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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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