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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Aaron's Rod, by D. H. Lawrence
+#4 in our series by D. H. Lawrence
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+Title: Aaron's Rod
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+Author: D. H. Lawrence
+
+Release Date: October, 2003 [Etext# 4520]
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+[This file was first posted on January 30, 2002]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Aaron's Rod, by D. H. Lawrence
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+Produced by Doug Levy
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+
+
+
+AARON'S ROD
+
+by D. H. Lawrence
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I.  THE BLUE BALL
+    II.  ROYAL OAK
+   III.  "THE LIGHTED TREE"
+    IV.  "THE PILLAR OF SALT"
+     V.  AT THE OPERA
+    VI.  TALK
+   VII.  THE DARK SQUARE GARDEN
+  VIII.  A PUNCH IN THE WIND
+    IX.  LOW-WATER MARK
+     X.  THE WAR AGAIN
+    XI.  MORE PILLAR OF SALT
+   XII.  NOVARA
+  XIII.  WIE ES IHNEN GEFAELLT
+   XIV.  XX SETTEMBRE
+    XV.  A RAILWAY JOURNEY
+   XVI.  FLORENCE
+  XVII.  HIGH UP OVER THE CATHEDRAL SQUARE
+ XVIII.  THE MARCHESA
+   XIX.  CLEOPATRA, BUT NOT ANTHONY
+    XX.  THE BROKEN ROD
+   XXI.  WORDS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE BLUE BALL
+
+
+There was a large, brilliant evening star in the early twilight, and
+underfoot the earth was half frozen.  It was Christmas Eve.  Also the
+War was over, and there was a sense of relief that was almost a new
+menace.  A man felt the violence of the nightmare released now into the
+general air.  Also there had been another wrangle among the men on the
+pit-bank that evening.
+
+Aaron Sisson was the last man on the little black railway-line
+climbing the hill home from work.  He was late because he had attended
+a meeting of the men on the bank.  He was secretary to the Miners Union
+for his colliery, and had heard a good deal of silly wrangling that
+left him nettled.
+
+He strode over a stile, crossed two fields, strode another stile, and
+was in the long road of colliers' dwellings.  Just across was his own
+house: he had built it himself.  He went through the little gate, up
+past the side of the house to the back.  There he hung a moment,
+glancing down the dark, wintry garden.
+
+"My father--my father's come!" cried a child's excited voice, and two
+little girls in white pinafores ran out in front of his legs.
+
+"Father, shall you set the Christmas Tree?" they cried.  "We've
+got one!"
+
+"Afore I have my dinner?" he answered amiably.
+
+"Set it now.  Set it now.--We got it through Fred Alton."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+The little girls were dragging a rough, dark object out of a corner of
+the passage into the light of the kitchen door.
+
+"It's a beauty!" exclaimed Millicent.
+
+"Yes, it is," said Marjory.
+
+"I should think so," he replied, striding over the dark bough.  He went
+to the back kitchen to take off his coat.
+
+"Set it now, Father.  Set it now," clamoured the girls.
+
+"You might as well.  You've left your dinner so long, you might as well
+do it now before you have it," came a woman's plangent voice, out of
+the brilliant light of the middle room.
+
+Aaron Sisson had taken off his coat and waistcoat and his cap.  He
+stood bare-headed in his shirt and braces, contemplating the tree.
+
+"What am I to put it in?" he queried.  He picked up the tree, and held
+it erect by the topmost twig.  He felt the cold as he stood in the yard
+coatless, and he twitched his shoulders.
+
+"Isn't it a beauty!" repeated Millicent.
+
+"Ay!--lop-sided though."
+
+"Put something on, you two!" came the woman's high imperative voice,
+from the kitchen.
+
+"We aren't cold," protested the girls from the yard.
+
+"Come and put something on," insisted the voice.  The man started off
+down the path, the little girls ran grumbling indoors.  The sky was
+clear, there was still a crystalline, non-luminous light in the under
+air.
+
+Aaron rummaged in his shed at the bottom of the garden, and found a
+spade and a box that was suitable.  Then he came out to his neat, bare,
+wintry garden.  The girls flew towards him, putting the elastic of
+their hats under their chins as they ran.  The tree and the box lay
+on the frozen earth.  The air breathed dark, frosty, electric.
+
+"Hold it up straight," he said to Millicent, as he arranged the tree
+in the box.  She stood silent and held the top bough, he filled in
+round the roots.
+
+When it was done, and pressed in, he went for the wheelbarrow.  The
+girls were hovering excited round the tree.  He dropped the barrow
+and stooped to the box.  The girls watched him hold back his face--
+the boughs pricked him.
+
+"Is it very heavy?"  asked Millicent.
+
+"Ay!" he replied, with a little grunt.  Then the procession set off--
+the trundling wheel-barrow, the swinging hissing tree, the two excited
+little girls.  They arrived at the door.  Down went the legs of the
+wheel-barrow on the yard.  The man looked at the box.
+
+"Where are you going to have it?" he called.
+
+"Put it in the back kitchen," cried his wife.
+
+"You'd better have it where it's going to stop.  I don't want to hawk
+it about."
+
+"Put it on the floor against the dresser, Father.  Put it there,"
+urged Millicent.
+
+"You come and put some paper down, then," called the mother hastily.
+
+The two children ran indoors, the man stood contemplative in the cold,
+shrugging his uncovered shoulders slightly.  The open inner door showed
+a bright linoleum on the floor, and the end of a brown side-board on
+which stood an aspidistra.
+
+Again with a wrench Aaron Sisson lifted the box.  The tree pricked
+and stung.  His wife watched him as he entered staggering, with his
+face averted.
+
+"Mind where you make a lot of dirt," she said.
+
+He lowered the box with a little jerk on to the spread-out newspaper
+on the floor.  Soil scattered.
+
+"Sweep it up," he said to Millicent.
+
+His ear was lingering over the sudden, clutching hiss of the tree-
+boughs.
+
+A stark white incandescent light filled the room and made everything
+sharp and hard.  In the open fire-place a hot fire burned red.  All
+was scrupulously clean and perfect.  A baby was cooing in a rocker-
+less wicker cradle by the hearth.  The mother, a slim, neat woman with
+dark hair, was sewing a child's frock.  She put this aside, rose, and
+began to take her husband's dinner from the oven.
+
+"You stopped confabbing long enough tonight," she said.
+
+"Yes," he answered, going to the back kitchen to wash his hands.
+
+In a few minutes he came and sat down to his dinner.  The doors were
+shut close, but there was a draught, because the settling of the mines
+under the house made the doors not fit.  Aaron moved his chair, to get
+out of the draught.  But he still sat in his shirt and trousers.
+
+He was a good-looking man, fair, and pleasant, about thirty-two years
+old.  He did not talk much, but seemed to think about something.  His
+wife resumed her sewing.  She was acutely aware of her husband, but he
+seemed not very much aware of her.
+
+"What were they on about today, then?" she said.
+
+"About the throw-in."
+
+"And did they settle anything?"
+
+"They're going to try it--and they'll come out if it isn't
+satisfactory."
+
+"The butties won't have it, I know," she said.  He gave a short laugh,
+and went on with his meal.
+
+The two children were squatted on the floor by the tree.  They had a
+wooden box, from which they had taken many little newspaper packets,
+which they were spreading out like wares.
+
+"Don't open any.  We won't open any of them till we've taken them
+all out--and then we'll undo one in our turns.  Then we s'll both
+undo equal," Millicent was saying.
+
+"Yes, we'll take them ALL out first," re-echoed Marjory.
+
+"And what are they going to do about Job Arthur Freer?  Do they want
+him?"  A faint smile came on her husband's face.
+
+"Nay, I don't know what they want.--Some of 'em want him--whether
+they're a majority, I don't know."
+
+She watched him closely.
+
+"Majority!  I'd give 'em majority.  They want to get rid of you, and
+make a fool of you, and you want to break your heart over it.  Strikes
+me you need something to break your heart over."
+
+He laughed silently.
+
+"Nay," he said.  "I s'll never break my heart."
+
+"You'll go nearer to it over that, than over anything else: just
+because a lot of ignorant monkeys want a monkey of their own sort to
+do the Union work, and jabber to them, they want to get rid of you,
+and you eat your heart out about it.  More fool you, that's all I
+say--more fool you.  If you cared for your wife and children half
+what you care about your Union, you'd be a lot better pleased in the
+end.  But you care about nothing but a lot of ignorant colliers, who
+don't know what they want except it's more money just for themselves.
+Self, self, self--that's all it is with them--and ignorance."
+
+"You'd rather have self without ignorance?" he said, smiling finely.
+
+"I would, if I've got to have it.  But what I should like to see is
+a man that has thought for others, and isn't all self and politics."
+
+Her color had risen, her hand trembled with anger as she sewed.  A
+blank look had come over the man's face, as if he did not hear or heed
+any more.  He drank his tea in a long draught, wiped his moustache with
+two fingers, and sat looking abstractedly at the children.
+
+They had laid all the little packets on the floor, and Millicent was
+saying:
+
+"Now I'll undo the first, and you can have the second.  I'll take
+this--"
+
+She unwrapped the bit of newspaper and disclosed a silvery ornament
+for a Christmas tree: a frail thing like a silver plum, with deep rosy
+indentations on each side.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed.  "Isn't it LOVELY!"  Her fingers cautiously
+held the long bubble of silver and glowing rose, cleaving to it with
+a curious, irritating possession.  The man's eyes moved away from her.
+The lesser child was fumbling with one of the little packets.
+
+"Oh!"--a wail went up from Millicent.  "You've taken one!--You didn't
+wait."  Then her voice changed to a motherly admonition, and she began
+to interfere.  "This is the way to do it, look!  Let me help you."
+
+But Marjory drew back with resentment.
+
+"Don't, Millicent!--Don't!" came the childish cry.  But Millicent's
+fingers itched.
+
+At length Marjory had got out her treasure--a little silvery bell
+with a glass top hanging inside.  The bell was made of frail glassy
+substance, light as air.
+
+"Oh, the bell!" rang out Millicent's clanging voice.  "The bell!  It's
+my bell.  My bell!  It's mine!  Don't break it, Marjory.  Don't break
+it, will you?"
+
+Marjory was shaking the bell against her ear.  But it was dumb, it made
+no sound.
+
+"You'll break it, I know you will.--You'll break it.  Give it ME--"
+cried Millicent, and she began to take away the bell.  Marjory set up
+an expostulation.
+
+"LET HER ALONE," said the father.
+
+Millicent let go as if she had been stung, but still her brassy,
+impudent voice persisted:
+
+"She'll break it.  She'll break it.  It's mine--"
+
+"You undo another," said the mother, politic.
+
+Millicent began with hasty, itching fingers to unclose another package.
+
+"Aw--aw Mother, my peacock--aw, my peacock, my green peacock!"
+Lavishly she hovered over a sinuous greenish bird, with wings and tail
+of spun glass, pearly, and body of deep electric green.
+
+"It's mine--my green peacock!  It's mine, because Marjory's had one
+wing off, and mine hadn't.  My green peacock that I love!  I love it!"
+She swung it softly from the little ring on its back.  Then she went
+to her mother.
+
+"Look, Mother, isn't it a beauty?"
+
+"Mind the ring doesn't come out," said her mother.  "Yes, it's lovely!"
+The girl passed on to her father.
+
+"Look, Father, don't you love it!"
+
+"Love it?" he re-echoed, ironical over the word love.
+
+She stood for some moments, trying to force his attention.  Then she
+went back to her place.
+
+Marjory had brought forth a golden apple, red on one cheek, rather
+garish.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Millicent feverishly, instantly seized with desire for
+what she had not got, indifferent to what she had.  Her eye ran quickly
+over the packages.  She took one.
+
+"Now!" she exclaimed loudly, to attract attention.  "Now!  What's
+this?--What's this?  What will this beauty be?"
+
+With finicky fingers she removed the newspaper.  Marjory watched her
+wide-eyed.  Millicent was self-important.
+
+"The blue ball!" she cried in a climax of rapture.  "I've got THE BLUE
+BALL."
+
+She held it gloating in the cup of her hands.  It was a little globe
+of hardened glass, of a magnificent full dark blue color.  She rose
+and went to her father.
+
+"It was your blue ball, wasn't it, father?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you had it when you were a little boy, and now I have it when I'm
+a little girl."
+
+"Ay," he replied drily.
+
+"And it's never been broken all those years."
+
+"No, not yet."
+
+"And perhaps it never will be broken."  To this she received no answer.
+
+"Won't it break?" she persisted.  "Can't you break it?"
+
+"Yes, if you hit it with a hammer," he said.
+
+"Aw!" she cried.  "I don't mean that.  I mean if you just drop it.  It
+won't break if you drop it, will it?"
+
+"I dare say it won't."
+
+"But WILL it?"
+
+"I sh'd think not."
+
+"Should I try?"
+
+She proceeded gingerly to let the blue ball drop, it bounced dully on
+the floor-covering.
+
+"Oh-h-h!" she cried, catching it up.  "I love it."
+
+"Let ME drop it," cried Marjory, and there was a performance of
+admonition and demonstration from the elder sister.
+
+But Millicent must go further.  She became excited.
+
+"It won't break," she said, "even if you toss it up in the air."
+
+She flung it up, it fell safely.  But her father's brow knitted
+slightly.  She tossed it wildly: it fell with a little splashing
+explosion: it had smashed.  It had fallen on the sharp edge of the
+tiles that protruded under the fender.
+
+"NOW what have you done!" cried the mother.
+
+The child stood with her lip between her teeth, a look, half, of pure
+misery and dismay, half of satisfaction, on her pretty sharp face.
+
+"She wanted to break it," said the father.
+
+"No, she didn't!  What do you say that for!" said the mother.  And
+Millicent burst into a flood of tears.
+
+He rose to look at the fragments that lay splashed on the floor.
+
+"You must mind the bits," he said, "and pick 'em all up."
+
+He took one of the pieces to examine it.  It was fine and thin and
+hard, lined with pure silver, brilliant.  He looked at it closely.
+So--this was what it was.  And this was the end of it.  He felt the
+curious soft explosion of its breaking still in his ears.  He threw
+his piece in the fire.
+
+"Pick all the bits up," he said.  "Give over! give over!  Don't cry
+any more."  The good-natured tone of his voice quieted the child, as
+he intended it should.
+
+He went away into the back kitchen to wash himself.  As he was bending
+his head over the sink before the little mirror, lathering to shave,
+there came from outside the dissonant voices of boys, pouring out the
+dregs of carol-singing.
+
+"While Shep-ep-ep-ep-herds watched--"
+
+He held his soapy brush suspended for a minute.  They called this
+singing!  His mind flitted back to early carol music.  Then again
+he heard the vocal violence outside.
+
+"Aren't you off there!" he called out, in masculine menace.  The noise
+stopped, there was a scuffle.  But the feet returned and the voices
+resumed.  Almost immediately the door opened, boys were heard muttering
+among themselves.  Millicent had given them a penny.  Feet scraped
+on the yard, then went thudding along the side of the house, to the
+street.
+
+To Aaron Sisson, this was home, this was Christmas: the unspeakably
+familiar.  The war over, nothing was changed.  Yet everything changed.
+The scullery in which he stood was painted green, quite fresh, very
+clean, the floor was red tiles.  The wash-copper of red bricks was very
+red, the mangle with its put-up board was white-scrubbed, the American
+oil-cloth on the table had a gay pattern, there was a warm fire, the
+water in the boiler hissed faintly.  And in front of him, beneath him
+as he leaned forward shaving, a drop of water fell with strange,
+incalculable rhythm from the bright brass tap into the white enamelled
+bowl, which was now half full of pure, quivering water.  The war was
+over, and everything just the same.  The acute familiarity of this
+house, which he had built for his marriage twelve years ago, the
+changeless pleasantness of it all seemed unthinkable.  It prevented
+his thinking.
+
+When he went into the middle room to comb his hair he found the
+Christmas tree sparkling, his wife was making pastry at the table,
+the baby was sitting up propped in cushions.
+
+"Father," said Millicent, approaching him with a flat blue-and-white
+angel of cotton-wool, and two ends of cotton--"tie the angel at the
+top."
+
+"Tie it at the top?" he said, looking down.
+
+"Yes.  At the very top--because it's just come down from the sky."
+
+"Ay my word!" he laughed.  And he tied the angel.
+
+Coming downstairs after changing he went into the icy cold parlour,
+and took his music and a small handbag.  With this he retreated again
+to the back kitchen.  He was still in trousers and shirt and slippers:
+but now it was a clean white shirt, and his best black trousers, and
+new pink and white braces.  He sat under the gas-jet of the back
+kitchen, looking through his music.  Then he opened the bag, in which
+were sections of a flute and a piccolo.  He took out the flute, and
+adjusted it.  As he sat he was physically aware of the sounds of the
+night: the bubbling of water in the boiler, the faint sound of the
+gas, the sudden crying of the baby in the next room, then noises
+outside, distant boys shouting, distant rags of carols, fragments
+of voices of men.  The whole country was roused and excited.
+
+The little room was hot.  Aaron rose and opened a square ventilator
+over the copper, letting in a stream of cold air, which was grateful
+to him.  Then he cocked his eye over the sheet of music spread out on
+the table before him.  He tried his flute.  And then at last, with the
+odd gesture of a diver taking a plunge, he swung his head and began
+to play.  A stream of music, soft and rich and fluid, came out of the
+flute.  He played beautifully.  He moved his head and his raised bare
+arms with slight, intense movements, as the delicate music poured out.
+It was sixteenth-century Christmas melody, very limpid and delicate.
+
+The pure, mindless, exquisite motion and fluidity of the music
+delighted him with a strange exasperation.  There was something tense,
+exasperated to the point of intolerable anger, in his good-humored
+breast, as he played the finely-spun peace-music.  The more exquisite
+the music, the more perfectly he produced it, in sheer bliss; and at
+the same time, the more intense was the maddened exasperation within
+him.
+
+Millicent appeared in the room.  She fidgetted at the sink.  The music
+was a bugbear to her, because it prevented her from saying what was
+on her own mind.  At length it ended, her father was turning over the
+various books and sheets.  She looked at him quickly, seizing her
+opportunity.
+
+"Are you going out, Father?" she said.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Are you going out?" She twisted nervously.
+
+"What do you want to know for?"
+
+He made no other answer, and turned again to the music.  His eye went
+down a sheet--then over it again--then more closely over it again.
+
+"Are you?" persisted the child, balancing on one foot.
+
+He looked at her, and his eyes were angry under knitted brows.
+
+"What are you bothering about?" he said.
+
+"I'm not bothering--I only wanted to know if you were going out," she
+pouted, quivering to cry.
+
+"I expect I am," he said quietly.
+
+She recovered at once, but still with timidity asked:
+
+"We haven't got any candles for the Christmas tree--shall you buy some,
+because mother isn't going out?"
+
+"Candles!" he repeated, settling his music and taking up the piccolo.
+
+"Yes--shall you buy us some, Father?  Shall you?"
+
+"Candles!" he repeated, putting the piccolo to his mouth and blowing a
+few piercing, preparatory notes.
+
+"Yes, little Christmas-tree candles--blue ones and red ones, in boxes
+--Shall you, Father?"
+
+"We'll see--if I see any--"
+
+"But SHALL you?" she insisted desperately.  She wisely mistrusted his
+vagueness.
+
+But he was looking unheeding at the music.  Then suddenly the piccolo
+broke forth, wild, shrill, brilliant.  He was playing Mozart.  The
+child's face went pale with anger at the sound.  She turned, and went
+out, closing both doors behind her to shut out the noise.
+
+The shrill, rapid movement of the piccolo music seemed to possess the
+air, it was useless to try to shut it out.  The man went on playing
+to himself, measured and insistent.  In the frosty evening the sound
+carried.  People passing down the street hesitated, listening.  The
+neighbours knew it was Aaron practising his piccolo.  He was esteemed
+a good player: was in request at concerts and dances, also at swell
+balls.  So the vivid piping sound tickled the darkness.
+
+He played on till about seven o'clock; he did not want to go out too
+soon, in spite of the early closing of the public houses.  He never
+went with the stream, but made a side current of his own.  His wife
+said he was contrary.  When he went into the middle room to put on his
+collar and tie, the two little girls were having their hair brushed,
+the baby was in bed, there was a hot smell of mince-pies baking in
+the oven.
+
+"You won't forget our candles, will you, Father?" asked Millicent,
+with assurance now.
+
+"I'll see," he answered.
+
+His wife watched him as he put on his overcoat and hat.  He was well-
+dressed, handsome-looking.  She felt there was a curious glamour about
+him.  It made her feel bitter.  He had an unfair advantage--he was free
+to go off, while she must stay at home with the children.
+
+"There's no knowing what time you'll be home," she said.
+
+"I shan't be late," he answered.
+
+"It's easy to say so," she retorted, with some contempt.  He took his
+stick, and turned towards the door.
+
+"Bring the children some candles for their tree, and don't be so
+selfish," she said.
+
+"All right," he said, going out.
+
+"Don't say ALL RIGHT if you never mean to do it," she cried, with
+sudden anger, following him to the door.
+
+His figure stood large and shadowy in the darkness.
+
+"How many do you want?" he said.
+
+"A dozen," she said.  "And holders too, if you can get them," she
+added, with barren bitterness.
+
+"Yes--all right," he turned and melted into the darkness.  She went
+indoors, worn with a strange and bitter flame.
+
+He crossed the fields towards the little town, which once more fumed
+its lights under the night.  The country ran away, rising on his right
+hand.  It was no longer a great bank of darkness.  Lights twinkled
+freely here and there, though forlornly, now that the war-time
+restrictions were removed.  It was no glitter of pre-war nights, pit-
+heads glittering far-off with electricity.  Neither was it the black
+gulf of the war darkness: instead, this forlorn sporadic twinkling.
+
+Everybody seemed to be out of doors.  The hollow dark countryside
+re-echoed like a shell with shouts and calls and excited voices.
+Restlessness and nervous excitement, nervous hilarity were in the
+air.  There was a sense of electric surcharge everywhere, frictional,
+a neurasthenic haste for excitement.
+
+Every moment Aaron Sisson was greeted with Good-night--Good-night,
+Aaron--Good-night, Mr. Sisson.  People carrying parcels, children,
+women, thronged home on the dark paths.  They were all talking loudly,
+declaiming loudly about what they could and could not get, and what
+this or the other had lost.
+
+When he got into the main street, the only street of shops, it was
+crowded.  There seemed to have been some violent but quiet contest,
+a subdued fight, going on all the afternoon and evening: people
+struggling to buy things, to get things.  Money was spent like water,
+there was a frenzy of money-spending.  Though the necessities of life
+were in abundance, still the people struggled in frenzy for cheese,
+sweets, raisins, pork-stuff, even for flowers and holly, all of which
+were scarce, and for toys and knick-knacks, which were sold out.  There
+was a wild grumbling, but a deep satisfaction in the fight, the
+struggle.  The same fight and the same satisfaction in the fight was
+witnessed whenever a tram-car stopped, or when it heaved its way into
+sight.  Then the struggle to mount on board became desperate and savage,
+but stimulating.  Souls surcharged with hostility found now some outlet
+for their feelings.
+
+As he came near the little market-place he bethought himself of the
+Christmas-tree candles.  He did not intend to trouble himself.  And
+yet, when he glanced in passing into the sweet-shop window, and saw
+it bare as a board, the very fact that he probably _could not_ buy
+the things made him hesitate, and try.
+
+"Have you got any Christmas-tree candles?" he asked as he entered
+the shop.
+
+"How many do you want?"
+
+"A dozen."
+
+"Can't let you have a dozen.  You can have two boxes--four in a box--
+eight.  Six-pence a box."
+
+"Got any holders?"
+
+"Holders?  Don't ask.  Haven't seen one this year."
+
+"Got any toffee--?"
+
+"Cough-drops--two-pence an ounce--nothing else left."
+
+"Give me four ounces."
+
+He watched her weighing them in the little brass scales.
+
+"You've not got much of a Christmas show," he said.
+
+"Don't talk about Christmas, as far as sweets is concerned.  They ought
+to have allowed us six times the quantity--there's plenty of sugar, why
+didn't they?  We s'll have to enjoy ourselves with what we've got.  We
+mean to, anyhow."
+
+"Ay," he said.
+
+"Time we had a bit of enjoyment, THIS Christmas.  They ought to have
+made things more plentiful."
+
+"Yes," he said, stuffing his package in his pocket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ROYAL OAK
+
+
+The war had killed the little market of the town.  As he passed the
+market place on the brow, Aaron noticed that there were only two
+miserable stalls.  But people crowded just the same.  There was a loud
+sound of voices, men's voices.  Men pressed round the doorways of the
+public-houses.
+
+But he was going to a pub out of town.  He descended the dark hill.
+A street-lamp here and there shed parsimonious light.  In the bottoms,
+under the trees, it was very dark.  But a lamp glimmered in front of
+the "Royal Oak."  This was a low white house sunk three steps below
+the highway.  It was darkened, but sounded crowded.
+
+Opening the door, Sisson found himself in the stone passage.  Old Bob,
+carrying three cans, stopped to see who had entered--then went on into
+the public bar on the left.  The bar itself was a sort of little
+window-sill on the right: the pub was a small one.  In this window-
+opening stood the landlady, drawing and serving to her husband.  Behind
+the bar was a tiny parlour or den, the landlady's preserve.
+
+"Oh, it's you," she said, bobbing down to look at the newcomer.  None
+entered her bar-parlour unless invited.
+
+"Come in," said the landlady.  There was a peculiar intonation in her
+complacent voice, which showed she had been expecting him, a little
+irritably.
+
+He went across into her bar-parlour.  It would not hold more than eight
+or ten people, all told--just the benches along the walls, the fire
+between--and two little round tables.
+
+"I began to think you weren't coming," said the landlady, bringing him
+a whiskey.
+
+She was a large, stout, high-coloured woman, with a fine profile,
+probably Jewish.  She had chestnut-coloured eyes, quick, intelligent.
+Her movements were large and slow, her voice laconic.
+
+"I'm not so late, am I?" asked Aaron.
+
+"Yes, you are late, I should think."  She Looked up at the little
+clock.  "Close on nine."
+
+"I did some shopping," said Aaron, with a quick smile.
+
+"Did you indeed?  That's news, I'm sure.  May we ask what you bought?"
+
+This he did not like.  But he had to answer.
+
+"Christmas-tree candles, and toffee."
+
+"For the little children?  Well you've done well for once!  I must say
+I recommend you.  I didn't think you had so much in you."
+
+She sat herself down in her seat at the end of the bench, and took up
+her knitting.  Aaron sat next to her.  He poured water into his glass,
+and drank.
+
+"It's warm in here," he said, when he had swallowed the liquor.
+
+"Yes, it is.  You won't want to keep that thick good overcoat on,"
+replied the landlady.
+
+"No," he said, "I think I'll take it off."
+
+She watched him as he hung up his overcoat.  He wore black clothes, as
+usual.  As he reached up to the pegs, she could see the muscles of his
+shoulders, and the form of his legs.  Her reddish-brown eyes seemed to
+burn, and her nose, that had a subtle, beautiful Hebraic curve, seemed
+to arch itself.  She made a little place for him by herself, as he
+returned.  She carried her head thrown back, with dauntless self-
+sufficiency.
+
+There were several colliers in the room, talking quietly.  They
+were the superior type all, favoured by the landlady, who loved
+intellectual discussion.  Opposite, by the fire, sat a little,
+greenish man--evidently an oriental.
+
+"You're very quiet all at once, Doctor," said the landlady in her
+slow, laconic voice.
+
+"Yes.--May I have another whiskey, please?"  She rose at once,
+powerfully energetic.
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry," she said.  And she went to the bar.
+
+"Well," said the little Hindu doctor, "and how are things going now,
+with the men?"
+
+"The same as ever," said Aaron.
+
+"Yes," said the stately voice of the landlady.  "And I'm afraid they
+will always be the same as ever.  When will they learn wisdom?"
+
+"But what do you call wisdom?" asked Sherardy, the Hindu.  He spoke
+with a little, childish lisp.
+
+"What do I call wisdom?" repeated the landlady.  "Why all acting
+together for the common good.  That is wisdom in my idea."
+
+"Yes, very well, that is so.  But what do you call the common good?"
+replied the little doctor, with childish pertinence.
+
+"Ay," said Aaron, with a laugh, "that's it."  The miners were all
+stirring now, to take part in the discussion.
+
+"What do I call the common good?" repeated the landlady.  "That all
+people should study the welfare of other people, and not only their
+own."
+
+"They are not to study their own welfare?" said the doctor.
+
+"Ah, that I did not say," replied the landlady.  "Let them study their
+own welfare, and that of others also."
+
+"Well then," said the doctor, "what is the welfare of a collier?"
+
+"The welfare of a collier," said the landlady, "is that he shall earn
+sufficient wages to keep himself and his family comfortable, to
+educate his children, and to educate himself; for that is what he
+wants, education."
+
+"Ay, happen so," put in Brewitt, a big, fine, good-humoured collier.
+"Happen so, Mrs. Houseley.  But what if you haven't got much education,
+to speak of?"
+
+"You can always get it," she said patronizing.
+
+"Nay--I'm blest if you can.  It's no use tryin' to educate a man over
+forty--not by book-learning.  That isn't saying he's a fool, neither."
+
+"And what better is them that's got education?" put in another man.
+"What better is the manager, or th' under-manager, than we are?--
+Pender's yaller enough i' th' face."
+
+"He is that," assented the men in chorus.
+
+"But because he's yellow in the face, as you say, Mr. Kirk," said the
+landlady largely, "that doesn't mean he has no advantages higher than
+what you have got."
+
+"Ay," said Kirk.  "He can ma'e more money than I can--that's about a'
+as it comes to."
+
+"He can make more money," said the landlady.  "And when he's made it,
+he knows better how to use it."
+
+"'Appen so, an' a'!--What does he do, more than eat and drink and
+work?--an' take it out of hisself a sight harder than I do, by th'
+looks of him.--What's it matter, if he eats a bit more or drinks a
+bit more--"
+
+"No," reiterated the landlady.  "He not only eats and drinks.  He can
+read, and he can converse."
+
+"Me an' a'," said Tom Kirk, and the men burst into a laugh.  "I can
+read--an' I've had many a talk an' conversation with you in this
+house, Mrs. Houseley--am havin' one at this minute, seemingly."
+
+"SEEMINGLY, you are," said the landlady ironically.  "But do you
+think there would be no difference between your conversation, and Mr.
+Pender's, if he were here so that I could enjoy his conversation?"
+
+"An' what difference would there be?" asked Tom Kirk.  "He'd go home
+to his bed just the same."
+
+"There, you are mistaken.  He would be the better, and so should I, a
+great deal better, for a little genuine conversation."
+
+"If it's conversation as ma'es his behind drop--" said Tom Kirk.  "An'
+puts th' bile in his face--" said Brewitt.  There was a general laugh.
+
+"I can see it's no use talking about it any further," said the
+landlady, lifting her head dangerously.
+
+"But look here, Mrs. Houseley, do you really think it makes much
+difference to a man, whether he can hold a serious conversation or
+not?" asked the doctor.
+
+"I do indeed, all the difference in the world--To me, there is no
+greater difference, than between an educated man and an uneducated
+man."
+
+"And where does it come in?" asked Kirk.
+
+"But wait a bit, now," said Aaron Sisson.  "You take an educated man--
+take Pender.  What's his education for?  What does he scheme for?--What
+does he contrive for?  What does he talk for?--"
+
+"For all the purposes of his life," replied the landlady.
+
+"Ay, an' what's the purpose of his life?" insisted Aaron Sisson.
+
+"The purpose of his life," repeated the landlady, at a loss.  "I should
+think he knows that best himself."
+
+"No better than I know it--and you know it," said Aaron.
+
+"Well," said the landlady, "if you know, then speak out.  What is it?"
+
+"To make more money for the firm--and so make his own chance of a
+rise better."
+
+The landlady was baffled for some moments.  Then she said:
+
+"Yes, and suppose that he does.  Is there any harm in it?  Isn't it
+his duty to do what he can for himself?  Don't you try to earn all
+you can?"
+
+"Ay," said Aaron.  "But there's soon a limit to what I can earn.--It's
+like this.  When you work it out, everything comes to money.  Reckon
+it as you like, it's money on both sides.  It's money we live for, and
+money is what our lives is worth--nothing else.  Money we live for,
+and money we are when we're dead: that or nothing.  An' it's money as
+is between the masters and us.  There's a few educated ones got hold
+of one end of the rope, and all the lot of us hanging on to th' other
+end, an' we s'll go on pulling our guts out, time in, time out--"
+
+"But they've got th' long end o' th' rope, th' masters has," said
+Brewitt.
+
+"For as long as one holds, the other will pull," concluded Aaron
+Sisson philosophically.
+
+"An' I'm almighty sure o' that," said Kirk.  There was a little pause.
+
+"Yes, that's all there is in the minds of you men," said the landlady.
+"But what can be done with the money, that you never think of--the
+education of the children, the improvement of conditions--"
+
+"Educate the children, so that they can lay hold of the long end of
+the rope, instead of the short end," said the doctor, with a little
+giggle.
+
+"Ay, that's it," said Brewitt.  "I've pulled at th' short end, an' my
+lads may do th' same."
+
+"A selfish policy," put in the landlady.
+
+"Selfish or not, they may do it."
+
+"Till the crack o' doom," said Aaron, with a glistening smile.
+
+"Or the crack o' th' rope," said Brewitt.
+
+"Yes, and THEN WHAT?" cried the landlady.
+
+"Then we all drop on our backsides," said Kirk.  There was a general
+laugh, and an uneasy silence.
+
+"All I can say of you men," said the landlady, "is that you have a
+narrow, selfish policy.--Instead of thinking of the children, instead
+of thinking of improving the world you live in--"
+
+"We hang on, British bulldog breed," said Brewitt.  There was a general
+laugh.
+
+"Yes, and little wiser than dogs, wrangling for a bone," said the
+landlady.
+
+"Are we to let t' other side run off wi' th' bone, then, while we sit
+on our stunts an' yowl for it?" asked Brewitt.
+
+"No indeed.  There can be wisdom in everything.--It's what you DO
+with the money, when you've got it," said the landlady, "that's where
+the importance lies."
+
+"It's Missis as gets it," said Kirk.  "It doesn't stop wi' us."  "Ay,
+it's the wife as gets it, ninety per cent," they all concurred.
+
+"And who SHOULD have the money, indeed, if not your wives?  They have
+everything to do with the money.  What idea have you, but to waste it!"
+
+"Women waste nothing--they couldn't if they tried," said Aaron Sisson.
+
+There was a lull for some minutes.  The men were all stimulated by
+drink.  The landlady kept them going.  She herself sipped a glass of
+brandy--but slowly.  She sat near to Sisson--and the great fierce
+warmth of her presence enveloped him particularly.  He loved so to
+luxuriate, like a cat, in the presence of a violent woman.  He knew
+that tonight she was feeling very nice to him--a female glow that
+came out of her to him.  Sometimes when she put down her knitting, or
+took it up again from the bench beside him, her fingers just touched
+his thigh, and the fine electricity ran over his body, as if he were
+a cat tingling at a caress.
+
+And yet he was not happy--nor comfortable.  There was a hard, opposing
+core in him, that neither the whiskey nor the woman could dissolve or
+soothe, tonight.  It remained hard, nay, became harder and more deeply
+antagonistic to his surroundings, every moment.  He recognised it
+as a secret malady he suffered from: this strained, unacknowledged
+opposition to his surroundings, a hard core of irrational, exhausting
+withholding of himself.  Irritating, because he still WANTED to give
+himself.  A woman and whiskey, these were usually a remedy--and music.
+But lately these had begun to fail him.  No, there was something in
+him that would not give in--neither to the whiskey, nor the woman, nor
+even the music.  Even in the midst of his best music, it sat in the
+middle of him, this invisible black dog, and growled and waited, never
+to be cajoled.  He knew of its presence--and was a little uneasy.  For
+of course he _wanted_ to let himself go, to feel rosy and loving and
+all that.  But at the very thought, the black dog showed its teeth.
+
+Still he kept the beast at bay--with all his will he kept himself as
+it were genial.  He wanted to melt and be rosy, happy.
+
+He sipped his whiskey with gratification, he luxuriated in the presence
+of the landlady, very confident of the strength of her liking for him.
+He glanced at her profile--that fine throw-back of her hostile head,
+wicked in the midst of her benevolence; that subtle, really very
+beautiful delicate curve of her nose, that moved him exactly like a
+piece of pure sound.  But tonight it did not overcome him.  There was
+a devilish little cold eye in his brain that was not taken in by what
+he saw.
+
+A terrible obstinacy located itself in him.  He saw the fine, rich-
+coloured, secretive face of the Hebrew woman, so loudly self-
+righteous, and so dangerous, so destructive, so lustful--and he waited
+for his blood to melt with passion for her.  But not tonight.  Tonight
+his innermost heart was hard and cold as ice.  The very danger and
+lustfulness of her, which had so pricked his senses, now made him
+colder.  He disliked her at her tricks.  He saw her once too often.
+Her and all women.  Bah, the love game!  And the whiskey that was to
+help in the game!  He had drowned himself once too often in whiskey
+and in love.  Now he floated like a corpse in both, with a cold,
+hostile eye.
+
+And at least half of his inward fume was anger because he could no
+longer drown.  Nothing would have pleased him better than to feel
+his senses melting and swimming into oneness with the dark.  But
+impossible!  Cold, with a white fury inside him, he floated wide eyed
+and apart as a corpse.  He thought of the gentle love of his first
+married years, and became only whiter and colder, set in more intense
+obstinacy.  A wave of revulsion lifted him.
+
+He became aware that he was deadly antagonistic to the landlady, that
+he disliked his whole circumstances.  A cold, diabolical consciousness
+detached itself from his state of semi-intoxication.
+
+"Is it pretty much the same out there in India?" he asked of the
+doctor, suddenly.
+
+The doctor started, and attended to him on his own level.
+
+"Probably," he answered.  "It is worse."
+
+"Worse!" exclaimed Aaron Sisson.  "How's that?"
+
+"Why, because, in a way the people of India have an easier time even
+than the people of England.  Because they have no responsibility.
+The British Government takes the responsibility.  And the people
+have nothing to do, except their bit of work--and talk perhaps about
+national rule, just for a pastime."
+
+"They have to earn their living?" said Sisson.
+
+"Yes," said the little doctor, who had lived for some years among the
+colliers, and become quite familiar with them.  "Yes, they have to earn
+their living--and then no more.  That's why the British Government is
+the worst thing possible for them.  It is the worst thing possible.
+And not because it is a bad government.  Really, it is not a bad
+government.  It is a good one--and they know it--much better than
+they would make for themselves, probably.  But for that reason it is
+so very bad."
+
+The little oriental laughed a queer, sniggering laugh.  His eyes were
+very bright, dilated, completely black.  He was looking into the ice-
+blue, pointed eyes of Aaron Sisson.  They were both intoxicated--but
+grimly so.  They looked at each other in elemental difference.
+
+The whole room was now attending to this new conversation: which they
+all accepted as serious.  For Aaron was considered a special man, a
+man of peculiar understanding, even though as a rule he said little.
+
+"If it is a good government, doctor, how can it be so bad for the
+people?" said the landlady.
+
+The doctor's eyes quivered for the fraction of a second, as he watched
+the other man.  He did not look at the landlady.
+
+"It would not matter what kind of mess they made--and they would make
+a mess, if they governed themselves, the people of India.  They would
+probably make the greatest muddle possible--and start killing one
+another.  But it wouldn't matter if they exterminated half the
+population, so long as they did it themselves, and were responsible
+for it."
+
+Again his eyes dilated, utterly black, to the eyes of the other man,
+and an arch little smile flickered on his face.
+
+"I think it would matter very much indeed," said the landlady.  "They
+had far better NOT govern themselves."
+
+She was, for some reason, becoming angry.  The little greenish doctor
+emptied his glass, and smiled again.
+
+"But what difference does it make," said Aaron Sisson, "whether they
+govern themselves or not?  They only live till they die, either way."
+And he smiled faintly.  He had not really listened to the doctor.
+The terms "British Government," and "bad for the people--good for
+the people," made him malevolently angry.
+
+The doctor was nonplussed for a moment.  Then he gathered himself
+together.
+
+"It matters," he said; "it matters.--People should always be
+responsible for themselves.  How can any people be responsible for
+another race of people, and for a race much older than they are,
+and not at all children."
+
+Aaron Sisson watched the other's dark face, with its utterly exposed
+eyes.  He was in a state of semi-intoxicated anger and clairvoyance.
+He saw in the black, void, glistening eyes of the oriental only the
+same danger, the same menace that he saw in the landlady.  Fair, wise,
+even benevolent words: always the human good speaking, and always
+underneath, something hateful, something detestable and murderous.
+Wise speech and good intentions--they were invariably maggoty with
+these secret inclinations to destroy the man in the man.  Whenever he
+heard anyone holding forth: the landlady, this doctor, the spokesman
+on the pit bank: or when he read the all-righteous newspaper; his soul
+curdled with revulsion as from something foul.  Even the infernal
+love and good-will of his wife.  To hell with good-will!  It was more
+hateful than ill-will.  Self-righteous bullying, like poison gas!
+
+The landlady looked at the clock.
+
+"Ten minutes to, gentlemen," she said coldly.  For she too knew that
+Aaron was spoiled for her for that night.
+
+The men began to take their leave, shakily.  The little doctor seemed
+to evaporate.  The landlady helped Aaron on with his coat.  She saw the
+curious whiteness round his nostrils and his eyes, the fixed hellish
+look on his face.
+
+"You'll eat a mince-pie in the kitchen with us, for luck?" she said to
+him, detaining him till last.
+
+But he turned laughing to her.
+
+"Nay," he said, "I must be getting home."
+
+He turned and went straight out of the house.  Watching him, the
+landlady's face became yellow with passion and rage.
+
+"That little poisonous Indian viper," she said aloud, attributing
+Aaron's mood to the doctor.  Her husband was noisily bolting the door.
+
+Outside it was dark and frosty.  A gang of men lingered in the road
+near the closed door.  Aaron found himself among them, his heart
+bitterer than steel.
+
+The men were dispersing.  He should take the road home.  But the devil
+was in it, if he could take a stride in the homeward direction.  There
+seemed a wall in front of him.  He veered.  But neither could he take
+a stride in the opposite direction.  So he was destined to veer round,
+like some sort of weather-cock, there in the middle of the dark road
+outside the "Royal Oak."
+
+But as he turned, he caught sight of a third exit.  Almost opposite was
+the mouth of Shottle Lane, which led off under trees, at right angles
+to the highroad, up to New Brunswick Colliery.  He veered towards the
+off-chance of this opening, in a delirium of icy fury, and plunged
+away into the dark lane, walking slowly, on firm legs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"THE LIGHTED TREE"
+
+
+It is remarkable how many odd or extraordinary people there are in
+England.  We hear continual complaints of the stodgy dullness of the
+English.  It would be quite as just to complain of their freakish,
+unusual characters.  Only _en masse_ the metal is all Britannia.
+
+In an ugly little mining town we find the odd ones just as distinct as
+anywhere else.  Only it happens that dull people invariably meet dull
+people, and odd individuals always come across odd individuals, no
+matter where they may be.  So that to each kind society seems all of
+a piece.
+
+At one end of the dark tree-covered Shottle Lane stood the "Royal Oak"
+public house; and Mrs. Houseley was certainly an odd woman.  At the
+other end of the lane was Shottle House, where the Bricknells lived;
+the Bricknells were odd, also.  Alfred Bricknell, the old man, was one
+of the partners in the Colliery firm.  His English was incorrect, his
+accent, broad Derbyshire, and he was not a gentleman in the snobbish
+sense of the word.  Yet he was well-to-do, and very stuck-up.  His wife
+was dead.
+
+Shottle House stood two hundred yards beyond New Brunswick Colliery.
+The colliery was imbedded in a plantation, whence its burning pit-
+hill glowed, fumed, and stank sulphur in the nostrils of the
+Bricknells.  Even war-time efforts had not put out this refuse fire.
+Apart from this, Shottle House was a pleasant square house, rather
+old, with shrubberies and lawns.  It ended the lane in a dead end.
+Only a field-path trekked away to the left.
+
+On this particular Christmas Eve Alfred Bricknell had only two of his
+children at home.  Of the others, one daughter was unhappily married,
+and away in India weeping herself thinner; another was nursing her
+babies in Streatham.  Jim, the hope of the house, and Julia, now
+married to Robert Cunningham, had come home for Christmas.
+
+The party was seated in the drawing-room, that the grown-up daughters
+had made very fine during their periods of courtship.  Its walls were
+hung with fine grey canvas, it had a large, silvery grey, silky
+carpet, and the furniture was covered with dark green silky material.
+Into this reticence pieces of futurism, Omega cushions and Van-Gogh-
+like pictures exploded their colours.  Such _chic_ would certainly not
+have been looked for up Shottle Lane.
+
+The old man sat in his high grey arm-chair very near an enormous coal
+fire.  In this house there was no coal-rationing.  The finest coal was
+arranged to obtain a gigantic glow such as a coal-owner may well
+enjoy, a great, intense mass of pure red fire.  At this fire Alfred
+Bricknell toasted his tan, lambs-wool-lined slippers.
+
+He was a large man, wearing a loose grey suit, and sprawling in the
+large grey arm-chair.  The soft lamp-light fell on his clean, bald,
+Michael-Angelo head, across which a few pure hairs glittered.  His
+chin was sunk on his breast, so that his sparse but strong-haired
+white beard, in which every strand stood distinct, like spun glass
+lithe and elastic, curved now upwards and inwards, in a curious curve
+returning upon him.  He seemed to be sunk in stern, prophet-like
+meditation.  As a matter of fact, he was asleep after a heavy meal.
+
+Across, seated on a pouffe on the other side of the fire, was a cameo-
+like girl with neat black hair done tight and bright in the French
+mode.  She had strangely-drawn eyebrows, and her colour was brilliant.
+She was hot, leaning back behind the shaft of old marble of the
+mantel-piece, to escape the fire.  She wore a simple dress of apple-
+green satin, with full sleeves and ample skirt and a tiny bodice of
+green cloth.  This was Josephine Ford, the girl Jim was engaged to.
+
+Jim Bricknell himself was a tall big fellow of thirty-eight.  He sat
+in a chair in front of the fire, some distance back, and stretched
+his long legs far in front of him.  His chin too was sunk on his
+breast, his young forehead was bald, and raised in odd wrinkles,
+he had a silent half-grin on his face, a little tipsy, a little
+satyr-like.  His small moustache was reddish.
+
+Behind him a round table was covered with cigarettes, sweets, and
+bottles.  It was evident Jim Bricknell drank beer for choice.  He
+wanted to get fat--that was his idea.  But he couldn't bring it off:
+he was thin, though not too thin, except to his own thinking.
+
+His sister Julia was bunched up in a low chair between him and his
+father.  She too was a tall stag of a thing, but she sat bunched up
+like a witch.  She wore a wine-purple dress, her arms seemed to poke
+out of the sleeves, and she had dragged her brown hair into straight,
+untidy strands.  Yet she had real beauty.  She was talking to the
+young man who was not her husband: a fair, pale, fattish young fellow
+in pince-nez and dark clothes.  This was Cyril Scott, a friend.
+
+The only other person stood at the round table pouring out red wine.
+He was a fresh, stoutish young Englishman in khaki, Julia's husband,
+Robert Cunningham, a lieutenant about to be demobilised, when he would
+become a sculptor once more.  He drank red wine in large throatfuls,
+and his eyes grew a little moist.  The room was hot and subdued,
+everyone was silent.
+
+"I say," said Robert suddenly, from the rear--"anybody have a drink?
+Don't you find it rather hot?"
+
+"Is there another bottle of beer there?" said Jim, without moving, too
+settled even to stir an eye-lid.
+
+"Yes--I think there is," said Robert.
+
+"Thanks--don't open it yet," murmured Jim.
+
+"Have a drink, Josephine?" said Robert.
+
+"No thank you," said Josephine, bowing slightly.
+
+Finding the drinks did not go, Robert went round with the cigarettes.
+Josephine Ford looked at the white rolls.
+
+"Thank you," she said, and taking one, suddenly licked her rather
+full, dry red lips with the rapid tip of her tongue.  It was an odd
+movement, suggesting a snake's flicker.  She put her cigarette between
+her lips, and waited.  Her movements were very quiet and well bred; but
+perhaps too quiet, they had the dangerous impassivity of the Bohemian,
+Parisian or American rather than English.
+
+"Cigarette, Julia?" said Robert to his wife.
+
+She seemed to start or twitch, as if dazed.  Then she looked up at
+her husband with a queer smile, puckering the corners of her eyes.
+He looked at the cigarettes, not at her.  His face had the blunt
+voluptuous gravity of a young lion, a great cat.  She kept him
+standing for some moments impassively.  Then suddenly she hung her
+long, delicate fingers over the box, in doubt, and spasmodically
+jabbed at the cigarettes, clumsily raking one out at last.
+
+"Thank you, dear--thank you," she cried, rather high, looking up and
+smiling once more.  He turned calmly aside, offering the cigarettes
+to Scott, who refused.
+
+"Oh!" said Julia, sucking the end of her cigarette.  "Robert is so
+happy with all the good things--aren't you dear?" she sang, breaking
+into a hurried laugh.  "We aren't used to such luxurious living, we
+aren't--ARE WE DEAR--No, we're not such swells as this, we're not.
+Oh, ROBBIE, isn't it all right, isn't it just all right?"  She tailed
+off into her hurried, wild, repeated laugh.  "We're so happy in a land
+of plenty, AREN'T WE DEAR?"
+
+"Do you mean I'm greedy, Julia?" said Robert.
+
+"Greedy!--Oh, greedy!--he asks if he's greedy?--no you're not greedy,
+Robbie, you're not greedy.  I want you to be happy."
+
+"I'm quite happy," he returned.
+
+"Oh, he's happy!--Really!--he's happy!  Oh, what an accomplishment!
+Oh, my word!"  Julia puckered her eyes and laughed herself into a
+nervous twitching silence.
+
+Robert went round with the matches.  Julia sucked her cigarette.
+
+"Give us a light, Robbie, if you ARE happy!" she cried.
+
+"It's coming," he answered.
+
+Josephine smoked with short, sharp puffs.  Julia sucked wildly at her
+light.  Robert returned to his red wine.  Jim Bricknell suddenly roused
+up, looked round on the company, smiling a little vacuously and
+showing his odd, pointed teeth.
+
+"Where's the beer?" he asked, in deep tones, smiling full into
+Josephine's face, as if she were going to produce it by some sleight
+of hand.  Then he wheeled round to the table, and was soon pouring
+beer down his throat as down a pipe.  Then he dropped supine again.
+Cyril Scott was silently absorbing gin and water.
+
+"I say," said Jim, from the remote depths of his sprawling.  "Isn't
+there something we could do to while the time away?"
+
+Everybody suddenly laughed--it sounded so remote and absurd.
+
+"What, play bridge or poker or something conventional of that sort?"
+said Josephine in her distinct voice, speaking to him as if he were
+a child.
+
+"Oh, damn bridge," said Jim in his sleep-voice.  Then he began pulling
+his powerful length together.  He sat on the edge of his chair-seat,
+leaning forward, peering into all the faces and grinning.
+
+"Don't look at me like that--so long--" said Josephine, in her self-
+contained voice.  "You make me uncomfortable."  She gave an odd little
+grunt of a laugh, and the tip of her tongue went over her lips as she
+glanced sharply, half furtively round the room.
+
+"I like looking at you," said Jim, his smile becoming more malicious.
+
+"But you shouldn't, when I tell you not," she returned.
+
+Jim twisted round to look at the state of the bottles.  The father also
+came awake.  He sat up.
+
+"Isn't it time," he said, "that you all put away your glasses and
+cigarettes and thought of bed?"
+
+Jim rolled slowly round towards his father, sprawling in the long
+chair.
+
+"Ah, Dad," he said, "tonight's the night!  Tonight's some night, Dad.--
+You can sleep any time--" his grin widened--"but there aren't many
+nights to sit here--like this--Eh?"
+
+He was looking up all the time into the face of his father, full and
+nakedly lifting his face to the face of his father, and smiling
+fixedly.  The father, who was perfectly sober, except for the contagion
+from the young people, felt a wild tremor go through his heart as he
+gazed on the face of his boy.  He rose stiffly.
+
+"You want to stay?" he said.  "You want to stay!--Well then--well
+then, I'll leave you.  But don't be long."  The old man rose to his
+full height, rather majestic.  The four younger people also rose
+respectfully--only Jim lay still prostrate in his chair, twisting
+up his face towards his father.
+
+"You won't stay long," said the old man, looking round a little
+bewildered.  He was seeking a responsible eye.  Josephine was the
+only one who had any feeling for him.
+
+"No, we won't stay long, Mr. Bricknell," she said gravely.
+
+"Good night, Dad," said Jim, as his father left the room.
+
+Josephine went to the window.  She had rather a stiff, _poupee_ walk.
+
+"How is the night?" she said, as if to change the whole feeling in
+the room.  She pushed back the thick grey-silk curtains.  "Why?" she
+exclaimed.  "What is that light burning?  A red light?"
+
+"Oh, that's only the pit-bank on fire," said Robert, who had followed
+her.
+
+"How strange!--Why is it burning now?"
+
+"It always burns, unfortunately--it is most consistent at it.  It is
+the refuse from the mines.  It has been burning for years, in spite
+of all efforts to the contrary."
+
+"How very curious!  May we look at it?" Josephine now turned the handle
+of the French windows, and stepped out.
+
+"Beautiful!" they heard her voice exclaim from outside.
+
+In the room, Julia laid her hand gently, protectively over the hand of
+Cyril Scott.
+
+"Josephine and Robert are admiring the night together!" she said,
+smiling with subtle tenderness to him.
+
+"Naturally!  Young people always do these romantic things," replied
+Cyril Scott.  He was twenty-two years old, so he could afford to be
+cynical.
+
+"Do they?--Don't you think it's nice of them?" she said, gently
+removing her hand from his.  His eyes were shining with pleasure.
+
+"I do.  I envy them enormously.  One only needs to be sufficiently
+naive," he said.
+
+"One does, doesn't one!" cooed Julia.
+
+"I say, do you hear the bells?" said Robert, poking his head into
+the room.
+
+"No, dear!  Do you?" replied Julia.
+
+"Bells!  Hear the bells!  Bells!" exclaimed the half-tipsy and self-
+conscious Jim.  And he rolled in his chair in an explosion of sudden,
+silent laughter, showing his mouthful of pointed teeth, like a dog.
+Then he gradually gathered himself together, found his feet, smiling
+fixedly.
+
+"Pretty cool night!" he said aloud, when he felt the air on his almost
+bald head.  The darkness smelt of sulphur.
+
+Josephine and Robert had moved out of sight.  Julia was abstracted,
+following them with her eyes.  With almost supernatural keenness she
+seemed to catch their voices from the distance.
+
+"Yes, Josephine, WOULDN'T that be AWFULLY ROMANTIC!"--she suddenly
+called shrilly.
+
+The pair in the distance started.
+
+"What--!" they heard Josephine's sharp exclamation.
+
+"What's that?--What would be romantic?" said Jim as he lurched up and
+caught hold of Cyril Scott's arm.
+
+"Josephine wants to make a great illumination of the grounds of the
+estate," said Julia, magniloquent.
+
+"No--no--I didn't say it," remonstrated Josephine.
+
+"What Josephine said," explained Robert, "was simply that it would be
+pretty to put candles on one of the growing trees, instead of having a
+Christmas-tree indoors."
+
+"Oh, Josephine, how sweet of you!" cried Julia.
+
+Cyril Scott giggled.
+
+"Good egg!  Champion idea, Josey, my lass.  Eh?  What--!" cried Jim.
+"Why not carry it out--eh?  Why not?  Most attractive."  He leaned
+forward over Josephine, and grinned.
+
+"Oh, no!" expostulated Josephine.  "It all sounds so silly now.  No.
+Let us go indoors and go to bed."
+
+"NO, Josephine dear--No!  It's a LOVELY IDEA!" cried Julia.  "Let's
+get candles and lanterns and things--"
+
+"Let's!" grinned Jim.  "Let's, everybody--let's."
+
+"Shall we really?" asked Robert.  "Shall we illuminate one of the fir-
+trees by the lawn?"
+
+"Yes!  How lovely!" cried Julia.  "I'll fetch the candles."
+
+"The women must put on warm cloaks," said Robert.
+
+They trooped indoors for coats and wraps and candles and lanterns.
+Then, lighted by a bicycle lamp, they trooped off to the shed to
+twist wire round the candles for holders.  They clustered round
+the bench.
+
+"I say," said Julia, "doesn't Cyril look like a pilot on a stormy
+night!  Oh, I say--!" and she went into one of her hurried laughs.
+
+They all looked at Cyril Scott, who was standing sheepishly in the
+background, in a very large overcoat, smoking a large pipe.  The
+young man was uncomfortable, but assumed a stoic air of philosophic
+indifference.
+
+Soon they were busy round a prickly fir-tree at the end of the lawn.
+Jim stood in the background vaguely staring.  The bicycle lamp sent
+a beam of strong white light deep into the uncanny foliage, heads
+clustered and hands worked.  The night above was silent, dim.  There
+was no wind.  In the near distance they could hear the panting of
+some engine at the colliery.
+
+"Shall we light them as we fix them," asked Robert, "or save them for
+one grand rocket at the end?"
+
+"Oh, as we do them," said Cyril Scott, who had lacerated his fingers
+and wanted to see some reward.
+
+A match spluttered.  One naked little flame sprang alight among the
+dark foliage.  The candle burned tremulously, naked.  They all were
+silent.
+
+"We ought to do a ritual dance!  We ought to worship the tree," sang
+Julia, in her high voice.
+
+"Hold on a minute.  We'll have a little more illumination," said
+Robert.
+
+"Why yes.  We want more than one candle," said Josephine.
+
+But Julia had dropped the cloak in which she was huddled, and with
+arms slung asunder was sliding, waving, crouching in a _pas seul_
+before the tree, looking like an animated bough herself.
+
+Jim, who was hugging his pipe in the background, broke into a short,
+harsh, cackling laugh.
+
+"Aren't we fools!" he cried.  "What?  Oh, God's love, aren't we fools!"
+
+"No--why?" cried Josephine, amused but resentful.
+
+But Jim vouchsafed nothing further, only stood like a Red Indian
+gripping his pipe.
+
+The beam of the bicycle-lamp moved and fell upon the hands and faces
+of the young people, and penetrated the recesses of the secret trees.
+Several little tongues of flame clipped sensitive and ruddy on the
+naked air, sending a faint glow over the needle foliage.  They gave a
+strange, perpendicular aspiration in the night.  Julia waved slowly in
+her tree dance.  Jim stood apart, with his legs straddled, a motionless
+figure.
+
+The party round the tree became absorbed and excited as more ruddy
+tongues of flame pricked upward from the dark tree.  Pale candles
+became evident, the air was luminous.  The illumination was becoming
+complete, harmonious.
+
+Josephine suddenly looked round.
+
+"Why-y-y!" came her long note of alarm.
+
+A man in a bowler hat and a black overcoat stood on the edge of the
+twilight.
+
+"What is it?" cried Julia.
+
+"_Homo sapiens_!" said Robert, the lieutenant.  "Hand the light,
+Cyril."  He played the beam of light full on the intruder; a man in
+a bowler hat, with a black overcoat buttoned to his throat, a pale,
+dazed, blinking face.  The hat was tilted at a slightly jaunty angle
+over the left eye, the man was well-featured.  He did not speak.
+
+"Did you want anything?" asked Robert, from behind the light.
+
+Aaron Sisson blinked, trying to see who addressed him.  To him, they
+were all illusory.  He did not answer.
+
+"Anything you wanted?" repeated Robert, military, rather peremptory.
+
+Jim suddenly doubled himself up and burst into a loud harsh cackle
+of laughter.  Whoop! he went, and doubled himself up with laughter.
+Whoop!  Whoop! he went, and fell on the ground and writhed with
+laughter.  He was in that state of intoxication when he could find
+no release from maddening self-consciousness.  He knew what he was
+doing, he did it deliberately.  And yet he was also beside himself,
+in a sort of hysterics.  He could not help himself in exasperated
+self-consciousness.
+
+The others all began to laugh, unavoidably.  It was a contagion.  They
+laughed helplessly and foolishly.  Only Robert was anxious.
+
+"I'm afraid he'll wake the house," he said, looking at the doubled up
+figure of Jim writhing on the grass and whooping loudly.
+
+"Or not enough," put in Cyril Scott.  He twigged Jim's condition.
+
+"No--no!" cried Josephine, weak with laughing in spite of herself.
+"No--it's too long--I'm like to die laughing--"
+
+Jim embraced the earth in his convulsions.  Even Robert shook quite
+weakly with laughter.  His face was red, his eyes full of dancing
+water.  Yet he managed to articulate.
+
+"I say, you know, you'll bring the old man down."  Then he went off
+again into spasms.
+
+"Hu!  Hu!" whooped Jim, subsiding.  "Hu!"
+
+He rolled over on to his back, and lay silent.  The others also became
+weakly silent.
+
+"What's amiss?" said Aaron Sisson, breaking this spell.
+
+They all began to laugh again, except Jim, who lay on his back looking
+up at the strange sky.
+
+"What're you laughing at?" repeated Aaron.
+
+"We're laughing at the man on the ground," replied Josephine.  "I think
+he's drunk a little too much."
+
+"Ay," said Aaron, standing mute and obstinate.
+
+"Did you want anything?" Robert enquired once more.
+
+"Eh?" Aaron looked up.  "Me?  No, not me."  A sort of inertia kept
+him rooted.  The young people looked at one another and began to
+laugh, rather embarrassed.
+
+"Another!" said Cyril Scott cynically.
+
+They wished he would go away.  There was a pause.
+
+"What do you reckon stars are?" asked the sepulchral voice of Jim.
+He still lay flat on his back on the grass.
+
+Josephine went to him and pulled at his coat.
+
+"Get up," she said.  "You'll take cold.  Get up now, we're going
+indoors."
+
+"What do you reckon stars are?" he persisted.
+
+Aaron Sisson stood on the edge of the light, smilingly staring at the
+scene, like a boy out of his place, but stubbornly keeping his ground.
+
+"Get up now," said Josephine.  "We've had enough."  But Jim would not
+move.
+
+Robert went with the bicycle lamp and stood at Aaron's side.
+
+"Shall I show you a light to the road--you're off your track," he said.
+"You're in the grounds of Shottle House."
+
+"I can find my road," said Aaron.  "Thank you."
+
+Jim suddenly got up and went to peer at the stranger, poking his face
+close to Aaron's face.
+
+"Right-o," he replied.  "You're not half a bad sort of chap--Cheery-o!
+What's your drink?"
+
+"Mine--whiskey," said Aaron.
+
+"Come in and have one.  We're the only sober couple in the bunch--
+what?" cried Jim.
+
+Aaron stood unmoving, static in everything.  Jim took him by the arm
+affectionately.  The stranger looked at the flickering tree, with its
+tiers of lights.
+
+"A Christmas tree," he said, jerking his head and smiling.
+
+"That's right, old man," said Jim, seeming thoroughly sober now.  "Come
+indoors and have a drink."
+
+Aaron Sisson negatively allowed himself to be led off.  The others
+followed in silence, leaving the tree to flicker the night through.
+The stranger stumbled at the open window-door.
+
+"Mind the step," said Jim affectionately.
+
+They crowded to the fire, which was still hot.  The newcomer looked
+round vaguely.  Jim took his bowler hat and gave him a chair.  He
+sat without looking round, a remote, abstract look on his face.  He
+was very pale, and seemed-inwardly absorbed.
+
+The party threw off their wraps and sat around.  Josephine turned to
+Aaron Sisson, who sat with a glass of whiskey in his hand, rather
+slack in his chair, in his thickish overcoat.  He did not want to
+drink.  His hair was blond, quite tidy, his mouth and chin handsome
+but a little obstinate, his eyes inscrutable.  His pallor was not
+natural to him.  Though he kept the appearance of a smile, underneath
+he was hard and opposed.  He did not wish to be with these people, and
+yet, mechanically, he stayed.
+
+"Do you feel quite well?" Josephine asked him.
+
+He looked at her quickly.
+
+"Me?" he said.  He smiled faintly.  "Yes, I'm all right."  Then he
+dropped his head again and seemed oblivious.
+
+"Tell us your name," said Jim affectionately.
+
+The stranger looked up.
+
+"My name's Aaron Sisson, if it's anything to you," he said.
+
+Jim began to grin.
+
+"It's a name I don't know," he said.  Then he named all the party
+present.  But the stranger hardly heeded, though his eyes looked
+curiously from one to the other, slow, shrewd, clairvoyant.
+
+"Were you on your way home?" asked Robert, huffy.
+
+The stranger lifted his head and looked at him.
+
+"Home!" he repeated.  "No.  The other road--" He indicated the
+direction with his head, and smiled faintly.
+
+"Beldover?" inquired Robert.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He had dropped his head again, as if he did not want to look at them.
+
+To Josephine, the pale, impassive, blank-seeming face, the blue eyes
+with the smile which wasn't a smile, and the continual dropping of the
+well-shaped head was curiously affecting.  She wanted to cry.
+
+"Are you a miner?" Robert asked, _de haute en bas_.
+
+"No," cried Josephine.  She had looked at his hands.
+
+"Men's checkweighman," replied Aaron.  He had emptied his glass.  He
+put it on the table.
+
+"Have another?" said Jim, who was attending fixedly, with curious
+absorption, to the stranger.
+
+"No," cried Josephine, "no more."
+
+Aaron looked at Jim, then at her, and smiled slowly, with remote
+bitterness.  Then he lowered his head again.  His hands were loosely
+clasped between his knees.
+
+"What about the wife?" said Robert--the young lieutenant.
+
+"What about the wife and kiddies?  You're a married man, aren't you?"
+
+The sardonic look of the stranger rested on the subaltern.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"Won't they be expecting you?" said Robert, trying to keep his temper
+and his tone of authority.
+
+"I expect they will--"
+
+"Then you'd better be getting along, hadn't you?"
+
+The eyes of the intruder rested all the time on the flushed subaltern.
+The look on Aaron's face became slowly satirical.
+
+"Oh, dry up the army touch," said Jim contemptuously, to Robert.
+"We're all civvies here.  We're all right, aren't we?" he said loudly,
+turning to the stranger with a grin that showed his pointed teeth.
+
+Aaron gave a brief laugh of acknowledgement.
+
+"How many children have you?" sang Julia from her distance.
+
+"Three."
+
+"Girls or boys?"
+
+"Girls."
+
+"All girls?  Dear little things!  How old?"
+
+"Oldest eight--youngest nine months--"
+
+"So small!" sang Julia, with real tenderness now--Aaron dropped his
+head.  "But you're going home to them, aren't you?" said Josephine,
+in whose eyes the tears had already risen.  He looked up at her, at
+her tears.  His face had the same pale perverse smile.
+
+"Not tonight," he said.
+
+"But why?  You're wrong!" cried Josephine.
+
+He dropped his head and became oblivious.
+
+"Well!" said Cyril Scott, rising at last with a bored exclamation.
+"I think I'll retire."
+
+"Will you?" said Julia, also rising.  "You'll find your candle
+outside."
+
+She went out.  Scott bade good night, and followed her.  The four
+people remained in the room, quite silent.  Then Robert rose and
+began to walk about, agitated.
+
+"Don't you go back to 'em.  Have a night out.  You stop here tonight,"
+Jim said suddenly, in a quiet intimate tone.
+
+The stranger turned his head and looked at him, considering.
+
+"Yes?" he said.  He seemed to be smiling coldly.
+
+"Oh, but!" cried Josephine.  "Your wife and your children!  Won't they
+be awfully bothered?  Isn't it awfully unkind to them?"
+
+She rose in her eagerness.  He sat turning up his face to her.  She
+could not understand his expression.
+
+"Won't you go home to them?" she said, hysterical.
+
+"Not tonight," he replied quietly, again smiling.
+
+"You're wrong!" she cried.  "You're wrong!"  And so she hurried out of
+the room in tears.
+
+"Er--what bed do you propose to put him in?" asked Robert rather
+officer-like.
+
+"Don't propose at all, my lad," replied Jim, ironically--he did not
+like Robert.  Then to the stranger he said:
+
+"You'll be all right on the couch in my room?--it's a good couch, big
+enough, plenty of rugs--"  His voice was easy and intimate.
+
+Aaron looked at him, and nodded.
+
+They had another drink each, and at last the two set off, rather
+stumbling, upstairs.  Aaron carried his bowler hat with him.
+
+Robert remained pacing in the drawing-room for some time.  Then he
+went out, to return in a little while.  He extinguished the lamps and
+saw that the fire was safe.  Then he went to fasten the window-doors
+securely.  Outside he saw the uncanny glimmer of candles across the
+lawn.  He had half a mind to go out and extinguish them--but he did
+not.  So he went upstairs and the house was quiet.  Faint crumbs of
+snow were falling outside.
+
+When Jim woke in the morning Aaron had gone.  Only on the floor were
+two packets of Christmas-tree candles, fallen from the stranger's
+pockets.  He had gone through the drawing-room door, as he had come.
+The housemaid said that while she was cleaning the grate in the
+dining-room she heard someone go into the drawing-room: a parlour-
+maid had even seen someone come out of Jim's bedroom.  But they had
+both thought it was Jim himself, for he was an unsettled house mate.
+
+There was a thin film of snow, a lovely Christmas morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"THE PILLAR OF SALT"
+
+
+Our story will not yet see daylight.  A few days after Christmas,
+Aaron sat in the open shed at the bottom of his own garden, looking
+out on the rainy darkness.  No one knew he was there.  It was some
+time after six in the evening.
+
+From where he sat, he looked straight up the garden to the house.
+The blind was not drawn in the middle kitchen, he could see the
+figures of his wife and one child.  There was a light also in the
+upstairs window.  His wife was gone upstairs again.  He wondered if
+she had the baby ill.  He could see her figure vaguely behind the lace
+curtains of the bedroom.  It was like looking at his home through the
+wrong end of a telescope.  Now the little girls had gone from the
+middle room: only to return in a moment.
+
+His attention strayed.  He watched the light falling from the window
+of the next-door house.  Uneasily, he looked along the whole range of
+houses.  The street sloped down-hill, and the backs were open to the
+fields.  So he saw a curious succession of lighted windows, between
+which jutted the intermediary back premises, scullery and outhouse, in
+dark little blocks.  It was something like the keyboard of a piano:
+more still, like a succession of musical notes.  For the rectangular
+planes of light were of different intensities, some bright and keen,
+some soft, warm, like candle-light, and there was one surface of pure
+red light, one or two were almost invisible, dark green.  So the long
+scale of lights seemed to trill across the darkness, now bright, now
+dim, swelling and sinking.  The effect was strange.
+
+And thus the whole private life of the street was threaded in lights.
+There was a sense of indecent exposure, from so many backs.  He felt
+himself almost in physical contact with this contiguous stretch of
+back premises.  He heard the familiar sound of water gushing from the
+sink in to the grate, the dropping of a pail outside the door, the
+clink of a coal shovel, the banging of a door, the sound of voices.
+So many houses cheek by jowl, so many squirming lives, so many back
+yards, back doors giving on to the night.  It was revolting.
+
+Away in the street itself, a boy was calling the newspaper: "-'NING
+POST! -'NING PO-O-ST!"  It was a long, melancholy howl, and seemed to
+epitomise the whole of the dark, wet, secretive, thickly-inhabited
+night.  A figure passed the window of Aaron's own house, entered, and
+stood inside the room talking to Mrs. Sisson.  It was a young woman in
+a brown mackintosh and a black hat.  She stood under the incandescent
+light, and her hat nearly knocked the globe.  Next door a man had run
+out in his shirt sleeves: this time a young, dark-headed collier
+running to the gate for a newspaper, running bare-headed, coatless,
+slippered in the rain.  He had got his news-sheet, and was returning.
+And just at that moment the young man's wife came out, shading her
+candle with a lading tin.  She was going to the coal-house for some
+coal.  Her husband passed her on the threshold.  She could be heard
+breaking the bits of coal and placing them on the dustpan.  The light
+from her candle fell faintly behind her.  Then she went back, blown by
+a swirl of wind.  But again she was at the door, hastily standing her
+iron shovel against the wall.  Then she shut the back door with a bang.
+These noises seemed to scrape and strike the night.
+
+In Aaron's own house, the young person was still talking to Mrs.
+Sisson.  Millicent came out, sheltering a candle with her hand.
+The candle blew out.  She ran indoors, and emerged again, her white
+pinafore fluttering.  This time she performed her little journey
+safely.  He could see the faint glimmer of her candle emerging
+secretly from the closet.
+
+The young person was taking her leave.  He could hear her sympathetic
+--"Well--good night!  I hope she'll be no worse.  Good night Mrs.
+Sisson!"  She was gone--he heard the windy bang of the street-gate.
+Presently Millicent emerged again, flitting indoors.
+
+So he rose to his feet, balancing, swaying a little before he started
+into motion, as so many colliers do.  Then he moved along the path
+towards the house, in the rain and darkness, very slowly edging
+forwards.
+
+Suddenly the door opened.  His wife emerged with a pail.  He stepped
+quietly aside, on to his side garden, among the sweet herbs.  He could
+smell rosemary and sage and hyssop.  A low wall divided his garden
+from his neighbour's.  He put his hand on it, on its wetness, ready
+to drop over should his wife come forward.  But she only threw the
+contents of her pail on the garden and retired again.  She might have
+seen him had she looked.  He remained standing where he was, listening
+to the trickle of rain in the water-butt.  The hollow countryside lay
+beyond him.  Sometimes in the windy darkness he could see the red burn
+of New Brunswick bank, or the brilliant jewels of light clustered at
+Bestwood Colliery.  Away in the dark hollow, nearer, the glare of the
+electric power-station disturbed the night.  So again the wind swirled
+the rain across all these hieroglyphs of the countryside, familiar to
+him as his own breast.
+
+A motor-car was labouring up the hill.  His trained ear attended to it
+unconsciously.  It stopped with a jar.  There was a bang of the yard-
+gate.  A shortish dark figure in a bowler hat passed the window.
+Millicent was drawing down the blind.  It was the doctor.  The blind
+was drawn, he could see no more.
+
+Stealthily he began to approach the house.  He stood by the climbing
+rose of the porch, listening.  He heard voices upstairs.  Perhaps the
+children would be downstairs.  He listened intently.  Voices were
+upstairs only.  He quietly opened the door.  The room was empty, save
+for the baby, who was cooing in her cradle.  He crossed to the hall.
+At the foot of the stairs he could hear the voice of the Indian
+doctor: "Now little girl, you must just keep still and warm in bed,
+and not cry for the moon."  He said "_de_ moon," just as ever.--Marjory
+must be ill.
+
+So Aaron quietly entered the parlour.  It was a cold, clammy room,
+dark.  He could hear footsteps passing outside on the asphalt pavement
+below the window, and the wind howling with familiar cadence.  He
+began feeling for something in the darkness of the music-rack beside
+the piano.  He touched and felt--he could not find what he wanted.
+Perplexed, he turned and looked out of the window.  Through the iron
+railing of the front wall he could see the little motorcar sending its
+straight beams of light in front of it, up the street.
+
+He sat down on the sofa by the window.  The energy had suddenly left
+all his limbs.  He sat with his head sunk, listening.  The familiar
+room, the familiar voice of his wife and his children--he felt weak as
+if he were dying.  He felt weak like a drowning man who acquiesces in
+the waters.  His strength was gone, he was sinking back.  He would
+sink back to it all, float henceforth like a drowned man.
+
+So he heard voices coming nearer from upstairs, feet moving.  They
+were coming down.
+
+"No, Mrs. Sisson, you needn't worry," he heard the voice of the doctor
+on the stairs.  "If she goes on as she is, she'll be all right.  Only
+she must be kept warm and quiet--warm and quiet--that's the chief
+thing."
+
+"Oh, when she has those bouts I can't bear it," Aaron heard his wife's
+voice.
+
+They were downstairs.  Their feet click-clicked on the tiled passage.
+They had gone into the middle room.  Aaron sat and listened.
+
+"She won't have any more bouts.  If she does, give her a few drops
+from the little bottle, and raise her up.  But she won't have any
+more," the doctor said.
+
+"If she does, I s'll go off my head, I know I shall."
+
+"No, you won't.  No, you won't do anything of the sort.  You won't go
+off your head.  You'll keep your head on your shoulders, where it ought
+to be," protested the doctor.
+
+"But it nearly drives me mad."
+
+"Then don't let it.  The child won't die, I tell you.  She will be all
+right, with care.  Who have you got sitting up with her?  You're not
+to sit up with her tonight, I tell you.  Do you hear me?"
+
+"Miss Smitham's coming in.  But it's no good--I shall have to sit up.
+I shall HAVE to."
+
+"I tell you you won't.  You obey ME.  I know what's good for you as
+well as for her.  I am thinking of you as much as of her."
+
+"But I can't bear it--all alone."  This was the beginning of tears.
+There was a dead silence--then a sound of Millicent weeping with her
+mother.  As a matter of fact, the doctor was weeping too, for he was
+an emotional sympathetic soul, over forty.
+
+"Never mind--never mind--you aren't alone," came the doctor's matter-
+of-fact voice, after a loud nose-blowing.  "I am here to help you.  I
+will do whatever I can--whatever I can."
+
+"I can't bear it.  I can't bear it," wept the woman.
+
+Another silence, another nose-blowing, and again the doctor:
+
+"You'll HAVE to bear it--I tell you there's nothing else for it.
+You'll have to bear it--but we'll do our best for you.  I will do my
+best for you--always--ALWAYS--in sickness or out of sickness--There!"
+He pronounced _there_ oddly, not quite _dhere_.
+
+"You haven't heard from your husband?" he added.
+
+"I had a letter--"--sobs--"from the bank this morning."
+
+"FROM DE BANK?"
+
+"Telling me they were sending me so much per month, from him, as an
+allowance, and that he was quite well, but he was travelling."
+
+"Well then, why not let him travel?  You can live."
+
+"But to leave me alone," there was burning indignation in her voice.
+"To go off and leave me with every responsibility, to leave me with
+all the burden."
+
+"Well I wouldn't trouble about him.  Aren't you better off without
+him?"
+
+"I am.  I am," she cried fiercely.  "When I got that letter this
+morning, I said MAY EVIL BEFALL YOU, YOU SELFISH DEMON.  And I hope
+it may."
+
+
+"Well-well, well-well, don't fret.   Don't be angry, it won't make it
+any better, I tell you."
+
+"Angry!  I AM angry.  I'm worse than angry.  A week ago I hadn't a
+grey hair in my head.  Now look here--"  There was a pause.
+
+"Well-well, well-well, never mind.  You will be all right, don't you
+bother.  Your hair is beautiful anyhow."
+
+"What makes me so mad is that be should go off like that--never a
+word--coolly takes his hook.  I could kill him for it."
+
+"Were you ever happy together?"
+
+"We were all right at first.  I know I was fond of him.  But he'd kill
+anything.--He kept himself back, always kept himself back, couldn't
+give himself--"
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Ah well," sighed the doctor.  "Marriage is a mystery.  I'm glad I'm
+not entangled in it."
+
+"Yes, to make some woman's life a misery.--I'm sure it was death to
+live with him, he seemed to kill everything off inside you.  He was a
+man you couldn't quarrel with, and get it over.  Quiet--quiet in his
+tempers, and selfish through and through.  I've lived with him twelve
+years--I know what it is.  Killing!  You don't know what he was--"
+
+"I think I knew him.  A fair man?  Yes?" said the doctor.
+
+"Fair to look at.--There's a photograph of him in the parlour--taken
+when he was married--and one of me.--Yes, he's fairhaired."
+
+Aaron guessed that she was getting a candle to come into the parlour.
+He was tempted to wait and meet them--and accept it all again.
+Devilishly tempted, he was.  Then he thought of her voice, and his
+heart went cold.  Quick as thought, he obeyed his first impulse.  He
+felt behind the couch, on the floor where the curtains fell.  Yes--the
+bag was there.  He took it at once.  In the next breath he stepped out
+of the room and tip-toed into the passage.  He retreated to the far
+end, near the street door, and stood behind the coats that hung on the
+hall-stand.
+
+At that moment his wife came into the passage, holding a candle.  She
+was red-eyed with weeping, and looked frail.
+
+"Did YOU leave the parlour door open?" she asked of Millicent,
+suspiciously.
+
+"No," said Millicent from the kitchen.
+
+The doctor, with his soft, Oriental tread followed Mrs. Sisson into
+the parlour.  Aaron saw his wife hold up the candle before his
+portrait and begin to weep.  But he knew her.  The doctor laid his
+hand softly on her arm, and left it there, sympathetically.  Nor
+did he remove it when Millicent stole into the room, looking very
+woe-begone and important.  The wife wept silently, and the child
+joined in.
+
+"Yes, I know him," said the doctor.  "If he thinks he will be happier
+when he's gone away, you must be happier too, Mrs. Sisson.  That's all.
+Don't let him triumph over you by making you miserable.  You enjoy
+yourself as well.  You're only a girl---"
+
+But a tear came from his eye, and he blew his nose vigorously on a
+large white silk handkerchief, and began to polish his _pince nez_.
+Then he turned, and they all bundled out of the room.
+
+The doctor took his departure.  Mrs. Sisson went almost immediately
+upstairs, and Millicent shortly crept after her.  Then Aaron, who had
+stood motionless as if turned to a pillar of salt, went quietly down
+the passage and into the living room.  His face was very pale, ghastly-
+looking.  He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the mantel,
+as he passed, and felt weak, as if he were really a criminal.  But his
+heart did not relax, nevertheless.  So he hurried into the night, down
+the garden, climbed the fence into the field, and went away across the
+field in the rain, towards the highroad.
+
+He felt sick in every fibre.  He almost hated the little handbag he
+carried, which held his flute and piccolo.  It seemed a burden just
+then--a millstone round his neck.  He hated the scene he had left--
+and he hated the hard, inviolable heart that stuck unchanging in his
+own breast.
+
+Coming to the high-road, he saw a tall, luminous tram-car roving along
+through the rain.  The trams ran across country from town to town.  He
+dared not board, because people knew him.  So he took a side road, and
+walked in a detour for two miles.  Then he came out on the high-road
+again and waited for a tram-car.  The rain blew on his face.  He
+waited a long time for the last car.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+AT THE OPERA
+
+
+A friend had given Josephine Ford a box at the opera for one evening;
+our story continues by night.  The box was large and important, near
+the stage.  Josephine and Julia were there, with Robert and Jim--also
+two more men.  The women sat in the front of the box, conspicuously.
+They were both poor, they were rather excited.  But they belonged to
+a set which looked on social triumphs as a downfall that one allows
+oneself.  The two men, Lilly and Struthers, were artists, the former
+literary, the latter a painter.  Lilly sat by Josephine in the front
+of the box: he was her little lion of the evening.
+
+Few women can sit in the front of a big box, on a crowded and full-
+swing opera night, without thrilling and dilating.  There is an
+intoxication in being thus thrust forward, conspicuous and enhanced,
+right in the eye of the vast crowd that lines the hollow shell of the
+auditorium.  Thus even Josephine and Julia leaned their elbows and
+poised their heads regally, looking condescendingly down upon the
+watchful world.  They were two poor women, having nothing to do with
+society.  Half bohemians.
+
+Josephine was an artist.  In Paris she was a friend of a very
+fashionable dressmaker and decorator, master of modern elegance.
+Sometimes she designed dresses for him, and sometimes she accepted
+from him a commission to decorate a room.  Usually at her last sou,
+it gave her pleasure to dispose of costly and exquisite things for
+other people, and then be rid of them.
+
+This evening her dress was a simple, but a marvellously poised thing
+of black and silver: in the words of the correct journal.  With her
+tight, black, bright hair, her arched brows, her dusky-ruddy face and
+her bare shoulders; her strange equanimity, her long, slow, slanting
+looks; she looked foreign and frightening, clear as a cameo, but dark,
+far off.  Julia was the English beauty, in a lovely blue dress.  Her
+hair was becomingly untidy on her low brow, her dark blue eyes wandered
+and got excited, her nervous mouth twitched.  Her high-pitched, sing-
+song voice and her hurried laugh could be heard in the theatre.  She
+twisted a beautiful little fan that a dead artist had given her.
+
+Not being fashionable, they were in the box when the overture began.
+The opera was Verdi--_Aida_.  If it is impossible to be in an important
+box at the opera without experiencing the strange intoxication of
+social pre-eminence, it is just as impossible to be there without
+some feeling of horror at the sight the stage presents.
+
+Josephine leaned her elbow and looked down: she knew how arresting
+that proud, rather stiff bend of her head was.  She had some aboriginal
+American in her blood.  But as she looked, she pursed her mouth.  The
+artist in her forgot everything, she was filled with disgust.  The
+sham Egypt of _Aida_ hid from her nothing of its shame.  The singers
+were all colour-washed, deliberately colour-washed to a bright orange
+tint.  The men had oblong dabs of black wool under their lower lip;
+the beard of the mighty Pharaohs.  This oblong dab shook and wagged to
+the singing.
+
+The vulgar bodies of the fleshy women were unendurable.  They all
+looked such good meat.  Why were their haunches so prominent?  It
+was a question Josephine could not solve.  She scanned their really
+expensive, brilliant clothing.  It was _nearly_ right--nearly splendid.
+It only lacked that last subtlety which the world always lacks, the
+last final clinching which puts calm into a sea of fabric, and yet
+is the opposite pole to machine fixity.
+
+But the leading tenor was the chief pain.  He was large, stout, swathed
+in a cummerbund, and looked like a eunuch.  This fattish, emasculated
+look seems common in stage heroes--even the extremely popular.  The
+tenor sang bravely, his mouth made a large, coffin-shaped, yawning gap
+in his orange face, his little beard fluttered oddly, like a tail.  He
+turned up his eyes to Josephine's box as he sang--that being the
+regulation direction.  Meanwhile his abdomen shook as he caught his
+breath, the flesh of his fat, naked arms swayed.
+
+Josephine looked down with the fixed gravity of a Red Indian,
+immovable, inscrutable.  It was not till the scene was ended that she
+lifted her head as if breaking a spell, sent the point of her tongue
+rapidly over her dried lips, and looked round into the box.  Her brown
+eyes expressed shame, fear, and disgust.  A curious grimace went over
+her face--a grimace only to be expressed by the exclamation _Merde!_
+But she was mortally afraid of society, and its fixed institutions.
+Rapidly she scanned the eyes of her friends in the box.  She rested
+on the eyes of Lilly, a dark, ugly man.
+
+"Isn't it nasty?" she said.
+
+"You shouldn't look so closely," he said.  But he took it calmly,
+easily, whilst she felt floods of burning disgust, a longing to
+destroy it all.
+
+"Oh-ho-ho!" laughed Julia.  "It's so fu-nny--so funny!"
+
+"Of course we are too near," said Robert.
+
+"Say you admire that pink fondant over there," said Struthers,
+indicating with his eyebrows a blond large woman in white satin with
+pink edging, who sat in a box opposite, on the upper tier.
+
+"Oh, the fondant--exactly--the fondant!  Yes, I admire her immensely!
+Isn't she exactly IT!" sang Julia.
+
+Josephine was scanning the auditorium.  So many myriads of faces--like
+beads on a bead-work pattern--all bead-work, in different layers.  She
+bowed to various acquaintances--mostly Americans in uniform, whom she
+had known in Paris.  She smiled to Lady Cochrane, two boxes off--Lady
+Cochrane had given her the box.  But she felt rather coldly towards
+her.
+
+The curtain rose, the opera wound its slow length along.  The audience
+loved it.  They cheered with mad enthusiasm.  Josephine looked down on
+the choppy sea of applause, white gloves clapping, heads shaking.  The
+noise was strange and rattling.  What a curious multiple object a
+theatre-audience was!  It seemed to have a million heads, a million
+hands, and one monstrous, unnatural consciousness.  The singers
+appeared before the curtain--the applause rose up like clouds of dust.
+
+"Oh, isn't it too wonderful!" cried Julia.  "I am wild with excitement.
+Are you all of you?"
+
+"Absolutely wild," said Lilly laconically.
+
+"Where is Scott to-night?" asked Struthers.
+
+Julia turned to him and gave him a long, queer look from her dark
+blue eyes.
+
+"He's in the country," she said, rather enigmatic.
+
+"Don't you know, he's got a house down in Dorset," said Robert,
+verbally rushing in.  "He wants Julia to go down and stay."
+
+"Is she going?" said Lilly.
+
+"She hasn't decided," replied Robert.
+
+"Oh!  What's the objection?" asked Struthers.
+
+"Well, none whatsoever, as far as can be seen, except that she can't
+make up her mind," replied Robert.
+
+"Julia's got no mind," said Jim rudely.
+
+"Oh!  Hear the brotherly verdict!" laughed Julia hurriedly.
+
+"You mean to go down to Dorset alone!" said Struthers.
+
+"Why not?" replied Robert, answering for her.
+
+"And stay how long?"
+
+"Oh--as long as it lasts," said Robert again.
+
+"Starting with eternity," said Lilly, "and working back to a
+fortnight."
+
+"And what's the matter?--looks bad in the eyes of the world?"
+
+"Yes--about that.  Afraid of compromising herself--"
+
+Lilly looked at them.
+
+"Depends what you take the world to mean.  Do you mean us in this box,
+or the crew outside there?" he jerked his head towards the auditorium.
+
+"Do you think, Lilly, that we're the world?" said Robert ironically.
+
+"Oh, yes, I guess we're shipwrecked in this box, like Robinson Crusoes.
+And what we do on our own little island matters to us alone.  As
+for the infinite crowds of howling savages outside there in the
+unspeakable, all you've got to do is mind they don't scrap you."
+
+"But WON'T they?" said Struthers.
+
+"Not unless you put your head in their hands," said Lilly.
+
+"I don't know--" said Jim.
+
+But the curtain had risen, they hushed him into silence.
+
+All through the next scene, Julia puzzled herself, as to whether she
+should go down to the country and live with Scott.  She had carried
+on a nervous kind of _amour_ with him, based on soul sympathy and
+emotional excitement.  But whether to go and live with him?  She didn't
+know if she wanted to or not: and she couldn't for her life find out.
+She was in that nervous state when desire seems to evaporate the moment
+fulfilment is offered.
+
+When the curtain dropped she turned.
+
+"You see," she said, screwing up her eyes, "I have to think of
+Robert."  She cut the word in two, with an odd little hitch in
+her voice--"ROB-ert."
+
+"My dear Julia, can't you believe that I'm tired of being thought of,"
+cried Robert, flushing.
+
+Julia screwed up her eyes in a slow smile, oddly cogitating.
+
+"Well, who AM I to think of?" she asked.
+
+"Yourself," said Lilly.
+
+"Oh, yes!  Why, yes!  I never thought of that!"  She gave a hurried
+little laugh.  "But then it's no FUN to think about oneself," she
+cried flatly.  "I think about ROB-ert, and SCOTT."  She screwed up
+her eyes and peered oddly at the company.
+
+"Which of them will find you the greatest treat," said Lilly
+sarcastically.
+
+"Anyhow," interjected Robert nervously, "it will be something new
+for Scott."
+
+"Stale buns for you, old boy," said Jim drily.
+
+"I don't say so.  But--" exclaimed the flushed, full-blooded Robert,
+who was nothing if not courteous to women.
+
+"How long ha' you been married?  Eh?" asked Jim.
+
+"Six years!" sang Julia sweetly.
+
+"Good God!"
+
+"You see," said Robert, "Julia can't decide anything for herself.  She
+waits for someone else to decide, then she puts her spoke in."
+
+"Put it plainly--" began Struthers.
+
+"But don't you know, it's no USE putting it plainly," cried Julia.
+
+"But DO you want to be with Scott, out and out, or DON'T you?" said
+Lilly.
+
+"Exactly!" chimed Robert.  "That's the question for you to answer
+Julia."
+
+"I WON'T answer it," she cried.  "Why should I?"  And she looked away
+into the restless hive of the theatre.  She spoke so wildly that she
+attracted attention.  But it half pleased her.  She stared abstractedly
+down at the pit.
+
+The men looked at one another in some comic consternation.
+
+"Oh, damn it all!" said the long Jim, rising and stretching himself.
+"She's dead nuts on Scott.  She's all over him.  She'd have eloped
+with him weeks ago if it hadn't been so easy.  She can't stand it
+that Robert offers to hand her into the taxi."
+
+He gave his malevolent grin round the company, then went out.  He did
+not reappear for the next scene.
+
+"Of course, if she loves Scott--" began Struthers.
+
+Julia suddenly turned with wild desperation, and cried:
+
+"I like him tremendously--tre-men-dous-ly!  He DOES understand."
+
+"Which we don't," said Robert.
+
+Julia smiled her long, odd smile in their faces: one might almost say
+she smiled in their teeth.
+
+"What do YOU think, Josephine?" asked Lilly.
+
+Josephine was leaning froward.  She started.  Her tongue went rapidly
+over her lips.  "Who--?  I--?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I think Julia should go with Scott," said Josephine.  "She'll bother
+with the idea till she's done it.  She loves him, really."
+
+"Of course she does," cried Robert.
+
+Julia, with her chin resting on her arms, in a position which
+irritated the neighbouring Lady Cochrane sincerely, was gazing with
+unseeing eyes down upon the stalls.
+
+"Well then--" began Struthers.  But the music struck up softly.  They
+were all rather bored.  Struthers kept on making small, half audible
+remarks--which was bad form, and displeased Josephine, the hostess of
+the evening.
+
+When the curtain came down for the end of the act, the men got up.
+Lilly's wife, Tanny, suddenly appeared.  She had come on after a
+dinner engagement.
+
+"Would you like tea or anything?" Lilly asked.
+
+The women refused.  The men filtered out on to the crimson and white,
+curving corridor.  Julia, Josephine and Tanny remained in the box.
+Tanny was soon hitched on to the conversation in hand.
+
+"Of course," she replied, "one can't decide such a thing like drinking
+a cup of tea."
+
+"Of course, one can't, dear Tanny," said Julia.
+
+"After all, one doesn't leave one's husband every day, to go and live
+with another man.  Even if one looks on it as an experiment--."
+
+"It's difficult!" cried Julia.  "It's difficult!  I feel they all want
+to FORCE me to decide.  It's cruel."
+
+"Oh, men with their beastly logic, their either-this-or-that stunt,
+they are an awful bore.--But of course, Robert can't love you REALLY,
+or he'd want to keep you.  I can see Lilly discussing such a thing
+for ME.  But then you don't love Robert either," said Tanny.
+
+"I do!  Oh, I do, Tanny!  I DO love him, I love him dearly.  I think
+he's beautiful.  Robert's beautiful.  And he NEEDS me.  And I need him
+too.  I need his support.  Yes, I do love him."
+
+"But you like Scott better," said Tanny.
+
+"Only because he--he's different," sang Julia, in long tones.  "You
+see Scott has his art.  His art matters.  And ROB-ert--Robert is a
+dilettante, don't you think--he's dilettante--"  She screwed up her
+eyes at Tanny.  Tanny cogitated.
+
+"Of course I don't think that matters," she replied.
+
+"But it does, it matters tremendously, dear Tanny, tremendously."
+
+"Of course," Tanny sheered off.  "I can see Scott has great
+attractions--a great warmth somewhere--"
+
+"Exactly!" cried Julia.  "He UNDERSTANDS"
+
+"And I believe he's a real artist.  You might even work together.  You
+might write his librettos."
+
+"Yes!--Yes!--"  Julia spoke with a long, pondering hiss.
+
+"It might be AWFULLY nice," said Tanny rapturously.
+
+"Yes!--It might!--It might--!" pondered Julia.  Suddenly she gave
+herself a shake.  Then she laughed hurriedly, as if breaking from
+her line of thought.
+
+"And wouldn't Robert be an AWFULLY nice lover for Josephine!  Oh,
+wouldn't that be splendid!" she cried, with her high laugh.
+
+Josephine, who had been gazing down into the orchestra, turned now,
+flushing darkly.
+
+"But I don't want a lover, Julia," she said, hurt.
+
+"Josephine dear!  Dear old Josephine!  Don't you really!  Oh, yes,
+you do.--I want one so BADLY," cried Julia, with her shaking laugh.
+"Robert's awfully good to me.  But we've been married six years.
+And it does make a difference, doesn't it, Tanny dear?"
+
+"A great difference," said Tanny.
+
+"Yes, it makes a difference, it makes a difference," mused Julia.
+"Dear old Rob-ert--I wouldn't hurt him for worlds.  I wouldn't.  Do
+you think it would hurt Robert?"
+
+She screwed up her eyes, looking at Tanny.
+
+"Perhaps it would do Robert good to be hurt a little," said Tanny.
+"He's so well-nourished."
+
+"Yes!--Yes!--I see what you mean, Tanny!--Poor old ROB-ert!  Oh, poor
+old Rob-ert, he's so young!"
+
+"He DOES seem young," said Tanny.  "One doesn't forgive it."
+
+"He is young," said Julia.  "I'm five years older than he.  "He's only
+twenty-seven.  Poor Old Robert."
+
+"Robert is young, and inexperienced," said Josephine, suddenly turning
+with anger.  "But I don't know why you talk about him."
+
+"Is he inexperienced, Josephine dear?  IS he?" sang Julia.  Josephine
+flushed darkly, and turned away.
+
+"Ah, he's not so innocent as all that," said Tanny roughly.  "Those
+young young men, who seem so fresh, they're deep enough, really.
+They're far less innocent really than men who are experienced."
+
+"They are, aren't they, Tanny," repeated Julia softly.  "They're old--
+older than the Old Man of the Seas, sometimes, aren't they?  Incredibly
+old, like little boys who know too much--aren't they?  Yes!"  She
+spoke quietly, seriously, as if it had struck her.
+
+Below, the orchestra was coming in.  Josephine was watching closely.
+Julia became aware of this.
+
+"Do you see anybody we know, Josephine?" she asked.
+
+Josephine started.
+
+"No," she said, looking at her friends quickly and furtively.
+
+"Dear old Josephine, she knows all sorts of people," sang Julia.
+
+At that moment the men returned.
+
+"Have you actually come back!" exclaimed Tanny to them.  They sat
+down without answering.  Jim spread himself as far as he could, in
+the narrow space.  He stared upwards, wrinkling his ugly, queer face.
+It was evident he was in one of his moods.
+
+"If only somebody loved me!" he complained.  "If only somebody loved
+me I should be all right.  I'm going to pieces."  He sat up and peered
+into the faces of the women.
+
+"But we ALL love you," said Josephine, laughing uneasily.  "Why aren't
+you satisfied?"
+
+"I'm not satisfied.  I'm not satisfied," murmured Jim.
+
+"Would you like to be wrapped in swaddling bands and laid at the
+breast?" asked Lilly, disagreeably.
+
+Jim opened his mouth in a grin, and gazed long and malevolently at
+his questioner.
+
+"Yes," he said.  Then he sprawled his long six foot of limb and body
+across the box again.
+
+"You should try loving somebody, for a change," said Tanny.  "You've
+been loved too often.  Why not try and love somebody?"
+
+Jim eyed her narrowly.
+
+"I couldn't love YOU," he said, in vicious tones.
+
+"_A la bonne heure_!" said Tanny.
+
+But Jim sank his chin on his chest, and repeated obstinately:
+
+"I want to be loved."
+
+"How many times have you been loved?" Robert asked him.  "It would be
+rather interesting to know."
+
+Jim looked at Robert long and slow, but did not answer.
+
+"Did you ever keep count?" Tanny persisted.
+
+Jim looked up at her, malevolent.
+
+"I believe I did," he replied.
+
+"Forty is the age when a man should begin to reckon up," said Lilly.
+
+Jim suddenly sprang to his feet, and brandished his fists.
+
+"I'll pitch the lot of you over the bloody rail," he said.
+
+He glared at them, from under his bald, wrinkled forehead.  Josephine
+glanced round.  She had become a dusky white colour.  She was afraid
+of him, and she disliked him intensely nowadays.
+
+"Do you recognise anyone in the orchestra?" she asked.
+
+The party in the box had become dead silent.  They looked down.  The
+conductor was at his stand.  The music began.  They all remained silent
+and motionless during the next scene, each thinking his own thoughts.
+Jim was uncomfortable.  He wanted to make good.  He sat with his elbows
+on his knees, grinning slightly, looking down.  At the next interval he
+stood up suddenly.
+
+"It IS the chap--What?" he exclaimed excitedly, looking round at his
+friends.
+
+"Who?" said Tanny.
+
+"It IS he?" said Josephine quietly, meeting Jim's eye.
+
+"Sure!" he barked.
+
+He was leaning forward over the ledge, rattling a programme in his
+hand, as if trying to attract attention.  Then he made signals.
+
+"There you are!" he exclaimed triumphantly.  "That's the chap."
+
+"Who?  Who?" they cried.
+
+But neither Jim nor Josephine would vouchsafe an answer.
+
+The next was the long interval.  Jim and Josephine gazed down at
+the orchestra.  The musicians were laying aside their instruments
+and rising.  The ugly fire-curtain began slowly to descend.  Jim
+suddenly bolted out.
+
+"Is it that man Aaron Sisson?" asked Robert.
+
+"Where?  Where?" cried Julia.  "It can't be."
+
+But Josephine's face was closed and silent.  She did not answer.
+
+The whole party moved out on to the crimson-carpeted gangway.  Groups
+of people stood about chatting, men and women were passing along, to
+pay visits or to find drinks.  Josephine's party stared around, talking
+desultorily.  And at length they perceived Jim stalking along, leading
+Aaron Sisson by the arm.  Jim was grinning, the flautist looked
+unwilling.  He had a comely appearance, in his white shirt--a certain
+comely blondness and repose.  And as much a gentleman as anybody.
+
+"Well!" cried Josephine to him.  "How do you come here?"
+
+"I play the flute," he answered, as he shook hands.
+
+The little crowd stood in the gangway and talked.
+
+"How wonderful of you to be here!" cried Julia.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Do you think so?" he answered.
+
+"Yes, I do.--It seems so FAR from Shottle House and Christmas Eve.--Oh,
+wasn't it exciting!" cried Julia.
+
+Aaron looked at her, but did not answer.
+
+"We've heard all about you," said Tanny playfully.
+
+"Oh, yes," he replied.
+
+"Come!" said Josephine, rather irritated.  "We crowd up the gangway."
+And she led the way inside the box.
+
+Aaron stood and looked down at the dishevelled theatre.
+
+"You get all the view," he said.
+
+"We do, don't we!" cried Julia.
+
+"More than's good for us," said Lilly.
+
+"Tell us what you are doing.  You've got a permanent job?" asked
+Josephine.
+
+"Yes--at present."
+
+"Ah!  It's more interesting for you than at Beldover."
+
+She had taken her seat.  He looked down at her dusky young face.  Her
+voice was always clear and measured.
+
+"It's a change," he said, smiling.
+
+"Oh, it must be more than that," she said.  "Why, you must feel a
+whole difference.  It's a whole new life."
+
+He smiled, as if he were laughing at her silently.  She flushed.
+
+"But isn't it?" she persisted.
+
+"Yes.  It can be," he replied.
+
+He looked as if he were quietly amused, but dissociated.  None of the
+people in the box were quite real to him.  He was not really amused.
+Julia found him dull, stupid.  Tanny also was offended that he could
+not _perceive her_.  The men remained practically silent.
+
+"You're a chap I always hoped would turn up again," said Jim.
+
+"Oh, yes!" replied Aaron, smiling as if amused.
+
+"But perhaps he doesn't like us!  Perhaps he's not glad that we turned
+up," said Julia, leaving her sting.
+
+The flautist turned and looked at her.
+
+"You can't REMEMBER us, can you?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," he said.  "I can remember you."
+
+"Oh," she laughed.  "You are unflattering."
+
+He was annoyed.  He did not know what she was getting at.
+
+"How are your wife and children?" she asked spitefully.
+
+"All right, I think."
+
+"But you've been back to them?" cried Josephine in dismay.
+
+He looked at her, a slow, half smiling look, but did not speak.
+
+"Come and have a drink.  Damn the women," said Jim uncouthly, seizing
+Aaron by the arm and dragging him off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+TALK
+
+
+The party stayed to the end of the interminable opera.  They had agreed
+to wait for Aaron.  He was to come around to the vestibule for them,
+after the show.  They trooped slowly down-stairs into the crush of the
+entrance hall.  Chattering, swirling people, red carpet, palms green
+against cream-and-gilt walls, small whirlpools of life at the open,
+dark doorways, men in opera hats steering decisively about-it was the
+old scene.  But there were no taxis--absolutely no taxis.  And it was
+raining.  Fortunately the women had brought shoes.  They slipped these
+on.  Jim rocked through the crowd, in his tall hat, looking for the
+flautist.
+
+At last Aaron was found--wearing a bowler hat.  Julia groaned in
+spirit.  Josephine's brow knitted.  Not that anybody cared, really.
+But as one must frown at something, why not at the bowler hat?
+Acquaintances and elegant young men in uniforms insisted on rushing
+up and bowing and exchanging a few words, either with Josephine, or
+Jim, or Julia, or Lilly.  They were coldly received.  The party veered
+out into the night.
+
+The women hugged their wraps about them, and set off sharply, feeling
+some repugnance for the wet pavements and the crowd.  They had not far
+to go--only to Jim's rooms in Adelphi.  Jim was leading Aaron, holding
+him by the arm and slightly pinching his muscles.  It gave him great
+satisfaction to have between his fingers the arm-muscles of a working-
+man, one of the common people, the _fons et origo_ of modern life.
+Jim was talking rather vaguely about Labour and Robert Smillie, and
+Bolshevism.  He was all for revolution and the triumph of labour.
+
+So they arrived, mounted a dark stair, and entered a large, handsome
+room, one of the Adams rooms.  Jim had furnished it from Heale's with
+striped hangings, green and white and yellow and dark purple, and with
+a green-and-black checked carpet, and great stripe-covered chairs and
+Chesterfield.  A big gas-fire was soon glowing in the handsome old
+fire-place, the panelled room seemed cosy.
+
+While Jim was handing round drinks and sandwiches, and Josephine was
+making tea, Robert played Bach on the piano--the pianola, rather.  The
+chairs and lounge were in a half-circle round the fire.  The party
+threw off their wraps and sank deep into this expensive comfort of
+modern bohemia.  They needed the Bach to take away the bad taste that
+_Aida_ had left in their mouths.  They needed the whiskey and curacao
+to rouse their spirits.  They needed the profound comfort in which to
+sink away from the world.  All the men, except Aaron, had been through
+the war in some way or other.  But here they were, in the old setting
+exactly, the old bohemian routine.
+
+The bell rang, Jim went downstairs.  He returned shortly with a frail,
+elegant woman--fashionable rather than bohemian.  She was cream and
+auburn, Irish, with a slightly-lifted upper lip that gave her a
+pathetic look.  She dropped her wrap and sat down by Julia, taking
+her hand delicately.
+
+"How are you, darling?" she asked.
+
+"Yes--I'm happy," said Julia, giving her odd, screwed-up smile.
+
+The pianola stopped, they all chatted indiscriminately.  Jim was
+watching the new-comer--Mrs. Browning--with a concentrated wolfish
+grin.
+
+"I like her," he said at last.  "I've seen her before, haven't I?--I
+like her awfully."
+
+"Yes," said Josephine, with a slight grunt of a laugh.  "He wants to
+be loved."
+
+"Oh," cried Clariss.  "So do I!"
+
+"Then there you are!" cried Tanny.
+
+"Alas, no, there we aren't," cried Clariss.  She was beautiful too,
+with her lifted upper-lip.  "We both want to be loved, and so we miss
+each other entirely.  We run on in two parallel lines, that can never
+meet."  She laughed low and half sad.
+
+"Doesn't SHE love you?" said Aaron to Jim amused, indicating Josephine.
+"I thought you were engaged."
+
+"HER!" leered Jim vindictively, glancing at Josephine.  "She doesn't
+love me."
+
+"Is that true?" asked Robert hastily, of Josephine.
+
+"Why," she said, "yes.  Why should he make me say out here that I don't
+love him!"
+
+"Got you my girl," said Jim.
+
+"Then it's no engagement?" said Robert.
+
+"Listen to the row fools make, rushing in," said Jim maliciously.
+
+"No, the engagement is broken," said Josephine.
+
+"World coming to pieces bit by bit," said Lilly.  Jim was twisting
+in his chair, and looking like a Chinese dragon, diabolical.  The
+room was uneasy.
+
+"What gives you such a belly-ache for love, Jim?" said Lilly, "or
+for being loved?  Why do you want so badly to be loved?"
+
+"Because I like it, damn you," barked Jim.  "Because I'm in need
+of it."
+
+None of them quite knew whether they ought to take it as a joke.  It
+was just a bit too real to be quite pleasant.
+
+"Why are you such a baby?" said Lilly.  "There you are, six foot in
+length, have been a cavalry officer and fought in two wars, and you
+spend your time crying for somebody to love you.  You're a comic."
+
+"Am I though?" said Jim.  "I'm losing life.  I'm getting thin."
+
+"You don't look as if you were losing life," said Lilly.
+
+"Don't I?  I am, though.  I'm dying."
+
+"What of?  Lack of life?"
+
+"That's about it, my young cock.  Life's leaving me."
+
+"Better sing Tosti's Farewell to it."
+
+Jim who had been sprawling full length in his arm-chair, the centre of
+interest of all the company, suddenly sprang forward and pushed his
+face, grinning, in the face of Lilly.
+
+"You're a funny customer, you are," he said.
+
+Then he turned round in his chair, and saw Clariss sitting at the feet
+of Julia, with one white arm over her friend's knee.  Jim immediately
+stuck forward his muzzle and gazed at her.  Clariss had loosened her
+masses of thick, auburn hair, so that it hung half free.  Her face was
+creamy pale, her upper lip lifted with odd pathos!  She had rose-rubies
+in her ears.
+
+"I like HER," said Jim.  "What's her name?"
+
+"Mrs. Browning.  Don't be so rude," said Josephine.
+
+"Browning for gravies.  Any relation of Robert?"
+
+"Oh, yes!  You ask my husband," came the slow, plangent voice of
+Clariss.
+
+"You've got a husband, have you?"
+
+"Rather!  Haven't I, Juley?"
+
+"Yes," said Julia, vaguely and wispily.  "Yes, dear, you have."
+
+"And two fine children," put in Robert.
+
+"No!  You don't mean it!" said Jim.  "Who's your husband?  Anybody?"
+
+"Rather!" came the deep voice of Clariss.  "He sees to that."
+
+Jim stared, grinning, showing his pointed teeth, reaching nearer
+and nearer to Clariss who, in her frail scrap of an evening dress,
+amethyst and silver, was sitting still in the deep black hearth-rug,
+her arm over Julia's knee, taking very little notice of Jim, although
+he amused her.
+
+"I like you awfully, I say," he repeated.
+
+"Thanks, I'm sure," she said.
+
+The others were laughing, sprawling in their chairs, and sipping
+curacao and taking a sandwich or a cigarette.  Aaron Sisson alone
+sat upright, smiling flickeringly.  Josephine watched him, and her
+pointed tongue went from time to time over her lips.
+
+"But I'm sure," she broke in, "this isn't very interesting for the
+others.  Awfully boring!  Don't be silly all the time, Jim, or we
+must go home."
+
+Jim looked at her with narrowed eyes.  He hated her voice.  She let
+her eye rest on his for a moment.  Then she put her cigarette to her
+lips.  Robert was watching them both.
+
+Josephine took her cigarette from her lips again.
+
+"Tell us about yourself, Mr. Sisson," she said.  "How do you like
+being in London?"
+
+"I like London," said Aaron.
+
+Where did he live?  Bloomsbury.  Did he know many people?  No--nobody
+except a man in the orchestra.  How had he got his job?  Through an
+agent.  Etc. Etc.
+
+"What do you make of the miners?" said Jim, suddenly taking a new line.
+
+"Me?" said Sisson.  "I don't make anything of them."
+
+"Do you think they'll make a stand against the government?"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Nationalisation."
+
+"They might, one day."
+
+"Think they'd fight?"
+
+"Fight?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Aaron sat laughing.
+
+"What have they to fight for?"
+
+"Why, everything!  What haven't they to fight for?" cried Josephine
+fiercely.  "Freedom, liberty, and escape from this vile system.  Won't
+they fight for that?"
+
+Aaron sat smiling, slowly shaking his head.
+
+"Nay," he said, "you mustn't ask me what they'll do--I've only just
+left them, for good.  They'll do a lot of cavilling."
+
+"But won't they ACT?" cried Josephine.
+
+"Act?" said Aaron.  "How, act?"
+
+"Why, defy the government, and take things in their own hands," said
+Josephine.
+
+"They might, some time," said Aaron, rather indifferent.
+
+"I wish they would!" cried Josephine.  "My, wouldn't I love it if
+they'd make a bloody revolution!"
+
+They were all looking now at her.  Her black brows were twitching, in
+her black and silver dress she looked like a symbol of young disaster.
+
+"Must it be bloody, Josephine?" said Robert.
+
+"Why, yes.  I don't believe in revolutions that aren't bloody," said
+Josephine.  "Wouldn't I love it!  I'd go in front with a red flag."
+
+"It would be rather fun," said Tanny.
+
+"Wouldn't it!" cried Josephine.
+
+"Oh, Josey, dear!" cried Julia hysterically.  "Isn't she a red-hot
+Bolsher!  _I_ should be frightened."
+
+"No!" cried Josephine.  "I should love it."
+
+"So should I," said Jim, in a luscious sort of voice.  "What price
+machine-guns at the end of the Strand!  That's a day to live for,
+what?"
+
+"Ha! Ha!" laughed Clariss, with her deep laugh.  "We'd all Bolsh
+together.  I'd give the cheers."
+
+"I wouldn't mind getting killed.  I'd love it, in a real fight," said
+Josephine.
+
+"But, Josephine," said Robert, "don't you think we've had enough of
+that sort of thing in the war?  Don't you think it all works out
+rather stupid and unsatisfying?"
+
+"Ah, but a civil war would be different.  I've no interest in fighting
+Germans.  But a civil war would be different."
+
+"That's a fact, it would," said Jim.
+
+"Only rather worse," said Robert.
+
+"No, I don't agree," cried Josephine.  "You'd feel you were doing
+something, in a civil war."
+
+"Pulling the house down," said Lilly.
+
+"Yes," she cried.  "Don't you hate it, the house we live in--London--
+England--America!  Don't you hate them?"
+
+"I don't like them.  But I can't get much fire in my hatred.  They
+pall on me rather," said Lilly.
+
+"Ay!" said Aaron, suddenly stirring in his chair.
+
+Lilly and he glanced at one another with a look of recognition.
+
+"Still," said Tanny, "there's got to be a clearance some day or other."
+
+"Oh," drawled Clariss.  "I'm all for a clearance.  I'm all for pulling
+the house down.  Only while it stands I do want central heating and a
+good cook."
+
+"May I come to dinner?" said Jim.
+
+"Oh, yes.  You'd find it rather domestic."
+
+"Where do you live?"
+
+"Rather far out now--Amersham."
+
+"Amersham?  Where's that--?"
+
+"Oh, it's on the map."
+
+There was a little lull.  Jim gulped down a drink, standing at the
+sideboard.  He was a tall, fine, soldierly figure, and his face, with
+its little sandy moustache and bald forehead, was odd.  Aaron Sisson
+sat watching him, unconsciously.
+
+"Hello you!" said Jim.  "Have one?"
+
+Aaron shook his head, and Jim did not press him.  It saved the drinks.
+
+"You believe in love, don't you?" said Jim, sitting down near Aaron,
+and grinning at him.
+
+"Love!" said Aaron.
+
+"LOVE! he says," mocked Jim, grinning at the company.
+
+"What about it, then?" asked Aaron.
+
+"It's life!  Love is life," said Jim fiercely.
+
+"It's a vice, like drink," said Lilly.
+
+"Eh?  A vice!" said Jim.  "May be for you, old bird."
+
+"More so still for you," said Lilly.
+
+"It's life.  It's life!" reiterated Jim.  "Don't you agree?"  He
+turned wolfishly to Clariss.
+
+"Oh, yes--every time--" she drawled, nonchalant.
+
+"Here, let's write it down," said Lilly.  He found a blue pencil and
+printed in large letters on the old creamy marble of the mantel-piece
+panel:--LOVE IS LIFE.
+
+Julia suddenly rose and flung her arms asunder wildly.
+
+"Oh, I hate love.  I hate it," she protested.
+
+Jim watched her sardonically.
+
+"Look at her!" he said.  "Look at Lesbia who hates love."
+
+"No, but perhaps it is a disease.  Perhaps we are all wrong, and we
+can't love properly," put in Josephine.
+
+"Have another try," said Jim,--"I know what love is.  I've thought
+about it.  Love is the soul's respiration."
+
+"Let's have that down," said Lilly.
+
+LOVE IS THE SOUL'S RESPIRATION.  He printed it on the old mantel-piece.
+
+Jim eyed the letters.
+
+"It's right," he said.  "Quite right.  When you love, your soul
+breathes in.  If you don't breathe in, you suffocate."
+
+"What about breathing out?" said Robert.  "If you don't breathe out,
+you asphyxiate."
+
+"Right you are, Mock Turtle--" said Jim maliciously.
+
+"Breathing out is a bloody revolution," said Lilly.
+
+"You've hit the nail on the head," said Jim solemnly.
+
+"Let's record it then," said Lilly.  And with the blue pencil he
+printed:
+
+WHEN YOU LOVE, YOUR SOUL BREATHES IN--
+
+WHEN YOUR SOUL BREATHES OUT, IT'S A BLOODY REVOLUTION.
+
+"I say Jim," he said.  "You must be busting yourself, trying to
+breathe in."
+
+"Don't you be too clever.  I've thought about it," said Jim.  "When
+I'm in love, I get a great inrush of energy.  I actually feel it rush
+in--here!"  He poked his finger on the pit of his stomach.  "It's the
+soul's expansion.  And if I can't get these rushes of energy, I'M
+DYING, AND I KNOW I AM."
+
+He spoke the last words with sudden ferocity and desperation.
+
+"All _I_ know is," said Tanny, "you don't look it."
+
+"I AM.  I am." Jim protested.  "I'm dying.  Life's leaving me."
+
+"Maybe you're choking with love," said Robert.  "Perhaps you have
+breathed in so much, you don't know how to let it go again.  Perhaps
+your soul's got a crick in it, with expanding so much."
+
+"You're a bloody young sucking pig, you are," said Jim.
+
+"Even at that age, I've learned my manners," replied Robert.
+
+Jim looked round the party.  Then he turned to Aaron Sisson.
+
+"What do you make of 'em, eh?" he said.
+
+Aaron shook his head, and laughed.
+
+"Me?" he said.
+
+But Jim did not wait for an answer.
+
+"I've had enough," said Tanny suddenly rising.  "I think you're all
+silly.  Besides, it's getting late."
+
+"She!" said Jim, rising and pointing luridly to Clariss.  "She's Love.
+And HE's the Working People.  The hope is these two--"  He jerked a
+thumb at Aaron Sisson, after having indicated Mrs. Browning.
+
+"Oh, how awfully interesting.  It's quite a long time since I've been
+a personification.--I suppose you've never been one before?" said
+Clariss, turning to Aaron in conclusion.
+
+"No, I don't think I have," he answered.
+
+"I hope personification is right.--Ought to be _allegory_ or something
+else?"  This from Clariss to Robert.
+
+"Or a parable, Clariss," laughed the young lieutenant.
+
+"Goodbye," said Tanny.  "I've been awfully bored."
+
+"Have you?" grinned Jim.  "Goodbye!  Better luck next time."
+
+"We'd better look sharp," said Robert, "if we want to get the tube."
+
+The party hurried through the rainy narrow streets down to the
+Embankment station.  Robert and Julia and Clariss were going west,
+Lilly and his wife were going to Hampstead, Josephine and Aaron
+Sisson were going both to Bloomsbury.
+
+"I suppose," said Robert, on the stairs--"Mr. Sisson will see you to
+your door, Josephine.  He lives your way."
+
+"There's no need at all," said Josephine.
+
+The four who were going north went down to the low tube level.  It
+was nearly the last train.  The station was half deserted, half rowdy,
+several fellows were drunk, shouting and crowing.  Down there in the
+bowels of London, after midnight, everything seemed horrible and
+unnatural.
+
+"How I hate this London," said Tanny.  She was half Norwegian, and had
+spent a large part of her life in Norway, before she married Lilly.
+
+"Yes, so do I," said Josephine.  "But if one must earn one's living one
+must stay here.  I wish I could get back to Paris.  But there's nothing
+doing for me in France.--When do you go back into the country, both of
+you?"
+
+"Friday," said Lilly.
+
+"How lovely for you!--And when will you go to Norway, Tanny?"
+
+"In about a month," said Tanny.
+
+"You must be awfully pleased."
+
+"Oh--thankful--THANKFUL to get out of England--"
+
+"I know.  That's how I feel.  Everything is so awful--so dismal and
+dreary, I find it--"
+
+They crowded into the train.  Men were still yelling like wild beasts
+--others were asleep--soldiers were singing.
+
+"Have you really broken your engagement with Jim?" shrilled Tanny in a
+high voice, as the train roared.
+
+"Yes, he's impossible," said Josephine.  "Perfectly hysterical and
+impossible."
+
+"And SELFISH--" cried Tanny.
+
+"Oh terribly--" cried Josephine.
+
+"Come up to Hampstead to lunch with us," said Lilly to Aaron.
+
+"Ay--thank you," said Aaron.
+
+Lilly scribbled directions on a card.  The hot, jaded midnight
+underground rattled on.  Aaron and Josephine got down to change
+trains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE DARK SQUARE GARDEN
+
+
+Josephine had invited Aaron Sisson to dinner at a restaurant in Soho,
+one Sunday evening.  They had a corner to themselves, and with a bottle
+of Burgundy she was getting his history from him.
+
+His father had been a shaft-sinker, earning good money, but had been
+killed by a fall down the shaft when Aaron was only four years old.
+The widow had opened a shop: Aaron was her only child.  She had done
+well in her shop.  She had wanted Aaron to be a schoolteacher.  He had
+served three years apprenticeship, then suddenly thrown it up and gone
+to the pit.
+
+"But why?" said Josephine.
+
+"I couldn't tell you.  I felt more like it."
+
+He had a curious quality of an intelligent, almost sophisticated mind,
+which had repudiated education.  On purpose he kept the midland accent
+in his speech.  He understood perfectly what a personification was--
+and an allegory.  But he preferred to be illiterate.
+
+Josephine found out what a miner's checkweighman was.  She tried to
+find out what sort of wife Aaron had--but, except that she was the
+daughter of a publican and was delicate in health, she could learn
+nothing.
+
+"And do you send her money?" she asked.
+
+"Ay," said Aaron.  "The house is mine.  And I allow her so much a week
+out of the money in the bank.  My mother left me a bit over a thousand
+when she died."
+
+"You don't mind what I say, do you?" said Josephine.
+
+"No I don't mind," he laughed.
+
+He had this pleasant-seeming courteous manner.  But he really kept
+her at a distance.  In some things he reminded her of Robert: blond,
+erect, nicely built, fresh and English-seeming.  But there was a
+curious cold distance to him, which she could not get across.  An
+inward indifference to her--perhaps to everything.  Yet his laugh
+was so handsome.
+
+"Will you tell me why you left your wife and children?--Didn't you
+love them?"
+
+Aaron looked at the odd, round, dark muzzle of the girl.  She had had
+her hair bobbed, and it hung in odd dark folds, very black, over her
+ears.
+
+"Why I left her?" he said.  "For no particular reason.  They're all
+right without me."
+
+Josephine watched his face.  She saw a pallor of suffering under its
+freshness, and a strange tension in his eyes.
+
+"But you couldn't leave your little girls for no reason at all--"
+
+"Yes, I did.  For no reason--except I wanted to have some free room
+round me--to loose myself--"
+
+"You mean you wanted love?" flashed Josephine, thinking he said _lose_.
+
+"No, I wanted fresh air.  I don't know what I wanted.  Why should I
+know?"
+
+"But we must know: especially when other people will be hurt,"
+said she.
+
+"Ah, well!  A breath of fresh air, by myself.  I felt forced to feel
+--I feel if I go back home now, I shall be FORCED--forced to love--
+or care--or something."
+
+"Perhaps you wanted more than your wife could give you," she said.
+
+"Perhaps less.  She's made up her mind she loves me, and she's not
+going to let me off."
+
+"Did you never love her?" said Josephine.
+
+"Oh, yes.  I shall never love anybody else.  But I'm damned if I want
+to be a lover any more.  To her or to anybody.  That's the top and
+bottom of it.  I don't want to CARE, when care isn't in me.  And I'm
+not going to be forced to it."
+
+The fat, aproned French waiter was hovering near.  Josephine let him
+remove the plates and the empty bottle.
+
+"Have more wine," she said to Aaron.
+
+But he refused.  She liked him because of his dead-level indifference
+to his surroundings.  French waiters and foreign food--he noticed them
+in his quick, amiable-looking fashion--but he was indifferent.
+Josephine was piqued.  She wanted to pierce this amiable aloofness
+of his.
+
+She ordered coffee and brandies.
+
+"But you don't want to get away from EVERYTHING, do you?  I myself
+feel so LOST sometimes--so dreadfully alone: not in a silly sentimental
+fashion, because men keep telling me they love me, don't you know.  But
+my LIFE seems alone, for some reason--"
+
+"Haven't you got relations?" he said.
+
+"No one, now mother is dead.  Nothing nearer than aunts and cousins
+in America.  I suppose I shall see them all again one day.  But they
+hardly count over here."
+
+"Why don't you get married?" he said.  "How old are you?"
+
+"I'm twenty-five.  How old are you?"
+
+"Thirty-three."
+
+"You might almost be any age.--I don't know why I don't get married.
+In a way, I hate earning my own living--yet I go on--and I like my
+work--"
+
+"What are you doing now?"
+
+"I'm painting scenery for a new play--rather fun--I enjoy it.  But I
+often wonder what will become of me."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+She was almost affronted.
+
+"What becomes of me?  Oh, I don't know.  And it doesn't matter, not
+to anybody but myself."
+
+"What becomes of anybody, anyhow?  We live till we die.  What do you
+want?"
+
+"Why, I keep saying I want to get married and feel sure of something.
+But I don't know--I feel dreadful sometimes--as if every minute would
+be the last.  I keep going on and on--I don't know what for--and IT
+keeps going on and on--goodness knows what it's all for."
+
+"You shouldn't bother yourself," he said.  "You should just let it go
+on and on--"
+
+"But I MUST bother," she said.  "I must think and feel--"
+
+"You've no occasion," he said.
+
+"How--?" she said, with a sudden grunting, unhappy laugh.  Then she
+lit a cigarette.
+
+"No," she said.  "What I should really like more than anything would
+be an end of the world.  I wish the world would come to an end."
+
+He laughed, and poured his drops of brandy down his throat.
+
+"It won't, for wishing," he said.
+
+"No, that's the awful part of it.  It'll just go on and on--  Doesn't
+it make you feel you'd go mad?"
+
+He looked at her and shook his head.
+
+"You see it doesn't concern me," he said.  "So long as I can float
+by myself."
+
+"But ARE you SATISFIED!" she cried.
+
+"I like being by myself--I hate feeling and caring, and being forced
+into it.  I want to be left alone--"
+
+"You aren't very polite to your hostess of the evening," she said,
+laughing a bit miserably.
+
+"Oh, we're all right," he said.  "You know what I mean--"
+
+"You like your own company?  Do you?--Sometimes I think I'm nothing
+when I'm alone.  Sometimes I think I surely must be nothing--
+nothingness."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"No," he said.  "No.  I only want to be left alone."
+
+"Not to have anything to do with anybody?" she queried ironically.
+
+"Not to any extent."
+
+She watched him--and then she bubbled with a laugh.
+
+"I think you're funny," she said.  "You don't mind?"
+
+"No--why--It's just as you see it.--Jim Bricknell's a rare comic, to
+my eye."
+
+"Oh, him!--no, not actually.  He's self-conscious and selfish and
+hysterical.  It isn't a bit funny after a while."
+
+"I only know what I've seen," said Aaron.  "You'd both of you like a
+bloody revolution, though."
+
+"Yes.  Only when it came he wouldn't be there."
+
+"Would you?"
+
+"Yes, indeed I would.  I would give everything to be in it.  I'd give
+heaven and earth for a great big upheaval--and then darkness."
+
+"Perhaps you'll get it, when you die," said Aaron.
+
+"Oh, but I don't want to die and leave all this standing.  I hate
+it so."
+
+"Why do you?"
+
+"But don't you?"
+
+"No, it doesn't really bother me."
+
+"It makes me feel I can't live."
+
+"I can't see that."
+
+"But you always disagree with one!" said Josephine.  "How do you like
+Lilly?  What do you think of him?"
+
+"He seems sharp," said Aaron.
+
+"But he's more than sharp."
+
+"Oh, yes!  He's got his finger in most pies."
+
+"And doesn't like the plums in any of them," said Josephine tartly.
+
+"What does he do?"
+
+"Writes--stories and plays."
+
+"And makes it pay?"
+
+"Hardly at all.--They want us to go.  Shall we?"  She rose from the
+table.  The waiter handed her her cloak, and they went out into the
+blowy dark night.  She folded her wrap round her, and hurried forward
+with short, sharp steps.  There was a certain Parisian _chic_ and
+mincingness about her, even in her walk: but underneath, a striding,
+savage suggestion as if she could leg it in great strides, like some
+savage squaw.
+
+Aaron pressed his bowler hat down on his brow.
+
+"Would you rather take a bus?" she said in a high voice, because of
+the wind.
+
+"I'd rather walk."
+
+"So would I."
+
+They hurried across the Charing Cross Road, where great buses rolled
+and rocked, crammed with people.  Her heels clicked sharply on the
+pavement, as they walked east.  They crossed Holborn, and passed the
+Museum.  And neither of them said anything.
+
+When they came to the corner, she held out her hand.
+
+"Look!" she said.  "Don't come any further: don't trouble."
+
+"I'll walk round with you: unless you'd rather not."
+
+"No--But do you want to bother?"
+
+"It's no bother."
+
+So they pursued their way through the high wind, and turned at last
+into the old, beautiful square.  It seemed dark and deserted, dark
+like a savage wilderness in the heart of London.  The wind was roaring
+in the great bare trees of the centre, as if it were some wild dark
+grove deep in a forgotten land.
+
+Josephine opened the gate of the square garden with her key, and let
+it slam to behind him.
+
+"How wonderful the wind is!" she shrilled.  "Shall we listen to it for
+a minute?"
+
+She led him across the grass past the shrubs to the big tree in the
+centre.  There she climbed up to a seat.  He sat beside her.  They
+sat in silence, looking at the darkness.  Rain was blowing in the
+wind.  They huddled against the big tree-trunk, for shelter, and
+watched the scene.
+
+Beyond the tall shrubs and the high, heavy railings the wet street
+gleamed silently.  The houses of the Square rose like a cliff on this
+inner dark sea, dimly lighted at occasional windows.  Boughs swayed
+and sang.  A taxi-cab swirled round a corner like a cat, and purred to
+a standstill.  There was a light of an open hall door.  But all far
+away, it seemed, unthinkably far away.  Aaron sat still and watched.
+He was frightened, it all seemed so sinister, this dark, bristling
+heart of London.  Wind boomed and tore like waves ripping a shingle
+beach.  The two white lights of the taxi stared round and departed,
+leaving the coast at the foot of the cliffs deserted, faintly spilled
+with light from the high lamp.  Beyond there, on the outer rim, a
+policeman passed solidly.
+
+Josephine was weeping steadily all the time, but inaudibly.
+Occasionally she blew her nose and wiped her face.  But he had not
+realized.  She hardly realized herself.  She sat near the strange
+man.  He seemed so still and remote--so fascinating.
+
+"Give me your hand," she said to him, subduedly.
+
+He took her cold hand in his warm, living grasp.  She wept more
+bitterly.  He noticed at last.
+
+"Why are you crying?" he said.
+
+"I don't know," she replied, rather matter-of-fact, through her tears.
+
+So he let her cry, and said no more, but sat with her cold hand in his
+warm, easy clasp.
+
+"You'll think me a fool," she said.  "I don't know why I cry."
+
+"You can cry for nothing, can't you?" he said.
+
+"Why, yes, but it's not very sensible."
+
+He laughed shortly.
+
+"Sensible!" he said.
+
+"You are a strange man," she said.
+
+But he took no notice.
+
+"Did you ever intend to marry Jim Bricknell?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"I can't imagine it," he said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Both were watching blankly the roaring night of mid-London, the
+phantasmagoric old Bloomsbury Square.  They were still hand in hand.
+
+"Such as you shouldn't marry," he said.
+
+"But why not?  I want to."
+
+"You think you do."
+
+"Yes indeed I do."
+
+He did not say any more.
+
+"Why shouldn't I?" she persisted.  "I don't know--"
+
+And again he was silent.
+
+"You've known some life, haven't you?" he asked.
+
+"Me?  Why?"
+
+"You seem to."
+
+Do I?  I'm sorry.  Do I seem vicious?--No, I'm not vicious.--I've seen
+some life, perhaps--in Paris mostly.  But not much.  Why do you ask?"
+
+"I wasn't thinking."
+
+"But what do you mean?  What are you thinking?"
+
+"Nothing.  Nothing."
+
+"Don't be so irritating," said she.
+
+But he did not answer, and she became silent also.  They sat hand
+in hand.
+
+"Won't you kiss me?" came her voice out of the darkness.
+
+He waited some moments, then his voice sounded gently, half mocking,
+half reproachful.
+
+"Nay!" he said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't want to."
+
+"Why not?" she asked.
+
+He laughed, but did not reply.
+
+She sat perfectly still for some time.  She had ceased to cry.  In the
+darkness her face was set and sullen.  Sometimes a spray of rain blew
+across it.  She drew her hand from his, and rose to her feet.
+
+"Ill go in now," she said.
+
+"You're not offended, are you?" he asked.
+
+"No.  Why?"
+
+They stepped down in the darkness from their perch.
+
+"I wondered."
+
+She strode off for some little way.  Then she turned and said:
+
+"Yes, I think it is rather insulting."
+
+"Nay," he said.  "Not it!  Not it!"
+
+And he followed her to the gate.
+
+She opened with her key, and they crossed the road to her door.
+
+"Good-night," she said, turning and giving him her hand.
+
+"You'll come and have dinner with me--or lunch--will you?  When shall
+we make it?" he asked.
+
+"Well, I can't say for certain--I'm very busy just now.  I'll let
+you know."
+
+A policeman shed his light on the pair of them as they stood on the
+step.
+
+"All right," said Aaron, dropping back, and she hastily opened the big
+door, and entered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A PUNCH IN THE WIND
+
+
+The Lillys had a labourer's cottage in Hampshire--pleasant enough.
+They were poor.  Lilly was a little, dark, thin, quick fellow, his
+wife was strong and fair.  They had known Robert and Julia for some
+years, but Josephine and Jim were new acquaintances,--fairly new.
+
+One day in early spring Lilly had a telegram, "Coming to see you
+arrive 4:30--Bricknell."  He was surprised, but he and his wife got
+the spare room ready.  And at four o'clock Lilly went off to the
+station.  He was a few minutes late, and saw Jim's tall, rather
+elegant figure stalking down the station path.  Jim had been an
+officer in the regular army, and still spent hours with his tailor.
+But instead of being a soldier he was a sort of socialist, and a red-
+hot revolutionary of a very ineffectual sort.
+
+"Good lad!" he exclaimed, as Lilly came up.  "Thought you wouldn't
+mind."
+
+"Not at all.  Let me carry your bag."  Jim had a bag and a knapsack.
+
+"I had an inspiration this morning," said Jim.  "I suddenly saw that
+if there was a man in England who could save me, it was you."
+
+"Save you from what?" asked Lilly, rather abashed.
+
+"Eh--?" and Jim stooped, grinning at the smaller man.
+
+Lilly was somewhat puzzled, but he had a certain belief in himself as
+a saviour.  The two men tramped rather incongruously through the lanes
+to the cottage.
+
+Tanny was in the doorway as they came up the garden path.
+
+"So nice to see you!  Are you all right?" she said.
+
+"A-one" said Jim, grinning.  "Nice of you to have me."
+
+"Oh, we're awfully pleased."
+
+Jim dropped his knapsack on the broad sofa.
+
+"I've brought some food," he said.
+
+"Have you!  That's sensible of you.  We can't get a great deal here,
+except just at week-ends," said Tanny.
+
+Jim fished out a pound of sausages and a pot of fish paste.
+
+"How lovely the sausages," said Tanny.  "We'll have them for dinner
+tonight--and we'll have the other for tea now.  You'd like a wash?"
+
+But Jim had already opened his bag, taken off his coat, and put on an
+old one.
+
+"Thanks," he said.
+
+Lilly made the tea, and at length all sat down.
+
+"Well how unexpected this is--and how nice," said Tanny.
+
+"Jolly--eh?" said Jim.
+
+He ate rapidly, stuffing his mouth too full.
+
+"How is everybody?" asked Tanny.
+
+"All right.  Julia's gone with Cyril Scott.  Can't stand that fellow,
+can you?  What?"
+
+"Yes, I think he's rather nice," said Tanny.  "What will Robert do?"
+
+"Have a shot at Josephine, apparently."
+
+"Really?  Is he in love with her?  I thought so.  And she likes him
+too, doesn't she?" said Tanny.
+
+"Very likely," said Jim.
+
+"I suppose you're jealous," laughed Tanny.
+
+"Me!" Jim shook his head.  "Not a bit.  Like to see the ball kept
+rolling."
+
+"What have you been doing lately?"
+
+"Been staying a few days with my wife."
+
+"No, really!  I can't believe it."
+
+Jim had a French wife, who had divorced him, and two children.  Now he
+was paying visits to this wife again: purely friendly.  Tanny did most
+of the talking.  Jim excited her, with his way of looking in her face
+and grinning wolfishly, and at the same time asking to be saved.
+
+After tea, he wanted to send telegrams, so Lilly took him round to the
+village post-office.  Telegrams were a necessary part of his life.  He
+had to be suddenly starting off to keep sudden appointments, or he
+felt he was a void in the atmosphere.  He talked to Lilly about social
+reform, and so on.  Jim's work in town was merely nominal.  He spent
+his time wavering about and going to various meetings, philandering
+and weeping.
+
+Lilly kept in the back of his mind the Saving which James had come to
+look for.  He intended to do his best.  After dinner the three sat
+cosily round the kitchen fire.
+
+"But what do you really think will happen to the world?" Lilly asked
+Jim, amid much talk.
+
+"What?  There's something big coming," said Jim.
+
+"Where from?"
+
+"Watch Ireland, and watch Japan--they're the two poles of the world,"
+said Jim.
+
+"I thought Russia and America," said Lilly.
+
+"Eh?  What?  Russia and America!  They'll depend on Ireland and Japan.
+I know it.  I've had a vision of it.  Ireland on this side and Japan
+on the other--they'll settle it."
+
+"I don't see how," said Lilly.
+
+"I don't see HOW--But I had a vision of it."
+
+"What sort of vision?"
+
+"Couldn't describe it."
+
+"But you don't think much of the Japanese, do you?" asked Lilly.
+
+"Don't I!  Don't I!" said Jim.  "What, don't you think they're
+wonderful?"
+
+"No.  I think they're rather unpleasant."
+
+"I think the salvation of the world lies with them."
+
+"Funny salvation," said Lilly.  "I think they're anything but angels."
+
+"Do you though?  Now that's funny.  Why?"
+
+"Looking at them even.  I knew a Russian doctor who'd been through the
+Russo-Japanese war, and who had gone a bit cracked.  He said he saw the
+Japs rush a trench.  They threw everything away and flung themselves
+through the Russian fire and simply dropped in masses.  But those that
+reached the trenches jumped in with bare hands on the Russians and
+tore their faces apart and bit their throats out--fairly ripped the
+faces off the bone.--It had sent the doctor a bit cracked.  He said
+the wounded were awful,--their faces torn off and their throats
+mangled--and dead Japs with flesh between the teeth--God knows if it's
+true.  But that's the impression the Japanese had made on this man.
+It had affected his mind really."
+
+Jim watched Lilly, and smiled as if he were pleased.
+
+"No--really--!" he said.
+
+"Anyhow they're more demon than angel, I believe," said Lilly.
+
+"Oh, no, Rawdon, but you always exaggerate," said Tanny.
+
+"Maybe," said Lilly.
+
+"I think Japanese are fascinating--fascinating--so quick, and such
+FORCE in them--"
+
+"Rather!--eh?" said Jim, looking with a quick smile at Tanny.
+
+"I think a Japanese lover would be marvellous," she laughed riskily.
+
+"I s'd think he would," said Jim, screwing up his eyes.
+
+"Do you hate the normal British as much as I do?" she asked him.
+
+"Hate them!  Hate them!" he said, with an intimate grin.
+
+"Their beastly virtue," said she.  "And I believe there's nobody more
+vicious underneath."
+
+"Nobody!" said Jim.
+
+"But you're British yourself," said Lilly to Jim.
+
+"No, I'm Irish.  Family's Irish--my mother was a Fitz-patrick."
+
+"Anyhow you live in England."
+
+"Because they won't let me go to Ireland."
+
+The talk drifted.  Jim finished up all the beer, and they prepared to
+go to bed.  Jim was a bit tipsy, grinning.  He asked for bread and
+cheese to take upstairs.
+
+"Will you have supper?" said Lilly.  He was surprised, because Jim had
+eaten strangely much at dinner.
+
+"No--where's the loaf?" And he cut himself about half of it. There was
+no cheese.
+
+"Bread'll do," said Jim.
+
+"Sit down and eat it.  Have cocoa with it," said Tanny.
+
+"No, I like to have it in my bedroom."
+
+"You don't eat bread in the night?" said Lilly.
+
+"I do."
+
+"What a funny thing to do."
+
+The cottage was in darkness.  The Lillys slept soundly.  Jim woke up
+and chewed bread and slept again.  In the morning at dawn he rose and
+went downstairs.  Lilly heard him roaming about--heard the woman come
+in to clean--heard them talking.  So he got up to look after his
+visitor, though it was not seven o'clock, and the woman was busy.--But
+before he went down, he heard Jim come upstairs again.
+
+Mrs. Short was busy in the kitchen when Lilly went down.
+
+"The other gentleman have been down, Sir," said Mrs. Short.  "He
+asked me where the bread and butter were, so I said should I cut him
+a piece.  But he wouldn't let me do it.  I gave him a knife and he
+took it for himself, in the pantry."
+
+"I say, Bricknell," said Lilly at breakfast time, "why do you eat so
+much bread?"
+
+"I've got to feed up.  I've been starved during this damned war."
+
+"But hunks of bread won't feed you up."
+
+"Gives the stomach something to work at, and prevents it grinding on
+the nerves," said Jim.
+
+"But surely you don't want to keep your stomach always full and heavy."
+
+"I do, my boy.  I do.  It needs keeping solid.  I'm losing life, if I
+don't.  I tell you I'm losing life.  Let me put something inside me."
+
+"I don't believe bread's any use."
+
+During breakfast Jim talked about the future of the world.
+
+"I reckon Christ's the finest thing time has ever produced," said he;
+"and will remain it."
+
+"But you don't want crucifixions _ad infinitum_," said Lilly.
+
+"What?  Why not?"
+
+"Once is enough--and have done."
+
+"Don't you think love and sacrifice are the finest things in life?"
+said Jim, over his bacon.
+
+"Depends WHAT love, and what sacrifice," said Lilly.  "If I really
+believe in an Almighty God, I am willing to sacrifice for Him.  That
+is, I'm willing to yield my own personal interest to the bigger
+creative interest.--But it's obvious Almighty God isn't mere Love."
+
+"I think it is.  Love and only love," said Jim.  "I think the greatest
+joy is sacrificing oneself to love."
+
+"To SOMEONE you love, you mean," said Tanny.
+
+"No I don't.  I don't mean someone at all.  I mean love--love--love.
+I sacrifice myself to love.  I reckon that's the highest man is
+capable of."
+
+"But you can't sacrifice yourself to an abstract principle," said
+Tanny.
+
+"That's just what you can do.  And that's the beauty of it.  Who
+represents the principle doesn't matter.  Christ is the principle
+of love," said Jim.
+
+"But no!" said Tanny.  "It MUST be more individual.  It must be
+SOMEBODY you love, not abstract love in itself.  How can you
+sacrifice yourself to an abstraction."
+
+"Ha, I think Love and your Christ detestable," said Lilly--"a sheer
+ignominy."
+
+"Finest thing the world has produced," said Jim.
+
+"No.  A thing which sets itself up to be betrayed!  No, it's foul.
+Don't you see it's the Judas principle you really worship.  Judas
+is the real hero.  But for Judas the whole show would have been
+_manque_."
+
+"Oh yes," said Jim.  "Judas was inevitable.  I'm not sure that Judas
+wasn't the greatest of the disciples--and Jesus knew it.  I'm not sure
+Judas wasn't the disciple Jesus loved."
+
+"Jesus certainly encouraged him in his Judas tricks," said Tanny.
+
+Jim grinned knowingly at Lilly.
+
+"Then it was a nasty combination.  And anything which turns on a Judas
+climax is a dirty show, to my thinking.  I think your Judas is a
+rotten, dirty worm, just a dirty little self-conscious sentimental
+twister.  And out of all Christianity he is the hero today.  When
+people say Christ they mean Judas.  They find him luscious on the
+palate.  And Jesus fostered him--" said Lilly.
+
+"He's a profound figure, is Judas.  It's taken two thousand years to
+begin to understand him," said Jim, pushing the bread and marmalade
+into his mouth.
+
+"A traitor is a traitor--no need to understand any further.  And a
+system which rests all its weight on a piece of treachery makes that
+treachery not only inevitable but sacred.  That's why I'm sick of
+Christianity.--At any rate this modern Christ-mongery."
+
+"The finest thing the world has produced, or ever will produce--Christ
+and Judas--" said Jim.
+
+"Not to me," said Lilly.  "Foul combination."
+
+It was a lovely morning in early March.  Violets were out, and the
+first wild anemones.  The sun was quite warm.  The three were about
+to take out a picnic lunch.  Lilly however was suffering from Jim's
+presence.
+
+"Jolly nice here," said Jim.  "Mind if I stay till Saturday?"
+
+There was a pause.  Lilly felt he was being bullied, almost obscenely
+bullied.  Was he going to agree?  Suddenly he looked up at Jim.
+
+"I'd rather you went tomorrow," he said.
+
+Tanny, who was sitting opposite Jim, dropped her head in confusion.
+
+"What's tomorrow?" said Jim.
+
+"Thursday," said Lilly.
+
+"Thursday," repeated Jim.  And he looked up and got Lilly's eye.  He
+wanted to say "Friday then?"
+
+"Yes, I'd rather you went Thursday," repeated Lilly.
+
+"But Rawdon--!" broke in Tanny, who was suffering.  She stopped,
+however.
+
+"We can walk across country with you some way if you like," said Lilly
+to Jim.  It was a sort of compromise.
+
+"Fine!" said Jim.  "We'll do that, then."
+
+It was lovely sunshine, and they wandered through the woods.  Between
+Jim and Tanny was a sort of growing _rapprochement_, which got on
+Lilly's nerves.
+
+"What the hell do you take that beastly personal tone for?" cried
+Lilly at Tanny, as the three sat under a leafless great beech-tree.
+
+"But I'm not personal at all, am I, Mr. Bricknell?" said Tanny.
+
+Jim watched Lilly, and grinned pleasedly.
+
+"Why shouldn't you be, anyhow?" he said.
+
+"Yes!" she retorted.  "Why not!"
+
+"Not while I'm here.  I loathe the slimy creepy personal intimacy.--
+'Don't you think, Mr. Bricknell, that it's lovely to be able to talk
+quite simply to somebody?  Oh, it's such a relief, after most people
+---'"  Lilly mimicked his wife's last speech savagely.
+
+"But I MEAN it," cried Tanny.  "It is lovely."
+
+"Dirty messing," said Lilly angrily.
+
+Jim watched the dark, irascible little man with amusement.  They rose,
+and went to look for an inn, and beer.  Tanny still clung rather
+stickily to Jim's side.
+
+But it was a lovely day, the first of all the days of spring, with
+crocuses and wall-flowers in the cottage gardens, and white cocks
+crowing in the quiet hamlet.
+
+When they got back in the afternoon to the cottage, they found a
+telegram for Jim.  He let the Lillys see it--"Meet you for a walk on
+your return journey Lois."  At once Tanny wanted to know all about
+Lois.  Lois was a nice girl, well-to-do middle-class, but also an
+actress, and she would do anything Jim wanted.
+
+"I must get a wire to her to meet me tomorrow," he said.  "Where shall
+I say?"
+
+Lilly produced the map, and they decided on time and station at which
+Lois coming out of London, should meet Jim.  Then the happy pair could
+walk along the Thames valley, spending a night perhaps at Marlowe, or
+some such place.
+
+Off went Jim and Lilly once more to the postoffice.  They were quite
+good friends.  Having so inhospitably fixed the hour of departure,
+Lilly wanted to be nice.  Arrived at the postoffice, they found it
+shut: half-day closing for the little shop.
+
+"Well," said Lilly.  "We'll go to the station."
+
+They proceeded to the station--found the station-master--were conducted
+down to the signal-box.  Lilly naturally hung back from people, but Jim
+was hob-nob with the station-master and the signal man, quite officer-
+and-my-men kind of thing.  Lilly sat out on the steps of the signal-
+box, rather ashamed, while the long telegram was shouted over the
+telephone to the junction town--first the young lady and her address,
+then the message "Meet me X. station 3:40 tomorrow walk back great
+pleasure Jim."
+
+Anyhow that was done.  They went home to tea.  After tea, as the
+evening fell, Lilly suggested a little stroll in the woods, while
+Tanny prepared the dinner.  Jim agreed, and they set out.  The two
+men wandered through the trees in the dusk, till they came to a bank
+on the farther edge of the wood.  There they sat down.
+
+And there Lilly said what he had to say.  "As a matter of fact," he
+said, "it's nothing but love and self-sacrifice which makes you feel
+yourself losing life."
+
+"You're wrong.  Only love brings it back--and wine.  If I drink a
+bottle of Burgundy I feel myself restored at the middle--right here!
+I feel the energy back again.  And if I can fall in love--But it's
+becoming so damned hard--"
+
+"What, to fall in love?" asked Lilly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why not leave off trying!  What do you want to poke yourself and
+prod yourself into love, for?"
+
+"Because I'm DEAD without it.  I'm dead.  I'm dying."
+
+"Only because you force yourself.  If you drop working yourself up--"
+
+"I shall die.  I only live when I can fall in love.  Otherwise I'm
+dying by inches.  Why, man, you don't know what it was like.  I used
+to get the most grand feelings--like a great rush of force, or light--
+a great rush--right here, as I've said, at the solar plexus.  And it
+would come any time--anywhere--no matter where I was.  And then I was
+all right.
+
+"All right for what?--for making love?"
+
+"Yes, man, I was."
+
+"And now you aren't?--Oh, well, leave love alone, as any twopenny
+doctor would tell you."
+
+"No, you're off it there.  It's nothing technical.  Technically I can
+make love as much as you like.  It's nothing a doctor has any say in.
+It's what I feel inside me.  I feel the life going.  I know it's going.
+I never get those inrushes now, unless I drink a jolly lot, or if I
+possibly could fall in love.  Technically, I'm potent all right--oh,
+yes!"
+
+"You should leave yourself and your inrushes alone."
+
+"But you can't.  It's a sort of ache."
+
+"Then you should stiffen your backbone.  It's your backbone that
+matters.  You shouldn't want to abandon yourself.  You shouldn't want
+to fling yourself all loose into a woman's lap.  You should stand by
+yourself and learn to be by yourself.  Why don't you be more like the
+Japanese you talk about?  Quiet, aloof little devils.  They don't
+bother about being loved.  They keep themselves taut in their own
+selves--there, at the bottom of the spine--the devil's own power
+they've got there."
+
+Jim mused a bit.
+
+"Think they have?" he laughed.  It seemed comic to him.
+
+"Sure!  Look at them.  Why can't you gather yourself there?"
+
+"At the tail?"
+
+"Yes.  Hold yourself firm there."
+
+Jim broke into a cackle of a laugh, and rose.  The two went through
+the dark woods back to the cottage.  Jim staggered and stumbled like
+a drunken man: or worse, like a man with locomotor ataxia: as if he
+had no power in his lower limbs.
+
+"Walk there--!" said Lilly, finding him the smoothest bit of the dark
+path.  But Jim stumbled and shambled, in a state of nauseous weak
+relaxation.  However, they reached the cottage: and food and beer--
+and Tanny, piqued with curiosity to know what the men had been saying
+privately to each other.
+
+After dinner they sat once more talking round the fire.
+
+Lilly sat in a small chair facing the fire, the other two in the
+armchairs on either side the hearth.
+
+"How nice it will be for you, walking with Lois towards London
+tomorrow," gushed Tanny sentimentally.
+
+"Good God!" said Lilly.  "Why the dickens doesn't he walk by himself,
+without wanting a woman always there, to hold his hand."
+
+"Don't be so spiteful," said Tanny.  "YOU see that you have a woman
+always there, to hold YOUR hand."
+
+"My hand doesn't need holding," snapped Lilly.
+
+"Doesn't it!  More than most men's!  But you're so beastly ungrateful
+and mannish.  Because I hold you safe enough all the time you like to
+pretend you're doing it all yourself."
+
+"All right.  Don't drag yourself in," said Lilly, detesting his wife
+at that moment.  "Anyhow," and he turned to Jim, "it's time you'd done
+slobbering yourself over a lot of little women, one after the other."
+
+"Why shouldn't I, if I like it?" said Jim.
+
+"Yes, why not?" said Tanny.
+
+"Because it makes a fool of you.  Look at you, stumbling and staggering
+with no use in your legs.  I'd be ashamed if I were you."
+
+"Would you?" said Jim.
+
+"I would.  And it's nothing but your wanting to be loved which does it.
+A maudlin crying to be loved, which makes your knees all go rickety."
+
+"Think that's it?" said Jim.
+
+"What else is it.  You haven't been here a day, but you must telegraph
+for some female to be ready to hold your hand the moment you go away.
+And before she lets go, you'll be wiring for another.  YOU WANT TO BE
+LOVED, you want to be loved--a man of your years.  It's disgusting--"
+
+"I don't see it.  I believe in love--" said Jim, watching and grinning
+oddly.
+
+"Bah, love!  Messing, that's what it is.  It wouldn't matter if it
+did you no harm.  But when you stagger and stumble down a road, out
+of sheer sloppy relaxation of your will---"
+
+At this point Jim suddenly sprang from his chair at Lilly, and gave
+him two or three hard blows with his fists, upon the front of the
+body.  Then he sat down in his own chair again, saying sheepishly:
+
+"I knew I should have to do it, if he said any more."
+
+Lilly sat motionless as a statue, his face like paper.  One of the
+blows had caught him rather low, so that he was almost winded and
+could not breathe.  He sat rigid, paralysed as a winded man is.  But
+he wouldn't let it be seen.  With all his will he prevented himself
+from gasping.  Only through his parted lips he drew tiny gasps,
+controlled, nothing revealed to the other two.  He hated them both
+far too much.
+
+For some minutes there was dead silence, whilst Lilly silently and
+viciously fought for his breath.  Tanny opened her eyes wide in a
+sort of pleased bewilderment, and Jim turned his face aside, and
+hung his clasped hands between his knees.
+
+"There's a great silence, suddenly!" said Tanny.
+
+"What is there to say?" ejaculated Lilly rapidly, with a spoonful of
+breath which he managed to compress and control into speech.  Then he
+sat motionless again, concerned with the business of getting back his
+wind, and not letting the other two see.
+
+Jim jerked in his chair, and looked round.
+
+"It isn't that I don't like the man," he said, in a rather small
+voice.  "But I knew if he went on I should have to do it."
+
+To Lilly, rigid and physically preoccupied, there sounded a sort of
+self-consciousness in Jim's voice, as if the whole thing had been
+semi-deliberate.  He detected the sort of maudlin deliberateness
+which goes with hysterics, and he was colder, more icy than ever.
+
+Tanny looked at Lilly, puzzled, bewildered, but still rather pleased,
+as if she demanded an answer.  None being forthcoming, she said:
+
+"Of course, you mustn't expect to say all those things without rousing
+a man."
+
+Still Lilly did not answer.  Jim glanced at him, then looked at Tanny.
+
+"It isn't that I don't like him," he said, slowly.  "I like him better
+than any man I've ever known, I believe."  He clasped his hands and
+turned aside his face.
+
+"Judas!" flashed through Lilly's mind.
+
+Again Tanny looked for her husband's answer.
+
+"Yes, Rawdon," she said.  "You can't say the things you do without
+their having an effect.  You really ask for it, you know."
+
+"It's no matter."  Lilly squeezed the words out coldly.  "He wanted to
+do it, and he did it."
+
+A dead silence ensued now.  Tanny looked from man to man.
+
+"I could feel it coming on me," said Jim.
+
+"Of course!" said Tanny.  "Rawdon doesn't know the things he says."
+She was pleased that he had had to pay for them, for once.
+
+It takes a man a long time to get his breath back, after a sharp blow
+in the wind.  Lilly was managing by degrees.  The others no doubt
+attributed his silence to deep or fierce thoughts.  It was nothing
+of the kind, merely a cold struggle to get his wind back, without
+letting them know he was struggling: and a sheer, stock-stiff hatred
+of the pair of them.
+
+"I like the man," said Jim.  "Never liked a man more than I like him."
+He spoke as if with difficulty.
+
+"The man" stuck safely in Lilly's ears.
+
+"Oh, well," he managed to say.  "It's nothing.  I've done my talking
+and had an answer, for once."
+
+"Yes, Rawdy, you've had an answer, for once.  Usually you don't get an
+answer, you know--and that's why you go so far--in the things you say.
+Now you'll know how you make people feel."
+
+"Quite!" said Lilly.
+
+"_I_ don't feel anything.  I don't mind what he says," said Jim.
+
+"Yes, but he ought to know the things he DOES say," said Tanny.  "He
+goes on, without considering the person he's talking to.  This time
+it's come back on him.  He mustn't say such personal things, if he's
+not going to risk an answer."
+
+"I don't mind what he says.  I don't mind a bit," said Jim.
+
+"Nor do I mind," said Lilly indifferently.  "I say what I feel--You do
+as you feel--There's an end of it."
+
+A sheepish sort of silence followed this speech.  It was broken by a
+sudden laugh from Tanny.
+
+"The things that happen to us!" she said, laughing rather shrilly.
+"Suddenly, like a thunderbolt, we're all struck into silence!"
+
+"Rum game, eh!" said Jim, grinning.
+
+"Isn't it funny!  Isn't life too funny!"  She looked again at her
+husband.  "But, Rawdy, you must admit it was your own fault."
+
+Lilly's stiff face did not change.
+
+"Why FAULT!" he said, looking at her coldly.  "What is there to talk
+about?"
+
+"Usually there's so much," she said sarcastically.
+
+A few phrases dribbled out of the silence.  In vain Jim, tried to
+get Lilly to thaw, and in vain Tanny gave her digs at her husband.
+Lilly's stiff, inscrutable face did not change, he was polite and
+aloof.  So they all went to bed.
+
+In the morning, the walk was to take place, as arranged, Lilly and
+Tanny accompanying Jim to the third station across country.  The
+morning was lovely, the country beautiful.  Lilly liked the
+countryside and enjoyed the walk.  But a hardness inside himself
+never relaxed.  Jim talked a little again about the future of the
+world, and a higher state of Christlikeness in man.  But Lilly only
+laughed.  Then Tanny managed to get ahead with Jim, sticking to his
+side and talking sympathetic personalities.  But Lilly, feeling it
+from afar, ran after them and caught them up.  They were silent.
+
+"What was the interesting topic?" he said cuttingly.
+
+"Nothing at all!" said Tanny, nettled.  "Why must you interfere?"
+
+"Because I intend to," said Lilly.
+
+And the two others fell apart, as if severed with a knife.  Jim walked
+rather sheepishly, as if cut out.
+
+So they came at last past the canals to the wayside station: and at
+last Jim's train came.  They all said goodbye.  Jim and Tanny were
+both waiting for Lilly to show some sign of real reconciliation.  But
+none came.  He was cheerful and aloof.
+
+"Goodbye," he said to Jim.  "Hope Lois will be there all right.  Third
+station on.  Goodbye!  Goodbye!"
+
+"You'll come to Rackham?" said Jim, leaning out of the train.
+
+"We should love to," called Tanny, after the receding train.
+
+"All right," said Lilly, non-committal.
+
+But he and his wife never saw Jim again.  Lilly never intended to see
+him: a devil sat in the little man's breast.
+
+"You shouldn't play at little Jesus, coming so near to people, wanting
+to help them," was Tanny's last word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+LOW-WATER MARK
+
+
+Tanny went away to Norway to visit her people, for the first time for
+three years.  Lilly did not go: he did not want to.  He came to London
+and settled in a room over Covent Garden market.  The room was high
+up, a fair size, and stood at the corner of one of the streets and
+the market itself, looking down on the stalls and the carts and the
+arcade.  Lilly would climb out of the window and sit for hours watching
+the behaviour of the great draught-horses which brought the mountains
+of boxes and vegetables.  Funny half-human creatures they seemed, so
+massive and fleshy, yet so Cockney.  There was one which could not
+bear donkeys, and which used to stretch out its great teeth like some
+massive serpent after every poor diminutive ass that came with a
+coster's barrow.  Another great horse could not endure standing.  It
+would shake itself and give little starts, and back into the heaps of
+carrots and broccoli, whilst the driver went into a frenzy of rage.
+
+There was always something to watch.  One minute it was two great
+loads of empty crates, which in passing had got entangled, and reeled,
+leaning to fall disastrously.  Then the drivers cursed and swore and
+dismounted and stared at their jeopardised loads: till a thin fellow
+was persuaded to scramble up the airy mountains of cages, like a
+monkey.  And he actually managed to put them to rights.  Great sigh
+of relief when the vans rocked out of the market.
+
+Again there was a particular page-boy in buttons, with a round and
+perky behind, who nimbly carried a tea-tray from somewhere to
+somewhere, under the arches beside the market.  The great brawny
+porters would tease him, and he would stop to give them cheek.  One
+afternoon a giant lunged after him: the boy darted gracefully among
+the heaps of vegetables, still bearing aloft his tea-tray, like some
+young blue-buttoned acolyte fleeing before a false god.  The giant
+rolled after him--when alas, the acolyte of the tea-tray slipped
+among the vegetables, and down came the tray.  Then tears, and a
+roar of unfeeling mirth from the giants.  Lilly felt they were going
+to make it up to him.
+
+Another afternoon a young swell sauntered persistently among the
+vegetables, and Lilly, seated in his high little balcony, wondered
+why.  But at last, a taxi, and a very expensive female, in a sort of
+silver brocade gown and a great fur shawl and ospreys in her bonnet.
+Evidently an assignation.  Yet what could be more conspicuous than
+this elegant pair, picking their way through the cabbage-leaves?
+
+And then, one cold grey afternoon in early April, a man in a black
+overcoat and a bowler hat, walking uncertainly.  Lilly had risen and
+was just retiring out of the chill, damp air.  For some reason he
+lingered to watch the figure.  The man was walking east.  He stepped
+rather insecurely off the pavement, and wavered across the setts
+between the wheels of the standing vans.  And suddenly he went down.
+Lilly could not see him on the ground, but he saw some van-men go
+forward, and he saw one of them pick up the man's hat.
+
+"I'd better go down," said Lilly to himself.
+
+So he began running down the four long flights of stone stairs, past
+the many doors of the multifarious business premises, and out into the
+market.  A little crowd had gathered, and a large policeman was just
+rowing into the centre of the interest.  Lilly, always a hoverer on
+the edge of public commotions, hung now hesitating on the outskirts
+of the crowd.
+
+"What is it?" he said, to a rather sniffy messenger boy.
+
+"Drunk," said the messenger boy: except that, in unblushing cockney,
+he pronounced it "Drank."
+
+Lilly hung further back on the edge of the little crowd.
+
+"Come on here.  Where d' you want to go?" he heard the hearty tones of
+the policeman.
+
+"I'm all right.  I'm all right," came the testy drunken answer.
+
+"All right, are yer!  All right, and then some,--come on, get on
+your pins."
+
+"I'm all right!  I'm all right."
+
+The voice made Lilly peer between the people.  And sitting on the
+granite setts, being hauled up by a burly policeman, he saw our
+acquaintance Aaron, very pale in the face and a little dishevelled.
+
+"Like me to tuck the sheets round you, shouldn't you?  Fancy yourself
+snug in bed, don't you?  You won't believe you're right in the way of
+traffic, will you now, in Covent Garden Market?  Come on, we'll see to
+you."  And the policeman hoisted the bitter and unwilling Aaron.
+
+Lilly was quickly at the centre of the affair, unobtrusive like a
+shadow, different from the other people.
+
+"Help him up to my room, will you?" he said to the constable.  "Friend
+of mine."
+
+The large constable looked down on the bare-headed wispy, unobtrusive
+Lilly with good-humoured suspicion and incredulity.  Lilly could not
+have borne it if the policeman had uttered any of this cockney
+suspicion, so he watched him.  There was a great gulf between the
+public official and the odd, quiet little individual--yet Lilly had
+his way.
+
+"Which room?" said the policeman, dubious.
+
+Lilly pointed quickly round.  Then he said to Aaron:
+
+"Were you coming to see me, Sisson?  You'll come in, won't you?"
+
+Aaron nodded rather stupidly and testily.  His eyes looked angry.
+Somebody stuck his hat on his head for him, and made him look a fool.
+Lilly took it off again, and carried it for him.  He turned and the
+crowd eased.  He watched Aaron sharply, and saw that it was with
+difficulty he could walk.  So he caught him by the arm on the other
+side from the policeman, and they crossed the road to the pavement.
+
+"Not so much of this sort of thing these days," said the policeman.
+
+"Not so much opportunity," said Lilly.
+
+"More than there was, though.  Coming back to the old days, like.
+Working round, bit by bit."
+
+They had arrived at the stairs.  Aaron stumbled up.
+
+"Steady now!  Steady does it!" said the policeman, steering his charge.
+There was a curious breach of distance between Lilly and the constable.
+
+At last Lilly opened his own door.  The room was pleasant.  The fire
+burned warm, the piano stood open, the sofa was untidy with cushions
+and papers.  Books and papers covered the big writing desk.  Beyond
+the screen made by the bookshelves and the piano were two beds, with
+washstand by one of the large windows, the one through which Lilly
+had climbed.
+
+The policeman looked round curiously.
+
+"More cosy here than in the lock-up, sir!" he said.
+
+Lilly laughed.  He was hastily clearing the sofa.
+
+"Sit on the sofa, Sisson," he said.
+
+The policeman lowered his charge, with a--
+
+"Right we are, then!"
+
+Lilly felt in his pocket, and gave the policeman half a crown.  But
+he was watching Aaron, who sat stupidly on the sofa, very pale and
+semi-conscious.
+
+"Do you feel ill, Sisson?" he said sharply.
+
+Aaron looked back at him with heavy eyes, and shook his head slightly.
+
+"I believe you are," said Lilly, taking his hand.
+
+"Might be a bit o' this flu, you know," said the policeman.
+
+"Yes," said Lilly.  "Where is there a doctor?" he added, on reflection.
+
+"The nearest?" said the policeman.  And he told him.  "Leave a message
+for you, Sir?"
+
+Lilly wrote his address on a card, then changed his mind.
+
+"No, I'll run round myself if necessary," he said.
+
+And the policeman departed.
+
+"You'll go to bed, won't you?" said Lilly to Aaron, when the door was
+shut.  Aaron shook his head sulkily.
+
+"I would if I were you.  You can stay here till you're all right.  I'm
+alone, so it doesn't matter."
+
+But Aaron had relapsed into semi-consciousness.  Lilly put the big
+kettle on the gas stove, the little kettle on the fire.  Then he
+hovered in front of the stupefied man.  He felt uneasy.  Again he
+took Aaron's hand and felt the pulse.
+
+"I'm sure you aren't well.  You must go to bed," he said.  And he
+kneeled and unfastened his visitor's boots.  Meanwhile the kettle
+began to boil, he put a hot-water bottle into the bed.
+
+"Let us get your overcoat off," he said to the stupefied man.  "Come
+along."  And with coaxing and pulling and pushing he got off the
+overcoat and coat and waistcoat.
+
+At last Aaron was undressed and in bed.  Lilly brought him tea.  With
+a dim kind of obedience he took the cup and would drink.  He looked at
+Lilly with heavy eyes.
+
+"I gave in, I gave in to her, else I should ha' been all right,"
+he said.
+
+"To whom?" said Lilly.
+
+"I gave in to her--and afterwards I cried, thinking of Lottie and the
+children.  I felt my heart break, you know.  And that's what did it.
+I should have been all right if I hadn't given in to her--"
+
+"To whom?" said Lilly.
+
+"Josephine.  I felt, the minute I was loving her, I'd done myself.
+And I had.  Everything came back on me.  If I hadn't given in to her,
+I should ha' kept all right."
+
+"Don't bother now.  Get warm and still--"
+
+"I felt it--I felt it go, inside me, the minute I gave in to her.
+It's perhaps killed me."
+
+"No, not it.  Never mind, be still.  Be still, and you'll be all right
+in the morning."
+
+"It's my own fault, for giving in to her.  If I'd kept myself back, my
+liver wouldn't have broken inside me, and I shouldn't have been sick.
+And I knew--"
+
+"Never mind now.  Have you drunk your tea?  Lie down.  Lie down, and
+go to sleep."
+
+Lilly pushed Aaron down in the bed, and covered him over.  Then he
+thrust his hands under the bedclothes and felt his feet--still cold.
+He arranged the water bottle.  Then he put another cover on the bed.
+
+Aaron lay still, rather grey and peaked-looking, in a stillness that
+was not healthy.  For some time Lilly went about stealthily, glancing
+at his patient from time to time.  Then he sat down to read.
+
+He was roused after a time by a moaning of troubled breathing and a
+fretful stirring in the bed.  He went across.  Aaron's eyes were open,
+and dark looking.
+
+"Have a little hot milk," said Lilly.
+
+Aaron shook his head faintly, not noticing.
+
+"A little Bovril?"
+
+The same faint shake.
+
+Then Lilly wrote a note for the doctor, went into the office on the
+same landing, and got a clerk, who would be leaving in a few minutes,
+to call with the note.  When he came back he found Aaron still
+watching.
+
+"Are you here by yourself?" asked the sick man.
+
+"Yes.  My wife's gone to Norway."
+
+"For good?"
+
+"No," laughed Lilly.  "For a couple of months or so.  She'll come back
+here: unless she joins me in Switzerland or somewhere."
+
+Aaron was still for a while.
+
+"You've not gone with her," he said at length.
+
+"To see her people?  No, I don't think they want me very badly--and I
+didn't want very badly to go.  Why should I?  It's better for married
+people to be separated sometimes."
+
+"Ay!" said Aaron, watching the other man with fever-darkened eyes.
+
+"I hate married people who are two in one--stuck together like two
+jujube lozenges," said Lilly.
+
+"Me an' all.  I hate 'em myself," said Aaron.
+
+"Everybody ought to stand by themselves, in the first place--men and
+women as well.  They can come together, in the second place, if they
+like.  But nothing is any good unless each one stands alone,
+intrinsically."
+
+"I'm with you there," said Aaron.  "If I'd kep' myself to myself I
+shouldn't be bad now--though I'm not very bad.  I s'll be all right
+in the morning.  But I did myself in when I went with another woman.
+I felt myself go--as if the bile broke inside me, and I was sick."
+
+"Josephine seduced you?" laughed Lilly.
+
+"Ay, right enough," replied Aaron grimly.  "She won't be coming here,
+will she?"
+
+"Not unless I ask her."
+
+"You won't ask her, though?"
+
+"No, not if you don't want her."
+
+"I don't."
+
+The fever made Aaron naive and communicative, unlike himself.  And he
+knew he was being unlike himself, he knew that he was not in proper
+control of himself, so he was unhappy, uneasy.
+
+"I'll stop here the night then, if you don't mind," he said.
+
+"You'll have to," said Lilly.  "I've sent for the doctor.  I believe
+you've got the flu."
+
+"Think I have?" said Aaron frightened.
+
+"Don't be scared," laughed Lilly.
+
+There was a long pause.  Lilly stood at the window looking at the
+darkening market, beneath the street-lamps.
+
+"I s'll have to go to the hospital, if I have," came Aaron's voice.
+
+"No, if it's only going to be a week or a fortnight's business, you
+can stop here.  I've nothing to do," said Lilly.
+
+"There's no occasion for you to saddle yourself with me," said Aaron
+dejectedly.
+
+"You can go to your hospital if you like--or back to your lodging--if
+you wish to," said Lilly.  "You can make up your mind when you see how
+you are in the morning."
+
+"No use going back to my lodgings," said Aaron.
+
+"I'll send a telegram to your wife if you like," said Lilly.
+
+Aaron was silent, dead silent, for some time.
+
+"Nay," he said at length, in a decided voice.  "Not if I die for it."
+
+Lilly remained still, and the other man lapsed into a sort of semi-
+sleep, motionless and abandoned.  The darkness had fallen over London,
+and away below the lamps were white.
+
+Lilly lit the green-shaded reading lamp over the desk.  Then he stood
+and looked at Aaron, who lay still, looking sick.  Rather beautiful
+the bones of the countenance: but the skull too small for such a heavy
+jaw and rather coarse mouth.  Aaron half-opened his eyes, and writhed
+feverishly, as if his limbs could not be in the right place.  Lilly
+mended the fire, and sat down to write.  Then he got up and went
+downstairs to unfasten the street door, so that the doctor could walk
+up.  The business people had gone from their various holes, all the
+lower part of the tall house was in darkness.
+
+Lilly waited and waited.  He boiled an egg and made himself toast.
+Aaron said he might eat the same.  Lilly cooked another egg and took
+it to the sick man.  Aaron looked at it and pushed it away with
+nausea.  He would have some tea.  So Lilly gave him tea.
+
+"Not much fun for you, doing this for somebody who is nothing to you,"
+said Aaron.
+
+"I shouldn't if you were unsympathetic to me," said Lilly.  "As it is,
+it's happened so, and so we'll let be."
+
+"What time is it?"
+
+"Nearly eight o'clock."
+
+"Oh, my Lord, the opera."
+
+And Aaron got half out of bed.  But as he sat on the bedside he knew he
+could not safely get to his feet.  He remained a picture of dejection.
+
+"Perhaps we ought to let them know," said Lilly.
+
+But Aaron, blank with stupid misery, sat huddled there on the bedside
+without answering.
+
+"Ill run round with a note," said Lilly.  "I suppose others have had
+flu, besides you.  Lie down!"
+
+But Aaron stupidly and dejectedly sat huddled on the side of the bed,
+wearing old flannel pyjamas of Lilly's, rather small for him.  He felt
+too sick to move.
+
+"Lie down!  Lie down!" said Lilly.  "And keep still while I'm gone.  I
+shan't be more than ten minutes."
+
+"I don't care if I die," said Aaron.
+
+Lilly laughed.
+
+"You're a long way from dying," said he, "or you wouldn't say it."
+
+But Aaron only looked up at him with queer, far-off, haggard eyes,
+something like a criminal who is just being executed.
+
+"Lie down!" said Lilly, pushing him gently into the bed.  "You won't
+improve yourself sitting there, anyhow."
+
+Aaron lay down, turned away, and was quite still.  Lilly quietly left
+the room on his errand.
+
+The doctor did not come until ten o'clock: and worn out with work when
+he did come.
+
+"Isn't there a lift in this establishment?" he said, as he groped
+his way up the stone stairs.  Lilly had heard him, and run down to
+meet him.
+
+The doctor poked the thermometer under Aaron's tongue and felt the
+pulse.  Then he asked a few questions: listened to the heart and
+breathing.
+
+"Yes, it's the flu," he said curtly.  "Nothing to do but to keep warm
+in bed and not move, and take plenty of milk and liquid nourishment.
+I'll come round in the morning and give you an injection.  Lungs are
+all right so far."
+
+"How long shall I have to be in bed?" said Aaron.
+
+"Oh--depends.  A week at least."
+
+Aaron watched him sullenly--and hated him.  Lilly laughed to himself.
+The sick man was like a dog that is ill but which growls from a deep
+corner, and will bite if you put your hand in.  He was in a state of
+black depression.
+
+Lilly settled him down for the night, and himself went to bed.  Aaron
+squirmed with heavy, pained limbs, the night through, and slept and
+had bad dreams.  Lilly got up to give him drinks.  The din in the
+market was terrific before dawn, and Aaron suffered bitterly.
+
+In the morning he was worse.  The doctor gave him injections against
+pneumonia.
+
+"You wouldn't like me to wire to your wife?" said Lilly.
+
+"No," said Aaron abruptly.  "You can send me to the hospital.  I'm
+nothing but a piece of carrion."
+
+"Carrion!" said Lilly.  "Why?"
+
+"I know it.  I feel like it."
+
+"Oh, that's only the sort of nauseated feeling you get with flu."
+
+"I'm only fit to be thrown underground, and made an end of.  I can't
+stand myself--"
+
+He had a ghastly, grey look of self-repulsion.
+
+"It's the germ that makes you feel like that," said Lilly.  "It poisons
+the system for a time.  But you'll work it off."
+
+At evening he was no better, the fever was still high.  Yet there were
+no complications--except that the heart was irregular.
+
+"The one thing I wonder," said Lilly, "is whether you hadn't better
+be moved out of the noise of the market.  It's fearful for you in the
+early morning."
+
+"It makes no difference to me," said Aaron.
+
+The next day he was a little worse, if anything.  The doctor knew
+there was nothing to be done.  At evening he gave the patient a
+calomel pill.  It was rather strong, and Aaron had a bad time.  His
+burning, parched, poisoned inside was twisted and torn.  Meanwhile
+carts banged, porters shouted, all the hell of the market went on
+outside, away down on the cobble setts.  But this time the two men
+did not hear.
+
+"You'll feel better now," said Lilly, "after the operation."
+
+"It's done me harm," cried Aaron fretfully.  "Send me to the hospital,
+or you'll repent it.  Get rid of me in time."
+
+"Nay," said Lilly.  "You get better.  Damn it, you're only one among
+a million."
+
+Again over Aaron's face went the ghastly grimace of self-repulsion.
+
+"My soul's gone rotten," he said.
+
+"No," said Lilly.  "Only toxin in the blood."
+
+Next day the patient seemed worse, and the heart more irregular.  He
+rested badly.  So far, Lilly had got a fair night's rest.  Now Aaron
+was not sleeping, and he seemed to struggle in the bed.
+
+"Keep your courage up, man," said the doctor sharply.  "You give way."
+
+Aaron looked at him blackly, and did not answer.
+
+In the night Lilly was up time after time.  Aaron would slip down
+on his back, and go semi-conscious.  And then he would awake, as if
+drowning, struggling to move, mentally shouting aloud, yet making no
+sound for some moments, mentally shouting in frenzy, but unable to
+stir or make a sound.  When at last he got some sort of physical
+control he cried: "Lift me up!  Lift me up!"
+
+Lilly hurried and lifted him up, and he sat panting with a sobbing
+motion, his eyes gloomy and terrified, more than ever like a criminal
+who is just being executed.  He drank brandy, and was laid down on
+his side.
+
+"Don't let me lie on my back," he said, terrified.  "No, I won't,"
+said Lilly.  Aaron frowned curiously on his nurse.  "Mind you don't
+let me," he said, exacting and really terrified.
+
+"No, I won't let you."
+
+And now Lilly was continually crossing over and pulling Aaron on to
+his side, whenever he found him slipped down on his back.
+
+In the morning the doctor was puzzled.  Probably it was the toxin in
+the blood which poisoned the heart.  There was no pneumonia.  And yet
+Aaron was clearly growing worse.  The doctor agreed to send in a nurse
+for the coming night.
+
+"What's the matter with you, man!" he said sharply to his patient.
+"You give way!  You give way!  Can't you pull yourself together?"
+
+But Aaron only became more gloomily withheld, retracting from life.
+And Lilly began to be really troubled.  He got a friend to sit with
+the patient in the afternoon, whilst he himself went out and arranged
+to sleep in Aaron's room, at his lodging.
+
+The next morning, when he came in, he found the patient lying as ever,
+in a sort of heap in the bed.  Nurse had had to lift him up and hold
+him up again.  And now Aaron lay in a sort of semi-stupor of fear,
+frustrated anger, misery and self-repulsion: a sort of interlocked
+depression.
+
+The doctor frowned when he came.  He talked with the nurse, and wrote
+another prescription.  Then he drew Lilly away to the door.
+
+"What's the matter with the fellow?" he said.  "Can't you rouse his
+spirit?  He seems to be sulking himself out of life.  He'll drop out
+quite suddenly, you know, if he goes on like this.  Can't you rouse
+him up?"
+
+"I think it depresses him partly that his bowels won't work.  It
+frightens him.  He's never been ill in his life before," said Lilly.
+
+"His bowels won't work if he lets all his spirit go, like an animal
+dying of the sulks," said the doctor impatiently.  "He might go off
+quite suddenly--dead before you can turn round--"
+
+Lilly was properly troubled.  Yet he did not quite know what to do.
+It was early afternoon, and the sun was shining into the room.  There
+were daffodils and anemones in a jar, and freezias and violets.  Down
+below in the market were two stalls of golden and blue flowers, gay.
+
+"The flowers are lovely in the spring sunshine," said Lilly.  "I wish
+I were in the country, don't you?  As soon as you are better we'll go.
+It's been a terrible cold, wet spring.  But now it's going to be nice.
+Do you like being in the country?"
+
+"Yes," said Aaron.
+
+He was thinking of his garden.  He loved it.  Never in his life had he
+been away from a garden before.
+
+"Make haste and get better, and we'll go."
+
+"Where?" said Aaron.
+
+"Hampshire.  Or Berkshire.  Or perhaps you'd like to go home?  Would
+you?"
+
+Aaron lay still, and did not answer.
+
+"Perhaps you want to, and you don't want to," said Lilly.  "You can
+please yourself, anyhow."
+
+There was no getting anything definite out of the sick man--his soul
+seemed stuck, as if it would not move.
+
+Suddenly Lilly rose and went to the dressing-table.
+
+"I'm going to rub you with oil," he said.  "I'm going to rub you as
+mothers do their babies whose bowels don't work."
+
+Aaron frowned slightly as he glanced at the dark, self-possessed face
+of the little man.
+
+"What's the good of that?" he said irritably.  "I'd rather be left
+alone."
+
+"Then you won't be."
+
+Quickly he uncovered the blond lower body of his patient, and began to
+rub the abdomen with oil, using a slow, rhythmic, circulating motion,
+a sort of massage.  For a long time he rubbed finely and steadily,
+then went over the whole of the lower body, mindless, as if in a sort
+of incantation.  He rubbed every speck of the man's lower body--the
+abdomen, the buttocks, the thighs and knees, down to the feet, rubbed
+it all warm and glowing with camphorated oil, every bit of it, chafing
+the toes swiftly, till he was almost exhausted.  Then Aaron was covered
+up again, and Lilly sat down in fatigue to look at his patient.
+
+He saw a change.  The spark had come back into the sick eyes, and the
+faint trace of a smile, faintly luminous, into the face.  Aaron was
+regaining himself.  But Lilly said nothing.  He watched his patient
+fall into a proper sleep.
+
+And he sat and watched him sleep.  And he thought to himself: "I wonder
+why I do it.  I wonder why I bother with him. . . . Jim ought to have
+taught me my lesson.  As soon as this man's really better he'll punch
+me in the wind, metaphorically if not actually, for having interfered
+with him.  And Tanny would say, he was quite right to do it.  She says
+I want power over them.  What if I do?  They don't care how much power
+the mob has over them, the nation, Lloyd George and Northcliffe and
+the police and money.  They'll yield themselves up to that sort of
+power quickly enough, and immolate themselves _pro bono publico_ by
+the million.  And what's the bonum publicum but a mob power?  Why
+can't they submit to a bit of healthy individual authority?  The fool
+would die, without me: just as that fool Jim will die in hysterics one
+day.  Why does he last so long!
+
+"Tanny's the same.  She does nothing really but resist me: my
+authority, or my influence, or just ME.  At the bottom of her heart
+she just blindly and persistently opposes me.  God knows what it is
+she opposes: just me myself.  She thinks I want her to submit to me.
+So I do, in a measure natural to our two selves.  Somewhere, she
+ought to submit to me.  But they all prefer to kick against the
+pricks.  Not that THEY get many pricks.  I get them.  Damn them all,
+why don't I leave them alone?  They only grin and feel triumphant when
+they've insulted one and punched one in the wind.
+
+"This Aaron will do just the same.  I like him, and he ought to like
+me.  And he'll be another Jim: he WILL like me, if he can knock the
+wind out of me.  A lot of little Stavrogins coming up to whisper
+affectionately, and biting one's ear.
+
+"But anyhow I can soon see the last of this chap: and him the last of
+all the rest.  I'll be damned for ever if I see their Jims and Roberts
+and Julias and Scotts any more.  Let them dance round their insipid
+hell-broth.  Thin tack it is.
+
+"There's a whole world besides this little gang of Europeans.  Except,
+dear God, that they've exterminated all the peoples worth knowing.  I
+can't do with folk who teem by the billion, like the Chinese and Japs
+and orientals altogether.  Only vermin teem by the billion.  Higher
+types breed slower.  I would have loved the Aztecs and the Red Indians.
+I KNOW they hold the element in life which I am looking for--they had
+living pride.  Not like the flea-bitten Asiatics--even niggers are
+better than Asiatics, though they are wallowers--the American races--
+and the South Sea Islanders--the Marquesans, the Maori blood.  That
+was the true blood.  It wasn't frightened.  All the rest are craven--
+Europeans, Asiatics, Africans--everyone at his own individual quick
+craven and cringing: only conceited in the mass, the mob.  How I hate
+them: the mass-bullies, the individual Judases.
+
+"Well, if one will be a Jesus he must expect his Judas.  That's why
+Abraham Lincoln gets shot.  A Jesus makes a Judas inevitable.  A man
+should remain himself, not try to spread himself over humanity.  He
+should pivot himself on his own pride.
+
+"I suppose really I ought to have packed this Aaron off to the
+hospital.  Instead of which here am I rubbing him with oil to rub the
+life into him.  And I KNOW he'll bite me, like a warmed snake, the
+moment he recovers.  And Tanny will say 'Quite right, too,' I shouldn't
+have been so intimate.  No, I should have left it to mechanical doctors
+and nurses.
+
+"So I should.  Everything to its own.  And Aaron belongs to this little
+system, and Jim is waiting to be psychoanalysed, and Tanny is waiting
+for her own glorification.
+
+"All right, Aaron.  Last time I break my bread for anybody, this is.
+So get better, my flautist, so that I can go away.
+
+"It was easy for the Red Indians and the Others to take their hook
+into death.  They might have stayed a bit longer to help one to defy
+the white masses.
+
+"I'll make some tea--"
+
+Lilly rose softly and went across to the fire.  He had to cross a
+landing to a sort of little lavatory, with a sink and a tap, for
+water.  The clerks peeped out at him from an adjoining office and
+nodded.  He nodded, and disappeared from their sight as quickly as
+possible, with his kettle.  His dark eyes were quick, his dark hair
+was untidy, there was something silent and withheld about him.
+People could never approach him quite ordinarily.
+
+He put on the kettle, and quietly set cups and plates on a tray.  The
+room was clean and cosy and pleasant.  He did the cleaning himself, and
+was as efficient and inobtrusive a housewife as any woman.  While the
+kettle boiled, he sat darning the socks which he had taken off Aaron's
+feet when the flautist arrived, and which he had washed.  He preferred
+that no outsider should see him doing these things.  Yet he preferred
+also to do them himself, so that he should be independent of outside
+aid.
+
+His face was dark and hollow, he seemed frail, sitting there in the
+London afternoon darning the black woollen socks.  His full brow was
+knitted slightly, there was a tension.  At the same time, there was
+an indomitable stillness about him, as it were in the atmosphere about
+him.  His hands, though small, were not very thin.  He bit off the
+wool as he finished his darn.
+
+As he was making the tea he saw Aaron rouse up in bed.
+
+"I've been to sleep.  I feel better," said the patient, turning round
+to look what the other man was doing.  And the sight of the water
+steaming in a jet from the teapot seemed attractive.
+
+"Yes," said Lilly.  "You've slept for a good two hours."
+
+"I believe I have," said Aaron.
+
+"Would you like a little tea?"
+
+"Ay--and a bit of toast."
+
+"You're not supposed to have solid food.  Let me take your
+temperature."
+
+The temperature was down to a hundred, and Lilly, in spite of the
+doctor, gave Aaron a piece of toast with his tea, enjoining him not
+to mention it to the nurse.
+
+In the evening the two men talked.
+
+"You do everything for yourself, then?" said Aaron.
+
+"Yes, I prefer it."
+
+"You like living all alone?"
+
+"I don't know about that.  I never have lived alone.  Tanny and I have
+been very much alone in various countries: but that's two, not one."
+
+"You miss her then?"
+
+"Yes, of course.  I missed her horribly in the cottage, when she'd
+first gone.  I felt my heart was broken.  But here, where we've never
+been together, I don't notice it so much."
+
+"She'll come back," said Aaron.
+
+"Yes, she'll come back.  But I'd rather meet her abroad than here--and
+get on a different footing."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  There's something with marriage altogether, I
+think.  _Egoisme a deux_--"
+
+"What's that mean?"
+
+"_Egoisme a deux_?  Two people, one egoism.  Marriage is a self-
+conscious egoistic state, it seems to me."
+
+"You've got no children?" said Aaron.
+
+"No.  Tanny wants children badly.  I don't.  I'm thankful we have
+none."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I can't quite say.  I think of them as a burden.  Besides, there ARE
+such millions and billions of children in the world.  And we know well
+enough what sort of millions and billions of people they'll grow up
+into.  I don't want to add my quota to the mass--it's against my
+instinct--"
+
+"Ay!" laughed Aaron, with a curt acquiescence.
+
+"Tanny's furious.  But then, when a woman has got children, she thinks
+the world wags only for them and her.  Nothing else.  The whole world
+wags for the sake of the children--and their sacred mother."
+
+"Ay, that's DAMNED true," said Aaron.
+
+"And myself, I'm sick of the children stunt.  Children are all right,
+so long as you just take them for what they are: young immature things
+like kittens and half-grown dogs, nuisances, sometimes very charming.
+But I'll be hanged if I can see anything high and holy about children.
+I should be sorry, too, it would be so bad for the children.  Young
+brats, tiresome and amusing in turns."
+
+"When they don't give themselves airs," said Aaron,
+
+"Yes, indeed.  Which they do half the time.  Sacred children, and
+sacred motherhood, I'm absolutely fed stiff by it.  That's why I'm
+thankful I have no children.  Tanny can't come it over me there."
+
+"It's a fact.  When a woman's got her children, by God, she's a bitch
+in the manger.  You can starve while she sits on the hay.  It's useful
+to keep her pups warm."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why, you know," Aaron turned excitedly in the bed, "they look on a
+man as if he was nothing but an instrument to get and rear children.
+If you have anything to do with a woman, she thinks it's because you
+want to get children by her.  And I'm damned if it is.  I want my own
+pleasure, or nothing: and children be damned."
+
+"Ah, women--THEY must be loved, at any price!" said Lilly.  "And if
+you just don't want to love them--and tell them so--what a crime."
+
+"A crime!" said Aaron.  "They make a criminal of you.  Them and their
+children be cursed.  Is my life given me for nothing but to get
+children, and work to bring them up?  See them all in hell first.
+They'd better die while they're children, if childhood's all that
+important."
+
+"I quite agree," said Lilly.  "If childhood is more important than
+manhood, then why live to be a man at all?  Why not remain an infant?"
+
+"Be damned and blasted to women and all their importances," cried
+Aaron.  "They want to get you under, and children is their chief
+weapon."
+
+"Men have got to stand up to the fact that manhood is more than
+childhood--and then force women to admit it," said Lilly.  "But the
+rotten whiners, they're all grovelling before a baby's napkin and a
+woman's petticoat."
+
+"It's a fact," said Aaron.  But he glanced at Lilly oddly, as if
+suspiciously.  And Lilly caught the look.  But he continued:
+
+"And if they think you try to stand on your legs and walk with the
+feet of manhood, why, there isn't a blooming father and lover among
+them but will do his best to get you down and suffocate you--either
+with a baby's napkin or a woman's petticoat."
+
+Lilly's lips were curling; he was dark and bitter.
+
+"Ay, it is like that," said Aaron, rather subduedly.
+
+"The man's spirit has gone out of the world.  Men can't move an inch
+unless they can grovel humbly at the end of the journey."
+
+"No," said Aaron, watching with keen, half-amused eyes.
+
+"That's why marriage wants readjusting--or extending--to get men on to
+their own legs once more, and to give them the adventure again.  But
+men won't stick together and fight for it.  Because once a woman has
+climbed up with her children, she'll find plenty of grovellers ready
+to support her and suffocate any defiant spirit.  And women will
+sacrifice eleven men, fathers, husbands, brothers and lovers, for one
+baby--or for her own female self-conceit--"
+
+"She will that," said Aaron.
+
+"And can you find two men to stick together, without feeling criminal,
+and without cringing, and without betraying one another?  You can't.
+One is sure to go fawning round some female, then they both enjoy
+giving each other away, and doing a new grovel before a woman again."
+
+"Ay," said Aaron.
+
+After which Lilly was silent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE WAR AGAIN
+
+
+"One is a fool," said Lilly, "to be lachrymose.  The thing to do is to
+get a move on."
+
+Aaron looked up with a glimpse of a smile.  The two men were sitting
+before the fire at the end of a cold, wet April day: Aaron
+convalescent, somewhat chastened in appearance.
+
+"Ay," he said rather sourly.  "A move back to Guilford Street."
+
+"Oh, I meant to tell you," said Lilly.  "I was reading an old Baden
+history.  They made a law in 1528--not a law, but a regulation--that:
+if a man forsakes his wife and children, as now so often happens, the
+said wife and children are at once to be dispatched after him.  I
+thought that would please you.  Does it?"
+
+"Yes," said Aaron briefly.
+
+"They would have arrived the next day, like a forwarded letter."
+
+"I should have had to get a considerable move on, at that rate,"
+grinned Aaron.
+
+"Oh, no.  You might quite like them here."  But Lilly saw the white
+frown of determined revulsion on the convalescent's face.
+
+"Wouldn't you?" he asked.
+
+Aaron shook his head.
+
+"No," he said.  And it was obvious he objected to the topic.  "What
+are you going to do about your move on?"
+
+"Me!" said Lilly.  "I'm going to sail away next week--or steam dirtily
+away on a tramp called the _Maud Allen Wing_."
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"Malta."
+
+"Where from?"
+
+"London Dock.  I fixed up my passage this morning for ten pounds.  I
+am cook's assistant, signed on."
+
+Aaron looked at him with a little admiration.
+
+"You can take a sudden jump, can't you?" he said.
+
+"The difficulty is to refrain from jumping: overboard or anywhere."
+
+Aaron smoked his pipe slowly.
+
+"And what good will Malta do you?" he asked, envious.
+
+"Heaven knows.  I shall cross to Syracuse, and move up Italy."
+
+"Sounds as if you were a millionaire."
+
+"I've got thirty-five pounds in all the world.  But something will
+come along."
+
+"I've got more than that," said Aaron.
+
+"Good for you," replied Lilly.
+
+He rose and went to the cupboard, taking out a bowl and a basket of
+potatoes.  He sat down again, paring the potatoes.  His busy activity
+annoyed Aaron.
+
+"But what's the good of going to Malta?  Shall YOU be any different in
+yourself, in another place?  You'll be the same there as you are here."
+
+"How am I here?"
+
+"Why, you're all the time grinding yourself against something inside
+you.  You're never free.  You're never content.  You never stop
+chafing."
+
+Lilly dipped his potato into the water, and cut out the eyes carefully.
+Then he cut it in two, and dropped it in the clean water of the second
+bowl.  He had not expected this criticism.
+
+"Perhaps I don't," said he.
+
+"Then what's the use of going somewhere else?  You won't change
+yourself."
+
+"I may in the end," said Lilly.
+
+"You'll be yourself, whether it's Malta or London," said Aaron.
+
+"There's a doom for me," laughed Lilly.  The water on the fire was
+boiling.  He rose and threw in salt, then dropped in the potatoes with
+little plops.  "There there are lots of mes.  I'm not only just one
+proposition.  A new place brings out a new thing in a man.  Otherwise
+you'd have stayed in your old place with your family."
+
+"The man in the middle of you doesn't change," said Aaron.
+
+"Do you find it so?" said Lilly.
+
+"Ay.  Every time."
+
+"Then what's to be done?"
+
+"Nothing, as far as I can see.  You get as much amusement out of life
+as possible, and there's the end of it."
+
+"All right then, I'll get the amusement."
+
+"Ay, all right then," said Aaron.  "But there isn't anything wonderful
+about it.  You talk as if you were doing something special.  You
+aren't.  You're no more than a man who drops into a pub for a drink,
+to liven himself up a bit.  Only you give it a lot of names, and make
+out as if you were looking for the philosopher's stone, or something
+like that.  When you're only killing time like the rest of folks,
+before time kills you."
+
+Lilly did not answer.  It was not yet seven o'clock, but the sky was
+dark.  Aaron sat in the firelight.  Even the saucepan on the fire was
+silent.  Darkness, silence, the firelight in the upper room, and the
+two men together.
+
+"It isn't quite true," said Lilly, leaning on the mantelpiece and
+staring down into the fire.
+
+"Where isn't it?  You talk, and you make a man believe you've got
+something he hasn't got?  But where is it, when it comes to?  What
+have you got, more than me or Jim Bricknell!  Only a bigger choice
+of words, it seems to me."
+
+Lilly was motionless and inscrutable like a shadow.
+
+"Does it, Aaron!" he said, in a colorless voice.
+
+"Yes.  What else is there to it?" Aaron sounded testy.
+
+"Why," said Lilly at last, "there's something.  I agree, it's true
+what you say about me.  But there's a bit of something else.  There's
+just a bit of something in me, I think, which ISN'T a man running into
+a pub for a drink--"
+
+"And what--?"
+
+The question fell into the twilight like a drop of water falling down
+a deep shaft into a well.
+
+"I think a man may come into possession of his own soul at last--as
+the Buddhists teach--but without ceasing to love, or even to hate.
+One loves, one hates--but somewhere beyond it all, one understands,
+and possesses one's soul in patience and in peace--"
+
+"Yes," said Aaron slowly, "while you only stand and talk about it.
+But when you've got no chance to talk about it--and when you've got
+to live--you don't possess your soul, neither in patience nor in peace,
+but any devil that likes possesses you and does what it likes with
+you, while you fridge yourself and fray yourself out like a worn rag."
+
+"I don't care," said Lilly, "I'm learning to possess my soul in
+patience and in peace, and I know it.  And it isn't a negative Nirvana
+either.  And if Tanny possesses her own soul in patience and peace as
+well--and if in this we understand each other at last--then there we
+are, together and apart at the same time, and free of each other, and
+eternally inseparable.  I have my Nirvana--and I have it all to myself.
+But more than that.  It coincides with her Nirvana."
+
+"Ah, yes," said Aaron.  "But I don't understand all that word-
+splitting."
+
+"I do, though.  You learn to be quite alone, and possess your own soul
+in isolation--and at the same time, to be perfectly WITH someone else--
+that's all I ask."
+
+"Sort of sit on a mountain top, back to back with somebody else, like
+a couple of idols."
+
+"No--because it isn't a case of sitting--or a case of back to back.
+It's what you get to after a lot of fighting and a lot of sensual
+fulfilment.  And it never does away with the fighting and with the
+sensual passion.  It flowers on top of them, and it would never
+flower save on top of them."
+
+"What wouldn't?"
+
+"The possessing one's own soul--and the being together with someone
+else in silence, beyond speech."
+
+"And you've got them?"
+
+"I've got a BIT of the real quietness inside me."
+
+"So has a dog on a mat."
+
+"So I believe, too."
+
+"Or a man in a pub."
+
+"Which I don't believe."
+
+"You prefer the dog?"
+
+"Maybe."
+
+There was silence for a few moments.
+
+"And I'm the man in the pub," said Aaron.
+
+"You aren't the dog on the mat, anyhow,"
+
+"And you're the idol on the mountain top, worshipping yourself."
+
+"You talk to me like a woman, Aaron."
+
+"How do you talk to ME, do you think?"
+
+"How do I?"
+
+"Are the potatoes done?"
+
+Lilly turned quickly aside, and switched on the electric light.
+Everything changed.  Aaron sat still before the fire, irritated.
+Lilly went about preparing the supper.
+
+The room was pleasant at night.  Two tall, dark screens hid the two
+beds.  In front, the piano was littered with music, the desk littered
+with papers.  Lilly went out on to the landing, and set the chops to
+grill on the gas stove.  Hastily he put a small table on the hearth-
+rug, spread it with a blue-and-white cloth, set plates and glasses.
+Aaron did not move.  It was not his nature to concern himself with
+domestic matters--and Lilly did it best alone.
+
+The two men had an almost uncanny understanding of one another--like
+brothers.  They came from the same district, from the same class.  Each
+might have been born into the other's circumstance.   Like brothers,
+there was a profound hostility between them.  But hostility is not
+antipathy.
+
+Lilly's skilful housewifery always irritated Aaron: it was so self-
+sufficient.  But most irritating of all was the little man's
+unconscious assumption of priority.  Lilly was actually unaware
+that he assumed this quiet predominance over others.  He mashed
+the potatoes, he heated the plates, he warmed the red wine, he whisked
+eggs into the milk pudding, and served his visitor like a housemaid.
+But none of this detracted from the silent assurance with which he bore
+himself, and with which he seemed to domineer over his acquaintance.
+
+At last the meal was ready.  Lilly drew the curtains, switched off the
+central light, put the green-shaded electric lamp on the table, and
+the two men drew up to the meal.  It was good food, well cooked and
+hot.  Certainly Lilly's hands were no longer clean: but it was clean
+dirt, as he said.
+
+Aaron sat in the low arm-chair at table.  So his face was below, in
+the full light.  Lilly sat high on a small chair, so that his face was
+in the green shadow.  Aaron was handsome, and always had that peculiar
+well-dressed look of his type.  Lilly was indifferent to his own
+appearance, and his collar was a rag.
+
+So the two men ate in silence.  They had been together alone for a
+fortnight only: but it was like a small eternity.  Aaron was well
+now--only he suffered from the depression and the sort of fear that
+follows influenza.
+
+"When are you going?" he asked irritably, looking up at Lilly, whose
+face hovered in that green shadow above, and worried him.
+
+"One day next week.  They'll send me a telegram.  Not later than
+Thursday."
+
+"You're looking forward to going?" The question was half bitter.
+
+"Yes.  I want to get a new tune out of myself."
+
+"Had enough of this?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+A flush of anger came on Aaron's face.
+
+"You're easily on, and easily off," he said, rather insulting.
+
+"Am I?" said Lilly.  "What makes you think so?"
+
+"Circumstances," replied Aaron sourly.
+
+To which there was no answer.  The host cleared away the plates, and
+put the pudding on the table.  He pushed the bowl to Aaron.
+
+"I suppose I shall never see you again, once you've gone," said Aaron.
+
+"It's your choice.  I will leave you an address."
+
+After this, the pudding was eaten in silence.
+
+"Besides, Aaron," said Lilly, drinking his last sip of wine, "what do
+you care whether you see me again or not?  What do you care whether
+you see anybody again or not?  You want to be amused.  And now you're
+irritated because you think I am not going to amuse you any more: and
+you don't know who is going to amuse you.  I admit it's a dilemma.
+But it's a hedonistic dilemma of the commonest sort."
+
+"I don't know hedonistic.  And supposing I am as you say--are you any
+different?"
+
+"No, I'm not very different.  But I always persuade myself there's a
+bit of difference.  Do you know what Josephine Ford confessed to me?
+She's had her lovers enough.  'There isn't any such thing as love,
+Lilly,' she said.  'Men are simply afraid to be alone.  That is
+absolutely all there is in it: fear of being alone.'"
+
+"What by that?" said Aaron.
+
+"You agree?"
+
+"Yes, on the whole."
+
+"So do I--on the whole.  And then I asked her what about woman.  And
+then she said with a woman it wasn't fear, it was just boredom.  A
+woman is like a violinist: any fiddle, any instrument rather than
+empty hands and no tune going."
+
+"Yes--what I said before: getting as much amusement out of life as
+possible," said Aaron.
+
+"You amuse me--and I'll amuse you."
+
+"Yes--just about that."
+
+"All right, Aaron," said Lilly.  "I'm not going to amuse you, or try
+to amuse you any more."
+
+"Going to try somebody else; and Malta."
+
+"Malta, anyhow."
+
+"Oh, and somebody else--in the next five minutes."
+
+"Yes--that also."
+
+"Goodbye and good luck to you."
+
+"Goodbye and good luck to you, Aaron."
+
+With which Lilly went aside to wash the dishes.  Aaron sat alone under
+the zone of light, turning over a score of _Pelleas_.  Though the noise
+of London was around them, it was far below, and in the room was a deep
+silence.  Each of the men seemed invested in his own silence.
+
+Aaron suddenly took his flute, and began trying little passages from
+the opera on his knee.  He had not played since his illness.  The noise
+came out a little tremulous, but low and sweet.  Lilly came forward
+with a plate and a cloth in his hand.
+
+"Aaron's rod is putting forth again," he said, smiling.
+
+"What?" said Aaron, looking up.
+
+"I said Aaron's rod is putting forth again."
+
+"What rod?"
+
+"Your flute, for the moment."
+
+"It's got to put forth my bread and butter."
+
+"Is that all the buds it's going to have?"
+
+"What else!"
+
+"Nay--that's for you to show.  What flowers do you imagine came out of
+the rod of Moses's brother?"
+
+"Scarlet runners, I should think if he'd got to live on them."
+
+"Scarlet enough, I'll bet."
+
+Aaron turned unnoticing back to his music.  Lilly finished the wiping
+of the dishes, then took a book and sat on the other side of the table.
+
+"It's all one to you, then," said Aaron suddenly, "whether we ever see
+one another again?"
+
+"Not a bit," said Lilly, looking up over his spectacles.  "I very much
+wish there might be something that held us together."
+
+"Then if you wish it, why isn't there?"
+
+"You might wish your flute to put out scarlet-runner flowers at the
+joints."
+
+"Ay--I might.  And it would be all the same."
+
+The moment of silence that followed was extraordinary in its hostility.
+
+"Oh, we shall run across one another again some time," said Aaron.
+
+"Sure," said Lilly.  "More than that:  I'll write you an address that
+will always find me.  And when you write I will answer you."
+
+He took a bit of paper and scribbled an address.  Aaron folded it and
+put it into his waistcoat pocket.  It was an Italian address.
+
+"But how can I live in Italy?" he said.  "You can shift about.  I'm
+tied to a job."
+
+"You--with your budding rod, your flute--and your charm--you can always
+do as you like."
+
+"My what?"
+
+"Your flute and your charm."
+
+"What charm?"
+
+"Just your own.  Don't pretend you don't know you've got it.  I don't
+really like charm myself; too much of a trick about it.  But whether
+or not, you've got it."
+
+"It's news to me."
+
+"Not it."
+
+"Fact, it is."
+
+"Ha!  Somebody will always take a fancy to you.  And you can live on
+that, as well as on anything else."
+
+"Why do you always speak so despisingly?"
+
+"Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"Have you any right to despise another man?"
+
+"When did it go by rights?"
+
+"No, not with you."
+
+"You answer me like a woman, Aaron."
+
+Again there was a space of silence.  And again it was Aaron who at
+last broke it.
+
+"We're in different positions, you and me," he said.
+
+"How?"
+
+"You can live by your writing--but I've got to have a job."
+
+"Is that all?" said Lilly.
+
+"Ay.  And plenty.  You've got the advantage of me."
+
+"Quite," said Lilly.  "But why?  I was a dirty-nosed little boy when
+you were a clean-nosed little boy.  And I always had more patches on
+my breeches than you: neat patches, too, my poor mother!  So what's
+the good of talking about advantages?  You had the start.  And at this
+very moment you could buy me up, lock, stock, and barrel.  So don't
+feel hard done by.  It's a lie."
+
+"You've got your freedom."
+
+"I make it and I take it."
+
+"Circumstances make it for you."
+
+"As you like."
+
+"You don't do a man justice," said Aaron.
+
+"Does a man care?"
+
+"He might."
+
+"Then he's no man."
+
+"Thanks again, old fellow."
+
+"Welcome," said Lilly, grimacing.
+
+Again Aaron looked at him, baffled, almost with hatred.  Lilly grimaced
+at the blank wall opposite, and seemed to ruminate.  Then he went back
+to his book.  And no sooner had he forgotten Aaron, reading the
+fantasies of a certain Leo Frobenius, than Aaron must stride in again.
+
+"You can't say there isn't a difference between your position and
+mine," he said pertinently.
+
+Lilly looked darkly over his spectacles.
+
+"No, by God," he said.  "I should be in a poor way otherwise."
+
+"You can't say you haven't the advantage--your JOB gives you the
+advantage."
+
+"All right.  Then leave it out with my job, and leave me alone."
+
+"That's your way of dodging it."
+
+"My dear Aaron, I agree with you perfectly.  There is no difference
+between us, save the fictitious advantage given to me by my job.
+Save for my job--which is to write lies--Aaron and I are two identical
+little men in one and the same little boat.  Shall we leave it at that,
+now?"
+
+"Yes," said Aaron.  "That's about it."
+
+"Let us shake hands on it--and go to bed, my dear chap.  You are just
+recovering from influenza, and look paler than I like."
+
+"You mean you want to be rid of me," said Aaron.
+
+"Yes, I do mean that," said Lilly.
+
+"Ay," said Aaron.
+
+And after a few minutes more staring at the score of _Pelleas_, he
+rose, put the score away on the piano, laid his flute beside it, and
+retired behind the screen.  In silence, the strange dim noise of
+London sounding from below, Lilly read on about the Kabyles.  His soul
+had the faculty of divesting itself of the moment, and seeking further,
+deeper interests.  These old Africans!  And Atlantis!  Strange, strange
+wisdom of the Kabyles!  Old, old dark Africa, and the world before the
+flood!  How jealous Aaron seemed!  The child of a jealous God.  A
+jealous God!  Could any race be anything but despicable, with such
+an antecedent?
+
+But no, persistent as a jealous God himself, Aaron reappeared in his
+pyjamas, and seated himself in his chair.
+
+"What is the difference then between you and me, Lilly?" he said.
+
+"Haven't we shaken hands on it--a difference of jobs."
+
+"You don't believe that, though, do you?"
+
+"Nay, now I reckon you're trespassing."
+
+"Why am I?  I know you don't believe it."
+
+"What do I believe then?" said Lilly.
+
+"You believe you know something better than me--and that you are
+something better than me.  Don't you?"
+
+"Do YOU believe it?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That I AM something better than you, and that I KNOW something
+better?"
+
+"No, because I don't see it," said Aaron.
+
+"Then if you don't see it, it isn't there.  So go to bed and sleep
+the sleep of the just and the convalescent.  I am not to be badgered
+any more."
+
+"Am I badgering you?" said Aaron.
+
+"Indeed you are."
+
+"So I'm in the wrong again?"
+
+"Once more, my dear."
+
+"You're a God-Almighty in your way, you know."
+
+"So long as I'm not in anybody else's way--Anyhow, you'd be much
+better sleeping the sleep of the just.  And I'm going out for a
+minute or two.  Don't catch cold there with nothing on--
+
+"I want to catch the post," he added, rising.
+
+Aaron looked up at him quickly.  But almost before there was time to
+speak, Lilly had slipped into his hat and coat, seized his letters,
+and gone.
+
+It was a rainy night.  Lilly turned down King Street to walk to
+Charing Cross.  He liked being out of doors.  He liked to post his
+letters at Charing Cross post office.  He did not want to talk to
+Aaron any more.  He was glad to be alone.
+
+He walked quickly down Villiers Street to the river, to see it flowing
+blackly towards the sea.  It had an endless fascination for him: never
+failed to soothe him and give him a sense of liberty.  He liked the
+night, the dark rain, the river, and even the traffic.  He enjoyed
+the sense of friction he got from the streaming of people who meant
+nothing to him.  It was like a fox slipping alert among unsuspecting
+cattle.
+
+When he got back, he saw in the distance the lights of a taxi
+standing outside the building where he lived, and heard a thumping
+and hallooing.  He hurried forward.
+
+It was a man called Herbertson.
+
+"Oh, why, there you are!" exclaimed Herbertson, as Lilly drew near.
+"Can I come up and have a chat?"
+
+"I've got that man who's had flu.  I should think he is gone to bed."
+
+"Oh!"  The disappointment was plain.  "Well, look here I'll just come
+up for a couple of minutes."  He laid his hand on Lilly's arm.  "I
+heard you were going away.  Where are you going?"
+
+"Malta."
+
+"Malta!  Oh, I know Malta very well.  Well now, it'll be all right
+if I come up for a minute?  I'm not going to see much more of you,
+apparently."  He turned quickly to the taxi.  "What is it on the
+clock?"
+
+The taxi was paid, the two men went upstairs.  Aaron was in bed, but
+he called as Lilly entered the room.
+
+"Hullo!" said Lilly.  "Not asleep?  Captain Herbertson has come in for
+a minute."
+
+"Hope I shan't disturb you," said Captain Herbertson, laying down his
+stick and gloves, and his cap.  He was in uniform.  He was one of the
+few surviving officers of the Guards, a man of about forty-five, good-
+looking, getting rather stout.  He settled himself in the chair where
+Aaron had sat, hitching up his trousers.  The gold identity plate, with
+its gold chain, fell conspicuously over his wrist.
+
+"Been to 'Rosemary,'" he said.  "Rotten play, you know--but passes the
+time awfully well.  Oh, I quite enjoyed it."
+
+Lilly offered him Sauterne--the only thing in the house.
+
+"Oh, yes!  How awfully nice!  Yes, thanks, I shall love it.  Can I
+have it with soda?  Thanks!  Do you know, I think that's the very best
+drink in the tropics: sweet white wine, with soda?  Yes--well!--  Well
+--now, why are you going away?"
+
+"For a change," said Lilly.
+
+"You're quite right, one needs a change now the damned thing is all
+over.  As soon as I get out of khaki I shall be off.  Malta!  Yes!
+I've been in Malta several times.  I think Valletta is quite enjoyable,
+particularly in winter, with the opera.  Oh--er--how's your wife?  All
+right?  Yes!--glad to see her people again.  Bound to be--  Oh, by the
+way, I met Jim Bricknell.  Sends you a message hoping you'll go down
+and stay--down at Captain Bingham's place in Surrey, you know.  Awfully
+queer lot down there.  Not my sort, no.  You won't go down?  No, I
+shouldn't.  Not the right sort of people."
+
+Herbertson rattled away, rather spasmodic.  He had been through the
+very front hell of the war--and like every man who had, he had the war
+at the back of his mind, like an obsession.  But in the meantime, he
+skirmished.
+
+"Yes.  I was on guard one day when the Queen gave one of her tea-
+parties to the blind.  Awful affair.  But the children are awfully
+nice children.  Prince of Wales awfully nice, almost too nice.  Prince
+Henry smart boy, too--oh, a smart boy.  Queen Mary poured the tea,
+and I handed round bread and butter.  She told me I made a very good
+waiter.  I said, Thank you, Madam.  But I like the children.  Very
+different from the Battenbergs.  Oh!--" he wrinkled his nose.  "I
+can't stand the Battenbergs."
+
+"Mount Battens," said Lilly.
+
+"Yes!  Awful mistake, changing the royal name.  They were Guelfs, why
+not remain it?  Why, I'll tell you what Battenberg did.  He was in the
+Guards, too--"
+
+The talk flowed on: about royalty and the Guards, Buckingham Palace
+and St. James.
+
+"Rather a nice story about Queen Victoria.  Man named Joyce, something
+or other, often used to dine at the Palace.  And he was an awfully good
+imitator--really clever, you know.  Used to imitate the Queen.  'Mr.
+Joyce,' she said, 'I hear your imitation is very amusing.  Will you do
+it for us now, and let us see what it is like?'  'Oh, no, Madam!  I'm
+afraid I couldn't do it now.  I'm afraid I'm not in the humour.'  But
+she would have him do it.  And it was really awfully funny.  He had to
+do it.  You know what he did.  He used to take a table-napkin, and put
+it on with one corner over his forehead, and the rest hanging down
+behind, like her veil thing.  And then he sent for the kettle-lid.  He
+always had the kettle-lid, for that little crown of hers.  And then he
+impersonated her.  But he was awfully good--so clever.  'Mr. Joyce,'
+she said.  'We are not amused.  Please leave the room.'  Yes, that is
+exactly what she said: 'WE are not amused--please leave the room.'  I
+like the WE, don't you?  And he a man of sixty or so.  However, he
+left the room and for a fortnight or so he wasn't invited--Wasn't she
+wonderful--Queen Victoria?"
+
+And so, by light transitions, to the Prince of Wales at the front, and
+thus into the trenches.  And then Herbertson was on the subject he was
+obsessed by.  He had come, unconsciously, for this and this only, to
+talk war to Lilly: or at Lilly.  For the latter listened and watched,
+and said nothing.  As a man at night helplessly takes a taxi to find
+some woman, some prostitute, Herbertson had almost unthinkingly got
+into a taxi and come battering at the door in Covent Garden, only to
+talk war to Lilly, whom he knew very little.  But it was a driving
+instinct--to come and get it off his chest.
+
+And on and on he talked, over his wine and soda.  He was not conceited
+--he was not showing off--far from it.  It was the same thing here in
+this officer as it was with the privates, and the same with this
+Englishman as with a Frenchman or a German or an Italian.  Lilly had
+sat in a cowshed listening to a youth in the north country: he had
+sat on the corn-straw that the oxen had been treading out, in
+Calabria, under the moon: he had sat in a farm-kitchen with a German
+prisoner: and every time it was the same thing, the same hot, blind,
+anguished voice of a man who has seen too much, experienced too much,
+and doesn't know where to turn.  None of the glamour of returned
+heroes, none of the romance of war: only a hot, blind, mesmerised
+voice, going on and on, mesmerised by a vision that the soul cannot
+bear.
+
+In this officer, of course, there was a lightness and an appearance
+of bright diffidence and humour.  But underneath it all was the same
+as in the common men of all the combatant nations: the hot, seared
+burn of unbearable experience, which did not heal nor cool, and whose
+irritation was not to be relieved.  The experience gradually cooled on
+top: but only with a surface crust.  The soul did not heal, did not
+recover.
+
+"I used to be awfully frightened," laughed Herbertson.  "Now you say,
+Lilly, you'd never have stood it.  But you would.  You're nervous--and
+it was just the nervous ones that did stand it.  When nearly all our
+officers were gone, we had a man come out--a man called Margeritson,
+from India--big merchant people out there.  They all said he was no
+good--not a bit of good--nervous chap.  No good at all.  But when you
+had to get out of the trench and go for the Germans he was perfect--
+perfect--It all came to him then, at the crisis, and he was perfect.
+
+"Some things frighten one man, and some another.  Now shells would
+never frighten me.  But I couldn't stand bombs.  You could tell the
+difference between our machines and the Germans.  Ours was a steady
+noise--drrrrrrrr!--but their's was heavy, drrrrRURUrrrrRURU!--  My
+word, that got on my nerves. . . .
+
+"No I was never hit.  The nearest thing was when I was knocked down
+by an exploding shell--several times that--you know.  When you shout
+like mad for the men to come and dig you out, under all the earth.
+And my word, you do feel frightened then."  Herbertson laughed with a
+twinkling motion to Lilly.  But between his brows there was a tension
+like madness.
+
+"And a funny thing you know--how you don't notice things.  In--let me
+see--1916, the German guns were a lot better than ours.  Ours were old,
+and when they're old you can't tell where they'll hit: whether they'll
+go beyond the mark, or whether they'll fall short.  Well, this day our
+guns were firing short, and killing our own men.  We'd had the order
+to charge, and were running forward, and I suddenly felt hot water
+spurting on my neck--"  He put his hand to the back of his neck and
+glanced round apprehensively.  "It was a chap called Innes--Oh, an
+awfully decent sort--people were in the Argentine.  He'd been calling
+out to me as we were running, and I was just answering.  When I felt
+this hot water on my neck and saw him running past me with no head--
+he'd got no head, and he went running past me.  I don't know how far,
+but a long way. . . . Blood, you know--Yes--well--
+
+"Oh, I hated Chelsea--I loathed Chelsea--Chelsea was purgatory to me.
+I had a corporal called Wallace--he was a fine chap--oh, he was a fine
+chap--six foot two--and about twenty-four years old.  He was my stand-
+back.  Oh, I hated Chelsea, and parades, and drills.  You know, when
+it's drill, and you're giving orders, you forget what order you've
+just given--in front of the Palace there the crowd don't notice--but
+it's AWFUL for you.  And you know you daren't look round to see what
+the men are doing.  But Wallace was splendid.  He was just behind me,
+and I'd hear him, quite quiet you know, 'It's right wheel, sir.'
+Always perfect, always perfect--yes--well. . . .
+
+"You know you don't get killed if you don't think you will.  Now I
+never thought I should get killed.  And I never knew a man get killed
+if he hadn't been thinking he would.  I said to Wallace I'd rather be
+out here, at the front, than at Chelsea.  I hated Chelsea--I can't
+tell you how much.  'Oh no, sir!' he said.  'I'd rather be at Chelsea
+than here.  I'd rather be at Chelsea.  There isn't hell like this at
+Chelsea.'  We'd had orders that we were to go back to the real camp
+the next day.  'Never mind, Wallace,' I said.  'We shall be out of
+this hell-on-earth tomorrow.'  And he took my hand.  We weren't much
+for showing feeling or anything in the guards.  But he took my hand.
+And we climbed out to charge--Poor fellow, he was killed--"  Herbertson
+dropped his head, and for some moments seemed to go unconscious, as if
+struck.  Then he lifted his face, and went on in the same animated
+chatty fashion: "You see, he had a presentiment.  I'm sure he had a
+presentiment.  None of the men got killed unless they had a
+presentiment--like that, you know. . . ."
+
+Herbertson nodded keenly at Lilly, with his sharp, twinkling, yet
+obsessed eyes.  Lilly wondered why he made the presentiment responsible
+for the death--which he obviously did--and not vice versa.  Herbertson
+implied every time, that you'd never get killed if you could keep
+yourself from having a presentiment.  Perhaps there was something in
+it.  Perhaps the soul issues its own ticket of death, when it can
+stand no more.  Surely life controls life: and not accident.
+
+"It's a funny thing what shock will do.  We had a sergeant and he
+shouted to me.  Both his feet were off--both his feet, clean at the
+ankle.  I gave him morphia.  You know officers aren't allowed to use
+the needle--might give the man blood poisoning.  You give those
+tabloids.  They say they act in a few minutes, but they DON'T.  It's
+a quarter of an hour.  And nothing is more demoralising than when you
+have a man, wounded, you know, and crying out.  Well, this man I gave
+him the morphia before he got over the stunning, you know.  So he
+didn't feel the pain.  Well, they carried him in.  I always used to
+like to look after my men.  So I went next morning and I found he
+hadn't been removed to the Clearing Station.  I got hold of the doctor
+and I said, 'Look here!  Why hasn't this man been taken to the Clearing
+Station?'  I used to get excited.  But after some years they'd got used
+to me.  'Don't get excited, Herbertson, the man's dying.'  'But,' I
+said, 'he's just been talking to me as strong as you are.'  And he had
+--he'd talk as strong and well as you or me, then go quiet for a bit.
+I said I gave him the morphia before he came round from the stunning.
+So he'd felt nothing.  But in two hours he was dead.  The doctor says
+that the shock does it like that sometimes.  You can do nothing for
+them.  Nothing vital is injured--and yet the life is broken in them.
+Nothing can be done--funny thing--Must be something in the brain--"
+
+"It's obviously not the brain," said Lilly.  "It's deeper than the
+brain."
+
+"Deeper," said Herbertson, nodding.
+
+"Funny thing where life is.  We had a lieutenant.  You know we all
+buried our own dead.  Well, he looked as if he was asleep.  Most of
+the chaps looked like that."  Herbertson closed his eyes and laid his
+face aside, like a man asleep and dead peacefully.  "You very rarely
+see a man dead with any other look on his face--you know the other
+look.--"  And he clenched his teeth with a sudden, momentaneous,
+ghastly distortion.--"Well, you'd never have known this chap was dead.
+He had a wound here--in the back of the head--and a bit of blood on
+his hand--and nothing else, nothing.  Well, I said we'd give him a
+decent burial.  He lay there waiting--and they'd wrapped him in a
+filthy blanket--you know.  Well, I said he should have a proper
+blanket.  He'd been dead lying there a day and a half you know.  So
+I went and got a blanket, a beautiful blanket, out of his private kit
+--his people were Scotch, well-known family--and I got the pins, you
+know, ready to pin him up properly, for the Scots Guards to bury him.
+And I thought he'd be stiff, you see.  But when I took him by the
+arms, to lift him on, he sat up.  It gave me an awful shock.  'Why
+he's alive!' I said.  But they said he was dead.  I couldn't believe
+it.  It gave me an awful shock.  He was as flexible as you or me, and
+looked as if he was asleep.  You couldn't believe he was dead.  But we
+pinned him up in his blanket.  It was an awful shock to me.  I couldn't
+believe a man could be like that after he'd been dead two days. . . .
+
+"The Germans were wonderful with the machine guns--it's a wicked thing,
+a machine gun.  But they couldn't touch us with the bayonet.  Every
+time the men came back they had bayonet practice, and they got awfully
+good.  You know when you thrust at the Germans--so--if you miss him,
+you bring your rifle back sharp, with a round swing, so that the butt
+comes up and hits up under the jaw.  It's one movement, following on
+with the stab, you see, if you miss him.  It was too quick for them--
+But bayonet charge was worst, you know.  Because your man cries out
+when you catch him, when you get him, you know.  That's what does
+you. . . .
+
+"No, oh no, this was no war like other wars.  All the machinery of it.
+No, you couldn't stand it, but for the men.  The men are wonderful,
+you know.  They'll be wiped out. . . . No, it's your men who keep you
+going, if you're an officer. . . . But there'll never be another war
+like this.  Because the Germans are the only people who could make a
+war like this--and I don't think they'll ever do it again, do you?
+
+"Oh, they were wonderful, the Germans.  They were amazing.  It was
+incredible, what they invented and did.  We had to learn from them,
+in the first two years.  But they were too methodical.  That's why
+they lost the war.  They were too methodical.  They'd fire their guns
+every ten minutes--regular.  Think of it.  Of course we knew when to
+run, and when to lie down.  You got so that you knew almost exactly
+what they'd do--if you'd been out long enough.  And then you could
+time what you wanted to do yourselves.
+
+"They were a lot more nervous than we were, at the last.  They sent up
+enough light at night from their trenches--you know, those things that
+burst in the air like electric light--we had none of that to do--they
+did it all for us--lit up everything.  They were more nervous than we
+were. . . ."
+
+It was nearly two o'clock when Herbertson left.  Lilly, depressed,
+remained before the fire.  Aaron got out of bed and came uneasily to
+the fire.
+
+"It gives me the bellyache, that damned war," he said.
+
+"So it does me," said Lilly.  "All unreal."
+
+"Real enough for those that had to go through it."
+
+"No, least of all for them," said Lilly sullenly.  "Not as real as a
+bad dream.  Why the hell don't they wake up and realise it!"
+
+"That's a fact," said Aaron.  "They're hypnotised by it."
+
+"And they want to hypnotise me.  And I won't be hypnotised.  The
+war was a lie and is a lie and will go on being a lie till somebody
+busts it."
+
+"It was a fact--you can't bust that.  You can't bust the fact that it
+happened."
+
+"Yes you can.  It never happened.  It never happened to me.  No more
+than my dreams happen.  My dreams don't happen: they only seem."
+
+"But the war did happen, right enough," smiled Aaron palely.
+
+"No, it didn't.  Not to me or to any man, in his own self.  It took
+place in the automatic sphere, like dreams do.  But the ACTUAL MAN in
+every man was just absent--asleep--or drugged--inert--dream-logged.
+That's it."
+
+"You tell 'em so," said Aaron.
+
+"I do.  But it's no good.  Because they won't wake up now even--perhaps
+never.  They'll all kill themselves in their sleep."
+
+"They wouldn't be any better if they did wake up and be themselves--
+that is, supposing they are asleep, which I can't see.  They are what
+they are--and they're all alike--and never very different from what
+they are now."
+
+Lilly stared at Aaron with black eyes.
+
+"Do you believe in them less than I do, Aaron?" he asked slowly.
+
+"I don't even want to believe in them."
+
+"But in yourself?"  Lilly was almost wistful--and Aaron uneasy.
+
+"I don't know that I've any more right to believe in myself than in
+them," he replied.  Lilly watched and pondered.
+
+"No," he said.  "That's not true--I KNEW the war was false: humanly
+quite false.  I always knew it was false.  The Germans were false, we
+were false, everybody was false."
+
+"And not you?" asked Aaron shrewishly.
+
+"There was a wakeful, self-possessed bit of me which knew that the war
+and all that horrible movement was false for me.  And so I wasn't going
+to be dragged in.  The Germans could have shot my mother or me or what
+they liked: I wouldn't have joined the WAR.  I would like to kill my
+enemy.  But become a bit of that huge obscene machine they called the
+war, that I never would, no, not if I died ten deaths and had eleven
+mothers violated.  But I would like to kill my enemy: Oh, yes, more
+than one enemy.  But not as a unit in a vast obscene mechanism.  That
+never: no, never."
+
+Poor Lilly was too earnest and vehement.  Aaron made a fine nose.
+It seemed to him like a lot of words and a bit of wriggling out of
+a hole.
+
+"Well," he said, "you've got men and nations, and you've got the
+machines of war--so how are you going to get out of it?  League of
+Nations?"
+
+"Damn all leagues.  Damn all masses and groups, anyhow.  All I want
+is to get MYSELF out of their horrible heap: to get out of the swarm.
+The swarm to me is nightmare and nullity--horrible helpless writhing
+in a dream.  I want to get myself awake, out of it all--all that mass-
+consciousness, all that mass-activity--it's the most horrible nightmare
+to me.  No man is awake and himself.  No man who was awake and in
+possession of himself would use poison gases: no man.  His own awake
+self would scorn such a thing.  It's only when the ghastly mob-sleep,
+the dream helplessness of the mass-psyche overcomes him, that he
+becomes completely base and obscene."
+
+"Ha--well," said Aaron.  "It's the wide-awake ones that invent the
+poison gas, and use it.  Where should we be without it?"
+
+Lilly started, went stiff and hostile.
+
+"Do you mean that, Aaron?" he said, looking into Aaron's face with a
+hard, inflexible look.
+
+Aaron turned aside half sheepishly.
+
+"That's how it looks on the face of it, isn't it?" he said.
+
+"Look here, my friend, it's too late for you to be talking to me about
+the face of things.  If that's how you feel, put your things on and
+follow Herbertson.  Yes--go out of my room.  I don't put up with the
+face of things here."
+
+Aaron looked at him in cold amazement.
+
+"It'll do tomorrow morning, won't it?" he asked rather mocking.
+
+"Yes," said Lilly coldly.  "But please go tomorrow morning."
+
+"Oh, I'll go all right," said Aaron.  "Everybody's got to agree with
+you--that's your price."
+
+But Lilly did not answer.  Aaron turned into bed, his satirical smile
+under his nose.  Somewhat surprised, however, at this sudden turn of
+affairs.
+
+As he was just going to sleep, dismissing the matter, Lilly came once
+more to his bedside, and said, in a hard voice:
+
+"I'm NOT going to pretend to have friends on the face of things.  No,
+and I don't have friends who don't fundamentally agree with me.  A
+friend means one who is at one with me in matters of life and death.
+And if you're at one with all the rest, then you're THEIR friend, not
+mine.  So be their friend.  And please leave me in the morning.  You
+owe me nothing, you have nothing more to do with me.  I have had enough
+of these friendships where I pay the piper and the mob calls the tune.
+
+"Let me tell you, moreover, your heroic Herbertsons lost us more than
+ever they won.  A brave ant is a damned cowardly individual.  Your
+heroic officers are a sad sight AFTERWARDS, when they come home.
+Bah, your Herbertson!  The only justification for war is what we
+learn from it.  And what have they learnt?--Why did so many of them
+have presentiments, as he called it?  Because they could feel inside
+them, there was nothing to come after.  There was no life-courage:
+only death-courage.  Nothing beyond this hell--only death or love--
+languishing--"
+
+"What could they have seen, anyhow?" said Aaron.
+
+"It's not what you see, actually.  It's the kind of spirit you keep
+inside you: the life spirit.  When Wallace had presentiments,
+Herbertson, being officer, should have said: 'None of that, Wallace.
+You and I, we've got to live and make life smoke.'--Instead of which
+he let Wallace be killed and his own heart be broken.  Always the
+death-choice--  And we won't, we simply will not face the world as
+we've made it, and our own souls as we find them, and take the
+responsibility.  We'll never get anywhere till we stand up man to
+man and face EVERYTHING out, and break the old forms, but never let
+our own pride and courage of life be broken."
+
+Lilly broke off, and went silently to bed.  Aaron turned over to sleep,
+rather resenting the sound of so many words.  What difference did it
+make, anyhow?  In the morning, however, when he saw the other man's
+pale, closed, rather haughty face, he realised that something _had_
+happened.  Lilly was courteous and even affable: but with a curious
+cold space between him and Aaron.  Breakfast passed, and Aaron knew
+that he must leave.  There was something in Lilly's bearing which just
+showed him the door.  In some surprise and confusion, and in some
+anger, not unmingled with humorous irony, he put his things in his
+bag.  He put on his hat and coat.  Lilly was seated rather stiffly
+writing.
+
+"Well," said Aaron.  "I suppose we shall meet again."
+
+"Oh, sure to," said Lilly, rising from his chair.  "We are sure to run
+across one another."
+
+"When are you going?" asked Aaron.
+
+"In a few days' time."
+
+"Oh, well, I'll run in and see you before you go, shall I?"
+
+"Yes, do."
+
+Lilly escorted his guest to the top of the stairs, shook hands, and
+then returned into his own room, closing the door on himself.
+
+Aaron did not find his friend at home when he called.  He took it
+rather as a slap in the face.  But then he knew quite well that Lilly
+had made a certain call on his, Aaron's soul: a call which he, Aaron,
+did not at all intend to obey.  If in return the soul-caller chose to
+shut his street-door in the face of the world-friend--well, let it be
+quits.  He was not sure whether he felt superior to his unworldly
+enemy or not.  He rather thought he did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+MORE PILLAR OF SALT
+
+
+The opera season ended, Aaron was invited by Cyril Scott to join a
+group of musical people in a village by the sea.  He accepted, and
+spent a pleasant month.  It pleased the young men musically-inclined
+and bohemian by profession to patronise the flautist, whom they
+declared marvellous.  Bohemians with well-to-do parents, they could
+already afford to squander a little spasmodic and self-gratifying
+patronage.  And Aaron did not mind being patronised.  He had nothing
+else to do.
+
+But the party broke up early in September.  The flautist was detained
+a few days at a country house, for the amusement of the guests.  Then
+he left for London.
+
+In London he found himself at a loose end.  A certain fretful dislike
+of the patronage of indifferent young men, younger than himself, and
+a certain distaste for regular work in the orchestra made him look
+round.  He wanted something else.  He wanted to disappear again.
+Qualms and emotions concerning his abandoned family overcame him.
+The early, delicate autumn affected him.  He took a train to the
+Midlands.
+
+And again, just after dark, he strolled with his little bag across the
+field which lay at the end of his garden.  It had been mown, and the
+grass was already growing long.  He stood and looked at the line of
+back windows, lighted once more.  He smelled the scents of autumn,
+phlox and moist old vegetation and corn in sheaf.  A nostalgia which
+was half at least revulsion affected him.  The place, the home, at
+once fascinated and revolted him.
+
+Sitting in his shed, he scrutinised his garden carefully, in the
+starlight.  There were two rows of beans, rather disshevelled.  Near
+at hand the marrow plants sprawled from their old bed.  He could detect
+the perfume of a few carnations.  He wondered who it was had planted
+the garden, during his long absence.  Anyhow, there it was, planted
+and fruited and waning into autumn.
+
+The blind was not drawn.  It was eight o'clock.  The children were
+going to bed.  Aaron waited in his shed, his bowels stirred with
+violent but only half-admitted emotions.  There was his wife, slim and
+graceful, holding a little mug to the baby's mouth.  And the baby was
+drinking.  She looked lonely.  Wild emotions attacked his heart.  There
+was going to be a wild and emotional reconciliation.
+
+Was there?  It seemed like something fearful and imminent.  A passion
+arose in him, a craving for the violent emotional reconciliation.  He
+waited impatiently for the children to be gone to bed, gnawed with
+restless desire.
+
+He heard the clock strike nine, then half-past, from the village
+behind.  The children would be asleep.  His wife was sitting sewing
+some little frock.  He went lingering down the garden path, stooping
+to lift the fallen carnations, to see how they were.  There were many
+flowers, but small.  He broke one off, then threw it away.  The golden
+rod was out.  Even in the little lawn there were asters, as of old.
+
+His wife started to listen, hearing his step.  He was filled with a
+violent conflict of tenderness, like a sickness.  He hesitated, tapping
+at the door, and entered.  His wife started to her feet, at bay.
+
+"What have you come for!" was her involuntary ejaculation.
+
+But he, with the familiar odd jerk of his head towards the garden,
+asked with a faint smile:
+
+"Who planted the garden?"
+
+And he felt himself dropping into the twang of the vernacular, which
+he had discarded.
+
+Lottie only stood and stared at him, objectively.  She did not think
+to answer.  He took his hat off, and put it on the dresser.  Again
+the familiar act maddened her.
+
+"What have you come for?" she cried again, with a voice full of hate.
+Or perhaps it was fear and doubt and even hope as well.  He heard
+only hate.
+
+This time he turned to look at her.  The old dagger was drawn in her.
+
+"I wonder," he said, "myself."
+
+Then she recovered herself, and with trembling hand picked up her
+sewing again.  But she still stood at bay, beyond the table.  She
+said nothing.  He, feeling tired, sat down on the chair nearest the
+door.  But he reached for his hat, and kept it on his knee.  She,
+as she stood there unnaturally, went on with her sewing.  There was
+silence for some time.  Curious sensations and emotions went through
+the man's frame seeming to destroy him.  They were like electric
+shocks, which he felt she emitted against him.  And an old sickness
+came in him again.  He had forgotten it.  It was the sickness of the
+unrecognised and incomprehensible strain between him and her.
+
+After a time she put down her sewing, and sat again in her chair.
+
+"Do you know how vilely you've treated me?" she said, staring across
+the space at him.  He averted his face.
+
+Yet he answered, not without irony.
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"And why?" she cried.  "I should like to know why."
+
+He did not answer.  The way she rushed in made him go vague.
+
+"Justify yourself.  Say why you've been so vile to me.  Say what you
+had against me," she demanded.
+
+"What I HAD against her," he mused to himself: and he wondered that
+she used the past tense.  He made no answer.
+
+"Accuse me," she insisted.  "Say what I've done to make you treat me
+like this.  Say it.  You must THINK it hard enough."
+
+"Nay," he said.  "I don't think it."
+
+This speech, by which he merely meant that he did not trouble to
+formulate any injuries he had against her, puzzled her.
+
+"Don't come pretending you love me, NOW.  It's too late," she said
+with contempt.  Yet perhaps also hope.
+
+"You might wait till I start pretending," he said.
+
+This enraged her.
+
+"You vile creature!" she exclaimed.  "Go!  What have you come for?"
+
+"To look at YOU," he said sarcastically.
+
+After a few minutes she began to cry, sobbing violently into her apron.
+And again his bowels stirred and boiled.
+
+"What have I done!  What have I done!  I don't know what I've done
+that he should be like this to me," she sobbed, into her apron.  It
+was childish, and perhaps true.  At least it was true from the childish
+part of her nature.  He sat gloomy and uneasy.
+
+She took the apron from her tear-stained face, and looked at him.  It
+was true, in her moments of roused exposure she was a beautiful woman--
+a beautiful woman.  At this moment, with her flushed, tear-stained,
+wilful distress, she was beautiful.
+
+"Tell me," she challenged.  "Tell me!  Tell me what I've done.  Tell
+me what you have against me.  Tell me."
+
+Watching like a lynx, she saw the puzzled, hurt look in his face.
+Telling isn't so easy--especially when the trouble goes too deep for
+conscious comprehension.  He couldn't _tell_ what he had against her.
+And he had not the slightest intention of doing what she would have
+liked him to do, starting to pile up detailed grievances.  He knew
+the detailed grievances were nothing in themselves.
+
+"You CAN'T," she cried vindictively.  "You CAN'T.  You CAN'T find
+anything real to bring against me, though you'd like to.  You'd like
+to be able to accuse me of something, but you CAN'T, because you know
+there isn't anything."
+
+She watched him, watched.  And he sat in the chair near the door,
+without moving.
+
+"You're unnatural, that's what you are," she cried.  "You're
+unnatural.  You're not a man.  You haven't got a man's feelings.
+You're nasty, and cold, and unnatural.  And you're a coward.  You're
+a coward.  You run away from me, without telling me what you've got
+against me."
+
+"When you've had enough, you go away and you don't care what you do,"
+he said, epigrammatic.
+
+She paused a moment.
+
+"Enough of what?" she said.  "What have you had enough of?  Of me and
+your children?  It's a nice manly thing to say.  Haven't I loved you?
+Haven't I loved you for twelve years, and worked and slaved for you
+and tried to keep you right?  Heaven knows where you'd have been but
+for me, evil as you are at the bottom.  You're evil, that's what it
+is--and weak.  You're too weak to love a woman and give her what she
+wants: too weak.  Unmanly and cowardly, he runs away."
+
+"No wonder," he said.
+
+"No," she cried.  "It IS no wonder, with a nature like yours: weak and
+unnatural and evil.  It IS no wonder."
+
+She became quiet--and then started to cry again, into her apron.  Aaron
+waited.  He felt physically weak.
+
+"And who knows what you've been doing all these months?" she wept.
+"Who knows all the vile things you've been doing?  And you're the
+father of my children--the father of my little girls--and who knows
+what vile things he's guilty of, all these months?"
+
+"I shouldn't let my imagination run away with me," he answered.  "I've
+been playing the flute in the orchestra of one of the theatres in
+London."
+
+"Ha!" she cried.  "It's more than that.  Don't think I'm going to
+believe you.  I know you, with your smooth-sounding lies.  You're a
+liar, as you know.  And I know you've been doing other things besides
+play a flute in an orchestra.  You!--as if I don't know you.  And then
+coming crawling back to me with your lies and your pretense.  Don't
+think I'm taken in."
+
+"I should be sorry," he said.
+
+"Coming crawling back to me, and expecting to be forgiven," she went
+on.  "But no--I don't forgive--and I can't forgive--never--not as long
+as I live shall I forgive what you've done to me."
+
+"You can wait till you're asked, anyhow," he said.
+
+"And you can wait," she said.  "And you shall wait."  She took up her
+sewing, and stitched steadily, as if calmly.  Anyone glancing in would
+have imagined a quiet domestic hearth at that moment.  He, too, feeling
+physically weak, remained silent, feeling his soul absent from the
+scene.
+
+Again she suddenly burst into tears, weeping bitterly.
+
+"And the children," she sobbed, rocking herself with grief and chagrin.
+"What have I been able to say to the children--what have I been able
+to tell them?"
+
+"What HAVE you told them?" he asked coldly.
+
+"I told them you'd gone away to work," she sobbed, laying her head on
+her arms on the table.  "What else could I tell them?  I couldn't tell
+them the vile truth about their father.  I couldn't tell THEM how evil
+you are."  She sobbed and moaned.
+
+He wondered what exactly the vile truth would have been, had she
+_started_ to tell it.  And he began to feel, coldly and cynically,
+that among all her distress there was a luxuriating in the violent
+emotions of the scene in hand, and the situation altogether.
+
+Then again she became quiet, and picked up her sewing.  She stitched
+quietly, wistfully, for some time.  Then she looked up at him--a long
+look of reproach, and sombre accusation, and wifely tenderness.  He
+turned his face aside.
+
+"You know you've been wrong to me, don't you?" she said, half
+wistfully, half menacing.
+
+He felt her wistfulness and her menace tearing him in his bowels
+and loins.
+
+"You do know, don't you?" she insisted, still with the wistful appeal,
+and the veiled threat.
+
+"You do, or you would answer," she said.  "You've still got enough
+that's right in you, for you to know."
+
+She waited.  He sat still, as if drawn by hot wires.
+
+Then she slipped across to him, put her arms round him, sank on her
+knees at his side, and sank her face against his thigh.
+
+"Say you know how wrong you are.  Say you know how cruel you've been
+to me," she pleaded.  But under her female pleading and appeal he felt
+the iron of her threat.
+
+"You DO know it," she murmured, looking up into his face as she
+crouched by his knee.  "You DO know it.  I can see in your eyes that
+you know it.  And why have you come back to me, if you don't know it!
+Why have you come back to me?  Tell me!"  Her arms gave him a sharp,
+compulsory little clutch round the waist.  "Tell me!  Tell me!" she
+murmured, with all her appeal liquid in her throat.
+
+But him, it half overcame, and at the same time, horrified.  He had a
+certain horror of her.  The strange liquid sound of her appeal seemed
+to him like the swaying of a serpent which mesmerises the fated,
+fluttering, helpless bird.  She clasped her arms round him, she drew
+him to her, she half roused his passion.  At the same time she coldly
+horrified and repelled him.  He had not the faintest feeling, at the
+moment, of his own wrong.  But she wanted to win his own self-betrayal
+out of him.  He could see himself as the fascinated victim, falling to
+this cajoling, awful woman, the wife of his bosom.  But as well, he
+had a soul outside himself, which looked on the whole scene with cold
+revulsion, and which was as unchangeable as time.
+
+"No," he said.  "I don't feel wrong."
+
+"You DO!" she said, giving him a sharp, admonitory clutch.  "You DO.
+Only you're silly, and obstinate, babyish and silly and obstinate.
+An obstinate little boy--you DO feel wrong.  And you ARE wrong.  And
+you've got to say it."
+
+But quietly he disengaged himself and got to his feet, his face pale
+and set, obstinate as she said.  He put his hat on, and took his little
+bag.  She watched him curiously, still crouching by his chair.
+
+"I'll go," he said, putting his hand on the latch.
+
+Suddenly she sprang to her feet and clutched him by the shirt-neck,
+her hand inside his soft collar, half strangling him.
+
+"You villain," she said, and her face was transfigured with passion
+as he had never seen it before, horrible.  "You villain!" she said
+thickly.  "What have you come here for?"
+
+His soul went black as he looked at her.   He broke her hand away from
+his shirt collar, bursting the stud-holes.  She recoiled in silence.
+And in one black, unconscious movement he was gone, down the garden
+and over the fence and across the country, swallowed in a black
+unconsciousness.
+
+She, realising, sank upon the hearth-rug and lay there curled upon
+herself.  She was defeated.  But she, too, would never yield.  She
+lay quite motionless for some time.  Then she got up, feeling the
+draught on the floor.  She closed the door, and drew down the blind.
+Then she looked at her wrist, which he had gripped, and which pained
+her.  Then she went to the mirror and looked for a long time at her
+white, strained, determined face.  Come life, come death, she, too
+would never yield.  And she realised now that he would never yield.
+
+She was faint with weariness, and would be glad to get to bed and
+sleep.
+
+Aaron meanwhile had walked across the country and was looking for a
+place to rest.  He found a cornfield with a half-built stack, and
+sheaves in stook.  Ten to one some tramp would have found the stack.
+He threw a dozen sheaves together and lay down, looking at the stars
+in the September sky.  He, too, would never yield.  The illusion of
+love was gone for ever.  Love was a battle in which each party strove
+for the mastery of the other's soul.  So far, man had yielded the
+mastery to woman.  Now he was fighting for it back again.  And too
+late, for the woman would never yield.
+
+But whether woman yielded or not, he would keep the mastery of his
+own soul and conscience and actions.  He would never yield himself
+up to her judgment again.  He would hold himself forever beyond her
+jurisdiction.
+
+Henceforth, life single, not life double.
+
+He looked at the sky, and thanked the universe for the blessedness of
+being alone in the universe.  To be alone, to be oneself, not to be
+driven or violated into something which is not oneself, surely it is
+better than anything.  He thought of Lottie, and knew how much more
+truly herself she was when she was alone, with no man to distort her.
+And he was thankful for the division between them.  Such scenes as the
+last were too horrible and unreal.
+
+As for future unions, too soon to think about it.  Let there be clean
+and pure division first, perfected singleness.  That is the only way
+to final, living unison: through sheer, finished singleness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+NOVARA
+
+
+Having no job for the autumn, Aaron fidgetted in London.  He played at
+some concerts and some private shows.  He was one of an odd quartette,
+for example, which went to play to Lady Artemis Hooper,  when she lay
+in bed after her famous escapade of falling through the window of her
+taxi-cab.  Aaron had that curious knack, which belongs to some people,
+of getting into the swim without knowing he was doing it.  Lady Artemis
+thought his flute lovely, and had him again to play for her.  Aaron
+looked at her and she at him.  She, as she reclined there in bed in a
+sort of half-light, well made-up, smoking her cigarettes and talking
+in a rather raucous voice, making her slightly rasping witty comments
+to the other men in the room--of course there were other men, the
+audience--was a shock to the flautist.  This was the bride of the
+moment!  Curious how raucous her voice sounded out of the cigarette
+smoke.  Yet he liked her--the reckless note of the modern, social
+freebooter.  In himself was a touch of the same quality.
+
+"Do you love playing?" she asked him.
+
+"Yes," he said, with that shadow of irony which seemed like a smile on
+his face.
+
+"Live for it, so to speak," she said.
+
+"I make my living by it," he said.
+
+"But that's not really how you take it?" she said.  He eyed her.  She
+watched him over her cigarette.  It was a personal moment.
+
+"I don't think about it," he said.
+
+"I'm sure you don't.  You wouldn't be so good if you did.  You're
+awfully lucky, you know, to be able to pour yourself down your flute."
+
+"You think I go down easy?" he laughed.
+
+"Ah!" she replied, flicking her cigarette broadcast.  "That's the
+point.  What should you say, Jimmy?" she turned to one of the men.
+He screwed his eyeglass nervously and stiffened himself to look
+at her.
+
+"I--I shouldn't like to say, off-hand," came the small-voiced, self-
+conscious answer.  And Jimmy bridled himself and glanced at Aaron.
+
+"Do you find it a tight squeeze, then?" she said, turning to Aaron
+once more.
+
+"No, I can't say that," he answered.  "What of me goes down goes down
+easy enough.  It's what doesn't go down."
+
+"And how much is that?" she asked, eying him.
+
+"A good bit, maybe," he said.
+
+"Slops over, so to speak," she retorted sarcastically.  "And which do
+you enjoy more, trickling down your flute or slopping over on to the
+lap of Mother Earth--of Miss, more probably!"
+
+"Depends," he said.
+
+Having got him a few steps too far upon the personal ground, she left
+him to get off by himself.
+
+So he found London got on his nerves.  He felt it rubbed him the
+wrong way.  He was flattered, of course, by his own success--and
+felt at the same time irritated by it.  This state of mind was by
+no means acceptable.  Wherever he was he liked to be given, tacitly,
+the first place--or a place among the first.  Among the musical
+people he frequented, he found himself on a callow kind of equality
+with everybody, even the stars and aristocrats, at one moment, and a
+backstairs outsider the next.  It was all just as the moment demanded.
+There was a certain excitement in slithering up and down the social
+scale, one minute chatting in a personal tete-a-tete with the most
+famous, or notorious, of the society beauties: and the next walking
+in the rain, with his flute in a bag, to his grubby lodging in
+Bloomsbury.  Only the excitement roused all the savage sarcasm
+that lay at the bottom of his soul, and which burned there like
+an unhealthy bile.
+
+Therefore he determined to clear out--to disappear.  He had a letter
+from Lilly, from Novara.  Lilly was drifting about.  Aaron wrote to
+Novara, and asked if he should come to Italy, having no money to speak
+of.  "Come if you want to.  Bring your flute.  And if you've no money,
+put on a good suit of clothes and a big black hat, and play outside
+the best cafe in any Italian town, and you'll collect enough to get
+on with."
+
+It was a sporting chance.  Aaron packed his bag and got a passport, and
+wrote to Lilly to say he would join him, as invited, at Sir William
+Franks'.  He hoped Lilly's answer would arrive before he left London.
+But it didn't.
+
+Therefore behold our hero alighting at Novara, two hours late, on a
+wet, dark evening.  He hoped Lilly would be there: but nobody.  With
+some slight dismay he faced the big, crowded station.  The stream of
+people carried him automatically through the barrier, a porter having
+seized his bag, and volleyed various unintelligible questions at him.
+Aaron understood not one word.  So he just wandered after the blue
+blouse of the porter.
+
+The porter deposited the bag on the steps of the station front, fired
+off more questions and gesticulated into the half-illuminated space
+of darkness outside the station.  Aaron decided it meant a cab, so he
+nodded and said "Yes."  But there were no cabs.  So once more the blue-
+bloused porter slung the big bag and the little bag on the strap over
+his shoulder, and they plunged into the night, towards some lights and
+a sort of theatre place.
+
+One carriage stood there in the rain--yes, and it was free.
+
+"Keb?  Yes--orright--sir.  Whe'to?  Where you go?  Sir William Franks?
+Yes, I know.  Long way go--go long way.  Sir William Franks."
+
+The cabman spattered his few words of English.  Aaron gave the porter
+an English shilling.  The porter let the coin lie in the middle of
+his palm, as if it were a live beetle, and darted to the light of the
+carriage to examine the beast, exclaiming volubly.  The cabman, wild
+with interest, peered down from the box into the palm of the porter,
+and carried on an impassioned dialogue.  Aaron stood with one foot on
+the step.
+
+"What you give--he?  One franc?" asked the driver.
+
+"A shilling," said Aaron.
+
+"One sheeling.  Yes.  I know that.  One sheeling English"--and the
+driver went off into impassioned exclamations in Torinese.  The
+porter, still muttering and holding his hand as if the coin might
+sting him, filtered away.
+
+"Orright.  He know--sheeling--orright.  English moneys, eh?  Yes, he
+know.  You get up, sir."
+
+And away went Aaron, under the hood of the carriage, clattering down
+the wide darkness of Novara, over a bridge apparently, past huge rain-
+wet statues, and through more rainy, half-lit streets.
+
+They stopped at last outside a sort of park wall with trees above.
+The big gates were just beyond.
+
+"Sir William Franks--there."  In a mixture of Italian and English the
+driver told Aaron to get down and ring the bell on the right.  Aaron
+got down and in the darkness was able to read the name on the plate.
+
+"How much?" said Aaron to the driver.
+
+"Ten franc," said the fat driver.
+
+But it was his turn now to screw down and scrutinise the pink ten-
+shilling note.  He waved it in his hand.
+
+"Not good, eh?  Not good moneys?"
+
+"Yes," said Aaron, rather indignantly.  "Good English money.  Ten
+shillings.  Better than ten francs, a good deal.  Better--better--"
+
+"Good--you say?  Ten sheeling--" The driver muttered and muttered, as
+if dissatisfied.  But as a matter of fact he stowed the note in his
+waistcoat pocket with considerable satisfaction, looked at Aaron
+curiously, and drove away.
+
+Aaron stood there in the dark outside the big gates, and wished
+himself somewhere else.  However, he rang the bell.  There was a huge
+barking of dogs on the other side.  Presently a light switched on,
+and a woman, followed by a man, appeared cautiously, in the half-
+opened doorway.
+
+"Sir William Franks?" said Aaron.
+
+"Si, signore."
+
+And Aaron stepped with his two bags inside the gate.  Huge dogs jumped
+round.  He stood in the darkness under the trees at the foot of the
+park.  The woman fastened the gate--Aaron saw a door--and through an
+uncurtained window a man writing at a desk--rather like the clerk in
+an hotel office.  He was going with his two bags to the open door,
+when the woman stopped him, and began talking to him in Italian.  It
+was evident he must not go on.  So he put down the bags.  The man
+stood a few yards away, watchfully.
+
+Aaron looked down at the woman and tried to make out something of what
+she was saying, but could not.  The dogs still barked spasmodically,
+drops fell from the tall, dark trees that rose overhead.
+
+"Is Mr. Lilly here?  Mr. Lilly?" he asked.
+
+"Signor Lillee.  No, Signore--"
+
+And off the woman went in Italian.  But it was evident Lilly was not
+at the house.  Aaron wished more than ever he had not come, but had
+gone to an hotel.
+
+He made out that the woman was asking him for his name--"Meester--?
+Meester--?" she kept saying, with a note of interrogation.
+
+"Sisson.  Mr. Sisson," said Aaron, who was becoming impatient.  And he
+found a visiting card to give her.  She seemed appeased--said something
+about telephone--and left him standing.
+
+The rain had ceased, but big drops were shaken from the dark, high
+trees.  Through the uncurtained window he saw the man at the desk
+reach the telephone.  There was a long pause.  At length the woman
+came back and motioned to him to go up--up the drive which curved
+and disappeared under the dark trees.
+
+"Go up there?" said Aaron, pointing.
+
+That was evidently the intention.  So he picked up his bags and strode
+forward, from out of the circle of electric light, up the curved drive
+in the darkness.  It was a steep incline.  He saw trees and the grass
+slopes.  There was a tang of snow in the air.
+
+Suddenly, up ahead, a brilliant light switched on.  He continued uphill
+through the trees along the path, towards it, and at length, emerged
+at the foot of a great flight of steps, above which was a wide glass
+entrance, and an Italian manservant in white gloves hovering as if on
+the brink.
+
+Aaron emerged from the drive and climbed the steps.  The manservant
+came down two steps and took the little bag.  Then he ushered Aaron
+and the big bag into a large, pillared hall, with thick Turkish carpet
+on the floor, and handsome appointments.  It was spacious, comfortable
+and warm; but somewhat pretentious; rather like the imposing hall into
+which the heroine suddenly enters on the film.
+
+Aaron dropped his heavy bag, with relief, and stood there, hat in
+hand, in his damp overcoat in the circle of light, looking vaguely
+at the yellow marble pillars, the gilded arches above, the shadowy
+distances and the great stairs.  The butler disappeared--reappeared
+in another moment--and through an open doorway came the host.  Sir
+William was a small, clean old man with a thin, white beard and a
+courtly deportment, wearing a black velvet dinner jacket faced with
+purple silk.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Sisson.  You come straight from England?"
+
+Sir William held out his hand courteously and benevolently, smiling an
+old man's smile of hospitality.
+
+"Mr. Lilly has gone away?" said Aaron.
+
+"Yes.  He left us several days ago."
+
+Aaron hesitated.
+
+"You didn't expect me, then?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes.  Yes, oh, yes.  Very glad to see you--well, now, come
+in and have some dinner--"
+
+At this moment Lady Franks appeared--short, rather plump, but erect
+and definite, in a black silk dress and pearls round her throat.
+
+"How do you do?  We are just at dinner," she said.  "You haven't eaten?
+No--well, then--would you like a bath now, or--?"
+
+It was evident the Franks had dispensed much hospitality: much of it
+charitable.  Aaron felt it.
+
+"No," he said.  "I'll wash my hands and come straight in, shall I?"
+
+"Yes, perhaps that would be better--"
+
+"I'm afraid I am a nuisance."
+
+"Not at all--Beppe--" and she gave instructions in Italian.
+
+Another footman appeared, and took the big bag.  Aaron took the little
+one this time.  They climbed the broad, turning stairs, crossed another
+handsome lounge, gilt and ormolu and yellow silk chairs and scattered
+copies of _The Graphic_ or of _Country Life_, then they disappeared
+through a doorway into a much narrower flight of stairs.  Man can so
+rarely keep it up all the way, the grandeur.
+
+Two black and white chamber-maids appeared.  Aaron found himself in
+a blue silk bedroom, and a footman unstrapping his bag, which he did
+not want unstrapped.  Next minute he was beckoned and allured by the
+Italian servants down the corridor, and presented to the handsome,
+spacious bathroom, which was warm and creamy-coloured and glittering
+with massive silver and mysterious with up-to-date conveniences.  There
+he was left to his own devices, and felt like a small boy finding out
+how it works.  For even the mere turning on of the taps was a problem
+in silver mechanics.
+
+In spite of all the splendours and the elaborated convenience, he
+washed himself in good hot water, and wished he were having a bath,
+chiefly because of the wardrobe of marvellous Turkish towels.  Then he
+clicked his way back to his bedroom, changed his shirt and combed his
+hair in the blue silk bedroom with the Greuze picture, and felt a
+little dim and superficial surprise.  He had fallen into country house
+parties before, but never into quite such a plushy sense of riches.
+He felt he ought to have his breath taken away.  But alas, the cinema
+has taken our breath away so often, investing us in all the splendours
+of the splendidest American millionaire, or all the heroics and marvels
+of the Somme or the North Pole, that life has now no magnate richer
+than we, no hero nobler than we have been, on the film.  _Connu_!
+_Connu_!  Everything life has to offer is known to us, couldn't be
+known better, from the film.
+
+So Aaron tied his tie in front of a big Venice mirror, and nothing was
+a surprise to him.  He found a footman hovering to escort him to the
+dining-room--a real Italian footman, uneasy because milady's dinner
+was unsettled.  He entered the rather small dining-room, and saw the
+people at table.
+
+He was told various names: bowed to a young, slim woman with big
+blue eyes and dark hair like a photograph, then to a smaller rather
+colourless young woman with a large nose: then to a stout, rubicund,
+bald colonel, and to a tall, thin, Oxford-looking major with a black
+patch over his eye--both these men in khaki: finally to a good-
+looking, well-nourished young man in a dinner-jacket, and he sat down
+to his soup, on his hostess' left hand.  The colonel sat on her right,
+and was confidential.  Little Sir William, with his hair and his beard
+white like spun glass, his manner very courteous and animated, the
+purple facings of his velvet jacket very impressive, sat at the far
+end of the table jesting with the ladies and showing his teeth in an
+old man's smile, a little bit affected, but pleasant, wishing everybody
+to be happy.
+
+Aaron ate his soup, trying to catch up.  Milady's own confidential
+Italian butler, fidelity itself, hovered quivering near, spiritually
+helping the newcomer to catch up.  Two nice little entree dishes,
+specially prepared for Aaron to take the place of the bygone fish
+and vol au-vents of the proper dinner, testified to the courtesy
+and charity of his hostess.
+
+Well, eating rapidly, he had more or less caught up by the time the
+sweets came.  So he swallowed a glass of wine and looked round.  His
+hostess with her pearls, and her diamond star in her grey hair, was
+speaking of Lilly and then of music to him.
+
+"I hear you are a musician.  That's what I should have been if I had
+had my way."
+
+"What instrument?" asked Aaron.
+
+"Oh, the piano.  Yours is the flute, Mr. Lilly says.  I think the flute
+can be so attractive.  But I feel, of course you have more range with
+the piano.  I love the piano--and orchestra."
+
+At that moment, the colonel and hostess-duties distracted her.  But
+she came back in snatches.  She was a woman who reminded him a little
+of Queen Victoria; so assured in her own room, a large part of her
+attention always given to the successful issue of her duties, the
+remainder at the disposal of her guests.  It was an old-fashioned,
+not unpleasant feeling: like retrospect.  But she had beautiful, big,
+smooth emeralds and sapphires on her fingers.  Money!  What a curious
+thing it is!  Aaron noticed the deference of all the guests at table:
+a touch of obsequiousness: before the money!  And the host and hostess
+accepted the deference, nay, expected it, as their due.  Yet both Sir
+William and Lady Franks knew that it was only money and success.  They
+had both a certain afterthought, knowing dimly that the game was but
+a game, and that they were the helpless leaders in the game.  They
+had a certain basic ordinariness which prevented their making any
+great hits, and which kept them disillusioned all the while.  They
+remembered their poor and insignificant days.
+
+"And I hear you were playing in the orchestra at Covent Garden.  We
+came back from London last week.  I enjoyed Beecham's operas so much."
+
+"Which do you like best?" said Aaron.
+
+"Oh, the Russian.  I think _Ivan_.  It is such fine music."
+
+"I find _Ivan_ artificial."
+
+"Do you?  Oh, I don't think so.  No, I don't think you can say that."
+
+Aaron wondered at her assurance.  She seemed to put him just a tiny
+bit in his place, even in an opinion on music.  Money gave her that
+right, too.  Curious--the only authority left.  And he deferred to her
+opinion: that is, to her money.  He did it almost deliberately.  Yes--
+what did he believe in, besides money?  What does any man?  He looked
+at the black patch over the major's eye.  What had he given his eye
+for?--the nation's money.  Well, and very necessary, too; otherwise
+we might be where the wretched Austrians are.  Instead of which--how
+smooth his hostess' sapphires!
+
+"Of course I myself prefer Moussorgsky," said Aaron.  "I think he is a
+greater artist.  But perhaps it is just personal preference."
+
+"Yes.  _Boris_ is wonderful.  Oh, some of the scenes in _Boris_!"
+
+"And even more _Kovantchina_," said Aaron.  "I wish we could go back
+to melody pure and simple.  Yet I find _Kovantchina_, which is all
+mass music practically, gives me more satisfaction than any other
+opera."
+
+"Do you really?  I shouldn't say so: oh, no--but you can't mean that
+you would like all music to go back to melody pure and simple!  Just
+a flute--just a pipe!  Oh, Mr. Sisson, you are bigoted for your
+instrument.  I just LIVE in harmony--chords, chords!"  She struck
+imaginary chords on the white damask, and her sapphires swam blue.
+But at the same time she was watching to see if Sir William had still
+got beside his plate the white medicine _cachet_ which he must swallow
+at every meal.  Because if so, she must remind him to swallow it.
+However, at that very moment, he put it on his tongue.  So that she
+could turn her attention again to Aaron and the imaginary chord on
+the white damask; the thing she just lived in.  But the rubicund bald
+colonel, more rubicund after wine, most rubicund now the Marsala was
+going, snatched her attention with a burly homage to her femininity,
+and shared his fear with her with a boyish gallantry.
+
+When the women had gone up, Sir William came near and put his hand on
+Aaron's shoulder.  It was evident the charm was beginning to work.  Sir
+William was a self-made man, and not in the least a snob.  He liked the
+fundamental ordinariness in Aaron, the commonness of the common man.
+
+"Well now, Mr. Sisson, we are very glad to see you!  Very glad, indeed.
+I count Mr. Lilly one of the most interesting men it has ever been my
+good fortune to know.  And so for your own sake, and for Mr. Lilly's
+sake, we are very glad to see you.  Arthur, my boy, give Mr. Sisson
+some Marsala--and take some yourself."
+
+"Thank you, Sir," said the well-nourished young man in nice evening
+clothes.  "You'll take another glass yourself, Sir?"
+
+"Yes, I will, I will.  I will drink a glass with Mr. Sisson.  Major,
+where are you wandering off to?  Come and take a glass with us, my
+boy."
+
+"Thanks, Sir William," drawled the young major with the black patch.
+
+"Now, Colonel--I hope you are in good health and spirits."
+
+"Never better, Sir William, never better."
+
+"I'm very glad to hear it; very glad indeed.  Try my Marsala--I think
+it is quite good.  Port is beyond us for the moment--for the moment--"
+
+And the old man sipped his brown wine, and smiled again.  He made quite
+a handsome picture: but he was frail.
+
+"And where are you bound, Mr. Sisson?  Towards Rome?"
+
+"I came to meet Lilly," said Aaron.
+
+"Ah!  But Lilly has fled over the borders by this time.  Never was such
+a man for crossing frontiers.  Wonderful person, to be able to do it."
+
+"Where has he gone?" said Aaron.
+
+"I think to Geneva for the moment.  But he certainly talked of Venice.
+You yourself have no definite goal?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah!  You have not come to Italy to practice your art?"
+
+"I shall HAVE to practice it: or else--no, I haven't come for that."
+
+"Ah, you will HAVE to practice it.  Ah, yes!  We are all under the
+necessity to eat.  And you have a family in England?  Am I not right?"
+
+"Quite.  I've got a family depending on me."
+
+"Yes, then you must practice your art: you must practice your art.
+Well--shall we join the ladies?  Coffee will no doubt be served."
+
+"Will you take my arm, Sir?" said the well-nourished Arthur.
+
+"Thank you, thank you," the old man motioned him away.
+
+So they went upstairs to where the three women were sitting in the
+library round the fire, chattering not very interested.  The entry
+of Sir William at once made a stir.
+
+The girl in white, with the biggish nose, fluttered round him.  She
+was Arthur's wife.  The girl in soft blue spread herself on the couch:
+she was the young Major's wife, and she had a blue band round her
+hair.  The Colonel hovered stout and fidgetty round Lady Franks and
+the liqueur stand.  He and the Major were both in khaki--belonging to
+the service on duty in Italy still.
+
+Coffee appeared--and Sir William doled out _creme de menthe_.  There
+was no conversation--only tedious words.  The little party was just
+commonplace and dull--boring.  Yet Sir William, the self-made man, was
+a study.  And the young, Oxford-like Major, with his English diffidence
+and his one dark, pensive, baffled eye was only waiting to be earnest,
+poor devil.
+
+The girl in white had been a sort of companion to Lady Franks, so that
+Arthur was more or less a son-in-law.  In this capacity, he acted.
+Aaron strayed round uneasily looking at the books, bought but not
+read, and at the big pictures above.  It was Arthur who fetched out
+the little boxes containing the orders conferred on Sir William for
+his war-work: and perhaps more, for the many thousands of pounds he
+had spent on his war-work.
+
+There were three orders: one British, and quite important, a large
+silver star for the breast: one Italian, smaller, and silver and
+gold; and one from the State of Ruritania, in silver and red-and-
+green enamel, smaller than the others.
+
+"Come now, William," said Lady Franks, "you must try them all on.
+You must try them all on together, and let us see how you look."
+
+The little, frail old man, with his strange old man's blue eyes and
+his old man's perpetual laugh, swelled out his chest and said:
+
+"What, am I to appear in all my vanities?"  And he laughed shortly.
+
+"Of course you are.  We want to see you," said the white girl.
+
+"Indeed we do!  We shouldn't mind all appearing in such vanities--what,
+Lady Franks!" boomed the Colonel.
+
+"I should think not," replied his hostess.  "When a man has honours
+conferred on him, it shows a poor spirit if he isn't proud of them."
+
+"Of course I am proud of them!" said Sir William.  "Well then, come
+and have them pinned on.  I think it's wonderful to have got so much
+in one life-time--wonderful," said Lady Franks.
+
+"Oh, Sir William is a wonderful man," said the Colonel.  "Well--we
+won't say so before him.  But let us look at him in his orders."
+
+Arthur, always ready on these occasions, had taken the large and
+shining British star from its box, and drew near to Sir William, who
+stood swelling his chest, pleased, proud, and a little wistful.
+
+"This one first, Sir," said Arthur.
+
+Sir William stood very still, half tremulous, like a man undergoing
+an operation.
+
+"And it goes just here--the level of the heart.  This is where it
+goes."  And carefully he pinned the large, radiating ornament on
+the black velvet dinner-jacket of the old man.
+
+"That is the first--and very becoming," said Lady Franks.
+
+"Oh, very becoming!  Very becoming!" said the tall wife of the Major--
+she was a handsome young woman of the tall, frail type.
+
+"Do you think so, my dear?" said the old man, with his eternal smile:
+the curious smile of old people when they are dead.
+
+"Not only becoming, Sir," said the Major, bending his tall, slim
+figure forwards.  "But a reassuring sign that a nation knows how
+to distinguish her valuable men."
+
+"Quite!" said Lady Franks.  "I think it is a very great honour to
+have got it.  The king was most gracious, too--  Now the other.
+That goes beside it--the Italian--"
+
+Sir William stood there undergoing the operation of the pinning-on.
+The Italian star being somewhat smaller than the British, there was
+a slight question as to where exactly it should be placed.  However,
+Arthur decided it: and the old man stood before the company with his
+two stars on his breast.
+
+"And now the Ruritanian," said Lady Franks eagerly.
+
+"That doesn't go on the same level with the others, Lady Franks," said
+Arthur.  "That goes much lower down--about here."
+
+"Are you sure?" said Lady Franks.  "Doesn't it go more here?"
+
+"No no, no no, not at all.  Here!  Isn't it so, Sybil?"
+
+"Yes, I think so," said Sybil.
+
+Old Sir William stood quite silent, his breast prepared, peering over
+the facings of his coat to see where the star was going.  The Colonel
+was called in, and though he knew nothing about it, he agreed with
+Arthur, who apparently did know something.  So the star was pinned
+quite low down.  Sir William, peeping down, exclaimed:
+
+"Well, that is most curious now!  I wear an order over the pit of my
+stomach!  I think that is very curious: a curious place to wear an
+order."
+
+"Stand up!  Stand up and let us look!" said Lady Franks.  "There now,
+isn't it handsome?  And isn't it a great deal of honour for one man?
+Could he have expected so much, in one life-time?  I call it wonderful.
+Come and look at yourself, dear"--and she led him to a mirror.
+
+"What's more, all thoroughly deserved," said Arthur.
+
+"I should think so," said the Colonel, fidgetting.
+
+"Ah, yes, nobody has deserved them better," cooed Sybil.
+
+"Nor on more humane and generous grounds," said the Major, _sotto
+voce._
+
+"The effort to save life, indeed," returned the Major's young wife:
+"splendid!"
+
+Sir William stood naively before the mirror and looked at his three
+stars on his black velvet dinner-jacket.
+
+"Almost directly over the pit of my stomach," he said.  "I hope that
+is not a decoration for my greedy APPETITE."  And he laughed at the
+young women.
+
+"I assure you it is in position, Sir," said Arthur.  "Absolutely
+correct.  I will read it out to you later."
+
+"Aren't you satisfied?  Aren't you a proud man!  Isn't it wonderful?"
+said Lady Franks.  "Why, what more could a man want from life?  He
+could never EXPECT so much."
+
+"Yes, my dear.  I AM a proud man.  Three countries have honoured me--"
+There was a little, breathless pause.
+
+"And not more than they ought to have done," said Sybil.
+
+"Well!  Well!  I shall have my head turned.  Let me return to my own
+humble self.  I am too much in the stars at the moment."
+
+Sir William turned to Arthur to have his decorations removed.  Aaron,
+standing in the background, felt the whole scene strange, childish, a
+little touching.  And Lady Franks was so obviously trying to _console_
+her husband: to console the frail, excitable old man with his honours.
+But why console him?  Did he need consolation?  And did she?  It was
+evident that only the hard-money woman in her put any price on the
+decorations.
+
+Aaron came forward and examined the orders, one after the other.  Just
+metal playthings of curious shiny silver and gilt and enamel.  Heavy
+the British one--but only like some heavy buckle, a piece of metal
+merely when one turned it over.  Somebody dropped the Italian cross,
+and there was a moment of horror.  But the lump of metal took no hurt.
+Queer to see the things stowed in their boxes again.  Aaron had always
+imagined these mysterious decorations as shining by nature on the
+breasts of heroes.  Pinned-on pieces of metal were a considerable
+come-down.
+
+The orders were put away, the party sat round the fire in the
+comfortable library, the men sipping more _creme de menthe_, since
+nothing else offered, and the couple of hours in front promising the
+tedium of small-talk of tedious people who had really nothing to say
+and no particular originality in saying it.
+
+Aaron, however, had reckoned without his host.  Sir William sat upright
+in his chair, with all the determination of a frail old man who insists
+on being level with the young.  The new guest sat in a lower chair,
+smoking, that curious glimmer on his face which made him so attractive,
+and which only meant that he was looking on the whole scene from the
+outside, as it were, from beyond a fence.  Sir William came almost
+directly to the attack.
+
+"And so, Mr. Sisson, you have no definite purpose in coming to Italy?"
+
+"No, none," said Aaron.  "I wanted to join Lilly."
+
+"But when you had joined him--?"
+
+"Oh, nothing--stay here a time, in this country, if I could earn my
+keep."
+
+"Ah!--earn your keep?  So you hope to earn your keep here?  May I
+ask how?"
+
+"By my flute."
+
+"Italy is a poor country."
+
+"I don't want much."
+
+"You have a family to provide for."
+
+"They are provided for--for a couple of years."
+
+"Oh, indeed!  Is that so?"
+
+The old man got out of Aaron the detailed account of his circumstances
+--how he had left so much money to be paid over to his wife, and had
+received only a small amount for himself.
+
+"I see you are like Lilly--you trust to Providence," said Sir William.
+
+"Providence or fate," said Aaron.
+
+"Lilly calls it Providence," said Sir William.  "For my own part, I
+always advise Providence plus a banking account.  I have every belief
+in Providence, plus a banking account.  Providence and no banking
+account I have observed to be almost invariably fatal.  Lilly and I
+have argued it.  He believes in casting his bread upon the waters.
+I sincerely hope he won't have to cast himself after his bread, one of
+these days.  Providence with a banking account.  Believe in Providence
+once you have secured enough to live on.  I should consider it
+disastrous to believe in Providence BEFORE.  One can never be SURE
+of Providence."
+
+"What can you be sure of, then?" said Aaron.
+
+"Well, in moderation, I can believe in a little hard cash, and in my
+own ability to earn a little hard cash."
+
+"Perhaps Lilly believes in his own ability, too."
+
+"No.  Not so.  Because he will never directly work to earn money.  He
+works--and works quite well, I am told: but only as the spirit moves
+him, and never with any eye to the market.  Now I call that TEMPTING
+Providence, myself.  The spirit may move him in quite an opposite
+direction to the market--then where is Lilly?  I have put it to him
+more than once."
+
+"The spirit generally does move him dead against the market," said
+Aaron.  "But he manages to scrape along."
+
+"In a state of jeopardy: all the time in a state of jeopardy," said
+the old man.  "His whole existence, and that of his wife, is completely
+precarious.  I found, in my youth, the spirit moved me to various
+things which would have left me and my wife starving.  So I realised
+in time, this was no good.  I took my spirit in hand, therefore, and
+made him pull the cart which mankind is riding in.  I harnessed him
+to the work of productive labour.  And so he brought me my reward."
+
+"Yes," said Aaron.  "But every man according to his belief."
+
+"I don't see," said Sir William, "how a man can BELIEVE in a
+Providence unless he sets himself definitely to the work of earning
+his daily bread, and making provision for future needs.  That's what
+Providence means to me--making provision for oneself and one's family.
+Now, Mr. Lilly--and you yourself--you say you believe in a Providence
+that does NOT compel you to earn your daily bread, and make provision.
+I confess myself I cannot see it: and Lilly has never been able to
+convince me."
+
+"I don't believe in a kind-hearted Providence," said Aaron, "and I
+don't believe Lilly does.  But I believe in chance.  I believe, if
+I go my own way, without tying my nose to a job, chance will always
+throw something in my way: enough to get along with."
+
+"But on what do you base such a very unwarrantable belief?"
+
+"I just feel like that."
+
+"And if you are ever quite without success--and nothing to fall
+back on?"
+
+"I can work at something."
+
+"In case of illness, for example?"
+
+"I can go to a hospital--or die."
+
+"Dear me!  However, you are more logical than Lilly.  He seems to
+believe that he has the Invisible--call it Providence if you will--on
+his side, and that this Invisible will never leave him in the lurch,
+or let him down, so long as he sticks to his own side of the bargain,
+and NEVER works for his own ends.  I don't quite see how he works.
+Certainly he seems to me a man who squanders a great deal of talent
+unworthily.  Yet for some reason or other he calls this true, genuine
+activity, and has a contempt for actual work by which a man makes
+provision for his years and for his family.  In the end, he will have
+to fall back on charity.  But when I say so, he denies it, and says
+that in the end we, the men who work and make provision, will have to
+fall back on him.  Well, all I can say is, that SO FAR he is in far
+greater danger of having to fall back on me, than I on him."
+
+The old man sat back in his chair with a little laugh of triumph.  But
+it smote almost devilishly on Aaron's ears, and for the first time in
+his life he felt that there existed a necessity for taking sides.
+
+"I don't suppose he will do much falling back," he said.
+
+"Well, he is young yet.  You are both young.  You are squandering your
+youth.  I am an old man, and I see the end."
+
+"What end, Sir William?"
+
+"Charity--and poverty--and some not very congenial 'job,' as you call
+it, to put bread in your mouth.  No, no, I would not like to trust
+myself to your Providence, or to your Chance.  Though I admit your
+Chance is a sounder proposition than Lilly's Providence.  You speculate
+with your life and your talent.  I admit the nature which is a born
+speculator.  After all, with your flute, you will speculate in other
+people's taste for luxury, as a man may speculate in theatres or
+_trains de luxe_.  You are the speculator.  That may be your way of
+wisdom.  But Lilly does not even speculate.  I cannot see his point.
+I cannot see his point.  I cannot see his point.  Yet I have the
+greatest admiration for his mentality."
+
+The old man had fired up during this conversation--and all the others
+in the room had gone silent.  Lady Franks was palpably uneasy.  She
+alone knew how frail the old man was--frailer by far than his years.
+She alone knew what fear of his own age, what fear of death haunted
+him now: fear of his own non-existence.  His own old age was an agony
+to him; worse than an agony, a horror.  He wanted to be young--to live,
+to live.  And he was old, he was breaking up.  The glistening youth of
+Aaron, the impetuousness of Lilly fascinated him.  And both these men
+seemed calmly to contradict his own wealth and honours.
+
+Lady Franks tried to turn off the conversation to the trickles of
+normal chit-chat.  The Colonel was horribly bored--so were all the
+women--Arthur was indifferent.  Only the young Major was implicated,
+troubled in his earnest and philosophic spirit.
+
+"What I can't see," he said, "is the place that others have in your
+scheme."
+
+"Is isn't a scheme," said Aaron.
+
+"Well then, your way of life.  Isn't it pretty selfish, to marry a
+woman and then expect her to live on very little indeed, and that
+always precarious, just because you happen to believe in Providence or
+in Chance: which I think worse?  What I don't see is where others come
+in.  What would the world be like if everybody lived that way?"
+
+"Other people can please themselves," said Aaron.
+
+"No, they can't--because you take first choice, it seems to me.
+Supposing your wife--or Lilly's wife--asks for security and for
+provision, as Sir William says.  Surely she has a right to it."
+
+"If I've no right to it myself--and I HAVE no right to it, if I don't
+want it--then what right has she?"
+
+"Every right, I should say.  All the more since you are improvident."
+
+"Then she must manage her rights for herself.  It's no good her
+foisting her rights on to me."
+
+"Isn't that pure selfishness?"
+
+"It may be.  I shall send my wife money as long as I've money to send."
+
+"And supposing you have none?"
+
+"Then I can't send it--and she must look out for herself."
+
+"I call that almost criminal selfishness."
+
+"I can't help it."
+
+The conversation with the young Major broke off.
+
+"It is certainly a good thing for society that men like you and Mr.
+Lilly are not common," said Sir William, laughing.
+
+"Becoming commoner every day, you'll find," interjaculated the
+Colonel.
+
+"Indeed!  Indeed!  Well.  May we ask you another question, Mr. Sisson?
+I hope you don't object to our catechism?"
+
+"No.  Nor your judgment afterwards," said Aaron, grinning.
+
+"Then upon what grounds did you abandon your family?  I know it is a
+tender subject.  But Lilly spoke of it to us, and as far I could see.
+. . ."
+
+"There were no grounds," said Aaron.  "No, there weren't I just left
+them."
+
+"Mere caprice?"
+
+"If it's a caprice to be begotten--and a caprice to be born--and a
+caprice to die--then that was a caprice, for it was the same."
+
+"Like birth or death?   I don't follow."
+
+"It happened to me: as birth happened to me once--and death will
+happen.  It was a sort of death, too: or a sort of birth.  But as
+undeniable as either.  And without any more grounds."
+
+The old, tremulous man, and the young man were watching one another.
+
+"A natural event," said Sir William.
+
+"A natural event," said Aaron.
+
+"Not that you loved any other woman?"
+
+"God save me from it."
+
+"You just left off loving?"
+
+"Not even that.  I went away."
+
+"What from?"
+
+"From it all."
+
+"From the woman in particular?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  Yes.  Yes, that."
+
+"And you couldn't go back?"
+
+Aaron shook his head.
+
+"Yet you can give no reasons?"
+
+"Not any reasons that would be any good.  It wasn't a question of
+reasons.  It was a question of her and me and what must be.  What
+makes a child be born out of its mother to the pain and trouble of
+both of them?  I don't know."
+
+"But that is a natural process."
+
+"So is this--or nothing."
+
+"No," interposed the Major.  "Because birth is a universal process--
+and yours is a specific, almost unique event."
+
+"Well, unique or not, it so came about.  I didn't ever leave off loving
+her--not as far as I know.  I left her as I shall leave the earth when
+I die--because it has to be."
+
+"Do you know what I think it is, Mr. Sisson?" put in Lady Franks.  "I
+think you are just in a wicked state of mind: just that.  Mr. Lilly,
+too.  And you must be very careful, or some great misfortune will
+happen to you."
+
+"It may," said Aaron.
+
+"And it will, mark my word, it will."
+
+"You almost wish it might, as a judgment on me," smiled Aaron.
+
+"Oh, no, indeed.  I should only be too sorry.  But I feel it will,
+unless you are careful."
+
+"I'll be careful, then."
+
+"Yes, and you can't be too careful."
+
+"You make me frightened."
+
+"I would like to make you very frightened indeed, so that you went
+back humbly to your wife and family."
+
+"It would HAVE to be a big fright then, I assure you."
+
+"Ah, you are really heartless.  It makes me angry."
+
+She turned angrily aside.
+
+"Well, well!  Well, well!  Life!  Life!  Young men are a new thing to
+me!"  said Sir William, shaking his head.  "Well, well!  What do you
+say to whiskey and soda, Colonel?"
+
+"Why, delighted, Sir William," said the Colonel, bouncing up.
+
+"A night-cap, and then we retire," said Lady Franks.
+
+Aaron sat thinking.  He knew Sir William liked him: and that Lady
+Franks didn't.  One day he might have to seek help from Sir William.
+So he had better placate milady.  Wrinkling the fine, half mischievous
+smile on his face, and trading on his charm, he turned to his hostess.
+
+"You wouldn't mind, Lady Franks, if I said nasty things about my wife
+and found a lot of fault with her.  What makes you angry is that I know
+it is not a bit more her fault than mine, that we come apart.  It can't
+be helped."
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed.  I disapprove of your way of looking at things
+altogether.  It seems to me altogether cold and unmanly and inhuman.
+Thank goodness my experience of a man has been different."
+
+"We can't all be alike, can we?  And if I don't choose to let you see
+me crying, that doesn't prove I've never had a bad half hour, does it?
+I've had many--ay, and a many."
+
+"Then why are you so WRONG, so wrong in your behaviour?"
+
+"I suppose I've got to have my bout out: and when it's out, I can
+alter."
+
+"Then I hope you've almost had your bout out," she said.
+
+"So do I," said he, with a half-repentant, half-depressed look on his
+attractive face.  The corners of his mouth grimaced slightly under his
+moustache.
+
+"The best thing you can do is to go straight back to England, and
+to her."
+
+"Perhaps I'd better ask her if she wants me, first," he said drily.
+
+"Yes, you might do that, too."  And Lady Franks felt she was quite
+getting on with her work of reform, and the restoring of woman to
+her natural throne.  Best not go too fast, either.
+
+"Say when," shouted the Colonel, who was manipulating the syphon.
+
+"When," said Aaron.
+
+The men stood up to their drinks.
+
+"Will you be leaving in the morning, Mr. Sisson?" asked Lady Franks.
+
+"May I stay till Monday morning?" said Aaron.  They were at Saturday
+evening.
+
+"Certainly.  And you will take breakfast in your room: we all do.  At
+what time?  Half past eight?"
+
+"Thank you very much."
+
+"Then at half past eight the man will bring it in.  Goodnight."
+
+Once more in his blue silk bedroom, Aaron grimaced to himself and
+stood in the middle of the room grimacing.  His hostess' admonitions
+were like vitriol in his ears.  He looked out of the window.  Through
+the darkness of trees, the lights of a city below.  Italy!  The air
+was cold with snow.  He came back into his soft, warm room.  Luxurious
+it was.  And luxurious the deep, warm bed.
+
+He was still asleep when the man came noiselessly in with the tray:
+and it was morning.  Aaron woke and sat up.  He felt that the deep,
+warm bed, and the soft, warm room had made him sleep too well: robbed
+him of his night, like a narcotic.  He preferred to be more
+uncomfortable and more aware of the flight of the dark hours.  It
+seemed numbing.
+
+The footman in his grey house-jacket was neat and Italian and
+sympathising.  He gave good-morning in Italian--then softly arranged
+the little table by the bedside, and put out the toast and coffee and
+butter and boiled egg and honey, with silver and delicate china.  Aaron
+watched the soft, catlike motions of the man.  The dark eyes glanced
+once at the blond man, leaning on his elbow on the pillow.  Aaron's
+face had that watchful, half-amused expression.  The man said something
+in Italian.  Aaron shook his head, laughed, and said:
+
+"Tell me in English."
+
+The man went softly to the window curtains, and motioned them with
+his hand.
+
+"Yes, do," said Aaron.
+
+So the man drew the buff-coloured silk curtains: and Aaron, sitting
+in bed, could see away beyond red roofs of a town, and in the further
+heaven great snowy mountains.
+
+"The Alps," he said in surprise.
+
+"Gli Alpi--si, signore."  The man bowed, gathered up Aaron's clothes,
+and silently retired.
+
+Aaron watched through the window.  It was a frosty morning at the end
+of September, with a clear blue morning-sky, Alpine, and the watchful,
+snow-streaked mountain tops bunched in the distance, as if waiting.
+There they were, hovering round, circling, waiting.  They reminded him
+of marvellous striped sky-panthers circling round a great camp: the
+red-roofed city.  Aaron looked, and looked again.  In the near distance,
+under the house elm-tree tops were yellowing.  He felt himself changing
+inside his skin.
+
+So he turned away to his coffee and eggs.  A little silver egg-cup with
+a curious little frill round it: honey in a frail, iridescent glass
+bowl, gold-iridescent: the charm of delicate and fine things.  He
+smiled half mockingly to himself.  Two instincts played in him: the
+one, an instinct for fine, delicate things: he had attractive hands;
+the other, an inclination to throw the dainty little table with all
+its niceties out of the window.  It evoked a sort of devil in him.
+
+He took his bath: the man had brought back his things: he dressed and
+went downstairs.  No one in the lounge: he went down to the ground
+floor: no one in the big hall with its pillars of yellow marble and
+its gold arches, its enormous, dark, bluey-red carpet.  He stood
+before the great glass doors.  Some red flowers still were blooming in
+the tubs, on the steps, handsome: and beautiful chrysanthemums in the
+wide portico.  Beyond, yellow leaves were already falling on the green
+grass and the neat drive.  Everywhere was silent and empty.  He climbed
+the wide stairs, sat in the long, upper lounge where the papers were.
+He wanted his hat and coat, and did not know where to find them.  The
+windows looked on to a terraced garden, the hill rising steeply behind
+the house.  He wanted to go out.
+
+So he opened more doors, and in a long drawing-room came upon five
+or six manservants, all in the grey house-jackets, all clean-shaven,
+neat, with neat black hair, all with dusters or brushes or feather
+brooms, and all frolicking, chattering, playing like so many monkeys.
+They were all of the same neat, smallish size.  They were all laughing.
+They rolled back a great rug as if it were some football game, one
+flew at the curtains.  And they merely looked at Aaron and went on
+chattering, and laughing and dusting.
+
+Surprised, and feeling that he trespassed, he stood at the window a
+moment looking out.  The noise went on behind him.  So he turned,
+smiling, and asked for his hat, pointing to his head.  They knew at
+once what he wanted.  One of the fellows beckoned him away, down to
+the hall and to the long cupboard place where hats and coats and
+sticks were hung.  There was his hat; he put it on, while the man
+chattered to him pleasantly and unintelligibly, and opened for him
+the back door, into the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WIE ES IHNEN GEFAELLT
+
+
+The fresh morning air comes startling after a central heated house.
+So Aaron found it.  He felt himself dashing up the steps into the
+garden like a bird dashing out of a trap where it has been caught:
+that warm and luxurious house.  Heaven bless us, we who want to save
+civilisation.  We had better make up our minds what of it we want to
+save.  The kernel may be all well and good.  But there is precious
+little kernel, to a lot of woolly stuffing and poisonous rind.
+
+The gardens to Sir William's place were not imposing, and still rather
+war-neglected.  But the pools of water lay smooth in the bright air,
+the flowers showed their colour beside the walks.  Many birds dashed
+about, rather bewildered, having crossed the Alps in their migration
+southwards.  Aaron noted with gratification a certain big magnificence,
+a certain reckless powerfulness in the still-blossoming, harsh-
+coloured, autumn flowers.  Distinct satisfaction he derived from it.
+
+He wandered upwards, up the succeeding flights of step; till he came
+to the upper rough hedge, and saw the wild copse on the hill-crest just
+above.  Passing through a space in the hedge, he climbed the steep last
+bit of Sir William's lane.  It was a little vineyard, with small vines
+and yellowing leaves.  Everywhere the place looked neglected--but as
+if man had just begun to tackle it once more.
+
+At the very top, by the wild hedge where spindle-berries hung pink,
+seats were placed, and from here the view was very beautiful.  The hill
+dropped steep beneath him.  A river wound on the near side of the city,
+crossed by a white bridge.  The city lay close clustered, ruddy on the
+plains, glittering in the clear air with its flat roofs and domes and
+square towers, strangely naked-seeming in the clear, clean air.  And
+massive in the further nearness, snow-streaked mountains, the tiger-
+like Alps.  Tigers prowling between the north and the south.  And this
+beautiful city lying nearest exposed.  The snow-wind brushed her this
+morning like the icy whiskers of a tiger.  And clear in the light lay
+Novara, wide, fearless, violent Novara. Beautiful the perfect air, the
+perfect and unblemished Alp-sky.  And like the first southern flower,
+Novara.
+
+Aaron sat watching in silence.  Only the uneasy birds rustled.  He
+watched the city and the winding river, the bridges, and the imminent
+Alps. He was on the south side.  On the other side of the time
+barrier.  His old, sleepy English nature was startled in its sleep.
+He felt like a man who knows it is time to wake up, and who doesn't
+want to wake up, to face the responsibility of another sort of day.
+
+To open his darkest eyes and wake up to a new responsibility.  Wake up
+and enter on the responsibility of a new self in himself.  Ach, the
+horror of responsibility!  He had all his life slept and shelved the
+burden.  And he wanted to go on sleeping.  It was so hateful to have
+to get a new grip on his own bowels, a new hard recklessness into his
+heart, a new and responsible consciousness into his mind and soul.  He
+felt some finger prodding, prodding, prodding him awake out of the
+sleep of pathos and tragedy and spasmodic passion, and he wriggled,
+unwilling, oh, most unwilling to undertake the new business.
+
+In fact he ran away again.  He gave a last look at the town and its
+white-fanged mountains, and descended through the garden, round the
+way of the kitchen garden and garage and stables and pecking chickens,
+back to the house again.  In the hall still no one.  He went upstairs
+to the long lounge.  There sat the rubicund, bald, boy-like Colonel
+reading the _Graphic_.  Aaron sat down opposite him, and made a feeble
+attempt at conversation.  But the Colonel wasn't having any.  It was
+evident he didn't care for the fellow--Mr. Aaron, that is.  Aaron
+therefore dried up, and began to sit him out, with the aid of _The
+Queen_.  Came a servant, however, and said that the Signor Colonello
+was called up from the hospital, on the telephone.  The Colonel once
+departed, Aaron fled again, this time out of the front doors, and down
+the steep little park to the gates.
+
+Huge dogs and little dogs came bounding forward.  Out of the lodge came
+the woman with the keys, smiling very pleasantly this morning.  So, he
+was in the street.  The wide road led him inevitably to the big bridge,
+with the violent, physical stone statue-groups.  Men and women were
+moving about, and he noticed for the first time the littleness and the
+momentaneousness of the Italians in the street.  Perhaps it was the
+wideness of the bridge and the subsequent big, open boulevard.  But
+there it was: the people seemed little, upright brisk figures moving
+in a certain isolation, like tiny figures on a big stage.  And he felt
+himself moving in the space between.  All the northern cosiness gone.
+He was set down with a space round him.
+
+Little trams flitted down the boulevard in the bright, sweet light.
+The barbers' shops were all busy, half the Novarese at that moment
+ambushed in lather, full in the public gaze.  A shave is nothing if not
+a public act, in the south.  At the little outdoor tables of the cafes
+a very few drinkers sat before empty coffee-cups.  Most of the shops
+were shut.  It was too soon after the war for life to be flowing very
+fast.  The feeling of emptiness, of neglect, of lack of supplies was
+evident everywhere.
+
+Aaron strolled on, surprised himself at his gallant feeling of liberty:
+a feeling of bravado and almost swaggering carelessness which is
+Italy's best gift to an Englishman.  He had crossed the dividing line,
+and the values of life, though ostensibly and verbally the same, were
+dynamically different.  Alas, however, the verbal and the ostensible,
+the accursed mechanical ideal gains day by day over the spontaneous
+life-dynamic, so that Italy becomes as idea-bound and as automatic as
+England: just a business proposition.
+
+Coming to the station, he went inside.  There he saw a money-changing
+window which was open, so he planked down a five-pound note and got
+two-hundred-and-ten lire.  Here was a start.  At a bookstall he saw a
+man buy a big timetable with a large railway map in it.  He immediately
+bought the same. Then he retired to a corner to get his whereabouts.
+
+In the morning he must move: where?  He looked on the map.  The map
+seemed to offer two alternatives, Milan and Genoa.  He chose Milan,
+because of its musical associations and its cathedral.  Milano then.
+Strolling and still strolling, he found the boards announcing Arrivals
+and Departures.  As far as he could make out, the train for Milan left
+at 9:00 in the morning.
+
+So much achieved, he left the big desolating caravanserai of the
+station.  Soldiers were camped in every corner, lying in heaps asleep.
+In their grey-green uniform, he was surprised at their sturdy limbs
+and uniformly short stature.  For the first time, he saw the cock-
+feathers of the Bersaglieri.  There seemed a new life-quality
+everywhere.  Many worlds, not one world.  But alas, the one world
+triumphing more and more over the many worlds, the big oneness
+swallowing up the many small diversities in its insatiable gnawing
+appetite, leaving a dreary sameness throughout the world, that means
+at last complete sterility.
+
+Aaron, however, was too new to the strangeness, he had no eye for the
+horrible sameness that was spreading like a disease over Italy from
+England and the north.  He plunged into the space in front of the
+station, and took a new, wide boulevard.  To his surprise he ran
+towards a big and over-animated statue that stood resolutely with its
+back to the magnificent snow-domes of the wild Alps.  Wolves in the
+street could not have startled him more than those magnificent fierce-
+gleaming mountains of snow at the street-end, beyond the statue.  He
+stood and wondered, and never thought to look who the gentleman was.
+Then he turned right round, and began to walk home.
+
+Luncheon was at one o'clock.  It was half-past twelve when he rang at
+the lodge gates.  He climbed through the leaves of the little park, on
+a side-path, rather reluctantly towards the house.  In the hall Lady
+Franks was discussing with Arthur a fat Pekinese who did not seem very
+well.  She was sure the servants did not obey her orders concerning the
+Pekinese bitch.  Arthur, who was more than indifferent, assured her they
+did.  But she seemed to think that the whole of the male human race was
+in league against the miserable specimen of a she-dog.  She almost cried,
+thinking her Queenie _might_ by some chance meet with, perhaps, a harsh
+word or look.  Queenie apparently fattened on the secret detestation
+of the male human species.
+
+"I can't bear to think that a dumb creature might be ill-treated," she
+said to Aaron.  "Thank goodness the Italians are better than they used
+to be."
+
+"Are they better than they used to be?"
+
+"Oh, much.  They have learnt it from us."
+
+She then enquired if her guest had slept, and if he were rested from
+his journey.  Aaron, into whose face the faint snow-wind and the sun
+had brought a glow, replied that he had slept well and enjoyed the
+morning, thank you.  Whereupon Lady Franks knitted her brows and said
+Sir William had had such a bad night.  He had not been able to sleep,
+and had got up and walked about the room.  The least excitement, and
+she dreaded a break-down.  He must have absolute calm and restfulness.
+
+"There's one for you and your jawing last night, Aaron, my boy!" said
+our hero to himself.
+
+"I thought Sir William seemed so full of life and energy," he said,
+aloud.
+
+"Ah, did you!  No, he WANTS to be.  But he can't do it.  He's very
+much upset this morning.  I have been very anxious about him."
+
+"I am sorry to hear that."
+
+Lady Franks departed to some duty.  Aaron sat alone before the fire.
+It was a huge fireplace, like a dark chamber shut in by tall, finely-
+wrought iron gates.  Behind these iron gates of curly iron the logs
+burned and flickered like leopards slumbering and lifting their heads
+within their cage.  Aaron wondered who was the keeper of the savage
+element, who it was that would open the iron grille and throw on
+another log, like meat to the lions.  To be sure the fire was only to
+be looked at: like wild beasts in the Zoo.  For the house was warm from
+roof to floor.  It was strange to see the blue air of sunlight outside,
+the yellow-edged leaves falling in the wind, the red flowers shaking.
+
+The gong sounded softly through the house.  The Colonel came in
+heartily from the garden, but did not speak to Aaron.  The Major and
+his wife came pallid down the stairs.  Lady Franks appeared, talking
+domestic-secretarial business with the wife of Arthur.  Arthur, well-
+nourished and half at home, called down the stairs.  And then Sir
+William descended, old and frail now in the morning, shaken: still
+he approached Aaron heartily, and asked him how he did, and how he
+had spent his morning.  The old man who had made a fortune: how he
+expected homage: and how he got it!  Homage, like most things, is just
+a convention and a social trick.  Aaron found himself paying homage,
+too, to the old man who had made a fortune.  But also, exacting a
+certain deference in return, from the old man who had made a fortune.
+Getting it, too.  On what grounds?  Youth, maybe.  But mostly, scorn
+for fortunes and fortune-making.  Did he scorn fortunes and fortune-
+making?  Not he, otherwise whence this homage for the old man with
+much money?  Aaron, like everybody else, was rather paralysed by a
+million sterling, personified in one old man.  Paralysed, fascinated,
+overcome.  All those three.  Only having no final control over his own
+make-up, he could not drive himself into the money-making or even into
+the money-having habit.  And he had just wit enough to threaten Sir
+William's golden king with his own ivory queen and knights of wilful
+life.  And Sir William quaked.
+
+"Well, and how have you spent your morning?" asked the host.
+
+"I went first to look at the garden."
+
+"Ah, not much to see now.  They have been beautiful with flowers,
+once.  But for two and a half years the house has been a hospital
+for officers--and even tents in the park and garden--as many as two
+hundred wounded and sick at a time.  We are only just returning to
+civil life.  And flowers need time.  Yes--yes--British officers--for
+two and a half years.  But did you go up, now, to the belvedere?"
+
+"To the top--where the vines are?  I never expected the mountains."
+
+"You never expected the mountains?  Pray, why not?  They are always
+there!"
+
+"But I was never there before.  I never knew they were there, round
+the town.  I didn't expect it like that."
+
+"Ah!  So you found our city impressive?"
+
+"Very!  Ah, very!  A new world to me.  I feel I've come out of myself."
+
+"Yes, it is a wonderful sight--a wonderful sight--  But you have not
+been INTO the town?"
+
+"Yes.  I saw the men being shaved, and all the soldiers at the station:
+and a statue, and mountains behind it.  Oh, I've had a full morning."
+
+"A full morning!  That is good, that is good!"  The old man looked
+again at the younger man, and seemed to get life from him, to live
+in him vicariously.
+
+"Come," said the hostess.  "Luncheon."
+
+Aaron sat again on his hostess' left hand.  The Colonel was more
+affable now it was meal-time.  Sir William was again in a good humour,
+chaffing the young ladies with an old man's gallantry.  But now he
+insisted on drawing Aaron into the play.  And Aaron did not want to be
+drawn.  He did not one bit want to chaffer gallantries with the young
+women.  Between him and Sir William there was a curious rivalry--
+unconscious on both sides.  The old knight had devoted an energetic,
+adventurous, almost an artistic nature to the making of his fortune
+and the developing of later philanthropies.  He had no children.
+Aaron was devoting a similar nature to anything but fortune-making and
+philanthropy.  The one held life to be a storing-up of produce and a
+conservation of energy: the other held life to be a sheer spending of
+energy and a storing-up of nothing but experience.  There they were,
+in opposition, the old man and the young.  Sir William kept calling
+Aaron into the chaffer at the other end of the table: and Aaron kept
+on refusing to join.  He hated long distance answers, anyhow.  And in
+his mood of the moment he hated the young women.  He had a conversation
+with Arthur about statues: concerning which Aaron knew nothing, and
+Arthur less than nothing.  Then Lady Franks turned the conversation to
+the soldiers at the station, and said how Sir William had equipped
+rest-huts for the Italian privates, near the station: but that such
+was the jealousy and spite of the Italian Red Cross--or some such body,
+locally--that Sir William's huts had been left empty--standing unused--
+while the men had slept on the stone floor of the station, night after
+night, in icy winter.  There was evidently much bitter feeling as a
+result of Sir William's philanthropy.  Apparently even the honey of
+lavish charity had turned to gall in the Italian mouth: at least the
+official mouth.  Which gall had been spat back at the charitable, much
+to his pain.  It is in truth a difficult world, particularly when you
+have another race to deal with.  After which came the beef-olives.
+
+"Oh," said Lady Franks, "I had such a dreadful dream last night, such
+a dreadful dream.  It upset me so much.  I have not been able to get
+over it all day."
+
+"What was it?" said Aaron.  "Tell it, and break it."
+
+"Why," said his hostess, "I dreamed I was asleep in my room--just as I
+actually was--and that it was night, yet with a terrible sort of light,
+like the dead light before dawn, so that one could see.  And my maid
+Giuseppina came running into my room, saying: 'Signora!  Signora!  Si
+alza!  Subito!  Signora!  Vengono su!'--and I said, 'Chi?  Chi sono chi
+vengono?  Chi?'--'I Novaresi!  I Novaresi vengono su.  Vengono qui!'--
+I got out of bed and went to the window.  And there they were, in the
+dead light, rushing up to the house, through the trees.  It was so
+awful, I haven't been able to forget it all day."
+
+"Tell me what the words are in English," said Aaron.
+
+"Why," she said, "get up, get up--the Novaresi, the people of Novara
+are coming up--vengono su--they are coming up--the Novara people--work-
+people.  I can't forget it.  It was so real, I can't believe it didn't
+actually happen."
+
+"Ah," said Aaron.  "It will never happen.  I know, that whatever one
+foresees, and FEELS has happened, never happens in real life.  It
+sort of works itself off through the imagining of it."
+
+"Well, it was almost more real to me than real life," said his hostess.
+
+"Then it will never happen in real life," he said.
+
+Luncheon passed, and coffee.  The party began to disperse--Lady Franks
+to answer more letters, with the aid of Arthur's wife--some to sleep,
+some to walk.  Aaron escaped once more through the big gates.  This
+time he turned his back on the town and the mountains, and climbed
+up the hill into the country.  So he went between the banks and the
+bushes, watching for unknown plants and shrubs, hearing the birds,
+feeling the influence of a new soil.  At the top of the hill he saw
+over into vineyards, and a new strange valley with a winding river,
+and jumbled, entangled hills.  Strange wild country so near the town.
+It seemed to keep an almost virgin wildness--yet he saw the white
+houses dotted here and there.
+
+Just below him was a peasant house: and on a little loggia in the sun
+two peasants in white shirtsleeves and black Sunday suits were sitting
+drinking wine, and talking, talking.  Peasant youths in black hats,
+their sweethearts in dark stuff dresses, wearing no hat, but a black
+silk or a white silk scarf, passed slowly along the little road just
+below the ridge.  None looked up to see Aaron sitting there alone.
+From some hidden place somebody was playing an accordion, a jerky
+sound in the still afternoon.  And away beyond lay the unchanging,
+mysterious valley, and the infolding, mysterious hills of Italy.
+
+Returning back again another way, he lost himself at the foot of
+the hill in new and deserted suburb streets--unfinished streets of
+seemingly unfinished houses.  Then a sort of boulevard where bourgeois
+families were taking the Sunday afternoon walk: stout papas, stout,
+pallid mamas in rather cheap black fur, little girls very much dressed,
+and long lads in short socks and round sailor caps, ribbons fluttering.
+Alien they felt, alien, alien, as a bourgeois crowd always does, but
+particularly a foreign, Sunday-best bourgeois crowd.  Aaron wandered
+and wandered, finding the tram terminus and trying blank, unfinished
+street after street.  He had a great disinclination to ask his way.
+
+At last he recognised the bank and the little stream of water that
+ran along the street side.  So he was back in time for tea.  A hospital
+nurse was there, and two other strange women.  Arthur played the part
+of host.  Sir William came in from a walk with the dogs, but retired
+to his room without taking tea.
+
+And so the evening fell.  Aaron sat in the hall at some distance from
+the fire, which burned behind its wrought iron gates.  He was tired now
+with all his impressions, and dispirited.  He thought of his wife and
+children at home: of the church-bells ringing so loudly across the
+field beyond his garden end: of the dark-clad people trailing unevenly
+across the two paths, one to the left, one to the right, forking their
+way towards the houses of the town, to church or to chapel: mostly to
+chapel.  At this hour he himself would be dressed in his best clothes,
+tying his bow, ready to go out to the public house.  And his wife would
+be resenting his holiday departure, whilst she was left fastened to
+the children.
+
+Rather tired and dispirited in this alien place, he wondered if he
+wished himself back.  But the moment he actually _realised_ himself
+at home, and felt the tension of barrenness which it meant, felt the
+curious and deadly opposition of his wife's will against his own
+nature, the almost nauseating ache which it amounted to, he pulled
+himself together and rejoiced again in his new surroundings.  Her will,
+her will, her terrible, implacable, cunning will!  What was there in
+the female will so diabolical, he asked himself, that it could press
+like a flat sheet of iron against a man all the time?  The female will!
+He realised now that he had a horror of it.  It was flat and inflexible
+as a sheet of iron.  But also it was cunning as a snake that could sing
+treacherous songs.
+
+Of two people at a deadlock, he always reminded himself, there is not
+one only wholly at fault.  Both must be at fault.  Having a detached
+and logical soul, he never let himself forget this truth.  Take Lottie!
+He had loved her.  He had never loved any other woman.  If he had had
+his other affairs--it was out of spite or defiance or curiosity.  They
+meant nothing.  He and Lottie had loved one another.  And the love had
+developed almost at once into a kind of combat.  Lottie had been the
+only child of headstrong, well-to-do parents.  He also had been the
+only child of his widowed mother.  Well then, both he and Lottie had
+been brought up to consider themselves the first in whatsoever company
+they found themselves.  During the early months of the marriage he had,
+of course, continued the spoiling of the young wife.  But this never
+altered the fact that, by his very nature, he considered himself as
+first and almost as single in any relationship.  First and single he
+felt, and as such he bore himself.  It had taken him years to realise
+that Lottie also felt herself first and single: under all her
+whimsicalness and fretfulness was a conviction as firm as steel: that
+she, as woman, was the centre of creation, the man was but an adjunct.
+She, as woman, and particularly as mother, was the first great source
+of life and being, and also of culture.  The man was but the
+instrument and the finisher.  She was the source and the substance.
+
+Sure enough, Lottie had never formulated this belief inside herself.
+But it was formulated for her in the whole world.  It is the
+substantial and professed belief of the whole white world.  She did
+but inevitably represent what the whole world around her asserted:
+the life-centrality of woman.  Woman, the life-bearer, the life-source.
+
+Nearly all men agree to the assertion.  Practically all men, even while
+demanding their selfish rights as superior males, tacitly agree to the
+fact of the sacred life-bearing priority of woman.  Tacitly, they yield
+the worship to that which is female.  Tacitly, they conspire to agree
+that all that is productive, all that is fine and sensitive and most
+essentially noble, is woman.  This, in their productive and religious
+souls, they believe.  And however much they may react against the
+belief, loathing their women, running to prostitutes, or beer or
+_anything_, out of reaction against this great and ignominious dogma
+of the sacred priority of women, still they do but profane the god
+they worship.  Profaning woman, they still inversely worship her.
+
+But in Aaron was planted another seed.  He did not know it.  He started
+off on the good old tack of worshipping his woman while his heart was
+honest, and profaning her in his fits of temper and revolt.  But he
+made a bad show.  Born in him was a spirit which could not worship
+woman: no, and would not.  Could not and would not.  It was not in him.
+In early days, he tried to pretend it was in him.  But through his
+plaintive and homage-rendering love of a young husband was always,
+for the woman, discernible the arrogance of self-unyielding male.
+He never yielded himself: never.  All his mad loving was only an
+effort.  Afterwards, he was as devilishly unyielded as ever.  And it
+was an instinct in her, that her man must yield to her, so that she
+should envelop him yielding, in her all-beneficent love.  She was
+quite sure that her love was all-beneficent.  Of this no shadow of
+doubt.  She was quite sure that the highest her man could ever know
+or ever reach, was to be perfectly enveloped in her all-beneficent
+love.  This was her idea of marriage.  She held it not as an idea, but
+as a profound impulse and instinct: an instinct developed in her by the
+age in which she lived.  All that was deepest and most sacred in he
+feeling centred in this belief.
+
+And he outraged her!  Oh, from the first day and the first night, she
+felt he outraged her.  True, for some time she had been taken in by
+his manifest love.  But though you can deceive the conscious mind,
+you can never deceive the deep, unconscious instinct.  She could never
+understand whence arose in her, almost from the first days of marriage
+with him, her terrible paroxysms of hatred for him.  She was in love
+with him: ah, heaven, how maddeningly she was in love with him: a
+certain unseizable beauty that was his, and which fascinated her as a
+snake a bird.  But in revulsion, how she hated him!  How she abhorred
+him!  How she despised and shuddered at him!  He seemed a horrible
+thing to her.
+
+And then again, oh, God, the agony of her desire for him.  The agony
+of her long, long desire for him.  He was a passionate lover.  He gave
+her, ostensibly, all she asked for.  He withheld from her nothing, no
+experience, no degree of intimacy.  She was his initiate, or he hers.
+
+And yet, oh, horror for a woman, he withheld everything from her.
+He withheld the very centre of himself.  For a long time, she never
+realised.  She was dazed and maddened only.  But as months of married
+experience passed into years of married torment, she began to
+understand.  It was that, after their most tremendous, and, it seemed
+to her, heaven-rending passion--yea, when for her every veil seemed
+rent and a terrible and sacred creative darkness covered the earth--
+then--after all this wonder and miracle--in crept a poisonous grey
+snake of disillusionment, a poisonous grey snake of disillusion that
+bit her to madness, so that she really was a mad woman, demented.
+
+Why?  Why?  He never gave himself.  He never came to her, _really_.
+He withheld himself.  Yes, in those supreme and sacred times which
+for her were the whole culmination of life and being, the ecstasy
+of unspeakable passional conjunction, he was not really hers.  He
+was withheld.  He withheld the central core of himself, like the
+devil and hell-fiend he was.  He cheated and made play with her
+tremendous passional soul, her sacred sex passion, most sacred of
+all things for a woman.  All the time, some central part of him
+stood apart from her, aside, looking on.
+
+Oh, agony and horror for a passionate, fierce-hearted woman!  She who
+loved him.  She who loved him to madness.  She who would have died for
+him.  She who did die with him, many terrible and magnificent connubial
+deaths, in his arms, her husband.
+
+Her husband!  How bitter the word grew to her!  Her husband! and him
+never once given, given wholly to her!  Her husband--and in all the
+frenzied finality of desire, she never _fully_ possessed him, not once.
+No, not once.  As time went on, she learned it for inevitable.  Not
+once!
+
+And then, how she hated him!  Cheated, foiled, betrayed, forced to love
+him or to hate him: never able to be at peace near him nor away from
+him: poor Lottie, no wonder she was as a mad woman.  She was strictly
+as a woman demented, after the birth of her second child.  For all
+her instinct, all her impulse, all her desire, and above all, all her
+_will_, was to possess her man in very fulness once: just once: and
+once and for all.  Once, just once: and it would be once and for all.
+
+But never!  Never!  Not once!  Never!  Not for one single solitary
+second!  Was it not enough to send a woman mad!  Was it not enough to
+make her demented!  Yes, and mad she was.  She made his life a hell
+for him.  She bit him to the bone with her frenzy of rage, chagrin,
+and agony.  She drove him mad, too: mad, so that he beat her: mad so
+that he longed to kill her.  But even in his greatest rages it was
+the same: he never finally lost himself: he remained, somewhere in
+the centre, in possession of himself.  She sometimes wished he would
+kill her: or that she would kill him.  Neither event happened.
+
+And neither of them understood what was happening.  How should they?
+They were both dazed, horrified, and mortified.  He took to leaving her
+alone as much as was possible.  But when he _had_ to come home, there
+was her terrible will, like a flat, cold snake coiled round his soul
+and squeezing him to death.  Yes, she did not relent.  She was a good
+wife and mother.  All her duties she fulfilled.  But she was not one
+to yield.  _He_ must yield.  That was written in eternal letters, on
+the iron tablet of her will.  _He_ must yield.  She the woman, the
+mother of his children, how should she ever even think to yield?  It
+was unthinkable.  He, the man, the weak, the false, the treacherous,
+the half-hearted, it was he who must yield.  Was not hers the divine
+will and the divine right?  Ha, she would be less than woman if she
+ever capitulated, abandoned her divine responsibility as woman!  No,
+_he_ must yield.
+
+So, he was unfaithful to her.  Piling reproach after reproach upon
+himself, he added adultery to his brutality.  And this was the
+beginning of the end.  She was more than maddened: but he began to grow
+silent, unresponsive, as if he did not hear her.  He was unfaithful to
+her: and oh, in such a low way.  Such shame, such shame!  But he only
+smiled carelessly now, and asked her what she wanted.  She had asked
+for all she got.  That he reiterated.  And that was all he would do.
+
+Terrible was, that she found even his smile of insolent indifference
+half-beautiful.  Oh, bitter chain to bear!  But she summoned up all
+her strange woman's will.  She fought against his fascination, the
+fascination he exerted over her.  With fearful efforts of will she
+fought against it, and mastered it.  And then, suddenly, horror and
+agony of it, up it would rush in her again, her unbearable desire
+for him, the longing for his contact, his quality of beauty.
+
+That was a cross hard to bear.  Yet even that she bore.  And schooled
+herself into a fretful, petulant manner of indifference.  Her odd,
+whimsical petulance hid a will which he, and he alone, knew to be
+stronger than steel, strong as a diabolical, cold, grey snake that
+presses and presses and cannot-relax: nay, cannot relax.  She became
+the same as he.  Even in her moments of most passionate desire for
+him, the cold and snake-like tension of her will never relaxed, and
+the cold, snake-like eye of her intention never closed.
+
+So, till it reached a deadlock.  Each will was wound tense, and so
+fixed.  Fixed!  There was neither any relaxing or any increase of
+pressure.  Fixed.  Hard like a numbness, a grip that was solidifying
+and turning to stone.
+
+He realised, somehow, that at this terrible passive game of fixed
+tension she would beat him.  Her fixed female soul, her wound-up
+female will would solidify into stone--whereas his must break.
+In him something must break.  It was a cold and fatal deadlock,
+profitless.  A life-automatism of fixed tension that suddenly, in
+him, did break.  His will flew loose in a recoil: a recoil away from
+her.  He left her, as inevitably as a broken spring flies out from
+its hold.
+
+Not that he was broken.  He would not do her even that credit.  He
+had only flown loose from the old centre-fixture.  His will was still
+entire and unabated.  Only he did not know: he did not understand.
+He swung wildly about from place to place, as if he were broken.
+
+Then suddenly, on this Sunday evening in the strange country, he
+realised something about himself.  He realised that he had never
+intended to yield himself fully to her or to anything: that he did
+not intend ever to yield himself up entirely to her or to anything:
+that his very being pivoted on the fact of his isolate self-
+responsibility, aloneness.  His intrinsic and central aloneness was
+the very centre of his being.  Break it, and he broke his being.
+Break this central aloneness, and he broke everything.  It was the
+great temptation, to yield himself: and it was the final sacrilege.
+Anyhow, it was something which, from his profoundest soul, he did not
+intend to do.  By the innermost isolation and singleness of his own
+soul he would abide though the skies fell on top of one another, and
+seven heavens collapsed.
+
+Vaguely he realised this.  And vaguely he realised that this had
+been the root cause of his strife with Lottie: Lottie, the only
+person who had mattered at all to him in all the world: save perhaps
+his mother.  And his mother had not mattered, no, not one-half nor
+one-fifth what Lottie had mattered.  So it was: there was, for him,
+only her significant in the universe.  And between him and her
+matters were as they were.
+
+He coldly and terribly hated her, for a moment.  Then no more.  There
+was no solution.  It was a situation without a solution.  But at any
+rate, it was now a defined situation.  He could rest in peace.
+
+Thoughts something in this manner ran through Aaron's subconscious
+mind as he sat still in the strange house.  He could not have fired it
+all off at any listener, as these pages are fired off at any chance
+reader.  Nevertheless there it was, risen to half consciousness in him.
+All his life he had _hated_ knowing what he felt.  He had wilfully, if
+not consciously, kept a gulf between his passional soul and his open
+mind.  In his mind was pinned up a nice description of himself, and a
+description of Lottie, sort of authentic passports to be used in the
+conscious world.  These authentic passports, self-describing: nose
+short, mouth normal, etc.; he had insisted that they should do all
+the duty of the man himself.  This ready-made and very banal idea
+of himself as a really quite nice individual: eyes blue, nose short,
+mouth normal, chin normal; this he had insisted was really himself.
+It was his conscious mask.
+
+Now at last, after years of struggle, he seemed suddenly to have
+dropped his mask on the floor, and broken it.  His authentic self-
+describing passport, his complete and satisfactory idea of himself
+suddenly became a rag of paper, ridiculous.  What on earth did it
+matter if he was nice or not, if his chin was normal or abnormal.
+
+His mask, his idea of himself dropped and was broken to bits.  There
+he sat now maskless and invisible.  That was how he strictly felt:
+invisible and undefined, rather like Wells' _Invisible Man_.  He had
+no longer a mask to present to people: he was present and invisible:
+they _could_ not really think anything about him, because they could
+not really see him.  What did they see when they looked at him?  Lady
+Franks, for example.  He neither knew nor cared.  He only knew he was
+invisible to himself and everybody, and that all thinking about what
+he was like was only a silly game of Mrs. Mackenzie's Dead.
+
+So there.  The old Aaron Sisson was as if painfully transmuted, as the
+Invisible Man when he underwent his transmutations.  Now he was gone,
+and no longer to be seen.  His visibility lost for ever.
+
+And then what?  Sitting there as an invisible presence, the
+preconceived world melted also and was gone.  Lady Franks, Sir William,
+all the guests, they talked and maneuvered with their visible
+personalities, manipulating the masks of themselves.  And underneath
+there was something invisible and dying--something fading, wilting:
+the essential plasm of themselves: their invisible being.
+
+Well now, and what next?  Having in some curious manner tumbled from
+the tree of modern knowledge, and cracked and rolled out from the shell
+of the preconceived idea of himself like some dark, night-lustrous
+chestnut from the green ostensibility of the burr, he lay as it were
+exposed but invisible on the floor, knowing, but making no conceptions:
+knowing, but having no idea.  Now that he was finally unmasked and
+exposed, the accepted idea of himself cracked and rolled aside like
+a broken chestnut-burr, the mask split and shattered, he was at last
+quiet and free.  He had dreaded exposure: and behold, we cannot be
+exposed, for we are invisible.  We cannot be exposed to the looks of
+others, for our very being is night-lustrous and unseeable.  Like the
+Invisible Man, we are only revealed through our clothes and our masks.
+
+In his own powerful but subconscious fashion Aaron realized this.
+He was a musician.  And hence even his deepest _ideas_: were not word-
+ideas, his very thoughts were not composed of words and ideal concepts.
+They too, his thoughts and his ideas, were dark and invisible, as
+electric vibrations are invisible no matter how many words they may
+purport.  If I, as a word-user, must translate his deep conscious
+vibrations into finite words, that is my own business.  I do but
+make a translation of the man.  He would speak in music.  I speak
+with words.
+
+The inaudible music of his conscious soul conveyed his meaning in him
+quite as clearly as I convey it in words: probably much more clearly.
+But in his own mode only: and it was in his own mode only he realised
+what I must put into words.  These words are my own affair.  His mind
+was music.
+
+Don't grumble at me then, gentle reader, and swear at me that this
+damned fellow wasn't half clever enough to think all these smart
+things, and realise all these fine-drawn-out subtleties.  You are
+quite right, he wasn't, yet it all resolved itself in him as I say,
+and it is for you to prove that it didn't.
+
+In his now silent, maskless state of wordless comprehension, he knew
+that he had never wanted to surrender himself utterly to Lottie: nor
+to his mother: nor to anybody.  The last extreme of self-abandon in
+love was for him an act of false behaviour.  His own nature inside him
+fated him not to take this last false step, over the edge of the abyss
+of selflessness.   Even if he wanted to, he could not.  He might
+struggle on the edge of the precipice like an assassin struggling with
+his own soul, but he could not conquer.  For, according to all the
+current prejudice and impulse in one direction, he too had believed
+that the final achievement, the consummation of human life, was this
+flinging oneself over the precipice, down the bottomless pit of love.
+Now he realised that love, even in its intensest, was only an attribute
+of the human soul: one of its incomprehensible gestures.  And to fling
+down the whole soul in one gesture of finality in love was as much a
+criminal suicide as to jump off a church-tower or a mountain-peak.
+Let a man give himself as much as he liked in love, to seven thousand
+extremities, he must never give himself _away_.  The more generous and
+the more passionate a soul, the more it _gives_ itself.  But the more
+absolute remains the law, that it shall never give itself away.  Give
+thyself, but give thyself not away.  That is the lesson written at the
+end of the long strange lane of love.
+
+The _idee fixe_ of today is that every individual shall not only give
+himself, but shall achieve the last glory of giving himself away.  And
+since this takes two--you can't even make a present of yourself unless
+you've got somebody to receive the present; since this last extra-
+divine act takes two people to perform it, you've got to take into
+count not only your giver but your receiver.  Who is going to be the
+giver and who the receiver.
+
+Why, of course, in our long-drawn-out Christian day, man is given
+and woman is recipient.  Man is the gift, woman the receiver.  This
+is the sacrament we live by; the holy Communion we live for.  That
+man gives himself to woman in an utter and sacred abandon, all, all,
+all himself given, and taken.  Woman, eternal woman, she is the
+communicant.  She receives the sacramental body and spirit of the
+man.  And when she's got it, according to her passionate and all-too-
+sacred desire, completely, when she possesses her man at last finally
+and ultimately, without blemish or reservation in the perfection of
+the sacrament: then, also, poor woman, the blood and the body of which
+she has partaken become insipid or nauseous to her, she is driven mad
+by the endless meal of the marriage sacrament, poisoned by the sacred
+communion which was her goal and her soul's ambition.
+
+We have pushed a process into a goal.  The aim of any process is
+not the perpetuation of that process, but the completion thereof.
+Love is a process of the incomprehensible human soul: love also
+incomprehensible, but still only a process.  The process should
+work to a completion, not to some horror of intensification and
+extremity wherein the soul and body ultimately perish.  The completion
+of the process of love is the arrival at a state of simple, pure self-
+possession, for man and woman.  Only that.  Which isn't exciting enough
+for us sensationalists.  We prefer abysses and maudlin self-abandon and
+self-sacrifice, the degeneration into a sort of slime and merge.
+
+Perhaps, truly, the process of love is never accomplished.  But it
+moves in great stages, and at the end of each stage a true goal, where
+the soul possesses itself in simple and generous singleness.  Without
+this, love is a disease.
+
+So Aaron, crossing a certain border-line and finding himself alone
+completely, accepted his loneliness or singleness as a fulfilment, a
+state of fulfilment.  The long fight with Lottie had driven him at last
+to himself, so that he was quiet as a thing which has its root deep in
+life, and has lost its anxiety.  As for considering the lily, it is not
+a matter of consideration.  The lily toils and spins hard enough, in
+her own way.  But without that strain and that anxiety with which we
+try to weave ourselves a life.  The lily is life-rooted, life-central.
+She _cannot_ worry.  She is life itself, a little, delicate fountain
+playing creatively, for as long or as short a time as may be, and
+unable to be anxious.  She may be sad or sorry, if the north wind
+blows.  But even then, anxious she cannot be.  Whether her fountain
+play or cease to play, from out the cold, damp earth, she cannot be
+anxious.  She may only be glad or sorry, and continue her way.  She is
+perfectly herself, whatever befall! even if frosts cut her off.  Happy
+lily, never to be saddled with an _idee fixe_, never to be in the grip
+of a monomania for happiness or love or fulfilment.  It is not _laisser
+aller_.  It is life-rootedness.  It is being by oneself, life-living,
+like the much-mooted lily.  One toils, one spins, one strives: just
+as the lily does.  But like her, taking one's own life-way amidst
+everything, and taking one's own life-way alone.  Love too.  But there
+also, taking one's way alone, happily alone in all the wonders of
+communion, swept up on the winds, but never swept away from one's
+very self.  Two eagles in mid-air, maybe, like Whitman's Dalliance
+of Eagles.  Two eagles in mid-air, grappling, whirling, coming to
+their intensification of love-oneness there in mid-air.  In mid-air
+the love consummation.  But all the time each lifted on its own wings:
+each bearing itself up on its own wings at every moment of the mid-air
+love consummation.  That is the splendid love-way.
+
+
+           .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+
+The party was festive at dinner-time, the women in their finest
+dresses, new flowers on the table, the best wine going.  It was Sunday
+evening.  Aaron too was dressed--and Lady Franks, in black lace and
+pearls, was almost gay.  There were quails for dinner.  The Colonel
+was quite happy.  An air of conviviality gathered round the table
+during the course of the meal.
+
+"I hope," said Aaron, "that we shall have some music tonight."
+
+"I want so much to hear your flute," said his hostess.
+
+"And I your piano," he said.
+
+"I am very weak--very out of practise.  I tremble at the thought of
+playing before a musician.  But you must not be too critical."
+
+"Oh," said Aaron, "I am not a man to be afraid of."
+
+"Well, we will see," said Lady Franks.  "But I am afraid of music
+itself."
+
+"Yes," said Aaron.  "I think it is risky."
+
+"Risky!  I don't see that!  Music risky?  Bach?  Beethoven!  No, I
+don't agree.  On the contrary, I think it is most elevating--most
+morally inspiring.  No, I tremble before it because it is so wonderful
+and elevating."
+
+"I often find it makes me feel diabolical," said he.
+
+"That is your misfortune, I am sure," said Lady Franks.  "Please do
+take another--but perhaps you don't like mushrooms?"
+
+Aaron quite liked mushrooms, and helped himself to the _entree_.
+
+"But perhaps," said she, "you are too modern.  You don't care for Bach
+or Beethoven or Chopin--dear Chopin."
+
+"I find them all quite as modern as I am."
+
+"Is that so!  Yes.  For myself I am quite old-fashioned--though I can
+appreciate Strauss and Stravinsky as well, some things.  But my old
+things--ah, I don't think the moderns are so fine.  They are not so
+deep.  They haven't fathomed life so deeply."  Lady Franks sighed
+faintly.
+
+"They don't care for depths," said Aaron.
+
+"No, they haven't the capacity.  But I like big, deep music.  Oh, I
+love orchestra.  But my instrument is the piano.  I like the great
+masters, Bach, Beethoven.  They have such faith.  You were talking of
+faith--believing that things would work out well for you in the end.
+Beethoven inspires that in me, too."
+
+"He makes you feel that all will be well with you at last?"
+
+"Yes, he does.  He makes me feel faith in my PERSONAL destiny.  And I
+do feel that there is something in one's special fate.  I feel that I
+myself have a special kind of fate, that will always look after me."
+
+"And you can trust to it?"
+
+"Yes, I can.  It ALWAYS turns out right.  I think something has gone
+wrong--and then, it always turns out right.  Why when we were in London
+--when we were at lunch one morning it suddenly struck me, haven't I
+left my fur cloak somewhere?  It was rather cold, so I had taken it
+with me, and then never put it on.  And I hadn't brought it home.  I
+had left it somewhere.  But whether in a taxi, or in a shop, or in a
+little show of pictures I had been to, I couldn't remember.  I COULD
+NOT remember.  And I thought to myself: have I lost my cloak?  I went
+round to everywhere I could think of: no-trace of it.  But I didn't
+give it up.  Something prompted me not to give it up: quite distinctly,
+I felt something telling me that I should get it back.  So I called at
+Scotland Yard and gave the information.  Well, two days later I had a
+notice from Scotland Yard, so I went.  And there was my cloak.  I had
+it back.  And that has happened to me almost every time.  I almost
+always get my things back.  And I always feel that something looks
+after me, do you know: almost takes care of me."
+
+"But do you mean when you lose things--or in your life?"
+
+"I mean when I lose things--or when I want to get something I want--I
+am very nearly ALWAYS successful.  And I always feel there is some sort
+of higher power which does it for me."
+
+"Finds your cloak for you."
+
+"Yes.  Wasn't it extraordinary?  I felt when I saw my cloak in Scotland
+Yard: There, I KNEW I should recover you.  And I always feel, as I say,
+that there is some higher power which helps me.  Do you feel the same?"
+
+"No, not that way, worse luck.  I lost a batch of music a month ago
+which didn't belong to me--and which I couldn't replace.  But I never
+could recover it: though I'm sure nobody wanted it."
+
+"How very unfortunate!  Whereas my fur cloak was just the thing that
+gets stolen most."
+
+"I wished some power would trace my music: but apparently we aren't
+all gifted alike with guardian angels."
+
+"Apparently not.  And that is how I regard it: almost as a gift, you
+know, that my fairy godmother gave me in my cradle."
+
+"For always recovering your property?"
+
+"Yes--and succeeding in my undertakings."
+
+"I'm afraid I had no fairy godmother."
+
+"Well--I think I had.  And very glad I am of it."
+
+"Why, yes," said Aaron, looking at his hostess.
+
+So the dinner sailed merrily on.
+
+"But does Beethoven make you feel," said Aaron as an afterthought, "in
+the same way--that you will always find the things you have lost?"
+
+"Yes--he makes me feel the same faith: that what I lose will be
+returned to me.  Just as I found my cloak.  And that if I enter into
+an undertaking, it will be successful."
+
+"And your life has been always successful?"
+
+"Yes--almost always.  We have succeeded with almost everything."
+
+"Why, yes," said Aaron, looking at her again.
+
+But even so, he could see a good deal of hard wornness under her
+satisfaction.  She had had her suffering, sure enough.  But none the
+less, she was in the main satisfied.  She sat there, a good hostess,
+and expected the homage due to her success.  And of course she got it.
+Aaron himself did his little share of shoe-licking, and swallowed the
+taste of boot-polish with a grimace, knowing what he was about.
+
+The dinner wound gaily to an end.  The ladies retired.  Sir William
+left his seat of honour at the end of the table and came and sat next
+to Aaron, summoning the other three men to cluster near.
+
+"Now, Colonel," said the host, "send round the bottle."
+
+With a flourish of the elbow and shoulder, the Colonel sent on the
+port, actually port, in those bleak, post-war days!
+
+"Well, Mr. Sisson," said Sir William, "we will drink to your kind
+Providence: providing, of course, that we shall give no offence by
+so doing."
+
+"No, sir; no, sir!  The Providence belonged to Mr. Lilly.  Mr. Sisson
+put his money on kindly fortune, I believe," said Arthur, who rosy and
+fresh with wine, looked as if he would make a marvelous _bonne bouchee_
+for a finely-discriminating cannibal.
+
+"Ah, yes, indeed!  A much more ingratiating lady to lift our glasses
+to.  Mr. Sisson's kindly fortune.  _Fortuna gentil-issima_!  Well, Mr.
+Sisson, and may your Lady Fortune ever smile on you."
+
+Sir William lifted his glass with an odd little smirk, some touch of a
+strange, prim old satyr lurking in his oddly inclined head.  Nay, more
+than satyr: that curious, rather terrible iron demon that has fought
+with the world and wrung wealth from it, and which knows all about it.
+The devilish spirit of iron itself, and iron machines.  So, with his
+strange, old smile showing his teeth rather terribly, the old knight
+glowered sightlessly over his glass at Aaron.  Then he drank: the
+strange, careful, old-man's gesture in drinking.
+
+"But," said Aaron, "if Fortune is a female---"
+
+"Fortune!  Fortune!  Why, Fortune is a lady.  What do you say, Major?"
+
+"She has all the airs of one, Sir William," said the Major, with the
+wistful grimness of his age and culture.  And the young fellow stared
+like a crucified cyclops from his one eye: the black shutter being over
+the other.
+
+"And all the graces," capped Sir William, delighted with himself.
+
+"Oh, quite!" said the Major.  "For some, all the airs, and for others,
+all the graces."
+
+"Faint heart ne'er won fair lady, my boy," said Sir William.  "Not that
+your heart is faint.  On the contrary--as we know, and your country
+knows.  But with Lady Fortune you need another kind of stout heart--
+oh, quite another kind."
+
+"I believe it, sir: and the kind of stout heart which I am afraid I
+haven't got," said the Major.
+
+"What!" said the old man.  "Show the white feather before you've
+tackled the lady!  Fill the Major's glass, Colonel.  I am quite sure
+we will none of us ever say die."
+
+"Not likely.  Not if we know it," said the Colonel, stretching himself
+heartily inside his tunic.  He was becoming ruddier than the cherry.
+All he cared about at the moment was his gay little port glass.  But
+the Major's young cheek was hollow and sallow, his one eye terribly
+pathetic.
+
+"And you, Mr. Sisson," said Sir William, "mean to carry all before you
+by taking no thought for the morrow.  Well, now, we can only wish you
+success."
+
+"I don't want to carry all before me," said Aaron.  "I should be sorry.
+I want to walk past most of it."
+
+"Can you tell us where to?  I am intrigued, as Sybil says, to know
+where you will walk to.  Come now.  Enlighten us."
+
+"Nowhere, I suppose."
+
+"But is that satisfactory?  Can you find it satisfactory?"
+
+"Is it even true?" said the Major.  "Isn't it quite as positive an act
+to walk away from a situation as to walk towards it?"
+
+"My dear boy, you can't merely walk away from a situation.  Believe
+that.  If you walk away from Rome, you walk into the Maremma, or into
+the Alban Hills, or into the sea--but you walk into something.  Now
+if I am going to walk away from Rome, I prefer to choose my direction,
+and therefore my destination."
+
+"But you can't," said the Major.
+
+"What can't you?"
+
+"Choose.  Either your direction or your destination."  The Major was
+obstinate.
+
+"Really!" said Sir William.  "I have not found it so.  I have not found
+it so.  I have had to keep myself hard at work, all my life, choosing
+between this or that."
+
+"And we," said the Major, "have no choice, except between this or
+nothing."
+
+"Really!  I am afraid," said Sir William, "I am afraid I am too old--
+or too young--which shall I say?--to understand."
+
+"Too young, sir," said Arthur sweetly.  "The child was always father
+to the man, I believe."
+
+"I confess the Major makes me feel childish," said the old man.  "The
+choice between this or nothing is a puzzler to me.  Can you help me
+out, Mr. Sisson?  What do you make of this this-or-nothing business?
+I can understand neck-or-nothing---"
+
+"I prefer the NOTHING part of it to the THIS part of it," said Aaron,
+grinning.
+
+"Colonel," said the old man, "throw a little light on this nothingness."
+
+"No, Sir William," said the Colonel.  "I am all right as I am."
+
+"As a matter of fact, so are we all, perfectly A-one," said Arthur.
+
+Aaron broke into a laugh.
+
+"That's the top and bottom of it," he laughed, flushed with wine, and
+handsome.  We're all as right as ninepence.  Only it's rather nice to
+talk."
+
+"There!" said Sir William.  "We're all as right as ninepence!  We're
+all as right ninepence.  So there well leave it, before the Major has
+time to say he is twopence short."  Laughing his strange old soundless
+laugh, Sir William rose and made a little bow.  "Come up and join the
+ladies in a minute or two," he said.  Arthur opened the door for him
+and he left the room.
+
+The four men were silent for a moment--then the Colonel whipped up the
+decanter and filled his glass.  Then he stood up and clinked glasses
+with Aaron, like a real old sport.
+
+"Luck to you," he said.
+
+"Thanks," said Aaron.
+
+"You're going in the morning?" said Arthur.
+
+"Yes," said Aaron.
+
+"What train?" said Arthur.
+
+"Eight-forty."
+
+"Oh--then we shan't see you again.  Well--best of luck."
+
+"Best of luck--" echoed the Colonel.
+
+"Same to you," said Aaron, and they all peered over their glasses and
+quite loved one another for a rosy minute.
+
+"I should like to know, though," said the hollow-cheeked young Major
+with the black flap over his eye, "whether you do really mean you are
+all right--that it is all right with you--or whether you only say so
+to get away from the responsibility."
+
+"I mean I don't really care--I don't a damn--let the devil take
+it all."
+
+"The devil doesn't want it, either," said the Major.
+
+"Then let him leave it.  I don't care one single little curse about
+it all."
+
+"Be damned.  What is there to care about?" said the Colonel.
+
+"Ay, what?" said Aaron.
+
+"It's all the same, whether you care or don't care.  So I say it's much
+easier not to care," said Arthur.
+
+"Of course it is," said the Colonel gaily.
+
+"And I think so, too," said Aaron.
+
+"Right you are!  We're all as right as ninepence--what?  Good old
+sport!  Here's yours!" cried the Colonel.
+
+"We shall have to be going up," said Arthur, wise in his generation.
+
+As they went into the hall, Arthur suddenly put one arm round Aaron's
+waist, and one arm round the Colonel's, and the three did a sudden
+little barn-dance towards the stairs.  Arthur was feeling himself
+quite let loose again, back in his old regimental mess.
+
+Approaching the foot of the stairs, he let go again.  He was in that
+rosy condition when united-we-stand.  But unfortunately it is a
+complicated job to climb the stairs in unison.  The whole lot tends to
+fall backwards.  Arthur, therefore, rosy, plump, looking so good to
+eat, stood still a moment in order to find his own neatly-slippered
+feet.  Having found them, he proceeded to put them carefully one before
+the other, and to his enchantment found that this procedure was
+carrying him magically up the stairs.  The Colonel, like a drowning
+man, clutched feebly for the straw of the great stair-rail--and missed
+it.  He would have gone under, but that Aaron's hand gripped his arm.
+So, orientating once more like a fragile tendril, he reached again
+for the banister rail, and got it.  After which, lifting his feet as
+if they were little packets of sand tied to his trouser buttons, he
+manipulated his way upwards.  Aaron was in that pleasant state when he
+saw what everybody else was doing and was unconscious of what he did
+himself.  Whilst tall, gaunt, erect, like a murdered Hamlet resurrected
+in khaki, with the terrible black shutter over his eye, the young
+Major came last.
+
+Arthur was making a stern fight for his composure.  His whole future
+depended on it.  But do what he would, he could not get the flushed,
+pleased, mess-happy look off his face.  The Colonel, oh, awful man,
+did a sort of plump roly-poly-cake-walk, like a fat boy, right to the
+very door of that santum-sanctorum, the library.  Aaron was inwardly
+convulsed.  Even the Major laughed.
+
+But Arthur stiffened himself militarily and cleared his throat.  All
+four started to compose themselves, like actors going on the stage,
+outside that library door.  And then Arthur softly, almost wistfully,
+opened and held the door for the others to pass.  The Colonel slunk
+meekly in, and sat in a chair in the background.  The Major stalked
+in expressionless, and hovered towards the sofa where his wife sat.
+
+There was a rather cold-water-down-your-back feeling in the library.
+The ladies had been waiting for coffee.  Sir William was waiting, too.
+Therefore in a little tension, half silent, the coffee was handed
+round.  Lady Franks was discussing something with Arthur's wife.
+Arthur's wife was in a cream lace dress, and looking what is called
+lovely.  The Major's wife was in amethyst chiffon with dark-red roses,
+and was looking blindingly beautiful.  The Colonel was looking into
+his coffee-cup as wistfully as if it contained the illusion of tawny
+port.  The Major was looking into space, as if there and there alone,
+etc.  Arthur was looking for something which Lady Franks had asked for,
+and which he was much too flushed to find.  Sir William was looking at
+Aaron, and preparing for another _coeur a coeur_.
+
+"Well," he said, "I doubt if you will care for Milan.  It is one of
+the least Italian of all the towns, in my opinion.  Venice, of course,
+is a thing apart.  I cannot stand, myself, that miserable specimen the
+modern Roman.  He has most of the vices of the old Romans and none of
+the virtues.  The most congenial town, perhaps, for a stranger, is
+Florence.  But it has a very bad climate."
+
+Lady Franks rose significantly and left the room, accompanied by
+Arthur's wife.  Aaron knew, silently, that he was summoned to follow.
+His hostess had her eye on him this evening.  But always postponing his
+obedience to the cool commands of women, he remained talking with his
+host in the library, and sipping _creme de menthe_!  Came the ripple
+of the pianoforte from the open doorway down at the further end of the
+room.  Lady Franks was playing, in the large drawing-room.  And the
+ripple of the music contained in it the hard insistence of the little
+woman's will.  Coldly, and decidedly, she intended there should be no
+more unsettling conversations for the old Sir William.  Aaron was to
+come forthwith into the drawing room.  Which Aaron plainly understood--
+and so he didn't go.  No, he didn't go, though the pianoforte rippled
+and swelled in volume.  No, and he didn't go even when Lady Franks
+left off playing and came into the library again.  There he sat,
+talking with Sir William.  Let us do credit to Lady Franks' will-
+power, and admit that the talk was quite empty and distracted--none
+of the depths and skirmishes of the previous occasions.  None the less,
+the talk continued.  Lady Franks retired, discomfited, to her piano
+again.  She would never break in upon her lord.
+
+So now Aaron relented.  He became more and more distracted.  Sir
+William wandered away like some restless, hunted soul.  The Colonel
+still sat in his chair, nursing his last drop of _creme de menthe_
+resentfully.  He did not care for the green toffee-stuff.  Arthur was
+busy.  The Major lay sprawled in the last stages of everything on the
+sofa, holding his wife's hand.  And the music came pathetically through
+the open folding-doors.  Of course, she played with feeling--it went
+without saying.  Aaron's soul felt rather tired.  But she had a touch
+of discrimination also.
+
+He rose and went to the drawing-room.  It was a large, vacant-seeming,
+Empire sort of drawing-room, with yellow silk chairs along the walls
+and yellow silk panels upon the walls, and a huge, vasty crystal
+chandelier hanging from a faraway-above ceiling.  Lady Franks sat at
+a large black Bechstein piano at one end of this vacant yellow state-
+room.  She sat, a little plump elderly lady in black lace, for all the
+world like Queen Victoria in Max Beerbohm's drawing of Alfred Tennyson
+reading to her Victorian Majesty, with space before her.  Arthur's
+wife was bending over some music in a remote corner of the big room.
+
+Aaron seated himself on one of the chairs by the wall, to listen.
+Certainly it was a beautiful instrument.  And certainly, in her way,
+she loved it.  But Aaron remembered an anthem in which he had taken
+part as a boy.
+
+
+                    His eye is on the sparrow
+                    So I know He watches me.
+
+
+For a long time he had failed to catch the word _sparrow_, and had
+heard:
+
+
+                    His eye is on the spy-hole
+                    So I know He watches me.
+
+
+Which was just how it had all seemed to him, as a boy.
+
+Now, as ever, he felt the eye was on the spy-hole.  There sat the
+woman playing music.  But her inward eye was on the spy-hole of her
+vital affairs--her domestic arrangements, her control of her household,
+guests and husband included.  The other eye was left for the music,
+don't you know.
+
+Sir William appeared hovering in the doorway, not at all liking the
+defection of Mr. Aaron.  Then he retreated.  He seemed not to care
+for music.  The Major's wife hovered--felt it her duty to _aude_, or
+play audience--and entered, seating herself in a breath of lilac and
+amethyst again at the near distance.  The Major, after a certain
+beating about the bush, followed and sat wrapt in dim contemplation
+near his wife.  Arthur luckily was still busy with something.
+
+Aaron of course made proper musical remarks in the intervals--Arthur's
+wife sorted out more pieces.  Arthur appeared--and then the Colonel.
+The Colonel tip-toed beautifully across the wide blank space of the
+Empire room, and seated himself on a chair, rather in the distance,
+with his back to the wall, facing Aaron.  When Lady Franks finished
+her piece, to everybody's amazement the Colonel clapped gaily to
+himself and said Bravo! as if at a Cafe Chantant, looking round for
+his glass.  But there was no glass.  So he crossed his neatly-khakied
+legs, and looked rapt again.
+
+Lady Franks started with a _vivace_ Schumann piece.  Everybody listened
+in sanctified silence, trying to seem to like it.  When suddenly our
+Colonel began to spring and bounce in his chair, slinging his loose
+leg with a kind of rapture up and down in the air, and capering upon
+his posterior, doing a sitting-down jig to the Schumann _vivace_.
+Arthur, who had seated himself at the farthest extremity of the room,
+winked with wild bliss at Aaron.  The Major tried to look as if he
+noticed nothing, and only succeeded in looking agonised.  His wife
+studied the point of her silver shoe minutely, and peeped through her
+hair at the performance.  Aaron grimly chuckled, and loved the Colonel
+with real tenderness.
+
+And the game went on while the _vivace_ lasted.  Up and down bounced
+the plump Colonel on his chair, kicking with his bright, black-patent
+toe higher and higher, getting quite enthusiastic over his jig.  Rosy
+and unabashed, he was worthy of the great nation he belonged to.  The
+broad-seated Empire chair showed no signs of giving way.  Let him enjoy
+himself, away there across the yellow Sahara of this silk-panelled
+salon.  Aaron felt quite cheered up.
+
+"Well, now," he thought to himself, "this man is in entire command
+of a very important branch of the British Service in Italy.  We are
+a great race still."
+
+But Lady Franks must have twigged.  Her playing went rather stiff.
+She came to the end of the _vivace_ movement, and abandoned her piece.
+
+"I always prefer Schumann in his _vivace_ moods," said Aaron.
+
+"Do you?" said Lady Franks.  "Oh, I don't know."
+
+It was now the turn of Arthur's wife to sing.  Arthur seemed to get
+further away: if it was possible, for he was at the remotest remote
+end of the room, near the gallery doors.  The Colonel became quiet,
+pensive.  The Major's wife eyed the young woman in white lace, and
+seemed not to care for lace.  Arthur seemed to be trying to push
+himself backwards through the wall.  Lady Franks switched on more
+lights into the vast and voluminous crystal chandelier which hung
+like some glory-cloud above the room's centre.  And Arthur's wife
+sang sweet little French songs, and _Ye Banks and Braes_, and _Caro
+mio ben_, which goes without saying: and so on.  She had quite a nice
+voice and was quite adequately trained.  Which is enough said.  Aaron
+had all his nerves on edge.
+
+Then he had to play the flute.  Arthur strolled upstairs with him, arm-
+in-arm, where he went to fetch his instrument.
+
+"I find music in the home rather a strain, you know," said Arthur.
+
+"Cruel strain.  I quite agree," said Aaron.
+
+"I don't mind it so much in the theatre--or even a concert--where
+there are a lot of other people to take the edge off--  But after
+a good dinner--"
+
+"It's medicine," said Aaron.
+
+"Well, you know, it really is, to me.  It affects my inside."  Aaron
+laughed.  And then, in the yellow drawing-room, blew into his pipe
+and played.  He knew so well that Arthur, the Major, the Major's wife,
+the Colonel, and Sir William thought it merely an intolerable bore.
+However, he played.  His hostess even accompanied him in a Mozart bit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+XX SETTEMBRE
+
+
+Aaron was awakened in the morning by the soft entrance of the butler
+with the tray: it was just seven o'clock.  Lady Franks' household was
+punctual as the sun itself.
+
+But our hero roused himself with a wrench.  The very act of lifting
+himself from the pillow was like a fight this morning.  Why?  He
+recognized his own wrench, the pain with which he struggled under the
+necessity to move.  Why shouldn't he want to move?  Why not?  Because
+he didn't want the day in front--the plunge into a strange country,
+towards nowhere, with no aim in view.  True, he said that ultimately he
+wanted to join Lilly.  But this was hardly more than a sop, an excuse
+for his own irrational behaviour.  He was breaking loose from one
+connection after another; and what for?  Why break every tie?  Snap,
+snap, snap went the bonds and ligatures which bound him to the life
+that had formed him, the people he had loved or liked.  He found all
+his affections snapping off, all the ties which united him with his
+own people coming asunder.  And why?  In God's name, why?  What was
+there instead?
+
+There was nothingness.  There was just himself, and blank nothingness.
+He had perhaps a faint sense of Lilly ahead of him; an impulse in that
+direction, or else merely an illusion.  He could not persuade himself
+that he was seeking for love, for any kind of unison or communion. He
+knew well enough that the thought of any loving, any sort of real
+coming together between himself and anybody or anything, was just
+objectionable to him.  No--he was not moving _towards_ anything: he
+was moving almost violently away from everything.  And that was what
+he wanted.  Only that.  Only let him _not_ run into any sort of
+embrace with anything or anybody--this was what he asked.  Let no
+new connection be made between himself and anything on earth.  Let
+all old connections break.  This was his craving.
+
+Yet he struggled under it this morning as under the lid of a tomb.  The
+terrible sudden weight of inertia!  He knew the tray stood ready by the
+bed: he knew the automobile would be at the door at eight o'clock, for
+Lady Franks had said so, and he half divined that the servant had also
+said so: yet there he lay, in a kind of paralysis in this bed.  He
+seemed for the moment to have lost his will.  Why go forward into more
+nothingness, away from all that he knew, all he was accustomed to and
+all he belonged to?
+
+However, with a click he sat up.  And the very instant he had poured
+his coffee from the little silver coffee-pot into his delicate cup, he
+was ready for anything and everything.  The sense of silent adventure
+took him, the exhilarated feeling that he was fulfilling his own
+inward destiny.  Pleasant to taste was the coffee, the bread, the
+honey--delicious.
+
+The man brought his clothes, and again informed him that the automobile
+would be at the door at eight o'clock: or at least so he made out.
+
+"I can walk," said Aaron.
+
+"Milady ha comandato l'automobile," said the man softly.
+
+It was evident that if Milady had ordered it, so it must be.
+
+So Aaron left the still-sleeping house, and got into the soft and
+luxurious car.  As he dropped through the park he wondered that Sir
+William and Lady Franks should be so kind to him: a complete stranger.
+But so it was.  There he sat in their car.  He wondered, also, as he
+ran over the bridge and into the city, whether this soft-running
+automobile would ever rouse the socialistic bile of the work-people.
+For the first time in his life, as he sat among the snug cushions, he
+realised what it might be to be rich and uneasy: uneasy, even if not
+afraid, lurking there inside an expensive car.--Well, it wasn't much
+of a sensation anyhow: and riches were stuffy, like wadded upholstery
+on everything.  He was glad to get out into the fresh air of the common
+crowd.  He was glad to be in the bleak, not-very-busy station.  He was
+glad to be part of common life.  For the very atmosphere of riches
+seems to be stuffed and wadded, never any real reaction.  It was
+terrible, as if one's very body, shoulders and arms, were upholstered
+and made cushiony.  Ugh, but he was glad to shake off himself the
+atmosphere of wealth and motor-cars, to get out of it all.  It was
+like getting out of quilted clothes.
+
+"Well," thought Aaron, "if this is all it amounts to, to be rich, you
+can have riches.  They talk about money being power.  But the only sort
+of power it has over me is to bring on a kind of numbness, which I
+fairly hate.  No wonder rich people don't seem to be really alive."
+
+The relief of escaping quite took away his self-conscious embarrassment
+at the station.  He carried his own bags, bought a third-class ticket,
+and got into the train for Milan without caring one straw for the
+comments or the looks of the porters.
+
+It began to rain.  The rain ran across the great plain of north Italy.
+Aaron sat in his wood-seated carriage and smoked his pipe in silence,
+looking at the thick, short Lombards opposite him without heeding
+them.  He paid hardly any outward attention to his surroundings, but
+sat involved in himself.
+
+In Milan he had been advised to go to the Hotel Britannia, because
+it was not expensive, and English people went there.  So he took a
+carriage, drove round the green space in front of Milan station, and
+away into the town.  The streets were busy, but only half-heartedly so.
+
+It must be confessed that every new move he made was rather an effort.
+Even he himself wondered why he was struggling with foreign porters
+and foreign cabmen, being talked at and not understanding a word.  But
+there he was.  So he went on with it.
+
+The hotel was small and congenial.  The hotel porter answered in
+English.  Aaron was given a little room with a tiny balcony, looking
+on to a quiet street.  So, he had a home of his own once more.  He
+washed, and then counted his money.  Thirty-seven pounds he had: and
+no more.  He stood on the balcony and looked at the people going by
+below.  Life seems to be moving so quick, when one looks down on it
+from above.
+
+Across the road was a large stone house with its green shutters all
+closed.  But from the flagpole under the eaves, over the central window
+of the uppermost floor--the house was four storeys high--waved the
+Italian flag in the melancholy damp air.  Aaron looked at it--the
+red, white and green tricolour, with the white cross of Savoy in the
+centre.  It hung damp and still.  And there seemed a curious vacancy
+in the city--something empty and depressing in the great human centre.
+Not that there was really a lack of people.  But the spirit of the
+town seemed depressed and empty.  It was a national holiday.  The
+Italian flag was hanging from almost every housefront.
+
+It was about three o'clock in the afternoon.  Aaron sat in the
+restaurant of the hotel drinking tea, for he was rather tired, and
+looking through the thin curtains at the little square outside, where
+people passed: little groups of dark, aimless-seeming men, a little
+bit poorer looking--perhaps rather shorter in stature--but very much
+like the people in any other town.  Yet the feeling of the city was
+so different from that of London.  There seemed a curious emptiness.
+The rain had ceased, but the pavements were still wet.  There was a
+tension.
+
+Suddenly there was a noise of two shots, fired in rapid succession.
+Aaron turned startled to look into the quiet piazza.  And to his
+amazement, the pavements were empty, not a soul was in sight.  Two
+minutes before the place was busy with passers-by, and a newspaper
+man selling the Corriere, and little carriages rattling through.
+Now, as if by magic, nobody, nothing.  It was as if they had all
+melted into thin air.
+
+The waiter, too, was peeping behind the curtain.  A carriage came
+trotting into the square--an odd man took his way alone--the traffic
+began to stir once more, and people reappeared as suddenly as they had
+disappeared.  Then the waiter ran hastily and furtively out and craned
+his neck, peering round the square.  He spoke with two youths--rather
+loutish youths.  Then he returned to his duty in the hotel restaurant.
+
+"What was it?  What were the shots?" Aaron asked him.
+
+"Oh--somebody shooting at a dog," said the man negligently.
+
+"At a dog!" said Aaron, with round eyes.
+
+He finished his tea, and went out into the town.  His hotel was not
+far from the cathedral square.  Passing through the arcade, he came in
+sight of the famous cathedral with its numerous spines pricking into
+the afternoon air.  He was not as impressed as he should have been.
+And yet there was something in the northern city--this big square with
+all the trams threading through, the little yellow Continental trams:
+and the spiny bulk of the great cathedral, like a grey-purple sea-
+urchin with many spines, on the one side, the ornamental grass-plots
+and flower beds on the other: the big shops going all along the
+further strands, all round: and the endless restless nervous drift of
+a north Italian crowd, so nervous, so twitchy; nervous and twitchy as
+the slipping past of the little yellow tram-cars; it all affected him
+with a sense of strangeness, nervousness, and approaching winter.  It
+struck him the people were afraid of themselves: afraid of their own
+souls, and that which was in their own souls.
+
+Turning up the broad steps of the cathedral, he entered the famous
+building.  The sky had cleared, and the freshened light shone coloured
+in living tablets round the wonderful, towering, rose-hearted dusk of
+the great church.  At some altars lights flickered uneasily.  At some
+unseen side altar mass was going on, and a strange ragged music
+fluttered out on the incense-dusk of the great and lofty interior,
+which was all shadow, all shadow, hung round with jewel tablets of
+light.  Particularly beautiful the great east bay, above the great
+altar.  And all the time, over the big-patterned marble floor, the
+faint click and rustle of feet coming and going, coming and going,
+like shallow uneasy water rustled back and forth in a trough.  A white
+dog trotted pale through the under-dusk, over the pale, big-patterned
+floor.  Aaron came to the side altar where mass was going on, candles
+ruddily wavering.  There was a small cluster of kneeling women--
+a ragged handful of on-looking men--and people wandering up and
+wandering away, young women with neatly dressed black hair, and shawls,
+but without hats; fine young women in very high heels; young men with
+nothing to do; ragged men with nothing to do.  All strayed faintly
+clicking over the slabbed floor, and glanced at the flickering altar
+where the white-surpliced boys were curtseying and the white-and-gold
+priest bowing, his hands over his breast, in the candle-light.  All
+strayed, glanced, lingered, and strayed away again, as if the spectacle
+were not sufficiently holding.  The bell chimed for the elevation of
+the Host.  But the thin trickle of people trickled the same, uneasily,
+over the slabbed floor of the vastly-upreaching shadow-foliaged
+cathedral.
+
+The smell of incense in his nostrils, Aaron went out again by a side
+door, and began to walk along the pavements of the cathedral square,
+looking at the shops.  Some were closed, and had little notices pinned
+on them.  Some were open, and seemed half-stocked with half-elegant
+things.  Men were carrying newspapers.  In the cafes a few men were
+seated drinking vermouth.  In the doorway of the restaurants waiters
+stood inert, looking out on the streets.  The curious heart-eating
+_ennui_ of the big town on a holiday came over our hero.  He felt he
+must get out, whatever happened.  He could not bear it.
+
+So he went back to his hotel and up to his room.  It was still only
+five o'clock.  And he did not know what to do with himself.  He lay
+down on the bed, and looked at the painting on his bedroom ceiling.
+It was a terrible business in reckitt's blue and browny gold, with
+awful heraldic beasts, rather worm-wriggly, displayed in a blue field.
+
+As he lay thinking of nothing and feeling nothing except a certain
+weariness, or dreariness, or tension, or God-knows-what, he heard a
+loud hoarse noise of humanity in the distance, something frightening.
+Rising, he went on to his little balcony.  It was a sort of procession,
+or march of men, here and there a red flag fluttering from a man's
+fist.  There had been a big meeting, and this was the issue.  The
+procession was irregular, but powerful, men four abreast.  They emerged
+irregularly from the small piazza to the street, calling and
+vociferating.  They stopped before a shop and clotted into a crowd,
+shouting, becoming vicious.  Over the shop-door hung a tricolour, a
+national flag.  The shop was closed, but the men began to knock at the
+door.  They were all workmen, some in railway men's caps, mostly in
+black felt hats.  Some wore red cotton neck-ties.  They lifted their
+faces to the national flag, and as they shouted and gesticulated Aaron
+could see their strong teeth in their jaws.  There was something
+frightening in their lean, strong Italian jaws, something inhuman and
+possessed-looking in their foreign, southern-shaped faces, so much more
+formed and demon-looking than northern faces.  They had a demon-like
+set purpose, and the noise of their voices was like a jarring of steel
+weapons.  Aaron wondered what they wanted.  There were no women--all
+men--a strange male, slashing sound.  Vicious it was--the head of the
+procession swirling like a little pool, the thick wedge of the
+procession beyond, flecked with red flags.
+
+A window opened above the shop, and a frowsty-looking man, yellow-
+pale, was quickly and nervously hauling in the national flag.  There
+were shouts of derision and mockery--a great overtone of acrid
+derision--the flag and its owner ignominiously disappeared.  And the
+procession moved on.  Almost every shop had a flag flying.  And every
+one of these flags now disappeared, quickly or slowly, sooner or later,
+in obedience to the command of the vicious, derisive crowd, that
+marched and clotted slowly down the street, having its own way.
+
+Only one flag remained flying--the big tricolour that floated from the
+top storey of the house opposite Aaron's hotel.  The ground floor of
+this house consisted of shop-premises--now closed.  There was no sign
+of any occupant.  The flag floated inert aloft.
+
+The whole crowd had come to a stop immediately below the hotel, and
+all were now looking up at the green and white and red tricolour which
+stirred damply in the early evening light, from under the broad eaves
+of the house opposite.  Aaron looked at the long flag, which drooped
+almost unmoved from the eaves-shadow, and he half expected it to furl
+itself up of its own accord, in obedience to the will of the masses.
+Then he looked down at the packed black shoulders of the mob below,
+and at the curious clustering pattern of a sea of black hats.  He
+could hardly see anything but hats and shoulders, uneasily moving
+like boiling pitch away beneath him.  But the shouts began to come
+up hotter and hotter.  There had been a great ringing of a door-bell
+and battering on the shop-door.  The crowd--the swollen head of the
+procession--talked and shouted, occupying the centre of the street,
+but leaving the pavement clear.  A woman in a white blouse appeared
+in the shop-door.  She came out and looked up at the flag and shook
+her head and gesticulated with her hands.  It was evidently not her
+flag--she had nothing to do with it.  The leaders again turned to the
+large house-door, and began to ring all the bells and to knock with
+their knuckles.  But no good--there was no answer.  They looked up
+again at the flag.  Voices rose ragged and ironical.  The woman
+explained something again.  Apparently there was nobody at home in
+the upper floors--all entrance was locked--there was no caretaker.
+Nobody owned the flag.  There it hung under the broad eaves of the
+strong stone house, and didn't even know that it was guilty.  The
+woman went back into her shop and drew down the iron shutter from
+inside.
+
+The crowd, nonplussed, now began to argue and shout and whistle.  The
+voices rose in pitch and derision.  Steam was getting up.  There hung
+the flag.  The procession crowded forward and filled the street in a
+mass below.  All the rest of the street was empty and shut up.  And
+still hung the showy rag, red and white and green, up aloft.
+
+Suddenly there was a lull--then shouts, half-encouraging, half-
+derisive.  And Aaron saw a smallish-black figure of a youth, fair-
+haired, not more than seventeen years old, clinging like a monkey to
+the front of the house, and by the help of the heavy drain-pipe and
+the stone-work ornamentation climbing up to the stone ledge that ran
+under ground-floor windows, up like a sudden cat on to the projecting
+footing.  He did not stop there, but continued his race like some
+frantic lizard running up the great wall-front, working away from the
+noise below, as if in sheer fright.  It was one unending wriggling
+movement, sheer up the front of the impassive, heavy stone house.
+
+The flag hung from a pole under one of the windows of the top storey--
+the third floor.  Up went the wriggling figure of the possessed youth.
+The cries of the crowd below were now wild, ragged ejaculations of
+excitement and encouragement.  The youth seemed to be lifted up, almost
+magically on the intense upreaching excitement of the massed men below.
+He passed the ledge of the first floor, like a lizard he wriggled up
+and passed the ledge or coping of the second floor, and there he was,
+like an upward-climbing shadow, scrambling on to the coping of the
+third floor.  The crowd was for a second electrically still as the boy
+rose there erect, cleaving to the wall with the tips of his fingers.
+
+But he did not hesitate for one breath.  He was on his feet and
+running along the narrow coping that went across the house under
+the third floor windows, running there on that narrow footing away
+above the street, straight to the flag.  He had got it--he had
+clutched it in his hand, a handful of it.  Exactly like a great
+flame rose the simultaneous yell of the crowd as the boy jerked
+and got the flag loose.  He had torn it down.  A tremendous prolonged
+yell, touched with a snarl of triumph, and searing like a puff of
+flame, sounded as the boy remained for one moment with the flag in
+his hand looking down at the crowd below.  His face was odd and elated
+and still.  Then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him,
+and Aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces,
+whilst the noise of yelling rose up unheard.
+
+There was a great clutch and hiss in the crowd.  The boy still stood
+unmoved, holding by one hand behind him, looking down from above, from
+his dangerous elevation, in a sort of abstraction.
+
+And the next thing Aaron was conscious of was the sound of trumpets.
+A sudden startling challenge of trumpets, and out of nowhere a sudden
+rush of grey-green carabinieri battering the crowd wildly with
+truncheons.  It was so sudden that Aaron _heard_ nothing any more.
+He only saw.
+
+In utmost amazement he saw the greeny-grey uniformed carabinieri
+rushing thick and wild and indiscriminate on the crowd: a sudden new
+excited crowd in uniforms attacking the black crowd, beating them
+wildly with truncheons.  There was a seething moment in the street
+below.  And almost instantaneously the original crowd burst into a
+terror of frenzy.  The mob broke as if something had exploded inside
+it.  A few black-hatted men fought furiously to get themselves free of
+the hated soldiers; in the confusion bunches of men staggered, reeled,
+fell, and were struggling among the legs of their comrades and of the
+carabinieri.  But the bulk of the crowd just burst and fled--in every
+direction.  Like drops of water they seemed to fly up at the very
+walls themselves.  They darted into any entry, any doorway.  They
+sprang up the walls and clambered into the ground-floor windows.
+They sprang up the walls on to window-ledges, and then jumped down
+again, and ran--clambering, wriggling, darting, running in every
+direction; some cut, blood on their faces, terror or frenzy of flight
+in their hearts.  Not so much terror as the frenzy of running away.
+In a breath the street was empty.
+
+And all the time, there above on the stone coping stood the long-
+faced, fair-haired boy, while four stout carabinieri in the street
+below stood with uplifted revolvers and covered him, shouting that if
+he moved they would shoot.  So there he stood, still looking down,
+still holding with his left hand behind him, covered by the four
+revolvers.  He was not so much afraid as twitchily self-conscious
+because of his false position.
+
+Meanwhile down below the crowd had dispersed--melted momentaneously.
+The carabinieri were busy arresting the men who had fallen and been
+trodden underfoot, or who had foolishly let themselves be taken;
+perhaps half a dozen men, half a dozen prisoners; less rather than
+more.  The sergeant ordered these to be secured between soldiers.
+And last of all the youth up above, still covered by the revolvers,
+was ordered to come down.  He turned quite quietly, and quite humbly,
+cautiously picked his way along the coping towards the drain-pipe.
+He reached this pipe and began, in humiliation, to climb down.  It
+was a real climb down.
+
+Once in the street he was surrounded by the grey uniforms.  The
+soldiers formed up.  The sergeant gave the order.  And away they
+marched, the dejected youth a prisoner between them.
+
+Then were heard a few scattered yells of derision and protest, a few
+shouts of anger and derision against the carabinieri.  There were once
+more gangs of men and groups of youths along the street.  They sent up
+an occasional shout.  But always over their shoulders, and pretending
+it was not they who shouted.  They were all cowed and hang-dog once
+more, and made not the slightest effort to save the youth.
+Nevertheless, they prowled and watched, ready for the next time.
+
+So, away went the prisoner and the grey-green soldiers, and the street
+was left to the little gangs and groups of hangdog, discontented men,
+all thoroughly out of countenance.  The scene was ended.
+
+Aaron looked round, dazed.  And then for the first time he noticed, on
+the next balcony to his own, two young men: young gentlemen, he would
+have said.  The one was tall and handsome and well-coloured, might be
+Italian.  But the other with his pale thin face and his rimless monocle
+in his eye, he was surely an Englishman.  He was surely one of the
+young officers shattered by the war.  A look of strange, arch, bird-
+like pleasure was on his face at this moment: if one could imagine the
+gleaming smile of a white owl over the events that had just passed,
+this was the impression produced on Aaron by the face of the young
+man with the monocle.  The other youth, the ruddy, handsome one, had
+knitted his brows in mock distress, and was glancing with a look of
+shrewd curiosity at Aaron, and with a look of almost self-satisfied
+excitement first to one end of the street, then to the other.
+
+"But imagine, Angus, it's all over!" he said, laying his hand on the
+arm of the monocled young man, and making great eyes--not without a
+shrewd glance in Aaron's direction.
+
+"Did you see him fall!" replied Angus, with another strange gleam.
+
+"Yes.  But was he HURT--?"
+
+"I don't know.  I should think so.  He fell right back out of that on
+to those stones!"
+
+"But how perfectly AWFUL!  Did you ever see anything like it?"
+
+"No.  It's one of the funniest things I ever did see.  I saw nothing
+quite like it, even in the war--"
+
+Here Aaron withdrew into his room.  His mind and soul were in a whirl.
+He sat down in his chair, and did not move again for a great while.
+When he did move, he took his flute and played he knew not what.  But
+strange, strange his soul passed into his instrument.  Or passed half
+into his instrument.  There was a big residue left, to go bitter, or
+to ferment into gold old wine of wisdom.
+
+He did not notice the dinner gong, and only the arrival of the chamber-
+maid, to put the wash-table in order, sent him down to the restaurant.
+The first thing he saw, as he entered, was the two young Englishmen
+seated at a table in a corner just behind him.  Their hair was brushed
+straight back from their foreheads, making the sweep of the head bright
+and impeccable, and leaving both the young faces clear as if in cameo.
+Angus had laid his monocle on the table, and was looking round the
+room with wide, light-blue eyes, looking hard, like some bird-creature,
+and seeming to see nothing.  He had evidently been very ill: was
+still very ill.  His cheeks and even his jaw seemed shrunken, almost
+withered.  He forgot his dinner: or he did not care for it.  Probably
+the latter.
+
+"What do you think, Francis," he said, "of making a plan to see
+Florence and Sienna and Orvieto on the way down, instead of going
+straight to Rome?"  He spoke in precise, particularly-enunciated
+words, in a public-school manner, but with a strong twang of South
+Wales.
+
+"Why, Angus," came the graceful voice of  Francis, "I thought we had
+settled to go straight through via Pisa."  Francis was graceful in
+everything--in his tall, elegant figure, in the poses of his handsome
+head, in the modulation of his voice.
+
+"Yes, but I see we can go either way--either Pisa or Florence.  And I
+thought it might be nice to look at Florence and Sienna and Orvieto.
+I believe they're very lovely," came the soft, precise voice of Angus,
+ending in a touch of odd emotion on the words "very lovely," as if it
+were a new experience to him to be using them.
+
+"I'm SURE they're marvellous.  I'm quite sure they're marvellously
+beautiful," said Francis, in his assured, elegant way.  "Well, then,
+Angus--suppose we do that, then?--When shall we start?"
+
+Angus was the nervous insister.  Francis was quite occupied with his
+own thoughts and calculations and curiosity.  For he was very curious,
+not to say inquisitive.  And at the present moment he had a new subject
+to ponder.
+
+This new subject was Aaron, who sat with his back to our new couple,
+and who, with his fine sharp ears, caught every word that they said.
+Aaron's back was broad enough, and his shoulders square, and his head
+rather small and fairish and well-shaped--and Francis was intrigued.
+He wanted to know, was the man English.  He _looked_ so English--
+yet he might be--he might perhaps be Danish, Scandinavian, or Dutch.
+Therefore, the elegant young man watched and listened with all his
+ears.
+
+The waiter who had brought Aaron his soup now came very free and easy,
+to ask for further orders.
+
+"What would you like to drink?  Wine?  Chianti?  Or white wine?  Or
+beer?"--The old-fashioned "Sir" was dropped.  It is too old-fashioned
+now, since the war.
+
+"What SHOULD I drink?" said Aaron, whose acquaintance with wines was
+not very large.
+
+"Half-litre of Chianti: that is very good," said the waiter, with the
+air of a man who knew only too well how to bring up his betters, and
+train them in the way they should go.
+
+"All right," said Aaron.
+
+The welcome sound of these two magic words, All Right! was what the
+waiter most desired.  "All right!  Yes!  All Right!"  This is the
+pith, the marrow, the sum and essence of the English language to a
+southerner.  Of course it is not _all right_.  It is _Or-rye_--and
+one word at that.  The blow that would be given to most foreign
+waiters, if they were forced to realize that the famous _orye_ was
+really composed of two words, and spelt _all right_, would be too
+cruel, perhaps.
+
+"Half litre Chianti.  Orye," said the waiter.  And we'll let him
+say it.
+
+"ENGLISH!" whispered Francis melodramatically in the ear of Angus. "I
+THOUGHT so.  The flautist."
+
+Angus put in his monocle, and stared at the oblivious shoulders of
+Aaron, without apparently seeing anything.  "Yes.  Obviously English,"
+said Angus, pursing like a bird.
+
+"Oh, but I heard him," whispered Francis emphatically.  "Quite," said
+Angus.  "But quite inoffensive."
+
+"Oh, but Angus, my dear--he's the FLAUTIST.   Don't you remember?
+The divine bit of Scriabin.  At least I believe it was Scriabin.--
+But PERFECTLY DIVINE!!!  I adore the flute above all things--"  And
+Francis placed his hand on Angus' arm, and rolled his eyes--Lay this
+to the credit of a bottle of Lacrimae Cristi, if you like.
+
+"Yes.  So do I," said Angus, again looking archly through the monocle,
+and seeing nothing.  "I wonder what he's doing here."
+
+"Don't you think we might ASK him?" said Francis, in a vehement
+whisper.  "After all, we are the only three English people in the
+place."
+
+"For the moment, apparently we are," said Angus.  "But the English
+are all over the place wherever you go, like bits of orange peel in
+the street.  Don't forget that, Francesco."
+
+"No, Angus, I don't.  The point is, his flute is PERFECTLY DIVINE--and
+he seems quite attractive in himself.  Don't you think so?"
+
+"Oh, quite," said Angus, whose observations had got no further than
+the black cloth of the back of Aaron's jacket.  That there was a man
+inside he had not yet paused to consider.
+
+"Quite a musician," said Francis.
+
+"The hired sort," said Angus, "most probably."
+
+"But he PLAYS--he plays most marvellously.  THAT you can't get away
+from, Angus."
+
+"I quite agree," said Angus.
+
+"Well, then?  Don't you think we might hear him again?  Don't you
+think we might get him to play for us?--But I should love it more
+than anything."
+
+"Yes, I should, too," said Angus.  "You might ask him to coffee and
+a liqueur."
+
+"I should like to--most awfully.  But do you think I might?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  He won't mind being offered a coffee and liqueur.  We can
+give him something decent--Where's the waiter?"  Angus lifted his
+pinched, ugly bare face and looked round with weird command for the
+waiter.  The waiter, having not much to do, and feeling ready to draw
+these two weird young birds, allowed himself to be summoned.
+
+"Where's the wine list?  What liqueurs have you got?" demanded Angus
+abruptly.
+
+The waiter rattled off a list, beginning with Strega and ending with
+cherry brandy.
+
+"Grand Marnier," said Angus.  "And leave the bottle."
+
+Then he looked with arch triumph at Francis, like a wicked bird.
+Francis bit his finger moodily, and glowered with handsome, dark-blue
+uncertain eyes at Mr. Aaron, who was just surveying the _Frutte_,
+which consisted of two rather old pomegranates and various pale
+yellow apples, with a sprinkling of withered dried figs.  At the
+moment, they all looked like a _Natura Morta_ arrangement.
+
+"But do you think I might--?" said Francis moodily.  Angus pursed his
+lips with a reckless brightness.
+
+"Why not?  I see no reason why you shouldn't," he said.  Whereupon
+Francis cleared his throat, disposed of his serviette, and rose to
+his feet, slowly but gracefully.  Then he composed himself, and took
+on the air he wished to assume at the moment.  It was a nice degage
+air, half naive and half enthusiastic.  Then he crossed to Aaron's
+table, and stood on one lounging hip, gracefully, and bent forward
+in a confidential manner, and said:
+
+"Do excuse me.  But I MUST ask you if it was you we heard playing the
+flute so perfectly wonderfully, just before dinner."
+
+The voice was confidential and ingratiating.  Aaron, relieved from the
+world's stress and seeing life anew in the rosy glow of half a litre
+of good old Chianti--the war was so near but gone by--looked up at the
+dark blue, ingenuous, well-adapted eyes of our friend Francis, and
+smiling, said:
+
+"Yes, I saw you on the balcony as well."
+
+"Oh, did you notice us?" plunged Francis.  "But wasn't it an
+extraordinary affair?"
+
+"Very," said Aaron.  "I couldn't make it out, could you?"
+
+"Oh," cried Francis.  "I never try.  It's all much too new and
+complicated for me.--But perhaps you know Italy?"
+
+"No, I don't," said Aaron.
+
+"Neither do we.  And we feel rather stunned.  We had only just arrived
+--and then--Oh!"  Francis put up his hand to his comely brow and rolled
+his eyes.  "I feel perfectly overwhelmed with it still."
+
+He here allowed himself to sink friendlily into the vacant chair
+opposite Aaron's.
+
+"Yes, I thought it was a bit exciting," said Aaron.  "I wonder what
+will become of him--"
+
+"--Of the one who climbed for the flag, you mean?  No!--But wasn't it
+perfectly marvellous!  Oh, incredible, quite incredible!--And then your
+flute to finish it all!  Oh!  I felt it only wanted that.--I haven't
+got over it yet.  But your playing was MARVELLOUS, really marvellous.
+Do you know, I can't forget it.  You are a professional musician, of
+course."
+
+"If you mean I play for a living," said Aaron.  "I have played in
+orchestras in London."
+
+"Of course!  Of course!  I knew you must be a professional.  But don't
+you give private recitals, too?"
+
+"No, I never have."
+
+"Oh!" cried Francis, catching his breath.  "I can't believe it.  But
+you play MARVELLOUSLY!  Oh, I just loved it, it simply swept me away,
+after that scene in the street.  It seemed to sum it all up, you know."
+
+"Did it," said Aaron, rather grimly.
+
+"But won't you come and have coffee with us at our table?" said
+Francis.  "We should like it most awfully if you would."
+
+"Yes, thank you," said Aaron, half-rising.
+
+"But you haven't had your dessert," said Francis, laying a fatherly
+detaining hand on the arm of the other man.  Aaron looked at the
+detaining hand.
+
+"The dessert isn't much to stop for," he said.  "I can take with me
+what I want."  And he picked out a handful of dried figs.
+
+The two went across to Angus' table.
+
+"We're going to take coffee together," said Francis complacently,
+playing the host with a suave assurance that was rather amusing and
+charming in him.
+
+"Yes.  I'm very glad," said Angus.  Let us give the show away: he
+was being wilfully nice.  But he _was_ quite glad; to be able to be
+so nice.  Anything to have a bit of life going: especially a bit of
+pleased life.  He looked at Aaron's comely, wine-warmed face with
+gratification.
+
+"Have a Grand Marnier," he said.  "I don't know how bad it is.
+Everything is bad now.  They lay it down to the war as well.  It
+used to be quite a decent drink.  What the war had got to do with
+bad liqueurs, I don't know."
+
+Aaron sat down in a chair at their table.
+
+"But let us introduce ourselves," said Francis.  "I am Francis--or
+really Franz Dekker—And this is Angus Guest, my friend."
+
+"And my name is Aaron Sisson."
+
+"What!  What did you say?" said Francis, leaning forward.  He, too,
+had sharp ears.
+
+"Aaron Sisson."
+
+"Aaron Sisson!  Oh, but how amusing!  What a nice name!"
+
+"No better than yours, is it?"
+
+"Mine!  Franz Dekker!  Oh, much more amusing, _I_ think," said Francis
+archly.
+
+"Oh, well, it's a matter of opinion.  You're the double decker,
+not me."
+
+"The double decker!" said Francis archly.  "Why, what do you mean!--"
+He rolled his eyes significantly.  "But may I introduce my friend Angus
+Guest."
+
+"You've introduced me already, Francesco," said Angus.
+
+"So sorry," said Francis.
+
+"Guest!" said Aaron.
+
+Francis suddenly began to laugh.
+
+"May he not be Guest?" he asked, fatherly.
+
+"Very likely," said Aaron.  "Not that I was ever good at guessing."
+
+Francis tilted his eyebrows.  Fortunately the waiter arrived with
+the coffee.
+
+"Tell me," said Francis, "will you have your coffee black, or with
+milk?"  He was determined to restore a tone of sobriety.
+
+The coffee was sipped in sober solemnity.
+
+"Is music your line as well, then?" asked Aaron.
+
+"No, we're painters.  We're going to work in Rome."
+
+"To earn your living?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+The amount of discretion, modesty, and reserve which Francis put into
+these two syllables gave Aaron to think that he had two real young
+swells to deal with.
+
+"No," continued Francis.  "I was only JUST down from Oxford when the
+war came--and Angus had been about ten months at the Slade--But I have
+always painted.--So now we are going to work, really hard, in Rome, to
+make up for lost time.--Oh, one has lost so much time, in the war.  And
+such PRECIOUS time!  I don't know if ever one will even be able to make
+it up again."  Francis tilted his handsome eyebrows and put his head on
+one side with a wise-distressed look.
+
+"No," said Angus.  "One will never be able to make it up.  What is
+more, one will never be able to start again where one left off.  We're
+shattered old men, now, in one sense.  And in another sense, we're just
+pre-war babies."
+
+The speech was uttered with an odd abruptness and didacticism which
+made Aaron open his eyes.  Angus had that peculiar manner: he seemed
+to be haranguing himself in the circle of his own thoughts, not
+addressing himself to his listener.
+
+So his listener listened on the outside edge of the young fellow's
+crowded thoughts.  Francis put on a distressed air, and let his
+attention wander.  Angus pursed his lips and his eyes were stretched
+wide with a kind of pleasure, like a wicked owl which has just
+joyfully hooted an ill omen.
+
+"Tell me," said Francis to Aaron.  "Where were YOU all the time during
+the war?"
+
+"I was doing my job," said Aaron.  Which led to his explaining his
+origins.
+
+"Really!  So your music is quite new!  But how interesting!" cried
+Francis.
+
+Aaron explained further.
+
+"And so the war hardly affected you?  But what did you FEEL about it,
+privately?"
+
+"I didn't feel much.  I didn't know what to feel.  Other folks did
+such a lot of feeling, I thought I'd better keep my mouth shut."
+
+"Yes, quite!" said Angus.  "Everybody had such a lot of feelings on
+somebody else's behalf, that nobody ever had time to realise what they
+felt themselves.  I know I was like that.  The feelings all came on to
+me from the outside: like flies settling on meat.  Before I knew where
+I was I was eaten up with a swarm of feelings, and I found myself in
+the trenches.  God knows what for.  And ever since then I've been
+trying to get out of my swarm of feelings, which buzz in and out of
+me and have nothing to do with me.  I realised it in hospital.  It's
+exactly like trying to get out of a swarm of nasty dirty flies.  And
+every one you kill makes you sick, but doesn't make the swarm any less."
+
+Again Angus pursed and bridled and looked like a pleased, wicked white
+owl.  Then he polished his monocle on a very choice silk handkerchief,
+and fixed it unseeing in his left eye.
+
+But Francis was not interested in his friend's experiences.  For
+Francis had had a job in the War Office--whereas Angus was a war-hero
+with shattered nerves.  And let him depreciate his own experiences as
+much as he liked, the young man with the monocle kept tight hold on
+his prestige as a war hero.  Only for himself, though.  He by no means
+insisted that anyone else should be war-bitten.
+
+Francis was one of those men who, like women, can set up the
+sympathetic flow and make a fellow give himself away without realising
+what he is doing.  So there sat our friend Aaron, amusingly unbosoming
+himself of all his history and experiences, drawn out by the arch,
+subtle attentiveness of the handsome Francis.  Angus listened, too,
+with pleased amusedness on his pale, emaciated face, pursing his
+shrunken jaw.  And Aaron sipped various glasses of the liqueur, and
+told all his tale as if it was a comedy.  A comedy it seemed, too, at
+that hour.  And a comedy no doubt it was.  But mixed, like most things
+in this life.  Mixed.
+
+It was quite late before this seance broke up: and the waiter itching
+to get rid of the fellows.
+
+"Well, now," said Francis, as he rose from the table and settled his
+elegant waist, resting on one hip, as usual.  "We shall see you in the
+morning, I hope.  You say you are going to Venice.  Why?  Have you some
+engagement in Venice?"
+
+"No," said Aaron.  "I only was going to look for a friend--Rawdon
+Lilly."
+
+"Rawdon Lilly!  Why, is he in Venice?  Oh, I've heard SUCH a lot
+about him.  I should like so much to meet him.  But I heard he was
+in Germany--"
+
+"I don't know where he is."
+
+"Angus!  Didn't we hear that Lilly was in Germany?"
+
+"Yes, in Munich, being psychoanalysed, I believe it was."
+
+Aaron looked rather blank.
+
+"But have you anything to take you to Venice?  It's such a bad climate
+in the winter.  Why not come with us to Florence?" said Francis.
+
+Aaron wavered.  He really did not know what to do.
+
+"Think about it," said Francis, laying his hand on Aaron's arm.  "Think
+about it tonight.  And we'll meet in the morning.  At what time?"
+
+"Any time," said Aaron.
+
+"Well, say eleven.  We'll meet in the lounge here at eleven.  Will
+that suit you?  All right, then.  It's so awfully nice meeting you.
+That marvellous flute.--And think about Florence.  But do come.
+Don't disappoint us."
+
+The two young men went elegantly upstairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A RAILWAY JOURNEY
+
+
+The next day but one, the three set off for Florence.  Aaron had made
+an excursion from Milan with the two young heroes, and dined with them
+subsequently at the most expensive restaurant in the town.  Then they
+had all gone home--and had sat in the young men's bedroom drinking
+tea, whilst Aaron played the flute.  Francis was really musical, and
+enchanted.  Angus enjoyed the novelty, and the moderate patronage he
+was able to confer.  And Aaron felt amused and pleased, and hoped he
+was paying for his treat.
+
+So behold them setting off for Florence in the early morning.  Angus
+and Francis had first-class tickets: Aaron took a third-class.
+
+"Come and have lunch with us on the train," said Angus.  "I'll order
+three places, and we can lunch together."
+
+"Oh, I can buy a bit of food at the station," said Aaron.
+
+"No, come and lunch with us.  It will be much nicer.  And we shall
+enjoy it as well," said Angus.
+
+"Of course!  Ever so much nicer!  Of course!" cried Francis.  "Yes, why
+not, indeed!  Why should you hesitate?"
+
+"All right, then," said Aaron, not without some feeling of constraint.
+
+So they separated.  The young men settled themselves amidst the red
+plush and crochet-work, looking, with their hair plastered smoothly
+back, quite as first class as you could wish, creating quite the right
+impression on the porters and the travelling Italians.  Aaron went to
+his third-class, further up the train.
+
+"Well, then, _au revoir_, till luncheon," cried Francis.
+
+The train was fairly full in the third and second classes.  However,
+Aaron got his seat, and the porter brought on his bags, after disposing
+of the young men's luggage.  Aaron gave the tip uneasily.  He always
+hated tipping--it seemed humiliating both ways.  And the airy aplomb of
+the two young cavaliers, as they settled down among the red plush and
+the obsequiousness, and said "Well, then, _au revoir_ till luncheon,"
+was peculiarly unsettling: though they did not intend it so.
+
+"The porter thinks I'm their servant--their valet," said Aaron to
+himself, and a curious half-amused, half-contemptuous look flickered
+on his face.  It annoyed him.  The falsity occasioned by the difference
+in the price of the tickets was really humiliating.  Aaron had lived
+long enough to know that as far as manhood and intellect went--nay,
+even education--he was not the inferior of the two young "gentlemen."
+He knew quite well that, as far as intrinsic nature went, they did not
+imagine him an inferior: rather the contrary.  They had rather an
+exaggerated respect for him and his life-power, and even his origin.
+And yet--they had the inestimable cash advantage--and they were going
+to keep it.  They knew it was nothing more than an artificial cash
+superiority.  But they gripped it all the more intensely.  They were
+the upper middle classes.  They were Eton and Oxford.  And they were
+going to hang on to their privileges.  In these days, it is a fool who
+abdicates before he's forced to.  And therefore:
+
+"Well, then--_au revoir_ till luncheon."
+
+They were being so awfully nice.  And inwardly they were not
+condescending.  But socially, they just had to be.  The world is made
+like that.  It wasn't their own private fault.  It was no fault at all.
+It was just the mode in which they were educated, the style of their
+living.  And as we know, _le style, c'est l'homme_.
+
+Angus came of very wealthy iron people near Merthyr.  Already he had a
+very fair income of his own.  As soon as the law-business concerning
+his father's and his grandfather's will was settled, he would be well
+off.  And he knew it, and valued himself accordingly.  Francis was the
+son of a highly-esteemed barrister and politician of Sydney, and in
+his day would inherit his father's lately-won baronetcy.  But Francis
+had not very much money: and was much more class-flexible than Angus.
+Angus had been born in a house with a park, and of awful, hard-willed,
+money-bound people.  Francis came of a much more adventurous, loose,
+excitable family, he had the colonial newness and adaptability.  He
+knew, for his own part, that class superiority was just a trick,
+nowadays.  Still, it was a trick that paid.  And a trick he was going
+to play as long as it did pay.
+
+While Aaron sat, a little pale at the gills, immobile, ruminating these
+matters, a not very pleasant look about his nose-end, he heard a voice:
+
+"Oh, there you ARE!  I thought I'd better come and see, so that we
+can fetch you at lunch time.--You've got a seat?  Are you quite
+comfortable?  Is there anything I could get you?  Why, you're in a
+non-smoker!--But that doesn't matter, everybody will smoke.  Are you
+sure you have everything?  Oh, but wait just one moment--"
+
+It was Francis, long and elegant, with his straight shoulders and his
+coat buttoned to show his waist, and his face so well-formed and so
+modern.  So modern, altogether.  His voice was pleasantly modulated,
+and never hurried.  He now looked as if a thought had struck him.  He
+put a finger to his brow, and hastened back to his own carriage.  In
+a minute, he returned with a new London literary magazine.
+
+"Something to read--I shall have to FLY--See you at lunch," and he had
+turned and elegantly hastened, but not too fast, back to his carriage.
+The porter was holding the door for him.  So Francis looked pleasantly
+hurried, but by no means rushed.  Oh, dear, no.  He took his time.  It
+was not for him to bolt and scramble like a mere Italian.
+
+The people in Aaron's carriage had watched the apparition of the
+elegant youth intently.  For them, he was a being from another sphere
+--no doubt a young milordo with power wealth, and glamorous life behind
+him.  Which was just what Francis intended to convey.  So handsome--so
+very, very impressive in all his elegant calm showiness.  He made such
+a _bella figura_.  It was just what the Italians loved.  Those in the
+first class regions thought he might even be an Italian, he was so
+attractive.
+
+The train in motion, the many Italian eyes in the carriage studied
+Aaron.  He, too, was good-looking.  But by no means as fascinating
+as the young milordo.  Not half as sympathetic.  No good at all at
+playing a role.  Probably a servant of the young signori.
+
+Aaron stared out of the window, and played the one single British role
+left to him, that of ignoring his neighbours, isolating himself in
+their midst, and minding his own business.  Upon this insular trick
+our greatness and our predominance depends--such as it is.  Yes, they
+might look at him.  They might think him a servant or what they liked.
+But he was inaccessible to them.  He isolated himself upon himself,
+and there remained.
+
+It was a lovely day, a lovely, lovely day of early autumn.  Over the
+great plain of Lombardy a magnificent blue sky glowed like mid-summer,
+the sun shone strong.  The great plain, with its great stripes of
+cultivation--without hedges or boundaries---how beautiful it was!
+Sometimes he saw oxen ploughing.  Sometimes.  Oh, so beautiful, teams
+of eight, or ten, even of twelve pale, great soft oxen in procession,
+ploughing the dark velvety earth, a driver with a great whip at their
+head, a man far behind holding the plough-shafts.  Beautiful the soft,
+soft plunging motion of oxen moving forwards.  Beautiful the strange,
+snaky lifting of the muzzles, the swaying of the sharp horns.  And the
+soft, soft crawling motion of a team of oxen, so invisible, almost,
+yet so inevitable.  Now and again straight canals of water flashed
+blue.  Now and again the great lines of grey-silvery poplars rose and
+made avenues or lovely grey airy quadrangles across the plain.  Their
+top boughs were spangled with gold and green leaf.  Sometimes the vine-
+leaves were gold and red, a patterning.  And the great square farm-
+homesteads, white, red-roofed, with their out-buildings, stood naked
+amid the lands, without screen or softening.  There was something big
+and exposed about it all.  No more the cosy English ambushed life, no
+longer the cosy littleness of the landscape.  A bigness--and nothing
+to shelter the unshrinking spirit.  It was all exposed, exposed to the
+sweep of plain, to the high, strong sky, and to human gaze.  A kind of
+boldness, an indifference.  Aaron was impressed and fascinated.  He
+looked with new interest at the Italians in the carriage with him--for
+this same boldness and indifference and exposed gesture.  And he found
+it in them, too.  And again it fascinated him.  It seemed so much
+bigger, as if the walls of life had fallen.  Nay, the walls of English
+life will have to fall.
+
+Sitting there in the third-class carriage, he became happy again.  The
+_presence_ of his fellow-passengers was not so hampering as in England.
+In England, everybody seems held tight and gripped, nothing is left
+free.  Every passenger seems like a parcel holding his string as fast
+as he can about him, lest one corner of the wrapper should come undone
+and reveal what is inside.  And every other passenger is forced, by
+the public will, to hold himself as tight-bound also.  Which in the
+end becomes a sort of self-conscious madness.
+
+But here, in the third class carriage, there was no tight string round
+every man.  They were not all trussed with self-conscious string as
+tight as capons.  They had a sufficient amount of callousness and
+indifference and natural equanimity.  True, one of them spat
+continually on the floor, in large spits.  And another sat with his
+boots all unlaced and his collar off, and various important buttons
+undone.  They did not seem to care if bits of themselves did show,
+through the gaps in the wrapping.  Aaron winced--but he preferred it
+to English tightness.  He was pleased, he was happy with the Italians.
+He thought how generous and natural they were.
+
+So the towns passed by, and the hours, and he seemed at last to have
+got outside himself and his old conditions.  It seemed like a great
+escape.  There was magic again in life--real magic.  Was it illusion,
+or was it genuine?  He thought it was genuine, and opened his soul a
+if there was no danger.
+
+Lunch-time came.  Francis summoned Aaron down the rocking tram.  The
+three men had a table to themselves, and all felt they were enjoying
+themselves very much indeed.  Of course Francis and Angus made a great
+impression again.  But in the dining car were mostly middle-class,
+well-to-do Italians.  And these did not look upon our two young heroes
+as two young wonders.  No, rather with some criticism, and some class-
+envy.  But they were impressed.  Oh, they were impressed!  How should
+they not be, when our young gentlemen had such an air!  Aaron was
+conscious all the time that the fellow-diners were being properly
+impressed by the flower of civilisation and the salt of the earth,
+namely, young, well-to-do Englishmen.  And he had a faint premonition,
+based on experience perhaps, that fellow-passengers in the end never
+forgive the man who has "impressed" them.  Mankind loves being
+impressed.  It asks to be impressed.  It almost forces those whom it
+can force to play a role and to make an impression.  And afterwards,
+never forgives.
+
+When the train ran into Bologna Station, they were still in the
+restaurant car.  Nor did they go at once to their seats.  Angus had
+paid the bill.  There was three-quarters-of-an-hour's wait in Bologna.
+
+"You may as well come down and sit with us," said Francis.  "We've got
+nobody in our carriage, so why shouldn't we all stay together during
+the wait.  You kept your own seat, I suppose."
+
+No, he had forgotten.  So when he went to look for it, it was occupied
+by a stout man who was just taking off his collar and wrapping a white
+kerchief round his neck.  The third class carriages were packed.  For
+those were early days after the war, while men still had pre-war
+notions and were poor.  Ten months would steal imperceptibly by, and
+the mysterious revolution would be effected.  Then, the second class
+and the first class would be packed, indescribably packed, crowded, on
+all great trains: and the third class carriages, lo and behold, would
+be comparatively empty.  Oh, marvellous days of bankruptcy, when nobody
+will condescend to travel third!
+
+However, these were still modest, sombre months immediately after the
+peace.  So a large man with a fat neck and a white kerchief, and his
+collar over his knee, sat in Aaron's seat.  Aaron looked at the man,
+and at his own luggage overhead.  The fat man saw him looking and
+stared back: then stared also at the luggage overhead: and with his
+almost invisible north-Italian gesture said much plainer than words
+would have said it: "Go to hell.  I'm here and I'm going to stop here."
+
+There was something insolent and unbearable about the look--and about
+the rocky fixity of the large man.  He sat as if he had insolently
+taken root in his seat.  Aaron flushed slightly.  Francis and Angus
+strolled along the train, outside, for the corridor was already
+blocked with the mad Bologna rush, and the baggage belonging.  They
+joined Aaron as he stood on the platform.
+
+"But where is YOUR SEAT?" cried Francis, peering into the packed and
+jammed compartments of the third class.
+
+"That man's sitting in it."
+
+"Which?" cried Francis, indignant.
+
+"The fat one there--with the collar on his knee."
+
+"But it was your seat--!"
+
+Francis' gorge rose in indignation.  He mounted into the corridor.
+And in the doorway of the compartment he bridled like an angry horse
+rearing, bridling his head.  Poising himself on one hip, he stared
+fixedly at the man with the collar on his knee, then at the baggage
+aloft.  He looked down at the fat man as a bird looks down from the
+eaves of a house.  But the man looked back with a solid, rock-like
+impudence, before which an Englishman quails: a jeering, immovable
+insolence, with a sneer round the nose and a solid-seated posterior.
+
+"But," said Francis in English--none of them had any Italian yet.
+"But," said Francis, turning round to Aaron, "that was YOUR SEAT?"
+and he flung his long fore-finger in the direction of the fat man's
+thighs.
+
+"Yes!" said Aaron.
+
+"And he's TAKEN it--!" cried Francis in indignation.
+
+"And knows it, too," said Aaron.
+
+"But--!" and Francis looked round imperiously, as if to summon his
+bodyguard.  But bodyguards are no longer forthcoming, and train-guards
+are far from satisfactory.  The fat man sat on, with a sneer-grin,
+very faint but very effective, round his nose, and a solidly-planted
+posterior.  He quite enjoyed the pantomime of the young foreigners.
+The other passengers said something to him, and he answered laconic.
+Then they all had the faint sneer-grin round their noses.  A woman in
+the corner grinned jeeringly straight in Francis' face.  His charm
+failed entirely this time: and as for his commandingness, that was
+ineffectual indeed.  Rage came up in him.
+
+"Oh well--something must be done," said he decisively.  "But didn't you
+put something in the seat to RESERVE it?"
+
+"Only that _New Statesman_--but he's moved it."
+
+The man still sat with the invisible sneer-grin on his face, and that
+peculiar and immovable plant of his Italian posterior.
+
+"Mais--cette place etait RESERVEE--" said Francis, moving to the
+direct attack.
+
+The man turned aside and ignored him utterly--then said something to
+the men opposite, and they all began to show their teeth in a grin.
+
+Francis was not so easily foiled.  He touched the man on the arm.  The
+man looked round threateningly, as if he had been struck.
+
+"Cette place est reservee--par ce Monsieur--" said Francis with
+hauteur, though still in an explanatory tone, and pointing to Aaron.
+
+The Italian looked him, not in the eyes, but between the eyes, and
+sneered full in his face.  Then he looked with contempt at Aaron.
+And then he said, in Italian, that there was room for such snobs in
+the first class, and that they had not any right to come occupying
+the place of honest men in the third.
+
+"Gia!  Gia!" barked the other passengers in the carriage.
+
+"Loro possono andare prima classa--PRIMA CLASSA!" said the woman in
+the corner, in a very high voice, as if talking to deaf people, and
+pointing to Aaron's luggage, then along the train to the first class
+carriages.
+
+"C'e posto la," said one of the men, shrugging his shoulders.
+
+There was a jeering quality in the hard insolence which made Francis
+go very red and Augus very white.  Angus stared like a death's-head
+behind his monocle, with death-blue eyes.
+
+"Oh, never mind.  Come along to the first class.  I'll pay the
+difference.  We shall be much better all together.  Get the luggage
+down, Francis.  It wouldn't be possible to travel with this lot, even
+if he gave up the seat.  There's plenty of room in our carriage--and
+I'll pay the extra," said Angus.
+
+He knew there was one solution--and only one--Money.
+
+But Francis bit his finger.  He felt almost beside himself--and
+quite powerless.  For he knew the guard of the train would jeer too.
+It is not so easy to interfere with honest third-class Bolognesi
+in Bologna station, even if they _have_ taken another man's seat.
+Powerless, his brow knitted, and looking just like Mephistopheles
+with his high forehead and slightly arched nose, Mephistopheles in
+a rage, he hauled down Aaron's bag and handed it to Angus.  So they
+transferred themselves to the first-class carriage, while the fat
+man and his party in the third-class watched in jeering, triumphant
+silence.  Solid, planted, immovable, in static triumph.
+
+So Aaron sat with the others amid the red plush, whilst the train
+began its long slow climb of the Apennines, stinking sulphurous
+through tunnels innumerable.  Wonderful the steep slopes, the great
+chestnut woods, and then the great distances glimpsed between the
+heights, Firenzuola away and beneath, Turneresque hills far off, built
+of heaven-bloom, not of earth.  It was cold at the summit-station, ice
+and snow in the air, fierce.  Our travellers shrank into the carriage
+again, and wrapped themselves round.
+
+Then the train began its long slither downhill, still through a whole
+necklace of tunnels, which fortunately no longer stank.  So down and
+down, till the plain appears in sight once more, the Arno valley.  But
+then began the inevitable hitch that always happens in Italian travel.
+The train began to hesitate--to falter to a halt, whistling shrilly
+as if in protest: whistling pip-pip-pip in expostulation as it stood
+forlorn among the fields: then stealing forward again and stealthily
+making pace, gathering speed, till it had got up a regular spurt:
+then suddenly the brakes came on with a jerk, more faltering to a
+halt, more whistling and pip-pip-pipping, as the engine stood jingling
+with impatience: after which another creak and splash, and another
+choking off.  So on till they landed in Prato station: and there they
+sat.  A fellow passenger told them, there was an hour to wait here: an
+hour.  Something had happened up the line.
+
+"Then I propose we make tea," said Angus, beaming.
+
+"Why not!  Of course.  Let us make tea.  And I will look for water."
+
+So Aaron and Francis went to the restaurant bar and filled the little
+pan at the tap.  Angus got down the red picnic case, of which he
+was so fond, and spread out the various arrangements on the floor
+of the coupe.  He soon had the spirit-lamp burning, the water heating.
+Francis proposed that he and Aaron should dash into Prato and see
+what could be bought, whilst the tea was in preparation.  So off
+they went, leaving Angus like a busy old wizard manipulating his
+arrangements on the floor of the carriage, his monocle beaming with
+bliss.  The one fat fellow--passenger with a lurid striped rug over
+his knees watched with acute interest.  Everybody who passed the
+doorway stood to contemplate the scene with pleasure.  Officials came
+and studied the situation with appreciation.  Then Francis and Aaron
+returned with a large supply of roast chestnuts, piping hot, and hard
+dried plums, and good dried figs, and rather stale rusks.  They found
+the water just boiling, Angus just throwing in the tea-egg, and the
+fellow-passenger just poking his nose right in, he was so thrilled.
+
+Nothing pleased Angus so much as thus pitching camp in the midst of
+civilisation.  The scrubby newspaper packets of chestnuts, plums, figs
+and rusks were spread out: Francis flew for salt to the man at the
+bar, and came back with a little paper of rock-salt: the brown tea
+was dispensed in the silver-fitted glasses from the immortal luncheon-
+case: and the picnic was in full swing.  Angus, being in the height of
+his happiness, now sat on the seat cross-legged, with his feet under
+him, in the authentic Buddha fashion, and on his face the queer rapt
+alert look, half a smile, also somewhat Buddhistic, holding his glass
+of brown tea in his hand.  He was as rapt and immobile as if he really
+were in a mystic state.  Yet it was only his delight in the tea-party.
+The fellow-passenger peered at the tea, and said in broken French, was
+it good.  In equally fragmentary French Francis said very good, and
+offered the fat passenger some.  He, however, held up his hand in
+protest, as if to say not for any money would he swallow the hot-
+watery stuff.  And he pulled out a flask of wine.  But a handful
+of chestnuts he accepted.
+
+The train-conductor, ticket-collector, and the heavy green soldier who
+protected them, swung open the door and stared attentively.  The fellow
+passenger addressed himself to these new-comers, and they all began
+to smile good-naturedly.  Then the fellow-passenger--he was stout and
+fifty and had a brilliant striped rug always over his knees--pointed
+out the Buddha-like position of Angus, and the three in-starers smiled
+again.  And so the fellow-passenger thought he must try too.  So he put
+aside his rug, and lifted his feet from the floor, and took his toes
+in his hands, and tried to bring his legs up and his feet under him.
+But his knees were fat, his trousers in the direst extreme of peril,
+and he could no more manage it than if he had tried to swallow himself.
+So he desisted suddenly, rather scared, whilst the three bunched and
+official heads in the doorway laughed and jested at him, showing their
+teeth and teasing him.  But on our gypsy party they turned their eyes
+with admiration.  They loved the novelty and the fun.  And on the thin,
+elegant Angus in his new London clothes, they looked really puzzled,
+as he sat there immobile, gleaming through his monocle like some
+Buddha going wicked, perched cross-legged and ecstatic on the red
+velvet seat.  They marvelled that the lower half of him could so
+double up, like a foot-rule.  So they stared till they had seen
+enough.  When they suddenly said "Buon 'appetito," withdrew their
+heads and shoulders, slammed the door, and departed.
+
+Then the train set off also--and shortly after six arrived in Florence.
+It was debated what should Aaron do in Florence.  The young men had
+engaged a room at Bertolini's hotel, on the Lungarno.  Bertolini's was
+not expensive--but Aaron knew that his friends would not long endure
+hotel life.  However, he went along with the other two, trusting to
+find a cheaper place on the morrow.
+
+It was growing quite dark as they drove to the hotel, but still was
+light enough to show the river rustling, the Ponte Vecchio spanning
+its little storeys across the flood, on its low, heavy piers: and
+some sort of magic of the darkening, varied houses facing, on the
+other side of the stream.  Of course they were all enchanted.
+
+"I knew," said Francis, "we should love it."
+
+Aaron was told he could have a little back room and pension terms for
+fifteen lire a day, if he stayed at least fifteen days.  The exchange
+was then at forty-five.  So fifteen lire meant just six-shillings-and-
+six pence a day, without extras.  Extras meant wine, tea, butter, and
+light.  It was decided he should look for something cheaper next day.
+
+By the tone of the young men, he now gathered that they would prefer
+it if he took himself off to a cheaper place.  They wished to be on
+their own.
+
+"Well, then," said Francis, "you will be in to lunch here, won't you?
+Then we'll see you at lunch."
+
+It was as if both the young men had drawn in their feelers now.  They
+were afraid of finding the new man an incubus.  They wanted to wash
+their hands of him.  Aaron's brow darkened.
+
+
+             "Perhaps it was right your love to dissemble
+              But why did you kick me down stairs? . . ."
+
+
+Then morning found him out early, before his friends had arisen.  It
+was sunny again.  The magic of Florence at once overcame him, and he
+forgot the bore of limited means and hotel costs.  He went straight out
+of the hotel door, across the road, and leaned on the river parapet.
+There ran the Arno: not such a flood after all, but a green stream
+with shoals of pebbles in its course.  Across, and in the delicate
+shadow of the early sun, stood the opposite Lungarno, the old flat
+houses, pink, or white, or grey stone, with their green shutters, some
+closed, some opened.  It had a flowery effect, the skyline irregular
+against the morning light.  To the right the delicate Trinita bridge,
+to the left, the old bridge with its little shops over the river.
+Beyond, towards the sun, glimpses of green, sky-bloomed country:
+Tuscany.
+
+There was a noise and clatter of traffic: boys pushing hand-barrows
+over the cobble-stones, slow bullocks stepping side by side, and
+shouldering one another affectionately, drawing a load of country
+produce, then horses in great brilliant scarlet cloths, like vivid
+palls, slowly pulling the long narrow carts of the district: and men
+hu-huing!--and people calling: all the sharp, clattering morning noise
+of Florence.
+
+"Oh, Angus!  Do come and look!  OH, so lovely!"
+
+Glancing up, he saw the elegant figure of Francis, in fine coloured-
+silk pyjamas, perched on a small upper balcony, turning away from the
+river towards the bedroom again, his hand lifted to his lips, as if
+to catch there his cry of delight.  The whole pose was classic and
+effective: and very amusing.  How the Italians would love it!
+
+Aaron slipped back across the road, and walked away under the houses
+towards the Ponte Vecchio.  He passed the bridge--and passed the
+Uffizi--watching the green hills opposite, and San Miniato.  Then he
+noticed the over-dramatic group of statuary in the Piazza Mentana--
+male and physical and melodramatic--and then the corner house.  It was
+a big old Florentine house, with many green shutters and wide eaves.
+There was a notice plate by the door--"Pension Nardini."
+
+He came to a full stop.  He stared at the notice-plate, stared at
+the glass door, and turning round, stared at the over-pathetic dead
+soldier on the arm of his over-heroic pistol-firing comrade; _Mentana_
+--and the date!  Aaron wondered what and where Mentana was.  Then at
+last he summoned his energy, opened the glass door, and mounted the
+first stairs.
+
+He waited some time before anybody appeared.  Then a maid-servant.
+
+"Can I have a room?" said Aaron.
+
+The bewildered, wild-eyed servant maid opened a door and showed him
+into a heavily-gilt, heavily-plush drawing-room with a great deal of
+frantic grandeur about it.  There he sat and cooled his heels for half
+an hour.  Arrived at length a stout young lady--handsome, with big
+dark-blue Italian eyes--but anaemic and too stout.
+
+"Oh!" she said as she entered, not knowing what else to say.
+
+"Good-morning," said Aaron awkwardly.
+
+"Oh, good-morning!  English!  Yes!  Oh, I am so sorry to keep you, you
+know, to make you wait so long.  I was upstairs, you know, with a lady.
+Will you sit?"
+
+"Can I have a room?" said Aaron.
+
+"A room!  Yes, you can."
+
+"What terms?"
+
+"Terms!  Oh!   Why, ten francs a day, you know, pension--if you stay--
+How long will you stay?"
+
+"At least a month, I expect."
+
+"A month!  Oh yes.  Yes, ten francs a day."
+
+"For everything?"
+
+"Everything.  Yes, everything.  Coffee, bread, honey or jam in the
+morning: lunch at half-past twelve; tea in the drawing-room, half-
+past four: dinner at half-past seven: all very nice.  And a warm
+room with the sun--Would you like to see?"
+
+So Aaron was led up the big, rambling old house to the top floor--then
+along a long old corridor--and at last into a big bedroom with two
+beds and a red tiled floor--a little dreary, as ever--but the sun just
+beginning to come in, and a lovely view on to the river, towards the
+Ponte Vecchio, and at the hills with their pines and villas and verdure
+opposite.
+
+Here he would settle.  The signorina would send a man for his bags, at
+half past two in the afternoon.
+
+At luncheon Aaron found the two friends, and told them of his move.
+
+"How very nice for you!  Ten francs a day--but that is nothing.  I am
+so pleased you've found something.  And when will you be moving in?"
+said Francis.
+
+"At half-past two."
+
+"Oh, so soon.  Yes, just as well.--But we shall see you from time to
+time, of course.  What did you say the address was?  Oh, yes--just
+near the awful statue.  Very well.  We can look you up any time--and
+you will find us here.  Leave a message if we should happen not to be
+in--we've got lots of engagements--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+FLORENCE
+
+
+The very afternoon after Aaron's arrival in Florence the sky became
+dark, the wind cold, and rain began steadily to fall.  He sat in his
+big, bleak room above the river, and watched the pale green water
+fused with yellow, the many-threaded streams fuse into one, as swiftly
+the surface flood came down from the hills.  Across, the dark green
+hills looked darker in the wet, the umbrella pines held up in vain
+above the villas.  But away below, on the Lungarno, traffic rattled
+as ever.
+
+Aaron went down at five o'clock to tea, and found himself alone next a
+group of women, mostly Swedes or Danish or Dutch, drinking a peculiar
+brown herb-brew which tasted like nothing else on earth, and eating
+two thick bits of darkish bread smeared with a brown smear which hoped
+it was jam, but hoped in vain.  Unhappily he sat in the gilt and red,
+massively ornate room, while the foreign women eyed him.  Oh, bitter
+to be a male under such circumstances.
+
+He escaped as soon as possible back to his far-off regions, lonely and
+cheerless, away above.  But he rather liked the far-off remoteness in
+the big old Florentine house: he did not mind the peculiar dark, uncosy
+dreariness.  It was not really dreary: only indifferent.  Indifferent
+to comfort, indifferent to all homeliness and cosiness.  The over-big
+furniture trying to be impressive, but never to be pretty or bright or
+cheerful.  There it stood, ugly and apart.  And there let it stand.--
+Neither did he mind the lack of fire, the cold sombreness of his big
+bedroom.  At home, in England, the bright grate and the ruddy fire, the
+thick hearth-rug and the man's arm-chair, these had been inevitable.
+And now he was glad to get away from it all.  He was glad not to have a
+cosy hearth, and his own arm-chair.  He was glad to feel the cold, and
+to breathe the unwarmed air.  He preferred the Italian way of no fires,
+no heating.  If the day was cold, he was willing to be cold too.  If
+it was dark, he was willing to be dark.  The cosy brightness of a real
+home--it had stifled him till he felt his lungs would burst.  The
+horrors of real domesticity.  No, the Italian brutal way was better.
+
+So he put his overcoat over his knee, and studied some music he had
+bought in Milan: some Pergolesi and the Scarlatti he liked, and some
+Corelli.  He preferred frail, sensitive, abstract music, with not much
+feeling in it, but a certain limpidity and purity.  Night fell as he
+sat reading the scores.  He would have liked to try certain pieces on
+his flute.  But his flute was too sensitive, it winced from the new
+strange surroundings, and would not blossom.
+
+Dinner sounded at last--at eight o'clock, or something after.  He had
+to learn to expect the meals always forty minutes late.  Down he went,
+down the long, dark, lonely corridors and staircases.  The dining room
+was right downstairs.  But he had a little table to himself near the
+door, the elderly women were at some little distance.  The only other
+men were Agostmo, the unshapely waiter, and an Italian duke, with wife
+and child and nurse, the family sitting all together at a table halfway
+down the room, and utterly pre-occupied with a little yellow dog.
+
+However, the food was good enough, and sufficient, and the waiter and
+the maid-servant cheerful and bustling.  Everything felt happy-go-
+lucky and informal, there was no particular atmosphere.  Nobody put
+on any airs, because nobody in the Nardini took any notice if they did.
+The little ducal dog yapped, the ducal son shouted, the waiter dropped
+half a dozen spoons, the old women knitted during the waits, and all
+went off so badly that it was quite pleasant.  Yes, Aaron preferred it
+to Bertolini's, which was trying to be efficient and correct: though
+not making any strenuous effort.  Still, Bertolini's was much more up
+to the scratch, there was the tension of proper standards.  Whereas
+here at Nardini's, nothing mattered very much.
+
+It was November.  When he got up to his far-off room again, Aaron felt
+almost as if he were in a castle with the drawbridge drawn up.  Through
+the open window came the sound of the swelling Arno, as it rushed and
+rustled along over its gravel-shoals.  Lights spangled the opposite
+side.  Traffic sounded deep below.  The room was not really cold, for
+the summer sun so soaks into these thick old buildings, that it takes
+a month or two of winter to soak it out.--The rain still fell.
+
+In the morning it was still November, and the dawn came slowly.  And
+through the open window was the sound of the river's rushing.  But the
+traffic started before dawn, with a bang and a rattle of carts, and a
+bang and jingle of tram-cars over the not-distant bridge.  Oh, noisy
+Florence!  At half-past seven Aaron rang for his coffee: and got it
+at a few minutes past eight.  The signorina had told him to take his
+coffee in bed.
+
+Rain was still falling.  But towards nine o'clock it lifted, and he
+decided to go out.  A wet, wet world.  Carriages going by, with huge
+wet shiny umbrellas, black and with many points, erected to cover the
+driver and the tail of the horse and the box-seat.  The hood of the
+carriage covered the fare.  Clatter-clatter through the rain.  Peasants
+with long wagons and slow oxen, and pale-green huge umbrellas erected
+for the driver to walk beneath.  Men tripping along in cloaks, shawls,
+umbrellas, anything, quite unconcerned.  A man loading gravel in the
+river-bed, in spite of the wet.  And innumerable bells ringing: but
+innumerable bells.  The great soft trembling of the cathedral bell
+felt in all the air.
+
+Anyhow it was a new world.  Aaron went along close to the tall thick
+houses, following his nose.  And suddenly he caught sight of the long
+slim neck of the Palazzo Vecchio up above, in the air.  And in another
+minute he was passing between massive buildings, out into the Piazza
+della Signoria.  There he stood still and looked round him in real
+surprise, and real joy.  The flat empty square with its stone paving
+was all wet.  The great buildings rose dark.  The dark, sheer front
+of the Palazzo Vecchio went up like a cliff, to the battlements, and
+the slim tower soared dark and hawk-like, crested, high above.  And at
+the foot of the cliff stood the great naked David, white and stripped
+in the wet, white against the dark, warm-dark cliff of the building--
+and near, the heavy naked men of Bandinelli.
+
+The first thing he had seen, as he turned into the square, was the
+back of one of these Bandinelli statues: a great naked man of marble,
+with a heavy back and strong naked flanks over which the water was
+trickling.  And then to come immediately upon the David, so much
+whiter, glistening skin-white in the wet, standing a little forward,
+and shrinking.
+
+He may be ugly, too naturalistic, too big, and anything else you
+like.  But the David in the Piazza della Signoria, there under the
+dark great palace, in the position Michelangelo chose for him, there,
+standing forward stripped and exposed and eternally half-shrinking,
+half--wishing to expose himself, he is the genius of Florence.  The
+adolescent, the white, self-conscious, physical adolescent: enormous,
+in keeping with the stark, grim, enormous palace, which is dark and
+bare as he is white and bare.  And behind, the big, lumpy Bandinelli
+men are in keeping too.  They may be ugly--but they are there in their
+place, and they have their own lumpy reality.  And this morning in the
+rain, standing unbroken, with the water trickling down their flanks
+and along the inner side of their great thighs, they were real enough,
+representing the undaunted physical nature of the heavier Florentines.
+
+Aaron looked and looked at the three great naked men.  David so much
+white, and standing forward, self-conscious: then at the great
+splendid front of the Palazzo Vecchio: and at the fountain splashing
+water upon its wet, wet figures; and the distant equestrian statue;
+and the stone-flagged space of the grim square.  And he felt that here
+he was in one of the world's living centres, here, in the Piazza della
+Signoria.  The sense of having arrived--of having reached a perfect
+centre of the human world: this he had.
+
+And so, satisfied, he turned round to look at the bronze Perseus which
+rose just above him.  Benvenuto Cellini's dark hero looked female,
+with his plump hips and his waist, female and rather insignificant:
+graceful, and rather vulgar.  The clownish Bandinellis were somehow
+more to the point.--Then all the statuary in the Loggia!  But that is
+a mistake.  It looks too much like the yard of a monumental mason.
+
+The great, naked men in the rain, under the dark-grey November sky, in
+the dark, strong inviolable square!  The wonderful hawk-head of the old
+palace.  The physical, self-conscious adolescent, Michelangelo's David,
+shrinking and exposing himself, with his white, slack limbs!  Florence,
+passionate, fearless Florence had spoken herself out.--Aaron was
+fascinated by the Piazza della Signoria.  He never went into the town,
+nor returned from it to his lodging, without contriving to pass through
+the square.  And he never passed through it without satisfaction.  Here
+men had been at their intensest, most naked pitch, here, at the end of
+the old world and the beginning of the new.  Since then, always rather
+puling and apologetic.
+
+Aaron felt a new self, a new life-urge rising inside himself.  Florence
+seemed to start a new man in him.  It was a town of men.  On Friday
+morning, so early, he heard the traffic.  Early, he watched the rather
+low, two-wheeled traps of the peasants spanking recklessly over the
+bridge, coming in to town.  And then, when he went out, he found the
+Piazza della Signoria packed with men: but all, all men.  And all
+farmers, land-owners and land-workers.  The curious, fine-nosed Tuscan
+farmers, with their half-sardonic, amber-coloured eyes.  Their curious
+individuality, their clothes worn so easy and reckless, their hats
+with the personal twist.  Their curious full oval cheeks, their
+tendency to be too fat, to have a belly and heavy limbs.  Their close-
+sitting dark hair.  And above all, their sharp, almost acrid, mocking
+expression, the silent curl of the nose, the eternal challenge, the
+rock-bottom unbelief, and the subtle fearlessness.  The dangerous,
+subtle, never-dying fearlessness, and the acrid unbelief.  But men!
+Men!  A town of men, in spite of everything.  The one manly quality,
+undying, acrid fearlessness.  The eternal challenge of the un-quenched
+human soul.  Perhaps too acrid and challenging today, when there is
+nothing left to challenge.  But men--who existed without apology and
+without justification.  Men who would neither justify themselves nor
+apologize for themselves.  Just men.  The rarest thing left in our
+sweet Christendom.
+
+Altogether Aaron was pleased with himself, for being in Florence.
+Those were early days after the war, when as yet very few foreigners
+had returned, and the place had the native sombreness and intensity.
+So that our friend did not mind being alone.
+
+The third day, however, Francis called on him.  There was a tap at the
+bedroom door, and the young man entered, all eyes of curiosity.
+
+"Oh, there you ARE!" he cried, flinging his hand and twisting his
+waist and then laying his hand on his breast.  "Such a LONG way up to
+you!  But miles--!  Well, how are you?  Are you quite all right here?
+You are?  I'm so glad--we've been so rushed, seeing people that we
+haven't had a MINUTE.  But not a MINUTE!  People! People! People!
+Isn't it amazing how many there are, and how many one knows, and
+gets to know!  But amazing!  Endless acquaintances!--Oh, and such
+quaint people here!  so ODD!  So MORE than odd!  Oh, extraordinary--!"
+Francis chuckled to himself over the extraordinariness.  Then he
+seated himself gracefully at Aaron's table.  "Oh, MUSIC!  What?
+Corelli!  So interesting!  So very CLEVER, these people, weren't
+they!--Corelli and the younger Scarlatti and all that crowd."  Here
+he closed the score again.  "But now--LOOK!  Do you want to know
+anybody here, or don't you?  I've told them about you, and of course
+they're dying to meet you and hear you play.  But I thought it best
+not to mention anything about--about your being hard-up, and all that.
+I said you were just here on a visit.  You see with this kind of people
+I'm sure it's much the best not to let them start off by thinking you
+will need them at all--or that you MIGHT need them.  Why give yourself
+away, anyhow?  Just meet them and take them for what they're worth--and
+then you can see.  If they like to give you an engagement to play at
+some show or other--well, you can decide when the time comes whether
+you will accept.  Much better that these kind of people shouldn't get
+it into their heads at once that they can hire your services.  It
+doesn't do.  They haven't enough discrimination for that.  Much best
+make rather a favour of it, than sort of ask them to hire you.--Don't
+you agree?  Perhaps I'm wrong."
+
+Aaron sat and listened and wondered at the wisdom and the genuine
+kindness of the young _beau_.  And more still, he wondered at the
+profound social disillusionment.  This handsome collie dog was
+something of a social wolf, half showing his fangs at the moment.
+But with genuine kindheartedness for another wolf.  Aaron was
+touched.
+
+"Yes, I think that's the best way," he said.
+
+"You do!  Yes, so do I.  Oh, they are such queer people!  Why is it,
+do you think, that English people abroad go so very QUEER--so ultra-
+English--INCREDIBLE!--and at the same time so perfectly impossible?
+But impossible!  Pathological, I assure you.--And as for their sexual
+behaviour--oh, dear, don't mention it.  I assure you it doesn't bear
+mention.--And all quite flagrant, quite unabashed--under the cover of
+this fanatical Englishness.  But I couldn't begin to TELL you all the
+things.  It's just incredible."
+
+Aaron wondered how on earth Francis had been able to discover and
+bear witness to so much that was incredible, in a bare two days.
+But a little gossip, and an addition of lurid imagination will carry
+you anywhere.
+
+"Well now," said Francis.  "What are you doing today?"
+
+Aaron was not doing anything in particular.
+
+"Then will you come and have dinner with us--?"
+
+Francis fixed up the time and the place--a small restaurant at the
+other end of the town.  Then he leaned out of the window.
+
+"Fascinating place!  Oh, fascinating place!" he said, soliloquy.
+"And you've got a superb view.  Almost better than ours, I think.--
+Well then, half-past seven.  We're meeting a few other people, mostly
+residents or people staying some time.  We're not inviting them.  Just
+dropping in, you know--a little restaurant.  We shall see you then!
+Well then, _a rivederci_ till this evening.--So glad you like Florence!
+I'm simply loving it--revelling.  And the pictures!--Oh--"
+
+The party that evening consisted all of men:  Francis and Angus, and
+a writer, James Argyle, and little Algy Constable, and tiny Louis Mee,
+and deaf Walter Rosen.  They all snapped and rattled at one another,
+and were rather spiteful but rather amusing.  Francis and Angus had to
+leave early.  They had another appointment.  And James Argyle got quite
+tipsy, and said to Aaron:
+
+"But, my boy, don't let yourself be led astray by the talk of such
+people as Algy.  Beware of them, my boy, if you've a soul to save.
+If you've a soul to save!"  And he swallowed the remains of his litre.
+
+Algy's nose trembled a little, and his eyes blinked.  "And if you've
+a soul to LOSE," he said, "I would warn you very earnestly against
+Argyle."  Whereupon Algy shut one eye and opened the other so wide,
+that Aaron was almost scared.  "Quite right, my boy.  Ha! Ha!  Never a
+truer thing said!  Ha-ha-ha."  Argyle laughed his Mephistophelian tipsy
+laugh.  "They'll teach you to save.  Never was such a lot of ripe old
+savers!  Save their old trouser-buttons!  Go to them if you want to
+learn to save.  Oh, yes, I advise it seriously.  You'll lose nothing--
+not even a reputation.--You may lose a SOUL, of course.  But that's a
+detail, among such a hoard of banknotes and trouser-buttons.  Ha-ha!
+What's a soul, to them--?"
+
+"What is it to you, is perhaps the more pertinent question," said Algy,
+flapping his eyelids like some crazy owl.  "It is you who specialise
+in the matter of soul, and we who are in need of enlightenment--"
+
+"Yes, very true, you ARE!  You ARE in need of enlightenment.  A set of
+benighted wise virgins.  Ha-ha-ha!  That's good, that--benighted wise
+virgins!  What--"  Argyle put his red face near to Aaron's, and made a
+_moue_, narrowing his eyes quizzically as he peered up from under his
+level grey eyebrows.  "Sit in the dark to save the lamp-oil--And all
+no good to them.--When the bridegroom cometh--!  Ha-ha!  Good that!
+Good, my boy!--The bridegroom--" he giggled to himself.  "What about
+the bridegroom, Algy, my boy?  Eh?  What about him?  Better trim your
+wick, old man, if it's not too late--"
+
+"We were talking of souls, not wicks, Argyle," said Algy.
+
+"Same thing.  Upon my soul it all amounts to the same thing.  Where's
+the soul in a man that hasn't got a bedfellow--eh?--answer me that!
+Can't be done you know.  Might as well ask a virgin chicken to lay
+you an egg."
+
+"Then there ought to be a good deal of it about," said Algy.
+
+"Of what?  Of soul?  There ought to be a good deal of soul about?--Ah,
+because there's a good deal of--, you mean.--Ah, I wish it were so.  I
+wish it were so.  But, believe me, there's far more damned chastity in
+the world, than anything else.  Even in this town.--Call it chastity,
+if you like.  I see nothing in it but sterility.  It takes a rat to
+praise long tails.  Impotence set up the praise of chastity--believe me
+or not--but that's the bottom of it.  The virtue is made out of the
+necessity.--Ha-ha-ha!--Like them!  Like them!  Ha-ha!  Saving their
+souls!  Why they'd save the waste matter of their bodies if they could.
+Grieves them to part with it.--Ha! ha!--ha!"
+
+There was a pause.  Argyle was in his cups, which left no more to be
+said.  Algy, quivering and angry, looked disconcertingly round the
+room as if he were quite calm and collected.  The deaf Jewish Rosen
+was smiling down his nose and saying: "What was that last?  I didn't
+catch that last," cupping his ear with his hand in the frantic hope
+that someone would answer.  No one paid any heed.
+
+"I shall be going," said Algy, looking round.  Then to Aaron he said,
+"You play the flute, I hear.  May we hear you some time?"
+
+"Yes," said Aaron, non-committal.
+
+"Well, look here--come to tea tomorrow.  I shall have some friends,
+and Del Torre will play the piano.  Come to tea tomorrow, will you?"
+
+"Thank you, I will."
+
+"And perhaps you'll bring your flute along."
+
+"Don't you do any such thing, my boy.  Make them entertain YOU, for
+once.--They're always squeezing an entertainment out of somebody--"
+and Argyle desperately emptied the remains of Algy's wine into his
+own glass: whilst Algy stood as if listening to something far off,
+and blinking terribly.
+
+"Anyhow," he said at length, "you'll come, won't you?  And bring the
+flute if you feel like it."
+
+"Don't you take that flute, my boy," persisted Argyle.  "Don't think of
+such a thing.  If they want a concert, let them buy their tickets and
+go to the Teatro Diana.  Or to Marchesa del Torre's Saturday morning.
+She can afford to treat them."  Algy looked at Argyle, and blinked.
+"Well," he said.  "I hope you'll get home all right, Argyle."
+
+"Thank you for your courtesy, Algy.  Won't you lend me your arm?"
+
+As Algy was small and frail, somewhat shaky, and as Argyle was a
+finely built, heavy man of fifty or more, the slap was unkind.
+
+"Afraid I can't tonight.  Good-night--"
+
+Algy departed, so did little Mee, who had sat with a little delighted
+disapproval on his tiny, bird-like face, without saying anything.  And
+even the Jew Rosen put away his deaf-machine and began awkwardly to
+take his leave.  His long nose was smiling to itself complacently at
+all the things Argyle had been saying.
+
+When he, too, had gone, Argyle arched his brows at Aaron, saying:
+
+"Oh, my dear fellow, what a lot they are!--Little Mee--looking like
+an innocent little boy.  He's over seventy if he's a day.  Well over
+seventy.  Well, you don't believe me.  Ask his mother--ask his mother.
+She's ninety-five.  Old lady of ninety-five--"  Argyle even laughed
+himself at his own preposterousness.
+
+"And then Algy--Algy's not a fool, you know.  Oh, he can be most
+entertaining, most witty, and amusing.  But he's out of place here.
+He should be in Kensington, dandling round the ladies' drawing rooms
+and making his _mots_.  They're rich, you know, the pair of them.
+Little Mee used to boast that he lived on eleven-and-three-pence a
+week.  Had to, poor chap.  But then what does a white mouse like
+that need?  Makes a heavy meal on a cheese-paring.  Luck, you know--
+but of course he's come into money as well.  Rich as Croesus, and
+still lives on nineteen-and-two-pence a week.  Though it's nearly
+double, of course, what it used to be.  No wonder he looks anxious.
+They disapprove of me--oh, quite right, quite right from their own
+point of view.  Where would their money be otherwise?  It wouldn't
+last long if I laid hands on it--" he made a devilish quizzing face.
+"But you know, they get on my nerves.  Little old maids, you know,
+little old maids.  I'm sure I'm surprised at their patience with me.--
+But when people are patient with you, you want to spit gall at them.
+Don't you?  Ha-ha-ha!  Poor old Algy.--Did I lay it on him tonight,
+or did I miss him?"
+
+"I think you got him," said Aaron.
+
+"He'll never forgive me.  Depend on it, he'll never forgive me.  Ha-
+ha!  I like to be unforgiven.  It adds ZEST to one's intercourse with
+people, to know that they'll never forgive one.  Ha-ha-ha!  Little old
+maids, who do their knitting with their tongues.  Poor old Algy--he
+drops his stitches now.  Ha-ha-ha!--Must be eighty, I should say."
+
+Aaron laughed.  He had never met a man like Argyle before--and he
+could not help being charmed.  The other man had a certain wicked
+whimsicality that was very attractive, when levelled against someone
+else, and not against oneself.  He must have been very handsome in his
+day, with his natural dignity, and his clean-shaven strong square face.
+But now his face was all red and softened and inflamed, his eyes had
+gone small and wicked under his bushy grey brows.  Still he had a
+presence.  And his grey hair, almost gone white, was still handsome.
+
+"And what are you going to do in Florence?" asked Argyle.
+
+Aaron explained.
+
+"Well," said Argyle.  "Make what you can out of them, and then go.
+Go before they have time to do the dirty on you.  If they think you
+want anything from them, they'll treat you like a dog, like a dog.
+Oh, they're very frightened of anybody who wants anything of them:
+frightened to death.  I see nothing of them.--Live by myself--see
+nobody.  Can't stand it, you know: their silly little teaparties--
+simply can't stand it.  No, I live alone--and shall die alone.--At
+least, I sincerely hope so.  I should be sorry to have any of them
+hanging round."
+
+The restaurant was empty, the pale, malarial waiter--he had of course
+contracted malaria during the war--was looking purple round the eyes.
+But Argyle callously sat on.  Aaron therefore rose to his feet.
+
+"Oh, I'm coming, I'm coming," said Argyle.
+
+He got unsteadily to his feet.  The waiter helped him on with his coat:
+and he put a disreputable-looking little curly hat on his head.  Then
+he took his stick.
+
+"Don't look at my appearance, my dear fellow," said Argyle.  "I am
+frayed at the wrists--look here!"  He showed the cuffs of his overcoat,
+just frayed through.  "I've got a trunkful of clothes in London, if
+only somebody would bring it out to me.--Ready then!  _Avanti!_"
+
+And so they passed out into the still rainy street.  Argyle lived in
+the very centre of the town: in the Cathedral Square.  Aaron left him
+at his hotel door.
+
+"But come and see me," said Argyle.  "Call for me at twelve o'clock--
+or just before twelve--and let us have luncheon together.  What!  Is
+that all right?--Yes, come just before twelve.--When?--Tomorrow?
+Tomorrow morning?  Will you come tomorrow?"
+
+Aaron said he would on Monday.
+
+"Monday, eh!  You say Monday!  Very well then.  Don't you forget now.
+Don't you forget.  For I've a memory like a vice. _I_ shan't forget.--
+Just before twelve then.  And come right up.  I'm right under the roof. 
+In
+Paradise, as the porter always says.  _Siamo nel paradiso_.  But he's
+a _cretin_.  As near Paradise as I care for, for it's devilish hot in
+summer, and damned cold in winter.  Don't you forget now--Monday,
+twelve o'clock."
+
+And Argyle pinched Aaron's arm fast, then went unsteadily up the steps
+to his hotel door.
+
+The next day at Algy's there was a crowd  Algy had a very pleasant
+flat indeed, kept more scrupulously neat and finicking than ever any
+woman's flat was kept.  So today, with its bowls of flowers and its
+pictures and books and old furniture, and Algy, very nicely dressed,
+fluttering and blinking and making really a charming host, it was all
+very delightful to the little mob of visitors.  They were a curious
+lot, it is true: everybody rather exceptional.  Which though it may
+be startling, is so very much better fun than everybody all alike.
+Aaron talked to an old, old Italian elegant in side-curls, who peeled
+off his grey gloves and studied his formalities with a delightful
+Mid-Victorian dash, and told stories about a _plaint_ which Lady Surry
+had against Lord Marsh, and was quite incomprehensible.  Out rolled
+the English words, like plums out of a burst bag, and all completely
+unintelligible.  But the old _beau_ was supremely satisfied.  He loved
+talking English, and holding his listeners spell-bound.
+
+Next to Aaron on the sofa sat the Marchesa del Torre, an American
+woman from the Southern States, who had lived most of her life in
+Europe.  She was about forty years of age, handsome, well-dressed,
+and quiet in the buzz of the tea-party.  It was evident she was one
+of Algy's lionesses.  Now she sat by Aaron, eating nothing, but taking
+a cup of tea and keeping still.  She seemed sad--or not well perhaps.
+Her eyes were heavy.  But she was very carefully made up, and very
+well dressed, though simply: and sitting there, full-bosomed, rather
+sad, remote-seeming, she suggested to Aaron a modern Cleopatra
+brooding, Anthony-less.
+
+Her husband, the Marchese, was a little intense Italian in a colonel's
+grey uniform, cavalry, leather gaiters.  He had blue eyes, his hair was
+cut very short, his head looked hard and rather military: he would
+have been taken for an Austrian officer, or even a German, had it not
+been for the, peculiar Italian sprightliness and touch of grimace in
+his mobile countenance.  He was rather like a gnome--not ugly, but odd.
+
+Now he came and stood opposite to Signor di Lanti, and quizzed him in
+Italian.  But it was evident, in quizzing the old buck, the little
+Marchese was hovering near his wife, in ear-shot.  Algy came up with
+cigarettes, and she at once began to smoke, with that peculiar heavy
+intensity of a nervous woman.
+
+Aaron did not say anything--did not know what to say.  He was
+peculiarly conscious of the woman sitting next to him, her arm near
+his.  She smoked heavily, in silence, as if abstracted, a sort of
+cloud on her level, dark brows.  Her hair was dark, but a softish
+brown, not black, and her skin was fair.  Her bosom would be white.--
+Why Aaron should have had this thought, he could not for the life of
+him say.
+
+Manfredi, her husband, rolled his blue eyes and grimaced as he laughed
+at old Lanti.  But it was obvious that his attention was diverted
+sideways, towards his wife.  Aaron, who was tired of nursing a tea-
+cup, placed in on a table and resumed his seat in silence.  But
+suddenly the little Marchese whipped out his cigarette-case, and
+making a little bow, presented it to Aaron, saying:
+
+"Won't you smoke?"
+
+"Thank you," said Aaron.
+
+"Turkish that side--Virginia there--you see."
+
+"Thank you, Turkish," said Aaron.
+
+The little officer in his dove-grey and yellow uniform snapped his box
+shut again, and presented a light.
+
+"You are new in Florence?" he said, as he presented the match.
+
+"Four days," said Aaron.
+
+"And I hear you are musical."
+
+"I play the flute--no more."
+
+"Ah, yes--but then you play it as an artist, not as an accomplishment."
+
+"But how do you know?" laughed Aaron.
+
+"I was told so--and I believe it."
+
+"That's nice of you, anyhow--But you are a musician too."
+
+"Yes--we are both musicians--my wife and I."
+
+Manfredi looked at his wife.  She flicked the ash off her cigarette.
+
+"What sort?" said Aaron.
+
+"Why, how do you mean, what sort?  We are dilettanti, I suppose."
+
+"No--what is your instrument?  The piano?"
+
+"Yes--the pianoforte.  And my wife sings.  But we are very much out of
+practice.  I have been at the war four years, and we have had our home
+in Paris.  My wife was in Paris, she did not wish to stay in Italy
+alone.  And so--you see--everything goes--"
+
+"But you will begin again?"
+
+"Yes.  We have begun already.  We have music on Saturday mornings.
+Next Saturday a string quartette, and violin solos by a young
+Florentine woman--a friend--very good indeed, daughter of our
+Professor Tortoli, who composes--as you may know--"
+
+"Yes," said Aaron.
+
+"Would you care to come and hear--?"
+
+"Awfully nice if you would--" suddenly said the wife, quite simply, as
+if she had merely been tired, and not talking before.
+
+"I should like to very much--"
+
+"Do come then."
+
+While they were making the arrangements, Algy came up in his blandest
+manner.
+
+"Now Marchesa--might we hope for a song?"
+
+"No--I don't sing any more," came the slow, contralto reply.
+
+"Oh, but you can't mean you say that deliberately--"
+
+"Yes, quite deliberately--"  She threw away her cigarette and opened
+her little gold case to take another.
+
+"But what can have brought you to such a disastrous decision?"
+
+"I can't say," she replied, with a little laugh.  "The war, probably."
+
+"Oh, but don't let the war deprive us of this, as of everything else."
+
+"Can't be helped," she said.  "I have no choice in the matter.  The
+bird has flown--"  She spoke with a certain heavy languor.
+
+"You mean the bird of your voice?  Oh, but that is quite impossible.
+One can hear it calling out of the leaves every time you speak."
+
+"I'm afraid you can't get him to do any more than call out of the
+leaves."
+
+"But--but--pardon me--is it because you don't intend there should be
+any more song?  Is that your intention?"
+
+"That I couldn't say," said the Marchesa, smoking, smoking.
+
+"Yes," said Manfredi.  "At the present time it is because she WILL
+not--not because she cannot.  It is her will, as you say."
+
+"Dear me!  Dear me!" said Algy.  "But this is really another disaster
+added to the war list.--But--but--will none of us ever be able to
+persuade you?"  He smiled half cajoling, half pathetic, with a
+prodigious flapping of his eyes.
+
+"I don't know," said she.  "That will be as it must be."
+
+"Then can't we say it must be SONG once more?"
+
+To this sally she merely laughed, and pressed out her half-smoked
+cigarette.
+
+"How very disappointing!  How very cruel of--of fate--and the war--
+and--and all the sum total of evils," said Algy.
+
+"Perhaps--" here the little and piquant host turned to Aaron.
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Sisson, your flute might call out the bird of song.  As
+thrushes call each other into challenge, you know.  Don't you think
+that is very probable?"
+
+"I have no idea," said Aaron.
+
+"But you, Marchesa.  Won't you give us hope that it might be so?"
+
+"I've no idea, either," said she.  "But I should very much like to
+hear Mr. Sisson's flute.  It's an instrument I like extremely."
+
+"There now.  You see you may work the miracle, Mr. Sisson.  Won't you
+play to us?"
+
+"I'm afraid I didn't bring my flute along," said Aaron  "I didn't want
+to arrive with a little bag."
+
+"Quite!" said Algy.  "What a pity it wouldn't go in your pocket."
+
+"Not music and all," said Aaron.
+
+"Dear me!  What a _comble_ of disappointment.  I never felt so
+strongly, Marchesa, that the old life and the old world had collapsed.
+--Really--I shall soon have to try to give up being cheerful at all."
+
+"Don't do that," said the Marchesa.  "It isn't worth the effort."
+
+"Ah!  I'm glad you find it so.  Then I have hope."
+
+She merely smiled, indifferent.
+
+The teaparty began to break up--Aaron found himself going down the
+stairs with the Marchesa and her husband.  They descended all three
+in silence, husband and wife in front.  Once outside the door, the
+husband asked:
+
+"How shall we go home, dear?  Tram or carriage--?"  It was evident he
+was economical.
+
+"Walk," she said, glancing over her shoulder at Aaron.  "We are all
+going the same way, I believe."
+
+Aaron said where he lived.  They were just across the river.  And so
+all three proceeded to walk through the town.
+
+"You are sure it won't be too much for you--too far?" said the little
+officer, taking his wife's arm solicitously.  She was taller than he.
+But he was a spirited fellow.
+
+"No, I feel like walking."
+
+"So long as you don't have to pay for it afterwards."
+
+Aaron gathered that she was not well.  Yet she did not look ill--unless
+it were nerves.  She had that peculiar heavy remote quality of pre-
+occupation and neurosis.
+
+The streets of Florence were very full this Sunday evening, almost
+impassable, crowded particularly with gangs of grey-green soldiers.
+The three made their way brokenly, and with difficulty.  The Italian
+was in a constant state of returning salutes.  The grey-green, sturdy,
+unsoldierly soldiers looked at the woman as she passed.
+
+"I am sure you had better take a carriage," said Manfredi.
+
+"No--I don't mind it."
+
+"Do you feel at home in Florence?" Aaron asked her.
+
+"Yes--as much as anywhere.  Oh, yes--quite at home."
+
+"Do you like it as well as anywhere?"  he asked.
+
+"Yes--for a time.  Paris for the most part."
+
+"Never America?"
+
+"No, never America.  I came when I was quite a little girl to Europe--
+Madrid--Constantinople--Paris.  I hardly knew America at all."
+
+Aaron remembered that Francis had told him, the Marchesa's father had
+been ambassador to Paris.
+
+"So you feel you have no country of your own?"
+
+"I have Italy.  I am Italian now, you know."
+
+Aaron wondered why she spoke so muted, so numbed.  Manfredi seemed
+really attached to her--and she to him.  They were so simple with
+one another.
+
+They came towards the bridge where they should part.
+
+"Won't you come and have a cocktail?" she said.
+
+"Now?" said Aaron.
+
+"Yes.  This is the right time for a cocktail.  What time is it,
+Manfredi?"
+
+"Half past six.  Do come and have one with us," said the Italian.
+"We always take one about this time."
+
+Aaron continued with them over the bridge.  They had the first floor
+of an old palazzo opposite, a little way up the hill.  A man-servant
+opened the door.
+
+"If only it will be warm," she said.  "The apartment is almost
+impossible to keep warm.  We will sit in the little room."
+
+Aaron found himself in a quite warm room with shaded lights and a
+mixture of old Italian stiffness and deep soft modern comfort.  The
+Marchesa went away to take off her wraps, and the Marchese chatted
+with Aaron.  The little officer was amiable and kind, and it was
+evident he liked his guest.
+
+"Would you like to see the room where we have music?" he said.  "It is
+a fine room for the purpose--we used before the war to have music every
+Saturday morning, from ten to twelve: and all friends might come.
+Usually we had fifteen or twenty people.  Now we are starting again.
+I myself enjoy it so much.  I am afraid my wife isn't so enthusiastic
+as she used to be.  I wish something would rouse her up, you know.
+The war seemed to take her life away.  Here in Florence are so many
+amateurs.  Very good indeed.  We can have very good chamber-music
+indeed.  I hope it will cheer her up and make her quite herself again.
+I was away for such long periods, at the front.--And it was not good
+for her to be alone.--I am hoping now all will be better."
+
+So saying, the little, odd officer switched on the lights of the
+long salon.  It was a handsome room in the Italian mode of the Empire
+period--beautiful old faded tapestry panels--reddish--and some ormolu
+furniture--and other things mixed in--rather conglomerate, but
+pleasing, all the more pleasing.  It was big, not too empty, and
+seemed to belong to human life, not to show and shut-upedness.  The
+host was happy showing it.
+
+"Of course the flat in Paris is more luxurious than this," he
+said.  "But I prefer this.  I prefer it here."  There was a certain
+wistfulness as he looked round, then began to switch off the lights.
+
+They returned to the little salotta.  The Marchesa was seated in a low
+chair.  She wore a very thin white blouse, that showed her arms and her
+throat.  She was a full-breasted, soft-skinned woman, though not stout.
+
+"Make the cocktails then, Manfredi," she said.  "Do you find this room
+very cold?" she asked of Aaron.
+
+"Not a bit cold," he said.
+
+"The stove goes all the time," she said, "but without much effect."
+
+"You wear such thin clothes," he said.
+
+"Ah, no, the stove should give heat enough.  Do sit down.  Will you
+smoke?  There are cigarettes--and cigars, if you prefer them."
+
+"No, I've got my own, thanks."
+
+She took her own cigarette from her gold case.
+
+"It is a fine room, for music, the big room," said he.
+
+"Yes, quite.  Would you like to play for us some time, do you think?"
+
+"Do you want me to?  I mean does it interest you?"
+
+"What--the flute?"
+
+"No--music altogether--"
+
+"Music altogether--!  Well!  I used to love it.  Now--I'm not sure.
+Manfredi lives for it, almost."
+
+"For that and nothing else?" asked Aaron.
+
+"No, no!  No, no!  Other things as well."
+
+"But you don't like it much any more?"
+
+"I don't know.  Perhaps I don't.  I'm not sure."
+
+"You don't look forward to the Saturday mornings?" he asked.
+
+"Perhaps I don't--but for Manfredi's sake, of course, I do.  But for
+his sake more than my own, I admit.  And I think he knows it."
+
+"A crowd of people in one's house--" said Aaron.
+
+"Yes, the people.  But it's not only that.  It's the music itself--I
+think I can't stand it any more.  I don't know."
+
+"Too emotional?  Too much feeling for you?"
+
+"Yes, perhaps.  But no.  What I can't stand is chords, you know:
+harmonies.  A number of sounds all sounding together.  It just makes
+me ill.  It makes me feel so sick."
+
+"What--do you want discords?--dissonances?"
+
+"No--they are nearly as bad.  No, it's just when any number of musical
+notes, different notes, come together, harmonies or discords.  Even
+a single chord struck on the piano.  It makes me feel sick.  I just
+feel as if I should retch.  Isn't it strange?  Of course, I don't
+tell Manfredi.  It would be too cruel to him.  It would cut his life
+in two."
+
+"But then why do you have the music--the Saturdays--then?"
+
+"Oh, I just keep out of the way as much as possible.  I'm sure you feel
+there is something wrong with me, that I take it as I do," she added,
+as if anxious: but half ironical.
+
+"No--I was just wondering--I believe I feel something the same myself.
+I know orchestra makes me blind with hate or I don't know what.  But I
+want to throw bombs."
+
+"There now.  It does that to me, too.  Only now it has fairly got me
+down, and I feel nothing but helpless nausea.  You know, like when
+you are seasick."
+
+Her dark-blue, heavy, haunted-looking eyes were resting on him as if
+she hoped for something.  He watched her face steadily, a curious
+intelligence flickering on his own.
+
+"Yes," he said.  "I understand it.  And I know, at the bottom, I'm like
+that.  But I keep myself from realising, don't you know?  Else perhaps,
+where should I be?  Because I make my life and my living at it, as
+well."
+
+"At music!  Do you!  But how bad for you.  But perhaps the flute is
+different.  I have a feeling that it is.  I can think of one single
+pipe-note--yes, I can think of it quite, quite calmly.  And I can't
+even think of the piano, or of the violin with its tremolo, or of
+orchestra, or of a string quartette--or even a military band--I can't
+think of it without a shudder.  I can only bear drum-and-fife.  Isn't
+it crazy of me--but from the other, from what we call music proper,
+I've endured too much.  But bring your flute one day.  Bring it, will
+you?  And let me hear it quite alone.  Quite, quite alone.  I think it
+might do me an awful lot of good.  I do, really.  I can imagine it."
+She closed her eyes and her strange, sing-song lapsing voice came to
+an end.  She spoke almost like one in a trance--or a sleep-walker.
+
+"I've got it now in my overcoat pocket," he said, "if you like."
+
+"Have you?  Yes!" She was never hurried: always slow and resonant,
+so that the echoes of her voice seemed to linger.  "Yes--do get
+it.  Do get it.  And play in the other room--quite--quite without
+accompaniment.  Do--and try me."
+
+"And you will tell me what you feel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Aaron went out to his overcoat.  When he returned with his flute, which
+he was screwing together, Manfredi had come with the tray and the three
+cocktails.  The Marchesa took her glass.
+
+"Listen, Manfredi," she said.  "Mr. Sisson is going to play, quite
+alone in the sala.  And I am going to sit here and listen."
+
+"Very well," said Manfredi.  "Drink your cocktail first.  Are you going
+to play without music?"
+
+"Yes," said Aaron.
+
+"I'll just put on the lights for you."
+
+"No--leave it dark.  Enough light will come in from here."
+
+"Sure?" said Manfredi.
+
+"Yes."
+
+The little soldier was an intruder at the moment.  Both the others felt
+it so.  But they bore him no grudge.  They knew it was they who were
+exceptional, not he.  Aaron swallowed his drink, and looked towards
+the door.
+
+"Sit down, Manfredi.  Sit still," said the Marchesa.
+
+"Won't you let me try some accompaniment?" said the soldier.
+
+"No.  I shall just play a little thing from memory," said Aaron.
+
+"Sit down, dear.  Sit down," said the Marchesa to her husband.
+
+He seated himself obediently.  The flash of bright yellow on the grey
+of his uniform seemed to make him like a chaffinch or a gnome.
+
+Aaron retired to the other room, and waited awhile, to get back the
+spell which connected him with the woman, and gave the two of them
+this strange isolation, beyond the bounds of life, as it seemed.
+
+He caught it again.  And there, in the darkness of the big room, he
+put his flute to his lips, and began to play.  It was a clear, sharp,
+lilted run-and-fall of notes, not a tune in any sense of the word,
+and yet a melody, a bright, quick sound of pure animation, a bright,
+quick, animate noise, running and pausing.  It was like a bird's
+singing, in that it had no human emotion or passion or intention or
+meaning--a ripple and poise of animate sound.  But it was unlike a
+bird's singing, in that the notes followed clear and single one after
+the other, in their subtle gallop.  A nightingale is rather like that
+--a wild sound.  To read all the human pathos into nightingales'
+singing is nonsense.  A wild, savage, non-human lurch and squander
+of sound, beautiful, but entirely unaesthetic.
+
+What Aaron was playing was not of his own invention.  It was a bit
+of mediaeval phrasing written for the pipe and the viol.  It made
+the piano seem a ponderous, nerve-wracking steam-roller of noise,
+and the violin, as we know it, a hateful wire-drawn nerve-torturer.
+
+After a little while, when he entered the smaller room again, the
+Marchesa looked full into his face.
+
+"Good!" she said.  "Good!"
+
+And a gleam almost of happiness seemed to light her up.  She seemed
+like one who had been kept in a horrible enchanted castle--for years
+and years.  Oh, a horrible enchanted castle, with wet walls of emotions
+and ponderous chains of feelings and a ghastly atmosphere of must-be.
+She felt she had seen through the opening door a crack of sunshine,
+and thin, pure, light outside air, outside, beyond this dank and
+beastly dungeon of feelings and moral necessity.  Ugh!--she shuddered
+convulsively at what had been.  She looked at her little husband.
+Chains of necessity all round him: a little jailor.  Yet she was fond
+of him.  If only he would throw away the castle keys.  He was a little
+gnome.  What did he clutch the castle-keys so tight for?
+
+Aaron looked at her.  He knew that they understood one another, he and
+she.  Without any moral necessity or any other necessity.  Outside--
+they had got outside the castle of so-called human life.  Outside the
+horrible, stinking human castle Of life.  A bit of true, limpid
+freedom.  Just a glimpse.
+
+"Charming!" said the Marchese.  "Truly charming!  But what was it you
+played?"
+
+Aaron told him.
+
+"But truly delightful.  I say, won't you play for us one of these
+Saturdays?  And won't you let me take the accompaniment?  I should
+be charmed, charmed if you would."
+
+"All right," said Aaron.
+
+"Do drink another cocktail," said his hostess.
+
+He did so.  And then he rose to leave.
+
+"Will you stay to dinner?" said the Marchesa.  "We have two people
+coming--two Italian relatives of my husband.  But--"
+
+No, Aaron declined to stay to dinner.
+
+"Then won't you come on--let me see--on Wednesday?  Do come on
+Wednesday.  We are alone.  And do bring the flute.  Come at half-past
+six, as today, will you?  Yes?"
+
+Aaron promised--and then he found himself in the street.  It was half-
+past seven.  Instead of returning straight home, he crossed the Ponte
+Vecchio and walked straight into the crowd.  The night was fine now.
+He had his overcoat over his arm, and in a sort of trance or frenzy,
+whirled away by his evening's experience, and by the woman, he strode
+swiftly forward, hardly heeding anything, but rushing blindly on
+through all the crowd, carried away by his own feelings, as much as
+if he had been alone, and all these many people merely trees.
+
+Leaving the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele a gang of soldiers suddenly
+rushed round him, buffeting him in one direction, whilst another gang,
+swinging round the corner, threw him back helpless again into the
+midst of the first gang.  For some moments he struggled among the rude,
+brutal little mob of grey-green coarse uniforms that smelt so strong
+of soldiers.  Then, irritated, he found himself free again, shaking
+himself and passing on towards the cathedral.  Irritated, he now put
+on his overcoat and buttoned it to the throat, closing himself in, as
+it were, from the brutal insolence of the Sunday night mob of men.
+Before, he had been walking through them in a rush of naked feeling,
+all exposed to their tender mercies.  He now gathered himself together.
+
+As he was going home, suddenly, just as he was passing the Bargello,
+he stopped.  He stopped, and put his hand to his breast pocket.  His
+letter-case was gone.  He had been robbed.  It was as if lightning ran
+through him at that moment, as if a fluid electricity rushed down his
+limbs, through the sluice of his knees, and out at his feet, leaving
+him standing there almost unconscious.  For a moment unconscious and
+superconscious he stood there.  He had been robbed.  They had put
+their hand in his breast and robbed him.  If they had stabbed him,
+it could hardly have had a greater effect on him.
+
+And he had known it.  He had known it.  When the soldiers jostled him
+so evilly they robbed him.  And he knew it.  He had known it as if it
+were fate.  Even as if it were fated beforehand.
+
+Feeling quite weak and faint, as if he had really been struck by some
+evil electric fluid, he walked on.  And as soon as he began to walk,
+he began to reason.  Perhaps his letter-case was in his other coat.
+Perhaps he had not had it with him at all.  Perhaps he was feeling all
+this, just for nothing.  Perhaps it was all folly.
+
+He hurried forward.  He wanted to make sure.  He wanted relief.  It was
+as if the power of evil had suddenly seized him and thrown him, and he
+wanted to say it was not so, that he had imagined it all, conjured it
+up.  He did not want to admit the power of evil--particularly at that
+moment.  For surely a very ugly evil spirit had struck him, in the
+midst of that gang of Italian soldiers.  He knew it--it had pierced
+him.  It had _got_ him.
+
+But he wanted to say it was not so.  Reaching the house, he hastened
+upwards to his far-off, lonely room, through the dark corridors.  Once
+in his own apartment, he shut the door and switched on the light, a
+sensation like fear at his heart.  Then he searched his other pockets.
+He looked everywhere.  In vain.
+
+In vain, truly enough.  For he _knew_ the thing was stolen.  He had
+known it all along.  The soldiers had deliberately plotted, had
+deliberately rushed him and taken his purse.  They must have watched
+him previously.  They must have grinned, and jeered at him.
+
+He sat down in a chair, to recover from the shock.  The pocket-book
+contained four hundred francs, three one-pound notes, and various
+letters and private effects.  Well, these were lost.  But it was not
+so much the loss as the assault on his person that caused him to feel
+so stricken.  He felt the jeering, gibing blows they had given as they
+jostled him.
+
+And now he sat, weak in every limb, and said to himself: "Yes--and if I
+hadn't rushed along so full of feeling: if I hadn't exposed myself: if
+I hadn't got worked up with the Marchesa, and then rushed all kindled
+through the streets, without reserve, it would never have happened.  I
+gave myself away: and there was someone ready to snatch what I gave.  I
+gave myself away.  It is my own fault.  I should have been on my guard.
+I should be always on my guard: always, always.  With God and the devil
+both, I should be on my guard.  Godly or devilish, I should hold fast
+to my reserve and keep on the watch.  And if I don't, I deserve what
+I get."
+
+But still he sat in his chair in his bedroom, dazed.  One part of his
+soul was saying emphatically: It serves you right.  It is nothing but
+right.  It serves everybody right who rushes enkindled through the
+street, and trusts implicitly in mankind and in the life-spirit, as
+if mankind and the life-spirit were a playground for enkindled
+individuals.  It serves you right.  You have paid about twelve pounds
+sterling for your lesson.  Fool, you might have known beforehand, and
+then you needn't have paid at all.  You can ill afford twelve pounds
+sterling, you fool.  But since paid you have, then mind, mind the
+lesson is learned.  Never again.  Never expose yourself again.  Never
+again absolute trust.  It is a blasphemy against life, is absolute
+trust.  Has a wild creature ever absolute trust?  It minds itself.
+Sleeping or waking it is on its guard.  And so must you be, or you'll
+go under.  Sleeping or waking, man or woman, God or the devil, keep
+your guard over yourself.  Keep your guard over yourself, lest worse
+befall you.  No man is robbed unless he incites a robber.  No man is
+murdered unless he attracts a murderer.  Then be not robbed: it lies
+within your own power.  And be not murdered.  Or if you are, you
+deserve it.  Keep your guard over yourself, now, always and forever.
+Yes, against God quite as hard as against the devil.  He's fully as
+dangerous to you. . . .
+
+Thus thinking, not in his mind but in his soul, his active, living
+soul, he gathered his equanimity once more, and accepted the fact.
+So he rose and tidied himself for dinner.  His face was now set, and
+still.  His heart also was still--and fearless.  Because its sentinel
+was stationed.  Stationed, stationed for ever.
+
+And Aaron never forgot.  After this, it became essential to him to feel
+that the sentinel stood guard in his own heart.  He felt a strange
+unease the moment he was off his guard.  Asleep or awake, in the midst
+of the deepest passion or the suddenest love, or in the throes of
+greatest excitement or bewilderment, somewhere, some corner of himself
+was awake to the fact that the sentinel of the soul must not sleep,
+no, never, not for one instant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+HIGH UP OVER THE CATHEDRAL SQUARE
+
+
+Aaron and Lilly sat in Argyle's little loggia, high up under the eaves
+of the small hotel, a sort of long attic-terrace just under the roof,
+where no one would have suspected it.  It was level with the grey
+conical roof of the Baptistery.  Here sat Aaron and Lilly in the
+afternoon, in the last of the lovely autumn sunshine.  Below, the
+square was already cold in shadow, the pink and white and green
+Baptistery rose lantern-shaped as from some sea-shore, cool, cold and
+wan now the sun was gone.  Black figures, innumerable black figures,
+curious because they were all on end, up on end--Aaron could not say
+why he expected them to be horizontal--little black figures upon end,
+like fishes that swim on their tails, wiggled endlessly across the
+piazza, little carriages on natural all-fours rattled tinily across,
+the yellow little tram-cars, like dogs slipped round the corner.
+The balcony was so high up, that the sound was ineffectual.  The
+upper space, above the houses, was nearer than the under-currents
+of the noisy town.  Sunlight, lovely full sunlight, lingered warm
+and still on the balcony.  It caught the facade of the cathedral
+sideways, like the tips of a flower, and sideways lit up the stem
+of Giotto's tower, like a lily stem, or a long, lovely pale pink
+and white and green pistil of the lily of the cathedral.  Florence,
+the flowery town.  Firenze--Fiorenze--the flowery town: the red lilies.
+The Fiorentini, the flower-souled.  Flowers with good roots in the
+mud and muck, as should be: and fearless blossoms in air, like the
+cathedral and the tower and the David.
+
+"I love it," said Lilly.  "I love this place, I love the cathedral and
+the tower.  I love its pinkness and its paleness.  The Gothic souls
+find fault with it, and say it is gimcrack and tawdry and cheap.  But
+I love it, it is delicate and rosy, and the dark stripes are as they
+should be, like the tiger marks on a pink lily.  It's a lily, not a
+rose; a pinky white lily with dark tigery marks.  And heavy, too, in
+its own substance: earth-substance, risen from earth into the air:
+and never forgetting the dark, black-fierce earth--I reckon here men
+for a moment were themselves, as a plant in flower is for the moment
+completely itself.  Then it goes off.  As Florence has gone off.  No
+flowers now.  But it HAS flowered.  And I don't see why a race should
+be like an aloe tree, flower once and die.  Why should it?  Why not
+flower again?  Why not?"
+
+"If it's going to, it will," said Aaron.  "Our deciding about it won't
+alter it."
+
+"The decision is part of the business."
+
+Here they were interrupted by Argyle, who put his head through one of
+the windows.  He had flecks of lather on his reddened face.
+
+"Do you think you're wise now," he said, "to sit in that sun?"
+
+"In November?" laughed Lilly.
+
+"Always fear the sun when there's an 'r' in the month," said Argyle.
+"Always fear it 'r' or no 'r,' _I_ say.  I'm frightened of it.  I've
+been in the South, I know what it is.  I tell you I'm frightened of
+it. But if you think you can stand it--well--"
+
+"It won't last much longer, anyhow," said Lilly.
+
+"Too long for me, my boy.  I'm a shady bird, in all senses of the
+word, in all senses of the word.--Now are you comfortable?  What?
+Have another cushion?  A rug for your knees?  You're quite sure now?
+Well, wait just one moment till the waiter brings up a syphon, and
+you shall have a whiskey and soda.  Precious--oh, yes, very precious
+these days--like drinking gold.  Thirty-five lire a bottle, my boy!"
+Argyle pulled a long face, and made a noise with his lips.  "But I
+had this bottle given me, and luckily you've come while there's a
+drop left.  Very glad you have!  Very glad you have."
+
+Here he poked a little table through the window, and put a bottle and
+two glasses, one a tooth-glass, upon it.  Then he withdrew again to
+finish shaving.  The waiter presently hobbled up with the syphon and
+third glass.  Argyle pushed his head through the window, that was only
+a little higher than the balcony.  He was soon neatly shaved, and was
+brushing his hair.
+
+"Go ahead, my boys, go ahead with that whiskey!" he said.
+
+"We'll wait for you," said Lilly.
+
+"No, no, don't think of it.  However, if you will, I shall be one
+minute only--one minute only.  I'll put on the water for the tea now.
+Oh, damned bad methylated spirit they sell now!  And six francs a
+litre!  Six francs a litre!  I don't know what I'm going to do, the
+air I breathe costs money nowadays--Just one moment and I'll be with
+you!  Just one moment--"
+
+In a very little while he came from the tiny attic bedroom, through
+the tiniest cupboard of a sitting-room under the eaves, where his
+books were, and where he had hung his old red India tapestries--or
+silk embroideries--and he emerged there up above the world on the
+loggia.
+
+"Now then--_siamo nel paradiso_, eh?  Paradisal enough for you, is it?"
+
+"The devil looking over Lincoln," said Lilly laughing, glancing up
+into Argyle's face.
+
+"The devil looking over Florence would feel sad," said Argyle.  "The
+place is fast growing respectable--Oh, piety makes the devil chuckle.
+But respectability, my boy, argues a serious diminution of spunk.  And
+when the spunk diminishes we-ell--it's enough to make the most sturdy
+devil look sick.  What?  No doubt about it, no doubt whatever--There
+--!" he had just finished settling his tie and buttoning his waistcoat.
+"How do I look, eh?  Presentable?--I've just had this suit turned.
+Clever little tailor across the way there.  But he charged me a hundred
+and twenty francs."  Argyle pulled a face, and made the little trumping
+noise with his lips.  "However--not bad, is it?--He had to let in a bit
+at the back of the waistcoat, and a gusset, my boy, a gusset--in the
+trousers back.  Seems I've grown in the arsal region.  Well, well,
+might do worse.--Is it all right?"
+
+Lilly eyed the suit.
+
+"Very nice.  Very nice indeed.  Such a good cloth!  That makes all
+the difference."
+
+"Oh, my dear fellow, all the difference!  This suit is eleven years
+old--eleven years old.  But beautiful English cloth--before the war,
+before the war!"
+
+"It looks quite wonderfully expensive and smart now," said Lilly.
+
+"Expensive and smart, eh!  Ha-ha-ha!  Well, it cost me a hundred and
+twenty francs to have it turned, and I found that expensive enough.
+Well, now, come--" here Argyle's voice took on a new gay cheer.  "A
+whiskey and soda, Lilly?  Say when!  Oh, nonsense, nonsense!  You're
+going to have double that.  You're no lily of the valley here,
+remember.  Not with me.  Not likely.  _Siamo nel paradiso_, remember."
+
+"But why should we drink your whiskey?  Tea would do for us just as
+well."
+
+"Not likely!  Not likely!  When I have the pleasure of your company,
+my boy, we drink a glass of something, unless I am utterly stripped.
+Say when, Aaron."
+
+"When," said Aaron.
+
+Argyle at last seated himself heavily in a small chair.  The sun had
+left the loggia, but was glowing still on Giotto's tower and the top
+of the cathedral facade, and on the remoter great red-tiled dome.
+
+"Look at my little red monthly rose," said Argyle.  "Wonderful little
+fellow!  I wouldn't have anything happen to him for the world.  Oh, a
+bacchic little chap.  I made Pasquale wear a wreath of them on his
+hair.  Very becoming they were, very.--Oh, I've had a charming show
+of flowers.  Wonderful creatures sunflowers are."  They got up and
+put their heads over the balcony, looking down on the square below.
+"Oh, great fun, great fun.--Yes, I had a charming show of flowers,
+charming.--Zinnias, petunias, ranunculus, sunflowers, white stocks--
+oh, charming.  Look at that bit of honeysuckle.  You see the berries
+where his flowers were!  Delicious scent, I assure you."
+
+Under the little balcony wall Argyle had put square red-tiled pots,
+all round, and in these still bloomed a few pansies and asters, whilst
+in a corner a monthly rose hung flowers like round blood-drops.  Argyle
+was as tidy and scrupulous in his tiny rooms and his balcony as if he
+were a first-rate sea-man on a yacht.  Lilly remarked on this.
+
+"Do you see signs of the old maid coming out in me?  Oh, I don't doubt
+it.  I don't doubt it.  We all end that way.  Age makes old maids of
+us all.  And Tanny is all right, you say?  Bring her to see me.  Why
+didn't she come today?"
+
+"You know you don't like people unless you expect them."
+
+"Oh, but my dear fellow!--You and Tanny; you'd be welcome if you came
+at my busiest moment.  Of course you would.  I'd be glad to see you if
+you interrupted me at any crucial moment.--I am alone now till August.
+Then we shall go away together somewhere.  But you and Tanny; why,
+there's the world, and there's Lilly: that's how I put it, my boy."
+
+"All right, Argyle.--Hoflichkeiten."
+
+"What?  Gar keine Hoflichkeiten.  Wahrhaftiger Kerl bin ich.--When am
+I going to see Tanny?  When are you coming to dine with me?"
+
+"After you've dined with us--say the day after tomorrow."
+
+"Right you are.  Delighted--.  Let me look if that water's boiling."
+He got up and poked half himself inside the bedroom.  "Not yet.  Damned
+filthy methylated spirit they sell."
+
+"Look," said Lilly.  "There's Del Torre!"
+
+"Like some sort of midge, in that damned grey-and-yellow uniform.  I
+can't stand it, I tell you.  I can't stand the sight of any more of
+these uniforms.  Like a blight on the human landscape.  Like a blight.
+Like green-flies on rose-trees, smother-flies.  Europe's got the
+smother-fly in these infernal shoddy militarists."
+
+"Del Torre's coming out of it as soon as he can," said Lilly.
+
+"I should think so, too."
+
+"I like him myself--very much.  Look, he's seen us!  He wants to come
+up, Argyle."
+
+"What, in that uniform!  I'll see him in his grandmother's crinoline
+first."
+
+"Don't be fanatical, it's bad taste.  Let him come up a minute."
+
+"Not for my sake.  But for yours, he shall," Argyle stood at the
+parapet of the balcony and waved his arm.  "Yes, come up," he said,
+"come up, you little mistkafer--what the Americans call a bug.  Come
+up and be damned."
+
+Of course Del Torre was too far off to hear this exhortation.  Lilly
+also waved to him--and watched him pass into the doorway far below.
+
+"I'll rinse one of these glasses for him," said Argyle.
+
+The Marchese's step was heard on the stone stairs: then his knock.
+
+"Come in!  Come in!" cried Argyle from the bedroom, where he was
+rinsing the glass.  The Marchese entered, grinning with his curious,
+half courteous greeting.  "Go through--go through," cried Argyle.
+"Go on to the loggia--and mind your head.  Good heavens, mind your
+head in that doorway."
+
+The Marchese just missed the top of the doorway as he climbed the
+abrupt steps on to the loggia.--There he greeted Lilly and Aaron
+with hearty handshakes.
+
+"Very glad to see you--very glad, indeed!" he cried, grinning with
+excited courtesy and pleasure, and covering Lilly's hand with both
+his own gloved hands.  "When did you come to Florence?"
+
+There was a little explanation.  Argyle shoved the last chair--it was
+a luggage stool--through the window.
+
+"All I can do for you in the way of a chair," he said.
+
+"Ah, that is all right," said the Marchese.  "Well, it is very nice
+up here--and very nice company.  Of the very best, the very best in
+Florence."
+
+"The highest, anyhow," said Argyle grimly, as he entered with the
+glass.  "Have a whiskey and soda, Del Torre.  It's the bottom of
+the bottle, as you see."
+
+"The bottom of the bottle!  Then I start with the tail-end, yes!"
+He stretched his blue eyes so that the whites showed all round, and
+grinned a wide, gnome-like grin.
+
+"You made that start long ago, my dear fellow.  Don't play the
+_ingenue_ with me, you know it won't work.  Say when, my man, say
+when!"
+
+"Yes, when," said Del Torre.  "When did I make that start, then?"
+
+"At some unmentionably young age.  Chickens such as you soon learn
+to cheep."
+
+"Chickens such as I soon learn to cheap," repeated Del Torre, pleased
+with the verbal play.  "What is cheap, please?  What is TO CHEAP?"
+
+"Cheep! Cheep!" squeaked Argyle, making a face at the little Italian,
+who was perched on one strap of the luggage-stool.  "It's what chickens
+say when they're poking their little noses into new adventures--naughty
+ones."
+
+"Are chickens naughty?  Oh! I thought they could only be good!"
+
+"Featherless chickens like yourself, my boy."
+
+"Oh, as for featherless--then there is no saying what they will do.--"
+And here the Marchese turned away from Argyle with the inevitable
+question to Lilly:
+
+"Well, and how long will you stay in Florence?"
+
+Lilly did not know: but he was not leaving immediately.
+
+"Good!  Then you will come and see us at once. . . ."
+
+Argyle rose once more, and went to make the tea.  He shoved a lump of
+cake--or rather panetone, good currant loaf--through the window, with
+a knife to cut it.
+
+"Help yourselves to the panetone," he said.  "Eat it up.  The tea is
+coming at once.  You'll have to drink it in your glasses, there's only
+one old cup."
+
+The Marchese cut the cake, and offered pieces.  The two men took and
+ate.
+
+"So you have already found Mr. Sisson!" said Del Torre to Lilly.
+
+"Ran straight into him in the Via Nazionale," said Lilly.
+
+"Oh, one always runs into everybody in Florence.  We are all already
+acquainted: also with the flute.  That is a great pleasure."
+
+"So I think.--Does your wife like it, too?"
+
+"Very much, indeed!  She is quite _eprise_.  I, too, shall have to
+learn to play it."
+
+"And run the risk of spoiling the shape of your mouth--like
+Alcibiades."
+
+"Is there a risk?  Yes!  Then I shan't play it.  My mouth is too
+beautiful.--But Mr. Sisson has not spoilt his mouth."
+
+"Not yet," said Lilly.  "Give him time."
+
+"Is he also afraid--like Alcibiades?"
+
+"Are you, Aaron?" said Lilly.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Afraid of spoiling your beauty by screwing your mouth to the flute?"
+
+"I look a fool, do I, when I'm playing?" said Aaron.
+
+"Only the least little bit in the world," said Lilly.  "The way you
+prance your head, you know, like a horse."
+
+"Ah, well," said Aaron.  "I've nothing to lose."
+
+"And were you surprised, Lilly, to find your friend here?" asked
+Del Torre.
+
+"I ought to have been.  But I wasn't really."
+
+"Then you expected him?"
+
+"No.  It came naturally, though.--But why did you come, Aaron?  What
+exactly brought you?"
+
+"Accident," said Aaron.
+
+"Ah, no!  No!  There is no such thing as accident," said the Italian.
+"A man is drawn by his fate, where he goes."
+
+"You are right," said Argyle, who came now with the teapot.  "A man
+is drawn--or driven.  Driven, I've found it.  Ah, my dear fellow,
+what is life but a search for a friend?  A search for a friend--that
+sums it up."
+
+"Or a lover," said the Marchese, grinning.
+
+"Same thing.  Same thing.  My hair is white--but that is the sum of my
+whole experience.  The search for a friend."  There was something at
+once real and sentimental in Argyle's tone.
+
+"And never finding?" said Lilly, laughing.
+
+"Oh, what would you?  Often finding.  Often finding.  And losing, of
+course.--A life's history.  Give me your glass.  Miserable tea, but
+nobody has sent me any from England--"
+
+"And you will go on till you die, Argyle?" said Lilly.  "Always seeking
+a friend--and always a new one?"
+
+"If I lose the friend I've got.  Ah, my dear fellow, in that case I
+shall go on seeking.  I hope so, I assure you.  Something will be
+very wrong with me, if ever I sit friendless and make no search."
+
+"But, Argyle, there is a time to leave off."
+
+"To leave off what, to leave off what?"
+
+"Having friends: or a friend, rather: or seeking to have one."
+
+"Oh, no!  Not at all, my friend.  Not at all!  Only death can make an
+end of that, my friend.  Only death.  And I should say, not even death.
+Not even death ends a man's search for a friend.  That is my belief.
+You may hang me for it, but I shall never alter."
+
+"Nay," said Lilly.  "There is a time to love, and a time to leave off
+loving."
+
+"All I can say to that is that my time to leave off hasn't come yet,"
+said Argyle, with obstinate feeling.
+
+"Ah, yes, it has.  It is only a habit and an idea you stick to."
+
+"Indeed, it is no such thing.  Indeed, it is no such thing.  It is a
+profound desire and necessity: and what is more, a belief."
+
+"An obstinate persistency, you mean," said Lilly.
+
+"Well, call it so if it pleases you.  It is by no means so to me."
+There was a brief pause.  The sun had left the cathedral dome and
+the tower, the sky was full of light, the square swimming in shadow.
+
+"But can a man live," said the Marchese, "without having something he
+lives for: something he wishes for, or longs for, and tries that he
+may get?"
+
+"Impossible!  Completely impossible!" said Argyle.  "Man is a seeker,
+and except as such, he has no significance, no importance."
+
+"He bores me with his seeking," said Lilly.  "He should learn to
+possess himself--to be himself--and keep still."
+
+"Ay, perhaps so," said Aaron.  "Only--"
+
+"But my dear boy, believe me, a man is never himself save in the
+supreme state of love: or perhaps hate, too, which amounts to the same
+thing.  Never really himself.--Apart from this he is a tram-driver or
+a money-shoveller or an idea-machine.  Only in the state of love is he
+really a man, and really himself.  I say so, because I know," said
+Argyle.
+
+"Ah, yes.  That is one side of the truth.  It is quite true, also.
+But it is just as true to say, that a man is never less himself,
+than in the supreme state of love.  Never less himself, than then."
+
+"Maybe!  Maybe!  But what could be better?  What could be better than
+to lose oneself with someone you love, entirely, and so find yourself.
+Ah, my dear fellow, that is my creed, that is my creed, and you can't
+shake me in it.  Never in that.  Never in that."
+
+"Yes, Argyle," said Lilly.  "I know you're an obstinate love-apostle."
+
+"I am!  I am!  And I have certain standards, my boy, and certain ideals
+which I never transgress.  Never transgress.  And never abandon."
+
+"All right, then, you are an incurable love-maker."
+
+"Pray God I am," said Argyle.
+
+"Yes," said the Marchese.  "Perhaps we are all so.  What else do you
+give?  Would you have us make money?  Or do you give the centre of
+your spirit to your work?  How is it to be?"
+
+"I don't vitally care either about money or my work or--" Lilly
+faltered.
+
+"Or what, then?"
+
+"Or anything.  I don't really care about anything.  Except that--"
+
+"You don't care about anything?  But what is that for a life?" cried
+the Marchese, with a hollow mockery.
+
+"What do YOU care for?" asked Lilly.
+
+"Me?  I care for several things.  I care for my wife.  I care for love.
+And I care to be loved.  And I care for some pleasures.  And I care
+for music.  And I care for Italy."
+
+"You are well off for cares," said Lilly.
+
+"And you seem to me so very poor," said Del Torre.
+
+"I should say so--if he cares for nothing," interjaculated Argyle.
+Then he clapped Lilly on the shoulder with a laugh.  "Ha! Ha! Ha!--
+But he only says it to tease us," he cried, shaking Lilly's shoulder.
+"He cares more than we do for his own way of loving.  Come along,
+don't try and take us in.  We are old birds, old birds," said Argyle.
+But at that moment he seemed a bit doddering.
+
+"A man can't live," said the Italian, "without an object."
+
+"Well--and that object?" said Lilly.
+
+"Well--it may be many things.  Mostly it is two things.--love, and
+money.  But it may be many things: ambition, patriotism, science,
+art--many things.  But it is some objective.  Something outside the
+self.  Perhaps many things outside the self."
+
+"I have had only one objective all my life," said Argyle.  "And that
+was love.  For that I have spent my life."
+
+"And the lives of a number of other people, too," said Lilly.
+
+"Admitted.  Oh, admitted.  It takes two to make love: unless you're a
+miserable--"
+
+"Don't you think," said Aaron, turning to Lilly, "that however you try
+to get away from it, if you're not after money, and can't fit yourself
+into a job--you've got to, you've got to try and find something else--
+somebody else--somebody.  You can't really be alone."
+
+"No matter how many mistakes you've made--you can't really be alone--?"
+asked Lilly.
+
+"You can be alone for a minute.  You can be alone just in that minute
+when you've broken free, and you feel heart thankful to be alone,
+because the other thing wasn't to be borne.  But you can't keep on
+being alone.  No matter how many tunes you've broken free, and feel,
+thank God to be alone (nothing on earth is so good as to breathe fresh
+air and be alone), no matter how many times you've felt this--it wears
+off every time, and you begin to look again--and you begin to roam
+round.  And even if you won't admit it to yourself, still you are
+seeking--seeking.  Aren't you?  Aren't you yourself seeking?"
+
+"Oh, that's another matter," put in Argyle.  "Lilly is happily married
+and on the shelf.  With such a fine woman as Tanny I should think so--
+RATHER!  But his is an exceptional nature, and an exceptional case.
+As for me, I made a hell of my marriage, and I swear it nearly sent
+me to hell.  But I didn't forswear love, when I forswore marriage and
+woman.  Not by ANY means."
+
+"Are you not seeking any more, Lilly?" asked the Marchese.  "Do you
+seek nothing?"
+
+"We married men who haven't left our wives, are we supposed to seek
+anything?" said Lilly.  "Aren't we perfectly satisfied and in bliss
+with the wonderful women who honour us as wives?"
+
+"Ah, yes, yes!" said the Marchese.  "But now we are not speaking to
+the world.  Now we try to speak of that which we have in our centre
+of our hearts."
+
+"And what have we there?" said Lilly.
+
+"Well--shall I say?  We have unrest.  We have another need.  We have
+something that hurts and eats us, yes, eats us inside.   Do I speak
+the truth?"
+
+"Yes.  But what is the something?"
+
+"I don't know.  I don't know.  But it is something in love, I think.
+It is love itself which gnaws us inside, like a cancer," said the
+Italian.
+
+"But why should it?  Is that the nature of love?" said Lilly.
+
+"I don't know.  Truly.  I don't know.--But perhaps it is in the nature
+of love--I don't know.--But I tell you, I love my, wife--she is very
+dear to me.  I admire her, I trust her, I believe her.  She is to me
+much more than any woman, more even than my mother.--And so, I am very
+happy.  I am very happy, she is very happy, in our love and our
+marriage.--But wait.  Nothing has changed--the love has not changed:
+it is the same.--And yet we are NOT happy.  No, we are not happy.  I
+know she is not happy, I know I am not--"
+
+"Why should you be?" said Lilly.
+
+"Yes--and it is not even happiness," said the Marchese, screwing up
+his face in a painful effort of confession.  "It is not even happiness.
+No, I do not ask to be happy.  Why should I?  It is childish--but
+there is for both of us, I know it, something which bites us, which
+eats us within, and drives us, drives us, somewhere, we don't know
+where.  But it drives us, and eats away the life--and yet we love
+each other, and we must not separate--Do you know what I mean?  Do
+you understand me at all in what I say?  I speak what is true."
+
+"Yes, I understand.  I'm in the same dilemma myself.--But what I want
+to hear, is WHY you think it is so.  Why is it?"
+
+"Shall I say what I think?  Yes?  And you can tell me if it is foolish
+to you.--Shall I tell you?  Well.  Because a woman, she now first
+wants the man, and he must go to her because he is wanted.  Do you
+understand?--You know--supposing I go to a woman--supposing she is my
+wife--and I go to her, yes, with my blood all ready, because it is I
+who want.  Then she puts me off.  Then she says, not now, not now, I
+am tired, I am not well.  I do not feel like it.  She puts me off--
+till I am angry or sorry or whatever I am--but till my blood has gone
+down again, you understand, and I don't want her any more.  And then
+she puts her arms round me, and caresses me, and makes love to me--
+till she rouses me once more.  So, and so she rouses me--and so I come
+to her.  And I love her, it is very good, very good.  But it was she
+who began, it was her initiative, you know.--I do not think, in all
+my life, my wife has loved me from my initiative, you know.  She will
+yield to me--because I insist, or because she wants to be a good
+submissive wife who loves me.  So she will yield to me.  But ah, what
+is it, you know?  What is it a woman who allows me, and who has no
+answer?  It is something worse than nothing--worse than nothing.  And
+so it makes me very discontented and unbelieving.--If I say to her,
+she says it is not true--not at all true.  Then she says, all she
+wants is that I should desire her, that I should love her and desire
+her.  But even that is putting her will first.  And if I come to her
+so, if I come to her of my own desire, then she puts me off.  She
+puts me off, or she only allows me to come to her.  Even now it is
+the same after ten years, as it was at first.  But now I know, and
+for many years I did not know--"
+
+The little man was intense.  His face was strained, his blue eyes
+so stretched that they showed the whites all round.  He gazed into
+Lilly's face.
+
+"But does it matter?" said Lilly slowly, "in which of you the desire
+initiates?  Isn't the result the same?"
+
+"It matters.  It matters--" cried the Marchese.
+
+"Oh, my dear fellow, how MUCH it matters--" interrupted Argyle sagely.
+
+"Ay!" said Aaron.
+
+The Marchese looked from one to the other of them.
+
+"It matters!" he cried.  "It matters life or death.  It used to be,
+that desire started in the man, and the woman answered.  It used to be
+so for a long time in Italy.  For this reason the women were kept away
+from the men.  For this reason our Catholic religion tried to keep the
+young girls in convents, and innocent, before marriage.  So that with
+their minds they should not know, and should not start this terrible
+thing, this woman's desire over a man, beforehand.  This desire which
+starts in a woman's head, when she knows, and which takes a man for
+her use, for her service.  This is Eve.  Ah, I hate Eve.  I hate her,
+when she knows, and when she WILLS.  I hate her when she will make of
+me that which serves her desire.--She may love me, she may be soft and
+kind to me, she may give her life for me.  But why?  Only because I am
+HERS.  I am that thing which does her most intimate service.  She can
+see no other in me.  And I may be no other to her--"
+
+"Then why not let it be so, and be satisfied?" said Lilly.
+
+"Because I cannot.  I cannot.  I would.  But I cannot.  The Borghesia--
+the citizens--the bourgeoisie, they are the ones who can.  Oh, yes.
+The bourgeoisie, the shopkeepers, these serve their wives so, and
+their wives love them.  They are the marital maquereaux--the husband-
+maquereau, you know.  Their wives are so stout and happy, and they
+dote on their husbands and always betray them.  So it is with the
+bourgeoise.  She loves her husband so much, and is always seeking to
+betray him.  Or she is a Madame Bovary, seeking for a scandal.  But the
+bourgeois husband, he goes on being the same.  He is the horse, and she
+the driver.  And when she says gee-up, you know--then he comes ready,
+like a hired maquereau.  Only he feels so good, like a good little boy
+at her breast.  And then there are the nice little children.  And so
+they keep the world going.--But for me--" he spat suddenly and with
+frenzy on the floor.
+
+"You are quite right, my boy," said Argyle.  "You are quite right.
+They've got the start of us, the women: and we've got to canter when
+they say gee-up.  I--oh, I went through it all.  But I broke the
+shafts and smashed the matrimonial cart, I can tell you, and I didn't
+care whether I smashed her up along with it or not.  I didn't care
+one single bit, I assure you.--And here I am.  And she is dead and
+buried these dozen years.  Well--well!  Life, you know, life.  And
+women oh, they are the very hottest hell once they get the start of
+you.  There's NOTHING they won't do to you, once they've got you.
+Nothing they won't do to you.  Especially if they love you.  Then
+you may as well give up the ghost: or smash the cart behind you, and
+her in it.  Otherwise she will just harry you into submission, and
+make a dog of you, and cuckold you under your nose.  And you'll
+submit.  Oh, you'll submit, and go on calling her my darling.  Or
+else, if you won't submit, she'll do for you.  Your only chance is to
+smash the shafts, and the whole matrimonial cart.  Or she'll do for
+you.  For a woman has an uncanny, hellish strength--she's a she-bear
+and a wolf, is a woman when she's got the start of you.  Oh, it's a
+terrible experience, if you're not a bourgeois, and not one of the
+knuckling-under money-making sort."
+
+"Knuckling-under sort.  Yes.  That is it," said the Marchese.
+
+"But can't there be a balancing of wills?" said Lilly.
+
+"My dear boy, the balance lies in that, that when one goes up, the
+other goes down.  One acts, the other takes.  It is the only way in
+love--And the women are nowadays the active party.  Oh, yes, not a
+shadow of doubt about it.  They take the initiative, and the man plays
+up.  That's how it is.  The man just plays up.--Nice manly proceeding,
+what!" cried Argyle.
+
+"But why can't man accept it as the natural order of things?" said
+Lilly.  "Science makes it the natural order."
+
+"All my --- to science," said Argyle.  "No man with one drop of real
+spunk in him can stand it long."
+
+"Yes! Yes! Yes!" cried the Italian.  "Most men want it so.  Most men
+want only, that a woman shall want them, and they shall then play up
+to her when she has roused them.  Most men want only this: that a woman
+shall choose one man out, to be her man, and he shall worship her and
+come up when she shall provoke him.  Otherwise he is to keep still.
+And the woman, she is quite sure of her part.  She must be loved and
+adored, and above all, obeyed, particularly in her sex desire.  There
+she must not be thwarted, or she becomes a devil.  And if she is
+obeyed, she becomes a misunderstood woman with nerves, looking round
+for the next man whom she can bring under.  So it is."
+
+"Well," said Lilly.  "And then what?"
+
+"Nay," interrupted Aaron.  "But do you think it's true what he says?
+Have you found it like that?  You're married.  Has your experience
+been different, or the same?"
+
+"What was yours?" asked Lilly.
+
+"Mine was the same.  Mine was the same, if ever it was," said Aaron.
+
+"And mine was EXTREMELY similar," said Argyle with a grimace.
+
+"And yours, Lilly?" asked the Marchese anxiously.
+
+"Not very different," said Lilly.
+
+"Ah!" cried Del Torre, jerking up erect as if he had found something.
+
+"And what's your way out?" Aaron asked him.
+
+"I'm not out--so I won't holloa," said Lilly.  "But Del Torre puts it
+best.--What do you say is the way out, Del Torre?"
+
+"The way out is that it should change: that the man should be the
+asker and the woman the answerer.  It must change."
+
+"But it doesn't.  Prrr!"  Argyle made his trumpeting noise.
+
+"Does it?" asked Lilly of the Marchese.
+
+"No.  I think it does not."
+
+"And will it ever again?"
+
+"Perhaps never."
+
+"And then what?"
+
+"Then?  Why then man seeks a _pis-aller_.  Then he seeks something
+which will give him answer, and which will not only draw him, draw
+him, with a terrible sexual will.--So he seeks young girls, who know
+nothing, and so cannot force him.  He thinks he will possess them
+while they are young, and they will be soft and responding to his
+wishes.--But in this, too, he is mistaken.  Because now a baby of one
+year, if it be a female, is like a woman of forty, so is its will made
+up, so it will force a man."
+
+"And so young girls are no good, even as a _pis-aller_."
+
+"No good--because they are all modern women.  Every one, a modern
+woman.  Not one who isn't."
+
+"Terrible thing, the modern woman," put in Argyle.
+
+"And then--?"
+
+"Then man seeks other forms of loves, always seeking the loving
+response, you know, of one gentler and tenderer than himself, who
+will wait till the man desires, and then will answer with full love.
+--But it is all _pis-aller_, you know."
+
+"Not by any means, my boy," cried Argyle.
+
+"And then a man naturally loves his own wife, too, even if it is not
+bearable to love her."
+
+"Or one leaves her, like Aaron," said Lilly.
+
+"And seeks another woman, so," said the Marchese.
+
+"Does he seek another woman?" said Lilly.  "Do you, Aaron?"
+
+"I don't WANT to," said Aaron.  "But--I can't stand by myself in the
+middle of the world and in the middle of people, and know I am quite
+by myself, and nowhere to go, and nothing to hold on to.  I can for
+a day or two--But then, it becomes unbearable as well.  You get
+frightened.  You feel you might go funny--as you would if you stood
+on this balcony wall with all the space beneath you."
+
+"Can't one be alone--quite alone?" said Lilly.
+
+"But no--it is absurd.  Like Saint Simeon Stylites on a pillar.  But
+it is absurd!" cried the Italian.
+
+"I don't mean like Simeon Stylites.  I mean can't one live with one's
+wife, and be fond of her: and with one's friends, and enjoy their
+company: and with the world and everything, pleasantly: and yet KNOW
+that one is alone?  Essentially, at the very core of me, alone.
+Eternally alone.  And choosing to be alone.  Not sentimental or LONELY.
+Alone, choosing to be alone, because by one's own nature one is alone.
+The being with another person is secondary," said Lilly.
+
+"One is alone," said Argyle, "in all but love.  In all but love, my
+dear fellow.  And then I agree with you."
+
+"No," said Lilly, "in love most intensely of all, alone."
+
+"Completely incomprehensible," said Argyle.  "Amounts to nothing."
+
+"One man is but a part.  How can he be so alone?" said the Marchese.
+
+"In so far as he is a single individual soul, he IS alone--ipso facto.
+In so far as I am I, and only I am I, and I am only I, in so far, I am
+inevitably and eternally alone, and it is my last blessedness to know
+it, and to accept it, and to live with this as the core of my self-
+knowledge."
+
+"My dear boy, you are becoming metaphysical, and that is as bad as
+softening of the brain," said Argyle.
+
+"All right," said Lilly.
+
+"And," said the Marchese, "it may be so by REASON.  But in the heart--?
+Can the heart ever beat quite alone?  Plop!  Plop!--Can the heart
+beat quite alone, alone in all the atmosphere, all the space of the
+universe?  Plop!  Plop!  Plop!--Quite alone in all the space?"  A
+slow smile came over the Italian's face.  "It is impossible.  It may
+eat against the heart of other men, in anger, all in pressure against
+the others.  It may beat hard, like iron, saying it is independent.
+But this is only beating against the heart of mankind, not alone.--
+But either with or against the heart of mankind, or the heart of
+someone, mother, wife, friend, children--so must the heart of every
+man beat.  It is so."
+
+"It beats alone in its own silence," said Lilly.
+
+The Italian shook his head.
+
+"We'd better be going inside, anyhow," said Argyle.  "Some of you will
+be taking cold."
+
+"Aaron," said Lilly.  "Is it true for you?"
+
+"Nearly," said Aaron, looking into the quiet, half-amused, yet
+frightening eyes of the other man.  "Or it has been."
+
+"A miss is as good as a mile," laughed Lilly, rising and picking up
+his chair to take it indoors.  And the laughter of his voice was so
+like a simple, deliberate amiability, that Aaron's heart really stood
+still for a second.  He knew that Lilly was alone--as far as he, Aaron,
+was concerned.  Lilly was alone--and out of his isolation came his
+words, indifferent as to whether they came or not.  And he left his
+friends utterly to their own choice.  Utterly to their own choice.
+Aaron felt that Lilly was _there_, existing in life, yet neither
+asking for connection nor preventing any connection.  He was present,
+he was the real centre of the group.  And yet he asked nothing of them,
+and he imposed nothing.  He left each to himself, and he himself remained
+just himself: neither more nor less.  And there was a finality about
+it, which was at once maddening and fascinating.  Aaron felt angry,
+as if he were half insulted by the other man's placing the gift of
+friendship or connection so quietly back in the giver's hands.  Lilly
+would receive no gift of friendship in equality.  Neither would he
+violently refuse it.  He let it lie unmarked.  And yet at the same
+time Aaron knew that he could depend on the other man for help, nay,
+almost for life itself--so long as it entailed no breaking of the
+intrinsic isolation of Lilly's soul.  But this condition was also
+hateful.  And there was also a great fascination in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE MARCHESA
+
+
+So Aaron dined with the Marchesa and Manfredi.  He was quite startled
+when his hostess came in: she seemed like somebody else.  She seemed
+like a demon, her hair on her brows, her terrible modern elegance.
+She wore a wonderful gown of thin blue velvet, of a lovely colour,
+with some kind of gauzy gold-threaded filament down the sides.  It
+was terribly modern, short, and showed her legs and her shoulders and
+breast and all her beautiful white arms.  Round her throat was a collar
+of dark-blue sapphires.  Her hair was done low, almost to the brows,
+and heavy, like an Aubrey Beardsley drawing.  She was most carefully
+made up--yet with that touch of exaggeration, lips slightly too red,
+which was quite intentional, and which frightened Aaron.  He thought
+her wonderful, and sinister.  She affected him with a touch of horror.
+She sat down opposite him, and her beautifully shapen legs, in frail,
+goldish stockings, seemed to glisten metallic naked, thrust from out
+of the wonderful, wonderful skin, like periwinkle-blue velvet.  She
+had tapestry shoes, blue and gold: and almost one could see her toes:
+metallic naked.  The gold-threaded gauze slipped at her side.  Aaron
+could not help watching the naked-seeming arch of her foot.  It was
+as if she were dusted with dark gold-dust upon her marvellous nudity.
+
+She must have seen his face, seen that he was _ebloui_.
+
+"You brought the flute?" she said, in that toneless, melancholy,
+unstriving voice of hers.  Her voice alone was the same: direct
+and bare and quiet.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Perhaps I shall sing later on, if you'll accompany me.  Will you?"
+
+"I thought you hated accompaniments."
+
+"Oh, no--not just unison.  I don't mean accompaniment.  I mean unison.
+I don't know how it will be.  But will you try?"
+
+"Yes, I'll try."
+
+"Manfredi is just bringing the cocktails.  Do you think you'd prefer
+orange in yours?"
+
+"Ill have mine as you have yours."
+
+"I don't take orange in mine.  Won't you smoke?"
+
+The strange, naked, remote-seeming voice!  And then the beautiful firm
+limbs thrust out in that dress, and nakedly dusky as with gold-dust.
+Her beautiful woman's legs, slightly glistening, duskily.  His one
+abiding instinct was to touch them, to kiss them.  He had never known
+a woman to exercise such power over him.  It was a bare, occult force,
+something he could not cope with.
+
+Manfredi came in with the little tray.  He was still in uniform.
+
+"Hello!" cried the little Italian.  "Glad to see you--well, everything
+all right?  Glad to hear it.  How is the cocktail, Nan?"
+
+"Yes," she said.  "All right."
+
+"One drop too much peach, eh?"
+
+"No, all right."
+
+"Ah," and the little officer seated himself, stretching his gaitered
+legs as if gaily.  He had a curious smiling look on his face, that
+Aaron thought also diabolical--and almost handsome.  Suddenly the
+odd, laughing, satanic beauty of the little man was visible.
+
+"Well, and what have you been doing with yourself?" said he.  "What
+did you do yesterday?"
+
+"Yesterday?" said Aaron.  "I went to the Uffizi."
+
+"To the Uffizi?  Well!  And what did you think of it?"
+
+"Very fine."
+
+"I think it is.  I think it is.  What pictures did you look at?"
+
+"I was with Dekker.  We looked at most, I believe."
+
+"And what do you remember best?"
+
+"I remember Botticelli's Venus on the Shell."
+
+"Yes!  Yes!--" said Manfredi.  "I like her.  But I like others better.
+You thought her a pretty woman, yes?"
+
+"No--not particularly pretty.  But I like her body.  And I like the
+fresh air.  I like the fresh air, the summer sea-air all through it--
+through her as well."
+
+"And her face?" asked the Marchesa, with a slow, ironic smile.
+
+"Yes--she's a bit baby-faced," said Aaron.
+
+"Trying to be more innocent than her own common-sense will let her,"
+said the Marchesa.
+
+"I don't agree with you, Nan," said her husband.  "I think it is just
+that wistfulness and innocence which makes her the true Venus: the
+true modern Venus.  She chooses NOT to know too much.  And that is her
+attraction.  Don't you agree, Aaron?  Excuse me, but everybody speaks
+of you as Aaron.  It seems to come naturally.  Most people speak of me
+as Manfredi, too, because it is easier, perhaps, than Del Torre.  So
+if you find it easier, use it.  Do you mind that I call you Aaron?"
+
+"Not at all.  I hate Misters, always."
+
+"Yes, so do I.  I like one name only."
+
+The little officer seemed very winning and delightful to Aaron this
+evening--and Aaron began to like him extremely.  But the dominating
+consciousness in the room was the woman's.
+
+"DO you agree, Mr. Sisson?" said the Marchesa.  "Do you agree that the
+mock-innocence and the sham-wistfulness of Botticelli's Venus are her
+great charms?"
+
+"I don't think she is at all charming, as a person," said Aaron.  "As
+a particular woman, she makes no impression on me at all.  But as a
+picture--and the fresh air, particularly the fresh air.  She doesn't
+seem so much a woman, you know, as the kind of out-of-doors morning-
+feelings at the seaside."
+
+"Quite!  A sort of sea-scape of a woman.  With a perfectly sham
+innocence.  Are you as keen on innocence as Manfredi is?"
+
+"Innocence?" said Aaron.  "It's the sort of thing I don't have much
+feeling about."
+
+"Ah, I know you," laughed the soldier wickedly.  "You are the sort of
+man who wants to be Anthony to Cleopatra.  Ha-ha!"
+
+Aaron winced as if struck.  Then he too smiled, flattered.  Yet he felt
+he had been struck!  Did he want to be Anthony to Cleopatra?  Without
+knowing, he was watching the Marchesa.  And she was looking away, but
+knew he was watching her.  And at last she turned her eyes to his,
+with a slow, dark smile, full of pain and fuller still of knowledge.
+A strange, dark, silent look of knowledge she gave him: from so far
+away, it seemed.  And he felt all the bonds that held him melting away.
+His eyes remained fixed and gloomy, but with his mouth he smiled back
+at her.  And he was terrified.  He knew he was sulking towards her--
+sulking towards her.  And he was terrified.  But at the back of his
+mind, also, he knew there was Lilly, whom he might depend on.  And
+also he wanted to sink towards her.  The flesh and blood of him simply
+melted out, in desire towards her.  Cost what may, he must come to her.
+And yet he knew at the same time that, cost what may, he must keep the
+power to recover himself from her.  He must have his cake and eat it.
+
+And she became Cleopatra to him.  "Age cannot wither, nor custom
+stale--"  To his instinctive, unwilled fancy, she was Cleopatra.
+
+They went in to dinner, and he sat on her right hand.  It was a
+smallish table, with a very few daisy-flowers: everything rather
+frail, and sparse.  The food the same--nothing very heavy, all rather
+exquisite.  They drank hock.  And he was aware of her beautiful arms,
+and her bosom; her low-crowded, thick hair, parted in the centre: the
+sapphires on her throat, the heavy rings on her fingers: and the
+paint on her lips, the fard.  Something deep, deep at the bottom of
+him hovered upon her, cleaved to her.  Yet he was as if sightless,
+in a stupor.  Who was she, what was she?  He had lost all his grasp.
+Only he sat there, with his face turned to hers, or to her, all the
+time.  And she talked to him.  But she never looked at him.
+
+Indeed she said little.  It was the husband who talked.  His manner
+towards Aaron was almost caressive.  And Aaron liked it.  The woman
+was silent mostly, and seemed remote.  And Aaron felt his life ebb
+towards her.  He felt the marvellousness, the rich beauty of her arms
+and breast.  And the thought of her gold-dusted smooth limbs beneath
+the table made him feel almost an idiot.
+
+The second wine was a gold-coloured Moselle, very soft and rich and
+beautiful.  She drank this with pleasure, as one who understands.  And
+for dessert there was a dish of cacchi--that orange-coloured, pulpy
+Japanese fruit--persimmons.  Aaron had never eaten these before.  Soft,
+almost slimy, of a wonderful colour, and of a flavour that had sunk
+from harsh astringency down to that first decay-sweetness which is all
+autumn-rich.  The Marchese loved them, and scooped them out with his
+spoon.  But she ate none.
+
+Aaron did not know what they talked about, what was said.  If someone
+had taken his mind away altogether, and left him with nothing but a
+body and a spinal consciousness, it would have been the same.
+
+But at coffee the talk turned to Manfredi's duties.  He would not be
+free from the army for some time yet.  On the morrow, for example, he
+had to be out and away before it was day.  He said he hated it, and
+wanted to be a free man once more.  But it seemed to Aaron he would be
+a very bored man, once he was free.  And then they drifted on to talk
+of the palazzo in which was their apartment.
+
+"We've got such a fine terrace--you can see it from your house where
+you are," said Manfredi.  "Have you noticed it?"
+
+"No," said Aaron.
+
+"Near that tuft of palm-trees.  Don't you know?"
+
+"No," said Aaron.
+
+"Let us go out and show it him," said the Marchesa.
+
+Manfredi fetched her a cloak, and they went through various doors,
+then up some steps.  The terrace was broad and open.  It looked
+straight across the river at the opposite Lungarno: and there was the
+thin-necked tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, and the great dome of the
+cathedral in the distance, in shadow-bulk in the cold-aired night of
+stars.  Little trams were running brilliant over the flat new bridge
+on the right.  And from a garden just below rose a tuft of palm-trees.
+
+"You see," said the Marchesa, coming and standing close to Aaron, so
+that she just touched him, "you can know the terrace, just by these
+palm trees.  And you are in the Nardini just across there, are you?
+On the top floor, you said?"
+
+"Yes, the top floor--one of the middle windows, I think."
+
+"One that is always open now--and the others are shut.  I have noticed
+it, not connecting it with you."
+
+"Yes, my window is always open."
+
+She was leaning very slightly against him, as he stood.  And he knew,
+with the same kind of inevitability with which he knew he would one
+day die, that he would be the lover of this woman.  Nay, that he was
+her lover already.
+
+"Don't take cold," said Manfredi.
+
+She turned at once indoors.  Aaron caught a faint whiff of perfume
+from the little orange trees in tubs round the wall.
+
+"Will you get the flute?" she said as they entered.
+
+"And will you sing?" he answered.
+
+"Play first," she said.
+
+He did as she wished.  As the other night, he went into the big music-
+room to play.  And the stream of sound came out with the quick wild
+imperiousness of the pipe.  It had an immediate effect on her.  She
+seemed to relax the peculiar, drug-like tension which was upon her at
+all ordinary times.  She seemed to go still, and yielding.  Her red
+mouth looked as if it might moan with relief.  She sat with her chin
+dropped on her breast, listening.  And she did not move.  But she sat
+softly, breathing rather quick, like one who has been hurt, and is
+soothed.  A certain womanly naturalness seemed to soften her.
+
+And the music of the flute came quick, rather brilliant like a call-
+note, or like a long quick message, half command.  To her it was like
+a pure male voice--as a blackbird's when he calls: a pure male voice,
+not only calling, but telling her something, telling her something,
+and soothing her soul to sleep.  It was like the fire-music putting
+Brunnhilde to sleep.  But the pipe did not flicker and sink.  It
+seemed to cause a natural relaxation in her soul, a peace.  Perhaps
+it was more like waking to a sweet, morning awakening, after a night
+of tormented, painful tense sleep.  Perhaps more like that.
+
+When Aaron came in, she looked at him with a gentle, fresh smile that
+seemed to make the fard on her face look like a curious tiredness,
+which now she might recover from.  And as the last time, it was
+difficult for her to identify this man with the voice of the flute.
+It was rather difficult.  Except that, perhaps, between his brows was
+something of a doubt, and in his bearing an aloofness that made her
+dread he might go away and not come back.  She could see it in him,
+that he might go away and not come back.
+
+She said nothing to him, only just smiled.  And the look of knowledge
+in her eyes seemed, for the moment, to be contained in another look: a
+look of faith, and at last happiness.  Aaron's heart stood still.  No,
+in her moment's mood of faith and at last peace, life-trust, he was
+perhaps more terrified of her than in her previous sinister elegance.
+His spirit started and shrank.  What was she going to ask of him?
+
+"I am so anxious that you should come to play one Saturday morning,"
+said Manfredi.  "With an accompaniment, you know.  I should like so
+much to hear you with piano accompaniment."
+
+"Very well," said Aaron.
+
+"Will you really come?  And will you practise with me, so that I can
+accompany you?" said Manfredi eagerly.
+
+"Yes.  I will," said Aaron.
+
+"Oh, good!  Oh, good!  Look here, come in on Friday morning and let us
+both look through the music."
+
+"If Mr. Sisson plays for the public," said the Marchesa, "he must not
+do it for charity.  He must have the proper fee."
+
+"No, I don't want it," said Aaron.
+
+"But you must earn money, mustn't you?" said she.
+
+"I must," said Aaron.  "But I can do it somewhere else."
+
+"No.  If you play for the public, you must have your earnings.  When
+you play for me, it is different."
+
+"Of course," said Manfredi.  "Every man must have his wage.  I have
+mine from the Italian government---"
+
+After a while, Aaron asked the Marchesa if she would sing.
+
+"Shall I?" she said.
+
+"Yes, do."
+
+"Then I will sing alone first, to let you see what you think of it--
+I shall be like Trilby--I won't say like Yvette Guilbert, because I
+daren't.  So I will be like Trilby, and sing a little French song.
+Though not Malbrouck, and without a Svengali to keep me in tune."
+
+She went near the door, and stood with heir hands by her side.  There
+was something wistful, almost pathetic now, in her elegance.
+
+
+                    "Derriere chez mon pere
+                      _Vole vole mon coeur, vole_!
+                     Derriere chez mon pere
+                     Il y a un pommier doux.
+                       _Tout doux, et iou
+                        Et iou, tout doux.
+                        Il y a unpommier doux_.
+
+                     Trois belles princesses
+                      _Vole vole mon coeur, vole_!
+                     Trois belles princesses
+                     Sont assis dessous.
+                      _Tout doux, et iou
+                       Et iou, tout doux.
+                       Sont asses dessous._"
+
+
+She had a beautiful, strong, sweet voice.  But it was faltering,
+stumbling and sometimes it seemed to drop almost to speech.  After
+three verses she faltered to an end, bitterly chagrined.
+
+"No," she said.  "It's no good.  I can't sing."  And she dropped in
+her chair.
+
+"A lovely little tune," said Aaron.  "Haven't you got the music?"
+
+She rose, not answering, and found him a little book.
+
+"What do the words mean?" he asked her.
+
+She told him.  And then he took his flute.
+
+"You don't mind if I play it, do you?" he said.
+
+So he played the tune.  It was so simple.  And he seemed to catch the
+lilt and the timbre of her voice.
+
+"Come and sing it while I play--" he said.
+
+"I can't sing," she said, shaking her head rather bitterly.
+
+"But let us try," said he, disappointed.
+
+"I know I can't," she said.  But she rose.
+
+He remained sitting at the little table, the book propped up under the
+reading lamp.  She stood at a little distance, unhappy.
+
+"I've always been like that," she said.  "I could never sing music,
+unless I had a thing drilled into me, and then it wasn't singing
+any more."
+
+But Aaron wasn't heeding.  His flute was at his mouth, he was watching
+her.  He sounded the note, but she did not begin.  She was twisting her
+handkerchief.  So he played the melody alone.  At the end of the verse,
+he looked up at her again, and a half mocking smile played in his eyes.
+Again he sounded the note, a challenge.  And this time, as at his
+bidding, she began to sing.  The flute instantly swung with a lovely
+soft firmness into the song, and she wavered only for a minute or two.
+Then her soul and her voice got free, and she sang--she sang as she
+wanted to sing, as she had always wanted to sing, without that awful
+scotch, that impediment inside her own soul, which prevented her.
+
+She sang free, with the flute gliding along with her.  And oh, how
+beautiful it was for her!  How beautiful it was to sing the little song
+in the sweetness of her own spirit.  How sweet it was to move pure and
+unhampered at last in the music!  The lovely ease and lilt of her own
+soul in its motion through the music!  She wasn't aware of the flute.
+She didn't know there was anything except her own pure lovely song-
+drift.  Her soul seemed to breathe as a butterfly breathes, as it rests
+on a leaf and slowly breathes its wings.  For the first time!  For the
+first time her soul drew its own deep breath.  All her life, the breath
+had caught half-way.  And now she breathed full, deep, to the deepest
+extent of her being.
+
+And oh, it was so wonderful, she was dazed.  The song ended, she stood
+with a dazed, happy face, like one just coming awake.  And the fard on
+her face seemed like the old night-crust, the bad sleep.  New and
+luminous she looked out.  And she looked at Aaron with a proud smile.
+
+"Bravo, Nan!  That was what you wanted," said her husband.
+
+"It was, wasn't it?" she said, turning a wondering, glowing face
+to him.
+
+His face looked strange and withered and gnome-like, at the moment.
+
+She went and sat in her chair, quite silent, as if in a trance.  The
+two men also sat quite still.  And in the silence a little drama played
+itself between the three, of which they knew definitely nothing.  But
+Manfredi knew that Aaron had done what he himself never could do, for
+this woman.  And yet the woman was his own woman, not Aaron's.  And so,
+he was displaced.  Aaron, sitting there, glowed with a sort of triumph.
+He had performed a little miracle, and felt himself a little wonder-
+worker, to whom reverence was due.  And as in a dream the woman sat,
+feeling what a joy it was to float and move like a swan in the high
+air, flying upon the wings of her own spirit.  She was as a swan which
+never before could get its wings quite open, and so which never could
+get up into the open, where alone it can sing.  For swans, and storks
+make their music only when they are high, high up in the air.  Then
+they can give sound to their strange spirits.  And so, she.
+
+Aaron and Manfredi kept their faces averted from one another and
+hardly spoke to one another.  It was as if two invisible hands pushed
+their faces apart, away, averted.  And Aaron's face glimmered with a
+little triumph, and a little grimace of obstinacy.  And the Italian's
+face looked old, rather monkey-like, and of a deep, almost stone-bare
+bitterness.  The woman looked wondering from one man to the other--
+wondering.  The glimmer of the open flower, the wonder-look, still
+lasted.  And Aaron said in his heart, what a goodly woman, what a
+woman to taste and enjoy.  Ah, what a woman to enjoy!  And was it not
+his privilege?  Had he not gained it?
+
+His manhood, or rather his maleness, rose powerfully in him, in a sort
+of mastery.  He felt his own power, he felt suddenly his own virile
+title to strength and reward.  Suddenly, and newly flushed with his
+own male super-power, he was going to have his reward.  The woman was
+his reward.  So it was, in him.  And he cast it over in his mind.  He
+wanted her--ha, didn't he!  But the husband sat there, like a soap-
+stone Chinese monkey, greyish-green.  So, it would have to be another
+time.
+
+He rose, therefore, and took his leave.
+
+"But you'll let us do that again, won't you?" said she.
+
+"When you tell me, I'll come," said he.
+
+"Then I'll tell you soon," said she.
+
+So he left, and went home to his own place, and there to his own
+remote room.  As he laid his flute on the table he looked at it
+and smiled.  He remembered that Lilly had called it Aaron's Rod.
+
+"So you blossom, do you?--and thorn as well," said he.
+
+For such a long time he had been gripped inside himself, and withheld.
+For such a long time it had been hard and unyielding, so hard and
+unyielding.  He had wanted nothing, his desire had kept itself back,
+fast back.  For such a long time his desire for woman had withheld
+itself, hard and resistant.  All his deep, desirous blood had been
+locked, he had wanted nobody, and nothing.  And it had been hard to
+live, so.  Without desire, without any movement of passionate love,
+only gripped back in recoil!  That was an experience to endure.
+
+And now came his desire back.  But strong, fierce as iron.  Like the
+strength of an eagle with the lightning in its talons.  Something to
+glory in, something overweening, the powerful male passion, arrogant,
+royal, Jove's thunderbolt.  Aaron's black rod of power, blossoming
+again with red Florentine lilies and fierce thorns.  He moved about
+in the splendour of his own male lightning, invested in the thunder
+of the male passion-power.  He had got it back, the male godliness,
+the male godhead.
+
+So he slept, and dreamed violent dreams of strange, black strife,
+something like the street-riot in Milan, but more terrible.  In the
+morning, however, he cared nothing about his dreams.  As soon as it was
+really light, he rose, and opened his window wide.  It was a grey, slow
+morning.  But he saw neither the morning nor the river nor the woman
+walking on the gravel river-bed with her goose nor the green hill up
+to San Miniato.  He watched the tuft of palm-trees, and the terrace
+beside it.  He could just distinguish the terrace clearly, among the
+green of foliage.  So he stood at his window for a full hour, and did
+not move.  Motionless, planted, he stood and watched that terrace
+across above the Arno.  But like a statue.
+
+After an hour or so, he looked at his watch.  It was nine o'clock.  So
+he rang for his coffee, and meanwhile still stood watching the terrace
+on the hill.  He felt his turn had come.  The phoenix had risen in fire
+again, out of the ashes.
+
+Therefore at ten o'clock he went over the bridge.  He wrote on the back
+of his card a request, would she please let him have the little book
+of songs, that he might practise them over.  The manservant went, and
+came back with the request that Aaron should wait.  So Aaron entered,
+while the man took his hat.
+
+The manservant spoke only French and Spanish, no English.  He was a
+Spaniard, with greyish hair and stooping shoulders, and dark, mute-
+seeming eyes.  He spoke as little as possible.  The Marchesa had
+inherited him from her father.
+
+Aaron sat in the little sitting-room and waited.  After a rather long
+time the Marchesa came in--wearing a white, thin blouse and a blue
+skirt.  She was hardly made up at all.  She had an odd pleased, yet
+brooding look on her face as she gave Aaron her hand.  Something
+brooded between her brows.  And her voice was strange, with a strange,
+secret undertone, that he could not understand.  He looked up at her.
+And his face was bright, and his knees, as he sat, were like the knees
+of the gods.
+
+"You wanted the book of _chansons_?" she said.
+
+"I wanted to learn your tunes," he replied.
+
+"Yes.  Look--here it is!"  And she brought him the little yellow book.
+It was just a hand-book, with melody and words only, no accompaniment.
+So she stood offering him the book, but waiting as if for something
+else, and standing as if with another meaning.
+
+He opened the leaves at random.
+
+"But I ought to know which ones you sing," said he, rising and standing
+by her side with the open book.
+
+"Yes," she said, looking over his arm.  He turned the pages one by
+one.  "_Trois jeunes tambours_," said she.  "Yes, that. . . . Yes,
+_En passant par la Lorraine_. . . . _Aupres de ma blonde_. . . . Oh,
+I like that one so much--"  He stood and went over the tune in his
+mind.
+
+"Would you like me to play it?" he said.
+
+"Very much," said she.
+
+So he got his flute, propped up the book against a vase, and played
+the tune, whilst she hummed it fragmentarily.  But as he played, he
+felt that he did not cast the spell over her.  There was no connection.
+She was in some mysterious way withstanding him.  She was withstanding
+him, and his male super-power, and his thunderbolt desire.  She was,
+in some indescribable way, throwing cold water over his phoenix newly
+risen from the ashes of its nest in flames.
+
+He realised that she did not want him to play.  She did not want him
+to look at the songs.  So he put the book away, and turned round,
+rather baffled, not quite sure what was happening, yet feeling she was
+withstanding him.  He glanced at her face: it was inscrutable: it was
+her Cleopatra face once more, yet with something new and warm in it.
+He could not understand it.  What was it in her face that puzzled him?
+Almost angered him?  But she could not rob him of his male power, she
+could not divest him of his concentrated force.
+
+"Won't you take off your coat?" she said, looking at him with strange,
+large dark eyes.  A strange woman, he could not understand her.  Yet,
+as he sat down again, having removed his overcoat, he felt her looking
+at his limbs, his physical body.  And this went against him, he did
+not want it.  Yet quite fixed in him too was the desire for her, her
+beautiful white arms, her whole soft white body.  And such desire he
+would not contradict nor allow to be contradicted.  It was his will
+also.  Her whole soft white body--to possess it in its entirety, its
+fulness.
+
+"What have you to do this morning?" she asked him.
+
+"Nothing," he said.  "Have you?"  He lifted his head and looked at her.
+
+"Nothing at all," said she.
+
+And then they sat in silence, he with his head dropped.  Then again he
+looked at her.
+
+"Shall we be lovers?" he said.
+
+She sat with her face averted, and did not answer.  His heart struck
+heavily, but he did not relax.
+
+"Shall we be lovers?" came his voice once more, with the faintest
+touch of irony.
+
+Her face gradually grew dusky.  And he wondered very much to see it.
+
+"Yes," said she, still not looking at him.  "If you wish."
+
+"I do wish," he said.  And all the time he sat with his eyes fixed on
+her face, and she sat with her face averted.
+
+"Now?" he said.  "And where?"
+
+Again she was silent for some moments, as if struggling with herself.
+Then she looked at him--a long, strange, dark look, incomprehensible,
+and which he did not like.
+
+"You don't want emotions?  You don't want me to say things, do you?"
+he said.
+
+A faint ironic smile came on her face.
+
+"I know what all that is worth," she said, with curious calm
+equanimity.  "No, I want none of that."
+
+"Then--?"
+
+But now she sat gazing on him with wide, heavy, incomprehensible eyes.
+It annoyed him.
+
+"What do you want to see in me?" he asked, with a smile, looking
+steadily back again.
+
+And now she turned aside her face once more, and once more the dusky
+colour came in her cheek.  He waited.
+
+"Shall I go away?" he said at length.
+
+"Would you rather?" she said, keeping her face averted.
+
+"No," he said.
+
+Then again she was silent.
+
+"Where shall I come to you?" he said.
+
+She paused a moment still, then answered:
+
+"I'll go to my room."
+
+"I don't know which it is," he said.
+
+"I'll show it you," she said.
+
+"And then I shall come to you in ten minutes.  In ten minutes," he
+reiterated.
+
+So she rose, and led the way out of the little salon.  He walked
+with her to the door of her room, bowed his head as she looked at
+him, holding the door handle; and then he turned and went back to
+the drawing-room, glancing at his watch.
+
+In the drawing-room he stood quite still, with his feet apart, and
+waited.  He stood with his hands behind him, and his feet apart, quite
+motionless, planted and firm.  So the minutes went by unheeded.  He
+looked at his watch.  The ten minutes were just up.  He had heard
+footsteps and doors.  So he decided to give her another five minutes.
+He wished to be quite sure that she had had her own time for her own
+movements.
+
+Then at the end of the five minutes he went straight to her room,
+entered, and locked the door behind him.  She was lying in bed, with
+her back to him.
+
+He found her strange, not as he had imagined her.  Not powerful, as
+he had imagined her.  Strange, in his arms she seemed almost small
+and childish, whilst in daily life she looked a full, womanly woman.
+Strange, the naked way she clung to him!  Almost like a sister, a
+younger sister!  Or like a child!  It filled him with a curious wonder,
+almost a bewilderment.  In the dark sightlessness of passion, she
+seemed almost like a clinging child in his arms.  And yet like a child
+who in some deep and essential way mocked him.  In some strange and
+incomprehensible way, as a girl-child blindly obstinate in her deepest
+nature, she was against him.  He felt she was not his woman.  Through
+him went the feeling, "This is not my woman."
+
+When, after a long sleep, he awoke and came fully to himself, with
+that click of awakeness which is the end, the first shades were
+closing on the afternoon.  He got up and reached for his watch.
+
+"Quarter past four," he said.
+
+Her eyes stretched wide with surprise as she looked at him.  But she
+said nothing.  The same strange and wide, perhaps insatiable child-
+like curiosity was in her eyes as she watched him.  He dressed very
+quickly.  And her eyes were wide, and she said no single word.
+
+But when he was dressed, and bent over her to say goodbye, she put
+her arms round him, that seemed such frail and childish arms now, yet
+withal so deadly in power.  Her soft arms round his neck, her tangle
+of hair over his face.  And yet, even as he kissed her, he felt her
+deadly.  He wanted to be gone.  He wanted to get out of her arms and
+her clinging and her tangle of hair and her curiosity and her strange
+and hateful power.
+
+"You'll come again.  We'll be like this again?" she whispered.
+
+And it was hard for him to realise that this was that other woman, who
+had sat so silently on the sofa, so darkly and reservedly, at the tea
+at Algy's.
+
+"Yes!  I will!  Goodbye now!"  And he kissed her, and walked straight
+out of the room.  Quickly he took his coat and his hat, quickly, and
+left the house.  In his nostrils was still the scent with which the
+bed linen was faintly scented--he did not know what it was.  But now
+he wiped his face and his mouth, to wipe it away.
+
+He had eaten nothing since coffee that morning, and was hungry, faint-
+feeling.  And his face, and his mind, felt withered.  Curiously he felt
+blasted as if blighted by some electricity.  And he knew, he knew quite
+well he was only in possession of a tithe of his natural faculties.
+And in his male spirit he felt himself hating her: hating her deeply,
+damnably.  But he said to himself: "No, I won't hate her.  I won't
+hate her."
+
+So he went on, over the Ponte Vecchio, where the jeweller's windows
+on the bridge were already blazing with light, on into the town.  He
+wanted to eat something, so he decided to go to a shop he knew, where
+one could stand and eat good tiny rolls split into truffle or salami
+sandwiches, and drink Marsala.  So one after the other he ate little
+truffle rolls, and drank a few glasses of Marsala.  And then he did
+not know what to do.  He did not want to eat any more, he had had what
+he wanted.  His hunger had been more nervous than sensual.
+
+So he went into the street.  It was just growing dark and the town was
+lighting up.  He felt curiously blazed, as if some flame or electric
+power had gone through him and withered his vital tissue.  Blazed, as
+if some kind of electric flame had run over him and withered him.  His
+brain felt withered, his mind had only one of its many-sighted eyes
+left open and unscorched.  So many of the eyes of his mind were
+scorched now and sightless.
+
+Yet a restlessness was in his nerves.  What should he do?  He
+remembered he had a letter in his pocket from Sir William Franks.
+Sir William had still teased him about his fate and his providence,
+in which he, Aaron, was supposed to trust.  "I shall be very glad to
+hear from you, and to know how your benevolent Providence--or was
+yours a Fate--has treated you since we saw you---"
+
+So, Aaron turned away, and walked to the post office.  There he took
+paper, and sat down at one of the tables in the writing room, and
+wrote his answer.  It was very strange, writing thus when most of his
+mind's eyes were scorched, and it seemed he could hardly see to hold
+the pen, to drive it straight across the paper.  Yet write he must.
+And most of his faculties being quenched or blasted for the moment,
+he wrote perhaps his greatest, or his innermost, truth.--"I don't
+want my Fate or my Providence to treat me well.  I don't want kindness
+or love.  I don't believe in harmony and people loving one another.  I
+believe in the fight and in nothing else.  I believe in the fight which
+is in everything.  And if it is a question of women, I believe in the
+fight of love, even if it blinds me.  And if it is a question of the
+world, I believe in fighting it and in having it hate me, even if it
+breaks my legs.  I want the world to hate me, because I can't bear the
+thought that it might love me.  For of all things love is the most
+deadly to me, and especially from such a repulsive world as I think
+this is. . . ."
+
+Well, here was a letter for a poor old man to receive.  But, in the
+dryness of his withered mind, Aaron got it out of himself.  When a
+man writes a letter to himself, it is a pity to post it to somebody
+else.  Perhaps the same is true of a book.
+
+His letter written, however, he stamped it and sealed it and put it in
+the box.  That made it final.  Then he turned towards home.  One fact
+remained unbroken in the debris of his consciousness: that in the town
+was Lilly: and that when he needed, he could go to Lilly: also, that
+in the world was Lottie, his wife: and that against Lottie, his heart
+burned with a deep, deep, almost unreachable bitterness.--Like a deep
+burn on his deepest soul, Lottie.  And like a fate which he resented,
+yet which steadied him, Lilly.
+
+He went home and lay on his bed.  He had enough self-command to hear
+the gong and go down to dinner.  White and abstract-looking, he sat
+and ate his dinner.  And then, thank God, he could go to bed, alone,
+in his own cold bed, alone, thank God.  To be alone in the night!
+For this he was unspeakably thankful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+CLEOPATRA, BUT NOT ANTHONY
+
+
+Aaron awoke in the morning feeling better, but still only a part
+himself.  The night alone had restored him.  And the need to be alone
+still was his greatest need.  He felt an intense resentment against
+the Marchesa.  He felt that somehow, she had given him a scorpion.
+And his instinct was to hate her.  And yet he avoided hating her.  He
+remembered Lilly--and the saying that one must possess oneself, and be
+alone in possession of oneself.  And somehow, under the influence of
+Lilly, he refused to follow the reflex of his own passion.  He refused
+to hate the Marchesa.  He _did_ like her.  He did _esteem_ her.  And
+after all, she too was struggling with her fate.  He had a genuine
+sympathy with her.  Nay, he was not going to hate her.
+
+But he could not see her.  He could not bear the thought that she
+might call and see him.  So he took the tram to Settignano, and
+walked away all day into the country, having bread and sausage in
+his pocket.  He sat for long hours among the cypress trees of Tuscany.
+And never had any trees seemed so like ghosts, like soft, strange,
+pregnant presences.  He lay and watched tall cypresses breathing and
+communicating, faintly moving and as it were walking in the small
+wind.  And his soul seemed to leave him and to go far away, far back,
+perhaps, to where life was all different and time passed otherwise
+than time passes now.  As in clairvoyance he perceived it: that our
+life is only a fragment of the shell of life.  That there has been
+and will be life, human life such as we do not begin to conceive.
+Much that is life has passed away from men, leaving us all mere bits.
+In the dark, mindful silence and inflection of the cypress trees,
+lost races, lost language, lost human ways of feeling and of knowing.
+Men have known as we can no more know, have felt as we can no more
+feel.  Great life-realities gone into the darkness.  But the cypresses
+commemorate.  In the afternoon, Aaron felt the cypresses rising dark
+about him, like so many high visitants from an old, lost, lost subtle
+world, where men had the wonder of demons about them, the aura of
+demons, such as still clings to the cypresses, in Tuscany.
+
+All day, he did not make up his mind what he was going to do.  His
+first impulse was never to see her again.  And this was his intention
+all day.  But as he went home in the tram he softened, and thought.
+Nay, that would not be fair.  For how had she treated him, otherwise
+than generously.
+
+She had been generous, and the other thing, that he felt blasted
+afterwards, which was his experience, that was fate, and not her
+fault.  So he must see her again.  He must not act like a churl.
+But he would tell her--he would tell her that he was a married man,
+and that though he had left his wife, and though he had no dogma of
+fidelity, still, the years of marriage had made a married man of him,
+and any other woman than his wife was a strange woman to him, a
+violation.  "I will tell her," he said to himself, "that at the bottom
+of my heart I love Lottie still, and that I can't help it.  I believe
+that is true.  It isn't love, perhaps.  But it is marriage.  I am
+married to Lottie.  And that means I can't be married to another woman.
+It isn't my nature.  And perhaps I can't bear to live with Lottie now,
+because I am married and not in love.  When a man is married, he is
+not in love.  A husband is not a lover.  Lilly told me that: and I
+know it's true now.  Lilly told me that a husband cannot be a lover,
+and a lover cannot be a husband.  And that women will only have lovers
+now, and never a husband.  Well, I am a husband, if I am anything.
+And I shall never be a lover again, not while I live.  No, not to
+anybody.  I haven't it in me.  I'm a husband, and so it is finished
+with me as a lover.  I can't be a lover any more, just as I can't be
+aged twenty any more.  I am a man now, not an adolescent.  And to my
+sorrow I am a husband to a woman who wants a lover: always a lover.
+But all women want lovers.  And I can't be it any more.  I don't
+want to.  I have finished that.  Finished for ever: unless I become
+senile---"
+
+Therefore next day he gathered up his courage.  He would not have had
+courage unless he had known that he was not alone.  The other man was
+in the town, and from this fact he derived his strength: the fact that
+Lilly was there.  So at teatime he went over the river, and rang at
+her door.  Yes, she was at home, and she had other visitors.  She was
+wearing a beautiful soft afternoon dress, again of a blue like chicory-
+flowers, a pale, warm blue.  And she had cornflowers in her belt:
+heaven knows where she had got them.
+
+She greeted Aaron with some of the childish shyness.  He could tell
+that she was glad he had come, and that she had wondered at his not
+coming sooner.  She introduced him to her visitors: two young ladies
+and one old lady and one elderly Italian count.  The conversation was
+mostly in French or Italian, so Aaron was rather out of it.
+
+However, the visitors left fairly early, so Aaron stayed them out.
+When they had gone, he asked:
+
+"Where is Manfredi?"
+
+"He will come in soon.  At about seven o'clock."
+
+Then there was a silence again.
+
+"You are dressed fine today," he said to her.
+
+"Am I?" she smiled.
+
+He was never able to make out quite what she felt, what she was
+feeling.  But she had a quiet little air of proprietorship in him,
+which he did not like.
+
+"You will stay to dinner tonight, won't you?" she said.
+
+"No--not tonight," he said.  And then, awkwardly, he added: "You know.
+I think it is better if we are friends--not lovers.  You know--I don't
+feel free.  I feel my wife, I suppose, somewhere inside me.  And I
+can't help it---"
+
+She bent her head and was silent for some moments.  Then she lifted her
+face and looked at him oddly.
+
+"Yes," she said.  "I am sure you love your wife."
+
+The reply rather staggered him--and to tell the truth, annoyed him.
+
+"Well," he said.  "I don't know about love.  But when one has been
+married for ten years--and I did love her--then--some sort of bond
+or something grows.  I think some sort of connection grows between
+us, you know.  And it isn't natural, quite, to break it.--Do you
+know what I mean?"
+
+She paused a moment.  Then, very softly, almost gently, she said:
+
+"Yes, I do.  I know so well what you mean."
+
+He was really surprised at her soft acquiescence.  What _did_ she mean?
+
+"But we can be friends, can't we?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I hope so.  Why, yes!  Goodness, yes!  I should be sorry if we
+couldn't be friends."
+
+After which speech he felt that everything was all right--everything
+was A-one.  And when Manfredi came home, the first sound he heard was
+the flute and his wife's singing.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come," his wife said to him.  "Shall we go into
+the sala and have real music?  Will you play?"
+
+"I should love to," replied the husband.
+
+Behold them then in the big drawing-room, and Aaron and the Marchese
+practising together, and the Marchesa singing an Italian folk-song
+while her husband accompanied her on the pianoforte.   But her singing
+was rather strained and forced.  Still, they were quite a little
+family, and it seemed quite nice.  As soon as she could, the Marchesa
+left the two men together, whilst she sat apart.  Aaron and Manfredi
+went through old Italian and old German music, tried one thing and
+then another, and seemed quite like brothers.  They arranged a piece
+which they should play together on a Saturday morning, eight days
+hence.
+
+The next day, Saturday, Aaron went to one of the Del Torre music
+mornings.  There was a string quartette--and a violin soloist--and the
+Marchese at the piano.  The audience, some dozen or fourteen friends,
+sat at the near end of the room, or in the smaller salotta, whilst the
+musicians performed at the further end of the room.  The Lillys were
+there, both Tanny and her husband.  But apart from these, Aaron knew
+nobody, and felt uncomfortable.  The Marchesa gave her guests little
+sandwiches and glasses of wine or Marsala or vermouth, as they chose.
+And she was quite the hostess: the well-bred and very simple, but still
+the conventional hostess.  Aaron did not like it.  And he could see
+that Lilly too was unhappy.  In fact, the little man bolted the moment
+he could, dragging after him the indignant Tanny, who was so looking
+forward to the excellent little sandwiches.  But no--Lilly just rudely
+bolted.  Aaron followed as soon as he could.
+
+"Will you come to dinner tomorrow evening?" said his hostess to him as
+he was leaving.  And he agreed.  He had really resented seeing her as
+a conventional hostess, attending so charmingly to all the other people,
+and treating him so merely as one of the guests, among many others.  So
+that when at the last moment she quietly invited him to dinner next
+day, he was flattered and accepted at once.
+
+The next day was Sunday--the seventh day after his coming together
+with the Marchesa--which had taken place on the Monday.  And already
+he was feeling much less dramatic in his decision to keep himself
+apart from her, to be merely friends.  Already the memory of the
+last time was fanning up in him, not as a warning but as a terrible
+incitement.  Again the naked desire was getting hold of him, with
+that peculiar brutal powerfulness which startled him and also pleased
+him.
+
+So that by the time Sunday morning came, his recoil had exhausted
+itself, and he was ready again, eager again, but more wary this time.
+He sat in his room alone in the morning, playing his flute, playing
+over from memory the tunes she loved, and imagining how he and she
+would get into unison in the evening.  His flute, his Aaron's rod,
+would blossom once again with splendid scarlet flowers, the red
+Florentine lilies.  It was curious, the passion he had for her: just
+unalloyed desire, and nothing else.  Something he had not known in his
+life before.  Previously there had been always _some_ personal quality,
+some sort of personal tenderness.  But here, none.  She did not seem
+to want it.  She seemed to hate it, indeed.  No, all he felt was stark,
+naked desire, without a single pretension.  True enough, his last
+experience had been a warning to him.  His desire and himself likewise
+had broken rather disastrously under the proving.  But not finally
+broken.  He was ready again.  And with all the sheer powerful insolence 
+of desire he looked forward to the evening.  For he almost expected
+Manfredi would not be there.  The officer had said something about having
+to go to Padua on the Saturday afternoon.
+
+So Aaron went skipping off to his appointment, at seven o'clock.  Judge
+of his chagrin, then, when he found already seated in the salotta an
+elderly, quite well-known, very cultured and very well-connected
+English authoress.  She was charming, in her white hair and dress
+of soft white wool and white lace, with a long chain of filigree gold
+beads, like bubbles.  She was charming in her old-fashioned manner
+too, as if the world were still safe and stable, like a garden in
+which delightful culture, and choice ideas bloomed safe from wind and
+weather.  Alas, never was Aaron more conscious of the crude collapse
+in the world than when he listened to this animated, young-seeming
+lady from the safe days of the seventies.  All the old culture and
+choice ideas seemed like blowing bubbles.  And dear old Corinna Wade,
+she seemed to be blowing bubbles still, as she sat there so charming
+in her soft white dress, and talked with her bright animation about
+the influence of woman in Parliament and the influence of woman in
+the Periclean day.  Aaron listened spell-bound, watching the bubbles
+float round his head, and almost hearing them go pop.
+
+To complete the party arrived an elderly litterateur who was more proud
+of his not-very-important social standing than of his literature.  In
+fact he was one of those English snobs of the old order, living abroad.
+Perfectly well dressed for the evening, his grey hair and his prim face
+was the most well-dressed thing to be met in North Italy.
+
+"Oh, so glad to see you, Mr. French.  I didn't know you were in
+Florence again.  You make that journey from Venice so often.  I
+wonder you don't get tired of it," cried Corinna Wade.
+
+"No," he said.  "So long as duty to England calls me to Florence, I
+shall come to Florence.  But I can LIVE in no town but Venice."
+
+"No, I suppose you can't.  Well, there is something special about
+Venice: having no streets and no carriages, and moving about in a
+gondola.  I suppose it is all much more soothing."
+
+"Much less nerve-racking, yes.  And then there is a quality in the
+whole life.  Of course I see few English people in Venice--only the
+old Venetian families, as a rule."
+
+"Ah, yes.  That must be very interesting.  They are very exclusive
+still, the Venetian _noblesse_?" said Miss Wade.
+
+"Oh, very exclusive," said Mr. French.  "That is one of the charms.
+Venice is really altogether exclusive.  It excludes the world, really,
+and defies time and modern movement.  Yes, in spite of the steamers on
+the canal, and the tourists."
+
+"That is so.  That is so.  Venice is a strange back-water.  And the
+old families are very proud still, in these democratic days.  They
+have a great opinion of themselves, I am told."
+
+"Well," said Mr. French.  "Perhaps you know the rhyme:
+
+                     "'Veneziano gran' Signore
+                     Padovano buon' dotore.
+                     Vicenzese mangia il gatto
+                     Veronese tutto matto---'"
+
+"How very amusing!" said Miss Wade.  "_Veneziana_ gran' Signore.  The
+Venetian is a great gentleman!  Yes, I know they are all convinced of
+it.  Really, how very amusing, in these advanced days.  To be born a
+Venetian, is to be born a great gentleman!  But this outdoes divine
+right of king."
+
+"To be born a Venetian GENTLEMAN, is to be born a great gentleman,"
+said Mr. French, rather fussily.
+
+"You seriously think so?" said Miss Wade.  "Well now, what do you
+base your opinion on?"
+
+Mr. French gave various bases for his opinion.
+
+"Yes--interesting.  Very interesting.  Rather like the Byzantines--
+lingering on into far other ages.  Anna Comnena always charmed me very
+much.  HOW she despised the flower of the north--even Tancred!  And
+so the lingering Venetian families!  And you, in your palazzo on the
+Grand Canal: you are a northern barbarian civilised into the old
+Venetian Signoria.  But how very romantic a situation!"
+
+It was really amusing to see the old maid, how she skirmished and hit
+out gaily, like an old jaunty free lance: and to see the old bachelor,
+how prim he was, and nervy and fussy and precious, like an old maid.
+
+But need we say that Mr. Aaron felt very much out of it.  He sat and
+listened, with a sardonic small smile on his face and a sardonic gleam
+in his blue eyes, that looked so very blue on such an occasion.  He
+made the two elderly people uncomfortable with his silence: his
+democratic silence, Miss Wade might have said.
+
+However, Miss Wade lived out towards Galuzzo, so she rose early,
+to catch her tram.  And Mr. French gallantly and properly rose to
+accompany her, to see her safe on board.  Which left Aaron and the
+Marchesa alone.
+
+"What time is Manfredi coming back?" said he.
+
+"Tomorrow," replied she.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Why do you have those people?" he asked.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Those two who were here this evening."
+
+"Miss Wade and Mr. French?--Oh, I like Miss Wade so very much.  She is
+so refreshing."
+
+"Those old people," said Aaron.  "They licked the sugar off the pill,
+and go on as if everything was toffee.  And we've got to swallow the
+pill.  It's easy to be refreshing---"
+
+"No, don't say anything against her.  I like her so much."
+
+"And him?"
+
+"Mr. French!--Well, he's perhaps a little like the princess who felt
+the pea through three feather-beds.  But he can be quite witty, and
+an excellent conversationalist, too.  Oh yes, I like him quite well."
+
+"Matter of taste," said Aaron.
+
+They had not much to say to one another.  The time passed, in the
+pauses.  He looked at his watch.
+
+"I shall have to go," he said.
+
+"Won't you stay?" she said, in a small, muted voice.
+
+"Stay all night?" he said.
+
+"Won't you?"
+
+"Yes," he said quietly.  Did he not feel the strength of his desire
+on him.
+
+After which she said no more.  Only she offered him whiskey and soda,
+which he accepted.
+
+"Go then," he said to her. "And I'll come to you.--Shall I come in
+fifteen minutes?"
+
+She looked at him with strange, slow dark eyes. And he could not
+understand.
+
+"Yes," she said.  And she went.
+
+And again, this night as before, she seemed strangely small and
+clinging in his arms.  And this night he felt his passion drawn from
+him as if a long, live nerve were drawn out from his body, a long
+live thread of electric fire, a long, living nerve finely extracted
+from him, from the very roots of his soul.  A long fine discharge of
+pure, bluish fire, from the core of his soul.  It was an excruciating,
+but also an intensely gratifying sensation.
+
+This night he slept with a deeper obliviousness than before.  But ah,
+as it grew towards morning how he wished he could be alone.
+
+They must stay together till the day was light.  And she seemed to love
+clinging to him and curling strangely on his breast.  He could never
+reconcile it with her who was a hostess entertaining her guests.  How
+could she now in a sort of little ecstasy curl herself and nestle
+herself on his, Aaron's breast, tangling his face all over with her
+hair.  He verily believed that this was what she really wanted of him:
+to curl herself on his naked breast, to make herself small, small, to
+feel his arms around her, while he himself was remote, silent, in some
+way inaccessible.  This seemed almost to make her beside herself with
+gratification.  But why, why?  Was it because he was one of her own
+race, and she, as it were, crept right home to him?
+
+He did not know.  He only knew it had nothing to do with him: and that,
+save out of _complaisance_, he did not want it.  It simply blasted his
+own central life.  It simply blighted him.
+
+And she clung to him closer.  Strange, she was afraid of him!  Afraid
+of him as of a fetish!  Fetish afraid, and fetish-fascinated!  Or was
+her fear only a delightful game of cat and mouse?  Or was the fear
+genuine, and the delight the greater: a sort of sacrilege?  The fear,
+and the dangerous, sacrilegious power over that which she feared.
+
+In some way, she was not afraid of him at all.  In some other way she
+used him as a mere magic implement, used him with the most amazing
+priestess-craft.  Himself, the individual man which he was, this she
+treated with an indifference that was startling to him.
+
+He forgot, perhaps, that this was how he had treated her.  His famous
+desire for her, what had it been but this same attempt to strike a
+magic fire out of her, for his own ecstasy.  They were playing the same
+game of fire.  In him, however, there was all the time something hard
+and reckless and defiant, which stood apart.  She was absolutely gone
+in her own incantations.  She was absolutely gone, like a priestess
+utterly involved in her terrible rites.  And he was part of the ritual
+only, God and victim in one.  God and victim!  All the time, God and
+victim.  When his aloof soul realised, amid the welter of incantation,
+how he was being used,--not as himself but as something quite different
+--God and victim--then he dilated with intense surprise, and his
+remote soul stood up tall and knew itself alone.  He didn't want it,
+not at all.  He knew he was apart.  And he looked back over the whole
+mystery of their love-contact.  Only his soul was apart.
+
+He was aware of the strength and beauty and godlikeness that his
+breast was then to her--the magic.  But himself, he stood far off,
+like Moses' sister Miriam.  She would drink the one drop of his
+innermost heart's blood, and he would be carrion.  As Cleopatra
+killed her lovers in the morning.  Surely they knew that death was
+their just climax.  They had approached the climax.  Accept then.
+
+But his soul stood apart, and could have nothing to do with it.  If he
+had really been tempted, he would have gone on, and she might have had
+his central heart's blood.  Yes, and thrown away the carrion.  He would
+have been willing.
+
+But fatally, he was not tempted.  His soul stood apart and decided.  At
+the bottom of his soul he disliked her.  Or if not her, then her whole
+motive.  Her whole life-mode.  He was neither God nor victim: neither
+greater nor less than himself.  His soul, in its isolation as she lay
+on his breast, chose it so, with the soul's inevitability.  So, there
+was no temptation.
+
+When it was sufficiently light, he kissed her and left her.  Quietly
+he left the silent flat.  He had some difficulty in unfastening the
+various locks and bars and catches of the massive door downstairs, and
+began, in irritation and anger, to feel he was a prisoner, that he was
+locked in.  But suddenly the ponderous door came loose, and he was out
+in the street.  The door shut heavily behind him, with a shudder.  He
+was out in the morning streets of Florence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE BROKEN ROD
+
+
+The day was rainy.  Aaron stayed indoors alone, and copied music and
+slept.  He felt the same stunned, withered feeling as before, but less
+intensely, less disastrously, this time.  He knew now, without argument
+or thought that he would never go again to the Marchesa: not as a
+lover.  He would go away from it all.  He did not dislike her.  But
+he would never see her again.  A great gulf had opened, leaving him
+alone on the far side.
+
+He did not go out till after dinner.  When he got downstairs he found
+the heavy night-door closed.  He wondered: then remembered the
+Signorina's fear of riots and disturbances.  As again he fumbled with
+the catches, he felt that the doors of Florence were trying to prevent
+his egress.  However, he got out.
+
+It was a very dark night, about nine o'clock, and deserted seeming.  He
+was struck by the strange, deserted feeling of the city's atmosphere.
+Yet he noticed before him, at the foot of the statue, three men, one
+with a torch: a long torch with naked flames.  The men were stooping
+over something dark, the man with the torch bending forward too.
+It was a dark, weird little group, like Mediaeval Florence.  Aaron
+lingered on his doorstep, watching.  He could not see what they were
+doing.  But now, the two were crouching down; over a long dark object
+on the ground, and the one with the torch bending also to look.  What
+was it?  They were just at the foot of the statue, a dark little group
+under the big pediment, the torch-flames weirdly flickering as the
+torch-bearer moved and stooped lower to the two crouching men, who
+seemed to be kneeling.
+
+Aaron felt his blood stir.  There was something dark and mysterious,
+stealthy, in the little scene.  It was obvious the men did not want to
+draw attention, they were so quiet and furtive-seeming.  And an eerie
+instinct prevented Aaron's going nearer to look.  Instead, he swerved
+on to the Lungarno, and went along the top of the square, avoiding the
+little group in the centre.  He walked the deserted dark-seeming street
+by the river, then turned inwards, into the city.  He was going to the
+Piazza Vittoria Emmanuele, to sit in the cafe which is the centre of
+Florence at night.  There he could sit for an hour, and drink his
+vermouth and watch the Florentines.
+
+As he went along one of the dark, rather narrow streets, he heard a
+hurrying of feet behind him.  Glancing round, he saw the torch-bearer
+coming along at a trot, holding his flaming torch up in front of him
+as he trotted down the middle of the narrow dark street.  Aaron shrank
+under the wall.  The trotting torch-bearer drew near, and now Aaron
+perceived the other two men slowly trotting behind, stealthily,
+bearing a stretcher on which a body was wrapped up, completely and
+darkly covered.  The torch-bearer passed, the men with the stretcher
+passed too, hastily and stealthily, the flickering flames revealing
+them.  They took no notice of Aaron, no notice of anything, but trotted
+softly on towards the centre of the city.  Their queer, quick footsteps
+echoed down the distance.  Then Aaron too resumed his way.
+
+He came to the large, brilliantly-lighted cafe.  It was Sunday evening,
+and the place was full.  Men, Florentines, many, many men sat in groups
+and in twos and threes at the little marble tables.  They were mostly
+in dark clothes or black overcoats.  They had mostly been drinking just
+a cup of coffee--others however had glasses of wine or liquor.  But
+mostly it was just a little coffee-tray with a tiny coffee pot and a
+cup and saucer.  There was a faint film of tobacco smoke.  And the men
+were all talking: talking, talking with that peculiar intensity of the
+Florentines.  Aaron felt the intense, compressed sound of many half-
+secret voices.  For the little groups and couples abated their voices,
+none wished that others should hear what they said.
+
+Aaron was looking for a seat--there was no table to him-—when suddenly
+someone took him by the arm.  It was Argyle.
+
+"Come along, now!  Come and join us.  Here, this way!  Come along!"
+
+Aaron let himself be led away towards a corner.  There sat Lilly and
+a strange man: called Levison.  The room was warm.  Aaron could never
+bear to be too hot.  After sitting a minute, he rose and took off his
+coat, and hung it on a stand near the window.  As he did so he felt the
+weight of his flute--it was still in his pocket.  And he wondered if it
+was safe to leave it.
+
+"I suppose no one will steal from the overcoat pockets," he said, as
+he sat down.
+
+"My dear chap, they'd steal the gold filling out of your teeth, if you
+happened to yawn," said Argyle.  "Why, have you left valuables in your
+overcoat?"
+
+"My flute," said Aaron.
+
+"Oh, they won't steal that," said Argyle.
+
+"Besides," said Lilly, "we should see anyone who touched it."
+
+And so they settled down to the vermouth.
+
+"Well," said Argyle, "what have you been doing with yourself, eh?  I
+haven't seen a glimpse of you for a week.  Been going to the dogs, eh?"
+
+"Or the bitches," said Aaron.
+
+"Oh, but look here, that's bad!  That's bad!  I can see I shall have
+to take you in hand, and commence my work of reform.  Oh, I'm a great
+reformer, a Zwingli and Savonarola in one.  I couldn't count the number
+of people I've led into the right way.  It takes some finding, you
+know.  Strait is the gate--damned strait sometimes.  A damned tight
+squeeze. . . ."  Argyle was somewhat intoxicated.  He spoke with a
+slight slur, and laughed, really tickled at his own jokes.  The man
+Levison smiled acquiescent.  But Lilly was not listening.  His brow
+was heavy and he seemed abstracted.  He hardly noticed Aaron's arrival.
+
+"Did you see the row yesterday?" asked Levison.
+
+"No," said Aaron.  "What was it?"
+
+It was the socialists.  They were making a demonstration against the
+imprisonment of one of the railway-strikers.  I was there.  They went
+on all right, with a good bit of howling and gibing: a lot of young
+louts, you know.  And the shop-keepers shut up shop, and nobody showed
+the Italian flag, of course.  Well, when they came to the Via Benedetto
+Croce, there were a few mounted carabinieri.  So they stopped the
+procession, and the sergeant said that the crowd could continue, could
+go on where they liked, but would they not go down the Via Verrocchio,
+because it was being repaired, the roadway was all up, and there were
+piles of cobble stones.  These might prove a temptation and lead to
+trouble.  So would the demonstrators not take that road--they might
+take any other they liked.--Well, the very moment he had finished,
+there was a revolver shot, he made a noise, and fell forward over his
+horse's nose.  One of the anarchists had shot him.  Then there was
+hell let loose, the carabinieri fired back, and people were bolting
+and fighting like devils.  I cleared out, myself.  But my God--what
+do you think of it?"
+
+"Seems pretty mean," said Aaron.
+
+"Mean!--He had just spoken them fair--they could go where they liked,
+only would they not go down the one road, because of the heap of
+stones.  And they let him finish.  And then shot him dead."
+
+"Was he dead?" said Aaron.
+
+"Yes--killed outright, the Nazione says."
+
+There was a silence.  The drinkers in the cafe all continued to talk
+vehemently, casting uneasy glances.
+
+"Well," said Argyle, "if you let loose the dogs of war, you mustn't
+expect them to come to heel again in five minutes."
+
+"But there's no fair play about it, not a bit," said Levison.
+
+"Ah, my dear fellow, are you still so young and callow that you
+cherish the illusion of fair play?" said Argyle.
+
+"Yes, I am," said Levison.
+
+"Live longer and grow wiser," said Argyle, rather contemptuously.
+
+"Are you a socialist?" asked Levison.
+
+"Am I my aunt Tabitha's dachshund bitch called Bella," said Argyle,
+in his musical, indifferent voice.  "Yes, Bella's her name.  And if
+you can tell me a damneder name for a dog, I shall listen, I assure
+you, attentively."
+
+"But you haven't got an aunt called Tabitha," said Aaron.
+
+"Haven't I?  Oh, haven't I?  I've got TWO aunts called Tabitha: if
+not more."
+
+"They aren't of any vital importance to you, are they?" said Levison.
+
+"Not the very least in the world--if it hadn't been that my elder Aunt
+Tabitha had christened her dachshund bitch Bella.  I cut myself off
+from the family after that.  Oh, I turned over a new leaf, with not
+a family name on it.  Couldn't stand Bella amongst the rest."
+
+"You must have strained most of the gnats out of your drink, Argyle,"
+said Lilly, laughing.
+
+"Assiduously!  Assiduously!  I  can't stand these little vermin.
+Oh, I am quite indifferent about swallowing  a camel or two--or even
+a whole string of dromedaries.  How charmingly Eastern that sounds!
+But gnats!   Not for anything in the world would I swallow one."
+
+"You're a bit of a SOCIALIST though, aren't you?" persisted Levison,
+now turning to Lilly.
+
+"No," said Lilly.  "I was."
+
+"And am no more," said Argyle sarcastically.  "My dear fellow, the only
+hope of salvation for the world lies in the re-institution of slavery."
+
+"What kind of slavery?" asked Levison.
+
+"Slavery!  SLAVERY!  When I say SLAVERY I don't mean any of your damned
+modern reform cant.  I mean solid sound slavery on which the Greek and
+the Roman world rested.  FAR finer worlds than ours, my dear chap!  Oh
+FAR finer!  And can't be done without slavery.  Simply can't be done.--
+Oh, they'll all come to realise it, when they've had a bit more of this
+democratic washer-women business."
+
+Levison was laughing, with a slight sneer down his nose.  "Anyhow,
+there's no immediate danger--or hope, if you prefer it--of the re-
+instituting of classic slavery," he said.
+
+"Unfortunately no.  We are all such fools," said Argyle.
+
+"Besides," said Levison, "who would you make slaves of?"
+
+"Everybody, my dear chap: beginning with the idealists and the
+theorising Jews, and after them your nicely-bred gentlemen, and then
+perhaps, your profiteers and Rothschilds, and ALL politicians, and
+ending up with the proletariat," said Argyle.
+
+"Then who would be the masters?--the professional classes, doctors and
+lawyers and so on?"
+
+"What?  Masters.  They would be the sewerage slaves, as being those
+who had made most smells."  There was a moment's silence.
+
+"The only fault I have to find with your system," said Levison, rather
+acidly, "is that there would be only one master, and everybody else
+slaves."
+
+"Do you call that a fault?  What do you want with more than one master?
+Are you asking for several?--Well, perhaps there's cunning in THAT.--
+Cunning devils, cunning devils, these theorising slaves--"  And Argyle
+pushed his face with a devilish leer into Aaron's face.  "Cunning
+devils!" he reiterated, with a slight tipsy slur.  "That be-fouled
+Epictetus wasn't the last of 'em--nor the first.  Oh, not by any
+means, not by any means."
+
+Here Lilly could not avoid a slight spasm of amusement.  "But returning
+to serious conversation," said Levison, turning his rather sallow face
+to Lilly.  "I think you'll agree with me that socialism is the
+inevitable next step--"
+
+Lilly waited for some time without answering.  Then he said, with
+unwilling attention to the question: "I suppose it's the logically
+inevitable next step."
+
+"Use logic as lavatory paper," cried Argyle harshly. "Yes--logically
+inevitable--and humanly inevitable at the same time.  Some form of
+socialism is bound to come, no matter how you postpone it or try
+variations," said Levison.
+
+"All right, let it come," said Lilly.  "It's not my affair, neither
+to help it nor to keep it back, or even to try varying it."
+
+"There I don't follow you," said Levison.  "Suppose you were in
+Russia now--"
+
+"I watch it I'm not."
+
+"But you're in Italy, which isn't far off.  Supposing a socialist
+revolution takes place all around you.  Won't that force the problem
+on you?--It is every man's problem," persisted Levison.
+
+"Not mine," said Lilly.
+
+"How shall you escape it?" said Levison.
+
+"Because to me it is no problem.  To Bolsh or not to Bolsh, as far as
+my mind goes, presents no problem.  Not any more than to be or not to
+be.  To be or not to be is simply no problem--"
+
+"No, I quite agree, that since you are already existing, and since
+death is ultimately inevitable, to be or not to be is no sound
+problem," said Levison.  "But the parallel isn't true of socialism.
+That is not a problem of existence, but of a certain mode of existence
+which centuries of thought and action on the part of Europe have now
+made logically inevitable for Europe.  And therefore there is a
+problem.  There is more than a problem, there is a dilemma.  Either
+we must go to the logical conclusion--or--"
+
+"Somewhere else," said Lilly.
+
+"Yes--yes.  Precisely!  But where ELSE?  That's the one half of the
+problem: supposing you do not agree to a logical progression in human
+social activity.  Because after all, human society through the course
+of ages only enacts, spasmodically but still inevitably, the logical
+development of a given idea."
+
+"Well, then, I tell you.--The idea and the ideal has for me gone dead--
+dead as carrion--"
+
+"Which idea, which ideal precisely?"
+
+"The ideal of love, the ideal that it is better to give than to
+receive, the ideal of liberty, the ideal of the brotherhood of man,
+the ideal of the sanctity of human life, the ideal of what we call
+goodness, charity, benevolence, public spirited-ness, the ideal of
+sacrifice for a cause, the ideal of unity and unanimity--all the
+lot--all the whole beehive of ideals--has all got the modern bee-
+disease, and gone putrid, stinking.--And when the ideal is dead and
+putrid, the logical sequence is only stink.--Which, for me, is the
+truth concerning the ideal of good, peaceful, loving humanity and its
+logical sequence in socialism and equality, equal opportunity or
+whatever you like.--But this time he stinketh--and I'm sorry for any
+Christus who brings him to life again, to stink livingly for another
+thirty years: the beastly Lazarus of our idealism."
+
+"That may be true for you--"
+
+"But it's true for nobody else," said Lilly.  "All the worse for them.
+Let them die of the bee-disease."
+
+"Not only that," persisted Levison, "but what is your alternative?  Is
+it merely nihilism?"
+
+"My alternative," said Lilly, "is an alternative for no one but myself,
+so I'll keep my mouth shut about it."
+
+"That isn't fair."
+
+"I tell you, the ideal of fairness stinks with the rest.--I have no
+obligation to say what I think."
+
+"Yes, if you enter into conversation, you have--"
+
+"Bah, then I didn't enter into conversation.--The only thing is, I
+agree in the rough with Argyle.  You've got to have a sort of slavery
+again.  People are not MEN: they are insects and instruments, and
+their destiny is slavery.  They are too many for me, and so what I
+think is ineffectual.  But ultimately they will be brought to agree--
+after sufficient extermination--and then they will elect for themselves
+a proper and healthy and energetic slavery."
+
+"I should like to know what you mean by slavery.  Because to me it is
+impossible that slavery should be healthy and energetic.  You seem to
+have some other idea in your mind, and you merely use the word slavery
+out of exasperation--"
+
+"I mean it none the less.  I mean a real committal of the life-issue of
+inferior beings to the responsibility of a superior being."
+
+"It'll take a bit of knowing, who are the inferior and which is the
+superior," said Levison sarcastically.
+
+"Not a bit.  It is written between a man's brows, which he is."
+
+"I'm afraid we shall all read differently."
+
+"So long as we're liars."
+
+"And putting that question aside: I presume that you mean that this
+committal of the life-issue of inferior beings to someone higher shall
+be made voluntarily--a sort of voluntary self-gift of the inferiors--"
+
+"Yes--more or less--and a voluntary acceptance.  For it's no pretty
+gift, after all.--But once made it must be held fast by genuine power.
+Oh yes--no playing and fooling about with it.  Permanent and very
+efficacious power."
+
+"You mean military power?"
+
+"I do, of course."
+
+Here Levison smiled a long, slow, subtle smile of ridicule.  It all
+seemed to him the preposterous pretentiousness of a megalomaniac--one
+whom, after a while, humanity would probably have the satisfaction
+of putting into prison, or into a lunatic asylum.  And Levison felt
+strong, overwhelmingly strong, in the huge social power with which
+he, insignificant as he was, was armed against such criminal-imbecile
+pretensions as those above set forth.  Prison or the lunatic asylum.
+The face of the fellow gloated in these two inevitable engines of
+his disapproval.
+
+"It will take you some time before you'll get your doctrines accepted,"
+he said.
+
+"Accepted!  I'd be sorry.  I don't want a lot of swine snouting and
+sniffing at me with their acceptance.--Bah, Levison--one can easily
+make a fool of you.  Do you take this as my gospel?"
+
+"I take it you are speaking seriously."
+
+Here Lilly broke into that peculiar, gay, whimsical smile.
+
+"But I should say the blank opposite with just as much fervour," he
+declared.
+
+"Do you mean to say you don't MEAN what you've been saying?" said
+Levison, now really looking angry.
+
+"Why, I'll tell you the real truth," said Lilly.  "I think every
+man is a sacred and holy individual, NEVER to be violated; I think
+there is only one thing I hate to the verge of madness, and that is
+BULLYING.  To see any living creature BULLIED, in any way, almost
+makes a murderer of me.  That is true.  Do you believe it--?"
+
+"Yes," said Levison unwillingly.  That may be true as well.  You have
+no doubt, like most of us, got a complex nature which--"
+
+C R A S H!
+
+There intervened one awful minute of pure shock, when the soul was in
+darkness.
+
+Out of this shock Aaron felt himself issuing amid a mass of terrible
+sensations: the fearful blow of the explosion, the noise of glass, the
+hoarse howl of people, the rushing of men, the sudden gulf, the awful
+gulfing whirlpool of horror in the social life.
+
+He stood in agony and semi-blindness amid a chaos.  Then as he began
+to recover his consciousness, he found himself standing by a pillar
+some distance from where he had been sitting: he saw a place where
+tables and chairs were all upside down, legs in the air, amid debris
+of glass and breakage: he saw the cafe almost empty, nearly everybody
+gone: he saw the owner, or the manager, advancing aghast to the place
+of debris: he saw Lilly standing not far off, white as a sheet, and
+as if unconscious.  And still he had no idea of what had happened.  He
+thought perhaps something had broken down.  He could not understand.
+
+Lilly began to look round.  He caught Aaron's eye.  And then Aaron
+began to approach his friend.
+
+"What is it?" he asked.
+
+"A bomb," said Lilly.
+
+The manager, and one old waiter, and three or four youths had now
+advanced to the place of debris.  And now Aaron saw that a man was
+lying there--and horror, blood was running across the floor of the
+cafe.  Men began now hastily to return to the place.  Some seized
+their hats and departed again at once.  But many began to crowd in--
+a black eager crowd of men pressing to where the bomb had burst--
+where the man was lying.  It was rather dark, some of the lamps were
+broken--but enough still shone.  Men surged in with that eager, excited
+zest of people, when there has been an accident.  Grey carabinieri, and
+carabinieri in the cocked hat and fine Sunday uniform pressed forward
+officiously.
+
+"Let us go," said Lilly.
+
+And he went to the far corner, where his hat hung.  But Aaron looked in
+vain for his own hat.  The bomb had fallen near the stand where he had
+hung it and his overcoat.
+
+"My hat and coat?" he said to Lilly.
+
+Lilly, not very tall, stood on tiptoe.  Then he climbed on a chair and
+looked round.  Then he squeezed past the crowd.
+
+Aaron followed.  On the other side of the crowd excited angry men
+were wrestling over overcoats that were mixed up with a broken marble
+table-top.  Aaron spied his own black hat under the sofa near the
+wall.  He waited his turn and then in the confusion pressed forward
+to where the coats were.  Someone had dragged out his, and it lay
+on the floor under many feet.  He managed, with a struggle, to get
+it from under the feet of the crowd.  He felt at once for his flute.
+But his trampled, torn coat had no flute in its pocket.  He pushed
+and struggled, caught sight of a section, and picked it up.  But it
+was split right down, two silver stops were torn out, and a long thin
+spelch of wood was curiously torn off.  He looked at it, and his heart
+stood still.  No need to look for the rest.
+
+He felt utterly, utterly overcome--as if he didn't care what became
+of him any further.  He didn't care whether he were hit by a bomb,
+or whether he himself threw the next bomb, and hit somebody.  He just
+didn't care any more about anything in life or death.  It was as if the
+reins of his life slipped from his hands.  And he would let everything
+run where it would, so long as it did run.
+
+Then he became aware of Lilly's eyes on him--and automatically he
+joined the little man.
+
+"Let us go," said Lilly.
+
+And they pushed their way through the door.  The police were just
+marching across the square.  Aaron and Lilly walked in the opposite
+direction.  Groups of people were watching.  Suddenly Lilly swerved
+-- in the middle of the road was a large black glisten of blood,
+trickling horribly.  A wounded man had run from the blow and fallen
+here.
+
+Aaron did not know where he was going.  But in the Via Tournabuoni
+Lilly turned towards the Arno, and soon they were on the Ponte Santa
+Trinita.
+
+"Who threw the bomb?" said Aaron.
+
+"I suppose an anarchist."
+
+"It's all the same," said Aaron.
+
+The two men, as if unable to walk any further, leaned on the broad
+parapet of the bridge and looked at the water in the darkness of the
+still, deserted night.  Aaron still had his flute section in his hand,
+his overcoat over his arm.
+
+"Is that your flute?" asked Lilly.
+
+"Bit of it.  Smashed."
+
+"Let me look."
+
+He looked, and gave it back.
+
+"No good," he said.
+
+"Oh, no," said Aaron.
+
+"Throw it in the river, Aaron," said Lilly.
+
+Aaron turned and looked at him.
+
+"Throw it in the river," repeated Lilly.  "It's an end."
+
+Aaron nervelessly dropped the flute into the stream.  The two men
+stood leaning on the bridge-parapet, as if unable to move.
+
+"We shall have to go home," said Lilly.  "Tanny may hear of it and be
+anxious."
+
+Aaron was quite dumbfounded by the night's event: the loss of his
+flute.  Here was a blow he had not expected.  And the loss was for
+him symbolistic.  It chimed with something in his soul: the bomb,
+the smashed flute, the end.
+
+"There goes Aaron's Rod, then," he said to Lilly.
+
+"It'll grow again.  It's a reed, a water-plant--you can't kill it,"
+said Lilly, unheeding.
+
+"And me?"
+
+"You'll have to live without a rod, meanwhile."
+
+To which pleasant remark Aaron made no reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+WORDS
+
+
+He went home to bed: and dreamed a strange dream.  He dreamed that he
+was in a country with which he was not acquainted.  Night was coming
+on, and he had nowhere to sleep.  So he passed the mouth of a sort
+of cave or house, in which a woman, an old woman, sat.  Therefore he
+entered, and though he could not understand the language, still his
+second self understood.  The cave was a house: and men came home from
+work.  His second self assumed that they were tin-miners.
+
+He wandered uneasily to and fro, no one taking any particular notice
+of him.  And he realized that there was a whole vast country spreading,
+a sort of underworld country, spreading away beyond him.  He wandered
+from vast apartment to apartment, down narrow corridors like the roads
+in a mine.  In one of the great square rooms, the men were going to
+eat.  And it seemed to him that what they were going to eat was a man,
+naked man.  But his second self knew that what appeared to his eyes as
+a man was really a man's skin stuffed tight with prepared meat, as the
+skin of a Bologna sausage.  This did not prevent his seeing the naked
+man who was to be eaten walk slowly and stiffly across the gangway and
+down the corridor.  He saw him from behind.  It was a big handsome man
+in the prime of life, quite naked and perhaps stupid.  But of course he
+was only a skin stuffed with meat, whom the grey tin-miners were going
+to eat.
+
+Aaron, the dream-Aaron, turned another way, and strayed along the vast
+square rooms, cavern apartments.  He came into one room where there
+were many children, all in white gowns.  And they were all busily
+putting themselves to bed, in the many beds scattered about the room
+at haphazard.  And each child went to bed with a wreath of flowers
+on its head, white flowers and pink, so it seemed.  So there they all
+lay, in their flower-crowns in the vast space of the rooms.  And Aaron
+went away.
+
+He could not remember the following part.  Only he seemed to have
+passed through many grey domestic apartments, where were all women,
+all greyish in their clothes and appearance, being wives of the
+underground tin-miners.  The men were away and the dream-Aaron
+remembered with fear the food they were to eat.
+
+The next thing he could recall was, that he was in a boat.  And now he
+was most definitely two people.  His invisible, _conscious_ self, what
+we have called his second self, hovered as it were before the prow of
+the boat, seeing and knowing, but unseen.  His other self, the palpable
+Aaron, sat as a passenger in the boat, which was being rowed by the
+unknown people of this underworld.  They stood up as they thrust the
+boat along.  Other passengers were in the boat too, women as well,
+but all of them unknown people, and not noticeable.
+
+The boat was upon a great lake in the underworld country, a lake of
+dark blue water, but crystal clear and very beautiful in colour.  The
+second or invisible Aaron sat in the prow and watched the fishes
+swimming suspended in the clear, beautiful dark-blue water.  Some
+were pale fish, some frightening-looking, like centipedes swimming,
+and some were dark fish, of definite form, and delightful to watch.
+
+The palpable or visible Aaron sat at the side of the boat, on the end
+of the middle seat, with his naked right elbow leaning out over the
+side.  And now the boat entered upon shallows.  The impalpable Aaron in
+the bows saw the whitish clay of the bottom swirl up in clouds at each
+thrust of the oars, whitish-clayey clouds which would envelope the
+strange fishes in a sudden mist.  And on the right hand of the course
+stakes stood up in the water, at intervals, to mark the course.
+
+The boat must pass very near these stakes, almost touching.  And
+Aaron's naked elbow was leaning right over the side.  As they
+approached the first stake, the boatmen all uttered a strange cry of
+warning, in a foreign language.  The flesh-and-blood Aaron seemed not
+even to hear.  The invisible Aaron heard, but did not comprehend the
+words of the cry.
+
+So the naked elbow struck smartly against the stake as the boat passed.
+
+The rowers rowed on.  And still the flesh-and-blood Aaron sat with his
+arm over the side.  Another stake was nearing.  "Will he heed, will he
+heed?" thought the anxious second self.  The rowers gave the strange
+warning cry.  He did not heed, and again the elbow struck against the
+stake as the boat passed.  And yet the flesh-and-blood Aaron sat on
+and made no sign.  There were stakes all along this shallow part of
+the lake.  Beyond was deep water again.  The invisible Aaron was
+becoming anxious.  "Will he never hear?  Will he never heed?  Will he
+never understand?" he thought.  And he watched in pain for the next
+stake.  But still the flesh-and-blood Aaron sat on, and though the
+rowers cried so acutely that the invisible Aaron almost understood
+their very language, still the Aaron seated at the side heard nothing,
+and his elbow struck against the third stake.
+
+This was almost too much.  But after a few moments, as the boat rowed
+on, the palpable Aaron changed his position as he sat, and drew in
+his arm: though even now he was not aware of any need to do so.  The
+invisible Aaron breathed with relief in the bows, the boat swung
+steadily on, into the deep, unfathomable water again.
+
+They were drawing near a city.  A lake-city, like Mexico.  They must
+have reached a city, because when Aaron woke up and tried to piece
+together the dream of which these are mere fragments, he could
+remember having just seen an idol.  An Astarte he knew it as, seated
+by the road, and in her open lap, were some eggs: smallish hen's eggs,
+and one or two bigger eggs, like swan's, and one single little roll of
+bread.  These lay in the lap of the roadside Astarte. . . . And then
+he could remember no more.
+
+He woke, and for a minute tried to remember what he had been dreaming,
+and what it all meant.  But he quickly relinquished the effort.  So he
+looked at his watch: it was only half-past three.  He had one of those
+American watches with luminous, phosphorescent figures and fingers.
+And tonight he felt afraid of its eerily shining face.
+
+He was awake a long time in the dark--for two hours, thinking and
+not thinking, in that barren state which is not sleep, nor yet full
+wakefulness, and which is a painful strain.  At length he went to
+sleep again, and did not wake till past eight o'clock.  He did not
+ring for his coffee till nine.
+
+Outside was a bright day--but he  hardly heeded it.  He lay
+profitlessly thinking.  With the breaking of the flute, that which was
+slowly breaking had finally shattered at last.  And there was nothing
+ahead: no plan, no prospect.  He knew quite well that people would
+help him: Francis Dekker or Angus Guest or the Marchese or Lilly.
+They would get him a new flute, and find him engagements.  But what
+was the good?  His flute was broken, and broken finally.  The bomb had
+settled it.  The bomb had settled it and everything.  It was an end,
+no matter how he tried to patch things up.  The only thing he felt
+was a thread of destiny attaching him to Lilly.  The rest had all
+gone as bare and bald as the dead orb of the moon.  So he made up
+his mind, if he could, to make some plan that would bring his life
+together with that of his evanescent friend.
+
+Lilly was a peculiar bird.  Clever and attractive as he undoubtedly
+was, he was perhaps the most objectionable person to know.  It was
+stamped on his peculiar face.  Aaron thought of Lilly's dark, ugly
+face, which had something that lurked in it as a creature under
+leaves.  Then he thought of the wide-apart eyes, with their curious
+candour and surety.  The peculiar, half-veiled surety, as if nothing,
+nothing could overcome him.  It made people angry, this look of silent,
+indifferent assurance.  "Nothing can touch him on the quick, nothing
+can really GET at him," they felt at last.  And they felt it with
+resentment, almost with hate.  They wanted to be able to get at him.
+For he was so open-seeming, so very outspoken.  He gave himself away
+so much.  And he had no money to fall back on.  Yet he gave himself
+away so easily, paid such attention, almost deference to any chance
+friend.  So they all thought: Here is a wise person who finds me the
+wonder which I really am.--And lo and behold, after he had given them
+the trial, and found their inevitable limitations, he departed and
+ceased to heed their wonderful existence.  Which, to say the least
+of it, was fraudulent and damnable.  It was then, after his departure,
+that they realised his basic indifference to them, and his silent
+arrogance.  A silent arrogance that knew all their wisdom, and left
+them to it.
+
+Aaron had been through it all.  He had started by thinking Lilly a
+peculiar little freak: gone on to think him a wonderful chap, and a
+bit pathetic: progressed, and found him generous, but overbearing:
+then cruel and intolerant, allowing no man to have a soul of his own:
+then terribly arrogant, throwing a fellow aside like an old glove
+which is in holes at the finger-ends.  And all the time, which was
+most beastly, seeing through one.  All the time, freak and outsider
+as he was, Lilly _knew_.  He knew, and his soul was against the whole
+world.
+
+Driven to bay, and forced to choose.  Forced to choose, not between
+life and death, but between the world and the uncertain, assertive
+Lilly.  Forced to choose, and yet, in the world, having nothing left
+to choose.  For in the world there was nothing left to choose, unless
+he would give in and try for success.  Aaron knew well enough that
+if he liked to do a bit of buttering, people would gladly make a
+success of him, and give him money and success.  He could become
+quite a favourite.
+
+But no!  If he had to give in to something: if he really had to give
+in, and it seemed he had: then he would rather give in to the little
+Lilly than to the beastly people of the world.  If he had to give in,
+then it should be to no woman, and to no social ideal, and to no
+social institution.  No!--if he had to yield his wilful independence,
+and give himself, then he would rather give himself to the little,
+individual man than to any of the rest.  For to tell the truth, in the
+man was something incomprehensible, which had dominion over him, if he
+chose to allow it.
+
+As he lay pondering this over, escaping from the _cul de sac_ in which
+he had been running for so long, by yielding to one of his pursuers:
+yielding to the peculiar mastery of one man's nature rather than to
+the quicksands of woman or the stinking bogs of society: yielding,
+since yield he must, in some direction or other: yielding in a new
+direction now, to one strange and incalculable little individual: as
+Aaron lay so relaxing, finding a peculiar delight in giving his soul
+to his mind's hero, the self-same hero tapped and entered.
+
+"I wondered," he said, "if you'd like to walk into the country with
+me: it is such a nice day.  I thought you might have gone out already.
+But here you are in bed like a woman who's had a baby.--You're all
+right, are you?"
+
+"Yes," said Aaron.  "I'm all right."
+
+"Miserable about your flute?--Ah, well, there are more flutes.  Get
+up then."  And Lilly went to the window, and stood looking out at
+the river.
+
+"We're going away on Thursday," he said.
+
+"Where to?" said Aaron.
+
+"Naples.  We've got a little house there for the winter--in the
+country, not far from Sorrento--I must get a bit of work done, now
+the winter is coming.  And forget all about everything and just live
+with life.  What's the good of running after life, when we've got it
+in us, if nobody prevents us and obstructs us?"
+
+Aaron felt very queer.
+
+"But for how long will you settle down--?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, only the winter.  I am a vagrant really: or a migrant.  I must
+migrate.  Do you think a cuckoo in Africa and a cuckoo in Essex is one
+AND the same bird?  Anyhow, I know I must oscillate between north and
+south, so oscillate I do.  It's just my nature.  All people don't have
+the same needs."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Aaron, who had risen and was sitting on the side
+of the bed.
+
+"I would very much like to try life in another continent, among another
+race.  I feel Europe becoming like a cage to me.  Europe may be all
+right in herself.  But I find myself chafing.  Another year I shall
+get out.  I shall leave Europe.  I begin to feel caged."
+
+"I guess there are others that feel caged, as well as you," said Aaron.
+
+"I guess there are."
+
+"And maybe they haven't a chance to get out."
+
+Lilly was silent a moment.  Then he said:
+
+"Well, I didn't make life and society.  I can only go my own way."
+
+Aaron too was silent.  A deep disappointment was settling over his
+spirit.
+
+"Will you be alone all winter?"
+
+"Just myself and Tanny," he answered.  "But people always turn up."
+
+"And then next year, what will you do?"
+
+"Who knows?  I may sail far off.  I should like to.  I should like to
+try quite a new life-mode.  This is finished in me--and yet perhaps
+it is absurd to go further.  I'm rather sick of seekers.  I hate a
+seeker."
+
+"What," said Aaron rather sarcastically--"those who are looking for a
+new religion?"
+
+"Religion--and love--and all that.  It's a disease now."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Aaron.  "Perhaps the lack of love and religion
+is the disease."
+
+"Ah--bah!  The grinding the old millstones of love and God is what ails
+us, when there's no more grist between the stones.  We've ground love
+very small.  Time to forget it.  Forget the very words religion, and
+God, and love--then have a shot at a new mode.  But the very words
+rivet us down and don't let us move.  Rivets, and we can't get them
+out."
+
+"And where should we be if we could?" said Aaron.
+
+"We might begin to be ourselves, anyhow."
+
+"And what does that mean?" said Aaron.  "Being yourself--what does it
+mean?"
+
+"To me, everything."
+
+"And to most folks, nothing.  They've got to have a goal."
+
+"There is no goal.  I loathe goals more than any other impertinence.
+Gaols, they are.  Bah--jails and jailers, gaols and gaolers---"
+
+"Wherever you go, you'll find people with their noses tied to some
+goal," said Aaron.
+
+"Their wagon hitched to a star--which goes round and round like an ass
+in a gin," laughed Lilly.  "Be damned to it."
+
+Aaron got himself dressed, and the two men went out, took a tram and
+went into the country.  Aaron could not help it--Lilly put his back up.
+They came to a little inn near a bridge, where a broad stream rustled
+bright and shallow.  It was a sunny warm day, and Aaron and Lilly had
+a table outside under the thin trees at the top of the bank above the
+river.  The yellow leaves were falling--the Tuscan sky was turquoise
+blue.  In the stream below three naked boys still adventurously bathed,
+and lay flat on the shingle in the sun.  A wagon with two pale, loving,
+velvety oxen drew slowly down the hill, looking at each step as if
+they were going to come to rest, to move no more.  But still they
+stepped forward.  Till they came to the inn, and there they stood at
+rest.  Two old women were picking the last acorns under three scrubby
+oak-trees, whilst a girl with bare feet drove her two goats and a
+sheep up from the water-side towards the women.  The girl wore a
+dress that had been blue, perhaps indigo, but which had faded to the
+beautiful lavender-purple colour which is so common, and which always
+reminded Lilly of purple anemones in the south.
+
+The two friends sat in the sun and drank red wine.  It was midday.
+From the thin, square belfry on the opposite hill the bells had rung.
+The old women and the girl squatted under the trees, eating their bread
+and figs.  The boys were dressing, fluttering into their shirts on the
+stream's shingle.  A big girl went past, with somebody's dinner tied
+in a red kerchief and perched on her head.  It was one of the most
+precious hours: the hour of pause, noon, and the sun, and the quiet
+acceptance of the world.  At such a time everything seems to fall into
+a true relationship, after the strain of work and of urge.
+
+Aaron looked at Lilly, and saw the same odd, distant look on his
+face as on the face of some animal when it lies awake and alert,
+yet perfectly at one with its surroundings.  It was something quite
+different from happiness: an alert enjoyment of rest, an intense and
+satisfying sense of centrality.  As a dog when it basks in the sun with
+one eye open and winking: or a rabbit quite still and wide-eyed, with
+a faintly-twitching nose.  Not passivity, but alert enjoyment of being
+central, life-central in one's own little circumambient world.
+
+They sat thus still--or lay under the trees--for an hour and a half.
+Then Lilly paid the bill, and went on.
+
+"What am I going to do this winter, do you think?" Aaron asked.
+
+"What do you want to do?"
+
+"Nay, that's what I want to know."
+
+"Do you want anything?  I mean, does something drive you from inside?"
+
+"I can't just rest," said Aaron.
+
+"Can't you settle down to something?--to a job, for instance?"
+
+"I've not found the job I could settle down to, yet," said Aaron.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It's just my nature."
+
+"Are you a seeker?  Have you got a divine urge, or need?"
+
+"How do I know?" laughed Aaron.  "Perhaps I've got a DAMNED urge, at
+the bottom of me.  I'm sure it's nothing divine."
+
+"Very well then.  Now, in life, there are only two great dynamic
+urges--do you believe me--?"
+
+"How do I know?" laughed Aaron.  "Do you want to be believed?"
+
+"No, I don't care a straw.  Only for your own sake, you'd better
+believe me."
+
+"All right then--what about it?"
+
+"Well, then, there are only two great dynamic urges in LIFE: love and
+power."
+
+"Love and power?" said Aaron.  "I don't see power as so very
+important."
+
+"You don't see because you don't look.  But that's not the point.  What
+sort of urge is your urge?  Is it the love urge?"
+
+"I don't know," said Aaron.
+
+"Yes, you do.  You know that you have got an urge, don't you?"
+
+"Yes--" rather unwillingly Aaron admitted it.
+
+"Well then, what is it?  Is it that you want to love, or to be obeyed?"
+
+"A bit of both."
+
+"All right--a bit of both.  And what are you looking for in love?--A
+woman whom you can love, and who will love you, out and out and all in
+all and happy ever after sort of thing?"
+
+"That's what I started out for, perhaps," laughed Aaron.
+
+"And now you know it's all my eye!"  Aaron looked at Lilly, unwilling
+to admit it.  Lilly began to laugh.
+
+"You know it well enough," he said.  "It's one of your lost illusions,
+my boy.  Well, then, what next?  Is it a God you're after?  Do you want
+a God you can strive to and attain, through love, and live happy ever
+after, countless millions of eternities, immortality and all that?  Is
+this your little dodge?"
+
+Again Aaron looked at Lilly with that odd double look of mockery and
+unwillingness to give himself away.
+
+"All right then.  You've got a love-urge that urges you to God; have
+you?  Then go and join the Buddhists in Burmah, or the newest fangled
+Christians in Europe.  Go and stick your head in a bush of Nirvana or
+spiritual perfection.  Trot off."
+
+"I won't," said Aaron.
+
+"You must.  If you've got a love-urge, then give it its fulfilment."
+
+"I haven't got a love-urge."
+
+"You have.  You want to get excited in love.  You want to be carried
+away in love.  You want to whoosh off in a nice little love whoosh and
+love yourself.  Don't deny it.  I know you do.  You want passion to
+sweep you off on wings of fire till you surpass yourself, and like the
+swooping eagle swoop right into the sun.  I know you, my love-boy."
+
+"Not any more--not any more.  I've been had too often," laughed Aaron.
+
+"Bah, it's a lesson men never learn.  No matter how sick they make
+themselves with love, they always rush for more, like a dog to his
+vomit."
+
+"Well, what am I to do then, if I'm not to love?" cried Aaron.
+
+"You want to go on, from passion to passion, from ecstasy to ecstasy,
+from triumph to triumph, till you can whoosh away into glory, beyond
+yourself, all bonds loosened and happy ever after.  Either that or
+Nirvana, opposite side of the medal."
+
+"There's probably more hate than love in me," said Aaron.
+
+"That's the recoil of the same urge.  The anarchist, the criminal, the
+murderer, he is only the extreme lover acting on the recoil.  But it
+is love: only in recoil.  It flies back, the love-urge, and becomes
+a horror."
+
+"All right then.  I'm a criminal and a murderer," said Aaron.
+
+"No, you're not.  But you've a love-urge.  And perhaps on the recoil
+just now.  But listen to me.  It's no good thinking the love-urge
+is the one and only.  _Niente_!  You can whoosh if you like, and get
+excited and carried away loving a woman, or humanity, or God.  Swoop
+away in the love direction till you lose yourself.  But that's where
+you're had.  You can't lose yourself.  You can try.  But you might
+just as well try to swallow yourself.  You'll only bite your fingers
+off in the attempt.  You can't lose yourself, neither in woman nor
+humanity nor in God.  You've always got yourself on your hands in the
+end: and a very raw and jaded and humiliated and nervous-neurasthenic
+self it is, too, in the end.  A very nasty thing to wake up to is one's
+own raw self after an excessive love-whoosh.  Look even at President
+Wilson: he love-whooshed for humanity, and found in the end he'd only
+got a very sorry self on his hands.
+
+"So leave off.  Leave off, my boy.  Leave off love-whooshing.  You
+can't lose yourself, so stop trying.  The responsibility is on your
+own shoulders all the time, and no God which man has ever struck can
+take it off.  You ARE yourself and so BE yourself.  Stick to it and
+abide by it.  Passion or no passion, ecstasy or no ecstasy, urge or no
+urge, there's no goal outside you, where you can consummate like an
+eagle flying into the sun, or a moth into a candle.  There's no goal
+outside you--and there's no God outside you.  No God, whom you can get
+to and rest in.  None.  It's a case of:
+
+
+          'Trot, trot to market, to buy a penny bun,
+           And trot, trot back again, as fast as you can run.'
+
+
+But there's no God outside you, whom you can rise to or sink to or
+swoop away to.  You can't even gum yourself to a divine Nirvana moon.
+Because all the time you've got to eat your dinner and digest it.
+There is no goal outside you.  None.
+
+"There is only one thing, your own very self.  So you'd better stick
+to it.  You can't be any bigger than just yourself, so you needn't
+drag God in.  You've got one job, and no more.  There inside you lies
+your own very self, like a germinating egg, your precious Easter egg
+of your own soul.  There it is, developing bit by bit, from one single
+egg-cell which you were at your conception in your mother's womb, on
+and on to the strange and peculiar complication in unity which never
+stops till you die--if then.  You've got an innermost, integral unique
+self, and since it's the only thing you have got or ever will have,
+don't go trying to lose it.  You've got to develop it, from the egg
+into the chicken, and from the chicken into the one-and-only phoenix,
+of which there can only be one at a time in the universe.  There can
+only be one of you at a time in the universe--and one of me.  So don't
+forget it.  Your own single oneness is your destiny.  Your destiny
+comes from within, from your own self-form.  And you can't know it
+beforehand, neither your destiny nor your self-form.  You can only
+develop it.  You can only stick to your own very self, and NEVER
+betray it.  And by so sticking, you develop the one and only phoenix
+of your own self, and you unfold your own destiny, as a dandelion
+unfolds itself into a dandelion, and not into a stick of celery.
+
+"Remember this, my boy: you've never got to deny the Holy Ghost which
+is inside you, your own soul's self.  Never.  Or you'll catch it.  And
+you've never got to think you'll dodge the responsibility of your own
+soul's self, by loving or sacrificing or Nirvaning--or even anarchising
+and throwing bombs.  You never will. . . ."
+
+Aaron was silenced for a moment by this flood of words.  Then he said
+smiling:
+
+"So I'd better sit tight on my soul, till it hatches, had I?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  If your soul's urge urges you to love, then love.  But
+always know that what you are doing is the fulfilling of your own
+soul's impulse.  It's no good trying to act by prescription: not a
+bit.  And it's no use getting into frenzies.  If you've got to go
+in for love and passion, go in for them.  But they aren't the goal.
+They're a mere means: a life-means, if you will.  The only goal is
+the fulfilling of your own soul's active desire and suggestion.  Be
+passionate as much as ever it is your nature to be passionate, and
+deeply sensual as far as you can be.  Small souls have a small
+sensuality, deep souls a deep one.  But remember, all the time, the
+responsibility is upon your own head, it all rests with your own
+lonely soul, the responsibility for your own action."
+
+"I never said it didn't," said Aaron.
+
+"You never said it did.  You never accepted.  You thought there was
+something outside, to justify you: God, or a creed, or a prescription.
+But remember, your soul inside you is your only Godhead.  It develops
+your actions within you as a tree develops its own new cells.  And
+the cells push on into buds and boughs and flowers.  And these are
+your passion and your acts and your thoughts and expressions, your
+developing consciousness.  You don't know beforehand, and you can't.
+You can only stick to your own soul through thick and thin.
+
+"You are your own Tree of Life, roots and limbs and trunk.  Somewhere
+within the wholeness of the tree lies the very self, the quick: its
+own innate Holy Ghost.  And this Holy Ghost puts forth new buds, and
+pushes past old limits, and shakes off a whole body of dying leaves.
+And the old limits hate being empassed, and the old leaves hate to
+fall.  But they must, if the tree-soul says so. . . ."
+
+They had sat again during this harangue, under a white wall.  Aaron
+listened more to the voice than the words.  It was more the sound
+value which entered his soul, the tone, the strange speech-music which
+sank into him.  The sense he hardly heeded.  And yet he understood, he
+knew.  He understood, oh so much more deeply than if be had listened
+with his head.  And he answered an objection from the bottom of his
+soul.
+
+"But you talk," he said, "as if we were like trees, alone by ourselves
+in the world.  We aren't.  If we love, it needs another person than
+ourselves.  And if we hate, and even if we talk."
+
+"Quite," said Lilly.  "And that's just the point.  We've got to love
+and hate moreover--and even talk.  But we haven't got to fix on any
+one of these modes, and say that's the only mode.  It is such
+imbecility to say that love and love alone must rule.  It is so
+obviously not the case.  Yet we try and make it so."
+
+"I feel that," said Aaron.  "It's all a lie."
+
+"It's worse.  It's a half lie.  But listen.  I told you there were
+two urges--two great life-urges, didn't I?  There may be more.  But
+it comes on me so strongly, now, that there are two: love, and power.
+And we've been trying to work ourselves, at least as individuals, from
+the love-urge exclusively, hating the power-urge, and repressing it.
+And now I find we've got to accept the very thing we've hated.
+
+"We've exhausted our love-urge, for the moment.  And yet we try to
+force it to continue working.  So we get inevitably anarchy and murder.
+It's no good.  We've got to accept the power motive, accept it in deep
+responsibility, do you understand me?  It is a great life motive.  It
+was that great dark power-urge which kept Egypt so intensely living
+for so many centuries.  It is a vast dark source of life and strength
+in us now, waiting either to issue into true action, or to burst into
+cataclysm.  Power--the power-urge.  The will-to-power--but not in
+Nietzsche's sense.  Not intellectual power.  Not mental power.  Not
+conscious will-power.  Not even wisdom.  But dark, living, fructifying
+power.  Do you know what I mean?"
+
+"I don't know," said Aaron.
+
+"Take what you call love, for example.  In the real way of love, the
+positive aim is to make the other person--or persons--happy.  It
+devotes itself to the other or to others.  But change the mode.  Let
+the urge be the urge of power.  Then the great desire is not happiness,
+neither of the beloved nor of oneself.  Happiness is only one of many
+states, and it is horrible to think of fixing us down to one state.
+The urge of power does not seek for happiness any more than for any
+other state.  It urges from within, darkly, for the displacing of
+the old leaves, the inception of the new.  It is powerful and self-
+central, not seeking its centre outside, in some God or some beloved,
+but acting indomitably from within itself.
+
+"And of course there must be one who urges, and one who is impelled.
+Just as in love there is a beloved and a lover: The man is supposed to
+be the lover, the woman the beloved.  Now, in the urge of power, it is
+the reverse.  The woman must submit, but deeply, deeply submit.  Not
+to any foolish fixed authority, not to any foolish and arbitrary will.
+But to something deep, deeper.  To the soul in its dark motion of power
+and pride.  We must reverse the poles.  The woman must now submit--
+but deeply, deeply, and richly!  No subservience.  None of that.  No
+slavery.  A deep, unfathomable free submission."
+
+"You'll never get it," said Aaron.
+
+"You will, if you abandon the love idea and the love motive, and if
+you stand apart, and never bully, never force from the conscious will.
+That's where Nietzsche was wrong.  His was the conscious and benevolent
+will, in fact, the love-will.  But the deep power-urge is not conscious
+of its aims: and it is certainly not consciously benevolent or love-
+directed.--Whatever else happens, somewhere, sometime, the deep power-
+urge in man will have to issue forth again, and woman will submit,
+livingly, not subjectedly."
+
+"She never will," persisted Aaron.  "Anything else will happen, but
+not that."
+
+"She will," said Lilly, "once man disengages himself from the love-
+mode, and stands clear.  Once he stands clear, and the other great
+urge begins to flow in him, then the woman won't be able to resist.
+Her own soul will wish to yield itself."
+
+"Woman yield--?" Aaron re-echoed.
+
+"Woman--and man too.  Yield to the deep power-soul in the individual
+man, and obey implicitly.  I don't go back on what I said before.  I do
+believe that every man must fulfil his own soul, every woman must be
+herself, herself only, not some man's instrument, or some embodied
+theory.  But the mode of our being is such that we can only live and
+have our being whilst we are implicit in one of the great dynamic
+modes.  We MUST either love, or rule.  And once the love-mode changes,
+as change it must, for we are worn out and becoming evil in its
+persistence, then the other mode will take place in us.  And there
+will be profound, profound obedience in place of this love-crying,
+obedience to the incalculable power-urge.  And men must submit to the
+greater soul in a man, for their guidance: and women must submit to
+the positive power-soul in man, for their being."
+
+"You'll never get it," said Aaron.
+
+"You will, when all men want it.  All men say, they want a leader.
+Then let them in their souls submit to some greater soul than theirs.
+At present, when they say they want a leader, they mean they want an
+instrument, like Lloyd George.  A mere instrument for their use.  But
+it's more than that.  It's the reverse.  It's the deep, fathomless
+submission to the heroic soul in a greater man.  You, Aaron, you too
+have the need to submit.  You, too, have the need livingly to yield to
+a more heroic soul, to give yourself.  You know you have.  And you know
+it isn't love.  It is life-submission.  And you know it.  But you kick
+against the pricks.  And perhaps you'd rather die than yield.  And so,
+die you must.  It is your affair."
+
+There was a long pause.  Then Aaron looked up into Lilly's face.
+It was dark and remote-seeming.  It was like a Byzantine eikon at
+the moment.
+
+"And whom shall I submit to?" he said.
+
+"Your soul will tell you," replied the other.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Aaron's Rod, by D. H. Lawrence
+
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