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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia
+Scarlett, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+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 Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett
+
+Author: Compton Mackenzie
+
+Release Date: April 24, 2012 [EBook #39527]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SYLVIA SCARLETT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SYLVIA SCARLETT
+
+BOOKS BY COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+SYLVIA SCARLETT PLASHERS MEAD
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK [ESTABLISHED 1817]
+
+
+
+
+THE EARLY LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF
+
+SYLVIA SCARLETT
+
+By COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+Author of "PLASHERS MEAD" "SINISTER STREET" "CARNIVAL" ETC.
+
+[Illustration: colophon]
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+SYLVIA SCARLETT
+
+Copyright, 1918,
+by Harper & Brothers
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+PRELUDE
+
+
+
+
+=_Prelude_=
+
+
+At six o'clock on the morning of Ash Wednesday in the year 1847, the
+Honorable Charles Cunningham sat sipping his coffee in the restaurant of
+the Vendanges de Bourgogne. He was somewhat fatigued by the exertions
+that as "lion" of the moment he had felt bound to make, exertions that
+had included a display of English eccentricity and had culminated in a
+cotillion at a noble house in the Faubourg St.-Germain, the daughter of
+which had been assigned to him by Parisian gossip as his future wife.
+Marriage, however, did not present itself to his contemplation as an
+urgent duty; and he sipped his coffee, reassured by the example of his
+brother Saxby, who, with the responsibility of a family succession,
+remained a bachelor. In any case, the notion of marrying a French girl
+was preposterous; he was not to be flattered into an unsuitable alliance
+by compliments upon his French. Certainly he spoke French uncommonly
+well, devilishly well for an Englishman, he told himself; and he stroked
+his whiskers in complacent meditation.
+
+Charles Cunningham had arrived at the Vendanges de Bourgogne to watch
+that rowdy climax of Carnival, the _descente de la Courtille_. And now
+through the raw air they were coming down from Belleville, all sorts of
+revelers in masks and motley and rags. The noise of tin trumpets and toy
+drums, of catcalls and cocoricots, of laughter and cheers and whistling,
+came nearer. Presently the road outside was thronged for the aristocrats
+of the Faubourg St.-Germain to alight from their carriages and mix with
+the mob. This was the traditional climax of Carnival for Parisian
+society: every year they drove here on Ash Wednesday morning to get
+themselves banged on the head by bladders, to be spurted with cheap
+scent and pelted with sugar-plums, and to retaliate by flinging down
+hot louis for the painful enrichment of the masses. The noise was for a
+time deafening; but gradually the cold light of morning and the
+melancholy Lenten bells cast a gloom upon the crowd, which passed on
+toward the boulevards, diminishing in sound and size at every street
+corner.
+
+The tall, fair Englishman let himself be carried along by the exodus,
+thinking idly what excitable folk foreigners were, but conscious,
+nevertheless, of a warmth of intimacy that was not at all disagreeable,
+the kind of intimacy that is bestowed on a man by taking a pack of
+friendly dogs for a country walk. Suddenly he was aware of a small hand
+upon his sleeve, a small hand that lay there like a white butterfly;
+and, looking down, he saw a poke-bonnet garlanded with yellow rosebuds.
+The poke-bonnet was all he could see, for the wearer kept her gaze
+steadily on the road, while with little feet she mimicked his long
+strides. The ineffable lightness of the arm laid on his own, the joyous
+mockery of her footsteps, the sense of an exquisite smile beneath the
+poke-bonnet, and the airy tremor of invitation that fluttered from the
+golden shawl of Siamese crêpe about her shoulders tempted him to
+withdraw from the crowd at the first opportunity. Soon they were in a
+by-street, whence the clamor of Carnival slowly died away, leaving no
+sound upon the morning air but their footfalls and the faint whisper of
+her petticoats where she tripped along beside him.
+
+Presently the poke-bonnet was raised; Charles Cunningham beheld his
+companion's face, a perfect oval, set with eyes of deepest brown,
+demurely passionate, eyes that in this empty street were all for him. He
+had never considered himself a romantic young man; when this encounter
+had faded to a mere flush upon the dreamy sky of the past, he was always
+a little scornful of his first remark, and apt to wonder how the deuce
+he ever came to make it.
+
+"By Jove! _vous savez, vous êtes tout à fait comme un oiseau!_"
+
+"_Eh, alors?_" she murmured, in a tone that was neither defiance nor
+archness nor indifference nor invitation, but something that was
+compounded of all four and expressed exactly herself. "_Eh, alors?_"
+
+"_Votre nid est loin d'ici?"_ he asked.
+
+Nor did he blush for the guise of his speech at the time: afterward it
+struck him as most indecorously poetic.
+
+"_Viens donc,"_ she whispered.
+
+"_Comment appelez-vous?"_
+
+"_Moi, je suis Adèle._"
+
+"_Adèle quoi?_" he pressed.
+
+"_Mais Adèle alors, tout simplement ça._"
+
+"_C'est un peu--vous savez--un peu._" He made a sweep with his
+unoccupied arm to indicate the vagueness of it all.
+
+"I love you," she trilled; deep down in her ivory throat emotion caught
+the trill and made of it a melody that set his heart beating.
+
+"_Vraiment?_" he asked, very solemnly; then laying syllable upon
+syllable in a kind of amazed deliberation, as a child builds a tower of
+bricks, he began to talk to her in French.
+
+"_Mais, comme tu parles bien,_" she told him.
+
+"_Tu m'inspires,_" he murmured, hoarsely.
+
+Afterward, when he looked back at the adventure, he awarded this remark
+the prize for folly.
+
+The adventure did not have a long life; a week later Charles Cunningham
+was called back to England by the news of his brother's illness. Before
+Lent was out he had become the Earl of Saxby, who really had to think
+seriously of marriage and treat it with more respect than the Parisian
+gossip over which Charles Cunningham had idly mused at six o'clock of
+Ash Wednesday morning in the year 1847. As for Adèle, she met in May the
+owner of a traveling-booth, a widower called Bassompierre with a small
+son, who had enough of the gipsy to attract the irresponsible Adèle and
+enough of the bourgeois to induce her to marry him for the sake of a
+secure and solid future. She need not have troubled about her future,
+the deep-voiced Adèle; for just when November darkens to December she
+died in giving birth to Juliette. The gipsy in Albert Bassompierre
+accepted as his own daughter Juliette; the bourgeois in him erected a
+cross in the cemetery and put a wreath of immortelles in a glass case to
+lie on Adèle's tomb. Then he locked away the few pieces of jewelry that
+life had brought her, hung another daguerreotype beside the one of his
+first wife, and wrapped Juliette in a golden shawl of Siamese crêpe.
+Lightly the two daguerreotypes swung to and fro; and lightly rocked the
+cradle where the baby Juliette lay sleeping, while the caravan jolted
+southward along the straight French roads where the poplars seemed to be
+commenting to one another in the wind.
+
+For eighteen years the caravan jolted along these roads, until young
+Edouard Bassompierre was old enough to play leading man throughout the
+repertory and thereby most abruptly plunge his predecessor into old age.
+At the same time Juliette was allowed to act the soubrettes; her father
+was too much afraid of the leading lady to play any tricks of suddenly
+imposed senility with her. It was, on the whole, a jolly life, this
+vagrancy from fair to fair of all the towns of France. It was jolly,
+when the performance was done, to gather in the tent behind the stage
+and eat chipped potatoes and drink red wine with all the queer people
+whose voices were hoarse with crying their wares all the day long.
+
+Then came, one springtime, the fair at Compiègne. Business was splendid,
+for the Emperor was there to hunt the wild boar in the forest. Never had
+old Albert Bassompierre beaten his big drum so confidently at the
+entrance of his booth; never had Edouard captured so many young women's
+hearts; both of them were too much occupied with their own triumphs to
+notice the young officer who came every night to the play. The Emperor
+left Compiègne in April; when he departed, the young officer departed
+also, accompanied by Juliette.
+
+"_Ah, la vache,_" cried old Bassompierre; "it's perhaps as well her
+mother didn't live, for she might have done the same."
+
+"You should have let her play the lead," said Edouard.
+
+"She can play lead in real life," replied old Bassompierre. "If she
+can," he added, fiercely.
+
+But when Juliette wrote to him from Paris and told him how happy she was
+with her lover, the gipsy in Bassompierre drove out the bourgeois, and
+he sent his daughter her mother's jewelry and the golden shawl; but he
+kept the daguerreotype, for, after all, Juliette was not really his
+daughter and Adèle had really been his wife.
+
+Three years passed. Juliette lived in a little house at Belleville with
+two baby girls called Elène and Henriette. When in after years she
+looked back to this time it seemed to her smothered in roses, the roses
+of an operatic scene. Everything, indeed, in retrospect was like
+that--the arrival of her lover in his gay uniform, the embowered kisses,
+the lights of Paris far below, the suppers on the veranda, the warm
+Sunday mornings, the two babies asleep on the lawn and their father
+watching them, herself before a glass and her lover's face seen over her
+shoulder, the sudden sharp embrace; all were heavy with the intolerable
+sense of a curtain that must fall. Then came the war; there was a
+hurried move down to stuffy apartments in Paris; ready money hastily got
+together by the young officer, who spoke confidently of the large sum it
+was, since, after all, the war would be over in a month and the
+Prussians have had their lesson; and at last a breathless kiss. The
+crowds surged cheering through the streets, the two babies screamed
+disapproval of their new surroundings, and
+
+Juliette's lover was killed in the first battle; he had only time to
+scribble a few trembling lines:
+
+     _Mon adorée, je t'ai flanqué un mauvais coup. Pardonnez-moi. Mes
+     dernières pensées sont pour toi. Adieu. Deux gros bécots aux bébés.
+     J'ai parlé pour toi à mon père. Cherche argent--je t'embrasse
+     follement follem---- _
+
+Yet when she received this letter, some impulse kept her from going to
+her lover's father. She could not bear the possibility of being made to
+realize that those debonair years of love were regarded by him as an
+intrigue to be solved by money. If André's mother had been alive, she
+might have felt differently; now she would not trouble a stricken family
+that might regard her tears as false; she would not even try to return
+to her own father. No doubt he would welcome her; but pride, all the
+strange and terrible pride that was henceforth to haunt Juliette's soul,
+forbade her.
+
+It was impossible, however, to remain in Paris; and without any reason
+for her choice she took her babies to Lyon and settled down in rooms
+overlooking the Rhône, to await the end of the war. When she had paid
+the cost of the journey and bought herself the necessary mourning, she
+found she had nearly eleven thousand francs left; with care this could
+surely be made to last three years at least; in three years much might
+happen. As a matter of fact, much happened almost at once; for the
+beauty of Juliette, a lustrous and imperial beauty, caught the fancy of
+Gustave Lataille, who was conductor of the orchestra at one of the
+smaller theaters in Lyon. To snare his fancy might not have been enough;
+but when with her dowry she captured also his imagination, he married
+her. Juliette did not consider it wrong to marry this somber, withered,
+and uncommunicative man of forty, for whom she had neither passion nor
+affection. He struck her as essentially like most of the husbands she
+had observed hitherto; and she esteemed herself lucky not to have met
+such a one before she had been granted the boon of love. She must have
+inherited from that unknown father her domestic qualities; she certainly
+acquired none from Adèle. From him, too, may have come that pride which,
+however it may have found its chief expression in ideals of bourgeois
+respectability, was nevertheless a fine fiery virtue and supported her
+spirit to the very last.
+
+Juliette and Lataille lived together without anything to color a drab
+existence. Notwithstanding his connection with the theater, Lataille had
+no bohemian tastes; once when his wife suggested, after a visit from her
+father, that there seemed no reason why she should not apply for an
+engagement to act, he unhesitatingly refused his permission; when she
+attempted to argue, he reminded her that he had given his name to Elène
+and Henriette, and she was silent. Henceforth she devoted herself to
+sewing, and brought into the world four girls in successive
+years--Françoise, Marie, Marguerite, and Valentine. The last was born in
+1875, soon after the Latailles had moved to Lille, where Gustave had
+secured the post of conductor at the principal theater. Juliette
+welcomed the change, for it gave her the small house of her own which
+she had long wanted; moreover, nobody in Lille knew at first hand of the
+circumstances in which Gustave had married her, so that Elène and
+Henrietta could go to school without being teased about their mother's
+early lapse from the standards of conduct which she fervently desired
+they would adopt.
+
+Unfortunately, the conductor had only enjoyed his advancement a year
+when he was struck down by a paralytic stroke. With six small children
+and a palsied husband upon her hands, Juliette had to find work. Partly
+from compassion for her ill-fortune, but chiefly because by now she was
+a most capable seamstress, the management of the theater engaged her as
+wardrobe mistress; and for five years Juliette sustained her husband,
+her children, and her house. They were years that would have rubbed the
+bloom from most women; but Juliette's beauty seemed to grow rather than
+diminish. Her personality became proverbial in the town of Lille, and
+though as wardroom mistress she was denied the public triumph of the
+footlights, she had nevertheless a fame of her own that was considered
+unique in the history of her profession. Her pride flourished on the
+deference that was shown her even by the management; between her beauty
+and her sharp tongue she achieved an authority that reached its height
+in the way she brought up her children. Their snowy pinafores, their
+trim stockings, their manners, and their looks were the admiration of
+the _quartier_; and when in the year 1881 Gustave Lataille died, the
+neatness of their new black dresses surprised even the most confirmed
+admirers of Madame Lataille's industry and taste. At no time could
+Juliette have seemed so beautiful as when, after the funeral, she raised
+her widow's veil and showed the attendant sympathizers a countenance
+unmarked by one tear of respectable emotion. She was far too proud to
+weep for a husband whom she had never loved and whose death was a
+relief; when the neighbors expressed astonishment at the absence of any
+outward sorrow, she flung out a challenge to fate:
+
+"I have not reached the age of thirty-four, and brought up six children,
+and never once been late with so much as a ribbon, to cry for any man
+now. He'll be a wonderful man that will ever make me cry. Henriette,
+don't tug at your garter."
+
+And as she stood there, with great brown eyes burning beneath a weight
+of lustrous black hair, she seemed of marble without and within.
+
+Nevertheless, before six months had passed, Madame Lataille fell
+impetuously in love with a young English clerk of twenty-one, called
+Henry Snow; what is more, she married him. Nobody in Lille was able to
+offer a credible explanation of her behavior. People were willing to
+admit that his conduct was comprehensible, notwithstanding the fourteen
+years of her seniority; and it says much for the way Juliette had
+impressed her personality upon a dull provincial world that Henry Snow's
+action should have been so immediately understood. Before the problem of
+her conduct, however, the world remained in perplexity. Financial
+considerations could not have supplied a motive; from all accounts the
+Englishman was unlikely to help; indeed, gossip said that even in his
+obscure position he had already had opportunities of showing that, such
+as it was, the position was better than he deserved and unlikely to be
+bettered in the future. Nor could his good looks have attracted her, for
+he was insignificant; and since Englishmen in the experience of Lille
+were, whatever their faults, never insignificant, the insignificance of
+Henry Snow acquired an active quality which contradicted its
+characterization and made him seem not merely unattractive, but
+positively displeasing. Nor could she have required some one to help in
+managing her six children; altogether the affair was a mystery, which
+gathered volume when the world began to realize the depth of the feeling
+that Henry Snow had roused in Juliette. All the world loves a lover, but
+only when it is allowed to obtrude itself upon the love. Juliette,
+absorbed by her emotion and the eternal jealousy of the woman who
+marries a man much younger than herself, refused to admit any spectators
+to marvel at the development of the mystery. She carried on her work as
+usual; but instead of maintaining her position as a figure she became an
+object of curiosity, and presently, because that curiosity was never
+gratified, an object of suspicion. The lover-loving world began to shake
+its head and calumny whispered everywhere its commentary; she could
+never have been a _femme propre_; this marriage must have been forced
+upon the young Englishman as the price of a five-year-old intrigue.
+When some defender of Juliette pointed out that the clerk had only been
+in Lille three years, that his name had never been connected with hers,
+and that in any case he was only twenty-one now, calumny retorted with a
+long line of Henry Snows; presently the story of Juliette's life with
+André Duchesnil was dragged to light, and by an infinite multiplication
+of whispers her career from earliest youth was established as
+licentious, mercenary, and cruel.
+
+For a while Juliette was so much wrapped up in her own joy that she did
+not observe the steady withdrawal of popular esteem. Having made it
+clear to everybody that she wished to be left alone with her husband,
+she supposed she had been successful and congratulated herself
+accordingly, until one day a persistent friend, proof against Juliette's
+icy discouragement, drove into her that the _quartier_ was pitying Henry
+Snow, that things were being said against her, and that the only way to
+put a stop to unkind gossip was to move about among the neighbors in
+more friendly fashion.
+
+Gradually it dawned upon Juliette that her friend was the emissary of a
+universally accepted calumny, the voice of the _quartier_, the first to
+brave her, and only now rash enough to do so because she had public
+opinion at her back. This did not prevent Juliette from showing her
+counselor the door to the street, nor from slamming it so abruptly that
+a meter of stuff was torn from her skirt; yet when she went back to her
+room and picked up her needlework there came upon her with a shock the
+realization of what effect all this might have on Henry. If the world
+were pitying him now, it would presently be laughing; if he were laughed
+at, he would grow to hate her. Hitherto she had been so happy in her
+love that she had never stopped to consider anything or anybody. She
+remembered now Henry's amazement when, in the first tumultuous wave of
+passion dammed for so many years, she had refused to let herself be
+swept away; she recalled his faint hesitation when first she spoke of
+marriage and gave him to understand that without marriage she would not
+be his. Even then he must have foreseen the possibility of ridicule, and
+he had only married her because she had been able to seem so desirable.
+And she was still desirable; he was still enthralled; he was still vain
+of her love; yet how was the flattery of one woman to mitigate for a man
+the contempt of the crowd? Mercifully, he was an Englishman in a French
+town, therefore it would take longer for the popular feeling to touch
+him; but soon or late it would strike home to his vanity. Something must
+be devised to transfix him with the dignity of marriage. They must have
+a child; no father could do anything but resent and despise laughter
+that would be directed against his fatherhood. Juliette's wish was
+granted very shortly afterward; and when she told her husband of their
+expectation she held him close and looked deep into his eyes for the
+triumph she sought. Perhaps the fire in her own was reflected in his,
+for she released him from her embrace with a sigh of content.
+
+Through the months of waiting Juliette longed for a boy. It seemed to
+her somehow essential for the retention of Henry's love that she should
+give him a boy; she could scarcely bear another girl, she who had
+brought into the world six girls. Much of Juliette's pride during those
+months was softened by her longing; she began once more to frequent the
+company of her neighbors in her zest for the least scrap of information
+that would help the fulfilment of it. There was no fantastic concoction
+she would not drink, nor any omen she would not propitiate. Half the
+saints in the calendar were introduced to her by ladies that knew them
+and vouched for the interest they would take in her pregnancy. Juliette
+never confided to anybody her reason for wanting a boy; and nobody
+suspected it, since half a dozen girls were enough to explain any
+woman's desire for a change. One adviser discovered in a tattered volume
+of obstetrical theory that when the woman was older than the man the
+odds were on a male child. Juliette's researches to gather confirmation
+of this remark led her into discussions about unequal marriages; and as
+the time of her confinement drew near she became gentler and almost
+anxious to discuss her love for Henry Snow, so much gentler and less
+reserved that those who had formerly whispered loudest and most falsely
+to one another now whispered sympathetically to her.
+
+On the day before Juliette's confinement her husband came in from work
+very irritable.
+
+"Here, when's this baby going to be born? I'm getting a bit annoyed. The
+men at the office are betting on its being a boy. It makes me look a
+fool, you know, that sort of thing."
+
+She clutched his arm. "Which do you want, Henri? Tell me, _mon amour,
+mon homme_."
+
+"I don't care which it is, as long as you're quick about it and this
+betting stops."
+
+That night she was delivered of a girl, and because it was his she
+choked down the wild disappointment and loved Sylvia the best of all her
+seven girls.
+
+
+
+
+SYLVIA SCARLETT
+
+
+
+
+=Sylvia Scarlett=
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The first complete memory of her father that Sylvia possessed was of
+following her mother out into the street on a clear moonlight night
+after rain and of seeing him seated in a puddle outside the house,
+singing an unintelligible song which he conducted with his umbrella. She
+remembered her mother's calling to him sharply, and how at last after
+numerous shakings and many reproaches he had walked into the house on
+all fours, carrying the umbrella in his mouth like a dog. She remembered
+that the umbrella was somehow wrong at the end, different from any other
+umbrella she had ever seen, so that when it was put into the hall-stand
+it looked like a fat old market woman instead of the trim young lady it
+should have resembled. She remembered how she had called her mother's
+attention to the loss of its feet and how her mother, having apparently
+realized for the first time her presence at the scene, had promptly
+hustled her up-stairs to bed with so much roughness that she had cried.
+
+When Sylvia was older and had become in a way her mother's confidante,
+sitting opposite to her in the window to sew until it was no longer
+possible to save oil for the lamp, she ventured to recall this scene.
+Her mother had laughed at the remembrance of it and had begun to hum the
+song her father had sung:
+
+    La donna è mobile
+    La da-di la-di-da.
+
+"Shall I ever forget him?" Madame Snow had cried. "It was the day your
+sister Elène was married, and he had been down to the railway-station
+to see them off to Bruxelles."
+
+Sylvia had asked what the words of the song meant, and had been told
+that they meant women were always running around.
+
+"Where?" she had pressed.
+
+"Some of them after men and others running away from them," her mother
+had replied.
+
+"Shall I do that when I'm big?" Sylvia had continued. "Which shall I
+do?"
+
+But it had been time to fetch the lamp and the question had remained
+unanswered.
+
+Sylvia was five when her sister Elène was married; soon afterward
+Henriette married, too. She remembered that very well, because Marie
+went to join Françoise in the other bedroom, and with only Marguerite
+and Valentine left, they no longer slept three in a bed. This
+association had often been very uncomfortable because Marguerite would
+eat biscuits, the crumbs of which used to scratch her legs; and worse
+than the crumbs was the invariable quarrel between Marguerite and
+Valentine that always ended in their pinching each other across Sylvia,
+so that she often got pinched by mistake.
+
+For several years Sylvia suffered from being the youngest of many
+sisters, and her mother's favorite. When she went to school, she asked
+other girls if it were not nicer to have brothers, but the stories she
+heard about the behavior of boys made her glad there were only girls in
+her house. She had practical experience of the ways of boys when at the
+age of eight she first took part in the annual _féerie_ at the Lille
+theater. On her first appearance she played a monster; though all the
+masks were very ugly, she, being the smallest performer, always got the
+ugliest, and with the progress of the season the one that was most
+knocked about. In after years these performances seemed like a nightmare
+of hot cardboard-scented breath, of being hustled down the stone stairs
+from the dressing-room, of noisy rough boys shouting and scrambling for
+the best masks, of her legs being pinched, while she was waiting in the
+wings, by invisible boys, and once of somebody's twisting her mask
+right round as they made the famous entrance of the monsters, so that,
+being able to see nothing, she fell down and made all the audience
+laugh. Such were boys!
+
+In contrast with scenes of discomfort and misery like these were the
+hours when she sat sewing with her mother in the quiet house. There
+would be long silences only broken by the sound of her mother's hand
+searching for new thread or needle in the work-basket, of clocks, of
+kettle on the hob, or of distant street cries. Then her mother would
+suddenly laugh to herself and begin a tale so interesting that Sylvia's
+own needlework would lie idly on her knee, until she was reproved for
+laziness, and silence again inclosed the room. Sometimes the sunset
+would glow through the window-panes upon her mother's work, and Sylvia
+would stare entranced at the great silken roses that slowly opened their
+petals for those swift fingers. Sometimes it would be a piece of lace
+that lay on her mother's lap, lace that in the falling dusk became light
+and mysterious as a cloud. Yet even these tranquil hours had storms, as
+on the occasion when her mother had been working all day at a lace cap
+which had been promised without fail to somebody at the theater who
+required it that night. At six o'clock she had risen with a sigh and
+given the cap to Sylvia to hold while she put on her things to take it
+down to the theater. Sylvia had stood by the fire, dreaming over the
+beauty of the lace; and then without any warning the cap had fallen into
+the fire and in a moment was ashes. Sylvia wished she could have
+followed the cap when she saw her mother's face of despair on realizing
+what had happened. It was then that for the first time she learned how
+much depended upon her mother's work; for during all that week, whenever
+she was sent out on an errand, she was told to buy only the half of
+everything, half the usual butter, half the usual sugar, and what was
+stranger still to go to shops outside the _quartier_ at which Madame
+Snow never dealt. When she inquired the reason of this her mother asked
+her if she wanted all the _quartier_ to know that they were poor and
+could only afford to buy half the usual amount that week.
+
+Sylvia, when the first shame of her carelessness had died away, rather
+enjoyed these excursions to streets more remote, where amusing
+adventures were always possible. One Saturday afternoon in April Sylvia
+set out with a more than usually keen sense of the discoveries and
+adventures that might befall her. The first discovery was a boy on a
+step-ladder, polishing a shop window; and the second discovery was that
+she could stand on the curbstone and never once fail to spit home upon
+the newly polished glass. She did this about a dozen times, watching the
+saliva dribble down the pane and speculating with herself which driblet
+would make the longest journey. Regretfully she saw that the boy was
+preparing to descend and admire his handiwork, because two driblets were
+still progressing slowly downward, one of which had been her original
+fancy for the prize of endurance. As she turned to flee, she saw on the
+pavement at her feet a golden ten-franc piece; she picked it up and
+grasping it tightly in her hot little hand ran off, not forgetting, even
+in the excitement of her sudden wealth, to turn round at a safe distance
+and put out her tongue at the boy to mark her contempt for him, for the
+rest of his class, and for all their handiwork, especially that newly
+polished window-pane. Then she examined the gold piece and marveled at
+it, thinking how it obliterated the memory of that mother-o'-pearl
+button which only the other day she had found on the dust-heap and lost
+a few hours afterward.
+
+It was a wonderful afternoon, an afternoon of unbridled acquisition,
+which began with six very rich cakes and ended with a case of needles
+for her mother that used up her last sou. Coming out of the needle-shop,
+her arms full of packages, she met a regiment of soldiers marching and
+singing. The soldiers expressed her triumphant mood, and Sylvia marched
+with them, joining in their songs. She had a few cakes left and, being
+grateful to the soldiers, she handed them round among them, which earned
+her much applause from passers-by. When the regiment had arrived at the
+barracks and her particular friends had all kissed her farewell and
+there were no more bystanders to smile their approbation, Sylvia thought
+it would be wise to do the shopping for her mother. She had marched
+farther than she realized with the soldiers; it was nearly dusk when
+she reached the grocer's where she was to buy the small quantity of
+sugar that was all that could be afforded this week. She made her
+purchase, and put her hand into the pocket of her pinafore for the
+money: the pocket was empty. Everything in the grocer's shop seemed to
+be tumbling about her in a great and universal catastrophe. She searched
+feverishly again; there was a small hole; of course her mother had given
+her a ten-franc piece, telling her to be very careful indeed of the
+change, which was wanted badly for the rent. She could not explain to
+the man what had happened and, leaving the packet on the counter, she
+rushed from the shop into the cruel twilight, choked by tearless sobs
+and tremors of apprehension. At first she thought of trying to find the
+shops where she had made her own purchases that she might recover such
+of the money as had not been eaten; but her nervous fears refused to let
+her mind work properly, and everything that had happened on this
+luckless afternoon seemed to have happened in a dream. It was already
+dark; all she could do was to run home, clutching the miserable toys to
+her heart and wondering if the needle-case could possibly allay a
+little, a very little, of her mother's anger.
+
+Madame Snow began as soon as Sylvia entered the house by demanding what
+she had been doing to be so late in coming home. Sylvia stammered and
+was silent; stammered again and let fall all her parcels; then she burst
+into a flood of tears that voiced a despair more profound than she had
+ever known. When her mother at last extracted from Sylvia what had
+happened she, too, wept; and the pair of them sat filling the room with
+their sobs, until Henry Snow appeared upon the scene and asked if they
+had both gone mad.
+
+His wife and daughter sobbed a violent negative. Henry stared at the
+floor littered with Sylvia's numerous purchases, but found there no
+answer to the riddle. He moved across to Juliette and shook her, urging
+her not to become hysterical.
+
+"The last bit of money I had and the rent due on Monday!" she wailed.
+
+"Don't you worry about money," said Henry, importantly. "I've had a bit
+of luck at cards," and he offered his wife a note. Moreover, when he
+heard the reason for all this commotion of grief, he laughed, said it
+might have happened to any one, congratulated Sylvia upon her choice of
+goods, declared it was time she began to study English seriously and
+vowed that he was the one to be her teacher, yes, by gad, he was, and
+that to-morrow morning being Sunday they would make a start. Then he
+began to fondle his wife, which embarrassed Sylvia, but nevertheless
+because these caresses so plainly delighted her mother, they consoled
+her for the disaster. So she withdrew to a darker corner of the room and
+played with the doll she had bought, listening to the conversation
+between her parents.
+
+"Do you love me, Henri?"
+
+"Of course I love you."
+
+"You know that I would sacrifice the world for you? I've given you
+everything. If you love me still, then you must love me for
+myself--myself alone, _mon homme_."
+
+"Of course I do."
+
+"But I'm growing old," protested Juliette. "There are others younger
+than I. _Ah, Henri, amour de ma vie_, I'm jealous even of the girls. I
+want them all out of the house. I hate them now, except ours--ours, _ma
+poupée_."
+
+Sylvia regarding her own doll could not help feeling that this was a
+most inappropriate name for her father; she wondered why her mother
+called him that and decided finally that it must be because he was
+shorter than she was. The evening begun so disastrously ended most
+cheerfully; when Françoise and Marie arrived back at midnight, they
+escaped even the mildest rebuke from their mother.
+
+Sylvia's father kept his promise about teaching her English, and she was
+granted the great pleasure of being admitted to his room every evening
+when he returned from work. This room until now had always been a
+Bluebeard's chamber, not merely for Sylvia, but for every one else in
+the house. To be sure Sylvia had sometimes, when supper was growing
+cold, peeped in to warn her father of fleeting time, but it had always
+been impressed upon her that in no circumstances was she to enter the
+room; though she had never seen in these quick glimpses anything more
+exciting than her father sitting in his shirt-sleeves and reading in a
+tumble-down arm-chair, there had always been the sense of a secret. Now
+that she was made free of this apartment she perceived nothing behind
+the door but a bookcase fairly full of books, nothing indeed anywhere
+that seemed to merit concealment, unless it were some pictures of
+undressed ladies looking at themselves in a glass. Once she had an
+opportunity of opening one of the books and she was astonished, when her
+father came in and caught her, that he said nothing, for she felt sure
+that her mother would have been very angry if she had seen her reading
+such a book. She had blushed when her father found her; when he had said
+nothing and even laughed in a queer unpleasant sort of a way, she had
+blushed still more deeply. Yet whenever she had a chance she read these
+books afterward and henceforth regarded her father with an affectionate
+contempt which was often expressed too frankly to please her mother, who
+finally became so much irritated by it that she sent her away to
+Bruxelles to stay with Elène, her eldest married sister. Sylvia did not
+enjoy this visit very much, because her brother-in-law was always making
+remarks about her personal appearance, comparing it most unfavorably
+with his wife's. It seemed that Elène had recently won a prize for
+beauty at the Exposition, and though Sylvia would have been suitably
+proud of this family achievement in ordinary circumstances, this
+continual harping upon it to her own disadvantage made her wish that
+Elène had been ignobly defeated.
+
+"Strange her face should be so round and yours such a perfect oval,"
+Elène's husband would say. "And her lips are so thin and her eyes so
+much lighter than yours. She's short, too, for her age. I don't think
+she'll ever be as tall as you. But of course every one can't be
+beautiful."
+
+"Of course they can't," Sylvia snapped. "If they could, Elène might not
+have won the prize so easily."
+
+"She's not a great beauty, but she has a tongue. And she's smart," her
+brother-in-law concluded.
+
+Sylvia used to wonder why every one alluded to her tongue. Her mother
+had told her just before she was sent to Bruxelles that the priest had
+put too much salt on it when she was christened. She resolved to be
+silent in future; but this resolve reacted upon her nerves to such an
+extent that she wrote home to Lille and begged to be allowed to come
+back. There had been diplomacy in the way she had written to her father
+in English rather than to her mother in French. Such a step led her
+mother to suppose that she repented of criticizing her father; it also
+prevented her sister Elène from understanding the letter and perhaps
+writing home to suggest keeping her in Bruxelles. Sylvia was overjoyed
+at receiving an early reply from her mother bidding her come home, and
+sending stamps for her to buy a picture post-card album, which would be
+much cheaper in Belgium; she was enjoined to buy one picture post-card
+and put it in the album, so that the customs officials should not charge
+duty.
+
+Sylvia had heard a great deal of smuggling and was thrilled by the
+illegal transaction, which seemed to her the most exciting enterprise of
+her life. She said good-by to Bruxelles without regret; clasping her
+album close, she waited anxiously for the train to start, thinking to
+herself that Elène only kept on putting her head into the carriage
+window to make stupid remarks because the compartment was crowded and
+she hoped some one would recognize her as the winner of the beauty
+competition at the Bruxelles Exposition.
+
+At last the train started, and Sylvia settled down to the prospect of
+crossing the frontier with contraband. She looked at all the people in
+the carriage, thinking to herself what dangers she would presently
+encounter. It was almost impossible not to tell them, as they sat there
+in the stuffy compartment scattering crumbs everywhere with their
+lunches. Soon a pleasant woman in black engaged Sylvia in conversation
+by offering her an orange from a string-bag. It was very difficult to
+eat the orange and keep a tight hold of the album; in the end it fell on
+the floor, whereupon a fat old gentleman sitting opposite stooped over
+and picked it up for her. He had grunted so in making the effort that
+Sylvia felt she must reward him with more than thanks; she decided to
+divulge her secret and explain to him and the pleasant woman with the
+string-bag the history of the album. Sylvia was glad when all her other
+fellow-travelers paid attention to the tale, and she could point out
+that an album like this cost two francs fifty centimes in Lille, whereas
+in Bruxelles she had been able to buy it for two francs. Then, because
+everybody smiled so encouragingly, she unwrapped the album and showed
+the single picture post-card, discoursing upon the ruse. Everybody
+congratulated her, and everybody told one another anecdotes about
+smuggling, until finally a tired and anxious-looking woman informed the
+company that she was at that very moment smuggling lace to the value of
+more than two thousand francs. Everybody warned her to be very careful,
+so strict were the customs officials; but the anxious-looking woman
+explained that it was wrapped round her and that in any case she must
+take the risk, so much depended upon her ability to sell this lace at a
+handsome profit in France.
+
+When the frontier was reached Sylvia alighted with the rest of the
+travelers to pass through the customs, and with quickening heart she
+presented herself at the barrier, her album clutched tightly to her
+side. No, she had nothing to declare, and with a sigh of relief at
+escape from danger she saw her little valise safely chalked. When she
+passed through to take her seat in the train again, she saw a man whom
+she recognized as a traveler from her own compartment that had told
+several anecdotes about contraband. He was talking earnestly now to one
+of the officials at the barrier and pointing out the anxious woman, who
+was still waiting to pass through.
+
+"I tell you she had two thousand francs' worth of lace wrapped round
+her. She admitted it in the train."
+
+Sylvia felt her legs give way beneath her when she heard this piece of
+treachery. She longed to cry out to the woman with the lace that she had
+been betrayed, but already she had turned deathly pale at the approach
+of the officials. They were beckoning her to follow them to a kind of
+cabin, and she was moving toward it hopelessly. It was dreadful to see a
+poor woman so treated, and Sylvia looked round to find the man who had
+been the cause of it, but he had vanished.
+
+Half an hour afterward the woman of the lace wearily climbed into the
+compartment and took her seat with the rest; her eyes were red and she
+was still weeping bitterly. The others asked what had happened.
+
+"They found it on me," she moaned. "And now what shall I do? It was all
+we had in the world to pay the mortgage on our house. My poor husband is
+ill, very ill, and it was the only way to save him. I should have sold
+that lace for four thousand francs, and now they have confiscated it and
+we shall be fined one thousand francs. We haven't any money. It was
+everything--everything. We shall lose our house and our furniture, and
+my husband will die. Oh, _mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_"
+
+She rocked backward and forward in her grief; nothing that any one could
+say comforted her. Sylvia told how she had been betrayed; everybody
+execrated the spy and said how careful one should be to whom one spoke
+when traveling; but that did not help the poor woman, who sobbed more
+and more despairingly.
+
+At last the train came to its first stop in France, and the man that had
+denounced the poor woman suddenly jumped in, as they were starting
+again, and took his old seat. The fat gentleman next to Sylvia swelled
+with indignation; his veins stood out, and he shouted angrily at the man
+what a rascal he was. Everybody in the carriage joined in abusing him;
+and the poor woman herself wailed out her sad story and reproached him
+for the ruin he had brought upon her. As for Sylvia, she could not
+contain herself, but jumped up and with all her might kicked him on the
+shins, an action which made the fat gentleman shout: "_Bravo! Vas-y!
+Encore, la gosse! Bravo! Bis! Bis!"_
+
+When the noise had subsided the man began to speak.
+
+"I regret infinitely, madame, the inconvenience to which I was
+unfortunately compelled to put you, but the fact is that I myself was
+carrying diamonds upon me to the value of more than two hundred thousand
+francs."
+
+He suddenly took out a wallet from his pocket and emptied the stones
+into his hand, where they lay sparkling in the dusty sunshine of the
+compartment. Everybody was silent with surprise for a moment; when they
+began to abuse him again, he trickled the diamonds back into the wallet
+and begged for attention.
+
+"How much have you lost, madame?" he inquired, very politely.
+
+The woman of the lace poured forth her woes for the twentieth time.
+
+"Permit me to offer you these notes to the value of six thousand
+francs," he said. "I hope the extra thousand will recompense you for the
+temporary inconvenience to which I was unfortunately compelled to put
+you. Pray accept my deepest apologies, but at the same time let me
+suggest greater discretion in future. Yet we are all human, are we not,
+monsieur?" he added, turning to the fat gentleman next to Sylvia. "Will
+you be very much surprised when I tell you that I have never traveled
+from Amsterdam but I have found some indiscreet fellow-traveler that has
+been of permanent service to me at temporary inconvenience to himself.
+This time I thought I was going to be unlucky, for this was the last
+compartment left; fortunately that young lady set a bad example."
+
+He smiled at Sylvia.
+
+This story, when she told it at home, seemed to make a great impression
+upon her father, who maintained that the stranger was a fool ever to
+return to the carriage.
+
+"Some people seem to think money's made to throw into the gutter," he
+grumbled.
+
+Sylvia was sorry about his point of view, but when she argued with him
+he told her to shut up; later on that same evening he had a dispute with
+his wife about going out.
+
+"I want to win it back," he protested. "I've had a run of bad luck
+lately. I feel to-night it's going to change. Did I tell you I saw the
+new moon over my right shoulder, as I came in?"
+
+"So did I," said his wife. "But I don't rush off and gamble away other
+people's money for the sake of the moon."
+
+"You saw it, too, did you?" said Henry, eagerly. "Well, there you are!"
+
+The funny thing was that Henry was right; he did have a run of good
+luck, and the house became more cheerful again. Sylvia went on with her
+English studies; but nowadays even during lessons her father never
+stopped playing cards. She asked him once if he were telling his
+fortune, and he replied that he was trying to make it. "See if you can
+pick out the queen," he would say. And Sylvia never could, which made
+her father chuckle to himself with pleasure. About this time, too, he
+developed a habit of playing with a ten-centime piece. Whenever he or
+any one else was talking, he used to fidget with this coin; in the
+middle of something important or interesting it used to jingle down on
+the floor, and everybody had to go on hands and knees to search for it.
+This habit became so much the intrinsic Henry Snow that Sylvia could
+never think of him without that ten-centime piece sliding over his long
+mobile hands, in and out of his prehensile fingers: and though with the
+progress of time he ceased to drop the coin very often, the restless
+motion always irritated her. When Sylvia was eleven her uncle Edouard
+came to Lille with his caravan and brought the news of the death of her
+grandfather. She was not much impressed by this, but the caravan and the
+booth delighted her; and when her uncle asked if he might not take her
+away with him on a long tour through the south of France, she begged to
+be allowed to go. Her mother had so often held her spellbound by tales
+of her own wandering life that, when she seemed inclined to withhold her
+permission, Sylvia blamed her as the real origin of this longing to
+taste the joys of vagrancy, pleading so earnestly that at last her
+mother gave way and let her go.
+
+Uncle Edouard and Aunt Elise, who sat in the box outside the booth and
+took the money, were both very kind to Sylvia, and since they had no
+children of their own, she was much spoilt. Indeed, there was not a dull
+moment throughout the tour; for even when she went to bed, which was
+always delightfully late, bed was really a pleasure in a caravan.
+
+In old Albert Bassompierre's days the players had confined themselves to
+the legitimate drama; Edouard had found it more profitable to tour a
+variety show interspersed with one-act farces and melodrama. Sylvia's
+favorites in the company were Madame Perron, the wife of the _chanteur
+grivois_, and Blanche, a tall, fair, noisy girl who called herself a
+_diseuse_, but who usually sang indecent ballads in a powerful
+contralto. Madame Perron was Sylvia's first attraction, because she had
+a large collection of dolls with which she really enjoyed playing. She
+was a _femme très-propre_, and never went farther with any of her
+admirers in the audience than to exact from him the gift of a doll.
+
+"_Voilà ses amours manqués_," her husband used to say with a laugh.
+
+In the end Sylvia found her rather dull, and preferred to go tearing
+about the country with Blanche, who, though she had been a scullery-maid
+in a Boulogne hotel only a year ago, had managed during her short career
+on the stage to collect more lovers than Madame Perron had collected
+dolls. She had a passion for driving. Sylvia could always be sure that
+on the morning after their opening performance in any town a wagonette
+or dog-cart would be waiting to take them to some neighboring village,
+where a jolly party would make a tremendous noise, scandalize the
+inhabitants, and depart, leaving a legacy of unpopularity in the
+district for whichever of Blanche's lovers had paid for the
+entertainment with his purse and his reputation. Once they arrived at a
+village where a charity bazaar was being held under the direction of the
+_curé_. Blanche was presented to him as a distinguished actress from
+Paris who was seeking peace and recreation in the depths of the country.
+The _curé_ asked if it would be presuming too far on her good nature to
+give them a taste of her art in the cause of holy charity, a speech
+perhaps from Corneill or Racine. Blanche assented immediately and
+recited a piece stuffed so full of spicy argot that the rustic gentility
+understood very little of it, though enough to make them blush--all
+except the priest, that is, who was very deaf and asked Blanche, when
+she had finished, if it were not a speech from Phèdre she had declaimed,
+thanking her very earnestly for the pleasure she had given his simple
+parish folk, a pleasure, alas, which he regretted he had not been able
+to enjoy as much as he should have enjoyed it before he became deaf.
+
+On another occasion they drove to see the ruins of an ancient castle in
+Brittany, and afterward went down into the village to drink wine in the
+garden of the inn, where an English family was sitting at afternoon tea.
+Sylvia stared curiously at the two little girls who obeyed their
+governess so promptly and ate their cakes so mincingly. They were the
+first English girls she had ever seen, and she would very much have
+liked to tell them that her father was English, for they seemed to want
+cheering up, so solemn were their light-blue eyes and so high their
+boots. Sylvia whispered to Blanche that they were English, who replied
+that so much was very obvious, and urged Sylvia to address them in their
+native tongue; it would give them much pleasure, she thought. Sylvia,
+however, was too shy, so Blanche in her loudest voice suddenly shouted:
+
+"Oh yes! T'ank you! I love you! All right! You sleep with me?
+Goddambleudi!"
+
+The English family looked very much shocked, but the governess came to
+their rescue by asking in a thin throaty voice for the "attition," and
+presently they all walked out of the garden. Blanche judged the English
+to be a dull race, and, mounting on a table, began a rowdy dance. It
+happened that, just when the table cracked, the English governess came
+back for an umbrella she had left behind, and that Blanche, leaping
+wildly to save herself from falling, leaped on the governess and brought
+her to the ground in a general ruin of chairs and tables. Blanche picked
+up the victim and said that it was all very _rigolo_, which left miss as
+wise as she was before, her French not extending beyond the tea-table
+and the chaster portions of a bedroom. Blanche told Sylvia to explain to
+miss that she had displayed nothing more in her fall than had given much
+pleasure to all the world. Sylvia, who really felt the poor governess
+required such practical consolation, translated accordingly, whereat
+miss became very red and, snatching her umbrella, walked away muttering,
+"Impertinent little gipsy." When Blanche was told the substance of her
+last remark, she exclaimed, indignantly:
+
+_"Elles sont des vrais types, vous savez, ces gonzesses. Mince, alors!
+Pourquoi s'emballer comme ça? Elle portait un pantalon fermé! Quelle
+race infecte, ces Anglais! Moi, je ne peux pas les suffrir."_
+
+Sylvia, listening to Blanche's tirade, wondered if all the English were
+like that. She thought of her father's books, and decided that life in
+France must have changed him somehow. Then she called to mind with a
+shiver the solemn light-blue eyes of the little girls. England must be a
+cold sort of a place where nobody ever laughed; perhaps that was why
+her father had come away. Sylvia decided to remain in France, always in
+a caravan if possible, where no English miss could poke about with bony
+fingers in one's bread and butter.
+
+Sylvia acquired a good deal of worldly wisdom from being so continuously
+in the society of Blanche, and for a child of eleven she was growing up
+somewhat rapidly. Yet it would have been hard to say that the influence
+of her noisy friend was hurtful, for it never roused in Sylvia a single
+morbid thought. Life in those days presented itself to her mostly as an
+amusing game, a game that sometimes caused tears, but tears that were
+easily dried, because, after all, it was only a game. Such was the
+situation created on one occasion by the unexpected arrival of Blanche's
+_fiancé_ from his regiment, the 717th of the line.
+
+The company was playing at St.-Nazaire at the time, and Louis Moreau
+telegraphed from Nantes that he had been granted a _congé_ of
+forty-eight hours.
+
+"_Mince, alors!_" cried Blanche to Sylvia. "And, you know, I don't want
+to give him up, because he has thirty thousand francs and he loves me _à
+la folie_. We are only waiting till he has finished his military service
+to get married. But I don't want him here. First of all, I have a very
+_chic_ lover, who has a _poignon fou_ and doesn't care how much he
+spends, and then the lover of my heart is here."
+
+Sylvia protested that she had heard the last claim too often.
+
+"No, but this is something much greater than a _béguin_. It is real
+love. _Il est très trr-ès-beau garçon, tu sais._ And, _chose
+très-drôle_, he also is doing his military service here. _Tout ça ne se
+dessine pas du tout bien, tu sais, mais pas du tout, tu comprends! Moi,
+je ne suis pas veineuse. Ah, non, alors, c'est le comble!_"
+
+Blanche had been sufficiently agile to extract the usual wagonette and
+pair of horses from the chic lover to whom she had introduced her real
+lover, a tall cuirassier with fierce mustaches, as her brother; but the
+imminent arrival of Louis was going to spoil all this, because Louis
+knew well that she did not possess a relative in the world, in fact, as
+Blanche emphasized, her solitary position had been one of her charms.
+
+"You'll have to get rid of Monsieur Beaujour." This was the rich lover.
+
+"And lose my horses? _Ah, non, alors!_"
+
+"Well, then you'll have to tell Marcel he mustn't come near you until
+Louis has gone."
+
+"And see him go off with that Jeanne at the Clair de la Lune Concert!"
+
+"Couldn't Louis pay for the horses?" suggested Sylvia.
+
+"I'm not going to let him waste his money like that; besides, he'll only
+be here two nights. _C'est assommant, tu sais_," Blanche sighed.
+
+In the middle of the discussion Louis arrived, a very short little
+_sous-officier_ with kind watery eyes and a mustache that could only be
+seen properly out of doors. Louis had not had more than five minutes
+with his _fiancée_ before M. Beaujour drove up with the wagonette and
+pair. He was the son of a rich shipping agent in St.-Nazaire, with a
+stiff manner that he mistook for evidence of aristocratic descent, and
+bad teeth that prevented him from smiling more than he could help.
+
+"I shall tell him you're my brother," said Blanche, quickly. Louis began
+to protest.
+
+"_Pas de boniment_," Blanche went on. "I must be pleasant to strangers
+in front. Madame Bassompierre insists on that, and you know I've never
+given you any cause to be really jealous."
+
+M. Beaujour looked very much surprised when Blanche presented Louis to
+him as her brother; Sylvia, remembering the tall cuirassier with the
+fierce mustaches that had also been introduced as Blanche's brother,
+appreciated his sensations. However, he accepted the relationship and
+invited Louis to accompany them on the drive, putting him with Sylvia
+and seating himself next Blanche on the box; Louis, who found Sylvia
+sympathetic, talked all the time about the wonderful qualities of
+Blanche, continually turning round to adore her shapely back.
+
+M. Beaujour invited Louis to a supper he was giving that evening in
+honor of Blanche, and supposed, perhaps a little maliciously, that
+Monsieur would be glad to meet his brother again, who was also to be of
+the party. Louis looked at Blanche in perplexity; she frowned at him and
+said nothing.
+
+That supper, to which M. and Mme. Perron with several other members of
+the company were invited, was a very restless meal. First, Blanche would
+go out with the host while Marcel and Louis glared alternately at each
+other and the door; then she would withdraw with Louis, while M.
+Beaujour and Marcel glared and fidgeted; finally she would disappear
+with Marcel, once for such a long time that Sylvia grew nervous and went
+outside to find her. Blanche was in tears; Marcel was stalking up and
+down the passage, twisting his fierce mustaches and muttering his
+annoyance. Sylvia was involved in a bitter discussion about the various
+degrees of Blanche's love, and in the end Blanche cried that her whole
+life had been shattered, and rushed back to the supper-room. Sylvia took
+this opportunity of representing Blanche's point of view to Marcel, and
+so successful was she with her tale of the emotional stress caused by
+the conflict of love with prudence that finally Marcel burst into tears,
+called down benedictions upon Sylvia's youthful head, and rejoined the
+supper-party, where he drank a great quantity of red wine and squeezed
+Blanche's hand under the table for the rest of the evening.
+
+Sylvia, having been successful once, now invited Louis to accompany her
+outside. To him she explained that Marcel loved Blanche madly, that she,
+the owner, as Louis knew, of a melting heart, had been much upset by her
+inability to return his love, and that Louis must not be jealous,
+because Blanche loved only him. Louis's eyes became more watery than
+ever, and he took his seat at table again, a happy man until he drank
+too much wine and had to retire permanently from the feast. Finally
+Sylvia tackled M. Beaujour, and, recognizing that he was probably tired
+of lies, told him the truth of the situation, leaving it to him as an
+_homme supérieur_ to realize that he could only be an episode in
+Blanche's life and begging him not to force his position that night. M.
+Beaujour could not help being flattered by this child's perception of
+his superiority, and for the rest of the entertainment played the host
+in a manner that was, as Madame Perron said, _très très-correcte_.
+
+However, amusing evenings like this came to an end for Sylvia when once
+more the caravan returned to Lille. Her uncle and aunt had so much
+enjoyed her company that they proposed to Madame Snow to adopt Sylvia as
+their own daughter. Sylvia, much as she loved her mother, would have
+been very glad to leave the house at Lille, for it seemed, when she saw
+it again, poverty-stricken and pinched. There was only Valentine now
+left of her sisters, and her mother looked very care-worn. Her father,
+however, declined most positively to listen to the Bassompierres'
+proposal, and was indeed almost insulting about it. Madame Snow wearily
+bade Sylvia say no more, and the caravan went on its way again. Sylvia
+wondered whether life in Lille had always been as dull in reality as
+this, or if it were dull merely in contrast with the gay life of
+vagrancy. Everybody in Lille seemed to be quarreling. Her mother was
+always reproaching Valentine for being late, and her father for losing
+money, and herself for idleness in the house. She tried to make friends
+with her sister, but Valentine was suspicious of her former intimacy
+with their mother, and repelled her advances. The months dragged on,
+months of eternal sewing, eternal saving, eternal nagging, eternal
+sameness. Then one evening, when her mother was standing in the kitchen,
+giving a last glance at everything before she went down to the theater,
+she suddenly threw up her arms, cried in a choking voice, "Henri!" and
+collapsed upon the floor. There was nobody in the house except Sylvia,
+who, though she felt very much frightened, tried for a long time,
+without success, to restore her mother to consciousness. At last her
+father came in and bent over his wife.
+
+"Good God, she's dead!" he exclaimed, and Sylvia broke into a sweat of
+horror to think that she had been alone in the twilight with something
+dead. Her father struggled to lift the body on the sofa, calling to
+Sylvia to come and help him. She began to whimper, and he swore at her
+for cowardice. A clock struck and Sylvia shrieked. Her father began to
+drag the body toward the sofa; playing-cards fell from his sleeves on
+the dead woman's face.
+
+"Didn't she say anything before she died?" he asked. Sylvia shook her
+head.
+
+"She was only forty-six, you know," he said; in and out of his fingers,
+round and round his hand, slipped the ten-centime piece.
+
+For some time after his wife's death Henry Snow was inconsolable, and
+his loudly expressed grief had the effect of making Sylvia seem hard,
+for she grew impatient with him, especially when every week he used to
+sell some cherished piece of furniture. She never attempted to explain
+her sentiments when he accused her of caring more for furniture than for
+her dead mother; she felt it would be useless to explain them to him,
+and suffered in silence. What Sylvia found most inexplicable was the way
+in which her father throve on sorrow and every day seemed to grow
+younger. This fact struck her so sharply that one day she penetrated the
+hostility that had been gathering daily between her and Valentine and
+asked her sister if she had observed this queer change. Valentine got
+very angry; demanded what Sylvia meant; flung out some cruel sneers; and
+involved her in a scene with her father, who charged her with malice and
+underhanded behavior. Sylvia was completely puzzled by the effect of her
+harmless observation, and supposed that Valentine, who had always been
+jealous of her, had seized the opportunity to make further mischief. She
+could never understand why Valentine was jealous of her, because
+Valentine was really beautiful, and very much like her mother, enviable
+from any point of view, and even now obviously dearer to her stepfather
+than his own daughter. She would have liked to know where the caravan
+was now; she was sure that her father would no longer wish to forbid her
+adoption by Uncle Edouard and Aunt Elise.
+
+The house grew emptier and emptier of furniture; Sylvia found it so hard
+to obtain any money from her father for current expenses that she was
+often hungry. She did not like to write to any of her older sisters,
+because she was afraid that Valentine would make it appear that she was
+in the wrong and trying to stir up trouble. Summer passed into autumn,
+and with the lengthening darkness the house became unbearably still;
+neither her father nor her sister was ever at home; even the clocks had
+now all disappeared. Sylvia could not bear to remain indoors; for in her
+nervous, hungry state old childish terrors were revived, and the great
+empty loft at the top of the house was once again inhabited by that
+one-legged man with whose clutches her mother used to frighten her when
+naughty long ago. There recurred, too, a story told by her mother on
+just such a gusty evening as these, of how, when she first came to
+Lille, she had found an armed burglar under her bed, and of how the man
+had been caught and imprisoned. Even her mother, who was not a nervous
+woman, had been frightened by his threats of revenge when he should be
+free again, and once when she and her mother were sewing together close
+to the dusky window her mother had fancied she had seen him pass the
+house, a large pale man in a dark suit. Supposing he should come back
+now for his revenge? And above all these other terrors was the dread of
+her mother's ghost.
+
+Sylvia took to going out alone every evening, whether it rained or blew,
+to seek in the streets relief from the silence of the desolate house.
+Loneliness came to seem to her the worst suffering imaginable, and the
+fear of it which was bred during these months haunted her for years to
+come.
+
+In November, about half past eight of a windy night, Sylvia came back
+from one of her solitary walks and found her father sitting with a
+bottle of brandy in the kitchen. His face was haggard; his collar was
+loose; from time to time he mopped his forehead with a big blue
+handkerchief and stared at himself in a small cracked shaving-glass that
+he must have brought down from his bedroom. She asked if he were ill,
+and he told her not to worry him, but to go out and borrow a railway
+time-table.
+
+When Sylvia returned she heard Valentine's angry voice in the kitchen,
+and waited in the passage to know the cause of the dispute.
+
+"No, I won't come with you," Valentine was saying. "You must be mad! If
+you're in danger of going to prison, so much the worse for you. I've got
+plenty of people who'll look after me."
+
+"But I'm your stepfather."
+
+Valentine's laugh made Sylvia turn pale.
+
+"Stepfather! Fine stepfather! Why, I hate you! Do you hear? I hate you!
+My man is waiting for me now, and he'll laugh when he hears that a
+convict wants his step-daughter to go away with him. My mother may have
+loved you, but I'd like her to see you now. _L'amour de sa vie. Son
+homme! Sa poupée, sa poupée! Ah, mais non alors! Sa poupée!"_
+
+Sylvia could not bear any longer this mockery of her mother's love, and,
+bursting into the kitchen, she began to abuse Valentine with all the
+vulgar words she had learned from Blanche.
+
+Valentine caught her sister by the shoulders and shook her violently:
+
+_"Tu seras bien avec ton père, sale gosse!"_
+
+Then she smacked her cheek several times and left the house.
+
+Sylvia flung her arms round her father.
+
+"Take me with you," she cried. "You hate her, don't you? Take me,
+father."
+
+Henry rose and, in rising, upset the bottle of brandy.
+
+"Thank God," he said, fervently. "My own daughter still loves me."
+
+Sylvia perceived nothing ludicrous in the tone of her father's speech,
+and happy tears rose to her eyes.
+
+"See! here is the time-table. Must we go to-night? Sha'n't we go
+to-night?"
+
+She helped her father to pack; at midnight they were in the train going
+north.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+THE amount of brandy that Henry Snow had drunk to support what he called
+his misfortune made him loquacious for the first part of the journey.
+While he and Sylvia waited during the night at a railway junction, he
+held forth at length not merely upon the event that was driving him out
+of France, but generally upon the whole course of his life. Sylvia was
+glad that her father treated her as if she were grown up, because having
+conceived for him a kind of maternal solicitude, not so much from pity
+or affection as from the inspiration to quit Lille forever which she
+gratefully owed to his lapse, she had no intention of letting him
+re-establish any authority over herself. His life's history, poured
+forth while they paced the dark platform or huddled before the stove in
+the dim waiting-room, confirmed her resolve.
+
+"Of course, when I first got that job in Lille it seemed just what I was
+looking for. I'd had a very scrappy education, because my father, who
+was cashier in a bank, died, and my mother, who you're a bit like--I
+used to have a photograph of her, but I suppose it's lost, like
+everything else--my mother got run over and killed coming back from the
+funeral. There's something funny about that, you know. I remember your
+mother laughed very much when I told her about it once. But I didn't
+laugh at the time, I can tell you, because it meant two aunts playing
+battledore and shuttlecock. Don't interrupt, there's a good girl. It's a
+sort of game. I can't remember what it is in French. I dare say it
+doesn't exist in France. You'll have to stick to English now. Good old
+England, it's not a bad place. Well, these two aunts of mine grudged
+every penny they spent on me, but one of them got married to a man who
+knew the firm I worked for in Lille. That's how I came to France. Where
+are my aunts now? Dead, I hope. Don't you fret, Sylvia, we sha'n't
+trouble any of our relations for a long time to come. Then after I'd
+been in France about four years I married your mother. If you ask me
+why, I can't tell you. I loved her; but the thing was wrong somehow. It
+put me in a false position. Well, look at me! I'm only thirty-four now.
+Who'd think you were my daughter?
+
+"And while we're talking on serious subjects, let me give you a bit of
+advice. Keep off jealousy. Jealousy is hell; and your mother was
+jealous. Well--Frenchwomen are more jealous than Englishwomen. You can't
+get over that fact. The scenes I've had with her. It was no good my
+pointing out that she was fourteen years older than me. Not a bit of
+good. It made her worse. That's why I took to reading. I had to get away
+from her sometimes and shut myself up. That's why I took to cards. And
+that's where your mother was wrong. She'd rather I gambled away her
+money, because it's no use to pretend that it wasn't her money, than go
+and sit at a café and perhaps observe--mind you, simply observe--another
+woman. I used to drink a bit too much when we were first married, but it
+caused such rows that I gave that up. I remember I broke an umbrella
+once, and you'd really have thought there wasn't another umbrella in the
+whole world. Why, that little drop of brandy I drank to-night has made
+me feel quite funny. I'm not used to it. But there was some excuse for
+drinking to-night. I've had runs of bad luck before, but anything like
+these last two months I've never had in my life. The consequence was I
+borrowed some of my salary in advance without consulting anybody. That's
+where the manager had me this afternoon. He couldn't see that it was
+merely borrowing. As a matter of fact, the sum wasn't worth an argument;
+but he wasn't content with that; he actually told me he was going to
+examine--well--you wouldn't understand if I tried to explain to you. It
+would take a commercial training to understand what I've been doing.
+Anyway, I made up my mind to make a bolt for it. Now don't run away with
+the notion that the police will be after me, because I very much hope
+they won't. In fact, I don't think they'll do anything. But the whole
+affair gave me a shock and Valentine's behavior upset me. You see, when
+your mother was alive if I'd had a bad week she used to help me out; but
+Valentine actually asked me for money. She accused me of all sorts of
+things which, luckily, you're too young to understand; and I really
+didn't like to refuse her when I'd got the money.
+
+"Well, it's been a lesson to me and I tell you I've missed your mother
+these last months. She was jealous; she was close; she had a tongue; but
+a finer woman never lived, and I'm proud of her. She used to wish you
+were a boy. Well, I don't blame her. After all, she'd had six girls, and
+what use are they to anybody? None at all. They might as well not exist.
+Women go off and get married and take somebody else's name, and it's
+finished. There's not one of your sisters that's really stayed in the
+family. A selfish crowd, and the worst of the lot was Valentine. Yes,
+you ought to have been a boy. I'll tell you what, it wouldn't be a bad
+idea if you _were_ a boy for a bit. You see, in case the French police
+make inquiries, it would be just as well to throw them off the scent;
+and, another thing, it would be much easier for me till I find my feet
+again in London. Would you like to be a boy, Sylvia? There's no reason
+against it that I can see, and plenty of reasons for it. Of course it
+means cutting off your hair, but they say that's a very good thing for
+the hair once in a way. You'll be more free, too, as a boy, and less of
+a responsibility. There's no doubt a girl would be a big responsibility
+in London."
+
+"But could I be a boy?" Sylvia asked. "I'd like to be a boy if I could.
+And what should I be called?"
+
+"Of course you could be a boy," her father affirmed, enthusiastically.
+"You were always a bit of a _garçon_ _manqué_, as the French say. I'll
+buy you a Norfolk suit."
+
+Sylvia was not yet sufficiently unsexed not to want to know more about
+her proposed costume. Her father pledged his word that it would please
+her; his description of it recalled the dress that people in Lille put
+on to go shooting sparrows on Sunday.
+
+"_Un sporting?_" Sylvia queried.
+
+"That's about it," her father agreed. "If you had any scissors with you,
+I'd start right in now and cut your hair."
+
+Sylvia said she had scissors in her bag; and presently she and her
+father retired to the outer gloom of the junction, where, undisturbed by
+a single curious glance, Sylvia's curls were swept away by the wind.
+
+"I've not done it quite so neatly as I might," said her father,
+examining the effect under a wavering gas-jet. "I'll have you properly
+cropped to-morrow at a hairdresser's."
+
+Sylvia felt cold and bare round the neck, but she welcomed the sensation
+as one of freedom. How remote Lille seemed already--utterly, gloriously
+far away! Now arose the problem of her name.
+
+"The only boy's name I can think of that's anything like Sylvia is
+Silas, and that's more Si than Sil. Wait a bit. What about Silvius? I've
+seen that name somewhere. Only, we'll call you Sil for short."
+
+"Why was I ever called Sylvia?" she asked.
+
+"It was a fancy of your mother's. It comes in a song called '_Plaisir
+d'amour_.' And your mother liked the English way of saying it. I've got
+it. Sylvester! Sylvester Snow! What do you want better than that?"
+
+When the train approached Boulogne, Henry Snow gave up talking and began
+to juggle with the ten-centime piece; while they were walking along to
+the boat he looked about him furtively. Nobody stopped them, however;
+and with the kind of relief she had felt when she had brought her album
+safely over the frontier Sylvia saw the coast of France recede. There
+were many English people on the boat, and Sylvia watched them with such
+concentration that several elderly ladies at whom she stared in turn
+thought she was waiting for them to be sick, and irritably waved her
+away. The main impression of her fellow-travelers was their resemblance
+to the blind beggars that one saw sitting outside churches. She was
+tempted to drop a sou in one of the basins, but forbore, not feeling
+quite sure how such humor would appeal to the English. Presently she
+managed to engage in conversation an English girl of her own age, but
+she had not got far with the many questions she wanted to ask when her
+companion was whisked away and she heard a voice reproving her for
+talking to strange little girls. Sylvia decided that the strangeness of
+her appearance must be due to her short hair, and she longed for the
+complete transformation. Soon it began to rain; the shores of that
+mysterious land to which she actually belonged swam toward her. Her
+father came up from below, where, as he explained, he had been trying to
+sleep off the effects of a bad night. Indeed, he did not recover his
+usual jauntiness until they were in the train, traveling through country
+that seemed to Sylvia not very different from the country of France.
+Would London, after all, prove to be very different from Lille? Then
+slowly the compartment grew dark, and from time to time the train
+stopped.
+
+"A fog," said her father, and he explained to her the meaning of a
+London fog.
+
+It grew darker and darker, with a yellowish-brown darkness that was
+unlike any obscurity she had ever known.
+
+"Bit of luck," said her father. "We sha'n't be noticed in this. Phew! It
+is thick. We'd better go to some hotel close by for to-night. No good
+setting out to look for rooms in this."
+
+In the kitchen at Lille there had been a picture called "The Impenitent
+Sinner," in which demons were seen dragging a dead man from his bed into
+flames and darkness; Sylvia pointed out its likeness to the present
+scene at Charing Cross. Outside the station it was even worse. There was
+a thunderous din; horses came suddenly out of the darkness; everybody
+seemed to be shouting; boys were running along with torches; it was
+impossible to breathe.
+
+"Why did they build a city here?" she inquired.
+
+At last they came to a house in a quieter street, where they walked up
+high, narrow stairs to their bedrooms.
+
+The next morning her father took Sylvia's measurements and told her not
+to get up before he came back. When she walked out beside him in a
+Norfolk suit nobody seemed to stare at her; when her hair had been
+properly cut by a barber and she could look at herself in a long glass,
+she plunged her hands into her trousers pockets and felt securely a boy.
+
+While they were walking to a mysterious place called the Underground,
+her father asked if she had caught bronchitis, and he would scarcely
+accept her word that she was trying to practise whistling.
+
+"Well, don't do it when I'm inquiring about rooms or the people in the
+house may think it's something infectious," he advised. "And don't
+forget your name's Sylvester. Which reminds me it wouldn't be a bad
+notion if I was to change my own name. There's no sense in running one's
+head into a noose, and if inquiries _were_ made by the police it would
+be foolish to ram my name right down their throats. Henry Snow. What
+about Henry White? Better keep to the same initials. I've got it. Henry
+Scarlett. You couldn't find anything more opposite to Snow than that."
+
+Thus Sylvia Snow became Sylvester Scarlett.
+
+After a long search they took rooms with Mrs. Threadgould, a widow who
+with her two boys, Willie and Ernie, lived at 45 Pomona Terrace,
+Shepherd's Bush. There were no other lodgers, for the house was small;
+and Henry Scarlett decided it was just the place in which to stay
+quietly for a while until the small sum of money he had brought with him
+from Lille was finished, when it would be necessary to look for work.
+Meanwhile he announced that he should study very carefully the
+advertisements in the daily papers, leaving everybody with the
+impression that reading advertisements was a most erudite business, a
+kind of scientific training that when the moment arrived would produce
+practical results.
+
+Sylvia meanwhile was enjoined to amuse herself in the company of Mrs.
+Threadgould's two boys, who were about her own age. It happened that at
+this time Willie Threadgould, the elder, was obsessed by secret
+societies, to which his brother Ernie and many other boys in the
+neighborhood had recently been initiated. Sylvia was regarded with
+suspicion by Willie until she was able to thrill him with the story of
+various criminal associations in France and so became his lieutenant in
+all enterprises. Most of the secret societies that had been rapidly
+formed by Willie and as rapidly dissolved had possessed a merely
+academic value; now with Sylvia's advent they were given a practical
+intention. Secrecy for secrecy's sake went out of fashion. Muffling the
+face in dusters, giving the sign and countersign, lurking at the corner
+of the road to meet another conspirator, were excellent decorations, but
+Sylvia pointed out that they led nowhere and produced nothing; to
+illustrate her theory she proposed a secret society for ringing other
+people's bells. She put this forward as a kind of elementary exercise;
+but she urged that, when the neighborhood had realized the bell-ringing
+as something to which they were more continuously exposed than other
+neighborhoods, the moment would be ripe to form another secret society
+that should inflict a more serious nuisance. From the secret society
+that existed to be a nuisance would grow another secret society that
+existed to be a threat; and finally there seemed no reason why Willie
+Threadgould (Sylvia was still feminine enough to let Willie think it was
+Willie) should control Shepherd's Bush and emulate the most remarkable
+brigands of history. In the end Sylvia's imagination banished her from
+the ultimate power at which she aimed. The Secret Society for Ringing
+Other People's Bells did its work so well that extra policemen were put
+on duty to cope with the nuisance and an inspector made a house-to-house
+visitation, which gave her father such a shock that he left Pomona
+Terrace the next day and took a room in Lillie Road, Fulham.
+
+"We have been betrayed," Sylvia assured Willie. "Do not forget to avenge
+my capture."
+
+Willie vowed he would let nothing interfere with his vengeance, not even
+if the traitor turned out to be his own brother Ernie.
+
+Sylvia asked if he would kill him, and reminded Willie that it was a
+serious thing to betray a secret society when that society was doing
+something more than dressing up. Willie doubted if it would be possible
+to kill the culprit, but swore that he should prefer death to what
+should happen to him.
+
+Sylvia was so much gratified by Willie's severity that she led him into
+a corner, where, having exacted his silence with the most solemn oaths,
+she betrayed herself and the secret of her sex; then they embraced. When
+they parted forever next day, Sylvia felt that she had left behind her
+in Willie's heart a romantic memory that would never fade.
+
+Mrs. Meares, who kept the house in Lillie Road, was an Irishwoman whose
+husband had grown tired of her gentility and left her. She did not
+herself sum up her past so tersely as this, but Sylvia was sure that Mr.
+Meares had left her because he could no longer endure the stories about
+her royal descent. Perhaps he might have been able to endure his wife's
+royal descent, because, after all, he had married into the family and
+might have extracted some pride out of that fact; but all her friends
+apparently came from kings and queens, too. Ireland, if Mrs. Meares was
+to be believed, consisted of one large poverty-stricken royal family,
+which must have cheapened the alliance for Mr. Meares. It was lucky that
+he was still alive, for otherwise Sylvia was sure that her father would
+have married their new landlady, such admiration did he always express
+for the manner in which she struggled against misfortune without losing
+her dignity. This, from what Sylvia could see, consisted of wearing silk
+skirts that trailed in the dust of her ill-kept house and of her fanning
+herself in an arm-chair however cold the weather. The only thing that
+stirred her to action was the necessity of averting an ill-omen. Thus,
+she would turn back on a flight of stairs rather than pass anybody
+descending; although ordinarily when she went up-stairs she used to sigh
+and hold her heart at every step. Sylvia remembered her mother's
+scrupulous care of her house, even in the poorest days; she could not
+help contrasting her dignity with this Irish dignity that was content to
+see indefinite fried eggs on her table, cockroaches in the bedrooms, and
+her own placket always agape. Mrs. Meares used to say that she would
+never let any of her rooms to ladies, because ladies always fussed.
+
+"Gentlemen are so much more considerate," said Mrs. Meares.
+
+Their willingness to be imposed upon made Sylvia contemptuous of the sex
+she had adopted, and she tried to spur her father to protest when his
+bed was still unmade at four o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+"Why don't you make it?" he suggested. "I don't like to worry poor Mrs.
+Meares."
+
+Sylvia, however contemptuous of manhood, had no intention of
+relinquishing its privileges; she firmly declined to have anything to do
+with the making of beds.
+
+The breakfast-room was placed below the level of the street. Here, in an
+atmosphere of cat-haunted upholstery and broken springs, of overcooked
+vegetables and dingy fires, yet withal of a kind of frowsy comfort,
+Sylvia sometimes met the other lodgers. One of them was Baron von
+Statten, a queer German, whom Sylvia could not make out at all, for he
+spoke English as if he had been taught by a maid-of-all-work with a bad
+cold, powdered his pink face, and wore three rings, yet was so poor that
+sometimes he stayed in bed for a week at a stretch, pending negotiations
+with his laundress. The last piece of information Sylvia obtained from
+Clara, the servant, who professed a great contempt for the baron. Mrs.
+Meares, on the other hand, derived much pride from his position in her
+house, which she pointed out was really that of an honored guest, since
+he owed now nearly seven weeks' rent; she never failed to refer to him
+by his title with warm affection. Another lodger was a Welsh pianist
+called Morgan, who played the piano all day long and billiards for as
+much of the night as he could. He was a bad-tempered young man with long
+black hair and a great antipathy to the baron, whom he was always trying
+to insult; indeed, once at breakfast he actually poured a cup of coffee
+over him.
+
+"Mr. Morgan!" Mrs. Meares had cried. "No Irishman would have done that."
+
+"No Irishman would ever do anything," the pianist snapped, "if he could
+get somebody else to do it for him."
+
+Sylvia welcomed the assault, because the scalding coffee drove the baron
+to unbutton his waistcoat in a frenzy of discomfort and thereby
+confirmed Clara's legend about the scarcity of his linen.
+
+The third lodger was Mr. James Monkley, about whom Sylvia was undecided;
+sometimes she liked him very much, at other times she disliked him
+equally. He had curly red hair, finely cut red lips, a clear complexion,
+and an authoritative, determined manner, but his eyes, instead of being
+the pleasant blue they ought to have been in such a face, were of a
+shade of muddy green and never changed their expression. Sylvia once
+mentioned about Mr. Monkley's eyes to Clara, who said they were like a
+fish.
+
+"But Monkley's not like a fish," Sylvia argued.
+
+"I don't know what he's like, I'm sure," said Clara. "All I know is he
+gives any one the creeps something shocking whenever he stares, which
+he's forever doing. Well, fine feathers don't make a summer and he looks
+best who looks last, as they say."
+
+One reason for disliking Mr. Monkley was his intimacy with her father.
+Sylvia would not have objected to this if it had not meant long
+confabulations during which she was banished from the room and, what was
+worse, thrown into the society of Mrs. Meares, who always seemed to
+catch her when she was trying to make her way down-stairs to Clara.
+
+"Come in and talk to me," Mrs. Meares would say. "I'm just tidying up my
+bedroom. Ah, Sil, if God had not willed otherwise I should have had a
+boy just your age now. Poor little innocent!"
+
+Sylvia knew too well this counterpart of hers and hated him as much in
+his baby's grave as she might have done were he still her competitor in
+life.
+
+"Ah, it's a terrible thing to be left as I've been left, to be married
+and not married, to have been a mother and to have lost my child. And I
+was never intended for this life. My father kept horses. We had a
+carriage. But they say, 'trust an Irishwoman to turn her hand to
+anything.' And it's true. There's many people would wonder how I do it
+with only one maid. How's your dear father? He seems comfortable. Ah,
+it's a privilege to look after a gentleman like him. He seems to have
+led a most adventurous life. Most of his time spent abroad, he tells me.
+Well, travel gives an air to a man. Ah, now if one of the cats hasn't
+been naughty just when I'd got my room really tidy! Will you tell Clara,
+if you are going down-stairs, to bring up a dustpan? I don't mind asking
+you, for at your age I think you would be glad to wait on the ladies
+like a little gentleman. Sure, as your father said the other day, it's a
+very good thing you're in a lady's house. That's why the dear baron's so
+content; and the poor man has much to try him, for his relations in
+Berlin have treated him abominably."
+
+Such speeches inflicted upon her because Monkley wanted to talk secrets
+with her father made her disapprove of Monkley. Nevertheless, she
+admired him in a way; he was the only person in the house who was not
+limp, except Mr. Morgan, the pianist; but he used to glare at her, when
+they occasionally met, and seemed to regard her as an unpleasant result
+of being late for breakfast, like a spot on the table-cloth made by a
+predecessor's egg.
+
+Monkley used to ask Sylvia sometimes about what she was going to do.
+Naturally he treated her future as a boy's future, which took most of
+the interest out of the conversation; for Sylvia did not suppose that
+she would be able to remain a boy very much longer. The mortifying fact,
+too, was that she was not getting anything out of her transformation:
+for all the fun she was having, she might as well have stayed a girl.
+There had been a brief vista of liberty at Pomona Terrace; here, beyond
+going out to buy a paper or tobacco for her father, she spent most of
+her time in gossiping with Clara, which she could probably have done
+more profitably in petticoats.
+
+Winter drew out to spring; to the confabulations between Jimmy Monkley
+and Henry Scarlett were now added absences from the house that lasted
+for a day or two at a time. These expeditions always began with the
+friends' dressing up in pearl-buttoned overcoats very much cut in at the
+waist. Sylvia felt that such careful attention to externals augured the
+great secrecy and importance of the enterprise; remembering the effect
+of Willie Threadgould's duster-shrouded countenance upon his
+fellow-conspirators, she postulated to herself that with the human race,
+particularly the male portion, dress was always the prelude to action.
+One morning after breakfast, when Monkley and her father had hurried off
+to catch a train, the baron said in his mincing voice:
+
+"Off ra-c-cing again! They do enjoy themselves-s-s."
+
+She asked what racing meant, and the baron replied:
+
+"Hors-s-se-ra-c-cing, of cour-se."
+
+Sylvia, being determined to arrive at the truth of this business, put
+the baron through a long interrogation, from which she managed to learn
+that the jockeys wore colored silk jackets and that in his prosperous
+days the baron had found the sport too exciting for his heart. After
+breakfast Sylvia took the subject with her into the kitchen, and tried
+to obtain fuller information from Clara, who, with the prospect of a
+long morning's work, was disinclined to be communicative.
+
+"What a boy you are for asking questions! Why don't you ask your dad
+when he comes home, or that Monkley? As if I'd got time to talk about
+racing. I've got enough racing of my own to think about; but if it goes
+on much longer I shall race off out of it one of these days, and that's
+a fact. You may take a pitcher to the well, but you can't make it drink,
+as they say."
+
+Sylvia withdrew for a while, but later in the afternoon she approached
+Clara again.
+
+"God bless the boy! He's got racing on the brain," the maid exclaimed.
+"I had a young man like that once, but I soon gave him the go-by. He was
+that stuffed up with halfpenny papers he couldn't cuddle any one without
+crackling like an egg-shell. 'Don't carry on so, Clara,' he said to me.
+'I had a winner to-day in the three-thirty.' 'Did you?' I answered, very
+cool. 'Well, you've got a loser now,' and with that I walked off very
+dignified and left him. It's the last straw, they say, that gives the
+camel the hump. And he properly gave me the hump. But I reckon, I do,
+that it's mugs like him as keeps your dad and that Monkley so
+smart-looking. I reckon most of the racing they do is racing to see
+which can get some silly josser to give them his money first."
+
+Sylvia informed Clara that her father used to play cards for money in
+France.
+
+"There you are. What did I tell you?" Clara went on. "Nap, they call it,
+but I reckon that there Monkley keeps wide enough awake. Oh, he's an
+artful one, he is! Birds and feathers keep together, they say, and I
+reckon your dad's cleverer than what he makes out to be."
+
+Sylvia produced in support of this idea her father's habit of juggling
+with a penny.
+
+"What did I tell you?" Clara exclaimed, triumphantly. "Take it from me,
+Sil, the two of them has a rare old time with this racing. I've got a
+friend, Maudie Tilt, who's in service, and her brother started off to be
+a jockey, only he never got very far, because he got kicked on the head
+by a horse when he was sweeping out the stable, which was very
+aggravating for his relations, because he had a sister who died in a
+galloping consumption the same week. I reckon horses was very unlucky
+for them, I do."
+
+"My grandmother got run over coming back from my grandfather's funeral,"
+Sylvia proclaimed.
+
+"By the hearse?" Clara asked, awestruck.
+
+Sylvia felt it would be well to make the most of her story, and replied
+without hesitation in the affirmative.
+
+"Well, they say to meet an empty hearse means a pleasant surprise," said
+Clara. "But I reckon your grandma didn't think so. Here, I'll tell you
+what, my next afternoon off I'll take you round to see Maudie Tilt. She
+lives not far from where the Cedars 'bus stops."
+
+About a week after this conversation Clara, wearing balloon sleeves of
+last year's fashion and with her hair banked up to support a monstrous
+hat, descended into the basement, whence she and Sylvia emerged into a
+fine April afternoon and hailed an omnibus.
+
+"Mind you don't get blown off the top, miss," said the conductor, with a
+glance at Clara's sleeves.
+
+"No fear of that. I've grown a bit heavier since I saw your face," Clara
+replied, climbing serenely to the top of the omnibus. "Two, as far as
+you go," she said, handing twopence to the conductor when he came up for
+the fares.
+
+"I could go a long way with you, miss," he said, punching the tickets
+with a satisfied twinkle. "What a lovely hat!"
+
+"Is it? Well, don't start in trying to eat it because you've been used
+to green food all your life."
+
+"Your sister answers very sharp, doesn't she, Tommy?" said the conductor
+to Sylvia.
+
+After this display of raillery Sylvia felt it would be weak merely to
+point out that Clara was not a sister, so she remained silent.
+
+The top of the omnibus was empty except for Clara and Sylvia; the
+conductor, whistling a cheerful tune, descended again.
+
+"Saucy things," Clara commented. "But there, you can't blame them. It
+makes any one feel cheerful to be out in the open air like this."
+
+Maudie's house in Castleford Road was soon reached after they left the
+omnibus. When they rang the area bell, Maudie herself opened the door.
+
+"Oh, you did give me a turn!" she exclaimed. "I thought it was early for
+the milkman. You couldn't have come at a better time, because they've
+both gone away. She's been ill, and they'll be away for a month. Cook's
+gone for a holiday, and I'm all alone."
+
+Sylvia was presented formally to the hostess; and when, at Clara's
+prompting, she had told the story of her grandmother's death,
+conversation became easy. Maudie Tilt took them all over the house, and,
+though Clara said she should die of nervousness, insisted upon their
+having tea in the drawing-room.
+
+"Supposing they come back," Clara whispered. "Oh, lor'! Whatever's
+that?"
+
+Maudie told her not to be silly, and went on to boast that she did not
+care if they did come back, because she had made up her mind to give up
+domestic service and go on the stage.
+
+"Fancy!" said Clara. "Whoever put that idea into your head?"
+
+"Well, I started learning some of the songs they sing in the halls, and
+some friends of mine gave a party last January and I made quite a hit.
+I'll sing you a song now, if you like."
+
+And Maudie, sitting down at the piano, accompanied herself with much
+effect in one of Miss Vesta Victoria's songs.
+
+"For goodness' sake keep quiet, Maudie," Clara begged. "You'll have the
+neighbors coming 'round to see whatever's the matter. You have got a
+cheek."
+
+Sylvia thoroughly enjoyed Maudie's performance and thought she would
+have a great success. She liked Maudie's smallness and neatness and
+glittering, dark eyes. Altogether it was a delightful afternoon, and she
+was sorry to go away.
+
+"Come again," cried Maudie, "before they come back, and we'll have some
+more."
+
+"Oh, I did feel frightened!" Clara said, when she and Sylvia were
+hurrying to catch the omnibus back to Lillie Road. "I couldn't enjoy
+it, not a bit. I felt as if I was in the bath and the door not bolted,
+though they do say stolen fruit is the sweetest."
+
+When she got home, Sylvia found that her father had returned also, and
+she held forth on the joys of Maudie Tilt's house.
+
+"Wants to go on the stage, does she?" said Monkley, who was in the room.
+"Well, you'd better introduce us and we'll see what we can do. Eh,
+Harry?"
+
+Sylvia approved of this suggestion and eagerly vouched for Maudie's
+willingness.
+
+"We'll have a little supper-party," said Monkley. "Sil can go round and
+tell her we're coming."
+
+Sylvia blessed the persistency with which she had worried Clara on the
+subject of racing; otherwise, bisexual and solitary, she might have been
+moping in Lillie Road. She hoped that Maudie Tilt would not offer any
+objections to the proposed party, and determined to point out most
+persuasively the benefit of Monkley's patronage, if she really meant to
+go on the stage. However, Maudie was not at all difficult to convince
+and showed herself as eager for the party as Sylvia herself. She was
+greatly impressed by her visitor's experience of the stage, but reckoned
+that no boys should have pinched her legs or given her the broken masks.
+
+"You ought to have punched into them," she said. "Still, I dare say it
+wasn't so easy for you, not being a girl. Boys are very nasty to one
+another, when they'd be as nice as anything to a girl."
+
+Sylvia was conscious of a faint feeling of contempt for Maudie's
+judgment, and she wondered from what her illusions were derived.
+
+Clara, when she heard of the proposed party, was dubious. She had no
+confidence in Monkley, and said so frankly.
+
+"No one wants to go chasing after a servant-girl for nothing," she
+declared. "Every cloud's got a silver lining."
+
+"But what could he want to do wrong?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Ah, now you're asking. But if I was Maudie Tilt I'd keep myself to
+myself."
+
+Clara snapped out the last remark and would say nothing more on the
+subject.
+
+A few days later, under Sylvia's guidance, James Monkley and Henry
+Scarlett sought Castleford Road. Maudie had put on a black silk dress,
+and with her hair done in what she called the French fashion she
+achieved a kind of Japanese piquancy.
+
+"_N'est-ce pas qu'elle a un chic?"_ Sylvia whispered to her father.
+
+They had supper in the dining-room and made a good deal of noise over
+it, for Monkley had brought two bottles of champagne, and Maudie could
+not resist producing a bottle of cognac from her master's cellar. When
+Monkley asked if everything were not kept under lock and key, Maudie
+told him that if they couldn't trust her they could lump it; she could
+jolly soon find another place; and, any way, she intended to get on the
+stage somehow. After supper they went up-stairs to the drawing-room; and
+Maudie was going to sit down at the piano, when Monkley told her that he
+would accompany her, because he wanted to see how she danced. Maudie
+gave a most spirited performance, kicking up her legs and stamping until
+the ornaments on the mantelpiece rattled. Then Monkley showed Maudie
+where she could make improvements in her renderings, which surprised
+Sylvia very much, because she had never connected Monkley with anything
+like this.
+
+"Quite an artist is Jimmy," Henry Scarlett declared. Then he added in an
+undertone to Sylvia: "He's a wonderful chap, you know. I've taken a rare
+fancy to him. Do anything. Sharp as a needle. I may as well say right
+out that he's made all the difference to my life in London."
+
+Presently Monkley suggested that Maudie should show them over the house,
+and they went farther up-stairs to the principal bedroom, where the two
+men soused their heads with the various hair-washes left behind by the
+master of the house. Henry expressed a desire to have a bath, and
+retired with an enormous sponge and a box of bath-salts. Monkley began
+to flirt with Maudie; Sylvia, feeling that the evening was becoming
+rather dull, went down-stairs again to the drawing-room and tried to
+pass the time away with a stereoscope.
+
+After that evening Monkley and Scarlett went often to see Maudie, but,
+much to Sylvia's resentment, they never took her with them. When she
+grumbled about this to Clara, Clara told her that she was well out of
+it.
+
+"Too many cooks drink up the soup, which means you're one too many, my
+lad, and a rolling stone doesn't let the grass grow under its feet,
+which means as that Monkley's got some game on."
+
+Sylvia did not agree with Clara's point of view; she still felt
+aggrieved by being left out of everything. Luckily, when life in Lillie
+Road was becoming utterly dull again, a baboon escaped from Earl's Court
+Exhibition, climbed up the drain-pipe outside the house, and walked into
+Mrs. Meares's bedroom; so that for some time after this she had
+palpitations whenever a bell rang. Mr. Morgan was very unkind about her
+adventure, for he declared that the baboon looked so much like an
+Irishman that she must have thought it was her husband come back; Mr.
+Morgan had been practising the Waldstein Sonata at the time, and had
+been irritated by the interruption of a wandering ape.
+
+A fortnight after this there was a scene in the house that touched
+Sylvia more sharply, for Maudie Tilt arrived one morning and begged to
+speak with Mr. Monkley, who, being in the Scarletts' room at the moment,
+looked suddenly at Sylvia's father with a question in his eyes.
+
+"I told you not to take them all," Henry said.
+
+"I'll soon calm her down," Monkley promised. "If you hadn't insisted on
+taking those bottles of hair-wash she'd never have thought of looking to
+see if the other things were still there."
+
+Henry indicated his daughter with a gesture.
+
+"Rot! The kid's got to stand in on this," Monkley said, with a laugh.
+"After all, it was he who introduced us. I'll bring her up here to talk
+it out," he added.
+
+Presently he returned with Maudie, who had very red eyes and a
+frightened expression.
+
+"Oh, Jimmy!" she burst out. "Whatever did you want to take that jewelry
+for? I only found out last night, and they'll be home to-morrow.
+Whatever am I going to say?"
+
+"Jewelry?" repeated Monkley, in a puzzled voice. "Harry took some
+hair-wash, if that's what you mean."
+
+"Jewelry?" Henry murmured, taking the cue from his friend. "Was there
+any jewelry?"
+
+"Oh, don't pretend you don't know nothing about it," Maudie cried,
+dissolving into tears. "For the love of God give it to me, so as I can
+put it back. If you're hard up, Jimmy, you can take what I saved for the
+stage; but give us back that jewelry."
+
+"If you act like that you'll make your fortune as a professional,"
+Monkley sneered.
+
+Maudie turned to Sylvia in desperation. "Sil," she cried, "make them
+give it back. It'll be the ruin of me. Why, it's burglary! Oh, whatever
+shall I do?"
+
+Maudie flung herself down on the bed and wept convulsively. Sylvia felt
+her heart beating fast, but she strung herself up to the encounter and
+faced Monkley.
+
+"What's the good of saying you haven't got the jewelry," she cried,
+"when you know you have? Give it to her or I'll--I'll go out into the
+middle of the road and shout at the top of my voice that there's a snake
+in the house, and people will have to come in and look for it, because
+when they didn't believe about the baboon in Mrs. Meares's room the
+baboon was there all the time."
+
+She stopped and challenged Monkley with flashing eyes, head thrown back,
+and agitated breast.
+
+"You oughtn't to talk to a grown-up person like that, you know," said
+her father.
+
+Something unspeakably soft in his attitude infuriated Sylvia, and
+spinning round she flashed out at him:
+
+"If you don't make Monkley give back the things you stole I'll tell
+everybody about _you_. I mean it. I'll tell everybody." She stamped her
+feet.
+
+"That's a daughter," said Henry. "That's the way they're bringing them
+up nowadays--to turn round on their fathers."
+
+"A daughter?" Monkley echoed, with an odd look at his friend.
+
+"I mean son," said Henry, weakly. "Anyway, it's all the same."
+
+Monkley seemed to pay no more attention to the slip, but went over to
+Maudie and began to coax her.
+
+"Come on, Maudie, don't turn away from a good pal. What if we did take
+a few things? They shouldn't have left them behind. People deserve to
+lose things if they're so careless."
+
+"That's quite true," Henry agreed, virtuously. "It'll be a lesson to
+them."
+
+"Go back and pack up your things, my dear, and get out of the house.
+I'll see you through. You shall take another name and go on the stage
+right away. What's the good of crying over a few rings and bangles?"
+
+But Maudie refused to be comforted. "Give them back to me. Give them
+back to me," she moaned.
+
+"Oh, all right," Monkley said, suddenly. "But you're no sport, Maudie.
+You've got the chance of your life and you're turning it down. Well,
+don't blame me if you find yourself still a slavey five years hence."
+
+Monkley went down-stairs and came back again in a minute or two with a
+parcel wrapped up in tissue-paper.
+
+"You haven't kept anything back?" Maudie asked, anxiously.
+
+"My dear girl, you ought to know how many there were. Count them."
+
+"Would you like me to give you back the hair-wash?" Henry asked,
+indignantly.
+
+Maudie rose to go away.
+
+"You're not angry with me, Jim?" she asked, pleadingly.
+
+"Oh, get out!" he snapped.
+
+Maudie turned pale and rushed from the room.
+
+"Silly b----h," Monkley said. "Well, it's been a very instructive
+morning," he added, fixing Sylvia with his green eyes and making her
+feel uncomfortable.
+
+"Some people make a fuss about the least little thing," Henry said.
+"There was just the same trouble when I pawned my wife's jewelry. Coming
+round the corner to have one?" he inquired, looking at Monkley, who said
+he would join him presently and followed him out of the room.
+
+When she was alone, Sylvia tried to put her emotions in order, without
+success. She had wished for excitement, but, now that it had arrived,
+she wished it had kept away from her. She was not so much shocked by the
+revelation of what her father and Monkley had done (though she resented
+their cowardly treatment of Maudie), as frightened by what might
+ultimately happen to her in their company. They might at any moment find
+themselves in prison, and if she were to be let out before the others,
+what would she do? She would be utterly alone and would starve; or, what
+seemed more likely, they would be arrested and she would remain in
+Lillie Road, waiting for news and perhaps compelled to earn her living
+by working for Mrs. Meares. At all costs she must be kept informed of
+what was going on. If her father tried to shut her out of his
+confidence, she would appeal to Monkley. Her meditation was interrupted
+by Monkley himself.
+
+"So you're a little girl," he said, suddenly. "Fancy that."
+
+"What if I am?" challenged Sylvia, who saw no hope of successfully
+denying the accusation.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," Monkley murmured. "It's more fun, that's all. But,
+look here, girl or boy, don't let me ever have any more heroics from
+you. D'ye hear? Or, by God! I'll--"
+
+Sylvia felt that the only way of dealing with Monkley was to stand up to
+him from the first.
+
+"Oh, shut up!" she broke in. "You can't frighten me. Next time, perhaps
+you'll tell me beforehand what you're going to do, and then I'll see if
+I'll let you do it."
+
+He began to laugh. "You've got some pluck."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, to cheek me like that."
+
+"I'm not Maudie, you see," Sylvia pointed out.
+
+Presently a spasm of self-consciousness made her long to be once more in
+petticoats, and, grabbing wildly at her flying boyhood, she said how
+much she wanted to have adventures. Monkley promised she should have as
+many as she liked, and bade her farewell, saying that he was going to
+join her father in a saloon bar round the corner. Sylvia volunteered to
+accompany him, and after a momentary hesitation he agreed to take her.
+On the stairs they overtook the baron, very much dressed up, who, in
+answer to an inquiry from Monkley, informed them that he was going to
+lunch with the Emperor of Byzantium.
+
+"Give my love to the Empress," Monkley laughed.
+
+"It's-s nothing to laugh at," the baron said, severely. "He lives in
+West Kensington."
+
+"Next door to the Pope, I suppose," Monkley went on.
+
+"You never will be serious, but I'll take you there one afternoon, if
+you don't believe me."
+
+The baron continued on his way down-stairs with a kind of mincing
+dignity, and Mrs. Meares came out of her bedroom.
+
+"Isn't it nice for the dear baron?" she purred. "He's received some of
+his money from Berlin, and at last he can go and look up his old
+friends. He's lunching with the Emperor to-day."
+
+"I hope he won't drop his crown in the soup," Monkley said.
+
+"Ah, give over laughing, Mr. Monkley, for I like to think of the poor
+baron in the society to which he belongs. And he doesn't forget his old
+friends. But there, after all, why would he, for, though I'm living in
+Lillie Road, I've got the real spirit of the past in my blood, and the
+idea of meeting the Emperor doesn't elate me at all. It seems somehow as
+if I were used to meeting emperors."
+
+On the way to the public house Monkley held forth to Sylvia on the
+prevalence of human folly, and vowed that he would hold the baron to his
+promise and visit the Emperor himself.
+
+"And take me with you?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"You seem very keen on the new partnership," he observed.
+
+"I don't want to be left out of things," she explained. "Not out of
+anything. It makes me look stupid. Father treats me like a little girl;
+but it's he who's stupid, really."
+
+They had reached the public house, and Henry was taken aback by Sylvia's
+arrival. She, for her part, was rather disappointed in the saloon bar.
+The words had conjured something much more sumptuous than this place
+that reminded her of a chemist's shop.
+
+"I don't want the boy to start learning to drink," Henry protested.
+
+Monkley told him to give up the fiction of Sylvia's boyhood with him,
+to which Henry replied that, though, as far as he knew, he had only been
+sitting here ten minutes, Jimmy and Sylvia seemed to have settled the
+whole world between them in that time.
+
+"What's more, if she's going to remain a boy any longer, she's got to
+have some new clothes," Monkley announced.
+
+Sylvia flushed with pleasure, recognizing that cooperative action of
+which preliminary dressing-up was the pledge.
+
+"You see, I've promised to take her round with me to the Emperor of
+Byzantium."
+
+"I don't know that pub," said Henry. "Is it Walham Green way?"
+
+Monkley told him about meeting the baron, and put forward his theory
+that people who were willing to be duped by the Emperor of Byzantium
+would be equally willing to be duped by other people, with much profit
+to the other people.
+
+"Meaning you and me?" said Henry.
+
+"Well, in this case I propose to leave you out of the first act,"
+Monkley said. "I'm going to have a look at the scene myself. There's no
+one like you with the cards, Harry, but when it comes to the patter I
+think you'll give me first."
+
+Presently, Sylvia was wearing Etons, at Monkley's suggestion, and
+waiting in a dream of anticipation; the baron proclaimed that the
+Emperor would hold a reception on the first Thursday in June. When
+Monkley said he wanted young Sylvester to go with them, the baron looked
+doubtful; but Monkley remarked that he had seen the baron coming out of
+a certain house in Earl's Court Road the other day, which seemed to
+agitate him and make him anxious for Sylvia to attend the reception.
+
+Outside the very commonplace house in Stanmore Crescent, where the
+Emperor of Byzantium lived, Monkley told the baron that he did not wish
+anything said about Sylvester's father. Did the baron understand? He
+wished a certain mystery to surround Sylvester. The baron after his
+adventure in Earl's Court Road would appreciate the importance of
+secrecy.
+
+"You are a regular devil, Monkley," said von Statten, in his most
+mincing voice. Remembering the saloon bar, Sylvia had made up her mind
+not to be disappointed if the Emperor's reception failed to be very
+exciting; yet on the whole she was rather impressed. To be sure, the
+entrance hall of 14 Stanmore Crescent was not very imperial; but a
+footman took their silk hats, and, though Monkley whispered that he was
+carrying them like flower-pots and was evidently the jobbing gardener
+from round the corner, Sylvia was agreeably awed, especially when they
+were invited to proceed to the antechamber.
+
+"In other words, the dining-room," said Monkley to the baron.
+
+"Hush! Don't you see the throne-room beyond?" the baron whispered.
+
+Sure enough, opening out of the antechamber was a smaller room in which
+was a dais covered with purple cloth. On a high Venetian chair sat the
+Emperor, a young man with dark, bristling hair, in evening dress. Sylvia
+stood on tiptoe to get a better look at him; but there was such a crush
+in the entrance to the throne-room that she had to be content for the
+present with staring at the numerous courtiers and listening to
+Monkley's whispered jokes, which the baron tried in vain to stop.
+
+"I suppose where the young man with a head like a door-mat and a face
+like a scraper is sitting is where the Imperial family congregates after
+dinner. I'd like to see what's under that purple cloth. Packing-cases,
+I'll bet a quid."
+
+"Hush! hush! not so loud," the baron implored. "Here's Captain Grayrigg,
+the Emperor's father."
+
+He pointed to a very small man with pouched eyes and a close-cropped
+pointed beard.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me the Emperor hasn't made his father a
+field-marshal? He ought to be ashamed of himself."
+
+"My dear man, Captain Grayrigg married the late Empress. He is nothing
+himself."
+
+"I suppose he has to knock the packing-cases together and pay for the
+ices."
+
+But the baron had pressed forward to meet Captain Grayrigg and did not
+answer. Presently he came back very officiously and beckoned to
+Monkley, whom he introduced.
+
+"From New York City, Colonel," said Monkley, with a quick glance at the
+baron.
+
+Sylvia nearly laughed, because Jimmy was talking through his nose in the
+most extraordinary way.
+
+"Ah! an American," said Captain Grayrigg. "Then I expect this sort of
+thing strikes you as quite ridiculous."
+
+"Why, no, Colonel. Between ourselves I may as well tell you I'm over
+here myself on a job not unconnected with royalty."
+
+Monkley indicated Sylvia with a significant look.
+
+"This little French boy who is called Master Sylvestre at present may be
+heard of later."
+
+Jimmy had accentuated her nationality. Sylvia, quick enough to see what
+he wanted her to do, replied in French.
+
+A tall young man with an olive complexion and priestly gestures,
+standing close by, pricked up his ears at Monkley's remark. When Captain
+Grayrigg had retired he came forward and introduced himself as the
+Prince de Condé.
+
+Monkley seemed to be sizing up the prince; then abruptly with an air of
+great cordiality he took his arm.
+
+"Say, Prince, let's go and find an ice. I guess you're the man I've been
+looking for ever since I landed in England."
+
+They moved off together to find refreshment. Sylvia was left in the
+antechamber, which was filled with a most extraordinary crowd of people.
+There were young men with very pink cheeks who all wore white roses or
+white carnations in their buttonholes; there was a battered-looking
+woman with a wreath of laurel in her hair who suddenly began to declaim
+in a wailful voice. Everybody said, "Hush," and tried to avoid catching
+his neighbor's eye. At first, Sylvia decided that the lady must be a
+lunatic whom people had to humor, because her remarks had nothing to do
+with the reception and were not even intelligible; then she decided that
+she was a ventriloquist who was imitating a cat. An old gentleman in
+kilts was standing near her, and Sylvia remembered that once in France
+she had seen somebody dressed like that, who had danced in a tent; this
+lent color to the theory of their both being entertainers. The old
+gentleman asked the baron if he had the Gaelic, and the baron said he
+had not; whereupon the old gentleman sniffed very loudly, which made
+Sylvia feel rather uncomfortable, because, though she had not eaten
+garlic, she had eaten onions for lunch. Presently the old gentleman
+moved away and she asked the baron when he was going to begin his dance;
+the baron told her that he was the chief of a great Scottish clan and
+that he always dressed like that. A clergyman with two black-and-white
+dogs under his arms was walking about and protesting in a high voice
+that he couldn't shake hands; and a lady in a Grecian tunic, standing
+near Sylvia, tried to explain to her in French that the dogs were
+descended from King Charles I. Sylvia wanted to tell her she spoke
+English, because she was sure something had gone wrong with the
+explanation, owing to the lady's French; but she did not like to do so
+after Jimmy's deliberate insistence upon her nationality.
+
+Presently a very fussy woman with a long, stringy neck, bulging eyes,
+and arched fingers came into the antechamber and wanted to know who had
+not yet been presented to the Emperor. Sylvia looked round for Jimmy,
+but he was nowhere to be seen, and, being determined not to go away
+without entering the throne-room, she said loudly:
+
+_"Moi, je n'ai pas encore vu l'empereur."_
+
+"Oh, the little darling!" trilled the fussy woman. _"Venez avec moi, je
+vous présenterai moi-même."_
+
+"How beautifully Miss Widgett speaks French!" somebody murmured, when
+Sylvia was being led into the throne-room. "It's such a gift."
+
+Sylvia was very much impressed by a large orange flag nailed to the wall
+above the Emperor's throne.
+
+_"Le drapeau impériale de Byzance," Miss Widgett said. "Voyez-vous
+l'aigle avec deux têtes. Il était fait pour sa majesté impériale par le
+Société du roi Charles I de West London."_
+
+"King Charles again," Sylvia thought.
+
+"_Il faut baiser la main_," Miss Widgett prompted. Sylvia followed out
+the suggestion; and the Emperor, to whom Miss Widgett had whispered a
+few words, said:
+
+"_Ah, vous êtes français,_" and to Miss Widgett, "Who did you say he
+was?"
+
+"I really don't know. He came with Baron von Statten. _Comment vous
+appelez-vous?_" Miss Widgett asked, turning to Sylvia.
+
+Sylvia answered that she was called Monsieur Sylvestre, and just then a
+most unusual squealing was heard in the antechamber.
+
+"_Mon dieu! qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?_" Sylvia cried.
+
+"_C'est le--comment dit-on_ bagpipes _en Français? C'est le 'baagpeep'
+vous savez_," which left Sylvia as wise as she was before. However, as
+there was no general panic, she ceased to be frightened. Soon she saw
+Jimmy beckoning to her from the antechamber, and shortly afterward they
+left the reception, which had interested Sylvia very much, though she
+regretted that nobody had offered her an ice.
+
+Monkley congratulated Sylvia upon her quickness in grasping that he had
+wanted her to pretend she was French, and by his praise roused in her
+the sense of ambition, which, though at present it was nothing more than
+a desire to please him personally, marked, nevertheless, a step forward
+in the development of her character; certainly from this moment the old
+fear of having no one to look after her began to diminish, and though
+she still viewed with pleasure the prospect of being alone, she began to
+have a faint conception of making herself indispensable, perceiving
+dimly the independence that would naturally follow. Meanwhile, however
+gratifying Monkley's compliment, it could not compensate her for the ice
+she had not been given, and Sylvia made this so plain to him that he
+invited her into a confectioner's shop on the way home and gave her a
+larger ice than any she had seen at the Emperor's.
+
+Ever since Sylvia had made friends with Jimmy Monkley, her father had
+adopted the attitude of being left out in the cold, which made him the
+worst kind of audience for an enthusiastic account of the reception.
+Mrs. Meares, though obviously condescending, was a more satisfactory
+listener, and she was able to explain to Sylvia some of the things that
+had puzzled her, among others the old gentleman's remark about Gaelic.
+
+"This keeping up of old customs and ceremonies in our degenerate days is
+most commendable," said Mrs. Meares. "I wish I could be doing more in
+that line here, but Lillie Road does not lend itself to the antique and
+picturesque; Mr. Morgan, too, gets so impatient even if Clara only hums
+at her work that I don't like to ask that Scotchman to come and play his
+bagpipes here, though I dare say he should be only too glad to do so for
+a shilling. No, my dear boy, I don't mean the gentleman you met at the
+Emperor's. There is a poor man who plays in the street round here from
+time to time and dances a sword dance. But the English have no idea of
+beauty or freedom. I remember last time I saw him the poor man was being
+moved on for obstructing the traffic."
+
+Clara put forward a theory that the reception had been a church treat.
+There had been a similar affair in her own parish once, in which the
+leading scholars of the Sunday-school classes had portrayed the kings
+and queens of England. She herself had been one of the little princes
+who were smothered in the Tower, and had worn a pair of her mother's
+stockings. There had been trouble, she remembered, because the other
+little prince had been laced up so tightly that he was sick over the
+pillow that was wanted to stuff out the boy who was representing Henry
+VIII and could not be used at the last moment.
+
+Sylvia assured her that nothing like this had taken place at the
+Emperor's, but Clara remained unconvinced.
+
+A week or two passed. The reception was almost forgotten, when one day
+Sylvia found the dark-complexioned young man with whom Monkley had made
+friends talking earnestly to him and her father.
+
+"You understand," he was saying. "I wouldn't do this if I didn't require
+money for my work. You must not look upon me as a pretender. I really am
+the only surviving descendant in the direct line of the famous Prince de
+Condé."
+
+"Of course," Monkley answered. "I know you're genuine enough. All you've
+got to do is to back--Well, here he is," he added, turning round and
+pointing to Sylvia.
+
+"I don't think Sil looks much like a king," Henry said, pensively.
+"Though I'm bound to say the only one I ever saw in real life was
+Leopold of Belgium."
+
+Sylvia began to think that Clara had been right, after all.
+
+"What about the present King of Spain, then?" Monkley asked. "He isn't
+much more than nine years old, if he's as much. You don't suppose he
+looks like a king, do you? On the Spanish stamps he looks more like an
+advertisement for Mellin's food than anything else."
+
+"Naturally the _de jure_ King of Spain, who until the present has been
+considered to be Don Carlos, is also the _de jure_ King of France," said
+the Prince de Condé.
+
+"Don't you start any of your games with kings of France," Henry advised.
+"I know the French well and they won't stand it. What does he want to be
+king of two places for? I should have thought Spain was enough for
+anybody."
+
+"The divine right of monarchs is something greater than mere geography,"
+the Prince answered, scornfully.
+
+"All right. Have it your own way. You're the authority here on kings.
+But don't overdo it. That's all I advise," Henry said, finally. "I know
+everybody thinks I'm wrong nowadays," he added, with a glance at Monkley
+and Sylvia. "But what about Condy's Fluid?"
+
+"What about it?" Monkley asked. "What do you want Condy's for?"
+
+"I don't want it," said Henry. "I simply passed the remark. Our friend
+here is the Prince de Condé. Well, I merely remark 'What about Condy's
+Fluid?' I don't want to start an argument, because, as I said, I'm
+always wrong nowadays, but I think if he wanted to be a prince he ought
+to have chosen a more _recherché_ title, not gone routing about among
+patent medicines."
+
+The Prince de Condé looked inquiringly at Monkley.
+
+"Don't you bother about him, old chap. He's gone off at the deep end."
+
+"I knew it," Henry said. "I knew I should be wrong. That's right, laugh
+away," he added, bitterly, to Sylvia.
+
+There followed a long explanation by the prince of Sylvia's royal
+descent, which she could not understand at all. Monkley, however, seemed
+to be understanding it very well, so well that her father gave up being
+offended and loudly expressed his admiration for Jimmy's grip of the
+subject.
+
+"Now," said Monkley, "the question is who are we going to touch?"
+
+The prince asked if he had noticed at the reception a young man, a
+rather good-looking, fair young man with a white rose in his buttonhole.
+Monkley said that most of the young men he had seen in Stanmore Crescent
+would answer to that description, and the prince gave up trying to
+describe him except as the only son of a wealthy and distinguished
+painter--Sir Francis Hurndale. It seemed that young Godfrey Hurndale
+could always command the paternal purse; and the prince suggested that a
+letter should be sent to his father from the secretary of the _de jure_
+King of Spain and France, offering him the post of court painter on his
+accession. Monkley objected that a man who had made money out of
+painting would not be taken in by so transparent a fraud as that; and
+the prince explained that Sir Francis would only be amused, but that he
+would certainly pass the letter on to his son, who was an enthusiastic
+Legitimist; that the son would consult him, the Prince de Condé; and
+that afterward it lay with Monkley to make the most of the situation,
+bearing in mind that he, the prince, required a fair share of the
+profits in order to advance his great propaganda for a universal
+Platonic system of government.
+
+"At present," the prince proclaimed, becoming more and more sacerdotal
+as he spoke of his scheme--"at present I am a lay member of the Society
+of Jesus, which represents the Platonic tendency in modern thought. I am
+vowed to exterminate republicanism, anarchy, socialism, and to maintain
+the conservative instincts of humanity against--"
+
+"Well, nobody's going to quarrel with you about spending your own
+money," Monkley interrupted.
+
+"He can give it to the Salvation Army if he likes," Henry agreed.
+
+The discussion of the more practical aspects of the plan went on for
+several days. Ultimately it was decided to leave Lillie Road as a first
+step and take a small house in a suburb; to Sylvia's great delight, for
+she was tired of the mustiness of Lillie Road, they moved to Rosemary
+Avenue, Streatham. It was a newly built house and it was all their own,
+with the Common at one end of the road, and, better still, a back
+garden. Sylvia had never lived where she had been able to walk out of
+her own door to her own patch of green; moreover she thoroughly enjoyed
+the game of being an exiled king that might be kidnapped by his foes at
+any moment. To be sure, there were disadvantages; for instance, she was
+not allowed to cultivate an acquaintanceship with the two freckled girls
+next door on their right, nor with the boy who had an air-gun on their
+left; but generally the game was amusing, especially when her father
+became the faithful old French servant, who had guarded her all these
+years, until Mr. James Monkley, the enthusiastic American amateur of
+genealogy, had discovered the little king hidden away in the old
+servant's cottage. Henry objected to being ordered about by his own
+daughter, but his objections were overruled by Jimmy, and Sylvia gave
+him no rest.
+
+"That damned Condé says he's a lay Jesuit," Henry grumbled. "But what am
+I? A lay figure. I suppose you wouldn't like me to sleep in a kennel in
+the back yard?" he asked. "Another thing I can't understand is why on
+earth you had to be an American, Jimmy."
+
+Monkley told Henry of his sudden impulse to be an American at the
+Emperor's reception.
+
+"Never give way to impulse," Henry said. "You're not a bit like an
+American. You'll get a nasty growth in your nose or strain it or
+something. Americans may talk through the nose a bit; but you make a
+noise like a cat that's had its tail shut in a door. It's like living in
+a Punch and Judy show. It may not damage your nose, but it's very bad
+for my ears, old man. It's all very fine for me to be a French servant.
+I can speak French; though I don't look like the servant part of it. But
+you can't speak American, and if you go on trying much harder you very
+soon won't be able to speak any language at all. I noticed to-day, when
+you started talking to the furniture fellow, he looked very uneasy. I
+think he thought he was sitting on a concertina."
+
+"Anyway, he cleared off without getting this month's instalment,"
+Monkley said.
+
+"Oh, it's a very good voice to have when there are duns kicking
+around," Henry said. "Or in a crowded railway carriage. But as a voice
+to live with, it's rotten. However, don't listen to me. My advice
+doesn't count nowadays. Only," and Henry paused impressively, "when
+people advise you to try linseed oil for your boots as soon as you start
+talking to them, then don't say I didn't warn you."
+
+Notwithstanding Henry's pessimism, Monkley continued to practise his
+American; day by day the task of imposing Sylvia on the world as the
+King of Spain and France was being carefully prepared, too carefully, it
+seemed to Sylvia, for so much talk beforehand was becoming tiresome. The
+long delay was chiefly due to Henry's inability to keep in his head the
+numerous genealogical facts that were crammed down his throat by the
+Prince de Condé.
+
+"I never was any good at history even when I was a boy," Henry
+protested. "Never. And I was never good at working out cousins and
+aunts. I know I had two aunts, and hated them both."
+
+At last Henry's facts were considered firmly enough implanted to justify
+a move; and in September the prince and Monkley sat down to compose
+their preliminary letter to Sir Francis Hurndale. Sylvia by now was so
+much accustomed to the behavior of her companions that she never thought
+seriously about the fantastic side of the affair. Her own masquerade as
+a boy had been passed off so successfully even upon such an acute
+observer as Jimmy, until her father had let out the secret by a slip of
+the tongue, that she had no qualms about being accepted as a king. She
+realized that money was to be made out of it; but the absence of money
+had already come to seem a temporary discomfort, to relieve which people
+in a position like her own and her father's had no reason to be
+scrupulous. Not that she really ever bothered her head with the morality
+of financial ways and means. When she spent the ten-franc piece that she
+thought she had found, the wrong had lain in unwittingly depriving her
+mother whom she loved; if she had not loved her mother she might have
+still had scruples about stealing from her; but stealing from people who
+had plenty of money and with whom there was no binding link of
+affection would have been quite incomprehensible to her. Therefore the
+sight of Jimmy Monkley and her father and the Prince de Condé sitting
+round a spindle-legged tea-table in this new house that smelled
+pleasantly of varnish was merely something in a day's work of the life
+they were leading, like a game of cards. It was a much jollier life than
+any she had yet known; her alliance with Jimmy had been a very good
+move; her father was treated as he ought to be treated by being kept
+under; she was shortly going to have some more clothes.
+
+Sylvia sat watching the trio, thinking how much more vividly present
+Jimmy seemed to be than either of the other two--the prince with his
+greenish complexion never really well shaved, and his turn-down collars
+that made his black suit more melancholy, or her father with his light,
+plaintive eyes and big ears. She was glad that she was not going to
+resemble her father except perhaps in being short and in the shape of
+her wide nose; yet she was not really very short; it was only that her
+mother had been so tall; perhaps, too, when her hair grew long again her
+nose would not seem so wide.
+
+The letter was finished and Jimmy was reading it aloud:
+
+     SIR,--I have the honor to ask if, in the probable event of a great
+     dynastic change taking place in one of the chief countries of
+     Europe, you would welcome the post of court painter, naturally at a
+     suitable remuneration. If you read the daily papers, as no doubt
+     you do, you will certainly have come to the conclusion that neither
+     the present ruling house nor what is known as the Carlist party had
+     any real hold upon the affections of the Spanish people. Verb. sap.
+     Interesting changes may be foreshadowed, of which I am not yet at
+     liberty to write more fully. Should you entertain the proposal I
+     shall be happy to wait upon you with further particulars.
+
+     I have the honor to be, sir, Your obedient servant,
+
+     JOSEPHE-ERNESTE,
+
+     PRINCE DE CONDÉ.
+
+"Do you know what it sounds like?" said Henry. "Mind I'm not saying this
+because I didn't write the letter myself. It sounds to me like a cross
+between a prophecy in Old Moore's Almanack and somebody trying to sell a
+patent knife-cleaner."
+
+"There's a good deal in what you say," Monkley agreed, in rather a
+dissatisfied tone.
+
+Henry was so much flattered by the reception of his criticism that he
+became compassionate to the faults of the letter and tried hard to point
+out some of its merits.
+
+"After all," said Jimmy, "the great thing is that the prince has signed
+it. If his name doesn't draw Master Godfrey, no letters are going to.
+We'll send it off as it is."
+
+So the letter was sent. Two days afterward the prince arrived with the
+news that Godfrey Hurndale had called upon him and that he had been
+inexpressibly happy at the prospect of meeting the _de jure_ King of
+France and Spain.
+
+"Bring him round to-morrow afternoon about tea-time," said Monkley. "You
+haven't forgotten the family history, Henry?"
+
+Henry said that he had not forgotten a single relation, and that he
+damned them severally each morning in all their titles while he was
+dressing.
+
+The next afternoon Sylvia sat in an arm-chair in the presence-room,
+which Henry supposed was so called because none of the furniture had
+been paid for, and waited for Godfrey Hurndale's coming. Her father put
+on the rusty black evening-dress of the family retainer, and Jimmy wore
+a most conspicuous check suit and talked so loudly and nasally that
+Henry was driven to a final protest:
+
+"Look here, Jimmy, I've dressed up to help this show in a suit that's as
+old as one of those infernal ancestors of Sil's, but if you don't get
+less American it'll fall to pieces. Every time you guess I can hear a
+seam give."
+
+"Remember to talk nothing but French," Monkley warned Sylvia, when the
+bell rang. "Go on, Harry. You've got to open the door. And don't forget
+that _you_ can only speak French."
+
+Monkley followed him out of the room, and his voice could be heard
+clanking about the hall as he invited young Hurndale into the
+dining-room first. Henry came back and took up his position behind
+Sylvia's chair; she felt very solemn and excited, and asked her father
+rather irritably why he was muttering. The reason, however, remained a
+mystery, for the dining-room door opened again and, heralded by
+Monkley's twanging invitation, Mr. Hurndale stood shyly in the entrance
+to the presence-room.
+
+"Go right in, Mr. Hurndale," Monkley said. "I guess his Majesty's just
+about ready to meet you."
+
+Sylvia, when she saw the young man bowing before her, really felt a kind
+of royal exaltation and held out her hand to be kissed.
+
+Hurndale reverently bent over it and touched it with his lips; so did
+the prince, an action for which Sylvia was unprepared and which she
+rather resented, thinking to herself that he really did not shave and
+that it had not only been his grubby appearance. Then Hurndale offered
+her a large bunch of white carnations and she became kingly again.
+
+"_François_," she commanded her father, "_mets ces oeillets dans ma
+chambre._"
+
+And when her father passed out with a bow Sylvia was indeed a king. The
+audience did not last long. There were practical matters to discuss, for
+which his Majesty was begged to excuse their withdrawal. Sylvia would
+have liked a longer ceremony. When the visitor had gone they all sat
+down to a big tea in the presence-room, and she was told that the young
+man had been so completely conquered by her gracious reception of him
+that he had promised to raise five hundred pounds for her cause. His
+reward in addition to royal favors was to be a high class of the Order
+of Isabella the Catholic. Everybody, even Henry, was in high good humor.
+The prince did not come to Streatham again; but a week later Monkley got
+a letter from him with the Paris postmark.
+
+     DEAR MR. MONKLEY,--Our young friend handed me a check for £200 the
+     day before yesterday. As he seemed uncertain about the remainder of
+     the sum promised, I took the liberty of drawing my share at once.
+     My great work requires immediate assistance, and I am now busily
+     occupied in Paris. My next address will be a castle in Spain, where
+     perhaps we shall meet when you are looking for your next site.
+
+     Most truly yours,
+
+     JOSEPHE-ERNESTE,
+
+     PRINCE DE CONDÉ.
+
+Jimmy and Henry stared at each other.
+
+"I knew it," said Henry. "I'm always wrong; but I knew it. Still, if I
+could catch him, it would take more than Condy's Fluid to disinfect that
+pea-green welsher after I'd done with him."
+
+Monkley sat biting his lips in silence; and Sylvia, recognizing the
+expression in his eyes that she dreaded formerly, notwithstanding that
+he was now her best friend, felt sharply her old repugnance for him.
+Henry was still abusing the defaulter when Monkley cut him short.
+
+"Shut up. I rather admire him."
+
+"Admire him?" Henry gasped. "I suppose you'd admire the hangman and
+shake hands with him on the scaffold. It's all very fine for you. You
+didn't have to learn how Ferdinand the Fifty-eighth married Isabella the
+Innocent, daughter of Alphonso the Eighth, commonly called Alphonso the
+Anxious. Condy's Fluid! I swallowed enough of it, I can tell you."
+
+Monkley told him gruffly to keep quiet; then he sat down and began to
+write, still with that expression in his eyes. Presently he tore up the
+letter and paced the room.
+
+"Damn that swine," he suddenly shouted, kicking the spindle-legged table
+into the fireplace. "We wanted the money, you know. We wanted the money
+badly."
+
+Shortly before dawn the three of them abandoned the new house in
+Streatham and occupied rooms in the Kennington Park Road. Monkley and
+Sylvia's father resumed the racing that had temporarily been interrupted
+by ambition. Sylvia wandered about the streets in a suit of Etons that
+was rapidly showing signs of wear.
+
+One day early in the new year Sylvia was leaning over the parapet of
+Waterloo Bridge and munching hot chestnuts. The warmth of them in her
+pockets was grateful. Her pastime of dropping the shells into the river
+did not lack interest; she was vaguely conscious in the frosty sunshine
+of life's bounty, and she offered to the future a welcome from the
+depths of her being; meanwhile there still remained forty chestnuts to
+be eaten.
+
+Her meditation was interrupted by a voice from a passerby who had
+detached himself from the stream of traffic that she had been
+disregarding in her pensive greed; she looked up and met the glance of a
+pleasant middle-aged gentleman in a dark-gray coat with collar and cuffs
+of chinchilla, who was evidently anxious to begin a conversation.
+
+"You're out of school early," he observed.
+
+Sylvia replied that she did not go to school.
+
+"Private tutor?" he asked; and, partly to save further questions about
+her education, partly because she was not quite sure what a private
+tutor was, she answered in the affirmative.
+
+The stranger looked along the parapet inquisitively.
+
+"I'm out alone this afternoon," Sylvia said, quickly.
+
+The stranger asked her what amused her most, museums or theaters or
+listening to bands, and whether she preferred games or country walks.
+Sylvia would have liked to tell him that she preferred eating chestnuts
+to anything else on earth at that moment; but, being unwilling to create
+an impression of trying to snub such a benevolent person, she replied
+vaguely that she did not know what she liked best. Then because such an
+answer seemed to imply a lack of intelligence that she did not wish to
+impute to herself, she informed him that she liked looking at people,
+which was strictly true, for if she had not been eating chestnuts she
+would certainly have still been contemplating the traffic across the
+bridge.
+
+"I'll show you some interesting people, if you care to come with me,"
+the stranger proposed. "Have you anything to do this afternoon?"
+
+Sylvia admitted that her time was unoccupied.
+
+"Come along, then," said the middle-aged gentleman, a little fussily,
+she thought, and forthwith he hailed a passing hansom. Sylvia had for a
+long time been ambitious to travel in a hansom. She had already eaten
+thirty-five chestnuts, only seven of which had been bad; she decided to
+accept the stranger's invitation. He asked her where she lived and
+promised to send her home by cab when the entertainment was over.
+
+Sylvia asked if it was a reception to which he was taking her. The
+middle-aged gentleman laughed, squeezed her hand, and said that it might
+be called a reception, adding, with a chuckle, "a very warm reception,
+in fact." Sylvia did not understand the joke, but laughed out of
+politeness.
+
+There followed an exchange of names, and Sylvia learnt that her new
+acquaintance was called Corydon.
+
+"You'll excuse me from offering you one of my cards," he said. "I
+haven't one with me this afternoon."
+
+They drove along for some time, during which the conversation of Mr.
+Corydon always pursued the subject of her likes and dislikes. They drew
+clear of the press of traffic and bowled westward toward Sloane Street;
+Sylvia, recognizing one of the blue West Kensington omnibuses, began to
+wonder if the cab would take her past Lillie Road where Jimmy had
+specially forbidden her to go, because both he and her father owed
+several weeks' rent to Mrs. Meares and he did not want to remind her of
+their existence. When they drew nearer and nearer to Sylvia's former
+lodging she began to feel rather uneasy and wish that the cab would turn
+down a side-street. The landmarks were becoming more and more familiar,
+and Sylvia was asking herself if Mrs. Meares had employed the stranger
+to kidnap her as a hostage for the unpaid rent, when the cab turned off
+into Redcliffe Gardens and soon afterward pulled up at a house.
+
+"Here we are," said Mr. Corydon. "You'll enjoy yourself most
+tremendously, Sylvester."
+
+The door was opened by a servant, who was apparently dressed as a
+brigand, which puzzled Sylvia so much that she asked the reason in a
+whisper. Mr. Corydon laughed.
+
+"He's a Venetian. That's the costume of a gondolier, my dear boy. My
+friend who is giving the reception dresses all his servants like
+gondoliers. So much more picturesque than a horrible housemaid."
+
+Sylvia regarded this exotic Clara with considerable interest; the only
+other Venetian product of which she had hitherto been aware was blinds.
+
+The house, which smelt strongly of incense and watered flowers, awed
+Sylvia with its luxury, and she began to regret having put foot in a
+place where it was so difficult to know on what she was intended to
+tread. However, since Mr. Corydon seemed to walk everywhere without
+regard for the softness of the carpets, Sylvia made up her mind to
+brave the silent criticism of the gondolier and follow up-stairs in his
+footsteps. Mr. Corydon took her arm and introduced her to a large room
+where a fume of cigarette smoke and incense blurred the outlines of the
+numerous guests that sat about in listening groups, while some one
+played the grand piano. There were many low divans round the room, to
+one of which Mr. Corydon guided Sylvia, and while the music continued
+she had an opportunity of studying her fellow-guests. They were mostly
+young men of about eighteen, rather like the young men at the Emperor's
+reception; but there were also several middle-aged men of the same type
+as Mr. Corydon, one of whom came across and shook hands with them both
+when the music stopped.
+
+"So glad you've come to see me," he said in a voice that sounded as if
+each word were being delicately fried upon his tongue. "Aren't you going
+to smoke a cigarette? These are Russian. Aren't they beautiful to look
+at?"
+
+He proffered a green cigarette-case. Sylvia, who felt that she must take
+advantage of this opportunity to learn something about a sphere of life
+which was new to her, asked him what it was made of.
+
+"Jade, my dear. I brought such heaps of beautiful jade back with me from
+China. I've even got a jade toilet-set. My dear, it was dreadfully
+expensive."
+
+He giggled. Sylvia, blowing clouds of smoke from her cigarette, thought
+dreamily what funny things her father would have said about him.
+
+"Raymond's going to dance for us," he said, turning to Corydon. "Isn't
+it too sweet of him?"
+
+At that moment somebody leaped into the middle of the room with a wild
+scream and began to throw himself into all sorts of extraordinary
+attitudes.
+
+"Oh, Raymond, you're too wonderful!" the host ejaculated. "You make me
+feel quite Bacchic."
+
+Sylvia was not surprised that anybody should feel "backache" (she had
+thus understood her host) in the presence of such contortions. The
+screaming Raymond was followed into the arena by another lightly clad
+and equally shrill youth called Sydney, and both of them flung
+themselves into a choric frenzy, chasing each other round and round,
+sawing the air with their legs, and tearing roses from their hair to
+fling at the guests, who flung them back at the dancers. Suddenly
+Raymond collapsed upon the carpet and began to moan.
+
+"What's the matter, my dear?" cried the host, rushing forward and
+kneeling to support the apparently agonized youth in his arms.
+
+"Oh, my foot!" Raymond wailed. "I've trodden on something."
+
+"He's trodden on a thorn. He's trodden on a thorn," everybody said at
+once.
+
+Raymond was borne tenderly to a divan, and was so much petted that
+Sydney became jealous and began to dance again, this time on the top of
+the piano. Presently everybody else began to dance, and Mr. Corydon
+would have liked to dance with Sylvia; but she declined. Gondoliers
+entered with trays of liqueurs, and Sylvia, tasting crème de menthe for
+the first time, found it so good that she drank four glasses, which made
+her feel rather drowsy. New guests were continually arriving, to whom
+she did not pay much attention until suddenly she recognized the baron
+with Godfrey Hurndale, who at the same moment recognized her. The baron
+rushed forward and seized Sylvia's arm. She thought he was going to drag
+her back by force to Mrs. Meares to answer for the missing rent, but he
+began to arch his unoccupied arm like an excited swan, and call out in
+his high, mincing voice:
+
+"Blackmailers-s-s! blackmailers-s-s!"
+
+"They blackmailed me out of four hundred pounds," said Hurndale.
+
+"Who brought him here?" the baron cried. "It's-s-s true. Godfrey has
+been persecuted by these horrid people. Blackmailers-s-s!"
+
+All the other guests gathered round Sylvia and behaved like angry women
+trying to mount an omnibus. Mr. Corydon had turned very pale and was
+counting his visiting-cards. Sylvia could not understand the reason for
+all this noise; but vaguely through a green mist of crème de menthe she
+understood that she was being attacked on all sides and began to get
+annoyed. Somebody pinched her arm, and without waiting to see who it
+was she hit the nearest person within reach, who happened to be Mr.
+Corydon. His visiting-cards fell on the floor, and he groveled on the
+carpet trying to sweep them together. Sylvia followed her attack on Mr.
+Corydon by treading hard on Sydney's bare toes, who thereupon slapped
+her face; presently everybody was pushing her and pinching her and
+hustling her, until she got in such a rage and kicked so furiously that
+her enemies retired.
+
+"Who brought him here?" Godfrey Hurndale was demanding. "I tell you he
+belongs to a gang of blackmailers."
+
+"Most dreadful people," the baron echoed.
+
+"Antonio! Domenico!" the host cried.
+
+Two gondoliers entered the room, and at a word from their master they
+seized Sylvia and pushed her out into the street, flinging her coat and
+cap after her. By this time she was in a blind fury, and, snatching the
+bag of chestnuts from her pocket, she flung it with all her force at the
+nearest window and knew the divine relief of starring the pane.
+
+An old lady that was passing stopped and held up her hands.
+
+"You wicked young rascal, I shall tell the policeman of you," she
+gasped, and began to belabor Sylvia with her umbrella.
+
+Such unwarrantable interference was not to be tolerated; Sylvia pushed
+the old lady so hard that she sat down heavily in the gutter. Nobody
+else was in sight, and she ran as fast as she could until she found an
+omnibus, in which she traveled to Waterloo Bridge. There she bought
+fifty more chestnuts and walked slowly back to Kennington Park Road,
+vainly trying to find an explanation of the afternoon's adventure.
+
+Her father and Monkley were not back when Sylvia reached home, and she
+sat by the fire in the twilight, munching her chestnuts and pondering
+the whole extraordinary business. When the others came in she told her
+story, and Jimmy looked meaningly at her father.
+
+"Shows how careful you ought to be," he said. Then turning to Sylvia,
+he asked her what on earth she thought she was doing when she broke the
+window.
+
+"Suppose you'd been collared by the police, you little fool. We should
+have got into a nice mess, thanks to you. Look here, in future you're
+not to speak to people in the street. Do you hear?"
+
+Sylvia had no chestnuts left to throw at Jimmy, so in her rage she took
+an ornament from the mantelpiece and smashed it on the fender.
+
+"You've got the breaking mania," said Henry. "You'd better spend the
+next money you've got on cocoanuts instead of chestnuts."
+
+"_Oh, ta gueule!_ I'm not going to be a boy any longer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+While her hair was growing long again Sylvia developed a taste for
+reading. She had nothing else to do, for it was not to be supposed that
+with her head cropped close she could show herself to the world in
+petticoats. Her refusal any longer to wear male attire gave Monkley and
+her father an excuse to make one of their hurried moves from Kennington
+Park Road, where by this time they owed enough money to justify the
+trouble of evading payment. Henry had for some time expressed a desire
+to be more central; and a partially furnished top floor was found in
+Fitzroy Street, or, as the landlord preferred to call it, a
+self-contained and well-appointed flat. The top floor had certainly been
+separated from the rest of the house by a wooden partition and a door of
+its own, which possibly justified the first half of the description, but
+the good appointments were limited to a bath that looked like an old
+palette, and a geyser that was not always safe according to Mrs.
+Bullwinkle, a decrepit charwoman, left behind by the last tenants,
+together with some under-linen and two jars containing a morbid growth
+that may formerly have been pickles.
+
+"How d'ye mean, not safe?" Henry asked. "Is it liable to blow up?"
+
+"It went off with a big bang last April and hasn't been lit since," the
+charwoman said. "But perhaps it 'll be all right now. The worst of it is
+I never can remember which tap you put the match to."
+
+"You leave it alone, old lady," Henry advised. "Nobody's likely to do
+much bathing in here; from what I can see of it that bath gives more
+than it gets. What did the last people use it for--growing watercress or
+keeping chickens?"
+
+"It was a very nice bath once," the charwoman said.
+
+"Do you mean to say you've ever tried it? Go on! You're mixing it up
+with the font in which you were baptized. There's never been any water
+in this bath since the flood."
+
+Nevertheless, however inadequately appointed, the new abode had one
+great advantage over any other they had known, which was a large
+raftered garret with windows at either end that ran the whole depth of
+the house. The windows at the back opened on a limitless expanse of
+roofs and chimneys, those in front looked across to a dancing-academy on
+the top floor but one of the house opposite, a view that gave perpetual
+pleasure to Sylvia during the long period of her seclusion.
+
+Now that Sylvia had become herself again, her father and Monkley
+insisted upon her doing the housework, which, as Henry reminded her, she
+was perfectly able to do on account of the excellent training she had
+received in that respect from her mother. Sylvia perceived the logic of
+this and made no attempt to contest it; though she stipulated that Mrs.
+Bullwinkle should not be considered to be helping her.
+
+"We don't want her," Henry protested, indignantly.
+
+"Well, tell her not to come any more," Sylvia said.
+
+"I've shoved her away once or twice," said Henry. "But I expect the
+people here before us used to give her a saucer of milk sometimes. The
+best way would be to go out one afternoon and tell her to light the
+geyser. Then perhaps when we came back she'd be gone for good."
+
+Nevertheless, Mrs. Bullwinkle was of some service to Sylvia, for one
+day, when she was sadly washing down the main staircase of the house,
+she looked up from her handiwork and asked Sylvia, who was passing at
+the moment, if she would like some books to read, inviting her
+down-stairs to take her choice.
+
+"Mr. Bullwinkle used to be a big reader," the charwoman said. "A very
+big reader. A very big reader indeed he used to be, did Mr. Bullwinkle.
+In those days he was caretaker at a Congregational chapel in Gospel Oak,
+and he used to say that reading took his mind off of religion a bit.
+Otherwise he'd have gone mad before he did, which was shortly after he
+left the chapel through an argument he had with Pastor Phillips, who
+wrote his name in the dust on the reading-desk, which upset my old man,
+because he thought it wasn't all a straightforward way of telling him
+that his services wasn't considered satisfactory. Yes," said Mrs.
+Bullwinkle, with a stertorous sniff, "he died in Bedlam, did my old man.
+He had a very queer mania; he thought he was inside out, and it preyed
+on his mind. He wouldn't never have been shut up at all if he hadn't of
+always been undressing himself in the street and putting on his trousers
+inside out to suit his complaint. They had to feed him with a chube in
+the end, because he would have it his mouth couldn't be got at through
+him being inside out. Queer fancies some people has, don't they? Oh,
+well, if we was all the same, it would be a dull world I suppose."
+
+Sylvia sat up in the big garret and read through one after another of
+the late Mr. Bullwinkle's tattered and heterogeneous collection. She did
+not understand all she read; but there were few books that did not give
+her on one page a vivid impression, which she used to elaborate with her
+imagination into something that was really a more substantial experience
+than the book itself. The days grew longer and more sunny, and Sylvia
+dreamed them away, reading and thinking and watching from her window the
+little girls pirouette in the shadowy room opposite. Her hair was quite
+long now, a warm brown with many glinting strands.
+
+In the summer Jimmy and Henry made a good deal of money by selling a
+number of tickets for a non-existent stand in one of the best positions
+on the route of the Diamond Jubilee procession; indeed they felt
+prosperous enough to buy for themselves and Sylvia seats in a genuine
+stand. Sylvia enjoyed the pageant, which seemed more like something out
+of a book than anything in real life. She took advantage of the
+temporary prosperity to ask for money to buy herself new clothes.
+
+"Can't you see other people dressed up without wanting to go and do the
+same yourself?" Henry asked. "What's the matter with the frock you've
+got on?"
+
+However, she talked to Monkley about it and had her own way. When she
+had new clothes, she used to walk about the streets again, but, though
+she was often accosted, she would never talk to anybody. Yet it was a
+dull life, really, and once she brought up the subject of getting work.
+
+"Work!" her father exclaimed, in horror. "Good heavens! what will you
+think of next? First it's clothes. Now it's work. Ah, my dear girl, you
+ought to have had to slave for your living as I had; you wouldn't talk
+about work."
+
+"Well, can I have a piano and learn to play?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like the band of the Grenadier Guards to come and
+serenade you in your bedroom while you're dressing?" Henry suggested.
+
+"Why shouldn't she have a piano?" Monkley asked. "I'll teach her to
+play. Besides, I'd like a piano myself."
+
+So the piano was obtained. Sylvia learned to play, and even to sing a
+little with her deep voice; and another regular caller for money was
+added to the already long list.
+
+In the autumn Sylvia's father fell in love, and brought a woman to live
+in what was henceforth always called the flat, even by Henry, who had
+hitherto generally referred to it as The Hammam.
+
+In Sylvia's opinion the advent of Mabel Bannerman had a most vitiating
+effect upon life in Fitzroy Street. Her father began to deteriorate
+immediately. His return to England and the unsurveyed life he had been
+leading for nearly two years had produced an expansion of his
+personality in every direction. He had lost the shiftless insignificance
+that had been his chief characteristic in France, and though he was
+still weak and lacking in any kind of initiative, he had acquired a
+quaintness of outlook and faculty for expressing it which disguised his
+radical futility under a veil of humor. He was always dominated by
+Monkley in practical matters where subordination was reasonable and
+beneficial, but he had been allowed to preserve his own point of view,
+that with the progress of time had even come to be regarded as
+important. When Sylvia was much younger she had always criticized her
+father's behavior; but, like everybody else, she had accepted her
+mother's leadership of the house and family as natural and inevitable,
+and had regarded her father as a kind of spoiled elder brother whose
+character was fundamentally worthless and whose relation to her mother
+was the only one imaginable. Now that Sylvia was older, she did not
+merely despise her father's weakness; she resented the shameful position
+which he occupied in relation to this intruder. Mabel Bannerman belonged
+to that full-blown intensely feminine type that by sheer excess of
+femininity imposes itself upon a weak man, smothering him, as it were,
+with her emotions and her lace, and destroying by sensuality every trait
+of manhood that does not directly contribute to the justification of
+herself. Within a week or two Henry stood for no more in the Fitzroy
+Street house than a dog that is alternately patted and scolded, that
+licks the hand of its mistress more abjectly for each new brutality, and
+that asks as its supreme reward permission to fawn upon her lap. Sylvia
+hated Mabel Bannerman; she hated her peroxide hair, she hated her full,
+moist lips, she hated her rounded back and her shining finger-nails
+spotted with white, she hated with a hatred so deep as to be forever
+incommunicable each blowsy charm that went to make up what was called "a
+fine woman"; she hated her inability ever to speak the truth; she hated
+the way she looked at Monkley, who should have been nothing to her; she
+hated the sight of her drinking tea in the morning; she hated the smell
+of her wardrobe and the pink ribbons which she tied to every projection
+in her bedroom; she hated her affectation of babyishness; she hated the
+way she would make Henry give money to beggars for the gratification of
+an impulsive and merely sensual generosity of her own; she hated her
+embedded garters and smooth legs.
+
+"O God," Sylvia cried aloud to herself once, when she was leaning out of
+the window and looking down into Fitzroy Street, "O God, if I could only
+throw her into the street and see her eaten by dogs."
+
+Monkley hated her too; that was some consolation. Now often, when he was
+ready for an expedition, Henry would be unable to accompany him, because
+Mabel was rather seedy that morning; or because Mabel wanted him to go
+out with her; or because Mabel complained of being left alone so much.
+Monkley used to look at him with a savage contempt; and Sylvia used to
+pray sometimes that he would get angry enough to rush into Mabel's room
+and pound her, where she lay so softly in her soft bed.
+
+Mabel used to bring her friends to the flat to cheer her up, as she used
+to say, and when she had filled the room she had chosen as her
+sitting-room (the garret was not cozy enough for Mabel) with a scented
+mob of chattering women, she would fix upon one of them as the object of
+her jealousy, accusing Henry of having looked at her all the evening.
+There would sometimes be a scene at the moment when half the mob would
+cluster around Mabel to console her outraged feelings and the rest of it
+would hover about her rival to assure her she was guiltless. Sylvia,
+standing sullenly apart, would ponder the result of throwing a lighted
+lamp into the middle of the sickly sobbing pandemonium. The quarrel was
+not so bad as the inevitable reconciliation afterward, with its profuse
+kissing and interminable explanations that seemed like an orchestra from
+which Mabel emerged with a plaintive solo that was the signal for the
+whole scene to be lived over again in maddeningly reiterated accounts
+from all the women talking at once. Worse even than such evenings were
+those when Mabel restrained, or rather luxuriously hoarded up, her
+jealousy until the last visitor had departed; for then through half the
+night Sylvia must listen to her pouring over Henry a stream of
+reproaches which he would weakly try to divert by arguments or more
+weakly try to dam with caresses. Such methods of treatment usually ended
+in Mabel's dressing herself and rushing from the bedroom to leave the
+flat forever. Unfortunately she never carried out her threat.
+
+"Why don't you go?" Sylvia once asked, when Mabel was standing by the
+door, fully dressed, with heaving breast, making no effort to turn the
+handle.
+
+"These shoes hurt me," said Mabel. "He knows I can't go out in these
+shoes. The heartless brute!"
+
+"If you knew those shoes hurt, why did you put them on?" Sylvia asked,
+scornfully.
+
+"I was too much upset by Harry's treatment of me. Oh, whatever shall I
+do? I'm so miserable."
+
+Whereupon Mabel collapsed upon the mat and wept black tears, until Henry
+came and tried to lift her up, begging her not to stay where she might
+catch cold.
+
+"You know when a jelly won't set?" Sylvia said, when she was recounting
+the scene to Monkley afterward. "Well, she was just like a jelly and
+father simply couldn't make her stand up on the plate."
+
+Jimmy laughed sardonically.
+
+These continued altercations between Mabel and Henry led to altercations
+with their neighbors underneath, who complained of being kept awake at
+night. The landlord, a fiery little Jew, told them that what between the
+arrears of rent and the nuisance they were causing to his other tenants
+he would have to give them notice. Sylvia could never get any money for
+the purposes of housekeeping except from Jimmy, and when she wanted
+clothes it was always Jimmy whom she must ask.
+
+"Let's go away," she said to him one day. "Let's leave them here
+together."
+
+Monkley looked at her in surprise.
+
+"Do you mean that?"
+
+"Of course I mean it."
+
+"But if we left Harry with her he'd starve and she'd leave him in a
+week."
+
+"Let him starve," Sylvia cried. "He deserves to starve."
+
+"You hard-hearted little devil," Monkley said. "After all, he is your
+father."
+
+"That's what makes me hate him," Sylvia declared. "He's no right to be
+my father. He's no right to make me think like that of him. He must be
+wrong to make me feel as I do about him."
+
+Monkley came close and took her hand. "Do you mean what you said about
+leaving them and going away with me?"
+
+Sylvia looked at him, and, meeting his eyes, she shook her head. "No, of
+course I don't really mean it, but why can't you think of some way to
+stop all this? Why should we put up with it any longer? Make him turn
+her out into the street."
+
+Monkley laughed. "You _are_ very young, aren't you? Though I've thought
+once or twice lately that you seemed to be growing up."
+
+Again Sylvia caught his eyes and felt a little afraid, not really
+afraid, she said to herself, but uneasy, as if somebody she could not
+see had suddenly opened a door behind her.
+
+"Don't let's talk about me, anyway," she said. "Think of something to
+change things here."
+
+"I'd thought of a concert-party this summer. Pierrots, you know. How
+d'ye think your father would do as a pierrot? He might be very funny if
+she'd let him be funny."
+
+Sylvia clapped her hands. "Oh, Jimmy, it would be such fun!"
+
+"You wouldn't mind if she came too?"
+
+"I'd rather she didn't," Sylvia said. "But it would be different,
+somehow. We shouldn't be shut up with her as we are here. I'll be able
+to sing, won't I?"
+
+"That was my idea."
+
+Before Henry met Mabel he would have had a great deal to say about this
+concert-party; now he accepted Monkley's announcement with a dull
+equanimity that settled Sylvia. He received the news that he would
+become a pierrot just as he had received the news that, his nightgown
+not having been sent back that week by the laundress, he would have to
+continue with the one he was wearing.
+
+Early summer passed away quickly enough in constant rehearsals. Sylvia
+was pleased to find that she had been right in supposing that the state
+of domestic affairs would be improved by Jimmy's plan. Mabel turned out
+to be a good singer for the kind of performance they were going to give,
+and the amount of emotion she put into her songs left her with less to
+work off on Henry, who recovered some of his old self and was often
+really funny, especially in his duologues with Monkley. Sylvia picked
+out for herself and learned a few songs, most of which were condemned as
+unsuitable by Jimmy. The one that she liked best and in her own opinion
+sang best was the "Raggle Taggle Gipsies," though the others all
+prophesied for it certain failure. Monkley himself played all the
+accompaniments and by his personality kept the whole show together; he
+also sang a few songs, which, although he had practically no voice,
+were given with such point that Sylvia felt convinced that his share in
+the performance would be the most popular of the lot. Shortly before
+they were to start on tour, which was fixed for the beginning of July,
+Monkley decided that they wanted another man who could really sing, and
+a young tenor known as Claude Raglan was invited to join the party. He
+was a good-looking youth, much in earnest, and with a tendency toward
+consumption, of which he was very proud.
+
+"Though what there is to be proud of in losing one of your lungs I don't
+know. I might as well be proud because I lost a glove the other day."
+
+Henry was severe upon Claude Raglan from the beginning. Perhaps he
+suspected him of admiring Mabel. There was often much tension at
+rehearsals on account of Henry's attitude; once, for instance, when
+Claude Raglan had sung "Little Dolly Daydreams" with his usual romantic
+fervor, Henry took a new song from his pocket and, having planted it
+down with a defiant snap on the music-stand, proceeded to sing:
+
+            "I'll give him Dolly Daydreams
+            Down where the poppies grow;
+            I'll give him Dolly Daydreams,
+              The pride of Idaho.
+            And if I catch him kissing her
+            There's sure to be some strife,
+    Because if he's got anything he wants to give away,
+            Let him come and give it to his wife."
+
+The tenor declared that Henry's song, which was in the nature of a
+derogatory comment upon his own, could only have the effect of spoiling
+the more serious contribution.
+
+"What of it?" Henry asked, truculently.
+
+"It seems to me perfectly obvious," Claude said, with an effort to
+restrain his annoyance.
+
+"I consider that it won't hurt your song at all," Henry declared. "In
+fact, I think it will improve it. In my opinion it will have a much
+greater success than yours. In fact, I may as well say straight out that
+if it weren't for my song I don't believe the audience would let you
+sing yours more than once. ''Cos no one's gwine ter kiss dat gal but
+me!'" he went on, mimicking the indignant Claude. "No wonder you've got
+consumption coming on! And the audience will notice there's something
+wrong with you, and start clearing out to avoid infection. That's where
+my song will come in. My song will be a tonic. Now don't start breathing
+at me, or you'll puncture the other lung. Let's try that last verse over
+again, Jimmy."
+
+In the end, after a long discussion, during which Mabel introduced the
+most irrelevant arguments, Monkley decided that both songs should be
+sung, but with a long enough interval between them to secure Claude
+against the least impression that he was being laughed at.
+
+At last the company, which called itself The Pink Pierrots, was ready to
+start for the South Coast. It took Monkley all his ingenuity to get out
+of London without paying for the dresses or the properties, but it was
+managed somehow; and at the beginning of July they pitched a small tent
+on the beach at Hastings. There were many rival companies, some of which
+possessed the most elaborate equipment, almost a small theater with
+railed-off seats and a large piano; but Sylvia envied none of these its
+grandeur. She thought that none was so tastefully dressed as themselves,
+that there was no leader so sure of keeping the attention of an audience
+as Jimmy was, that no tenor could bring tears to the eyes of the young
+women on the Marina as Claude could, that no voice could be heard
+farther off than Mabel's, and that no comedian could so quickly gain the
+sympathy of that large but unprofitable portion of an audience--the
+small boys--as her father could.
+
+Sylvia enjoyed every moment of the day from the time they left their
+lodgings, pushing before them the portable piano in the morning
+sunshine, to the journey home after the last performance, which was
+given in a circle of rosy lantern-light within sound of the sea. They
+worked so hard that there was no time for quarreling except with
+competitors upon whose preserves they had trespassed. Mabel was so bent
+upon fascinating the various patrons, and Henry was so obviously a
+success only with the unsentimental small boys, that she never once
+accused him of making eyes even at a nursemaid. Sylvia was given a duet
+with Claude Raglan, and, whether it was that she was conscious of being
+envied by many of the girls in the audience or whether the sentimental
+tune influenced her imagination, she was certainly aware of a faint
+thrill of pleasure--a hardly perceptible quickening of the heart--every
+time that Claude took her in his arms to sing the last verse. After they
+had sung together for a week, Jimmy said the number was a failure and
+abolished it, which Sylvia thought was very unfair, because it had
+always been well applauded.
+
+She grumbled to Claude about their deprivation, while they were toiling
+home to dinner (they were at Bournemouth now, and the weather was
+extremely hot), and he declared in a tragical voice that people were
+always jealous of him.
+
+"It's the curse of being an artist," he announced. "Everywhere I go I
+meet with nothing but jealousy. I can't help having a good voice. I'm
+not conceited about it. I can't help the girls sending me chocolates and
+asking me to sign the post-cards of me which they buy. I'm not conceited
+about that, either. There's something about my personality that appeals
+to women. Perhaps it's my delicate look. I don't suppose I shall live
+very long, and I think that makes women sorry for me. They're quicker to
+see these things than men. I know Harry thinks I'm as healthy as a
+beefsteak. I'm positive I coughed up some blood this morning, and when I
+told Harry he asked me with a sneer if I'd cleaned my teeth. You're not
+a bit like your dad, Sylvia. There's something awfully sympathetic about
+you, little girl. I'm sorry Jimmy's cut out our number. He's a jolly
+good manager and all that, but he does not like anybody else to make a
+hit. Have you noticed that lately he's taken to gagging during my songs?
+Luckily I'm not at all easy to dry up."
+
+Sylvia wondered why anybody like Jimmy should bother to be jealous of
+Claude. He was pleasant enough, of course, and he had a pretty, girlish
+mouth and looked very slim and attractive in his pierrot's dress; but
+nobody could take him seriously except the stupid girls who bought his
+photograph and sighed over it, when they brushed their hair in the
+morning.
+
+The weather grew hotter and the hard work made them all irritable; when
+they got home for dinner at midday it was impossible to eat, and they
+used to loll about in the stuffy sitting-room, which the five of them
+shared in common, while the flies buzzed everywhere. It was never worth
+while to remove the make-up; so all their faces used to get mottled with
+pale streaks of perspiration, the rouge on their lips would cake, and
+their ruffles hung limp and wet, stained round the neck with dirty
+carmine. Sylvia lost all enjoyment in the tour, and used to lie on the
+horsehair sofa that pricked her cheeks, watching distastefully the cold
+mutton, the dull knives, and the spotted cloth, and the stewed fruit
+over which lay a faint silvery film of staleness. Round the room her
+fellow-mountebanks were still seated on the chairs into which they had
+first collapsed when they reached the lodgings, motionless, like great
+painted dolls.
+
+The weather grew hotter. The men, particularly Henry, took to drinking
+brandy at every opportunity; toward the end of their stay in Bournemouth
+the quarrels between him and Mabel broke out again, but with a
+difference, because now it was Henry who was the aggressor. He had never
+objected to Mabel's admirers hitherto, had, indeed, been rather proud of
+their existence in a fatuous way and derived from their numbers a
+showman's satisfaction. When it was her turn to take round the hat, he
+used to smirk over the quantity of post-cards she sold of herself and
+call everybody's attention to her capricious autography that was so
+successful with the callow following. Then suddenly one day he made an
+angry protest against the admiration which an older man began to accord
+her, a pretentious sort of man with a diamond ring and yellow
+cummerbund, who used to stand with his straw hat atilt and wink at
+Mabel, tugging at his big drooping mustache and jingling the money in
+his pockets.
+
+Everybody told Henry not to be foolish; he only sulked and began to
+drink more brandy than ever. The day after Henry's outbreak, the Pink
+Pierrots moved to Swanage, where their only rivals were a troupe of
+niggers, upon whom Henry was able to loose some of his spleen in a
+dispute that took place over the new-comers' right to plant their pink
+tent where they did.
+
+"This isn't Africa, you know," Henry said. "This is Swanage. It's no
+good your waving your banjo at me. I know it's a banjo, all right,
+though I may forget, next time I hear you play it."
+
+"We've been here every year for the last ten years," the chief nigger
+shouted.
+
+"I thought so by your songs," Henry retorted. "If you told me you got
+wrecked here with Christopher Columbus I shouldn't have contradicted
+you."
+
+"This part of the beach belongs to us," the niggers proclaimed.
+
+"I suppose you bought it off Noah, didn't you, when he let you out of
+the ark?" said Henry.
+
+In the end, however, the two companies adjusted their differences and
+removed themselves out of each other's hearing. Mabel's voice defeated
+even the tambourines and bones of the niggers. Swanage seemed likely to
+be an improvement upon Bournemouth, until one day Mabel's prosperous
+admirer appeared on the promenade and Henry's jealousy rose to fury.
+
+"Don't you tell me you didn't tell him to follow you here," he said,
+"because I don't believe you. I saw you smile at him."
+
+Monkley remonstrated with Mabel, when Henry had gone off in a fever of
+rage to his room, but she seemed to be getting a certain amount of
+pleasure from the situation.
+
+"You must cut it out," Monkley said. "I don't want the party broken up
+on account of you and Henry. I tell you he really is upset. What the
+deuce do you want to drag in all this confounded love business now for?
+Leave that to Claude. It'll burst up the show, and it's making Harry
+drink, which his head can't stand."
+
+Mabel looked at herself in the glass over the fireplace and patted her
+hair complacently. "I'm rather glad to see Harry can get jealous. After
+all, it's always a pleasure to think some one's really fond of you."
+
+Sylvia watched Mabel very carefully and perceived that she actually was
+carrying on a flirtation with the man who had followed her from
+Bournemouth. She hoped that it would continue and that her father would
+get angry enough with Mabel to get rid of her when the tour came to an
+end.
+
+One Saturday afternoon, when Mabel was collecting, Sylvia distinctly saw
+her admirer drop a note into the hat, which she took with her into the
+tent to read and tore up; during her next song Sylvia noticed that the
+man with the yellow cummerbund was watching her with raised eyebrows,
+and that, when Mabel smiled and nodded, he gently clapped his hands and
+went away.
+
+Sylvia debated with herself the advisability of telling her father at
+once what she had seen, thus bringing things to an immediate climax and
+getting rid of Mabel forever, even if by doing so the show were spoilt.
+But when she saw his glazed eyes and realized how drunk he was, she
+thought she would wait. The next afternoon, when Henry was taking his
+Sunday rest, Mabel dressed herself and went out. Sylvia followed her
+and, after ascertaining that she had taken the path toward the cliffs to
+the east of the town, came back to the lodgings and again debated with
+herself a course of action. She decided in the end to wait a little
+longer before she denounced Mabel. Later on, when her father had wakened
+and was demanding Mabel's company for a stroll in the moonlight, a
+letter was brought to the lodgings by a railway porter from Mabel
+herself to say that she had left the company and had gone away with her
+new friend by train. Sylvia thought how near she had been to spoiling
+the elopement and hugged herself with pleasure; but she could not resist
+telling her father now that she had seen the intrigue in progress and of
+her following Mabel that afternoon and seeing her take the path toward
+the cliffs. Henry seemed quite shattered by his loss, and could do
+nothing but drink brandy, while Monkley swore at Mabel for wrecking a
+good show and wondered where he was going to find another girl, even
+going so far as to suggest telegraphing on the off chance to Maudie
+Tilt.
+
+It was very hot on Monday, and after the morning performance Henry
+announced that he did not intend to walk all the way back to the
+lodgings for dinner. He should go to the hotel and have a snack. What
+did it matter about his being in his pierrot's rig? Swanage was a small
+place, and if the people were not used to his costume by now, they
+never would be. It was no good any one arguing; he intended to stay
+behind this morning. The others left him talking in his usual style of
+melancholy humor to the small boy who for the sum of twopence kept an
+eye on the portable piano and the book of songs during the hot midday
+hours. When they looked round he was juggling with one of the pennies,
+to the admiration of the owner. They never saw him alive again. He was
+brought back dead that evening on a stretcher, his pink costume splashed
+with blood. The odd thing was that the hotel carving-knife was in his
+pocket, though it was proved conclusively at the inquest that death was
+due to falling over the cliffs on the east side of the town.
+
+Sylvia wondered if she ought to blame herself for her father's death,
+and she confided in Jimmy what she had told him about Mabel's behavior.
+Jimmy asked her why she could not have let things alone, and made her
+very miserable by his strictures upon her youthful tactlessness; so
+miserable, indeed, that he was fain to console her and assure her that
+it had all been an accident due to Henry's fondness for brandy--that and
+the sun must have turned his head.
+
+"You don't think he took the knife to kill himself?" she asked.
+
+"More likely he took it with some idea of killing them, and, being
+drunk, fell over the cliff. Poor old Harry! I shall miss him, and now
+you're all alone in the world."
+
+That was true, and the sudden realization of this fact drove out of
+Sylvia's mind the remorse for her father's death by confronting her with
+the instancy of the great problem that had for so long haunted her mind.
+She turned to Jimmy almost fearfully.
+
+"I shall have you to look after me?"
+
+Jimmy took her hand and gazed into her eyes.
+
+"You want to stay with me, then?" he asked, earnestly.
+
+"Of course I do. Who else could I stay with?"
+
+"You wouldn't prefer to be with Claude, for example?" he went on.
+
+"Claude?" she repeated, in a puzzled voice. And then she grasped in all
+its force the great new truth that for the rest of her life the choice
+of her companions lay with herself alone. She had become at this moment
+grown up and was free, like Mabel, to choose even a man with a yellow
+cummerbund.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Sylvia begged Monkley not to go back and live in Fitzroy Street. She
+felt the flat would be haunted by memories of her father and Mabel. It
+was as well that she did not want to return there, for Jimmy assured her
+that nothing would induce him to go near Fitzroy Street. A great deal of
+money was owing, and he wished the landlord luck in his dispute with the
+furnishing people when he tried to seize the furniture for arrears of
+rent. It would be necessary to choose for their next abode a quarter of
+London to which he was a stranger, because he disliked having to make
+détours to avoid streets where he owed money. Finsbury Park was
+melancholy; Highgate was inaccessible; Hampstead was expensive and
+almost equally inaccessible; but they must go somewhere in the North of
+London, for there did not remain a suburb in the West or South the
+tradesmen and house-owners of which he had not swindled at one time or
+another. On second thoughts, there was a part of Hampstead that was
+neither so expensive nor so inaccessible, which was reached from
+Haverstock Hill; they would look for rooms there. They settled down
+finally in one of a row of old houses facing the southerly extremity of
+the Heath, the rural aspect of which was heightened by long gardens in
+front that now in late summer were filled with sunflowers and
+hollyhocks. The old-fashioned house, which resembled a large cottage
+both without and within, belonged to a decayed florist and nursery
+gardener called Samuel Gustard, whose trade was now confined to the sale
+of penny packets of seeds, though a weather-beaten sign-board facing the
+road maintained a legend of greater glories. Mr. Gustard himself made no
+effort to live up to his sign-board; indeed, he would not even stir
+himself to produce a packet of seeds, for if his wife were about he
+would indicate to her with the stem of his pipe which packet was
+wanted, and if she were not about, he would tell the customer that the
+variety was no longer in stock. A greenhouse kept from collapse by the
+sturdy vine it was supposed to protect ran along the fence on one side
+of the garden; the rest was a jungle of coarse herbaceous flowers,
+presumably the survivors of Mr. Gustard's last horticultural effort,
+about ten years ago.
+
+The money made by the tour of the Pink Pierrots did not last very long,
+and Jimmy was soon forced back to industry. Sylvia nowadays heard more
+about his successes and failures than when her father was alive, and she
+begged very hard to be allowed to help on some of his expeditions.
+
+"You're no good to me yet," Monkley told her. "You're too old to be
+really innocent and not old enough to pretend to be. Besides, people
+don't take school-girls to race meetings. Later on, when you've learned
+a bit more about life, we'll start a gambling club in the West End and
+work on a swell scale what I do now in a small way in
+railway-carriages."
+
+This scheme of Jimmy's became a favorite topic; and Sylvia began to
+regard a flash gambling-hell as the crown of human ambition. Jimmy's
+imagination used to run riot amid the splendor of it all, as he
+discoursed of the footmen with plush breeches; of the shaded lamps; of
+the sideboard loaded with hams and jellies and fruit at which the guests
+would always be able to refresh themselves, for it would never do to let
+them go away because they were hungry, and people were always hungry at
+three in the morning; of the smart page-boy in the entrance of the flats
+who would know how to reckon up a visitor and give the tip up-stairs by
+ringing a bell; and of the rigid exclusion of all women except Sylvia
+herself.
+
+"I can see it all before me," Jimmy used to sigh. "I can smell the
+cigars and whisky. I'm flinging back the curtains when every one has
+gone and feeling the morning air. And here we are stuck in this old
+cucumber-frame at Hampstead! But we'll get it, we'll get it. I shall
+have a scoop one of these days and be able to start saving, and when
+I've saved a couple of hundred I'll bluff the rest."
+
+In October Jimmy came home from Newmarket and told Sylvia he had run
+against an old friend, who had proposed a money-making scheme which
+would take him away from London for a couple of months. He could not
+explain the details to Sylvia, but he might say that it was a confidence
+trick on the grand scale and that it meant his residing in a northern
+city. He had told his friend he would give him an answer to-morrow, and
+wanted to know what Sylvia thought about it.
+
+She was surprised by Jimmy's consulting her in this way. She had always
+taken it for granted that from time to time she would be left alone.
+Jimmy's action made her realize more clearly than ever that to a great
+extent she already possessed that liberty of choice the prospect of
+which had dawned upon her at Swanage.
+
+She assured Jimmy of her readiness to be left alone in Hampstead. When
+he expatiated on his consideration for her welfare she was bored and
+longed for him to be gone; his solicitude gave her a feeling of
+restraint; she became impatient of his continually wanting to know if
+she should miss him and of his commendation of her to the care of Mr.
+and Mrs. Gustard, from whom she desired no interference, being quite
+content with the prospect of sitting in her window with a book and a
+green view.
+
+The next morning Monkley left Hampstead; and Sylvia inhaled freedom with
+the autumn air. She had been given what seemed a very large sum of money
+to sustain herself until Jimmy's return. She had bought a new hat; a
+black kitten had adopted her; it was pearly October weather. Sylvia
+surveyed life with a sense of pleasure that was nevertheless most
+unreasonably marred by a faint breath of restlessness, an almost
+imperceptible discontent. Life had always offered itself to her
+contemplation, whether of the past or of the future, as a set of vivid
+impressions that formed a crudely colored panorama of action without any
+emotional light and shade, the intervals between which, like the
+intervals of a theatrical performance, were only tolerable with plenty
+of chocolates to eat. At the present moment she had plenty of chocolates
+to eat, more, in fact, than she had ever had before, but the interval
+was seeming most exasperatingly long.
+
+"You ought to take a walk on the Heath," Mr. Gustard advised. "It isn't
+good to sit about all day doing nothing."
+
+"You don't take walks," Sylvia pointed out. "And you sit about all day
+doing nothing. I do read a book, anyway."
+
+"I'm different," Mr. Gustard pronounced, very solemnly. "I've lived my
+life. If I was to take a walk round Hampstead I couldn't hardly peep
+into a garden without seeing a tree as I'd planted myself. And when I'm
+gone, the trees 'll still be there. That's something to _think_ about,
+that is. There was a clergyman came nosing round here the other day to
+ask me why I didn't go to church. I told him I'd done without church as
+a lad, and I couldn't see why I shouldn't do without it now. 'But you're
+growing old, Mr. Gustard,' he says to me. 'That's just it,' I says to
+him. 'I'm getting very near the time when, if all they say is true, I
+shall be in the heavenly choir for ever and ever, amen, and the less
+singing I hear for the rest of my time on earth the better.' 'That's a
+very blasphemous remark,' he says to me. 'Is it?' says I to him. 'Well,
+here's another. Perhaps all this talk by parsons,' I says, 'about this
+life on earth being just a choir practice for heaven won't bear looking
+into. Perhaps we shall all die and go to sleep and never wake up and
+never dream and never do nothing at all, never. And if that's true,' I
+says, 'I reckon I shall bust my coffin with laughing when I think of my
+trees growing and growing and growing and you preaching to a lot of old
+women and children about something you don't know nothing about and they
+don't know nothing about and nobody don't know nothing about.' With that
+I offered him a pear, and he walked off very offended with his head in
+the air. You get out and about, my dear. Bustle around and enjoy
+yourself. That's my motto for the young."
+
+Sylvia felt that there was much to be said for Mr. Gustard's attitude,
+and she took his advice so far as to go for a long walk on the Heath
+that very afternoon. Yet there was something lacking. When she got home
+again she found that the book of adventure which she had been reading
+was no longer capable of keeping her thoughts fixed. The stupid part of
+it was that her thoughts wandered nowhere in particular and without
+attaching themselves to a definite object. She would try to concentrate
+them upon Jimmy and speculate what he was doing, but Jimmy would turn
+into Claude Raglan; and when she began to speculate what Claude was
+doing, Claude would turn back again into Jimmy. Her own innermost
+restlessness made her so fidgety that she went to the window and stared
+at the road along the dusky Heath. The garden gate of next door swung to
+with a click, and Sylvia saw a young man coming toward the house. She
+was usually without the least interest in young men, but on this
+afternoon of indefinable and errant thoughts she welcomed the least
+excuse for bringing herself back to a material object; and this young
+man, though it was twilight and his face was not clearly visible,
+managed to interest her somehow, so that at tea she found herself asking
+Mr. Gustard who he might be and most unaccountably blushing at the
+question.
+
+"That 'ud be young Artie, wouldn't it?" he suggested to his wife. She
+nodded over the squat teapot that she so much resembled:
+
+"That must be him come back from his uncle's. Mrs. Madden was only
+saying to me this morning, when we was waiting for the grocer's man,
+that she was expecting him this evening. She spoils him something
+shocking. If you please, his highness has been down into Hampshire to
+see if he would like to be a gentleman farmer. Whoever heard, I should
+like to know? Why he can't be long turned seventeen. It's a pity his
+father isn't alive to keep him from idling his time away."
+
+"There's no harm in giving a bit of liberty to the young," Mr. Gustard
+answered, preparing to be as eloquent as the large piece of bread and
+butter in his mouth would let him. "I'm not in favor of pushing a young
+man too far."
+
+"No, you was never in favor of pushing anything, neither yourself nor
+your business," said Mrs. Gustard, sharply. "But I think it's a sin to
+let a boy like that moon away all his time with a book. Books were only
+intended for the gentry and people as have grown too old for anything
+else, and even then they're bad for their eyes."
+
+Sylvia wondered whether Mrs. Gustard intended to criticize unfavorably
+her own manner of life, but she left the defense of books to Mr.
+Gustard, who was so impatient to begin that he nearly choked:
+
+"Because I don't read," he said, "that's no reason for me to try and
+stop others from reading. What I say is 'liberty for all.' If young
+Artie Madden wants to read, let him read. If Sylvia here wants to read,
+let her read. Books give employment to a lot of people--binders,
+printers, paper-makers, booksellers. It's a regular trade. If people
+didn't like to smell flowers and sit about under trees, there wouldn't
+be no gardeners, would there? Very well, then; and if there wasn't
+people who wanted to read, there wouldn't be no printers."
+
+"What about the people who write all the rubbish?" Mrs. Gustard
+demanded, fiercely. "Nice, idle lot of good-for-nothings they are, I'm
+sure."
+
+"That's because the only writing fellow we ever knew got that
+servant-girl of ours into trouble."
+
+"Samuel," Mrs. Gustard interrupted, "that'll do!"
+
+"I don't suppose every writing fellow's like him," Mr. Gustard went on.
+"And, anyway, the girl was a saucy hussy."
+
+"Samuel! That will do, I said."
+
+"Well, so she was," Mr. Gustard continued, defiantly. "Didn't she used
+to powder her face with your Borwick's?"
+
+"I'll trouble you not to spit crumbs all over my clean cloth," said Mrs.
+Gustard, "making the whole place look like a bird-cage!"
+
+Mr. Gustard winked at Sylvia and was silent. She for her part had
+already begun to weave round Arthur Madden a veil of romance, when the
+practical side of her suddenly roused itself to a sense of what was
+going on and admonished her to leave off dreaming and attend to her cat.
+
+Up-stairs in her bedroom, she opened her window and looked out at the
+faint drizzle of rain which was just enough to mellow the leafy autumnal
+scents and diffuse the golden beams of the lamps along the Heath. There
+was the sound of another window's being opened on a line with hers;
+presently a head and shoulders scarcely definable in the darkness leaned
+out, whistling an old French air that was familiar to her from earliest
+childhood, the words of which had long ago been forgotten. She could not
+help whistling the air in unison; and after a moment's silence a voice
+from the head and shoulders asked who it was.
+
+"A girl," Sylvia said.
+
+"Anybody could tell that," the voice commented, a little scornfully.
+"Because the noise is all woolly."
+
+"It's not," Sylvia contradicted, indignantly. "Perhaps you'll say I'm
+out of tune? I know quite well who you are. You're Arthur Madden, the
+boy next door."
+
+"But who are you?"
+
+"I'm Sylvia Scarlett."
+
+"Are you a niece of Mrs. Gustard?" the voice inquired.
+
+"Of course not," Sylvia scoffed. "I'm just staying here."
+
+"Who with?"
+
+"By myself."
+
+"By yourself?" the voice echoed, incredulously.
+
+"Why not? I'm nearly sixteen."
+
+This was too much for Arthur Madden, who struck a match to illuminate
+the features of the strange unknown. Although he did not succeed in
+discerning Sylvia, he lit up his own face, which she liked well enough
+to suggest they should go for a walk, making the proposal a kind of test
+for herself of Arthur Madden's character, and deciding that if he showed
+the least hesitation in accepting she would never speak to him again.
+The boy, however, was immediately willing; the two pairs of shoulders
+vanished; Sylvia put on her coat and went down-stairs.
+
+"Going out for a blow?" Mr. Gustard asked.
+
+Sylvia nodded. "With the boy next door," she answered.
+
+"You haven't been long," said Mr. Gustard, approvingly. "That's the way
+I like to see it. When I courted Mrs. Gustard, which was forty years ago
+come next November, it was in the time of toolip-planting, and I hove a
+toolip bulb at her and caught her in the chignon. 'Whatever are you
+doing of?' she says to me. 'It's a proposal of marriage,' I says, and
+when she started giggling I was that pleased I planted half the toolips
+upside down. But that's forty years ago, that is. Mrs. Gustard's grown
+more particular since, and so as she's washing up the tea-things in the
+scullery, I should just slip out, and I'll tell her you've gone out to
+get a paper to see if it's true what somebody said about Buckingham
+Palace being burned to a cinder."
+
+Sylvia was not at all sure that she ought to recognize Mrs. Gustard's
+opinion even so far as by slipping out and thereby giving her an idea
+that she did not possess perfect liberty of action. However, she decided
+that the point was too trifling to worry about, and, with a wave of her
+hand, she left her landlord to tell what story he chose to his wife.
+
+Arthur Madden was waiting for her by his gate when she reached the end
+of the garden; while they wandered along by the Heath, indifferent to
+the drizzle, Sylvia felt an extraordinary release from the faint
+discontent of these past days, an extraordinary delight in finding
+herself with a companion who was young like herself and who, like
+herself, seemed full of speculation upon the world which he was setting
+out to explore, regarding it as an adventure and ready to exchange hopes
+and fears and fancies with her in a way that no one had ever done
+hitherto; moreover, he was ready to be most flatteringly impressed by
+her experiences, even if he still maintained she could not whistle
+properly. The friendship between Sylvia and Arthur begun upon that night
+grew daily closer. Mrs. Gustard used to say that they wasted each
+other's time, but she was in the minority; she used to say also that
+Arthur was being more spoiled than ever by his mother; but it was this
+very capacity for being spoiled that endeared him to Sylvia, who had
+spent a completely free existence for so long now that unless Arthur had
+been allowed his freedom she would soon have tired of the friendship.
+She liked Mrs. Madden, a beautiful and unpractical woman, who
+unceasingly played long sonatas on a cracked piano; at least she would
+have played them unceasingly had she not continually been jumping up to
+wait on Arthur, hovering round him like a dark and iridescent butterfly.
+
+In the course of many talks together Arthur told Sylvia the family
+history. It seemed that his mother had been the daughter of a gentleman,
+not an ordinary kind of top-hatted gentleman, but a squire with horses
+and hounds and a park; his father had been a groom and she had eloped
+with him, but Sylvia was not to suppose that his father had been an
+ordinary kind of groom; he too came from good stock, though he had been
+rather wild. His father's father had been a farmer in Sussex, and he had
+just come back from staying at the farm, where his uncle had offered to
+give him a start in life, but he had found he did not care much for
+farm-work. His mother's family would have nothing to do with her beyond
+allowing her enough to live upon without disturbing them.
+
+"What are you going to do?" Sylvia asked.
+
+Arthur replied that he did not know, but that he had thoughts of being a
+soldier.
+
+"A soldier?" said Sylvia, doubtfully. Her experience of soldiers was
+confined to Blanche's lovers, and the universal connotation in France of
+soldiery with a vile servitude that could hardly be avoided.
+
+"But of course the worst of it is," Arthur explained, "there aren't any
+wars nowadays."
+
+They were walking over the Heath on a fine November day about Martinmas;
+presently, when they sat down under some pines and looked at London
+spread beneath them in a sparkling haze, Arthur took Sylvia's hand and
+told her that he loved her.
+
+She nearly snatched her hand away and would have told him not to be
+silly, but suddenly the beauty of the tranquil city below and the wind
+through the pines conquered her spirit; she sat closer to him, letting
+her head droop upon his shoulder; when his clasp tightened round her
+unresisting hand she burst into tears, unable to tell him that her
+sorrow was nothing but joy, that he had nothing to do with it nor with
+her, and yet that he had everything to do with it, because with no one
+else could she have borne this incommunicable display of life. Then she
+dried her tears and told Arthur she thought he had better become a
+highwayman.
+
+"Highwaymen don't exist any longer," Arthur objected. "All the jolly
+things have disappeared from the world--war and highwaymen and pirates
+and troubadours and crusaders and maypoles and the Inquisition.
+Everything."
+
+Gradually Sylvia learned from Arthur how much of what she had been
+reading was mere invention, and in the first bitterness of
+disillusionment she wished to renounce books forever; but Arthur
+dissuaded her from doing that, and they used to read simultaneously the
+same books so as to be able to discuss them during their long walks.
+They became two romantics born out of due season, two romantics that
+should have lived a century ago and that now bewailed the inability of
+the modern world to supply what their adventurous souls demanded.
+
+Arthur was inclined to think that Sylvia had much less cause to repine
+than he; the more tales she told him of her life, the more tributes of
+envy he paid to her good fortune. He pointed out that Monkley scarcely
+differed from the highwayman of romance; nor did he doubt but that if
+all his enterprises could be known he would rival Dick Turpin himself.
+Sylvia agreed with all he said, but she urged the inequality of her own
+share in the achievement. What she wanted was something more than to sit
+at home and enjoy fruits in the stealing of which she had played no
+part. She wanted none of Arthur's love unless he were prepared to face
+the problem of living life at its fullest in company with her. She would
+let him kiss her sometimes, because, unhappily, it seemed that even very
+young men were infected with this malady, and that if deprived of this
+odious habit they were liable to lose determination and sink into
+incomprehensible despondency. At the same time Sylvia made Arthur
+clearly understand that she was yielding to his weakness, not to her
+own, and that, if he wished to retain her compassion, he must prove that
+the devotion of which he boasted was vital to his being.
+
+"You mustn't just kiss me," Sylvia warned him, "because it's easy. It's
+very difficult, really, because it's very difficult for me to let you do
+it. I have to wind myself up beforehand just as if I were going to pull
+out a loose tooth."
+
+Arthur gazed at her with wide-open, liquid eyes; his mouth trembled.
+"You say such cruel things," he murmured.
+
+Sylvia punched him as hard as she could. "I won't be stared at like
+that. You look like a cow when you stare at me like that. Buck up and
+think what we're going to do."
+
+"I'm ready to do anything," Arthur declared, "as long as you're decent
+to me. But you're such an extraordinary girl. One moment you burst into
+tears and put your head on my shoulder, and the next moment you're
+punching me."
+
+"And I shall punch you again," Sylvia said, fiercely, "if you dare to
+remind me that I ever cried in front of you. You weren't there when I
+cried."
+
+"But I was," he protested.
+
+"No, you weren't. You were only there like a tree or a cloud."
+
+"Or a cow," said Arthur, gloomily.
+
+"I think that if we did go away together," Sylvia said, meditatively, "I
+should leave you almost at once, because you will keep returning to
+things I said. My father used to be like that."
+
+"But if we go away," Arthur asked, "how are we going to live? I
+shouldn't be any use on racecourses. I'm the sort of person that gets
+taken in by the three-card trick."
+
+"You make me so angry when you talk like that," Sylvia said. "Of course
+if you think you'll always be a fool, you always will be a fool. Being
+in love with me must make you think that you're not a fool. Perhaps we
+never shall go away together; but if we do, you'll have to begin by
+stealing bicycles. Jimmy Monkley and my father did that for a time. You
+hire a bicycle and sell it or pawn it a long way off from the shop it
+came from. It's quite easy. Only, of course, it's best to disguise
+yourself. Father used to paint out his teeth, wear blue glasses, and
+powder his mustache gray. But once he made himself so old in a place
+called Lewisham that the man in the bicycle-shop thought he was too old
+to ride and wouldn't let him have a machine."
+
+Sylvia was strengthened in her resolve to launch Arthur upon the stormy
+seas of an independent existence by the placid harbor in which his
+mother loved to see him safely at anchor. Sylvia could not understand
+how a woman like Mrs. Madden, who had once been willing to elope with a
+groom, could bear to let her son spend his time so ineffectively. Not
+that she wished Mrs. Madden to exert her authority by driving him into a
+clerkship, or indeed into any profession for which he had no
+inclination, but she deplored the soft slavery which a fond woman can
+impose, the slavery of being waited upon that is more deadening than the
+slavery of waiting upon other people. She used to make a point of
+impressing upon Mrs. Madden the extent to which she and Arthur went
+shares in everything, lest she might suppose that Sylvia imitated her
+complaisance, and when Mrs. Madden used to smile in her tired way and
+make some remark about boy and girl lovers, Sylvia used to get angry and
+try to demonstrate the unimportance of that side of life.
+
+"You funny child," Mrs. Madden said. "When you're older, how you'll
+laugh at what you think now. Of course, you don't know anything about
+love yet, mercifully for you. I wish I were richer; I should so like to
+adopt you."
+
+"Oh, but I wouldn't be adopted," Sylvia quickly interposed. "I can't
+tell you how glad I am that I belong to nobody. And please don't think
+I'm so innocent, because I'm not. I've seen a great deal of love, you
+must remember, and I've thought a lot about it, and made up my mind that
+I'll never be a slave to that sort of thing. Arthur may be stupidly in
+love with me, but I'm very strict with him and it doesn't do him any
+harm."
+
+"Come and sing your favorite song," Mrs. Madden laughed. "I'll play your
+accompaniment."
+
+All the discussions between them ended in music; Sylvia would sing that
+she was off with the raggle-taggle gipsies--or, stamping with her foot
+upon the floor of the old house until it shook and crossing her arms
+with such resolution that Arthur's eyes would grow larger than ever, as
+if he half expected to see her act upon the words and fling herself out
+into the December night, regardless of all but a mad demonstration of
+liberty.
+
+Sylvia would sometimes sing about the gipsies to herself while she was
+undressing, which generally called forth a protest from Mrs. Gustard,
+who likened the effect to that of a young volcano let loose.
+
+Another person that was pained by Sylvia's exuberance was Maria, her
+black cat, so called on account of his color before he was definitely
+established as a gentleman. He had no ear for music and he disapproved
+of dancing; nor did he have the least sympathy with the aspirations of
+the lawless song she sang. Mrs. Gustard considered that he was more
+artful than what any one would think, but she repudiated as "heathenish"
+Sylvia's contention that she outwardly resembled Maria.
+
+"Still I do think I'm like a cat," Sylvia argued. "Perhaps not very like
+a black cat, more like a tabby. One day you'll come up to my room and
+find me purring on the bed."
+
+Mrs. Gustard exclaimed against such an unnatural event.
+
+Sylvia received one or two letters from Jimmy Monkley during the winter,
+in which he wrote with considerable optimism of the success of his
+venture and thought he might be back in Hampstead by February. He came
+back unexpectedly, however, in the middle of January, and Sylvia was
+only rather glad to see him; she had grown fond of her life alone and
+dreaded Jimmy's habit of arranging matters over her head. He was not so
+amiable as formerly, because the scheme had only been partially
+successful and he had failed to make enough money to bring the flash
+gambling-hell perceptibly nearer. Sylvia had almost forgotten that
+project; it seemed to her now a dull project, neither worthy of herself
+nor of him. She did not attempt, on Jimmy's return, to change her own
+way of spending the time, and she persisted in taking the long walks
+with Arthur as usual.
+
+"What the devil you see to admire in that long-legged, saucer-eyed,
+curly-headed mother's pet I don't know," Jimmy grumbled.
+
+"I don't admire him," Sylvia said. "I don't admire anybody except Joan
+of Arc. But I like him."
+
+Jimmy scowled; and later on that day Mr. Gustard warned Sylvia that her
+uncle (as such was Jimmy known in the lodgings) had carried on
+alarmingly about her friendship with young Artie.
+
+"It's nothing to do with him," Sylvia affirmed, with out-thrust chin.
+
+"Nothing whatever," Mr. Gustard agreed. "But if I was you I wouldn't
+throw young Artie in his face. I've never had a niece myself, but from
+what I can make out an uncle feels something like a father; and a father
+gets very worried about his rights."
+
+"But you've never had any children, and so you can't know any more about
+the feelings of a father," Sylvia objected.
+
+"Ah, but I've got my own father to look back upon," Mr. Gustard said.
+"He mostly took a spade to me, I remember, though he wasn't against
+jabbing me in the ribs with a trowel if there wasn't a spade handy. I
+reckon it was him as first put the notion of liberty for all into my
+head. I never set much store by uncles, though. The only uncle I ever
+had died of croup when he was two years old."
+
+"My father didn't like his aunts," Sylvia added to the condemnation. "He
+was brought up by two aunts."
+
+"Aunts in general is sour bodies, 'specially when they're in charge and
+get all the fuss of having children with none of the fun."
+
+"Mr. Monkley isn't really my uncle," Sylvia abruptly proclaimed.
+
+"Go on! you don't mean it?" said Mr. Gustard. "I suppose he's your
+guardian?"
+
+"He's nothing at all," Sylvia answered.
+
+"He must be something."
+
+"He's absolutely nothing," she insisted. "He used to live with my
+father, and when my father died he just went on living with me. If I
+don't want to live with him I needn't."
+
+"But you must live with somebody," said Mr. Gustard. "There's a law
+about having visible means of support. You couldn't have a lot of kids
+living on their own."
+
+"Why not?" Sylvia asked, in contemptuous amazement.
+
+"Why not?" Mr. Gustard repeated. "Why because every one would get
+pestered to death. It's the same with stray dogs. Stray dogs have got to
+have a home. If they haven't a home of their own, they're taken to the
+Dogs' Home at Battersea and cremated, which is a painless and mercenary
+death."
+
+"I don't call that much of a home," Sylvia scoffed. "A place where
+you're killed."
+
+"That's because we're speaking of dogs. Of course, if the police started
+in cremating children, there'd be a regular outcry. So the law insists
+on children having homes."
+
+Sylvia tried hard to convince Mr. Gustard that she was different from
+other children, and in any case no longer a child; but though the
+discussion lasted a long time he would not admit the logic of Sylvia's
+arguments; in the end she decided he did not know what he was talking
+about.
+
+Monkley so much disliked Sylvia's intimacy with Arthur that he began to
+talk of moving from Hampstead, whereupon she warned him that if he tried
+to go away without paying the rent she would make a point of letting Mr.
+Gustard know where they had gone.
+
+"It strikes me," Monkley said, and when he spoke, Sylvia was reminded of
+the tone he used when she had protested against his treatment of Maudie
+Tilt--"it strikes me that since I've been away you've taken things a bit
+too much into your own hands. That's a trick you'd better drop with me,
+or we shall quarrel."
+
+Sylvia braced herself to withstand him as she had withstood him before;
+but she could not help feeling a little apprehensive, so cold were his
+green eyes, so thin his mouth.
+
+"I don't care if we quarrel or not," she declared. "Because if we
+quarreled it would mean that I couldn't bear you near me any longer and
+that I was glad to quarrel. If you make me hate you, Jimmy, you may be
+sorry, but I shall never be sorry. If you make me hate you, Jimmy, you
+can't think how dreadfully much I shall hate you."
+
+"Don't try to come the little actress over me," Monkley said. "I've
+known too many women in my life to be bounced by a kid like you. But
+that's enough. I can't think why I pay so much attention to you."
+
+"No," Sylvia said. "All the women you've known don't seem to have been
+able to teach you how to manage a little girl like me. What a pity!"
+
+She laughed and left him alone.
+
+There was a halcyon week that February, and Sylvia spent every day and
+all day on the Heath with Arthur. People used to turn and stare after
+them as they walked arm-in-arm over the vivid green grass.
+
+"I think it's you they stare at," Sylvia said. "You look interesting
+with your high color and dark curly hair. You look rather foreign.
+Perhaps people think you're a poet. I read the other day about a poet
+called Keats who lived in Hampstead and loved a girl called Fanny
+Brawne. I wish I knew what she looked like. It's not a very pretty name.
+Now I've got rather a pretty name, I think; though I'm not pretty
+myself."
+
+"You're not exactly pretty," Arthur agreed. "But I think if I saw you I
+should turn round to look at you. You're like a person in a picture. You
+seem to stand out and to be the most important figure. In paintings
+that's because the chief figure is usually so much larger than the
+others. Well, that's the impression you give me."
+
+Speculation upon Sylvia's personality ceased when they got home; Monkley
+threatened Arthur in a very abusive way, even going as far as to pick up
+a stone and fling it through one of the few panes of glass left in the
+tumble-down greenhouse in order to illustrate the violent methods he
+proposed to adopt.
+
+The next day, when Sylvia went to fetch Arthur for their usual walk, he
+made some excuse and was obviously frightened to accompany her.
+
+"What can he do to you?" Sylvia demanded, in scornful displeasure. "The
+worst he can do is to kill you, and then you'd have died because you
+wouldn't surrender. Haven't you read about martyrs?"
+
+"Of course I've read about martyrs," said Arthur, rather querulously.
+"But reading about martyrs is very different from being a martyr
+yourself. You seem to think everybody can be anything you happen to read
+about. You wouldn't care to be a martyr, Sylvia."
+
+"That's just where you're wrong," she loftily declared. "I'd much sooner
+be a martyr than a coward."
+
+Arthur winced at her plain speaking. "You don't care what you say," was
+his reproach.
+
+"No, and I don't care what I do," Sylvia agreed. "Are you coming out
+with me? Because if you're not, you shall never be my friend again."
+
+Arthur pulled himself together and braved Monkley's threats. On a quiet
+green summit he demanded her impatient kisses for a recompense; she,
+conscious of his weakness and against her will made fonder of him by
+this very weakness, kissed him less impatiently than was her wont, so
+that Arthur, under the inspiration of that rare caress, vowed he cared
+for nobody and for nothing, if she would but always treat him thus
+kindly.
+
+Sylvia, who was determined to make Jimmy pay for his bad behavior,
+invited herself to tea with Mrs. Madden; afterward, though it was cloudy
+and ominous, Arthur and she walked out on the Heath once more, until it
+rained so hard that they were driven home. It was about seven o'clock
+when Sylvia reached her room, her hair all tangled with moisture, her
+eyes and cheeks on fire with the exhilaration of that scurry through the
+rain. She had not stood a moment to regard herself in the glass when
+Monkley, following close upon her heels, shut the door behind him and
+turned the key in the lock. Sylvia looked round in astonishment; by a
+trick of candle-light his eyes gleamed for an instant, so that she felt
+a tremor of fear.
+
+"You've come back at last, have you?" he began in a slow voice, so
+deliberate and gentle in its utterance that Sylvia might not have
+grasped the extent of his agitation, had not one of his legs, affected
+by a nervous twitch, drummed upon the floor a sinister accompaniment.
+"You shameless little b----h, I thought I forbade you to go out with
+him again. You've been careering over the Heath. You've been encouraging
+him to make love to you. Look at your hair--it's in a regular tangle!
+and your cheeks--they're like fire. Well, if you can let that nancified
+milksop mess you about, you can put up with me. I've wanted to long
+enough, God knows; and this is the reward I get for leaving you alone.
+You give yourself to the first b----y boy that comes along."
+
+Before Sylvia had time to reply, Monkley had leaped across the room and
+crushed her to him.
+
+"Kiss me, damn you, kiss me! Put your arms round me."
+
+Sylvia would not scream, because she could not have endured that anybody
+should behold her in such an ignominious plight. Therefore she only
+kicked and fought, and whispered all the while, with savage intensity!
+"You frog! you frog! You look like a frog! Leave me alone!"
+
+Monkley held her more closely and forced her mouth against his own, but
+Sylvia bit through his under lip till her teeth met. The pain caused
+him to start back and tread on Maria, who, searching in a panic for
+better cover than the bed afforded, had run between his legs. The cat,
+uttering one of those unimaginable wails with which only cats have power
+so horribly to surprise, retired to a corner, where he hissed and
+growled. In another corner Sylvia spat forth the unclean blood and wiped
+from her lips the soilure of the kisses.
+
+Monkley had had enough for the present. The pain and sudden noise had
+shaken his nerves. When the blood ran down his chin, bedabbling his tie,
+he unlocked the door and retired, crying out almost in a whimper for
+something to stop a bad razor cut. Mrs. Gustard went to the wood-shed
+for cobwebs; but Monkley soon shouted down that he had found some cotton
+wool, and Sylvia heard a cork being drawn. She made up her mind to kill
+him that night, but she was perplexed by the absence of a suitable
+weapon, and gradually it was borne in upon her mind that if she killed
+Monkley she would have to pay the penalty, which did not seem to her a
+satisfactory kind of revenge. She gave up the notion of killing him and
+decided to run away with Arthur instead.
+
+For a long time Sylvia sat in her bedroom, thinking over her plan; then
+she went next door and asked Arthur to come out and talk to her about
+something important. They stood whispering in the wet garden, while she
+bewitched him into offering to share her future. He was dazed by the
+rapidity with which she disposed of every objection he brought forward.
+She knew how to get enough money for them to start with. She knew how to
+escape from the house, and because the creeper beneath Arthur's window
+was not strong enough to bear his weight, he must tie his sheets
+together. He must not bring much luggage; she would only bring a small
+valise, and Maria could travel in her work-basket.
+
+"Maria?" echoed Arthur, in dismay.
+
+"Of course! it was Maria who saved me," said Sylvia. "I shall wait till
+Monkley is asleep. I expect he'll be asleep early, because he's drinking
+brandy hard now; then I shall whistle the last line of the raggle-taggle
+gipsies and slither down from my window by the ivy."
+
+She stuffed Arthur's reeling brain with further details, and, catching
+him to her heart, she kissed him with as much enthusiasm as might have
+been mistaken for passion. In the end, between coaxing and frightening
+him, threatening and inspiring him, Sylvia made Arthur agree to
+everything, and danced back indoors.
+
+"Anybody would think you were glad because your guardian angel's gone
+and sliced a rasher off of his mouth," Mr. Gustard observed.
+
+By ten o'clock all was quiet in the house. Sylvia chose with the
+greatest care her equipment for the adventure. She had recently bought a
+tartan frock, which, not having yet been worn, she felt would
+excellently become the occasion; this she put on, and plaited her
+tangled hair in a long pigtail. The result was unsatisfactory, for it
+made her look too prim for a heroine; she therefore undid the pigtail
+and tied her hair loosely back with a nut-brown bow. It was still
+impossibly early for an escape, so Sylvia sat down on the edge of her
+bed and composed herself to read the escape of Fabrizio from the Sforza
+tower in Parma. The book in which she read this was not one that she had
+been able to read through without a great deal of skipping; but this
+escape which she had only come across a day or two before seemed a
+divine omen to approve her decision. Sylvia regretted the absence of the
+armed men at the foot of the tower, but said to herself that, after all,
+she was escaping with her lover, whereas Fabrizio had been compelled to
+leave Clelia Conti behind. The night wore away; at half past eleven
+Sylvia dropped her valise from the window and whistled that she was off
+with the raggle-taggle gipsies--oh. Then she waited until a ghostly
+snake was uncoiled from Arthur's window.
+
+"My dearest boy, you're an angel," she trilled, in an ecstasy, when she
+saw him slide safely down into the garden.
+
+"Catch Maria," she whispered. "I'm coming myself in a moment."
+
+Arthur caught her work-basket, and a faint protesting mew floated away
+on the darkness. Sylvia wrapped herself up, and then very cautiously,
+candle in hand, walked across to the door of Monkley's room and
+listened. He was snoring loudly. She pushed open the door and beheld
+him fast asleep, a red-and-white beard of cotton wool upon his chin.
+Then risking all in an impulse to be quick, though she was almost
+stifled by fear, she hurried across the room to his trunk. He kept all
+his money in a tin box. How she hoped there was enough to make him rue
+her flight. Monkley never stirred; the box was safe in her muff. She
+stole back to her room, blew out the candle, flung the muff down to
+Arthur, held her breath when the coins rattled, put one leg over the
+sill, and scrambled down by the ivy.
+
+"I wish it had been higher," she whispered, when Arthur clasped her with
+affectionate solicitude where she stood in the sodden vegetation.
+
+"I'm jolly glad it wasn't," he said. "Now what are we going to do?"
+
+"Why, find a 'bus, of course!" Sylvia said. "And get as far from
+Hampstead as possible."
+
+"But it's after twelve o'clock," Arthur objected. "There won't be any
+'buses now. I don't know what we're going to do. We can't look for rooms
+at this time of night."
+
+"We must just walk as far as we can away from Hampstead," said Sylvia,
+cheerfully.
+
+"And carry our luggage? Supposing a policeman asks us where we're
+going?"
+
+"Oh, bother policemen! Come along. You don't seem to be enjoying
+yourself nearly as much as I am. I care for nobody. I'm off with the
+raggle-taggle gipsies--oh," she lightly sang.
+
+Maria mewed at the sound of his mistress's voice.
+
+"You're as bad as Maria," she went on, reproachfully. "Look how nice the
+lamp-posts look. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, I can see.
+Let's bet how many lamp-posts we pass before we're safe in our own
+house."
+
+They set out for London by the road along the Heath. At first trees
+overhung the path, and they passed pool after pool of checkered
+lamplight that quivered in the wet road. Followed a space of open
+country where they heard the last whispers of a slight and desultory
+wind. Soon they were inclosed by mute and unillumined houses on either
+side, until they found themselves on the top of Haverstock Hill, faced
+by the tawny glow of the London sky, and stretching before them a double
+row of lamp-posts innumerable and pale that converged to a dim point in
+the heart of the city below.
+
+"I think I'm rather frightened," Sylvia said. "Or perhaps I'm a little
+tired."
+
+"Shall we go back?" Arthur suggested.
+
+"No, no. We'll just rest a moment or two, and I'll be all right." They
+sat down on their bags, and she stroked Maria pensively.
+
+Sylvia was relieved when the silence was interrupted by a policeman. She
+felt the need of opposition to drive away the doubts that took advantage
+of that first fatigue to shake her purpose.
+
+"Now then, what are you doing?" he demanded, gruffly.
+
+"We're sitting down," Sylvia informed him.
+
+"Loitering isn't allowed here," the policeman said.
+
+"Where is it allowed, please?" she asked, sweetly.
+
+"Loitering isn't allowed nowhere," the policeman declared.
+
+"Well, why did you say it wasn't allowed here?" she continued. "I
+thought you were going to tell us of a place where it was allowed."
+
+Arthur jogged Sylvia's elbow and whispered to her not to annoy the
+policeman.
+
+"Come along, now, move on," the policeman commanded. In order to
+emphasize his authority he flashed his bull's-eye in Sylvia's face.
+"Where do you live?" he asked, after the scrutiny.
+
+"Lillie Road, Fulham. We missed the last train from Hampstead, and we're
+walking home. I never heard of any rule against sitting on one's own
+luggage in the middle of the night. I think you'd better take us to the
+police station. We must rest somewhere."
+
+The policeman looked puzzled.
+
+"What did you want to miss your train for?" he asked.
+
+"We didn't want to miss it," Sylvia gently explained. "We were very
+angry when we missed it. Come on, Arthur, I don't feel tired any
+longer."
+
+She got up and started off down Haverstock Hill, followed by Arthur.
+
+"I'm sorry you can't recommend any proper loitering-places on the road,"
+said Sylvia, turning round, "because we shall probably have to loiter
+about thirty-six times before we get to Lillie Road. Good night. If we
+meet any burglars we'll give them your love and say there's a nice
+policeman living on Haverstock Hill who'd like a chat."
+
+"Suppose he had run us in?" Arthur said, when they had left the
+policeman behind them.
+
+"I wanted him to at first," Sylvia replied. "But afterward I thought it
+might be awkward on account of Monkley's cash-box. I wish we could open
+it now and see how much there is inside, but perhaps it would look funny
+at this time of night."
+
+They had nearly reached the bottom of Haverstock Hill, and there were
+signs of life in the squalid streets they were approaching.
+
+"I don't think we ought to hang about here," Arthur said. "These are
+slums. We ought to be careful; I think we ought to have waited till the
+morning."
+
+"You wouldn't have come, if we'd waited," Sylvia maintained. "You'd have
+been too worried about leaving your mother."
+
+"I'm still worried about that," said Arthur, gloomily.
+
+"Why? You can send a post-card to say that you're all right. Knowing
+where you are won't make up for your being away. In any case, you'd have
+had to go away soon. You couldn't have spent your whole life in that
+house at Hampstead."
+
+"Well, I think this running away will bring us bad luck."
+
+Sylvia made a dramatic pause and dropped her valise on the pavement.
+
+"Go home, then. Go home and leave me alone. If you can't enjoy yourself,
+I'd rather you went home. I can't bear to be with somebody who is not
+enjoying himself as much as I am."
+
+"You can't be enjoying this waking about all night with two bags and a
+cat," Arthur insisted. "But I'm not going home without you. If you want
+to go on, I shall go on, too. I'm feeling rather tired. I expect I shall
+enjoy myself more to-morrow."
+
+Sylvia picked up her valise again. "I hope you will, I'm sure," she
+said. "You're spoiling the fun by grumbling all the time like this. What
+is there to grumble at? Just a small bag which makes your arm ache. You
+ought to be glad you haven't got mine to carry as well as your own."
+
+After another quarter of an hour among the ill-favored streets Sylvia
+called a rest; this time they withdrew from the pavement into the area
+of an unoccupied house, where they leaned against the damp brick wall,
+quite exhausted, and heard without interest the footsteps of the people
+who went past above. Maria began to mew and Sylvia let her out of the
+basket. A lean and amorous tom-cat in pursuit of love considered that
+Maria had prejudiced his chance of success, and their recriminations
+ended in a noisy scuffle during which the lid of a dust-bin in the next
+area was upset with a loud clatter; somebody, throwing open a window,
+emptied a utensil partly over Arthur.
+
+"Don't make such a noise. It was only a jug," Sylvia whispered. "You'll
+wake up all the houses."
+
+"It's your damned cat making the noise," Arthur said. "Come here, you
+brute."
+
+Maria was at last secured and replaced in his basket, and Arthur asked
+Sylvia if she was sure it was only a jug.
+
+"It's simply beastly in this area," he added. "Anything's better than
+sitting here."
+
+After making sure that nobody was in sight, they went on their way,
+though by now their legs were so weary that from time to time the bags
+scraped along the pavement.
+
+"The worst of it is," Sylvia sighed, "we've come so far now that it
+would be just as tiring to go back to Hampstead as to go on."
+
+"Oh, _you're_ thinking now of going back!" Arthur jeered. "It's a pity
+you didn't think of that when we were on Haverstock Hill."
+
+"I'm not thinking at all of going back," Sylvia snapped. "I'm not
+tired."
+
+"Oh no," said Arthur, sarcastically. "And I'm not at all wet, really."
+
+They got more and more irritable with each other. The bow in Sylvia's
+hair dropped off, and with all the fretful obstinacy of fatigue she
+would go wandering back on their tracks to see if she could find it; but
+the bow was lost. At last they saw a hansom coming toward them at a
+walking pace, and Sylvia announced that they would ride.
+
+"But where shall we drive to?" Arthur asked. "We can't just get in and
+drive anywhere."
+
+"We'll tell him to go to Waterloo," said Sylvia. "Stations are always
+open; we can wait there till the morning and then look for a house."
+
+She hailed the cab; with sighs of relief they sank back upon the seat,
+exhausted. Presently an odd noise like a fishmonger's smacking a cod
+could be heard beside the cab, and, leaning out over the apron to see
+what was the cause of it, Arthur was spattered with mud by a piece of
+the tire which was flogging the road with each revolution of the wheel.
+The driver pulled up and descended from the box to restrain it.
+
+"I've been tying it up all day, but it will do it," he complained.
+"There's nothing to worry over, but it fidgets one, don't it, flapping
+like that? I've tied it up with string and I've tied it up with wire,
+and last time I used my handkerchief. Now I suppose it's got to be my
+bootlace. Well, here goes," he said, and with many grunts he stooped
+over to undo his lace.
+
+Neither Sylvia nor Arthur could ever say what occurred to irritate a
+horse that with equanimity had tolerated the flapping all day, but
+suddenly it leaped forward at a canter, while the loose piece of tire
+slapped the road with increasing rapidity and noise. The reins slipped
+down; and Sylvia, who had often been allowed to drive with Blanche,
+managed to gather them up and keep the horse more or less in the middle
+of the road. After the cab had traveled about a mile the tire that all
+day had been seeking freedom achieved its purpose and, lancing itself
+before the vehicle in a swift parabola, looped itself round the ancient
+ragman who was shuffling along the gutter in pursuit of wealth. The
+horse chose that moment to stop abruptly and an unpleasant encounter
+with the ragman seemed inevitable. Already he was approaching the cab,
+waving in angry fashion his spiked stick and swearing in a bronchial
+voice; he stopped his abuse, however, on perceiving the absence of the
+driver, and muttering to himself: "A lucky night, so help me! A lovely
+long strip of india-rubber! Gor! what a find!" he turned round and
+walked away as fast as he could, stuffing the tire into his basket as he
+went.
+
+"I wonder whether I could drive the cab properly if I climbed up on the
+box," said Sylvia, thoughtfully.
+
+"Oh no! For goodness' sake, don't do anything of the kind!" Arthur
+begged. "Let's get down while the beast is quiet. Come along. We shall
+never be able to explain why we're in this cab. It's like a dream."
+
+Sylvia gave way so far as not to mount the box, but she declined to
+alight, and insisted they ought to stay where they were and rest as long
+as they could; there were still a number of dark hours before them.
+
+"But my dear girl, this beast of a horse may start off again," Arthur
+protested.
+
+"Well, what if it does?" Sylvia said. "We can't be any more lost than we
+are now. I don't know in the least what part of London we've got to."
+
+"I'm sure there's something the matter with this cab," Arthur woefully
+exclaimed.
+
+"There is," she agreed. "You've just set fire to it with that match."
+
+"I'm so nervous," said Arthur. "I don't know what I'm doing. Phew! what
+a stink of burnt hair. Do let's get out."
+
+He stamped on the smoldering mat.
+
+"Shut up," Sylvia commanded. "I'm going to try and have a sleep. Wake me
+up if the horse tries to walk into a shop or anything."
+
+But this was more than Arthur could stand, and he shook her in
+desperation. "You sha'n't go to sleep. You don't seem to mind what
+happens to us."
+
+"Not a bit," Sylvia agreed. Then suddenly she sang at the top of her
+voice, "for I'm off with the raggle-taggle gipsies--oh!"
+
+The horse at once trotted forward, and Arthur was in despair.
+
+"Oh, damn!" he moaned. "Now you've started that horrible brute off
+again. Whatever made me come away with you?"
+
+"You can go home whenever you like," said Sylvia, coldly.
+
+"What's the good of telling me that when we're tearing along in a cab
+without a driver?" Arthur bewailed.
+
+"We're not tearing along," Sylvia contradicted. "And I'm driving. I
+expect the horse will go back to its stable if we don't interfere with
+him too much."
+
+"Who wants to interfere with the brute? Oh, listen to that wheel. I'm
+sure it's coming off."
+
+"Here's a cab shelter," Sylvia said, encouragingly. "I'm going to try
+and pull up."
+
+Luckily the horse was ready enough to stop, and both of them got out.
+Sylvia walked without hesitation into the shelter, followed by Arthur
+with the bags. There were three or four cabmen inside, eating
+voluptuously in an atmosphere of tobacco smoke, steam, and burnt grease.
+She explained to them about the cab's running away, was much gratified
+by the attention her story secured, and learned that it was three
+o'clock and that she was in Somers Town.
+
+"Where are you going, missie?" one of the cabmen asked.
+
+"We were going to Waterloo, but we don't mind staying here," Sylvia
+said. "My brother is rather tired and my cat would like some milk."
+
+"What did the driver look like, missie?" one of the men asked.
+
+Sylvia described him vaguely as rather fat, a description which would
+have equally suited any of the present company, with the exception of
+the attendant tout, who was exceptionally lean.
+
+"I wonder if it 'ud be Bill?" said one of the cabmen.
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised."
+
+"Wasn't Bill grumbling about his tire this morning?"
+
+"I don't know if it was his tire; he was grumbling about something."
+
+"I reckon it's Bill. Did you notice if the gentleman as drove you had a
+swelling behind his ear?" asked the man who had first propounded the
+theory of the missing driver's being Bill.
+
+"I didn't notice," said Sylvia.
+
+"About the size of a largish potato?" the theorist pressed,
+encouragingly.
+
+"I'm afraid I didn't notice," said Sylvia.
+
+"It must be Bill," the theorist decided. "Any one wouldn't notice that
+swelling in the dark, 'specially if Bill had his collar turned up."
+
+"He did have his collar turned up," Arthur put in.
+
+"There you are," said the theorist. "What did I tell you? Of course it's
+Bill. No one wouldn't see his swelling with his coat turned up. Poor old
+Bill, he won't half swear when he has to walk home to-night. Here, Joe,"
+he went on, addressing the attending tout. "Give Bill's horse a bit of a
+feed."
+
+Sylvia and Arthur were given large slices of bread and butter and large
+cups of coffee; Maria had a saucer of milk. Life was looking much more
+cheerful. Presently a burly cabman appeared in the entrance of the
+shelter and was greeted with shouts of merriment.
+
+"What ho, Bill, old cock! Lost your ruddy cab, old sporty? Lor! we
+haven't half laughed to think of you having to use your bacon and eggs
+to get here. I reckon you didn't half swear."
+
+"Who are you getting at, you blinking set of mugs? Who's lost his ruddy
+cab?" demanded Bill.
+
+"That's not the driver," Sylvia said.
+
+"I thought it couldn't be Bill," said the theorist quickly. "As soon as
+I heard she never noticed that lump behind his ear, I thought it wasn't
+Bill."
+
+"Here, less of it, you and your lumps behind the ear," said Bill,
+aggressively. "You'll have a blurry lump behin' your own blurry ear,
+Fred Organ, before you knows where you are."
+
+Sylvia could not refrain from observing the famous lump with a good deal
+of curiosity, and she wondered how any one could ever have supposed it
+might be unnoticed. She would have described it as more like a beet root
+than a potato, she thought.
+
+A long discussion about the future of the driverless cab ensued; finally
+it was decided that Joe the tout should lead it to the police station if
+it were not claimed by daylight. The company then turned to the
+discussion of the future of the abandoned fares. Sylvia had by this
+time evolved an elaborate tale of running away from a stepfather whose
+conduct to Arthur, herself, and Maria had been extremely brutal.
+
+"Knocked the cat about, did he?" said the theorist, whose name was Fred
+Organ. "I never could abide people as ill-treated dumb animals."
+
+Sylvia went on to explain that they had intended to throw themselves on
+the mercy of an aunt who lived at Dover, and with that intention had
+been bound for Waterloo when they lost their driver. When she was told
+that they were going to the wrong station for Dover, she began to
+express fears of the reception her aunt might accord them. Did any one
+present know where they could find lodgings, for which, of course, they
+would pay, because their mother had provided them with the necessary
+money.
+
+"That's a mother all over," said Fred Organ, with enthusiastic
+sentiment. "Ain't it, boys? Ah, I wish I hadn't lost my poor old
+mother."
+
+Various suggestions about rooms were made, but finally Fred Organ was so
+much moved by the emotional details with which Sylvia continually
+supplemented her tale that he offered to give them lodgings in his own
+house near Finsbury Park. Sylvia would have preferred a suburb that was
+barred to Monkley, but she accepted the offer because, with Arthur
+turning out so inept at adventure, it seemed foolish to take any more
+risks that night.
+
+Fred Organ had succeeded to the paternal house and hansom about two
+years before. He was now twenty-six, but his corpulence made him appear
+older; for the chubby smoothness of youth had vanished with continual
+exposure to the weather, leaving behind many folds and furrows in his
+large face. Mr. Organ, senior, had bought No. 53 Colonial Terrace by
+instalments, the punctual payment of which had worried him so much as
+probably to shorten his life, the last one having been paid just before
+his death. He had only a week or two for the enjoyment of possession,
+which was as well; for the house that had cost its owner so much effort
+to obtain was nearly as ripe for dissolution as himself, and the
+maintenance of it in repair seemed likely to cause Fred Organ as much
+financial stress in the future as the original purchase had caused his
+father in the past.
+
+So much of his history did Fred Organ give them while he was stabling
+his horse, before he could introduce them to his inheritance. It was
+five o'clock of a chill February morning, and the relief of finding
+herself safely under a roof after such a tiring and insecure night
+compensated Sylvia for the impression of unutterable dreariness that
+Colonial Terrace first made upon her mind, a dreariness quite out of
+accord with the romantic beginning to the life of independence of which
+she had dreamed. They could not go to bed when they reached the house,
+because Fred Organ, master though he was, doubted if it would be wise to
+wake up his sister to accommodate the guests.
+
+"Not that she'd have any call to make a fuss," he observed, "because if
+I says a thing in No. 53, no one hasn't got the right to object. Still,
+I'd rather you got a nice first impression of my sister Edith. Well,
+make yourselves at home. I'll rout round and get the kitchen fire
+going."
+
+Fred routed round with such effect that he woke his sister, who began to
+scream from the landing above:
+
+"Hube! Get up, you great coward! There's somebody breaking in at the
+back. Get up, Hube, and fetch a policeman before we're both murdered."
+
+"It's only me, Ede," Fred called out. "Keep your hair on."
+
+When Sylvia saw Edith Organ's curl-papers she thought the last
+injunction was rather funny. Explanations were soon given and Edith was
+so happy to find her alarm unnecessary that she was as pleasant as
+possible and even invited Sylvia to come and share her bed and sleep
+late into the morning; whereupon Fred Organ invited Arthur to share his
+bed, which Arthur firmly declined to do, notwithstanding Sylvia's frown.
+
+"Well, you can't go to bed with the girls," said Fred.
+
+"Oh, Fred, you are a.... Oh, he is a.... Oh, isn't he? Oh, I never.
+Fancy! What a thing to say! There! Well! Who ever did? I'm sure. What a
+remark to pass!" Edith exclaimed, quite incoherent from embarrassment,
+pleasure, and sleep.
+
+"Where's Hube?" Fred asked.
+
+"Oh, Hube!" snapped Edith. "He's well underneath the bedclothes. Trust
+Hube for that. Nothing'd get him out of bed except an earthquake."
+
+"Wouldn't it, then?" said a sleek voice, and Hube himself, an extremely
+fat young man in a trailing nightgown, appeared in the doorway.
+
+"You wouldn't think he was only nineteen, would you?" said Fred,
+proudly.
+
+"Nice noise to kick up in the middle of the night," Hubert grumbled. "I
+dreamt the house was falling down on top of me."
+
+"And it will, too," Fred prophesied, "if I can't soon scrape together
+some money for repairs. There's a crack as wide as the strand down the
+back."
+
+Sylvia wondered how so rickety a house was able to withstand the wear
+and tear of such a fat family when they all, with the exception of
+Arthur, who lay down on the kitchen table, went creaking up-stairs to
+bed.
+
+The examination of Monkley's cash-box produced £35; Sylvia felt
+ineffably rich, so rich that she offered to lend Fred Organ the money he
+wanted to repair his property. He accepted the offer in the spirit in
+which it was made, as he said, and Sylvia, whom contact with Monkley had
+left curiously uncynical, felt that she had endeared herself to Fred
+Organ for a long time to come. She was given a room of her own at No.
+53, for which she was glad, because sleeping with Edith had been rather
+like eating scented cornflour pudding, a combination of the flabby with
+the stuffy that had never appeared to her taste. Arthur was given the
+choice of sleeping with Hubert or in the bath, and he chose the latter
+without a moment's hesitation.
+
+Relations between Arthur and Hubert had been strained ever since. Hubert
+offered Arthur a bite from an apple he was munching, which was refused
+with a too obvious disgust.
+
+"Go on, what do you take me for? Eve?" asked Hubert, indignantly. "It
+won't poison you."
+
+The strain was not relaxed by Hubert's obvious fondness for Sylvia.
+
+"I thought when I came away with you," Arthur said, "that we were going
+to live by ourselves and earn our own living; instead of which you let
+that fat brute hang around you all day."
+
+"I can't be always rude to him," Sylvia explained. "He's very
+good-natured."
+
+"Do you call it good-natured to turn the tap on me when I'm lying in
+bed?" Arthur demanded.
+
+"I expect he only did it for fun."
+
+"Fun!" said Arthur, darkly. "I shall hit him one of these days."
+
+Arthur did hit him; but Hubert, with all his fat, hit harder than he,
+and Arthur never tried again. Sylvia found herself growing very tired of
+him; the universal censure upon his namby-pambyness was beginning to
+react upon her. The poetical youth of Hampstead Heath seemed no longer
+so poetical in Colonial Terrace. Yet she did not want to quarrel with
+him finally, for in a curious way he represented to her a link with what
+she still paradoxically spoke of as home. Sylvia had really had a great
+affection for Monkley, which made her hate him more for what he had
+tried to do. Yet, though she hated him and though the notion of being
+with him again made her shudder, she could not forget that he had known
+her father, who was bound up with the memory of her mother and of all
+the past that, being so irreparably over, was now strangely cherished.
+Sylvia felt that, were Arthur to go, she would indeed find herself
+alone, in that state which first she had dreaded, then desired, and now
+once again dreaded, notwithstanding her bold conceptions of independence
+and belief in her own ability to determine the manner of life she
+wished. There were times when she felt what almost amounted to a
+passionate hatred of Colonial Terrace, which had brought her freedom,
+indeed, but the freedom of a world too gray to make freedom worth
+possessing. She was fond of Fred Organ, and she fancied that he would
+have liked formally to adopt her; yet the idea of being adopted by him
+somehow repelled her. She was fond of Edith Organ too, but no fonder
+than she had been of Clara; Edith seemed to have less to tell her about
+life than Clara, perhaps because she was older now and had read so many
+books. As for Hubert, who claimed to be in love with her, he existed
+about the house like a large over-fed dog; that was all, that and his
+capacity for teasing Arthur, which amused her.
+
+Everything about this escapade was so different from what she had
+planned. Always in her dreams there had been a room with a green view
+over trees or a silver view over water, and herself encouraging some one
+(she supposed it must have been Arthur, though she could hardly believe
+this when she looked at him now) to perform the kind of fantastic deeds
+that people performed in books. Surely some books were true. Looking
+back on her old fancies, Sylvia came to the conclusion that she had
+always pictured herself married to Arthur; yet how ridiculous such an
+idea now seemed. He had always talked with regret of the adventures that
+were no longer possible in dull modern days; but when the very small
+adventure of being in a runaway cab had happened, how miserably Arthur
+had failed to rise to the occasion, and now here he was loafing in
+Colonial Terrace. Hubert had secured a position in a bookshop near
+Finsbury Park railway station, which he had forfeited very soon
+afterward, but only because he had made a habit of borrowing for
+Sylvia's perusal the books which customers had bought, and of sending
+them on to their owners two or three days later. To be sure, they had
+nearly all been very dull books of a religious bent, but in such a
+district as Finsbury Park what else could be expected? At least Hubert
+had sacrificed something for her. Arthur had done nothing; even when
+Fred Organ, to please Sylvia, had offered to teach him to drive a
+hansom, he had refused to learn.
+
+One day Edith Organ announced that there was to be a supper-party at a
+public house in Harringay where one of the barmaids was a friend of
+hers. It seemed that Mrs. Hartle, the proprietress, had recently had
+cause to rejoice over a victory, but whether it was domestic, political,
+or professional Edith was unable to remember; at any rate, a jolly
+evening could be counted upon.
+
+"You must wear that new white dress, Syl; it suits you a treat," Edith
+advised. "I was told only to bring one gentleman, and I think it's
+Artie's turn."
+
+"Why?" Hubert demanded, fiercely.
+
+"Oh, Hube, you know you don't like parties. You always want to go home
+early, and I'm out to enjoy myself and I don't care who knows it."
+
+Sylvia suspected that Edith's real reason for wishing Arthur to be the
+guest was his greater presentableness; she had often heard her praise
+Arthur's appearance while deprecating his namby-pamby manner; however,
+for a party like this, of which Edith was proclaiming the extreme
+selectness, that might be considered an advantage. Mrs. Hartle was
+reputed to be a woman to whom the least vulgarity was disgusting.
+
+"She's highly particular, they tell me, not to say stand-offish. You
+know, doesn't like to make herself cheap. Well, I don't blame her. She's
+thought a lot of round here. She had some trouble with her husband--her
+second husband that is--and everybody speaks very highly of the
+dignified way in which she made him sling his hook out of it."
+
+"I don't think so much of her," Hubert grunted. "I went into the
+saloon-bar once, and she said, 'Here, my man, the public bar is the
+hother side.' 'Oh, his it?' I said. 'Well, I can't round the corner for
+the crowd,' I said, 'listening to your old man singing "At Trinity
+Church I met my doom" on the pavement outside.' She didn't half color
+up, I can tell you. So he was singing, too, fit to give any one the
+earache to listen to him. I don't want to go to her supper-party."
+
+"Well, if you're not going, you needn't be so nasty about it, Hube. I'd
+take you if I could."
+
+"I wouldn't come," Hubert declared. "Not if Mrs. Hartle was to go down
+on her knees and ask me to come. So shut your mouth."
+
+The chief event of the party for Sylvia was her meeting with Danny
+Lewis, who paid her a good deal of attention at supper and danced with
+her all the time afterward. Sylvia was grateful to him for his patience
+with her bad dancing at first, and she learned so quickly under his
+direction that when it was time to go she really danced rather well.
+Sylvia's new friend saw them back to Colonial Terrace and invited
+himself to tea the following afternoon. Edith, who could never bear the
+suggestion of impoliteness, assured him that he would be most welcome,
+though she confided in Sylvia, as they went up to bed, that she could
+not feel quite sure about him. Sylvia insisted he was everything he
+should be, and praised his manners so highly that Edith humbly promised
+to believe in his perfection. Arthur went up-stairs and slammed his door
+without saying good night.
+
+The next morning, a morning of east wind, Arthur attacked Sylvia on the
+subject of her behavior the night before.
+
+"Look here," he opened, very grandly, "if you prefer to spend the
+evenings waltzing with dirty little Jews, I won't stand it."
+
+Sylvia regarded him disdainfully.
+
+"Do you hear?" repeated Arthur. "I won't stand it. It's bad enough with
+that great hulking lout here, but when it comes to a greasy Jew I've had
+enough."
+
+"So have I," Sylvia said. "You'd better go back to Hampstead."
+
+"I'm going to-day," Arthur declared, and waited pathetically for Sylvia
+to protest. She was silent. Then he tried to be affectionate, and vowed
+he had not meant a word he said, but she brushed away his tentative
+caress and meek apology.
+
+"I don't want to talk to you any more," she said. "There are lots of
+things I could tell you; but you'll always be unhappy anyway, because
+you're soft and silly, so I won't. You'll be home for dinner," she
+added.
+
+When Arthur was ready to start he looked so forlorn that Sylvia was
+sorry for him.
+
+"Here, take Maria," she said, impulsively. "He'll remind you of me."
+
+"I don't want anything to remind me of you," said Arthur in a hollow
+voice, "but I'll take Maria."
+
+That afternoon Danny Lewis, wearing a bright orange tie and a flashing
+ring, came to visit Sylvia. She had already told him a good deal about
+herself the night before, and when now she told him how she had
+dismissed Arthur he suggested that Monkley would probably find out where
+she was and come to take her back. Sylvia turned pale; the possibility
+of Arthur's betrayal of her address had never struck her. She cried in
+a panic that she must leave Finsbury Park at once. Danny offered to find
+her a room.
+
+"I've got no money. I spent all I had left on new frocks," she bewailed.
+
+"That's all right, kid; bring the frocks along with you. I've got plenty
+of money."
+
+Sylvia packed in a frenzy of haste, expecting every moment to hear the
+bell ring and see Monkley waiting grimly outside; his cold eyes, when
+her imagination recalled them, made her shiver with fear. When they got
+down-stairs Hubert, who was in the passage, asked where she was going,
+and she told him that she was going away.
+
+"Not with that--" said Hubert, barring the way to the front door.
+
+Danny did not hesitate; his arm shot out, and Hubert went over, bringing
+down the hat-stand with a crash.
+
+"Quick, quick!" cried Sylvia, in exultation at being with some one who
+could act. "Edie's gone round to the baker's to fetch some crumpets for
+tea. Let's go before she gets back."
+
+They hurried out. The wind had fallen. Colonial Terrace looked very
+gray, very quiet, very long in the bitter March air. Danny Lewis with
+his orange tie promised a richer, warmer life beyond these ridiculous
+little houses that imitated one another.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Danny Lewis took Sylvia to an eating-house in Euston Road kept by a
+married couple called Gonner. Here everything--the meat, the pies, the
+butter, the streaky slabs of marble, the fly-blown face of the weary
+clock, the sawdust sprinkled on the floor, the cane-seated
+chairs--combined to create an effect of greasy pallor that extended even
+to Mr. and Mrs. Gonner themselves, who seemed to have acquired the
+nature of their environment. Sylvia shrank from their whitish arms bare
+to the elbow and glistering with fats, and from their faces, which
+seemed to her like bladders of lard, especially Mrs. Gonner's, who wore
+on the top of her head a knob of dank etiolated hair. In such an
+atmosphere Danny Lewis with his brilliant tie and green beaver hat
+acquired a richness of personality that quite overpowered Sylvia's
+judgment and preserved the condition of abnormal excitement set up by
+the rapidity and completeness with which this time she had abandoned
+herself to independence.
+
+There was a brief conversation between Danny and the Gonners, after
+which Mr. Gonner returned to his task of cutting some very fat bacon
+into rashers and Mrs. Gonner held up the flap of the counter for Sylvia
+and Danny to pass up-stairs through the back of the shop. For one moment
+Sylvia hesitated when the flap dropped back into its place, for it
+seemed to make dangerously irrevocable her admittance to the unknown
+house above; Danny saw her hesitation and with a word or two of
+encouragement checked her impulse to go no farther. Mrs. Gonner led the
+way up-stairs and showed them into a bedroom prematurely darkened by
+coarse lace curtains that shut out the fading daylight. Sylvia had a
+vague impression of too much furniture, which was confirmed when Mrs.
+Gonner lit a gas-jet over the mantelpiece; she looked round
+distastefully at the double-bed pushed against the wall, at the crimson
+vases painted with butterflies, at the faded oleograph of two children
+on the edge of a precipice with a guardian angel behind them, whose face
+had at some time been eaten away by mice. There was a short silence,
+only broken by Mrs. Gonner's whispering breath.
+
+"We shall be all right here, kid, eh?" exclaimed Danny, in a tone that
+was at once suave and boisterous.
+
+"What's your room like?" Sylvia asked.
+
+He looked at her a moment, seemed about to speak, thought better of it,
+and turned to Mrs. Gonner, who told Danny that he could have the front
+room as well if he wanted it; they moved along the passage to inspect
+this room, which was much larger and better lighted than the other and
+was pleasantly filled with the noise of traffic. Sylvia immediately
+declared that she preferred to be here.
+
+"So I'm to have the rabbit-hutch," said Danny, laughing easily. "Trust a
+woman to have her own way! That's right, isn't it, Mrs. Gonner?"
+
+Mrs. Gonner stared at Sylvia a moment, and murmured that she had long
+ago forgotten what she wanted, but that, anyway, for her one thing was
+the same as another, which Sylvia was very ready to believe.
+
+When Mrs. Gonner had left the room, Danny told Sylvia that he must go
+and get a few things together from his flat in Shaftsbury Avenue, and
+asked if she would wait till he came back.
+
+"Of course I'll wait," she told him. "Do you think I want to run away
+twice in one day?"
+
+Danny still hesitated, and she wondered why he should expect her, who
+was so much used to being left alone, to mind waiting for him an hour or
+two.
+
+"We might go to the Mo to-night," he suggested.
+
+She looked blank.
+
+"The Middlesex," he explained. "It's a music-hall. Be a good girl while
+I'm out. I'll bring you back some chocolates."
+
+He seemed anxious to retain her with the hint of pleasures that were in
+his power to confer; it made Sylvia impatient that he should rely on
+them rather than upon her capacity for knowing her own mind.
+
+"I may be young," she said, "but I do know what I want. I'm not like
+that woman down-stairs."
+
+"And you know how to make other people want, eh?" Danny muttered. He
+took a step forward, and Sylvia hoped he was not going to try to kiss
+her--she felt disinclined at this moment for a long explanation--but he
+went off, whistling.
+
+For a long time Sylvia stood by the window, looking down at the traffic
+and the lights coming out one by one in the windows opposite. She hoped
+that Danny would not end like Monkley, and she determined to be prompt
+in checking the first signs of his doing so. Standing here in this room,
+that was now dark except for the faint transitory shadows upon the walls
+and ceiling of lighted vehicles below, Sylvia's thoughts went back to
+the time she had spent with Blanche. It seemed to her that then she had
+been wiser than she was now, for all the books she had read since; or
+was it that she was growing up and becoming an actress in scenes that
+formerly she had regarded with the secure aloofness of a child?
+
+"I'm not innocent," she said to herself. "I know everything that can be
+known. But yet when Monkley tried to do that I was horrified. I felt
+sick and frightened and angry, oh, dreadfully angry! Yet when Blanche
+behaved as she did I did not mind at all; I used to encourage her. Oh,
+why am I not a boy? If I were a boy, I would show people that making
+love isn't really a bit necessary. Yet sometimes I liked Arthur to make
+love to me. I can't make myself out. I think I must be what people call
+an exceptional person. I hope Danny won't make love to me. But I feel he
+will; and if he does I shall kill myself; I can't go on living like this
+with everybody making love to me. I'm not like Blanche or Mabel; I don't
+like it. How I used to hate Mabel! Shall I ever get like her? Oh, I
+wish, I wish, I wish I were a boy. I don't believe Danny will be any
+better than Jimmy was. Yet he doesn't frighten me so much. He doesn't
+seem so much there as Jimmy was. But if he does make love to me, it will
+be more dangerous. How shall I ever escape from here? I'm sure Mrs.
+Gonner will never lift the flap."
+
+Sylvia began to be obsessed by that flap, and the notion of it wrought
+upon her fancy to such an extent that she was impelled to go down-stairs
+and see if the way out was open or shut, excusing her abrupt appearance
+by asking for a box of matches. There were two or three people eating at
+the white tables, who eyed her curiously; she wondered what they would
+have done if she had suddenly begged their help. She was vexed with
+herself for giving way to her nerves like this, and she went up-stairs
+again with a grand resolve to be very brave. She even challenged her
+terrors by going into that bedroom behind and contending with its
+oppressiveness. So successful was she in calming her overwrought nerves
+that, when Danny suddenly came back and found her in his bedroom, she
+was no longer afraid; she looked at him there in the doorway, wearing
+now a large tie of pale-blue silk, as she would have looked at any
+brigand in an opera. When he presented her with a large box of
+chocolates she laughed. He wondered why; she said it was she who ought
+to give him chocolates, which left him blank. She tried to explain her
+impression of him as a brigand, and he asked her if she meant that he
+looked like an actor.
+
+"Yes, that's what I mean," she said, impatiently, though she meant
+nothing of the kind.
+
+Danny seemed gratified as by a compliment and said that he was often
+mistaken for an actor; he supposed it was his hair.
+
+They dined at a restaurant in Soho, where Sylvia was conscious of
+arousing a good deal of attention; afterward they went to the Middlesex
+music-hall, but she felt very tired, and did not enjoy it so much as she
+expected. Moreover, Danny irritated her by sucking his teeth with an air
+of importance all through the evening.
+
+For a fortnight Danny treated Sylvia with what was almost a luxurious
+consideration. She was never really taken in by it, but she submitted so
+willingly to being spoiled that, as she told herself, she could hardly
+blame Danny for thinking he was fast making himself indispensable to her
+happiness. He was very anxious for her to lead a lazy existence,
+encouraged her to lie in bed the whole morning, fed her with chocolates,
+and tried to cultivate in her a habit of supposing that it was
+impossible to go anywhere without driving in a hansom; he also used to
+buy her brightly colored blouses and scarves, which she used to wear out
+of politeness, for they gave her very little pleasure. He flattered her
+consistently, praising her cleverness and comparing her sense of humor
+with that of other women always to their disadvantage. He told stories
+very well, particularly those against his own race; and though Sylvia
+was a little scornful of this truckling self-mockery, she could not help
+laughing at the stories. Sylvia realized by the contempt with which
+Danny referred to women that his victories had usually been gained very
+easily, and she was much on her guard. Encouraged, however, by the way
+in which Sylvia seemed to enjoy the superficial pleasures he provided
+for her, Danny soon attempted to bestow his favors as he bestowed his
+chocolates. Sylvia, who never feared Danny personally as she had feared
+Monkley, repulsed him, yet not so firmly as she would have done had not
+her first impression of the house still affected her imagination. Danny,
+who divined her malaise, but mistook it for the terror he was used to
+inspiring, began to play the bully. It was twilight, one of those
+sapphire twilights of early spring; the gas had not been lighted and the
+fire had died away to a glow. Sylvia had thrown off his caressing arm
+three times, when Danny suddenly jumped up, pulled out a clasp-knife,
+and, standing over Sylvia, threatened her with death if she would not
+immediately consent to be his. Sylvia's heart beat a little faster at
+such a threat delivered with all the additional force vile language
+could give to it, but she saw two things quite clearly: first, that, if
+Danny were really to kill her, death would be far preferable to
+surrender; secondly, that the surest way of avoiding either would be by
+assuming he would turn out a coward in the face of the unexpected. She
+rose from the arm-chair; Danny rushed to the door, flourishing his knife
+and forbidding her to think of escape.
+
+"Who wants to escape?" she asked, in so cool a tone that Danny, who had
+naturally anticipated a more feminine reception of his violence, failed
+to sustain his part by letting her see that he was puzzled. She strolled
+across the room to the wash-stand; then she strolled up to the brigand.
+
+"Put that knife away," she said. "I want to tell you something, darling
+Danny."
+
+In the gloom she could see that he threw a suspicious glance at her for
+the endearing epithet, but he put away the knife.
+
+"What do you want to say?" he growled.
+
+"Only this." She brought her arm swiftly round and emptied the
+water-bottle over him. "Though I ought to smash it on your greasy head.
+I read in a book once that the Jews were a subject race. You'd better
+light the gas."
+
+He spluttered that he was all wet, and she turned away from him,
+horribly scared that in a moment his fingers would be tightening round
+her neck; but he had taken off his coat and was shaking it.
+
+Sylvia poked the fire and sat down again in the arm-chair. "Listen," she
+began.
+
+He came across the room in his shirt-sleeves, his tie hanging in a
+cascade of amber silk over his waistcoat.
+
+"No, don't pull down the blinds," she added. "I want to be quite sure
+you really have cooled down and aren't going to play with that knife
+again. Listen. It's no good your trying to make love to me. I don't want
+to be made love to by anybody, least of all by you."
+
+Danny looked more cheerful when she assured him of her indifference to
+other men.
+
+"It's no use your killing me, because you'll only be hanged. It's no use
+your stabbing me, because you'll go to prison. If you hit me, I shall
+hit you back. You thought I was afraid of you. I wasn't. I'm more afraid
+of a bug than I am of you. I saw a bug to-day; so I'm going to leave
+this house. The weather's getting warmer. You and the bugs have come out
+together. Come along, Danny, dry your coat and tell me a story that will
+make me laugh. Tell me the story of the Jew who died of grief because he
+bought his wife a new hat and found his best friend had bought her one
+that day and he might have saved his money. Do make me laugh, Danny."
+
+They went to the Middlesex music-hall that evening, and Danny did not
+suck his teeth once. The next morning he told Sylvia that he had been to
+visit a friend who wished very much to meet her, and that he proposed to
+introduce him that afternoon, if she agreed. He was a fellow in a good
+way of business, the son of a bootmaker in Drury Lane, quite a superior
+sort of fellow and one by whom she could not fail to be impressed; his
+name was Jay Cohen. The friend arrived toward four o'clock, and Danny on
+some excuse left him with Sylvia. He had big teeth and round, prominent
+eyes; his boots were very glossy and sharply pointed at the toes, with
+uppers of what looked like leopard-skin. Observing Sylvia's glances
+directed to his boots, he asked with a smile if she admired the latest
+thing. She confessed they were rather too late for her taste, and Mr.
+Cohen excused them as a pair sent back to his father by a well-known
+music-hall comedian, who complained of their pinching him. Sylvia said
+it was lucky they only pinched him; she should not have been astonished
+if they had bitten him.
+
+"You're a Miss Smartie, aren't you?" said Jay Cohen.
+
+The conversation languished for a while, but presently he asked Sylvia
+why she was so unkind to his friend Danny.
+
+"What do you mean, 'unkind'?" she repeated. "Unkind what about?"
+
+Mr. Cohen smiled in a deprecating way. "He's a good boy, is Danny. Real
+good. He is, really. All the girls are mad about Danny. You know, smart
+girls, girls that get around. He's very free, too. Money's nothing to
+Danny when he's out to spend. His father's got a tobacconist's shop in
+the Caledonian Road. A good business--a very good business. Danny told
+me what the turn-over was once, and I was surprised. I remember I
+thought what a rare good business it was. Well, Danny's feeling a bit
+upset to-day, and he came round to see me early this morning. He must
+have been very upset, because it was very early, and he said to me that
+he was mad over a girl and would I speak for him? He reckoned he'd made
+a big mistake and he wanted to put it right, but he was afraid of being
+laughed at, because the young lady in question was a bit high-handed. He
+wants to marry you. There it is right out. He'd like to marry you at
+once, but he's afraid of his father, and he thought...."
+
+Mr. Cohen broke off suddenly in his proposal and listened: "What's
+that?"
+
+"It sounds like some one shouting down-stairs," Sylvia said. "But you
+often hear rows going on down there. There was a row yesterday because a
+woman bit on a stone in a pie and broke her tooth."
+
+"That's Jubie's voice," said Mr. Cohen, blinking his eyes and running
+his hands nervously through his sleek hair.
+
+"Who's Jubie?"
+
+Before he could explain there was a sound of impassioned footsteps on
+the stairs. In a moment the door was flung open, and a handsome Jewess
+with flashing eyes and ear-rings slammed it behind her.
+
+"Where's Danny?" she demanded.
+
+"Is that you, Jubie?" said Mr. Cohen. "Danny's gone over to see his dad.
+He won't be here to-day."
+
+"You liar, he's here this moment. I followed him into the shop and he
+ran up-stairs. So you're the kid he's been trailing around with him,"
+she said, eying Sylvia. "The dirty rotter!"
+
+Sylvia resented the notion of being trailed by such a one as Danny
+Lewis, but, feeling undecided how to appease this tropical creature, she
+took the insult without reply.
+
+"He thinks to double cross Jubie Myers! Wait till my brother Sam knows
+where he is."
+
+Mr. Cohen had retired to the window and was studying the traffic of
+Euston Road; one of his large ears was twitching nervously toward the
+threats of the outraged Miss Myers, who after much breathless abuse of
+Sylvia at last retired to fetch her brother Sam. When she was gone, Mr.
+Cohen said he thought he would go too, because he did not feel inclined
+to meet Sam Myers, who was a pugilist with many victories to his credit
+at Wonderland; just as he reached the door, Danny entered and with a
+snarl accused him of trying to round on him.
+
+"You know you fetched Jubie here on purpose, so as you could do me in
+with the kid," said Danny. "I know you, Jay Cohen."
+
+They wrangled for some time over this, until suddenly Danny landed his
+friend a blow between the eyes. Sylvia, recognizing the Danny who had so
+neatly knocked out Hubert Organ in Colonial Terrace, became pleasantly
+enthusiastic on his behalf, and cried "Bravo!"
+
+The encouragement put a fine spirit into Danny's blows; he hammered the
+unfortunate Cohen round and round the room, upsetting tables and chairs
+and wash-stand until with a stinging blow he knocked him backward into
+the slop-pail, in which he sat so heavily that when he tried to rise the
+slop-pail stuck and gave him the appearance of a large baboon crawling
+with elevated rump on all-fours. Danny kicked off the slop-pail, and
+invited Cohen to stand up to him; but when he did get on his feet he ran
+to the door and reached the stairs just as Mrs. Gonner was wearily
+ascending to find out what was happening. He tried to stop himself by
+clutching the knob of the baluster, which broke; the result was that he
+dragged Mrs. Gonner with him in a glissade which ended behind the
+counter. The confusion in the shop became general: Mr. Gonner cut his
+thumb, and the sight of the blood caused a woman who was eating a
+sausage to choke; another customer took advantage of the row to snatch a
+side of bacon and try to escape, but another customer with a finer moral
+sense prevented him; a dog, who was sniffing in the entrance, saw the
+bacon on the floor and tried to seize it, but, getting his tail trodden
+upon by somebody, it took fright and bit a small boy who was waiting to
+change a shilling into coppers. Meanwhile Sylvia, who expected every
+moment that Jubie and her pugilistic brother would return and increase
+the confusion with possibly unpleasant consequences for herself, took
+advantage of Danny's being occupied in an argument with Cohen and the
+two Gonners to put on her hat and coat and escape from the shop. She
+jumped on the first omnibus and congratulated herself when she looked
+round and saw a policeman entering the eating-house.
+
+Presently the conductor came up for her fare; she found she had
+fivepence in the world. She asked him where the omnibus went, and was
+told to the Cedars Hotel, West Kensington.
+
+"Past Lillie Road?"
+
+He nodded, and she paid away her last penny. After all, even if Monkley
+and her father did owe Mrs. Meares a good deal of money, Sylvia did not
+believe she would have her arrested. She would surely be too much
+interested to find that she was a girl and not a boy. Sylvia laughed
+when she thought of Jay Cohen in the slop-pail, for she remembered the
+baboon in Lillie Road, and she wondered if Clara was still there. What a
+lot she would have to tell Mrs. Meares, and if the baron had not left
+she would ask him why he had attacked her in that extraordinary way when
+she went to the party in Redcliffe Gardens. That was more than two years
+ago now. Sylvia wished she had gone to Lillie Road with Arthur Madden
+when she had some money and could have paid Mrs. Meares what was owing
+to her. Now she had not a penny in the world; she had not even any
+clothes. The omnibus jogged on, and Sylvia's thoughts jogged with it.
+
+"I wonder if I shall always have adventures," she said to herself, "but
+I wish I could sometimes have adventures that have nothing to do with
+love. It's such a nuisance to be always running away for the same
+reason. It's such a stupid reason. But it's rather jolly to run away.
+It's more fun than being like that girl in front." She contemplated a
+girl of about her own age, to whom an elderly woman was pointing out the
+St. James's Hall with a kind of suppressed excitement, a fever of
+unsatisfied pleasure.
+
+"You've never been to the Moore and Burgess minstrels, have you, dear?"
+she was saying. "We _must_ get your father to take us some afternoon.
+Look at the people coming out."
+
+The girl looked dutifully, but Sylvia thought it was more amusing to
+look at the people struggling to mount omnibuses already full. She
+wondered what that girl would have done with somebody like Danny Lewis,
+and she felt sorry for the prim and dutiful young creature who could
+never see Jay Cohen sitting in a slop-pail. Sylvia burst into a loud
+laugh, and a stout woman who was occupying three-quarters of her seat
+edged away from her a little.
+
+"We shall be late for tea," said the elderly woman in an ecstasy of
+dissipation, when she saw the clock at Hyde Park Corner. "We sha'n't be
+home till after six. We ought to have had tea at King's Cross."
+
+The elderly woman was still talking about tea when they stopped at
+Sloane Street, and Sylvia's counterpart was still returning polite
+answers to her speculation; when they got down at South Kensington
+Station the last thing Sylvia heard was a suggestion that perhaps it
+might be possible to arrange for dinner to be a quarter of an hour
+earlier.
+
+It was dark when Sylvia reached the house in Lillie Road and she hoped
+very much that Clara would open the door; but another servant came, and
+when she asked for Mrs. Meares a sudden alarm caught her that Mrs.
+Meares might no longer be here and that she would be left alone in the
+night without a penny in the world. But Mrs. Meares was in.
+
+"Have you come about the place?" whispered the new servant. "Because if
+you have you'll take my advice and have nothing to do with it."
+
+Sylvia asked why.
+
+"Why, it's nothing but a common lodging-house in my opinion. The woman
+who keeps it--lady _she_ calls herself--tries to kid you as they're all
+paying guests. And the cats! You may like cats. I don't. Besides I've
+been used to company where I've been in service, and the only company
+you get here is beetles. If any one goes down into the kitchen at night
+it's like walking on nutshells, they're so thick."
+
+"I haven't come about the place," Sylvia explained. "I want to see Mrs.
+Meares herself."
+
+"Oh, a friend of hers. I'm sorry, I'm shaw," said the servant, "but I
+haven't said nothing but what is gospel truth, and I told her the same.
+You'd better come up to the droring-room--well, droring-room! You'll
+have to excuse the laundry, which is all over the chairs because we had
+the sweep in this morning. A nice hullabaloo there was yesterday!
+Fire-engines and all. Mrs. Meares was very upset. She's up in her
+bedroom, I expect."
+
+The servant lit the gas in the drawing-room and, leaving Sylvia among
+the outspread linen, went up-stairs to fetch Mrs. Meares, who shortly
+afterward descended in a condition of dignified bewilderment and entered
+the room with one arm arched like a note of interrogation in cautious
+welcome.
+
+"Miss Scarlett? The name is familiar, but--?"
+
+Sylvia poured out her story, and at the end of it Mrs. Meares dreamily
+smoothed her brow.
+
+"I don't quite understand. Were you a girl dressed as a boy then or are
+you a boy dressed as a girl now?"
+
+Sylvia explained, and while she was giving the explanation she became
+aware of a profound change in Mrs. Meares's attitude toward her, an
+alteration of standpoint much more radical than could have been caused
+by any resentment at the behavior of Monkley and her father. Suddenly
+Sylvia regarded Mrs. Meares with the eyes of Clara, or of that new
+servant who had whispered to her in the hall. She was no longer the
+bland and futile Irishwoman of regal blood; the good-natured and
+feckless creature with open placket and draperies trailing in the dust
+of her ill-swept house; the soft-voiced, soft-hearted Hibernian with a
+gentle smile for man's failings and foibles, and a tear ever welling
+from that moist gray eye in memory of her husband's defection and the
+death of her infant son. Sylvia felt that now she was being sized up by
+some one who would never be indulgent again, who would exact from her
+the uttermost her girlhood could give, who would never forget the
+advantage she had gained in learning how desperate was the state of
+Sylvia Scarlett, and who would profit by it accordingly.
+
+"It seems so peculiar to resort to me," Mrs. Meares was saying, "after
+the way your father treated me, but I'm not the woman to bear a grudge.
+Thank God, I can meet the blows of fortune with nobility and forgive an
+injury with any one in the world. It's lucky indeed that I can show my
+true character and offer you assistance. The servant is leaving
+to-morrow, and though I will not take advantage of your position to ask
+you to do anything in the nature of menial labor, though to be sure it's
+myself knows too well the word--to put it shortly, I can offer you board
+and lodging in return for any little help you may give me until I will
+get a new servant. And it's not easy to get servants these days. Such
+grand ideas have they."
+
+Sylvia felt that she ought to accept this offer; she was destitute and
+she wished to avoid charity, having grasped that, though it was a great
+thing to make oneself indispensable, it was equally important not to put
+oneself under an obligation; finally it would be a satisfaction to pay
+back what her father owed. Not that she fancied his ghost would be
+disturbed by the recollection of any earthly debts; it would be purely a
+personal satisfaction, and she told Mrs. Meares that she was willing to
+help under the proposed terms.
+
+Somewhere about nine o'clock Sylvia sat down with Mrs. Meares in the
+breakfast-room to supper, which was served by Amelia as if she had been
+unwillingly dragged into a game of cards and was showing her displeasure
+in the way she dealt the hand. The incandescent gas jigged up and down,
+and Mrs. Meares swept her plate every time she languorously flung
+morsels to the numerous cats, some of which they did not like and left
+to be trodden into the threadbare carpet by Amelia. Sylvia made
+inquiries about Mr. Morgan and the baron, but they had both left; the
+guests at present were a young actor who hoped to walk on in the new
+production at the St. James's, a Nonconformist minister who had been
+persecuted by his congregation into resigning, and an elderly clerk
+threatened with locomotor ataxia, who had a theory, contrary to the
+advice of his doctor, that it was beneficial to walk to the city every
+morning. His symptoms were described with many details, but, owing to
+Mrs. Meares's diving under the table to show the cats where a morsel of
+meat had escaped their notice, it was difficult to distinguish between
+the symptoms of the disease, the topography of the meat, and the names
+of the cats.
+
+Next day Sylvia watched Amelia put on the plumage of departure and leave
+with her yellow tin trunk; then she set to work to help Mrs. Meares make
+the beds of Mr. Leslie Warburton, the actor; Mr. Croasdale, the
+minister; and Mr. Witherwick, the clerk. Her companion's share was
+entirely verbal and she disliked the task immensely. When the beds were
+finished, she made an attempt with Mrs. Meares to put away the clean
+linen, but Mrs. Meares went off in the middle to find the words of a
+poem she could not remember, leaving behind her towels to mark her
+passage as boys in paper-chases strew paper on Hampstead Heath. She did
+not find the words of the poem, or, if she did, she had forgotten them
+when Sylvia discovered her; but she had decided to alter the arrangement
+of the drawing-room curtains, so that to the unassorted unburied linen
+were added long strips of faded green silk which hung about the house
+for some days. Mrs. Meares asked Sylvia if she would like to try her
+hand at an omelette; the result was a failure, whether on account of the
+butter or the eggs was not quite certain; the cat to which it was given
+was sick.
+
+The three lodgers made no impression on Sylvia. Each of them in turn
+tried to kiss her when she first went into his room; each of them
+afterward complained bitterly of the way the eggs were poached at
+breakfast and asked Mrs. Meares why she had got rid of Amelia. Gradually
+Sylvia found that she was working as hard as Clara used to work, that
+slowly and gently she was being smothered by Mrs. Meares, and that the
+process was regarded by Mrs. Meares as an act of holy charity, to which
+she frequently alluded in a very superior way.
+
+Early one afternoon at the end of April Sylvia went out shopping for
+Mrs. Meares, which was not such a simple matter, because a good deal of
+persuasiveness had to be used nowadays with the tradesmen on account of
+unpaid books. As she passed the entrance to the Earl's Court Exhibition
+she saw Mabel Bannerman coming out; though she had hated Mabel and had
+always blamed her for her father's death, past enmity fled away in the
+pleasure of seeing somebody who belonged to a life that only a month of
+Mrs. Meares had wonderfully enchanted. She called after her; Mabel, only
+slightly more flaccid nowadays, welcomed her without hesitation.
+
+"Why, if it isn't Sylvia! Well, I declare! You are a stranger."
+
+They talked for a while on the pavement, until Mabel, who disliked such
+publicity except in a love-affair, and who was frankly eager for a full
+account of what had happened after she left Swanage, invited Sylvia to
+"have one" at the public house to which her father in the old days used
+to invite Jimmy, and where once he had been surprised by Sylvia's
+arrival with his friend.
+
+Mabel was shocked to think that Henry had perhaps died on her account,
+but she assured Sylvia that for any wrong she had done him she had paid
+ten times over in the life she had led with the other man.
+
+"Oh, he was a brute. Your dad was an angel beside him, dear. Oh, I was a
+stupid girl! But there, it's no good crying over spilt milk. What's done
+can't be undone, and I've paid. My voice is quite gone. I can't sing a
+note. What do you think I'm doing now? Working at the Exhibition. It
+opens next week, you know."
+
+"Acting?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Acting? No! I'm in Open Sesame, the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels.
+Well, I suppose it is acting in a way, because I'm supposed to be a
+Turkish woman. You know, sequins and trousers and a what d'ye call
+it--round my face. You know. Oh dear, whatever is it called? A hookah!"
+
+"But a hookah's a pipe," Sylvia objected. "You mean a yashmak."
+
+"That's it. Well, I sell Turkish Delight, but some of the girls sell
+coffee, and for an extra threepence you can see the Sultan's harem. It
+ought to go well. There's a couple of real Turks and a black eunuch who
+gives me the creeps. The manager's very hopeful. Which reminds me. He's
+looking out for some more girls. Why don't you apply? It isn't like you,
+Sylvia, to be doing what's nothing better than a servant's job. I'm so
+afraid I shall get a varicose vein through standing about so much, and
+an elastic stocking makes one look so old. Oh dear, don't let's talk
+about age. Drink up and have another."
+
+Sylvia explained to Mabel about her lack of money and clothes, and it
+was curious to discover how pleasant and sympathetic Mabel was
+now--another instance of the degrading effect of love, for Sylvia could
+hardly believe that this was the hysterical creature who used to keep
+her awake in Fitzroy Street.
+
+"I'd lend you the money," said Mabel, "but really, dear, until we open I
+haven't got very much. In fact," she added, looking at the empty
+glasses, "when I've paid for these two I shall be quite stony. Still, I
+live quite close. Finborough Road. Why don't you come and stay with me?
+I'll take you round to the manager to-morrow morning. He's sure to
+engage you. Of course, the salary is small. I don't suppose he'll offer
+more than fifteen shillings. Still, there's tips, and anything would be
+better than slaving for that woman. I live at three hundred and twenty.
+I've got a nice room with a view over Brompton Cemetery. One might be in
+the country. It's beautifully quiet except for the cats, and you hardly
+notice the trains."
+
+Sylvia promised that she would think it over and let her know that
+evening.
+
+"That's right, dear. The landlady's name is Gowndry."
+
+They parted with much cordiality and good wishes, and Sylvia went back
+to Lillie Road. Mrs. Meares was deeply injured when she was informed
+that her lady-help proposed to desert her.
+
+"But surely you shall wait till I've got a servant," she said. "And what
+will poor Mr. Witherwick do? He's so fond of you, Sylvia. I'm sure your
+poor father would be most distressed to think of you at Earl's Court.
+Such temptations for a young girl. I look upon myself as your guardian,
+you know. I would feel a big responsibility if anything came to you."
+
+Sylvia, however, declined to stay.
+
+"And I wanted to give you a little kitten. Mavourneen will be having
+kittens next month, and May cats are so lucky. When you told me about
+your black cat, Maria, I said to myself that I would be giving you one.
+And dear Parnell is the father, and if it's not Parnell, it's my darling
+Brian Boru. You beauty! Was you the father of some sweet little kitties?
+Clever man!"
+
+When Mrs. Meares turned away to congratulate Brian Boru upon his
+imminent if ambiguous paternity, Sylvia went up-stairs to get her only
+possession--a coat with a fur-trimmed collar and cuffs, which she had
+worn alternately with underclothing for a month; this week the
+underclothing was, luckily, not at the wash. Sylvia shook off Mrs.
+Meares's last remonstrances and departed into the balmy April afternoon.
+The weather was so fine that she pawned her overcoat and bought a hat;
+then she pawned her fur cap, bought a pair of stockings (the pair in the
+wash belonged to Mrs. Meares), and went to Finborough Road.
+
+Mrs. Gowndry asked if she was the young lady who was going to share Miss
+Bannerman's room; when Sylvia said she was, Mrs. Gowndry argued that
+the bed would not hold two and that she had not bargained for the sofa's
+being used for anything but sitting on.
+
+"That sofa's never been slept on in its life," she protested. "And if I
+start in letting people sleep anywhere, I might as well turn my house
+into a public convenience and have done with it; but, there, it's no
+good grumbling. Such is life. It's the back room. Second floor up. The
+last lodger burnt his name on the door with a poker, so you can't make
+no mistake."
+
+Mrs. Gowndry dived abruptly into the basement and left Sylvia to find
+her way up to Mabel's room alone. Her hostess was in a kimono, Oriental
+even away from the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels; she had tied pink
+bows to every projection and there was a strong smell of cheap scent.
+Sylvia welcomed the prettiness and sweetness after Lillie Road; her
+former dislike of Mabel's domestic habits existed no longer; she told
+her of the meeting with Mrs. Gowndry and was afraid that the plan of
+living here might not be allowed.
+
+"Oh, she's always like that," Mabel explained. "She's a silly old crow,
+but she's very nice, really. Her husband's a lavatory attendant, and,
+being shut up all day underground, he grumbles a lot when he comes home,
+and of course his wife has to suffer for it. Where's your luggage?"
+
+"I told you I hadn't got any."
+
+"You really are a caution, Sylvia. Fancy! Never mind. I expect I'll be
+able to fit you out."
+
+"I sha'n't want much," Sylvia said, "with the warm weather coming."
+
+"But you'll have to change when you go to the Exhibition, and you don't
+want the other girls to stare."
+
+They spent the evening in cutting down some of Mabel's underclothes, and
+Sylvia wondered more than ever how she could have once found her so
+objectionable. In an excess of affection she hugged Mabel and thanked
+her warmly for her kindness.
+
+"Go on," said Mabel. "There's nothing to thank me for. You'd do the same
+for me."
+
+"But I used to be so beastly to you."
+
+"Oh, well, you were only a kid. You didn't understand about love.
+Besides, I was very nervous in those days. I expect there were faults on
+both sides. I spoke to the manager about you, and I'm sure it'll be all
+right."
+
+The following morning Sylvia accompanied Mabel to the Exhibition and,
+after being presented to Mr. Woolfe, the manager, she was engaged to
+sell cigarettes and serve coffee in the Hall of a Thousand and One
+Marvels from eleven in the morning till eleven at night on a salary of
+fourteen shillings a week, all extras to be shared with seven other
+young ladies similarly engaged.
+
+"You'll be Amethyst," said Mr. Woolfe. "You'd better go and try on your
+dress. The idea is that there are eight beautiful odalisques dressed
+like precious stones. Pretty fancy, isn't it? Now don't grumble and say
+you'd rather be Diamond or Turquoys, because all the other jools are
+taken."
+
+Sylvia passed through an arched doorway hung with a heavy curtain into
+the dressing-room of the eight odalisques, which lacked in Eastern
+splendor, and was very draughty. Seven girls, mostly older than herself,
+were wrestling with veils and brocades.
+
+"He said we was to cover up our faces with this. It is chiffong or tool,
+dear?"
+
+"Oh, Daisy, you are silly to let him make you Rewby. Why don't you ask
+him to let you be Saffer? You don't mind, do you, kiddie? You're dark.
+You take Daisy's Rewby, and let her be Saffer."
+
+"Aren't we going to wear anything over these drawers? Oh, girls, I shall
+feel shy."
+
+Sylvia did not think that any of them would feel half as shy as she felt
+at the present moment in being plunged into the company of girls of
+whose thoughts and habits and sensations and manners she was utterly
+ignorant. She felt more at ease when she had put on her mauve dress and
+had veiled her face. When they were all ready, they paraded before Mr.
+Woolfe.
+
+"Very good. Very good," he said. "Quite a lot of atmosphere. Here you,
+my dear, Emruld, put your yashmak up a bit higher. You look as if you'd
+got mumps like that. Now then, here's the henna to paint your
+finger-nails, and the kohl for your eyes."
+
+"Coal for our eyes," echoed all the girls. "Why can't we use liquid
+black the same as we always do? Coal! What a liberty! Whatever next?"
+
+"That shows you don't know anything about the East. K-O-H-L, not
+C-O-A-L, you silly girls. And don't you get hennering your hair. It's
+only to be used for the nails."
+
+When the Exhibition opened on the 1st of May the Hall of a Thousand and
+One Marvels was the only sideshow that was in full working order. The
+negro eunuch stood outside and somewhat inappropriately bellowed his
+invitation to the passing crowds to visit Sesame, where all the glamour
+of the East was to be had for sixpence, including a cup of delicious
+Turkish coffee specially made by the Sultan's own coffee-maker. Once
+inside, visitors could for a further sum of threepence view an exact
+reproduction of a Turkish harem, where real Turkish ladies in all the
+abandonment of languorous poses offered a spectacle of luxury that could
+only be surpassed by paying another threepence to see a faithless wife
+tied up in a sack and flung into the Bosphorus once every hour. Other
+threepennies secured admission to Aladdin's Cave, where the Genie of the
+Lamp told fortunes, or to the Cave of the Forty Thieves, where a lucky
+ticket entitled the owner to draw a souvenir from Ali Baba's sack of
+treasure, and see Morgiana dance a voluptuous _pas seul_ once every
+hour. Visitors to the Hall could also buy attar of roses, cigarettes,
+seraglio pastilles, and Turkish Delight. It was very Oriental--even Mr.
+Woolfe wore a fez.
+
+Either because Sylvia moved in a way that seemed to Mr. Woolfe more
+Oriental than the others or because she got on very well with him
+personally, she was soon promoted to a small inner room more richly
+draped and lighted by a jeweled lamp hanging from the ceiling of gilded
+arabesques. Here Mr. Woolfe as a mark of his esteem introduced regular
+customers who could appreciate the softer carpet and deeper divans. At
+one end was a lattice, beyond which might be seen two favorites of the
+harem, who, slowly fanning themselves, reclined eternally amid perfumed
+airs--that is, except during the intervals for dinner and tea, which
+lasted half an hour and exposed them to the unrest of European
+civilization. One of these favorites was Mabel, whom Mr. Woolfe had been
+heard to describe as his beau ideel of a sultana, and whom he had taken
+from the sale of Turkish Delight to illustrate his conception. Mabel was
+paid a higher salary in consequence, because, inclosed in the harem, she
+was no longer able to profit by the male admirers who had bought Turkish
+Delight at her plump hands. The life was well suited to her natural
+laziness; though she dreaded getting fat, she was glad to be relieved of
+the menace from her varicose vein. Sylvia was the only odalisque that
+waited in this inner room, but her salary was not raised, since she now
+had the sole right to all the extras; she certainly preferred this
+darkened chamber to the other, and when there were no intruders from the
+world outside she could gossip through the lattice with the two
+favorites.
+
+Mrs. Gowndry had let Sylvia a small room at the very top of the house;
+notwithstanding Mabel's good nature, she might have grown tired of being
+always at close quarters with her. Sylvia's imagination was captured by
+the life she led at Earl's Court; she made up her mind that one day she
+would somehow visit the real East. When Mr. Woolfe found out her deep
+interest in the part she was playing and her fondness for reading, he
+lent her various books that had inspired his creation at Earl's Court;
+she had long ago read the _Arabian Nights_, but there were several
+volumes of travels which fed her ambition to leave this dull Western
+world. On Sunday mornings she used to lean out of her window and fancy
+the innumerable tombs of Brompton Cemetery were the minarets of an
+Eastern town; and later on, when June made every hour in the open air
+desirable after being shut up so long at Earl's Court, Sylvia used to
+spend her Sunday afternoons in wandering about the cemetery, in reading
+upon the tombs the exalted claims they put forward for poor mortality,
+and in puzzling over the broken columns, the urns and anchors and
+weeping angels that commemorated the wealthy dead. Every one buried here
+had lived on earth a life of perfect virtue, it seemed; every one buried
+here had been confident of another life after the grave. Long ago at
+Lille she had been taught something about the future these dead people
+seemed to have counted upon; but there had been so much to do on Sunday
+mornings, and she could not remember that she had ever gone to church
+after she was nine. Perhaps she had made a mistake in abandoning so
+early the chance of finding out more about religion; it was difficult
+not to be impressed by the universal testimony of these countless tombs.
+Religion had evidently a great influence upon humanity, though in her
+reading she had never been struck by the importance of it. People in
+books attended church just as they wore fine clothes, or fought duels,
+or went to dinner-parties; the habit belonged to the observances of
+polite society and if she ever found herself in such society she would
+doubtless behave like her peers. She had not belonged to a society with
+leisure for church-going. Yet in none of the books that she had read had
+religion seemed anything like so important as love or money. She herself
+thought that the pleasures of both these were much exaggerated, though
+in her own actual experience their power of seriously disturbing some
+people was undeniable. But who was ever disturbed by religion? Probably
+all these tombs were a luxury of the rich, rather like visiting-cards,
+which, as every one knew, must be properly inscribed and follow a
+certain pattern. She remembered that old Mr. Gustard, who was not rich,
+had been very doubtful of another life, and she was consoled by this
+reflection, for she had been rendered faintly anxious by the pious
+repetitions of faith in a future life, practical comfort in which could
+apparently only be secured by the strictest behavior on earth. She had
+the fancy to invent her own epitaph: "Here lies Sylvia Scarlett, who was
+always running away. If she has to live all over again and be the same
+girl, she accepts no responsibility for anything that may occur." She
+printed this on a piece of paper, fastened it to a twig, and stuck it
+into the earth to judge the effect. Sylvia was so deeply engrossed in
+her task that she did not see that somebody was watching her until she
+had stepped back to admire her handiwork.
+
+"You extraordinary girl!" said a pleasant voice.
+
+Looking round, Sylvia saw a thin clean-shaven man of about thirty, who
+was leaning on a cane with an ivory crook and looking at her epitaph
+through gold-rimmed glasses. She blushed, to her annoyance, and snatched
+up the twig.
+
+"What are you always running away from?" the stranger asked. "Or is that
+an indiscreet question?"
+
+Sylvia could have shaken herself for not giving a ready answer, but this
+new-comer seemed entitled to something better than rudeness, and her
+ready answers were usually rude.
+
+"Now don't go away," the stranger begged. "It's so refreshing to meet
+something alive in this wilderness of death. I've been inspecting a
+grave for a friend who is abroad, and I'm feeling thoroughly depressed.
+One can't avoid reading epitaphs in a cemetery, can one? Or writing
+them?" he added, with a pleasant laugh. "I like yours much the best of
+any I've read so far. What a charming name. Sylvia Scarlett. Balzac said
+the best epitaphs were single names. If I saw Sylvia Scarlett on a tomb
+with nothing else, my appetite for romance would be perfectly
+satisfied."
+
+"Have you read many books of Balzac?" Sylvia asked.
+
+The stranger's conversation had detained her; she could ask the question
+quite simply.
+
+"I've read most of them, I think."
+
+"I've read some," Sylvia said. "But he's not my favorite writer. I like
+Scott better. But now I only read books about the Orient."
+
+She was rather proud of the last word and hoped the stranger would
+notice it.
+
+"What part attracts you most?"
+
+"I think Japan," Sylvia said. "But I like Turkey rather. Only I wouldn't
+ever let myself be shut up in a harem."
+
+"I suppose you'd run away?" said the stranger, with a smile. "Which
+reminds me that you haven't answered my first question. Please do, if
+it's not impertinent."
+
+They wandered along the paths shaded by yews and willows, and Sylvia
+told him many things about her life; he was the easiest person to talk
+to that she had ever met.
+
+"And so this passion for the East has been inspired by the Hall of a
+Thousand and One Marvels. Dear me, what an unexpected consequence. And
+this Hall of a Thousand and One Marbles," he indicated the cemetery with
+a sweep of his cane, "this inspires you to write an epitaph? Well, my
+dear, such an early essay in mortuary literature may end in a famous
+elegy. You evidently possess the poetic temperament."
+
+"I don't like poetry," Sylvia interrupted. "I don't believe it ever.
+Nobody really talks like that when they're in love."
+
+"Quite true," said the stranger. "Poets have often ere this been charged
+with exaggeration. Perhaps I wrong you in attributing to you the poetic
+temperament. Yes, on second thoughts, I'm sure I do. You are an
+eminently practical young lady. I won't say prosaic, because the word
+has been debased. I suspect by the poets who are always uttering base
+currency of thoughts and words and emotions. Dear me, this is a most
+delightful adventure."
+
+"Adventure?" repeated Sylvia.
+
+"Our meeting," the stranger explained.
+
+"Do you call that an adventure?" said Sylvia, contemptuously. "Why, I've
+had adventures much more exciting than this."
+
+"I told you that your temperament was anti-poetic," said the stranger.
+"How severe you are with my poor gossamers. You are like the Red Queen.
+You've seen adventures compared with which this is really an ordinary
+afternoon walk."
+
+"I don't understand half you're saying," said Sylvia. "Who's the Red
+Queen? Why was she red?"
+
+"Why was Sylvia Scarlett?" the stranger laughed.
+
+"I don't think that's a very good joke," said Sylvia, solemnly.
+
+"It wasn't, and to make my penitence, if you'll let me, I'll visit you
+at Earl's Court and present you with copies of _Alice's Adventures in
+Wonderland and through The Looking-glass_."
+
+"Books," said Sylvia, in a satisfied tone. "All right. When will you
+come? To-morrow?"
+
+The stranger nodded.
+
+"What are you?" Sylvia asked, abruptly.
+
+"My name is Iredale--Philip Iredale. No profession."
+
+"Are you what's called a gentleman?" Sylvia went on.
+
+"I hope most people would so describe me," said Mr. Iredale.
+
+"I asked you that," Sylvia said, "because I never met a gentleman
+before. I don't think Jimmy Monkley was a gentleman, and Arthur Madden
+was too young. Perhaps the Emperor of Byzantium was a gentleman."
+
+"I hope so indeed," said Mr. Iredale. "The Palaeologos family is an old
+one. Did you meet the Emperor in the course of your Oriental studies?
+Shall I meet him in the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels?"
+
+Sylvia told him the story of the Emperor's reception, which seemed to
+amuse him very much.
+
+"Where do you live?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Well, I live in Hampshire generally, but I have rooms in the Temple."
+
+"The Temple of who?" Sylvia asked, grandly.
+
+"Mammon is probably the dedication, but by a legal fiction the titular
+god is suppressed."
+
+"Do you believe in God?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"My dear Miss Scarlett, I protest that such a question so abruptly put
+in a cemetery is most unfair."
+
+"Don't call me Miss Scarlett. It makes me feel like a girl in a shop.
+Call me Sylvia. That's my name."
+
+"Dear me, how very refreshing you are," said Mr. Iredale. "Do you know
+I'm positively longing for to-morrow. But meanwhile, dear child, dear
+girl, we have to-day. What shall we do with the rest of it? Let's get on
+top of a 'bus and ride to Kensington Gardens. Hallowed as this spot is
+both by the mighty dead and the dear living, I'm tired of tombs."
+
+"I can't go on the top of a 'bus," Sylvia said. "Because I've not got
+any petticoats underneath my frock. I haven't saved up enough money to
+buy petticoats yet. I had to begin with chemises."
+
+"Then we must find a hansom," said Mr. Iredale, gravely.
+
+They drove to Kensington Gardens and walked under the trees to Hyde Park
+Corner; there they took another hansom and drove to a restaurant with
+very comfortable chairs and delicious things to eat. Mr. Iredale and
+Sylvia talked hard all the time; after dinner he drove her back to
+Finborough Road and lifted his hat when she waved good-by to him from
+the steps.
+
+Mabel was furiously interested by Sylvia's account of her day, and gave
+her much advice.
+
+"Now don't let everything be too easy," she said. "Remember he's rich
+and can afford to spend a little money. Don't encourage him to make love
+to you at the very commencement, or he'll get tired and then you'll be
+sorry."
+
+"Oh, who's thinking about making love?" Sylvia exclaimed. "That's just
+why I've enjoyed myself to-day. There wasn't a sign of love-making. He
+told me I was the most interesting person he'd ever met."
+
+"There you are," Mabel said. "There's only one way a girl can interest a
+man, is there?"
+
+Sylvia burst into tears and stamped her foot on the floor.
+
+"I won't believe you," she cried. "I don't want to believe you."
+
+"Well, there's no need to cry about it," Mabel said. "Only he'd be a
+funny sort of man if he didn't want to make love to you."
+
+"Well, he is a funny sort of man," Sylvia declared. "And I hope he's
+going on being funny. He's coming to the Exhibition to-morrow and you'll
+see for yourself how funny he is."
+
+Mabel was so deeply stirred by the prospect of Mr. Iredale's visit that
+she practised a more than usually voluptuous pose, which was frustrated
+by her fellow-favorite, who accused her of pushing her great legs all
+over the place and invited her to keep to her own cushions. Mabel got
+very angry and managed to drop a burning pastille on her companion's
+trousers, which caused a scene in the harem and necessitated the
+intervention of Mr. Woolfe.
+
+"She did it for the purpose, the spiteful thing," the outraged favorite
+declared. "Behaves more like a performing seal than a Turkish lady, and
+then burns my costume. No, it's no good trying to 'my dear' me. I've
+stood it long enough and I'm not going to stand it no longer."
+
+Mabel expressed an opinion that the rival favorite was a vulgar person;
+luckily, before Mr. Iredale arrived the quarrel had been adjusted, and
+when he sat down on the divan and received a cup of coffee from Sylvia,
+whose brown eyes twinkled merry recognition above her yashmak, the two
+favorites were languorously fanning the perfumed airs of their
+seclusion, once again in drowsy accord.
+
+Mr. Iredale came often to the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels; he
+never failed to bring with him books for Sylvia and he was always eager
+to discuss with her what she had last read. On Sundays he used to take
+her out to Richmond or Kew, but he never invited her to visit him at his
+rooms.
+
+"He's awfully gone on you," said Mabel. "Well, I wish you the best of
+luck, I'm sure, for he's a very nice fellow."
+
+Mr. Iredale was not quite so enthusiastic over Mabel; he often
+questioned Sylvia about her friend's conduct and seemed much disturbed
+by the materialism and looseness of her attitude toward life.
+
+"It seems dreadful," he used to say to her, "that you can't find a
+worthier friend than that blond enormity. I hope she never introduces
+you to any of her men."
+
+Sylvia assured him that Mabel was much too jealous to do anything of the
+sort.
+
+"Jealous!" he ejaculated. "How monstrous that a child like you should
+already be established in competition with that. Ugh!"
+
+June passed away to July. Mr. Iredale told Sylvia that he ought to be in
+the country by now and that he could not understand himself. One day he
+asked her if she would like to live in the country, and became lost in
+meditation when she said she might. Sylvia delighted in his company and
+had a deep affection for this man who had so wonderfully entered into
+her life without once shocking her sensibility or her pride. She
+understood, however, that it was easy for him to behave himself, because
+he had all he wanted; nevertheless the companionship of a man of leisure
+had for herself such charm that she did not feel attracted to any deeper
+reflection upon moral causes; he was lucky to be what he was, but she
+was equally lucky to have found him for a friend.
+
+Sometimes when he inveighed against her past associates and what he
+called her unhappy bringing up, she felt impelled to defend them.
+
+"You see, you have all you want, Philip."
+
+Sylvia had learned with considerable difficulty to call him Philip; she
+could never get rid of the idea that he was much older than herself and
+that people who heard her call him by his Christian name would laugh.
+Even now she could only call him Philip when the importance of the
+remark was enough to hide what still seemed an unpardonable kind of
+pertness.
+
+"You think I have all I want, do you?" he answered, a little bitterly.
+"My dear child, I'm in the most humiliating position in which a man can
+find himself. There is only one thing I want, but I'm afraid to make the
+effort to secure it: I'm afraid of being laughed at. Sylvia dear, you
+were wiser than you knew when you objected to calling me Philip for that
+very reason. I wish I could spread my canvas to a soldier's wind like
+you and sail into life, but I can't. I've been taught to tack, and I've
+never learned how to reach harbor. I suppose some people, in spite of
+our system of education, succeed in learning," he sighed.
+
+"I don't understand a bit what you're talking about," she said.
+
+"Don't you? It doesn't matter. I was really talking to myself, which is
+very rude. Impose a penalty."
+
+"Admit you have everything you want," Sylvia insisted. "And don't be
+always running down poor Jimmy and my father and every one I've ever
+known."
+
+"From their point of view I confess I have everything I want," he
+agreed.
+
+On another occasion Sylvia asked him if he did not think she ought to
+consider religion more than she had done. Being so much in Philip's
+company was giving her a desire to experiment with the habits of
+well-regulated people, and she was perplexed to find that he paid no
+attention to church-going.
+
+"Ah, there you can congratulate yourself," he said, emphatically.
+"Whatever was deplorable in your bringing up, at least you escaped that
+damnable imposition, that fraudulent attempt to flatter man beyond his
+deserts."
+
+"Oh, don't use so many long words all at once," Sylvia begged. "I like
+a long word now and then, because I'm collecting long words, but I can't
+collect them and understand what you're talking about at the same time.
+Do you think I ought to go to church?"
+
+"No, no, a thousand times no," Philip replied. "You've luckily escaped
+from religion as a social observance. Do you feel the need for it? Have
+you ineffable longings?"
+
+"I know that word," Sylvia said. "It means something that can't be said
+in words, doesn't it? Well, I've often had longings like that,
+especially in Hampstead, but no longings that had anything to do with
+going to church. How could they have, if they were ineffable?"
+
+"Quite true," Philip agreed. "And therefore be grateful that you're a
+pagan. If ever a confounded priest gets hold of you and tries to bewitch
+you with his mumbo-jumbo, send for me and I'll settle him. No, no, going
+to church of one's own free will is either a drug (sometimes a
+stimulant, sometimes a narcotic) or it's mere snobbery. In either case
+it is a futile waste of time, because there are so many problems in this
+world--you're one of the most urgent--that it's criminal to avoid their
+solution by speculating upon the problem of the next world, which is
+insoluble."
+
+"But is there another world?" she asked.
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+"And all those announcements in the cemetery meant nothing?"
+
+"Nothing but human vanity--the vanity of the dead and the vanity of the
+living."
+
+"Thanks," Sylvia said. "I thought that was probably the explanation."
+
+Mabel, who had long ago admitted that Philip was just as funny as Sylvia
+had described him, often used to ask her what they found to talk about.
+
+"He can't be interested in Earl's Court, and you're such a kid. I can't
+understand it."
+
+"Well, we talked about religion to-day," Sylvia told her.
+
+"Oh, that's it, is it?" Mabel said, very knowingly. "He's one of those
+fellows who ought to have been a clergyman, is he? I knew he reminded me
+of some one. He's the walking image of the clergyman where we used to
+live in Clapham. But you be careful, Sylvia. It's an old trick, that."
+
+"You're quite wrong. He hates clergymen."
+
+"Oh," Mabel exclaimed, taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovering
+herself. "Oh, well, people always pretend to hate what they can't get.
+And I dare say he wanted to be a clergyman. But don't let him try to
+convert you. It's an old trick to get something for nothing. And I know,
+my dear."
+
+July passed away into August, and Sylvia, buried for so many hours in
+the airless Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels, was flagging visibly.
+Philip used to spend nearly every afternoon and evening in the inner
+room where she worked--so many, indeed, that Mr. Woolfe protested and
+told her he would really have to put her back into the outer hall,
+because good customers were being annoyed by her admirer's glaring at
+them through his glasses.
+
+Philip was very much worried by Sylvia's wan looks, and urged her more
+insistently to leave her job, and let him provide for her. But having
+vowed to herself that never again would she put herself under an
+obligation to anybody, she would not hear of leaving the Exhibition.
+
+One Sunday in the middle of August Philip took Sylvia to Oxford, of
+which he had often talked to her. She enjoyed the day very much and
+delighted him by the interest she took in all the colleges they visited;
+but he was very much worried, so he said, by the approach of age.
+
+"You aren't so very old," Sylvia reassured him. "Old, but not very old."
+
+"Fifteen years older than you," he sighed.
+
+"Still, you're not old enough to be my father," she added,
+encouragingly.
+
+In the afternoon they went to St. Mary's Walks and sat upon a bench by
+the Cherwell. Close at hand a Sabbath bell chimed a golden monotone;
+Philip took Sylvia's hand and looked right into her face, as he always
+did when he was not wearing his glasses:
+
+"Little delightful thing, if you won't let me take you away from that
+inferno of Earl's Court, will you marry me? Not at once, because it
+wouldn't be fair to you and it wouldn't be fair to myself. I'm going to
+make a suggestion that will make you laugh, but it is quite a serious
+suggestion. I want you to go to school."
+
+Sylvia drew back and stared at him over her shoulder.
+
+"To school?" she echoed. "But I'm sixteen."
+
+"Lots of girls--most girls in the position I want you to take--are still
+at school then. Only a year, dear child, and then if you will have me,
+we'll get married. I don't think you'd be bored down in Hampshire. I
+have thousands of books and you shall read them all. Don't get into your
+head that I'm asking you to marry me because I'm sorry for you--"
+
+"There's nothing to be sorry for," Sylvia interrupted, sharply.
+
+"I know there's not, and I want you terribly. You fascinate me to an
+extent I never could have thought possible for any woman. I really
+haven't cared much about women; they always seemed in the way. I do
+believe you would be happy with me. We'll travel to the East together.
+You shall visit Japan and Turkey. I love you so much, Sylvia. Tell me,
+don't you love me a little?"
+
+"I like you very much indeed," she answered, gently. "Oh, very, very,
+very much. Perhaps I love you. I don't think I love you, because if I
+loved you I think my heart would beat much faster when you asked me to
+marry you, and it isn't beating at all. Feel."
+
+She put his hand upon her heart.
+
+"It certainly doesn't seem to be unusually rapid," he agreed.
+
+Sylvia looked at him in perplexity. His thin face was flushed, and the
+golden light of the afternoon gave it a warmer glow; his very blue eyes
+without their glasses had such a wide-open pleading expression; she was
+touched by his kindness.
+
+"If you think I ought to go to school," she offered, "I will go to
+school."
+
+He looked at her with a question in his eyes. She saw that he wanted to
+kiss her, and she pretended she thought he was dissatisfied with her
+answer about school.
+
+"I won't promise to marry you," she said. "Because I like to keep
+promises and I can't say now what I shall be like in a year, can I? I'm
+changing all the time. Only I do like you very, very, very much. Don't
+forget that."
+
+He took her hand and kissed it with the courtesy that for her was almost
+his greatest charm; manners seemed to Sylvia the chief difference
+between Philip and all the other people she had known. Once he had told
+her she had very bad manners, and she had lain awake half the night in
+her chagrin. She divined that the real reason of his wanting her to go
+to school was his wish to correct her manners. How little she knew about
+him, and yet she had been asked to marry him. His father and mother were
+dead, but he had a sister whom she would have to meet.
+
+"Have you told your sister about me?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Not yet," he confessed. "I think I won't tell anybody about you except
+the lady to whose care I am going to intrust you."
+
+Sylvia asked him how long he had made up his mind to ask her to marry
+him, and he told her he had been thinking about it for a long time, but
+that he had always been afraid at the last moment.
+
+"Afraid I should disgrace you, I suppose?" Sylvia said.
+
+He put on his glasses and coughed, a sure sign he was embarrassed. She
+laughed.
+
+"And of course there's no doubt that I _should_ disgrace you. I probably
+shall now as a matter of fact. Mabel will be rather sorry," she went on,
+pensively. "She likes me to be there at night in case she gets
+frightened. She told me once that the only reason she ever went wrong
+was because she was frightened to sleep alone. She was married to a
+commercial traveler, who, of course, was just the worst person she could
+have married, because he was always leaving her alone. Poor Mabel!"
+
+Philip took her hand again and said in a tone of voice which she
+resented as adumbrating already, however faintly, a hint of ownership:
+
+"Sylvia dear, you won't talk so freely as that in the school, will you?
+Promise me you won't."
+
+"But it used to amuse you when I talked like that," she said. "You
+mustn't think now that you've got the right to lecture me."
+
+"My dear child, it doesn't matter what you say to me; I understand. But
+some people might not."
+
+"Well, don't say I didn't warn you," she almost sighed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Miss Ashley's school for young ladies, situated in its own grounds on
+Campden Hill, was considered one of the best in England; a day or two
+after they got back from Oxford, Philip announced to Sylvia that he was
+glad to say Miss Ashley would take her as a pupil. She was a friend of
+his family; but he had sworn her to secrecy, and it had been decided
+between them that Sylvia should be supposed to be an orphan educated
+until now in France.
+
+"Mayn't I tell the other girls that I've been an odalisque?" Sylvia
+asked.
+
+"Good heavens! no!" said Philip, earnestly.
+
+"But I was looking forward to telling them," she explained. "Because I'm
+sure it would amuse them."
+
+Philip smiled indulgently and thought she would find lots of other ways
+of amusing them. He had told Miss Ashley, who, by the way, was an
+enthusiastic rationalist, that he did not want her to attend the outward
+shows of religion, and Miss Ashley had assented, though as a
+schoolmistress she was bound to see that her other pupils went to church
+at least once every Sunday. He had reassured her about the bad example
+Sylvia would set by promising to come himself and take her out every
+Sunday in his capacity as guardian.
+
+"You'll be glad of that, won't you?" he asked, anxiously.
+
+"I expect so," Sylvia said. "But of course I may find being at school
+such fun that I sha'n't want to leave it."
+
+Again Philip smiled indulgently and hoped she would. Of course, it was
+now holiday-time, but Miss Ashley had quite agreed with him in the
+desirableness of Sylvia's going to Hornton House before the term began.
+She would be able to help her to equip herself with all the things a
+school-girl required. He knew, for instance, that she was short of
+various articles of clothing. Sylvia could take Miss Ashley completely
+into her confidence, but even with her he advised a certain reticence
+with regard to some of her adventures. She was of course a woman of
+infinite experience and extremely broad-minded, but many years as a
+schoolmistress might have made her consider some things were better left
+unsaid; there were some people, particularly English people, who were
+much upset by details. Perhaps Sylvia would spare her the details?
+
+"You see, my dear child, you've had an extraordinary number of odd
+adventures for your age, and they've made you what you are, you dear.
+But now is the chance of setting them in their right relation to your
+future life. You know, I'm tremendously keen about this one year's
+formal education. You're just the material that can be perfected by
+academic methods, which with ordinary material end in mere barren
+decoration."
+
+"I don't understand. I don't understand," Sylvia interrupted.
+
+"Sorry! My hobby-horse has bolted with me and left you behind. But I
+won't try to explain or even to advise. I leave everything to you. After
+all, you are you; and I'm the last person to wish you to be any one
+else."
+
+Philip was humming excitedly when they drove up to Hornton House, and
+Sylvia was certainly much impressed by its Palladian grandeur and the
+garden that seemed to spread illimitably behind it. She felt rather shy
+of Miss Ashley herself, who was apparently still in her dressing-gown, a
+green-linen dressing-gown worked in front with what Sylvia considered
+were very bad reproductions of flowers in brownish silk. She was
+astonished at seeing a woman of Miss Ashley's dignity still in her
+dressing-gown at three o'clock in the afternoon, but she was still more
+astonished to see her in a rather battered straw hat, apparently ready
+to go shopping in Kensington High Street without changing her attire.
+She looked at Philip, who, however, seemed unaware of anything unusual.
+A carriage was waiting for them when they went out, and Philip left her
+with Miss Ashley, promising to dine at Hornton House that night.
+
+The afternoon passed away rapidly in making all sorts of purchases,
+even of trunks; it seemed to Sylvia that thousands of pounds must have
+been spent upon her outfit, and she felt a thrill of pride. Everybody
+behind the various counters treated Miss Ashley with great deference;
+Sylvia was bound to admit that, however careless she might be of her own
+appearance, she was splendidly able to help other people to choose jolly
+things. They drove back to Hornton House in a carriage that seemed full
+of parcels, though they only took with them what Miss Ashley considered
+immediately important. Tea was waiting in the garden under a great
+cedar-tree; and by the time tea was finished Sylvia was sure that she
+should like Miss Ashley and that she should not run away that night,
+which she had made up her mind to do unless she was absolutely contented
+with the prospect of her new existence. She liked her bedroom very much,
+and the noise that the sparrows made in the creeper outside her window.
+The starched maid-servant who came to help her dress for dinner rather
+frightened her, but she decided to be very French in order to take away
+the least excuse for ridicule.
+
+Sylvia thought at dinner that the prospect of marriage had made Philip
+seem even older, or perhaps it was his assumption of guardianship which
+gave him this added seriousness.
+
+"Of course, French she already knows," he was saying, "though it might
+be as well to revise her grammar a little. History she has a queer,
+disjointed knowledge of--it would be as well to fill in the gaps. I
+should like her to learn a little Latin. Then there are mathematics and
+what is called science. Of course, one would like her to have a general
+acquaintance with both, but I don't want to waste time with too much
+elementary stuff. It would be almost better for her to be completely
+ignorant of either."
+
+"I think you will have to leave the decision to me, Philip," said Miss
+Ashley, in that almost too deliberately tranquil voice, which Sylvia
+felt might so easily become in certain circumstances exasperating. "I
+think you may rely on my judgment where girls are concerned."
+
+Philip hastened to assure Miss Ashley that he was not presuming to
+dictate to her greater experience of education; he only wished to lay
+stress on the subjects that he considered would be most valuable for
+the life Sylvia was likely to lead.
+
+"I have a class," said Miss Ashley, "which is composed of older girls
+and of which the routine is sufficiently elastic to fit any individual
+case. I take that class myself."
+
+Sylvia half expected that Miss Ashley would suggest including Philip in
+it, if he went on talking any longer. Perhaps Philip himself suspected
+as much, for he said no more about Sylvia's education and talked instead
+about the gravity of the situation in South Africa.
+
+Sylvia was vividly aware of the comfort of her bedroom and of the
+extraordinary freshness of it in comparison with all the other rooms she
+had so far inhabited. Miss Ashley faintly reminded her of her mother,
+not that there was the least outward resemblance except in height, for
+Miss Ashley's hair was gray, whereas her mother's until the day of her
+death had kept all its lustrous darkness. Yet both wore their hair in
+similar fashion, combed up high from the forehead so as to give them a
+majestic appearance. Her mother's eyes had been of a deep and glowing
+brown set in that pale face; Miss Ashley's eyes were small and gray, and
+her complexion had the hard rosiness of an apple. The likeness between
+the two women lay rather in the possession of a natural authority which
+warned one that disobedience would be an undertaking and defiance an
+impossibility. Sylvia rejoiced in the idea of being under control; it
+was invigorating, like the delicious torment of a cold bath. Of course
+she had no intention of being controlled in big things, but she was
+determined to submit over little things for the sheer pleasure of
+submitting to Miss Ashley, who was, moreover, likely to be always right.
+In the morning, when she came down in one of her new frocks, her hair
+tied back with a big brown bow, and found Miss Ashley sitting in the
+sunny green window of the dining-room, reading the _Morning Post_, she
+congratulated herself upon the positive pleasure that such a getting up
+was able to give her and upon this new sense of spaciousness that such a
+beginning of the day was able to provide.
+
+"You're looking at my dress," said Miss Ashley, pleasantly. "When you're
+my age you'll abandon fashion and adopt what is comfortable and
+becoming."
+
+"I thought it was a dressing-gown yesterday," Sylvia admitted.
+
+"Rather an elaborate dressing-gown." Miss Ashley laughed. "I'm not so
+vain as all that."
+
+Sylvia wondered what she would have said to some of Mabel's
+dressing-gowns. Now that she was growing used to Miss Ashley's attire,
+she began to think she rather liked it. This gown of peacock-blue linen
+was certainly attractive, and the flowers embroidered upon its front
+were clearly recognizable as daisies.
+
+During the fortnight before school reopened Sylvia gave Miss Ashley a
+good deal of her confidence, and found her much less shocked by her
+experiences than Philip had been. She told her that she felt rather
+ungrateful in so abruptly cutting herself off from Mabel, who had been
+very kind to her; but on this point Miss Ashley was firm in her
+agreement with Philip, and would not hear of Sylvia's making any attempt
+to see Mabel again.
+
+"You are lucky, my dear, in having only one person whose friendship you
+are forced to give up, as it seems to you, a little harshly. Great
+changes are rarely made with so slight an effort of separation. I am not
+in favor personally of violent uprootings and replantings, and it was
+only because you were in such a solitary position that I consented to do
+what Philip asked. Your friend Mabel was, I am sure, exceedingly kind to
+you; but you are much too young to repay her kindness. It is the
+privilege of the very young to be heartless. From what you have told me,
+you have often been heartless about other people, so I don't think you
+need worry about Mabel. Besides, let me assure you that Mabel herself
+would be far from enjoying any association with you that included
+Hornton House."
+
+Sylvia had no arguments to bring forward against Miss Ashley;
+nevertheless, she felt guilty of treating Mabel shabbily, and wished
+that she could have explained to her that it was not really her fault.
+
+Miss Ashley took her once or twice to the play, which Sylvia enjoyed
+more than music-halls. In the library at Hornton House she found plenty
+of books to read, and Miss Ashley was willing to talk about them in a
+very interesting way. Philip came often to see her and told her how
+much Miss Ashley liked her and how pleased they both were to see her
+settling down so easily and quickly.
+
+The night before term began the four assistant mistresses arrived; their
+names were Miss Pinck, Miss Primer, Miss Hossack, and Miss Lee. Sylvia
+was by this time sufficiently at home in Hornton House to survive the
+ordeal of introduction without undue embarrassment, though, to Miss
+Ashley's amusement, she strengthened her French accent. Miss Pinck, the
+senior assistant mistress, was a very small woman with a sharp chin and
+knotted fingers, two features which contrasted noticeably with her
+general plumpness. She taught History and English Literature and had an
+odd habit, when she was speaking, of suddenly putting her hands behind
+her back, shooting her chin forward, and screwing up her eyes so
+fiercely that the person addressed involuntarily drew back in alarm.
+Sylvia, to whom this gesture became very familiar, used to wonder if in
+the days of her vanity Miss Pinck had cultivated it to avoid displaying
+her fingers, so that from long practice her chin had learned to replace
+the forefinger in impressing a fact.
+
+The date was 1689, Miss Pinck would say, and one almost expected to see
+a pencil screwed into her chin which would actually write the figures
+upon somebody's notebook.
+
+Miss Primer was a thin, melancholy, and sandy-haired woman, who must
+have been very pretty before her face was netted with innumerable small
+lines that made her look as if birds had been scratching on it when she
+was asleep. Miss Primer took an extremely gloomy view of everything, and
+with the prospect of war in South Africa she arrived in a condition of
+exalted, almost ecstatic depression; she taught Art, which at Hornton
+House was no cure for pessimism. Miss Hossack, the Mathematical and
+Scientific mistress, did not have much to do with Sylvia; she was a
+robust woman with a loud voice who liked to be asked questions. Finally
+there was Miss Lee, who taught music and was the particular adoration of
+every girl in the school, including Sylvia. She was usually described as
+"ethereal," "angelic," or "divine." One girl with a taste for painting
+discovered that she was her ideal conception of St. Cecilia; this
+naturally roused the jealousy of rival adorers that would not be
+"copy-cats," until one of them discovered that Miss Lee, whose first
+name was Mary, had Annabel for a second name, the very mixture of the
+poetic and the intimate that was required. Sylvia belonged neither to
+the Cecilias nor to the Annabels, but she loved dear Miss Lee none the
+less deeply and passed exquisite moments in trying to play the Clementi
+her mistress wanted her to learn.
+
+"What a strange girl you are, Sylvia!" Miss Lee used to say. "Anybody
+would think you had been taught music by an accompanist. You don't seem
+to have any notion of a piece, but you really play accompaniments
+wonderfully. It's not mere vamping."
+
+Sylvia wondered what Miss Lee would have thought of Jimmy Monkley and
+the Pink Pierrots.
+
+The afternoon that the girls arrived at Hornton House Sylvia was sure
+that nothing could keep her from running away that night; the prospect
+of facing the chattering, giggling mob that thronged the hitherto quiet
+hall was overwhelming. From the landing above she leaned over to watch
+them, unable to imagine what she would talk about to them or what they
+would talk about to her. It was Miss Lee who saved the situation by
+inviting Sylvia to meet four of the girls at tea in her room and
+cleverly choosing, as Sylvia realized afterward, the four leaders of the
+four chief sets. Who would not adore Miss Lee?
+
+"Oh, Miss Lee, _did_ you notice Gladys and Enid Worstley?" Muriel
+ejaculated, accentuating some of her words like the notes of an unevenly
+blown harmonium, and explaining to Sylvia in a sustained tremolo that
+these twins, whose real name was Worsley, were always called Worstley
+because it was impossible to decide which was more wicked. "Oh, Miss
+Lee, they've got the most _lovely_ dresses," she went on, releasing
+every stop in a diapason of envy. "Simply _gorgeously_ beautiful. I do
+think it's a shame to dress them up like that. I do, _really_."
+
+Sylvia made a mental note to cultivate this pair not for their dresses,
+but for their behavior. Muriel was all very well, but those eyebrows
+eternally arched and those eyes eternally staring out of her head would
+sooner or later have most irresistibly to be given real cause for
+amazement.
+
+"Their mother likes them to be prettily dressed," said Miss Lee.
+
+"Of course she does," Gwendyr put in, primly. "She was an actress."
+
+To hell with Gwendyr, thought Sylvia. Why shouldn't their mother have
+been an actress?
+
+"Oh, but they're so conceited!" said Dorothy. "Enid Worsley _never_ can
+pass a glass, and their frocks are most frightfully short. _Don't_ you
+remember when they danced at last breaking-up?"
+
+"This is getting unbearable," Sylvia thought.
+
+"I think they're rather dears," Phyllis drawled. "They're jolly pretty,
+anyway."
+
+Sylvia looked at Phyllis and decided that she was jolly pretty, too,
+with her golden hair and smocked linen frock of old rose; she would like
+to be friends with Phyllis. The moment had come, however, when she must
+venture all her future on a single throw. She must either shock Miss Lee
+and the four girls irretrievably or she must be henceforth accepted at
+Hornton House as herself; there must be none of these critical sessions
+about Sylvia Scarlett. She pondered for a minute or two the various
+episodes of her past. Then suddenly she told them how she had run away
+from school in France, arrived in England without a penny, and earned
+her living as an odalisque at the Exhibition. Which would she be, she
+asked, when she saw the girls staring at her open-mouthed now with real
+amazement, villain or heroine? She became a heroine, especially to
+Gladys and Enid, with whom she made friends that night, and who showed
+her in strictest secrecy two powder-puffs and a tin of Turkish
+cigarettes.
+
+There were moments when Sylvia was sad, especially when war broke out
+and so many of the girls had photographs of brothers and cousins and
+friends in uniform, not to mention various generals whose ability was as
+yet unquestioned. She did not consider the photograph of Philip a worthy
+competitor of these and begged him to enlist, which hurt his feelings.
+Nevertheless, her adventures as an odalisque were proof in the eyes of
+the girls against martial relations; their only regret was that the
+Exhibition closed before they had time to devise a plot to visit the
+Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels and be introduced by Sylvia to the
+favorites of the harem.
+
+Miss Ashley was rather cross with Sylvia for her revelations and urged
+her as a personal favor to herself not to make any more. Sylvia
+explained the circumstances quite frankly and promised that she would
+not offend again; but she pointed out that the girls were all very
+inquisitive about Philip and asked how she was to account for his taking
+her out every Sunday.
+
+"He's your guardian, my dear. What could be more natural?"
+
+"Then you must tell him not to blush and drop his glasses when the girls
+tell him I'm nearly ready. They _all_ think he's in love with me."
+
+"Well, it doesn't matter," said Miss Ashley, impatiently.
+
+"But it does matter," Sylvia contradicted. "Because even if he is going
+to marry me he's not the sort of lover one wants to put in a frame, now
+is he? That's why I bought that photograph of George Alexander which
+Miss Pinck made such a fuss about. I _must_ have a secret sorrow. All
+the girls have secret sorrows this term."
+
+Miss Ashley shook her head gravely, but Sylvia was sure she was laughing
+like herself.
+
+Sylvia's chief friend was Phyllis Markham--the twins were only
+fourteen--and the two of them headed a society for toleration, which was
+designed to contend with stupid and ill-natured criticism. The society
+became so influential and so tolerant that the tone of the school was
+considered in danger, especially by Miss Primer, who lamented it much,
+together with the reverses in South Africa; and when after the Christmas
+holidays (which Sylvia spent with Miss Ashley at Bournemouth) a grave
+defeat coincided with the discovery that the Worsleys were signaling
+from their window to some boys in a house opposite, Miss Primer in a
+transport of woe took up the matter with the head-mistress. Miss Ashley
+called a conference of the most influential girls, at which Sylvia was
+present, and with the support of Phyllis maintained that the behavior of
+the twins had been much exaggerated.
+
+"But in their nightgowns," Miss Primer wailed. "The policeman at the
+corner must have seen them. At such a time, too, with these deadful
+Boers winning everywhere. And their hair streaming over their
+shoulders."
+
+"It always is," said Sylvia.
+
+Miss Ashley rebuked her rather sharply for interrupting.
+
+"A bull's-eye lantern. The room reeked of hot metal. I could not read
+the code. I took it upon myself to punish them with an extra hour's
+freehand to-day. But the punishment is most inadequate. I detect a
+disturbing influence right through the school."
+
+Miss Ashley made a short speech in which she pointed out the
+responsibilities of the older girls in such matters and emphasized the
+vulgarity of the twins' conduct. No one wished to impute nasty motives
+to them, but it must be clearly understood that the girls of Hornton
+House could not and should not be allowed to behave like servants. She
+relied upon Muriel Battersby, Dorothy Hearne, Gwendyr Jones, Phyllis
+Markham, Georgina Roe, Helen Macdonald, and Sylvia Scarlett to prevent
+in future such unfortunate incidents as this that had been brought to
+her notice by Miss Primer, she was sure much against Miss Primer's will.
+
+Miss Primer at these words threw up her eyes to indicate the misery she
+had suffered before she had been able to bring herself to the point of
+reporting the twins. Phyllis whispered to Sylvia that Miss Primer looked
+like a dying duck in a thunder-storm, a phrase which she now heard for
+the first time and at which she laughed aloud.
+
+Miss Ashley paused in her discourse and fixed Sylvia with her gray eyes
+in pained interrogation; Miss Pinck's chin shot out; Miss Lee bit her
+under lip and tenderly shook her head; the other girls stared at their
+laps and tried to look at one another without moving their heads.
+Phyllis quickly explained that it was she who had made Sylvia laugh.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, Miss Ashley," she drawled.
+
+"I'm glad to hear that you are _very_ sorry," said Miss Ashley, "but
+Sylvia must realize when it is permissible and when it is not
+permissible to laugh. I'm afraid I must ask her to leave the room."
+
+"I ought to go, too," Phyllis declared. "I made her laugh."
+
+"I'm sure, Phyllis, that to yourself your wit seems irresistible. Pray
+let us have an opportunity of judging."
+
+"Well, I said that Miss Primer looked like a dying duck in a
+thunder-storm."
+
+The horrified amazement of everybody in the room expressed itself in a
+gasp that sounded like a ghostly, an infinitely attenuated scream of
+dismay. Sylvia, partly from nervousness, partly because the simile even
+on repetition appealed to her sense of the ridiculous, laughed aloud for
+a second time--laughed, indeed, with a kind of guffaw the sacrilegious
+echoes of which were stifled in an appalled silence.
+
+"Sylvia Scarlett and Phyllis Markham will both leave the room
+immediately," said Miss Ashley. "I will speak to them later."
+
+Outside the study of the head-mistress, Sylvia and Phyllis looked at
+each other like people who have jointly managed to break a mirror.
+
+"What will she do?"
+
+"Sylvia, I simply couldn't help it. I simply couldn't bear them all any
+longer."
+
+"My dear, I know. Oh, I think it was wonderful of you."
+
+Sylvia laughed heartily for the third time, and just at this moment the
+twins, who were the original cause of all the commotion, came sidling up
+to know what everybody had said.
+
+"You little beasts with your bull's-eye lamps and your naughtiness,"
+Phyllis cried. "I expect we shall all be expelled. What fun! I shall get
+some hunting. Oh, three cheers, I say!"
+
+"Of course you know why Miss Primer was really in such a wax?" Gladys
+asked, with the eyes of an angel and the laugh of a fairy.
+
+"No, let me tell, Gladys," Enid burst in. "You know I won the toss. We
+tossed up which should tell and I won. You _are_ a chiseler. You see,
+when Miss Primer came tearing up into our room we turned the lamps onto
+her, and she was simply furious because she thought everybody in the
+street could see her in that blue-flannel wrapper."
+
+"Which, of course, they could," Sylvia observed.
+
+"Of course!" the twins shrieked together. "And the boys opposite
+clapped, and she heard them and tried to pull down the blind, and her
+wrapper came open and she was wearing a chest-protector!"
+
+The interview with Miss Ashley was rather distressing, because she took
+from the start the altogether unexpected line of blaming Phyllis and
+Sylvia not for the breach of discipline, but for the wound they had
+inflicted upon Miss Primer. All that had seemed fine and honest and
+brave and noble collapsed immediately; it was impossible after Miss
+Ashley's words not to feel ashamed, and both the girls offered to beg
+Miss Primer's pardon. Miss Ashley said no more about the incident after
+this, though she took rather an unfair advantage of their chastened
+spirits by exacting a promise that they would in common with the rest of
+the school leaders set their faces against the encouragement of such
+behavior as that of the twins last night.
+
+The news from South Africa was so bad that Miss Primer's luxury of grief
+could scarcely have been heightened by Phyllis's and Sylvia's rudeness;
+however, she wept a few tears, patted their hands, and forgave them. A
+few days afterward she was granted the boon of another woe, which she
+shared with the whole school, in the news of Miss Lee's approaching
+marriage. Any wedding would have upset Miss Primer, but in this case the
+sorrow was rendered three times as poignant by the fact that Miss Lee
+was going to marry a soldier under orders for the front. This romantic
+accessory could not fail to thrill the girls, though it was not enough
+to compensate for the loss of their beloved Miss Lee. Rivalries between
+the Cecilias and Annabels were forever finished; several girls had been
+learning Beethoven's Pathetic Sonata and the amount of expression put
+into it would, they hoped, show Miss Lee the depth of their emotion when
+for the last time these frail fingers so lightly corrected their touch,
+when for the last time that delicate pencil inscribed her directions
+upon their music.
+
+"Of course the school will _never_ be the same without her," said
+Muriel.
+
+"I shall write home and ask if I can't take up Italian instead of
+music," said Dorothy.
+
+"Fancy playing duets with any one but Miss Lee," said Gwendyr. "The very
+idea makes me shudder."
+
+"Perhaps we shall have a music-master now," said Gladys.
+
+Whereupon everybody told her she was a heartless thing. Poor Gladys, who
+really loved Miss Lee as much as anybody, retired to her room and cried
+for the rest of the evening, until she was consoled by Enid, who pointed
+out that now she _must_ use her powder-puff.
+
+For Sylvia the idea of Miss Lee's departure and marriage was desolating;
+it was an abrupt rending of half the ties that bound her to Hornton
+House. Phyllis, Miss Ashley, and the twins were all that really
+remained, and Phyllis was always threatening to persuade her people to
+take her away when the weather was tolerably warm, so deeply did she
+resent the loss of hunting. It was curious how much more Phyllis meant
+to her than Philip, so much, indeed, that she had never confided in her
+that she was going to marry Philip. How absurd that two names so nearly
+alike could be in the one case so beautiful, in the other so ugly. Yet
+she was still very fond of Philip and she still enjoyed going out with
+him on Sundays, even though it meant being deprived of pleasant times
+with Phyllis. She had warned Philip that she might get too fond of
+school, and he had smiled in that superior way of his. Ought she to
+marry him at all? He had been so kind to her that if she refused to
+marry him she would have to run away, for she could not continue under
+an obligation. Why did people want to marry? Why must she marry? Worst
+of all, why must Miss Lee marry? But these were questions that not even
+Miss Hossack would be able to answer. Ah, if it had only been Miss
+Hossack who had been going to marry. Sylvia began to make up a rhyme
+about Miss Hossack marrying a Cossack and going for her honeymoon to the
+Trossachs, where Helen Macdonald lived.
+
+All the girls had subscribed to buy Miss Lee a dressing-case, which they
+presented to her one evening after tea with a kind of dismal
+beneficence, as if they were laying a wreath upon her tomb. Next morning
+she went away by an early train to the north of England, and after
+lunch every girl retired with the secret sorrow that now had more than
+fashion to commend it. Sylvia's sorrow was an aching regret that she had
+not told Miss Lee more about herself and her life and Philip; now it was
+too late. She met the twins wandering disconsolately enlaced along the
+corridor outside her room.
+
+"Oh, Sylvia, dearest Sylvia!" they moaned. "We've lost our duet with
+Miss Lee's fingering."
+
+"I'll help you to look for it."
+
+"Oh, but we lost it on purpose, because we didn't like it, and the next
+day Miss Lee said she was going to be married."
+
+Sylvia asked where they lost it.
+
+"Oh, we put it in an envelope and posted it to the Bishop of London."
+
+Sylvia suggested they should write to the Bishop and explain the
+circumstances in which the duet was sent to him; he would no doubt
+return it.
+
+"Oh no," said the twins, mournfully. "We never put a stamp on and we
+wrote inside, 'A token of esteem and regard from two sinners who you
+confirmed.' How can we ask for it back?"
+
+Sylvia embraced the twins, and the three of them wandered in the sad and
+wintry garden until it was time for afternoon school.
+
+The next day happened to be Sunday, and Philip came as usual to take
+Sylvia out. He had sent her the evening before an overcoat trimmed with
+gray squirrel, which, if it had not arrived after Miss Lee's departure,
+would have been so much more joyfully welcomed. Philip asked her why she
+was so sad and if the coat did not please her. She told him about its
+coming after Miss Lee had gone, and, as usual, he had a lot to say:
+
+"You strange child, how quickly you have adopted the outlook and manners
+of the English school-girl. One would say that you had never been
+anything else. How absurd I was to be afraid that you were a wild bird
+whom I had caught too late. I'm quite positive now that you'll be happy
+with me down in Hampshire. I'm sorry you've lost Miss Lee. A charming
+woman, I thought, and very cultivated. Miss Ashley will miss her
+greatly, but she herself will be glad to get away from music-teaching.
+It must be an atrocious existence."
+
+Here was a new point of view altogether. Could it really be possible
+that those delicious hours with Miss Lee were a penance to the mistress?
+Sylvia looked at Philip angrily, for she found it unforgivable in him to
+destroy her illusions like this. He did not observe her expression and
+continued his monologue:
+
+"Really atrocious. Exercises! Scales! Other people's chilblains! A
+creaking piano-stool! What a purgatory! And all to teach a number of
+young women to inflict an objectionable noise upon their friends and
+relations."
+
+"Thanks," Sylvia broke in. "You won't catch me playing again."
+
+"I'm not talking about you," Philip said. "You have temperament. You're
+different from the ordinary school-girl." He took her arm
+affectionately. "You're you, dear Sylvia."
+
+"And yours," she added, sullenly. "I thought you said just now that I
+was just like any other English school-girl and that you were so happy
+about it."
+
+"I said you'd wonderfully adopted the outlook," Philip corrected. "Not
+quite the same thing."
+
+"Oh, well, take your horrible coat, because I don't want it," Sylvia
+exclaimed, and, rapidly unbuttoning her new overcoat, she flung it on
+the pavement at his feet.
+
+Nobody was in sight at the moment, so Philip did not get angry.
+
+"Now don't tell me it's illogical to throw away only the coat and not
+undress myself completely. I know quite well that everything I've got on
+is yours."
+
+"Oh no, it's not," Philip said, gently. "It's yours."
+
+"But you paid for everything."
+
+"No, you paid yourself," he insisted.
+
+"How?"
+
+"By being Sylvia. Come along, don't trample on your poor coat. There's a
+most detestable wind blowing."
+
+He picked up the offending overcoat and helped her into it again with so
+much sympathy half humorous, half grave in his demeanor that she could
+not help being sorry for her outburst.
+
+Nevertheless, the fact of her complete dependence upon Philip for
+everything, even before marriage, was always an oppression to Sylvia's
+mind, which was increased by the continual reminders of her loneliness
+that intercourse with other girls forced upon her. They, when they
+should marry, should be married from a background; the lovers, when they
+came for them, would have to fight for their love by breaking down the
+barriers of old associations, old friendships, and old affections; in a
+word, they would have to win the brides. What was her own background?
+Nothing but a panorama of streets which offered no opposition to
+Philip's choice except in so far as it was an ugly background for a
+possession of his own and therefore fit to be destroyed. It was all very
+well for Philip to tell her that she was herself and that he loved her
+accordingly. If that were true, why was he taking so much trouble to
+turn her into something different? Other girls at Hornton House, when
+they married, would not begin with ugly backgrounds to be obliterated;
+their pasts would merge beautifully with the pasts of their husbands;
+they were not being transformed by Miss Pinck and Miss Primer; they were
+merely being supplied by them with value for their parents' money. It
+was a visit to Phyllis Markham's home in Leicestershire during the
+Easter holidays that had branded with the iron of jealousy these facts
+upon her meditation. Phyllis used to lament that she had no brothers;
+and Sylvia used to wonder what she would have said if she had been like
+herself, without mother, without father, without brothers, without
+sisters, without relations, without friends, without letters, without
+photographs, with nothing in the whole world between herself and the
+shifting panorama from which she had been snatched but the love of a
+timid man inspired by an unusual encounter in Brompton Cemetery. This
+visit to Phyllis Markham was the doom upon their friendship; however
+sweet, however sympathetic, however loyal Phyllis might be, she must
+ultimately despise her friend's past; every word Sylvia listened to
+during those Easter holidays seemed to cry out the certain fulfilment of
+this conjecture.
+
+"I expect I'm too sensitive," Sylvia said to herself. "I expect I really
+am common, because apparently common people are always looking out for
+slights. I don't look out for them now, but if I were to tell Phyllis
+all about myself, I'm sure I should begin to look out for them. No, I'll
+just be friends with her up to a point, for so long as I stay at Hornton
+House; then we'll separate forever. I'm really an absolute fraud. I'm
+just as much of a fraud now as when I was dressed up as a boy. I'm not
+real in this life. I haven't been real since I came down to breakfast
+with Miss Ashley that first morning. I'm simply a very good impostor. I
+must inherit the talent from father. Another reason against telling
+Phyllis about myself is that, if I do, I shall become her property. Miss
+Ashley knows all about me, but I'm not her property, because it's part
+of her profession to be told secrets. Phyllis would love me more than
+ever, so long as she was the only person that owned the secret, but if
+anybody else ever knew, even if it were only Philip, she would be
+jealous and she would have to make a secret of it with some one else.
+Then she would be ashamed of herself and would begin to hate and despise
+me in self-defense. No, I must never tell any of the girls."
+
+Apart from these morbid fits, which were not very frequent, Sylvia
+enjoyed her stay at Markham Grange. In a way it encouraged the idea of
+marrying Philip; for the country life appealed to her not as to a
+cockney by the strangeness of its inhabitants and the mere quantity of
+grass in sight, but more deeply with those old ineffable longings of
+Hampstead.
+
+At the end of the summer term the twins invited Sylvia to stay with them
+in Hertfordshire. She refused at first, because she felt that she could
+not bear the idea of being jealously disturbed by a second home. The
+twins were inconsolable at her refusal and sent a telegram to their
+mother, who had already written one charming letter of invitation, and
+who now wrote another in which she told Sylvia of her children's bitter
+disappointment and begged her to come. Miss Ashley, also, was anxious
+that Sylvia should go, and told her frankly that it seemed an excellent
+chance to think over seriously her marriage with Philip in the autumn.
+Philip, now that the date of her final decision was drawing near,
+wished her to remain with Miss Ashley in London. His opposition was
+enough to make Sylvia insist upon going; so, when at the end of July the
+school was swept by a tornado of relations and friends, Sylvia was swept
+away with the twins to Hertfordshire, and Philip was left to wait till
+the end of September to know whether she would marry him or not in
+October.
+
+The Worsleys' home at Arbour End made an altogether different impression
+upon Sylvia from Markham Grange. She divined in some way that the
+background here was not immemorial, but that the Worsleys had created it
+themselves. And a perfect background it was--a very comfortable red
+brick house with a garden full of flowers, an orchard loaded with fruit,
+fields promenaded by neat cows, pigsties inhabited by clean pigs, a
+shining dog-cart and a shining horse, all put together with the
+satisfying completeness of a picture-puzzle. Mr. Worsley was a handsome
+man, tall and fair with a boyish face and a quantity of clothes; Mrs.
+Worsley was slim and fair, with a rose-leaf complexion and as many
+clothes as her husband. The twins were even naughtier and more charming
+than they were at Hornton House; there was a small brother called
+Hercules, aged six, who was as charming as his sisters and surpassed
+them in wickedness. The maids were trim and tolerant; the gardener was
+never grumpy; Hercules's governess disapproved of holiday tasks; the
+dogs wagged their tails at the least sound.
+
+"I love these people," Sylvia said to herself, when she was undressing
+on the first night of her stay. "I love them, I love them. I feel at
+home--at home--at home!" She leaped into bed and hugged the pillow in a
+triumph of good-fellowship.
+
+At Arbour End Sylvia banished the future and gave herself to the
+present. One seemed to have nothing to do but to amuse oneself then, and
+it was so easy to amuse oneself that one never grew tired of doing so.
+As the twins pointed out, their father was so much nicer than any other
+father, because whatever was suggested he always enjoyed. If it was a
+question of learning golf, Mr. Worsley took the keenest interest in
+teaching it. When Gladys drove a ball through the drawing-room window,
+no one was more delighted than Mr. Worsley himself; he infected
+everybody with his pleasure, so that the gardener beamed at the notion
+of going to fetch the glazier from the village, and the glazier beamed
+when he mended the window, and the maids beamed while they watched him
+at work, and the dogs sat down in a loose semicircle, thumping the lawn
+with appreciative tails. The next day, when Hercules, who, standing
+solemnly apart from the rest, had observed all that happened, threw a
+large stone through the mended window, there was the same scene of
+pleasure slightly intensified.
+
+Mrs. Worsley flitted through the house, making every room she entered
+more beautiful and more gay for her presence. She had only one regret,
+which was that the twins were getting so big, and this not as with other
+mothers because it made her feel old, but because she would no more see
+their black legs and their tumbled hair. Sylvia once asked her how she
+could bear to let them go to school, and Mrs. Worsley's eyes filled with
+tears.
+
+"I had to send them to school," she whispered, sadly. "Because they
+_would_ fall in love with the village boys and they were getting
+Hertfordshire accents. Perhaps you've noticed that I myself speak with a
+slight cockney accent. Do you understand, dear?"
+
+The August days fled past and in the last week came a letter from Miss
+Ashley.
+
+     MURREN, _August 26, 1900._
+
+     MY DEAR SYLVIA,--I shall be back from Switzerland by September 3d,
+     and I shall be delighted to see you at Hornton House again. Philip
+     nearly followed me here in order to talk about you, but I declined
+     his company. I want you to think very seriously about your future,
+     as no doubt you have been doing all this month. If you have the
+     least hesitation about marrying Philip, let me advise you not to do
+     it. I shall be glad to offer you a place at Hornton House, not as a
+     schoolmistress, but as a kind of director of the girls' leisure
+     time. I have grown very fond of you during this year and have
+     admired the way in which you settled down here more than I can
+     express. We will talk this over more fully when we meet, but I want
+     you to know that, if you feel you ought not to marry, you have a
+     certain amount of security for the future while you are deciding
+     what you will ultimately do. Give my love to the twins. I shall be
+     glad to see you again.
+
+     Your affectionate
+
+     CAROLINE ASHLEY.
+
+The effect of Miss Ashley's letter was the exact contrary of what she
+had probably intended; it made Sylvia feel that she was not bound to
+marry Philip, and, from the moment she was not bound, that she was
+willing, even anxious, to marry him. The aspects of his character which
+she had criticized to herself vanished and left only the first
+impression of him, when she was absolutely free and was finding his
+company such a relief from the Exhibition. Another result of the letter
+was that by removing the shame of dependence and by providing an
+alternative it opened a way to discussion, for which Sylvia fixed upon
+Mrs. Worsley, divining that she certainly would look at her case
+unprejudiced by anything but her own experience.
+
+Sylvia never pretended to herself that she would be at all influenced by
+advice. Listening to advice from Mrs. Worsley would be like looking into
+a shop-window with money in one's pocket, but with no intention of
+entering the shop to make a purchase; listening to her advice before
+Miss Ashley's offer would have been like looking at a shop-window
+without a penny in the world, a luxury of fancy to which Sylvia had
+never given way. So at the first opportunity Sylvia talked to Mrs.
+Worsley about Philip, going back for her opinion of him and feeling
+toward him to those first days together, and thereby giving her listener
+an impression that she liked him a very great deal, which was true, as
+Sylvia assured herself, yet not without some misgivings about her
+presentation of the state of affairs.
+
+"He sounds most fascinating," said Mrs. Worsley. "Of course Lennie was
+never at all clever. I don't think he ever read a book in his life. When
+I met him first I was acting in burlesque, and I had to make up my mind
+between him and my profession; I'm so glad I chose him. But at first I
+was rather miserable. His parents were still alive, and though they were
+very kind to me, I was always an intruder, and of course Lennie was
+dependent on them, for he was much too stupid an old darling to earn his
+own living. He really has nothing but his niceness. Then his parents
+died and, being an only son, Lennie had all the money. We lived for a
+time in his father's house, but it became impossible. We had my poor old
+mother down to stay with us, and the neighbors called, as if she were a
+curiosity. When she didn't appear at tea, you could feel they were
+staying on, hoping against hope to get a glimpse of her. I expect I was
+sensitive and rather silly, but I was miserable. And then Lennie, who is
+not clever, but so nice that it always leads him to do exactly the right
+thing, went away suddenly and bought this house, where life has been one
+long dream of happiness. You've seen how utterly self-contained we are.
+Nobody comes to visit us very much, because when we first came here we
+used to hide when people called. And then the twins have always been
+such a joy--oh, dear, I wish they would never grow up; but there's still
+Hercules, and you never know, there might be another baby. Oh, my dear
+Sylvia, I'm sure you ought to get married. And you say his parents are
+dead?"
+
+"But he has a sister."
+
+"Oh, a sister doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter his being clever and
+fond of books, because you're fond of books yourself. The twins tell me
+you've read everything in the world and that there's nothing you don't
+know. I'm sure you'd soon get tired of Hornton House--oh, yes, I
+strongly advise you to get married."
+
+When Sylvia got back to London the memory of Arbour End rested in her
+thoughts like a pleasant dream of the night that one ponders in a summer
+dawn. She assured Miss Ashley that she was longing to marry Philip; and
+when she seemed to express in her reception of the announcement a kind
+of puzzled approval, Sylvia spoke with real enthusiasm of her marriage.
+Miss Ashley never knew that the real inspiration of such enthusiasm was
+Arbour End and not at all Philip himself. As for Sylvia, because she
+would by no means admit even to herself that she had taken Mrs.
+Worsley's advice, she passed over the advice and remarked only the signs
+of happiness at Arbour End.
+
+Sylvia and Philip were married at a registry-office early in October.
+The honeymoon was spent in the Italian lakes, where Philip denounced the
+theatrical scenery, but crowned Sylvia with vine-leaves and wrote Latin
+poetry to her, which he translated aloud in the evenings as well as the
+mosquitoes would let him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Green Lanes lay midway between the market town of Galton and the large
+village of Newton Candover. It is a small, tumble-down hamlet remote
+from any highroad, the confluence of four deserted by-ways leading to
+other hamlets upon the wooded downland of which Green Lanes was the
+highest point. Hare Hall, the family mansion of the Iredales, was quite
+two miles away in the direction of Newton Candover and was let for a
+long term of years to a rich stockbroker. Philip himself lived at The
+Old Farm, an Elizabethan farm-house which he had filled with books. The
+only other "gentleman" in Green Lanes was the vicar, Mr. Dorward, with
+whom Philip had quarreled. The squire as lay rector drew a yearly
+revenue of £300, but he refused to allow the living more than £90 until
+the vicar gave up his ritualistic fads, to which, though he never went
+inside the church, he strongly objected.
+
+Sylvia's first quarrel with Philip was over the vicar, whom she met
+through her puppy's wandering into his cottage while he was at tea and
+refusing to come out. She might never have visited him again if Philip
+had not objected, for he was very shy and eccentric; but after two more
+visits to annoy Philip, she began to like Mr. Dorward, and her
+friendship with him became a standing source of irritation to her
+husband and a pleasure to herself which she declined to give up. Her
+second quarrel with Philip was over his sister Gertrude, who came down
+for a visit soon after they got back from Como. Gertrude, having until
+her brother's marriage always lived at The Old Farm, could not refrain
+from making Sylvia very much aware of this; her conversation was one
+long, supercilious narrative of what she used to do at Green Lanes, with
+which were mingled fears for what might be done there in the future.
+Philip was quite ready to admit that his sister could be very
+irritating, but he thought Sylvia's demand for her complete exclusion
+from The Old Farm for at least a year was unreasonable.
+
+"Well, if she comes, I shall go," Sylvia said, sullenly.
+
+"My dear child, do remember that you're married and that you can't go
+and come as you like," Philip answered. "However, I quite see your point
+of view about poor Gertrude and I quite agree with you that for a time
+it will be wiser to keep ourselves rather strictly to ourselves."
+
+Why could he not have said that at first, Sylvia thought. She would have
+been so quickly generous if he had, but the preface about her being
+married had spoiled his concession. He was a curious creature, this
+husband of hers. When they were alone he would encourage her to be as
+she used to be; he would laugh with her, show the keenest interest in
+what she was reading, search for a morning to find some book that would
+please her, listen with delight to her stories of Jimmy Monkley or of
+her father or of Blanche, and be always, in fact, the sympathetic
+friend, never obtruding himself, as lover or monitor, two aspects of him
+equally repugnant to Sylvia. Yet when there was the least likelihood not
+alone of a third person's presence, but even of a third person's hearing
+any roundabout gossip of her real self, Philip would shrivel her up with
+interminable corrections, and what was far worse, try to sweeten the
+process by what she considered fatuous demonstrations of affection. For
+a time there was no great tension between them, because Sylvia's
+adventurous spirit was occupied by her passion for knowledge; she felt
+vaguely that at any time the moment might arrive when mere knowledge
+without experience would not be enough; at present the freedom of
+Philip's library was adventure enough. He was most eager to assist her
+progress, and almost reckless in the way he spurred her into every
+liberty of thought, maintaining the stupidity of all conventional
+beliefs--moral, religious, or political. He warned her that the
+expression of such opinions, or, still worse, action under the influence
+of them, would be for her or for any one else in the present state of
+society quite impossible; Sylvia used to think at the time that it was
+only herself as his wife whom he wished to keep in check, and resented
+his reasons accordingly; afterward looking back to this period she came
+to the conclusion that Philip was literally a theorist, and that his
+fierce denunciations of all conventional opinions could never in any
+circumstances have gone further than quarreling with the vicar and
+getting married in a registry-office. Once when she attacked him for his
+cowardice he retorted by citing his marriage with her, and immediately
+afterward apologized for what he characterized as "caddishness."
+
+"If you had married me and been content to let me remain myself," Sylvia
+said, "you might have used that argument. But you showed you were
+frightened of what you'd done when you sent me to Hornton House."
+
+"My dear child, I wanted you to go there for your own comfort, not for
+mine. After all, it was only like reading a book; it gave you a certain
+amount of academic theory that you could prove or disprove by
+experience."
+
+"A devil of a lot of experience I get here," Sylvia exclaimed.
+
+"You're still only seventeen," Philip answered. "The time will come."
+
+"It will come," Sylvia murmured, darkly.
+
+"You're not threatening to run away from me already?" Philip asked, with
+a smile.
+
+"I might do anything," she owned. "I might poison you."
+
+Philip laughed heartily at this; just then Mr. Dorward passed over the
+village green, which gave him an opportunity to rail at his cassock.
+
+"It's ridiculous for a man to go about dressed up like that. Of course,
+nobody attends his church. I can't think why my father gave him the
+living. He's a ritualist, and his manners are abominable."
+
+"But he looks like a Roman Emperor," said Sylvia.
+
+Philip spluttered with indignation. "Oh, he's Roman enough, my dear
+child; but an Emperor! Which Emperor?"
+
+"I'm not sure which it is, but I think it's Nero."
+
+"Yes, I see what you mean," Philip assented, after a pause. "You're
+amazingly observant. Yes, there is that kind of mixture of sensual
+strength and fineness about his face. But it's not surprising. The line
+between degeneracy and the 'twopence colored' type of religion is not
+very clearly drawn."
+
+It was after this conversation that, in searching for a picture of
+Nero's head to compare with Mr. Dorward's, Sylvia came across the
+Satyricon of Petronius in a French translation. She read it through
+without skipping a word, applied it to the test of recognition, and
+decided that she found more satisfactorily than in any book she had yet
+read a distorting mirror of her life from the time she left France until
+she met Philip, a mirror, however, that never distorted so wildly as to
+preclude recognition. Having made this discovery, she announced it to
+him, who applauded her sense of humor and of literature, but begged her
+to keep it to herself; people might get a wrong idea of her; he knew
+what she meant and appreciated the reflection, but it was a book that,
+generally speaking, no woman would read, still less talk about, and
+least of all claim kinship with. It was of course an immortal work of
+art, humorous, witty, fantastic.
+
+"And true," Sylvia added.
+
+"And no doubt true to its period and its place, which was southern Italy
+in the time of Nero."
+
+"And true to southern England in the time of Victoria," Sylvia insisted.
+"I don't mean that it's exactly the same," she went on, striving almost
+painfully to express her thoughts. "The same, though. I _feel_ it's
+true. I don't _know_ it's true. Oh, can't you understand?"
+
+"I fancy you're trying to voice your esthetic consciousness of great art
+that, however time may change its accessories, remains inherently
+changeless. Realism in fact as opposed to what is wrongly called
+realism. Lots of critics, Sylvia, have tried to define what is worrying
+you, and lots of long words have been enlisted on their behalf. A better
+and more ancient word for realism was 'poetry'; but the word has been
+debased by the versifiers who call themselves poets just as painters
+call themselves artists--both are titles that only posterity can award.
+Great art is something that is made and that lives in itself; like that
+stuff, radium, which was discovered the year before last, it eternally
+gives out energy without consuming itself. Radium, however, does not
+solve the riddle of life, and until we solve that, great art will remain
+undefinable. Which reminds me of a mistake that so-called believers
+make. I've often heard Christians maintain the truth of Christianity,
+because it is still alive. What nonsense! The words of Christ are still
+alive, because Christ Himself was a great poet, and therefore expressed
+humanity as perhaps no one else ever expressed humanity before. But the
+lying romantic, the bad poet, in fact, who tickles the vain and
+credulous mob with miracles and theogonies, expresses nothing. It is a
+proof of nothing but the vitality of great art that the words of Christ
+can exist and can continue to affect humanity notwithstanding the
+mountebank behavior attributed to Him, out of which priests have
+manufactured a religion. It is equally surprising that Cervantes could
+hold his own against the romances of chivalry he tried to kill. He may
+have killed one mode of expression, but he did not prevent _East Lynne_
+from being written; he yet endures because Don Quixote, whom he made,
+has life. By the way, you never got on with Don Quixote, did you?"
+
+Sylvia shook her head.
+
+"I think it's a failure on your part, dear Sylvia."
+
+"He is so stupid," she said.
+
+"But he realized how stupid he was before he died."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. "I can't help my bad taste, as you call it.
+He annoys me."
+
+"You think the Yanguseian carriers dealt with him in the proper way?"
+
+"I don't remember them."
+
+"They beat him."
+
+"I think I could beat a person who annoyed me very much," Sylvia said.
+"I don't mean with sticks, of course, but with my behavior."
+
+"Is that another warning?" Philip asked.
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Anyway, you think Petronius is good?"
+
+She nodded her head emphatically.
+
+"Come, you shall give a judgment on Aristophanes. I commend him to you
+in the same series of French translations."
+
+"I think Lysistrata is simply splendid," Sylvia said, a week or so
+later. "And I like the Thesmos-something and the Eck-something."
+
+"I thought you might," Philip laughed. "But don't quote from them when
+my millionaire tenant comes to tea."
+
+"Don't be always harping upon the dangers of my conversation," she
+exhorted.
+
+"Mayn't I even tease you?" Philip asked, in mock humility.
+
+"I don't mind being teased, but it isn't teasing. It's serious."
+
+"Your sense of humor plays you tricks sometimes," he said.
+
+"Oh, don't talk about my sense of humor like that. My sense of humor
+isn't a watch that you can take out and tap and regulate and wind up and
+shake your head over. I hate people who talk about a sense of humor as
+you do. Are you so sure you have one yourself?"
+
+"Perhaps I haven't," Philip agreed, but by the way in which he spoke
+Sylvia knew that he would maintain he had a sense of humor, and that the
+rest of humanity had none if it combined to contradict him. "I always
+distrust people who are too confidently the possessors of one," he
+added.
+
+"You don't understand in the least what I mean," Sylvia cried out, in
+exasperation. "You couldn't distrust anybody else's sense of humor if
+you had one yourself."
+
+"That's what I said," Philip pointed out, in an aggrieved voice.
+
+"Don't go on; you'll make me scream," she adjured him. "I won't talk
+about a sense of humor, because if there is such a thing it obviously
+can't be talked about."
+
+Lest Philip should pursue the argument, she left him and went for a long
+muddy walk by herself half-way to Galton. She had never before walked
+beyond the village of Medworth, but she was still in such a state of
+nervous exasperation that she continued down the hill beyond it without
+noticing how far it was taking her. The country on either side of the
+road ascended in uncultivated fields toward dense oak woods. In many of
+these fields were habitations with grandiose names, mostly built of
+corrugated iron. Sylvia thought at first that she was approaching the
+outskirts of Galton and pressed on to explore the town, the name of
+which was familiar from the rickety tradesmen's carts that jogged
+through Green Lanes. There was no sign of a town, however, and after
+walking about two miles through a landscape that recalled the pictures
+she had seen of primitive settlements in the Far West, she began to feel
+tired and turned round upon her tracks, wishing she had not come quite
+so far. Suddenly a rustic gate that was almost buried in the unclipped
+hazel hedge on one side of the road was flung open, and an elderly lady
+with a hooked nose and fierce bright eyes, dressed in what looked at a
+first glance like a pair of soiled lace window-curtains, asked Sylvia
+with some abruptness if she had met a turkey going in her direction.
+Sylvia shook her head, and the elderly lady (Sylvia would have called
+her an old lady from her wrinkled countenance, had she not been so
+astonishingly vivacious in her movements) called in a high harsh voice:
+
+"Emmie! There's a girl here coming from Galton way, and _she_ hasn't
+seen Major Kettlewell."
+
+In the distance a female voice answered, shrilly, "Perhaps he's crossed
+over to the Pluepotts'!"
+
+Sylvia explained that she had misunderstood the first inquiry, but that
+nobody had passed her since she turned back five minutes ago.
+
+"We call the turkey Major Kettlewell because he looks like Major
+Kettlewell, but Major Kettlewell himself lives over there."
+
+The elderly lady indicated the other side of the road with a vague
+gesture, and went on:
+
+"Where can that dratted bird have got to? Major! Major! Major!
+Chuch--chick--chilly--chilly--chuck--chuck," she called.
+
+Sylvia hoped that the real major lived far enough away to be out of
+hearing.
+
+"Never keep a turkey," the elderly lady went on, addressing Sylvia. "We
+didn't kill it for Christmas, because we'd grown fond of it, even
+though he is like that old ruffian of a major. And ever since he's gone
+on the wander. It's the springtime coming, I suppose."
+
+The elderly lady's companion had by this time reached the gate, and
+Sylvia saw that she was considerably younger, but with the same
+hall-mark of old-maidishness.
+
+"Don't worry any more about the bird, Adelaide," said the new-comer.
+"It's tea-time. Depend upon it, he's crossed over to the Pluepotts'.
+This time I really will wring his neck."
+
+Sylvia prepared to move along, but the first lady asked her where she
+was going, and, when she heard Green Lanes, exclaimed:
+
+"Gemini! That's beyond Medworth, isn't it? You'd better come in and have
+a cup of tea with us. I'm Miss Horne, and my friend here is Miss
+Hobart."
+
+Sunny Bank, as this particular tin house was named, not altogether
+inappropriately, although it happened to be on the less sunny side of
+the road, was built half-way up a steepish slope of very rough ground
+from which enough flints had been extracted to pave a zigzag of
+ascending paths, and to vary the contour of the slope with a miniature
+mountain range of unused material without apparently smoothing the areas
+of proposed cultivation.
+
+"These paths are something dreadful, Emmie," said Miss Horne, as the
+three of them scrambled up through the garden. "Never mind, we'll get
+the roller out of the hedge when Mr. Pluepott comes in on Wednesday.
+Miss Hobart nearly got carried away by the roller yesterday," she
+explained to Sylvia.
+
+A trellised porch outside the bungalow--such apparently was the correct
+name for these habitations--afforded a view of the opposite slope, which
+was sprinkled with bungalows surrounded like Sunny Bank by heaps of
+stones; there were also one or two more pretentious buildings of red
+brick and one or two stony gardens without a dwelling-place as yet.
+
+"I suppose you're wondering why the name over the door isn't the same as
+the one on the gate? Mr. Pluepott is always going to take it out, but he
+never remembers to bring the paint. It's the name the man from whom we
+bought it gave the bungalow," said Miss Hobart, crossly. Sylvia read in
+gothic characters over the door Floral Nook, and agreed with the two
+ladies that Sunny Bank was much more suitable.
+
+"For whatever else it may be, it certainly isn't damp," Miss Horne
+declared. "But, dear me, talking of names, you haven't told us yours."
+
+Sylvia felt shy. It was actually the first time she had been called upon
+to announce herself since she was married. The two ladies exclaimed on
+hearing she was Mrs. Iredale, and Sylvia felt that there was a kind of
+impropriety in her being married, when Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, who
+were so very much older than she, were still spinsters.
+
+The four small rooms of which the bungalow consisted were lined with
+varnished match-boarding; everything was tied up with brightly colored
+bows of silk, and most of the pictures were draped with small curtains;
+the bungalow was full of knickknacks and shivery furniture, but not full
+enough to satisfy the owners' passion for prettiness, so that wherever
+there was a little space on the walls silk bows had been nailed about
+like political favors. Sylvia thought it would have been simpler to tie
+a wide sash of pink silk round the house and call it The Chocolate Box.
+Tea, though even the spoons were tied up with silk, was a varied and
+satisfying meal. The conversation of the two ladies was remarkably
+entertaining when it touched upon their neighbors, and when twilight
+warned Sylvia that she must hurry away she was sorry to leave them.
+While she was making her farewells there was a loud tap at the door,
+followed immediately by the entrance of a small bullet-headed man with
+quick black eyes.
+
+"I've brought back your turkey, Miss Horne."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Mr. Pluepott. There you are, Emmie. You were right."
+
+At this moment the bird began to flap its wings as violently as its
+position head downward would allow; nor, not being a horse, did it pay
+any attention to Mr. Pluepott's repeated shouts of "Woa! Woa back, will
+you!"
+
+"I think you'd better let him flap outside, Mr. Pluepott," Miss Hobart
+advised.
+
+Sylvia thought so too when she looked at the floor.
+
+"Shall I wring its neck now or would you rather I waited till I come in
+on Wednesday?"
+
+"Oh, I think we'll wait, thank you, Mr. Pluepott," Miss Horne said.
+"Perhaps you wouldn't mind shutting him up in the coop. He does wander
+so. Are you going into Galton?"
+
+Mr. Pluepott replied, as he confined Major Kettlewell to his barracks,
+that, on the contrary, he was driving up to Medworth to see about some
+beehives for sale there, whereupon Miss Horne and Miss Hobart asked if
+he would mind taking Mrs. Iredale that far upon her way.
+
+A few minutes later Sylvia, on a very splintery seat, was jolting along
+beside Mr. Pluepott toward Medworth.
+
+"Rum lot of people hereabouts," he said, by way of opening the
+conversation, "Some of the rummest people it's ever been my luck to
+meet. I came here because my wife had to leave the Midlands. Chest was
+bad. I used to be a cobbler at Bedford. Since I've been here I've become
+everything--carpenter, painter, decorator, gardener, mason, bee expert,
+poultry-keeper, blacksmith, livery-stables, furniture-remover, house
+agent, common carrier, bricklayer, dairyman, horse-breaker. The only
+thing I don't do now is make boots. Funny thing, and you won't believe
+it, but last week I had to buy myself the first pair of boots I ever
+bought since I was a lad of fifteen. Oh, well, I like the latest better
+than the last, as I jokingly told my missus the other night. It made her
+laugh," said Mr. Pluepott, looking at Sylvia rather anxiously; she
+managed to laugh too, and he seemed relieved.
+
+"I often make jokes for my missus. She's apt to get very melancholy with
+her chest. But, as I was saying, the folk round here they beat the band.
+It just shows what advertisement will do."
+
+Sylvia asked why.
+
+"Well, when I first came here, and I was one of the three first, I came
+because I read an advertisement in the paper: 'Land for the Million in
+lots from a quarter of an acre.' Some fellow had bought an old farm that
+was no use to nobody and had the idea of splitting it up into lots.
+Originally this was the Oak Farm Estate and belonged to St. Mary's
+College, Oxford. Now we call it Oaktown--the residents, that is--but
+when we applied the other day to the Galton Rural District Council, so
+as we could have the name properly recognized, went in we did with the
+major, half a dozen of us, as smart as a funeral, one of the wise men of
+Gotham, which is what I jokingly calls Galton nowadays, said he thought
+Tintown would be a better name. The major got rare and angry, but his
+teeth slipped just as he was giving it 'em hot and strong, which is a
+trick they have. He nearly swallowed 'em last November, when he was
+taking the chair at a Conservative meeting, in an argument with a
+Radical about the war. They had to lead him outside and pat his back.
+It's a pity the old ladies can't get on with him. They fell out over
+blackberrying in his copse last Michaelmas. Well, the fact is the
+major's a bit close, and I think he meant to sell the blackberries. He's
+put up a notice now 'Beware of Dangerous Explosives,' though there's
+nothing more dangerous than a broken air-gun in the whole house. Miss
+Horne was very bitter about it; oh, very bitter she was. Said she always
+knew the major was a guy, and he only wanted to stuff himself with
+gunpowder to give the boys a rare set out on the Fifth."
+
+"How did Miss Horne and Miss Hobart come here?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Advertisement. They lived somewhere near London, I believe; came into a
+bit of money, I've heard, and thought they'd settle in the country. I
+give them a morning a week on Wednesdays. The man they bought it off had
+been a tax-collector somewhere in the West Indies. He swindled them
+properly, but they were sorry for him because he had a floating
+kidney--floating in alcohol, I should think, by the amount he drank. But
+they won't hear a word against him even now. He's living in Galton and
+they send him cabbages every week, which he gives to his rabbits when
+he's sober and throws at his housekeeper when he's drunk. Sunny Bank!
+I'm glad it's not my Bank. As I jokingly said to my missus, I should
+soon be stony-broke. Ah, well, there's all sorts here and that's a
+fact," Mr. Pluepott continued, with a pensive flick at his pony. "That
+man over there, for instance." He pointed with his whip through the
+gathering darkness to a particularly small tin cottage. "He used to play
+the trombone in a theater till he played his inside out; now he thinks
+he's going to make a fortune growing early tomatoes for Covent Garden
+market. You get him with a pencil in his hand of an evening and you'd
+think about borrowing money from him next year; but when you see him
+next morning trying to cover a five-by-four packing-case with a broken
+sash-light, you'd be more afraid of his trying to borrow from you."
+
+With such conversation did Mr. Pluepott beguile the way to Medworth; and
+when he heard that Sylvia intended to walk in the dusk to Green Lanes he
+insisted on driving her the extra two miles.
+
+"The hives won't fly away," he said, cheerfully, "and I like to make a
+good job of a thing. Well, now you've found your way to Oaktown, I hope
+you'll visit us again. Mrs. Pluepott will be very glad to see you drop
+in for a cup of tea any day, and if you've got any comical
+reading-matter, she'd be glad to borrow from you; for her chest does
+make her very melancholy, and, being accustomed to having me always
+about the house when I was cobbling, she doesn't seem to get used to
+being alone. Only the other day she said if she'd known I was going to
+turn into a Buffalo Bill she'd rather have stayed in Bedford. 'Land for
+the Millions!' she said, 'I reckon you'd call it Land for the Million,
+if you had to sweep the house clean of the mud you bring into it.' Well,
+good night to you. Very glad I was able to oblige, I'm sure."
+
+Philip was relieved when Sylvia got back. She had never been out for so
+long before, and she teased him about the running away, that he had
+evidently imagined. She felt in a good humor after her expedition, and
+was glad to be back in this dignified and ancient house with its books
+and lamplight and not a silken bow anywhere to be seen.
+
+"So you've been down to that abomination of tin houses? It's an absolute
+blot on the countryside. I don't recommend too close an
+acquaintanceship. I'm told it's inhabited by an appalling set of
+rascals. Poor Melville, who owns the land all 'round, says he can't keep
+a hare."
+
+Sylvia said the people seemed rather amusing, and was not at all
+inclined to accept Philip's condemnation of them; he surely did not
+suggest that Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, for instance, were poachers?
+
+"My dear child, people who come and live in a place like the Oak Farm
+Estate--Oaktown, as they have the impudence to call it--are there for no
+good. They've either done something discreditable in town or they hope
+to do something discreditable in the country. Oh yes, I've heard all
+about our neighbors. There's a ridiculous fellow who calls himself a
+major--I believe he used to be in the volunteers--and can't understand
+why he's not made a magistrate. I'm told he's the little tin god of
+Tintown. No, no, I prefer even your friendship with our vicar. Don't be
+cross with me, Sylvia, for laughing at your new friends, but you mustn't
+take them too seriously. I shall have finished the text I'm writing this
+month, and we'll go up to London for a bit. Shall we? I'm afraid you're
+getting dull down here."
+
+The spring wore away, but the text showed no signs of being finished.
+Sylvia suggested that she should invite Gladys and Enid Worsley to stay
+with her, but Philip begged her to postpone the invitation while he was
+working, and thought in any case it would be better to have them down in
+summer. Sylvia went to Oaktown once or twice, but said nothing about it
+to Philip, because from a sort of charitableness she did not want him to
+diminish himself further in her eyes by airing his prejudices with the
+complacency that seemed to increase all the time they stayed in the
+country.
+
+One day at the end of April Miss Horne and Miss Hobart announced they
+had bought a governess-car and a pony, built a stable, and intended to
+celebrate their first drive by calling on Sylvia at Green Lanes. Mr.
+Pluepott had promised, even if it should not be on a Wednesday, to
+superintend the first expedition and gave his opinion of the boy whom it
+was proposed to employ as coachman. The boy in question, whom Mr.
+Pluepott called Jehuselah, whether from an attempt to combine a
+satirical expression of his driving and his age, or too slight
+acquaintance with Biblical personalities, was uncertain, was known as
+Ernie to Miss Horne and Miss Hobart when he was quick and good, but as
+Ernest when he was slow and bad; his real name all the time was Herbert.
+
+"Good heavens!" Philip ejaculated, when he beheld the governess-car from
+his window. "Who on earth is this?"
+
+"Friends of mine," said Sylvia. "Miss Horne and Miss Hobart. I told you
+about them."
+
+"But they're getting out," Philip gasped, in horror. "They're coming
+here."
+
+"I know," Sylvia said. "I hope there's plenty for tea. They always give
+me the most enormous teas." And without waiting for any more of Philip's
+protests she hurried down-stairs and out into the road to welcome the
+two ladies. They were both of them dressed in pigeon's-throat silk under
+more lace even than usual, and arrived in a state of enthusiasm over
+Ernie's driving and thankfulness for the company of Mr. Pluepott, who
+was also extremely pleased with the whole turn-out.
+
+"A baby in arms couldn't have handled that pony more carefully," he
+declared, looking at Ernie with as much pride as if he had begotten him.
+
+"We're so looking forward to meeting Mr. Iredale," said Miss Horne.
+
+"We hear he's a great scholar," said Miss Hobart.
+
+Sylvia took them into the dining-room, where she was glad to see that a
+gigantic tea had been prepared--a match even for the most profuse of
+Sunny Bank's.
+
+Then she went up-stairs to fetch Philip, who flatly refused to come
+down.
+
+"You must come," Sylvia urged. "I'll never forgive you if you don't."
+
+"My dearest Sylvia, I really cannot entertain the eccentricities of
+Tintown here. You invited them. You must look after them. I'm busy."
+
+"Are you coming?" Sylvia asked, biting her lips.
+
+"No, I really can't. It's absurd. I don't want this kind of people here.
+Besides, I must work."
+
+"You sha'n't work," Sylvia cried, in a fury, and she swept all his books
+and papers on the floor.
+
+"I certainly sha'n't come now," he said, in the prim voice that was so
+maddening.
+
+"Did you mean to come before I upset your books?"
+
+"Yes, I probably should have come," he answered.
+
+"All right. I'm so sorry. I'll pick everything up," and she plunged down
+on the floor. "There you are," she said when everything was put back in
+its place. "Now will you come?"
+
+"No, my dear. I told you I wouldn't after you upset my things."
+
+"Philip," she cried, her eyes bright with rage, "you're making me begin
+to hate you sometimes."
+
+Then she left him and went back to her guests, to whom she explained
+that her husband had a headache and was lying down. The ladies were
+disappointed, but consoled themselves by recommending a number of
+remedies which Miss Horne insisted that Sylvia should write down. When
+tea was finished, Miss Hobart said that their first visit to Green Lanes
+had been most enjoyable and that there was only one thing they would
+like to do before going home, which would be to visit the church. Sylvia
+jumped at an excuse for not showing them over the house, and they set
+out immediately through the garden to walk to the little church that
+stood in a graveyard grass-grown like the green lanes of the hamlet
+whose dead were buried there. The sun was westering, and in the golden
+air they lowered their voices for a thrush that was singing his vespers
+upon a moldering wooden cross.
+
+"Nobody ever comes here," Sylvia said. "Hardly anybody comes to church
+ever. The people don't like Mr. Dorward's services. They say he can't be
+heard."
+
+Suddenly the vicar himself appeared, and seemed greatly pleased to see
+Sylvia and her visitors; she felt a little guilty, because, though she
+was great friends with Mr. Dorward, she had never been inside the
+church, nor had he ever hinted he would like her to come. It would seem
+so unkind for her to come like this for the first time with strangers,
+as if the church which she knew he deeply loved was nothing but a
+tea-time entertainment. There was no trace of reproachfulness in his
+manner, as he showed Miss Horne and Miss Hobart the vestments and a
+little image of the Virgin in peach-blow glaze that he moved caressingly
+into the sunlight, as a child might fondle reverently a favorite doll.
+He spoke of his plans for restoration and unrolled the design of a
+famous architect, adding with a smile for Sylvia that the lay rector
+disapproved of it thoroughly. They left him arranging the candlesticks
+on the altar, a half-pathetic, half-humorous figure that seemed to be
+playing a solitary game.
+
+"And you say nobody goes to his church!" Miss Horne exclaimed. "But he's
+most polite and charming."
+
+"Scarcely anybody goes," Sylvia said.
+
+"Emmie," said Miss Horne, standing upright and flashing forth an eagle's
+glance. "_We_ will attend his service."
+
+"That is a very good idea of yours, Adelaide," Miss Hobart replied.
+
+Then they got into the governess-car with much determination, and with
+friendly waves of the hand to Sylvia set out back to Oaktown.
+
+When Miss Horne and Miss Hobart had left, Sylvia went up-stairs to have
+it out with Philip. At this rate there would very soon be a crisis in
+their married life. She was a little disconcerted by his getting up the
+moment she entered his room and coming to meet her with an apology.
+
+"Dearest Sylvia, you can call me what you will; I shall deserve the
+worst. I can't understand my behavior this afternoon. I think I must
+have been working so hard that my nerves are hopelessly jangled. I very
+nearly followed you into the churchyard to make myself most humbly
+pleasant, but I saw Dorward go 'round almost immediately afterward, and
+I could not have met him in the mood I was in without being unpardonably
+rude."
+
+He waited for her with an arm stretched out in reconciliation, but
+Sylvia hesitated.
+
+"It's all very well to hurt my feelings like that because you happened
+to be feeling in a bad temper," she said, "and then think you've only
+got to make a pleasant little speech to put everything right again.
+Besides, it isn't only to-day; it's day after day since we've been
+married. I feel like Gulliver when he was being tied up by the
+Lilliputians. I can't find any one big rope that's destroying my
+freedom, but somehow or other my freedom is being destroyed. Did you
+marry me casually, as people buy birds, to put me in a cage?"
+
+"My dear, I married you because I loved you. You know I fought against
+the idea of marrying you for a long time, but I loved you too much."
+
+"Are you afraid of my loyalty?" she demanded. "Do you think I go to
+Oaktown to be made love to?"
+
+"Sylvia!" he protested.
+
+"I go there because I'm bored, bored, endlessly, hopelessly,
+paralyzingly bored. It's my own fault. I never ought to have married
+you. I can't think why I did, but at least it wasn't for any mercenary
+reason. You're not to believe that. Philip, I do like you, but why will
+you always upset me?"
+
+He thought for a moment and asked her presently what greater freedom she
+wanted, what kind of freedom.
+
+"That's it," she went on. "I told you I couldn't find any one big rope
+that bound me. There isn't a single thread I can't snap with perfect
+ease, but it's the multitude of insignificant little threads that almost
+choke me."
+
+"You told me you thought you would like to live in the country," he
+reminded her.
+
+"I do, but, Philip, do remember that I really am still a child. I've got
+a deep voice and I can talk like a professor, but I'm still a hopeless
+kid. I oughtn't to have to tell you this. You ought to see it for
+yourself if you love me."
+
+"Dearest Sylvia, I'm always telling you how young you are, and there's
+nothing that annoys you more," he said.
+
+"Oh, Philip, Philip, you really are pathetic! When did you ever meet a
+young person who liked to have her youth called attention to? You're so
+remote from beginning to understand how to manage me, and I'm still
+manageable. Very soon I sha'n't be, though; and there'll be such a
+dismal smash-up."
+
+"If you'd only explain exactly," he began; but she interrupted him at
+once.
+
+"My dear man, if I explain and you take notes and consult them for your
+future behavior to me, do you think that's going to please me? It can
+all be said in two words. I'm human. For the love of God be human
+yourself."
+
+"Look here, let's go away for a spell," said Philip, brightly.
+
+"The cat's miaowing. Let's open the door. No, seriously, I think I
+should like to go away from here for a while."
+
+"By yourself?" he asked, in a frightened voice.
+
+"Oh no, not by myself. I'm perfectly content with you. Only don't
+suggest the Italian lakes and try to revive the early sweets of our
+eight months of married life. Don't let's have a sentimental rebuilding.
+It will be so much more practical to build up something quite new."
+
+Philip really seemed to have been shaken by this conversation. Sylvia
+knew he had not finished his text, but he put everything aside in order
+not to keep her waiting; and before May was half-way through they had
+reached the island of Sirene. Here they stayed two months in a crumbling
+pension upon the cliff's edge until Sylvia was sun-dried without and
+within; she was enthralled by the evidences of imperial Rome, and her
+only regret was that she did not meet an eccentric Englishman who was
+reputed to have found, when digging a cistern, at least one of the lost
+books of Elephantis, which he read in olive-groves by the light of the
+moon. However, she met several other eccentrics of different
+nationalities and was pleased to find that Philip's humanism was, with
+Sirene as a background, strong enough to lend him an appearance of
+humanity. They planned, like all other visitors to Sirene, to build a
+big villa there; they listened like all other visitors to the Italian
+and foreign inhabitants' depreciation of every villa but the one in
+which they lived, either because they liked it or because they wanted to
+let it or because they wished new-comers to fall into snares laid for
+themselves when they were new-comers.
+
+At last they tore themselves from Sirenean dreams and schemes, chiefly
+because Sylvia had accepted an invitation to stay at Arbour End. They
+lingered for a while at Naples on the way home, where Sylvia looked
+about her with Petronian eyes, so much so, indeed, that a guide mistook
+what was merely academic curiosity for something more practical. It cost
+Philip fifty liras and nearly all the Italian he knew to get rid of the
+pertinacious and ingenious fellow.
+
+Arbour End had not changed at all in a year. Sylvia, when she thought
+of Green Lanes, laughed a little bitterly at herself (but not so
+bitterly as she would have laughed before the benevolent sunshine of
+Sirene) for ever supposing that she and Philip could create anything
+like it. Gladys and Enid, though they were now fifteen, had not yet
+lengthened their frocks; their mother could not yet bring herself to
+contemplate the disappearance of those slim black legs.
+
+"But we shall have to next term," Gladys said, "because Miss Ashley's
+written home about them."
+
+"And that stuck-up thing Gwendyr Jones said they were positively
+disgusting," Enid went on.
+
+"Yes," added Gladys, "and I told her they weren't half as disgusting as
+her ankles. And they aren't, are they, Sylvia?"
+
+"Some of the girls call her marrow-bones," said Enid.
+
+Sylvia would have preferred to avoid any intimate talks with Mrs.
+Worsley, but it was scarcely to be expected that she would succeed, and
+one night, looking ridiculously young with her fair hair hanging down
+her back, she came to Sylvia's bedroom, and sitting down at the end of
+her bed, began:
+
+"Well, are you glad you got married?"
+
+At any rate, Sylvia thought, she had the tact not to ask if she was glad
+she had taken her advice.
+
+"I'm not so sorry as I was," Sylvia told her.
+
+"Ah, didn't I warn you against the first year? You'll see that I was
+right."
+
+"But I was not sorry in the way you prophesied. I've never had any
+bothers with the country. Philip's sister was rather a bore, always
+wondering about his clothes for the year after next; but we made a
+treaty, and she's been excluded from The Old Farm--wait a bit, only till
+next October. By Jove! I say, the treaty'll have to be renewed. I don't
+believe even memories of Sirene would enable me to deal with Gertrude
+this winter. No, what worries me most in marriage is not other people,
+but our two selves. I hate writing Sylvia Iredale instead of Sylvia
+Scarlett. Quite unreasonable of me, but most worries are unreasonable. I
+don't want to be owned. I'm a book to Philip; he bought me for my
+binding and never intended to read me, even if he could. I don't mean
+to say I was beautiful, but I was what an American girl at Hornton House
+used to call cunning; the pattern was unusual, and he couldn't resist
+it. But now that he's bought me, he expects me to stay quite happily on
+a shelf in a glass case; one day he may perhaps try to read me, but at
+present, so long as I'm taken out and dusted--our holiday at Sirene was
+a dusting--he thinks that's enough. But the worm that flies in the heart
+of the storm has got in, Victoria, and is making a much more unusual
+pattern across my inside--I say, I think it's about time to drop this
+metaphor, don't you?"
+
+"I don't think I quite understand all you're saying," said Victoria
+Worsley.
+
+Sylvia brought her hand from beneath the bedclothes and took her
+friend's.
+
+"Does it matter?"
+
+"Oh, but I like to understand what people are saying," Mrs. Worsley
+insisted. "That's why we never go abroad for our holidays. But, Sylvia,
+about being owned, which is where I stopped understanding. Lennie
+doesn't own me."
+
+"No, you own _him_, but I don't own Philip."
+
+"I expect you will, my dear, after you've been married a little longer."
+
+"You think I shall acquire him in monthly instalments. I should find at
+the end the cost too much in repairs, like Fred Organ."
+
+"Who's he?"
+
+"Hube's brother, the cabman. Don't you remember?"
+
+"Oh, of course, how silly of me! I thought it might be an Italian you
+met at Sirene. You've made me feel quite sad, Sylvia. I always want
+everybody to be happy," she sighed. "I am happy--perfectly happy--in
+spite of being married."
+
+"Nobody's happy because of being married," Sylvia enunciated, rather
+sententiously.
+
+"What nonsense you talk, and you're only just eighteen!"
+
+"That's why I talk nonsense," Sylvia said, "but all the same it's very
+true nonsense. You and Lennie couldn't have ever been anything but
+happy."
+
+"Darling Lennie, I think it must be because he's so stupid. I wonder if
+he's smoking in bed. He always does if I leave him to go and talk to
+anybody. Good night, dear."
+
+Sylvia returned to her book, wondering more than ever how she could have
+supposed a year ago that she could follow Victoria Worsley along the
+pathway of her simple and happy life.
+
+The whole family from Arbour End came to London for the ten days before
+term began, and Sylvia stayed with them at a hotel. Gladys and Enid had
+to get their new frocks, and certain gaps in Hercules's education had to
+be filled up, such as visiting the Zoo and the Tower of London and the
+Great Wheel at Earl's Court. Sylvia and the twins searched in vain for
+the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels, but they found Mabel selling
+Turkish Delight by herself at a small stall in another part of the
+Exhibition. Sylvia thought the best way of showing her penitence for the
+heartless way she had treated her was to buy as much Turkish Delight as
+could possibly be carried away, since she probably received a percentage
+on the takings. Mabel seemed to bear no resentment, but she was rather
+shy, because she mistook the twins for Sylvia's sisters-in-law and
+therefore avoided the only topic upon which she could talk freely, which
+was men. They left the florid and accommodating creature with a callow
+youth who was leaning familiarly across the counter and smacking with a
+cane his banana-colored boots; then they ate as much Turkish Delight as
+they could and divided the rest among some ducks and the Kaffirs in the
+kraal.
+
+Sylvia also visited Hornton House and explained to Miss Ashley why she
+had demanded the banishment of Gertrude from Green Lanes.
+
+"Poor Gertrude, she was very much upset," Miss Ashley said.
+
+Sylvia, softened by the memories of a so happy year that her old school
+evoked, made up her mind not to carry on the war against Gertrude. She
+felt, too, a greater charity toward Philip, who, after all, had been the
+cause of her being given that so happy year, and she went back to
+Hampshire with the firm intention of encouraging this new mood that the
+last four months had created in her. Philip was waiting on the platform
+and was so glad to see her again that he drove even more absent-mindedly
+than usual, until she took the reins from him and whipped up the horse
+with a quite positive anticipation of home.
+
+Sylvia learned from Philip that the visit of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart
+had influenced other lives than their own, for it seemed that Miss
+Horne's announcement of their attendance in future at Mr. Dorward's
+empty church had been fully carried out. Not a Sunday passed but that
+they drove up in the governess-car to Mass, so Philip said with a wry
+face for the word; what was more, they stayed to lunch with the vicar,
+presided at the Sunday-school, and attended the evening service, which
+had been put forward half an hour to suit their supper.
+
+"They absolutely rule Green Lanes ecclesiastically," Philip said. "And
+some of the mercenary bumpkins and boobies 'round here have taken to
+going to church for what they can get out of the two old ladies. I'm
+glad to say, however, that the farmers and their families haven't come
+'round yet."
+
+Sylvia said she was glad for Mr. Dorward's sake, and she wondered why
+Philip made such a fuss about the form of a service in the reality of
+which, whatever way it was presented, he had no belief.
+
+"I suppose you're right," he agreed. "Perhaps what I'm really afraid of
+is that our fanatical vicar will really convert the parish to his
+childish religion. Upon my soul, I believe Miss Horne has her eye upon
+me. I know she's been holding forth upon my iniquitous position as lay
+rector, and these confounded Radicals will snatch hold of anything to
+create prejudice against landowners."
+
+"Why don't you make friends with Mr. Dorward?" Sylvia suggested. "You
+could surely put aside your religious differences and talk about the
+classics."
+
+"I dare say I'm bigoted in my own way," Philip answered. "But I can't
+stand a priest, just as some people can't stand cats or snakes. It's a
+positively physical repulsion that I can't get over. No, I'm afraid I
+must leave Dorward to you, Sylvia. I don't think there's much danger of
+your falling a victim to man-millinery. It'll take all your strength of
+mind, however, to resist the malice of these two old witches, and I
+wager you'll be excommunicated from the society of Tintown in next to no
+time."
+
+Sylvia found that Philip had by no means magnified the activities of
+Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, and for the first time on a Sunday morning
+at Green Lanes a thin black stream of worshipers flowed past the windows
+of The Old Farm after service. It was more than curiosity could bear;
+without saying a word to anybody Sylvia attended the evening service
+herself. The church was very small, and her entrance would have
+attracted much more attention than it did if Ernie, who was holding the
+thurible for Mr. Dorward to put in the incense, had not given at that
+moment a mighty sneeze, scattering incense and charcoal upon the altar
+steps and frightening the woman at the harmonium into a violent discord,
+from which the choir was rescued by Miss Horne's unmoved and harsh
+soprano that positively twisted back the craning necks of the
+congregation into their accustomed apathy. Sylvia wondered whether fear,
+conversion, or extra wages had induced Ernie to put on that romantic
+costume which gave him the appearance of a rustic table covered with a
+tea-cloth, as he waited while the priest tried to evoke a few threads of
+smoke from the ruin caused by his sneeze. Sylvia was so much occupied in
+watching Ernie that she did not notice the rest of the congregation had
+sat down. Mr. Dorward must have seen her, for he had thrown off the
+heavy vestment he was wearing and was advancing apparently to say how
+d'ye do. No, he seemed to think better of it, and had turned aside to
+read from a large book, but what he read neither Sylvia nor the
+congregation had any idea. She decided that all this standing up and
+kneeling and sitting down again was too confusing for a novice, and
+during the rest of the service she remained seated, which was at once
+the most comfortable and the least conspicuous attitude. Sylvia had
+intended to slip out before the service was over, as she did not want
+Miss Horne and Miss Hobart to exult over her imaginary conversion, but
+the finale came sooner than she expected in a fierce hymnal outburst
+during which Mr. Dorward hurriedly divested himself and reached the
+vestianel. Miss Horne had scarcely thumped the last beat on the
+choir-boy's head in front of her, the echoes of the last amen had
+scarcely died away, before the female sexton, an old woman called
+Cassandra Batt, was turning out the oil-lamps and the little
+congregation had gathered 'round the vicar in the west door to hear Miss
+Horne's estimate of its behavior. There was no chance for Sylvia to
+escape.
+
+"Ernest," said Miss Horne, "what did you sneeze for during the
+Magnificat? Father Dorward never got through with censing the altar, you
+bad boy."
+
+"The stoff got all up me nose," said Ernie. "Oi couldn't help meself."
+
+"Next time you want to sneeze," said Miss Hobart, kindly, "press your
+top lip below the nose, and you'll keep it back."
+
+"I got too much to do," Ernie muttered, "and too much to think on."
+
+"Jane Frost," said Miss Horne, quickly turning the direction of her
+attack, "you must practise all this week. Suppose Father Dorward gets a
+new organ? You wouldn't like not to be allowed to play on it. Some of
+your notes to-night weren't like a musical instrument at all. The Nunc
+Dimittis was more like water running out of a bath. 'Lord, now lettest
+thou thy servant depart in peace,' are the words, not in pieces, which
+was what it sounded like the way you played it."
+
+Miss Jane Frost, a daughter of the woman who kept the Green Lanes shop,
+blushed as deeply as her anemia would let her, and promised she would do
+better next week.
+
+"That's right, Jane," said Miss Hobart, whose part seemed to be the
+consolation of Miss Horne's victims. "I dare say the pedal is a bit
+obstinate."
+
+"Oh, it's turble obstinate," said Cassandra, the sexton, who, having
+extinguished all the lamps, now elbowed her way through the clustered
+congregation, a lighted taper in her hand. "I jumped on un once or twice
+this morning to make um a bit easier like, but a groaned at me like a
+wicked old toad. It's ile that a wants."
+
+The congregation, on which a good deal of grease was being scattered by
+Cassandra's taper in her excitement, hastened to support her diagnosis.
+
+"Oh yass, yass, 'tis ile that a wants."
+
+"I will bring a bottle of oil up during the week," Miss Horne
+proclaimed. "Good night, everybody, and remember to be punctual next
+Sunday."
+
+The congregation murmured its good night, and Sylvia, to whom it
+probably owed such a speedy dismissal, was warmly greeted by Miss Horne.
+
+"So glad you've come, Mrs. Iredale, though I wish you'd brought the lay
+rector. Lay rector, indeed! Sakes alive, what will they invent next?"
+
+"Yes, we're so glad you've come, dear," Miss Hobart added. Mr. Dorward
+came up in his funny quick way. When they were all walking across the
+churchyard, he whispered to Sylvia, in his funny quick voice:
+
+"Church fowls, church fowls, you know! Mustn't discourage them. Pious
+fowls! Godly fowls! An example for the parish. Better attendance
+lately."
+
+Then he caught up the two ladies and helped them into the vehicle,
+wishing them a pleasant drive and promising a nearly full moon shortly,
+after Medworth, very much as if the moon was really made of cheese and
+would be eaten for supper by Miss Horne and Miss Hobart.
+
+When Sylvia got back to The Old Farm she amused Philip so much with her
+account of the service that he forgot to be angry with her for doing
+what at first he maintained put him in a false position.
+
+All that autumn and winter Miss Horne and Miss Hobart wrestled with
+Satan for the souls of the hamlet; incidentally they wrestled with him
+for Sylvia's soul, but she scratched the event by ceasing to appear at
+all in church, and intercourse between them became less frequent; the
+friends of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart had to be all or nothing, and not
+the least divergence of belief or opinion, manners or policy, was
+tolerated by these two bigoted old ladies. The congregation,
+notwithstanding their efforts, remained stationary, much to Philip's
+satisfaction.
+
+"The truth is," he said, "that the measure of their power is the pocket.
+Every scamp in the parish who thinks it will pay him to go to church is
+going to church. The others don't go at all or walk over to Medworth."
+
+Her contemplation of the progress of religion in Green Lanes, which,
+however much she affected to laugh at it, could not help interesting
+Sylvia on account of her eccentric friend the vicar, was temporarily
+interrupted by a visit from Gertrude Iredale. Remembering what Miss
+Ashley had told her, Sylvia had insisted upon Philip's asking his sister
+to stay, and he had obviously been touched by her suggestion. Gertrude
+perhaps had also taken some advice from Miss Ashley, for she was
+certainly less inclined to wonder what her brother would do about his
+clothes the year after next. She could not, however, altogether keep to
+herself her criticism of the housewifery at The Old Farm, a simple
+business in Sylvia's eyes, which consisted of letting the cook do
+exactly as she liked, with what she decided were very satisfactory
+results.
+
+"But it's so extravagant," Gertrude objected.
+
+"Well, Philip doesn't grumble. We can afford to pay a little extra every
+week to have the house comfortably run."
+
+"But the principle is so bad," Gertrude insisted.
+
+"Oh, principle," said Sylvia in an airy way, which must have been
+galling to her sister-in-law. "I don't believe in principles. Principles
+are only excuses for what we want to think or what we want to do."
+
+"Don't you believe in abstract morality?" Gertrude asked, taking off her
+glasses and gazing with weak and earnest eyes at Sylvia.
+
+"I don't believe in anything abstract," Sylvia replied.
+
+"How strange!" the other murmured. "Goodness me! if I didn't believe in
+abstract morality I don't know where I should be--or what I should do."
+
+Sylvia regarded the potential sinner with amused curiosity.
+
+"Do tell me what you might do," she begged. "Would you live with a man
+without marrying him?"
+
+"Please don't be coarse," said Gertrude. "I don't like it."
+
+"I could put it much more coarsely," Sylvia said, with a laugh. "Would
+you--"
+
+"Sylvia!" Gertrude whistled through her teeth in an agony of
+apprehensive modesty. "I entreat you not to continue."
+
+"There you are," said Sylvia. "That shows what rubbish all your scruples
+are. You're shocked at what you thought I was going to say. Therefore
+you ought to be shocked at yourself. As a matter of fact, I was going to
+ask if you would marry a man without loving him."
+
+"If I were to marry," Gertrude said, primly, "I should certainly want to
+love my husband."
+
+"Yes, but what do you understand by love? Do you mean by love the
+emotion that makes people go mad to possess--"
+
+Gertrude rose from her chair. "Sylvia, the whole conversation is
+becoming extremely unpleasant. I must ask you either to stop or let me
+go out of the room."
+
+"You needn't be afraid of any personal revelations," Sylvia assured her.
+"I've never been in love that way. I only wanted to find out if you had
+been and ask you about it."
+
+"Never," said Gertrude, decidedly. "I've certainly never been in love
+like that, and I hope I never shall."
+
+"I think you're quite safe. And I'm beginning to think I'm quite safe,
+too," Sylvia added. "However, if you won't discuss abstract morality in
+an abstract way, you mustn't expect me to do so, and the problem of
+housekeeping returns to the domain of practical morality, where
+principles don't count."
+
+Sylvia decided after this conversation to accept Gertrude as a joke, and
+she ceased to be irritated by her any longer, though her sister-in-law
+stayed from Christmas till the end of February. In one way her presence
+was of positive utility, because Philip, who was very much on the
+lookout for criticism of his married life, was careful not to find fault
+with Sylvia while she remained at Green Lanes; it also acted as a
+stimulus to Sylvia herself, who used her like a grindstone on which to
+sharpen her wits. Another advantage from Gertrude's visit was that
+Philip was able to finish his text, thanks to her industrious docketing
+and indexing and generally fussing about in his study. Therefore, when
+Sylvia proposed that the twins should spend their Easter holidays at The
+Old Farm, he had no objection to offer.
+
+The prospect of the twins' visit kept Sylvia at the peak of pleasurable
+expectation throughout the month of March, and when at last, on a
+budding morn in early April, she drove through sky-enchanted puddles to
+meet them, she sang for the first time in months the raggle-taggle
+gipsies, and reached the railway station fully half an hour before the
+train was due. Nobody got out but the twins; yet they laughed and talked
+so much, the three of them, in the first triumph of meeting, that
+several passengers thought the wayside station must be more important
+than it was, and asked anxiously if this was Galton.
+
+Gladys and Enid had grown a good deal in six months, and now with their
+lengthened frocks and tied-back hair they looked perhaps older than
+sixteen. Their faces, however, had not grown longer with their frocks;
+they were as full of spirits as ever, and Sylvia found that while they
+still charmed her as of old with that quality of demanding to be loved
+for the sheer grace of their youth, they were now capable of giving her
+the intimate friendship she so greatly desired.
+
+"You darlings," she cried. "You're like champagne-cup in two beautiful
+crystal glasses with rose-leaves floating about on top."
+
+The twins, who with all that zest in their own beauty which is the
+prerogative of a youth unhampered by parental jealousy, frankly loved to
+be admired; Sylvia's admiration never made them self-conscious, because
+it seemed a natural expression of affection. Their attitude toward
+Philip was entirely free from any conventional respect; as Sylvia's
+husband he was candidate for all the love they had for her, but when
+they found that Philip treated them as Sylvia's toys they withheld the
+honor of election and began to criticize him. When he seemed shocked at
+their criticism they began to tease him, explaining to Sylvia that he
+had obviously never been teased in his life. Philip, for his part, found
+them precocious and vain, which annoyed Sylvia and led to her seeking
+diversions and entertainment for the twins' holidays outside The Old
+Farm. As a matter of fact, she had no need to search far, because they
+both took a great fancy to Mr. Dorward, who turned out to have an
+altogether unusual gift for drawing nonsensical pictures, which were
+almost as funny as his own behavior, that behavior which irritated so
+many more people than it amused.
+
+The twins teased Mr. Dorward a good deal about his love-affair with Miss
+Horne and Miss Hobart, and though this teasing may only have coincided
+with Mr. Dorward's previous conviction that the two ladies were managing
+him and his parish rather too much for his dignity and certainly too
+much for his independence, there was no doubt that the quarrel between
+them was prepared during the time that Gladys and Enid were staying at
+Green Lanes; indeed, Sylvia thought she could name the actual afternoon.
+
+Sylvia's intercourse with Miss Horne and Miss Hobart was still friendly
+enough to necessitate an early visit to Sunny Bank to present the twins.
+The two ladies were very fond of what they called "young people," and at
+first they were enraptured by Gladys and Enid, particularly when they
+played some absurd school-girl's trick upon Major Kettlewell. Sylvia,
+too, had by her tales of the island of Sirene inspired them with a
+longing to go there; they liked nothing better than to make her describe
+the various houses and villas that were for sale or to let, in every one
+of which in turn Miss Horne and Miss Hobart saw themselves installed.
+
+On the particular afternoon from which Sylvia dated the preparation of
+the quarrel, they were all at tea with Mr. Dorward in his cottage. The
+conversation came round to Sirene, and Sylvia told how she had always
+thought that the vicar resembled a Roman Emperor. Was it Nero? He was
+perhaps flattered by the comparison, notwithstanding the ladies' loud
+exclamations of dissent, and was anxious to test the likeness from a
+volume of engraved heads which he produced. With Gladys sitting on one
+arm of his chair and Enid on the other, the pages were turned over
+slowly to allow time for a careful examination of each head, which
+involved a good deal of attention to Mr. Dorward's own. In the end Nero
+was ruled out and a more obscure Emperor was hailed as his prototype,
+after which the twins rushed out into the garden and gathered strands of
+ivy to encircle his imperial brow; Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, who had
+taken no part in the discussion, left immediately after the coronation,
+and though it was a perfectly fine evening, they announced, as they got
+into their vehicle, that it looked very much like rain.
+
+Next Sunday the ladies came to church as usual, but Mr. Dorward kept
+them waiting half an hour for lunch while he showed the twins his
+ornaments and vestments, which they looked at solemnly as a penance for
+having spent most of the service with their handkerchiefs in their
+mouths. What Miss Horne and Miss Hobart said at lunch Sylvia never found
+out, but they drove away before Sunday-school and never came back to
+Green Lanes, either on that Sunday or on any Sunday afterward.
+
+All that Mr. Dorward would say about the incident was:
+
+"Church fowls! Chaste fowls! Chaste and holy, but tiresome. The vicar
+mustn't be managed. Doesn't like it. Gets frightened. Felt remote at
+lunch. That was all. Would keep on talking. Got bored and more remote.
+Vicar got so remote that he had to finish his lunch under the table."
+
+"Oh no, you didn't really?" cried the twins, in an ecstasy of pleasure.
+"You didn't really get under the table, Mr. Dorward?"
+
+"Of course, of course, of course. Vicar always speaks the truth.
+Delicious lunch."
+
+Sylvia had to tell Philip about this absurd incident, but he would only
+say that the man was evidently a buffoon in private as well as in
+public.
+
+"But, Philip, don't you think it's a glorious picture? We laughed till
+we were tired."
+
+"Gladys and Enid laugh very easily," he answered. "Personally I see
+nothing funny in a man, especially a clergyman, behaving like a clown."
+
+"Oh, Philip, you're impossible!" Sylvia cried.
+
+"Thanks," he said, dryly. "I've noticed that ever since the arrival of
+our young guests you've found more to complain of in my personality even
+than formerly."
+
+"Young guests!" Sylvia echoed, scornfully. "Who would think, to hear you
+talk now, that you married a child? Really you're incomprehensible."
+
+"Impossible! Incomprehensible! In fact thoroughly negative," Philip
+said.
+
+Sylvia shrugged her shoulders and left him.
+
+The twins went back to school at the beginning of May, and Sylvia, who
+missed them very much, had to fall back on Mr. Dorward to remind her of
+their jolly company. Their intercourse, which the twins had established
+upon a certain plane, continued now upon the same plane. Life had to be
+regarded as Alice saw it in Wonderland or through the looking-glass.
+Sylvia remembered with irony that it was Philip who first introduced her
+to those two books; she decided he had only liked them because it was
+correct to like them. Mr. Dorward, however, actually was somebody in
+that fantastic world, not like anybody Alice met there, but another
+inhabitant whom she just happened to miss.
+
+To whom else but Mr. Dorward could have occurred that ludicrous
+adventure when he was staying with a brother priest in a remote part of
+Devonshire?
+
+"I always heard he was a little odd. However, we had dinner together in
+the kitchen. He only dined in the drawing-room on Thursdays."
+
+"When did he dine in the dining-room?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Never. There wasn't a dining-room. There were a lot of rooms that were
+going to be the dining-room, but it was never decided which. And that
+cast a gloom over the whole house. My host behaved in the most
+evangelical way at dinner and only once threw the salad at the cook.
+After dinner we sat comfortably before the kitchen fire and discussed
+the Mozarabic rite and why yellow was no longer a liturgical color for
+confessors. At half past eleven my host suggested it was time to go to
+bed. He showed me up-stairs to a very nice bedroom and said good night,
+advising me to lock the door. I locked the door, undressed, said my
+prayers, and got into bed. I was just dozing off when I heard a loud tap
+at the door. I felt rather frightened. Rather frightened I felt. But I
+went to the door and opened it. Outside in the passage was my host in
+his nightgown with a candlestick.
+
+"'Past twelve o'clock,' he shouted. 'Time to change beds!' and before I
+knew where I was he had rushed past me and shut me out into the
+passage."
+
+"Did you change beds?"
+
+"There wasn't another bed in the house. I had to sleep in one of the
+rooms that might one day be a dining-room, and the next morning a rural
+dean arrived, which drove me away."
+
+Gradually from underneath what Philip called "a mass of affectation,"
+but what Sylvia divined as an armor assumed against the unsympathetic
+majority by a shy, sensitive, and lovable spirit, there emerged for her
+the reality of Mr. Dorward. She began to comprehend his faith, which was
+as simple as a little child's; she began to realize also that he was
+impelled to guard what he held to be most holy against the jeers of
+unbelievers by diverting toward his own eccentricity the world's
+mockery. He was a man of the deepest humility who considered himself
+incapable of proselytizing. Sylvia used to put before him sometimes the
+point of view of the outside world and try to show how he could avoid
+criticism and gain adherents. He used always to reply that if God had
+intended him to be a missionary he would not have been placed in this
+lowly parish, that here he was unable to do much harm, and that any who
+found faith in his church must find it through the grace of God, since
+it was impossible to suppose they would ever find it through his own
+ministrations. He insisted that people who stayed away from church
+because he read the service badly or burned too many candles or wore
+vestments were only ostentatious worshipers who looked upon the church
+as wax-works must regard Madame Tussaud's. He explained that he had been
+driven to discourage the work of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart because he
+had detected in himself a tendency toward spiritual pride in the growth
+of a congregation that did not belong either to him or to God; if he had
+tolerated Miss Horne's methods for a time it was because he feared to
+oppose the Divine intention. However, as soon as he found that he was
+thinking complacently of a congregation of twenty-four, nearly every one
+of which was a pensioner of Miss Horne, he realized that they were
+instruments of the devil, particularly when at lunch they began to
+suggest....
+
+"What?" Sylvia asked, when he paused.
+
+"The only thing to do was to finish my lunch under the table," he
+snapped; nor would he be persuaded to discuss the quarrel further.
+
+Sylvia, who felt that the poor ladies had, after all, been treated in
+rather a cavalier fashion and was reproaching herself for having
+deserted them, went down to Oaktown shortly after this to call at Sunny
+Bank. They received her with freezing coldness, particularly Miss
+Hobart, whose eyes under lowering eyelids were sullen with hate. She
+said much less than Miss Horne, who walked in and out of the shivery
+furniture, fanning herself in her agitation and declaiming against Mr.
+Dorward at the top of her voice.
+
+"And your little friends?" Miss Hobart put in with a smile that was not
+a smile. "We thought them just a little badly brought up."
+
+"You liked them very much at first," Sylvia said.
+
+"Yes, one often likes people at first."
+
+And as Sylvia looked at her she realized that Miss Hobart was not nearly
+so old as she had thought her, perhaps not yet fifty. Still, at fifty
+one had no right to be jealous.
+
+"In fact," said Sylvia, brutally, "you liked them very much till you
+thought Mr. Dorward liked them too."
+
+Miss Hobart's eyelids almost closed over her eyes and her thin lips
+disappeared. Miss Horne stopped in her restless parade and, pointing
+with her fan to the door, bade Sylvia be gone and never come to Sunny
+Bank again.
+
+"The old witch," thought Sylvia, when she was toiling up the hill to
+Medworth in the midsummer heat. "I believe he's right and that she is
+the devil."
+
+She did not tell Philip about her quarrel, because she knew that he
+would have reminded her one by one of every occasion he had taken to
+warn Sylvia against being friendly with any inhabitant of Tintown. A
+week or two later, Philip announced with an air of satisfaction that a
+van of Treacherites had arrived in Newton Candover and might be expected
+at Green Lanes next Sunday.
+
+Sylvia asked what on earth Treacherites were, and he explained that they
+were the followers of a certain Mr. John Treacher, who regarded himself
+as chosen by God to purify the Church of England of popish abuses.
+
+"A dreadful little cad, I believe," he added. "But it will be fun to see
+what they make of Dorward. It's a pity the old ladies have been kept
+away by the heat, or we might have a free fight."
+
+Sylvia warned Mr. Dorward of the Treacherites' advent, and he seemed
+rather worried by the news; she had a notion he was afraid of them,
+which made her impatient, as she frankly told him.
+
+"Not many of us. Not many of us," said Mr. Dorward. "Hope they won't try
+to break up the church."
+
+The Treacherites arrived on Saturday evening and addressed a meeting by
+The Old Farm, which fetched Philip out into the road with threats of
+having them put in jail for creating a disturbance.
+
+"If you want to annoy people, go to church to-morrow and annoy the
+vicar," he said, grimly.
+
+Sylvia, who had heard Philip's last remark, turned on him in a rage:
+"What a mean and cowardly thing to say when you know Mr. Dorward can't
+defend himself as you can. Let them come to church to-morrow and annoy
+the vicar. You see what they'll get."
+
+"Come, come, Sylvia," Philip said, with an attempt at pacification and
+evidently ashamed of himself. "Let these Christians fight it out among
+themselves. It's nothing to do with us, as long as they don't...."
+
+"Thank you, it's everything to do with me," she said. He looked at her
+in surprise.
+
+Next morning Sylvia took up her position in the front of the church and
+threatened with her eye the larger congregation that had gathered in the
+hope of a row as fiercely as Miss Horne and Miss Hobart might have done.
+The Treacherites were two young men with pimply faces who swaggered into
+church and talked to one another loudly before the service began,
+commenting upon the ornaments with cockney facetiousness. Cassandra Batt
+came over to Sylvia and whispered hoarsely in her ear that she was
+afraid there would be trouble, because some of the village lads had
+looked in for a bit of fun. The service was carried through with
+constant interruptions, and Sylvia felt her heart beating faster and
+faster with suppressed rage. When it was over, the congregation
+dispersed into the churchyard, where the yokels hung about waiting for
+the vicar to come out. As he appeared in the west door a loud booing was
+set up, and one of the Treacherites shouted:
+
+"Follow me, loyal members of the Protestant Established Church, and
+destroy the idols of the Pope." Whereupon the iconoclast tried to push
+past Mr. Dorward, who was fumbling in his vague way with the lock of the
+door. He turned white with rage and, seizing the Treacherite by the
+scruff of his neck, he flung him head over heels across two mounds. At
+this the yokels began to boo more vehemently, but Mr. Dorward managed to
+shut the door and lock it, after which he walked across to the
+discomfited Treacherite and, holding out his hand, apologized for his
+violence. The yokels, who mistook generosity for weakness, began to
+throw stones at the vicar, one of which cut his face. Sylvia, who had
+been standing motionless in a trance of fury, was roused by the blood to
+action. With a bound she sprang at the first Treacherite and pushed him
+into a half-dug grave; then turning swiftly, she advanced against his
+companion with upraised stick.
+
+The youth just had time to gasp a notification to the surrounding
+witnesses that Sylvia assaulted him first, before he ran; but the
+yokels, seeing that the squire's wife was on the side of the parson, and
+fearing for the renewal of their leases and the repairs to their
+cottages, turned round upon the Treacherites and dragged them off toward
+the village pond.
+
+"Come on, Cassandra," Sylvia cried. "Let's go and break up the van."
+
+Cassandra seized her pickax and followed Sylvia, who with hair streaming
+over her shoulders and elation in her aspect charged past The Old Farm
+just when Philip was coming out of the gate.
+
+"Come on, Philip!" she cried. "Come on and help me break up their damned
+van."
+
+By this time the attack had brought most of the village out of doors.
+Dogs were barking; geese and ducks were flapping in all directions;
+Sylvia kept turning round to urge the sexton, whose progress was
+hampered by a petticoat's slipping down, not to bother about her
+clothes, but to come on. A grandnephew of the old woman picked up the
+crimson garment and, as he pursued his grandaunt to restore it to her,
+waved it in the air like a standard. The yokels, who saw the squire
+watching from his gate, assumed his complete approval of what was
+passing (as a matter of fact he was petrified with dismay), and paid no
+attention to the vicar's efforts to rescue the Treacherites from their
+doom in the fast-nearing pond. The van of the iconoclasts was named
+Ridley: "By God's grace we have to-day lit such a candle as will never
+be put out" was printed on one side. On the other was inscribed, "John
+Treacher's Poor Preachers. Supported by Voluntary Contributions." By the
+time Sylvia, Cassandra, and the rest had finished with the van it was
+neither legible without nor habitable within.
+
+Naturally there was a violent quarrel between Sylvia and Philip over her
+behavior, a quarrel that was not mended by her being summoned later on
+by the outraged Treacherites, together with Mr. Dorward and several
+yokels.
+
+"You've made a fool of me from one end of the county to the other,"
+Philip told her. "Understand once and for all that I don't intend to put
+up with this sort of thing."
+
+"It was your fault," she replied. "You began it by egging on these
+brutes to attack Mr. Dorward. You could easily have averted any trouble
+if you'd wanted to. It serves you jolly well right."
+
+"There's no excuse for your conduct," Philip insisted. "A stranger
+passing through the village would have thought a lunatic asylum had
+broken loose."
+
+"Oh, well, it's a jolly good thing to break loose sometimes--even for
+lunatics," Sylvia retorted. "If you could break loose yourself sometimes
+you'd be much easier to live with."
+
+"The next time you feel repressed," he said, "all I ask is that you'll
+choose a place where we're not quite so well known in which to give vent
+to your feelings."
+
+The argument went on endlessly, for neither Sylvia nor Philip would
+yield an inch; it became, indeed, one of the eternal disputes that
+reassert themselves at the least excuse. If Philip's egg were not cooked
+long enough, the cause would finally be referred back to that Sunday
+morning; if Sylvia were late for lunch, her unpunctuality would
+ultimately be dated from the arrival of the Treacherites.
+
+Luckily the vicar, with whom the events of that Sunday had grown into a
+comic myth that was continually being added to, was able to give Sylvia
+relief from Philip's exaggerated disapproval. Moreover, the Treacherites
+had done him a service by advertising his church and bringing a certain
+number of strangers there every Sunday out of curiosity; these pilgrims
+inflated the natives of Green Lanes with a sense of their own
+importance, and they now filled the church, taking pride and pleasure in
+the ownership of an attraction and boasting to the natives of the
+villages round about the size of the offertory. Mr. Dorward's popery and
+ritualism were admired now as commercial smartness, and if he had chosen
+to ride into church on Palm Sunday or any other Sunday on a donkey (a
+legendary ceremony invariably attributed to High Church vicars), there
+was not a man, woman, or child in the parish of Green Lanes that would
+not have given a prod of encouragement to the sacred animal.
+
+One hot September afternoon Sylvia was walking back from Medworth when
+she was overtaken by Mr. Pluepott in his cart. They stopped to exchange
+the usual country greetings, at which by now Sylvia was an adept. When
+presently Mr. Pluepott invited her to take advantage of a lift home she
+climbed up beside him. For a while they jogged along in silence;
+suddenly Mr. Pluepott delivered himself of what was evidently much upon
+his mind:
+
+"Mrs. Iredale," he began, "you and me has known each other the best part
+of two years, and your coming and having a cup of tea with Mrs. Pluepott
+once or twice and Mrs. Pluepott having a big opinion of you makes me so
+bold."
+
+He paused and reined in his pony to a walk that would suit the gravity
+of his communication.
+
+"I'd like to give you a bit of a warning as from a friend and, with all
+due respect, an admirer. Being a married man myself and you a young
+lady, you won't go for to mistake my meaning when I says to you right
+out that women is worse than the devil. Miss Horne! As I jokingly said
+to Mrs. Pluepott, though, being a sacred subject, she wouldn't laugh,
+'Miss Horne!' I said. 'Miss Horns! That's what she ought to be called.'
+Mrs. Iredale," he went on, pulling up the pony to a dead, stop and
+turning round with a very serious countenance to Sylvia--"Mrs. Iredale,
+you've got a wicked, bad enemy in that old woman."
+
+"I know," she agreed. "We quarreled over something."
+
+"If you quarreled, and whether it was your fault or whether it was hers,
+isn't nothing to do with me, but the lies she's spreading around about
+you and the Reverend Dorward beat the band. I'm not speaking gossip. I'm
+not going by hearsay. I've heard her myself, and Miss Hobart's as bad,
+if not worse. There, now I've told you and I hope you'll pardon the
+liberty, but I couldn't help it."
+
+With which Mr. Pluepott whipped up his pony to a frantic gallop, and
+very soon they reached the outskirts of Green Lanes, where Sylvia got
+down.
+
+"Thanks," she said, offering her hand. "I don't think I need bother
+about Miss Horne, but it was very kind of you to tell me. Thanks very
+much," and with a wave of her stick Sylvia walked pensively along into
+the village. As she passed Mr. Dorward's cottage she rattled her stick
+on his gate till he looked out from a window in the thatch, like a bird
+disturbed on its nest.
+
+"Hullo, old owl!" Sylvia cried. "Come down a minute. I want to say
+something to you."
+
+The vicar presently came blinking out into the sunlight of the garden.
+
+"Look here," she said, "do you know that those two old villains in
+Oaktown are spreading it about that you and I are having a love-affair?
+Haven't you got a prescription for that sort of thing in your church
+business? Can't you curse them with bell, book, and candle, or
+something? I'll supply the bell, if you'll supply the rest of the
+paraphernalia."
+
+Dorward shook his head. "Can't be done. Cursing is the prerogative of
+bishops. Not on the best terms with my bishop, I'm afraid. Last time he
+sent for me I had to spend the night and I left a rosary under my
+pillow. He was much pained, my spies at the Palace tell me."
+
+"Well, if _you_ don't mind, I don't mind," she said. "All right. So
+long."
+
+Three days later, an anonymous post-card was sent to Sylvia, a vulgar
+Temptation of St. Anthony; and a week afterward Philip suddenly flung a
+letter down before her which he told her to read. It was an ill-spelled
+ungrammatical screed, which purported to warn Philip of his wife's
+behavior, enumerated the hours she had spent alone with Dorward either
+in his cottage or in the church, and wound up with the old proverb of
+there being none so blind as those who won't see. Sylvia blushed while
+she read it, not for what it said about herself, but for the vile
+impulse that launched this smudged and scrabbled impurity.
+
+"That's a jolly thing to get at breakfast," Philip said.
+
+"Beastly," she agreed. "And your showing it to me puts you on a level
+with the sender."
+
+"I thought it would be a good lesson for you," he said.
+
+"A lesson?" she repeated.
+
+"Yes, a lesson that one can't behave exactly as one likes, particularly
+in the country among a lot of uneducated peasants."
+
+"But I don't understand," Sylvia went on. "Did you show me this filthy
+piece of paper with the idea of asking me to change my manner of life?"
+
+"I showed it to you in order to impress upon you that people talk, and
+that you owe it to me to keep their tongues quiet."
+
+"What do you want me to do?"
+
+"Something perfectly simple," Philip said. "I want you to give up
+visiting Dorward in his cottage and, as you have no religious
+inclinations, I should like you to avoid his church."
+
+"And that's why you showed me this anonymous letter?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"In fact you're going to give it your serious attention?" she continued.
+
+"Not at all," he contradicted. "For a long time I've objected to your
+friendship with Dorward, but, knowing you were too headstrong to listen
+to my advice, I said nothing. This letter makes it impossible to keep
+silent any longer about my wishes."
+
+"But you don't really believe that Dorward and I are having an affair?"
+she gasped.
+
+Philip made an impatient gesture.
+
+"What a foolish question! Do you suppose that if I had for one moment
+thought such a thing I shouldn't have spoken before? No, no, my dear,
+it's all very unpleasant, but you must see that as soon as I am made
+aware, however crude the method of bringing it to my knowledge, that
+people are talking about you and my vicar, I have no alternative but to
+forbid you to do anything that will make these tongues go on wagging."
+
+"To forbid me?" she repeated.
+
+Philip bowed ironically, Sylvia thought; the gesture, infinitely slight
+and unimportant as it was, cut the last knot.
+
+"I shall have to tell Mr. Dorward about this letter and explain to him,"
+she said.
+
+Philip hesitated for a moment. "Yes, I think that would be the best
+thing to do," he agreed.
+
+Sylvia regarded him curiously.
+
+"You don't mind his knowing that you showed it to me?" she asked.
+
+"Not at all," said Philip.
+
+She laughed, and he took alarm at the tone.
+
+"I thought you were going to be sensible," he began, but she cut him
+short.
+
+"Oh, I am, my dear man. Don't worry."
+
+Now that the unpleasant scene was over, he seemed anxious for her
+sympathy.
+
+"I'm sorry this miserable business has occurred, but you understand,
+don't you, that it's been just as bad for me as for you?"
+
+"Do you want me to apologize?" Sylvia demanded, in her brutal way.
+
+"No, of course not. Only I thought perhaps you might have shown a little
+more appreciation of my feelings."
+
+"Ah, Philip, if you want that, you'll have to let me really go wrong
+with Dorward."
+
+"Personally I consider that last remark of yours in very bad taste; but
+I know we have different standards of humor."
+
+Sylvia found Dorward in the church, engaged in an argument with
+Cassandra about the arrangement of the chrysanthemums for Michaelmas.
+
+"I will not have them like this," he was saying.
+
+"But we always putts them fan-shaped like that."
+
+"Take them away," he shouted, and, since Cassandra still hesitated, he
+flung the flowers all over the church.
+
+The short conversation that followed always remained associated in
+Sylvia's mind with Cassandra's grunts and her large base elevated above
+the pews, while she browsed hither and thither, bending over to pick up
+the scattered chrysanthemums.
+
+"Mr. Dorward, I want to ask you something very serious."
+
+He looked at her sharply, almost suspiciously.
+
+"Does it make you very much happier to have faith?"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," he said, brushing petals from his cassock.
+
+"But would it make me?"
+
+"I expect so--I expect so," he said, still brushing and trying with that
+shy curtness to avoid the contact of reality.
+
+"Well, how can I get faith?"
+
+"You must pray, dear lady, you must pray."
+
+"You'll have to pray for me," Sylvia said.
+
+"Always do. Always pray for you. Never less than three prayers every
+day. Mass once a week."
+
+Sylvia felt a lump in her throat; it seemed to her that this friend,
+accounted mad by the world, had paid her the tenderest and most
+exquisite courtesy she had ever known.
+
+"Come along now, Cassandra," cried the vicar, clapping his hands
+impatiently to cover his embarrassment. "Where are the flowers? Where
+are the flowers, you miserable old woman?"
+
+Cassandra came up to him, breathing heavily with exertion. "You know,
+Mr. Dorward, you're enough to try the patience of an angel on a tomb;
+you are indeed."
+
+Sylvia left them arguing all over again about the chrysanthemums. That
+afternoon she went away from Green Lanes to London.
+
+Three months later, she obtained an engagement in a musical comedy
+company on tour and sent back to Philip the last shred of clothing that
+she had had through him, with a letter and ten pounds in bank-notes:
+
+     You _must_ divorce me now. I've not been able to earn enough to pay
+     you back more than this for your bad bargain. I don't think I've
+     given any more pleasure to the men who have paid less for me than
+     you did, if that's any consolation.
+
+     SYLVIA SCARLETT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Sylvia stood before the looking-glass in the Birmingham lodgings and
+made a speech to herself:
+
+"Humph! You look older, my dear. You look more than nineteen and a half.
+You're rather glad, though, aren't you, to have finished with the last
+three months? You feel degraded, don't you? What's that you say? You
+don't feel degraded any more by what you've done now than by what you
+did when you were married? You consider the net result of the last three
+months has simply been to prove what you'd suspected for a long
+time--the wrong you did yourself in marrying Philip Iredale? Wait a
+minute; don't go so fast; there's something wrong with your moral sense.
+You know perfectly well your contention is impossible; or do you accuse
+every woman who marries to have a position and a home of being a
+prostitute? Ah, but you didn't marry Philip for either of those reasons,
+you say? Yes, you did--you married him to make something like Arbour
+End."
+
+Tears welled up in Sylvia's eyes. She thought she had driven Arbour End
+from her mind forever.
+
+"Come, come, we don't want any tears. What are you crying for? You knew
+when you left Green Lanes that everything which had come into your life
+through Philip Iredale must be given up. You were rather proud of your
+ruthlessness. Don't spoil it now. That's right, no more tears. You're
+feeling a bit _abrutie_, aren't you? My advice to you is to obliterate
+the last three months from your imagination. I quite understand that you
+suffered a good deal, but novices must be prepared to suffer. In my
+opinion you can congratulate yourself on having come through so easily.
+Here you are, a jolly little _cabetine_ with a complete contempt for
+men. You're not yet twenty; you're not likely to fall in love, for you
+must admit that after those three months the word sounds more than
+usually idiotic. From what I've seen of you I should say that for the
+future you'll be very well able to look after yourself; you might even
+become a famous actress. Ah, that makes you smile, eh?"
+
+Sylvia dabbed her face with the powder-puff and went down-stairs to
+dinner. Her two companions had not yet begun; for this was the first
+meal at which they would all sit down together, and an atmosphere of
+politeness hung over life at present. Lily Haden and Dorothy Lonsdale
+had joined the "Miss Elsie of Chelsea" company at the same time as
+Sylvia, and were making their first appearance on any stage, having
+known each other in the dullness of West Kensington. For a fortnight
+they had clung together, but, having been given an address for rooms in
+Birmingham that required a third person's contribution, they had invited
+Sylvia to join them. Lily was a tall, slim girl with very fair, golden
+hair, who had an air of romantic mystery that was due to indolence of
+mind and body. Dorothy also was fair, with a mass of light-brown hair, a
+perfect complexion, profile, and figure, and, what finally gave her a
+really distinguished beauty in such a setting, brown eyes instead of
+blue. Lily's languorous grace of manner and body was so remarkable that
+in a room it was difficult to choose between her and Dorothy, but behind
+the footlights there was no comparison; there Dorothy had everybody's
+glances, and Lily's less definite features went for nothing.
+
+Each girl was prompt to take Sylvia into her confidence about the other.
+Thus from Lily she learned that Dorothy's real name was Norah Caffyn;
+that she was the eldest of a very large family; that Lily had known her
+at school; that she had been engaged to a journalist who was disapproved
+of by her family; that she had offered to break with Wilfred Curlew, if
+she were allowed to go on the stage; and that she had taken the name of
+Lonsdale from the road where she lived, and Dorothy from the sister next
+to her.
+
+"I suppose in the same way as she used to take her dolls?" Sylvia
+suggested.
+
+Lily looked embarrassed. She was evidently not sure whether a joke was
+intended, and when Sylvia encouraged her to suppose it was, she laughed
+a little timidly, being rather doubtful if it were not a pun.
+
+"Her sister was awfully annoyed about it, because she hasn't got a
+second name. She's the only one in the family who hasn't."
+
+Lily also told Sylvia something about herself, how her mother had lately
+died and how she could not get on with her sister, who had married an
+actor and was called Doris. Her mother had been a reciter, and there had
+always been lots of theatrical people at their house, so it had been
+easy for her to get an introduction to Mr. Walter Keal, who had the
+touring rights of all John Richards's great Vanity Theater productions.
+
+From Dorothy Sylvia learned that she had known Lily at school, but not
+for long, as Mrs. Haden never paid her daughters' fees; that Mr. Haden
+had always been supposed to live in Burmah, but that people who knew
+Mrs. Haden declared he had never existed; and finally that Lily had been
+"awfully nice" to herself and helped her to get an introduction to Mr.
+Walter Keal.
+
+The association of Sylvia with the two girls begun at Birmingham was not
+interrupted until the end of the tour. Lily and Dorothy depended upon
+it, Lily because Sylvia saved her the trouble of thinking for herself,
+Dorothy because she found in Sylvia some one who could deflect all the
+difficulties of life on tour and leave her free to occupy herself with
+her own prosperity and her own comforts. Dorothy possessed a selfishness
+that almost attained to the dignity of ambition, though never quite, as
+her conceit would not allow her to state an object in her career, for
+fear of failure; her method was invariably to seize the best of any
+situation that came along, whether it was a bed, a chair, a potato, or a
+man; this method with ordinary good luck would insure success through
+life. Lily was too lazy to minister to Dorothy's selfishness; moreover,
+she often managed in taking the nearest and easiest to rob Dorothy of
+the best.
+
+Sylvia was perfectly aware of their respective characters, but she was
+always willing to give herself any amount of trouble to preserve beauty
+around her; Lily and Dorothy were not really more troublesome than two
+cats would have been; in fact, rather less, because at any rate they
+could carry themselves, if not their bags.
+
+Life on tour went its course with the world divided into three
+categories--the members of the company, the public expressing its
+personality in different audiences, and for the actors saloon-bars and
+the drinks they were stood, for the actresses admirers and the presents
+they were worth. Sometimes when the saloon-bars and the admirers were
+alike unprofitable, the members of the company mixed among themselves
+whether in a walk round a new town or at tea in rooms where a landlady
+possessed hospitable virtues. Sylvia had a special gift for getting the
+best out of landladies, and the men of the company came more often to
+tea with herself and her friends than with the other ladies. They came,
+indeed, too often to please Dorothy, who disapproved of Lily's
+easy-going acceptance of the sort of love that is made because at the
+moment there is nothing else to do. She spoke to Sylvia about this, who
+agreed with her, but thought that with Lily it was inevitable.
+
+"But not with boys in the company," Dorothy urged, disdainfully. "It
+makes us all so cheap. I don't want to put on side, but, after all, we
+are a little different from the other girls."
+
+Sylvia found this belief universal in the chorus. She could not think of
+any girl who had not at one time or another taken her aside and claimed
+for herself, and by the politeness owed to present company for Sylvia,
+this "little difference."
+
+"Personally," Sylvia said, "I think we're all much the same. Some of us
+drop our aitches, others our p's and q's; some of us sing flat, the rest
+sing sharp; and we all look just alike when we're waiting for the train
+on Sunday morning."
+
+Nevertheless, with all her prevision of a fate upon Lily's conduct,
+Sylvia did speak to her about the way in which she tolerated the
+familiarity of the men in the company.
+
+"I suppose you're thinking of Tom," Lily said.
+
+"Tom, Dick, and Harry," Sylvia put in.
+
+"Well. I don't like to seem stuck up," Lily explained. "Tom's always
+very nice about carrying my bag and getting me tea when we're
+traveling."
+
+"If I promise to look after the bag," Sylvia asked, "will you promise to
+discourage Tom?"
+
+"But, my dear, why should you carry my bag when I can get Tom to do it?"
+
+"It bores me to see you and him together," Sylvia explained. "These boys
+in the company are all very well, but they aren't really men at all."
+
+"I know," Lily said, eagerly. "That's what I feel. They don't seem real
+to me. Of course, I shouldn't let anybody make love to me seriously."
+
+"What do you call serious love-making?"
+
+"Oh, Sylvia, how you do go on asking questions. You know perfectly well
+what I mean. You only ask questions to make me feel uncomfortable."
+
+"Just as I might disarrange the cushions of your chair?"
+
+"I know quite well who's been at you to worry me," Lily went on. "I know
+it's Dorothy. She's always been used to being the eldest and finding
+fault with everybody else. She doesn't really mind Tom's kissing
+me--she's perfectly ready to make use of him herself--but she's always
+thinking about other people and she's so afraid that some of the men she
+goes out with will laugh at his waistcoat. I'm used to actors; she
+isn't. I never bother about her. I don't complain about her practising
+her singing or talking for hours and hours about whether I think she
+looks better with a teardrop or without. Why can't she let me alone?
+Nobody ever lets me alone. It's all I've ever asked all my life."
+
+The feeling between Lily and Dorothy was reaching the point of tension.
+Sylvia commented on it one evening to Fay Onslow, the oldest member of
+the chorus, a fat woman, wise and genial, universally known as Onzie
+except by her best boy of the moment, who had to call her Fay. However,
+she cost him very little else, and was generally considered to throw
+herself away, though, of course, as her friends never failed to add, she
+was getting on and could no longer afford to be too particular.
+
+"Well, between you and I, Sylvia, I've often wondered you've kept your
+little family together for so long. I've been on the stage now for
+twenty-five years. I'm not far off forty, dear. I used to be in
+burlesque at the old Frivolity."
+
+"Do you remember Victoria Deane?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Of course I do. She made a big hit and then got married and left the
+stage. A sweetly pretty little thing, she was. But, as I was saying,
+dear, in all my experience I never knew two fair girls get through a
+tour together without falling out, two girls naturally fair, that is,
+and you mark my words, Lily Haden and Dolly Lonsdale will have a row."
+
+Sylvia was anxious to avert this, because she would have found it hard
+to choose between their rival claims upon her. She was fonder of Lily,
+but she was very fond of Dorothy, and she believed that Dorothy might
+attain real success in her profession. It seemed more worth while to
+take trouble over Dorothy; yet something warned her that an expense of
+devotion in that direction would ultimately be, from a selfish point of
+view, wasted. Dorothy would never consider affection where advancement
+was concerned; yet was it not just this quality in her that she admired?
+There would certainly be an unusual exhilaration in standing behind
+Dorothy and helping her to rise and rise, whereas with Lily the best
+that could be expected was to prevent her falling infinitely low.
+
+"How I've changed since I left Philip," she said to herself. "I seem to
+have lost myself somehow and to have transferred all my interest in life
+to other people. I suppose it won't last. God forbid I should become a
+problem to myself like a woman in a damned novel. Down with
+introspection, though, Heaven knows, observation in 'Miss Elsie of
+Chelsea' is not a profitable pastime."
+
+Sylvia bought an eye-glass next day, and though all agreed with one
+another in private that it was an affectation, everybody assured her
+that she was a girl who could wear an eye-glass with advantage. Lily
+thought the cord must be rather a bore.
+
+"It's symbolic," Sylvia declared to the dressing-room.
+
+"I think I'll have my eyes looked at in Sheffield," said Onzie. "There's
+a doctor there who's very good to pros. I often feel my eyes are
+getting a bit funny. It may be the same as Sylvia's got."
+
+The tour was coming to an end; the last three nights would be played at
+Oxford, to which everybody looked forward. All the girls who had been to
+Oxford before told wonderful tales of the pleasures that might be
+anticipated. Even some of the men were heard to speculate if such or
+such a friend were still there, which annoyed those who could not even
+boast of having had a friend there two years ago. The jealous ones
+revenged themselves by criticizing the theatrical manners of the
+undergraduate, especially upon the last night of a musical comedy. One
+heard a great deal of talk, they said, about a college career, but
+personally and without offense to anybody present who had friends at
+college, they considered that a college career in nine cases out of ten
+meant rowdiness and a habit of thinking oneself better than other
+people.
+
+Sylvia, Lily, and Dorothy had rooms in Eden Square, which was the
+recognized domain of theatrical companies playing in Oxford. Numerous
+invitations to lunch and tea were received, and Sylvia, who had formed a
+preconceived idea of Oxford based upon Philip, was astonished how little
+the undergraduates she met resembled him. Dorothy managed with her usual
+instinct for the best to secure as an admirer Lord Clarehaven, or, as
+the other girls preferred to call him with a nicer formality, the Earl
+of Clarehaven. He invited her with a friend to lunch at Christ Church on
+the last day. Dorothy naturally chose Sylvia, and, as Lily was already
+engaged elsewhere, Sylvia accepted. Later in the afternoon Dorothy
+proposed that the young men should come back and have tea in Eden
+Square, and Sylvia divined Dorothy's intention of proving to these young
+men that the actress in her own home would be as capable of maintaining
+propriety as she had been at lunch.
+
+"We'll buy the cakes on the way," said Dorothy, which was another
+example of her infallible instinct for the best and the most economical.
+
+Loaded with éclairs, meringues, and chocolates, Dorothy, Sylvia, and
+their four guests reached Eden Square.
+
+"You'll have to excuse the general untidiness," Dorothy said, with an
+affected little laugh, flinging open the door of the sitting-room. She
+would probably have chosen another word for the picture of Lily sitting
+on Tom's knee in the worn leather-backed arm-chair if she had entered
+first: unfortunately, Lord Clarehaven was accorded that privilege, and
+the damage was done. Sylvia quickly introduced everybody, and nobody
+could have complained of the way in which the undergraduates sailed over
+an awkward situation, nor could much have been urged against Tom, for he
+left immediately. As for Lily, she was a great success with the young
+men and seemed quite undisturbed by the turn of events.
+
+As soon as the three girls were alone together, Dorothy broke out:
+
+"I hope you don't think I'll ever live with you again after that
+disgusting exhibition. I suppose you think just because you gave me an
+introduction that you can do what you like. I don't know what Sylvia
+thinks of you, but I can tell you what I think. You make me feel
+absolutely sick. That beastly chorus-boy! The idea of letting anybody
+like that even look at you. Thank Heaven, the tour's over. I'm going
+down to the theater. I can't stay in this room. It makes me blush to
+think of it. I'll take jolly good care who I live with in future."
+
+Then suddenly, to Sylvia's immense astonishment, Dorothy slapped Lily's
+face. What torments of mortification must be raging in that small soul
+to provoke such an unlady-like outburst!
+
+"I should hit her back if I were you, my lass," Sylvia advised, putting
+up her eye-glass for the fray; but Lily began to cry and Dorothy
+flounced out of the room.
+
+Sylvia bent over her in consolation, though her sense of justice made
+her partly excuse Dorothy's rage.
+
+"How did I know she would bring her beastly men back to tea? She only
+did it to brag about having a lord to our digs. After all, they're just
+as much mine as hers. I was sorry for Tom. He doesn't know anybody in
+Oxford, and he felt out of it with all the other boys going out. He
+asked me if I was going to turn him down because I'd got such fine
+friends. I was sorry for him, Sylvia, and so I asked him to tea. I don't
+see why Dorothy should turn round and say nasty things to me. I've
+always been decent to her. Oh, Sylvia, you don't know how lonely I feel
+sometimes."
+
+This appeal was too much for Sylvia, who clasped Lily to her and let her
+sob forth her griefs upon her shoulder.
+
+"Sylvia, I've got nobody. I hate my sister Doris. Mother's dead.
+Everybody ran her down, but she had a terrible life. Father used to take
+drugs, and then he stole and was put in prison. People used to say
+mother wasn't married, but she was. Only the truth was so terrible, she
+could never explain. You don't know how she worked. She brought up Doris
+and me entirely. She used to recite, and she used to be always hard up.
+She died of heart failure, and that comes from worry. Nobody understands
+me. I don't know what will become of me."
+
+"My dear," Sylvia said, "you know I'm your pal."
+
+"Oh, Sylvia, you're a darling! I'd do anything for you."
+
+"Even carry your own bag at the station to-morrow?"
+
+"No, don't tease me," Lily begged. "If you won't tease me, I'll do
+anything."
+
+That evening Mr. Keal, with the mighty Mr. Richards himself, came up
+from London to see the show. The members of the chorus were much
+agitated. It could only mean that girls were to be chosen for the Vanity
+production in the autumn. Every one of them put on rather more make-up
+than usual, acted hard all the time she was on the stage, and tried to
+study Mr. Richards's face from the wings.
+
+"You and I are one of the 'also rans,'" Sylvia told Lily. "The great man
+eyed me with positive dislike."
+
+In the end it was Dorothy Lonsdale who was engaged for the Vanity: she
+was so much elated that she was reconciled with Lily and told everybody
+in the dressing-room that she had met a cousin at Oxford, Arthur
+Lonsdale, Lord Cleveden's son.
+
+"Which side of the road are you related to him?" Sylvia asked. Dorothy
+blushed, but she pretended not to understand what Sylvia meant, and said
+quite calmly that it was on her mother's side. She parted with Sylvia
+and Lily very cordially at Paddington, but she did not invite either of
+them to come and see her at Lonsdale Road.
+
+Sylvia and Lily stayed together at Mrs. Gowndry's in Finborough Road,
+for it happened that the final negotiations for Sylvia's divorce from
+Philip were being concluded and she took pleasure in addressing her
+communications from the house where she had been living when he first
+met her. Philip was very anxious to make her an allowance, but she
+declined it; her case was undefended. Lily and she managed to get an
+engagement in another touring company, which opened in August somewhere
+on the south coast. About this time Sylvia read in a paper that Jimmy
+Monkley had been sentenced to three years' penal servitude for fraud,
+and by an odd coincidence in the same paper she read of the decree nisi
+made absolute that set Philip and herself free. Old associations seemed
+to be getting wound up. Unfortunately, the new ones were not promising;
+no duller collection of people had surely ever been gathered together
+than the company in which she was working at present. Not only was the
+company tiresome, but Sylvia and Lily failed to meet anywhere on the
+tour one amusing person. To be sure, Lily thought that Sylvia was too
+critical, and therefore so alarming that several "nice boys" were
+discouraged too early in their acquaintanceship for a final judgment to
+be passed upon them.
+
+"The trouble is," said Sylvia, "that at this rate we shall never make
+our fortunes. I stipulate that, if we adopt a gay life, it really will
+be a gay life. I don't want to have soul-spasms and internal wrestles
+merely for the sake of being bored."
+
+Sylvia tried to produce Lily as a dancer; for a week or two they worked
+hard at imitations of the classical school, but very soon they both grew
+tired of it.
+
+"The nearest we shall ever get to jingling our money at this game,"
+Sylvia said, "is jingling our landlady's ornaments on the mantelpiece.
+Lily, I think we're not meant for the stage. And yet, if I could only
+find my line, I believe.... I believe.... Oh, well, I can't, and so
+there's an end of it. But look here, winter's coming on. We've got
+nothing to wear. We haven't saved a penny. Ruin stares us in the face.
+Say something, Lily; do say something, or I shall scream."
+
+"I don't think we ought to have eaten those plums at dinner. They
+weren't really ripe," Lily said.
+
+"Well, anyhow, that solves the problem of the moment. Put your things
+on. You'd better come out and walk them off."
+
+They were playing in Eastbourne that week, where a sudden hot spell had
+prolonged the season farther into September than usual; a new company of
+entertainers known as "The Highwaymen" was attracting audiences almost
+as large as in the prime of summer. Sylvia and Lily paused to watch them
+from the tamarisks below the Marina.
+
+Suddenly Sylvia gave an exclamation.
+
+"I do believe that's Claude Raglan who's singing now. Do you remember,
+Lily, I told you about the Pink Pierrots? I'm sure it is."
+
+Presently the singer came round with the bag and a packet of his picture
+post-cards. Sylvia asked if he had a photograph of Claude Raglan. When
+he produced one she dug him in the ribs, and cried:
+
+"Claudie, you consumptive ass, don't you recognize me? Sylvia."
+
+He was delighted to see her again, and willingly accepted an invitation
+to supper after the show, if he might bring a friend with him.
+
+"Jack Airdale--an awfully decent fellow. Quite a good voice, too, though
+I think from the point of view of the show it's a mistake to have a high
+barytone when they've already got a tenor. However, he does a good deal
+of accompanying. In fact, he's a much better accompanist than he is
+singer."
+
+"I suppose you've got more girls than ever in love with you, now you
+wear a mask?" said Sylvia.
+
+Claude seemed doubtful whether to take this remark as a compliment to
+his voice or as an insult to his face. Finally he took it as a joke and
+laughed.
+
+"Just the same, I see," he said. "Always chaffing a fellow."
+
+Claude Raglan and Jack Airdale came to supper in due course. Sylvia
+liked Jack; he was a round-faced young man in the early twenties, with
+longish light hair that flopped all over his face when he became
+excited. Sylvia and he were good friends immediately and made a great
+deal of noise over supper, while Claude and Lily looked at each other.
+
+"How's the consumption, Claudie?" Sylvia asked.
+
+Claude sighed with a soulful glance at Lily's delicate form.
+
+"Don't imagine she's sympathizing with you," Sylvia cried. "She's only
+thinking about plums."
+
+"He's grown out of it," Airdale said. "Look at the length of his neck."
+
+"I have to wear these high collars. My throat...." Claude began.
+
+"Oh, shut up with your ailments," Sylvia interrupted.
+
+"Hear, hear," Airdale shouted. "Down with ailments," and he threw a
+cushion at Claude.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't behave like a clown," said Claude, smoothing his
+ruffled hair and looking to see if Lily was joining in the laugh against
+him.
+
+Presently the conversation turned upon the prospects of the two girls
+for next winter, about which Sylvia was very pessimistic.
+
+"Why don't we join together and run a street show--Pierrot, Pierrette,
+Harlequin, and Columbine?" Airdale suggested. "I'll swear there's money
+in it."
+
+"About enough to pay for our coffins," said Claude. "Sing out of doors
+in the winter? My dear Jack, you're mad."
+
+Sylvia thought the idea was splendid, and had sketched out Lily's
+Columbine dress before Lily herself had realized that the conversation
+had taken a twist.
+
+"Light-blue crêpe de Chine with bunches of cornflowers for Columbine.
+Pierrette in dark blue with bunches of forget-me-nots, Pierrot in light
+blue. Silver and dark-blue lozenges for Harlequin."
+
+"Paregoric lozenges would suit Claude better," said Airdale. "O
+Pagliacci! Can't you hear him? No, joking apart, I think it would be a
+great effort. We sha'n't have to sing much outside. We shall get invited
+into people's houses."
+
+"Shall we?" Claude muttered.
+
+"And if the show goes," Airdale went on, "we might vary our costumes.
+For instance, we might be Bacchanals in pink fleshings and vine leaves."
+
+"Vine leaves," Claude ejaculated. "Vine Street more likely."
+
+"Don't laugh, old boy, with that lung of yours," said Airdale,
+earnestly.
+
+In the end, before the company left Eastbourne, it was decided,
+notwithstanding Claude's lugubrious prophecies, to launch the
+enterprise; when the tour broke up in December Sylvia had made dresses
+both for Lily and for herself as she had first planned them with an eye
+only for what became Lily. Claude's hypochondria was appeased by letting
+him wear a big patchwork cloak over his harlequin's dress in which white
+lozenges had been substituted for silver ones, owing to lack of money.
+They hired a small piano very much like the one that belonged to the
+Pink Pierrots, and on Christmas Eve they set out from Finborough Road,
+where Claude and Jack had rooms near Mrs. Gowndry's. They came into
+collision with a party of carol-singers who seemed to resent their
+profane competition, and, much to Jack Airdale's disappointment, they
+were not invited into a single house; the money taken after three hours
+of wandering music was one shilling and fivepence in coppers.
+
+"Never mind," said Jack. "We aren't known yet. It's a pity we didn't
+start singing last Christmas Eve. We should have had more engagements
+than we should have known what to do with this year."
+
+"We must build up the show for next year," Sylvia agreed,
+enthusiastically.
+
+"I shall sing the 'Lost Chord' next year," Claude answered. "They may
+let me in, if I worry them outside heaven's gates, to hear that last
+Amen."
+
+Jack and Sylvia were justified in their optimism, for gradually the
+Carnival Quartet, as they called themselves, became known in South
+Kensington, and they began to get engagements to appear in other parts
+of London. Jack taught Sylvia to vamp well enough on the guitar to
+accompany herself in duets with him; Claude looked handsome in his
+harlequin's dress, which prosperity had at last endowed with silver
+lozenges; Lily danced actively enough for the drawing-rooms in which
+they performed; Sylvia, inspired by the romantic exterior of herself and
+her companions, invented a mime to the music of Schumann's "Carnival"
+which Jack Airdale played, or, as Claude said, maltreated.
+
+The Quartet showed signs of increasing vitality with the approach of
+spring, and there was no need to think any more of touring in musical
+comedy, which was a relief to Sylvia. When summer came, they agreed to
+keep together and work the South Coast.
+
+However, all these plans came suddenly to nothing, because one misty
+night early in March Harlequin and Columbine lost Pierrot and Pierrette
+on the way home from a party in Chelsea; a brief note from Harlequin to
+Pierrot, which he found when he got home, indicated that the loss should
+be considered permanent.
+
+This treachery was a shock to Sylvia, and she was horrified at herself
+for feeling it so deeply. Ever since that day in Oxford when Lily had
+sobbed out her griefs, Sylvia had concentrated upon her all the capacity
+for affection which had begun to blossom during the time she was with
+Philip and which had been cut off ruthlessly with everything else that
+belonged to life with him. She knew that she should have foreseen the
+possibility, nay the probability, of this happening, but she had charmed
+herself with the romantic setting of their musical adventure and let all
+else go.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, Sylvia," said Jack; "I ought to have kept a better
+lookout on Claude."
+
+"It's not your fault, old son. But, O God! why can't four people stay
+friends without muddling everything up with this accursed love?"
+
+Jack was sympathetic, but it was useless to confide in him her feeling
+for Lily; he would never understand. She would seem to him so little
+worth while; for him the behavior of such a one meant less than the
+breaking of a porcelain figure.
+
+"It did seem worth while," Sylvia said to herself, that night, "to keep
+that frail and lovely thing from this. It was my fault, of course, for I
+knew both Lily and Claude through and through. Yet what does it matter?
+What a fool I am. It was absurd of me to imagine we could go on forever
+as we were. I don't really mind about Lily; I'm angry because my conceit
+has been wounded. It serves me right. But that dirty little actor won't
+appreciate her. He's probably sick of her easiness already. Oh, why the
+hell am I not a man?"
+
+Presently, however, Sylvia's mood of indignation burned itself out; she
+began to attribute the elopement of Claude and Lily to the characters
+they had assumed of Harlequin and Columbine, and to regard the whole
+affair as a scene from a play which must not be taken more deeply to
+heart than with the pensive melancholy that succeeds the fall of the
+curtain on mimic emotions. After all, what had Lily been to her more
+than a puppet whose actions she had always controlled for her pleasure
+until she was stolen from her? Without Lily she was once more at a loose
+end; there was the whole history of her sorrow.
+
+"I can't think what they wanted to run away for," said Jack. Sylvia
+fancied the flight was the compliment both Harlequin and Columbine had
+paid to her authority.
+
+"I don't find you so alarming," he said.
+
+"No, old son, because you and I have always regarded the Quartet from a
+strictly professional point of view, and consequently each other.
+Meanwhile the poor old Quartet is done in. We two can't sustain a
+program alone."
+
+Airdale gloomily assented, but thought it would be well to continue for
+a week or so, in case Claude and Lily came back.
+
+"I notice you take it for granted that I'll be willing to continue
+busking with them," Sylvia said.
+
+That evening Airdale and she went out as usual; but the loss of the
+other two seemed somehow to have robbed the entertainment of its
+romantic distinction, and Sylvia was dismayed to find with what a
+shameful timidity she now took herself and her guitar into saloon-bars;
+she felt like a beggar and was humiliated by Jack's apologetic manner,
+and still more by her own instinctive support of such cringing to the
+benevolence of potmen and barmaids.
+
+One evening, after about a week of these distasteful peregrinations, the
+two mountebanks came out of a public house in Fulham Road where they
+had been forced to endure a more than usually intolerable patronage.
+Sylvia vowed she would not perform again under such conditions, and they
+turned up Tinderbox Lane to wander home. This thoroughfare, only used by
+pedestrians, was very still, and trees planted down the middle of the
+pavement gave to the mild March evening an effluence of spring. Sylvia
+began to strum upon her guitar the tune that Arthur Madden and she sang
+together from the windows at Hampstead on the night she met him first;
+her companion soon caught hold of the air, and they strolled slowly
+along, dreaming, she looking downward of the past, he of the future with
+his eyes fixed on the chimneys of the high flats that encircled the
+little houses and long gardens of Tinderbox Lane. They were passing a
+wall on their right in which numbered doors were set at intervals. From
+one of these a tall figure emerged and stopped a moment to say good-by
+to somebody standing in the entrance. The two musicians with a
+simultaneous instinct for an audience that might appreciate them stopped
+and addressed their song to the parting pair, a tall old gentleman with
+drooping gray whiskers, very much muffled up, and an exceedingly stout
+woman of ripe middle age.
+
+"Bravo!" said the old gentleman, in a tremulous voice, as he tapped his
+cane on the pavement. "Polly, this is devilish appropriate. By gad! it
+makes me feel inclined to dance again, Polly," and the old gentleman
+forthwith postured with his thin legs like a cardboard antic at the end
+of a string. The fat woman standing in the doorway came out into the
+lamplight, and clasping her hands in alarm, begged him not to take cold,
+but the old gentleman would not stop until Polly had made a pretense of
+dancing a few steps with him, after which he again piped, "Bravo," vowed
+he must have a whisky, and invited Sylvia and Jack to come inside and
+join them.
+
+"Dashwood is my name, Major-General Dashwood, and this is Mrs.
+Gainsborough."
+
+"Come along," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "The captain--"
+
+"She will call me Captain," said the general, with a chuckle. "Obstinate
+gal! Knew me first when I was a captain, thirty-six years ago, and has
+never called me anything since. What a woman, though!"
+
+"He's very gay to-night. We've been celebrating our anniversary," Mrs.
+Gainsborough explained, while the four of them walked along a gravel
+path toward a small square creeper-covered house at the end of a very
+long garden.
+
+"We met first at the Argyll Rooms in March, 1867, and in September,
+1869, Mulberry Cottage was finished. I planted those mulberry-trees
+myself, and they'll outlive us both," said the general.
+
+"Now don't let's have any more dismals," Mrs. Gainsborough begged.
+"We've had quite enough to-night, talking over old times."
+
+Mulberry Cottage was very comfortable inside, full of mid-Victorian
+furniture and ornaments that suited its owner, who, Sylvia now perceived
+by the orange lamplight, was even fatter than she had seemed at first.
+Her hair, worn in a chignon, was black, her face was rosy and large,
+almost monumental, with a plinth of chins.
+
+The general so much enjoyed having a fresh audience for his tales, and
+sat so long over the whisky, that Mrs. Gainsborough became worried.
+
+"Bob, you ought to go. You know I don't like to argue before strangers,
+but your sister will be getting anxious. Miss Dashwood's quite alone,"
+she explained to her guests. "I wonder if you'd mind walking back with
+him?" she whispered to Sylvia. "He lives in Redcliffe Gardens. That's
+close to you, isn't it?"
+
+"If we can have music all the way, by gad! of course," said the general,
+standing up so straight that Sylvia was afraid he would bump his head on
+the ceiling.
+
+"Now, Bob dear, don't get too excited and do keep your muffler well
+wrapped round your throat."
+
+The general insisted on having one more glass for the sake of old times,
+and there was a short delay in the garden, because he stuck his cane
+fast in the ground to show the size of the mulberry-trees when he
+planted them, but ultimately they said good night to Mrs. Gainsborough,
+upon whom Sylvia promised to call next day, and set out for Redcliffe
+Gardens to the sound of guitars.
+
+General Dashwood turned round from time to time to shake his cane at
+passers-by that presumed to stare at the unusual sight of an old
+gentleman, respectable in his dress and demeanor, escorted down Fulham
+Road by two musicians.
+
+"Do you see anything so damned odd in our appearance?" he asked Sylvia.
+
+"Nothing at all," she assured him.
+
+"Sensible gal! I've a very good mind to knock down the next scoundrel
+who stares at us."
+
+Presently the general, on whom the fresh air was having an effect, took
+Sylvia's arm and grew confidential.
+
+"Go on playing," he commanded Jack Airdale. "I'm only talking business.
+The fact is," he said to Sylvia, "I'm worried about Polly. Hope I shall
+live another twenty years, but fact is, my dear, I've never really got
+over that wound of mine at Balaclava. Damme! I've never been the same
+man since."
+
+Sylvia wondered what he could have been before.
+
+"Naturally she's well provided for. Bob Dashwood always knew how to
+treat a woman. No wife, no children, you understand me? But it's the
+loneliness. She ought to have somebody with her. She's a wonderful
+woman, and she was a handsome gal. Damme! she's still handsome--what?
+Fifty-five you know. By gad, yes. And I'm seventy. But it's the
+loneliness. Ah, dear, if the gods had been kind; but then she'd have
+probably been married by now."
+
+The general blew his nose, sighed, and shook his head. Sylvia asked
+tenderly how long the daughter had lived.
+
+"Never lived at all," said the general, stopping dead and opening his
+eyes very wide, as he looked at Sylvia. "Never was born. Never was going
+to be born. Hale and hearty, but too late now, damme! I've taken a fancy
+to you. Sensible gal! Damned sensible. Why don't you go and live with
+Polly?"
+
+In order to give Sylvia time to reflect upon her answer, the general
+skipped along for a moment to the tune that Jack was playing.
+
+"Nothing between you and him?" he asked, presently, indicating Jack with
+his cane.
+
+Sylvia shook her head.
+
+"Thought not. Very well, then, why don't you go and live with Polly?
+Give you time to look round a bit. Understand what you feel about
+playing for your bread and butter like this. Finest thing in the world
+music, if you haven't got to do it. Go and see Polly to-morrow. I spoke
+to her about it to-night. She'll be delighted. So shall I. Here we are
+in Redcliffe Gardens. Damned big house and only myself and my sister to
+live in it. Live there like two needles in a haystack. Won't ask you in.
+Damned inhospitable, but no good because I shall have to go to bed at
+once. Perhaps you wouldn't mind pressing the bell? Left my latch-key in
+me sister's work-basket."
+
+The door opened, and the general, after bidding Sylvia and Jack a
+courteous good night, marched up his front-door steps with as much
+martial rigidity as he could command.
+
+On the way back to Finborough Road, Sylvia, who had been attracted to
+the general's suggestion, postponed raising the question with Jack by
+telling him about her adventure in Redcliffe Gardens when she threw the
+bag of chestnuts through the window. She did not think it fair, however,
+to make any other arrangement without letting him know, and before she
+went to see Mrs. Gainsborough the next day she announced her idea and
+asked him if he would be much hurt by her backing out of the busking.
+
+"My dear girl, of course not," said Jack. "As a matter of fact, I've had
+rather a decent offer to tour in a show through the East. I should
+rather like to see India and all that. I didn't say anything about it,
+because I didn't want to let you down. However, if you're all right, I'm
+all right."
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough by daylight appealed to Sylvia as much as ever. She
+told her what the general had said, and Mrs. Gainsborough begged her to
+come that very afternoon.
+
+"The only thing is," Sylvia objected, "I've got a friend, a girl, who's
+away at present, and she might want to go on living with me."
+
+"Let her come too," Mrs. Gainsborough cried. "The more the merrier. Good
+Land! What a set-out we shall have. The captain won't know himself. He's
+very fond of me, you know. But it would be more jolly for him to have
+some youngsters about. He's that young. Upon my word, you'd think he was
+a boy. And he's always the same. Oh, dearie me! the times we've had,
+you'd hardly believe. Life with him was a regular circus."
+
+So it was arranged that Sylvia should come at once to live with Mrs.
+Gainsborough in Tinderbox Lane, and Jack went off to the East.
+
+The general used to visit them nearly every afternoon, but never in the
+evening.
+
+"Depend upon it, Sylvia," Mrs. Gainsborough said, "he got into rare hot
+water with his sister the other night. Of course it was an exception,
+being our anniversary, and I dare say next March, if we're all spared,
+he'll be allowed another evening. It's a great pity, though, that we
+didn't meet first in June. So much more seasonable for jollifications.
+But there, he was young and never looked forward to being old."
+
+The general was not spared for another anniversary. Scarcely a month
+after Sylvia had gone to live with Mrs. Gainsborough, he died very
+quietly in the night. His sister came herself to break the news, a frail
+old lady who seemed very near to joining her brother upon the longest
+journey.
+
+"She'll never be able to keep away from him," Mrs. Gainsborough sobbed.
+"She'll worry and fret herself for fear he might catch cold in his
+coffin. And look at me! As healthy and rosy as a great radish!"
+
+The etiquette of the funeral caused Mrs. Gainsborough considerable
+perplexity.
+
+"Now tell me, Sylvia, ought I or ought I not to wear a widow's veil?
+Miss Dashwood inviting me in that friendly way, I do want to show that I
+appreciate her kindness. I know that strictly we weren't married. I dare
+say nowadays it would be different, but people was much more
+old-fashioned about marrying ballet-girls when I was young. Still, it
+doesn't seem hardly decent for me to go gallivanting to his funeral in
+me black watered silk, the same as if I were going to the upper boxes of
+a theater with Mrs. Marsham or Mrs. Beardmore."
+
+Sylvia told Mrs. Gainsborough that in her opinion a widow's cap at the
+general's funeral would be like the dash of mauve at the wedding in the
+story. She suggested the proper thing to do would be to buy a new black
+dress unprofaned by visits to the upper boxes.
+
+"If I can get such an out size in the time," Mrs. Gainsborough sighed,
+"which is highly doubtful."
+
+However, the new dress was obtained, and Mrs. Gainsborough went off to
+the funeral at Brompton.
+
+"On, it was a beautiful ceremony," she sobbed, when she got home. "And
+really Miss Dashwood, well, she couldn't have been nicer. Oh, my poor
+dear captain, if only all the clergyman said was true. And yet I should
+feel more comfortable somehow if it wasn't. Though I suppose if it was
+true there'd be no objection to our meeting in heaven as friends only.
+Dear me, it all sounded so real when I heard the clergyman talking about
+it. Just as if he was going up in a lift, as you might say. So natural
+it sounded. 'A gallant soldier,' he said, 'a veteran of the Crimea.' So
+he was gallant, the dear captain. You should have seen him lay out two
+roughs who tried to snatch me watch and chain once at the Epsom Derby.
+He was a gentleman, too. I'm sure nobody ever treated any woman kinder
+than he treated me. Seventy years old he was. Captain Bob Dashwood of
+the Seventeenth Hussars. I can see him now as he used to be. He liked to
+come stamping up the garden. Oh, he was a stamper, and 'Polly,' he
+hollered out, 'get on your frills. Here's Dick Avon--the Markiss of Avon
+_that_ was' (oh, he was a wild thing) 'and Jenny Ward' (you know, she
+threw herself off Westminster Bridge and caused such a stir in Jubilee
+year). People talked a lot about it at the time. I remember we drove to
+the Star and Garter at Richmond that day--a lovely June day it was--and
+caused quite a sensation, because we all looked so smart. Oh, my Bob, my
+Bob, it only seems yesterday."
+
+Sylvia consoled Mrs. Gainsborough and rejoiced in her assurance that she
+did not know what she should have done.
+
+"Fancy him thinking about me being so lonely and wanting you to come and
+live with me. Depend upon it he knew he was going to die all of a
+sudden," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Oh, there's no doubt he was clever
+enough to have been a doctor. Only of course with his family he had to
+be a soldier."
+
+Sylvia mostly spent these spring days in the garden with Mrs.
+Gainsborough, listening to her tales about the past and helping her to
+overlook the labors of the jobbing gardener who came in twice a week.
+Her landlady or hostess (for the exact relation was not yet determined)
+was very strict in this regard, because her father had been a nursery
+gardener and she insisted upon a peculiar knowledge of the various ways
+in which horticultural obligations could be avoided. When Sylvia raised
+the question of her status at Mulberry Cottage, Mrs. Gainsborough always
+begged her not to be in a hurry to settle anything; later on, when
+Sylvia was able to earn some money, she should pay for her board, but
+payment for her lodging, so long as Mrs. Gainsborough was alive and the
+house was not burned to the ground, was never to be mentioned. That was
+certainly the captain's intention and it must be respected.
+
+Sylvia often went to see Mrs. Gowndry in Finborough Road in case there
+should be news of Lily. Her old landlady was always good enough to say
+that she missed her, and in her broken-up existence the affection even
+of Mrs. Gowndry was very grateful.
+
+"I've told me old man to keep a good lookout for her," said Mrs.
+Gowndry.
+
+"He's hardly likely to meet her at his work," Sylvia said.
+
+"Certainly not. No. But he often goes up to get a breath of
+air--well--it isn't to be expected that he wouldn't. I often say to him
+when he comes home a bit grumblified that his profession is as bad as a
+miner's, and _they_ only does eight hours, whereas in his lavatory they
+does twelve. Too long, too long, and it must be fidgety work, with
+people bobbing in and out all the time and always in a hurry, as you
+might say. Of course now and again you get a lodger who makes himself
+unpleasant, but, year in year out, looking after lodgers is a more
+peaceful sort of a life than looking after a lavatory. Don't you be
+afraid, Miss Scarlett. If ever a letter comes for you our Tommy shall
+bring it straight round, and he's a boy as can be trusted not to lose
+anything he's given. You wouldn't lose the pretty lady's letter, would
+you, Tommy? You never lose nothing, do you?"
+
+"I lost a acid-drop once."
+
+"There, fancy him remembering. That's a hit for his ma, that is. He'd
+only half sucked this here acid-drop and laid it aside to finish sucking
+it when he went up to bed, and I must have swept it up, not thinking
+what it was. Fancy him remembering. He don't talk much, but he's a
+artful one."
+
+Tommy had a bagful of acid-drops soon after this, for he brought a
+letter to Sylvia from Lily:
+
+     DEAR SYLVIA,--I suppose you're awfully angry with me, but Claude
+     went on tour a month ago, and I hate being alone. I wonder if this
+     will find you. I'm staying in rotten rooms in Camden Town. 14
+     Winchester Terrace. Send me a card if you're in London.
+
+     Loving, LILY.
+
+Sylvia immediately went over to Camden Town and brought Lily away from
+the rooms, which were indeed "rotten." When she had installed her at
+Mulberry Cottage she worked herself up to having a clear understanding
+with Lily, but when it came to the point she felt it was useless to
+scold her except in fun, as a child scolds her doll. She did, however,
+treat her henceforth in what Mrs. Gainsborough called a "highly
+dictatorial way." Sylvia thought she could give Lily the appearance of
+moral or immoral energy, however impossible it might be to give her the
+reality. With this end in view she made Lily's will entirely subordinate
+to her own, which was not difficult. The affection that Sylvia now had
+for her was not so much tender as careful, the affection one might feel
+for a bicycle rather than for a horse. She was always brutally frank
+with herself about their relation to each other, and because she never
+congratulated herself upon her kindness she was able to sustain her
+affection.
+
+"There is nothing so fickle as a virtuous impulse," Sylvia declared to
+herself. "It's a kind of moral usury which is always looking for a
+return on the investment. The moment the object fails to pay an
+exorbitant interest in gratitude, the impulse to speculate withers up.
+The lowest circle in hell should be reserved for people who try to help
+others and cannot understand why their kindness is not appreciated.
+Really that was Philip's trouble. He never got over being hurt that I
+didn't perpetually remind him of his splendid behavior toward me. I
+suppose I'm damned inhuman. Well, well, I couldn't have stood those
+three months after I left him if I hadn't been."
+
+The affair between Lily and Claude Raglan was not much discussed. He
+had, it seemed, only left her because his career was at stake; he had
+received a good offer and she had not wished to detain him.
+
+"But is it over between you?" Sylvia demanded.
+
+"Yes, of course, it's over--at any rate, for a long time to come," Lily
+answered. "He cried when he left me. He really was a nice boy. If he
+lives, he thinks he will be a success--a real success. He introduced me
+to a lot of nice boys."
+
+"That was rash of him," Sylvia laughed. "Were they as nice as the
+lodgings he introduced you to?"
+
+"No, don't laugh at him. He couldn't afford anything else."
+
+"But why in Heaven's name, if you wanted to play around together, had
+you got to leave Finborough Road?"
+
+Lily blushed faintly. "You won't be angry if I tell you?"
+
+Sylvia shook her head.
+
+"Claude said he couldn't bear the idea that you were looking at us. He
+said it spoiled everything."
+
+"What did he think I was going to do?" Sylvia snapped. "Put pepper on
+the hymeneal pillow?"
+
+"You said you wouldn't be angry."
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"Well, don't use long words, because it makes me think you are."
+
+Soon after Lily came to Tinderbox Lane, Sylvia met Dorothy Lonsdale with
+a very lovely dark girl called Olive Fanshawe, a fellow-member of the
+Vanity chorus. Dorothy was glad to see her, principally, Sylvia thought,
+because she was able to talk about lunch at Romano's and supper at the
+Savoy.
+
+"Look here," Sylvia said. "A little less of the Queen of Sheba, if you
+don't mind. Don't forget I'm one of the blokes as is glad to smell the
+gratings outside a baker's."
+
+Miss Fanshawe laughed, and Sylvia looked at her quickly, wondering if
+she were worth while.
+
+Dorothy was concerned to hear she was still with Lily. "That dreadful
+girl," she simpered.
+
+"Oh, go to hell," said Sylvia, sharply, and walked off.
+
+Next day a note came from Dorothy to invite her and Lily to tea at the
+flat she shared with Olive.
+
+"Wonderful how attractive rudeness is," Sylvia commented.
+
+"Oh, do let's go. Look, she lives in Half Moon Street," Lily said.
+
+"And a damned good address for the demi-monde," Sylvia added.
+
+However, the tea-party was definitely a success, and for the rest of the
+summer Sylvia and Lily spent a lot of time on the river with what Sylvia
+called the semicircle of intimate friends they had brought away from
+Half Moon Street. She grew very fond of Olive Fanshawe and warned her
+against her romantic adoration of Dorothy.
+
+"But you're just as romantic over Lily," Olive argued.
+
+"Not a single illusion left, my dear," Sylvia assured her. "Besides, I
+should never compare Lily with Dorothy. Dorothy is more beautiful, more
+ambitious, more mercenary. She'll probably marry a lord. She's acquired
+the art of getting a lot for nothing to a perfection that could only be
+matched by a politician or a girl with the same brown eyes in the same
+glory of light-brown hair. And when it suits her she'll go back on her
+word just as gracefully, and sell her best friend as readily as a
+politician will sell his country."
+
+"You're very down on politicians. I think there's something so romantic
+about them," Olive declared. "Young politicians, of course."
+
+"My dear, you'd think a Bradshaw romantic."
+
+"It is sometimes," said Olive.
+
+"Well, I know two young politicians," Sylvia continued. "A Liberal and a
+Conservative. They both spend their whole time in hoping I sha'n't
+suggest walking down Bond Street with them, the Liberal because I may
+see a frock and the Conservative because he may meet a friend. They
+both make love to me as if they were addressing their future
+constituents, with a mixture of flattery, condescension, and best
+clothes; but they reserve all their affection for the constituency. As I
+tell them, if they'd fondle the constituency and nurse me, I should
+endure their company more easily. Unhappily, they both think I'm
+intelligent, and a man who admires a woman's intelligence is like a
+woman who admires her friend's looking-glass--each one is granting an
+audience to himself."
+
+"At any rate," said Olive, "you've managed to make yourself quite a
+mystery. All the men we know are puzzled by you."
+
+"Tell them, my dear, I'm quite simple. I represent the original
+conception of the Hetæra, a companion. I don't want to be made love to,
+and every man who makes love to me I dislike. If I ever do fall in love,
+I'll be a man's slave. Of that I'm sure. So don't utter dark warnings,
+for I've warned myself already. I do want a certain number of
+things--nice dresses, because I owe them to myself, good books,
+and--well, really, I think that's all. In return for the dresses and the
+books--I suppose one ought to add an occasional fiver just to show
+there's no ill feeling about preferring to sleep in my own room--in
+return for very little. I'm ready to talk, walk, laugh, sing, dance,
+tell incomparably bawdy stories, and, what is after all the most
+valuable return of all, I'm ready to sit perfectly still and let myself
+be bored to death while giving him an idea that I'm listening
+intelligently. Of course, sometimes I do listen intelligently without
+being bored. In that case I let him off with books only."
+
+"You really are an extraordinary girl," said Olive.
+
+"You, on the other hand, my dear," Sylvia went on, "always give every
+man the hope that if he's wise and tender, and of course
+lavish--ultimately all men believe in the pocket--he will be able to cry
+Open Sesame to the mysterious treasure of romantic love that he discerns
+in your dark eyes, in your caressing voice, and in your fervid
+aspirations. In the end you'll give it all to a curly-headed actor and
+live happily ever afterward at Ravenscourt Park. Farewell to Coriolanus
+in his smart waistcoat; farewell to Julius Cæsar and his amber
+cigarette-holder; farewell to every nincompoop with a top-hat as bright
+as a halo; farewell incidentally to Dolly Lonsdale, who'll discover that
+Ravenscourt Park is too difficult for the chauffeur to find."
+
+"Oh, Sylvia, shut up!" Olive said. "I believe you drank too much
+champagne at lunch."
+
+"I'm glad you reminded me," Sylvia cried. "By Jove! I'd forgotten the
+fizz. That's where we all meet on common ground--or rather, I should say
+in common liquid. It sounds like mixed bathing. It is a kind of mixed
+bathing, after all. You're quite right, Olive, whatever our different
+tastes in men, clothes, and behavior, we all must have champagne.
+Champagne is a bloody sight thicker than water, as the prodigal said
+when his father uncorked a magnum to wash down the fatted calf."
+
+Gradually Sylvia did succeed in sorting out from the various men a few
+who were content to accept the terms of friendship she offered. She had
+to admit that most of them fell soon or late, and with each new man she
+gave less and took more. As regards Lily, she tried to keep her as
+unapproachable as herself, but it was not always possible. Sometimes
+with a shrug of the shoulders she let Lily go her own way, though she
+was always hard as steel with the fortunate suitor. Once a rich young
+financier called Hausberg, who had found Lily somewhat expensive,
+started a theory that Sylvia was living on her friend; she heard of the
+slander and dealt with it very directly. The young man in question was
+anxious to set Lily up in a flat of her own. Sylvia let Lily appear to
+view the plan with favor. The flat was taken and furnished; a date was
+fixed for Lily's entrance; the young man was given the latch-key and
+told to come at midnight. When he arrived, there was nobody in the flat
+but a chimpanzee that Sylvia had bought at Jamrack's. She and Lily were
+at Brighton with Arthur Lonsdale and Tony Clarehaven, whom they had
+recently met again at a Covent Garden ball.
+
+They were both just down from Oxford, and Lonsdale had taken a great
+fancy to Lily. He was a jolly youth, whose father, Lord Cleveden, had
+consented after a struggle to let him go into partnership with a
+distinguished professional motorist. It was with him that Dorothy
+Lonsdale claimed distant kinship. Clarehaven's admiration for Dorothy
+had not diminished; somebody had told him that the best way to get hold
+of her would be to make her jealous. This was his object in inviting
+Sylvia to Brighton. Sylvia agreed to go, partly to tease Dorothy, partly
+to disappoint Clarehaven. Lonsdale had helped her to get the chimpanzee
+into the flat, and all the way down to Brighton they laughed.
+
+"My word, you know!" Lonsdale chuckled, "the jolly old chimpanzee will
+probably eat the wall-paper. What do you think Hausberg will say when he
+opens the door?"
+
+"I expect he'll say, 'Are you there, Lily?'" Sylvia suggested.
+
+"What do you think the jolly old chimpanzee will do? Probably bite his
+ear off--what? Topping. Good engine this. We're doing fifty-nine or an
+unripe sixty. Why does a chicken cross the road? No answer, thank you,
+this time. Must slow down a bit. There's a trap somewhere here. I say,
+you know, I've got a sister called Sylvia. Hullo! hullo! Mind your hoop,
+Tommy! Too late. Funeral on Friday. Colonial papers please copy. I
+wonder how they'll get the chimpanzee out again. I told the hall porter,
+when he cast a cold and glassy eye on the crate, it was a marble Venus
+that Mr. Hausberg was going to use as a hat-stand. My word! I expect the
+jolly old flat looks like the last days of Pompeii by now. When I undid
+the door of the crate the brute was making a noise like a discontented
+cistern. I rapidly scattered Brazil nuts and bananas on the floor to
+occupy his mind and melted away like a strawberry ice on a grill. Hullo!
+We're getting into Brighton."
+
+Clarehaven did not enjoy his week-end, for it consisted entirely of a
+lecture by Sylvia on his behavior. This caused him to drink many more
+whisky-and-sodas than usual, and he came back to London on Monday with a
+bad headache, which he attributed to Sylvia's talking.
+
+"My dear man, _I_ haven't got a mouth. You have," she said.
+
+This week-end caused a quarrel between Sylvia and Dorothy, for which she
+was not sorry. She had recently met a young painter, Ronald Walker, who
+wanted Lily to sit for him; he had taken them once or twice to the Café
+Royal, which Sylvia had found a pleasant change from the society of Half
+Moon Street. Soon after this Lonsdale began a liaison with Queenie
+Molyneux, of the Frivolity Theater. The only member of the Half Moon
+Street set with whom Sylvia kept up a friendship was Olive Fanshawe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+During her second year at Mulberry Cottage Sylvia achieved an existence
+that, save for the absence of any one great motive like art or love, was
+complete. She had also one real friend in Jack Airdale, who had returned
+from his tour. Apart from the pleasant security of knowing that he would
+always be content with good-fellowship only, he encouraged her to
+suppose that somewhere, could she but find the first step, a career lay
+before her. Sylvia did not in her heart believe in this career, but in
+moments of depression Jack's confidence was of the greatest comfort, and
+she was always ready to play with the notion, particularly as it seemed
+to provide a background for her present existence and to cover the
+futility of its perfection. Jack was anxious that she should try to get
+on the proper stage, but Sylvia feared to destroy by premature failure a
+part of the illusion of ultimate success she continued to allow herself
+by finally ruling out the theater as one of the possible channels to
+that career. In the summer Lily became friendly with one or two men whom
+Sylvia could not endure, but a lassitude had descended upon her and she
+lacked any energy to stop the association. As a matter of fact she was
+sickening for diphtheria at the time, and while she was in the hospital
+Lily took to frequenting the Orient promenade with these new friends. As
+soon as Sylvia came out they were banished; but each time that she
+intervened on Lily's behalf it seemed to her a little less worth while.
+Nevertheless, finding that Lily was bored by her own habit of staying in
+at night, she used much against her will to accompany her very often to
+various places of amusement without a definite invitation from a man to
+escort them.
+
+One day at the end of December Mrs. Gainsborough came home from
+shopping with two tickets for a fancy-dress dance at the Redcliffe Hall
+in Fulham Road. When the evening arrived Sylvia did not want to go, for
+the weather was raw and foggy; but Mrs. Gainsborough was so much
+disappointed at her tickets not being used that to please her Sylvia
+agreed to go. It seemed unlikely to be an amusing affair, so she and
+Lily went in the most ordinary of their fancy dresses as masked
+Pierrettes. The company, as they had anticipated, was quite
+exceptionally dull.
+
+"My dear, it's like a skating-rink on Saturday afternoon," Sylvia said.
+"We'll have one more dance together and then go home."
+
+They were standing at the far end of the hall near the orchestra, and
+Sylvia was making disdainful comments upon the various couples that were
+passing out to refresh themselves or flirt in the draughty corridors.
+
+Suddenly Sylvia saw a man in evening dress pushing his way in their
+direction, regardless of what ribbons he tore or toes he outraged in his
+transit. He was a young man of about twenty-three or twenty-four, with a
+countenance in which eagerness was curiously mixed with impassivity.
+Sylvia saw him as one sees a picture on first entering a gallery, which
+one postpones visiting with a scarcely conscious and yet perfectly
+deliberate anticipation of pleasure later on. She continued talking to
+Lily, who had her back to the new-comer; while she talked she was aware
+that all her own attention was fixed upon this new-comer and that she
+was asking herself the cause of the contradictions in his face and
+deciding that it was due to the finely carved immobile mouth beneath
+such eager eyes. Were they brown or blue? The young man had reached
+them, and from that immobile mouth came in accents that were almost like
+despair a salutation to Lily. Sylvia felt for a moment as if she had
+been wounded; she saw that Lily was looking at her with that expression
+she always put on when she thought Sylvia was angry with her; then after
+what seemed an age turned round slowly to the young man and, lifting her
+mask, engaged in conversation with him. Sylvia felt that she was
+trespassing upon the borders of great emotion and withdrew out of
+hearing, until Lily beckoned her forward to introduce the young man as
+Mr. Michael Fane. Sylvia did not raise her mask, and after nodding to
+him again retired from the conversation.
+
+"But this is absurd," she said to herself, after a while; and abruptly
+raising her mask she broke in upon the duologue. The music had begun. He
+was asking Lily to dance, and she, waiting for Sylvia's leave in a way
+that made Sylvia want to slap her, was hesitating.
+
+"What rot, Lily!" she exclaimed, impatiently. "Of course you may dance."
+
+The young man turned toward Sylvia and smiled. A moment later he and
+Lily had waltzed away.
+
+"Good God!" said Sylvia to herself. "Am I going mad? A youth smiles at
+me and I feel inclined to cry. What is this waltz they're playing?"
+
+She looked at one of the sheets of music, but the name was nowhere
+legible, and she nearly snatched it away from the player in
+exasperation. Nothing seemed to matter in the world except that she
+should know the name of this waltz. Without thinking what she was doing
+she thumped the clarinet-player on the shoulder, who stopped indignantly
+and asked if she was trying to knock his teeth out.
+
+"What waltz are you playing? What waltz are you playing?"
+
+"'Waltz Amarousse.' Perhaps you'll punch one of the strings next time,
+miss?"
+
+"Happy New-Year," Sylvia laughed, and the clarinet-player with a
+disgusted glance turned round to his music again.
+
+By the time the dance was over and the other two had rejoined her,
+Sylvia was laughing at herself; but they thought she was laughing at
+them. Fane and Lily danced several more dances together, and gradually
+Sylvia made up her mind that she disapproved of this new intimacy, this
+sudden invasion of Lily's life from the past from which she should have
+cut herself off as completely as Sylvia had done from her own. What
+right had Lily to complicate their existence in this fashion? How
+unutterably dull this masquerade was! She whispered to Lily in the next
+interval that she was tired and wanted to go home.
+
+The fog outside was very dense. Fane took their arms to cross the road,
+and Sylvia, though he caught her arm close to him, felt drearily how
+mechanical its gesture was toward her, how vital toward Lily. Neither of
+her companions spoke to each other, and she asked them questions about
+their former friendship, which Lily did not answer because she was
+evidently afraid of her annoyance, and which he did not answer because
+he did not hear. Sylvia had made up her mind that Fane should not enter
+Mulberry Cottage, when Lily whispered to her that she should ask him,
+but at the last moment she remembered his smile and invited him to
+supper. A strange shyness took possession of her, which she tried to
+cover by exaggeration, almost, she thought, hysterical fooling with Mrs.
+Gainsborough that lasted until two o'clock in the morning of New-Year's
+day, when Michael Fane went home after exacting a promise from the two
+girls to lunch with him at Kettner's that afternoon. Lily was so sleepy
+that she did not rise to see him out. Sylvia was glad of the
+indifference.
+
+Next morning Sylvia found out that Michael was a "nice boy" whom Lily
+had known in West Kensington when she was seventeen. He had been awfully
+in love with her, and her mother had been annoyed because he wanted to
+marry her. He had only been seventeen himself, and like many other
+school-boy loves of those days this one had just ended somehow, but
+exactly how Lily could not recall. She wished that Sylvia would not go
+on asking so many questions; she really could not remember anything more
+about it. They had gone once for a long drive in a cab, and there had
+been a row about that at home.
+
+"Are you in love with him now?" Sylvia demanded.
+
+"No, of course not. How could I be?"
+
+Sylvia was determined that she never should be, either: there should be
+no more Claude Raglans to interfere with their well-devised existence.
+
+During the next fortnight Sylvia took care that Lily and Michael should
+never be alone together, and she tried very often, after she discovered
+that Michael was sensitive, to shock him by references to their life,
+and with an odd perverseness to try particularly to shock him about
+herself by making brutally coarse remarks in front of Lily, taking
+pleasure in his embarrassment. Yet there was in the end little pleasure
+in shocking him, for he had no conventional niceness; yet there was a
+pleasure in hurting him, a fierce pleasure.
+
+"Though why on earth I bother about his feelings, I can't imagine,"
+Sylvia said to herself. "All I know is that he's an awful bore and makes
+us break all sorts of engagements with other people. You liar! You know
+he's not a bore, and you know that you don't care a damn how many
+engagements you break. Don't pose to yourself. You're jealous of him
+because you think that Lily may get really fond of him. You don't want
+her to get fond of him, because you don't think she's good enough for
+him. You don't want him to get fond of _her_."
+
+The boldness of this thought, the way in which it had attacked the
+secret recesses of her being, startled Sylvia. It was almost a sensation
+of turning pale at herself, of fearing to understand herself, that made
+her positively stifle the mood and flee from these thoughts, which might
+violate her personality.
+
+Down-stairs, there was a telegram from Olive Fanshawe at Brighton,
+begging Sylvia to come at once; she was terribly unhappy; Sylvia could
+scarcely tear herself away from Mulberry Cottage at such a moment even
+for Olive, but, knowing that if she did not go she would be sorry, she
+went.
+
+Sylvia found Olive in a state of collapse. Dorothy Lonsdale and she had
+been staying in Brighton for a week's holiday, and yesterday Dorothy had
+married Clarehaven. Sylvia laughed.
+
+"Oh, Sylvia, don't laugh!" Olive begged. "It was perfectly dreadful. Of
+course it was a great shock to me, but I did not show it. I told her she
+could count on me as a pal to help her in every way. And what do you
+think she said? Sylvia, you'll never guess. It was too cruel. She said
+to me in a voice of ice, dear--really, a voice of ice--she said the best
+way I could help her was by not seeing her any more. She did not intend
+to go near the stage door of a theater again. She did not want to know
+any of her stage friends any more. She didn't even say she was sorry;
+she was quite calm. She was like ice, Sylvia dear. Clarehaven came in
+and she asked if he'd telegraphed to his mother, and when he said he
+had she got up as if she'd been calling on me quite formally and shook
+hands, and said: 'Good-by, Olive. We're going down to Clare Court
+to-morrow, and I don't expect we shall see each other again for a long
+time.' Clarehaven said what rot and that I must come down to Devonshire
+and stay with them, and Dolly froze him, my dear; she froze him with a
+look. I never slept all night, and the book I was reading began to
+repeat itself, and I thought I was going mad; but this morning I found
+the printers had made some mistake and put sixteen pages twice over. But
+I really thought I was going mad, so I wired for you. Oh, Sylvia,
+Sylvia, say something to console me! She was like ice, dear, really like
+a block of ice."
+
+"If she'd only waited till you had found the curly-headed actor it
+wouldn't have mattered so much," Sylvia said.
+
+Poor Olive really was on the verge of a nervous collapse, and Sylvia
+stayed with her three days, though it was agony to leave Lily in London
+with Michael Fane. Nor could she talk of her own case to Olive. It would
+seem like a competitive sorrow, a vulgar bit of egotistic assumption to
+suit the occasion.
+
+When Sylvia got back to Mulberry Cottage she found an invitation from
+Jack Airdale to dine at Richmond and go to a dance with him afterward.
+Conscious from something in Michael's watchful demeanor of a development
+in the situation, she was pleased to be able to disquiet him by
+insisting that Lily should go with her.
+
+On the way, Sylvia extracted from Lily that Michael had asked her to
+marry him. It took all Jack Airdale's good nature not to be angry with
+Sylvia that night--as she tore the world to shreds. At the moment when
+Lily had told her she had felt with a despair that was not communicable,
+as Olive's despair had been, how urgent it was to stop Michael from
+marrying Lily. She was not good enough for him. The knowledge rang in
+her brain like a discordant clangor of bells, and Sylvia knew in that
+moment that the real reason of her thinking this was jealousy of Lily.
+The admission tortured her pride, and after a terrible night in which
+the memory of Olive's grief interminably dwelt upon and absorbed helped
+her to substitute the pretense, so passionately invoked that it almost
+ceased to be a pretense, that she was opposing the marriage partly
+because Michael would never keep Lily faithful, partly because she could
+not bear the idea of losing her friend.
+
+When, the next day, Sylvia faced Michael for the discussion of the
+marriage, she was quite sure not merely that he had never attracted her,
+but even that she hated him and, what was more deadly, despised him. She
+taunted him with wishing to marry Lily for purely sentimental reasons,
+for the gratification of a morbid desire to save her. She remembered
+Philip, and all the hatred she had felt for Philip's superiority was
+transferred to Michael. She called him a prig and made him wince by
+speaking of Lily and herself as "tarts," exacting from the word the
+uttermost tribute of its vulgarity. She dwelt on Lily's character and
+evolved a theory of woman's ownership by man that drove her into such
+illogical arguments and exaggerated pretensions that Michael had some
+excuse for calling her hysterical. The dispute left Lily on one side for
+a time and became personal to herself and him. He told her she was
+jealous. In an access of outraged pride she forgot that he was referring
+to her jealousy about Lily, and to any one less obsessed by an idea than
+he was she would have revealed her secret. Suddenly he seemed to give
+way. When he was going he told her that she hated him because he loved
+Lily and hated him twice as much because his love was returned.
+
+Sylvia felt she would go mad when Michael said that he loved Lily; but
+he was thinking it was because Lily loved him that she was biting her
+nails and glaring at him. Then he asked her what college at Oxford her
+husband had been at. She had spoken of Philip during their quarrel. This
+abrupt linking of himself with Philip restored her balance, and coolly
+she began to arrange in her mind for Lily's withdrawal from London for a
+while. Of passion and fury there was nothing left except a calm
+determination to disappoint Master Michael. She remembered Olive
+Fanshawe's, "Like ice, dear, she was like a block of ice." She, too, was
+like a block of ice as she watched him walking away down the long
+garden.
+
+When Michael had gone Sylvia told Lily that marriage with him was
+impossible.
+
+"Why do you want to be married?" she demanded. "Was your mother so happy
+in her marriage? I tell you, child, that marriage is almost
+inconceivably dull. What have you got in common with him? Nothing,
+absolutely nothing."
+
+"I'm not a bit anxious to be married," Lily protested. "But when
+somebody goes on and on asking, it's so difficult to refuse. I liked
+Claude better than I like Michael. But Claude had to think about his
+future."
+
+"And what about your future?" Sylvia exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, I expect it'll be all right. Michael has money."
+
+"I say you shall not marry him," Sylvia almost shouted.
+
+"Oh, don't keep on so," Lily fretfully implored. "It gives me a
+headache. I won't marry him if it's going to upset you so much. But you
+mustn't leave me alone with him again, because he worries me just as
+much as you do."
+
+"We'll go away to-morrow," Sylvia announced, abruptly. It flashed upon
+her that she would like to go to Sirene with Lily, but, alas! there was
+not enough money for such a long journey, and Bournemouth or Brighton
+must be the colorless substitute.
+
+Lily cheered up at the idea of going away, and Sylvia was half resentful
+that she could accept parting from Michael so easily. Lily's frocks were
+not ready the next day, and in the morning Michael's ring was heard.
+
+"Oh, now I suppose we shall have more scenes," Lily complained.
+
+Sylvia ran after Mrs. Gainsborough, who was waddling down the garden
+path to open the door.
+
+"Come back, come back at once!" she cried. "You're not to open the
+door."
+
+"Well, there's a nice thing. But it may be the butcher."
+
+"We don't want any meat. It's not the butcher. It's Fane. You're not to
+open the door. We've all gone away."
+
+"Well, don't snap my head off," said Mrs. Gainsborough, turning back
+unwillingly to the house.
+
+All day long at intervals the bell rang.
+
+"The neighbors 'll think the house is on fire," Mrs. Gainsborough
+bewailed.
+
+"Nobody hears it except ourselves, you silly old thing," Sylvia said.
+
+"And what 'll the passers-by think?" Mrs. Gainsborough asked. "It looks
+so funny to see any one standing outside a door, ringing all day long
+like a chimney-sweep who's come on Monday instead of Tuesday. Let me go
+out and tell him you've gone away. I'll hold the door on the jar, the
+same as if I was arguing with a hawker. Now be sensible, Sylvia. I'll
+just pop out, pop my head round the door, and pop back in again."
+
+"You're not to go. Sit down."
+
+"You do order any one about so. I might be a serviette, the way you
+crumple me up. Sylvia, don't keep prodding into me. I may be fat, but I
+have got some feelings left. You're a regular young spiteful. A porter
+wouldn't treat luggage so rough. Give over, Sylvia."
+
+"What a fuss you make about nothing!" Sylvia said.
+
+"Well, that ping-ping-pinging gets on my nerves. I feel as if I were
+coming out in black spots like a domino. Why don't the young fellow give
+over? It's a wonder his fingers aren't worn out."
+
+The ringing continued until nearly midnight in bursts of half an hour at
+a stretch. Next morning Sylvia received a note from Fane in which he
+invited her to be sporting and let him see Lily.
+
+"How I hate that kind of gentlemanly attitude!" she scoffed to herself.
+
+Sylvia wrote as unpleasant a letter as she could invent, which she left
+with Mrs. Gainsborough to be given to Michael when he should call in
+answer to an invitation she had posted for the following day at twelve
+o'clock. Then Lily and she left for Brighton. All the way down in the
+train she kept wondering why she had ended her letter to Michael by
+calling him "my little Vandyck." Suddenly she flew into a rage with
+herself, because she knew that she was making such speculation an excuse
+to conjure his image to her mind.
+
+Toward the end of February Sylvia and Lily came back to Mulberry
+Cottage. Sylvia had awakened one morning with the conviction that it
+was beneath her dignity to interfere further between Lily and Michael.
+She determined to leave everything to fate. She would go and stay with
+Olive for a while, and if Lily went away with Michael, so much the
+better. To hell with both of them. This resolution once taken, Sylvia,
+who had been rather charming to Lily all the time at Brighton, began now
+to treat her with a contempt that was really an expression of the
+contempt she felt for Michael. A week after their return to London she
+spent the whole of one day in ridiculing him so cruelly that even Mrs.
+Gainsborough protested. Then she was seized with an access of penitence,
+and, clasping Lily to her, she almost entreated her to vow that she
+loved her better than any one else in the world. Lily, however, was by
+this time thoroughly sulky and would have nothing to do with Sylvia's
+tardy sweetness. The petulant way in which she shook herself free from
+the embrace at last brought Sylvia up to the point of leaving Lily to
+herself. She should go and stay with Olive Fanshawe, and if, when she
+came back, Lily were still at Mulberry Cottage, she would atone for the
+way she had treated her lately; if she were gone, it would be only one
+more person ruthlessly cut out of her life. It was curious to think of
+everybody--Monkley, Philip, the Organs, Mabel, the twins, Miss Ashley,
+Dorward, all going on with their lives at this moment regardless of her.
+
+"I might just as well be dead," she told herself. "What a fuss people
+make about death!"
+
+Sylvia was shocked to find how much Olive had suffered from Dorothy's
+treatment of her. For the first time in her life she was unable to
+dispose of emotion as mere romantic or sentimental rubbish; there was
+indeed something deeper than the luxury of grief that could thus ennoble
+even a Vanity girl.
+
+"I do try, Sylvia, not to mope all the time. I keep on telling myself
+that, if I really loved Dorothy, I should be glad for her to be Countess
+of Clarehaven, with everything that she wants. She was always a good
+girl. I lived with her more than two years and she was _frightfully_
+strict about men. She deserved to be a countess. And I'm sure she's
+quite right in wanting to cut herself off altogether from the theater.
+I think, you know, she may have meant to be kind in telling me at once
+like that, instead of gradually dropping me, which would have been
+worse, wouldn't it? Only I do miss her so. She was such a lovely thing
+to look at."
+
+"So are you," Sylvia said.
+
+"Ah, but I'm dark, dear, and a dark girl never has that almost unearthly
+beauty that Dolly had."
+
+"Dark girls have often something better than unearthly and seraphic
+beauty," Sylvia said. "They often have a gloriously earthly and human
+faithfulness."
+
+"Ah, you need to tease me about being romantic, but I think it's you
+that's being romantic now. You were quite right, dear; I used to be
+stupidly romantic over foolish little things without any importance, and
+now it all seems such a waste of time. That's really what I feel most of
+all, now that I've lost my friend. It seems to me that every time I
+patted a dog I was wasting time."
+
+Sylvia had a fleeting thought that perhaps Gladys and Enid Worsley might
+have felt like that about her, but in a moment she quenched the fire it
+kindled in her heart. She was not going to bask in the warmth of
+self-pity like a spoiled little girl that hopes she may die to punish
+her brother for teasing her.
+
+"I think, you know," Olive went on, "that girls like us aren't prepared
+to stand sorrow. We've absolutely nothing to fall back upon. I've been
+thinking all these days what an utterly unsatisfactory thing lunch at
+Romano's really is. The only thing in my life that I can look back to
+for comfort is summer at the convent in Belgium. Of course we giggled
+all the time; but all the noise of talking has died away, and I can only
+see a most extraordinary peacefulness. I wonder if the nuns would have
+me as a boarder for a little while this summer. I feel I absolutely must
+go there. It isn't being sentimental, because I never knew Dorothy in
+those days."
+
+Perhaps Olive's regret for her lost friend affected Sylvia. When she
+went back to Mulberry Cottage and found that Lily had gone away,
+notwithstanding her own deliberate provocation of the elopement, she was
+dismayed. There was nothing left of Lily but two old frocks in the
+wardrobe, two old frocks the color of dead leaves; and this poignant
+reminder of a physical loss drove out all the other emotions. She told
+herself that it was ridiculous to be moved like this and she jeered at
+herself for imitating Olive's grief. But it was no use; those two frocks
+affrighted her courage with their deadness. No kind of communion after
+marriage would compensate for the loss of Lily's presence; it was like
+the fading of a flower in the completeness of its death. Even if she had
+been able to achieve the selflessness of Olive and take delight in
+Lily's good fortune, how impossible it was to believe in the triumph of
+this marriage. Lily would either be bored or she would become actively
+miserable--Sylvia snorted at the adverb--and run away or rather slowly
+melt to damnation. It would not even be necessary for her to be
+miserable; any unscrupulous friend of her husband's would have his way
+with her. For an instant Sylvia had a tremor of compassion for Michael,
+but it died in the thought of how such a disillusion would serve him
+right. He had built up this passion out of sentimentality; he was like
+Don Quixote; he was stupid. No doubt he had managed by now to fall in
+love with Lily, but it had never been an inevitable passion, and no pity
+should be shown to lovers that did not love wildly at first sight. They
+alone could plead fate's decrees.
+
+Jack Airdale came to see Sylvia, and he took advantage of her despair to
+press his desire for her to go upon the stage. He was positive that she
+had in her the makings of a great actress. He did not want to talk about
+himself, but he must tell Sylvia that there was a wonderful joy in
+getting on. He would never, of course, do anything very great, but he
+was understudy to some one or other at some theater or other, and there
+was always a chance of really showing what he could do one night or at
+any rate one afternoon. Even Claude was getting on; he had met him the
+other day in a tail coat and a top-hat. Since there had been such an
+outcry against tubercular infection, he had been definitely cured of his
+tendency toward consumption; he had nothing but neurasthenia to contend
+with now.
+
+But Sylvia would not let Jack "speak about her" to the managers he knew.
+She had no intention of continuing as she was at present, but she should
+wait till she was twenty-three before she took any step that would
+involve anything more energetic than turning over the pages of a book;
+she intended to dream away the three months that were left to
+twenty-two. Jack Airdale went away discouraged.
+
+Sylvia met Ronald Walker, who had painted Lily. From him she learned
+that Fane had taken a house for her somewhere near Regent's Park. By a
+curious coincidence, a great friend of his who was also a friend of
+Fane's had helped to acquire the house. Ronald understood that there was
+considerable feeling against the marriage among Fane's friends. What was
+Fane like? He knew several men who knew him, and he seemed to be one of
+those people about whose affairs everybody talked.
+
+"Thank Heaven, nobody bothers about me," said Ronald. "This man Fane
+seems to have money to throw about. I wish he'd buy my picture of Lily.
+You're looking rather down, Sylvia. I suppose you miss her? By Jove!
+what an amazing sitter! She wasn't really beautiful, you know--I mean to
+say with the kind of beauty that lives outside its setting. I don't
+quite mean that, but in my picture of her, which most people consider
+the best thing I've done, she never gave me what I ought to have had
+from such a model. I felt cheated, somehow, as if I'd cut a bough from a
+tree and in doing so destroyed all its grace. It was her gracefulness
+really; and dancing's the only art for that. I can't think why I didn't
+paint you."
+
+"You're not going to begin now," Sylvia assured him.
+
+"Well, of course, now you challenge me," he laughed. "The fact is,
+Sylvia, I've never really seen you in repose till this moment. You were
+always tearing around and talking. Look here, I do want to paint you. I
+say, let me paint you in this room with Mrs. Gainsborough. By Jove! I
+see exactly what I want."
+
+"It sounds as if you wanted an illustration for the Old and New Year,"
+Sylvia said.
+
+In the end, however, she gave way; and really, it passed the time,
+sitting for Ronald Walker with Mrs. Gainsborough in that room where
+nothing of Lily remained.
+
+"Well," Mrs. Gainsborough declared, when the painter had finished. "I
+knew I was fat, but really it's enough to make any one get out of breath
+just to look at any one so fat as you've made me. He hasn't been stingy
+with his paint, I'll say that. But really, you know, it looks like a
+picture of the fat woman in a fair. Now Sylvia's very good. Just the way
+she looks at you with her chin stuck out like a step-ladder. Your eyes
+are very good, too. He's just got that nasty glitter you get into them
+sometimes."
+
+One day in early June, without any warning, Michael Fane revisited
+Mulberry Cottage. Sylvia had often declaimed against him to Mrs.
+Gainsborough, and now while they walked up the garden she could see that
+Mrs. Gainsborough was nervous, and by the way that Michael walked either
+that he was nervous or that something had happened. Sylvia came down the
+steps from the balcony to meet them, and, reading in his countenance
+that he had come to ask her help, she was aware of an immense relief,
+which she hid under an attitude of cold hostility. They sat on the
+garden seat under the budding mulberry-tree, and without any
+preliminaries of conversation Michael told her that he and Lily had
+parted. Sylvia resented an implication in his tone that she would
+somehow be awed by this announcement; she felt bitterly anxious to
+disappoint and humiliate him by her indifference, hoping that he would
+beg her to get Lily back for him. Instead of this he spoke of putting
+her out of his life, and Sylvia perceived that it was not at all to get
+Lily back that he had come to her. She was angry at missing her
+opportunity and she jeered at the stately way in which he confessed his
+failure and his loss; nor would he wince when she mocked his romantic
+manner of speech. At last she was almost driven into the brutality of
+picturing in unforgivable words the details of Lily's infidelity, but
+from this he flinched, stopping her with a gesture. He went on to give
+Sylvia full credit for her victory, to grant that she had been right
+from the first, and gradually by dwelling on the one aspect of Lily that
+was common to both of them, her beauty, he asked her very gently to take
+Lily back to live with her again. Sylvia could not refrain from sneers,
+and he was stung into another allusion to her jealousy, which Sylvia set
+out to disprove almost mathematically, though all the time she was
+afraid of what clear perception he might not have attained through
+sorrow. But he was still obsessed by the salvation of Lily; and Sylvia,
+because she could forgive him for his indifference to her own future
+except so far as it might help Lily, began to mock at herself, to accuse
+herself for those three months after she left Philip, to rake up that
+corpse from its burial-place so that this youth who troubled her very
+soul might turn his face from her in irremediable disgust and set her
+free from the spell he was unaware of casting.
+
+When she had worn herself out with the force of her denunciation both of
+herself and of mankind, he came back to his original request; Sylvia,
+incapable of struggling further, yielded to his perseverance, but with a
+final flicker of self-assertion she begged him not to suppose that she
+was agreeing to take Lily back for any other reason than because she
+wanted to please herself.
+
+Michael began to ask her about Lily's relation to certain men with whom
+he had heard her name linked--with Ronald Walker, and with Lonsdale,
+whom he had known at Oxford. Sylvia told him the facts quite simply; and
+then because she could not bear this kind of self-torture he was
+inflicting on himself, she tried to put out of its agony his last
+sentimental regret for Lily by denying to her and by implication to
+herself also the justification even of a free choice.
+
+"Money is necessary sometimes, you know," she said.
+
+Sylvia expected he would recoil from this, but he accepted it as the
+statement of a natural fact, agreed with its truth, and begged that in
+the future if ever money should be necessary he should be given the
+privilege of helping. So long as it was apparently only Lily whom he
+desired to help thus, Michael had put forward his claims easily enough.
+Then in a flash Sylvia felt that now he was transferring half his
+interest in Lily to her. He was stumbling hopelessly over that; he was
+speaking in a shy way of sending her books that she would enjoy; then
+abruptly he had turned from her and the garden door had slammed behind
+him. It was with a positive exultation that Sylvia realized that he had
+forgotten to give her Lily's address and that it was the dread of
+seeming to intrude upon her which had driven him away like that. She ran
+after him and called him back. He gave her a visiting-card on which his
+name was printed above the address; it was like a little tombstone of
+his dead love. He was talking now about selling the furniture and
+sending the money to Lily. Sylvia all the time was wondering why the
+first man that had ever appealed to her in the least should be like the
+famous hero of literature that had always bored her. With an impulse to
+avenge Michael she asked the name of the man for whom Lily had betrayed
+him. But he had never known; he had only seen his hat.
+
+Sylvia pulled Michael to her and kissed him with the first kiss she had
+given to any man that was not contemptuous either of him or of herself.
+
+"How many women have kissed you suddenly like that?" she asked.
+
+"One--well, perhaps two!" he answered.
+
+Even this kiss of hers was not hers alone, but because she might never
+see him again Sylvia broke the barrier of jealousy and in a sudden
+longing to be prodigal of herself for once she gave him all she could,
+her pride, by letting him know that she for her part had never kissed
+any man like that before.
+
+Sylvia went back to the seat under the mulberry-tree and made up her
+mind that the time was ripe for activity again. She had allowed herself
+to become the prey of emotion by leading this indeterminate life in
+which sensation was cultivated at the expense of incident. It was a pity
+that Michael had intrusted her with Lily, for at this moment she would
+have liked to be away out of it at once; any adventure embarked upon
+with Lily would always be bounded by her ability to pack in time. Sylvia
+could imagine how those two dresses she had left behind must have been
+the most insuperable difficulty of the elopement. Another objection to
+Lily's company now was the way in which it would repeatedly remind her
+of Michael.
+
+"Of course it won't remind me sentimentally," Sylvia assured herself.
+"I'm not such a fool as to suppose that I'm going to suffer from a sense
+of personal loss. On the other hand, I sha'n't ever be able to forget
+what an exaggerated impression I gave him. It's really perfectly
+damnable to divine one's sympathy with a person, to know that one could
+laugh together through life, and by circumstances to have been placed
+in an utterly abnormal relation to him. It really is damnable. He'll
+think of me, if he ever thinks of me at all, as one of the great
+multitude of wronged women. I shall think of him--though as a matter of
+fact I shall avoid thinking of him--either as what might have been, a
+false concept, for of course what might have been is fundamentally
+inconceivable, or as what he was, a sentimental fool. However, the mere
+fact that I'm sitting here bothering my head about what either of us
+thinks shows that I need a change of air."
+
+That afternoon a parcel of books arrived for Sylvia from Michael Fane;
+among them was Skelton's Don Quixote and Adlington's _Apuleius_, on the
+fly-leaf of which he had written:
+
+    I've eaten rose leaves and I am no longer a golden ass.
+
+"No, damn his eyes!" said Sylvia, "I'm the ass now. And how odd that he
+should send me _Don Quixote_."
+
+At twilight Sylvia went to see Lily at Ararat House. She found her in a
+strange rococo room that opened on a garden bordered by the Regent's
+Canal; here amid candles and mirrors she was sitting in conversation
+with her housekeeper. Each of them existed from every point of view and
+infinitely reduplicated in the mirrors, which was not favorable to
+toleration of the housekeeper's figure, that was like an hour-glass.
+Sylvia waited coldly for her withdrawal before she acknowledged Lily's
+greeting. At last the objectionable creature rose and, accompanied by a
+crowd of reflections, left the room.
+
+"Don't lecture me," Lily begged. "I had the most awful time yesterday."
+
+"But Michael said he had not seen you."
+
+"Oh, not with Michael," Lily exclaimed. "With Claude."
+
+"With Claude?" Sylvia echoed.
+
+"Yes, he came to see me and left his hat in the hall and Michael took it
+away with him in his rage. It was the only top-hat he'd got, and he had
+an engagement for an 'at home,' and he couldn't go out in the sun, and,
+oh dear, you never heard such a fuss, and when Mabel--"
+
+"Mabel?"
+
+"--Miss Harper, my housekeeper, offered to go out and buy him another,
+he was livid with fury. He asked if I thought he was made of money and
+could buy top-hats like matches. I'm glad you've come. Michael has
+broken off the engagement, and I expected you rather. A friend of
+his--rather a nice boy called Maurice Avery--is coming round this
+evening to arrange about selling everything. I shall have quite a lot of
+money. Let's go away and be quiet after all this bother and fuss."
+
+"Look here," Sylvia said. "Before we go any further I want to know one
+thing. Is Claude going to drop in and out of your life at critical
+moments for the rest of time?"
+
+"Oh no! We've quarreled now. He'll never forgive me over the hat.
+Besides, he puts some stuff on his hair now that I don't like. Sylvia,
+do come and look at my frocks. I've got some really lovely frocks."
+
+Maurice Avery, to whom Sylvia took an instant dislike, came in
+presently. He seemed to attribute the ruin of his friend's hopes
+entirely to a failure to take his advice:
+
+"Of course this was the wrong house to start with. I advised him to take
+one at Hampstead, but he wouldn't listen to me. The fact is Michael
+doesn't understand women."
+
+"Do you?" Sylvia snapped.
+
+Avery looked at her a moment, and said he understood them better than
+Michael.
+
+"Of course nobody can ever really understand a woman," he added, with an
+instinct of self-protection. "But I advised him not to leave Lily alone.
+I told him it wasn't fair to her or to himself."
+
+"Did you give him any advice about disposing of the furniture?" Sylvia
+asked.
+
+"Well, I'm arranging about that now."
+
+"Sorry," said Sylvia. "I thought you were paving Michael's past with
+your own good intentions."
+
+"You mustn't take any notice of her," Lily told Avery, who was looking
+rather mortified. "She's rude to everybody."
+
+"Well, shall I tell you my scheme for clearing up here?" he asked.
+
+"If it will bring us any nearer to business," Sylvia answered, "we'll
+manage to support the preliminary speech."
+
+A week or two later Avery handed Lily £270, which she immediately
+transferred to Sylvia's keeping.
+
+"I kept the Venetian mirror for myself," Avery said. "You know the one
+with the jolly little cupids in pink and blue glass. I shall always
+think of you and Ararat House when I look at myself in it."
+
+"I suppose all your friends wear their hearts on your sleeve," Sylvia
+said. "That must add a spice to vanity."
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough was very much upset at the prospect of the girls'
+going away.
+
+"That comes of having me picture painted. I felt it was unlucky when he
+was doing it. Oh, dearie me! whatever shall I do?"
+
+"Come with us," Sylvia suggested. "We're going to France. Lock up your
+house, give the key to the copper on the beat, put on your gingham gown,
+and come with us, you old sea-elephant."
+
+"Come with you?" Mrs. Gainsborough gasped. "But there, why shouldn't I?"
+
+"No reason at all."
+
+"Why, then I will. I believe the captain would have liked me to get a
+bit of a blow."
+
+"Anything to declare?" the customs official asked at Boulogne.
+
+"I declare I'm enjoying myself," said Mrs. Gainsborough, looking round
+her and beaming at France.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+When she once more landed on French soil, Sylvia, actuated by a classic
+piety, desired to visit her mother's grave. She would have preferred to
+go to Lille by herself, for she lacked the showman's instinct; but her
+companions were so horrified at the notion of being left to themselves
+in Paris until she rejoined them, that in the end she had to take them
+with her.
+
+The sight of the old house and the faces of some of the older women in
+the _quartier_ conjured up the past so vividly for Sylvia that she could
+not bring herself to make any inquiries about the rest of her family. It
+seemed as if she must once more look at Lille from her mother's point of
+view and maintain the sanctity of private life against the curiosity or
+criticism of neighbors. She did not wish to hear the details of her
+father's misdoing or perhaps be condoled with over Valentine. The
+simplest procedure would have been to lay a wreath upon the grave and
+depart again. This she might have done if Mrs. Gainsborough's genial
+inquisitiveness about her relatives had not roused in herself a wish to
+learn something about them. She decided to visit her eldest sister in
+Brussels, leaving it to chance if she still lived where Sylvia had
+visited her twelve years ago.
+
+"Brussels," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Well, that sounds familiar, anyway.
+Though I suppose the sprout-gardens are all built over nowadays. Ah
+dear!"
+
+The building over of her father's nursery-garden and of many other green
+spots she had known in London always drew a tear from Mrs. Gainsborough,
+who was inclined to attribute most of human sorrow to the utilitarian
+schemes of builders.
+
+"Yes, they found the Belgian hares ate up all the sprouts," Sylvia said.
+"And talking of hair," she went on, "what's the matter with yours?"
+
+"Ah, well, there! Now I meant to say nothing about it. But I've left me
+mahogany wash at home. There's a calamity!"
+
+"You'd better come out with me and buy another bottle," Sylvia advised.
+
+"You'll never get one here," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "This is a wash,
+not a dye, you must remember. It doesn't tint the hair; it just brings
+up the color and gives it a nice gloss."
+
+"If that's all it does, I'll lend you my shoe-polish. Go along, you
+wicked old fraud, and don't talk to me about washes. I can see the white
+hairs coming out like stars."
+
+Sylvia found Elène in Brussels, and was amazed to see how much she
+resembled her mother nowadays. M. Durand, her husband, had prospered and
+he now owned a large confectioner's shop in the heart of the city, above
+which Madame Durand had started a pension for economical tourists. Mrs.
+Gainsborough could not get over the fact that her hostess did not speak
+English; it struck her as unnatural that Sylvia should have a sister who
+could only speak French. The little Durands were a more difficult
+problem. She did not so much mind feeling awkward with grown-up people
+through having to sit dumb, but children stared at her so, if she said
+nothing; and if she talked, they stared at her still more; she kept
+feeling that she ought to stroke them or pat them, which might offend
+their mother. She found ultimately that they were best amused by her
+taking out two false teeth she had, one of which once was lost, because
+the eldest boy would play dice with them.
+
+Elène gave Sylvia news of the rest of the family, though, since all the
+four married sisters were in different towns in France and she had seen
+none of them for ten years, it was not very fresh news. Valentine, in
+whose career Sylvia was most interested, was being very well
+_entretenue_ by a _marseillais_ who had bought her an apartment that
+included a porcelain-tiled bath-room; she might be considered lucky, for
+the man with whom she had left Lille had been a rascal. It happened that
+her news of Valentine was fresh and authentic, because a _lilleoise_ who
+lived in Bruxelles had recently been obliged to go to Marseilles over
+some legal dispute and, meeting Valentine, had been invited to see her
+apartment. It was a pity that she was not married, but her position was
+the next best thing to marriage. Of the Bassompierres Elène had heard
+nothing for years, but what would interest Sylvia were some family
+papers and photographs that Sylvia's father had sent to her as the
+eldest daughter when their mother died, together with an old-fashioned
+photograph of their grandmother. From these papers it seemed that an
+English _milord_ and not Bassompierre had really been their grandfather.
+Sylvia being half English already, it might not interest her so much,
+but for herself to know she had English blood _l'avait beaucoup
+impressioné_, so many English tourists came to her pension.
+
+Sylvia looked at the daguerreotype of her grandmother, a glass faintly
+bloomed, the likeness of a ghost indeed. She then had loved an
+Englishman; her mother, too; herself.... Sylvia packed the daguerreotype
+out of sight and turned to look at a golden shawl of a material rather
+like crêpe de Chine, which had been used to wrap up their mother when
+she was a baby. Would Sylvia like it? It was no use to Elène, too old
+and frail and faded. Sylvia stayed in Brussels for a week and left with
+many promises to return soon. She was glad she had paid the visit; for
+it had given back to her the sense of continuity which in the shifting
+panorama of her life she had lost, so that she had come to regard
+herself as an unreal person, an exception in humanity, an emotional
+freak; this separation from the rest of the world had been irksome to
+Sylvia since she had discovered the possibility of her falling in love,
+because it was seeming the cause of her not being loved. Henceforth she
+would meet man otherwise than with defiance or accusation in her eyes;
+she, too, perhaps would meet a lover thus.
+
+Sylvia folded up the golden shawl to put it at the bottom of her trunk;
+figuratively, she wrapped up in it her memories, tender, gay, sorrowful,
+vile all together.
+
+"Soon be in Paris, shall we?" said Mrs. Gainsborough, when the train
+reached the eastern suburbs. "It makes one feel quite naughty, doesn't
+it? The captain was always going to take me, but we never went,
+somehow. What's that? There's the Eiffel Tower? So it is, upon my word,
+and just what it looks like in pictures. Not a bit different. I hope it
+won't fall down while we're still in Paris. Nice set-out that would be.
+I've always been afraid of sky accidents since a friend of mine, a Mrs.
+Ewings, got stuck in the Great Wheel at Earl's Court with a man who
+started undressing himself. It was all right, as it happened, because he
+only wanted to wave his shirt to his wife, who was waiting for him down
+below, so as she shouldn't get anxious, but it gave Mrs. Ewings a nasty
+turn. Two hours she was stuck with nothing in her bag but a box of
+little liver pills, which made her mouth water, she said, she was that
+hungry. She _thinks_ she'd have eaten them if she'd have been alone; but
+the man, who was an undertaker from Wandsworth, told her a lot of
+interesting stories about corpses, and that kept her mind occupied till
+the wheel started going round again, and the Exhibition gave her soup
+and ten shillings compensation, which made a lot of people go up in it
+on the chance of being stuck."
+
+It was strange, Sylvia thought, that she should be as ignorant of Paris
+as Mrs. Gainsborough, but somehow the three of them would manage to
+enjoy themselves. Lily was more nearly vivacious than she had ever known
+her.
+
+"Quite saucy," Mrs. Gainsborough vowed. "But there, we're all young, and
+you soon get used to the funny people you see in France. After all,
+they're foreigners. We ought to feel sorry for them."
+
+"I say steady, Mrs. Gainsborough," Lily murmured, with a frown. "Some of
+these people in the carriage may speak English."
+
+"Speak English?" Mrs. Gainsborough repeated. "You don't mean to tell me
+they'd go on jabbering to one another in French if they could speak
+English! What an idea!"
+
+A young man who had got into the compartment at Chantilly had been
+casting glances of admiration at Lily ever since, and it was on account
+of him that she had warned Mrs. Gainsborough. He was a slim, dark young
+man dressed by an English tailor, very diffident for a Frenchman, but
+when Sylvia began to speculate upon the choice of a hotel he could no
+longer keep silence and asked in English if he could be of any help.
+When Sylvia replied to him in French, he was much surprised:
+
+_"Mais vous êtes française!"_
+
+_"Je suis du pays de la lune,"_ Sylvia said.
+
+"Now don't encourage the young fellow to gabble in French," Mrs.
+Gainsborough protested. "It gives me the pins and needles to hear you.
+You ought to encourage people to speak English, if they want to, I'm
+sure."
+
+The young Frenchman smiled at this and offered his card to Sylvia, whom
+he evidently accepted as the head of the party. She read, "Hector
+Ozanne," and smiled for the heroic first name; somehow he did not look
+like Hector and because he was so modest she presented him to Lily to
+make him happy.
+
+"I am enchanted to meet a type of English beauty," he said. "You must
+forgive my sincerity, which arises only from admiration. Madame," he
+went on, turning to Mrs. Gainsborough, "I am honored to meet you."
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough, who was not quite sure how to deal with such
+politeness, became flustered and dropped her bag. Ozanne and she both
+plunged for it simultaneously and bumped their heads; upon this painful
+salute a general friendliness was established.
+
+"I am a bachelor," said Ozanne. "I have nothing to occupy myself, and if
+I might be permitted to assist you in a research for an apartment I
+shall be very elated."
+
+Sylvia decided in favor of rooms on the _rive gauche_. She felt it was a
+conventional taste, but held to her opinion against Ozanne's objections.
+
+"But I have an apartment in the Rue Montpensier, with a view of the
+Palais Royal. I do not live there now myself. I beseech you to make me
+the pleasure to occupy it. It is so very good, the view of the garden.
+And if you like an ancient house, it is very ancient. Do you concur?"
+
+"And where will you go?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"I live always in my club. For me it would be a big advantage, I assure
+you."
+
+"We should have to pay rent," said Sylvia, quickly.
+
+"The rent will be one thousand a year."
+
+"God have mercy upon us!" Mrs. Gainsborough gasped. "A thousand a year?
+Why, the man must think that we're the royal family broken out from
+Windsor Castle on the randan."
+
+"Shut up, you silly old thing," said Sylvia. "He's asking nothing at
+all. Francs, not pounds. _Vous êtes trop gentil pour nous, Monsieur."_
+
+_"Alors, c'est entendu?"_
+
+_"Mais oui."_
+
+_"Bon! Nous y irons ensemble tout de suite, n'est-ce pas?"_
+
+The apartment was really charming. From the windows one could see the
+priests with their breviaries muttering up and down the old garden of
+the Palais Royal; and, as in all gardens in the heart of a great city,
+many sorts of men and women were resting there in the sunlight. Ozanne
+invited them to dine with him that night and left them to unpack.
+
+"Well, I'm bound to say we seem to have fallen on our feet right off,"
+Mrs. Gainsborough said. "I shall quite enjoy myself here; I can see that
+already."
+
+The acquaintance with Hector Ozanne ripened into friendship, and from
+friendship his passion for Lily became obvious, not that really it had
+ever been anything else, Sylvia thought; the question was whether it
+should be allowed to continue. Sylvia asked Ozanne his intentions. He
+declared his desperate affection, exclaimed against the iniquity of not
+being able to marry on account of a mother from whom he derived his
+entire income, stammered, and was silent.
+
+"I suppose you'd like me and Mrs. Gainsborough to clear out of this?"
+Sylvia suggested.
+
+No, he would like nothing of the kind; he greatly preferred that they
+should all stay where they were as they were, save only that of course
+they must pay no rent in future and that he must be allowed to maintain
+entirely the upkeep of the apartment. He wished it to be essentially
+their own and he had no intention of intruding there except as a guest.
+From time to time no doubt Lily would like to see something of the
+French countryside and of the _plages_, and no doubt equally Sylvia
+would not be lonely in Paris with Mrs. Gainsborough. He believed that
+Lily loved him. She was, of course, like all English girls, cold, but
+for his part he admired such coldness, in fact he admired everything
+English. He knew that his happiness depended upon Sylvia, and he begged
+her to be kind.
+
+Hector Ozanne was the only son of a rich manufacturer who had died about
+five years ago. The business had for some time been a limited company of
+which Madame Ozanne held the greater number of shares. Hector himself
+was now twenty-five and would within a year be found a wife by his
+mother; until then he would be allowed to choose a mistress by himself.
+He was kind-hearted, simple, and immensely devoted to Lily. She liked
+lunching and dining with him, and would like still better dressing
+herself at his expense; she certainly cared for him as much now as his
+future wife would care for him on the wedding-day. There seemed no
+reason to oppose the intimacy. If it should happen that Hector should
+fail to treat Lily properly, Sylvia would know how to deal with him, or
+rather with his mother. Amen.
+
+July was burning fiercely and Hector was unwilling to lose delightful
+days with Lily; they drove away together one morning in a big motor-car,
+which Mrs. Gainsborough blessed with as much fervor as she would have
+blessed a hired brougham at a suburban wedding. She and Sylvia were left
+together either to visit some _plage_ or amuse themselves in Paris.
+
+"Paris I think, you uncommendable mammoth, you phosphor-eyed
+hippopotamus, Paris I _think_."
+
+"Well, I should like to see a bit of life, I must say. We've led a very
+quiet existence so far. I don't want to go back to England and tell my
+friend Mrs. Marsham that I've seen nothing. She's a most enterprising
+woman herself. I don't think you ever saw her, did you? Before she was
+going to have her youngest she had a regular passion to ride on a camel.
+She used to dream of camels all night long, and at last, being as I said
+a very enterprising woman and being afraid when her youngest was born he
+might be a humpback through her dreaming of camels all the time, she
+couldn't stand it no longer and one Monday morning, which is a sixpenny
+day, she went off to the Zoo by herself, being seven months gone at the
+time, and took six rides on the camel right off the reel, as they say."
+
+"That must have been the last straw," Sylvia said.
+
+"Have I told you this story before, then?"
+
+Sylvia shook her head.
+
+"Well, that's a queer thing. I was just about to say that when she'd
+finished her rides she went to look at the giraffes, and one of them got
+hold of her straw hat in his mouth and nearly tore it off her head. She
+hollered out, and the keeper asked her if she couldn't read the notice
+that visitors was requested not to feed these animals. This annoyed Mrs.
+Marsham very much, and she told the keeper he wasn't fit to manage
+performing fleas, let alone giraffes, which annoyed _him_ very much.
+It's a pity you never met her. I sent her a post-card the other day, as
+vulgar a one as I could find, but you can buy them just as vulgar in
+London."
+
+Sylvia did so far gratify Mrs. Gainsborough's desire to impress Mrs.
+Marsham as to take her to one or two Montmartre ballrooms; but she
+declared they did not come up to her expectations, and decided that she
+should have to fall back on her own imagination to thrill Mrs. Marsham.
+
+"As most travelers do," Sylvia added.
+
+They also went together to several plays, at which Sylvia laughed very
+heartily, much to Mrs. Gainsborough's chagrin.
+
+"I'm bothered if I know what you're laughing at," she said, finally. "I
+can't understand a word of what they're saying."
+
+"Just as well you can't," Sylvia told her.
+
+"Now there's a tantalizing hussy for you. But I can guess, you great
+tomboy."
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Gainsborough laughed as heartily as anybody in the
+audience at her own particular thoughts. She attracted a good deal of
+attention by this, because she often laughed at them without reference
+to what was happening on the stage. When Sylvia dug her in the ribs to
+make her keep quiet, she protested that, if she could only tell the
+audience what she was thinking, they would not bother any more about the
+stage.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts, they say. I reckon mine are worth the price
+of a seat in the circle, anyway."
+
+It was after this performance that Sylvia and Mrs. Gainsborough went to
+the Café de la Chouette, which was frequented mostly by the performers,
+poets, and composers of the music-hall world. The place was crowded, and
+they were forced to sit at a table already occupied by one of those
+figures that only in Paris seem to have the right to live on an equality
+with the rest of mankind, merely on account of their eccentric
+appearance. He was probably not more than forty years old, but his
+gauntness made him look older. He wore blue-and-white checked trousers,
+a tail coat from which he or somebody else had clipped off the tails, a
+red velvet waistcoat, and a yachting-cap. His eyes were cavernous, his
+cheeks were rouged rather than flushed with fever. He carried a leather
+bag slung round his middle filled with waste paper, from which he
+occasionally took out a piece and wrote upon it a few words. He was
+drinking an unrecognizable liqueur.
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough was rather nervous of sitting down beside so strange a
+creature, but Sylvia insisted. The man made no gesture at their
+approach, but turned his eyes upon them with the impassivity of a cat.
+
+"Look here, Sylvia, in two twos he's going to give me an attack of the
+horrors," Mrs. Gainsborough whispered. "He's staring at me and twitching
+his nose like a hungry child at a jam roll. It's no good you telling me
+to give over. I can't help it. Look at his eyes. More like coal-cellars
+than eyes. I've never been able to abide being stared at since I sat
+down beside a wax-work at Louis Tussaud's and asked it where the ladies'
+cloak-room was."
+
+"He amuses me," Sylvia said. "What are you going to have?"
+
+"Well, I _was_ going to have a grenadier, but really if that skelington
+opposite is going to look at me all night, I think I'll take something
+stronger."
+
+"Try a cuirassier," Sylvia suggested.
+
+"Whatever's that?"
+
+"It's the same relation to a curaçao that a grenadier is to a
+grenadine."
+
+"What I should really like is a nice little drop of whisky with a little
+tiddley bit of lemon; but there, I've noticed if you ask for whisky in
+Paris it causes a regular commotion. The waiter holds the bottle as if
+it was going to bite him, and the proprietor winks at him he's pouring
+out too much, and I can't abide those blue siphons. Sells they call
+them, and sells they are."
+
+"I shall order you a bock in a moment," Sylvia threatened.
+
+"Now don't be unkind just because I made a slight complaint about being
+stared at. Perhaps they won't make such a bother if I _do_ have a little
+whisky. But there, I can't resist it. It's got a regular taste of
+London, whisky has."
+
+The man at the table leaned over suddenly and asked, in a tense voice:
+
+"Scotch or Irish?"
+
+"Oh, good land! what a turn you gave me! I couldn't have jumped more,"
+Mrs. Gainsborough exclaimed, "not if one of the lions in Trafalgar
+Square had said pip-ip as I passed!"
+
+"You didn't think I was English, did you?" said the stranger. "I forget
+it myself sometimes. I'm a terrible warning to the world. I'm a pose
+that's become a reality."
+
+"Pose?" Mrs. Gainsborough echoed. "Oh, I didn't understand you for the
+moment. You mean you're an artist's model?"
+
+The stranger turned his eyes upon Sylvia, and, whether from sympathy or
+curiosity, she made friends with him, so that when they were ready to go
+home the eccentric Englishman, whom every one called Milord and who did
+not offer any alternative name to his new friends, said he would walk
+with them a bit of the way, much to Mrs. Gainsborough's embarrassment.
+
+"I'm the first of the English decadents," he proclaimed to Sylvia.
+"Twenty years ago I came to Paris to study art. I hadn't a penny to
+spend on drugs. I hadn't enough money to lead a life of sin. There's a
+tragedy! For five years I starved myself instead. I thought I should
+make myself interesting. I did. I became a figure. I learned the
+raptures of hunger. Nothing surpasses them--opium, morphine, ether,
+cocaine, hemp. What are they beside hunger? Have you got any coco with
+you? Just a little pinch? No? Never mind. I don't really like it. Not
+really. Some people like it, though. Who's the old woman with you? A
+procuress? Last night I had a dream in which I proved the non-existence
+of God by the least common multiple. I can't exactly remember how I did
+it now. That's why I was so worried this evening; I can't remember if
+the figures were two, four, sixteen, and thirty-eight. I worked it out
+last night in my dream. I obtained a view of the universe as a
+geometrical abstraction. It's perfectly simple, but I cannot get it
+right now. There's a crack in my ceiling which indicates the way. Unless
+I can walk along that crack I can't reach the center of the universe,
+and of course it's hopeless to try to obtain a view of the universe as a
+geometrical abstraction if one can't reach the center. I take it you
+agree with me on that point. That point! Wait a minute. I'm almost
+there. That point. Don't let me forget. That point. That is the point.
+Ah!"
+
+The abstraction eluded him and he groaned aloud.
+
+"The more I listen to him," said Mrs. Gainsborough, "the more certain
+sure I am he ought to see a doctor."
+
+"I must say good night," the stranger murmured, sadly. "I see that I
+must start again at the beginning of that crack in my ceiling. I was
+lucky to find the room that had such a crack, though in a way it's
+rather a nuisance. It branches off so, and I very often lose the
+direction. There's one particular branch that always leads away from the
+point. I'm afraid to do anything about it in the morning. Of course, I
+might put up a notice to say, _this is the wrong way_; but supposing it
+were really the right way? It's a great responsibility to own such a
+crack. Sometimes I almost go mad with the burden of responsibility. Why,
+by playing about with that ceiling when my brain isn't perfectly clear I
+might upset the whole universe! We'll meet again one night at the
+Chouette. I think I'll cross the boulevard now. There's no traffic, and
+I have to take a certain course not to confuse my line of thought."
+
+The eccentric stranger left them and, crossing the road in a series of
+diagonal tacks, disappeared.
+
+"Coco," said Sylvia.
+
+"Cocoa?" echoed Mrs. Gainsborough. "Brandy, more like."
+
+"Or hashish."
+
+"Ashes? Well, I had a fox-terrier once that died in convulsions from
+eating coke, so perhaps it is ashes."
+
+"We must meet him again," said Sylvia. "These queer people outside
+ordinary life interest me."
+
+"Well, it's interesting to visit a hospital," Mrs. Gainsborough agreed.
+"But that doesn't say you want to go twice. Once is enough for that
+fellow, to my thinking. He's interesting, but uncomfortable, like the
+top of a 'bus."
+
+Sylvia, however, was determined to pursue her acquaintance with the
+outcast Englishman. She soon discovered that for years he had been
+taking drugs and that nothing but drugs had brought him to his present
+state of abject buffoonery. Shortly before he became friends with Sylvia
+he had been taken up as a week's amusement by some young men who were
+under the impression that they were seeing Parisian life in his company.
+They had been generous to him, and latterly he had been able to drug
+himself as much as he wanted. The result had been to hasten his supreme
+collapse. Even in his last illness he would not talk to Sylvia about his
+youth before he came to Paris, and in the end she was inclined to accept
+him at his own estimate, a pose that was become a reality.
+
+One evening he seemed more haggard than usual and talked much less; by
+the twitching of his nostrils, he had been dosing himself hard with
+cocaine. Suddenly, he stretched his thin hand across the marble table
+and seized hers feverishly:
+
+"Tell me," he asked. "Are you sorry for me?"
+
+"I think it's an impertinence to be sorry for anybody," she answered.
+"But if you mean do I wish you well, why, yes, old son, I wish you very
+well."
+
+"What I told you once about my coming to Paris to work at art was all
+lies. I came here because I had to leave nothing else behind, not even a
+name. You said, one evening when we were arguing about ambition, that if
+you could only find your line you might do something on the stage. Why
+don't you recite my poems? Read them through. One or two are in English,
+but most of them are in French. They are really more sighs than poems.
+They require no acting. They want just a voice."
+
+He undid the leather strap that supported his satchel and handed it to
+Sylvia.
+
+"To-morrow," he said, "if I'm still alive, I'll come here and find out
+what you think of them. But you've no idea how threatening that 'if' is.
+It gets longer and longer. I can't see the end if it anywhere. It was
+very long last night. The dot of the 'i' was already out of sight. It's
+the longest 'if' that was ever imagined."
+
+He rose hurriedly and left the café; Sylvia never saw him again.
+
+The poems of this strange and unhappy creature formed a record of many
+years' slow debasement. Many of them seemed to her too personal and too
+poignant to be repeated aloud, almost even to be read to oneself. There
+was nothing, indeed, to do but burn them, that no one else might
+comprehend a man's degradation. Some of the poems, however, were
+objective, and in their complete absence of any effort to impress or
+rend or horrify they seemed not so much poems as actual glimpses into
+human hearts. Nor was that a satisfactory definition, for there was no
+attempt to explain any of the people described in these poems; they were
+ordinary people of the streets that lived in a few lines. This could
+only be said of the poems written in French; those in English seemed to
+her not very remarkable. She wondered if perhaps the less familiar
+tongue had exacted from him an achievement that was largely fortuitous.
+
+"I've got an idea for a show," Sylvia said to Mrs. Gainsborough. "One or
+two old folk-songs, and then one of these poems half sung, half recited
+to an improvised accompaniment. Not more than one each evening."
+
+Sylvia was convinced of her ability to make a success, and spent a
+couple of weeks in searching for the folk-songs she required.
+
+Lily and Hector came back in the middle of this new idea, and Hector was
+sure that Sylvia would be successful. She felt that he was too well
+pleased with himself at the moment not to be uncritically content with
+the rest of the world, but he was useful to Sylvia in securing an
+_audition_ for her. The agent was convinced of the inevitable failure of
+Sylvia's performance with the public, and said he thought it was a pity
+to waste such real talent on antique rubbish like the songs she had
+chosen. As for the poems, they were no doubt all very well in their way;
+he was not going to say he had not been able to listen to them, but the
+public did not expect that kind of thing. He did not wish to discourage
+a friend of M. Ozanne; he had by him the rights for what would be three
+of the most popular songs in Europe, if they were well sung. Sylvia read
+them through and then sang them. The agent was delighted. She knew he
+was really pleased because he gave up referring to her as a friend of M.
+Ozanne and addressed her directly. Hector advised her to begin with the
+ordinary stuff, and when she was well known enough to experiment upon
+the public with her own ideas. Sylvia, who was feeling the need to do
+something at once, decided to risk an audition at one of the outlying
+music-halls. She herself declared that the songs were so good in their
+own way that she could not help making a hit, but the others insisted
+that the triumph belonged to her.
+
+_"Vous avez vraiment de l'espièglerie,"_ said Hector.
+
+"You really were awfully jolly," said Lily.
+
+"I didn't understand a word, of course," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "But
+you looked that wicked--well, really--I thoroughly enjoyed myself."
+
+During the autumn Sylvia had secured engagements in music-halls of the
+_quartier_, but the agent advised her to take a tour before she ventured
+to attack the real Paris. It seemed to her a good way of passing the
+winter. Lily and Hector were very much together, and though Hector was
+always anxious for Sylvia to make a third, she found that the kind of
+amusement that appealed to him was much the same as that which had
+appealed to the young men who frequented Half Moon Street. It was a life
+of going to races, at which Hector would pass ladies without saluting or
+being saluted, who, he informed Sylvia and Lily afterward, were his
+aunts or his cousins, and actually on one occasion his mother. Sylvia
+began to feel the strain of being in the demi-monde but not of it; it
+was an existence that suited Lily perfectly, who could not understand
+why Sylvia should rail at their seclusion from the world. Mrs.
+Gainsborough began to grow restless for the peace of Mulberry Cottage
+and the safety of her furniture.
+
+"You never know what will happen. I had a friend once--a Mrs. Beardmore.
+She was housekeeper to two maiden ladies in Portman Square--well,
+housekeeper, she was more of a companion because one of them was stone
+deaf. One summer they went away to Scarborough, and when they came back
+some burglars had brought a furniture-van three days running and emptied
+the whole house, all but the bell-pulls. Drove back, they did, from
+King's Cross in a four-wheeler, and the first thing they saw was a large
+board up--TO BE LET OR SOLD. A fine how-de-do there was in Portman
+Square, I can tell you; and the sister that was deaf had left her
+ear-trumpet in the train and nobody couldn't explain to her what had
+happened."
+
+So Mrs. Gainsborough, whose fears had been heightened by the repetition
+of this tale, went back to London with what she described as a
+collection of vulgarities for Mrs. Marsham. Sylvia went away on tour.
+
+Sylvia found the life of a music-hall singer on tour very solitary. Her
+fellow-vagabonds were so much more essentially mountebanks than in
+England, and so far away from normal existence, that even when she
+traveled in company because her next town coincided with the next town
+of other players, she was never able to identify herself with them, as
+in England she had managed to identify herself with the other members of
+the chorus. She found that it paid her best to be English, and to affect
+in her songs an almost excessive English accent. She rather resented the
+exploitation of her nationality, because it seemed to her the same kind
+of appeal that would have been made by a double-headed woman or a
+performing seal. Nobody wanted her songs to be well rendered so much as
+unusually rendered; everybody wanted to be surprised by her ability to
+sing at all in French. But if the audiences wished her to be English,
+she found that being English off the stage was a disadvantage among
+these continental mountebanks. Sylvia discovered the existence of a
+universal prejudice against English actresses, partly on account of
+their alleged personal uncleanliness, partly on account of their
+alleged insincerity. On several occasions astonishment was expressed at
+the trouble she took with her hair and at her capacity for being a good
+_copaine_; when, later on, it would transpire that she was half French,
+everybody would find almost with relief an explanation of her apparent
+unconformity to rule.
+
+Sylvia grew very weary of the monotonous life in which everybody's
+interest was bounded by the psychology of an audience. Interest in the
+individual never extended beyond the question of whether she would or
+would not, if she were a woman; of whether he desired or did not desire,
+if he were a man. When either of these questions was answered the
+interest reverted to the audience. It seemed maddeningly unimportant to
+Sylvia that the audience on Monday night should have failed to
+appreciate a point which the audience of Tuesday night would probably
+hail with enthusiasm; yet often she had to admit to herself that it was
+just her own inability or unwillingness to treat an audience as an
+individual that prevented her from gaining real success. She decided
+that every interpretative artist must pander his emotion, his humor, his
+wit, his movements nightly, and that somehow he must charm each audience
+into the complacency with which a sophisticated libertine seeks an
+admission of enduring love from the woman he has paid to satisfy a
+momentary desire. Assuredly the most successful performers in the grand
+style were those who could conceal even from the most intelligent
+audiences their professional relation to them. A performer of
+acknowledged reputation would not play to the gallery with battered
+wiles and manifest allurements, but it was unquestionable that the
+foundation of success was playing to the gallery, and that the
+third-rate performer who flattered these provincial audiences with the
+personal relation could gain louder applause than Sylvia, who wanted no
+audience but herself. It was significant how a word of _argot_ that
+meant a fraud of apparent brilliancy executed by an artist upon the
+public had extended itself into daily use. Everything was _chic_. It was
+_chic_ to wear a hat of the latest fashion; it was _chic_ to impress
+one's lover by a jealous outburst; it was _chic_ to refuse a man one's
+favors. Everything was chic: it was impossible to think or act or speak
+in this world of vagabonds without _chic_.
+
+The individualistic life that Sylvia had always led both in private and
+in public seemed to her, notwithstanding the various disasters of her
+career, infinitely worthier than this dependency upon the herd that
+found its most obvious expression in the theater. It was revolting to
+witness human nature's lust for the unexceptionable or its cruel
+pleasure in the exception. Yet now, looking back at her past, she could
+see that it had always been her unwillingness to conform that had kept
+her apart from so much human enjoyment and human gain, though equally
+she might claim apart from human sorrow and human loss.
+
+"The struggle, of course, would be terrible for a long while," Sylvia
+said to herself, "if everybody renounced entirely any kind of
+co-operation or interference with or imitation of or help from anybody
+else, but out of that struggle might arise the true immortals. A cat
+with a complete personality is surely higher than a man with an
+incomplete personality. Anyway, it's quite certain that this
+_cabotinage_ is for me impossible. I believe that if I pricked a vein
+sawdust would trickle out of me now."
+
+In such a mood of cheated hope did Sylvia return to Paris in the early
+spring; she was about to comment on Lily's usual state of molluscry, by
+yielding to which in abandoning the will she had lost the power to
+develop, when Lily herself proceeded to surprise her.
+
+The affection between Hector and Lily had apparently made a steady
+growth and had floated in an undisturbed and equable depth of water for
+so long that Lily, like an ambitious water-lily, began to be ambitious
+of becoming a terrestrial plant. While for nearly a year she had been
+blossoming apparently without regard for anything but the beauty of the
+moment, she had all the time been sending out long roots beneath the
+water, long roots that were growing more and more deeply into the warm
+and respectable mud.
+
+"You mean you'd like to marry Hector?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Why, yes, I think I should, rather. I'm getting tired of never being
+settled."
+
+"But does he want to marry you?"
+
+"We've talked about it often. He hates the idea of not marrying me."
+
+"He'd like to go away with you and live on the top of a mountain remote
+from mankind, or upon a coral island in the Pacific with nothing but the
+sound of the surf and the cocoanuts dropping idly one by one, wouldn't
+he?"
+
+"Well, he did say he wished we could go away somewhere all alone. How
+did you guess? How clever you are, Sylvia!" Lily exclaimed, opening wide
+her deep-blue eyes.
+
+"My dear girl, when a man knows that it's impossible to be married
+either because he's married already or for any other reason, he always
+hymns a solitude for two. You never heard any man with serious
+intentions propose to live with his bride-elect in an Alpine hut or
+under a lonely palm. The man with serious intentions tries to reconcile
+his purse, not his person, with poetic aspirations. He's in a quandary
+between Hampstead and Kensington, not between mountain-tops and lagoons.
+I suppose he has also talked of a dream-child--a fairy miniature of his
+Lily?" Sylvia went on.
+
+"We have talked about a baby," Lily admitted.
+
+"The man with serious intentions talks about the aspect of the nursery
+and makes reluctant plans to yield, if compelled to, the room he had
+chosen for his study."
+
+"You make fun of everything," Lily murmured, rather sulkily.
+
+"But, my dear," Sylvia argued, "for me to be able to reproduce Hector's
+dream so accurately proves that I'm building to the type. I'll speculate
+further. I'm sure he has regretted the irregular union and vowed that,
+had he but known at first what an angel of purity you were, he would
+have died rather than propose it."
+
+Lily sat silent, frowning. Presently she jumped up, and the sudden
+activity of movement brought home to Sylvia more than anything else the
+change in her.
+
+"If you promise not to laugh, here are his letters," Lily said, flinging
+into Sylvia's lap a bundle tied up with ribbon.
+
+"Letters!" Sylvia snapped. "Who cares about letters? The love-letters of
+a successful lover have no value. When he has something to write that he
+cannot say to your face, then I'll read his letter. All public
+blandishments shock me."
+
+Hector was called away from Paris to go and stay with his mother at
+Aix-les-Bains; for a fortnight two letters arrived every day.
+
+"The snow in Savoy will melt early this year," Sylvia mocked. "It's
+lucky he's not staying at St.-Moritz. Winter sports could never survive
+such a furnace."
+
+Then followed a week's silence.
+
+"The Alpine Club must have protested," Sylvia mocked. "Avalanches are
+not expected in March."
+
+"He's probably motoring with his mother," Lily explained.
+
+The next day a letter arrived from Hector.
+
+     HOTEL SUPERBE, AIX-LES-BAINS.
+
+     MY DEAR LILY,--I do not know how to express myself. You have known
+     always the great difficulties of my position opposite to my mother.
+     She has found that I owe to marry myself, and I have demanded the
+     hand of Mademoiselle Arpenteur-Legage. I dare not ask your pardon,
+     but I have written to make an arrangement for you, and from now
+     please use the apartment which has for me memories the most sacred.
+     It is useless to fight against circumstances.
+
+     HECTOR.
+
+"I think he might have used mourning paper," Sylvia said. "They always
+have plenty at health resorts."
+
+"Don't be so unkind, Sylvia," Lily cried. "How can you be so unkind,
+when you see that my heart is broken?" She burst into tears.
+
+In a moment Sylvia was on her knees beside her.
+
+"Lily, my dearest Lily, you did not really love him? Oh no, my dear, not
+really. If you really loved him, I'll go now to Aix myself and arrange
+matters over the head of his stuffy old mother. But you didn't really
+love him. You're simply upset at the breaking of a habit. Oh, my dear,
+you couldn't really have loved him!"
+
+"He sha'n't marry this girl," Lily declared, standing up in a rage.
+"I'll go to Aix-les-Bains myself and I'll see this Mademoiselle." She
+snatched the letter from the floor to read the odious name of her rival.
+"I'll send her all his letters. You mightn't want to read them, but
+she'll want to read them. She'll read every word. She'll read how, when
+he was thinking of proposing to her, he was calling me his angel, his
+life, his soul, how he was--Oh, she'll read every word, and I'll send
+them to her by registered post, and then I'll know she gets them. How
+dare a Frenchman treat an English girl like that? How dare he? How dare
+he? French people think English girls have no passion. They think we're
+cold. Are we cold? We may not like being kissed all the time like French
+girls, but we're not cold. Oh, I feel I could kill him!"
+
+Sylvia interrupted her rage.
+
+"My dear, if all this fire and fury is because you're disappointed at
+not being married, twist him for fifty thousand francs, buy a silver
+casket, put his letters inside, and send them to him for a
+wedding-present with your good wishes. But if you love him, darling
+Lily, let me go and tell him the truth; if I think he's not worth it,
+then come away with me and be lonely with me somewhere. My beautiful
+thing, I can't promise you a coral island, but you shall have all my
+heart if you will."
+
+"Love him?" echoed Lily. "I hate him. I despise him after this, but why
+should he marry her?"
+
+"If you feel like that about him, I should have thought the best way to
+punish him would be to let the marriage proceed; to punish him further
+you've only to refuse yourself to him when he's married, for I'm quite
+sure that within six months he'll be writing to say what a mistake he
+made, how cold his wife is, and how much he longs to come back to you,
+_la jolie maîtresse de sa jeunesse, le souvenir du bon temps jadis_, and
+so on with the sentimental eternities of reconstructed passion."
+
+"Live with him after he's married?" Lily exclaimed. "Why, I've never
+even kissed a married man! I should never forgive myself."
+
+"You don't love him at all, do you?" Sylvia asked, pressing her hands
+down on Lily's shoulders and forcing her to look straight at her.
+"Laugh, my dear, laugh! Hurrah! you can't pretend you care a bit about
+him. Fifty thousand francs and freedom! And just when I was getting
+bored with Paris."
+
+"It's all very well for you, Sylvia," Lily said, resentfully, as she
+tried to shake off Sylvia's exuberance. "You don't want to be married. I
+do. I really looked forward to marrying Michael."
+
+Sylvia's face hardened.
+
+"Oh, I know you blame me entirely for that," she continued. "But it
+wasn't my fault, really. It was bad luck. It's no good pretending I
+wasn't fond of Claude. I was, and when I met him--"
+
+"Look here, don't let's live that episode over again in discussion,"
+Sylvia said. "It belongs to the past, and I've always had a great
+objection to body-snatching."
+
+"What I was going to explain," Lily went on, "was that Michael put the
+idea of marriage into my head. Then being always with Hector, I got used
+to being with somebody. I was always treated like a married woman when
+we went to the seaside or on motoring tours. You always think that
+because I sit still and say nothing my mind's an absolute blank, but it
+isn't. I've been thinking for a long time about marriage. After all,
+there must be something in marriage, or so many people wouldn't get
+married. You married the wrong man, but I don't believe you'll ever find
+the right man. You're much, much, much too critical. I _will_ get
+married."
+
+"And now," Sylvia said, with a laugh, "to all the other riddles that
+torment my poor brain I must add you."
+
+Hector Ozanne tried to stanch Lily's wounded ideals with a generous
+compress of notes; he succeeded.
+
+"After all," she admitted, twanging the elastic round the bundle. "I'm
+not so badly off."
+
+"We must buy that silver casket for the letters," Sylvia said. "His
+wedding-day draws near. I think I shall dress up like the Ancient
+Mariner and give them to him myself."
+
+"How much will a silver casket cost?" Lily asked.
+
+Sylvia roughly estimated.
+
+"It seems a good deal," said Lily, thoughtfully. "I think I shall just
+send them to him in a cardboard box. I finished those chocolates after
+dinner. Yes, that will do quite well. After all, he treated me very
+badly and to get his letters back safely will be quite a good-enough
+present. What could he do with a silver casket? He'd probably use it for
+visiting-cards."
+
+That evening Sylvia, greatly content to have Lily to herself, again took
+her to the Café de la Chouette.
+
+Her agent, who was drinking in a corner, came across to speak to her.
+
+"Brazil?" she repeated, doubtfully.
+
+"Thirty francs for three songs and you can go home at twelve. It isn't
+as if you had to sit drinking champagne and dancing all night."
+
+Sylvia looked at Lily.
+
+"Would you like a voyage?"
+
+"We might as well go."
+
+The contract was arranged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+One of the habits that Sylvia had acquired on tour in France was
+card-playing; perhaps she inherited her skill from Henry, for she was a
+very good player. The game on the voyage was poker. Before they were
+through the Straits of Gibraltar Sylvia had lost five hundred francs;
+she borrowed five hundred francs from Lily and set herself to win them
+back. The sea became very rough in the Atlantic; all the passengers were
+seasick. The other four poker-players, who were theatrical folk, wanted
+to stop, but Sylvia would not hear of it; she was much too anxious about
+her five hundred francs to feel seasick. She lost Lily's first five
+hundred francs and borrowed five hundred more. Lily began to feel less
+seasick now, and she watched the struggle with a personal interest. The
+other players, with the hope that Sylvia's bad luck would hold, were so
+deeply concentrated upon maintaining their advantage that they too
+forgot to be seasick. The ship rolled, but the poker-players only left
+the card-room for meals in the deserted saloon. Sylvia began to win
+again. Blue skies and calmer weather appeared; the other poker-players
+had no excuse for not continuing, especially now that it was possible to
+play on deck. Sylvia had won back all she had lost and two hundred
+francs besides when the ship entered the harbor of Rio de Janeiro.
+
+"I think I should like gambling," Lily said, "if only one didn't have to
+shuffle and cut all the time."
+
+The place where Sylvia was engaged to sing was one of those centers of
+aggregated amusement that exist all over the world without any
+particular characteristic to distinguish one from another, like the
+dinners in what are known as first-class hotels on the Continent.
+Everything here was more expensive than in Europe; even the
+roulette-boards had zero and double zero to help the bank. The tradition
+of Brazil for supplying gold and diamonds to the world had bred a
+familiarity with the external signs of wealth that expressed itself in
+overjeweled men and women, whose display one forgave more easily on
+account of the natural splendor of the scene with which they had to
+compete.
+
+Lily, with the unerring bad taste that nearly always is to be found in
+sensuous and indolent women, to whom the obvious makes the quickest and
+easiest appeal, admired the flashing stones and stars and fireflies with
+an energy that astonished Sylvia, notwithstanding the novel glimpse she
+had been given of Lily's character in the affair with Hector Ozanne. The
+climate was hot, but a sea breeze freshened the city after sunset; the
+enforced day-long inactivity, with the luxurious cool baths and
+competent negresses who attended upon her lightest movement, satisfied
+Lily's conception of existence, and when they drove along the margin of
+the bay before dinner her only complaint was that she could not
+coruscate like other women in the carriages they passed.
+
+With the money they had in hand Sylvia felt justified in avoiding a
+_pension d'artistes_, and they had taken a flat together. This meant
+that when Sylvia went to work at the cabaret, Lily, unless she came with
+her, was left alone, which did not at all suit her. Sylvia therefore
+suggested that she should accept an engagement to dance at midnight,
+with the stipulation that she should not be compelled to stay until 3
+A.M. unless she wanted to, and that by foregoing any salary she should
+not be expected to drink gooseberry wine at 8,000 reis a bottle, on
+which she would receive a commission of 1,000 reis. The management knew
+what a charm the tall, fair English girl would exercise over the swart
+Brazilians, and was glad enough to engage her at her own terms. Sylvia
+had not counted upon Lily's enjoying the cabaret life so much. The heat
+was affecting her much more than Lily, and she began to complain of the
+long hours of what for her was a so false gaiety. Nothing, however,
+would persuade Lily to go home before three o'clock at the earliest, and
+Sylvia, on whom a great lassitude and indifference had settled, used to
+wait for her, sitting alone while Lily danced the _machiche_.
+
+One night, when Sylvia had sung two of her songs with such a sense of
+hopeless depression weighing her down that the applause which followed
+each of them seemed to her a mockery, she had a sudden vertigo from
+which she pulled herself together with a conviction that nothing would
+induce her to sing the third song. She went on the scene, seated herself
+at the piano, and to the astonishment and discomfort of the audience and
+her fellow-players, half chanted, half recited one of the eccentric
+Englishman's poems about a body in the morgue. Such a performance in
+such a place created consternation, but in the silence that followed
+Sylvia fainted. When she came to herself she was back in her own
+bedroom, with a Brazilian doctor jabbering and mouthing over her
+symptoms. Presently she was taken to a clinic and, when she was well
+enough to know what had happened, she learned that she had yellow fever,
+but that the crisis had passed. At first Lily came to see her every day,
+but when convalescence was further advanced she gave up coming, which
+worried Sylvia intensely and hampered her progress. She insisted that
+something terrible had happened to Lily and worked herself up into such
+a state that the doctor feared a relapse. She was too weak to walk;
+realizing at last that the only way of escaping from the clinic would be
+to get well, she fought against her apprehensions for Lily's safety and
+after a fortnight of repressed torments was allowed out. When Sylvia
+reached the flat she was met by the grinning negresses, who told her
+that Lily had gone to live elsewhere and let her understand that it was
+with a man.
+
+Sylvia was not nearly well enough to reappear at the cabaret, but she
+went down that evening and was told by the other girls that Lily was at
+the tables. They were duly shocked at Sylvia's altered appearance,
+congratulated her upon having been lucky enough to escape the necessity
+of shaving her head, and expressed their regrets at not knowing in which
+clinic she had been staying so that they might have brought her the news
+of their world. Sylvia lacked the energy to resent their hypocrisy and
+went to look for Lily, whom she found blazing with jewels at one of the
+roulette-tables.
+
+There was something so fantastic in Lily's appearance, thus bedecked,
+that Sylvia thought for a moment it was a feverish vision such as had
+haunted her brain at the beginning of the illness. Lily wore suspended
+from a fine chain round her neck a large diamond, one of those so-called
+blue diamonds of Brazil that in the moonlight seem like sapphires; her
+fingers flashed fire; a large brooch of rubies in the likeness of a
+butterfly winked somberly from her black corsage.
+
+Sylvia made her way through the press of gamblers and touched Lily's
+arm. So intent was she upon the tables that she brushed away the hand as
+if it had been a mosquito.
+
+"Lily! Lily!" Sylvia called, sharply. "Where have you been? Where have
+you gone?"
+
+At that moment the wheel stopped, and the croupier cried the number and
+the color in all their combinations. Sylvia was sure that he exchanged
+glances with Lily and that the gold piece upon the 33 on which he was
+paying had not been there before the wheel had stopped.
+
+"Lily! Lily! Where have you been?" Sylvia called, again. Lily gathered
+in her winnings and turned round. It was curious how changed her eyes
+were; they seemed now merely like two more rich jewels that she was
+wearing.
+
+"I'm sorry I've not been to see you," she said. "My dear, I've won
+nearly four thousand pounds."
+
+"You have, have you?" Sylvia said. "Then the sooner you leave Brazil the
+better."
+
+Lily threw a swift glance of alarm toward the croupier, a man of almost
+unnatural thinness, who, while he intoned the invitation to place the
+stakes, fixed his eyes upon her.
+
+"I can't leave Brazil," she said, in a whisper. "I'm living with him."
+
+"Living with a croupier?" Sylvia gasped.
+
+"Hush! He belongs to quite a good family. He ruined himself. His name is
+Manuel Camacho. Don't talk to me any more, Sylvia. Go away. He's madly
+jealous. He wants to marry me."
+
+"Like Hector, I suppose," Sylvia scoffed.
+
+"Not a bit like Hector. He brings a priest every morning and says he'll
+kill me and himself and the priest, too, if I don't marry him. But I
+want to make more money, and then I will marry him. I must. I'm afraid
+of what he'll do if I refuse. Go away from me, Sylvia, go away. There'll
+be a fearful scene to-night if you will go on talking to me. Last night
+a man threw a flower into our carriage when we were driving home, and
+Manuel jumped out and beat him insensible with his cane. Go away."
+
+Sylvia demanded where she was living, but Lily would not tell her,
+because she was afraid of what her lover might do.
+
+"He doesn't even let me look out of the window. If I look out of the
+window he tears his clothes with rage and digs his finger-nails into the
+palms of his hands. He's very violent. Sometimes he shoots at the
+chandelier."
+
+Sylvia began to laugh. There was something ridiculous in the notion of
+Lily's leading this kind of lion-tamer's existence. Suddenly the
+croupier with an angry movement swept a pile of money from the table.
+
+"Go away, Sylvia, go away. I know he'll break out in a moment. That was
+meant for a warning."
+
+Sylvia understood that it was hopeless to persist for the moment, and
+she made her way back to the cabaret. The girls were eager to know what
+she thought of Lily's protector.
+
+_"Elle a de la veine, tu sais, la petite Lili. Elle l'a pris comme ça,
+et il l'aime à la folie. Et elle gagne! mon Dieu, comme elle gagne! Tout
+va pour elle. Tu sais, elle a des brillants merveilleux. Ça fait riche,
+tu sais. Y'a pas de chic, mais il est jaloux! Il se porte comme un fou.
+Ça me raserait, tu sais, être collée avec un homme pareil. Pourtant,
+elle est busineuse, la petite Lili! Elle ne lui donne pas un rond. Y'a
+pas de dos vert. Ah, non, elle est la vraie anglaise sans blague. Et le
+mec, dis, n'est-ce pas qu'il est maigre comme tout? On dirait un
+squelette."_
+
+With all their depreciation of the croupier, it seemed to Sylvia that
+most of the girls would have been well pleased to change places with
+Lily. But how was she herself to regard the affair? During those long
+days of illness, when she had lain hour after hour with her thoughts,
+to what a failure her life had seemed to be turning, and what a
+haphazard, harborless course hers had seemed to be. Now she must perhaps
+jettison the little cargo she carried, or would it be fairer to say that
+she must decide whether she should disembark it? It was absurd to
+pretend that Michael would have viewed with anything but dismay the
+surrender of Lily to such a one as that croupier, and if she made that
+surrender, she would be violating his trust that counted for so much in
+her aimless career. Yet was she not attributing to Michael the sentiment
+he felt before Lily's betrayal of him? He had only demanded of Sylvia
+that she should prevent Lily from drifting downward along the dull road
+of undistinguished ruin. If this fantastic Brazilian wished to marry
+her, why should he not do so? Then she herself should be alone indeed
+and, unless a miracle happened, should be lost in the eternal whirl of
+vagabonds to and fro across the face of the earth.
+
+"They say one must expect to be depressed after yellow fever," Sylvia
+reassured herself. "Perhaps this mood won't last, but, oh, the
+endlessness of it all! How even one's brush and comb seem weighed down
+by an interminable melancholy. As I look round me I can see nothing that
+doesn't strike me as hopelessly, drearily, appallingly superfluous. The
+very soap in its china dish looks wistful. How pathetic the life of a
+piece of soap is, when one stops to contemplate it. A slow and steady
+diminution. Oh, I must do something to shake off this intolerable
+heaviness!"
+
+The simplest and most direct path to energy and action seemed to be an
+attempt to interview Camacho, and the following evening Sylvia tried to
+make Lily divulge her address; but she begged not to be disturbed, and
+Sylvia, seeing that she was utterly absorbed by the play, had to leave
+her.
+
+"Either I am getting flaccid beyond belief," she said to herself, "or
+Lily has acquired an equally incredible determination. I think it's the
+latter. It just shows what passion will do even for a Lily. All her life
+she has remained unmoved, until roulette reveals itself to her and she
+finds out what she was intended for. Of course I must leave her to her
+fierce skeleton; he represents the corollary to the passion. Queer
+thing, the way she always wins. I'm sure they're cheating, somehow, the
+two of them. There's the final link. They'll go away presently to
+Europe, and Lily will enjoy the sweetest respectability that exists--the
+one that is founded on early indiscretion and dishonesty--a paradise
+preceded by the fall."
+
+Sylvia waited by the entrance to the roulette-room on the next night
+until play was finished, watched Lily come out with Camacho, and saw
+them get into a carriage and drive away immediately. None of the
+attendants or the other croupiers knew where Camacho lived, or, if they
+knew, they refused to tell Sylvia. On the fourth evening, therefore, she
+waited in a carriage by the entrance and ordered her driver to follow
+the one in which Lily was. She found that Camacho's apartments were not
+so far from her own; the next morning she waited at the corner of the
+street until she saw him come out; then she rang the bell. The negress
+who opened the door shook her head at the notion of letting Sylvia
+enter, but the waiting in the sun had irritated her and she pushed past
+and ran up-stairs. The negress had left the upper door open, and Sylvia
+was able to enter the flat. Lily was in bed, playing with her jewels as
+if they were toys.
+
+"Sylvia!" she cried, in alarm. "He'll kill you if he finds you here.
+He's gone to fetch the priest. They'll be back in a moment. Go away."
+
+Sylvia said she insisted on speaking to Camacho; she had some good
+advice to give him.
+
+"But he's particularly jealous of you. The first evening you spoke to me
+... look!" Lily pointed to the ceiling, which was marked like a die with
+five holes. "He did that when he came home to show what he would do to
+you."
+
+"Rubbish!" said Sylvia. "He'll be like a lamb when we meet. If he hadn't
+fired at the ceiling I should have felt much more alarmed for the safety
+of my head."
+
+"But, Sylvia," Lily entreated. "You don't know what he's like. Once,
+when he thought a man nudged me, he came home and tore all the towels to
+pieces with his teeth. The servant nearly cried when she saw the room in
+the morning. It was simply covered with bits of towel, and he swallowed
+one piece and nearly choked. You don't know what he's like. I can manage
+him, but nobody else could."
+
+Here was a new Lily indeed, who dared to claim that she could manage
+somebody of whom Sylvia must be afraid. She challenged Lily to say when
+she had ever known her to flinch from an encounter with a man.
+
+"But, my dear, Manuel isn't English. When he's in one of those rages
+he's not like a human being at all. You can't soothe him by arguing with
+him. You have to calm him without talking."
+
+"What do you use? A red-hot poker?"
+
+Lily became agitated at Sylvia's obstinacy, and, regardless of her
+jewels, which tinkled down into a heap on the floor, she jumped out of
+bed and implored her not to stay.
+
+"I want to know one or two things before I go," Sylvia said, and was
+conscious of taking advantage of Lily's alarm to make her speak the
+truth, owing to the lack of time for the invention of lies.
+
+"Do you love this man?"
+
+"Yes, in a way I do."
+
+"You could be happy married to him?"
+
+"Yes, when I've won five thousand pounds."
+
+"He cheats for you?"
+
+Lily hesitated.
+
+"Never mind," Sylvia went on. "I know he does."
+
+"Oh, my dear," Lily murmured, biting her lip. "Then other people might
+notice. Never mind. I ought to finish to-night. The boat sails the day
+after to-morrow."
+
+"And what about me?" Sylvia asked.
+
+Lily looked shamefaced for a moment, but the natural optimism of the
+gambler quickly reasserted itself.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't like to break your contract."
+
+"My contract," Sylvia repeated, bitterly. "What about---- Oh, but how
+foolish I am. You dear unimaginative creature!"
+
+"I'm not at all unimaginative," Lily interposed, quickly. "One of the
+reasons why I want to leave Brazil is because the black people here make
+me nervous. That's why I left our flat. I didn't know what to do. I was
+so frightened. I think I'm very imaginative. You got ill. What was I to
+do?"
+
+She asked this like an accusation, and Sylvia knew that it would be
+impossible to make her see any other point of view.
+
+"Besides, it was your fault I started to gamble. I watched you on the
+boat."
+
+"But you were going away without a word to me?" Sylvia could not refrain
+from tormenting herself with this question.
+
+"Oh no, I was coming to say good-by, but you don't understand how
+closely he watches me."
+
+The thought of Camacho's jealous antics recurred to Lily with the
+imminence of his return; she begged Sylvia, now that all her questions
+were answered, to escape. It was too late; there was a sound of
+footsteps upon the stairs and the noise of angry voices above deep
+gobbles of protested innocence from the black servant.
+
+The entrance reminded Sylvia of "Il Barbiere di Siviglia," for when
+Camacho came leaping into the room, as thin and active as a grasshopper,
+the priest was holding his coattails with one hand and with the other
+making the most operatic gestures of despair, like Don Basilio. In the
+doorway the black servant continued to gobble at everybody in turn,
+including the Almighty, to witness the clarity of her conscience.
+
+"What language do you speak?" Sylvia asked, sharply, while Camacho was
+struggling to free himself from the restraint of the priest.
+
+"I speak English! Gaddam! Hell! Five hundred hells!" the croupier
+shouted. "And I have sweared a swore that you will not interrupt between
+me myself and my Lili."
+
+Camacho raised his arm to shake his fist, and the priest caught hold of
+it, which made Camacho turn round and open on him with Portuguese
+expletives.
+
+"When you've quite done cracking Brazil nuts with your teeth, perhaps
+you'll listen to me," Sylvia began.
+
+"No, you hear me, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Camacho shouted. "And I will
+not hear you. I have heard you enough. You shall not take her away.
+_Putain!_"
+
+"If you want to be polite in French," Sylvia said. "Come along!
+
+    _"Ce marloupatte pâle et mince_
+    _Se nommait simplement Navet,_
+    _Mais il vivait ainsi qu'un prince,_
+    _Il aimait les femmes qu'on rince._
+
+_Tu comprends? Mais moi, je ne suis pas une femme qu'on rince."_
+
+It was certainly improbable, Sylvia thought, that the croupier had
+understood much of Richepin's verse, but the effect of the little
+recitation was excellent because it made him choke. Lily now intervened,
+and when Sylvia beheld her soothing the inarticulate Camacho by stroking
+his head, she abandoned the last faint inclination to break off this
+match and called upon the priest to marry them at once. No doubt the
+priest would have been willing to begin the ceremony if he had been able
+to understand a word of what Sylvia said, but he evidently thought she
+was appealing to him against Camacho's violence, and with a view to
+affording the ultimate assistance of which he was capable he crossed
+himself and turned up his eyes to heaven.
+
+"What an awful noise there is!" Sylvia cried, and, looking round her
+with a sudden realization of its volume, she perceived that the negress
+in the doorway had been reinforced by what was presumably the
+cook--another negress who was joining in her fellow-servant's
+protestations. At the same time the priest was talking incessantly in
+rapid Portuguese; Camacho was probably swearing in the same language;
+and Lily was making a noise that was exactly half-way between a dove
+cooing and an ostler grooming a horse.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Camacho," Sylvia began.
+
+"Oh, don't speak to him, Sylvia," Lily implored. "He can't be spoken to
+when he's like this. It's a kind of illness, really."
+
+Sylvia paid no attention to her, but continued to address the croupier.
+
+"If you'll listen to me, Mr. Camacho, instead of behaving like an
+exasperated toy terrier, you'll find that we both want the same thing."
+
+"You shall not have her," the croupier chattered. "I will shoot
+everybody before you shall have her."
+
+"I don't want her," Sylvia screamed. "I've come here to be a bridesmaid
+or a godmother or any other human accessory to a wedding you like to
+mention. Take her, my dear man, she's yours."
+
+At last Sylvia was able to persuade him that she was not to be regarded
+as an enemy of his matrimonial intentions, and after a final burst of
+rage directed against the negresses, whom he ejected from the room, as a
+housemaid turns a mattress, he made a speech:
+
+"I am to marry Lily. We go to Portugal, where I am not to be a croupier,
+but a gentleman. I excuse my furage. You grant excusals, yes? It is a
+decomprehence."
+
+"He's apologizing," Lily explained in the kind of way one might call
+attention to the tricks of an intelligent puppy.
+
+"She's actually proud of him," Sylvia thought. "But, of course, to her
+he represents gold and diamonds."
+
+The priest, who had grasped that the strain was being relaxed, began to
+exude smiles and to rub his hands; he sniffed the prospect of a fee so
+richly that one seemed to hear the notes crackle like pork. Camacho
+produced the wedding-ring that was even more outshone than wedding-rings
+usually are by the diamonds of betrothal.
+
+"But I can't be married in my dressing-gown," Lily protested.
+
+Sylvia felt inclined to say it was the most suitable garment, except a
+nightgown, that she could have chosen, but in the end, after another
+discussion, it was decided that the ecclesiastical ceremony should be
+performed to-morrow in church and that to-day should be devoted to the
+civil rite. Sylvia promised not to say a word about the departure to
+Europe.
+
+Three days later Sylvia went on board the steamer to make her farewells.
+She gave Lily a delicate little pistol for a wedding-present; from Lily,
+in memory of her marriage, she received a box of chocolates.
+
+It was impossible not to feel lonely, when Lily had gone: in three and
+a half years they had been much together. For a while Sylvia tried to
+content herself with the company of the girls in the _pension
+d'artistes_, to which she had been forced to go because the flat was too
+expensive for her to live in now. Her illness had swallowed up any money
+she had saved, and the manager took advantage of it to lower her salary.
+When she protested the manager told her he would be willing to pay the
+original salary, if she would go to São Paulo. Though Sylvia understood
+that the management was trying to get the best of a bargain, she was too
+listless to care much and she agreed to go. The voyage there was like a
+nightmare. The boat was full of gaudy negroes who sang endlessly their
+mysterious songs; the smell was vile; the food was worse; cockroaches
+swarmed. São Paulo was a squalid reproduction of Rio de Janeiro, and the
+women who sang in the cabaret were all seamed with ten years' longer
+vagabondage than those at Rio. The men of São Paulo treated them with
+the insolence of the half-breeds they all seemed. On the third night a
+big man with teeth like an ancient fence and a diamond in his
+shirt-front like a crystal stopper leaned over from a box and shouted to
+Sylvia to come up and join him when she had finished her songs; he said
+other things that made her shake with anger. When she left the scene,
+the grand pimp, who was politely known as the manager, congratulated
+Sylvia upon her luck: she had caught the fancy of the richest patron.
+
+"You don't suppose I'm going to see that _goujat_ in his box?" she
+growled.
+
+The grand pimp was in despair. Did she wish to drive away their richest
+patron? He would probably open a dozen bottles of champagne. He might
+... the grand pimp waved his arms to express mental inability to express
+all the splendors within her grasp. Presently the impatient suitor came
+behind the scene to know the reason of Sylvia's delay. He grasped her by
+the wrist and tried to drag her up to his box. She seized the only
+weapon in reach--a hand-glass--and smashed it against his face. The
+suitor roared; the grand pimp squealed; Sylvia escaped to the stage,
+which was almost flush with the main dancing-hall. She forced her way
+through the orchestra, kicking the instruments right and left, and fell
+into the arms of a man more resplendent than the rest, but a
+_rastaquouère_ of more Parisian cut, who in a dago-American accent
+promised to plug the first guy that tried to touch her.
+
+Sylvia felt like Carmen on the arm of the Toreador when she and her
+protector walked out of the cabaret. He was a youngish man, wearing a
+blue serge suit and high-heeled shoes half buckskin, half
+patent-leather, tied with white silk laces, so excessively American in
+shape that one looked twice to be sure he was not wearing them on the
+wrong feet. His trousers, after exhausting the ordinary number of
+buttons in front, prolonged themselves into a kind of corselet that drew
+attention to the slimness of his waist. He wore a frilled white shirt
+sown with blue hearts and a white silk tie with a large diamond pin. The
+back of his neck was shaved, which gave his curly black hair the look of
+a wig. He was the Latin dandy after being operated upon in an American
+barber shop, and his name was Carlos Morera.
+
+Sylvia noted his appearance in such detail, because the appearance of
+anybody after that monster in the box would have come as a relief and a
+diversion. Morera had led her to a bar that opened out of the cabaret,
+and after placing two automatic pistols on the counter he ordered
+champagne cocktails for them both.
+
+"He won't come after you in here. Dat stiff don't feel he would like to
+meet Carlos Morera. Say, do you know why? Why, because Carlos Morera's
+ready to plug any stiff dat don't happen to suit his fancy right away.
+Dat's me, Carlos Morera. I'm pretty rich, I am. I'm a gentleman, I am.
+But dat ain't going to stop me using those"; he indicated the pistols.
+"Drink up and let's have another. Don't you want to drink? See here,
+then." He poured Sylvia's cocktail on the floor. "Nothing won't stop
+Carlos Morera if he wants to call another round of drinks. Two more
+champagne cocktails!"
+
+"Is this going to be my Manuel?" Sylvia asked herself. She felt at the
+moment inclined to let him be anything rather than go back to the
+concert and face that man in the box.
+
+"You're looking some white," Morera commented. "I believe he scared you.
+I believe I ought to have shot him. Say, you sit here and drink up. I
+t'ink I'll go back and shoot him now. I sha'n't be gone long."
+
+"Sit still, you fire-eater," cried Sylvia, catching hold of his arm.
+
+"Say, dat's good. Fire-eater! Yes, I believe I'd eat fire if it came to
+it. I believe you could make me laugh. I'm going to Buenos Aires
+to-morrow. Why don't you come along of me? This São Paulo is a bum
+Brazilian town. You want to see the Argentine. I'll show you lots of
+life."
+
+"Look here," said Sylvia. "I don't mind coming with you to make you
+laugh and to laugh myself, but that's all. Understand?"
+
+"Dat's all right," Carlos agreed. "I'm a funny kind of a fellow, I am.
+As soon as I found I could buy any girl I wanted, I didn't seem to want
+them no more. 'Sides, I've got seven already. You come along of me. I'm
+good company, I am. Everybody dat goes along of me laughs and has good
+fun. Hear that?"
+
+He jingled the money in his pocket with a joyful reverence, as if he
+were ringing a sanctus-bell. "Now, you come back with me into the
+cabaret."
+
+Sylvia hesitated.
+
+"Don't you worry. Nobody won't dare to look at you when you're with me."
+
+Morera put her arm in his, and back they walked into the cabaret again,
+more than ever like Carmen with her Toreador. The grand pimp, seeing
+that Sylvia was safely protected, came forward with obeisances and
+apologies.
+
+"See here. Bring two bottles of champagne," Morera commanded.
+
+The grand pimp beckoned authoritatively to a waiter, but Morera stood up
+in a fury.
+
+"I didn't tell you to bring a waiter. I told you to bring two bottles of
+champagne. Bring them yourself."
+
+The grand pimp returned very meekly with the bottles.
+
+"Dat's more like. Draw the cork of one."
+
+The grand pimp asked if he should put the other on ice.
+
+"Don't you worry about the other," said Morera. "The other's only there
+so I can break it on your damned head in case I get tired of looking at
+you. See what I mean?"
+
+The grand pimp professed the most perfect comprehension.
+
+"Well, this is a bum place," Morera declared, after they had sat for a
+while. "I believe we sha'n't get no fun here. Let's quit."
+
+He drove her back to the pension, and the next day they took ship to La
+Plata for Buenos Aires.
+
+Morera insisted on Sylvia's staying at an expensive hotel and was very
+anxious for her to buy plenty of new evening frocks.
+
+"I've got a fancy," he explained, "to show you a bit of life. You hadn't
+seen life before you came to Argentina."
+
+The change of air had made Sylvia feel much better, and when she had
+fitted herself out with new clothes, to which Morera added a variety of
+expensive and gaudy jewels, she felt quite ready to examine life under
+his guidance.
+
+He took her to one or two theaters, to the opera, and to the casinos;
+then one evening he decided upon a special entertainment of which he
+made a secret.
+
+"I want you to dress yourself up fine to-night," he said. "We're going
+to some smart ball. Put on all your jewelry. I'm going to dress up
+smart, too."
+
+Sylvia had found that overdressing was the best way of returning his
+hospitality; this evening she determined to surpass all previous
+efforts.
+
+"Heavens!" she ejaculated, when she made the final survey of herself in
+the looking-glass. "Do I look more like a Christmas tree or a chemist's
+shop?"
+
+When she joined Morera in the lounge, she saw that he was in evening
+dress, with diamonds wherever it was possible to put them.
+
+"You're fine," he said, contentedly. "Dat's the way I like to see a goil
+look. I guess we're going to have lots of fun to-night."
+
+They drank a good deal of champagne at dinner, and about eleven o'clock
+went out to their carriage. When the coachman was given the address of
+the ballroom, he looked round in surprise and was sworn at for his
+insolence, so with a shrug of the shoulders he drove off. They left the
+ordinary centers of amusement behind them and entered a meaner quarter
+where half-breeds and negroes predominated; at last after a very long
+drive they pulled up before what looked like a third-rate saloon. Sylvia
+hesitated before she got out; it did not seem at all a suitable
+environment for their conspicuous attire.
+
+"We shall have lots of fun," Morera promised. "This is the toughest
+dancing-saloon in Buenos Aires."
+
+"It looks it," Sylvia agreed.
+
+They entered a vestibule that smelt of sawdust, niggers, and raw
+spirits, and went up-stairs to a crowded hall that was thick with
+tobacco smoke and dust. A negro band was playing ragtime in a corner;
+all along one side of the hall ran a bar. The dancers were a queer
+medley. The men were mostly of the Parisian apache type, though
+naturally more swarthy; the women were mostly in black dresses, with
+shawls of brilliantly colored silk and tawdry combs in their black hair.
+There were one or two women dancing in coat and skirt and hat, whose
+lifted petticoats and pale, dissolute faces shocked even Sylvia's
+masculine tolerance; there was something positively evil in their
+commonplace attire and abandoned motion; they were like anemic
+shop-girls possessed with unclean spirits.
+
+"I believe we shall make these folks mad," said Morera, with a happy
+chuckle. Before Sylvia could refuse he had taken her in his arms and was
+dancing round the room at double time. The cracked mirrors caught their
+reflections as they swept round, and Sylvia realized with a shock the
+amount of diamonds they were wearing between them and the effect they
+must be having in this thieves' kitchen.
+
+"Some of these guys are looking mad already," Morera proclaimed,
+enthusiastically.
+
+The dance came to an end, and they leaned back against the wall
+exhausted. Several men walked provocatively past, looking Sylvia and her
+partner slowly up and down.
+
+"Come along of me," Morera said. "We'll promenade right around the
+hall."
+
+He put her arm in his and swaggered up and down. The other dancers were
+gathering in knots and eyeing them menacingly. At last an enormous
+American slouched across the empty floor and stood in their path.
+
+"Say, who the hell are you, anyway?" he asked.
+
+"Say, what the hell's dat to you?" demanded Morera.
+
+"Quit!" bellowed the American.
+
+Morera fired without taking his hand from his pocket, and the American
+dropped.
+
+"Hands up! _Manos arriba!_" cried Morera, pulling out his two pistols
+and covering the dancers while he backed with Sylvia toward the
+entrance. When they were up-stairs in the vestibule he told her to look
+if the carriage were at the door; when he heard that it was not he gave
+a loud whoop of exultation.
+
+"I said I believed we was going to have lots of fun. We got to run now
+and see if any of those guys can catch us."
+
+He seized Sylvia's arm, and they darted down the steps and out into the
+street. Morera looked rapidly right and left along the narrow
+thoroughfare. They could hear the noise of angry voices gathering in the
+vestibule of the saloon.
+
+"This way and round the turning," he cried, pulling Sylvia to the left.
+There was only one window alight in the narrow alley up which they had
+turned, a dim orange stain in the darkness. Morera hammered on the door
+as their pursuers came running round the corner. Two or three shots were
+fired, but before they were within easy range the door had opened and
+they were inside. The old hag who had opened it protested when she saw
+Sylvia, but Morera commanded her in Spanish to bolt it, and she seemed
+afraid to disobey. Somewhere in a distant part of the house there was a
+sound of women's crooning; outside they could hear the shuffling of
+their pursuers' feet.
+
+"Say, this is fun," Morera chuckled. "We've arrived into a _burdel_."
+
+It was impossible for Sylvia to be angry with him, so frank was he in
+his enjoyment of the situation. The old woman, however, was very angry
+indeed, for the pursuers were banging upon her door and she feared a
+visit from the police. Her clamor was silenced with a handful of notes.
+
+"Champagne for the girls," Morera cried.
+
+For Sylvia the evening had already taken on the nature of a dream, and
+she accepted the immediate experience as only one of an inconsequent
+procession of events. Having attained this state of mind, she saw
+nothing unusual in sitting down with half a dozen women who clung to
+their sofas as sea-anemones to the rocks of an aquarium. She had a
+fleeting astonishment that they should have names, that beings so
+utterly indistinguishable should be called Juanilla or Belita or Tula or
+Lola or Maruca, but the faint shock of realizing a common humanity
+passed off almost at once, and she found herself enjoying a conversation
+with Belita, who spoke a few words of broken French. With the
+circulation of the champagne the women achieved a kind of liveliness and
+examined Sylvia's jewels with murmurs of admiration. The ancient bawd
+who owned them proposed a dance, to which Morera loudly agreed. The
+women whispered and giggled among themselves, looking bashfully over
+their shoulders at Sylvia in a way that made the crone thump her stick
+on the floor with rage. She explained in Spanish the cause of their
+hesitation.
+
+"They don't want to take off their clothes in front of you," Morera
+translated to Sylvia, with apologies for such modesty from women who no
+longer had the right to possess even their own emotions; nevertheless,
+he suggested that they might be excused to avoid spoiling a jolly
+evening.
+
+"Good heavens! I should think so!" Sylvia agreed.
+
+Morera gave a magnanimous wave of his arm, in which he seemed to confer
+upon the women the right to keep on their clothes. They clapped their
+hands and laughed like children. Soon to the sound of castanets they
+wriggled their bodies in a way that was not so much suggestive of
+dancing as of flea-bites. A lamp with a tin reflector jarred fretfully
+upon a shelf, and the floor creaked.
+
+Suddenly Morera held up his hand for silence. The knocking on the street
+door was getting louder. He asked the old woman if there was any way of
+getting out at the back.
+
+"Dat's all right, kid," he told Sylvia. "We can crawl over the dooryards
+at the back. Dat door in front ain't going to hold not more than five
+minutes."
+
+He tore the elastic from a bundle of notes and scattered them in the
+air like leaves; the women pounced upon the largesse and were fighting
+with one another on the floor when Sylvia and Morera followed the old
+woman to the back door and out into a squalid yard.
+
+How they ever surmounted the various walls and crossed the various yards
+they encountered Sylvia could never understand. All she remembered was
+being lifted on packing-cases and dust-bins, of slipping once and
+crashing into a hen-coop, of tearing her dress on some broken glass, of
+riding astride walls and pricking her face against plants, and of
+repeating to herself all the time, "When lilacs last in the dooryard
+bloomed." When at last they extricated themselves from the maze of
+dooryards they wandered for a long time through a maze of narrow
+streets. Sylvia had managed to stuff all her jewelry out of sight into
+her corsage, where it scratched her most uncomfortably, but any
+discomfort was preferable to the covetous eyes of the half-breeds that
+watched her from the shadows.
+
+"I guess you enjoyed yourself," said Morera, in a satisfied voice, when
+at last they found a carriage and leaned back to breathe the gentle
+night air.
+
+"I enjoyed myself thoroughly," said Sylvia.
+
+"Dat's the way to see a bit of life," he declared. "What's the good of
+sitting in a bum theater all the night? Dat don't amuse me any. I
+plugged him in the leg," he added, in a tone of almost tender
+reminiscence.
+
+Sylvia expressed surprise at his knowing where he had hit him, and
+Morera was very indignant at the idea of her supposing that he should
+shoot a man without knowing exactly at what part of him he was aiming
+and where he should hit him.
+
+"Why, I might have killed him dead," he added. "I didn't want to kill a
+man dead just for a bit of fun. I started them guys off, see. They
+thought they'd got a slob. Dat's where I was laughing. I guess I'll
+sleep good to-night."
+
+Sylvia spent a month seeing life with Carlos Morera; though she never
+had another experience so exciting as the first, she passed a good deal
+of her time upon the verge of melodramatic adventure. She grew fond of
+this child-like creature with his spendthrift ostentation and bravado.
+He never showed the least sign of wanting to make love to her, and
+demanded nothing from Sylvia but overdressing and admiration of his
+exploits. At the end of the month he told Sylvia that business called
+him to New York and invited her to come with him. He let her understand,
+however, that now he wanted her as his mistress. Even if she could have
+tolerated the idea, Sylvia was sure that from the moment she accepted
+such a position he would begin to despise her. She had heard too many of
+his contemptuous references to the women he had bought. She refused to
+accompany him, on the plea of wanting to go back to Europe. Morera
+looked sullen, and she had a feeling that he was regretting the amount
+he had spent upon her. Her pride found such a sensation insupportable
+and she made haste to return him all his jewels.
+
+"Say, what sort of a guy do you think I am?" He threw the jewels at her
+feet and left her like a spoiled child.
+
+An hour or two later he came back with a necklace that must have cost
+five thousand dollars.
+
+"Dat's the sort of guy I am," he said, and would take no refusal from
+her to accept it.
+
+"You can't go on spending money for nothing like this," Sylvia
+protested.
+
+"I got plenty, ha'n't I?" he asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And I believe it's my money, ain't it?" he continued.
+
+She nodded again.
+
+"Well, dat finishes dat argument right away. Now I got another
+proposition. You listening? I got a proposition dat we get married. I
+believe I 'ain't met no girl like you. I know you've been a cabaret
+girl. Dat don't matter a cent to me. You're British. Well, I've always
+had a kind of notion I'd like to marry a British girl. Don't you tink
+I'm always the daffy guy you've bummed around with in Buenos Aires. You
+saw me in dat dancing-saloon? Well, I guess you know what I can do.
+Dat's what I am in business. Say, Sylvia, will you marry me?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"My dear old son, it wouldn't work for you or for me."
+
+"I don't see how you figure dat out."
+
+"I've figured it out to seventy times seven. It wouldn't do. Not for
+another mad month even. Come, let's say good-by. I want to go to Europe.
+I'm going to have a good time. It'll be you that's going to give it to
+me. My dear old Carlos, you may have spent your money badly from your
+point of view, but you haven't really. You never spent any money better
+in all your life."
+
+Morera did not bother her any more. With all his exterior foolishness he
+had a very deep perception of individual humanity. There was a boat
+sailing for Marseilles in a day or two, and he bought a ticket for
+Sylvia.
+
+"It's a return ticket," he told her. "It's good for a year."
+
+She assured him that even if she came back it could never be to marry
+him, but he insisted upon her keeping it, and to please him she yielded.
+
+Sylvia left the Argentine worth nearly as much as Lily when she went
+away from Brazil, and as if her luck was bent upon an even longer run,
+she gained heavily at poker all the way back across the Atlantic.
+
+When she reached Marseilles, Sylvia conceived a longing to meet
+Valentine again, and she telegraphed to Elène at Brussels for her
+address. It was with a quite exceptional anticipation that Sylvia asked
+the _concierge_ if Madame Lataille was in. While she walked up-stairs to
+her sister's apartment she remembered how she had yearned to be friends
+with Valentine nearly thirteen years ago, forgetting all about the
+disappointment of her hope in a sudden desire to fill up a small corner
+of her present loneliness.
+
+Valentine had always lingered in Sylvia's imagination as a rather wild
+figure, headstrong to such a pitch where passion was concerned that she
+herself had always felt colorless and insignificant in comparison. There
+was something splendidly tropical about Valentine as she appeared to
+Sylvia's fancy; in all the years after she quitted France she had
+cherished a memory of Valentine's fiery anger on the night of her
+departure as something nobly independent.
+
+Like other childish memories, Sylvia found Valentine much less
+impressive when she met her again--much less impressive, for instance,
+than Elène, who, though she had married a shopkeeper and had settled
+down to a most uncompromising and ordinary respectability, retained a
+ripening outward beauty that made up for any pinching of the spirit.
+Here was Valentine, scarcely even pretty, who achieved by neatness any
+effect of personality that she did. She had fine eyes--it seemed
+impossible for any of her mother's children to avoid them, however dull
+and inexpressive might have been the father's. Sylvia was thinking of
+Henry's eyes, but what she had heard of M. Lataille in childhood had
+never led her to picture him as more remarkable outwardly than her own
+father.
+
+"Twelve years since we met," Valentine was murmuring, and Sylvia was
+agreeing and thinking to herself all the time how very much compressed
+Valentine was, not uncomfortably or displeasingly, but like a new dress
+before it has blossomed to the individuality of the wearer. There
+recurred to Sylvia out of the past a likeness between Valentine and
+Maudie Tilt when Maudie had dressed up for the supper-party with Jimmy
+Monkley.
+
+When the first reckonings of lapsed years were over there did not seem
+much to talk about, but presently Sylvia described with much detail the
+voyage from La Plata to Marseilles, just as, when one takes up a
+long-interrupted correspondence, great attention is often devoted to the
+weather at the moment.
+
+"_Alors, vous êtes chanteuse?_" Valentine asked.
+
+"_Oui, je suis chanteuse_," Sylvia replied.
+
+Neither of the sisters used the second person singular: the
+conversation, which was desultory, like the conversation of travelers in
+a railway carriage, ended abruptly as if the train had entered a tunnel.
+
+"_Vous êtes très-bien ici_," said Sylvia, looking round. The train had
+emerged and was running through a dull cutting.
+
+"_Oui, je suis très-bien ici_," Valentine replied.
+
+There was no hostility between the sisters; there was merely a blank, a
+sundering stretch of twelve years, that dismayed both of them with its
+tracklessness. Presently Sylvia noticed a photograph upon the wall so
+conspicuously framed as to justify a supposition that it represented the
+man who was responsible for Valentine's well-being.
+
+"_Oui, c'est mon amant_," said Valentine, in reply to the unspoken
+question.
+
+Sylvia was faced by the problem of commenting satisfactorily upon a
+photograph. To begin with, it was one of those photographs that preserve
+the individual hairs of the mustache but eradicate every line from the
+face. It was impossible to comment on it, and it would have been equally
+impossible to comment on the original in person. The only fact emerging
+from the photograph was that in addition to a mustache the subject of it
+owned a pearl tie-pin; but even of the genuineness of the pearl it was
+unable to give any assurance.
+
+"Photographs tell one nothing, do they?" Sylvia said, at last. "They're
+like somebody else's dreams."
+
+Valentine knitted her brows in perplexity.
+
+"Or somebody else's baby," Sylvia went on, desperately.
+
+"I don't like babies," said Valentine.
+
+"_Vraiment on est très-bien ici_," said Sylvia.
+
+She felt that by flinging an accentuated compliment to the room
+Valentine might feel her lover was included in the approbation.
+
+"And it's mine," said Valentine, complacently. "He bought it for me.
+_C'est pour la vie_."
+
+Passion might be quenched in the slough of habitude; love's pinions
+might molt like any farm-yard hen's. What was that, when the apartment
+was hers for life?
+
+"How many rooms have you?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Besides this one I have a bedroom, a dining-room, a kitchen, and a
+bath-room. Would you like to see the bath-room?"
+
+When Valentine asked the last question she was transformed; a latent
+exultation flamed out from her immobility.
+
+"I should love to see the bath-room," said Sylvia. "I think bath-rooms
+are often the most interesting part of a house."
+
+"But this is an exceptional bath-room. It cost two thousand francs to
+install."
+
+Valentine led the way to the admired chamber, to which a complicated
+arrangement of shining pipes gave an orchestral appearance. Valentine
+flitted from tap to tap. Aretino himself could scarcely have imagined
+more methods of sprinkling water upon the human body.
+
+"And these pipes are for warming the towels," she explained. It was a
+relief to find pipes that led a comparatively passive existence amid
+such a convolution of fountainous activity.
+
+"I thought while I was about it that I would have the tiles laid right
+up to the ceiling," Valentine went on, pensively. "And you see, the
+ceiling is made of looking-glass. When the water is very hot, _ça fait
+drôle, tu sais, on ne se voit plus_."
+
+It was the first time she had used the second person singular; the
+bath-room had created in Valentine something that almost resembled
+humanity.
+
+"Yes," Sylvia agreed. "I suppose that is the best way of making the
+ceiling useful."
+
+"_C'est pour la vie_," Valentine contentedly sighed.
+
+"But if he were to marry?" Sylvia ventured.
+
+"It would make no difference," Valentine answered. "I have saved money
+and with a bath-room like this one can always get a good rent.
+Everything in the apartment is mine, and the apartment is mine, too."
+
+"_Alors, tu es contente?_" said Sylvia.
+
+"_Oui, je suis contente_," said Valentine.
+
+"_Elle est jolie, ta salle de bain_."
+
+"_Oui, elle est jolie comme un amour_," Valentine assented, with a sweet
+maternal smile.
+
+They talked of the bath-room for a while when they came back to the
+boudoir; Sylvia was conscious of displaying the politeness with which
+one descends from the nursery at an afternoon call.
+
+"_Enfin_," said Sylvia, "_Je file_."
+
+"_Tu pars tout de suite de Marseilles?_"
+
+"_Oui, je pars ce soir_."
+
+She had not really intended to leave Marseilles that evening, but there
+seemed no reason to stay.
+
+"_C'est dommage que tu n'as pas vu Louis_."
+
+"_Il s'appelle Louis?_"
+
+"_Oui, il s'appelle Louis. Il est à Lyon pour ses affaires_."
+
+"_Alors, au revoir, Valentine_."
+
+"_Au revoir, Sylvie_."
+
+They hesitated, both of them, to see which would offer her cheek first;
+in the end they managed to be simultaneous.
+
+"Even the farewell was a stalemate," Sylvia said to herself on the way
+down-stairs.
+
+She wondered, while she was walking back to her hotel, what was going to
+be the passion of her own life. One always started out with a dim
+conception of perfect love, however one might scoff at it openly in
+self-protection, but evidently it by no means followed that love for a
+man, let alone perfect love, would ever arrive. Lily had succeeded in
+inspiring at least one man with love for her, but she had found her own
+passion in roulette with Camacho tacked to it, inherited like a
+husband's servant, familiar with any caprice, but jealous and irritable.
+Valentine had found her grand passion in a bath-room that satisfied even
+her profoundest maternal instincts. Dorothy had loved a coronet with
+such fervor that she had been able to abandon everything that could
+smirch it. Sylvia's own mother had certainly found at thirty-four her
+grand passion, but Sylvia felt that it would be preferable to fall in
+love with a bath-room now than wait ten years for a Henry.
+
+Sylvia reached the hotel, packed up her things, and set out to Paris
+without any definite plans in her head for the future, and just because
+she had no definite plans and nothing to keep her from sleeping, she
+could not sleep and tossed about on the _wagon-lit_ half the night.
+
+"It's not as if I hadn't got money. I'm amazingly lucky. It's really
+fantastic luck to find somebody like poor old Carlos to set me up for
+five years of luxurious independence. I suppose if I were wise I should
+buy a house in London--and yet I don't want to go back to London. The
+trouble with me is that, though I like to be independent, I don't like
+to be alone. Yet with Michael.... But what's the use of thinking about
+him? Do I actually miss him? No, certainly not. He's nothing more to me
+than something I might have had, but failed to secure. I'm regretting a
+missed experience. If one loses somebody like that, it leaves a sense of
+incompletion. How often does one feel a quite poignant regret because
+one has forgotten to finish a cup of coffee; but the regret is always
+for the incomplete moment; it doesn't endure. Michael in a year will
+have changed; I've changed, also. There is nothing to suggest that if we
+met again now, we should meet in the same relation, with the same
+possibility in the background of our intercourse. Then why won't I go
+back to Mulberry Cottage? Obviously because I have out-lived Mulberry
+Cottage. I don't want to stop my course by running into a backwater
+that's already been explored. I want to go on and on until ... yes,
+until what? I can travel now, if I want to. Well, why shouldn't I
+travel? If I visit my agent in Paris--and I certainly shall visit him in
+order to tell him what I think of the management of that damned Casino
+at Rio--he'll offer me another contract to sing in some outlandish
+corner of the globe, and if I weren't temporarily independent, I should
+have to accept it with all its humiliations. Merely to travel would be a
+mistake I think. I've got myself into the swirl of mountebanks, and
+somehow I must continue with them. It's a poor little loyalty, but even
+that is better than nothing. Really, if one isn't tied down by poverty,
+one can have a very good time, traveling the world as a singer. Or I
+could live in Paris for a while. I should soon meet amusing people. Oh,
+I don't know what I want. I should rather like to get hold of Olive
+again. She may be married by now. She probably is married. She's bound
+to be married. A superfluity of romantic affection was rapidly
+accumulating that must have been deposited somewhere by now. I might get
+Gainsborough out from England to come with me. Come with me, where? It
+seems a shame to uproot the poor old thing again. She's nearly sixty.
+But I must have somebody."
+
+When Sylvia reached Paris she visited two trunks that were in a
+repository. Among other things she took out the volume of Adlington's
+_Apuleius_.
+
+"Yes, there's no doubt I'm still an ass," she said. "And since the
+Argentine really a golden ass; but oh, when, when, when shall I eat the
+rose-leaves and turn into Sylvia again? One might make a joke about
+that, as the White Knight said, something about Golden and Silver and
+Argentine."
+
+Thinking of jokes reminded Sylvia of Mr. Pluepott, and thinking of
+Alice through the looking-glass brought back the Vicar. What a long way
+off they seemed.
+
+"I can't let go of everybody," she cried. So she telegraphed and wrote
+urgently to Mrs. Gainsborough, begging her to join her in Paris. While
+she was waiting for a reply, she discussed projects for the future with
+her agent, who, when he found that she had some money, was anxious for
+her to invest a certain amount in the necessary _réclame_ and appear at
+the Folies Bergères.
+
+"But I don't want to make a success by singing French songs with an
+English accent," Sylvia protested. "I'd as soon make a success by
+singing without a roof to my mouth. You discouraged me from doing
+something I really wanted to do. All I want now is an excuse for
+roaming."
+
+"What about a tour in Spain?" the agent suggested. "I can't get you more
+than ten francs a night, though, if you only want to sing. Still,
+Spain's much cheaper than America."
+
+"_Mon cher ami, j'ai besoin du travail pour me distraire_. Ten francs is
+the wage of a slave, but pocket-money, if one is not a slave."
+
+"_Vous avez de la veine, vous_."
+
+"_Vraiment?_"
+
+"_Mais oui_."
+
+"_Peut-être quelqu'un m'a plaqué_."
+
+He tried to look grave and sympathetic.
+
+"_Salaud_," she mocked. "_Crois-tu que je t'en dirais. Bigre! je
+creverais plutôt_."
+
+She had dropped into familiarity of speech with him, but he, still
+hopeful of persuading her to intrust a profitable _réclame_ to him,
+continued to treat her formally. Sylvia realized the _arrière pensée_
+and laughed at him.
+
+"_Je ne suis pas encore en grande vedette, tu sais_."
+
+He assured her that such a triumph would ultimately come to her, and she
+scoffed.
+
+"_Mon vieux, si je n'avais pas de la galette, je pourrais crever de faim
+devant ta porte. Ce que tu me dis, c'est du chic_."
+
+"Well, will you go to Spain?"
+
+The contract was signed.
+
+A day or two later, when she was beginning to give up hope of getting
+an answer from Mrs. Gainsborough, the old lady herself turned up at the
+hotel, looking not a minute older.
+
+"You darling and daring old plesiosaurus," cried Sylvia, seizing her by
+the hand and twirling her round the vestibule.
+
+"Yes, I am pleased to see you and no mistake," said Mrs. Gainsborough.
+"But what a tyrant! Well, really, I was in me bed when your telegram
+came and that boy he knocked like a tiger. Knock--knock! all the time I
+was trying to slip on me petticoat, which through me being in a regular
+fluster I put on wrong way up and got me feet all wound up with the
+strings. Knock--knock! 'Whatever do you think you're doing?' I said when
+at last I was fairly decent and went to open the door. 'Telegram,' he
+says, as saucy as brass. 'Telegram?' I said. 'I thought by the row you
+was making that you was building St. Paul's Cathedral.' 'Wait for the
+answer?' he said. 'Answer?' I said. 'Certainly not.' Well, there was I
+with your telegram in one hand and me petticoat slipping down in the
+other. Then on the top of that came your letter, and I couldn't resist a
+sight of you, my dearie. Fancy that Lily waltzing off like that. And
+with a Portuguese. She'll get Portuguese before he's finished with her.
+Portuguese is what she'll be. And the journey! Well, really, I don't
+know how I managed. I kept on saying, 'France,' the same as if I was
+asking a policeman the way to Oxford Circus, and they bundled me about
+like ... well, really, everybody was most kind. Still when I got to
+France, it wasn't much use going on shouting 'France' to everybody.
+However, I met a nice young fellow in the train, and he very
+thoughtfully assisted me into a cab and ... well, I am glad to see you."
+
+"Now you're coming with me to Spain," Sylvia announced.
+
+"Good land alive! Where?"
+
+"Spain."
+
+"Are you going chasing after Lily again?"
+
+"No, we're going off on our own."
+
+"Well, I may have started on the gad late in life, but I've certainly
+started now," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Spain? That's where the Spanish
+flies come from, isn't it? Well, they ought to be lively enough, so I
+suppose we shall enjoy ourselves. And how do we get there?"
+
+"By train!"
+
+"Dear land! it's wonderful what they can do nowadays. What relation then
+is Spain to Portugal exactly? You must excuse my ignorance, Sylvia, but
+really I'm still all of a fluster. Fancy being bounced out of me bed
+into Spain. You really are a demon. Fancy you getting yellow fever. You
+haven't changed color much. Spain! Upon my word I never heard anything
+like it. We'd better take plenty with us to eat. I knew it reminded me
+of something. The Spanish Armada! I once heard a clergyman recite the
+Spanish Armada, though what it was all about I've completely forgotten.
+There was some fighting in it though. I went with the captain. Well, if
+he could see me now. You may be sure he's laughing, wherever he is. The
+idea of me going to Spain."
+
+The idea materialized; that night they drove to the Gare d'Orléans.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The journey to Madrid was for Mrs. Gainsborough a long revelation of
+human eccentricity.
+
+"Not even Mrs. Ewings would believe it," she assured Sylvia. "It's got
+to be seen to be believed. I opened my mouth a bit wide when I first
+came to France, but France is Peckham Rye if you put it alongside of
+Spain. When that guard or whatever he calls himself opened our door and
+bobbed in out of the runnel with the train going full speed and asked
+for our tickets, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Showing
+off, that's what I call it. And carrying wine inside of goats!
+Disgusting I should say. Nice set-out there'd be in England if the
+brewers started sending round beer inside of sheep. Why, it would cause
+a regular outcry; but these Spanish seem to put up with everything. I'm
+not surprised they come round selling water at every station. The cheek
+of it though, when you come to think about it. Putting wine inside of
+goats so as to make people buy water. If I'd have been an enterprising
+woman like Mrs. Marsham, I should have got out at the last station and
+complained to the police about it. But really the stations aren't fit
+for a decent person to walk about in. I'm not considered very
+particular, but when a station consists of nothing but a signal-box and
+a lavatory and no platform, I don't call it a station. And what a
+childish way of starting a train--blowing a toy horn like that. More
+like a school treat than a railway journey. And the turkeys! Now I ask
+you, Sylvia, would you believe it? Four turkeys under the seat and three
+on the rack over me head. A regular Harlequinade! And every time anybody
+takes out a cigarette or a bit of bread they offer it all around the
+compartment. Fortunately I don't look hungry, or they might have been
+offended. No wonder England's full of aliens. I shall explain the
+reason of it when I get home."
+
+The place of entertainment where Sylvia worked was called the Teatro
+Japonés, for what reason it would have been difficult to say. The girls
+were, as usual, mostly French, but there were one or two Spanish dancers
+that, as Mrs. Gainsborough put it, kept one "rum-tum-tumming in one's
+seat all the time it was going on." Sylvia found Madrid a dull city
+entirely without romance of aspect, nor did the pictures in the Prado
+make up for the bull-ring's wintry desolation. Mrs. Gainsborough
+considered the most remarkable evidence of Spanish eccentricity was the
+way in which flocks of turkeys, after traveling in passenger-trains,
+actually wandered about the chief thoroughfares.
+
+"Suppose if I was to go shooing across Piccadilly with a herd of
+chickens, let alone turkeys, well, it _would_ be a circus, and that's a
+fact."
+
+When they first arrived they stayed at a large hotel in the Puerta del
+Sol, but Mrs. Gainsborough got into trouble with the baths, partly
+because they cost five pesetas each and partly because she said it went
+to her heart to see a perfectly clean sheet floating about in the water.
+After that they tried a smaller hotel, where they were fairly
+comfortable, though Mrs. Gainsborough took a long time to get used to
+being brought chocolate in the morning.
+
+"I miss my morning tea, Sylvia, and it's no use me pretending I don't. I
+don't feel like chocolate in the morning. I'd just as lieve have a slice
+of plum-pudding in a cup. Why, if you try to put a lump of sugar in, it
+won't sink; it keeps bobbing up like a kitten. And another thing I can't
+seem to get used to is having the fish after the meat. Every time it
+comes in like that it seems a kind of carelessness. What fish it is,
+too, when it does come. Well, they say a donkey can eat thistles, but it
+would take him all his time to get through one of those fish. No wonder
+they serve them after the meat. I should think they were afraid of the
+amount of meat any one might eat, trying to get the bones out of one's
+throat. I've felt like a pincushion ever since I got to Madrid, and how
+you can sing beats me. Your throat must be like a zither by now."
+
+It really did not seem worth while to remain any longer in Madrid, and
+Sylvia asked to be released from her contract. The manager, who had been
+wondering to all the other girls why Sylvia had ever been sent to him,
+discovered that she was his chief attraction when she wanted to break
+the contract. However, a hundred pesetas in his own pocket removed all
+objections, and she was free to leave Spain.
+
+"Well, do you want to go home?" she asked Mrs. Gainsborough. "Or would
+you come to Seville?"
+
+"Now we've come so far, we may as well go on a bit farther," Mrs.
+Gainsborough thought.
+
+Seville was very different from Madrid.
+
+"Really, when you see oranges growing in the streets," Mrs. Gainsborough
+said, "you begin to understand why people ever goes abroad. Why, the
+flowers are really grand, Sylvia. Carnations as common as daisies. Well,
+I declare, I wrote home a post-card to Mrs. Beardmore and told her
+Seville was like being in a conservatory. She's living near Kew now, so
+she'll understand my meaning."
+
+They both much enjoyed the dancing in the cafés, when solemn men hurled
+their sombreros on the dancers' platform to mark their appreciation of
+the superb creatures who flaunted themselves there so gracefully.
+
+"But they're bold hussies with it all, aren't they?" Mrs. Gainsborough
+observed. "Upon me word, I wouldn't care to climb up there and swing my
+hips about like that."
+
+From Seville, after an idle month of exquisite weather, often so warm
+that Sylvia could sit in the garden of the Alcazar and read in the shade
+of the lemon-trees, they went to Granada.
+
+"So they've got an Alhambra here, have they?" said Mrs. Gainsborough.
+"But from what I've seen of the performances in Spain it won't come up
+to good old Leicester Square."
+
+On Sylvia the Alhambra cast an enchantment more powerful than any famous
+edifice she had yet seen. Her admiration of cathedrals had always been
+tempered by a sense of missing most of what they stood for. They were
+still exercising their functions in a modern world and thereby
+overshadowed her personal emotions in a way that she found most
+discouraging to the imagination. The Alhambra, which once belonged to
+kings, now belonged to individual dreams. Those shaded courts where even
+at midday the ice lay thick upon the fountains; that sudden escape from
+a frozen chastity of brown stone out on the terraces rich with sunlight;
+that vision of the Sierra Nevada leaping against the blue sky with all
+its snowy peaks; this incredible meeting of East and South and North--to
+know all these was to stand in the center of the universe, oneself a
+king.
+
+"What's it remind you of, Sylvia?" Mrs. Gainsborough asked.
+
+"Everything," Sylvia cried. She felt that it would take but the least
+effort of will to light in one swoop upon the Sierra Nevada and from
+those bastions storm ... what?
+
+"It reminds me just a tiddly-bit of Earl's Court," said Mrs.
+Gainsborough, putting her head on one side like a meditative hen. "If
+you shut one eye against those mountains, you'll see what I mean."
+
+Sylvia came often by herself to the Alhambra; she had no scruples in
+leaving Mrs. Gainsborough, who had made friends at the pension with a
+lonely American widower.
+
+"He knows everything," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "I've learned more in a
+fortnight with him than I ever learned in my whole life. What that man
+doesn't know! Well, I'm sure it's not worth knowing. He's been in trade
+and never been able to travel till now, but he's got the world off by
+heart, as you might say. I sent a p. c. to Mrs. Ewings to say I'd found
+a masher at last. The only thing against him is the noises he makes with
+his throat. I gave him some lozenges at first, but he made more noise
+than ever sucking them, and I had to desist."
+
+Soon after Mrs. Gainsborough met her American, Sylvia made the
+acquaintance of a youthful guide of thirteen or fourteen years, who for
+a very small wage adopted her and gave her much entertainment. Somehow
+or other Rodrigo had managed to pick up a good deal of English and
+French, which, as he pointed out, enabled him to compete with the older
+guides who resented his intrusion. Rodrigo did not consider that the
+career of a guide was worthy of real ambition. For the future he
+hesitated between being a gentleman's servant and a tobacconist in
+Gibraltar. He was a slim child with the perfect grace of the young South
+in movements and in manners alike.
+
+Rodrigo was rather distressed at the beginning by Sylvia's want of
+appetite for mere sight-seeing; he reproved her indeed very gravely for
+wasting valuable time in repeating her visits to favorite spots while so
+many others remained unvisited. He was obsessed by the rapidity with
+which most tourists passed through Granada, but when he discovered that
+Sylvia had no intention of hurrying or being hurried, his native
+indolence blossomed to her sympathy and he adapted himself to her
+pleasure in sitting idle and dreaming in the sun.
+
+Warmer weather came in February, and Rodrigo suggested that the Alhambra
+should be visited by moonlight. He did not make this suggestion because
+it was the custom of other English people to desire this experience; he
+realized that the Señorita was not influenced by what other people did;
+at the same time the Alhambra by moonlight could scarcely fail to please
+the Señorita's passion for beauty. He himself had a passion for beauty,
+and he pledged his word she would not regret following his advice;
+moreover, he would bring his guitar.
+
+On a February night, when the moon was still high, Sylvia and Rodrigo
+walked up the avenue that led to the Alhambra. There was nobody on the
+summit but themselves. Far down lights flitted in the gipsy quarter, and
+there came up a faint noise of singing and music.
+
+It was Carnival, Rodrigo explained, and the Señorita would have enjoyed
+it; but, alas! there were many rascals about on such nights, and though
+he was armed, he did not recommend a visit. He brought out his guitar;
+from beneath her Spanish cloak Sylvia also brought out a guitar.
+
+"The Señorita plays? _Maravilloso!_" Rodrigo exclaimed. "But why the
+Señorita did not inform me to carry her guitar? The hill was long. The
+Señorita will be tired."
+
+Sylvia opened with one of her old French songs, after which Rodrigo,
+who had paid her a courteous and critical attention, declared that she
+had a musician's soul like himself, and forthwith, in a treble that was
+limpid as the moon, light, unpassionate as the snow, remote as the
+mountains, he too sang.
+
+"Exquisite," Sylvia sighed.
+
+The Señorita was too kind, and as if to disclaim the compliment he went
+off into a mad gipsy tune. Suddenly he broke off.
+
+"Hark! Does the Señorita hear a noise of weeping?"
+
+There was indeed a sound of some one's crying, a sound that came nearer
+every moment.
+
+"It is most unusual to hear a sound of weeping in the Alhambra _au clair
+de la lune_," said Rodrigo. "If the Señorita will permit me, I shall
+find out the cause."
+
+Soon he came back with a girl whose cheeks glistened with tears.
+
+"She is a dancer," Rodrigo explained. "She says she is Italian, but--"
+With a shrug of the shoulders he gave Sylvia to understand that he
+accepted no responsibility for her statement. It was Carnival.
+
+Sylvia asked the new-comer in French what was the matter, but for some
+time she could only sob without saying a word. Rodrigo, who was
+regarding her with a mixture of disapproval and compassion, considered
+that she had reached the stage--he spoke with all possible respect for
+the Señorita, who must not suppose herself included in his
+generalization--the stage of incoherence that is so much more frequent
+with women than with men whose feelings have been upset. If he might
+suggest a remedy to the Señorita, it would be to leave her alone for a
+few minutes and continue the interrupted music. They had come here to
+enjoy the Alhambra by moonlight; it seemed a pity to allow the grief of
+an unknown dancer to spoil the beauty of the scene, grief that probably
+had nothing to do with the Alhambra, but was an echo of the world below.
+It might be a lovers' quarrel due to the discovery of a masked
+flirtation, a thing of no importance compared with the Alhambra by
+moonlight.
+
+"I'm not such a philosopher as you, Rodrigo. I am a poor, inquisitive
+woman."
+
+Certainly inquisitiveness might be laid to the charge of the feminine
+sex, he agreed, but not to all. There must be exceptions, and with a
+gesture expressive of tolerance for the weaknesses of womankind he
+managed to convey his intention of excepting Sylvia from Eve's heritage.
+Human nature was not all woven to the same pattern. Many of his friends,
+for instance, would fail to appreciate the Alhambra on such a night, and
+would prefer to blow horns in the streets.
+
+By this time the grief of the stranger was less noisy, and Sylvia again
+asked her who she was and why she was weeping. She spoke in English this
+time; the fair, slim child, for when one looked at her she was scarcely
+more than fifteen, brightened.
+
+"I don't know where I was," she said.
+
+Rodrigo clicked his tongue and shook his head; he was shocked by this
+avowal much more deeply than in his sense of locality. Sylvia was
+puzzled by her accent. The 'w's' were nearly 'v's,' but the intonation
+was Italian.
+
+"And you're a dancer?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I was dancing at the Estrella."
+
+Rodrigo explained that this was a cabaret, the kind of place with which
+the Señorita would not be familiar.
+
+"And you're Italian?"
+
+The girl nodded, and Sylvia, seeing that it would be impossible to
+extract anything about her story in her present overwrought state,
+decided to take her back to the pension.
+
+"And I will carry the Señorita's guitar," said Rodrigo. "To-morrow
+morning at eleven o'clock?" he asked by the gate of Sylvia's pension.
+"Or would the Señorita prefer that I waited to conduct the _señorita
+extraviada?_"
+
+Sylvia bade him come in the morning; with a deep bow to her and to the
+stranger he departed, twanging his guitar. Mrs. Gainsborough, who by
+this time had reached the point of thinking that her American widower
+existed only to be oracular, wished to ask his advice about the
+stranger, and was quite offended with Sylvia for telling her rather
+sharply that she did not want all the inmates of the pension buzzing
+round the frightened child.
+
+"Chocolate would be more useful than advice," Sylvia said.
+
+"I know you're very down on poor Mr. Linthicum, but he's a mass of
+information. Only this morning he was explaining how you can keep eggs
+fresh for a year by putting them in a glass of water. Now I like a bit
+of advice. I'm not like you, you great harum-scarum thing."
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough was unable to remain very long in a state of injured
+dignity; she soon came up to Sylvia's bedroom with cups of chocolate.
+
+"And though you laugh at poor Mr. Linthicum," she said, "it's thanks to
+him you've got this chocolate so quick, for he talked to the servant
+himself."
+
+With this Mrs. Gainsborough left the room in high good humor at the
+successful rehabilitation of the informative widower.
+
+The girl, whose name was Concetta, had long ceased to lament, but she
+was still very shy, and Sylvia found it extremely difficult at first to
+reach any clear comprehension of her present trouble. Gradually,
+however, by letting her talk in her own breathless way, and in an odd
+mixture of English, French, German, and Italian, she was able to put
+together the facts into a kind of consecutiveness.
+
+Her father had been an Italian, who for some reason that was not at all
+clear had lived at Aix-la-Chapelle. Her mother, to whom he had
+apparently never been married, had been a Fleming. This mother had died
+when Concetta was about four, and her father had married a German woman
+who had beaten her, particularly after her father had either died or
+abandoned his child to the stepmother--it was not clear which. At this
+point an elder brother appeared in the tale, who at the age of eleven
+had managed to steal some money and run away. Of this brother Concetta
+had made an ideal hero. She dreamed of him even now and never came to
+any town but that she expected to meet him there. Sylvia had asked her
+how she expected to recognize somebody who had disappeared from her life
+when she was only six years old, but Concetta insisted that she should
+know him again. When she said this, she looked round her with an
+expression of fear and asked if anybody could overhear them. Sylvia
+assured her that they were quite alone, and Concetta said in a whisper:
+
+"Once in Milano I saw Francesco. Hush! he passed in the street, and I
+said, 'Francesco,' and he said, 'Concettina,' but we could not speak
+together more longer."
+
+Sylvia would not contest this assertion, though she made up her mind
+that it must have been a dream.
+
+"It was a pity you could not speak," she said.
+
+"Yes, nothing but Francesco and Concettina before he was gone. _Peccato!
+Peccato!_"
+
+Francesco's example had illuminated his sister's life with the hope of
+escaping from the stepmother, and she had hoarded pennies month after
+month for three years. She would not speak in detail of the cruelty of
+her stepmother; the memory of it even at this distance of time was too
+much charged with horror. It was evident to Sylvia that she had suffered
+exceptional things and that this was no case of ordinary unkindness.
+There was still in Concetta's eyes the look of an animal in a trap, and
+Sylvia felt a rage at human cruelty hammering upon her brain. One read
+of these things with an idle shudder, but, oh, to behold before one a
+child whose very soul was scarred. There was more for the imagination to
+feed upon, because Concetta said that not only was her stepmother cruel,
+but also her school-teachers and schoolmates.
+
+"Everybody was liking to beat me. I don't know why, but they was liking
+to beat me; no, really, they was liking it."
+
+At last, and here Concetta was very vague, as if she were seeking to
+recapture the outlines of a dream that fades in the light of morning,
+somehow or other she ran away and arrived at a big place with trees in a
+large city.
+
+"Where, at Aix-la-Chapelle?"
+
+"No, I got into a train and came somewhere to a big place with trees in
+the middle of a city."
+
+"Was it a park in Brussels?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders and came back to her tale. In this park she
+had met some little girls who had played with her; they had played a
+game of joining hands and dancing round in a circle until they all fell
+down in the grass. A gentleman had laughed to see them amusing
+themselves so much, and the little girls had asked her to come with them
+and the gentleman; they had danced round him and pulled his coat to make
+him take Concetta. He had asked her whence she came and whither she was
+going; he was a schoolmaster and he was going far away with all these
+other little girls. Concetta had cried when they were leaving her, and
+the gentleman, when he found that she was really alone in this big city,
+had finally been persuaded to take her with him. They went far away in
+the train to Dantzic, where he had a school to learn dancing. She had
+been happy there; the master was very kind. When she was thirteen she
+had gone with the other girls from the school to dance in the ballet at
+La Scala in Milan, but before that she had danced at Dresden and Munich.
+Then about six months ago a juggler called Zozo had wanted her and
+another girl to join his act. He was a young man; she had liked him and
+she had left Milan with him. They had performed in Rome and Naples and
+Bari and Palermo. At Palermo the other girl had gone back to her home in
+Italy, and Concetta had traveled to Spain with Zozo through Tunis and
+Algiers and Oran. Zozo had treated her kindly until they came here to
+the Estrella Concert; but here he had changed and, when she did not like
+him to make love to her, he had beaten her. To-night before they went to
+the cabaret he had told her that unless she would let him love her he
+would throw the daggers at her heart. In their act she was tied up and
+he threw daggers all round her. She had been frightened, and when he
+went to dress she had run away; but the streets were full of people in
+masks, and she had lost herself.
+
+Sylvia looked at this child with her fair hair, who but for the agony
+and fear in her blue eyes would have been like one of those rapturous
+angels in old Flemish pictures. Here she sat, as ten years ago Sylvia
+had sat in the cab-shelter talking to Fred Organ. Her story and
+Concetta's met at this point in man's vileness.
+
+"My poor little thing, you must come and live with me," cried Sylvia,
+clasping Concetta in her arms. "I too am all alone, and I should love to
+feel that somebody was dependent on me. You shall come with me to
+England. You're just what I've been looking for. Now I'm going to put
+you to bed, for you're worn out."
+
+"But he'll come to find me," Concetta gasped, in sudden affright. "He
+was so clever. On the program you can read. ZOZO: _el mejor
+prestigitador del mundo_. He knows everything."
+
+"We must introduce him to Mrs. Gainsborough. She likes encyclopedias
+with pockets."
+
+"Please?"
+
+"I was talking to myself. My dear, you'll be perfectly safe here with me
+from the greatest magician in the world."
+
+In the end she was able to calm Concetta's fears; in sleep, when those
+frightened eyes were closed, she seemed younger than ever, and Sylvia
+brooded over her by candle-light as if she were indeed her child.
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough, on being told next morning Concetta's story and
+Sylvia's resolve to adopt her, gave her blessing to the plan.
+
+"Mulberry Cottage'll be nice for her to play about in. She'll be able to
+dig in the garden. We'll buy a bucket and spade. Fancy, what wicked
+people there are in this world. But I blame her stepmother more than I
+do this Shoushou."
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough persisted in treating Concetta as if she were about
+nine years old and was continually thinking of toys that might amuse
+her. When at last she was brought to realize that she was fifteen, she
+was greatly disappointed on behalf of Mr. Linthicum, to whom she had
+presented Concetta as an infant prodigy.
+
+"He commented so much on the languages she could speak, and he told her
+of a quick way to practise elemental American, which I always thought
+was the same as English, but apparently it's not. It's a much older
+language, really, and came over with Christopher Columbus in the
+_Mayflower_."
+
+Rodrigo was informed by Sylvia that henceforth the Señorita Concetta
+would live with her. He expressed no surprise and accepted with a
+charming courtliness the new situation at the birth of which he had
+presided. Sylvia thought it might be prudent to take Rodrigo so far into
+her confidence as to give him a hint about a possible attempt by the
+juggler to get Concetta back into his power. Rodrigo looked very serious
+at the notion, and advised the Señorita to leave Granada quickly. It was
+against his interest to give this counsel, for he should lose his
+Señorita, the possession of whom had exposed him to a good deal of envy
+from the other guides. Besides, he had grown fond of the Señorita and he
+should miss her. He had intended to practise much on his guitar this
+spring, and he had looked forward to hearing the nightingales with her;
+they would be singing next month in the lemon-groves. Many people were
+deaf to the song of birds, but personally he could not listen to them
+without ... a shrug of the shoulders expressed the incommunicable
+emotion.
+
+"You shall come with us, Rodrigo."
+
+"To Gibraltar?" he asked, quickly, with flashing eyes.
+
+"Why not?" said Sylvia.
+
+He seized her hand and kissed it.
+
+"_El destino_," he murmured. "I shall certainly see there the
+tobacco-shop that one day I shall have."
+
+For two or three days Rodrigo guarded the pension against the conjuror
+and his spies. By this time between Concetta's apprehensions and Mrs.
+Gainsborough's exaggeration of them, Zozo had acquired a demoniac
+menace, lurking in the background of enjoyment like a child's fear.
+
+The train for Algeciras would leave in the morning at four o'clock. It
+was advisable, Rodrigo thought, to be at the railway station by two
+o'clock at the latest; he should come with a carriage to meet them.
+Would the Señorita excuse him this evening, because his mother--he gave
+one of his inimitable shrugs to express the need of sometimes yielding
+to maternal fondness--wished him to spend his last evening with her.
+
+At two o'clock next morning Rodrigo had not arrived, but at three a
+carriage drove up and the coachman handed Sylvia a note. It was in
+Spanish to say that Rodrigo had met with an accident and that he was
+very ill. He kissed the Señorita's hand. He believed that he was going
+to die, which was his only consolation for not being able to go with her
+to Gibraltar; it was _el destino_; he had brought the accident on
+himself.
+
+Sylvia drove with Mrs. Gainsborough and Concetta to the railway station.
+When she arrived and found that the train would not leave till five, she
+kept the coachman and, after seeing her companions safely into their
+compartment, drove to where Rodrigo lived.
+
+He was lying in a hovel in the poorest part of the city. His mother, a
+ragged old woman, was lamenting in a corner; one or two neighbors were
+trying to quiet her. On Sylvia's arrival they all broke out in a loud
+wail of apology for the misfortune that had made Rodrigo break his
+engagement. Sylvia paid no attention to them, but went quickly across to
+the bed of the sick boy. He opened his eyes and with an effort put out a
+slim brown arm and caught hold of her hand to kiss it. She leaned over
+and kissed his pale lips. In a very faint voice, hiding his head in the
+pillow for shame, he explained that he had brought the accident on
+himself by his boasting. He had boasted so much about the tobacco-shop
+and the favor of the Señorita that an older boy, another guide, a--he
+tried to shrug his shoulders in contemptuous expression of this older
+boy's inferior quality, but his body contracted in a spasm of pain and
+he had to set criticism on one side. This older boy had hit him out of
+jealousy, and, alas! Rodrigo had lost his temper and drawn a knife, but
+the other boy had stabbed first. It was _el destino_ most unhappily
+precipitated by his own vainglory.
+
+Sylvia turned to the women to ask what could be done. Their weeping
+redoubled. The doctor had declared it was only a matter of hours; the
+priest had given unction. Suddenly Rodrigo with a violent effort
+clutched at Sylvia's hand:
+
+"Señorita, the train!"
+
+He fell back dead.
+
+Sylvia left money for the funeral; there was nothing more to be done. In
+the morning twilight she went down the foul stairs and back to the
+carriage that seemed now to smell of death.
+
+When she arrived at the station a great commotion was taking place on
+the platform, and Mrs. Gainsborough appeared, surrounded by a
+gesticulating crowd of porters, officials, and passengers.
+
+"Sylvia! Well, I'm glad you've got here at last. She's gone. He's
+whisked her away. And can I explain what I want to these Spanish idiots?
+No. I've shouted as hard as I could, and they _won't_ understand. They
+_won't_ understand me. They don't want to understand, that's my
+opinion."
+
+With which Mrs. Gainsborough sailed off again along the platform,
+followed by the crowd, which, in addition to arguing with her
+occasionally, detached from itself small groups to argue furiously with
+one another about her incomprehensible desire. Sylvia extricated their
+luggage from the compartment, for the train to go to Algeciras without
+them; then she extricated Mrs. Gainsborough from the general noise and
+confusion that was now being added to by loud whistles from the
+impatient train.
+
+"I was sitting in one corner and Concertina was sitting in the other,"
+Mrs. Gainsborough explained to Sylvia. "I'd just bobbed down to pick up
+me glasses when I saw that Shoushou beckoning to her, though for the
+moment I thought it was the porter. Concertina went as white as paper.
+'Here,' I hollered, 'what are you doing?' and with that I got up from me
+place and tripped over _your_ luggage and came down bump on the
+foot-warmer. When I got up she was gone. Depend upon it, he'd been
+watching out for her at the station. As soon as I could get out of the
+carriage I started hollering, and every one in the station came running
+round to see what was the matter. I tried to tell them about Shoushou,
+and they pretended--for don't you tell me I can't make myself understood
+if people want to understand--they pretended they thought I was asking
+whether I was in the right train. When I hollered 'Shoushou,' they all
+started to holler 'Shoushou' as well and nod their heads and point to
+the train. I got that aggravated, I could have killed them. And then
+what do you think they did? Insulting I call it. Why, they all began to
+laugh and beckon to me, and I, thinking that at last they'd found out me
+meaning, went and followed them like a silly juggins, and where do you
+think they took me? To the moojeries! what _we_ call the ladies'
+cloak-room. Well, that did make me annoyed, and I started in to tell
+them what I thought of such behavior. 'I don't want the moojeries,' I
+shouted. Then I tried to explain by illustrating my meaning. I took hold
+of some young fellow and said 'Shoushou,' and then I caught hold of a
+hussy that was laughing, intending to make her Concertina, but the silly
+little bitch--really it's enough to make any one a bit unrefined--_she_
+thought I was going to hit her and started in to scream the station-roof
+down. After that you came along, but of course it was too late."
+
+Sylvia was very much upset by the death of Rodrigo and the loss of
+Concetta, but she could not help laughing over Mrs. Gainsborough's woes.
+
+"It's all very well for you to sit there and laugh, you great tomboy,
+but it's your own fault. If you'd have let me bring Mr. Linthicum, this
+wouldn't have happened. What could I do? I felt like a missionary among
+a lot of cannibals."
+
+In the end Sylvia was glad to avail herself of the widower's help, but
+after two days even he had to admit himself beaten.
+
+"And if he says they can't be found," said Mrs. Gainsborough, "depend
+upon it they can't be found--not by anybody. That man's as persistent as
+a beggar. When he came up to me this morning and cleared his throat and
+shook his head, well, then I knew we might as well give up hope."
+
+Sylvia stayed on for a while in Granada because she did not like to
+admit defeat, but the sadness of Rodrigo's death and the disappointment
+over Concetta had spoiled the place for her. Here was another of these
+incomplete achievements that made life so bitter. She had thought for a
+brief space that the solitary and frightened child would provide the aim
+that she had so ardently desired. Concetta had responded so sweetly to
+her protection, had chattered with such delight of going to England and
+of becoming English; now she had been dragged back. _El destino_!
+Rodrigo's death did not affect her so much as the loss of that fair,
+slim child. His short life had been complete; he was spared forever from
+disillusionment, and by existing in her memory eternally young and
+joyous and wise he had spared his Señorita also the pain of
+disillusionment, just as when he was alive he had always assumed the
+little bothers upon his shoulders, the little bothers of every-day
+existence. His was a perfect episode, but Concetta disturbed her with
+vain regrets and speculations. Yet in a way Concetta had helped her, for
+she knew now that she held in her heart an inviolate treasure of love.
+Never again could anything happen like those three months after she left
+Philip; never again could she treat any one with the scorn she had
+treated Michael; never again could she take such a cynical attitude
+toward any one as that she had taken toward Lily. All these
+disappointments added a little gold tried by fire to the treasure in her
+heart, and firmly she must believe that it was being stored to some
+purpose soon to be showered prodigally, ah, how prodigally, upon
+somebody.
+
+That evening Sylvia had made up her mind to return to England at once,
+but after she had gone to bed she was awakened by Mrs. Gainsborough's
+coming into her room and in a choked voice asking for help. When the
+light was turned on, Sylvia saw that she was enmeshed in a mosquito-net
+and looking in her nightgown like a large turbot.
+
+"I knew it would happen," Mrs. Gainsborough panted. "Every night I've
+said to myself, 'It's bound to happen,' and it has. I was dreaming how
+that Shoushou was chasing me with a butterfly-net, and look at me! Don't
+tell me dreams don't sometimes come true. Now don't stand there in fits
+of laughter. I can't get out of it, you unfeeling thing. I've swallowed
+about a pint of Keating's. I hope I sha'n't come out in spots. Come and
+help me out. I daren't move a finger, or I shall start off sneezing
+again. And every time I sneeze I get deeper in. It's something chronic."
+
+"Didn't Linthicum ever inform you how to get out of a mosquito-net that
+collapses in the middle of the night?" Sylvia asked, when she had
+extricated the old lady.
+
+"No, the conversation never happened to take a turn that way. But depend
+upon it, I shall ask him to-morrow. I won't be caught twice."
+
+Sylvia suddenly felt that it would be impossible to return to England
+yet.
+
+"We must go on," she told Mrs. Gainsborough. "You must have more
+opportunities for practising what Linthicum has been preaching to you."
+
+"What you'd like is for me to make a poppy-show of myself all over the
+world and drag me round the Continent like a performing bear."
+
+"We'll go to Morocco," Sylvia cried.
+
+"Don't shout like that. You'll set me off on the sneeze again. You're
+here, there, and everywhere like a demon king, I do declare. Morocco?
+That's where the leather comes from, isn't it? Do they have
+mosquito-nets there too?"
+
+Sylvia nodded.
+
+"Well, the first thing I shall do to-morrow is to ask Mr. Linthicum
+what's the best way of fastening up a mosquito-net in Morocco. And now I
+suppose I shall wake up in the morning with a nose like a tomato. Ah,
+well, such is life."
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough went back to bed, and Sylvia lay awake thinking of
+Morocco.
+
+Mr. Linthicum came to see them off on their second attempt to leave
+Granada. He cleared his throat rather more loudly than usual to compete
+with the noise of the railway, invited them to look him up if they ever
+came to Schenectady, pressed a book called _Five Hundred Facts for the
+Waistcoat Pocket_ into Mrs. Gainsborough's hands, and waved them out of
+sight with a large bandana handkerchief.
+
+"Well, I shall miss that man," said Mrs. Gainsborough, settling down to
+the journey. "He must have been a regular education for his customers,
+and I shall never forget his recipe for avoiding bunions when
+mountaineering."
+
+"How's that done?"
+
+"Oh, I don't remember the details. I didn't pay any attention to them,
+because it's not to be supposed that I'm going to career up Mont Blong
+at my time of life. No, I was making a reference to the tone of his
+voice. They may be descended from Indians, but I dare say Adam wasn't
+much better than a red Indian, if it comes to that."
+
+They traveled to Cadiz for the boat to Tangier. Mrs. Gainsborough got
+very worried on the long spit of land over which the train passed, and
+insisted on piling up all the luggage at one end of the compartment in
+case they fell into the sea, though she was unable to explain her motive
+for doing this. The result was that, when they stopped at a station
+before Cadiz and the door of the compartment was opened suddenly, all
+the luggage fell out on top of three priests that were preparing to
+climb in, one of whom was knocked flat. Apart from the argument that
+ensued the journey was uneventful.
+
+The boat from Tangier left in the dark. At dawn Cadiz glimmered like a
+rosy pearl upon the horizon.
+
+"We're in Trafalgar Bay now," said Sylvia.
+
+But Mrs. Gainsborough, who was feeling the effects of getting up so
+early, said she wished it was Trafalgar Square and begged to be left in
+peace. After an hour's doze in the sunlight she roused herself slightly:
+
+"Where's this Trafalgar Bay you were making such a fuss about?"
+
+"We've passed it now," Sylvia said.
+
+"Oh, well, I dare say it wasn't anything to look at. I'm bound to say
+the chocolate we had this morning does not seem to go with the sea air.
+They're arguing the point inside me something dreadful. I suppose this
+boat is safe? It seems to be jigging a good deal. Mr. Linthicum said it
+was a good plan to put the head between the knees when you felt a
+bit--well, I wouldn't say seasick--but you know.... I'm bound to say I
+think he was wrong for once. I feel more like putting my knees up over
+my head. Can't you speak to the captain and tell him to go a bit more
+quietly? It's no good racing along like he's doing. Of course the boat
+jigs. I shall get aggravated in two twos. It's to be hoped Morocco will
+be worth it. I never got up so early to go anywhere. Was that sailor
+laughing at me when he walked past? It's no good my getting up to tell
+him what I think of him, because every time I try to get up the boat
+gets up with me. It keeps butting into me behind like a great
+billy-goat."
+
+Presently Mrs. Gainsborough was unable even to protest against the
+motion, and could only murmur faintly to Sylvia a request to remove her
+veil.
+
+"Here we are," cried Sylvia, three or four hours later. "And it's
+glorious!"
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough sat up and looked at the rowboats filled with Moors,
+negroes, and Jews.
+
+"But they're nearly all of them black," she gasped.
+
+"Of course they are. What color did you expect them to be? Green like
+yourself?"
+
+"But do you mean to say you've brought me to a place inhabited by
+blacks? Well, I never did. It's to be hoped we sha'n't be eaten alive.
+Mrs. Marsham! Mrs. Ewings! Mrs. Beardmore! Well, I don't say they
+haven't told me some good stories now and again, but--"
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough shook her head to express the depths of insignificance
+to which henceforth the best stories of her friends would have to sink
+when she should tell about herself in Morocco.
+
+"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," said Mrs. Gainsborough, when they
+stood upon the quay. "I feel like the widow Twankay myself."
+
+Sylvia remembered her ambition to visit the East, when she herself wore
+a yashmak in Open Sesame: here it was fulfilling perfectly her most
+daring hopes.
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough was relieved to find a comparatively European hotel,
+and next morning after a long sleep she was ready for any adventure.
+
+"Sylvia!" she suddenly screamed when they were being jostled in the
+crowded bazaar. "Look, there's a camel coming toward us! Did you ever
+hear such a hollering and jabbering in all your life? I'm sure I never
+did. Mrs. Marsham and her camel at the Zoo. Tut-tut-tut! Do you suppose
+Mrs. Marsham ever saw a camel coming toward her in the street like a
+cab-horse might? Certainly not. Why, after this there's nothing _in_ her
+story. It's a mere anecdote."
+
+They wandered up to the outskirts of the prison, and saw a fat Jewess
+being pushed along under arrest for giving false weight. She made some
+resistance in the narrow entrance, and the guard planted his foot in the
+small of her back, so that she seemed suddenly to crumple up and fall
+inside.
+
+"Well, I've often said lightly 'what a heathen' or 'there's a young
+heathen,' but that brings it home to one," said Mrs. Gainsborough,
+gravely.
+
+Sylvia paid no attention to her companion's outraged sympathy. She was
+in the East where elderly obese Jewesses who gave false weight were well
+treated thus. She was living with every moment of rapturous reality the
+dreams of wonder that the _Arabian Nights_ had brought her in youth. Yet
+Tangier was only a gateway to enchantments a hundredfold more powerful.
+She turned suddenly to Mrs. Gainsborough and asked her if she could stay
+here while she rode into the interior.
+
+"Stay here alone?" Mrs. Gainsborough exclaimed. "Not if I know it."
+
+This plan of Sylvia's to explore the interior of Morocco was narrowed
+down ultimately into riding to Tetuan, which was apparently just
+feasible for Mrs. Gainsborough, though likely to be rather fatiguing.
+
+A dragoman was found, a certain Don Alfonso reported to be comparatively
+honest. He was an undersized man rather like the stump of a tallow
+candle into which the wick has been pressed down by the snuffer, for he
+was bald and cream-colored, with a thin, uneven black mustache and two
+nodules on his forehead. His clothes, too, were crinkled like a
+candlestick. He spoke French well, but preferred to speak English, of
+which he only knew two words, "all right"; this often made his advice
+unduly optimistic. In addition to Don Alfonso they were accompanied by a
+Moorish trooper and a native called Mohammed.
+
+"A soldier, is he?" said Mrs. Gainsborough, regarding the grave bearded
+man to whose care they were intrusted. "He looks more like the outside
+of an ironmonger's shop. Swords, pistols, guns, spears. It's to be hoped
+he won't get aggravated with us on the way. I should look very funny
+lying in the road with a pistol through my heart."
+
+They rode out of Tangier before a single star had paled in the east, and
+when dawn broke they were in a wide valley fertile and bright with
+flowers; green hills rose to right and left of them and faded far away
+into blue mountains.
+
+"I wish you'd tell that Mahomet not to irritate my poor mule by egging
+it on all the time," Mrs. Gainsborough said to Don Alfonso, who,
+realizing by her gestures that she wanted something done to her mount,
+and supposing by her smile that the elation of adventure had seized her,
+replied "All right," and said something in Moorish to Mohammed. He at
+once caught the mule a terrific whack on the crupper, causing the animal
+to leap forward and leave Mrs. Gainsborough and the saddle in the path.
+
+"Now there's a nice game to play!" said Mrs. Gainsborough, indignantly.
+"'All right,' he says, and 'boomph'! What's he think I'm made of? Well,
+of course here we shall have to sit now until some one comes along with
+a step-ladder. If you'd have let me ride on a camel," she added,
+reproachfully, to Sylvia, "this wouldn't have occurred. I'm not sitting
+on myself any more; I'm sitting on bumps like eggs. I feel like a hen.
+It's all very fine for Mr. Alfonso to go on gabbling, 'All right,' but
+it's all wrong, and if you'll have the goodness to tell him so in his
+own unnatural language I'll be highly obliged."
+
+The Moorish soldier sat regarding the scene from his horse with
+immutable gravity.
+
+"I reckon he'd like nothing better than to get a good jab at me now,"
+said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Yes, I dare say I look very inviting sitting
+here on the ground. Well, it's to be hoped they'll have the 'Forty
+Thieves' or 'Aladdin' for the next pantomime at Drury Lane. I shall
+certainly invite Mrs. Marsham and Mrs. Beardmore to come with me into
+the upper boxes so as I can explain what it's all about. Mrs. Ewings
+doesn't like panto, or I'd have taken her too. She likes a good cry when
+she goes to the theater."
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough was settling down to spend the rest of the morning in
+amiable reminiscence and planning, but she was at last persuaded to get
+up and mount her mule again after the strictest assurances had been
+given to her of Mohammed's good behavior for the rest of the journey.
+
+"He's not to bellow in the poor animal's ear," she stipulated.
+
+Sylvia promised.
+
+"And he's not to go screeching, '_Arrassy_,' or whatever it is, behind,
+so as the poor animal thinks it's a lion galloping after him."
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough was transferring all consideration for herself to the
+mule.
+
+"And he's to throw away that stick."
+
+This clause was only accepted by the other side with a good deal of
+protestation.
+
+"And he's to keep his hands and feet to himself, and not to throw stones
+or nothing at the poor beast, who's got quite enough to do to carry me."
+
+"And Ali Baba's to ride in front." She indicated the trooper. "It gets
+me on the blink when he's behind me, as if I was in a shooting-gallery.
+If he's going to be any use to us, _which_ I doubt, he'll be more useful
+in front than hiding behind me."
+
+"All right," said Don Alfonso, who was anxious to get on, because they
+had a long way to go.
+
+"And that's enough of 'all right' from him," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "I
+don't want to hear any more 'all rights.'"
+
+At midday they reached a khan, where they ate lunch and rested for two
+hours in the shade.
+
+Soon after they had started again, they met a small caravan with veiled
+women and mules loaded with oranges.
+
+"Quite pleasant-looking people," Mrs. Gainsborough beamed. "I should
+have waved my hand if I could have been sure of not falling off again.
+Funny trick, wearing that stuff round their faces. I suppose they're
+ashamed of being so black."
+
+Mrs. Gainsborough's progress, which grew more and more leisurely as the
+afternoon advanced, became a source of real anxiety to Don Alfonso; he
+confided to Sylvia that he was afraid the gates of Tetuan would be shut.
+When Mrs. Gainsborough was told of his alarm she was extremely scornful.
+
+"He's having you on, Sylvia, so as to give Mohamet the chance of
+sloshing my poor mule again. Whoever heard of a town having gates? He'll
+tell us next that we've got to pay sixpence at the turnstile to pass
+in."
+
+They came to a high place where a white stone by the path recorded a
+battle between Spaniards and Moors. Far below were the domes and
+rose-dyed minarets of Tetuan and a shining river winding to the sea.
+They heard the sound of a distant gun.
+
+"Sunset," cried Don Alfonso, much perturbed. "In half an hour the gates
+will be shut."
+
+He told tales of brigands and of Riffs, of travelers found with their
+throats cut outside the city walls, and suddenly, as if to give point to
+his fears, a figure leaning on a long musket appeared in silhouette upon
+the edge of the hill above them. It really seemed advisable to hurry,
+and, notwithstanding Mrs. Gainsborough's expostulations, the speed of
+the party was doubled down a rocky descent to a dried-up watercourse
+with high banks. Twilight came on rapidly and the soldier prepared one
+of his numerous weapons for immediate use in an emergency. Mrs.
+Gainsborough was much too nervous about falling off to bother about
+brigands, and at last without any mishap they reached the great
+castellated gate of Tetuan. It was shut.
+
+"Well, I never saw the like," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "It's true, then.
+We must ring the bell, that's all."
+
+The soldier, Mohammed, and Don Alfonso raised their voices in a loud
+hail, but nobody paid any attention, and the twilight deepened. Mrs.
+Gainsborough alighted from her mule and thumped at the iron-studded
+door. Silence answered her.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me seriously that they're going to keep us outside
+here all night? Why, it's laughable!" Suddenly she lifted her voice and
+cried, "Milk-ho!" Whether the unusual sound aroused the curiosity or the
+alarm of the porter within was uncertain, but he leaned his head out of
+a small window above the gate and shouted something at the belated party
+below. Immediately the dispute for which Mohammed and Don Alfonso had
+been waiting like terriers on a leash was begun; it lasted for ten
+minutes without any of the three participants drawing breath.
+
+In the end Don Alfonso announced that the porter declined to open for
+less than two francs, although he had offered him as much as one franc
+fifty. With a determination not to be beaten that was renewed by the
+pause for breath, Don Alfonso flung himself into the argument again,
+splendidly assisted by Mohammed, who seemed to be tearing out his hair
+in baffled fury.
+
+"I wish I knew what they were calling each other," said Sylvia.
+
+"Something highly insulting, I should think," Mrs. Gainsborough
+answered. "Wonderful the way they use their hands. He doesn't seem to be
+worrying himself so very much. I suppose he'll start in shooting in the
+end."
+
+She pointed to the soldier, who was regarding the dispute with
+contemptuous gravity. Another window in a tower on the other side of the
+gate was opened, and the first porter was reinforced. Perspiration was
+dripping from Don Alfonso's forehead; he looked more like a candle stump
+than ever, when presently he stood aside from the argument to say that
+he had been forced to offer one franc seventy-five to enter Tetuan.
+
+"Tetuan," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Tetuarn't, I should say."
+
+Sylvia asked Don Alfonso what he was calling the porter, and it
+appeared, though he minimized the insult by a gesture, that he had just
+invited forty-three dogs to devour the corpse of the porter's
+grandmother. This, however, he hastened to add, had not annoyed him so
+much as his withdrawal from one franc fifty to one franc twenty-five.
+
+In the end the porter agreed to open the gate for one franc
+seventy-five.
+
+"Which is just as well," said Mrs. Gainsborough, "for I'm sure Mohamet
+would have thrown a fit soon. He's got to banging his forehead with his
+fists, and that's a very bad sign."
+
+They rode through the darkness between double walls, disturbing every
+now and then a beggar who whined for alms or cursed them if the mule
+trod upon his outspread legs. They found an inn called the Hôtel
+Splendide, a bug-ridden tumble-down place kept by Spanish Jews as
+voracious as the bugs. Yet out on the roof, looking at the domes and
+minarets glimmering under Venus setting in the west from a sky full of
+stars, listening to the howling of distant dogs, breathing the perfume
+of the East, Sylvia felt like a conqueror.
+
+Next morning Mrs. Gainsborough, finding that the bugs had retreated with
+the light, decided to spend the morning in sleeping off some of her
+bruises. Sylvia wandered through the bazaars with Don Alfonso, and sat
+for a while in the garden of a French convent, where a fountain
+whispered in the shade of pomegranates. Suddenly, walking along the path
+toward her she saw Maurice Avery.
+
+Sylvia had disliked Avery very much when she met him in London nearly
+two years ago; but the worst enemy, the most flagitious bore, is
+transformed when encountered alone in a distant country, and now Sylvia
+felt well disposed toward him and eager to share with any one who could
+appreciate her pleasure the marvel of being in Tetuan. He too, by the
+way his face lighted up, was glad to see her, and they shook hands with
+a cordiality that was quite out of proportion to their earlier
+acquaintance.
+
+"I say, what a queer place to meet!" he exclaimed. "Are you alone,
+then?"
+
+"I've got Mrs. Gainsborough with me, that's all. I'm not married ... or
+anything."
+
+It was absurd how eager she felt to assure Avery of this; and then in a
+moment the topic had been started.
+
+"No, have you really got Mrs. Gainsborough?" he exclaimed. "Of course
+I've heard about her from Michael. Poor old Michael!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" Sylvia asked, sharply.
+
+"Oh, he's perfectly all right, but he's lost to his friends. At least I
+suppose he is--buried in a monastery. He's not actually a monk. I
+believe he's what's called an oblate, pursuing the Fata Morgana of
+faith--a sort of dream...."
+
+"Yes, yes," Sylvia interrupted. "I understand the allusion. You needn't
+talk down to me."
+
+Avery blushed. The color in his cheeks made him seem very young.
+
+"Sorry. I was thinking of somebody else for the moment. That sounds very
+discourteous also. I must apologize again. What's happened to Lily
+Haden?"
+
+Sylvia told him briefly the circumstances of Lily's marriage at Rio.
+"Does Michael ever talk about her?" she asked.
+
+"Oh no, never!" said Avery. "He's engaged in saving his own soul now.
+That sounds malicious, but seriously I don't think she was ever more to
+him than an intellectual landmark. To understand Michael's point of view
+in all that business you've got to know that he was illegitimate. His
+father, Lord Saxby, had a romantic passion for the daughter of a country
+parson--a queer, cross-grained old scholar. You remember Arthur
+Lonsdale? Well, his father, Lord Cleveden, knew the whole history of the
+affair. Lady Saxby wouldn't divorce him; so they were never married. I
+suppose Michael brooded over this and magnified his early devotion to
+Lily in some way or other up to a vow of reparation. I'm quite sure it
+was a kind of indirect compliment to his own mother. Of course it was
+all very youthful and foolish--and yet I don't know...." he broke off
+with a sigh.
+
+"You think one can't afford to bury the past?"
+
+Avery looked at her quickly. "What made you ask me that?"
+
+"I thought you seemed to admire Michael's youthful foolishness."
+
+"I do really. I admire any one that's steadfast even to a mistaken idea.
+It's strange to meet an Englishwoman here," he said, looking intently at
+Sylvia. "One's guard drops. I'm longing to make a confidante of you, but
+you might be bored. I'm rather frightened of you, really. I always was."
+
+"I sha'n't exchange confidences," Sylvia said, "if that's what you're
+afraid of."
+
+"No, of course not," Avery said, quickly. "Last spring I was in love
+with a girl...."
+
+Sylvia raised her eyebrows.
+
+"Oh yes, it's a very commonplace beginning and rather a commonplace end,
+I'm afraid. She was a ballet-girl--the incarnation of May and London.
+That sounds exaggerated, for I know that lots of other Jenny Pearls have
+been the same to somebody, but I do believe most people agreed with me.
+I wanted her to live with me. She wouldn't. She had sentimental, or what
+I thought were sentimental, ideas about her mother and family. I was
+called away to Spain. When my business was finished I begged her to come
+out to me there. That was last April. She refused, and I was piqued, I
+suppose, at first, and did not go back to England. Then, as one does, I
+made up my mind to the easiest thing at the moment by letting myself be
+enchanted by my surroundings into thinking that I was happier as it was.
+For a while I was happier; in a way our love had been a great strain
+upon us both. I came to Morocco, and gradually ever since I've been
+realizing that I left something unfinished. It's become a kind of
+obsession. Do you know what I mean?"
+
+"Indeed I do, very well indeed," Sylvia said.
+
+"Thanks," he said with a grateful look. "Now comes the problem. If I go
+back to England this month, if I arrive in England on the first of May
+exactly a year later, there's only one thing I can do to atone for my
+behavior--I must ask her to marry me. You see that, don't you? This
+little thing is proud, oh, but tremendously proud. I doubt very much if
+she'll forgive me, even if I show the sincerity of my regret by asking
+her to marry me now; but it's my only chance. And yet--oh, I expect this
+will sound damnable to you, but it's the way we've all been molded in
+England--she's common. Common! What an outrageous word to use. But then
+it is used by everybody. She's the most frankly cockney thing you ever
+saw. Can I stand her being snubbed and patronized? Can I stand my wife's
+being snubbed and patronized? Can love survive the sort of ambushed
+criticism that I shall perceive all round us? For I wouldn't try to
+change her. No, no, no! She must be herself. I'll have no throaty 'aws'
+masquerading as 'o's.' She must keep her own clear 'aou's.' There must
+not be any 'naceness' or patched-up shop-walker's English. I love her
+more at this moment than I ever loved her, but can I stand it? And I'm
+not asking this egotistically: I'm asking it for both of us. That's why
+you meet me in Tetuan, for I dare not go back to England lest the first
+cockney voice I hear may kill my determination, and I really am longing
+to marry her. Yet I wait here, staking what I know in my heart is all my
+future happiness on chance, assuring myself that presently impulse and
+reason will be reconciled and will send me back to her, but still I
+wait."
+
+He paused. The fountain whispered in the shade of the pomegranates. A
+nun was gathering flowers for the chapel. Outside, the turmoil of the
+East sounded like the distant chattering of innumerable monkeys.
+
+"You've so nearly reached the point at which a man has the right to
+approach a woman," Sylvia said, "that if you're asking my advice, I
+advise you to wait until you do actually reach that point. Of course you
+may lose her by waiting. She may marry somebody else."
+
+"Oh, I know; I've thought of that. In a way that would be a solution."
+
+"So long as you regard her marriage with somebody else as a solution,
+you're still some way from the point. It's curious she should be a
+ballet-girl, because Mrs. Gainsborough, you know, was a ballet-girl. In
+1869, when she took her emotional plunge, she was able to exchange the
+wings of Covent Garden for the wings of love easily enough. In 1869
+ballet-girls never thought of marrying what were and are called
+'gentlemen.' I think Mrs. Gainsborough would consider her life a
+success; she was not too much married to spoil love, and the captain was
+certainly more devoted to her than most husbands would have been. The
+proof that her life was a success is that she has remained young. Yet if
+I introduce you to her you'll see at once your own Jenny at sixty like
+her--that won't be at all a hard feat of imagination. But you'll still
+be seeing yourself at twenty-five or whatever you are; you'll never be
+able to see yourself at sixty; therefore I sha'n't introduce you. I'm
+too much of a woman not to hope with all my heart that you'll go home to
+England, marry your Jenny, and live happily ever afterward, and I think
+you'd better not meet Mrs. Gainsborough, in case she prejudices your
+resolve. Thanks for giving me your confidence."
+
+"Oh no! Thank _you_ for listening," said Avery.
+
+"I'm glad you're not going to develop her. I once suffered from that
+kind of vivisection myself, though I never had a cockney accent. Some
+souls can't stand straight lacing, just as some bodies revolt from
+stays. And so Michael is in a monastery? I suppose that means all his
+soul spasms are finally allayed?"
+
+"O Lord! No!" said Avery. "He's in the very middle of them."
+
+"What I really meant to say was heart palpitations."
+
+"I don't think, really," said Avery, "that Michael ever had them."
+
+"What was Lily, then?"
+
+"Oh, essentially a soul spasm," he declared.
+
+"Yes, I suppose it was," Sylvia agreed, pensively.
+
+"I think, you know, I must meet Mrs. Gainsborough," said Avery. "Fate
+answers for you. Here she comes."
+
+Don Alfonso, with the pain that every dog and dragoman feels in the
+separation of his charges, had taken advantage of Sylvia's talk with
+Avery to bring Mrs. Gainsborough triumphantly back to the fold.
+
+"Here we are again," said Mrs. Gainsborough, limping down the path. "And
+my behind looks like a magic lantern. Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn't
+see you'd met a friend. So that's what Alfonso was trying to tell me.
+He's been going like an alarm-clock all the way here. Pleased to meet
+you, I'm sure. How do you like Morocco? We got shut out last night."
+
+"This is a friend of Michael Fane's," said Sylvia.
+
+"Did you know _him_? He _was_ a nice young fellow. Very nice he was. But
+he wouldn't know me now. Very stay-at-home I was when he used to come to
+Mulberry Cottage. Why, he tried to make me ride in a hansom once, and I
+was actually too nervous. You know, I'd got into a regular rut. But now,
+well, upon me word, I don't believe now I should say 'no' if any one was
+to invite me to ride inside of a whale. It's her doing, the tartar."
+
+Avery had learned a certain amount of Arabic during his stay in Morocco
+and he made the bazaars of Tetuan much more interesting than Don Alfonso
+could have done. He also had many tales to tell of the remote cities
+like Fez and Mequinez and Marakeesh. Sylvia almost wished that she could
+pack Mrs. Gainsborough off to England and accompany him into the real
+interior. Some of her satisfaction in Tetuan had been rather spoiled
+that morning by finding a visitor's book in the hotel with the names of
+traveling clergymen and their daughters patronizingly inscribed therein.
+However, Avery decided to ride away almost at once, and said that he
+intended to banish the twentieth century for two or three months.
+
+They stayed a few days at Tetuan, but the bugs were too many for Mrs.
+Gainsborough, who began to sigh for a tranquil bed. Avery and Sylvia had
+a short conversation together before they left. He thanked her for her
+sympathy, held to his intention of spending the summer in Morocco, but
+was nearly sure he should return to England in the autumn, with a mind
+serenely fixed.
+
+"I wish, if you go back to London, you'd look Jenny up," he said.
+
+Sylvia shook her head very decidedly. "I can't imagine anything that
+would annoy her more, if she's the girl I suppose her to be."
+
+"But I'd like her to have a friend like you," he urged.
+
+Sylvia looked at him severely. "Are you quite sure that you don't want
+to change her?" she asked.
+
+"Of course. Why?"
+
+"Choosing friends for somebody else is not very wise; it sounds
+uncommonly like a roundabout way of developing her. No, no, I won't meet
+your Jenny."
+
+"I see what you mean," Avery assented. "I'll write to Michael and tell
+him I've met you. Shall I tell him about Lily? Where is she now?"
+
+"I don't know. I've never had even a post-card. My fault, really. Yes,
+you can tell Michael that she's probably quite happy and--no, I don't
+think there's any other message. Oh yes, you might say I've eaten one or
+two rose-leaves but not enough yet."
+
+Avery looked puzzled.
+
+"Apuleius," she added.
+
+"Strange girl. I _wish_ you would go and see Jenny."
+
+"Oh no! She's eaten all the rose-leaves she wants, and I'm sure she's
+not the least interested in Apuleius."
+
+Next day Sylvia and Mrs. Gainsborough set out on the return journey to
+Tangier, which, apart from a disastrous attempt by Mrs. Gainsborough to
+eat a prickly pear, lacked incident.
+
+"Let sleeping pears lie," said Sylvia.
+
+"Well, you don't expect a fruit to be so savage," retorted Mrs.
+Gainsborough. "I thought I must have aggravated a wasp. Talk about
+nettles. They're chammy leather beside them. Prickly pears! I suppose
+the next thing I try to eat will be stabbing apples."
+
+They went home by Gibraltar, where Mrs. Gainsborough was delighted to
+see English soldiers.
+
+"It's nice to know we've got our eyes open even in Spain. I reckon I'll
+get a good cup of tea here."
+
+They reached England at the end of April, and Sylvia decided to stay for
+a while at Mulberry Cottage. Reading through _The Stage_, she found that
+Jack Airdale was resting at Richmond in his old rooms, and went down to
+see him. He was looking somewhat thin and worried.
+
+"Had rather a rotten winter," he told her. "I got ill with a quinsey and
+had to throw up a decent shop, and somehow or other I haven't managed to
+get another one yet."
+
+"Look here, old son," Sylvia said, "I don't want any damned pride from
+you. I've got plenty of money at present. You've got to borrow fifty
+pounds. You want feeding up and fitting out. Don't be a cad now, and
+refuse a 'lidy.' Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You know me by this time.
+Who's going to be more angry, you at being lent money or me at being
+refused by one of the few, the very few, mark you, good pals I've got?
+Don't be a beast, Jack. You've got to take it."
+
+He surrendered, from habit. Sylvia gave him all her news, but the item
+that interested him most was her having half taken up the stage.
+
+"I knew you'd make a hit," he declared.
+
+"But I didn't."
+
+"My dear girl, you don't give yourself a chance. You can't play hide and
+seek with the public, though, by Jove!" he added, ruefully, "I have been
+lately."
+
+"For the present I can afford to wait."
+
+"Yes, you're damned lucky in one way, and yet I'm not sure that you
+aren't really very unlucky. If you hadn't found some money you'd have
+been forced to go on."
+
+"My dear lad, lack of money wouldn't make me an artist."
+
+"What would, then?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Being fed up with everything. That's what drove me
+into self-expression, as I should call it if I were a temperamental
+miss with a light-boiled ego swimming in a saucepan of emotion for the
+public to swallow or myself to crack. But conceive my disgust! There was
+I yearning unattainable 'isms' from a soul nurtured on tragic
+disillusionment, and I was applauded for singing French songs with an
+English accent. No, seriously, I shall try again, old Jack, when I
+receive another buffet. At present I'm just dimly uncomfortable. I shall
+blossom late like a chrysanthemum. I ain't no daffodil, I ain't. Or
+perhaps it would be truer to say that I was forced when young--don't
+giggle, you ribald ass, not that way--and I've got to give myself a rest
+before I bloom, _en plein air_."
+
+"But you really have got plenty of money?" Airdale inquired, anxiously.
+
+"Masses! Cataracts! And all come by perfectly honest. No, seriously,
+I've got about four thousand pounds."
+
+"Well, I really do think you're rather lucky, you know."
+
+"Of course. But it's all written in the book of Fate. Listen. I've got a
+mulberry mark on my arm; I live at Mulberry Cottage; and Morera, that's
+the name of my fairy godfather, is Spanish for mulberry-tree. Can you
+beat it?"
+
+"I hope you've invested this money," said Airdale.
+
+"It's in a bank."
+
+He begged her to be careful of her riches, and she rallied him on his
+inconsistency, because a moment back he had been telling her that their
+possession was hindering her progress in art.
+
+"My dear Sylvia, I haven't known you for five years not to have
+discovered that I might as well advise a schoolmaster as you, but what
+_are_ you going to do?"
+
+"Plans for this summer? A little gentle reading. A little browsing among
+the classics. A little theater-going. A little lunching at Verrey's with
+Mr. John Airdale. Resting address, six Rosetree Terrace, Richmond,
+Surrey. A little bumming around town, as Señor Morera would say. Plans
+for the autumn? A visit to the island of Sirene, if I can find a nice
+lady-like young woman to accompany me. Mrs. Gainsborough has decided
+that she will travel no more. Her brain is bursting with unrelated
+adventure."
+
+"But you can't go on from month to month like that."
+
+"Well, if you'll tell me how to skip over December, January, and August
+I'll be grateful," Sylvia laughed.
+
+"No, don't rag about. I mean for the future in general," he explained.
+"Are you going to get married? You can't go on forever like this."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, you're young now. But what's more gloomy than a restless old
+maid?"
+
+"My dear man, don't you fret about my withering. I've got a little
+crystal flask of the finest undiluted strychnine. I believe strychnine
+quickens the action of the heart. Verdict. Death from attempted
+galvanization of the cardiac muscles. No flowers by request. Boomph! as
+Mrs. Gainsborough would say. Ring off. The last time I wrote myself an
+epitaph it led me into matrimony. _Absit omen_."
+
+Airdale was distressed by Sylvia's joking about her death, and begged
+her to stop.
+
+"Then don't ask me any more about the future in general. And now let's
+go and be Epicurean at Verrey's."
+
+After Jack Airdale the only other old friend that Sylvia took any
+trouble to find was Olive Fanshawe. She was away on tour when Sylvia
+returned to England, but she came back to London in June, was still
+unmarried, and had been promised a small part in the Vanity production
+that autumn. Sylvia found that Olive had recaptured her romantic ideals
+and was delighted with her proposal that they should live together at
+Mulberry Cottage. Olive took very seriously her small part at the
+Vanity, of which the most distinguished line was: "Girls, have you seen
+the Duke of Mayfair? He's awfully handsome." Sylvia was not very
+encouraging to Olive's opportunities of being able to give an original
+reading of such a line, but she listened patiently to her variations in
+which each word was overaccentuated in turn. Luckily there was also a
+melodious quintet consisting of the juvenile lead and four beauties of
+whom Olive was to be one; this, it seemed, promised to be a hit, and
+indeed it was.
+
+The most interesting event for the Vanity world that autumn, apart from
+the individual successes and failures in the new production, was the
+return of Lord and Lady Clarehaven to London, and not merely their
+return, but their re-entry into the Bohemian society from which Lady
+Clarehaven had so completely severed herself.
+
+"I know it's perfectly ridiculous of me," said Olive, "but, Sylvia, do
+you know, I'm quite nervous at the idea of meeting her again."
+
+A most cordial note had arrived from Dorothy inviting Olive to lunch
+with her in Curzon Street.
+
+"Write back and tell her you're living with me," Sylvia advised.
+"That'll choke off some of the friendliness."
+
+But to Sylvia's boundless surprise a messenger-boy arrived with an
+urgent invitation for her to come too.
+
+"Curiouser and curiouser," she murmured. "What does it mean? She surely
+can't be tired of being a countess already. I'm completely stumped.
+However, of course we'll put on our clean bibs and go. Don't look so
+frightened. Olive, if conversation hangs fire at lunch, we'll tickle the
+footmen."
+
+"I really feel quite faint," said Olive. "My heart's going pitter-pat.
+Isn't it silly of me?"
+
+Lunch, to which Arthur Lonsdale had also been invited, did nothing to
+enlighten Sylvia about the Clarehavens' change of attitude. Dorothy,
+more beautiful than ever and pleasant enough superficially, seemed
+withal faintly resentful; Clarehaven was in exuberant spirits and
+evidently enjoying London tremendously. The only sign of tension, well
+not exactly tension, but slight disaccord, and that was too strong a
+word, was once when Clarehaven, having been exceptionally rowdy, glanced
+at Dorothy a swift look of defiance for checking him.
+
+"She's grown as prim as a parlor-maid," said Lonsdale to Sylvia when,
+after lunch, they had a chance of talking together. "You ought to have
+seen her on the ancestral acres. My mother, who presides over our place
+like a Queen Turnip, is without importance beside Dolly, absolutely
+without importance. It got on Tony's nerves, that's about the truth of
+it. He never could stand the land. It has the same effect on him as the
+sea has on some people. Black vomit, coma, and death--what?"
+
+"Dorothy, of course, played the countess in real life as seriously as
+she would have played her on the stage. She was the star," Sylvia said.
+
+"Star! My dear girl, she was a comet. And the dowager loved her. They
+used to drive round in a barouche and administer gruel to the village
+without anesthetics."
+
+"I suppose they kept them for Clarehaven," Sylvia laughed.
+
+"That's it. Of course, I shouted when I saw the state of affairs, having
+first of all been called in to recover old Lady Clarehaven's reason when
+she heard that her only child was going to wed a Vanity girl. But they
+loved her. Every frump in the county adored her. It's Tony who insisted
+on this move to London. He stood it in Devonshire for two and a half
+years, but the lights of the wicked city--soft music, please--called
+him, and they've come back. Dolly's fed up to the wide about it. I say,
+we are a pair of gossips. What's your news?"
+
+"I met Maurice Avery, in Morocco."
+
+"What, Mossy Avery! Not really? Disguised as a slipper, I suppose. Rum
+bird. He got awfully keen on a little girl at the Orient and tootled her
+all over town for a while, but I haven't seen him for months. I used to
+know him rather well at the 'Varsity: he was one of the esthetic push. I
+say, what's become of Lily?"
+
+"Married to a croupier? Not, really. By Jove! what a time I had over her
+with Michael Fane's people. His sister, an awfully good sort, put me
+through a fearful catechism."
+
+"His sister?" repeated Sylvia.
+
+"You know what Michael's doing now? Greatest scream on earth. He's a
+monk. Some special kind of a monk that sounds like omelette, but isn't.
+Nothing to be done about it. I buzzed down to see him last year, and he
+was awfully fed up. I asked him if he couldn't stop monking for a bit
+and come out for a spin on my new forty-five Shooting Star. He wasn't in
+uniform, so there's no reason why he shouldn't have come."
+
+"He's in England, now, then?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"No, he got fed up with everybody buzzing down to see what he looked
+like as a monk, and he's gone off to Chartreuse or Benedictine or
+somewhere--I know it's the name of a liqueur--somewhere abroad. I wanted
+him to become a partner in our business, and promised we'd put a jolly
+little runabout on the market called The Jovial Monk, but he wouldn't.
+Look here, we'd better join the others. Dolly's got her eye on me. I
+say," he chuckled, in a whisper, "I suppose you know she's a connection
+of mine?"
+
+"Yes, by carriage."
+
+Lonsdale asked what she meant, and Sylvia told him the origin of
+Dorothy's name.
+
+"Oh, I say, that's topping. What's her real name?"
+
+"No, no," Sylvia said. "I've been sufficiently spiteful."
+
+"Probably Buggins, really. I say, Cousin Dorothy," he went on, in a
+louder voice. "What about bridge to-morrow night after the Empire?"
+
+Lady Clarehaven flashed a look at Sylvia, who could not resist shaking
+her head and earning thereby another sharper flash. When Sylvia talked
+over the Clarehavens with Olive, she found that Olive had been quite
+oblivious of anything unusual in the sudden move to town.
+
+"Of course, Dorothy and I can never be what we were to each other; but I
+thought they seemed so happy together. I'm so glad it's been such a
+success."
+
+"Well, has it?" said Sylvia, doubtfully.
+
+"Oh yes, my dear! How can you imagine anything else?"
+
+With the deepening of winter Olive fell ill and the doctors prescribed
+the Mediterranean for her. The malady was nothing to worry about; it was
+nothing more than fatigue; and if she were to rest now and if possible
+not work before the following autumn, there was every reason to expect
+that she would be perfectly cured.
+
+Sylvia jumped at an excuse to go abroad again and suggested a visit to
+Sirene. The doctor, on being assured that Sirene was in the
+Mediterranean, decided that it was exactly the place best suited to
+Olive's state of health. Like most English doctors, he regarded the
+Mediterranean as a little larger than the Serpentine, with a
+characteristic climate throughout. Olive, however, was much opposed to
+leaving London, and when Sylvia began to get annoyed with her obstinacy,
+she confessed that the real reason for wishing to stay was Jack.
+
+"Naturally, I wanted to tell you at once, my dear. But Jack wouldn't let
+me, until he could see his way clear to our being married. He was quite
+odd about you, for you know how fond he is of you--he thinks there's
+nobody like you--but he particularly asked me not to tell you just yet."
+
+"Of course I know the reason," Sylvia proclaimed, instantly. "The silly,
+scrupulous, proud ass. I'll have it out with him to-morrow at lunch.
+Dearest Olive, I'm so happy that I like your curly-headed actor."
+
+"Oh, but, darling Sylvia, his hair's quite straight!"
+
+"Yes, but it's very long and gets into his eyes. It's odd hair, anyway.
+And when did the flaming arrow pin your two hearts together?"
+
+"It was that evening you played baccarat at Curzon Street--about ten
+days ago. You didn't think we'd known long, did you? Oh, my dear, I
+couldn't have kept the secret any longer."
+
+Next day Sylvia lunched with Jack Airdale and came to the point at once.
+
+"Look here, you detestably true-to-type, impossibly sensitive ass,
+because I to please me lent you fifty pounds, is that any excuse for you
+to keep me out in the cold over you and Olive? Seriously, Jack, I do
+think it was mean of you."
+
+Jack was abashed and mumbled many excuses. He had been afraid Sylvia
+would despise him for talking about marriage when he owed her money. He
+felt, anyway, that he wasn't good enough for Olive. Before Olive had
+known anything about it, he had been rather ashamed of himself for being
+in love with her; he felt he was taking advantage of Sylvia's
+friendship.
+
+"All which excuses are utterly feeble," Sylvia pronounced. "Now listen.
+Olive's ill. She ought to go abroad. I very selfishly want a companion.
+You've got to insist on her going. The fifty pounds I lent you will pay
+her expenses, so that debt's wiped out, and you're standing her a
+holiday in the Mediterranean."
+
+Jack thought for a moment with a puzzled air.
+
+"Don't be absurd, Sylvia. Really for the moment you took me in with your
+confounded arithmetic. Why, you're doubling the obligation."
+
+"Obligation! Obligation! Don't you dare to talk about obligations to me.
+I don't believe in obligations. Am I to understand that for the sake of
+your unworthy--well, it can't be dignified with the word--pride, Olive
+is to be kept in London throughout the spring?"
+
+Jack protested he had been talking about the loan to himself. Olive's
+obligation would be a different one.
+
+"Jack, have you ever seen a respectable woman throw a sole Morny across
+a restaurant? Because you will in one moment. Amen to the whole
+discussion. Please! The only thing you've got to do is to insist on
+Olive's coming with me. Then while she's away you must be a good little
+actor and act away as hard as you know how, so that you can be married
+next June as a present to me on my twenty-sixth birthday."
+
+"You're the greatest dear," said Jack, fervently.
+
+"Of course I am. But I'm waiting."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Why, for an exhortation to matrimony. Haven't you noticed that people
+who are going to get married always try to persuade everybody else to
+come in with them? I'm sure human co-operation began with paleolithic
+bathers."
+
+So Olive and Sylvia left England for Sirene.
+
+"I'd like to be coming with you," said Mrs. Gainsborough at Charing
+Cross. "But I'm just beginning to feel a tiddley-bit stiff, and well,
+there, after Morocco, I shouldn't be satisfied with anything less than a
+cannibal island, and it's too late for me to start in being a Robinson
+Crusoe, which reminds me that when I took Mrs. Beardmore to the Fulham
+pantomime last night it was Dick Whittington. And upon my soul, if he
+didn't go to Morocco with his cat. 'Well,' I said to Mrs. Beardmore,
+'it's not a bit like it.' I told her that if Dick Whittington went there
+now he wouldn't take his cat with him. He'd take a box of Keating's.
+Somebody behind said, 'Hush.' And I said, 'Hush yourself. Perhaps
+_you've_ been to Morocco?' Which made him look very silly, for I don't
+suppose he's ever been further East than Aldgate in his life. We had no
+more 'hushes' from him, I can tell you; and Mrs. Beardmore looked round
+at him in a very lady-like way which she's got from being a housekeeper,
+and said, 'My friend _has_ been to Morocco.' After that we la-la'd the
+chorus in peace and quiet. Good-by, duckies, and don't gallivant about
+too much."
+
+Sylvia had brought a bagful of books about the Roman emperors, and Olive
+had brought a number of anthologies that made up by the taste of the
+binder for the lack of it in the compiler. They were mostly about love.
+To satisfy Sylvia's historical passion a week was spent in Rome and
+another week in Naples. She told Olive of her visit to Italy with Philip
+over seven years ago, and, much to her annoyance, Olive poured out a
+good deal of emotion over that hapless marriage.
+
+"Don't you feel any kind of sentimental regret?" she asked while they
+were watching from Posilipo the vapors of Vesuvius rose-plumed in the
+wintry sunset. "Surely you feel softened toward it all now. Why, I think
+I should regret anything that had once happened in this divinely
+beautiful place."
+
+"The thing I remember most distinctly is Philip's having read somewhere
+that the best way to get rid of an importunate guide was to use the
+local negative and throw the head back instead of shaking it. The result
+was that Philip used to walk about as if he were gargling. To annoy him
+I used to wink behind his back at the guides, and naturally with such
+encouragement his local negative was absolutely useless."
+
+"I think you must have been rather trying, Sylvia dear."
+
+"Oh, I was--infernally trying, but one doesn't marry a child of
+seventeen as a sedative."
+
+"I think it's all awfully sad," Olive sighed.
+
+Sylvia had rather a shock, a few days after they had reached Sirene,
+when she saw Miss Horne and Miss Hobart drive past on the road up to
+Anasirene, the green rival of Sirene among the clouds to the west of the
+island. She made inquiries at the pension and was informed that two
+sisters Miss Hobart-Horne, English millionaires many times over, had
+lived at Sirene these five years. Sylvia decided that it would be quite
+easy to avoid meeting them, and warned Olive against making friends with
+any of the residents, on the plea that she did not wish to meet people
+whom she had met here seven years ago with her husband. In the earlier
+part of the spring they stayed at a pension, but Sylvia found that it
+was difficult to escape from people there, and they moved up to
+Anasirene, where they took a _villino_ that was cut off from all
+dressed-up humanity by a sea of olives. Here it was possible to roam by
+paths that were not frequented save by peasants whose personalities so
+long attuned to earth had lost the power of detaching themselves from
+the landscape and did not affect the onlooker more than the movement of
+trees or the rustle of small beasts. Life was made up of these
+essentially undisturbing personalities set in a few pictures that
+escaped from the swift southern spring: anemones splashed out like wine
+upon the green corn; some girl with slanting eyes that regarded coldly a
+dead bird in her thin brown hand; red-beaded cherry-trees that threw
+shadows on the tawny wheat below; wind over the olives and the sea, wind
+that shook the tresses of the broom and ruffled the scarlet poppies;
+then suddenly the first cicala and eternal noon.
+
+It would have been hard to say how they spent these four months, Sylvia
+thought.
+
+"Can you bear to leave your beloved trees, your namesakes?" she asked.
+
+"Jack is getting impatient," said Olive.
+
+"Then we must fade out of Anasirene just as one by one the flowers have
+all faded."
+
+"I don't think I've faded much," Olive laughed. "I never felt so well in
+my life, thanks to you."
+
+Jack and Olive were married at the end of June. It was necessary to go
+down to a small Warwickshire town and meet all sorts of country people
+that reminded Sylvia of Green Lanes. Olive's father, who was a
+solicitor, was very anxious for Sylvia to stay when the wedding was
+over. He was cheating the gods out of half their pleasure in making him
+a solicitor by writing a history of Warwickshire worthies. Sylvia had so
+much impressed him as an intelligent observer that he would have liked
+to retain her at his elbow for a while. She would not stay, however. The
+particular song that the sirens had sung to her during her sojourn in
+their territory was about writing a book. They called her back now and
+flattered her with a promise of inspiration. Sylvia was not much more
+ready to believe in sirens than in mortals, and she resisted the impulse
+to return. Nevertheless, with half an idea of scoring off them by
+writing the book somewhere else, she settled down in Mulberry Cottage to
+try: the form should be essays, and she drew up a list of subjects:--
+
+1. _Obligations.
+
+Judiac like the rest of our moral system; post obits on human
+gratitude_.
+
+2. _Friendship.
+
+A flowery thing. Objectionable habit of keeping pressed flowers_.
+
+3. _Marriage.
+
+Judiac. Include this with obligations; nothing wrong with the idea of
+marriage. The marriage of convenience probably more honest than the
+English marriage of so-called affection. Levi the same as Lewis_.
+
+4. _Gambling.
+
+A moral occupation that brings out the worst side of everybody_.
+
+5. _Development.
+
+Exploiting human personality. Judiac, of course_.
+
+6. _Acting.
+
+A low art form; oh yes, very low; being paid for what the rest of the
+world does for nothing_.
+
+7. _Prostitution.
+
+Selling one's body to keep one's soul. This is the meaning of the sins
+that were forgiven to the woman because she loved much. One might say of
+most marriages that they were selling one's soul to keep one's body_.
+
+Sylvia found that when she started to write on these and other subjects
+she knew nothing about them; the consequence was that summer passed into
+autumn and autumn into winter while she went on reading history and
+philosophy. For pastime she played baccarat at Curzon Street and lost
+six hundred pounds. In February she decided that, so much having been
+written on the subjects she had chosen, it was useless to write any
+more. She went to stay with Jack and Olive, who were now living in West
+Kensington. Olive was expecting a baby in April.
+
+"If it's a boy, we're going to call him Sylvius. But if it's a girl,
+Jack says we can't call her Sylvia, because for us there can never be
+more than one Sylvia."
+
+"Call her Argentina."
+
+"No, we're going to call her Sylvia Rose."
+
+"Well, I hope it'll be a boy," said Sylvia. "Anyway, I hope it'll be a
+boy, because there are too many girls."
+
+Olive announced that she had taken a cottage in the country close to
+where her people lived, and that Sylvius or Sylvia Rose was to be born
+there; she thought it was right.
+
+"I don't know why childbirth should be more moral in the country,"
+Sylvia said.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing to do with morals; it's on account of baby's health.
+You will come and stay with me, won't you?"
+
+In March, therefore, Sylvia went down to Warwickshire with Olive, much
+to the gratification of Mr. Fanshawe. It was a close race whether he
+would be a grandfather or an author first, but in the end Mr. Fanshawe
+had the pleasure of placing a copy of his work on Warwickshire worthies
+in the hands of the monthly nurse before she could place in his arms a
+grandchild. Three days later Olive brought into the world a little girl
+and a little boy. Jack was acting in Dundee. The problem of nomenclature
+was most complicated. Olive had to think it all out over again from the
+beginning. Jack had to be consulted by telegram about every change, and
+on occasions where accuracy was all-important, the post-office clerks
+were usually most careless. For instance, Mr. Fanshawe thought it would
+be charming to celebrate the forest of Arden by calling the children
+Orlando and Rosalind; Jack thereupon replied:
+
+     Do not like Rosebud. What will boy be called. Suggest Palestine.
+     First name arrived Ostend. If Oswald no.
+
+"Palestine!" exclaimed Olive.
+
+"Obviously Valentine," said Sylvia. "But look here, why not Sylvius for
+the boy and Rose for the girl? 'Rose Airdale, all were thine!'"
+
+When several more telegrams had been exchanged to enable Olive, in
+Warwickshire, to be quite sure that Jack, by this time in Aberdeen, had
+got the names right, Sylvius and Rose were decided upon, though Mr.
+Fanshawe advocated Audrey for the girl with such pertinacity that he
+even went as far as to argue with his daughter on the steps of the font.
+Indeed, as Sylvia said afterward, if the clergyman had not been so deaf,
+Rose would probably be Audrey at this moment.
+
+On the afternoon of the christening Sylvia received a telegram.
+
+"Too late," she said, with a laugh, as she tore it open. "He can't
+change his mind now."
+
+But the telegram was signed "Beardmore" and asked Sylvia to come at once
+to London because Mrs. Gainsborough was very ill.
+
+When she arrived at Mulberry Cottage, on a fine morning in early June,
+Mrs. Beardmore, whom Sylvia had never seen, was gravely accompanying two
+other elderly women to the garden door.
+
+"She's not dead?" Sylvia cried.
+
+The three friends shook their heads and sighed.
+
+"Not yet, poor soul," said the thinnest, bursting into tears.
+
+This must be Mrs. Ewings.
+
+"I'm just going to send another doctor," said the most majestic, which
+must be Mrs. Marsham.
+
+Mrs. Beardmore said nothing, but she sniffed and led the way toward the
+house. Mrs. Marsham and Mrs. Ewings went off together.
+
+Inside the darkened room, but not so dark in the June sunshine as to
+obscure entirely the picture of Captain Dashwood in whiskers that hung
+upon the wall by her bed, Mrs. Gainsborough lay breathing heavily. The
+nurse made a gesture of silence and came out tiptoe from the room.
+Down-stairs in the parlor Sylvia listened to Mrs. Beardmore's story of
+the illness.
+
+"I heard nothing till three days ago, when the woman who comes in of a
+morning ascertained from Mrs. Gainsborough the wish she had for me to
+visit her. The Misses Hargreaves, with who I reside, was exceptionally
+kind and insisted upon me taking the tram from Kew that very moment. I
+communicated with Mrs. Marsham and Mrs. Ewings, but they, both having
+lodgers, was unable to evacuate their business, and Mrs. Gainsborough
+was excessively anxious as you should be communicated with on the
+telegraph, which I did accordingly. We have two nurses night and day,
+and the doctor is all that can be desired, all that can be desired,
+notwithstanding whatever Mrs. Marsham may say to the contrary; Mrs.
+Marsham, who I've known for some years, has that habit of contradicting
+everybody else something outrageous. Mrs. Ewings and me was both
+entirely satisfied with Doctor Barker. I'm very glad you've come, Miss
+Scarlett, and Mrs. Gainsborough will be very glad you've come. If you'll
+permit the liberty of the observation, Mrs. Gainsborough is very fond of
+you. As soon as she wakes up I shall have to get back to Kew, not
+wishing to trespass too much on the kindness of the two Misses
+Hargreaves to who I act as housekeeper. It's her heart that's the
+trouble. Double pneumonia through pottering in the garden. That's what
+the doctor diag--yes, that's what the doctor says, and though Mrs.
+Marsham contradicted him, taking the words out of his mouth and throwing
+them back in his face, and saying it was nothing of the kind but going
+to the King's funeral, I believe he's right."
+
+Mrs. Beardmore went back to Kew. Mrs. Gainsborough, who had been in a
+comatose state all the afternoon, began to wander in her mind about an
+hour before sunset.
+
+"It's very dark. High time the curtain went up. The house will be
+getting impatient in a minute. It's not to be supposed they'll wait all
+night. Certainly not."
+
+Sylvia drew the curtains back, and the room was flooded with gold.
+
+"That's better. Much better. The country smells beautiful, don't it,
+this morning? The glory die-johns are a treat this year, but the captain
+he always likes a camellia or a gardenia. Well, if they start in
+building over your nursery, pa.... Certainly not, certainly not. They'll
+build over everything. Now don't talk about dying, Bob. Don't let's be
+dismal on our anniversary. Certainly not."
+
+She suddenly recognized Sylvia and her mind cleared.
+
+"Oh, I _am_ glad you've come. Really, you know, I hate to make a fuss,
+but I'm not feeling at all meself. I'm just a tiddley-bit ill, it's my
+belief. Sylvia, give me your hand. Sylvia, I'm joking. I really am
+remarkably ill. Oh, there's no doubt I'm going to die. What a beautiful
+evening! Yes, it's not to be supposed I'm going to live forever, and
+there, after all, I'm not sorry. As soon as I began to get that
+stiffness I thought it meant I was not meself. And what's the good of
+hanging about if you're not yourself?"
+
+The nurse came forward and begged her not to talk too much.
+
+"You can't stop me talking. There was a clergyman came through Mrs.
+Ewings's getting in a state about me, and he talked till I was sick and
+tired of the sound of his voice. Talked away, he did, about the death of
+Our Lord and being nailed to the cross. It made me very dismal. 'Here,
+when did all this occur?' I asked. 'Nineteen hundred and ten years ago,'
+he said. 'Oh well,' I said, 'it all occurred such a long time ago and
+it's all so sad, let's hope it never occurred at all.'"
+
+The nurse said firmly that if Mrs. Gainsborough would not stop talking
+she should have to make Sylvia go out of the room.
+
+"There's a tyrant," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Well, just sit by me
+quietly and hold my hand."
+
+The sun set behind the housetops. Mrs. Gainsborough's hand was cold when
+twilight came.
+
+Sylvia felt that it was out of the question to stay longer at Mulberry
+Cottage, though Miss Dashwood, to whom the little property reverted, was
+very anxious for her to do so. After the funeral Sylvia joined Olive and
+Jack in Warwickshire.
+
+They realized that she was feeling very deeply the death of Mrs.
+Gainsborough, and were anxious that she should arrange to live with them
+in West Kensington.
+
+Sylvia, however, said that she wished to remain friends with them, and
+declined the proposal.
+
+"Do you remember what I told you once," she said to Jack, "about going
+back to the stage in some form or another when I was tired of things?"
+
+Jack, who had not yet renounced his ambition for Sylvia's theatrical
+career, jumped at the opportunity of finding her an engagement, and when
+they all went back to London with the babies he rushed about the Strand
+to see what was going. Sylvia moved all her things from Mulberry Cottage
+to the Airdales' house, refusing once more Miss Dashwood's almost
+tearful offer to make over the cottage to her. She was sorry to
+withstand the old lady, who was very frail by now, but she knew that if
+she accepted, it would mean more dreaming about writing books and
+gambling at Curzon Street, and ultimately doing nothing until it was too
+late.
+
+"I'm reaching the boring idle thirties. I'm twenty-seven," she told Jack
+and Olive. "I must sow a few more wild oats before my face is plowed
+with wrinkles to receive the respectable seeds of a flourishing old age.
+By the way, as demon-godmother I've placed one thousand pounds to the
+credit of Rose and Sylvius."
+
+The parents protested, but Sylvia would take no denial.
+
+"I've kept lots for myself," she assured them. As a matter of fact, she
+had nearly another £1,000 in the bank.
+
+At the end of July Jack came in radiant to say that a piece with an
+English company was being sent over to New York the following month.
+There was a small part for which the author required somebody whose
+personality seemed to recall Sylvia's. Would she read it? Sylvia said
+she would.
+
+"The author was pleased, eh?" Jack asked, enthusiastically, when Sylvia
+came back from the trial.
+
+"I don't really know. Whenever he tried to speak, the manager said, 'One
+moment, please'; it was like a boxing-match. However, as the important
+thing seemed to be that I should speak English with a French accent, I
+was engaged."
+
+Sylvia could not help being amused at herself when she found that her
+first essay with legitimate drama was to be the exact converse of her
+first essay with the variety stage, dependent, as before, upon a kind of
+infirmity. Really, the only time she had been able to express herself
+naturally in public had been when she sang "The Raggle-taggle Gipsies"
+with the Pink Pierrots, and that had been a failure. However, a tour in
+the States would give her a new glimpse of life, which at twenty-seven
+was the important consideration; and perhaps New York, more generous
+than other capitals, would give her life itself, or one of the only two
+things in life that mattered, success and love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+The play in which Sylvia was to appear in New York was called "A
+Honeymoon in Europe," and if it might be judged from the first few
+rehearsals, at which the performers had read their parts like
+half-witted board-school children, it was thin stuff. Still, it was not
+fair to pass a final opinion without the two American stars who were
+awaiting the English company in their native land.
+
+The author, Mr. Marchmont Hearne, was a timid little man who between the
+business manager and producer looked and behaved very much like the
+Dormouse at the Mad Tea-party. The manager did not resemble the Hatter
+except in the broad brim of his top-hat, which in mid-Atlantic he
+reluctantly exchanged for a cloth cap. The company declared he was
+famous for his tact; certainly he managed to suppress the Dormouse at
+every point by shouting, "One minute, Mr. Stern, _please_," or, "Please,
+Mr. Burns, one minute," and apologizing at once so effusively for not
+calling him by his right name that the poor little Dormouse had no
+courage to contest the real point at issue, which had nothing to do with
+his name. When the manager had to exercise a finer tactfulness, as with
+obdurate actresses, he was wont to soften his remarks by adding that
+nothing "derogatory" had been intended; this seemed to mollify
+everybody, probably, Sylvia thought, because it was such a long word.
+The Hatter's name was Charles Fitzherbert. The producer, Mr. Wade
+Fortescue, by the length of his ears, by the way in which his electrical
+hair propelled itself into a peak on either side of his head, and by his
+wild, artistic eye, was really rather like the March Hare outwardly; his
+behavior was not less like. Mr. Fortescue's attitude toward "A Honeymoon
+in Europe" was one that Beethoven might have taken up on being invited
+to orchestrate "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay." The author did not go so far as
+to resent this attitude, but on many occasions he was evidently pained
+by it, notwithstanding Mr. Fitzherbert's assurances that Mr. Fortescue
+had intended nothing "derogatory."
+
+Sylvia's part was that of a French chambermaid. The author had drawn it
+faithfully to his experience of Paris in the course of several
+week-ends. As his conception coincided with that of the general public
+in supposing a French chambermaid to be a cross between a street-walker
+and a tight-rope walker, it seemed probable that the part would be a
+success; although Mr. Fortescue wanted to mix the strain still further
+by introducing the blood of a comic ventriloquist.
+
+"You must roll your 'r's' more, Miss Scarlett," he assured her. "That
+line will go for nothing as you said it."
+
+"I said it as a French chambermaid would say it," Sylvia insisted.
+
+"If I might venture--" the Dormouse began.
+
+"One minute, please, Mr. Treherne," interrupted the Mad Hatter. "What
+Mr. Fortescue wants, Miss Scarlett, is exaggeration--a leetle
+exaggeration. I believe that is what you want, Mr. Fortescue?"
+
+"I don't want a caricature," snapped the March Hare. "The play is
+farcical enough as it is. What I want to impart is realism. I want Miss
+Scarlett to say the line as a French girl would say it."
+
+"Precisely," said the Hatter. "That's precisely what I was trying to
+explain to Miss Scarlett. You're a bit hasty, old chap, you know, and I
+think you frightened her a little. That's all right, Miss Scarlett,
+there's nothing to be frightened about. Mr. Fortescue intended nothing
+derogatory."
+
+"I'm not in the least frightened," said Sylvia, indignantly.
+
+"If I might make a suggestion, I think that--" the Dormouse began.
+
+"One minute please, please, Mr. Burns, one minute--Ah, dear me, Mr.
+Hearne, I was confusing you with the poet. Nothing derogatory in that,
+eh?" he laughed jovially.
+
+"May I ask a question?" said Sylvia, and asked it before Mr.
+Fitzherbert could interrupt again. "Why do all English authors draw all
+Frenchwomen as cocottes and all French authors draw all English women as
+governesses? The answer's obvious."
+
+The Mad Hatter and the March Hare were so much taken aback by this
+attack from Alice that the Dormouse was able to emit an entire sentence.
+
+"I should like to say that Miss Scarlett's rendering of the accent gives
+me great satisfaction. I have no fault to find. I shall be much obliged,
+Miss Scarlett, if you will correct my French whenever necessary. I am
+fully sensible of its deficiencies."
+
+Mr. Marchmont Hearne blinked after this challenge and breathed rather
+heavily.
+
+"I've had a good deal of experience," said Mr. Fortescue, grimly, "but I
+never yet found that it improved a play to allow the performers of minor
+rôles, essentially minor rôles, to write their parts in at rehearsal."
+
+Mr. Fitzherbert was in a quandary for a moment whether he should smoothe
+the rufflings of the author or of the actress or of the producer, but
+deciding that the author could be more profitable to his career in the
+end, he took him up-stage and tried to whisper away Mr. Fortescue's bad
+temper. In the end Sylvia was allowed to roll her "r's" at her own pace.
+
+"I'm glad you stood up to him, dear," said an elderly actress like a
+pink cabbage rose fading at the tips of the petals, who had been sitting
+throughout the rehearsal so nearly on the scene that she was continually
+being addressed in mistake by people who really were "on." The author,
+who had once or twice smiled at her pleasantly, was evidently under the
+delusion that she was interested in his play.
+
+"Yes, I was delighted with the way you stood up to them," continued Miss
+Nancy Tremayne. "My part's wretched, dear. All feeding! Still, if I'm
+allowed to slam the door when I go off in the third act, I may get a
+hand. Have you ever been to New York before? I like it myself, and you
+can live quite cheaply if you know the ropes. Of course, I'm drawing a
+very good salary, because they wanted me. I said I couldn't come for a
+penny under one hundred dollars, and I really didn't want to come at
+all. However, he _would_ have me, and between you and me, I'm really
+rather glad to have the chance of saving a little money. The managers
+are getting very stingy in England. Don't tell anybody what I'm getting,
+will you, dear? One doesn't like to create jealousy at the commencement
+of a tour. It seems to be quite a nice crowd, though the girls look a
+little old, don't you think? Amy Melhuish, who's playing the ingénue,
+must be at least thirty. It's wonderful how some women have the nerve to
+go on. I gave up playing ingénues as soon as I was over twenty-eight,
+and that's four years ago now, or very nearly. Oh dear, how time flies!"
+
+Sylvia thought that, if Miss Tremayne was only twenty-eight four years
+ago, time must have crawled.
+
+"They're sending us out in the _Minneworra_. The usual economy, but
+really in a way it's nicer, because it's all one class. Yes, I'm glad
+you stood up to them, dear. Fortescue's been impossible ever since he
+produced one of those filthy Strindberg plays last summer for the
+Unknown Plays Committee. I hate this continental muck. Degenerate, I say
+it is. In my opinion Ibsen has spoiled the drama in England. What do you
+think of Charlie Fitzherbert? He's such a nice man. Always ready to
+smooth over any little difficulties. When Mr. Vernon said to me that
+Charlie would be coming with us, I felt quite safe."
+
+"Morally?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Oh, go on! You know what I mean. Comfortable, and not likely to be
+stranded. Well, I'm always a little doubtful about American productions.
+I suppose I'm conservative. I like old-fashioned ways."
+
+Which was not surprising, Sylvia thought.
+
+"Miss Tremayne, I can't hear myself speak. Are you on in this scene?"
+demanded the producer.
+
+"I really don't know. My next cue is--"
+
+"I don't think Miss Tremayne comes on till Act Three," said the author.
+
+"We sha'n't get there for another two hours," the producer growled.
+
+Miss Tremayne moved her chair back three feet, and turned to finish her
+conversation with Sylvia.
+
+"What I was going to say when I was interrupted, dear, was that, if
+you're a bad sailor, you ought to make a point of making friends with
+the purser. Unfortunately I don't know the purser on the _Minneworra_,
+but the purser on the _Minnetoota_ was quite a friend of mine, and gave
+me a beautiful deck-cabin. The other girls were very jealous."
+
+"Damn it, Miss Tremayne, didn't I ask you not to go on talking?" the
+producer shouted.
+
+"Nice gentlemanly way of asking anybody not to whisper a few words of
+advice, isn't it?" said Miss Tremayne, with a scathing glance at Mr.
+Fortescue as she moved her chair quite six feet farther away from the
+scene.
+
+"Now, of course, we're in a draught," she grumbled to Sylvia. "But I
+always say that producers never have any consideration for anybody but
+themselves."
+
+By the time the S.S. _Minneworra_ reached New York Sylvia had come to
+the conclusion that the representatives of the legitimate drama differed
+only from the chorus of a musical comedy in taking their temperaments
+and exits more seriously. Sylvia's earlier experience had led her to
+suppose that the quantity of make-up and proximity to the footlights
+were the most important things in art.
+
+Whatever hopes of individual ability to shine the company might have
+cherished before it reached New York were quickly dispelled by the two
+American stars, up to whom and not with whom they were expected to
+twinkle. Mr. Diomed Olver and Miss Marcia Neville regarded the rest of
+the company as Jupiter and Venus might regard the Milky Way. Miss
+Tremayne's exit upon a slammed door was forbidden the first time she
+tried it, because it would distract the attention of the audience from
+Miss Neville, who at that moment would be sustaining a dimple, which she
+called holding a situation. This dimple, which was famous from Boston to
+San Francisco, from Buffalo to New Orleans, had, when Miss Neville first
+swam into the ken of a manager's telescope, been easy enough to sustain.
+Of late years a slight tendency toward stoutness had made it necessary
+to assist the dimple with the forefinger and internal suction; the
+slamming of a door might disturb so nice an operation, and an appeal,
+which came oddly from Miss Neville, was made to Miss Tremayne's sense
+of natural acting.
+
+Mr. Olver did not bother to conceal his intention of never moving from
+the center of the stage, where he maintained himself with the noisy
+skill of a gyroscope.
+
+"See here," he explained to members of the company who tried to compete
+with his stellar supremacy. "The public pays to see Diomed Olver and
+Marcia Neville; they don't care a damned cent for anything else in
+creation. Got me? That's good. Now we'll go along together fine."
+
+Mr. Charles Fitzherbert assisted no more at rehearsals, but occupied
+himself entirely with the box-office. Mr. Wade Fortescue was very fierce
+about 2 A.M. in the bar of his hotel, but very mild at rehearsals. Mr.
+Marchmont Hearne hibernated during this period, and when he appeared
+very shyly at the opening performance in Brooklyn the company greeted
+him with the surprised cordiality that is displayed to some one who has
+broken his leg and emerges weeks later from hospital without a limp.
+
+New York made a deep and instant impression on Sylvia. No city that she
+had seen was so uncompromising; so sure of its flamboyant personality;
+so completely an ingenious, spoiled, and precocious child; so lovable
+for its extravagance and mischief. To her the impression was of some
+Gargantuan boy in his nursery building up tall towers to knock them
+down, running his clockwork-engines for fun through the streets of his
+toy city, scattering in corners quantities of toy bricks in readiness
+for a new fit of destructive construction, scooping up his tin
+inhabitants at the end of a day's play to put them helter-skelter into
+their box, eking out the most novel electrical toys of that Christmas
+with the battered old trams of the Christmas before, cherishing old
+houses with a child's queer conservatism, devoting a large stretch of
+bright carpet to a park, and robbing his grandmother's mantelpiece of
+her treasures to put inside his more permanent structures. After seeing
+New York she sympathized very much with the remark she had heard made by
+a young New-Yorker on board the _Minneworra_, which at the time she had
+thought a mere callow piece of rudeness.
+
+A grave doctor from Toledo, Ohio, almost as grave as if he were from the
+original Toledo, had expressed a hope to Sylvia that she would not
+accept New York as representative of the United States. She must travel
+to the West. New York had no family life. If Miss Scarlett wished to see
+family life, he should be glad to show it to her in Toledo. For
+confirmation of his criticism he had appealed to a young man standing at
+his elbow.
+
+"Well," the young man had replied, "I've never been fifty miles west of
+New York in my life, and I hope I never shall. When I want to travel I
+cross over to Europe for a month."
+
+The Toledo doctor had afterward spoken severely to Sylvia on the subject
+of this young New-Yorker, citing him as a dangerous element in the
+national welfare. Now, after seeing the Gargantuan boy's nursery, she
+understood the spirit that wanted to enjoy his nursery and not be
+bothered to go for polite walks with maiden aunts in the country;
+equally, no doubt, in Toledo she should appreciate the point of view of
+the doctor and recognize the need for the bone that would support the
+vast bulk of the growing child.
+
+Sylvia had noticed that as she grew older impressions became less vivid;
+her later and wider experience of London was already dim beside those
+first years with her father and Monkley. It had been the same during her
+travels. Already even the Alhambra was no longer quite clearly imprinted
+upon her mind, and each year it had been growing less and less easy to
+be astonished. But this arrival in New York had been like an arrival in
+childhood, as surprising, as exciting, as terrifying, as stimulating.
+New York was like a rejuvenating potion in the magic influence of which
+the memories of past years dissolved. Partly, no doubt, this effect
+might be ascribed to the invigorating air, and partly, Sylvia thought,
+to the anxiously receptive condition of herself now within sight of
+thirty; but neither of these explanations was wide enough to include all
+that New York gave of regenerative emotion, of willingness to be alive
+and unwillingness to go to bed, and of zest in being amused. Sylvia had
+supposed that she had long ago outgrown the pleasure of wandering about
+streets for no other reason than to be wandering about streets, of
+staring into shops, of staring after people, of staring at
+advertisements, of staring in company with a crowd of starers as well
+entertained as herself at a bat that was flying about in daylight
+outside the Plaza Hotel; but here in New York all that old youthful
+attitude of assuming that the world existed for one's diversion, mixed
+with a sharp, though always essentially contemptuous, curiosity about
+the method it was taking to amuse one, was hers again. Sylvia had always
+regarded England as the frivolous nation that thought of nothing but
+amusement, England that took its pleasure so earnestly and its business
+so lightly. In New York there was no question of qualifying adverbs;
+everything was a game. It was a game, and apparently, by the enthusiasm
+with which it was played, a novel game, to control the traffic in Fifth
+Avenue--a rather dangerous game like American football, in which at
+first the casualties to the policemen who played it were considerable.
+Street-mending was another game, rather an elementary game that
+contained a large admixture of practical joking. Getting a carriage
+after the theater was a game played with counters. Eating, even, could
+be made into a game either mechanical like the automatic dime lunch, or
+intellectual like the free lunch, or imaginative like the quick lunch.
+
+Sylvia had already made acquaintance with the crude material of America
+in Carlos Morera. New York was Carlos Morera much more refined and more
+matured, sweetened by its own civilization, which, having severed itself
+from other civilizations like the Anglo-Saxon or Latin, was already most
+convincingly a civilization of its own, bearing the veritable stamp of
+greatness. Sometimes Sylvia would be faced even in New York by a
+childishness that scarcely differed from the childishness of Carlos
+Morera. One evening, for instance, two of the men in the company who
+knew her tastes invited her to come with them to Murden's all-night
+saloon off Sixth Avenue. They had been told it was a sight worth seeing.
+Sylvia, with visions of something like the dancing-saloon in Buenos
+Aires, was anxious to make the experiment. It sounded exciting when she
+heard that the place was kept going by "graft." After the performance
+she and her companions went to Jack's for supper; thence they walked
+along Sixth Avenue to Murden's. It was only about two o'clock when they
+entered by a side door into a room exactly like the bar parlor of an
+English public house, where they sat rather drearily drinking some
+inferior beer, until one of Sylvia's companions suggested that they had
+arrived too near the hours of legal closing. They left Murden's and
+visited a Chinese restaurant in Broadway with a cabaret attached. The
+prices, the entertainment, the food, and the company were in a
+descending scale; the prices were much the highest. Two hours later they
+went back to Murden's; the parlor was not less dreary; the beer was
+still abominable. However, just as they had decided that this could not
+be the right place, an enormous man slightly drunk entered under the
+escort of two ladies of the town. Perceiving that Sylvia and her
+companions had risen, the new-comer waved them back into their chairs
+and called for drinks all round.
+
+"British?" he asked.
+
+They nodded.
+
+"Yes, I thought you were Britishers. I'm Under-Sheriff McMorris." With
+this he seated himself, hugging the two nymphs on either side of him
+like a Dionysius in his chariot.
+
+"Actor folk?" he asked.
+
+They nodded.
+
+"Yes, I thought you were actor folk. Ever read Shakespeare? Some boy,
+eh? Gee! I used to be able to spout Parsha without taking breath."
+
+Forthwith he delivered the speech about the quality of mercy.
+
+"Wal?" he demanded at the end.
+
+The English actors congratulated him and called for another round. Mr.
+McMorris turned to one of the nymphs:
+
+"Wal, honey?"
+
+"Cut it out, you fat old slob; you're tanked!" said honey.
+
+Mr. McMorris recited several other speeches, including the vision of the
+dagger from "Macbeth." From Shakespeare he passed to Longfellow, and
+from Longfellow to Byron. After an hour of recitations he was persuaded
+by the bartender to give some of his reminiscences of criminals in New
+York, which he did so vividly that Sylvia began to suppose that at one
+time or another he really had been connected with the law. Finally about
+six o'clock he became pathetic and wept away most of what he had drunk.
+
+"I'm feeling bad this morning. I gart to go and arrest a man for whom I
+have a considerable admiration. I gart to go down-town to Washington
+Square and arrest a prominent citizen at eight o'clock sharp. I guess
+they're waiting right now for me to come along and make that arrest.
+Where's my black-jack?"
+
+He fumbled in his pocket for a leather-covered life-preserver, which he
+flourished truculently. Leaning upon the shoulders of the nymphs, he
+waved a farewell and staggered out.
+
+Sylvia asked the bartender what he really was.
+
+"He's Under-Sheriff McMorris. At eight o'clock he's going to arrest a
+prominent New York citizen for misappropriation of some fund."
+
+That evening in the papers Sylvia read that Under-Sheriff McMorris had
+burst into tears when ex-Governor Somebody or other had walked down the
+steps of his house in Washington Square and offered himself to the
+custody of the law.
+
+"I don't like to have to do this, Mr. Governor," Under-Sheriff McMorris
+had protested.
+
+"You must do your duty, Mr. Under-Sheriff."
+
+The crowd had thereupon cheered loudly, and the wife of the ex-Governor,
+dissolved in tears, had waved the Stars and Stripes from an upper
+window.
+
+"Jug for the ex-Governor and a jag for the under-sheriff," said Sylvia.
+"If only the same spirit could be applied to minor arrests. That may
+come. It's wonderful, really, how in this mighty republic they manage to
+preserve any vestige of personality, but they do."
+
+The play ran through the autumn and went on tour in January. Sylvia did
+not add much to her appreciation of America in the course of it,
+because, as was inevitable in the short visits they paid to various
+towns, she had to depend for intercourse upon the members of the
+company. She reached New York again shortly before her twenty-eighth
+birthday. When nearly all her fellow-players returned to England, she
+decided to stay behind. The first impression she had received of
+entering upon a new phase of life when she landed in New York had not
+yet deserted her, and having received an offer from the owner of what
+sounded, from his description, like a kind of hydropathic establishment
+to entertain the visitors there during the late summer and fall, she
+accepted. In August, therefore, she left New York and went to
+Sulphurville, Indiana.
+
+Sylvia had had glimpses of rural America in Vermont and New Hampshire
+during the tour; in such a cursory view it had not seemed to differ much
+from rural England. Now she was going to see rustic America, if a
+distinction between the two adjectives might be made. At Indianapolis
+she changed from the great express into a smaller train that deposited
+her at a railway station consisting of a tumble-down shed. Nobody came
+out to welcome the train, but the colored porter insisted that this was
+the junction from which she would ultimately reach Sulphurville and
+denied firmly Sylvia's suggestion that the engine-driver had stopped
+here for breath. She was the only passenger who alighted, and she saw
+the train continue on its way with something near despair. The sun was
+blazing down. All around was a grasshopper-haunted wilderness of Indian
+corn. It was the hottest, greenest, flattest, most God-forsaken spot she
+had ever seen. The heat was so tremendous that she ventured inside the
+hut for shade. The only sign of life was a bug proceeding slowly across
+a greasy table. Sylvia went out and wandered round to the other side.
+Here, fast asleep, was a man dressed in a pair of blue trousers, a
+neckerchief, and an enormous straw hat. As the trousers reached to his
+armpits, he was really fully dressed, and Sylvia was able to recognize
+him as a human being from an illustrated edition she possessed of
+_Huckleberry Finn_; at the same time, she thought it wiser to let him
+sleep and returned to the front of the shed. To her surprise, for it
+seemed scarcely possible that anybody could inhabit the second floor,
+she perceived a woman with curl-papers, in a spotted green-and-yellow
+bed-wrapper, looking out of what until now she had supposed to be a gap
+in the roof caused by decay. Sylvia asked the woman if this was the
+junction for Sulphurville. She nodded, but vanished from the window
+before there was time to ask her when the train would arrive.
+
+Sylvia waited for an hour in the heat, and had almost given up hope of
+ever reaching Sulphurville when suddenly a train arrived, even smaller
+than the one into which she had changed at Indianapolis, but still
+considerably larger than any European train. The hot afternoon wore away
+while this new train puffed slowly deeper and deeper into rustic America
+until it reached Bagdad. Hitherto Sylvia had traveled in what was called
+a parlor-car, but at Bagdad she had to enter a fourth train that did not
+possess a parlor-car and that really resembled a local train in England,
+with oil-lamps and semi-detached compartments. At every station between
+Bagdad and Sulphurville crowds of country folk got in, all of whom were
+wearing flags and flowers in their buttonholes and were in a state of
+perspiring festivity. At the last station before Sulphurville the train
+was invaded by the members of a local band, whose instruments fought for
+a place as hard as their masters. Sylvia was nearly elbowed out of her
+seat by an aggressive ophicleide, but an old gentleman opposite with a
+saxhorn behind him and a euphonium on his knees told her by way of
+encouragement that the soldiers didn't pass through Indiana every day.
+
+"The last time I saw soldiers like that was during the war," he said,
+"and I don't allow any of us here will ever see so many soldiers again."
+He looked round the company defiantly, but nobody seemed inclined to
+contradict him, and he grunted with disappointment. It seemed hard that
+the old gentleman's day should end so tamely, but fortunately a young
+man in the far corner proclaimed it not merely as his opinion, but
+supported it from inside information, that the regiment was being
+marched through Indiana like this in order to get it nearer to the
+Mexican border.
+
+"Shucks!" said the old gentleman, and blew his nose so violently that
+every one looked involuntarily at one of the brass instruments.
+"Shucks!" he repeated. Then he smiled at Sylvia, who, sympathizing with
+the happy close of his day, smiled back just as the train entered the
+station of Sulphurville.
+
+The Plutonian Hotel, Sulphurville, had presumably been built to appease
+the same kind of human credulity that created the pump-rooms at Bath or
+Wiesbaden or Aix-les-Bains. Sylvia had observed that one of the great
+elemental beliefs of the human race, a belief lost in primeval fog, was
+that if water with an odd taste bubbled out of the earth, it must
+necessarily possess curative qualities; if it bubbled forth without a
+nasty enough taste to justify the foundation of a spa, it was analyzed
+by prominent chemists, bottled, and sold as a panacea to the great
+encouragement of lonely dyspeptics with nothing else to read at dinner.
+In the Middle Ages, and possibly in the classic times of Æsculapius,
+these natural springs had fortified the spiritual side of man; in late
+days they served to dilute his spirits. The natural springs at
+Sulphurville fully justified the erection of the Plutonian Hotel and the
+lowest depths of mortal credulity, for they had a revolting smell, an
+exceptionally unpleasant taste, and a high temperature. Everything that
+balneal ingenuity could suggest had been done, and in case the internal
+cure was not nasty enough as it was, the first glass of water was
+prescribed for six o'clock in the morning. Though it was necessary to
+test human faith by the most arduous and vexatious ordinances for human
+conduct, lest it might grow contemptuous of the cure, it was equally
+necessary to prevent boredom, if not of the devotees themselves, at any
+rate of their families. Accordingly, there was an annex of the ascetic
+hotel where everybody was driven to bed at eleven by the uncomfortable
+behavior of the servants, and where breakfast was served not later than
+seven; this annex possessed a concert-hall, a small theater, a
+gaming-saloon with not merely roulette, but many apparently childish
+games of chance that nevertheless richly rewarded the management. Sylvia
+wondered if there was any moral intention on the part of the proprietors
+in the way they encouraged gambling, if they wished to accentuate the
+chances and changes of human life and thereby secure for their clients
+a religious attitude toward their bodily safety. Certainly at the
+Plutonian Hotel it was impossible to obtain anything except meals
+without gambling. In order to buy a cigar or a box of chocolates it was
+necessary to play dice with the young woman who sold them, with more or
+less profit to the hotel, according to one's luck. Every morning some
+new object was on view in the lobby to be raffled that evening. Thus on
+the fourth night of her stay Sylvia became the owner of a large trunk,
+the emptiness of which was continuous temptation.
+
+The Plutonian was not merely a resort for gouty Easterners; it catered
+equally for the uric acid of the West. Sylvia liked the families from
+the West, particularly the girls with their flowing hair and big felt
+hats who rode on Kentucky ponies to see smugglers' caves in the hills,
+conforming invariably to the traditional aspect of the Western belle in
+the cinema. The boys were not so picturesque; in fact, they scarcely
+differed from European boys of the same age. The East supplied the
+exotic note among the children; candy-fed, shrill, and precocious with a
+queer gnomelike charm, they resembled expensive toys. These visitors to
+Sulphurville were much more affable with one another than their fellows
+in Europe would have been in similar circumstances. Sylvia had already
+noticed that in America stomachic subjects could inspire the dullest
+conversation; here at the Plutonian the stomach had taken the place of
+the soul, and it was scarcely an exaggeration to say that in the lounges
+people rose up to testify in public about their insides.
+
+The morning after Sylvia's arrival the guests were much excited by the
+visit of the soldiers, who were to camp for a week on the hotel grounds
+and perform various maneuvers. Sylvia observed that everybody talked as
+if a troupe of acrobats was going to visit the hotel; nobody seemed to
+have any idea that the American army served any purpose but the
+entertainment of the public with gymnastic displays. That afternoon the
+regiment marched past the hotel to its camping-ground; the band played
+the "Star-spangled Banner"; all the visitors grouped upon the steps in
+front clapped their hands; the colonel took off his hat, waved it at the
+audience, and bowed like a successful author. At first Sylvia
+considered his behavior undignified and absurd; afterward she rather
+approved of its friendliness, its absence of pomp and arrogance, its
+essentially democratic inspiration--in a word, its familiarity.
+
+The proprietor of the Plutonian, a leading political "boss," was so much
+moved by the strains of the music, the martial bearing of the men, and
+the opportunity of self-advertisement, that he invited the officers of
+the regiment to mess free in the hotel during their visit. Everybody
+praised Mr. O'Halloran's generosity and patriotism, the more warmly
+because it gave everybody an occasion to commiserate with the officers
+upon their absurdly small pay. Such commiseration gratified the
+individual's sense of superiority and made it easy for him to brag about
+his own success in life. Sylvia resented the business man's point of
+view about his national army; it was almost as patronizing as an
+Englishman's attitude to an artist or a German's to a woman or a
+Frenchman's to anybody but a Frenchman. Snobbishness was only tolerable
+about the past. Perhaps that was the reason why the Italians were the
+only really democratic nation she had met so far. The Italians were
+aristocrats trying to become tradesmen; the rest of mankind were
+tradesmen striving to appear aristocrats.
+
+Sylvia had sung her songs and was watching the roulette, when a young
+lieutenant who had been playing with great seriousness turned to her and
+asked if she was not British.
+
+"We got to know some British officers out in China," he told her. "We
+couldn't seem to understand them at first, but afterward we found out
+they were good boys, really. Only the trouble was we were never properly
+introduced at first, and that worried them some. Say, there's a
+fellow-countryman of yours sick in Sulphurville. I kind of found out by
+accident this morning, because I went into a drug-store and the
+storekeeper was handing out some medicine to a colored girl who was
+arguing with him whether she should pay for it. Seems this young
+Britisher's expecting his remittance. That's a God-awful place to be
+stranded, Sulphurville."
+
+They chatted for a while together. Sylvia liked the simple
+good-fellowship of the young American, his inquisitiveness about her
+reasons for coming to sing at the Plutonian Hotel, and his frank
+anticipation of any curiosity on her side by telling her all about
+himself and his career since he left West Point. He was amused by her
+account of the excitement over the passage of the troops through the
+villages, and seized the occasion to moralize on the vastness of a
+country through one state of which a regiment could march and surprise
+half the inhabitants with their first view of an American soldier.
+
+"Seems kind of queer," he said.
+
+"But very Arcadian," Sylvia added.
+
+When Sylvia went to bed her mind reverted to the young Englishman; at
+the time she had scarcely taken in the significance of what the officer
+had told her. Now suddenly the sense of his loneliness and suffering
+overwhelmed her fancy. She thought of the desolation of that railway
+junction where she had waited for the train to Sulphurville, of the heat
+and the grasshoppers and the flat, endless greenery. Even that brief
+experience of being alone in the heart of America had frightened her.
+She had not taken heed of the vastness of it while she was traveling
+with the company, and here at the hotel definitely placed as an
+entertainer she had a certain security. But to be alone and penniless in
+Sulphurville, to be ill, moreover, and dependent on the charity of
+foreigners, so much the more foreign because, though they spoke the same
+language, they spoke it with strange differences like the people in a
+dream. The words were the same, but they expressed foreign ideas. Sylvia
+began to speculate upon the causes that had led to this young
+Englishman's being stranded in Sulphurville. There seemed no
+explanation, unless he were perhaps an actor who had been abandoned
+because he was too ill to travel with the company. At this idea she
+almost got out of bed to walk through the warm frog-haunted night to his
+rescue. She became sentimental about him in the dark. It seemed to her
+that nothing in the world was so pitiable as a sick artist; always the
+servant of the public's curiosity, he was now the helpless prey of it.
+He would be treated with the contempt that is accorded to sick animals
+whose utility is at an end. She visualized him in the care of a woman
+like the one who had leaned out of that railway shed in a spotted
+green-and-yellow wrapper. Yet, after all, he might not be a mountebank;
+there was really no reason to suppose he was anything but poor and
+lonely, though that was enough indeed.
+
+"I must be getting very old," Sylvia said to herself. "Only approaching
+senility could excuse this prodigal effusion of what is really almost
+maternal lust. I've grown out of any inclination to ask myself why I
+think things or why I do things. I've nothing now but an immense desire
+to do--do--do. I was beginning to think this desperate determination to
+be impressed, like a child whose father is hiding conspicuously behind
+the door, was due to America. It's nothing to do with America; it's
+myself. It's a kind of moral and mental drunkenness. I know what I'm
+doing. I'm entirely responsible for my actions. That's the way a drunken
+man argues. Nobody is so utterly convinced of his rightness and
+reasonableness and judgment as a drunken man. I might argue with myself
+till morning that it's ridiculous to excite myself over the prospect of
+helping an Englishman stranded in Sulphurville, but when, worn out with
+self-conviction, I fall asleep, I shall wake on tiptoe, as it were. I
+shall be quite violently awake at once. The fact is I'm absolutely tired
+of observing human nature. I just want to tumble right into the middle
+of its confusion and forget how to criticize anybody or anything. What's
+the good of meeting a drunken man with generalizations about human
+conduct or direction or progression? He won't listen to generalizations,
+because drunkenness is the apotheosis of the individual. That's why
+drunken people are always so earnestly persuasive, so anxious to
+convince the unintoxicated observer that it is better to walk on
+all-fours than upright. Eccentricity becomes a moral passion; every
+drunken man is a missionary of the peculiar. At the present moment I'm
+in the mental state that, did I possess an honest taste for liquor,
+would make me get up and uncork the brandy-bottle. It's a kind of
+defiant self-expression. Oh, that poor young Englishman lying alone in
+Sulphurville! To-morrow, to-morrow! Who knows? Perhaps I really shall
+find that I am necessary to somebody. Even as a child I conceived the
+notion of being indispensable. I want somebody to say to me: 'You! You!
+What should I have done without you?' I suppose every woman feels that;
+I suppose that is the maternal instinct. But I don't believe many women
+can feel it so sharply as I do, because very few women have ever been
+compelled by circumstances to develop their personalities so early and
+so fully, and then find that nobody wants that personality. I could cry
+just at the mere notion of being wanted, and surely this young
+Englishman, whoever he is, will want me. Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia, you're
+deliberately working yourself up to an adventure! And who has a better
+right? Tell me that. That's exactly why I praised the drunkard; he knows
+how to dodge self-consciousness. Why shouldn't you set out to have an
+adventure? You shall, my dear. And if you're disappointed? You've been
+disappointed before. Damn those tree-frogs! Like all croakers, they
+disturb oblivion. I wonder if he'd like my new trunk. And I wonder how
+old he is. I'm assuming that he's young, but he may be a matted old
+tramp."
+
+Sylvia woke next morning, as she had prefigured herself, on tiptoe; at
+breakfast she was sorry for all the noisy people round her, so important
+to her was life seeming. She set out immediately afterward to walk along
+the hot, dusty road to the town, elated by the notion of leaving behind
+her the restlessness and stark cleanliness of the big hotel. The main
+street of Sulphurville smelled of straw and dry grain; and if it had not
+been for the flies she would have found the air sweet enough after the
+damp exhalations of brimstone that permeated the atmosphere of the
+Plutonian and its surroundings. The flies, however, tainted everything;
+not even the drug-store was free from them. Sylvia inquired for the
+address of the Englishman, and the druggist looked at her sharply. She
+wondered if he was hoping for the settlement of his account.
+
+"Madden's the name, ain't it?" the druggist asked.
+
+"Madden," she repeated, mechanically. A wave of emotion flooded her
+mind, receded, and left it strewn with the jetsam of the past. The
+druggist and the drug-store faded out of her consciousness; she was in
+Colonial Terrace again, insisting upon Arthur's immediate departure.
+
+"What a little beast I was!" she thought, and a desire came over her to
+atone for former heartlessness by her present behavior. Then abruptly
+she realized that the Madden of Sulphurville was not necessarily, or
+even probably, the Arthur Madden of Hampstead. Yet behind this
+half-disappointment lay the conviction that it was he. "Which accounts
+for my unusual excitement," Sylvia murmured. She heard herself calmly
+asking the storekeeper for his address.
+
+"The Auburn Hotel," she repeated. "Thank you."
+
+The storekeeper seemed inclined to question her further; no doubt he
+wished to be able to count upon his bill's being paid; but Sylvia
+hurried from the shop before he could speak.
+
+The Auburn Hotel, Sulphurville, was perhaps not worse than a hotel of
+the same class would have been in England, but the colored servant added
+just enough to the prevailing squalor to make it seem worse. When Sylvia
+asked to see Mr. Madden the colored servant stared at her, wiped her
+mouth with her apron, and called:
+
+"Mrs. Lebus!"
+
+"Oh, Julie, is that you? What is it you want?" twanged a voice from
+within that sounded like a cat caught in a guitar.
+
+"You're wanted right now, Mrs. Lebus," the servant called back.
+
+The duet was like a parody of a 'coon song, and Sylvia found herself
+humming to ragtime:
+
+    "Oh, Mrs. Lebus, you're wanted,
+     Oh yes, you're wanted, sure you're wanted, Mrs. Lebus,
+     You're wanted, you're wanted,
+     You're wanted--right now."
+
+Mrs. Lebus was one of those women whose tongues are always hunting, like
+eager terriers. With evident reluctance she postponed the chase of an
+artful morsel that had taken refuge in some difficult country at the
+back of her mouth, and faced the problem of admitting Sylvia to the sick
+man's room.
+
+"You a relative?" she asked.
+
+Sylvia shook her head.
+
+"Perhaps you've come about his remittance. He told me he was expecting a
+hundred dollars any time. You staying in Sulphurville?"
+
+Sylvia understood that the apparent disinclination to admit her was only
+due to unsatisfied curiosity and that there was not necessarily any
+suspicion of her motives. At this moment something particularly
+delicious ran across the path of Mrs. Lebus's tongue, and Sylvia took
+advantage of the brief pause during which it was devoured, to penetrate
+into the lobby, where a melancholy citizen in a frock-coat and a straw
+hat was testing the point of a nib upon his thumb, whether with the
+intention of offering it to Mrs. Lebus to pick her teeth or of writing a
+letter was uncertain.
+
+"Oh, Scipio!" said Mrs. Lebus. She pronounced it "Skipio."
+
+"Wal?"
+
+"She wants to see Mr. Madden."
+
+"Sure."
+
+The landlady turned to Sylvia.
+
+"Mr. Lebus don't have no objections. Julie, take Miss--What did you say
+your name was?"
+
+Sylvia saw no reason against falling into what Mrs. Lebus evidently
+considered was a skilfully laid trap, and told her.
+
+"Scarlett," Mr. Lebus repeated. "We don't possess that name in
+Sulphurville. Yes, ma'am, that name's noo to Sulphurville."
+
+"Sakes alive, Scipio, are you going to keep Miss Scarlett hanging around
+all day whiles you gossip about Sulphurville?" his wife asked. Aware of
+her husband's enthusiasm for his native place, she may have foreseen a
+dissertation upon its wonders unless she were ruthless.
+
+"Julie'll take you up to his apartment. And don't you forget to knock
+before you open the door, Julie."
+
+On the way up-stairs in the wake of the servant, Sylvia wondered how she
+should explain her intrusion to a stranger, even though he were an
+Englishman. She had so firmly decided to herself it was Arthur that she
+could not make any plans for meeting anybody else. Julie was quite ready
+to open the door of the bedroom and let Sylvia enter unannounced; she
+was surprised by being requested to go in first and ask the gentleman if
+he could receive Miss Scarlett. However, she yielded to foreign
+eccentricity, and a moment later ushered Sylvia in.
+
+It was Arthur Madden; and Sylvia, from a mixture of penitence for the
+way she treated him at Colonial Terrace, of self-congratulation for
+being so sure beforehand that it was he, and from swift compassion for
+his illness and loneliness, ran across the room and greeted him with a
+kiss.
+
+"How on earth did you get into this horrible hole?" Arthur asked.
+
+"My dear, I knew it was you when I heard your name." Breathlessly she
+poured out the story of how she had found him.
+
+"But you'd made up your mind to play the Good Samaritan to whoever it
+was--you never guessed for a moment at first that it was me."
+
+She forgave him the faint petulance because he was ill, and also because
+it brought back to her with a new vividness long bygone jealousies,
+restoring a little more of herself as she once was, nearly thirteen
+years ago. How little he had changed outwardly, and much of what change
+there was might be put down to his illness.
+
+"Arthur, do you remember Maria?" she asked.
+
+He smiled. "He died only about two years ago. He lived with my mother
+after I went on the stage."
+
+Sylvia wondered to him why they had never met all these years. She had
+known so many people on the stage, but then, of course, she had been a
+good deal out of England. What had made Arthur go on the stage first? He
+had never talked of it in the old days.
+
+"I used always to be keen on music."
+
+Sylvia whistled the melody that introduced them to each other, and he
+smiled again.
+
+"My mother still plays that sometimes, and I've often thought of you
+when she does. She lives at Dulwich now."
+
+They talked for a while of Hampstead and laughed over the escape.
+
+"You were a most extraordinary kid," he told her. "Because, after all, I
+was seventeen at the time--older than you. Good Lord! I'm thirty now,
+and you must be twenty-eight!"
+
+To Sylvia it was much more incredible that he should be thirty; he
+seemed so much younger than she, lying here in this frowsy room, or was
+it that she felt so much older than he?
+
+"But how on earth _did_ you get stranded in this place?" she asked.
+
+"I was touring with a concert party. The last few years I've practically
+given up the stage proper. I don't know why, really, for I was doing
+quite decently, but concert-work was more amusing, somehow. One wasn't
+so much at the beck and call of managers."
+
+Sylvia knew, by the careful way in which he was giving his reasons for
+abandoning the stage, that he had not yet produced the real reason. It
+might have been baffled ambition or it might have been a woman.
+
+"Well, we came to Sulphurville," said Arthur. He hesitated for a moment.
+Obviously there had been a woman. "We came to Sulphurville," he went on,
+"and played at the hotel you're playing at now--a rotten hole," he
+added, with retrospective bitterness. "I don't know how it was, but I
+suppose I got keen on the gambling--anyway, I had a row with the other
+people in the show, and when they left I refused to go with them. I
+stayed behind and got keen on the gambling."
+
+"It was after the row that you took to roulette?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Well, as a matter if fact, I had a row with a girl. She treated me
+rather badly, and I stayed on. I lost a good deal of money. Well, it
+wasn't a very large sum, as a matter of fact, but it was all I had, and
+then I fell ill. I caught cold and I was worried over things. I cabled
+to my mother for some money, but there's been no reply. I'm afraid she's
+had difficulty in raising it. She quarreled with my father's people when
+I went on the stage. Damned narrow-minded set of yokels. Furious because
+I wouldn't take up farming. How I hate narrow-minded people!" And with
+an invalid's fretful intolerance he went on grumbling at the
+ineradicable characteristics of an English family four thousand miles
+away.
+
+"Of course something may have happened to my mother," he added. "You may
+be sure that if anything had those beasts would never take the trouble
+to write and tell me. It would be a pleasure to them if they could annoy
+me in any way."
+
+A swift criticism of Arthur's attitude toward the possibility of his
+mother's death rose to Sylvia's mind, but she repressed it, pleading
+with herself to excuse him because he was ill and overstrained. She was
+positively determined to see henceforth nothing but good in people, and
+in her anxiety to confirm herself in this resolve she was ready not
+merely to exaggerate everything in Arthur's favor, but even to twist any
+failure on his side into actual merit. Thus when she hastened to put her
+own resources at his disposal, and found him quite ready to accept
+without protest her help, she choked back the comparison with Jack
+Airdale's attitude in similar circumstances, and was quite angry with
+herself, saying how much more naturally Arthur had received her
+good-will and how splendid it was to find such simplicity and sincerity.
+
+"I'll nurse you till you're quite well, and then why shouldn't we take
+an engagement together somewhere?"
+
+Arthur became enthusiastic over this suggestion.
+
+"You've not heard me sing yet. My throat's still too weak, but you'll be
+surprised, Sylvia."
+
+"I haven't got anything but a very deep voice," she told him. "But I can
+usually make an impression."
+
+"Can you? Of course, where I've always been held back is by lack of
+money. I've never been able to afford to buy good songs."
+
+Arthur began to sketch out for himself a most radiant future, and as he
+talked Sylvia thought again how incredible it was that he should be
+older than herself. Yet was not this youthful enthusiasm exactly what
+she required? It was just the capacity of Arthur's for thinking he had a
+future that was going to make life tremendously worth while for her,
+tremendously interesting--oh, it was impossible not to believe in the
+decrees of fate, when at the very moment of her greatest longing to be
+needed by somebody she had met Arthur again. She could be everything to
+him, tend him through his illness, provide him with money to rid
+himself of the charity of Mrs. Lebus and the druggist, help him in his
+career, and watch over his fidelity to his ambition. She remembered how,
+years ago at Hampstead, his mother had watched over him; she could
+recall every detail of the room and see Mrs. Madden interrupt one of her
+long sonatas to be sure Arthur was not sitting in a draught. And it had
+been she who had heedlessly lured him away from that tender mother.
+There was poetic justice in this opportunity of reparation now accorded
+to her. To be sure, it had been nothing but a childish
+escapade--reparation was too strong a word; but there was something so
+neat about this encounter years afterward in a place like Sulphurville.
+How pale he was, which, nevertheless, made him more romantic to look at;
+how thin and white his hands were! She took one of them in her own boy's
+hands, as so many people had called them, and clasped it with the
+affection that one gives to small helpless things, to children and
+kittens, an affection that is half gratitude because one feels good-will
+rising like a sweet fountain from the depth of one's being, the
+freshness of which playing upon the spirit is so dear, that no words are
+enough to bless the wand that made the stream gush forth.
+
+"I shall come and see you all day," said Sylvia. "But I think I ought
+not to break my contract at the Plutonian."
+
+"Oh, you'll come and live here," Arthur begged. "You've no idea how
+horrible it is. There was a cockroach in the soup last night, and of
+course there are bugs. For goodness' sake, Sylvia, don't give me hope
+and then dash it away from me. I tell you I've had a hell of a time in
+this cursed hole. Listen to the bed; it sounds as if it would collapse
+at any moment. And the bugs have got on my nerves to such a pitch that I
+spend the whole time looking at spots on the ceiling and fancying
+they've moved. It's so hot, too; everything's rotted with heat. You
+mustn't desert me. You must come and stay here with me."
+
+"Why shouldn't you move up to the Plutonian?" Sylvia suggested. "I'll
+tell you what I'll do. I'll get one of the doctors to come and look at
+you, and if he thinks it's possible you shall move up there at once.
+Poor boy, it really is too ghastly here."
+
+Arthur was nearly weeping with self-pity.
+
+"But, my dear girl, it's much worse than you think. You know those
+horrible birds' bath-tubs in which they bring your food at third-rate
+American hotels, loathsome saucers with squash and bits of grit in
+watery milk that they call cereals, and bony bits of chicken, well,
+imagine being fed like that when you're ill; imagine your bed covered
+with those infernal saucers. One of them always used to get left behind
+when Julie cleared away, and it always used to fall with a crash on the
+floor, and I used to wonder if the mess would tempt the cockroaches into
+my room. And then Lebus used to come up and make noises in his throat
+and brag about Sulphurville, and I used to know by his wandering eye
+that he was looking for what he called the cuspidor, which I'd put out
+of sight. And Mrs. Lebus used to come up and suck her teeth at me until
+I felt inclined to strangle her."
+
+"The sooner you're moved away the better," Sylvia said, decidedly.
+
+"Oh yes, if you think it can be managed. But if not, Sylvia, for God's
+sake don't leave me alone."
+
+"Are you really glad to see me?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, my dear, it was like heaven opening before one's eyes!"
+
+"Tell me about the girl you were fond of," she said, abruptly.
+
+"What do you want to talk about her for? There's nothing to tell you,
+really. She had red hair."
+
+Sylvia was glad that Arthur spoke of her with so little interest; it
+certainly was definitely comforting to feel the utter dispossession of
+that red-haired girl.
+
+"Look here," said Sylvia. "I'm going to let these people suppose that
+I'm your long-lost relative. I shall pay their bill and bring the doctor
+down to see you. Arthur, I'm glad I've found you. Do you remember the
+cab-horse? Oh, and do you remember the cats in the area and the jug of
+water that splashed you? You were so unhappy, almost as unhappy as you
+were when I found you here. Have you always been treated unkindly?"
+
+"I have had a pretty hard time," Arthur said.
+
+"Oh, but you mustn't be sorry for yourself," she laughed.
+
+"No, seriously, Sylvia, I've always had a lot of people against me."
+
+"Yes, but that's such fun. You simply must be amused by life when you're
+with me. I'm not hard-hearted a bit, really, but you mustn't be offended
+with me when I tell you that really there's something a tiny bit funny
+in your being stranded in the Auburn Hotel, Sulphurville."
+
+"I'm glad you think so," said Arthur, in rather a hurt tone of voice.
+
+"Don't be cross, you foolish creature."
+
+"I'm not a bit cross. Only I _would_ like you to understand that my
+illness isn't a joke. You don't suppose I should let you pay my bills
+and do all this for me unless it were really something serious."
+
+Sylvia put her hand on his mouth. "I forgive you," she murmured,
+"because you really are ill. Oh, Arthur, _do_ you remember Hube? What
+fun everything is!"
+
+Sylvia left him and went down-stairs to arrange matters with Mrs. Lebus.
+
+"It was a relation, after all," she told her. "The Maddens have been
+related to us for hundreds of years."
+
+"My! My! Now ain't that real queer? Oh, Scipio!"
+
+Mr. Lebus came into view cleaning his nails with the same pen, and was
+duly impressed with the coincidence.
+
+"Darned if I don't tell Pastor Gollick after next Sunday meeting. He's
+got a kind of hankering after the ways of Providence. Gee! Why, it's a
+sermonizing cinch."
+
+There was general satisfaction in the Auburn Hotel over the payment of
+Arthur's bill.
+
+"Not that I wouldn't have trusted him for another month and more," Mrs.
+Lebus affirmed. "But it's a satisfaction to be able to turn round and
+say to the neighbors, 'What did I tell you?' Folks in Sulphurville was
+quite sure I'd never be paid back a cent. This'll learn them!"
+
+Mr. Lebus, in whose throat the doubts of the neighbors had gathered to
+offend his faith, cleared them out forever in one sonorous rauque.
+
+The druggist's account was settled, and though, when Sylvia first heard
+him, he had been doubtful if his medicine was doing the patient any
+good, he was now most anxious that he should continue with the
+prescription. That afternoon one of the doctors in residence at the
+Plutonian visited Arthur and at once advised his removal thither.
+
+Arthur made rapid progress when he was once out of the hospitable
+squalor of the Auburn Hotel, and the story of Sylvia's discovery of her
+unfortunate cousin became a romantic episode for all the guests of the
+Plutonian, a never-failing aid to conversation between wives waiting for
+their husbands to emerge from their daily torture at the hands of the
+masseurs, who lived like imps in the sulphurous glooms of the bath
+below; maybe it even provided the victims themselves with a sufficiently
+absorbing topic to mitigate the penalties of their cure.
+
+Arthur himself expanded wonderfully as the subject of so much
+discussion. It gave Sylvia the greatest pleasure to see the way in which
+his complexion was recovering its old ruddiness and his steps their
+former vigor; but she did not approve of the way in which the story kept
+pace with Arthur's expansion. She confided to him how very personally
+the news of the sick Englishman had affected her and how she had made up
+her mind from the beginning that it was a stranded actor, and afterward,
+when she heard in the drug-store the name Madden, that it actually was
+Arthur himself. He, however, was unable to stay content with such an
+incomplete telepathy; indulging human nature's preference for what is
+not true, both in his own capacity as a liar and in his listeners' avid
+and wanton credulity, he transferred a woman's intimate hopes into a
+quack's tale.
+
+"Then you didn't see your cousin's spirit go up in the elevator when you
+were standing in the lobby? Now isn't that perfectly discouraging?"
+complained a lady with an astral reputation in Illinois.
+
+"I'm afraid the story's been added to a good deal," Sylvia said. "I'm
+sorry to disappoint the faithful."
+
+"She's shy about giving us her experiences," said another lady from
+Iowa. "I know I was just thrilled when I heard it. It seemed to me the
+most wonderful story I'd ever imagined. I guess you felt kind of queer
+when you saw him lying on a bed in your room."
+
+"He was in his own room," Sylvia corrected, "and I didn't feel at all
+queer. It was he who felt queer."
+
+"Isn't she secretive?" exclaimed the lady from Illinois. "Why, I was
+going to ask you to write it up in our society's magazine, _The Flash_.
+We don't print any stories that aren't established as true. Well, your
+experience has given me real courage, Miss Scarlett. Thank you."
+
+The astral enthusiast clasped Sylvia's hand and gazed at her as
+earnestly as if she had noticed a smut on her nose.
+
+"Yes, I'm sure we ought to be grateful," said the lady from Iowa. "My!
+Our footsteps are treading in the unseen every day of our lives! You
+certainly are privileged," she added, wrapping Sylvia in a damp mist of
+benign fatuity.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't elaborate everything so," Sylvia begged of Arthur
+when she had escaped from the deification of the two psychical ladies.
+"It makes me feel so dreadfully old to see myself assuming a legendary
+shape before my own eyes. It's as painful as being stuffed
+alive--stuffed alive with nonsense," she added, with a laugh.
+
+Arthur's expansion, however, was not merely grafted on Sylvia's
+presentiment of his discovery in Sulphurville; he blossomed upon his own
+stock, a little exotically, perhaps, like the clumps of fiery cannas in
+the grounds of the hotel, but with a quite conspicuous effectiveness.
+Like the cannas, he required protection from frost, for there was a very
+real sensitiveness beneath all that flamboyance, and it was the
+knowledge of this that kept Sylvia from criticizing him at all severely.
+Besides, even if he did bask a little too complacently in expressions of
+interest and sympathy, it was a very natural reaction from his wretched
+solitude at the Auburn Hotel, for which he could scarcely be held
+culpable, least of all by herself. Moreover, was not this so visible
+recovery the best tribute he could have paid to her care? If he appeared
+to strut--for, indeed, there was a hint of strutting in his demeanor--he
+only did so from a sense of well-being. Finally, if any further defense
+was necessary, he was an Englishman among a crowd of Americans; the
+conditions demanded a good deal of competitive self-assertion.
+
+Meanwhile summer was gone; the trees glowed with every shade of crimson.
+Sylvia could not help feeling that there was something characteristic in
+the demonstrative richness of the American fall; though she was far from
+wishing to underrate its beauty, the display was oppressive. She sighed
+for the melancholy of the European autumn, a conventional emotion, no
+doubt, but so closely bound up with old associations that she could not
+wish to lose it. This cremation of summer, these leafy pyrotechnics,
+this holocaust of color, seemed a too barbaric celebration of the year's
+death. It was significant that autumn with its long-drawn-out suggestion
+of decline should here have failed to displace fall; for there was
+something essentially catastrophic in this ruthless bonfire of foliage.
+It was not surprising that the aboriginal inhabitants should have been
+redskins, nor that the gorgeousness of nature should have demanded from
+the humanity it overwhelmed a readjustment of decorative values which
+superficial observers were apt to mistake for gaudy ostentation. Sylvia
+could readily imagine that if she had been accustomed from childhood to
+these crimson woods, these beefy robins, and these saucer-eyed daisies,
+she might have found her own more familiar landscapes merely tame and
+pretty; but as it was she felt dazzled and ill at ease. It's a little
+more and how much it is, she told herself, pondering the tantalizing
+similarity that was really as profoundly different as an Amazonian
+forest from Kensington Gardens.
+
+Arthur's first flamboyance was much toned down by all that natural
+splendor; in fact, it no longer existed, and Sylvia found a freshening
+charm in his company amid these crimson trees and unfamiliar birds, and
+in this staring white hotel with its sulphurous exhalations. His
+complete restoration to health, moreover, was a pleasure and a pride
+that nothing could mar, and she found herself planning his happiness and
+prosperity as if she had already transferred to him all she herself
+hoped from life.
+
+At the end of September the long-expected remittance arrived from Mrs.
+Madden, and Sylvia gathered from the letter that the poor lady had been
+much puzzled to send the money.
+
+"We must cable it back to her at once," Sylvia said.
+
+"Oh, well, now it's come, is that wise?" Arthur objected. "She may have
+had some difficulty in getting it, but that's over now."
+
+"No, no. It must be cabled back to her. I've got plenty of money to
+carry us on till we begin to work together."
+
+"But I can't go on accepting charity like this," Arthur protested. "It's
+undignified, really. I've never done such a thing before."
+
+"You accepted it from your mother."
+
+"Oh, but my mother's different."
+
+"Only because she's less able to afford it than I am," Sylvia pointed
+out. "Look, she's sent you fifty pounds. Think how jolly it would be for
+her suddenly to receive fifty pounds for herself."
+
+Arthur warmed to the idea; he could not resist the picture of his
+mother's pleasure, nor the kind of inverted generosity with which it
+seemed to endow himself. He talked away about the arrival of the money
+in England till it almost seemed as if he were sending his mother the
+accumulation of hard-earned savings to buy herself a new piano; that was
+the final purpose to which, in Arthur's expanding fancy, the fifty
+pounds was to be put. Sylvia found his attitude rather boyish and
+charming, and they had an argument, on the way to cable the money back,
+whether it would be better for Mrs. Madden to buy a Bechstein or a
+Blüthner.
+
+Sylvia's contract with the Plutonian expired with the first fortnight of
+October, and they decided to see what likelihood there was of work in
+New York before they thought of returning to Europe. They left
+Sulphurville with everybody's good wishes, because everybody owed to
+their romantic meeting an opportunity of telling a really good ghost
+story at first hand, with the liberty of individual elaboration.
+
+New York was very welcome after Sulphurville. They passed the wooded
+heights of the Hudson at dusk in a glow of somber magnificence softened
+by the vapors of the river. It seemed to Sylvia that scarcely ever had
+she contemplated a landscape of such restrained splendor, and she
+thought of that young New-Yorker who had preferred not to travel more
+than fifty miles west of his native city, though the motive of his
+loyalty had most improbably been the beauty of the Hudson. She wondered
+if Arthur appreciated New York, but he responded to her enthusiasm with
+the superficial complaints of the Englishman, complaints that when
+tested resolved themselves into conventional formulas of disapproval.
+
+"I suppose trite opinions are a comfortable possession," Sylvia said.
+"But a good player does not like a piano that is too easy. You complain
+of the morning papers' appearing shortly after midnight, but confess
+that in your heart you prefer reading _them_ in bed to reading a London
+evening paper, limp from being carried about in the pocket and with
+whatever is important in it illegible."
+
+"But the flaring head-lines," Arthur protested. "You surely don't like
+them?"
+
+"Oh, but I do!" she avowed. "They're as much more amusing than the
+dreary column beneath as tinned tongue is nicer than the dry undulation
+for which you pay twice as much. Head-lines are the poetry of
+journalism, and, after all, what would the Parthenon be without its
+frieze?"
+
+"Of course you'd argue black was white," Arthur said.
+
+"Well, that's a better standpoint than accepting everything as gray."
+
+"Most things are gray."
+
+"Oh no, they're not! Some things are. Old men's beards and dirty linen
+and Tschaikowsky's music and oysters and Wesleyans."
+
+"There you go," he jeered.
+
+"Where do I go?"
+
+"Right off the point," said Arthur, triumphantly. "No woman can argue."
+
+"Oh, but I'm not a woman," Sylvia contradicted. "I'm a mythical female
+monster, don't you know--one of those queer beasts with claws like
+hay-rakes and breasts like peg-tops and a tail like a fish."
+
+"Do you mean a Sphinx?" Arthur asked, in his literal way. He was always
+rather hostile toward her extravagant fancies, because he thought it
+dangerous to encourage a woman in much the same way as he would have
+objected to encouraging a beggar.
+
+"No, I really meant a grinx, which is rather like a Sphinx, but the
+father was a griffin--the mother in both cases was a minx, of course."
+
+"What was the father of the Sphinx?" he asked, rather ungraciously.
+
+Sylvia clapped her hands.
+
+"I knew you wouldn't be able to resist the question. A sphere--a woman's
+sphere, of course, which is nearly as objectionable a beast as a lady's
+man."
+
+"You do talk rot sometimes," said Arthur.
+
+"Don't you ever have fancies?" she demanded, mockingly.
+
+"Yes, of course, but practical fancies."
+
+"Practical fancies," Sylvia echoed. "Oh, my dear, it sounds like a fairy
+in Jaeger combinations! You don't know what fun it is talking rot to
+you, Arthur. It's like hoaxing a chicken with marbles. You walk away
+from my conversation with just the same disgusted dignity."
+
+"You haven't changed a bit," Arthur proclaimed. "You're just the same as
+you were at fifteen."
+
+Sylvia, who had been teasing him with a breath of malice, was penitent
+at once; after all, he had once run away with her, and it would be
+difficult for any woman of twenty-eight not to rejoice a little at the
+implication of thirteen undestructive years.
+
+"That last remark was like a cocoanut thrown by a monkey from the top of
+the cocoanut-palm," she said. "You meant it to be crushing, but it was
+crushed instead, and quite deliciously sweet inside."
+
+All the time that Sylvia had been talking so lightly, while the train
+was getting nearer and nearer to New York, there had lain at the back of
+her mind the insistent problem of her relationship to Arthur. The
+impossibility of their going on together as friends and nothing more had
+been firmly fixed upon her consciousness for a long time now, and the
+reason of this was to be sought for less in Arthur than in herself. So
+far they had preserved all the outward semblances of friendship, but she
+knew that one look from her eyes deep into his would transform him into
+her lover. She gave Arthur credit for telling himself quite sincerely
+that it would be "caddish" to make love to her while he remained under
+what he would consider a grave obligation; and because with his
+temperament it would be as much in the ordinary routine of the day to
+make love to a woman as to dress himself in the morning. She praised his
+decorum and was really half grateful to him for managing to keep his
+balance on the very small pedestal that she had provided. She might
+fairly presume, too, that if she let Arthur fall in love with her he
+would wish to marry her. Why should she not marry him? It was impossible
+to answer without accusing herself of a cynicism that she was far from
+feeling, yet without which she could not explain even to herself her
+quite definite repulsion from the idea of marrying him. The future,
+really, now, the very immediate future, must be flung to chance; it was
+hopeless to arrogate to her forethought the determination of it;
+besides, here was New York already.
+
+"We'd better go to my old hotel," Sylvia suggested. Was it the
+reflection of her own perplexity, or did she detect in Arthur's accents
+a note of relief, as if he too had been watching the Palisades of the
+Hudson and speculating upon the far horizon they concealed?
+
+They dined at Rector's, and after dinner they walked down Broadway into
+Madison Square, where upon this mild October night the Metropolitan
+Tower, that best of all the Gargantuan baby's toys, seemed to challenge
+the indifferent moon. They wandered up Madison Avenue, which was dark
+after the winking sky-signs of Broadway and with its not very tall
+houses held a thought of London in the darkness. But when Sylvia turned
+to look back it was no longer London, for she could see the great,
+illuminated hands and numerals of the clock in the Metropolitan flashing
+from white to red for the hour. This clock without a dial-plate was the
+quietest of the Gargantuan baby's toys, for it did not strike; one was
+conscious of the almost pathetic protest against all those other
+damnably noisy toys: one felt he might become so enamoured of its pretty
+silence that to provide himself with a new diversion he might take to
+doubling the hours to keep pace with the rapidity of the life with which
+he played.
+
+"It's almost as if we were walking up Haverstock Hill again," said
+Arthur.
+
+"And we're grown up now," Sylvia murmured. "Oh, dreadfully grown up,
+really!"
+
+They walked on for a while in silence. It was impossible to keep back
+the temptation to cheat time by leaping over the gulf of years and being
+what they were when last they walked along together like this. Sylvia
+kept looking over her shoulder at the bland clock hanging in the sky
+behind them; at this distance the fabric of the tower had melted into
+the night and was no longer visible, which gave to the clock a strange
+significance and made it a simulacrum of time itself.
+
+"You haven't changed a bit," she said.
+
+"Do you remember when you told me I looked like a cow? It was after"--he
+breathed perceptibly faster--"after I kissed you."
+
+She would not ascribe his remembering what she had called him to an
+imperfectly healed scar of vanity, but with kindlier thoughts turned it
+to a memento of his affection for her. After all, she had loved him
+then; it had been a girl's love, but did there ever come with age a
+better love than that first flushed gathering of youth's opening
+flowers?
+
+"Sylvia, I've thought about you ever since. When you drove me away from
+Colonial Terrace I felt like killing myself. Surely we haven't met again
+for nothing."
+
+"Is it nothing unless I love you?" she asked, fiercely, striving to turn
+the words into weapons to pierce the recesses of his thoughts and blunt
+themselves against a true heart.
+
+"Ah no, I won't say that," he cried. "Besides, I haven't the right to
+talk about love. You've been--Sylvia, I can't tell you what you've been
+to me since I met you again."
+
+"If I could only believe--oh, but believe with all of me that was and is
+and ever will be--that I could have been so much."
+
+"You have, you have."
+
+"Don't take my love as a light thing," she warned him. "It's not that
+I'm wanting so very much for myself, but I want to be so much to you."
+
+"Sylvia, won't you marry me? I couldn't ever take your love lightly.
+Indeed. Really."
+
+"Ah, it's not asking me to marry you that means you're serious. I'm not
+asking you what your intentions are. I'm asking if you want me."
+
+"Sylvia, I want you dreadfully."
+
+"Now, now?" she pressed.
+
+"Now and always."
+
+They had stopped without being aware of it. A trolley-car jangled by,
+casting transitory lights that wavered across Arthur's face, and Sylvia
+could see how his eyes were shining. She dreaded lest by adding a few
+conventional words he should spoil what he had said so well, but he
+waited for her, as in the old days he had always waited.
+
+"You're not cultivating this love, like a convalescent patient does for
+his nurse?" Sylvia demanded.
+
+She stopped herself abruptly, conscious that every question she put to
+him was ultimately being put to herself.
+
+"Did I ever not love you?" he asked. "It was you that grew tired of me.
+It was you that sent me away."
+
+"Don't pretend that all these years you've been waiting for me to come
+back," she scoffed.
+
+"Of course not. What I'm trying to explain is that we can start now
+where we left off; that is, if you will."
+
+He held out his hand half timidly.
+
+"And if I won't?"
+
+The hand dropped again to his side, and there was so much wounded
+sensitiveness in the slight gesture that Sylvia caught him to her as if
+he were a child who had fallen and needed comforting.
+
+"When I first put my head on your shoulder," she murmured. "Oh, how well
+I can remember the day--such a sparkling day, with London spread out
+like life at our feet. Now we're in the middle of New York, but it seems
+just as far away from us two as London was that day--and life," she
+added, with a sigh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Circumstances seemed to applaud almost immediately the step that Sylvia
+had taken. There was no long delay caused by looking for work in New
+York, which might have destroyed romance by its interposition of fretful
+hopes and disappointments. A variety company was going to leave in
+November for a tour in eastern Canada. At least two months would be
+spent in the French provinces, and Sylvia's bilingual accomplishment was
+exactly what the manager wanted.
+
+"I'm getting on," she laughed. "I began by singing French songs with an
+English accent; I advanced from that to acting English words with a
+French accent; now I'm going to be employed in doing both. But what does
+it matter? The great thing is that we should be together."
+
+That was where Arthur made the difference to her life; he was securing
+her against the loneliness that at twenty-eight was beginning once more
+to haunt her imagination. What did art matter? It had never been
+anything but a refuge.
+
+Arthur himself was engaged to sing, and though he had not such a good
+voice as Claude Raglan, he sang with much better taste and was really
+musical. Sylvia was annoyed to find herself making comparisons between
+Claude and Arthur. It happened at the moment that Arthur was fussing
+about his number on the program, and she could not help being reminded
+of Claude's attitude toward his own artistic importance. She consoled
+herself by thinking that it should always be one of her aims to prevent
+the likeness growing any closer; then she laughed at herself for this
+resolve, which savored of developing Arthur, that process she had always
+so much condemned.
+
+They opened at Toronto, and after playing a week Arthur caught a chill
+and was out of the program for a fortnight; this gave Sylvia a fresh
+opportunity of looking after him; and Toronto in wet, raw weather was so
+dreary that, to come back to the invalid after the performance,
+notwithstanding the ineffable discomfort of the hotel, was to come back
+home. During this time Sylvia gave Arthur a history of the years that
+had gone by since they parted, and it puzzled her that he should be so
+jealous of the past. She wondered why she could not feel the same
+jealousy about his past, and she found herself trying to regret that
+red-haired girl and many others on account of the obvious pleasure such
+regrets afforded Arthur. She used to wonder, too, why she always left
+out certain incidents and obscured certain aspects of her own past,
+whether, for instance, she did not tell him about Michael Fane on her
+own account or because she was afraid that Arthur would perceive a
+superficial resemblance between himself and Claude and a very real one
+between herself and Lily, or because she would have resented from Arthur
+the least expression, not so much of contempt as even of mild surprise,
+at Michael's behavior. Another subject she could never discuss with
+Arthur was her mother's love for her father, notwithstanding that his
+own mother's elopement with a groom must have prevented the least
+criticism on his side. Here again she wondered if her reserve was due to
+loyalty or to a vague sense of temperamental repetition that was
+condemning her to stand in the same relation to Arthur as her mother to
+her father. She positively had to run away from the idea that Arthur had
+his prototype; she was shutting him up in a box and scarcely even
+looking at him, which was as good as losing him altogether, really. Even
+when she did look at him she handled him with such exaggerated
+carefulness, for fear of his getting broken, that all the pleasure of
+possession was lost. Perhaps she should have had an equal anxiety to
+preserve intact anybody else with whom she might have thrown in her lot;
+but when she thought over this attitude it was dismaying enough and
+seemed to imply an incapacity on her part to enjoy fully anything in
+life.
+
+"I've grown out of being destructive; at least I think I have. I wonder
+if the normal process from Jacobinism to the intense conservatism of
+age is due to wisdom, jealousy, or fear.
+
+"Arthur, what are your politics?" she asked, aloud.
+
+He looked up from the game of patience he was playing, a game in which
+he was apt to attribute the pettiest personal motives to the court-cards
+whenever he failed to get out.
+
+"Politics?" he echoed, vaguely. "I don't think I ever had any. I suppose
+I'm a Conservative. Oh yes, certainly I'm a Conservative. That infernal
+knave of hearts is covered now!" he added, in an aggrieved voice.
+
+"Well, I didn't cover it," said Sylvia.
+
+"No, dear, of course you didn't. But it really is a most extraordinary
+thing that I always get done by the knaves."
+
+"You share your misfortune with the rest of humanity, if that's any
+consolation."
+
+The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Orlone. He was a
+huge Neapolitan with the countenance of a gigantic and swarthy Punch,
+who had been trying to get back to Naples for twenty years, but had been
+prevented at first by his passion for gambling and afterward by an
+unwilling wife and a numerous family. Orlone made even Toronto cheerful,
+and before he had come two paces into a room Sylvia always began to
+laugh. He never said anything deliberately funny except on the stage,
+but laughter emanated from him infectiously, as yawning might. Though he
+had spent twenty years in America, he still spoke the most imperfect
+English; and when he and Sylvia had done laughing at each other they
+used to laugh all over again, she at his English, he at her Italian.
+When they had finished laughing at that Orlone used to swear marvelously
+for Sylvia's benefit whenever she should again visit Sirene; and she
+would teach him equally tremendous oaths in case he should ever come to
+London. When they had finished laughing at this, Orlone would look over
+Arthur's shoulder and, after making the most ridiculous gestures of
+caution, would finally burst out into an absolute roar of laughter right
+in Arthur's ear.
+
+"_Pazienza_," Sylvia would say, pointing to the outspread cards.
+
+"_Brava signora! Come parla bene!_"
+
+And of course this was obviously so absurd a statement that it would set
+them off laughing again.
+
+"You are a pair of lunatics," Arthur would protest; he would have liked
+to be annoyed at his game's being interrupted, but he was powerless to
+repulse Orlone's good humor.
+
+When they returned to New York in the spring and Sylvia looked back at
+the tour, she divined how much of her pleasure in it had been owed to
+Orlone's all-pervading mirth. He had really provided the robust and
+full-blooded contrast to Arthur that had been necessary. It was not
+exactly that without him their existence together would have been
+insipid--oh no, there was nothing insipid about Arthur, but one
+appreciated his delicacy after that rude and massive personality. When
+they had traveled over leagues of snow-covered country, Orlone had
+always lightened the journey with gay Neapolitan songs, and sometimes
+with tender ones like "Torno di Surriento." It was then that, gazing out
+over the white waste, she had been able to take Arthur's hand and sigh
+to be sitting with him on some Sirenian cliff, to smell again the
+rosemary and crumble with her fingers the sunburnt earth. But this
+capacity of Orlone's for conjuring up the long Parthenopean shore was
+nothing more than might have been achieved by any terra-cotta Silenus in
+a provincial museum. After Silenus, what nymph would not turn to Hylas
+somewhat gratefully? It had been the greatest fun in the world to drive
+in tinkling sledges through Montreal, with Orlone to tease the driver
+until he was as sore as the head of the bear that in his fur coat he
+resembled; it had been fun to laugh with Orlone in Quebec and Ottawa and
+everywhere else; but after so much laughter it had always been
+particularly delightful to be alone again with Arthur, and to feel that
+he too was particularly enjoying being alone with her.
+
+"I really do think we get on well together," she said to him.
+
+"Of course we do."
+
+And was there in the way he agreed with her just the least suggestion
+that he should have been surprised if she had not enjoyed his company,
+an almost imperceptible hint of complacency, or was it condescension?
+
+"I really must get out of this habit of poking my nose into other
+people's motives," Sylvia told herself. "I'm like a horrid little boy
+with a new penknife. Arthur could fairly say to me that I forced myself
+upon him. I did really. I went steaming into the Auburn Hotel like a
+salvage-tug. There's the infernal side of obligations--I can't really
+quite free myself from the notion that Arthur ought to be grateful to
+me. He's in a false position through no fault of his own, and he's
+behaving beautifully. It's my own cheap cynicism that's to blame. I wish
+I could discover some mental bitter aloes that would cure me of biting
+my mind, as I cured myself of biting my nails."
+
+Sylvia was very glad that Arthur succeeded in getting an engagement that
+spring to act, and that she did not; she was really anxious to let him
+feel that she should be dependent on him for a while. The result would
+have been entirely satisfactory but for one flaw--the increase in
+Arthur's sense of his own artistic importance. Sylvia would not have
+minded this so much if he had possessed enough of it to make him
+oblivious of the world's opinion, but it was always more of a vanity
+than a pride, chiefly concerned with the personal impression he made. It
+gave him much more real pleasure to be recognized by two shop-girls on
+their afternoon out than to be praised by a leading critic. Sylvia would
+have liked him to be equally contemptuous of either form of flattery,
+but that he should revel in both, and actually esteem more valuable the
+recognition accorded him by a shop-girl's backward glance and a nudge
+from her companion seemed to be lamentable.
+
+"I don't see why you should despise me for being pleased," Arthur said.
+"I'm only pleased because it's a proof that I'm getting known."
+
+"But they'd pay the same compliment to a man with a wen on his nose."
+
+"No doubt, but also to any famous man," Arthur added.
+
+Sylvia could have screamed with irritation at his lack of any sense of
+proportion. Why could he not be like Jack Airdale, who had never
+suffered from any illusion that what he was doing, so far as art was
+concerned, was not essentially insignificant? Yet, after all, was she
+not being unreasonable in paying so much attention to a childish piece
+of vanity that was inseparable from the true histrionic temperament?
+
+"I'm sorry, Arthur. I think I'm being unfair to you. I only criticize
+you because I want you to be always the best of you. I see your point of
+view, but I was irritated by the giggles."
+
+"I wasn't paying the least attention to the girls."
+
+"Oh, I wasn't jealous," she said, quickly. "Oh no, darling Arthur, even
+with the great affection that I have for you, I shall never be able to
+be jealous of your making eyes at shop-girls."
+
+When Arthur's engagement seemed likely to come to an end in the summer,
+they discussed plans and decided to take a holiday in the country,
+somewhere in Maine or Vermont. Arthur, as usual, set the scene
+beforehand, but as he set it quite in accord with Sylvia's taste she did
+not mind. Indeed, their holiday in Vermont on the borders of Lake
+Champlain was as near as she ever got to being perfectly happy with
+Arthur--happy, that is, to the point of feeling like a chill the
+prospect of separation. Sylvia was inclined to say that all Arthur's
+faults were due to the theater, and that when one had him like this in
+simple surroundings the best side of him was uppermost and visible, like
+a spun coin that shows a simple head when it falls.
+
+Sylvia found that she had brought with her by chance the manuscript of
+the poems given to her by the outcast Englishman in Paris, and Arthur
+was very anxious that she should come back to her idea of rendering
+these. He had already composed a certain number of unimportant songs in
+his career, but now the Muses smiled upon him (or perhaps it might be
+truer to speak of her own smiles, Sylvia thought) with such favor that
+he set a dozen poems to the very accompaniment they wanted, the kind of
+music, moreover, that suited Sylvia's voice.
+
+"We must get these done in New York," he said; but that week a letter
+came from Olive Airdale, and Sylvia had a sudden longing for England.
+She did not think she would make an effort to do anything in America.
+The truth was that she had supplemented the Englishman's poems with an
+idea of her own to give impressions gathered from her own life. It was
+strange how abruptly the longing to express herself had arrived, but it
+had arrived, with a force and fierceness that were undeniable. It had
+come, too, with that authentic fever of secrecy that she divined a woman
+must feel in the first moment of knowing that she has conceived. She
+could not have imparted her sense of creation to any one else; such an
+intimacy of revelation was too shocking to be contemplated. Somehow she
+was sure that this strange shamefulness was right and that she was
+entitled to hug within herself the conception that would soon enough be
+turned to the travail of birth.
+
+"By, Jove! Sylvia, this holiday _has_ done you good!" Arthur exclaimed.
+
+She kissed him because, ignorant though he was of the true reason, she
+owed him thanks for her looks.
+
+"Sylvia, if we go back to England, do let's be married first."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, because it's not fair on me."
+
+"On you?"
+
+"Yes, on me. People will always blame me, of course."
+
+"What has it got to do with anybody else except me?"
+
+"My mother--"
+
+"My dear Arthur," Sylvia interrupted, sharply, "if your mother ran away
+with a groom, she'll be the first person to sympathize with my point of
+view."
+
+"I suppose you're trying to be cruel," said Arthur.
+
+"And succeeding, to judge by your dolorous mouth. No, my dear, let the
+suggestion of marriage come from me. I sha'n't be hurt if you refuse."
+
+"Well, are we to pretend we're married?" Arthur asked, hopelessly.
+
+"Certainly not, if by that you mean that I'm to put 'Mrs. Arthur Madden'
+on a visiting-card. Don't look so frightened. I'm not proposing to march
+into drawing-rooms with a big drum to proclaim my emancipation from the
+social decencies. Don't worry me, Arthur. It's all much too complicated
+to explain, but I'll tell you one thing, I'm not going to marry you
+merely to remove the world's censure of your conduct, and as long as you
+feel about marrying me as you might feel about letting me carry a heavy
+bag, I'll never marry you."
+
+"I don't feel a bit like that about it," he protested. "If I could leave
+you, I'd leave you now. But the very thought of losing you makes my
+heart stop beating. It's like suddenly coming to the edge of a
+precipice. I know perfectly well that you despise me at heart. You think
+I'm a wretched actor with no feelings off the stage. You think I don't
+know my own mind, if you even admit that I've got a mind at all. But I'm
+thirty-one. I'm not a boy. I've had a good many women in love with me.
+Now don't begin to laugh. I'm determined to say what I ought to have
+said long ago, and should have said if I hadn't been afraid the whole
+time of losing you. If I lose you now it can't be helped. I'd sooner
+lose you than go on being treated like a child. What I want to say is
+that, though I know you think it wasn't worth while being loved by the
+women who've loved me, I do think it was. I'm not in the least ashamed
+of them. Most of them, at any rate, were beautiful, though I admit that
+all of them put together wouldn't have made up for missing you. You're a
+thousand times cleverer than I. You've got much more personality. You've
+every right to consider you've thrown yourself away on me. But the fact
+remains that you've done it. We've been together now a year. That proves
+that there _is_ something in me. I'm prouder of this year with you than
+of all the rest of my life. You've developed me in the most
+extraordinary way."
+
+"I have?" Sylvia burst in.
+
+"Of course you have. But I'm not going to be treated like a mantis."
+
+"Like a what?"
+
+"A mantis. You can read about it in that French book on insects. The
+female eats the male. Well, I'm damned well not going to be eaten. I'm
+not going back to England with you unless you marry me."
+
+"Well, I'm not going to marry you," Sylvia declared.
+
+"Very well, then I shall try to get an engagement on tour and we'll
+separate."
+
+"So much the better," she said. "I've got a good deal to occupy myself
+at present."
+
+"Of course you can have the music I wrote for those poems," said Arthur.
+
+"Damn your music," she replied.
+
+Sylvia was so much obsessed with the conviction of having at last found
+a medium for expressing herself in art that, though she was vaguely
+aware of having a higher regard for Arthur at this moment than she had
+ever had, she could only behold him as a troublesome visitor that was
+preventing her from sitting down to work.
+
+Arthur went off on tour. Sylvia took an apartment in New York far away
+up-town and settled down to test her inspiration. In six months she
+lived her whole life over again, and of every personality that had
+touched her own and left its mark she made a separate presentation. Her
+great anxiety was to give to each sketch the air of an improvisation,
+and in the course of it to make her people reveal their permanent
+characters rather than their transient emotions. It was really based on
+the art of the impersonator who comes on with a cocked hat, sticks out
+his neck, puts his hands behind his back, and his legs apart, leans over
+to the audience, and whispers Napoleon. Sylvia thought she could extend
+the pleasures of recognition beyond the mere mimicry of externals to a
+finer mimicry of essentials. She wanted an audience to clap not because
+she could bark sufficiently like a real dog to avoid being mistaken for
+a kangaroo, but because she could be sufficiently Mrs. Gainsborough not
+to be recognized as Mrs. Beardmore--yet without relying upon their
+respective sizes in corsets to mark the difference. She did not intend
+to use even make-up; the entertainment was always to be an
+improvisation. It was also to be undramatic; that is to say, it was not
+to obtain its effect by working to a climax, so that, however well
+hidden the mechanism might have been during the course of the
+presentation, the machinery would reveal itself at the end. Sylvia
+wanted to make each member of the audience feel that he had dreamed her
+improvisation, or rather she hoped that he would gain from it that
+elusive sensation of having lived it before, and that the effect upon
+each person listening to her should be ultimately incommunicable, like
+a dream. She was sure now that she could achieve this effect with the
+poems, not, as she had originally supposed, through their objective
+truthfulness, but through their subjective truth. That outcast
+Englishman should be one of her improvisations, and of course the
+original idea of letting the poems be accompanied by music would be
+ruinous; one might as well illustrate them with a magic lantern. As to
+her own inventions, she must avoid giving them a set form, because,
+whatever actors might urge to the contrary, a play could never really be
+performed twice by the same caste. She would have a scene painted like
+those futurist Italian pictures; they were trying to do with color what
+she was trying to do with acting; they were striving to escape from the
+representation of mere externals, and often succeeding almost too well,
+she added, with a smile. She would get hold of Ronald Walker in London,
+who doubtless by now would be too prosperous to serve her purpose
+himself, but who would probably know of some newly fledged painter
+anxious to flap his wings.
+
+At the end of six months Sylvia had evolved enough improvisations to
+make a start. She went to bed tired out with the last night's work, and
+woke up in the morning with a sense of blankness at the realization of
+there being nothing to do that day. All the time she had been working
+she had been content to be alone; she had even looked forward to amusing
+herself in New York when her work was finished. Now the happy moment had
+come and she could feel nothing but this empty boredom. She wondered
+what Arthur was doing, and she reproached herself for the way in which
+she had discarded him. She had been so thrilled by the notion that she
+was necessary to somebody; it had seemed to her the consummation of so
+many heedless years. Yet no sooner had she successfully imposed herself
+upon Arthur than she was eager to think of nothing but herself without
+caring a bit about his point of view. Now that she could do nothing more
+with her work until the test of public performance was applied to it,
+she was bored; in fact, she missed Arthur. The truth was that half the
+pleasure of being necessary to somebody else had been that he should be
+necessary to her. But marriage with Arthur? Marriage with a
+curly-headed actor? Marriage with anybody? No, that must wait, at any
+rate until she had given the fruit of these six months to the world. She
+could not be hampered by belonging to anybody before that.
+
+"I do think I'm justified in taking myself a little seriously for a
+while," said Sylvia, "and in shutting my eyes to my own absurdity.
+Self-mockery is dangerous beyond a certain point. I really will give
+this idea of mine a fair chance. If I'm a failure, Arthur will love me
+all the more through vanity, and if I'm a success--I suppose really
+he'll be vain of that, too."
+
+Sylvia telegraphed to Arthur, and heard that he expected to be back in
+New York at the end of the month. He was in Buffalo this week. Nothing
+could keep her a moment longer in New York alone, and she went up to
+join him. She had a sudden fear when she arrived that she might find him
+occupied with a girl; in fact, really, when she came to think of the
+manner in which she had left him, it was most improbable that she should
+not. She nearly turned round and went back to New York; but her real
+anxiety to see Arthur and talk to him about her work made her decide to
+take the risk of what might be the deepest humiliation of her life. It
+was strange how much she wanted to talk about what she had done; the
+desire to do so now was as overmastering an emotion as had been in the
+first moment of conception the urgency of silence.
+
+Sylvia was spared the shock of finding Arthur wrapped up in some one
+else.
+
+"Sylvia, how wonderful! What a relief to see you again!" he exclaimed.
+"I've been longing for you to see me in the part I'm playing now. It's
+certainly the most successful thing I've done. I'm so glad you kept me
+from wasting myself any longer on that concert work. I really believe
+I've made a big hit at last."
+
+Sylvia was almost as much taken aback to find Arthur radiant with the
+prospect of success as she would have been to find him head over ears in
+love. She derived very little satisfaction from the way in which he
+attributed his success to her; she was not at all in the mood for being
+a godmother, now that she had a baby of her own.
+
+"I'm so glad, old son. That's splendid. Now I want to talk about the
+work I've been doing all these six months."
+
+Forthwith she plunged into the details of the scheme, to which Arthur
+listened attentively enough, though he only became really enthusiastic
+when she could introduce analogies with his own successful performance.
+
+"You will go in front to-night?" he begged. "I'm awfully keen to hear
+what you think of my show. Half my pleasure in the hit has been spoiled
+by your not having seen it. Besides, I think you'll be interested in
+noticing that once or twice I try to get the same effect as you're
+trying for in these impersonations."
+
+"Damn your eyes, Arthur, they're not impersonations; they're
+improvisations."
+
+"Did I say impersonations? I'm sorry," said Arthur, looking rather
+frightened.
+
+"Yes, you'd better placate me," she threatened. "Or I'll spend my whole
+time looking at Niagara and never go near your show."
+
+However, Sylvia did go to see the play that night and found that Arthur
+really was excellent in his part, which was that of the usual young man
+in musical comedy who wanders about in a well-cut flannel suit, followed
+by six young women with parasols ready to smother him with affection,
+melody, and lace. But how, even in the intoxication of success, he had
+managed to establish a single analogy with what she proposed to do was
+beyond comprehension.
+
+Arthur came out of the stage door, wreathed in questions.
+
+"You were in such a hurry to get out," said Sylvia, "that you didn't
+take off your make-up properly. You'll get arrested if you walk about
+like that. I hear the sumptuary laws in Buffalo are very strict."
+
+"No, don't rag. Did you like the hydrangea song? Do you remember the one
+I mean?"
+
+He hummed the tune.
+
+"I warn you, Arthur, there's recently been a moral up-lift in Buffalo.
+You will be sewn up in a barrel and flung into Niagara if you don't take
+care. No, seriously. I think your show was capital. Which brings me to
+the point. We sail for Europe at the end of April."
+
+"Oh, but do you think it's wise for me to leave America now that I've
+really got my foot in?"
+
+"Do you still want to marry me?"
+
+"More than ever," he assured her.
+
+"Very well, then. Your only chance of marrying me is to leave New York
+without a murmur. I've thought it all out. As soon as I get back I shall
+spend my last shilling on fitting out my show. When I've produced it and
+when I've found out that I've not been making a fool of myself for the
+last six months, perhaps I'll marry you. Until then--as friends we met,
+as anything more than friends we part. Got me, Steve?"
+
+"But, Sylvia--"
+
+"But me no buts, or you'll get my goat. Understand my meaning, Mr.
+Stevenson?"
+
+"Yes, only--"
+
+"The discussion's closed."
+
+"Are we engaged?"
+
+"I don't know. We'll have to see our agents about that."
+
+"Oh, don't rag. Marriage is not a joke. You are a most extraordinary
+girl."
+
+"Thanks for the discount. I shall be thirty in three months, don't
+forget. Talking of the advantages of rouge, you might get rid of some of
+yours before supper, if you don't mind."
+
+"Are we engaged?" Arthur repeated, firmly.
+
+"No, the engagement ring and the marriage-bells will be pealed
+simultaneously. You're as free as Boccaccio, old son."
+
+"You're in one of those moods when it's impossible to argue with you."
+
+"So much the better. We shall enjoy our supper all the more. I'm so
+excited at the idea of going back to England. After all, I shall have
+been away nearly three years. I shall find godchildren who can talk.
+Think of that. Arthur, don't you want to go back?"
+
+"Yes, if I can get a shop. I think it's madness for me to leave New
+York, but I daren't let you go alone."
+
+The anticipation of being in England again and of putting to the test
+her achievement could not charm away all Sylvia's regret at leaving
+America, most of all New York. She owed to New York this new stability
+that she discovered in her life. She owed to some action of New York
+upon herself the delight of inspiration, the sweet purgatory of effort,
+the hope of a successful end to her dreams. It was the only city of
+which she had ever taken a formal farewell, such as she took from the
+top of the Metropolitan Tower upon a lucid morning in April. The city
+lay beneath, with no magic of smoke to lend a meretricious romance to
+its checkered severity; a city encircled with silver waters and
+pavilioned by huge skies, expressing modern humanity, as the great
+monuments of ancient architecture express the mighty dead.
+
+"We too can create our Parthenons," thought Sylvia, as she sank to earth
+in the florid elevator.
+
+They crossed the Atlantic on one of the smaller Cunard liners. The
+voyage was uneventful. Nearly all the passengers in turn told Sylvia why
+they were not traveling by one of the large ships, but nobody suggested
+as a reason that the smaller ships were cheaper.
+
+When they reached England Arthur went to stay with his mother at
+Dulwich. Sylvia went to the Airdales; she wanted to set her scheme in
+motion, but she promised to come and stay at Dulwich later on.
+
+"At last you've come back," Olive said, on the verge of tears. "I've
+missed you dreadfully."
+
+"Great Scott! Look at Sylvius and Rose!" Sylvia exclaimed. "They're like
+two pigs made of pink sugar. Pity we never thought of it at the time, or
+they could have been christened Scarlet and Crimson."
+
+"Darlings, isn't godmamma horrid to you?" said Olive.
+
+"Here! Here! What are you teaching them to call me?"
+
+"Dat's godmamma," said Sylvius, in a thick voice.
+
+"Dat's godmamma," Rose echoed.
+
+"Not on your life, cullies," their godmother announced, "unless you want
+a thick ear each."
+
+"Give me one," said Sylvius, stolidly.
+
+"Give me one," Rose echoed.
+
+"How can you tease the poor darlings so?" Olive exclaimed.
+
+"Sylvius will have one," he announced, in the same thick monotone.
+
+"Rose will have one," echoed his sister.
+
+Sylvia handed her godson a large painted ball.
+
+"Here's your thick ear, Pork."
+
+Sylvius laughed fatly; the ball and the new name both pleased him.
+
+"And here's yours," she said, offering another to Rose, who waited to
+see what her brother did with his and then proceeded to do the same with
+the same fat laugh. Suddenly, however, her lips puckered.
+
+"What is it, darling?" her mother asked, anxiously.
+
+"Rose wants to be said Pork."
+
+"You didn't call her Pork," Olive translated, reproachfully, to Sylvia.
+
+"Give me back the ball," said Sylvia. "Now then, here's your thick ear,
+Porka."
+
+Rose laughed ecstatically. After two ornaments had been broken Jack came
+in, and the children retired with their nurse.
+
+Sylvia found that family life had not spoiled Jack's interest in that
+career of hers; indeed, he was so much excited by her news that he
+suggested omitting for once the ceremony of seeing the twins being given
+their bath in order not to lose any of the short time available before
+he should have to go down to the theater. Sylvia, however, would not
+hear of any change in the domestic order, and reminded Jack that she was
+proposing to quarter herself on them for some time.
+
+"I know, it's terrific," he said.
+
+The excitement of the bath was always considerable, but this evening,
+with Sylvia's assistance, it became acute. Sylvius hit his nurse in the
+eye with the soap, and Rose, wrought up to a fever of emulation, managed
+to hurl the sponge into the grate.
+
+Jack was enthusiastic about Sylvia's scheme. She was not quite sure that
+he understood exactly at what she was aiming, but he wished her so well
+that in any case his criticism would have had slight value; he gave
+instead his devoted attention, and that seemed a pledge of success.
+Success! Success! it sounded like a cataract in her ears, drowning every
+other sound. She wondered if the passion of her life was to be success.
+On no thoughts urged so irresistibly had she ever sailed to sleep, nor
+had she ever wakened in such a buoyancy, greeting the day as a swimmer
+greets the sea.
+
+"Now what about the backing?" Jack asked.
+
+"Backing? I'll back myself. You'll be my manager. I've enough to hire
+the Pierian Hall for a day and a night. I've enough to pay for one
+scene. Which reminds me I must get hold of Ronald Walker. You'll sing,
+Jack, two songs? Oh, and there's Arthur Madden. He'll sing, too."
+
+"Who's he?" Olive asked.
+
+"Oh, didn't I tell you about him?" said Sylvia, almost too nonchalantly,
+she feared. "He's rather good. Quite good, really. I'll tell you about
+him sometime. By the way, I've talked so much about myself and my plans
+that I've never asked about other people. How's the countess?"
+
+Olive looked grave. "We don't ever see them, but everybody says that
+Clarehaven is going the pace tremendously."
+
+"Have they retreated to Devonshire?"
+
+"Oh no! Didn't you hear? I thought I'd told you in one of my letters. He
+had to sell the family place. Do you remember a man called Leopold
+Hausberg?"
+
+"Do I not?" Sylvia exclaimed. "He took a flat once for a chimpanzee
+instead of Lily."
+
+"Well, he's become Lionel Houston this year, and he's talked about with
+Dorothy a good deal. Of course he's very rich, but I do hope there's
+nothing in what people say. Poor Dorothy!"
+
+"She'll survive even the divorce court," Sylvia said. "I wish I knew
+what had become of Lily. She might have danced in my show. I suppose
+it's too late now, though. Poor Lily! I say, we're getting very
+compassionate, you and I, Olive. Are you and Jack going to have any more
+kids?"
+
+"Sylvia darling," Olive exclaimed, with a blush.
+
+Sylvia had intended to stay a week or two with the Airdales, and, after
+having set in motion the preliminaries of her undertaking, to go down to
+Dulwich and visit Mrs. Madden, but she thought she would get hold of
+Ronnie Walker first, and with this object went to the Café Royal, where
+she should be certain of finding either him or a friend who would know
+where he was.
+
+Sylvia had scarcely time to look round her in the swirl of gilt and
+smoke and chatter before Ronald Walker himself, wearing now a long pale
+beard, greeted her.
+
+"My dear Ronald, what's the matter? Are you tired of women? You look
+more like a grate than a great man," Sylvia exclaimed. "Cut it off and
+give it to your landlady to stuff her fireplace this summer."
+
+"What shall we drink?" he asked, imperturbably.
+
+"I've been absinthe for so long that really--"
+
+"It's a vermouth point," added Ronald.
+
+"Ronnie, you devil, I can't go on, it's too whisky. Well, of course
+after that we ought both to drink port and brandy. Don't you find it
+difficult to clean your beard?"
+
+"I'm not a messy feeder," said Ronnie.
+
+"You don't paint with it, then?"
+
+"Only Cubist pictures."
+
+Sylvia launched out into an account of her work, and demanded his help
+for the painting of the scene.
+
+"I want the back-cloth to be a city, not to represent a city, mark you,
+but to be a city."
+
+She told him about New York as beheld from the Metropolitan Tower, and
+exacted from the chosen painter the ability to make the audience think
+that.
+
+"I'm too old-fashioned for you, my dear," said Ronald.
+
+"Oh, you, my dear man, of course. If I asked you for a city, you'd give
+me a view from a Pierrot's window of a Harlequin who'd stolen the first
+five numbers of the Yellow Book from a Pantaloon who kept a second-hand
+bookshop in a street-scene by Steinlen, and whose daughter, Columbine,
+having died of grief at being deserted by the New English Art Club, had
+been turned into a book-plate. No, I want some fierce young genius of
+to-day."
+
+Over their drinks they discussed possible candidates; finally Ronald
+said he would invite a certain number of the most representative and
+least representational modern painters to his studio, from whom Sylvia
+might make her choice. Accordingly, two or three days later Sylvia
+visited Ronald in Grosvenor Road. For the moment, when she entered, she
+thought that he had been playing a practical joke upon her, for it
+seemed impossible that these extraordinary people could be real. The
+northerly light of the studio, severe and virginal, was less kind than
+the feverish exhalation of the Café Royal.
+
+"They are real?" she whispered to her host.
+
+"Oh yes, they're quite real, and in deadly earnest. Each of them
+represents a school and each of them thinks I've been converted to his
+point of view. I'll introduce Morphew."
+
+He beckoned to a tall young man in black, who looked like a rolled-up
+umbrella with a jade handle.
+
+"Morphew, this is Miss Scarlett. She's nearly as advanced as you are.
+Sylvia, this is Morphew, the Azurist."
+
+Walker maliciously withdrew when he had made the introduction.
+
+"Ought I to know what an Azurist is?" Sylvia asked. She felt that it was
+an unhappy opening for the conversation, but she did not want to hurt
+his religious feelings if Azurism was a religion, and if it was a trade
+she might be excused for not knowing what it was, such a rare trade must
+it be.
+
+Mr. Morphew smiled in a superior way. "I think most people have heard
+about me by now."
+
+"Ah, but I've been abroad."
+
+"Several of my affirmations have been translated and published in
+France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, and Holland,"
+said Mr. Morphew, in a tone that seemed to imply that if Sylvia had not
+grasped who he was by now she never would, in which case it was scarcely
+worth his while to go on talking to her.
+
+"Oh dear! What a pity!" she exclaimed. "I was in Montenegro all last
+year, so I must have missed them. I don't _think_ you're known in
+Montenegro yet. It's such a small country, I should have been sure to
+hear about anything like that.
+
+"Like what?" thought Sylvia, turning up her mind's eyes to heaven.
+
+Mr. Morphew was evidently not sure what sort of language was spoken in
+Montenegro, and thought it wiser to instruct Sylvia than to expose his
+own ignorance.
+
+"What color is that?" he suddenly demanded, pointing to the orange
+coverlet of a settee.
+
+"Orange," said Sylvia. "Perhaps it's inclining to some shade of brown."
+
+"Orange! Brown!" Mr. Morphew scoffed. "It's blue."
+
+"Oh, but it's not!" she contradicted. "There's nothing blue about it."
+
+"Blue," repeated Mr. Morphew. "All is blue. The Azurists deny that there
+is anything but blue. Blue," he continued in a rapt voice. "Blue! I was
+a Blanchist at first; but when we quarreled most of the Blanchists
+followed me. I shall publish the nineteenth affirmation of the Azurists
+next week. If you give me your address I'll send you a copy. We're going
+to give the Ovists hell in a new magazine that we're bringing out. We
+find that affirmations are not enough."
+
+"Will it be an ordinary magazine?" Sylvia asked. "Will you have stories,
+for instance?"
+
+"We don't admit that stories exist. Life-rays exist. There will be
+life-rays in our magazine."
+
+"I suppose they'll be pretty blue," said Sylvia.
+
+"All life-rays are blue."
+
+"I suppose you don't mind wet weather?" she suggested. "Because it must
+be rather difficult to know when it's going to clear up."
+
+"There are degrees of blue," Mr. Morphew explained.
+
+"I see. Life isn't just one vast, reckless blue. Well, thank you very
+much for being so patient with my old-fashioned optical ideas. I do hope
+you'll go to America and tell them that their leaves turn blue in
+autumn. Anyway, you'll feel quite at home crossing the ocean, though
+some people won't even admit that's blue."
+
+Sylvia left the Azurist and rejoined Ronald.
+
+"Well," he laughed. "You look quite frightened."
+
+"My dear, I've just done a bolt from the blue. You are a beast to rag
+my enthusiasms. Isn't there anybody here whose serious view of himself I
+can indorse?"
+
+"Well, there's Pattison, the Ovist. He maintains that everything
+resolves itself into ovals."
+
+"I think I should almost prefer Azurism," said Sylvia. "What about the
+Blanchists?"
+
+"Oh, you wouldn't like them! They maintain that there's no such thing as
+color; their pictures depend on the angle at which they're hung."
+
+"But if there's no such thing as color, how can they paint?"
+
+"They don't. Their canvases are blank. Then there are the
+Combinationists. They don't repudiate color, but they repudiate paint.
+The most famous Combinationist picture exhibited so far consisted of
+half a match-box, a piece of orange-peel, and some sealing-wax, all
+stuck upon a slip of sugar-paper. The other Combinationists wanted to
+commit suicide because they despaired of surpassing it. Roger Cadbury
+wrote a superb introduction, pointing out that it must be either liked
+or disliked, but that it was impossible to do both or neither. It was
+that picture which inspired Hezekiah Penny to write what is considered
+one of his finest poems. You know it, perhaps?
+
+    "Why do I sing?
+     There is no reason why I should continue:
+     This image of the essential bin is better
+     Than the irritated uvulas of modern poets.
+
+That caused almost as great sensation as the picture, because some of
+his fellow-poets maintained that he had no right to speak for anybody
+but himself."
+
+"Who is Hezekiah Penny?" Sylvia asked.
+
+"Hezekiah Penny is a provincial poet who began by writing Provençal
+verse."
+
+"But this is madness," Sylvia exclaimed, looking round her at the
+studio, where the representatives of modernity eyed one another with
+surprise and distaste like unusual fish in the tank of an aquarium.
+"Behind all this rubbish surely something truly progressive exists.
+You've deliberately invited all the charlatans and impostors to meet me.
+I tell you, Ronnie, I saw lots of pictures in New York that were
+eccentric, but they were striving to rediscover life in painting. You're
+prejudiced because you belong to the decade before all this, and you've
+taken a delight in showing me all the extravagant side of it. You should
+emulate Tithonus."
+
+"Who was he?"
+
+"Now don't pretend you can't follow a simple allusion. The gentleman who
+fell in love with Aurora."
+
+"Didn't he get rather tired of living forever?"
+
+"Oh, well, that was because he grew a beard like you. Don't nail my
+allusions to the counter; they're not lies."
+
+"I'll take pity on you," said Ronnie. "There is quite a clever youth
+whom I intended for you from the beginning. He's coming in later, when
+the rest have gone."
+
+When she and Ronnie were alone again and before Lucian Hope, the young
+painter, arrived, Sylvia, looking through one of his sketch-books, came
+across a series of studies of a girl in the practice-dress of dancing;
+he told her it was Jenny Pearl.
+
+"Maurice Avery's Jenny," she murmured. "What happened to her?"
+
+"Didn't you hear about it? She was killed by her husband. It was a
+horrible business. Maurice went down to see her where she lived in the
+country, and this brute shot her. It was last summer. The papers were
+full of it."
+
+"And what happened to Maurice?"
+
+"Oh, he nearly went off his head. He's wandering about in Morocco
+probably."
+
+"Where I met him," said Sylvia.
+
+"But didn't he tell you?"
+
+"Oh, it was before. More than three years ago. We talked about her."
+
+Sylvia shuddered. One of her improvisations had been Maurice Avery; she
+must burn it.
+
+Lucian Hope arrived before Sylvia could ask any more questions about the
+horrible event; she was glad to escape from the curiosity that would
+have turned it into a tale of the police-court. The new-comer was not
+more than twenty-two, perhaps less--too young, at any rate, to have
+escaped from the unconventionality of artistic attire that stifles all
+personality. But he had squirrel's eyes, and was not really like an
+undertaker. He was shy, too, so shy that Sylvia wondered how he could
+tolerate being stared at in the street on account of his odd appearance.
+She would have liked to ask him what pleasure he derived from such
+mimicry of a sterile and professional distinction, but she feared to
+hurt his young vanity; moreover, she was disarmed by those squirrel's
+eyes, so sharp and bright even in the falling dusk. The three of them
+talked restlessly for a while, and Sylvia, seeing that Ronald was
+preparing to broach the subject for which they were met, anticipated him
+with a call for attention, and began one of her improvisations. It was
+of Concetta lost in a greater city than Granada. By the silence that
+followed she knew that her companions had cared for it, and she changed
+to Mrs. Gainsborough. Then she finished up with three of the poems.
+
+"Could you paint me a scene for that?" she asked, quickly, to avoid any
+comment.
+
+"Oh, rather!" replied the young man, very eagerly; though it was nearly
+dark now, she could see his eyes flashing real assurance.
+
+They all three dined together that evening, and Lucian Hope, ever since
+Sylvia had let him know that she stood beside him to conquer the world,
+lost his early shyness and talked volubly of what she wanted and what he
+wanted to do. Ronald Walker presided in the background of the ardent
+conversation, and as they came out of the restaurant he took Sylvia's
+arm for a moment.
+
+"All right?"
+
+"Quite all right, thanks."
+
+"So's your show going to be. Not so entirely modern as you gave me to
+suppose. But that's not a great fault."
+
+Sylvia and Lucian Hope spent a good deal of time together, so much was
+there to talk about in connection with the great enterprise. She brought
+him to the Airdales' that he might meet Jack, who was supposed to have
+charge of the financial arrangements. The sight of the long-haired young
+man made Sylvius cry, and, as a matter of course, Rose, also, which
+embarrassed Lucian Hope a good deal, especially when he had to listen to
+an explanation of himself by Olive for the children's consolation.
+
+"He's a gollywog," Sylvius howled.
+
+"He's a gollywog," Rose echoed.
+
+"He's tum to gobble us," Sylvius bellowed.
+
+"To gobble us, to gobble us," Rose wailed.
+
+"He's not a gollywog, darlings," their mother declared. "He makes pretty
+pictures, oh, such pretty pictures of--"
+
+"He _is_ a gollywog," choked Sylvius, in an ecstasy of rage and fear.
+
+"A gollywog, a gollywog," Rose insisted.
+
+Their mother changed her tactics. "But he's a kind gollywog. Oh, such a
+kind gollywog, the kindest, nicest gollywog that was ever thought of."
+
+"He _is_--ent," both children proclaimed. "He's bad!"
+
+"Don't you think I'd better go?" asked the painter. "I think it must be
+my hair that's upsetting them."
+
+He started toward the door, but, unfortunately, he was on the wrong side
+of the children, who, seeing him make a move in their direction, set up
+such an appalling yell that the poor young man drew back in despair. In
+the middle of this the maid entered, announcing Mr. Arthur Madden, who
+followed close upon her heels. Sylvius and Rose were by this time
+obsessed with the idea of an invasion by an army of gollywogs, and
+Arthur's pleasant face took on for them the dreaded lineaments of the
+foe. Both children clung shrieking to their mother's skirts. Sylvia and
+Jack were leaning back, incapable through laughter. Arthur and Lucian
+Hope surveyed miserably the scene they had created. At last the nurse
+arrived to rescue the twins, and they were carried away without being
+persuaded to change their minds about the inhuman nature of the two
+visitors.
+
+Arthur apologized for worrying Sylvia, but his mother was so anxious to
+know when she was coming down to Dulwich, and as he had been up in town
+seeing about an engagement, he had not been able to resist coming to
+visit her.
+
+Sylvia felt penitent for having abandoned Arthur so completely since
+they had arrived in England, and she told him she would go back with him
+that very afternoon.
+
+"Oh, but Miss Scarlett," protested Lucian, "don't you remember? We
+arranged to explore Limehouse to-morrow."
+
+Arthur looked at the painter very much as if he were indeed the gollywog
+for which he had just been taken.
+
+"I don't want to interfere with previous arrangements," he said, with
+such a pathetic haughtiness that Sylvia had not the heart to wound his
+dignity, and told Lucian Hope that the expedition to Limehouse must be
+postponed. The young painter looked disconsolate and Arthur blossomed
+from his fading. However, Lucian had the satisfaction of saying, in a
+mysterious voice, to Sylvia before he went:
+
+"Well, then, while you're away I'll get on with it."
+
+It was not until they were half-way to Dulwich in the train that Arthur
+asked Sylvia what he was going to get on with.
+
+"My scene," she said.
+
+"What scene?"
+
+"Arthur, don't be stupid. The set for my show."
+
+"You're not going to let a youth like that paint a set for you? You're
+mad. What experience has he had?"
+
+"None. That's exactly why I chose him. I'm providing the experience."
+
+"Have you known him long?" Arthur demanded. "You can't have known him
+very long. He must have been at school when you left England."
+
+"Don't be jealous," said Sylvia.
+
+"Jealous? Of him? Huh!"
+
+Mrs. Madden had changed more than Sylvia expected. Arthur had seemed so
+little altered that she was surprised to see his mother with white hair,
+for she could scarcely be fifty-five yet. The drawing-room of the little
+house in Dulwich recalled vividly the drawing-room of the house in
+Hampstead; nor had Mrs. Madden bought herself a new piano with the fifty
+pounds that was cabled back to her from Sulphurville. It suddenly
+occurred to Sylvia that this was the first time she had seen her since
+she ran away with Arthur, fifteen years ago, and she felt that she ought
+to apologize for that behavior now; but, after all, Mrs. Madden had run
+away herself once upon a time with her father's groom and could scarcely
+have been greatly astonished at Arthur's elopement.
+
+"You have forgiven me for carrying him off from Hampstead?" she asked,
+with a smile.
+
+Mrs. Madden laughed gently. "Yes, I was frightened at the time. But in
+the end it did Arthur good, I think. It's been such a pleasure to me to
+hear how successful he's been lately." She looked at Sylvia with an
+expression of marked sympathy.
+
+After supper Mrs. Madden came up to Sylvia's room and, taking her hand,
+said, in her soft voice, "Arthur has told me all about you two."
+
+Sylvia flushed and pulled her hand away. "He's no business to tell you
+anything about me," she said, hotly.
+
+"You mustn't be angry, Sylvia. He made it quite clear that you hadn't
+quite made up your mind yet. Poor boy," she added, with a sigh.
+
+Sylvia, when she understood that Arthur had not said anything about
+their past, had a strong desire to tell Mrs. Madden that she had lived
+with him for a year. She resented the way she had said "poor boy." She
+checked the impulse and assured her that if Arthur had spoken of their
+marriage he had had no right to do so. It really was most improbable
+that she should marry him; oh, but most improbable.
+
+"You always spoke very severely about love when you were a little girl.
+Do you remember? You must forgive a mother, but I must tell you that I
+believe Arthur's happiness depends upon your marrying him. He talks of
+nothing else and makes such plans for the future."
+
+"He makes too many plans," Sylvia said, severely.
+
+"Ah, there soon comes a time when one ceases to make plans," Mrs. Madden
+sighed. "One is reduced to expedients. But now that you're a woman, and
+I can easily believe that you're the clever woman Arthur says you are,
+for you gave every sign of it when you were young--now that you're a
+woman, I do hope you'll be a merciful woman. It's such a temptation--you
+must forgive my plain speaking--it's such a temptation to keep a man
+like Arthur hanging on. You must have noticed how young he is still--to
+all intents and purposes quite a boy; and believe me he has the same
+romantic adoration for you and your wonderfulness as he had when he was
+seventeen. Don't, I beg of you, treat such devotion too lightly."
+
+Sylvia could not keep silent under this unjustified imputation of
+heartlessness, and broke out:
+
+"I'm sure you'll admit that Arthur has given quite a wrong idea of me
+when I tell you that we lived together for a year; and you must remember
+that I've been married already and know what it means. Arthur has no
+right to complain of me."
+
+"Oh, Sylvia, I'm sorry!" Mrs. Madden almost whispered. "Oh dear! how
+could Arthur do such a thing?"
+
+"Because I made him, of course. Now you must forgive _me_ if I say
+something that hurts your feelings, but I must say it. When you ran away
+with your husband, you must have made him do it. You _must_ have done."
+
+"Good gracious me!" Mrs. Madden exclaimed. "I suppose I did. I never
+looked at it in that light before. You've made me feel quite ashamed of
+my behavior. Quite embarrassed. And I suppose everybody has always
+blamed me entirely; but because my husband was one of my father's
+servants I always used to be defending him. I never thought of defending
+myself."
+
+Sylvia was sorry for stirring up in Mrs. Madden's placid mind old
+storms. It was painful to see this faded gentlewoman in the little
+suburban bedroom, blushing nervously at the unlady-like behavior of long
+ago. Presently Mrs. Madden pulled herself up and said, with a certain
+decision:
+
+"Yes, but I did marry him."
+
+"Yes, but you hadn't been married already. You hadn't knocked round half
+the globe for twenty-eight years. It's no good my pretending to be
+shocked at myself. I don't care a bit what anybody thinks about me, and,
+anyway, it's done now."
+
+"Surely you'd be happier if you married Arthur after--after that," Mrs.
+Madden suggested.
+
+"But I'm not in the least unhappy. I can't say whether I shall marry
+Arthur until I've given my performance. I can't say what effect either
+success or failure will have on me. My whole mind is concentrated in the
+Pierian Hall next October."
+
+"I'm afraid I cant understand this modern way of looking at things."
+
+"But there's nothing modern about my point of view, Mrs. Madden.
+There's nothing modern about the egotism of an artist. Arthur is as free
+as I am. He has his own career to think about. He does think about it a
+great deal. He's radically much more interested in that than in marrying
+me. The main point is that he's free at present. From the moment I
+promise to marry him and he accepts that promise he won't be free. Nor
+shall I. It wouldn't be fair on either of us to make that promise now,
+because I must know what October is going to bring forth."
+
+"Well, I call it very modern. When I was young we looked at marriage as
+the most important event in a girl's life."
+
+"But you didn't, dear Mrs. Madden. You, or rather your contemporaries,
+regarded marriage as a path to freedom--social freedom, that is. Your
+case was exceptional. You fell passionately in love with a man beneath
+you, as the world counts it. You married him, and what was the result?
+You were cut off by your relations as utterly as if you had become the
+concubine of a Hottentot."
+
+"Oh, Sylvia dear, what an uncomfortable comparison!"
+
+"Marriage to your contemporaries was a social observance. I'm not
+religious, but I regard marriage as so sacred that, because I've been
+divorced and because, so far as I know, my husband is still alive, I
+have something like religious qualms about marrying again. It takes a
+cynic to be an idealist; the sentimentalist gets left at the first
+fence. It's just because I'm fond of Arthur in a perfectly normal way
+when I'm not immersed in my ambition that I even contemplate the
+_notion_ of marrying him. I've got a perfectly normal wish to have
+children and a funny little house of my own. So far as I know at
+present, I should like Arthur to be the father of my children. But it's
+got to be an equal business. Personally I think that the Turks are wiser
+about women than we are; I think the majority of women are only fit for
+the harem and I'm not sure that the majority wouldn't be much happier
+under such conditions. The incurable vanity of man, however, has removed
+us from our seclusion to admire his antics, and it's too late to start
+shutting us up in a box now. Woman never thought of equality with man
+until he put the notion into her head."
+
+"I think perhaps supper may be ready," Mrs. Madden said. "It all sounds
+very convincing as you speak, but I can't help feeling that you'd be
+happier if you wouldn't take everything to pieces to look at the works.
+Things hardly ever go so well again afterward. Oh dear, I wish you
+hadn't lived together first."
+
+"It breaks the ice of the wedding-cake, doesn't it?" said Sylvia.
+
+"And I wish you wouldn't make such bitter remarks. You don't really mean
+what you say. I'm sure supper must be ready."
+
+"Oh, but I do," Sylvia insisted, as they passed out into the narrow
+little passage and down the narrow stairs into the little dining-room.
+Nevertheless, in Sylvia's mind there was a kindliness toward this little
+house, almost a tenderness, and far away at the back of her imagination
+was the vision of herself established in just such another little house.
+
+"But even the Albert Memorial would look all right from the wrong end of
+a telescope," she said to herself.
+
+One thing was brought home very vividly during her stay in Dulwich,
+which was the difference between what she had deceived herself into
+thinking was that first maternal affection she had felt for Arthur and
+the true maternal love of his mother. Whenever she had helped Arthur in
+any way, she had always been aware of enjoying the sensation of her
+indispensableness; it had been an emotion altogether different from this
+natural selfishness of the mother; it was really one that had always
+reflected a kind of self-conscious credit upon herself. Here in Dulwich,
+with this aspect of her affection for Arthur completely overshadowed,
+Sylvia was able to ask herself more directly if she loved him in the
+immemorial way of love; and though she could not arrive at a finally
+positive conclusion, she was strengthened in her resolve not to let him
+go. Arthur himself was more in love with her than he had ever been, and
+she thought that perhaps this was due to that sudden and disquieting
+withdrawal of herself; in the midst of possession he had been
+dispossessed, and until he could pierce her secret reasons he would
+inevitably remain deeply in love, even to the point of being jealous of
+a boy like Lucian Hope. Sylvia understood Arthur's having refused an
+engagement to tour as juvenile lead in a successful musical piece and
+his unwillingness to leave her alone in town; he was rewarded, too, for
+his action, because shortly afterward he obtained a good engagement in
+London to take the place of a singer who had retired from the cast of
+the Frivolity Theater. At that rate he would soon find himself at the
+Vanity Theater itself.
+
+In June Sylvia went back to the Airdales', and soon afterward took rooms
+near them in West Kensington. It was impossible to continue indefinitely
+to pretend that Arthur and herself were mere theatrical acquaintances,
+and one day Olive asked Sylvia if she intended to marry him.
+
+"What do you advise?" Sylvia asked. "There's a triumph, dearest Olive.
+Have I ever asked your advice before?"
+
+"I like him; Jack likes him, too, and says that he ought to get on fast
+now; but I don't know. Well, he's not the sort of man I expected you to
+marry."
+
+"You've had an ideal for me all the time," Sylvia exclaimed. "And you've
+never told me."
+
+"Oh no, I've never had anybody definite in my mind, but I think I should
+be able to say at once if the man you had chosen was the right one.
+Don't ask me to describe him, because I couldn't do it. You used to
+tease me about marrying a curly-headed actor, but Arthur Madden seems to
+me much more of a curly-headed actor than Jack is."
+
+"In fact, you thoroughly disapprove of poor Arthur?" Sylvia pressed.
+
+"Oh dear, no! Oh, not at all! Please don't think that. I'm only anxious
+that you shouldn't throw yourself away."
+
+"Remnants always go cheap," said Sylvia. "However, don't worry. I'll be
+quite sure of myself before I marry anybody again."
+
+The summer passed away quickly in a complexity of arrangements for the
+opening performance at the Pierian Hall. Sylvia stayed three or four
+times at Dulwich and grew very fond of Mrs. Madden, who never referred
+again to the subject of marriage. She also went up to Warwickshire with
+Olive and the children, much to the pleasure of Mr. Fanshawe, who was
+now writing a supplementary volume called _More Warwickshire Worthies_.
+In London she scarcely met any old friends; indeed, she went out of her
+way to avoid people like the Clarehavens, because they would not have
+been interested in what she was doing. By this time Sylvia had reached
+the point of considering everybody either for the interest and belief he
+evinced in her success or by the use he could be to her in securing it.
+The first rapturous egoism of Arthur's own success in London had worn
+off with time, and he was able to devote himself entirely to running
+about for Sylvia, which gradually made her regard him more and more as a
+fixture. As for Lucian Hope, he thought of nothing but the great
+occasion, and would have fought anybody who had ventured to cast a
+breath of doubt upon the triumph at hand. The set that he had painted
+was exactly what Sylvia required, and though both Arthur and Jack
+thought it would distract the audience's attention by puzzling them,
+they neither of them on Sylvia's account criticized it at all harshly.
+
+At last in mid-October the very morning of the day arrived, so long
+anticipated with every kind of discussion that its superficial
+resemblance to other mornings seemed heartless and unnatural. It was
+absurd that a milkman's note should be the same as yesterday, that
+servants should shake mats on front-door steps as usual, and that the
+maid who knocked at Sylvia's door should not break down beneath the
+weightiness of her summons. Nor, when Sylvia looked out of the window,
+were Jack and Arthur and Ronald and Lucian pacing with agitated steps
+the pavement below, an absence of enthusiasm, at any rate on the part of
+Arthur and Lucian, that hurt her feelings, until she thought for a
+moment how foolishly unreasonable she was being.
+
+As soon as Sylvia was dressed she went round to the Airdales'; everybody
+she met on the way inspired her with a longing to confide in him the
+portentousness of the day, and she found herself speculating whether
+several business men, who were hurrying to catch the nine-o'clock
+train, had possibly an intention of visiting the Pierian Hall that
+afternoon. She was extremely annoyed to find, when she reached the
+Airdales' house, that neither Jack nor Olive was up.
+
+"Do they know the time?" she demanded of the maid, in a scandalized
+voice. "Their clock must have stopped."
+
+"Oh no, miss, I don't think so. Breakfast is at ten, as usual. There's
+Mr. Airdale's dressing-room bell going now, miss. That 'll be for his
+shaving-water. Shall I say you're waiting to see him?"
+
+What a ridiculous time to begin shaving, Sylvia thought.
+
+"Yes, please," she added, aloud. "Or no, don't bother him; I'll come
+back at ten o'clock."
+
+Sylvia saw more of the streets of West Kensington in that hour than she
+had ever seen of them before, and decided that the neighborhood was
+impossible. Nothing so intolerably monotonous as these rows of stupid
+and meaningless houses had ever been designed. One after another of them
+blinked at her in the autumnal sunshine with a fatuous complacency that
+made her long to ring all the bells in the street. Presently she found
+herself by the play-fields of St. James's School, where the last boys
+were hurrying across the grass like belated ants. She looked at the
+golden clock in the school-buildings--half past nine. In five hours and
+a half she would be waiting for the curtain to go up; in seven hours and
+a half the audience would be wondering if it should have tea in Bond
+Street or cross Piccadilly and walk down St. James's Street to
+Rumpelmayer's. This problem of the audience began to worry Sylvia. She
+examined the alternatives with a really anxious gravity. If it went to
+Rumpelmayer's it would have to walk back to the Dover Street Tube, which
+would mean recrossing Piccadilly; on the other hand, it would be on the
+right side for the omnibuses. On the other hand, it would find
+Rumpelmayer's full, because other audiences would have arrived before
+it, invading the tea-shop from Pall Mall. Sylvia grew angry at the
+thought of these other audiences robbing her audience of its tea--her
+audience, some members of which would have read in the paper this
+morning:
+
+  PIERIAN HALL.
+
+       This afternoon at 3 p. m.
+
+          SYLVIA SCARLETT
+
+               IN
+
+         IMPROVISATIONS
+
+and would actually have paid, some of them, as much as seven shillings
+and sixpence to see Sylvia Scarlett. Seven hours and a half: seven
+shillings and sixpence: 7-1/2 plus 7-1/2 made fifteen. When she was
+fifteen she had met Arthur. Sylvia's mind rambled among the omens of
+numbers, and left her audience still undecided between Bond Street and
+Rumpelmayer's, left it upon the steps of the Pierian Hall, the sport of
+passing traffic, hungry, thirsty, homesick. In seven and a half hours
+she would know the answer to that breathless question asked a year ago
+in Vermont. To think that the exact spot on which she had stood when she
+asked was existing at this moment in Vermont! In seven and a half hours,
+no, in seven hours and twenty-five minutes; the hands were moving on. It
+was really terrible how little people regarded the flight of time; the
+very world might come to an end in seven hours and twenty-five minutes.
+
+"Have you seen Sylvia Scarlett yet?"
+
+"No, we intended to go yesterday, but there were no seats left. They say
+she's wonderful."
+
+"Oh, my dear, she's perfectly amazing! Of course it's something quite
+new. You really must go."
+
+"Who is she like?"
+
+"Oh, she's not like anybody else. I'm told she's half French."
+
+"Oh, really! How interesting."
+
+"Good morning! Have you used Pear's soap?"
+
+"V-vi-vin-vino-vinol-vinoli-vinolia."
+
+Sylvia pealed the Airdales' bell, and found Jack in the queer mixed
+costume which a person wears on the morning of an afternoon that will be
+celebrated by his best tail-coat.
+
+"My dear girl, you really mustn't get so excited," he protested, when he
+saw Sylvia's manner.
+
+"Oh, Jack, do you think I shall be a success?"
+
+"Of course you will. Now, do, for goodness' sake, drink a cup of coffee
+or something."
+
+Sylvia found that she was hungry enough to eat even an egg, which
+created a domestic crisis, because Sylvius and Rose quarreled over which
+of them was to have the top. Finally it was adjusted by awarding the top
+to Sylvius, but by allowing Rose to turn the empty egg upside down for
+the exquisite pleasure of watching Sylvia tap it with ostentatious
+greed, only to find that there was nothing inside, after all, an
+operation that Sylvius watched with critical jealousy and Rose saluted
+with ecstatic joy. Sylvia's disappointment was so beautifully violent
+that Sylvius regretted the material choice he had made, and wanted
+Sylvia to eat another egg, of which Rose might eat the top and he offer
+the empty shell; but it was too late, and Sylvius learned that often the
+shadow is better than the substance.
+
+It had been decided in the end that Jack should confine himself to the
+cares of general management, and Arthur was left without a rival. Sylvia
+had insisted that he should only sing old English folk-songs, a decision
+which he had challenged at first on the ground that he required the
+advertisement of more modern songs, and that Sylvia's choice was not
+going to help him.
+
+"You're not singing to help yourself," she had told him. "You're singing
+to help me."
+
+In addition to Arthur there was a girl whom Lucian Hope had discovered,
+a delicate creature with red hair, whose chief claim to employment was
+that she was starving, though incidentally she had a very sweet and pure
+soprano voice. Finally there was an Irish pianist whose technique and
+good humor were alike unassailable.
+
+Before the curtain went up, Sylvia could think of nothing but the
+improvisations that she ought to have invented instead of the ones that
+she had. It was a strain upon her common sense to prevent her from
+canceling the whole performance and returning its money to the audience.
+The more she contemplated what she was going to do the more she viewed
+the undertaking as a fraud upon the public. There had never been any
+_chicane_ like the _chicane_ she was presently going to commit. What was
+that noise? Who had given the signal to O'Hea? What in hell's name did
+he think he was doing at the piano? The sound of the music was like
+water running into one's bath while one was lying in bed--nothing could
+stop it from overflowing presently. Nothing could stop the curtain from
+rising. At what a pace he was playing that Debussy! He was showing off,
+the fool! A ridiculous joke came into her mind that she kept on
+repeating while the music flowed: "Many a minim makes a maxim. Many a
+minim makes a maxim." How cold it was in the dressing-room, and the
+music was getting quicker and quicker. There was a knock at the door. It
+was Arthur. How nice he looked with that red carnation in his
+buttonhole.
+
+"How nice you look, Arthur, in that buttonhole."
+
+The flower became tremendously important; it seemed to Sylvia that, if
+she could go on flattering the flower, O'Hea would somehow be kept at
+the piano.
+
+"Well, don't pull it to pieces," said Arthur, ruthfully. But it was too
+late; the petals were scattered on the floor like drops of blood.
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry! Come along back to my dressing-room. I'll give you
+another flower."
+
+"No, no; there isn't time now. Wait till you come off after your first
+set."
+
+Now it was seeming the most urgent thing in the world to find another
+flower for Arthur's buttonhole. At all cost the rise of that curtain
+must be delayed. But Arthur had brought her on the stage and the notes
+were racing toward the death of the piece. It was absurd of O'Hea to
+have chosen Debussy; the atmosphere required a ballade of Chopin, or,
+better still, Schumann's Noveletten. He could have played all the
+Noveletten. Oh dear, what a pity she had not thought of making that
+suggestion. The piano would have been scarcely half-way through by now.
+
+Suddenly there was silence. Then there followed the languid applause of
+an afternoon audience for an unimportant part of the program.
+
+"He's stopped," Sylvia exclaimed, in horror. "What _has_ happened?"
+
+She turned to Arthur in despair, but he had hurried off the stage.
+Lucian Hope's painted city seemed to press forward and stifle her; she
+moved down-stage to escape it. The curtain went up and she recoiled as
+from a chasm at her feet. Why on earth was O'Hea sitting in that idiotic
+attitude, as if he were going to listen to a sermon, looking down like
+that, with his right arm supporting his left elbow and his left hand
+propping up his chin? How hot the footlights were! She hoped nothing had
+happened, and looked round in alarm; but the fireman was standing quite
+calmly in the wings. Just as Sylvia was deciding that her voice could
+not possibly escape from her throat, which had closed upon it like a
+pair of pincers, the voice tore itself free and went traveling out
+toward that darkness in front, that nebulous darkness scattered with
+hands and faces and programs. Like Concetta in a great city, Sylvia was
+lost in that darkness; she _was_ Concetta. It seemed to her that the
+applause at the end was not so much approval of Concetta as a welcome to
+Mrs. Gainsborough; when isolated laughs and volleys of laughter came out
+of the darkness and were followed sometimes by the darkness itself
+laughing everywhere, so that O'Hea looked up very personally and winked
+at her, then Sylvia fell in love with her audience. The laughter
+increased, and suddenly she recognized at the end of each volley that
+Sylvius and Rose were supplementing its echoes with rapturous echoes of
+their own. She could not see them, but their gurgles in the darkness
+were like a song of nightingales to Sylvia. She ceased to be Mrs.
+Gainsborough, and began to say three or four of the poems. Then the
+curtain fell, and came up again, and fell, and came up again, and fell,
+and came up again.
+
+Jack was standing beside her and saying:
+
+"Splendid, splendid, splendid, splendid!"
+
+"Delighted, delighted, delighted, delighted!"
+
+"Very good audience! Splendid audience! Delighted audience! Success!
+Success! Success!"
+
+Really, how wonderfully O'Hea was playing, Sylvia thought, and how good
+that Debussy was!
+
+The rest of the performance was as much of a success as the beginning.
+Perhaps the audience liked best Mrs. Gowndry and the woman who smuggled
+lace from Belgium into France. Sylvius and Rose laughed so much at the
+audience's laughter at Mrs. Gowndry that Sylvius announced in the
+ensuing lull that he wanted to go somewhere, a desire which was
+naturally indorsed by Rose. The audience was much amused, because it
+supposed that Sylvius's wish was a tribute to the profession of Mrs.
+Gowndry's husband, and whatever faint doubts existed about the propriety
+of alluding in the Pierian Hall to a lavatory-attendant were dispersed.
+
+Sylvia forgot altogether about the audience's tea when the curtain fell
+finally. It was difficult to think about anything with so many smiling
+people pressing round her on the stage. Several old friends came and
+reminded her of their existence, but there was no one who had quite such
+a radiant smile as Arthur Lonsdale.
+
+"Lonnie! How nice of you to come!"
+
+"I say, topping, I mean. What? I say, that's a most extraordinary
+back-cloth you've got. What on earth is it supposed to be? It reminds me
+of what you feel like when you're driving a car through a strange town
+after meeting a man you haven't seen for some time and who's just found
+out a good brand of fizz at the hotel where he's staying. I was afraid
+you'd get bitten in the back before you'd finished. I say, Mrs. Gowndry
+was devilish good. Some of the other lads and lasses were a bit beyond
+me."
+
+"And how's business?"
+
+"Oh, very good. We've just put the neatest little ninety h. p.
+torpedo-body two-seater on the market. I'll tootle you down to Brighton
+in it one Sunday morning. Upon my word, you'll scarcely have time to
+wrap yourself up before you'll have to unwrap yourself to shake hands
+with dear old Harry Burnly coming out to welcome you from the
+Britannia."
+
+"Not married yet, Lonnie?"
+
+"No, not yet. Braced myself up to do it the other day, dived in, and was
+seized with cramp at the deep end. She offered to be a sister to me and
+I sank like a stone. My mother's making rather a nuisance of herself
+about it. She keeps producing girls out of her muff like a conjurer,
+whenever she comes to see me. And what girls! Heather mixture most of
+them, like Guggenheim's Twelfth of August. I shall come to it at last, I
+suppose. Mr. Arthur Lonsdale and his bride leaving St. Margaret's,
+Westminster, under an arch of spanners formed by grateful chauffeurs
+whom the brilliant and handsome young bride-groom has recommended to
+many titled readers of this paper. Well, so long, Sylvia; there's a
+delirious crowd of admirers waiting for you. Send me a line where you're
+living and we'll have a little dinner somewhere--"
+
+Sylvia's success was not quite so huge as in the first intoxication of
+her friends' enthusiasm she had begun to fancy. However, it was
+unmistakably a success, and she was able to give two recitals a week
+through the autumn, with certainly the prospect of a good music-hall
+engagement for the following spring, if she cared to accept it. Most of
+the critics discovered that she was not as good as Yvette Guilbert. In
+view of Yvette Guilbert's genius, of which they were much more firmly
+convinced now than they would have been when Yvette Guilbert first
+appeared, this struck them as a fairly safe comparison; moreover, it
+gave their readers an impression that they understood French, which
+enhanced the literary value of their criticism. To strengthen this
+belief most of them were inclined to think that the French poems were
+the best part of Miss Sylvia Scarlett's performance. One or two of the
+latter definitely recalled some of Yvette Guilbert's early work, no
+doubt by the number of words they had not understood, because somebody
+had crackled a program or had shuffled his feet or had coughed. As for
+the English character studies, or, as some of them carried away by
+reminiscences of Yvette Guilbert into oblivion of their own language
+preferred to call them, _études_, they had a certain distinction, and in
+many cases betrayed signs of an almost meticulous observation, though at
+the same time, like everybody else doing anything at the present moment
+except in France, they did not have as much distinction or
+meticulousness as the work of forerunners in England or contemporaries
+abroad. Still, that was not to say that the work of Miss Sylvia Scarlett
+was not highly promising and of the greatest possible interest. The
+_timbre_ of her voice was specially worthy of notice and justified the
+italics in which it was printed. Finally, two critics, who were probably
+sitting next to each other, found a misprint in the program, no doubt in
+searching for a translation of the poems.
+
+If Sylvia fancied a lack of appreciation in the critics, all her friends
+were positive that they were wonderful notices for a beginner.
+
+"Why, I think that's a splendid notice in the _Telegraph_," said Olive.
+"I found it almost at once. Why, one often has to read right through the
+paper before one can find the notice."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that the most self-inebriated egotist on earth
+ever read right through the _Daily Telegraph_? I don't believe it. He'd
+have been drowned like Narcissus."
+
+Arthur pressed for a decision about their marriage, now that Sylvia knew
+what she had so long wanted to know; but she was wrapped up in ideas for
+improving her performance and forbade Arthur to mention the subject
+until she raised it herself; for the present she was on with a new love
+twice a week. Indeed, they were fascinating to Sylvia, these audiences
+each with a definite personality of its own. She remembered how she had
+scoffed in old days at the slavish flattery of them by her fellow-actors
+and actresses; equally in the old days she had scoffed at love. She
+wished that she could feel toward Arthur as she felt now toward her
+audiences, which were as absorbing as children with their little
+clevernesses and precocities. The difference between what she was doing
+now and what she had done formerly when she sang French songs with an
+English accent was the difference between the realism of an old knotted
+towel that is a baby and an expensive doll that may be a baby but never
+ceases to be a doll. Formerly she had been a mechanical thing and had
+never given herself because she had possessed neither art nor truth, but
+merely craft and accuracy. She had thought that the personality was
+degraded by depending on the favor of an audience. All that old
+self-consciousness and false shame were gone. She and her audience
+communed through art as spirits may commune after death. In the
+absorption of studying the audience as a separate entity, Sylvia forgot
+that it was made up of men and women. When she knew that any friends of
+hers were in front, they always remained entirely separate in her mind
+from the audience. Gradually, however, as the autumn advanced, several
+people from long ago re-entered her life and she began to lose that
+feeling of seclusion from the world and to realize the gradual setting
+up of barriers to her complete liberty of action. The first of these
+visitants was Miss Ashley, who in her peacock-blue gown looked much as
+she had looked when Sylvia last saw her.
+
+"I could not resist coming round to tell you how greatly I enjoyed your
+performance," she said. "I've been so sorry that you never came to see
+me all these years."
+
+Sylvia felt embarrassed, because she dreaded presently an allusion to
+her marriage with Philip, but Miss Ashley was too wise.
+
+"How's Hornton House!" asked Sylvia, rather timidly. It was like
+inquiring after the near relation of an old friend who might have died.
+
+"Just the same. Miss Primer is still with me. Miss Hossack now has a
+school of her own. Miss Pinck became very ill with gouty rheumatism and
+had to retire. I won't ask you about yourself; you told me so much from
+the stage. Now that we've been able to meet again, won't you come and
+visit your old school sometime?"
+
+Sylvia hesitated.
+
+"Please," Miss Ashley insisted. "I'm not inviting you out of politeness.
+It would really give me pleasure. I have never ceased to think about you
+all these years. Well, I won't keep you, for I'm sure you must be tired.
+Do come. Tell me, Sylvia. I should so like to bring the girls one
+afternoon. What would be a good afternoon to come?"
+
+"You mean, when will there be nothing in the program that--"
+
+"We poor schoolmistresses," said Miss Ashley, with a whimsical look of
+deprecation.
+
+"Come on Saturday fortnight, and afterward I'll go back with you all to
+Hornton House. I'd love that."
+
+So it was arranged.
+
+On Wednesday of the following week it happened that there was a
+particularly appreciative audience, and Sylvia became so much enamoured
+of the laughter that she excelled herself. It was an afternoon of
+perfect accord, and she traced the source of it to a group somewhere in
+the middle of the stalls, too far back for her to recognize its
+composition. After the performance a pack of visiting-cards was brought
+to the door of her dressing-room. She read: "Mrs. Ian Campbell, Mrs.
+Ralph Dennison." Who on earth were they? "Mr. Leonard Worsley"--
+
+Sylvia flung open the door, and there they all were, Mr. and Mrs.
+Worsley, Gladys and Enid, two good-looking men in the background, two
+children in the foreground.
+
+"Gladys! Enid!"
+
+"Sylvia!"
+
+"Oh, Sylvia, you were priceless! Oh, we enjoyed ourselves no end! You
+don't know my husband. Ian, come and bow nicely to the pretty lady,"
+cried Gladys.
+
+"Sylvia, it was simply ripping. We laughed and laughed. Ralph, come and
+be introduced, and this is Stumpy, my boy," Enid cried, simultaneously.
+
+"Fancy, he's a grandfather," the daughters exclaimed, dragging Mr.
+Worsley forward. He looked younger than ever.
+
+"Hercules is at Oxford, or of course he'd have come, too. This is
+Proodles," said Gladys, pointing to the little girl.
+
+"Sylvia, why did you desert us like that?" Mrs. Worsley reproachfully
+asked. "When are you coming down to stay with us at Arbor End? Of course
+the children are married...." She broke off with half a sigh.
+
+"Oh, but we can all squash in," Gladys shouted.
+
+"Oh, rather," Enid agreed. "The kids can sleep in the coal-scuttles. We
+sha'n't notice any difference."
+
+"Dears, it's so wonderful to see you," Sylvia gasped. "But do tell me
+who you all are over again. I'm so muddled."
+
+"I'm Mrs. Ian Campbell," Gladys explained. "And this is Ian. And this is
+Proodles, and at home there's Groggles, who's too small for anything
+except pantomimes. And that's Mrs. Ralph Dennison, and that's Ralph,
+and that's Stumpy, and at home Enid's got a girlie called Barbara.
+Mother hates being a grandmother four times over, so she's called Aunt
+Victoria, and of course father's still one of the children. We've both
+been married seven years."
+
+Nothing had so much brought home to Sylvia the flight of time as this
+meeting with Gladys and Enid, who when she last saw them were only
+sixteen. It was incredible. And they had not forgotten her; in what
+seemed now a century they had not forgotten her! Sylvia told them about
+Miss Ashley's visit and suggested that they should come and join the
+party of girls from Hornton House. It would be fun, would it not? Miss
+Primer was still at the school.
+
+Gladys and Enid were delighted with the plan, and on the day fixed about
+twenty girls invaded Sylvia's dressing-room, shepherded by Miss Primer,
+who was still melting with tears for Rodrigo's death in the scene. Miss
+Ashley had brought the carriage to drive Sylvia back, but she insisted
+upon going in a motor-'bus with the others and was well rewarded by Miss
+Primer's ecstasies of apprehension. Sylvia wandered with Gladys and Enid
+down well-remembered corridors, in and out of bedrooms and class-rooms;
+she listened to resolutions to send Prudence and Barbara to Hornton
+House in a few years. For Sylvia it was almost too poignant, the thought
+of these families growing up all round her, while she, after so many
+years, was still really as much alone as she had always been. The
+company of all these girls with their slim black legs, their pigtails
+and fluffy hair tied back with big bows, the absurdly exaggerated speech
+and the enlaced loves of girlhood--the accumulation of it all was
+scarcely to be borne.
+
+When Sylvia visited Arbor End and talked once again to Mrs. Worsley,
+sitting at the foot of her bed, about the wonderful lives of that so
+closely self-contained family, the desolation of the future came visibly
+nearer; it seemed imperative at whatever cost to drive it back.
+
+Shortly before Christmas a card was brought round to Sylvia--"Mrs.
+Prescott-Merivale, Hardingham Hall, Hunts."
+
+"Who is it?" she asked her maid.
+
+"It's a lady, miss."
+
+"Well of course I didn't suppose a cassowary had sent up his card.
+What's she like?"
+
+The maid strove to think of some phrase that would describe the visitor,
+but she fell back hopelessly upon her original statement.
+
+"She's a lady, miss." Then, with a sudden radiancy lighting her eyes,
+she added, "And there's a little boy with her."
+
+"My entertainment seems to be turning into a children's treat," Sylvia
+muttered to herself. "_Sic itur ad astra._"
+
+"I beg your pardon, miss, did you say to show her in?"
+
+Sylvia nodded.
+
+Presently a tall young woman in the late twenties, with large and
+brilliant gray eyes, rose-flushed and deep in furs, came in, accompanied
+by an extraordinarily handsome boy of seven or eight.
+
+"How awfully good of you to let me waste a few minutes of your time,"
+she said, and as she spoke, Sylvia had a fleeting illusion that it was
+herself who was speaking, a sensation infinitely rapid, but yet
+sufficiently clear to make her ask herself the meaning of it, and to
+find in the stranger's hair the exact replica of her own. The swift
+illusion and the equally swift comparison were fled before she had
+finished inviting her visitor to sit down.
+
+"I must explain who I am. I've heard about you, oh, of course, publicly,
+but also from my brother."
+
+"Your brother?" repeated Sylvia.
+
+"Yes, Michael Fane."
+
+"He's not with you?"
+
+"No. I wish he had been. Alas! he's gone off to look for a friend who,
+by the way, I expect you know also. Maurice Avery? All sorts of horrid
+rumors about what had happened to him in Morocco were being brought back
+to us, so Michael went off last spring, and has been with him ever
+since."
+
+"But I thought he was a monk," Sylvia said.
+
+Mrs. Merivale laughed with what seemed rather like relief. "No, he's
+neither priest nor monk, thank goodness, though the prospect still hangs
+over us."
+
+"After all these years?" Sylvia asked, in astonishment.
+
+"Oh, my dear Miss Scarlett, don't forget the narrow way is also long.
+But I didn't come to talk to you about Michael. I simply most
+shamelessly availed myself of his having met you a long time ago to give
+myself an excuse for talking to you about your performance. Of course
+it's absolutely great. How lucky you are!"
+
+"Lucky?" Sylvia could not help glancing at the handsome boy beside her.
+
+"He's rather a lamb, isn't he?" Mrs. Merivale agreed. "But you started
+all sorts of old, forgotten, hidden-away, burned-out fancies of mine
+this afternoon, and--you see, I intended to be a professional pianist
+once, but I got married instead. Much better, really, because,
+unless--Oh, I don't know. Yes, I _am_ jealous of you. You've picked me
+up and put me down again where I was once. Now the conversation's backed
+into me, and I really do want to talk about you. Your performance is the
+kind about which one wonders why nobody ever did it before. That's the
+greatest compliment one can pay an artist, I think. All great art is the
+great expression of a great commonplace; that's why it always looks so
+easy. I do hope you're having the practical success you deserve."
+
+"Yes, I think I shall be all right," Sylvia said. "Only, I expect that
+after the New-Year I shall have to cut my show considerably and take a
+music-hall engagement. I'm not making a fortune at the Pierian."
+
+"How horrid for you! How I should love to play with you! Oh dear! It's
+heartrending to say it, but it's much too late. Well, I mustn't keep
+you. You've given me such tremendous pleasure and just as much pain with
+it as makes the pleasure all the sharper.... I'll write and tell Michael
+about you."
+
+"I expect he's forgotten my name by now," Sylvia said.
+
+"Oh no, he never forgets anybody, even in the throes of theological
+speculation. Good-by. I see that this is your last performance for the
+present. I shall come and hear you again when you reopen. How odious
+about music-halls. You ought to have called yourself Silvia Scarletti,
+told your press agent that you were the direct descendant of the
+composer, vowed that when you came to England six months ago you could
+speak nothing but Polish, and you could have filled the Pierian night
+and day for a year. We're queer people, we English. I think, you know,
+it's a kind of shyness, the way we treat native artists. You get the
+same thing in families. It's not really that the prophet has no honor,
+etc.; it really is, I believe, a fear of boasting, which would be such
+bad form, wouldn't it? Of course we've ruined ourselves as a nation by
+our good manners and our sense of humor. Why, we've even insisted that
+what native artists we do support shall be gentlemen first and artists
+second. In what other country could an actor be knighted for his
+trousers or an author for his wife's dowry? Good-by. I do wish you
+great, great success."
+
+"Anyway, I can't be knighted," Sylvia laughed.
+
+"Oh, don't be too sure. A nation that has managed to turn its artists
+into gentlemen will soon insist on turning its women into gentlemen,
+too, or at any rate on securing their good manners in some way."
+
+"Women will never really have good manners," Sylvia said.
+
+"No, thank God. There you're right. Well, good-by. It's been so jolly to
+talk to you, and again I've loved every moment of this afternoon.
+Charles," she added to the handsome boy, "after bragging about your
+country's good manners, let's see you make a decent bow."
+
+He inclined his head with a grave courtesy, opened the door for his
+mother, and followed her out.
+
+The visit of Michael's sister, notwithstanding that she had envied
+Sylvia's luck, left her with very little opinion of it herself. What was
+her success, after all? A temporary elation dependent upon good health
+and the public taste, financially uncertain, emotionally wearing,
+radically unsatisfying and insecure, for, however good her performance
+was, it was always mummery, really, as near as mummery could get to
+creative work, perhaps, but mortal like its maker.
+
+"Sad to think this is the last performance here," said her maid.
+
+Sylvia agreed with her. It was a relief to find a peg on which to hang
+the unreasonable depression that was weighing her down. She passed out
+of her dressing-room. As the stage door swung to behind her a figure
+stepped into the lamplight of the narrow court; it was Jimmy Monkley.
+The spruceness had left him; all the color, too, had gone from his face,
+which was now sickly white--an evil face with its sandy mustache
+streaked with gray and its lusterless green eyes. Sylvia was afraid that
+from the way she started back from him he would think that she scorned
+him for having been in prison, and with an effort she tried to be
+cordial.
+
+"You've done damned well for yourself," he said, paying no attention to
+what she was saying. She found this meeting overwhelmingly repulsive and
+moved toward her taxi. It was seeming to her that Monkley had the power
+to snatch her away and plunge her back into that life of theirs. She
+would really rather have met Philip than him.
+
+"Damned well for yourself," he repeated.
+
+"I'm sorry I can't stay. I'm in a hurry. I'm in a hurry."
+
+She reached the taxi and slammed the door in his face.
+
+This unexpected meeting convinced Sylvia of the necessity of attaching
+herself finally to a life that would make the resurrection of a Monkley
+nothing more influential than a nightmare. She knew that she was giving
+way to purely nervous fears in being thus affected by what, had she
+stopped to think, was the natural result of her name's becoming known.
+But the liability to nervous fears was in itself an argument that
+something was wrong. When had she ever been a prey to such hysteria
+before? When had she allowed herself to be haunted by a face, as now she
+was being haunted by Monkley's face? Suppose he had seated himself
+behind the taxi and that when she reached the Airdales' house he should
+once more be standing on the pavement in the lamplight?
+
+In Brompton Road Sylvia told the driver to stop. She wanted to do some
+Christmas shopping. After an hour or more spent among toys she came out
+with a porter loaded with packages, and looked round her quickly; but of
+course he was not upon the pavement. How absurd she had been! In any
+case, what could Monkley do? She would forget all about him. To-morrow
+was Christmas Eve. There was going to be such a jolly party at the
+Airdales'. The taxi hummed toward West Kensington. Sylvia leaned back,
+huddled up with her thoughts, until they reached Lillie Road. She had
+passed Mrs. Meares's house so many times without giving it a second
+look. Now she found herself peering out into the thickening fog in case
+Monkley should be standing upon the door-step. She was glad when she
+reached the Airdales' house, warm and bright, festooned with holly and
+mistletoe. There were pleasant little household noises everywhere,
+comfortable little noises, and a rosy glow from the silken shades of the
+lamps; the carpet was so quiet and the parlor-maid in a clean cap and
+apron so efficient, so quick to get in all the parcels and shut out the
+foggy night.
+
+Olive was already in the drawing-room, and because this was to be a
+specially unceremonious evening in preparation for the party to-morrow,
+Olive was in a pink tea-gown that blended with the prettiness of her
+cozy house and made her more essentially a part of it all. How bleak was
+her own background in comparison with this, Sylvia thought. Jack was
+dining out most unwillingly and had left a great many pleas to be
+forgiven by Sylvia on the first night of her Christmas visit. After
+dinner they sat in the drawing-room, and Sylvia told Olive about her
+meeting with Monkley. She said nothing about Michael Fane's sister; that
+meeting did not seem to have any bearing upon the subject she wanted to
+discuss.
+
+"Can you understand," Sylvia asked, "being almost frightened into
+marriage?"
+
+"Yes, I think so," Olive replied, as judicially as the comfort of her
+surroundings would allow. It was impossible to preserve a critical
+attitude in this room; in such a suave and genial atmosphere one
+accepted anything.
+
+"Well, do you still object to my marrying Arthur?" Sylvia demanded.
+
+"But, my dear, I never objected to your marrying him. I may have
+suggested, when I first saw him, that he seemed rather too much the type
+of the ordinary actor for you, but that was only because you yourself
+had always scoffed at actors so haughtily. Since I've known him I've
+grown to like him. Please don't think I ever objected to your marrying
+him. I never felt more sure about anybody's knowing her own mind than I
+do about you."
+
+"Well, I am going to marry him," Sylvia said.
+
+"Darling Sylvia, why do you say it so defiantly? Everybody will be
+delighted. Jack was talking only the other day about his perpetual dread
+that you'd never give yourself a chance of establishing your position
+finally, because you were so restless."
+
+Sylvia contemplated an admission to Olive of having lived with Arthur
+for a year in America, but in this room the fact had an ugly look and
+seemed to belong rather to that evil face of the past that had
+confronted her with such ill omen this evening, rather than to anything
+so homely as marriage.
+
+"Arthur may not be anything more than an actor," she went on. "But in my
+profession what else do I want? He has loved me for a long time; I'm
+very fond of him. It's essential that I should have a background so that
+I shall never be shaken out of my self-possession by anything like this
+evening's encounter. I've lived a life of feverish energy, and it's only
+since the improvisations that I can begin to believe it wasn't all
+wasted. I made a great mistake when I was seventeen, and when I was
+nineteen I tried to repair it with a still greater mistake. Then came
+Lily; she was a mistake. Oh, when I look back at it all, it's nothing
+but mistake after mistake. I long for such funny ordinary little
+pleasures. Olive darling, I've tried, I've tried to think I can do
+without love, without children, without family, without friends. I
+can't."
+
+The tears were running swiftly, and all the time more swiftly, down
+Sylvia's cheeks while she was speaking. Olive jumped up from her soft
+and quilted chair and knelt beside her friend.
+
+"My darling Sylvia, you have friends, you have, indeed you have."
+
+"I know," Sylvia went on. "It's ungrateful of me. Why, if it hadn't been
+for you and Jack I should have gone mad. But just because you're so
+happy together, and because you have Sylvius and Rose, and because I
+flit about on the outskirts of it all like a timid, friendly, solitary
+ghost, I must have some one to love me. I've really treated Arthur very
+badly. I've kept him waiting now for a year. I wasn't brave enough to
+let him go, and I wasn't brave enough to marry him. I've never been
+undecided in my life. It must be that the gipsy in me has gone forever,
+I think. This success of mine has been leading all the time to settling
+down properly. Most of the people who came back to me out of the past
+were the nice people, like my old mistress and the grown-up twins, and I
+want to be like them. Oh, Olive, I'm so tired of being different, of
+people thinking that I'm hard and brutal and cynical. I'm not. Indeed
+I'm not. I couldn't have felt that truly appalling horror of Monkley
+this evening if I were really bad."
+
+"Sylvia dear, you're working yourself up needlessly. How can you say
+that you're bad? How can you say such things about yourself? You're not
+religious, perhaps."
+
+"Listen, Olive, if I marry Arthur I swear I'll make it a success. You
+know that I have a strong will. I'm not going to criticize him. I'm
+simply determined to make him and myself happy. It's very easy to love
+him, really. He's like a boy--very weak, you know--but with all sorts of
+charming qualities, and his mother would be so glad if it were all
+settled. Olive, I meant to tell you a whole heap of things about myself,
+about what I've done, but I won't. I'm going to forget it all and be
+happy. I'm glad it's Christmas-time. I've bought such ripping things for
+the kids. When I was buying them to-night there came into my head almost
+my first adventure when I was a very little girl and thought I'd found a
+ten-franc piece which was really the money I'd been given for the
+marketing. I had just such an orgy of buying to-night. Did you know that
+a giraffe could make a noise? Well, it can, or at any rate the giraffe I
+bought for Sylvius can. You twist its neck and it protests like a
+bronchial calf."
+
+The party on Christmas Eve was a great success. Lucian Hope burnt a hole
+in the table-cloth with what was called a drawing-room firework. Jack
+split his coat trying to hide inside his bureau. Arthur, sitting on a
+bottle with his legs crossed, lit a candle, twice running. The little
+red-haired singer found the ring in the pudding. Sylvia found the
+sixpence. Nobody found the button, so it must have been swallowed. It
+was a splendid party. Sylvius and Rose did not begin to cry steadily
+until after ten o'clock.
+
+When the guests were getting ready to leave, about two o'clock on
+Christmas morning, and while Lucian Hope was telling everybody in turn
+that somebody must have swallowed the button inadvertently, to prove
+that he was quite able to pronounce "inadvertently," Sylvia took Arthur
+down the front-door steps and walked with him a little way along the
+foggy street.
+
+"Arthur, I'll marry you when you like," she said, laying a hand upon his
+arm.
+
+"Sylvia, what a wonderful Christmas present!"
+
+"To us both," she whispered.
+
+Then on an impulse she dragged him back to the house and proclaimed
+their engagement, which meant the opening of new bottles of champagne
+and the drinking of so many healths that it was three o'clock before the
+party broke up. Nor was there any likelihood of anybody's being able to
+say "inadvertently" by the time he had reached the corner of the street.
+
+Arthur had begged Sylvia to come down to Dulwich on Christmas day, and
+Mrs. Madden rejoiced over the decision they had reached at last. There
+were one or two things to be considered, the most important of which was
+the question of money. Sylvia had spent the last penny of what was left
+of Morera's money in launching herself, and she owed nearly two hundred
+pounds besides. Arthur had saved nothing. Both of them, however, had
+been offered good engagements for the spring, Arthur to tour as lead in
+one of the Vanity productions, which might mean an engagement at the
+Vanity itself in the autumn; Sylvia to play a twenty minutes' turn at
+all the music-halls of a big circuit. It seemed unsatisfactory to marry
+and immediately afterward to separate, and they decided each to take the
+work that had been offered, to save all the money possible, and to aim
+at both playing in London next autumn, but in any case to be married in
+early June when the tours would end. They should then have a couple of
+months to themselves. Mrs. Madden wanted them to be married at once; but
+the other way seemed more prudent, and Sylvia, having once made up her
+mind, was determined to be practical and not to run the risk of spoiling
+by financial worries the beginning of their real life together. Her
+marriage in its orderliness and forethought and simplicity of intention
+was to compensate for everything that had gone before. Mrs. Madden
+thought they were both of them being too deliberate, but then she had
+run away once with her father's groom and must have had a fundamentally
+impulsive, even a reckless temperament.
+
+The engagement was announced with an eye to the most advantageous
+publicity that is the privilege of being servants of the public. One was
+able to read everywhere of a theatrical romance or more coldly of a
+forthcoming theatrical marriage; nearly all the illustrated weeklies had
+two little oval photographs underneath which ran the legend:
+
+                        INTERESTING ENGAGEMENT
+
+     We learn that Miss Sylvia Scarlett, who recently registered such an
+     emphatic success in her original entertainment at the Pierian Hall,
+     will shortly wed Mr. Arthur Madden, whom many of our readers will
+     remember for his rendering of "Somebody is sitting in the sunset"
+     at the Frivolity Theater.
+
+In one particularly intimate paper was a short interview headed:
+
+                      ACTRESS'S DELIGHTFUL CANDOR
+
+     "No," said Miss Scarlett to our representative who had called upon
+     the clever and original young performer to ascertain when her
+     marriage with Mr. Arthur Madden of "Somebody is sitting in the
+     sunset" fame would take place. "No, Arthur and I have decided to
+     wait till June. Frankly, we can't afford to be married yet...."
+
+and so on, with what was described as a portrait of Miss Sylvia Scarlet
+inset, but which without the avowal would probably have been taken for
+the thumbprint of a paperboy.
+
+"This is all terribly vulgar," Sylvia bewailed, but Jack, Arthur, and
+Olive were all firm in the need for thorough advertisement, and she
+acquiesced woefully. In January she and Arthur parted for their
+respective tours. Jack, before she went away, begged Sylvia for the
+fiftieth time to take back the money she had settled on her godchildren.
+He argued with her until she got angry.
+
+"Jack, if you mention that again I'll never come to your house any
+more. One of the most exquisite joys in all my life was when I was able
+to do that, and when you and Olive were sweet enough to let me, for you
+really were sweet and simple in those days and not purse-proud
+_bourgeois_, as you are now. Please, Jack!" She had tears in her eyes.
+"Don't be unkind."
+
+"But supposing you have children of your own?" he urged.
+
+"Jack, don't go on. It really upsets me. I cannot bear the idea of that
+money's belonging to anybody but the twins."
+
+"Did you tell Arthur?"
+
+"It's nothing to do with Arthur. It's only to do with me. It was my
+present. It was made before Arthur came on the scene."
+
+With great unwillingness Jack obeyed her command not to say anything
+more on the subject.
+
+Sylvia earned a good enough salary to pay off nearly all her debts by
+May, when her tour brought her to the suburban music-halls and she was
+able to amuse herself by house-hunting for herself and Arthur. All her
+friends, and not the least old ones like Gladys and Enid, took a
+profound interest in her approaching marriage. Wedding-presents even
+began to arrive. The most remarkable omen of the gods' pleasure was a
+communication she received in mid-May from Miss Dashwood's solicitors to
+say that Miss Dashwood had died and had left to Sylvia in her will the
+freehold of Mulberry Cottage with all it contained. Olive was enraptured
+with her good fortune, and wanted to telegraph to Arthur, who was in
+Leeds that week; but Sylvia said she would rather write:
+
+     DEAREST ARTHUR,--You remember my telling you about Mulberry
+     Cottage? Well, the most wonderful thing has happened. That old
+     darling, Miss Dashwood, the sister of Mrs. Gainsborough's captain,
+     has left it to me with everything in it. It has of course for me
+     all sorts of memories, and I want to tell you very seriously that I
+     regard it as a sign, yes, really a sign of my wanderings and
+     restlessness being forever finished. It seems to me somehow to
+     consecrate our marriage. Don't think I'm turning religious: I shall
+     never do that. Oh no, never! But I can't help being moved by what
+     to you may seem only a coincidence. Arthur, you must forgive me for
+     the way in which I've often treated you. You mustn't think that
+     because I've always bullied you in the past I'm always going to in
+     the future. If you want me now, I'm yours _really_, much more than
+     I ever was in America, much, much more. You _shall_ be happy with
+     me. Oh, it's such a dear house with a big garden, for London a very
+     big garden, and it held once two such true hearts. Do you see the
+     foolish tears smudging the ink? They're my tears for so much. I'm
+     going to-morrow morning to dust our house. Think of me when you get
+     this letter as really at last
+
+     Your
+
+     SYLVIA.
+
+The next morning arrived a letter from Leeds, which had crossed hers:
+
+     MY DEAR SYLVIA,--I don't know how to tell you what I must tell. I
+     was married this morning to Maimie Vernon. I don't know how I let
+     myself fall in love with her. I never looked at her when she sang
+     at the Pierian with you. But she got an engagement in this company
+     and--well, you know the way things happen on tour. The only thing
+     that makes me feel not an absolutely hopeless cad is that I've a
+     feeling somehow that you were going to marry me more out of
+     kindness and pity than out of love.
+
+     Forgive me.
+
+     ARTHUR.
+
+"That funny little red-haired girl!" Sylvia gasped. Then like a surging
+wave the affront to her pride overwhelmed her. With an effort she looked
+at her other letters. One was from Michael Fane's sister:
+
+     HARDINGHAM HALL, HUNTS, _May, 1914_.
+
+     DEAR MISS SCARLETT,--My brother is back in England and so anxious
+     to meet you again. I know you're playing near town at present.
+     Couldn't you possibly come down next Sunday morning and stay till
+     Monday? It would give us the greatest pleasure.
+
+     Yours sincerely,
+
+     STELLA PRESCOTT-MERIVALE.
+
+"Never," Sylvia cried, tearing the letter into small pieces. "Ah no!
+That, never, never!"
+
+She left her rooms, and went to Mulberry Cottage. The caretaker
+fluttered round her to show her sense of Sylvia's importance as her new
+mistress. Was there nothing that she could do? Was there nothing that
+she could get?
+
+Sylvia sat on the seat under the mulberry-tree in the still morning
+sunlight of May. It was impossible to think, impossible to plan,
+impossible, impossible. The ideas in her brain went slowly round and
+round. Nothing would stop them. Round and round they went, getting every
+moment more mixed up with one another. But gradually from the confusion
+one idea emerged, sharp, strong, insistent--she must leave England. The
+moment this idea had stated itself, Sylvia could think of nothing but
+the swiftness and secrecy of her departure. She felt that if one person
+should ever fling a glance of sympathy or condolence or pity or even of
+mild affection, she should kill herself to set free her outraged soul.
+She made no plans for the future. She had no reproaches for Arthur. She
+had nothing but the urgency of flight as from the Furies themselves.
+Quickly she went back to her rooms and packed. All her big luggage she
+took to Mulberry Cottage and placed with the caretaker. She sent a sum
+of money to the solicitors and asked them to pay the woman until she
+came back.
+
+At the last moment, in searching through her trunks, she found the
+yellow shawl that was wrapped round her few treasures of ancestry. She
+was going to leave it behind, but on second thought she packed it in the
+only trunk she took with her. She was going back perhaps to the life of
+which these treasures were the only solid pledge.
+
+"This time, yes, I'm off with the raggle-taggle gipsies in deadly
+earnest. Charing Cross," she told the taxi-driver.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early Life and Adventures of
+Sylvia Scarlett, by Compton Mackenzie
+
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+  The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Early Life and Adventures of
+Sylvia Scarlett, by Compton Mackenzie.
+</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia
+Scarlett, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+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 Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett
+
+Author: Compton Mackenzie
+
+Release Date: April 24, 2012 [EBook #39527]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SYLVIA SCARLETT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
+
+
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+
+
+</pre>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="359" height="550" alt="image of the book&#39;s cover" title="image of the book&#39;s cover" />
+</p>
+
+<div class="vr"><p class="nind"><b>SYLVIA
+<br />
+SCARLETT<br />
+==========</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="c">B<small>OOKS BY</small><br />
+COMPTON MACKENZIE<br />
+<small>SYLVIA SCARLETT<br />
+PLASHERS MEAD</small><br />
+&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+HARPER &amp; BROTHERS, NEW YORK<br />
+[ESTABLISHED 1817]</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1><small>THE EARLY LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF</small><br />
+SYLVIA SCARLETT</h1>
+
+<p class="ccb">By COMPTON MACKENZIE <img src="images/colophon_2.png"
+alt=""
+width="50"
+height="12"
+/><br /><br />
+<small>Author of &ldquo;PLASHERS MEAD&rdquo; &ldquo;SINISTER STREET&rdquo; &ldquo;CARNIVAL&rdquo; ETC.</small></p>
+
+<hr />
+<hr class="mac" />
+
+<p class="figcenter2">
+<img src="images/colophon.png" width="150"
+height="133" alt="colophon" title="colophon" />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="mac" />
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cb">HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br />
+NEW YORK AND LONDON</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="c"><small>SYLVIA SCARLETT<br />
+Copyright, 1918, by Harper &amp; Brothers<br />
+Printed in the United States of
+America</small></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table border="3" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td><a href="#PRELUDE"><b>PRELUDE, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER: I,</b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>II, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>III, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>IV, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>V, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>VI, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>VII, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>VIII, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>IX, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>X, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>XI, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>XII, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>XIII, </b></a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>XIV</b></a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<h2><a name="PRELUDE" id="PRELUDE"></a>PRELUDE</h2>
+
+<h2><a name="Prelude" id="Prelude"></a><b><i>Prelude</i></b></h2>
+
+<p>A<small>T</small> six o&rsquo;clock on the morning of Ash Wednesday in the year 1847, the
+Honorable Charles Cunningham sat sipping his coffee in the restaurant of
+the Vendanges de Bourgogne. He was somewhat fatigued by the exertions
+that as &ldquo;lion&rdquo; of the moment he had felt bound to make, exertions that
+had included a display of English eccentricity and had culminated in a
+cotillion at a noble house in the Faubourg St.-Germain, the daughter of
+which had been assigned to him by Parisian gossip as his future wife.
+Marriage, however, did not present itself to his contemplation as an
+urgent duty; and he sipped his coffee, reassured by the example of his
+brother Saxby, who, with the responsibility of a family succession,
+remained a bachelor. In any case, the notion of marrying a French girl
+was preposterous; he was not to be flattered into an unsuitable alliance
+by compliments upon his French. Certainly he spoke French uncommonly
+well, devilishly well for an Englishman, he told himself; and he stroked
+his whiskers in complacent meditation.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Cunningham had arrived at the Vendanges de Bourgogne to watch
+that rowdy climax of Carnival, the <i>descente de la Courtille</i>. And now
+through the raw air they were coming down from Belleville, all sorts of
+revelers in masks and motley and rags. The noise of tin trumpets and toy
+drums, of catcalls and cocoricots, of laughter and cheers and whistling,
+came nearer. Presently the road outside was thronged for the aristocrats
+of the Faubourg St.-Germain to alight from their carriages and mix with
+the mob. This was the traditional climax of Carnival for Parisian
+society: every year they drove here on Ash Wednesday morning to get
+themselves banged on the head by bladders, to be spurted with cheap
+scent and pelted with sugar-plums, and to retaliate by flinging down
+hot louis for the painful enrichment of the masses. The noise was for a
+time deafening; but gradually the cold light of morning and the
+melancholy Lenten bells cast a gloom upon the crowd, which passed on
+toward the boulevards, diminishing in sound and size at every street
+corner.</p>
+
+<p>The tall, fair Englishman let himself be carried along by the exodus,
+thinking idly what excitable folk foreigners were, but conscious,
+nevertheless, of a warmth of intimacy that was not at all disagreeable,
+the kind of intimacy that is bestowed on a man by taking a pack of
+friendly dogs for a country walk. Suddenly he was aware of a small hand
+upon his sleeve, a small hand that lay there like a white butterfly;
+and, looking down, he saw a poke-bonnet garlanded with yellow rosebuds.
+The poke-bonnet was all he could see, for the wearer kept her gaze
+steadily on the road, while with little feet she mimicked his long
+strides. The ineffable lightness of the arm laid on his own, the joyous
+mockery of her footsteps, the sense of an exquisite smile beneath the
+poke-bonnet, and the airy tremor of invitation that fluttered from the
+golden shawl of Siamese crêpe about her shoulders tempted him to
+withdraw from the crowd at the first opportunity. Soon they were in a
+by-street, whence the clamor of Carnival slowly died away, leaving no
+sound upon the morning air but their footfalls and the faint whisper of
+her petticoats where she tripped along beside him.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the poke-bonnet was raised; Charles Cunningham beheld his
+companion&rsquo;s face, a perfect oval, set with eyes of deepest brown,
+demurely passionate, eyes that in this empty street were all for him. He
+had never considered himself a romantic young man; when this encounter
+had faded to a mere flush upon the dreamy sky of the past, he was always
+a little scornful of his first remark, and apt to wonder how the deuce
+he ever came to make it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By Jove! <i>vous savez, vous êtes tout à fait comme un oiseau!</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Eh, alors?</i>&rdquo; she murmured, in a tone that was neither defiance nor
+archness nor indifference nor invitation, but something that was
+compounded of all four and expressed exactly herself. &ldquo;<i>Eh, alors?</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Votre nid est loin d&rsquo;ici?&rdquo;</i> he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did he blush for the guise of his speech at the time: afterward it
+struck him as most indecorously poetic.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Viens donc,&rdquo;</i> she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Comment appelez-vous?&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Moi, je suis Adèle.</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Adèle quoi?</i>&rdquo; he pressed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Mais Adèle alors, tout simplement ça.</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>C&rsquo;est un peu&mdash;vous savez&mdash;un peu.</i>&rdquo; He made a sweep with his
+unoccupied arm to indicate the vagueness of it all.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I love you,&rdquo; she trilled; deep down in her ivory throat emotion caught
+the trill and made of it a melody that set his heart beating.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Vraiment?</i>&rdquo; he asked, very solemnly; then laying syllable upon
+syllable in a kind of amazed deliberation, as a child builds a tower of
+bricks, he began to talk to her in French.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Mais, comme tu parles bien,</i>&rdquo; she told him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Tu m&rsquo;inspires,</i>&rdquo; he murmured, hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward, when he looked back at the adventure, he awarded this remark
+the prize for folly.</p>
+
+<p>The adventure did not have a long life; a week later Charles Cunningham
+was called back to England by the news of his brother&rsquo;s illness. Before
+Lent was out he had become the Earl of Saxby, who really had to think
+seriously of marriage and treat it with more respect than the Parisian
+gossip over which Charles Cunningham had idly mused at six o&rsquo;clock of
+Ash Wednesday morning in the year 1847. As for Adèle, she met in May the
+owner of a traveling-booth, a widower called Bassompierre with a small
+son, who had enough of the gipsy to attract the irresponsible Adèle and
+enough of the bourgeois to induce her to marry him for the sake of a
+secure and solid future. She need not have troubled about her future,
+the deep-voiced Adèle; for just when November darkens to December she
+died in giving birth to Juliette. The gipsy in Albert Bassompierre
+accepted as his own daughter Juliette; the bourgeois in him erected a
+cross in the cemetery and put a wreath of immortelles in a glass case to
+lie on Adèle&rsquo;s tomb. Then he locked away the few pieces of jewelry that
+life had brought her, hung another daguerreotype beside the one of his
+first wife, and wrapped Juliette in a golden shawl of Siamese crêpe.
+Lightly the two daguerreotypes swung to and fro; and lightly rocked the
+cradle where the baby Juliette lay sleeping, while the caravan jolted
+southward along the straight French roads where the poplars seemed to be
+commenting to one another in the wind.</p>
+
+<p>For eighteen years the caravan jolted along these roads, until young
+Edouard Bassompierre was old enough to play leading man throughout the
+repertory and thereby most abruptly plunge his predecessor into old age.
+At the same time Juliette was allowed to act the soubrettes; her father
+was too much afraid of the leading lady to play any tricks of suddenly
+imposed senility with her. It was, on the whole, a jolly life, this
+vagrancy from fair to fair of all the towns of France. It was jolly,
+when the performance was done, to gather in the tent behind the stage
+and eat chipped potatoes and drink red wine with all the queer people
+whose voices were hoarse with crying their wares all the day long.</p>
+
+<p>Then came, one springtime, the fair at Compiègne. Business was splendid,
+for the Emperor was there to hunt the wild boar in the forest. Never had
+old Albert Bassompierre beaten his big drum so confidently at the
+entrance of his booth; never had Edouard captured so many young women&rsquo;s
+hearts; both of them were too much occupied with their own triumphs to
+notice the young officer who came every night to the play. The Emperor
+left Compiègne in April; when he departed, the young officer departed
+also, accompanied by Juliette.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Ah, la vache,</i>&rdquo; cried old Bassompierre; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s perhaps as well her
+mother didn&rsquo;t live, for she might have done the same.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You should have let her play the lead,&rdquo; said Edouard.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She can play lead in real life,&rdquo; replied old Bassompierre. &ldquo;If she
+can,&rdquo; he added, fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>But when Juliette wrote to him from Paris and told him how happy she was
+with her lover, the gipsy in Bassompierre drove out the bourgeois, and
+he sent his daughter her mother&rsquo;s jewelry and the golden shawl; but he
+kept the daguerreotype, for, after all, Juliette was not really his
+daughter and Adèle had really been his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Three years passed. Juliette lived in a little house at Belleville with
+two baby girls called Elène and Henriette. When in after years she
+looked back to this time it seemed to her smothered in roses, the roses
+of an operatic scene. Everything, indeed, in retrospect was like
+that&mdash;the arrival of her lover in his gay uniform, the embowered kisses,
+the lights of Paris far below, the suppers on the veranda, the warm
+Sunday mornings, the two babies asleep on the lawn and their father
+watching them, herself before a glass and her lover&rsquo;s face seen over her
+shoulder, the sudden sharp embrace; all were heavy with the intolerable
+sense of a curtain that must fall. Then came the war; there was a
+hurried move down to stuffy apartments in Paris; ready money hastily got
+together by the young officer, who spoke confidently of the large sum it
+was, since, after all, the war would be over in a month and the
+Prussians have had their lesson; and at last a breathless kiss. The
+crowds surged cheering through the streets, the two babies screamed
+disapproval of their new surroundings, and</p>
+
+<p>Juliette&rsquo;s lover was killed in the first battle; he had only time to
+scribble a few trembling lines:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Mon adorée, je t&rsquo;ai flanqué un mauvais coup. Pardonnez-moi. Mes
+dernières pensées sont pour toi. Adieu. Deux gros bécots aux bébés.
+J&rsquo;ai parlé pour toi à mon père. Cherche argent&mdash;je t&rsquo;embrasse
+follement follem&mdash;&mdash; </i></p></div>
+
+<p>Yet when she received this letter, some impulse kept her from going to
+her lover&rsquo;s father. She could not bear the possibility of being made to
+realize that those debonair years of love were regarded by him as an
+intrigue to be solved by money. If André&rsquo;s mother had been alive, she
+might have felt differently; now she would not trouble a stricken family
+that might regard her tears as false; she would not even try to return
+to her own father. No doubt he would welcome her; but pride, all the
+strange and terrible pride that was henceforth to haunt Juliette&rsquo;s soul,
+forbade her.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible, however, to remain in Paris; and without any reason
+for her choice she took her babies to Lyon and settled down in rooms
+overlooking the Rhône, to await the end of the war. When she had paid
+the cost of the journey and bought herself the necessary mourning, she
+found she had nearly eleven thousand francs left; with care this could
+surely be made to last three years at least; in three years much might
+happen. As a matter of fact, much happened almost at once; for the
+beauty of Juliette, a lustrous and imperial beauty, caught the fancy of
+Gustave Lataille, who was conductor of the orchestra at one of the
+smaller theaters in Lyon. To snare his fancy might not have been enough;
+but when with her dowry she captured also his imagination, he married
+her. Juliette did not consider it wrong to marry this somber, withered,
+and uncommunicative man of forty, for whom she had neither passion nor
+affection. He struck her as essentially like most of the husbands she
+had observed hitherto; and she esteemed herself lucky not to have met
+such a one before she had been granted the boon of love. She must have
+inherited from that unknown father her domestic qualities; she certainly
+acquired none from Adèle. From him, too, may have come that pride which,
+however it may have found its chief expression in ideals of bourgeois
+respectability, was nevertheless a fine fiery virtue and supported her
+spirit to the very last.</p>
+
+<p>Juliette and Lataille lived together without anything to color a drab
+existence. Notwithstanding his connection with the theater, Lataille had
+no bohemian tastes; once when his wife suggested, after a visit from her
+father, that there seemed no reason why she should not apply for an
+engagement to act, he unhesitatingly refused his permission; when she
+attempted to argue, he reminded her that he had given his name to Elène
+and Henriette, and she was silent. Henceforth she devoted herself to
+sewing, and brought into the world four girls in successive
+years&mdash;Françoise, Marie, Marguerite, and Valentine. The last was born in
+1875, soon after the Latailles had moved to Lille, where Gustave had
+secured the post of conductor at the principal theater. Juliette
+welcomed the change, for it gave her the small house of her own which
+she had long wanted; moreover, nobody in Lille knew at first hand of the
+circumstances in which Gustave had married her, so that Elène and
+Henrietta could go to school without being teased about their mother&rsquo;s
+early lapse from the standards of conduct which she fervently desired
+they would adopt.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, the conductor had only enjoyed his advancement a year
+when he was struck down by a paralytic stroke. With six small children
+and a palsied husband upon her hands, Juliette had to find work. Partly
+from compassion for her ill-fortune, but chiefly because by now she was
+a most capable seamstress, the management of the theater engaged her as
+wardrobe mistress; and for five years Juliette sustained her husband,
+her children, and her house. They were years that would have rubbed the
+bloom from most women; but Juliette&rsquo;s beauty seemed to grow rather than
+diminish. Her personality became proverbial in the town of Lille, and
+though as wardroom mistress she was denied the public triumph of the
+footlights, she had nevertheless a fame of her own that was considered
+unique in the history of her profession. Her pride flourished on the
+deference that was shown her even by the management; between her beauty
+and her sharp tongue she achieved an authority that reached its height
+in the way she brought up her children. Their snowy pinafores, their
+trim stockings, their manners, and their looks were the admiration of
+the <i>quartier</i>; and when in the year 1881 Gustave Lataille died, the
+neatness of their new black dresses surprised even the most confirmed
+admirers of Madame Lataille&rsquo;s industry and taste. At no time could
+Juliette have seemed so beautiful as when, after the funeral, she raised
+her widow&rsquo;s veil and showed the attendant sympathizers a countenance
+unmarked by one tear of respectable emotion. She was far too proud to
+weep for a husband whom she had never loved and whose death was a
+relief; when the neighbors expressed astonishment at the absence of any
+outward sorrow, she flung out a challenge to fate:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have not reached the age of thirty-four, and brought up six children,
+and never once been late with so much as a ribbon, to cry for any man
+now. He&rsquo;ll be a wonderful man that will ever make me cry. Henriette,
+don&rsquo;t tug at your garter.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And as she stood there, with great brown eyes burning beneath a weight
+of lustrous black hair, she seemed of marble without and within.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, before six months had passed, Madame Lataille fell
+impetuously in love with a young English clerk of twenty-one, called
+Henry Snow; what is more, she married him. Nobody in Lille was able to
+offer a credible explanation of her behavior. People were willing to
+admit that his conduct was comprehensible, notwithstanding the fourteen
+years of her seniority; and it says much for the way Juliette had
+impressed her personality upon a dull provincial world that Henry Snow&rsquo;s
+action should have been so immediately understood. Before the problem of
+her conduct, however, the world remained in perplexity. Financial
+considerations could not have supplied a motive; from all accounts the
+Englishman was unlikely to help; indeed, gossip said that even in his
+obscure position he had already had opportunities of showing that, such
+as it was, the position was better than he deserved and unlikely to be
+bettered in the future. Nor could his good looks have attracted her, for
+he was insignificant; and since Englishmen in the experience of Lille
+were, whatever their faults, never insignificant, the insignificance of
+Henry Snow acquired an active quality which contradicted its
+characterization and made him seem not merely unattractive, but
+positively displeasing. Nor could she have required some one to help in
+managing her six children; altogether the affair was a mystery, which
+gathered volume when the world began to realize the depth of the feeling
+that Henry Snow had roused in Juliette. All the world loves a lover, but
+only when it is allowed to obtrude itself upon the love. Juliette,
+absorbed by her emotion and the eternal jealousy of the woman who
+marries a man much younger than herself, refused to admit any spectators
+to marvel at the development of the mystery. She carried on her work as
+usual; but instead of maintaining her position as a figure she became an
+object of curiosity, and presently, because that curiosity was never
+gratified, an object of suspicion. The lover-loving world began to shake
+its head and calumny whispered everywhere its commentary; she could
+never have been a <i>femme propre</i>; this marriage must have been forced
+upon the young Englishman as the price of a five-year-old intrigue.
+When some defender of Juliette pointed out that the clerk had only been
+in Lille three years, that his name had never been connected with hers,
+and that in any case he was only twenty-one now, calumny retorted with a
+long line of Henry Snows; presently the story of Juliette&rsquo;s life with
+André Duchesnil was dragged to light, and by an infinite multiplication
+of whispers her career from earliest youth was established as
+licentious, mercenary, and cruel.</p>
+
+<p>For a while Juliette was so much wrapped up in her own joy that she did
+not observe the steady withdrawal of popular esteem. Having made it
+clear to everybody that she wished to be left alone with her husband,
+she supposed she had been successful and congratulated herself
+accordingly, until one day a persistent friend, proof against Juliette&rsquo;s
+icy discouragement, drove into her that the <i>quartier</i> was pitying Henry
+Snow, that things were being said against her, and that the only way to
+put a stop to unkind gossip was to move about among the neighbors in
+more friendly fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually it dawned upon Juliette that her friend was the emissary of a
+universally accepted calumny, the voice of the <i>quartier</i>, the first to
+brave her, and only now rash enough to do so because she had public
+opinion at her back. This did not prevent Juliette from showing her
+counselor the door to the street, nor from slamming it so abruptly that
+a meter of stuff was torn from her skirt; yet when she went back to her
+room and picked up her needlework there came upon her with a shock the
+realization of what effect all this might have on Henry. If the world
+were pitying him now, it would presently be laughing; if he were laughed
+at, he would grow to hate her. Hitherto she had been so happy in her
+love that she had never stopped to consider anything or anybody. She
+remembered now Henry&rsquo;s amazement when, in the first tumultuous wave of
+passion dammed for so many years, she had refused to let herself be
+swept away; she recalled his faint hesitation when first she spoke of
+marriage and gave him to understand that without marriage she would not
+be his. Even then he must have foreseen the possibility of ridicule, and
+he had only married her because she had been able to seem so desirable.
+And she was still desirable; he was still enthralled; he was still vain
+of her love; yet how was the flattery of one woman to mitigate for a man
+the contempt of the crowd? Mercifully, he was an Englishman in a French
+town, therefore it would take longer for the popular feeling to touch
+him; but soon or late it would strike home to his vanity. Something must
+be devised to transfix him with the dignity of marriage. They must have
+a child; no father could do anything but resent and despise laughter
+that would be directed against his fatherhood. Juliette&rsquo;s wish was
+granted very shortly afterward; and when she told her husband of their
+expectation she held him close and looked deep into his eyes for the
+triumph she sought. Perhaps the fire in her own was reflected in his,
+for she released him from her embrace with a sigh of content.</p>
+
+<p>Through the months of waiting Juliette longed for a boy. It seemed to
+her somehow essential for the retention of Henry&rsquo;s love that she should
+give him a boy; she could scarcely bear another girl, she who had
+brought into the world six girls. Much of Juliette&rsquo;s pride during those
+months was softened by her longing; she began once more to frequent the
+company of her neighbors in her zest for the least scrap of information
+that would help the fulfilment of it. There was no fantastic concoction
+she would not drink, nor any omen she would not propitiate. Half the
+saints in the calendar were introduced to her by ladies that knew them
+and vouched for the interest they would take in her pregnancy. Juliette
+never confided to anybody her reason for wanting a boy; and nobody
+suspected it, since half a dozen girls were enough to explain any
+woman&rsquo;s desire for a change. One adviser discovered in a tattered volume
+of obstetrical theory that when the woman was older than the man the
+odds were on a male child. Juliette&rsquo;s researches to gather confirmation
+of this remark led her into discussions about unequal marriages; and as
+the time of her confinement drew near she became gentler and almost
+anxious to discuss her love for Henry Snow, so much gentler and less
+reserved that those who had formerly whispered loudest and most falsely
+to one another now whispered sympathetically to her.</p>
+
+<p>On the day before Juliette&rsquo;s confinement her husband came in from work
+very irritable.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here, when&rsquo;s this baby going to be born? I&rsquo;m getting a bit annoyed. The
+men at the office are betting on its being a boy. It makes me look a
+fool, you know, that sort of thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She clutched his arm. &ldquo;Which do you want, Henri? Tell me, <i>mon amour,
+mon homme</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care which it is, as long as you&rsquo;re quick about it and this
+betting stops.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That night she was delivered of a girl, and because it was his she
+choked down the wild disappointment and loved Sylvia the best of all her
+seven girls.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p>
+
+<div class="vr"><p class="nind"><b>SYLVIA
+<br />
+SCARLETT</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a></p>
+
+<h2><i>Sylvia Scarlett</i></h2>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE first complete memory of her father that Sylvia possessed was of
+following her mother out into the street on a clear moonlight night
+after rain and of seeing him seated in a puddle outside the house,
+singing an unintelligible song which he conducted with his umbrella. She
+remembered her mother&rsquo;s calling to him sharply, and how at last after
+numerous shakings and many reproaches he had walked into the house on
+all fours, carrying the umbrella in his mouth like a dog. She remembered
+that the umbrella was somehow wrong at the end, different from any other
+umbrella she had ever seen, so that when it was put into the hall-stand
+it looked like a fat old market woman instead of the trim young lady it
+should have resembled. She remembered how she had called her mother&rsquo;s
+attention to the loss of its feet and how her mother, having apparently
+realized for the first time her presence at the scene, had promptly
+hustled her up-stairs to bed with so much roughness that she had cried.</p>
+
+<p>When Sylvia was older and had become in a way her mother&rsquo;s confidante,
+sitting opposite to her in the window to sew until it was no longer
+possible to save oil for the lamp, she ventured to recall this scene.
+Her mother had laughed at the remembrance of it and had begun to hum the
+song her father had sung:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">La donna è mobile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">La da-di la-di-da.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shall I ever forget him?&rdquo; Madame Snow had cried. &ldquo;It was the day your
+sister Elène was married, and he had<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> been down to the railway-station
+to see them off to Bruxelles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had asked what the words of the song meant, and had been told
+that they meant women were always running around.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where?&rdquo; she had pressed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some of them after men and others running away from them,&rdquo; her mother
+had replied.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shall I do that when I&rsquo;m big?&rdquo; Sylvia had continued. &ldquo;Which shall I
+do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But it had been time to fetch the lamp and the question had remained
+unanswered.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was five when her sister Elène was married; soon afterward
+Henriette married, too. She remembered that very well, because Marie
+went to join Françoise in the other bedroom, and with only Marguerite
+and Valentine left, they no longer slept three in a bed. This
+association had often been very uncomfortable because Marguerite would
+eat biscuits, the crumbs of which used to scratch her legs; and worse
+than the crumbs was the invariable quarrel between Marguerite and
+Valentine that always ended in their pinching each other across Sylvia,
+so that she often got pinched by mistake.</p>
+
+<p>For several years Sylvia suffered from being the youngest of many
+sisters, and her mother&rsquo;s favorite. When she went to school, she asked
+other girls if it were not nicer to have brothers, but the stories she
+heard about the behavior of boys made her glad there were only girls in
+her house. She had practical experience of the ways of boys when at the
+age of eight she first took part in the annual <i>féerie</i> at the Lille
+theater. On her first appearance she played a monster; though all the
+masks were very ugly, she, being the smallest performer, always got the
+ugliest, and with the progress of the season the one that was most
+knocked about. In after years these performances seemed like a nightmare
+of hot cardboard-scented breath, of being hustled down the stone stairs
+from the dressing-room, of noisy rough boys shouting and scrambling for
+the best masks, of her legs being pinched, while she was waiting in the
+wings, by invisible boys, and once of somebody&rsquo;s twisting her mask
+right<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> round as they made the famous entrance of the monsters, so that,
+being able to see nothing, she fell down and made all the audience
+laugh. Such were boys!</p>
+
+<p>In contrast with scenes of discomfort and misery like these were the
+hours when she sat sewing with her mother in the quiet house. There
+would be long silences only broken by the sound of her mother&rsquo;s hand
+searching for new thread or needle in the work-basket, of clocks, of
+kettle on the hob, or of distant street cries. Then her mother would
+suddenly laugh to herself and begin a tale so interesting that Sylvia&rsquo;s
+own needlework would lie idly on her knee, until she was reproved for
+laziness, and silence again inclosed the room. Sometimes the sunset
+would glow through the window-panes upon her mother&rsquo;s work, and Sylvia
+would stare entranced at the great silken roses that slowly opened their
+petals for those swift fingers. Sometimes it would be a piece of lace
+that lay on her mother&rsquo;s lap, lace that in the falling dusk became light
+and mysterious as a cloud. Yet even these tranquil hours had storms, as
+on the occasion when her mother had been working all day at a lace cap
+which had been promised without fail to somebody at the theater who
+required it that night. At six o&rsquo;clock she had risen with a sigh and
+given the cap to Sylvia to hold while she put on her things to take it
+down to the theater. Sylvia had stood by the fire, dreaming over the
+beauty of the lace; and then without any warning the cap had fallen into
+the fire and in a moment was ashes. Sylvia wished she could have
+followed the cap when she saw her mother&rsquo;s face of despair on realizing
+what had happened. It was then that for the first time she learned how
+much depended upon her mother&rsquo;s work; for during all that week, whenever
+she was sent out on an errand, she was told to buy only the half of
+everything, half the usual butter, half the usual sugar, and what was
+stranger still to go to shops outside the <i>quartier</i> at which Madame
+Snow never dealt. When she inquired the reason of this her mother asked
+her if she wanted all the <i>quartier</i> to know that they were poor and
+could only afford to buy half the usual amount that week.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, when the first shame of her carelessness had<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> died away, rather
+enjoyed these excursions to streets more remote, where amusing
+adventures were always possible. One Saturday afternoon in April Sylvia
+set out with a more than usually keen sense of the discoveries and
+adventures that might befall her. The first discovery was a boy on a
+step-ladder, polishing a shop window; and the second discovery was that
+she could stand on the curbstone and never once fail to spit home upon
+the newly polished glass. She did this about a dozen times, watching the
+saliva dribble down the pane and speculating with herself which driblet
+would make the longest journey. Regretfully she saw that the boy was
+preparing to descend and admire his handiwork, because two driblets were
+still progressing slowly downward, one of which had been her original
+fancy for the prize of endurance. As she turned to flee, she saw on the
+pavement at her feet a golden ten-franc piece; she picked it up and
+grasping it tightly in her hot little hand ran off, not forgetting, even
+in the excitement of her sudden wealth, to turn round at a safe distance
+and put out her tongue at the boy to mark her contempt for him, for the
+rest of his class, and for all their handiwork, especially that newly
+polished window-pane. Then she examined the gold piece and marveled at
+it, thinking how it obliterated the memory of that mother-o&rsquo;-pearl
+button which only the other day she had found on the dust-heap and lost
+a few hours afterward.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wonderful afternoon, an afternoon of unbridled acquisition,
+which began with six very rich cakes and ended with a case of needles
+for her mother that used up her last sou. Coming out of the needle-shop,
+her arms full of packages, she met a regiment of soldiers marching and
+singing. The soldiers expressed her triumphant mood, and Sylvia marched
+with them, joining in their songs. She had a few cakes left and, being
+grateful to the soldiers, she handed them round among them, which earned
+her much applause from passers-by. When the regiment had arrived at the
+barracks and her particular friends had all kissed her farewell and
+there were no more bystanders to smile their approbation, Sylvia thought
+it would be wise to do the shopping for her mother. She had marched
+farther than she realized with the soldiers; it was nearly dusk when
+she<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a> reached the grocer&rsquo;s where she was to buy the small quantity of
+sugar that was all that could be afforded this week. She made her
+purchase, and put her hand into the pocket of her pinafore for the
+money: the pocket was empty. Everything in the grocer&rsquo;s shop seemed to
+be tumbling about her in a great and universal catastrophe. She searched
+feverishly again; there was a small hole; of course her mother had given
+her a ten-franc piece, telling her to be very careful indeed of the
+change, which was wanted badly for the rent. She could not explain to
+the man what had happened and, leaving the packet on the counter, she
+rushed from the shop into the cruel twilight, choked by tearless sobs
+and tremors of apprehension. At first she thought of trying to find the
+shops where she had made her own purchases that she might recover such
+of the money as had not been eaten; but her nervous fears refused to let
+her mind work properly, and everything that had happened on this
+luckless afternoon seemed to have happened in a dream. It was already
+dark; all she could do was to run home, clutching the miserable toys to
+her heart and wondering if the needle-case could possibly allay a
+little, a very little, of her mother&rsquo;s anger.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Snow began as soon as Sylvia entered the house by demanding what
+she had been doing to be so late in coming home. Sylvia stammered and
+was silent; stammered again and let fall all her parcels; then she burst
+into a flood of tears that voiced a despair more profound than she had
+ever known. When her mother at last extracted from Sylvia what had
+happened she, too, wept; and the pair of them sat filling the room with
+their sobs, until Henry Snow appeared upon the scene and asked if they
+had both gone mad.</p>
+
+<p>His wife and daughter sobbed a violent negative. Henry stared at the
+floor littered with Sylvia&rsquo;s numerous purchases, but found there no
+answer to the riddle. He moved across to Juliette and shook her, urging
+her not to become hysterical.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The last bit of money I had and the rent due on Monday!&rdquo; she wailed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you worry about money,&rdquo; said Henry, importantly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had a bit
+of luck at cards,&rdquo; and he offered his<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> wife a note. Moreover, when he
+heard the reason for all this commotion of grief, he laughed, said it
+might have happened to any one, congratulated Sylvia upon her choice of
+goods, declared it was time she began to study English seriously and
+vowed that he was the one to be her teacher, yes, by gad, he was, and
+that to-morrow morning being Sunday they would make a start. Then he
+began to fondle his wife, which embarrassed Sylvia, but nevertheless
+because these caresses so plainly delighted her mother, they consoled
+her for the disaster. So she withdrew to a darker corner of the room and
+played with the doll she had bought, listening to the conversation
+between her parents.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you love me, Henri?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I love you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know that I would sacrifice the world for you? I&rsquo;ve given you
+everything. If you love me still, then you must love me for
+myself&mdash;myself alone, <i>mon homme</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m growing old,&rdquo; protested Juliette. &ldquo;There are others younger
+than I. <i>Ah, Henri, amour de ma vie</i>, I&rsquo;m jealous even of the girls. I
+want them all out of the house. I hate them now, except ours&mdash;ours, <i>ma
+poupée</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia regarding her own doll could not help feeling that this was a
+most inappropriate name for her father; she wondered why her mother
+called him that and decided finally that it must be because he was
+shorter than she was. The evening begun so disastrously ended most
+cheerfully; when Françoise and Marie arrived back at midnight, they
+escaped even the mildest rebuke from their mother.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia&rsquo;s father kept his promise about teaching her English, and she was
+granted the great pleasure of being admitted to his room every evening
+when he returned from work. This room until now had always been a
+Bluebeard&rsquo;s chamber, not merely for Sylvia, but for every one else in
+the house. To be sure Sylvia had sometimes, when supper was growing
+cold, peeped in to warn her father of fleeting time, but it had always
+been impressed upon her that in no circumstances was she to enter the
+room; though she had never seen in these quick glimpses anything more
+exciting than her father sitting in his shirt-sleeves and reading in a
+tumble-down arm-chair, there had always been the sense of<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> a secret. Now
+that she was made free of this apartment she perceived nothing behind
+the door but a bookcase fairly full of books, nothing indeed anywhere
+that seemed to merit concealment, unless it were some pictures of
+undressed ladies looking at themselves in a glass. Once she had an
+opportunity of opening one of the books and she was astonished, when her
+father came in and caught her, that he said nothing, for she felt sure
+that her mother would have been very angry if she had seen her reading
+such a book. She had blushed when her father found her; when he had said
+nothing and even laughed in a queer unpleasant sort of a way, she had
+blushed still more deeply. Yet whenever she had a chance she read these
+books afterward and henceforth regarded her father with an affectionate
+contempt which was often expressed too frankly to please her mother, who
+finally became so much irritated by it that she sent her away to
+Bruxelles to stay with Elène, her eldest married sister. Sylvia did not
+enjoy this visit very much, because her brother-in-law was always making
+remarks about her personal appearance, comparing it most unfavorably
+with his wife&rsquo;s. It seemed that Elène had recently won a prize for
+beauty at the Exposition, and though Sylvia would have been suitably
+proud of this family achievement in ordinary circumstances, this
+continual harping upon it to her own disadvantage made her wish that
+Elène had been ignobly defeated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Strange her face should be so round and yours such a perfect oval,&rdquo;
+Elène&rsquo;s husband would say. &ldquo;And her lips are so thin and her eyes so
+much lighter than yours. She&rsquo;s short, too, for her age. I don&rsquo;t think
+she&rsquo;ll ever be as tall as you. But of course every one can&rsquo;t be
+beautiful.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course they can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Sylvia snapped. &ldquo;If they could, Elène might not
+have won the prize so easily.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s not a great beauty, but she has a tongue. And she&rsquo;s smart,&rdquo; her
+brother-in-law concluded.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia used to wonder why every one alluded to her tongue. Her mother
+had told her just before she was sent to Bruxelles that the priest had
+put too much salt on it when she was christened. She resolved to be
+silent in future; but this resolve reacted upon her nerves to such an
+extent that she wrote home to Lille and begged to be<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> allowed to come
+back. There had been diplomacy in the way she had written to her father
+in English rather than to her mother in French. Such a step led her
+mother to suppose that she repented of criticizing her father; it also
+prevented her sister Elène from understanding the letter and perhaps
+writing home to suggest keeping her in Bruxelles. Sylvia was overjoyed
+at receiving an early reply from her mother bidding her come home, and
+sending stamps for her to buy a picture post-card album, which would be
+much cheaper in Belgium; she was enjoined to buy one picture post-card
+and put it in the album, so that the customs officials should not charge
+duty.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had heard a great deal of smuggling and was thrilled by the
+illegal transaction, which seemed to her the most exciting enterprise of
+her life. She said good-by to Bruxelles without regret; clasping her
+album close, she waited anxiously for the train to start, thinking to
+herself that Elène only kept on putting her head into the carriage
+window to make stupid remarks because the compartment was crowded and
+she hoped some one would recognize her as the winner of the beauty
+competition at the Bruxelles Exposition.</p>
+
+<p>At last the train started, and Sylvia settled down to the prospect of
+crossing the frontier with contraband. She looked at all the people in
+the carriage, thinking to herself what dangers she would presently
+encounter. It was almost impossible not to tell them, as they sat there
+in the stuffy compartment scattering crumbs everywhere with their
+lunches. Soon a pleasant woman in black engaged Sylvia in conversation
+by offering her an orange from a string-bag. It was very difficult to
+eat the orange and keep a tight hold of the album; in the end it fell on
+the floor, whereupon a fat old gentleman sitting opposite stooped over
+and picked it up for her. He had grunted so in making the effort that
+Sylvia felt she must reward him with more than thanks; she decided to
+divulge her secret and explain to him and the pleasant woman with the
+string-bag the history of the album. Sylvia was glad when all her other
+fellow-travelers paid attention to the tale, and she could point out
+that an album like this cost two francs fifty centimes in Lille, whereas
+in Bruxelles she had been<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a> able to buy it for two francs. Then, because
+everybody smiled so encouragingly, she unwrapped the album and showed
+the single picture post-card, discoursing upon the ruse. Everybody
+congratulated her, and everybody told one another anecdotes about
+smuggling, until finally a tired and anxious-looking woman informed the
+company that she was at that very moment smuggling lace to the value of
+more than two thousand francs. Everybody warned her to be very careful,
+so strict were the customs officials; but the anxious-looking woman
+explained that it was wrapped round her and that in any case she must
+take the risk, so much depended upon her ability to sell this lace at a
+handsome profit in France.</p>
+
+<p>When the frontier was reached Sylvia alighted with the rest of the
+travelers to pass through the customs, and with quickening heart she
+presented herself at the barrier, her album clutched tightly to her
+side. No, she had nothing to declare, and with a sigh of relief at
+escape from danger she saw her little valise safely chalked. When she
+passed through to take her seat in the train again, she saw a man whom
+she recognized as a traveler from her own compartment that had told
+several anecdotes about contraband. He was talking earnestly now to one
+of the officials at the barrier and pointing out the anxious woman, who
+was still waiting to pass through.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you she had two thousand francs&rsquo; worth of lace wrapped round
+her. She admitted it in the train.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt her legs give way beneath her when she heard this piece of
+treachery. She longed to cry out to the woman with the lace that she had
+been betrayed, but already she had turned deathly pale at the approach
+of the officials. They were beckoning her to follow them to a kind of
+cabin, and she was moving toward it hopelessly. It was dreadful to see a
+poor woman so treated, and Sylvia looked round to find the man who had
+been the cause of it, but he had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour afterward the woman of the lace wearily climbed into the
+compartment and took her seat with the rest; her eyes were red and she
+was still weeping bitterly. The others asked what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They found it on me,&rdquo; she moaned. &ldquo;And now what<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> shall I do? It was all
+we had in the world to pay the mortgage on our house. My poor husband is
+ill, very ill, and it was the only way to save him. I should have sold
+that lace for four thousand francs, and now they have confiscated it and
+we shall be fined one thousand francs. We haven&rsquo;t any money. It was
+everything&mdash;everything. We shall lose our house and our furniture, and
+my husband will die. Oh, <i>mon Dieu! mon Dieu!</i>&ldquo;</p>
+
+<p>She rocked backward and forward in her grief; nothing that any one could
+say comforted her. Sylvia told how she had been betrayed; everybody
+execrated the spy and said how careful one should be to whom one spoke
+when traveling; but that did not help the poor woman, who sobbed more
+and more despairingly.</p>
+
+<p>At last the train came to its first stop in France, and the man that had
+denounced the poor woman suddenly jumped in, as they were starting
+again, and took his old seat. The fat gentleman next to Sylvia swelled
+with indignation; his veins stood out, and he shouted angrily at the man
+what a rascal he was. Everybody in the carriage joined in abusing him;
+and the poor woman herself wailed out her sad story and reproached him
+for the ruin he had brought upon her. As for Sylvia, she could not
+contain herself, but jumped up and with all her might kicked him on the
+shins, an action which made the fat gentleman shout: &rdquo;<i>Bravo! Vas-y!
+Encore, la gosse! Bravo! Bis! Bis!&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p>When the noise had subsided the man began to speak.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I regret infinitely, madame, the inconvenience to which I was
+unfortunately compelled to put you, but the fact is that I myself was
+carrying diamonds upon me to the value of more than two hundred thousand
+francs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He suddenly took out a wallet from his pocket and emptied the stones
+into his hand, where they lay sparkling in the dusty sunshine of the
+compartment. Everybody was silent with surprise for a moment; when they
+began to abuse him again, he trickled the diamonds back into the wallet
+and begged for attention.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How much have you lost, madame?&rdquo; he inquired, very politely.</p>
+
+<p>The woman of the lace poured forth her woes for the twentieth time.<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Permit me to offer you these notes to the value of six thousand
+francs,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I hope the extra thousand will recompense you for the
+temporary inconvenience to which I was unfortunately compelled to put
+you. Pray accept my deepest apologies, but at the same time let me
+suggest greater discretion in future. Yet we are all human, are we not,
+monsieur?&rdquo; he added, turning to the fat gentleman next to Sylvia. &ldquo;Will
+you be very much surprised when I tell you that I have never traveled
+from Amsterdam but I have found some indiscreet fellow-traveler that has
+been of permanent service to me at temporary inconvenience to himself.
+This time I thought I was going to be unlucky, for this was the last
+compartment left; fortunately that young lady set a bad example.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>This story, when she told it at home, seemed to make a great impression
+upon her father, who maintained that the stranger was a fool ever to
+return to the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some people seem to think money&rsquo;s made to throw into the gutter,&rdquo; he
+grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was sorry about his point of view, but when she argued with him
+he told her to shut up; later on that same evening he had a dispute with
+his wife about going out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want to win it back,&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had a run of bad luck
+lately. I feel to-night it&rsquo;s going to change. Did I tell you I saw the
+new moon over my right shoulder, as I came in?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So did I,&rdquo; said his wife. &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t rush off and gamble away other
+people&rsquo;s money for the sake of the moon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You saw it, too, did you?&rdquo; said Henry, eagerly. &ldquo;Well, there you are!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The funny thing was that Henry was right; he did have a run of good
+luck, and the house became more cheerful again. Sylvia went on with her
+English studies; but nowadays even during lessons her father never
+stopped playing cards. She asked him once if he were telling his
+fortune, and he replied that he was trying to make it. &ldquo;See if you can
+pick out the queen,&rdquo; he would say. And Sylvia never could, which made
+her father chuckle to himself<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> with pleasure. About this time, too, he
+developed a habit of playing with a ten-centime piece. Whenever he or
+any one else was talking, he used to fidget with this coin; in the
+middle of something important or interesting it used to jingle down on
+the floor, and everybody had to go on hands and knees to search for it.
+This habit became so much the intrinsic Henry Snow that Sylvia could
+never think of him without that ten-centime piece sliding over his long
+mobile hands, in and out of his prehensile fingers: and though with the
+progress of time he ceased to drop the coin very often, the restless
+motion always irritated her. When Sylvia was eleven her uncle Edouard
+came to Lille with his caravan and brought the news of the death of her
+grandfather. She was not much impressed by this, but the caravan and the
+booth delighted her; and when her uncle asked if he might not take her
+away with him on a long tour through the south of France, she begged to
+be allowed to go. Her mother had so often held her spellbound by tales
+of her own wandering life that, when she seemed inclined to withhold her
+permission, Sylvia blamed her as the real origin of this longing to
+taste the joys of vagrancy, pleading so earnestly that at last her
+mother gave way and let her go.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Edouard and Aunt Elise, who sat in the box outside the booth and
+took the money, were both very kind to Sylvia, and since they had no
+children of their own, she was much spoilt. Indeed, there was not a dull
+moment throughout the tour; for even when she went to bed, which was
+always delightfully late, bed was really a pleasure in a caravan.</p>
+
+<p>In old Albert Bassompierre&rsquo;s days the players had confined themselves to
+the legitimate drama; Edouard had found it more profitable to tour a
+variety show interspersed with one-act farces and melodrama. Sylvia&rsquo;s
+favorites in the company were Madame Perron, the wife of the <i>chanteur
+grivois</i>, and Blanche, a tall, fair, noisy girl who called herself a
+<i>diseuse</i>, but who usually sang indecent ballads in a powerful
+contralto. Madame Perron was Sylvia&rsquo;s first attraction, because she had
+a large collection of dolls with which she really enjoyed playing. She
+was a <i>femme très-propre</i>, and never went farther with any of her<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a>
+admirers in the audience than to exact from him the gift of a doll.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Voilà ses amours manqués</i>,&rdquo; her husband used to say with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>In the end Sylvia found her rather dull, and preferred to go tearing
+about the country with Blanche, who, though she had been a scullery-maid
+in a Boulogne hotel only a year ago, had managed during her short career
+on the stage to collect more lovers than Madame Perron had collected
+dolls. She had a passion for driving. Sylvia could always be sure that
+on the morning after their opening performance in any town a wagonette
+or dog-cart would be waiting to take them to some neighboring village,
+where a jolly party would make a tremendous noise, scandalize the
+inhabitants, and depart, leaving a legacy of unpopularity in the
+district for whichever of Blanche&rsquo;s lovers had paid for the
+entertainment with his purse and his reputation. Once they arrived at a
+village where a charity bazaar was being held under the direction of the
+<i>curé</i>. Blanche was presented to him as a distinguished actress from
+Paris who was seeking peace and recreation in the depths of the country.
+The <i>curé</i> asked if it would be presuming too far on her good nature to
+give them a taste of her art in the cause of holy charity, a speech
+perhaps from Corneill or Racine. Blanche assented immediately and
+recited a piece stuffed so full of spicy argot that the rustic gentility
+understood very little of it, though enough to make them blush&mdash;all
+except the priest, that is, who was very deaf and asked Blanche, when
+she had finished, if it were not a speech from Phèdre she had declaimed,
+thanking her very earnestly for the pleasure she had given his simple
+parish folk, a pleasure, alas, which he regretted he had not been able
+to enjoy as much as he should have enjoyed it before he became deaf.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion they drove to see the ruins of an ancient castle in
+Brittany, and afterward went down into the village to drink wine in the
+garden of the inn, where an English family was sitting at afternoon tea.
+Sylvia stared curiously at the two little girls who obeyed their
+governess so promptly and ate their cakes so mincingly. They were the
+first English girls she had ever seen, and she would very<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> much have
+liked to tell them that her father was English, for they seemed to want
+cheering up, so solemn were their light-blue eyes and so high their
+boots. Sylvia whispered to Blanche that they were English, who replied
+that so much was very obvious, and urged Sylvia to address them in their
+native tongue; it would give them much pleasure, she thought. Sylvia,
+however, was too shy, so Blanche in her loudest voice suddenly shouted:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes! T&rsquo;ank you! I love you! All right! You sleep with me?
+Goddambleudi!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The English family looked very much shocked, but the governess came to
+their rescue by asking in a thin throaty voice for the &ldquo;attition,&rdquo; and
+presently they all walked out of the garden. Blanche judged the English
+to be a dull race, and, mounting on a table, began a rowdy dance. It
+happened that, just when the table cracked, the English governess came
+back for an umbrella she had left behind, and that Blanche, leaping
+wildly to save herself from falling, leaped on the governess and brought
+her to the ground in a general ruin of chairs and tables. Blanche picked
+up the victim and said that it was all very <i>rigolo</i>, which left miss as
+wise as she was before, her French not extending beyond the tea-table
+and the chaster portions of a bedroom. Blanche told Sylvia to explain to
+miss that she had displayed nothing more in her fall than had given much
+pleasure to all the world. Sylvia, who really felt the poor governess
+required such practical consolation, translated accordingly, whereat
+miss became very red and, snatching her umbrella, walked away muttering,
+&ldquo;Impertinent little gipsy.&rdquo; When Blanche was told the substance of her
+last remark, she exclaimed, indignantly:</p>
+
+<p><i>&ldquo;Elles sont des vrais types, vous savez, ces gonzesses. Mince, alors!
+Pourquoi s&rsquo;emballer comme ça? Elle portait un pantalon fermé! Quelle
+race infecte, ces Anglais! Moi, je ne peux pas les suffrir.&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, listening to Blanche&rsquo;s tirade, wondered if all the English were
+like that. She thought of her father&rsquo;s books, and decided that life in
+France must have changed him somehow. Then she called to mind with a
+shiver the solemn light-blue eyes of the little girls. England must be a
+cold sort of a place where nobody ever laughed; perhaps<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> that was why
+her father had come away. Sylvia decided to remain in France, always in
+a caravan if possible, where no English miss could poke about with bony
+fingers in one&rsquo;s bread and butter.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia acquired a good deal of worldly wisdom from being so continuously
+in the society of Blanche, and for a child of eleven she was growing up
+somewhat rapidly. Yet it would have been hard to say that the influence
+of her noisy friend was hurtful, for it never roused in Sylvia a single
+morbid thought. Life in those days presented itself to her mostly as an
+amusing game, a game that sometimes caused tears, but tears that were
+easily dried, because, after all, it was only a game. Such was the
+situation created on one occasion by the unexpected arrival of Blanche&rsquo;s
+<i>fiancé</i> from his regiment, the 717th of the line.</p>
+
+<p>The company was playing at St.-Nazaire at the time, and Louis Moreau
+telegraphed from Nantes that he had been granted a <i>congé</i> of
+forty-eight hours.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Mince, alors!</i>&rdquo; cried Blanche to Sylvia. &ldquo;And, you know, I don&rsquo;t want
+to give him up, because he has thirty thousand francs and he loves me <i>à
+la folie</i>. We are only waiting till he has finished his military service
+to get married. But I don&rsquo;t want him here. First of all, I have a very
+<i>chic</i> lover, who has a <i>poignon fou</i> and doesn&rsquo;t care how much he
+spends, and then the lover of my heart is here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia protested that she had heard the last claim too often.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, but this is something much greater than a <i>béguin</i>. It is real
+love. <i>Il est très trr-ès-beau garçon, tu sais.</i> And, <i>chose
+très-drôle</i>, he also is doing his military service here. <i>Tout ça ne se
+dessine pas du tout bien, tu sais, mais pas du tout, tu comprends! Moi,
+je ne suis pas veineuse. Ah, non, alors, c&rsquo;est le comble!</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Blanche had been sufficiently agile to extract the usual wagonette and
+pair of horses from the chic lover to whom she had introduced her real
+lover, a tall cuirassier with fierce mustaches, as her brother; but the
+imminent arrival of Louis was going to spoil all this, because Louis
+knew well that she did not possess a relative in the world,<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> in fact, as
+Blanche emphasized, her solitary position had been one of her charms.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have to get rid of Monsieur Beaujour.&rdquo; This was the rich lover.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And lose my horses? <i>Ah, non, alors!</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then you&rsquo;ll have to tell Marcel he mustn&rsquo;t come near you until
+Louis has gone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And see him go off with that Jeanne at the Clair de la Lune Concert!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t Louis pay for the horses?&rdquo; suggested Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not going to let him waste his money like that; besides, he&rsquo;ll only
+be here two nights. <i>C&rsquo;est assommant, tu sais</i>,&rdquo; Blanche sighed.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of the discussion Louis arrived, a very short little
+<i>sous-officier</i> with kind watery eyes and a mustache that could only be
+seen properly out of doors. Louis had not had more than five minutes
+with his <i>fiancée</i> before M. Beaujour drove up with the wagonette and
+pair. He was the son of a rich shipping agent in St.-Nazaire, with a
+stiff manner that he mistook for evidence of aristocratic descent, and
+bad teeth that prevented him from smiling more than he could help.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall tell him you&rsquo;re my brother,&rdquo; said Blanche, quickly. Louis began
+to protest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Pas de boniment</i>,&rdquo; Blanche went on. &ldquo;I must be pleasant to strangers
+in front. Madame Bassompierre insists on that, and you know I&rsquo;ve never
+given you any cause to be really jealous.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>M. Beaujour looked very much surprised when Blanche presented Louis to
+him as her brother; Sylvia, remembering the tall cuirassier with the
+fierce mustaches that had also been introduced as Blanche&rsquo;s brother,
+appreciated his sensations. However, he accepted the relationship and
+invited Louis to accompany them on the drive, putting him with Sylvia
+and seating himself next Blanche on the box; Louis, who found Sylvia
+sympathetic, talked all the time about the wonderful qualities of
+Blanche, continually turning round to adore her shapely back.</p>
+
+<p>M. Beaujour invited Louis to a supper he was giving that evening in
+honor of Blanche, and supposed, perhaps a little maliciously, that
+Monsieur would be glad to meet his<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a> brother again, who was also to be of
+the party. Louis looked at Blanche in perplexity; she frowned at him and
+said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>That supper, to which M. and Mme. Perron with several other members of
+the company were invited, was a very restless meal. First, Blanche would
+go out with the host while Marcel and Louis glared alternately at each
+other and the door; then she would withdraw with Louis, while M.
+Beaujour and Marcel glared and fidgeted; finally she would disappear
+with Marcel, once for such a long time that Sylvia grew nervous and went
+outside to find her. Blanche was in tears; Marcel was stalking up and
+down the passage, twisting his fierce mustaches and muttering his
+annoyance. Sylvia was involved in a bitter discussion about the various
+degrees of Blanche&rsquo;s love, and in the end Blanche cried that her whole
+life had been shattered, and rushed back to the supper-room. Sylvia took
+this opportunity of representing Blanche&rsquo;s point of view to Marcel, and
+so successful was she with her tale of the emotional stress caused by
+the conflict of love with prudence that finally Marcel burst into tears,
+called down benedictions upon Sylvia&rsquo;s youthful head, and rejoined the
+supper-party, where he drank a great quantity of red wine and squeezed
+Blanche&rsquo;s hand under the table for the rest of the evening.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, having been successful once, now invited Louis to accompany her
+outside. To him she explained that Marcel loved Blanche madly, that she,
+the owner, as Louis knew, of a melting heart, had been much upset by her
+inability to return his love, and that Louis must not be jealous,
+because Blanche loved only him. Louis&rsquo;s eyes became more watery than
+ever, and he took his seat at table again, a happy man until he drank
+too much wine and had to retire permanently from the feast. Finally
+Sylvia tackled M. Beaujour, and, recognizing that he was probably tired
+of lies, told him the truth of the situation, leaving it to him as an
+<i>homme supérieur</i> to realize that he could only be an episode in
+Blanche&rsquo;s life and begging him not to force his position that night. M.
+Beaujour could not help being flattered by this child&rsquo;s perception of
+his superiority, and for the rest of the entertainment played<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a> the host
+in a manner that was, as Madame Perron said, <i>très très-correcte</i>.</p>
+
+<p>However, amusing evenings like this came to an end for Sylvia when once
+more the caravan returned to Lille. Her uncle and aunt had so much
+enjoyed her company that they proposed to Madame Snow to adopt Sylvia as
+their own daughter. Sylvia, much as she loved her mother, would have
+been very glad to leave the house at Lille, for it seemed, when she saw
+it again, poverty-stricken and pinched. There was only Valentine now
+left of her sisters, and her mother looked very care-worn. Her father,
+however, declined most positively to listen to the Bassompierres&rsquo;
+proposal, and was indeed almost insulting about it. Madame Snow wearily
+bade Sylvia say no more, and the caravan went on its way again. Sylvia
+wondered whether life in Lille had always been as dull in reality as
+this, or if it were dull merely in contrast with the gay life of
+vagrancy. Everybody in Lille seemed to be quarreling. Her mother was
+always reproaching Valentine for being late, and her father for losing
+money, and herself for idleness in the house. She tried to make friends
+with her sister, but Valentine was suspicious of her former intimacy
+with their mother, and repelled her advances. The months dragged on,
+months of eternal sewing, eternal saving, eternal nagging, eternal
+sameness. Then one evening, when her mother was standing in the kitchen,
+giving a last glance at everything before she went down to the theater,
+she suddenly threw up her arms, cried in a choking voice, &ldquo;Henri!&rdquo; and
+collapsed upon the floor. There was nobody in the house except Sylvia,
+who, though she felt very much frightened, tried for a long time,
+without success, to restore her mother to consciousness. At last her
+father came in and bent over his wife.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good God, she&rsquo;s dead!&rdquo; he exclaimed, and Sylvia broke into a sweat of
+horror to think that she had been alone in the twilight with something
+dead. Her father struggled to lift the body on the sofa, calling to
+Sylvia to come and help him. She began to whimper, and he swore at her
+for cowardice. A clock struck and Sylvia shrieked. Her father began to
+drag the body toward the sofa; playing-cards fell from his sleeves on
+the dead woman&rsquo;s face.<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t she say anything before she died?&rdquo; he asked. Sylvia shook her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She was only forty-six, you know,&rdquo; he said; in and out of his fingers,
+round and round his hand, slipped the ten-centime piece.</p>
+
+<p>For some time after his wife&rsquo;s death Henry Snow was inconsolable, and
+his loudly expressed grief had the effect of making Sylvia seem hard,
+for she grew impatient with him, especially when every week he used to
+sell some cherished piece of furniture. She never attempted to explain
+her sentiments when he accused her of caring more for furniture than for
+her dead mother; she felt it would be useless to explain them to him,
+and suffered in silence. What Sylvia found most inexplicable was the way
+in which her father throve on sorrow and every day seemed to grow
+younger. This fact struck her so sharply that one day she penetrated the
+hostility that had been gathering daily between her and Valentine and
+asked her sister if she had observed this queer change. Valentine got
+very angry; demanded what Sylvia meant; flung out some cruel sneers; and
+involved her in a scene with her father, who charged her with malice and
+underhanded behavior. Sylvia was completely puzzled by the effect of her
+harmless observation, and supposed that Valentine, who had always been
+jealous of her, had seized the opportunity to make further mischief. She
+could never understand why Valentine was jealous of her, because
+Valentine was really beautiful, and very much like her mother, enviable
+from any point of view, and even now obviously dearer to her stepfather
+than his own daughter. She would have liked to know where the caravan
+was now; she was sure that her father would no longer wish to forbid her
+adoption by Uncle Edouard and Aunt Elise.</p>
+
+<p>The house grew emptier and emptier of furniture; Sylvia found it so hard
+to obtain any money from her father for current expenses that she was
+often hungry. She did not like to write to any of her older sisters,
+because she was afraid that Valentine would make it appear that she was
+in the wrong and trying to stir up trouble. Summer passed into autumn,
+and with the lengthening darkness the house became unbearably still;
+neither her father nor<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> her sister was ever at home; even the clocks had
+now all disappeared. Sylvia could not bear to remain indoors; for in her
+nervous, hungry state old childish terrors were revived, and the great
+empty loft at the top of the house was once again inhabited by that
+one-legged man with whose clutches her mother used to frighten her when
+naughty long ago. There recurred, too, a story told by her mother on
+just such a gusty evening as these, of how, when she first came to
+Lille, she had found an armed burglar under her bed, and of how the man
+had been caught and imprisoned. Even her mother, who was not a nervous
+woman, had been frightened by his threats of revenge when he should be
+free again, and once when she and her mother were sewing together close
+to the dusky window her mother had fancied she had seen him pass the
+house, a large pale man in a dark suit. Supposing he should come back
+now for his revenge? And above all these other terrors was the dread of
+her mother&rsquo;s ghost.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia took to going out alone every evening, whether it rained or blew,
+to seek in the streets relief from the silence of the desolate house.
+Loneliness came to seem to her the worst suffering imaginable, and the
+fear of it which was bred during these months haunted her for years to
+come.</p>
+
+<p>In November, about half past eight of a windy night, Sylvia came back
+from one of her solitary walks and found her father sitting with a
+bottle of brandy in the kitchen. His face was haggard; his collar was
+loose; from time to time he mopped his forehead with a big blue
+handkerchief and stared at himself in a small cracked shaving-glass that
+he must have brought down from his bedroom. She asked if he were ill,
+and he told her not to worry him, but to go out and borrow a railway
+time-table.</p>
+
+<p>When Sylvia returned she heard Valentine&rsquo;s angry voice in the kitchen,
+and waited in the passage to know the cause of the dispute.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, I won&rsquo;t come with you,&rdquo; Valentine was saying. &ldquo;You must be mad! If
+you&rsquo;re in danger of going to prison, so much the worse for you. I&rsquo;ve got
+plenty of people who&rsquo;ll look after me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m your stepfather.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Valentine&rsquo;s laugh made Sylvia turn pale.<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stepfather! Fine stepfather! Why, I hate you! Do you hear? I hate you!
+My man is waiting for me now, and he&rsquo;ll laugh when he hears that a
+convict wants his step-daughter to go away with him. My mother may have
+loved you, but I&rsquo;d like her to see you now. <i>L&rsquo;amour de sa vie. Son
+homme! Sa poupée, sa poupée! Ah, mais non alors! Sa poupée!&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia could not bear any longer this mockery of her mother&rsquo;s love, and,
+bursting into the kitchen, she began to abuse Valentine with all the
+vulgar words she had learned from Blanche.</p>
+
+<p>Valentine caught her sister by the shoulders and shook her violently:</p>
+
+<p><i>&ldquo;Tu seras bien avec ton père, sale gosse!&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p>Then she smacked her cheek several times and left the house.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia flung her arms round her father.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take me with you,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You hate her, don&rsquo;t you? Take me,
+father.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Henry rose and, in rising, upset the bottle of brandy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank God,&rdquo; he said, fervently. &ldquo;My own daughter still loves me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia perceived nothing ludicrous in the tone of her father&rsquo;s speech,
+and happy tears rose to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;See! here is the time-table. Must we go to-night? Sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t we go
+to-night?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She helped her father to pack; at midnight they were in the train going
+north.<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE amount of brandy that Henry Snow had drunk to support what he called
+his misfortune made him loquacious for the first part of the journey.
+While he and Sylvia waited during the night at a railway junction, he
+held forth at length not merely upon the event that was driving him out
+of France, but generally upon the whole course of his life. Sylvia was
+glad that her father treated her as if she were grown up, because having
+conceived for him a kind of maternal solicitude, not so much from pity
+or affection as from the inspiration to quit Lille forever which she
+gratefully owed to his lapse, she had no intention of letting him
+re-establish any authority over herself. His life&rsquo;s history, poured
+forth while they paced the dark platform or huddled before the stove in
+the dim waiting-room, confirmed her resolve.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, when I first got that job in Lille it seemed just what I was
+looking for. I&rsquo;d had a very scrappy education, because my father, who
+was cashier in a bank, died, and my mother, who you&rsquo;re a bit like&mdash;I
+used to have a photograph of her, but I suppose it&rsquo;s lost, like
+everything else&mdash;my mother got run over and killed coming back from the
+funeral. There&rsquo;s something funny about that, you know. I remember your
+mother laughed very much when I told her about it once. But I didn&rsquo;t
+laugh at the time, I can tell you, because it meant two aunts playing
+battledore and shuttlecock. Don&rsquo;t interrupt, there&rsquo;s a good girl. It&rsquo;s a
+sort of game. I can&rsquo;t remember what it is in French. I dare say it
+doesn&rsquo;t exist in France. You&rsquo;ll have to stick to English now. Good old
+England, it&rsquo;s not a bad place. Well, these two aunts of mine grudged
+every penny they spent on me, but one of them got married to a man who
+knew the firm I worked for in Lille. That&rsquo;s how I came to France. Where
+are my<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> aunts now? Dead, I hope. Don&rsquo;t you fret, Sylvia, we sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t
+trouble any of our relations for a long time to come. Then after I&rsquo;d
+been in France about four years I married your mother. If you ask me
+why, I can&rsquo;t tell you. I loved her; but the thing was wrong somehow. It
+put me in a false position. Well, look at me! I&rsquo;m only thirty-four now.
+Who&rsquo;d think you were my daughter?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And while we&rsquo;re talking on serious subjects, let me give you a bit of
+advice. Keep off jealousy. Jealousy is hell; and your mother was
+jealous. Well&mdash;Frenchwomen are more jealous than Englishwomen. You can&rsquo;t
+get over that fact. The scenes I&rsquo;ve had with her. It was no good my
+pointing out that she was fourteen years older than me. Not a bit of
+good. It made her worse. That&rsquo;s why I took to reading. I had to get away
+from her sometimes and shut myself up. That&rsquo;s why I took to cards. And
+that&rsquo;s where your mother was wrong. She&rsquo;d rather I gambled away her
+money, because it&rsquo;s no use to pretend that it wasn&rsquo;t her money, than go
+and sit at a café and perhaps observe&mdash;mind you, simply observe&mdash;another
+woman. I used to drink a bit too much when we were first married, but it
+caused such rows that I gave that up. I remember I broke an umbrella
+once, and you&rsquo;d really have thought there wasn&rsquo;t another umbrella in the
+whole world. Why, that little drop of brandy I drank to-night has made
+me feel quite funny. I&rsquo;m not used to it. But there was some excuse for
+drinking to-night. I&rsquo;ve had runs of bad luck before, but anything like
+these last two months I&rsquo;ve never had in my life. The consequence was I
+borrowed some of my salary in advance without consulting anybody. That&rsquo;s
+where the manager had me this afternoon. He couldn&rsquo;t see that it was
+merely borrowing. As a matter of fact, the sum wasn&rsquo;t worth an argument;
+but he wasn&rsquo;t content with that; he actually told me he was going to
+examine&mdash;well&mdash;you wouldn&rsquo;t understand if I tried to explain to you. It
+would take a commercial training to understand what I&rsquo;ve been doing.
+Anyway, I made up my mind to make a bolt for it. Now don&rsquo;t run away with
+the notion that the police will be after me, because I very much hope
+they won&rsquo;t. In fact, I don&rsquo;t think they&rsquo;ll do anything. But the whole
+affair gave me a shock and Valentine&rsquo;s behavior<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> upset me. You see, when
+your mother was alive if I&rsquo;d had a bad week she used to help me out; but
+Valentine actually asked me for money. She accused me of all sorts of
+things which, luckily, you&rsquo;re too young to understand; and I really
+didn&rsquo;t like to refuse her when I&rsquo;d got the money.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s been a lesson to me and I tell you I&rsquo;ve missed your mother
+these last months. She was jealous; she was close; she had a tongue; but
+a finer woman never lived, and I&rsquo;m proud of her. She used to wish you
+were a boy. Well, I don&rsquo;t blame her. After all, she&rsquo;d had six girls, and
+what use are they to anybody? None at all. They might as well not exist.
+Women go off and get married and take somebody else&rsquo;s name, and it&rsquo;s
+finished. There&rsquo;s not one of your sisters that&rsquo;s really stayed in the
+family. A selfish crowd, and the worst of the lot was Valentine. Yes,
+you ought to have been a boy. I&rsquo;ll tell you what, it wouldn&rsquo;t be a bad
+idea if you <i>were</i> a boy for a bit. You see, in case the French police
+make inquiries, it would be just as well to throw them off the scent;
+and, another thing, it would be much easier for me till I find my feet
+again in London. Would you like to be a boy, Sylvia? There&rsquo;s no reason
+against it that I can see, and plenty of reasons for it. Of course it
+means cutting off your hair, but they say that&rsquo;s a very good thing for
+the hair once in a way. You&rsquo;ll be more free, too, as a boy, and less of
+a responsibility. There&rsquo;s no doubt a girl would be a big responsibility
+in London.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But could I be a boy?&rdquo; Sylvia asked. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to be a boy if I could.
+And what should I be called?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course you could be a boy,&rdquo; her father affirmed, enthusiastically.
+&ldquo;You were always a bit of a <i>garçon</i> <i>manqué</i>, as the French say. I&rsquo;ll
+buy you a Norfolk suit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was not yet sufficiently unsexed not to want to know more about
+her proposed costume. Her father pledged his word that it would please
+her; his description of it recalled the dress that people in Lille put
+on to go shooting sparrows on Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Un sporting?</i>&rdquo; Sylvia queried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s about it,&rdquo; her father agreed. &ldquo;If you had any scissors with you,
+I&rsquo;d start right in now and cut your hair.&rdquo;<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia said she had scissors in her bag; and presently she and her
+father retired to the outer gloom of the junction, where, undisturbed by
+a single curious glance, Sylvia&rsquo;s curls were swept away by the wind.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not done it quite so neatly as I might,&rdquo; said her father,
+examining the effect under a wavering gas-jet. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have you properly
+cropped to-morrow at a hairdresser&rsquo;s.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt cold and bare round the neck, but she welcomed the sensation
+as one of freedom. How remote Lille seemed already&mdash;utterly, gloriously
+far away! Now arose the problem of her name.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The only boy&rsquo;s name I can think of that&rsquo;s anything like Sylvia is
+Silas, and that&rsquo;s more Si than Sil. Wait a bit. What about Silvius? I&rsquo;ve
+seen that name somewhere. Only, we&rsquo;ll call you Sil for short.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why was I ever called Sylvia?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was a fancy of your mother&rsquo;s. It comes in a song called &lsquo;<i>Plaisir
+d&rsquo;amour</i>.&rsquo; And your mother liked the English way of saying it. I&rsquo;ve got
+it. Sylvester! Sylvester Snow! What do you want better than that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When the train approached Boulogne, Henry Snow gave up talking and began
+to juggle with the ten-centime piece; while they were walking along to
+the boat he looked about him furtively. Nobody stopped them, however;
+and with the kind of relief she had felt when she had brought her album
+safely over the frontier Sylvia saw the coast of France recede. There
+were many English people on the boat, and Sylvia watched them with such
+concentration that several elderly ladies at whom she stared in turn
+thought she was waiting for them to be sick, and irritably waved her
+away. The main impression of her fellow-travelers was their resemblance
+to the blind beggars that one saw sitting outside churches. She was
+tempted to drop a sou in one of the basins, but forbore, not feeling
+quite sure how such humor would appeal to the English. Presently she
+managed to engage in conversation an English girl of her own age, but
+she had not got far with the many questions she wanted to ask when her
+companion was whisked away and she heard a voice reproving her for
+talking to strange little girls. Sylvia decided that the<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> strangeness of
+her appearance must be due to her short hair, and she longed for the
+complete transformation. Soon it began to rain; the shores of that
+mysterious land to which she actually belonged swam toward her. Her
+father came up from below, where, as he explained, he had been trying to
+sleep off the effects of a bad night. Indeed, he did not recover his
+usual jauntiness until they were in the train, traveling through country
+that seemed to Sylvia not very different from the country of France.
+Would London, after all, prove to be very different from Lille? Then
+slowly the compartment grew dark, and from time to time the train
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A fog,&rdquo; said her father, and he explained to her the meaning of a
+London fog.</p>
+
+<p>It grew darker and darker, with a yellowish-brown darkness that was
+unlike any obscurity she had ever known.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bit of luck,&rdquo; said her father. &ldquo;We sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be noticed in this. Phew! It
+is thick. We&rsquo;d better go to some hotel close by for to-night. No good
+setting out to look for rooms in this.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the kitchen at Lille there had been a picture called &ldquo;The Impenitent
+Sinner,&rdquo; in which demons were seen dragging a dead man from his bed into
+flames and darkness; Sylvia pointed out its likeness to the present
+scene at Charing Cross. Outside the station it was even worse. There was
+a thunderous din; horses came suddenly out of the darkness; everybody
+seemed to be shouting; boys were running along with torches; it was
+impossible to breathe.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why did they build a city here?&rdquo; she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>At last they came to a house in a quieter street, where they walked up
+high, narrow stairs to their bedrooms.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning her father took Sylvia&rsquo;s measurements and told her not
+to get up before he came back. When she walked out beside him in a
+Norfolk suit nobody seemed to stare at her; when her hair had been
+properly cut by a barber and she could look at herself in a long glass,
+she plunged her hands into her trousers pockets and felt securely a boy.</p>
+
+<p>While they were walking to a mysterious place called the Underground,
+her father asked if she had caught bronchitis,<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> and he would scarcely
+accept her word that she was trying to practise whistling.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t do it when I&rsquo;m inquiring about rooms or the people in the
+house may think it&rsquo;s something infectious,&rdquo; he advised. &ldquo;And don&rsquo;t
+forget your name&rsquo;s Sylvester. Which reminds me it wouldn&rsquo;t be a bad
+notion if I was to change my own name. There&rsquo;s no sense in running one&rsquo;s
+head into a noose, and if inquiries <i>were</i> made by the police it would
+be foolish to ram my name right down their throats. Henry Snow. What
+about Henry White? Better keep to the same initials. I&rsquo;ve got it. Henry
+Scarlett. You couldn&rsquo;t find anything more opposite to Snow than that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Thus Sylvia Snow became Sylvester Scarlett.</p>
+
+<p>After a long search they took rooms with Mrs. Threadgould, a widow who
+with her two boys, Willie and Ernie, lived at 45 Pomona Terrace,
+Shepherd&rsquo;s Bush. There were no other lodgers, for the house was small;
+and Henry Scarlett decided it was just the place in which to stay
+quietly for a while until the small sum of money he had brought with him
+from Lille was finished, when it would be necessary to look for work.
+Meanwhile he announced that he should study very carefully the
+advertisements in the daily papers, leaving everybody with the
+impression that reading advertisements was a most erudite business, a
+kind of scientific training that when the moment arrived would produce
+practical results.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia meanwhile was enjoined to amuse herself in the company of Mrs.
+Threadgould&rsquo;s two boys, who were about her own age. It happened that at
+this time Willie Threadgould, the elder, was obsessed by secret
+societies, to which his brother Ernie and many other boys in the
+neighborhood had recently been initiated. Sylvia was regarded with
+suspicion by Willie until she was able to thrill him with the story of
+various criminal associations in France and so became his lieutenant in
+all enterprises. Most of the secret societies that had been rapidly
+formed by Willie and as rapidly dissolved had possessed a merely
+academic value; now with Sylvia&rsquo;s advent they were given a practical
+intention. Secrecy for secrecy&rsquo;s sake went out of fashion. Muffling the
+face in dusters, giving the sign and countersign,<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> lurking at the corner
+of the road to meet another conspirator, were excellent decorations, but
+Sylvia pointed out that they led nowhere and produced nothing; to
+illustrate her theory she proposed a secret society for ringing other
+people&rsquo;s bells. She put this forward as a kind of elementary exercise;
+but she urged that, when the neighborhood had realized the bell-ringing
+as something to which they were more continuously exposed than other
+neighborhoods, the moment would be ripe to form another secret society
+that should inflict a more serious nuisance. From the secret society
+that existed to be a nuisance would grow another secret society that
+existed to be a threat; and finally there seemed no reason why Willie
+Threadgould (Sylvia was still feminine enough to let Willie think it was
+Willie) should control Shepherd&rsquo;s Bush and emulate the most remarkable
+brigands of history. In the end Sylvia&rsquo;s imagination banished her from
+the ultimate power at which she aimed. The Secret Society for Ringing
+Other People&rsquo;s Bells did its work so well that extra policemen were put
+on duty to cope with the nuisance and an inspector made a house-to-house
+visitation, which gave her father such a shock that he left Pomona
+Terrace the next day and took a room in Lillie Road, Fulham.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We have been betrayed,&rdquo; Sylvia assured Willie. &ldquo;Do not forget to avenge
+my capture.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Willie vowed he would let nothing interfere with his vengeance, not even
+if the traitor turned out to be his own brother Ernie.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia asked if he would kill him, and reminded Willie that it was a
+serious thing to betray a secret society when that society was doing
+something more than dressing up. Willie doubted if it would be possible
+to kill the culprit, but swore that he should prefer death to what
+should happen to him.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was so much gratified by Willie&rsquo;s severity that she led him into
+a corner, where, having exacted his silence with the most solemn oaths,
+she betrayed herself and the secret of her sex; then they embraced. When
+they parted forever next day, Sylvia felt that she had left behind her
+in Willie&rsquo;s heart a romantic memory that would never fade.<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Meares, who kept the house in Lillie Road, was an Irishwoman whose
+husband had grown tired of her gentility and left her. She did not
+herself sum up her past so tersely as this, but Sylvia was sure that Mr.
+Meares had left her because he could no longer endure the stories about
+her royal descent. Perhaps he might have been able to endure his wife&rsquo;s
+royal descent, because, after all, he had married into the family and
+might have extracted some pride out of that fact; but all her friends
+apparently came from kings and queens, too. Ireland, if Mrs. Meares was
+to be believed, consisted of one large poverty-stricken royal family,
+which must have cheapened the alliance for Mr. Meares. It was lucky that
+he was still alive, for otherwise Sylvia was sure that her father would
+have married their new landlady, such admiration did he always express
+for the manner in which she struggled against misfortune without losing
+her dignity. This, from what Sylvia could see, consisted of wearing silk
+skirts that trailed in the dust of her ill-kept house and of her fanning
+herself in an arm-chair however cold the weather. The only thing that
+stirred her to action was the necessity of averting an ill-omen. Thus,
+she would turn back on a flight of stairs rather than pass anybody
+descending; although ordinarily when she went up-stairs she used to sigh
+and hold her heart at every step. Sylvia remembered her mother&rsquo;s
+scrupulous care of her house, even in the poorest days; she could not
+help contrasting her dignity with this Irish dignity that was content to
+see indefinite fried eggs on her table, cockroaches in the bedrooms, and
+her own placket always agape. Mrs. Meares used to say that she would
+never let any of her rooms to ladies, because ladies always fussed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gentlemen are so much more considerate,&rdquo; said Mrs. Meares.</p>
+
+<p>Their willingness to be imposed upon made Sylvia contemptuous of the sex
+she had adopted, and she tried to spur her father to protest when his
+bed was still unmade at four o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you make it?&rdquo; he suggested. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like to worry poor Mrs.
+Meares.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, however contemptuous of manhood, had no intention<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> of
+relinquishing its privileges; she firmly declined to have anything to do
+with the making of beds.</p>
+
+<p>The breakfast-room was placed below the level of the street. Here, in an
+atmosphere of cat-haunted upholstery and broken springs, of overcooked
+vegetables and dingy fires, yet withal of a kind of frowsy comfort,
+Sylvia sometimes met the other lodgers. One of them was Baron von
+Statten, a queer German, whom Sylvia could not make out at all, for he
+spoke English as if he had been taught by a maid-of-all-work with a bad
+cold, powdered his pink face, and wore three rings, yet was so poor that
+sometimes he stayed in bed for a week at a stretch, pending negotiations
+with his laundress. The last piece of information Sylvia obtained from
+Clara, the servant, who professed a great contempt for the baron. Mrs.
+Meares, on the other hand, derived much pride from his position in her
+house, which she pointed out was really that of an honored guest, since
+he owed now nearly seven weeks&rsquo; rent; she never failed to refer to him
+by his title with warm affection. Another lodger was a Welsh pianist
+called Morgan, who played the piano all day long and billiards for as
+much of the night as he could. He was a bad-tempered young man with long
+black hair and a great antipathy to the baron, whom he was always trying
+to insult; indeed, once at breakfast he actually poured a cup of coffee
+over him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Morgan!&rdquo; Mrs. Meares had cried. &ldquo;No Irishman would have done that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No Irishman would ever do anything,&rdquo; the pianist snapped, &ldquo;if he could
+get somebody else to do it for him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia welcomed the assault, because the scalding coffee drove the baron
+to unbutton his waistcoat in a frenzy of discomfort and thereby
+confirmed Clara&rsquo;s legend about the scarcity of his linen.</p>
+
+<p>The third lodger was Mr. James Monkley, about whom Sylvia was undecided;
+sometimes she liked him very much, at other times she disliked him
+equally. He had curly red hair, finely cut red lips, a clear complexion,
+and an authoritative, determined manner, but his eyes, instead of being
+the pleasant blue they ought to have been in such a face, were of a
+shade of muddy green and never changed their<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> expression. Sylvia once
+mentioned about Mr. Monkley&rsquo;s eyes to Clara, who said they were like a
+fish.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But Monkley&rsquo;s not like a fish,&rdquo; Sylvia argued.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what he&rsquo;s like, I&rsquo;m sure,&rdquo; said Clara. &ldquo;All I know is he
+gives any one the creeps something shocking whenever he stares, which
+he&rsquo;s forever doing. Well, fine feathers don&rsquo;t make a summer and he looks
+best who looks last, as they say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>One reason for disliking Mr. Monkley was his intimacy with her father.
+Sylvia would not have objected to this if it had not meant long
+confabulations during which she was banished from the room and, what was
+worse, thrown into the society of Mrs. Meares, who always seemed to
+catch her when she was trying to make her way down-stairs to Clara.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come in and talk to me,&rdquo; Mrs. Meares would say. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m just tidying up my
+bedroom. Ah, Sil, if God had not willed otherwise I should have had a
+boy just your age now. Poor little innocent!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia knew too well this counterpart of hers and hated him as much in
+his baby&rsquo;s grave as she might have done were he still her competitor in
+life.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, it&rsquo;s a terrible thing to be left as I&rsquo;ve been left, to be married
+and not married, to have been a mother and to have lost my child. And I
+was never intended for this life. My father kept horses. We had a
+carriage. But they say, &lsquo;trust an Irishwoman to turn her hand to
+anything.&rsquo; And it&rsquo;s true. There&rsquo;s many people would wonder how I do it
+with only one maid. How&rsquo;s your dear father? He seems comfortable. Ah,
+it&rsquo;s a privilege to look after a gentleman like him. He seems to have
+led a most adventurous life. Most of his time spent abroad, he tells me.
+Well, travel gives an air to a man. Ah, now if one of the cats hasn&rsquo;t
+been naughty just when I&rsquo;d got my room really tidy! Will you tell Clara,
+if you are going down-stairs, to bring up a dustpan? I don&rsquo;t mind asking
+you, for at your age I think you would be glad to wait on the ladies
+like a little gentleman. Sure, as your father said the other day, it&rsquo;s a
+very good thing you&rsquo;re in a lady&rsquo;s house. That&rsquo;s why the dear baron&rsquo;s so
+content; and the poor man has much to try him, for his relations in
+Berlin have treated him abominably.&rdquo;<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a></p>
+
+<p>Such speeches inflicted upon her because Monkley wanted to talk secrets
+with her father made her disapprove of Monkley. Nevertheless, she
+admired him in a way; he was the only person in the house who was not
+limp, except Mr. Morgan, the pianist; but he used to glare at her, when
+they occasionally met, and seemed to regard her as an unpleasant result
+of being late for breakfast, like a spot on the table-cloth made by a
+predecessor&rsquo;s egg.</p>
+
+<p>Monkley used to ask Sylvia sometimes about what she was going to do.
+Naturally he treated her future as a boy&rsquo;s future, which took most of
+the interest out of the conversation; for Sylvia did not suppose that
+she would be able to remain a boy very much longer. The mortifying fact,
+too, was that she was not getting anything out of her transformation:
+for all the fun she was having, she might as well have stayed a girl.
+There had been a brief vista of liberty at Pomona Terrace; here, beyond
+going out to buy a paper or tobacco for her father, she spent most of
+her time in gossiping with Clara, which she could probably have done
+more profitably in petticoats.</p>
+
+<p>Winter drew out to spring; to the confabulations between Jimmy Monkley
+and Henry Scarlett were now added absences from the house that lasted
+for a day or two at a time. These expeditions always began with the
+friends&rsquo; dressing up in pearl-buttoned overcoats very much cut in at the
+waist. Sylvia felt that such careful attention to externals augured the
+great secrecy and importance of the enterprise; remembering the effect
+of Willie Threadgould&rsquo;s duster-shrouded countenance upon his
+fellow-conspirators, she postulated to herself that with the human race,
+particularly the male portion, dress was always the prelude to action.
+One morning after breakfast, when Monkley and her father had hurried off
+to catch a train, the baron said in his mincing voice:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Off ra-c-cing again! They do enjoy themselves-s-s.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She asked what racing meant, and the baron replied:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hors-s-se-ra-c-cing, of cour-se.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, being determined to arrive at the truth of this business, put
+the baron through a long interrogation, from which she managed to learn
+that the jockeys wore colored silk jackets and that in his prosperous
+days the baron had<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a> found the sport too exciting for his heart. After
+breakfast Sylvia took the subject with her into the kitchen, and tried
+to obtain fuller information from Clara, who, with the prospect of a
+long morning&rsquo;s work, was disinclined to be communicative.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a boy you are for asking questions! Why don&rsquo;t you ask your dad
+when he comes home, or that Monkley? As if I&rsquo;d got time to talk about
+racing. I&rsquo;ve got enough racing of my own to think about; but if it goes
+on much longer I shall race off out of it one of these days, and that&rsquo;s
+a fact. You may take a pitcher to the well, but you can&rsquo;t make it drink,
+as they say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia withdrew for a while, but later in the afternoon she approached
+Clara again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;God bless the boy! He&rsquo;s got racing on the brain,&rdquo; the maid exclaimed.
+&ldquo;I had a young man like that once, but I soon gave him the go-by. He was
+that stuffed up with halfpenny papers he couldn&rsquo;t cuddle any one without
+crackling like an egg-shell. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t carry on so, Clara,&rsquo; he said to me.
+&lsquo;I had a winner to-day in the three-thirty.&rsquo; &lsquo;Did you?&rsquo; I answered, very
+cool. &lsquo;Well, you&rsquo;ve got a loser now,&rsquo; and with that I walked off very
+dignified and left him. It&rsquo;s the last straw, they say, that gives the
+camel the hump. And he properly gave me the hump. But I reckon, I do,
+that it&rsquo;s mugs like him as keeps your dad and that Monkley so
+smart-looking. I reckon most of the racing they do is racing to see
+which can get some silly josser to give them his money first.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia informed Clara that her father used to play cards for money in
+France.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There you are. What did I tell you?&rdquo; Clara went on. &ldquo;Nap, they call it,
+but I reckon that there Monkley keeps wide enough awake. Oh, he&rsquo;s an
+artful one, he is! Birds and feathers keep together, they say, and I
+reckon your dad&rsquo;s cleverer than what he makes out to be.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia produced in support of this idea her father&rsquo;s habit of juggling
+with a penny.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo; Clara exclaimed, triumphantly. &ldquo;Take it from me,
+Sil, the two of them has a rare old time with this racing. I&rsquo;ve got a
+friend, Maudie Tilt, who&rsquo;s in service, and her brother started off to be
+a jockey, only he<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a> never got very far, because he got kicked on the head
+by a horse when he was sweeping out the stable, which was very
+aggravating for his relations, because he had a sister who died in a
+galloping consumption the same week. I reckon horses was very unlucky
+for them, I do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My grandmother got run over coming back from my grandfather&rsquo;s funeral,&rdquo;
+Sylvia proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By the hearse?&rdquo; Clara asked, awestruck.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt it would be well to make the most of her story, and replied
+without hesitation in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, they say to meet an empty hearse means a pleasant surprise,&rdquo; said
+Clara. &ldquo;But I reckon your grandma didn&rsquo;t think so. Here, I&rsquo;ll tell you
+what, my next afternoon off I&rsquo;ll take you round to see Maudie Tilt. She
+lives not far from where the Cedars &rsquo;bus stops.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>About a week after this conversation Clara, wearing balloon sleeves of
+last year&rsquo;s fashion and with her hair banked up to support a monstrous
+hat, descended into the basement, whence she and Sylvia emerged into a
+fine April afternoon and hailed an omnibus.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mind you don&rsquo;t get blown off the top, miss,&rdquo; said the conductor, with a
+glance at Clara&rsquo;s sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No fear of that. I&rsquo;ve grown a bit heavier since I saw your face,&rdquo; Clara
+replied, climbing serenely to the top of the omnibus. &ldquo;Two, as far as
+you go,&rdquo; she said, handing twopence to the conductor when he came up for
+the fares.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I could go a long way with you, miss,&rdquo; he said, punching the tickets
+with a satisfied twinkle. &ldquo;What a lovely hat!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it? Well, don&rsquo;t start in trying to eat it because you&rsquo;ve been used
+to green food all your life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your sister answers very sharp, doesn&rsquo;t she, Tommy?&rdquo; said the conductor
+to Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>After this display of raillery Sylvia felt it would be weak merely to
+point out that Clara was not a sister, so she remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>The top of the omnibus was empty except for Clara and Sylvia; the
+conductor, whistling a cheerful tune, descended again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Saucy things,&rdquo; Clara commented. &ldquo;But there, you can&rsquo;t blame them. It
+makes any one feel cheerful to be out in the open air like this.&rdquo;<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a></p>
+
+<p>Maudie&rsquo;s house in Castleford Road was soon reached after they left the
+omnibus. When they rang the area bell, Maudie herself opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you did give me a turn!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;I thought it was early for
+the milkman. You couldn&rsquo;t have come at a better time, because they&rsquo;ve
+both gone away. She&rsquo;s been ill, and they&rsquo;ll be away for a month. Cook&rsquo;s
+gone for a holiday, and I&rsquo;m all alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was presented formally to the hostess; and when, at Clara&rsquo;s
+prompting, she had told the story of her grandmother&rsquo;s death,
+conversation became easy. Maudie Tilt took them all over the house, and,
+though Clara said she should die of nervousness, insisted upon their
+having tea in the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Supposing they come back,&rdquo; Clara whispered. &ldquo;Oh, lor&rsquo;! Whatever&rsquo;s
+that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Maudie told her not to be silly, and went on to boast that she did not
+care if they did come back, because she had made up her mind to give up
+domestic service and go on the stage.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fancy!&rdquo; said Clara. &ldquo;Whoever put that idea into your head?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I started learning some of the songs they sing in the halls, and
+some friends of mine gave a party last January and I made quite a hit.
+I&rsquo;ll sing you a song now, if you like.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And Maudie, sitting down at the piano, accompanied herself with much
+effect in one of Miss Vesta Victoria&rsquo;s songs.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For goodness&rsquo; sake keep quiet, Maudie,&rdquo; Clara begged. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have the
+neighbors coming &rsquo;round to see whatever&rsquo;s the matter. You have got a
+cheek.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia thoroughly enjoyed Maudie&rsquo;s performance and thought she would
+have a great success. She liked Maudie&rsquo;s smallness and neatness and
+glittering, dark eyes. Altogether it was a delightful afternoon, and she
+was sorry to go away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come again,&rdquo; cried Maudie, &ldquo;before they come back, and we&rsquo;ll have some
+more.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I did feel frightened!&rdquo; Clara said, when she and Sylvia were
+hurrying to catch the omnibus back to Lillie<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> Road. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t enjoy
+it, not a bit. I felt as if I was in the bath and the door not bolted,
+though they do say stolen fruit is the sweetest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When she got home, Sylvia found that her father had returned also, and
+she held forth on the joys of Maudie Tilt&rsquo;s house.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wants to go on the stage, does she?&rdquo; said Monkley, who was in the room.
+&ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;d better introduce us and we&rsquo;ll see what we can do. Eh,
+Harry?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia approved of this suggestion and eagerly vouched for Maudie&rsquo;s
+willingness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have a little supper-party,&rdquo; said Monkley. &ldquo;Sil can go round and
+tell her we&rsquo;re coming.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia blessed the persistency with which she had worried Clara on the
+subject of racing; otherwise, bisexual and solitary, she might have been
+moping in Lillie Road. She hoped that Maudie Tilt would not offer any
+objections to the proposed party, and determined to point out most
+persuasively the benefit of Monkley&rsquo;s patronage, if she really meant to
+go on the stage. However, Maudie was not at all difficult to convince
+and showed herself as eager for the party as Sylvia herself. She was
+greatly impressed by her visitor&rsquo;s experience of the stage, but reckoned
+that no boys should have pinched her legs or given her the broken masks.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You ought to have punched into them,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Still, I dare say it
+wasn&rsquo;t so easy for you, not being a girl. Boys are very nasty to one
+another, when they&rsquo;d be as nice as anything to a girl.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was conscious of a faint feeling of contempt for Maudie&rsquo;s
+judgment, and she wondered from what her illusions were derived.</p>
+
+<p>Clara, when she heard of the proposed party, was dubious. She had no
+confidence in Monkley, and said so frankly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No one wants to go chasing after a servant-girl for nothing,&rdquo; she
+declared. &ldquo;Every cloud&rsquo;s got a silver lining.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But what could he want to do wrong?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, now you&rsquo;re asking. But if I was Maudie Tilt I&rsquo;d keep myself to
+myself.&rdquo;<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a></p>
+
+<p>Clara snapped out the last remark and would say nothing more on the
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later, under Sylvia&rsquo;s guidance, James Monkley and Henry
+Scarlett sought Castleford Road. Maudie had put on a black silk dress,
+and with her hair done in what she called the French fashion she
+achieved a kind of Japanese piquancy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>N&rsquo;est-ce pas qu&rsquo;elle a un chic?&rdquo;</i> Sylvia whispered to her father.</p>
+
+<p>They had supper in the dining-room and made a good deal of noise over
+it, for Monkley had brought two bottles of champagne, and Maudie could
+not resist producing a bottle of cognac from her master&rsquo;s cellar. When
+Monkley asked if everything were not kept under lock and key, Maudie
+told him that if they couldn&rsquo;t trust her they could lump it; she could
+jolly soon find another place; and, any way, she intended to get on the
+stage somehow. After supper they went up-stairs to the drawing-room; and
+Maudie was going to sit down at the piano, when Monkley told her that he
+would accompany her, because he wanted to see how she danced. Maudie
+gave a most spirited performance, kicking up her legs and stamping until
+the ornaments on the mantelpiece rattled. Then Monkley showed Maudie
+where she could make improvements in her renderings, which surprised
+Sylvia very much, because she had never connected Monkley with anything
+like this.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite an artist is Jimmy,&rdquo; Henry Scarlett declared. Then he added in an
+undertone to Sylvia: &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a wonderful chap, you know. I&rsquo;ve taken a rare
+fancy to him. Do anything. Sharp as a needle. I may as well say right
+out that he&rsquo;s made all the difference to my life in London.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Presently Monkley suggested that Maudie should show them over the house,
+and they went farther up-stairs to the principal bedroom, where the two
+men soused their heads with the various hair-washes left behind by the
+master of the house. Henry expressed a desire to have a bath, and
+retired with an enormous sponge and a box of bath-salts. Monkley began
+to flirt with Maudie; Sylvia, feeling that the evening was becoming
+rather dull, went down-stairs again to the drawing-room and tried to
+pass the time away with a stereoscope.<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a></p>
+
+<p>After that evening Monkley and Scarlett went often to see Maudie, but,
+much to Sylvia&rsquo;s resentment, they never took her with them. When she
+grumbled about this to Clara, Clara told her that she was well out of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Too many cooks drink up the soup, which means you&rsquo;re one too many, my
+lad, and a rolling stone doesn&rsquo;t let the grass grow under its feet,
+which means as that Monkley&rsquo;s got some game on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia did not agree with Clara&rsquo;s point of view; she still felt
+aggrieved by being left out of everything. Luckily, when life in Lillie
+Road was becoming utterly dull again, a baboon escaped from Earl&rsquo;s Court
+Exhibition, climbed up the drain-pipe outside the house, and walked into
+Mrs. Meares&rsquo;s bedroom; so that for some time after this she had
+palpitations whenever a bell rang. Mr. Morgan was very unkind about her
+adventure, for he declared that the baboon looked so much like an
+Irishman that she must have thought it was her husband come back; Mr.
+Morgan had been practising the Waldstein Sonata at the time, and had
+been irritated by the interruption of a wandering ape.</p>
+
+<p>A fortnight after this there was a scene in the house that touched
+Sylvia more sharply, for Maudie Tilt arrived one morning and begged to
+speak with Mr. Monkley, who, being in the Scarletts&rsquo; room at the moment,
+looked suddenly at Sylvia&rsquo;s father with a question in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I told you not to take them all,&rdquo; Henry said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll soon calm her down,&rdquo; Monkley promised. &ldquo;If you hadn&rsquo;t insisted on
+taking those bottles of hair-wash she&rsquo;d never have thought of looking to
+see if the other things were still there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Henry indicated his daughter with a gesture.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rot! The kid&rsquo;s got to stand in on this,&rdquo; Monkley said, with a laugh.
+&ldquo;After all, it was he who introduced us. I&rsquo;ll bring her up here to talk
+it out,&rdquo; he added.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he returned with Maudie, who had very red eyes and a
+frightened expression.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Jimmy!&rdquo; she burst out. &ldquo;Whatever did you want to take that jewelry
+for? I only found out last night, and they&rsquo;ll be home to-morrow.
+Whatever am I going to say?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jewelry?&rdquo; repeated Monkley, in a puzzled voice. &ldquo;Harry took some
+hair-wash, if that&rsquo;s what you mean.&rdquo;<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jewelry?&rdquo; Henry murmured, taking the cue from his friend. &ldquo;Was there
+any jewelry?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t pretend you don&rsquo;t know nothing about it,&rdquo; Maudie cried,
+dissolving into tears. &ldquo;For the love of God give it to me, so as I can
+put it back. If you&rsquo;re hard up, Jimmy, you can take what I saved for the
+stage; but give us back that jewelry.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you act like that you&rsquo;ll make your fortune as a professional,&rdquo;
+Monkley sneered.</p>
+
+<p>Maudie turned to Sylvia in desperation. &ldquo;Sil,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;make them
+give it back. It&rsquo;ll be the ruin of me. Why, it&rsquo;s burglary! Oh, whatever
+shall I do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Maudie flung herself down on the bed and wept convulsively. Sylvia felt
+her heart beating fast, but she strung herself up to the encounter and
+faced Monkley.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the good of saying you haven&rsquo;t got the jewelry,&rdquo; she cried,
+&ldquo;when you know you have? Give it to her or I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I&rsquo;ll go out into the
+middle of the road and shout at the top of my voice that there&rsquo;s a snake
+in the house, and people will have to come in and look for it, because
+when they didn&rsquo;t believe about the baboon in Mrs. Meares&rsquo;s room the
+baboon was there all the time.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She stopped and challenged Monkley with flashing eyes, head thrown back,
+and agitated breast.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You oughtn&rsquo;t to talk to a grown-up person like that, you know,&rdquo; said
+her father.</p>
+
+<p>Something unspeakably soft in his attitude infuriated Sylvia, and
+spinning round she flashed out at him:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t make Monkley give back the things you stole I&rsquo;ll tell
+everybody about <i>you</i>. I mean it. I&rsquo;ll tell everybody.&rdquo; She stamped her
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a daughter,&rdquo; said Henry. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the way they&rsquo;re bringing them
+up nowadays&mdash;to turn round on their fathers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A daughter?&rdquo; Monkley echoed, with an odd look at his friend.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I mean son,&rdquo; said Henry, weakly. &ldquo;Anyway, it&rsquo;s all the same.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley seemed to pay no more attention to the slip, but went over to
+Maudie and began to coax her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come on, Maudie, don&rsquo;t turn away from a good pal.<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a> What if we did take
+a few things? They shouldn&rsquo;t have left them behind. People deserve to
+lose things if they&rsquo;re so careless.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s quite true,&rdquo; Henry agreed, virtuously. &ldquo;It&rsquo;ll be a lesson to
+them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go back and pack up your things, my dear, and get out of the house.
+I&rsquo;ll see you through. You shall take another name and go on the stage
+right away. What&rsquo;s the good of crying over a few rings and bangles?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But Maudie refused to be comforted. &ldquo;Give them back to me. Give them
+back to me,&rdquo; she moaned.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, all right,&rdquo; Monkley said, suddenly. &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re no sport, Maudie.
+You&rsquo;ve got the chance of your life and you&rsquo;re turning it down. Well,
+don&rsquo;t blame me if you find yourself still a slavey five years hence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley went down-stairs and came back again in a minute or two with a
+parcel wrapped up in tissue-paper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t kept anything back?&rdquo; Maudie asked, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear girl, you ought to know how many there were. Count them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Would you like me to give you back the hair-wash?&rdquo; Henry asked,
+indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>Maudie rose to go away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not angry with me, Jim?&rdquo; she asked, pleadingly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, get out!&rdquo; he snapped.</p>
+
+<p>Maudie turned pale and rushed from the room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Silly b&mdash;&mdash;h,&rdquo; Monkley said. &ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s been a very instructive
+morning,&rdquo; he added, fixing Sylvia with his green eyes and making her
+feel uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some people make a fuss about the least little thing,&rdquo; Henry said.
+&ldquo;There was just the same trouble when I pawned my wife&rsquo;s jewelry. Coming
+round the corner to have one?&rdquo; he inquired, looking at Monkley, who said
+he would join him presently and followed him out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>When she was alone, Sylvia tried to put her emotions in order, without
+success. She had wished for excitement, but, now that it had arrived,
+she wished it had kept away from her. She was not so much shocked by the
+revelation<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> of what her father and Monkley had done (though she resented
+their cowardly treatment of Maudie), as frightened by what might
+ultimately happen to her in their company. They might at any moment find
+themselves in prison, and if she were to be let out before the others,
+what would she do? She would be utterly alone and would starve; or, what
+seemed more likely, they would be arrested and she would remain in
+Lillie Road, waiting for news and perhaps compelled to earn her living
+by working for Mrs. Meares. At all costs she must be kept informed of
+what was going on. If her father tried to shut her out of his
+confidence, she would appeal to Monkley. Her meditation was interrupted
+by Monkley himself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So you&rsquo;re a little girl,&rdquo; he said, suddenly. &ldquo;Fancy that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What if I am?&rdquo; challenged Sylvia, who saw no hope of successfully
+denying the accusation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Monkley murmured. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s more fun, that&rsquo;s all. But,
+look here, girl or boy, don&rsquo;t let me ever have any more heroics from
+you. D&rsquo;ye hear? Or, by God! I&rsquo;ll&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt that the only way of dealing with Monkley was to stand up to
+him from the first.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, shut up!&rdquo; she broke in. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t frighten me. Next time, perhaps
+you&rsquo;ll tell me beforehand what you&rsquo;re going to do, and then I&rsquo;ll see if
+I&rsquo;ll let you do it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He began to laugh. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got some pluck.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, to cheek me like that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not Maudie, you see,&rdquo; Sylvia pointed out.</p>
+
+<p>Presently a spasm of self-consciousness made her long to be once more in
+petticoats, and, grabbing wildly at her flying boyhood, she said how
+much she wanted to have adventures. Monkley promised she should have as
+many as she liked, and bade her farewell, saying that he was going to
+join her father in a saloon bar round the corner. Sylvia volunteered to
+accompany him, and after a momentary hesitation he agreed to take her.
+On the stairs they overtook the baron, very much dressed up, who, in
+answer to an inquiry from Monkley, informed them that he was going to
+lunch with the Emperor of Byzantium.<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Give my love to the Empress,&rdquo; Monkley laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s-s nothing to laugh at,&rdquo; the baron said, severely. &ldquo;He lives in
+West Kensington.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Next door to the Pope, I suppose,&rdquo; Monkley went on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You never will be serious, but I&rsquo;ll take you there one afternoon, if
+you don&rsquo;t believe me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The baron continued on his way down-stairs with a kind of mincing
+dignity, and Mrs. Meares came out of her bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it nice for the dear baron?&rdquo; she purred. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s received some of
+his money from Berlin, and at last he can go and look up his old
+friends. He&rsquo;s lunching with the Emperor to-day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hope he won&rsquo;t drop his crown in the soup,&rdquo; Monkley said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, give over laughing, Mr. Monkley, for I like to think of the poor
+baron in the society to which he belongs. And he doesn&rsquo;t forget his old
+friends. But there, after all, why would he, for, though I&rsquo;m living in
+Lillie Road, I&rsquo;ve got the real spirit of the past in my blood, and the
+idea of meeting the Emperor doesn&rsquo;t elate me at all. It seems somehow as
+if I were used to meeting emperors.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On the way to the public house Monkley held forth to Sylvia on the
+prevalence of human folly, and vowed that he would hold the baron to his
+promise and visit the Emperor himself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And take me with you?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You seem very keen on the new partnership,&rdquo; he observed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to be left out of things,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;Not out of
+anything. It makes me look stupid. Father treats me like a little girl;
+but it&rsquo;s he who&rsquo;s stupid, really.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the public house, and Henry was taken aback by Sylvia&rsquo;s
+arrival. She, for her part, was rather disappointed in the saloon bar.
+The words had conjured something much more sumptuous than this place
+that reminded her of a chemist&rsquo;s shop.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want the boy to start learning to drink,&rdquo; Henry protested.</p>
+
+<p>Monkley told him to give up the fiction of Sylvia&rsquo;s boyhood<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> with him,
+to which Henry replied that, though, as far as he knew, he had only been
+sitting here ten minutes, Jimmy and Sylvia seemed to have settled the
+whole world between them in that time.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s more, if she&rsquo;s going to remain a boy any longer, she&rsquo;s got to
+have some new clothes,&rdquo; Monkley announced.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia flushed with pleasure, recognizing that cooperative action of
+which preliminary dressing-up was the pledge.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see, I&rsquo;ve promised to take her round with me to the Emperor of
+Byzantium.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that pub,&rdquo; said Henry. &ldquo;Is it Walham Green way?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley told him about meeting the baron, and put forward his theory
+that people who were willing to be duped by the Emperor of Byzantium
+would be equally willing to be duped by other people, with much profit
+to the other people.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Meaning you and me?&rdquo; said Henry.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, in this case I propose to leave you out of the first act,&rdquo;
+Monkley said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to have a look at the scene myself. There&rsquo;s no
+one like you with the cards, Harry, but when it comes to the patter I
+think you&rsquo;ll give me first.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Presently, Sylvia was wearing Etons, at Monkley&rsquo;s suggestion, and
+waiting in a dream of anticipation; the baron proclaimed that the
+Emperor would hold a reception on the first Thursday in June. When
+Monkley said he wanted young Sylvester to go with them, the baron looked
+doubtful; but Monkley remarked that he had seen the baron coming out of
+a certain house in Earl&rsquo;s Court Road the other day, which seemed to
+agitate him and make him anxious for Sylvia to attend the reception.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the very commonplace house in Stanmore Crescent, where the
+Emperor of Byzantium lived, Monkley told the baron that he did not wish
+anything said about Sylvester&rsquo;s father. Did the baron understand? He
+wished a certain mystery to surround Sylvester. The baron after his
+adventure in Earl&rsquo;s Court Road would appreciate the importance of
+secrecy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are a regular devil, Monkley,&rdquo; said von Statten, in<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> his most
+mincing voice. Remembering the saloon bar, Sylvia had made up her mind
+not to be disappointed if the Emperor&rsquo;s reception failed to be very
+exciting; yet on the whole she was rather impressed. To be sure, the
+entrance hall of 14 Stanmore Crescent was not very imperial; but a
+footman took their silk hats, and, though Monkley whispered that he was
+carrying them like flower-pots and was evidently the jobbing gardener
+from round the corner, Sylvia was agreeably awed, especially when they
+were invited to proceed to the antechamber.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In other words, the dining-room,&rdquo; said Monkley to the baron.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hush! Don&rsquo;t you see the throne-room beyond?&rdquo; the baron whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough, opening out of the antechamber was a smaller room in which
+was a dais covered with purple cloth. On a high Venetian chair sat the
+Emperor, a young man with dark, bristling hair, in evening dress. Sylvia
+stood on tiptoe to get a better look at him; but there was such a crush
+in the entrance to the throne-room that she had to be content for the
+present with staring at the numerous courtiers and listening to
+Monkley&rsquo;s whispered jokes, which the baron tried in vain to stop.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose where the young man with a head like a door-mat and a face
+like a scraper is sitting is where the Imperial family congregates after
+dinner. I&rsquo;d like to see what&rsquo;s under that purple cloth. Packing-cases,
+I&rsquo;ll bet a quid.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hush! hush! not so loud,&rdquo; the baron implored. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s Captain Grayrigg,
+the Emperor&rsquo;s father.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to a very small man with pouched eyes and a close-cropped
+pointed beard.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean to tell me the Emperor hasn&rsquo;t made his father a
+field-marshal? He ought to be ashamed of himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear man, Captain Grayrigg married the late Empress. He is nothing
+himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose he has to knock the packing-cases together and pay for the
+ices.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But the baron had pressed forward to meet Captain Grayrigg and did not
+answer. Presently he came back<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a> very officiously and beckoned to
+Monkley, whom he introduced.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;From New York City, Colonel,&rdquo; said Monkley, with a quick glance at the
+baron.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia nearly laughed, because Jimmy was talking through his nose in the
+most extraordinary way.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! an American,&rdquo; said Captain Grayrigg. &ldquo;Then I expect this sort of
+thing strikes you as quite ridiculous.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, no, Colonel. Between ourselves I may as well tell you I&rsquo;m over
+here myself on a job not unconnected with royalty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley indicated Sylvia with a significant look.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This little French boy who is called Master Sylvestre at present may be
+heard of later.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jimmy had accentuated her nationality. Sylvia, quick enough to see what
+he wanted her to do, replied in French.</p>
+
+<p>A tall young man with an olive complexion and priestly gestures,
+standing close by, pricked up his ears at Monkley&rsquo;s remark. When Captain
+Grayrigg had retired he came forward and introduced himself as the
+Prince de Condé.</p>
+
+<p>Monkley seemed to be sizing up the prince; then abruptly with an air of
+great cordiality he took his arm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say, Prince, let&rsquo;s go and find an ice. I guess you&rsquo;re the man I&rsquo;ve been
+looking for ever since I landed in England.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They moved off together to find refreshment. Sylvia was left in the
+antechamber, which was filled with a most extraordinary crowd of people.
+There were young men with very pink cheeks who all wore white roses or
+white carnations in their buttonholes; there was a battered-looking
+woman with a wreath of laurel in her hair who suddenly began to declaim
+in a wailful voice. Everybody said, &ldquo;Hush,&rdquo; and tried to avoid catching
+his neighbor&rsquo;s eye. At first, Sylvia decided that the lady must be a
+lunatic whom people had to humor, because her remarks had nothing to do
+with the reception and were not even intelligible; then she decided that
+she was a ventriloquist who was imitating a cat. An old gentleman in
+kilts was standing near her, and Sylvia remembered that once in France
+she had seen somebody dressed like that, who had danced in a tent; this
+lent color to the theory of their both being entertainers. The old
+gentleman asked the<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> baron if he had the Gaelic, and the baron said he
+had not; whereupon the old gentleman sniffed very loudly, which made
+Sylvia feel rather uncomfortable, because, though she had not eaten
+garlic, she had eaten onions for lunch. Presently the old gentleman
+moved away and she asked the baron when he was going to begin his dance;
+the baron told her that he was the chief of a great Scottish clan and
+that he always dressed like that. A clergyman with two black-and-white
+dogs under his arms was walking about and protesting in a high voice
+that he couldn&rsquo;t shake hands; and a lady in a Grecian tunic, standing
+near Sylvia, tried to explain to her in French that the dogs were
+descended from King Charles I. Sylvia wanted to tell her she spoke
+English, because she was sure something had gone wrong with the
+explanation, owing to the lady&rsquo;s French; but she did not like to do so
+after Jimmy&rsquo;s deliberate insistence upon her nationality.</p>
+
+<p>Presently a very fussy woman with a long, stringy neck, bulging eyes,
+and arched fingers came into the antechamber and wanted to know who had
+not yet been presented to the Emperor. Sylvia looked round for Jimmy,
+but he was nowhere to be seen, and, being determined not to go away
+without entering the throne-room, she said loudly:</p>
+
+<p><i>&ldquo;Moi, je n&rsquo;ai pas encore vu l&rsquo;empereur.&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, the little darling!&rdquo; trilled the fussy woman. <i>&ldquo;Venez avec moi, je
+vous présenterai moi-même.&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How beautifully Miss Widgett speaks French!&rdquo; somebody murmured, when
+Sylvia was being led into the throne-room. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s such a gift.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was very much impressed by a large orange flag nailed to the wall
+above the Emperor&rsquo;s throne.</p>
+
+<p><i>&ldquo;Le drapeau impériale de Byzance,&rdquo; Miss Widgett said. &ldquo;Voyez-vous
+l&rsquo;aigle avec deux têtes. Il était fait pour sa majesté impériale par le
+Société du roi Charles I de West London.&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;King Charles again,&rdquo; Sylvia thought.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Il faut baiser la main</i>,&rdquo; Miss Widgett prompted. Sylvia followed out
+the suggestion; and the Emperor, to whom Miss Widgett had whispered a
+few words, said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Ah, vous êtes français,</i>&rdquo; and to Miss Widgett, &ldquo;Who did you say he
+was?&rdquo;<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t know. He came with Baron von Statten. <i>Comment vous
+appelez-vous?</i>&rdquo; Miss Widgett asked, turning to Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia answered that she was called Monsieur Sylvestre, and just then a
+most unusual squealing was heard in the antechamber.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon dieu! qu&rsquo;est-ce que c&rsquo;est que ça?</i>&rdquo; Sylvia cried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>C&rsquo;est le&mdash;comment dit-on</i> bagpipes <i>en Français? C&rsquo;est le &lsquo;baagpeep&rsquo;
+vous savez</i>,&rdquo; which left Sylvia as wise as she was before. However, as
+there was no general panic, she ceased to be frightened. Soon she saw
+Jimmy beckoning to her from the antechamber, and shortly afterward they
+left the reception, which had interested Sylvia very much, though she
+regretted that nobody had offered her an ice.</p>
+
+<p>Monkley congratulated Sylvia upon her quickness in grasping that he had
+wanted her to pretend she was French, and by his praise roused in her
+the sense of ambition, which, though at present it was nothing more than
+a desire to please him personally, marked, nevertheless, a step forward
+in the development of her character; certainly from this moment the old
+fear of having no one to look after her began to diminish, and though
+she still viewed with pleasure the prospect of being alone, she began to
+have a faint conception of making herself indispensable, perceiving
+dimly the independence that would naturally follow. Meanwhile, however
+gratifying Monkley&rsquo;s compliment, it could not compensate her for the ice
+she had not been given, and Sylvia made this so plain to him that he
+invited her into a confectioner&rsquo;s shop on the way home and gave her a
+larger ice than any she had seen at the Emperor&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since Sylvia had made friends with Jimmy Monkley, her father had
+adopted the attitude of being left out in the cold, which made him the
+worst kind of audience for an enthusiastic account of the reception.
+Mrs. Meares, though obviously condescending, was a more satisfactory
+listener, and she was able to explain to Sylvia some of the things that
+had puzzled her, among others the old gentleman&rsquo;s remark about Gaelic.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This keeping up of old customs and ceremonies in our degenerate days is
+most commendable,&rdquo; said Mrs. Meares. &ldquo;I wish I could be doing more in
+that line here, but Lillie<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> Road does not lend itself to the antique and
+picturesque; Mr. Morgan, too, gets so impatient even if Clara only hums
+at her work that I don&rsquo;t like to ask that Scotchman to come and play his
+bagpipes here, though I dare say he should be only too glad to do so for
+a shilling. No, my dear boy, I don&rsquo;t mean the gentleman you met at the
+Emperor&rsquo;s. There is a poor man who plays in the street round here from
+time to time and dances a sword dance. But the English have no idea of
+beauty or freedom. I remember last time I saw him the poor man was being
+moved on for obstructing the traffic.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Clara put forward a theory that the reception had been a church treat.
+There had been a similar affair in her own parish once, in which the
+leading scholars of the Sunday-school classes had portrayed the kings
+and queens of England. She herself had been one of the little princes
+who were smothered in the Tower, and had worn a pair of her mother&rsquo;s
+stockings. There had been trouble, she remembered, because the other
+little prince had been laced up so tightly that he was sick over the
+pillow that was wanted to stuff out the boy who was representing Henry
+VIII and could not be used at the last moment.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia assured her that nothing like this had taken place at the
+Emperor&rsquo;s, but Clara remained unconvinced.</p>
+
+<p>A week or two passed. The reception was almost forgotten, when one day
+Sylvia found the dark-complexioned young man with whom Monkley had made
+friends talking earnestly to him and her father.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You understand,&rdquo; he was saying. &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t do this if I didn&rsquo;t require
+money for my work. You must not look upon me as a pretender. I really am
+the only surviving descendant in the direct line of the famous Prince de
+Condé.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; Monkley answered. &ldquo;I know you&rsquo;re genuine enough. All you&rsquo;ve
+got to do is to back&mdash;Well, here he is,&rdquo; he added, turning round and
+pointing to Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think Sil looks much like a king,&rdquo; Henry said, pensively.
+&ldquo;Though I&rsquo;m bound to say the only one I ever saw in real life was
+Leopold of Belgium.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia began to think that Clara had been right, after all.<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What about the present King of Spain, then?&rdquo; Monkley asked. &ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t
+much more than nine years old, if he&rsquo;s as much. You don&rsquo;t suppose he
+looks like a king, do you? On the Spanish stamps he looks more like an
+advertisement for Mellin&rsquo;s food than anything else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Naturally the <i>de jure</i> King of Spain, who until the present has been
+considered to be Don Carlos, is also the <i>de jure</i> King of France,&rdquo; said
+the Prince de Condé.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you start any of your games with kings of France,&rdquo; Henry advised.
+&ldquo;I know the French well and they won&rsquo;t stand it. What does he want to be
+king of two places for? I should have thought Spain was enough for
+anybody.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The divine right of monarchs is something greater than mere geography,&rdquo;
+the Prince answered, scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All right. Have it your own way. You&rsquo;re the authority here on kings.
+But don&rsquo;t overdo it. That&rsquo;s all I advise,&rdquo; Henry said, finally. &ldquo;I know
+everybody thinks I&rsquo;m wrong nowadays,&rdquo; he added, with a glance at Monkley
+and Sylvia. &ldquo;But what about Condy&rsquo;s Fluid?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What about it?&rdquo; Monkley asked. &ldquo;What do you want Condy&rsquo;s for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want it,&rdquo; said Henry. &ldquo;I simply passed the remark. Our friend
+here is the Prince de Condé. Well, I merely remark &lsquo;What about Condy&rsquo;s
+Fluid?&rsquo; I don&rsquo;t want to start an argument, because, as I said, I&rsquo;m
+always wrong nowadays, but I think if he wanted to be a prince he ought
+to have chosen a more <i>recherché</i> title, not gone routing about among
+patent medicines.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Prince de Condé looked inquiringly at Monkley.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you bother about him, old chap. He&rsquo;s gone off at the deep end.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I knew it,&rdquo; Henry said. &ldquo;I knew I should be wrong. That&rsquo;s right, laugh
+away,&rdquo; he added, bitterly, to Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>There followed a long explanation by the prince of Sylvia&rsquo;s royal
+descent, which she could not understand at all. Monkley, however, seemed
+to be understanding it very well, so well that her father gave up being
+offended and loudly expressed his admiration for Jimmy&rsquo;s grip of the
+subject.<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Monkley, &ldquo;the question is who are we going to touch?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The prince asked if he had noticed at the reception a young man, a
+rather good-looking, fair young man with a white rose in his buttonhole.
+Monkley said that most of the young men he had seen in Stanmore Crescent
+would answer to that description, and the prince gave up trying to
+describe him except as the only son of a wealthy and distinguished
+painter&mdash;Sir Francis Hurndale. It seemed that young Godfrey Hurndale
+could always command the paternal purse; and the prince suggested that a
+letter should be sent to his father from the secretary of the <i>de jure</i>
+King of Spain and France, offering him the post of court painter on his
+accession. Monkley objected that a man who had made money out of
+painting would not be taken in by so transparent a fraud as that; and
+the prince explained that Sir Francis would only be amused, but that he
+would certainly pass the letter on to his son, who was an enthusiastic
+Legitimist; that the son would consult him, the Prince de Condé; and
+that afterward it lay with Monkley to make the most of the situation,
+bearing in mind that he, the prince, required a fair share of the
+profits in order to advance his great propaganda for a universal
+Platonic system of government.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At present,&rdquo; the prince proclaimed, becoming more and more sacerdotal
+as he spoke of his scheme&mdash;&ldquo;at present I am a lay member of the Society
+of Jesus, which represents the Platonic tendency in modern thought. I am
+vowed to exterminate republicanism, anarchy, socialism, and to maintain
+the conservative instincts of humanity against&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, nobody&rsquo;s going to quarrel with you about spending your own
+money,&rdquo; Monkley interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He can give it to the Salvation Army if he likes,&rdquo; Henry agreed.</p>
+
+<p>The discussion of the more practical aspects of the plan went on for
+several days. Ultimately it was decided to leave Lillie Road as a first
+step and take a small house in a suburb; to Sylvia&rsquo;s great delight, for
+she was tired of the mustiness of Lillie Road, they moved to Rosemary
+Avenue, Streatham. It was a newly built house and it was all their<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> own,
+with the Common at one end of the road, and, better still, a back
+garden. Sylvia had never lived where she had been able to walk out of
+her own door to her own patch of green; moreover she thoroughly enjoyed
+the game of being an exiled king that might be kidnapped by his foes at
+any moment. To be sure, there were disadvantages; for instance, she was
+not allowed to cultivate an acquaintanceship with the two freckled girls
+next door on their right, nor with the boy who had an air-gun on their
+left; but generally the game was amusing, especially when her father
+became the faithful old French servant, who had guarded her all these
+years, until Mr. James Monkley, the enthusiastic American amateur of
+genealogy, had discovered the little king hidden away in the old
+servant&rsquo;s cottage. Henry objected to being ordered about by his own
+daughter, but his objections were overruled by Jimmy, and Sylvia gave
+him no rest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That damned Condé says he&rsquo;s a lay Jesuit,&rdquo; Henry grumbled. &ldquo;But what am
+I? A lay figure. I suppose you wouldn&rsquo;t like me to sleep in a kennel in
+the back yard?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Another thing I can&rsquo;t understand is why on
+earth you had to be an American, Jimmy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley told Henry of his sudden impulse to be an American at the
+Emperor&rsquo;s reception.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never give way to impulse,&rdquo; Henry said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not a bit like an
+American. You&rsquo;ll get a nasty growth in your nose or strain it or
+something. Americans may talk through the nose a bit; but you make a
+noise like a cat that&rsquo;s had its tail shut in a door. It&rsquo;s like living in
+a Punch and Judy show. It may not damage your nose, but it&rsquo;s very bad
+for my ears, old man. It&rsquo;s all very fine for me to be a French servant.
+I can speak French; though I don&rsquo;t look like the servant part of it. But
+you can&rsquo;t speak American, and if you go on trying much harder you very
+soon won&rsquo;t be able to speak any language at all. I noticed to-day, when
+you started talking to the furniture fellow, he looked very uneasy. I
+think he thought he was sitting on a concertina.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anyway, he cleared off without getting this month&rsquo;s instalment,&rdquo;
+Monkley said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s a very good voice to have when there are duns<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> kicking
+around,&rdquo; Henry said. &ldquo;Or in a crowded railway carriage. But as a voice
+to live with, it&rsquo;s rotten. However, don&rsquo;t listen to me. My advice
+doesn&rsquo;t count nowadays. Only,&rdquo; and Henry paused impressively, &ldquo;when
+people advise you to try linseed oil for your boots as soon as you start
+talking to them, then don&rsquo;t say I didn&rsquo;t warn you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding Henry&rsquo;s pessimism, Monkley continued to practise his
+American; day by day the task of imposing Sylvia on the world as the
+King of Spain and France was being carefully prepared, too carefully, it
+seemed to Sylvia, for so much talk beforehand was becoming tiresome. The
+long delay was chiefly due to Henry&rsquo;s inability to keep in his head the
+numerous genealogical facts that were crammed down his throat by the
+Prince de Condé.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never was any good at history even when I was a boy,&rdquo; Henry
+protested. &ldquo;Never. And I was never good at working out cousins and
+aunts. I know I had two aunts, and hated them both.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At last Henry&rsquo;s facts were considered firmly enough implanted to justify
+a move; and in September the prince and Monkley sat down to compose
+their preliminary letter to Sir Francis Hurndale. Sylvia by now was so
+much accustomed to the behavior of her companions that she never thought
+seriously about the fantastic side of the affair. Her own masquerade as
+a boy had been passed off so successfully even upon such an acute
+observer as Jimmy, until her father had let out the secret by a slip of
+the tongue, that she had no qualms about being accepted as a king. She
+realized that money was to be made out of it; but the absence of money
+had already come to seem a temporary discomfort, to relieve which people
+in a position like her own and her father&rsquo;s had no reason to be
+scrupulous. Not that she really ever bothered her head with the morality
+of financial ways and means. When she spent the ten-franc piece that she
+thought she had found, the wrong had lain in unwittingly depriving her
+mother whom she loved; if she had not loved her mother she might have
+still had scruples about stealing from her; but stealing from people who
+had plenty of money and with whom there<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> was no binding link of
+affection would have been quite incomprehensible to her. Therefore the
+sight of Jimmy Monkley and her father and the Prince de Condé sitting
+round a spindle-legged tea-table in this new house that smelled
+pleasantly of varnish was merely something in a day&rsquo;s work of the life
+they were leading, like a game of cards. It was a much jollier life than
+any she had yet known; her alliance with Jimmy had been a very good
+move; her father was treated as he ought to be treated by being kept
+under; she was shortly going to have some more clothes.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia sat watching the trio, thinking how much more vividly present
+Jimmy seemed to be than either of the other two&mdash;the prince with his
+greenish complexion never really well shaved, and his turn-down collars
+that made his black suit more melancholy, or her father with his light,
+plaintive eyes and big ears. She was glad that she was not going to
+resemble her father except perhaps in being short and in the shape of
+her wide nose; yet she was not really very short; it was only that her
+mother had been so tall; perhaps, too, when her hair grew long again her
+nose would not seem so wide.</p>
+
+<p>The letter was finished and Jimmy was reading it aloud:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>S<small>IR</small>,&mdash;I have the honor to ask if, in the probable event of a great
+dynastic change taking place in one of the chief countries of
+Europe, you would welcome the post of court painter, naturally at a
+suitable remuneration. If you read the daily papers, as no doubt
+you do, you will certainly have come to the conclusion that neither
+the present ruling house nor what is known as the Carlist party had
+any real hold upon the affections of the Spanish people. Verb. sap.
+Interesting changes may be foreshadowed, of which I am not yet at
+liberty to write more fully. Should you entertain the proposal I
+shall be happy to wait upon you with further particulars.</p>
+
+<p class="r">I have the honor to be, sir,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+Your obedient servant,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+J<small>OSEPHE</small>-E<small>RNESTE</small>,&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+P<small>RINCE DE</small> C<small>ONDÉ</small>.</p></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you know what it sounds like?&rdquo; said Henry. &ldquo;Mind I&rsquo;m not saying this
+because I didn&rsquo;t write the letter myself. It sounds to me like a cross
+between a prophecy in Old Moore&rsquo;s Almanack and somebody trying to sell a
+patent knife-cleaner.&rdquo;<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a good deal in what you say,&rdquo; Monkley agreed, in rather a
+dissatisfied tone.</p>
+
+<p>Henry was so much flattered by the reception of his criticism that he
+became compassionate to the faults of the letter and tried hard to point
+out some of its merits.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;After all,&rdquo; said Jimmy, &ldquo;the great thing is that the prince has signed
+it. If his name doesn&rsquo;t draw Master Godfrey, no letters are going to.
+We&rsquo;ll send it off as it is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So the letter was sent. Two days afterward the prince arrived with the
+news that Godfrey Hurndale had called upon him and that he had been
+inexpressibly happy at the prospect of meeting the <i>de jure</i> King of
+France and Spain.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bring him round to-morrow afternoon about tea-time,&rdquo; said Monkley. &ldquo;You
+haven&rsquo;t forgotten the family history, Henry?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Henry said that he had not forgotten a single relation, and that he
+damned them severally each morning in all their titles while he was
+dressing.</p>
+
+<p>The next afternoon Sylvia sat in an arm-chair in the presence-room,
+which Henry supposed was so called because none of the furniture had
+been paid for, and waited for Godfrey Hurndale&rsquo;s coming. Her father put
+on the rusty black evening-dress of the family retainer, and Jimmy wore
+a most conspicuous check suit and talked so loudly and nasally that
+Henry was driven to a final protest:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here, Jimmy, I&rsquo;ve dressed up to help this show in a suit that&rsquo;s as
+old as one of those infernal ancestors of Sil&rsquo;s, but if you don&rsquo;t get
+less American it&rsquo;ll fall to pieces. Every time you guess I can hear a
+seam give.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Remember to talk nothing but French,&rdquo; Monkley warned Sylvia, when the
+bell rang. &ldquo;Go on, Harry. You&rsquo;ve got to open the door. And don&rsquo;t forget
+that <i>you</i> can only speak French.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley followed him out of the room, and his voice could be heard
+clanking about the hall as he invited young Hurndale into the
+dining-room first. Henry came back and took up his position behind
+Sylvia&rsquo;s chair; she felt very solemn and excited, and asked her father
+rather irritably why he was muttering. The reason, however,<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a> remained a
+mystery, for the dining-room door opened again and, heralded by
+Monkley&rsquo;s twanging invitation, Mr. Hurndale stood shyly in the entrance
+to the presence-room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go right in, Mr. Hurndale,&rdquo; Monkley said. &ldquo;I guess his Majesty&rsquo;s just
+about ready to meet you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, when she saw the young man bowing before her, really felt a kind
+of royal exaltation and held out her hand to be kissed.</p>
+
+<p>Hurndale reverently bent over it and touched it with his lips; so did
+the prince, an action for which Sylvia was unprepared and which she
+rather resented, thinking to herself that he really did not shave and
+that it had not only been his grubby appearance. Then Hurndale offered
+her a large bunch of white carnations and she became kingly again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>François</i>,&rdquo; she commanded her father, &ldquo;<i>mets ces &oelig;illets dans ma
+chambre.</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And when her father passed out with a bow Sylvia was indeed a king. The
+audience did not last long. There were practical matters to discuss, for
+which his Majesty was begged to excuse their withdrawal. Sylvia would
+have liked a longer ceremony. When the visitor had gone they all sat
+down to a big tea in the presence-room, and she was told that the young
+man had been so completely conquered by her gracious reception of him
+that he had promised to raise five hundred pounds for her cause. His
+reward in addition to royal favors was to be a high class of the Order
+of Isabella the Catholic. Everybody, even Henry, was in high good humor.
+The prince did not come to Streatham again; but a week later Monkley got
+a letter from him with the Paris postmark.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>D<small>EAR MR</small>. M<small>ONKLEY</small>,&mdash;Our young friend handed me a check for £200 the
+day before yesterday. As he seemed uncertain about the remainder of
+the sum promised, I took the liberty of drawing my share at once.
+My great work requires immediate assistance, and I am now busily
+occupied in Paris. My next address will be a castle in Spain, where
+perhaps we shall meet when you are looking for your next site.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Most truly yours,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+J<small>OSEPHE</small>-E<small>RNESTE</small>,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+P<small>RINCE DE</small> C<small>ONDÉ</small>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a></p>
+
+<p>Jimmy and Henry stared at each other.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I knew it,&rdquo; said Henry. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m always wrong; but I knew it. Still, if I
+could catch him, it would take more than Condy&rsquo;s Fluid to disinfect that
+pea-green welsher after I&rsquo;d done with him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley sat biting his lips in silence; and Sylvia, recognizing the
+expression in his eyes that she dreaded formerly, notwithstanding that
+he was now her best friend, felt sharply her old repugnance for him.
+Henry was still abusing the defaulter when Monkley cut him short.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shut up. I rather admire him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Admire him?&rdquo; Henry gasped. &ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;d admire the hangman and
+shake hands with him on the scaffold. It&rsquo;s all very fine for you. You
+didn&rsquo;t have to learn how Ferdinand the Fifty-eighth married Isabella the
+Innocent, daughter of Alphonso the Eighth, commonly called Alphonso the
+Anxious. Condy&rsquo;s Fluid! I swallowed enough of it, I can tell you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley told him gruffly to keep quiet; then he sat down and began to
+write, still with that expression in his eyes. Presently he tore up the
+letter and paced the room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Damn that swine,&rdquo; he suddenly shouted, kicking the spindle-legged table
+into the fireplace. &ldquo;We wanted the money, you know. We wanted the money
+badly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before dawn the three of them abandoned the new house in
+Streatham and occupied rooms in the Kennington Park Road. Monkley and
+Sylvia&rsquo;s father resumed the racing that had temporarily been interrupted
+by ambition. Sylvia wandered about the streets in a suit of Etons that
+was rapidly showing signs of wear.</p>
+
+<p>One day early in the new year Sylvia was leaning over the parapet of
+Waterloo Bridge and munching hot chestnuts. The warmth of them in her
+pockets was grateful. Her pastime of dropping the shells into the river
+did not lack interest; she was vaguely conscious in the frosty sunshine
+of life&rsquo;s bounty, and she offered to the future a welcome from the
+depths of her being; meanwhile there still remained forty chestnuts to
+be eaten.</p>
+
+<p>Her meditation was interrupted by a voice from a passerby who had
+detached himself from the stream of traffic<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a> that she had been
+disregarding in her pensive greed; she looked up and met the glance of a
+pleasant middle-aged gentleman in a dark-gray coat with collar and cuffs
+of chinchilla, who was evidently anxious to begin a conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re out of school early,&rdquo; he observed.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia replied that she did not go to school.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Private tutor?&rdquo; he asked; and, partly to save further questions about
+her education, partly because she was not quite sure what a private
+tutor was, she answered in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger looked along the parapet inquisitively.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m out alone this afternoon,&rdquo; Sylvia said, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger asked her what amused her most, museums or theaters or
+listening to bands, and whether she preferred games or country walks.
+Sylvia would have liked to tell him that she preferred eating chestnuts
+to anything else on earth at that moment; but, being unwilling to create
+an impression of trying to snub such a benevolent person, she replied
+vaguely that she did not know what she liked best. Then because such an
+answer seemed to imply a lack of intelligence that she did not wish to
+impute to herself, she informed him that she liked looking at people,
+which was strictly true, for if she had not been eating chestnuts she
+would certainly have still been contemplating the traffic across the
+bridge.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll show you some interesting people, if you care to come with me,&rdquo;
+the stranger proposed. &ldquo;Have you anything to do this afternoon?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia admitted that her time was unoccupied.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come along, then,&rdquo; said the middle-aged gentleman, a little fussily,
+she thought, and forthwith he hailed a passing hansom. Sylvia had for a
+long time been ambitious to travel in a hansom. She had already eaten
+thirty-five chestnuts, only seven of which had been bad; she decided to
+accept the stranger&rsquo;s invitation. He asked her where she lived and
+promised to send her home by cab when the entertainment was over.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia asked if it was a reception to which he was taking her. The
+middle-aged gentleman laughed, squeezed her hand, and said that it might
+be called a reception, adding,<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> with a chuckle, &ldquo;a very warm reception,
+in fact.&rdquo; Sylvia did not understand the joke, but laughed out of
+politeness.</p>
+
+<p>There followed an exchange of names, and Sylvia learnt that her new
+acquaintance was called Corydon.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll excuse me from offering you one of my cards,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+haven&rsquo;t one with me this afternoon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They drove along for some time, during which the conversation of Mr.
+Corydon always pursued the subject of her likes and dislikes. They drew
+clear of the press of traffic and bowled westward toward Sloane Street;
+Sylvia, recognizing one of the blue West Kensington omnibuses, began to
+wonder if the cab would take her past Lillie Road where Jimmy had
+specially forbidden her to go, because both he and her father owed
+several weeks&rsquo; rent to Mrs. Meares and he did not want to remind her of
+their existence. When they drew nearer and nearer to Sylvia&rsquo;s former
+lodging she began to feel rather uneasy and wish that the cab would turn
+down a side-street. The landmarks were becoming more and more familiar,
+and Sylvia was asking herself if Mrs. Meares had employed the stranger
+to kidnap her as a hostage for the unpaid rent, when the cab turned off
+into Redcliffe Gardens and soon afterward pulled up at a house.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here we are,&rdquo; said Mr. Corydon. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll enjoy yourself most
+tremendously, Sylvester.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The door was opened by a servant, who was apparently dressed as a
+brigand, which puzzled Sylvia so much that she asked the reason in a
+whisper. Mr. Corydon laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a Venetian. That&rsquo;s the costume of a gondolier, my dear boy. My
+friend who is giving the reception dresses all his servants like
+gondoliers. So much more picturesque than a horrible housemaid.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia regarded this exotic Clara with considerable interest; the only
+other Venetian product of which she had hitherto been aware was blinds.</p>
+
+<p>The house, which smelt strongly of incense and watered flowers, awed
+Sylvia with its luxury, and she began to regret having put foot in a
+place where it was so difficult to know on what she was intended to
+tread. However, since Mr. Corydon seemed to walk everywhere without
+regard<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> for the softness of the carpets, Sylvia made up her mind to
+brave the silent criticism of the gondolier and follow up-stairs in his
+footsteps. Mr. Corydon took her arm and introduced her to a large room
+where a fume of cigarette smoke and incense blurred the outlines of the
+numerous guests that sat about in listening groups, while some one
+played the grand piano. There were many low divans round the room, to
+one of which Mr. Corydon guided Sylvia, and while the music continued
+she had an opportunity of studying her fellow-guests. They were mostly
+young men of about eighteen, rather like the young men at the Emperor&rsquo;s
+reception; but there were also several middle-aged men of the same type
+as Mr. Corydon, one of whom came across and shook hands with them both
+when the music stopped.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So glad you&rsquo;ve come to see me,&rdquo; he said in a voice that sounded as if
+each word were being delicately fried upon his tongue. &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you going
+to smoke a cigarette? These are Russian. Aren&rsquo;t they beautiful to look
+at?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He proffered a green cigarette-case. Sylvia, who felt that she must take
+advantage of this opportunity to learn something about a sphere of life
+which was new to her, asked him what it was made of.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jade, my dear. I brought such heaps of beautiful jade back with me from
+China. I&rsquo;ve even got a jade toilet-set. My dear, it was dreadfully
+expensive.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He giggled. Sylvia, blowing clouds of smoke from her cigarette, thought
+dreamily what funny things her father would have said about him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Raymond&rsquo;s going to dance for us,&rdquo; he said, turning to Corydon. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t
+it too sweet of him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At that moment somebody leaped into the middle of the room with a wild
+scream and began to throw himself into all sorts of extraordinary
+attitudes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Raymond, you&rsquo;re too wonderful!&rdquo; the host ejaculated. &ldquo;You make me
+feel quite Bacchic.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was not surprised that anybody should feel &ldquo;backache&rdquo; (she had
+thus understood her host) in the presence of such contortions. The
+screaming Raymond was followed into the arena by another lightly clad
+and equally shrill youth called Sydney, and both of them flung<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a>
+themselves into a choric frenzy, chasing each other round and round,
+sawing the air with their legs, and tearing roses from their hair to
+fling at the guests, who flung them back at the dancers. Suddenly
+Raymond collapsed upon the carpet and began to moan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter, my dear?&rdquo; cried the host, rushing forward and
+kneeling to support the apparently agonized youth in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, my foot!&rdquo; Raymond wailed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve trodden on something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s trodden on a thorn. He&rsquo;s trodden on a thorn,&rdquo; everybody said at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>Raymond was borne tenderly to a divan, and was so much petted that
+Sydney became jealous and began to dance again, this time on the top of
+the piano. Presently everybody else began to dance, and Mr. Corydon
+would have liked to dance with Sylvia; but she declined. Gondoliers
+entered with trays of liqueurs, and Sylvia, tasting crème de menthe for
+the first time, found it so good that she drank four glasses, which made
+her feel rather drowsy. New guests were continually arriving, to whom
+she did not pay much attention until suddenly she recognized the baron
+with Godfrey Hurndale, who at the same moment recognized her. The baron
+rushed forward and seized Sylvia&rsquo;s arm. She thought he was going to drag
+her back by force to Mrs. Meares to answer for the missing rent, but he
+began to arch his unoccupied arm like an excited swan, and call out in
+his high, mincing voice:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Blackmailers-s-s! blackmailers-s-s!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They blackmailed me out of four hundred pounds,&rdquo; said Hurndale.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who brought him here?&rdquo; the baron cried. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s-s-s true. Godfrey has
+been persecuted by these horrid people. Blackmailers-s-s!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>All the other guests gathered round Sylvia and behaved like angry women
+trying to mount an omnibus. Mr. Corydon had turned very pale and was
+counting his visiting-cards. Sylvia could not understand the reason for
+all this noise; but vaguely through a green mist of crème de menthe she
+understood that she was being attacked on all sides and began to get
+annoyed. Somebody pinched her<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a> arm, and without waiting to see who it
+was she hit the nearest person within reach, who happened to be Mr.
+Corydon. His visiting-cards fell on the floor, and he groveled on the
+carpet trying to sweep them together. Sylvia followed her attack on Mr.
+Corydon by treading hard on Sydney&rsquo;s bare toes, who thereupon slapped
+her face; presently everybody was pushing her and pinching her and
+hustling her, until she got in such a rage and kicked so furiously that
+her enemies retired.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who brought him here?&rdquo; Godfrey Hurndale was demanding. &ldquo;I tell you he
+belongs to a gang of blackmailers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Most dreadful people,&rdquo; the baron echoed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Antonio! Domenico!&rdquo; the host cried.</p>
+
+<p>Two gondoliers entered the room, and at a word from their master they
+seized Sylvia and pushed her out into the street, flinging her coat and
+cap after her. By this time she was in a blind fury, and, snatching the
+bag of chestnuts from her pocket, she flung it with all her force at the
+nearest window and knew the divine relief of starring the pane.</p>
+
+<p>An old lady that was passing stopped and held up her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You wicked young rascal, I shall tell the policeman of you,&rdquo; she
+gasped, and began to belabor Sylvia with her umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>Such unwarrantable interference was not to be tolerated; Sylvia pushed
+the old lady so hard that she sat down heavily in the gutter. Nobody
+else was in sight, and she ran as fast as she could until she found an
+omnibus, in which she traveled to Waterloo Bridge. There she bought
+fifty more chestnuts and walked slowly back to Kennington Park Road,
+vainly trying to find an explanation of the afternoon&rsquo;s adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Her father and Monkley were not back when Sylvia reached home, and she
+sat by the fire in the twilight, munching her chestnuts and pondering
+the whole extraordinary business. When the others came in she told her
+story, and Jimmy looked meaningly at her father.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shows how careful you ought to be,&rdquo; he said. Then<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> turning to Sylvia,
+he asked her what on earth she thought she was doing when she broke the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Suppose you&rsquo;d been collared by the police, you little fool. We should
+have got into a nice mess, thanks to you. Look here, in future you&rsquo;re
+not to speak to people in the street. Do you hear?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had no chestnuts left to throw at Jimmy, so in her rage she took
+an ornament from the mantelpiece and smashed it on the fender.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got the breaking mania,&rdquo; said Henry. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better spend the
+next money you&rsquo;ve got on cocoanuts instead of chestnuts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Oh, ta gueule!</i> I&rsquo;m not going to be a boy any longer.&rdquo;<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HILE her hair was growing long again Sylvia developed a taste for
+reading. She had nothing else to do, for it was not to be supposed that
+with her head cropped close she could show herself to the world in
+petticoats. Her refusal any longer to wear male attire gave Monkley and
+her father an excuse to make one of their hurried moves from Kennington
+Park Road, where by this time they owed enough money to justify the
+trouble of evading payment. Henry had for some time expressed a desire
+to be more central; and a partially furnished top floor was found in
+Fitzroy Street, or, as the landlord preferred to call it, a
+self-contained and well-appointed flat. The top floor had certainly been
+separated from the rest of the house by a wooden partition and a door of
+its own, which possibly justified the first half of the description, but
+the good appointments were limited to a bath that looked like an old
+palette, and a geyser that was not always safe according to Mrs.
+Bullwinkle, a decrepit charwoman, left behind by the last tenants,
+together with some under-linen and two jars containing a morbid growth
+that may formerly have been pickles.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How d&rsquo;ye mean, not safe?&rdquo; Henry asked. &ldquo;Is it liable to blow up?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It went off with a big bang last April and hasn&rsquo;t been lit since,&rdquo; the
+charwoman said. &ldquo;But perhaps it &rsquo;ll be all right now. The worst of it is
+I never can remember which tap you put the match to.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You leave it alone, old lady,&rdquo; Henry advised. &ldquo;Nobody&rsquo;s likely to do
+much bathing in here; from what I can see of it that bath gives more
+than it gets. What did the last people use it for&mdash;growing watercress or
+keeping chickens?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was a very nice bath once,&rdquo; the charwoman said.<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean to say you&rsquo;ve ever tried it? Go on! You&rsquo;re mixing it up
+with the font in which you were baptized. There&rsquo;s never been any water
+in this bath since the flood.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, however inadequately appointed, the new abode had one
+great advantage over any other they had known, which was a large
+raftered garret with windows at either end that ran the whole depth of
+the house. The windows at the back opened on a limitless expanse of
+roofs and chimneys, those in front looked across to a dancing-academy on
+the top floor but one of the house opposite, a view that gave perpetual
+pleasure to Sylvia during the long period of her seclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Now that Sylvia had become herself again, her father and Monkley
+insisted upon her doing the housework, which, as Henry reminded her, she
+was perfectly able to do on account of the excellent training she had
+received in that respect from her mother. Sylvia perceived the logic of
+this and made no attempt to contest it; though she stipulated that Mrs.
+Bullwinkle should not be considered to be helping her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want her,&rdquo; Henry protested, indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, tell her not to come any more,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve shoved her away once or twice,&rdquo; said Henry. &ldquo;But I expect the
+people here before us used to give her a saucer of milk sometimes. The
+best way would be to go out one afternoon and tell her to light the
+geyser. Then perhaps when we came back she&rsquo;d be gone for good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, Mrs. Bullwinkle was of some service to Sylvia, for one
+day, when she was sadly washing down the main staircase of the house,
+she looked up from her handiwork and asked Sylvia, who was passing at
+the moment, if she would like some books to read, inviting her
+down-stairs to take her choice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Bullwinkle used to be a big reader,&rdquo; the charwoman said. &ldquo;A very
+big reader. A very big reader indeed he used to be, did Mr. Bullwinkle.
+In those days he was caretaker at a Congregational chapel in Gospel Oak,
+and he used to say that reading took his mind off of religion a bit.
+Otherwise he&rsquo;d have gone mad before he did, which was shortly after he
+left the chapel through an argument<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> he had with Pastor Phillips, who
+wrote his name in the dust on the reading-desk, which upset my old man,
+because he thought it wasn&rsquo;t all a straightforward way of telling him
+that his services wasn&rsquo;t considered satisfactory. Yes,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Bullwinkle, with a stertorous sniff, &ldquo;he died in Bedlam, did my old man.
+He had a very queer mania; he thought he was inside out, and it preyed
+on his mind. He wouldn&rsquo;t never have been shut up at all if he hadn&rsquo;t of
+always been undressing himself in the street and putting on his trousers
+inside out to suit his complaint. They had to feed him with a chube in
+the end, because he would have it his mouth couldn&rsquo;t be got at through
+him being inside out. Queer fancies some people has, don&rsquo;t they? Oh,
+well, if we was all the same, it would be a dull world I suppose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia sat up in the big garret and read through one after another of
+the late Mr. Bullwinkle&rsquo;s tattered and heterogeneous collection. She did
+not understand all she read; but there were few books that did not give
+her on one page a vivid impression, which she used to elaborate with her
+imagination into something that was really a more substantial experience
+than the book itself. The days grew longer and more sunny, and Sylvia
+dreamed them away, reading and thinking and watching from her window the
+little girls pirouette in the shadowy room opposite. Her hair was quite
+long now, a warm brown with many glinting strands.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer Jimmy and Henry made a good deal of money by selling a
+number of tickets for a non-existent stand in one of the best positions
+on the route of the Diamond Jubilee procession; indeed they felt
+prosperous enough to buy for themselves and Sylvia seats in a genuine
+stand. Sylvia enjoyed the pageant, which seemed more like something out
+of a book than anything in real life. She took advantage of the
+temporary prosperity to ask for money to buy herself new clothes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you see other people dressed up without wanting to go and do the
+same yourself?&rdquo; Henry asked. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with the frock you&rsquo;ve
+got on?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>However, she talked to Monkley about it and had her own way. When she
+had new clothes, she used to walk<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> about the streets again, but, though
+she was often accosted, she would never talk to anybody. Yet it was a
+dull life, really, and once she brought up the subject of getting work.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Work!&rdquo; her father exclaimed, in horror. &ldquo;Good heavens! what will you
+think of next? First it&rsquo;s clothes. Now it&rsquo;s work. Ah, my dear girl, you
+ought to have had to slave for your living as I had; you wouldn&rsquo;t talk
+about work.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, can I have a piano and learn to play?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps you&rsquo;d like the band of the Grenadier Guards to come and
+serenade you in your bedroom while you&rsquo;re dressing?&rdquo; Henry suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t she have a piano?&rdquo; Monkley asked. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll teach her to
+play. Besides, I&rsquo;d like a piano myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So the piano was obtained. Sylvia learned to play, and even to sing a
+little with her deep voice; and another regular caller for money was
+added to the already long list.</p>
+
+<p>In the autumn Sylvia&rsquo;s father fell in love, and brought a woman to live
+in what was henceforth always called the flat, even by Henry, who had
+hitherto generally referred to it as The Hammam.</p>
+
+<p>In Sylvia&rsquo;s opinion the advent of Mabel Bannerman had a most vitiating
+effect upon life in Fitzroy Street. Her father began to deteriorate
+immediately. His return to England and the unsurveyed life he had been
+leading for nearly two years had produced an expansion of his
+personality in every direction. He had lost the shiftless insignificance
+that had been his chief characteristic in France, and though he was
+still weak and lacking in any kind of initiative, he had acquired a
+quaintness of outlook and faculty for expressing it which disguised his
+radical futility under a veil of humor. He was always dominated by
+Monkley in practical matters where subordination was reasonable and
+beneficial, but he had been allowed to preserve his own point of view,
+that with the progress of time had even come to be regarded as
+important. When Sylvia was much younger she had always criticized her
+father&rsquo;s behavior; but, like everybody else, she had accepted her<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a>
+mother&rsquo;s leadership of the house and family as natural and inevitable,
+and had regarded her father as a kind of spoiled elder brother whose
+character was fundamentally worthless and whose relation to her mother
+was the only one imaginable. Now that Sylvia was older, she did not
+merely despise her father&rsquo;s weakness; she resented the shameful position
+which he occupied in relation to this intruder. Mabel Bannerman belonged
+to that full-blown intensely feminine type that by sheer excess of
+femininity imposes itself upon a weak man, smothering him, as it were,
+with her emotions and her lace, and destroying by sensuality every trait
+of manhood that does not directly contribute to the justification of
+herself. Within a week or two Henry stood for no more in the Fitzroy
+Street house than a dog that is alternately patted and scolded, that
+licks the hand of its mistress more abjectly for each new brutality, and
+that asks as its supreme reward permission to fawn upon her lap. Sylvia
+hated Mabel Bannerman; she hated her peroxide hair, she hated her full,
+moist lips, she hated her rounded back and her shining finger-nails
+spotted with white, she hated with a hatred so deep as to be forever
+incommunicable each blowsy charm that went to make up what was called &ldquo;a
+fine woman&rdquo;; she hated her inability ever to speak the truth; she hated
+the way she looked at Monkley, who should have been nothing to her; she
+hated the sight of her drinking tea in the morning; she hated the smell
+of her wardrobe and the pink ribbons which she tied to every projection
+in her bedroom; she hated her affectation of babyishness; she hated the
+way she would make Henry give money to beggars for the gratification of
+an impulsive and merely sensual generosity of her own; she hated her
+embedded garters and smooth legs.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O God,&rdquo; Sylvia cried aloud to herself once, when she was leaning out of
+the window and looking down into Fitzroy Street, &ldquo;O God, if I could only
+throw her into the street and see her eaten by dogs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley hated her too; that was some consolation. Now often, when he was
+ready for an expedition, Henry would be unable to accompany him, because
+Mabel was rather seedy that morning; or because Mabel wanted him to go
+out with her; or because Mabel complained of being<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> left alone so much.
+Monkley used to look at him with a savage contempt; and Sylvia used to
+pray sometimes that he would get angry enough to rush into Mabel&rsquo;s room
+and pound her, where she lay so softly in her soft bed.</p>
+
+<p>Mabel used to bring her friends to the flat to cheer her up, as she used
+to say, and when she had filled the room she had chosen as her
+sitting-room (the garret was not cozy enough for Mabel) with a scented
+mob of chattering women, she would fix upon one of them as the object of
+her jealousy, accusing Henry of having looked at her all the evening.
+There would sometimes be a scene at the moment when half the mob would
+cluster around Mabel to console her outraged feelings and the rest of it
+would hover about her rival to assure her she was guiltless. Sylvia,
+standing sullenly apart, would ponder the result of throwing a lighted
+lamp into the middle of the sickly sobbing pandemonium. The quarrel was
+not so bad as the inevitable reconciliation afterward, with its profuse
+kissing and interminable explanations that seemed like an orchestra from
+which Mabel emerged with a plaintive solo that was the signal for the
+whole scene to be lived over again in maddeningly reiterated accounts
+from all the women talking at once. Worse even than such evenings were
+those when Mabel restrained, or rather luxuriously hoarded up, her
+jealousy until the last visitor had departed; for then through half the
+night Sylvia must listen to her pouring over Henry a stream of
+reproaches which he would weakly try to divert by arguments or more
+weakly try to dam with caresses. Such methods of treatment usually ended
+in Mabel&rsquo;s dressing herself and rushing from the bedroom to leave the
+flat forever. Unfortunately she never carried out her threat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you go?&rdquo; Sylvia once asked, when Mabel was standing by the
+door, fully dressed, with heaving breast, making no effort to turn the
+handle.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These shoes hurt me,&rdquo; said Mabel. &ldquo;He knows I can&rsquo;t go out in these
+shoes. The heartless brute!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you knew those shoes hurt, why did you put them on?&rdquo; Sylvia asked,
+scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was too much upset by Harry&rsquo;s treatment of me. Oh, whatever shall I
+do? I&rsquo;m so miserable.&rdquo;<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a></p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Mabel collapsed upon the mat and wept black tears, until Henry
+came and tried to lift her up, begging her not to stay where she might
+catch cold.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know when a jelly won&rsquo;t set?&rdquo; Sylvia said, when she was recounting
+the scene to Monkley afterward. &ldquo;Well, she was just like a jelly and
+father simply couldn&rsquo;t make her stand up on the plate.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jimmy laughed sardonically.</p>
+
+<p>These continued altercations between Mabel and Henry led to altercations
+with their neighbors underneath, who complained of being kept awake at
+night. The landlord, a fiery little Jew, told them that what between the
+arrears of rent and the nuisance they were causing to his other tenants
+he would have to give them notice. Sylvia could never get any money for
+the purposes of housekeeping except from Jimmy, and when she wanted
+clothes it was always Jimmy whom she must ask.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go away,&rdquo; she said to him one day. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s leave them here
+together.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley looked at her in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I mean it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But if we left Harry with her he&rsquo;d starve and she&rsquo;d leave him in a
+week.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let him starve,&rdquo; Sylvia cried. &ldquo;He deserves to starve.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You hard-hearted little devil,&rdquo; Monkley said. &ldquo;After all, he is your
+father.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what makes me hate him,&rdquo; Sylvia declared. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s no right to be
+my father. He&rsquo;s no right to make me think like that of him. He must be
+wrong to make me feel as I do about him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley came close and took her hand. &ldquo;Do you mean what you said about
+leaving them and going away with me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia looked at him, and, meeting his eyes, she shook her head. &ldquo;No, of
+course I don&rsquo;t really mean it, but why can&rsquo;t you think of some way to
+stop all this? Why should we put up with it any longer? Make him turn
+her out into the street.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley laughed. &ldquo;You <i>are</i> very young, aren&rsquo;t you?<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> Though I&rsquo;ve thought
+once or twice lately that you seemed to be growing up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again Sylvia caught his eyes and felt a little afraid, not really
+afraid, she said to herself, but uneasy, as if somebody she could not
+see had suddenly opened a door behind her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s talk about me, anyway,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Think of something to
+change things here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d thought of a concert-party this summer. Pierrots, you know. How
+d&rsquo;ye think your father would do as a pierrot? He might be very funny if
+she&rsquo;d let him be funny.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia clapped her hands. &ldquo;Oh, Jimmy, it would be such fun!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t mind if she came too?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather she didn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;But it would be different,
+somehow. We shouldn&rsquo;t be shut up with her as we are here. I&rsquo;ll be able
+to sing, won&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That was my idea.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Before Henry met Mabel he would have had a great deal to say about this
+concert-party; now he accepted Monkley&rsquo;s announcement with a dull
+equanimity that settled Sylvia. He received the news that he would
+become a pierrot just as he had received the news that, his nightgown
+not having been sent back that week by the laundress, he would have to
+continue with the one he was wearing.</p>
+
+<p>Early summer passed away quickly enough in constant rehearsals. Sylvia
+was pleased to find that she had been right in supposing that the state
+of domestic affairs would be improved by Jimmy&rsquo;s plan. Mabel turned out
+to be a good singer for the kind of performance they were going to give,
+and the amount of emotion she put into her songs left her with less to
+work off on Henry, who recovered some of his old self and was often
+really funny, especially in his duologues with Monkley. Sylvia picked
+out for herself and learned a few songs, most of which were condemned as
+unsuitable by Jimmy. The one that she liked best and in her own opinion
+sang best was the &ldquo;Raggle Taggle Gipsies,&rdquo; though the others all
+prophesied for it certain failure. Monkley himself played all the
+accompaniments and by his personality kept the whole show together; he
+also sang a<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> few songs, which, although he had practically no voice,
+were given with such point that Sylvia felt convinced that his share in
+the performance would be the most popular of the lot. Shortly before
+they were to start on tour, which was fixed for the beginning of July,
+Monkley decided that they wanted another man who could really sing, and
+a young tenor known as Claude Raglan was invited to join the party. He
+was a good-looking youth, much in earnest, and with a tendency toward
+consumption, of which he was very proud.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Though what there is to be proud of in losing one of your lungs I don&rsquo;t
+know. I might as well be proud because I lost a glove the other day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Henry was severe upon Claude Raglan from the beginning. Perhaps he
+suspected him of admiring Mabel. There was often much tension at
+rehearsals on account of Henry&rsquo;s attitude; once, for instance, when
+Claude Raglan had sung &ldquo;Little Dolly Daydreams&rdquo; with his usual romantic
+fervor, Henry took a new song from his pocket and, having planted it
+down with a defiant snap on the music-stand, proceeded to sing:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll give him Dolly Daydreams<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Down where the poppies grow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">I&rsquo;ll give him Dolly Daydreams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The pride of Idaho.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">And if I catch him kissing her<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">There&rsquo;s sure to be some strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because if he&rsquo;s got anything he wants to give away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Let him come and give it to his wife.&rdquo;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The tenor declared that Henry&rsquo;s song, which was in the nature of a
+derogatory comment upon his own, could only have the effect of spoiling
+the more serious contribution.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What of it?&rdquo; Henry asked, truculently.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It seems to me perfectly obvious,&rdquo; Claude said, with an effort to
+restrain his annoyance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I consider that it won&rsquo;t hurt your song at all,&rdquo; Henry declared. &ldquo;In
+fact, I think it will improve it. In my opinion it will have a much
+greater success than yours. In fact, I may as well say straight out that
+if it weren&rsquo;t for my song I don&rsquo;t believe the audience would let you
+sing yours<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> more than once. &lsquo;&#8217;Cos no one&rsquo;s gwine ter kiss dat gal but
+me!&rsquo;&rdquo; he went on, mimicking the indignant Claude. &ldquo;No wonder you&rsquo;ve got
+consumption coming on! And the audience will notice there&rsquo;s something
+wrong with you, and start clearing out to avoid infection. That&rsquo;s where
+my song will come in. My song will be a tonic. Now don&rsquo;t start breathing
+at me, or you&rsquo;ll puncture the other lung. Let&rsquo;s try that last verse over
+again, Jimmy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the end, after a long discussion, during which Mabel introduced the
+most irrelevant arguments, Monkley decided that both songs should be
+sung, but with a long enough interval between them to secure Claude
+against the least impression that he was being laughed at.</p>
+
+<p>At last the company, which called itself The Pink Pierrots, was ready to
+start for the South Coast. It took Monkley all his ingenuity to get out
+of London without paying for the dresses or the properties, but it was
+managed somehow; and at the beginning of July they pitched a small tent
+on the beach at Hastings. There were many rival companies, some of which
+possessed the most elaborate equipment, almost a small theater with
+railed-off seats and a large piano; but Sylvia envied none of these its
+grandeur. She thought that none was so tastefully dressed as themselves,
+that there was no leader so sure of keeping the attention of an audience
+as Jimmy was, that no tenor could bring tears to the eyes of the young
+women on the Marina as Claude could, that no voice could be heard
+farther off than Mabel&rsquo;s, and that no comedian could so quickly gain the
+sympathy of that large but unprofitable portion of an audience&mdash;the
+small boys&mdash;as her father could.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia enjoyed every moment of the day from the time they left their
+lodgings, pushing before them the portable piano in the morning
+sunshine, to the journey home after the last performance, which was
+given in a circle of rosy lantern-light within sound of the sea. They
+worked so hard that there was no time for quarreling except with
+competitors upon whose preserves they had trespassed. Mabel was so bent
+upon fascinating the various patrons, and Henry was so obviously a
+success only with the unsentimental small boys, that she never once
+accused him of making eyes even at a nursemaid. Sylvia was given a duet<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a>
+with Claude Raglan, and, whether it was that she was conscious of being
+envied by many of the girls in the audience or whether the sentimental
+tune influenced her imagination, she was certainly aware of a faint
+thrill of pleasure&mdash;a hardly perceptible quickening of the heart&mdash;every
+time that Claude took her in his arms to sing the last verse. After they
+had sung together for a week, Jimmy said the number was a failure and
+abolished it, which Sylvia thought was very unfair, because it had
+always been well applauded.</p>
+
+<p>She grumbled to Claude about their deprivation, while they were toiling
+home to dinner (they were at Bournemouth now, and the weather was
+extremely hot), and he declared in a tragical voice that people were
+always jealous of him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the curse of being an artist,&rdquo; he announced. &ldquo;Everywhere I go I
+meet with nothing but jealousy. I can&rsquo;t help having a good voice. I&rsquo;m
+not conceited about it. I can&rsquo;t help the girls sending me chocolates and
+asking me to sign the post-cards of me which they buy. I&rsquo;m not conceited
+about that, either. There&rsquo;s something about my personality that appeals
+to women. Perhaps it&rsquo;s my delicate look. I don&rsquo;t suppose I shall live
+very long, and I think that makes women sorry for me. They&rsquo;re quicker to
+see these things than men. I know Harry thinks I&rsquo;m as healthy as a
+beefsteak. I&rsquo;m positive I coughed up some blood this morning, and when I
+told Harry he asked me with a sneer if I&rsquo;d cleaned my teeth. You&rsquo;re not
+a bit like your dad, Sylvia. There&rsquo;s something awfully sympathetic about
+you, little girl. I&rsquo;m sorry Jimmy&rsquo;s cut out our number. He&rsquo;s a jolly
+good manager and all that, but he does not like anybody else to make a
+hit. Have you noticed that lately he&rsquo;s taken to gagging during my songs?
+Luckily I&rsquo;m not at all easy to dry up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia wondered why anybody like Jimmy should bother to be jealous of
+Claude. He was pleasant enough, of course, and he had a pretty, girlish
+mouth and looked very slim and attractive in his pierrot&rsquo;s dress; but
+nobody could take him seriously except the stupid girls who bought his
+photograph and sighed over it, when they brushed their hair in the
+morning.<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a></p>
+
+<p>The weather grew hotter and the hard work made them all irritable; when
+they got home for dinner at midday it was impossible to eat, and they
+used to loll about in the stuffy sitting-room, which the five of them
+shared in common, while the flies buzzed everywhere. It was never worth
+while to remove the make-up; so all their faces used to get mottled with
+pale streaks of perspiration, the rouge on their lips would cake, and
+their ruffles hung limp and wet, stained round the neck with dirty
+carmine. Sylvia lost all enjoyment in the tour, and used to lie on the
+horsehair sofa that pricked her cheeks, watching distastefully the cold
+mutton, the dull knives, and the spotted cloth, and the stewed fruit
+over which lay a faint silvery film of staleness. Round the room her
+fellow-mountebanks were still seated on the chairs into which they had
+first collapsed when they reached the lodgings, motionless, like great
+painted dolls.</p>
+
+<p>The weather grew hotter. The men, particularly Henry, took to drinking
+brandy at every opportunity; toward the end of their stay in Bournemouth
+the quarrels between him and Mabel broke out again, but with a
+difference, because now it was Henry who was the aggressor. He had never
+objected to Mabel&rsquo;s admirers hitherto, had, indeed, been rather proud of
+their existence in a fatuous way and derived from their numbers a
+showman&rsquo;s satisfaction. When it was her turn to take round the hat, he
+used to smirk over the quantity of post-cards she sold of herself and
+call everybody&rsquo;s attention to her capricious autography that was so
+successful with the callow following. Then suddenly one day he made an
+angry protest against the admiration which an older man began to accord
+her, a pretentious sort of man with a diamond ring and yellow
+cummerbund, who used to stand with his straw hat atilt and wink at
+Mabel, tugging at his big drooping mustache and jingling the money in
+his pockets.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody told Henry not to be foolish; he only sulked and began to
+drink more brandy than ever. The day after Henry&rsquo;s outbreak, the Pink
+Pierrots moved to Swanage, where their only rivals were a troupe of
+niggers, upon whom Henry was able to loose some of his spleen in a
+dispute that took place over the new-comers&rsquo; right to plant their pink
+tent where they did.<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This isn&rsquo;t Africa, you know,&rdquo; Henry said. &ldquo;This is Swanage. It&rsquo;s no
+good your waving your banjo at me. I know it&rsquo;s a banjo, all right,
+though I may forget, next time I hear you play it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been here every year for the last ten years,&rdquo; the chief nigger
+shouted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought so by your songs,&rdquo; Henry retorted. &ldquo;If you told me you got
+wrecked here with Christopher Columbus I shouldn&rsquo;t have contradicted
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This part of the beach belongs to us,&rdquo; the niggers proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you bought it off Noah, didn&rsquo;t you, when he let you out of
+the ark?&rdquo; said Henry.</p>
+
+<p>In the end, however, the two companies adjusted their differences and
+removed themselves out of each other&rsquo;s hearing. Mabel&rsquo;s voice defeated
+even the tambourines and bones of the niggers. Swanage seemed likely to
+be an improvement upon Bournemouth, until one day Mabel&rsquo;s prosperous
+admirer appeared on the promenade and Henry&rsquo;s jealousy rose to fury.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you tell me you didn&rsquo;t tell him to follow you here,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;because I don&rsquo;t believe you. I saw you smile at him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley remonstrated with Mabel, when Henry had gone off in a fever of
+rage to his room, but she seemed to be getting a certain amount of
+pleasure from the situation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must cut it out,&rdquo; Monkley said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want the party broken up
+on account of you and Henry. I tell you he really is upset. What the
+deuce do you want to drag in all this confounded love business now for?
+Leave that to Claude. It&rsquo;ll burst up the show, and it&rsquo;s making Harry
+drink, which his head can&rsquo;t stand.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mabel looked at herself in the glass over the fireplace and patted her
+hair complacently. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m rather glad to see Harry can get jealous. After
+all, it&rsquo;s always a pleasure to think some one&rsquo;s really fond of you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia watched Mabel very carefully and perceived that she actually was
+carrying on a flirtation with the man who had followed her from
+Bournemouth. She hoped that it would continue and that her father would
+get angry<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a> enough with Mabel to get rid of her when the tour came to an
+end.</p>
+
+<p>One Saturday afternoon, when Mabel was collecting, Sylvia distinctly saw
+her admirer drop a note into the hat, which she took with her into the
+tent to read and tore up; during her next song Sylvia noticed that the
+man with the yellow cummerbund was watching her with raised eyebrows,
+and that, when Mabel smiled and nodded, he gently clapped his hands and
+went away.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia debated with herself the advisability of telling her father at
+once what she had seen, thus bringing things to an immediate climax and
+getting rid of Mabel forever, even if by doing so the show were spoilt.
+But when she saw his glazed eyes and realized how drunk he was, she
+thought she would wait. The next afternoon, when Henry was taking his
+Sunday rest, Mabel dressed herself and went out. Sylvia followed her
+and, after ascertaining that she had taken the path toward the cliffs to
+the east of the town, came back to the lodgings and again debated with
+herself a course of action. She decided in the end to wait a little
+longer before she denounced Mabel. Later on, when her father had wakened
+and was demanding Mabel&rsquo;s company for a stroll in the moonlight, a
+letter was brought to the lodgings by a railway porter from Mabel
+herself to say that she had left the company and had gone away with her
+new friend by train. Sylvia thought how near she had been to spoiling
+the elopement and hugged herself with pleasure; but she could not resist
+telling her father now that she had seen the intrigue in progress and of
+her following Mabel that afternoon and seeing her take the path toward
+the cliffs. Henry seemed quite shattered by his loss, and could do
+nothing but drink brandy, while Monkley swore at Mabel for wrecking a
+good show and wondered where he was going to find another girl, even
+going so far as to suggest telegraphing on the off chance to Maudie
+Tilt.</p>
+
+<p>It was very hot on Monday, and after the morning performance Henry
+announced that he did not intend to walk all the way back to the
+lodgings for dinner. He should go to the hotel and have a snack. What
+did it matter about his being in his pierrot&rsquo;s rig? Swanage was a small
+place, and if the people were not used to his costume<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> by now, they
+never would be. It was no good any one arguing; he intended to stay
+behind this morning. The others left him talking in his usual style of
+melancholy humor to the small boy who for the sum of twopence kept an
+eye on the portable piano and the book of songs during the hot midday
+hours. When they looked round he was juggling with one of the pennies,
+to the admiration of the owner. They never saw him alive again. He was
+brought back dead that evening on a stretcher, his pink costume splashed
+with blood. The odd thing was that the hotel carving-knife was in his
+pocket, though it was proved conclusively at the inquest that death was
+due to falling over the cliffs on the east side of the town.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia wondered if she ought to blame herself for her father&rsquo;s death,
+and she confided in Jimmy what she had told him about Mabel&rsquo;s behavior.
+Jimmy asked her why she could not have let things alone, and made her
+very miserable by his strictures upon her youthful tactlessness; so
+miserable, indeed, that he was fain to console her and assure her that
+it had all been an accident due to Henry&rsquo;s fondness for brandy&mdash;that and
+the sun must have turned his head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think he took the knife to kill himself?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;More likely he took it with some idea of killing them, and, being
+drunk, fell over the cliff. Poor old Harry! I shall miss him, and now
+you&rsquo;re all alone in the world.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That was true, and the sudden realization of this fact drove out of
+Sylvia&rsquo;s mind the remorse for her father&rsquo;s death by confronting her with
+the instancy of the great problem that had for so long haunted her mind.
+She turned to Jimmy almost fearfully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall have you to look after me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jimmy took her hand and gazed into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You want to stay with me, then?&rdquo; he asked, earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I do. Who else could I stay with?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t prefer to be with Claude, for example?&rdquo; he went on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Claude?&rdquo; she repeated, in a puzzled voice. And then<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> she grasped in all
+its force the great new truth that for the rest of her life the choice
+of her companions lay with herself alone. She had become at this moment
+grown up and was free, like Mabel, to choose even a man with a yellow
+cummerbund.<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span>YLVIA begged Monkley not to go back and live in Fitzroy Street. She
+felt the flat would be haunted by memories of her father and Mabel. It
+was as well that she did not want to return there, for Jimmy assured her
+that nothing would induce him to go near Fitzroy Street. A great deal of
+money was owing, and he wished the landlord luck in his dispute with the
+furnishing people when he tried to seize the furniture for arrears of
+rent. It would be necessary to choose for their next abode a quarter of
+London to which he was a stranger, because he disliked having to make
+détours to avoid streets where he owed money. Finsbury Park was
+melancholy; Highgate was inaccessible; Hampstead was expensive and
+almost equally inaccessible; but they must go somewhere in the North of
+London, for there did not remain a suburb in the West or South the
+tradesmen and house-owners of which he had not swindled at one time or
+another. On second thoughts, there was a part of Hampstead that was
+neither so expensive nor so inaccessible, which was reached from
+Haverstock Hill; they would look for rooms there. They settled down
+finally in one of a row of old houses facing the southerly extremity of
+the Heath, the rural aspect of which was heightened by long gardens in
+front that now in late summer were filled with sunflowers and
+hollyhocks. The old-fashioned house, which resembled a large cottage
+both without and within, belonged to a decayed florist and nursery
+gardener called Samuel Gustard, whose trade was now confined to the sale
+of penny packets of seeds, though a weather-beaten sign-board facing the
+road maintained a legend of greater glories. Mr. Gustard himself made no
+effort to live up to his sign-board; indeed, he would not even stir
+himself to produce a packet of seeds, for if his wife were about he
+would indicate<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> to her with the stem of his pipe which packet was
+wanted, and if she were not about, he would tell the customer that the
+variety was no longer in stock. A greenhouse kept from collapse by the
+sturdy vine it was supposed to protect ran along the fence on one side
+of the garden; the rest was a jungle of coarse herbaceous flowers,
+presumably the survivors of Mr. Gustard&rsquo;s last horticultural effort,
+about ten years ago.</p>
+
+<p>The money made by the tour of the Pink Pierrots did not last very long,
+and Jimmy was soon forced back to industry. Sylvia nowadays heard more
+about his successes and failures than when her father was alive, and she
+begged very hard to be allowed to help on some of his expeditions.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re no good to me yet,&rdquo; Monkley told her. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re too old to be
+really innocent and not old enough to pretend to be. Besides, people
+don&rsquo;t take school-girls to race meetings. Later on, when you&rsquo;ve learned
+a bit more about life, we&rsquo;ll start a gambling club in the West End and
+work on a swell scale what I do now in a small way in
+railway-carriages.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This scheme of Jimmy&rsquo;s became a favorite topic; and Sylvia began to
+regard a flash gambling-hell as the crown of human ambition. Jimmy&rsquo;s
+imagination used to run riot amid the splendor of it all, as he
+discoursed of the footmen with plush breeches; of the shaded lamps; of
+the sideboard loaded with hams and jellies and fruit at which the guests
+would always be able to refresh themselves, for it would never do to let
+them go away because they were hungry, and people were always hungry at
+three in the morning; of the smart page-boy in the entrance of the flats
+who would know how to reckon up a visitor and give the tip up-stairs by
+ringing a bell; and of the rigid exclusion of all women except Sylvia
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can see it all before me,&rdquo; Jimmy used to sigh. &ldquo;I can smell the
+cigars and whisky. I&rsquo;m flinging back the curtains when every one has
+gone and feeling the morning air. And here we are stuck in this old
+cucumber-frame at Hampstead! But we&rsquo;ll get it, we&rsquo;ll get it. I shall
+have a scoop one of these days and be able to start saving, and when
+I&rsquo;ve saved a couple of hundred I&rsquo;ll bluff the rest.&rdquo;<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a></p>
+
+<p>In October Jimmy came home from Newmarket and told Sylvia he had run
+against an old friend, who had proposed a money-making scheme which
+would take him away from London for a couple of months. He could not
+explain the details to Sylvia, but he might say that it was a confidence
+trick on the grand scale and that it meant his residing in a northern
+city. He had told his friend he would give him an answer to-morrow, and
+wanted to know what Sylvia thought about it.</p>
+
+<p>She was surprised by Jimmy&rsquo;s consulting her in this way. She had always
+taken it for granted that from time to time she would be left alone.
+Jimmy&rsquo;s action made her realize more clearly than ever that to a great
+extent she already possessed that liberty of choice the prospect of
+which had dawned upon her at Swanage.</p>
+
+<p>She assured Jimmy of her readiness to be left alone in Hampstead. When
+he expatiated on his consideration for her welfare she was bored and
+longed for him to be gone; his solicitude gave her a feeling of
+restraint; she became impatient of his continually wanting to know if
+she should miss him and of his commendation of her to the care of Mr.
+and Mrs. Gustard, from whom she desired no interference, being quite
+content with the prospect of sitting in her window with a book and a
+green view.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Monkley left Hampstead; and Sylvia inhaled freedom with
+the autumn air. She had been given what seemed a very large sum of money
+to sustain herself until Jimmy&rsquo;s return. She had bought a new hat; a
+black kitten had adopted her; it was pearly October weather. Sylvia
+surveyed life with a sense of pleasure that was nevertheless most
+unreasonably marred by a faint breath of restlessness, an almost
+imperceptible discontent. Life had always offered itself to her
+contemplation, whether of the past or of the future, as a set of vivid
+impressions that formed a crudely colored panorama of action without any
+emotional light and shade, the intervals between which, like the
+intervals of a theatrical performance, were only tolerable with plenty
+of chocolates to eat. At the present moment she had plenty of chocolates
+to eat, more, in fact, than she had ever had before, but the interval
+was seeming most exasperatingly long.<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You ought to take a walk on the Heath,&rdquo; Mr. Gustard advised. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t
+good to sit about all day doing nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t take walks,&rdquo; Sylvia pointed out. &ldquo;And you sit about all day
+doing nothing. I do read a book, anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m different,&rdquo; Mr. Gustard pronounced, very solemnly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve lived my
+life. If I was to take a walk round Hampstead I couldn&rsquo;t hardly peep
+into a garden without seeing a tree as I&rsquo;d planted myself. And when I&rsquo;m
+gone, the trees &rsquo;ll still be there. That&rsquo;s something to <i>think</i> about,
+that is. There was a clergyman came nosing round here the other day to
+ask me why I didn&rsquo;t go to church. I told him I&rsquo;d done without church as
+a lad, and I couldn&rsquo;t see why I shouldn&rsquo;t do without it now. &lsquo;But you&rsquo;re
+growing old, Mr. Gustard,&rsquo; he says to me. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s just it,&rsquo; I says to
+him. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m getting very near the time when, if all they say is true, I
+shall be in the heavenly choir for ever and ever, amen, and the less
+singing I hear for the rest of my time on earth the better.&rsquo; &lsquo;That&rsquo;s a
+very blasphemous remark,&rsquo; he says to me. &lsquo;Is it?&rsquo; says I to him. &lsquo;Well,
+here&rsquo;s another. Perhaps all this talk by parsons,&rsquo; I says, &lsquo;about this
+life on earth being just a choir practice for heaven won&rsquo;t bear looking
+into. Perhaps we shall all die and go to sleep and never wake up and
+never dream and never do nothing at all, never. And if that&rsquo;s true,&rsquo; I
+says, &lsquo;I reckon I shall bust my coffin with laughing when I think of my
+trees growing and growing and growing and you preaching to a lot of old
+women and children about something you don&rsquo;t know nothing about and they
+don&rsquo;t know nothing about and nobody don&rsquo;t know nothing about.&rsquo; With that
+I offered him a pear, and he walked off very offended with his head in
+the air. You get out and about, my dear. Bustle around and enjoy
+yourself. That&rsquo;s my motto for the young.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt that there was much to be said for Mr. Gustard&rsquo;s attitude,
+and she took his advice so far as to go for a long walk on the Heath
+that very afternoon. Yet there was something lacking. When she got home
+again she found that the book of adventure which she had been reading
+was no longer capable of keeping her thoughts fixed. The stupid part of
+it was that her thoughts wandered<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> nowhere in particular and without
+attaching themselves to a definite object. She would try to concentrate
+them upon Jimmy and speculate what he was doing, but Jimmy would turn
+into Claude Raglan; and when she began to speculate what Claude was
+doing, Claude would turn back again into Jimmy. Her own innermost
+restlessness made her so fidgety that she went to the window and stared
+at the road along the dusky Heath. The garden gate of next door swung to
+with a click, and Sylvia saw a young man coming toward the house. She
+was usually without the least interest in young men, but on this
+afternoon of indefinable and errant thoughts she welcomed the least
+excuse for bringing herself back to a material object; and this young
+man, though it was twilight and his face was not clearly visible,
+managed to interest her somehow, so that at tea she found herself asking
+Mr. Gustard who he might be and most unaccountably blushing at the
+question.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That &rsquo;ud be young Artie, wouldn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; he suggested to his wife. She
+nodded over the squat teapot that she so much resembled:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That must be him come back from his uncle&rsquo;s. Mrs. Madden was only
+saying to me this morning, when we was waiting for the grocer&rsquo;s man,
+that she was expecting him this evening. She spoils him something
+shocking. If you please, his highness has been down into Hampshire to
+see if he would like to be a gentleman farmer. Whoever heard, I should
+like to know? Why he can&rsquo;t be long turned seventeen. It&rsquo;s a pity his
+father isn&rsquo;t alive to keep him from idling his time away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no harm in giving a bit of liberty to the young,&rdquo; Mr. Gustard
+answered, preparing to be as eloquent as the large piece of bread and
+butter in his mouth would let him. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not in favor of pushing a young
+man too far.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, you was never in favor of pushing anything, neither yourself nor
+your business,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gustard, sharply. &ldquo;But I think it&rsquo;s a sin to
+let a boy like that moon away all his time with a book. Books were only
+intended for the gentry and people as have grown too old for anything
+else, and even then they&rsquo;re bad for their eyes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia wondered whether Mrs. Gustard intended to criticize unfavorably
+her own manner of life, but she left<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> the defense of books to Mr.
+Gustard, who was so impatient to begin that he nearly choked:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because I don&rsquo;t read,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s no reason for me to try and
+stop others from reading. What I say is &lsquo;liberty for all.&rsquo; If young
+Artie Madden wants to read, let him read. If Sylvia here wants to read,
+let her read. Books give employment to a lot of people&mdash;binders,
+printers, paper-makers, booksellers. It&rsquo;s a regular trade. If people
+didn&rsquo;t like to smell flowers and sit about under trees, there wouldn&rsquo;t
+be no gardeners, would there? Very well, then; and if there wasn&rsquo;t
+people who wanted to read, there wouldn&rsquo;t be no printers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What about the people who write all the rubbish?&rdquo; Mrs. Gustard
+demanded, fiercely. &ldquo;Nice, idle lot of good-for-nothings they are, I&rsquo;m
+sure.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s because the only writing fellow we ever knew got that
+servant-girl of ours into trouble.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Samuel,&rdquo; Mrs. Gustard interrupted, &ldquo;that&rsquo;ll do!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose every writing fellow&rsquo;s like him,&rdquo; Mr. Gustard went on.
+&ldquo;And, anyway, the girl was a saucy hussy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Samuel! That will do, I said.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, so she was,&rdquo; Mr. Gustard continued, defiantly. &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t she used
+to powder her face with your Borwick&rsquo;s?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll trouble you not to spit crumbs all over my clean cloth,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Gustard, &ldquo;making the whole place look like a bird-cage!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gustard winked at Sylvia and was silent. She for her part had
+already begun to weave round Arthur Madden a veil of romance, when the
+practical side of her suddenly roused itself to a sense of what was
+going on and admonished her to leave off dreaming and attend to her cat.</p>
+
+<p>Up-stairs in her bedroom, she opened her window and looked out at the
+faint drizzle of rain which was just enough to mellow the leafy autumnal
+scents and diffuse the golden beams of the lamps along the Heath. There
+was the sound of another window&rsquo;s being opened on a line with hers;
+presently a head and shoulders scarcely definable in the darkness leaned
+out, whistling an old French air that was familiar to her from earliest
+childhood, the words of which had long ago been forgotten. She could not
+help whistling<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> the air in unison; and after a moment&rsquo;s silence a voice
+from the head and shoulders asked who it was.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A girl,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anybody could tell that,&rdquo; the voice commented, a little scornfully.
+&ldquo;Because the noise is all woolly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not,&rdquo; Sylvia contradicted, indignantly. &ldquo;Perhaps you&rsquo;ll say I&rsquo;m
+out of tune? I know quite well who you are. You&rsquo;re Arthur Madden, the
+boy next door.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But who are you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m Sylvia Scarlett.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you a niece of Mrs. Gustard?&rdquo; the voice inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; Sylvia scoffed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m just staying here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who with?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By yourself?&rdquo; the voice echoed, incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why not? I&rsquo;m nearly sixteen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This was too much for Arthur Madden, who struck a match to illuminate
+the features of the strange unknown. Although he did not succeed in
+discerning Sylvia, he lit up his own face, which she liked well enough
+to suggest they should go for a walk, making the proposal a kind of test
+for herself of Arthur Madden&rsquo;s character, and deciding that if he showed
+the least hesitation in accepting she would never speak to him again.
+The boy, however, was immediately willing; the two pairs of shoulders
+vanished; Sylvia put on her coat and went down-stairs.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Going out for a blow?&rdquo; Mr. Gustard asked.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia nodded. &ldquo;With the boy next door,&rdquo; she answered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t been long,&rdquo; said Mr. Gustard, approvingly. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the way
+I like to see it. When I courted Mrs. Gustard, which was forty years ago
+come next November, it was in the time of toolip-planting, and I hove a
+toolip bulb at her and caught her in the chignon. &lsquo;Whatever are you
+doing of?&rsquo; she says to me. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a proposal of marriage,&rsquo; I says, and
+when she started giggling I was that pleased I planted half the toolips
+upside down. But that&rsquo;s forty years ago, that is. Mrs. Gustard&rsquo;s grown
+more particular since, and so as she&rsquo;s washing up the tea-things in the
+scullery, I should just slip out, and I&rsquo;ll tell her you&rsquo;ve<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a> gone out to
+get a paper to see if it&rsquo;s true what somebody said about Buckingham
+Palace being burned to a cinder.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was not at all sure that she ought to recognize Mrs. Gustard&rsquo;s
+opinion even so far as by slipping out and thereby giving her an idea
+that she did not possess perfect liberty of action. However, she decided
+that the point was too trifling to worry about, and, with a wave of her
+hand, she left her landlord to tell what story he chose to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur Madden was waiting for her by his gate when she reached the end
+of the garden; while they wandered along by the Heath, indifferent to
+the drizzle, Sylvia felt an extraordinary release from the faint
+discontent of these past days, an extraordinary delight in finding
+herself with a companion who was young like herself and who, like
+herself, seemed full of speculation upon the world which he was setting
+out to explore, regarding it as an adventure and ready to exchange hopes
+and fears and fancies with her in a way that no one had ever done
+hitherto; moreover, he was ready to be most flatteringly impressed by
+her experiences, even if he still maintained she could not whistle
+properly. The friendship between Sylvia and Arthur begun upon that night
+grew daily closer. Mrs. Gustard used to say that they wasted each
+other&rsquo;s time, but she was in the minority; she used to say also that
+Arthur was being more spoiled than ever by his mother; but it was this
+very capacity for being spoiled that endeared him to Sylvia, who had
+spent a completely free existence for so long now that unless Arthur had
+been allowed his freedom she would soon have tired of the friendship.
+She liked Mrs. Madden, a beautiful and unpractical woman, who
+unceasingly played long sonatas on a cracked piano; at least she would
+have played them unceasingly had she not continually been jumping up to
+wait on Arthur, hovering round him like a dark and iridescent butterfly.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of many talks together Arthur told Sylvia the family
+history. It seemed that his mother had been the daughter of a gentleman,
+not an ordinary kind of top-hatted gentleman, but a squire with horses
+and hounds and a park; his father had been a groom and she had eloped
+with him, but Sylvia was not to suppose that his<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> father had been an
+ordinary kind of groom; he too came from good stock, though he had been
+rather wild. His father&rsquo;s father had been a farmer in Sussex, and he had
+just come back from staying at the farm, where his uncle had offered to
+give him a start in life, but he had found he did not care much for
+farm-work. His mother&rsquo;s family would have nothing to do with her beyond
+allowing her enough to live upon without disturbing them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur replied that he did not know, but that he had thoughts of being a
+soldier.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A soldier?&rdquo; said Sylvia, doubtfully. Her experience of soldiers was
+confined to Blanche&rsquo;s lovers, and the universal connotation in France of
+soldiery with a vile servitude that could hardly be avoided.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But of course the worst of it is,&rdquo; Arthur explained, &ldquo;there aren&rsquo;t any
+wars nowadays.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They were walking over the Heath on a fine November day about Martinmas;
+presently, when they sat down under some pines and looked at London
+spread beneath them in a sparkling haze, Arthur took Sylvia&rsquo;s hand and
+told her that he loved her.</p>
+
+<p>She nearly snatched her hand away and would have told him not to be
+silly, but suddenly the beauty of the tranquil city below and the wind
+through the pines conquered her spirit; she sat closer to him, letting
+her head droop upon his shoulder; when his clasp tightened round her
+unresisting hand she burst into tears, unable to tell him that her
+sorrow was nothing but joy, that he had nothing to do with it nor with
+her, and yet that he had everything to do with it, because with no one
+else could she have borne this incommunicable display of life. Then she
+dried her tears and told Arthur she thought he had better become a
+highwayman.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Highwaymen don&rsquo;t exist any longer,&rdquo; Arthur objected. &ldquo;All the jolly
+things have disappeared from the world&mdash;war and highwaymen and pirates
+and troubadours and crusaders and maypoles and the Inquisition.
+Everything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Gradually Sylvia learned from Arthur how much of what she had been
+reading was mere invention, and in the first bitterness of
+disillusionment she wished to renounce books<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> forever; but Arthur
+dissuaded her from doing that, and they used to read simultaneously the
+same books so as to be able to discuss them during their long walks.
+They became two romantics born out of due season, two romantics that
+should have lived a century ago and that now bewailed the inability of
+the modern world to supply what their adventurous souls demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur was inclined to think that Sylvia had much less cause to repine
+than he; the more tales she told him of her life, the more tributes of
+envy he paid to her good fortune. He pointed out that Monkley scarcely
+differed from the highwayman of romance; nor did he doubt but that if
+all his enterprises could be known he would rival Dick Turpin himself.
+Sylvia agreed with all he said, but she urged the inequality of her own
+share in the achievement. What she wanted was something more than to sit
+at home and enjoy fruits in the stealing of which she had played no
+part. She wanted none of Arthur&rsquo;s love unless he were prepared to face
+the problem of living life at its fullest in company with her. She would
+let him kiss her sometimes, because, unhappily, it seemed that even very
+young men were infected with this malady, and that if deprived of this
+odious habit they were liable to lose determination and sink into
+incomprehensible despondency. At the same time Sylvia made Arthur
+clearly understand that she was yielding to his weakness, not to her
+own, and that, if he wished to retain her compassion, he must prove that
+the devotion of which he boasted was vital to his being.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t just kiss me,&rdquo; Sylvia warned him, &ldquo;because it&rsquo;s easy. It&rsquo;s
+very difficult, really, because it&rsquo;s very difficult for me to let you do
+it. I have to wind myself up beforehand just as if I were going to pull
+out a loose tooth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Arthur gazed at her with wide-open, liquid eyes; his mouth trembled.
+&ldquo;You say such cruel things,&rdquo; he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia punched him as hard as she could. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t be stared at like
+that. You look like a cow when you stare at me like that. Buck up and
+think what we&rsquo;re going to do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m ready to do anything,&rdquo; Arthur declared, &ldquo;as long<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> as you&rsquo;re decent
+to me. But you&rsquo;re such an extraordinary girl. One moment you burst into
+tears and put your head on my shoulder, and the next moment you&rsquo;re
+punching me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I shall punch you again,&rdquo; Sylvia said, fiercely, &ldquo;if you dare to
+remind me that I ever cried in front of you. You weren&rsquo;t there when I
+cried.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I was,&rdquo; he protested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, you weren&rsquo;t. You were only there like a tree or a cloud.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Or a cow,&rdquo; said Arthur, gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think that if we did go away together,&rdquo; Sylvia said, meditatively, &ldquo;I
+should leave you almost at once, because you will keep returning to
+things I said. My father used to be like that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But if we go away,&rdquo; Arthur asked, &ldquo;how are we going to live? I
+shouldn&rsquo;t be any use on racecourses. I&rsquo;m the sort of person that gets
+taken in by the three-card trick.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You make me so angry when you talk like that,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;Of course
+if you think you&rsquo;ll always be a fool, you always will be a fool. Being
+in love with me must make you think that you&rsquo;re not a fool. Perhaps we
+never shall go away together; but if we do, you&rsquo;ll have to begin by
+stealing bicycles. Jimmy Monkley and my father did that for a time. You
+hire a bicycle and sell it or pawn it a long way off from the shop it
+came from. It&rsquo;s quite easy. Only, of course, it&rsquo;s best to disguise
+yourself. Father used to paint out his teeth, wear blue glasses, and
+powder his mustache gray. But once he made himself so old in a place
+called Lewisham that the man in the bicycle-shop thought he was too old
+to ride and wouldn&rsquo;t let him have a machine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was strengthened in her resolve to launch Arthur upon the stormy
+seas of an independent existence by the placid harbor in which his
+mother loved to see him safely at anchor. Sylvia could not understand
+how a woman like Mrs. Madden, who had once been willing to elope with a
+groom, could bear to let her son spend his time so ineffectively. Not
+that she wished Mrs. Madden to exert her authority by driving him into a
+clerkship, or indeed into any profession for which he had no
+inclination, but she<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a> deplored the soft slavery which a fond woman can
+impose, the slavery of being waited upon that is more deadening than the
+slavery of waiting upon other people. She used to make a point of
+impressing upon Mrs. Madden the extent to which she and Arthur went
+shares in everything, lest she might suppose that Sylvia imitated her
+complaisance, and when Mrs. Madden used to smile in her tired way and
+make some remark about boy and girl lovers, Sylvia used to get angry and
+try to demonstrate the unimportance of that side of life.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You funny child,&rdquo; Mrs. Madden said. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;re older, how you&rsquo;ll
+laugh at what you think now. Of course, you don&rsquo;t know anything about
+love yet, mercifully for you. I wish I were richer; I should so like to
+adopt you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but I wouldn&rsquo;t be adopted,&rdquo; Sylvia quickly interposed. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t
+tell you how glad I am that I belong to nobody. And please don&rsquo;t think
+I&rsquo;m so innocent, because I&rsquo;m not. I&rsquo;ve seen a great deal of love, you
+must remember, and I&rsquo;ve thought a lot about it, and made up my mind that
+I&rsquo;ll never be a slave to that sort of thing. Arthur may be stupidly in
+love with me, but I&rsquo;m very strict with him and it doesn&rsquo;t do him any
+harm.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come and sing your favorite song,&rdquo; Mrs. Madden laughed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll play your
+accompaniment.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>All the discussions between them ended in music; Sylvia would sing that
+she was off with the raggle-taggle gipsies&mdash;or, stamping with her foot
+upon the floor of the old house until it shook and crossing her arms
+with such resolution that Arthur&rsquo;s eyes would grow larger than ever, as
+if he half expected to see her act upon the words and fling herself out
+into the December night, regardless of all but a mad demonstration of
+liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia would sometimes sing about the gipsies to herself while she was
+undressing, which generally called forth a protest from Mrs. Gustard,
+who likened the effect to that of a young volcano let loose.</p>
+
+<p>Another person that was pained by Sylvia&rsquo;s exuberance was Maria, her
+black cat, so called on account of his color before he was definitely
+established as a gentleman. He had no ear for music and he disapproved
+of dancing; nor did he have the least sympathy with the aspirations of
+the<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> lawless song she sang. Mrs. Gustard considered that he was more
+artful than what any one would think, but she repudiated as &ldquo;heathenish&rdquo;
+Sylvia&rsquo;s contention that she outwardly resembled Maria.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Still I do think I&rsquo;m like a cat,&rdquo; Sylvia argued. &ldquo;Perhaps not very like
+a black cat, more like a tabby. One day you&rsquo;ll come up to my room and
+find me purring on the bed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gustard exclaimed against such an unnatural event.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia received one or two letters from Jimmy Monkley during the winter,
+in which he wrote with considerable optimism of the success of his
+venture and thought he might be back in Hampstead by February. He came
+back unexpectedly, however, in the middle of January, and Sylvia was
+only rather glad to see him; she had grown fond of her life alone and
+dreaded Jimmy&rsquo;s habit of arranging matters over her head. He was not so
+amiable as formerly, because the scheme had only been partially
+successful and he had failed to make enough money to bring the flash
+gambling-hell perceptibly nearer. Sylvia had almost forgotten that
+project; it seemed to her now a dull project, neither worthy of herself
+nor of him. She did not attempt, on Jimmy&rsquo;s return, to change her own
+way of spending the time, and she persisted in taking the long walks
+with Arthur as usual.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What the devil you see to admire in that long-legged, saucer-eyed,
+curly-headed mother&rsquo;s pet I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Jimmy grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t admire him,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t admire anybody except Joan
+of Arc. But I like him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jimmy scowled; and later on that day Mr. Gustard warned Sylvia that her
+uncle (as such was Jimmy known in the lodgings) had carried on
+alarmingly about her friendship with young Artie.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing to do with him,&rdquo; Sylvia affirmed, with out-thrust chin.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing whatever,&rdquo; Mr. Gustard agreed. &ldquo;But if I was you I wouldn&rsquo;t
+throw young Artie in his face. I&rsquo;ve never had a niece myself, but from
+what I can make out an uncle feels something like a father; and a father
+gets very worried about his rights.&rdquo;<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you&rsquo;ve never had any children, and so you can&rsquo;t know any more about
+the feelings of a father,&rdquo; Sylvia objected.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, but I&rsquo;ve got my own father to look back upon,&rdquo; Mr. Gustard said.
+&ldquo;He mostly took a spade to me, I remember, though he wasn&rsquo;t against
+jabbing me in the ribs with a trowel if there wasn&rsquo;t a spade handy. I
+reckon it was him as first put the notion of liberty for all into my
+head. I never set much store by uncles, though. The only uncle I ever
+had died of croup when he was two years old.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My father didn&rsquo;t like his aunts,&rdquo; Sylvia added to the condemnation. &ldquo;He
+was brought up by two aunts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aunts in general is sour bodies, &rsquo;specially when they&rsquo;re in charge and
+get all the fuss of having children with none of the fun.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Monkley isn&rsquo;t really my uncle,&rdquo; Sylvia abruptly proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go on! you don&rsquo;t mean it?&rdquo; said Mr. Gustard. &ldquo;I suppose he&rsquo;s your
+guardian?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s nothing at all,&rdquo; Sylvia answered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He must be something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s absolutely nothing,&rdquo; she insisted. &ldquo;He used to live with my
+father, and when my father died he just went on living with me. If I
+don&rsquo;t want to live with him I needn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you must live with somebody,&rdquo; said Mr. Gustard. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a law
+about having visible means of support. You couldn&rsquo;t have a lot of kids
+living on their own.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; Sylvia asked, in contemptuous amazement.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; Mr. Gustard repeated. &ldquo;Why because every one would get
+pestered to death. It&rsquo;s the same with stray dogs. Stray dogs have got to
+have a home. If they haven&rsquo;t a home of their own, they&rsquo;re taken to the
+Dogs&rsquo; Home at Battersea and cremated, which is a painless and mercenary
+death.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t call that much of a home,&rdquo; Sylvia scoffed. &ldquo;A place where
+you&rsquo;re killed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s because we&rsquo;re speaking of dogs. Of course, if the police started
+in cremating children, there&rsquo;d be a regular outcry. So the law insists
+on children having homes.&rdquo;<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia tried hard to convince Mr. Gustard that she was different from
+other children, and in any case no longer a child; but though the
+discussion lasted a long time he would not admit the logic of Sylvia&rsquo;s
+arguments; in the end she decided he did not know what he was talking
+about.</p>
+
+<p>Monkley so much disliked Sylvia&rsquo;s intimacy with Arthur that he began to
+talk of moving from Hampstead, whereupon she warned him that if he tried
+to go away without paying the rent she would make a point of letting Mr.
+Gustard know where they had gone.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It strikes me,&rdquo; Monkley said, and when he spoke, Sylvia was reminded of
+the tone he used when she had protested against his treatment of Maudie
+Tilt&mdash;&ldquo;it strikes me that since I&rsquo;ve been away you&rsquo;ve taken things a bit
+too much into your own hands. That&rsquo;s a trick you&rsquo;d better drop with me,
+or we shall quarrel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia braced herself to withstand him as she had withstood him before;
+but she could not help feeling a little apprehensive, so cold were his
+green eyes, so thin his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care if we quarrel or not,&rdquo; she declared. &ldquo;Because if we
+quarreled it would mean that I couldn&rsquo;t bear you near me any longer and
+that I was glad to quarrel. If you make me hate you, Jimmy, you may be
+sorry, but I shall never be sorry. If you make me hate you, Jimmy, you
+can&rsquo;t think how dreadfully much I shall hate you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t try to come the little actress over me,&rdquo; Monkley said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+known too many women in my life to be bounced by a kid like you. But
+that&rsquo;s enough. I can&rsquo;t think why I pay so much attention to you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;All the women you&rsquo;ve known don&rsquo;t seem to have been
+able to teach you how to manage a little girl like me. What a pity!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and left him alone.</p>
+
+<p>There was a halcyon week that February, and Sylvia spent every day and
+all day on the Heath with Arthur. People used to turn and stare after
+them as they walked arm-in-arm over the vivid green grass.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s you they stare at,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;You look interesting
+with your high color and dark curly hair. You look rather foreign.
+Perhaps people think you&rsquo;re a<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> poet. I read the other day about a poet
+called Keats who lived in Hampstead and loved a girl called Fanny
+Brawne. I wish I knew what she looked like. It&rsquo;s not a very pretty name.
+Now I&rsquo;ve got rather a pretty name, I think; though I&rsquo;m not pretty
+myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not exactly pretty,&rdquo; Arthur agreed. &ldquo;But I think if I saw you I
+should turn round to look at you. You&rsquo;re like a person in a picture. You
+seem to stand out and to be the most important figure. In paintings
+that&rsquo;s because the chief figure is usually so much larger than the
+others. Well, that&rsquo;s the impression you give me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Speculation upon Sylvia&rsquo;s personality ceased when they got home; Monkley
+threatened Arthur in a very abusive way, even going as far as to pick up
+a stone and fling it through one of the few panes of glass left in the
+tumble-down greenhouse in order to illustrate the violent methods he
+proposed to adopt.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, when Sylvia went to fetch Arthur for their usual walk, he
+made some excuse and was obviously frightened to accompany her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What can he do to you?&rdquo; Sylvia demanded, in scornful displeasure. &ldquo;The
+worst he can do is to kill you, and then you&rsquo;d have died because you
+wouldn&rsquo;t surrender. Haven&rsquo;t you read about martyrs?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ve read about martyrs,&rdquo; said Arthur, rather querulously.
+&ldquo;But reading about martyrs is very different from being a martyr
+yourself. You seem to think everybody can be anything you happen to read
+about. You wouldn&rsquo;t care to be a martyr, Sylvia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s just where you&rsquo;re wrong,&rdquo; she loftily declared. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d much sooner
+be a martyr than a coward.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Arthur winced at her plain speaking. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t care what you say,&rdquo; was
+his reproach.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, and I don&rsquo;t care what I do,&rdquo; Sylvia agreed. &ldquo;Are you coming out
+with me? Because if you&rsquo;re not, you shall never be my friend again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Arthur pulled himself together and braved Monkley&rsquo;s threats. On a quiet
+green summit he demanded her impatient kisses for a recompense; she,
+conscious of his weakness and against her will made fonder of him by
+this very weakness, kissed him less impatiently than was her wont, so<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a>
+that Arthur, under the inspiration of that rare caress, vowed he cared
+for nobody and for nothing, if she would but always treat him thus
+kindly.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, who was determined to make Jimmy pay for his bad behavior,
+invited herself to tea with Mrs. Madden; afterward, though it was cloudy
+and ominous, Arthur and she walked out on the Heath once more, until it
+rained so hard that they were driven home. It was about seven o&rsquo;clock
+when Sylvia reached her room, her hair all tangled with moisture, her
+eyes and cheeks on fire with the exhilaration of that scurry through the
+rain. She had not stood a moment to regard herself in the glass when
+Monkley, following close upon her heels, shut the door behind him and
+turned the key in the lock. Sylvia looked round in astonishment; by a
+trick of candle-light his eyes gleamed for an instant, so that she felt
+a tremor of fear.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve come back at last, have you?&rdquo; he began in a slow voice, so
+deliberate and gentle in its utterance that Sylvia might not have
+grasped the extent of his agitation, had not one of his legs, affected
+by a nervous twitch, drummed upon the floor a sinister accompaniment.
+&ldquo;You shameless little b&mdash;&mdash;h, I thought I forbade you to go out with
+him again. You&rsquo;ve been careering over the Heath. You&rsquo;ve been encouraging
+him to make love to you. Look at your hair&mdash;it&rsquo;s in a regular tangle!
+and your cheeks&mdash;they&rsquo;re like fire. Well, if you can let that nancified
+milksop mess you about, you can put up with me. I&rsquo;ve wanted to long
+enough, God knows; and this is the reward I get for leaving you alone.
+You give yourself to the first b&mdash;&mdash;y boy that comes along.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Before Sylvia had time to reply, Monkley had leaped across the room and
+crushed her to him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Kiss me, damn you, kiss me! Put your arms round me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia would not scream, because she could not have endured that anybody
+should behold her in such an ignominious plight. Therefore she only
+kicked and fought, and whispered all the while, with savage intensity!
+&ldquo;You frog! you frog! You look like a frog! Leave me alone!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Monkley held her more closely and forced her mouth against his own, but
+Sylvia bit through his under lip till her<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a> teeth met. The pain caused
+him to start back and tread on Maria, who, searching in a panic for
+better cover than the bed afforded, had run between his legs. The cat,
+uttering one of those unimaginable wails with which only cats have power
+so horribly to surprise, retired to a corner, where he hissed and
+growled. In another corner Sylvia spat forth the unclean blood and wiped
+from her lips the soilure of the kisses.</p>
+
+<p>Monkley had had enough for the present. The pain and sudden noise had
+shaken his nerves. When the blood ran down his chin, bedabbling his tie,
+he unlocked the door and retired, crying out almost in a whimper for
+something to stop a bad razor cut. Mrs. Gustard went to the wood-shed
+for cobwebs; but Monkley soon shouted down that he had found some cotton
+wool, and Sylvia heard a cork being drawn. She made up her mind to kill
+him that night, but she was perplexed by the absence of a suitable
+weapon, and gradually it was borne in upon her mind that if she killed
+Monkley she would have to pay the penalty, which did not seem to her a
+satisfactory kind of revenge. She gave up the notion of killing him and
+decided to run away with Arthur instead.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time Sylvia sat in her bedroom, thinking over her plan; then
+she went next door and asked Arthur to come out and talk to her about
+something important. They stood whispering in the wet garden, while she
+bewitched him into offering to share her future. He was dazed by the
+rapidity with which she disposed of every objection he brought forward.
+She knew how to get enough money for them to start with. She knew how to
+escape from the house, and because the creeper beneath Arthur&rsquo;s window
+was not strong enough to bear his weight, he must tie his sheets
+together. He must not bring much luggage; she would only bring a small
+valise, and Maria could travel in her work-basket.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Maria?&rdquo; echoed Arthur, in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course! it was Maria who saved me,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;I shall wait till
+Monkley is asleep. I expect he&rsquo;ll be asleep early, because he&rsquo;s drinking
+brandy hard now; then I shall whistle the last line of the raggle-taggle
+gipsies and slither down from my window by the ivy.&rdquo;<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a></p>
+
+<p>She stuffed Arthur&rsquo;s reeling brain with further details, and, catching
+him to her heart, she kissed him with as much enthusiasm as might have
+been mistaken for passion. In the end, between coaxing and frightening
+him, threatening and inspiring him, Sylvia made Arthur agree to
+everything, and danced back indoors.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anybody would think you were glad because your guardian angel&rsquo;s gone
+and sliced a rasher off of his mouth,&rdquo; Mr. Gustard observed.</p>
+
+<p>By ten o&rsquo;clock all was quiet in the house. Sylvia chose with the
+greatest care her equipment for the adventure. She had recently bought a
+tartan frock, which, not having yet been worn, she felt would
+excellently become the occasion; this she put on, and plaited her
+tangled hair in a long pigtail. The result was unsatisfactory, for it
+made her look too prim for a heroine; she therefore undid the pigtail
+and tied her hair loosely back with a nut-brown bow. It was still
+impossibly early for an escape, so Sylvia sat down on the edge of her
+bed and composed herself to read the escape of Fabrizio from the Sforza
+tower in Parma. The book in which she read this was not one that she had
+been able to read through without a great deal of skipping; but this
+escape which she had only come across a day or two before seemed a
+divine omen to approve her decision. Sylvia regretted the absence of the
+armed men at the foot of the tower, but said to herself that, after all,
+she was escaping with her lover, whereas Fabrizio had been compelled to
+leave Clelia Conti behind. The night wore away; at half past eleven
+Sylvia dropped her valise from the window and whistled that she was off
+with the raggle-taggle gipsies&mdash;oh. Then she waited until a ghostly
+snake was uncoiled from Arthur&rsquo;s window.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dearest boy, you&rsquo;re an angel,&rdquo; she trilled, in an ecstasy, when she
+saw him slide safely down into the garden.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Catch Maria,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m coming myself in a moment.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Arthur caught her work-basket, and a faint protesting mew floated away
+on the darkness. Sylvia wrapped herself up, and then very cautiously,
+candle in hand, walked across to the door of Monkley&rsquo;s room and
+listened. He was<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> snoring loudly. She pushed open the door and beheld
+him fast asleep, a red-and-white beard of cotton wool upon his chin.
+Then risking all in an impulse to be quick, though she was almost
+stifled by fear, she hurried across the room to his trunk. He kept all
+his money in a tin box. How she hoped there was enough to make him rue
+her flight. Monkley never stirred; the box was safe in her muff. She
+stole back to her room, blew out the candle, flung the muff down to
+Arthur, held her breath when the coins rattled, put one leg over the
+sill, and scrambled down by the ivy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish it had been higher,&rdquo; she whispered, when Arthur clasped her with
+affectionate solicitude where she stood in the sodden vegetation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m jolly glad it wasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now what are we going to do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, find a &rsquo;bus, of course!&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;And get as far from
+Hampstead as possible.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s after twelve o&rsquo;clock,&rdquo; Arthur objected. &ldquo;There won&rsquo;t be any
+&rsquo;buses now. I don&rsquo;t know what we&rsquo;re going to do. We can&rsquo;t look for rooms
+at this time of night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must just walk as far as we can away from Hampstead,&rdquo; said Sylvia,
+cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And carry our luggage? Supposing a policeman asks us where we&rsquo;re
+going?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, bother policemen! Come along. You don&rsquo;t seem to be enjoying
+yourself nearly as much as I am. I care for nobody. I&rsquo;m off with the
+raggle-taggle gipsies&mdash;oh,&rdquo; she lightly sang.</p>
+
+<p>Maria mewed at the sound of his mistress&rsquo;s voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re as bad as Maria,&rdquo; she went on, reproachfully. &ldquo;Look how nice the
+lamp-posts look. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, I can see.
+Let&rsquo;s bet how many lamp-posts we pass before we&rsquo;re safe in our own
+house.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They set out for London by the road along the Heath. At first trees
+overhung the path, and they passed pool after pool of checkered
+lamplight that quivered in the wet road. Followed a space of open
+country where they heard the last whispers of a slight and desultory
+wind. Soon they were inclosed by mute and unillumined houses on either
+side, until they found themselves on the top of Haverstock<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> Hill, faced
+by the tawny glow of the London sky, and stretching before them a double
+row of lamp-posts innumerable and pale that converged to a dim point in
+the heart of the city below.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m rather frightened,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;Or perhaps I&rsquo;m a little
+tired.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shall we go back?&rdquo; Arthur suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no. We&rsquo;ll just rest a moment or two, and I&rsquo;ll be all right.&rdquo; They
+sat down on their bags, and she stroked Maria pensively.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was relieved when the silence was interrupted by a policeman. She
+felt the need of opposition to drive away the doubts that took advantage
+of that first fatigue to shake her purpose.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now then, what are you doing?&rdquo; he demanded, gruffly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re sitting down,&rdquo; Sylvia informed him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Loitering isn&rsquo;t allowed here,&rdquo; the policeman said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where is it allowed, please?&rdquo; she asked, sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Loitering isn&rsquo;t allowed nowhere,&rdquo; the policeman declared.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, why did you say it wasn&rsquo;t allowed here?&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;I
+thought you were going to tell us of a place where it was allowed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Arthur jogged Sylvia&rsquo;s elbow and whispered to her not to annoy the
+policeman.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come along, now, move on,&rdquo; the policeman commanded. In order to
+emphasize his authority he flashed his bull&rsquo;s-eye in Sylvia&rsquo;s face.
+&ldquo;Where do you live?&rdquo; he asked, after the scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lillie Road, Fulham. We missed the last train from Hampstead, and we&rsquo;re
+walking home. I never heard of any rule against sitting on one&rsquo;s own
+luggage in the middle of the night. I think you&rsquo;d better take us to the
+police station. We must rest somewhere.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The policeman looked puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What did you want to miss your train for?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t want to miss it,&rdquo; Sylvia gently explained. &ldquo;We were very
+angry when we missed it. Come on, Arthur, I don&rsquo;t feel tired any
+longer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She got up and started off down Haverstock Hill, followed by Arthur.<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry you can&rsquo;t recommend any proper loitering-places on the road,&rdquo;
+said Sylvia, turning round, &ldquo;because we shall probably have to loiter
+about thirty-six times before we get to Lillie Road. Good night. If we
+meet any burglars we&rsquo;ll give them your love and say there&rsquo;s a nice
+policeman living on Haverstock Hill who&rsquo;d like a chat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Suppose he had run us in?&rdquo; Arthur said, when they had left the
+policeman behind them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wanted him to at first,&rdquo; Sylvia replied. &ldquo;But afterward I thought it
+might be awkward on account of Monkley&rsquo;s cash-box. I wish we could open
+it now and see how much there is inside, but perhaps it would look funny
+at this time of night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They had nearly reached the bottom of Haverstock Hill, and there were
+signs of life in the squalid streets they were approaching.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think we ought to hang about here,&rdquo; Arthur said. &ldquo;These are
+slums. We ought to be careful; I think we ought to have waited till the
+morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t have come, if we&rsquo;d waited,&rdquo; Sylvia maintained. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d have
+been too worried about leaving your mother.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m still worried about that,&rdquo; said Arthur, gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why? You can send a post-card to say that you&rsquo;re all right. Knowing
+where you are won&rsquo;t make up for your being away. In any case, you&rsquo;d have
+had to go away soon. You couldn&rsquo;t have spent your whole life in that
+house at Hampstead.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I think this running away will bring us bad luck.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia made a dramatic pause and dropped her valise on the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go home, then. Go home and leave me alone. If you can&rsquo;t enjoy yourself,
+I&rsquo;d rather you went home. I can&rsquo;t bear to be with somebody who is not
+enjoying himself as much as I am.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t be enjoying this waking about all night with two bags and a
+cat,&rdquo; Arthur insisted. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m not going home without you. If you want
+to go on, I shall go on, too. I&rsquo;m feeling rather tired. I expect I shall
+enjoy myself more to-morrow.&rdquo;<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia picked up her valise again. &ldquo;I hope you will, I&rsquo;m sure,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re spoiling the fun by grumbling all the time like this. What
+is there to grumble at? Just a small bag which makes your arm ache. You
+ought to be glad you haven&rsquo;t got mine to carry as well as your own.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>After another quarter of an hour among the ill-favored streets Sylvia
+called a rest; this time they withdrew from the pavement into the area
+of an unoccupied house, where they leaned against the damp brick wall,
+quite exhausted, and heard without interest the footsteps of the people
+who went past above. Maria began to mew and Sylvia let her out of the
+basket. A lean and amorous tom-cat in pursuit of love considered that
+Maria had prejudiced his chance of success, and their recriminations
+ended in a noisy scuffle during which the lid of a dust-bin in the next
+area was upset with a loud clatter; somebody, throwing open a window,
+emptied a utensil partly over Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t make such a noise. It was only a jug,&rdquo; Sylvia whispered. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll
+wake up all the houses.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s your damned cat making the noise,&rdquo; Arthur said. &ldquo;Come here, you
+brute.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Maria was at last secured and replaced in his basket, and Arthur asked
+Sylvia if she was sure it was only a jug.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s simply beastly in this area,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;Anything&rsquo;s better than
+sitting here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>After making sure that nobody was in sight, they went on their way,
+though by now their legs were so weary that from time to time the bags
+scraped along the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The worst of it is,&rdquo; Sylvia sighed, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve come so far now that it
+would be just as tiring to go back to Hampstead as to go on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, <i>you&rsquo;re</i> thinking now of going back!&rdquo; Arthur jeered. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a pity
+you didn&rsquo;t think of that when we were on Haverstock Hill.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not thinking at all of going back,&rdquo; Sylvia snapped. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not
+tired.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; said Arthur, sarcastically. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m not at all wet, really.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They got more and more irritable with each other. The bow in Sylvia&rsquo;s
+hair dropped off, and with all the fretful<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> obstinacy of fatigue she
+would go wandering back on their tracks to see if she could find it; but
+the bow was lost. At last they saw a hansom coming toward them at a
+walking pace, and Sylvia announced that they would ride.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But where shall we drive to?&rdquo; Arthur asked. &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t just get in and
+drive anywhere.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll tell him to go to Waterloo,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;Stations are always
+open; we can wait there till the morning and then look for a house.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She hailed the cab; with sighs of relief they sank back upon the seat,
+exhausted. Presently an odd noise like a fishmonger&rsquo;s smacking a cod
+could be heard beside the cab, and, leaning out over the apron to see
+what was the cause of it, Arthur was spattered with mud by a piece of
+the tire which was flogging the road with each revolution of the wheel.
+The driver pulled up and descended from the box to restrain it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been tying it up all day, but it will do it,&rdquo; he complained.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing to worry over, but it fidgets one, don&rsquo;t it, flapping
+like that? I&rsquo;ve tied it up with string and I&rsquo;ve tied it up with wire,
+and last time I used my handkerchief. Now I suppose it&rsquo;s got to be my
+bootlace. Well, here goes,&rdquo; he said, and with many grunts he stooped
+over to undo his lace.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Sylvia nor Arthur could ever say what occurred to irritate a
+horse that with equanimity had tolerated the flapping all day, but
+suddenly it leaped forward at a canter, while the loose piece of tire
+slapped the road with increasing rapidity and noise. The reins slipped
+down; and Sylvia, who had often been allowed to drive with Blanche,
+managed to gather them up and keep the horse more or less in the middle
+of the road. After the cab had traveled about a mile the tire that all
+day had been seeking freedom achieved its purpose and, lancing itself
+before the vehicle in a swift parabola, looped itself round the ancient
+ragman who was shuffling along the gutter in pursuit of wealth. The
+horse chose that moment to stop abruptly and an unpleasant encounter
+with the ragman seemed inevitable. Already he was approaching the cab,
+waving in angry fashion his spiked stick and swearing in a bronchial
+voice; he stopped his abuse, however, on perceiving the absence<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> of the
+driver, and muttering to himself: &ldquo;A lucky night, so help me! A lovely
+long strip of india-rubber! Gor! what a find!&rdquo; he turned round and
+walked away as fast as he could, stuffing the tire into his basket as he
+went.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wonder whether I could drive the cab properly if I climbed up on the
+box,&rdquo; said Sylvia, thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no! For goodness&rsquo; sake, don&rsquo;t do anything of the kind!&rdquo; Arthur
+begged. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s get down while the beast is quiet. Come along. We shall
+never be able to explain why we&rsquo;re in this cab. It&rsquo;s like a dream.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia gave way so far as not to mount the box, but she declined to
+alight, and insisted they ought to stay where they were and rest as long
+as they could; there were still a number of dark hours before them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But my dear girl, this beast of a horse may start off again,&rdquo; Arthur
+protested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, what if it does?&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t be any more lost than we
+are now. I don&rsquo;t know in the least what part of London we&rsquo;ve got to.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure there&rsquo;s something the matter with this cab,&rdquo; Arthur woefully
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is,&rdquo; she agreed. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve just set fire to it with that match.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m so nervous,&rdquo; said Arthur. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;m doing. Phew! what
+a stink of burnt hair. Do let&rsquo;s get out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He stamped on the smoldering mat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shut up,&rdquo; Sylvia commanded. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to try and have a sleep. Wake me
+up if the horse tries to walk into a shop or anything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But this was more than Arthur could stand, and he shook her in
+desperation. &ldquo;You sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t go to sleep. You don&rsquo;t seem to mind what
+happens to us.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not a bit,&rdquo; Sylvia agreed. Then suddenly she sang at the top of her
+voice, &ldquo;for I&rsquo;m off with the raggle-taggle gipsies&mdash;oh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The horse at once trotted forward, and Arthur was in despair.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, damn!&rdquo; he moaned. &ldquo;Now you&rsquo;ve started that horrible brute off
+again. Whatever made me come away with you?&rdquo;<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can go home whenever you like,&rdquo; said Sylvia, coldly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the good of telling me that when we&rsquo;re tearing along in a cab
+without a driver?&rdquo; Arthur bewailed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re not tearing along,&rdquo; Sylvia contradicted. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;m driving. I
+expect the horse will go back to its stable if we don&rsquo;t interfere with
+him too much.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who wants to interfere with the brute? Oh, listen to that wheel. I&rsquo;m
+sure it&rsquo;s coming off.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s a cab shelter,&rdquo; Sylvia said, encouragingly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to try
+and pull up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Luckily the horse was ready enough to stop, and both of them got out.
+Sylvia walked without hesitation into the shelter, followed by Arthur
+with the bags. There were three or four cabmen inside, eating
+voluptuously in an atmosphere of tobacco smoke, steam, and burnt grease.
+She explained to them about the cab&rsquo;s running away, was much gratified
+by the attention her story secured, and learned that it was three
+o&rsquo;clock and that she was in Somers Town.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where are you going, missie?&rdquo; one of the cabmen asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We were going to Waterloo, but we don&rsquo;t mind staying here,&rdquo; Sylvia
+said. &ldquo;My brother is rather tired and my cat would like some milk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What did the driver look like, missie?&rdquo; one of the men asked.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia described him vaguely as rather fat, a description which would
+have equally suited any of the present company, with the exception of
+the attendant tout, who was exceptionally lean.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wonder if it &rsquo;ud be Bill?&rdquo; said one of the cabmen.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t be surprised.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wasn&rsquo;t Bill grumbling about his tire this morning?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if it was his tire; he was grumbling about something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I reckon it&rsquo;s Bill. Did you notice if the gentleman as drove you had a
+swelling behind his ear?&rdquo; asked the man who had first propounded the
+theory of the missing driver&rsquo;s being Bill.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t notice,&rdquo; said Sylvia.<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;About the size of a largish potato?&rdquo; the theorist pressed,
+encouragingly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I didn&rsquo;t notice,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It must be Bill,&rdquo; the theorist decided. &ldquo;Any one wouldn&rsquo;t notice that
+swelling in the dark, &rsquo;specially if Bill had his collar turned up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He did have his collar turned up,&rdquo; Arthur put in.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There you are,&rdquo; said the theorist. &ldquo;What did I tell you? Of course it&rsquo;s
+Bill. No one wouldn&rsquo;t see his swelling with his coat turned up. Poor old
+Bill, he won&rsquo;t half swear when he has to walk home to-night. Here, Joe,&rdquo;
+he went on, addressing the attending tout. &ldquo;Give Bill&rsquo;s horse a bit of a
+feed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia and Arthur were given large slices of bread and butter and large
+cups of coffee; Maria had a saucer of milk. Life was looking much more
+cheerful. Presently a burly cabman appeared in the entrance of the
+shelter and was greeted with shouts of merriment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What ho, Bill, old cock! Lost your ruddy cab, old sporty? Lor! we
+haven&rsquo;t half laughed to think of you having to use your bacon and eggs
+to get here. I reckon you didn&rsquo;t half swear.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who are you getting at, you blinking set of mugs? Who&rsquo;s lost his ruddy
+cab?&rdquo; demanded Bill.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s not the driver,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought it couldn&rsquo;t be Bill,&rdquo; said the theorist quickly. &ldquo;As soon as
+I heard she never noticed that lump behind his ear, I thought it wasn&rsquo;t
+Bill.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here, less of it, you and your lumps behind the ear,&rdquo; said Bill,
+aggressively. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have a blurry lump behin&rsquo; your own blurry ear,
+Fred Organ, before you knows where you are.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia could not refrain from observing the famous lump with a good deal
+of curiosity, and she wondered how any one could ever have supposed it
+might be unnoticed. She would have described it as more like a beet root
+than a potato, she thought.</p>
+
+<p>A long discussion about the future of the driverless cab ensued; finally
+it was decided that Joe the tout should lead it to the police station if
+it were not claimed by daylight. The company then turned to the
+discussion of the<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a> future of the abandoned fares. Sylvia had by this
+time evolved an elaborate tale of running away from a stepfather whose
+conduct to Arthur, herself, and Maria had been extremely brutal.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Knocked the cat about, did he?&rdquo; said the theorist, whose name was Fred
+Organ. &ldquo;I never could abide people as ill-treated dumb animals.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia went on to explain that they had intended to throw themselves on
+the mercy of an aunt who lived at Dover, and with that intention had
+been bound for Waterloo when they lost their driver. When she was told
+that they were going to the wrong station for Dover, she began to
+express fears of the reception her aunt might accord them. Did any one
+present know where they could find lodgings, for which, of course, they
+would pay, because their mother had provided them with the necessary
+money.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a mother all over,&rdquo; said Fred Organ, with enthusiastic
+sentiment. &ldquo;Ain&rsquo;t it, boys? Ah, I wish I hadn&rsquo;t lost my poor old
+mother.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Various suggestions about rooms were made, but finally Fred Organ was so
+much moved by the emotional details with which Sylvia continually
+supplemented her tale that he offered to give them lodgings in his own
+house near Finsbury Park. Sylvia would have preferred a suburb that was
+barred to Monkley, but she accepted the offer because, with Arthur
+turning out so inept at adventure, it seemed foolish to take any more
+risks that night.</p>
+
+<p>Fred Organ had succeeded to the paternal house and hansom about two
+years before. He was now twenty-six, but his corpulence made him appear
+older; for the chubby smoothness of youth had vanished with continual
+exposure to the weather, leaving behind many folds and furrows in his
+large face. Mr. Organ, senior, had bought No. 53 Colonial Terrace by
+instalments, the punctual payment of which had worried him so much as
+probably to shorten his life, the last one having been paid just before
+his death. He had only a week or two for the enjoyment of possession,
+which was as well; for the house that had cost its owner so much effort
+to obtain was nearly as ripe for dissolution as himself, and the
+maintenance of it in repair seemed likely to cause Fred Organ as much
+financial stress in the future<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> as the original purchase had caused his
+father in the past.</p>
+
+<p>So much of his history did Fred Organ give them while he was stabling
+his horse, before he could introduce them to his inheritance. It was
+five o&rsquo;clock of a chill February morning, and the relief of finding
+herself safely under a roof after such a tiring and insecure night
+compensated Sylvia for the impression of unutterable dreariness that
+Colonial Terrace first made upon her mind, a dreariness quite out of
+accord with the romantic beginning to the life of independence of which
+she had dreamed. They could not go to bed when they reached the house,
+because Fred Organ, master though he was, doubted if it would be wise to
+wake up his sister to accommodate the guests.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not that she&rsquo;d have any call to make a fuss,&rdquo; he observed, &ldquo;because if
+I says a thing in No. 53, no one hasn&rsquo;t got the right to object. Still,
+I&rsquo;d rather you got a nice first impression of my sister Edith. Well,
+make yourselves at home. I&rsquo;ll rout round and get the kitchen fire
+going.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Fred routed round with such effect that he woke his sister, who began to
+scream from the landing above:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hube! Get up, you great coward! There&rsquo;s somebody breaking in at the
+back. Get up, Hube, and fetch a policeman before we&rsquo;re both murdered.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s only me, Ede,&rdquo; Fred called out. &ldquo;Keep your hair on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When Sylvia saw Edith Organ&rsquo;s curl-papers she thought the last
+injunction was rather funny. Explanations were soon given and Edith was
+so happy to find her alarm unnecessary that she was as pleasant as
+possible and even invited Sylvia to come and share her bed and sleep
+late into the morning; whereupon Fred Organ invited Arthur to share his
+bed, which Arthur firmly declined to do, notwithstanding Sylvia&rsquo;s frown.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you can&rsquo;t go to bed with the girls,&rdquo; said Fred.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Fred, you are a.... Oh, he is a.... Oh, isn&rsquo;t he? Oh, I never.
+Fancy! What a thing to say! There! Well! Who ever did? I&rsquo;m sure. What a
+remark to pass!&rdquo; Edith exclaimed, quite incoherent from embarrassment,
+pleasure, and sleep.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s Hube?&rdquo; Fred asked.<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Hube!&rdquo; snapped Edith. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s well underneath the bedclothes. Trust
+Hube for that. Nothing&rsquo;d get him out of bed except an earthquake.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t it, then?&rdquo; said a sleek voice, and Hube himself, an extremely
+fat young man in a trailing nightgown, appeared in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t think he was only nineteen, would you?&rdquo; said Fred,
+proudly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nice noise to kick up in the middle of the night,&rdquo; Hubert grumbled. &ldquo;I
+dreamt the house was falling down on top of me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And it will, too,&rdquo; Fred prophesied, &ldquo;if I can&rsquo;t soon scrape together
+some money for repairs. There&rsquo;s a crack as wide as the strand down the
+back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia wondered how so rickety a house was able to withstand the wear
+and tear of such a fat family when they all, with the exception of
+Arthur, who lay down on the kitchen table, went creaking up-stairs to
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>The examination of Monkley&rsquo;s cash-box produced £35; Sylvia felt
+ineffably rich, so rich that she offered to lend Fred Organ the money he
+wanted to repair his property. He accepted the offer in the spirit in
+which it was made, as he said, and Sylvia, whom contact with Monkley had
+left curiously uncynical, felt that she had endeared herself to Fred
+Organ for a long time to come. She was given a room of her own at No.
+53, for which she was glad, because sleeping with Edith had been rather
+like eating scented cornflour pudding, a combination of the flabby with
+the stuffy that had never appeared to her taste. Arthur was given the
+choice of sleeping with Hubert or in the bath, and he chose the latter
+without a moment&rsquo;s hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>Relations between Arthur and Hubert had been strained ever since. Hubert
+offered Arthur a bite from an apple he was munching, which was refused
+with a too obvious disgust.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go on, what do you take me for? Eve?&rdquo; asked Hubert, indignantly. &ldquo;It
+won&rsquo;t poison you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The strain was not relaxed by Hubert&rsquo;s obvious fondness for Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought when I came away with you,&rdquo; Arthur said,<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> &ldquo;that we were going
+to live by ourselves and earn our own living; instead of which you let
+that fat brute hang around you all day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t be always rude to him,&rdquo; Sylvia explained. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very
+good-natured.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you call it good-natured to turn the tap on me when I&rsquo;m lying in
+bed?&rdquo; Arthur demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I expect he only did it for fun.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fun!&rdquo; said Arthur, darkly. &ldquo;I shall hit him one of these days.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Arthur did hit him; but Hubert, with all his fat, hit harder than he,
+and Arthur never tried again. Sylvia found herself growing very tired of
+him; the universal censure upon his namby-pambyness was beginning to
+react upon her. The poetical youth of Hampstead Heath seemed no longer
+so poetical in Colonial Terrace. Yet she did not want to quarrel with
+him finally, for in a curious way he represented to her a link with what
+she still paradoxically spoke of as home. Sylvia had really had a great
+affection for Monkley, which made her hate him more for what he had
+tried to do. Yet, though she hated him and though the notion of being
+with him again made her shudder, she could not forget that he had known
+her father, who was bound up with the memory of her mother and of all
+the past that, being so irreparably over, was now strangely cherished.
+Sylvia felt that, were Arthur to go, she would indeed find herself
+alone, in that state which first she had dreaded, then desired, and now
+once again dreaded, notwithstanding her bold conceptions of independence
+and belief in her own ability to determine the manner of life she
+wished. There were times when she felt what almost amounted to a
+passionate hatred of Colonial Terrace, which had brought her freedom,
+indeed, but the freedom of a world too gray to make freedom worth
+possessing. She was fond of Fred Organ, and she fancied that he would
+have liked formally to adopt her; yet the idea of being adopted by him
+somehow repelled her. She was fond of Edith Organ too, but no fonder
+than she had been of Clara; Edith seemed to have less to tell her about
+life than Clara, perhaps because she was older now and had read so many
+books. As for Hubert, who claimed to be in<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a> love with her, he existed
+about the house like a large over-fed dog; that was all, that and his
+capacity for teasing Arthur, which amused her.</p>
+
+<p>Everything about this escapade was so different from what she had
+planned. Always in her dreams there had been a room with a green view
+over trees or a silver view over water, and herself encouraging some one
+(she supposed it must have been Arthur, though she could hardly believe
+this when she looked at him now) to perform the kind of fantastic deeds
+that people performed in books. Surely some books were true. Looking
+back on her old fancies, Sylvia came to the conclusion that she had
+always pictured herself married to Arthur; yet how ridiculous such an
+idea now seemed. He had always talked with regret of the adventures that
+were no longer possible in dull modern days; but when the very small
+adventure of being in a runaway cab had happened, how miserably Arthur
+had failed to rise to the occasion, and now here he was loafing in
+Colonial Terrace. Hubert had secured a position in a bookshop near
+Finsbury Park railway station, which he had forfeited very soon
+afterward, but only because he had made a habit of borrowing for
+Sylvia&rsquo;s perusal the books which customers had bought, and of sending
+them on to their owners two or three days later. To be sure, they had
+nearly all been very dull books of a religious bent, but in such a
+district as Finsbury Park what else could be expected? At least Hubert
+had sacrificed something for her. Arthur had done nothing; even when
+Fred Organ, to please Sylvia, had offered to teach him to drive a
+hansom, he had refused to learn.</p>
+
+<p>One day Edith Organ announced that there was to be a supper-party at a
+public house in Harringay where one of the barmaids was a friend of
+hers. It seemed that Mrs. Hartle, the proprietress, had recently had
+cause to rejoice over a victory, but whether it was domestic, political,
+or professional Edith was unable to remember; at any rate, a jolly
+evening could be counted upon.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must wear that new white dress, Syl; it suits you a treat,&rdquo; Edith
+advised. &ldquo;I was told only to bring one gentleman, and I think it&rsquo;s
+Artie&rsquo;s turn.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; Hubert demanded, fiercely.<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Hube, you know you don&rsquo;t like parties. You always want to go home
+early, and I&rsquo;m out to enjoy myself and I don&rsquo;t care who knows it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia suspected that Edith&rsquo;s real reason for wishing Arthur to be the
+guest was his greater presentableness; she had often heard her praise
+Arthur&rsquo;s appearance while deprecating his namby-pamby manner; however,
+for a party like this, of which Edith was proclaiming the extreme
+selectness, that might be considered an advantage. Mrs. Hartle was
+reputed to be a woman to whom the least vulgarity was disgusting.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s highly particular, they tell me, not to say stand-offish. You
+know, doesn&rsquo;t like to make herself cheap. Well, I don&rsquo;t blame her. She&rsquo;s
+thought a lot of round here. She had some trouble with her husband&mdash;her
+second husband that is&mdash;and everybody speaks very highly of the
+dignified way in which she made him sling his hook out of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so much of her,&rdquo; Hubert grunted. &ldquo;I went into the
+saloon-bar once, and she said, &lsquo;Here, my man, the public bar is the
+hother side.&rsquo; &lsquo;Oh, his it?&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Well, I can&rsquo;t round the corner for
+the crowd,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;listening to your old man singing &ldquo;At Trinity
+Church I met my doom&rdquo; on the pavement outside.&rsquo; She didn&rsquo;t half color
+up, I can tell you. So he was singing, too, fit to give any one the
+earache to listen to him. I don&rsquo;t want to go to her supper-party.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, if you&rsquo;re not going, you needn&rsquo;t be so nasty about it, Hube. I&rsquo;d
+take you if I could.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t come,&rdquo; Hubert declared. &ldquo;Not if Mrs. Hartle was to go down
+on her knees and ask me to come. So shut your mouth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The chief event of the party for Sylvia was her meeting with Danny
+Lewis, who paid her a good deal of attention at supper and danced with
+her all the time afterward. Sylvia was grateful to him for his patience
+with her bad dancing at first, and she learned so quickly under his
+direction that when it was time to go she really danced rather well.
+Sylvia&rsquo;s new friend saw them back to Colonial Terrace and invited
+himself to tea the following afternoon. Edith, who could never bear the
+suggestion of impoliteness,<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> assured him that he would be most welcome,
+though she confided in Sylvia, as they went up to bed, that she could
+not feel quite sure about him. Sylvia insisted he was everything he
+should be, and praised his manners so highly that Edith humbly promised
+to believe in his perfection. Arthur went up-stairs and slammed his door
+without saying good night.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, a morning of east wind, Arthur attacked Sylvia on the
+subject of her behavior the night before.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; he opened, very grandly, &ldquo;if you prefer to spend the
+evenings waltzing with dirty little Jews, I won&rsquo;t stand it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia regarded him disdainfully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you hear?&rdquo; repeated Arthur. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t stand it. It&rsquo;s bad enough with
+that great hulking lout here, but when it comes to a greasy Jew I&rsquo;ve had
+enough.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So have I,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better go back to Hampstead.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to-day,&rdquo; Arthur declared, and waited pathetically for Sylvia
+to protest. She was silent. Then he tried to be affectionate, and vowed
+he had not meant a word he said, but she brushed away his tentative
+caress and meek apology.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to talk to you any more,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;There are lots of
+things I could tell you; but you&rsquo;ll always be unhappy anyway, because
+you&rsquo;re soft and silly, so I won&rsquo;t. You&rsquo;ll be home for dinner,&rdquo; she
+added.</p>
+
+<p>When Arthur was ready to start he looked so forlorn that Sylvia was
+sorry for him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here, take Maria,&rdquo; she said, impulsively. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll remind you of me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want anything to remind me of you,&rdquo; said Arthur in a hollow
+voice, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;ll take Maria.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon Danny Lewis, wearing a bright orange tie and a flashing
+ring, came to visit Sylvia. She had already told him a good deal about
+herself the night before, and when now she told him how she had
+dismissed Arthur he suggested that Monkley would probably find out where
+she was and come to take her back. Sylvia turned pale; the possibility
+of Arthur&rsquo;s betrayal of her address had never<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a> struck her. She cried in
+a panic that she must leave Finsbury Park at once. Danny offered to find
+her a room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got no money. I spent all I had left on new frocks,&rdquo; she bewailed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right, kid; bring the frocks along with you. I&rsquo;ve got plenty
+of money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia packed in a frenzy of haste, expecting every moment to hear the
+bell ring and see Monkley waiting grimly outside; his cold eyes, when
+her imagination recalled them, made her shiver with fear. When they got
+down-stairs Hubert, who was in the passage, asked where she was going,
+and she told him that she was going away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not with that&mdash;&rdquo; said Hubert, barring the way to the front door.</p>
+
+<p>Danny did not hesitate; his arm shot out, and Hubert went over, bringing
+down the hat-stand with a crash.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quick, quick!&rdquo; cried Sylvia, in exultation at being with some one who
+could act. &ldquo;Edie&rsquo;s gone round to the baker&rsquo;s to fetch some crumpets for
+tea. Let&rsquo;s go before she gets back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They hurried out. The wind had fallen. Colonial Terrace looked very
+gray, very quiet, very long in the bitter March air. Danny Lewis with
+his orange tie promised a richer, warmer life beyond these ridiculous
+little houses that imitated one another.<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">D</span>ANNY LEWIS took Sylvia to an eating-house in Euston Road kept by a
+married couple called Gonner. Here everything&mdash;the meat, the pies, the
+butter, the streaky slabs of marble, the fly-blown face of the weary
+clock, the sawdust sprinkled on the floor, the cane-seated
+chairs&mdash;combined to create an effect of greasy pallor that extended even
+to Mr. and Mrs. Gonner themselves, who seemed to have acquired the
+nature of their environment. Sylvia shrank from their whitish arms bare
+to the elbow and glistering with fats, and from their faces, which
+seemed to her like bladders of lard, especially Mrs. Gonner&rsquo;s, who wore
+on the top of her head a knob of dank etiolated hair. In such an
+atmosphere Danny Lewis with his brilliant tie and green beaver hat
+acquired a richness of personality that quite overpowered Sylvia&rsquo;s
+judgment and preserved the condition of abnormal excitement set up by
+the rapidity and completeness with which this time she had abandoned
+herself to independence.</p>
+
+<p>There was a brief conversation between Danny and the Gonners, after
+which Mr. Gonner returned to his task of cutting some very fat bacon
+into rashers and Mrs. Gonner held up the flap of the counter for Sylvia
+and Danny to pass up-stairs through the back of the shop. For one moment
+Sylvia hesitated when the flap dropped back into its place, for it
+seemed to make dangerously irrevocable her admittance to the unknown
+house above; Danny saw her hesitation and with a word or two of
+encouragement checked her impulse to go no farther. Mrs. Gonner led the
+way up-stairs and showed them into a bedroom prematurely darkened by
+coarse lace curtains that shut out the fading daylight. Sylvia had a
+vague impression of too much furniture, which was confirmed when Mrs.
+Gonner lit a gas-jet over the mantelpiece; she looked round
+distastefully<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a> at the double-bed pushed against the wall, at the crimson
+vases painted with butterflies, at the faded oleograph of two children
+on the edge of a precipice with a guardian angel behind them, whose face
+had at some time been eaten away by mice. There was a short silence,
+only broken by Mrs. Gonner&rsquo;s whispering breath.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We shall be all right here, kid, eh?&rdquo; exclaimed Danny, in a tone that
+was at once suave and boisterous.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s your room like?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her a moment, seemed about to speak, thought better of it,
+and turned to Mrs. Gonner, who told Danny that he could have the front
+room as well if he wanted it; they moved along the passage to inspect
+this room, which was much larger and better lighted than the other and
+was pleasantly filled with the noise of traffic. Sylvia immediately
+declared that she preferred to be here.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So I&rsquo;m to have the rabbit-hutch,&rdquo; said Danny, laughing easily. &ldquo;Trust a
+woman to have her own way! That&rsquo;s right, isn&rsquo;t it, Mrs. Gonner?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gonner stared at Sylvia a moment, and murmured that she had long
+ago forgotten what she wanted, but that, anyway, for her one thing was
+the same as another, which Sylvia was very ready to believe.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Gonner had left the room, Danny told Sylvia that he must go
+and get a few things together from his flat in Shaftsbury Avenue, and
+asked if she would wait till he came back.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I&rsquo;ll wait,&rdquo; she told him. &ldquo;Do you think I want to run away
+twice in one day?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Danny still hesitated, and she wondered why he should expect her, who
+was so much used to being left alone, to mind waiting for him an hour or
+two.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We might go to the Mo to-night,&rdquo; he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>She looked blank.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Middlesex,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a music-hall. Be a good girl while
+I&rsquo;m out. I&rsquo;ll bring you back some chocolates.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He seemed anxious to retain her with the hint of pleasures that were in
+his power to confer; it made Sylvia impatient that he should rely on
+them rather than upon her capacity for knowing her own mind.<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I may be young,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but I do know what I want. I&rsquo;m not like
+that woman down-stairs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you know how to make other people want, eh?&rdquo; Danny muttered. He
+took a step forward, and Sylvia hoped he was not going to try to kiss
+her&mdash;she felt disinclined at this moment for a long explanation&mdash;but he
+went off, whistling.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time Sylvia stood by the window, looking down at the traffic
+and the lights coming out one by one in the windows opposite. She hoped
+that Danny would not end like Monkley, and she determined to be prompt
+in checking the first signs of his doing so. Standing here in this room,
+that was now dark except for the faint transitory shadows upon the walls
+and ceiling of lighted vehicles below, Sylvia&rsquo;s thoughts went back to
+the time she had spent with Blanche. It seemed to her that then she had
+been wiser than she was now, for all the books she had read since; or
+was it that she was growing up and becoming an actress in scenes that
+formerly she had regarded with the secure aloofness of a child?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not innocent,&rdquo; she said to herself. &ldquo;I know everything that can be
+known. But yet when Monkley tried to do that I was horrified. I felt
+sick and frightened and angry, oh, dreadfully angry! Yet when Blanche
+behaved as she did I did not mind at all; I used to encourage her. Oh,
+why am I not a boy? If I were a boy, I would show people that making
+love isn&rsquo;t really a bit necessary. Yet sometimes I liked Arthur to make
+love to me. I can&rsquo;t make myself out. I think I must be what people call
+an exceptional person. I hope Danny won&rsquo;t make love to me. But I feel he
+will; and if he does I shall kill myself; I can&rsquo;t go on living like this
+with everybody making love to me. I&rsquo;m not like Blanche or Mabel; I don&rsquo;t
+like it. How I used to hate Mabel! Shall I ever get like her? Oh, I
+wish, I wish, I wish I were a boy. I don&rsquo;t believe Danny will be any
+better than Jimmy was. Yet he doesn&rsquo;t frighten me so much. He doesn&rsquo;t
+seem so much there as Jimmy was. But if he does make love to me, it will
+be more dangerous. How shall I ever escape from here? I&rsquo;m sure Mrs.
+Gonner will never lift the flap.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia began to be obsessed by that flap, and the notion<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a> of it wrought
+upon her fancy to such an extent that she was impelled to go down-stairs
+and see if the way out was open or shut, excusing her abrupt appearance
+by asking for a box of matches. There were two or three people eating at
+the white tables, who eyed her curiously; she wondered what they would
+have done if she had suddenly begged their help. She was vexed with
+herself for giving way to her nerves like this, and she went up-stairs
+again with a grand resolve to be very brave. She even challenged her
+terrors by going into that bedroom behind and contending with its
+oppressiveness. So successful was she in calming her overwrought nerves
+that, when Danny suddenly came back and found her in his bedroom, she
+was no longer afraid; she looked at him there in the doorway, wearing
+now a large tie of pale-blue silk, as she would have looked at any
+brigand in an opera. When he presented her with a large box of
+chocolates she laughed. He wondered why; she said it was she who ought
+to give him chocolates, which left him blank. She tried to explain her
+impression of him as a brigand, and he asked her if she meant that he
+looked like an actor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s what I mean,&rdquo; she said, impatiently, though she meant
+nothing of the kind.</p>
+
+<p>Danny seemed gratified as by a compliment and said that he was often
+mistaken for an actor; he supposed it was his hair.</p>
+
+<p>They dined at a restaurant in Soho, where Sylvia was conscious of
+arousing a good deal of attention; afterward they went to the Middlesex
+music-hall, but she felt very tired, and did not enjoy it so much as she
+expected. Moreover, Danny irritated her by sucking his teeth with an air
+of importance all through the evening.</p>
+
+<p>For a fortnight Danny treated Sylvia with what was almost a luxurious
+consideration. She was never really taken in by it, but she submitted so
+willingly to being spoiled that, as she told herself, she could hardly
+blame Danny for thinking he was fast making himself indispensable to her
+happiness. He was very anxious for her to lead a lazy existence,
+encouraged her to lie in bed the whole morning, fed her with chocolates,
+and tried to cultivate in her a habit of supposing that it was
+impossible to go anywhere<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> without driving in a hansom; he also used to
+buy her brightly colored blouses and scarves, which she used to wear out
+of politeness, for they gave her very little pleasure. He flattered her
+consistently, praising her cleverness and comparing her sense of humor
+with that of other women always to their disadvantage. He told stories
+very well, particularly those against his own race; and though Sylvia
+was a little scornful of this truckling self-mockery, she could not help
+laughing at the stories. Sylvia realized by the contempt with which
+Danny referred to women that his victories had usually been gained very
+easily, and she was much on her guard. Encouraged, however, by the way
+in which Sylvia seemed to enjoy the superficial pleasures he provided
+for her, Danny soon attempted to bestow his favors as he bestowed his
+chocolates. Sylvia, who never feared Danny personally as she had feared
+Monkley, repulsed him, yet not so firmly as she would have done had not
+her first impression of the house still affected her imagination. Danny,
+who divined her malaise, but mistook it for the terror he was used to
+inspiring, began to play the bully. It was twilight, one of those
+sapphire twilights of early spring; the gas had not been lighted and the
+fire had died away to a glow. Sylvia had thrown off his caressing arm
+three times, when Danny suddenly jumped up, pulled out a clasp-knife,
+and, standing over Sylvia, threatened her with death if she would not
+immediately consent to be his. Sylvia&rsquo;s heart beat a little faster at
+such a threat delivered with all the additional force vile language
+could give to it, but she saw two things quite clearly: first, that, if
+Danny were really to kill her, death would be far preferable to
+surrender; secondly, that the surest way of avoiding either would be by
+assuming he would turn out a coward in the face of the unexpected. She
+rose from the arm-chair; Danny rushed to the door, flourishing his knife
+and forbidding her to think of escape.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who wants to escape?&rdquo; she asked, in so cool a tone that Danny, who had
+naturally anticipated a more feminine reception of his violence, failed
+to sustain his part by letting her see that he was puzzled. She strolled
+across the room to the wash-stand; then she strolled up to the brigand.<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Put that knife away,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I want to tell you something, darling
+Danny.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the gloom she could see that he threw a suspicious glance at her for
+the endearing epithet, but he put away the knife.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you want to say?&rdquo; he growled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Only this.&rdquo; She brought her arm swiftly round and emptied the
+water-bottle over him. &ldquo;Though I ought to smash it on your greasy head.
+I read in a book once that the Jews were a subject race. You&rsquo;d better
+light the gas.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He spluttered that he was all wet, and she turned away from him,
+horribly scared that in a moment his fingers would be tightening round
+her neck; but he had taken off his coat and was shaking it.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia poked the fire and sat down again in the arm-chair. &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; she
+began.</p>
+
+<p>He came across the room in his shirt-sleeves, his tie hanging in a
+cascade of amber silk over his waistcoat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t pull down the blinds,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;I want to be quite sure
+you really have cooled down and aren&rsquo;t going to play with that knife
+again. Listen. It&rsquo;s no good your trying to make love to me. I don&rsquo;t want
+to be made love to by anybody, least of all by you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Danny looked more cheerful when she assured him of her indifference to
+other men.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use your killing me, because you&rsquo;ll only be hanged. It&rsquo;s no use
+your stabbing me, because you&rsquo;ll go to prison. If you hit me, I shall
+hit you back. You thought I was afraid of you. I wasn&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;m more afraid
+of a bug than I am of you. I saw a bug to-day; so I&rsquo;m going to leave
+this house. The weather&rsquo;s getting warmer. You and the bugs have come out
+together. Come along, Danny, dry your coat and tell me a story that will
+make me laugh. Tell me the story of the Jew who died of grief because he
+bought his wife a new hat and found his best friend had bought her one
+that day and he might have saved his money. Do make me laugh, Danny.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They went to the Middlesex music-hall that evening, and Danny did not
+suck his teeth once. The next morning he told Sylvia that he had been to
+visit a friend who wished very much to meet her, and that he proposed to
+introduce<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> him that afternoon, if she agreed. He was a fellow in a good
+way of business, the son of a bootmaker in Drury Lane, quite a superior
+sort of fellow and one by whom she could not fail to be impressed; his
+name was Jay Cohen. The friend arrived toward four o&rsquo;clock, and Danny on
+some excuse left him with Sylvia. He had big teeth and round, prominent
+eyes; his boots were very glossy and sharply pointed at the toes, with
+uppers of what looked like leopard-skin. Observing Sylvia&rsquo;s glances
+directed to his boots, he asked with a smile if she admired the latest
+thing. She confessed they were rather too late for her taste, and Mr.
+Cohen excused them as a pair sent back to his father by a well-known
+music-hall comedian, who complained of their pinching him. Sylvia said
+it was lucky they only pinched him; she should not have been astonished
+if they had bitten him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a Miss Smartie, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; said Jay Cohen.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation languished for a while, but presently he asked Sylvia
+why she was so unkind to his friend Danny.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you mean, &lsquo;unkind&rsquo;?&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;Unkind what about?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cohen smiled in a deprecating way. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a good boy, is Danny. Real
+good. He is, really. All the girls are mad about Danny. You know, smart
+girls, girls that get around. He&rsquo;s very free, too. Money&rsquo;s nothing to
+Danny when he&rsquo;s out to spend. His father&rsquo;s got a tobacconist&rsquo;s shop in
+the Caledonian Road. A good business&mdash;a very good business. Danny told
+me what the turn-over was once, and I was surprised. I remember I
+thought what a rare good business it was. Well, Danny&rsquo;s feeling a bit
+upset to-day, and he came round to see me early this morning. He must
+have been very upset, because it was very early, and he said to me that
+he was mad over a girl and would I speak for him? He reckoned he&rsquo;d made
+a big mistake and he wanted to put it right, but he was afraid of being
+laughed at, because the young lady in question was a bit high-handed. He
+wants to marry you. There it is right out. He&rsquo;d like to marry you at
+once, but he&rsquo;s afraid of his father, and he thought....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cohen broke off suddenly in his proposal and listened: &ldquo;What&rsquo;s
+that?&rdquo;<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It sounds like some one shouting down-stairs,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;But you
+often hear rows going on down there. There was a row yesterday because a
+woman bit on a stone in a pie and broke her tooth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s Jubie&rsquo;s voice,&rdquo; said Mr. Cohen, blinking his eyes and running
+his hands nervously through his sleek hair.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s Jubie?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Before he could explain there was a sound of impassioned footsteps on
+the stairs. In a moment the door was flung open, and a handsome Jewess
+with flashing eyes and ear-rings slammed it behind her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s Danny?&rdquo; she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that you, Jubie?&rdquo; said Mr. Cohen. &ldquo;Danny&rsquo;s gone over to see his dad.
+He won&rsquo;t be here to-day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You liar, he&rsquo;s here this moment. I followed him into the shop and he
+ran up-stairs. So you&rsquo;re the kid he&rsquo;s been trailing around with him,&rdquo;
+she said, eying Sylvia. &ldquo;The dirty rotter!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia resented the notion of being trailed by such a one as Danny
+Lewis, but, feeling undecided how to appease this tropical creature, she
+took the insult without reply.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He thinks to double cross Jubie Myers! Wait till my brother Sam knows
+where he is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cohen had retired to the window and was studying the traffic of
+Euston Road; one of his large ears was twitching nervously toward the
+threats of the outraged Miss Myers, who after much breathless abuse of
+Sylvia at last retired to fetch her brother Sam. When she was gone, Mr.
+Cohen said he thought he would go too, because he did not feel inclined
+to meet Sam Myers, who was a pugilist with many victories to his credit
+at Wonderland; just as he reached the door, Danny entered and with a
+snarl accused him of trying to round on him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know you fetched Jubie here on purpose, so as you could do me in
+with the kid,&rdquo; said Danny. &ldquo;I know you, Jay Cohen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They wrangled for some time over this, until suddenly Danny landed his
+friend a blow between the eyes. Sylvia, recognizing the Danny who had so
+neatly knocked out Hubert Organ in Colonial Terrace, became pleasantly
+enthusiastic on his behalf, and cried &ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo;<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a></p>
+
+<p>The encouragement put a fine spirit into Danny&rsquo;s blows; he hammered the
+unfortunate Cohen round and round the room, upsetting tables and chairs
+and wash-stand until with a stinging blow he knocked him backward into
+the slop-pail, in which he sat so heavily that when he tried to rise the
+slop-pail stuck and gave him the appearance of a large baboon crawling
+with elevated rump on all-fours. Danny kicked off the slop-pail, and
+invited Cohen to stand up to him; but when he did get on his feet he ran
+to the door and reached the stairs just as Mrs. Gonner was wearily
+ascending to find out what was happening. He tried to stop himself by
+clutching the knob of the baluster, which broke; the result was that he
+dragged Mrs. Gonner with him in a glissade which ended behind the
+counter. The confusion in the shop became general: Mr. Gonner cut his
+thumb, and the sight of the blood caused a woman who was eating a
+sausage to choke; another customer took advantage of the row to snatch a
+side of bacon and try to escape, but another customer with a finer moral
+sense prevented him; a dog, who was sniffing in the entrance, saw the
+bacon on the floor and tried to seize it, but, getting his tail trodden
+upon by somebody, it took fright and bit a small boy who was waiting to
+change a shilling into coppers. Meanwhile Sylvia, who expected every
+moment that Jubie and her pugilistic brother would return and increase
+the confusion with possibly unpleasant consequences for herself, took
+advantage of Danny&rsquo;s being occupied in an argument with Cohen and the
+two Gonners to put on her hat and coat and escape from the shop. She
+jumped on the first omnibus and congratulated herself when she looked
+round and saw a policeman entering the eating-house.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the conductor came up for her fare; she found she had
+fivepence in the world. She asked him where the omnibus went, and was
+told to the Cedars Hotel, West Kensington.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Past Lillie Road?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, and she paid away her last penny. After all, even if Monkley
+and her father did owe Mrs. Meares a good deal of money, Sylvia did not
+believe she would have her arrested. She would surely be too much
+interested to find<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a> that she was a girl and not a boy. Sylvia laughed
+when she thought of Jay Cohen in the slop-pail, for she remembered the
+baboon in Lillie Road, and she wondered if Clara was still there. What a
+lot she would have to tell Mrs. Meares, and if the baron had not left
+she would ask him why he had attacked her in that extraordinary way when
+she went to the party in Redcliffe Gardens. That was more than two years
+ago now. Sylvia wished she had gone to Lillie Road with Arthur Madden
+when she had some money and could have paid Mrs. Meares what was owing
+to her. Now she had not a penny in the world; she had not even any
+clothes. The omnibus jogged on, and Sylvia&rsquo;s thoughts jogged with it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wonder if I shall always have adventures,&rdquo; she said to herself, &ldquo;but
+I wish I could sometimes have adventures that have nothing to do with
+love. It&rsquo;s such a nuisance to be always running away for the same
+reason. It&rsquo;s such a stupid reason. But it&rsquo;s rather jolly to run away.
+It&rsquo;s more fun than being like that girl in front.&rdquo; She contemplated a
+girl of about her own age, to whom an elderly woman was pointing out the
+St. James&rsquo;s Hall with a kind of suppressed excitement, a fever of
+unsatisfied pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve never been to the Moore and Burgess minstrels, have you, dear?&rdquo;
+she was saying. &ldquo;We <i>must</i> get your father to take us some afternoon.
+Look at the people coming out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked dutifully, but Sylvia thought it was more amusing to
+look at the people struggling to mount omnibuses already full. She
+wondered what that girl would have done with somebody like Danny Lewis,
+and she felt sorry for the prim and dutiful young creature who could
+never see Jay Cohen sitting in a slop-pail. Sylvia burst into a loud
+laugh, and a stout woman who was occupying three-quarters of her seat
+edged away from her a little.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We shall be late for tea,&rdquo; said the elderly woman in an ecstasy of
+dissipation, when she saw the clock at Hyde Park Corner. &ldquo;We sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be
+home till after six. We ought to have had tea at King&rsquo;s Cross.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The elderly woman was still talking about tea when they stopped at
+Sloane Street, and Sylvia&rsquo;s counterpart was still returning polite
+answers to her speculation; when they<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a> got down at South Kensington
+Station the last thing Sylvia heard was a suggestion that perhaps it
+might be possible to arrange for dinner to be a quarter of an hour
+earlier.</p>
+
+<p>It was dark when Sylvia reached the house in Lillie Road and she hoped
+very much that Clara would open the door; but another servant came, and
+when she asked for Mrs. Meares a sudden alarm caught her that Mrs.
+Meares might no longer be here and that she would be left alone in the
+night without a penny in the world. But Mrs. Meares was in.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you come about the place?&rdquo; whispered the new servant. &ldquo;Because if
+you have you&rsquo;ll take my advice and have nothing to do with it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia asked why.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, it&rsquo;s nothing but a common lodging-house in my opinion. The woman
+who keeps it&mdash;lady <i>she</i> calls herself&mdash;tries to kid you as they&rsquo;re all
+paying guests. And the cats! You may like cats. I don&rsquo;t. Besides I&rsquo;ve
+been used to company where I&rsquo;ve been in service, and the only company
+you get here is beetles. If any one goes down into the kitchen at night
+it&rsquo;s like walking on nutshells, they&rsquo;re so thick.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t come about the place,&rdquo; Sylvia explained. &ldquo;I want to see Mrs.
+Meares herself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, a friend of hers. I&rsquo;m sorry, I&rsquo;m shaw,&rdquo; said the servant, &ldquo;but I
+haven&rsquo;t said nothing but what is gospel truth, and I told her the same.
+You&rsquo;d better come up to the droring-room&mdash;well, droring-room! You&rsquo;ll
+have to excuse the laundry, which is all over the chairs because we had
+the sweep in this morning. A nice hullabaloo there was yesterday!
+Fire-engines and all. Mrs. Meares was very upset. She&rsquo;s up in her
+bedroom, I expect.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The servant lit the gas in the drawing-room and, leaving Sylvia among
+the outspread linen, went up-stairs to fetch Mrs. Meares, who shortly
+afterward descended in a condition of dignified bewilderment and entered
+the room with one arm arched like a note of interrogation in cautious
+welcome.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Scarlett? The name is familiar, but&mdash;?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia poured out her story, and at the end of it Mrs. Meares dreamily
+smoothed her brow.<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite understand. Were you a girl dressed as a boy then or are
+you a boy dressed as a girl now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia explained, and while she was giving the explanation she became
+aware of a profound change in Mrs. Meares&rsquo;s attitude toward her, an
+alteration of standpoint much more radical than could have been caused
+by any resentment at the behavior of Monkley and her father. Suddenly
+Sylvia regarded Mrs. Meares with the eyes of Clara, or of that new
+servant who had whispered to her in the hall. She was no longer the
+bland and futile Irishwoman of regal blood; the good-natured and
+feckless creature with open placket and draperies trailing in the dust
+of her ill-swept house; the soft-voiced, soft-hearted Hibernian with a
+gentle smile for man&rsquo;s failings and foibles, and a tear ever welling
+from that moist gray eye in memory of her husband&rsquo;s defection and the
+death of her infant son. Sylvia felt that now she was being sized up by
+some one who would never be indulgent again, who would exact from her
+the uttermost her girlhood could give, who would never forget the
+advantage she had gained in learning how desperate was the state of
+Sylvia Scarlett, and who would profit by it accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It seems so peculiar to resort to me,&rdquo; Mrs. Meares was saying, &ldquo;after
+the way your father treated me, but I&rsquo;m not the woman to bear a grudge.
+Thank God, I can meet the blows of fortune with nobility and forgive an
+injury with any one in the world. It&rsquo;s lucky indeed that I can show my
+true character and offer you assistance. The servant is leaving
+to-morrow, and though I will not take advantage of your position to ask
+you to do anything in the nature of menial labor, though to be sure it&rsquo;s
+myself knows too well the word&mdash;to put it shortly, I can offer you board
+and lodging in return for any little help you may give me until I will
+get a new servant. And it&rsquo;s not easy to get servants these days. Such
+grand ideas have they.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt that she ought to accept this offer; she was destitute and
+she wished to avoid charity, having grasped that, though it was a great
+thing to make oneself indispensable, it was equally important not to put
+oneself under an obligation; finally it would be a satisfaction to pay
+back what her father owed. Not that she fancied his ghost<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> would be
+disturbed by the recollection of any earthly debts; it would be purely a
+personal satisfaction, and she told Mrs. Meares that she was willing to
+help under the proposed terms.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere about nine o&rsquo;clock Sylvia sat down with Mrs. Meares in the
+breakfast-room to supper, which was served by Amelia as if she had been
+unwillingly dragged into a game of cards and was showing her displeasure
+in the way she dealt the hand. The incandescent gas jigged up and down,
+and Mrs. Meares swept her plate every time she languorously flung
+morsels to the numerous cats, some of which they did not like and left
+to be trodden into the threadbare carpet by Amelia. Sylvia made
+inquiries about Mr. Morgan and the baron, but they had both left; the
+guests at present were a young actor who hoped to walk on in the new
+production at the St. James&rsquo;s, a Nonconformist minister who had been
+persecuted by his congregation into resigning, and an elderly clerk
+threatened with locomotor ataxia, who had a theory, contrary to the
+advice of his doctor, that it was beneficial to walk to the city every
+morning. His symptoms were described with many details, but, owing to
+Mrs. Meares&rsquo;s diving under the table to show the cats where a morsel of
+meat had escaped their notice, it was difficult to distinguish between
+the symptoms of the disease, the topography of the meat, and the names
+of the cats.</p>
+
+<p>Next day Sylvia watched Amelia put on the plumage of departure and leave
+with her yellow tin trunk; then she set to work to help Mrs. Meares make
+the beds of Mr. Leslie Warburton, the actor; Mr. Croasdale, the
+minister; and Mr. Witherwick, the clerk. Her companion&rsquo;s share was
+entirely verbal and she disliked the task immensely. When the beds were
+finished, she made an attempt with Mrs. Meares to put away the clean
+linen, but Mrs. Meares went off in the middle to find the words of a
+poem she could not remember, leaving behind her towels to mark her
+passage as boys in paper-chases strew paper on Hampstead Heath. She did
+not find the words of the poem, or, if she did, she had forgotten them
+when Sylvia discovered her; but she had decided to alter the arrangement
+of the drawing-room curtains, so that to the unassorted unburied linen
+were<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a> added long strips of faded green silk which hung about the house
+for some days. Mrs. Meares asked Sylvia if she would like to try her
+hand at an omelette; the result was a failure, whether on account of the
+butter or the eggs was not quite certain; the cat to which it was given
+was sick.</p>
+
+<p>The three lodgers made no impression on Sylvia. Each of them in turn
+tried to kiss her when she first went into his room; each of them
+afterward complained bitterly of the way the eggs were poached at
+breakfast and asked Mrs. Meares why she had got rid of Amelia. Gradually
+Sylvia found that she was working as hard as Clara used to work, that
+slowly and gently she was being smothered by Mrs. Meares, and that the
+process was regarded by Mrs. Meares as an act of holy charity, to which
+she frequently alluded in a very superior way.</p>
+
+<p>Early one afternoon at the end of April Sylvia went out shopping for
+Mrs. Meares, which was not such a simple matter, because a good deal of
+persuasiveness had to be used nowadays with the tradesmen on account of
+unpaid books. As she passed the entrance to the Earl&rsquo;s Court Exhibition
+she saw Mabel Bannerman coming out; though she had hated Mabel and had
+always blamed her for her father&rsquo;s death, past enmity fled away in the
+pleasure of seeing somebody who belonged to a life that only a month of
+Mrs. Meares had wonderfully enchanted. She called after her; Mabel, only
+slightly more flaccid nowadays, welcomed her without hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, if it isn&rsquo;t Sylvia! Well, I declare! You are a stranger.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They talked for a while on the pavement, until Mabel, who disliked such
+publicity except in a love-affair, and who was frankly eager for a full
+account of what had happened after she left Swanage, invited Sylvia to
+&ldquo;have one&rdquo; at the public house to which her father in the old days used
+to invite Jimmy, and where once he had been surprised by Sylvia&rsquo;s
+arrival with his friend.</p>
+
+<p>Mabel was shocked to think that Henry had perhaps died on her account,
+but she assured Sylvia that for any wrong she had done him she had paid
+ten times over in the life she had led with the other man.<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, he was a brute. Your dad was an angel beside him, dear. Oh, I was a
+stupid girl! But there, it&rsquo;s no good crying over spilt milk. What&rsquo;s done
+can&rsquo;t be undone, and I&rsquo;ve paid. My voice is quite gone. I can&rsquo;t sing a
+note. What do you think I&rsquo;m doing now? Working at the Exhibition. It
+opens next week, you know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Acting?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Acting? No! I&rsquo;m in Open Sesame, the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels.
+Well, I suppose it is acting in a way, because I&rsquo;m supposed to be a
+Turkish woman. You know, sequins and trousers and a what d&rsquo;ye call
+it&mdash;round my face. You know. Oh dear, whatever is it called? A hookah!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But a hookah&rsquo;s a pipe,&rdquo; Sylvia objected. &ldquo;You mean a yashmak.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s it. Well, I sell Turkish Delight, but some of the girls sell
+coffee, and for an extra threepence you can see the Sultan&rsquo;s harem. It
+ought to go well. There&rsquo;s a couple of real Turks and a black eunuch who
+gives me the creeps. The manager&rsquo;s very hopeful. Which reminds me. He&rsquo;s
+looking out for some more girls. Why don&rsquo;t you apply? It isn&rsquo;t like you,
+Sylvia, to be doing what&rsquo;s nothing better than a servant&rsquo;s job. I&rsquo;m so
+afraid I shall get a varicose vein through standing about so much, and
+an elastic stocking makes one look so old. Oh dear, don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s talk
+about age. Drink up and have another.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia explained to Mabel about her lack of money and clothes, and it
+was curious to discover how pleasant and sympathetic Mabel was
+now&mdash;another instance of the degrading effect of love, for Sylvia could
+hardly believe that this was the hysterical creature who used to keep
+her awake in Fitzroy Street.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d lend you the money,&rdquo; said Mabel, &ldquo;but really, dear, until we open I
+haven&rsquo;t got very much. In fact,&rdquo; she added, looking at the empty
+glasses, &ldquo;when I&rsquo;ve paid for these two I shall be quite stony. Still, I
+live quite close. Finborough Road. Why don&rsquo;t you come and stay with me?
+I&rsquo;ll take you round to the manager to-morrow morning. He&rsquo;s sure to
+engage you. Of course, the salary is small. I don&rsquo;t suppose he&rsquo;ll offer
+more than fifteen shillings. Still, there&rsquo;s tips, and anything would be
+better<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a> than slaving for that woman. I live at three hundred and twenty.
+I&rsquo;ve got a nice room with a view over Brompton Cemetery. One might be in
+the country. It&rsquo;s beautifully quiet except for the cats, and you hardly
+notice the trains.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia promised that she would think it over and let her know that
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right, dear. The landlady&rsquo;s name is Gowndry.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They parted with much cordiality and good wishes, and Sylvia went back
+to Lillie Road. Mrs. Meares was deeply injured when she was informed
+that her lady-help proposed to desert her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But surely you shall wait till I&rsquo;ve got a servant,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And what
+will poor Mr. Witherwick do? He&rsquo;s so fond of you, Sylvia. I&rsquo;m sure your
+poor father would be most distressed to think of you at Earl&rsquo;s Court.
+Such temptations for a young girl. I look upon myself as your guardian,
+you know. I would feel a big responsibility if anything came to you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, however, declined to stay.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I wanted to give you a little kitten. Mavourneen will be having
+kittens next month, and May cats are so lucky. When you told me about
+your black cat, Maria, I said to myself that I would be giving you one.
+And dear Parnell is the father, and if it&rsquo;s not Parnell, it&rsquo;s my darling
+Brian Boru. You beauty! Was you the father of some sweet little kitties?
+Clever man!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Meares turned away to congratulate Brian Boru upon his
+imminent if ambiguous paternity, Sylvia went up-stairs to get her only
+possession&mdash;a coat with a fur-trimmed collar and cuffs, which she had
+worn alternately with underclothing for a month; this week the
+underclothing was, luckily, not at the wash. Sylvia shook off Mrs.
+Meares&rsquo;s last remonstrances and departed into the balmy April afternoon.
+The weather was so fine that she pawned her overcoat and bought a hat;
+then she pawned her fur cap, bought a pair of stockings (the pair in the
+wash belonged to Mrs. Meares), and went to Finborough Road.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gowndry asked if she was the young lady who was going to share Miss
+Bannerman&rsquo;s room; when Sylvia said<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a> she was, Mrs. Gowndry argued that
+the bed would not hold two and that she had not bargained for the sofa&rsquo;s
+being used for anything but sitting on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That sofa&rsquo;s never been slept on in its life,&rdquo; she protested. &ldquo;And if I
+start in letting people sleep anywhere, I might as well turn my house
+into a public convenience and have done with it; but, there, it&rsquo;s no
+good grumbling. Such is life. It&rsquo;s the back room. Second floor up. The
+last lodger burnt his name on the door with a poker, so you can&rsquo;t make
+no mistake.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gowndry dived abruptly into the basement and left Sylvia to find
+her way up to Mabel&rsquo;s room alone. Her hostess was in a kimono, Oriental
+even away from the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels; she had tied pink
+bows to every projection and there was a strong smell of cheap scent.
+Sylvia welcomed the prettiness and sweetness after Lillie Road; her
+former dislike of Mabel&rsquo;s domestic habits existed no longer; she told
+her of the meeting with Mrs. Gowndry and was afraid that the plan of
+living here might not be allowed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, she&rsquo;s always like that,&rdquo; Mabel explained. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a silly old crow,
+but she&rsquo;s very nice, really. Her husband&rsquo;s a lavatory attendant, and,
+being shut up all day underground, he grumbles a lot when he comes home,
+and of course his wife has to suffer for it. Where&rsquo;s your luggage?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I told you I hadn&rsquo;t got any.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You really are a caution, Sylvia. Fancy! Never mind. I expect I&rsquo;ll be
+able to fit you out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t want much,&rdquo; Sylvia said, &ldquo;with the warm weather coming.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you&rsquo;ll have to change when you go to the Exhibition, and you don&rsquo;t
+want the other girls to stare.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They spent the evening in cutting down some of Mabel&rsquo;s underclothes, and
+Sylvia wondered more than ever how she could have once found her so
+objectionable. In an excess of affection she hugged Mabel and thanked
+her warmly for her kindness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; said Mabel. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing to thank me for. You&rsquo;d do the same
+for me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I used to be so beastly to you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, you were only a kid. You didn&rsquo;t understand<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> about love.
+Besides, I was very nervous in those days. I expect there were faults on
+both sides. I spoke to the manager about you, and I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;ll be all
+right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The following morning Sylvia accompanied Mabel to the Exhibition and,
+after being presented to Mr. Woolfe, the manager, she was engaged to
+sell cigarettes and serve coffee in the Hall of a Thousand and One
+Marvels from eleven in the morning till eleven at night on a salary of
+fourteen shillings a week, all extras to be shared with seven other
+young ladies similarly engaged.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be Amethyst,&rdquo; said Mr. Woolfe. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better go and try on your
+dress. The idea is that there are eight beautiful odalisques dressed
+like precious stones. Pretty fancy, isn&rsquo;t it? Now don&rsquo;t grumble and say
+you&rsquo;d rather be Diamond or Turquoys, because all the other jools are
+taken.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia passed through an arched doorway hung with a heavy curtain into
+the dressing-room of the eight odalisques, which lacked in Eastern
+splendor, and was very draughty. Seven girls, mostly older than herself,
+were wrestling with veils and brocades.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He said we was to cover up our faces with this. It is chiffong or tool,
+dear?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Daisy, you are silly to let him make you Rewby. Why don&rsquo;t you ask
+him to let you be Saffer? You don&rsquo;t mind, do you, kiddie? You&rsquo;re dark.
+You take Daisy&rsquo;s Rewby, and let her be Saffer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t we going to wear anything over these drawers? Oh, girls, I shall
+feel shy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia did not think that any of them would feel half as shy as she felt
+at the present moment in being plunged into the company of girls of
+whose thoughts and habits and sensations and manners she was utterly
+ignorant. She felt more at ease when she had put on her mauve dress and
+had veiled her face. When they were all ready, they paraded before Mr.
+Woolfe.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very good. Very good,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Quite a lot of atmosphere. Here you,
+my dear, Emruld, put your yashmak up a bit higher. You look as if you&rsquo;d
+got mumps like that. Now then, here&rsquo;s the henna to paint your
+finger-nails, and the kohl for your eyes.&rdquo;<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Coal for our eyes,&rdquo; echoed all the girls. &ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t we use liquid
+black the same as we always do? Coal! What a liberty! Whatever next?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That shows you don&rsquo;t know anything about the East. K-O-H-L, not
+C-O-A-L, you silly girls. And don&rsquo;t you get hennering your hair. It&rsquo;s
+only to be used for the nails.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When the Exhibition opened on the 1st of May the Hall of a Thousand and
+One Marvels was the only sideshow that was in full working order. The
+negro eunuch stood outside and somewhat inappropriately bellowed his
+invitation to the passing crowds to visit Sesame, where all the glamour
+of the East was to be had for sixpence, including a cup of delicious
+Turkish coffee specially made by the Sultan&rsquo;s own coffee-maker. Once
+inside, visitors could for a further sum of threepence view an exact
+reproduction of a Turkish harem, where real Turkish ladies in all the
+abandonment of languorous poses offered a spectacle of luxury that could
+only be surpassed by paying another threepence to see a faithless wife
+tied up in a sack and flung into the Bosphorus once every hour. Other
+threepennies secured admission to Aladdin&rsquo;s Cave, where the Genie of the
+Lamp told fortunes, or to the Cave of the Forty Thieves, where a lucky
+ticket entitled the owner to draw a souvenir from Ali Baba&rsquo;s sack of
+treasure, and see Morgiana dance a voluptuous <i>pas seul</i> once every
+hour. Visitors to the Hall could also buy attar of roses, cigarettes,
+seraglio pastilles, and Turkish Delight. It was very Oriental&mdash;even Mr.
+Woolfe wore a fez.</p>
+
+<p>Either because Sylvia moved in a way that seemed to Mr. Woolfe more
+Oriental than the others or because she got on very well with him
+personally, she was soon promoted to a small inner room more richly
+draped and lighted by a jeweled lamp hanging from the ceiling of gilded
+arabesques. Here Mr. Woolfe as a mark of his esteem introduced regular
+customers who could appreciate the softer carpet and deeper divans. At
+one end was a lattice, beyond which might be seen two favorites of the
+harem, who, slowly fanning themselves, reclined eternally amid perfumed
+airs&mdash;that is, except during the intervals for dinner and tea, which
+lasted half an hour and exposed them<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a> to the unrest of European
+civilization. One of these favorites was Mabel, whom Mr. Woolfe had been
+heard to describe as his beau ideel of a sultana, and whom he had taken
+from the sale of Turkish Delight to illustrate his conception. Mabel was
+paid a higher salary in consequence, because, inclosed in the harem, she
+was no longer able to profit by the male admirers who had bought Turkish
+Delight at her plump hands. The life was well suited to her natural
+laziness; though she dreaded getting fat, she was glad to be relieved of
+the menace from her varicose vein. Sylvia was the only odalisque that
+waited in this inner room, but her salary was not raised, since she now
+had the sole right to all the extras; she certainly preferred this
+darkened chamber to the other, and when there were no intruders from the
+world outside she could gossip through the lattice with the two
+favorites.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gowndry had let Sylvia a small room at the very top of the house;
+notwithstanding Mabel&rsquo;s good nature, she might have grown tired of being
+always at close quarters with her. Sylvia&rsquo;s imagination was captured by
+the life she led at Earl&rsquo;s Court; she made up her mind that one day she
+would somehow visit the real East. When Mr. Woolfe found out her deep
+interest in the part she was playing and her fondness for reading, he
+lent her various books that had inspired his creation at Earl&rsquo;s Court;
+she had long ago read the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, but there were several
+volumes of travels which fed her ambition to leave this dull Western
+world. On Sunday mornings she used to lean out of her window and fancy
+the innumerable tombs of Brompton Cemetery were the minarets of an
+Eastern town; and later on, when June made every hour in the open air
+desirable after being shut up so long at Earl&rsquo;s Court, Sylvia used to
+spend her Sunday afternoons in wandering about the cemetery, in reading
+upon the tombs the exalted claims they put forward for poor mortality,
+and in puzzling over the broken columns, the urns and anchors and
+weeping angels that commemorated the wealthy dead. Every one buried here
+had lived on earth a life of perfect virtue, it seemed; every one buried
+here had been confident of another life after the grave. Long ago at
+Lille she had been taught something about the<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> future these dead people
+seemed to have counted upon; but there had been so much to do on Sunday
+mornings, and she could not remember that she had ever gone to church
+after she was nine. Perhaps she had made a mistake in abandoning so
+early the chance of finding out more about religion; it was difficult
+not to be impressed by the universal testimony of these countless tombs.
+Religion had evidently a great influence upon humanity, though in her
+reading she had never been struck by the importance of it. People in
+books attended church just as they wore fine clothes, or fought duels,
+or went to dinner-parties; the habit belonged to the observances of
+polite society and if she ever found herself in such society she would
+doubtless behave like her peers. She had not belonged to a society with
+leisure for church-going. Yet in none of the books that she had read had
+religion seemed anything like so important as love or money. She herself
+thought that the pleasures of both these were much exaggerated, though
+in her own actual experience their power of seriously disturbing some
+people was undeniable. But who was ever disturbed by religion? Probably
+all these tombs were a luxury of the rich, rather like visiting-cards,
+which, as every one knew, must be properly inscribed and follow a
+certain pattern. She remembered that old Mr. Gustard, who was not rich,
+had been very doubtful of another life, and she was consoled by this
+reflection, for she had been rendered faintly anxious by the pious
+repetitions of faith in a future life, practical comfort in which could
+apparently only be secured by the strictest behavior on earth. She had
+the fancy to invent her own epitaph: &ldquo;Here lies Sylvia Scarlett, who was
+always running away. If she has to live all over again and be the same
+girl, she accepts no responsibility for anything that may occur.&rdquo; She
+printed this on a piece of paper, fastened it to a twig, and stuck it
+into the earth to judge the effect. Sylvia was so deeply engrossed in
+her task that she did not see that somebody was watching her until she
+had stepped back to admire her handiwork.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You extraordinary girl!&rdquo; said a pleasant voice.</p>
+
+<p>Looking round, Sylvia saw a thin clean-shaven man of about thirty, who
+was leaning on a cane with an ivory<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> crook and looking at her epitaph
+through gold-rimmed glasses. She blushed, to her annoyance, and snatched
+up the twig.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you always running away from?&rdquo; the stranger asked. &ldquo;Or is that
+an indiscreet question?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia could have shaken herself for not giving a ready answer, but this
+new-comer seemed entitled to something better than rudeness, and her
+ready answers were usually rude.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t go away,&rdquo; the stranger begged. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so refreshing to meet
+something alive in this wilderness of death. I&rsquo;ve been inspecting a
+grave for a friend who is abroad, and I&rsquo;m feeling thoroughly depressed.
+One can&rsquo;t avoid reading epitaphs in a cemetery, can one? Or writing
+them?&rdquo; he added, with a pleasant laugh. &ldquo;I like yours much the best of
+any I&rsquo;ve read so far. What a charming name. Sylvia Scarlett. Balzac said
+the best epitaphs were single names. If I saw Sylvia Scarlett on a tomb
+with nothing else, my appetite for romance would be perfectly
+satisfied.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you read many books of Balzac?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger&rsquo;s conversation had detained her; she could ask the question
+quite simply.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve read most of them, I think.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve read some,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;But he&rsquo;s not my favorite writer. I like
+Scott better. But now I only read books about the Orient.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She was rather proud of the last word and hoped the stranger would
+notice it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What part attracts you most?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think Japan,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;But I like Turkey rather. Only I wouldn&rsquo;t
+ever let myself be shut up in a harem.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;d run away?&rdquo; said the stranger, with a smile. &ldquo;Which
+reminds me that you haven&rsquo;t answered my first question. Please do, if
+it&rsquo;s not impertinent.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They wandered along the paths shaded by yews and willows, and Sylvia
+told him many things about her life; he was the easiest person to talk
+to that she had ever met.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And so this passion for the East has been inspired by the Hall of a
+Thousand and One Marvels. Dear me,<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> what an unexpected consequence. And
+this Hall of a Thousand and One Marbles,&rdquo; he indicated the cemetery with
+a sweep of his cane, &ldquo;this inspires you to write an epitaph? Well, my
+dear, such an early essay in mortuary literature may end in a famous
+elegy. You evidently possess the poetic temperament.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like poetry,&rdquo; Sylvia interrupted. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it ever.
+Nobody really talks like that when they&rsquo;re in love.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite true,&rdquo; said the stranger. &ldquo;Poets have often ere this been charged
+with exaggeration. Perhaps I wrong you in attributing to you the poetic
+temperament. Yes, on second thoughts, I&rsquo;m sure I do. You are an
+eminently practical young lady. I won&rsquo;t say prosaic, because the word
+has been debased. I suspect by the poets who are always uttering base
+currency of thoughts and words and emotions. Dear me, this is a most
+delightful adventure.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Adventure?&rdquo; repeated Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Our meeting,&rdquo; the stranger explained.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you call that an adventure?&rdquo; said Sylvia, contemptuously. &ldquo;Why, I&rsquo;ve
+had adventures much more exciting than this.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I told you that your temperament was anti-poetic,&rdquo; said the stranger.
+&ldquo;How severe you are with my poor gossamers. You are like the Red Queen.
+You&rsquo;ve seen adventures compared with which this is really an ordinary
+afternoon walk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand half you&rsquo;re saying,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s the Red
+Queen? Why was she red?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why was Sylvia Scarlett?&rdquo; the stranger laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;s a very good joke,&rdquo; said Sylvia, solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t, and to make my penitence, if you&rsquo;ll let me, I&rsquo;ll visit you
+at Earl&rsquo;s Court and present you with copies of <i>Alice&rsquo;s Adventures in
+Wonderland and through The Looking-glass</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Books,&rdquo; said Sylvia, in a satisfied tone. &ldquo;All right. When will you
+come? To-morrow?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The stranger nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you?&rdquo; Sylvia asked, abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My name is Iredale&mdash;Philip Iredale. No profession.&rdquo;<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you what&rsquo;s called a gentleman?&rdquo; Sylvia went on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hope most people would so describe me,&rdquo; said Mr. Iredale.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I asked you that,&rdquo; Sylvia said, &ldquo;because I never met a gentleman
+before. I don&rsquo;t think Jimmy Monkley was a gentleman, and Arthur Madden
+was too young. Perhaps the Emperor of Byzantium was a gentleman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hope so indeed,&rdquo; said Mr. Iredale. &ldquo;The Palaeologos family is an old
+one. Did you meet the Emperor in the course of your Oriental studies?
+Shall I meet him in the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia told him the story of the Emperor&rsquo;s reception, which seemed to
+amuse him very much.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where do you live?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I live in Hampshire generally, but I have rooms in the Temple.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Temple of who?&rdquo; Sylvia asked, grandly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mammon is probably the dedication, but by a legal fiction the titular
+god is suppressed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you believe in God?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear Miss Scarlett, I protest that such a question so abruptly put
+in a cemetery is most unfair.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t call me Miss Scarlett. It makes me feel like a girl in a shop.
+Call me Sylvia. That&rsquo;s my name.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear me, how very refreshing you are,&rdquo; said Mr. Iredale. &ldquo;Do you know
+I&rsquo;m positively longing for to-morrow. But meanwhile, dear child, dear
+girl, we have to-day. What shall we do with the rest of it? Let&rsquo;s get on
+top of a &rsquo;bus and ride to Kensington Gardens. Hallowed as this spot is
+both by the mighty dead and the dear living, I&rsquo;m tired of tombs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t go on the top of a &rsquo;bus,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;ve not got
+any petticoats underneath my frock. I haven&rsquo;t saved up enough money to
+buy petticoats yet. I had to begin with chemises.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then we must find a hansom,&rdquo; said Mr. Iredale, gravely.</p>
+
+<p>They drove to Kensington Gardens and walked under the trees to Hyde Park
+Corner; there they took another hansom and drove to a restaurant with
+very comfortable chairs and delicious things to eat. Mr. Iredale and
+Sylvia<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a> talked hard all the time; after dinner he drove her back to
+Finborough Road and lifted his hat when she waved good-by to him from
+the steps.</p>
+
+<p>Mabel was furiously interested by Sylvia&rsquo;s account of her day, and gave
+her much advice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t let everything be too easy,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Remember he&rsquo;s rich
+and can afford to spend a little money. Don&rsquo;t encourage him to make love
+to you at the very commencement, or he&rsquo;ll get tired and then you&rsquo;ll be
+sorry.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, who&rsquo;s thinking about making love?&rdquo; Sylvia exclaimed. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just
+why I&rsquo;ve enjoyed myself to-day. There wasn&rsquo;t a sign of love-making. He
+told me I was the most interesting person he&rsquo;d ever met.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There you are,&rdquo; Mabel said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one way a girl can interest a
+man, is there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia burst into tears and stamped her foot on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t believe you,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to believe you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s no need to cry about it,&rdquo; Mabel said. &ldquo;Only he&rsquo;d be a
+funny sort of man if he didn&rsquo;t want to make love to you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, he is a funny sort of man,&rdquo; Sylvia declared. &ldquo;And I hope he&rsquo;s
+going on being funny. He&rsquo;s coming to the Exhibition to-morrow and you&rsquo;ll
+see for yourself how funny he is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mabel was so deeply stirred by the prospect of Mr. Iredale&rsquo;s visit that
+she practised a more than usually voluptuous pose, which was frustrated
+by her fellow-favorite, who accused her of pushing her great legs all
+over the place and invited her to keep to her own cushions. Mabel got
+very angry and managed to drop a burning pastille on her companion&rsquo;s
+trousers, which caused a scene in the harem and necessitated the
+intervention of Mr. Woolfe.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She did it for the purpose, the spiteful thing,&rdquo; the outraged favorite
+declared. &ldquo;Behaves more like a performing seal than a Turkish lady, and
+then burns my costume. No, it&rsquo;s no good trying to &lsquo;my dear&rsquo; me. I&rsquo;ve
+stood it long enough and I&rsquo;m not going to stand it no longer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mabel expressed an opinion that the rival favorite was a vulgar person;
+luckily, before Mr. Iredale arrived the<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a> quarrel had been adjusted, and
+when he sat down on the divan and received a cup of coffee from Sylvia,
+whose brown eyes twinkled merry recognition above her yashmak, the two
+favorites were languorously fanning the perfumed airs of their
+seclusion, once again in drowsy accord.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Iredale came often to the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels; he
+never failed to bring with him books for Sylvia and he was always eager
+to discuss with her what she had last read. On Sundays he used to take
+her out to Richmond or Kew, but he never invited her to visit him at his
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s awfully gone on you,&rdquo; said Mabel. &ldquo;Well, I wish you the best of
+luck, I&rsquo;m sure, for he&rsquo;s a very nice fellow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Iredale was not quite so enthusiastic over Mabel; he often
+questioned Sylvia about her friend&rsquo;s conduct and seemed much disturbed
+by the materialism and looseness of her attitude toward life.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It seems dreadful,&rdquo; he used to say to her, &ldquo;that you can&rsquo;t find a
+worthier friend than that blond enormity. I hope she never introduces
+you to any of her men.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia assured him that Mabel was much too jealous to do anything of the
+sort.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jealous!&rdquo; he ejaculated. &ldquo;How monstrous that a child like you should
+already be established in competition with that. Ugh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>June passed away to July. Mr. Iredale told Sylvia that he ought to be in
+the country by now and that he could not understand himself. One day he
+asked her if she would like to live in the country, and became lost in
+meditation when she said she might. Sylvia delighted in his company and
+had a deep affection for this man who had so wonderfully entered into
+her life without once shocking her sensibility or her pride. She
+understood, however, that it was easy for him to behave himself, because
+he had all he wanted; nevertheless the companionship of a man of leisure
+had for herself such charm that she did not feel attracted to any deeper
+reflection upon moral causes; he was lucky to be what he was, but she
+was equally lucky to have found him for a friend.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes when he inveighed against her past associates<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a> and what he
+called her unhappy bringing up, she felt impelled to defend them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see, you have all you want, Philip.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had learned with considerable difficulty to call him Philip; she
+could never get rid of the idea that he was much older than herself and
+that people who heard her call him by his Christian name would laugh.
+Even now she could only call him Philip when the importance of the
+remark was enough to hide what still seemed an unpardonable kind of
+pertness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You think I have all I want, do you?&rdquo; he answered, a little bitterly.
+&ldquo;My dear child, I&rsquo;m in the most humiliating position in which a man can
+find himself. There is only one thing I want, but I&rsquo;m afraid to make the
+effort to secure it: I&rsquo;m afraid of being laughed at. Sylvia dear, you
+were wiser than you knew when you objected to calling me Philip for that
+very reason. I wish I could spread my canvas to a soldier&rsquo;s wind like
+you and sail into life, but I can&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;ve been taught to tack, and I&rsquo;ve
+never learned how to reach harbor. I suppose some people, in spite of
+our system of education, succeed in learning,&rdquo; he sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand a bit what you&rsquo;re talking about,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you? It doesn&rsquo;t matter. I was really talking to myself, which is
+very rude. Impose a penalty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Admit you have everything you want,&rdquo; Sylvia insisted. &ldquo;And don&rsquo;t be
+always running down poor Jimmy and my father and every one I&rsquo;ve ever
+known.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;From their point of view I confess I have everything I want,&rdquo; he
+agreed.</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion Sylvia asked him if he did not think she ought to
+consider religion more than she had done. Being so much in Philip&rsquo;s
+company was giving her a desire to experiment with the habits of
+well-regulated people, and she was perplexed to find that he paid no
+attention to church-going.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, there you can congratulate yourself,&rdquo; he said, emphatically.
+&ldquo;Whatever was deplorable in your bringing up, at least you escaped that
+damnable imposition, that fraudulent attempt to flatter man beyond his
+deserts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t use so many long words all at once,&rdquo; Sylvia<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a> begged. &ldquo;I like
+a long word now and then, because I&rsquo;m collecting long words, but I can&rsquo;t
+collect them and understand what you&rsquo;re talking about at the same time.
+Do you think I ought to go to church?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no, a thousand times no,&rdquo; Philip replied. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve luckily escaped
+from religion as a social observance. Do you feel the need for it? Have
+you ineffable longings?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know that word,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;It means something that can&rsquo;t be said
+in words, doesn&rsquo;t it? Well, I&rsquo;ve often had longings like that,
+especially in Hampstead, but no longings that had anything to do with
+going to church. How could they have, if they were ineffable?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite true,&rdquo; Philip agreed. &ldquo;And therefore be grateful that you&rsquo;re a
+pagan. If ever a confounded priest gets hold of you and tries to bewitch
+you with his mumbo-jumbo, send for me and I&rsquo;ll settle him. No, no, going
+to church of one&rsquo;s own free will is either a drug (sometimes a
+stimulant, sometimes a narcotic) or it&rsquo;s mere snobbery. In either case
+it is a futile waste of time, because there are so many problems in this
+world&mdash;you&rsquo;re one of the most urgent&mdash;that it&rsquo;s criminal to avoid their
+solution by speculating upon the problem of the next world, which is
+insoluble.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But is there another world?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And all those announcements in the cemetery meant nothing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing but human vanity&mdash;the vanity of the dead and the vanity of the
+living.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;I thought that was probably the explanation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mabel, who had long ago admitted that Philip was just as funny as Sylvia
+had described him, often used to ask her what they found to talk about.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He can&rsquo;t be interested in Earl&rsquo;s Court, and you&rsquo;re such a kid. I can&rsquo;t
+understand it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, we talked about religion to-day,&rdquo; Sylvia told her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s it, is it?&rdquo; Mabel said, very knowingly. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s one of those
+fellows who ought to have been a clergyman, is he? I knew he reminded me
+of some one.<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a> He&rsquo;s the walking image of the clergyman where we used to
+live in Clapham. But you be careful, Sylvia. It&rsquo;s an old trick, that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re quite wrong. He hates clergymen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Mabel exclaimed, taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovering
+herself. &ldquo;Oh, well, people always pretend to hate what they can&rsquo;t get.
+And I dare say he wanted to be a clergyman. But don&rsquo;t let him try to
+convert you. It&rsquo;s an old trick to get something for nothing. And I know,
+my dear.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>July passed away into August, and Sylvia, buried for so many hours in
+the airless Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels, was flagging visibly.
+Philip used to spend nearly every afternoon and evening in the inner
+room where she worked&mdash;so many, indeed, that Mr. Woolfe protested and
+told her he would really have to put her back into the outer hall,
+because good customers were being annoyed by her admirer&rsquo;s glaring at
+them through his glasses.</p>
+
+<p>Philip was very much worried by Sylvia&rsquo;s wan looks, and urged her more
+insistently to leave her job, and let him provide for her. But having
+vowed to herself that never again would she put herself under an
+obligation to anybody, she would not hear of leaving the Exhibition.</p>
+
+<p>One Sunday in the middle of August Philip took Sylvia to Oxford, of
+which he had often talked to her. She enjoyed the day very much and
+delighted him by the interest she took in all the colleges they visited;
+but he was very much worried, so he said, by the approach of age.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You aren&rsquo;t so very old,&rdquo; Sylvia reassured him. &ldquo;Old, but not very old.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fifteen years older than you,&rdquo; he sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Still, you&rsquo;re not old enough to be my father,&rdquo; she added,
+encouragingly.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon they went to St. Mary&rsquo;s Walks and sat upon a bench by
+the Cherwell. Close at hand a Sabbath bell chimed a golden monotone;
+Philip took Sylvia&rsquo;s hand and looked right into her face, as he always
+did when he was not wearing his glasses:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Little delightful thing, if you won&rsquo;t let me take you<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a> away from that
+inferno of Earl&rsquo;s Court, will you marry me? Not at once, because it
+wouldn&rsquo;t be fair to you and it wouldn&rsquo;t be fair to myself. I&rsquo;m going to
+make a suggestion that will make you laugh, but it is quite a serious
+suggestion. I want you to go to school.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia drew back and stared at him over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To school?&rdquo; she echoed. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m sixteen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lots of girls&mdash;most girls in the position I want you to take&mdash;are still
+at school then. Only a year, dear child, and then if you will have me,
+we&rsquo;ll get married. I don&rsquo;t think you&rsquo;d be bored down in Hampshire. I
+have thousands of books and you shall read them all. Don&rsquo;t get into your
+head that I&rsquo;m asking you to marry me because I&rsquo;m sorry for you&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing to be sorry for,&rdquo; Sylvia interrupted, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know there&rsquo;s not, and I want you terribly. You fascinate me to an
+extent I never could have thought possible for any woman. I really
+haven&rsquo;t cared much about women; they always seemed in the way. I do
+believe you would be happy with me. We&rsquo;ll travel to the East together.
+You shall visit Japan and Turkey. I love you so much, Sylvia. Tell me,
+don&rsquo;t you love me a little?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I like you very much indeed,&rdquo; she answered, gently. &ldquo;Oh, very, very,
+very much. Perhaps I love you. I don&rsquo;t think I love you, because if I
+loved you I think my heart would beat much faster when you asked me to
+marry you, and it isn&rsquo;t beating at all. Feel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She put his hand upon her heart.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It certainly doesn&rsquo;t seem to be unusually rapid,&rdquo; he agreed.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia looked at him in perplexity. His thin face was flushed, and the
+golden light of the afternoon gave it a warmer glow; his very blue eyes
+without their glasses had such a wide-open pleading expression; she was
+touched by his kindness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you think I ought to go to school,&rdquo; she offered, &ldquo;I will go to
+school.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with a question in his eyes. She saw that he wanted to
+kiss her, and she pretended she thought he was dissatisfied with her
+answer about school.<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t promise to marry you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Because I like to keep
+promises and I can&rsquo;t say now what I shall be like in a year, can I? I&rsquo;m
+changing all the time. Only I do like you very, very, very much. Don&rsquo;t
+forget that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He took her hand and kissed it with the courtesy that for her was almost
+his greatest charm; manners seemed to Sylvia the chief difference
+between Philip and all the other people she had known. Once he had told
+her she had very bad manners, and she had lain awake half the night in
+her chagrin. She divined that the real reason of his wanting her to go
+to school was his wish to correct her manners. How little she knew about
+him, and yet she had been asked to marry him. His father and mother were
+dead, but he had a sister whom she would have to meet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you told your sister about me?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; he confessed. &ldquo;I think I won&rsquo;t tell anybody about you except
+the lady to whose care I am going to intrust you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia asked him how long he had made up his mind to ask her to marry
+him, and he told her he had been thinking about it for a long time, but
+that he had always been afraid at the last moment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Afraid I should disgrace you, I suppose?&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>He put on his glasses and coughed, a sure sign he was embarrassed. She
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And of course there&rsquo;s no doubt that I <i>should</i> disgrace you. I probably
+shall now as a matter of fact. Mabel will be rather sorry,&rdquo; she went on,
+pensively. &ldquo;She likes me to be there at night in case she gets
+frightened. She told me once that the only reason she ever went wrong
+was because she was frightened to sleep alone. She was married to a
+commercial traveler, who, of course, was just the worst person she could
+have married, because he was always leaving her alone. Poor Mabel!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip took her hand again and said in a tone of voice which she
+resented as adumbrating already, however faintly, a hint of ownership:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia dear, you won&rsquo;t talk so freely as that in the school, will you?
+Promise me you won&rsquo;t.&rdquo;<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But it used to amuse you when I talked like that,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You
+mustn&rsquo;t think now that you&rsquo;ve got the right to lecture me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear child, it doesn&rsquo;t matter what you say to me; I understand. But
+some people might not.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t say I didn&rsquo;t warn you,&rdquo; she almost sighed.<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">M</span>ISS ASHLEY&rsquo;S school for young ladies, situated in its own grounds on
+Campden Hill, was considered one of the best in England; a day or two
+after they got back from Oxford, Philip announced to Sylvia that he was
+glad to say Miss Ashley would take her as a pupil. She was a friend of
+his family; but he had sworn her to secrecy, and it had been decided
+between them that Sylvia should be supposed to be an orphan educated
+until now in France.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t I tell the other girls that I&rsquo;ve been an odalisque?&rdquo; Sylvia
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good heavens! no!&rdquo; said Philip, earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I was looking forward to telling them,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;m
+sure it would amuse them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip smiled indulgently and thought she would find lots of other ways
+of amusing them. He had told Miss Ashley, who, by the way, was an
+enthusiastic rationalist, that he did not want her to attend the outward
+shows of religion, and Miss Ashley had assented, though as a
+schoolmistress she was bound to see that her other pupils went to church
+at least once every Sunday. He had reassured her about the bad example
+Sylvia would set by promising to come himself and take her out every
+Sunday in his capacity as guardian.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be glad of that, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; he asked, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I expect so,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;But of course I may find being at school
+such fun that I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t want to leave it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again Philip smiled indulgently and hoped she would. Of course, it was
+now holiday-time, but Miss Ashley had quite agreed with him in the
+desirableness of Sylvia&rsquo;s going to Hornton House before the term began.
+She would be able to help her to equip herself with all the things a
+school-girl <a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a>required. He knew, for instance, that she was short of
+various articles of clothing. Sylvia could take Miss Ashley completely
+into her confidence, but even with her he advised a certain reticence
+with regard to some of her adventures. She was of course a woman of
+infinite experience and extremely broad-minded, but many years as a
+schoolmistress might have made her consider some things were better left
+unsaid; there were some people, particularly English people, who were
+much upset by details. Perhaps Sylvia would spare her the details?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see, my dear child, you&rsquo;ve had an extraordinary number of odd
+adventures for your age, and they&rsquo;ve made you what you are, you dear.
+But now is the chance of setting them in their right relation to your
+future life. You know, I&rsquo;m tremendously keen about this one year&rsquo;s
+formal education. You&rsquo;re just the material that can be perfected by
+academic methods, which with ordinary material end in mere barren
+decoration.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand. I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; Sylvia interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sorry! My hobby-horse has bolted with me and left you behind. But I
+won&rsquo;t try to explain or even to advise. I leave everything to you. After
+all, you are you; and I&rsquo;m the last person to wish you to be any one
+else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip was humming excitedly when they drove up to Hornton House, and
+Sylvia was certainly much impressed by its Palladian grandeur and the
+garden that seemed to spread illimitably behind it. She felt rather shy
+of Miss Ashley herself, who was apparently still in her dressing-gown, a
+green-linen dressing-gown worked in front with what Sylvia considered
+were very bad reproductions of flowers in brownish silk. She was
+astonished at seeing a woman of Miss Ashley&rsquo;s dignity still in her
+dressing-gown at three o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon, but she was still more
+astonished to see her in a rather battered straw hat, apparently ready
+to go shopping in Kensington High Street without changing her attire.
+She looked at Philip, who, however, seemed unaware of anything unusual.
+A carriage was waiting for them when they went out, and Philip left her
+with Miss Ashley, promising to dine at Hornton House that night.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon passed away rapidly in making all sorts<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a> of purchases,
+even of trunks; it seemed to Sylvia that thousands of pounds must have
+been spent upon her outfit, and she felt a thrill of pride. Everybody
+behind the various counters treated Miss Ashley with great deference;
+Sylvia was bound to admit that, however careless she might be of her own
+appearance, she was splendidly able to help other people to choose jolly
+things. They drove back to Hornton House in a carriage that seemed full
+of parcels, though they only took with them what Miss Ashley considered
+immediately important. Tea was waiting in the garden under a great
+cedar-tree; and by the time tea was finished Sylvia was sure that she
+should like Miss Ashley and that she should not run away that night,
+which she had made up her mind to do unless she was absolutely contented
+with the prospect of her new existence. She liked her bedroom very much,
+and the noise that the sparrows made in the creeper outside her window.
+The starched maid-servant who came to help her dress for dinner rather
+frightened her, but she decided to be very French in order to take away
+the least excuse for ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia thought at dinner that the prospect of marriage had made Philip
+seem even older, or perhaps it was his assumption of guardianship which
+gave him this added seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, French she already knows,&rdquo; he was saying, &ldquo;though it might
+be as well to revise her grammar a little. History she has a queer,
+disjointed knowledge of&mdash;it would be as well to fill in the gaps. I
+should like her to learn a little Latin. Then there are mathematics and
+what is called science. Of course, one would like her to have a general
+acquaintance with both, but I don&rsquo;t want to waste time with too much
+elementary stuff. It would be almost better for her to be completely
+ignorant of either.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think you will have to leave the decision to me, Philip,&rdquo; said Miss
+Ashley, in that almost too deliberately tranquil voice, which Sylvia
+felt might so easily become in certain circumstances exasperating. &ldquo;I
+think you may rely on my judgment where girls are concerned.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip hastened to assure Miss Ashley that he was not presuming to
+dictate to her greater experience of education; he only wished to lay
+stress on the subjects that he<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a> considered would be most valuable for
+the life Sylvia was likely to lead.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have a class,&rdquo; said Miss Ashley, &ldquo;which is composed of older girls
+and of which the routine is sufficiently elastic to fit any individual
+case. I take that class myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia half expected that Miss Ashley would suggest including Philip in
+it, if he went on talking any longer. Perhaps Philip himself suspected
+as much, for he said no more about Sylvia&rsquo;s education and talked instead
+about the gravity of the situation in South Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was vividly aware of the comfort of her bedroom and of the
+extraordinary freshness of it in comparison with all the other rooms she
+had so far inhabited. Miss Ashley faintly reminded her of her mother,
+not that there was the least outward resemblance except in height, for
+Miss Ashley&rsquo;s hair was gray, whereas her mother&rsquo;s until the day of her
+death had kept all its lustrous darkness. Yet both wore their hair in
+similar fashion, combed up high from the forehead so as to give them a
+majestic appearance. Her mother&rsquo;s eyes had been of a deep and glowing
+brown set in that pale face; Miss Ashley&rsquo;s eyes were small and gray, and
+her complexion had the hard rosiness of an apple. The likeness between
+the two women lay rather in the possession of a natural authority which
+warned one that disobedience would be an undertaking and defiance an
+impossibility. Sylvia rejoiced in the idea of being under control; it
+was invigorating, like the delicious torment of a cold bath. Of course
+she had no intention of being controlled in big things, but she was
+determined to submit over little things for the sheer pleasure of
+submitting to Miss Ashley, who was, moreover, likely to be always right.
+In the morning, when she came down in one of her new frocks, her hair
+tied back with a big brown bow, and found Miss Ashley sitting in the
+sunny green window of the dining-room, reading the <i>Morning Post</i>, she
+congratulated herself upon the positive pleasure that such a getting up
+was able to give her and upon this new sense of spaciousness that such a
+beginning of the day was able to provide.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re looking at my dress,&rdquo; said Miss Ashley, pleasantly. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;re
+my age you&rsquo;ll abandon fashion and adopt what is comfortable and
+becoming.&rdquo;<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought it was a dressing-gown yesterday,&rdquo; Sylvia admitted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rather an elaborate dressing-gown.&rdquo; Miss Ashley laughed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so
+vain as all that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia wondered what she would have said to some of Mabel&rsquo;s
+dressing-gowns. Now that she was growing used to Miss Ashley&rsquo;s attire,
+she began to think she rather liked it. This gown of peacock-blue linen
+was certainly attractive, and the flowers embroidered upon its front
+were clearly recognizable as daisies.</p>
+
+<p>During the fortnight before school reopened Sylvia gave Miss Ashley a
+good deal of her confidence, and found her much less shocked by her
+experiences than Philip had been. She told her that she felt rather
+ungrateful in so abruptly cutting herself off from Mabel, who had been
+very kind to her; but on this point Miss Ashley was firm in her
+agreement with Philip, and would not hear of Sylvia&rsquo;s making any attempt
+to see Mabel again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are lucky, my dear, in having only one person whose friendship you
+are forced to give up, as it seems to you, a little harshly. Great
+changes are rarely made with so slight an effort of separation. I am not
+in favor personally of violent uprootings and replantings, and it was
+only because you were in such a solitary position that I consented to do
+what Philip asked. Your friend Mabel was, I am sure, exceedingly kind to
+you; but you are much too young to repay her kindness. It is the
+privilege of the very young to be heartless. From what you have told me,
+you have often been heartless about other people, so I don&rsquo;t think you
+need worry about Mabel. Besides, let me assure you that Mabel herself
+would be far from enjoying any association with you that included
+Hornton House.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had no arguments to bring forward against Miss Ashley;
+nevertheless, she felt guilty of treating Mabel shabbily, and wished
+that she could have explained to her that it was not really her fault.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ashley took her once or twice to the play, which Sylvia enjoyed
+more than music-halls. In the library at Hornton House she found plenty
+of books to read, and Miss Ashley was willing to talk about them in a
+very interesting way. Philip came often to see her and told her<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a> how
+much Miss Ashley liked her and how pleased they both were to see her
+settling down so easily and quickly.</p>
+
+<p>The night before term began the four assistant mistresses arrived; their
+names were Miss Pinck, Miss Primer, Miss Hossack, and Miss Lee. Sylvia
+was by this time sufficiently at home in Hornton House to survive the
+ordeal of introduction without undue embarrassment, though, to Miss
+Ashley&rsquo;s amusement, she strengthened her French accent. Miss Pinck, the
+senior assistant mistress, was a very small woman with a sharp chin and
+knotted fingers, two features which contrasted noticeably with her
+general plumpness. She taught History and English Literature and had an
+odd habit, when she was speaking, of suddenly putting her hands behind
+her back, shooting her chin forward, and screwing up her eyes so
+fiercely that the person addressed involuntarily drew back in alarm.
+Sylvia, to whom this gesture became very familiar, used to wonder if in
+the days of her vanity Miss Pinck had cultivated it to avoid displaying
+her fingers, so that from long practice her chin had learned to replace
+the forefinger in impressing a fact.</p>
+
+<p>The date was 1689, Miss Pinck would say, and one almost expected to see
+a pencil screwed into her chin which would actually write the figures
+upon somebody&rsquo;s notebook.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Primer was a thin, melancholy, and sandy-haired woman, who must
+have been very pretty before her face was netted with innumerable small
+lines that made her look as if birds had been scratching on it when she
+was asleep. Miss Primer took an extremely gloomy view of everything, and
+with the prospect of war in South Africa she arrived in a condition of
+exalted, almost ecstatic depression; she taught Art, which at Hornton
+House was no cure for pessimism. Miss Hossack, the Mathematical and
+Scientific mistress, did not have much to do with Sylvia; she was a
+robust woman with a loud voice who liked to be asked questions. Finally
+there was Miss Lee, who taught music and was the particular adoration of
+every girl in the school, including Sylvia. She was usually described as
+&ldquo;ethereal,&rdquo; &ldquo;angelic,&rdquo; or &ldquo;divine.&rdquo; One girl with a taste for painting
+discovered that she was her ideal<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> conception of St. Cecilia; this
+naturally roused the jealousy of rival adorers that would not be
+&ldquo;copy-cats,&rdquo; until one of them discovered that Miss Lee, whose first
+name was Mary, had Annabel for a second name, the very mixture of the
+poetic and the intimate that was required. Sylvia belonged neither to
+the Cecilias nor to the Annabels, but she loved dear Miss Lee none the
+less deeply and passed exquisite moments in trying to play the Clementi
+her mistress wanted her to learn.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a strange girl you are, Sylvia!&rdquo; Miss Lee used to say. &ldquo;Anybody
+would think you had been taught music by an accompanist. You don&rsquo;t seem
+to have any notion of a piece, but you really play accompaniments
+wonderfully. It&rsquo;s not mere vamping.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia wondered what Miss Lee would have thought of Jimmy Monkley and
+the Pink Pierrots.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon that the girls arrived at Hornton House Sylvia was sure
+that nothing could keep her from running away that night; the prospect
+of facing the chattering, giggling mob that thronged the hitherto quiet
+hall was overwhelming. From the landing above she leaned over to watch
+them, unable to imagine what she would talk about to them or what they
+would talk about to her. It was Miss Lee who saved the situation by
+inviting Sylvia to meet four of the girls at tea in her room and
+cleverly choosing, as Sylvia realized afterward, the four leaders of the
+four chief sets. Who would not adore Miss Lee?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Miss Lee, <i>did</i> you notice Gladys and Enid Worstley?&rdquo; Muriel
+ejaculated, accentuating some of her words like the notes of an unevenly
+blown harmonium, and explaining to Sylvia in a sustained tremolo that
+these twins, whose real name was Worsley, were always called Worstley
+because it was impossible to decide which was more wicked. &ldquo;Oh, Miss
+Lee, they&rsquo;ve got the most <i>lovely</i> dresses,&rdquo; she went on, releasing
+every stop in a diapason of envy. &ldquo;Simply <i>gorgeously</i> beautiful. I do
+think it&rsquo;s a shame to dress them up like that. I do, <i>really</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia made a mental note to cultivate this pair not for their dresses,
+but for their behavior. Muriel was all very well, but those eyebrows
+eternally arched and those eyes eternally staring out of her head would
+sooner or later<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a> have most irresistibly to be given real cause for
+amazement.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Their mother likes them to be prettily dressed,&rdquo; said Miss Lee.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course she does,&rdquo; Gwendyr put in, primly. &ldquo;She was an actress.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To hell with Gwendyr, thought Sylvia. Why shouldn&rsquo;t their mother have
+been an actress?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but they&rsquo;re so conceited!&rdquo; said Dorothy. &ldquo;Enid Worsley <i>never</i> can
+pass a glass, and their frocks are most frightfully short. <i>Don&rsquo;t</i> you
+remember when they danced at last breaking-up?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is getting unbearable,&rdquo; Sylvia thought.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think they&rsquo;re rather dears,&rdquo; Phyllis drawled. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re jolly pretty,
+anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia looked at Phyllis and decided that she was jolly pretty, too,
+with her golden hair and smocked linen frock of old rose; she would like
+to be friends with Phyllis. The moment had come, however, when she must
+venture all her future on a single throw. She must either shock Miss Lee
+and the four girls irretrievably or she must be henceforth accepted at
+Hornton House as herself; there must be none of these critical sessions
+about Sylvia Scarlett. She pondered for a minute or two the various
+episodes of her past. Then suddenly she told them how she had run away
+from school in France, arrived in England without a penny, and earned
+her living as an odalisque at the Exhibition. Which would she be, she
+asked, when she saw the girls staring at her open-mouthed now with real
+amazement, villain or heroine? She became a heroine, especially to
+Gladys and Enid, with whom she made friends that night, and who showed
+her in strictest secrecy two powder-puffs and a tin of Turkish
+cigarettes.</p>
+
+<p>There were moments when Sylvia was sad, especially when war broke out
+and so many of the girls had photographs of brothers and cousins and
+friends in uniform, not to mention various generals whose ability was as
+yet unquestioned. She did not consider the photograph of Philip a worthy
+competitor of these and begged him to enlist, which hurt his feelings.
+Nevertheless, her adventures as an odalisque were proof in the eyes of
+the girls against<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a> martial relations; their only regret was that the
+Exhibition closed before they had time to devise a plot to visit the
+Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels and be introduced by Sylvia to the
+favorites of the harem.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ashley was rather cross with Sylvia for her revelations and urged
+her as a personal favor to herself not to make any more. Sylvia
+explained the circumstances quite frankly and promised that she would
+not offend again; but she pointed out that the girls were all very
+inquisitive about Philip and asked how she was to account for his taking
+her out every Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s your guardian, my dear. What could be more natural?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you must tell him not to blush and drop his glasses when the girls
+tell him I&rsquo;m nearly ready. They <i>all</i> think he&rsquo;s in love with me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it doesn&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; said Miss Ashley, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But it does matter,&rdquo; Sylvia contradicted. &ldquo;Because even if he is going
+to marry me he&rsquo;s not the sort of lover one wants to put in a frame, now
+is he? That&rsquo;s why I bought that photograph of George Alexander which
+Miss Pinck made such a fuss about. I <i>must</i> have a secret sorrow. All
+the girls have secret sorrows this term.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ashley shook her head gravely, but Sylvia was sure she was laughing
+like herself.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia&rsquo;s chief friend was Phyllis Markham&mdash;the twins were only
+fourteen&mdash;and the two of them headed a society for toleration, which was
+designed to contend with stupid and ill-natured criticism. The society
+became so influential and so tolerant that the tone of the school was
+considered in danger, especially by Miss Primer, who lamented it much,
+together with the reverses in South Africa; and when after the Christmas
+holidays (which Sylvia spent with Miss Ashley at Bournemouth) a grave
+defeat coincided with the discovery that the Worsleys were signaling
+from their window to some boys in a house opposite, Miss Primer in a
+transport of woe took up the matter with the head-mistress. Miss Ashley
+called a conference of the most influential girls, at which Sylvia was
+present, and with the support of Phyllis maintained that the behavior of
+the twins had been much exaggerated.<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But in their nightgowns,&rdquo; Miss Primer wailed. &ldquo;The policeman at the
+corner must have seen them. At such a time, too, with these deadful
+Boers winning everywhere. And their hair streaming over their
+shoulders.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It always is,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ashley rebuked her rather sharply for interrupting.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A bull&rsquo;s-eye lantern. The room reeked of hot metal. I could not read
+the code. I took it upon myself to punish them with an extra hour&rsquo;s
+freehand to-day. But the punishment is most inadequate. I detect a
+disturbing influence right through the school.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ashley made a short speech in which she pointed out the
+responsibilities of the older girls in such matters and emphasized the
+vulgarity of the twins&rsquo; conduct. No one wished to impute nasty motives
+to them, but it must be clearly understood that the girls of Hornton
+House could not and should not be allowed to behave like servants. She
+relied upon Muriel Battersby, Dorothy Hearne, Gwendyr Jones, Phyllis
+Markham, Georgina Roe, Helen Macdonald, and Sylvia Scarlett to prevent
+in future such unfortunate incidents as this that had been brought to
+her notice by Miss Primer, she was sure much against Miss Primer&rsquo;s will.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Primer at these words threw up her eyes to indicate the misery she
+had suffered before she had been able to bring herself to the point of
+reporting the twins. Phyllis whispered to Sylvia that Miss Primer looked
+like a dying duck in a thunder-storm, a phrase which she now heard for
+the first time and at which she laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ashley paused in her discourse and fixed Sylvia with her gray eyes
+in pained interrogation; Miss Pinck&rsquo;s chin shot out; Miss Lee bit her
+under lip and tenderly shook her head; the other girls stared at their
+laps and tried to look at one another without moving their heads.
+Phyllis quickly explained that it was she who had made Sylvia laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully sorry, Miss Ashley,&rdquo; she drawled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to hear that you are <i>very</i> sorry,&rdquo; said Miss Ashley, &ldquo;but
+Sylvia must realize when it is permissible and when it is not
+permissible to laugh. I&rsquo;m afraid I must ask her to leave the room.&rdquo;<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I ought to go, too,&rdquo; Phyllis declared. &ldquo;I made her laugh.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure, Phyllis, that to yourself your wit seems irresistible. Pray
+let us have an opportunity of judging.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I said that Miss Primer looked like a dying duck in a
+thunder-storm.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The horrified amazement of everybody in the room expressed itself in a
+gasp that sounded like a ghostly, an infinitely attenuated scream of
+dismay. Sylvia, partly from nervousness, partly because the simile even
+on repetition appealed to her sense of the ridiculous, laughed aloud for
+a second time&mdash;laughed, indeed, with a kind of guffaw the sacrilegious
+echoes of which were stifled in an appalled silence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia Scarlett and Phyllis Markham will both leave the room
+immediately,&rdquo; said Miss Ashley. &ldquo;I will speak to them later.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Outside the study of the head-mistress, Sylvia and Phyllis looked at
+each other like people who have jointly managed to break a mirror.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What will she do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia, I simply couldn&rsquo;t help it. I simply couldn&rsquo;t bear them all any
+longer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear, I know. Oh, I think it was wonderful of you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia laughed heartily for the third time, and just at this moment the
+twins, who were the original cause of all the commotion, came sidling up
+to know what everybody had said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You little beasts with your bull&rsquo;s-eye lamps and your naughtiness,&rdquo;
+Phyllis cried. &ldquo;I expect we shall all be expelled. What fun! I shall get
+some hunting. Oh, three cheers, I say!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course you know why Miss Primer was really in such a wax?&rdquo; Gladys
+asked, with the eyes of an angel and the laugh of a fairy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, let me tell, Gladys,&rdquo; Enid burst in. &ldquo;You know I won the toss. We
+tossed up which should tell and I won. You <i>are</i> a chiseler. You see,
+when Miss Primer came tearing up into our room we turned the lamps onto
+her, and she was simply furious because she thought everybody in the
+street could see her in that blue-flannel wrapper.&rdquo;<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Which, of course, they could,&rdquo; Sylvia observed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; the twins shrieked together. &ldquo;And the boys opposite
+clapped, and she heard them and tried to pull down the blind, and her
+wrapper came open and she was wearing a chest-protector!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The interview with Miss Ashley was rather distressing, because she took
+from the start the altogether unexpected line of blaming Phyllis and
+Sylvia not for the breach of discipline, but for the wound they had
+inflicted upon Miss Primer. All that had seemed fine and honest and
+brave and noble collapsed immediately; it was impossible after Miss
+Ashley&rsquo;s words not to feel ashamed, and both the girls offered to beg
+Miss Primer&rsquo;s pardon. Miss Ashley said no more about the incident after
+this, though she took rather an unfair advantage of their chastened
+spirits by exacting a promise that they would in common with the rest of
+the school leaders set their faces against the encouragement of such
+behavior as that of the twins last night.</p>
+
+<p>The news from South Africa was so bad that Miss Primer&rsquo;s luxury of grief
+could scarcely have been heightened by Phyllis&rsquo;s and Sylvia&rsquo;s rudeness;
+however, she wept a few tears, patted their hands, and forgave them. A
+few days afterward she was granted the boon of another woe, which she
+shared with the whole school, in the news of Miss Lee&rsquo;s approaching
+marriage. Any wedding would have upset Miss Primer, but in this case the
+sorrow was rendered three times as poignant by the fact that Miss Lee
+was going to marry a soldier under orders for the front. This romantic
+accessory could not fail to thrill the girls, though it was not enough
+to compensate for the loss of their beloved Miss Lee. Rivalries between
+the Cecilias and Annabels were forever finished; several girls had been
+learning Beethoven&rsquo;s Pathetic Sonata and the amount of expression put
+into it would, they hoped, show Miss Lee the depth of their emotion when
+for the last time these frail fingers so lightly corrected their touch,
+when for the last time that delicate pencil inscribed her directions
+upon their music.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course the school will <i>never</i> be the same without her,&rdquo; said
+Muriel.<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall write home and ask if I can&rsquo;t take up Italian instead of
+music,&rdquo; said Dorothy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fancy playing duets with any one but Miss Lee,&rdquo; said Gwendyr. &ldquo;The very
+idea makes me shudder.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps we shall have a music-master now,&rdquo; said Gladys.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon everybody told her she was a heartless thing. Poor Gladys, who
+really loved Miss Lee as much as anybody, retired to her room and cried
+for the rest of the evening, until she was consoled by Enid, who pointed
+out that now she <i>must</i> use her powder-puff.</p>
+
+<p>For Sylvia the idea of Miss Lee&rsquo;s departure and marriage was desolating;
+it was an abrupt rending of half the ties that bound her to Hornton
+House. Phyllis, Miss Ashley, and the twins were all that really
+remained, and Phyllis was always threatening to persuade her people to
+take her away when the weather was tolerably warm, so deeply did she
+resent the loss of hunting. It was curious how much more Phyllis meant
+to her than Philip, so much, indeed, that she had never confided in her
+that she was going to marry Philip. How absurd that two names so nearly
+alike could be in the one case so beautiful, in the other so ugly. Yet
+she was still very fond of Philip and she still enjoyed going out with
+him on Sundays, even though it meant being deprived of pleasant times
+with Phyllis. She had warned Philip that she might get too fond of
+school, and he had smiled in that superior way of his. Ought she to
+marry him at all? He had been so kind to her that if she refused to
+marry him she would have to run away, for she could not continue under
+an obligation. Why did people want to marry? Why must she marry? Worst
+of all, why must Miss Lee marry? But these were questions that not even
+Miss Hossack would be able to answer. Ah, if it had only been Miss
+Hossack who had been going to marry. Sylvia began to make up a rhyme
+about Miss Hossack marrying a Cossack and going for her honeymoon to the
+Trossachs, where Helen Macdonald lived.</p>
+
+<p>All the girls had subscribed to buy Miss Lee a dressing-case, which they
+presented to her one evening after tea with a kind of dismal
+beneficence, as if they were laying a wreath upon her tomb. Next morning
+she went away by<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> an early train to the north of England, and after
+lunch every girl retired with the secret sorrow that now had more than
+fashion to commend it. Sylvia&rsquo;s sorrow was an aching regret that she had
+not told Miss Lee more about herself and her life and Philip; now it was
+too late. She met the twins wandering disconsolately enlaced along the
+corridor outside her room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Sylvia, dearest Sylvia!&rdquo; they moaned. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve lost our duet with
+Miss Lee&rsquo;s fingering.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll help you to look for it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but we lost it on purpose, because we didn&rsquo;t like it, and the next
+day Miss Lee said she was going to be married.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia asked where they lost it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, we put it in an envelope and posted it to the Bishop of London.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia suggested they should write to the Bishop and explain the
+circumstances in which the duet was sent to him; he would no doubt
+return it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; said the twins, mournfully. &ldquo;We never put a stamp on and we
+wrote inside, &lsquo;A token of esteem and regard from two sinners who you
+confirmed.&rsquo; How can we ask for it back?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia embraced the twins, and the three of them wandered in the sad and
+wintry garden until it was time for afternoon school.</p>
+
+<p>The next day happened to be Sunday, and Philip came as usual to take
+Sylvia out. He had sent her the evening before an overcoat trimmed with
+gray squirrel, which, if it had not arrived after Miss Lee&rsquo;s departure,
+would have been so much more joyfully welcomed. Philip asked her why she
+was so sad and if the coat did not please her. She told him about its
+coming after Miss Lee had gone, and, as usual, he had a lot to say:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You strange child, how quickly you have adopted the outlook and manners
+of the English school-girl. One would say that you had never been
+anything else. How absurd I was to be afraid that you were a wild bird
+whom I had caught too late. I&rsquo;m quite positive now that you&rsquo;ll be happy
+with me down in Hampshire. I&rsquo;m sorry you&rsquo;ve lost Miss Lee. A charming
+woman, I thought, and very cultivated.<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a> Miss Ashley will miss her
+greatly, but she herself will be glad to get away from music-teaching.
+It must be an atrocious existence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Here was a new point of view altogether. Could it really be possible
+that those delicious hours with Miss Lee were a penance to the mistress?
+Sylvia looked at Philip angrily, for she found it unforgivable in him to
+destroy her illusions like this. He did not observe her expression and
+continued his monologue:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really atrocious. Exercises! Scales! Other people&rsquo;s chilblains! A
+creaking piano-stool! What a purgatory! And all to teach a number of
+young women to inflict an objectionable noise upon their friends and
+relations.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; Sylvia broke in. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t catch me playing again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not talking about you,&rdquo; Philip said. &ldquo;You have temperament. You&rsquo;re
+different from the ordinary school-girl.&rdquo; He took her arm
+affectionately. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re you, dear Sylvia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And yours,&rdquo; she added, sullenly. &ldquo;I thought you said just now that I
+was just like any other English school-girl and that you were so happy
+about it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I said you&rsquo;d wonderfully adopted the outlook,&rdquo; Philip corrected. &ldquo;Not
+quite the same thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, take your horrible coat, because I don&rsquo;t want it,&rdquo; Sylvia
+exclaimed, and, rapidly unbuttoning her new overcoat, she flung it on
+the pavement at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody was in sight at the moment, so Philip did not get angry.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t tell me it&rsquo;s illogical to throw away only the coat and not
+undress myself completely. I know quite well that everything I&rsquo;ve got on
+is yours.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no, it&rsquo;s not,&rdquo; Philip said, gently. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s yours.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you paid for everything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, you paid yourself,&rdquo; he insisted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By being Sylvia. Come along, don&rsquo;t trample on your poor coat. There&rsquo;s a
+most detestable wind blowing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He picked up the offending overcoat and helped her into it again with so
+much sympathy half humorous, half grave<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> in his demeanor that she could
+not help being sorry for her outburst.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the fact of her complete dependence upon Philip for
+everything, even before marriage, was always an oppression to Sylvia&rsquo;s
+mind, which was increased by the continual reminders of her loneliness
+that intercourse with other girls forced upon her. They, when they
+should marry, should be married from a background; the lovers, when they
+came for them, would have to fight for their love by breaking down the
+barriers of old associations, old friendships, and old affections; in a
+word, they would have to win the brides. What was her own background?
+Nothing but a panorama of streets which offered no opposition to
+Philip&rsquo;s choice except in so far as it was an ugly background for a
+possession of his own and therefore fit to be destroyed. It was all very
+well for Philip to tell her that she was herself and that he loved her
+accordingly. If that were true, why was he taking so much trouble to
+turn her into something different? Other girls at Hornton House, when
+they married, would not begin with ugly backgrounds to be obliterated;
+their pasts would merge beautifully with the pasts of their husbands;
+they were not being transformed by Miss Pinck and Miss Primer; they were
+merely being supplied by them with value for their parents&rsquo; money. It
+was a visit to Phyllis Markham&rsquo;s home in Leicestershire during the
+Easter holidays that had branded with the iron of jealousy these facts
+upon her meditation. Phyllis used to lament that she had no brothers;
+and Sylvia used to wonder what she would have said if she had been like
+herself, without mother, without father, without brothers, without
+sisters, without relations, without friends, without letters, without
+photographs, with nothing in the whole world between herself and the
+shifting panorama from which she had been snatched but the love of a
+timid man inspired by an unusual encounter in Brompton Cemetery. This
+visit to Phyllis Markham was the doom upon their friendship; however
+sweet, however sympathetic, however loyal Phyllis might be, she must
+ultimately despise her friend&rsquo;s past; every word Sylvia listened to
+during those Easter holidays seemed to cry out the certain fulfilment of
+this conjecture.<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I expect I&rsquo;m too sensitive,&rdquo; Sylvia said to herself. &ldquo;I expect I really
+am common, because apparently common people are always looking out for
+slights. I don&rsquo;t look out for them now, but if I were to tell Phyllis
+all about myself, I&rsquo;m sure I should begin to look out for them. No, I&rsquo;ll
+just be friends with her up to a point, for so long as I stay at Hornton
+House; then we&rsquo;ll separate forever. I&rsquo;m really an absolute fraud. I&rsquo;m
+just as much of a fraud now as when I was dressed up as a boy. I&rsquo;m not
+real in this life. I haven&rsquo;t been real since I came down to breakfast
+with Miss Ashley that first morning. I&rsquo;m simply a very good impostor. I
+must inherit the talent from father. Another reason against telling
+Phyllis about myself is that, if I do, I shall become her property. Miss
+Ashley knows all about me, but I&rsquo;m not her property, because it&rsquo;s part
+of her profession to be told secrets. Phyllis would love me more than
+ever, so long as she was the only person that owned the secret, but if
+anybody else ever knew, even if it were only Philip, she would be
+jealous and she would have to make a secret of it with some one else.
+Then she would be ashamed of herself and would begin to hate and despise
+me in self-defense. No, I must never tell any of the girls.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Apart from these morbid fits, which were not very frequent, Sylvia
+enjoyed her stay at Markham Grange. In a way it encouraged the idea of
+marrying Philip; for the country life appealed to her not as to a
+cockney by the strangeness of its inhabitants and the mere quantity of
+grass in sight, but more deeply with those old ineffable longings of
+Hampstead.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the summer term the twins invited Sylvia to stay with them
+in Hertfordshire. She refused at first, because she felt that she could
+not bear the idea of being jealously disturbed by a second home. The
+twins were inconsolable at her refusal and sent a telegram to their
+mother, who had already written one charming letter of invitation, and
+who now wrote another in which she told Sylvia of her children&rsquo;s bitter
+disappointment and begged her to come. Miss Ashley, also, was anxious
+that Sylvia should go, and told her frankly that it seemed an excellent
+chance to think over seriously her marriage with Philip in the autumn.
+Philip, now that the date of her final decision<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a> was drawing near,
+wished her to remain with Miss Ashley in London. His opposition was
+enough to make Sylvia insist upon going; so, when at the end of July the
+school was swept by a tornado of relations and friends, Sylvia was swept
+away with the twins to Hertfordshire, and Philip was left to wait till
+the end of September to know whether she would marry him or not in
+October.</p>
+
+<p>The Worsleys&rsquo; home at Arbour End made an altogether different impression
+upon Sylvia from Markham Grange. She divined in some way that the
+background here was not immemorial, but that the Worsleys had created it
+themselves. And a perfect background it was&mdash;a very comfortable red
+brick house with a garden full of flowers, an orchard loaded with fruit,
+fields promenaded by neat cows, pigsties inhabited by clean pigs, a
+shining dog-cart and a shining horse, all put together with the
+satisfying completeness of a picture-puzzle. Mr. Worsley was a handsome
+man, tall and fair with a boyish face and a quantity of clothes; Mrs.
+Worsley was slim and fair, with a rose-leaf complexion and as many
+clothes as her husband. The twins were even naughtier and more charming
+than they were at Hornton House; there was a small brother called
+Hercules, aged six, who was as charming as his sisters and surpassed
+them in wickedness. The maids were trim and tolerant; the gardener was
+never grumpy; Hercules&rsquo;s governess disapproved of holiday tasks; the
+dogs wagged their tails at the least sound.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I love these people,&rdquo; Sylvia said to herself, when she was undressing
+on the first night of her stay. &ldquo;I love them, I love them. I feel at
+home&mdash;at home&mdash;at home!&rdquo; She leaped into bed and hugged the pillow in a
+triumph of good-fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>At Arbour End Sylvia banished the future and gave herself to the
+present. One seemed to have nothing to do but to amuse oneself then, and
+it was so easy to amuse oneself that one never grew tired of doing so.
+As the twins pointed out, their father was so much nicer than any other
+father, because whatever was suggested he always enjoyed. If it was a
+question of learning golf, Mr. Worsley took the keenest interest in
+teaching it. When Gladys drove a ball through the drawing-room window,
+no one was more<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> delighted than Mr. Worsley himself; he infected
+everybody with his pleasure, so that the gardener beamed at the notion
+of going to fetch the glazier from the village, and the glazier beamed
+when he mended the window, and the maids beamed while they watched him
+at work, and the dogs sat down in a loose semicircle, thumping the lawn
+with appreciative tails. The next day, when Hercules, who, standing
+solemnly apart from the rest, had observed all that happened, threw a
+large stone through the mended window, there was the same scene of
+pleasure slightly intensified.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Worsley flitted through the house, making every room she entered
+more beautiful and more gay for her presence. She had only one regret,
+which was that the twins were getting so big, and this not as with other
+mothers because it made her feel old, but because she would no more see
+their black legs and their tumbled hair. Sylvia once asked her how she
+could bear to let them go to school, and Mrs. Worsley&rsquo;s eyes filled with
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I had to send them to school,&rdquo; she whispered, sadly. &ldquo;Because they
+<i>would</i> fall in love with the village boys and they were getting
+Hertfordshire accents. Perhaps you&rsquo;ve noticed that I myself speak with a
+slight cockney accent. Do you understand, dear?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The August days fled past and in the last week came a letter from Miss
+Ashley.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">M<small>URREN</small>, <i>August 26, 1900.</i></p>
+
+<p>M<small>Y DEAR</small> S<small>YLVIA</small>,&mdash;I shall be back from Switzerland by September 3d,
+and I shall be delighted to see you at Hornton House again. Philip
+nearly followed me here in order to talk about you, but I declined
+his company. I want you to think very seriously about your future,
+as no doubt you have been doing all this month. If you have the
+least hesitation about marrying Philip, let me advise you not to do
+it. I shall be glad to offer you a place at Hornton House, not as a
+schoolmistress, but as a kind of director of the girls&rsquo; leisure
+time. I have grown very fond of you during this year and have
+admired the way in which you settled down here more than I can
+express. We will talk this over more fully when we meet, but I want
+you to know that, if you feel you ought not to marry, you have a
+certain amount of security for the future while you are deciding
+what you will ultimately do. Give my love to the twins. I shall be
+glad to see you again.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Your affectionate&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+C<small>AROLINE</small> A<small>SHLEY</small>.</p></div>
+
+<p>The effect of Miss Ashley&rsquo;s letter was the exact contrary of what she
+had probably intended; it made Sylvia feel that she was not bound to
+marry Philip, and, from the moment she was not bound, that she was
+willing, even anxious, to marry him. The aspects of his character which
+she had criticized to herself vanished and left only the first
+impression of him, when she was absolutely free and was finding his
+company such a relief from the Exhibition. Another result of the letter
+was that by removing the shame of dependence and by providing an
+alternative it opened a way to discussion, for which Sylvia fixed upon
+Mrs. Worsley, divining that she certainly would look at her case
+unprejudiced by anything but her own experience.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia never pretended to herself that she would be at all influenced by
+advice. Listening to advice from Mrs. Worsley would be like looking into
+a shop-window with money in one&rsquo;s pocket, but with no intention of
+entering the shop to make a purchase; listening to her advice before
+Miss Ashley&rsquo;s offer would have been like looking at a shop-window
+without a penny in the world, a luxury of fancy to which Sylvia had
+never given way. So at the first opportunity Sylvia talked to Mrs.
+Worsley about Philip, going back for her opinion of him and feeling
+toward him to those first days together, and thereby giving her listener
+an impression that she liked him a very great deal, which was true, as
+Sylvia assured herself, yet not without some misgivings about her
+presentation of the state of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He sounds most fascinating,&rdquo; said Mrs. Worsley. &ldquo;Of course Lennie was
+never at all clever. I don&rsquo;t think he ever read a book in his life. When
+I met him first I was acting in burlesque, and I had to make up my mind
+between him and my profession; I&rsquo;m so glad I chose him. But at first I
+was rather miserable. His parents were still alive, and though they were
+very kind to me, I was always an intruder, and of course Lennie was
+dependent on them, for he was much too stupid an old darling to earn his
+own living. He really has nothing but his niceness. Then his parents
+died and, being an only son, Lennie had all the money. We lived for a
+time in his father&rsquo;s house, but it became impossible. We had my poor old
+mother down to stay with us, and the neighbors called, as if she were a<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a>
+curiosity. When she didn&rsquo;t appear at tea, you could feel they were
+staying on, hoping against hope to get a glimpse of her. I expect I was
+sensitive and rather silly, but I was miserable. And then Lennie, who is
+not clever, but so nice that it always leads him to do exactly the right
+thing, went away suddenly and bought this house, where life has been one
+long dream of happiness. You&rsquo;ve seen how utterly self-contained we are.
+Nobody comes to visit us very much, because when we first came here we
+used to hide when people called. And then the twins have always been
+such a joy&mdash;oh, dear, I wish they would never grow up; but there&rsquo;s still
+Hercules, and you never know, there might be another baby. Oh, my dear
+Sylvia, I&rsquo;m sure you ought to get married. And you say his parents are
+dead?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But he has a sister.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, a sister doesn&rsquo;t matter. And it doesn&rsquo;t matter his being clever and
+fond of books, because you&rsquo;re fond of books yourself. The twins tell me
+you&rsquo;ve read everything in the world and that there&rsquo;s nothing you don&rsquo;t
+know. I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;d soon get tired of Hornton House&mdash;oh, yes, I
+strongly advise you to get married.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When Sylvia got back to London the memory of Arbour End rested in her
+thoughts like a pleasant dream of the night that one ponders in a summer
+dawn. She assured Miss Ashley that she was longing to marry Philip; and
+when she seemed to express in her reception of the announcement a kind
+of puzzled approval, Sylvia spoke with real enthusiasm of her marriage.
+Miss Ashley never knew that the real inspiration of such enthusiasm was
+Arbour End and not at all Philip himself. As for Sylvia, because she
+would by no means admit even to herself that she had taken Mrs.
+Worsley&rsquo;s advice, she passed over the advice and remarked only the signs
+of happiness at Arbour End.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia and Philip were married at a registry-office early in October.
+The honeymoon was spent in the Italian lakes, where Philip denounced the
+theatrical scenery, but crowned Sylvia with vine-leaves and wrote Latin
+poetry to her, which he translated aloud in the evenings as well as the
+mosquitoes would let him.<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">G</span>REEN LANES lay midway between the market town of Galton and the large
+village of Newton Candover. It is a small, tumble-down hamlet remote
+from any highroad, the confluence of four deserted by-ways leading to
+other hamlets upon the wooded downland of which Green Lanes was the
+highest point. Hare Hall, the family mansion of the Iredales, was quite
+two miles away in the direction of Newton Candover and was let for a
+long term of years to a rich stockbroker. Philip himself lived at The
+Old Farm, an Elizabethan farm-house which he had filled with books. The
+only other &ldquo;gentleman&rdquo; in Green Lanes was the vicar, Mr. Dorward, with
+whom Philip had quarreled. The squire as lay rector drew a yearly
+revenue of £300, but he refused to allow the living more than £90 until
+the vicar gave up his ritualistic fads, to which, though he never went
+inside the church, he strongly objected.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia&rsquo;s first quarrel with Philip was over the vicar, whom she met
+through her puppy&rsquo;s wandering into his cottage while he was at tea and
+refusing to come out. She might never have visited him again if Philip
+had not objected, for he was very shy and eccentric; but after two more
+visits to annoy Philip, she began to like Mr. Dorward, and her
+friendship with him became a standing source of irritation to her
+husband and a pleasure to herself which she declined to give up. Her
+second quarrel with Philip was over his sister Gertrude, who came down
+for a visit soon after they got back from Como. Gertrude, having until
+her brother&rsquo;s marriage always lived at The Old Farm, could not refrain
+from making Sylvia very much aware of this; her conversation was one
+long, supercilious narrative of what she used to do at Green Lanes, with
+which were mingled fears for what might be done there in<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> the future.
+Philip was quite ready to admit that his sister could be very
+irritating, but he thought Sylvia&rsquo;s demand for her complete exclusion
+from The Old Farm for at least a year was unreasonable.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, if she comes, I shall go,&rdquo; Sylvia said, sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear child, do remember that you&rsquo;re married and that you can&rsquo;t go
+and come as you like,&rdquo; Philip answered. &ldquo;However, I quite see your point
+of view about poor Gertrude and I quite agree with you that for a time
+it will be wiser to keep ourselves rather strictly to ourselves.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Why could he not have said that at first, Sylvia thought. She would have
+been so quickly generous if he had, but the preface about her being
+married had spoiled his concession. He was a curious creature, this
+husband of hers. When they were alone he would encourage her to be as
+she used to be; he would laugh with her, show the keenest interest in
+what she was reading, search for a morning to find some book that would
+please her, listen with delight to her stories of Jimmy Monkley or of
+her father or of Blanche, and be always, in fact, the sympathetic
+friend, never obtruding himself, as lover or monitor, two aspects of him
+equally repugnant to Sylvia. Yet when there was the least likelihood not
+alone of a third person&rsquo;s presence, but even of a third person&rsquo;s hearing
+any roundabout gossip of her real self, Philip would shrivel her up with
+interminable corrections, and what was far worse, try to sweeten the
+process by what she considered fatuous demonstrations of affection. For
+a time there was no great tension between them, because Sylvia&rsquo;s
+adventurous spirit was occupied by her passion for knowledge; she felt
+vaguely that at any time the moment might arrive when mere knowledge
+without experience would not be enough; at present the freedom of
+Philip&rsquo;s library was adventure enough. He was most eager to assist her
+progress, and almost reckless in the way he spurred her into every
+liberty of thought, maintaining the stupidity of all conventional
+beliefs&mdash;moral, religious, or political. He warned her that the
+expression of such opinions, or, still worse, action under the influence
+of them, would be for her or for any one else in the present state of
+society quite impossible;<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> Sylvia used to think at the time that it was
+only herself as his wife whom he wished to keep in check, and resented
+his reasons accordingly; afterward looking back to this period she came
+to the conclusion that Philip was literally a theorist, and that his
+fierce denunciations of all conventional opinions could never in any
+circumstances have gone further than quarreling with the vicar and
+getting married in a registry-office. Once when she attacked him for his
+cowardice he retorted by citing his marriage with her, and immediately
+afterward apologized for what he characterized as &ldquo;caddishness.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you had married me and been content to let me remain myself,&rdquo; Sylvia
+said, &ldquo;you might have used that argument. But you showed you were
+frightened of what you&rsquo;d done when you sent me to Hornton House.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear child, I wanted you to go there for your own comfort, not for
+mine. After all, it was only like reading a book; it gave you a certain
+amount of academic theory that you could prove or disprove by
+experience.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A devil of a lot of experience I get here,&rdquo; Sylvia exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re still only seventeen,&rdquo; Philip answered. &ldquo;The time will come.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It will come,&rdquo; Sylvia murmured, darkly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not threatening to run away from me already?&rdquo; Philip asked, with
+a smile.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I might do anything,&rdquo; she owned. &ldquo;I might poison you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip laughed heartily at this; just then Mr. Dorward passed over the
+village green, which gave him an opportunity to rail at his cassock.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s ridiculous for a man to go about dressed up like that. Of course,
+nobody attends his church. I can&rsquo;t think why my father gave him the
+living. He&rsquo;s a ritualist, and his manners are abominable.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But he looks like a Roman Emperor,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>Philip spluttered with indignation. &ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s Roman enough, my dear
+child; but an Emperor! Which Emperor?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure which it is, but I think it&rsquo;s Nero.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I see what you mean,&rdquo; Philip assented, after a<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a> pause. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re
+amazingly observant. Yes, there is that kind of mixture of sensual
+strength and fineness about his face. But it&rsquo;s not surprising. The line
+between degeneracy and the &lsquo;twopence colored&rsquo; type of religion is not
+very clearly drawn.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was after this conversation that, in searching for a picture of
+Nero&rsquo;s head to compare with Mr. Dorward&rsquo;s, Sylvia came across the
+Satyricon of Petronius in a French translation. She read it through
+without skipping a word, applied it to the test of recognition, and
+decided that she found more satisfactorily than in any book she had yet
+read a distorting mirror of her life from the time she left France until
+she met Philip, a mirror, however, that never distorted so wildly as to
+preclude recognition. Having made this discovery, she announced it to
+him, who applauded her sense of humor and of literature, but begged her
+to keep it to herself; people might get a wrong idea of her; he knew
+what she meant and appreciated the reflection, but it was a book that,
+generally speaking, no woman would read, still less talk about, and
+least of all claim kinship with. It was of course an immortal work of
+art, humorous, witty, fantastic.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And true,&rdquo; Sylvia added.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And no doubt true to its period and its place, which was southern Italy
+in the time of Nero.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And true to southern England in the time of Victoria,&rdquo; Sylvia insisted.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean that it&rsquo;s exactly the same,&rdquo; she went on, striving almost
+painfully to express her thoughts. &ldquo;The same, though. I <i>feel</i> it&rsquo;s
+true. I don&rsquo;t <i>know</i> it&rsquo;s true. Oh, can&rsquo;t you understand?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I fancy you&rsquo;re trying to voice your esthetic consciousness of great art
+that, however time may change its accessories, remains inherently
+changeless. Realism in fact as opposed to what is wrongly called
+realism. Lots of critics, Sylvia, have tried to define what is worrying
+you, and lots of long words have been enlisted on their behalf. A better
+and more ancient word for realism was &lsquo;poetry&rsquo;; but the word has been
+debased by the versifiers who call themselves poets just as painters
+call themselves artists&mdash;both are titles that only posterity can award.
+Great art is something that is made and that lives in itself;<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a> like that
+stuff, radium, which was discovered the year before last, it eternally
+gives out energy without consuming itself. Radium, however, does not
+solve the riddle of life, and until we solve that, great art will remain
+undefinable. Which reminds me of a mistake that so-called believers
+make. I&rsquo;ve often heard Christians maintain the truth of Christianity,
+because it is still alive. What nonsense! The words of Christ are still
+alive, because Christ Himself was a great poet, and therefore expressed
+humanity as perhaps no one else ever expressed humanity before. But the
+lying romantic, the bad poet, in fact, who tickles the vain and
+credulous mob with miracles and theogonies, expresses nothing. It is a
+proof of nothing but the vitality of great art that the words of Christ
+can exist and can continue to affect humanity notwithstanding the
+mountebank behavior attributed to Him, out of which priests have
+manufactured a religion. It is equally surprising that Cervantes could
+hold his own against the romances of chivalry he tried to kill. He may
+have killed one mode of expression, but he did not prevent <i>East Lynne</i>
+from being written; he yet endures because Don Quixote, whom he made,
+has life. By the way, you never got on with Don Quixote, did you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s a failure on your part, dear Sylvia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He is so stupid,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But he realized how stupid he was before he died.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help my bad taste, as you call it.
+He annoys me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You think the Yanguseian carriers dealt with him in the proper way?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t remember them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They beat him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I could beat a person who annoyed me very much,&rdquo; Sylvia said.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean with sticks, of course, but with my behavior.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that another warning?&rdquo; Philip asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anyway, you think Petronius is good?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come, you shall give a judgment on Aristophanes.<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> I commend him to you
+in the same series of French translations.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think Lysistrata is simply splendid,&rdquo; Sylvia said, a week or so
+later. &ldquo;And I like the Thesmos-something and the Eck-something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you might,&rdquo; Philip laughed. &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t quote from them when
+my millionaire tenant comes to tea.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be always harping upon the dangers of my conversation,&rdquo; she
+exhorted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t I even tease you?&rdquo; Philip asked, in mock humility.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind being teased, but it isn&rsquo;t teasing. It&rsquo;s serious.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your sense of humor plays you tricks sometimes,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t talk about my sense of humor like that. My sense of humor
+isn&rsquo;t a watch that you can take out and tap and regulate and wind up and
+shake your head over. I hate people who talk about a sense of humor as
+you do. Are you so sure you have one yourself?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps I haven&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Philip agreed, but by the way in which he spoke
+Sylvia knew that he would maintain he had a sense of humor, and that the
+rest of humanity had none if it combined to contradict him. &ldquo;I always
+distrust people who are too confidently the possessors of one,&rdquo; he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand in the least what I mean,&rdquo; Sylvia cried out, in
+exasperation. &ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t distrust anybody else&rsquo;s sense of humor if
+you had one yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I said,&rdquo; Philip pointed out, in an aggrieved voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go on; you&rsquo;ll make me scream,&rdquo; she adjured him. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t talk
+about a sense of humor, because if there is such a thing it obviously
+can&rsquo;t be talked about.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lest Philip should pursue the argument, she left him and went for a long
+muddy walk by herself half-way to Galton. She had never before walked
+beyond the village of Medworth, but she was still in such a state of
+nervous exasperation that she continued down the hill beyond it without
+noticing how far it was taking her. The country<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> on either side of the
+road ascended in uncultivated fields toward dense oak woods. In many of
+these fields were habitations with grandiose names, mostly built of
+corrugated iron. Sylvia thought at first that she was approaching the
+outskirts of Galton and pressed on to explore the town, the name of
+which was familiar from the rickety tradesmen&rsquo;s carts that jogged
+through Green Lanes. There was no sign of a town, however, and after
+walking about two miles through a landscape that recalled the pictures
+she had seen of primitive settlements in the Far West, she began to feel
+tired and turned round upon her tracks, wishing she had not come quite
+so far. Suddenly a rustic gate that was almost buried in the unclipped
+hazel hedge on one side of the road was flung open, and an elderly lady
+with a hooked nose and fierce bright eyes, dressed in what looked at a
+first glance like a pair of soiled lace window-curtains, asked Sylvia
+with some abruptness if she had met a turkey going in her direction.
+Sylvia shook her head, and the elderly lady (Sylvia would have called
+her an old lady from her wrinkled countenance, had she not been so
+astonishingly vivacious in her movements) called in a high harsh voice:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Emmie! There&rsquo;s a girl here coming from Galton way, and <i>she</i> hasn&rsquo;t
+seen Major Kettlewell.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the distance a female voice answered, shrilly, &ldquo;Perhaps he&rsquo;s crossed
+over to the Pluepotts&rsquo;!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia explained that she had misunderstood the first inquiry, but that
+nobody had passed her since she turned back five minutes ago.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We call the turkey Major Kettlewell because he looks like Major
+Kettlewell, but Major Kettlewell himself lives over there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The elderly lady indicated the other side of the road with a vague
+gesture, and went on:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where can that dratted bird have got to? Major! Major! Major!
+Chuch&mdash;chick&mdash;chilly&mdash;chilly&mdash;chuck&mdash;chuck,&rdquo; she called.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia hoped that the real major lived far enough away to be out of
+hearing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never keep a turkey,&rdquo; the elderly lady went on, addressing Sylvia. &ldquo;We
+didn&rsquo;t kill it for Christmas,<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> because we&rsquo;d grown fond of it, even
+though he is like that old ruffian of a major. And ever since he&rsquo;s gone
+on the wander. It&rsquo;s the springtime coming, I suppose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The elderly lady&rsquo;s companion had by this time reached the gate, and
+Sylvia saw that she was considerably younger, but with the same
+hall-mark of old-maidishness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry any more about the bird, Adelaide,&rdquo; said the new-comer.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s tea-time. Depend upon it, he&rsquo;s crossed over to the Pluepotts&rsquo;.
+This time I really will wring his neck.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia prepared to move along, but the first lady asked her where she
+was going, and, when she heard Green Lanes, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gemini! That&rsquo;s beyond Medworth, isn&rsquo;t it? You&rsquo;d better come in and have
+a cup of tea with us. I&rsquo;m Miss Horne, and my friend here is Miss
+Hobart.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sunny Bank, as this particular tin house was named, not altogether
+inappropriately, although it happened to be on the less sunny side of
+the road, was built half-way up a steepish slope of very rough ground
+from which enough flints had been extracted to pave a zigzag of
+ascending paths, and to vary the contour of the slope with a miniature
+mountain range of unused material without apparently smoothing the areas
+of proposed cultivation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These paths are something dreadful, Emmie,&rdquo; said Miss Horne, as the
+three of them scrambled up through the garden. &ldquo;Never mind, we&rsquo;ll get
+the roller out of the hedge when Mr. Pluepott comes in on Wednesday.
+Miss Hobart nearly got carried away by the roller yesterday,&rdquo; she
+explained to Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>A trellised porch outside the bungalow&mdash;such apparently was the correct
+name for these habitations&mdash;afforded a view of the opposite slope, which
+was sprinkled with bungalows surrounded like Sunny Bank by heaps of
+stones; there were also one or two more pretentious buildings of red
+brick and one or two stony gardens without a dwelling-place as yet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re wondering why the name over the door isn&rsquo;t the same as
+the one on the gate? Mr. Pluepott is always going to take it out, but he
+never remembers to bring the paint. It&rsquo;s the name the man from whom we<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a>
+bought it gave the bungalow,&rdquo; said Miss Hobart, crossly. Sylvia read in
+gothic characters over the door Floral Nook, and agreed with the two
+ladies that Sunny Bank was much more suitable.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For whatever else it may be, it certainly isn&rsquo;t damp,&rdquo; Miss Horne
+declared. &ldquo;But, dear me, talking of names, you haven&rsquo;t told us yours.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt shy. It was actually the first time she had been called upon
+to announce herself since she was married. The two ladies exclaimed on
+hearing she was Mrs. Iredale, and Sylvia felt that there was a kind of
+impropriety in her being married, when Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, who
+were so very much older than she, were still spinsters.</p>
+
+<p>The four small rooms of which the bungalow consisted were lined with
+varnished match-boarding; everything was tied up with brightly colored
+bows of silk, and most of the pictures were draped with small curtains;
+the bungalow was full of knickknacks and shivery furniture, but not full
+enough to satisfy the owners&rsquo; passion for prettiness, so that wherever
+there was a little space on the walls silk bows had been nailed about
+like political favors. Sylvia thought it would have been simpler to tie
+a wide sash of pink silk round the house and call it The Chocolate Box.
+Tea, though even the spoons were tied up with silk, was a varied and
+satisfying meal. The conversation of the two ladies was remarkably
+entertaining when it touched upon their neighbors, and when twilight
+warned Sylvia that she must hurry away she was sorry to leave them.
+While she was making her farewells there was a loud tap at the door,
+followed immediately by the entrance of a small bullet-headed man with
+quick black eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve brought back your turkey, Miss Horne.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, thank you, Mr. Pluepott. There you are, Emmie. You were right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the bird began to flap its wings as violently as its
+position head downward would allow; nor, not being a horse, did it pay
+any attention to Mr. Pluepott&rsquo;s repeated shouts of &ldquo;Woa! Woa back, will
+you!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think you&rsquo;d better let him flap outside, Mr. Pluepott,&rdquo; Miss Hobart
+advised.<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia thought so too when she looked at the floor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shall I wring its neck now or would you rather I waited till I come in
+on Wednesday?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I think we&rsquo;ll wait, thank you, Mr. Pluepott,&rdquo; Miss Horne said.
+&ldquo;Perhaps you wouldn&rsquo;t mind shutting him up in the coop. He does wander
+so. Are you going into Galton?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pluepott replied, as he confined Major Kettlewell to his barracks,
+that, on the contrary, he was driving up to Medworth to see about some
+beehives for sale there, whereupon Miss Horne and Miss Hobart asked if
+he would mind taking Mrs. Iredale that far upon her way.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later Sylvia, on a very splintery seat, was jolting along
+beside Mr. Pluepott toward Medworth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rum lot of people hereabouts,&rdquo; he said, by way of opening the
+conversation, &ldquo;Some of the rummest people it&rsquo;s ever been my luck to
+meet. I came here because my wife had to leave the Midlands. Chest was
+bad. I used to be a cobbler at Bedford. Since I&rsquo;ve been here I&rsquo;ve become
+everything&mdash;carpenter, painter, decorator, gardener, mason, bee expert,
+poultry-keeper, blacksmith, livery-stables, furniture-remover, house
+agent, common carrier, bricklayer, dairyman, horse-breaker. The only
+thing I don&rsquo;t do now is make boots. Funny thing, and you won&rsquo;t believe
+it, but last week I had to buy myself the first pair of boots I ever
+bought since I was a lad of fifteen. Oh, well, I like the latest better
+than the last, as I jokingly told my missus the other night. It made her
+laugh,&rdquo; said Mr. Pluepott, looking at Sylvia rather anxiously; she
+managed to laugh too, and he seemed relieved.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I often make jokes for my missus. She&rsquo;s apt to get very melancholy with
+her chest. But, as I was saying, the folk round here they beat the band.
+It just shows what advertisement will do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia asked why.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, when I first came here, and I was one of the three first, I came
+because I read an advertisement in the paper: &lsquo;Land for the Million in
+lots from a quarter of an acre.&rsquo; Some fellow had bought an old farm that
+was no use to nobody and had the idea of splitting it up into lots.
+Originally this was the Oak Farm Estate and belonged to<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a> St. Mary&rsquo;s
+College, Oxford. Now we call it Oaktown&mdash;the residents, that is&mdash;but
+when we applied the other day to the Galton Rural District Council, so
+as we could have the name properly recognized, went in we did with the
+major, half a dozen of us, as smart as a funeral, one of the wise men of
+Gotham, which is what I jokingly calls Galton nowadays, said he thought
+Tintown would be a better name. The major got rare and angry, but his
+teeth slipped just as he was giving it &rsquo;em hot and strong, which is a
+trick they have. He nearly swallowed &rsquo;em last November, when he was
+taking the chair at a Conservative meeting, in an argument with a
+Radical about the war. They had to lead him outside and pat his back.
+It&rsquo;s a pity the old ladies can&rsquo;t get on with him. They fell out over
+blackberrying in his copse last Michaelmas. Well, the fact is the
+major&rsquo;s a bit close, and I think he meant to sell the blackberries. He&rsquo;s
+put up a notice now &lsquo;Beware of Dangerous Explosives,&rsquo; though there&rsquo;s
+nothing more dangerous than a broken air-gun in the whole house. Miss
+Horne was very bitter about it; oh, very bitter she was. Said she always
+knew the major was a guy, and he only wanted to stuff himself with
+gunpowder to give the boys a rare set out on the Fifth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How did Miss Horne and Miss Hobart come here?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Advertisement. They lived somewhere near London, I believe; came into a
+bit of money, I&rsquo;ve heard, and thought they&rsquo;d settle in the country. I
+give them a morning a week on Wednesdays. The man they bought it off had
+been a tax-collector somewhere in the West Indies. He swindled them
+properly, but they were sorry for him because he had a floating
+kidney&mdash;floating in alcohol, I should think, by the amount he drank. But
+they won&rsquo;t hear a word against him even now. He&rsquo;s living in Galton and
+they send him cabbages every week, which he gives to his rabbits when
+he&rsquo;s sober and throws at his housekeeper when he&rsquo;s drunk. Sunny Bank!
+I&rsquo;m glad it&rsquo;s not my Bank. As I jokingly said to my missus, I should
+soon be stony-broke. Ah, well, there&rsquo;s all sorts here and that&rsquo;s a
+fact,&rdquo; Mr. Pluepott continued, with a pensive flick at his pony. &ldquo;That
+man over there, for instance.&rdquo; He pointed<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a> with his whip through the
+gathering darkness to a particularly small tin cottage. &ldquo;He used to play
+the trombone in a theater till he played his inside out; now he thinks
+he&rsquo;s going to make a fortune growing early tomatoes for Covent Garden
+market. You get him with a pencil in his hand of an evening and you&rsquo;d
+think about borrowing money from him next year; but when you see him
+next morning trying to cover a five-by-four packing-case with a broken
+sash-light, you&rsquo;d be more afraid of his trying to borrow from you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With such conversation did Mr. Pluepott beguile the way to Medworth; and
+when he heard that Sylvia intended to walk in the dusk to Green Lanes he
+insisted on driving her the extra two miles.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The hives won&rsquo;t fly away,&rdquo; he said, cheerfully, &ldquo;and I like to make a
+good job of a thing. Well, now you&rsquo;ve found your way to Oaktown, I hope
+you&rsquo;ll visit us again. Mrs. Pluepott will be very glad to see you drop
+in for a cup of tea any day, and if you&rsquo;ve got any comical
+reading-matter, she&rsquo;d be glad to borrow from you; for her chest does
+make her very melancholy, and, being accustomed to having me always
+about the house when I was cobbling, she doesn&rsquo;t seem to get used to
+being alone. Only the other day she said if she&rsquo;d known I was going to
+turn into a Buffalo Bill she&rsquo;d rather have stayed in Bedford. &lsquo;Land for
+the Millions!&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I reckon you&rsquo;d call it Land for the Million,
+if you had to sweep the house clean of the mud you bring into it.&rsquo; Well,
+good night to you. Very glad I was able to oblige, I&rsquo;m sure.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip was relieved when Sylvia got back. She had never been out for so
+long before, and she teased him about the running away, that he had
+evidently imagined. She felt in a good humor after her expedition, and
+was glad to be back in this dignified and ancient house with its books
+and lamplight and not a silken bow anywhere to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So you&rsquo;ve been down to that abomination of tin houses? It&rsquo;s an absolute
+blot on the countryside. I don&rsquo;t recommend too close an
+acquaintanceship. I&rsquo;m told it&rsquo;s inhabited by an appalling set of
+rascals. Poor Melville, who owns the land all &rsquo;round, says he can&rsquo;t keep
+a hare.&rdquo;<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia said the people seemed rather amusing, and was not at all
+inclined to accept Philip&rsquo;s condemnation of them; he surely did not
+suggest that Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, for instance, were poachers?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear child, people who come and live in a place like the Oak Farm
+Estate&mdash;Oaktown, as they have the impudence to call it&mdash;are there for no
+good. They&rsquo;ve either done something discreditable in town or they hope
+to do something discreditable in the country. Oh yes, I&rsquo;ve heard all
+about our neighbors. There&rsquo;s a ridiculous fellow who calls himself a
+major&mdash;I believe he used to be in the volunteers&mdash;and can&rsquo;t understand
+why he&rsquo;s not made a magistrate. I&rsquo;m told he&rsquo;s the little tin god of
+Tintown. No, no, I prefer even your friendship with our vicar. Don&rsquo;t be
+cross with me, Sylvia, for laughing at your new friends, but you mustn&rsquo;t
+take them too seriously. I shall have finished the text I&rsquo;m writing this
+month, and we&rsquo;ll go up to London for a bit. Shall we? I&rsquo;m afraid you&rsquo;re
+getting dull down here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The spring wore away, but the text showed no signs of being finished.
+Sylvia suggested that she should invite Gladys and Enid Worsley to stay
+with her, but Philip begged her to postpone the invitation while he was
+working, and thought in any case it would be better to have them down in
+summer. Sylvia went to Oaktown once or twice, but said nothing about it
+to Philip, because from a sort of charitableness she did not want him to
+diminish himself further in her eyes by airing his prejudices with the
+complacency that seemed to increase all the time they stayed in the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>One day at the end of April Miss Horne and Miss Hobart announced they
+had bought a governess-car and a pony, built a stable, and intended to
+celebrate their first drive by calling on Sylvia at Green Lanes. Mr.
+Pluepott had promised, even if it should not be on a Wednesday, to
+superintend the first expedition and gave his opinion of the boy whom it
+was proposed to employ as coachman. The boy in question, whom Mr.
+Pluepott called Jehuselah, whether from an attempt to combine a
+satirical expression of his driving and his age, or too slight
+acquaintance with Biblical personalities, was uncertain, was known as
+Ernie<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a> to Miss Horne and Miss Hobart when he was quick and good, but as
+Ernest when he was slow and bad; his real name all the time was Herbert.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; Philip ejaculated, when he beheld the governess-car from
+his window. &ldquo;Who on earth is this?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Friends of mine,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;Miss Horne and Miss Hobart. I told you
+about them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But they&rsquo;re getting out,&rdquo; Philip gasped, in horror. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re coming
+here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;I hope there&rsquo;s plenty for tea. They always give
+me the most enormous teas.&rdquo; And without waiting for any more of Philip&rsquo;s
+protests she hurried down-stairs and out into the road to welcome the
+two ladies. They were both of them dressed in pigeon&rsquo;s-throat silk under
+more lace even than usual, and arrived in a state of enthusiasm over
+Ernie&rsquo;s driving and thankfulness for the company of Mr. Pluepott, who
+was also extremely pleased with the whole turn-out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A baby in arms couldn&rsquo;t have handled that pony more carefully,&rdquo; he
+declared, looking at Ernie with as much pride as if he had begotten him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re so looking forward to meeting Mr. Iredale,&rdquo; said Miss Horne.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We hear he&rsquo;s a great scholar,&rdquo; said Miss Hobart.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia took them into the dining-room, where she was glad to see that a
+gigantic tea had been prepared&mdash;a match even for the most profuse of
+Sunny Bank&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>Then she went up-stairs to fetch Philip, who flatly refused to come
+down.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must come,&rdquo; Sylvia urged. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never forgive you if you don&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dearest Sylvia, I really cannot entertain the eccentricities of
+Tintown here. You invited them. You must look after them. I&rsquo;m busy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you coming?&rdquo; Sylvia asked, biting her lips.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, I really can&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s absurd. I don&rsquo;t want this kind of people here.
+Besides, I must work.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t work,&rdquo; Sylvia cried, in a fury, and she swept all his books
+and papers on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I certainly sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t come now,&rdquo; he said, in the prim voice that was so
+maddening.<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did you mean to come before I upset your books?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I probably should have come,&rdquo; he answered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All right. I&rsquo;m so sorry. I&rsquo;ll pick everything up,&rdquo; and she plunged down
+on the floor. &ldquo;There you are,&rdquo; she said when everything was put back in
+its place. &ldquo;Now will you come?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, my dear. I told you I wouldn&rsquo;t after you upset my things.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Philip,&rdquo; she cried, her eyes bright with rage, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re making me begin
+to hate you sometimes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then she left him and went back to her guests, to whom she explained
+that her husband had a headache and was lying down. The ladies were
+disappointed, but consoled themselves by recommending a number of
+remedies which Miss Horne insisted that Sylvia should write down. When
+tea was finished, Miss Hobart said that their first visit to Green Lanes
+had been most enjoyable and that there was only one thing they would
+like to do before going home, which would be to visit the church. Sylvia
+jumped at an excuse for not showing them over the house, and they set
+out immediately through the garden to walk to the little church that
+stood in a graveyard grass-grown like the green lanes of the hamlet
+whose dead were buried there. The sun was westering, and in the golden
+air they lowered their voices for a thrush that was singing his vespers
+upon a moldering wooden cross.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nobody ever comes here,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;Hardly anybody comes to church
+ever. The people don&rsquo;t like Mr. Dorward&rsquo;s services. They say he can&rsquo;t be
+heard.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the vicar himself appeared, and seemed greatly pleased to see
+Sylvia and her visitors; she felt a little guilty, because, though she
+was great friends with Mr. Dorward, she had never been inside the
+church, nor had he ever hinted he would like her to come. It would seem
+so unkind for her to come like this for the first time with strangers,
+as if the church which she knew he deeply loved was nothing but a
+tea-time entertainment. There was no trace of reproachfulness in his
+manner, as he showed Miss Horne and Miss Hobart the vestments and a
+little image of the Virgin in peach-blow glaze that he moved caressingly
+into the sunlight, as a child might<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a> fondle reverently a favorite doll.
+He spoke of his plans for restoration and unrolled the design of a
+famous architect, adding with a smile for Sylvia that the lay rector
+disapproved of it thoroughly. They left him arranging the candlesticks
+on the altar, a half-pathetic, half-humorous figure that seemed to be
+playing a solitary game.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you say nobody goes to his church!&rdquo; Miss Horne exclaimed. &ldquo;But he&rsquo;s
+most polite and charming.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Scarcely anybody goes,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Emmie,&rdquo; said Miss Horne, standing upright and flashing forth an eagle&rsquo;s
+glance. &ldquo;<i>We</i> will attend his service.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is a very good idea of yours, Adelaide,&rdquo; Miss Hobart replied.</p>
+
+<p>Then they got into the governess-car with much determination, and with
+friendly waves of the hand to Sylvia set out back to Oaktown.</p>
+
+<p>When Miss Horne and Miss Hobart had left, Sylvia went up-stairs to have
+it out with Philip. At this rate there would very soon be a crisis in
+their married life. She was a little disconcerted by his getting up the
+moment she entered his room and coming to meet her with an apology.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dearest Sylvia, you can call me what you will; I shall deserve the
+worst. I can&rsquo;t understand my behavior this afternoon. I think I must
+have been working so hard that my nerves are hopelessly jangled. I very
+nearly followed you into the churchyard to make myself most humbly
+pleasant, but I saw Dorward go &rsquo;round almost immediately afterward, and
+I could not have met him in the mood I was in without being unpardonably
+rude.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He waited for her with an arm stretched out in reconciliation, but
+Sylvia hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all very well to hurt my feelings like that because you happened
+to be feeling in a bad temper,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and then think you&rsquo;ve only
+got to make a pleasant little speech to put everything right again.
+Besides, it isn&rsquo;t only to-day; it&rsquo;s day after day since we&rsquo;ve been
+married. I feel like Gulliver when he was being tied up by the
+Lilliputians. I can&rsquo;t find any one big rope that&rsquo;s destroying my
+freedom, but somehow or other my freedom is being destroyed. Did you
+marry me casually, as people buy birds, to put me in a cage?&rdquo;<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear, I married you because I loved you. You know I fought against
+the idea of marrying you for a long time, but I loved you too much.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you afraid of my loyalty?&rdquo; she demanded. &ldquo;Do you think I go to
+Oaktown to be made love to?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia!&rdquo; he protested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I go there because I&rsquo;m bored, bored, endlessly, hopelessly,
+paralyzingly bored. It&rsquo;s my own fault. I never ought to have married
+you. I can&rsquo;t think why I did, but at least it wasn&rsquo;t for any mercenary
+reason. You&rsquo;re not to believe that. Philip, I do like you, but why will
+you always upset me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He thought for a moment and asked her presently what greater freedom she
+wanted, what kind of freedom.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s it,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;I told you I couldn&rsquo;t find any one big rope
+that bound me. There isn&rsquo;t a single thread I can&rsquo;t snap with perfect
+ease, but it&rsquo;s the multitude of insignificant little threads that almost
+choke me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You told me you thought you would like to live in the country,&rdquo; he
+reminded her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do, but, Philip, do remember that I really am still a child. I&rsquo;ve got
+a deep voice and I can talk like a professor, but I&rsquo;m still a hopeless
+kid. I oughtn&rsquo;t to have to tell you this. You ought to see it for
+yourself if you love me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dearest Sylvia, I&rsquo;m always telling you how young you are, and there&rsquo;s
+nothing that annoys you more,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Philip, Philip, you really are pathetic! When did you ever meet a
+young person who liked to have her youth called attention to? You&rsquo;re so
+remote from beginning to understand how to manage me, and I&rsquo;m still
+manageable. Very soon I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be, though; and there&rsquo;ll be such a
+dismal smash-up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you&rsquo;d only explain exactly,&rdquo; he began; but she interrupted him at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear man, if I explain and you take notes and consult them for your
+future behavior to me, do you think that&rsquo;s going to please me? It can
+all be said in two words. I&rsquo;m human. For the love of God be human
+yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here, let&rsquo;s go away for a spell,&rdquo; said Philip, brightly.<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The cat&rsquo;s miaowing. Let&rsquo;s open the door. No, seriously, I think I
+should like to go away from here for a while.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By yourself?&rdquo; he asked, in a frightened voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no, not by myself. I&rsquo;m perfectly content with you. Only don&rsquo;t
+suggest the Italian lakes and try to revive the early sweets of our
+eight months of married life. Don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s have a sentimental rebuilding.
+It will be so much more practical to build up something quite new.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Philip really seemed to have been shaken by this conversation. Sylvia
+knew he had not finished his text, but he put everything aside in order
+not to keep her waiting; and before May was half-way through they had
+reached the island of Sirene. Here they stayed two months in a crumbling
+pension upon the cliff&rsquo;s edge until Sylvia was sun-dried without and
+within; she was enthralled by the evidences of imperial Rome, and her
+only regret was that she did not meet an eccentric Englishman who was
+reputed to have found, when digging a cistern, at least one of the lost
+books of Elephantis, which he read in olive-groves by the light of the
+moon. However, she met several other eccentrics of different
+nationalities and was pleased to find that Philip&rsquo;s humanism was, with
+Sirene as a background, strong enough to lend him an appearance of
+humanity. They planned, like all other visitors to Sirene, to build a
+big villa there; they listened like all other visitors to the Italian
+and foreign inhabitants&rsquo; depreciation of every villa but the one in
+which they lived, either because they liked it or because they wanted to
+let it or because they wished new-comers to fall into snares laid for
+themselves when they were new-comers.</p>
+
+<p>At last they tore themselves from Sirenean dreams and schemes, chiefly
+because Sylvia had accepted an invitation to stay at Arbour End. They
+lingered for a while at Naples on the way home, where Sylvia looked
+about her with Petronian eyes, so much so, indeed, that a guide mistook
+what was merely academic curiosity for something more practical. It cost
+Philip fifty liras and nearly all the Italian he knew to get rid of the
+pertinacious and ingenious fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Arbour End had not changed at all in a year. Sylvia,<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> when she thought
+of Green Lanes, laughed a little bitterly at herself (but not so
+bitterly as she would have laughed before the benevolent sunshine of
+Sirene) for ever supposing that she and Philip could create anything
+like it. Gladys and Enid, though they were now fifteen, had not yet
+lengthened their frocks; their mother could not yet bring herself to
+contemplate the disappearance of those slim black legs.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But we shall have to next term,&rdquo; Gladys said, &ldquo;because Miss Ashley&rsquo;s
+written home about them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And that stuck-up thing Gwendyr Jones said they were positively
+disgusting,&rdquo; Enid went on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; added Gladys, &ldquo;and I told her they weren&rsquo;t half as disgusting as
+her ankles. And they aren&rsquo;t, are they, Sylvia?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some of the girls call her marrow-bones,&rdquo; said Enid.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia would have preferred to avoid any intimate talks with Mrs.
+Worsley, but it was scarcely to be expected that she would succeed, and
+one night, looking ridiculously young with her fair hair hanging down
+her back, she came to Sylvia&rsquo;s bedroom, and sitting down at the end of
+her bed, began:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, are you glad you got married?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At any rate, Sylvia thought, she had the tact not to ask if she was glad
+she had taken her advice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sorry as I was,&rdquo; Sylvia told her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, didn&rsquo;t I warn you against the first year? You&rsquo;ll see that I was
+right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I was not sorry in the way you prophesied. I&rsquo;ve never had any
+bothers with the country. Philip&rsquo;s sister was rather a bore, always
+wondering about his clothes for the year after next; but we made a
+treaty, and she&rsquo;s been excluded from The Old Farm&mdash;wait a bit, only till
+next October. By Jove! I say, the treaty&rsquo;ll have to be renewed. I don&rsquo;t
+believe even memories of Sirene would enable me to deal with Gertrude
+this winter. No, what worries me most in marriage is not other people,
+but our two selves. I hate writing Sylvia Iredale instead of Sylvia
+Scarlett. Quite unreasonable of me, but most worries are unreasonable. I
+don&rsquo;t want to be owned. I&rsquo;m a book to Philip; he bought me for my
+binding and never intended to read<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a> me, even if he could. I don&rsquo;t mean
+to say I was beautiful, but I was what an American girl at Hornton House
+used to call cunning; the pattern was unusual, and he couldn&rsquo;t resist
+it. But now that he&rsquo;s bought me, he expects me to stay quite happily on
+a shelf in a glass case; one day he may perhaps try to read me, but at
+present, so long as I&rsquo;m taken out and dusted&mdash;our holiday at Sirene was
+a dusting&mdash;he thinks that&rsquo;s enough. But the worm that flies in the heart
+of the storm has got in, Victoria, and is making a much more unusual
+pattern across my inside&mdash;I say, I think it&rsquo;s about time to drop this
+metaphor, don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I quite understand all you&rsquo;re saying,&rdquo; said Victoria
+Worsley.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia brought her hand from beneath the bedclothes and took her
+friend&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Does it matter?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but I like to understand what people are saying,&rdquo; Mrs. Worsley
+insisted. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why we never go abroad for our holidays. But, Sylvia,
+about being owned, which is where I stopped understanding. Lennie
+doesn&rsquo;t own me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, you own <i>him</i>, but I don&rsquo;t own Philip.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I expect you will, my dear, after you&rsquo;ve been married a little longer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You think I shall acquire him in monthly instalments. I should find at
+the end the cost too much in repairs, like Fred Organ.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hube&rsquo;s brother, the cabman. Don&rsquo;t you remember?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, of course, how silly of me! I thought it might be an Italian you
+met at Sirene. You&rsquo;ve made me feel quite sad, Sylvia. I always want
+everybody to be happy,&rdquo; she sighed. &ldquo;I am happy&mdash;perfectly happy&mdash;in
+spite of being married.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nobody&rsquo;s happy because of being married,&rdquo; Sylvia enunciated, rather
+sententiously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What nonsense you talk, and you&rsquo;re only just eighteen!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I talk nonsense,&rdquo; Sylvia said, &ldquo;but all the same it&rsquo;s very
+true nonsense. You and Lennie couldn&rsquo;t have ever been anything but
+happy.&rdquo;<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Darling Lennie, I think it must be because he&rsquo;s so stupid. I wonder if
+he&rsquo;s smoking in bed. He always does if I leave him to go and talk to
+anybody. Good night, dear.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia returned to her book, wondering more than ever how she could have
+supposed a year ago that she could follow Victoria Worsley along the
+pathway of her simple and happy life.</p>
+
+<p>The whole family from Arbour End came to London for the ten days before
+term began, and Sylvia stayed with them at a hotel. Gladys and Enid had
+to get their new frocks, and certain gaps in Hercules&rsquo;s education had to
+be filled up, such as visiting the Zoo and the Tower of London and the
+Great Wheel at Earl&rsquo;s Court. Sylvia and the twins searched in vain for
+the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels, but they found Mabel selling
+Turkish Delight by herself at a small stall in another part of the
+Exhibition. Sylvia thought the best way of showing her penitence for the
+heartless way she had treated her was to buy as much Turkish Delight as
+could possibly be carried away, since she probably received a percentage
+on the takings. Mabel seemed to bear no resentment, but she was rather
+shy, because she mistook the twins for Sylvia&rsquo;s sisters-in-law and
+therefore avoided the only topic upon which she could talk freely, which
+was men. They left the florid and accommodating creature with a callow
+youth who was leaning familiarly across the counter and smacking with a
+cane his banana-colored boots; then they ate as much Turkish Delight as
+they could and divided the rest among some ducks and the Kaffirs in the
+kraal.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia also visited Hornton House and explained to Miss Ashley why she
+had demanded the banishment of Gertrude from Green Lanes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Poor Gertrude, she was very much upset,&rdquo; Miss Ashley said.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, softened by the memories of a so happy year that her old school
+evoked, made up her mind not to carry on the war against Gertrude. She
+felt, too, a greater charity toward Philip, who, after all, had been the
+cause of her being given that so happy year, and she went back to
+Hampshire with the firm intention of encouraging this<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a> new mood that the
+last four months had created in her. Philip was waiting on the platform
+and was so glad to see her again that he drove even more absent-mindedly
+than usual, until she took the reins from him and whipped up the horse
+with a quite positive anticipation of home.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia learned from Philip that the visit of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart
+had influenced other lives than their own, for it seemed that Miss
+Horne&rsquo;s announcement of their attendance in future at Mr. Dorward&rsquo;s
+empty church had been fully carried out. Not a Sunday passed but that
+they drove up in the governess-car to Mass, so Philip said with a wry
+face for the word; what was more, they stayed to lunch with the vicar,
+presided at the Sunday-school, and attended the evening service, which
+had been put forward half an hour to suit their supper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They absolutely rule Green Lanes ecclesiastically,&rdquo; Philip said. &ldquo;And
+some of the mercenary bumpkins and boobies &rsquo;round here have taken to
+going to church for what they can get out of the two old ladies. I&rsquo;m
+glad to say, however, that the farmers and their families haven&rsquo;t come
+&rsquo;round yet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia said she was glad for Mr. Dorward&rsquo;s sake, and she wondered why
+Philip made such a fuss about the form of a service in the reality of
+which, whatever way it was presented, he had no belief.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re right,&rdquo; he agreed. &ldquo;Perhaps what I&rsquo;m really afraid of
+is that our fanatical vicar will really convert the parish to his
+childish religion. Upon my soul, I believe Miss Horne has her eye upon
+me. I know she&rsquo;s been holding forth upon my iniquitous position as lay
+rector, and these confounded Radicals will snatch hold of anything to
+create prejudice against landowners.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you make friends with Mr. Dorward?&rdquo; Sylvia suggested. &ldquo;You
+could surely put aside your religious differences and talk about the
+classics.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I dare say I&rsquo;m bigoted in my own way,&rdquo; Philip answered. &ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t
+stand a priest, just as some people can&rsquo;t stand cats or snakes. It&rsquo;s a
+positively physical repulsion that I can&rsquo;t get over. No, I&rsquo;m afraid I
+must leave Dorward to you, Sylvia. I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s much danger of
+your falling a victim to man-millinery. It&rsquo;ll take<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a> all your strength of
+mind, however, to resist the malice of these two old witches, and I
+wager you&rsquo;ll be excommunicated from the society of Tintown in next to no
+time.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia found that Philip had by no means magnified the activities of
+Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, and for the first time on a Sunday morning
+at Green Lanes a thin black stream of worshipers flowed past the windows
+of The Old Farm after service. It was more than curiosity could bear;
+without saying a word to anybody Sylvia attended the evening service
+herself. The church was very small, and her entrance would have
+attracted much more attention than it did if Ernie, who was holding the
+thurible for Mr. Dorward to put in the incense, had not given at that
+moment a mighty sneeze, scattering incense and charcoal upon the altar
+steps and frightening the woman at the harmonium into a violent discord,
+from which the choir was rescued by Miss Horne&rsquo;s unmoved and harsh
+soprano that positively twisted back the craning necks of the
+congregation into their accustomed apathy. Sylvia wondered whether fear,
+conversion, or extra wages had induced Ernie to put on that romantic
+costume which gave him the appearance of a rustic table covered with a
+tea-cloth, as he waited while the priest tried to evoke a few threads of
+smoke from the ruin caused by his sneeze. Sylvia was so much occupied in
+watching Ernie that she did not notice the rest of the congregation had
+sat down. Mr. Dorward must have seen her, for he had thrown off the
+heavy vestment he was wearing and was advancing apparently to say how
+d&rsquo;ye do. No, he seemed to think better of it, and had turned aside to
+read from a large book, but what he read neither Sylvia nor the
+congregation had any idea. She decided that all this standing up and
+kneeling and sitting down again was too confusing for a novice, and
+during the rest of the service she remained seated, which was at once
+the most comfortable and the least conspicuous attitude. Sylvia had
+intended to slip out before the service was over, as she did not want
+Miss Horne and Miss Hobart to exult over her imaginary conversion, but
+the finale came sooner than she expected in a fierce hymnal outburst
+during which Mr. Dorward hurriedly divested himself and reached the
+vestianel. Miss Horne had scarcely thumped<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a> the last beat on the
+choir-boy&rsquo;s head in front of her, the echoes of the last amen had
+scarcely died away, before the female sexton, an old woman called
+Cassandra Batt, was turning out the oil-lamps and the little
+congregation had gathered &rsquo;round the vicar in the west door to hear Miss
+Horne&rsquo;s estimate of its behavior. There was no chance for Sylvia to
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ernest,&rdquo; said Miss Horne, &ldquo;what did you sneeze for during the
+Magnificat? Father Dorward never got through with censing the altar, you
+bad boy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The stoff got all up me nose,&rdquo; said Ernie. &ldquo;Oi couldn&rsquo;t help meself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Next time you want to sneeze,&rdquo; said Miss Hobart, kindly, &ldquo;press your
+top lip below the nose, and you&rsquo;ll keep it back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I got too much to do,&rdquo; Ernie muttered, &ldquo;and too much to think on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jane Frost,&rdquo; said Miss Horne, quickly turning the direction of her
+attack, &ldquo;you must practise all this week. Suppose Father Dorward gets a
+new organ? You wouldn&rsquo;t like not to be allowed to play on it. Some of
+your notes to-night weren&rsquo;t like a musical instrument at all. The Nunc
+Dimittis was more like water running out of a bath. &lsquo;Lord, now lettest
+thou thy servant depart in peace,&rsquo; are the words, not in pieces, which
+was what it sounded like the way you played it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Jane Frost, a daughter of the woman who kept the Green Lanes shop,
+blushed as deeply as her anemia would let her, and promised she would do
+better next week.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right, Jane,&rdquo; said Miss Hobart, whose part seemed to be the
+consolation of Miss Horne&rsquo;s victims. &ldquo;I dare say the pedal is a bit
+obstinate.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s turble obstinate,&rdquo; said Cassandra, the sexton, who, having
+extinguished all the lamps, now elbowed her way through the clustered
+congregation, a lighted taper in her hand. &ldquo;I jumped on un once or twice
+this morning to make um a bit easier like, but a groaned at me like a
+wicked old toad. It&rsquo;s ile that a wants.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The congregation, on which a good deal of grease was being scattered by
+Cassandra&rsquo;s taper in her excitement, hastened to support her diagnosis.<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yass, yass, &rsquo;tis ile that a wants.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will bring a bottle of oil up during the week,&rdquo; Miss Horne
+proclaimed. &ldquo;Good night, everybody, and remember to be punctual next
+Sunday.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The congregation murmured its good night, and Sylvia, to whom it
+probably owed such a speedy dismissal, was warmly greeted by Miss Horne.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So glad you&rsquo;ve come, Mrs. Iredale, though I wish you&rsquo;d brought the lay
+rector. Lay rector, indeed! Sakes alive, what will they invent next?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, we&rsquo;re so glad you&rsquo;ve come, dear,&rdquo; Miss Hobart added. Mr. Dorward
+came up in his funny quick way. When they were all walking across the
+churchyard, he whispered to Sylvia, in his funny quick voice:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Church fowls, church fowls, you know! Mustn&rsquo;t discourage them. Pious
+fowls! Godly fowls! An example for the parish. Better attendance
+lately.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then he caught up the two ladies and helped them into the vehicle,
+wishing them a pleasant drive and promising a nearly full moon shortly,
+after Medworth, very much as if the moon was really made of cheese and
+would be eaten for supper by Miss Horne and Miss Hobart.</p>
+
+<p>When Sylvia got back to The Old Farm she amused Philip so much with her
+account of the service that he forgot to be angry with her for doing
+what at first he maintained put him in a false position.</p>
+
+<p>All that autumn and winter Miss Horne and Miss Hobart wrestled with
+Satan for the souls of the hamlet; incidentally they wrestled with him
+for Sylvia&rsquo;s soul, but she scratched the event by ceasing to appear at
+all in church, and intercourse between them became less frequent; the
+friends of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart had to be all or nothing, and not
+the least divergence of belief or opinion, manners or policy, was
+tolerated by these two bigoted old ladies. The congregation,
+notwithstanding their efforts, remained stationary, much to Philip&rsquo;s
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The truth is,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that the measure of their power is the pocket.
+Every scamp in the parish who thinks it will pay him to go to church is
+going to church. The others don&rsquo;t go at all or walk over to Medworth.&rdquo;<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a></p>
+
+<p>Her contemplation of the progress of religion in Green Lanes, which,
+however much she affected to laugh at it, could not help interesting
+Sylvia on account of her eccentric friend the vicar, was temporarily
+interrupted by a visit from Gertrude Iredale. Remembering what Miss
+Ashley had told her, Sylvia had insisted upon Philip&rsquo;s asking his sister
+to stay, and he had obviously been touched by her suggestion. Gertrude
+perhaps had also taken some advice from Miss Ashley, for she was
+certainly less inclined to wonder what her brother would do about his
+clothes the year after next. She could not, however, altogether keep to
+herself her criticism of the housewifery at The Old Farm, a simple
+business in Sylvia&rsquo;s eyes, which consisted of letting the cook do
+exactly as she liked, with what she decided were very satisfactory
+results.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s so extravagant,&rdquo; Gertrude objected.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Philip doesn&rsquo;t grumble. We can afford to pay a little extra every
+week to have the house comfortably run.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But the principle is so bad,&rdquo; Gertrude insisted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, principle,&rdquo; said Sylvia in an airy way, which must have been
+galling to her sister-in-law. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe in principles. Principles
+are only excuses for what we want to think or what we want to do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you believe in abstract morality?&rdquo; Gertrude asked, taking off her
+glasses and gazing with weak and earnest eyes at Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe in anything abstract,&rdquo; Sylvia replied.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How strange!&rdquo; the other murmured. &ldquo;Goodness me! if I didn&rsquo;t believe in
+abstract morality I don&rsquo;t know where I should be&mdash;or what I should do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia regarded the potential sinner with amused curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do tell me what you might do,&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;Would you live with a man
+without marrying him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t be coarse,&rdquo; said Gertrude. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I could put it much more coarsely,&rdquo; Sylvia said, with a laugh. &ldquo;Would
+you&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia!&rdquo; Gertrude whistled through her teeth in an agony of
+apprehensive modesty. &ldquo;I entreat you not to continue.&rdquo;<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There you are,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;That shows what rubbish all your scruples
+are. You&rsquo;re shocked at what you thought I was going to say. Therefore
+you ought to be shocked at yourself. As a matter of fact, I was going to
+ask if you would marry a man without loving him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I were to marry,&rdquo; Gertrude said, primly, &ldquo;I should certainly want to
+love my husband.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but what do you understand by love? Do you mean by love the
+emotion that makes people go mad to possess&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Gertrude rose from her chair. &ldquo;Sylvia, the whole conversation is
+becoming extremely unpleasant. I must ask you either to stop or let me
+go out of the room.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t be afraid of any personal revelations,&rdquo; Sylvia assured her.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never been in love that way. I only wanted to find out if you had
+been and ask you about it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never,&rdquo; said Gertrude, decidedly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve certainly never been in love
+like that, and I hope I never shall.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think you&rsquo;re quite safe. And I&rsquo;m beginning to think I&rsquo;m quite safe,
+too,&rdquo; Sylvia added. &ldquo;However, if you won&rsquo;t discuss abstract morality in
+an abstract way, you mustn&rsquo;t expect me to do so, and the problem of
+housekeeping returns to the domain of practical morality, where
+principles don&rsquo;t count.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia decided after this conversation to accept Gertrude as a joke, and
+she ceased to be irritated by her any longer, though her sister-in-law
+stayed from Christmas till the end of February. In one way her presence
+was of positive utility, because Philip, who was very much on the
+lookout for criticism of his married life, was careful not to find fault
+with Sylvia while she remained at Green Lanes; it also acted as a
+stimulus to Sylvia herself, who used her like a grindstone on which to
+sharpen her wits. Another advantage from Gertrude&rsquo;s visit was that
+Philip was able to finish his text, thanks to her industrious docketing
+and indexing and generally fussing about in his study. Therefore, when
+Sylvia proposed that the twins should spend their Easter holidays at The
+Old Farm, he had no objection to offer.</p>
+
+<p>The prospect of the twins&rsquo; visit kept Sylvia at the peak<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a> of pleasurable
+expectation throughout the month of March, and when at last, on a
+budding morn in early April, she drove through sky-enchanted puddles to
+meet them, she sang for the first time in months the raggle-taggle
+gipsies, and reached the railway station fully half an hour before the
+train was due. Nobody got out but the twins; yet they laughed and talked
+so much, the three of them, in the first triumph of meeting, that
+several passengers thought the wayside station must be more important
+than it was, and asked anxiously if this was Galton.</p>
+
+<p>Gladys and Enid had grown a good deal in six months, and now with their
+lengthened frocks and tied-back hair they looked perhaps older than
+sixteen. Their faces, however, had not grown longer with their frocks;
+they were as full of spirits as ever, and Sylvia found that while they
+still charmed her as of old with that quality of demanding to be loved
+for the sheer grace of their youth, they were now capable of giving her
+the intimate friendship she so greatly desired.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You darlings,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re like champagne-cup in two beautiful
+crystal glasses with rose-leaves floating about on top.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The twins, who with all that zest in their own beauty which is the
+prerogative of a youth unhampered by parental jealousy, frankly loved to
+be admired; Sylvia&rsquo;s admiration never made them self-conscious, because
+it seemed a natural expression of affection. Their attitude toward
+Philip was entirely free from any conventional respect; as Sylvia&rsquo;s
+husband he was candidate for all the love they had for her, but when
+they found that Philip treated them as Sylvia&rsquo;s toys they withheld the
+honor of election and began to criticize him. When he seemed shocked at
+their criticism they began to tease him, explaining to Sylvia that he
+had obviously never been teased in his life. Philip, for his part, found
+them precocious and vain, which annoyed Sylvia and led to her seeking
+diversions and entertainment for the twins&rsquo; holidays outside The Old
+Farm. As a matter of fact, she had no need to search far, because they
+both took a great fancy to Mr. Dorward, who turned out to have an
+altogether unusual gift for drawing nonsensical pictures, which were
+almost<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a> as funny as his own behavior, that behavior which irritated so
+many more people than it amused.</p>
+
+<p>The twins teased Mr. Dorward a good deal about his love-affair with Miss
+Horne and Miss Hobart, and though this teasing may only have coincided
+with Mr. Dorward&rsquo;s previous conviction that the two ladies were managing
+him and his parish rather too much for his dignity and certainly too
+much for his independence, there was no doubt that the quarrel between
+them was prepared during the time that Gladys and Enid were staying at
+Green Lanes; indeed, Sylvia thought she could name the actual afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia&rsquo;s intercourse with Miss Horne and Miss Hobart was still friendly
+enough to necessitate an early visit to Sunny Bank to present the twins.
+The two ladies were very fond of what they called &ldquo;young people,&rdquo; and at
+first they were enraptured by Gladys and Enid, particularly when they
+played some absurd school-girl&rsquo;s trick upon Major Kettlewell. Sylvia,
+too, had by her tales of the island of Sirene inspired them with a
+longing to go there; they liked nothing better than to make her describe
+the various houses and villas that were for sale or to let, in every one
+of which in turn Miss Horne and Miss Hobart saw themselves installed.</p>
+
+<p>On the particular afternoon from which Sylvia dated the preparation of
+the quarrel, they were all at tea with Mr. Dorward in his cottage. The
+conversation came round to Sirene, and Sylvia told how she had always
+thought that the vicar resembled a Roman Emperor. Was it Nero? He was
+perhaps flattered by the comparison, notwithstanding the ladies&rsquo; loud
+exclamations of dissent, and was anxious to test the likeness from a
+volume of engraved heads which he produced. With Gladys sitting on one
+arm of his chair and Enid on the other, the pages were turned over
+slowly to allow time for a careful examination of each head, which
+involved a good deal of attention to Mr. Dorward&rsquo;s own. In the end Nero
+was ruled out and a more obscure Emperor was hailed as his prototype,
+after which the twins rushed out into the garden and gathered strands of
+ivy to encircle his imperial brow; Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, who had
+taken no part in the discussion,<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a> left immediately after the coronation,
+and though it was a perfectly fine evening, they announced, as they got
+into their vehicle, that it looked very much like rain.</p>
+
+<p>Next Sunday the ladies came to church as usual, but Mr. Dorward kept
+them waiting half an hour for lunch while he showed the twins his
+ornaments and vestments, which they looked at solemnly as a penance for
+having spent most of the service with their handkerchiefs in their
+mouths. What Miss Horne and Miss Hobart said at lunch Sylvia never found
+out, but they drove away before Sunday-school and never came back to
+Green Lanes, either on that Sunday or on any Sunday afterward.</p>
+
+<p>All that Mr. Dorward would say about the incident was:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Church fowls! Chaste fowls! Chaste and holy, but tiresome. The vicar
+mustn&rsquo;t be managed. Doesn&rsquo;t like it. Gets frightened. Felt remote at
+lunch. That was all. Would keep on talking. Got bored and more remote.
+Vicar got so remote that he had to finish his lunch under the table.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no, you didn&rsquo;t really?&rdquo; cried the twins, in an ecstasy of pleasure.
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t really get under the table, Mr. Dorward?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, of course, of course. Vicar always speaks the truth.
+Delicious lunch.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had to tell Philip about this absurd incident, but he would only
+say that the man was evidently a buffoon in private as well as in
+public.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, Philip, don&rsquo;t you think it&rsquo;s a glorious picture? We laughed till
+we were tired.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gladys and Enid laugh very easily,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Personally I see
+nothing funny in a man, especially a clergyman, behaving like a clown.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Philip, you&rsquo;re impossible!&rdquo; Sylvia cried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; he said, dryly. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve noticed that ever since the arrival of
+our young guests you&rsquo;ve found more to complain of in my personality even
+than formerly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Young guests!&rdquo; Sylvia echoed, scornfully. &ldquo;Who would think, to hear you
+talk now, that you married a child? Really you&rsquo;re incomprehensible.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Impossible! Incomprehensible! In fact thoroughly negative,&rdquo; Philip
+said.<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia shrugged her shoulders and left him.</p>
+
+<p>The twins went back to school at the beginning of May, and Sylvia, who
+missed them very much, had to fall back on Mr. Dorward to remind her of
+their jolly company. Their intercourse, which the twins had established
+upon a certain plane, continued now upon the same plane. Life had to be
+regarded as Alice saw it in Wonderland or through the looking-glass.
+Sylvia remembered with irony that it was Philip who first introduced her
+to those two books; she decided he had only liked them because it was
+correct to like them. Mr. Dorward, however, actually was somebody in
+that fantastic world, not like anybody Alice met there, but another
+inhabitant whom she just happened to miss.</p>
+
+<p>To whom else but Mr. Dorward could have occurred that ludicrous
+adventure when he was staying with a brother priest in a remote part of
+Devonshire?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I always heard he was a little odd. However, we had dinner together in
+the kitchen. He only dined in the drawing-room on Thursdays.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When did he dine in the dining-room?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never. There wasn&rsquo;t a dining-room. There were a lot of rooms that were
+going to be the dining-room, but it was never decided which. And that
+cast a gloom over the whole house. My host behaved in the most
+evangelical way at dinner and only once threw the salad at the cook.
+After dinner we sat comfortably before the kitchen fire and discussed
+the Mozarabic rite and why yellow was no longer a liturgical color for
+confessors. At half past eleven my host suggested it was time to go to
+bed. He showed me up-stairs to a very nice bedroom and said good night,
+advising me to lock the door. I locked the door, undressed, said my
+prayers, and got into bed. I was just dozing off when I heard a loud tap
+at the door. I felt rather frightened. Rather frightened I felt. But I
+went to the door and opened it. Outside in the passage was my host in
+his nightgown with a candlestick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Past twelve o&rsquo;clock,&rsquo; he shouted. &lsquo;Time to change beds!&rsquo; and before I
+knew where I was he had rushed past me and shut me out into the
+passage.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did you change beds?&rdquo;<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There wasn&rsquo;t another bed in the house. I had to sleep in one of the
+rooms that might one day be a dining-room, and the next morning a rural
+dean arrived, which drove me away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Gradually from underneath what Philip called &ldquo;a mass of affectation,&rdquo;
+but what Sylvia divined as an armor assumed against the unsympathetic
+majority by a shy, sensitive, and lovable spirit, there emerged for her
+the reality of Mr. Dorward. She began to comprehend his faith, which was
+as simple as a little child&rsquo;s; she began to realize also that he was
+impelled to guard what he held to be most holy against the jeers of
+unbelievers by diverting toward his own eccentricity the world&rsquo;s
+mockery. He was a man of the deepest humility who considered himself
+incapable of proselytizing. Sylvia used to put before him sometimes the
+point of view of the outside world and try to show how he could avoid
+criticism and gain adherents. He used always to reply that if God had
+intended him to be a missionary he would not have been placed in this
+lowly parish, that here he was unable to do much harm, and that any who
+found faith in his church must find it through the grace of God, since
+it was impossible to suppose they would ever find it through his own
+ministrations. He insisted that people who stayed away from church
+because he read the service badly or burned too many candles or wore
+vestments were only ostentatious worshipers who looked upon the church
+as wax-works must regard Madame Tussaud&rsquo;s. He explained that he had been
+driven to discourage the work of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart because he
+had detected in himself a tendency toward spiritual pride in the growth
+of a congregation that did not belong either to him or to God; if he had
+tolerated Miss Horne&rsquo;s methods for a time it was because he feared to
+oppose the Divine intention. However, as soon as he found that he was
+thinking complacently of a congregation of twenty-four, nearly every one
+of which was a pensioner of Miss Horne, he realized that they were
+instruments of the devil, particularly when at lunch they began to
+suggest....</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo; Sylvia asked, when he paused.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The only thing to do was to finish my lunch under the<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> table,&rdquo; he
+snapped; nor would he be persuaded to discuss the quarrel further.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, who felt that the poor ladies had, after all, been treated in
+rather a cavalier fashion and was reproaching herself for having
+deserted them, went down to Oaktown shortly after this to call at Sunny
+Bank. They received her with freezing coldness, particularly Miss
+Hobart, whose eyes under lowering eyelids were sullen with hate. She
+said much less than Miss Horne, who walked in and out of the shivery
+furniture, fanning herself in her agitation and declaiming against Mr.
+Dorward at the top of her voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And your little friends?&rdquo; Miss Hobart put in with a smile that was not
+a smile. &ldquo;We thought them just a little badly brought up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You liked them very much at first,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, one often likes people at first.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And as Sylvia looked at her she realized that Miss Hobart was not nearly
+so old as she had thought her, perhaps not yet fifty. Still, at fifty
+one had no right to be jealous.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In fact,&rdquo; said Sylvia, brutally, &ldquo;you liked them very much till you
+thought Mr. Dorward liked them too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hobart&rsquo;s eyelids almost closed over her eyes and her thin lips
+disappeared. Miss Horne stopped in her restless parade and, pointing
+with her fan to the door, bade Sylvia be gone and never come to Sunny
+Bank again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The old witch,&rdquo; thought Sylvia, when she was toiling up the hill to
+Medworth in the midsummer heat. &ldquo;I believe he&rsquo;s right and that she is
+the devil.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She did not tell Philip about her quarrel, because she knew that he
+would have reminded her one by one of every occasion he had taken to
+warn Sylvia against being friendly with any inhabitant of Tintown. A
+week or two later, Philip announced with an air of satisfaction that a
+van of Treacherites had arrived in Newton Candover and might be expected
+at Green Lanes next Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia asked what on earth Treacherites were, and he explained that they
+were the followers of a certain Mr. John Treacher, who regarded himself
+as chosen by God to purify the Church of England of popish abuses.<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A dreadful little cad, I believe,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;But it will be fun to see
+what they make of Dorward. It&rsquo;s a pity the old ladies have been kept
+away by the heat, or we might have a free fight.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia warned Mr. Dorward of the Treacherites&rsquo; advent, and he seemed
+rather worried by the news; she had a notion he was afraid of them,
+which made her impatient, as she frankly told him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not many of us. Not many of us,&rdquo; said Mr. Dorward. &ldquo;Hope they won&rsquo;t try
+to break up the church.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Treacherites arrived on Saturday evening and addressed a meeting by
+The Old Farm, which fetched Philip out into the road with threats of
+having them put in jail for creating a disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you want to annoy people, go to church to-morrow and annoy the
+vicar,&rdquo; he said, grimly.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, who had heard Philip&rsquo;s last remark, turned on him in a rage:
+&ldquo;What a mean and cowardly thing to say when you know Mr. Dorward can&rsquo;t
+defend himself as you can. Let them come to church to-morrow and annoy
+the vicar. You see what they&rsquo;ll get.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come, come, Sylvia,&rdquo; Philip said, with an attempt at pacification and
+evidently ashamed of himself. &ldquo;Let these Christians fight it out among
+themselves. It&rsquo;s nothing to do with us, as long as they don&rsquo;t....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, it&rsquo;s everything to do with me,&rdquo; she said. He looked at her
+in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning Sylvia took up her position in the front of the church and
+threatened with her eye the larger congregation that had gathered in the
+hope of a row as fiercely as Miss Horne and Miss Hobart might have done.
+The Treacherites were two young men with pimply faces who swaggered into
+church and talked to one another loudly before the service began,
+commenting upon the ornaments with cockney facetiousness. Cassandra Batt
+came over to Sylvia and whispered hoarsely in her ear that she was
+afraid there would be trouble, because some of the village lads had
+looked in for a bit of fun. The service was carried through with
+constant interruptions, and Sylvia felt her heart beating faster and
+faster with suppressed rage. When it was over, the congregation
+dispersed<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> into the churchyard, where the yokels hung about waiting for
+the vicar to come out. As he appeared in the west door a loud booing was
+set up, and one of the Treacherites shouted:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Follow me, loyal members of the Protestant Established Church, and
+destroy the idols of the Pope.&rdquo; Whereupon the iconoclast tried to push
+past Mr. Dorward, who was fumbling in his vague way with the lock of the
+door. He turned white with rage and, seizing the Treacherite by the
+scruff of his neck, he flung him head over heels across two mounds. At
+this the yokels began to boo more vehemently, but Mr. Dorward managed to
+shut the door and lock it, after which he walked across to the
+discomfited Treacherite and, holding out his hand, apologized for his
+violence. The yokels, who mistook generosity for weakness, began to
+throw stones at the vicar, one of which cut his face. Sylvia, who had
+been standing motionless in a trance of fury, was roused by the blood to
+action. With a bound she sprang at the first Treacherite and pushed him
+into a half-dug grave; then turning swiftly, she advanced against his
+companion with upraised stick.</p>
+
+<p>The youth just had time to gasp a notification to the surrounding
+witnesses that Sylvia assaulted him first, before he ran; but the
+yokels, seeing that the squire&rsquo;s wife was on the side of the parson, and
+fearing for the renewal of their leases and the repairs to their
+cottages, turned round upon the Treacherites and dragged them off toward
+the village pond.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come on, Cassandra,&rdquo; Sylvia cried. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go and break up the van.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Cassandra seized her pickax and followed Sylvia, who with hair streaming
+over her shoulders and elation in her aspect charged past The Old Farm
+just when Philip was coming out of the gate.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come on, Philip!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Come on and help me break up their damned
+van.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>By this time the attack had brought most of the village out of doors.
+Dogs were barking; geese and ducks were flapping in all directions;
+Sylvia kept turning round to urge the sexton, whose progress was
+hampered by a petticoat&rsquo;s slipping down, not to bother about her
+clothes, but<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> to come on. A grandnephew of the old woman picked up the
+crimson garment and, as he pursued his grandaunt to restore it to her,
+waved it in the air like a standard. The yokels, who saw the squire
+watching from his gate, assumed his complete approval of what was
+passing (as a matter of fact he was petrified with dismay), and paid no
+attention to the vicar&rsquo;s efforts to rescue the Treacherites from their
+doom in the fast-nearing pond. The van of the iconoclasts was named
+Ridley: &ldquo;By God&rsquo;s grace we have to-day lit such a candle as will never
+be put out&rdquo; was printed on one side. On the other was inscribed, &ldquo;John
+Treacher&rsquo;s Poor Preachers. Supported by Voluntary Contributions.&rdquo; By the
+time Sylvia, Cassandra, and the rest had finished with the van it was
+neither legible without nor habitable within.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally there was a violent quarrel between Sylvia and Philip over her
+behavior, a quarrel that was not mended by her being summoned later on
+by the outraged Treacherites, together with Mr. Dorward and several
+yokels.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve made a fool of me from one end of the county to the other,&rdquo;
+Philip told her. &ldquo;Understand once and for all that I don&rsquo;t intend to put
+up with this sort of thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was your fault,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;You began it by egging on these
+brutes to attack Mr. Dorward. You could easily have averted any trouble
+if you&rsquo;d wanted to. It serves you jolly well right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no excuse for your conduct,&rdquo; Philip insisted. &ldquo;A stranger
+passing through the village would have thought a lunatic asylum had
+broken loose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, it&rsquo;s a jolly good thing to break loose sometimes&mdash;even for
+lunatics,&rdquo; Sylvia retorted. &ldquo;If you could break loose yourself sometimes
+you&rsquo;d be much easier to live with.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The next time you feel repressed,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;all I ask is that you&rsquo;ll
+choose a place where we&rsquo;re not quite so well known in which to give vent
+to your feelings.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The argument went on endlessly, for neither Sylvia nor Philip would
+yield an inch; it became, indeed, one of the eternal disputes that
+reassert themselves at the least excuse. If Philip&rsquo;s egg were not cooked
+long enough, the cause<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> would finally be referred back to that Sunday
+morning; if Sylvia were late for lunch, her unpunctuality would
+ultimately be dated from the arrival of the Treacherites.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily the vicar, with whom the events of that Sunday had grown into a
+comic myth that was continually being added to, was able to give Sylvia
+relief from Philip&rsquo;s exaggerated disapproval. Moreover, the Treacherites
+had done him a service by advertising his church and bringing a certain
+number of strangers there every Sunday out of curiosity; these pilgrims
+inflated the natives of Green Lanes with a sense of their own
+importance, and they now filled the church, taking pride and pleasure in
+the ownership of an attraction and boasting to the natives of the
+villages round about the size of the offertory. Mr. Dorward&rsquo;s popery and
+ritualism were admired now as commercial smartness, and if he had chosen
+to ride into church on Palm Sunday or any other Sunday on a donkey (a
+legendary ceremony invariably attributed to High Church vicars), there
+was not a man, woman, or child in the parish of Green Lanes that would
+not have given a prod of encouragement to the sacred animal.</p>
+
+<p>One hot September afternoon Sylvia was walking back from Medworth when
+she was overtaken by Mr. Pluepott in his cart. They stopped to exchange
+the usual country greetings, at which by now Sylvia was an adept. When
+presently Mr. Pluepott invited her to take advantage of a lift home she
+climbed up beside him. For a while they jogged along in silence;
+suddenly Mr. Pluepott delivered himself of what was evidently much upon
+his mind:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mrs. Iredale,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;you and me has known each other the best part
+of two years, and your coming and having a cup of tea with Mrs. Pluepott
+once or twice and Mrs. Pluepott having a big opinion of you makes me so
+bold.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He paused and reined in his pony to a walk that would suit the gravity
+of his communication.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to give you a bit of a warning as from a friend and, with all
+due respect, an admirer. Being a married man myself and you a young
+lady, you won&rsquo;t go for to mistake my meaning when I says to you right
+out that women is worse than the devil. Miss Horne! As I jokingly<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a> said
+to Mrs. Pluepott, though, being a sacred subject, she wouldn&rsquo;t laugh,
+&lsquo;Miss Horne!&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Miss Horns! That&rsquo;s what she ought to be called.&rsquo;
+Mrs. Iredale,&rdquo; he went on, pulling up the pony to a dead, stop and
+turning round with a very serious countenance to Sylvia&mdash;&ldquo;Mrs. Iredale,
+you&rsquo;ve got a wicked, bad enemy in that old woman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; she agreed. &ldquo;We quarreled over something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you quarreled, and whether it was your fault or whether it was hers,
+isn&rsquo;t nothing to do with me, but the lies she&rsquo;s spreading around about
+you and the Reverend Dorward beat the band. I&rsquo;m not speaking gossip. I&rsquo;m
+not going by hearsay. I&rsquo;ve heard her myself, and Miss Hobart&rsquo;s as bad,
+if not worse. There, now I&rsquo;ve told you and I hope you&rsquo;ll pardon the
+liberty, but I couldn&rsquo;t help it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With which Mr. Pluepott whipped up his pony to a frantic gallop, and
+very soon they reached the outskirts of Green Lanes, where Sylvia got
+down.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; she said, offering her hand. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I need bother
+about Miss Horne, but it was very kind of you to tell me. Thanks very
+much,&rdquo; and with a wave of her stick Sylvia walked pensively along into
+the village. As she passed Mr. Dorward&rsquo;s cottage she rattled her stick
+on his gate till he looked out from a window in the thatch, like a bird
+disturbed on its nest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hullo, old owl!&rdquo; Sylvia cried. &ldquo;Come down a minute. I want to say
+something to you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The vicar presently came blinking out into the sunlight of the garden.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;do you know that those two old villains in
+Oaktown are spreading it about that you and I are having a love-affair?
+Haven&rsquo;t you got a prescription for that sort of thing in your church
+business? Can&rsquo;t you curse them with bell, book, and candle, or
+something? I&rsquo;ll supply the bell, if you&rsquo;ll supply the rest of the
+paraphernalia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Dorward shook his head. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t be done. Cursing is the prerogative of
+bishops. Not on the best terms with my bishop, I&rsquo;m afraid. Last time he
+sent for me I had to<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> spend the night and I left a rosary under my
+pillow. He was much pained, my spies at the Palace tell me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, if <i>you</i> don&rsquo;t mind, I don&rsquo;t mind,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;All right. So
+long.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Three days later, an anonymous post-card was sent to Sylvia, a vulgar
+Temptation of St. Anthony; and a week afterward Philip suddenly flung a
+letter down before her which he told her to read. It was an ill-spelled
+ungrammatical screed, which purported to warn Philip of his wife&rsquo;s
+behavior, enumerated the hours she had spent alone with Dorward either
+in his cottage or in the church, and wound up with the old proverb of
+there being none so blind as those who won&rsquo;t see. Sylvia blushed while
+she read it, not for what it said about herself, but for the vile
+impulse that launched this smudged and scrabbled impurity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a jolly thing to get at breakfast,&rdquo; Philip said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Beastly,&rdquo; she agreed. &ldquo;And your showing it to me puts you on a level
+with the sender.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought it would be a good lesson for you,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A lesson?&rdquo; she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, a lesson that one can&rsquo;t behave exactly as one likes, particularly
+in the country among a lot of uneducated peasants.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; Sylvia went on. &ldquo;Did you show me this filthy
+piece of paper with the idea of asking me to change my manner of life?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I showed it to you in order to impress upon you that people talk, and
+that you owe it to me to keep their tongues quiet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you want me to do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Something perfectly simple,&rdquo; Philip said. &ldquo;I want you to give up
+visiting Dorward in his cottage and, as you have no religious
+inclinations, I should like you to avoid his church.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And that&rsquo;s why you showed me this anonymous letter?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In fact you&rsquo;re going to give it your serious attention?&rdquo; she continued.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; he contradicted. &ldquo;For a long time I&rsquo;ve objected to your
+friendship with Dorward, but, knowing<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> you were too headstrong to listen
+to my advice, I said nothing. This letter makes it impossible to keep
+silent any longer about my wishes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t really believe that Dorward and I are having an affair?&rdquo;
+she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>Philip made an impatient gesture.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a foolish question! Do you suppose that if I had for one moment
+thought such a thing I shouldn&rsquo;t have spoken before? No, no, my dear,
+it&rsquo;s all very unpleasant, but you must see that as soon as I am made
+aware, however crude the method of bringing it to my knowledge, that
+people are talking about you and my vicar, I have no alternative but to
+forbid you to do anything that will make these tongues go on wagging.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To forbid me?&rdquo; she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Philip bowed ironically, Sylvia thought; the gesture, infinitely slight
+and unimportant as it was, cut the last knot.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall have to tell Mr. Dorward about this letter and explain to him,&rdquo;
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>Philip hesitated for a moment. &ldquo;Yes, I think that would be the best
+thing to do,&rdquo; he agreed.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia regarded him curiously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mind his knowing that you showed it to me?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; said Philip.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, and he took alarm at the tone.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you were going to be sensible,&rdquo; he began, but she cut him
+short.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I am, my dear man. Don&rsquo;t worry.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now that the unpleasant scene was over, he seemed anxious for her
+sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry this miserable business has occurred, but you understand,
+don&rsquo;t you, that it&rsquo;s been just as bad for me as for you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you want me to apologize?&rdquo; Sylvia demanded, in her brutal way.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, of course not. Only I thought perhaps you might have shown a little
+more appreciation of my feelings.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, Philip, if you want that, you&rsquo;ll have to let me really go wrong
+with Dorward.&rdquo;<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Personally I consider that last remark of yours in very bad taste; but
+I know we have different standards of humor.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia found Dorward in the church, engaged in an argument with
+Cassandra about the arrangement of the chrysanthemums for Michaelmas.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will not have them like this,&rdquo; he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But we always putts them fan-shaped like that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take them away,&rdquo; he shouted, and, since Cassandra still hesitated, he
+flung the flowers all over the church.</p>
+
+<p>The short conversation that followed always remained associated in
+Sylvia&rsquo;s mind with Cassandra&rsquo;s grunts and her large base elevated above
+the pews, while she browsed hither and thither, bending over to pick up
+the scattered chrysanthemums.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Dorward, I want to ask you something very serious.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her sharply, almost suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Does it make you very much happier to have faith?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,&rdquo; he said, brushing petals from his cassock.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But would it make me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I expect so&mdash;I expect so,&rdquo; he said, still brushing and trying with that
+shy curtness to avoid the contact of reality.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, how can I get faith?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must pray, dear lady, you must pray.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have to pray for me,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Always do. Always pray for you. Never less than three prayers every
+day. Mass once a week.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt a lump in her throat; it seemed to her that this friend,
+accounted mad by the world, had paid her the tenderest and most
+exquisite courtesy she had ever known.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come along now, Cassandra,&rdquo; cried the vicar, clapping his hands
+impatiently to cover his embarrassment. &ldquo;Where are the flowers? Where
+are the flowers, you miserable old woman?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Cassandra came up to him, breathing heavily with exertion. &ldquo;You know,
+Mr. Dorward, you&rsquo;re enough to try the patience of an angel on a tomb;
+you are indeed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia left them arguing all over again about the chrysanthemums.<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a> That
+afternoon she went away from Green Lanes to London.</p>
+
+<p>Three months later, she obtained an engagement in a musical comedy
+company on tour and sent back to Philip the last shred of clothing that
+she had had through him, with a letter and ten pounds in bank-notes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>You <i>must</i> divorce me now. I&rsquo;ve not been able to earn enough to pay
+you back more than this for your bad bargain. I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve
+given any more pleasure to the men who have paid less for me than
+you did, if that&rsquo;s any consolation.</p>
+
+<p class="r">S<small>YLVIA</small> S<small>CARLETT</small>.</p></div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">S</span>YLVIA stood before the looking-glass in the Birmingham lodgings and
+made a speech to herself:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Humph! You look older, my dear. You look more than nineteen and a half.
+You&rsquo;re rather glad, though, aren&rsquo;t you, to have finished with the last
+three months? You feel degraded, don&rsquo;t you? What&rsquo;s that you say? You
+don&rsquo;t feel degraded any more by what you&rsquo;ve done now than by what you
+did when you were married? You consider the net result of the last three
+months has simply been to prove what you&rsquo;d suspected for a long
+time&mdash;the wrong you did yourself in marrying Philip Iredale? Wait a
+minute; don&rsquo;t go so fast; there&rsquo;s something wrong with your moral sense.
+You know perfectly well your contention is impossible; or do you accuse
+every woman who marries to have a position and a home of being a
+prostitute? Ah, but you didn&rsquo;t marry Philip for either of those reasons,
+you say? Yes, you did&mdash;you married him to make something like Arbour
+End.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tears welled up in Sylvia&rsquo;s eyes. She thought she had driven Arbour End
+from her mind forever.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come, come, we don&rsquo;t want any tears. What are you crying for? You knew
+when you left Green Lanes that everything which had come into your life
+through Philip Iredale must be given up. You were rather proud of your
+ruthlessness. Don&rsquo;t spoil it now. That&rsquo;s right, no more tears. You&rsquo;re
+feeling a bit <i>abrutie</i>, aren&rsquo;t you? My advice to you is to obliterate
+the last three months from your imagination. I quite understand that you
+suffered a good deal, but novices must be prepared to suffer. In my
+opinion you can congratulate yourself on having come through so easily.
+Here you are, a jolly little <i>cabetine</i> with a complete contempt for
+men. You&rsquo;re not yet twenty; you&rsquo;re not likely to fall in love, for you
+must admit that<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> after those three months the word sounds more than
+usually idiotic. From what I&rsquo;ve seen of you I should say that for the
+future you&rsquo;ll be very well able to look after yourself; you might even
+become a famous actress. Ah, that makes you smile, eh?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia dabbed her face with the powder-puff and went down-stairs to
+dinner. Her two companions had not yet begun; for this was the first
+meal at which they would all sit down together, and an atmosphere of
+politeness hung over life at present. Lily Haden and Dorothy Lonsdale
+had joined the &ldquo;Miss Elsie of Chelsea&rdquo; company at the same time as
+Sylvia, and were making their first appearance on any stage, having
+known each other in the dullness of West Kensington. For a fortnight
+they had clung together, but, having been given an address for rooms in
+Birmingham that required a third person&rsquo;s contribution, they had invited
+Sylvia to join them. Lily was a tall, slim girl with very fair, golden
+hair, who had an air of romantic mystery that was due to indolence of
+mind and body. Dorothy also was fair, with a mass of light-brown hair, a
+perfect complexion, profile, and figure, and, what finally gave her a
+really distinguished beauty in such a setting, brown eyes instead of
+blue. Lily&rsquo;s languorous grace of manner and body was so remarkable that
+in a room it was difficult to choose between her and Dorothy, but behind
+the footlights there was no comparison; there Dorothy had everybody&rsquo;s
+glances, and Lily&rsquo;s less definite features went for nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Each girl was prompt to take Sylvia into her confidence about the other.
+Thus from Lily she learned that Dorothy&rsquo;s real name was Norah Caffyn;
+that she was the eldest of a very large family; that Lily had known her
+at school; that she had been engaged to a journalist who was disapproved
+of by her family; that she had offered to break with Wilfred Curlew, if
+she were allowed to go on the stage; and that she had taken the name of
+Lonsdale from the road where she lived, and Dorothy from the sister next
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose in the same way as she used to take her dolls?&rdquo; Sylvia
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a>Lily looked embarrassed. She was evidently not sure whether a joke was
+intended, and when Sylvia encouraged her to suppose it was, she laughed
+a little timidly, being rather doubtful if it were not a pun.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Her sister was awfully annoyed about it, because she hasn&rsquo;t got a
+second name. She&rsquo;s the only one in the family who hasn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lily also told Sylvia something about herself, how her mother had lately
+died and how she could not get on with her sister, who had married an
+actor and was called Doris. Her mother had been a reciter, and there had
+always been lots of theatrical people at their house, so it had been
+easy for her to get an introduction to Mr. Walter Keal, who had the
+touring rights of all John Richards&rsquo;s great Vanity Theater productions.</p>
+
+<p>From Dorothy Sylvia learned that she had known Lily at school, but not
+for long, as Mrs. Haden never paid her daughters&rsquo; fees; that Mr. Haden
+had always been supposed to live in Burmah, but that people who knew
+Mrs. Haden declared he had never existed; and finally that Lily had been
+&ldquo;awfully nice&rdquo; to herself and helped her to get an introduction to Mr.
+Walter Keal.</p>
+
+<p>The association of Sylvia with the two girls begun at Birmingham was not
+interrupted until the end of the tour. Lily and Dorothy depended upon
+it, Lily because Sylvia saved her the trouble of thinking for herself,
+Dorothy because she found in Sylvia some one who could deflect all the
+difficulties of life on tour and leave her free to occupy herself with
+her own prosperity and her own comforts. Dorothy possessed a selfishness
+that almost attained to the dignity of ambition, though never quite, as
+her conceit would not allow her to state an object in her career, for
+fear of failure; her method was invariably to seize the best of any
+situation that came along, whether it was a bed, a chair, a potato, or a
+man; this method with ordinary good luck would insure success through
+life. Lily was too lazy to minister to Dorothy&rsquo;s selfishness; moreover,
+she often managed in taking the nearest and easiest to rob Dorothy of
+the best.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was perfectly aware of their respective characters, but she was
+always willing to give herself any amount of trouble to preserve beauty
+around her; Lily and Dorothy<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a> were not really more troublesome than two
+cats would have been; in fact, rather less, because at any rate they
+could carry themselves, if not their bags.</p>
+
+<p>Life on tour went its course with the world divided into three
+categories&mdash;the members of the company, the public expressing its
+personality in different audiences, and for the actors saloon-bars and
+the drinks they were stood, for the actresses admirers and the presents
+they were worth. Sometimes when the saloon-bars and the admirers were
+alike unprofitable, the members of the company mixed among themselves
+whether in a walk round a new town or at tea in rooms where a landlady
+possessed hospitable virtues. Sylvia had a special gift for getting the
+best out of landladies, and the men of the company came more often to
+tea with herself and her friends than with the other ladies. They came,
+indeed, too often to please Dorothy, who disapproved of Lily&rsquo;s
+easy-going acceptance of the sort of love that is made because at the
+moment there is nothing else to do. She spoke to Sylvia about this, who
+agreed with her, but thought that with Lily it was inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But not with boys in the company,&rdquo; Dorothy urged, disdainfully. &ldquo;It
+makes us all so cheap. I don&rsquo;t want to put on side, but, after all, we
+are a little different from the other girls.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia found this belief universal in the chorus. She could not think of
+any girl who had not at one time or another taken her aside and claimed
+for herself, and by the politeness owed to present company for Sylvia,
+this &ldquo;little difference.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Personally,&rdquo; Sylvia said, &ldquo;I think we&rsquo;re all much the same. Some of us
+drop our aitches, others our p&rsquo;s and q&rsquo;s; some of us sing flat, the rest
+sing sharp; and we all look just alike when we&rsquo;re waiting for the train
+on Sunday morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, with all her prevision of a fate upon Lily&rsquo;s conduct,
+Sylvia did speak to her about the way in which she tolerated the
+familiarity of the men in the company.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re thinking of Tom,&rdquo; Lily said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tom, Dick, and Harry,&rdquo; Sylvia put in.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well. I don&rsquo;t like to seem stuck up,&rdquo; Lily explained.<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> &ldquo;Tom&rsquo;s always
+very nice about carrying my bag and getting me tea when we&rsquo;re
+traveling.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I promise to look after the bag,&rdquo; Sylvia asked, &ldquo;will you promise to
+discourage Tom?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, my dear, why should you carry my bag when I can get Tom to do it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It bores me to see you and him together,&rdquo; Sylvia explained. &ldquo;These boys
+in the company are all very well, but they aren&rsquo;t really men at all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; Lily said, eagerly. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I feel. They don&rsquo;t seem real
+to me. Of course, I shouldn&rsquo;t let anybody make love to me seriously.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you call serious love-making?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Sylvia, how you do go on asking questions. You know perfectly well
+what I mean. You only ask questions to make me feel uncomfortable.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just as I might disarrange the cushions of your chair?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know quite well who&rsquo;s been at you to worry me,&rdquo; Lily went on. &ldquo;I know
+it&rsquo;s Dorothy. She&rsquo;s always been used to being the eldest and finding
+fault with everybody else. She doesn&rsquo;t really mind Tom&rsquo;s kissing
+me&mdash;she&rsquo;s perfectly ready to make use of him herself&mdash;but she&rsquo;s always
+thinking about other people and she&rsquo;s so afraid that some of the men she
+goes out with will laugh at his waistcoat. I&rsquo;m used to actors; she
+isn&rsquo;t. I never bother about her. I don&rsquo;t complain about her practising
+her singing or talking for hours and hours about whether I think she
+looks better with a teardrop or without. Why can&rsquo;t she let me alone?
+Nobody ever lets me alone. It&rsquo;s all I&rsquo;ve ever asked all my life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The feeling between Lily and Dorothy was reaching the point of tension.
+Sylvia commented on it one evening to Fay Onslow, the oldest member of
+the chorus, a fat woman, wise and genial, universally known as Onzie
+except by her best boy of the moment, who had to call her Fay. However,
+she cost him very little else, and was generally considered to throw
+herself away, though, of course, as her friends never failed to add, she
+was getting on and could no longer afford to be too particular.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, between you and I, Sylvia, I&rsquo;ve often wondered<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a> you&rsquo;ve kept your
+little family together for so long. I&rsquo;ve been on the stage now for
+twenty-five years. I&rsquo;m not far off forty, dear. I used to be in
+burlesque at the old Frivolity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you remember Victoria Deane?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I do. She made a big hit and then got married and left the
+stage. A sweetly pretty little thing, she was. But, as I was saying,
+dear, in all my experience I never knew two fair girls get through a
+tour together without falling out, two girls naturally fair, that is,
+and you mark my words, Lily Haden and Dolly Lonsdale will have a row.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was anxious to avert this, because she would have found it hard
+to choose between their rival claims upon her. She was fonder of Lily,
+but she was very fond of Dorothy, and she believed that Dorothy might
+attain real success in her profession. It seemed more worth while to
+take trouble over Dorothy; yet something warned her that an expense of
+devotion in that direction would ultimately be, from a selfish point of
+view, wasted. Dorothy would never consider affection where advancement
+was concerned; yet was it not just this quality in her that she admired?
+There would certainly be an unusual exhilaration in standing behind
+Dorothy and helping her to rise and rise, whereas with Lily the best
+that could be expected was to prevent her falling infinitely low.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How I&rsquo;ve changed since I left Philip,&rdquo; she said to herself. &ldquo;I seem to
+have lost myself somehow and to have transferred all my interest in life
+to other people. I suppose it won&rsquo;t last. God forbid I should become a
+problem to myself like a woman in a damned novel. Down with
+introspection, though, Heaven knows, observation in &lsquo;Miss Elsie of
+Chelsea&rsquo; is not a profitable pastime.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia bought an eye-glass next day, and though all agreed with one
+another in private that it was an affectation, everybody assured her
+that she was a girl who could wear an eye-glass with advantage. Lily
+thought the cord must be rather a bore.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s symbolic,&rdquo; Sylvia declared to the dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I&rsquo;ll have my eyes looked at in Sheffield,&rdquo; said Onzie. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+a doctor there who&rsquo;s very good to pros.<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a> I often feel my eyes are
+getting a bit funny. It may be the same as Sylvia&rsquo;s got.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The tour was coming to an end; the last three nights would be played at
+Oxford, to which everybody looked forward. All the girls who had been to
+Oxford before told wonderful tales of the pleasures that might be
+anticipated. Even some of the men were heard to speculate if such or
+such a friend were still there, which annoyed those who could not even
+boast of having had a friend there two years ago. The jealous ones
+revenged themselves by criticizing the theatrical manners of the
+undergraduate, especially upon the last night of a musical comedy. One
+heard a great deal of talk, they said, about a college career, but
+personally and without offense to anybody present who had friends at
+college, they considered that a college career in nine cases out of ten
+meant rowdiness and a habit of thinking oneself better than other
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, Lily, and Dorothy had rooms in Eden Square, which was the
+recognized domain of theatrical companies playing in Oxford. Numerous
+invitations to lunch and tea were received, and Sylvia, who had formed a
+preconceived idea of Oxford based upon Philip, was astonished how little
+the undergraduates she met resembled him. Dorothy managed with her usual
+instinct for the best to secure as an admirer Lord Clarehaven, or, as
+the other girls preferred to call him with a nicer formality, the Earl
+of Clarehaven. He invited her with a friend to lunch at Christ Church on
+the last day. Dorothy naturally chose Sylvia, and, as Lily was already
+engaged elsewhere, Sylvia accepted. Later in the afternoon Dorothy
+proposed that the young men should come back and have tea in Eden
+Square, and Sylvia divined Dorothy&rsquo;s intention of proving to these young
+men that the actress in her own home would be as capable of maintaining
+propriety as she had been at lunch.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll buy the cakes on the way,&rdquo; said Dorothy, which was another
+example of her infallible instinct for the best and the most economical.</p>
+
+<p>Loaded with éclairs, meringues, and chocolates, Dorothy, Sylvia, and
+their four guests reached Eden Square.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have to excuse the general untidiness,&rdquo; Dorothy<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a> said, with an
+affected little laugh, flinging open the door of the sitting-room. She
+would probably have chosen another word for the picture of Lily sitting
+on Tom&rsquo;s knee in the worn leather-backed arm-chair if she had entered
+first: unfortunately, Lord Clarehaven was accorded that privilege, and
+the damage was done. Sylvia quickly introduced everybody, and nobody
+could have complained of the way in which the undergraduates sailed over
+an awkward situation, nor could much have been urged against Tom, for he
+left immediately. As for Lily, she was a great success with the young
+men and seemed quite undisturbed by the turn of events.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the three girls were alone together, Dorothy broke out:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hope you don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ll ever live with you again after that
+disgusting exhibition. I suppose you think just because you gave me an
+introduction that you can do what you like. I don&rsquo;t know what Sylvia
+thinks of you, but I can tell you what I think. You make me feel
+absolutely sick. That beastly chorus-boy! The idea of letting anybody
+like that even look at you. Thank Heaven, the tour&rsquo;s over. I&rsquo;m going
+down to the theater. I can&rsquo;t stay in this room. It makes me blush to
+think of it. I&rsquo;ll take jolly good care who I live with in future.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly, to Sylvia&rsquo;s immense astonishment, Dorothy slapped Lily&rsquo;s
+face. What torments of mortification must be raging in that small soul
+to provoke such an unlady-like outburst!</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should hit her back if I were you, my lass,&rdquo; Sylvia advised, putting
+up her eye-glass for the fray; but Lily began to cry and Dorothy
+flounced out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia bent over her in consolation, though her sense of justice made
+her partly excuse Dorothy&rsquo;s rage.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How did I know she would bring her beastly men back to tea? She only
+did it to brag about having a lord to our digs. After all, they&rsquo;re just
+as much mine as hers. I was sorry for Tom. He doesn&rsquo;t know anybody in
+Oxford, and he felt out of it with all the other boys going out. He
+asked me if I was going to turn him down because I&rsquo;d got such fine
+friends. I was sorry for him, Sylvia, and so I asked him to tea. I don&rsquo;t
+see why Dorothy should turn<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a> round and say nasty things to me. I&rsquo;ve
+always been decent to her. Oh, Sylvia, you don&rsquo;t know how lonely I feel
+sometimes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This appeal was too much for Sylvia, who clasped Lily to her and let her
+sob forth her griefs upon her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia, I&rsquo;ve got nobody. I hate my sister Doris. Mother&rsquo;s dead.
+Everybody ran her down, but she had a terrible life. Father used to take
+drugs, and then he stole and was put in prison. People used to say
+mother wasn&rsquo;t married, but she was. Only the truth was so terrible, she
+could never explain. You don&rsquo;t know how she worked. She brought up Doris
+and me entirely. She used to recite, and she used to be always hard up.
+She died of heart failure, and that comes from worry. Nobody understands
+me. I don&rsquo;t know what will become of me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; Sylvia said, &ldquo;you know I&rsquo;m your pal.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Sylvia, you&rsquo;re a darling! I&rsquo;d do anything for you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Even carry your own bag at the station to-morrow?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t tease me,&rdquo; Lily begged. &ldquo;If you won&rsquo;t tease me, I&rsquo;ll do
+anything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That evening Mr. Keal, with the mighty Mr. Richards himself, came up
+from London to see the show. The members of the chorus were much
+agitated. It could only mean that girls were to be chosen for the Vanity
+production in the autumn. Every one of them put on rather more make-up
+than usual, acted hard all the time she was on the stage, and tried to
+study Mr. Richards&rsquo;s face from the wings.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You and I are one of the &lsquo;also rans,&rsquo;&rdquo; Sylvia told Lily. &ldquo;The great man
+eyed me with positive dislike.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the end it was Dorothy Lonsdale who was engaged for the Vanity: she
+was so much elated that she was reconciled with Lily and told everybody
+in the dressing-room that she had met a cousin at Oxford, Arthur
+Lonsdale, Lord Cleveden&rsquo;s son.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Which side of the road are you related to him?&rdquo; Sylvia asked. Dorothy
+blushed, but she pretended not to understand what Sylvia meant, and said
+quite calmly that it was on her mother&rsquo;s side. She parted with Sylvia
+and<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a> Lily very cordially at Paddington, but she did not invite either of
+them to come and see her at Lonsdale Road.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia and Lily stayed together at Mrs. Gowndry&rsquo;s in Finborough Road,
+for it happened that the final negotiations for Sylvia&rsquo;s divorce from
+Philip were being concluded and she took pleasure in addressing her
+communications from the house where she had been living when he first
+met her. Philip was very anxious to make her an allowance, but she
+declined it; her case was undefended. Lily and she managed to get an
+engagement in another touring company, which opened in August somewhere
+on the south coast. About this time Sylvia read in a paper that Jimmy
+Monkley had been sentenced to three years&rsquo; penal servitude for fraud,
+and by an odd coincidence in the same paper she read of the decree nisi
+made absolute that set Philip and herself free. Old associations seemed
+to be getting wound up. Unfortunately, the new ones were not promising;
+no duller collection of people had surely ever been gathered together
+than the company in which she was working at present. Not only was the
+company tiresome, but Sylvia and Lily failed to meet anywhere on the
+tour one amusing person. To be sure, Lily thought that Sylvia was too
+critical, and therefore so alarming that several &ldquo;nice boys&rdquo; were
+discouraged too early in their acquaintanceship for a final judgment to
+be passed upon them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The trouble is,&rdquo; said Sylvia, &ldquo;that at this rate we shall never make
+our fortunes. I stipulate that, if we adopt a gay life, it really will
+be a gay life. I don&rsquo;t want to have soul-spasms and internal wrestles
+merely for the sake of being bored.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia tried to produce Lily as a dancer; for a week or two they worked
+hard at imitations of the classical school, but very soon they both grew
+tired of it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The nearest we shall ever get to jingling our money at this game,&rdquo;
+Sylvia said, &ldquo;is jingling our landlady&rsquo;s ornaments on the mantelpiece.
+Lily, I think we&rsquo;re not meant for the stage. And yet, if I could only
+find my line, I believe.... I believe.... Oh, well, I can&rsquo;t, and so
+there&rsquo;s an end of it. But look here, winter&rsquo;s coming on. We&rsquo;ve got
+nothing to wear. We haven&rsquo;t saved a penny.<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a> Ruin stares us in the face.
+Say something, Lily; do say something, or I shall scream.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think we ought to have eaten those plums at dinner. They
+weren&rsquo;t really ripe,&rdquo; Lily said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, anyhow, that solves the problem of the moment. Put your things
+on. You&rsquo;d better come out and walk them off.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They were playing in Eastbourne that week, where a sudden hot spell had
+prolonged the season farther into September than usual; a new company of
+entertainers known as &ldquo;The Highwaymen&rdquo; was attracting audiences almost
+as large as in the prime of summer. Sylvia and Lily paused to watch them
+from the tamarisks below the Marina.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Sylvia gave an exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do believe that&rsquo;s Claude Raglan who&rsquo;s singing now. Do you remember,
+Lily, I told you about the Pink Pierrots? I&rsquo;m sure it is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Presently the singer came round with the bag and a packet of his picture
+post-cards. Sylvia asked if he had a photograph of Claude Raglan. When
+he produced one she dug him in the ribs, and cried:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Claudie, you consumptive ass, don&rsquo;t you recognize me? Sylvia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was delighted to see her again, and willingly accepted an invitation
+to supper after the show, if he might bring a friend with him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jack Airdale&mdash;an awfully decent fellow. Quite a good voice, too, though
+I think from the point of view of the show it&rsquo;s a mistake to have a high
+barytone when they&rsquo;ve already got a tenor. However, he does a good deal
+of accompanying. In fact, he&rsquo;s a much better accompanist than he is
+singer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;ve got more girls than ever in love with you, now you
+wear a mask?&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>Claude seemed doubtful whether to take this remark as a compliment to
+his voice or as an insult to his face. Finally he took it as a joke and
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just the same, I see,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Always chaffing a fellow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Claude Raglan and Jack Airdale came to supper in due<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a> course. Sylvia
+liked Jack; he was a round-faced young man in the early twenties, with
+longish light hair that flopped all over his face when he became
+excited. Sylvia and he were good friends immediately and made a great
+deal of noise over supper, while Claude and Lily looked at each other.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How&rsquo;s the consumption, Claudie?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>Claude sighed with a soulful glance at Lily&rsquo;s delicate form.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t imagine she&rsquo;s sympathizing with you,&rdquo; Sylvia cried. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s only
+thinking about plums.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s grown out of it,&rdquo; Airdale said. &ldquo;Look at the length of his neck.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have to wear these high collars. My throat....&rdquo; Claude began.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, shut up with your ailments,&rdquo; Sylvia interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hear, hear,&rdquo; Airdale shouted. &ldquo;Down with ailments,&rdquo; and he threw a
+cushion at Claude.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t behave like a clown,&rdquo; said Claude, smoothing his
+ruffled hair and looking to see if Lily was joining in the laugh against
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the conversation turned upon the prospects of the two girls
+for next winter, about which Sylvia was very pessimistic.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t we join together and run a street show&mdash;Pierrot, Pierrette,
+Harlequin, and Columbine?&rdquo; Airdale suggested. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll swear there&rsquo;s money
+in it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;About enough to pay for our coffins,&rdquo; said Claude. &ldquo;Sing out of doors
+in the winter? My dear Jack, you&rsquo;re mad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia thought the idea was splendid, and had sketched out Lily&rsquo;s
+Columbine dress before Lily herself had realized that the conversation
+had taken a twist.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Light-blue crêpe de Chine with bunches of cornflowers for Columbine.
+Pierrette in dark blue with bunches of forget-me-nots, Pierrot in light
+blue. Silver and dark-blue lozenges for Harlequin.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Paregoric lozenges would suit Claude better,&rdquo; said Airdale. &ldquo;O
+Pagliacci! Can&rsquo;t you hear him? No, joking apart, I think it would be a
+great effort. We sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t have to sing much outside. We shall get invited
+into people&rsquo;s houses.&rdquo;<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shall we?&rdquo; Claude muttered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And if the show goes,&rdquo; Airdale went on, &ldquo;we might vary our costumes.
+For instance, we might be Bacchanals in pink fleshings and vine leaves.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Vine leaves,&rdquo; Claude ejaculated. &ldquo;Vine Street more likely.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t laugh, old boy, with that lung of yours,&rdquo; said Airdale,
+earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>In the end, before the company left Eastbourne, it was decided,
+notwithstanding Claude&rsquo;s lugubrious prophecies, to launch the
+enterprise; when the tour broke up in December Sylvia had made dresses
+both for Lily and for herself as she had first planned them with an eye
+only for what became Lily. Claude&rsquo;s hypochondria was appeased by letting
+him wear a big patchwork cloak over his harlequin&rsquo;s dress in which white
+lozenges had been substituted for silver ones, owing to lack of money.
+They hired a small piano very much like the one that belonged to the
+Pink Pierrots, and on Christmas Eve they set out from Finborough Road,
+where Claude and Jack had rooms near Mrs. Gowndry&rsquo;s. They came into
+collision with a party of carol-singers who seemed to resent their
+profane competition, and, much to Jack Airdale&rsquo;s disappointment, they
+were not invited into a single house; the money taken after three hours
+of wandering music was one shilling and fivepence in coppers.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; said Jack. &ldquo;We aren&rsquo;t known yet. It&rsquo;s a pity we didn&rsquo;t
+start singing last Christmas Eve. We should have had more engagements
+than we should have known what to do with this year.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must build up the show for next year,&rdquo; Sylvia agreed,
+enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall sing the &lsquo;Lost Chord&rsquo; next year,&rdquo; Claude answered. &ldquo;They may
+let me in, if I worry them outside heaven&rsquo;s gates, to hear that last
+Amen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jack and Sylvia were justified in their optimism, for gradually the
+Carnival Quartet, as they called themselves, became known in South
+Kensington, and they began to get engagements to appear in other parts
+of London. Jack taught Sylvia to vamp well enough on the guitar to
+accompany herself in duets with him; Claude looked handsome<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> in his
+harlequin&rsquo;s dress, which prosperity had at last endowed with silver
+lozenges; Lily danced actively enough for the drawing-rooms in which
+they performed; Sylvia, inspired by the romantic exterior of herself and
+her companions, invented a mime to the music of Schumann&rsquo;s &ldquo;Carnival&rdquo;
+which Jack Airdale played, or, as Claude said, maltreated.</p>
+
+<p>The Quartet showed signs of increasing vitality with the approach of
+spring, and there was no need to think any more of touring in musical
+comedy, which was a relief to Sylvia. When summer came, they agreed to
+keep together and work the South Coast.</p>
+
+<p>However, all these plans came suddenly to nothing, because one misty
+night early in March Harlequin and Columbine lost Pierrot and Pierrette
+on the way home from a party in Chelsea; a brief note from Harlequin to
+Pierrot, which he found when he got home, indicated that the loss should
+be considered permanent.</p>
+
+<p>This treachery was a shock to Sylvia, and she was horrified at herself
+for feeling it so deeply. Ever since that day in Oxford when Lily had
+sobbed out her griefs, Sylvia had concentrated upon her all the capacity
+for affection which had begun to blossom during the time she was with
+Philip and which had been cut off ruthlessly with everything else that
+belonged to life with him. She knew that she should have foreseen the
+possibility, nay the probability, of this happening, but she had charmed
+herself with the romantic setting of their musical adventure and let all
+else go.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully sorry, Sylvia,&rdquo; said Jack; &ldquo;I ought to have kept a better
+lookout on Claude.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not your fault, old son. But, O God! why can&rsquo;t four people stay
+friends without muddling everything up with this accursed love?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jack was sympathetic, but it was useless to confide in him her feeling
+for Lily; he would never understand. She would seem to him so little
+worth while; for him the behavior of such a one meant less than the
+breaking of a porcelain figure.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It did seem worth while,&rdquo; Sylvia said to herself, that night, &ldquo;to keep
+that frail and lovely thing from this. It was my fault, of course, for I
+knew both Lily and Claude<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> through and through. Yet what does it matter?
+What a fool I am. It was absurd of me to imagine we could go on forever
+as we were. I don&rsquo;t really mind about Lily; I&rsquo;m angry because my conceit
+has been wounded. It serves me right. But that dirty little actor won&rsquo;t
+appreciate her. He&rsquo;s probably sick of her easiness already. Oh, why the
+hell am I not a man?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Presently, however, Sylvia&rsquo;s mood of indignation burned itself out; she
+began to attribute the elopement of Claude and Lily to the characters
+they had assumed of Harlequin and Columbine, and to regard the whole
+affair as a scene from a play which must not be taken more deeply to
+heart than with the pensive melancholy that succeeds the fall of the
+curtain on mimic emotions. After all, what had Lily been to her more
+than a puppet whose actions she had always controlled for her pleasure
+until she was stolen from her? Without Lily she was once more at a loose
+end; there was the whole history of her sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t think what they wanted to run away for,&rdquo; said Jack. Sylvia
+fancied the flight was the compliment both Harlequin and Columbine had
+paid to her authority.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t find you so alarming,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, old son, because you and I have always regarded the Quartet from a
+strictly professional point of view, and consequently each other.
+Meanwhile the poor old Quartet is done in. We two can&rsquo;t sustain a
+program alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Airdale gloomily assented, but thought it would be well to continue for
+a week or so, in case Claude and Lily came back.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I notice you take it for granted that I&rsquo;ll be willing to continue
+busking with them,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>That evening Airdale and she went out as usual; but the loss of the
+other two seemed somehow to have robbed the entertainment of its
+romantic distinction, and Sylvia was dismayed to find with what a
+shameful timidity she now took herself and her guitar into saloon-bars;
+she felt like a beggar and was humiliated by Jack&rsquo;s apologetic manner,
+and still more by her own instinctive support of such cringing to the
+benevolence of potmen and barmaids.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, after about a week of these distasteful peregrinations, the
+two mountebanks came out of a public<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> house in Fulham Road where they
+had been forced to endure a more than usually intolerable patronage.
+Sylvia vowed she would not perform again under such conditions, and they
+turned up Tinderbox Lane to wander home. This thoroughfare, only used by
+pedestrians, was very still, and trees planted down the middle of the
+pavement gave to the mild March evening an effluence of spring. Sylvia
+began to strum upon her guitar the tune that Arthur Madden and she sang
+together from the windows at Hampstead on the night she met him first;
+her companion soon caught hold of the air, and they strolled slowly
+along, dreaming, she looking downward of the past, he of the future with
+his eyes fixed on the chimneys of the high flats that encircled the
+little houses and long gardens of Tinderbox Lane. They were passing a
+wall on their right in which numbered doors were set at intervals. From
+one of these a tall figure emerged and stopped a moment to say good-by
+to somebody standing in the entrance. The two musicians with a
+simultaneous instinct for an audience that might appreciate them stopped
+and addressed their song to the parting pair, a tall old gentleman with
+drooping gray whiskers, very much muffled up, and an exceedingly stout
+woman of ripe middle age.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo; said the old gentleman, in a tremulous voice, as he tapped his
+cane on the pavement. &ldquo;Polly, this is devilish appropriate. By gad! it
+makes me feel inclined to dance again, Polly,&rdquo; and the old gentleman
+forthwith postured with his thin legs like a cardboard antic at the end
+of a string. The fat woman standing in the doorway came out into the
+lamplight, and clasping her hands in alarm, begged him not to take cold,
+but the old gentleman would not stop until Polly had made a pretense of
+dancing a few steps with him, after which he again piped, &ldquo;Bravo,&rdquo; vowed
+he must have a whisky, and invited Sylvia and Jack to come inside and
+join them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dashwood is my name, Major-General Dashwood, and this is Mrs.
+Gainsborough.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come along,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;The captain&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She will call me Captain,&rdquo; said the general, with a chuckle. &ldquo;Obstinate
+gal! Knew me first when I was a<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a> captain, thirty-six years ago, and has
+never called me anything since. What a woman, though!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s very gay to-night. We&rsquo;ve been celebrating our anniversary,&rdquo; Mrs.
+Gainsborough explained, while the four of them walked along a gravel
+path toward a small square creeper-covered house at the end of a very
+long garden.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We met first at the Argyll Rooms in March, 1867, and in September,
+1869, Mulberry Cottage was finished. I planted those mulberry-trees
+myself, and they&rsquo;ll outlive us both,&rdquo; said the general.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s have any more dismals,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough begged.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had quite enough to-night, talking over old times.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mulberry Cottage was very comfortable inside, full of mid-Victorian
+furniture and ornaments that suited its owner, who, Sylvia now perceived
+by the orange lamplight, was even fatter than she had seemed at first.
+Her hair, worn in a chignon, was black, her face was rosy and large,
+almost monumental, with a plinth of chins.</p>
+
+<p>The general so much enjoyed having a fresh audience for his tales, and
+sat so long over the whisky, that Mrs. Gainsborough became worried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bob, you ought to go. You know I don&rsquo;t like to argue before strangers,
+but your sister will be getting anxious. Miss Dashwood&rsquo;s quite alone,&rdquo;
+she explained to her guests. &ldquo;I wonder if you&rsquo;d mind walking back with
+him?&rdquo; she whispered to Sylvia. &ldquo;He lives in Redcliffe Gardens. That&rsquo;s
+close to you, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If we can have music all the way, by gad! of course,&rdquo; said the general,
+standing up so straight that Sylvia was afraid he would bump his head on
+the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, Bob dear, don&rsquo;t get too excited and do keep your muffler well
+wrapped round your throat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The general insisted on having one more glass for the sake of old times,
+and there was a short delay in the garden, because he stuck his cane
+fast in the ground to show the size of the mulberry-trees when he
+planted them, but ultimately they said good night to Mrs. Gainsborough,
+upon whom Sylvia promised to call next day, and set out for Redcliffe
+Gardens to the sound of guitars.</p>
+
+<p>General Dashwood turned round from time to time to<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a> shake his cane at
+passers-by that presumed to stare at the unusual sight of an old
+gentleman, respectable in his dress and demeanor, escorted down Fulham
+Road by two musicians.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you see anything so damned odd in our appearance?&rdquo; he asked Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing at all,&rdquo; she assured him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sensible gal! I&rsquo;ve a very good mind to knock down the next scoundrel
+who stares at us.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Presently the general, on whom the fresh air was having an effect, took
+Sylvia&rsquo;s arm and grew confidential.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go on playing,&rdquo; he commanded Jack Airdale. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m only talking business.
+The fact is,&rdquo; he said to Sylvia, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m worried about Polly. Hope I shall
+live another twenty years, but fact is, my dear, I&rsquo;ve never really got
+over that wound of mine at Balaclava. Damme! I&rsquo;ve never been the same
+man since.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia wondered what he could have been before.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Naturally she&rsquo;s well provided for. Bob Dashwood always knew how to
+treat a woman. No wife, no children, you understand me? But it&rsquo;s the
+loneliness. She ought to have somebody with her. She&rsquo;s a wonderful
+woman, and she was a handsome gal. Damme! she&rsquo;s still handsome&mdash;what?
+Fifty-five you know. By gad, yes. And I&rsquo;m seventy. But it&rsquo;s the
+loneliness. Ah, dear, if the gods had been kind; but then she&rsquo;d have
+probably been married by now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The general blew his nose, sighed, and shook his head. Sylvia asked
+tenderly how long the daughter had lived.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never lived at all,&rdquo; said the general, stopping dead and opening his
+eyes very wide, as he looked at Sylvia. &ldquo;Never was born. Never was going
+to be born. Hale and hearty, but too late now, damme! I&rsquo;ve taken a fancy
+to you. Sensible gal! Damned sensible. Why don&rsquo;t you go and live with
+Polly?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In order to give Sylvia time to reflect upon her answer, the general
+skipped along for a moment to the tune that Jack was playing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing between you and him?&rdquo; he asked, presently, indicating Jack with
+his cane.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia shook her head.<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thought not. Very well, then, why don&rsquo;t you go and live with Polly?
+Give you time to look round a bit. Understand what you feel about
+playing for your bread and butter like this. Finest thing in the world
+music, if you haven&rsquo;t got to do it. Go and see Polly to-morrow. I spoke
+to her about it to-night. She&rsquo;ll be delighted. So shall I. Here we are
+in Redcliffe Gardens. Damned big house and only myself and my sister to
+live in it. Live there like two needles in a haystack. Won&rsquo;t ask you in.
+Damned inhospitable, but no good because I shall have to go to bed at
+once. Perhaps you wouldn&rsquo;t mind pressing the bell? Left my latch-key in
+me sister&rsquo;s work-basket.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, and the general, after bidding Sylvia and Jack a
+courteous good night, marched up his front-door steps with as much
+martial rigidity as he could command.</p>
+
+<p>On the way back to Finborough Road, Sylvia, who had been attracted to
+the general&rsquo;s suggestion, postponed raising the question with Jack by
+telling him about her adventure in Redcliffe Gardens when she threw the
+bag of chestnuts through the window. She did not think it fair, however,
+to make any other arrangement without letting him know, and before she
+went to see Mrs. Gainsborough the next day she announced her idea and
+asked him if he would be much hurt by her backing out of the busking.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear girl, of course not,&rdquo; said Jack. &ldquo;As a matter of fact, I&rsquo;ve had
+rather a decent offer to tour in a show through the East. I should
+rather like to see India and all that. I didn&rsquo;t say anything about it,
+because I didn&rsquo;t want to let you down. However, if you&rsquo;re all right, I&rsquo;m
+all right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough by daylight appealed to Sylvia as much as ever. She
+told her what the general had said, and Mrs. Gainsborough begged her to
+come that very afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The only thing is,&rdquo; Sylvia objected, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a friend, a girl, who&rsquo;s
+away at present, and she might want to go on living with me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let her come too,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough cried. &ldquo;The more the merrier. Good
+Land! What a set-out we shall have. The captain won&rsquo;t know himself. He&rsquo;s
+very fond<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a> of me, you know. But it would be more jolly for him to have
+some youngsters about. He&rsquo;s that young. Upon my word, you&rsquo;d think he was
+a boy. And he&rsquo;s always the same. Oh, dearie me! the times we&rsquo;ve had,
+you&rsquo;d hardly believe. Life with him was a regular circus.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So it was arranged that Sylvia should come at once to live with Mrs.
+Gainsborough in Tinderbox Lane, and Jack went off to the East.</p>
+
+<p>The general used to visit them nearly every afternoon, but never in the
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Depend upon it, Sylvia,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough said, &ldquo;he got into rare hot
+water with his sister the other night. Of course it was an exception,
+being our anniversary, and I dare say next March, if we&rsquo;re all spared,
+he&rsquo;ll be allowed another evening. It&rsquo;s a great pity, though, that we
+didn&rsquo;t meet first in June. So much more seasonable for jollifications.
+But there, he was young and never looked forward to being old.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The general was not spared for another anniversary. Scarcely a month
+after Sylvia had gone to live with Mrs. Gainsborough, he died very
+quietly in the night. His sister came herself to break the news, a frail
+old lady who seemed very near to joining her brother upon the longest
+journey.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;ll never be able to keep away from him,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough sobbed.
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;ll worry and fret herself for fear he might catch cold in his
+coffin. And look at me! As healthy and rosy as a great radish!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The etiquette of the funeral caused Mrs. Gainsborough considerable
+perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now tell me, Sylvia, ought I or ought I not to wear a widow&rsquo;s veil?
+Miss Dashwood inviting me in that friendly way, I do want to show that I
+appreciate her kindness. I know that strictly we weren&rsquo;t married. I dare
+say nowadays it would be different, but people was much more
+old-fashioned about marrying ballet-girls when I was young. Still, it
+doesn&rsquo;t seem hardly decent for me to go gallivanting to his funeral in
+me black watered silk, the same as if I were going to the upper boxes of
+a theater with Mrs. Marsham or Mrs. Beardmore.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia told Mrs. Gainsborough that in her opinion a<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a> widow&rsquo;s cap at the
+general&rsquo;s funeral would be like the dash of mauve at the wedding in the
+story. She suggested the proper thing to do would be to buy a new black
+dress unprofaned by visits to the upper boxes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I can get such an out size in the time,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough sighed,
+&ldquo;which is highly doubtful.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>However, the new dress was obtained, and Mrs. Gainsborough went off to
+the funeral at Brompton.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On, it was a beautiful ceremony,&rdquo; she sobbed, when she got home. &ldquo;And
+really Miss Dashwood, well, she couldn&rsquo;t have been nicer. Oh, my poor
+dear captain, if only all the clergyman said was true. And yet I should
+feel more comfortable somehow if it wasn&rsquo;t. Though I suppose if it was
+true there&rsquo;d be no objection to our meeting in heaven as friends only.
+Dear me, it all sounded so real when I heard the clergyman talking about
+it. Just as if he was going up in a lift, as you might say. So natural
+it sounded. &lsquo;A gallant soldier,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;a veteran of the Crimea.&rsquo; So
+he was gallant, the dear captain. You should have seen him lay out two
+roughs who tried to snatch me watch and chain once at the Epsom Derby.
+He was a gentleman, too. I&rsquo;m sure nobody ever treated any woman kinder
+than he treated me. Seventy years old he was. Captain Bob Dashwood of
+the Seventeenth Hussars. I can see him now as he used to be. He liked to
+come stamping up the garden. Oh, he was a stamper, and &lsquo;Polly,&rsquo; he
+hollered out, &lsquo;get on your frills. Here&rsquo;s Dick Avon&mdash;the Markiss of Avon
+<i>that</i> was&rsquo; (oh, he was a wild thing) &lsquo;and Jenny Ward&rsquo; (you know, she
+threw herself off Westminster Bridge and caused such a stir in Jubilee
+year). People talked a lot about it at the time. I remember we drove to
+the Star and Garter at Richmond that day&mdash;a lovely June day it was&mdash;and
+caused quite a sensation, because we all looked so smart. Oh, my Bob, my
+Bob, it only seems yesterday.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia consoled Mrs. Gainsborough and rejoiced in her assurance that she
+did not know what she should have done.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fancy him thinking about me being so lonely and wanting you to come and
+live with me. Depend upon it he knew he was going to die all of a
+sudden,&rdquo; said Mrs.<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> Gainsborough. &ldquo;Oh, there&rsquo;s no doubt he was clever
+enough to have been a doctor. Only of course with his family he had to
+be a soldier.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia mostly spent these spring days in the garden with Mrs.
+Gainsborough, listening to her tales about the past and helping her to
+overlook the labors of the jobbing gardener who came in twice a week.
+Her landlady or hostess (for the exact relation was not yet determined)
+was very strict in this regard, because her father had been a nursery
+gardener and she insisted upon a peculiar knowledge of the various ways
+in which horticultural obligations could be avoided. When Sylvia raised
+the question of her status at Mulberry Cottage, Mrs. Gainsborough always
+begged her not to be in a hurry to settle anything; later on, when
+Sylvia was able to earn some money, she should pay for her board, but
+payment for her lodging, so long as Mrs. Gainsborough was alive and the
+house was not burned to the ground, was never to be mentioned. That was
+certainly the captain&rsquo;s intention and it must be respected.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia often went to see Mrs. Gowndry in Finborough Road in case there
+should be news of Lily. Her old landlady was always good enough to say
+that she missed her, and in her broken-up existence the affection even
+of Mrs. Gowndry was very grateful.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve told me old man to keep a good lookout for her,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Gowndry.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s hardly likely to meet her at his work,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly not. No. But he often goes up to get a breath of
+air&mdash;well&mdash;it isn&rsquo;t to be expected that he wouldn&rsquo;t. I often say to him
+when he comes home a bit grumblified that his profession is as bad as a
+miner&rsquo;s, and <i>they</i> only does eight hours, whereas in his lavatory they
+does twelve. Too long, too long, and it must be fidgety work, with
+people bobbing in and out all the time and always in a hurry, as you
+might say. Of course now and again you get a lodger who makes himself
+unpleasant, but, year in year out, looking after lodgers is a more
+peaceful sort of a life than looking after a lavatory. Don&rsquo;t you be
+afraid, Miss Scarlett. If ever a letter comes for you our Tommy shall
+bring it straight round, and he&rsquo;s a<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a> boy as can be trusted not to lose
+anything he&rsquo;s given. You wouldn&rsquo;t lose the pretty lady&rsquo;s letter, would
+you, Tommy? You never lose nothing, do you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I lost a acid-drop once.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There, fancy him remembering. That&rsquo;s a hit for his ma, that is. He&rsquo;d
+only half sucked this here acid-drop and laid it aside to finish sucking
+it when he went up to bed, and I must have swept it up, not thinking
+what it was. Fancy him remembering. He don&rsquo;t talk much, but he&rsquo;s a
+artful one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tommy had a bagful of acid-drops soon after this, for he brought a
+letter to Sylvia from Lily:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>D<small>EAR</small> S<small>YLVIA</small>,&mdash;I suppose you&rsquo;re awfully angry with me, but Claude
+went on tour a month ago, and I hate being alone. I wonder if this
+will find you. I&rsquo;m staying in rotten rooms in Camden Town. 14
+Winchester Terrace. Send me a card if you&rsquo;re in London.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Loving, <span style="margin-left: 20%;">L<small>ILY</small>.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Sylvia immediately went over to Camden Town and brought Lily away from
+the rooms, which were indeed &ldquo;rotten.&rdquo; When she had installed her at
+Mulberry Cottage she worked herself up to having a clear understanding
+with Lily, but when it came to the point she felt it was useless to
+scold her except in fun, as a child scolds her doll. She did, however,
+treat her henceforth in what Mrs. Gainsborough called a &ldquo;highly
+dictatorial way.&rdquo; Sylvia thought she could give Lily the appearance of
+moral or immoral energy, however impossible it might be to give her the
+reality. With this end in view she made Lily&rsquo;s will entirely subordinate
+to her own, which was not difficult. The affection that Sylvia now had
+for her was not so much tender as careful, the affection one might feel
+for a bicycle rather than for a horse. She was always brutally frank
+with herself about their relation to each other, and because she never
+congratulated herself upon her kindness she was able to sustain her
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is nothing so fickle as a virtuous impulse,&rdquo; Sylvia declared to
+herself. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a kind of moral usury which is always looking for a
+return on the investment. The moment the object fails to pay an
+exorbitant interest in gratitude, the impulse to speculate withers up.
+The<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a> lowest circle in hell should be reserved for people who try to help
+others and cannot understand why their kindness is not appreciated.
+Really that was Philip&rsquo;s trouble. He never got over being hurt that I
+didn&rsquo;t perpetually remind him of his splendid behavior toward me. I
+suppose I&rsquo;m damned inhuman. Well, well, I couldn&rsquo;t have stood those
+three months after I left him if I hadn&rsquo;t been.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The affair between Lily and Claude Raglan was not much discussed. He
+had, it seemed, only left her because his career was at stake; he had
+received a good offer and she had not wished to detain him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But is it over between you?&rdquo; Sylvia demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, of course, it&rsquo;s over&mdash;at any rate, for a long time to come,&rdquo; Lily
+answered. &ldquo;He cried when he left me. He really was a nice boy. If he
+lives, he thinks he will be a success&mdash;a real success. He introduced me
+to a lot of nice boys.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That was rash of him,&rdquo; Sylvia laughed. &ldquo;Were they as nice as the
+lodgings he introduced you to?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t laugh at him. He couldn&rsquo;t afford anything else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But why in Heaven&rsquo;s name, if you wanted to play around together, had
+you got to leave Finborough Road?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lily blushed faintly. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t be angry if I tell you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Claude said he couldn&rsquo;t bear the idea that you were looking at us. He
+said it spoiled everything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What did he think I was going to do?&rdquo; Sylvia snapped. &ldquo;Put pepper on
+the hymeneal pillow?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You said you wouldn&rsquo;t be angry.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t use long words, because it makes me think you are.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Soon after Lily came to Tinderbox Lane, Sylvia met Dorothy Lonsdale with
+a very lovely dark girl called Olive Fanshawe, a fellow-member of the
+Vanity chorus. Dorothy was glad to see her, principally, Sylvia thought,
+because she was able to talk about lunch at Romano&rsquo;s and supper at the
+Savoy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;A little less of the Queen of<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a> Sheba, if you
+don&rsquo;t mind. Don&rsquo;t forget I&rsquo;m one of the blokes as is glad to smell the
+gratings outside a baker&rsquo;s.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Fanshawe laughed, and Sylvia looked at her quickly, wondering if
+she were worth while.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy was concerned to hear she was still with Lily. &ldquo;That dreadful
+girl,&rdquo; she simpered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, go to hell,&rdquo; said Sylvia, sharply, and walked off.</p>
+
+<p>Next day a note came from Dorothy to invite her and Lily to tea at the
+flat she shared with Olive.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wonderful how attractive rudeness is,&rdquo; Sylvia commented.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, do let&rsquo;s go. Look, she lives in Half Moon Street,&rdquo; Lily said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And a damned good address for the demi-monde,&rdquo; Sylvia added.</p>
+
+<p>However, the tea-party was definitely a success, and for the rest of the
+summer Sylvia and Lily spent a lot of time on the river with what Sylvia
+called the semicircle of intimate friends they had brought away from
+Half Moon Street. She grew very fond of Olive Fanshawe and warned her
+against her romantic adoration of Dorothy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you&rsquo;re just as romantic over Lily,&rdquo; Olive argued.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not a single illusion left, my dear,&rdquo; Sylvia assured her. &ldquo;Besides, I
+should never compare Lily with Dorothy. Dorothy is more beautiful, more
+ambitious, more mercenary. She&rsquo;ll probably marry a lord. She&rsquo;s acquired
+the art of getting a lot for nothing to a perfection that could only be
+matched by a politician or a girl with the same brown eyes in the same
+glory of light-brown hair. And when it suits her she&rsquo;ll go back on her
+word just as gracefully, and sell her best friend as readily as a
+politician will sell his country.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re very down on politicians. I think there&rsquo;s something so romantic
+about them,&rdquo; Olive declared. &ldquo;Young politicians, of course.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear, you&rsquo;d think a Bradshaw romantic.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is sometimes,&rdquo; said Olive.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I know two young politicians,&rdquo; Sylvia continued. &ldquo;A Liberal and a
+Conservative. They both spend their whole time in hoping I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t
+suggest walking down Bond Street with them, the Liberal because I may
+see a frock<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a> and the Conservative because he may meet a friend. They
+both make love to me as if they were addressing their future
+constituents, with a mixture of flattery, condescension, and best
+clothes; but they reserve all their affection for the constituency. As I
+tell them, if they&rsquo;d fondle the constituency and nurse me, I should
+endure their company more easily. Unhappily, they both think I&rsquo;m
+intelligent, and a man who admires a woman&rsquo;s intelligence is like a
+woman who admires her friend&rsquo;s looking-glass&mdash;each one is granting an
+audience to himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At any rate,&rdquo; said Olive, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve managed to make yourself quite a
+mystery. All the men we know are puzzled by you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell them, my dear, I&rsquo;m quite simple. I represent the original
+conception of the Hetæra, a companion. I don&rsquo;t want to be made love to,
+and every man who makes love to me I dislike. If I ever do fall in love,
+I&rsquo;ll be a man&rsquo;s slave. Of that I&rsquo;m sure. So don&rsquo;t utter dark warnings,
+for I&rsquo;ve warned myself already. I do want a certain number of
+things&mdash;nice dresses, because I owe them to myself, good books,
+and&mdash;well, really, I think that&rsquo;s all. In return for the dresses and the
+books&mdash;I suppose one ought to add an occasional fiver just to show
+there&rsquo;s no ill feeling about preferring to sleep in my own room&mdash;in
+return for very little. I&rsquo;m ready to talk, walk, laugh, sing, dance,
+tell incomparably bawdy stories, and, what is after all the most
+valuable return of all, I&rsquo;m ready to sit perfectly still and let myself
+be bored to death while giving him an idea that I&rsquo;m listening
+intelligently. Of course, sometimes I do listen intelligently without
+being bored. In that case I let him off with books only.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You really are an extraordinary girl,&rdquo; said Olive.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You, on the other hand, my dear,&rdquo; Sylvia went on, &ldquo;always give every
+man the hope that if he&rsquo;s wise and tender, and of course
+lavish&mdash;ultimately all men believe in the pocket&mdash;he will be able to cry
+Open Sesame to the mysterious treasure of romantic love that he discerns
+in your dark eyes, in your caressing voice, and in your fervid
+aspirations. In the end you&rsquo;ll give it all to a curly-headed actor and
+live happily ever afterward at Ravenscourt Park. Farewell to Coriolanus
+in his smart waistcoat;<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> farewell to Julius Cæsar and his amber
+cigarette-holder; farewell to every nincompoop with a top-hat as bright
+as a halo; farewell incidentally to Dolly Lonsdale, who&rsquo;ll discover that
+Ravenscourt Park is too difficult for the chauffeur to find.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Sylvia, shut up!&rdquo; Olive said. &ldquo;I believe you drank too much
+champagne at lunch.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you reminded me,&rdquo; Sylvia cried. &ldquo;By Jove! I&rsquo;d forgotten the
+fizz. That&rsquo;s where we all meet on common ground&mdash;or rather, I should say
+in common liquid. It sounds like mixed bathing. It is a kind of mixed
+bathing, after all. You&rsquo;re quite right, Olive, whatever our different
+tastes in men, clothes, and behavior, we all must have champagne.
+Champagne is a bloody sight thicker than water, as the prodigal said
+when his father uncorked a magnum to wash down the fatted calf.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Gradually Sylvia did succeed in sorting out from the various men a few
+who were content to accept the terms of friendship she offered. She had
+to admit that most of them fell soon or late, and with each new man she
+gave less and took more. As regards Lily, she tried to keep her as
+unapproachable as herself, but it was not always possible. Sometimes
+with a shrug of the shoulders she let Lily go her own way, though she
+was always hard as steel with the fortunate suitor. Once a rich young
+financier called Hausberg, who had found Lily somewhat expensive,
+started a theory that Sylvia was living on her friend; she heard of the
+slander and dealt with it very directly. The young man in question was
+anxious to set Lily up in a flat of her own. Sylvia let Lily appear to
+view the plan with favor. The flat was taken and furnished; a date was
+fixed for Lily&rsquo;s entrance; the young man was given the latch-key and
+told to come at midnight. When he arrived, there was nobody in the flat
+but a chimpanzee that Sylvia had bought at Jamrack&rsquo;s. She and Lily were
+at Brighton with Arthur Lonsdale and Tony Clarehaven, whom they had
+recently met again at a Covent Garden ball.</p>
+
+<p>They were both just down from Oxford, and Lonsdale had taken a great
+fancy to Lily. He was a jolly youth, whose father, Lord Cleveden, had
+consented after a struggle to let him go into partnership with a
+distinguished professional<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a> motorist. It was with him that Dorothy
+Lonsdale claimed distant kinship. Clarehaven&rsquo;s admiration for Dorothy
+had not diminished; somebody had told him that the best way to get hold
+of her would be to make her jealous. This was his object in inviting
+Sylvia to Brighton. Sylvia agreed to go, partly to tease Dorothy, partly
+to disappoint Clarehaven. Lonsdale had helped her to get the chimpanzee
+into the flat, and all the way down to Brighton they laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My word, you know!&rdquo; Lonsdale chuckled, &ldquo;the jolly old chimpanzee will
+probably eat the wall-paper. What do you think Hausberg will say when he
+opens the door?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I expect he&rsquo;ll say, &lsquo;Are you there, Lily?&rsquo;&rdquo; Sylvia suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you think the jolly old chimpanzee will do? Probably bite his
+ear off&mdash;what? Topping. Good engine this. We&rsquo;re doing fifty-nine or an
+unripe sixty. Why does a chicken cross the road? No answer, thank you,
+this time. Must slow down a bit. There&rsquo;s a trap somewhere here. I say,
+you know, I&rsquo;ve got a sister called Sylvia. Hullo! hullo! Mind your hoop,
+Tommy! Too late. Funeral on Friday. Colonial papers please copy. I
+wonder how they&rsquo;ll get the chimpanzee out again. I told the hall porter,
+when he cast a cold and glassy eye on the crate, it was a marble Venus
+that Mr. Hausberg was going to use as a hat-stand. My word! I expect the
+jolly old flat looks like the last days of Pompeii by now. When I undid
+the door of the crate the brute was making a noise like a discontented
+cistern. I rapidly scattered Brazil nuts and bananas on the floor to
+occupy his mind and melted away like a strawberry ice on a grill. Hullo!
+We&rsquo;re getting into Brighton.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Clarehaven did not enjoy his week-end, for it consisted entirely of a
+lecture by Sylvia on his behavior. This caused him to drink many more
+whisky-and-sodas than usual, and he came back to London on Monday with a
+bad headache, which he attributed to Sylvia&rsquo;s talking.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear man, <i>I</i> haven&rsquo;t got a mouth. You have,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>This week-end caused a quarrel between Sylvia and Dorothy, for which she
+was not sorry. She had recently<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a> met a young painter, Ronald Walker, who
+wanted Lily to sit for him; he had taken them once or twice to the Café
+Royal, which Sylvia had found a pleasant change from the society of Half
+Moon Street. Soon after this Lonsdale began a liaison with Queenie
+Molyneux, of the Frivolity Theater. The only member of the Half Moon
+Street set with whom Sylvia kept up a friendship was Olive Fanshawe.<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">D</span>URING her second year at Mulberry Cottage Sylvia achieved an existence
+that, save for the absence of any one great motive like art or love, was
+complete. She had also one real friend in Jack Airdale, who had returned
+from his tour. Apart from the pleasant security of knowing that he would
+always be content with good-fellowship only, he encouraged her to
+suppose that somewhere, could she but find the first step, a career lay
+before her. Sylvia did not in her heart believe in this career, but in
+moments of depression Jack&rsquo;s confidence was of the greatest comfort, and
+she was always ready to play with the notion, particularly as it seemed
+to provide a background for her present existence and to cover the
+futility of its perfection. Jack was anxious that she should try to get
+on the proper stage, but Sylvia feared to destroy by premature failure a
+part of the illusion of ultimate success she continued to allow herself
+by finally ruling out the theater as one of the possible channels to
+that career. In the summer Lily became friendly with one or two men whom
+Sylvia could not endure, but a lassitude had descended upon her and she
+lacked any energy to stop the association. As a matter of fact she was
+sickening for diphtheria at the time, and while she was in the hospital
+Lily took to frequenting the Orient promenade with these new friends. As
+soon as Sylvia came out they were banished; but each time that she
+intervened on Lily&rsquo;s behalf it seemed to her a little less worth while.
+Nevertheless, finding that Lily was bored by her own habit of staying in
+at night, she used much against her will to accompany her very often to
+various places of amusement without a definite invitation from a man to
+escort them.</p>
+
+<p>One day at the end of December Mrs. Gainsborough<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a> came home from
+shopping with two tickets for a fancy-dress dance at the Redcliffe Hall
+in Fulham Road. When the evening arrived Sylvia did not want to go, for
+the weather was raw and foggy; but Mrs. Gainsborough was so much
+disappointed at her tickets not being used that to please her Sylvia
+agreed to go. It seemed unlikely to be an amusing affair, so she and
+Lily went in the most ordinary of their fancy dresses as masked
+Pierrettes. The company, as they had anticipated, was quite
+exceptionally dull.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear, it&rsquo;s like a skating-rink on Saturday afternoon,&rdquo; Sylvia said.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have one more dance together and then go home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They were standing at the far end of the hall near the orchestra, and
+Sylvia was making disdainful comments upon the various couples that were
+passing out to refresh themselves or flirt in the draughty corridors.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Sylvia saw a man in evening dress pushing his way in their
+direction, regardless of what ribbons he tore or toes he outraged in his
+transit. He was a young man of about twenty-three or twenty-four, with a
+countenance in which eagerness was curiously mixed with impassivity.
+Sylvia saw him as one sees a picture on first entering a gallery, which
+one postpones visiting with a scarcely conscious and yet perfectly
+deliberate anticipation of pleasure later on. She continued talking to
+Lily, who had her back to the new-comer; while she talked she was aware
+that all her own attention was fixed upon this new-comer and that she
+was asking herself the cause of the contradictions in his face and
+deciding that it was due to the finely carved immobile mouth beneath
+such eager eyes. Were they brown or blue? The young man had reached
+them, and from that immobile mouth came in accents that were almost like
+despair a salutation to Lily. Sylvia felt for a moment as if she had
+been wounded; she saw that Lily was looking at her with that expression
+she always put on when she thought Sylvia was angry with her; then after
+what seemed an age turned round slowly to the young man and, lifting her
+mask, engaged in conversation with him. Sylvia felt that she was
+trespassing upon the borders of great emotion and withdrew out of
+hearing, until Lily beckoned her forward to introduce the young man as
+Mr.<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a> Michael Fane. Sylvia did not raise her mask, and after nodding to
+him again retired from the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But this is absurd,&rdquo; she said to herself, after a while; and abruptly
+raising her mask she broke in upon the duologue. The music had begun. He
+was asking Lily to dance, and she, waiting for Sylvia&rsquo;s leave in a way
+that made Sylvia want to slap her, was hesitating.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What rot, Lily!&rdquo; she exclaimed, impatiently. &ldquo;Of course you may dance.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The young man turned toward Sylvia and smiled. A moment later he and
+Lily had waltzed away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; said Sylvia to herself. &ldquo;Am I going mad? A youth smiles at
+me and I feel inclined to cry. What is this waltz they&rsquo;re playing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at one of the sheets of music, but the name was nowhere
+legible, and she nearly snatched it away from the player in
+exasperation. Nothing seemed to matter in the world except that she
+should know the name of this waltz. Without thinking what she was doing
+she thumped the clarinet-player on the shoulder, who stopped indignantly
+and asked if she was trying to knock his teeth out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What waltz are you playing? What waltz are you playing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Waltz Amarousse.&rsquo; Perhaps you&rsquo;ll punch one of the strings next time,
+miss?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Happy New-Year,&rdquo; Sylvia laughed, and the clarinet-player with a
+disgusted glance turned round to his music again.</p>
+
+<p>By the time the dance was over and the other two had rejoined her,
+Sylvia was laughing at herself; but they thought she was laughing at
+them. Fane and Lily danced several more dances together, and gradually
+Sylvia made up her mind that she disapproved of this new intimacy, this
+sudden invasion of Lily&rsquo;s life from the past from which she should have
+cut herself off as completely as Sylvia had done from her own. What
+right had Lily to complicate their existence in this fashion? How
+unutterably dull this masquerade was! She whispered to Lily in the next
+interval that she was tired and wanted to go home.</p>
+
+<p>The fog outside was very dense. Fane took their arms to cross the road,
+and Sylvia, though he caught her arm<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a> close to him, felt drearily how
+mechanical its gesture was toward her, how vital toward Lily. Neither of
+her companions spoke to each other, and she asked them questions about
+their former friendship, which Lily did not answer because she was
+evidently afraid of her annoyance, and which he did not answer because
+he did not hear. Sylvia had made up her mind that Fane should not enter
+Mulberry Cottage, when Lily whispered to her that she should ask him,
+but at the last moment she remembered his smile and invited him to
+supper. A strange shyness took possession of her, which she tried to
+cover by exaggeration, almost, she thought, hysterical fooling with Mrs.
+Gainsborough that lasted until two o&rsquo;clock in the morning of New-Year&rsquo;s
+day, when Michael Fane went home after exacting a promise from the two
+girls to lunch with him at Kettner&rsquo;s that afternoon. Lily was so sleepy
+that she did not rise to see him out. Sylvia was glad of the
+indifference.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning Sylvia found out that Michael was a &ldquo;nice boy&rdquo; whom Lily
+had known in West Kensington when she was seventeen. He had been awfully
+in love with her, and her mother had been annoyed because he wanted to
+marry her. He had only been seventeen himself, and like many other
+school-boy loves of those days this one had just ended somehow, but
+exactly how Lily could not recall. She wished that Sylvia would not go
+on asking so many questions; she really could not remember anything more
+about it. They had gone once for a long drive in a cab, and there had
+been a row about that at home.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you in love with him now?&rdquo; Sylvia demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, of course not. How could I be?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was determined that she never should be, either: there should be
+no more Claude Raglans to interfere with their well-devised existence.</p>
+
+<p>During the next fortnight Sylvia took care that Lily and Michael should
+never be alone together, and she tried very often, after she discovered
+that Michael was sensitive, to shock him by references to their life,
+and with an odd perverseness to try particularly to shock him about
+herself by making brutally coarse remarks in front of Lily, taking
+pleasure in his embarrassment. Yet there was in the end<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> little pleasure
+in shocking him, for he had no conventional niceness; yet there was a
+pleasure in hurting him, a fierce pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Though why on earth I bother about his feelings, I can&rsquo;t imagine,&rdquo;
+Sylvia said to herself. &ldquo;All I know is that he&rsquo;s an awful bore and makes
+us break all sorts of engagements with other people. You liar! You know
+he&rsquo;s not a bore, and you know that you don&rsquo;t care a damn how many
+engagements you break. Don&rsquo;t pose to yourself. You&rsquo;re jealous of him
+because you think that Lily may get really fond of him. You don&rsquo;t want
+her to get fond of him, because you don&rsquo;t think she&rsquo;s good enough for
+him. You don&rsquo;t want him to get fond of <i>her</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The boldness of this thought, the way in which it had attacked the
+secret recesses of her being, startled Sylvia. It was almost a sensation
+of turning pale at herself, of fearing to understand herself, that made
+her positively stifle the mood and flee from these thoughts, which might
+violate her personality.</p>
+
+<p>Down-stairs, there was a telegram from Olive Fanshawe at Brighton,
+begging Sylvia to come at once; she was terribly unhappy; Sylvia could
+scarcely tear herself away from Mulberry Cottage at such a moment even
+for Olive, but, knowing that if she did not go she would be sorry, she
+went.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia found Olive in a state of collapse. Dorothy Lonsdale and she had
+been staying in Brighton for a week&rsquo;s holiday, and yesterday Dorothy had
+married Clarehaven. Sylvia laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Sylvia, don&rsquo;t laugh!&rdquo; Olive begged. &ldquo;It was perfectly dreadful. Of
+course it was a great shock to me, but I did not show it. I told her she
+could count on me as a pal to help her in every way. And what do you
+think she said? Sylvia, you&rsquo;ll never guess. It was too cruel. She said
+to me in a voice of ice, dear&mdash;really, a voice of ice&mdash;she said the best
+way I could help her was by not seeing her any more. She did not intend
+to go near the stage door of a theater again. She did not want to know
+any of her stage friends any more. She didn&rsquo;t even say she was sorry;
+she was quite calm. She was like ice, Sylvia dear. Clarehaven came in
+and she asked if he&rsquo;d telegraphed to his mother,<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> and when he said he
+had she got up as if she&rsquo;d been calling on me quite formally and shook
+hands, and said: &lsquo;Good-by, Olive. We&rsquo;re going down to Clare Court
+to-morrow, and I don&rsquo;t expect we shall see each other again for a long
+time.&rsquo; Clarehaven said what rot and that I must come down to Devonshire
+and stay with them, and Dolly froze him, my dear; she froze him with a
+look. I never slept all night, and the book I was reading began to
+repeat itself, and I thought I was going mad; but this morning I found
+the printers had made some mistake and put sixteen pages twice over. But
+I really thought I was going mad, so I wired for you. Oh, Sylvia,
+Sylvia, say something to console me! She was like ice, dear, really like
+a block of ice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If she&rsquo;d only waited till you had found the curly-headed actor it
+wouldn&rsquo;t have mattered so much,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Olive really was on the verge of a nervous collapse, and Sylvia
+stayed with her three days, though it was agony to leave Lily in London
+with Michael Fane. Nor could she talk of her own case to Olive. It would
+seem like a competitive sorrow, a vulgar bit of egotistic assumption to
+suit the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>When Sylvia got back to Mulberry Cottage she found an invitation from
+Jack Airdale to dine at Richmond and go to a dance with him afterward.
+Conscious from something in Michael&rsquo;s watchful demeanor of a development
+in the situation, she was pleased to be able to disquiet him by
+insisting that Lily should go with her.</p>
+
+<p>On the way, Sylvia extracted from Lily that Michael had asked her to
+marry him. It took all Jack Airdale&rsquo;s good nature not to be angry with
+Sylvia that night&mdash;as she tore the world to shreds. At the moment when
+Lily had told her she had felt with a despair that was not communicable,
+as Olive&rsquo;s despair had been, how urgent it was to stop Michael from
+marrying Lily. She was not good enough for him. The knowledge rang in
+her brain like a discordant clangor of bells, and Sylvia knew in that
+moment that the real reason of her thinking this was jealousy of Lily.
+The admission tortured her pride, and after a terrible night in which
+the memory of Olive&rsquo;s grief interminably dwelt upon and absorbed helped
+her to<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a> substitute the pretense, so passionately invoked that it almost
+ceased to be a pretense, that she was opposing the marriage partly
+because Michael would never keep Lily faithful, partly because she could
+not bear the idea of losing her friend.</p>
+
+<p>When, the next day, Sylvia faced Michael for the discussion of the
+marriage, she was quite sure not merely that he had never attracted her,
+but even that she hated him and, what was more deadly, despised him. She
+taunted him with wishing to marry Lily for purely sentimental reasons,
+for the gratification of a morbid desire to save her. She remembered
+Philip, and all the hatred she had felt for Philip&rsquo;s superiority was
+transferred to Michael. She called him a prig and made him wince by
+speaking of Lily and herself as &ldquo;tarts,&rdquo; exacting from the word the
+uttermost tribute of its vulgarity. She dwelt on Lily&rsquo;s character and
+evolved a theory of woman&rsquo;s ownership by man that drove her into such
+illogical arguments and exaggerated pretensions that Michael had some
+excuse for calling her hysterical. The dispute left Lily on one side for
+a time and became personal to herself and him. He told her she was
+jealous. In an access of outraged pride she forgot that he was referring
+to her jealousy about Lily, and to any one less obsessed by an idea than
+he was she would have revealed her secret. Suddenly he seemed to give
+way. When he was going he told her that she hated him because he loved
+Lily and hated him twice as much because his love was returned.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt she would go mad when Michael said that he loved Lily; but
+he was thinking it was because Lily loved him that she was biting her
+nails and glaring at him. Then he asked her what college at Oxford her
+husband had been at. She had spoken of Philip during their quarrel. This
+abrupt linking of himself with Philip restored her balance, and coolly
+she began to arrange in her mind for Lily&rsquo;s withdrawal from London for a
+while. Of passion and fury there was nothing left except a calm
+determination to disappoint Master Michael. She remembered Olive
+Fanshawe&rsquo;s, &ldquo;Like ice, dear, she was like a block of ice.&rdquo; She, too, was
+like a block of ice as she watched him walking away down the long
+garden.<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a></p>
+
+<p>When Michael had gone Sylvia told Lily that marriage with him was
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why do you want to be married?&rdquo; she demanded. &ldquo;Was your mother so happy
+in her marriage? I tell you, child, that marriage is almost
+inconceivably dull. What have you got in common with him? Nothing,
+absolutely nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a bit anxious to be married,&rdquo; Lily protested. &ldquo;But when
+somebody goes on and on asking, it&rsquo;s so difficult to refuse. I liked
+Claude better than I like Michael. But Claude had to think about his
+future.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what about your future?&rdquo; Sylvia exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I expect it&rsquo;ll be all right. Michael has money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I say you shall not marry him,&rdquo; Sylvia almost shouted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t keep on so,&rdquo; Lily fretfully implored. &ldquo;It gives me a
+headache. I won&rsquo;t marry him if it&rsquo;s going to upset you so much. But you
+mustn&rsquo;t leave me alone with him again, because he worries me just as
+much as you do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll go away to-morrow,&rdquo; Sylvia announced, abruptly. It flashed upon
+her that she would like to go to Sirene with Lily, but, alas! there was
+not enough money for such a long journey, and Bournemouth or Brighton
+must be the colorless substitute.</p>
+
+<p>Lily cheered up at the idea of going away, and Sylvia was half resentful
+that she could accept parting from Michael so easily. Lily&rsquo;s frocks were
+not ready the next day, and in the morning Michael&rsquo;s ring was heard.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, now I suppose we shall have more scenes,&rdquo; Lily complained.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia ran after Mrs. Gainsborough, who was waddling down the garden
+path to open the door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come back, come back at once!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not to open the
+door.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s a nice thing. But it may be the butcher.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want any meat. It&rsquo;s not the butcher. It&rsquo;s Fane. You&rsquo;re not to
+open the door. We&rsquo;ve all gone away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t snap my head off,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough, turning back
+unwillingly to the house.</p>
+
+<p>All day long at intervals the bell rang.<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The neighbors &rsquo;ll think the house is on fire,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough
+bewailed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nobody hears it except ourselves, you silly old thing,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what &rsquo;ll the passers-by think?&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough asked. &ldquo;It looks
+so funny to see any one standing outside a door, ringing all day long
+like a chimney-sweep who&rsquo;s come on Monday instead of Tuesday. Let me go
+out and tell him you&rsquo;ve gone away. I&rsquo;ll hold the door on the jar, the
+same as if I was arguing with a hawker. Now be sensible, Sylvia. I&rsquo;ll
+just pop out, pop my head round the door, and pop back in again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not to go. Sit down.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You do order any one about so. I might be a serviette, the way you
+crumple me up. Sylvia, don&rsquo;t keep prodding into me. I may be fat, but I
+have got some feelings left. You&rsquo;re a regular young spiteful. A porter
+wouldn&rsquo;t treat luggage so rough. Give over, Sylvia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a fuss you make about nothing!&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, that ping-ping-pinging gets on my nerves. I feel as if I were
+coming out in black spots like a domino. Why don&rsquo;t the young fellow give
+over? It&rsquo;s a wonder his fingers aren&rsquo;t worn out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The ringing continued until nearly midnight in bursts of half an hour at
+a stretch. Next morning Sylvia received a note from Fane in which he
+invited her to be sporting and let him see Lily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How I hate that kind of gentlemanly attitude!&rdquo; she scoffed to herself.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia wrote as unpleasant a letter as she could invent, which she left
+with Mrs. Gainsborough to be given to Michael when he should call in
+answer to an invitation she had posted for the following day at twelve
+o&rsquo;clock. Then Lily and she left for Brighton. All the way down in the
+train she kept wondering why she had ended her letter to Michael by
+calling him &ldquo;my little Vandyck.&rdquo; Suddenly she flew into a rage with
+herself, because she knew that she was making such speculation an excuse
+to conjure his image to her mind.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of February Sylvia and Lily came back to Mulberry
+Cottage. Sylvia had awakened one morning<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a> with the conviction that it
+was beneath her dignity to interfere further between Lily and Michael.
+She determined to leave everything to fate. She would go and stay with
+Olive for a while, and if Lily went away with Michael, so much the
+better. To hell with both of them. This resolution once taken, Sylvia,
+who had been rather charming to Lily all the time at Brighton, began now
+to treat her with a contempt that was really an expression of the
+contempt she felt for Michael. A week after their return to London she
+spent the whole of one day in ridiculing him so cruelly that even Mrs.
+Gainsborough protested. Then she was seized with an access of penitence,
+and, clasping Lily to her, she almost entreated her to vow that she
+loved her better than any one else in the world. Lily, however, was by
+this time thoroughly sulky and would have nothing to do with Sylvia&rsquo;s
+tardy sweetness. The petulant way in which she shook herself free from
+the embrace at last brought Sylvia up to the point of leaving Lily to
+herself. She should go and stay with Olive Fanshawe, and if, when she
+came back, Lily were still at Mulberry Cottage, she would atone for the
+way she had treated her lately; if she were gone, it would be only one
+more person ruthlessly cut out of her life. It was curious to think of
+everybody&mdash;Monkley, Philip, the Organs, Mabel, the twins, Miss Ashley,
+Dorward, all going on with their lives at this moment regardless of her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I might just as well be dead,&rdquo; she told herself. &ldquo;What a fuss people
+make about death!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was shocked to find how much Olive had suffered from Dorothy&rsquo;s
+treatment of her. For the first time in her life she was unable to
+dispose of emotion as mere romantic or sentimental rubbish; there was
+indeed something deeper than the luxury of grief that could thus ennoble
+even a Vanity girl.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do try, Sylvia, not to mope all the time. I keep on telling myself
+that, if I really loved Dorothy, I should be glad for her to be Countess
+of Clarehaven, with everything that she wants. She was always a good
+girl. I lived with her more than two years and she was <i>frightfully</i>
+strict about men. She deserved to be a countess. And I&rsquo;m sure she&rsquo;s
+quite right in wanting to cut herself off altogether<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a> from the theater.
+I think, you know, she may have meant to be kind in telling me at once
+like that, instead of gradually dropping me, which would have been
+worse, wouldn&rsquo;t it? Only I do miss her so. She was such a lovely thing
+to look at.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So are you,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, but I&rsquo;m dark, dear, and a dark girl never has that almost unearthly
+beauty that Dolly had.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dark girls have often something better than unearthly and seraphic
+beauty,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;They often have a gloriously earthly and human
+faithfulness.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, you need to tease me about being romantic, but I think it&rsquo;s you
+that&rsquo;s being romantic now. You were quite right, dear; I used to be
+stupidly romantic over foolish little things without any importance, and
+now it all seems such a waste of time. That&rsquo;s really what I feel most of
+all, now that I&rsquo;ve lost my friend. It seems to me that every time I
+patted a dog I was wasting time.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had a fleeting thought that perhaps Gladys and Enid Worsley might
+have felt like that about her, but in a moment she quenched the fire it
+kindled in her heart. She was not going to bask in the warmth of
+self-pity like a spoiled little girl that hopes she may die to punish
+her brother for teasing her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think, you know,&rdquo; Olive went on, &ldquo;that girls like us aren&rsquo;t prepared
+to stand sorrow. We&rsquo;ve absolutely nothing to fall back upon. I&rsquo;ve been
+thinking all these days what an utterly unsatisfactory thing lunch at
+Romano&rsquo;s really is. The only thing in my life that I can look back to
+for comfort is summer at the convent in Belgium. Of course we giggled
+all the time; but all the noise of talking has died away, and I can only
+see a most extraordinary peacefulness. I wonder if the nuns would have
+me as a boarder for a little while this summer. I feel I absolutely must
+go there. It isn&rsquo;t being sentimental, because I never knew Dorothy in
+those days.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Olive&rsquo;s regret for her lost friend affected Sylvia. When she
+went back to Mulberry Cottage and found that Lily had gone away,
+notwithstanding her own deliberate provocation of the elopement, she was
+dismayed. There was nothing left of Lily but two old frocks in the
+wardrobe,<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a> two old frocks the color of dead leaves; and this poignant
+reminder of a physical loss drove out all the other emotions. She told
+herself that it was ridiculous to be moved like this and she jeered at
+herself for imitating Olive&rsquo;s grief. But it was no use; those two frocks
+affrighted her courage with their deadness. No kind of communion after
+marriage would compensate for the loss of Lily&rsquo;s presence; it was like
+the fading of a flower in the completeness of its death. Even if she had
+been able to achieve the selflessness of Olive and take delight in
+Lily&rsquo;s good fortune, how impossible it was to believe in the triumph of
+this marriage. Lily would either be bored or she would become actively
+miserable&mdash;Sylvia snorted at the adverb&mdash;and run away or rather slowly
+melt to damnation. It would not even be necessary for her to be
+miserable; any unscrupulous friend of her husband&rsquo;s would have his way
+with her. For an instant Sylvia had a tremor of compassion for Michael,
+but it died in the thought of how such a disillusion would serve him
+right. He had built up this passion out of sentimentality; he was like
+Don Quixote; he was stupid. No doubt he had managed by now to fall in
+love with Lily, but it had never been an inevitable passion, and no pity
+should be shown to lovers that did not love wildly at first sight. They
+alone could plead fate&rsquo;s decrees.</p>
+
+<p>Jack Airdale came to see Sylvia, and he took advantage of her despair to
+press his desire for her to go upon the stage. He was positive that she
+had in her the makings of a great actress. He did not want to talk about
+himself, but he must tell Sylvia that there was a wonderful joy in
+getting on. He would never, of course, do anything very great, but he
+was understudy to some one or other at some theater or other, and there
+was always a chance of really showing what he could do one night or at
+any rate one afternoon. Even Claude was getting on; he had met him the
+other day in a tail coat and a top-hat. Since there had been such an
+outcry against tubercular infection, he had been definitely cured of his
+tendency toward consumption; he had nothing but neurasthenia to contend
+with now.</p>
+
+<p>But Sylvia would not let Jack &ldquo;speak about her&rdquo; to the managers he knew.
+She had no intention of continuing as she was at present, but she should
+wait till she was twenty-three<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a> before she took any step that would
+involve anything more energetic than turning over the pages of a book;
+she intended to dream away the three months that were left to
+twenty-two. Jack Airdale went away discouraged.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia met Ronald Walker, who had painted Lily. From him she learned
+that Fane had taken a house for her somewhere near Regent&rsquo;s Park. By a
+curious coincidence, a great friend of his who was also a friend of
+Fane&rsquo;s had helped to acquire the house. Ronald understood that there was
+considerable feeling against the marriage among Fane&rsquo;s friends. What was
+Fane like? He knew several men who knew him, and he seemed to be one of
+those people about whose affairs everybody talked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank Heaven, nobody bothers about me,&rdquo; said Ronald. &ldquo;This man Fane
+seems to have money to throw about. I wish he&rsquo;d buy my picture of Lily.
+You&rsquo;re looking rather down, Sylvia. I suppose you miss her? By Jove!
+what an amazing sitter! She wasn&rsquo;t really beautiful, you know&mdash;I mean to
+say with the kind of beauty that lives outside its setting. I don&rsquo;t
+quite mean that, but in my picture of her, which most people consider
+the best thing I&rsquo;ve done, she never gave me what I ought to have had
+from such a model. I felt cheated, somehow, as if I&rsquo;d cut a bough from a
+tree and in doing so destroyed all its grace. It was her gracefulness
+really; and dancing&rsquo;s the only art for that. I can&rsquo;t think why I didn&rsquo;t
+paint you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not going to begin now,&rdquo; Sylvia assured him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, of course, now you challenge me,&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;The fact is,
+Sylvia, I&rsquo;ve never really seen you in repose till this moment. You were
+always tearing around and talking. Look here, I do want to paint you. I
+say, let me paint you in this room with Mrs. Gainsborough. By Jove! I
+see exactly what I want.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It sounds as if you wanted an illustration for the Old and New Year,&rdquo;
+Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>In the end, however, she gave way; and really, it passed the time,
+sitting for Ronald Walker with Mrs. Gainsborough in that room where
+nothing of Lily remained.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough declared, when the painter had finished. &ldquo;I
+knew I was fat, but really it&rsquo;s enough to make any one get out of breath
+just to look at any one so<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a> fat as you&rsquo;ve made me. He hasn&rsquo;t been stingy
+with his paint, I&rsquo;ll say that. But really, you know, it looks like a
+picture of the fat woman in a fair. Now Sylvia&rsquo;s very good. Just the way
+she looks at you with her chin stuck out like a step-ladder. Your eyes
+are very good, too. He&rsquo;s just got that nasty glitter you get into them
+sometimes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>One day in early June, without any warning, Michael Fane revisited
+Mulberry Cottage. Sylvia had often declaimed against him to Mrs.
+Gainsborough, and now while they walked up the garden she could see that
+Mrs. Gainsborough was nervous, and by the way that Michael walked either
+that he was nervous or that something had happened. Sylvia came down the
+steps from the balcony to meet them, and, reading in his countenance
+that he had come to ask her help, she was aware of an immense relief,
+which she hid under an attitude of cold hostility. They sat on the
+garden seat under the budding mulberry-tree, and without any
+preliminaries of conversation Michael told her that he and Lily had
+parted. Sylvia resented an implication in his tone that she would
+somehow be awed by this announcement; she felt bitterly anxious to
+disappoint and humiliate him by her indifference, hoping that he would
+beg her to get Lily back for him. Instead of this he spoke of putting
+her out of his life, and Sylvia perceived that it was not at all to get
+Lily back that he had come to her. She was angry at missing her
+opportunity and she jeered at the stately way in which he confessed his
+failure and his loss; nor would he wince when she mocked his romantic
+manner of speech. At last she was almost driven into the brutality of
+picturing in unforgivable words the details of Lily&rsquo;s infidelity, but
+from this he flinched, stopping her with a gesture. He went on to give
+Sylvia full credit for her victory, to grant that she had been right
+from the first, and gradually by dwelling on the one aspect of Lily that
+was common to both of them, her beauty, he asked her very gently to take
+Lily back to live with her again. Sylvia could not refrain from sneers,
+and he was stung into another allusion to her jealousy, which Sylvia set
+out to disprove almost mathematically, though all the time she was
+afraid of what clear perception he might not have attained through
+sorrow. But he was still obsessed by the<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> salvation of Lily; and Sylvia,
+because she could forgive him for his indifference to her own future
+except so far as it might help Lily, began to mock at herself, to accuse
+herself for those three months after she left Philip, to rake up that
+corpse from its burial-place so that this youth who troubled her very
+soul might turn his face from her in irremediable disgust and set her
+free from the spell he was unaware of casting.</p>
+
+<p>When she had worn herself out with the force of her denunciation both of
+herself and of mankind, he came back to his original request; Sylvia,
+incapable of struggling further, yielded to his perseverance, but with a
+final flicker of self-assertion she begged him not to suppose that she
+was agreeing to take Lily back for any other reason than because she
+wanted to please herself.</p>
+
+<p>Michael began to ask her about Lily&rsquo;s relation to certain men with whom
+he had heard her name linked&mdash;with Ronald Walker, and with Lonsdale,
+whom he had known at Oxford. Sylvia told him the facts quite simply; and
+then because she could not bear this kind of self-torture he was
+inflicting on himself, she tried to put out of its agony his last
+sentimental regret for Lily by denying to her and by implication to
+herself also the justification even of a free choice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Money is necessary sometimes, you know,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia expected he would recoil from this, but he accepted it as the
+statement of a natural fact, agreed with its truth, and begged that in
+the future if ever money should be necessary he should be given the
+privilege of helping. So long as it was apparently only Lily whom he
+desired to help thus, Michael had put forward his claims easily enough.
+Then in a flash Sylvia felt that now he was transferring half his
+interest in Lily to her. He was stumbling hopelessly over that; he was
+speaking in a shy way of sending her books that she would enjoy; then
+abruptly he had turned from her and the garden door had slammed behind
+him. It was with a positive exultation that Sylvia realized that he had
+forgotten to give her Lily&rsquo;s address and that it was the dread of
+seeming to intrude upon her which had driven him away like that. She ran
+after him and called him back. He gave her a visiting-card<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a> on which his
+name was printed above the address; it was like a little tombstone of
+his dead love. He was talking now about selling the furniture and
+sending the money to Lily. Sylvia all the time was wondering why the
+first man that had ever appealed to her in the least should be like the
+famous hero of literature that had always bored her. With an impulse to
+avenge Michael she asked the name of the man for whom Lily had betrayed
+him. But he had never known; he had only seen his hat.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia pulled Michael to her and kissed him with the first kiss she had
+given to any man that was not contemptuous either of him or of herself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How many women have kissed you suddenly like that?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One&mdash;well, perhaps two!&rdquo; he answered.</p>
+
+<p>Even this kiss of hers was not hers alone, but because she might never
+see him again Sylvia broke the barrier of jealousy and in a sudden
+longing to be prodigal of herself for once she gave him all she could,
+her pride, by letting him know that she for her part had never kissed
+any man like that before.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia went back to the seat under the mulberry-tree and made up her
+mind that the time was ripe for activity again. She had allowed herself
+to become the prey of emotion by leading this indeterminate life in
+which sensation was cultivated at the expense of incident. It was a pity
+that Michael had intrusted her with Lily, for at this moment she would
+have liked to be away out of it at once; any adventure embarked upon
+with Lily would always be bounded by her ability to pack in time. Sylvia
+could imagine how those two dresses she had left behind must have been
+the most insuperable difficulty of the elopement. Another objection to
+Lily&rsquo;s company now was the way in which it would repeatedly remind her
+of Michael.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course it won&rsquo;t remind me sentimentally,&rdquo; Sylvia assured herself.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not such a fool as to suppose that I&rsquo;m going to suffer from a sense
+of personal loss. On the other hand, I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t ever be able to forget
+what an exaggerated impression I gave him. It&rsquo;s really perfectly
+damnable to divine one&rsquo;s sympathy with a person, to know that one could
+laugh together through life, and by circumstances<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a> to have been placed
+in an utterly abnormal relation to him. It really is damnable. He&rsquo;ll
+think of me, if he ever thinks of me at all, as one of the great
+multitude of wronged women. I shall think of him&mdash;though as a matter of
+fact I shall avoid thinking of him&mdash;either as what might have been, a
+false concept, for of course what might have been is fundamentally
+inconceivable, or as what he was, a sentimental fool. However, the mere
+fact that I&rsquo;m sitting here bothering my head about what either of us
+thinks shows that I need a change of air.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon a parcel of books arrived for Sylvia from Michael Fane;
+among them was Skelton&rsquo;s Don Quixote and Adlington&rsquo;s <i>Apuleius</i>, on the
+fly-leaf of which he had written:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I&rsquo;ve eaten rose leaves and I am no longer a golden ass.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, damn his eyes!&rdquo; said Sylvia, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m the ass now. And how odd that he
+should send me <i>Don Quixote</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At twilight Sylvia went to see Lily at Ararat House. She found her in a
+strange rococo room that opened on a garden bordered by the Regent&rsquo;s
+Canal; here amid candles and mirrors she was sitting in conversation
+with her housekeeper. Each of them existed from every point of view and
+infinitely reduplicated in the mirrors, which was not favorable to
+toleration of the housekeeper&rsquo;s figure, that was like an hour-glass.
+Sylvia waited coldly for her withdrawal before she acknowledged Lily&rsquo;s
+greeting. At last the objectionable creature rose and, accompanied by a
+crowd of reflections, left the room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t lecture me,&rdquo; Lily begged. &ldquo;I had the most awful time yesterday.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But Michael said he had not seen you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, not with Michael,&rdquo; Lily exclaimed. &ldquo;With Claude.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;With Claude?&rdquo; Sylvia echoed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, he came to see me and left his hat in the hall and Michael took it
+away with him in his rage. It was the only top-hat he&rsquo;d got, and he had
+an engagement for an &lsquo;at home,&rsquo; and he couldn&rsquo;t go out in the sun, and,
+oh dear, you never heard such a fuss, and when Mabel&mdash;&rdquo;<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mabel?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&mdash;Miss Harper, my housekeeper, offered to go out and buy him another,
+he was livid with fury. He asked if I thought he was made of money and
+could buy top-hats like matches. I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;ve come. Michael has
+broken off the engagement, and I expected you rather. A friend of
+his&mdash;rather a nice boy called Maurice Avery&mdash;is coming round this
+evening to arrange about selling everything. I shall have quite a lot of
+money. Let&rsquo;s go away and be quiet after all this bother and fuss.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;Before we go any further I want to know one
+thing. Is Claude going to drop in and out of your life at critical
+moments for the rest of time?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no! We&rsquo;ve quarreled now. He&rsquo;ll never forgive me over the hat.
+Besides, he puts some stuff on his hair now that I don&rsquo;t like. Sylvia,
+do come and look at my frocks. I&rsquo;ve got some really lovely frocks.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Maurice Avery, to whom Sylvia took an instant dislike, came in
+presently. He seemed to attribute the ruin of his friend&rsquo;s hopes
+entirely to a failure to take his advice:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course this was the wrong house to start with. I advised him to take
+one at Hampstead, but he wouldn&rsquo;t listen to me. The fact is Michael
+doesn&rsquo;t understand women.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you?&rdquo; Sylvia snapped.</p>
+
+<p>Avery looked at her a moment, and said he understood them better than
+Michael.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course nobody can ever really understand a woman,&rdquo; he added, with an
+instinct of self-protection. &ldquo;But I advised him not to leave Lily alone.
+I told him it wasn&rsquo;t fair to her or to himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did you give him any advice about disposing of the furniture?&rdquo; Sylvia
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m arranging about that now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sorry,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;I thought you were paving Michael&rsquo;s past with
+your own good intentions.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t take any notice of her,&rdquo; Lily told Avery, who was looking
+rather mortified. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s rude to everybody.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, shall I tell you my scheme for clearing up here?&rdquo; he asked.<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If it will bring us any nearer to business,&rdquo; Sylvia answered, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll
+manage to support the preliminary speech.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A week or two later Avery handed Lily £270, which she immediately
+transferred to Sylvia&rsquo;s keeping.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I kept the Venetian mirror for myself,&rdquo; Avery said. &ldquo;You know the one
+with the jolly little cupids in pink and blue glass. I shall always
+think of you and Ararat House when I look at myself in it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose all your friends wear their hearts on your sleeve,&rdquo; Sylvia
+said. &ldquo;That must add a spice to vanity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough was very much upset at the prospect of the girls&rsquo;
+going away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That comes of having me picture painted. I felt it was unlucky when he
+was doing it. Oh, dearie me! whatever shall I do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come with us,&rdquo; Sylvia suggested. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to France. Lock up your
+house, give the key to the copper on the beat, put on your gingham gown,
+and come with us, you old sea-elephant.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come with you?&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough gasped. &ldquo;But there, why shouldn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No reason at all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, then I will. I believe the captain would have liked me to get a
+bit of a blow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anything to declare?&rdquo; the customs official asked at Boulogne.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I declare I&rsquo;m enjoying myself,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough, looking round
+her and beaming at France.<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN she once more landed on French soil, Sylvia, actuated by a classic
+piety, desired to visit her mother&rsquo;s grave. She would have preferred to
+go to Lille by herself, for she lacked the showman&rsquo;s instinct; but her
+companions were so horrified at the notion of being left to themselves
+in Paris until she rejoined them, that in the end she had to take them
+with her.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of the old house and the faces of some of the older women in
+the <i>quartier</i> conjured up the past so vividly for Sylvia that she could
+not bring herself to make any inquiries about the rest of her family. It
+seemed as if she must once more look at Lille from her mother&rsquo;s point of
+view and maintain the sanctity of private life against the curiosity or
+criticism of neighbors. She did not wish to hear the details of her
+father&rsquo;s misdoing or perhaps be condoled with over Valentine. The
+simplest procedure would have been to lay a wreath upon the grave and
+depart again. This she might have done if Mrs. Gainsborough&rsquo;s genial
+inquisitiveness about her relatives had not roused in herself a wish to
+learn something about them. She decided to visit her eldest sister in
+Brussels, leaving it to chance if she still lived where Sylvia had
+visited her twelve years ago.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Brussels,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;Well, that sounds familiar, anyway.
+Though I suppose the sprout-gardens are all built over nowadays. Ah
+dear!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The building over of her father&rsquo;s nursery-garden and of many other green
+spots she had known in London always drew a tear from Mrs. Gainsborough,
+who was inclined to attribute most of human sorrow to the utilitarian
+schemes of builders.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, they found the Belgian hares ate up all the sprouts,&rdquo; Sylvia said.
+&ldquo;And talking of hair,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s the matter with yours?&rdquo;<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, well, there! Now I meant to say nothing about it. But I&rsquo;ve left me
+mahogany wash at home. There&rsquo;s a calamity!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;d better come out with me and buy another bottle,&rdquo; Sylvia advised.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll never get one here,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;This is a wash,
+not a dye, you must remember. It doesn&rsquo;t tint the hair; it just brings
+up the color and gives it a nice gloss.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If that&rsquo;s all it does, I&rsquo;ll lend you my shoe-polish. Go along, you
+wicked old fraud, and don&rsquo;t talk to me about washes. I can see the white
+hairs coming out like stars.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia found Elène in Brussels, and was amazed to see how much she
+resembled her mother nowadays. M. Durand, her husband, had prospered and
+he now owned a large confectioner&rsquo;s shop in the heart of the city, above
+which Madame Durand had started a pension for economical tourists. Mrs.
+Gainsborough could not get over the fact that her hostess did not speak
+English; it struck her as unnatural that Sylvia should have a sister who
+could only speak French. The little Durands were a more difficult
+problem. She did not so much mind feeling awkward with grown-up people
+through having to sit dumb, but children stared at her so, if she said
+nothing; and if she talked, they stared at her still more; she kept
+feeling that she ought to stroke them or pat them, which might offend
+their mother. She found ultimately that they were best amused by her
+taking out two false teeth she had, one of which once was lost, because
+the eldest boy would play dice with them.</p>
+
+<p>Elène gave Sylvia news of the rest of the family, though, since all the
+four married sisters were in different towns in France and she had seen
+none of them for ten years, it was not very fresh news. Valentine, in
+whose career Sylvia was most interested, was being very well
+<i>entretenue</i> by a <i>marseillais</i> who had bought her an apartment that
+included a porcelain-tiled bath-room; she might be considered lucky, for
+the man with whom she had left Lille had been a rascal. It happened that
+her news of Valentine was fresh and authentic, because a <i>lilleoise</i> who
+lived in Bruxelles had recently been obliged to go to Marseilles over
+some legal<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a> dispute and, meeting Valentine, had been invited to see her
+apartment. It was a pity that she was not married, but her position was
+the next best thing to marriage. Of the Bassompierres Elène had heard
+nothing for years, but what would interest Sylvia were some family
+papers and photographs that Sylvia&rsquo;s father had sent to her as the
+eldest daughter when their mother died, together with an old-fashioned
+photograph of their grandmother. From these papers it seemed that an
+English <i>milord</i> and not Bassompierre had really been their grandfather.
+Sylvia being half English already, it might not interest her so much,
+but for herself to know she had English blood <i>l&rsquo;avait beaucoup
+impressioné</i>, so many English tourists came to her pension.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia looked at the daguerreotype of her grandmother, a glass faintly
+bloomed, the likeness of a ghost indeed. She then had loved an
+Englishman; her mother, too; herself.... Sylvia packed the daguerreotype
+out of sight and turned to look at a golden shawl of a material rather
+like crêpe de Chine, which had been used to wrap up their mother when
+she was a baby. Would Sylvia like it? It was no use to Elène, too old
+and frail and faded. Sylvia stayed in Brussels for a week and left with
+many promises to return soon. She was glad she had paid the visit; for
+it had given back to her the sense of continuity which in the shifting
+panorama of her life she had lost, so that she had come to regard
+herself as an unreal person, an exception in humanity, an emotional
+freak; this separation from the rest of the world had been irksome to
+Sylvia since she had discovered the possibility of her falling in love,
+because it was seeming the cause of her not being loved. Henceforth she
+would meet man otherwise than with defiance or accusation in her eyes;
+she, too, perhaps would meet a lover thus.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia folded up the golden shawl to put it at the bottom of her trunk;
+figuratively, she wrapped up in it her memories, tender, gay, sorrowful,
+vile all together.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Soon be in Paris, shall we?&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough, when the train
+reached the eastern suburbs. &ldquo;It makes one feel quite naughty, doesn&rsquo;t
+it? The captain was always going to take me, but we never went,
+somehow.<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a> What&rsquo;s that? There&rsquo;s the Eiffel Tower? So it is, upon my word,
+and just what it looks like in pictures. Not a bit different. I hope it
+won&rsquo;t fall down while we&rsquo;re still in Paris. Nice set-out that would be.
+I&rsquo;ve always been afraid of sky accidents since a friend of mine, a Mrs.
+Ewings, got stuck in the Great Wheel at Earl&rsquo;s Court with a man who
+started undressing himself. It was all right, as it happened, because he
+only wanted to wave his shirt to his wife, who was waiting for him down
+below, so as she shouldn&rsquo;t get anxious, but it gave Mrs. Ewings a nasty
+turn. Two hours she was stuck with nothing in her bag but a box of
+little liver pills, which made her mouth water, she said, she was that
+hungry. She <i>thinks</i> she&rsquo;d have eaten them if she&rsquo;d have been alone; but
+the man, who was an undertaker from Wandsworth, told her a lot of
+interesting stories about corpses, and that kept her mind occupied till
+the wheel started going round again, and the Exhibition gave her soup
+and ten shillings compensation, which made a lot of people go up in it
+on the chance of being stuck.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was strange, Sylvia thought, that she should be as ignorant of Paris
+as Mrs. Gainsborough, but somehow the three of them would manage to
+enjoy themselves. Lily was more nearly vivacious than she had ever known
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite saucy,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough vowed. &ldquo;But there, we&rsquo;re all young, and
+you soon get used to the funny people you see in France. After all,
+they&rsquo;re foreigners. We ought to feel sorry for them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I say steady, Mrs. Gainsborough,&rdquo; Lily murmured, with a frown. &ldquo;Some of
+these people in the carriage may speak English.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Speak English?&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough repeated. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to tell me
+they&rsquo;d go on jabbering to one another in French if they could speak
+English! What an idea!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A young man who had got into the compartment at Chantilly had been
+casting glances of admiration at Lily ever since, and it was on account
+of him that she had warned Mrs. Gainsborough. He was a slim, dark young
+man dressed by an English tailor, very diffident for a Frenchman, but
+when Sylvia began to speculate upon the choice of a hotel he could no
+longer keep silence and asked<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a> in English if he could be of any help.
+When Sylvia replied to him in French, he was much surprised:</p>
+
+<p><i>&ldquo;Mais vous êtes française!&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p><i>&ldquo;Je suis du pays de la lune,&rdquo;</i> Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t encourage the young fellow to gabble in French,&rdquo; Mrs.
+Gainsborough protested. &ldquo;It gives me the pins and needles to hear you.
+You ought to encourage people to speak English, if they want to, I&rsquo;m
+sure.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The young Frenchman smiled at this and offered his card to Sylvia, whom
+he evidently accepted as the head of the party. She read, &ldquo;Hector
+Ozanne,&rdquo; and smiled for the heroic first name; somehow he did not look
+like Hector and because he was so modest she presented him to Lily to
+make him happy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am enchanted to meet a type of English beauty,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You must
+forgive my sincerity, which arises only from admiration. Madame,&rdquo; he
+went on, turning to Mrs. Gainsborough, &ldquo;I am honored to meet you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough, who was not quite sure how to deal with such
+politeness, became flustered and dropped her bag. Ozanne and she both
+plunged for it simultaneously and bumped their heads; upon this painful
+salute a general friendliness was established.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am a bachelor,&rdquo; said Ozanne. &ldquo;I have nothing to occupy myself, and if
+I might be permitted to assist you in a research for an apartment I
+shall be very elated.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia decided in favor of rooms on the <i>rive gauche</i>. She felt it was a
+conventional taste, but held to her opinion against Ozanne&rsquo;s objections.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I have an apartment in the Rue Montpensier, with a view of the
+Palais Royal. I do not live there now myself. I beseech you to make me
+the pleasure to occupy it. It is so very good, the view of the garden.
+And if you like an ancient house, it is very ancient. Do you concur?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And where will you go?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I live always in my club. For me it would be a big advantage, I assure
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We should have to pay rent,&rdquo; said Sylvia, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The rent will be one thousand a year.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;God have mercy upon us!&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough gasped. &ldquo;A thousand a year?
+Why, the man must think that we&rsquo;re<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a> the royal family broken out from
+Windsor Castle on the randan.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shut up, you silly old thing,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s asking nothing at
+all. Francs, not pounds. <i>Vous êtes trop gentil pour nous, Monsieur.&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p><i>&ldquo;Alors, c&rsquo;est entendu?&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p><i>&ldquo;Mais oui.&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p><i>&ldquo;Bon! Nous y irons ensemble tout de suite, n&rsquo;est-ce pas?&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p>The apartment was really charming. From the windows one could see the
+priests with their breviaries muttering up and down the old garden of
+the Palais Royal; and, as in all gardens in the heart of a great city,
+many sorts of men and women were resting there in the sunlight. Ozanne
+invited them to dine with him that night and left them to unpack.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m bound to say we seem to have fallen on our feet right off,&rdquo;
+Mrs. Gainsborough said. &ldquo;I shall quite enjoy myself here; I can see that
+already.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The acquaintance with Hector Ozanne ripened into friendship, and from
+friendship his passion for Lily became obvious, not that really it had
+ever been anything else, Sylvia thought; the question was whether it
+should be allowed to continue. Sylvia asked Ozanne his intentions. He
+declared his desperate affection, exclaimed against the iniquity of not
+being able to marry on account of a mother from whom he derived his
+entire income, stammered, and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;d like me and Mrs. Gainsborough to clear out of this?&rdquo;
+Sylvia suggested.</p>
+
+<p>No, he would like nothing of the kind; he greatly preferred that they
+should all stay where they were as they were, save only that of course
+they must pay no rent in future and that he must be allowed to maintain
+entirely the upkeep of the apartment. He wished it to be essentially
+their own and he had no intention of intruding there except as a guest.
+From time to time no doubt Lily would like to see something of the
+French countryside and of the <i>plages</i>, and no doubt equally Sylvia
+would not be lonely in Paris with Mrs. Gainsborough. He believed that
+Lily loved him. She was, of course, like all English girls, cold, but
+for his part he admired such coldness, in fact he<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a> admired everything
+English. He knew that his happiness depended upon Sylvia, and he begged
+her to be kind.</p>
+
+<p>Hector Ozanne was the only son of a rich manufacturer who had died about
+five years ago. The business had for some time been a limited company of
+which Madame Ozanne held the greater number of shares. Hector himself
+was now twenty-five and would within a year be found a wife by his
+mother; until then he would be allowed to choose a mistress by himself.
+He was kind-hearted, simple, and immensely devoted to Lily. She liked
+lunching and dining with him, and would like still better dressing
+herself at his expense; she certainly cared for him as much now as his
+future wife would care for him on the wedding-day. There seemed no
+reason to oppose the intimacy. If it should happen that Hector should
+fail to treat Lily properly, Sylvia would know how to deal with him, or
+rather with his mother. Amen.</p>
+
+<p>July was burning fiercely and Hector was unwilling to lose delightful
+days with Lily; they drove away together one morning in a big motor-car,
+which Mrs. Gainsborough blessed with as much fervor as she would have
+blessed a hired brougham at a suburban wedding. She and Sylvia were left
+together either to visit some <i>plage</i> or amuse themselves in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Paris I think, you uncommendable mammoth, you phosphor-eyed
+hippopotamus, Paris I <i>think</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I should like to see a bit of life, I must say. We&rsquo;ve led a very
+quiet existence so far. I don&rsquo;t want to go back to England and tell my
+friend Mrs. Marsham that I&rsquo;ve seen nothing. She&rsquo;s a most enterprising
+woman herself. I don&rsquo;t think you ever saw her, did you? Before she was
+going to have her youngest she had a regular passion to ride on a camel.
+She used to dream of camels all night long, and at last, being as I said
+a very enterprising woman and being afraid when her youngest was born he
+might be a humpback through her dreaming of camels all the time, she
+couldn&rsquo;t stand it no longer and one Monday morning, which is a sixpenny
+day, she went off to the Zoo by herself, being seven months gone at the
+time, and took six rides on the camel right off the reel, as they say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That must have been the last straw,&rdquo; Sylvia said.<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have I told you this story before, then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s a queer thing. I was just about to say that when she&rsquo;d
+finished her rides she went to look at the giraffes, and one of them got
+hold of her straw hat in his mouth and nearly tore it off her head. She
+hollered out, and the keeper asked her if she couldn&rsquo;t read the notice
+that visitors was requested not to feed these animals. This annoyed Mrs.
+Marsham very much, and she told the keeper he wasn&rsquo;t fit to manage
+performing fleas, let alone giraffes, which annoyed <i>him</i> very much.
+It&rsquo;s a pity you never met her. I sent her a post-card the other day, as
+vulgar a one as I could find, but you can buy them just as vulgar in
+London.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia did so far gratify Mrs. Gainsborough&rsquo;s desire to impress Mrs.
+Marsham as to take her to one or two Montmartre ballrooms; but she
+declared they did not come up to her expectations, and decided that she
+should have to fall back on her own imagination to thrill Mrs. Marsham.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As most travelers do,&rdquo; Sylvia added.</p>
+
+<p>They also went together to several plays, at which Sylvia laughed very
+heartily, much to Mrs. Gainsborough&rsquo;s chagrin.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m bothered if I know what you&rsquo;re laughing at,&rdquo; she said, finally. &ldquo;I
+can&rsquo;t understand a word of what they&rsquo;re saying.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just as well you can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Sylvia told her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now there&rsquo;s a tantalizing hussy for you. But I can guess, you great
+tomboy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Mrs. Gainsborough laughed as heartily as anybody in the
+audience at her own particular thoughts. She attracted a good deal of
+attention by this, because she often laughed at them without reference
+to what was happening on the stage. When Sylvia dug her in the ribs to
+make her keep quiet, she protested that, if she could only tell the
+audience what she was thinking, they would not bother any more about the
+stage.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A penny for your thoughts, they say. I reckon mine are worth the price
+of a seat in the circle, anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was after this performance that Sylvia and Mrs. Gainsborough went to
+the Café de la Chouette, which was<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a> frequented mostly by the performers,
+poets, and composers of the music-hall world. The place was crowded, and
+they were forced to sit at a table already occupied by one of those
+figures that only in Paris seem to have the right to live on an equality
+with the rest of mankind, merely on account of their eccentric
+appearance. He was probably not more than forty years old, but his
+gauntness made him look older. He wore blue-and-white checked trousers,
+a tail coat from which he or somebody else had clipped off the tails, a
+red velvet waistcoat, and a yachting-cap. His eyes were cavernous, his
+cheeks were rouged rather than flushed with fever. He carried a leather
+bag slung round his middle filled with waste paper, from which he
+occasionally took out a piece and wrote upon it a few words. He was
+drinking an unrecognizable liqueur.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough was rather nervous of sitting down beside so strange a
+creature, but Sylvia insisted. The man made no gesture at their
+approach, but turned his eyes upon them with the impassivity of a cat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here, Sylvia, in two twos he&rsquo;s going to give me an attack of the
+horrors,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough whispered. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s staring at me and twitching
+his nose like a hungry child at a jam roll. It&rsquo;s no good you telling me
+to give over. I can&rsquo;t help it. Look at his eyes. More like coal-cellars
+than eyes. I&rsquo;ve never been able to abide being stared at since I sat
+down beside a wax-work at Louis Tussaud&rsquo;s and asked it where the ladies&rsquo;
+cloak-room was.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He amuses me,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;What are you going to have?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I <i>was</i> going to have a grenadier, but really if that skelington
+opposite is going to look at me all night, I think I&rsquo;ll take something
+stronger.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Try a cuirassier,&rdquo; Sylvia suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Whatever&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the same relation to a curaçao that a grenadier is to a
+grenadine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What I should really like is a nice little drop of whisky with a little
+tiddley bit of lemon; but there, I&rsquo;ve noticed if you ask for whisky in
+Paris it causes a regular commotion. The waiter holds the bottle as if
+it was going to bite him, and the proprietor winks at him he&rsquo;s pouring
+out too<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a> much, and I can&rsquo;t abide those blue siphons. Sells they call
+them, and sells they are.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall order you a bock in a moment,&rdquo; Sylvia threatened.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t be unkind just because I made a slight complaint about being
+stared at. Perhaps they won&rsquo;t make such a bother if I <i>do</i> have a little
+whisky. But there, I can&rsquo;t resist it. It&rsquo;s got a regular taste of
+London, whisky has.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The man at the table leaned over suddenly and asked, in a tense voice:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Scotch or Irish?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, good land! what a turn you gave me! I couldn&rsquo;t have jumped more,&rdquo;
+Mrs. Gainsborough exclaimed, &ldquo;not if one of the lions in Trafalgar
+Square had said pip-ip as I passed!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t think I was English, did you?&rdquo; said the stranger. &ldquo;I forget
+it myself sometimes. I&rsquo;m a terrible warning to the world. I&rsquo;m a pose
+that&rsquo;s become a reality.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pose?&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough echoed. &ldquo;Oh, I didn&rsquo;t understand you for the
+moment. You mean you&rsquo;re an artist&rsquo;s model?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The stranger turned his eyes upon Sylvia, and, whether from sympathy or
+curiosity, she made friends with him, so that when they were ready to go
+home the eccentric Englishman, whom every one called Milord and who did
+not offer any alternative name to his new friends, said he would walk
+with them a bit of the way, much to Mrs. Gainsborough&rsquo;s embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m the first of the English decadents,&rdquo; he proclaimed to Sylvia.
+&ldquo;Twenty years ago I came to Paris to study art. I hadn&rsquo;t a penny to
+spend on drugs. I hadn&rsquo;t enough money to lead a life of sin. There&rsquo;s a
+tragedy! For five years I starved myself instead. I thought I should
+make myself interesting. I did. I became a figure. I learned the
+raptures of hunger. Nothing surpasses them&mdash;opium, morphine, ether,
+cocaine, hemp. What are they beside hunger? Have you got any coco with
+you? Just a little pinch? No? Never mind. I don&rsquo;t really like it. Not
+really. Some people like it, though. Who&rsquo;s the old woman<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a> with you? A
+procuress? Last night I had a dream in which I proved the non-existence
+of God by the least common multiple. I can&rsquo;t exactly remember how I did
+it now. That&rsquo;s why I was so worried this evening; I can&rsquo;t remember if
+the figures were two, four, sixteen, and thirty-eight. I worked it out
+last night in my dream. I obtained a view of the universe as a
+geometrical abstraction. It&rsquo;s perfectly simple, but I cannot get it
+right now. There&rsquo;s a crack in my ceiling which indicates the way. Unless
+I can walk along that crack I can&rsquo;t reach the center of the universe,
+and of course it&rsquo;s hopeless to try to obtain a view of the universe as a
+geometrical abstraction if one can&rsquo;t reach the center. I take it you
+agree with me on that point. That point! Wait a minute. I&rsquo;m almost
+there. That point. Don&rsquo;t let me forget. That point. That is the point.
+Ah!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The abstraction eluded him and he groaned aloud.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The more I listen to him,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough, &ldquo;the more certain
+sure I am he ought to see a doctor.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I must say good night,&rdquo; the stranger murmured, sadly. &ldquo;I see that I
+must start again at the beginning of that crack in my ceiling. I was
+lucky to find the room that had such a crack, though in a way it&rsquo;s
+rather a nuisance. It branches off so, and I very often lose the
+direction. There&rsquo;s one particular branch that always leads away from the
+point. I&rsquo;m afraid to do anything about it in the morning. Of course, I
+might put up a notice to say, <i>this is the wrong way</i>; but supposing it
+were really the right way? It&rsquo;s a great responsibility to own such a
+crack. Sometimes I almost go mad with the burden of responsibility. Why,
+by playing about with that ceiling when my brain isn&rsquo;t perfectly clear I
+might upset the whole universe! We&rsquo;ll meet again one night at the
+Chouette. I think I&rsquo;ll cross the boulevard now. There&rsquo;s no traffic, and
+I have to take a certain course not to confuse my line of thought.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The eccentric stranger left them and, crossing the road in a series of
+diagonal tacks, disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Coco,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Cocoa?&rdquo; echoed Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;Brandy, more like.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Or hashish.&rdquo;<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ashes? Well, I had a fox-terrier once that died in convulsions from
+eating coke, so perhaps it is ashes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must meet him again,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;These queer people outside
+ordinary life interest me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s interesting to visit a hospital,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough agreed.
+&ldquo;But that doesn&rsquo;t say you want to go twice. Once is enough for that
+fellow, to my thinking. He&rsquo;s interesting, but uncomfortable, like the
+top of a &rsquo;bus.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, however, was determined to pursue her acquaintance with the
+outcast Englishman. She soon discovered that for years he had been
+taking drugs and that nothing but drugs had brought him to his present
+state of abject buffoonery. Shortly before he became friends with Sylvia
+he had been taken up as a week&rsquo;s amusement by some young men who were
+under the impression that they were seeing Parisian life in his company.
+They had been generous to him, and latterly he had been able to drug
+himself as much as he wanted. The result had been to hasten his supreme
+collapse. Even in his last illness he would not talk to Sylvia about his
+youth before he came to Paris, and in the end she was inclined to accept
+him at his own estimate, a pose that was become a reality.</p>
+
+<p>One evening he seemed more haggard than usual and talked much less; by
+the twitching of his nostrils, he had been dosing himself hard with
+cocaine. Suddenly, he stretched his thin hand across the marble table
+and seized hers feverishly:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Are you sorry for me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s an impertinence to be sorry for anybody,&rdquo; she answered.
+&ldquo;But if you mean do I wish you well, why, yes, old son, I wish you very
+well.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What I told you once about my coming to Paris to work at art was all
+lies. I came here because I had to leave nothing else behind, not even a
+name. You said, one evening when we were arguing about ambition, that if
+you could only find your line you might do something on the stage. Why
+don&rsquo;t you recite my poems? Read them through. One or two are in English,
+but most of them are in French. They are really more sighs than poems.
+They require no acting. They want just a voice.&rdquo;<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a></p>
+
+<p>He undid the leather strap that supported his satchel and handed it to
+Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To-morrow,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if I&rsquo;m still alive, I&rsquo;ll come here and find out
+what you think of them. But you&rsquo;ve no idea how threatening that &lsquo;if&rsquo; is.
+It gets longer and longer. I can&rsquo;t see the end if it anywhere. It was
+very long last night. The dot of the &lsquo;i&rsquo; was already out of sight. It&rsquo;s
+the longest &lsquo;if&rsquo; that was ever imagined.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He rose hurriedly and left the café; Sylvia never saw him again.</p>
+
+<p>The poems of this strange and unhappy creature formed a record of many
+years&rsquo; slow debasement. Many of them seemed to her too personal and too
+poignant to be repeated aloud, almost even to be read to oneself. There
+was nothing, indeed, to do but burn them, that no one else might
+comprehend a man&rsquo;s degradation. Some of the poems, however, were
+objective, and in their complete absence of any effort to impress or
+rend or horrify they seemed not so much poems as actual glimpses into
+human hearts. Nor was that a satisfactory definition, for there was no
+attempt to explain any of the people described in these poems; they were
+ordinary people of the streets that lived in a few lines. This could
+only be said of the poems written in French; those in English seemed to
+her not very remarkable. She wondered if perhaps the less familiar
+tongue had exacted from him an achievement that was largely fortuitous.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got an idea for a show,&rdquo; Sylvia said to Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;One or
+two old folk-songs, and then one of these poems half sung, half recited
+to an improvised accompaniment. Not more than one each evening.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was convinced of her ability to make a success, and spent a
+couple of weeks in searching for the folk-songs she required.</p>
+
+<p>Lily and Hector came back in the middle of this new idea, and Hector was
+sure that Sylvia would be successful. She felt that he was too well
+pleased with himself at the moment not to be uncritically content with
+the rest of the world, but he was useful to Sylvia in securing an
+<i>audition</i> for her. The agent was convinced of the inevitable failure of
+Sylvia&rsquo;s performance with the public, and said he<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a> thought it was a pity
+to waste such real talent on antique rubbish like the songs she had
+chosen. As for the poems, they were no doubt all very well in their way;
+he was not going to say he had not been able to listen to them, but the
+public did not expect that kind of thing. He did not wish to discourage
+a friend of M. Ozanne; he had by him the rights for what would be three
+of the most popular songs in Europe, if they were well sung. Sylvia read
+them through and then sang them. The agent was delighted. She knew he
+was really pleased because he gave up referring to her as a friend of M.
+Ozanne and addressed her directly. Hector advised her to begin with the
+ordinary stuff, and when she was well known enough to experiment upon
+the public with her own ideas. Sylvia, who was feeling the need to do
+something at once, decided to risk an audition at one of the outlying
+music-halls. She herself declared that the songs were so good in their
+own way that she could not help making a hit, but the others insisted
+that the triumph belonged to her.</p>
+
+<p><i>&ldquo;Vous avez vraiment de l&rsquo;espièglerie,&rdquo;</i> said Hector.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You really were awfully jolly,&rdquo; said Lily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t understand a word, of course,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;But
+you looked that wicked&mdash;well, really&mdash;I thoroughly enjoyed myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>During the autumn Sylvia had secured engagements in music-halls of the
+<i>quartier</i>, but the agent advised her to take a tour before she ventured
+to attack the real Paris. It seemed to her a good way of passing the
+winter. Lily and Hector were very much together, and though Hector was
+always anxious for Sylvia to make a third, she found that the kind of
+amusement that appealed to him was much the same as that which had
+appealed to the young men who frequented Half Moon Street. It was a life
+of going to races, at which Hector would pass ladies without saluting or
+being saluted, who, he informed Sylvia and Lily afterward, were his
+aunts or his cousins, and actually on one occasion his mother. Sylvia
+began to feel the strain of being in the demi-monde but not of it; it
+was an existence that suited Lily perfectly, who could not understand
+why Sylvia should rail at their seclusion from the world. Mrs.
+Gainsborough began to grow restless<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a> for the peace of Mulberry Cottage
+and the safety of her furniture.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You never know what will happen. I had a friend once&mdash;a Mrs. Beardmore.
+She was housekeeper to two maiden ladies in Portman Square&mdash;well,
+housekeeper, she was more of a companion because one of them was stone
+deaf. One summer they went away to Scarborough, and when they came back
+some burglars had brought a furniture-van three days running and emptied
+the whole house, all but the bell-pulls. Drove back, they did, from
+King&rsquo;s Cross in a four-wheeler, and the first thing they saw was a large
+board up&mdash;<small>TO BE LET OR SOLD</small>. A fine how-de-do there was in Portman
+Square, I can tell you; and the sister that was deaf had left her
+ear-trumpet in the train and nobody couldn&rsquo;t explain to her what had
+happened.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So Mrs. Gainsborough, whose fears had been heightened by the repetition
+of this tale, went back to London with what she described as a
+collection of vulgarities for Mrs. Marsham. Sylvia went away on tour.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia found the life of a music-hall singer on tour very solitary. Her
+fellow-vagabonds were so much more essentially mountebanks than in
+England, and so far away from normal existence, that even when she
+traveled in company because her next town coincided with the next town
+of other players, she was never able to identify herself with them, as
+in England she had managed to identify herself with the other members of
+the chorus. She found that it paid her best to be English, and to affect
+in her songs an almost excessive English accent. She rather resented the
+exploitation of her nationality, because it seemed to her the same kind
+of appeal that would have been made by a double-headed woman or a
+performing seal. Nobody wanted her songs to be well rendered so much as
+unusually rendered; everybody wanted to be surprised by her ability to
+sing at all in French. But if the audiences wished her to be English,
+she found that being English off the stage was a disadvantage among
+these continental mountebanks. Sylvia discovered the existence of a
+universal prejudice against English actresses, partly on account of
+their alleged personal uncleanliness, partly on<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a> account of their
+alleged insincerity. On several occasions astonishment was expressed at
+the trouble she took with her hair and at her capacity for being a good
+<i>copaine</i>; when, later on, it would transpire that she was half French,
+everybody would find almost with relief an explanation of her apparent
+unconformity to rule.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia grew very weary of the monotonous life in which everybody&rsquo;s
+interest was bounded by the psychology of an audience. Interest in the
+individual never extended beyond the question of whether she would or
+would not, if she were a woman; of whether he desired or did not desire,
+if he were a man. When either of these questions was answered the
+interest reverted to the audience. It seemed maddeningly unimportant to
+Sylvia that the audience on Monday night should have failed to
+appreciate a point which the audience of Tuesday night would probably
+hail with enthusiasm; yet often she had to admit to herself that it was
+just her own inability or unwillingness to treat an audience as an
+individual that prevented her from gaining real success. She decided
+that every interpretative artist must pander his emotion, his humor, his
+wit, his movements nightly, and that somehow he must charm each audience
+into the complacency with which a sophisticated libertine seeks an
+admission of enduring love from the woman he has paid to satisfy a
+momentary desire. Assuredly the most successful performers in the grand
+style were those who could conceal even from the most intelligent
+audiences their professional relation to them. A performer of
+acknowledged reputation would not play to the gallery with battered
+wiles and manifest allurements, but it was unquestionable that the
+foundation of success was playing to the gallery, and that the
+third-rate performer who flattered these provincial audiences with the
+personal relation could gain louder applause than Sylvia, who wanted no
+audience but herself. It was significant how a word of <i>argot</i> that
+meant a fraud of apparent brilliancy executed by an artist upon the
+public had extended itself into daily use. Everything was <i>chic</i>. It was
+<i>chic</i> to wear a hat of the latest fashion; it was <i>chic</i> to impress
+one&rsquo;s lover by a jealous outburst; it was <i>chic</i> to refuse a man one&rsquo;s
+favors. Everything was<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a> chic: it was impossible to think or act or speak
+in this world of vagabonds without <i>chic</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The individualistic life that Sylvia had always led both in private and
+in public seemed to her, notwithstanding the various disasters of her
+career, infinitely worthier than this dependency upon the herd that
+found its most obvious expression in the theater. It was revolting to
+witness human nature&rsquo;s lust for the unexceptionable or its cruel
+pleasure in the exception. Yet now, looking back at her past, she could
+see that it had always been her unwillingness to conform that had kept
+her apart from so much human enjoyment and human gain, though equally
+she might claim apart from human sorrow and human loss.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The struggle, of course, would be terrible for a long while,&rdquo; Sylvia
+said to herself, &ldquo;if everybody renounced entirely any kind of
+co-operation or interference with or imitation of or help from anybody
+else, but out of that struggle might arise the true immortals. A cat
+with a complete personality is surely higher than a man with an
+incomplete personality. Anyway, it&rsquo;s quite certain that this
+<i>cabotinage</i> is for me impossible. I believe that if I pricked a vein
+sawdust would trickle out of me now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In such a mood of cheated hope did Sylvia return to Paris in the early
+spring; she was about to comment on Lily&rsquo;s usual state of molluscry, by
+yielding to which in abandoning the will she had lost the power to
+develop, when Lily herself proceeded to surprise her.</p>
+
+<p>The affection between Hector and Lily had apparently made a steady
+growth and had floated in an undisturbed and equable depth of water for
+so long that Lily, like an ambitious water-lily, began to be ambitious
+of becoming a terrestrial plant. While for nearly a year she had been
+blossoming apparently without regard for anything but the beauty of the
+moment, she had all the time been sending out long roots beneath the
+water, long roots that were growing more and more deeply into the warm
+and respectable mud.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mean you&rsquo;d like to marry Hector?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, yes, I think I should, rather. I&rsquo;m getting tired of never being
+settled.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But does he want to marry you?&rdquo;<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve talked about it often. He hates the idea of not marrying me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;d like to go away with you and live on the top of a mountain remote
+from mankind, or upon a coral island in the Pacific with nothing but the
+sound of the surf and the cocoanuts dropping idly one by one, wouldn&rsquo;t
+he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, he did say he wished we could go away somewhere all alone. How
+did you guess? How clever you are, Sylvia!&rdquo; Lily exclaimed, opening wide
+her deep-blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear girl, when a man knows that it&rsquo;s impossible to be married
+either because he&rsquo;s married already or for any other reason, he always
+hymns a solitude for two. You never heard any man with serious
+intentions propose to live with his bride-elect in an Alpine hut or
+under a lonely palm. The man with serious intentions tries to reconcile
+his purse, not his person, with poetic aspirations. He&rsquo;s in a quandary
+between Hampstead and Kensington, not between mountain-tops and lagoons.
+I suppose he has also talked of a dream-child&mdash;a fairy miniature of his
+Lily?&rdquo; Sylvia went on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We have talked about a baby,&rdquo; Lily admitted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The man with serious intentions talks about the aspect of the nursery
+and makes reluctant plans to yield, if compelled to, the room he had
+chosen for his study.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You make fun of everything,&rdquo; Lily murmured, rather sulkily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, my dear,&rdquo; Sylvia argued, &ldquo;for me to be able to reproduce Hector&rsquo;s
+dream so accurately proves that I&rsquo;m building to the type. I&rsquo;ll speculate
+further. I&rsquo;m sure he has regretted the irregular union and vowed that,
+had he but known at first what an angel of purity you were, he would
+have died rather than propose it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lily sat silent, frowning. Presently she jumped up, and the sudden
+activity of movement brought home to Sylvia more than anything else the
+change in her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you promise not to laugh, here are his letters,&rdquo; Lily said, flinging
+into Sylvia&rsquo;s lap a bundle tied up with ribbon.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Letters!&rdquo; Sylvia snapped. &ldquo;Who cares about letters? The love-letters of
+a successful lover have no value. When he has something to write that he
+cannot say to your face,<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a> then I&rsquo;ll read his letter. All public
+blandishments shock me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Hector was called away from Paris to go and stay with his mother at
+Aix-les-Bains; for a fortnight two letters arrived every day.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The snow in Savoy will melt early this year,&rdquo; Sylvia mocked. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+lucky he&rsquo;s not staying at St.-Moritz. Winter sports could never survive
+such a furnace.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then followed a week&rsquo;s silence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Alpine Club must have protested,&rdquo; Sylvia mocked. &ldquo;Avalanches are
+not expected in March.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s probably motoring with his mother,&rdquo; Lily explained.</p>
+
+<p>The next day a letter arrived from Hector.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">H<small>OTEL</small> S<small>UPERBE</small>,<br />
+A<small>IX-LES</small>-B<small>AINS</small>.</p>
+
+<p>M<small>Y DEAR</small> L<small>ILY</small>,&mdash;I do not know how to express myself. You have known
+always the great difficulties of my position opposite to my mother.
+She has found that I owe to marry myself, and I have demanded the
+hand of Mademoiselle Arpenteur-Legage. I dare not ask your pardon,
+but I have written to make an arrangement for you, and from now
+please use the apartment which has for me memories the most sacred.
+It is useless to fight against circumstances.</p>
+
+<p class="r">H<small>ECTOR</small>.</p></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think he might have used mourning paper,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;They always
+have plenty at health resorts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be so unkind, Sylvia,&rdquo; Lily cried. &ldquo;How can you be so unkind,
+when you see that my heart is broken?&rdquo; She burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment Sylvia was on her knees beside her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lily, my dearest Lily, you did not really love him? Oh no, my dear, not
+really. If you really loved him, I&rsquo;ll go now to Aix myself and arrange
+matters over the head of his stuffy old mother. But you didn&rsquo;t really
+love him. You&rsquo;re simply upset at the breaking of a habit. Oh, my dear,
+you couldn&rsquo;t really have loved him!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t marry this girl,&rdquo; Lily declared, standing up in a rage.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to Aix-les-Bains myself and I&rsquo;ll see this Mademoiselle.&rdquo; She
+snatched the letter from the floor to read the odious name of her rival.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll send her all his letters. You mightn&rsquo;t want to read them, but
+she&rsquo;ll want<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a> to read them. She&rsquo;ll read every word. She&rsquo;ll read how, when
+he was thinking of proposing to her, he was calling me his angel, his
+life, his soul, how he was&mdash;Oh, she&rsquo;ll read every word, and I&rsquo;ll send
+them to her by registered post, and then I&rsquo;ll know she gets them. How
+dare a Frenchman treat an English girl like that? How dare he? How dare
+he? French people think English girls have no passion. They think we&rsquo;re
+cold. Are we cold? We may not like being kissed all the time like French
+girls, but we&rsquo;re not cold. Oh, I feel I could kill him!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia interrupted her rage.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear, if all this fire and fury is because you&rsquo;re disappointed at
+not being married, twist him for fifty thousand francs, buy a silver
+casket, put his letters inside, and send them to him for a
+wedding-present with your good wishes. But if you love him, darling
+Lily, let me go and tell him the truth; if I think he&rsquo;s not worth it,
+then come away with me and be lonely with me somewhere. My beautiful
+thing, I can&rsquo;t promise you a coral island, but you shall have all my
+heart if you will.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Love him?&rdquo; echoed Lily. &ldquo;I hate him. I despise him after this, but why
+should he marry her?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you feel like that about him, I should have thought the best way to
+punish him would be to let the marriage proceed; to punish him further
+you&rsquo;ve only to refuse yourself to him when he&rsquo;s married, for I&rsquo;m quite
+sure that within six months he&rsquo;ll be writing to say what a mistake he
+made, how cold his wife is, and how much he longs to come back to you,
+<i>la jolie maîtresse de sa jeunesse, le souvenir du bon temps jadis</i>, and
+so on with the sentimental eternities of reconstructed passion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Live with him after he&rsquo;s married?&rdquo; Lily exclaimed. &ldquo;Why, I&rsquo;ve never
+even kissed a married man! I should never forgive myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t love him at all, do you?&rdquo; Sylvia asked, pressing her hands
+down on Lily&rsquo;s shoulders and forcing her to look straight at her.
+&ldquo;Laugh, my dear, laugh! Hurrah! you can&rsquo;t pretend you care a bit about
+him. Fifty thousand francs and freedom! And just when I was getting
+bored with Paris.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all very well for you, Sylvia,&rdquo; Lily said, resentfully,<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a> as she
+tried to shake off Sylvia&rsquo;s exuberance. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t want to be married. I
+do. I really looked forward to marrying Michael.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia&rsquo;s face hardened.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I know you blame me entirely for that,&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;But it
+wasn&rsquo;t my fault, really. It was bad luck. It&rsquo;s no good pretending I
+wasn&rsquo;t fond of Claude. I was, and when I met him&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here, don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s live that episode over again in discussion,&rdquo;
+Sylvia said. &ldquo;It belongs to the past, and I&rsquo;ve always had a great
+objection to body-snatching.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What I was going to explain,&rdquo; Lily went on, &ldquo;was that Michael put the
+idea of marriage into my head. Then being always with Hector, I got used
+to being with somebody. I was always treated like a married woman when
+we went to the seaside or on motoring tours. You always think that
+because I sit still and say nothing my mind&rsquo;s an absolute blank, but it
+isn&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;ve been thinking for a long time about marriage. After all,
+there must be something in marriage, or so many people wouldn&rsquo;t get
+married. You married the wrong man, but I don&rsquo;t believe you&rsquo;ll ever find
+the right man. You&rsquo;re much, much, much too critical. I <i>will</i> get
+married.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; Sylvia said, with a laugh, &ldquo;to all the other riddles that
+torment my poor brain I must add you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Hector Ozanne tried to stanch Lily&rsquo;s wounded ideals with a generous
+compress of notes; he succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;After all,&rdquo; she admitted, twanging the elastic round the bundle. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+not so badly off.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must buy that silver casket for the letters,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;His
+wedding-day draws near. I think I shall dress up like the Ancient
+Mariner and give them to him myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How much will a silver casket cost?&rdquo; Lily asked.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia roughly estimated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It seems a good deal,&rdquo; said Lily, thoughtfully. &ldquo;I think I shall just
+send them to him in a cardboard box. I finished those chocolates after
+dinner. Yes, that will do quite well. After all, he treated me very
+badly and to get his letters back safely will be quite a good-enough
+present. What could he do with a silver casket? He&rsquo;d probably use it for
+visiting-cards.&rdquo;<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a></p>
+
+<p>That evening Sylvia, greatly content to have Lily to herself, again took
+her to the Café de la Chouette.</p>
+
+<p>Her agent, who was drinking in a corner, came across to speak to her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Brazil?&rdquo; she repeated, doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thirty francs for three songs and you can go home at twelve. It isn&rsquo;t
+as if you had to sit drinking champagne and dancing all night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia looked at Lily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Would you like a voyage?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We might as well go.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The contract was arranged.<a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span>NE of the habits that Sylvia had acquired on tour in France was
+card-playing; perhaps she inherited her skill from Henry, for she was a
+very good player. The game on the voyage was poker. Before they were
+through the Straits of Gibraltar Sylvia had lost five hundred francs;
+she borrowed five hundred francs from Lily and set herself to win them
+back. The sea became very rough in the Atlantic; all the passengers were
+seasick. The other four poker-players, who were theatrical folk, wanted
+to stop, but Sylvia would not hear of it; she was much too anxious about
+her five hundred francs to feel seasick. She lost Lily&rsquo;s first five
+hundred francs and borrowed five hundred more. Lily began to feel less
+seasick now, and she watched the struggle with a personal interest. The
+other players, with the hope that Sylvia&rsquo;s bad luck would hold, were so
+deeply concentrated upon maintaining their advantage that they too
+forgot to be seasick. The ship rolled, but the poker-players only left
+the card-room for meals in the deserted saloon. Sylvia began to win
+again. Blue skies and calmer weather appeared; the other poker-players
+had no excuse for not continuing, especially now that it was possible to
+play on deck. Sylvia had won back all she had lost and two hundred
+francs besides when the ship entered the harbor of Rio de Janeiro.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I should like gambling,&rdquo; Lily said, &ldquo;if only one didn&rsquo;t have to
+shuffle and cut all the time.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The place where Sylvia was engaged to sing was one of those centers of
+aggregated amusement that exist all over the world without any
+particular characteristic to distinguish one from another, like the
+dinners in what are known as first-class hotels on the Continent.
+Everything<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a> here was more expensive than in Europe; even the
+roulette-boards had zero and double zero to help the bank. The tradition
+of Brazil for supplying gold and diamonds to the world had bred a
+familiarity with the external signs of wealth that expressed itself in
+overjeweled men and women, whose display one forgave more easily on
+account of the natural splendor of the scene with which they had to
+compete.</p>
+
+<p>Lily, with the unerring bad taste that nearly always is to be found in
+sensuous and indolent women, to whom the obvious makes the quickest and
+easiest appeal, admired the flashing stones and stars and fireflies with
+an energy that astonished Sylvia, notwithstanding the novel glimpse she
+had been given of Lily&rsquo;s character in the affair with Hector Ozanne. The
+climate was hot, but a sea breeze freshened the city after sunset; the
+enforced day-long inactivity, with the luxurious cool baths and
+competent negresses who attended upon her lightest movement, satisfied
+Lily&rsquo;s conception of existence, and when they drove along the margin of
+the bay before dinner her only complaint was that she could not
+coruscate like other women in the carriages they passed.</p>
+
+<p>With the money they had in hand Sylvia felt justified in avoiding a
+<i>pension d&rsquo;artistes</i>, and they had taken a flat together. This meant
+that when Sylvia went to work at the cabaret, Lily, unless she came with
+her, was left alone, which did not at all suit her. Sylvia therefore
+suggested that she should accept an engagement to dance at midnight,
+with the stipulation that she should not be compelled to stay until 3
+<small>A.M.</small> unless she wanted to, and that by foregoing any salary she should
+not be expected to drink gooseberry wine at 8,000 reis a bottle, on
+which she would receive a commission of 1,000 reis. The management knew
+what a charm the tall, fair English girl would exercise over the swart
+Brazilians, and was glad enough to engage her at her own terms. Sylvia
+had not counted upon Lily&rsquo;s enjoying the cabaret life so much. The heat
+was affecting her much more than Lily, and she began to complain of the
+long hours of what for her was a so false gaiety. Nothing, however,
+would persuade Lily to go home before three o&rsquo;clock at the earliest, and
+Sylvia, on whom a great<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a> lassitude and indifference had settled, used to
+wait for her, sitting alone while Lily danced the <i>machiche</i>.</p>
+
+<p>One night, when Sylvia had sung two of her songs with such a sense of
+hopeless depression weighing her down that the applause which followed
+each of them seemed to her a mockery, she had a sudden vertigo from
+which she pulled herself together with a conviction that nothing would
+induce her to sing the third song. She went on the scene, seated herself
+at the piano, and to the astonishment and discomfort of the audience and
+her fellow-players, half chanted, half recited one of the eccentric
+Englishman&rsquo;s poems about a body in the morgue. Such a performance in
+such a place created consternation, but in the silence that followed
+Sylvia fainted. When she came to herself she was back in her own
+bedroom, with a Brazilian doctor jabbering and mouthing over her
+symptoms. Presently she was taken to a clinic and, when she was well
+enough to know what had happened, she learned that she had yellow fever,
+but that the crisis had passed. At first Lily came to see her every day,
+but when convalescence was further advanced she gave up coming, which
+worried Sylvia intensely and hampered her progress. She insisted that
+something terrible had happened to Lily and worked herself up into such
+a state that the doctor feared a relapse. She was too weak to walk;
+realizing at last that the only way of escaping from the clinic would be
+to get well, she fought against her apprehensions for Lily&rsquo;s safety and
+after a fortnight of repressed torments was allowed out. When Sylvia
+reached the flat she was met by the grinning negresses, who told her
+that Lily had gone to live elsewhere and let her understand that it was
+with a man.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was not nearly well enough to reappear at the cabaret, but she
+went down that evening and was told by the other girls that Lily was at
+the tables. They were duly shocked at Sylvia&rsquo;s altered appearance,
+congratulated her upon having been lucky enough to escape the necessity
+of shaving her head, and expressed their regrets at not knowing in which
+clinic she had been staying so that they might have brought her the news
+of their world. Sylvia lacked the energy to resent their hypocrisy and
+went to look for<a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a> Lily, whom she found blazing with jewels at one of the
+roulette-tables.</p>
+
+<p>There was something so fantastic in Lily&rsquo;s appearance, thus bedecked,
+that Sylvia thought for a moment it was a feverish vision such as had
+haunted her brain at the beginning of the illness. Lily wore suspended
+from a fine chain round her neck a large diamond, one of those so-called
+blue diamonds of Brazil that in the moonlight seem like sapphires; her
+fingers flashed fire; a large brooch of rubies in the likeness of a
+butterfly winked somberly from her black corsage.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia made her way through the press of gamblers and touched Lily&rsquo;s
+arm. So intent was she upon the tables that she brushed away the hand as
+if it had been a mosquito.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lily! Lily!&rdquo; Sylvia called, sharply. &ldquo;Where have you been? Where have
+you gone?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the wheel stopped, and the croupier cried the number and
+the color in all their combinations. Sylvia was sure that he exchanged
+glances with Lily and that the gold piece upon the 33 on which he was
+paying had not been there before the wheel had stopped.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lily! Lily! Where have you been?&rdquo; Sylvia called, again. Lily gathered
+in her winnings and turned round. It was curious how changed her eyes
+were; they seemed now merely like two more rich jewels that she was
+wearing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry I&rsquo;ve not been to see you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;My dear, I&rsquo;ve won
+nearly four thousand pounds.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have, have you?&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;Then the sooner you leave Brazil the
+better.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lily threw a swift glance of alarm toward the croupier, a man of almost
+unnatural thinness, who, while he intoned the invitation to place the
+stakes, fixed his eyes upon her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t leave Brazil,&rdquo; she said, in a whisper. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m living with him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Living with a croupier?&rdquo; Sylvia gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hush! He belongs to quite a good family. He ruined himself. His name is
+Manuel Camacho. Don&rsquo;t talk to me any more, Sylvia. Go away. He&rsquo;s madly
+jealous. He wants to marry me.&rdquo;<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Like Hector, I suppose,&rdquo; Sylvia scoffed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not a bit like Hector. He brings a priest every morning and says he&rsquo;ll
+kill me and himself and the priest, too, if I don&rsquo;t marry him. But I
+want to make more money, and then I will marry him. I must. I&rsquo;m afraid
+of what he&rsquo;ll do if I refuse. Go away from me, Sylvia, go away. There&rsquo;ll
+be a fearful scene to-night if you will go on talking to me. Last night
+a man threw a flower into our carriage when we were driving home, and
+Manuel jumped out and beat him insensible with his cane. Go away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia demanded where she was living, but Lily would not tell her,
+because she was afraid of what her lover might do.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t even let me look out of the window. If I look out of the
+window he tears his clothes with rage and digs his finger-nails into the
+palms of his hands. He&rsquo;s very violent. Sometimes he shoots at the
+chandelier.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia began to laugh. There was something ridiculous in the notion of
+Lily&rsquo;s leading this kind of lion-tamer&rsquo;s existence. Suddenly the
+croupier with an angry movement swept a pile of money from the table.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go away, Sylvia, go away. I know he&rsquo;ll break out in a moment. That was
+meant for a warning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia understood that it was hopeless to persist for the moment, and
+she made her way back to the cabaret. The girls were eager to know what
+she thought of Lily&rsquo;s protector.</p>
+
+<p><i>&ldquo;Elle a de la veine, tu sais, la petite Lili. Elle l&rsquo;a pris comme ça,
+et il l&rsquo;aime à la folie. Et elle gagne! mon Dieu, comme elle gagne! Tout
+va pour elle. Tu sais, elle a des brillants merveilleux. Ça fait riche,
+tu sais. Y&rsquo;a pas de chic, mais il est jaloux! Il se porte comme un fou.
+Ça me raserait, tu sais, être collée avec un homme pareil. Pourtant,
+elle est busineuse, la petite Lili! Elle ne lui donne pas un rond. Y&rsquo;a
+pas de dos vert. Ah, non, elle est la vraie anglaise sans blague. Et le
+mec, dis, n&rsquo;est-ce pas qu&rsquo;il est maigre comme tout? On dirait un
+squelette.&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p>With all their depreciation of the croupier, it seemed to Sylvia that
+most of the girls would have been well pleased to change places with
+Lily. But how was she herself to regard the affair? During those long
+days of illness, when<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a> she had lain hour after hour with her thoughts,
+to what a failure her life had seemed to be turning, and what a
+haphazard, harborless course hers had seemed to be. Now she must perhaps
+jettison the little cargo she carried, or would it be fairer to say that
+she must decide whether she should disembark it? It was absurd to
+pretend that Michael would have viewed with anything but dismay the
+surrender of Lily to such a one as that croupier, and if she made that
+surrender, she would be violating his trust that counted for so much in
+her aimless career. Yet was she not attributing to Michael the sentiment
+he felt before Lily&rsquo;s betrayal of him? He had only demanded of Sylvia
+that she should prevent Lily from drifting downward along the dull road
+of undistinguished ruin. If this fantastic Brazilian wished to marry
+her, why should he not do so? Then she herself should be alone indeed
+and, unless a miracle happened, should be lost in the eternal whirl of
+vagabonds to and fro across the face of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They say one must expect to be depressed after yellow fever,&rdquo; Sylvia
+reassured herself. &ldquo;Perhaps this mood won&rsquo;t last, but, oh, the
+endlessness of it all! How even one&rsquo;s brush and comb seem weighed down
+by an interminable melancholy. As I look round me I can see nothing that
+doesn&rsquo;t strike me as hopelessly, drearily, appallingly superfluous. The
+very soap in its china dish looks wistful. How pathetic the life of a
+piece of soap is, when one stops to contemplate it. A slow and steady
+diminution. Oh, I must do something to shake off this intolerable
+heaviness!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The simplest and most direct path to energy and action seemed to be an
+attempt to interview Camacho, and the following evening Sylvia tried to
+make Lily divulge her address; but she begged not to be disturbed, and
+Sylvia, seeing that she was utterly absorbed by the play, had to leave
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Either I am getting flaccid beyond belief,&rdquo; she said to herself, &ldquo;or
+Lily has acquired an equally incredible determination. I think it&rsquo;s the
+latter. It just shows what passion will do even for a Lily. All her life
+she has remained unmoved, until roulette reveals itself to her and she
+finds out what she was intended for. Of course I must<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a> leave her to her
+fierce skeleton; he represents the corollary to the passion. Queer
+thing, the way she always wins. I&rsquo;m sure they&rsquo;re cheating, somehow, the
+two of them. There&rsquo;s the final link. They&rsquo;ll go away presently to
+Europe, and Lily will enjoy the sweetest respectability that exists&mdash;the
+one that is founded on early indiscretion and dishonesty&mdash;a paradise
+preceded by the fall.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia waited by the entrance to the roulette-room on the next night
+until play was finished, watched Lily come out with Camacho, and saw
+them get into a carriage and drive away immediately. None of the
+attendants or the other croupiers knew where Camacho lived, or, if they
+knew, they refused to tell Sylvia. On the fourth evening, therefore, she
+waited in a carriage by the entrance and ordered her driver to follow
+the one in which Lily was. She found that Camacho&rsquo;s apartments were not
+so far from her own; the next morning she waited at the corner of the
+street until she saw him come out; then she rang the bell. The negress
+who opened the door shook her head at the notion of letting Sylvia
+enter, but the waiting in the sun had irritated her and she pushed past
+and ran up-stairs. The negress had left the upper door open, and Sylvia
+was able to enter the flat. Lily was in bed, playing with her jewels as
+if they were toys.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia!&rdquo; she cried, in alarm. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll kill you if he finds you here.
+He&rsquo;s gone to fetch the priest. They&rsquo;ll be back in a moment. Go away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia said she insisted on speaking to Camacho; she had some good
+advice to give him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But he&rsquo;s particularly jealous of you. The first evening you spoke to me
+... look!&rdquo; Lily pointed to the ceiling, which was marked like a die with
+five holes. &ldquo;He did that when he came home to show what he would do to
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rubbish!&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll be like a lamb when we meet. If he hadn&rsquo;t
+fired at the ceiling I should have felt much more alarmed for the safety
+of my head.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, Sylvia,&rdquo; Lily entreated. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know what he&rsquo;s like. Once,
+when he thought a man nudged me, he came home and tore all the towels to
+pieces with his teeth. The servant nearly cried when she saw the room in
+the morning. It was simply covered with bits of towel, and he<a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a> swallowed
+one piece and nearly choked. You don&rsquo;t know what he&rsquo;s like. I can manage
+him, but nobody else could.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Here was a new Lily indeed, who dared to claim that she could manage
+somebody of whom Sylvia must be afraid. She challenged Lily to say when
+she had ever known her to flinch from an encounter with a man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, my dear, Manuel isn&rsquo;t English. When he&rsquo;s in one of those rages
+he&rsquo;s not like a human being at all. You can&rsquo;t soothe him by arguing with
+him. You have to calm him without talking.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you use? A red-hot poker?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lily became agitated at Sylvia&rsquo;s obstinacy, and, regardless of her
+jewels, which tinkled down into a heap on the floor, she jumped out of
+bed and implored her not to stay.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want to know one or two things before I go,&rdquo; Sylvia said, and was
+conscious of taking advantage of Lily&rsquo;s alarm to make her speak the
+truth, owing to the lack of time for the invention of lies.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you love this man?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, in a way I do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You could be happy married to him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, when I&rsquo;ve won five thousand pounds.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He cheats for you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lily hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; Sylvia went on. &ldquo;I know he does.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, my dear,&rdquo; Lily murmured, biting her lip. &ldquo;Then other people might
+notice. Never mind. I ought to finish to-night. The boat sails the day
+after to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what about me?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>Lily looked shamefaced for a moment, but the natural optimism of the
+gambler quickly reasserted itself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you wouldn&rsquo;t like to break your contract.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My contract,&rdquo; Sylvia repeated, bitterly. &ldquo;What about&mdash;&mdash; Oh, but how
+foolish I am. You dear unimaginative creature!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not at all unimaginative,&rdquo; Lily interposed, quickly. &ldquo;One of the
+reasons why I want to leave Brazil is because the black people here make
+me nervous. That&rsquo;s why I left our flat. I didn&rsquo;t know what to do. I was
+so<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a> frightened. I think I&rsquo;m very imaginative. You got ill. What was I to
+do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She asked this like an accusation, and Sylvia knew that it would be
+impossible to make her see any other point of view.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Besides, it was your fault I started to gamble. I watched you on the
+boat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you were going away without a word to me?&rdquo; Sylvia could not refrain
+from tormenting herself with this question.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no, I was coming to say good-by, but you don&rsquo;t understand how
+closely he watches me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The thought of Camacho&rsquo;s jealous antics recurred to Lily with the
+imminence of his return; she begged Sylvia, now that all her questions
+were answered, to escape. It was too late; there was a sound of
+footsteps upon the stairs and the noise of angry voices above deep
+gobbles of protested innocence from the black servant.</p>
+
+<p>The entrance reminded Sylvia of &ldquo;Il Barbiere di Siviglia,&rdquo; for when
+Camacho came leaping into the room, as thin and active as a grasshopper,
+the priest was holding his coattails with one hand and with the other
+making the most operatic gestures of despair, like Don Basilio. In the
+doorway the black servant continued to gobble at everybody in turn,
+including the Almighty, to witness the clarity of her conscience.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What language do you speak?&rdquo; Sylvia asked, sharply, while Camacho was
+struggling to free himself from the restraint of the priest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I speak English! Gaddam! Hell! Five hundred hells!&rdquo; the croupier
+shouted. &ldquo;And I have sweared a swore that you will not interrupt between
+me myself and my Lili.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Camacho raised his arm to shake his fist, and the priest caught hold of
+it, which made Camacho turn round and open on him with Portuguese
+expletives.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When you&rsquo;ve quite done cracking Brazil nuts with your teeth, perhaps
+you&rsquo;ll listen to me,&rdquo; Sylvia began.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, you hear me, no, no, no, no, no, no!&rdquo; Camacho shouted. &ldquo;And I will
+not hear you. I have heard you enough. You shall not take her away.
+<i>Putain!</i>&rdquo;<a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you want to be polite in French,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;Come along!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>&ldquo;Ce marloupatte pâle et mince</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Se nommait simplement Navet,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Mais il vivait ainsi qu&rsquo;un prince,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Il aimait les femmes qu&rsquo;on rince.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="nind"><i>Tu comprends? Mais moi, je ne suis pas une femme qu&rsquo;on rince.&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<p>It was certainly improbable, Sylvia thought, that the croupier had
+understood much of Richepin&rsquo;s verse, but the effect of the little
+recitation was excellent because it made him choke. Lily now intervened,
+and when Sylvia beheld her soothing the inarticulate Camacho by stroking
+his head, she abandoned the last faint inclination to break off this
+match and called upon the priest to marry them at once. No doubt the
+priest would have been willing to begin the ceremony if he had been able
+to understand a word of what Sylvia said, but he evidently thought she
+was appealing to him against Camacho&rsquo;s violence, and with a view to
+affording the ultimate assistance of which he was capable he crossed
+himself and turned up his eyes to heaven.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What an awful noise there is!&rdquo; Sylvia cried, and, looking round her
+with a sudden realization of its volume, she perceived that the negress
+in the doorway had been reinforced by what was presumably the
+cook&mdash;another negress who was joining in her fellow-servant&rsquo;s
+protestations. At the same time the priest was talking incessantly in
+rapid Portuguese; Camacho was probably swearing in the same language;
+and Lily was making a noise that was exactly half-way between a dove
+cooing and an ostler grooming a horse.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here, Mr. Camacho,&rdquo; Sylvia began.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t speak to him, Sylvia,&rdquo; Lily implored. &ldquo;He can&rsquo;t be spoken to
+when he&rsquo;s like this. It&rsquo;s a kind of illness, really.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia paid no attention to her, but continued to address the croupier.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you&rsquo;ll listen to me, Mr. Camacho, instead of behaving<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a> like an
+exasperated toy terrier, you&rsquo;ll find that we both want the same thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You shall not have her,&rdquo; the croupier chattered. &ldquo;I will shoot
+everybody before you shall have her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want her,&rdquo; Sylvia screamed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come here to be a bridesmaid
+or a godmother or any other human accessory to a wedding you like to
+mention. Take her, my dear man, she&rsquo;s yours.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At last Sylvia was able to persuade him that she was not to be regarded
+as an enemy of his matrimonial intentions, and after a final burst of
+rage directed against the negresses, whom he ejected from the room, as a
+housemaid turns a mattress, he made a speech:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am to marry Lily. We go to Portugal, where I am not to be a croupier,
+but a gentleman. I excuse my furage. You grant excusals, yes? It is a
+decomprehence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s apologizing,&rdquo; Lily explained in the kind of way one might call
+attention to the tricks of an intelligent puppy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s actually proud of him,&rdquo; Sylvia thought. &ldquo;But, of course, to her
+he represents gold and diamonds.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The priest, who had grasped that the strain was being relaxed, began to
+exude smiles and to rub his hands; he sniffed the prospect of a fee so
+richly that one seemed to hear the notes crackle like pork. Camacho
+produced the wedding-ring that was even more outshone than wedding-rings
+usually are by the diamonds of betrothal.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t be married in my dressing-gown,&rdquo; Lily protested.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt inclined to say it was the most suitable garment, except a
+nightgown, that she could have chosen, but in the end, after another
+discussion, it was decided that the ecclesiastical ceremony should be
+performed to-morrow in church and that to-day should be devoted to the
+civil rite. Sylvia promised not to say a word about the departure to
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Three days later Sylvia went on board the steamer to make her farewells.
+She gave Lily a delicate little pistol for a wedding-present; from Lily,
+in memory of her marriage, she received a box of chocolates.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible not to feel lonely, when Lily had gone:<a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a> in three and
+a half years they had been much together. For a while Sylvia tried to
+content herself with the company of the girls in the <i>pension
+d&rsquo;artistes</i>, to which she had been forced to go because the flat was too
+expensive for her to live in now. Her illness had swallowed up any money
+she had saved, and the manager took advantage of it to lower her salary.
+When she protested the manager told her he would be willing to pay the
+original salary, if she would go to São Paulo. Though Sylvia understood
+that the management was trying to get the best of a bargain, she was too
+listless to care much and she agreed to go. The voyage there was like a
+nightmare. The boat was full of gaudy negroes who sang endlessly their
+mysterious songs; the smell was vile; the food was worse; cockroaches
+swarmed. São Paulo was a squalid reproduction of Rio de Janeiro, and the
+women who sang in the cabaret were all seamed with ten years&rsquo; longer
+vagabondage than those at Rio. The men of São Paulo treated them with
+the insolence of the half-breeds they all seemed. On the third night a
+big man with teeth like an ancient fence and a diamond in his
+shirt-front like a crystal stopper leaned over from a box and shouted to
+Sylvia to come up and join him when she had finished her songs; he said
+other things that made her shake with anger. When she left the scene,
+the grand pimp, who was politely known as the manager, congratulated
+Sylvia upon her luck: she had caught the fancy of the richest patron.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t suppose I&rsquo;m going to see that <i>goujat</i> in his box?&rdquo; she
+growled.</p>
+
+<p>The grand pimp was in despair. Did she wish to drive away their richest
+patron? He would probably open a dozen bottles of champagne. He might
+... the grand pimp waved his arms to express mental inability to express
+all the splendors within her grasp. Presently the impatient suitor came
+behind the scene to know the reason of Sylvia&rsquo;s delay. He grasped her by
+the wrist and tried to drag her up to his box. She seized the only
+weapon in reach&mdash;a hand-glass&mdash;and smashed it against his face. The
+suitor roared; the grand pimp squealed; Sylvia escaped to the stage,
+which was almost flush with the main dancing-hall. She forced her way
+through the orchestra,<a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a> kicking the instruments right and left, and fell
+into the arms of a man more resplendent than the rest, but a
+<i>rastaquouère</i> of more Parisian cut, who in a dago-American accent
+promised to plug the first guy that tried to touch her.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt like Carmen on the arm of the Toreador when she and her
+protector walked out of the cabaret. He was a youngish man, wearing a
+blue serge suit and high-heeled shoes half buckskin, half
+patent-leather, tied with white silk laces, so excessively American in
+shape that one looked twice to be sure he was not wearing them on the
+wrong feet. His trousers, after exhausting the ordinary number of
+buttons in front, prolonged themselves into a kind of corselet that drew
+attention to the slimness of his waist. He wore a frilled white shirt
+sown with blue hearts and a white silk tie with a large diamond pin. The
+back of his neck was shaved, which gave his curly black hair the look of
+a wig. He was the Latin dandy after being operated upon in an American
+barber shop, and his name was Carlos Morera.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia noted his appearance in such detail, because the appearance of
+anybody after that monster in the box would have come as a relief and a
+diversion. Morera had led her to a bar that opened out of the cabaret,
+and after placing two automatic pistols on the counter he ordered
+champagne cocktails for them both.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t come after you in here. Dat stiff don&rsquo;t feel he would like to
+meet Carlos Morera. Say, do you know why? Why, because Carlos Morera&rsquo;s
+ready to plug any stiff dat don&rsquo;t happen to suit his fancy right away.
+Dat&rsquo;s me, Carlos Morera. I&rsquo;m pretty rich, I am. I&rsquo;m a gentleman, I am.
+But dat ain&rsquo;t going to stop me using those&rdquo;; he indicated the pistols.
+&ldquo;Drink up and let&rsquo;s have another. Don&rsquo;t you want to drink? See here,
+then.&rdquo; He poured Sylvia&rsquo;s cocktail on the floor. &ldquo;Nothing won&rsquo;t stop
+Carlos Morera if he wants to call another round of drinks. Two more
+champagne cocktails!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is this going to be my Manuel?&rdquo; Sylvia asked herself. She felt at the
+moment inclined to let him be anything rather than go back to the
+concert and face that man in the box.<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re looking some white,&rdquo; Morera commented. &ldquo;I believe he scared you.
+I believe I ought to have shot him. Say, you sit here and drink up. I
+t&rsquo;ink I&rsquo;ll go back and shoot him now. I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be gone long.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sit still, you fire-eater,&rdquo; cried Sylvia, catching hold of his arm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say, dat&rsquo;s good. Fire-eater! Yes, I believe I&rsquo;d eat fire if it came to
+it. I believe you could make me laugh. I&rsquo;m going to Buenos Aires
+to-morrow. Why don&rsquo;t you come along of me? This São Paulo is a bum
+Brazilian town. You want to see the Argentine. I&rsquo;ll show you lots of
+life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind coming with you to make you
+laugh and to laugh myself, but that&rsquo;s all. Understand?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; Carlos agreed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a funny kind of a fellow, I am.
+As soon as I found I could buy any girl I wanted, I didn&rsquo;t seem to want
+them no more. &lsquo;Sides, I&rsquo;ve got seven already. You come along of me. I&rsquo;m
+good company, I am. Everybody dat goes along of me laughs and has good
+fun. Hear that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He jingled the money in his pocket with a joyful reverence, as if he
+were ringing a sanctus-bell. &ldquo;Now, you come back with me into the
+cabaret.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you worry. Nobody won&rsquo;t dare to look at you when you&rsquo;re with me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Morera put her arm in his, and back they walked into the cabaret again,
+more than ever like Carmen with her Toreador. The grand pimp, seeing
+that Sylvia was safely protected, came forward with obeisances and
+apologies.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;See here. Bring two bottles of champagne,&rdquo; Morera commanded.</p>
+
+<p>The grand pimp beckoned authoritatively to a waiter, but Morera stood up
+in a fury.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t tell you to bring a waiter. I told you to bring two bottles of
+champagne. Bring them yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The grand pimp returned very meekly with the bottles.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s more like. Draw the cork of one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The grand pimp asked if he should put the other on ice.<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you worry about the other,&rdquo; said Morera. &ldquo;The other&rsquo;s only there
+so I can break it on your damned head in case I get tired of looking at
+you. See what I mean?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The grand pimp professed the most perfect comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, this is a bum place,&rdquo; Morera declared, after they had sat for a
+while. &ldquo;I believe we sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t get no fun here. Let&rsquo;s quit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He drove her back to the pension, and the next day they took ship to La
+Plata for Buenos Aires.</p>
+
+<p>Morera insisted on Sylvia&rsquo;s staying at an expensive hotel and was very
+anxious for her to buy plenty of new evening frocks.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a fancy,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;to show you a bit of life. You hadn&rsquo;t
+seen life before you came to Argentina.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The change of air had made Sylvia feel much better, and when she had
+fitted herself out with new clothes, to which Morera added a variety of
+expensive and gaudy jewels, she felt quite ready to examine life under
+his guidance.</p>
+
+<p>He took her to one or two theaters, to the opera, and to the casinos;
+then one evening he decided upon a special entertainment of which he
+made a secret.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want you to dress yourself up fine to-night,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re going
+to some smart ball. Put on all your jewelry. I&rsquo;m going to dress up
+smart, too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had found that overdressing was the best way of returning his
+hospitality; this evening she determined to surpass all previous
+efforts.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Heavens!&rdquo; she ejaculated, when she made the final survey of herself in
+the looking-glass. &ldquo;Do I look more like a Christmas tree or a chemist&rsquo;s
+shop?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When she joined Morera in the lounge, she saw that he was in evening
+dress, with diamonds wherever it was possible to put them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re fine,&rdquo; he said, contentedly. &ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s the way I like to see a goil
+look. I guess we&rsquo;re going to have lots of fun to-night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They drank a good deal of champagne at dinner, and about eleven o&rsquo;clock
+went out to their carriage. When the coachman was given the address of
+the ballroom, he<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a> looked round in surprise and was sworn at for his
+insolence, so with a shrug of the shoulders he drove off. They left the
+ordinary centers of amusement behind them and entered a meaner quarter
+where half-breeds and negroes predominated; at last after a very long
+drive they pulled up before what looked like a third-rate saloon. Sylvia
+hesitated before she got out; it did not seem at all a suitable
+environment for their conspicuous attire.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We shall have lots of fun,&rdquo; Morera promised. &ldquo;This is the toughest
+dancing-saloon in Buenos Aires.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It looks it,&rdquo; Sylvia agreed.</p>
+
+<p>They entered a vestibule that smelt of sawdust, niggers, and raw
+spirits, and went up-stairs to a crowded hall that was thick with
+tobacco smoke and dust. A negro band was playing ragtime in a corner;
+all along one side of the hall ran a bar. The dancers were a queer
+medley. The men were mostly of the Parisian apache type, though
+naturally more swarthy; the women were mostly in black dresses, with
+shawls of brilliantly colored silk and tawdry combs in their black hair.
+There were one or two women dancing in coat and skirt and hat, whose
+lifted petticoats and pale, dissolute faces shocked even Sylvia&rsquo;s
+masculine tolerance; there was something positively evil in their
+commonplace attire and abandoned motion; they were like anemic
+shop-girls possessed with unclean spirits.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I believe we shall make these folks mad,&rdquo; said Morera, with a happy
+chuckle. Before Sylvia could refuse he had taken her in his arms and was
+dancing round the room at double time. The cracked mirrors caught their
+reflections as they swept round, and Sylvia realized with a shock the
+amount of diamonds they were wearing between them and the effect they
+must be having in this thieves&rsquo; kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some of these guys are looking mad already,&rdquo; Morera proclaimed,
+enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>The dance came to an end, and they leaned back against the wall
+exhausted. Several men walked provocatively past, looking Sylvia and her
+partner slowly up and down.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come along of me,&rdquo; Morera said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll promenade right around the
+hall.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He put her arm in his and swaggered up and down. The other dancers were
+gathering in knots and eyeing them<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a> menacingly. At last an enormous
+American slouched across the empty floor and stood in their path.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say, who the hell are you, anyway?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say, what the hell&rsquo;s dat to you?&rdquo; demanded Morera.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quit!&rdquo; bellowed the American.</p>
+
+<p>Morera fired without taking his hand from his pocket, and the American
+dropped.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hands up! <i>Manos arriba!</i>&rdquo; cried Morera, pulling out his two pistols
+and covering the dancers while he backed with Sylvia toward the
+entrance. When they were up-stairs in the vestibule he told her to look
+if the carriage were at the door; when he heard that it was not he gave
+a loud whoop of exultation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I said I believed we was going to have lots of fun. We got to run now
+and see if any of those guys can catch us.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He seized Sylvia&rsquo;s arm, and they darted down the steps and out into the
+street. Morera looked rapidly right and left along the narrow
+thoroughfare. They could hear the noise of angry voices gathering in the
+vestibule of the saloon.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This way and round the turning,&rdquo; he cried, pulling Sylvia to the left.
+There was only one window alight in the narrow alley up which they had
+turned, a dim orange stain in the darkness. Morera hammered on the door
+as their pursuers came running round the corner. Two or three shots were
+fired, but before they were within easy range the door had opened and
+they were inside. The old hag who had opened it protested when she saw
+Sylvia, but Morera commanded her in Spanish to bolt it, and she seemed
+afraid to disobey. Somewhere in a distant part of the house there was a
+sound of women&rsquo;s crooning; outside they could hear the shuffling of
+their pursuers&rsquo; feet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say, this is fun,&rdquo; Morera chuckled. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve arrived into a <i>burdel</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible for Sylvia to be angry with him, so frank was he in
+his enjoyment of the situation. The old woman, however, was very angry
+indeed, for the pursuers were banging upon her door and she feared a
+visit from the police. Her clamor was silenced with a handful of notes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Champagne for the girls,&rdquo; Morera cried.</p>
+
+<p>For Sylvia the evening had already taken on the nature<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a> of a dream, and
+she accepted the immediate experience as only one of an inconsequent
+procession of events. Having attained this state of mind, she saw
+nothing unusual in sitting down with half a dozen women who clung to
+their sofas as sea-anemones to the rocks of an aquarium. She had a
+fleeting astonishment that they should have names, that beings so
+utterly indistinguishable should be called Juanilla or Belita or Tula or
+Lola or Maruca, but the faint shock of realizing a common humanity
+passed off almost at once, and she found herself enjoying a conversation
+with Belita, who spoke a few words of broken French. With the
+circulation of the champagne the women achieved a kind of liveliness and
+examined Sylvia&rsquo;s jewels with murmurs of admiration. The ancient bawd
+who owned them proposed a dance, to which Morera loudly agreed. The
+women whispered and giggled among themselves, looking bashfully over
+their shoulders at Sylvia in a way that made the crone thump her stick
+on the floor with rage. She explained in Spanish the cause of their
+hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t want to take off their clothes in front of you,&rdquo; Morera
+translated to Sylvia, with apologies for such modesty from women who no
+longer had the right to possess even their own emotions; nevertheless,
+he suggested that they might be excused to avoid spoiling a jolly
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good heavens! I should think so!&rdquo; Sylvia agreed.</p>
+
+<p>Morera gave a magnanimous wave of his arm, in which he seemed to confer
+upon the women the right to keep on their clothes. They clapped their
+hands and laughed like children. Soon to the sound of castanets they
+wriggled their bodies in a way that was not so much suggestive of
+dancing as of flea-bites. A lamp with a tin reflector jarred fretfully
+upon a shelf, and the floor creaked.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Morera held up his hand for silence. The knocking on the street
+door was getting louder. He asked the old woman if there was any way of
+getting out at the back.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s all right, kid,&rdquo; he told Sylvia. &ldquo;We can crawl over the dooryards
+at the back. Dat door in front ain&rsquo;t going to hold not more than five
+minutes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He tore the elastic from a bundle of notes and scattered<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a> them in the
+air like leaves; the women pounced upon the largesse and were fighting
+with one another on the floor when Sylvia and Morera followed the old
+woman to the back door and out into a squalid yard.</p>
+
+<p>How they ever surmounted the various walls and crossed the various yards
+they encountered Sylvia could never understand. All she remembered was
+being lifted on packing-cases and dust-bins, of slipping once and
+crashing into a hen-coop, of tearing her dress on some broken glass, of
+riding astride walls and pricking her face against plants, and of
+repeating to herself all the time, &ldquo;When lilacs last in the dooryard
+bloomed.&rdquo; When at last they extricated themselves from the maze of
+dooryards they wandered for a long time through a maze of narrow
+streets. Sylvia had managed to stuff all her jewelry out of sight into
+her corsage, where it scratched her most uncomfortably, but any
+discomfort was preferable to the covetous eyes of the half-breeds that
+watched her from the shadows.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I guess you enjoyed yourself,&rdquo; said Morera, in a satisfied voice, when
+at last they found a carriage and leaned back to breathe the gentle
+night air.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I enjoyed myself thoroughly,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s the way to see a bit of life,&rdquo; he declared. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the good of
+sitting in a bum theater all the night? Dat don&rsquo;t amuse me any. I
+plugged him in the leg,&rdquo; he added, in a tone of almost tender
+reminiscence.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia expressed surprise at his knowing where he had hit him, and
+Morera was very indignant at the idea of her supposing that he should
+shoot a man without knowing exactly at what part of him he was aiming
+and where he should hit him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, I might have killed him dead,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want to kill a
+man dead just for a bit of fun. I started them guys off, see. They
+thought they&rsquo;d got a slob. Dat&rsquo;s where I was laughing. I guess I&rsquo;ll
+sleep good to-night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia spent a month seeing life with Carlos Morera; though she never
+had another experience so exciting as the first, she passed a good deal
+of her time upon the verge of melodramatic adventure. She grew fond of
+this child-like creature with his spendthrift ostentation and bravado.<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a>
+He never showed the least sign of wanting to make love to her, and
+demanded nothing from Sylvia but overdressing and admiration of his
+exploits. At the end of the month he told Sylvia that business called
+him to New York and invited her to come with him. He let her understand,
+however, that now he wanted her as his mistress. Even if she could have
+tolerated the idea, Sylvia was sure that from the moment she accepted
+such a position he would begin to despise her. She had heard too many of
+his contemptuous references to the women he had bought. She refused to
+accompany him, on the plea of wanting to go back to Europe. Morera
+looked sullen, and she had a feeling that he was regretting the amount
+he had spent upon her. Her pride found such a sensation insupportable
+and she made haste to return him all his jewels.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say, what sort of a guy do you think I am?&rdquo; He threw the jewels at her
+feet and left her like a spoiled child.</p>
+
+<p>An hour or two later he came back with a necklace that must have cost
+five thousand dollars.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s the sort of guy I am,&rdquo; he said, and would take no refusal from
+her to accept it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t go on spending money for nothing like this,&rdquo; Sylvia
+protested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I got plenty, ha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t I?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I believe it&rsquo;s my money, ain&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; he continued.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, dat finishes dat argument right away. Now I got another
+proposition. You listening? I got a proposition dat we get married. I
+believe I &rsquo;ain&rsquo;t met no girl like you. I know you&rsquo;ve been a cabaret
+girl. Dat don&rsquo;t matter a cent to me. You&rsquo;re British. Well, I&rsquo;ve always
+had a kind of notion I&rsquo;d like to marry a British girl. Don&rsquo;t you tink
+I&rsquo;m always the daffy guy you&rsquo;ve bummed around with in Buenos Aires. You
+saw me in dat dancing-saloon? Well, I guess you know what I can do.
+Dat&rsquo;s what I am in business. Say, Sylvia, will you marry me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear old son, it wouldn&rsquo;t work for you or for me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how you figure dat out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve figured it out to seventy times seven. It wouldn&rsquo;t<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a> do. Not for
+another mad month even. Come, let&rsquo;s say good-by. I want to go to Europe.
+I&rsquo;m going to have a good time. It&rsquo;ll be you that&rsquo;s going to give it to
+me. My dear old Carlos, you may have spent your money badly from your
+point of view, but you haven&rsquo;t really. You never spent any money better
+in all your life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Morera did not bother her any more. With all his exterior foolishness he
+had a very deep perception of individual humanity. There was a boat
+sailing for Marseilles in a day or two, and he bought a ticket for
+Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a return ticket,&rdquo; he told her. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s good for a year.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She assured him that even if she came back it could never be to marry
+him, but he insisted upon her keeping it, and to please him she yielded.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia left the Argentine worth nearly as much as Lily when she went
+away from Brazil, and as if her luck was bent upon an even longer run,
+she gained heavily at poker all the way back across the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached Marseilles, Sylvia conceived a longing to meet
+Valentine again, and she telegraphed to Elène at Brussels for her
+address. It was with a quite exceptional anticipation that Sylvia asked
+the <i>concierge</i> if Madame Lataille was in. While she walked up-stairs to
+her sister&rsquo;s apartment she remembered how she had yearned to be friends
+with Valentine nearly thirteen years ago, forgetting all about the
+disappointment of her hope in a sudden desire to fill up a small corner
+of her present loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>Valentine had always lingered in Sylvia&rsquo;s imagination as a rather wild
+figure, headstrong to such a pitch where passion was concerned that she
+herself had always felt colorless and insignificant in comparison. There
+was something splendidly tropical about Valentine as she appeared to
+Sylvia&rsquo;s fancy; in all the years after she quitted France she had
+cherished a memory of Valentine&rsquo;s fiery anger on the night of her
+departure as something nobly independent.</p>
+
+<p>Like other childish memories, Sylvia found Valentine much less
+impressive when she met her again&mdash;much less impressive, for instance,
+than Elène, who, though she had married a shopkeeper and had settled
+down to a most uncompromising<a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a> and ordinary respectability, retained a
+ripening outward beauty that made up for any pinching of the spirit.
+Here was Valentine, scarcely even pretty, who achieved by neatness any
+effect of personality that she did. She had fine eyes&mdash;it seemed
+impossible for any of her mother&rsquo;s children to avoid them, however dull
+and inexpressive might have been the father&rsquo;s. Sylvia was thinking of
+Henry&rsquo;s eyes, but what she had heard of M. Lataille in childhood had
+never led her to picture him as more remarkable outwardly than her own
+father.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Twelve years since we met,&rdquo; Valentine was murmuring, and Sylvia was
+agreeing and thinking to herself all the time how very much compressed
+Valentine was, not uncomfortably or displeasingly, but like a new dress
+before it has blossomed to the individuality of the wearer. There
+recurred to Sylvia out of the past a likeness between Valentine and
+Maudie Tilt when Maudie had dressed up for the supper-party with Jimmy
+Monkley.</p>
+
+<p>When the first reckonings of lapsed years were over there did not seem
+much to talk about, but presently Sylvia described with much detail the
+voyage from La Plata to Marseilles, just as, when one takes up a
+long-interrupted correspondence, great attention is often devoted to the
+weather at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Alors, vous êtes chanteuse?</i>&rdquo; Valentine asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Oui, je suis chanteuse</i>,&rdquo; Sylvia replied.</p>
+
+<p>Neither of the sisters used the second person singular: the
+conversation, which was desultory, like the conversation of travelers in
+a railway carriage, ended abruptly as if the train had entered a tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Vous êtes très-bien ici</i>,&rdquo; said Sylvia, looking round. The train had
+emerged and was running through a dull cutting.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Oui, je suis très-bien ici</i>,&rdquo; Valentine replied.</p>
+
+<p>There was no hostility between the sisters; there was merely a blank, a
+sundering stretch of twelve years, that dismayed both of them with its
+tracklessness. Presently Sylvia noticed a photograph upon the wall so
+conspicuously framed as to justify a supposition that it represented the
+man who was responsible for Valentine&rsquo;s well-being.<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Oui, c&rsquo;est mon amant</i>,&rdquo; said Valentine, in reply to the unspoken
+question.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was faced by the problem of commenting satisfactorily upon a
+photograph. To begin with, it was one of those photographs that preserve
+the individual hairs of the mustache but eradicate every line from the
+face. It was impossible to comment on it, and it would have been equally
+impossible to comment on the original in person. The only fact emerging
+from the photograph was that in addition to a mustache the subject of it
+owned a pearl tie-pin; but even of the genuineness of the pearl it was
+unable to give any assurance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Photographs tell one nothing, do they?&rdquo; Sylvia said, at last. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re
+like somebody else&rsquo;s dreams.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Valentine knitted her brows in perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Or somebody else&rsquo;s baby,&rdquo; Sylvia went on, desperately.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like babies,&rdquo; said Valentine.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Vraiment on est très-bien ici</i>,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>She felt that by flinging an accentuated compliment to the room
+Valentine might feel her lover was included in the approbation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And it&rsquo;s mine,&rdquo; said Valentine, complacently. &ldquo;He bought it for me.
+<i>C&rsquo;est pour la vie</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Passion might be quenched in the slough of habitude; love&rsquo;s pinions
+might molt like any farm-yard hen&rsquo;s. What was that, when the apartment
+was hers for life?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How many rooms have you?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Besides this one I have a bedroom, a dining-room, a kitchen, and a
+bath-room. Would you like to see the bath-room?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When Valentine asked the last question she was transformed; a latent
+exultation flamed out from her immobility.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should love to see the bath-room,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;I think bath-rooms
+are often the most interesting part of a house.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But this is an exceptional bath-room. It cost two thousand francs to
+install.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Valentine led the way to the admired chamber, to which a complicated
+arrangement of shining pipes gave an orchestral appearance. Valentine
+flitted from tap to tap. Aretino<a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a> himself could scarcely have imagined
+more methods of sprinkling water upon the human body.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And these pipes are for warming the towels,&rdquo; she explained. It was a
+relief to find pipes that led a comparatively passive existence amid
+such a convolution of fountainous activity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought while I was about it that I would have the tiles laid right
+up to the ceiling,&rdquo; Valentine went on, pensively. &ldquo;And you see, the
+ceiling is made of looking-glass. When the water is very hot, <i>ça fait
+drôle, tu sais, on ne se voit plus</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time she had used the second person singular; the
+bath-room had created in Valentine something that almost resembled
+humanity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Sylvia agreed. &ldquo;I suppose that is the best way of making the
+ceiling useful.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>C&rsquo;est pour la vie</i>,&rdquo; Valentine contentedly sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But if he were to marry?&rdquo; Sylvia ventured.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It would make no difference,&rdquo; Valentine answered. &ldquo;I have saved money
+and with a bath-room like this one can always get a good rent.
+Everything in the apartment is mine, and the apartment is mine, too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Alors, tu es contente?</i>&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Oui, je suis contente</i>,&rdquo; said Valentine.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Elle est jolie, ta salle de bain</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Oui, elle est jolie comme un amour</i>,&rdquo; Valentine assented, with a sweet
+maternal smile.</p>
+
+<p>They talked of the bath-room for a while when they came back to the
+boudoir; Sylvia was conscious of displaying the politeness with which
+one descends from the nursery at an afternoon call.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Enfin</i>,&rdquo; said Sylvia, &ldquo;<i>Je file</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Tu pars tout de suite de Marseilles?</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Oui, je pars ce soir</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She had not really intended to leave Marseilles that evening, but there
+seemed no reason to stay.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>C&rsquo;est dommage que tu n&rsquo;as pas vu Louis</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Il s&rsquo;appelle Louis?</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Oui, il s&rsquo;appelle Louis. Il est à Lyon pour ses affaires</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Alors, au revoir, Valentine</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Au revoir, Sylvie</i>.&rdquo;<a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a></p>
+
+<p>They hesitated, both of them, to see which would offer her cheek first;
+in the end they managed to be simultaneous.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Even the farewell was a stalemate,&rdquo; Sylvia said to herself on the way
+down-stairs.</p>
+
+<p>She wondered, while she was walking back to her hotel, what was going to
+be the passion of her own life. One always started out with a dim
+conception of perfect love, however one might scoff at it openly in
+self-protection, but evidently it by no means followed that love for a
+man, let alone perfect love, would ever arrive. Lily had succeeded in
+inspiring at least one man with love for her, but she had found her own
+passion in roulette with Camacho tacked to it, inherited like a
+husband&rsquo;s servant, familiar with any caprice, but jealous and irritable.
+Valentine had found her grand passion in a bath-room that satisfied even
+her profoundest maternal instincts. Dorothy had loved a coronet with
+such fervor that she had been able to abandon everything that could
+smirch it. Sylvia&rsquo;s own mother had certainly found at thirty-four her
+grand passion, but Sylvia felt that it would be preferable to fall in
+love with a bath-room now than wait ten years for a Henry.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia reached the hotel, packed up her things, and set out to Paris
+without any definite plans in her head for the future, and just because
+she had no definite plans and nothing to keep her from sleeping, she
+could not sleep and tossed about on the <i>wagon-lit</i> half the night.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not as if I hadn&rsquo;t got money. I&rsquo;m amazingly lucky. It&rsquo;s really
+fantastic luck to find somebody like poor old Carlos to set me up for
+five years of luxurious independence. I suppose if I were wise I should
+buy a house in London&mdash;and yet I don&rsquo;t want to go back to London. The
+trouble with me is that, though I like to be independent, I don&rsquo;t like
+to be alone. Yet with Michael.... But what&rsquo;s the use of thinking about
+him? Do I actually miss him? No, certainly not. He&rsquo;s nothing more to me
+than something I might have had, but failed to secure. I&rsquo;m regretting a
+missed experience. If one loses somebody like that, it leaves a sense of
+incompletion. How often does one feel a quite poignant regret because
+one has forgotten to finish a cup of coffee; but the regret is always<a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a>
+for the incomplete moment; it doesn&rsquo;t endure. Michael in a year will
+have changed; I&rsquo;ve changed, also. There is nothing to suggest that if we
+met again now, we should meet in the same relation, with the same
+possibility in the background of our intercourse. Then why won&rsquo;t I go
+back to Mulberry Cottage? Obviously because I have out-lived Mulberry
+Cottage. I don&rsquo;t want to stop my course by running into a backwater
+that&rsquo;s already been explored. I want to go on and on until ... yes,
+until what? I can travel now, if I want to. Well, why shouldn&rsquo;t I
+travel? If I visit my agent in Paris&mdash;and I certainly shall visit him in
+order to tell him what I think of the management of that damned Casino
+at Rio&mdash;he&rsquo;ll offer me another contract to sing in some outlandish
+corner of the globe, and if I weren&rsquo;t temporarily independent, I should
+have to accept it with all its humiliations. Merely to travel would be a
+mistake I think. I&rsquo;ve got myself into the swirl of mountebanks, and
+somehow I must continue with them. It&rsquo;s a poor little loyalty, but even
+that is better than nothing. Really, if one isn&rsquo;t tied down by poverty,
+one can have a very good time, traveling the world as a singer. Or I
+could live in Paris for a while. I should soon meet amusing people. Oh,
+I don&rsquo;t know what I want. I should rather like to get hold of Olive
+again. She may be married by now. She probably is married. She&rsquo;s bound
+to be married. A superfluity of romantic affection was rapidly
+accumulating that must have been deposited somewhere by now. I might get
+Gainsborough out from England to come with me. Come with me, where? It
+seems a shame to uproot the poor old thing again. She&rsquo;s nearly sixty.
+But I must have somebody.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When Sylvia reached Paris she visited two trunks that were in a
+repository. Among other things she took out the volume of Adlington&rsquo;s
+<i>Apuleius</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, there&rsquo;s no doubt I&rsquo;m still an ass,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And since the
+Argentine really a golden ass; but oh, when, when, when shall I eat the
+rose-leaves and turn into Sylvia again? One might make a joke about
+that, as the White Knight said, something about Golden and Silver and
+Argentine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Thinking of jokes reminded Sylvia of Mr. Pluepott, and<a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a> thinking of
+Alice through the looking-glass brought back the Vicar. What a long way
+off they seemed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t let go of everybody,&rdquo; she cried. So she telegraphed and wrote
+urgently to Mrs. Gainsborough, begging her to join her in Paris. While
+she was waiting for a reply, she discussed projects for the future with
+her agent, who, when he found that she had some money, was anxious for
+her to invest a certain amount in the necessary <i>réclame</i> and appear at
+the Folies Bergères.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t want to make a success by singing French songs with an
+English accent,&rdquo; Sylvia protested. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d as soon make a success by
+singing without a roof to my mouth. You discouraged me from doing
+something I really wanted to do. All I want now is an excuse for
+roaming.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What about a tour in Spain?&rdquo; the agent suggested. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t get you more
+than ten francs a night, though, if you only want to sing. Still,
+Spain&rsquo;s much cheaper than America.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon cher ami, j&rsquo;ai besoin du travail pour me distraire</i>. Ten francs is
+the wage of a slave, but pocket-money, if one is not a slave.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Vous avez de la veine, vous</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Vraiment?</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Mais oui</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Peut-être quelqu&rsquo;un m&rsquo;a plaqué</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He tried to look grave and sympathetic.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Salaud</i>,&rdquo; she mocked. &ldquo;<i>Crois-tu que je t&rsquo;en dirais. Bigre! je
+creverais plutôt</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She had dropped into familiarity of speech with him, but he, still
+hopeful of persuading her to intrust a profitable <i>réclame</i> to him,
+continued to treat her formally. Sylvia realized the <i>arrière pensée</i>
+and laughed at him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Je ne suis pas encore en grande vedette, tu sais</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He assured her that such a triumph would ultimately come to her, and she
+scoffed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Mon vieux, si je n&rsquo;avais pas de la galette, je pourrais crever de faim
+devant ta porte. Ce que tu me dis, c&rsquo;est du chic</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, will you go to Spain?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The contract was signed.</p>
+
+<p>A day or two later, when she was beginning to give up<a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a> hope of getting
+an answer from Mrs. Gainsborough, the old lady herself turned up at the
+hotel, looking not a minute older.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You darling and daring old plesiosaurus,&rdquo; cried Sylvia, seizing her by
+the hand and twirling her round the vestibule.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I am pleased to see you and no mistake,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough.
+&ldquo;But what a tyrant! Well, really, I was in me bed when your telegram
+came and that boy he knocked like a tiger. Knock&mdash;knock! all the time I
+was trying to slip on me petticoat, which through me being in a regular
+fluster I put on wrong way up and got me feet all wound up with the
+strings. Knock&mdash;knock! &lsquo;Whatever do you think you&rsquo;re doing?&rsquo; I said when
+at last I was fairly decent and went to open the door. &lsquo;Telegram,&rsquo; he
+says, as saucy as brass. &lsquo;Telegram?&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;I thought by the row you
+was making that you was building St. Paul&rsquo;s Cathedral.&rsquo; &lsquo;Wait for the
+answer?&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Answer?&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;Certainly not.&rsquo; Well, there was I
+with your telegram in one hand and me petticoat slipping down in the
+other. Then on the top of that came your letter, and I couldn&rsquo;t resist a
+sight of you, my dearie. Fancy that Lily waltzing off like that. And
+with a Portuguese. She&rsquo;ll get Portuguese before he&rsquo;s finished with her.
+Portuguese is what she&rsquo;ll be. And the journey! Well, really, I don&rsquo;t
+know how I managed. I kept on saying, &lsquo;France,&rsquo; the same as if I was
+asking a policeman the way to Oxford Circus, and they bundled me about
+like ... well, really, everybody was most kind. Still when I got to
+France, it wasn&rsquo;t much use going on shouting &lsquo;France&rsquo; to everybody.
+However, I met a nice young fellow in the train, and he very
+thoughtfully assisted me into a cab and ... well, I am glad to see you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now you&rsquo;re coming with me to Spain,&rdquo; Sylvia announced.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good land alive! Where?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Spain.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you going chasing after Lily again?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, we&rsquo;re going off on our own.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I may have started on the gad late in life, but <a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a>I&rsquo;ve certainly
+started now,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;Spain? That&rsquo;s where the Spanish
+flies come from, isn&rsquo;t it? Well, they ought to be lively enough, so I
+suppose we shall enjoy ourselves. And how do we get there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By train!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dear land! it&rsquo;s wonderful what they can do nowadays. What relation then
+is Spain to Portugal exactly? You must excuse my ignorance, Sylvia, but
+really I&rsquo;m still all of a fluster. Fancy being bounced out of me bed
+into Spain. You really are a demon. Fancy you getting yellow fever. You
+haven&rsquo;t changed color much. Spain! Upon my word I never heard anything
+like it. We&rsquo;d better take plenty with us to eat. I knew it reminded me
+of something. The Spanish Armada! I once heard a clergyman recite the
+Spanish Armada, though what it was all about I&rsquo;ve completely forgotten.
+There was some fighting in it though. I went with the captain. Well, if
+he could see me now. You may be sure he&rsquo;s laughing, wherever he is. The
+idea of me going to Spain.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The idea materialized; that night they drove to the Gare d&rsquo;Orléans.<a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE journey to Madrid was for Mrs. Gainsborough a long revelation of
+human eccentricity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not even Mrs. Ewings would believe it,&rdquo; she assured Sylvia. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s got
+to be seen to be believed. I opened my mouth a bit wide when I first
+came to France, but France is Peckham Rye if you put it alongside of
+Spain. When that guard or whatever he calls himself opened our door and
+bobbed in out of the runnel with the train going full speed and asked
+for our tickets, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Showing
+off, that&rsquo;s what I call it. And carrying wine inside of goats!
+Disgusting I should say. Nice set-out there&rsquo;d be in England if the
+brewers started sending round beer inside of sheep. Why, it would cause
+a regular outcry; but these Spanish seem to put up with everything. I&rsquo;m
+not surprised they come round selling water at every station. The cheek
+of it though, when you come to think about it. Putting wine inside of
+goats so as to make people buy water. If I&rsquo;d have been an enterprising
+woman like Mrs. Marsham, I should have got out at the last station and
+complained to the police about it. But really the stations aren&rsquo;t fit
+for a decent person to walk about in. I&rsquo;m not considered very
+particular, but when a station consists of nothing but a signal-box and
+a lavatory and no platform, I don&rsquo;t call it a station. And what a
+childish way of starting a train&mdash;blowing a toy horn like that. More
+like a school treat than a railway journey. And the turkeys! Now I ask
+you, Sylvia, would you believe it? Four turkeys under the seat and three
+on the rack over me head. A regular Harlequinade! And every time anybody
+takes out a cigarette or a bit of bread they offer it all around the
+compartment. Fortunately I don&rsquo;t look hungry, or they might have been
+offended.<a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a> No wonder England&rsquo;s full of aliens. I shall explain the
+reason of it when I get home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The place of entertainment where Sylvia worked was called the Teatro
+Japonés, for what reason it would have been difficult to say. The girls
+were, as usual, mostly French, but there were one or two Spanish dancers
+that, as Mrs. Gainsborough put it, kept one &ldquo;rum-tum-tumming in one&rsquo;s
+seat all the time it was going on.&rdquo; Sylvia found Madrid a dull city
+entirely without romance of aspect, nor did the pictures in the Prado
+make up for the bull-ring&rsquo;s wintry desolation. Mrs. Gainsborough
+considered the most remarkable evidence of Spanish eccentricity was the
+way in which flocks of turkeys, after traveling in passenger-trains,
+actually wandered about the chief thoroughfares.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Suppose if I was to go shooing across Piccadilly with a herd of
+chickens, let alone turkeys, well, it <i>would</i> be a circus, and that&rsquo;s a
+fact.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When they first arrived they stayed at a large hotel in the Puerta del
+Sol, but Mrs. Gainsborough got into trouble with the baths, partly
+because they cost five pesetas each and partly because she said it went
+to her heart to see a perfectly clean sheet floating about in the water.
+After that they tried a smaller hotel, where they were fairly
+comfortable, though Mrs. Gainsborough took a long time to get used to
+being brought chocolate in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I miss my morning tea, Sylvia, and it&rsquo;s no use me pretending I don&rsquo;t. I
+don&rsquo;t feel like chocolate in the morning. I&rsquo;d just as lieve have a slice
+of plum-pudding in a cup. Why, if you try to put a lump of sugar in, it
+won&rsquo;t sink; it keeps bobbing up like a kitten. And another thing I can&rsquo;t
+seem to get used to is having the fish after the meat. Every time it
+comes in like that it seems a kind of carelessness. What fish it is,
+too, when it does come. Well, they say a donkey can eat thistles, but it
+would take him all his time to get through one of those fish. No wonder
+they serve them after the meat. I should think they were afraid of the
+amount of meat any one might eat, trying to get the bones out of one&rsquo;s
+throat. I&rsquo;ve felt like a pincushion ever since I got to Madrid, and<a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a> how
+you can sing beats me. Your throat must be like a zither by now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It really did not seem worth while to remain any longer in Madrid, and
+Sylvia asked to be released from her contract. The manager, who had been
+wondering to all the other girls why Sylvia had ever been sent to him,
+discovered that she was his chief attraction when she wanted to break
+the contract. However, a hundred pesetas in his own pocket removed all
+objections, and she was free to leave Spain.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, do you want to go home?&rdquo; she asked Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;Or would
+you come to Seville?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now we&rsquo;ve come so far, we may as well go on a bit farther,&rdquo; Mrs.
+Gainsborough thought.</p>
+
+<p>Seville was very different from Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really, when you see oranges growing in the streets,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough
+said, &ldquo;you begin to understand why people ever goes abroad. Why, the
+flowers are really grand, Sylvia. Carnations as common as daisies. Well,
+I declare, I wrote home a post-card to Mrs. Beardmore and told her
+Seville was like being in a conservatory. She&rsquo;s living near Kew now, so
+she&rsquo;ll understand my meaning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They both much enjoyed the dancing in the cafés, when solemn men hurled
+their sombreros on the dancers&rsquo; platform to mark their appreciation of
+the superb creatures who flaunted themselves there so gracefully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But they&rsquo;re bold hussies with it all, aren&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough
+observed. &ldquo;Upon me word, I wouldn&rsquo;t care to climb up there and swing my
+hips about like that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>From Seville, after an idle month of exquisite weather, often so warm
+that Sylvia could sit in the garden of the Alcazar and read in the shade
+of the lemon-trees, they went to Granada.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So they&rsquo;ve got an Alhambra here, have they?&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough.
+&ldquo;But from what I&rsquo;ve seen of the performances in Spain it won&rsquo;t come up
+to good old Leicester Square.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On Sylvia the Alhambra cast an enchantment more powerful than any famous
+edifice she had yet seen. Her admiration of cathedrals had always been
+tempered by a<a name="page_313" id="page_313"></a> sense of missing most of what they stood for. They were
+still exercising their functions in a modern world and thereby
+overshadowed her personal emotions in a way that she found most
+discouraging to the imagination. The Alhambra, which once belonged to
+kings, now belonged to individual dreams. Those shaded courts where even
+at midday the ice lay thick upon the fountains; that sudden escape from
+a frozen chastity of brown stone out on the terraces rich with sunlight;
+that vision of the Sierra Nevada leaping against the blue sky with all
+its snowy peaks; this incredible meeting of East and South and North&mdash;to
+know all these was to stand in the center of the universe, oneself a
+king.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s it remind you of, Sylvia?&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Everything,&rdquo; Sylvia cried. She felt that it would take but the least
+effort of will to light in one swoop upon the Sierra Nevada and from
+those bastions storm ... what?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It reminds me just a tiddly-bit of Earl&rsquo;s Court,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Gainsborough, putting her head on one side like a meditative hen. &ldquo;If
+you shut one eye against those mountains, you&rsquo;ll see what I mean.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia came often by herself to the Alhambra; she had no scruples in
+leaving Mrs. Gainsborough, who had made friends at the pension with a
+lonely American widower.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He knows everything,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve learned more in a
+fortnight with him than I ever learned in my whole life. What that man
+doesn&rsquo;t know! Well, I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;s not worth knowing. He&rsquo;s been in trade
+and never been able to travel till now, but he&rsquo;s got the world off by
+heart, as you might say. I sent a p. c. to Mrs. Ewings to say I&rsquo;d found
+a masher at last. The only thing against him is the noises he makes with
+his throat. I gave him some lozenges at first, but he made more noise
+than ever sucking them, and I had to desist.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Soon after Mrs. Gainsborough met her American, Sylvia made the
+acquaintance of a youthful guide of thirteen or fourteen years, who for
+a very small wage adopted her and gave her much entertainment. Somehow
+or other Rodrigo had managed to pick up a good deal of English and
+French, which, as he pointed out, enabled him to compete with the<a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a> older
+guides who resented his intrusion. Rodrigo did not consider that the
+career of a guide was worthy of real ambition. For the future he
+hesitated between being a gentleman&rsquo;s servant and a tobacconist in
+Gibraltar. He was a slim child with the perfect grace of the young South
+in movements and in manners alike.</p>
+
+<p>Rodrigo was rather distressed at the beginning by Sylvia&rsquo;s want of
+appetite for mere sight-seeing; he reproved her indeed very gravely for
+wasting valuable time in repeating her visits to favorite spots while so
+many others remained unvisited. He was obsessed by the rapidity with
+which most tourists passed through Granada, but when he discovered that
+Sylvia had no intention of hurrying or being hurried, his native
+indolence blossomed to her sympathy and he adapted himself to her
+pleasure in sitting idle and dreaming in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Warmer weather came in February, and Rodrigo suggested that the Alhambra
+should be visited by moonlight. He did not make this suggestion because
+it was the custom of other English people to desire this experience; he
+realized that the Señorita was not influenced by what other people did;
+at the same time the Alhambra by moonlight could scarcely fail to please
+the Señorita&rsquo;s passion for beauty. He himself had a passion for beauty,
+and he pledged his word she would not regret following his advice;
+moreover, he would bring his guitar.</p>
+
+<p>On a February night, when the moon was still high, Sylvia and Rodrigo
+walked up the avenue that led to the Alhambra. There was nobody on the
+summit but themselves. Far down lights flitted in the gipsy quarter, and
+there came up a faint noise of singing and music.</p>
+
+<p>It was Carnival, Rodrigo explained, and the Señorita would have enjoyed
+it; but, alas! there were many rascals about on such nights, and though
+he was armed, he did not recommend a visit. He brought out his guitar;
+from beneath her Spanish cloak Sylvia also brought out a guitar.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Señorita plays? <i>Maravilloso!</i>&rdquo; Rodrigo exclaimed. &ldquo;But why the
+Señorita did not inform me to carry her guitar? The hill was long. The
+Señorita will be tired.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia opened with one of her old French songs, after<a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a> which Rodrigo,
+who had paid her a courteous and critical attention, declared that she
+had a musician&rsquo;s soul like himself, and forthwith, in a treble that was
+limpid as the moon, light, unpassionate as the snow, remote as the
+mountains, he too sang.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Exquisite,&rdquo; Sylvia sighed.</p>
+
+<p>The Señorita was too kind, and as if to disclaim the compliment he went
+off into a mad gipsy tune. Suddenly he broke off.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hark! Does the Señorita hear a noise of weeping?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was indeed a sound of some one&rsquo;s crying, a sound that came nearer
+every moment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is most unusual to hear a sound of weeping in the Alhambra <i>au clair
+de la lune</i>,&rdquo; said Rodrigo. &ldquo;If the Señorita will permit me, I shall
+find out the cause.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Soon he came back with a girl whose cheeks glistened with tears.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She is a dancer,&rdquo; Rodrigo explained. &ldquo;She says she is Italian, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+With a shrug of the shoulders he gave Sylvia to understand that he
+accepted no responsibility for her statement. It was Carnival.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia asked the new-comer in French what was the matter, but for some
+time she could only sob without saying a word. Rodrigo, who was
+regarding her with a mixture of disapproval and compassion, considered
+that she had reached the stage&mdash;he spoke with all possible respect for
+the Señorita, who must not suppose herself included in his
+generalization&mdash;the stage of incoherence that is so much more frequent
+with women than with men whose feelings have been upset. If he might
+suggest a remedy to the Señorita, it would be to leave her alone for a
+few minutes and continue the interrupted music. They had come here to
+enjoy the Alhambra by moonlight; it seemed a pity to allow the grief of
+an unknown dancer to spoil the beauty of the scene, grief that probably
+had nothing to do with the Alhambra, but was an echo of the world below.
+It might be a lovers&rsquo; quarrel due to the discovery of a masked
+flirtation, a thing of no importance compared with the Alhambra by
+moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not such a philosopher as you, Rodrigo. I am a poor, inquisitive
+woman.&rdquo;<a name="page_316" id="page_316"></a></p>
+
+<p>Certainly inquisitiveness might be laid to the charge of the feminine
+sex, he agreed, but not to all. There must be exceptions, and with a
+gesture expressive of tolerance for the weaknesses of womankind he
+managed to convey his intention of excepting Sylvia from Eve&rsquo;s heritage.
+Human nature was not all woven to the same pattern. Many of his friends,
+for instance, would fail to appreciate the Alhambra on such a night, and
+would prefer to blow horns in the streets.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the grief of the stranger was less noisy, and Sylvia again
+asked her who she was and why she was weeping. She spoke in English this
+time; the fair, slim child, for when one looked at her she was scarcely
+more than fifteen, brightened.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know where I was,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>Rodrigo clicked his tongue and shook his head; he was shocked by this
+avowal much more deeply than in his sense of locality. Sylvia was
+puzzled by her accent. The &lsquo;w&rsquo;s&rsquo; were nearly &lsquo;v&rsquo;s,&rsquo; but the intonation
+was Italian.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you&rsquo;re a dancer?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I was dancing at the Estrella.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Rodrigo explained that this was a cabaret, the kind of place with which
+the Señorita would not be familiar.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And you&rsquo;re Italian?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The girl nodded, and Sylvia, seeing that it would be impossible to
+extract anything about her story in her present overwrought state,
+decided to take her back to the pension.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I will carry the Señorita&rsquo;s guitar,&rdquo; said Rodrigo. &ldquo;To-morrow
+morning at eleven o&rsquo;clock?&rdquo; he asked by the gate of Sylvia&rsquo;s pension.
+&ldquo;Or would the Señorita prefer that I waited to conduct the <i>señorita
+extraviada?</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia bade him come in the morning; with a deep bow to her and to the
+stranger he departed, twanging his guitar. Mrs. Gainsborough, who by
+this time had reached the point of thinking that her American widower
+existed only to be oracular, wished to ask his advice about the
+stranger, and was quite offended with Sylvia for telling her rather
+sharply that she did not want all the inmates of the pension buzzing
+round the frightened child.<a name="page_317" id="page_317"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Chocolate would be more useful than advice,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know you&rsquo;re very down on poor Mr. Linthicum, but he&rsquo;s a mass of
+information. Only this morning he was explaining how you can keep eggs
+fresh for a year by putting them in a glass of water. Now I like a bit
+of advice. I&rsquo;m not like you, you great harum-scarum thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough was unable to remain very long in a state of injured
+dignity; she soon came up to Sylvia&rsquo;s bedroom with cups of chocolate.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And though you laugh at poor Mr. Linthicum,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s thanks to
+him you&rsquo;ve got this chocolate so quick, for he talked to the servant
+himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With this Mrs. Gainsborough left the room in high good humor at the
+successful rehabilitation of the informative widower.</p>
+
+<p>The girl, whose name was Concetta, had long ceased to lament, but she
+was still very shy, and Sylvia found it extremely difficult at first to
+reach any clear comprehension of her present trouble. Gradually,
+however, by letting her talk in her own breathless way, and in an odd
+mixture of English, French, German, and Italian, she was able to put
+together the facts into a kind of consecutiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Her father had been an Italian, who for some reason that was not at all
+clear had lived at Aix-la-Chapelle. Her mother, to whom he had
+apparently never been married, had been a Fleming. This mother had died
+when Concetta was about four, and her father had married a German woman
+who had beaten her, particularly after her father had either died or
+abandoned his child to the stepmother&mdash;it was not clear which. At this
+point an elder brother appeared in the tale, who at the age of eleven
+had managed to steal some money and run away. Of this brother Concetta
+had made an ideal hero. She dreamed of him even now and never came to
+any town but that she expected to meet him there. Sylvia had asked her
+how she expected to recognize somebody who had disappeared from her life
+when she was only six years old, but Concetta insisted that she should
+know him again. When she said this, she looked round her with an
+expression of fear and asked if<a name="page_318" id="page_318"></a> anybody could overhear them. Sylvia
+assured her that they were quite alone, and Concetta said in a whisper:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Once in Milano I saw Francesco. Hush! he passed in the street, and I
+said, &lsquo;Francesco,&rsquo; and he said, &lsquo;Concettina,&rsquo; but we could not speak
+together more longer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia would not contest this assertion, though she made up her mind
+that it must have been a dream.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was a pity you could not speak,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, nothing but Francesco and Concettina before he was gone. <i>Peccato!
+Peccato!</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Francesco&rsquo;s example had illuminated his sister&rsquo;s life with the hope of
+escaping from the stepmother, and she had hoarded pennies month after
+month for three years. She would not speak in detail of the cruelty of
+her stepmother; the memory of it even at this distance of time was too
+much charged with horror. It was evident to Sylvia that she had suffered
+exceptional things and that this was no case of ordinary unkindness.
+There was still in Concetta&rsquo;s eyes the look of an animal in a trap, and
+Sylvia felt a rage at human cruelty hammering upon her brain. One read
+of these things with an idle shudder, but, oh, to behold before one a
+child whose very soul was scarred. There was more for the imagination to
+feed upon, because Concetta said that not only was her stepmother cruel,
+but also her school-teachers and schoolmates.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Everybody was liking to beat me. I don&rsquo;t know why, but they was liking
+to beat me; no, really, they was liking it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At last, and here Concetta was very vague, as if she were seeking to
+recapture the outlines of a dream that fades in the light of morning,
+somehow or other she ran away and arrived at a big place with trees in a
+large city.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where, at Aix-la-Chapelle?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, I got into a train and came somewhere to a big place with trees in
+the middle of a city.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Was it a park in Brussels?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders and came back to her tale. In this park she
+had met some little girls who had played with her; they had played a
+game of joining hands and dancing round in a circle until they all fell
+down in the grass. A gentleman had laughed to see them amusing<a name="page_319" id="page_319"></a>
+themselves so much, and the little girls had asked her to come with them
+and the gentleman; they had danced round him and pulled his coat to make
+him take Concetta. He had asked her whence she came and whither she was
+going; he was a schoolmaster and he was going far away with all these
+other little girls. Concetta had cried when they were leaving her, and
+the gentleman, when he found that she was really alone in this big city,
+had finally been persuaded to take her with him. They went far away in
+the train to Dantzic, where he had a school to learn dancing. She had
+been happy there; the master was very kind. When she was thirteen she
+had gone with the other girls from the school to dance in the ballet at
+La Scala in Milan, but before that she had danced at Dresden and Munich.
+Then about six months ago a juggler called Zozo had wanted her and
+another girl to join his act. He was a young man; she had liked him and
+she had left Milan with him. They had performed in Rome and Naples and
+Bari and Palermo. At Palermo the other girl had gone back to her home in
+Italy, and Concetta had traveled to Spain with Zozo through Tunis and
+Algiers and Oran. Zozo had treated her kindly until they came here to
+the Estrella Concert; but here he had changed and, when she did not like
+him to make love to her, he had beaten her. To-night before they went to
+the cabaret he had told her that unless she would let him love her he
+would throw the daggers at her heart. In their act she was tied up and
+he threw daggers all round her. She had been frightened, and when he
+went to dress she had run away; but the streets were full of people in
+masks, and she had lost herself.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia looked at this child with her fair hair, who but for the agony
+and fear in her blue eyes would have been like one of those rapturous
+angels in old Flemish pictures. Here she sat, as ten years ago Sylvia
+had sat in the cab-shelter talking to Fred Organ. Her story and
+Concetta&rsquo;s met at this point in man&rsquo;s vileness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My poor little thing, you must come and live with me,&rdquo; cried Sylvia,
+clasping Concetta in her arms. &ldquo;I too am all alone, and I should love to
+feel that somebody was dependent on me. You shall come with me to
+England.<a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a> You&rsquo;re just what I&rsquo;ve been looking for. Now I&rsquo;m going to put
+you to bed, for you&rsquo;re worn out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But he&rsquo;ll come to find me,&rdquo; Concetta gasped, in sudden affright. &ldquo;He
+was so clever. On the program you can read. ZOZO: <i>el mejor
+prestigitador del mundo</i>. He knows everything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must introduce him to Mrs. Gainsborough. She likes encyclopedias
+with pockets.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was talking to myself. My dear, you&rsquo;ll be perfectly safe here with me
+from the greatest magician in the world.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the end she was able to calm Concetta&rsquo;s fears; in sleep, when those
+frightened eyes were closed, she seemed younger than ever, and Sylvia
+brooded over her by candle-light as if she were indeed her child.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough, on being told next morning Concetta&rsquo;s story and
+Sylvia&rsquo;s resolve to adopt her, gave her blessing to the plan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mulberry Cottage&rsquo;ll be nice for her to play about in. She&rsquo;ll be able to
+dig in the garden. We&rsquo;ll buy a bucket and spade. Fancy, what wicked
+people there are in this world. But I blame her stepmother more than I
+do this Shoushou.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough persisted in treating Concetta as if she were about
+nine years old and was continually thinking of toys that might amuse
+her. When at last she was brought to realize that she was fifteen, she
+was greatly disappointed on behalf of Mr. Linthicum, to whom she had
+presented Concetta as an infant prodigy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He commented so much on the languages she could speak, and he told her
+of a quick way to practise elemental American, which I always thought
+was the same as English, but apparently it&rsquo;s not. It&rsquo;s a much older
+language, really, and came over with Christopher Columbus in the
+<i>Mayflower</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Rodrigo was informed by Sylvia that henceforth the Señorita Concetta
+would live with her. He expressed no surprise and accepted with a
+charming courtliness the new situation at the birth of which he had
+presided. Sylvia thought it might be prudent to take Rodrigo so far into
+her<a name="page_321" id="page_321"></a> confidence as to give him a hint about a possible attempt by the
+juggler to get Concetta back into his power. Rodrigo looked very serious
+at the notion, and advised the Señorita to leave Granada quickly. It was
+against his interest to give this counsel, for he should lose his
+Señorita, the possession of whom had exposed him to a good deal of envy
+from the other guides. Besides, he had grown fond of the Señorita and he
+should miss her. He had intended to practise much on his guitar this
+spring, and he had looked forward to hearing the nightingales with her;
+they would be singing next month in the lemon-groves. Many people were
+deaf to the song of birds, but personally he could not listen to them
+without ... a shrug of the shoulders expressed the incommunicable
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You shall come with us, Rodrigo.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To Gibraltar?&rdquo; he asked, quickly, with flashing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>He seized her hand and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>El destino</i>,&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;I shall certainly see there the
+tobacco-shop that one day I shall have.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>For two or three days Rodrigo guarded the pension against the conjuror
+and his spies. By this time between Concetta&rsquo;s apprehensions and Mrs.
+Gainsborough&rsquo;s exaggeration of them, Zozo had acquired a demoniac
+menace, lurking in the background of enjoyment like a child&rsquo;s fear.</p>
+
+<p>The train for Algeciras would leave in the morning at four o&rsquo;clock. It
+was advisable, Rodrigo thought, to be at the railway station by two
+o&rsquo;clock at the latest; he should come with a carriage to meet them.
+Would the Señorita excuse him this evening, because his mother&mdash;he gave
+one of his inimitable shrugs to express the need of sometimes yielding
+to maternal fondness&mdash;wished him to spend his last evening with her.</p>
+
+<p>At two o&rsquo;clock next morning Rodrigo had not arrived, but at three a
+carriage drove up and the coachman handed Sylvia a note. It was in
+Spanish to say that Rodrigo had met with an accident and that he was
+very ill. He kissed the Señorita&rsquo;s hand. He believed that he was going
+to die, which was his only consolation for not being able to go with her
+to Gibraltar; it was <i>el destino</i>; he had brought the accident on
+himself.<a name="page_322" id="page_322"></a></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia drove with Mrs. Gainsborough and Concetta to the railway station.
+When she arrived and found that the train would not leave till five, she
+kept the coachman and, after seeing her companions safely into their
+compartment, drove to where Rodrigo lived.</p>
+
+<p>He was lying in a hovel in the poorest part of the city. His mother, a
+ragged old woman, was lamenting in a corner; one or two neighbors were
+trying to quiet her. On Sylvia&rsquo;s arrival they all broke out in a loud
+wail of apology for the misfortune that had made Rodrigo break his
+engagement. Sylvia paid no attention to them, but went quickly across to
+the bed of the sick boy. He opened his eyes and with an effort put out a
+slim brown arm and caught hold of her hand to kiss it. She leaned over
+and kissed his pale lips. In a very faint voice, hiding his head in the
+pillow for shame, he explained that he had brought the accident on
+himself by his boasting. He had boasted so much about the tobacco-shop
+and the favor of the Señorita that an older boy, another guide, a&mdash;he
+tried to shrug his shoulders in contemptuous expression of this older
+boy&rsquo;s inferior quality, but his body contracted in a spasm of pain and
+he had to set criticism on one side. This older boy had hit him out of
+jealousy, and, alas! Rodrigo had lost his temper and drawn a knife, but
+the other boy had stabbed first. It was <i>el destino</i> most unhappily
+precipitated by his own vainglory.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia turned to the women to ask what could be done. Their weeping
+redoubled. The doctor had declared it was only a matter of hours; the
+priest had given unction. Suddenly Rodrigo with a violent effort
+clutched at Sylvia&rsquo;s hand:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Señorita, the train!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He fell back dead.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia left money for the funeral; there was nothing more to be done. In
+the morning twilight she went down the foul stairs and back to the
+carriage that seemed now to smell of death.</p>
+
+<p>When she arrived at the station a great commotion was taking place on
+the platform, and Mrs. Gainsborough appeared, surrounded by a
+gesticulating crowd of porters, officials, and passengers.<a name="page_323" id="page_323"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia! Well, I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;ve got here at last. She&rsquo;s gone. He&rsquo;s
+whisked her away. And can I explain what I want to these Spanish idiots?
+No. I&rsquo;ve shouted as hard as I could, and they <i>won&rsquo;t</i> understand. They
+<i>won&rsquo;t</i> understand me. They don&rsquo;t want to understand, that&rsquo;s my
+opinion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With which Mrs. Gainsborough sailed off again along the platform,
+followed by the crowd, which, in addition to arguing with her
+occasionally, detached from itself small groups to argue furiously with
+one another about her incomprehensible desire. Sylvia extricated their
+luggage from the compartment, for the train to go to Algeciras without
+them; then she extricated Mrs. Gainsborough from the general noise and
+confusion that was now being added to by loud whistles from the
+impatient train.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was sitting in one corner and Concertina was sitting in the other,&rdquo;
+Mrs. Gainsborough explained to Sylvia. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d just bobbed down to pick up
+me glasses when I saw that Shoushou beckoning to her, though for the
+moment I thought it was the porter. Concertina went as white as paper.
+&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; I hollered, &lsquo;what are you doing?&rsquo; and with that I got up from me
+place and tripped over <i>your</i> luggage and came down bump on the
+foot-warmer. When I got up she was gone. Depend upon it, he&rsquo;d been
+watching out for her at the station. As soon as I could get out of the
+carriage I started hollering, and every one in the station came running
+round to see what was the matter. I tried to tell them about Shoushou,
+and they pretended&mdash;for don&rsquo;t you tell me I can&rsquo;t make myself understood
+if people want to understand&mdash;they pretended they thought I was asking
+whether I was in the right train. When I hollered &lsquo;Shoushou,&rsquo; they all
+started to holler &lsquo;Shoushou&rsquo; as well and nod their heads and point to
+the train. I got that aggravated, I could have killed them. And then
+what do you think they did? Insulting I call it. Why, they all began to
+laugh and beckon to me, and I, thinking that at last they&rsquo;d found out me
+meaning, went and followed them like a silly juggins, and where do you
+think they took me? To the moojeries! what <i>we</i> call the ladies&rsquo;
+cloak-room. Well, that did make me annoyed, and I started in to tell
+them what I thought of such behavior. &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t want the<a name="page_324" id="page_324"></a> moojeries,&rsquo; I
+shouted. Then I tried to explain by illustrating my meaning. I took hold
+of some young fellow and said &lsquo;Shoushou,&rsquo; and then I caught hold of a
+hussy that was laughing, intending to make her Concertina, but the silly
+little bitch&mdash;really it&rsquo;s enough to make any one a bit unrefined&mdash;<i>she</i>
+thought I was going to hit her and started in to scream the station-roof
+down. After that you came along, but of course it was too late.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was very much upset by the death of Rodrigo and the loss of
+Concetta, but she could not help laughing over Mrs. Gainsborough&rsquo;s woes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all very well for you to sit there and laugh, you great tomboy,
+but it&rsquo;s your own fault. If you&rsquo;d have let me bring Mr. Linthicum, this
+wouldn&rsquo;t have happened. What could I do? I felt like a missionary among
+a lot of cannibals.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the end Sylvia was glad to avail herself of the widower&rsquo;s help, but
+after two days even he had to admit himself beaten.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And if he says they can&rsquo;t be found,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough, &ldquo;depend
+upon it they can&rsquo;t be found&mdash;not by anybody. That man&rsquo;s as persistent as
+a beggar. When he came up to me this morning and cleared his throat and
+shook his head, well, then I knew we might as well give up hope.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia stayed on for a while in Granada because she did not like to
+admit defeat, but the sadness of Rodrigo&rsquo;s death and the disappointment
+over Concetta had spoiled the place for her. Here was another of these
+incomplete achievements that made life so bitter. She had thought for a
+brief space that the solitary and frightened child would provide the aim
+that she had so ardently desired. Concetta had responded so sweetly to
+her protection, had chattered with such delight of going to England and
+of becoming English; now she had been dragged back. <i>El destino</i>!
+Rodrigo&rsquo;s death did not affect her so much as the loss of that fair,
+slim child. His short life had been complete; he was spared forever from
+disillusionment, and by existing in her memory eternally young and
+joyous and wise he had spared his Señorita also the pain of
+disillusionment, just as when he was alive he had always assumed the<a name="page_325" id="page_325"></a>
+little bothers upon his shoulders, the little bothers of every-day
+existence. His was a perfect episode, but Concetta disturbed her with
+vain regrets and speculations. Yet in a way Concetta had helped her, for
+she knew now that she held in her heart an inviolate treasure of love.
+Never again could anything happen like those three months after she left
+Philip; never again could she treat any one with the scorn she had
+treated Michael; never again could she take such a cynical attitude
+toward any one as that she had taken toward Lily. All these
+disappointments added a little gold tried by fire to the treasure in her
+heart, and firmly she must believe that it was being stored to some
+purpose soon to be showered prodigally, ah, how prodigally, upon
+somebody.</p>
+
+<p>That evening Sylvia had made up her mind to return to England at once,
+but after she had gone to bed she was awakened by Mrs. Gainsborough&rsquo;s
+coming into her room and in a choked voice asking for help. When the
+light was turned on, Sylvia saw that she was enmeshed in a mosquito-net
+and looking in her nightgown like a large turbot.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I knew it would happen,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough panted. &ldquo;Every night I&rsquo;ve
+said to myself, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s bound to happen,&rsquo; and it has. I was dreaming how
+that Shoushou was chasing me with a butterfly-net, and look at me! Don&rsquo;t
+tell me dreams don&rsquo;t sometimes come true. Now don&rsquo;t stand there in fits
+of laughter. I can&rsquo;t get out of it, you unfeeling thing. I&rsquo;ve swallowed
+about a pint of Keating&rsquo;s. I hope I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t come out in spots. Come and
+help me out. I daren&rsquo;t move a finger, or I shall start off sneezing
+again. And every time I sneeze I get deeper in. It&rsquo;s something chronic.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t Linthicum ever inform you how to get out of a mosquito-net that
+collapses in the middle of the night?&rdquo; Sylvia asked, when she had
+extricated the old lady.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, the conversation never happened to take a turn that way. But depend
+upon it, I shall ask him to-morrow. I won&rsquo;t be caught twice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia suddenly felt that it would be impossible to return to England
+yet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must go on,&rdquo; she told Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;You<a name="page_326" id="page_326"></a> must have more
+opportunities for practising what Linthicum has been preaching to you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What you&rsquo;d like is for me to make a poppy-show of myself all over the
+world and drag me round the Continent like a performing bear.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll go to Morocco,&rdquo; Sylvia cried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t shout like that. You&rsquo;ll set me off on the sneeze again. You&rsquo;re
+here, there, and everywhere like a demon king, I do declare. Morocco?
+That&rsquo;s where the leather comes from, isn&rsquo;t it? Do they have
+mosquito-nets there too?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, the first thing I shall do to-morrow is to ask Mr. Linthicum
+what&rsquo;s the best way of fastening up a mosquito-net in Morocco. And now I
+suppose I shall wake up in the morning with a nose like a tomato. Ah,
+well, such is life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough went back to bed, and Sylvia lay awake thinking of
+Morocco.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Linthicum came to see them off on their second attempt to leave
+Granada. He cleared his throat rather more loudly than usual to compete
+with the noise of the railway, invited them to look him up if they ever
+came to Schenectady, pressed a book called <i>Five Hundred Facts for the
+Waistcoat Pocket</i> into Mrs. Gainsborough&rsquo;s hands, and waved them out of
+sight with a large bandana handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I shall miss that man,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough, settling down to
+the journey. &ldquo;He must have been a regular education for his customers,
+and I shall never forget his recipe for avoiding bunions when
+mountaineering.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How&rsquo;s that done?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t remember the details. I didn&rsquo;t pay any attention to them,
+because it&rsquo;s not to be supposed that I&rsquo;m going to career up Mont Blong
+at my time of life. No, I was making a reference to the tone of his
+voice. They may be descended from Indians, but I dare say Adam wasn&rsquo;t
+much better than a red Indian, if it comes to that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They traveled to Cadiz for the boat to Tangier. Mrs.<a name="page_327" id="page_327"></a> Gainsborough got
+very worried on the long spit of land over which the train passed, and
+insisted on piling up all the luggage at one end of the compartment in
+case they fell into the sea, though she was unable to explain her motive
+for doing this. The result was that, when they stopped at a station
+before Cadiz and the door of the compartment was opened suddenly, all
+the luggage fell out on top of three priests that were preparing to
+climb in, one of whom was knocked flat. Apart from the argument that
+ensued the journey was uneventful.</p>
+
+<p>The boat from Tangier left in the dark. At dawn Cadiz glimmered like a
+rosy pearl upon the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re in Trafalgar Bay now,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Gainsborough, who was feeling the effects of getting up so
+early, said she wished it was Trafalgar Square and begged to be left in
+peace. After an hour&rsquo;s doze in the sunlight she roused herself slightly:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s this Trafalgar Bay you were making such a fuss about?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve passed it now,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, I dare say it wasn&rsquo;t anything to look at. I&rsquo;m bound to say
+the chocolate we had this morning does not seem to go with the sea air.
+They&rsquo;re arguing the point inside me something dreadful. I suppose this
+boat is safe? It seems to be jigging a good deal. Mr. Linthicum said it
+was a good plan to put the head between the knees when you felt a
+bit&mdash;well, I wouldn&rsquo;t say seasick&mdash;but you know.... I&rsquo;m bound to say I
+think he was wrong for once. I feel more like putting my knees up over
+my head. Can&rsquo;t you speak to the captain and tell him to go a bit more
+quietly? It&rsquo;s no good racing along like he&rsquo;s doing. Of course the boat
+jigs. I shall get aggravated in two twos. It&rsquo;s to be hoped Morocco will
+be worth it. I never got up so early to go anywhere. Was that sailor
+laughing at me when he walked past? It&rsquo;s no good my getting up to tell
+him what I think of him, because every time I try to get up the boat
+gets up with me. It keeps butting into me behind like a great
+billy-goat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Presently Mrs. Gainsborough was unable even to protest against the
+motion, and could only murmur faintly to Sylvia a request to remove her
+veil.<a name="page_328" id="page_328"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here we are,&rdquo; cried Sylvia, three or four hours later. &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s
+glorious!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough sat up and looked at the rowboats filled with Moors,
+negroes, and Jews.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But they&rsquo;re nearly all of them black,&rdquo; she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course they are. What color did you expect them to be? Green like
+yourself?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But do you mean to say you&rsquo;ve brought me to a place inhabited by
+blacks? Well, I never did. It&rsquo;s to be hoped we sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be eaten alive.
+Mrs. Marsham! Mrs. Ewings! Mrs. Beardmore! Well, I don&rsquo;t say they
+haven&rsquo;t told me some good stories now and again, but&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough shook her head to express the depths of insignificance
+to which henceforth the best stories of her friends would have to sink
+when she should tell about herself in Morocco.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough, when they
+stood upon the quay. &ldquo;I feel like the widow Twankay myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia remembered her ambition to visit the East, when she herself wore
+a yashmak in Open Sesame: here it was fulfilling perfectly her most
+daring hopes.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough was relieved to find a comparatively European hotel,
+and next morning after a long sleep she was ready for any adventure.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia!&rdquo; she suddenly screamed when they were being jostled in the
+crowded bazaar. &ldquo;Look, there&rsquo;s a camel coming toward us! Did you ever
+hear such a hollering and jabbering in all your life? I&rsquo;m sure I never
+did. Mrs. Marsham and her camel at the Zoo. Tut-tut-tut! Do you suppose
+Mrs. Marsham ever saw a camel coming toward her in the street like a
+cab-horse might? Certainly not. Why, after this there&rsquo;s nothing <i>in</i> her
+story. It&rsquo;s a mere anecdote.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They wandered up to the outskirts of the prison, and saw a fat Jewess
+being pushed along under arrest for giving false weight. She made some
+resistance in the narrow entrance, and the guard planted his foot in the
+small of her back, so that she seemed suddenly to crumple up and fall
+inside.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve often said lightly &lsquo;what a heathen&rsquo; or &lsquo;there&rsquo;s<a name="page_329" id="page_329"></a> a young
+heathen,&rsquo; but that brings it home to one,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough,
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia paid no attention to her companion&rsquo;s outraged sympathy. She was
+in the East where elderly obese Jewesses who gave false weight were well
+treated thus. She was living with every moment of rapturous reality the
+dreams of wonder that the <i>Arabian Nights</i> had brought her in youth. Yet
+Tangier was only a gateway to enchantments a hundredfold more powerful.
+She turned suddenly to Mrs. Gainsborough and asked her if she could stay
+here while she rode into the interior.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stay here alone?&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough exclaimed. &ldquo;Not if I know it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This plan of Sylvia&rsquo;s to explore the interior of Morocco was narrowed
+down ultimately into riding to Tetuan, which was apparently just
+feasible for Mrs. Gainsborough, though likely to be rather fatiguing.</p>
+
+<p>A dragoman was found, a certain Don Alfonso reported to be comparatively
+honest. He was an undersized man rather like the stump of a tallow
+candle into which the wick has been pressed down by the snuffer, for he
+was bald and cream-colored, with a thin, uneven black mustache and two
+nodules on his forehead. His clothes, too, were crinkled like a
+candlestick. He spoke French well, but preferred to speak English, of
+which he only knew two words, &ldquo;all right&rdquo;; this often made his advice
+unduly optimistic. In addition to Don Alfonso they were accompanied by a
+Moorish trooper and a native called Mohammed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A soldier, is he?&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough, regarding the grave bearded
+man to whose care they were intrusted. &ldquo;He looks more like the outside
+of an ironmonger&rsquo;s shop. Swords, pistols, guns, spears. It&rsquo;s to be hoped
+he won&rsquo;t get aggravated with us on the way. I should look very funny
+lying in the road with a pistol through my heart.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They rode out of Tangier before a single star had paled in the east, and
+when dawn broke they were in a wide valley fertile and bright with
+flowers; green hills rose to right and left of them and faded far away
+into blue mountains.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish you&rsquo;d tell that Mahomet not to irritate my poor<a name="page_330" id="page_330"></a> mule by egging
+it on all the time,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough said to Don Alfonso, who,
+realizing by her gestures that she wanted something done to her mount,
+and supposing by her smile that the elation of adventure had seized her,
+replied &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; and said something in Moorish to Mohammed. He at
+once caught the mule a terrific whack on the crupper, causing the animal
+to leap forward and leave Mrs. Gainsborough and the saddle in the path.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now there&rsquo;s a nice game to play!&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough, indignantly.
+&ldquo;&lsquo;All right,&rsquo; he says, and &lsquo;boomph&rsquo;! What&rsquo;s he think I&rsquo;m made of? Well,
+of course here we shall have to sit now until some one comes along with
+a step-ladder. If you&rsquo;d have let me ride on a camel,&rdquo; she added,
+reproachfully, to Sylvia, &ldquo;this wouldn&rsquo;t have occurred. I&rsquo;m not sitting
+on myself any more; I&rsquo;m sitting on bumps like eggs. I feel like a hen.
+It&rsquo;s all very fine for Mr. Alfonso to go on gabbling, &lsquo;All right,&rsquo; but
+it&rsquo;s all wrong, and if you&rsquo;ll have the goodness to tell him so in his
+own unnatural language I&rsquo;ll be highly obliged.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Moorish soldier sat regarding the scene from his horse with
+immutable gravity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I reckon he&rsquo;d like nothing better than to get a good jab at me now,&rdquo;
+said Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;Yes, I dare say I look very inviting sitting
+here on the ground. Well, it&rsquo;s to be hoped they&rsquo;ll have the &lsquo;Forty
+Thieves&rsquo; or &lsquo;Aladdin&rsquo; for the next pantomime at Drury Lane. I shall
+certainly invite Mrs. Marsham and Mrs. Beardmore to come with me into
+the upper boxes so as I can explain what it&rsquo;s all about. Mrs. Ewings
+doesn&rsquo;t like panto, or I&rsquo;d have taken her too. She likes a good cry when
+she goes to the theater.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough was settling down to spend the rest of the morning in
+amiable reminiscence and planning, but she was at last persuaded to get
+up and mount her mule again after the strictest assurances had been
+given to her of Mohammed&rsquo;s good behavior for the rest of the journey.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not to bellow in the poor animal&rsquo;s ear,&rdquo; she stipulated.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia promised.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And he&rsquo;s not to go screeching, &lsquo;<i>Arrassy</i>,&rsquo; or whatever it<a name="page_331" id="page_331"></a> is, behind,
+so as the poor animal thinks it&rsquo;s a lion galloping after him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough was transferring all consideration for herself to the
+mule.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And he&rsquo;s to throw away that stick.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This clause was only accepted by the other side with a good deal of
+protestation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And he&rsquo;s to keep his hands and feet to himself, and not to throw stones
+or nothing at the poor beast, who&rsquo;s got quite enough to do to carry me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And Ali Baba&rsquo;s to ride in front.&rdquo; She indicated the trooper. &ldquo;It gets
+me on the blink when he&rsquo;s behind me, as if I was in a shooting-gallery.
+If he&rsquo;s going to be any use to us, <i>which</i> I doubt, he&rsquo;ll be more useful
+in front than hiding behind me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Don Alfonso, who was anxious to get on, because they
+had a long way to go.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And that&rsquo;s enough of &lsquo;all right&rsquo; from him,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t want to hear any more &lsquo;all rights.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At midday they reached a khan, where they ate lunch and rested for two
+hours in the shade.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after they had started again, they met a small caravan with veiled
+women and mules loaded with oranges.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite pleasant-looking people,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough beamed. &ldquo;I should
+have waved my hand if I could have been sure of not falling off again.
+Funny trick, wearing that stuff round their faces. I suppose they&rsquo;re
+ashamed of being so black.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gainsborough&rsquo;s progress, which grew more and more leisurely as the
+afternoon advanced, became a source of real anxiety to Don Alfonso; he
+confided to Sylvia that he was afraid the gates of Tetuan would be shut.
+When Mrs. Gainsborough was told of his alarm she was extremely scornful.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s having you on, Sylvia, so as to give Mohamet the chance of
+sloshing my poor mule again. Whoever heard of a town having gates? He&rsquo;ll
+tell us next that we&rsquo;ve got to pay sixpence at the turnstile to pass
+in.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They came to a high place where a white stone by the path recorded a
+battle between Spaniards and Moors.<a name="page_332" id="page_332"></a> Far below were the domes and
+rose-dyed minarets of Tetuan and a shining river winding to the sea.
+They heard the sound of a distant gun.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sunset,&rdquo; cried Don Alfonso, much perturbed. &ldquo;In half an hour the gates
+will be shut.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He told tales of brigands and of Riffs, of travelers found with their
+throats cut outside the city walls, and suddenly, as if to give point to
+his fears, a figure leaning on a long musket appeared in silhouette upon
+the edge of the hill above them. It really seemed advisable to hurry,
+and, notwithstanding Mrs. Gainsborough&rsquo;s expostulations, the speed of
+the party was doubled down a rocky descent to a dried-up watercourse
+with high banks. Twilight came on rapidly and the soldier prepared one
+of his numerous weapons for immediate use in an emergency. Mrs.
+Gainsborough was much too nervous about falling off to bother about
+brigands, and at last without any mishap they reached the great
+castellated gate of Tetuan. It was shut.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I never saw the like,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s true, then.
+We must ring the bell, that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The soldier, Mohammed, and Don Alfonso raised their voices in a loud
+hail, but nobody paid any attention, and the twilight deepened. Mrs.
+Gainsborough alighted from her mule and thumped at the iron-studded
+door. Silence answered her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean to tell me seriously that they&rsquo;re going to keep us outside
+here all night? Why, it&rsquo;s laughable!&rdquo; Suddenly she lifted her voice and
+cried, &ldquo;Milk-ho!&rdquo; Whether the unusual sound aroused the curiosity or the
+alarm of the porter within was uncertain, but he leaned his head out of
+a small window above the gate and shouted something at the belated party
+below. Immediately the dispute for which Mohammed and Don Alfonso had
+been waiting like terriers on a leash was begun; it lasted for ten
+minutes without any of the three participants drawing breath.</p>
+
+<p>In the end Don Alfonso announced that the porter declined to open for
+less than two francs, although he had offered him as much as one franc
+fifty. With a determination not to be beaten that was renewed by the
+pause for breath, Don Alfonso flung himself into the argument<a name="page_333" id="page_333"></a> again,
+splendidly assisted by Mohammed, who seemed to be tearing out his hair
+in baffled fury.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish I knew what they were calling each other,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Something highly insulting, I should think,&rdquo; Mrs. Gainsborough
+answered. &ldquo;Wonderful the way they use their hands. He doesn&rsquo;t seem to be
+worrying himself so very much. I suppose he&rsquo;ll start in shooting in the
+end.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She pointed to the soldier, who was regarding the dispute with
+contemptuous gravity. Another window in a tower on the other side of the
+gate was opened, and the first porter was reinforced. Perspiration was
+dripping from Don Alfonso&rsquo;s forehead; he looked more like a candle stump
+than ever, when presently he stood aside from the argument to say that
+he had been forced to offer one franc seventy-five to enter Tetuan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tetuan,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;Tetuarn&rsquo;t, I should say.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia asked Don Alfonso what he was calling the porter, and it
+appeared, though he minimized the insult by a gesture, that he had just
+invited forty-three dogs to devour the corpse of the porter&rsquo;s
+grandmother. This, however, he hastened to add, had not annoyed him so
+much as his withdrawal from one franc fifty to one franc twenty-five.</p>
+
+<p>In the end the porter agreed to open the gate for one franc
+seventy-five.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Which is just as well,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough, &ldquo;for I&rsquo;m sure Mohamet
+would have thrown a fit soon. He&rsquo;s got to banging his forehead with his
+fists, and that&rsquo;s a very bad sign.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They rode through the darkness between double walls, disturbing every
+now and then a beggar who whined for alms or cursed them if the mule
+trod upon his outspread legs. They found an inn called the Hôtel
+Splendide, a bug-ridden tumble-down place kept by Spanish Jews as
+voracious as the bugs. Yet out on the roof, looking at the domes and
+minarets glimmering under Venus setting in the west from a sky full of
+stars, listening to the howling of distant dogs, breathing the perfume
+of the East, Sylvia felt like a conqueror.<a name="page_334" id="page_334"></a></p>
+
+<p>Next morning Mrs. Gainsborough, finding that the bugs had retreated with
+the light, decided to spend the morning in sleeping off some of her
+bruises. Sylvia wandered through the bazaars with Don Alfonso, and sat
+for a while in the garden of a French convent, where a fountain
+whispered in the shade of pomegranates. Suddenly, walking along the path
+toward her she saw Maurice Avery.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had disliked Avery very much when she met him in London nearly
+two years ago; but the worst enemy, the most flagitious bore, is
+transformed when encountered alone in a distant country, and now Sylvia
+felt well disposed toward him and eager to share with any one who could
+appreciate her pleasure the marvel of being in Tetuan. He too, by the
+way his face lighted up, was glad to see her, and they shook hands with
+a cordiality that was quite out of proportion to their earlier
+acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I say, what a queer place to meet!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Are you alone,
+then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got Mrs. Gainsborough with me, that&rsquo;s all. I&rsquo;m not married ... or
+anything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was absurd how eager she felt to assure Avery of this; and then in a
+moment the topic had been started.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, have you really got Mrs. Gainsborough?&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Of course
+I&rsquo;ve heard about her from Michael. Poor old Michael!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, what&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; Sylvia asked, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s perfectly all right, but he&rsquo;s lost to his friends. At least I
+suppose he is&mdash;buried in a monastery. He&rsquo;s not actually a monk. I
+believe he&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s called an oblate, pursuing the Fata Morgana of
+faith&mdash;a sort of dream....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; Sylvia interrupted. &ldquo;I understand the allusion. You needn&rsquo;t
+talk down to me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Avery blushed. The color in his cheeks made him seem very young.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sorry. I was thinking of somebody else for the moment. That sounds very
+discourteous also. I must apologize again. What&rsquo;s happened to Lily
+Haden?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia told him briefly the circumstances of Lily&rsquo;s marriage at Rio.
+&ldquo;Does Michael ever talk about her?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no, never!&rdquo; said Avery. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s engaged in saving<a name="page_335" id="page_335"></a> his own soul now.
+That sounds malicious, but seriously I don&rsquo;t think she was ever more to
+him than an intellectual landmark. To understand Michael&rsquo;s point of view
+in all that business you&rsquo;ve got to know that he was illegitimate. His
+father, Lord Saxby, had a romantic passion for the daughter of a country
+parson&mdash;a queer, cross-grained old scholar. You remember Arthur
+Lonsdale? Well, his father, Lord Cleveden, knew the whole history of the
+affair. Lady Saxby wouldn&rsquo;t divorce him; so they were never married. I
+suppose Michael brooded over this and magnified his early devotion to
+Lily in some way or other up to a vow of reparation. I&rsquo;m quite sure it
+was a kind of indirect compliment to his own mother. Of course it was
+all very youthful and foolish&mdash;and yet I don&rsquo;t know....&rdquo; he broke off
+with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You think one can&rsquo;t afford to bury the past?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Avery looked at her quickly. &ldquo;What made you ask me that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you seemed to admire Michael&rsquo;s youthful foolishness.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do really. I admire any one that&rsquo;s steadfast even to a mistaken idea.
+It&rsquo;s strange to meet an Englishwoman here,&rdquo; he said, looking intently at
+Sylvia. &ldquo;One&rsquo;s guard drops. I&rsquo;m longing to make a confidante of you, but
+you might be bored. I&rsquo;m rather frightened of you, really. I always was.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t exchange confidences,&rdquo; Sylvia said, &ldquo;if that&rsquo;s what you&rsquo;re
+afraid of.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, of course not,&rdquo; Avery said, quickly. &ldquo;Last spring I was in love
+with a girl....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia raised her eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes, it&rsquo;s a very commonplace beginning and rather a commonplace end,
+I&rsquo;m afraid. She was a ballet-girl&mdash;the incarnation of May and London.
+That sounds exaggerated, for I know that lots of other Jenny Pearls have
+been the same to somebody, but I do believe most people agreed with me.
+I wanted her to live with me. She wouldn&rsquo;t. She had sentimental, or what
+I thought were sentimental, ideas about her mother and family. I was
+called away to Spain. When my business was finished I begged her to come
+out to me there. That was last April.<a name="page_336" id="page_336"></a> She refused, and I was piqued, I
+suppose, at first, and did not go back to England. Then, as one does, I
+made up my mind to the easiest thing at the moment by letting myself be
+enchanted by my surroundings into thinking that I was happier as it was.
+For a while I was happier; in a way our love had been a great strain
+upon us both. I came to Morocco, and gradually ever since I&rsquo;ve been
+realizing that I left something unfinished. It&rsquo;s become a kind of
+obsession. Do you know what I mean?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Indeed I do, very well indeed,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; he said with a grateful look. &ldquo;Now comes the problem. If I go
+back to England this month, if I arrive in England on the first of May
+exactly a year later, there&rsquo;s only one thing I can do to atone for my
+behavior&mdash;I must ask her to marry me. You see that, don&rsquo;t you? This
+little thing is proud, oh, but tremendously proud. I doubt very much if
+she&rsquo;ll forgive me, even if I show the sincerity of my regret by asking
+her to marry me now; but it&rsquo;s my only chance. And yet&mdash;oh, I expect this
+will sound damnable to you, but it&rsquo;s the way we&rsquo;ve all been molded in
+England&mdash;she&rsquo;s common. Common! What an outrageous word to use. But then
+it is used by everybody. She&rsquo;s the most frankly cockney thing you ever
+saw. Can I stand her being snubbed and patronized? Can I stand my wife&rsquo;s
+being snubbed and patronized? Can love survive the sort of ambushed
+criticism that I shall perceive all round us? For I wouldn&rsquo;t try to
+change her. No, no, no! She must be herself. I&rsquo;ll have no throaty &lsquo;aws&rsquo;
+masquerading as &lsquo;o&rsquo;s.&rsquo; She must keep her own clear &lsquo;aou&rsquo;s.&rsquo; There must
+not be any &lsquo;naceness&rsquo; or patched-up shop-walker&rsquo;s English. I love her
+more at this moment than I ever loved her, but can I stand it? And I&rsquo;m
+not asking this egotistically: I&rsquo;m asking it for both of us. That&rsquo;s why
+you meet me in Tetuan, for I dare not go back to England lest the first
+cockney voice I hear may kill my determination, and I really am longing
+to marry her. Yet I wait here, staking what I know in my heart is all my
+future happiness on chance, assuring myself that presently impulse and
+reason will be reconciled and will send me back to her, but still I
+wait.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He paused. The fountain whispered in the shade of the<a name="page_337" id="page_337"></a> pomegranates. A
+nun was gathering flowers for the chapel. Outside, the turmoil of the
+East sounded like the distant chattering of innumerable monkeys.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve so nearly reached the point at which a man has the right to
+approach a woman,&rdquo; Sylvia said, &ldquo;that if you&rsquo;re asking my advice, I
+advise you to wait until you do actually reach that point. Of course you
+may lose her by waiting. She may marry somebody else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I know; I&rsquo;ve thought of that. In a way that would be a solution.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So long as you regard her marriage with somebody else as a solution,
+you&rsquo;re still some way from the point. It&rsquo;s curious she should be a
+ballet-girl, because Mrs. Gainsborough, you know, was a ballet-girl. In
+1869, when she took her emotional plunge, she was able to exchange the
+wings of Covent Garden for the wings of love easily enough. In 1869
+ballet-girls never thought of marrying what were and are called
+&lsquo;gentlemen.&rsquo; I think Mrs. Gainsborough would consider her life a
+success; she was not too much married to spoil love, and the captain was
+certainly more devoted to her than most husbands would have been. The
+proof that her life was a success is that she has remained young. Yet if
+I introduce you to her you&rsquo;ll see at once your own Jenny at sixty like
+her&mdash;that won&rsquo;t be at all a hard feat of imagination. But you&rsquo;ll still
+be seeing yourself at twenty-five or whatever you are; you&rsquo;ll never be
+able to see yourself at sixty; therefore I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t introduce you. I&rsquo;m
+too much of a woman not to hope with all my heart that you&rsquo;ll go home to
+England, marry your Jenny, and live happily ever afterward, and I think
+you&rsquo;d better not meet Mrs. Gainsborough, in case she prejudices your
+resolve. Thanks for giving me your confidence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no! Thank <i>you</i> for listening,&rdquo; said Avery.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you&rsquo;re not going to develop her. I once suffered from that
+kind of vivisection myself, though I never had a cockney accent. Some
+souls can&rsquo;t stand straight lacing, just as some bodies revolt from
+stays. And so Michael is in a monastery? I suppose that means all his
+soul spasms are finally allayed?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O Lord! No!&rdquo; said Avery. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s in the very middle of them.&rdquo;<a name="page_338" id="page_338"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What I really meant to say was heart palpitations.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think, really,&rdquo; said Avery, &ldquo;that Michael ever had them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What was Lily, then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, essentially a soul spasm,&rdquo; he declared.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I suppose it was,&rdquo; Sylvia agreed, pensively.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think, you know, I must meet Mrs. Gainsborough,&rdquo; said Avery. &ldquo;Fate
+answers for you. Here she comes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Don Alfonso, with the pain that every dog and dragoman feels in the
+separation of his charges, had taken advantage of Sylvia&rsquo;s talk with
+Avery to bring Mrs. Gainsborough triumphantly back to the fold.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here we are again,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough, limping down the path. &ldquo;And
+my behind looks like a magic lantern. Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn&rsquo;t
+see you&rsquo;d met a friend. So that&rsquo;s what Alfonso was trying to tell me.
+He&rsquo;s been going like an alarm-clock all the way here. Pleased to meet
+you, I&rsquo;m sure. How do you like Morocco? We got shut out last night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is a friend of Michael Fane&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did you know <i>him</i>? He <i>was</i> a nice young fellow. Very nice he was. But
+he wouldn&rsquo;t know me now. Very stay-at-home I was when he used to come to
+Mulberry Cottage. Why, he tried to make me ride in a hansom once, and I
+was actually too nervous. You know, I&rsquo;d got into a regular rut. But now,
+well, upon me word, I don&rsquo;t believe now I should say &lsquo;no&rsquo; if any one was
+to invite me to ride inside of a whale. It&rsquo;s her doing, the tartar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Avery had learned a certain amount of Arabic during his stay in Morocco
+and he made the bazaars of Tetuan much more interesting than Don Alfonso
+could have done. He also had many tales to tell of the remote cities
+like Fez and Mequinez and Marakeesh. Sylvia almost wished that she could
+pack Mrs. Gainsborough off to England and accompany him into the real
+interior. Some of her satisfaction in Tetuan had been rather spoiled
+that morning by finding a visitor&rsquo;s book in the hotel with the names of
+traveling clergymen and their daughters patronizingly inscribed therein.
+However, Avery decided to ride away almost at once, and said that he
+intended to banish the twentieth century for two or three months.<a name="page_339" id="page_339"></a></p>
+
+<p>They stayed a few days at Tetuan, but the bugs were too many for Mrs.
+Gainsborough, who began to sigh for a tranquil bed. Avery and Sylvia had
+a short conversation together before they left. He thanked her for her
+sympathy, held to his intention of spending the summer in Morocco, but
+was nearly sure he should return to England in the autumn, with a mind
+serenely fixed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish, if you go back to London, you&rsquo;d look Jenny up,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia shook her head very decidedly. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t imagine anything that
+would annoy her more, if she&rsquo;s the girl I suppose her to be.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I&rsquo;d like her to have a friend like you,&rdquo; he urged.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia looked at him severely. &ldquo;Are you quite sure that you don&rsquo;t want
+to change her?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course. Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Choosing friends for somebody else is not very wise; it sounds
+uncommonly like a roundabout way of developing her. No, no, I won&rsquo;t meet
+your Jenny.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see what you mean,&rdquo; Avery assented. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll write to Michael and tell
+him I&rsquo;ve met you. Shall I tell him about Lily? Where is she now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I&rsquo;ve never had even a post-card. My fault, really. Yes,
+you can tell Michael that she&rsquo;s probably quite happy and&mdash;no, I don&rsquo;t
+think there&rsquo;s any other message. Oh yes, you might say I&rsquo;ve eaten one or
+two rose-leaves but not enough yet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Avery looked puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Apuleius,&rdquo; she added.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Strange girl. I <i>wish</i> you would go and see Jenny.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no! She&rsquo;s eaten all the rose-leaves she wants, and I&rsquo;m sure she&rsquo;s
+not the least interested in Apuleius.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Next day Sylvia and Mrs. Gainsborough set out on the return journey to
+Tangier, which, apart from a disastrous attempt by Mrs. Gainsborough to
+eat a prickly pear, lacked incident.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let sleeping pears lie,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you don&rsquo;t expect a fruit to be so savage,&rdquo; retorted Mrs.
+Gainsborough. &ldquo;I thought I must have aggravated a wasp. Talk about
+nettles. They&rsquo;re chammy<a name="page_340" id="page_340"></a> leather beside them. Prickly pears! I suppose
+the next thing I try to eat will be stabbing apples.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They went home by Gibraltar, where Mrs. Gainsborough was delighted to
+see English soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nice to know we&rsquo;ve got our eyes open even in Spain. I reckon I&rsquo;ll
+get a good cup of tea here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They reached England at the end of April, and Sylvia decided to stay for
+a while at Mulberry Cottage. Reading through <i>The Stage</i>, she found that
+Jack Airdale was resting at Richmond in his old rooms, and went down to
+see him. He was looking somewhat thin and worried.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Had rather a rotten winter,&rdquo; he told her. &ldquo;I got ill with a quinsey and
+had to throw up a decent shop, and somehow or other I haven&rsquo;t managed to
+get another one yet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here, old son,&rdquo; Sylvia said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want any damned pride from
+you. I&rsquo;ve got plenty of money at present. You&rsquo;ve got to borrow fifty
+pounds. You want feeding up and fitting out. Don&rsquo;t be a cad now, and
+refuse a &lsquo;lidy.&rsquo; Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You know me by this time.
+Who&rsquo;s going to be more angry, you at being lent money or me at being
+refused by one of the few, the very few, mark you, good pals I&rsquo;ve got?
+Don&rsquo;t be a beast, Jack. You&rsquo;ve got to take it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He surrendered, from habit. Sylvia gave him all her news, but the item
+that interested him most was her having half taken up the stage.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I knew you&rsquo;d make a hit,&rdquo; he declared.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear girl, you don&rsquo;t give yourself a chance. You can&rsquo;t play hide and
+seek with the public, though, by Jove!&rdquo; he added, ruefully, &ldquo;I have been
+lately.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For the present I can afford to wait.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, you&rsquo;re damned lucky in one way, and yet I&rsquo;m not sure that you
+aren&rsquo;t really very unlucky. If you hadn&rsquo;t found some money you&rsquo;d have
+been forced to go on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear lad, lack of money wouldn&rsquo;t make me an artist.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What would, then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know. Being fed up with everything. That&rsquo;s what drove me
+into self-expression, as I should call<a name="page_341" id="page_341"></a> it if I were a temperamental
+miss with a light-boiled ego swimming in a saucepan of emotion for the
+public to swallow or myself to crack. But conceive my disgust! There was
+I yearning unattainable &lsquo;isms&rsquo; from a soul nurtured on tragic
+disillusionment, and I was applauded for singing French songs with an
+English accent. No, seriously, I shall try again, old Jack, when I
+receive another buffet. At present I&rsquo;m just dimly uncomfortable. I shall
+blossom late like a chrysanthemum. I ain&rsquo;t no daffodil, I ain&rsquo;t. Or
+perhaps it would be truer to say that I was forced when young&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+giggle, you ribald ass, not that way&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve got to give myself a rest
+before I bloom, <i>en plein air</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you really have got plenty of money?&rdquo; Airdale inquired, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Masses! Cataracts! And all come by perfectly honest. No, seriously,
+I&rsquo;ve got about four thousand pounds.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I really do think you&rsquo;re rather lucky, you know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course. But it&rsquo;s all written in the book of Fate. Listen. I&rsquo;ve got a
+mulberry mark on my arm; I live at Mulberry Cottage; and Morera, that&rsquo;s
+the name of my fairy godfather, is Spanish for mulberry-tree. Can you
+beat it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ve invested this money,&rdquo; said Airdale.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s in a bank.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He begged her to be careful of her riches, and she rallied him on his
+inconsistency, because a moment back he had been telling her that their
+possession was hindering her progress in art.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear Sylvia, I haven&rsquo;t known you for five years not to have
+discovered that I might as well advise a schoolmaster as you, but what
+<i>are</i> you going to do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Plans for this summer? A little gentle reading. A little browsing among
+the classics. A little theater-going. A little lunching at Verrey&rsquo;s with
+Mr. John Airdale. Resting address, six Rosetree Terrace, Richmond,
+Surrey. A little bumming around town, as Señor Morera would say. Plans
+for the autumn? A visit to the island of Sirene, if I can find a nice
+lady-like young woman to accompany me.<a name="page_342" id="page_342"></a> Mrs. Gainsborough has decided
+that she will travel no more. Her brain is bursting with unrelated
+adventure.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you can&rsquo;t go on from month to month like that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, if you&rsquo;ll tell me how to skip over December, January, and August
+I&rsquo;ll be grateful,&rdquo; Sylvia laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t rag about. I mean for the future in general,&rdquo; he explained.
+&ldquo;Are you going to get married? You can&rsquo;t go on forever like this.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;re young now. But what&rsquo;s more gloomy than a restless old
+maid?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear man, don&rsquo;t you fret about my withering. I&rsquo;ve got a little
+crystal flask of the finest undiluted strychnine. I believe strychnine
+quickens the action of the heart. Verdict. Death from attempted
+galvanization of the cardiac muscles. No flowers by request. Boomph! as
+Mrs. Gainsborough would say. Ring off. The last time I wrote myself an
+epitaph it led me into matrimony. <i>Absit omen</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Airdale was distressed by Sylvia&rsquo;s joking about her death, and begged
+her to stop.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then don&rsquo;t ask me any more about the future in general. And now let&rsquo;s
+go and be Epicurean at Verrey&rsquo;s.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>After Jack Airdale the only other old friend that Sylvia took any
+trouble to find was Olive Fanshawe. She was away on tour when Sylvia
+returned to England, but she came back to London in June, was still
+unmarried, and had been promised a small part in the Vanity production
+that autumn. Sylvia found that Olive had recaptured her romantic ideals
+and was delighted with her proposal that they should live together at
+Mulberry Cottage. Olive took very seriously her small part at the
+Vanity, of which the most distinguished line was: &ldquo;Girls, have you seen
+the Duke of Mayfair? He&rsquo;s awfully handsome.&rdquo; Sylvia was not very
+encouraging to Olive&rsquo;s opportunities of being able to give an original
+reading of such a line, but she listened patiently to her variations in
+which each word was overaccentuated in turn. Luckily there was also a
+melodious quintet consisting of the juvenile lead and four beauties of
+whom Olive was to be one; this, it seemed, promised to be a hit, and
+indeed it was.<a name="page_343" id="page_343"></a></p>
+
+<p>The most interesting event for the Vanity world that autumn, apart from
+the individual successes and failures in the new production, was the
+return of Lord and Lady Clarehaven to London, and not merely their
+return, but their re-entry into the Bohemian society from which Lady
+Clarehaven had so completely severed herself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know it&rsquo;s perfectly ridiculous of me,&rdquo; said Olive, &ldquo;but, Sylvia, do
+you know, I&rsquo;m quite nervous at the idea of meeting her again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A most cordial note had arrived from Dorothy inviting Olive to lunch
+with her in Curzon Street.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Write back and tell her you&rsquo;re living with me,&rdquo; Sylvia advised.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;ll choke off some of the friendliness.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But to Sylvia&rsquo;s boundless surprise a messenger-boy arrived with an
+urgent invitation for her to come too.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Curiouser and curiouser,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;What does it mean? She surely
+can&rsquo;t be tired of being a countess already. I&rsquo;m completely stumped.
+However, of course we&rsquo;ll put on our clean bibs and go. Don&rsquo;t look so
+frightened. Olive, if conversation hangs fire at lunch, we&rsquo;ll tickle the
+footmen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I really feel quite faint,&rdquo; said Olive. &ldquo;My heart&rsquo;s going pitter-pat.
+Isn&rsquo;t it silly of me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lunch, to which Arthur Lonsdale had also been invited, did nothing to
+enlighten Sylvia about the Clarehavens&rsquo; change of attitude. Dorothy,
+more beautiful than ever and pleasant enough superficially, seemed
+withal faintly resentful; Clarehaven was in exuberant spirits and
+evidently enjoying London tremendously. The only sign of tension, well
+not exactly tension, but slight disaccord, and that was too strong a
+word, was once when Clarehaven, having been exceptionally rowdy, glanced
+at Dorothy a swift look of defiance for checking him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s grown as prim as a parlor-maid,&rdquo; said Lonsdale to Sylvia when,
+after lunch, they had a chance of talking together. &ldquo;You ought to have
+seen her on the ancestral acres. My mother, who presides over our place
+like a Queen Turnip, is without importance beside Dolly, absolutely
+without importance. It got on Tony&rsquo;s nerves, that&rsquo;s about the truth of
+it. He never could stand the land. It<a name="page_344" id="page_344"></a> has the same effect on him as the
+sea has on some people. Black vomit, coma, and death&mdash;what?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dorothy, of course, played the countess in real life as seriously as
+she would have played her on the stage. She was the star,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Star! My dear girl, she was a comet. And the dowager loved her. They
+used to drive round in a barouche and administer gruel to the village
+without anesthetics.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose they kept them for Clarehaven,&rdquo; Sylvia laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s it. Of course, I shouted when I saw the state of affairs, having
+first of all been called in to recover old Lady Clarehaven&rsquo;s reason when
+she heard that her only child was going to wed a Vanity girl. But they
+loved her. Every frump in the county adored her. It&rsquo;s Tony who insisted
+on this move to London. He stood it in Devonshire for two and a half
+years, but the lights of the wicked city&mdash;soft music, please&mdash;called
+him, and they&rsquo;ve come back. Dolly&rsquo;s fed up to the wide about it. I say,
+we are a pair of gossips. What&rsquo;s your news?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I met Maurice Avery, in Morocco.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What, Mossy Avery! Not really? Disguised as a slipper, I suppose. Rum
+bird. He got awfully keen on a little girl at the Orient and tootled her
+all over town for a while, but I haven&rsquo;t seen him for months. I used to
+know him rather well at the &lsquo;Varsity: he was one of the esthetic push. I
+say, what&rsquo;s become of Lily?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Married to a croupier? Not, really. By Jove! what a time I had over her
+with Michael Fane&rsquo;s people. His sister, an awfully good sort, put me
+through a fearful catechism.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;His sister?&rdquo; repeated Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know what Michael&rsquo;s doing now? Greatest scream on earth. He&rsquo;s a
+monk. Some special kind of a monk that sounds like omelette, but isn&rsquo;t.
+Nothing to be done about it. I buzzed down to see him last year, and he
+was awfully fed up. I asked him if he couldn&rsquo;t stop monking for a bit
+and come out for a spin on my new forty-five Shooting Star. He wasn&rsquo;t in
+uniform, so there&rsquo;s no reason why he shouldn&rsquo;t have come.&rdquo;<a name="page_345" id="page_345"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s in England, now, then?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, he got fed up with everybody buzzing down to see what he looked
+like as a monk, and he&rsquo;s gone off to Chartreuse or Benedictine or
+somewhere&mdash;I know it&rsquo;s the name of a liqueur&mdash;somewhere abroad. I wanted
+him to become a partner in our business, and promised we&rsquo;d put a jolly
+little runabout on the market called The Jovial Monk, but he wouldn&rsquo;t.
+Look here, we&rsquo;d better join the others. Dolly&rsquo;s got her eye on me. I
+say,&rdquo; he chuckled, in a whisper, &ldquo;I suppose you know she&rsquo;s a connection
+of mine?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, by carriage.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lonsdale asked what she meant, and Sylvia told him the origin of
+Dorothy&rsquo;s name.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I say, that&rsquo;s topping. What&rsquo;s her real name?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been sufficiently spiteful.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Probably Buggins, really. I say, Cousin Dorothy,&rdquo; he went on, in a
+louder voice. &ldquo;What about bridge to-morrow night after the Empire?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Lady Clarehaven flashed a look at Sylvia, who could not resist shaking
+her head and earning thereby another sharper flash. When Sylvia talked
+over the Clarehavens with Olive, she found that Olive had been quite
+oblivious of anything unusual in the sudden move to town.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, Dorothy and I can never be what we were to each other; but I
+thought they seemed so happy together. I&rsquo;m so glad it&rsquo;s been such a
+success.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, has it?&rdquo; said Sylvia, doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes, my dear! How can you imagine anything else?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With the deepening of winter Olive fell ill and the doctors prescribed
+the Mediterranean for her. The malady was nothing to worry about; it was
+nothing more than fatigue; and if she were to rest now and if possible
+not work before the following autumn, there was every reason to expect
+that she would be perfectly cured.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia jumped at an excuse to go abroad again and suggested a visit to
+Sirene. The doctor, on being assured that Sirene was in the
+Mediterranean, decided that it was exactly the place best suited to
+Olive&rsquo;s state of health. Like most English doctors, he regarded the
+Mediterranean as a little larger than the Serpentine, with a
+characteristic<a name="page_346" id="page_346"></a> climate throughout. Olive, however, was much opposed to
+leaving London, and when Sylvia began to get annoyed with her obstinacy,
+she confessed that the real reason for wishing to stay was Jack.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Naturally, I wanted to tell you at once, my dear. But Jack wouldn&rsquo;t let
+me, until he could see his way clear to our being married. He was quite
+odd about you, for you know how fond he is of you&mdash;he thinks there&rsquo;s
+nobody like you&mdash;but he particularly asked me not to tell you just yet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I know the reason,&rdquo; Sylvia proclaimed, instantly. &ldquo;The silly,
+scrupulous, proud ass. I&rsquo;ll have it out with him to-morrow at lunch.
+Dearest Olive, I&rsquo;m so happy that I like your curly-headed actor.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but, darling Sylvia, his hair&rsquo;s quite straight!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but it&rsquo;s very long and gets into his eyes. It&rsquo;s odd hair, anyway.
+And when did the flaming arrow pin your two hearts together?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was that evening you played baccarat at Curzon Street&mdash;about ten
+days ago. You didn&rsquo;t think we&rsquo;d known long, did you? Oh, my dear, I
+couldn&rsquo;t have kept the secret any longer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Next day Sylvia lunched with Jack Airdale and came to the point at once.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here, you detestably true-to-type, impossibly sensitive ass,
+because I to please me lent you fifty pounds, is that any excuse for you
+to keep me out in the cold over you and Olive? Seriously, Jack, I do
+think it was mean of you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jack was abashed and mumbled many excuses. He had been afraid Sylvia
+would despise him for talking about marriage when he owed her money. He
+felt, anyway, that he wasn&rsquo;t good enough for Olive. Before Olive had
+known anything about it, he had been rather ashamed of himself for being
+in love with her; he felt he was taking advantage of Sylvia&rsquo;s
+friendship.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All which excuses are utterly feeble,&rdquo; Sylvia pronounced. &ldquo;Now listen.
+Olive&rsquo;s ill. She ought to go abroad. I very selfishly want a companion.
+You&rsquo;ve got to insist on her going. The fifty pounds I lent you will pay
+her expenses, so that debt&rsquo;s wiped out, and you&rsquo;re standing her a
+holiday in the Mediterranean.&rdquo;<a name="page_347" id="page_347"></a></p>
+
+<p>Jack thought for a moment with a puzzled air.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be absurd, Sylvia. Really for the moment you took me in with your
+confounded arithmetic. Why, you&rsquo;re doubling the obligation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Obligation! Obligation! Don&rsquo;t you dare to talk about obligations to me.
+I don&rsquo;t believe in obligations. Am I to understand that for the sake of
+your unworthy&mdash;well, it can&rsquo;t be dignified with the word&mdash;pride, Olive
+is to be kept in London throughout the spring?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jack protested he had been talking about the loan to himself. Olive&rsquo;s
+obligation would be a different one.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jack, have you ever seen a respectable woman throw a sole Morny across
+a restaurant? Because you will in one moment. Amen to the whole
+discussion. Please! The only thing you&rsquo;ve got to do is to insist on
+Olive&rsquo;s coming with me. Then while she&rsquo;s away you must be a good little
+actor and act away as hard as you know how, so that you can be married
+next June as a present to me on my twenty-sixth birthday.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re the greatest dear,&rdquo; said Jack, fervently.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I am. But I&rsquo;m waiting.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, for an exhortation to matrimony. Haven&rsquo;t you noticed that people
+who are going to get married always try to persuade everybody else to
+come in with them? I&rsquo;m sure human co-operation began with paleolithic
+bathers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So Olive and Sylvia left England for Sirene.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to be coming with you,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough at Charing
+Cross. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m just beginning to feel a tiddley-bit stiff, and well,
+there, after Morocco, I shouldn&rsquo;t be satisfied with anything less than a
+cannibal island, and it&rsquo;s too late for me to start in being a Robinson
+Crusoe, which reminds me that when I took Mrs. Beardmore to the Fulham
+pantomime last night it was Dick Whittington. And upon my soul, if he
+didn&rsquo;t go to Morocco with his cat. &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; I said to Mrs. Beardmore,
+&lsquo;it&rsquo;s not a bit like it.&rsquo; I told her that if Dick Whittington went there
+now he wouldn&rsquo;t take his cat with him. He&rsquo;d take a box of Keating&rsquo;s.
+Somebody behind said, &lsquo;Hush.&rsquo; And I said, &lsquo;Hush yourself. Perhaps
+<i>you&rsquo;ve</i> been to<a name="page_348" id="page_348"></a> Morocco?&rsquo; Which made him look very silly, for I don&rsquo;t
+suppose he&rsquo;s ever been further East than Aldgate in his life. We had no
+more &lsquo;hushes&rsquo; from him, I can tell you; and Mrs. Beardmore looked round
+at him in a very lady-like way which she&rsquo;s got from being a housekeeper,
+and said, &lsquo;My friend <i>has</i> been to Morocco.&rsquo; After that we la-la&rsquo;d the
+chorus in peace and quiet. Good-by, duckies, and don&rsquo;t gallivant about
+too much.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had brought a bagful of books about the Roman emperors, and Olive
+had brought a number of anthologies that made up by the taste of the
+binder for the lack of it in the compiler. They were mostly about love.
+To satisfy Sylvia&rsquo;s historical passion a week was spent in Rome and
+another week in Naples. She told Olive of her visit to Italy with Philip
+over seven years ago, and, much to her annoyance, Olive poured out a
+good deal of emotion over that hapless marriage.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you feel any kind of sentimental regret?&rdquo; she asked while they
+were watching from Posilipo the vapors of Vesuvius rose-plumed in the
+wintry sunset. &ldquo;Surely you feel softened toward it all now. Why, I think
+I should regret anything that had once happened in this divinely
+beautiful place.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The thing I remember most distinctly is Philip&rsquo;s having read somewhere
+that the best way to get rid of an importunate guide was to use the
+local negative and throw the head back instead of shaking it. The result
+was that Philip used to walk about as if he were gargling. To annoy him
+I used to wink behind his back at the guides, and naturally with such
+encouragement his local negative was absolutely useless.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think you must have been rather trying, Sylvia dear.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I was&mdash;infernally trying, but one doesn&rsquo;t marry a child of
+seventeen as a sedative.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s all awfully sad,&rdquo; Olive sighed.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had rather a shock, a few days after they had reached Sirene,
+when she saw Miss Horne and Miss Hobart drive past on the road up to
+Anasirene, the green rival of Sirene among the clouds to the west of the
+island. She made inquiries at the pension and was informed that two<a name="page_349" id="page_349"></a>
+sisters Miss Hobart-Horne, English millionaires many times over, had
+lived at Sirene these five years. Sylvia decided that it would be quite
+easy to avoid meeting them, and warned Olive against making friends with
+any of the residents, on the plea that she did not wish to meet people
+whom she had met here seven years ago with her husband. In the earlier
+part of the spring they stayed at a pension, but Sylvia found that it
+was difficult to escape from people there, and they moved up to
+Anasirene, where they took a <i>villino</i> that was cut off from all
+dressed-up humanity by a sea of olives. Here it was possible to roam by
+paths that were not frequented save by peasants whose personalities so
+long attuned to earth had lost the power of detaching themselves from
+the landscape and did not affect the onlooker more than the movement of
+trees or the rustle of small beasts. Life was made up of these
+essentially undisturbing personalities set in a few pictures that
+escaped from the swift southern spring: anemones splashed out like wine
+upon the green corn; some girl with slanting eyes that regarded coldly a
+dead bird in her thin brown hand; red-beaded cherry-trees that threw
+shadows on the tawny wheat below; wind over the olives and the sea, wind
+that shook the tresses of the broom and ruffled the scarlet poppies;
+then suddenly the first cicala and eternal noon.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been hard to say how they spent these four months, Sylvia
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can you bear to leave your beloved trees, your namesakes?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jack is getting impatient,&rdquo; said Olive.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then we must fade out of Anasirene just as one by one the flowers have
+all faded.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve faded much,&rdquo; Olive laughed. &ldquo;I never felt so well in
+my life, thanks to you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jack and Olive were married at the end of June. It was necessary to go
+down to a small Warwickshire town and meet all sorts of country people
+that reminded Sylvia of Green Lanes. Olive&rsquo;s father, who was a
+solicitor, was very anxious for Sylvia to stay when the wedding was
+over. He was cheating the gods out of half their pleasure in making him
+a solicitor by writing a history of Warwickshire worthies. Sylvia had so
+much impressed him as an intelligent<a name="page_350" id="page_350"></a> observer that he would have liked
+to retain her at his elbow for a while. She would not stay, however. The
+particular song that the sirens had sung to her during her sojourn in
+their territory was about writing a book. They called her back now and
+flattered her with a promise of inspiration. Sylvia was not much more
+ready to believe in sirens than in mortals, and she resisted the impulse
+to return. Nevertheless, with half an idea of scoring off them by
+writing the book somewhere else, she settled down in Mulberry Cottage to
+try: the form should be essays, and she drew up a list of subjects:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>1. <i>Obligations.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Judiac like the rest of our moral system; post obits on human
+gratitude</i>.</p>
+
+<p>2. <i>Friendship.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>A flowery thing. Objectionable habit of keeping pressed flowers</i>.</p>
+
+<p>3. <i>Marriage.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Judiac. Include this with obligations; nothing wrong with the idea of
+marriage. The marriage of convenience probably more honest than the
+English marriage of so-called affection. Levi the same as Lewis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>4. <i>Gambling.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>A moral occupation that brings out the worst side of everybody</i>.</p>
+
+<p>5. <i>Development.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Exploiting human personality. Judiac, of course</i>.</p>
+
+<p>6. <i>Acting.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>A low art form; oh yes, very low; being paid for what the rest of the
+world does for nothing</i>.</p>
+
+<p>7. <i>Prostitution.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Selling one&rsquo;s body to keep one&rsquo;s soul. This is the meaning of the sins
+that were forgiven to the woman because she loved much. One might say of
+most marriages that they were selling one&rsquo;s soul to keep one&rsquo;s body</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Sylvia found that when she started to write on these and other subjects
+she knew nothing about them; the consequence was that summer passed into
+autumn and autumn into winter while she went on reading history and
+philosophy. For pastime she played baccarat at Curzon Street<a name="page_351" id="page_351"></a> and lost
+six hundred pounds. In February she decided that, so much having been
+written on the subjects she had chosen, it was useless to write any
+more. She went to stay with Jack and Olive, who were now living in West
+Kensington. Olive was expecting a baby in April.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If it&rsquo;s a boy, we&rsquo;re going to call him Sylvius. But if it&rsquo;s a girl,
+Jack says we can&rsquo;t call her Sylvia, because for us there can never be
+more than one Sylvia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Call her Argentina.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, we&rsquo;re going to call her Sylvia Rose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I hope it&rsquo;ll be a boy,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;Anyway, I hope it&rsquo;ll be a
+boy, because there are too many girls.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Olive announced that she had taken a cottage in the country close to
+where her people lived, and that Sylvius or Sylvia Rose was to be born
+there; she thought it was right.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why childbirth should be more moral in the country,&rdquo;
+Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s nothing to do with morals; it&rsquo;s on account of baby&rsquo;s health.
+You will come and stay with me, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In March, therefore, Sylvia went down to Warwickshire with Olive, much
+to the gratification of Mr. Fanshawe. It was a close race whether he
+would be a grandfather or an author first, but in the end Mr. Fanshawe
+had the pleasure of placing a copy of his work on Warwickshire worthies
+in the hands of the monthly nurse before she could place in his arms a
+grandchild. Three days later Olive brought into the world a little girl
+and a little boy. Jack was acting in Dundee. The problem of nomenclature
+was most complicated. Olive had to think it all out over again from the
+beginning. Jack had to be consulted by telegram about every change, and
+on occasions where accuracy was all-important, the post-office clerks
+were usually most careless. For instance, Mr. Fanshawe thought it would
+be charming to celebrate the forest of Arden by calling the children
+Orlando and Rosalind; Jack thereupon replied:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Do not like Rosebud. What will boy be called. Suggest Palestine.
+First name arrived Ostend. If Oswald no.</p></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Palestine!&rdquo; exclaimed Olive.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Obviously Valentine,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;But look here, why not Sylvius for
+the boy and Rose for the girl? &lsquo;Rose Airdale, all were thine!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When several more telegrams had been exchanged to enable Olive, in
+Warwickshire, to be quite sure that Jack, by this time in Aberdeen, had
+got the names right, Sylvius and Rose were decided upon, though Mr.
+Fanshawe advocated Audrey for the girl with such pertinacity that he
+even went as far as to argue with his daughter on the steps of the font.
+Indeed, as Sylvia said afterward, if the clergyman had not been so deaf,
+Rose would probably be Audrey at this moment.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the christening Sylvia received a telegram.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Too late,&rdquo; she said, with a laugh, as she tore it open. &ldquo;He can&rsquo;t
+change his mind now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But the telegram was signed &ldquo;Beardmore&rdquo; and asked Sylvia to come at once
+to London because Mrs. Gainsborough was very ill.</p>
+
+<p>When she arrived at Mulberry Cottage, on a fine morning in early June,
+Mrs. Beardmore, whom Sylvia had never seen, was gravely accompanying two
+other elderly women to the garden door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s not dead?&rdquo; Sylvia cried.</p>
+
+<p>The three friends shook their heads and sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not yet, poor soul,&rdquo; said the thinnest, bursting into tears.</p>
+
+<p>This must be Mrs. Ewings.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m just going to send another doctor,&rdquo; said the most majestic, which
+must be Mrs. Marsham.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Beardmore said nothing, but she sniffed and led the way toward the
+house. Mrs. Marsham and Mrs. Ewings went off together.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the darkened room, but not so dark in the June sunshine as to
+obscure entirely the picture of Captain Dashwood in whiskers that hung
+upon the wall by her bed, Mrs. Gainsborough lay breathing heavily. The
+nurse made a gesture of silence and came out tiptoe from the room.
+Down-stairs in the parlor Sylvia listened to Mrs. Beardmore&rsquo;s story of
+the illness.<a name="page_353" id="page_353"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I heard nothing till three days ago, when the woman who comes in of a
+morning ascertained from Mrs. Gainsborough the wish she had for me to
+visit her. The Misses Hargreaves, with who I reside, was exceptionally
+kind and insisted upon me taking the tram from Kew that very moment. I
+communicated with Mrs. Marsham and Mrs. Ewings, but they, both having
+lodgers, was unable to evacuate their business, and Mrs. Gainsborough
+was excessively anxious as you should be communicated with on the
+telegraph, which I did accordingly. We have two nurses night and day,
+and the doctor is all that can be desired, all that can be desired,
+notwithstanding whatever Mrs. Marsham may say to the contrary; Mrs.
+Marsham, who I&rsquo;ve known for some years, has that habit of contradicting
+everybody else something outrageous. Mrs. Ewings and me was both
+entirely satisfied with Doctor Barker. I&rsquo;m very glad you&rsquo;ve come, Miss
+Scarlett, and Mrs. Gainsborough will be very glad you&rsquo;ve come. If you&rsquo;ll
+permit the liberty of the observation, Mrs. Gainsborough is very fond of
+you. As soon as she wakes up I shall have to get back to Kew, not
+wishing to trespass too much on the kindness of the two Misses
+Hargreaves to who I act as housekeeper. It&rsquo;s her heart that&rsquo;s the
+trouble. Double pneumonia through pottering in the garden. That&rsquo;s what
+the doctor diag&mdash;yes, that&rsquo;s what the doctor says, and though Mrs.
+Marsham contradicted him, taking the words out of his mouth and throwing
+them back in his face, and saying it was nothing of the kind but going
+to the King&rsquo;s funeral, I believe he&rsquo;s right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Beardmore went back to Kew. Mrs. Gainsborough, who had been in a
+comatose state all the afternoon, began to wander in her mind about an
+hour before sunset.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s very dark. High time the curtain went up. The house will be
+getting impatient in a minute. It&rsquo;s not to be supposed they&rsquo;ll wait all
+night. Certainly not.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia drew the curtains back, and the room was flooded with gold.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s better. Much better. The country smells beautiful, don&rsquo;t it,
+this morning? The glory die-johns are a treat this year, but the captain
+he always likes a<a name="page_354" id="page_354"></a> camellia or a gardenia. Well, if they start in
+building over your nursery, pa.... Certainly not, certainly not. They&rsquo;ll
+build over everything. Now don&rsquo;t talk about dying, Bob. Don&rsquo;t let&rsquo;s be
+dismal on our anniversary. Certainly not.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She suddenly recognized Sylvia and her mind cleared.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I <i>am</i> glad you&rsquo;ve come. Really, you know, I hate to make a fuss,
+but I&rsquo;m not feeling at all meself. I&rsquo;m just a tiddley-bit ill, it&rsquo;s my
+belief. Sylvia, give me your hand. Sylvia, I&rsquo;m joking. I really am
+remarkably ill. Oh, there&rsquo;s no doubt I&rsquo;m going to die. What a beautiful
+evening! Yes, it&rsquo;s not to be supposed I&rsquo;m going to live forever, and
+there, after all, I&rsquo;m not sorry. As soon as I began to get that
+stiffness I thought it meant I was not meself. And what&rsquo;s the good of
+hanging about if you&rsquo;re not yourself?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The nurse came forward and begged her not to talk too much.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t stop me talking. There was a clergyman came through Mrs.
+Ewings&rsquo;s getting in a state about me, and he talked till I was sick and
+tired of the sound of his voice. Talked away, he did, about the death of
+Our Lord and being nailed to the cross. It made me very dismal. &lsquo;Here,
+when did all this occur?&rsquo; I asked. &lsquo;Nineteen hundred and ten years ago,&rsquo;
+he said. &lsquo;Oh well,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;it all occurred such a long time ago and
+it&rsquo;s all so sad, let&rsquo;s hope it never occurred at all.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The nurse said firmly that if Mrs. Gainsborough would not stop talking
+she should have to make Sylvia go out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a tyrant,&rdquo; said Mrs. Gainsborough. &ldquo;Well, just sit by me
+quietly and hold my hand.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The sun set behind the housetops. Mrs. Gainsborough&rsquo;s hand was cold when
+twilight came.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt that it was out of the question to stay longer at Mulberry
+Cottage, though Miss Dashwood, to whom the little property reverted, was
+very anxious for her to do so. After the funeral Sylvia joined Olive and
+Jack in Warwickshire.</p>
+
+<p>They realized that she was feeling very deeply the death of Mrs.
+Gainsborough, and were anxious that she should arrange to live with them
+in West Kensington.<a name="page_355" id="page_355"></a></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, however, said that she wished to remain friends with them, and
+declined the proposal.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you remember what I told you once,&rdquo; she said to Jack, &ldquo;about going
+back to the stage in some form or another when I was tired of things?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Jack, who had not yet renounced his ambition for Sylvia&rsquo;s theatrical
+career, jumped at the opportunity of finding her an engagement, and when
+they all went back to London with the babies he rushed about the Strand
+to see what was going. Sylvia moved all her things from Mulberry Cottage
+to the Airdales&rsquo; house, refusing once more Miss Dashwood&rsquo;s almost
+tearful offer to make over the cottage to her. She was sorry to
+withstand the old lady, who was very frail by now, but she knew that if
+she accepted, it would mean more dreaming about writing books and
+gambling at Curzon Street, and ultimately doing nothing until it was too
+late.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m reaching the boring idle thirties. I&rsquo;m twenty-seven,&rdquo; she told Jack
+and Olive. &ldquo;I must sow a few more wild oats before my face is plowed
+with wrinkles to receive the respectable seeds of a flourishing old age.
+By the way, as demon-godmother I&rsquo;ve placed one thousand pounds to the
+credit of Rose and Sylvius.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The parents protested, but Sylvia would take no denial.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve kept lots for myself,&rdquo; she assured them. As a matter of fact, she
+had nearly another £1,000 in the bank.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of July Jack came in radiant to say that a piece with an
+English company was being sent over to New York the following month.
+There was a small part for which the author required somebody whose
+personality seemed to recall Sylvia&rsquo;s. Would she read it? Sylvia said
+she would.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The author was pleased, eh?&rdquo; Jack asked, enthusiastically, when Sylvia
+came back from the trial.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t really know. Whenever he tried to speak, the manager said, &lsquo;One
+moment, please&rsquo;; it was like a boxing-match. However, as the important
+thing seemed to be that I should speak English with a French accent, I
+was engaged.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia could not help being amused at herself when she found that her
+first essay with legitimate drama was to be<a name="page_356" id="page_356"></a> the exact converse of her
+first essay with the variety stage, dependent, as before, upon a kind of
+infirmity. Really, the only time she had been able to express herself
+naturally in public had been when she sang &ldquo;The Raggle-taggle Gipsies&rdquo;
+with the Pink Pierrots, and that had been a failure. However, a tour in
+the States would give her a new glimpse of life, which at twenty-seven
+was the important consideration; and perhaps New York, more generous
+than other capitals, would give her life itself, or one of the only two
+things in life that mattered, success and love.<a name="page_357" id="page_357"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE play in which Sylvia was to appear in New York was called &ldquo;A
+Honeymoon in Europe,&rdquo; and if it might be judged from the first few
+rehearsals, at which the performers had read their parts like
+half-witted board-school children, it was thin stuff. Still, it was not
+fair to pass a final opinion without the two American stars who were
+awaiting the English company in their native land.</p>
+
+<p>The author, Mr. Marchmont Hearne, was a timid little man who between the
+business manager and producer looked and behaved very much like the
+Dormouse at the Mad Tea-party. The manager did not resemble the Hatter
+except in the broad brim of his top-hat, which in mid-Atlantic he
+reluctantly exchanged for a cloth cap. The company declared he was
+famous for his tact; certainly he managed to suppress the Dormouse at
+every point by shouting, &ldquo;One minute, Mr. Stern, <i>please</i>,&rdquo; or, &ldquo;Please,
+Mr. Burns, one minute,&rdquo; and apologizing at once so effusively for not
+calling him by his right name that the poor little Dormouse had no
+courage to contest the real point at issue, which had nothing to do with
+his name. When the manager had to exercise a finer tactfulness, as with
+obdurate actresses, he was wont to soften his remarks by adding that
+nothing &ldquo;derogatory&rdquo; had been intended; this seemed to mollify
+everybody, probably, Sylvia thought, because it was such a long word.
+The Hatter&rsquo;s name was Charles Fitzherbert. The producer, Mr. Wade
+Fortescue, by the length of his ears, by the way in which his electrical
+hair propelled itself into a peak on either side of his head, and by his
+wild, artistic eye, was really rather like the March Hare outwardly; his
+behavior was not less like. Mr. Fortescue&rsquo;s attitude toward &ldquo;A Honeymoon
+in Europe&rdquo; was one that Beethoven might have taken up on being invited
+to orchestrate<a name="page_358" id="page_358"></a> &ldquo;Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.&rdquo; The author did not go so far as
+to resent this attitude, but on many occasions he was evidently pained
+by it, notwithstanding Mr. Fitzherbert&rsquo;s assurances that Mr. Fortescue
+had intended nothing &ldquo;derogatory.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia&rsquo;s part was that of a French chambermaid. The author had drawn it
+faithfully to his experience of Paris in the course of several
+week-ends. As his conception coincided with that of the general public
+in supposing a French chambermaid to be a cross between a street-walker
+and a tight-rope walker, it seemed probable that the part would be a
+success; although Mr. Fortescue wanted to mix the strain still further
+by introducing the blood of a comic ventriloquist.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must roll your &lsquo;r&rsquo;s&rsquo; more, Miss Scarlett,&rdquo; he assured her. &ldquo;That
+line will go for nothing as you said it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I said it as a French chambermaid would say it,&rdquo; Sylvia insisted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I might venture&mdash;&rdquo; the Dormouse began.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One minute, please, Mr. Treherne,&rdquo; interrupted the Mad Hatter. &ldquo;What
+Mr. Fortescue wants, Miss Scarlett, is exaggeration&mdash;a leetle
+exaggeration. I believe that is what you want, Mr. Fortescue?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want a caricature,&rdquo; snapped the March Hare. &ldquo;The play is
+farcical enough as it is. What I want to impart is realism. I want Miss
+Scarlett to say the line as a French girl would say it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Precisely,&rdquo; said the Hatter. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s precisely what I was trying to
+explain to Miss Scarlett. You&rsquo;re a bit hasty, old chap, you know, and I
+think you frightened her a little. That&rsquo;s all right, Miss Scarlett,
+there&rsquo;s nothing to be frightened about. Mr. Fortescue intended nothing
+derogatory.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not in the least frightened,&rdquo; said Sylvia, indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I might make a suggestion, I think that&mdash;&rdquo; the Dormouse began.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One minute please, please, Mr. Burns, one minute&mdash;Ah, dear me, Mr.
+Hearne, I was confusing you with the poet. Nothing derogatory in that,
+eh?&rdquo; he laughed jovially.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;May I ask a question?&rdquo; said Sylvia, and asked it before<a name="page_359" id="page_359"></a> Mr.
+Fitzherbert could interrupt again. &ldquo;Why do all English authors draw all
+Frenchwomen as cocottes and all French authors draw all English women as
+governesses? The answer&rsquo;s obvious.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Mad Hatter and the March Hare were so much taken aback by this
+attack from Alice that the Dormouse was able to emit an entire sentence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should like to say that Miss Scarlett&rsquo;s rendering of the accent gives
+me great satisfaction. I have no fault to find. I shall be much obliged,
+Miss Scarlett, if you will correct my French whenever necessary. I am
+fully sensible of its deficiencies.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Marchmont Hearne blinked after this challenge and breathed rather
+heavily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had a good deal of experience,&rdquo; said Mr. Fortescue, grimly, &ldquo;but I
+never yet found that it improved a play to allow the performers of minor
+rôles, essentially minor rôles, to write their parts in at rehearsal.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fitzherbert was in a quandary for a moment whether he should smoothe
+the rufflings of the author or of the actress or of the producer, but
+deciding that the author could be more profitable to his career in the
+end, he took him up-stage and tried to whisper away Mr. Fortescue&rsquo;s bad
+temper. In the end Sylvia was allowed to roll her &ldquo;r&rsquo;s&rdquo; at her own pace.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you stood up to him, dear,&rdquo; said an elderly actress like a
+pink cabbage rose fading at the tips of the petals, who had been sitting
+throughout the rehearsal so nearly on the scene that she was continually
+being addressed in mistake by people who really were &ldquo;on.&rdquo; The author,
+who had once or twice smiled at her pleasantly, was evidently under the
+delusion that she was interested in his play.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I was delighted with the way you stood up to them,&rdquo; continued Miss
+Nancy Tremayne. &ldquo;My part&rsquo;s wretched, dear. All feeding! Still, if I&rsquo;m
+allowed to slam the door when I go off in the third act, I may get a
+hand. Have you ever been to New York before? I like it myself, and you
+can live quite cheaply if you know the ropes. Of course, I&rsquo;m drawing a
+very good salary, because they wanted me. I said I couldn&rsquo;t come for a
+penny under<a name="page_360" id="page_360"></a> one hundred dollars, and I really didn&rsquo;t want to come at
+all. However, he <i>would</i> have me, and between you and me, I&rsquo;m really
+rather glad to have the chance of saving a little money. The managers
+are getting very stingy in England. Don&rsquo;t tell anybody what I&rsquo;m getting,
+will you, dear? One doesn&rsquo;t like to create jealousy at the commencement
+of a tour. It seems to be quite a nice crowd, though the girls look a
+little old, don&rsquo;t you think? Amy Melhuish, who&rsquo;s playing the ingénue,
+must be at least thirty. It&rsquo;s wonderful how some women have the nerve to
+go on. I gave up playing ingénues as soon as I was over twenty-eight,
+and that&rsquo;s four years ago now, or very nearly. Oh dear, how time flies!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia thought that, if Miss Tremayne was only twenty-eight four years
+ago, time must have crawled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re sending us out in the <i>Minneworra</i>. The usual economy, but
+really in a way it&rsquo;s nicer, because it&rsquo;s all one class. Yes, I&rsquo;m glad
+you stood up to them, dear. Fortescue&rsquo;s been impossible ever since he
+produced one of those filthy Strindberg plays last summer for the
+Unknown Plays Committee. I hate this continental muck. Degenerate, I say
+it is. In my opinion Ibsen has spoiled the drama in England. What do you
+think of Charlie Fitzherbert? He&rsquo;s such a nice man. Always ready to
+smooth over any little difficulties. When Mr. Vernon said to me that
+Charlie would be coming with us, I felt quite safe.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Morally?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, go on! You know what I mean. Comfortable, and not likely to be
+stranded. Well, I&rsquo;m always a little doubtful about American productions.
+I suppose I&rsquo;m conservative. I like old-fashioned ways.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Which was not surprising, Sylvia thought.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Tremayne, I can&rsquo;t hear myself speak. Are you on in this scene?&rdquo;
+demanded the producer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t know. My next cue is&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think Miss Tremayne comes on till Act Three,&rdquo; said the author.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t get there for another two hours,&rdquo; the producer growled.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Tremayne moved her chair back three feet, and turned to finish her
+conversation with Sylvia.<a name="page_361" id="page_361"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What I was going to say when I was interrupted, dear, was that, if
+you&rsquo;re a bad sailor, you ought to make a point of making friends with
+the purser. Unfortunately I don&rsquo;t know the purser on the <i>Minneworra</i>,
+but the purser on the <i>Minnetoota</i> was quite a friend of mine, and gave
+me a beautiful deck-cabin. The other girls were very jealous.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Damn it, Miss Tremayne, didn&rsquo;t I ask you not to go on talking?&rdquo; the
+producer shouted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nice gentlemanly way of asking anybody not to whisper a few words of
+advice, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; said Miss Tremayne, with a scathing glance at Mr.
+Fortescue as she moved her chair quite six feet farther away from the
+scene.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, of course, we&rsquo;re in a draught,&rdquo; she grumbled to Sylvia. &ldquo;But I
+always say that producers never have any consideration for anybody but
+themselves.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>By the time the S.S. <i>Minneworra</i> reached New York Sylvia had come to
+the conclusion that the representatives of the legitimate drama differed
+only from the chorus of a musical comedy in taking their temperaments
+and exits more seriously. Sylvia&rsquo;s earlier experience had led her to
+suppose that the quantity of make-up and proximity to the footlights
+were the most important things in art.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever hopes of individual ability to shine the company might have
+cherished before it reached New York were quickly dispelled by the two
+American stars, up to whom and not with whom they were expected to
+twinkle. Mr. Diomed Olver and Miss Marcia Neville regarded the rest of
+the company as Jupiter and Venus might regard the Milky Way. Miss
+Tremayne&rsquo;s exit upon a slammed door was forbidden the first time she
+tried it, because it would distract the attention of the audience from
+Miss Neville, who at that moment would be sustaining a dimple, which she
+called holding a situation. This dimple, which was famous from Boston to
+San Francisco, from Buffalo to New Orleans, had, when Miss Neville first
+swam into the ken of a manager&rsquo;s telescope, been easy enough to sustain.
+Of late years a slight tendency toward stoutness had made it necessary
+to assist the dimple with the forefinger and internal suction; the
+slamming of a door might disturb so nice an operation, and an appeal,
+which came oddly from<a name="page_362" id="page_362"></a> Miss Neville, was made to Miss Tremayne&rsquo;s sense
+of natural acting.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Olver did not bother to conceal his intention of never moving from
+the center of the stage, where he maintained himself with the noisy
+skill of a gyroscope.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;See here,&rdquo; he explained to members of the company who tried to compete
+with his stellar supremacy. &ldquo;The public pays to see Diomed Olver and
+Marcia Neville; they don&rsquo;t care a damned cent for anything else in
+creation. Got me? That&rsquo;s good. Now we&rsquo;ll go along together fine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Charles Fitzherbert assisted no more at rehearsals, but occupied
+himself entirely with the box-office. Mr. Wade Fortescue was very fierce
+about 2 <small>A.M.</small> in the bar of his hotel, but very mild at rehearsals. Mr.
+Marchmont Hearne hibernated during this period, and when he appeared
+very shyly at the opening performance in Brooklyn the company greeted
+him with the surprised cordiality that is displayed to some one who has
+broken his leg and emerges weeks later from hospital without a limp.</p>
+
+<p>New York made a deep and instant impression on Sylvia. No city that she
+had seen was so uncompromising; so sure of its flamboyant personality;
+so completely an ingenious, spoiled, and precocious child; so lovable
+for its extravagance and mischief. To her the impression was of some
+Gargantuan boy in his nursery building up tall towers to knock them
+down, running his clockwork-engines for fun through the streets of his
+toy city, scattering in corners quantities of toy bricks in readiness
+for a new fit of destructive construction, scooping up his tin
+inhabitants at the end of a day&rsquo;s play to put them helter-skelter into
+their box, eking out the most novel electrical toys of that Christmas
+with the battered old trams of the Christmas before, cherishing old
+houses with a child&rsquo;s queer conservatism, devoting a large stretch of
+bright carpet to a park, and robbing his grandmother&rsquo;s mantelpiece of
+her treasures to put inside his more permanent structures. After seeing
+New York she sympathized very much with the remark she had heard made by
+a young New-Yorker on board the <i>Minneworra</i>, which at the time she had
+thought a mere callow piece of rudeness.<a name="page_363" id="page_363"></a></p>
+
+<p>A grave doctor from Toledo, Ohio, almost as grave as if he were from the
+original Toledo, had expressed a hope to Sylvia that she would not
+accept New York as representative of the United States. She must travel
+to the West. New York had no family life. If Miss Scarlett wished to see
+family life, he should be glad to show it to her in Toledo. For
+confirmation of his criticism he had appealed to a young man standing at
+his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; the young man had replied, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never been fifty miles west of
+New York in my life, and I hope I never shall. When I want to travel I
+cross over to Europe for a month.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Toledo doctor had afterward spoken severely to Sylvia on the subject
+of this young New-Yorker, citing him as a dangerous element in the
+national welfare. Now, after seeing the Gargantuan boy&rsquo;s nursery, she
+understood the spirit that wanted to enjoy his nursery and not be
+bothered to go for polite walks with maiden aunts in the country;
+equally, no doubt, in Toledo she should appreciate the point of view of
+the doctor and recognize the need for the bone that would support the
+vast bulk of the growing child.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had noticed that as she grew older impressions became less vivid;
+her later and wider experience of London was already dim beside those
+first years with her father and Monkley. It had been the same during her
+travels. Already even the Alhambra was no longer quite clearly imprinted
+upon her mind, and each year it had been growing less and less easy to
+be astonished. But this arrival in New York had been like an arrival in
+childhood, as surprising, as exciting, as terrifying, as stimulating.
+New York was like a rejuvenating potion in the magic influence of which
+the memories of past years dissolved. Partly, no doubt, this effect
+might be ascribed to the invigorating air, and partly, Sylvia thought,
+to the anxiously receptive condition of herself now within sight of
+thirty; but neither of these explanations was wide enough to include all
+that New York gave of regenerative emotion, of willingness to be alive
+and unwillingness to go to bed, and of zest in being amused. Sylvia had
+supposed that she had long ago outgrown the pleasure of wandering<a name="page_364" id="page_364"></a> about
+streets for no other reason than to be wandering about streets, of
+staring into shops, of staring after people, of staring at
+advertisements, of staring in company with a crowd of starers as well
+entertained as herself at a bat that was flying about in daylight
+outside the Plaza Hotel; but here in New York all that old youthful
+attitude of assuming that the world existed for one&rsquo;s diversion, mixed
+with a sharp, though always essentially contemptuous, curiosity about
+the method it was taking to amuse one, was hers again. Sylvia had always
+regarded England as the frivolous nation that thought of nothing but
+amusement, England that took its pleasure so earnestly and its business
+so lightly. In New York there was no question of qualifying adverbs;
+everything was a game. It was a game, and apparently, by the enthusiasm
+with which it was played, a novel game, to control the traffic in Fifth
+Avenue&mdash;a rather dangerous game like American football, in which at
+first the casualties to the policemen who played it were considerable.
+Street-mending was another game, rather an elementary game that
+contained a large admixture of practical joking. Getting a carriage
+after the theater was a game played with counters. Eating, even, could
+be made into a game either mechanical like the automatic dime lunch, or
+intellectual like the free lunch, or imaginative like the quick lunch.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had already made acquaintance with the crude material of America
+in Carlos Morera. New York was Carlos Morera much more refined and more
+matured, sweetened by its own civilization, which, having severed itself
+from other civilizations like the Anglo-Saxon or Latin, was already most
+convincingly a civilization of its own, bearing the veritable stamp of
+greatness. Sometimes Sylvia would be faced even in New York by a
+childishness that scarcely differed from the childishness of Carlos
+Morera. One evening, for instance, two of the men in the company who
+knew her tastes invited her to come with them to Murden&rsquo;s all-night
+saloon off Sixth Avenue. They had been told it was a sight worth seeing.
+Sylvia, with visions of something like the dancing-saloon in Buenos
+Aires, was anxious to make the experiment. It sounded exciting when she
+heard that the place was kept<a name="page_365" id="page_365"></a> going by &ldquo;graft.&rdquo; After the performance
+she and her companions went to Jack&rsquo;s for supper; thence they walked
+along Sixth Avenue to Murden&rsquo;s. It was only about two o&rsquo;clock when they
+entered by a side door into a room exactly like the bar parlor of an
+English public house, where they sat rather drearily drinking some
+inferior beer, until one of Sylvia&rsquo;s companions suggested that they had
+arrived too near the hours of legal closing. They left Murden&rsquo;s and
+visited a Chinese restaurant in Broadway with a cabaret attached. The
+prices, the entertainment, the food, and the company were in a
+descending scale; the prices were much the highest. Two hours later they
+went back to Murden&rsquo;s; the parlor was not less dreary; the beer was
+still abominable. However, just as they had decided that this could not
+be the right place, an enormous man slightly drunk entered under the
+escort of two ladies of the town. Perceiving that Sylvia and her
+companions had risen, the new-comer waved them back into their chairs
+and called for drinks all round.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;British?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>They nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I thought you were Britishers. I&rsquo;m Under-Sheriff McMorris.&rdquo; With
+this he seated himself, hugging the two nymphs on either side of him
+like a Dionysius in his chariot.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Actor folk?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>They nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I thought you were actor folk. Ever read Shakespeare? Some boy,
+eh? Gee! I used to be able to spout Parsha without taking breath.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Forthwith he delivered the speech about the quality of mercy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wal?&rdquo; he demanded at the end.</p>
+
+<p>The English actors congratulated him and called for another round. Mr.
+McMorris turned to one of the nymphs:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wal, honey?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Cut it out, you fat old slob; you&rsquo;re tanked!&rdquo; said honey.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. McMorris recited several other speeches, including the vision of the
+dagger from &ldquo;Macbeth.&rdquo; From Shakespeare<a name="page_366" id="page_366"></a> he passed to Longfellow, and
+from Longfellow to Byron. After an hour of recitations he was persuaded
+by the bartender to give some of his reminiscences of criminals in New
+York, which he did so vividly that Sylvia began to suppose that at one
+time or another he really had been connected with the law. Finally about
+six o&rsquo;clock he became pathetic and wept away most of what he had drunk.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m feeling bad this morning. I gart to go and arrest a man for whom I
+have a considerable admiration. I gart to go down-town to Washington
+Square and arrest a prominent citizen at eight o&rsquo;clock sharp. I guess
+they&rsquo;re waiting right now for me to come along and make that arrest.
+Where&rsquo;s my black-jack?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He fumbled in his pocket for a leather-covered life-preserver, which he
+flourished truculently. Leaning upon the shoulders of the nymphs, he
+waved a farewell and staggered out.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia asked the bartender what he really was.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s Under-Sheriff McMorris. At eight o&rsquo;clock he&rsquo;s going to arrest a
+prominent New York citizen for misappropriation of some fund.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That evening in the papers Sylvia read that Under-Sheriff McMorris had
+burst into tears when ex-Governor Somebody or other had walked down the
+steps of his house in Washington Square and offered himself to the
+custody of the law.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like to have to do this, Mr. Governor,&rdquo; Under-Sheriff McMorris
+had protested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must do your duty, Mr. Under-Sheriff.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The crowd had thereupon cheered loudly, and the wife of the ex-Governor,
+dissolved in tears, had waved the Stars and Stripes from an upper
+window.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jug for the ex-Governor and a jag for the under-sheriff,&rdquo; said Sylvia.
+&ldquo;If only the same spirit could be applied to minor arrests. That may
+come. It&rsquo;s wonderful, really, how in this mighty republic they manage to
+preserve any vestige of personality, but they do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The play ran through the autumn and went on tour in January. Sylvia did
+not add much to her appreciation of America in the course of it,
+because, as was inevitable in<a name="page_367" id="page_367"></a> the short visits they paid to various
+towns, she had to depend for intercourse upon the members of the
+company. She reached New York again shortly before her twenty-eighth
+birthday. When nearly all her fellow-players returned to England, she
+decided to stay behind. The first impression she had received of
+entering upon a new phase of life when she landed in New York had not
+yet deserted her, and having received an offer from the owner of what
+sounded, from his description, like a kind of hydropathic establishment
+to entertain the visitors there during the late summer and fall, she
+accepted. In August, therefore, she left New York and went to
+Sulphurville, Indiana.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had had glimpses of rural America in Vermont and New Hampshire
+during the tour; in such a cursory view it had not seemed to differ much
+from rural England. Now she was going to see rustic America, if a
+distinction between the two adjectives might be made. At Indianapolis
+she changed from the great express into a smaller train that deposited
+her at a railway station consisting of a tumble-down shed. Nobody came
+out to welcome the train, but the colored porter insisted that this was
+the junction from which she would ultimately reach Sulphurville and
+denied firmly Sylvia&rsquo;s suggestion that the engine-driver had stopped
+here for breath. She was the only passenger who alighted, and she saw
+the train continue on its way with something near despair. The sun was
+blazing down. All around was a grasshopper-haunted wilderness of Indian
+corn. It was the hottest, greenest, flattest, most God-forsaken spot she
+had ever seen. The heat was so tremendous that she ventured inside the
+hut for shade. The only sign of life was a bug proceeding slowly across
+a greasy table. Sylvia went out and wandered round to the other side.
+Here, fast asleep, was a man dressed in a pair of blue trousers, a
+neckerchief, and an enormous straw hat. As the trousers reached to his
+armpits, he was really fully dressed, and Sylvia was able to recognize
+him as a human being from an illustrated edition she possessed of
+<i>Huckleberry Finn</i>; at the same time, she thought it wiser to let him
+sleep and returned to the front of the shed. To her surprise, for it
+seemed scarcely possible that anybody could inhabit the second floor,
+she perceived a woman with<a name="page_368" id="page_368"></a> curl-papers, in a spotted green-and-yellow
+bed-wrapper, looking out of what until now she had supposed to be a gap
+in the roof caused by decay. Sylvia asked the woman if this was the
+junction for Sulphurville. She nodded, but vanished from the window
+before there was time to ask her when the train would arrive.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia waited for an hour in the heat, and had almost given up hope of
+ever reaching Sulphurville when suddenly a train arrived, even smaller
+than the one into which she had changed at Indianapolis, but still
+considerably larger than any European train. The hot afternoon wore away
+while this new train puffed slowly deeper and deeper into rustic America
+until it reached Bagdad. Hitherto Sylvia had traveled in what was called
+a parlor-car, but at Bagdad she had to enter a fourth train that did not
+possess a parlor-car and that really resembled a local train in England,
+with oil-lamps and semi-detached compartments. At every station between
+Bagdad and Sulphurville crowds of country folk got in, all of whom were
+wearing flags and flowers in their buttonholes and were in a state of
+perspiring festivity. At the last station before Sulphurville the train
+was invaded by the members of a local band, whose instruments fought for
+a place as hard as their masters. Sylvia was nearly elbowed out of her
+seat by an aggressive ophicleide, but an old gentleman opposite with a
+saxhorn behind him and a euphonium on his knees told her by way of
+encouragement that the soldiers didn&rsquo;t pass through Indiana every day.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The last time I saw soldiers like that was during the war,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t allow any of us here will ever see so many soldiers again.&rdquo;
+He looked round the company defiantly, but nobody seemed inclined to
+contradict him, and he grunted with disappointment. It seemed hard that
+the old gentleman&rsquo;s day should end so tamely, but fortunately a young
+man in the far corner proclaimed it not merely as his opinion, but
+supported it from inside information, that the regiment was being
+marched through Indiana like this in order to get it nearer to the
+Mexican border.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; said the old gentleman, and blew his nose so violently that
+every one looked involuntarily at one of the<a name="page_369" id="page_369"></a> brass instruments.
+&ldquo;Shucks!&rdquo; he repeated. Then he smiled at Sylvia, who, sympathizing with
+the happy close of his day, smiled back just as the train entered the
+station of Sulphurville.</p>
+
+<p>The Plutonian Hotel, Sulphurville, had presumably been built to appease
+the same kind of human credulity that created the pump-rooms at Bath or
+Wiesbaden or Aix-les-Bains. Sylvia had observed that one of the great
+elemental beliefs of the human race, a belief lost in primeval fog, was
+that if water with an odd taste bubbled out of the earth, it must
+necessarily possess curative qualities; if it bubbled forth without a
+nasty enough taste to justify the foundation of a spa, it was analyzed
+by prominent chemists, bottled, and sold as a panacea to the great
+encouragement of lonely dyspeptics with nothing else to read at dinner.
+In the Middle Ages, and possibly in the classic times of Æsculapius,
+these natural springs had fortified the spiritual side of man; in late
+days they served to dilute his spirits. The natural springs at
+Sulphurville fully justified the erection of the Plutonian Hotel and the
+lowest depths of mortal credulity, for they had a revolting smell, an
+exceptionally unpleasant taste, and a high temperature. Everything that
+balneal ingenuity could suggest had been done, and in case the internal
+cure was not nasty enough as it was, the first glass of water was
+prescribed for six o&rsquo;clock in the morning. Though it was necessary to
+test human faith by the most arduous and vexatious ordinances for human
+conduct, lest it might grow contemptuous of the cure, it was equally
+necessary to prevent boredom, if not of the devotees themselves, at any
+rate of their families. Accordingly, there was an annex of the ascetic
+hotel where everybody was driven to bed at eleven by the uncomfortable
+behavior of the servants, and where breakfast was served not later than
+seven; this annex possessed a concert-hall, a small theater, a
+gaming-saloon with not merely roulette, but many apparently childish
+games of chance that nevertheless richly rewarded the management. Sylvia
+wondered if there was any moral intention on the part of the proprietors
+in the way they encouraged gambling, if they wished to accentuate the
+chances and changes of human life and<a name="page_370" id="page_370"></a> thereby secure for their clients
+a religious attitude toward their bodily safety. Certainly at the
+Plutonian Hotel it was impossible to obtain anything except meals
+without gambling. In order to buy a cigar or a box of chocolates it was
+necessary to play dice with the young woman who sold them, with more or
+less profit to the hotel, according to one&rsquo;s luck. Every morning some
+new object was on view in the lobby to be raffled that evening. Thus on
+the fourth night of her stay Sylvia became the owner of a large trunk,
+the emptiness of which was continuous temptation.</p>
+
+<p>The Plutonian was not merely a resort for gouty Easterners; it catered
+equally for the uric acid of the West. Sylvia liked the families from
+the West, particularly the girls with their flowing hair and big felt
+hats who rode on Kentucky ponies to see smugglers&rsquo; caves in the hills,
+conforming invariably to the traditional aspect of the Western belle in
+the cinema. The boys were not so picturesque; in fact, they scarcely
+differed from European boys of the same age. The East supplied the
+exotic note among the children; candy-fed, shrill, and precocious with a
+queer gnomelike charm, they resembled expensive toys. These visitors to
+Sulphurville were much more affable with one another than their fellows
+in Europe would have been in similar circumstances. Sylvia had already
+noticed that in America stomachic subjects could inspire the dullest
+conversation; here at the Plutonian the stomach had taken the place of
+the soul, and it was scarcely an exaggeration to say that in the lounges
+people rose up to testify in public about their insides.</p>
+
+<p>The morning after Sylvia&rsquo;s arrival the guests were much excited by the
+visit of the soldiers, who were to camp for a week on the hotel grounds
+and perform various maneuvers. Sylvia observed that everybody talked as
+if a troupe of acrobats was going to visit the hotel; nobody seemed to
+have any idea that the American army served any purpose but the
+entertainment of the public with gymnastic displays. That afternoon the
+regiment marched past the hotel to its camping-ground; the band played
+the &ldquo;Star-spangled Banner&rdquo;; all the visitors grouped upon the steps in
+front clapped their hands; the colonel took off his hat, waved it at the
+audience, and bowed like a successful<a name="page_371" id="page_371"></a> author. At first Sylvia
+considered his behavior undignified and absurd; afterward she rather
+approved of its friendliness, its absence of pomp and arrogance, its
+essentially democratic inspiration&mdash;in a word, its familiarity.</p>
+
+<p>The proprietor of the Plutonian, a leading political &ldquo;boss,&rdquo; was so much
+moved by the strains of the music, the martial bearing of the men, and
+the opportunity of self-advertisement, that he invited the officers of
+the regiment to mess free in the hotel during their visit. Everybody
+praised Mr. O&rsquo;Halloran&rsquo;s generosity and patriotism, the more warmly
+because it gave everybody an occasion to commiserate with the officers
+upon their absurdly small pay. Such commiseration gratified the
+individual&rsquo;s sense of superiority and made it easy for him to brag about
+his own success in life. Sylvia resented the business man&rsquo;s point of
+view about his national army; it was almost as patronizing as an
+Englishman&rsquo;s attitude to an artist or a German&rsquo;s to a woman or a
+Frenchman&rsquo;s to anybody but a Frenchman. Snobbishness was only tolerable
+about the past. Perhaps that was the reason why the Italians were the
+only really democratic nation she had met so far. The Italians were
+aristocrats trying to become tradesmen; the rest of mankind were
+tradesmen striving to appear aristocrats.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had sung her songs and was watching the roulette, when a young
+lieutenant who had been playing with great seriousness turned to her and
+asked if she was not British.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We got to know some British officers out in China,&rdquo; he told her. &ldquo;We
+couldn&rsquo;t seem to understand them at first, but afterward we found out
+they were good boys, really. Only the trouble was we were never properly
+introduced at first, and that worried them some. Say, there&rsquo;s a
+fellow-countryman of yours sick in Sulphurville. I kind of found out by
+accident this morning, because I went into a drug-store and the
+storekeeper was handing out some medicine to a colored girl who was
+arguing with him whether she should pay for it. Seems this young
+Britisher&rsquo;s expecting his remittance. That&rsquo;s a God-awful place to be
+stranded, Sulphurville.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They chatted for a while together. Sylvia liked the<a name="page_372" id="page_372"></a> simple
+good-fellowship of the young American, his inquisitiveness about her
+reasons for coming to sing at the Plutonian Hotel, and his frank
+anticipation of any curiosity on her side by telling her all about
+himself and his career since he left West Point. He was amused by her
+account of the excitement over the passage of the troops through the
+villages, and seized the occasion to moralize on the vastness of a
+country through one state of which a regiment could march and surprise
+half the inhabitants with their first view of an American soldier.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Seems kind of queer,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But very Arcadian,&rdquo; Sylvia added.</p>
+
+<p>When Sylvia went to bed her mind reverted to the young Englishman; at
+the time she had scarcely taken in the significance of what the officer
+had told her. Now suddenly the sense of his loneliness and suffering
+overwhelmed her fancy. She thought of the desolation of that railway
+junction where she had waited for the train to Sulphurville, of the heat
+and the grasshoppers and the flat, endless greenery. Even that brief
+experience of being alone in the heart of America had frightened her.
+She had not taken heed of the vastness of it while she was traveling
+with the company, and here at the hotel definitely placed as an
+entertainer she had a certain security. But to be alone and penniless in
+Sulphurville, to be ill, moreover, and dependent on the charity of
+foreigners, so much the more foreign because, though they spoke the same
+language, they spoke it with strange differences like the people in a
+dream. The words were the same, but they expressed foreign ideas. Sylvia
+began to speculate upon the causes that had led to this young
+Englishman&rsquo;s being stranded in Sulphurville. There seemed no
+explanation, unless he were perhaps an actor who had been abandoned
+because he was too ill to travel with the company. At this idea she
+almost got out of bed to walk through the warm frog-haunted night to his
+rescue. She became sentimental about him in the dark. It seemed to her
+that nothing in the world was so pitiable as a sick artist; always the
+servant of the public&rsquo;s curiosity, he was now the helpless prey of it.
+He would be treated with the contempt that is accorded to sick animals
+whose utility is at an end. She<a name="page_373" id="page_373"></a> visualized him in the care of a woman
+like the one who had leaned out of that railway shed in a spotted
+green-and-yellow wrapper. Yet, after all, he might not be a mountebank;
+there was really no reason to suppose he was anything but poor and
+lonely, though that was enough indeed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I must be getting very old,&rdquo; Sylvia said to herself. &ldquo;Only approaching
+senility could excuse this prodigal effusion of what is really almost
+maternal lust. I&rsquo;ve grown out of any inclination to ask myself why I
+think things or why I do things. I&rsquo;ve nothing now but an immense desire
+to do&mdash;do&mdash;do. I was beginning to think this desperate determination to
+be impressed, like a child whose father is hiding conspicuously behind
+the door, was due to America. It&rsquo;s nothing to do with America; it&rsquo;s
+myself. It&rsquo;s a kind of moral and mental drunkenness. I know what I&rsquo;m
+doing. I&rsquo;m entirely responsible for my actions. That&rsquo;s the way a drunken
+man argues. Nobody is so utterly convinced of his rightness and
+reasonableness and judgment as a drunken man. I might argue with myself
+till morning that it&rsquo;s ridiculous to excite myself over the prospect of
+helping an Englishman stranded in Sulphurville, but when, worn out with
+self-conviction, I fall asleep, I shall wake on tiptoe, as it were. I
+shall be quite violently awake at once. The fact is I&rsquo;m absolutely tired
+of observing human nature. I just want to tumble right into the middle
+of its confusion and forget how to criticize anybody or anything. What&rsquo;s
+the good of meeting a drunken man with generalizations about human
+conduct or direction or progression? He won&rsquo;t listen to generalizations,
+because drunkenness is the apotheosis of the individual. That&rsquo;s why
+drunken people are always so earnestly persuasive, so anxious to
+convince the unintoxicated observer that it is better to walk on
+all-fours than upright. Eccentricity becomes a moral passion; every
+drunken man is a missionary of the peculiar. At the present moment I&rsquo;m
+in the mental state that, did I possess an honest taste for liquor,
+would make me get up and uncork the brandy-bottle. It&rsquo;s a kind of
+defiant self-expression. Oh, that poor young Englishman lying alone in
+Sulphurville! To-morrow, to-morrow! Who knows? Perhaps I really shall
+find that I am necessary to somebody. Even as a child I conceived the
+notion<a name="page_374" id="page_374"></a> of being indispensable. I want somebody to say to me: &lsquo;You! You!
+What should I have done without you?&rsquo; I suppose every woman feels that;
+I suppose that is the maternal instinct. But I don&rsquo;t believe many women
+can feel it so sharply as I do, because very few women have ever been
+compelled by circumstances to develop their personalities so early and
+so fully, and then find that nobody wants that personality. I could cry
+just at the mere notion of being wanted, and surely this young
+Englishman, whoever he is, will want me. Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia, you&rsquo;re
+deliberately working yourself up to an adventure! And who has a better
+right? Tell me that. That&rsquo;s exactly why I praised the drunkard; he knows
+how to dodge self-consciousness. Why shouldn&rsquo;t you set out to have an
+adventure? You shall, my dear. And if you&rsquo;re disappointed? You&rsquo;ve been
+disappointed before. Damn those tree-frogs! Like all croakers, they
+disturb oblivion. I wonder if he&rsquo;d like my new trunk. And I wonder how
+old he is. I&rsquo;m assuming that he&rsquo;s young, but he may be a matted old
+tramp.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia woke next morning, as she had prefigured herself, on tiptoe; at
+breakfast she was sorry for all the noisy people round her, so important
+to her was life seeming. She set out immediately afterward to walk along
+the hot, dusty road to the town, elated by the notion of leaving behind
+her the restlessness and stark cleanliness of the big hotel. The main
+street of Sulphurville smelled of straw and dry grain; and if it had not
+been for the flies she would have found the air sweet enough after the
+damp exhalations of brimstone that permeated the atmosphere of the
+Plutonian and its surroundings. The flies, however, tainted everything;
+not even the drug-store was free from them. Sylvia inquired for the
+address of the Englishman, and the druggist looked at her sharply. She
+wondered if he was hoping for the settlement of his account.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Madden&rsquo;s the name, ain&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; the druggist asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Madden,&rdquo; she repeated, mechanically. A wave of emotion flooded her
+mind, receded, and left it strewn with the jetsam of the past. The
+druggist and the drug-store faded out of her consciousness; she was in
+Colonial Terrace again, insisting upon Arthur&rsquo;s immediate departure.<a name="page_375" id="page_375"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a little beast I was!&rdquo; she thought, and a desire came over her to
+atone for former heartlessness by her present behavior. Then abruptly
+she realized that the Madden of Sulphurville was not necessarily, or
+even probably, the Arthur Madden of Hampstead. Yet behind this
+half-disappointment lay the conviction that it was he. &ldquo;Which accounts
+for my unusual excitement,&rdquo; Sylvia murmured. She heard herself calmly
+asking the storekeeper for his address.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Auburn Hotel,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;Thank you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The storekeeper seemed inclined to question her further; no doubt he
+wished to be able to count upon his bill&rsquo;s being paid; but Sylvia
+hurried from the shop before he could speak.</p>
+
+<p>The Auburn Hotel, Sulphurville, was perhaps not worse than a hotel of
+the same class would have been in England, but the colored servant added
+just enough to the prevailing squalor to make it seem worse. When Sylvia
+asked to see Mr. Madden the colored servant stared at her, wiped her
+mouth with her apron, and called:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mrs. Lebus!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Julie, is that you? What is it you want?&rdquo; twanged a voice from
+within that sounded like a cat caught in a guitar.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re wanted right now, Mrs. Lebus,&rdquo; the servant called back.</p>
+
+<p>The duet was like a parody of a &rsquo;coon song, and Sylvia found herself
+humming to ragtime:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&ldquo;Oh, Mrs. Lebus, you&rsquo;re wanted,<br /></span>
+<span class="ist">Oh yes, you&rsquo;re wanted, sure you&rsquo;re wanted, Mrs. Lebus,<br /></span>
+<span class="ist">You&rsquo;re wanted, you&rsquo;re wanted,<br /></span>
+<span class="ist">You&rsquo;re wanted&mdash;right now.&rdquo;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lebus was one of those women whose tongues are always hunting, like
+eager terriers. With evident reluctance she postponed the chase of an
+artful morsel that had taken refuge in some difficult country at the
+back of her mouth, and faced the problem of admitting Sylvia to the sick
+man&rsquo;s room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You a relative?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia shook her head.<a name="page_376" id="page_376"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps you&rsquo;ve come about his remittance. He told me he was expecting a
+hundred dollars any time. You staying in Sulphurville?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia understood that the apparent disinclination to admit her was only
+due to unsatisfied curiosity and that there was not necessarily any
+suspicion of her motives. At this moment something particularly
+delicious ran across the path of Mrs. Lebus&rsquo;s tongue, and Sylvia took
+advantage of the brief pause during which it was devoured, to penetrate
+into the lobby, where a melancholy citizen in a frock-coat and a straw
+hat was testing the point of a nib upon his thumb, whether with the
+intention of offering it to Mrs. Lebus to pick her teeth or of writing a
+letter was uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Scipio!&rdquo; said Mrs. Lebus. She pronounced it &ldquo;Skipio.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wal?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She wants to see Mr. Madden.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The landlady turned to Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Lebus don&rsquo;t have no objections. Julie, take Miss&mdash;What did you say
+your name was?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia saw no reason against falling into what Mrs. Lebus evidently
+considered was a skilfully laid trap, and told her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Scarlett,&rdquo; Mr. Lebus repeated. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t possess that name in
+Sulphurville. Yes, ma&rsquo;am, that name&rsquo;s noo to Sulphurville.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sakes alive, Scipio, are you going to keep Miss Scarlett hanging around
+all day whiles you gossip about Sulphurville?&rdquo; his wife asked. Aware of
+her husband&rsquo;s enthusiasm for his native place, she may have foreseen a
+dissertation upon its wonders unless she were ruthless.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Julie&rsquo;ll take you up to his apartment. And don&rsquo;t you forget to knock
+before you open the door, Julie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On the way up-stairs in the wake of the servant, Sylvia wondered how she
+should explain her intrusion to a stranger, even though he were an
+Englishman. She had so firmly decided to herself it was Arthur that she
+could not make any plans for meeting anybody else. Julie was quite ready
+to open the door of the bedroom and let Sylvia enter<a name="page_377" id="page_377"></a> unannounced; she
+was surprised by being requested to go in first and ask the gentleman if
+he could receive Miss Scarlett. However, she yielded to foreign
+eccentricity, and a moment later ushered Sylvia in.</p>
+
+<p>It was Arthur Madden; and Sylvia, from a mixture of penitence for the
+way she treated him at Colonial Terrace, of self-congratulation for
+being so sure beforehand that it was he, and from swift compassion for
+his illness and loneliness, ran across the room and greeted him with a
+kiss.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How on earth did you get into this horrible hole?&rdquo; Arthur asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear, I knew it was you when I heard your name.&rdquo; Breathlessly she
+poured out the story of how she had found him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you&rsquo;d made up your mind to play the Good Samaritan to whoever it
+was&mdash;you never guessed for a moment at first that it was me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She forgave him the faint petulance because he was ill, and also because
+it brought back to her with a new vividness long bygone jealousies,
+restoring a little more of herself as she once was, nearly thirteen
+years ago. How little he had changed outwardly, and much of what change
+there was might be put down to his illness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Arthur, do you remember Maria?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled. &ldquo;He died only about two years ago. He lived with my mother
+after I went on the stage.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia wondered to him why they had never met all these years. She had
+known so many people on the stage, but then, of course, she had been a
+good deal out of England. What had made Arthur go on the stage first? He
+had never talked of it in the old days.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I used always to be keen on music.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia whistled the melody that introduced them to each other, and he
+smiled again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My mother still plays that sometimes, and I&rsquo;ve often thought of you
+when she does. She lives at Dulwich now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They talked for a while of Hampstead and laughed over the escape.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You were a most extraordinary kid,&rdquo; he told her. &ldquo;Because, after all, I
+was seventeen at the time&mdash;older<a name="page_378" id="page_378"></a> than you. Good Lord! I&rsquo;m thirty now,
+and you must be twenty-eight!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To Sylvia it was much more incredible that he should be thirty; he
+seemed so much younger than she, lying here in this frowsy room, or was
+it that she felt so much older than he?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But how on earth <i>did</i> you get stranded in this place?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was touring with a concert party. The last few years I&rsquo;ve practically
+given up the stage proper. I don&rsquo;t know why, really, for I was doing
+quite decently, but concert-work was more amusing, somehow. One wasn&rsquo;t
+so much at the beck and call of managers.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia knew, by the careful way in which he was giving his reasons for
+abandoning the stage, that he had not yet produced the real reason. It
+might have been baffled ambition or it might have been a woman.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, we came to Sulphurville,&rdquo; said Arthur. He hesitated for a moment.
+Obviously there had been a woman. &ldquo;We came to Sulphurville,&rdquo; he went on,
+&ldquo;and played at the hotel you&rsquo;re playing at now&mdash;a rotten hole,&rdquo; he
+added, with retrospective bitterness. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how it was, but I
+suppose I got keen on the gambling&mdash;anyway, I had a row with the other
+people in the show, and when they left I refused to go with them. I
+stayed behind and got keen on the gambling.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was after the row that you took to roulette?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, as a matter if fact, I had a row with a girl. She treated me
+rather badly, and I stayed on. I lost a good deal of money. Well, it
+wasn&rsquo;t a very large sum, as a matter of fact, but it was all I had, and
+then I fell ill. I caught cold and I was worried over things. I cabled
+to my mother for some money, but there&rsquo;s been no reply. I&rsquo;m afraid she&rsquo;s
+had difficulty in raising it. She quarreled with my father&rsquo;s people when
+I went on the stage. Damned narrow-minded set of yokels. Furious because
+I wouldn&rsquo;t take up farming. How I hate narrow-minded people!&rdquo; And with
+an invalid&rsquo;s fretful intolerance he went on grumbling at the
+ineradicable characteristics of an English family four thousand miles
+away.<a name="page_379" id="page_379"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course something may have happened to my mother,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;You may
+be sure that if anything had those beasts would never take the trouble
+to write and tell me. It would be a pleasure to them if they could annoy
+me in any way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A swift criticism of Arthur&rsquo;s attitude toward the possibility of his
+mother&rsquo;s death rose to Sylvia&rsquo;s mind, but she repressed it, pleading
+with herself to excuse him because he was ill and overstrained. She was
+positively determined to see henceforth nothing but good in people, and
+in her anxiety to confirm herself in this resolve she was ready not
+merely to exaggerate everything in Arthur&rsquo;s favor, but even to twist any
+failure on his side into actual merit. Thus when she hastened to put her
+own resources at his disposal, and found him quite ready to accept
+without protest her help, she choked back the comparison with Jack
+Airdale&rsquo;s attitude in similar circumstances, and was quite angry with
+herself, saying how much more naturally Arthur had received her
+good-will and how splendid it was to find such simplicity and sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll nurse you till you&rsquo;re quite well, and then why shouldn&rsquo;t we take
+an engagement together somewhere?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Arthur became enthusiastic over this suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve not heard me sing yet. My throat&rsquo;s still too weak, but you&rsquo;ll be
+surprised, Sylvia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t got anything but a very deep voice,&rdquo; she told him. &ldquo;But I can
+usually make an impression.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can you? Of course, where I&rsquo;ve always been held back is by lack of
+money. I&rsquo;ve never been able to afford to buy good songs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Arthur began to sketch out for himself a most radiant future, and as he
+talked Sylvia thought again how incredible it was that he should be
+older than herself. Yet was not this youthful enthusiasm exactly what
+she required? It was just the capacity of Arthur&rsquo;s for thinking he had a
+future that was going to make life tremendously worth while for her,
+tremendously interesting&mdash;oh, it was impossible not to believe in the
+decrees of fate, when at the very moment of her greatest longing to be
+needed by somebody she had met Arthur again. She could be everything to
+him, tend him through his illness, provide him with<a name="page_380" id="page_380"></a> money to rid
+himself of the charity of Mrs. Lebus and the druggist, help him in his
+career, and watch over his fidelity to his ambition. She remembered how,
+years ago at Hampstead, his mother had watched over him; she could
+recall every detail of the room and see Mrs. Madden interrupt one of her
+long sonatas to be sure Arthur was not sitting in a draught. And it had
+been she who had heedlessly lured him away from that tender mother.
+There was poetic justice in this opportunity of reparation now accorded
+to her. To be sure, it had been nothing but a childish
+escapade&mdash;reparation was too strong a word; but there was something so
+neat about this encounter years afterward in a place like Sulphurville.
+How pale he was, which, nevertheless, made him more romantic to look at;
+how thin and white his hands were! She took one of them in her own boy&rsquo;s
+hands, as so many people had called them, and clasped it with the
+affection that one gives to small helpless things, to children and
+kittens, an affection that is half gratitude because one feels good-will
+rising like a sweet fountain from the depth of one&rsquo;s being, the
+freshness of which playing upon the spirit is so dear, that no words are
+enough to bless the wand that made the stream gush forth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall come and see you all day,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;But I think I ought
+not to break my contract at the Plutonian.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;ll come and live here,&rdquo; Arthur begged. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve no idea how
+horrible it is. There was a cockroach in the soup last night, and of
+course there are bugs. For goodness&rsquo; sake, Sylvia, don&rsquo;t give me hope
+and then dash it away from me. I tell you I&rsquo;ve had a hell of a time in
+this cursed hole. Listen to the bed; it sounds as if it would collapse
+at any moment. And the bugs have got on my nerves to such a pitch that I
+spend the whole time looking at spots on the ceiling and fancying
+they&rsquo;ve moved. It&rsquo;s so hot, too; everything&rsquo;s rotted with heat. You
+mustn&rsquo;t desert me. You must come and stay here with me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t you move up to the Plutonian?&rdquo; Sylvia suggested. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll
+tell you what I&rsquo;ll do. I&rsquo;ll get one of the doctors to come and look at
+you, and if he thinks it&rsquo;s possible you shall move up there at once.
+Poor boy, it really is too ghastly here.&rdquo;<a name="page_381" id="page_381"></a></p>
+
+<p>Arthur was nearly weeping with self-pity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, my dear girl, it&rsquo;s much worse than you think. You know those
+horrible birds&rsquo; bath-tubs in which they bring your food at third-rate
+American hotels, loathsome saucers with squash and bits of grit in
+watery milk that they call cereals, and bony bits of chicken, well,
+imagine being fed like that when you&rsquo;re ill; imagine your bed covered
+with those infernal saucers. One of them always used to get left behind
+when Julie cleared away, and it always used to fall with a crash on the
+floor, and I used to wonder if the mess would tempt the cockroaches into
+my room. And then Lebus used to come up and make noises in his throat
+and brag about Sulphurville, and I used to know by his wandering eye
+that he was looking for what he called the cuspidor, which I&rsquo;d put out
+of sight. And Mrs. Lebus used to come up and suck her teeth at me until
+I felt inclined to strangle her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The sooner you&rsquo;re moved away the better,&rdquo; Sylvia said, decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes, if you think it can be managed. But if not, Sylvia, for God&rsquo;s
+sake don&rsquo;t leave me alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you really glad to see me?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, my dear, it was like heaven opening before one&rsquo;s eyes!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me about the girl you were fond of,&rdquo; she said, abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you want to talk about her for? There&rsquo;s nothing to tell you,
+really. She had red hair.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was glad that Arthur spoke of her with so little interest; it
+certainly was definitely comforting to feel the utter dispossession of
+that red-haired girl.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to let these people suppose that
+I&rsquo;m your long-lost relative. I shall pay their bill and bring the doctor
+down to see you. Arthur, I&rsquo;m glad I&rsquo;ve found you. Do you remember the
+cab-horse? Oh, and do you remember the cats in the area and the jug of
+water that splashed you? You were so unhappy, almost as unhappy as you
+were when I found you here. Have you always been treated unkindly?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have had a pretty hard time,&rdquo; Arthur said.<a name="page_382" id="page_382"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but you mustn&rsquo;t be sorry for yourself,&rdquo; she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, seriously, Sylvia, I&rsquo;ve always had a lot of people against me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but that&rsquo;s such fun. You simply must be amused by life when you&rsquo;re
+with me. I&rsquo;m not hard-hearted a bit, really, but you mustn&rsquo;t be offended
+with me when I tell you that really there&rsquo;s something a tiny bit funny
+in your being stranded in the Auburn Hotel, Sulphurville.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad you think so,&rdquo; said Arthur, in rather a hurt tone of voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be cross, you foolish creature.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a bit cross. Only I <i>would</i> like you to understand that my
+illness isn&rsquo;t a joke. You don&rsquo;t suppose I should let you pay my bills
+and do all this for me unless it were really something serious.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia put her hand on his mouth. &ldquo;I forgive you,&rdquo; she murmured,
+&ldquo;because you really are ill. Oh, Arthur, <i>do</i> you remember Hube? What
+fun everything is!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia left him and went down-stairs to arrange matters with Mrs. Lebus.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was a relation, after all,&rdquo; she told her. &ldquo;The Maddens have been
+related to us for hundreds of years.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My! My! Now ain&rsquo;t that real queer? Oh, Scipio!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lebus came into view cleaning his nails with the same pen, and was
+duly impressed with the coincidence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Darned if I don&rsquo;t tell Pastor Gollick after next Sunday meeting. He&rsquo;s
+got a kind of hankering after the ways of Providence. Gee! Why, it&rsquo;s a
+sermonizing cinch.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was general satisfaction in the Auburn Hotel over the payment of
+Arthur&rsquo;s bill.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not that I wouldn&rsquo;t have trusted him for another month and more,&rdquo; Mrs.
+Lebus affirmed. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s a satisfaction to be able to turn round and
+say to the neighbors, &lsquo;What did I tell you?&rsquo; Folks in Sulphurville was
+quite sure I&rsquo;d never be paid back a cent. This&rsquo;ll learn them!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lebus, in whose throat the doubts of the neighbors had gathered to
+offend his faith, cleared them out forever in one sonorous rauque.</p>
+
+<p>The druggist&rsquo;s account was settled, and though, when<a name="page_383" id="page_383"></a> Sylvia first heard
+him, he had been doubtful if his medicine was doing the patient any
+good, he was now most anxious that he should continue with the
+prescription. That afternoon one of the doctors in residence at the
+Plutonian visited Arthur and at once advised his removal thither.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur made rapid progress when he was once out of the hospitable
+squalor of the Auburn Hotel, and the story of Sylvia&rsquo;s discovery of her
+unfortunate cousin became a romantic episode for all the guests of the
+Plutonian, a never-failing aid to conversation between wives waiting for
+their husbands to emerge from their daily torture at the hands of the
+masseurs, who lived like imps in the sulphurous glooms of the bath
+below; maybe it even provided the victims themselves with a sufficiently
+absorbing topic to mitigate the penalties of their cure.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur himself expanded wonderfully as the subject of so much
+discussion. It gave Sylvia the greatest pleasure to see the way in which
+his complexion was recovering its old ruddiness and his steps their
+former vigor; but she did not approve of the way in which the story kept
+pace with Arthur&rsquo;s expansion. She confided to him how very personally
+the news of the sick Englishman had affected her and how she had made up
+her mind from the beginning that it was a stranded actor, and afterward,
+when she heard in the drug-store the name Madden, that it actually was
+Arthur himself. He, however, was unable to stay content with such an
+incomplete telepathy; indulging human nature&rsquo;s preference for what is
+not true, both in his own capacity as a liar and in his listeners&rsquo; avid
+and wanton credulity, he transferred a woman&rsquo;s intimate hopes into a
+quack&rsquo;s tale.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you didn&rsquo;t see your cousin&rsquo;s spirit go up in the elevator when you
+were standing in the lobby? Now isn&rsquo;t that perfectly discouraging?&rdquo;
+complained a lady with an astral reputation in Illinois.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid the story&rsquo;s been added to a good deal,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+sorry to disappoint the faithful.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s shy about giving us her experiences,&rdquo; said another lady from
+Iowa. &ldquo;I know I was just thrilled when I heard it. It seemed to me the
+most wonderful story I&rsquo;d<a name="page_384" id="page_384"></a> ever imagined. I guess you felt kind of queer
+when you saw him lying on a bed in your room.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He was in his own room,&rdquo; Sylvia corrected, &ldquo;and I didn&rsquo;t feel at all
+queer. It was he who felt queer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t she secretive?&rdquo; exclaimed the lady from Illinois. &ldquo;Why, I was
+going to ask you to write it up in our society&rsquo;s magazine, <i>The Flash</i>.
+We don&rsquo;t print any stories that aren&rsquo;t established as true. Well, your
+experience has given me real courage, Miss Scarlett. Thank you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The astral enthusiast clasped Sylvia&rsquo;s hand and gazed at her as
+earnestly as if she had noticed a smut on her nose.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m sure we ought to be grateful,&rdquo; said the lady from Iowa. &ldquo;My!
+Our footsteps are treading in the unseen every day of our lives! You
+certainly are privileged,&rdquo; she added, wrapping Sylvia in a damp mist of
+benign fatuity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t elaborate everything so,&rdquo; Sylvia begged of Arthur
+when she had escaped from the deification of the two psychical ladies.
+&ldquo;It makes me feel so dreadfully old to see myself assuming a legendary
+shape before my own eyes. It&rsquo;s as painful as being stuffed
+alive&mdash;stuffed alive with nonsense,&rdquo; she added, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur&rsquo;s expansion, however, was not merely grafted on Sylvia&rsquo;s
+presentiment of his discovery in Sulphurville; he blossomed upon his own
+stock, a little exotically, perhaps, like the clumps of fiery cannas in
+the grounds of the hotel, but with a quite conspicuous effectiveness.
+Like the cannas, he required protection from frost, for there was a very
+real sensitiveness beneath all that flamboyance, and it was the
+knowledge of this that kept Sylvia from criticizing him at all severely.
+Besides, even if he did bask a little too complacently in expressions of
+interest and sympathy, it was a very natural reaction from his wretched
+solitude at the Auburn Hotel, for which he could scarcely be held
+culpable, least of all by herself. Moreover, was not this so visible
+recovery the best tribute he could have paid to her care? If he appeared
+to strut&mdash;for, indeed, there was a hint of strutting in his demeanor&mdash;he
+only did so from a sense of well-being. Finally, if any further defense
+was necessary, he was an Englishman among a<a name="page_385" id="page_385"></a> crowd of Americans; the
+conditions demanded a good deal of competitive self-assertion.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile summer was gone; the trees glowed with every shade of crimson.
+Sylvia could not help feeling that there was something characteristic in
+the demonstrative richness of the American fall; though she was far from
+wishing to underrate its beauty, the display was oppressive. She sighed
+for the melancholy of the European autumn, a conventional emotion, no
+doubt, but so closely bound up with old associations that she could not
+wish to lose it. This cremation of summer, these leafy pyrotechnics,
+this holocaust of color, seemed a too barbaric celebration of the year&rsquo;s
+death. It was significant that autumn with its long-drawn-out suggestion
+of decline should here have failed to displace fall; for there was
+something essentially catastrophic in this ruthless bonfire of foliage.
+It was not surprising that the aboriginal inhabitants should have been
+redskins, nor that the gorgeousness of nature should have demanded from
+the humanity it overwhelmed a readjustment of decorative values which
+superficial observers were apt to mistake for gaudy ostentation. Sylvia
+could readily imagine that if she had been accustomed from childhood to
+these crimson woods, these beefy robins, and these saucer-eyed daisies,
+she might have found her own more familiar landscapes merely tame and
+pretty; but as it was she felt dazzled and ill at ease. It&rsquo;s a little
+more and how much it is, she told herself, pondering the tantalizing
+similarity that was really as profoundly different as an Amazonian
+forest from Kensington Gardens.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur&rsquo;s first flamboyance was much toned down by all that natural
+splendor; in fact, it no longer existed, and Sylvia found a freshening
+charm in his company amid these crimson trees and unfamiliar birds, and
+in this staring white hotel with its sulphurous exhalations. His
+complete restoration to health, moreover, was a pleasure and a pride
+that nothing could mar, and she found herself planning his happiness and
+prosperity as if she had already transferred to him all she herself
+hoped from life.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of September the long-expected remittance arrived from Mrs.
+Madden, and Sylvia gathered from the<a name="page_386" id="page_386"></a> letter that the poor lady had been
+much puzzled to send the money.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must cable it back to her at once,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, now it&rsquo;s come, is that wise?&rdquo; Arthur objected. &ldquo;She may have
+had some difficulty in getting it, but that&rsquo;s over now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no. It must be cabled back to her. I&rsquo;ve got plenty of money to
+carry us on till we begin to work together.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t go on accepting charity like this,&rdquo; Arthur protested. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+undignified, really. I&rsquo;ve never done such a thing before.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You accepted it from your mother.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but my mother&rsquo;s different.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Only because she&rsquo;s less able to afford it than I am,&rdquo; Sylvia pointed
+out. &ldquo;Look, she&rsquo;s sent you fifty pounds. Think how jolly it would be for
+her suddenly to receive fifty pounds for herself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Arthur warmed to the idea; he could not resist the picture of his
+mother&rsquo;s pleasure, nor the kind of inverted generosity with which it
+seemed to endow himself. He talked away about the arrival of the money
+in England till it almost seemed as if he were sending his mother the
+accumulation of hard-earned savings to buy herself a new piano; that was
+the final purpose to which, in Arthur&rsquo;s expanding fancy, the fifty
+pounds was to be put. Sylvia found his attitude rather boyish and
+charming, and they had an argument, on the way to cable the money back,
+whether it would be better for Mrs. Madden to buy a Bechstein or a
+Blüthner.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia&rsquo;s contract with the Plutonian expired with the first fortnight of
+October, and they decided to see what likelihood there was of work in
+New York before they thought of returning to Europe. They left
+Sulphurville with everybody&rsquo;s good wishes, because everybody owed to
+their romantic meeting an opportunity of telling a really good ghost
+story at first hand, with the liberty of individual elaboration.</p>
+
+<p>New York was very welcome after Sulphurville. They passed the wooded
+heights of the Hudson at dusk in a glow of somber magnificence softened
+by the vapors of the river. It seemed to Sylvia that scarcely ever had
+she contemplated<a name="page_387" id="page_387"></a> a landscape of such restrained splendor, and she
+thought of that young New-Yorker who had preferred not to travel more
+than fifty miles west of his native city, though the motive of his
+loyalty had most improbably been the beauty of the Hudson. She wondered
+if Arthur appreciated New York, but he responded to her enthusiasm with
+the superficial complaints of the Englishman, complaints that when
+tested resolved themselves into conventional formulas of disapproval.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose trite opinions are a comfortable possession,&rdquo; Sylvia said.
+&ldquo;But a good player does not like a piano that is too easy. You complain
+of the morning papers&rsquo; appearing shortly after midnight, but confess
+that in your heart you prefer reading <i>them</i> in bed to reading a London
+evening paper, limp from being carried about in the pocket and with
+whatever is important in it illegible.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But the flaring head-lines,&rdquo; Arthur protested. &ldquo;You surely don&rsquo;t like
+them?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but I do!&rdquo; she avowed. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re as much more amusing than the
+dreary column beneath as tinned tongue is nicer than the dry undulation
+for which you pay twice as much. Head-lines are the poetry of
+journalism, and, after all, what would the Parthenon be without its
+frieze?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course you&rsquo;d argue black was white,&rdquo; Arthur said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s a better standpoint than accepting everything as gray.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Most things are gray.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no, they&rsquo;re not! Some things are. Old men&rsquo;s beards and dirty linen
+and Tschaikowsky&rsquo;s music and oysters and Wesleyans.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There you go,&rdquo; he jeered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where do I go?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Right off the point,&rdquo; said Arthur, triumphantly. &ldquo;No woman can argue.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but I&rsquo;m not a woman,&rdquo; Sylvia contradicted. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a mythical female
+monster, don&rsquo;t you know&mdash;one of those queer beasts with claws like
+hay-rakes and breasts like peg-tops and a tail like a fish.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean a Sphinx?&rdquo; Arthur asked, in his literal way. He was always
+rather hostile toward her extravagant fancies, because he thought it
+dangerous to encourage<a name="page_388" id="page_388"></a> a woman in much the same way as he would have
+objected to encouraging a beggar.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, I really meant a grinx, which is rather like a Sphinx, but the
+father was a griffin&mdash;the mother in both cases was a minx, of course.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What was the father of the Sphinx?&rdquo; he asked, rather ungraciously.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia clapped her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I knew you wouldn&rsquo;t be able to resist the question. A sphere&mdash;a woman&rsquo;s
+sphere, of course, which is nearly as objectionable a beast as a lady&rsquo;s
+man.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You do talk rot sometimes,&rdquo; said Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you ever have fancies?&rdquo; she demanded, mockingly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, of course, but practical fancies.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Practical fancies,&rdquo; Sylvia echoed. &ldquo;Oh, my dear, it sounds like a fairy
+in Jaeger combinations! You don&rsquo;t know what fun it is talking rot to
+you, Arthur. It&rsquo;s like hoaxing a chicken with marbles. You walk away
+from my conversation with just the same disgusted dignity.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t changed a bit,&rdquo; Arthur proclaimed. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re just the same as
+you were at fifteen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, who had been teasing him with a breath of malice, was penitent
+at once; after all, he had once run away with her, and it would be
+difficult for any woman of twenty-eight not to rejoice a little at the
+implication of thirteen undestructive years.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That last remark was like a cocoanut thrown by a monkey from the top of
+the cocoanut-palm,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You meant it to be crushing, but it was
+crushed instead, and quite deliciously sweet inside.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>All the time that Sylvia had been talking so lightly, while the train
+was getting nearer and nearer to New York, there had lain at the back of
+her mind the insistent problem of her relationship to Arthur. The
+impossibility of their going on together as friends and nothing more had
+been firmly fixed upon her consciousness for a long time now, and the
+reason of this was to be sought for less in Arthur than in herself. So
+far they had preserved all the outward semblances of friendship, but she
+knew that one look from her eyes deep into his would transform him into<a name="page_389" id="page_389"></a>
+her lover. She gave Arthur credit for telling himself quite sincerely
+that it would be &ldquo;caddish&rdquo; to make love to her while he remained under
+what he would consider a grave obligation; and because with his
+temperament it would be as much in the ordinary routine of the day to
+make love to a woman as to dress himself in the morning. She praised his
+decorum and was really half grateful to him for managing to keep his
+balance on the very small pedestal that she had provided. She might
+fairly presume, too, that if she let Arthur fall in love with her he
+would wish to marry her. Why should she not marry him? It was impossible
+to answer without accusing herself of a cynicism that she was far from
+feeling, yet without which she could not explain even to herself her
+quite definite repulsion from the idea of marrying him. The future,
+really, now, the very immediate future, must be flung to chance; it was
+hopeless to arrogate to her forethought the determination of it;
+besides, here was New York already.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;d better go to my old hotel,&rdquo; Sylvia suggested. Was it the
+reflection of her own perplexity, or did she detect in Arthur&rsquo;s accents
+a note of relief, as if he too had been watching the Palisades of the
+Hudson and speculating upon the far horizon they concealed?</p>
+
+<p>They dined at Rector&rsquo;s, and after dinner they walked down Broadway into
+Madison Square, where upon this mild October night the Metropolitan
+Tower, that best of all the Gargantuan baby&rsquo;s toys, seemed to challenge
+the indifferent moon. They wandered up Madison Avenue, which was dark
+after the winking sky-signs of Broadway and with its not very tall
+houses held a thought of London in the darkness. But when Sylvia turned
+to look back it was no longer London, for she could see the great,
+illuminated hands and numerals of the clock in the Metropolitan flashing
+from white to red for the hour. This clock without a dial-plate was the
+quietest of the Gargantuan baby&rsquo;s toys, for it did not strike; one was
+conscious of the almost pathetic protest against all those other
+damnably noisy toys: one felt he might become so enamoured of its pretty
+silence that to provide himself with a new diversion he might take to
+doubling the hours to keep pace with the rapidity of the life with which
+he played.<a name="page_390" id="page_390"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s almost as if we were walking up Haverstock Hill again,&rdquo; said
+Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And we&rsquo;re grown up now,&rdquo; Sylvia murmured. &ldquo;Oh, dreadfully grown up,
+really!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They walked on for a while in silence. It was impossible to keep back
+the temptation to cheat time by leaping over the gulf of years and being
+what they were when last they walked along together like this. Sylvia
+kept looking over her shoulder at the bland clock hanging in the sky
+behind them; at this distance the fabric of the tower had melted into
+the night and was no longer visible, which gave to the clock a strange
+significance and made it a simulacrum of time itself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t changed a bit,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you remember when you told me I looked like a cow? It was after&rdquo;&mdash;he
+breathed perceptibly faster&mdash;&ldquo;after I kissed you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She would not ascribe his remembering what she had called him to an
+imperfectly healed scar of vanity, but with kindlier thoughts turned it
+to a memento of his affection for her. After all, she had loved him
+then; it had been a girl&rsquo;s love, but did there ever come with age a
+better love than that first flushed gathering of youth&rsquo;s opening
+flowers?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia, I&rsquo;ve thought about you ever since. When you drove me away from
+Colonial Terrace I felt like killing myself. Surely we haven&rsquo;t met again
+for nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it nothing unless I love you?&rdquo; she asked, fiercely, striving to turn
+the words into weapons to pierce the recesses of his thoughts and blunt
+themselves against a true heart.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah no, I won&rsquo;t say that,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Besides, I haven&rsquo;t the right to
+talk about love. You&rsquo;ve been&mdash;Sylvia, I can&rsquo;t tell you what you&rsquo;ve been
+to me since I met you again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If I could only believe&mdash;oh, but believe with all of me that was and is
+and ever will be&mdash;that I could have been so much.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have, you have.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t take my love as a light thing,&rdquo; she warned him. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not that
+I&rsquo;m wanting so very much for myself, but I want to be so much to you.&rdquo;<a name="page_391" id="page_391"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia, won&rsquo;t you marry me? I couldn&rsquo;t ever take your love lightly.
+Indeed. Really.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, it&rsquo;s not asking me to marry you that means you&rsquo;re serious. I&rsquo;m not
+asking you what your intentions are. I&rsquo;m asking if you want me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia, I want you dreadfully.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, now?&rdquo; she pressed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now and always.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They had stopped without being aware of it. A trolley-car jangled by,
+casting transitory lights that wavered across Arthur&rsquo;s face, and Sylvia
+could see how his eyes were shining. She dreaded lest by adding a few
+conventional words he should spoil what he had said so well, but he
+waited for her, as in the old days he had always waited.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not cultivating this love, like a convalescent patient does for
+his nurse?&rdquo; Sylvia demanded.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped herself abruptly, conscious that every question she put to
+him was ultimately being put to herself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did I ever not love you?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;It was you that grew tired of me.
+It was you that sent me away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t pretend that all these years you&rsquo;ve been waiting for me to come
+back,&rdquo; she scoffed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course not. What I&rsquo;m trying to explain is that we can start now
+where we left off; that is, if you will.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand half timidly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And if I won&rsquo;t?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The hand dropped again to his side, and there was so much wounded
+sensitiveness in the slight gesture that Sylvia caught him to her as if
+he were a child who had fallen and needed comforting.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When I first put my head on your shoulder,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;Oh, how well
+I can remember the day&mdash;such a sparkling day, with London spread out
+like life at our feet. Now we&rsquo;re in the middle of New York, but it seems
+just as far away from us two as London was that day&mdash;and life,&rdquo; she
+added, with a sigh.<a name="page_392" id="page_392"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">C</span>IRCUMSTANCES seemed to applaud almost immediately the step that Sylvia
+had taken. There was no long delay caused by looking for work in New
+York, which might have destroyed romance by its interposition of fretful
+hopes and disappointments. A variety company was going to leave in
+November for a tour in eastern Canada. At least two months would be
+spent in the French provinces, and Sylvia&rsquo;s bilingual accomplishment was
+exactly what the manager wanted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting on,&rdquo; she laughed. &ldquo;I began by singing French songs with an
+English accent; I advanced from that to acting English words with a
+French accent; now I&rsquo;m going to be employed in doing both. But what does
+it matter? The great thing is that we should be together.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That was where Arthur made the difference to her life; he was securing
+her against the loneliness that at twenty-eight was beginning once more
+to haunt her imagination. What did art matter? It had never been
+anything but a refuge.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur himself was engaged to sing, and though he had not such a good
+voice as Claude Raglan, he sang with much better taste and was really
+musical. Sylvia was annoyed to find herself making comparisons between
+Claude and Arthur. It happened at the moment that Arthur was fussing
+about his number on the program, and she could not help being reminded
+of Claude&rsquo;s attitude toward his own artistic importance. She consoled
+herself by thinking that it should always be one of her aims to prevent
+the likeness growing any closer; then she laughed at herself for this
+resolve, which savored of developing Arthur, that process she had always
+so much condemned.</p>
+
+<p>They opened at Toronto, and after playing a week<a name="page_393" id="page_393"></a> Arthur caught a chill
+and was out of the program for a fortnight; this gave Sylvia a fresh
+opportunity of looking after him; and Toronto in wet, raw weather was so
+dreary that, to come back to the invalid after the performance,
+notwithstanding the ineffable discomfort of the hotel, was to come back
+home. During this time Sylvia gave Arthur a history of the years that
+had gone by since they parted, and it puzzled her that he should be so
+jealous of the past. She wondered why she could not feel the same
+jealousy about his past, and she found herself trying to regret that
+red-haired girl and many others on account of the obvious pleasure such
+regrets afforded Arthur. She used to wonder, too, why she always left
+out certain incidents and obscured certain aspects of her own past,
+whether, for instance, she did not tell him about Michael Fane on her
+own account or because she was afraid that Arthur would perceive a
+superficial resemblance between himself and Claude and a very real one
+between herself and Lily, or because she would have resented from Arthur
+the least expression, not so much of contempt as even of mild surprise,
+at Michael&rsquo;s behavior. Another subject she could never discuss with
+Arthur was her mother&rsquo;s love for her father, notwithstanding that his
+own mother&rsquo;s elopement with a groom must have prevented the least
+criticism on his side. Here again she wondered if her reserve was due to
+loyalty or to a vague sense of temperamental repetition that was
+condemning her to stand in the same relation to Arthur as her mother to
+her father. She positively had to run away from the idea that Arthur had
+his prototype; she was shutting him up in a box and scarcely even
+looking at him, which was as good as losing him altogether, really. Even
+when she did look at him she handled him with such exaggerated
+carefulness, for fear of his getting broken, that all the pleasure of
+possession was lost. Perhaps she should have had an equal anxiety to
+preserve intact anybody else with whom she might have thrown in her lot;
+but when she thought over this attitude it was dismaying enough and
+seemed to imply an incapacity on her part to enjoy fully anything in
+life.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve grown out of being destructive; at least I think I have. I wonder
+if the normal process from Jacobinism<a name="page_394" id="page_394"></a> to the intense conservatism of
+age is due to wisdom, jealousy, or fear.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Arthur, what are your politics?&rdquo; she asked, aloud.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up from the game of patience he was playing, a game in which
+he was apt to attribute the pettiest personal motives to the court-cards
+whenever he failed to get out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Politics?&rdquo; he echoed, vaguely. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I ever had any. I suppose
+I&rsquo;m a Conservative. Oh yes, certainly I&rsquo;m a Conservative. That infernal
+knave of hearts is covered now!&rdquo; he added, in an aggrieved voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I didn&rsquo;t cover it,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, dear, of course you didn&rsquo;t. But it really is a most extraordinary
+thing that I always get done by the knaves.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You share your misfortune with the rest of humanity, if that&rsquo;s any
+consolation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Orlone. He was a
+huge Neapolitan with the countenance of a gigantic and swarthy Punch,
+who had been trying to get back to Naples for twenty years, but had been
+prevented at first by his passion for gambling and afterward by an
+unwilling wife and a numerous family. Orlone made even Toronto cheerful,
+and before he had come two paces into a room Sylvia always began to
+laugh. He never said anything deliberately funny except on the stage,
+but laughter emanated from him infectiously, as yawning might. Though he
+had spent twenty years in America, he still spoke the most imperfect
+English; and when he and Sylvia had done laughing at each other they
+used to laugh all over again, she at his English, he at her Italian.
+When they had finished laughing at that Orlone used to swear marvelously
+for Sylvia&rsquo;s benefit whenever she should again visit Sirene; and she
+would teach him equally tremendous oaths in case he should ever come to
+London. When they had finished laughing at this, Orlone would look over
+Arthur&rsquo;s shoulder and, after making the most ridiculous gestures of
+caution, would finally burst out into an absolute roar of laughter right
+in Arthur&rsquo;s ear.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Pazienza</i>,&rdquo; Sylvia would say, pointing to the outspread cards.<a name="page_395" id="page_395"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Brava signora! Come parla bene!</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And of course this was obviously so absurd a statement that it would set
+them off laughing again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are a pair of lunatics,&rdquo; Arthur would protest; he would have liked
+to be annoyed at his game&rsquo;s being interrupted, but he was powerless to
+repulse Orlone&rsquo;s good humor.</p>
+
+<p>When they returned to New York in the spring and Sylvia looked back at
+the tour, she divined how much of her pleasure in it had been owed to
+Orlone&rsquo;s all-pervading mirth. He had really provided the robust and
+full-blooded contrast to Arthur that had been necessary. It was not
+exactly that without him their existence together would have been
+insipid&mdash;oh no, there was nothing insipid about Arthur, but one
+appreciated his delicacy after that rude and massive personality. When
+they had traveled over leagues of snow-covered country, Orlone had
+always lightened the journey with gay Neapolitan songs, and sometimes
+with tender ones like &ldquo;Torno di Surriento.&rdquo; It was then that, gazing out
+over the white waste, she had been able to take Arthur&rsquo;s hand and sigh
+to be sitting with him on some Sirenian cliff, to smell again the
+rosemary and crumble with her fingers the sunburnt earth. But this
+capacity of Orlone&rsquo;s for conjuring up the long Parthenopean shore was
+nothing more than might have been achieved by any terra-cotta Silenus in
+a provincial museum. After Silenus, what nymph would not turn to Hylas
+somewhat gratefully? It had been the greatest fun in the world to drive
+in tinkling sledges through Montreal, with Orlone to tease the driver
+until he was as sore as the head of the bear that in his fur coat he
+resembled; it had been fun to laugh with Orlone in Quebec and Ottawa and
+everywhere else; but after so much laughter it had always been
+particularly delightful to be alone again with Arthur, and to feel that
+he too was particularly enjoying being alone with her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I really do think we get on well together,&rdquo; she said to him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course we do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And was there in the way he agreed with her just the least suggestion
+that he should have been surprised if she<a name="page_396" id="page_396"></a> had not enjoyed his company,
+an almost imperceptible hint of complacency, or was it condescension?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I really must get out of this habit of poking my nose into other
+people&rsquo;s motives,&rdquo; Sylvia told herself. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m like a horrid little boy
+with a new penknife. Arthur could fairly say to me that I forced myself
+upon him. I did really. I went steaming into the Auburn Hotel like a
+salvage-tug. There&rsquo;s the infernal side of obligations&mdash;I can&rsquo;t really
+quite free myself from the notion that Arthur ought to be grateful to
+me. He&rsquo;s in a false position through no fault of his own, and he&rsquo;s
+behaving beautifully. It&rsquo;s my own cheap cynicism that&rsquo;s to blame. I wish
+I could discover some mental bitter aloes that would cure me of biting
+my mind, as I cured myself of biting my nails.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was very glad that Arthur succeeded in getting an engagement that
+spring to act, and that she did not; she was really anxious to let him
+feel that she should be dependent on him for a while. The result would
+have been entirely satisfactory but for one flaw&mdash;the increase in
+Arthur&rsquo;s sense of his own artistic importance. Sylvia would not have
+minded this so much if he had possessed enough of it to make him
+oblivious of the world&rsquo;s opinion, but it was always more of a vanity
+than a pride, chiefly concerned with the personal impression he made. It
+gave him much more real pleasure to be recognized by two shop-girls on
+their afternoon out than to be praised by a leading critic. Sylvia would
+have liked him to be equally contemptuous of either form of flattery,
+but that he should revel in both, and actually esteem more valuable the
+recognition accorded him by a shop-girl&rsquo;s backward glance and a nudge
+from her companion seemed to be lamentable.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why you should despise me for being pleased,&rdquo; Arthur said.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m only pleased because it&rsquo;s a proof that I&rsquo;m getting known.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But they&rsquo;d pay the same compliment to a man with a wen on his nose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No doubt, but also to any famous man,&rdquo; Arthur added.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia could have screamed with irritation at his lack of any sense of
+proportion. Why could he not be like Jack Airdale, who had never
+suffered from any illusion that<a name="page_397" id="page_397"></a> what he was doing, so far as art was
+concerned, was not essentially insignificant? Yet, after all, was she
+not being unreasonable in paying so much attention to a childish piece
+of vanity that was inseparable from the true histrionic temperament?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry, Arthur. I think I&rsquo;m being unfair to you. I only criticize
+you because I want you to be always the best of you. I see your point of
+view, but I was irritated by the giggles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t paying the least attention to the girls.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I wasn&rsquo;t jealous,&rdquo; she said, quickly. &ldquo;Oh no, darling Arthur, even
+with the great affection that I have for you, I shall never be able to
+be jealous of your making eyes at shop-girls.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When Arthur&rsquo;s engagement seemed likely to come to an end in the summer,
+they discussed plans and decided to take a holiday in the country,
+somewhere in Maine or Vermont. Arthur, as usual, set the scene
+beforehand, but as he set it quite in accord with Sylvia&rsquo;s taste she did
+not mind. Indeed, their holiday in Vermont on the borders of Lake
+Champlain was as near as she ever got to being perfectly happy with
+Arthur&mdash;happy, that is, to the point of feeling like a chill the
+prospect of separation. Sylvia was inclined to say that all Arthur&rsquo;s
+faults were due to the theater, and that when one had him like this in
+simple surroundings the best side of him was uppermost and visible, like
+a spun coin that shows a simple head when it falls.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia found that she had brought with her by chance the manuscript of
+the poems given to her by the outcast Englishman in Paris, and Arthur
+was very anxious that she should come back to her idea of rendering
+these. He had already composed a certain number of unimportant songs in
+his career, but now the Muses smiled upon him (or perhaps it might be
+truer to speak of her own smiles, Sylvia thought) with such favor that
+he set a dozen poems to the very accompaniment they wanted, the kind of
+music, moreover, that suited Sylvia&rsquo;s voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must get these done in New York,&rdquo; he said; but that week a letter
+came from Olive Airdale, and Sylvia had a sudden longing for England.
+She did not think she<a name="page_398" id="page_398"></a> would make an effort to do anything in America.
+The truth was that she had supplemented the Englishman&rsquo;s poems with an
+idea of her own to give impressions gathered from her own life. It was
+strange how abruptly the longing to express herself had arrived, but it
+had arrived, with a force and fierceness that were undeniable. It had
+come, too, with that authentic fever of secrecy that she divined a woman
+must feel in the first moment of knowing that she has conceived. She
+could not have imparted her sense of creation to any one else; such an
+intimacy of revelation was too shocking to be contemplated. Somehow she
+was sure that this strange shamefulness was right and that she was
+entitled to hug within herself the conception that would soon enough be
+turned to the travail of birth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By, Jove! Sylvia, this holiday <i>has</i> done you good!&rdquo; Arthur exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>She kissed him because, ignorant though he was of the true reason, she
+owed him thanks for her looks.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia, if we go back to England, do let&rsquo;s be married first.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, because it&rsquo;s not fair on me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, on me. People will always blame me, of course.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What has it got to do with anybody else except me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My mother&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear Arthur,&rdquo; Sylvia interrupted, sharply, &ldquo;if your mother ran away
+with a groom, she&rsquo;ll be the first person to sympathize with my point of
+view.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re trying to be cruel,&rdquo; said Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And succeeding, to judge by your dolorous mouth. No, my dear, let the
+suggestion of marriage come from me. I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be hurt if you refuse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, are we to pretend we&rsquo;re married?&rdquo; Arthur asked, hopelessly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly not, if by that you mean that I&rsquo;m to put &lsquo;Mrs. Arthur Madden&rsquo;
+on a visiting-card. Don&rsquo;t look so frightened. I&rsquo;m not proposing to march
+into drawing-rooms with a big drum to proclaim my emancipation from the
+social decencies. Don&rsquo;t worry me, Arthur. It&rsquo;s all much too complicated
+to explain, but I&rsquo;ll tell you one<a name="page_399" id="page_399"></a> thing, I&rsquo;m not going to marry you
+merely to remove the world&rsquo;s censure of your conduct, and as long as you
+feel about marrying me as you might feel about letting me carry a heavy
+bag, I&rsquo;ll never marry you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel a bit like that about it,&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;If I could leave
+you, I&rsquo;d leave you now. But the very thought of losing you makes my
+heart stop beating. It&rsquo;s like suddenly coming to the edge of a
+precipice. I know perfectly well that you despise me at heart. You think
+I&rsquo;m a wretched actor with no feelings off the stage. You think I don&rsquo;t
+know my own mind, if you even admit that I&rsquo;ve got a mind at all. But I&rsquo;m
+thirty-one. I&rsquo;m not a boy. I&rsquo;ve had a good many women in love with me.
+Now don&rsquo;t begin to laugh. I&rsquo;m determined to say what I ought to have
+said long ago, and should have said if I hadn&rsquo;t been afraid the whole
+time of losing you. If I lose you now it can&rsquo;t be helped. I&rsquo;d sooner
+lose you than go on being treated like a child. What I want to say is
+that, though I know you think it wasn&rsquo;t worth while being loved by the
+women who&rsquo;ve loved me, I do think it was. I&rsquo;m not in the least ashamed
+of them. Most of them, at any rate, were beautiful, though I admit that
+all of them put together wouldn&rsquo;t have made up for missing you. You&rsquo;re a
+thousand times cleverer than I. You&rsquo;ve got much more personality. You&rsquo;ve
+every right to consider you&rsquo;ve thrown yourself away on me. But the fact
+remains that you&rsquo;ve done it. We&rsquo;ve been together now a year. That proves
+that there <i>is</i> something in me. I&rsquo;m prouder of this year with you than
+of all the rest of my life. You&rsquo;ve developed me in the most
+extraordinary way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have?&rdquo; Sylvia burst in.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course you have. But I&rsquo;m not going to be treated like a mantis.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Like a what?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A mantis. You can read about it in that French book on insects. The
+female eats the male. Well, I&rsquo;m damned well not going to be eaten. I&rsquo;m
+not going back to England with you unless you marry me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m not going to marry you,&rdquo; Sylvia declared.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well, then I shall try to get an engagement on tour and we&rsquo;ll
+separate.&rdquo;<a name="page_400" id="page_400"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So much the better,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a good deal to occupy myself
+at present.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course you can have the music I wrote for those poems,&rdquo; said Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Damn your music,&rdquo; she replied.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was so much obsessed with the conviction of having at last found
+a medium for expressing herself in art that, though she was vaguely
+aware of having a higher regard for Arthur at this moment than she had
+ever had, she could only behold him as a troublesome visitor that was
+preventing her from sitting down to work.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur went off on tour. Sylvia took an apartment in New York far away
+up-town and settled down to test her inspiration. In six months she
+lived her whole life over again, and of every personality that had
+touched her own and left its mark she made a separate presentation. Her
+great anxiety was to give to each sketch the air of an improvisation,
+and in the course of it to make her people reveal their permanent
+characters rather than their transient emotions. It was really based on
+the art of the impersonator who comes on with a cocked hat, sticks out
+his neck, puts his hands behind his back, and his legs apart, leans over
+to the audience, and whispers Napoleon. Sylvia thought she could extend
+the pleasures of recognition beyond the mere mimicry of externals to a
+finer mimicry of essentials. She wanted an audience to clap not because
+she could bark sufficiently like a real dog to avoid being mistaken for
+a kangaroo, but because she could be sufficiently Mrs. Gainsborough not
+to be recognized as Mrs. Beardmore&mdash;yet without relying upon their
+respective sizes in corsets to mark the difference. She did not intend
+to use even make-up; the entertainment was always to be an
+improvisation. It was also to be undramatic; that is to say, it was not
+to obtain its effect by working to a climax, so that, however well
+hidden the mechanism might have been during the course of the
+presentation, the machinery would reveal itself at the end. Sylvia
+wanted to make each member of the audience feel that he had dreamed her
+improvisation, or rather she hoped that he would gain from it that
+elusive sensation of having lived it before, and that the effect upon
+each person listening to<a name="page_401" id="page_401"></a> her should be ultimately incommunicable, like
+a dream. She was sure now that she could achieve this effect with the
+poems, not, as she had originally supposed, through their objective
+truthfulness, but through their subjective truth. That outcast
+Englishman should be one of her improvisations, and of course the
+original idea of letting the poems be accompanied by music would be
+ruinous; one might as well illustrate them with a magic lantern. As to
+her own inventions, she must avoid giving them a set form, because,
+whatever actors might urge to the contrary, a play could never really be
+performed twice by the same caste. She would have a scene painted like
+those futurist Italian pictures; they were trying to do with color what
+she was trying to do with acting; they were striving to escape from the
+representation of mere externals, and often succeeding almost too well,
+she added, with a smile. She would get hold of Ronald Walker in London,
+who doubtless by now would be too prosperous to serve her purpose
+himself, but who would probably know of some newly fledged painter
+anxious to flap his wings.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of six months Sylvia had evolved enough improvisations to
+make a start. She went to bed tired out with the last night&rsquo;s work, and
+woke up in the morning with a sense of blankness at the realization of
+there being nothing to do that day. All the time she had been working
+she had been content to be alone; she had even looked forward to amusing
+herself in New York when her work was finished. Now the happy moment had
+come and she could feel nothing but this empty boredom. She wondered
+what Arthur was doing, and she reproached herself for the way in which
+she had discarded him. She had been so thrilled by the notion that she
+was necessary to somebody; it had seemed to her the consummation of so
+many heedless years. Yet no sooner had she successfully imposed herself
+upon Arthur than she was eager to think of nothing but herself without
+caring a bit about his point of view. Now that she could do nothing more
+with her work until the test of public performance was applied to it,
+she was bored; in fact, she missed Arthur. The truth was that half the
+pleasure of being necessary to somebody else had been that he should be
+necessary to her. But marriage<a name="page_402" id="page_402"></a> with Arthur? Marriage with a
+curly-headed actor? Marriage with anybody? No, that must wait, at any
+rate until she had given the fruit of these six months to the world. She
+could not be hampered by belonging to anybody before that.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do think I&rsquo;m justified in taking myself a little seriously for a
+while,&rdquo; said Sylvia, &ldquo;and in shutting my eyes to my own absurdity.
+Self-mockery is dangerous beyond a certain point. I really will give
+this idea of mine a fair chance. If I&rsquo;m a failure, Arthur will love me
+all the more through vanity, and if I&rsquo;m a success&mdash;I suppose really
+he&rsquo;ll be vain of that, too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia telegraphed to Arthur, and heard that he expected to be back in
+New York at the end of the month. He was in Buffalo this week. Nothing
+could keep her a moment longer in New York alone, and she went up to
+join him. She had a sudden fear when she arrived that she might find him
+occupied with a girl; in fact, really, when she came to think of the
+manner in which she had left him, it was most improbable that she should
+not. She nearly turned round and went back to New York; but her real
+anxiety to see Arthur and talk to him about her work made her decide to
+take the risk of what might be the deepest humiliation of her life. It
+was strange how much she wanted to talk about what she had done; the
+desire to do so now was as overmastering an emotion as had been in the
+first moment of conception the urgency of silence.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was spared the shock of finding Arthur wrapped up in some one
+else.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia, how wonderful! What a relief to see you again!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been longing for you to see me in the part I&rsquo;m playing now. It&rsquo;s
+certainly the most successful thing I&rsquo;ve done. I&rsquo;m so glad you kept me
+from wasting myself any longer on that concert work. I really believe
+I&rsquo;ve made a big hit at last.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was almost as much taken aback to find Arthur radiant with the
+prospect of success as she would have been to find him head over ears in
+love. She derived very little satisfaction from the way in which he
+attributed his success to her; she was not at all in the mood<a name="page_403" id="page_403"></a> for being
+a godmother, now that she had a baby of her own.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m so glad, old son. That&rsquo;s splendid. Now I want to talk about the
+work I&rsquo;ve been doing all these six months.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Forthwith she plunged into the details of the scheme, to which Arthur
+listened attentively enough, though he only became really enthusiastic
+when she could introduce analogies with his own successful performance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You will go in front to-night?&rdquo; he begged. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully keen to hear
+what you think of my show. Half my pleasure in the hit has been spoiled
+by your not having seen it. Besides, I think you&rsquo;ll be interested in
+noticing that once or twice I try to get the same effect as you&rsquo;re
+trying for in these impersonations.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Damn your eyes, Arthur, they&rsquo;re not impersonations; they&rsquo;re
+improvisations.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did I say impersonations? I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; said Arthur, looking rather
+frightened.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, you&rsquo;d better placate me,&rdquo; she threatened. &ldquo;Or I&rsquo;ll spend my whole
+time looking at Niagara and never go near your show.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>However, Sylvia did go to see the play that night and found that Arthur
+really was excellent in his part, which was that of the usual young man
+in musical comedy who wanders about in a well-cut flannel suit, followed
+by six young women with parasols ready to smother him with affection,
+melody, and lace. But how, even in the intoxication of success, he had
+managed to establish a single analogy with what she proposed to do was
+beyond comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur came out of the stage door, wreathed in questions.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You were in such a hurry to get out,&rdquo; said Sylvia, &ldquo;that you didn&rsquo;t
+take off your make-up properly. You&rsquo;ll get arrested if you walk about
+like that. I hear the sumptuary laws in Buffalo are very strict.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t rag. Did you like the hydrangea song? Do you remember the one
+I mean?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He hummed the tune.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I warn you, Arthur, there&rsquo;s recently been a moral <a name="page_404" id="page_404"></a>up-lift in Buffalo.
+You will be sewn up in a barrel and flung into Niagara if you don&rsquo;t take
+care. No, seriously. I think your show was capital. Which brings me to
+the point. We sail for Europe at the end of April.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but do you think it&rsquo;s wise for me to leave America now that I&rsquo;ve
+really got my foot in?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you still want to marry me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;More than ever,&rdquo; he assured her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well, then. Your only chance of marrying me is to leave New York
+without a murmur. I&rsquo;ve thought it all out. As soon as I get back I shall
+spend my last shilling on fitting out my show. When I&rsquo;ve produced it and
+when I&rsquo;ve found out that I&rsquo;ve not been making a fool of myself for the
+last six months, perhaps I&rsquo;ll marry you. Until then&mdash;as friends we met,
+as anything more than friends we part. Got me, Steve?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, Sylvia&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But me no buts, or you&rsquo;ll get my goat. Understand my meaning, Mr.
+Stevenson?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, only&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The discussion&rsquo;s closed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are we engaged?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. We&rsquo;ll have to see our agents about that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t rag. Marriage is not a joke. You are a most extraordinary
+girl.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks for the discount. I shall be thirty in three months, don&rsquo;t
+forget. Talking of the advantages of rouge, you might get rid of some of
+yours before supper, if you don&rsquo;t mind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are we engaged?&rdquo; Arthur repeated, firmly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, the engagement ring and the marriage-bells will be pealed
+simultaneously. You&rsquo;re as free as Boccaccio, old son.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re in one of those moods when it&rsquo;s impossible to argue with you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So much the better. We shall enjoy our supper all the more. I&rsquo;m so
+excited at the idea of going back to England. After all, I shall have
+been away nearly three years. I shall find godchildren who can talk.
+Think of that. Arthur, don&rsquo;t you want to go back?&rdquo;<a name="page_405" id="page_405"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, if I can get a shop. I think it&rsquo;s madness for me to leave New
+York, but I daren&rsquo;t let you go alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The anticipation of being in England again and of putting to the test
+her achievement could not charm away all Sylvia&rsquo;s regret at leaving
+America, most of all New York. She owed to New York this new stability
+that she discovered in her life. She owed to some action of New York
+upon herself the delight of inspiration, the sweet purgatory of effort,
+the hope of a successful end to her dreams. It was the only city of
+which she had ever taken a formal farewell, such as she took from the
+top of the Metropolitan Tower upon a lucid morning in April. The city
+lay beneath, with no magic of smoke to lend a meretricious romance to
+its checkered severity; a city encircled with silver waters and
+pavilioned by huge skies, expressing modern humanity, as the great
+monuments of ancient architecture express the mighty dead.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We too can create our Parthenons,&rdquo; thought Sylvia, as she sank to earth
+in the florid elevator.</p>
+
+<p>They crossed the Atlantic on one of the smaller Cunard liners. The
+voyage was uneventful. Nearly all the passengers in turn told Sylvia why
+they were not traveling by one of the large ships, but nobody suggested
+as a reason that the smaller ships were cheaper.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached England Arthur went to stay with his mother at
+Dulwich. Sylvia went to the Airdales; she wanted to set her scheme in
+motion, but she promised to come and stay at Dulwich later on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At last you&rsquo;ve come back,&rdquo; Olive said, on the verge of tears. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+missed you dreadfully.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Great Scott! Look at Sylvius and Rose!&rdquo; Sylvia exclaimed. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re like
+two pigs made of pink sugar. Pity we never thought of it at the time, or
+they could have been christened Scarlet and Crimson.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Darlings, isn&rsquo;t godmamma horrid to you?&rdquo; said Olive.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here! Here! What are you teaching them to call me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s godmamma,&rdquo; said Sylvius, in a thick voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s godmamma,&rdquo; Rose echoed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not on your life, cullies,&rdquo; their godmother announced, &ldquo;unless you want
+a thick ear each.&rdquo;<a name="page_406" id="page_406"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Give me one,&rdquo; said Sylvius, stolidly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Give me one,&rdquo; Rose echoed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How can you tease the poor darlings so?&rdquo; Olive exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvius will have one,&rdquo; he announced, in the same thick monotone.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rose will have one,&rdquo; echoed his sister.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia handed her godson a large painted ball.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s your thick ear, Pork.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvius laughed fatly; the ball and the new name both pleased him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And here&rsquo;s yours,&rdquo; she said, offering another to Rose, who waited to
+see what her brother did with his and then proceeded to do the same with
+the same fat laugh. Suddenly, however, her lips puckered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is it, darling?&rdquo; her mother asked, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rose wants to be said Pork.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t call her Pork,&rdquo; Olive translated, reproachfully, to Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Give me back the ball,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;Now then, here&rsquo;s your thick ear,
+Porka.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Rose laughed ecstatically. After two ornaments had been broken Jack came
+in, and the children retired with their nurse.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia found that family life had not spoiled Jack&rsquo;s interest in that
+career of hers; indeed, he was so much excited by her news that he
+suggested omitting for once the ceremony of seeing the twins being given
+their bath in order not to lose any of the short time available before
+he should have to go down to the theater. Sylvia, however, would not
+hear of any change in the domestic order, and reminded Jack that she was
+proposing to quarter herself on them for some time.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know, it&rsquo;s terrific,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement of the bath was always considerable, but this evening,
+with Sylvia&rsquo;s assistance, it became acute. Sylvius hit his nurse in the
+eye with the soap, and Rose, wrought up to a fever of emulation, managed
+to hurl the sponge into the grate.</p>
+
+<p>Jack was enthusiastic about Sylvia&rsquo;s scheme. She was not quite sure that
+he understood exactly at what she was<a name="page_407" id="page_407"></a> aiming, but he wished her so well
+that in any case his criticism would have had slight value; he gave
+instead his devoted attention, and that seemed a pledge of success.
+Success! Success! it sounded like a cataract in her ears, drowning every
+other sound. She wondered if the passion of her life was to be success.
+On no thoughts urged so irresistibly had she ever sailed to sleep, nor
+had she ever wakened in such a buoyancy, greeting the day as a swimmer
+greets the sea.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now what about the backing?&rdquo; Jack asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Backing? I&rsquo;ll back myself. You&rsquo;ll be my manager. I&rsquo;ve enough to hire
+the Pierian Hall for a day and a night. I&rsquo;ve enough to pay for one
+scene. Which reminds me I must get hold of Ronald Walker. You&rsquo;ll sing,
+Jack, two songs? Oh, and there&rsquo;s Arthur Madden. He&rsquo;ll sing, too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s he?&rdquo; Olive asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, didn&rsquo;t I tell you about him?&rdquo; said Sylvia, almost too nonchalantly,
+she feared. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s rather good. Quite good, really. I&rsquo;ll tell you about
+him sometime. By the way, I&rsquo;ve talked so much about myself and my plans
+that I&rsquo;ve never asked about other people. How&rsquo;s the countess?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Olive looked grave. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t ever see them, but everybody says that
+Clarehaven is going the pace tremendously.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have they retreated to Devonshire?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no! Didn&rsquo;t you hear? I thought I&rsquo;d told you in one of my letters. He
+had to sell the family place. Do you remember a man called Leopold
+Hausberg?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do I not?&rdquo; Sylvia exclaimed. &ldquo;He took a flat once for a chimpanzee
+instead of Lily.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, he&rsquo;s become Lionel Houston this year, and he&rsquo;s talked about with
+Dorothy a good deal. Of course he&rsquo;s very rich, but I do hope there&rsquo;s
+nothing in what people say. Poor Dorothy!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;ll survive even the divorce court,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;I wish I knew
+what had become of Lily. She might have danced in my show. I suppose
+it&rsquo;s too late now, though. Poor Lily! I say, we&rsquo;re getting very
+compassionate, you and I, Olive. Are you and Jack going to have any more
+kids?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia darling,&rdquo; Olive exclaimed, with a blush.<a name="page_408" id="page_408"></a></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had intended to stay a week or two with the Airdales, and, after
+having set in motion the preliminaries of her undertaking, to go down to
+Dulwich and visit Mrs. Madden, but she thought she would get hold of
+Ronnie Walker first, and with this object went to the Café Royal, where
+she should be certain of finding either him or a friend who would know
+where he was.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had scarcely time to look round her in the swirl of gilt and
+smoke and chatter before Ronald Walker himself, wearing now a long pale
+beard, greeted her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear Ronald, what&rsquo;s the matter? Are you tired of women? You look
+more like a grate than a great man,&rdquo; Sylvia exclaimed. &ldquo;Cut it off and
+give it to your landlady to stuff her fireplace this summer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What shall we drink?&rdquo; he asked, imperturbably.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been absinthe for so long that really&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a vermouth point,&rdquo; added Ronald.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ronnie, you devil, I can&rsquo;t go on, it&rsquo;s too whisky. Well, of course
+after that we ought both to drink port and brandy. Don&rsquo;t you find it
+difficult to clean your beard?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a messy feeder,&rdquo; said Ronnie.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t paint with it, then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Only Cubist pictures.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia launched out into an account of her work, and demanded his help
+for the painting of the scene.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want the back-cloth to be a city, not to represent a city, mark you,
+but to be a city.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She told him about New York as beheld from the Metropolitan Tower, and
+exacted from the chosen painter the ability to make the audience think
+that.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m too old-fashioned for you, my dear,&rdquo; said Ronald.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you, my dear man, of course. If I asked you for a city, you&rsquo;d give
+me a view from a Pierrot&rsquo;s window of a Harlequin who&rsquo;d stolen the first
+five numbers of the Yellow Book from a Pantaloon who kept a second-hand
+bookshop in a street-scene by Steinlen, and whose daughter, Columbine,
+having died of grief at being deserted by the New English Art Club, had
+been turned into a book-plate. No, I want some fierce young genius of
+to-day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Over their drinks they discussed possible candidates; finally Ronald
+said he would invite a certain number of the<a name="page_409" id="page_409"></a> most representative and
+least representational modern painters to his studio, from whom Sylvia
+might make her choice. Accordingly, two or three days later Sylvia
+visited Ronald in Grosvenor Road. For the moment, when she entered, she
+thought that he had been playing a practical joke upon her, for it
+seemed impossible that these extraordinary people could be real. The
+northerly light of the studio, severe and virginal, was less kind than
+the feverish exhalation of the Café Royal.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They are real?&rdquo; she whispered to her host.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh yes, they&rsquo;re quite real, and in deadly earnest. Each of them
+represents a school and each of them thinks I&rsquo;ve been converted to his
+point of view. I&rsquo;ll introduce Morphew.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He beckoned to a tall young man in black, who looked like a rolled-up
+umbrella with a jade handle.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Morphew, this is Miss Scarlett. She&rsquo;s nearly as advanced as you are.
+Sylvia, this is Morphew, the Azurist.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Walker maliciously withdrew when he had made the introduction.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ought I to know what an Azurist is?&rdquo; Sylvia asked. She felt that it was
+an unhappy opening for the conversation, but she did not want to hurt
+his religious feelings if Azurism was a religion, and if it was a trade
+she might be excused for not knowing what it was, such a rare trade must
+it be.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Morphew smiled in a superior way. &ldquo;I think most people have heard
+about me by now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, but I&rsquo;ve been abroad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Several of my affirmations have been translated and published in
+France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, and Holland,&rdquo;
+said Mr. Morphew, in a tone that seemed to imply that if Sylvia had not
+grasped who he was by now she never would, in which case it was scarcely
+worth his while to go on talking to her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh dear! What a pity!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;I was in Montenegro all last
+year, so I must have missed them. I don&rsquo;t <i>think</i> you&rsquo;re known in
+Montenegro yet. It&rsquo;s such a small country, I should have been sure to
+hear about anything like that.<a name="page_410" id="page_410"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Like what?&rdquo; thought Sylvia, turning up her mind&rsquo;s eyes to heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Morphew was evidently not sure what sort of language was spoken in
+Montenegro, and thought it wiser to instruct Sylvia than to expose his
+own ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What color is that?&rdquo; he suddenly demanded, pointing to the orange
+coverlet of a settee.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Orange,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;Perhaps it&rsquo;s inclining to some shade of brown.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Orange! Brown!&rdquo; Mr. Morphew scoffed. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s blue.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but it&rsquo;s not!&rdquo; she contradicted. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing blue about it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Blue,&rdquo; repeated Mr. Morphew. &ldquo;All is blue. The Azurists deny that there
+is anything but blue. Blue,&rdquo; he continued in a rapt voice. &ldquo;Blue! I was
+a Blanchist at first; but when we quarreled most of the Blanchists
+followed me. I shall publish the nineteenth affirmation of the Azurists
+next week. If you give me your address I&rsquo;ll send you a copy. We&rsquo;re going
+to give the Ovists hell in a new magazine that we&rsquo;re bringing out. We
+find that affirmations are not enough.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Will it be an ordinary magazine?&rdquo; Sylvia asked. &ldquo;Will you have stories,
+for instance?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t admit that stories exist. Life-rays exist. There will be
+life-rays in our magazine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose they&rsquo;ll be pretty blue,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All life-rays are blue.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you don&rsquo;t mind wet weather?&rdquo; she suggested. &ldquo;Because it must
+be rather difficult to know when it&rsquo;s going to clear up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There are degrees of blue,&rdquo; Mr. Morphew explained.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see. Life isn&rsquo;t just one vast, reckless blue. Well, thank you very
+much for being so patient with my old-fashioned optical ideas. I do hope
+you&rsquo;ll go to America and tell them that their leaves turn blue in
+autumn. Anyway, you&rsquo;ll feel quite at home crossing the ocean, though
+some people won&rsquo;t even admit that&rsquo;s blue.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia left the Azurist and rejoined Ronald.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;You look quite frightened.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear, I&rsquo;ve just done a bolt from the blue. You are<a name="page_411" id="page_411"></a> a beast to rag
+my enthusiasms. Isn&rsquo;t there anybody here whose serious view of himself I
+can indorse?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s Pattison, the Ovist. He maintains that everything
+resolves itself into ovals.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I should almost prefer Azurism,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;What about the
+Blanchists?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you wouldn&rsquo;t like them! They maintain that there&rsquo;s no such thing as
+color; their pictures depend on the angle at which they&rsquo;re hung.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But if there&rsquo;s no such thing as color, how can they paint?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t. Their canvases are blank. Then there are the
+Combinationists. They don&rsquo;t repudiate color, but they repudiate paint.
+The most famous Combinationist picture exhibited so far consisted of
+half a match-box, a piece of orange-peel, and some sealing-wax, all
+stuck upon a slip of sugar-paper. The other Combinationists wanted to
+commit suicide because they despaired of surpassing it. Roger Cadbury
+wrote a superb introduction, pointing out that it must be either liked
+or disliked, but that it was impossible to do both or neither. It was
+that picture which inspired Hezekiah Penny to write what is considered
+one of his finest poems. You know it, perhaps?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&ldquo;Why do I sing?<br /></span>
+<span class="ist">There is no reason why I should continue:<br /></span>
+<span class="ist">This image of the essential bin is better<br /></span>
+<span class="ist">Than the irritated uvulas of modern poets.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That caused almost as great sensation as the picture, because some of
+his fellow-poets maintained that he had no right to speak for anybody
+but himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who is Hezekiah Penny?&rdquo; Sylvia asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hezekiah Penny is a provincial poet who began by writing Provençal
+verse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But this is madness,&rdquo; Sylvia exclaimed, looking round her at the
+studio, where the representatives of modernity eyed one another with
+surprise and distaste like unusual fish in the tank of an aquarium.
+&ldquo;Behind all this rubbish surely something truly progressive exists.
+You&rsquo;ve deliberately invited all the charlatans and impostors to meet me.
+I tell you, Ronnie, I saw lots of pictures in New York that<a name="page_412" id="page_412"></a> were
+eccentric, but they were striving to rediscover life in painting. You&rsquo;re
+prejudiced because you belong to the decade before all this, and you&rsquo;ve
+taken a delight in showing me all the extravagant side of it. You should
+emulate Tithonus.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who was he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t pretend you can&rsquo;t follow a simple allusion. The gentleman who
+fell in love with Aurora.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t he get rather tired of living forever?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, that was because he grew a beard like you. Don&rsquo;t nail my
+allusions to the counter; they&rsquo;re not lies.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take pity on you,&rdquo; said Ronnie. &ldquo;There is quite a clever youth
+whom I intended for you from the beginning. He&rsquo;s coming in later, when
+the rest have gone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When she and Ronnie were alone again and before Lucian Hope, the young
+painter, arrived, Sylvia, looking through one of his sketch-books, came
+across a series of studies of a girl in the practice-dress of dancing;
+he told her it was Jenny Pearl.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Maurice Avery&rsquo;s Jenny,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;What happened to her?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you hear about it? She was killed by her husband. It was a
+horrible business. Maurice went down to see her where she lived in the
+country, and this brute shot her. It was last summer. The papers were
+full of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what happened to Maurice?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, he nearly went off his head. He&rsquo;s wandering about in Morocco
+probably.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where I met him,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But didn&rsquo;t he tell you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, it was before. More than three years ago. We talked about her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia shuddered. One of her improvisations had been Maurice Avery; she
+must burn it.</p>
+
+<p>Lucian Hope arrived before Sylvia could ask any more questions about the
+horrible event; she was glad to escape from the curiosity that would
+have turned it into a tale of the police-court. The new-comer was not
+more than twenty-two, perhaps less&mdash;too young, at any rate, to have
+escaped from the unconventionality of artistic attire that stifles all
+personality. But he had squirrel&rsquo;s eyes, and was<a name="page_413" id="page_413"></a> not really like an
+undertaker. He was shy, too, so shy that Sylvia wondered how he could
+tolerate being stared at in the street on account of his odd appearance.
+She would have liked to ask him what pleasure he derived from such
+mimicry of a sterile and professional distinction, but she feared to
+hurt his young vanity; moreover, she was disarmed by those squirrel&rsquo;s
+eyes, so sharp and bright even in the falling dusk. The three of them
+talked restlessly for a while, and Sylvia, seeing that Ronald was
+preparing to broach the subject for which they were met, anticipated him
+with a call for attention, and began one of her improvisations. It was
+of Concetta lost in a greater city than Granada. By the silence that
+followed she knew that her companions had cared for it, and she changed
+to Mrs. Gainsborough. Then she finished up with three of the poems.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Could you paint me a scene for that?&rdquo; she asked, quickly, to avoid any
+comment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, rather!&rdquo; replied the young man, very eagerly; though it was nearly
+dark now, she could see his eyes flashing real assurance.</p>
+
+<p>They all three dined together that evening, and Lucian Hope, ever since
+Sylvia had let him know that she stood beside him to conquer the world,
+lost his early shyness and talked volubly of what she wanted and what he
+wanted to do. Ronald Walker presided in the background of the ardent
+conversation, and as they came out of the restaurant he took Sylvia&rsquo;s
+arm for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All right?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite all right, thanks.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So&rsquo;s your show going to be. Not so entirely modern as you gave me to
+suppose. But that&rsquo;s not a great fault.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia and Lucian Hope spent a good deal of time together, so much was
+there to talk about in connection with the great enterprise. She brought
+him to the Airdales&rsquo; that he might meet Jack, who was supposed to have
+charge of the financial arrangements. The sight of the long-haired young
+man made Sylvius cry, and, as a matter of course, Rose, also, which
+embarrassed Lucian Hope a good deal, especially when he had to listen to
+an explanation of himself by Olive for the children&rsquo;s consolation.<a name="page_414" id="page_414"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a gollywog,&rdquo; Sylvius howled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a gollywog,&rdquo; Rose echoed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s tum to gobble us,&rdquo; Sylvius bellowed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To gobble us, to gobble us,&rdquo; Rose wailed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not a gollywog, darlings,&rdquo; their mother declared. &ldquo;He makes pretty
+pictures, oh, such pretty pictures of&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He <i>is</i> a gollywog,&rdquo; choked Sylvius, in an ecstasy of rage and fear.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A gollywog, a gollywog,&rdquo; Rose insisted.</p>
+
+<p>Their mother changed her tactics. &ldquo;But he&rsquo;s a kind gollywog. Oh, such a
+kind gollywog, the kindest, nicest gollywog that was ever thought of.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He <i>is</i>&mdash;ent,&rdquo; both children proclaimed. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s bad!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think I&rsquo;d better go?&rdquo; asked the painter. &ldquo;I think it must be
+my hair that&rsquo;s upsetting them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He started toward the door, but, unfortunately, he was on the wrong side
+of the children, who, seeing him make a move in their direction, set up
+such an appalling yell that the poor young man drew back in despair. In
+the middle of this the maid entered, announcing Mr. Arthur Madden, who
+followed close upon her heels. Sylvius and Rose were by this time
+obsessed with the idea of an invasion by an army of gollywogs, and
+Arthur&rsquo;s pleasant face took on for them the dreaded lineaments of the
+foe. Both children clung shrieking to their mother&rsquo;s skirts. Sylvia and
+Jack were leaning back, incapable through laughter. Arthur and Lucian
+Hope surveyed miserably the scene they had created. At last the nurse
+arrived to rescue the twins, and they were carried away without being
+persuaded to change their minds about the inhuman nature of the two
+visitors.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur apologized for worrying Sylvia, but his mother was so anxious to
+know when she was coming down to Dulwich, and as he had been up in town
+seeing about an engagement, he had not been able to resist coming to
+visit her.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt penitent for having abandoned Arthur so completely since
+they had arrived in England, and she told him she would go back with him
+that very afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but Miss Scarlett,&rdquo; protested Lucian, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you remember? We
+arranged to explore Limehouse to-morrow.&rdquo;<a name="page_415" id="page_415"></a></p>
+
+<p>Arthur looked at the painter very much as if he were indeed the gollywog
+for which he had just been taken.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to interfere with previous arrangements,&rdquo; he said, with
+such a pathetic haughtiness that Sylvia had not the heart to wound his
+dignity, and told Lucian Hope that the expedition to Limehouse must be
+postponed. The young painter looked disconsolate and Arthur blossomed
+from his fading. However, Lucian had the satisfaction of saying, in a
+mysterious voice, to Sylvia before he went:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then, while you&rsquo;re away I&rsquo;ll get on with it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was not until they were half-way to Dulwich in the train that Arthur
+asked Sylvia what he was going to get on with.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My scene,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What scene?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Arthur, don&rsquo;t be stupid. The set for my show.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not going to let a youth like that paint a set for you? You&rsquo;re
+mad. What experience has he had?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;None. That&rsquo;s exactly why I chose him. I&rsquo;m providing the experience.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you known him long?&rdquo; Arthur demanded. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t have known him
+very long. He must have been at school when you left England.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be jealous,&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jealous? Of him? Huh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Madden had changed more than Sylvia expected. Arthur had seemed so
+little altered that she was surprised to see his mother with white hair,
+for she could scarcely be fifty-five yet. The drawing-room of the little
+house in Dulwich recalled vividly the drawing-room of the house in
+Hampstead; nor had Mrs. Madden bought herself a new piano with the fifty
+pounds that was cabled back to her from Sulphurville. It suddenly
+occurred to Sylvia that this was the first time she had seen her since
+she ran away with Arthur, fifteen years ago, and she felt that she ought
+to apologize for that behavior now; but, after all, Mrs. Madden had run
+away herself once upon a time with her father&rsquo;s groom and could scarcely
+have been greatly astonished at Arthur&rsquo;s elopement.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have forgiven me for carrying him off from Hampstead?&rdquo; she asked,
+with a smile.<a name="page_416" id="page_416"></a></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Madden laughed gently. &ldquo;Yes, I was frightened at the time. But in
+the end it did Arthur good, I think. It&rsquo;s been such a pleasure to me to
+hear how successful he&rsquo;s been lately.&rdquo; She looked at Sylvia with an
+expression of marked sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>After supper Mrs. Madden came up to Sylvia&rsquo;s room and, taking her hand,
+said, in her soft voice, &ldquo;Arthur has told me all about you two.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia flushed and pulled her hand away. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s no business to tell you
+anything about me,&rdquo; she said, hotly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t be angry, Sylvia. He made it quite clear that you hadn&rsquo;t
+quite made up your mind yet. Poor boy,&rdquo; she added, with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia, when she understood that Arthur had not said anything about
+their past, had a strong desire to tell Mrs. Madden that she had lived
+with him for a year. She resented the way she had said &ldquo;poor boy.&rdquo; She
+checked the impulse and assured her that if Arthur had spoken of their
+marriage he had had no right to do so. It really was most improbable
+that she should marry him; oh, but most improbable.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You always spoke very severely about love when you were a little girl.
+Do you remember? You must forgive a mother, but I must tell you that I
+believe Arthur&rsquo;s happiness depends upon your marrying him. He talks of
+nothing else and makes such plans for the future.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He makes too many plans,&rdquo; Sylvia said, severely.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, there soon comes a time when one ceases to make plans,&rdquo; Mrs. Madden
+sighed. &ldquo;One is reduced to expedients. But now that you&rsquo;re a woman, and
+I can easily believe that you&rsquo;re the clever woman Arthur says you are,
+for you gave every sign of it when you were young&mdash;now that you&rsquo;re a
+woman, I do hope you&rsquo;ll be a merciful woman. It&rsquo;s such a temptation&mdash;you
+must forgive my plain speaking&mdash;it&rsquo;s such a temptation to keep a man
+like Arthur hanging on. You must have noticed how young he is still&mdash;to
+all intents and purposes quite a boy; and believe me he has the same
+romantic adoration for you and your wonderfulness as he had when he was
+seventeen. Don&rsquo;t, I beg of you, treat such devotion too lightly.&rdquo;<a name="page_417" id="page_417"></a></p>
+
+<p>Sylvia could not keep silent under this unjustified imputation of
+heartlessness, and broke out:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;ll admit that Arthur has given quite a wrong idea of me
+when I tell you that we lived together for a year; and you must remember
+that I&rsquo;ve been married already and know what it means. Arthur has no
+right to complain of me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Sylvia, I&rsquo;m sorry!&rdquo; Mrs. Madden almost whispered. &ldquo;Oh dear! how
+could Arthur do such a thing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because I made him, of course. Now you must forgive <i>me</i> if I say
+something that hurts your feelings, but I must say it. When you ran away
+with your husband, you must have made him do it. You <i>must</i> have done.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good gracious me!&rdquo; Mrs. Madden exclaimed. &ldquo;I suppose I did. I never
+looked at it in that light before. You&rsquo;ve made me feel quite ashamed of
+my behavior. Quite embarrassed. And I suppose everybody has always
+blamed me entirely; but because my husband was one of my father&rsquo;s
+servants I always used to be defending him. I never thought of defending
+myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was sorry for stirring up in Mrs. Madden&rsquo;s placid mind old
+storms. It was painful to see this faded gentlewoman in the little
+suburban bedroom, blushing nervously at the unlady-like behavior of long
+ago. Presently Mrs. Madden pulled herself up and said, with a certain
+decision:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but I did marry him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but you hadn&rsquo;t been married already. You hadn&rsquo;t knocked round half
+the globe for twenty-eight years. It&rsquo;s no good my pretending to be
+shocked at myself. I don&rsquo;t care a bit what anybody thinks about me, and,
+anyway, it&rsquo;s done now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Surely you&rsquo;d be happier if you married Arthur after&mdash;after that,&rdquo; Mrs.
+Madden suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m not in the least unhappy. I can&rsquo;t say whether I shall marry
+Arthur until I&rsquo;ve given my performance. I can&rsquo;t say what effect either
+success or failure will have on me. My whole mind is concentrated in the
+Pierian Hall next October.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I cant understand this modern way of looking at things.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But there&rsquo;s nothing modern about my point of view,<a name="page_418" id="page_418"></a> Mrs. Madden.
+There&rsquo;s nothing modern about the egotism of an artist. Arthur is as free
+as I am. He has his own career to think about. He does think about it a
+great deal. He&rsquo;s radically much more interested in that than in marrying
+me. The main point is that he&rsquo;s free at present. From the moment I
+promise to marry him and he accepts that promise he won&rsquo;t be free. Nor
+shall I. It wouldn&rsquo;t be fair on either of us to make that promise now,
+because I must know what October is going to bring forth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I call it very modern. When I was young we looked at marriage as
+the most important event in a girl&rsquo;s life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you didn&rsquo;t, dear Mrs. Madden. You, or rather your contemporaries,
+regarded marriage as a path to freedom&mdash;social freedom, that is. Your
+case was exceptional. You fell passionately in love with a man beneath
+you, as the world counts it. You married him, and what was the result?
+You were cut off by your relations as utterly as if you had become the
+concubine of a Hottentot.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Sylvia dear, what an uncomfortable comparison!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Marriage to your contemporaries was a social observance. I&rsquo;m not
+religious, but I regard marriage as so sacred that, because I&rsquo;ve been
+divorced and because, so far as I know, my husband is still alive, I
+have something like religious qualms about marrying again. It takes a
+cynic to be an idealist; the sentimentalist gets left at the first
+fence. It&rsquo;s just because I&rsquo;m fond of Arthur in a perfectly normal way
+when I&rsquo;m not immersed in my ambition that I even contemplate the
+<i>notion</i> of marrying him. I&rsquo;ve got a perfectly normal wish to have
+children and a funny little house of my own. So far as I know at
+present, I should like Arthur to be the father of my children. But it&rsquo;s
+got to be an equal business. Personally I think that the Turks are wiser
+about women than we are; I think the majority of women are only fit for
+the harem and I&rsquo;m not sure that the majority wouldn&rsquo;t be much happier
+under such conditions. The incurable vanity of man, however, has removed
+us from our seclusion to admire his antics, and it&rsquo;s too late to start
+shutting us up in a box now. Woman never thought of equality with man
+until he put the notion into her head.&rdquo;<a name="page_419" id="page_419"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think perhaps supper may be ready,&rdquo; Mrs. Madden said. &ldquo;It all sounds
+very convincing as you speak, but I can&rsquo;t help feeling that you&rsquo;d be
+happier if you wouldn&rsquo;t take everything to pieces to look at the works.
+Things hardly ever go so well again afterward. Oh dear, I wish you
+hadn&rsquo;t lived together first.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It breaks the ice of the wedding-cake, doesn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; said Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t make such bitter remarks. You don&rsquo;t really mean
+what you say. I&rsquo;m sure supper must be ready.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but I do,&rdquo; Sylvia insisted, as they passed out into the narrow
+little passage and down the narrow stairs into the little dining-room.
+Nevertheless, in Sylvia&rsquo;s mind there was a kindliness toward this little
+house, almost a tenderness, and far away at the back of her imagination
+was the vision of herself established in just such another little house.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But even the Albert Memorial would look all right from the wrong end of
+a telescope,&rdquo; she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>One thing was brought home very vividly during her stay in Dulwich,
+which was the difference between what she had deceived herself into
+thinking was that first maternal affection she had felt for Arthur and
+the true maternal love of his mother. Whenever she had helped Arthur in
+any way, she had always been aware of enjoying the sensation of her
+indispensableness; it had been an emotion altogether different from this
+natural selfishness of the mother; it was really one that had always
+reflected a kind of self-conscious credit upon herself. Here in Dulwich,
+with this aspect of her affection for Arthur completely overshadowed,
+Sylvia was able to ask herself more directly if she loved him in the
+immemorial way of love; and though she could not arrive at a finally
+positive conclusion, she was strengthened in her resolve not to let him
+go. Arthur himself was more in love with her than he had ever been, and
+she thought that perhaps this was due to that sudden and disquieting
+withdrawal of herself; in the midst of possession he had been
+dispossessed, and until he could pierce her secret reasons he would
+inevitably remain deeply in love, even to the point of being jealous of
+a boy<a name="page_420" id="page_420"></a> like Lucian Hope. Sylvia understood Arthur&rsquo;s having refused an
+engagement to tour as juvenile lead in a successful musical piece and
+his unwillingness to leave her alone in town; he was rewarded, too, for
+his action, because shortly afterward he obtained a good engagement in
+London to take the place of a singer who had retired from the cast of
+the Frivolity Theater. At that rate he would soon find himself at the
+Vanity Theater itself.</p>
+
+<p>In June Sylvia went back to the Airdales&rsquo;, and soon afterward took rooms
+near them in West Kensington. It was impossible to continue indefinitely
+to pretend that Arthur and herself were mere theatrical acquaintances,
+and one day Olive asked Sylvia if she intended to marry him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you advise?&rdquo; Sylvia asked. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a triumph, dearest Olive.
+Have I ever asked your advice before?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I like him; Jack likes him, too, and says that he ought to get on fast
+now; but I don&rsquo;t know. Well, he&rsquo;s not the sort of man I expected you to
+marry.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve had an ideal for me all the time,&rdquo; Sylvia exclaimed. &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve
+never told me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no, I&rsquo;ve never had anybody definite in my mind, but I think I should
+be able to say at once if the man you had chosen was the right one.
+Don&rsquo;t ask me to describe him, because I couldn&rsquo;t do it. You used to
+tease me about marrying a curly-headed actor, but Arthur Madden seems to
+me much more of a curly-headed actor than Jack is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In fact, you thoroughly disapprove of poor Arthur?&rdquo; Sylvia pressed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh dear, no! Oh, not at all! Please don&rsquo;t think that. I&rsquo;m only anxious
+that you shouldn&rsquo;t throw yourself away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Remnants always go cheap,&rdquo; said Sylvia. &ldquo;However, don&rsquo;t worry. I&rsquo;ll be
+quite sure of myself before I marry anybody again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The summer passed away quickly in a complexity of arrangements for the
+opening performance at the Pierian Hall. Sylvia stayed three or four
+times at Dulwich and grew very fond of Mrs. Madden, who never referred
+again<a name="page_421" id="page_421"></a> to the subject of marriage. She also went up to Warwickshire with
+Olive and the children, much to the pleasure of Mr. Fanshawe, who was
+now writing a supplementary volume called <i>More Warwickshire Worthies</i>.
+In London she scarcely met any old friends; indeed, she went out of her
+way to avoid people like the Clarehavens, because they would not have
+been interested in what she was doing. By this time Sylvia had reached
+the point of considering everybody either for the interest and belief he
+evinced in her success or by the use he could be to her in securing it.
+The first rapturous egoism of Arthur&rsquo;s own success in London had worn
+off with time, and he was able to devote himself entirely to running
+about for Sylvia, which gradually made her regard him more and more as a
+fixture. As for Lucian Hope, he thought of nothing but the great
+occasion, and would have fought anybody who had ventured to cast a
+breath of doubt upon the triumph at hand. The set that he had painted
+was exactly what Sylvia required, and though both Arthur and Jack
+thought it would distract the audience&rsquo;s attention by puzzling them,
+they neither of them on Sylvia&rsquo;s account criticized it at all harshly.</p>
+
+<p>At last in mid-October the very morning of the day arrived, so long
+anticipated with every kind of discussion that its superficial
+resemblance to other mornings seemed heartless and unnatural. It was
+absurd that a milkman&rsquo;s note should be the same as yesterday, that
+servants should shake mats on front-door steps as usual, and that the
+maid who knocked at Sylvia&rsquo;s door should not break down beneath the
+weightiness of her summons. Nor, when Sylvia looked out of the window,
+were Jack and Arthur and Ronald and Lucian pacing with agitated steps
+the pavement below, an absence of enthusiasm, at any rate on the part of
+Arthur and Lucian, that hurt her feelings, until she thought for a
+moment how foolishly unreasonable she was being.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Sylvia was dressed she went round to the Airdales&rsquo;; everybody
+she met on the way inspired her with a longing to confide in him the
+portentousness of the day, and she found herself speculating whether
+several business men, who were hurrying to catch the nine-o&rsquo;clock<a name="page_422" id="page_422"></a>
+train, had possibly an intention of visiting the Pierian Hall that
+afternoon. She was extremely annoyed to find, when she reached the
+Airdales&rsquo; house, that neither Jack nor Olive was up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do they know the time?&rdquo; she demanded of the maid, in a scandalized
+voice. &ldquo;Their clock must have stopped.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no, miss, I don&rsquo;t think so. Breakfast is at ten, as usual. There&rsquo;s
+Mr. Airdale&rsquo;s dressing-room bell going now, miss. That &rsquo;ll be for his
+shaving-water. Shall I say you&rsquo;re waiting to see him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>What a ridiculous time to begin shaving, Sylvia thought.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, please,&rdquo; she added, aloud. &ldquo;Or no, don&rsquo;t bother him; I&rsquo;ll come
+back at ten o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia saw more of the streets of West Kensington in that hour than she
+had ever seen of them before, and decided that the neighborhood was
+impossible. Nothing so intolerably monotonous as these rows of stupid
+and meaningless houses had ever been designed. One after another of them
+blinked at her in the autumnal sunshine with a fatuous complacency that
+made her long to ring all the bells in the street. Presently she found
+herself by the play-fields of St. James&rsquo;s School, where the last boys
+were hurrying across the grass like belated ants. She looked at the
+golden clock in the school-buildings&mdash;half past nine. In five hours and
+a half she would be waiting for the curtain to go up; in seven hours and
+a half the audience would be wondering if it should have tea in Bond
+Street or cross Piccadilly and walk down St. James&rsquo;s Street to
+Rumpelmayer&rsquo;s. This problem of the audience began to worry Sylvia. She
+examined the alternatives with a really anxious gravity. If it went to
+Rumpelmayer&rsquo;s it would have to walk back to the Dover Street Tube, which
+would mean recrossing Piccadilly; on the other hand, it would be on the
+right side for the omnibuses. On the other hand, it would find
+Rumpelmayer&rsquo;s full, because other audiences would have arrived before
+it, invading the tea-shop from Pall Mall. Sylvia grew angry at the
+thought of these other audiences robbing her audience of its tea&mdash;her
+audience, some members of which would have read in the paper this
+morning:<a name="page_423" id="page_423"></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="c">P<small>IERIAN</small> H<small>ALL</small>.<br />
+<br />
+This afternoon at 3 p. m.<br />
+<br />
+ SYLVIA SCARLETT<br />
+<br />
+<small>IN</small><br />
+<br />
+IMPROVISATIONS
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="nind">and would actually have paid, some of them, as much as seven shillings
+and sixpence to see Sylvia Scarlett. Seven hours and a half: seven
+shillings and sixpence: 7&frac12; plus 7&frac12; made fifteen. When she was
+fifteen she had met Arthur. Sylvia&rsquo;s mind rambled among the omens of
+numbers, and left her audience still undecided between Bond Street and
+Rumpelmayer&rsquo;s, left it upon the steps of the Pierian Hall, the sport of
+passing traffic, hungry, thirsty, homesick. In seven and a half hours
+she would know the answer to that breathless question asked a year ago
+in Vermont. To think that the exact spot on which she had stood when she
+asked was existing at this moment in Vermont! In seven and a half hours,
+no, in seven hours and twenty-five minutes; the hands were moving on. It
+was really terrible how little people regarded the flight of time; the
+very world might come to an end in seven hours and twenty-five minutes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you seen Sylvia Scarlett yet?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, we intended to go yesterday, but there were no seats left. They say
+she&rsquo;s wonderful.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, my dear, she&rsquo;s perfectly amazing! Of course it&rsquo;s something quite
+new. You really must go.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who is she like?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, she&rsquo;s not like anybody else. I&rsquo;m told she&rsquo;s half French.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, really! How interesting.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good morning! Have you used Pear&rsquo;s soap?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;V-vi-vin-vino-vinol-vinoli-vinolia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia pealed the Airdales&rsquo; bell, and found Jack in the queer mixed
+costume which a person wears on the morning of an afternoon that will be
+celebrated by his best tail-coat.<a name="page_424" id="page_424"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear girl, you really mustn&rsquo;t get so excited,&rdquo; he protested, when he
+saw Sylvia&rsquo;s manner.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Jack, do you think I shall be a success?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course you will. Now, do, for goodness&rsquo; sake, drink a cup of coffee
+or something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia found that she was hungry enough to eat even an egg, which
+created a domestic crisis, because Sylvius and Rose quarreled over which
+of them was to have the top. Finally it was adjusted by awarding the top
+to Sylvius, but by allowing Rose to turn the empty egg upside down for
+the exquisite pleasure of watching Sylvia tap it with ostentatious
+greed, only to find that there was nothing inside, after all, an
+operation that Sylvius watched with critical jealousy and Rose saluted
+with ecstatic joy. Sylvia&rsquo;s disappointment was so beautifully violent
+that Sylvius regretted the material choice he had made, and wanted
+Sylvia to eat another egg, of which Rose might eat the top and he offer
+the empty shell; but it was too late, and Sylvius learned that often the
+shadow is better than the substance.</p>
+
+<p>It had been decided in the end that Jack should confine himself to the
+cares of general management, and Arthur was left without a rival. Sylvia
+had insisted that he should only sing old English folk-songs, a decision
+which he had challenged at first on the ground that he required the
+advertisement of more modern songs, and that Sylvia&rsquo;s choice was not
+going to help him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not singing to help yourself,&rdquo; she had told him. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re singing
+to help me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In addition to Arthur there was a girl whom Lucian Hope had discovered,
+a delicate creature with red hair, whose chief claim to employment was
+that she was starving, though incidentally she had a very sweet and pure
+soprano voice. Finally there was an Irish pianist whose technique and
+good humor were alike unassailable.</p>
+
+<p>Before the curtain went up, Sylvia could think of nothing but the
+improvisations that she ought to have invented instead of the ones that
+she had. It was a strain upon her common sense to prevent her from
+canceling the whole performance and returning its money to the audience.
+The more she contemplated what she was going to do the<a name="page_425" id="page_425"></a> more she viewed
+the undertaking as a fraud upon the public. There had never been any
+<i>chicane</i> like the <i>chicane</i> she was presently going to commit. What was
+that noise? Who had given the signal to O&rsquo;Hea? What in hell&rsquo;s name did
+he think he was doing at the piano? The sound of the music was like
+water running into one&rsquo;s bath while one was lying in bed&mdash;nothing could
+stop it from overflowing presently. Nothing could stop the curtain from
+rising. At what a pace he was playing that Debussy! He was showing off,
+the fool! A ridiculous joke came into her mind that she kept on
+repeating while the music flowed: &ldquo;Many a minim makes a maxim. Many a
+minim makes a maxim.&rdquo; How cold it was in the dressing-room, and the
+music was getting quicker and quicker. There was a knock at the door. It
+was Arthur. How nice he looked with that red carnation in his
+buttonhole.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How nice you look, Arthur, in that buttonhole.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The flower became tremendously important; it seemed to Sylvia that, if
+she could go on flattering the flower, O&rsquo;Hea would somehow be kept at
+the piano.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t pull it to pieces,&rdquo; said Arthur, ruthfully. But it was too
+late; the petals were scattered on the floor like drops of blood.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m sorry! Come along back to my dressing-room. I&rsquo;ll give you
+another flower.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no; there isn&rsquo;t time now. Wait till you come off after your first
+set.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now it was seeming the most urgent thing in the world to find another
+flower for Arthur&rsquo;s buttonhole. At all cost the rise of that curtain
+must be delayed. But Arthur had brought her on the stage and the notes
+were racing toward the death of the piece. It was absurd of O&rsquo;Hea to
+have chosen Debussy; the atmosphere required a ballade of Chopin, or,
+better still, Schumann&rsquo;s Noveletten. He could have played all the
+Noveletten. Oh dear, what a pity she had not thought of making that
+suggestion. The piano would have been scarcely half-way through by now.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there was silence. Then there followed the languid applause of
+an afternoon audience for an unimportant part of the program.<a name="page_426" id="page_426"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s stopped,&rdquo; Sylvia exclaimed, in horror. &ldquo;What <i>has</i> happened?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She turned to Arthur in despair, but he had hurried off the stage.
+Lucian Hope&rsquo;s painted city seemed to press forward and stifle her; she
+moved down-stage to escape it. The curtain went up and she recoiled as
+from a chasm at her feet. Why on earth was O&rsquo;Hea sitting in that idiotic
+attitude, as if he were going to listen to a sermon, looking down like
+that, with his right arm supporting his left elbow and his left hand
+propping up his chin? How hot the footlights were! She hoped nothing had
+happened, and looked round in alarm; but the fireman was standing quite
+calmly in the wings. Just as Sylvia was deciding that her voice could
+not possibly escape from her throat, which had closed upon it like a
+pair of pincers, the voice tore itself free and went traveling out
+toward that darkness in front, that nebulous darkness scattered with
+hands and faces and programs. Like Concetta in a great city, Sylvia was
+lost in that darkness; she <i>was</i> Concetta. It seemed to her that the
+applause at the end was not so much approval of Concetta as a welcome to
+Mrs. Gainsborough; when isolated laughs and volleys of laughter came out
+of the darkness and were followed sometimes by the darkness itself
+laughing everywhere, so that O&rsquo;Hea looked up very personally and winked
+at her, then Sylvia fell in love with her audience. The laughter
+increased, and suddenly she recognized at the end of each volley that
+Sylvius and Rose were supplementing its echoes with rapturous echoes of
+their own. She could not see them, but their gurgles in the darkness
+were like a song of nightingales to Sylvia. She ceased to be Mrs.
+Gainsborough, and began to say three or four of the poems. Then the
+curtain fell, and came up again, and fell, and came up again, and fell,
+and came up again.</p>
+
+<p>Jack was standing beside her and saying:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Splendid, splendid, splendid, splendid!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Delighted, delighted, delighted, delighted!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very good audience! Splendid audience! Delighted audience! Success!
+Success! Success!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Really, how wonderfully O&rsquo;Hea was playing, Sylvia thought, and how good
+that Debussy was!<a name="page_427" id="page_427"></a></p>
+
+<p>The rest of the performance was as much of a success as the beginning.
+Perhaps the audience liked best Mrs. Gowndry and the woman who smuggled
+lace from Belgium into France. Sylvius and Rose laughed so much at the
+audience&rsquo;s laughter at Mrs. Gowndry that Sylvius announced in the
+ensuing lull that he wanted to go somewhere, a desire which was
+naturally indorsed by Rose. The audience was much amused, because it
+supposed that Sylvius&rsquo;s wish was a tribute to the profession of Mrs.
+Gowndry&rsquo;s husband, and whatever faint doubts existed about the propriety
+of alluding in the Pierian Hall to a lavatory-attendant were dispersed.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia forgot altogether about the audience&rsquo;s tea when the curtain fell
+finally. It was difficult to think about anything with so many smiling
+people pressing round her on the stage. Several old friends came and
+reminded her of their existence, but there was no one who had quite such
+a radiant smile as Arthur Lonsdale.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lonnie! How nice of you to come!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I say, topping, I mean. What? I say, that&rsquo;s a most extraordinary
+back-cloth you&rsquo;ve got. What on earth is it supposed to be? It reminds me
+of what you feel like when you&rsquo;re driving a car through a strange town
+after meeting a man you haven&rsquo;t seen for some time and who&rsquo;s just found
+out a good brand of fizz at the hotel where he&rsquo;s staying. I was afraid
+you&rsquo;d get bitten in the back before you&rsquo;d finished. I say, Mrs. Gowndry
+was devilish good. Some of the other lads and lasses were a bit beyond
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And how&rsquo;s business?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, very good. We&rsquo;ve just put the neatest little ninety h. p.
+torpedo-body two-seater on the market. I&rsquo;ll tootle you down to Brighton
+in it one Sunday morning. Upon my word, you&rsquo;ll scarcely have time to
+wrap yourself up before you&rsquo;ll have to unwrap yourself to shake hands
+with dear old Harry Burnly coming out to welcome you from the
+Britannia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not married yet, Lonnie?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, not yet. Braced myself up to do it the other day, dived in, and was
+seized with cramp at the deep end. She offered to be a sister to me and
+I sank like a stone. My mother&rsquo;s making rather a nuisance of herself
+about it.<a name="page_428" id="page_428"></a> She keeps producing girls out of her muff like a conjurer,
+whenever she comes to see me. And what girls! Heather mixture most of
+them, like Guggenheim&rsquo;s Twelfth of August. I shall come to it at last, I
+suppose. Mr. Arthur Lonsdale and his bride leaving St. Margaret&rsquo;s,
+Westminster, under an arch of spanners formed by grateful chauffeurs
+whom the brilliant and handsome young bride-groom has recommended to
+many titled readers of this paper. Well, so long, Sylvia; there&rsquo;s a
+delirious crowd of admirers waiting for you. Send me a line where you&rsquo;re
+living and we&rsquo;ll have a little dinner somewhere&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia&rsquo;s success was not quite so huge as in the first intoxication of
+her friends&rsquo; enthusiasm she had begun to fancy. However, it was
+unmistakably a success, and she was able to give two recitals a week
+through the autumn, with certainly the prospect of a good music-hall
+engagement for the following spring, if she cared to accept it. Most of
+the critics discovered that she was not as good as Yvette Guilbert. In
+view of Yvette Guilbert&rsquo;s genius, of which they were much more firmly
+convinced now than they would have been when Yvette Guilbert first
+appeared, this struck them as a fairly safe comparison; moreover, it
+gave their readers an impression that they understood French, which
+enhanced the literary value of their criticism. To strengthen this
+belief most of them were inclined to think that the French poems were
+the best part of Miss Sylvia Scarlett&rsquo;s performance. One or two of the
+latter definitely recalled some of Yvette Guilbert&rsquo;s early work, no
+doubt by the number of words they had not understood, because somebody
+had crackled a program or had shuffled his feet or had coughed. As for
+the English character studies, or, as some of them carried away by
+reminiscences of Yvette Guilbert into oblivion of their own language
+preferred to call them, <i>études</i>, they had a certain distinction, and in
+many cases betrayed signs of an almost meticulous observation, though at
+the same time, like everybody else doing anything at the present moment
+except in France, they did not have as much distinction or
+meticulousness as the work of forerunners in England or contemporaries
+abroad. Still, that was not to say that the work of Miss Sylvia Scarlett
+was not highly promising and<a name="page_429" id="page_429"></a> of the greatest possible interest. The
+<i>timbre</i> of her voice was specially worthy of notice and justified the
+italics in which it was printed. Finally, two critics, who were probably
+sitting next to each other, found a misprint in the program, no doubt in
+searching for a translation of the poems.</p>
+
+<p>If Sylvia fancied a lack of appreciation in the critics, all her friends
+were positive that they were wonderful notices for a beginner.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, I think that&rsquo;s a splendid notice in the <i>Telegraph</i>,&rdquo; said Olive.
+&ldquo;I found it almost at once. Why, one often has to read right through the
+paper before one can find the notice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean to tell me that the most self-inebriated egotist on earth
+ever read right through the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>? I don&rsquo;t believe it. He&rsquo;d
+have been drowned like Narcissus.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Arthur pressed for a decision about their marriage, now that Sylvia knew
+what she had so long wanted to know; but she was wrapped up in ideas for
+improving her performance and forbade Arthur to mention the subject
+until she raised it herself; for the present she was on with a new love
+twice a week. Indeed, they were fascinating to Sylvia, these audiences
+each with a definite personality of its own. She remembered how she had
+scoffed in old days at the slavish flattery of them by her fellow-actors
+and actresses; equally in the old days she had scoffed at love. She
+wished that she could feel toward Arthur as she felt now toward her
+audiences, which were as absorbing as children with their little
+clevernesses and precocities. The difference between what she was doing
+now and what she had done formerly when she sang French songs with an
+English accent was the difference between the realism of an old knotted
+towel that is a baby and an expensive doll that may be a baby but never
+ceases to be a doll. Formerly she had been a mechanical thing and had
+never given herself because she had possessed neither art nor truth, but
+merely craft and accuracy. She had thought that the personality was
+degraded by depending on the favor of an audience. All that old
+self-consciousness and false shame were gone. She and her audience
+communed through art as spirits<a name="page_430" id="page_430"></a> may commune after death. In the
+absorption of studying the audience as a separate entity, Sylvia forgot
+that it was made up of men and women. When she knew that any friends of
+hers were in front, they always remained entirely separate in her mind
+from the audience. Gradually, however, as the autumn advanced, several
+people from long ago re-entered her life and she began to lose that
+feeling of seclusion from the world and to realize the gradual setting
+up of barriers to her complete liberty of action. The first of these
+visitants was Miss Ashley, who in her peacock-blue gown looked much as
+she had looked when Sylvia last saw her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I could not resist coming round to tell you how greatly I enjoyed your
+performance,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been so sorry that you never came to see
+me all these years.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia felt embarrassed, because she dreaded presently an allusion to
+her marriage with Philip, but Miss Ashley was too wise.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How&rsquo;s Hornton House!&rdquo; asked Sylvia, rather timidly. It was like
+inquiring after the near relation of an old friend who might have died.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just the same. Miss Primer is still with me. Miss Hossack now has a
+school of her own. Miss Pinck became very ill with gouty rheumatism and
+had to retire. I won&rsquo;t ask you about yourself; you told me so much from
+the stage. Now that we&rsquo;ve been able to meet again, won&rsquo;t you come and
+visit your old school sometime?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please,&rdquo; Miss Ashley insisted. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not inviting you out of politeness.
+It would really give me pleasure. I have never ceased to think about you
+all these years. Well, I won&rsquo;t keep you, for I&rsquo;m sure you must be tired.
+Do come. Tell me, Sylvia. I should so like to bring the girls one
+afternoon. What would be a good afternoon to come?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mean, when will there be nothing in the program that&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We poor schoolmistresses,&rdquo; said Miss Ashley, with a whimsical look of
+deprecation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come on Saturday fortnight, and afterward I&rsquo;ll go back with you all to
+Hornton House. I&rsquo;d love that.&rdquo;<a name="page_431" id="page_431"></a></p>
+
+<p>So it was arranged.</p>
+
+<p>On Wednesday of the following week it happened that there was a
+particularly appreciative audience, and Sylvia became so much enamoured
+of the laughter that she excelled herself. It was an afternoon of
+perfect accord, and she traced the source of it to a group somewhere in
+the middle of the stalls, too far back for her to recognize its
+composition. After the performance a pack of visiting-cards was brought
+to the door of her dressing-room. She read: &ldquo;Mrs. Ian Campbell, Mrs.
+Ralph Dennison.&rdquo; Who on earth were they? &ldquo;Mr. Leonard Worsley&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia flung open the door, and there they all were, Mr. and Mrs.
+Worsley, Gladys and Enid, two good-looking men in the background, two
+children in the foreground.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gladys! Enid!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Sylvia, you were priceless! Oh, we enjoyed ourselves no end! You
+don&rsquo;t know my husband. Ian, come and bow nicely to the pretty lady,&rdquo;
+cried Gladys.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia, it was simply ripping. We laughed and laughed. Ralph, come and
+be introduced, and this is Stumpy, my boy,&rdquo; Enid cried, simultaneously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fancy, he&rsquo;s a grandfather,&rdquo; the daughters exclaimed, dragging Mr.
+Worsley forward. He looked younger than ever.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hercules is at Oxford, or of course he&rsquo;d have come, too. This is
+Proodles,&rdquo; said Gladys, pointing to the little girl.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia, why did you desert us like that?&rdquo; Mrs. Worsley reproachfully
+asked. &ldquo;When are you coming down to stay with us at Arbor End? Of course
+the children are married....&rdquo; She broke off with half a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but we can all squash in,&rdquo; Gladys shouted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, rather,&rdquo; Enid agreed. &ldquo;The kids can sleep in the coal-scuttles. We
+sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t notice any difference.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dears, it&rsquo;s so wonderful to see you,&rdquo; Sylvia gasped. &ldquo;But do tell me
+who you all are over again. I&rsquo;m so muddled.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m Mrs. Ian Campbell,&rdquo; Gladys explained. &ldquo;And this is Ian. And this is
+Proodles, and at home there&rsquo;s Groggles, who&rsquo;s too small for anything
+except pantomimes. And that&rsquo;s Mrs. Ralph Dennison, and that&rsquo;s Ralph,
+and<a name="page_432" id="page_432"></a> that&rsquo;s Stumpy, and at home Enid&rsquo;s got a girlie called Barbara.
+Mother hates being a grandmother four times over, so she&rsquo;s called Aunt
+Victoria, and of course father&rsquo;s still one of the children. We&rsquo;ve both
+been married seven years.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nothing had so much brought home to Sylvia the flight of time as this
+meeting with Gladys and Enid, who when she last saw them were only
+sixteen. It was incredible. And they had not forgotten her; in what
+seemed now a century they had not forgotten her! Sylvia told them about
+Miss Ashley&rsquo;s visit and suggested that they should come and join the
+party of girls from Hornton House. It would be fun, would it not? Miss
+Primer was still at the school.</p>
+
+<p>Gladys and Enid were delighted with the plan, and on the day fixed about
+twenty girls invaded Sylvia&rsquo;s dressing-room, shepherded by Miss Primer,
+who was still melting with tears for Rodrigo&rsquo;s death in the scene. Miss
+Ashley had brought the carriage to drive Sylvia back, but she insisted
+upon going in a motor-&rsquo;bus with the others and was well rewarded by Miss
+Primer&rsquo;s ecstasies of apprehension. Sylvia wandered with Gladys and Enid
+down well-remembered corridors, in and out of bedrooms and class-rooms;
+she listened to resolutions to send Prudence and Barbara to Hornton
+House in a few years. For Sylvia it was almost too poignant, the thought
+of these families growing up all round her, while she, after so many
+years, was still really as much alone as she had always been. The
+company of all these girls with their slim black legs, their pigtails
+and fluffy hair tied back with big bows, the absurdly exaggerated speech
+and the enlaced loves of girlhood&mdash;the accumulation of it all was
+scarcely to be borne.</p>
+
+<p>When Sylvia visited Arbor End and talked once again to Mrs. Worsley,
+sitting at the foot of her bed, about the wonderful lives of that so
+closely self-contained family, the desolation of the future came visibly
+nearer; it seemed imperative at whatever cost to drive it back.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before Christmas a card was brought round to Sylvia&mdash;&ldquo;Mrs.
+Prescott-Merivale, Hardingham Hall, Hunts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo; she asked her maid.<a name="page_433" id="page_433"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a lady, miss.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well of course I didn&rsquo;t suppose a cassowary had sent up his card.
+What&rsquo;s she like?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The maid strove to think of some phrase that would describe the visitor,
+but she fell back hopelessly upon her original statement.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a lady, miss.&rdquo; Then, with a sudden radiancy lighting her eyes,
+she added, &ldquo;And there&rsquo;s a little boy with her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My entertainment seems to be turning into a children&rsquo;s treat,&rdquo; Sylvia
+muttered to herself. &ldquo;<i>Sic itur ad astra.</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon, miss, did you say to show her in?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Presently a tall young woman in the late twenties, with large and
+brilliant gray eyes, rose-flushed and deep in furs, came in, accompanied
+by an extraordinarily handsome boy of seven or eight.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How awfully good of you to let me waste a few minutes of your time,&rdquo;
+she said, and as she spoke, Sylvia had a fleeting illusion that it was
+herself who was speaking, a sensation infinitely rapid, but yet
+sufficiently clear to make her ask herself the meaning of it, and to
+find in the stranger&rsquo;s hair the exact replica of her own. The swift
+illusion and the equally swift comparison were fled before she had
+finished inviting her visitor to sit down.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I must explain who I am. I&rsquo;ve heard about you, oh, of course, publicly,
+but also from my brother.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your brother?&rdquo; repeated Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, Michael Fane.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not with you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No. I wish he had been. Alas! he&rsquo;s gone off to look for a friend who,
+by the way, I expect you know also. Maurice Avery? All sorts of horrid
+rumors about what had happened to him in Morocco were being brought back
+to us, so Michael went off last spring, and has been with him ever
+since.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I thought he was a monk,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Merivale laughed with what seemed rather like relief. &ldquo;No, he&rsquo;s
+neither priest nor monk, thank goodness, though the prospect still hangs
+over us.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;After all these years?&rdquo; Sylvia asked, in astonishment.<a name="page_434" id="page_434"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, my dear Miss Scarlett, don&rsquo;t forget the narrow way is also long.
+But I didn&rsquo;t come to talk to you about Michael. I simply most
+shamelessly availed myself of his having met you a long time ago to give
+myself an excuse for talking to you about your performance. Of course
+it&rsquo;s absolutely great. How lucky you are!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lucky?&rdquo; Sylvia could not help glancing at the handsome boy beside her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s rather a lamb, isn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo; Mrs. Merivale agreed. &ldquo;But you started
+all sorts of old, forgotten, hidden-away, burned-out fancies of mine
+this afternoon, and&mdash;you see, I intended to be a professional pianist
+once, but I got married instead. Much better, really, because,
+unless&mdash;Oh, I don&rsquo;t know. Yes, I <i>am</i> jealous of you. You&rsquo;ve picked me
+up and put me down again where I was once. Now the conversation&rsquo;s backed
+into me, and I really do want to talk about you. Your performance is the
+kind about which one wonders why nobody ever did it before. That&rsquo;s the
+greatest compliment one can pay an artist, I think. All great art is the
+great expression of a great commonplace; that&rsquo;s why it always looks so
+easy. I do hope you&rsquo;re having the practical success you deserve.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I think I shall be all right,&rdquo; Sylvia said. &ldquo;Only, I expect that
+after the New-Year I shall have to cut my show considerably and take a
+music-hall engagement. I&rsquo;m not making a fortune at the Pierian.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How horrid for you! How I should love to play with you! Oh dear! It&rsquo;s
+heartrending to say it, but it&rsquo;s much too late. Well, I mustn&rsquo;t keep
+you. You&rsquo;ve given me such tremendous pleasure and just as much pain with
+it as makes the pleasure all the sharper.... I&rsquo;ll write and tell Michael
+about you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I expect he&rsquo;s forgotten my name by now,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh no, he never forgets anybody, even in the throes of theological
+speculation. Good-by. I see that this is your last performance for the
+present. I shall come and hear you again when you reopen. How odious
+about music-halls. You ought to have called yourself Silvia Scarletti,
+told your press agent that you were the direct descendant of the
+composer, vowed that when you came to England six months ago you could
+speak nothing but Polish, and<a name="page_435" id="page_435"></a> you could have filled the Pierian night
+and day for a year. We&rsquo;re queer people, we English. I think, you know,
+it&rsquo;s a kind of shyness, the way we treat native artists. You get the
+same thing in families. It&rsquo;s not really that the prophet has no honor,
+etc.; it really is, I believe, a fear of boasting, which would be such
+bad form, wouldn&rsquo;t it? Of course we&rsquo;ve ruined ourselves as a nation by
+our good manners and our sense of humor. Why, we&rsquo;ve even insisted that
+what native artists we do support shall be gentlemen first and artists
+second. In what other country could an actor be knighted for his
+trousers or an author for his wife&rsquo;s dowry? Good-by. I do wish you
+great, great success.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anyway, I can&rsquo;t be knighted,&rdquo; Sylvia laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t be too sure. A nation that has managed to turn its artists
+into gentlemen will soon insist on turning its women into gentlemen,
+too, or at any rate on securing their good manners in some way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Women will never really have good manners,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, thank God. There you&rsquo;re right. Well, good-by. It&rsquo;s been so jolly to
+talk to you, and again I&rsquo;ve loved every moment of this afternoon.
+Charles,&rdquo; she added to the handsome boy, &ldquo;after bragging about your
+country&rsquo;s good manners, let&rsquo;s see you make a decent bow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He inclined his head with a grave courtesy, opened the door for his
+mother, and followed her out.</p>
+
+<p>The visit of Michael&rsquo;s sister, notwithstanding that she had envied
+Sylvia&rsquo;s luck, left her with very little opinion of it herself. What was
+her success, after all? A temporary elation dependent upon good health
+and the public taste, financially uncertain, emotionally wearing,
+radically unsatisfying and insecure, for, however good her performance
+was, it was always mummery, really, as near as mummery could get to
+creative work, perhaps, but mortal like its maker.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sad to think this is the last performance here,&rdquo; said her maid.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia agreed with her. It was a relief to find a peg on which to hang
+the unreasonable depression that was weighing her down. She passed out
+of her dressing-room. As the stage door swung to behind her a figure
+stepped into<a name="page_436" id="page_436"></a> the lamplight of the narrow court; it was Jimmy Monkley.
+The spruceness had left him; all the color, too, had gone from his face,
+which was now sickly white&mdash;an evil face with its sandy mustache
+streaked with gray and its lusterless green eyes. Sylvia was afraid that
+from the way she started back from him he would think that she scorned
+him for having been in prison, and with an effort she tried to be
+cordial.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve done damned well for yourself,&rdquo; he said, paying no attention to
+what she was saying. She found this meeting overwhelmingly repulsive and
+moved toward her taxi. It was seeming to her that Monkley had the power
+to snatch her away and plunge her back into that life of theirs. She
+would really rather have met Philip than him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Damned well for yourself,&rdquo; he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry I can&rsquo;t stay. I&rsquo;m in a hurry. I&rsquo;m in a hurry.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She reached the taxi and slammed the door in his face.</p>
+
+<p>This unexpected meeting convinced Sylvia of the necessity of attaching
+herself finally to a life that would make the resurrection of a Monkley
+nothing more influential than a nightmare. She knew that she was giving
+way to purely nervous fears in being thus affected by what, had she
+stopped to think, was the natural result of her name&rsquo;s becoming known.
+But the liability to nervous fears was in itself an argument that
+something was wrong. When had she ever been a prey to such hysteria
+before? When had she allowed herself to be haunted by a face, as now she
+was being haunted by Monkley&rsquo;s face? Suppose he had seated himself
+behind the taxi and that when she reached the Airdales&rsquo; house he should
+once more be standing on the pavement in the lamplight?</p>
+
+<p>In Brompton Road Sylvia told the driver to stop. She wanted to do some
+Christmas shopping. After an hour or more spent among toys she came out
+with a porter loaded with packages, and looked round her quickly; but of
+course he was not upon the pavement. How absurd she had been! In any
+case, what could Monkley do? She would forget all about him. To-morrow
+was Christmas Eve. There was going to be such a jolly party at the
+Airdales&rsquo;. The taxi hummed toward West Kensington.<a name="page_437" id="page_437"></a> Sylvia leaned back,
+huddled up with her thoughts, until they reached Lillie Road. She had
+passed Mrs. Meares&rsquo;s house so many times without giving it a second
+look. Now she found herself peering out into the thickening fog in case
+Monkley should be standing upon the door-step. She was glad when she
+reached the Airdales&rsquo; house, warm and bright, festooned with holly and
+mistletoe. There were pleasant little household noises everywhere,
+comfortable little noises, and a rosy glow from the silken shades of the
+lamps; the carpet was so quiet and the parlor-maid in a clean cap and
+apron so efficient, so quick to get in all the parcels and shut out the
+foggy night.</p>
+
+<p>Olive was already in the drawing-room, and because this was to be a
+specially unceremonious evening in preparation for the party to-morrow,
+Olive was in a pink tea-gown that blended with the prettiness of her
+cozy house and made her more essentially a part of it all. How bleak was
+her own background in comparison with this, Sylvia thought. Jack was
+dining out most unwillingly and had left a great many pleas to be
+forgiven by Sylvia on the first night of her Christmas visit. After
+dinner they sat in the drawing-room, and Sylvia told Olive about her
+meeting with Monkley. She said nothing about Michael Fane&rsquo;s sister; that
+meeting did not seem to have any bearing upon the subject she wanted to
+discuss.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can you understand,&rdquo; Sylvia asked, &ldquo;being almost frightened into
+marriage?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I think so,&rdquo; Olive replied, as judicially as the comfort of her
+surroundings would allow. It was impossible to preserve a critical
+attitude in this room; in such a suave and genial atmosphere one
+accepted anything.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, do you still object to my marrying Arthur?&rdquo; Sylvia demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, my dear, I never objected to your marrying him. I may have
+suggested, when I first saw him, that he seemed rather too much the type
+of the ordinary actor for you, but that was only because you yourself
+had always scoffed at actors so haughtily. Since I&rsquo;ve known him I&rsquo;ve
+grown to like him. Please don&rsquo;t think I ever objected to your marrying
+him. I never felt more sure about anybody&rsquo;s knowing her own mind than I
+do about you.&rdquo;<a name="page_438" id="page_438"></a></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I am going to marry him,&rdquo; Sylvia said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Darling Sylvia, why do you say it so defiantly? Everybody will be
+delighted. Jack was talking only the other day about his perpetual dread
+that you&rsquo;d never give yourself a chance of establishing your position
+finally, because you were so restless.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia contemplated an admission to Olive of having lived with Arthur
+for a year in America, but in this room the fact had an ugly look and
+seemed to belong rather to that evil face of the past that had
+confronted her with such ill omen this evening, rather than to anything
+so homely as marriage.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Arthur may not be anything more than an actor,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;But in my
+profession what else do I want? He has loved me for a long time; I&rsquo;m
+very fond of him. It&rsquo;s essential that I should have a background so that
+I shall never be shaken out of my self-possession by anything like this
+evening&rsquo;s encounter. I&rsquo;ve lived a life of feverish energy, and it&rsquo;s only
+since the improvisations that I can begin to believe it wasn&rsquo;t all
+wasted. I made a great mistake when I was seventeen, and when I was
+nineteen I tried to repair it with a still greater mistake. Then came
+Lily; she was a mistake. Oh, when I look back at it all, it&rsquo;s nothing
+but mistake after mistake. I long for such funny ordinary little
+pleasures. Olive darling, I&rsquo;ve tried, I&rsquo;ve tried to think I can do
+without love, without children, without family, without friends. I
+can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The tears were running swiftly, and all the time more swiftly, down
+Sylvia&rsquo;s cheeks while she was speaking. Olive jumped up from her soft
+and quilted chair and knelt beside her friend.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My darling Sylvia, you have friends, you have, indeed you have.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; Sylvia went on. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s ungrateful of me. Why, if it hadn&rsquo;t been
+for you and Jack I should have gone mad. But just because you&rsquo;re so
+happy together, and because you have Sylvius and Rose, and because I
+flit about on the outskirts of it all like a timid, friendly, solitary
+ghost, I must have some one to love me. I&rsquo;ve really treated Arthur very
+badly. I&rsquo;ve kept him waiting now for a year. I wasn&rsquo;t brave enough to
+let him go, and I wasn&rsquo;t<a name="page_439" id="page_439"></a> brave enough to marry him. I&rsquo;ve never been
+undecided in my life. It must be that the gipsy in me has gone forever,
+I think. This success of mine has been leading all the time to settling
+down properly. Most of the people who came back to me out of the past
+were the nice people, like my old mistress and the grown-up twins, and I
+want to be like them. Oh, Olive, I&rsquo;m so tired of being different, of
+people thinking that I&rsquo;m hard and brutal and cynical. I&rsquo;m not. Indeed
+I&rsquo;m not. I couldn&rsquo;t have felt that truly appalling horror of Monkley
+this evening if I were really bad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia dear, you&rsquo;re working yourself up needlessly. How can you say
+that you&rsquo;re bad? How can you say such things about yourself? You&rsquo;re not
+religious, perhaps.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Listen, Olive, if I marry Arthur I swear I&rsquo;ll make it a success. You
+know that I have a strong will. I&rsquo;m not going to criticize him. I&rsquo;m
+simply determined to make him and myself happy. It&rsquo;s very easy to love
+him, really. He&rsquo;s like a boy&mdash;very weak, you know&mdash;but with all sorts of
+charming qualities, and his mother would be so glad if it were all
+settled. Olive, I meant to tell you a whole heap of things about myself,
+about what I&rsquo;ve done, but I won&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;m going to forget it all and be
+happy. I&rsquo;m glad it&rsquo;s Christmas-time. I&rsquo;ve bought such ripping things for
+the kids. When I was buying them to-night there came into my head almost
+my first adventure when I was a very little girl and thought I&rsquo;d found a
+ten-franc piece which was really the money I&rsquo;d been given for the
+marketing. I had just such an orgy of buying to-night. Did you know that
+a giraffe could make a noise? Well, it can, or at any rate the giraffe I
+bought for Sylvius can. You twist its neck and it protests like a
+bronchial calf.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The party on Christmas Eve was a great success. Lucian Hope burnt a hole
+in the table-cloth with what was called a drawing-room firework. Jack
+split his coat trying to hide inside his bureau. Arthur, sitting on a
+bottle with his legs crossed, lit a candle, twice running. The little
+red-haired singer found the ring in the pudding. Sylvia found the
+sixpence. Nobody found the button, so it must have been swallowed. It
+was a splendid party. Sylvius and Rose did not begin to cry steadily
+until after ten o&rsquo;clock.<a name="page_440" id="page_440"></a></p>
+
+<p>When the guests were getting ready to leave, about two o&rsquo;clock on
+Christmas morning, and while Lucian Hope was telling everybody in turn
+that somebody must have swallowed the button inadvertently, to prove
+that he was quite able to pronounce &ldquo;inadvertently,&rdquo; Sylvia took Arthur
+down the front-door steps and walked with him a little way along the
+foggy street.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Arthur, I&rsquo;ll marry you when you like,&rdquo; she said, laying a hand upon his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sylvia, what a wonderful Christmas present!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To us both,&rdquo; she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Then on an impulse she dragged him back to the house and proclaimed
+their engagement, which meant the opening of new bottles of champagne
+and the drinking of so many healths that it was three o&rsquo;clock before the
+party broke up. Nor was there any likelihood of anybody&rsquo;s being able to
+say &ldquo;inadvertently&rdquo; by the time he had reached the corner of the street.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur had begged Sylvia to come down to Dulwich on Christmas day, and
+Mrs. Madden rejoiced over the decision they had reached at last. There
+were one or two things to be considered, the most important of which was
+the question of money. Sylvia had spent the last penny of what was left
+of Morera&rsquo;s money in launching herself, and she owed nearly two hundred
+pounds besides. Arthur had saved nothing. Both of them, however, had
+been offered good engagements for the spring, Arthur to tour as lead in
+one of the Vanity productions, which might mean an engagement at the
+Vanity itself in the autumn; Sylvia to play a twenty minutes&rsquo; turn at
+all the music-halls of a big circuit. It seemed unsatisfactory to marry
+and immediately afterward to separate, and they decided each to take the
+work that had been offered, to save all the money possible, and to aim
+at both playing in London next autumn, but in any case to be married in
+early June when the tours would end. They should then have a couple of
+months to themselves. Mrs. Madden wanted them to be married at once; but
+the other way seemed more prudent, and Sylvia, having once made up her
+mind, was determined to be practical and not to run the risk of spoiling
+by financial worries the beginning of their real life together. Her
+marriage in its orderliness<a name="page_441" id="page_441"></a> and forethought and simplicity of intention
+was to compensate for everything that had gone before. Mrs. Madden
+thought they were both of them being too deliberate, but then she had
+run away once with her father&rsquo;s groom and must have had a fundamentally
+impulsive, even a reckless temperament.</p>
+
+<p>The engagement was announced with an eye to the most advantageous
+publicity that is the privilege of being servants of the public. One was
+able to read everywhere of a theatrical romance or more coldly of a
+forthcoming theatrical marriage; nearly all the illustrated weeklies had
+two little oval photographs underneath which ran the legend:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="c"><small>INTERESTING ENGAGEMENT</small></p>
+
+<p>We learn that Miss Sylvia Scarlett, who recently registered such an
+emphatic success in her original entertainment at the Pierian Hall,
+will shortly wed Mr. Arthur Madden, whom many of our readers will
+remember for his rendering of &ldquo;Somebody is sitting in the sunset&rdquo;
+at the Frivolity Theater.</p></div>
+
+<p>In one particularly intimate paper was a short interview headed:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="c"><small>ACTRESS&rsquo;S DELIGHTFUL CANDOR</small></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Miss Scarlett to our representative who had called upon
+the clever and original young performer to ascertain when her
+marriage with Mr. Arthur Madden of &ldquo;Somebody is sitting in the
+sunset&rdquo; fame would take place. &ldquo;No, Arthur and I have decided to
+wait till June. Frankly, we can&rsquo;t afford to be married yet....&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p class="nind">and so on, with what was described as a portrait of Miss Sylvia Scarlet
+inset, but which without the avowal would probably have been taken for
+the thumbprint of a paperboy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is all terribly vulgar,&rdquo; Sylvia bewailed, but Jack, Arthur, and
+Olive were all firm in the need for thorough advertisement, and she
+acquiesced woefully. In January she and Arthur parted for their
+respective tours. Jack, before she went away, begged Sylvia for the
+fiftieth time to take back the money she had settled on her godchildren.
+He argued with her until she got angry.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jack, if you mention that again I&rsquo;ll never come to your<a name="page_442" id="page_442"></a> house any
+more. One of the most exquisite joys in all my life was when I was able
+to do that, and when you and Olive were sweet enough to let me, for you
+really were sweet and simple in those days and not purse-proud
+<i>bourgeois</i>, as you are now. Please, Jack!&rdquo; She had tears in her eyes.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be unkind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But supposing you have children of your own?&rdquo; he urged.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jack, don&rsquo;t go on. It really upsets me. I cannot bear the idea of that
+money&rsquo;s belonging to anybody but the twins.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did you tell Arthur?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing to do with Arthur. It&rsquo;s only to do with me. It was my
+present. It was made before Arthur came on the scene.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With great unwillingness Jack obeyed her command not to say anything
+more on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia earned a good enough salary to pay off nearly all her debts by
+May, when her tour brought her to the suburban music-halls and she was
+able to amuse herself by house-hunting for herself and Arthur. All her
+friends, and not the least old ones like Gladys and Enid, took a
+profound interest in her approaching marriage. Wedding-presents even
+began to arrive. The most remarkable omen of the gods&rsquo; pleasure was a
+communication she received in mid-May from Miss Dashwood&rsquo;s solicitors to
+say that Miss Dashwood had died and had left to Sylvia in her will the
+freehold of Mulberry Cottage with all it contained. Olive was enraptured
+with her good fortune, and wanted to telegraph to Arthur, who was in
+Leeds that week; but Sylvia said she would rather write:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>D<small>EAREST</small> A<small>RTHUR</small>,&mdash;You remember my telling you about Mulberry
+Cottage? Well, the most wonderful thing has happened. That old
+darling, Miss Dashwood, the sister of Mrs. Gainsborough&rsquo;s captain,
+has left it to me with everything in it. It has of course for me
+all sorts of memories, and I want to tell you very seriously that I
+regard it as a sign, yes, really a sign of my wanderings and
+restlessness being forever finished. It seems to me somehow to
+consecrate our marriage. Don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m turning religious: I shall
+never do that. Oh no, never! But I can&rsquo;t help being moved by what
+to you may seem only a coincidence. Arthur, you must forgive me for
+the way in which I&rsquo;ve often treated you. You mustn&rsquo;t think that
+because I&rsquo;ve always bullied you in the<a name="page_443" id="page_443"></a> past I&rsquo;m always going to in
+the future. If you want me now, I&rsquo;m yours <i>really</i>, much more than
+I ever was in America, much, much more. You <i>shall</i> be happy with
+me. Oh, it&rsquo;s such a dear house with a big garden, for London a very
+big garden, and it held once two such true hearts. Do you see the
+foolish tears smudging the ink? They&rsquo;re my tears for so much. I&rsquo;m
+going to-morrow morning to dust our house. Think of me when you get
+this letter as really at last</p>
+
+<p class="r">Your
+<span style="margin-left: 10%;">S<small>YLVIA</small>.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>The next morning arrived a letter from Leeds, which had crossed hers:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>M<small>Y</small> D<small>EAR</small> S<small>YLVIA</small>,&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know how to tell you what I must tell. I
+was married this morning to Maimie Vernon. I don&rsquo;t know how I let
+myself fall in love with her. I never looked at her when she sang
+at the Pierian with you. But she got an engagement in this company
+and&mdash;well, you know the way things happen on tour. The only thing
+that makes me feel not an absolutely hopeless cad is that I&rsquo;ve a
+feeling somehow that you were going to marry me more out of
+kindness and pity than out of love.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Forgive me. <span style="margin-left: 10%;">A<small>RTHUR</small>.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That funny little red-haired girl!&rdquo; Sylvia gasped. Then like a surging
+wave the affront to her pride overwhelmed her. With an effort she looked
+at her other letters. One was from Michael Fane&rsquo;s sister:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">H<small>ARDINGHAM</small> H<small>ALL</small>,&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+H<small>UNTS</small>,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<i>May, 1914</i>.</p>
+
+<p>D<small>EAR</small> M<small>ISS</small> S<small>CARLETT</small>,&mdash;My brother is back in England and so anxious
+to meet you again. I know you&rsquo;re playing near town at present.
+Couldn&rsquo;t you possibly come down next Sunday morning and stay till
+Monday? It would give us the greatest pleasure.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Yours sincerely,&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10%;">S<small>TELLA</small> P<small>RESCOTT</small>-M<small>ERIVALE</small>.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never,&rdquo; Sylvia cried, tearing the letter into small pieces. &ldquo;Ah no!
+That, never, never!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She left her rooms, and went to Mulberry Cottage. The caretaker
+fluttered round her to show her sense of Sylvia&rsquo;s importance as her new
+mistress. Was there nothing that she could do? Was there nothing that
+she could get?</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia sat on the seat under the mulberry-tree in the still morning
+sunlight of May. It was impossible to think,<a name="page_444" id="page_444"></a> impossible to plan,
+impossible, impossible. The ideas in her brain went slowly round and
+round. Nothing would stop them. Round and round they went, getting every
+moment more mixed up with one another. But gradually from the confusion
+one idea emerged, sharp, strong, insistent&mdash;she must leave England. The
+moment this idea had stated itself, Sylvia could think of nothing but
+the swiftness and secrecy of her departure. She felt that if one person
+should ever fling a glance of sympathy or condolence or pity or even of
+mild affection, she should kill herself to set free her outraged soul.
+She made no plans for the future. She had no reproaches for Arthur. She
+had nothing but the urgency of flight as from the Furies themselves.
+Quickly she went back to her rooms and packed. All her big luggage she
+took to Mulberry Cottage and placed with the caretaker. She sent a sum
+of money to the solicitors and asked them to pay the woman until she
+came back.</p>
+
+<p>At the last moment, in searching through her trunks, she found the
+yellow shawl that was wrapped round her few treasures of ancestry. She
+was going to leave it behind, but on second thought she packed it in the
+only trunk she took with her. She was going back perhaps to the life of
+which these treasures were the only solid pledge.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This time, yes, I&rsquo;m off with the raggle-taggle gipsies in deadly
+earnest. Charing Cross,&rdquo; she told the taxi-driver.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="c">THE END</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/back.jpg" width="359" height="550" alt="image of the book&#39;s back cover" title="image of the book&#39;s back cover" />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early Life and Adventures of
+Sylvia Scarlett, by Compton Mackenzie
+
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+</body>
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