I'm sure I should. But will /you/?"--whimsically. She glanced at the
+sophisticated simplicity of Magda's white gown, at the narrow suede
+shoes and filmy stockings--every detail of her dress and person
+breathing the expensiveness and luxury and highly specialised
+civilisation of the city. "Somehow I can't imagine you--on a farm in
+the depths of the country! I believe you'll hate it."
+
+"I shall like it." Magda got up restlessly. "I'm sick of society and
+the theatre and the eternal gossip that goes on in London. I--I want
+to get away from it all!"
+
+Gillian's thoughts turned back to the happenings of the last few
+months. She thought she understood what lay behind Magda's sudden
+decision to bury herself in the country.
+
+"Have you taken rooms at this farm?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I have"--shortly. Then, with one of those sudden flashes of
+affectionate insight which were part of her essential lovableness, she
+went on: "Gilly, are you sure you don't mind? I ought to have asked
+you first"--remorsefully. "I expect you'll be bored to death. Perhaps
+you'd rather not come?"
+
+Gillian's quiet brown eyes smiled at her reassuringly.
+
+"'Where thou goest--'" she quoted. "Of course I want to come. I've
+never been to Devonshire. And I know Coppertop will adore the pigs and
+cows--"
+
+"And cream," put in Coppertop ruminatively.
+
+"Tell me about the place," said Gillian. "How did you hear of it?"
+
+"Through the prosaic columns of the /Daily Post/," replied Magda. "I
+didn't want a place recommended by anyone I knew. That doesn't cut the
+connecting line one bit. Probably the people who've recommended it to
+you decide to look you up in their car, just when you think you're
+safely buried, and disinter you. I don't /want/ to be disinterred. I
+propose to get right away into the country, out of reach of everybody
+we know, for two months. I shan't give our address to anyone except
+Melrose, and he can forward on all letters." A small amused smile
+crossed her lips. "Then we can answer them or not, exactly as we feel
+disposed. It will be heavenly."
+
+"Still I don't know where this particular paradise is which you've
+selected," returned Gillian patiently.
+
+"It's at the back of beyond--a tiny village in Devonshire called
+Ashencombe. I just managed to find it on the Ordnance map with a
+magnifying glass! The farm itself is called Stockleigh and is owned
+and farmed by some people named Storran. The answer to my letter was
+signed Dan Storran. Hasn't it a nice sound--Storran of Stockleigh?"
+
+"And did you engage the rooms on those grounds, may I ask? Because the
+proprietor's name 'had a nice sound'?"
+
+Magda regarded her seriously.
+
+"Do you know, I really believe that had a lot to do with it," she
+acknowledged.
+
+Gillian went off into a little gale of laughter.
+
+"How like you!" she exclaimed.
+
+
+
+The train steamed fussily out of Ashencombe station, leaving Magda,
+Gillian, and Coppertop, together with sundry trunks and suitcases, in
+undisputed possession of the extremely amateurish-looking platform.
+Magda glanced about her with amusement.
+
+"What a ridiculous little wayside place!" she exclaimed. "It has a
+kind of 'home-made' appearance, hasn't it? You'd hardly expect a real
+bona fide train to stop here!"
+
+"This your luggage, miss?"
+
+A porter--or, to be accurate, /the/ porter, since Ashencombe boasted
+but one--addressed her abruptly. From a certain inimical gleam in his
+eye Magda surmised that he had overheard her criticism.
+
+"Yes." She nodded smilingly. "Is there a trap of any kind to meet us?"
+
+Being a man as well as a porter he melted at once under Magda's
+disarming smile, and replied with a sudden accession of amiability.
+
+"Be you going to Stockleigh?" he asked. The soft sing-song intonation
+common to all Devon voices fell very pleasantly on ears accustomed to
+the Cockney twang of London streets.
+
+"Yes, to Storran of Stockleigh," announced Coppertop importantly.
+
+The porter's mouth widened into an appreciative grin.
+
+"That's right, young master, and there's the wagonette from the Crown
+and Bells waiting to take you there."
+
+A few minutes later, the luggage precariously piled up on the box-seat
+beside the driver, they were ambling through the leafy Devon lanes at
+an unhurried pace apparently dictated by the somewhat ancient
+quadruped between the shafts. The driver swished his whip negligently
+above the animal's broad back, but presumably more with the idea of
+keeping off the flies than with any hope of accelerating his speed.
+There would be no other train to meet at Ashencombe until the down
+mail, due four hours later, so why hurry? No one ever appears to be in
+a hurry in the leisurely West Country--a refreshing characteristic in
+a world elsewhere so perforated by tubes and shaken by the ubiquitous
+motor-bus.
+
+Magda leaned back in the wagonette with a sigh of pleasure. The
+drowsy, sunshiny peace of the July afternoon seemed very far removed
+from the torrid rush and roar of the previous day in London.
+
+It was almost like entering another world. Instead of the crowded,
+wood-paved streets, redolent of petrol, this winding ribbon of a lane
+where the brambles and tufted grass leaned down from close-set hedges
+to brush the wheels of the carriage as it passed. Overhead, a restful
+sky of misty blue flecked with wisps of white cloud, while each
+inconsequent turn of the narrow twisting road revealed a sudden
+glimpse of distant purple hills, or a small friendly cottage built of
+cob and crowned with yellow thatch, or high-hedged fields of standing
+corn, deepening to gold and quiveringly still as the sea on a windless
+afternoon.
+
+At last the wagonette swung round an incredibly sharp turn and rumbled
+between two granite posts--long since denuded of the gate which had
+once swung between them--pulling up in front of a low, two-storied
+house, which seemed to convey a pleasant sense of welcome, as some
+houses do.
+
+The casement windows stood wide open and through them you caught
+glimpses of white curtains looped back with lavender ribbons. Roses,
+pink and white and red, nodded their heads to you from the walls, even
+peering out impertinently to catch the sun from beneath the eaves of
+the roof, whose thatch had mellowed to a somber brown with wind and
+weather. Above the doorway trails of budding honeysuckle challenged
+the supremacy of more roses in their summer prime, and just within, in
+the cool shadow of the porch, stood a woman's slender figure.
+
+Gillian never forgot that first glimpse of June Storran. She looked
+very simple and girlish as she stood there, framed in the rose-covered
+trellis of the porch, waiting with a slight stir of nervousness to
+receive the travellers. The sunlight, filtering between the leaves of
+the honeysuckle, dappled her ash-blond hair with hovering flecks of
+gold, and a faint, shy smile curved her lips as she came forward, a
+little hesitatingly, to greet them.
+
+"I am so glad to see you," she said. "Dan--my husband had to go to
+Exeter to-day. He was sorry he could not meet you himself at the
+station."
+
+As she and Magda stood side by side the contrast between them was
+curiously marked--the one in her obviously homemade cotton frock, with
+her total absence of poise and her look of extreme youth hardly
+seeming the married woman that she was, the other gowned with the
+simplicity of line and detailed finish achieved only by a great
+dressmaker, her quiet assurance and distinctive little air of /savoir
+vivre/ setting her worlds apart from Dan Storran's young wife.
+
+"Will you come in? The man will see to your luggage."
+
+June was speaking again, still shyly but with her shyness tempered by
+a sensitive instinct of hospitality. She led the way into the house
+and they followed her through a big, low-raftered living-room and up a
+flight of slippery oak stairs.
+
+"These are your rooms," said June, pausing at last at the end of a
+rambling passage-way. "I hope"--she flushed a little anxiously--"I do
+hope you will like them. I've made them as nice as I could. But, of
+course"--she glanced at Magda deprecatingly--"you will find them very
+different from London rooms."
+
+Magda flashed her a charming smile.
+
+"I'm sure we shall love them," she answered, glancing about her with
+genuine appreciation.
+
+The rooms were very simply furnished, but sweet and fresh with chintz
+and flowers, and the whitewashed ceilings, sloping at odd, unexpected
+angles, gave them a quaint attractiveness. The somewhat coarse but
+spotless bed-linen exhaled a faint fragrance of lavender.
+
+"You ought to charge extra for the view alone," observed Gillian,
+going to one of the open lattice windows and looking across the rise
+and fall of hill and valley to where the distant slopes of Dartmoor,
+its craggy tors veiled in a grey-blue haze, rimmed the horizon.
+
+"I hope you didn't think the terms too high?" said June. "You see, I--
+we never had paying-guests before, and I really didn't know what would
+be considered fair. I do hope you'll be happy and comfortable here,"
+she added timidly.
+
+There was something very appealing in her ingenuousness and wistful
+desire to please, and Magda reassured her quickly.
+
+"I haven't any doubt about it," she said, smiling. "This is such a
+charming house"--glancing about her--"so dear and old-fashioned. I
+think it's very good of you to let us share your home for a little
+while. It will be a lovely holiday for us."
+
+June Storran had no possibility of knowing that this dark, slender
+woman to whom she had let her rooms was the famous dancer, Magda
+Wielitzska, since the rooms had been engaged in the name of Miss
+Vallincourt, but she responded to Magda's unfailing charm as a flower
+to the sun.
+
+"It will be lovely for us, too," she replied. "Do you know, we were so
+frightened about putting in that advertisement you answered! Dan was
+terribly against it." A troubled little frown knitted her level brows.
+"But we've had such bad luck on the farm since we were married--the
+rain spoilt all our crops last year and we lost several valuable
+animals--so I thought it would help a bit if we took paying-guests
+this summer. But Dan didn't really approve."
+
+"I can quite understand," said Gillian. "Naturally he wanted to keep
+his home to himself--an Englishman's home is his castle, you know! And
+I expect"--smilingly--"you haven't been married very long."
+
+Mrs. Storran flushed rosily. She was evidently a sensitive little
+person, and the blood came and went quickly under her clear skin at
+the least provocation.
+
+"Not very long," she acknowledged. "But we've been very happy--in
+spite of our bad luck on the farm! After all, that's what matters,
+isn't it?"
+
+"It's the only thing that really matters at all," said Gillian. Her
+eyes had grown suddenly soft with some tender recollection of the
+past. "But you mustn't let us give you a lot of trouble while we're
+here. You don't look over-strong." Her glance rested kindly on her
+hostess's young face. In spite of its dewy blue eyes and clear skin
+with the tinge of wild-rose pink in the cheeks, it conveyed a certain
+impression of fragility. She looked almost as though a vigorous puff
+of wind might blow her away.
+
+"Oh, I'm quite well. Of course I found looking after a farmhouse
+rather heavy work--just at first. I hadn't been used to it, and we
+can't afford to keep a servant. You see, I married Dan against the
+wishes of my people, so of course we couldn't accept any help from
+them, though they have offered it."
+
+"I don't see why not," objected Magda. "They can't feel very badly
+about it if they are willing to help you."
+
+"Oh, no--they would, gladly. But Dan would hate it in the
+circumstances. You can understand that, can't you?"--appealingly. "He
+wants to justify himself--to prove that he can keep his own wife. He'd
+be too proud to let me take anything from them."
+
+"Storran of Stockleigh appears to be considerably less attractive than
+his name," summed up Gillian, as, half an hour later, she and Magda
+and Coppertop were seated round a rustic wooden table in the garden
+partaking of a typical Devonshire tea with its concomitants of jam and
+clotted cream.
+
+"Apparently," she continued, "he has married 'above him.' Little Mrs.
+Storran obviously comes of good stock, while I expect he himself is
+just an ordinary sort of farmer and doesn't half appreciate her.
+Anyway, he doesn't seem to consider her much."
+
+Magda made no answer. Characteristically her interest in June Storran
+had evaporated, pushed aside by something of more personal concern.
+
+"This is the most restful, peaceful spot I've ever struck," she said,
+leaning back with a sigh of pleasure. "Isn't it lovely, Gilly? There's
+something homelike and friendly about the whole landscape--a sort of
+/intimate/ feeling. I feel as if I'd known it all for years--and
+should like to know it for years more! Don't they say Devon folk
+always want to come home to die? I'm not surprised."
+
+"Yes, it's very beautiful," agreed Gillian, her gaze resting
+contentedly on the gracious curves of green and golden fields, broken
+here and there by stretches of ploughed land glowing warmly red
+between the ripening corn and short-cropped pasture.
+
+"I believe I could be quite good here, Gillyflower," pursued Magda
+reflectively. "Just live happily from one day to the next, breathing
+this glorious air, and eating plain, simple food, and feeding those
+adorable fluffy yellow balls Mrs. Storran calls chickens, and churning
+butter and--"
+
+Gillian's ringing, whole-hearted laughter checked this enthusiastic
+epitome of the simple life.
+
+"Never, Magda!" she asserted, shaking her head. "I'm quite expecting
+you to get bored in about a week and to rush me off to Deauville or
+somewhere of that ilk. And as to being 'good'--why, it isn't in you!"
+
+"I'm not so sure." Magda rose and together they strolled over the
+grass towards the house, Coppertop skirmishing happily behind them. "I
+really think I might be good here--if only for the sole reason that
+there's no temptation to be anything else"--drily.
+
+As she spoke a gate clicked close at hand. Followed the sound of
+quick, striding steps, and the next moment a man's figure rounded the
+tall yew hedge which skirted the foot of the garden and came towards
+them.
+
+He was a big giant of a man--at least six foot two in his socks, and
+proportionately broad and muscular in build. There was something free
+and bold in his swinging gait that seemed to challenge the whole
+world. It suggested an almost fierce independence of spirit that would
+give or take as it chose, but would never brook dictation from any man
+--or woman either.
+
+Instinctively Magda and Gillian paused, and Magda held out a slim
+hand, smiling, as he overtook them.
+
+"I'm sure you must be Mr. Storran," she said.
+
+He halted abruptly and snatched off his cap, revealing a crop of
+crinkly dark-brown hair thatching a lean sunburnt face, out of which
+gleamed a pair of eyes as vividly blue as periwinkles.
+
+"Yes, I'm Dan Storran," he said simply. "Is it Miss Vallincourt?"
+
+Magda nodded and proceeded to introduce Gillian. But Storran's glance
+only rested cursorily on Gillian's soft, pretty face, returning at
+once to Magda's as though drawn thither by a magnet.
+
+"I'm sorry I couldn't meet your train myself to-day," he said, a note
+of eager apology in his voice.
+
+Magda smiled at him.
+
+"So am I," she answered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+FOREBODINGS
+
+Gillian was sitting alone in the yew-hedged garden, her slim fingers
+busy repairing the holes which appeared with unfailing regularity in
+the heels of Coppertop's stockings. From the moment he had come to
+Stockleigh the number and size of the said holes had increased
+appreciably, for, although five weeks had elapsed since the day of
+arrival, Coppertop was still revelling whole-heartedly in the
+incredible daily delights which, from the viewpoint of six years old,
+attach to a farm.
+
+Day after day found him trotting contentedly in the wake of the
+stockman, one Ned Honeycott, whom he had adopted as guide,
+philosopher, and friend, and whom he regarded as a veritable fount of
+knowledge and the provider of unlimited adventure and entertainment.
+
+It was Honeycott who lifted Coppertop on to the broad back of the
+steadiest cart-horse; who had taught him how to feed calves by dipping
+his chubby little hand into a pail of milk and then letting them suck
+the milk from off his fingers; who beneficently contrived that hardly
+a load of hay was driven to the great rick without Coppertop's small
+person perched proudly aloft thereon, his slim legs dangling and his
+shrill voice joining with that of the carter in an encouraging "Come-
+up, Blossom," to the bay mare as she plodded forward between the
+shafts.
+
+Gillian experienced no anxiety with regard to Coppertop's safety while
+he was in Ned Honeycott's charge, but she missed the childish
+companionship, the more so as she found herself frequently alone these
+days. June Storran was naturally occupied about her house and dairy,
+while Magda, under Dan Storran's tutelage, appeared smitten with an
+extraordinary interest in farm management.
+
+It seemed to Gillian that Magda and Dan were in each other's company
+the greater part of the time. Every day Dan had some suggestion or
+other to make for Miss Vallincourt's amusement. Either it was: "Would
+you care to see the hay-loader at work?" Or: "I've just bought a
+couple of pedigree Devon cows I'd like to show you, Miss Vallincourt."
+Or, as yesterday: "There's a pony fair to be held to-morrow at
+Pennaway Bridge. Would you care to drive in it?" And to each and all
+of Storran's suggestions Magda had yielded a ready assent.
+
+So this morning had seen the two of them setting out for Pennaway in
+Dan's high dog-cart, while Gillian and June stood together in the
+rose-covered porch and watched them depart.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to have gone?" Gillian asked on a sudden impulse.
+
+She regretted the question the instant it had passed her lips, for in
+the wide-apart blue eyes June turned upon her there was something of
+the mute, puzzled misery of a dog that has received an unexpected
+blow.
+
+"I couldn't spare the time," she answered hastily. "You see"--the
+sensitive colour as usual coming and going quickly in her face--"Miss
+Vallincourt is on a holiday."
+
+She turned and went quickly into the house, leaving Gillian conscious
+of a sudden uneasiness--that queer "trouble ahead" feeling which
+descends upon us sometimes, without warning and without our being able
+to assign any very definite cause for it.
+
+She was thinking over the little incident now, as she sat sewing in
+the evening light, and meditating whether she should give Magda a hint
+that it might be kinder of her not to monopolise so much of Dan's
+society. And then the crisp sound of a horse trotting on the hard, dry
+road came to her ears, and almost immediately the high dog-cart swung
+between the granite gateposts and clattered into the yard.
+
+Dan tossed the reins on to the horse's neck and, springing to the
+ground, came round to help Magda down from the cart.
+
+"It's rather a steep step. Let me lift you down," he said.
+
+"Very well."
+
+Magda stood up in the trap and looked down at him with smiling eyes,
+unconsciously delighting in his sheer physical good looks. He was a
+magnificent specimen of manhood, and the good yeoman blood in him,
+which had come down through the generations of the same sturdy stock,
+proclaimed itself in his fine physique and splendid virility.
+
+A moment later he had swung her down as easily as though she were a
+child, and she was standing beside him.
+
+She laughed up at him.
+
+"Oh, 'girt Jan Ridd'!" she exclaimed softly.
+
+He laughed back, well pleased. (Was there ever a man who failed to be
+ridiculously flattered by a feminine tribute to his physical
+strength?) Nor did his hands release her quite at once.
+
+"You're as light as a feather! I could carry you all day and--"
+
+"Not know it!" concluded Magda gaily.
+
+His hands fell away from her slim body abruptly.
+
+"Oh, I should know it right enough!" he said jerkily.
+
+His eyes kindled, and Magda, conscious of something suddenly
+disturbing and electric in the atmosphere, turned quickly and, leaving
+Storran to unharness the horse, made her way to where she espied
+Gillian sitting.
+
+The latter looked up from her sewing.
+
+"So you've got back? Did you have a good time?"
+
+"Yes. It was quite amusing. There were heaps and heaps of ponies--some
+of them wild, unbroken colts which had been brought straight off the
+Moor. They were rearing and plunging all over the place. I loved them!
+By the way, I'm gong to learn riding, Gillyflower. Mr. Storran has
+offered to teach me. He says he has a nice quiet mare I could start
+on."
+
+A small frown puckered Gillian's brows.
+
+"Do you think Mrs. Storran will like it?"
+
+Magda started.
+
+"Why on earth shouldn't she?"
+
+"Well,"--Gillian spoke with a vague discomfort. "He's her husband!"
+
+"I don't see what that has to do with it," replied Magda. "We're
+staying here and, of course, the Storrans want to make it as nice as
+they can for us. Anyway, I'm going to take such goods as the gods
+provide."
+
+She got up abruptly and went in the direction of the house, leaving
+Gillian to digest as best she might the hint that her interference was
+not likely to be either welcomed or effective.
+
+Left to herself, Gillian sighed unhappily. Almost she wished they had
+never come to Stockleigh, only that it was pure joy to her to see
+Coppertop's rather thin little cheeks filling out and growing sunburnt
+and rosy. He had not picked up strength very readily after his attack
+of croup, and subsequently the intense heat in London had tried him a
+good deal.
+
+But she was gradually becoming apprehensive that disturbing
+consequences might accrue from Magda's stay at Stockleigh Farm. A
+woman of her elusive charm, equipped with all the subtle lore that her
+environment had taught her, must almost inevitably hold for a man of
+Storran's primitive way of life the fascination of something new and
+rather wonderful. To contrast his wife with her was to contrast a
+field-flower with some rare, exotic bloom, and Gillian was conscious
+of a sudden rush of sympathy for June's unarmoured youth and
+inexperience.
+
+Magda's curiously uncertain moods of late, too, had worried her not a
+little. She was unlike herself--at times brooding and introspective,
+at other times strung up to a species of forced gaiety--a gaiety which
+had the cold sparkle of frost or diamonds. With all her faults Magda
+had ever been lovably devoid of bitterness, but now it seemed as
+though she were developing a certain new quality of hardness.
+
+It puzzled Gillian, ignorant of that sudden discovery and immediate
+loss of the Garden of Eden. It might have been less of an enigma to
+old Lady Arabella, to whom the jigsaw puzzle of human motives and
+impulses was always a matter of absorbing interest, and who, as more
+or less an onlooker at life during the last thirty years, had become
+an adept in the art of fitting the pieces of the puzzle together.
+
+Magda herself was only conscious of an intense restlessness and
+dissatisfaction with existence in general. She reflected bitterly that
+she had been a fool to let slip her hold of herself--as she had done
+the night of Lady Arabella's reception--even for a moment.
+
+It had been thoroughly drilled into her both by precept and example--
+her mother's precept and her father's example--that to let a man count
+for anything much in her life was the biggest mistake a woman could
+make, and Michael's treatment of her had driven home the truth of all
+the warnings Diane had instilled.
+
+He had hurt her as she had never been hurt before, and all that she
+craved now was change. Change and amusement to drug her mind so that
+she need not think. Whether anyone else got hurt in the process was a
+question that never presented itself to her.
+
+She had not expected to find amusement at Stockleigh. She had been
+driven there by an overmastering desire to escape from London--for a
+few weeks, at least, to get right away from her accustomed life and
+from everyone who knew her. And at Stockleigh she had found Dan
+Storran.
+
+The homage that had leaped into his eyes the first moment they had
+rested on her, and which had slowly deepened as the days slipped by,
+had somehow soothed her, restoring her feminine poise which Michael's
+sudden defection had shaken.
+
+She knew--as every woman always does know when a man is attracted by
+her--that she had the power to stir this big, primitive countryman,
+whose way of life had never before brought him into contact with her
+type of woman, just as she had stirred other men. And she carelessly
+accepted the fact, without a thought that in playing with Dan
+Storran's emotions she was dealing with a man who knew none of the
+moves of the game, to whom the art of love-making as a pastime was an
+unknown quantity, and whose fierce, elemental passions, once aroused,
+might prove difficult to curb. He amused her and kept her thoughts off
+recent happenings, and for the moment that was all that mattered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+STORRAN OF STOCKLEIGH
+
+It was a glorious morning. The sun blazed like a great golden shield
+out of a cloudless sky, and hardly a breath of air stirred the foliage
+of the trees.
+
+Magda, to content an insatiable Coppertop, had good-naturally suffered
+herself to be dragged over the farm. They had visited the pigs--a new
+and numerous litter of fascinating black ones having recently made
+their debut into this world of sin--and had watched the cows being
+milked, and been chased by the irascible gander, and finally, laughing
+and breathless, they had made good their escape into the garden where
+Gillian sat sewing, and had flung themselves down exhaustedly on the
+grass at her feet.
+
+"I'm in a state of mental and moral collapse, Gilly," declared Magda,
+fanning herself vigorously with a cabbage leaf. "Whew! It is hot! As
+soon as I can generate enough energy, I propose to bathe. Will you
+come?"
+
+Gillian shook her head lazily.
+
+"I think not to-day. I want to finish this overall for Coppertop. And
+it's such a long trudge from here down to the river."
+
+"Yes, I know." Magda nodded. "It's three interminable fields away--and
+the thistles and things prick one's ankles abominably. Still, it's
+lovely when you /do/ get there! I think I'll go now"--springing up
+from the velvet turf--"before I get too lazy to move."
+
+Gillian's eyes followed her thoughtfully as she made her way into the
+house. She had never seen Magda so restless--she seemed unable to keep
+still a moment.
+
+Half an hour later Magda emerged from the house wrapped in a cloak, a
+little scarlet bathing-cap turbanning her dark hair, and a pair of
+sandals on the slim supple feet that had danced their way into the
+hearts of half of Europe.
+
+"Good-bye!" she called gaily, waving her hand. And went out by the
+wicket gate leading into the fields.
+
+There was not a soul in sight. Only the cows, their red, burnished
+coats gleaming like the skin of a horse-chestnut in the hot sun, cast
+ruminative glances at her white-cloaked figure as it passed, and
+occasionally a peacefully grazing sheep emitted an astonished bleat at
+the unusual vision and skedaddled away in a hurry.
+
+Magda emulated Agag in her progress across the field which intervened
+between the house and the river, now and then giving vent to a little
+cry of protest as a particularly prickly thistle or hidden trail of
+bramble whipped against her bare ankles.
+
+At last from somewhere near at hand came the cool gurgle of running
+water and, bending her steps in the direction of the sound, two
+minutes' further walking brought her to the brink of the river.
+Further up it came tumbling through the valley, leaping the rocks in a
+churning torrent of foam, a cloud of delicate up-flung spray
+feathering the air above it; but here there were long stretches of
+deep, smooth water where no boulder broke the surface into spume, and
+quiet pools where fat little trout heedlessly squandered the joyous
+moments of a precarious existence.
+
+Magda threw off her wrapper and, picking her way across the moss-grown
+rocks, paused for an instant on the bank, her slender figure, clad in
+its close-fitting scarlet bathing-suit, vividly outlined against the
+surrounding green of the landscape. Then she plunged in and struck out
+downstream, swimming with long, even strokes, the soft moorland water
+laving her throat like the touch of a satin-smooth hand.
+
+She was heading for a spot she knew of, a quarter of a mile below,
+where a wooden bridge spanned the river and the sun's heat poured down
+unchecked by sheltering trees. Here she proposed to scramble out and
+bask in the golden warmth.
+
+She had just established herself on a big, sun-warmed boulder when a
+familiar step sounded on the bridge and Dan Storran's tall figure
+emerged into view. He pulled up sharply as he caught sight of her, his
+face taking on a schoolboy look of embarrassment. Deauville /plage/,
+where people bathed in companionable parties and strolled in and out
+of the water as seemed good to them, was something altogether outside
+Dan's ken.
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry," he began, flushing uncomfortably.
+
+Magda waved to him airily.
+
+"You needn't be. I'm having a sun-bath. You can stay and talk to me if
+you like. Or are you too busy farming this morning?"
+
+"No, I'm not too busy," he said slowly.
+
+There was a curious dazzled look in his eyes as they rested on her.
+Sheathed in the stockingette bathing-suit she wore, every line and
+curve of her supple body was revealed. Her wet, white limbs gleamed
+pearl-like in the quivering sunlight. The beauty of her ran through
+his veins like wine.
+
+"Then come and amuse me!" Magda patted the warm surface of the rock
+beside her invitingly. "You can give me a cigarette to begin with."
+
+Storran sat down and pulled out his case. As he held a match for her
+to light up from, his hand brushed hers and he drew it away sharply.
+It was trembling absurdly.
+
+He sat silent for a moment or two; then he said with an odd
+abruptness:
+
+"I suppose you find it frightfully dull down here?"
+
+Magda laughed a little.
+
+"Is that because I told you to come and amuse me? . . . No, I don't
+find it dull. Change is never really dull."
+
+"Well, you must find it change enough here from the sort of life
+you've been accustomed to lead."
+
+"How do you know what sort of life I lead?"--teasingly.
+
+"I can guess. One has only to look at you. You're different--different
+from everyone about here. The way you move--you're like a thoroughbred
+amongst cart-horses." He spoke with a kind of sullen bitterness.
+
+Magda drew her feet up on to the rock and clasped her hands round her
+knees.
+
+"Now you're talking nonsense, you know," she said amusedly. "Frankly,
+I like it down here immensely. I happened to be--rather worried when I
+came away from London, and there's something very soothing and
+comforting about the country--particularly your lovely Devon country."
+
+"Worried?" Storran's face darkened. "Who'd been worrying you?"
+
+"Oh"--vaguely. "All sorts of things. Men--and women. But don't let's
+talk about worries to-day. This glorious sunshine makes me feel as
+though there weren't any such things in the world."
+
+She leaned back, stretching her arms luxuriously above her head with
+the lithe, sensuous grace of movement which her training had made
+second nature. Storran's eyes dwelt on her with a queer tensity of
+expression. Every gesture, every tone of her curiously attractive
+voice, held for him a disturbing allure which he could not analyse and
+against which he was fighting blindly.
+
+He had never doubted his love for his wife. Quite honestly he had
+believed her the one woman in the world when he married her. Yet now
+he was beginning to find every hour a blank that did not bring him
+sight or sound of this other woman--this woman with her slender limbs
+and skin like a stephanotis petal, and her long Eastern eyes with the
+subtle lure which seemed to lie in their depths. Beside her June's
+young peach-bloom prettiness faded into something colourless and
+insignificant.
+
+"It must be nice to be you"--Magda nodded at him. "With no vague,
+indefinable sort of things to worry you."
+
+He smiled reluctantly.
+
+"How do you know I haven't?"
+
+"Oh, because I do."
+
+"A woman's reason!"
+
+"Quite. But women's reasons are generally very sound--we were endowed
+with a sixth sense, you know! Besides--it's obvious, isn't it? Here
+you are--you and June--living a simple, primitive kind of existence,
+all to yourselves, like Adam and Eve. And if you do have a worry it's
+a real definite one--as when a cow inconveniently goes and dies or
+your root crop fails. Nothing intangible and uncertain about that!"
+
+"Have you forgotten that the serpent intruded even upon Adam and Eve?"
+he asked quietly.
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Is that a hit at Gillian and me? I know--June told us--that you were
+horribly opposed to anyone's coming here for the summer. I thought
+that you had got over that by now?"
+
+"So I have"--bluntly.
+
+"Then we're not--not unwelcome visitors any longer?" the soft,
+tantalising voice went on. The low cadence of it seemed to tug at his
+very heartstrings.
+
+He leaned nearer to her and, catching both her hands in his, twisted
+her round so that she faced him.
+
+"Why do you ask?" he demanded, his voice suddenly roughened and
+uneven.
+
+"Because I wanted to know--of course!"--lightly.
+
+"Then--you're not an unwelcome visitor. You never have been! From the
+moment you came the place was different somehow. When you go----"
+
+He stopped as though startled by the sound of his own words--struck by
+the full significance of them.
+
+"When you go!" he repeated blankly. His grip of her slight hands
+tightened till it was almost painful. "But you won't go! I can't let
+you go now! Magda--"
+
+The situation was threatening to get out of hand. Magda drew quickly
+away from him, springing to her feet.
+
+"Don't talk like that," she said hastily. "You don't mean it, you
+know."
+
+With a sudden, unexpected movement she slipped from his side and ran
+down to the river's edge. He caught a flashing glimpse of scarlet,
+heard the splash as her slim body cleaved the water, and a moment
+later all he could see was the red of her turban cap, bobbing like a
+scarlet poppy on the surface of the river, and the glimmer of a moon-
+white arm and shoulder as a smooth overhand stroke bore her swiftly
+away from him.
+
+He stood staring after her, conscious of a sudden bewildered sense of
+check and thwarting. The blood seemed leaping in his veins. His heart
+thudded against his ribs. He stepped forward impetuously as though to
+plunge in after the receding gleam of scarlet still flickering betwixt
+the branches which overhung the river.
+
+Then, with a stifled exclamation, he drew back, brushing his hand
+across his eyes as though to clear their vision. What mad impulse was
+this urging him on to say and do such things as he had never before
+conceived himself saying or doing?
+
+Magda had checked him on the brink of telling her--what? The sweat
+broke out on his forehead as the realisation surged over him.
+
+"God!" he muttered. "God!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE LATEST NEWS
+
+Magda hardly knew what impulse had bidden her save Dan Storran from
+himself--check the hot utterance to which he had so nearly given voice
+and which to a certain extent she had herself provoked. Driven by the
+bitterness of spirit which Michael's treatment of her had engendered,
+she knew that she had flirted outrageously with Dan ever since she had
+come to Stockleigh. She had bestowed no thought on June--pretty,
+helpless June, watching with distressed, bewildered eyes while Dan
+unaccountably changed towards her, his moods alternating from sullen
+unresponsiveness to a kind of forced and contrite tenderness which she
+had found almost more difficult to meet and understand.
+
+It was indeed something altogether apart from any sympathy for June
+which had prompted Magda to leave Storran before he uttered words that
+he might regret, but which no power on earth could ever recall. Still
+beneath the resentment and wounded pride which Michael's going had
+caused her flickered the spark of an ideal utterly at variance with
+the whole tenor of the teaching of poor Diane's last embittered days--
+the ideal of womanhood which had been Michael's. And the impulse which
+had bade her leave Storran so abruptly was born of the one-time
+resolution she had made to become the sort of woman Michael would wish
+his wife to be.
+
+She felt oddly perturbed when at last she reached the seclusion of her
+chintzy bedroom underneath the sloping roof. A vague sense of shame
+assailed her. The game, as between herself and Dan, was hardly a fair
+one, after all, and she could well picture the cold contempt in
+Michael's eyes had he been looking on at it.
+
+Though he had no right to disapprove of her now! He had forfeited that
+right--if he had ever had it--when he went away without a word of
+farewell--without giving her even the chance to appeal against the
+judgment which, by his very going, he had silently pronounced against
+her.
+
+For months, now, she had been a prey to a conflicting jumble of
+emotions--the pain and hurt pride which Michael's departure had
+occasioned her, the craving for anything that might serve to distract
+her thoughts and keep them from straying back to those few vibrant
+meetings with him, and deep down within her an aching, restless wonder
+as to whether she would ever see him again.
+
+With an effort she dismissed the fresh tangle of thought provoked by
+the morning's brief scene with Dan Storran, and, dressing quickly,
+went downstairs to the mid-day dinner which was the order of things at
+Stockleigh.
+
+At first the solid repast, with its plentitude of good farmhouse fare
+partaken of during the hottest hour of the day, had somewhat appalled
+Magda. But now she had grown quite accustomed to the appearance of a
+roast joint or of a smoking, home-cured ham, attended by a variety of
+country vegetables and followed by fruit tart and clotted cream.
+
+Although she herself, as befitted a woman whose "figure was her
+fortune" according to Lady Arabella, partook extremely sparingly of
+this hospitable meal, it somehow pleased her to see big Dan Storran
+come in from his work in the fields and do full justice to the
+substantial fare. To Magda, ultra-modern and over-civilised as she
+was, there was something refreshing in the simple and primitive usages
+of Stockleigh Farm and its master--this man who toiled, and satisfied
+his hunger, and rested from toil, just as his fathers had done before
+him, literally fulfilling the law: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou
+eat bread.
+
+And perhaps if Magda had never crossed his path Dan Storran might have
+gone his way contentedly, toiling from sun-up to sun-down till all his
+days were finished.
+
+Even although she had crossed it, she might still have left him pretty
+much as she found him--unawakened to the deeps of his own nature--if
+she had remained in her present ambiguous mood, half-remorseful, half
+indifferent. But it was precisely at this particular juncture that it
+pleased Fate to give a fresh twist to her swiftly turning wheel.
+
+Storran did not come in until dinner was half over, and when finally
+he appeared he was somewhat taciturn and avoided meeting Magda's eyes.
+June got up from the table and went dutifully into the kitchen to
+fetch the joint of meat and vegetables which she had been keeping hot
+for him there. Abruptly Dan followed her.
+
+"Sorry I'm late, June," he said awkwardly. "Here, give the tray to me;
+I'll carry it in."
+
+June paused in the middle of the kitchen, flushing right up to the
+soft tendrils of hair that curled about her forehead. It was weeks
+since Dan had offered to relieve her of any of her housewifely tasks,
+although at one time he had been wont to hurry home, if he could
+manage to do so, on purpose to help her. Dozens of times they had laid
+the table together, punctuating the process with jokes and gay little
+bursts of laughter and an odd kiss or two thrown in to sweeten the
+work. But not lately--not since the visitors from London had come to
+Stockleigh Farm.
+
+So June blushed and looked at her husband with eyes that were suddenly
+sweet and questioning. She knew, though she had not told him yet, that
+there was a reason now why he should try to save her when his greater
+strength could do so, and for a moment she wondered shyly if he had
+guessed.
+
+"Why, Dan, Dan----" she stammered.
+
+His face darkened. Her obvious surprise irritated him, pricking his
+conscience.
+
+"It's not very complimentary of you to look so taken aback when I
+offer to carry something for you," he said. "Anyone might think I
+never did wait on my wife."
+
+The blood drained away from June's face as suddenly as it had rushed
+there.
+
+"Well, you don't often, do you?" she returned shortly.
+
+They re-entered the sitting-room together and Magda glanced up,
+smiling approval. She, too, was feeling somewhat conscience-stricken,
+and to see Dan helping his wife in this everyday, intimate sort of
+fashion seemed to minimise the significance of that little incident
+which had occurred by the river's edge.
+
+"What a nice, polite husband!" she commented gaily. "Mr. Storran, you
+really out to come up to London and give classes--'Manners for Men,'
+you know. Very few of them wait on their wives these days."
+
+June upset the salt and busied herself spooning it up again from the
+cloth. There was no answering smile on her face. She was not quite
+clear /why/ Dan had followed her out into the kitchen so unexpectedly,
+but she sensed that it was not the old, quick impulse to wait upon her
+which had actuated him.
+
+Had she but known it, it was the same instinct, more primitively
+manifested, which induces a man whose conscience is not altogether
+clear respecting his loyalty towards his wife to bring her home an
+unexpected gift of jewellery.
+
+The disturbing memory of a lithe, scarlet-sheathed figure had been
+with Dan all morning as he went about his work, and he was sullenly
+ashamed of the riot which the vision occasioned within him and of his
+own utter helplessness to master it. It--it was damnable! So he
+accompanied his wife to the kitchen and offered to carry in the joint.
+
+Following upon this incident the atmosphere seemed to become all at
+once constrained and difficult. June sat very silent, her eyes holding
+that expression of pain and bewilderment which was growing habitual to
+them, while Storran hurried through his meal in the shortest possible
+time. As soon as he had finished he pushed back his chair abruptly
+and, with a muttered apology, quitted the room and went out again on
+to the farm. June rose and began clearing the table mechanically.
+
+"Can't I help you?" Gillian paused as she was about to follow Magda
+out of the room. "You look so tired to-day."
+
+June's lip quivered sensitively. She was in the state of nerves when a
+little unexpected sympathy is the most upsetting thing imaginable.
+
+"Oh, I can't let you!" she answered hastily. "No--really!"--as Gillian
+calmly took the tray she was carrying out of her hands.
+
+"Supposing you go and lie down for a little while," suggested Gillian
+practically. "And leave the washing-up to Coppertop and me!"
+
+The tears suddenly brimmed up into the wide-open blue eyes.
+
+"Oh, I couldn't!"
+
+"Wouldn't you like a little rest?" urged Gillian persuasively. "I
+believe you'd be asleep in two minutes!"
+
+"I believe I should," acknowledged June faintly. "I--I haven't been
+sleeping very well lately."
+
+A little shudder ran through her as she recalled those long hours each
+night when she lay at Dan's side, staring wide-eyed into the darkness
+and wondering dully what it was that had come between herself and her
+husband--come just at the time when, with his unborn child beneath her
+heart, they two should have been drawn together in to the most
+wonderful and blessed comradeship and understanding. Only Dan didn't
+know this--didn't know that before the snowdrops lifted their white
+heads again from the green carpet of spring there would be a little
+son--June was sure it would be a son, to grow up tall and strong like
+Dan himself!--born of the love which had once been so sweet and
+untroubled by any creeping doubts.
+
+"I assure you"--Gillian broke in on the miserable thoughts that were
+chasing each other through June's tired brain--"I assure you,
+Coppertop and I are very competent people. We won't break a single
+dish!"
+
+"But you've never been used to that kind of thing--washing-up!"
+protested June, glancing significantly at Gillian's white hands and
+soft, pretty frock of hyacinth muslin.
+
+"Haven't I?" Gillian laughed gaily. "I haven't always been as well off
+as I am not, and I expect I know quite as much about doing 'chores' as
+you! Come now!" She waited expectantly.
+
+"Dan would be awfully angry if he knew--it's my duty, you see,"
+objected June, visibly weakening.
+
+"If he knew! But what a husband doesn't know his heart doesn't grieve
+over," replied Gillian sagely. "There, that's settled. Come along
+upstairs and let me tuck you up in your bed, and leave the rest to
+Coppertop and me."
+
+And June, with her heart suddenly warmed and comforted in the way in
+which an unexpected kindness does warm and comfort, went very
+willingly and, tired out in body and mind, fell asleep in ten minutes.
+
+Meanwhile Magda had established herself in the hammock slung from the
+boughs of one of the great elms which shaded the garden. She had
+brought a book with her, since her thoughts were none too pleasant
+company just at the moment, and was speedily absorbed in its contents.
+
+It was very soothing and tranquil out there in the noonday heat. The
+gnats hovered in the sunlight, dancing and whirling in little
+transient clusters; now and again a ladybird flickered by or a swallow
+swooped so near that his darting shadow fell across her book; while
+all about her sounded the pleasant hum of a summer's day--the soft
+susurration of the pleasant hum of a thousand insect voices blending
+into an indefinite, murmurous vibration of the air.
+
+Occasionally the whir of a motor-car sweeping along the adjacent road
+broke harshly across the peaceful quiet. Magda glanced up with some
+annoyance as the first one sped by, dragging her back to an unwilling
+sense of civilisation. Then she bent her head resolutely above her
+book and declined to be distracted any further, finally losing herself
+completely in the story she was reading.
+
+So it came about that when a long, low, dust-powdered car curved in
+between the granite gateposts of Stockleigh Farm and came abruptly to
+a standstill, she remained entirely oblivious of its advent. Nor did
+she see the tall, slender-limbed man who had been driving, and whose
+questing hazel eyes had descried her almost immediately, slip from his
+seat behind the steering-wheel and come across the grass towards her.
+
+"/Antoine!/"
+
+The book fell from her hand and she sat up suddenly in the hammock.
+
+"What on earth are you doing here?" she demanded. There was no welcome
+in her tone.
+
+For a moment Davilof remained watching her, the sunshine, slanting
+between the leaves of the trees, throwing queer little flickering
+lights into the hazel eyes and glinting on his golden-brown hair and
+beard.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she repeated.
+
+"I came--to see you," he said simply.
+
+There was something disarming in the very simplicity of his reply. It
+seemed to imply an almost child-like wonder that she should ask--that
+there could possibly be any other reason for his presence.
+
+But it failed to propitiate Magda in the slightest degree. She felt
+intensely annoyed that anyone from the outside world--from her world
+of London--should have intruded upon her seclusion at Ashencombe, nor
+could she imagine how Davilof had discovered her retreat.
+
+"How did you learn I was here?" she asked.
+
+"From Melrose."
+
+Magda's eyes darkened sombrely.
+
+"Do you mean you bribed him?" she asked quickly. "Oh, but surely not!"
+--in dismayed tones. "Melrose would go to the stake sooner than accept
+a bribe!"
+
+Davilof's mouth twisted in a rueful smile.
+
+"I'm sure he would! I tried him, but he wouldn't look at a bribe of
+any sort. So I had to resort to strategy. It was one evening, when he
+was taking your letters to post, and I waited for him at the pillar-
+box. I came up very quietly behind him and just nipped one of the
+letters, readdressed to you, out of his hand. I read the address and
+then posted the letter for him. It was very simple."
+
+He recounted the incident with a little swaggering air of bravado,
+boyishly delighted at the success of his small ruse. Vexed as she was
+Magda could hardly refrain from smiling; the whole thing was so
+eminently un-English--so exactly like Davilof!
+
+"Well, now that you have seen me, will you please go away again?" she
+said coolly, reopening her book as though to end the conversation.
+
+He regarded her with unqualified reproach.
+
+"Won't you even ask me to tea?" he said plaintively.
+
+"Certainly not," Magda was beginning. But precisely as she spoke June
+Storran, looking more herself again after her short sleep, came
+towards them from the house.
+
+Her face brightened as she caught sight of Davilof. Even to June's
+inexperienced eyes it was quite obvious that he admired the woman with
+whom he was talking. The very way he looked at her told her that.
+Presumably he was one of her London friends who had motored to
+Devonshire to see her. No man--within the limited scope of June's
+knowledge of men--did that deliciously absurd, extravagant kind of
+thing unless he was tremendously in love. Nor would any nice woman let
+a man take such a journey on her behalf unless she reciprocated his
+feelings. Of this June--whose notions were old-fashioned--felt
+assured. So her spirits rose accordingly. Since, if these two were on
+the verge of becoming engaged, the mere fact would clear away the
+indefinable shadows which seemed to have been menacing her own
+happiness from the time Miss Vallincourt had come to Stockleigh.
+
+"Tea is just ready," she announced, approaching. "Will you come in?
+And perhaps your friend will have tea with us?" she added shyly.
+
+Davilof was presented and June repeated her invitation. He shot a
+glance of triumph at Magda.
+
+"I shall be delighted, madame," he said, giving June one of his quaint
+little foreign bows. "But--the sun is shining so gloriously--might we
+not have it out here?"
+
+June looked round her doubtfully. As is often the case with people
+born and bred in the country, it never occurred to the Storrans to
+have the family meals out-of-doors, and June felt considerable
+misgiving as to whether Dan would appreciate the innovation.
+
+"Ah, please, madame!" pleaded Davilof persuasively. "Let us have it
+here--under this tree. Why, the tree grows here expressly for the
+purpose!"
+
+Davilof had all the charm of his nationality, and June capitulated,
+retreating to make the necessary arrangements.
+
+"I don't fancy Dan Storran will at all approve of the alteration from
+his usual customs which you've engineered," observed Magda when they
+were again alone.
+
+"Dan Storran?" Davilof's glance flashed over her face, searching,
+questioning.
+
+"The owner of the place. He's been teaching me to ride," she added
+inconsequently.
+
+"Who is he?"--with swift jealousy. "The little fair-haired lady's
+brother?"
+
+"No, her husband. I said /Mrs./ Storran."
+
+Davilof's interest waned suddenly.
+
+"Did you?"--indifferently. "I didn't notice. She's a pretty little
+person."
+
+Magda agreed absently. A fresh difficulty had occurred to her; Davilof
+might chance to give away to the Storrans the secret of her identity.
+
+"Oh, by the way," she said hurriedly. "They don't know me here as
+Magda Wielitzska. I'm plain Miss Vallincourt to them--enjoying the
+privileges of being a nobody! You'll be sure to remember, won't you?"
+He nodded, and she pursued more lightly: "And now, as you insist on
+having your tea here, you might begin to earn it by telling me the
+latest London gossip. We hear nothing at all down here. We don't even
+get a London newspaper.
+
+"I don't think there is much news. There never is at this time of the
+year. Everybody's out of town."
+
+He vouchsafed one or two items concerning mutual friends--an
+engagement here, a forthcoming divorce there. So-and-so was in Italy
+and Mrs. Somebody Else was said to have eloped with a well-known
+actor-manager to America--all the odds and ends of gossip that runs
+like wildfire over the social prairie.
+
+"Oh, by the way," he went on, "your artist friend--"
+
+"Which artist friend?" Magda interrupted almost rudely. She was moved
+by a perfectly irrational impulse to stop him, to delay what he had to
+say.
+
+"Why, Quarrington--Michael Quarrington. It seems he has married a
+Spanish woman--a rather lovely person who had been sitting to him for
+one of his pictures. That's the latest bit of news."
+
+For an instant it seemed to Magda as though the whole world stood
+still--gripped in a strange, soundless stillness like the catastrophic
+pause which for an infinitesimal space of time succeeds a bad
+accident. Then she heard herself saying:
+
+"Really? Where did you hear that?"
+
+"Oh, there've been several rumours of a beautiful Spaniard whom he has
+been using as a model. The Arlingtons were travelling in Spain and saw
+her. Mrs. A. said she was a glorious creature--a dancer. And the other
+day I saw in one of the papers--the /Weekly Gossip/ I think it was--
+that he'd married her."
+
+The carelessly spoken words drove at Magda with the force of utter
+certainty. It was true, then--quite true! The fact that the Spaniard
+had been a dancer gave an irrefutable reality to the tale; Michael so
+worshipped every form of dancing.
+
+"Never give your heart to any man." Her mother's last cynical warning
+beat in Magda's brain with a dull iteration that almost maddened her.
+She put her hand up to her throat, feeling as if she were choking.
+
+Then, dimly, as though from a great way off, she heard Antoine's voice
+again:
+
+"I'm glad Quarrington's married. He was the man who saved you in the
+fog--you remember?--and I've always been afraid you might get to care
+for him."
+
+Magda was conscious of one thing and one thing only--that somewhere,
+deep down inside her, everything had turned to ice. She knew she would
+never feel anything again--much. . . . She thought death must come
+like that sometimes--just one thrust of incredible, immeasurable
+agony, and then a dull, numbed sense of finality.
+
+". . . afraid you might get to care for him." The meaning of Antoine's
+last words slowly penetrated her mind. She gave a hard little laugh.
+
+"Why should I? Does one 'get to care' for a man just because he does
+the only obvious thing there is to do in an emergency?"
+
+She was surprised to hear how perfectly natural her voice sounded. It
+was quite steady. Reassured, she went on, shrugging her shoulders:
+
+"Besides--do I ever care?"
+
+Antoine, sitting on the grass at her feet, suddenly raised himself a
+little and put his hand over hers as they lay very still and folded on
+her lap.
+
+"You shall care--some time," he said in a low, tense voice. "I swear
+it!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+DAN STORRAN'S AWAKENING
+
+"Fairy Lady, we're going to have a picnic tea!"
+
+Coppertop's excited voice, shrilling across the garden as he came
+racing over the grass, put an abrupt end to a scene that was
+threatening to develop along the familiar tempestuous lines dictated
+by Antoine's temperament.
+
+The child's advent was somewhat differently received--by Magda with
+unmixed relief, by Antoine with a baulked gesture of annoyance.
+However, he recovered himself almost immediately, and when, a moment
+later, June reappeared, laden with the paraphernalia for tea, he
+rushed forward with his usual charming manners to assist her.
+
+Presently Gillian joined them, exclaiming with surprise as she
+perceived who was the visitor.
+
+"Why, this is like a bit of London appearing in our very midst," she
+declared, shaking hands with Davilof. "Where have you hailed from? I
+heard the car but never suspected you were the arrival."
+
+"I'm on holiday," he replied. "And it struck me"--his hazel eyes
+smiled straight into hers--"that Devonshire might be a very delightful
+place in which to spend my holiday."
+
+Magda looked up suddenly from stirring her tea.
+
+"I think you've made a mistake, Davilof," she said curtly. "You're not
+likely to enjoy a holiday in Devonshire."
+
+June, innocently unaware of any double entente in Magda's speech,
+glanced across at her in astonishment.
+
+"Oh, but why not, Miss Vallincourt? Devon is a lovely county; most
+people like it so much. But perhaps you don't care for the country,
+Mr.--Mr. Davilof?" She stumbled a little over the foreign name.
+
+"I think it would depend upon who my neighbours were--whether I liked
+it or nor," he returned, meeting Magda's glance challengingly over the
+top of June's head, bent above the teacups. "I feel sure I should like
+it here. And there is a charming little inn at Ashencombe where one
+might stop."
+
+Gillian divined that a veiled passage of arms between Magda and the
+musician underlay the light discussion. Moreover--though she had no
+clue to the cause--she was sensitively conscious that the former was
+not quite herself. She had seen that white, set look on her face
+before. Something had distressed her, and Gillian felt apprehensive
+lest Davilof had been the bearer of unwelcome tidings. It was either
+that, or else he must have succeeded in frictioning Magda in some way
+himself, since, beyond flinging an occasional double-edged sentence in
+his direction, she seemed absent and disinclined to take part in the
+conversation.
+
+It was almost a relief to Gillian when Dan Storran appeared, although
+the recollection of the strained atmosphere which had attended the
+previous meal did not hold out much promise of better things to come.
+His face was still clouded and he glowered at the tea-table under the
+elms with dissatisfied eyes.
+
+"What on earth's the meaning of this?" he demanded ungraciously of his
+wife. "Is it some newfangled notion that's got you?"
+
+June coloured up nervously, and was about to falter an explanation of
+the innovation when Magda suddenly took the matter out of her hands.
+
+"There's nothing newfangled about tea out-of-doors, on a glorious day
+like this," she said. "It's the only sensible thing to do. You don't
+really mind, do you?"
+
+She smiled up at him provocatively and his sombre face lightened.
+
+"Not if you like it," he replied shortly.
+
+"Well, I do. So sit down and be pleased--instead of looking like a
+thundercloud, please." The softness in her voice robbed the speech of
+its sharpness. "I have a friend here--and we're having tea outside in
+his honour."
+
+She introduced the two men, who exchanged a few commonplace words--
+each, meanwhile, taking the measure of the other through eyes that
+were frankly hostile. They were of such dissimilar type that there was
+practically no common ground upon which they could meet, and with the
+swift, unerring intuition of the lover each had recognised the other
+as standing in some relationship to Magda which premised a just cause
+for jealousy. Both men endeavoured to secure her undivided attention
+and, failing lamentably, their mutual antagonism deepened, smouldering
+visibly beneath the stiff platitudes they exchanged with one another.
+
+Gillian, thrust rather into the position of an onlooker, watched the
+proceedings with amused eyes--her amusement only tempered by the
+slightly apprehensive feeling concerning Magda of which she had been
+vaguely conscious from the first moment she had found her in Davilof's
+company, and which continued to obsess her.
+
+True, she no longer wore that set, still look which Gillian had
+observed on her face prior to Dan Storran's appearance upon the scene.
+But even when she smiled and talked, playing the men off one against
+the other with a deft skill that was inimitable, there seemed a
+curious new hardness underlying it all--a certain reckless deviltry
+for which Gillian was at a loss to account.
+
+June watched, too, with troubled eyes. Half an hour ago she had been
+feeling ridiculously happy, comfortably assured in her own mind that
+this tall, rather exquisite foreigner and the woman whose presence in
+her home had occasioned so much bitter heart-burning were only
+hesitating, as it were, on the brink of matrimony. And now--now she
+did not know what to think! Miss Vallincourt was treating Davilof with
+an airy negligence that to June's honest and candid soul seemed
+altogether incompatible with such circumstances.
+
+Meanwhile, with her own ears attuned to catch each varying shade of
+Dan's beloved voice, she could not but perceive its change of quality,
+slight, but unmistakable, when he spoke to Magda--the sudden deepening
+of it--and the unconscious self-betrayal of his glance as it rested on
+her. It was a relief when at last he got up and moved off, excusing
+himself on the plea that he had some work he must attend to. As he
+shook hands with Davilof the eyes of the two men met, hard as steel
+and as hostile.
+
+Storran's departure was the signal for the breaking-up of the party.
+June returned to the house, while Gillian allowed herself to be
+carried off by Coppertop to visit the calves, which were a never-
+failing source of interest to him.
+
+Left alone, an awkward pause ensued between Davilof and Magda,
+backwash of the obvious clash of antagonism between the two men.
+
+"So!" commented Davilof, at last. "It looks as though there might be
+another Raynham episode down here before long."
+
+The colour rushed up into Magda's face.
+
+"Don't you think that remark is in rather bad taste?" she replied
+icily.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Perhaps it was. But the men who love you get rather beyond
+considering the matter of good or bad taste."
+
+She made a petulant gesture.
+
+"Oh, don't begin that old subject again. We've had it all out before.
+It's finished."
+
+"It's not finished."
+
+There was a clipped, curt force about the brief denial. The good-
+humoured, big-child mood in which Davilof had joyously narrated to her
+how he had circumvented the unfortunate Melrose had passed, leaving
+the man--turbulent and passionately demanding as of old.
+
+"It's not finished," he repeated. "It never will be--till you're my
+wife."
+
+Magda laughed lightly.
+
+"Then I'm afraid it will have to remain unfinished--a continued-in-
+our-next kind of thing. For I certainly haven't the least intention of
+becoming your wife. Do understand that I /mean/ it. And please go
+away. You had no business to come down here at all."
+
+A smouldering fire lit itself in his eyes.
+
+"No!" he said, taking a step nearer her. "No! I'm not going. I came
+because I can't bear it any longer without you. Since you went away
+I've been half-mad, I think. I can't eat or sleep! I can't even play!"
+--he flung out his sensitive musician's hands in a gesture of despair.
+
+Magda glanced at him quickly. It was true. The man looked as though he
+had been suffering. She had not noticed it before. His face had
+altered--worn a trifle fine; the line from chin to cheek-bone had
+hollowed somewhat and his eyes held a certain feverish brightness. But
+although she could see the alteration, it did not move her in the
+least. She felt perfectly indifferent. It was as though the band of
+ice which seemed to have clasped itself about her heart when she heard
+of Michael's marriage had frozen her capacity for feeling anything at
+all.
+
+"I thought once"--Davilof was speaking again--"I thought once that you
+had said 'no' to me because of Quarrington. But now I know you never
+cared for him----"
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+The question sprang from her lips before she was aware.
+
+"How do I know?" Davilof laughed harshly. "Why, because the man who
+was loved by Magda Wielitzska wouldn't marry any other woman. There
+would be no other woman in the world for him. . . . There's no other
+woman in the world for me." His control was rapidly deserting him.
+"Magda, I can't live without you! I've told you--I can neither eat nor
+sleep. I burn for you! If you refuse to give yourself to me, you
+destroy me!"
+
+Swept by an emotion stronger than himself, his acquired Englishisms
+went by the board. He was all Pole in the picturesque ardour of his
+speech.
+
+Magda regarded him calmly.
+
+"My dear Davilof," she said quietly. "What weight do you suppose such
+an argument would have with me?"
+
+The cool, ironic little question, with its insolent indifference,
+checked him like the flick of a lash across the face. He turned away.
+
+"None, I suppose," he admitted bitterly. "You are fire and flame--but
+within, you are ice."
+
+"Yes," she said, almost as though to herself. "Within, I'm ice. I
+believe that's true."
+
+"True!" he repeated. "Of course it's true. If it were not----"
+
+A slight smile tilted her mouth.
+
+"Well?" she echoed. "If it were not?"
+
+He swung round. With a quick stride he was beside her. His eyes
+blazing with a sudden fury of passion and resentment, he caught her by
+the shoulders, forcing her to face him.
+
+"God!" he muttered thickly. "What are you made of? You make men go
+through hell for you! Even here--here in this little country place--
+you do it! Storran's wife--one can see her heart breaks, and it is you
+who are breaking it. Yet nothing touches you! You've no conscience
+like other women--no heart--"
+
+Magda pulled herself out of his grasp.
+
+"Oh, do forget that I'm a woman, Davilof! I'm a dancer. Nothing else
+matters. I don't want to be troubled with a heart. And--and I think
+they left out my soul."
+
+"Yes," he agreed with intense bitterness. "I think they did. One day,
+Magda some man will kill you. You'll try him too far."
+
+"Indeed? Is that what you contemplate doing when you finally lose
+patience with me?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I shall not lose patience--until you are another man's wife," he said
+quietly. "And I don't intend you to be that."
+
+
+
+An hour later, Gillian, having dispatched her small son to bed and
+seen him safely tucked up between the lavender-scented sheets,
+discovered Magda alone in the low-raftered sitting-room. She was lying
+back idly in a chair, her hands resting on the arms, in her eyes a
+curious abstracted look as though she were communing with herself.
+
+Apparently she was too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice
+Gillian's entrance, for she did not speak.
+
+"What are you thinking about? Planning a new dance that shall out-vie
+/The Swan-Maiden/?" asked Gillian at last, for the sake of something
+to say. The silence and Magda's strange aloofness frightened her in
+some way.
+
+It was quite a moment before Magda made any answer. When she did, it
+was to say with a bitter kind of wonder in her voice:
+
+"What centuries ago it seems since the first night of /The Swan-
+Maiden/!"
+
+"It's not very long," began Gillian, then checked herself and asked
+quickly: "Is there anything the matter, Magda? Did Antoine bring you
+bad news of some kind?"
+
+"He brought me the offering of his hand and heart. That's no news, is
+it?"
+
+The opening was too good to be lost. With the remembrance of June's
+wistful face before her eyes, Gillian plunged in recklessly.
+
+"Apropos of such offerings--don't you think it would be wiser if you
+weren't quite so nice to Dan Storran?"
+
+"Am I nice to him?"
+
+"Too much so for my peace of mind--or his! It worries me, Magda--
+really. You'll play with fire once too often."
+
+"My dear Gillian, I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself. Do
+you imagine"--with a small, fine smile--"that I'm in danger of losing
+my heart to a son of the soil?"
+
+Gillian could have shaken her.
+
+"/You?/ You don't suppose I'm afraid for you! It's Dan Storran who
+isn't able to look after himself." She stooped over Magda's chair and
+slipped an arm persuasively round her shoulders. "Come away, Magda.
+Let's leave Stockleigh--go home to London."
+
+"Certainly not." Magda stood up suddenly. "I'm quite well amused down
+here. I don't propose to leave till our time is up."
+
+She spoke with unmistakable decision, and Gillian, feeling that it
+would be useless to urge her further at the moment, went slowly out of
+the room and upstairs. As she went she could hear Dan's footstep in
+the passage below. It sounded tired--quite unlike his usual swinging
+stride with its suggestion of impetuous force.
+
+But it was not work that had tired Dan Storran that afternoon. When he
+had quitted the little party gathered beneath the elms, he had started
+off across the fields, unheeding where he went, and for hours he had
+been tramping, deaf and blind to the world around him, immersed in the
+thoughts that had driven him forth.
+
+The full significance of the last few weeks had suddenly come home to
+him. Till now he had been drifting--drifting unthinkingly, conscious
+only that life had become extraordinarily full of interest and of a
+breathless kind of happiness, half sweet, half bitter. Bitter when
+Magda was not with him, sweet with a maddening sweetness when she was.
+
+He had not stopped to consider what it all meant--why the dull,
+monotonous round of existence on the farm to which he had long grown
+accustomed should all at once have come alive--grown vibrant and quick
+with some new impulse.
+
+But the happenings of to-day had suddenly shown him where he stood.
+That revealing moment by the river's edge with Magda, the swift,
+unreasoning jealousy of Davilof which had run like fire through his
+veins--jealousy because the other man was so evidently an old
+acquaintance with prior rights in her which seemed to set him, Dan
+Storran, quite outside the circle of their intimacy--had startled him
+into recognition of how far he had drifted.
+
+He loved her--craved for her with every fibre of his being. She was
+his woman, and beside the tumultuous demand for her of all his lusty
+manhood the quiet, unexacting affection which he bore his wife was as
+water is to wine.
+
+And since in Dan's simple code of ethics a man's loyalty to his wife
+occupied a very definite and unassailable position, the realisation
+came to him fraught with the acme of bitterness and self-contempt. Nor
+did he propose to yield to the madness in his blood. Hour after hour,
+as he tramped blindly across country, he thrashed the matter out. This
+love which had come to him was a forbidden thing--a thing which must
+be fought and thrust outside his life. For the sake of June he must
+see no more of Magda. She must go--leave Stockleigh. Afterwards he
+would tear the very memory of her out of his heart.
+
+Dan was a very direct person. Having taken his decision he did not
+stop to count the cost. That could come afterwards. Dimly he
+apprehended that it might be a very heavy one. But he was strong, now
+--strong to do the only possible thing. As he stood with his hand on
+the latch of the living-room door, he wondered whether what he had to
+say would mean to Magda all, or even a part, of what it meant to him--
+wondered with a sudden uncontrollable leaping of his pulses. . . . The
+latch grated raucously as he jerked it up and flung open the door.
+Magda was standing by the window, the soft glow of the westering sun
+falling about her. Dan's eyes rested hungrily on the small dark head
+outlined against the tender light.
+
+"Why--Dan----" She faltered into tremulous silence before the look on
+his face--the aching demand of it.
+
+The huskily sweet voice robbed him of his strength. He strode forward
+and caught her in his arms, staring down at her with burning eyes.
+Then, almost violently, he thrust her away from him, unkissed,
+although the soft curved lips had for a moment lain so maddeningly
+near his own.
+
+"When can you and Mrs. Grey make it convenient to leave Stockleigh
+Farm?" he asked, his voice like iron.
+
+The crudeness of it whipped her pride--that pride which Michael had
+torn down and trampled on--into fresh, indignant life.
+
+"To leave? Why should we leave?"
+
+Storran's face was white under his tan.
+
+"Because," he said hoarsely, "because you're coming between me and my
+wife. That's why."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE MOONLIT GARDEN
+
+The chintzy bedroom under the sloping roof was very still and quiet.
+The moonlight, streaming in through the open casement, revealed the
+bed unoccupied, its top-sheet neatly folded back just as when June had
+made her final round of the house some hours earlier, leaving
+everything in order for the night.
+
+Magda, crouched by the window, glanced back at it indifferently. She
+did not want to go to bed. If she went, she knew she would not sleep.
+She felt as though she would never sleep again.
+
+She had no idea of the time. She might have been there half an hour or
+half eternity--she did not know which. The little sounds of movement
+in the different bedrooms had gradually died down into silence, until
+at least the profound tranquillity and peace of night enshrouded the
+whole house. Only for her there was neither tranquility nor peace.
+
+She was alone now, face to face with the news which Davilof had
+brought her--the news of Michael's marriage. Throughout the rest of
+the day, after Davilof had gone, she had forced the matter into the
+background of her thoughts, and during supper she had kept up a light-
+hearted ripple of talk and laughter which had deceived even Gillian,
+convincing her that her apprehensions of the afternoon were unfounded.
+
+Perhaps she was helped by the fact that Dan failed to put in an
+appearance at the supper-table. It was easier to scintillate
+successfully for the sole benefit of a couple of other women than
+under the eyes of a man who had just ordered you out of his life. But
+when at last she was alone in her own room, the sparkle was suddenly
+quenched. There was no longer any need to pretend.
+
+Michael was married! Married! And the bitterness which she had been
+strenuously keeping at bay since the day, months ago now, when she had
+learned from Lady Arabella that he had deliberately left England
+without seeing her again swept over her in a black flood.
+
+It had hurt her badly enough when he had gone away, but somewhere in
+the depths of her consciousness there had always lurked a little
+fugitive hope that he would come back--that she would be given another
+chance. Now she knew that he would never come back--that one isn't
+always given a second chance in this world.
+
+And beneath the sick anguish of the realisation she was aware of a
+fierce resentment--a bitter, rebellious anger that any man could make
+her suffer as she was suffering now. It was unjust--a burden that had
+been forced upon her unfairly. She could not help her own character--
+that was a heritage with which one comes into the world--and now she
+was being punished for simply having been herself!
+
+An hour--two hours crept by. Hours of black, stark misery. The clock
+in the hall struck one--a single, bell-like stroke that reverberated
+through the silent house. It penetrated the numbed confusion of her
+mind, rousing her to a sudden recognition of the fact that she had
+been crouched so long in one position that her limbs were stiff and
+aching.
+
+She drew herself up to her feet, stretching her cramped muscles. The
+night was warm and the room felt stiflingly hot. She looked longingly
+through the window to where the garden lay drenched in moonlight, with
+cool-looking alleyways of moon-washed paths threading the black gloom
+of overhanging trees, ebony-edged in the silver light.
+
+She felt as though she could hardly breathe in the confined space of
+the room. Its low, sloping roof, which she had thought so quaintly
+attractive, seemed to press down on her like the lid of a box. She
+must get out--out into the black and silver night which beckoned to
+her through the open window. She could not stay in this room--this
+little room, alone with her thoughts.
+
+She glanced down dubiously at the soft, chiffony negligee which she
+had slipped on in place of a frock. Her feet, too, were bare. She had
+stripped off her shoes and stockings first thing upon coming upstairs,
+for the sake of coolness. Certainly her attire was not quite suitable
+for out-of-doors. . . . But there would be no one to see her.
+Ashencombe folk did not take their walks abroad at that hour of the
+night. And she longed to feel the cool touch of the dewy grass against
+her feet.
+
+Very quietly she opened her door and stole out into the passage. The
+house was strangely, wonderfully still. Only the ticking of the hall-
+clock broke the silence. So lightly that not a board creaked beneath
+her step, Magda flitted down the old stairway, and, crossing the hall,
+felt gingerly for the massive bolt which barred the heavy oaken door.
+She wondered if it would slide back quietly; she rather doubted it.
+She remembered often enough having heard it grate into its place as
+Storran went his nightly round, locking up the house. But, as her
+slender, seeking fingers came in contact with the knob, she realised
+that to-night by some oversight he had forgotten to shoot the bolt
+and, noiselessly lifting the iron latch, she opened the door and
+slipped out into the moonlit garden. Down the paths she went and
+across the lawns, the touch of the earth coming clean and cool to her
+bare feet. Now and again she paused to draw a long breath of the night
+air, fresh and sweet with the lingering scents of the day's blooming.
+
+An arch of rambler roses led into the distant part of the garden
+towards which she was wending her way, its powdering of tiny blossoms
+gleaming like star clusters borrowed from the Milky Way. Magda stooped
+as she passed beneath it to avoid an overhanging branch. Then, as she
+straightened herself, lifting her head once more, she stood still,
+suddenly arrested. On a stone bench, barely twenty yards away, sat Dan
+Storran!
+
+Against the pallid ghost-white of the bench his motionless figure
+showed black and sombre like some sable statue. His big shoulders were
+bowed, his hands hung loosely clasped between his knees, the white
+mask of his face, mercilessly revealed in the clear moonlight, was
+twisted into harsh lines of mental conflict. A certain grim triumph
+manifested itself in the set of his mouth and out-thrust jaw.
+
+He did not see the slight figure standing just within the shade of the
+rose-twined arch, and Magda remained for a moment or two watching him
+in silence. The unbarred door was explained now. Storran had not come
+in at all that night. She guessed the struggle which had sent him
+forth to seek the utter solitude of the garden. Almost she thought she
+could divine the processes of thought which had closed his lips in
+that strange line of ironic triumph. He had told her to go--when every
+nerve of him ached to bid her stay. And he was glad that the strength
+in him had won.
+
+A bitter smile flitted across her face. Men were all the same! They
+idolised a woman just because she was beautiful--for her lips and eyes
+and hair and the nameless charm that was in her--and set her up on an
+altar at which they could kneel becomingly. Then, when they found she
+was merely an ordinary human being like themselves, with her bundle of
+faults and failings, hereditary and acquired, the prig in them was
+appropriately shocked--and they went away!
+
+An unhappy woman is very often a bitter one. And Magda had been slowly
+learning the meaning of unhappiness for the first time in her life--a
+life that had been hitherto roses and laurel all the way.
+
+The devils that lie in wait for our weak moments prompted her then.
+The bitterness faded from her lips and they curved in a smile that
+subtly challenged the stern decision in Dan Storran's face. She
+hesitated an instant. Then, with feet that scarcely seemed to brush
+the grass, she glided forward, swaying, bending to some rhythmic
+measure, floating spirit-like across the lawn.
+
+With a great cry Dan leaped to his feet and stared at her, transfixed.
+At the sound of his voice she paused, poised on one bare foot, leaning
+a little towards him with curving, outstretched arms. Then, before he
+could touch her, she drew away, step by step, and Dan Storran,
+standing there in tense, breathless silence, beheld what no one else
+had ever seen--the Wielitzska dancing in the moonlight as she alone
+could dance.
+
+He knew nothing of art, nor of the supreme technique which went to
+make each supple movement a thing of sheer perfection, instinct with
+rhythm and significance. But he was a man, and a man in love, fighting
+the strongest instincts of his nature; and the bewildering beauty of
+her as she danced, the languorous, ethereal allure, delicately
+sensuous as the fragrance of a La France rose, sent the hot blood
+rioting through his veins. . . . She was going--slowly retreating from
+him. The primal man in him, the innate hunter who took his mate by
+capture, swept him headlong. With a bound he sprang past the dusky
+shrubbery that hedged the lawn and overtook her, catching her in his
+arms. She did not struggle. He felt her yield, and strained the soft,
+panting body closer to him. Beneath his hand he could feel the
+hurrying beat of her heart. Her breath, quickened by the exertion of
+the dance, came unevenly between her lips as she smiled at him.
+
+"Do you still want me to go away, Dan Storran?"
+
+There was a note of half-amused, half-triumphant mockery in her voice.
+The last bonds that held him snapped suddenly: "Yes!" he cried
+hoarsely. "Yes, I do. To go away with me!"
+
+He crushed his mouth down on hers, draining the sweetness of her in
+burning kisses he had thwarted through all these weeks that they had
+been together, pouring out his love in disjointed, stumbling phrases
+which halted by very reason of the force of passion which evoked them.
+
+Frightened by the tempest of emotion she had aroused she strained away
+from him. But she was powerless against his huge strength, helpless to
+resist him.
+
+At length the fierce tensity of his grip relaxed, though his arms
+still clasped her.
+
+"Tell me," he commanded triumphantly. "Tell me you love me. I want to
+hear it!" His voice vibrated and his eyes sought her face hungrily.
+
+She summoned up all her forces to deny him--to deny him in such a
+manner that he should realise his mistake absolutely and at once. "But
+I don't! I don't love you! If you thought that, you misunderstood me."
+
+His hands released their hold of her and fell heavily to his sides.
+"Misunderstood?" he muttered. The glad triumph went suddenly out of
+his voice. "Misunderstood?" he repeated dully.
+
+"Yes. Misunderstood me altogether."
+
+"I don't believe it!"
+
+"But you /must/ believe it," she insisted. "It's the truth!"
+
+He stared at her.
+
+"Then what have you meant all these weeks?"
+
+"I've not meant anything."
+
+"It's a lie!" he gave back savagely. "Unless"--he came closer to her--
+"unless--is it that man, that damned foreigner, who was here to-day?"
+
+"Antoine? No. Oh, Dan"--she forced an uncertain little laugh to her
+lips--"if you knew me better you'd know that I never /do/--'mean
+anything'!"
+
+The bitter intonation in her voice--the gibe at her own poor ruins of
+love fallen about her--was lost on him. He was in total ignorance of
+her friendship with Quarrington. But the plain significance of her
+words came home to him clearly enough. He did not speak for a minute
+or two. Then: "You've been playing with me, then--fooling me?" he said
+heavily.
+
+Magda remained silent. The heavy, laboured speech seemed to hold
+something minatory in it--the sullen lowering which precedes a
+tempest.
+
+"Answer me!" he persisted. "Was that it?"
+
+"I--I suppose it was," she faltered.
+
+He drew still closer and instinctively she shrank away. A
+consciousness of repressed violence communicated itself to her. She
+half expected him to strike her.
+
+"And you don't love me? You're quite sure?"
+
+There was an ominous kind of patience in the persistent questioning.
+It was as though he were deliberately giving her every possible chance
+to clear herself. Her nerves frayed a little.
+
+"Of course I'm sure--perfectly sure," she said with nervous asperity.
+"I wish you'd believe me, Dan!"
+
+"I only wanted to make sure," he returned.
+
+Something in the careful precision of his answer struck her with a
+swift sense of apprehension. She looked up at him and what she saw
+made her catch her breath convulsively. His face was ashen, the veins
+in his forehead standing out like weals, and his eyes gleamed like
+blue flame--mad eyes. His hands, hanging at his sides, twitched
+curiously.
+
+"I'm sure now," he said. "Sure. . . . Do you know what you've done?
+You've smashed up my life. Smashed it. June and I were happy enough
+till you came. Now we'll never be happy again. I expect you've smashed
+other lives, too. But you won't do it any more. I'm the last. Women
+like you are better dead!"
+
+His great arms swung out and gripped her.
+
+"No, don't struggle. It wouldn't be any good, you know." He went on
+speaking very carefully and quietly, and while he spoke she felt his
+left arm tighten round her, binding her own arms down to her sides as
+might a thong, while his right hand slid up to the base of her throat.
+She writhed, twisting her body desperately in his grip. "Keep still.
+I've kissed you. And now I'm going to kill you. You'll be better
+dead."
+
+There was implacable purpose in his strangely quiet, unhurried
+accents. Magda recognised it--recognised that death was very close to
+her. It would be useless to scream. Before help could come--if anyone
+heard her cries, which was unlikely--Dan would have accomplished what
+he meant to do.
+
+In the last fraction of time these thoughts flashed through her mind.
+Her brain seemed to be working with abnormal clarity and speed. This
+was death, then--unavoidable, inevitable.
+
+She felt Dan's hand creep upward, closing round her throat. Quite
+suddenly she ceased to struggle and lay still in his grasp. After all,
+she didn't know that she would much mind dying. Life was not so sweet.
+There would be pain, she supposed . . . a moment's agony. . . .
+
+All at once, Storran's hands fell away from her passive, silent body
+and he stepped back. "I can't do it!" he muttered hoarsely. "I can't
+do it!"
+
+For a moment the suddenness of her release left Magda swaying dizzily
+on her feet. Then her brain clearing, she looked across to where Dan
+Storran's big figure faced her. The nonchalance with which she usually
+met life, and with which a few moments earlier she had been prepared
+to face inevitable death, stood by her now. A faint, quizzical smile
+tilted her mouth.
+
+"So you couldn't do it after all, Dan?" The familiar note of half-
+indifferent mockery sounded in her voice.
+
+Storran stared at her. "By God! I don't believe you are a woman!" he
+exclaimed thickly.
+
+She regarded him contemplatively, her hands lightly touching the red
+marks scored by his fingers on the whiteness of her throat.
+
+"Do you know," she replied dispassionately, "I sometimes wonder if I
+am? I don't seem to have--feelings, like other women. It doesn't
+matter to me, really, a bit that I've--what was it you said?--smashed
+up your life. I don't know that it would have mattered much if you had
+strangled me." She paused, then stepped towards him. "Now you know the
+truth. Do you still want to kill me, Dan Storran! . . . Or may I go?"
+
+He swung aside from her.
+
+"Go!" he muttered sullenly. "Go to /hell/!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE DAY AFTER
+
+"Magda, how could you?" Gillian's voice was full of blank dismay. "You
+ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself!"
+
+Magda perched on the foot of Gillian's bed, her hands clasped round
+her knees, nodded.
+
+"Yes, I suppose I ought. I don't know what made me do it--except that
+he'd suggested I should leave Stockleigh! I'm not used to being--
+shunted!"
+
+"Heaven knows you're not!" agreed Gillian ruefully. "It would be a
+wholesome tonic for you if you were. I told you only yesterday that it
+would be better if we left here. And on top of that you must needs go
+and dance in the moonlight, of all things, while Dan Storran looks on!
+What ordinary man is going to keep his head in such circumstances, do
+you suppose? Especially when he was more than half in love with you to
+start with. . . . Oh, I should like to shake you!"
+
+"Well, I'll leave now--as soon as ever you like," replied Magda,
+slipping down from the bed. She was unwontedly meek, from which
+Gillian judged that for once she felt herself unable to cope with the
+situation she had created. "Will you arrange it?"
+
+Gillian shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I suppose so," she returned resignedly. "As usual, you break the
+crockery and someone else has to sweep up the pieces."
+
+Magda bent down and kissed her.
+
+"You're such a dear, Gillyflower," she said with that impulsive,
+lovable charm of manner which it was so difficult to resist. "Still"--
+her voice hardening a little--"perhaps there are a few odd bits that
+I'll have to sweep up myself."
+
+And she departed to her own room to complete her morning toilette,
+leaving Gillian wondering rather anxiously what she could have meant.
+
+When, half an hour later, the two girls descended for breakfast, Dan
+Storran was not visible. He had gone off early to work, June
+explained, and Magda experienced a sensation of distinct relief. She
+had dreaded meeting Dan this morning. The mad, bizarre scene of the
+night before, with sudden unleashing of savage and ungoverned
+passions, had shaken even her insouciant poise, though she was very
+far from seeing it in its true proportions.
+
+June received Gillian's intimation that they proposed leaving
+Stockleigh Farm that day without comment. She was very quiet and self-
+contained, and busied herself in making the necessary arrangements for
+their departure, sending a boy into Ashencombe to order the wagonette
+from the Crown and Bells to take them to the station whilst she
+herself laboriously made out the account that was owing. When she
+presented the latter, with a perfectly composed and business-like air,
+and proceeded conscientiously to stamp and receipt it, no one could
+have guessed how bitter a thing it was to her to accept Miss
+Vallincourt's money. Within herself she recognised that every penny of
+it had been earned at the cost of her own happiness.
+
+But as she stood at the gate, watching the ancient vehicle from the
+Crown and Bells bearing the London visitors towards the station, a
+little quiver of hope stirred in her heart. Early that morning Dan
+himself had said to her before starting out to his work: "Get those
+people away! They must be out of the house before I come into it
+again. Pay them a week's money instead of notice if necessary. We can
+afford it." So it was evident that he, too, had realised the danger of
+their happiness--hers and his--if Miss Vallincourt remained at
+Stockleigh any longer.
+
+He did not come in till late in the evening, when June was sitting in
+the lamplight, adding delicate stitchery to some tiny garments upon
+which she was at work. She hid them hastily at the sound of his
+footsteps, substituting one of his own socks that stood in need of
+repair. Not yet could she share with him that wonderful secret joy
+which was hers. There must be a clearer understanding between them
+first. They must get back to where they were before Miss Vallincourt
+came between them, so that nothing might mar the sweetness of the
+telling.
+
+Presently Dan came into the room and sat down heavily. June looked
+across at him.
+
+"She has gone, Dan," she said quietly. She did not use the word
+"they." Those others did not count as far as she was concerned. Her
+use of the pronoun sounded significantly in Storran's ears.
+
+"You know, then?" he said dully. Adding, after a moment's pause. "Did
+she tell you?"
+
+"Tell me?" repeated June doubtfully. "Tell me what?"
+
+"That she's robbed you of all that belongs to you."
+
+Her face blanched. "What do you mean, Dan?" she asked falteringly. "I
+don't think I understand."
+
+Her wide, questioning blue eyes, with that softness and depth of
+expression dawning in them which motherhood gives to women's eyes,
+searched his face. The innocent appeal of them cut him to the heart.
+He had loved his wife; and now he had to tell her that he loved her no
+longer.
+
+"You've got to understand," he said roughly. His hatred of being
+compelled to hurt her made him almost brutal. "I--everything is
+changed between us, June." He stopped, not knowing how to go on.
+
+"Changed? How, Dan?" Her voice sharpened with apprehension. "Do you
+mean--that you don't--care any longer?"
+
+"Yes. It's that. It's Magda--Oh, good God! Can't you understand?"
+
+"You love Miss Vallincourt?" June spoke in carefully measured accents.
+She felt that if she did not speak very quietly indeed she should
+scream. She wanted to laugh, too. It sounded so absurd to be asking
+her husband if he loved Miss Vallincourt!
+
+Dan's eyes met her own.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I love her." He paused a moment, then added: "I asked
+her to go away with me."
+
+June stared at him dumbly. The whole thing seemed unreal. She could
+not feel as though what Dan was saying had any relation to herself,
+any bearing on their life together. At last:
+
+"Why didn't you go, then?" she heard herself say--at least, she
+supposed she must be saying it, although the voice didn't sound a bit
+like her own.
+
+Dan turned on her with sudden savagery. His nerves were raw.
+
+"You speak as though you were disappointed," he said roughly.
+
+"No. But if you care for Miss Vallincourt and she cares for you, I'm
+wondering what stopped you."
+
+"She doesn't care for me"--shortly.
+
+June felt a thrill of pure joy. If Magda didn't care, then she could
+win him back--win back her husband! Within her she was instinctively
+aware that if Magda /had/ cared, no power of hers could have won back
+Dan's allegiance. A faint doubt assailed her.
+
+"She--she /seemed/ as if she cared?" she ventured.
+
+Dan nodded indifferently.
+
+"Yes. I was a summer holiday's amusement for her."
+
+"And--was that all?"
+
+As June spoke, her direct gaze sought her husband's face. He met it
+fair and square, unflinchingly.
+
+"That's all," he replied quietly.
+
+She crossed the room swiftly to his side.
+
+"Then, if that's all, Dan, we--we won't speak of it again--ever," she
+said steadily. "It--it was just a mistake. It need never come between
+us. You'll get over it, and I"--her small head reared itself bravely--
+"I'll forget it."
+
+The pathetic courage of her! Storran turned away with a groan.
+
+"No," he answered. "I shan't 'get over it.' When a man loves a woman
+as I love Magda he doesn't 'get over it.' That's what I meant when I
+told you she had robbed you."
+
+"You /will/ get over it, Dan," she persisted. "I'll help you."
+
+"You can't," he returned doggedly. "You, least of all! Every touch of
+your hand--I should be thinking what her touch would have meant! The
+sound of your step--I'd be listening for hers!"
+
+He saw her wince. He wanted to kick himself for hurting her like this.
+But he knew what he intended doing; and sooner or later she must know
+too. It would be better for her in the long run to face it now than to
+be endlessly waiting and hoping and longing for what he knew could
+never be.
+
+"Dan, I'll be very patient. Don't you think--if you tried--you could
+conquer this love of yours for Miss Vallincourt?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"It's conquered me, June. It's--it's torture!"
+
+"It will be easier now she's gone away," she suggested.
+
+"Gone away? . . . Aye, as far as London! And in five hours I could be
+with her--see her again----"
+
+He broke off. At the bare thought his heart was pounding against his
+ribs, his breath labouring in his throat.
+
+"Won't you try, Dan?" Even to herself June's voice sounded faint and
+far away.
+
+"It would be useless." He got up and strode aimlessly back and forth,
+coming at last to a standstill in front of her. "A man knows his own
+limits, June. And I've reached mine. England can't hold the two of
+us."
+
+June gave a little stifled cry.
+
+"What do you mean? You're not--you're not going to leave me? To go
+abroad--now?"
+
+There would be need for him in England soon--in a few months. But of
+course he couldn't know that. Should she tell him. Tell him why he
+/must not/ leave her now? Keep him with her by a sure and certain
+chain--the knowledge that she was soon to be the mother of his child?
+
+She debated the question wildly in her mind, tempted to tell him, yet
+feeling that even if then he stayed with her it would not be because
+he loved her or had ceased to care for Miss Vallincourt, but only
+because he was impelled by a sense of duty. And her pride rebelled
+against holding him by that.
+
+His voice broke in upon her conflicting thoughts.
+
+"Yes. I'm going abroad. It's the only thing, June. I can't stay in
+England--and keep away from her."
+
+June was silent a moment. Then she said in a very low voice, almost as
+though speaking to herself:
+
+"I wonder if--if you ever loved me."
+
+He wheeled round, and the desperate misery in his eyes hurt her almost
+physically.
+
+"Yes," he said harshly. "I did love you. In a way, I do now. But it's
+nothing--nothing to the madness in my blood! I'm a brute to leave you.
+But I'm going to do it. No civilised country can hold me now!"
+
+So that was to be the end of it! June recognised the bitter truth at
+last. Magda had indeed robbed her of everything she possessed. And
+robbed her wantonly, seeing that she herself set no value on Dan's
+love--had, in fact, tossed it aside like an outworn plaything.
+
+June ceased to plead with Dan then. She would not wish to hold him by
+any other chain than his love for her. And if that chain had snapped--
+broken irrevocably--then the child born of what had once been love
+would only be an encumbrance in his eyes, an unwelcome tie, shackling
+him to a duty from which he longed to escape.
+
+So she let him go--let him go in silence. . . .
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+WHAT LADY ARABELLA KNEW
+
+Lady Arabella might disapprove of her god-daughter from every point of
+the compass, but she was nevertheless amazingly fond of her, so that
+when Gillian appeared on her spotless Park Lane doorstep one afternoon
+with the information that she and Magda had returned from Devonshire,
+she hailed the announcement with enthusiasm.
+
+"But where is Magda? Why didn't she come with you?" she demanded
+impatiently.
+
+"Her manager rang up to know if he could see her about various things
+in connection with this next winter's season, so there's a great
+council in progress. But she's coming to see you to-morrow. Won't I
+do"--Gillian wrinkled her brows whimsically--"for to-day?"
+
+"Bless the child! Of course you will! Come along and tell me all about
+your Devonshire trip. I suppose," she went on, "you heard the news of
+Michael Quarrington's marriage? Or didn't you get any newspapers down
+in your benighted village?"
+
+"No, we had no London papers," replied Gillian doubtfully. "But--I
+don't understand. Mr. Quarrington isn't married, is he? I thought--I
+thought----"
+
+"You thought he was in love with Magda. So he was. The announcement
+startled everybody, I can tell you! And Davilof promptly decided that
+a motoring trip would benefit his health and shot off to Devonshire at
+top speed. Of course he wanted to impart the news to Magda. He must
+have felt a pretty fool since!" And Lady Arabella gave one of her
+enjoyable chuckles.
+
+"Yes. Antoine came down to see us," replied Gillian in puzzled tones.
+"But Magda never confided anything special he had said. I suppose he
+/must/ have told her----" She broke off as all at once illumination
+penetrated the darkness. "That explains it, then! Explains
+everything!" she exclaimed.
+
+"What explains what?" demanded Lady Arabella bluntly.
+
+"Why----" And Gillian proceeded to recount the events which had led up
+to the abrupt termination of the visit to Stockleigh Farm.
+
+"She was in a very odd kind of mood after Antoine had gone. I even
+asked her if he had brought any bad news, but I couldn't get any
+sensible answer out of her. And that night she proceeded to dance in
+the moonlight with Dan Storran for audience--out of sheer devilment,
+of course!"
+
+"Or sheer heartsickness," suggested Lady Arabella, with one of those
+quick flashes of tender insight which combined so incongruously with
+the rest of her personality.
+
+"Do you think she--cared, then?" asked Gillian.
+
+"For Quarrington? Of course I do. Oh, well it will all come right in
+the end, I hope. And, anyway"--with a wicked little grin--"Davilof
+won't have quite such a clear coast as he anticipated."
+
+"But if Michael Quarrington is married--"
+
+"He isn't," interrupted Lady Arabella briskly. "It was contradicted in
+the papers the very next morning. Only I suppose Davilof hustled off
+to Devonshire in such a hurry that he never saw it.
+
+"Contradicted? But how did such a mistake arise?"
+
+"Oh, whoever supplied that particular tidbit of news got the names
+mixed. It ought really to have been /Warrington/, not Quarrington--
+Mortrake Warrington, the sculptor, you know. It seems he and Michael
+were both using the same woman as a model--only Warrington married
+her! Spoiled Michael's picture--or his temper--when he ran off with
+her for a honeymoon, I expect!"
+
+On her return to Friars' Holm Gillian hastened to retail for Magda's
+benefit the information she had acquired from Lady Arabella, and was
+rewarded by the immediate change in her which became apparent. The
+haunted, feverish look in her eyes was replaced by a more tranquil
+shining, the intense restlessness she had evinced of late seemed to
+fall away from her, and she ceased to pepper her conversation with the
+bitter speeches which had worried Gillian more than a little,
+recognising in them, as she did, the outcrop of some inward and
+spiritual turmoil.
+
+To Magda, the fact that Michael was not married, after all, seemed to
+re-create the whole world. It left hope still at the bottom of the box
+of life's possibilities. Looking backward, she realised now how
+strongly she had clung to the belief that some day he would come back
+to her. It had been the one gleam of light through all those dark
+months which had followed his abrupt departure; and the intolerable
+pain of the hours that had succeeded Davilof's announcement of his
+marriage to the Spanish woman had taught her how much Michael meant to
+her.
+
+She was beginning to appreciate, too, the tangle of convictions and
+emotions which had driven him from her side. His original attitude
+toward her, based on the treatment she had accorded to his friend who
+had loved her, had been one of plain censure and distrust,
+strengthened and intensified by that strong "partisan" feeling of one
+man for another--fruit of the ineradicable sex antagonism which so
+often colours the judgments men pass on women and women on men. Then
+had come love, against which he had striven in vain, and gradually,
+out of love, had grown a new tentative belief which the pitiful
+culmination of the Raynham episode had suddenly and very completely
+shattered.
+
+Of late, circumstances had combined to impress on Magda an altogether
+new point of view--the viewpoint from which other people might
+conceivably regard her actions. She had never troubled about such a
+thing before, nor was she finding the experience at all a pleasant
+one. But it helped her to understand to a certain extent--though still
+only in a very modified degree--the influences which had sent Michael
+Quarrington out of England.
+
+And now, in the passionate relief bred of the knowledge that he was
+still free, that he had not gone straight from her to another woman,
+much of the resentful hardness which had embittered her during the
+last few months melted away, and she became once more the nonchalant,
+tantalising but withal lovable and charming personality of former
+days.
+
+She was even conscious of a certain compunction for her behaviour at
+Stockleigh. She had been bitterly hurt herself, and since, for the
+moment, to experiment with a new and, to her, quite unknown type of
+man had amused her and helped to distract her thoughts, she had not
+paused to consider the possible resultant consequences to the subject
+of the experiment.
+
+She endeavoured to solace herself with the belief that after she had
+gone he would instinctively turn to June once more, and that life on
+the farm would probably resume the even tenor of its way. Gradually,
+with the passage of time, her thoughts reverted less and less often to
+the happenings at Stockleigh, and the prickings of conscience--which
+beset her return to London--grew considerably fainter and more
+infrequent.
+
+It was almost inevitable that this should be so. With the autumn came
+the stir and hustle of the season, with its thousand-and-one claims
+upon her thought and time. The management of the Imperial Theatre was
+nothing if not enterprising, and designed to present a series of
+ballets throughout the course of the winter, in the greater number of
+which Magda would be the bright and particular star. And in the
+absorption of work and the sheer joy she found in the art which she
+loved, the recollection of her holiday at Stockleigh slipped by
+degrees into the background of her mind. Fraught with such immense
+significance and catastrophe to those others, Dan and June--to Magda
+it soon came to occupy no more than an incidental niche in her memory.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+CROSS CURRENTS
+
+Winter had slipped away, pushed from his place by the tender,
+resistless hands of spring. And now spring had given place to summer,
+and June, arms filled with flowers, was converting the earth into a
+garden of roses.
+
+Magda's car, purring its way southward along the great road from
+London, sped between fields that still gleamed with the first
+freshness of their young green, while through the open window drifted
+vagrant little puffs of clean country air, coming delicately to her
+nostrils, fragrant of leaf and bloom.
+
+She was motoring to Netherway, a delightfully small and insignificant
+place on the Hampshire coast where Lady Arabella had what it pleased
+her to term her "cottage in the country," a charming old place,
+Elizabethan in character--the type of "cottage" which boasted a score
+or so of rooms and every convenience which an imaginative estate
+agent, sustained by the knowledge that his client regarded money as a
+means and not an end, could devise.
+
+Summer invitations to the Hermitage--as the place was quite inaptly
+called, since no one could be less akin to a hermit than its
+gregarious owner--were much sought after by the younger generation of
+Lady Arabella's set. The beautifully wooded park, with its green
+aisles of shady solitude sloping down from the house to the very edge
+of the blue waters of the Solent, was an ideal spot in which to bring
+to a safe and happy conclusion a love affair that might seem to have
+hung fire a trifle during the hurly-burly of the London season. And if
+further inducement were needed, it was to be found in the fact that
+Lady Arabella herself constituted the most desirable of chaperons,
+remaining considerately inconspicuous until the moment when her
+congratulations were requested.
+
+This year a considerable amount of disappointment had been occasioned
+by the fact that she had left town quite early during the season, and
+later on had apparently limited her invitations exclusively to the
+trio at Friars' Holm. She declared that the number of matrimonial
+ventures for which the Hermitage was responsible was beginning to
+weigh on her conscience. Also, she wanted a quiet holiday and she
+proposed to take one.
+
+And now Magda was on her way to join her, Gillian remaining behind in
+order to close up the house at Hampstead and settle the servants on
+board wages. It had been arranged that she and Coppertop should come
+on to Netherway immediately this was accomplished.
+
+Magda could hardly believe that only a year had elapsed since last the
+roses beckoned her out of London. It seemed far longer since that hot
+summer's day when she had rushed away to Devonshire, vainly seeking a
+narcotic for the new and bewildering turmoil of pain that was
+besetting her.
+
+She had learned now that you carry a heartache with you, and that no
+change of scenery makes up for the beloved face you can no longer see.
+For Michael had not come back. He had remained abroad and had never by
+sign or letter acknowledged that he even remembered her existence.
+Magda had come to accept it as a fact now that he had gone out of her
+life entirely.
+
+A whiff of air tinged with the salt tang of the sea blew in at the
+window, and she came suddenly out of her musings to find that the car
+was winding its way up the hill upon which the Hermitage was perched.
+
+A long, low house, clothed in creeper, it stood just below the hill's
+brow, sheltered to the rear by a great belt of woods, and overlooking
+a sea which sparkled in the sunlight as though strewn with diamond-
+dust.
+
+Lady Arabella was waiting in the porch when the car drew up and
+welcomed her god-daughter with delight. She seemed bubbling over with
+good spirits, and there was a half-mischievous, half-guilty twinkle in
+her keen old eyes which suggested that there might be some ulterior
+cause for her effervescence.
+
+"If you were poor I should say you'd just come into a fortune,"
+commented Magda, regarding her judicially. "As you're not, I should
+like to know why you're looking as pleased as a child with a new toy.
+Own up, now, Marraine! What's the secret you've got up your sleeve?"
+
+"Yes, there is a secret," acknowledged Lady Arabella gleefully. "Come
+along and I'll show it you."
+
+Magda smiled and followed her across the long hall and into a room at
+the further end of which stood a big easel. On the easel, just nearing
+completion, rested a portrait of her godmother. It was rather a
+wonderful portrait. The artist seemed to have penetrated beyond the
+mere physical lineaments of his sitter into the very crannies of her
+soul. It was all there--the thoroughly worldly shrewdness, the
+mordant, somewhat cynical humour, and the genuine kindness of heart
+which went to make up Lady Arabella's personality as her world knew
+it. And something more. Behind all these one sensed the glamour of a
+long-past romance, the unquenched spark of a faith that, as Lady
+Arabella had herself once put it in a rare moment of self-revelation,
+"love is the best thing this queer old world of ours has to offer."
+The portrait on the easel was that of a woman who had visioned the
+miracle of love only to be robbed of its fulfilment.
+
+Magda stood silently in front of the picture, marvelling at its keen
+perceptive powers. And then quite suddenly she realised who must have
+painted it. It almost seemed to her as though she had really known it
+from the first moment her eyes had rested on the canvas. The
+brushwork, and that uncannily clever characterisation, were
+unmistakable.
+
+"Good likeness, don't you think?"
+
+Lady Arabella's snapping speech broke the silence.
+
+"It's rather more than that, isn't it?" said Magda. "How did you
+seduce Michael Quarrington? I thought"--for an instant her voice
+wavered, then steadied again--"I thought he was abroad."
+
+"He was. At the present moment he's at the Hermitage."
+
+"/Here/?"
+
+Magda turned her head aside so that Lady Arabella might not see the
+wave of scarlet which flooded her face and then receded, leaving it
+milk-white. Michael . . . /here/! She felt her heart beating in great
+suffocating throbs, and the room seemed to swim round her. If he were
+here, knowing that she was to be his fellow-guest, surely he could not
+hate her so badly! She was conscious of a sudden wild uprush of hope.
+Perhaps--perhaps happiness was not so far away, after all!
+
+And then she heard Lady Arabella's voice breaking across the riot of
+emotion which stirred within her.
+
+"Yes, he has been here the last three weeks painting my portrait. It's
+for you, the portrait. I thought you'd like to have it when you
+haven't got the original any longer."
+
+Magda turned to her suddenly, her affection for her godmother alertly
+apprehensive.
+
+"What do you mean?" she said anxiously. "You're--you're not ill,
+Marraine?"
+
+"Ill? No. But I'm over seventy. And after seventy you've had your
+allotted span, you know. Anything beyond that's an extra. And whether
+fate gives me a bit more rope or not, I've nothing to grumble at. I've
+/lived/, not vegetated--and I've had a very good time, too." She
+paused, then added slowly: "Though I've missed the best."
+
+Magda slipped her hand into the old woman's thin, wrinkled one with a
+quick gesture of understanding, and a little sympathetic silence fell
+between them.
+
+"Then you'll find the hanging-room for the portrait at Friars' Holm?"
+queried Lady Arabella, breaking it at last in practical tones.
+
+"You know we'd love to have it," replied Magda warmly. In a studiously
+casual voice she pursued: "By the way, does Mr. Quarrington know I'm
+here?"
+
+Lady Arabella nodded. Secretly she was congratulating herself on
+having successfully tided over the awkwardness of explaining Michael's
+presence at the Hermitage. She had been somewhat apprehensive as to
+how Magda would take it. It was quite on the cards that she might have
+ordered her car round again and driven straight back to London!
+
+But she had accepted the fact with apparent composure--one's mental
+states, fortunately, being invisible to the curious eyes of the
+outside world!--and Lady Arabella felt proportionately relieved. Nor
+had Quarrington himself evinced any particular emotion, either of
+dissatisfaction or otherwise, when she had confided to him the fact
+that she was expecting her god-daughter. And although the extreme
+composure exhibited by both Michael and Magda was a trifle baffling,
+Lady Arabella was fain to comfort herself with her confirmed belief in
+propinquity as the resolution of most lovers' problems and
+misunderstandings.
+
+She was fully determined to bring these two together once more if it
+were in any way possible, and the commission to paint her portrait had
+been merely part of her scheme. Her three score years and ten had had
+little enough to do with it. They weighed extremely lightly on her
+erect old shoulders, and her spirit was as unquenchable as it had been
+twenty years ago. It seemed more than likely that fate was preparing
+to allow her quite a good deal of rope.
+
+As for Quarrington, he would probably have refused to return to
+England at this juncture to please anyone other than Lady Arabella.
+But somehow no one ever did refuse Lady Arabella anything that she
+particularly set her heart upon. Moreover, as he reflected upon
+receipt of her assured little missive commissioning him to paint her
+portrait, he would be obliged to return to England sooner or later,
+and by now he felt he had himself sufficiently in hand to risk the
+contingency of a possible meeting with Magda. But he had hardly
+counted upon finding himself actually under the same roof with her for
+days together, and, although outwardly unmoved, he was somewhat taken
+aback when halfway through his visit to the Hermitage, Lady Arabella
+cheerfully communicated the prospect to him.
+
+He could read between the lines and guess her purpose, and it afforded
+him a certain sardonic amusement. It was like Lady Arabella's
+temerity, he reflected! No other woman, knowing as much of the special
+circumstances as she did, would have ventured so far.
+
+Well, she would soon realise that her attempt to bridge matters over
+between himself and her god-daughter was foredoomed to failure. He
+would never trust Magda, or any other woman, again. From the moment he
+had left England he had made up his mind that henceforth no woman
+should have any place in his life, and certain subsequent occurrences
+had confirmed him in this determination.
+
+At the same time he was not going to run away. He would stay and face
+it out. He would remain at the Hermitage until he had finished the
+portrait upon which he was at work, and then he would pack up and
+depart.
+
+So that when finally he and Magda met in the sun-filled South Parlour
+at the Hermitage each of them was prepared to treat the other with a
+cool detachment.
+
+But Magda found it difficult to maintain her pose after her first
+glance at his face. The alteration in it sent a swift pang to her
+heart. It had hardened--hardened into lines of a grim self-control
+that spoke of long mental conflict. The mouth, too, had learned to
+close in a new line of bitterness, and in the grey eyes as they rested
+on her there lay a certain cynical indifference which seemed to set
+her as far away from him as the north is from the south. She realised
+that the gulf between them was almost as wide and impassable as though
+he were in very truth the Spanish dancer's husband. This man proposed
+to give her neither love nor forgiveness. Only the feminine instinct
+of pride--the pride of woman who must be sought and never the seeker--
+carried her through the ordeal of the first meeting. Nor did he seek
+to make it easier for her.
+
+"It is a long time since you were in England," she remarked after the
+first interchange of civilities.
+
+"Very long," agreed Quarrington politely. "It would probably have been
+still longer if Lady Arabella had not tempted me. But her portrait was
+too interesting a commission to refuse."
+
+"It sounds banal to say how good I think it. You never paint anything
+that /isn't/ good, do you?"
+
+"I paint what I see."
+
+"In that case quite a lot of people might be afraid to have their
+portraits painted by you--beauty being so much in the eye of the
+beholder!" returned Magda with the flippancy that is so often only the
+defence behind which a woman takes refuge.
+
+"I don't think so. As a matter of fact I have no objection to painting
+a plain face--provided there's a beautiful soul behind it."
+
+"But I suppose a beautiful soul in a beautiful body would satisfy you
+better?"
+
+"It might, if such a combination existed."
+
+Magda flushed a little.
+
+"You don't think it does?"
+
+The grey, contemptuous eyes swept her face suddenly.
+
+"My experience has not led me to think so."
+
+There was an almost calculated insolence in the careless answer. It
+was as though he had tossed her an epitome of his opinion of her.
+Magda's spirit rose in opposition.
+
+"Perhaps your experience has been somewhat limited," she observed.
+
+"Perhaps it has. If so, I have no wish to extend it."
+
+In spite of Michael's taciturnity--or perhaps, more truly, on account
+of it--Magda's spirits lightened curiously after that first interview
+with him. The mere fact of his presence had stilled the incessant ache
+at her heart--the ache to see him again and hear his voice. And the
+morose cynicism of his thrusts at her was just so much proof that,
+although he had forced himself to remain out of England for a year and
+a half, yet he had not thereby achieved either peace of mind or
+indifference. Magda was too true a daughter of Eve not to know that a
+man doesn't expend powder and shot on a woman to whom he is completely
+indifferent.
+
+The next day or two were not without their difficulties, as Lady
+Arabella speedily realised. A triangular party, when two out of the
+three share certain poignant memories, is by no means the easiest
+thing to stage-manage. There were inevitable awkward moments that
+could only be surmounted by the exercise of considerable tact, and the
+hours which Lady Arabella passed sitting to Quarrington for her
+portrait, while Magda wandered alone through the woods or sculled a
+solitary boat up the river, helped to minimize the strain
+considerably.
+
+Nevertheless, it was a relief to everyone concerned when Gillian and
+Coppertop were added to the party. A strained atmosphere was somewhat
+difficult of accomplishment anywhere within the joyous vicinity of the
+latter, while Gillian's tranquil and happy nature reacted on the whole
+household.
+
+"That's an extraordinary friendship," commented Quarrington one day as
+he and his hostess stood at the window watching Gillian and Magda,
+returned from shopping in the village, approaching up the drive. "Mrs.
+Grey is so simple and--to use an overworked word--so essentially
+womanly."
+
+"And Magda?"
+
+The hard look deepened in Michael's eyes.
+
+"Essentially--feminine," he answered curtly. "A quite different
+thing."
+
+"She hasn't found her soul yet," said Lady Arabella. Adding with
+sudden daring: "Suppose you find it for her, Michael?"
+
+"I don't think the search would interest me," he returned coolly. "I
+haven't the instinct of the prospector." He paused, then went on
+slowly and as though making the admission almost against his will:
+"But I'd like to paint her."
+
+"A portrait of her?"
+
+"No, not a portrait."
+
+"Then you mean you want her to sit for your 'Circe'?"
+
+Lady Arabella knew all about the important picture he had in mind to
+paint. They had often discussed it together during the progress of the
+sittings she had been giving him, and she was aware that so far he had
+been unable to find a suitable model.
+
+"Yes," he said slowly. "She is the perfect model for such a subject--
+body and soul."
+
+Lady Arabella ignored the sneer.
+
+"Then why not ask her to sit for you?"
+
+Quarrington's brows drew together.
+
+"You know the answer to that, I think, Lady Arabella," he answered
+curtly.
+
+"Oh, you men! I've no patience with you!" exclaimed the old lady
+testily. "/I/ shall ask her, then!"
+
+Gillian and Magda, laden with parcels, entered the room as she spoke,
+and, before Quarrington could prevent her, she had flashed round on
+her god-daughter.
+
+"Magda, here's Michael in need of a model for the best picture he's
+ever likely to paint, and it seems you exactly fit the bill. Will you
+sit for him?"
+
+Followed an astonished silence. Gillian glanced apprehensively towards
+Magda. She felt as though Lady Arabella had suddenly let off a
+firework in their midst. Magda halted in the process of unwrapping a
+small parcel.
+
+"What is the subject of the picture?"
+
+There was a perceptible pause. Then Lady Arabella took the bull by the
+horns.
+
+"Circe," she said tersely.
+
+"Oh!" Magda seemed to reflect. "She turned men into swine, didn't
+she?" She looked across at Quarrington. "And I'm to understand you
+think I'd make a suitable model for that particular subject?"
+
+"She was a very beautiful person," suggested Gillian hastily.
+
+"Mr. Quarrington hasn't answered my question," persisted Magda.
+
+He met her glance with cool defiance.
+
+"Then, yes," he returned with a little bow. "As Mrs. Grey has just
+remarked--Circle was very beautiful."
+
+"You score," observed Magda demurely. There was a glint of amusement
+in her eyes.
+
+"Yes, I think he does," agreed Lady Arabella, who was deriving an
+impish, pixie-like enjoyment from the situation. Then, recognising
+that it might be more diplomatic not to press the matter any further
+at the moment, she skilfully drew the conversation into other
+channels.
+
+It was not until evening, after dinner, that she reverted to the
+subject. They had all four been partaking of coffee and cigarettes on
+the verandah, and subsequently she had proposed a stroll in the garden
+--a suggestion to which Gillian responded with alacrity. Magda, her
+slim length extended on a comfortably cushioned wicker lunge, shook
+her head.
+
+"I'm too comfortable to stir," she declared idly.
+
+Lady Arabella paused at the edge of the verandah and contemplated her
+critically. Something in the girl's pose and in the long, lithe lines
+of her recumbent figure was responsible for her next remark.
+
+"I can see you as Circe," she commented, "quite well." She tucked her
+arm into Gillian's and, as they moved away together, threw back over
+her shoulder: "By the way, have you two settled the vexed question of
+the model for the picture yet?"
+
+Quarrington blew a thin stream of smoke into the air before replying.
+Then, looking quizzically across at Magda, he asked: "Have we?"
+
+"Have we what?"
+
+"Decided whether you will sit for my picture of Circe?"
+
+Magda lifted her long white lids and met his glance.
+
+"Why should I?" she asked lazily.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with apparent unconcern.
+
+"No reason in the world--unless you feel inclined to do a good turn."
+
+His indifference was maddening.
+
+"I don't make a habit of doing good turns," she retorted sharply.
+
+"So I should imagine."
+
+The contemptuous edge to his voice roused her to indignation. As
+always, she found herself stung to the quick by the man's coolly
+critical attitude towards her. She was back once more in the
+atmosphere of their first meeting on the day he had come to her
+assistance in the fog. It seemed almost incredible that all that
+followed had ever taken place--incredible that he had ever cared for
+her or taught her to care for him. At least he was making it very
+clear to her now that he intended to cut those intervening memories
+out of his life.
+
+It was a sheer challenge to her femininity, and everything that was
+woman in her rose to meet it.
+
+She smiled across at him engagingly.
+
+"I might--perhaps--make an exception."
+
+For a moment there was silence. Quarrington's gaze was riveted on her
+slim, supple figure with its perfect symmetry and rare grace of limb.
+It was difficult to interpret his expression. Magda wondered if he
+were going to reject her offer. He seemed to be fighting something out
+with himself--pulled two ways--the artist in him combating the man's
+impulse to resist her.
+
+Suddenly the artist triumphed. He rose and, coming to her side, stood
+looking down at her.
+
+"Will you?" he said. "/Will you/?"
+
+Something more than the artist spoke in his voice. It held a note of
+passionate eagerness, a clipped tensity that set all her pulses
+racing.
+
+She turned her head aside.
+
+"Yes," she answered, a little breathlessly. "Yes--if you want me to."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A READJUSTMENT OF IDEAS
+
+Magda glanced from the divan covered with a huge tiger-skin to
+Michael, wheeling his easel into place. A week's hard work on the part
+of the artist had witnessed the completion of Lady Arabella's
+portrait, and to-day he proposed to make some preliminary sketches for
+"Circe."
+
+Magda felt oddly nervous and unsure of herself. This last fortnight
+passed in daily companionship with Quarrington had proved a
+considerable strain. Not withstanding that she had consented to sit
+for his picture of Circe, he had not deviated from the attitude which
+he had apparently determined upon from the first moment of her arrival
+at the Hermitage--an attitude of aloof indifference to which was added
+a bitterness of speech that continually thrust at her with its
+trenchant cynicism. It was as though he had erected a high wall
+between them which Magda found no effort of hers could break down, and
+she was beginning to ask herself whether he could ever really have
+cared for her at all. Surely no man who had once cared could be so
+hard--so implacably hard!
+
+And now, alone with him in the big room which had been converted into
+a temporary studio, she found herself overwhelmed by a feeling of
+intense self-consciousness. She felt it would be impossible to bear
+the coolly neutral gaze of those grey eyes for hours at a time. She
+wished fervently that she had never consented to sit for the picture
+at all.
+
+"How do you want me to pose?" she inquired at last, endeavouring to
+speak with her usual detachment and conscious that she was failing
+miserably. "You haven't told me yet."
+
+He laughed a little.
+
+"I haven't the least intention of telling you," he replied. "'The
+Wielitzska' doesn't need advice as to how to pose."
+
+Magda looked at him uncertainly.
+
+"But you've given me no idea of what you want," she protested. "I must
+have some idea to start from!"
+
+"I want a recumbent Circe," he vouchsafed at last. "Hence the divan.
+Here is the goblet"--he held it out--"supposed to contain the fatal
+potion which transformed men into swine. I leave the rest to you. You
+posed very successfully for me some years ago--without my issuing any
+stage directions. Afterwards you played the part of a youthful Circe,
+I remember. You should be more experienced now."
+
+She flushed under the cool, satirical tone. It seemed as though he
+neglected no opportunity of impressing on her the poor estimation in
+which he held her. Her thoughts flew back to a sunlit glade in a wood
+and to the grey-eyed, boyish-looking painter who had kissed her and
+called her "Witch-child!"
+
+"You--you were kinder in those days," she said suddenly. She made a
+few steps towards him and stood looking up at him, her hands hanging
+loosely clasped in front of her, like a penitent school-girl.
+
+"Saint Michel"--and at the sound of her old childish name for him he
+winced. "Saint Michel, I don't think I can sit for you if--if you're
+going to be unkind. I thought I could, but--but--I can't!"
+
+"Unkind?" he muttered.
+
+"Yes," she said desperately. "Since I came here you've said a good
+many hard things to me. I--I dare say I've deserved them. But"--
+smiling up at him rather wanly--"it isn't always easy to accept one's
+deserts." She paused, then spoke quickly: "Couldn't we--while we're
+here together--behave like friends? Just friends? It's only for a
+short time."
+
+His face had whitened while she was speaking. He was silent for a
+little and his hand, grasping the side of the big easel, slowly
+tightened its grip till the knuckles showed white like bone. At last
+he answered her.
+
+"Very well--friends, then! So be it."
+
+Impulsively she held out her hand. He took it in his and held it a
+moment, looking down at its slim whiteness. Then he bent his head and
+she felt his lips hot against her soft palm.
+
+A little shaken, she drew away from him and moved towards the divan.
+She paused beside it and glanced down reflectively at the goblet she
+still carried in her hand, mentally formulating her conception of
+Circe before she posed. An instant later and her voice roused
+Quarrington from the momentary reverie into which he had fallen.
+
+"How would this do?"
+
+He looked up, and as his gaze absorbed the picture before him an eager
+light of pure aesthetic satisfaction leaped into his eyes.
+
+"Hold that!" he exclaimed quickly. "Don't move, please!" And,
+snatching up a stick of charcoal, he began to sketch rapidly with
+swift, sure strokes.
+
+The pose she had assumed was matchless. She was half-sitting, half-
+lying on the divan, the swathing draperies of her tunic outlining the
+wonderful modelling of her limbs. The upper part of her body, twisting
+a little from the waist, was thrown back as she leaned upon one arm,
+hand pressed palm downward on the tiger-skin. In her other hand she
+held a golden goblet, proffering the fatal draught, and her tilted
+face with its strange, enigmatic smile and narrowed lids held all the
+seductive entreaty and beguilement, and the deep, cynical knowledge of
+mankind, which are the garnerings of the Circes of this world.
+
+At length Quarrington laid down his charcoal.
+
+"It's a splendid pose," he said enthusiastically. "That sideways bend
+you've given to your body--it's wonderful! But can you stand it, do
+you think? Of course I'll give you rests as often as I can, but even
+so it will be a very trying pose to hold."
+
+Magda sat up, letting her feet slide slowly over the edge of the
+divan. The "feet of Aurora" someone had once called them--white and
+arched, with rosy-tipped toes curved like the petals of a flower.
+
+"I can hold it for a good while, I think," she answered evasively.
+
+She did not tell him that even to her trained muscles the preservation
+of this particular pose, with its sinuous twist of the body, was
+likely to prove somewhat of a strain. If the pose was so exactly what
+he wanted for his Circe, he should have it, whatever the cost to
+herself.
+
+And without knowing it, yielding to an impulse which she hardly
+recognised, Magda had taken the first step along the pathway of
+service and sacrifice trodden by those who love.
+
+
+
+"It seems as though you were destined to be the model of my two
+'turning-point' pictures," commented Quarrington some days later,
+during one of the intervals when Magda was taking a brief rest. "It
+was the 'Repose of Titania' which first established my reputation, you
+know."
+
+"But this can't be a 'turning-point,' " objected Magda. "When you've
+reached the top of the pinnacle of fame, so to speak, there isn't any
+'turning-point'--unless"--laughing--"you're going to turn round and
+climb down again!"
+
+"There's no top to the pinnacle of work--of achievement," he answered
+quietly. "At least, there shouldn't be. One just goes on--slipping
+back a bit, sometimes, then scrambling on again." His glance returned
+to the picture and Magda watched the ardour of the creative artist
+light itself anew in his eyes. "That"--he nodded towards the canvas--
+"is going to be the best bit of work I've done."
+
+"What made you"--she hesitated a moment--"what made you choose Circe
+as the subject?"
+
+His face clouded over.
+
+"The experience of a friend of mine."
+
+Magda caught her breath.
+
+"Not--you don't mean-----"
+
+"Oh, no"--divining her thought--"not the friend of whom you know--who
+loved the dancer. She hurt him"--looking at her significantly--"but
+she didn't injure him to that extent. Circe turned men into swine, you
+remember. My friend was too fine a character for her to spoil like
+that."
+
+"I'm glad." Magda spoke very low, her head bent. She felt unable to
+meet his eyes. After a short silence she asked: "Then what inspired--
+this picture?"
+
+Was it some woman-episode that had occurred while he was abroad which
+had scored those new lines on his face, embittering the mouth and
+implanting that sternly sad expression in the grey eyes? She must know
+--at all hazards, she must know!
+
+Quarrington lit a cigarette.
+
+"It's not a pretty story," he remarked harshly.
+
+Magda glanced towards the picture. The enchanting, tilted face smiled
+at her from the canvas, faintly derisive.
+
+"Tell it me," was all she said.
+
+"There's very little to tell," he answered briefly. "There was a man
+and his wife--and another woman. Till the latter came along they were
+absolutely happy together--sufficient unto each other. The other woman
+was one of the Circe type, and she broke the man. Broke him utterly. I
+happened to be in Paris at the time, and he came to see me there on
+his way out to South America. He'd left his wife, left his work--
+everything. Just /quitted/! Since then I believe 'Frisco has seen more
+of him than any other place. A man I know ran across him there and
+told me he'd gone under--utterly."
+
+"And the wife?"
+
+"Dead"--shortly. "She'd no heart to go on living--no wish to. She died
+when their first child was born--she and the child together--a few
+months after her husband had left her."
+
+Magda uttered a stifled cry of pity, but Quarrington seemed not to
+hear it.
+
+"That woman was a twentieth-century Circe." He paused, then added with
+grim conviction: "There's no forgiveness for a woman like that."
+
+"Ah! Don't say that!"
+
+The words broke impulsively from Magda's lips. The recollection of the
+summer she had spent at Stockleigh rushed over her accusingly--and she
+realised that actually she had come between Dan Storran and his wife
+very much as the Circe woman of Michael's story had come between some
+other husband and wife.
+
+A deep compassion for that unknown woman surged up within her. Surely
+her burden of remorse must be almost more than she could endure! And
+Magda--to whom penalties and consequences had hitherto been but very
+unimportant factors with which she concerned herself as little as
+possible--was all at once conscious of an intense thankfulness that
+she had not been thus punished, that she had quitted Stockleigh
+leaving husband and wife still together. Together, they would find the
+way back into each other's hearts!
+
+"Don't say that!" she repeated imploringly. "It sounds so hard--so
+relentless!"
+
+"I don't think that it is a case for relenting. But I oughtn't to have
+told you about it. After all, neither the husband nor wife were
+friends of yours. And you're looking quite upset over it. I didn't
+imagine that you were so easily moved to sympathy."
+
+She looked away. Of late she had been puzzled herself at the new and
+unwonted emotions which stirred her.
+
+"I don't think--I used to be," she said at last, uncertainly.
+
+"Well, please don't take the matter too much to heart or you won't be
+able to assume the personality of Circe again when you've rested. I
+don't want to paint the picture of a model of propriety!"
+
+It seemed as though he were anxious to restore the conversation to a
+lighter vein, and Magda responded gladly.
+
+"I'm quite rested now. Shall I pose again?" she suggested a few
+minutes later.
+
+Michael assented and, picking up his palette, began squeezing out
+fresh shining little worms of paint on to it while Magda reassumed her
+pose. For a while he chatted intermittently, but presently he fell
+silent, becoming more and more deeply absorbed in his work. Finally,
+when some remark of hers repeated a second time still remained
+unanswered, she realised that he had completely forgotten her
+existence. As far as he was concerned she was no longer Magda
+Wielitzska, posing for him, but Circe, the enchantress, whose amazing
+beauty he was transferring to his canvas in glowing brushstrokes. As
+with all genius, the impulse of creative work had seized him suddenly
+and was driving him on regardless of everything exterior to his art.
+
+Time had ceased to matter to him, and Magda, with little nervous pains
+shooting first through one limb, then another, was wondering how much
+longer she could maintain the pose. She was determined not to give in,
+not to check him while that fervour of creation was upon him.
+
+The pain was increasing. She felt as though she were being stabbed
+with red-hot knives. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on her forehead,
+and her breath came gaspingly between her lips.
+
+All at once the big easel at which Michael was standing receded out of
+sight, and when it reappeared again it was quite close to her, swaying
+and nodding like a mandarin. Instinctively she put out her hand to
+steady it, but it leaned nearer and nearer and finally gave a huge
+lurch and swooped down on top of her, and the studio and everything in
+it faded out of sight. . . .
+
+
+
+The metallic tinkle of the gold goblet as it fell from her hand and
+rolled along the floor startled Michael out of his absorption. With a
+sharp exclamation he flung down his brush and palette and strode
+hurriedly to the divan. Magda was lying half across it in a little
+crumpled heap, unconscious.
+
+His first impulse to lift her up was arrested by something in her
+attitude, and he stood quite still, looking down at her, his face
+suddenly drawn and very weary.
+
+In the limp figure with its upturned face and the purple shadows which
+fatigue had painted below the closed eyelids, there was an
+irresistible appeal. She looked so young, so helpless, and the
+knowledge that she had done this for him--forced her limbs into
+agonised subjection until at last conscious endurance had failed her--
+moved him indescribably.
+
+Surely this was a new Magda! Or else he had never known her. Had he
+been too hard--hard to her and pitilessly hard to himself--when he had
+allowed the ugly facts of her flirtation with Kit Raynham to drive him
+from her?
+
+Eighteen months ago! And in all those eighteen months no word of
+gossip, no lightest breath of scandal against her, had reached his
+ears. Had he been merely a self-righteous Pharisee, enforcing the
+penalty of old sins, bygone failings? A grim smile twisted his lips.
+If so, and he had made her suffer, he had at least suffered equally
+himself!
+
+He stooped over the prone figure on the divan. Lower, lower still,
+till a tendril of dark hair that had strayed across her forehead
+quivered beneath his breath. Then suddenly he drew back, jerking
+himself upright. Striding across the room he pealed the bell and, when
+a neat maidservant appeared in response, ordered sharply:
+
+"Bring some brandy--quick! And ask Mrs. Grey to come here.
+Mademoiselle Wielitzska has fainted."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AT THE END OF THE STORM
+
+"This is very nice--but it won't exactly contribute towards finishing
+the picture!"
+
+As she spoke Magda leaned back luxuriously against her cushions and
+glanced smilingly across at Michael where he sat with his hand on the
+tiller of the /Bella Donna/, the little sailing-yacht which Lady
+Arabella kept for the amusement of her guests rather than for her own
+enjoyment, since she herself could rarely be induced to go on board.
+
+It had been what Magda called a "blue day"--the sky overhead a deep
+unbroken azure, the dimpling, dancing waters of the Solent flinging
+back a blue almost as vivid--and she and Quarrington had put out from
+Netherway harbour in the morning and crossed to Cowes.
+
+Here they had lunched and Magda had purchased one or two of the
+necessities of life (from a feminine point of view) not procurable in
+the village emporia at Netherway. Afterwards, as there was still ample
+time before they need think of returning home, Michael had suggested
+an hour's run down towards the Needles.
+
+The /Bella Donna/ sped gaily before the wind, and neither of its
+occupants, engrossed in conversation, noticed that away to windward a
+bank of sullen cloud was creeping forward, slowly but surely eating up
+the blue of the sky.
+
+"Of course it will contribute towards finishing the picture."
+Quarrington answered Magda's laughing comment composedly. "A blow like
+this will have done you all the good in the world, and I shan't have
+you collapsing on my hands again as you did a week ago."
+
+"Oh, then, you brought me out on hygienic grounds alone?" derided
+Magda.
+
+She was feeling unaccountably happy and light-hearted. Since the day
+when she had fainted during the sitting Michael seemed to have
+changed. He no longer gave utterance to those sudden, gibing speeches
+which had so often hurt her intolerably. That sense of his aloofness,
+as though a great wall rose between them, was gone. Somehow she felt
+that he had drawn nearer to her, and once or twice those grey,
+compelling eyes had glowed with a smothered fire that had set her
+heart racing unsteadily within her.
+
+"Haven't you enjoyed to-day, then?" he inquired, responding to her
+question with another.
+
+"I've loved it," she answered simply. "I think if I'd been a man I
+should have chosen to be a sailor."
+
+"Then it's a good thing heaven saw to it that you were a woman. The
+world couldn't have done without its Wielitzska."
+
+"Oh, I don't know"--half-indifferently, half-wistfully. "It's
+astonishing how little necessary anyone really is in this world. If I
+were drowned this afternoon the Imperial management would soon find
+someone to take my place."
+
+"But your friends wouldn't," he said quietly.
+
+Magda laughed a little uncertainly.
+
+"Well, I won't suggest we put them to the test, so please take me home
+safely."
+
+As she spoke a big drop of rain splashed down on to her hand. Then
+another and another. Simultaneously she and Michael glanced upwards to
+the sky overhead, startlingly transformed from an arch of quivering
+blue into a monotonous expanse of grey, across which came sweeping
+drifts of black cloud, heavy with storm.
+
+"By Jove! We're in for it!" muttered Quarrington.
+
+His voice held a sudden gravity. He knew the danger of those
+unexpected squalls which trap the unwary in the Solent, and inwardly
+he cursed himself for not having observed the swift alteration in the
+weather.
+
+The /Bella Donna/, too, was by no means the safest of craft in which
+to meet rough weather. She was slipping along very fast now, and
+Michael's keen glance swept the gray landscape to where, at the mouth
+of the channel, the treacherous Needles sentinelled the open sea.
+
+"We must bring her round--quick!" he said sharply, springing up. "Can
+you take the tiller? Do you know how to steer?"
+
+Magda caught the note of urgency in his voice.
+
+"I can do what you tell me," she said quietly.
+
+"Do you know port from starboard?" he asked grimly.
+
+"Yes. I know that."
+
+Even while they had been speaking the wind had increased, churning the
+sea into foam-flecked billows that swirled and broke only to gather
+anew.
+
+It was ticklish work bringing the /Bella Donna/ to the wind. Twice she
+refused to come, lurching sickeningly as she rolled broadside on to
+the race of wind-driven waves. The third time she heeled over till her
+canvas almost brushed the surface of the water and it seemed as though
+she must inevitably capsize. There was an instant's agonised suspense.
+Then she righted herself, the mainsail bellied out as the boom swung
+over, and the tense moment passed.
+
+"Frightened?" queried Quarrington when he had made fast the mainsheet.
+
+Magda smiled straight into his eyes.
+
+"No. We almost capsized then, didn't we?"
+
+"It was a near shave," he answered bluntly.
+
+They did not speak much after that. They had enough to do to catch the
+wind which seemed to bluster from all quarters at once, coming in
+violent, gusty spurts that shook the frail little vessel from stem to
+stern. Time after time the waves broke over her bows, flooding the
+deck and drenching them both with stinging spray.
+
+Magda sat very still, maintaining her grip of the wet and slippery
+tiller with all the strength of her small, determined hands. Her limbs
+ached with cold. The piercing wind and rain seemed to penetrate
+through her thin summer clothing to her very skin. But unwaveringly
+she responded to Michael's orders as they reached her through the
+bellowing of the gale. Her eyes were like stars and her lips closed in
+a scarlet line of courage.
+
+"Port your helm! /Hard/! . . . Hold on!"
+
+Then the thudding swing of the boom as the /Bella Donna/ slewed round
+on a fresh tack.
+
+The hurly-burly of the storm was bewildering. In the last hour or so
+the entire aspect of things had altered, and Magda was conscious of a
+freakish sense of the unreality of it all. With the ridiculous
+inconsequence of thought that so often accompanies moments of acute
+anxiety she reflected that Noah probably experienced a somewhat
+similar astonishment when he woke up one morning to find that the
+Flood had actually begun.
+
+It seemed as though the storm had reached out long arms and drawn the
+whole world of land and sea and sky into its turbulent embrace.
+Driving sheets of rain blurred the coastline on either hand, while the
+wind caught up the grey waters into tossing, crested billows and flung
+them down again in a smother of angry spume.
+
+Overhead, it screamed through the rigging of the little craft like a
+tormented devil, tearing at the straining canvas with devouring
+fingers while the slender mast groaned beneath its force.
+
+Suddenly a terrific gust of wind seemed to strike the boat like an
+actual blow. Magda saw Michael leap aside, and in the same instant
+came a splitting, shattering report as the mast snapped in half and a
+tangled mass of wood and cordage and canvas fell crash on to the deck
+where he had been standing.
+
+Magda uttered a cry and sprang to her feet. For an instant her heart
+seemed to stop beating as she visioned him beneath the mass of tackle.
+Or had he been swept off his feet--overboard into the welter of grey,
+surging waters that clamoured round the boat?
+
+The moment of uncertainty seemed endless, immeasurable. Then Michael
+appeared, stepping across the wreckage, and came towards her. The
+relief was almost unendurable. She stretched out shaking hands.
+
+"Oh, Michael! . . . Michael!" she cried sobbingly.
+
+And all at once she was in his arms. She felt them close about her,
+strong as steel and tender as love itself. In the rocking, helpless
+boat, with the storm beating up around them and death a sudden,
+imminent hazard, she had come at last into haven.
+
+An hour later the storm had completely died away. It had begun to
+abate in violence almost immediately after the breaking of the /Bella
+Donna's/ mast. It was as though, having wreaked its fury and executed
+all the damage possible short of absolute destruction, it was
+satisfied. With the same suddenness with which it had arisen it sank
+away, leaving a sulky, sunless sky brooding above a sullen sea still
+heaving restlessly with the aftermath of tempest.
+
+The yacht had drifted gradually out of mid-channel shorewards, and
+after one or two unsuccessful efforts Quarrington at last succeeded in
+casting anchor. Then he turned to Magda, who had been assisting in the
+operation, with a smile.
+
+"That's about all we can do," he said. "We're perfectly helpless till
+some tug or steamer comes along."
+
+"Probably they'll run us down," she suggested. "We're in the fairway,
+aren't we?"
+
+"Yes--which is about our best hope of getting picked up before night."
+Then, laying his hand on her arm: "Are you very cold and wet?"
+
+Magda laughed--laughed out of sheer happiness. What did being cold
+matter, or wet either, if Michael loved her? And she was sure now that
+he did, though there had been but the one moment's brief embrace.
+Afterwards he had had his hands full endeavouring to keep the /Bella
+Donna/ afloat.
+
+"I think the wind has blown my things dry," she said. "How about you?"
+
+"Oh, I'm all right--men's clothing being adapted for use, not
+ornament! But I must find something to wrap you up in. We may be here
+for hours and the frock you're wearing has about as much warming
+capacity as a spider's web."
+
+He disappeared below into the tiny, single-berthed cabin, and
+presently returned armed with a couple of blankets, one of which he
+proceeded to wrap about Magda's shoulders, tucking the other over her
+knees where she sat in the stern of the boat.
+
+"I don't want them both," she protested, resisting. "You take one."
+
+There was something rather delightful in this unconventional
+comradeship of discomfort.
+
+"You'll obey orders," replied Michael firmly. "Especially as you're
+going to be my wife so soon."
+
+A warm flush dyed her face from brow to throat. He regarded her with
+quizzical eyes. Behind their tender mockery lurked something else--
+something strong and passionate and imperious, momentarily held in
+leash. But she knew it was there--could feel the essential, imperative
+demand of it.
+
+"Well? Does the prospect alarm you?"
+
+Magda forced herself to meet his glance.
+
+"So soon?" she repeated hesitantly.
+
+"Yes. As soon as it can be accomplished," he said triumphantly.
+
+He seated himself beside her and took her in his arms, blankets and
+all.
+
+"Did you think I'd be willing to wait?" he said.
+
+"I didn't think you wanted to marry me at all!" returned Magda, the
+words coming out with a little rush. "I thought you--you disapproved
+of me too much!"
+
+His mouth twisted queerly.
+
+"So I did. I'm scrapping the beliefs of half a lifetime because I love
+you. I've fought against it--tried not to love you--kept away from
+you! But it was stronger than I."
+
+"Saint Michel, I'm so glad--glad it was stronger," she said
+tremulously, a little break in her voice.
+
+He bent his head and kissed her lips, and with the kiss she gave him
+back she surrendered her very self into his keeping. She felt his arms
+strain about her, and the fierce pressure of their clasp taught her
+the exquisite joy of pain that is born of love.
+
+She yielded resistlessly, every fibre of her being quivering
+responsive to the overwhelming passion of love which had at last
+stormed and broken down all barriers--both the man's will to resist
+and her own defences.
+
+Somewhere at the back of her consciousness Diane's urgent warning:
+/"Never give your heart to any man. Take everything, but do not
+give!"/ tinkled feebly like the notes of a worn-out instrument. But
+even had she paused to listen to it she would only have laughed at it.
+She knew better.
+
+Love was the most wonderful thing in the world. If it meant anything
+at all, it meant giving. And she was ready to give Michael everything
+she had--to surrender body, soul, and spirit, the threefold gift that
+a man demands of his mate.
+
+She drew herself out of his arms and slipped to her knees beside him.
+
+"Saint Michel, do you believe in me now?"
+
+"Believe in you? I don't know whether I believe in you or not. But I
+know I love you! . . . That's all that matters. I love you!"
+
+"No, no!" She resisted his arms that sought to draw her back into his
+embrace. "I want more than that. I'm beginning to realise things.
+There must be trust in love. . . . Michael, I'm not really hard--and
+selfish, as they say. I've been foolish and thoughtless, perhaps. But
+I've never done any harm. Not real harm. I've never"--she laughed a
+little brokenly--"I've never turned men into swine, Michael. . . .
+I've hurt people, sometimes, by letting them love me. But, I didn't
+know, then! Now--now I know what love is, I shall be different. Quite
+different. Saint Michel, I know now--love is self-surrender."
+
+The tremulous sweetness of her, the humble submissiveness of her
+appeal, could not but win their way. Michael's lingering disbelief
+wavered and broke. She had been foolish, spoilt and thoughtless, but
+she had never done any real harm. Men had loved her--but how could it
+be otherwise? And perhaps, after all, they were none the worse for
+having loved her.
+
+Deliberately Michael flung the past behind him and with it his last
+doubt of her. He drew her back into his arms, against his heart, and
+their lips met in a kiss that held not only love but utter faith and
+confidence--a pledge for all time.
+
+"Beloved!" he whispered. "My beloved!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+NIGHT
+
+Michael and Magda stood together on the deck of the crippled yacht
+which now rocked idly on a quite placid sea. Dusk was falling. That
+first glorious, irrecoverable hour when love had come into its own was
+past, and the consideration of things mundane was forcing itself on
+their notice--more especially consideration of their particular
+plight.
+
+"It looks rather as though we may have to spend the night here,"
+observed Quarrington, his eyes scanning the channel void of any
+welcome sight of sail or funnel.
+
+Magda's brows drew together in a little troubled frown.
+
+"Marraine and Gillian will be frightfully worried and anxious," she
+said uneasily. It was significant of the gradual alteration in her
+outlook that this solicitude for others should have rushed first of
+anything to her lips.
+
+"Yes." He spoke with a curious abruptness. "Besides, that's not the
+only point. There's--Mrs. Grundy."
+
+Magda shrugged her shoulders and laughed.
+
+"Well, if it's to come to a choice between Mrs. Grundy and Davy Jones,
+I think I should decide to face Mrs. Grundy! Anyway, people can't say
+much more--or much worse--things about me than they've said already."
+
+Quarrington frowned moodily.
+
+"I'd like to kick myself for bringing you out to-day and landing you
+into this mess. I can't stand the idea of people gossiping about you."
+
+"They've left me very little reputation at any time. A little less
+can't hurt me."
+
+His eyes grew stormy.
+
+"Don't!" he said sharply. "I hate to hear you talk like that."
+
+"But it's true! No public woman gets a fair chance."
+
+"/You/ will--when you're my wife," he said between his teeth. "I'll
+see to that."
+
+Magda glanced at him swiftly.
+
+"Then you don't want me to--to give up dancing after we're married?"
+
+"Certainly I don't. I shall want you to do just as you like. I've no
+place for the man who asks his wife to 'give up' things in order to
+marry him. I've no more right to ask you to give up dancing than you
+have to ask me to stop painting."
+
+Magda smiled at him radiantly.
+
+"Saint Michel, you're really rather nice," she observed impertinently.
+"So few men are as sensible as that. I shall call you the 'Wise Man,'
+I think."
+
+"In spite of to-day?" he queried whimsically, with a rueful glance at
+the debris of mast and canvas huddled on the deck.
+
+"/Because/ of to-day," she amended softly. "It's--it's very wise to be
+in love, Michael."
+
+He drew her into his arms and his lips found hers.
+
+"I think it is," he agreed.
+
+Another hour went by, and still there came no sign of any passing
+vessel.
+
+"Why the devil isn't there a single tug passing up and down just when
+we happen to want one?" demanded Quarrington irately of the
+unresponsive universe. He swung round on Magda. "I suppose you're
+starving?" he went on, in his voice a species of savage discontent--
+that unreasonable fury to which masculine temperament is prone when
+confronted with an obstacle which declines to yield either to force or
+persuasion.
+
+Magda laughed outright.
+
+"I'll admit to being hungry. Aren't you? . . . It's horribly
+unromantic of us, Michael," she added regretfully.
+
+Quarrington grinned.
+
+"It is," he assented. "All the same, I believe I could consume a tin
+of bully beef and feel humbly grateful for it at the present moment!"
+
+Magda had a sudden inspiration.
+
+"Michael! Let's forage in the locker! There's almost sure to be some
+biscuits or chocolate there. Marraine nearly always has things like
+that put on board. And there may be something left from the last
+supply."
+
+A brief search brought to light a half-tin of biscuits and some plain
+chocolate, and off these, with the addition of a bottle of soda-water,
+also discovered, they proceeded to make an impromptu meal. It was a
+somewhat thin substitute for the perfectly appointed little dinner of
+which they would have partaken in the ordinary course of events at the
+Hermitage, but when you have been a good many hours without food of
+any description, and spent the greater part of the time in "saving
+your own life at sea," as Michael put it, even biscuits and chocolate
+have their uses.
+
+When the improvised feast was over, Quarrington explored the recesses
+of the tiny hold and unearthed a lantern, which he proceeded to light
+and attach to the broken mast. It burned with a flickering, uncertain
+light, momentarily threatening to go out altogether.
+
+"We're not precisely well-equipped with lights," he remarked grimly.
+"But at least that's a precaution--as long as it lasts! It may--or may
+not--save us from being run down."
+
+Twilight deepened slowly into dark. The lights of Yarmouth sprang into
+being, a cluster of lambent orange points studding the dim coast of
+the Island. One by one the stars twinkled out in the dusky sky, and a
+waning moon, thin and frail like a worn sickle, flung a quivering
+ribbon of silver across the sea.
+
+It was strangely still and quiet. Now and again the idle rudder
+creaked as the boat swung to the current. Once there came the long-
+drawn hoot of a distant siren. Beyond these fitful sounds only the
+gurgle of water lapping the sides of the boat broke the silence.
+
+"We're here till morning," said Quarrington at last. "You may as well
+go to bed."
+
+"To bed?"
+
+"Well, there's a cabin, isn't there?"--smiling. "And a more or less
+uncomfortable bunk. Come down and see what you can make of it as an
+abiding-place for the night."
+
+"And--and you? Can't we rig up anything for you?" Magda looked round
+her vaguely.
+
+"I shan't sleep. I'll do sentry-go on deck"--laughing. "It wouldn't do
+for us both to go comfortably asleep and get run down without even
+having a shot at making our presence known!"
+
+"Then I'll keep watch with you," said Magda.
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort. You'll go down to the cabin and
+sleep."
+
+"Let me stay, Michael. I couldn't bear to think of your watching all
+through the night while I slept comfortably below."
+
+"You won't sleep /comfortably/--if my estimate of the look of that
+bunk is correct. But you'll be out of the cold. Come, be sensible,
+Magda. You're not suitably attired for a night watch. You'd be
+perished with cold before morning."
+
+"Well, let us take it in turns, then," she suggested. "I'll sleep four
+hours and then I'll keep a look-out while you have a rest."
+
+"No," he said quietly.
+
+"Then we'll both watch," she asserted. Through the starlit dark he
+could just discern her small head turned defiantly away from him.
+
+"Has it occurred to you," he asked incisively, "what a night spent in
+the open might mean to you? Rheumatism is not precisely the kind of
+thing a dancer wants to cultivate."
+
+"Well, I'm not going below, anyway."
+
+She sat down firmly and Quarrington regarded her a moment in silence.
+
+"You baby!" he said at last in an amused voice.
+
+And the next moment she felt herself picked up as easily as though she
+were in very truth the baby he had called her and carried swiftly down
+the few steps into the cabin. The recollection of that day of her
+accident in the fog, when he had carried her from the wrenched and
+twisted car into his own house, rushed over her. Now, as then, she
+could feel the strength of his arms clasped about her, the masterful
+purpose of the man that bore her whither he wished regardless of
+whether she wanted to go or not.
+
+He laid her down on the bunk and, bending over her, kept his hands on
+her shoulders.
+
+"Now," he demanded, "are you going to stay there?"
+
+A faint rebellion still stirred within her.
+
+"Supposing I say 'no'!"--irresolutely.
+
+"I'm not supposing anything so unlikely," he assured her. "I'm merely
+waiting to hear you say 'yes.'"
+
+She recognised the utter futility of trying to pit her will against
+the indomitable will of the man beside her.
+
+"Michael, you are a bully!" she protested indignantly, half angry with
+him.
+
+"Then you'll stay there?" he persisted.
+
+"You don't give me much choice"--twisting her shoulders restlessly
+beneath his hands.
+
+He laughed a little.
+
+"You haven't answered me."
+
+"Well, then--yes!"
+
+She almost flung the word at him, and instantly she felt him lift his
+hands from her shoulders and heard his footsteps as he tramped out of
+the cabin and up on to the deck. Presently he returned, carrying the
+blankets which he had wrapped round her earlier in the course of their
+vigil. Magda accepted them with becoming docility.
+
+"Thank you, Wise Man," she said meekly.
+
+He stood looking down at her in the faint moonlight that slanted in
+through the open door of the cabin, and all at once something in the
+intentness of his gaze awakened her to a sudden vivid consciousness of
+the situation--of the hour and of her absolute aloneness with him.
+Their solitude was as complete as though they had been cast on a
+desert island.
+
+Magda felt her pulses throb unevenly. The whole atmosphere seemed
+sentient and athrill with the surge of some deep-lying emotion. She
+could feel it beating up against her--the clamorous demand of
+something hardly curbed and straining for release.
+
+"Michael----" The word stammered past her lips.
+
+The sound of her voice snapped the iron control he had been forcing on
+himself. With a hoarse, half-strangled exclamation he caught her up
+from where she lay, crushing her slim, soft body in a grip that almost
+stifled her, kissing her fiercely on eyes and lips and throat. Then
+abruptly he released her and, without a word, without a backward look,
+strode out of the cabin and up on to the deck.
+
+Magda sank down weakly on the edge of the narrow bunk. The storm of
+his passion had swept through her as the wind sweeps through a tree,
+leaving her spent and trembling. Sleep was an impossibility. Ten
+minutes, twenty passed--she could not have told how long it was. Then
+she heard him coming back, and as he gained the threshold she sprang
+to her feet and faced him, nervously on the defensive. In the pale,
+elusive moonlight, and with that startled poise of figure, she might
+well have been the hamadryad at bay of one of her most famous dances.
+
+Michael looked rather white and there was a grim repression about the
+set of his lips. As he caught sight of her face with its mute
+apprehension and dilated eyes, he spoke quickly.
+
+"You should be resting," he said. "Let me tuck you up and then try to
+go to sleep."
+
+There was something infinitely reassuring in the steady tones of his
+voice. It held nothing but kindness--just comradeship and kindness. He
+was master of himself once more. For her sake he had fought back the
+rising tide of passion. It had no place while they two were here alone
+on the wide waters.
+
+He stooped and picked up the blankets, laying them over her with a
+tenderness that seemed in some subtle way to be part of his very
+strength. Her taut nerves relaxed. She smiled up at him.
+
+"Good-night, Saint Michel," she said simply. "Take care of me."
+
+He stooped and kissed the slim hand lying outside the blanket.
+
+"Now and always," he answered gravely.
+
+
+
+When Magda awoke, seven hours later, the sunlight was streaming into
+the cabin. She could hear Michael moving about the deck, and she
+sprang up and proceeded to make such toilette as was possible in the
+circumstances, taking down her hair and dressing it afresh at the tiny
+looking-glass hung on the wall. She had barely completed the operation
+when she heard Michael give a shout.
+
+"Ahoy! Ahoy there!"
+
+She ran up on deck. Approaching them was a small steam-tug, and once
+again Quarrington sent his voice ringing lustily across the water,
+while he flourished a large white handkerchief in the endeavour to
+attract the attention of those on board.
+
+Suddenly the tug saw them and, altering her course, came fussing up
+alongside. Quarrington briefly explained their predicament--in the
+face of the /Bella Donna's/ battered appearance a lengthy explanation
+was hardly necessary--and a few minutes later the tug was steaming for
+Netherway harbour, towing the crippled yacht behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE OTHER MAN
+
+"Please, Marraine, will you give us your blessing?"
+
+The joyous excitement and relief incidental to the safe return of the
+voyagers had spent itself at last, and now, refreshed and invigorated
+by a hot bath and by a meal of more varied constituents than biscuit
+and plain chocolate, Magda propounded her question, a gleam of mirth
+glancing in her eyes.
+
+Lady Arabella glanced doubtfully from one to the other. Then a look of
+undisguised satisfaction dawned in her face.
+
+"Do you mean----" she began eagerly.
+
+"We've been and gone and got engaged," explained Quarrington.
+
+"My dears!" Lady Arabella jumped up with the agility of twenty rather
+than seventy and proceeded to pour out her felicitations. Incidentally
+she kissed everybody all round, including Quarrington, and her keen
+old hawk's eyes grew all soft and luminous like a girl's.
+
+Coppertop was hugely excited.
+
+"Will the wedding be to-morrow?" he asked hopefully. "And shall I be a
+page and carry the Fairy Lady's train?"
+
+Magda smiled at him.
+
+"Of course you shall be a page, Topkins. But the wedding won't be
+quite as soon as to-morrow," she told him.
+
+"Why not?" insinuated Quarrington calmly. "There are such things as
+special licences, you know."
+
+"Don't be silly," replied Magda scathingly. "I've only just been saved
+from drowning, and I don't propose to take on such a risk as matrimony
+till I've had time to recover my nerve."
+
+Lady Arabella surveyed them both with a species of irritated approval.
+
+"And to think," she burst out at last, indignantly, "of all the hours
+I've spent having my silly portrait painted and getting cramp in my
+stiff old joints, and that even then it needed Providence to threaten
+you both with a watery grave to bring you up to the scratch!"
+
+"Well, we're engaged now," submitted Magda meekly.
+
+Lady Arabella chuckled sardonically.
+
+"If you weren't, you'd have to be--after last night!" she commented
+drily.
+
+"No one need know about last night," retorted Magda.
+
+"Huh!" Lady Arabella snorted. "Half Netherway will know the tale by
+midday. And you may be sure your best enemy will hear of it. They
+always do."
+
+"Never mind. It will make an excellent advertisement," observed Magda
+philosophically. "Can't you see it in all the papers?--'NARROW ESCAPE
+OF THE WIELITZSKA.' In big capitals."
+
+They all laughed, realising the great amount of probability contained
+in her forecast. And, thanks to an enterprising young journalist who
+chanced to be prowling about Netherway on that particular day, the
+London newspapers flared out into large headlines, accompanied by
+vivid and picturesque details of the narrow escape while yachting of
+the famous dancer and of the well-known artist, Michael Quarrington--
+who, in some of the cheaper papers, was credited with having saved the
+Wielitzska's life by swimming ashore with her.
+
+The immediate result was an augmented post-bag for the Hermitage, and
+Gillian had to waste the better part of a couple of sunshiny days in
+writing round to Magda's friends assuring them of her continued
+existence and wellbeing, and thanking them for their kind inquiries.
+
+It was decided to keep the engagement private for the present, and
+life at the Hermitage resumed the even tenor of its way, Magda
+continuing to sit daily for the picture of Circe which Michael was
+anxious to complete before she returned to London for the autumn
+season.
+
+"It's /our/ picture now, Saint Michel," she told him, with a happy,
+possessive pride in his work.
+
+In this new atmosphere of tranquil happiness Magda bloomed like a
+flower in the sun. To the nameless natural charm which was always hers
+there was added a fresh sweetness and appeal, and the full revelation
+of her love for him startled even Michael. He had not realised the
+deep capacity for love which had lain hidden beneath her nonchalance.
+
+It seemed as though her whole nature had undergone a change. Alone
+with him she was no longer the assured woman of the world, the spoilt
+and feted dancer, but just a simple, unaffected girl, sometimes a
+little shy, almost diffident, at others frank and spontaneous with the
+splendid candour and simplicity of a woman who knows no fear of love,
+but goes courageously to meet it and all that it demands of her.
+
+She was fugitively sweet and tender with Coppertop, and now and then
+her eyes would shine with a quiet, dreaming light as though she
+visioned a future wherein someone like Coppertop, only littler, might
+lie in the crook of her arm.
+
+Often during these tranquil summer days the two were to be found
+together, Magda recounting the most gorgeous stories of knights and
+dragons such as Coppertop's small soul delighted in. On one such
+occasion, at the end of a particularly thrilling narrative, he sat
+back on his heels and regarded her with a certain wistful anxiety.
+
+"I suppose," he asked rather forlornly, "when you're married they'll
+give you a little boy like me, Fairy Lady, won't they?"
+
+The clear, warm colour ran up swiftly beneath her skin.
+
+"Perhaps so, Topkins," she answered very low.
+
+He heaved a big sigh. "He'll be a very /lucky/ little boy," he said
+plaintively. "If Mummie couldn't have been my mummie, I'd have choosed
+you."
+
+And so, in this tender atmosphere of peace and contentment, the summer
+slipped by until it was time for Magda to think of going back to
+London. The utter content and happiness of these weeks almost
+frightened her sometimes.
+
+"It can't last, Gilly," she confided to Gillian one day, caught by an
+access of superstitious fear. "It simply /can't/ last! No one was
+meant to be as happy as I am!"
+
+"I think we were all meant to be happy," replied Gillian simply.
+"Happy and good!" she added, laughing.
+
+"Yes. But I haven't been particularly good. I've just done whatever it
+occurred to me to do without considering the consequences. I expect I
+shall be made to take my consequences all in a heap together one day."
+
+Gillian smiled.
+
+"Then I suppose we shall all of us have to rally round and get you out
+of them," she said cheerfully.
+
+"Perhaps--perhaps you wouldn't be able to."
+
+There was a strange note of foreboding in Magda's voice--an accent of
+fatality, and despite herself Gillian experienced a reflex sense of
+uneasiness.
+
+"Nonsense!" she said brusquely. "What on earth has put all these
+ridiculous notions into your head?"
+
+Magda smiled at her. "I think it was four lines I read in a book
+yesterday. They set me thinking."
+
+"More's the pity then!" grumbled Gillian. "What were they?"
+
+Magda was silent a moment, looking out over the sea with abstracted
+eyes. It was so blue to-day--all blue and gold in the dancing
+sunlight. But she knew that self-same sea could be grey--grey and
+chill as death.
+
+Her glance came slowly back to Gillian's face as she quoted the
+fragment of verse which had persisted in her thoughts:
+
+
+ "To-day and all the still unborn To-morrows
+  Have sprung from Yesterday. For Woe or Weal
+  The Soul is weighted by the Burden of Dead Days--
+  Bound to the unremitting Past with Ropes of Steel."
+
+
+After a moment she added:
+
+"Even you couldn't cut through 'ropes of steel,' my Gillyflower."
+
+Gillian tried to shrug away this fanciful depression of the moment.
+
+"Well, by way of a counterblast to your dejection of spirit, I propose
+to send an announcement of your engagement to the /Morning Post/.
+You're not meaning to keep it private after we get back to town, are
+you?"
+
+"Oh, no. It was only that I didn't want to be pestered with
+congratulations while we were down here. I suppose they'll have to
+come some day"--with a small grimace of disgust.
+
+"You'll be snowed under with them," Gillian assured her encouragingly.
+
+The public announcement of the engagement preceded Magda's return from
+Netherway by a few days, so that by the time the Hermitage house-party
+actually broke up, its various members returning to town, all London
+was fairly humming with the news. The papers were full of it.
+Portraits of the fiances appeared side by side, together with brief
+histories of their respective careers up to date, and accompanied by
+refreshing details concerning their personal tastes.
+
+"Dear me, I never knew Michael had a passion for raw meat before,"
+remarked Magda, after reading various extracts from the different
+accounts aloud for Gillian's edification.
+
+"Has he?" Gillian was arranging flowers and spoke somewhat
+indistinctly, owing to the fact that she had the stem of a
+chrysanthemum between her lips.
+
+"Yes, he must have. Listen to this, 'Mr. Quarrington's wonderful
+creations are evidently not entirely the fruit of the spirit, since we
+understand that his staple breakfast dish consists of a couple of
+underdone cutlets--so lightly cooked, in fact, as to be almost raw.'
+I'm glad I've learned that," pursued Magda earnestly. "It seems to me
+an important thing for a wife to know. Don't you think so, Gillian?"
+
+Gillian shouted with delight.
+
+"Of course I do! Do let's ask Michael to lunch and offer him a couple
+of raw cutlets on a charger."
+
+"No," insisted Magda firmly. "I shall keep a splendid treat like that
+for him till after we're married. Even at a strictly conservative
+estimate it should be worth a new hat to me."
+
+"Or a dose of arsenic in your next cup of tea," suggested Gillian,
+giggling.
+
+The following evening was the occasion of Magda's first appearance at
+the Imperial after the publication of her engagement, and the theatre
+was packed from floor to ceiling. "House Full" boards were exhibited
+outside at quite an early hour, and when Magda appeared on the stage
+she was received with such enthusiasm that for a time it was
+impossible to proceed with the ballet. When finally the curtain fell
+on what the critics characterised next day as "the most appealing
+performance of /The Swan-Maiden/ which Mademoiselle Wielitzska has yet
+given us," she received an absolute ovation. The audience went half-
+crazy with excitement, applauding deliriously, while the front of the
+stage speedily became converted into a veritable bank of flowers, from
+amidst which Magda bowed and smiled her thanks.
+
+She enjoyed every moment of it, every handclap. She was radiantly
+happy, and this spontaneous sharing in her happiness by the big public
+which idolised her served but to intensify it. She was almost crying
+as she returned to her dressing-room after taking a dozen or more
+calls, and when, as usual, Virginie met her on the threshold, she
+dropped the great sheaf of lilies she was carrying and flung her arms
+round the old woman's neck.
+
+"Oh, the dears!" she exclaimed. "The blessed /dears/! Virginie, I
+believe I'm the happiest woman alive!"
+
+"And who should be, /mon petite chou/, if not thou?" returned the old
+woman with conviction. "Of course they love thee! /Mais bien sur/!
+Doest thou not dance for them as none else can dance and give them
+angel visions that they could not imagine for themselves?" She paused.
+Then thrusting her hand suddenly into the pocket of her apron and
+producing a card: "/Tiens/! I forgot! Monsieur Davilof waits. Will
+mademoiselle receive him?"
+
+Magda nodded. She had not seen Antoine since her return from
+Netherway. He had been away in Poland, visiting his mother whom, by
+the way, he adored. But as her engagement to Michael was now public
+she was anxious to get her first meeting with the musician over. He
+would probably rave a little, despairing in the picturesque and
+dramatic fashion characteristic of him, and the sooner he "got it out
+of his system," as Gillian had observed on one occasion, the better
+for everyone concerned. So Magda braced herself for the interview, and
+prepared to receive a tragical and despondent Davilof.
+
+But she was not in the least prepared for the man as he appeared when
+Virginie ushered him into the dressing-room and retired, discreetly
+closing the door behind her. Magda, her hand outstretched to greet
+him, paused in sheer dismay, her arm falling slowly to her side.
+
+She had never seen so great a change in any man. His face was grey--
+grey and lined like the face of a man who has had no sleep for days.
+His shoulders stooped a little as though he were too weary to hold
+himself upright, and there was a curiously rigid look about his
+features, particularly the usually mobile mouth. The only live thing
+about him seemed to be his eyes. They blazed with a burning brightness
+that made her think of flame. With it all, he was as immaculately
+groomed, his small golden beard as perfectly trimmed, as ever.
+
+"Antoine!" His name faltered from Magda's lips. The man's face, its
+beauty all marred by some terrible turmoil of the soul, shocked her.
+
+He vouchsafed no greeting, but came swiftly to her side.
+
+"Is it true?" he demanded imperiously.
+
+She shrank back from him. There was a dynamic force about him that
+startled her.
+
+"Is what true?"
+
+"Is it true that you're engaged to Quarrington?"
+
+"Of course it is. It was in all the papers. Didn't you see it?"
+
+"Yes, I saw it. I didn't believe it. I was in Poland when I heard and
+I started for England at once. But I was taken ill on the journey.
+Since then I've been travelling night and day." He paused, adding in a
+tone of finality: "You must break it off."
+
+"Break it off? Are you crazy, Antoine?"
+
+"No, I'm not crazy. But you're mine. You're meant for me. And no other
+man shall have you."
+
+Magda's first impulse was to order him out of the room. But the man's
+haggard face was so pitifully eloquent of the agony he had been
+enduring that she had not the heart. Instead, she temporised
+persuasively.
+
+"Don't talk like that, Antoine." She spoke very gently. "You don't
+mean it, you know. If--if you do care for me as you say, you'd like me
+to be happy, wouldn't you?"
+
+"I'd make you happy," he said hoarsely.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No," she answered. "You couldn't make me happy. Only Michael can do
+that. So you must let me go to him. . . . Antoine, I'd rather go with
+your good wishes. Won't you give them to me? We've been friends so
+long--"
+
+"/Friends/?" he broke in fiercely. "No! We've never been 'friends.'
+I've been your lover from the first moment I saw you, and shall be
+your lover till I die!"
+
+Magda retreated before his vehemence. She was still wearing her
+costume of the Swan-Maiden, and there was something frailly virginal
+and elusive about her as she drew away from him that set the hot,
+foreign blood in him on fire. In two strides he was at her side, his
+hands gripping her bare arms with a savage clasp that hurt her.
+
+"/Mon adoree/!"
+
+His voice was harsh with the tensity of passion, and the cry that
+struggled from her throat for utterance was smothered by his lips on
+hers. The burning kisses seemed to scorch her--consuming, overwhelming
+her. When at last he took his mouth from hers she tried unavailingly
+to free herself. But his clasp of her only tightened.
+
+"Now you know how I love you," he said grimly. He was breathing rather
+fast, but in some curious way he seemed to have regained his self-
+control. It was as though he had only slipped the leash of passion so
+that she might, as he said, comprehend his love for her. "Do you think
+I'll give you up? I tell you I'd rather kill you than see you
+Quarrington's wife."
+
+Once more she made an effort to release herself.
+
+"Oh, you're mad, you're mad!" she cried. "Let me go, Davilof! At
+once!"
+
+"No," he said in a measured voice. "Don't struggle. I'm not going to
+let you go. Not yet. I've reached my limit. You shall go when you
+promise to marry me. Me, not Quarrington."
+
+She had not been frightened by the storm of passion which had carried
+him headlong. That had merely roused her to anger. But this quiet,
+purposeful composure which had succeeded it filled her with an odd
+kind of misgiving.
+
+"It's absurd to talk like that," she said, holding on desperately to
+her self-possession. "It's silly--and melodramatic, and only makes me
+realise how glad I am I shall be Michael's wife and not yours."
+
+"You will never be Quarrington's wife."
+
+He spoke with conviction. Magda called up all her courage to defy him.
+
+"And do you propose to prevent it?" she asked contemptuously.
+
+"Yes." Then, suddenly: "/Adoree/, don't force me to do it! I don't
+want to. Because it will hurt you horribly. And it will all be saved
+if you'll promise to marry me."
+
+He spoke appealingly, with an earnestness that was unmistakable. But
+Magda's nerve was gradually returning.
+
+"You don't seem to understand that you can't prevent my marrying
+Michael--or anyone else," she said coolly. "You haven't the power."
+
+"I can prevent your marrying Michael"--doggedly.
+
+She was silent a moment.
+
+"I suppose," she said at last, "you think that because he once thought
+badly of me you can make him think the same again. Well, you can't.
+Michael and I trust each other--absolutely!"
+
+Her face was transfigured. Michael trusted her now! Nothing could
+really hurt her while he believed in her. She could afford to laugh at
+Antoine's threat.
+
+"And now," she said quietly, "will you please release me?"
+
+Slowly, reluctantly Davilof's hands dropped from her arms, revealing
+red weals where the grip of his fingers had crushed the soft, white
+flesh. He uttered a stifled exclamation as his eyes fell on the angry-
+looking marks.
+
+"/Mon dieu/! I've hurt you--"
+
+"No!" Magda faced him with a defiance that was rather splendid. "No!
+/You can't/ hurt me, Davilof. Only the man I love can do that."
+
+He flinched at the proud significance of the words--denying him even
+the power to hurt her. It was almost as though she had struck him,
+contemptuously disdainful of his toy weapons--the weapons of the man
+who didn't count.
+
+There was a long silence. At last he spoke.
+
+"You'll be sorry for that," he said in a voice of concentrated anger.
+"Damned sorry. Because it isn't true. I /can/ hurt you. And by God, if
+you won't marry me, I will! . . . Magda----" With one of the swift
+changes so characteristic of the man he softened suddenly into
+passionate supplication. "Have a little mercy! God! If you knew how I
+love you, you couldn't turn me away. Wait! Think again--"
+
+"That will do." She checked him imperiously. "I don't want your love.
+And for the future please understand that you won't even be a friend.
+I don't wish to see or speak to you again!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE ROPES OF STEEL
+
+Magda sat gazing idly into the fire, watching with abstracted eyes the
+flames leap up and curl gleefully round the fresh logs with which she
+had just fed it. She was thinking about nothing in particular--merely
+revelling in the pleasant warmth and comfort of the room and in the
+prospect of a lazy evening spent at home, since to-night she was not
+due to appear in any of the ballets to be given at the Imperial
+Theatre.
+
+Outside, the snow was falling steadily in feathery flakes, hiding the
+grime of London beneath a garment of shimmering white and transforming
+the commonplace houses built of brick and mortar, each capped with its
+ugly chimneystack, into glittering fairy palaces, crowned with silver
+towers and minarets.
+
+The bitter weather served to emphasise the easy comfort of the room,
+and Magda curled up into her chair luxuriously. She was expecting
+Michael to dinner at Friars' Holm this evening. They had not seen each
+other for three whole days, so that there was an added edge to her
+enjoyment of the prospect. She would have so much to tell him! About
+the triumphant reception she had had the other night down at the
+theatre--he had been prevented from being present--and about the
+unwarrantable attitude Davilof had adopted, which had been worrying
+her not a little. He would sympathise with her over that--the
+effortless sympathy of the man in possession!
+
+Then the unwelcome thought obtruded itself that if the snow continued
+falling Michael might be weather-bound and unable to get out to
+Hampstead. She uncurled herself from her chair and ran to the window.
+The sky stretched sombrely away in every direction. No sign of a break
+in the lowering, snow-filled clouds! She drummed on the window with
+impatient fingers; and then, drowning the little tapping noise they
+made, came the sound of an opening door and Melrose's placid voice
+announcing:
+
+"Mr. Quarrington."
+
+Magda whirled round from the window.
+
+"Michael!" she exclaimed joyfully. "I was just wondering if you would
+be able to get over this evening. I suppose you came while you could!"
+--laughing. "I shouldn't be in the least surprised if you were snowed
+up here. Shall you mind--dreadfully--if you are?"
+
+But Michael made no response to the tenderly mocking question, nor did
+her smile draw from him any answering smile. She looked at him
+waveringly. He had been in the room quite long enough to take her in
+his arms and kiss her. And he hadn't done it.
+
+"Michael----" She faltered a little. "How queer you are! Have you--
+brought bad news?" A sudden dread rushed through her. "It's not--
+Marraine?"
+
+"No, no." He spoke hastily, answering the startled apprehension in her
+eyes. "It's not that."
+
+Her mind, alertly prescient, divined significance in the mere wording
+of the phrase.
+
+"Then there is--something?"
+
+"Yes, there is something."
+
+His voice sounded forced, and Magda waited with a strange feeling of
+tension for him to continue.
+
+"I want to ask you a question," he went on in the same carefully
+measured accents. "Did you ever stay at a place called Stockleigh--
+Stockleigh Farm at Ashencombe?"
+
+Stockleigh! At the sound of the word it seemed to Magda as though a
+hand closed suddenly round her heart, squeezing it so tightly that she
+could not breathe.
+
+"I--yes, I stayed there," she managed to say at last.
+
+"Ah-h!" It was no more than a suddenly checked breath. "When were you
+there?" The question came swiftly, like the thrust of a sword. With
+it, it seemed to Magda that she could feel the first almost
+imperceptible pull of the "ropes of steel."
+
+"I was there--the summer before last," she said slowly.
+
+Michael made no answer. Only in the silence that followed she saw his
+face change. Something that had been hope--a fighting hope--died out
+of his eyes and his jaw seemed to set itself with a curious
+inflexibility.
+
+She waited for him to speak--waited with a keyed-up intensity of
+longing that was almost physically painful. At last, unable to bear
+the continued silence, she spoke again. Her voice cracked a little.
+
+"Why--why do you ask, Michael?"
+
+He looked at her and a sudden cynical amusement gleamed in his eyes--
+an amusement so bitterly unmirthful that there seemed something almost
+brutal about it. Her hand went up to her face as though to screen out
+the sight of it.
+
+"You can't guess, I suppose?" he said with dry, harsh irony. Then,
+after a moment: "Why did you never tell me you were there? You never
+spoke of it. . . . Wasn't it curious you should never speak of it?"
+
+She made a step towards him. She could not endure this torturing
+suspense another instant. It was racking her. She must know what
+Stockleigh signified to him.
+
+"What do you mean? Tell me what you mean!" she asked desperately.
+
+"Do you remember the story I told you down at Netherway--of a man and
+his wife and another woman?"
+
+"Yes, I remember"--almost whispering.
+
+"That was the story of my sister, June, and her husband, Dan Storran.
+You--were the other woman."
+
+She felt his eyes--those eyes out of which all hope had died--fixed on
+her.
+
+"June--your sister? Your sister? Are you sure?" she stammered
+stupidly.
+
+It couldn't be true! Not even God could have thought of a punishment
+so cruel, so awful as this. That June--the woman who had died just
+because she "had no heart to go on living"--should be Michael's
+sister! Oh, it was a crazy tangling of the threads--mad! Like some
+macabre invention sprung from a disordered brain. She wanted to laugh,
+and she knew if she began to laugh she should never stop. She felt she
+was losing her hold over herself. With a violent effort she clutched
+at her self-control.
+
+"Will you say it all over again, please?" she said in a flat voice. "I
+don't think I understand."
+
+"Nor did I till to-day," he replied shortly. "Davilof made me
+understand--this morning."
+
+"Davilof?" The word seemed to drag itself from her throat. . . .
+Davilof--who had been at Stockleigh that summer! Then it was all going
+to be true, after all.
+
+"Yes, Davilof. He had chanced on the fact that June was my sister.
+Very few people knew it, because, when she married, it was against our
+father's wishes, and she had cut herself adrift from the family. I
+wanted to help her, but she would never let me." He paused, then went
+on tonelessly: "It's all quite clear, isn't it? You know everything
+that happened while you were at Stockleigh. I've told you what
+happened afterwards. Storran cleared out of the country at once, and
+June had nothing left to live for. The only thing I didn't know was
+the name of the woman who had smashed up both their lives. I saw Dan
+in Paris . . . He came to me at my studio. But he was a white man. He
+never gave away the name of the woman who had ruined him. I only knew
+she had spent that particular summer at Stockleigh. It was Davilof who
+told me who the woman was."
+
+/"I can prevent your marrying Quarrington!"/ Magda could hear again
+the quiet conviction of Antoine's utterance. So he had known, then,
+when he threatened her, that June was Michael's sister! She wondered
+dully how long he had been aware of the fact--how he had first
+stumbled across it and realised its value as a hammer with which to
+crush her happiness. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered any more.
+The main fact was that he /had/ known.
+
+June was dead! Amid the confused welter of emotions which seemed to
+have utterly submerged her during the last few minutes, Magda had
+almost lost sight of this as a fact by itself--as distinct from its
+identity with the fact that Michael's sister was dead. She felt
+vaguely sorry for June.
+
+Since the day she and Gillian had left Ashencombe she had heard
+nothing of Storran or his wife. No least scrap of news relating to
+them had come her way. In the ordinary course of events it was hardly
+likely that it would. The circles of their respective lives did not
+overlap each other. And Magda had made no effort to discover what had
+happened at Stockleigh after she had left there. She had been glad to
+shut the door on that episode in her life. She was not proud of it.
+
+There were other incidents, too, which she could have wished were
+blotted out--the Raynham incident amongst them. With the new insight
+which love had brought her she was beginning to rate these things at
+their true value, to realise how little she had understood of all
+love's exquisite significance when she played with it as lightly as a
+child might play with a trinket. She had learned better now--learned
+that love was of the spirit as well as of the body, and that in
+playing at love she had played with men's souls.
+
+She believed she had put that part of her life behind her--all those
+unrecognising days before love came to her. And now, without warning,
+sudden as an Eastern night, the past had risen up and confronted her.
+The implacable ropes of steel held her in bondage.
+
+"Michael . . . can't you--forgive me?"
+
+Her voice wavered and broke as she realised the utter futility of her
+question. Between them, now and always, there must lie the young, dead
+body of June Storran.
+
+"Forgive you?" Michael's voice was harsh with an immeasurable
+bitterness. "Good God! What are you made of that you can even ask me?
+It's women like you who turn this world into plain hell! . . . Look
+back! Have you ever looked back, I wonder?" He paused, and she knew
+his eyes were searching her--those keen, steady eyes, hard, now, like
+flint--searching the innermost recesses of her being. She felt as
+though he were dragging the soul out of her body, stripping it naked
+to the merciless lash of truth.
+
+"June--my little sister, the happiest of mortals--dead, through you.
+And Storran--he was a big man, white all through--down and out. And
+God knows who else has had their sun put out by you. . . . You're like
+a blight--spreading disease and corruption wherever you go."
+
+A little moan broke from her lips. For a moment it was a physical
+impossibility for her to speak. She could only shrink, mute and
+quivering, beneath the flail of his scorn.
+
+At last: "Is--is that what you think of me?" she almost whispered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+She winced at the harsh monosyllable. There was a finality about it--
+definite, unalterable. She looked at him dry-eyed, her face tragically
+beautiful in its agony. But he seemed impervious to either its beauty
+or its suffering. There was no hint of softening in him. Without
+another word he swung round on his heel and turned to leave her.
+
+"Michael . . . don't go!" The lovely voice was a mere thread of sound
+--hoarse and strangulated. "Don't go! . . . Oh, be a little merciful!"
+
+She laid an imploring hand on his arm, and at the touch of her his
+iron composure shook a little. For a moment the hardness in his eyes
+was wiped out by a look of intolerable pain. Then, with a quiet,
+inexorable movement he released himself from her straining clasp.
+
+"There's no question of mercy," he said inflexibly. "I'm not judging
+you, or punishing you. It's simply that I can't marry you. . . . You
+must see that June's death--my sister's death--lies at your door."
+
+"No," she said. "No. I suppose you can't marry me--now."
+
+Her breath came in short, painful gasps. Her face seemed to have grown
+smaller--shrunk. There was a pinched look about the nostrils and every
+drop of blood had drained away, leaving even her lips a curious
+greyish-white. She leaned forward, swaying a little.
+
+"I suppose," she said in a clear, dry voice, "you don't even love me
+any more?"
+
+His hands clenched and he took a sudden impetuous step towards her.
+
+"Not love you?" he said. And at last the man's own agony broke through
+his enforced calm, shaking his voice so that it was hoarse and
+terrible. "Not love you? I love you now as I loved you the day I first
+saw you. God in heaven! Did you think love could be killed so easily?
+Does it die--just because it's forbidden by every decent instinct that
+a man possesses? If so, nine-tenths of us would find the world an
+easier place to live in!"
+
+"And there is--no forgiveness, Michael?" The lovely grief-wrung face
+was uplifted to his beseechingly.
+
+"Don't ask me!" he said hoarsely. "You know there can be none."
+
+He turned and strode to the door. He did not look back even when his
+name tore itself like a cry between her lips. The next moment the
+sound of a door's closing came dully to her ears.
+
+She looked vaguely round the room. The fire was dying, the charred
+logs sinking down on to a bed of smouldering cinders. A touch would
+scatter them from their semblance of logs into a heap of grey,
+formless ash. Outside the window the snow still fell monotonously,
+wrapping the world in a passionless, chill winding-sheet.
+
+With a little broken cry she stumbled forward on to her knees, her
+arms outflung across the table.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ACCOUNT RENDERED
+
+The long, interminable night was over at last. Never afterwards, all
+the days of her life, could Magda look back on the black horror of
+those hours without a shudder. She felt as though she had been through
+hell and come out on the other side, to find stretching before her
+only the blank grey desolation of chaos.
+
+She was stripped of everything--of love, of happiness, even of hope.
+There was nothing in the whole world to look forward to. There never
+would be again. And when she looked back it was with eyes that had
+been vouchsafed a terrible enlightenment.
+
+Phrases which had fallen from Michael's lips scourged her anew
+throughout the long hours of the night. "Women like you make this
+world into plain hell," he had said. "You're like a blight--spreading
+disease and corruption wherever you go." And the essential truth which
+each sentence held left her writhing.
+
+It was all true--horribly, hideously true. The magical, mysterious
+power of beauty which had been given her, which might have helped to
+lighten the burden of the sad old world wherever she passed, she had
+used to destroy and deface and mutilate. The debt against her--the
+debt of all the pain and grief which she had brought to others--had
+been mounting up, higher and higher through the years. And now the
+time had come when payment was to be exacted.
+
+
+
+Quite simply and directly, without seeking in any way to exculpate
+herself, she had told Gillian the bare facts of what had happened--
+that her engagement was broken off and the reason why. But she had
+checked all comment and the swift, understanding sympathy which
+Gillian would have given. Criticism or sympathy would equally have
+been more than she could bear.
+
+"There is nothing to be said or done about it," she maintained. "I've
+sinned, and now I'm to be punished for my sins. That's all."
+
+The child of Hugh Vallincourt spoke in that impassive summing up of
+the situation and Lady Arabella, with her intimate knowledge of both
+Hugh and his sister Catherine, would have ascribed it instantly to the
+Vallincourt strain in her god-daughter. To Gillian, however, to whom
+the Vallincourts were nothing more than a name, the strange
+submissiveness of it was incomprehensible. As the days passed, she
+tried to rouse Magda from the apathy into which she seemed to have
+fallen, but without success.
+
+"It's no use, Gillyflower," she would reply with a weary little smile.
+"There /is/ no way out. Do you remember I once said I was too happy
+for it to last? It was quite true. . . . Have you told Marraine?" she
+asked suddenly.
+
+"Yes. And she wants to see you."
+
+"I don't think I want to see her--or anyone just at present. I've got
+to think--to think things out."
+
+"What do you mean? What are you going to do?"
+
+"I--don't know--yet."
+
+Gillian regarded her with some anxiety. That Magda, usually so
+unreserved and spontaneous, should shut her out of her confidence
+thoroughly disquieted her. She felt afraid. It seemed to her as though
+the girl were more or less stunned by the enormity of the blow which
+had befallen her. She went about with a curious absence of interest in
+anything--composed, quiet, absorbed in her own thoughts, only rousing
+herself to appear at the Imperial as usual. Probably her work at the
+theatre was the one thing that saved her from utter collapse.
+
+As far as Gillian knew she had not shed a single tear. Only her face
+seemed to grow daily more strained-looking, and her eyes held a
+curious expression that was difficult to interpret.
+
+There were days which she spent entirely in the seclusion of her own
+room, and then Virginie alone was allowed entrance. The old
+Frenchwoman would come in with some special little dish she had cooked
+with her own hands, hoping to tempt her beloved mistress's appetite--
+which in these days had dwindled to such insignificant proportions
+that Virginie was in despair.
+
+"Thou must eat," she would say.
+
+"I don't want anything--really, Virginie," Magda would insist.
+
+"And wherefore not?" demanded Virginie indignantly one day. "Thou art
+not one of the Sisters of Penitence that thou must needs deny thyself
+the good things of life."
+
+Magda looked up with a sudden flash of interest.
+
+"The Sisters of Penitence, Virginie? Who are they? Tell me about
+them."
+
+Virginie set a plate containing an epicurean omelet triumphantly in
+front of her.
+
+"Eat that, then, /cherie/, while I tell thee of them," she replied
+with masterly diplomacy. "It is good, the omelet. Virginie made it for
+thee with her own hands."
+
+Magda laughed faintly in spite of herself and began upon the omelet
+obediently.
+
+"Very well, then. Tell me about the Sisters of Penitence. Are they
+always being sorry for what they've done?"
+
+"It is a sisterhood, /mademoiselle cherie/, for those who would
+withdraw themselves from the world. They are very strict, I believe,
+the sisters, and mortify the flesh exceedingly. Me, I cannot see why
+we should leave the beautiful world the /bon dieu/ has put us into.
+For certain, He would not have put us in if He had not meant us to
+stay there!"
+
+"Perhaps--they are happier--out of the world, Virginia," suggested
+Magda slowly.
+
+"But my niece, who was in the sisterhood a year, was glad to come out
+again. Though, of course, she left her sins behind her, and that was
+good. It is always good to get rid of one's sins, /n'est-ce pas/?"
+
+"Get rid of your sins? But how can you?"
+
+"If one does penance day and night, day and night, for a whole long
+year, one surely expiates them! And then"--with calm certainty--"of
+course one has got rid of them. They are wiped off the slate and one
+begins again. At least, it was so with my niece. For when she came out
+of the sisterhood, the man who had betrayed her married her, and they
+have three--no, four /bebes/ now. So that it is evident /le bon dieu/
+was pleased with her penance and rewarded her accordingly."
+
+Magda repressed an inclination to smile at the naive simplicity of
+Virginie's creed. Life would indeed be an easy affair if one could
+"get rid of one's sins" on such an ingenuous principal of quid pro
+quo!
+
+But Virginie came of French peasant stock, and to her untutored mind
+such a process of wiping the slate clean seemed extremely reasonable.
+She continued with enthusiasm:
+
+"She but took the Vow of Penitence for a year. It is a rule of the
+sisterhood. If one has sinned greatly, one can take a vow of penitence
+for a year and expiate the sin. Some remain altogether and take the
+final vows. But my niece--no! She sinned and she paid. And then she
+came back into the world again. She is a good girl, my niece Suzette.
+Mademoiselle has enjoyed her omelet? Yes?"
+
+Magda nodded.
+
+"Yes, Virginie, I've enjoyed it. And I think your niece was certainly
+a brave /fille/. I'm glad she's happy now."
+
+For long after Virginie had left her, Magda sat quietly thinking. The
+story of the old Frenchwoman's niece had caught hold of her
+imagination. Like herself she had sinned, though differently. Within
+her own mind Magda wondered whether she or Suzette were in reality the
+greater sinner of the two. Suzette had at least given all, without
+thought of self, whereas she had only taken--taken with both hands,
+giving nothing in return.
+
+Probably Suzette had been an attractive little person--of the same
+type of brown-eyed, vivacious youth which must have been Virginie's
+five-and-thirty years ago--and her prettiness had caused her downfall.
+Magda glanced towards the mirror. It was through her beauty she
+herself had sinned. It had given her so much power, that exquisite,
+perfect body of hers, and she had pitifully misused the power it had
+bestowed. The real difference between herself and Suzette lay in the
+fact that the little French girl had paid the uttermost farthing of
+the price demanded--had submitted herself to discipline till she had
+surely expiated all the evil she had done. What if she, likewise, were
+to seek some such discipline?
+
+The idea had presented itself to her at precisely the moment when she
+was in the grip of an agony of recoil from her former way of life.
+Like her father, she had been suddenly brought up short and forced to
+survey her actions through the eyes of someone else, to look at all
+that she had done from another's angle of vision. And coincidentally,
+just as in the case of her father, the abrupt downfall of her hopes,
+the sudden shattering of her happiness, seemed as though it were due
+to the intervention of an angry God.
+
+The fanatical Vallincourt blood which ran in Magda's veins caused her
+to respond instinctively to this aspect of the matter. But the strain
+of her passionate, joy-loving mother which crossed with it tempered
+the tendency toward quite such drastic self-immolation as had appealed
+to Hugh Vallincourt.
+
+To Magda, Michael had come to mean the beginning and end of everything
+--the pivot upon which her whole existence hung. So that if Michael
+shut her out of his life for ever, that existence would no longer hold
+either value or significance. From her point of view, then, the
+primary object of any kind of self-discipline would be that it might
+make her more fit to be the wife of "Saint Michel."
+
+He despised her now. The evil she had done stood between them like a
+high wall. But if she were to make atonement--as Suzette had atoned--
+surely, when the wickedness had been purged out of her by pain and
+discipline, Michael would relent!
+
+The idea lodged in her mind. It went with her by day and coloured her
+thoughts by night, and it was still working within her like yeast when
+she at last nerved herself to go and see her godmother.
+
+Lady Arabella, as might have been anticipated, concealed her own sore-
+heartedness under a manner that was rather more militant than usual,
+if that were possible.
+
+"Why you hadn't more sense than to spend your time fooling with a sort
+of cave-man from the backwoods, I can't conceive," she scolded. "You
+must have known how it would end."
+
+"I didn't. I never thought about it. I was just sick with Michael
+because he had gone abroad, and then, when I heard that he was
+married, it was the last straw. I don't think--that night--I should
+have much cared what happened."
+
+Lady Arabella nodded.
+
+"Women like you make it heaven or hell for the men who love you."
+
+"And hell, without the choice of heaven, for ourselves," returned
+Magda.
+
+The bitterness in her voice wrung the old woman's heart. She sighed,
+then straightened her back defiantly.
+
+"We have to bear the burden of our blunders, my dear."
+
+There was a reminiscent look in the keen old eyes. Lady Arabella had
+had her own battles to fight. "And, after all, who should pay the
+price if not we ourselves?"
+
+"But if the price is outrageous, Marraine? What then?"
+
+"Still you've got to pay."
+
+Magda returned home with those words ringing in her ears. They fitted
+into the thoughts which had been obsessing her with a curious
+precision. It was true, then. You had to pay, one way or another. Lady
+Arabella knew it. Little Suzette had somehow found it out.
+
+That night a note left Friars' Holm addressed to the Mother Superior
+of the Sisters of Penitence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+GILLIAN INTERCEDES
+
+It was a bald, austere-looking room. Magda glanced about her
+curiously--at the plain, straight-backed chairs, at the meticulously
+tidy desk and bare, polished floor. Everything was scrupulously clean,
+but the total absence of anything remotely resembling luxury struck
+poignantly on eyes accustomed to all the ease and beauty of
+surroundings which unlimited money can procure.
+
+By contrast with the severity of the room Magda felt uncomfortably
+conscious of her own attire. The exquisite gown she was wearing, the
+big velvet hat with its drooping plume, the French shoes with their
+buckles and curved Louis heels--all seemed acutely out of place in
+this austere, formal-looking chamber.
+
+Her glance came back to the woman sitting opposite her, the Mother
+Superior of the Sisters of Penitence--tall, thin, undeniably
+impressive, with a stern, colourless face as clean-cut as a piece of
+ivory, out of which gleamed cold blue eyes that seemed to regard the
+dancer with a strange mixture of fervour and hostility.
+
+Magda could imagine no reason for the antagonism which she sensed in
+the steady scrutiny of those light-blue eyes. As far as she was
+concerned, the Mother Superior was an entire stranger, without
+incentive either to like or dislike her.
+
+But to the woman who, while she had been in the world, had been known
+as Catherine Vallincourt, the name of Magda Wielitzska was as familiar
+as her own. In the dark, slender girl before her, whose pale,
+beautiful face called to mind some rare and delicate flower, she
+recognised the living embodiment of her brother's transgression--that
+brother who had made Diane Wielitzska his wife and the mother of his
+child.
+
+All she had anticipated of evil consequence at the time of the
+marriage had crystallised into hard fact. The child of the "foreign
+dancing-woman"--the being for whose existence Hugh's mad passion for
+Diane had been responsible--had on her own confession worked precisely
+such harm in the world as she, Catherine, had foreseen. And now, the
+years which had raised Catherine to the position of Mother Superior of
+the community she had entered had brought that child to her doors as a
+penitent waveringly willing to make expiation.
+
+Catherine was conscious of a strange elevation of spirit. She felt
+ecstatically uplifted at the thought that it might be given to her to
+purge from Hugh's daughter, by severity of discipline and penance, the
+evil born within her. In some measure she would thus be instrumental
+in neutralising her brother's sin.
+
+She was supremely conscious that to a certain extent--though by no
+means altogether--her zealous ardour had its origin in her rooted
+antipathy to Hugh's wife and hence to the child of the marriage. But,
+since beneath her sable habit there beat the heart of just an
+ordinary, natural woman, with many faults and failings still
+unconquered in spite of the austerities of her chosen life, a certain
+very human element of satisfaction mingled itself with her fervour for
+Magda's regeneration.
+
+With a curious impassivity that masked the intensity of her desire she
+had told Magda that, by the rules of the community, penitents who
+desired to make expiation were admitted there, but that if once the
+step were taken, and the year's vow of penitence voluntarily assumed,
+there could be no return to the world until the expiration of the time
+appointed.
+
+Somehow the irrevocability of such a vow, undertaken voluntarily, had
+not struck her in its full significance until Catherine had quietly,
+almost tonelessly, in the flat, level voice not infrequently acquired
+by the religious, affirmed it.
+
+"Supposing"--Magda looked round the rigidly bare room with a new sense
+of apprehension--"supposing I felt I simply couldn't stand it any
+longer? Do you mean to say, /then/, that I should not be allowed to
+leave here?"
+
+"No, you would not be permitted to. Vows are not toys to be broken at
+will."
+
+"A year is a long time," murmured Magda.
+
+The eyes beneath the coifed brow with its fine network of wrinkles
+were adamant.
+
+"The body must be crucified that the soul may live," returned the cold
+voice unflinchingly.
+
+Magda's thoughts drew her this way and that. A year! It was an
+eternity! And yet, if only she could emerge purified, a woman worthy
+to be Michael's wife, she felt she would be willing to go through with
+it.
+
+It was as though the white-faced, passionless woman beside her read
+her thoughts.
+
+"If you would be purified," said Catherine, "if you would cast out the
+devil that is within you, you will have to abide meekly by such
+penance as is ordained. You must submit yourself to pain."
+
+At the words a memory of long ago stirred in Magda's mind. She
+remembered that when her father had beaten her as a child he had said:
+"If you hurt people enough you can stop them from committing sin."
+
+Groping dimly for some light that might elucidate the problems which
+bewildered her, Magda clutched at the words as though they were a
+revelation. They seemed to point to the only way by which she might
+repair the past.
+
+Catherine, watching closely the changes on the pale, sensitive face,
+spoke again.
+
+"Of course, if you feel you have not the strength of will to keep your
+vow, you must not take it."
+
+The words acted like a spur. Instantly, Magda's decision was taken.
+
+"If I take the vow, I shall have strength of mind to keep it," she
+said.
+
+The following evening Magda composedly informed Gillian that she
+proposed to take a vow of expiation and retire into the community of
+the Sisters of Penitence for a year. Gillian was frankly aghast; she
+had never dreamed of any such upshot to the whole miserable business
+of Magda's broken engagement.
+
+"But it is madness!" she protested. "You would hate it!"
+
+Magda nodded.
+
+"That's just it. I've done what I liked all my life. And you know what
+the result has been! Now I propose to do what I /don't/ like for a
+year."
+
+Neither persuasion nor exhortation availed to shake her resolution,
+and in despair Gillian referred the matter to Lady Arabella, hoping
+she might induce Magda to change her mind.
+
+Lady Arabella accepted the news with unexpected composure.
+
+"It is just what one might expect from the child of Hugh Vallincourt,"
+she said thoughtfully. "It's the swing of the pendulum. There's always
+been that tendency in the Vallincourts--the tendency towards atonement
+by some sort of violent self-immolation. They are invariably
+/excessive/--either excessively bad like the present man, Rupert, or
+excessively devout like Hugh and Catherine! By the way, the Sisters of
+Penitence is the community Catherine first joined. I wonder if she is
+there still? Probably she's dead by now, though. I remember hearing
+some years ago that she was seriously ill--somewhere about the time of
+Hugh's death. That's the last I ever heard of her. I've been out of
+touch with the whole Vallincourt family for so many years now that I
+don't know what has become of them."
+
+"You don't mean to say that you're going to /let/ Magda do what she
+proposes?" exclaimed Gillian, in dismayed astonishment.
+
+"There's never much question of 'letting' Magda do things, is there?"
+retorted Lady Arabella. "If she's made up her mind to be penitential--
+penitential she'll be! I dare say it won't do her any harm."
+
+"I don't see how it can do her any good," protested Gillian. "Magda
+isn't cut out for a sisterhood."
+
+"That's just why it may be good for her."
+
+"I don't believe in mortification of the flesh and all that sort of
+thing, either," continued Gillian obstinately.
+
+"My dear, we must all work out our own salvation--each in his own way.
+Prayer and fasting would never be my method. But for some people it's
+the only way. I believe it is for the Vallincourts. In any case, it's
+only for a year. And a year is very little time out of life."
+
+Nevertheless, at Gillian's urgent request, Lady Arabella made an
+effort to dissuade Magda from her intention.
+
+"If you live long enough, my dear," she told her crispy, "providence
+will see to it that you get your deserts. You needn't be so anxious to
+make sure of them. Retribution is a very sure-footed traveller."
+
+"It isn't only retribution, punishment, I'm looking for," returned
+Magda. "It is--I can't quite explain it, Marraine, but even though
+Michael never sees me or speaks to me again, I'd like to feel I'd made
+myself into the sort of woman he /would/ speak to."
+
+From that standpoint she refused to move, declining even to discuss
+the matter further, but proceeded quietly and unswervingly with her
+arrangements. The failure to complete her contract at the Imperial
+Theatre involved her in a large sum of money by way of forfeit, but
+this she paid ungrudgingly, feeling as though it were the first step
+along the new road of renunciation she designed to tread.
+
+To the manager she offered no further explanation than that she
+proposed to give up dancing, "at any rate for a year or so," and
+although he was nearly distracted over the idea, he found his
+arguments and persuasions were no more effective than those King
+Canute optimistically addressed to the encroaching waves. The utmost
+concession he could extract from Magda was her assent to giving a
+farewell appearance--for which occasion the astute manager privately
+decided to quadruple the price of the seats. He only wished it were
+possible to quadruple the seating capacity of the theatre as well!
+
+Meanwhile Gillian, whose normal, healthy young mind recoiled from the
+idea of Magda's self-imposed year of discipline, had secretly resolved
+upon making a final desperate venture in the hope of straightening out
+the tangle of her friend's life. She would go herself and see Michael
+and plead with him. Surely, if he loved Magda as he had once seemed to
+do, he would not remain obdurate when he realised how bitterly she had
+repented--and how much she loved him!
+
+It was not easy for Gillian to come to this decision. She held very
+strong opinions on the subject of the rights of the individual to
+manage his own affairs without interference, and as she passed out of
+the busy main street into the quiet little old-world court where
+Michael had his rooms and studio she felt as guilty as a small boy
+caught trespassing in an orchard.
+
+The landlady who opened the door in response to her somewhat timid
+ring regarded her with a curiously surprised expression when she
+inquired if Mr. Quarrington were in.
+
+"I'll see, miss," she answered non-committally, "if you'll step
+inside."
+
+The unusual appearance of the big double studio where she was left to
+wait puzzled Gillian. All the familiar tapestries and cushions and
+rare knick-knacks which wontedly converted the further end of it into
+a charming reception room were gone. The chairs were covered in plain
+holland, the piano sheeted. But the big easel, standing like a tall
+cross in the cold north light, was swathed in a dust-sheet. Gillian's
+heart misgave her. Was she too late? Had Michael--gone away?
+
+A moment later a quick, resolute footstep reassured her. The door
+opened and Michael himself came in. He paused on the threshold as he
+perceived who his visitor was, then came forward and shook hands with
+his usual grave courtesy. After that, he seemed to wait as though for
+some explanation of her visit.
+
+Gillian found herself nervously unready. All the little opening
+speeches she had prepared for the interview deserted her suddenly,
+driven away by her shocked realisation of the transformation which the
+few days since she had last seen him had wrought in the man beside
+her.
+
+His face was lined and worn. The grey eyes were sunken and burned with
+a strange, bitter brilliance. Only the dogged, out-thrust jaw remained
+the same as ever--obstinate and unconquerable. Twice she essayed to
+speak and twice failed. The third time the words came stumblingly.
+
+"Michael, what--what does it mean--all this?" She indicated the
+holland-sheeted studio with a gesture.
+
+"It means that I'm going away," he replied. "I'm packing now. I leave
+England to-morrow."
+
+"You mustn't go!"
+
+The words broke from her imperatively, like a mandate.
+
+He glanced at her quickly and into his eyes came a look of
+comprehension.
+
+"You're a good friend," he said quietly. "But I must go."
+
+"No, no, you mustn't! Listen--"
+
+"Nothing can alter my decision," he interrupted in a tone of absolute
+finality. "Nothing you could say, Gillian--so don't say it."
+
+"But I must!" she insisted. "Oh, Michael, I'm not going to pretend
+that Magda hasn't been to blame--that it isn't all terrible! But if
+you saw her--now--you'd /have/ to forgive her and love her again." She
+spoke with a simple sincerity that was infinitely appealing.
+
+"I've never ceased to love her," he replied, still in that quiet voice
+of repressed determination.
+
+"Then if you love, her, can't you forgive her? She's had everything
+against her from the beginning, both temperament and upbringing, and
+on top of that there's been the wild success she's had as a dancer.
+You can't judge her by ordinary standards of conduct. You /can't/! It
+isn't fair."
+
+"I don't presume to judge her"--icily. "I simply say I can't marry
+her."
+
+"If you could see her now, Michael----" Her voice shook a little. "It
+hurts me to see Magda--like that. She's broken----"
+
+"And my sister, June, is dead," he said in level, unemotional tones.
+
+Gillian wrung her hands.
+
+"But even so----! Magda didn't kill her, Michael. She couldn't tell--
+she didn't know that June----" She halted, faltering into silence.
+
+"That June was soon to have a child?" Michael finished her sentence
+for her. "No. But she knew she loved her husband. And she stole him
+from her. When I think of it all, of June . . . little June! . . . And
+Storran--gone under! Oh, what's the use of talking?"--savagely. "You
+know--and I know--that there's nothing left. Nothing!"
+
+"If you loved her, Michael--"
+
+"If I loved her!" he broke out stormily. "You're not a man, and you
+don't know what it means to want the woman you love night and day, to
+ache for her with every fibre of your body--and to know that you can't
+have her and keep your self-respect!"
+
+"Oh--self-respect!" There was a note of contempt in Gillian's voice.
+"If you set your 'self-respect' above your love--"
+
+"You don't understand!" he interrupted violently. "You're a woman and
+you can't understand! I must honour the woman I love--it's the kernel
+of the whole thing. I must look up to her--not down!"
+
+Gillian clasped her hands.
+
+"Oh!" she said in a low, vehement voice. "I don't think we women
+/want/ to be 'looked up to.' It sets us so far away. We're not
+goddesses. We're only women, Michael, with all our little weaknesses
+just the same as men. And we want the men who love us to be comrades--
+not worshippers. Good pals, who'll forgive us and help us up when we
+tumble down, just as we'd be ready to forgive them and help them up.
+Can't you--can't you do that for Magda?"
+
+"No," he said shortly. "I can't."
+
+Gillian was at the end of her resources. She would not tell him that
+Magda proposed joining the Sisters of Penitence for a year. Somehow
+she felt she would not wish him to know this or to be influenced by
+it.
+
+She had made her appeal to Michael himself, to his sheer love for the
+woman he had intended to make his wife. And she had failed because the
+man was too bitter, too sore, to see clearly through the pain that
+blinded him.
+
+His voice, curt and clipped, broke the silence which had fallen.
+
+"Have you said all you came to say?" he asked with frigid politeness.
+
+"All," she returned sadly.
+
+He moved slowly towards the door.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand.
+
+He took it and held it in his. For a moment the hard eyes softened a
+little.
+
+"I'm sorry I can't do what you ask," he said abruptly.
+
+Gillian opened her lips to speak, but no words came. Instead, a sudden
+lump rose in her throat, choking her into silence, at the sight of the
+man's wrung face, with its bitter, pain-ridden eyes and the jaw that
+was squared implacably against love and forgiveness, and against his
+own overwhelming desire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+"CHILDREN STUMBLING IN THE DARK"
+
+As Gillian mingled once more with the throng on the pavements she felt
+curiously unwilling to return home. She had set out from Friars' Holm
+so full of hope in her errand! It had seemed impossible that she could
+fail, and she had been almost unconsciously looking forward to seeing
+Magda's wan, strained face relax into half-incredulous delight as she
+confided in her the news that Michael was as eager and longing for a
+reconciliation as she herself.
+
+And instead--this! This utter, hopeless failure to move him one jot.
+Only the memory of the man's stern, desperately unhappy eyes curbed
+the hot tide of her anger against him for his iron refusal.
+
+He still loved Magda, so he said. And, indeed, Gillian believed it.
+But--love! It was not love as she and Tony Grey had understood it--
+simple, forgiving, and wholly trustful. It seemed to her as though
+Michael and Magda were both wandering in a dim twilight of
+misunderstanding, neither of them able to see that there was only one
+thing for them to do if they were ever to find happiness again. They
+must thrust the past behind them--with all its bitterness and failures
+and mistakes, and go forward, hand in hand, in search of the light.
+Love would surely lead them to it eventually.
+
+Yet this was the last thing either of them seemed able to think of
+doing. Magda was determined to spend the sweetness of her youth in
+making reparation for the past, while Michael was torn by bitterly
+conflicting feelings--his passionate love for Magda warring with his
+innate recoil from all that she had done and with his loyalty to his
+dead sister.
+
+Gillian sighed as she threaded her way slowly along the crowded
+street. The lights of a well-known tea-shop beckoned invitingly and,
+only too willing to postpone the moment of her return home, she turned
+in between its plate-glass doors.
+
+They swung together behind her, dulling the rumble of the traffic,
+while all around uprose the gay hum of conversation and the chink of
+cups and saucers mingling with the rhythmic melodies that issued from
+a cleverly concealed orchestra.
+
+The place was very crowded. For a moment it seemed to Gillian as
+though there were no vacant seat. Then she espied an empty table for
+two in a distant corner and hastily made her way thither. She had
+barely given her order to the waitress when the swing doors parted
+again to admit someone else--a man this time.
+
+The new arrival paused, as Gillian herself had done, to search out a
+seat. Then, noting the empty place at her table, he came quickly
+towards it.
+
+Gillian was idly scanning the list of marvellous little cakes
+furnished by the menu, and her first cognisance of the new-comer's
+approach was the vision of a strong, masculine hand gripping the back
+of the chair opposite her preparatory to pulling it out from under the
+table.
+
+"I'm afraid there's no other vacant seat," he was beginning
+apologetically. But at the sound of his voice Gillian's eyes flew up
+from that virile-looking hand to the face of its owner, and a low cry
+of surprise broke from her lips.
+
+"Dan Storran!"
+
+Simultaneously the man gave utterance to her own name.
+
+Gillian stared at him stupidly. Could this really be Dan Storran--
+Storran of Stockleigh?
+
+The alteration in him was immense. He looked ten years older. An
+habitual stoop had lessened his apparent height and the dark, kinky
+hair was streaked with grey. The golden-tan bestowed by an English sun
+had been exchanged for the sallow skin of a man who has lived hard in
+a hot country, and the face was thin and heavily lined. Only the eyes
+of periwinkle-blue remained to remind Gillian of the splendid young
+giant she had known at Ashencombe--and even they were changed and held
+the cynical weariness of a man who has eaten of Dead Sea fruit and
+found it bitter to the taste.
+
+There were other changes, too. Storran of Stockleigh was as civilised,
+his clothes and general appearance as essentially "right," as those of
+the men around him. All suggestion of the "cave-man from the
+backwoods," as Lady Arabella had termed him, was gone.
+
+"I didn't know you were in England," said Gillian at last.
+
+"I landed yesterday."
+
+"You've been in South America, haven't you?"
+
+She spoke mechanically. There seemed something forced and artificial
+about this exchange of platitudes between herself and the man who had
+figured so disastrously in Magda's life. Without warning he brought
+the conversation suddenly back to the realities.
+
+"Yes. I was in 'Frisco when my wife died. Since then I've been half
+over the world."
+
+Behind the harshly uttered statement Gillian could sense the
+unspeakable bitterness of the man's soul. It hurt her, calling forth
+her quick sympathy just as the sight of some maimed and wounded animal
+would have done.
+
+"Oh!" she said, a sensitive quiver in her voice. "I was so sorry--so
+terribly sorry--to hear about June. We hadn't heard--we only knew
+quite recently." Her face clouded as she reflected on the tragic
+happenings with which the news had been accompanied.
+
+At this moment a waitress paused at Storran's side and he gave his
+order. Then, looking curiously at Gillian, he said:
+
+"What did you hear? Just that she died when our child was born, I
+suppose?"
+
+Gillian's absolute honesty of soul could not acquiesce, though it
+would have been infinitely the easier course.
+
+"No," she said, flushing a little and speaking very low. "We heard
+that she might have lived if--if she had only been--happier."
+
+He nodded silently, rather as though this was the answer he had
+anticipated. Presently he spoke abruptly:
+
+"Does Miss Vallincourt know that?"
+
+Gillian hesitated. Then, taking her courage in both hands she told him
+quickly and composedly the whole story of the engagement and its
+rupture, and let him understand just precisely what June's death,
+owing to the special circumstances in which it had occurred, had meant
+for Magda of retribution and of heartbreak.
+
+Storran listened without comment, in his eyes an odd look of
+concentration. The waitress dexterously slid a tray in front of him
+and he poured himself out a cup of tea mechanically, but he made no
+attempt to drink it. When Gillian ceased, his face showed no sign of
+softening. It looked hard and very weary. His strong fingers moved
+restlessly, crumbling one of the small cakes on the plate in front of
+him.
+
+"'Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding
+small,'" he quoted at last, quietly.
+
+Gillian met his harshly cynical glance with one of brave defiance.
+
+"I don't think God's mills have anything to do with it," she said
+swiftly. "He'd understand all the excuses and allowances that should
+be made for her better even than I do. And I shouldn't want to punish
+Magda. I'd make her--happy. She's never known what it means to be
+really happy. Success and gaiety aren't /happiness/."
+
+"And you?" he asked quickly.
+
+There was a soft and wonderful shining in the brown eyes that were
+lifted to his.
+
+"I had one year of utter happiness," she answered gently. "And I've
+got Coppertop--so I can't ever be quite unhappy."
+
+"If there were more women like you----" he began abruptly.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No, no," she said, smiling a little. "If there were more men like
+Tony! You men are so hard--so cruelly hard."
+
+He looked at her very directly.
+
+"Haven't I the right to be?" he demanded bitterly.
+
+"Ah! Forgive me!" Gillian spoke with an accent of self-reproach. "I'd
+forgotten you still--care."
+
+"For Magda?" He laughed shortly. "No. That's dead, thank God! I killed
+it. Worked it out of my system in 'Frisco"--with exceeding bitterness.
+"Then I got the news of June's death. Her sister wrote me. Told me she
+died because she'd no longer any wish to live. That sobered me-
+brought me back to my sense. There was a good deal more to the letter
+--my sister-in-law didn't let me down lightly. I've had to pay for
+that summer at Stockleigh. And now Magda's paying. . . . Well, that
+seems to square things somehow."
+
+"Oh, you are brutal!" broke out Gillian.
+
+His eyes, hard as steel and as unyielding, met hers.
+
+"Am I?"--indifferently. "Perhaps I am."
+
+This was a very different Dan from the impetuous, hot-headed Dan of
+former times. Gillian found his calm ruthlessness difficult to
+understand, and yet, realising all that he had suffered, she could not
+but condone it to a certain extent.
+
+When at last she rose to go, he detained her a moment.
+
+"I am remaining in England now. I should like to see you sometimes.
+May I?"
+
+She hesitated. Then something that appealed in the tired eyes impelled
+her answer.
+
+"If you wish," she said gently.
+
+
+
+Back once more in the street she made her way as quickly as possible
+to the nearest tube station, in order to reach it before the usual
+evening crowd of homeward-wending clerks and typists poured into the
+thoroughfares from a thousand open office doors. But as soon as she
+was safely seated in the train her thoughts reverted to the two
+strange interviews in which she had taken part that afternoon.
+
+She felt very low-spirited. Since she had seen and talked with the two
+men in whose lives Magda had played so big a part, she was oppressed
+with a sense of the utter hopelessness of trying to put matters right.
+Things must take their course--drive on to whatever end, bitter or
+sweet, lay hidden in the womb of fate.
+
+She had tried to stem the current of affairs, but she had proved as
+powerless to deflect it as a dried stick tossed on to a river in
+spate. And now, whether the end were ultimate happiness or hopeless,
+irretrievable disaster, Michael and Magda must still fight their way
+towards it, each alone, by the dim light of that "blind Understanding"
+which is all that Destiny vouchsafes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+FAREWELL
+
+The curtains swung together for the last time, the orchestra struck up
+the National Anthem, and the great audience which had come from all
+parts to witness the Wielitzska's farewell performance began to
+disperse.
+
+A curious quietness attended its departure. It was as though a pall of
+gravity hung over the big assemblage. Public announcements of the
+performance had explained that the famous dancer proposed taking a
+long rest for reasons of health. "But," as everyone declared, "you
+know what that means! She's probably broken down--heart or something.
+We shall never see her dance again." And so, beneath the tremendous
+reception which they gave her, there throbbed an element of sadness,
+behind all the cheers and the clapping an insistent minor note which
+carried across the footlights to where Magda stood bowing her thanks,
+and smiling through the mist of tears which filled her eyes.
+
+The dance which she had chosen for her last appearance was the /Swan-
+Maiden/. There had seemed a strange applicability in the choice, and
+to those who had eyes to see there was a new quality in the
+Wielitzska's dancing--a depth of significance and a spirituality of
+interpretation which was commented upon in the Press the next day.
+
+It had been quite unmistakable. She had gripped her audience so that
+throughout the final scene of the ballet no word was spoken. The big
+crowd, drawn from all classes, sat tense and silent, sensitive to
+every movement, every exquisite, appealing gesture of the Swan-Maiden.
+And when at last she had lain, limp in death, in her lover's embrace,
+and the music had quivered into silence, there followed a vibrant
+pause--almost it seemed as though a sigh of mingled ecstasy and regret
+went up--before the thunderous applause roared through the auditorium.
+
+The insatiable few were still clapping and stamping assiduously when
+Magda, after taking innumerable calls, at last came off the stage. It
+had been a wonderful night of triumph, and as she made her way towards
+her dressing-room she was conscious of a sudden breathless realisation
+of all that she was sacrificing. For a moment she felt as though she
+must rush back on to the stage and tell everybody that she couldn't do
+it, that it was all a mistake--that this was not a farewell! But she
+set her teeth and moved resolutely towards her dressing-room.
+
+As her fingers closed round the handle of the door, someone stepped
+out from the shadows of the passage and spoke:
+
+"Magda!"
+
+The voice, wrung and urgent, was Antoine Davilof's.
+
+Her first impulse was to hurry forward and put the dressing-room door
+betwixt herself and him. She had not seen him since that night when he
+had come down to the theatre and implored her to be his wife, warning
+her that he would prevent her marriage with Michael. He had carried
+out his threat with a completeness that had wrecked her life, and
+although, since the breaking-off of her engagement, he had both
+written and telephoned, begging her to see him, she had steadfastly
+refused. Once he had come to Friars' Holm, but had been met with an
+inexorable "Not at home!" from Melrose.
+
+"Magda! For God's sake, give me a moment!"
+
+Something in the strained tones moved her to an unexpected feeling of
+compassion. It was the voice of a man in the extremity of mental
+anguish.
+
+Silently she opened the door of the dressing-room and signed to him to
+follow her.
+
+"Well," she said, facing him, "what is it? Why have you come?"
+
+The impulse of compassion died out suddenly. His was the hand that had
+destroyed her happiness. The sight of him roused her to a fierce anger
+and resentment.
+
+"Well?" she repeated. "What do you want? To know the result of your
+handiwork?"--bitterly. "You've been quite as successful as even you
+could have wished."
+
+"Don't," he said unevenly. "Magda, I can't bear it. You can't give up
+--all this. Your dancing--it's your life! I shall never forgive myself
+. . . I'll see Quarrington and tell him--"
+
+"You can't see him. He's gone away."
+
+"Then I'll find him."
+
+"If you found him, nothing you could say would make any difference,"
+she answered unemotionally. "It's the facts that matter. You can't
+alter--facts."
+
+Davilof made a gesture of despair.
+
+"Is it true you're going into some sisterhood?" he asked hoarsely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And it is I--I who have driven you to this! /Dieu/! I've been mad--
+mad!"
+
+His hands were clenched, his face working painfully. The hazel eyes--
+those poet's eyes of his which she had seen sometimes soft with dreams
+and sometimes blazing with love's fire--were blurred by misery. They
+reminded her of the contrite, tortured eyes of a dog which, maddened
+by pain, has bitten the hand of a beloved master. Her anger died away
+in the face of that overwhelming remorse. She herself had learned to
+know the illimitable bitterness of self-reproach.
+
+"Antoine----" Her voice had grown very gentle.
+
+He swung round on her.
+
+"And I can't undo it!" he exclaimed desperately. "I can't undo it!
+. . . Magda, will you believe me--will you /try/ to believe that, if
+my life could undo the harm I've done, I'd give it gladly?"
+
+"I believe you would, Antoine," she replied simply.
+
+With a stifled exclamation he turned away and, dropping into a chair,
+leaned his arms on the table and hid his face. Once, twice she heard
+the sound of a man's hard-drawn sob, and the dry agony of it wrung her
+heart. All that was sweet and compassionate in her--the potential
+mother that lies in every woman--responded to his need. She ran to him
+and, kneeling at his side, laid a kind little hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Don't Antoine!" she said pitifully. "Ah, don't, my dear!"
+
+He caught the hand and held it against his cheek.
+
+"It's unforgivable!" he muttered.
+
+"No, no. I do forgive you."
+
+"You can't forgive! . . . Impossible!"
+
+"I think I can, Antoine. You see, I need forgiveness so badly myself.
+I wouldn't want to keep anyone else without it. Besides, Michael would
+have been bound to learn--what you told him--sooner or later." She
+rose to her feet, pushing back the hair from her forehead rather
+wearily. "It's better as it is--that he should know now. It--it would
+have been unbearable if it had come later--when I was his wife."
+
+Antoine stumbled to his feet. His beautiful face was marred with
+grief.
+
+"I wish I were dead!"
+
+The words broke from him like an exceeding bitter cry. To Magda they
+seemed to hold some terrible import.
+
+"Not that, Antoine!" she answered in a frightened voice. "You're not
+thinking--you're not meaning----"
+
+He shook his head, smiling faintly.
+
+"No," he said quietly. "The Davilofs have never been cowards. I shan't
+take that way out. You need have no fears, Magda." The sudden tension
+in her face relaxed. "But I shall not stay in England. England--
+without you--would be hell. A hell of memories."
+
+"What shall you do, then, Antoine? You won't give up playing?"
+
+He made a fierce gesture of distaste.
+
+"I couldn't play in public! Not now. Not for a time. I think I shall
+go to my mother. She always wants me, and she sees me very little."
+
+Magda nodded. Her eyes were wistful.
+
+"Yes, go to her. I think mothers must understand--as other people
+can't ever understand. She will be glad to have you with her,
+Antoine."
+
+He was silent for a moment, his eyes dwelling on her face as though he
+sought to learn each line of it, so that when she would be no more
+beside him he might carry the memory of it in his heart for ever.
+
+"Then it is good-bye," he said at last.
+
+Magda held out her hands and, taking them in his, he drew her close to
+him.
+
+"I love you," he said, "and I have brought you only pain." There was a
+tragic simplicity in the statement.
+
+"No," she answered steadily. "Never think that. I spoiled my own life.
+And--love is a big gift, Antoine."
+
+She lifted her face to his and very tenderly, almost reverently, he
+kissed her. She knew that in that last kiss there was no disloyalty to
+Michael. It held renunciation. It accepted forgiveness.
+
+
+
+"Did you know that Dan Storran was in front to-night?" asked Gillian,
+as half an hour later she and Magda were driving back to Hampstead
+together. She had already confided the fact of her former meeting with
+him in the tea-shop.
+
+Magda's eyes widened a little.
+
+"No," she said quietly. "I think I'm glad I didn't know."
+
+She was very silent throughout the remainder of the drive home and
+Gillian made no effort to distract her. She herself felt disinclined
+to talk. She was oppressed by the knowledge that this was the last
+night she and Magda would have with each other. To-morrow Magda would
+be gone and one chapter of their lives together ended. The gates of
+the Sisters of Penitence would close upon her and Friars' Holm would
+be empty of her presence.
+
+Everything had been said that could be said, every persuasion used.
+But to each and all Magda had only answered: "I know it's the only
+thing for me to do. It probably wouldn't be for you, or for anyone
+else. But it is for me. So you must let me go, Gillyflower."
+
+Gillian dreaded the morrow with its inevitable moment of farewell. As
+for Virginie, she had done little else but weep for the last three
+days, and although Lady Arabella had said very little, she had kissed
+her god-daughter good-bye with a brusqueness that veiled an
+inexpressible grief and tenderness. Gillian foresaw that betwixt
+administering comfort to Lady Arabella and Virginie, and setting
+Magda's personal affairs in order after her departure, she would have
+little time for the indulgence of her own individual sorrow. Perhaps
+it was just as well that these tasks should devolve on her. They would
+serve to occupy her thoughts.
+
+
+
+The morning sunlight, goldenly gay, was streaming in through the
+windows as Magda, wrapped in a soft silken peignoir, made her way into
+the bathroom. Virginie, her eyes reddened from a night's weeping, was
+kneeling beside the sunken bath of green-veined marble, stirring
+sweet-smelling salts in to the steaming water. Their fragrance
+permeated the atmosphere like incense.
+
+"My tub ready, Virginie?" asked Magda, cheerfully.
+
+Virginie scrambled to her feet.
+
+"/Mais oui, mademoiselle/. The bath is ready."
+
+Then, her face puckering up suddenly, she burst into tears and ran out
+of the room. Magda smiled and sighed, then busied herself with her
+morning ablutions--prolonging them a little as she realised that this
+was the last occasion for a whole year when she would step down into a
+bath prepared and perfumed for her in readiness by her maid.
+
+A year! It was a long time to look forward to. So much can happen in a
+year. And no one can foresee what the end may bring.
+
+Presently she emerged from her bath, her skin gleaming like wet ivory,
+her dark hair sparkling with the drops of water that had splashed on
+to it. As she stepped up from its green-veined depths, she caught a
+glimpse of herself in a panel mirror hung against the wall, and for a
+moment she was aware of the familiar thrill of delight in her own
+beauty--in the gleaming, glowing radiance of perfectly formed,
+perfectly groomed flesh and blood.
+
+Then, with a revulsion of feeling, came the sudden realisation that it
+was this very perfection of body which had been her undoing--like a
+bitter blight, leaving in its wake a trail of havoc and desolation.
+She was even conscious of a fierce eagerness for the period of penance
+to begin. Almost ecstatically she contemplated the giving of her body
+to whatever discipline might be appointed.
+
+To anyone hitherto as spoiled and imperious as Magda, whose body had
+been the actual temple of her art, and so, almost inevitably, of her
+worship, this utter renouncing of physical self-government was the
+supremest expiation she could make. As with Hugh Vallincourt, whose
+blood ran in her veins, the idea of personal renunciation made a
+curious appeal to her emotional temperament, and she was momentarily
+filled with something of the martyr's ecstasy.
+
+
+
+Gillian's arms clung round Magda's neck convulsively as she kissed her
+at the great gates of Friars' Holm a few hours later.
+
+"Good-bye! . . . Ah, Magda! Come back to me!"
+
+"I shall come back."
+
+One more lingering kiss, and then Magda stepped into the open car.
+Virginie made a rush forward before the door closed and, dropping on
+to her knees on the footboard, convulsively snatched her adored young
+mistress's hand between her two old worn ones and covered it with
+kisses.
+
+"Oh, mademoiselle, thy old Virginie will die without thee!" she sobbed
+brokenly.
+
+And then the car slid away and Magda's last glimpse was of the open
+gates of Friars' Holm with its old-world garden, stately and formal,
+in the background; and of Virginie weeping unrestrainedly, her snowy
+apron flung up over her head; and of Gillian standing erect, her brown
+eyes very wide and winking away the tears that welled up despite
+herself, and her hand on Coppertop's small manful shoulder, gripping
+it hard.
+
+As the car passed through the streets many people, recognising its
+occupant, stopped and turned to follow it with their eyes. One or two
+women waved their hands, and a small errand-boy--who had saved up his
+pennies and squeezed into the gallery of the Imperial Theatre the
+previous evening--threw up his hat and shouted "Hooray!"
+
+Once, at a crossing, the chauffeur was compelled to pull up to allow
+the traffic to pass, and a flower-girl with a big basket of early
+violets on her arm, recognising the famous dancer, tossed a bunch
+lightly into the car. They fell on Magda's lap. She picked them up
+and, brushing them with her lips, smiled at the girl and fastened the
+violets against the furs at her breast. The flower-girl treasured the
+smile of the great Wielitzska in her memory for many a long day, while
+in the arid months that were to follow Magda treasured the sweet
+fragrance of that spontaneous gift.
+
+Half an hour later the doors of the grey house where the Sisters of
+Penitence dwelt apart from the world opened to receive Magda
+Vallincourt, and closed again behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE GREY VEIL
+
+Magda felt a sudden stab of fear. The sound of the latch clicking into
+its place brought home to her the irrevocability of the step she had
+taken. That tall, self-locking door stood henceforth betwixt her and
+the dear, familiar world she had known--the world of laughter and
+luxury and success. But beyond, on the far horizon, there was Michael
+--her "Saint Michel." If these months of discipline brought her nearer
+him, then she would never grudge them.
+
+The serene eyes of the Sister who received her--Sister Bernardine--
+helped to steady her quivering pulses.
+
+There was something in Sister Bernardine that was altogether lacking
+in Catherine Vallincourt--a delightfully human understanding and
+charity for all human weakness, whether of the soul or body.
+
+It was she who reassured Magda when a sudden appalling and unforeseen
+idea presented itself to her.
+
+"My hair!" she exclaimed breathlessly, her hand going swiftly to the
+heavy, smoke-black tresses. "Will they cut off my hair?"
+
+As Sister Bernardine comfortingly explained that only those who joined
+the community as sisters had their heads shaven, a strange expression
+flickered for an instant in her eyes, a fleeting reminiscence of that
+day, five-and-twenty years ago, when the shears had cropped their
+ruthless way through the glory of hair which had once been hers.
+
+And afterwards, as time went on and Magda, wearing the grey veil and
+grey serge dress of a voluntary penitent, found herself absorbed into
+the daily life of the community, it was often only the recollection of
+Sister Bernardine's serene, kind eyes which helped her to hold out.
+Somehow, somewhere out of this drastic, self-denying life Sister
+Bernardine had drawn peace and tranquillity of soul, and Magda clung
+to this thought when the hard rules of the sisterhood, the
+distastefulness of the tasks appointed her, and the frequent fasts
+ordained, chafed and fretted her until sometimes her whole soul seemed
+to rise up in rebellion against the very discipline she had craved.
+
+Most of her tasks were performed under the lynx eyes of Sister
+Agnetia, an elderly and sour-visaged sister to whom Magda had taken an
+instinctive dislike from the outset. The Mother Superior she could
+tolerate. She was severe and uncompromising. But she was at least
+honest. There was no doubting the bedrock genuineness of her
+disciplinary ardour, harsh and merciless though it might appear. But
+with Sister Agnetia, Magda was always sensible of the personal venom
+of a little mind vested with authority beyond its deserts, and she
+resented her dictation accordingly. And equally accordingly, it seemed
+to fall always to her lot to work under Sister Agnetia's supervision.
+
+Catherine had been quick enough to detect Magda's detestation of this
+particular sister and to use it as a further means of discipline. It
+was necessary that Magda's pride and vanity should be humbled, and
+Catherine saw to it that they were. It was assuredly by the Will of
+Heaven that the child of Diane Wielitzska had been led to her very
+doors, and to the subject of her chastening Catherine brought much
+thought and discrimination. /"If you hurt people enough you can make
+them good."/ It had been her brother's bitter creed and it was hers.
+Pain, in Catherine's idea, was the surest means of chastening, and
+Magda was to remember her year at the sisterhood by two things--by the
+deadly, unbearable monotony of its daily routine and by her first
+acquaintance with actual bodily pain.
+
+Her health had always been magnificent, and--with the exception of the
+trivial punishments of childhood and those few moments when she was
+sitting for the picture of Circe--physical suffering was unknown to
+her. The penances, therefore, which Catherine appointed her--to kneel
+for a stated length of time until it seemed as though every muscle she
+possessed were stretched to breaking-point, to fast when her whole
+healthy young body craved for food, to be chastened with flagellum, a
+scourge of knotted cords--all these grew to be a torment almost beyond
+endurance.
+
+Almost! . . . Yet in the beginning the thought of Michael sustained
+her triumphantly.
+
+
+
+It was a curious sensation--that first stroke of the flagellum.
+
+As Magda, unversed in physical suffering, felt the cords shock against
+her flesh, she was conscious of a strange uplifting of spirit. This,
+then, this smarting, blinding thing called pain, was the force that
+would drive the will to do evil out of her soul.
+
+She waited expectantly--almost exultantly--for the second fall of the
+thongs. The interval between seemed endless. Sister Agnetia was very
+deliberate, pausing between each stroke. She knew to a nicety the
+value of anticipation as a remedial force in punishment.
+
+Again the cords descended on the bared shoulders. Magda winced away
+from them, shivering. For a moment Sister Agnetia's arm hung flaccid,
+the cords of the flagellum pendant and still.
+
+"Are you submitting to the discipline, Sister Penitentia?" came her
+voice. It was an unpleasant voice, suggestive of a knife that has been
+dipped in oil.
+
+Magda caught her breath.
+
+"Yes . . . yes . . . I submit myself."
+
+Dimly she felt that by means of this endurance she would win back
+Michael, cleanse herself to receive his love.
+
+"I submit," she repeated in a rapt whisper of self-surrender.
+
+Sister Agnetia's voice swam unctuously into her consciousness once
+more.
+
+"I thought you tried to avoid that last stroke. If you flinch from
+punishment it is not submission, but rebellion."
+
+Magda gripped her hands together and pressed her knees into the hard
+stone floor, her muscles taut with anticipation as she heard the soft
+whistle of the thongs cleaving the air.
+
+This time she bore the pang of anguish motionless, but the vision of
+Michael went out suddenly in a throbbing darkness of swift agony. Her
+shoulders felt red-hot. The pain shot up into her brain like fingers
+of flame. It clasped her whole body in a torment, and the ecstasy of
+self-surrender was lost in a sick groping after sheer endurance.
+
+The next stroke, crushing across that fever of intolerable suffering,
+wrung a hoarse moan from her dry lips. Her hands locked together till
+she felt as though their bones must crack with the strain as she
+waited for the next inexorable stroke.
+
+One moment! . . . Two! An eternity of waiting!
+
+"Go on!" she breathed. "Oh! . . . Be quick . . ." Her voice panted.
+
+No movement answered her. Unable to endure the suspense, she
+straightened her bowed shoulders and turned in convulsive appeal to
+where she had glimpsed the flail-like rise and fall of Sister
+Agnetia's serge-clad arm.
+
+There was no one there! The bare, cell-like chamber was empty, save
+for herself. Sister Agnetia had stolen away, completing the penance of
+physical pain by the refinement of anguish embodied in those hideous
+moments of mental dread.
+
+Magda almost fancied she could hear an oily chuckle outside the door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THOSE THAT WERE LEFT BEHIND
+
+For the first month or two after Magda's departure Gillian found that
+she had her hands full in settling up various business and personal
+matters which had been left with loose ends. She was frankly glad to
+discover that there were so many matters requiring her attention;
+otherwise the blank occasioned in her life by Magda's absence would
+have been almost unendurable.
+
+The two girls had grown very much into each other's hearts during the
+years they had shared together, and when friends part, no matter how
+big a wrench the separation may mean to the one who goes, there is a
+special kind of sadness reserved for the one who is left behind. For
+the one who sets out there are fresh faces, new activities in store.
+Even though the new life adventured upon may not prove to be precisely
+a bed of thornless roses, the pricking of the thorns provides
+distraction to the mind from the sheer, undiluted pain of separation.
+
+But for Gillian, left behind at Friars' Holm, there remained nothing
+but an hourly sense of loss added to that crushing, inevitable
+flatness which succeeds a crisis of any kind.
+
+Nor did a forlorn Coppertop's reiterated inquiries as to how soon the
+Fairy Lady might be expected back again help to mend matters.
+
+Lady Arabella's grief was expressed in a characteristically prickly
+fashion.
+
+"Young people don't seem to know the first thing about love nowadays,"
+she observed with the customary scathing contempt of one age for
+another.
+
+In /my/ young days! Ah! there will never be times like those again! We
+are all quite sure of it as our young days recede into the misty past.
+
+"If you loved, you loved," pursued Lady Arabella crisply. "And the
+death of half a dozen sisters wouldn't have been allowed to interfere
+with the proceedings."
+
+Gillian smiled a little.
+
+"It wasn't only that. It was Michael's bitter disappointment in Magda,
+I think, quite as much as the fact that, indirectly, he held her
+responsible for June's death."
+
+"It's ridiculous to try and foist Mrs. Storran's death on to Magda,"
+fumed Lady Arabella restively. "If she hadn't the physical health to
+have a good, hearty baby successfully, she shouldn't have attempted
+it. That's all! . . . And then those two idiots--Magda and Michael! Of
+course he must needs shoot off abroad, and equally of course she must
+be out of the way in a sisterhood when he comes rushing back--as he
+will do!"--with a grim smile.
+
+"He hasn't done yet," Gillian pointed out.
+
+"I give him precisely six months, my dear, before he finds out that,
+sister or no sister, he can't live without Magda. Michael
+Quarrington's got too much good red blood in his veins to live the
+life of a hermit. He's a man, thank goodness, not a mystical dreamer
+like Hugh Vallincourt. And he'll come back to his mate as surely as
+the sun will rise to-morrow."
+
+"I wish I felt as confident as you do."
+
+"I wish I could make sure of putting my hand on Magda when he comes,"
+grumbled Lady Arabella. "That's the hitch I'm afraid of! If only she
+hadn't been so precipitate--only waited a bit for him to come back to
+her."
+
+"I don't agree with you," rapped out Gillian smartly. "Women are much
+too ready to do the patient Griselda stunt. I think"--with a vicious
+little nod of her brown head--"it would do Michael all the good in the
+world to come back and want Magda--want her /badly/. And find he
+couldn't get her! So there!"
+
+Lady Arabella regarded her with astonishment, then broke into a
+delighted chuckle.
+
+"Upon my word! If a tame dove had suddenly turned round and pecked at
+me, I couldn't have been more surprised! I didn't know you had so much
+of the leaven of malice and wickedness in you, Gillian!"
+
+Gillian, a little flushed and feeling, in truth, rather surprised at
+herself for her sudden heat, smiled back at her.
+
+"But I should have thought your opinion would have been very much the
+same as mine. I never expected you'd want Magda to sit down and
+twiddle her thumbs till Michael chose to come back to her."
+
+Lady Arabella sighed.
+
+"I don't. Not really. Only I want them to be happy," she said a little
+sadly. "Love is such a rare thing--love like theirs. And it's hard
+that Magda should lose the beauty and happiness of it all because of
+mistakes she made before she found herself, so to speak."
+
+Gillian nodded soberly. Lady Arabella had voiced precisely her own
+feeling in the matter. It /was/ hard! And yet it was only the
+fulfilment of the immutable law: /Who breaks, pays/.
+
+Gillian's thoughts tried to pierce the dim horizon. Perhaps all the
+pain and mistakes and misunderstandings of which this workaday world
+is so full are, after all, only a part of the beautiful tapestry which
+the patient Fingers of God are weaving--a dark and sombre warp, giving
+value to the gold and silver and jewelled threads of the weft which
+shall cross it. When the ultimate fabric is woven, and the tissue
+released from the loom, there will surely be no meaningless thread,
+sable or silver, in the consummated pattern.
+
+A few weeks after Magda's departure Gillian received a letter from Dan
+Storran, reminding her of her promise to let him see her and asking if
+she would lunch with him somewhere in town.
+
+It was with somewhat mixed feelings that she met him again. He was
+much altered--so changed from the hot-headed, primitive countryman she
+had first known. Some chance remark of hers enlightened him as to her
+confused sense of the difference in him, and he smiled across at her.
+
+"I've been through the mill, you see," he explained quietly, "since
+the Stockleigh days."
+
+The words seemed almost like a key unlocking the door that stands fast
+shut between one soul and another. He talked to her quite simply and
+frankly after that, telling her how, after he had left England, the
+madness in his blood had driven him whither it listed. There had been
+no depths to which he had not sunk, no wild living from which he had
+recoiled.
+
+And then had come the news of June's death. Not tenderly conveyed, but
+charged to his account by her sister with a fierce bitterness that had
+suddenly torn the veil from his eyes. Followed days and nights of
+agonised remorse, and after that the slow, steady, infinitely
+difficult climb back from the depths into which he had allowed himself
+to sink to a plane of life where, had June still lived, he would not
+have been ashamed to meet her eyes nor utterly unworthy to take her
+hand.
+
+"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," he ended. "But she
+would have wished it. I can never tell her now how I regret, never ask
+her forgiveness. And this was the only thing I could do to atone."
+
+Gillian's eyes were very soft as she answered:
+
+"I expect she knows, Dan, and is glad."
+
+After a moment she went on thoughtfully.
+
+"It's rather the same kind of feeling that has driven Magda into a
+sisterhood, I think--the desire to do something definite, something
+tangible, as a sort of reparation. And a woman is much more limited
+that way than a man."
+
+Storran's mouth hardened. Any mention of Magda would bring that look
+of concentrated hardness into his face, and as the months went on,
+giving Gillian a closer insight into the man, she began to realise
+that he had never forgiven Magda for her share in the ruin of his
+life. On this point he was as hard as nether millstone. He even seemed
+to derive a certain satisfaction from the knowledge that she was
+paying, and paying heavily, for all the harm she had wrought.
+
+It troubled Gillian--this incalculable hardness in Dan's nature
+towards one woman. She found him kindly and tolerant in his outlook on
+life--with the understanding tolerance of the man who has dragged
+himself out of the pit by his own sheer force of will, and who,
+knowing the power of temptation, is ready to give a helping hand to
+others who may have fallen by the way. So that his relentlessness
+towards Magda was the more inexplicable.
+
+More than once she tried to soften his attitude, tried to make him
+realise something of the conflicting influences both of temperament
+and environment which had helped to make Magda what she was. But he
+remained stubbornly unmoved.
+
+"No punishment is too severe for a woman who has done what Magda
+Vallincourt has done. She has wrecked lives simply in order to gratify
+her vanity and insensate instinct for conquest."
+
+Gillian shook her head.
+
+"No, you're wrong. You /won't/ understand! It's all that went before--
+her parents' mistakes--that should be blamed for half she's done. I
+think you're very merciless, Dan."
+
+"Perhaps I am--in this case. Frankly, if I could lessen her punishment
+by lifting my little finger--I wouldn't do it."
+
+Yet this same man when, as often happened, he took Gillian and
+Coppertop for a run into the country in his car, was as simple and
+considerate and kindly as a man could be. Coppertop adored him, and,
+as Gillian reflected, the love of children is rarely misplaced. Some
+instinct leads them to divine unfailingly which is gold and which
+dross.
+
+The car was a recent acquisition. As Storran himself expressed it,
+rather bitterly: "Now that I can't buy a ha'p'orth of happiness with
+the money, my luck has turned." He explained to Gillian that after he
+had left England he had sold his farm in Devonshire, and that a lucky
+investment of the capital thus realised had turned him into a
+comparatively rich man.
+
+"Even when I was making ducks and drakes of my life generally, I
+didn't seem to make a mistake over money matters. If I played cards, I
+won; if I backed a horse, he romped in first; it I bought shares, they
+jumped up immediately."
+
+"What a pity!" replied Gillian ingenuously. "If only your financial
+affairs hadn't prospered, you'd have had to settle down and /work/--
+instead of--of----"
+
+"Playing the fool," he supplemented. "No, I don't suppose I should. I
+hadn't learned--then--that work is the only panacea, the one big
+remedy."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"I've learned a lot of things in the last two years," quietly. "And
+I'm still learning."
+
+As the months went on, Dan's friendship began to mean a good deal to
+Gillian. It had come into her life just at a time when she was
+intolerably lonely, and quite unconsciously she was learning to turn
+to him for advice on all the large and small affairs of daily life as
+they came cropping up.
+
+She was infinitely glad of his counsel with regard to Coppertop, who
+was growing to the age when the want of a father--of a man's broad
+outlook and a man's restraining hand--became an acute lack in a boy's
+life. And to Gillian, who had gallantly faced the world alone since
+the day when death had abruptly ended her "year of utter happiness,"
+it was inexpressibly sweet to be once more shielded and helped in all
+the big and little ways in which a man--even if he was only a staunch
+man-friend--can shield and help a woman.
+
+It seemed as though Dan Storran always contrived to interpose his big
+person betwixt her and the sharp corners of life, and she began to
+wonder, with a faint, indefinable dread, what must become of their
+friendship when Magda returned to Friars' Holm. Feeling as he did
+towards the dancer, it would be impossible for him to come there any
+more, and somehow a snatched hour here and there--a lunch together, or
+a motor-spin into the country--would be a very poor substitute for his
+almost daily visits to the old Queen Anne house tucked away behind its
+high walls at Hampstead.
+
+Once she broached the subject to him rather diffidently.
+
+"My dear"--he had somehow dropped into the use of the little term of
+endearment, and Gillian found that she liked it and knew that she
+would miss it if it were suddenly erased from his speech--"my dear,
+why cross bridges till we come to them? Perhaps, when the time comes,
+there'll be no bridge to cross."
+
+Gillian glanced at him swiftly.
+
+"Do you mean that she--that you're feeling less bitter towards her,
+Dan?" she asked eagerly.
+
+He smiled down at her whimsically.
+
+"I don't quite know. But I know one thing--it's very difficult to be a
+lot with you and keep one's anger strictly up to concert pitch."
+
+Gillian made no answer. She was too wise--with that intuitive wisdom
+of woman--to force the pace. If Dan were beginning to relent ever so
+little towards Magda--why, then, her two best friends might yet come
+together in comradeship and learn to forget the bitter past. The
+gentle hand of Time would be laid on old wounds and its touch would
+surely bring healing. But Gillian would no more have thought of trying
+to hasten matters than she would have tried to force open the close-
+curled petals of a flower in bud.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE RETURN
+
+Magda slipped through the tall doorway in the wall which marked the
+abode of the Sisters of Penitence and stood once more on the pavement
+of the busy street. The year was over, and just as once before the
+clicking of the latch had seemed to signify the end of everything, so
+now it sounded a quite different note--of new beginnings, of release--
+freedom!
+
+Three months prior to the completion of her allotted span at the
+sisterhood Magda had had a serious attack of illness. The hard and
+rigorous life had told upon her physically, while the unaccustomed
+restrictions, the constant obedience exacted, had gone far towards
+assisting in the utter collapse of nerves already frayed by the strain
+of previous happenings.
+
+Probably her fierce determination to go through with her self-elected
+expiation, no matter what the cost, had a good deal to do with her
+ultimate breakdown. With unswerving resolution she had forced herself
+to obedience, to the performance of her appointed tasks in spite of
+their distastefulness; and behind the daily work and discipline there
+had been all the time the ceaseless, aching longing for the man who
+had loved her and who had gone away.
+
+It was not surprising, therefore, that the tired body and nerves at
+last gave way, and in the delirium of brain fever Magda revealed the
+whole pitiful story of the mistakes and misunderstandings which had
+brought her in desperation to the Sisters of Penitence.
+
+Fortunately it was upon Sister Bernardine that the major part of the
+nursing devolved, and it was into her gentle ears that Magda
+unwittingly poured out the history of the past. Bit by bit, from the
+ramblings of delirium, Sister Bernardine pieced together the story,
+and her shy, virginal heart found itself throbbing in overflowing
+sympathy--a sympathy that sought expression in the tender care she
+gave her patient.
+
+During the long, slow days of convalescence Magda, very helpless and
+dependent, had gradually learned to love the soft-footed little Sister
+who came and went throughout her illness--to love her as she would
+not, at one time, have believed it possible she could grow to love
+anyone behind the high grey walls which encircled the sisterhood.
+
+If the past year had taught her nothing else, it had at least taught
+her that goodness and badness are very evenly distributed. She had
+found both good and bad behind those tall grey walls just as she had
+found them in the great free world outside.
+
+Her last memory, as her first, was of Sister Bernardine's kind eyes.
+
+"Some of us find happiness in the world," the little Sister had said
+at parting, "and some of us out of it. I think you were meant to find
+yours in the world."
+
+It was Magda's own choice to leave the sisterhood on foot. She had
+nothing to take with her in the way of luggage, and she smiled a
+little as she realised that, for the moment, she possessed actually
+nothing but the clothes she stood up in--the same in which she had
+quitted Friars' Holm a year ago, and which, on departure, she had
+substituted for the grey veil and habit she was discarding.
+
+At first, as she made her way along the street, she found the
+continuous ebb and flow of the crowded thoroughfare somewhat confusing
+after the absolute calm and quiet of the preceding months, but very
+soon the Londoner's familiar love of London and of its ceaseless,
+kaleidoscopic movement returned to her, and with it the requisite
+poise to thread her way through the throngs that trod the pavements.
+
+Then her eyes turned to the shop windows--Catherine's stern discipline
+had completely failed to stamp out the eternal feminine in her niece--
+and as they absorbed the silken stuffs and rainbow colours that
+gleamed and glowed behind the thick plateglass, she became suddenly
+conscious of her own attire--of its cut and style. When last she had
+worn it, it had been the final word in fashionable raiment. Now it was
+out of date. The Wielitzska, whose clothes the newspapers had loved to
+chronicle, in a frock in which any one of the "young ladies" behind
+the counters of these self-same shops into which she was gazing would
+have declined to appear! She almost laughed out loud. And then, quick
+on the heels of her desire to laugh, came a revulsion of feeling. This
+little incident, just the disparity between the fashion of her own
+clothes and the fashion prevailing at the moment, served to make her
+realise, with a curious clarity of vision, the irrevocable passage of
+time. A year--a slice out of her life! What other differences would it
+ultimately show?
+
+Something else was already making itself apparent--the fact that none
+of the passers-by seemed to recognise her. In the old days, when she
+had been dancing constantly at the Imperial Theatre, she had grown so
+used to seeing the sudden look of interest and recognition spring into
+the eyes of one or another, to the little eager gesture that nudged a
+companion, pointing out the famous dancer as she passed along the
+street, that she had thought nothing of it--had hardly consciously
+noticed it. Now she missed it--missed it extraordinarily.
+
+A sudden sense of intense loneliness swept over her--the loneliness of
+the man who has been cast on a desert island, only returning to his
+fellows after many weary months of absence. She felt she could not
+endure to waste another moment before she saw again the beloved faces
+of Gillian and Virginie and felt once more the threads of the old
+familiar life quiver and vibrate between her fingers.
+
+With a quick, imperative gesture she hailed a taxi and was whirled
+away towards Hampstead.
+
+
+
+The first excited greetings and embraces were over. The flurry of
+broken, scattered phrases, half-tearfully, half-smilingly welcoming
+her back, had spent themselves, and now old Virginie, drawing away,
+regarded her with bewildered, almost frightened eyes.
+
+"/Mais, mon dieu/!" she muttered. "/Mon dieu/!" Then with a sudden
+cry: "Cherie! Cherie! What have they done to thee? What have they
+done?"
+
+"Done to me?" repeated Magda in puzzled tones. "Oh, I see! I'm
+thinner. I've been ill, you know."
+
+"It is not--that! Hast thou looked in the glass? Oh, my poor----" And
+the old Frenchwoman incontinently began to weep.
+
+A glass! Magda had not seen her own reflection in a looking-glass
+since the day she left Friars' Holm. There were no mirrors hanging on
+the walls of the house where the Sisters of Penitence dwelt. Filled
+with a nameless, inexplicable terror, she turned and walked out of the
+room. There was an old Chippendale mirror hanging at the further end,
+but she avoided it. Something in the askance expression of Virginie's
+eyes had frightened her so that she dared not challenge what the
+mirror might give back until she was alone.
+
+Once outside the door she flew upstairs to her own room and, locking
+the door, went to the glass. A stifled exclamation of dismay escaped
+her. She had not dreamed a year could compass such an alteration!
+Then, very deliberately, she removed her hat and, standing where the
+light fell full upon her, she examined her reflection. After a long
+moment she spoke, whisperingly, beneath her breath.
+
+"Why--why--it isn't me, at all. I'm ugly. Ugly----"
+
+With a quick movement she lifted her arm, screening her face against
+it for a moment.
+
+Her startled eyes had exaggerated the change absurdly. Nevertheless,
+that a change had taken place was palpable. The arresting radiance,
+the vivid physical perfection of her, had gone. She was thin, and with
+the thinness had come lines--lines of fatigue, and other, more lasting
+lines born of endurance and self-control. The pliant symmetry of her
+figure, too, was marred. She stooped a little; the gay, free carriage
+of her shoulders was gone. The heavy manual work at the sisterhood, of
+which, in common with the others, she had done her share, had taken
+its toll of her suppleness and grace, and the hands she extended in
+front of her, regarding them distastefully, were roughened and worn by
+the unwonted usage to which they had been subjected. Her hair, so
+long, hidden from the light and air by the veil she had worn, was
+flaccid and lustreless. Only her eyes remained unchangedly beautiful.
+Splendid and miserable, they stared back at the reflection which the
+mirror yielded.
+
+
+
+It was a long time before Magda reappeared downstairs, so long,
+indeed, that Gillian was beginning to grow nervously uneasy. When at
+last she came, she was curiously quiet and responded to all Gillian's
+attempts at conversation with a dull, flat indifference that was
+strangely at variance with the spontaneously happy excitement which
+had attended the first few moments after her arrival.
+
+Gillian was acutely conscious of the difference in her manner, but
+even she, with all her intuition, failed to attribute it to its
+rightful cause. To her, Magda was so indubitably, essentially the
+Magda she loved that she was hardly sensible of that shadowing of her
+radiant beauty which had revealed itself with a merciless clarity to
+the dancer herself. And such change as she observed she ascribed to
+recent illness.
+
+Meanwhile Magda got through that first evening at Friars' Holm as best
+she might. The hours seemed interminable. She was aching for night to
+come, so that she might be alone with her thoughts--alone to realise
+and face this new thing which had befallen her.
+
+She had lost her beauty! The one precious gift she had to give
+Michael, that lover of all beauty! . . . The knowledge seemed to beat
+against her brain, throbbing and pulsing like a wound, while she made
+a pretence at doing justice to the little dinner party, which had been
+especially concocted for her under Virginie's watchful eye, and
+responded in some sort to Coppertop's periodic outbreaks of jubilation
+over her return.
+
+But the moment of release came at length. A final good-night kiss to
+Gillian on the landing outside her bedroom door, and then a nerve-
+racking hour while Virginie fussed over her, undressing her and
+preparing her for bed with the same tender care she had devoted to the
+/bebe/ she had nursed and tended more than twenty years ago.
+
+It was over at last.
+
+"Sleep well!" And Virginie switched off the electric light as she
+pattered out of the room, leaving Magda alone in the cool dark, with
+the silken softness of crepe de chine once more caressing her slender
+limbs, and the fineness of lavender-scented linen smooth against her
+cheek.
+
+The ease, and comfort, and wellbeing of it all! Yet this first night,
+passed in the familiar luxury which had lapped her round since
+childhood, was a harder, more bitter night than any of the preceding
+three hundred and sixty-five she had spent tossing weary, aching limbs
+on a lumpy straw mattress with a coarse brown woollen blanket drawn up
+beneath her chin, vexing her satin skin.
+
+For each of those nights had counted as a step onwards along the hard
+road that was to lead her back eventually to Michael. Now she knew
+that they had all been endured in vain. Spiritually her self-elected
+year of discipline might have fitted her to be the wife of "Saint
+Michel." But the undimmed physical beauty and charm which Michael, the
+man and artist, would crave in the woman he loved was gone.
+
+The recognition of these things rushed over her, overwhelming her with
+a sense of blank and utter failure. It meant the end of everything. As
+far as she was concerned, life henceforward held nothing more. There
+was nothing to hope for in the future--except to hope that Michael
+might never see her again! At least, she would like to feel that his
+memory of her--of the Wielitzska whose lithe grace and beauty had
+swept him headlong even against the tide of his convictions--would
+remain for ever unmarred.
+
+It was a rather touching human little weakness--the weakness and
+prayer of many a woman who has lost her lover. . . . Let him remember
+her--always--as she was before the radiance of youth faded, before
+grief or pain blurred the perfection that had been hers!
+
+Perhaps for Magda the wish was even stronger, more insistent by reason
+of the fact that her beauty had been of so fine and rare a quality,
+setting her in a way apart from other women.
+
+With the instinct of the wounded wild creature she longed to hide--to
+hide herself from Michael, so that she might never see in his eyes
+that look of quickly veiled disappointment which she knew would spring
+into them as he realised the change in her. She felt she could not
+bear that. It would be like a sword-thrust through her heart. . . .
+Better if she had never left the sisterhood!
+
+Suddenly every nerve of her tautened. Supposing--supposing she
+returned there, never to emerge again? No chance encounter could ever
+then bring her within sight or sound of Michael. She would be spared
+watching the old, eager look of admiration fade suddenly from the grey
+eyes she loved.
+
+Hour after hour she lay there, dry-eyed, staring into the darkness.
+And with the dawn her decision was taken.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+AN UNANSWERED LETTER
+
+"You shan't do it!"
+
+When first Magda had bruited her idea of rejoining the sisterhood--the
+decision which had crystallised out of the long black hours of the
+night of her return to Friars' Holm--Gillian had merely laughed the
+notion aside, attaching little importance to it. But now, a week
+later, when Magda reverted to the subject with a certain purposeful
+definiteness, she grew suddenly frightened.
+
+"Do you want to throw away every possibility of happiness?" she
+demanded indignantly. "Just because Michael isn't here, waiting for
+you on the doorstep, so to speak, you decide to rush off and make it
+impossible for him ever to see you again!"
+
+Magda kept her head bent, refusing to meet the other's eyes.
+
+"I don't want him to see me now," she said shrinkingly. "I'm not--not
+the Magda he knew any longer."
+
+"That's an absurd exaggeration. You're not looking very well, that's
+all," retorted Gillian with her usual practical common sense. "You
+can't suppose that would make any difference to Michael! It didn't
+make any to me. I'm only too glad to have you back at any price!"
+
+Magda's faint responsive smile was touched with that bitter knowledge
+which is the heritage of the woman who has been much loved for her
+beauty.
+
+"You're a woman, Gillyflower," she said. "And Michael is not only a
+man--but an artist. Men don't want you when the bloom has been brushed
+off. And you know how Michael worships beauty! He's bound to--being an
+artist."
+
+"I think you're morbidly self-conscious," declared Gillian firmly. "I
+suppose it's the result of being out of the world for so long. You've
+lost all sense of proportion. You're quite lovely enough, now, to
+satisfy most people. You only look rather tired and worn out."
+
+But Magda's face remained clouded.
+
+"But even that isn't--all," she answered. "It's--oh, it's a heap of
+things! Somehow I thought when I came back I should see the road
+clear. But it isn't. It's all shadowed--just as it was before. I
+thought I should have so much to give Michael now. And I haven't
+anything. I don't think I ever quite realised before that, however
+much you try to atone, you can never /undo/ the harm you've done. But
+I've had time to think things out while I was with the Sisters."
+
+"And if you go back to them you'll have time to do nothing but think
+for the rest of your life!" flashed back Gillian.
+
+"Oh, no!" Magda spoke quickly. "I shouldn't return under a vow of
+penitence. There are working sisters attached to the community who go
+about amongst the sick and poor in the slums. I should join as a
+working sister if I went back."
+
+Gillian stared at her in amazement. Magda devoting her life to good
+works seemed altogether out of the picture! She began to feel that the
+whole affair was getting too complicated for her to handle, and as
+usual, when in a difficulty, she put the matter up to Lady Arabella.
+
+The latter, with her accumulated wisdom of seventy years, saw more
+clearly than the younger woman, although even she hardly understood
+that sense of the deadly emptiness and failure of her life which had
+overwhelmed Magda since her return to Friars' Holm. But the old woman
+realised that she had passed through a long period of strain, and
+that, now the reaction had come, the Vallincourt blood in her might
+drive her into almost any extreme of conduct.
+
+"If only Michael were on the spot!" she burst out irritably. "I own
+I'm disappointed in the man! I was so sure six months would bring him
+to his senses."
+
+"I know," assented Gillian miserably. "It's--it's--the most hopeless
+state of things imaginable!"
+
+Lady Arabella's interview with Magda herself proved unproductive.
+
+"Have you written to Michael?" she demanded.
+
+"Written to him?" A flash of the old defiant spirit sounded in Magda's
+voice. "No, nor shall I."
+
+"Don't be a fool, child. He's probably learned something during this
+last twelve months--as well as you. Don't let pride get in your way
+now."
+
+"It's not pride. Marraine, I never knew--I never thought---- Look at
+me! What have I to give Michael now? Have you forgotten that he's an
+artist and that beauty means everything to him?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"'Well!'" Magda held out her hands. "Can't you see that I'm changed?
+. . . Michael wouldn't want me to pose for him as Circe now!"
+
+"He wanted you for a wife--not a model, my dear. You can buy models at
+so much the hour."
+
+"Oh, Marraine! You won't understand----"
+
+Lady Arabella took the slender, work-roughened hands in hers.
+
+"Perhaps I understand better than you think," she said quietly. "There
+are other ways of assessing life than merely in terms of beauty. And
+you can believe this, too: you've lost nothing from the point of view
+of looks that a few months of normal healthy life won't set right.
+Moreover, if you'd grown as plain as a pikestaff, I don't think
+Michael would care twopence! He's an artist, I know. He can't help
+that, but he's a man first. And he's a man who knows how to love.
+Promise me one thing," she went on insistently. "Promise that you'll
+do nothing definite--yet. Not, at least, without consulting me."
+
+Magda hesitated.
+
+"Very well. I'll do nothing without--telling you--first."
+
+That was the utmost concession she would make, and with that her
+godmother had to be content.
+
+The same evening a letter in Lady Arabella's spirited, angular
+handwriting sped on its way to Paris.
+
+
+ "If you're not absolutely determined to ruin both your own and
+  Magda's lives, my dear Michael, put your pride and your ridiculous
+  principles in your pocket and come back to England. I don't happen
+  to be a grandmother, but I'm quite old enough for the job, so you
+  might pay my advice due respect by taking it."
+
+
+
+"I thought I was shelved altogether."
+
+Thus Dan Storran, rather crossly, when, a day or two later, he met
+Gillian by appointment for lunch at their favourite little restaurant
+in Soho. It was the first time she had been able to fix up a meeting
+with him since Magda's return, as naturally his customary visits to
+Friars' Holm were out of the question now.
+
+"Well, you expected my time to be pretty well occupied the first week
+or two after Magda came back, didn't you?" countered Gillian.
+
+She smiled as she spoke and proceeded leisurely to draw off her
+gloves, while Storran signalled to a waiter.
+
+She was really very glad to see him again. There was something so
+solid and dependable about him, and she felt it would be very
+comforting to confide in him her anxieties concerning Magda. Not that
+she anticipated he would have any particular compassion to bestow upon
+the latter. But she was femininely aware that inasmuch as Magda's
+affairs were disturbing her peace of mind, he would listen to them
+with sympathetic attention and probably, out of the depths of his
+man's consciousness, produce some quite sound and serviceable advice.
+
+Being a wise woman, however, she did not launch out into immediate
+explanation, but waited for him to work off his own individual grumble
+at not having seen her recently, trusting to the perfectly cooked
+little lunch to exercise a tranquillising effect.
+
+It was not until they had reached the cigarette and coffee stage of
+the proceedings that she allowed a small, well-considered sigh to
+escape her and drift away into the silence that had fallen between
+them. Storran glanced across at her with suddenly observant eyes.
+
+"What is it?" he asked quickly. "You look worried. Are you?"
+
+She nodded silently.
+
+"And here I've been grousing away about my own affairs all the time!
+Why didn't you stop me?"
+
+"You know I'm interested in your affairs."
+
+"And I'm interested in yours. What's bothering you, Gillian? Tell me."
+
+"Magda," said Gillian simply.
+
+She was rather surprised to observe that Dan's face did not, as usual,
+darken at the mere mention of Magda's name.
+
+"I saw her the other day," he said quickly. "I was in the Park and she
+drove by."
+
+Gillian felt that there was something more to come. She waited in
+silence.
+
+"She has altered very much," he went on bluntly. Then, after a moment:
+"I felt--sorry for her."
+
+"/You/ did, Dan?" Gillian's face lit up. "I'm glad. I've always hated
+your being so down on her."
+
+With an abrupt movement he jabbed the glowing stub of his cigarette on
+to an ash-tray, pressing it down until it went out. Then, taking out
+his case, he lit another before replying.
+
+"I shan't be 'down on her' any more," he said at last. "I never
+guessed she'd felt things--like that."
+
+"No. No one did. I don't suppose even Magda herself knew she could
+ever go through all she has done just for an ideal."
+
+Then very quietly, very simply and touchingly, she told him the story
+of all that had happened, of Magda's final intention of becoming a
+working member of the sisterhood, and of Lady Arabella's letter
+summoning Michael back to England.
+
+"But even when he comes," added Gillian, "unless he is very careful--
+unless he loves her in the biggest way a man can love, so that
+/nothing else matters/, he'll lose her. He'll have to convince her
+that she means just that to him."
+
+Storran was silent for a long time, and when at last he spoke it was
+with an obvious effort.
+
+"Listen," he said. "There's something you don't know. Perhaps when
+I've told you, you won't have anything more to say to me--I don't
+know."
+
+Gillian opened her lips in quick disclaimer, but he motioned her to be
+silent.
+
+"Wait," he said. "Wait till you've heard what I have to say. You
+think, and Magda thinks, that June died of a broken heart--at least,
+that the shock of all that miserable business down at Stockleigh
+helped to kill her."
+
+"Yes." Gillian assented mechanically when he paused.
+
+"I thought so, too, once. It was what June's sister told me--told
+everyone. But it wasn't true. She believed it, I know--probably
+believes it to this day. But, thank God, it wasn't true!"
+
+"How can you tell? All that strain and heart-break just at a time when
+she wasn't strong. Oh, Dan! We can never be sure--/sure/!"
+
+"I /am/ sure. Quite sure," he said steadily. "When I came to my senses
+out there in 'Frisco, I couldn't rest under that letter from June's
+sister. It burned into me like a red-hot iron. I was half-mad with
+pain, I think. I wrote to the doctor who had attended her, but I got
+no answer. Then I sailed for England, determined to find and see the
+man for myself. I found him--my letter had miscarried somehow--and he
+told me that June could not have lived. There were certain
+complications in her case which made it impossible. In fact, if she
+had been so happy that she had longed to live--and /tried/ to--it
+would only have made it harder for her, a rougher journey to travel.
+As it was, she went easily, without fighting death--letting go,
+without any effort, her hold on life."
+
+He ceased, and after a moment's silence Gillian spoke in strained,
+horror-stricken tones.
+
+"And you never told us! Oh! It was cruel of you, Dan! You would have
+spared Magda an infinity of self-reproach!"
+
+"I didn't want to spare her. I left her in ignorance on purpose. I
+wanted her to be punished--to suffer as she had made me suffer."
+
+There were tears in Gillian's eyes. It was terrible to her that Dan
+could be so bitter--so vengefully cruel. Yet she recognised that it
+had been but the natural outcome of the man's primitive nature to pay
+back good for good and evil for evil.
+
+"Then why do you tell me now?" she asked at last.
+
+"Why--because you've beaten me--you with your sweetness and courage
+and tolerance. You've taught me that retribution and punishment are
+best left in--more merciful Hands than ours."
+
+Gillian's hand went out to meet his.
+
+"Oh, Dan, I'm so glad!" she said simply.
+
+He kept her hand in his a moment, then released it gently.
+
+"Well, you can tell her now," he said awkwardly.
+
+"I?" Gillian smiled a little. "No. I want you to tell her. Don't you
+see, Dan"--as she sensed his impulse to refuse--"it will make all the
+difference in Magda if you and she are--are square with each other?
+She's overweighted. She's been carrying a bigger burden than she can
+bear. Michael comes first, of course, but there's been her treatment
+of you, as well. June, too. And--and other things. And it's crushing
+her. . . . No, you must tell her."
+
+"I will--if you say I must. But she won't forgive me easily."
+
+"I think she will. I think she'll understand just what made you do it.
+So now we'll go back to Friars' Holm together."
+
+An hour later Storran came slowly downstairs from the little room
+where he and Magda had met again for the first time since that
+moonlight night at Stockleigh--met, not as lovers, but as a man and
+woman who have each sinned and each learned, out of their sinning, how
+to pardon and forgive.
+
+Storran was very quiet and grave when presently he found himself alone
+with Gillian.
+
+"We men will never understand women," he said. "There's an angel
+hidden away somewhere in every one of you." His mouth curved into a
+smile, half-sad, half-whimsical. "I've just found Magda's."
+
+
+
+Lady Arabella and Gillian, both feeling rather like conspirators,
+waited anxiously for a reply to the former's letter to Quarrington.
+But none came. The time slipped by until a fortnight had elapsed, and
+with the passage of each day their hearts sank lower.
+
+Neither of them believed that Michael would have utterly disregarded
+the letter, had he received it, but they feared that it might have
+miscarried, or that he might be travelling and so not receive it in
+time to prevent Magda's carrying out her avowed intention of becoming
+a working member of the sisterhood.
+
+Even though she knew now that at least June Storran's death need no
+longer be added to her account, she still adhered to her decision. As
+she had told Dan with a weary simplicity: "I'm glad. But it won't make
+any difference--to Michael and me. Too much water has run under the
+bridge. Love that is dead doesn't come to life again."
+
+Each day was hardening her resolve, and both Lady Arabella and Gillian
+--those two whose unselfish happiness was bound up in her own--were
+beginning to realise that it would be a race against time if she was
+to be saved from taking a step that would divide her from Michael as
+long as they both should live.
+
+At the end of a fortnight Gillian, driven to desperation, despatched a
+telegram to his Paris address: "Did you receive communication from
+Lady Arabella?" But it shared the fate of the letter, failing to
+elicit any reply. She allowed sufficient time to elapse to cover any
+ordinary delay in transit, then, unknown to Magda, taxied down to the
+house in Park Lane.
+
+"I want you to invite Magda to stay with you, please," she informed
+Lady Arabella abruptly.
+
+"Of course I will," she replied. "But why? You've got a reason."
+
+Gillian nodded.
+
+"Yes," she acknowledged quietly. "I'm going to Paris--to find
+Michael."
+
+Lady Arabella, whose high spirits had wilted a little in the face of
+the double disappointment regarding any answer from Quarrington,
+beamed satisfaction.
+
+"You blessed child!" she exclaimed. "I'd have gone myself, but my old
+body is so stiff with rheumatism that I don't believe they'd get me on
+board the boat except in an ambulance!"
+
+"Well, I'm going," said Gillian. "Only the point is, Magda mustn't
+know. If she thought I was going off in pursuit of Michael I believe
+she'd lock me up in the cellar. She intends never to let him see her
+again. Melrose will manage about the letters, and somehow you've got
+to prevent Magda from coming to Friars' Holm and finding out that I'm
+not there."
+
+"I'll take her away with me," declared Lady Arabella. "Rheumatism--
+Harrogate. It's quite simple."
+
+Gillian heaved a sigh of relief.
+
+"Yes. That would be a good plan," she agreed. "Then I'd let you know
+when we should arrive--"
+
+"'We?'"
+
+"Michael and I. I'm not coming back without him. And you could bring
+Magda straight back to town with you."
+
+Lady Arabella's keen old eyes searched her face.
+
+"You sound very certain of success. Supposing you find Michael still
+unforgiving--and he refuses to return with you?"
+
+"I believe in Michael," replied Gillian steadily. "He's made mistakes.
+People in love do. But when he knows all that Magda has endured--for
+his sake, really--why, he'll come back. I'm sure of it."
+
+"I don't know, my dear. /I/ was sure he would come back within six
+months. But, you see, I was wrong. Men are kittle cattle--and often
+very slow to arrive at the intrinsic value and significance of things.
+A woman jumps to it while a man is crawling round on his hands and
+knees in the dark, looking for it with a match."
+
+Gillian laughed and got up to go, and Lady Arabella--whose rheumatism
+was quite real at the moment--rose rather painfully and hobbled down
+the room beside her, her thin, delicate old hand resting on the silver
+knob of a tall, ebony walking-stick.
+
+"Now, remember," urged Gillian. "Magda mustn't have the least
+suspicion Michael may be coming back--or she'd be off into her slums
+before you could stop her. /Whatever happens/, you've got to prevent
+her rushing back to the Sisters of Penitence."
+
+"Only over my dead body, my dear," Lady Arabella assured her
+determinedly. "She shan't go any other way."
+
+So Gillian returned to Friars' Holm bearing with her a note from Lady
+Arabella in which she asked her god-daughter to pay her a visit. In
+it, however, the wily old lady made no mention of her further idea of
+going to Harrogate, lest it should militate against an acceptance of
+the invitation. Magda demurred a little at first, but Gillian,
+suddenly endowed with diplomacy worthy of a Machiavelli, pointed out
+that if she really had any intention of ultimately withdrawing into a
+community the least she could do was to give her godmother the
+happiness of spending a few days with her.
+
+"She will only urge me to give up the idea all the time," protested
+Magda. "And I've quite made up my mind. The sooner I can get away from
+--from everything"--looking round her with desperate, haunted eyes--
+"the better it will be."
+
+Gillian's impulse to combat her decision to rejoin the sisterhood died
+on her lips stillborn. It was useless to argue the matter. There was
+only one person in the world who could save Magda from herself, and
+that was Michael. The main point was to concentrate on getting him
+back to England, rather than waste her energies upon what she knew
+beforehand must prove a fruitless argument.
+
+"I'll go to Marraine for a couple of nights, anyway," said Magda at
+last. "After that, I want to make arrangements for my reception into
+the sisterhood."
+
+Gillian returned no answer. She felt her heart contract at the quiet
+decision in Magda's voice, but she pinned her faith on Lady Arabella's
+ability to hold her, somehow, till she herself had accomplished her
+errand to Paris.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+AGAINST TIME
+
+Gillian, dashing headlong into Victoria Station, encountered Storran
+sauntering leisurely out of it, a newspaper under his arm.
+
+"Where are you off to?" he demanded, stopping abruptly. "You look as
+if you were in a hurry."
+
+"I am. Don't stop me. I'm catching the boat-train."
+
+Storran pulled out his watch as he turned and fell into step beside
+her.
+
+"Then you've got a good half-hour to spare. No hurry," he returned
+placidly.
+
+Gillian glanced at the watch on her wrist.
+
+"Are you sure?" she asked doubtfully. "If so, my watch must be
+altogether wrong!"
+
+"Unbeliever! Come and look at the clock. And, incidentally, give me
+that suit-case."
+
+She yielded up the case obediently and, having verified the time,
+proceeded towards the platform at a more reasonable gait.
+
+Storran, his long legs leisurely keeping pace with her shorter ones,
+smiled down at her.
+
+"And now, for the second time of asking, where are you off to?"
+
+"I'm going to France--to fetch Michael."
+
+He gave a quick exclamation--whether of surprise or disapproval she
+was not quite sure.
+
+"You haven't heard from him, then?"
+
+"No. And unless something happens /quick/, it will be too late."
+
+"But if he were at his studio he would surely have answered Lady
+Arabella's letter."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so," replied Gillian absently, her eyes following the
+queue of passengers passing through the gate on the platform. By
+mutual consent they had come to a standstill outside it.
+
+"Then if he isn't there, what's the use of your rushing over to
+Paris?" protested Storran. "It's absurd--an absolute wild-goose chase.
+You can't go!"
+
+Gillian's brown eyes came back to his face.
+
+"But I'm going," she said calmly.
+
+He frowned.
+
+"If Michael's not at his studio he may be--anywhere!"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I know. If so, I shall follow--anywhere."
+
+Storran looked down at her and read the quiet determination in her
+face.
+
+"Then let me come too," he said. "Sort of courier, you know. I'd just
+be at hand in case of a tangle."
+
+"Oh, no! I couldn't let you. There's not the least need. Good heavens,
+I'm not a baby!"
+
+There was a curious softness in Dan's blue eyes as they rested on her.
+
+"No. I think you're--a very good friend," he said. "But I don't see
+why you should have the monopoly! Let me show I know how to be a good
+pal, too, if I want to."
+
+"No--no." Gillian still protested, but her tone betrayed signs of
+weakening.
+
+"We'll be as conventional as you like," urged Dan, twinkling. "I'd
+stop at different hotels."
+
+"Well, but--"
+
+"Say 'yes'!" he insisted.
+
+Gillian smiled.
+
+"You obstinate person! Yes, then!"
+
+"Thank you. Then I'll go along and buy a ticket."
+
+He turned and went towards the booking-office, while Gillian, inwardly
+much relieved, awaited his return. She could not but acknowledge that
+in the "wild-goose chase" upon which she was embarking it would be an
+enormous comfort to have Storran at hand in case of an emergency. As
+to the proprieties--well, Gillian was far too honest and independent a
+soul to worry about them in the circumstances. Her friend's happiness
+was at stake. And whether people chose to talk because she and Dan
+Storran travelled to Paris together--or to Timbuctoo, for the matter
+of that, if Michael had chanced to depart thither--troubled her not at
+all.
+
+When Storran rejoined her a much more practical consideration
+presented itself to her mind.
+
+"But, my dear man, you can't fly with me to Paris without even a
+tooth-brush! I'd forgotten you'd no luggage!"
+
+Her face fell as she spoke. But Storran dismissed the matter with a
+smile.
+
+"Oh, I can buy clean collars and shirts as I go along," he replied,
+entirely unruffled. "The dickens was to get on to the train at all!
+They assured me there wasn't a seat. However, I make a point of never
+believing official statements--on principle."
+
+And as a consequence of such well-directed incredulity, Storran
+accompanied Gillian to Dover and thence to Calais.
+
+They had a good crossing--sun up and blue sky. Looking back,
+afterwards, it always seemed to Gillian as though the short time it
+occupied had been a merciful breathing space--a tranquil interval,
+specially vouchsafed, in which she was able to brace herself for the
+coming race against time. Just so long as they were on board, nothing
+she could do was of any importance whatever, either to help or hinder
+the fulfilment of her errand. She could not quicken the speed of the
+boat by a single throb of its engine. So, like a sensible woman, she
+sat on deck with Dan and enjoyed herself amazingly.
+
+Afterwards, in quick succession, came the stir and bustle of landing
+and the journey to Paris. They arrived too late to make any inquiries
+that night, but ten o'clock the following morning found them outside
+the building where Michael had his apartment.
+
+"Oh, Dan!"--Gillian was seized with sudden panic. "Supposing he is
+here, after all, and has /deliberately/ not answered Lady Arabella's
+letter?"
+
+"I shouldn't suppose anything so foolish. Michael may be many kinds of
+a fool--artists very often are, I believe. It's part of the
+temperament. But whatever he proposed to do regarding Magda, there's
+no reason in the world to suppose he wouldn't answer Lady Arabella's
+letter."
+
+"No--no. Perhaps not," agreed Gillian hurriedly. But it was in rather
+a shaky voice that she asked to see Mr. Quarrington when finally they
+found themselves confronted by the concierge.
+
+"Monsieur Quarrington?" Hands, shoulders, and eyebrows all seemed to
+gesticulate at once as madame la concierge made answer. "But he has
+been gone from here two--no, three months. Perhaps madame did not
+know?"
+
+"No," said Gillian. "I didn't know. But I thought he might possibly be
+away, because I--I have had no answer to a letter I wrote him."
+
+"What misfortune!"
+
+The concierge regarded Gillian with a pair of shrewd, gimlet eyes
+while a stream of inquiry and comment issued from her lips. Madame was
+the sister of monsieur, perhaps? Truly, they resembled each other! One
+could see at a glance. No, not a sister? Ah, a friend, then? And there
+had been no answer to a letter! But monsieur had left an address. Oh,
+yes. And all letters were forwarded. She herself saw to that.
+
+At last Gillian managed to stem the torrent of garrulity and
+interposed a question concerning the telegram she had sent.
+
+A telegram! Now that was another affair altogether. Yes, the concierge
+remembered the telegram. She had opened it to see if it were of life
+or death importance, in which case she would have, of course,
+telegraphed its contents to monsieur at his present address.
+
+Gillian was nearly crying with impatience as the woman's voluble
+tongue ran on complacently.
+
+"Then you did send it on?" she managed to interpolate at last.
+
+The letter--yes. Not, of course, the telegram. That would have been a
+needless expense seeing that monsieur would already have had the
+letter, since all the letters were sent on. /All!/ She, Madame Ribot,
+could vouch for that.
+
+At the end of half an hour Gillian succeeded in extracting Michael's
+address from amid the plethora of words and, bidding the voluble
+concierge /bon jour/, she and Storran beat a masterly retreat.
+
+It appeared that Michael had been commissioned to paint the portrait
+of some Italian society beauty and had gone to Rome. Gillian screwed
+up her small face resolutely.
+
+"I shall go to Rome!" she announced succinctly. There was a definite
+defiance in her tone, and Storran concealed a smile.
+
+"Of course you will," he replied composedly. "Just as well I came with
+you, isn't it?" he added with great cheerfulness.
+
+Her expression relaxed.
+
+"You really are rather a nice person, Dan," she allowed graciously. "I
+was horribly afraid you'd suggest wiring Michael again, or something
+silly like that. I'm not going to trust to anything of that kind."
+
+Accordingly, the only wire despatched was one to Lady Arabella,
+informing her as to their movements, and a few hours later found Dan
+and Gillian rushing across Europe as fast as the thunderous whirl of
+the express could take them. They travelled day and night, and it was
+a very weary Gillian who at last opened her eyes to the golden
+sunshine of Italy.
+
+At the hotel whither Madame Ribot had directed them, fresh
+disappointment awaited them. The manager--when he found that the two
+dusty and somewhat dishevelled-looking travellers who presented
+themselves at the inquiry bureau were actually friends of Signor
+Quarrington, the famous English artist who had stayed at his hotel--
+was desolated, but the signor had departed a month ago! Had he the
+address? But assuredly. He would write it down for the signora.
+
+"He's in Normandy!" exclaimed Gillian in tones of bitter
+disappointment. "At--what's the name of the place?--Armanches. Oh,
+Dan! We've got to go right back to Paris again and then on to the
+coast."
+
+Her face was full of anxiety. This would mean at least a delay of
+several days before they could possibly see Michael, and meanwhile it
+was a moot question as to how much longer Lady Arabella could restrain
+Magda from taking definite steps with regard to joining the
+sisterhood.
+
+Storran nodded.
+
+"Yes," he said quietly. "But all the same, you'll not start back till
+to-morrow--"
+
+"Oh, but I must!" interrupted Gillian. "We can't afford to waste a
+moment."
+
+He glanced down at her and shook his head. Her face was white and
+drawn, and there were deep violet shadows underneath her eyes.
+Suspense and her anxious impatience had told upon her, and she had
+slept but little on the journey. And now, with the addition of this
+last, totally unexpected disappointment, she looked as though she
+could not stand much more.
+
+"We can afford to waste a single day better than we can afford the
+three or four which it would cost us if you collapsed en route," said
+Storran.
+
+"I shan't collapse," she protested with white lips.
+
+"So much the better. But all the same, you'll stay here till to-morrow
+and get a good night's rest."
+
+"I shouldn't sleep," she urged. "Let's go right on, Dan. Let's go----"
+
+But the sentence was never finished. Quite suddenly she swayed,
+stretching out her hands with a blind, groping movement. Dan was just
+in time to catch her in his arms as she toppled over in a dead faint.
+
+It was a week later when, in the early morning, a rather wan and
+white-faced Gillian sprang up from her seat as the train ran into
+Bayeux.
+
+"Thank goodness we're here at last!" she exclaimed.
+
+Storran put out his hand to steady her as the train jolted to a
+standstill.
+
+"Yes, we're here at last," he said. "Now to find a vehicle of some
+description to take us out to Armanches."
+
+As he had suggested it would, Gillian's collapse had delayed them some
+time. Probably she had caught a slight chill while travelling, and
+that, together with the fatigue from which she was suffering, combined
+to keep her in bed at the hotel in Rome for a couple of days.
+
+When the slight feverishness had abated, she slept the greater part of
+the time, her weary body exacting the price for all those wakeful
+hours she had passed on the train. But it was not until four days had
+elapsed that Dan would agree to a resumption of the journey. Even
+then, consent was only wrung from him by the fear that she would fret
+herself ill over any further delay. He did not consider her by any
+means fit to travel. But Gillian was game to the core, and they had
+reached Bayeux without further /contretemps/.
+
+"The thing that puzzles me," she said as they started on the long
+drive from Bayeux to Armanches, "is why Michael didn't send his
+Normandy address to Madame Ribot. We should have been saved all that
+long journey to Rome if he had."
+
+"Perhaps he intended to, and forgot," suggested Dan. "Artists are
+proverbially absent-minded."
+
+But Gillian shook her head with a dissatisfied air. Michael was not of
+the absent-minded type.
+
+Armanches was a tiny place on the Normandy coast, in reality not much
+more than a fishing village, but its possession of a beautiful /plage/
+--smooth, fine, golden sands--brought many visitors to the old-
+fashioned hostelry it boasted.
+
+The landlady, a smiling, rosy-cheeked woman, with a chubby little
+brown-faced son hiding shy embarrassment behind her ample skirts,
+greeted the travellers hospitably. But when they mentioned
+Quarrington's name a look of sympathetic concern overspread her comely
+face.
+
+Yes, he was there. And of course madame could not know, but he had
+been ill, seriously ill with /la grippe/--taken ill the very day he
+had arrived, nearly a month ago. He had a nurse. Oh, yes! One had come
+from Bayeux. But this influenza! It was a veritable scourge. One was
+here to-day and gone to-morrow. However, Michael Quarrington was
+recovering, the saints be praised! Monsieur and madame wished to see
+him? The good woman looked doubtful. She would inquire. What name?
+Grey? But there was a telegram awaiting madame!
+
+Gillian's face blanched as the landlady bustled away in search of the
+wire. Had Magda already---- Oh, but that was impossible! Lady Arabella
+was in charge at that end, and Gillian had a great belief in Lady
+Arabella's capacity to deal with any crisis that might arise.
+Nevertheless, they had wired her the Normandy address from Rome, in
+case of necessity. The next moment Gillian had torn open the telegram
+and she and Dan were reading it together.
+
+
+ "Magda insists we return to London on Wednesday. She has completed
+  preliminary arrangements to join sisterhood and goes there
+  Thursday. Impossible to dissuade her.--ARABELLA WINTER."
+
+
+Gillian's mouth set itself in a straight line of determination as her
+eyes raced along the score or so of pregnant words. She was silent a
+moment. Then she met Storran's questioning glance.
+
+"We can just do it," she said sternly. "To-day is Wednesday. By
+crossing to Southampton to-night, we can make London to-morrow."
+
+Without waiting for his reply she entered the inn and ran quickly up
+the stairs which the landlady had already ascended.
+
+"But, madame, I am not sure that monsieur will receive anyone,"
+protested the astonished woman, turning round as Gillian caught up
+with her.
+
+"I must see him," asserted Gillian quietly.
+
+Perhaps something in the tense young face touched a sympathetic chord
+in the Frenchwoman's honest heart. She scented romance, and when she
+emerged from the invalid's bedroom her face was wreathed in smiles.
+
+"It is all arranged. Will madame please to enter?"
+
+A moment later Gillian found herself standing in front of a tall,
+gaunt figure of a man, whose coat hung loosely from his shoulders and
+whose face was worn and haggard with something more than /la grippe/
+alone.
+
+"Oh, Michael!"
+
+A little, stricken cry broke from her lips. What men and women make
+each other suffer! She realised it as she met the stark, bitter misery
+of the grey eyes that burned at her out of the thin face and
+remembered the look on Magda's own face when she had last seen her.
+
+She went straight to the point without a word of greeting or of
+explanation. There was no time for explanations, except the only one
+that mattered.
+
+"Michael, why didn't you answer Lady Arabella's letter?"
+
+He stared at her. Then he passed his hand wearily across his forehead.
+
+"Letter? I don't remember any letter."
+
+"She wrote to you about a month ago. I know the letter was forwarded
+on to Rome. It must have followed you here."
+
+"A month ago?" he repeated.
+
+Then a light broke over his face. He turned and crossed the room to
+where a small pile of letters lay on a table, dusty and forgotten.
+
+"Perhaps it's here," he said. "I was taken ill directly I arrived. I
+never even sent this address to the concierge at Paris. I believe I
+was off my head part of the time--'flue plays the deuce with you. But
+I remember now. The nurse told me there were some letters which had
+come while I was ill. I--didn't bother about them."
+
+While he spoke he was turning over the envelopes, one by one, in a
+desultory fashion.
+
+"Yes. This is Lady Arabella's writing." He paused and looked across at
+Gillian.
+
+"Will you read it, please?" she said. "And--oh, you ought to sit down!
+You don't look very strong yet."
+
+He smiled a little.
+
+"I'm not quite such a crock as I look. But won't you sit down yourself
+while I read this letter? Is it of importance?"
+
+"Oh! Please read it!" exclaimed Gillian with sudden nervous
+impatience.
+
+It seemed to her an eternity while he read the letter. But at last he
+looked up from its perusal.
+
+"Well?" she asked under her breath.
+
+Very deliberately he refolded the sheet of notepaper and slipped it
+back into its envelope.
+
+"It would have made no difference if I had received it earlier," he
+said composedly.
+
+"No difference"
+
+"None. Because, you see, this letter--asking me to go back to Magda--
+is written under a misapprehension.
+
+"How? What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean--that Magda has--no further use for me."
+
+Gillian leaned forward.
+
+"You're wrong," she said tersely--"quite wrong."
+
+"No." He shook his head. "I'm not blaming her. Looking back, I'm not
+even very much surprised. But still, the fact remains, she has no
+further use for me."
+
+"Will you tell me what makes you think that?" With an effort Gillian
+forced herself to speak quietly and composedly.
+
+He was silent a moment, staring out of the window at the gay blue sea
+beyond, sparkling in the morning sunlight. All at once he swung round
+on her, his face wrung with a sudden agony.
+
+"I /know/," he said in a roughened voice. "I know, because I wrote to
+her--six months ago. I was hard, I know, brutally hard to her that
+last day at Friars' Holm. But--God! I paid for it afterwards! And I
+wrote to her--bared my very soul to her. . . . Wrote so that if she
+had ever cared she must at least have answered me."
+
+He stopped abruptly, his face working.
+
+"And she didn't answer?"
+
+A wry smile twisted his lips.
+
+"I got my own letter back," he said quietly. "After all, that was an
+answer--a conclusive one."
+
+Gillian was thinking rapidly. Six months ago! A momentary flash of
+recollection came to her. So Lady Arabella, that wise old citizen of
+the world, had been quite right after all! She had given Michael six
+months to find out his imperative need of Magda. And he had found it.
+Only--something had gone wrong.
+
+"Magda never had that letter," she said quietly at last.
+
+She was gradually beginning to piece together the separate parts of
+the puzzle. All letters that came for Magda had been forwarded on to
+the sisterhood, and had she herself readdressed this of Michael's she
+would have recognised the handwriting. But probably she had been away
+from home, or had chanced to be out at post time, in which case
+Melrose, or old Virginie, would have readdressed the envelope and
+dropped it in the pillar box at the corner of the road.
+
+Then--as was the case with any correspondence addressed to one of the
+Sisters of Penitence--the letter would be read by the Mother Superior
+and passed on to its destined recipient if she thought good. If
+not----
+
+Gillian had learned a great deal about Catherine Vallincourt by now,
+both from Lady Arabella and from Magda herself, who, before leaving
+the community, had discovered the identity of its head. And she could
+visualise the stern, fanatical woman, obsessed by her idea of
+disciplining Magda and of counteracting the effects of her brother's
+marriage with Diane Wielitzska, opening the letter and, after perusal,
+calmly sealing it up in its envelope again and returning it to the
+sender.
+
+"Magda never had that letter, Michael," she repeated. "Listen!" And
+then, without preamble, but with every word vibrant with pity for the
+whole tragedy, she poured out the story of Magda's passionate
+repentance and atonement, of her impetuous adoption of her father's
+remorseless theory, mistaken though it might be, that pain is the
+remedy for sin, and of the utter, hopeless despair which had
+overwhelmed her now that she believed it had all proved unavailing.
+
+"She has come to believe that you don't want her--never could want
+her, Michael--because she has failed so much."
+
+There was more than one reproach mingled with the story, but Michael
+made no protest. It was only when she had finished that Gillian could
+read in his tortured eyes all that her narrative had cost him.
+
+"Yes," he said at last. "It's true. I wanted the impossible. I was
+looking for a goddess--not a woman. . . . But now I want--just a
+woman, Gillian."
+
+"Then, if you want her, you must save her from herself. You've just
+twenty-four hours to do it in. To-morrow she's still Magda. The next
+day she'll be Sister Somebody. And you'll have lost her."
+
+Half an hour later, when Michael's nurse returned, she found her
+patient packing a suit-case with the assistance of a pretty, brown-
+haired girl whose eyes shone with the unmistakable brightness of
+recent tears.
+
+"But you're not fit to travel!" she protested in horrified dismay.
+"You mustn't think of it, Mr. Quarrington."
+
+But Michael only laughed at her, defying her good-humouredly.
+
+"If the man you loved were waiting for you in England, nurse, you know
+you'd go--and you wouldn't care a hang whether you were fit to travel
+or not!"
+
+The nurse smiled in spite of herself.
+
+"No," she admitted. "I suppose I shouldn't."
+
+As the Havre-Southampton boat steamed through the moonlit night, Dan
+and Gillian were pacing the deck together.
+
+"I'm so glad Michael is going back to Magda without knowing--about
+June," said Gillian, coming to a standstill beside the deck-rail.
+"Going back just because his love is too big for anything else to
+matter now."
+
+"Haven't you told him?"--Storran's voice held surprise.
+
+"No. I decided not to. I should like Magda to tell him that herself."
+
+They were both silent for a little while. Gillian bent over the rail,
+looking down at the phosphorescent water breaking away from the
+steamer's bow. Suddenly a big hand covered hers.
+
+"I think I'm--lonely," said Storran.
+
+"Gillian," he went on, his voice deepening. "Gillian . . . dear. We're
+two rather lonely people. We shall be lonelier still when Michael and
+Magda are married. Couldn't we be lonely--in company?"
+
+Gillian's hand moved a little beneath his, then stayed still.
+
+"Why, Dan--Dan----" she stammered.
+
+"Yes," went on the strong, tender voice. "I'm asking you to marry me,
+Gillian, I'd never expect too much of you. We both know all that's in
+the past of each of us. But we might help each other to be less lonely
+--good comrades together, Gillian."
+
+And suddenly Gillian realised how good it would be to rest once more
+in the shelter of a man's affection and good comradeship--to have
+someone to laugh with or to be sorry with. There's a tender magic in
+the word "together." And she, too, had something to give in return--
+sympathy, and understanding, and a warm friendship. . . . She would
+not be going to him empty-handed.
+
+"Is it yes, Gillian?"
+
+She bent her head.
+
+"Yes, Dan."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE EDGE OF THE DAWN
+
+Magda paused outside the closed door of the room. She knew whom she
+would see within. Lady Arabella had told her he was there waiting for
+her.
+
+Her first impulse had been to refuse to meet him. Then the temptation
+to see him again--just once more--before she passed out of his life
+altogether, rushed over her like the surge of some resistless sea,
+sweeping everything before it.
+
+Very quietly she opened the door and went into the room.
+
+"Magda!"
+
+She never knew whether he really uttered her name or whether it was
+only the voiceless, clamorous cry of his whole consciousness--of a
+man's passionate demand for the woman who is mate of his soul and
+body.
+
+But she answered its appeal, her innermost being responding to the
+claim of it. All recollection of self, of the dimming of her beauty,
+even of the great gulf of months that lay between them, crowded with
+mistakes and failure, was burned away in the white-hot flame of love
+that blazed up within her.
+
+She ran to him, and that white, searing flame found its expression in
+the dear human tenderness of the little cry that broke from her as he
+turned his gaunt face towards her.
+
+"Oh, Saint Michel! Saint Michel! How dreadfully ill you look! Oh, my
+dear--sit down! You're not fit to stand!"
+
+But when that first instinctive cry had left her lips, memory came
+flooding over her once more. She shrank back from him, covering her
+face with her hands, agonisingly conscious of the change in herself--
+of that shadowing of her beauty which the sensitiveness of a woman in
+love had so piteously magnified.
+
+Then, drawing her hands slowly down, she braced herself to say what
+must be said.
+
+"You are free of me, Michael." She spoke in a curious, still voice. "I
+know Marraine and Gillian between them have brought you back. But you
+are free of me. As you see--I shall never do any more harm. No other
+man will come to grief for the sake of the Wielitzska. . . . I
+determined that as I had made others pay, so I would pay. I think"--
+suddenly moving towards the window and standing full in the brilliant
+sunlight--"I think you'll agree I've settled the bill."
+
+Michael came to her side.
+
+"I want you for my wife," he said simply.
+
+She held out her work-roughened hands, while the keen-edged sunlight
+pitilessly revealed the hollowed line of cheek and throat, the
+lustreless dark hair, the fine lines that Pain, the great Sculptor,
+had graved about her mouth.
+
+"You are an artist before everything, Michael," she said. "Look--look
+well!"
+
+He took the two work-worn hands in his and drew her nearer him.
+
+"I'm your lover before everything," he answered. "When will you come
+to me, Magda?"
+
+"No, no," she said whisperingly. "I mustn't come. You'll never--never
+quite forgive me. Some day the past would come between us again--
+you'll never forget it all."
+
+"No," he replied steadily. "Perhaps not. Consequences /cannot/ be
+evaded. There are things that can't be forgotten. But one forgives.
+And I love you--love you, Magda, so that I can't face life without
+you." His voice vibrated. "The past must always lie like a shadow on
+our love. But you're my woman--my soul! And if you've sinned, then it
+must be my sin, too----"
+
+She leaned away from him.
+
+"Do you mean--June?" she asked.
+
+He nodded with set lips.
+
+"Then--then you don't know--you haven't heard?"
+
+His expression answered her and her face changed--grew suddenly
+radiant, transfigured. "Oh, Saint Michel--Saint Michel! Then there is
+one thing I can do, one gift I have still left to give! Oh, my dear, I
+can take away the shadow!" Her voice breathless and shaken, she told
+him how June had died--all that Dan Storran had learned from the
+doctor who had attended her.
+
+"I know I hurt her--hurt her without thinking. But oh, Michael! Thank
+God, it wasn't through me that she died!"
+
+And Michael, as he folded his arms about her, knew that the shadow
+which had lain between him and the woman he loved was there no longer.
+They were free--freed from those "ropes of steel" which had held them
+bound. Free to go together and find once more their Garden of Eden.
+
+
+
+Presently, when those first perfect moments of reunion were past,
+Magda gave utterance to the doubts and perplexities that still vexed
+her soul.
+
+"Pain may purify," she said slowly. "But it spoils, Michael, and
+blots, and ruins. I think, after all, pain is meaningless."
+
+Michael's grey, steady eyes met her troubled ones.
+
+"I don't think pain--just as pain--purifies," he answered quickly.
+"Pain is merely horrible. It is the /willingness to suffer/ that
+shrives us--not the pain itself."
+
+Later still, the essential woman in her came into its own again. "I
+shall never be able to sit for you any more, Saint Michel," she said
+regretfully. "I'm nobody's model--now!"
+
+She could see only her lost beauty--the unthinking, radiant beauty of
+mere youth. But Michael could see all that her voluntary renunciation
+and atonement had bestowed in its stead of more enduring significance.
+
+He took her by the hand and led her to the mirror.
+
+"There," he said, a great content in his voice, "is the model for the
+greatest picture I shall ever paint--the model for my 'Madonna.'"
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Lamp of Fate by Margaret Pedler
+
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