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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of December Love, by Robert Hichens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: December Love
+
+Author: Robert Hichens
+
+Release Date: April 22, 2006 [EBook #6616]
+Last Updated: September 24, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DECEMBER LOVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+DECEMBER LOVE
+
+By Robert Hichens
+
+
+
+
+
+DECEMBER LOVE
+
+By Robert Hichens
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Alick Craven, who was something in the Foreign Office, had been living
+in London, except for an interval of military service during the
+war, for several years, and had plenty of interesting friends and
+acquaintances, when one autumn day, in a club, Francis Braybrooke, who
+knew everybody, sat down beside him and began, as his way was, talking
+of people. Braybrooke talked well and was an exceedingly agreeable man,
+but he seldom discussed ideas. His main interest lay in the doings of
+the human race, the “human animal,” to use a favorite phrase of his, in
+what the human race was “up to.” People were his delight. He could not
+live away from the centre of their activities. He was never tired
+of meeting new faces, and would go to endless trouble to bring an
+interesting personality within the circle of his acquaintance. Craven’s
+comparative indifference about society, his laziness in social matters,
+was a perpetual cause of surprise to Braybrooke, who nevertheless was
+always ready to do Craven a good turn, whether he wanted it done to him
+or not. Indeed, Craven was indebted to his kind old friend for various
+introductions which had led to pleasant times, and for these he was
+quite grateful. Braybrooke was much older than most people, though he
+seldom looked it, and decades older than Craven, and he had a genial way
+of taking those younger than himself in charge, always with a view to
+their social advancement. He was a very ancient hand at the social
+game; he loved to play it; and he wanted as many as possible to join
+in, provided, of course, that they were “suitable” for such a purpose.
+Perhaps he slightly resembled “the world’s governess,” as a witty woman
+had once called him. But he was really a capital fellow and a mine of
+worldly wisdom.
+
+On the occasion in question, after chatting for about an hour, he
+happened to mention Lady Sellingworth--“Adela Sellingworth,” as he
+called her. Craven did not know her, and said so in the simplest way.
+
+“I don’t know Lady Sellingworth.”
+
+Braybrooke sat for a moment in silence looking at Craven over his
+carefully trimmed grey and brown beard.
+
+“How very strange!” he said at last.
+
+“Why is it strange?”
+
+“All these years in London and not know Adela Sellingworth!”
+
+“I know about her, of course. I know she was a famous beauty when King
+Edward was Prince of Wales, and was tremendously prominent in society
+after he came to the throne. But I have never seen her about since I
+have been settled in London. To tell the honest truth, I thought Lady
+Sellingworth was what is called a back number.”
+
+“Adela Sellingworth a back number!”
+
+Braybrooke bristled gently and caught his beard-point with his
+broad-fingered right hand. His small, observant hazel eyes rebuked
+Craven mildly, and he slightly shook his head, covered with thick,
+crinkly and carefully brushed hair.
+
+“Well--but,” Craven protested. “But surely she long ago retired from the
+fray! Isn’t she over sixty?”
+
+“She is about sixty. But that is nothing nowadays.”
+
+“No doubt she had a terrific career.”
+
+“Terrific! What do you mean exactly by terrific?”
+
+“Why, that she was what used to be called a professional beauty, a
+social ruler, immensely distinguished and smart and all that sort of
+thing. But I understood that she suddenly gave it all up. I remember
+someone telling me that she abdicated, and that those who knew her best
+were most surprised about it.”
+
+“A woman told you that, no doubt.”
+
+“Yes, I think it was a woman.”
+
+“Anything else?”
+
+“If I remember rightly, she said that Lady Sellingworth was the very
+last woman one had expected to do such a thing, that she was one of the
+old guard, whose motto is ‘never give up,’ that she went on expecting,
+and tacitly demanding, the love and admiration which most men only give
+with sincerity to young women long after she was no more young and had
+begun to lose her looks. Perhaps it was all lies.”
+
+“No, no. There is something in it.”
+
+He looked meditative.
+
+“It certainly was a sudden business,” he presently added. “I have often
+thought so. It came about after her return from Paris some ten years
+ago--that time when her jewels were stolen.”
+
+“Were they?” said Craven.
+
+“Were they!”
+
+Braybrooke’s tone just then really did rather suggest the world’s
+governess.
+
+“My dear fellow--yes, they were, to the tune of about fifty thousand
+pounds.”
+
+“What a dreadful business! Did she get them back?”
+
+“No. She never even tried to. But, of course, it came out eventually.”
+
+“It seems to me that everything anyone wishes to hide does come out
+eventually in London,” said Craven, with perhaps rather youthful
+cynicism. “But surely Lady Sellingworth must have wanted to get her
+jewels back. What can have induced her to be silent about such a loss?”
+
+“It’s a mystery. I have wondered why--often,” said Braybrooke, gently
+stroking his beard.
+
+He even slightly wrinkled his forehead, until he remembered that such
+an indulgence is apt to lead to permanent lines, whereupon he abruptly
+became as smooth as a baby, and added:
+
+“She must have had a tremendous reason. But I’m not aware that anyone
+knows what it is unless--” he paused meditatively. “I have sometimes
+suspected that perhaps Seymour Portman--”
+
+“Sir Seymour, the general?”
+
+“Yes. He knows her better than anyone else does. He cared for her when
+she was a girl, through both her marriages, and cares for her just as
+much still, I believe.”
+
+“How were her jewels stolen?” Craven asked.
+
+Braybrooke had roused his interest. A woman who lost jewels worth fifty
+thousand pounds, and made no effort to get them back, must surely be an
+extraordinary creature.
+
+“They were stolen in Paris at the Gare du Nord out of a first-class
+compartment reserved for Adela Sellingworth. That much came out through
+her maid.”
+
+“And nothing was done?”
+
+“I believe not. Adela Sellingworth is said to have behaved most
+fatalistically when the story came out. She said the jewels were
+gone long ago, and there was an end of it, and that she couldn’t be
+bothered.”
+
+“Bothered!--about such a loss?”
+
+“And, what’s more, she got rid of the maid.”
+
+“Very odd!”
+
+“It was. Very odd! Her abdication also was very odd and abrupt. She
+changed her way of living, gave up society, let her hair go white,
+allowed her face to do whatever it chose, and, in fact, became very much
+what she is now--the most charming _old_ woman in London.”
+
+“Oh, is she charming?”
+
+“Is she charming!”
+
+Braybrooke raised his thick eyebrows and looked really pitiful.
+
+“I will see if I can take you there one day,” he continued, after
+a rebuking pause. “But don’t count on it. She doesn’t see very many
+people. Still, I think she might like you. You have tastes in common.
+She is interested in everything that is interesting--except, perhaps, in
+love affairs. She doesn’t seem to care about love affairs. And yet some
+young girls are devoted to her.”
+
+“Perhaps that is because she has abdicated.”
+
+Braybrooke looked at Craven with rather sharp inquiry.
+
+“I only mean that I don’t think, as a rule, young girls are very fond of
+elderly women whose motto is ‘never give up.’” Craven explained.
+
+“Ah?”
+
+Braybrooke was silent. Then, lighting a cigarette, he remarked:
+
+“Youth is very charming, but one must say that it is set free from
+cruelty.”
+
+“I agree with you. But what about the old guard?” Craven asked. “Is that
+always so very kind?”
+
+Then he suddenly remembered that in London there is an “old guard” of
+men, and that undoubtedly Braybrooke belonged to it; and, afraid that he
+was blundering, he changed the conversation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A fortnight later Craven received a note from his old friend saying that
+Braybrooke had spoken about him to “Adela Sellingworth,” and that she
+would be glad to know him. Braybrooke was off to Paris to stay with the
+Mariguys, but all Craven had to do was to leave a card at Number 18A,
+Berkeley Square, and when this formality had been accomplished Lady
+Sellingworth would no doubt write to him and suggest an hour for a
+meeting. Craven thanked his friend, left a card at Number 18A, and a day
+or two later received an invitation to go to tea with Lady Sellingworth
+on the following Sunday. He stayed in London on purpose to do this,
+although he had promised to go into the country from Saturday to Monday.
+Braybrooke had succeeded in rousing keen interest in him. It was not
+Craven’s habit to be at the feet of old ladies. He much preferred
+to them young or youngish women, unmarried or married. But Lady
+Sellingworth “intrigued” him. She had been a reigning beauty. She had
+“lived” as not many English women had lived. And then--the stolen jewels
+and her extraordinary indifference about their loss!
+
+Decidedly he wanted to know her!
+
+Number 18A, Berkeley Square was a large town mansion, and on the green
+front door there was a plate upon which was engraved in bold lettering,
+“The Dowager Countess of Sellingworth.” Craven looked at this plate and
+at the big knocker above it as he rang the electric bell. Almost as soon
+as he had pressed the button the big door was opened, and a very tall
+footman in a pale pink livery appeared. Behind him stood a handsome,
+middle-aged butler.
+
+A large square hall was before Craven, with a hooded chair and a big
+fire burning on a wide hearth. Beyond was a fine staircase, which had a
+balustrade of beautifully wrought ironwork with gold ornamentations. He
+gave his hat, coat and stick to the footman--after taking his name,
+the butler had moved away, and was pausing not far from the
+staircase--Craven suddenly felt as if he stood in a London more solid,
+more dignified, more peaceful, even more gentlemanlike, than the London
+he was accustomed to. There seemed to be in this house a large calm, an
+almost remote stillness, which put modern Bond Street, just around the
+corner, at a very great distance. As he followed the butler, walking
+softly, up the beautiful staircase, Craven was conscious of a flavour in
+this mansion which was new to him, but which savoured of spacious times,
+when the servant question was not acute, when decent people did not
+move from house to house like gipsies changing camp, when flats were
+unknown--spacious times and more elegant times than ours.
+
+The butler and Craven gained a large landing on which was displayed
+a remarkable collection of oriental china. The butler opened a tall
+mahogany door and bent his head again to receive the murmur of
+Craven’s name. It was announced, and Craven found himself in a great
+drawing-room, at the far end of which, by a fire, were sitting three
+people. They were Lady Sellingworth, the faithful Sir Seymour Portman,
+and a beautiful girl, slim, fair, with an athletic figure, and vividly
+intelligent, though rather sarcastic, violet eyes. This was Miss Beryl
+Van Tuyn. (Craven did not know who she was, though he recognized at
+once the erect figure, faithful, penetrating eyes and curly white
+hair--cauliflower hair--of the general, whom he had often seen about
+town and “in attendance” on royalty at functions.)
+
+Lady Sellingworth got up to receive him. As she did so he was almost
+startled by her height.
+
+She was astonishingly tall, probably well over six feet, very slim, thin
+even, with a small head covered with rather wavy white hair and set on a
+long neck, sloping shoulders, long, aristocratic hands on which she wore
+loose white gloves, narrow, delicate feet, very fine wrists and ankles.
+Her head reminded Craven of the head of a deer. As for her face, once
+marvellously beautiful according to the report of competent judges who
+had seen all the beauties of their day, it was now quite frankly a ruin,
+lined, fallen in here and there, haggard, drawn. Nevertheless, looking
+upon it, one could guess that once upon a time it must have been a
+face with a mobile, almost imperial, outline, perhaps almost insolently
+striking, the arrogant countenance of a conqueror. When gazing at it one
+gazed at the ruin, not of a cottage or of a gimcrack villa, but at the
+ruins of a palace. Lady Sellingworth’s eyes were very dark and still
+magnificent, like two brilliant lamps in her head. A keen intelligence
+gazed out of them. There was often something half sad, half mocking in
+their expression. But Craven thought that they mocked at herself rather
+than at others. She was very plainly dressed in black, and her dress was
+very high at the neck. She wore no ornaments except a wedding ring, and
+two sapphires in her ears, which were tiny and beautiful.
+
+Her greeting to Craven was very kind. He noticed at once that her
+manner was as natural almost as a frank, manly schoolboy’s, carelessly,
+strikingly natural. There could never, he thought, have been a grain
+of affectation in her. The idea even came into his head that she was
+as natural as a tramp. Nevertheless the stamp of the great lady was
+imprinted all over her. She had a voice that was low, very sensitive and
+husky.
+
+Instantly she fascinated Craven. Instantly he did not care whether she
+was old or young, in perfect preservation or a ruin. For she seemed to
+him penetratingly human, simply and absolutely herself as God had made
+her. And what a rare joy that was, to meet in London a woman of the
+great world totally devoid of the smallest shred of make-believe! Craven
+felt that if she appeared before her Maker she would be exactly as she
+was when she said how do you do to him.
+
+She introduced him to Miss Van Tuyn and the general, made him sit next
+to her, and gave him tea.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn began talking, evidently continuing a conversation
+which had been checked for a moment by the arrival of Craven. She was
+obviously intelligent and had enormous vitality. She was also obviously
+preoccupied with her own beauty and with the effect it was having upon
+her hearers. She not only listened to herself while she spoke; she
+seemed also to be trying to visualize herself while she spoke. In her
+imagination she was certainly watching herself, and noting with interest
+and pleasure her young and ardent beauty, which seemed to Craven more
+remarkable when she was speaking than when she was silent. She
+must, Craven thought, often have stood before a mirror and carefully
+“memorized” herself in all her variety and detail. As he sat there
+listening he could not help comparing her exquisite bloom of youth with
+the ravages of time so apparent in Lady Sellingworth, and being struck
+by the inexorable cruelty of life. Yet there was something which
+persisted and over which time had no empire--charm. On that afternoon
+the charm of Lady Sellingworth’s quiet attention to her girl visitor
+seemed to Craven even greater than the charm of that girl visitor’s
+vivid vitality.
+
+Sir Seymour, who had the self-contained and rather detached manner of
+the old courtier, mingled with the straight-forward self-possession of
+the old soldier thoroughly accustomed to dealing with men in difficult
+moments, threw in a word or two occasionally. Although a grave, even a
+rather sad-looking man, he was evidently entertained by Miss Van Tuyn’s
+volubility and almost passionate, yet not vulgar, egoism. Probably he
+thought such a lovely girl had a right to admire herself. She talked of
+herself in modern Paris with the greatest enthusiasm, cleverly grouping
+Paris, its gardens, its monuments, its pictures, its brilliant men and
+women as a decor around the one central figure--Miss Beryl Van Tuyn.
+
+“Why do you never come to Paris, dearest?” she presently said to Lady
+Sellingworth. “You used to know it so very well, didn’t you?”
+
+“Oh, yes; I had an apartment in Paris for years. But that was almost
+before you were born,” said the husky, sympathetic voice of her hostess.
+
+Craven glanced at her. She was smiling.
+
+“Surely you loved Paris, didn’t you?” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“Very much, and understood it very well.”
+
+“Oh--that! She understands everything, doesn’t she, Sir Seymour?”
+
+“Perhaps we ought to except mathematics and military tactics,” he
+replied, with a glance at Lady Sellingworth half humorous, half
+affectionate. “But certainly everything connected with the art of living
+is her possession.”
+
+“And--the art of dying?” Lady Sellingworth said, with a lightly mocking
+sound in her voice.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn opened her violet eyes very wide.
+
+“But is there an art of dying? Living--yes; for that is being and is
+continuous. But dying is ceasing.”
+
+“And there is an art of ceasing, Beryl. Some day you may know that.”
+
+“Well, but even very old people are always planning for the future on
+earth. No one expects to cease. Isn’t it so, Mr. Craven?”
+
+She turned to him, and he agreed with her and instanced a certain old
+duchess who, at the age of eighty, was preparing for a tour round
+the world when influenza stepped in and carried her off, to the great
+vexation of Thomas Cook and Son.
+
+“We must remember that that duchess was an American,” observed Sir
+Seymour.
+
+“You mean that we Americans are more determined not to cease than you
+English?” she asked. “That we are very persistent?”
+
+“Don’t you think so?”
+
+“Perhaps we are.”
+
+She turned and laid a hand gently, almost caressingly, on Lady
+Sellingworth’s.
+
+“I shall persist until I get you over to Paris,” she said. “I do want
+you to see my apartment, and my bronzes--particularly my bronzes. When
+were you last in Paris?”
+
+“Passing through or staying--do you mean?”
+
+“Staying.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth was silent for an instant, and Craven saw the half
+sad, half mocking expression in her eyes.
+
+“I haven’t stayed in Paris for ten years,” she said.
+
+She glanced at Sir Seymour, who slightly bent his curly head as if in
+assent.
+
+“It’s almost incredible, isn’t it, Mr. Craven?” said Miss Van Tuyn. “So
+unlike the man who expressed a wish to be buried in Paris.”
+
+Craven remembered at that moment Braybrooke’s remark in the club that
+Lady Sellingworth’s jewelry were stolen in Paris at the Gare du Nord ten
+years ago. Did Miss Van Tuyn know about that? He wondered as he murmured
+something non-committal.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn now tried to extract a word of honour promise from Lady
+Sellingworth to visit her in Paris, where, it seemed, she lived very
+independently with a _dame de compagnie_, who was always in one room
+with a cold reading the novels of Paul Bourget. (“Bourget keeps on
+writing for _her_!” the gay girl said, not without malice.)
+
+But Lady Sellingworth evaded her gently.
+
+“I’m too lazy for Paris now,” she said. “I no longer care for moving
+about. This old town house of mine has become to me like my shell. I’m
+lazy, Beryl; I’m lazy. You don’t know what that is; nor do you, Mr.
+Craven. Even you, Seymour, you don’t know. For you are a man of action,
+and at Court there is always movement. But I, my friends--” She gave
+Craven a deliciously kind yet impersonal smile. “I am a contemplative.
+There is nothing oriental about me, but I am just a quiet British
+contemplative, untouched by the unrest of your age.”
+
+“But it’s _your_ age, too!” cried Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“No, dear. I was an Edwardian.”
+
+“I wish I had known you then!” said Miss Van Tuyn impulsively.
+
+“You would not have known _me_ then,” returned Lady Sellingworth, with
+the slightest possible stress on the penultimate word.
+
+Then she changed the conversation. Craven felt that she was not fond of
+talking about herself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+That day Craven walked away from Lady Sellingworth’s house with Miss Van
+Tuyn, leaving Sir Seymour Portman behind him.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn was staying with a friend at the Hyde Park Hotel, and, as
+she said she wanted some air, Craven offered to accompany her there on
+foot.
+
+“Do!” she said in her frank and very conscious way. “I’m afraid of
+London on a Sunday.”
+
+“Afraid!”
+
+“As I’m afraid of a heavy, dull person with a morose expression. Please
+don’t be angry.”
+
+Craven smiled.
+
+“I know! Paris is much lighter in hand than London on a Sunday.”
+
+“Isn’t it? But there are people in London! Isn’t _she_ a precious
+person?”
+
+“Lady Sellingworth?”
+
+“Yes. You have marvellous old women in London who do all that we young
+people do, and who look astonishing. They might almost be somewhere in
+the thirties when one knows they are really in the sixties. They play
+games, ride, can still dance, have perfect digestions, sit up till two
+in the morning and are out shopping in Bond Street as fresh as paint
+by eleven, having already written dozens of acceptances to invitations,
+arranged dinners, theatre parties, heaven knows what! Made of cast iron,
+they seem. They even manage somehow to be fairly attractive to young
+men. They are living marvels, and I take off my toque to them. But Lady
+Sellingworth, quite old, ravaged, devastated by time one might say, who
+goes nowhere and who doesn’t even play bridge--she beats them all. I
+love her. I love her wrinkled distinction, her husky voice, her careless
+walk. She walks anyhow, like a woman alone on a country road. She looks
+even older than she is. But what does it matter? If I were a man--”
+
+“Would you fall in love with her?” Craven interposed.
+
+“Oh, no!”
+
+She shot a blue glance at him.
+
+“But I should love her--if only she would let me. But she wouldn’t. I
+feel that.”
+
+“I never saw her till to-day. She charmed me.”
+
+“Of course. But she didn’t try to.”
+
+“Probably not.”
+
+“That’s it! She doesn’t try, and that’s partly why she succeeds, being
+as God has made her. Do you know that some people hate her?”
+
+“Impossible!”
+
+“They do.”
+
+“Who do?”
+
+“The young-old women of her time, the young-old Edwardian women. She
+dates them. She shows them up by looking as she does. She is their
+contemporary, and she has the impertinence to be old. And they can’t
+forgive her for it.”
+
+“I understand,” said Craven. “She has betrayed the ‘old guard.’ She has
+disobeyed the command inscribed on their banner. She has given up.”
+
+“Yes. They will never pardon her, never!”
+
+“I wonder what made her do it?” said Craven.
+
+And he proceeded to touch on Miss Van Tuyn’s desire to get Lady
+Sellingworth to Paris. He soon found out that she did not know about the
+jewels episode. She showed curiosity, and he told her what he knew. She
+seemed deeply interested.
+
+“I was sure there was a mystery in her life,” she said. “I have always
+felt it. Ten years ago! And since then she has never stayed in Paris!”
+
+“And since then--from that moment--she has betrayed the ‘old guard.’”
+
+“How? I don’t understand.”
+
+Craven explained. Miss Van Tuyn listened with an intensity of interest
+which flattered him. He began to think her quite lovely, and she saw the
+pretty thought in his mind.
+
+When he had finished she said:
+
+“No attempt to recover the lost jewels, the desertion of Paris, the
+sudden change into old age! What do you make of it?”
+
+“I can make nothing. Unless the chagrin she felt made her throw up
+everything in a fit of anger. And then, of course, once the thing was
+done she couldn’t go back.”
+
+“You mean--go back to the Edwardian youthfulness she had abandoned?”
+
+“Yes. One may refuse to grow old, but once one has become definitely,
+ruthlessly old, it’s practically impossible to jump back to a pretence
+of the thirties.”
+
+“Of course. It would frighten people. But--it wasn’t that.”
+
+“No?”
+
+“No. For if she had felt the loss of her jewels so much as you suggest,
+she would have made every effort to recover them.”
+
+“I suppose she would.”
+
+“The heart of the mystery lies in her not wishing to try to get the
+jewels back. That, to me, is inexplicable. Because we women love jewels.
+And no woman carries about jewels worth fifty thousand pounds without
+caring very much for them.”
+
+“Just what I have thought,” said Craven.
+
+After a short silence he added:
+
+“Could Lady Sellingworth possibly have known who had stolen the jewels,
+do you think?”
+
+“What! And refrained from denouncing the thief!”
+
+“She might have had a reason.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn’s keen though still girlish eyes looked sharply into
+Craven’s for an instant.
+
+“I believe you men, you modern men are very apt to think terrible things
+about women,” she said.
+
+Craven warmly defended himself against this abrupt accusation.
+
+“Well, but what did you mean?” persisted Miss Van Tuyn. “Now, go against
+your sex and be truthful for once to a woman.”
+
+“I really don’t know exactly what I meant,” said Craven. “But I suppose
+it’s possible to conceive of circumstances in which a woman might know
+the identity of a thief and yet not wish to prosecute.”
+
+“Very well. I’ll let you alone,” she rejoined. “But this mystery makes
+Lady Sellingworth more fascinating to me than ever. I’m not particularly
+curious about other people. I’m too busy about myself for that. But
+I would give a great deal to know a little more of her truth. Do you
+remember her remark when I said ‘I wish I had known you then’?”
+
+“Yes. She said, ‘You would not have known _me_ then.’”
+
+“There have been two Adela Sellingworths. And I only know one. I do want
+to know the other. But I am almost sure I never shall. And yet she’s
+fond of me. I know that. She likes my being devoted to her. I feel she’s
+a book of wisdom, and I have only read a few pages.”
+
+She walked on quickly with her light, athletic step. Just as they were
+passing Hyde Park Corner she said:
+
+“I think I shall go to one of the ‘old guard.’”
+
+“Why?” asked Craven.
+
+“You ask questions to which you know the answers,” she retorted.
+
+And then they talked of other things.
+
+When they reached the hotel and Craven was about to say good-bye, Miss
+Van Tuyn said to him:
+
+“Are you coming to see me one day?”
+
+Her expression suggested that she was asking a question to which she
+knew the answer, in this following the example just given to her by
+Craven.
+
+“I want to,” he said.
+
+“Then do give me your card.”
+
+He gave it to her.
+
+“We both want to know her secret,” she said, as she put it into her
+card-case. “Our curiosity about that dear, delightful woman is a link
+between us.”
+
+Craven looked into her animated eyes, which were strongly searching him
+for admiration. He took her hand and held it for a moment.
+
+“I don’t think I want to know Lady Sellingworth’s secret if she doesn’t
+wish me to know it,” he said.
+
+“Now--is that true?”
+
+“Yes,” he said, with a genuine earnestness which seemed to amuse her.
+“Really, really it is true.”
+
+She sent him a slightly mocking glance.
+
+“Well, I am less delicate. I want to know it, whether she wishes me to
+or not. And yet I am more devoted to her than you are. I have known her
+for quite a long time.”
+
+“One can learn devotion very quickly,” he said, pressing her hand before
+he let it go.
+
+“In an afternoon?”
+
+“Yes, in an afternoon.”
+
+“Happy Lady Sellingworth!” she said.
+
+Then she turned to go into the hotel. Just before she passed through the
+swing door she looked round at Craven. The movement of her young head
+was delicious.
+
+“After all, in spite of the charm that won’t die,” he thought, “there’s
+nothing like youth for calling you.”
+
+He thought Lady Sellingworth really more charming than Miss Van Tuyn,
+but he knew that the feeling of her hand in his would not have thrilled
+something in him, a very intimate part of himself, as he had just been
+thrilled.
+
+He felt almost angry with himself as he walked away, and he muttered
+under his breath:
+
+“Damn the animal in me!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Not many days later Craven received a note from Miss Van Tuyn asking him
+to come to see her at a certain hour on a certain day. He went and found
+her alone in a private sitting-room overlooking the Park. For the first
+time he saw her without a hat. With her beautiful corn-coloured hair
+uncovered she looked, he thought, more lovely than when he had seen her
+at Lady Sellingworth’s. She noted that thought at once, caught it on the
+wing through his mind, as it were, and caged it comfortably in hers.
+
+“I have seen the ‘old guard,’” she said, after she had let him hold and
+press her hand for two or three seconds.
+
+“What, the whole regiment?” said Craven.
+
+She sat down on a sofa by a basket of roses. He sat down near her.
+
+“No; only two or three of the leaders.”
+
+“Do I know them?”
+
+“Probably. Mrs. Ackroyde?”
+
+“I know her.”
+
+“Lady Archie Brook?”
+
+“Her, too.”
+
+“I’ve also seen Lady Wrackley.”
+
+“I have met Lady Wrackley, but I can hardly say I know her. Still, she
+shows her teeth at me when I come into a room where she is.”
+
+“They are wonderful teeth, aren’t they?”
+
+“Astonishing!”
+
+“And they are her own--not by purchase.”
+
+“Are you sure she doesn’t owe for them?”
+
+“Positive; except, of course, to her Creator. Isn’t it wonderful to
+think that those three women are contemporaries of Lady Sellingworth?”
+
+“Indeed it is! But surely you didn’t let them know that you knew they
+were? Or shall I say know they are?”
+
+She smiled, showing perfect teeth, and shook her corn-coloured head.
+
+“You see, I’m so young and live in Paris! And then I’m American. They
+have no idea how much I know. I just let them suppose that I only knew
+they were old enough to remember Lady Sellingworth when she was still a
+reigning beauty. I implied that _they_ were buds then.”
+
+“And they accepted the implication?”
+
+“Oh, they are women of the world! They just swallowed it very quietly,
+as a well-bred person swallows a small easy-going bonbon.”
+
+Craven could not help laughing. As he did so he saw in Miss Van Tuyn’s
+eyes the thought:
+
+“You think me witty, and you’re not far out.”
+
+“And did you glean any knowledge of Lady Sellingworth?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, yes; quite a good deal. Mrs. Ackroyde showed me a photograph of her
+as she was about eleven years ago.”
+
+“A year before the plunge!”
+
+“Yes. She looked very handsome in the photograph. Of course, it was
+tremendously touched up. Still, it gave me a real idea of what she must
+once have been. But, oh! how she has changed!”
+
+“Naturally!”
+
+“I mean in expression. In the photograph she looks vain, imperious. Do
+you know how a woman looks who is always on the watch for new lovers?”
+
+“Well--yes, I think perhaps I do.”
+
+“Lady Sellingworth in the photograph has that on the pounce expression.”
+
+“That’s rather awful, isn’t it?”
+
+“Yes; because, of course, one can see she isn’t really at all young.
+It’s only a _fausse jeunesse_ after all, but still very effective. The
+gap between the woman of the photograph and the woman of 18A Berkeley
+Square is as the gulf between Dives and Lazarus. I shouldn’t have loved
+her then. But perhaps--perhaps a man might have thought he did. I mean
+in the real way of a man--perhaps.”
+
+Craven did not inquire what Miss Van Tuyn meant exactly by that.
+Instead, he asked:
+
+“And did these ladies of the ‘old guard’ speak kindly of the
+white-haired traitress?”
+
+“They were careful. But I gathered that Lady Sellingworth had been for
+years and years one of those who go on their way chanting, ‘Let us eat,
+drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.’ I gathered, too, that her
+efforts were chiefly concentrated on translating into appropriate action
+the third ‘let us.’ But that no doubt was for the sake of her figure
+and face. Lady Archie said that the motto of Lady Sellingworth’s life
+at that period was ‘after me the deluge,’ and that she had so dinned it
+into the ears of her friends that when she let her hair grow white they
+all instinctively put up umbrellas.”
+
+“And yet the deluge never came.”
+
+“It never does. I could almost wish it would.”
+
+“Now?”
+
+“No; after me.”
+
+He looked deep into her eyes, and as he did so she seemed deliberately
+to make them more profound so that he might not touch bottom.
+
+“It’s difficult to think of an after you,” he said.
+
+“But there will be, I suppose, some day when the Prince of Wales wears
+a grey beard and goes abroad in the winter to escape bronchial troubles.
+Oh, dear! What a brute Time is!”
+
+She tried to look pathetic, and succeeded better than Craven had
+expected.
+
+“I shall put up my _en tout cas_ then,” said Craven very seriously.
+
+Still looking pathetic, she allowed her eyes to stray to a neighbouring
+mirror, waited for a moment, then smiled.
+
+“Time’s a brute, but there’s still plenty of him for me,” she said. “And
+for you, too.”
+
+“He isn’t half so unpleasant to men as to women,” said Craven. “He makes
+a very unfair distinction between the sexes.”
+
+“Naturally--because he’s a man.”
+
+“What did Lady Wrackley say?” asked Craven, returning to their subject.
+
+“Why do you ask specially what she said?”
+
+“Because she has a reputation, a bad one, for speaking her mind.”
+
+“She certainly was the least guarded of the ‘old guard.’ But she said
+she loved Lady Sellingworth now, because she was so changed.”
+
+“Physically, I suppose.”
+
+“She didn’t say that. She said morally.”
+
+“That wasn’t stupid of her.”
+
+“Just what I thought. She said a moral revolution had taken place in
+Lady Sellingworth after the jewels were stolen.”
+
+“That sounds almost too tumultuous to be comfortable.”
+
+“Like ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ happening in one’s interior.”
+
+“And what did she attribute such a phenomenon to?”
+
+“Well, she took almost a clerical view of the matter.”
+
+“How very unexpected!”
+
+“She said she believed that Adela--she called her Adela--that Adela took
+the loss of her jewels as a punishment for her sins.”
+
+“Do you mean to say she used the word sins?”
+
+“No; she said ‘many lapses.’ But that’s what she meant.”
+
+“Lapses from what?”
+
+“She didn’t exactly say. But I’m afraid she meant from a strict moral
+code.”
+
+“Oh, Lord!” said Craven, thinking of Lady Wrackley’s smile.
+
+“Why do you say that?”
+
+“Please--never mind! So Lady Wrackley thinks that Lady Sellingworth
+considered the loss of her jewels such a fitting punishment for her many
+lapses from a strict moral code that she never tried to get them back?”
+
+“Apparently. She said that Addie--she called her Addie then--that Addie
+bowed her head.”
+
+“Not beneath the rod! Don’t tell me she used the word rod!”
+
+“But she did!”
+
+“Priceless!”
+
+“Wasn’t it? But women are like that when they belong to the ‘old guard.’
+Do you think she can be right?”
+
+“If it is so, Lady Sellingworth must be a very unusual sort of woman.”
+
+“She is--now. For she really did give up all in a moment. And she has
+never repented of what she did, as far as anyone knows. I think--”
+
+She paused, looking thoughtful at the mirror.
+
+“Yes?” said Craven gently.
+
+“I think it’s rather fine to plunge into old age like that. You go on
+being young and beautiful till everyone marvels, and then one day--or
+night, perhaps--you look in the glass and you see the wrinkles as they
+are--”
+
+“Does any woman ever do that?”
+
+“_She_ must have! And you say to yourself, ‘_C’est fini!_’ and you throw
+up the sponge. No more struggles for you! From one day to another you
+become an old woman. I think I shall do as Lady Sellingworth has done.”
+
+“When?”
+
+“When I’m--perhaps at fifty, yes, at fifty. No man really cares for a
+woman, as a woman wants him to care, after fifty.”
+
+“I wonder,” said Craven.
+
+She sent him a sharp, questioning glance.
+
+“Did you ever wonder before you went to Berkeley Square?”
+
+“Perhaps not.”
+
+A slight shadow seemed to pass over Miss Van Tuyn’s face.
+
+“I believe there was a famous French actress who was loved after she was
+seventy,” said Craven.
+
+“Then the man must have been a freak.”
+
+“Lots of us are freaks.”
+
+“I don’t think you are,” she said provocatively.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“I have my little private reasons,” she murmured.
+
+At that moment Craven was conscious of a silly desire to take her in his
+arms, bundle of vanities though he knew her to be. He hated himself for
+being so ordinary. But there it was!
+
+He looked at her eyebrows. They were dark and beautifully shaped and
+made an almost unnerving contrast with her corn-coloured hair.
+
+“I know what you are thinking,” she said.
+
+“Impossible!”
+
+“You are thinking that I darken them. But I don’t.”
+
+And then Craven gave up and became frankly foolish.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Though ordinary enough in her youthful egoism, and entirely _du jour_ in
+her flagrantly shown vanity, Miss Van Tuyn, as Craven was to find out,
+was really something of an original. Her independence was abnormal and
+was mental as well as physical. She lived a life of her own, and her
+brain was not purely imitative. She not only acted often originally,
+but thought for herself. She was not merely a very pretty girl. She was
+somebody. And somehow she had trained people to accept her daring way of
+life. In Paris she did exactly what she chose, and quite openly. There
+was no secrecy in her methods. In London she pursued the same housetop
+course. She seldom troubled about a chaperon, and would calmly give a
+lunch at the Carlton without one if she wanted to. Indeed, she had been
+seen there more than once, making one of a party of six, five of whom
+were men. She did not care for women as a sex, and said so in the
+plainest language, denouncing their mentality as still afflicted by a
+narrowness that smacked of the harem. But for certain women she had a
+cult, and among these women Lady Sellingworth held a prominent, perhaps
+the most prominent, place.
+
+Three days after his visit to the Hyde Park Hotel Craven, having no
+dinner invitation and feeling disinclined for the well-known formality
+of the club where he often dined, resolved to yield to a faint
+inclination towards a very mild Bohemianism which sometimes beset him,
+and made his way in a day suit to Soho seeking a restaurant. He walked
+first down Greek Street, then turned into Frith Street. There he peeped
+into two or three restaurants without making up his mind to sample their
+cooking, and presently was attracted by a sound of guitars giving forth
+with almost Neapolitan fervour the well-known tune, “O Sole Mio!” The
+music issued from an unpretentious building over the door of which was
+inscribed, “Ristorante Bella Napoli.”
+
+It was a cold, dark evening, and Craven was feeling for the moment
+rather depressed and lonely. The music drew his thoughts to dear Italy,
+to sunshine, a great blue bay, brown, half-naked fishermen pulling in
+nets from the deep with careless and Pagan gestures, to the thoughtless,
+delicious life only possible in the golden heart of the South. He did
+not know the restaurant, but he hesitated no longer. Never mind what the
+cooking was like; he would eat to the sound of those guitars which he
+knew were being thrummed by Italian fingers. He pushed the swing door
+and at once found himself in a room which seemed redolent of the country
+which everyone loves.
+
+It was a narrow room, with a sanded floor and the usual small tables.
+The walls were painted with volcanic pictures in which Vesuvius played a
+principal part. Vesuvius erupted on one wall, slept in the moonlight on
+another, at the end of the room was decked out in all the glories of an
+extremely Neapolitan sunset. Upon the ceiling was Capri, stretching
+out from an azure sea. For the moment the guitars had ceased, but their
+players, swarthy, velvet eyed, and unmistakable children of Italy, sat
+at ease, their instruments still held in brown hands ready for further
+plucking of the sonorous strings. And the room was alive with the uproar
+of Italian voices talking their native language, with the large and
+unselfconscious gestures of Italian hands, with the movement of Italian
+heads, with the flash and sparkle of animated Italian eyes. Chianti was
+being drunk; macaroni, minestra, gnocchi, ravioli, abione were being
+eaten; here and there Toscanas were being smoked. Italy was in the warm
+air, and in an instant from Craven’s consciousness London was blotted
+out.
+
+For a moment he stood just inside the door feeling almost confused.
+Opposite to him was the padrona, a large and lustrous woman with sleepy,
+ox-like eyes, sitting behind a sort of counter. Italian girls, with
+coal-black hair, slipped deftly to and fro among the tables serving
+the customers. The musicians stared at Craven with the fixed, unwinking
+definiteness which the traveller from England begins to meet with soon
+after he passes Lugano. Where was a table for an Englishman?
+
+“Ecco, signorino!”
+
+An Italian girl smiled and beckoned with a sort of intimate liveliness
+and understanding that quite warmed Craven’s heart. There was a table
+free, just one, under Vesuvius erupting. Craven took it, quickly ordered
+all the Italian dishes he could think of and a bottle of Chianti Rosso,
+and then looked about the long, little room. He looked--to see Italian
+faces, and he saw many; but suddenly, instead of merely looking, he
+stared. His eyelids quivered; even his lips parted. Was it possible?
+Yes, it was! At a table tucked into a corner by the window were sitting
+Beryl Van Tuyn and actually--Santa Lucia!--Lady Sellingworth! And they
+were both eating--what was it? Craven stretched his neck--they were both
+eating Risotto alla Milanese!
+
+At this moment the guitars struck up that most Neapolitan of songs, the
+“Canzona di Mergellina,” the smiling Italian girl popped a heaped-up
+plate of macaroni blushing gently with tomato sauce before Craven, and
+placed a straw bottle of ruby hued Chianti by the bit of bread at his
+left hand, and Miss Van Tuyn turned her corn-coloured head to have a
+good look at the room and, incidentally, to allow the room to have a
+good look at her.
+
+The violet eyes, full of conscious assurance, travelled from table to
+table and arrived at Craven and his macaroni. She looked surprised,
+then sent him a brilliant smile, turned quickly and spoke to Lady
+Sellingworth. The latter then also looked towards Craven, smiled kindly,
+and bowed with the careless, haphazard grace which seemed peculiar to
+her.
+
+Craven hesitated for an instant, then got up and threading his way
+among Italians, went to greet the two ladies. It struck him that Lady
+Sellingworth looked marvellously at home with her feet on the sanded
+floor. Could she ever be not at home anywhere? He spoke a few words,
+then returned to his table with Miss Van Tuyn’s parting sentence in his
+ears; “When you have dined come and smoke your Toscana with us.”
+
+As he ate his excellently cooked meal he felt pleasantly warmed and even
+the least bit excited. This was a wholly unexpected encounter. To meet
+the old age and the radiant youth which at the moment interested him
+more than any other old age, any other radiant youth, in London, in
+these surroundings, to watch them with the music of guitars in his
+ears and the taste of ravioli on his lips, silently to drink to them in
+authentic Chianti--all this gave a savour to his evening which he had
+certainly not anticipated. When now and then his eyes sought the table
+tucked into the corner by the window, he saw his two acquaintances
+plunged deep in conversation. Presently Miss Van Tuyn lit a cigarette,
+which she smoked in the short interval between two courses. She moved,
+and sat in such a way that her profile was presented to the room as
+clearly and definitely as a profile stamped on a finely cut coin.
+Certainly she was marvellously good-looking. She had not only the beauty
+of colouring; she had also the more distinguished and lasting beauty of
+line.
+
+An Italian voice near to Craven remarked loudly, with a sort of coarse
+sentimentality:
+
+“_Che bella ragassa!_”
+
+Another Italian voice replied:
+
+“_Ha ragione di venire qui con quella povera vecchia! Com’e brutta la
+vecchiezza!_”
+
+For a moment Craven felt hot with a sort of intimate anger; but the
+guitars began “Santa Lucia,” and took him away again to Naples. And what
+is the use of being angry with the Italian point of view? As well be
+angry with the Mediterranean for being a tideless sea. But he glanced
+at the profile and remembered the words, and could not help wondering
+whether Miss Van Tuyn’s cult for Lady Sellingworth had its foundations
+in self-love rather than in attraction to her whom Braybrooke had called
+“the most charming _old_ woman in London.”
+
+Presently Miss Van Tuyn, turning three-quarters face, sent him a
+“coffee-look,” and he saw that a coffee apparatus of the hour-glass type
+was being placed on the table by the window. He nodded, but held up a
+clean spoon to indicate that his zabaione had yet to be swallowed.
+She smiled, understanding, and spoke again to Lady Sellingworth. A few
+minutes later Craven left his table and joined them, taking his Toscana
+with him.
+
+They were charmingly prepared for his advent. Three cups were on the
+table, and coffee for three was mounting in the hour glass. The two
+friends were smoking cigarettes.
+
+As he prepared to sit down on the chair placed ready for him with his
+back to the window, Miss Van Tuyn said:
+
+“One minute! Please give the musicians this!”
+
+She put five shillings into his hand.
+
+“And ask them to play the Sicilian Pastorale, and ‘A Mezzanotte,’ and
+the Barcarola di Sorrento, and _not_ to play ‘Funiculi, Funicula.’ Do
+you mind?”
+
+“Of course not! But do let me--”
+
+“No, no! This is my little treat to Lady Sellingworth. She has never
+been here before.”
+
+Craven went round to the musicians and carried out his directions. As he
+did so he saw adoring looks of comprehension come into their dark
+faces, and, turning, he caught a wonderful smile that was meant for
+them flickering on the soft lips of Miss Van Tuyn. That smile was as
+provocative, as definitely full of the siren quality, as if it had
+dawned for the only lover, instead of for three humble Italians,
+“hairdressers in the daytime,” as Miss Van Tuyn explained to Craven
+while she poured out his coffee.
+
+“I often come here,” she added. “You’re surprised, I can see.”
+
+“I must say I am,” said Craven. “I thought your beat lay rather in the
+direction of the Carlton, the Ritz, and Claridge’s.”
+
+“You see how little he knows me!” she said, turning to Lady
+Sellingworth.
+
+“Beryl does not always tread beaten paths,” said Lady Sellingworth to
+Craven.
+
+“I hate beaten paths. One meets all the dull people on them, the people
+who hope they are walking where everyone walks. Beaten paths are like
+the front at Brighton on a Sunday morning. What do you say to our
+coffee, dearest?”
+
+“It is the best I have drunk for a long while outside my own house,”
+ Lady Sellingworth answered.
+
+Then she turned to Craven.
+
+“Are you really going to smoke a Toscana?”
+
+“If you really don’t mind? It isn’t a habit with me, but I assure you I
+know how to do it quite adequately.”
+
+“He’s an artist,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “He knows it’s the only cigar that
+really goes with Vesuvius. Do light up!”
+
+“I’m thankful I came here to-night,” he said. “I felt very dull and
+terrifically English, so I turned to Soho as an antidote. The guitars
+lured me in here. I was at the Embassy in Rome for a year. In the summer
+we lived at the Villa Rosebery, near Naples. Ever since that time I’ve
+had an almost childish love of guitars.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn held up a hand and formed “Sh!” with her rosy lips.
+
+“It’s the Barcarola di Sorrento!” she whispered.
+
+A silence fell in the narrow room. The Italian voices were hushed. The
+padrona dreamed behind her counter with her large arms laid upon it,
+like an Italian woman spread out on her balcony for an afternoon’s
+watching of the street below her window. And Craven let himself go
+to the music, as so many English people only let themselves go when
+something Italian is calling them. On his left Miss Van Tuyn, with one
+arm leaning on the table, listened intently, but not so intently that
+she forgot to watch Craven and to keep track of his mind. On his right
+Lady Sellingworth sat very still. She had put away her only half-smoked
+cigarette. Her eyes looked down on the table cloth. Her very tall
+figure was held upright, but without any stiffness. One of her hands
+was hidden. The other, in a long white glove, rested on the table, and
+presently the fingers of it began gently to close and unclose, making,
+as they did this, a faint shuffling noise against the cloth.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn glanced at those fingers and then again at Craven, but for
+the moment he did not notice her. He was standing by the little harbour
+at the Villa Rosebery, looking across the bay to Capri on a warm summer
+evening. And the sea people were in his thoughts. How often had he
+envied them their lives, as men envy those whose lives are utterly
+different from theirs!
+
+But presently Miss Van Tuyn’s persistent and vigorous mind must have got
+some hold on his, for he began to remember her beauty and to feel
+the lure of it in the music. And then, almost simultaneously, he was
+conscious of Lady Sellingworth, of her old age and of her departed
+beauty. And he felt her loss in the music.
+
+Could such a woman enjoy listening to such music? Must it not rather
+bring a subtle pain into her heart, the pain that Italy brings to her
+devotees, when the years have stolen from them the last possibilities
+of personal romance? For a moment Craven imaginatively projected himself
+into old age, saw himself with white hair, a lined face, heavily-veined
+hands, faded eyes.
+
+But her eyes were not faded. They still shone like lamps. Was she,
+perhaps, the victim of a youthful soul hidden in an old body, like
+trembling Love caged in a decaying tabernacle from which it could not
+escape?
+
+He looked up. At the same moment Lady Sellingworth looked up. Their eyes
+met. She smiled faintly, and her eyes mocked something or someone; fate,
+perhaps, him, or herself. He did not know what or whom they mocked.
+
+The music stopped, and, after some applause, conversation broke out
+again.
+
+“Have you given up Italy as you have given up Paris?” Miss Van Tuyn
+asked of Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“Oh, yes, long ago. I only go to Aix now for a cure, and sometimes in
+the early spring to Cap Martin.”
+
+“The hotel?”
+
+“Yes; the hotel. I like the pine woods.”
+
+“So do I. But, to my mind, there’s no longer a vestige of real romance
+on the French Riviera. Too many grand dukes have passed over it.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth laughed.
+
+“But I don’t seek romance when I leave London.”
+
+“No?”
+
+She looked oddly doubtful for a moment. Then she said:
+
+“Mr. Craven, will you tell us the truth?”
+
+“It depends. What about?”
+
+“Oh, a very simple matter.”
+
+“I’ll do my best, but all men are liars.”
+
+“We only ask you to do your best.”
+
+“We!” he said, with a glance at Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“Yes--yes,” she said. “I go solid with my sex.”
+
+“Then--what is it?”
+
+“Do you ever go travelling--ever, without a secret hope of romance
+meeting you on your travels, somewhere, somehow, wonderfully, suddenly?
+Do you?”
+
+He thought for a moment. Then he said:
+
+“Honestly, I don’t think I ever do.”
+
+“There!” said Miss Van Tuyn triumphantly. “Nor do I.”
+
+She looked half defiantly, half inquisitively at Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“My dear Beryl!” said the latter, “for all these lacks in your
+temperament you must wait.”
+
+“Wait? For how long?”
+
+“Till you are fifty, perhaps.”
+
+“I know I shall want romance at fifty.”
+
+“Let us say sixty, then.”
+
+“Or,” interrupted Craven, “until you are comfortably married.”
+
+“Comfortably married!” she cried. “_Quelle horreur!_”
+
+“I had no idea Americans were so romantic,” said Lady Sellingworth, with
+just a touch of featherweight malice.
+
+“Americans! I believe the longing for romance covers both sexes and all
+the human race.”
+
+She let her eyes go into Craven’s.
+
+“Only up till a certain age,” said Lady Sellingworth. “When we love to
+sit by the fire, we can do very well without it. But we must be careful
+to lay up treasure for our old age, mental treasure. We must cultivate
+tastes and habits which have nothing to do with wildness. A man in
+Sorrento taught me about that.”
+
+“A man in Sorrento!” said Miss Van Tuyn, suddenly and sharply on the
+alert.
+
+“Yes. He was a famous writer, and had, I dare say, been a famous lover
+in his time. One day, as we drove beyond the town towards the hills,
+he described to me the compensations old age holds for sensible people.
+It’s a question of cultivating and preparing the mind, of filling the
+storehouse against the day of famine. He had done it, and assured me
+that he didn’t regret his lost youth or sigh after its unrecoverable
+pleasures. He had accustomed his mind to its task.”
+
+“What task, dearest?”
+
+“Acting in connexion with the soul--his word that--as a thoroughly
+efficient substitute for his body as a pleasure giver.”
+
+At this moment the adoring eyes of the three musicians who were
+“hairdressers in the daytime” focussed passionately upon Miss Van Tuyn,
+distracted her attention. She felt masculinity intent upon her and
+responded automatically.
+
+“The dear boys! They are asking if they shall play the Pastorale for me.
+Look at their eyes!” she said.
+
+Craven did not bother to do that, but looked instead at hers, wondering
+a little at her widespread energy in net casting. Was it possible that
+once Lady Sellingworth had been like that, ceaselessly on the
+lookout for worship, requiring it as a right, even from men who were
+hairdressers in the daytime? As the musicians began to play he met her
+eyes again and felt sure that it could not have been so. Whatever she
+had done, whatever she had been, she could never have frequented the
+back stairs. That thought seemed a rather cruel thrust at Miss Van Tuyn.
+But there is a difference in vanities. Wonderful variety of nature!
+
+When the players had finished the Pastorale and “A Mezzanotte,” and
+had been rewarded by a long look of thanks from Miss Van Tuyn which
+evidently drove them over the borders of admiration into the regions
+of unfulfilled desire, Lady Sellingworth said she must go. And then an
+unexpected thing happened. It appeared that Miss Van Tuyn had asked a
+certain famous critic, who though English by birth was more Parisian
+than most French people, to call for her at the restaurant and take her
+on to join a party at the Cafe Royal. She, therefore, could not go yet,
+and she begged Lady Sellingworth to stay on and to finish up the
+evening in the company of Georgians at little marble tables. But Lady
+Sellingworth laughingly jibbed at the Cafe Royal.
+
+“I should fall out of my _assiette_ there!” she said.
+
+“But no one is ever surprised at the Cafe Royal, dearest. It is the one
+place in London where--Ah! here is Jennings come to fetch us!”
+
+A very small man, with a pointed black beard and wandering green eyes,
+wearing a Spanish sombrero and a black cloak, and carrying an ebony
+stick nearly as tall as himself, at this moment slipped furtively into
+the room, and, without changing his delicately plaintive expression,
+came up to Miss Van Tuyn and ceremoniously shook hands with her.
+
+Lady Sellingworth looked for a moment at Craven.
+
+“May I escort you home?” he said. “At any rate, let me get you a taxi.”
+
+“Lady Sellingworth, may I introduce Ambrose Jennings,” said Miss Van
+Tuyn in a rather firm voice at this moment.
+
+Lady Sellingworth bent kindly to the little man far down below her.
+After a word or two she said:
+
+“Now I must go.”
+
+“Must you really? Then Mr. Craven will get you a taxi.”
+
+“If it’s fine, I will walk. It seems more suitable to walk home after
+dining here.”
+
+“Walk! Then let us all walk together, and we’ll persuade you into the
+Cafe Royal.”
+
+“Dick Garstin will be there,” said Ambrose Jennings in a frail voice,
+“Enid Blunt, a Turkish refugee from Smyrna who writes quite decent
+verse, Thapoulos, Penitence Murray, who is just out of prison, and Smith
+the sculptor, with his mistress, a round-faced little Russian girl.
+She’s the dearest little Bolshevik I know.”
+
+He looked plaintively yet critically at Lady Sellingworth, and pulled
+his little black beard with fingers covered with antique rings.
+
+“Dear little bloodthirsty thing!” he added to Lady Sellingworth. “You
+would like her. I know it.”
+
+“I’m sure I should. There is something so alluring about Bolshevism when
+it’s safely tucked up at the Cafe Royal. But I will only walk to the
+door.”
+
+“And then Mr. Craven will get you a taxi,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “Shall we
+go?”
+
+They fared forth into the London night--Craven last.
+
+He realized that Miss Van Tuyn had made up her mind to keep both him
+and Jennings as her possessions of the evening, and to send Lady
+Sellingworth, if she would go home early, back to Berkeley Square
+without an escort. Her cult for her friend, though doubtless genuine,
+evidently weakened when there was any question of the allegiance of men.
+Craven made up his mind that he would not leave Lady Sellingworth until
+they were at the door of Number 18A, Berkeley Square.
+
+In the street he found himself by the side of Miss Van Tuyn, behind Lady
+Sellingworth and Ambrose Jennings, who were really a living caricature
+as they proceeded through the night towards Shaftesbury Avenue. The
+smallness of Jennings, accentuated by his bat-like cloth cloak, his
+ample sombrero and fantastically long stick, made Lady Sellingworth look
+like a moving tower as she walked at his side, like a leaning tower when
+she bent graciously to catch the murmur of his persistent conversation.
+And as over the theatres in letters of fire were written the names
+of the stars in the London firmament--Marie Lohr, Moscovitch, Elsie
+Janis--so over, all over, Lady Sellingworth seemed to be written for
+Craven to read: “I am really not a Bohemian.”
+
+“Do you genuinely wish Lady Sellingworth to finish the evening at the
+Cafe Royal?” he asked of his companion.
+
+“Yes. They would love her there. She would bring a new note.”
+
+“Probably. But would she love them?”
+
+“I don’t think you quite understand her,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“I’m quite sure I don’t. Still--”
+
+“In past years I am certain she has been to all the odd cafes of Paris.”
+
+“Perhaps. But one changes. And you yourself said there were--or was it
+had been?--two Adela Sellingworths, and that you only knew one.”
+
+“Yes. But perhaps at the Cafe Royal I should get to know the other.”
+
+“May she not be dead?”
+
+“I have a theory that nothing of us really dies while we live. Our abode
+changes. We know that. But I believe the inhabitant is permanent. We are
+what we were, with, of course, innumerable additions brought to us by
+the years. For instance, I believe that Lady Sellingworth now is what
+she was, to all intents and purposes, with additions which naturally
+have made great apparent changes in her. An old moss-covered house,
+overgrown with creepers, looks quite different from the same house when
+it is new and bare. But go inside--the rooms are the same, and under the
+moss and the creepers are the same walls.”
+
+“It may be so. But what a difference the moss and the creepers make.
+Some may be climbing roses.”
+
+Craven felt the shrewd girlish eyes were looking at him closely.
+
+“In her case some of them certainly are!” she said. “Oh, do look at them
+turning the corner! If Cirella were here he would have a subject for one
+of his most perfect caricatures. It is the leaning tower of Pisa with a
+bat.”
+
+The left wing of Ambrose Jennings’s cloak flew out as he whirled into
+Regent Street by Lady Sellingworth’s side.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+At the door of the Cafe Royal they stopped, and Miss Van Tuyn laid a
+hand on Lady Sellingworth’s arm.
+
+“Do come in, dearest. It will really amuse you,” she said urgently.
+“And--I’ll be truthful--I want to show you off to the Georgians as my
+friend. I want them to know how wonderful an Edwardian can be.”
+
+“Please--please!” pleaded Jennings from under his sombrero. “Dick would
+revel in you. You would whip him into brilliance. I know it. You admire
+his work, surely?”
+
+“I admire it very much.”
+
+“And he is more wonderful still when he’s drunk. And to-night--I feel
+it--he will be drunk. I pledge myself that Dick Garstin will be drunk.”
+
+“I’m sure it would be a very great privilege to see Mr. Garstin drunk.
+But I must go home. Good night, dear Beryl.”
+
+“But the little Bolshevik! You must meet the little Bolshevik!” cried
+Jennings.
+
+Lady Sellingworth shook her deer-like head, smiling.
+
+“Good night, Mr. Craven.”
+
+“But he is going to get you a taxi,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“Yes, and if you will allow me I am going to leave you at your door,”
+ said Craven, with decision.
+
+A line appeared in Miss Van Tuyn’s low forehead, but she only said:
+
+“And then you will come back and join us.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Craven.
+
+He took off his hat. Miss Van Tuyn gave him a long and eloquent look,
+which was really not unlike a Leap Year proposal. Then she entered the
+cafe with Jennings. Craven thought at that moment that her back looked
+unusually rigid.
+
+A taxi was passing. He held up his hand. It stopped. Lady Sellingworth
+and he got in, after he had given the address to the chauffeur.
+
+“What a lovely girl Beryl Van Tuyn is!” said Lady Sellingworth, as they
+drove off.
+
+“She is--very lovely.”
+
+“And she has a lot of courage, moral courage.”
+
+“Is it?” he could not help saying.
+
+“Yes. She lives as she chooses to live. And yet she isn’t married.”
+
+“Would marriage make it all easier for her?”
+
+“Much, if she married the man who suited her.”
+
+“I wonder what sort of a man that would be.”
+
+“So does she, I think. But she’s a strange girl. I should not be
+surprised if she were never to marry at all.”
+
+“Don’t you think she would fall in love?”
+
+“Yes. For I think every living woman is capable of that. But she has the
+sort of intellect which would not be tricked for very long by the heart.
+Any weakness of hers would soon be over, I fancy.”
+
+“I dare say you are right. In fact I believe you are generally right.
+She told me you were a book of wisdom. And I feel that it is true.”
+
+“Here is Berkeley Square.”
+
+“How wrong it is of these chauffeurs to drive so fast! It is almost as
+bad as in Paris. They defy the law. I should like to have this man up.”
+
+He got out. She followed him, looking immensely tall in the dimness.
+
+“I am not going back to the Cafe Royal,” he said.
+
+“But it will be amusing. And I think they are certainly expecting you.”
+
+“I am not going there.”
+
+She rang. Instantly the door was opened by the handsome middle-aged
+butler.
+
+“Then come in for a little while,” she said casually. “Murgatroyd, you
+might bring us up some tea and lemon, or will you have whisky and soda,
+Mr. Craven?”
+
+“I would much rather have tea and lemon, please,” he said.
+
+A great fire was burning in the hall. Again Craven felt that he was in
+a more elegant London than the London of modern days. As he went up
+the wide, calm staircase, and tasted the big silence of the house, he
+thought of the packed crowd in the Cafe Royal, of the uproar there, of
+the smoke wreaths, of the staring heterogeneous faces, of the shouting
+or sullenly folded lips, of the--perhaps--tipsy man of genius, of
+Jennings with his green eyes, his black beard, his tall ebony staff, of
+the “little bloodthirsty thing” with the round Russian face, of Miss Van
+Tuyn in the midst of it all, sitting by the side of Enid Blunt, smoking
+cigarettes, and searching the men’s faces for the looks which were food
+for her craving. And he loved the contrast which was given to him.
+
+“Do go in and sit by the fire, and I’ll come in a moment,” said the
+husky voice he was learning to love. “I’m just going to take off my
+hat.”
+
+Craven opened the great mahogany door and went in.
+
+The big room was very dimly lighted by two standard electric lamps, one
+near the fireplace, the other in a distant corner where a grand piano
+stood behind a huge china bowl in which a pink azalea was blooming.
+There was a low armchair near the fire by a sofa. He sat down in it,
+and picked up a book which lay on a table close beside it. What did she
+read--this book of wisdom?
+
+“_Musiciens d’aujourd’hui_,” by Romain Rolland.
+
+Craven thought he was disappointed. There was no revelation for him in
+that. He held the book on his knee, and wondered what he had expected
+to find, what type of book. What special line of reading was Lady
+Sellingworth’s likely to be? He could imagine her dreaming over “Wisdom
+and Destiny,” or perhaps over “The Book of Pity and of Death.” On the
+other hand, it seemed quite natural to think of her smiling her mocking
+smile over a work of delicate, or even of bitter, irony, such as
+Anatole France’s story of Pilate at the Baths of Baies, or study of
+the Penguins. He could not think that she cared for sentimental books,
+though she might perhaps have a taste for works dealing with genuine
+passion.
+
+He heard the door open gently, and got up. Lady Sellingworth came in.
+She had not changed her dress, which was a simple day dress of black.
+She had only taken off her fur and hat, and now came towards him, still
+wearing white gloves and holding a large black fan in her hand.
+
+“What’s that you’ve got?” she asked. “Oh--my book!”
+
+“Yes. I took it up because I wondered what you were reading. I think
+what people read by preference tells one something of what they are. I
+was interested to know what you read. Forgive my curiosity.”
+
+She sat down by the fire, opened the fan, and held it between her face
+and the flames.
+
+“I read all sorts of things.”
+
+“Novels?”
+
+“I very seldom read a novel now. Here is our tea. But I know you would
+rather have a whisky-and-soda.”
+
+“As a rule I should, but not to-night. I want to drink what you are
+drinking.”
+
+“And to smoke what I am smoking?” she said, with a faintly ironic smile.
+
+“Yes--please.”
+
+She held out a box of cigarettes. The butler went out of the room.
+
+“I love this house,” said Craven abruptly. “I love its atmosphere.”
+
+“It isn’t a modern atmosphere, is it?”
+
+“Neither distinctively modern, nor in the least old-fashioned. I think
+the right adjective for it would be perhaps--”
+
+He paused and sat silent for a moment.
+
+“I hardly know. There’s something remote, distinguished and yet very
+warm and intimate about it.”
+
+He looked at her and added, almost with hardihood.
+
+“It’s not a cold, or even a reserved house.”
+
+“Coldness and unnecessary reserve are tiresome--indeed, I might almost
+say abhorrent--to me.”
+
+She had given him his tea and lemon and taken hers.
+
+“But not aloofness?”
+
+“You have travelled?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, you know how, when travelling, it is easy to get into intimacies
+with people whom one doesn’t want to be intimate with at home.”
+
+“Yes. I know all about that.”
+
+“At my age one has learnt to avoid not only such intimacies but many
+others less disagreeable, but which at moments might give one what I can
+only call mental gooseflesh. Is that aloofness?”
+
+“I think it would probably be called so by some.”
+
+“By whom?”
+
+“Oh, by mental gooseflesh-givers!”
+
+She laughed, laughed quite out with a completeness which had something
+almost of youth in it.
+
+“I wonder,” he added rather ruefully, after the pause which the laugh
+had filled up, “I wonder whether I am one of them?”
+
+“I don’t think you are.”
+
+“And Ambrose Jennings?”
+
+“That’s a clever man!” was her reply.
+
+And then she changed the conversation to criticism in general, and to
+the type of clever mind which, unable to create, analyses the creations
+of others sensitively.
+
+“But I much prefer the creators,” she presently said.
+
+“So do I. They are like the fresh air compared with the air in a
+carefully closed room,” said Craven. “Talking of closed rooms, don’t you
+think it is strange the liking many brilliant men and women have, both
+creators and analysers of creators, for the atmosphere of garish or
+sordid cafes?”
+
+“You are thinking of the Cafe Royal?”
+
+“Yes. Do you know it?”
+
+“Don’t tell Beryl--but I have never been in it. Nevertheless, I know
+exactly what it is like.”
+
+“By hearsay?”
+
+“Oh, no. In years gone by I have been into many of the cafes in Paris.”
+
+“And did you like them and the life in them?”
+
+“In those days they often fascinated me, as no doubt the Cafe Royal and
+its life fascinates Beryl to-day. The hectic appeals to something in
+youth, when there is often fever in the blood. Strong lights, noise, the
+human pressure of crowds, the sight of myriads of faces, the sound of
+many voices--all that represents life to us when we are young. Calm,
+empty spaces, single notes, room all round us for breathing amply and
+fully, a face here or there--that doesn’t seem like life to us then.
+Beryl dines with me alone sometimes. But she must finish up in the
+evening with a crowd if she is near the door of the place where the
+crowd is. And you must not tell me you never like the Cafe Royal, for if
+you do I shall not believe you.”
+
+“I do like it at times,” he acknowledged. “But to-night, sitting here,
+the mere thought of it is almost hateful to me. It is all vermilion and
+orange colour, while this . . .”
+
+“Is drab!”
+
+“No, indeed! Dim purple, perhaps, or deepest green.”
+
+“You couldn’t bear it for long. You would soon begin longing for
+vermilion again.”
+
+“You seem to think me very young. I am twenty-nine.”
+
+“Have you ceased to love wildness already?”
+
+“No,” he answered truthfully. “But there is something there which makes
+me feel as if it were almost vulgar.”
+
+“No, no. It need not be vulgar. It can be wonderful--beautiful, even.
+It can be like the wild light which sometimes breaks out in the midst
+of the blackness of a storm and which is wilder far than the darkest
+clouds. Do you ever read William Watson?”
+
+“I have read some of his poems.”
+
+“There is one I think very beautiful. I wonder if you know it. ‘Pass,
+thou wild heart, wild heart of youth that still hast half a will to
+stay--’”
+
+She stopped and held her fan a little higher.
+
+“I don’t know it,” he said.
+
+“It always makes me feel that the man or woman who has never had the
+wild heart has never been truly and intensely human. But one must know
+when to stop, when to let the wild heart pass away.”
+
+“But if the heart wants to remain?”
+
+“Then you must dominate it. Nothing is more pitiable, nothing is more
+disgusting, even, than wildness in old age. I have a horror of that.
+And I am certain that nothing else can affect youth so painfully. Old
+wildness--that must give youth nausea of the soul.”
+
+She spoke with a thrill of energy which penetrated Craven in a peculiar
+and fascinating way. He felt almost as if she sent a vital fluid through
+his veins.
+
+Suddenly he thought of the “old guard,” and he knew that not one of the
+truly marvellous women who belonged to it could hold him or charm him as
+this white-haired woman, with the frankly old face, could and did.
+
+“After all,” he thought, “it isn’t the envelope that matters; it is the
+letter inside.”
+
+Deeply he believed that just then. He was, indeed, under a sort of
+spell for the moment. Could the spell be lasting? He looked at Lady
+Sellingworth’s eyes in the lamplight and firelight, and, despite a
+certain not forgotten moment connected with the Hyde Park Hotel, he
+believed that it could. And Lady Sellingworth looked at him and knew
+that it could not. About such a matter she had no illusions.
+
+And yet for years she had lived a life cloudy with illusions. What had
+led her out from those clouds? Braybrooke had hinted to Craven that
+possibly Seymour Portman knew the secret of Lady Sellingworth’s abrupt
+desertion of the “old guard” and plunge into old age. But even he did
+not know it. For he loved her in a still, determined, undeviating way.
+And no woman would care to tell such a secret to a man who loved her and
+who was almost certain, barring the explosion of a moral bombshell, and
+perhaps even then, to go on loving her.
+
+No one knew why Lady Sellingworth had abruptly and finally emerged from
+the world of illusions in which she had lived. But possibly a member of
+the underworld, a light-fingered gentleman of brazen assurance, had long
+ago guessed the reason for her sudden departure from the regiment of
+which she had been a conspicuous member; possibly he had guessed, or
+surmised, why she had sent in her papers. But even he could scarcely be
+certain.
+
+The truth of the matter was this.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Lady Sellingworth belonged to a great English family, and had been
+brought up in healthy splendour, saved from the canker of too much
+luxury by the aristocratic love of sport which is a tradition in such
+English families as hers. As a girl she had been what a certain sporting
+earl described as “a leggy beauty.” Even then she had shown a decided
+inclination to run wild and had seldom checked the inclination.
+Unusually tall and athletic, rather boyish in appearance, and of the
+thin, greyhound type, she had excelled in games and held her own in
+sports. She had shot in an era when comparatively few women shot, and in
+the hunting-field she had shown a reckless courage which had fascinated
+the hard-riding men who frequented her father’s house. As she grew older
+her beauty had rapidly developed, and with it an insatiable love of
+admiration. Early she had realized that she was going to be a beauty,
+and had privately thanked the gods for her luck. She could scarcely have
+borne not to be a beauty; but, mercifully, it was all right. Woman’s
+greatest gift was to be hers. When she looked into the glass and knew
+that, when she looked into men’s eyes and knew it even more definitely,
+she felt merciless and eternal. In the dawn no end was in sight; in the
+dawn no end seemed possible.
+
+From the age of sixteen onwards hers was the intimate joy, certainly
+one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all the joys of women, of
+knowing that all men looked at her with pleasure, that many men looked
+at her with longing, that she was incessantly desired.
+
+From the time when she was sixteen she lived perpetually in that
+atmosphere which men throw round a daring and beautiful woman without
+even conscious intention, creating it irresistibly merely by their
+natural desire. And that atmosphere was the breath of life to her. Soon
+she could not imagine finding any real value in life without it. She
+often considered plain girls, dull girls, middle-aged women who had
+never had any beauty, any saving grace but that of freshness, and
+wondered how they managed to get along at all. What was the use of life
+to them? Nobody bothered about them, except, perhaps, a few relations,
+or what are called “old friends”--that is, people who, having always
+been accustomed to you, put up with you comfortably, and wear their
+carpet slippers in your presence without troubling whether you like
+slippers or would prefer them in high-heeled shoes.
+
+As to old women, those from whom almost the last vestiges of what they
+once had been physically had fallen away, she was always charming to
+them; but she always wondered why they still seemed to cling on to life.
+They were done with. It was long ago all over for them. They did not
+matter any more, even if once they had mattered. Why did they still keep
+a hold on life with their skinny hands? Was it from fear of death, or
+what? Once she expressed her wonder about this to a man.
+
+“Of course,” she said. “I know they can’t go just because they want to.
+But why do they _want_ to stay?”
+
+“Oh,” he said, “I think lots of old ladies enjoy themselves immensely in
+their own way.”
+
+“Well, I can’t understand it!” she said.
+
+And she spoke the truth.
+
+She flirted, of course. Her youthful years were complicated by a maze
+of flirtations, through which she wandered with apparently the greatest
+assurance, gaining knowledge of men.
+
+Finally she married. She made what is called “a great match,” the sort
+of match in every way suitable to such an aristocratic, beautiful and
+daring girl.
+
+Then began her real reign.
+
+Although such a keen sportswoman, she was also a woman who had a good
+brain, a quick understanding, and a genuine love of the intellectual and
+artistic side of life, for its own sake, not for any reason of fashion.
+She was of the type that rather makes fashions than follows them. As a
+married woman she was not only Diana in the open country, she was Egeria
+elsewhere. She liked and she wanted all types of men; the hard-bitten,
+keen-eyed, lean-flanked men who could give her a lead or take a lead
+from her over difficult country, and the softer breed of men, whose more
+rounded bodies were informed by sharp spirits, who, many of them,
+could not have sat a horse over the easiest fence, or perhaps even have
+brought down a stag at twenty paces, but who would dominate thousands
+from their desks, or from the stages of opera houses, or from adjustable
+seats in front of pianos, or from studios hung with embroideries and
+strewn with carpets of the East.
+
+These knew how to admire and long for a beautiful woman quite as well
+as the men of the moors and the hunting field, and they were often more
+subtle in their ways of showing their feelings.
+
+Lady Sellingworth had horses named after her and books dedicated to her.
+She moved in all sets which were penetrated by the violent zest for the
+life of the big world, and in all sets she more than held her own. She
+was as much at home in Chelsea as she was at Newmarket. Her beautifully
+disguised search for admiration extended far and wide, and she found
+what she wanted sometimes in unexpected places, in sombre Oxford
+libraries, in time-worn deaneries, in East-End settlements, through
+which she flashed now and then like a bird of Paradise, darting across
+the murk of a strange black country on its way to golden regions, as
+well as in Mayfair, in the Shires, in foreign capitals, and on the moors
+of Scotland.
+
+Her husband was no obstacle in her way. She completely dominated him,
+even though she gave him no child. He knew she was, as he expressed it,
+“worth fifty” of him. Emphatically he was the husband of his wife, and
+five years after their marriage he died still adoring her.
+
+She was sorry; she was even very sorry. And she withdrew from the great
+world in which she had been a moving spirit now for over ten years for
+the period of mourning, a year. But she was not overwhelmed by sorrow.
+It is so very difficult for the woman who lives by, and for, her beauty
+and her charm for men to be overwhelmed. One man has gone and she mourns
+him; but there are so many men left, all of them with eyes in which
+lamps may be set and with hearts to be broken.
+
+It was at this time that she became very familiar with Paris.
+
+She wanted to be away from London, so she took an apartment in Paris,
+and began to live there very quietly. Friends, of course, came to see
+her, and she began to study Paris thoroughly, not the gay, social Paris,
+but a very interesting Paris. Presently her freedom from the ordinary
+social ties began to amuse her. She had now so much time for all sorts
+of things which women very much in society miss more often than
+not. Never going to parties, she was able to go elsewhere. She went
+elsewhere. Always there had dwelt caged in her a certain wildness which
+did not come from her English blood. There was a foreign strain in
+her from the borders of Asia mingled with a strong Celtic strain. This
+wildness which in her girlhood she had let loose happily in games and
+sports, in violent flirtations, and in much daring skating over thin
+ice, which in her married life had spent itself in the whirl of society,
+and in the energies necessary to the attainment of an unchallenged
+position at the top of things, in her widowhood began to seek an outlet
+in Bohemia.
+
+Paris can be a very kind or a very cruel city, in its gaiety hiding
+velvet or the claws of a tiger. To Lady Sellingworth--then Lady
+Manham--it was kind. It gave her its velvet. She knew a fresh type
+of life there, with much for the intellect, with not a little for the
+senses, even with something for the heart. It was there that she visited
+out-of-the-way cafes, where clever men met and talked over every subject
+on earth. A place like the Cafe Royal in London had no attraction for
+the Lady Sellingworth over sixty. That sort of thing, raised to the
+_nth_ degree, had been familiar to her years and years ago, before Beryl
+Van Tuyn and Enid Blunt had been in their cradles.
+
+And the freedom of her widowhood, with no tie at all, had become
+gradually very dear to her. She had felt free enough in her marriage.
+But this manner of life had more breathing space in it. There is no
+doubt that in that Paris year, especially in the second half of it, she
+allowed the wild strain in her to play as it had never played before,
+like a reckless child out of sight of parents and all relations.
+
+When the mourning was over and she returned to London she was a woman
+who had progressed, but whether upon an upward or a downward path who
+shall decide? She had certainly become more fascinating. Her beauty was
+at its height. The year in Paris, lived almost wholly among clever and
+very unprejudiced French people, had given her a peculiar polish--one
+Frenchman who knew English slang called it “a shine”--which made her
+stand out among her English contemporaries. Many of them when girls had
+received a “finish” in Paris. But girls cannot go about as she had gone
+about. They had learnt French; she had learnt Paris. From that
+time onward she was probably the most truly cosmopolitan of all the
+aristocratic Englishwomen of her day. Distinguished foreigners who
+visited London generally paid their first private call on her. Her house
+was European rather than English. She kept, too, her apartment in Paris,
+and lived there almost as much as she lived in London. And, perhaps, her
+secret wildness was more at home there.
+
+Scandal, of course, could not leave her untouched. But her position in
+society was never challenged. People said dreadful things about her, but
+everyone who did not know her wanted to know her, and no one who knew
+her wished not to know her. She “stood out” from all the other women in
+England of her day, not merely because of her beauty--she was not more
+beautiful than several of her contemporaries--but because of her gay
+distinction, a daring which was never, which could not be, ill bred,
+her extraordinary lack of all affectation, and a peculiar and delightful
+bonhomie which made her at home with everyone and everyone at home with
+her. Servants and dependents loved her. Everyone about her was fond of
+her. And yet she was certainly selfish. Invariably almost she was kind
+to people, but herself came first with her. She made few sacrifices,
+and many sacrificed themselves to her. There was seldom a moment when
+incense was not rising up before her altar, and the burnt offerings to
+her were innumerable.
+
+And all through these years she was sinking more deeply into slavery,
+while she was ruling others. Her slavery was to herself. She was the
+captive of her own vanity. Her love of admiration had developed into
+an insatiable passion. She was ceaselessly in her tower spying out for
+fresh lovers. From afar off she perceived them, and when they drew near
+to her castle she stopped them on their way. She did not love them and
+cast them to death like Tamara of the Caucasus. No; but she required of
+them the pause on their travels, which was a tribute to her power. No
+one must pass her by as if she were an ordinary woman.
+
+Probably there is no weed in all the human garden which grows so fast as
+vanity. Lady Sellingworth’s vanity grew and grew with the years until
+it almost devoured her. It became an idee fixe in her. A few people no
+doubt knew this--a few women. But she was saved from all vulgarity of
+vanity by an inherent distinction, not only of manner but of something
+more intimate, which never quite abandoned her, which her vanity was
+never able to destroy. Although her vanity was colossal, she usually
+either concealed it, or if she showed it showed it subtly. She was not
+of the type which cannot pass a mirror in a restaurant without staring
+into it. She only looked into mirrors in private. Nor was she one of
+those women who powder their faces and rouge their lips before men in
+public places. It was impossible for her to be blatant. Nevertheless,
+her moral disease led her gradually to fall from her own secret standard
+of what a woman of her world should be. Craven had once said to himself
+that Lady Sellingworth could never seek the backstairs. He was not
+wholly right in this surmise about her. There was a time in her
+life--the time when she was, or was called, a professional beauty--when
+she could scarcely see a man’s face without watching it for admiration.
+Although she preserved her delightfully unselfconscious manner she was
+almost ceaselessly conscious of self. Her own beauty was the idol which
+she worshipped and which she presented to the world expectant of the
+worship of others. There have been many women like her, but few who have
+been so clever in hiding their disease. But always seated in her brain
+there was an imp who understood, was contemptuous and mocked, an imp who
+knew what was coming to her, what comes to all the daughters of men who
+outlive youth and its shadowy triumphs. Her brain was ironic, while her
+temperament was passionate, and greedy in its pursuit of the food it
+clamoured for; her brain watched the unceasing chase with almost a
+bitterness of sarcasm, merging sometimes into a bitterness of pity. In
+some women there seems at times to be a dual personality, a woman of
+the blood at odds with a woman of the grey matter. It was so in Lady
+Sellingworth’s case, but for a long time the former woman dominated the
+latter, whose empire was to come later with white hair and a ravaged
+face.
+
+At the age of thirty-five, after some years of brilliant and even of
+despotic widowhood, she married again--Lord Sellingworth.
+
+He was twenty-five years older than she was, ruggedly handsome, huge,
+lean, self-possessed, very clever, very worldly, and that unusual
+phenomenon, a genuine atheist. There was no doubt that he had a keen
+passion for her, one of those passions which sometimes flare up in a man
+of a strong and impetuous nature, who has lived too much, who is
+worn out, haunted at times by physical weariness, yet still fiercely
+determined to keep a tight grip on life and life’s few real pleasures,
+the greatest of which is perhaps the indulgence of love.
+
+Like her first marriage this marriage was apparently a success. Lord
+Sellingworth’s cleverness fascinated his wife’s brain, and led her to
+value the pursuits of the intellect more than she had ever done before.
+She was proud of his knowledge and wit, proud of being loved by a man of
+obvious value. After this marriage her house became more than ever the
+resort of the brilliant men of the day. But though Lord Sellingworth
+undoubtedly improved his wife’s mental capacities, enlarged the horizon
+of her mind, and gave her new interests, without specially intending it
+he injured her soul. For he increased her worldliness and infected
+her with his atheism. She had always been devoted to the world. He
+continually suggested to her that there was nothing else, nothing
+beyond. All sense of mysticism had been left out of his nature. What he
+called “priestcraft” was abhorrent to him. The various religions seemed
+to him merely different forms of superstition, the assertions of their
+leaders only varying forms of humbug. He was greedy in searching for
+food to content the passions of the body, and was restless in pursuit of
+nutriment for the mind. But not believing in the soul he took no trouble
+about it.
+
+Lady Sellingworth had this man at her feet. Nevertheless, in a certain
+way he dominated her. In hard mental power he was much her superior, and
+her mind became gradually subservient to his in many subtle ways. It was
+in his day that she developed that noticeable and almost reckless egoism
+which is summed up by the laconic saying, “after me the deluge.” For
+Lord Sellingworth’s atheism was not of the type which leads to active
+humanitarianism, but of the opposite type which leads to an exquisite
+selfishness. And he led his wife with him. He taught her the whole
+art of self-culture, and with it the whole art of self-worship, subtly
+extending to her mind that which for long had been concerned mainly with
+the body. They were two of the most selfish and two of the most charming
+people in London. For they were both thorough bred and naturally
+kind-hearted, and so there were always showers of crumbs falling from
+their well-spread table for the benefit of those about them. Their
+friends had a magnificent time with them and so did their servants. They
+liked others to be pleased with them and satisfied because of them. For
+they must live in a warm atmosphere. And nothing makes the atmosphere
+so cold about a man or woman as the egoism which shows itself in
+miserliness, or in the unwillingness that others should have a good
+time.
+
+When Lady Sellingworth was thirty-nine Lord Sellingworth died abruptly.
+The doctors said that his heart was worn out; others said something
+different, something less kind.
+
+For the second time Lady Sellingworth was a widow; for the second time
+she spent the period of mourning in Paris. And when it was over she
+went for a tour round the world with a small party of friends; Sir Guy
+Letchworth and his plain, but gay and clever wife, and Roger Brand, a
+millionaire and a famous Edwardian.
+
+Brand was a bachelor, and had long been a devoted adherent of Lady
+Sellingworth’s, and people, of course, said that he was going to marry
+her. But they eventually came back from their long tour comfortably
+disengaged. Brand went back to his enormous home in Park Lane, and Lady
+Sellingworth settled down in number 18A Berkeley Square.
+
+She was now forty-one. She had arrived at a very difficult period in the
+life of a beauty. The freshness and bloom of youth had inevitably left
+her. The adjectives applied to her were changing. The word “lovely” was
+dropped. Its place was taken by such epithets as “handsome,” “splendid
+looking,” “brilliant,” “striking,” “alluring.” People spoke of Lady
+Sellingworth’s “good days”; and said of her, “Isn’t she astonishing?”
+ The word “zenith” was occasionally used in reference to her. A verb
+which began to be mixed up with her a good deal was the verb “to
+last.” It was said of her that she “lasted” wonderfully. Women put the
+question, “Isn’t it miraculous how Adela Sellingworth lasts?”
+
+All this might, perhaps, be called complimentary. But women are not as
+a rule specially fond of such compliments. When kind friends speak of
+a woman’s “good days” there is an implication that some of her days are
+bad. Lady Sellingworth knew as well as any woman which compliments are
+left-handed and which are not. On one occasion soon after she returned
+to London from her tour round the world a woman friend said to her:
+
+“Adela, you have never looked better than you do now. Do you know what
+you remind me of?”
+
+The woman was an American. Lady Sellingworth replied carelessly:
+
+“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
+
+“You remind me of our wonderful Indian summers that come in October. How
+do you manage it?”
+
+That come in October?
+
+These words struck a chill through Lady Sellingworth. Suddenly she felt
+the autumn in her. She had been in America: she had known the glory of
+its Indian summer; she had also known that Indian summer’s startling
+sudden collapse. Winter comes swiftly after those almost unnaturally
+golden days. And what is there left in winter for a woman who has lived
+for her beauty since she was sixteen years old? The freedom of a second
+widowhood would be only chill loneliness in winter. She saw herself like
+a figure in the distance, sitting over a fire alone. But little warmth
+would come from that fire. The warmth that was necessary to her came
+from quite other sources than coal or wood kindled and giving out
+flames.
+
+Her vanity shuddered. She realized strongly, perhaps, for the first
+time, that people were just beginning to think of her as a woman
+inevitably on the wane. She looked into her mirror, stared into it,
+and tried to consider herself impartially. She was certainly very
+good-looking. Her tall figure had never been made ugly by fatness. She
+was not the victim of what is sometimes called “the elderly spread.” But
+although she was slim, considering her great height, she thought that
+she discerned signs of a thickening tendency. She must take that in
+time. Her figure must not be allowed to degenerate. And her face?
+
+She was so accustomed to her face, and so accustomed to its being a
+beautiful face, that it was difficult to her to regard it with cold
+impartiality. But she tried to; tried to look at it as she might have
+looked at the face of another woman, of say, a rival beauty.
+
+What age did the face seem to be? If she had seen it passing by in the
+street what age would she have guessed its owner to be? Something in
+the thirties; but perhaps in the late thirties? She wasn’t quite
+certain about it. Really it is so difficult to look at yourself quite
+impartially. And she did not wish to fall into exaggeration, to be
+hypercritical. She wished to be strictly reasonable, to see herself
+exactly as she was. The eyes were brilliant, but did they look like
+young eyes?
+
+No, they didn’t. And yet they were full of light. There was nothing
+faded about them. But somehow at that moment they looked terribly
+experienced. With a conscious effort she tried to change their
+expression, to make them look less full of knowledge. But it seemed to
+her that she failed utterly. No, they were not young eyes; they never
+could be young eyes. The long accustomed woman of the world was mirrored
+in them with her many experiences. They were beautiful in their way, but
+their way had nothing to do with youth. And near the eyes, very near,
+there were definite traces of maturity. A few, as yet very faint, lines
+showed; and there were shadows; and there was--she could only call it
+to herself “a slightly hollow look,” which she had never observed in any
+girl, or, so far as she remembered, in any young woman.
+
+She gazed at her mouth and then at her throat. Both showed signs of age;
+the throat especially, she thought. The lips were fine, finely curved,
+voluptuous. But they were somehow not fresh lips. In some mysterious
+way, which really she could not define, life had marked them as mature.
+There were a couple of little furrows in the throat and there was also
+a slightly “drawn” look on each side just below the line of the jaw. By
+the temples also, close to the hair, there was something which did not
+look young.
+
+Lady Sellingworth felt very cold. At that moment she probably
+exaggerated in her mind the effect of her appearance. She plunged down
+into pessimism about herself. A sort of desperation came upon her.
+Underneath all her conquering charm, hidden away like a trembling bird
+under depths of green leaves, there was a secret diffidence of which she
+had occasionally been conscious during her life. It had no doubt been
+born with her, had lived in her as long as she had lived. Very few
+people knew of its existence. But she knew, had known of it as long as
+she remembered. Now that diffidence seemed to hold her with talons, to
+press its beak into her heart.
+
+She felt that she could not face the world with any assurance if she
+lost her beauty. She had charm, cleverness, rank, position, money. She
+knew all her advantages. But at that moment she seemed to be confronting
+penury. And as she continued to look into the mirror ugliness seemed to
+grow in the woman she saw like a spreading disease till she felt that
+she would be frightened to show herself to anyone, and wished she could
+hide from everyone who knew her.
+
+That absurdly morbid fit passed, of course. It could not continue,
+except in a woman who was physically ill, and Lady Sellingworth was
+quite well. But it left its mark in her mind. From that day she began
+to take intense trouble with herself. Hitherto she had been inclined
+to trust her own beauty. She had relied on it almost instinctively.
+And that strange, hidden diffidence, when it had manifested itself,
+had manifested itself in connexion with social things, the success of
+a dinner, or with things of the mind, the success or non-success of a
+conversation with a clever man. She had never spoken of it to anyone,
+for she had always been more or less ashamed of it, and had brought
+silence to her aid in the endeavour to stamp it out lest it should
+impair her power over others. But now it was quickened within her. It
+grew, and in its growth tortured her.
+
+“How do you manage it?”
+
+That not very kind question of the friend who had compared her to an
+Indian summer remained with Lady Sellingworth. Since she had considered
+herself in the mirror she had realized that she had attained that
+critical period in a beauty’s life when she must begin incessantly to
+manage to continue a beauty. Hitherto, beyond always dressing perfectly
+and taking care to be properly “turned out,” she had done less to
+herself than many women habitually do. Now she swung to the opposite
+extreme. There is no need to describe what she did. She did, or had done
+to her, all that she considered necessary, and she considered that a
+very great deal was necessary.
+
+A certain Greek, who was a marvellous expert in his line, helped her at
+a very high figure. And she helped herself by much rigid abstinence,
+by denying natural appetites, by patient physical discipline. Her fight
+against the years was tremendous, and was conducted with extraordinary
+courage.
+
+But nevertheless it seemed to her that a curse was put upon her; in that
+she was surely one of those women who, once they take the first step
+upon the downward slope, are compelled to go forward with a damnable
+rapidity.
+
+The more she “managed it” the more there seemed to be to manage.
+From the time when she frankly gave herself into the clutches of
+artificiality the natural physical merit of her seemed to her to
+deteriorate at a speed which was headlong.
+
+A hideous leap in the downward course took place presently. She began to
+dye her hair. She was not such a fool as to change its natural colour.
+She merely concealed the fact that white hairs were beginning to grow on
+her head at an age when many simple people, who don’t care particularly
+what they look like--sensible clergymen’s wives in the provinces, and
+others unknown to fashion--remain as brown as a berry, or as pleasantly
+auburn as the rind of a chestnut.
+
+The knowledge of those hidden white hairs haunted her. She felt horribly
+ashamed of them. She hated them with an intense, and almost despairing,
+hatred. For they stamped the terrific difference between her body and
+her nature.
+
+It seemed to her that in her nature she retained all the passions of
+youth. This was not strictly true, for no woman over forty has precisely
+the same passions as an ardent girl, however ardent she may be. But the
+“wild heart,” spoken of by Lady Sellingworth to Craven, still beat in
+her breast, and the vanity of the girl, enormously increased by the
+passage of the years, still lived intensely in the middle-aged woman.
+It was perhaps this natural wildness combined with her vanity which
+tortured Lady Sellingworth most at this period of her life. She still
+desired happiness and pleasure greedily, indeed with almost unnatural
+greediness; she still felt that life robbed of the admiration and the
+longing of men would not be worth living.
+
+Beryl Van Tuyn had spoken of a photograph of Lady Sellingworth taken
+when she was about forty-nine, and had said that, though very handsome,
+it showed a _fausse jeunesse_, and revealed a woman looking vain and
+imperious, a woman with the expression of one always on the watch for
+new lovers. And there had been a cruel truth in her words. For, from the
+time when she had given herself to artificiality until the time, some
+nine years later, when she had plunged into what had seemed to her,
+and to many others, something very like old age, Lady Sellingworth had
+definitely and continuously deteriorated, as all those do who try
+to defy any natural process. Carrying on a fight in which there is
+a possibility of winning may not do serious harm to a character, but
+carrying on a fight which must inevitably be lost always hardens and
+embitters the combatant. During those years of her _fausse jeunesse_
+Lady Sellingworth was at her worst.
+
+For one thing she became the victim of jealousy. She was secretly
+jealous of good-looking young women, and, spreading her evil wide like a
+cloud, she was even jealous of youth. To be young was to possess a
+gift which she had lost, and a gift which men love as they love but few
+things. She could not help secretly hating the possessors of it.
+
+She had now become enrolled in the “old guard,” and had adopted as her
+device their motto, “Never give up.” She was one of the more or less
+mysterious fighters of London. She fought youth incessantly, and she
+fought Time. And sometimes the weariness and the nausea of battle lay
+heavy upon her. Her expression began to change. She never lost, she
+never could lose, her distinction, but it was slightly blurred, slightly
+tarnished. She preserved the appearance of bonhomie, but her cordiality,
+her good nature, were not what they had been. Formerly she had had
+marvellous spirits; now she was often accompanied into the world by the
+black dog. And when she was alone he sat by the hearth with her.
+
+She began to hate being a widow. Sometimes she thought that she wished
+she had had children. But then it occurred to her that they might have
+been daughters, lovely girls now perhaps, showing to society what she
+had once been. With such daughters she would surely have been forced
+into abdication. For she knew that she could never have entered into a
+contest with her own children. Perhaps it was best as it was, best that
+she was childless.
+
+She might no doubt have married a third time. Sir Seymour Portman, a
+bachelor for her sake, would have asked nothing better than to become
+her husband. And there were other middle-aged and old men who would
+gladly have linked themselves with her, and who did not scruple to
+tell her so. But now she could not bear the idea of making a “suitable”
+ match. Lord Sellingworth had been old, and she had been happy with him.
+But she had felt, and had considered herself to be, young when she had
+married him. The contrast between him and herself had been flattering to
+her vanity. It would be different now. And besides, with the coming of
+middle age, and the fatal fading of physical attraction, there had come
+into her a painful obsession.
+
+As much as she hated youth in women she was attracted by it in men. She
+began secretly to worship youth as it showed itself in the other sex.
+Something in her clamoured for the admiration and the longing of the
+young men who were amorous of life, who were comparatively new to the
+fray, who had the ardour and the freshness which could have mated with
+hers when she was a girl, but which now contrasted violently with her
+terribly complete experience and growing morbidity. She felt that now
+she could never marry a man of her own age or older than herself, not
+simply because she could not love such a man, but because she would be
+perpetually in danger of loving a man of quite another type.
+
+She entered upon a very ugly period, perhaps the ugliest there can be in
+the secret life of a woman. And it was then that there came definitely
+into her face, and was fixed there, the expression noted by Miss Van
+Tuyn in the photograph in Mrs. Ackroyd’s drawing-room, the expression of
+a woman on the pounce.
+
+There is no food so satisfying to the vanity of a middle-aged woman as
+the admiration and desire of young men. Lady Sellingworth longed
+for, and sought for, that food, but not without inward shame, and
+occasionally something that approached inward horror. For she had, and
+never was able to lose, a sense of what was due not merely to herself
+but to her better self. Here the woman of the blood was at grips with
+the woman of the grey matter. And the imp enthroned somewhere within her
+watched, marked, remembered, condemned.
+
+That imp began to persecute Lady Sellingworth. She would have slain him
+if she could, for he was horribly critical, and remained cold through
+all her intensities. In Paris he had often been useful to her, for irony
+is appreciated in Paris, and he was strongly ironical. Often she felt as
+if he had eyes fixed upon her sardonically, when she was giving way to
+the woman in her blood. In Paris it had been different. For there, at
+any rate in all the earlier years, he had been criticizing and laughing
+at others. Now his attention was always on her. There were moments when
+she could almost hear his ugly, whispering voice telling her all he
+thought about her, about her appearance, her conduct, her future, about
+her connexions with others now, about the loneliness that was coming
+upon her. She saw many other women who were evidently content in, and
+unconscious of, their follies. Why was she not like them? Why had she
+been singled out for this persecution of the brain. It is terrible to
+have a brain which mocks at you instead of happily mocking at others.
+And that was her case. Later she was to understand herself better; she
+was to understand that her secret diffidence was connected with the imp,
+was the imp’s child in her as it were; later, too, she was to learn that
+the imp was working for her eventual salvation, in the moral sense.
+
+But she had not yet reached that turning in the path of her life.
+
+During all this period her existence was apparently as successful and
+brilliant as ever. She was still a leader in London, knowing and known
+to everyone, going to all interesting functions, receiving at her house
+all the famous men and women of the day. To an observer it would have
+seemed that she occupied an impregnable position and that she was having
+a wonderful time. But she was really a very unhappy woman at violent
+odds with herself.
+
+On one occasion when she was giving a dinner in her house a discussion
+broke out on the question of happiness. It was asked by someone, “If you
+could demand of the gods one gift, with the certainty of receiving
+it, what gift would you demand?” Various answers were given. One said,
+“Youth for as long as I lived”; another “Perfect health”; another
+“Supreme beauty”; another “The most brilliant intellect of my time”;
+another “The love and admiration of all I came in contact with.”
+ Finally a sad-looking elderly man, poet, philosopher, and the former
+administrator of a great province in India, was appealed to. His answer
+was, “Complete peace of mind.” And on his answer followed the general
+discussion about happiness.
+
+When the party broke up and Lady Sellingworth was alone she thought
+almost desperately about that discussion and about the last answer to
+the question which had been put.
+
+Complete peace of mind! How extraordinary it would be to possess that!
+She could scarcely conceive of it, and it seemed to her that even in her
+most wonderful days, in her radiant and careless youth, when she had
+had almost everything, she had never had that. But then she had not even
+wanted to have it. Complete peace seems but a chilly sort of thing to
+youth in its quick-silver time. But later on in life we love combat
+less.
+
+Suddenly Lady Sellingworth realized the age of her mind, and it seemed
+to her that she was a horrible mixture of incongruities. She was
+physically aging slowly but surely. She had appetites which were in
+direct conflict with age. She had desires all of which turned towards
+youth. And her mind was quite old. It must be, she said to herself,
+because now she was sitting still and longing to know that complete
+peace of mind which an old man had talked of that evening at her dinner
+table.
+
+A sort of panic shook her as she thought of all the antagonists which at
+a certain period of life gather together to attack and slay youth, all
+vestiges of youth, in the human being; the unsatisfied appetites,
+the revolts of the body, the wearinesses of soul, and the subtle and
+contradictory desires which lie hidden deep in the mind.
+
+She was now intensely careful about her body, had brought its care
+almost to the level of a finely finished art. But she had not troubled
+about the disciplining of her mind. Yet the undisciplined mind can work
+havoc in the tissues of the body. Youth of the mind, if preserved, helps
+the body to continue apparently young. It may not be able to cause the
+body actually to look young, but in some mysterious way it throws round
+the body a youthful atmosphere which deceives many people, which creates
+an illusion. And the strange thing is that the more intimate people are
+with one possessing that mental youthfulness, the more strong is the
+illusion upon them. Atmosphere has a spell which increases upon us
+the longer we remain bathed in it. Lady Sellingworth said all this to
+herself that night, and rebuked herself for letting her mind go towards
+old age. She rebelled against the longing for complete peace of mind
+because she now connected such a longing with stagnation. And men,
+especially young men, love vivacity, restlessness, the swift flying
+temperament. Such a temperament suggests to them youth. It is old age
+which sits still. Youth is for ever on the move.
+
+“I must not long for peace or anything of that kind!” she said to
+herself.
+
+Nevertheless the lack of all mental peace ravages the body.
+
+She scarcely knew what to do for the best. But eventually she tried
+to take her mind in hand, for she was afraid of it, afraid of its age,
+afraid of the effect its age might eventually have upon her appearance.
+So she strove to train it backwards towards youthfulness. For now
+she was sure that she was not one of those fortunate women who have
+naturally young minds which refuse to grow old. She knew a few such
+women. She envied them almost bitterly. There was no need for them to
+strive. She watched them surreptitiously, studied them, tried to master
+their secret.
+
+Presently a tragic episode occurred in her life.
+
+She fell in love with a man of about twenty-three. He was the son of
+people whom she knew very well in Paris, French people who were almost
+her contemporaries, and was the sporting type of Frenchman, very
+good-looking, lively, satirical and strong. He was a famous lawn tennis
+player and came over to London for the tournament at Wimbledon. She had
+already seen him in Paris, and had known him when he was little more
+than a boy. But she had never thought much about him in those days. For
+in those days she had not been haunted by the passion for youth which
+possessed her now.
+
+Louis de Rocheouart visited at her house as a matter of course, was
+agreeable and gallant to her because she was a charming and influential
+woman and an old friend of his family. But he did not think of her as a
+woman to whom it was possible that a man of his age could make love.
+He looked upon her as one who had been a famous beauty, but who was now
+merely a clever, well-preserved and extremely successful member of
+the “old guard” of society in London. Her “day” as a beauty was in his
+humble opinion quite over. She belonged to his mother’s day. He knew
+that. And his mother happened to be one of those delightful Frenchwomen
+who are spirituelle at all ages, but who never pretend to be anything
+they are not. His mother’s hair was already grey, and she had two
+married daughters, one of whom had been trusting enough to make her a
+grandmother.
+
+While Rocheouart was in London a number of popular middle-aged
+women banded together and gave a very smart ball at Prince’s. Lady
+Sellingworth was one of the hostesses, all of whom danced merrily and
+appeared to be in excellent spirits and health. It was certainly one
+of the very best balls of the season, and young men turned up at it in
+large numbers. Among them was young Rocheouart.
+
+Lady Sellingworth danced with him more than once. That night she had
+almost managed to deceive herself as to the real truth of life. The
+ball was being such a success; the scramble for invitations had been so
+great; the young men evidently found things so lively, and seemed to be
+in such exuberant spirits, that she was carried away, and really felt as
+if youth were once more dancing through her veins and shining out of her
+eyes.
+
+The “old guard” were _in excelsis_ that night; the Edwardians were in
+their glory on the top of the world. Probably more than one of them
+thought, “They can say what they like but we can cut out the girls when
+we choose.” Their savoir faire was immense. Many of them still possessed
+an amazing amount of the joie de vivre. And some of them were thoroughly
+sensible women, saved from absurdity by the blessed sense of humour.
+
+But Lady Sellingworth was by this time desperately in love with Louis
+de Rocheouart, and her sense of humour was in abeyance that night. In
+consequence, she was the victim of a mortification which she was never
+to forget as long as she lived.
+
+Towards the end of the evening she happened to be standing with Sir
+Seymour Portman near the entrance to the ballroom, and overheard a scrap
+of conversation between two people just behind them.
+
+A girl’s light voice said:
+
+“Have you heard the name Cora Wellingborough has given to this ball?”
+
+(The Duchess of Wellingborough was one of the hostesses.)
+
+“No,” replied a voice, which Lady Sellingworth recognized as the voice
+of young Rocheouart. “What is it?”
+
+“She calls it ‘The Hags’ Hop’! Isn’t it delicious of her? It will be
+all over London to-morrow. The name will stick. In the annuals of London
+festivities to-night will always be remembered as the night of the
+famous Hags’ Hop.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth heard Rocheouart’s strong, manly young laugh.
+
+“That’s just like the duchess!” he said. “She’s simply made of humour
+and always hits the nail on the head. And how clever of her to give the
+right name to the ball herself instead of leaving it for some pretty
+girl to do. The Hags’ Hop! It’s perfect! If she hadn’t said that, you
+would have before the evening was out, and then all the charming hags
+would have been furious with you.”
+
+The girl laughed, and she and Rocheouart passed Lady Sellingworth
+without noticing her and went into the ballroom.
+
+She looked at them as they began to dance; then she looked at the
+Duchess of Wellingborough, who was also dancing.
+
+The duchess was frankly middle-aged. She was very good-looking, but
+she had let her figure go. She was quite obviously the victim of
+the “elderly spread.” Her health was excellent, her sense of humour
+unfailing. She never pretended to anything, but was as natural almost as
+a big child. Although a widow, she wanted no lover. She often said that
+she had “got beyond all that sort of thing.” Another of her laughingly
+frank sayings was: “No young man need be afraid of me.” In consequence
+of her gaiety, humour, frankness and hospitality she was universally
+popular.
+
+But that night Lady Sellingworth almost hated her.
+
+The Hags’ Hop!
+
+That terrible name stuck in Lady Sellingworth’s mind and seemed to
+fasten there like a wound in a body.
+
+As Rocheouart’s partner had foretold, the name went all over London.
+The duchess’s _mot_ even got into a picture paper, and everyone laughed
+about it. The duchess was delighted. Nobody seemed to mind. Even Lady
+Sellingworth forced herself to quote the saying and to make merry over
+it. But from that day she gave up dancing entirely. Nothing would induce
+her even to join in a formal royal quadrille.
+
+Before his return to Paris, Rocheouart came to bid her good-bye.
+Although she was still, as she supposed, madly in love with him,
+she concealed it, or, if she showed it, did so only by being rather
+unnaturally cold with him. When he was gone she felt desperate.
+
+Her imp had perhaps controlled her during the short time of Rocheouart’s
+final visit, had mocked and made her fear him. When she was alone,
+however, he vanished for the moment.
+
+From that time the hidden diffidence in Lady Sellingworth was her deadly
+enemy, because it fought perpetually with her vanity and with her almost
+uncontrollable desires. Sometimes she was tempted to give way to it
+entirely and to retire from the fray. But she asked herself what she
+had to retire to. The thought of a life lived in the shade, or of a
+definitely middle-aged life, prolonged in such sunshine as falls upon
+grey-haired heads, was terrible to her. She was not like the Duchess
+of Wellingborough. She was cursed with what was called in her set “a
+temperament,” and she did not know how to conquer it, did not dare,
+even, to try to conquer it.
+
+She soon forgot Louis de Rocheouart, but his place was not long left
+empty. She fell in love with another young man.
+
+Eventually--by this time she had almost ceased to struggle, was not
+far from being a complete victim to her temperament--she seriously
+considered the possibility of marrying again, and of marrying a man many
+years younger than herself. Several women whom she knew had done this.
+Why should not she do it? Such marriages seldom turned out well, seldom
+lasted very long. But there were exceptions to every rule. Her marriage,
+if she made it, might be an exception. She was now only forty-eight.
+(She had reached the age when that qualifying word is applied to the
+years.) Women older, much older, than herself, had married mere boys.
+She did not intend to do that. But why should she not take a charming
+man of, say, thirty into her life?
+
+The mere thought of having such a husband, such a companion in Number
+18A, Berkeley Square, sent a glow through her mind and body. What a
+flood of virility, anticipation, new strength, new interests he would
+bring with him! She imagined his loud, careless step on the stairs, his
+strong bass or baritone voice resounding in the rooms; she heard the
+doors banged by his reckless hand; she saw his raincoats, his caps, his
+golf clubs, his gun cases littering the hall. When she motored he would
+be at the wheel instead of a detached and rigid-faced chauffeur, and he
+would whirl her along, taking risk, all the time.
+
+But would he be able to love her?
+
+Her diffidence and her vanity fought over that question; fought
+furiously, and with an ugly tenacity. It seemed that the vanity
+conquered. For she resolved to make the trial.
+
+Many striking advantages were on her side. She could give any man a
+magnificent social position, could take him into the heart of the great
+world. Her husband, unless he were absolutely impossible--and of course
+he would not be--would be welcomed everywhere because of her. She was
+rich. She had unusual charm. She was quick witted, intelligent, well
+read, full of tact and knowledge of the world. Surely she could be a
+splendid companion, even a great aid, to any man of the least ambition.
+And she was still very handsome--with difficulty.
+
+She and her Greek alone knew exactly how much trouble had to be taken to
+keep her as she was when she went among people.
+
+She had not been able to do much with her mind. It seemed uncontrollable
+by her. There was no harmony in her inner life. The diversities within
+her were sharp, intense. In her kingdom of self there was perpetual
+rebellion. And the disorder in her moral life had hastened the aging
+process more even than she was aware of. Underneath the artificial
+beauty of her appearance she was now older than her years.
+
+But she was still very handsome--with difficulty.
+
+She hardened herself after the fight and resolved that, if she chose,
+she could still make almost any man love her. That she could easily
+fascinate she knew. Most people were subject to her easy charm and to
+the delightfully unaffected manner which no amount of vanity had ever
+been able to rid her of. Surely the temporarily fascinated man might
+easily be changed into the permanent lover! Fear assailed her certainly
+when she thought of the danger of deliberately contrasting with her
+maturity the vividness of youth. To do what she thought of doing would
+be to run a great risk. When she had married Lord Sellingworth she had
+provided herself with a foil to her beauty and to her comparative
+youth. To marry a young man would be to make herself the foil. He would
+emphasize her age by his lack of years. Could she dare it?
+
+Again she hardened herself and resolved that she would dare it. The
+wildness in her came uppermost, rose to recklessness. After me the
+deluge! She might not be happy long if she married a young husband,
+but she might be happy for a time. The mere marriage would surely be a
+triumph for her. And if she had three years, two years, even one year of
+happiness, she would sing a _Laus Deo_ and let the deluge close over her
+head.
+
+She began, in woman’s quiet but penetrating way, to look about her. She
+met many young men in the world, in fact nearly all the young eligible
+men of the time. Many of them came to her house, for she often gave
+parties to which she asked not only the “old guard” and the well-known
+men of the day, but also the young married women. Now she began to give
+small dances to which she asked pretty young girls. There was a ballroom
+built out at the back of her house. It was often in use. The pretty
+young girls began to say she was “a dear” to bother so much about them.
+Dancing men voted her a thundering good hostess and a most good-natured
+woman. In popularity she almost cut out the Duchess of Wellingborough,
+who sometimes gave dances, too, for young people.
+
+Really through it all she was on the watch, was seeking the possible
+husband.
+
+Presently she found the man with whom she could imagine being almost
+desperately happy if he would only fall in with her hidden views. They
+were so carefully hidden that not one of her friends, not one of the
+“old guard,” suspected that she had made up her mind to marry again and
+to make what is universally called “a foolish marriage.”
+
+His name was Rupert Louth, and he was the fourth son of an impecunious
+but delightful peer, Lord Blyston. He was close upon thirty, and had
+spent the greater part of his time, since his twentieth year, out of
+England. He had ranched in Canada, and had also done something vague
+of the outdoor kind in Texas. He had fought, and was a good man of his
+hands. His health was splendid. He was as hard as nails in condition,
+and as lively and ready as they make them. Many things he could do, but
+one thing he had never been able to do. He had never been able to make
+money. His gift lay rather in the direction of joyously spending it.
+This gift distracted his father, who confided to Lady Sellingworth his
+fears for the lad’s--he would insist on calling Rupert the lad--for
+the lad’s future. Here he was back on the family’s hands with expensive
+tastes and no prospects whatever!
+
+“And he’s always after the women, too!” said Lord Blyston, with admiring
+despair. “He’s been away from them so long there’s no holding him.”
+
+After a pause he added:
+
+“My dear Adela, if you want to do me a good turn find the lad a wife.
+His poor mother’s gone, or she would have done it. What he wants is a
+wife who can manage him, with a decent amount of money.”
+
+Without exactly saying so, Lady Sellingworth implied that she would see
+what she could do for Rupert.
+
+From that moment Lord Blyston pushed “the lad” perpetually towards 18A
+Berkeley Square.
+
+Rupert Louth was fair and very good-looking, reckless and full of go.
+And wherever he went he carried with him an outdoor atmosphere. He cared
+nothing for books, music, or intellectual pursuits. Nevertheless, he was
+at home everywhere, and quite as much at ease in a woman’s drawing-room
+as rounding up cattle in Canada or lassooing wild horses in Texas. He
+lived entirely and wholeheartedly for the day, and was a magnificent
+specimen of dashing animal life; for certainly the animal predominated
+in him.
+
+Lady Sellingworth fell in love with him--it really was like falling in
+love each time--and resolved to marry him. A wonderful breath of manhood
+and youth exhaled from “the lad” and almost intoxicated her. It called
+to her wildness. It brought back to her the days when she had been a
+magnificent girl, had shot over the moors, and had more than held her
+own in the hunting field. After she had married Lord Sellingworth she
+had given up shooting and hunting, had devoted herself more keenly
+to the arts, to mental and purely social pursuits, to the opera,
+the forming of a salon, to politics and to entertaining, than to the
+physical pleasures which had formerly played such a prominent part in
+her life. Since his death she had put down her horses. But now she began
+to change her mode of living. She went with Rupert to Tattersalls, and
+they picked up some good horses together. She began riding again, and
+lent him a mount. She was perpetually at Hurlingham and Ranelagh, and
+developed a passion for polo, which he played remarkably well. She
+played lawn tennis at King’s Club in the morning, and renewed her energy
+at golf.
+
+Louth was really struck by her activity and competence, and said of her
+that she was a damned good sport and as active as a cat. He also said
+that there wasn’t a country in the world that bred such wonderful old
+women as England. This remark he made to his father, who rejoined that
+Adela Sellingworth was not an old woman.
+
+“Well, she must be near fifty!” said his son. “And if that isn’t old for
+a woman where are we to look for it?”
+
+Lord Blyston replied that there were many women far older than Adela
+Sellingworth, to which his son answered:
+
+“Anyhow, she’s as active as a cat, so why don’t you marry her?”
+
+“She’s twenty years too young for me,” said Lord Blyston. “I should bore
+her to death.”
+
+It had just occurred to him that Rupert could be very comfortable on
+Lord Sellingworth’s and Lord Manham’s combined fortunes, though he
+had no idea that Lady Sellingworth had ever thought of “the lad” as a
+possible husband.
+
+Other people, however, noticed the new development in her life.
+
+Every morning quite early she was to be seen, perfectly mounted,
+cantering in the Row, often with Rupert Louth beside her. Her
+extraordinary interest in every branch of athletics was generally
+remarked. She even went to boxing matches, and was persuaded to give
+away prizes at a big meeting at Stamford Bridge.
+
+Although she never said a word about it to anyone, this sudden outburst
+of intense bodily activity at her age presently began to tire, then
+almost to exhaust her. The strain upon her was great, too great.
+Whatever Rupert Louth did, he never turned a hair. But she was nearly
+twenty years older than he was, and decidedly out of training. She
+fought desperately against her physical fatigue, and showed a gay
+face to the world. But a horrible conviction possessed her. She began
+presently to feel certain that her effort to live up to Rupert Louth’s
+health and vigour was hastening the aging process in her body. By what
+she was doing she was marring her chance of preserving into old age
+the appearance of comparative youth. Sometimes at night, when all the
+activities of the day were over and there was no prospect of seeing
+Rupert again until, at earliest, the following morning, she felt
+absolutely haggard with weariness of body--felt as she said to herself
+with a shudder, like an old hag. But she could not give up, could not
+rest, for Rupert expected of everyone who was not definitely laid on
+the shelf inexhaustible energy, tireless vitality. His own perpetual
+freshness was a marvel, and fascinated Lady Sellingworth. To be with him
+was like being with eternal youth, and made her long for her own lost
+youth with an ache of desperation. But to act being young is hideously
+different from being actually young. She acted astonishingly well, but
+she paid for every moment of the travesty, and Rupert never noticed,
+never had the least suspicion of all she was going through on account of
+him.
+
+To him she was merely a magnificently hospitable pal of his father’s,
+who took a kindly interest in him. He found her capital company. He,
+like everyone else, felt her easy fascination, enjoyed being with her.
+But, like Rocheouart of the past days, he never thought of her as a
+possible lover. Nor did it ever occur to him that she was thinking of
+him as a possible husband. He always wanted, and generally managed to
+have a splendid time; and he was quite willing to be petted and spoilt
+and made much of; but he was not, under a mask of carelessness, a
+cold and persistent egoist. He really was just what he seemed to be, a
+light-hearted, rather uproarious, and very healthy young man, intent on
+enjoying himself, and recklessly indifferent to the future. He was
+quite willing to eat Lady Sellingworth’s excellent dinners, to ride her
+spirited horses, to sit in her opera box and look at pretty women while
+others listened to music, but it never occurred to him that it would be
+the act of a wise man to try to put her fortune into his own pocket at
+the price of marrying her.
+
+His lack of self-interest, which she divined, charmed Lady Sellingworth;
+on the other hand, she was tormented by his detachment from her, by
+his lack of all vision of the truth of the situation. And she was
+perpetually tortured by jealousy.
+
+Before she had been in love with Rupert she had often felt jealous. All
+women of her temperament are subject to jealousy, and all middle-aged
+people who worship youth unsuitably have felt its sting. But she had
+never before known jealousy as she knew it now.
+
+Although she was so often with Rupert she was more often not with him.
+He made no pretences of virtue to her or to anyone else. He was a cheery
+Pagan, a good sport and--no doubt--a devil among the women. Being
+a thorough gentleman he never talked, as some vulgar men do, of his
+conquests. But Lady Sellingworth knew that his silence probably covered
+a multitude of sins. And her ignorance of the greater part of his life
+often ravaged her.
+
+What was he doing when he was not with her? Who was he making love to?
+
+His name was not specially connected with that of any girl whom she knew
+in society. But she had reason to know that he spent a lot of his time
+out of society in circles to which she had never penetrated. Doubtless
+he met quantities of women whose names she had never heard of, unknown
+women of the stage, women who went to night clubs, women of the curious
+world which floats between the aristocracy and the respectable middle
+classes, which is as well dressed as the one and greedier even than
+the other, which seems always to have unlimited money, and which,
+nevertheless, has often no visible means of subsistence.
+
+She lay awake often, when she badly needed sleep, wondering where Rupert
+was and what he was doing.
+
+Jealousy, combined with unnatural physical exertion, and the perpetual
+endeavour to throw round her an atmosphere of youth, energy and
+unceasing cheerfulness, wrought havoc in Lady Sellingworth. Her
+appearance began to deteriorate. Deeper lines became visible near her
+eyes, and the light of those eyes was feverish. Her nerves began to go
+to pieces. Restlessness increased upon her. She was scarcely able to
+keep still for a moment. The more she needed repose the more incapable
+of repose she became. The effort to seem younger, gayer, stronger than
+she was became at last almost convulsive. Her social art was tarnished.
+The mechanism began to be visible.
+
+People noticed the change in her and began to discuss it, and more than
+one of the “old guard” hit upon the reason of it. It became subtly known
+and whispered about that Adela Sellingworth was desperately in love with
+Rupert Louth. Several of her friends hinted at their knowledge to Lady
+Sellingworth, and she was forced to laugh at the idea as absurd, knowing
+that her laughter would serve no good end. These experienced women
+knew. Impossible to deceive them about a thing of that kind! They were
+mercilessly capable in detecting a hidden passion in one of their body.
+Their intrigues and loves were usually common property, known to, and
+frankly discussed by them all.
+
+Lady Sellingworth presently had the satisfaction of knowing that the
+whole of the “old guard” was talking about her passion for Rupert Louth.
+This fact drove her to a hard decision which was not natural to her.
+She wanted to marry Rupert because she was in love with him. But now
+she felt she must marry him to save her own pride before her merciless
+fellow-women. She decided that the time had come when she must trample
+on her own delicacy and prove that she still possessed the power of a
+conqueror. Otherwise she would be laughed at by the greater part of the
+society in which she usually lived.
+
+She resolved to open Rupert Louth’s eyes and to make him understand that
+she and all she stood for were at his disposal. She knew he was up to
+the eyes in debt. She knew he had no prospects. Lord Blyston had no
+money to give him, and was for ever in difficulties himself. It was a
+critical moment for Louth, and a critical moment for her. Their marriage
+would smooth out the whole situation, would set him free from all money
+miseries, and her from greater miseries still--torments of desire, and
+the horror of being laughed at or pitied by her set. And in any case she
+felt that the time had arrived when she must do something drastic; must
+either achieve or frankly and definitely give up. She knew that she was
+nearing the end of her tether. She could not much longer keep up the
+brilliant pretence of being an untiring Amazon crammed full of the joie
+de vivre which she had assumed for the purpose of winning Rupert Louth
+as a husband. Her powers of persistence were rapidly waning. Only will
+drove her along, in defiance of the warnings and protests of her body.
+But the untiring Amazon was cracking up, to use a favourite expression
+of Louth’s. Soon the weary, middle-aged woman must claim her miserable
+rights: the right to be tired occasionally, the right to “slack off”
+ at certain hours of the day, the right to find certain things neither
+suitable nor amusing to her, the right, in fact, to be now and then a
+middle-aged woman. Certainly something in her said to Lady Sellingworth:
+“In your marriage, if you marry, you will have to act even better, even
+more strenuously, than you are acting now. Being in love as you are, you
+will never be able to dare to be your true self. Your whole married life
+will be a perpetual throwing of dust in the eyes of your husband. To
+keep him you will have to live backwards, or to try to live backwards,
+all the time. If you are tired now, what will you be then?” And she knew
+that the voice was speaking the truth. Her imp, too, was watching
+her closely and with an ugly intensity of irony as she approached her
+decision.
+
+Nevertheless, she defied him; she defied the voice within her, and took
+it. She said to herself, or her worn nervous system said to her, that
+there was nothing else to be done. In her fatigue of body and nerves she
+felt reckless as only the nearly worn out feel. Something--she didn’t
+know what--had cast the die for her. It was her fate to open Rupert
+Louth’s eyes, to make him see; it was her fate to force her will into
+a last strong spasm. She would not look farther than the day. She would
+not contemplate her married life imaginatively, held in contemplation,
+like a victim, by the icy hands of reason. She would kick reason out,
+harden herself, give her wildness free play, and act, concentrating
+on the present with all the force of which her diseased nerves were
+capable.
+
+Instead of thinking just then “after me the deluge,” her thought was
+“after my marriage to Rupert Louth the deluge.” She would, she must,
+make him her husband. It would be perhaps the last assertion of her
+power. She knew enough of men to know that such an assertion might well
+be followed by disaster. But she was prepared to brave any disaster
+except one, the losing of Louth and the subsequent ironical amusement of
+the “old guard.”
+
+Two or three days later Louth called, mounted on one of her horses, to
+take her for a ride in the park.
+
+During the previous night Lady Sellingworth had scarcely slept at all.
+She had got up feeling desperately nervous and almost lightheaded. On
+looking in the glass she had been shocked at her appearance, but she had
+managed to alter that considerably, although not so completely as she
+wished. Depression, following inevitably on insomnia, had fixed its
+claws in her. She felt deadly, almost terrible, and as if her face must
+be showing plainly the ugliness of her mental condition. For she
+seemed to have lost control over it. The facial muscles seemed to have
+hardened, to have become fixed. When the servant came to tell her that
+Louth and the horses were at the door she was almost afraid to go down,
+lest he should see at once in her face the strong will power which she
+had summoned up; as a weapon in this crisis of her life.
+
+As she went slowly downstairs she forced herself to smile. The smile
+came with difficulty, but it came, and when she met Louth he did not
+seem to notice any peculiarity in her. But, to tell the truth, he
+scarcely seemed to notice her at all with any particularity. For her
+strange and abnormal pre-occupation was matched by a like pre-occupation
+in him. He took off his hat, bade her good morning, and helped her
+skilfully to mount. But she saw at once that he was not as usual. His
+face was grave and looked almost thoughtful. The merry light had gone
+out of his eyes. And, strangest phenomenon of all, he was tongue-tied.
+They started away from the house, and rode through Mayfair towards the
+park in absolute silence.
+
+She began to wonder very much what was the matter with Rupert, and
+guessed that he had “come an awful cropper” of some kind. It must
+certainly be an exceptional cropper to cloud his spirit. Perhaps he had
+lost a really large sum of money, or perhaps he--The thought of a woman
+came suddenly to her, she did not know why. Suspicion, jealousy woke
+in her. She glanced sideways at Rupert under her hard hat. He looked
+splendid on horseback, handsomer even than when he was on foot. For he
+was that rare thing, a really perfect horseman. His appearance disarmed
+her. She longed to do something for him, by some act of glowing
+generosity to win him completely. But they were still in the streets,
+and she said nothing. Directly they turned into the green quietude of
+the park, however, she yielded to her impulse and spoke, and asked him
+bluntly what was the matter.
+
+He did not fence with her. Fencing was not easy to him. He turned in
+the saddle, faced her, and told her that he had made a damned fool of
+himself. Still bent on generosity, on being more than a friend to him,
+she asked him to tell her how. His reply almost stunned her. A fortnight
+previously he had secretly married a Miss Willoughby--really a Miss
+Bertha Crouch, and quite possibly of Crouch End--who was appearing in
+a piece at the Alhambra Theatre, but who had not yet arrived at the
+dignity of a “speaking part.” This young lady, it seemed, had already
+“landed” Louth in expenses which he didn’t know how to meet. What was he
+to do? She was the loveliest thing on earth, but she was accustomed to
+living in unbridled luxury. In fact she wanted the earth, and he was
+longing to give it to her. But how? Where could he possibly get hold
+of enough money for the purchase of the earth on behalf of Miss Bertha
+Crouch--now Willoughby, or, rather, now the Hon. Mrs. Rupert Louth?
+His face softened, his manner grew almost boyishly eager, as he poured
+confidences into Lady Sellingworth’s ears. She was his one real friend!
+She was a woman of the world. She had lived ever so much longer than he
+had and knew five times as much. What would she advise? Might he bring
+little Bertha to see her? Bertha was really the most splendid little
+sort, although naturally she wanted to have the things other women
+had--etc., etc.
+
+
+
+When she got home that day Lady Sellingworth almost crumbled. By a
+supreme effort during the rest of the ride she had managed to conceal
+the fact that she had received a blow over the heart. The pride on which
+she had been intending to trample when she came downstairs that morning
+had come to her aid in that difficult moment. The woman of the world
+had, as Louth would have said, “come up to the scratch.” But when she
+was alone she gave way to an access of furious despair; and, shut up in
+her bedroom behind locked doors, was just a savage human being who had
+been horribly wounded, and who was unable to take any revenge for the
+wound. She would not take any revenge, because she was not the sort
+of woman who could go quite into the gutter. And she knew even in her
+writhings of despair that Rupert Louth would go scot free. She would
+never try to punish him for what he had done to her: and he would never
+know he had done it, unless one of the “old guard” told him.
+
+It was when she thought of the “old guard” that Lady Sellingworth almost
+crumbled, almost went to pieces. For she knew that whatever she did, or
+left undone, she would never succeed in deceiving its members. She would
+not have been deceived herself if circumstances had been changed, if
+another woman had been in her situation and she had been an onlooker.
+“They” would all know.
+
+For a moment she thought of flight.
+
+But this episode ended in the usual way; it ended in the usual effort of
+the poor human being to safeguard the sacred things by deception. Lady
+Sellingworth somehow--how do human beings achieve such efforts?--pulled
+herself together and gave herself to pretence. She pretended to Louth
+that she was his best friend and had never thought of being anything
+else. She was the receptacle for the cascade of his confidences. She
+swore to help him in any way she could. Even after she received
+“the Crouch,” once Willoughby and still Willoughby to the “nuts” who
+frequented the stalls of the Alhambra. She received that tall and
+voluptuous young woman, with her haughty face and her disdainful airs,
+and she bore with her horrible proprietorship of Louth. And finally she
+broke it to Lord Blyston at Rupert’s earnest request.
+
+That should have been her supreme effort. But it was not. There was no
+rest in pretence. As soon as Lord Blyston knew, everyone knew, including
+the “old guard.” And then, of course, Lady Sellingworth’s energies had
+all to be called into full play.
+
+It was no wonder if underneath the cleverness of her Greek she aged
+rapidly, more rapidly than was natural in a woman of her years. For she
+had piled effort on effort. She had been young for Rupert Louth until
+she had been physically exhausted; and then she had been old for him
+until she was mentally exhausted. The hardy Amazon had been forced
+to change in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, into the calm and
+middle-aged adviser of hot passioned youth, into the steady unselfish
+confidante, into the breaker of untoward news to the venerable
+parent--in fact, into Mother Hubbard, as Lady Sellingworth more than
+once desperately told herself.
+
+“Mother Hubbard! Mother Hubbard! I’m just Mother Hubbard to him and to
+that horrible girl!”
+
+And she saw herself as Mother Hubbard, a “dame.” And she alone knew
+how absolutely bare her cupboard was at that time. But she struggled on
+magnificently, taking no rest; she faced the “old guard” with splendid
+courage, in fact with such courage that most of them pretended to
+be deceived, and perhaps--for is not everything possible in this
+life?--perhaps two or three of them really were deceived.
+
+The Duchess of Wellingborough said often at this time: “Addie
+Sellingworth has the stuff in her of a leader of forlorn hopes!”
+
+Lord Blyston paid up for “the Crouch,” once Willoughby, who had now
+left the Alhambra disconsolate. He paid up by selling the only estate
+he still possessed, and letting his one remaining country house to an
+extraordinarily vulgar manufacturer from the Midlands, who did not
+know a Turner from a Velasquez until he was told. And for the time “the
+Crouch” was as satisfied as a woman of her type can ever be.
+
+Time passed on. Lady Sellingworth went about everywhere with a smiling
+carefully-made-up face and a heart full of dust and ashes.
+
+But even then she could not make up her mind finally to abandon all
+pretence of youth, all hope of youth’s distractions, pleasures, even
+joys. She had a terribly obstinate nature, it seemed, a terribly strong
+lust after life.
+
+Even her imp could not lash her into acceptance of the inevitable, could
+not drive her with his thongs of irony into the dignity which only comes
+when the human being knows how to give up, and when.
+
+But what the imp could not achieve was eventually achieved by a man,
+whose name Lady Sellingworth did not know.
+
+This was how it happened.
+
+One day when Lady Sellingworth was walking down Bond Street--it was
+in the morning and she was with the Duchess of Wellingborough--an
+extraordinarily handsome young man, whom neither of them knew, met them
+and passed by. He was tall, brown skinned, with soft, very intelligent
+brown eyes, and strong, manly and splendidly cut features. His thick
+brown hair was brushed, his little brown moustache was cut, like a
+Guardsman’s. But he was certainly not a Guardsman. He was not even
+an Englishman, although he was dressed in a smart country suit made
+evidently by a first-rate London tailor. There was something faintly
+exotic about his eyes, and his way of holding himself and moving, which
+suggested to Lady Sellingworth either Spain or South America. She was
+not quite sure which. He gave her a long look as he went by, and she
+felt positive that he turned to glance after her when he had passed her.
+But this she never knew, as naturally she did not turn her head.
+
+“What an extraordinarily good-looking man that was!” said the Duchess
+of Wellingborough. “I wonder who he is. If--,” and she mentioned a
+well-known Spanish duke, “had a brother that might be the man. Do you
+know who he is?”
+
+“No,” said Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“Well, he must know who you are.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“He seemed deeply interested in you.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth wanted to say that a young man might possibly be
+deeply interested in her without knowing who she was. But she did not
+say it. It was not worth while. And she knew the duchess had not meant
+to be ill-mannered.
+
+She lunched with the duchess that day in Grosvenor Square, and met
+several of the “old guard” whom she knew very well, disastrously well.
+After lunch the duchess alluded to the brown man they had met in Bond
+Street, described him minutely, and asked if anyone knew him. Nobody
+knew him. But after the description everyone wanted to know him. It was
+generally supposed that he must be one of the strangers from distant
+countries who are perpetually flocking to London.
+
+“We shall probably all know him in a week or two,” said someone. “A man
+of that type is certain to have brought introductions.”
+
+“If he has brought one for Adela I’m sure he’ll deliver that first,”
+ said the duchess, with her usual almost boisterous good humour.
+
+And thereupon she told the “old guard” of the stranger’s evident
+interest in Lady Sellingworth.
+
+Although she completely concealed it, Lady Sellingworth felt decided
+interest in the brown man. The truth was that his long and ardent--yet
+somehow not impudently ardent--look at her had stirred the dust and
+ashes in her heart. It was as if a little of the dust rose and floated
+away, as if some of the ashes crumbled into a faint grey powder which
+was almost nothingness.
+
+At that moment she was in the dangerous mood when a woman of her type
+will give herself to almost any distraction which promises a possible
+adventure, or which holds any food for her almost starving vanity. Her
+love--or was it really lust--for Rupert Louth still ravaged her. The
+thought of “the Crouch’s” triumph still persecuted her mind. Terrible
+pictures of a happiness she had no share in still made every night
+hideous to her. She longed for Rupert Louth, but she longed also to be
+reinstated in her self-esteem. That glance of a stranger had helped her.
+She asked herself whether a man of that type, young, amazingly handsome,
+would ever send such a glance to Mother Hubbard. Suddenly she felt
+safer, as if she could hold up her head once more. Really she had always
+held it up, but to herself, since Louth’s blunt confession, she had been
+a woman bowed down, old, done with, a thing fit for the scrap heap.
+Now a slight, almost trembling sensation of returning self-esteem stole
+through her. She could not have been mistaken about the brown man’s
+interest in her, for the Duchess of Wellingborough had specially
+noticed it. She wondered who he was, whether he really had brought
+introductions, where he was staying, whether he would presently appear
+in her set. His brown eyes were gentle and yet enterprising. He looked
+like a sportsman, she thought, and yet as if he were more intellectual,
+more subtle than Louth. There seemed to be a slight thread of sympathy
+between her and him! She had felt it immediately when they had met in
+Bond Street. She wondered whether he had felt it too.
+
+In all probability if Lady Sellingworth had been in a thoroughly normal
+condition at this time she would not have thought twice about such a
+trifling episode as a stranger’s glance at her in the street. But she
+was not in a normal condition. She was the prey of acute depression
+and morbidity. Life was becoming hideous to her. She exaggerated her
+loneliness in the midst of society. She had mentally constructed for
+herself a new life with Louth as her husband. Imaginatively she had
+lived that life until it had become strangely familiar to her, as an
+imagined life can become to a highly strung woman. The abrupt and brutal
+withdrawal of all possibility of it as a reality had made the solitude
+of her widowhood seem suddenly terrible, unnatural, a sort of nightmare.
+She had moments of desperation in which she said to herself, “This
+cannot go on. I can’t live alone any more or I shall go mad.” In such
+moments she sometimes thought of rewarding Sir Seymour Portman’s long
+fidelity. But something in her, something imperious, shrank at the
+thought. She did not want to marry an elderly man.
+
+And yet it seemed that no young man would ever want to marry her.
+
+She shuddered before the mysteries of the flesh. Often she was shaken by
+a storm of self-pity. Darkness yawned before her. And she still longed,
+as she thought no other woman could ever have longed, for happiness,
+companionship, a virile affection.
+
+For some days she did not see the stranger again, although she was
+several times in Bond Street. She began to think, to fear, he had
+left London; yes--to fear! It had come to that! Realizing it, she felt
+humiliation. But his eyes had seemed to tell her that she possessed for
+him great attraction! She longed to see those eyes again, to decipher
+their message more carefully. The exact meaning of it might have escaped
+her in that brief instant of encounter. She wondered whether the young
+man had known who she was, or whether he had merely been suddenly struck
+by her appearance, and had thought, “I wish I knew that woman.” She
+wondered what exactly was his social status. No doubt if he had been
+English she could have “placed” him at once, or if he had been French.
+But he was neither the one nor the other. And she had had little time
+to make up her mind about him, although, of course, his good looks had
+leaped to the eye.
+
+She had begun to think that Destiny had decided against another
+encounter between her and this man when one day Seymour Portman asked
+her to lunch with him at the Carlton. She accepted and went into the
+restaurant at the appointed time. It was crowded with people, many of
+whom she knew, but one table near that allotted to the general’s
+party had two empty chairs before it. On it was a card with the word
+“Reserved.” Soon after the general’s guests had begun to lunch, when
+Lady Sellingworth was in the full flow of conversation with her host, by
+whose side she was sitting, and with a hunting peer whom she had known
+all her life, and who sat on her other side, two people made their way
+to the table near by and sat down in the empty chairs. One was an old
+woman in a coal-black wig, with a white face and faded eyes, rather
+vague and dull in appearance, but well dressed and quietly self-assured,
+the other was the man Lady Sellingworth had met in Bond Street. He took
+the chair which was nearly opposite to her; but whether deliberately
+or by accident she had no time to notice. He did not look at her for
+several minutes after sitting down. He was apparently busy ordering
+lunch, consulting with a waiter, and speaking to his old companion,
+whose coal-black wig made a rather strange contrast with her lined white
+cheeks and curiously indefinite eyes. But presently, with a sort of
+strong deliberation, his gaze was turned on Lady Sellingworth, and she
+knew at once that he had seen her when he came in. She met his gaze
+for an instant, and this time seemed to be definitely aware of some
+mysterious thread of sympathy between her and him. Sir Seymour spoke to
+her in his quiet, rather deep voice, and she turned towards him, and as
+she did so she felt she knew, as she had never known before, that she
+could never marry him, that something in her that was of her essence was
+irrevocably dedicated to youth and the beauty of youth, which is like
+no other beauty. The wildness of her which did not die, which probably
+would never die, was capable of trampling over Sir Seymour’s fidelity to
+get to unstable, selfish and careless youth, was capable of casting away
+his fidelity for the infidelity of youth. As she met her host’s grave
+eyes, she sentenced him in her heart to eternal watching at her gate.
+She could not, she never would be able to, let him into the secret room
+where she was really at home.
+
+During lunch she now and then glanced towards the old woman and the
+stranger. They evidently knew no one, for no one took any notice of
+them, and they did not seem to be on the look out for acquaintances.
+Many people passed by them, entering and leaving the restaurant, but
+there were no glances of recognition, no greetings. Only some of the
+women looked at the young man as if struck, or almost startled, by
+his good looks. Certainly he was amazingly handsome. His brown skin
+suggested the sun; his figure athletic exercises; the expression of his
+face audacity and complete self-possession. Yet there was in his large
+eyes a look of almost appealing gentleness, as if he were seeking
+something, some sympathy, some affection, perhaps, which he needed and
+had never yet found. Several times when she glanced towards him with
+careful casualness, Lady Sellingworth found his eyes fixed upon her with
+this no doubt unconsciously appealing expression in them. She knew that
+this man recognized her as the woman he had met in Bond Street. She felt
+positive that for some reason he was intent upon her, that he was deeply
+interested in her. For what reason? Her woman’s vanity, leaping eagerly
+up like a flame that had been damped down for a time but that now was
+being coaxed into bright burning, told her that there could be only one
+reason. Why is a handsome young man interested in a woman whom he
+does not know and has only met casually in the street? The mysterious
+attraction of sex supplied, Lady Sellingworth thought, the only possible
+answer. She had not been able to attract Rupert Louth, but she attracted
+this man, strongly, romantically, perhaps. The knowledge--for it seemed
+like knowledge, though it was really only surmise--warmed her whole
+nature. She felt again the delicious conquering sensation which she had
+lost. She emerged out of humiliation. Her vivacity grew as the lunch
+progressed. Suddenly she felt good-looking, fascinating, even brilliant.
+The horrible dreariness of life had departed from her, driven away by
+the look in a stranger’s eyes.
+
+Towards the end of lunch the woman on Sir Seymour’s other side said to
+him:
+
+“Do you know who that man is--the young man opposite to that funny South
+American-looking old woman with the black wig?”
+
+Sir Seymour looked for a moment at the brown man with his cool, direct,
+summing-up, soldier’s eyes.
+
+“No,” he answered. “I’ve never set eyes on him before.”
+
+“I think he is the best-looking man I have ever seen,” said the woman.
+
+“No doubt--very good-looking, very good-looking!” said her host; “but on
+the wrong side of the line, I should say.”
+
+“The wrong side of the line? What do you mean?”
+
+“The shady side,” said Sir Seymour.
+
+And then he turned to speak to Lady Sellingworth.
+
+She had overheard the conversation, and felt suddenly angry with him.
+But she concealed her vexation and merely said to herself that men are
+as jealous of each other as women are jealous, that a man cannot bear
+to hear another man praised by a woman. Possibly--she was not sure of
+this--possibly Sir Seymour had noticed that she was interested in the
+stranger. He was very sharp in all matters connected with her. His
+affection increased his natural acuteness. She resolved to be very
+careful, even very deceptive. And she said:
+
+“Isn’t it odd how good looks, good manners and perfect clothes, even
+combined with charm, cannot conceal the fact that a man is an outsider?”
+
+“Ah, you agree with me!” Sir Seymour said, looking suddenly pleased.
+“That’s good! Men and women are seldom at one on such matters.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth shot a glance at the man discussed and felt absurdly
+like a traitor.
+
+Soon afterwards Sir Seymour’s lunch party broke up.
+
+In leaving the restaurant Lady Sellingworth passed so close to the young
+man that her gown almost brushed against him. He looked up at her, and
+this time the meaning of his glance was unmistakable. It said: “I want
+to know you. How can I get to know you?”
+
+She went home feeling almost excited. On the hall table of her house she
+found a note from Rupert Louth asking her whether she would help “little
+Bertha” by speaking up for her to a certain great dressmaker, who
+had apparently been informed of the Louths’ shaky finances. Louth’s
+obstinate reliance on her as a devoted friend of him and his
+disdainfully vulgar young wife began to irritate Lady Sellingworth
+almost beyond endurance. She took the letter up with her into the
+drawing-room, and sat down by the writing-table holding it in her hand.
+It had come at a dangerous moment.
+
+Louth’s blindness now exasperated her, although she had desperately done
+her best to close his eyes to the real nature of her feeling for him and
+to the unexpressed intentions she had formed concerning him and had been
+forced to abandon. It was maddening to be tacitly rejected as a possible
+wife and to be enthusiastically claimed as a self-sacrificing friend.
+Surely no woman born of woman could be expected to stand it. At that
+moment Lady Sellingworth began almost to hate Rupert Louth.
+
+What a contrast there was between his gross misunderstanding of her and
+the brown man’s understanding! Already she began to tell herself that
+this man who did not know her nevertheless in some subtle, almost
+occult, way had a clear understanding of her present need. He wanted
+sympathy--his eyes said that--but he had sympathy to give. She began
+to hate the controlling absurdities of civilization. All her wildness
+seemed to rise up and rush to the surface. How inhuman, how against
+nature it was, that two human beings who wished to know each other
+should be held back from such knowledge by mere convention, by the
+unwritten law of the solemn and formal introduction! A great happiness
+might lie in their intercourse, but conventionality solemnly and
+selfishly forbade it, unless they could find a common acquaintance to
+mumble a few unmeaning words over them. Mumbo-Jumbo! What a fantastic
+world of stupidly obedient puppets this world of London was! She said to
+herself that she hated it. Then she thought of her first widowhood and
+of her curious year in Paris.
+
+There she might more easily have made the acquaintance of the unknown
+man in some Bohemian cafe, where people talked to each other casually,
+giving way to their natural impulses, drifting in and out as the whim
+took them, careless of the _convenances_ or actively despising them. In
+London, at any rate if one is English and cursed by being well
+known, one lives in a strait waist-coat. Lady Sellingworth felt the
+impossibility of speaking to a stranger without an introduction in spite
+of her secret wildness.
+
+And if he spoke to her?
+
+She remembered Sir Seymour’s instant judgment on him. It had made her
+feel very angry at the time when it was delivered, but then she had not
+held any mental debate about it. She had simply been secretly up in
+arms against an attack on the man she was interested in. Now she thought
+about it more seriously.
+
+Although she had never been able to love Sir Seymour, she esteemed him
+very highly and valued his friendship very much. She also respected
+his intellect and his character. He was not a petty man, but an
+honest, brave and far-seeing man of the world. Such a man’s opinion was
+certainly worth something. One could not put it aside as if it were the
+opinion of a fool. And after a brief glance at the stranger Sir Seymour
+had unhesitatingly pronounced him to be an outsider.
+
+Was he an outsider?
+
+As a rule Lady Sellingworth was swift in deciding what was the social
+status of a man. She could “place” a man as quickly as any woman. But,
+honestly, she could not make up her mind about the stranger. Although
+he was so exceptionally good-looking, perhaps, he was not exactly
+distinguished looking. But she had known dukes and Cabinet Ministers
+who resembled farmers and butlers, young men of high rank who had the
+appearance of grooms or bookies. It was difficult to be sure about
+anyone without personal knowledge of him.
+
+When she had first seen the young man in Bond Street it had certainly
+not occurred to her that there was anything common or shady in his
+appearance. And the Duchess of Wellingborough had not hinted that she
+held such an opinion about him. And surely women are quicker about such
+matters than men.
+
+Lady Sellingworth decided that Seymour Portman was prejudiced. Old
+courtiers are apt to be prejudiced. Always mixing with the most
+distinguished men of their time, they acquire, perhaps too easily, a
+habit of looking down upon ordinary but quite respectable people.
+
+Here Lady Sellingworth suddenly smiled. The adjective “respectable”
+ certainly did not fit the Bond Street young man. He looked slightly
+exotic! That, no doubt, had set Sir Seymour against him. He was not of
+the usual type of club man. He “intrigued” her terribly. As the Duchess
+of Wellingborough would have phrased it, she was “crazy” to know him.
+She even said to herself that she did not care whether he was on the
+shady side of the line or not. Abruptly a strong democratic feeling took
+possession of her. In the affections, in the passions, differences of
+rank did not count.
+
+Rupert Louth had married a Crouch!
+
+Lady Sellingworth looked at his note which was still in her hand, and
+memories of the disdainful young beauty “queening it”--that really was
+the only appropriate expression--“queening it” with vulgar gentility
+among the simple mannered, well-bred people to whom Louth belonged rose
+up in her mind. How terrible were those definite airs of being a lady!
+How truly unspeakable were those august condescensions of the undeniable
+Crouch!
+
+When Lady Sellingworth mused on them her sense of the equality before
+God of all human creatures decidedly weakened.
+
+She wrote a brief letter to Louth declining to “speak up” to the great
+dressmaker. “Little Bertha” must manage without her aid. She made this
+quite clear, but she wrote very charmingly, and sent her love at the end
+to little Bertha. That done, almost violently she dismissed Louth and
+his wife from her mind and became democratic again!
+
+Putting Louth and little Bertha aside, when it came to the affections
+and the passions what could one be but just a human being? Rank did not
+count when the heart was awake. She felt intensely human just then. And
+she continued to feel so. Life was quickened for her by the presence in
+London of a stranger whom nobody knew. This might be a humiliating fact.
+But how many facts connected with human beings if sternly considered are
+humiliating!
+
+And nobody knew of her fact.
+
+Every morning at this time she woke up with the hope of a little
+adventure during the day. When she went out she was alive to the
+possibility of a new encounter with the unknown man. And she met him
+several times, walking about town, sometimes alone, sometimes with the
+old lady, and once with another man, a thin sallow individual who looked
+like a Frenchman. And each time he sent her a glance which seemed almost
+to implore her to know him.
+
+But how could she know him? She never met him in society. Evidently he
+knew no one whom she knew. She began to be intensely irritated by her
+leaping desire which was constantly thwarted. That this man was in love
+with her and longing to know her she now firmly believed. She wished to
+know him. She wished it more than she wished for anything else in the
+world just then. But the gulf of conventionality yawned between them,
+and there seemed no likelihood of its ever being bridged. Sometimes she
+condemned the man for not being adventurous, for not taking his courage
+in both hands and speaking to her without an introduction. At other
+times she told herself that his not doing this proved him to be a
+gentleman, in spite of what Sir Seymour Portman had thought him. In
+defiance of his longing to know her he would not insult her.
+
+But if he only knew how she was pining for the insult!
+
+And yet if he had spoke to her perhaps she would have been angry.
+
+She discovered eventually that he was staying at the Carlton Hotel,
+for one day on her way to the restaurant she saw him with a key in his
+hand--evidently the key of his room. That same day she heard him speak
+for the first time. After lunch, when she was in the Palm Court, he
+came and stood quite close to where she was sitting. The thin, sallow
+individual was with him. They lighted cigars and looked about them. And
+presently she heard them talking in French. The thin man said something
+which she did not catch. In reply the other said, speaking very
+distinctly, almost loudly:
+
+“I shall go over to Paris on Thursday morning next. I shall stay at the
+Ritz Hotel.”
+
+That was all Lady Sellingworth heard. He had intended her to hear it.
+She was certain of that. For immediately afterwards he glanced at her
+and then moved away, like a man who has carried out an intention and can
+relax and be idle. He sat down by a table a little way off, and a waiter
+brought coffee for him and his companion.
+
+His voice, when he spoke the few words, had sounded agreeable. His
+French was excellent, but he had a slight foreign accent which Lady
+Sellingworth at once detected.
+
+Paris! He was going to Paris on Thursday!
+
+She was quite positive that he had wished her to know that. Why?
+
+There could be only one reason. She guessed that he had become as
+fiercely irritated by their situation as she was, that he was tempting
+her to break away and to do something definite, that he wanted her to
+leave London. She still had her apartment in Paris. Could he know that?
+Could he have seen her in Paris without her knowledge and have followed
+her to London?
+
+She began to feel really excited, and there was something almost
+youthful in her excitement. Yet she was on the eve of a horrible
+passing. For that day was her last day in the forties. On the following
+morning she would wake up a woman of fifty.
+
+While the two men were still having their coffee Lady Sellingworth and
+her friend got up to go away. As her tall figure disappeared the brown
+man whispered something to his companion and they both smiled. Then they
+continued talking in very low voices, and not in French.
+
+Paris! All the rest of that day Lady Sellingworth thought about Paris!
+Already it stood for a great deal in her life. Was it perhaps going to
+stand for much more? In Paris long ago--she wished it were not so
+long ago--she had tasted a curious freedom, had given herself to her
+wildness, had enlarged her boundaries. And now Paris called her again,
+called her through the voice of this man whom she did not yet know.
+
+Deliberately that day he had summoned her to Paris. She had no doubt
+about that. And if she went? He must have some quite definite intention
+connected with his wish for her to go. It could only be a romantic
+intention.
+
+And yet to-morrow she would be fifty!
+
+He was quite young. He could not be more than five-and-twenty.
+
+For a moment her imp spoke loudly in her ear. He told her that by this
+time she must have learnt her lesson, that it was useless to pretend
+that she had not, that Rupert Louth’s marriage had taught her all that
+she needed to know, and that now she must realize that the time for
+adventures, for romance, for the secret indulgence of the passions, was
+in her case irrevocably over. “Fifty! Fifty! Fifty!” he knelled in her
+ears. And there were obscure voices within her which backed him up,
+faintly, as if half afraid, agreeing with him.
+
+She listened. She could not help listening, though she hated it. And for
+a moment she was almost inclined to submit to the irony of the imp, to
+trample upon her desire, and to grasp hands once and for all with her
+self-respect.
+
+The imp said to her: “If you go to Paris you will be making a fool
+of yourself. That man doesn’t really want you to go. He is only a
+mischievous boy amusing himself at your expense. Perhaps he has made a
+bet with that friend of his that you will cross on the same day that
+he does. You are far too old for adventures. Look in the glass and see
+yourself as you really are. Remember your folly with Rupert Louth, and
+this time try to be wise.”
+
+But something else in her, the persistent vanity, perhaps, of a once
+very beautiful woman, told her that her attraction was not dead, and
+that if she obeyed her imp she would simply be throwing away the chance
+of a great joy. Once again her thoughts went to marriage. Once again
+she dreamed of a young man falling romantically in love with her, and
+of taking him into her life, and of making his life wonderful by her
+influence and her connexions.
+
+Once again she was driven by her wildness.
+
+The end of it was that she summoned her maid and told her that they were
+going over to Paris for a few days on the following Thursday. The maid
+was not surprised. She supposed that my lady wanted some new gowns. She
+asked, and was told, what to pack.
+
+Now Lady Sellingworth, as all her friends and many others knew,
+possessed an extremely valuable collection of jewels, and seldom, or
+never, moved far without taking a part of the collection with her. She
+loved jewels, and usually wore them in the evening, and as she was often
+seen in public--at the opera and elsewhere--her diamonds, emeralds,
+sapphires and pearls had often been admired, and perhaps longed for, by
+strangers.
+
+When she went to Paris on this occasion she took a jewel-case with her.
+In it there were perhaps fifty thousand pounds’ worth of gems. Her
+maid, a woman who had been with her for years, was in charge of the
+case except when Lady Sellingworth was actually in the train. Then Lady
+Sellingworth had it with her in a reserved first-class carriage for the
+whole of which she paid.
+
+The journey was not eventful. But to Lady Sellingworth it was an
+adventure.
+
+The brown man was on the train with his thin, sardonic friend, and with
+the old woman Lady Sellingworth had seen with him in London.
+
+The sight of this party--she saw them stepping into the Pullman car as
+she was going to her reserved carriage--surprised her. She had expected
+that the stranger would travel alone. As she sat down in her corner
+facing the engine, with the jewel-case on the seat next to her, she felt
+an obscure irritation. A man in search of adventure does not usually
+take two people--one of them an old woman in a black wig--with him when
+he sets out on his travels. A trio banishes romance. And how can a woman
+be thrilled by a family party?
+
+For a moment Lady Sellingworth felt anger against the stranger. For a
+moment she wished she had not undertaken the journey. It occurred to her
+that perhaps she had made a humiliating mistake when she thought that
+the brown man wished, and intended, her to go to Paris because he was
+going. Her pride was alarmed. She saw plainly for a moment the mud into
+which vanity had led her, and she longed to get out of the train and
+to remain in London. But how could she account to her maid for such a
+sudden change of plans? What could she say to her household? She
+knew, of course, that she owed them no explanation. But still--and her
+friends? She had told everybody that she was going to Paris. They would
+think her crazy for giving up the journey after she was actually in the
+train. And she had seen two or three acquaintances on the platform. No;
+she must make the journey now. It was too late to give it up. But she
+wished intensely she had not undertaken it.
+
+At the moment of this wish of hers, coming from the Pullman, the brown
+man walked slowly by on the platform, alone. His eyes were searching the
+train with keen attention. But Lady Sellingworth happened to be leaning
+back, and he did not see her. She knew he was looking for her. He went
+on out of her sight. She sat still in her corner, and presently saw
+him coming back. This time he saw her, and did something which for
+the moment startled her. On the window of the carriage, next the seat
+opposite to hers, was pasted a label with “Reserved” printed on it in
+big letters. Underneath was written: “For the Countess of Sellingworth.”
+ When the man saw Lady Sellingworth in her corner he gave no sign of
+recognition but he took out of the breast pocket of his travelling coat
+a pocket-book, went deliberately up to the window, looked hard at the
+label, and then wrote something--her name, no doubt--in his book. This
+done, he put the book back in his pocket and walked gravely away without
+glancing at her again.
+
+And now Lady Sellingworth no longer regretted that she was going to
+Paris. What the man had just done had reassured her. It was now evident
+to her that the first time they had met in Bond Street he had not known
+who she was or anything about her. He must simply have been struck by
+her beauty, and from that moment had wished to know her. Ever since
+then he must have been longing to know who she was. The fact that he
+had evidently not discovered her name till he had read it on the label
+pasted on the railway carriage window convinced her that, in spite of
+his boldness in showing her his feelings, he was a scrupulous man. A
+careless man could certainly have found out who she was at the Carlton,
+by asking a waiter. Evidently he had not chosen to do that. The omission
+showed delicacy, refinement of nature. It pleased her. It made her feel
+safe. She felt that the man was a gentleman, one who could respect a
+woman. Sir Seymour had been wrong in his hasty judgment. An outsider
+would not have behaved in such a way. That the stranger had deliberately
+taken down her name in his book while she was watching him did not
+displease her at all. He wished her to know of his longing, but he was
+evidently determined to keep it hidden from others.
+
+She felt now in the very heart of a romantic adventure, and thrilled
+with excitement about the future. What would happen when they all got
+to Paris? It was evident to her now that he did not know she had an
+apartment there--unless, indeed, he had first seen her in Paris and
+had, perhaps, followed her to London! But even if that were so it was
+unlikely that he knew where she lived.
+
+In any case she knew he was going to the Ritz.
+
+The train flew on towards the sea while she mused over possibilities and
+imagined events in Paris.
+
+She knew now, of course, that the stranger was absolutely out of her
+world. His ignorance proved to her that he could not be in any society
+she moved in. She guessed that he was some charming young man from a
+distance, come to Europe perhaps for the first time--some ardent youth
+from Brazil, from Peru, from Mexico! The guess gave colour to the
+adventure. He knew her name now. She wondered what his name was. And she
+wondered about the old woman in the wig and about the sardonic friend.
+In what relation did the three people stand to each other?
+
+She could not divine. But she thought that perhaps the old woman was the
+mother of the man she wished to know.
+
+She had a private cabin on the boat. It was on the top deck. But, as the
+weather was fine and the sea fairly calm, her maid occupied it with the
+jewel-case, while she sat in the open on a deck chair, well wrapped up
+in a fur rug. Presently an acquaintance, a colonel in the Life Guards,
+joined her, established himself in a chair at her side, and kept her
+busy with conversation.
+
+When the ship drew out into the Channel several men began to pace up
+and down the deck with the sturdy determination of good sailors resolved
+upon getting health from the salt briskness of the sea. Among them were
+the two men of the trio. The old woman had evidently gone into hiding.
+
+As Lady Sellingworth conversed with her colonel she made time, as a
+woman can, for a careful and detailed consideration of the man on whom
+her thoughts were concentrated. Although he did not look at her as he
+passed up and down the deck, she knew that he had seen where she was
+sitting. And, without letting the colonel see what she was doing, she
+followed the tall, athletic figure in the long, rough, greenish-brown
+overcoat with her eyes, looking away when it drew very near to her. And
+now and then she looked at its companion.
+
+In the Paris _rapide_ she was again alone in a carriage reserved for
+her. She did not go into the restaurant to lunch, as she hated eating in
+a crowd. Instead, her maid brought her a luncheon basket which had
+been supplied by the chef in Berkeley Square. After eating she smoked a
+cigarette and read the French papers which she had bought at the Calais
+station. And then she sat still and looked out of the window, and
+thought and dreamed and wondered and desired.
+
+Although she did not know it, she was living through almost the last
+of those dreams which are the rightful property of youth, but which
+sometimes, obstinate and deceitful, haunt elderly minds, usually to
+their undoing.
+
+The light began to fade and the dream to become more actual. She lived
+again as she had lived in the days when she was a reigning beauty,
+when there was no question of her having to seek for the joys and the
+adventures of life. In the twilight of France she reigned.
+
+A shadow passed by in the corridor. She had scarcely seen it. Rather
+she had felt its passing. But the dream was gone. She was alert, tense,
+expectant. Paris was near. And he was near. She linked the two together
+in her mind. And she felt that she was drawing close to a climax in
+her life. A conviction took hold of her that some big, some determining
+event was going to happen in Paris, that she would return to London
+different--a changed woman.
+
+Happiness changes! She was travelling in search of happiness. The wild
+blood in her leaped at the thought of grasping happiness. And she felt
+reckless. She would dare all, would do anything, if only she
+might capture happiness. Dignity, self-respect, propriety, the
+conventions--what value had they really? To bow down to them--does that
+bring happiness? Out of the way with them, and a straight course for
+the human satisfaction which comes only in following the dictates of the
+nature one is born with!
+
+Lights twinkled here and there in the gloom. Again the shadow passed in
+the corridor. A moment later Lady Sellingworth’s maid appeared to take
+charge of the jewel-case.
+
+
+
+The crowd at the Gare du Nord was great, and the station was badly lit.
+Lady Sellingworth did not see her reason for coming to Paris. A carriage
+was waiting for her. She got into it with her jewel-case, and drove away
+to her apartment, leaving her maid to follow with the luggage.
+
+In the evening she dined alone, and she went to bed early.
+
+She had made no engagements in Paris; had not told any of her friends
+there that she was going to be there for some days. She had no wish to
+go into society. Her wish was to be perfectly free. But as she lay in
+bed in her pretty, familiar room, she began to wonder what she was going
+to do. She had come to Paris suddenly, driven by an intense caprice,
+without making any plans, without even deciding how long she was going
+to stay. She had imagined that in loneliness she would keep a hold on
+liberty. But now she began to wonder about things.
+
+Even her secret wildness did not tell her that she could “knock about”
+ in Paris like a man. For one thing she was far too well known for that.
+Many people might recognize her. When she had been much younger she had
+certainly been to all sorts of odd places, and had had a wonderful time.
+But somehow, with the passing of the years, she had learnt to pay some
+attention to the imp within her, though there were moments when she
+defied him. And he told her that she simply could not now do many of
+the daring things which she had done when she was a brilliant and
+lovely young woman. Besides, what would be the use? Almost suddenly she
+realized the difficulty of her situation.
+
+She could not very well go about Paris alone. And yet to go about in
+company must inevitably frustrate the only purpose which had brought
+her to Paris. She had come there with an almost overwhelming desire, but
+with no plan for its realization.
+
+But surely he had a plan. He must certainly have one if, as she still
+believed, in spite of the trio, he had meant her to come to Paris
+when he did. She wondered intensely what his plan was. He looked very
+determined, audacious even, in spite of the curious and almost pleading
+softness of his eyes, a softness which had haunted her imagination ever
+since she had first seen him. She felt convinced that, once thoroughly
+roused, he would be a man who would stick at very little, perhaps at
+nothing, in carrying out a design he had formed. His design was surely
+to make her acquaintance, and to make it in Paris. Yet he had come over
+with two people, while she had come alone. What was he going to do? She
+longed to know his plan. She wished to conform to it. Yet how could she
+do that in total ignorance of what his plan was? Perhaps he knew her
+address and would communicate with her. But that morning he had not even
+known her name! She felt excited but puzzled. As the night grew late
+she told herself that she must cease from thinking and try to sleep.
+She must leave the near future in the lap of the gods. But she could not
+make her mind a blank. Over and over again she revolved the matter which
+obsessed her in her mind. Almost for the first time in her life she
+ardently wished she were a man, able to take the initiative in any
+matter of love.
+
+The clocks of Paris were striking three before at last she fell asleep.
+
+When she woke in the morning late and had had her coffee she did not
+know how she was going to spend the day. She felt full of anticipation,
+excited, yet vague, and usually lonely. The post brought her nothing.
+About noon she was dressed and ready for the day. She must go out, of
+course. It would be folly to remain shut up indoors after all the bother
+of the journey. She must lunch somewhere, do something afterwards. There
+was a telephone in her bedroom. She knew lots of people in Paris.
+She might telephone to someone to join her at lunch at the Ritz or
+somewhere. Afterwards they might go to a matinee or to a concert.
+But she was afraid of getting immersed in engagements, of losing her
+freedom. She thought over her friends and acquaintances in Paris. Which
+of them would be the safest to communicate with? Which would be most
+useful to her, and would trouble her least? Finally she decided on
+telephoning to a rich American spinster whom she had known for years, a
+woman who was what is called “large minded,” who was very tolerant, very
+understanding, and not more curious than a woman has to be. Caroline
+Briggs could comprehend a hint without demanding facts to explain it.
+
+She telephoned to Caroline Briggs. Miss Briggs was at home and replied,
+expressing pleasure and readiness to lunch with Lady Sellingworth
+anywhere. After a moment’s hesitation Lady Sellingworth suggested the
+Ritz. Miss Briggs agreed that the Ritz would be the best place.
+
+They met at the Ritz at one o’clock.
+
+Miss Briggs, a small, dark, elderly and animated person, immensely rich
+and full of worldly wisdom, wondered why Lady Sellingworth had come over
+to Paris, was told “clothes,” and smilingly accepted the explanation.
+She knew Lady Sellingworth very well, and, being extremely sharp and
+intuitive, realized at once that clothes had nothing to do with this
+sudden visit. A voice within her said: “It’s a man!”
+
+And presently the man came into the restaurant, accompanied by the
+eternal old woman in the black wig.
+
+Now Caroline Briggs had an enormous and cosmopolitan acquaintance. She
+was the sort of woman who knows wealthy Greeks, Egyptian pashas, Turkish
+princesses, and wonderful exotic personages from Brazil, Persia, Central
+America and the Indies. She gave parties which were really romantic,
+which had a flavour, as someone had said, of the novels of Ouida brought
+thoroughly up to date. Lady Sellingworth had been to some of them, and
+had not forgotten them. And it had occurred to her that if anyone she
+knew was acquainted with the brown man, that person might be Caroline
+Briggs. She had, therefore, come to the Ritz with a faint hope in her
+mind.
+
+Miss Brigs happened to be seated with her smart back to the man and old
+woman when they entered the restaurant, and they sat down at a table
+behind her, but in full view of Lady Sellingworth, who wished to draw
+her companion’s attention to them, but who also was reluctant to show
+any interest in them. She knew that Miss Briggs knew a great deal about
+her, and she did not mind that. But nevertheless, she felt at this
+moment a certain _pudeur_ which was almost like the _pudeur_ of a girl.
+Had it come to her with her entrance into the fifties? Or was it a cruel
+gift from her imp? She was not sure; but she could not persuade herself
+to draw Miss Briggs’s attention to the people who interested her until
+the bill was presented and it was almost time to leave the restaurant.
+
+Then at last she could keep silence no longer, and she said:
+
+“The people one sees in Paris seem to become more and more
+extraordinary! Many of them one can’t place at all.”
+
+Miss Briggs, who had lived in Paris for quite thirty years, remarked:
+
+“Do you think they are more extraordinary than the people one sees about
+London?”
+
+“Yes, really I do. That old woman in the black wig over there, for
+instance, intrigues me. Where can she come from? Who can she be?”
+
+Miss Briggs looked carelessly round, and at once understood the reason
+of Lady Sellingworth’s remarks. “The man” was before her, and she knew
+it. How? She could not have said. Had she been asked she would probably
+have replied: “My bones told me.”
+
+“Oh,” she said, after the look. “She’s the type of old woman who is born
+and brought up in Brazil, and who, when she is faded, comes to European
+spas for her health. I have met many of her type at Aix and Baden
+Baden.”
+
+“Ah!” replied Lady Sellingworth carelessly. “You don’t know her then?”
+
+“No. But I have seen her two or three times within the last few
+months--three times to be exact. Twice she has travelled in the same
+train as I was in, though not in the same compartment, and once I saw
+her dining here. Each time she was with that marvelously handsome young
+man. I really noticed her--don’t blame me--because of him.”
+
+“Perhaps he’s her son.”
+
+“He may be her husband.”
+
+“Oh--but the difference in their ages! She must be seventy at least, if
+not more.”
+
+“She may be very rich, too,” said Miss Briggs dryly.
+
+Lady Sellingworth remembered that it was always said that Miss Briggs’s
+enormous fortune had kept her a spinster. She was generally supposed to
+be one of those unfortunately cynical millionairesses who are unable to
+believe in man’s disinterested affection.
+
+“Shall we go?” said Lady Sellingworth.
+
+Miss Briggs assented, and they left the restaurant.
+
+They spent the afternoon together at a matinee at the Opera Comique, and
+afterwards Miss Briggs came to tea at Lady Sellingworth’s apartment.
+Not another word had been said about the two strangers, but Lady
+Sellingworth fully realized that Caroline Briggs had found her out. When
+her friend finally got up to go she asked Lady Sellingworth how long she
+intended to stay in Paris.
+
+“Oh, only a day or two,” Lady Sellingworth said. “I’ve got to see two or
+three dressmakers. Then I shall be off. I haven’t told anyone that I am
+here. It didn’t seem worth while.”
+
+“And you won’t be dull all alone?”
+
+“Oh, no, I am never dull. I love two or three days of complete rest
+now and then. One isn’t made of cast iron, although some people seem to
+think one is, or at ay rate ought to be.”
+
+There was a tired sound in her voice as she said this, and Miss Briggs’s
+small and sharp, but kind, eyes examined her face rather critically. But
+Miss Briggs only said:
+
+“Come and dine with me to-morrow night in my house. I shall be quite
+alone.”
+
+“Thank you, Caroline.”
+
+She spoke rather doubtfully and paused. But finally she said:
+
+“I will with pleasure. What time?”
+
+“Half-past eight.”
+
+When Miss Briggs had gone Lady Sellingworth gave way to an almost
+desperate fit of despondency. She felt ashamed of herself, like a
+sensitive person found out in some ugly fault. She sat down, and almost
+for the first time in her life mentally she wrestled with herself.
+
+Something, she did not quite know what, in Caroline Briggs’s look, or
+manner, or surmised mental attitude that day, had gone home to her.
+And that remark, “He may be her husband,” followed by, “she may be very
+rich, too,” had dropped upon her like a stone.
+
+It had never occurred to her that the old woman in the wig might be the
+young man’s wife. But she now realized that it was quite possible.
+
+She had always known, since she had known Caroline, that her friend was
+one of those few women who are wholly free from illusions. Miss Briggs
+had not only never fallen into follies; she had avoided natural joys.
+She had perhaps even been the slave of her self-respect. Never at all
+good-looking though certainly not ugly, she had been afraid of the
+effect of her wealth upon men. And because she was so rich she had
+never chosen to marry. She was possibly too much of a cynic, but she
+had always preserved her personal dignity. No one had ever legitimately
+laughed at her, and no one had ever had the chance of contemptuously
+pitying her. She must have missed a great deal, but now in middle-age
+she was surround by friends who respected her.
+
+That was something.
+
+And--Lady Sellingworth was sure of it--Caroline was not ravaged by the
+Furies who attack “foolish” middle-aged women.
+
+What did Caroline Briggs think of her? What must she think?
+
+Caroline knew well nearly all the members of the “old guard,” and most
+of them were fond of her. She had never got in any woman’s way with
+a man, and she was never condemnatory. So among women she was a very
+popular woman. Many people confided in her. Lady Sellingworth had never
+done this. But now she wished that she could bring herself to do it.
+Caroline must certainly know her horribly well. Perhaps she could be
+helped by Caroline.
+
+She needed help, for she was abominably devoid of moral courage.
+
+She did not quite know why at this particular moment she was overwhelmed
+by a feeling of degradation; she only knew that she was overwhelmed.
+She felt ashamed of being in Paris. She even compared herself with the
+horrible old woman in the wig, who, perhaps, had bought the brown man as
+she might have bought a big Newfoundland dog.
+
+Fifty! Fifty! Fifty! It knelled in her ears. Caroline saw her as a woman
+of fifty. Perhaps everyone really saw her so. And yet--why had the man
+given her that strange look in Bond Street? Why had he wished her to
+come to Paris? She tried, with a really unusual sincerity, to find some
+other reason than the reason which had delighted her vanity. But she
+failed. Sincerely she failed.
+
+And yet--was it possible?
+
+She thought of giving up, of becoming like Caroline. It would be a great
+rest. But how empty her life would be. Caroline’s life was a habit. But
+such a life for her would be an absolute novelty. No doubt Caroline’s
+reward had come to her in middle-age. Middle-age was bringing something
+to her, Adela Sellingworth, which was certainly not a reward. One got
+what one earned. That was certain. And she had earned wages which she
+dreaded having paid to her.
+
+She had a good brain, and she realized that if she had the moral courage
+she might--it was possible--be rewarded by a peace of mind such as she
+had never yet known. She was able as it were to catch a glimpse of a
+future in which she might be at ease with herself. It even enticed her.
+But something whispered to her, “It would be stagnation--death in life.”
+ And then she was afraid of it.
+
+She spent the evening in miserable depression, not knowing what she
+could do. She distrusted and almost hated herself. And she could not
+decide whether or not on the morrow to give Caroline some insight into
+her state of mind.
+
+On the following day she was still miserable, even tormented, and quite
+undecided as to what she was going to do.
+
+She spent the morning at her dressmaker’s, and walked, with her maid,
+in the Rue de la Paix. There she met a Frenchwoman whom she knew well,
+Madame de Gretigny, who begged her to come to lunch at her house in the
+Faubourg St. Honore. She accepted. What else could she do? After lunch
+she drove with her friend in the Bois. Then they dropped in to tea with
+some French mutual friends.
+
+The usual Paris was gently beginning to take possession of her. What was
+the good of it all? What had she really expected of this visit? She had
+started from London with a crazy sense of adventure. And here she was
+plunged in the life of convention! Oh, for the freedom of a man! Or the
+stable content of a Caroline Briggs!
+
+At moments she felt enraged.
+
+She saw the crowds passing in the streets, women tripping along
+consciously, men--flaneurs--strolling with their well-known look of
+watchful idleness, and she felt herself to be one of life’s prisoners.
+And she knew she would never again take hands with the Paris she had
+once known so well. Why was that? Because of something in herself,
+something irrevocable which had fixed itself in her with the years. She
+was changing, had changed, not merely in body, but in something else.
+She felt that her audacity was sinking under the influence of her
+diffidence. Suddenly it occurred to her that perhaps this sudden visit
+to Paris on the track of an adventure was the last strong effort of her
+audacity. How would it end? In a meek and ridiculous return to London
+after a lunch with Caroline Briggs, a dinner with Caroline, a visit
+to the Opera Comique with Caroline! That really seemed the probable
+conclusion of the whole business. And yet--and yet she still had a sort
+of queer under feeling that she was drawing near to a climax in her
+life, and that, when she did return to London, she would return a
+definitely changed woman.
+
+At half-past eight that night she walked into Caroline’s wonderful house
+in the Champs-Elysees.
+
+During dinner the two women talked as any two women of their types might
+have talked, quite noncommittally, although, in a surface way, quite
+intimately. Miss Briggs was a creature full of tact, and was the last
+person in the world to try to force a confidence from anyone. She was
+also not given at any time to pouring out confidences of her own.
+
+After dinner they sat in a little room which Miss Briggs had had
+conveyed from Persia to Paris. Everything in it was Persian. When the
+door by which it was entered had been shut there was absolutely nothing
+to suggest Europe to those within. A faint Eastern perfume pervaded
+this strange little room, which suggested a deep retirement, an almost
+cloistered seclusion. A grille in one of the walls drew the imagination
+towards the harem. It seemed that there must be hidden women over
+there beyond it. Instinctively one listened for the tinkle of childish
+laughter, for the distant plash of a fountain, for the shuffle of
+slippers on marble.
+
+Lady Sellingworth admired this room, and envied her friend for
+possessing it. But that night it brought to her a thought which she
+could not help expressing.
+
+“Aren’t you terribly lonely in this house, Caroline?” she said. “It
+is so large and so wonderful that I should think it must make solitude
+almost a bodily shape to you. And this room seems to be in the very
+heart of the house. Do you ever sit here without a friend or guest?”
+
+“Now and then, but not often at night,” said Miss Briggs, with serene
+self-possession.
+
+“You are an extraordinary woman!” said Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“Extraordinary! Why?”
+
+“Because you always seem so satisfied to live quite alone. I hate
+solitude. I’m afraid of it.”
+
+Suddenly she felt that she must be partially frank with her hostess.
+
+“Is self-respect a real companion for a woman?” she said. “Can one sit
+with it and be contented? Does it repay a woman for all the sacrifices
+she has offered up to it? Is it worth the sacrifices? That’s what I want
+to know.”
+
+“I dare say that depends on the woman’s mental make up,” replied Miss
+Briggs. “One woman, perhaps, might find that it was, another that it was
+not.”
+
+“Yes, we are all so different, so dreadfully different, one from
+another.”
+
+“It would be very much duller if we weren’t.”
+
+“Even as it is life can be very dull.”
+
+“I should certainly not call your life dull,” said Miss Briggs.
+
+“Anyhow, it’s dreadful!” said Lady Sellingworth, with sudden
+abandonment.
+
+“Why is it dreadful?”
+
+“Caroline, I was fifty a few days ago.”
+
+As Lady Sellingworth said this she observed her friend closely to see if
+she looked surprised. Miss Briggs did not look surprised. And she only
+said:
+
+“Were you? Well, I shall be fifty-eight in a couple of months.”
+
+“You don’t look it.”
+
+“Perhaps that’s because I haven’t looked young for the last thirty
+years.”
+
+“I hate being fifty. The difficulty with me is that my--my nature and my
+temperament don’t match with my age. And that worries me. What is one to
+do?”
+
+“Do you want me to advise you about something?”
+
+“I think I do. But it’s so difficult to explain. Perhaps there is a time
+to give up. Perhaps I have reached it. But if I do give up, what am I to
+do? How am I to live? I might marry again.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“It would have to be an elderly man, wouldn’t it?”
+
+“I hope so.”
+
+“I--I shouldn’t care to marry an elderly man. I don’t want to.”
+
+“Then don’t do it.”
+
+“You think if I were to marry a comparatively young man--”
+
+She paused, looking almost pleadingly at the uncompromising Miss Briggs.
+
+“I’m convinced of this, that no really normal young man could ever be
+contented long if he married a middle-aged woman. And what intelligent
+woman is happy with an abnormal man?”
+
+“Caroline, you are so dreadfully frank!”
+
+“I say just what I think.”
+
+“But you think so drastically. And you are so free from sentiment.”
+
+“What is called sentiment is very often nothing but what is described in
+the Bible as the lust of the eye.”
+
+This shaft, perhaps not intended to be a shaft, went home. Lady
+Sellingworth reddened and looked down.
+
+“I dare say it is,” she murmured. “But--no doubt some of us are more
+subject to temptation than others.”
+
+“I’m sure that is so.”
+
+“It’s very difficult to give up deliberately nearly all that has made
+life interesting and attractive to you ever since you can remember.
+Caroline, would you advise me to--to abdicate? You know what I mean.”
+
+Miss Briggs’s rather plain, but very intelligent, face softened.
+
+“Adela, my dear,” she said, “I understand a great deal more than you
+have cared to hint at to me.”
+
+“I know you do.”
+
+“I think that unless you change your way of life in time you are heading
+straight for tragedy. We both know a lot of women who try to defy the
+natural law. Many of them are rather beautiful women. But do you think
+they are happy women? I don’t. I know they aren’t. Youth laughs at
+them. I don’t know what you feel about it, but I think I would rather be
+pelted with stones than be jeered at by youth in my middle age. Respect
+may sound a very dull word, but I think there’s something very warm
+in it when it surrounds you as you get old. In youth we want love, of
+course, all of us. But in middle age we want respect too. And nothing
+else takes its place. There’s a dignity of the soul, and women like
+us--I’m older than you, but still we are neither of us very young any
+longer--only throw it away at a terrible price. When I want to see
+tragedy I look at the women who try to hang on to what refuses to stay
+with them. And I soon have to shut my eyes. It’s too painful. It’s like
+looking at bones decked out with jewels.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth sat very still. There was a long silence between the
+two friends. When they spoke again they spoke of other things.
+
+That night Lady Sellingworth told her maid to pack up, as she was
+returning to London by the morning express on the following day.
+
+
+
+At the Gare du Nord there was the usual bustle. But there was not a
+great crowd of travellers for England, and Lady Sellingworth without
+difficulty secured a carriage to herself. Her maid stood waiting with
+the jewel-case while she went to the bookstall to buy something to
+read on the journey. She felt dull, almost miserable, but absolutely
+determined. She knew that Caroline was right. She thought she meant to
+take her advice. At any rate, she would not try to pursue the adventure
+which had lured her to Paris. How she would be able to live when she
+got home she did not know. But she would go home. It had been absurd,
+undignified of her to come to Paris. She would try to forget all about
+it.
+
+She bought a book and some papers; then she walked to the train.
+
+“Are you going to get in, my lady?” said the maid.
+
+“Yes. You can put in the jewel-case.”
+
+The maid did so, and Lady Sellingworth got into the carriage and sat
+next to the window on the platform side, facing the engine, with the
+jewel-case beside her on the next seat. The corridor was between her
+and the platform. On the right, beyond the carriage door, the line was
+blocked by another train at rest in the station.
+
+She sat still, not reading, but thinking. The maid went away to her
+second-class carriage.
+
+Lady Sellingworth continued to feel very dull. Now that she was
+abandoning this adventure, or promise of adventure, she knew how much it
+had meant to her. It had lifted her out of the anger and depression in
+which she had been plunged by the Rupert Louth episode. It had appealed
+to her wildness, had given her new hope, something to look forward
+to, something that was food for her imagination. She had lived in an
+imagined future that was romantic, delicious and turbulent. Now she
+knew exactly how much she had counted on this visit to Paris as the door
+through which she would pass into a new and extraordinary romance. She
+had felt certain that something wonderful, something unconventional,
+bizarre, perhaps almost maddening, was going to happen to her in Paris.
+
+And now--At this moment she became aware of some influence which drew
+her attention to the platform on her left. She had not seen anyone;
+she had simply felt someone. She turned her head and looked through the
+window of the corridor.
+
+The brown man was on the platform alone, standing still and looking
+intently towards her carriage. Two or three people passed him. He did
+not move. She felt sure that he was waiting for her to get out, that
+this time he meant to speak to her.
+
+In a moment all her good resolutions, all the worldly wise advice of
+Miss Briggs, all her dullness and despair were forgotten. The wildness
+that would not die surged up in her. Her vanity glowed. She had been
+wrong, utterly wrong. Miss Briggs had been wrong. Despite the difference
+between their ages, this man, young, strong, amazingly handsome, must
+have fallen in love with her at first sight. He must have--somehow--been
+watching her in Paris. He must have ascertained that she was leaving
+Paris that morning, have followed her to the station determined at all
+costs to have a word with her.
+
+Should she let him have that word?
+
+Just for an instant she hesitated. Then, almost passionately, she gave
+way to a turbulent impulse. She felt reckless. At that moment she was
+almost ready to let the train go without her. But there were still a
+few, a very few, minutes before the time for its departure. She got up,
+left the carriage, and stood in the corridor looking out of the window.
+Immediately the man slightly raised his hat, sent her a long and
+imploring look, and then moved slowly away down the platform in the
+direction of the entrance to it. She gazed after him. He paused, again
+raised his hat, and made a very slight, scarcely noticeable gesture with
+his hand. Then he remained where he was.
+
+Saying to herself that she would certainly not obey his obvious wish and
+follow him, but would simply get out of the train and take a few breaths
+of air on the platform--as any woman might to while away the time--Lady
+Sellingworth made her way to the end of the corridor and descended to
+the platform. The brown man was still there, a little way off. Several
+people were hurrying to take their places in the train. Porters were
+carrying hand luggage, or wheeling trucks of heavy luggage to the
+railway vans. No one seemed to have any time to take notice of her or
+of the man. She did not look at him, but began slowly to stroll up and
+down, keeping near to her carriage. She had given him his chance. Now
+it was for him to take firm hold on it. She fully expected that he would
+come up and speak to her. She thrilled with excitement at the prospect.
+What would he say? How would he act? Would he explain why he had done
+nothing in Paris? Would he beg her to stay on in Paris? Would he ask to
+be allowed to visit her in London? Would he--But he did not come up to
+her.
+
+After taking several short turns, keeping her eyes resolutely away from
+the place where he was standing, Lady Sellingworth could not resist the
+impulse to look towards him to see what he was doing. She lifted her
+eyes.
+
+He was gone.
+
+“_En voiture!_” cried a hoarse voice.
+
+She stood still.
+
+“_En voiture! En voiture!_”
+
+Mechanically she moved. She went to her carriage, put her hand on the
+rail, mounted the steps, passing into the corridor, and reached her
+compartment just as the train began to move.
+
+What had happened to him? What was the meaning of it all? Was he
+travelling to England too? Had he got into the train?
+
+She sat down wondering, almost confused.
+
+Mechanically she let her right hand drop on to the seat beside her. She
+was so accustomed when travelling to have her jewel-case beside her that
+her hand must have missed it though her thoughts were far from it. For
+immediately after dropping her hand she looked down.
+
+The jewel-case was gone.
+
+Instantly her feeling of confusion was swept away; instantly she
+understood.
+
+She had been caught in a trap by a clever member of the swell mob
+operating with a confederate. While she had been on the platform, to
+which she had been deliberately enticed, the confederate had entered the
+compartment from the line, through the doorway on the right-hand side of
+her carriage, and had carried off the jewel-case.
+
+The revelation of the truth almost stunned something in her. Yet she
+was able to think quite clearly. She did nothing. She just sat still
+and understood, and went on understanding, while the train quickened its
+pace on its way towards the sea.
+
+By the time it slowed down, and the dull houses of Calais appeared, she
+had made up her mind about the future. Her vanity had received at last a
+mortal blow. The climax had come. It was not what she had expected,
+but her imp--less satirical now than desperately tragic and powerfully
+persuasive, told her that it was what she deserved. And she bowed her
+head to his verdict, not with tears, but with a cold and stormy sense of
+finality.
+
+When the train stopped at the harbour station her maid appeared in the
+corridor.
+
+“Shall I take the jewel-case, my lady?”
+
+Lady Sellingworth stood up. She had not decided what to say to her maid.
+She was taken by surprise. As she stood, her tall figure concealed the
+seat on which the jewel-case had been lying. For an instant she looked
+at the maid in silence. Perhaps the expression of her face as strange,
+for after a pause the maid said anxiously:
+
+“Whatever is it, my lady?”
+
+“Never mind about the jewel-case!” said Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“But--”
+
+“It’s gone!”
+
+“Gone, my lady!” said the maid, looking aghast. “Gone where?”
+
+“It was taken at the station in Paris.”
+
+“Taken, my lady! But it was in the carriage by the side of your
+ladyship! I never left it. I had it in my own hands till your
+ladyship--”
+
+“I know--I know! Don’t say anything more about it. It’s gone, and we
+shall never see it again.”
+
+The maid stared, horrified, and scenting a mystery.
+
+“Get that porter! Make haste!”
+
+They got down from the train. Lady Sellingworth turned to make her way
+to the ship.
+
+“But, my lady, surely we ought to speak to the police? All your
+beautiful jewels--”
+
+“The police could do nothing. It is too late! I should only have endless
+trouble, and no good would come of it.”
+
+“But your ladyship was in the carriage with them!”
+
+“Yes, I know! Now don’t say any more about the matter!”
+
+There was something in her tone which struck the maid to silence. She
+said not another word till they were on the ship.
+
+Then Lady Sellingworth went to the cabin which she had telegraphed for.
+
+“I am going to lie down,” she said. “You can leave me.”
+
+“Yes, my lady.”
+
+After arranging things in the cabin the maid was about to go when Lady
+Sellingworth said:
+
+“You have been with me a long time, Henderson. You have been very useful
+to me. And I think I have been a good mistress to you.”
+
+“Oh, yes, my lady, indeed you have. I would do anything for your
+ladyship.”
+
+“Would you? Then try to hold your tongue about this unfortunate
+occurrence. Talking can do no good. I shall not inform the police. The
+jewels are gone, and I shan’t get them back. I have a great dislike of
+fuss and gossip, and only wish to be left in peace. If you talk, all
+this is sure to get into the papers. I should hate that.”
+
+“Yes, my lady. But surely the police--”
+
+“It is my business, and no one else’s, to decide what is best in this
+matter. So hold your tongue, if you can. You will not repent it if you
+do.”
+
+“Yes, my lady. Certainly, my lady.”
+
+The maid was obviously horrified and puzzled. But she left her mistress
+without another word.
+
+They arrived in Berkeley Square in the evening.
+
+That evening which Lady Sellingworth spent in solitude was the turning
+point in her life. During it and the succeeding night she went down to
+the bedrock of realization. She allowed her brains full liberty. Or they
+took full liberty as their right. The woman of the grey matter had it
+out with the woman of the blood. She stared her wildness in the face and
+saw it just as it was, and resolved once for all to dominate it for the
+rest of her days. She was not such a fool as to think that she could
+ever destroy it. No doubt it would always be there to trouble her,
+perhaps often to torture her. But rule her, as it had ruled her in
+the past, it never should again. Her resolve about that was hard, of a
+rock-like quality.
+
+She had done with a whole side of life, and it was the side for which
+she had lived ever since she was a girl of sixteen. The renunciation was
+tremendous, devastating almost. She thought of a landslide carrying away
+villages, whole populations. How true had been the instinct which had
+told her that she was drawing near to a climax in her life! Had ever a
+woman before her been brought in a flash to such a cruel insight? It was
+as if a tideless sea, by some horrible miracle, retreated, leaving naked
+rocks which till that moment had never been seen by mortal eyes, hideous
+and grotesque rocks covered with slime and ooze.
+
+And she stood alone, staring at them.
+
+She remembered the dinner in her house at which there had been the
+discussion about happiness, and the desire of the old Anglo-Indian for
+complete peace of mind. Could a woman gain that mysterious benefit by
+giving up? Could such a thing ever be hers? She did not believe it. But
+she knew all the torture of striving. In her renunciation she would at
+least be able to rest, to rest in being frankly and openly what she was.
+And she knew she was tired. She was very tired. Perhaps some of the “old
+guard” were made of cast iron. But she was not.
+
+The “old guard”! With the thought of that body of wonderful women came
+a flood of memories. She remembered “The Hags’ Hop.” She saw Rocheouart
+standing before her; Rupert Louth; other young men, all lively,
+handsome, ardent, bursting with life and the wish to enjoy.
+
+Was there ever a time when the human being could utterly forego the wish
+to enjoy? To her there seemed to be hidden in desire seeds of eternity.
+The struggle for her, then, was not yet over. Perhaps it would only
+cease in the grave. And after? Sellingworth had often told her that
+there was no hereafter. And at the time she had believed him. But she
+was not sure now. For even the persistence of desire seemed to point to
+something beyond. But she would not bother about that. She was held fast
+enough in the present.
+
+What would the “old guard” say of her, think of her, in a very short
+time? What a defection hers would be! For she had resolved to take
+a plunge into middle age. No gliding into it for her! She would let
+everything go which was ready to go naturally. Her Greek had already
+lost his job, although as yet he did not know it.
+
+Caroline Briggs would believe that the change which was at hand, the
+change which would be discussed, perhaps laughed at, praised by some,
+condemned by others, had been brought about by the conversation in
+the Persian Room. She would never know the truth. No one of Lady
+Sellingworth’s set would ever know it. For no one, except a thief and
+his underlings, knew of the last folly of poor old Adela Sellingworth!
+
+Poor old Adela Sellingworth!
+
+As Lady Sellingworth called herself bitterly by that name tears at last
+came into her luminous eyes. Secretly she wept over herself, although
+the tears did not fall down upon her cheeks. She had done many foolish
+things, many wild things, many almost crazy things in her life. But that
+day she had surely been punished for them all. When she thought of the
+thieves’ plot against her, of the working out of it, she saw herself
+lying, like a naked thing, in the dust. Such men! How had they known her
+character? Somehow they must have got to know it, and devised their plan
+to appeal to it. They had woven just the right net to catch her in its
+folds. She seemed to hear their hideous discussions about her. The long
+look in Bond Street had been the first move in the horrible game. And
+she in her folly had connected the game with romance, with something
+like love even.
+
+Love! A life such as hers had been was the prostitution of love, and
+now she deserved to be loveless for the rest of her life. Vanity and
+sensuality had been her substitutes for love. She had dealt in travesty
+and had pretended, even to herself, that she was following reality. It
+was amazing how she had managed to deceive herself.
+
+She would never do that again.
+
+Very late that night, alone in her bedroom, she sat before a mirror and
+looked into it, saying good-bye to the self which she had cherished and
+fostered so long, had lived for recklessly sometimes, ruthlessly almost
+always. She saw a worn, but still very handsome woman. But she told
+herself that the woman was hideous. For really she was looking at the
+woman underneath, the woman who was going to emerge very soon into the
+daylight with a frankly lined face crowned with grey or perhaps even
+white hair, at the woman who was the truth, at _herself_. This woman
+before her was only a counterfeit, a marvellously clever artificiality.
+
+There were two electric lights at the sides of the mirror. She turned
+them both on. She wanted crude light just then. Cruelty she was taking
+to her bosom. She was grasping her nettle with both hands.
+
+Yes, the artificiality was marvellously clever! The Greek had been worth
+his money. He had created a sort of human orchid whose petals showed
+few, wonderfully few, signs of withering.
+
+But she had wanted to be not the orchid but really the rose. And so she
+was down in the dust.
+
+Poor old Adela Sellingworth, who in a very short time--how long exactly
+would the Greek’s work take to crumble--would look even older than
+fifty!
+
+She turned out the lights presently and got into bed. When she had made
+the big bedroom dark, and had stretched her long body out between the
+sheets of Irish linen, she felt terrifically tired, tired in body and
+spirit, but somehow not in mind. Her mind was almost horribly alive and
+full of agility. It brought visions before her; it brought voices into
+her ears.
+
+She saw men of the underworld sitting together in shadows and whispering
+about her, using coarse words, undressing her character, commenting
+upon it without mercy, planning how they would make use of it to their
+advantage. She heard them laughing about her and about all the women
+like her.
+
+And presently she saw an old woman with a white face, a withered throat
+and vague eyes, an old woman in a black wig, smiling as she decked
+herself out in the Sellingworth jewels.
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Miss Van Tuyn, enthroned among distinguished and definite Georgians in a
+nimbus of smoke, presently began to wonder what had become of a certain
+young man. Despite the clamour of voices about her, and the necessity
+for showing incessantly that, although she had never bothered to paint
+cubist pictures or to write minor poetry, or even to criticize and
+appreciate meticulously those who did, she was cleverer than any
+Georgian of them all, her mind would slip away to Berkeley Square. She
+had, of course, noted young Craven’s tacit resistance to the pressure
+of her desire, and her girlish vanity had resented it. But she had
+remembered that even in these active days of the ruthless development of
+the ego a sense of politeness, of what is “due” from one human being
+to another, still lingers in some perhaps old-fashioned bosoms. Lady
+Sellingworth was elderly. Craven might have thought it was his absolute
+duty to protect her from the possible dangers lurking between Regent
+Street and Berkeley Square. But as time went on, despite the sallies
+of Dick Garstin, the bloodless cynicisms of Enid Blunt, who counted
+insolence as the chief of the virtues, the amorous sentimentalities of
+the Turkish refugee from Smyrna, whose moral ruin had been brought about
+by a few lines of praise from Pierre Loti, the touching appreciations
+of prison life by Penitence Murray, and the voluble intellectuality of
+Thapoulos, Jennings and Smith the sculptor, Miss Van Tuyn began to
+feel absent-minded. Her power of attraction was quite evidently being
+seriously challenged. She was now certain--how could she not be--that
+Craven had not merely gone to Number 18A, but had also “gone in.”
+
+That was unnecessary. It was even very strange. For she, Beryl Van Tuyn,
+was at least thirty-six years younger than Lady Sellingworth.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn had an almost inordinate belief in the attraction youth
+holds for men. She had none of the hidden diffidence which had been such
+a troubling element in Lady Sellingworth’s nature. Nor was there any imp
+which sat out of reach and mocked her. The violet eyes were satirical;
+but her satire was reserved for others, and was seldom or never directed
+against herself. She possessed a supply of self-assurance such as
+Lady Sellingworth had never had, though for many years she had had
+the appearance of it. Having this inordinate belief and this strong
+self-assurance, having also youth and beauty, and remembering certain
+little things which seemed to her proof positive that Craven was quite
+as susceptible to physical emotions as are most healthy and normal
+young men, she wondered why he had not returned to the Cafe Royal after
+leaving Lady Sellingworth decorously at her door. He had known perfectly
+well that she wished him to return. She had not even been subtle in
+conveying the wish to him. And yet he had defied it.
+
+Or perhaps Lady Sellingworth had defied it for him.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn was really as fond of Lady Sellingworth as she could be of
+a woman. She felt strongly the charm which so many others had felt.
+Lady Sellingworth also interested her brain and aroused strongly the
+curiosity which was a marked feature of her “make-up.” She had called
+Lady Sellingworth a book of wisdom. She was also much influenced by
+distinction and personal prestige. About the distinction of her friend
+there could be no doubt; and the prestige of a once-famous woman of the
+world, and of a formerly great beauty whose name would have its place
+in the annals of King Edward the Seventh, still lingered about the
+now-faded recluse of Berkeley Square. But till this moment Miss Van Tuyn
+had never thought of Lady Sellingworth as a possible rival to herself.
+
+Even now when the idea presented itself to her she was inclined to
+dismiss it as too absurd for consideration. And yet Craven had not come
+back, although he must know she was expecting him.
+
+Perhaps Lady Sellingworth had made him go in against his will.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn remembered the photograph she had seen at Mrs. Ackroyd’s.
+That woman had the face of one who was on the watch for new lovers. And
+does a woman ever change? Only that very night she herself had said to
+Craven, as they walked from Soho to Regent Street, that she had a theory
+of the changelessness of character. Or perhaps she had really meant
+of temperament. She had even said that she believed that the Lady
+Sellingworth of to-day was to all intents and purposes the Lady
+Sellingworth of yesterday and of the other days of her past. If that
+were so--and she had meant what she had said--then in the white-haired
+woman, who seemed now indifferent to admiration and leagues removed from
+vanity, there still dwelt a woman on the pounce.
+
+Young Craven was very good-looking, and there was something interesting
+about his personality. His casual manner, which was nevertheless very
+polite, was attractive. His blue eyes and black hair gave him an almost
+romantic appearance. He was very quiet, but was certainly far from being
+cold. And he undoubtedly understood a great deal, and must have had many
+experiences of which he never talked. Miss Van Tuyn was subtle enough
+to know that he was subtle too. She had made up her mind to explore his
+subtlety. And now someone else was exploring it in Berkeley Square.
+The line reappeared in her low white forehead, and her cult for Lady
+Sellingworth, like flannel steeped in water, underwent a shrinking
+process. She felt strongly the indecency of grasping old age. And
+through her there floated strange echoes of voices which had haunted
+Lady Sellingworth’s youth, voices which had died away long ago in
+Berkeley Square, but which are captured by succeeding generations of
+women, and which persist through the ages, finding ever new dwellings.
+
+The night was growing late, but the Georgians bitterly complained of the
+absurdity of London having a closing time. The heat and the noise
+seemed to swell with the passing of the hours, and a curious and anemic
+brutality dawned with the midnight upon many of the faces around the
+narrow tables. They looked at the same time bloodless and hard. Eyes
+full of languor, or feverish with apparent expectation of some impending
+adventure, stared fixedly through the smoke wreaths at other eyes in the
+distance. Loud voices hammered through the murk. Foreheads beaded with
+perspiration began to look painfully expressive. It was as if all faces
+were undressed.
+
+Dick Garstin, the famous painter, a small, slight, clean-shaven man, who
+looked like an intellectual jockey with his powerful curved nose, thin,
+close-set lips, blue cheeks and prominent, bony chin, and who fostered
+the illusion deliberately by dressing in large-checked suits of a
+sporting cut, with big buttons and mighty pockets, kept on steadily
+drinking green chartreuse and smoking small, almost black, cigars. He
+was said to be made of iron, and certainly managed to combine perpetual
+dissipation with an astonishing amount of hard and admirable work. His
+models he usually found--or so he said--at the Cafe Royal, and he made
+a speciality of painting the portraits of women of the demi-monde,
+of women who drank, or took drugs, who were morphia maniacs, or were
+victims of other unhealthy and objectionable crazes. Nothing wholly
+sane, nothing entirely normal, nothing that suggested cold water, fresh
+air or sunshine, made any appeal to him. A daisy in the grass bored him;
+a gardenia emitting its strangely unreal perfume on a dung heap brought
+all his powers into play. He was an eccentric of genius, and in his
+strangeness was really true to himself, although normal people were apt
+to assert that his unlikeness to them was a pose. Simplicity, healthy
+goodness, the radiance of unsmirched youth seemed to his eyes wholly
+inexpressive. He loved the rotten as a dog loves garbage, and he raised
+it by his art to fascination. Even admirable people, walking through his
+occasional one-man exhibitions, felt a lure in his presentations of sin,
+of warped womanhood, and, gazing at the blurred faces, the dilated eyes,
+the haggard mouths, the vicious hands of his portraits, were shiveringly
+conscious of missed experiences, and for the moment felt ill at ease
+with what seemed just there, and just then, the dullness of virtue. The
+evil admired him because he made evil wonderful. To the perverse he was
+almost as a god.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn was an admirer of Dick Garstin. She thought him a great
+painter, but apart from his gift his mind interested her intensely. He
+had a sort of melancholy understanding of human nature and of life,
+a strangely sure instinct in probing to the bottom of psychological
+mysteries, a cruelly sure hand in tearing away the veils which the
+victims hoped would shroud their weaknesses and sins. These gifts made
+her brain respect him, and tickled her youthful curiosity. It was really
+for Dick that she had specially wished Lady Sellingworth to join the
+Georgians that night. And now, in her secret vexation, she was moved to
+speak of the once famous Edwardian.
+
+“Have you ever heard of Lady Sellingworth?” she said, leaning her elbow
+on the marble table in front of her, and bending towards Dick Garstin so
+that he might hear her through the uproar.
+
+He finished one more chartreuse and turned his small black eyes upon
+her. Pin-points of piercing light gleamed in them. He lifted his large,
+coarse and capable painter’s hand to his lips, put his cigar stump
+between them, inhaled a quantity of smoke, blew it out through his hairy
+nostrils, and then said in a big bass voice:
+
+“Never. Why should I have? I hate society women.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn suppressed a smile at the absurd and hackneyed phrase,
+which reminded her of picture papers. For a moment she thought of Dick
+Garstin as a sort of inverted snob. But she wanted something from him,
+so she pursued her conversational way, and inflicted upon him a rapid
+description of Lady Sellingworth, as she had been and as she was,
+recording the plunge from artificial youth into perfectly natural
+elderliness which had now, to her thinking, become definite old age.
+
+The painter gave her a sort of deep and melancholy attention, keeping
+the two pin-points of light directed steadily upon her.
+
+“Did you ever know a woman doing such a thing as that, Dick?” she asked.
+“Did you ever know of a woman clinging to her youth, and then suddenly,
+in a moment, flinging all pretence of it away from her?”
+
+He did not trouble, or perhaps did not choose, to answer her question,
+but instead made the statement:
+
+“She had been thrown off by some lover. In a moment of furious despair,
+thinking all was over for her for ever, she let everything go. And
+then she hadn’t the cheek to try to take any of it back. She hadn’t the
+_toupet_. But”--he flung a large hand stained with pigments out in an
+ugly, insolent gesture--“any one of these _fleurs du mal_ would have
+jumped back from the white to the bronze age when the fit was passed,
+without caring a damn what anyone thought of them. All the moral bravery
+is in the underworld. That is why I paint it.”
+
+“That is absolute truth,” said Jennings, who was sitting next to Dick
+Garstin and smoking an enormous pipe. “The lower you go the more truth
+you find.”
+
+“Then I suppose the gutter is full of it,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“The Cafe Royal is,” said Garstin. “There are free women here. Your
+women of society are for ever waiting on the opinion of what they call
+their set--God help them! Your Lady Sellingworth, for instance--would
+she dare, after showing herself as an old woman, to become a young woman
+again? Not she! Her precious set would laugh at her for it. But Cora,
+for instance--” He pointed to a table a little way off, at which a woman
+was sitting alone. “Do you suppose Cora cares one single damn what you,
+or I, or anyone else thinks of her? She knows we all know exactly what
+she is, and it makes not a particle of difference to her. She’ll tell
+you, or anyone else, what her nature is. If you don’t happen to like it,
+you can go to Hell--for her. That’s a free woman. Look at her face. Why,
+it’s great, because her life and what she is is written all over it.
+I’ve painted her, and I’ll paint her again. She’s a human document, not
+a sentimental Valentine. Waiter! Waiter!”
+
+His sonorous bass rolled out, dominating the uproar around him. Miss
+Van Tuyn looked at the woman he had been speaking of. She was tall,
+emaciated, high shouldered. Her face was dead white, with brightly
+painted lips. She had dark and widely dilated eyes which looked hungry,
+observant and desperate. The steadiness of their miserable gaze was like
+that of an animal. She was dressed in a perfectly cut coat and skirt
+with a neat collar and a black tie. Both her elbows were on the table,
+and her sharp white chin was supported by her hands, on which she wore
+white gloves sewn with black. Her features were good, and the shape
+of her small head was beautiful. Her expression was intense, but
+abstracted. In front of her was a small tumbler half full of a liquid
+the colour of water.
+
+A waiter brought Garstin a gin-and-soda. He mixed drinks in an almost
+stupefying way, as few men can without apparent ill-effects unless they
+are Russians.
+
+“Cora--a free woman, by God!” he observed, lighting another of his small
+but deadly cigars.
+
+Enid Blunt, who was sitting with Smith the sculptor and others at the
+adjoining table, began slowly, and with an insolent drawl, reciting a
+sonnet. She was black as the night. Even her hands looked swarthy.
+There were yellow lights in her eyes. Her voice was guttural, and she
+pronounced English with a strong German accent, although she had no
+German blood in her veins and had never been in Germany. The little
+Bolshevik, who had the face of a Russian peasant, candid eyes and a
+squat figure, listened with an air of profound and somehow innocent
+attention. She possessed neither morals nor manners, denied the
+existence of God, and wished to pull the whole fabric of European
+civilization to pieces. Her small brain was obsessed by a desire for
+anarchy. She hated all laws and was really a calmly ferocious little
+animal. But she looked like a creature of the fields, and had something
+of the shepherdess in her round grey eyes. Thapoulos, a Levantine, who
+had once been a courier in Athens, but who was now a rich banker with
+a taste for Bohemia, kept one thin yellow hand on her shoulder as he
+appeared to listen, with her, to the sonnet. Smith, with whom the little
+Bolshevik was allied for the time, and who did in clay very much what
+Garstin did on canvas, but more roughly and with less subtlety, looked
+at the Levantine’s hand with indifference. A large heavy man, with
+square shoulders and short bowed legs, he scarcely knew why he had
+anything to do with Anna, or remembered how they had come together. He
+did not understand her at all, but she cooked certain Russian dishes
+which he liked, and minded dirt as little as he did. Perhaps that lack
+of minding had thrown them together. He did not know; nobody knew or
+cared.
+
+“Well, I’m a free woman,” said Miss Van Tuyn, in answer to Garstin’s
+exclamation about Cora. “But you’ve never bothered to paint me.”
+
+She spoke with a touch of irritation. Somehow things seemed to be going
+vaguely wrong for her to-night.
+
+“I suppose I am not near enough to the gutter yet,” she added.
+
+“You’re too much of the out-of-door type for me,” said Garstin, looking
+at her with almost fierce attention. “There isn’t a line about you
+except now and then in your forehead just above the nose. And even that
+only comes from bad temper.”
+
+“Really, Dick,” said Miss Van Tuyn, “you are absurd. It’s putting your
+art into a strait waistcoat only to paint Cafe Royal types. But if you
+want lines Lady Sellingworth ought to sit for you.”
+
+Her mind that night could not detach itself from Lady Sellingworth.
+In the midst of the noise, and crush, and strong light of the cafe she
+continually imagined a spacious, quiet, and dimly lit room, very calm,
+very elegant, faintly scented with flowers; she continually visualized
+two figures near together, talking quietly, earnestly, confidentially.
+Why had she allowed Jennings to lead her astray? She might have been in
+that spacious room, too, if she had not been stupid.
+
+“I want to ask you something about Lady Sellingworth,” she continued.
+“Come a little nearer.”
+
+Garstin shifted his chair.
+
+“But I don’t know her,” he said, rumpling his hair with an air of
+boredom. “An old society woman! What’s the good of that to me? What have
+I to do with dowagers? Bow wow dowagers! Even Rembrandt--”
+
+“Now, Dick, don’t be a bore! If you would only listen occasionally,
+instead of continually--”
+
+“Go ahead, young woman! And bend down a little more. Why don’t you take
+off your hat?”
+
+“I will.”
+
+She did so quickly, and bent her lovely head nearer to him.
+
+“That’s better. You’ve got a damned fine head. Ceres might have owned
+it. But classical stuff is no good to me. You ought to have been painted
+by Leighton and hung on the line in the precious old Royal Academy.”
+
+Again the tell-tale mark appeared above the bridge of Miss Van Tuyn’s
+charming nose.
+
+“I painted by a Royal Academician!” she exclaimed. “Thank you, Dick!”
+
+Garstin, who was as mischievous as a monkey, and who loved to play cat
+and mouse with a woman, continued to gaze at her with his assumption of
+fierce attention.
+
+“But Leighton being unfortunately dead, we can’t go to him for your
+portrait,” he continued gravely. “I think we shall have to hand you over
+to McEvoy. Smith!” he suddenly roared.
+
+“Well, what is it, Dick, what is it?” said the sculptor in a thin voice,
+with high notes which came surprisingly through the thicket of tangled
+hair about the cavern of his mouth.
+
+“Who shall paint Beryl as Ceres?”
+
+“I refuse to be painted by anyone as Ceres!” said Miss Van Tuyn, almost
+viciously.
+
+“It ought to have been Leighton. But he’s been translated. I suggested
+McEvoy.”
+
+“Oh, Lord! He’d take the substance out of her, make her transparent!”
+
+“I have it then! Orpen! It shall be Orpen! Then she will be hung on the
+line.”
+
+“You talk as if I were the week’s washing,” said Miss Van Tuyn,
+recovering herself. “But I would rather be on the clothes-line than on
+the line at the Royal Academy. No, Dick, I shall wait.”
+
+“What for, my girl?”
+
+“For you to get over your acute attack of Cafe Royal. You don’t know how
+they laugh at you in Paris for always painting morphinomanes and chloral
+drinkers. That sort of thing was done to death in France in the youth of
+Degas. It may be new over here. But England always lags behind in art,
+always follows at the heels of the French. You are too big a man--”
+
+“I’ve got it, Smith,” said Garstin, interrupting in the quiet even voice
+of one who had been indulging an undisturbed process of steady thought,
+and who now announced the definite conclusion reached. “I have it. Frank
+Dicksee is the man!”
+
+At this moment Jennings, who for some time had been uneasily groping
+through his beard, and turning the rings round and round on his thin
+damp fingers, broke in with a flood of speech about modern French art,
+in which names of all the latest painters of Paris spun by like twigs on
+a spate of turbulent water. The Georgians were soon up and after him
+in full cry. It was now nearly closing time, and several friends of
+Garstin’s, models and others, who had been scattered about in the cafe,
+and who were on their way out, stopped to hear what was going on. Some
+adherents of Jennings also came up. The discussion became animated.
+Voices waxed roaringly loud or piercingly shrill. The little Bolshevik,
+suddenly losing her round faced calm and the shepherdess look in
+her eyes, burst forth in a voluble outcry in praise of the beauty of
+anarchy, expressing herself in broken English, spoken with a cockney
+accent, in broken French and liquid Russian. Enid Blunt, increasingly
+guttural, and mingling German words with her Bedford Park English,
+refuted, or strove to refute, Jennings’s ecstatic praise of French
+verse, citing rapidly poems composed by members of the Sitwell group,
+songs of Siegfried Sassoon, and even lyrics by Lady Margaret Sackville
+and Miss Victoria Sackville West. Jennings, who thought he was still
+speaking about pictures and statues, though he had now abandoned the
+painters and sculptors to their horrid fates in the hands of Garstin and
+Smith, replied with a vivacity rather Gallic than British, and finally,
+emerging almost with passion from his native language, burst into the
+only tongue which expresses anything properly, and assailed his enemy
+in fluent French. Thapoulos muttered comments in modern Greek. And the
+Turkish refugee from Smyrna quoted again and again the words of praise
+from Pierre Loti, which had made of him a moral wreck, a nuisance to all
+who came into contact with him, a mere prancing megalomaniac.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn did not join in the carnival of praises and condemnations.
+She had suddenly recovered her mental balance. Her native irony was
+roused from its sleep. She was once more the cool, self-possessed and
+beautiful girl from whose violet eyes satire looked out on all those
+about her.
+
+“Let them all make fools of themselves for my benefit,” was her
+comfortable thought as she listened to the chatter of tongues.
+
+Even Garstin was being thoroughly absurd, although his adherents stood
+round catching his vociferations as if they were so many precious
+jewels.
+
+“The most ridiculous human beings in the world at certain moments
+are those who work in the arts,” was Miss Van Tuyn’s mental comment.
+“Painters, poets, composers, novelists! All these people are living in
+blinkers. They can’t see the wide world. They can only see studies and
+studios.”
+
+She wished she had Craven with her to share in her silent irony. At that
+moment she felt some of the very common conceit of the rich dilettante,
+who tastes but who never creates, for whom indeed most of the creation
+is arduously accomplished.
+
+“They sweat for me, exhaust themselves for me, tear each other to pieces
+for me! If I were not here, if the world contained no such products
+as Beryl Van Tuyn and her like, female and male, what would all the
+Garstins, and Jenningses and Smiths and Enid Blunts do?”
+
+And she felt superior in her incapacity to create because of her
+capacity to judge. Wrongly she might, and probably did, judge, but she
+and her like judged, spent much of their lives in eagerly judging. And
+the poor creators, whatever they might say, whatever airs they
+might give themselves, toiled to gain the favourable judgment of the
+innumerable Beryl Van Tuyns.
+
+Closing time put an end at last to the fracas of tongues. Even geniuses
+must be driven forth from the electric light to the stars, however
+unwilling to go into a healthy atmosphere.
+
+There was a general movement. Miss Van Tuyn put on her hat and fur
+coat, the latter with the assistance of Jennings. Garstin slipped into
+a yellow and brown ulster, and jammed a soft hat on to his head with its
+thick tangle of hair. He lit another cigar and waved his hand to Cora,
+who was on her way out with a friend.
+
+“A free woman--by God!” he said once more, swinging round to where Miss
+Van Tuyn was standing between Jennings and Thapoulos. “I’ll paint her
+again. I’ll make a masterpiece of her.”
+
+“I’m sure you will. But now walk with me to the Hyde Park Hotel. It’s on
+your way to Chelsea.”
+
+“She doesn’t care whether I paint her or not. Cora doesn’t care. Art
+means nothing to her. She’s out for life, hunks of life. She’s after
+life like a hungry dog after the refuse on a scrap heap. That’s why I’ll
+paint her. She’s hungry. Look at her face.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn, perhaps moved by the sudden, almost ferocious urgency
+of his loud bass voice, turned to have a last look at the woman who was
+“out for life”; but Cora was already lost in the crowd, and instead
+of gazing into the dead-white face which suggested to her some strange
+putrefaction, she gazed full into the face of a man. He was not far
+off--by the doorway through which people were streaming out into Regent
+Street--and he happened to be looking at her. She had been expecting to
+see a whiteness which was corpse-like. Instead she was almost startled
+by the sight of a skin which suggested to her one of her own precious
+bronzes in Paris. It was certainly less deep in colour, but its smooth
+and equal, unvarying tint of brown somehow recalled to her those
+treasures which she genuinely loved and assiduously collected. And he
+was marvellously handsome as some of her bronzes were handsome, with
+strong, manly, finely cut features--audacious features, she thought. His
+mouth specially struck her by its full-lipped audacity. He was tall and
+had an athletic figure. She could not help swiftly thinking what a
+curse the modern wrappings of such a figure were; the tubes of cloth
+or serge--he wore blue serge--the unmeaning waistcoat with tie and
+pale-blue collar above it, the double-breasted jacket. And then she
+saw his eyes. Magnificent eyes, she thought them, soft, intelligent,
+appealing, brown like his skin and hair. And they were gazing at her
+with a sort of sympathetic intention.
+
+Suddenly she felt oddly restored. Really she had had a bad evening.
+Things had not gone quite right for her. She had saved the situation in
+a measure just at the end by taking refuge in irony. But in her irony
+she had been quite alone. And to be quite alone in anything is apt to
+be dull. Craven had let her down. Lady Sellingworth had not played
+the game--or had played it too well, which was worse. Garstin had been
+unusually tiresome with his allusions to the Royal Academy and his
+preposterous concentration on the Cora woman.
+
+This brown stranger’s gaze was really like manna falling from heaven in
+a hungry land. She boldly returned the gaze, stared, trusting to her own
+beauty. And as she stared she tried to sum up the stranger, and failed.
+She guessed him a little over thirty, but not much. And there somehow,
+after the quick, instinctive guess at his age, she stuck.
+
+“Come on, Beryl!”
+
+Garstin’s deep strong voice startled her. At that moment she felt angry
+with him for calling her by her Christian name, though he had done it
+ever since they had first made friends--if they were friends--in Paris
+two years ago, when he had come to have a look at her bronzes with a
+French painter whom she knew well.
+
+“You are going to walk back with me?”
+
+“To be sure I am. He is devilish good looking, but he ought to be out of
+those clothes.”
+
+“Dick!”
+
+He smiled at her sardonically. She knew that he seldom missed anything,
+but his sharp observation in the midst of the squash of people going
+out of the cafe took her genuinely aback. And then he had got at her
+thought, at one of her most definite thoughts at least, about the brown
+stranger!
+
+“You are disgustingly clever,” she said, as they made their way out,
+followed by the Georgians and their attendant cosmopolitans. “I believe
+I dislike you for it to-night.”
+
+“Then take a cab home and I’ll walk.”
+
+“No, thank you. I’d rather endure your abominable intelligence.”
+
+He smiled, curling up the left corner of his sensual mouth.
+
+“Come on then. Don’t bother about good-byes to all these fools. They’ll
+never stop talking if they once begin good-bying. Like sheep they don’t
+know how to get away from each other since they’ve been herded together.
+Come on! Come on!”
+
+He thrust an arm through hers and almost roughly, but forcibly, got her
+away through the throng. As he did so she was pushed by, or accidentally
+pushed against, several people. For a brief instant she was in contact
+with a man. She felt his side, the bone of one of his hips. It was the
+man who had looked at her in the cafe. She saw in the night the gleam
+of his big brown eyes looking down into hers. Then she and Garstin were
+tramping--Garstin always seemed to be tramping when he walked--over the
+pavement of Regent Street.
+
+“Catch on tight! Let’s get across and down to Piccadilly.”
+
+“Very well.”
+
+Presently they were passing the Ritz. They got away from the houses on
+that side. Now on their left were the tall railings that divided them
+from the stretching spaces of the Park shrouded in the darkness and
+mystery of night.
+
+“Well, my girl, what are you after?” said Garstin, who never troubled
+about the conventionalities, and seemed never to care what anyone
+thought of him and his ways. “Go ahead. Let me have it. I’m not
+coming in to your beastly hotel, you know. So get on with your bow wow
+Dowager.”
+
+“So you remember that I had begun--”
+
+“Of course I do.”
+
+“Do you ever miss anything--let anything escape you?”
+
+“I don’t know. Well, what is it?”
+
+“I wanted to tell you something about Lady Sellingworth which has
+puzzled me and a friend of mine. It is a sort of social mystery.”
+
+“Social! Oh, Lord!”
+
+“Now, Dick, don’t be a snob. You are a snob in your pretended hatred of
+all decent people.”
+
+“D’you call your society dames decent?”
+
+“Be quiet if you can! You’re worse than a woman.”
+
+He did not say anything. His horsey profile looked hard and
+expressionless in the night. As she glanced at it she could not help
+thinking of Newmarket. He ought surely to have been a jockey with that
+face and figure.
+
+“You are listening?”
+
+He said nothing. But he turned his face and she saw the two pin-points
+of light. That was enough. She told him about the theft of Lady
+Sellingworth’s jewels, her neglect of all endeavour to recover them, her
+immediate plunge into middle-age after the theft, and her avoidance of
+general society ever since.
+
+“What do you make of it?” she asked, when she had finished.
+
+“Make of it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Does your little mind find it mysterious?”
+
+“Well, isn’t it rather odd for a woman who loses fifty thousand pounds’
+worth of jewels never to try to get them back?”
+
+“Not if they were stolen by a lover.”
+
+“You think--”
+
+“It’s as obvious as that Martin, R.A., can’t paint and I can.”
+
+“But I believe they were stolen at the _Gare du Nord_. Now does that
+look like a lover?”
+
+“I didn’t say the _Gare du Nord_ looked like a lover.”
+
+“Don’t be utterly ridiculous.”
+
+“I don’t care where they were stolen--your old dowager’s Gew-gaws.
+Depend upon it they were stolen by some man she’d been mixed up with,
+and she knew it, and didn’t dare to prosecute. I can’t see any mystery
+in the matter.”
+
+“Perhaps you are right.”
+
+“Of course I am right.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn said nothing for two or three minutes. Her mind had gone
+from Lady Sellingworth to Craven, and then flitted on--she did not know
+why--to the man who had gazed at her so strangely in the Cafe Royal. She
+had been feeling rather neglected, badly treated almost, and his look
+had restored her to her normal supreme self-confidence. That fact would
+always be to the stranger’s credit. She wondered very much who he was.
+His good looks had almost startled her. She began also to wonder what
+Garstin had thought of him. Garstin seldom painted men. But he did so
+now and then. Two of his finest portraits were of men: one a Breton
+fisherman who looked like an apache of the sea, the other a Spanish
+bullfighter dressed in his Sunday clothes with the book of the Mass
+in his hand. Miss Van Tuyn had seen them both. She now found herself
+wishing that Garstin would paint a portrait of the man who had looked
+at her. But was he a Cafe Royal type? At present Garstin painted nothing
+which did not come out of the Cafe Royal.
+
+“That man--” she said abruptly.
+
+“I was just wondering when we should get to him!” interjected Garstin.
+“I thought your old dowager wouldn’t keep us away from him for long.”
+
+“I suppose you know by this time, Dick, that I don’t care in the least
+what you think of me.”
+
+“The only reason I bother about you is because you are a thoroughly
+independent cuss and have a damned fine head.”
+
+“Why don’t you paint me?”
+
+“I may come to it. But if I do I’m mortally afraid they’ll make an
+academician of me. Go on about your man.”
+
+“Didn’t you think him a wonderful type?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Tell me! If you want to paint someone, what do you do?”
+
+“Do? Go up and tell him or her to come along to the studio.”
+
+“Whether you know them or not?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“You ought to paint that man.”
+
+“Just because you want me to pick hum up and then introduce him to you.
+I don’t paint for reasons of that kind.”
+
+“Have you ever seen him before to-night?”
+
+“Yes. I saw him last night.”
+
+“For the first time?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“At the Cafe Royal?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What do you think he is?”
+
+“Probably a successful blackmailer.”
+
+For some obscure reason Miss Van Tuyn felt outraged by this opinion of
+Garstin.
+
+“The fact is,” she said, but in quite an impersonal voice, “that your
+mind is getting warped by living always among the scum of London, and
+by studying and painting only the scum. It really is a great pity. A
+painter ought to be a man of the world, not a man of the underworld.”
+
+“And the _a propos_ of all this?” asked Garstin
+
+“You are beginning to see the morphia maniac, the drunkard, the cocaine
+fiend, the prostitute, the--”
+
+“Blackmailer?”
+
+“Yes, the blackmailer, if you like, in everyone you meet. You live in
+a sort of bad dream, Dick. You paint in a bad dream. If you go on like
+this you will lose all sense of the true values.”
+
+“But I honestly do believe the man you want me to pick up and then
+introduce to you to be a successful blackmailer.”
+
+“Why? Do you know anything about him?”
+
+“Absolutely nothing.”
+
+“Then your supposition about him is absurd and rather disgusting.”
+
+“It isn’t a supposition.”
+
+“What is it then?”
+
+“Perhaps you don’t realize, my girl, that I’m highly sensitive.”
+
+“You seldom seem so. But, of course, I realize that you couldn’t paint
+as you do unless you were.”
+
+“Instead of using the word supposition in connexion with a fellow
+like myself your discrimination should have led you to choose the word
+instinct.”
+
+“Oh?”
+
+“Let’s cross over. Catch on!”
+
+They crossed to the side of the road next to Hyde Park.
+
+“My instinct tells me that the magnificently handsome man who stared
+at you to-night is of the tribe that lives by making those who are
+indiscreetly susceptible to beauty pay heavy tribute, in hard cash
+or its equivalent. He is probably a king in the underworld. Perhaps I
+really will paint him. No, I’m not coming in.”
+
+He left her on the doorstep of the hotel and tramped off towards
+Chelsea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Craven went away from Berkeley Square that night still under the
+spell and with a mind unusually vivid and alive. As he had told Lady
+Sellingworth, he was now twenty-nine and no longer considered himself
+young. At the F.O. there are usually a good many old young men, just as
+in London society there are always a great many young old women. Craven
+was one of the former. He was clever, discreet and careful in his work.
+He was also ambitious and intended to rise in the career he had chosen.
+To succeed he knew that energy was necessary, and consequently he
+was secretly energetic. But his energy did not usually show above the
+surface. Tradition rather forbade that. He had a quiet, even a lazy
+manner as a rule, and he thought he often felt old, especially in
+London. There was something in the London atmosphere which he considered
+antagonistic to youth. He had felt decades younger in Italy, especially
+when his ambassador had taken him to Naples in summer-time. But that was
+all over now. It might be a long time before he was again attached
+to an embassy.
+
+When he reached his rooms, or, rather, his flat, which was just off
+Curzon Street, he went to look at his bookshelves, and ran his finger
+along them until he came to the poems of William Watson, which were next
+to Rupert Brooke’s poems. After looking at the index he found the lyric
+he wanted, sat down, lit his pipe, and read it four times, thinking of
+Lady Sellingworth. Then he put away the book and meditated. Finally--it
+was after one o’clock--he went almost reluctantly to bed.
+
+In the morning he, of course, felt different--one always feels different
+in the morning--but nevertheless he was aware that something definite
+had come into his life which had made a change in it. This something was
+his acquaintance with Lady Sellingworth. Already he found it difficult
+to believe that he had lived for twenty-eight years without knowing her.
+
+He was one of those rather unusual young men who feel strongly the
+vulgarity of their own time, and who have in them something which seems
+at moments to throw back into the past. Not infrequently he felt that
+this mysterious something was lifting up the voice of the _laudator
+temporis acti_. But what did he, the human being who contained this
+voice and many other voices, know of those times now gone? They seemed
+to draw him in ignorance, and had for him something of the fascination
+which attaches to the unknown. And this fascination, or something akin
+to it, hung about Lady Sellingworth, and even about the house in which
+she dwelt, and drew him to both. He knew that he had never been in any
+house in London which he liked so much as he liked hers, that in no
+other London house had he ever felt so much at home, so almost curiously
+in place. The mere thought of the hall with its blazing fire, its
+beehive-chair, its staircase with the balustrade of wrought ironwork and
+gold, filled him with a longing to return to it, to hang up his hat--and
+remain. And the lady of the house was ideally right in it. He wondered
+whether in the future he would often be there, whether Lady Sellingworth
+would allow him to be one of the few real intimates to whom her door was
+open. He hoped so; he believed so; but he was not quite certain about
+it. For there was something elusive about her, not insincere but just
+that--elusive. She might not care to see very much of him although he
+knew that she liked him. They had touched the fringe of intimacy on the
+preceding night.
+
+After his work at the Foreign Office was over he walked to the club,
+and the first man he saw on entering it was Francis Braybrooke just back
+from Paris. Braybrooke was buying some stamps in the hall, and greeted
+Craven with his usual discreet cordiality.
+
+“I’ll come in a moment,” he said. “If you’re not busy we might have a
+talk. I shall like to hear how you fared with Adela Sellingworth.”
+
+Craven begged him to come, and in a few minutes they were settled in two
+deep arm-chairs in a quiet corner, and Craven was telling of his first
+visit to Berkeley Square.
+
+“Wasn’t I right?” said Braybrooke. “Could Adela Sellingworth ever be a
+back number? I think that was _your_ expression.”
+
+Craven slightly reddened.
+
+“Was it?”
+
+“I think so,” said Braybrooke, gently but firmly.
+
+“I was a--a young fool to use it.”
+
+“I fancy it’s a newspaper phrase that has pushed its way somehow into
+the language.”
+
+“Vulgarity pushes its way in everywhere now. Braybrooke, I want to
+thank you very much for your introduction to Lady Sellingworth. You were
+right. She has a wonderful charm. It’s a privilege for a young man, as
+I am I suppose, to know her. To be with her makes life seem more what it
+ought to be, what one wants it to be.”
+
+Braybrooke looked extremely pleased, almost touched.
+
+“I am glad you appreciate her,” he said. “It shows that real distinction
+has still a certain appeal. And so you met Beryl Van Tuyn there.”
+
+“Do you know her?”
+
+Braybrooke raised his eyebrows.
+
+“Know her? How should I not know her when I am constantly running over
+to Paris?”
+
+“Then I suppose she’s very much ‘in it’ there?”
+
+“Yes. She is criticized, of course. She lives very unconventionally,
+although Fanny Cronin is always officially with her.”
+
+“Fanny Cronin?”
+
+“Her _dame de compagnie_.”
+
+“Oh, the lady who reads Paul Bourget!”
+
+“I believe she does. Anyhow, one seldom sees her about. Beryl Van Tuyn
+is very audacious. She does things that no other lovely girl in her
+position would ever dare to do, or could do without peril to her
+reputation. But somehow she brings them off. Mind, I haven’t a word
+to say against her. She is exceedingly clever and has mastered the
+difficult art of making people accept from her what they wouldn’t accept
+for a moment from any other unmarried girl in society. She may be said
+to have a position of her own. Do you like her?”
+
+“Yes, I think I do. She is lovely and very good company.”
+
+“Frenchmen rave about her.”
+
+“And Frenchwomen?”
+
+“Oh, they all know her. She carries things through. That really is the
+art of life, to be able to carry things through. Her bronzes are quite
+remarkable. By the way, she has an excellent brain. She cares for
+the arts. She is by no means a fribble. I have been surprised by her
+knowledge more than once.”
+
+“She seems very fond of Lady Sellingworth. She wants to get her over to
+Paris.”
+
+“Adela Sellingworth won’t go.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“She seems to hate Paris now. It is years since she had stayed there.”
+
+After a pause Craven said:
+
+“Lady Sellingworth is something of a mystery, I think. I wonder--I
+wonder if she feels lonely in that big house of hers.”
+
+“Far more people feel lonely than seem lonely,” said Braybrooke.
+
+“I expect they do. But I think that somehow Lady Sellingworth seems
+lonely. And yet she is full of mockery.”
+
+“Mockery?”
+
+“Yes. I feel it.”
+
+“But didn’t you find her very kind?”
+
+“Oh, yes. I meant of self-mockery.”
+
+Braybrooke looked rather dubious.
+
+“I think,” continued Craven, perhaps a little obstinately, “that she
+looks upon herself with irony, while Miss Van Tuyn looks upon others
+with irony. Perhaps, though, that is rather a question of the different
+outlooks of youth and age.”
+
+“H’m?”
+
+Braybrooke pulled at his grey-and-brown beard.
+
+“I scarcely see--I scarcely see, I confess, why age should be more
+disposed to self-mockery than youth. Age, if properly met and
+suitably faced--that is, with dignity and self-respect, such as Adela
+Sellingworth undoubtedly shows--has no reason for self-mockery; whereas
+youth, although charming and delightful might well laugh occasionally at
+its own foolishness.”
+
+“Ah, but it never does!”
+
+“I think for once I shall have a cocktail,” said Braybrooke, signing to
+an attendant in livery, who at that moment came from some hidden region
+and looked around warily.
+
+“You will join me, Craven? Let it be dry Martinis. Eh? Yes! Two dry
+Martinis.”
+
+As the attendant went away Braybrooke added:
+
+“My dear boy, if you will excuse me for saying so, are you not getting
+the Foreign Office habit of being older than your years? I hope you will
+not begin wearing horn spectacles while your sight is still unimpaired.”
+
+Craven laughed and felt suddenly younger.
+
+The two dry Martinis were brought, and the talk grew a little more
+lively. Braybrooke, who seldom took a cocktail, was good enough to allow
+it to go to his head, and became, for him, almost unbuttoned. Craven,
+entertained by his elderly friend’s unwonted exuberance, talked more
+freely and a little more intimately to him than usual, and presently
+alluded to the events of the previous night, and described his
+expedition to Soho.
+
+“D’you know the _Ristorante Bella Napoli_?” he asked Braybrooke.
+“Vesuvius all over the walls, and hair-dressers playing Neapolitan
+tunes?”
+
+Braybrooke did not, but seemed interested, for he cocked his head to one
+side, and looked almost volcanic for a moment over the tiny glass in
+his hand. Craven described the restaurant, the company, the general
+atmosphere, the Chianti and Toscanas, and, proceeding with artful
+ingenuity, at last came to his climax--Lady Sellingworth and Miss Van
+Tuyn in their corner with their feet on the sanded floor and a smoking
+dish of Risotto alla Milanese before them.
+
+“Adela Sellingworth in Soho! Adela Sellingworth in the midst of such a
+society!” exclaimed the world’s governess with unfeigned astonishment.
+“What could have induced her--but to be sure, Beryl Van Tuyn is famous
+for her escapades, and for bringing the most unlikely people into them.
+I remember once in Paris she actually induced Madame Marretti to go
+to--ha--ah!”
+
+He pulled himself up short.
+
+“These Martinis are surely very strong!” he murmured into his beard
+reproachfully.
+
+“I don’t think so.”
+
+“My doctor tells me that all cocktails are rank poison. They set up
+fermentation.”
+
+“In the mind?” asked Craven.
+
+“No--no--in the--they cause indigestion, in fact. How poor Adela
+Sellingworth must have hated it!”
+
+“I don’t think she did. She seemed quite at home. Besides, she has been
+to many of the Paris cafes. She told me so.”
+
+“It must have been a long time ago. And in Paris it is all so different.
+And you sat with them?”
+
+Craven recounted the tale of the previous evening. When he came to the
+Cafe Royal suggestion the world’s governess looked really outraged.
+
+“Adela Sellingworth at the Cafe Royal!” he said. “How could Beryl Van
+Tuyn? And with a Bolshevik, a Turkish refugee--from Smyrna too!”
+
+“There were the Georgians for chaperons.”
+
+“Georgians!” said Braybrooke, with almost sharp vivacity. “I really hate
+that word. We are all subjects of King George. No one has a right to
+claim a monopoly of the present reign. I--waiter, bring me two more dry
+Martinis, please.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“What was I saying? Oh, yes--about that preposterous claim of certain
+groups and coteries! If anybody is a Georgian we are all Georgians
+together. I am a Georgian, if it comes to that.”
+
+“Why not? But Lady Sellingworth is definitely not one.”
+
+“How so? I must deny that, really. I know these young poets and painters
+like to imagine that everyone who has had the great honour of living
+under Queen Victoria--”
+
+“Forgive me! It isn’t that at all.”
+
+“Well, then--oh, our dry Martinis! How much is it, waiter?”
+
+“Two shillings, sir.”
+
+“Two--thank you. Well, then, Craven, I affirm that Lady Sellingworth is
+as much a Georgian as any young person who writes bad poetry in Cheyne
+Walk or paints impossible pictures in Glebe Place.”
+
+“She would deny that. She said, in my presence and in that of Sir
+Seymour Portman and Miss Van Tuyn, that she did not belong to this age.”
+
+“What an--what an extraordinary statement!” said Braybrooke, drinking
+down his second cocktail at a gulp.
+
+“She said she was--or rather, had been--an Edwardian. She would not have
+it that she belonged to the present day at all.”
+
+“A whim! It must have been a whim! The best of women are subject to
+caprice. It is the greatest mistake to class yourself as belonging to
+the past. It dates you. It--it--it practically inters you!”
+
+“I think she meant that her glory was Edwardian, that her real life was
+then. I don’t think she chooses to realize how immensely attractive she
+is now in the Georgian days.”
+
+“Well, I really can’t understand such a view. I shall--when I meet
+her--I shall really venture to remonstrate with her about it. And
+besides, apart from the personal question, one owes something to one’s
+contemporaries. Upon my word, I begin to understand at last why certain
+very charming women haven’t a good word to say for Adela Sellingworth.”
+
+“You mean the ‘old guard,’ I suppose?”
+
+“I don’t wish to mention any names. It is always a mistake to mention
+names. One cannot guard against it too carefully. But having done what
+she did ten years ago dear Adela Sellingworth should really--but it is
+not for me to criticise her. Only there is nothing people--women--are
+more sensitive about than the question of age. No one likes to be laid
+on the shelf. Adela Sellingworth has chosen to--well--one might feel
+such a very drastic step to be quite uncalled for--quite uncalled for.
+And so--but you haven’t told me! Did Adela Sellingworth allow herself to
+be persuaded to go to the Cafe Royal?”
+
+“No, she didn’t.”
+
+“Thank God for that!” said the world’s governess, looking immensely
+relieved.
+
+“I escorted her to Berkeley Square.”
+
+“Good! good!”
+
+“But we walked to the door of the Cafe Royal.”
+
+“What--down Shaftesbury Avenue?”
+
+“Yes!”
+
+“Past the Cafe Monico and--Piccadilly Circus?”
+
+“Yes!”
+
+“What time was it?”
+
+“Well after ten.”
+
+“Very unsuitable! I must say that--very unsuitable! That corner by the
+Monico at night is simply chock-a-block--I--I should say, teems, that’s
+the word--teems with people whom nobody knows or could ever wish to
+know. Beryl Van Tuyn should really be more careful. She grows quite
+reckless. And Adela Sellingworth is so tall and unmistakable. I do hope
+nobody saw her.”
+
+“I’m afraid scores of people did!”
+
+“No, no! I mean people she knows--women especially.”
+
+“I don’t think she would care.”
+
+“Her friends would care _for_ her!” retorted Braybrooke, almost
+severely. “To retire from life is all very well. I confess I think it a
+mistake. But that is merely one man’s opinion. But to retire from life,
+a great life such as hers was, and then after ten years to burst forth
+into--into the type of existence represented by Shaftesbury Avenue
+and the Cafe Royal, that would be unheard of, and really almost
+unforgivable.”
+
+“It would, in fact, be old wildness,” said Craven, with a faint touch of
+sarcasm.
+
+“Old wildness! What a very strange expression!”
+
+“But I think it covers the suggested situation. And we know what old
+wildness is--or if we don’t some of the ‘old guard’ can teach us. But
+Lady Sellingworth will never be the one to give us such a horrible
+lesson. If there is a woman in London with true dignity, dignity of the
+soul, she has it. She has almost too much of it even. I could almost
+wish she had less.”
+
+Braybrooke looked suddenly surprised and then alertly observant.
+
+“Less dignity?” he queried, after a slight but significant pause.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“But can a _grande dame_, as she is, ever have too much dignity of the
+soul?”
+
+“I think even such a virtue as that can be carried to morbidity. It may
+become a weapon against the happiness of the one who has it. Those who
+have no dignity are disgusting. As Lady Sellingworth said to me, they
+create nausea--”
+
+“Nausea!” interrupted Braybrooke, in an almost startled voice.
+
+“Yes--in others. But those who have too much dignity wrap themselves up
+in a secret reserve, and reserve shuts out natural happiness, I think,
+and creates loneliness. I’m sure Lady Sellingworth feels terribly alone
+in that beautiful house. I know she does.”
+
+“Has she told you so?”
+
+“Good heavens--no. But she never would.”
+
+“She need not be alone,” observed Braybrooke. “She could have a
+companion to-morrow.”
+
+“I can’t imagine her with a Fanny Cronin.”
+
+“I don’t mean a _dame de compagnie_. I mean a husband.”
+
+Craven’s ardent blue eyes looked a question.
+
+“Seymour Portman is always there waiting and hoping.”
+
+“Sir Seymour?” cried Craven.
+
+“Well, why not?” said Braybrooke, almost with severity. “Why not?”
+
+“But his age!”
+
+The world’s governess, who was older than Sir Seymour, though not a soul
+knew it, looked more severe.
+
+“His age would be in every way suitable to Adele Sellingworth’s,” he
+said firmly.
+
+“Oh, but--”
+
+“Go on!”
+
+“I can’t see an old man like Sir Seymour as _her_ husband. Oh, no! It
+wouldn’t do. She would never marry such an old man. I am certain of
+that.”
+
+Braybrooke pinched his lips together and felt for his beard.
+
+“I hope,” he said, lifting and lowering his bushy eyebrows, “I hope, at
+any rate, she will never be so foolish as to marry a man who is what
+is called young. That would be a terrible mistake, both for her and
+for him. Now I really must be going. I am dining to-night rather early
+with--oh, by the way, it is with one of your chiefs--Eric Learington.
+A good fellow--a good fellow! We are going to some music afterwards at
+Queen’s Hall. Good-bye. I’m very glad you realize Adela Sellingworth’s
+great distinction and charm. But--” He paused, as if considering
+something carefully; then he added:
+
+“But don’t forget that she and Seymour Portman would be perfectly
+suitable to one another. She is a delightful creature, but she is no
+longer a young woman. But I need not tell you that.”
+
+And having thus done the needless thing he went away, walking with a
+certain unwonted self-consciousness which had its source solely in dry
+Martinis.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Craven realized that he had “given himself away” directly Braybrooke was
+gone. The two empty glasses stood on a low table in front of his chair.
+He looked at them and for an instant was filled with anger against
+himself. To be immortal--he was old-fashioned enough to believe
+surreptitiously in his own immortality--and yet to be deflected from
+the straight path of good sense by a couple of dry Martinis! It was
+humiliating, and he raged against himself.
+
+Braybrooke had certainly gone away thinking that he, Craven, had fallen
+in love with Lady Sellingworth. That thought, too, might possibly
+have come out of one of those little glasses, the one on the left. But
+nevertheless it would stick in Braybrooke’s mind long after the Martinis
+were forgotten.
+
+And what if it did?
+
+Craven said that to himself, but he felt far less defiant than
+sensitively uncomfortable. He was surprised by himself. Evidently he had
+not known his own feelings. When Braybrooke mentioned Seymour Portman
+as a suitable husband for Lady Sellingworth something strong, almost
+violent, had risen up in Craven to protest. What was that? And why was
+he suddenly so angry? He was surely not going to make a fool of himself.
+He felt almost youthfully alarmed and also rather excited. An odd sense
+of romance suddenly floated about him. Did that too come from those
+cursed dry Martinis? Impossible to be sure for the moment. He found
+himself wondering whether teetotallers knew more about their souls than
+moderate drinkers, or less.
+
+But the odd sense of romance persisted when the effect of the dry
+Martinis must certainly have worn off. It was something such as
+Craven had never known, or even imagined before. He had had his little
+adventures, and about them had thrown the woven robes that gleam with
+prismatic colours; he had even had deeper, passionate episodes--as he
+thought them--in his life. As he had acknowledged in the _Ristorante
+Bella Napoli_ he had seldom or never started on a journey abroad without
+a secret hope of romance meeting him on the way. And sometimes it had
+met him. Or so he had believed at the time. But in all these episodes of
+the past there had been something definitely physical, something almost
+horribly natural, a prompting of the body, the kind of thing which
+belongs to youth, any youth, and which any doctor could explain in a few
+crude words. Even then, in those now dead moments, Craven had sometimes
+felt sensitive youth’s impotent anger at being under the yoke which is
+laid upon the necks of innumerable others, clever, dull, aristocratic,
+common, the elect and the hopelessly vulgar.
+
+In this new episode he was emancipated from that. He was able to feel
+that he was peculiar, if not unique. In the strong attraction which drew
+him towards Lady Sellingworth there was certainly nothing of the--well,
+to himself he called it “the medically physical.” Something of the body
+there might possibly be. Indeed, perhaps it was impossible that there
+should not be. But the predominant factor had nothing whatever to do
+with the body. He felt certain of that.
+
+When he got home from the Club he found on his table a note from Beryl
+Van Tuyn:
+
+
+HYDE PARK HOTEL, Thursday.
+
+My dear Mr. Craven,--What a pity you couldn’t get away last night.
+But you were quite right to play Squire of Dames to our dear Lady
+Sellingworth. We had a rather wonderful evening after you had gone. Dick
+Garstin was in his best vein. Green chartreuse brings out his genius in
+a wonderful way. I wish it would do for me what it does for him. But
+I have tried it--in small doses--quite in vain. He and I walked home
+together and talked of everything under the stars. I believe he is going
+to paint me. Next time you make your way to the Bella Napoli we might
+go together. Two lovers of Italy must always feel at home there, and
+the sight of Vesuvius is encouraging, I think. So don’t forget that my
+“beat,” as you call it, often lies in Soho.
+
+Isn’t dear Adela Sellingworth delightful? She looked like a wonderful
+antique in that Italian frame. I love every line in her face and would
+give my best bronze to have white hair like hers. But somehow I am
+almost glad she didn’t fall to the Cafe Royal. She is right. It is too
+Georgian for her. She is, as she says, definitely Edwardian and would
+scarcely understand the new jargon which comes as easily as how d’you do
+to _our_ lips.
+
+By the way, coming out of the Cafe Royal last night I saw a living
+bronze.--Yours,
+
+BERYL VAN TUYN.
+
+
+This note half amused and half irritated Craven on a first reading. On
+a second reading irritation predominated in him. Miss Van Tuyn’s
+determined relegation of Lady Sellingworth to the past seemed somehow
+to strike at him, to make him--or to intend to make him--ridiculous; and
+her deliberate classing of him with herself in the underlined “_our_”
+ seemed rather like an attempt to assert authority, the authority of
+youth over him. But no doubt this was very natural. Craven was quite
+sure that Miss Van Tuyn cared nothing about him. But he was a not
+disagreeable and quite presentable young man; he had looked into her
+violet eyes, had pressed her hand, had held it longer than was at all
+necessary, had in fact shown that he was just a young man and easily
+susceptible; and so she did not choose to let an elderly woman take
+possession of him even for an hour without sharpening a weapon or two
+and bringing them into use.
+
+No wonder that men are conceited when women so swiftly take up arms on
+their account!
+
+For a moment Craven almost disliked Miss Van Tuyn, and made up his mind
+that there would be no “next time” for him in Soho while she was in
+London. He knew that whenever they met he would feel her attraction;
+but he now classed it with those attractions of the past which were
+disgustingly explicable, and which just recently he had learnt to
+understand in a way that was almost old.
+
+Was he putting on horn spectacles while his eyesight was still
+unimpaired? He felt doubtful, almost confused for a moment. Was his new
+feeling for Lady Sellingworth subtly pulling him away from his youth?
+Where was he going? Perhaps this new sensation of movement was only
+deceptive; perhaps he was not on the way to an unknown region. For
+a moment he wished that he could talk freely, openly, with some
+understanding friend, a man of course. But though he had plenty of
+men friends he could not think of one he would be able to confide his
+present feelings to.
+
+Already he began to realize the human ridicule which always attends upon
+any departure from what, according to the decision of all absolutely
+ordinary people, is strictly normal.
+
+Everybody would understand and approve if he were to fall desperately
+in love with Beryl Van Tuyn; but if he were to prefer a great friendship
+with Lady Sellingworth to a love affair with her youthful and beautiful
+friend no one would understand, and everybody would be ready to laugh
+and condemn.
+
+He knew this and yet he felt obstinate, mulish almost, as he sat down to
+reply non-committally to Miss Van Tuyn’s letter. It was only when he did
+this that he thought seriously about its last words.
+
+Why had she troubled to write them down? Comparatively young though he
+was he knew that a woman’s “by the way” usually means anything rather
+than what it seems to mean--namely, a sentence thrown out by chance
+because it has just happened to turn up in the mind. “A living bronze.”
+ Miss Van Tuyn was exceptionally fond of bronzes and collected them with
+enthusiasm. She knew of course the Museum at Naples. Craven had often
+visited it when he had been staying at the Villa Rosebery. He could
+remember clearly almost every important bronze in that wonderful
+collection. He realized what “a living bronze” must mean when written of
+by a woman. Miss Van Tuyn had evidently seen an amazingly handsome man
+coming out of the Cafe Royal. But why should she tell him about it?
+Perhaps her motive was the very ordinary one, an attempt to rouse the
+swift jealousy of the male animal. She was certainly “up” to all
+the usual feminine tricks. He thoroughly realized her vanity and,
+contrasting it with Lady Sellingworth’s apparently almost careless lack
+of self-consciousness, he wondered whether Lady Sellingworth could ever
+have been what she was said to have been. If so, as a snake sheds its
+skin she must surely have sloughed her original nature. He was thankful
+for that, thankful for her absolute lack of pose and vanity. He even
+delighted in her self-mockery, divined by him. So few women mocked at
+themselves and so many mocked at others.
+
+If Miss Van Tuyn had intended to give a flick to his jealousy at the end
+of her letter she had failed. If she met fifty living bronzes and added
+them to her collection it was nothing to him. He compared his feeling
+when Braybrooke had suggested Seymour Portman as a husband for Lady
+Sellingworth with his lack of feeling about Miss Van Tuyn and her
+bronze, and he was almost startled. And yet Miss Van Tuyn was lovely and
+certainly did not want him to go quite away out of her ken. And, when
+she chose, she had made him very foolish about her.
+
+What did it all mean?
+
+He wrote a little letter in answer to hers, charmingly polite, but
+rather vague about Soho. At the end of it, before signing himself
+“Yours”--he could do no less with her letter before him--he put, “I
+feel rather intrigued about the living bronze. Was it in petticoats or
+trousers?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Craven had been right in his supposition about the world’s governess.
+Braybrooke had gone away from the Club that evening firmly persuaded
+that his young friend had done the almost unbelievable thing, had fallen
+in love with Adela Sellingworth. He was really perturbed about it.
+A tremulous sense of the fitness of things governed his whole life,
+presided as it were over all his actions and even over most of his
+thoughts. He instinctively shrank from everything that was bizarre,
+from everything that was, as he called it, “out of keeping.” He
+was responsible for the introduction of young Craven into Adela
+Sellingworth’s life. It would be very unfortunate indeed, it would be
+almost disastrous, if the result of that well-meant introduction were to
+be a preposterous passion!
+
+When the effect of the two cocktails had subsided he tried to convince
+himself that he was giving way to undue anxiety, that there was really
+nothing in his supposition except alcohol taken in the afternoon. But
+this effort failed. He had lived a very long time, much longer than
+almost anyone knew; he was intimately familiar with the world, and,
+although unyieldingly discreet himself, was well acquainted with its
+follies and sins. Life had taught him that practically nothing is
+impossible. He had known old men to run--or rather to walk--off with
+young girls; he had known old women to be infatuated with mere boys; he
+had known well-born women to marry grooms and chauffeurs; a Peer of his
+acquaintance had linked himself to a cabman’s daughter and stuck to
+her; chorus girls of course perpetually married into the Peerage; human
+passions--although he could not understand it--ran as wild as the roots
+of eucalyptus trees planted high within reach of water. So he could not
+rule out as impossible a sudden affection for Adela Sellingworth in
+the heart of young Craven. It was really very unfortunate. Feeling
+responsible, he thought perhaps he ought to do something discreetly. The
+question was--what?
+
+Braybrooke was inclined to be a matchmaker, though he had neglected to
+make one match, his own. Thinking things over now, he said to himself
+that it was quite time young Craven settled down. He was a very
+promising fellow. Eric Learington, of whom he had made some casual
+inquiries during the interval between the two parts of the concert at
+Queen’s Hall, had spoken quite warmly about Craven’s abilities, industry
+and ambition. No doubt the young man would go far. But he ought to have
+a clever wife with some money to help him. A budding diplomatist needs a
+wife more than most men. He is destined to do much entertaining. Social
+matters are a part of his duty, of his career. A suitable wife was
+clearly indicated for young Craven. And it occurred to the world’s
+governess that as he had apparently done harm unwittingly, or approached
+the doing of harm, by introducing Craven to dear Adela Sellingworth, it
+was incumbent on him to try to do good, if possible, by now knocking the
+harm on the head, of course gently, as a well-bred man does things.
+
+Beryl Van Tuyn came into his mind.
+
+As he had told Craven, he knew her quite well and knew all about her.
+She came of an excellent American family in Philadelphia. She was
+the only child of parents who could not get on together, and who were
+divorced. Both her father and mother had married again. The former lived
+in New York in Fifth Avenue; the latter, who was a beauty, was usually
+somewhere in Europe--now on the Riviera, now in Rome, at Aix, in Madrid,
+in London. She sometimes visited Paris, but seldom stayed long anywhere.
+She professed to be fond of Beryl, but the truth was that Beryl was far
+too good looking to be desirable as her companion. She loved her child
+intensely--at a distance. Beryl was quite satisfied to be at a distance,
+for she had a passion for independence. Her father gave her an ample
+allowance. Her mother had long ago unearthed Fanny Cronin from some lair
+in Philadelphia to be her official companion.
+
+Braybrooke knew all this, knew about how much money Miss Van Tuyn had,
+and about how much she would eventually have. Without being vulgarly
+curious, he somehow usually got to know almost everything.
+
+Beryl Van Tuyn would be just the wife for young Craven when she had
+settled down. She was too independent, too original, too daring, and far
+too unconventional for Braybrooke’s way of thinking. But he believed her
+to be really quite all right. Modern Americans held views about personal
+liberty which were not at all his, but that did not mean that they were
+not entirely respectable. Beryl Van Tuyn was clever, beautiful, had
+plenty of money. As a diplomatist’s wife, when she had settled down,
+she would be quite in her element. After some anxious thought he decided
+that it was his duty to try to pull strings.
+
+The ascertained fact that Craven had met Adela Sellingworth and Beryl
+Van Tuyn on the same day and together, and that the woman of sixty had
+evidently attracted him far more than the radiant girl of twenty-four,
+did not deter Braybrooke from his enterprise. His long experience of
+the world had led him to know that human beings can, and perpetually do,
+interfere successfully in each other’s affairs, help in making of
+what are called destinies, head each other off from the prosecution of
+designs, in fact play Providence and the Devil to each other.
+
+His laudable intention was to play Providence.
+
+On the following day he considered it his social duty to pay a call at
+Number 18A, Berkeley Square. Dear Adela Sellingworth would certainly
+wish to know how things were going in Paris. Although she now never went
+there, and in fact never went anywhere, she still, thank God, had an
+interest in what was going on in the world. It would be his pleasure to
+gratify it.
+
+He found her at home and alone. But before he was taken upstairs the
+butler said he was not sure whether her ladyship was seeing anyone and
+must find out. He went away to do so, and returned with an affirmative
+answer.
+
+When Braybrooke came into the big drawing-room on the first floor he
+fancied that his friend was looking older, and even paler, than usual.
+As he took her hand he thought, “Can I be right? Is it possible that
+Craven can imagine himself in love with her?”
+
+It was an uncomplimentary thought, and he tried to put it from him as
+singularly unsuitable, and indeed almost outrageous at this moment,
+but it would not go. It defied him and stuck firmly in his mind. In his
+opinion Adela Sellingworth was the most truly distinguished woman in
+London. But that she should attract a young man, almost indeed a boy, in
+_that_ way! It did really seem utterly impossible.
+
+In answer to his inquiry, Lady Sellingworth acknowledged that she had
+not been feeling very well during the last two days.
+
+“Perhaps you have been doing too much?” he suggested.
+
+The mocking look came into her eyes.
+
+“But what do I ever do now?” she said. “I lie quietly on my shelf. That
+surely can’t be very exhausting.”
+
+“No one would ever connect you with being laid on the shelf,” said
+Braybrooke; “your personality forbids that. Besides, I hear that you
+have been having quite a lively time.”
+
+He paused--it was his conception of the pause dramatic--then added:
+
+“At the foot of a volcano!”
+
+“Ah! you have heard about Vesuvius!”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What a marvellous gatherer of news you are! Beryl Van Tuyn?”
+
+“No. I happened to meet young Craven at the St. James’s Club, and he
+told me of your excursion into Bohemia.”
+
+“Bohemia!” she said. “I haven’t set foot in that entertaining country
+since I gave up my apartment in Paris. Soho is beyond its borders. But I
+confess to Soho. Beryl persuaded me, and I really quite enjoyed it. The
+coffee was delicious, and the hairdressers put their souls into their
+guitars. But I doubt if I shall go there again.”
+
+“It tired you? The atmosphere in those places is so mephitic.”
+
+“Oh, I didn’t mind that. Besides, we blew it away by walking home, at
+least part of the way home.”
+
+“Down Shaftesbury Avenue? That was surely rather dangerous.”
+
+“Dangerous! Why?”
+
+“The sudden change from stuffiness to cold and damp. Craven spoke
+of Toscanas. And those cheap restaurants are so very small and badly
+ventilated.”
+
+“Oh, we enjoyed our walk.”
+
+“That’s good. Craven was quite enthusiastic about the evening.”
+
+Again the pause dramatic!
+
+“He’s a nice boy. I hope you liked him. I feel a little responsible--”
+
+“Do you? But why?”
+
+“Because I ventured to introduce him to you.”
+
+“Oh, don’t worry. I assure you I like him very much.”
+
+Her tone was very casual, but quite cordial.
+
+“Well, he was enthusiastic about the evening, said it was like a bit of
+Italy. You know he was once at the embassy in Rome.”
+
+“Yes. He told me so.”
+
+“I hear very good accounts of him from the Foreign Office. Eric
+Learington speaks very well of him. He ought to rise high in the
+career.”
+
+“I hope he will. I like to see clever young men get on. And he certainly
+has something in him.”
+
+“Yes, I think so too. By the way, he seems tremendously taken with Miss
+Van Tuyn.”
+
+As the world’s governess said this he let his small hazel eyes fix
+themselves rather intently on Lady Sellingworth’s face. He saw no
+change of expression there. She still looked tired, but casual, neither
+specially interested nor in the least bored. Her brilliant eyes still
+held their slightly mocking expression.
+
+“Beryl must be almost irresistible to young men,” she said. “She
+combines beauty with brains, and she has the audacity which nearly
+always appeals to youth. Besides, unconventionality is really the salt
+of our over-civilized life, and she has it in abundance. She doesn’t
+merely pretend to it. It is part of her.”
+
+“She may grow out of it in time.”
+
+“I hope she won’t,” said Lady Sellingworth, rather decisively. “If she
+did she would lose a great deal of her charm.”
+
+“Well, but when she marries?”
+
+“Is she thinking of marrying?”
+
+“Girls of her age usually are, I fancy.”
+
+“If she marries the right man he won’t mind her unconventionality. He
+may even enjoy it.”
+
+It occurred to Braybrooke that Adela Sellingworth was supposed to have
+done a great many unconventional things at one time. Nevertheless he
+could not help saying:
+
+“I think most husbands prefer their wives to keep within bounds.”
+
+“Beryl may never marry,” said Lady Sellingworth, rather thoughtfully.
+“She is an odd girl. I could imagine--”
+
+She paused, but not dramatically.
+
+“Yes?” he said, with gentle insinuation.
+
+“I could imagine her choosing to live a life of her own.”
+
+“What, like Caroline Briggs?” he said.
+
+Lady Sellingworth moved, and her face changed, suddenly looked more
+expressive.
+
+“Ah, Caroline!” she said. “I am very fond of her. She is one in a
+thousand. But she and Beryl are quite different in character. Caroline
+lives for self-respect, I think. And Beryl lives for life. Caroline
+refuses, but Beryl accepts with both hands.”
+
+“Then she will probably accept a husband some day.”
+
+Suddenly Lady Sellingworth changed her manner. She leaned forward
+towards the world’s governess, smiled at him, and said, half
+satirically, half confidentially:
+
+“Now what is it you have in the back of your mind?”
+
+Braybrooke was slightly taken aback. He coughed and half closed his
+eyes, then gently pulled up his perfectly creased trousers, taking hold
+of them just above the knees.
+
+“I really don’t think--” he began.
+
+“You and I are old friends. Do tell me.”
+
+He certainly had not come intending to be quite frank, and this sudden
+attack rather startled him.
+
+“You have formed some project,” she continued. “I know it. Now let me
+guess what it is.”
+
+“But I assure you--”
+
+“You have found someone whom you think would suit Beryl as a husband.
+Isn’t that it?”
+
+“Well, I don’t know. I confess it had just occurred to me that with her
+beauty, her cleverness, and her money--for one has to think of money,
+unfortunately in these difficult days--she would be a very desirable
+wife for a rising ambitious man.”
+
+“No doubt. And who is he?”
+
+It was against all Braybrooke’s instincts to burst out abruptly into
+the open. He scarcely knew what to do. But he was sufficiently sharp to
+realize that Lady Sellingworth already knew the answer to her question.
+So he made a virtue of necessity and replied:
+
+“It had merely occurred to me, after noting young Craven’s enthusiasm
+about her beauty and cleverness, that he might suit her very well. He
+must marry and marry well if he wishes to rise high in the diplomatic
+career.”
+
+“Oh, but some very famous diplomatists have been bachelors,” she said,
+still smiling.
+
+She mentioned two or three.
+
+“Yes, yes, I know, I know,” he rejoined. “But it is really a great
+handicap. If anyone needs a brilliant wife it is an ambassador.”
+
+“You think Mr. Craven is destined to become an ambassador?”
+
+“I don’t see why not--in the fullness of time, of course. Perhaps you
+don’t know how ambitious and hard-working he is.”
+
+“I know really very little about him.”
+
+“His abilities are excellent. Learington has a great opinion of him.”
+
+“And so you think Beryl would suit him!”
+
+“It just occurred to me. I wouldn’t say more than that. I have a horror
+of matchmaking.”
+
+“Of course. Like all of us! Well, you may be right. She seemed to like
+him. You don’t want me to do anything, I suppose?”
+
+“Oh, no--no!” he exclaimed, with almost unnecessary earnestness, and
+looking even slightly embarrassed. “I only wished to know your opinion.
+I value your opinion so very highly.”
+
+She got up to stir the fire. He sprang, or rather got, up too, rather
+quickly, to forestall her. But she persisted.
+
+“I know my poker so well,” she said. “It will do things for me that it
+won’t do for anyone else. There! That is better.”
+
+She remained standing by the hearth, looking tremendously tall.
+
+“I don’t think I have an opinion,” she said. “Beryl would be a brilliant
+wife for any man. Mr. Craven seems a very pleasant boy. They might do
+admirably together. Or they might both be perfectly miserable. I can’t
+tell. Now do tell me about Paris. Did you see Caroline Briggs?”
+
+When Braybrooke left Berkeley Square that day he remembered having once
+said to Craven that Lady Sellingworth was interested in everything that
+was interesting except in love affairs, that she did not seem to care
+about love affairs. And he had a vague feeling of having, perhaps, for
+once done the wrong thing. Had he bored her? He hoped not. But he was
+not quite sure.
+
+When he had gone, and she was once more alone. Lady Sellingworth rang
+the bell. A tall footman came in answer to it, and she told him that
+if anyone else called he was to say, “not at home.” As he was about to
+leave the room after receiving this order she stopped him.
+
+“Wait a moment.”
+
+“Yes, my lady.”
+
+She seemed to hesitate; then she said:
+
+“If Mr. Craven happens to call I will see him. He was here two nights
+ago. Do you know him by sight?”
+
+“I can’t say I do, my lady.”
+
+“Ah! You were not in the hall when he called the other day?”
+
+“No, my lady.”
+
+“He is tall with dark hair, about thirty years old. Murgatroyd is not in
+to-day, is he?”
+
+“No, my lady.”
+
+“Then if anyone calls like the gentleman I have described just ask him
+his name. And if it is Mr. Craven you can let him in.”
+
+“Yes, my lady.”
+
+The footman went out. A clock chimed in the distance, where the piano
+stood behind the big azalea. It was half past five. Lady Sellingworth
+made up the fire again, though it did not really need mending; then she
+stood beside it with one narrow foot resting on the low fender, holding
+her black dress up a little with her left hand.
+
+Was Fate going to leave her alone? That was how she put it to herself.
+Or was she once more to be the victim of a temperament which she had
+sometimes hoped was dying out of her? In these last few years she had
+suffered less and less from it.
+
+She had made a grand effort of will. That was now ten years ago. It
+had cost her more than anyone would ever know; it had cost her those
+terrible tears of blood which only the soul weeps. But she had persisted
+in her effort. A horrible incident, humiliating her to the dust, had
+summoned all the pride that was left in her. In a sort of cold frenzy
+of will she had flung life away from her, the life of the woman who was
+vain, who would have worship, who would have the desire of men, the life
+of the beauty who would have admiration. All that she had clung to
+she had abandoned in that dreadful moment, had abandoned as by night a
+terrified being leaves a dwelling that is in flames. Feeling naked, she
+had gone out from it into the blackness. And for ten years she had
+stuck to her resolution, had been supported by the strength of her will
+fortified by a hideous memory. She had grasped her nettle, had pressed
+it to her bosom. She had taken to her all the semblance of old age,
+loneliness, dullness, had thrust away from her almost everything
+which she had formerly lived by. For, like almost all those who yield
+themselves to a terrific spasm of will, she had done more than it was
+necessary for her to do. From one extreme she had gone to another. As
+once she had tried to emphasize youth, she had emphasized the loss of
+youth. She had cruelly exposed her disabilities to an astonished world,
+had flung her loss of beauty, as it were, in the faces of the “old
+guard.” She had called all men to look upon the ravages Time had brought
+about in her. Few women had ever done what she had done.
+
+And eventually she had had a sort of reward. Gradually she had been
+enclosed by the curious tranquillity that habit, if not foolish or
+dangerous, brings to the human being. Her temperament, which had long
+been her enemy, seemed at last to lie down and sleep. There were times
+when she had wondered whether perhaps it would die. And she had come
+upon certain compensations which were definite, and which she had learnt
+how to value.
+
+By slow degrees she had lost the exasperation of desire. The lust of the
+eye, spoken of to her by Caroline Briggs in Paris on the evening which
+preceded her enlightenment, had ceased to persecute her because she had
+taught herself deliberately the custody of the eye. She had eventually
+attained to self-respect, even to a quiet sense of personal dignity, not
+the worldly dignity of the _grande dame_ aware of her aristocratic birth
+and position in the eyes of the world, but the unworldly dignity of the
+woman who is keeping her womanhood from all degradation, or possibility
+of degradation. Very often in those days she had recalled her
+conversation with Caroline Briggs in the Persian room of the big house
+in the Champs-Elysees. Caroline had spoken of the women who try to defy
+the natural law, and had said that they were unhappy women, laughed at
+by youth, even secretly jeered at. For years she, Adela Sellingworth,
+had been one of those women. And often she had been very unhappy. That
+misery at least was gone from her. Her nerves had quieted down. She who
+had been horribly restless had learnt to be still. Sometimes she was
+almost at peace. Often and often she had said to herself that Caroline
+was right, that the price paid by those who flung away their dignity of
+soul, as she had done in the past, was terrible, too terrible almost for
+endurance. At last she could respect herself as she was now; at last she
+could tacitly claim and hope to receive the respect of others. She no
+longer decked out her bones in jewels. Caroline did not know the reason
+of the great and startling change in her and in her way of life, and
+probably supposed both to be due to that momentous conversation. Anyhow,
+since then, whenever she and Lady Sellingworth had met, she had been
+extraordinarily kind, indeed, almost tender; and Lady Sellingworth knew
+that Caroline had taken her part against certain of the “old guard” who
+had shown almost acute animosity. Caroline Briggs now was perhaps Lady
+Sellingworth’s best friend. For at last they were on equal terms; and
+that fact had strengthened their friendship. But Caroline was quite
+safe, and Lady Sellingworth from time to time had realized that for her
+life might possibly still hold peculiar dangers. There had been moments
+in those ten years of temptation, of struggle, of a rending of the heart
+and flesh, which nobody knew of but herself. But as the time went on,
+and habit more and more asserted its sway, they had been less and less
+frequent. Calm, resignation had grown within her. There was none of the
+peace that passeth understanding, but sometimes there was peace. But
+even when there was, she was never quite certain that she had absolutely
+conquered herself.
+
+Men and women may not know themselves thoroughly, but they usually know
+very well whether they have finally got the better of a once dominating
+tendency or vice, or whether there is still a possibility of their
+becoming again its victim. In complete victory there is a knowledge
+which nothing can shake from its throne. That knowledge Lady
+Sellingworth had never possessed. She hoped, but she did not know. For
+sometimes, though very seldom, the old wildness seemed to stir within
+her like a serpent uncoiling itself after its winter’s sleep. Then she
+was frightened and made a great effort, an effort of fear. She set her
+heel on the serpent, and after a time it lay still. Sometimes, too, the
+loneliness of her life in her spacious and beautiful house became almost
+intolerable to her. This was especially the case at night. She did not
+care to show a haggard and lined face and white hair to her world when
+it was at play. And though she had defied the “old guard,” she did not
+love meeting all those women whom she knew so well, and who looked so
+much younger and gayer than she did. So she had many lonely evenings
+at home, when her servants were together below stairs, and she had for
+company only the fire and a book.
+
+The dinner in Soho had been quite an experience for her, and though she
+had taken it so simply and casually, had seemed so thoroughly at home
+and in place with her feet on the sanded floor, eating to the sound of
+guitars, she had really been inwardly excited. And when she had looked
+up and seen Craven gazing towards her she had felt an odd thrill at the
+heart. For she had known Italy, too, as well as she had known Paris, and
+had memories connected with Italy. And the guitars had spoken to her of
+days and nights which her will told her not to think of any more.
+
+And now? Was Fate going to leave her alone? Or was she once more going
+to be attacked? Something within her, no doubt woman’s instinct, scented
+danger.
+
+Braybrooke’s visit had disturbed her. She had known him for years, and
+knew the type of man he was--careful, discreet, but often very busy. He
+had a kind heart, but a brain which sometimes wove little plots. On the
+whole he was a sincere man, except, of course, sometimes socially, but
+now and then he found it necessary to tell little lies. Had he told her
+a little lie that day about young Craven and Beryl Van Tuyn? Had he been
+weaving the first strands of a little plot--a plot like a net--and was
+it his intention to catch her in it? She knew he had had a definite
+motive in coming to see her, and that the motive was not connected with
+his visit to Paris.
+
+His remarks about Craven had interested her because she was interested
+in Craven, but it was not quite clear to her why Braybrooke should
+suddenly concentrate on the young man’s future, nor why he should,
+with so much precaution, try to get at her opinion on the question of
+Craven’s marriage. When Braybrooke had first spoken to her of Craven he
+had not implied that he and Craven were specially intimate, or that he
+was deeply interested in Craven’s concerns or prospects. He had
+merely told her that Craven was a clever and promising “boy,” with an
+interesting mind and a nice nature, who had a great desire to meet her.
+And she had good-naturedly said that Craven might call. It had all been
+very casual. But Braybrooke’s manner had now completely changed. He
+seemed to think he was almost responsible for the young man. There had
+even been something furtive in his demeanour when speaking about Craven
+to her, and when she had forced him to explain and to say what was in
+his mind, for a moment he had been almost confused.
+
+What had it to do with her whether Craven married Beryl Van Tuyn or did
+not marry her?
+
+Although she had been interested when Braybrooke had spoken of Craven’s
+cleverness and energy, of his good prospects in his career, and of the
+appreciation of Eric Learington--a man not given to undue praises--she
+had been secretly irritated when he had come to the question of Beryl
+Van Tuyn and the importance of Craven’s marrying well. Why should he
+marry at all? And if he must, why Beryl Van Tuyn?
+
+Lady Sellingworth hated the thought of that marriage and the idea that
+Braybrooke was probably intent on trying to bring it about, or at any
+rate was considering whether he should make the endeavour, roused in her
+resentment against him.
+
+“Tiresome old man!” she said to herself, as she stood by the fire. “Why
+won’t he let things alone? What business is it of his?”
+
+And then she felt as if Braybrooke were meditating a stroke against her,
+and had practically asked her to help him in delivering the blow.
+
+She felt that definitely. And immediately she had felt it she was
+startled, and the strong sensation of being near to danger took hold of
+her.
+
+In all the ten years which had passed since the theft of her jewels
+she had never once deliberately stretched out her hands to happiness.
+Palliatives she had made the most of; compensations she had been
+thankful for. She had been very patient, and considering what she had
+been, very humble. But she had definitely given up the thought of ever
+knowing again any intimate personal happiness. That book was closed. In
+ten years she had never once tried to open it.
+
+And now, suddenly, without even being definitely conscious of what she
+was doing, she had laid her hands on it as if--The change in her, the
+abrupt and dangerous change, had surely come about two nights ago. And
+she felt now that something peculiar in Craven, rather than something
+unusual in herself, had caused it.
+
+Beryl Van Tuyn and she were friends because the girl had professed a
+cult for her, had been very charming to her, and, when in London, had
+persistently sought her out. Beryl had amused her. She had even been
+interested in Beryl because she had noted in her certain traits which
+had once been predominant in herself. And how she had understood Beryl’s
+vanity, Beryl’s passion for independence and love of the unconventional!
+Although they were so different, of different nations and different
+breeds, there was something which made them akin. And she had recognized
+it. And, recognizing it, she had sometimes felt a secret pity and even
+fear for the girl, thinking of the inevitable fading of that beauty,
+of the inevitable exasperation of that vanity with the passing of the
+years. The vanity would grow and the beauty would diminish as time went
+on. And then, some day, what would Beryl be? For in her vanity there was
+already exaggeration. In it she had already reached a stage which had
+only been gained by Lady Sellingworth at a much later period in life.
+Already she looked in the highways and byways for admiration. She sought
+for it even among Italian hairdressers! Some day it would make her
+suffer.
+
+Lady Sellingworth had seen young Craven go away from his visit to her
+in Beryl’s company with perhaps just a touch of half-ironical amusement,
+mingled with just a touch of half-wistful longing for the days that
+were over and done with. She knew so well that taking possession of
+a handsome young man on a first meeting. There was nothing in it but
+vanity. She had known and had done that sort of thing when she was a
+reigning beauty. Craven had interested and pleased her at once; she
+hardly knew why. There was something about him, about his look,
+bearing and manner which was sympathetic to her. She had felt a quiet
+inclination to know more of him. That was all. Seymour Portman had liked
+him, too, and had said so when the door had closed behind the young
+couple, leaving the old couple to themselves. He would come again some
+day, no doubt. And while she and Sir Seymour had remained by the fire
+talking quietly together, in imagination she had seen those two,
+linked by their youth--that wonderful bond--walking through the London
+twilight, chattering gaily, laughing at trifling jokes, realizing their
+freemasonry. And she had asked herself why it was that she could not
+feel that other freemasonry--of age. Seymour Portman had loved her for
+many years, loved her now, had never married because of her, would give
+up anything in London just to be quietly with her, would marry her now,
+ravaged though she was, worn, twice a widow, with a past behind her
+which he must know about, and which was not edifying. And yet she could
+not love him, partly, perhaps chiefly, because there was still rooted in
+her that ineradicable passion--it must be that, even now, a passion--for
+youth and the fascination of youth. When at last he had gone she had
+felt unusually bitter for a few minutes, had asked herself, as human
+beings ask themselves every day, the eternal why. “Why, why, why am I as
+I am? Why can’t I care for the suitable? Why can’t I like the gift held
+out to me? Why doesn’t my soul age with my body? Why must I continue
+to be lonely just because of the taint in my nature which forbids me to
+find companionship in one who finds perfect companionship in me? Why--to
+sum up--am I condemned eternally to be myself?”
+
+There was no answer. The voice was not in the whirlwind. And presently
+she had dismissed those useless, those damnable questions, which only
+torture because they are never answered.
+
+And then had come the night in Soho. And there for the first time since
+they had known each other she had felt herself to be subtly involved in
+a woman’s obscure conflict with Beryl Van Tuyn. She was not conscious
+of having taken up weapons. Nevertheless she had no doubt about the
+conflict. And on her side any force brought into play against her
+beautiful friend must have issued simply from her personality, from some
+influence, perhaps from some charm, which she had not deliberately used.
+(At least she thought she was being sincere with herself in telling
+herself that.) Craven had been the cause of the conflict, and certainly
+he had been fully aware of Beryl Van Tuyn’s part in it. And he had
+shown quiet determination, willfulness even. That willfulness of his had
+pleased Lady Sellingworth more than anything had pleased her for a
+very long time. It had even touched her. At first she had thought
+that perhaps it had been prompted by chivalry, by something charmingly
+old-fashioned, and delicately gentlemanly in Craven. Later on she had
+been glad--intimately, warmly glad--to be quite sure that something more
+personal had guided him in his conduct that night.
+
+He had simply preferred her company to the company of Beryl Van Tuyn.
+She was woman enough to rejoice in that fact. It was even rather
+wonderful to her. And it had given Craven a place in her estimation
+which no one had had for ten years.
+
+Beryl’s pressure upon him had been very definite. She had practically
+told him, and asked him, to do a certain thing--to finish the evening
+with her. And he had practically denied her right to command, and
+refused her request. He had preferred to the Georgians and their lively
+American contemporary, sincerely preferred, an Edwardian.
+
+The compliment was the greater because the Edwardian had not encouraged
+him. Indeed in a way he had really defied her as well as Beryl Van Tuyn.
+
+She had loved his defiance. When he had flatly told her he did not
+intend to go back to the Cafe Royal she had felt thankful to him--just
+that. And just before his almost boyish remark, made with genuine
+vexation in his voice, about the driving of London chauffeurs had given
+her a little happy thrill such as she had not known for years.
+
+She had not had the heart to leave him on her doorstep.
+
+But now, standing by the fire, she knew that it would have been safer to
+have left him there. And it would be safer now to ring the bell, summon
+the footman, and say that she was not at home to anyone that afternoon.
+While she was thinking this the footman entered the room. Hearing him
+she turned sharply.
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“Sir Seymour Portman has called, my lady. I told him you were not at
+home. But he asked me to make quite sure.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth hesitated. After a moment’s pause she said, in a dry
+voice:
+
+“Not at home.”
+
+The footman went out.
+
+There are moments in life which are full of revelation. That was such
+a moment for Lady Sellingworth. When she had heard the door open her
+instinct had played her false. She had turned sharply feeling certain
+that Craven had called. The reaction she felt when she heard the name of
+Sir Seymour told her definitely that she was in danger. She felt angry
+with herself, even disgusted, as well as half frightened.
+
+“What a brute I am!”
+
+She formed those words with her lips. An acute sense of disappointment
+pervaded her because Craven had not come, though she had no reason
+whatever to expect him. But she was angry because of her feeling about
+Seymour Portman. It was horrible to have such a tepid heart as hers was
+when such a long and deep devotion was given to it. The accustomed thing
+then made scarcely any impression upon her, while the thing that was
+new, untried, perhaps worth very little, excited in her an expectation
+which amounted almost to longing!
+
+“How can Seymour go on loving such a woman as I am?” she thought.
+
+Stretching herself a little she was able to look into an oval Venetian
+mirror above the high marble frame of the fireplace. She looked to
+scourge herself as punishment for what she was feeling.
+
+“You miserable, ridiculous old woman!” she said to herself, as she saw
+her lined face which the mirror, an antique one, slightly distorted.
+
+“You ought to be thankful to have such a friendship as Seymour’s!”
+
+She said that, and she knew that if, disobeying her order to the
+footman, he had come upstairs, her one desire would have been to get rid
+of him, at all costs, to get him and his devotion out of the house, lest
+Craven should come and she should not have Craven alone. If Seymour knew
+that surely even his love would turn into hatred!
+
+And if Craven knew!
+
+She felt that day as if all the rampart of will, which ten years’ labour
+had built up between her and the dangers and miseries attendant upon
+such a temperament as hers, were beginning before her eyes to crumble
+into dust, touched by the wand of a maleficent enchanter.
+
+And it was Craven’s fault. He should have been like other young men,
+obedient to the call of beauty and youth; he should have been wax in
+Beryl Van Tuyn’s pretty hands. Then this would never have happened, this
+crumbling of will. He had done a cruel thing without being aware of his
+cruelty. He had been carried away by something that was not primarily
+physical. And in yielding to that uncommon impulse, which proved that
+he was not typical, he had set in activity, in this hidden and violent
+activity, that which had been sleeping so deeply as to seem like
+something dead.
+
+As Lady Sellingworth looked into the Venetian mirror, which made her
+ugliness of age look uglier than it was, she regretted sharply that she
+had allowed herself to grow old in this fearfully definite way. It was
+too horrible to look like this and to be waiting eagerly, with an almost
+deceiving eagerness, for the opening of a door, a footfall, the sound
+of a voice that was young. Mrs. Ackroyd, Lady Archie Brook--they looked
+surely twenty years younger than she did. She had been a fool! She had
+been a passionate, impulsive fool!
+
+No; she was being a fool now.
+
+If only Caroline Briggs were in London! At that moment Lady Sellingworth
+longed to be defended against herself. She felt that she was near to the
+edge of a precipice, but that perhaps a strong hand could pull her away
+from it into the safety she had known for ten years.
+
+“I am sixty. That settles it. There is nothing to be excited about,
+nothing to look for, nothing to draw back from or refuse. The fact that
+I am sixty and look as I do settles the whole matter.”
+
+They were brave words, but unfortunately they altered nothing.
+Feeling was untouched by them. Even conviction was not attained. Lady
+Sellingworth knew she was sixty, but she felt like a woman of thirty at
+that moment. And yet she was not deceived, was not deceiving herself.
+She did know--or felt that she absolutely knew--that the curious spell
+she had evidently been able, how she scarcely knew, to exert upon Craven
+during his visit to her that night could not possibly be lasting. He
+must be a quite unusual young man, perhaps even in some degree abnormal.
+But even so the fascination he had felt, and had shown that he felt,
+could not possibly be a lasting fascination. In such matters she _knew_.
+
+Therefore surely the way was plain before her. Ten years ago she had
+made up her mind, as a woman seldom makes up her mind. She had seen
+facts, basic facts, naked in a glare of light. Those facts had not
+changed. But she had changed. She was ten years older. The horror of
+passing into the fifties had died out in the cold resignation of passing
+into the sixties. Any folly now would be ten times more foolish than a
+folly of ten years ago. She told herself that, reiterated it.
+
+The clock struck six. She heard it and turned from the fire. Certainly
+Craven would not call now. It was too late. Only a very intimate friend
+would be likely to call after six o’clock, and Craven was not a very
+intimate friend, but only a new acquaintance whom she had been with
+twice. When he had said good-bye to her after their long talk by the
+fire on the night of the dinner in Soho she had said nothing about his
+coming again. And he had not mentioned it. But she had felt then that
+to speak of such a thing was quite unnecessary, that it was tacitly
+understood between them that of course he would come again, and
+soon. And she believed that he had felt as she did. For despite her
+self-mockery, and even now when looking back, she had known, and still
+knew, that they had gone quite a long way together in a very short time.
+
+That happens sometimes; but perhaps very seldom when one of the
+travellers is sixty and the other some thirty years younger. Surely
+something peculiar in Craven rather than something unusual in herself
+had been at the root of the whole thing.
+
+That night he had seemed so oddly at home in her house, and really he
+had seemed so happy and at ease. They had talked about Italy, and he
+had told her what Italy meant to him, quite simply and without any pose,
+forgetting to be self-conscious in the English way. He had passed a
+whole summer on the bay of Naples, and he had told her all about it. And
+in the telling he had revealed a good deal of himself. The prelude in
+Soho had no doubt prepared the way for such talk by carrying them to
+Naples on wings of music. They would not have talked just like that
+after a banal dinner at Claridge’s or the Carlton. Craven had shown the
+enthusiasm that was in him for the sun, the sea, life let loose from
+convention, nature and beautiful things. The Foreign Office young
+man--quiet, reserved, and rather older than his years--had been pushed
+aside by a youth who had some Pagan blood in him, who had some agreeable
+wildness under the smooth surface which often covers only other layers
+of smoothness. He had told her of his envy of the sea people and she had
+understood it; and, in return, she had told him of an American boy whom
+she had known long ago, and who, fired by a book about life on the bay
+of Naples which he had read in San Francisco, had got hold of a little
+money, taken ship to Naples, gone straight to the point at Posilpipo,
+and stayed there among the fishermen for nearly two years, living their
+life, eating their food, learning to speak their argot, becoming at
+length as one of them. So thoroughly indeed had he identified himself
+with them that often he had acted as boatman to English and American
+tourists, and never had his nationality been discovered. In the end, of
+course, he had gone back to San Francisco, and she believed, was now a
+lawyer in California. But at least he had been wise enough to give up
+two years to a whim, and had bared his skin to the sun for two glorious
+summers. And not everyone has the will to adventure even so far as that.
+
+Then they had talked about the passion for adventure, and Craven had
+spoken of his love, not yet lost, for Browning’s poem, “Waring”; how he
+had read it when quite a boy and been fascinated by it as by few other
+poems. He had even quoted some lines from it, and said them well, taking
+pains and not fearing any criticism or ridicule from her. And they
+had wondered whether underneath the smooth surface of Browning, the
+persistent diner out, there had not been far down somewhere a brown and
+half-savage being who, in some other existence, had known life under
+lateen sails on seas that lie beyond the horizon line of civilization.
+And they had spoken of the colours of sails, of the red, the brown, the
+tawny orange-hued canvases, that, catching the winds under sunset skies,
+bring romance, like some rare fruit from hidden magical islands, upon
+emerald, bright-blue or indigo seas.
+
+The talk had run on without any effort. They had been happily sunk in
+talk. She had kept the fire from her face with the big fan. But the fire
+had lit his face up sometimes and the flames had seemed to leap in his
+eyes. And watching him without seeming to watch him the self-mockery had
+died out of her eyes. She had forgotten to mock at herself and had let
+herself go down the stream: floating from subject to subject, never
+touching bottom, never striking the bank, never brought up short by an
+obstacle. It had been a perfect conversation. Even her imp must have
+been quite absorbed in it. For he had not tormented her during it.
+
+But at last the clock had struck one, just one clear chiming blow. And
+suddenly Craven had started up. His blue eyes were shining and a dusky
+red had come into his cheeks. And he had apologized, had said something
+about being “carried away” beyond all recollection of the hour. She
+had stayed where she was and had bidden him good night quietly from the
+sofa, shutting up her fan and laying it on a table. And she had said:
+“I wonder what it was like with the Georgians!” And then he had again
+forgotten the hour, and had stood there talking about the ultra-modern
+young people of London as if he were very far away from them, were much
+older, much simpler, even much more akin to her, than they were. He had
+prefaced his remarks with the words, “I had forgotten all about them!”
+ and she had felt it was true. Beryl Van Tuyn’s name had not been
+mentioned between them. But she was not a Georgian. Perhaps that fact
+accounted for the omission, or perhaps there were other reasons for
+their not speaking of her just then. She had done her best to prevent
+the evening intimacy which had been theirs. And they both knew it.
+Perhaps that was why they did not speak of her. Poor Beryl! Just then
+Lady Sellingworth had known a woman’s triumph which was the sweeter
+because of her disadvantages. Thirty-six years older than the young and
+vivid beauty! And yet he had preferred to end his evening with her! He
+must be an unusual, even perhaps a rather strange man. Or else--no, the
+tremendous humiliation she had endured ten years ago, acting on a nature
+which had always been impaired by a secret diffidence, had made her too
+humble to believe any longer that she had within herself the conqueror’s
+power. He was not like other young men. That was it. She had come upon
+an exceptional nature. Exceptional natures love, hate, are drawn and
+repelled in exceptional ways. The rules which govern others do not apply
+to them. Craven was dangerous because he was, he must be, peculiar.
+
+When at last he had left her that night it had been nearly half-past
+one. But he had not apologized again. In going he had said: “Thank God
+you refused to go to the Cafe Royal!”
+
+Nearly half-past one! Lady Sellingworth now looked at the clock. It was
+nearly half-past six.
+
+She had a lonely dinner, a lonely evening before her.
+
+Suddenly all her resignation seemed to leave her, to abandon her, as if
+it had had enough of her and could not bear to be with her for another
+minute. She saw her life as a desert, without one flower, one growing
+green thing in it. How had she been able to endure it for so long? It
+was a monstrous injustice that she should be condemned to this horrible,
+unnerving loneliness. What was the use of living if one was entirely
+alone? What was the use of money, of a great and beautiful house, of
+comfort and leisure, if nobody shares them with you? People came to see
+her, of course. But what is the use of visitors, of people who drop in,
+and drop out just when you most need someone to help you in facing life,
+in the evenings and when deep night closes in? At that moment she felt,
+in her anger and rebellion, that she had never had anything in her life,
+that all the women she knew--except perhaps Caroline Briggs--had had
+more than herself, had had a far better time than she had had. During
+the last ten years her brilliant past had faded until now she could
+scarcely believe in it. It had become like a pale aquarelle. Her memory
+retained events, of course, but they seemed to have happened in the life
+of someone she had known intimately rather than of herself. They were
+to her like things told rather than like things lived. There were times
+when she even felt innocent. So much had she changed during the last ten
+years. And now she revolted, like a woman who had never lived and wanted
+to live for the first time, like a woman who had never had anything and
+who demanded possession. She even got up and stood out in the big room,
+saying to herself:
+
+“What shall I do to-night? I can’t stay here all alone. I must go out. I
+must do something unusual to take me out of myself. Mere stagnation here
+will drive me mad. I’ve got to do something to get away from myself.”
+
+But what could she do? An elderly well-known woman cannot break out of
+her house in the night, like an unknown young man, and run wild in the
+streets of London, or wander in the parks, seeking distractions and
+adventures.
+
+Ten years ago in Paris she had felt something of the same angry desire
+for the freedom of a man, something of the same impotence. Her curbed
+wildness then had tortured her. It tortured her now. Life was in violent
+activity all about her. Even the shop girls had something to look
+forward to. Soon they would be going out with their lovers. She knew
+something of the freedom of the modern girl. Women were beginning to
+take what men had always had. But all that freedom was too late for her!
+(She forgot that she had taken it long ago in Paris and felt that she
+had never had it. And that feeling made part of her anger.)
+
+The clock struck the half-hour.
+
+Just then the door was opened and the footman appeared before she had
+had time to move. He looked faintly surprised at seeing her standing
+facing him in the middle of the room.
+
+“Mr. Craven has called my lady.”
+
+“Mr. Craven! But I told you to let him in. Have you sent him away?”
+
+“No, my lady. But Mr. Craven wouldn’t come up till I had seen your
+ladyship. He said it was so late. He asked me first to tell your
+ladyship he had called, and whether he might see you just for a minute,
+as he had a message to give your ladyship.”
+
+“A message! Please ask him to come up.”
+
+The footman went out, and Lady Sellingworth went to sit down near the
+fire. She now looked exactly as usual, casual, indifferent, but kind,
+not at all like a woman who would ever pity herself. In a moment the
+footman announced “Mr. Craven,” and Craven walked in with an eager but
+slightly anxious expression on his face.
+
+“I know it is much too late for a visit,” he said. “But I thought I
+might perhaps just speak to you.”
+
+“Of course. I hear you have a message for me. Is it from Beryl?”
+
+He looked surprised.
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn? I haven’t seen her.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“I only wanted--I wondered whether, if you are not doing anything
+to-night, I could persuade you to give me a great pleasure. . . . Could
+I?”
+
+“But what is it?”
+
+“Would you dine with me at the _Bella Napoli_?”
+
+Lady Sellingworth thought of the shop girls again, but now how
+differently!
+
+“I would come and call for you just before eight. It’s a fine night.
+It’s dry, and it will be clear and starry.”
+
+“You want me to walk?”
+
+He slightly reddened.
+
+“Or shall we dress and go in a taxi?” he said.
+
+“No, no. But I haven’t said I can come.”
+
+His face fell.
+
+“I will come,” she said. “And we will walk. But what would Mr.
+Braybrooke say?”
+
+“Have you seen him? Has he told you?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“About our conversation in the club?”
+
+“I have seen him, and I don’t think he is quite pleased about
+Shaftesbury Avenue. But never mind. I cannot live to please Mr.
+Braybrooke. _Au revoir_. Just before eight.”
+
+When he had gone Lady Sellingworth again looked in the glass.
+
+“But it’s impossible!” she said to herself. “It’s impossible!”
+
+She hated her face at that moment, and could not help bitterly
+regretting the fierce impulse of ten years ago. If she had not yielded
+to that impulse she might now have been looking, not at a young woman
+certainly, but a woman well preserved. Now she was frankly a wreck.
+She would surely look almost grotesque dining alone with young Craven.
+People would think she was his grandmother. Perhaps it would be better
+not to go. She was filled with a sense of painful hesitation. She came
+away from the glass. No doubt Craven was “on the telephone.” She might
+communicate with him, tell him not to come, that she had changed her
+mind, did not feel very well. He would not believe her excuse whatever
+it was, but that could not be helped. Anything was better than to make
+a spectacle of herself in a restaurant. She had not put Craven’s address
+and telephone number in her address book, but she might perhaps have
+kept the note he had written to her before their first meeting. She did
+not remember having torn it up. She went to her writing-table, but could
+not find the note. She found his card, but it had only his club address
+on it. Then she went downstairs to a morning room she had on the ground
+floor. There was another big writing-table there. The telephone was
+there too. After searching for several minutes she discovered Craven’s
+note, the only note he had ever written to her. Stamped in the left-hand
+corner of the notepaper was a telephone number.
+
+She was about to take down the receiver when she remembered that Craven
+had not yet had time to walk back to his flat from her house, even if
+he were going straight home. She must wait a few minutes. She came away
+from the writing-table, sat down in an armchair, and waited.
+
+Night had closed in. Heavy curtains were drawn across the tall windows.
+One electric lamp, which she had just turned on, threw a strong light
+on the writing-table, on pens, stationery, an address book, a telephone
+book, a big blue-and-gold inkstand, some photographs which stood on
+a ledge protected by a tiny gilded rail. The rest of the room was in
+shadow. A low fire burned in the grate.
+
+Lady Sellingworth did not take up a book or occupy herself in any way.
+She just sat still in the armchair and waited. Now and then she heard a
+faint footfall, the hoot of a motor horn, the slight noise of a passing
+car. And loneliness crept upon her like something gathering her into a
+cold and terrible embrace.
+
+It occurred to her that she might ask Craven presently through the
+telephone to come and dine in Berkeley Square. No one would see her with
+him if she did that, except her own servants.
+
+But that would be a compromise. She was not fond of compromises. Better
+one thing or the other. Either she would go with him to the restaurant
+or she would not see him at all that night.
+
+If Caroline Briggs were only here! And yet if she were it would be
+difficult to speak about the matter to her. If she were told of it, what
+would she say? That would depend upon how she was told. If she were told
+all the truth, not mere incidents, but also the feelings attending
+them, she would tell her friend to give the whole thing up. Caroline was
+always drastic. She always went straight to the point.
+
+But Caroline was in Paris.
+
+Lady Sellingworth looked at her watch. Craven lived not far off. He
+might be at home by now. But perhaps she had better give him, and
+herself, a little more time. For she was still undecided, did not yet
+know what she was going to do. Impulse drove her on, but something
+else, reason perhaps, or fear, or secret, deep down, painfully acquired
+knowledge, was trying to hold her back. She remembered her last stay
+in Paris, her hesitation then, her dinner with Caroline Briggs, the
+definite decision she had come to, her effort to carry it out, the
+terrible breakdown of her decision at the railway station and its
+horrible result.
+
+Disaster had come upon her because she had yielded to an impulse ten
+years ago. Surely that should teach her not to yield to an impulse
+now. But the one was so different from the other, as different as that
+horrible man in Paris had been from young Craven. That horrible man in
+Paris! He had disappeared out of her life. She had never seen him again,
+had never mentioned him to anybody. He had gone, as mysteriously as he
+had come, carrying his booty with him, all those lovely things which
+had been hers, which she had worn on her neck and arms and bosom, in her
+hair and on her hands. Sometimes she had wondered about him, about
+the mentality and the life of such a man as he was, a creature of the
+underworld, preying on women, getting up in the morning, going to bed
+at night, with thoughts of crime in his mind, using his gift of beauty
+loathsomely. She had wondered, too, how it was that such loathsomeness
+as his was able to hide itself, how it was that he could look so manly,
+so athletic, even so wistful and eager for sympathy.
+
+But Seymour Portman had seen through him at a first glance. Evidently
+that type of man had a power to trick women’s instincts, but was less
+successful with men. Perhaps Caroline was right, and the whole question
+was simply one of the lust of the eye.
+
+Young Craven was good-looking too. But surely she had not been attracted
+to him, brought into sympathy with him merely because of that. She hoped
+not. She tried hard to think not. A woman of her age must surely be
+beyond the lure of mere looks in a man unconnected with the deeper
+things which make up personality.
+
+And yet ten years ago she had been lured towards a loathsome and utterly
+abominable personality by mere looks. Certainly her nature inclined her
+to be a prey to just that--the lust of the eye.
+
+(Caroline Briggs was horribly apposite in some of her remarks.)
+
+She tried to reconstitute her evenings with Craven in her imagination,
+keeping the conversation exactly as it had been, but giving him a
+thoroughly plain face, a bad complexion, mouse-coloured feeble hair,
+undistinguished features, ordinary eyes, and a short broad figure.
+Certainly it would have made a difference. But how much difference?
+Perhaps a good deal. But he had enjoyed the conversation as much as she
+had, and there was nothing in her appearance now to arouse the lust of
+the eye. Suddenly it occurred to her that she possessed now at least
+one advantage. If a young man were attracted by her it must be her
+personality, herself in fact, which attracted him. It could not be her
+looks. And surely it is better to attract by your personality than by
+your looks.
+
+A woman’s voice whispered within her just then, “It is better to attract
+by both. Then you are safe.”
+
+She moved uneasily. Then she got up and went to the telephone. The
+chances were in favour of Craven’s being in his flat by now.
+
+As she put her hand on the receiver, but before she took it down, Lady
+Sellingworth thought of the Paris railway station, of what had happened
+there, of the stern resolution she had come to that day, of the tears of
+blood that had sealed it, of the will that had enabled her to stick to
+it during ten years. And she thought, too, of that phrase of Caroline
+Briggs’s concerning the lust of the eye.
+
+“I won’t go!” she said to herself.
+
+And she took the receiver down.
+
+Almost immediately she was put through, and heard Craven’s voice at
+the other end, the voice which had recited those lines from Browning’s
+“Waring” by the fire, saying:
+
+“Yes? Who is it?”
+
+“Lady Sellingworth,” she replied.
+
+The sound of the voice changed at once, became eager as it said:
+
+“Oh--Lady Sellingworth! I have only just come in. I know what it is.”
+
+“But how can you?”
+
+“I do. You want me to dress for dinner. And we are to go in a cab and be
+very respectable instead of Bohemian. Isn’t that it?”
+
+She hesitated. Then she said:
+
+“No; it isn’t that.”
+
+“Do tell me then!”
+
+“I think--I’m afraid I can’t come.”
+
+“Oh, no--it can’t be that! But I have reserved the table in the corner
+for us. And we are going to have gnocchi done in a special way with
+cheese. Gnocchi with cheese! Please--please don’t disappoint me.”
+
+“But I haven’t been very well the last two days, and I’m rather afraid
+of the cold.”
+
+“I am so sorry. But it’s absolutely dry under foot. I swear it is!”
+
+A pause. Then his voice added:
+
+“Since I came in I have refused an invitation to dine out to-night. I
+absolutely relied on you.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“Yes. It was from Miss Van Tuyn, to dine with her at the _Bella
+Napoli_.”
+
+“I’ll come!” said Lady Sellingworth. “Good-bye.”
+
+And she put up the receiver.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Miss Van Tuyn had not intended to stay long in London when she came over
+from Paris. But now she changed her mind. She was pulled at by three
+interests--Lady Sellingworth, Craven and the living bronze. A cold hand
+had touched her vanity on the night of the dinner in Soho. She had felt
+angry with Craven for not coming back to the Cafe Royal, and angrier
+still with Lady Sellingworth for keeping him with her. Although she did
+not positively know that Craven had spent the last part of the evening
+in the drawing-room at Berkeley Square, she felt certain that he had
+done so. Probably Lady Sellingworth had pressed him to go in. But
+perhaps he had been glad to go, perhaps he had submitted to an influence
+which had carried him for the time out of his younger, more beautiful
+friend’s reach.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn resolved definitely that Craven must at once be added to
+the numerous men who were mad about her. So much was due to her vanity.
+Besides, she liked Craven, and might grow to like him very much if she
+knew him better. She decided to know him better, much better, and wrote
+her letter to him. Craven had puzzled a little over the final sentence
+of that letter. There were two reasons for its apparently casual
+insertion. Miss Van Tuyn wished to whip Craven into alertness by giving
+his male vanity a flick. Her other reason was more subtle. Some instinct
+seemed to tell her that in the future she might want to use the stranger
+as a weapon in connexion with Craven. She did not know how exactly. But
+in that sentence of her letter she felt that she was somehow preparing
+the ground for incidents which would be brought about by destiny, or
+which chance would allow to happen.
+
+That she would some day know “the living bronze” she felt certain. For
+she meant to know him. Garstin’s brutal comment on him had frightened
+her. She did not believe it to be just. Garstin was always brutal in his
+comments. And he lived so perpetually among shady, or more than shady,
+people that it was difficult for him to believe in the decency of
+anybody who was worth knowing. For him the world seemed to be divided
+into the hopelessly dull and conventional, who did not count, and the
+definitely outrageous, who were often interesting and worthy of being
+studied and sometimes painted. It must be obvious to anyone that
+the living bronze could not be numbered among the merely dull and
+conventional. Naturally enough, then, Garstin supposed him to be a
+successful blackmailer. Miss Van Tuyn was not going to allow herself
+to be influenced by the putrescence of Garstin’s mind. She had her own
+views on everything and usually held to them. She had quite decided
+that she would get to know the living bronze through Garstin, who
+always managed to know anyone he was interested in. Being totally
+unconventional and not, as he said, caring a damn about the proprieties,
+if he wished to speak to someone he spoke to him, if he wished to paint
+him he told him to come along to the studio. There was a simplicity
+about Garstin’s methods which was excused in some degree by his fame.
+But if he had not been famous he would have acted in just the same way.
+No shyness hindered him; no doubts about himself ever assailed him.
+He just did what he wanted to do without _arriere pensee_. There was
+certainly strength in Garstin, although it was not moral strength.
+
+The morning after the dinner in Soho Miss Van Tuyn telegraphed to Fanny
+Cronin to come over at once, with Bourget’s latest works, and engaged
+an apartment at Claridge’s. Although she sometime dined in the shadow
+of Vesuvius, she preferred to issue forth from some lair which was
+unmistakably smart and comfortable. Claridge’s was both, and everybody
+came there. Miss Cronin wired obedience and would be on the way
+immediately. Meanwhile Miss Van Tuyn received Craven’s note in answer to
+hers.
+
+She grasped all its meaning, surface and subterranean, immediately. It
+meant a very polite, very carefully masked, withdrawal from the sphere
+of her influence. The passage about Soho was perfectly clear to her
+mind, although to many it might have seemed to convey an agreeably
+worded acceptance of her suggestion, only laying its translation into
+action in a rather problematical future, the sort of future which would
+become present when “neither of us has an engagement.”
+
+Craven had evidently been “got at” by Adela Sellingworth.
+
+On the morning after Miss Van Tuyn’s telegram to Paris Fanny Cronin
+arrived, with Bourget’s latest book in her hand, and later they settled
+in at Claridge’s. Miss Cronin went to bed, and Miss Van Tuyn, who had no
+engagement for that evening, went presently to the telephone. Although
+in her note to Craven by implication she had left it to him to suggest
+a tete-a-tete dinner in Soho, she was now resolved to ask him. She was a
+girl of the determined modern type, not much troubled by the delicacies
+or inclined to wait humbly on the pleasure of men. If a man did not show
+her the way, she was quite ready to show the way to him. Without being
+precisely of the huntress type, she knew how to take bow and arrow in
+her hand.
+
+She rang up Craven, and the following dialogue took place at the
+telephone.
+
+“Yes? Yes?”
+
+“Is Mr. Craven there?”
+
+“Yes, I am Alick Craven. Who is it, please?”
+
+“Don’t you know?”
+
+“One minute! Is it--I’m afraid I don’t.”
+
+“Beryl Van Tuyn.”
+
+“Of course! I knew the voice at once, but somehow I couldn’t place it.
+How are you, Miss Van Tuyn?”
+
+“Dangerously well.”
+
+“That’s splendid.”
+
+“And you?”
+
+“I’m what dull people call very fit and cheery.”
+
+“How dreadful! Now, tell me--are you engaged to-night? I’m sure you
+aren’t, because I want you to take me to dine at the _Bella Napoli_.
+We agreed to tell each other when we were free. So I take you at your
+word.”
+
+“Oh, I’m awfully sorry!”
+
+“What?”
+
+“I’m ever so sorry.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I have a dinner engagement to-night.”
+
+“What a bore! But surely you can get out of it?”
+
+“I’m afraid not. No, really I can’t.”
+
+“Send an excuse! Say you are ill.”
+
+“I can’t honestly. It’s--it’s rather important. Besides, the fact is,
+I’m the host.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+The timbre of Miss Van Tuyn’s voice changed slightly at this crisis in
+the conversation.
+
+“Oh--if you’re the host, of course. . . . You really _are_ the host?”
+
+“Yes, I really am. So you see!”
+
+“No, but I hear and understand. Never mind. Ask me another night.”
+
+“Yes--that’s it. Another night. Thank you so much. By the way, does the
+living bronze--”
+
+“What? The living what?”
+
+“Bronze! . . . The living bronze--”
+
+“Oh, yes. Well, what about it?”
+
+“Does it wear petticoats or trousers?”
+
+“Trousers.”
+
+“Then I think I rather hate it.”
+
+“You--”
+
+But at this point the exchange intervened. Then something happened; and
+then Craven heard a voice saying:
+
+“No, darling! It’s the teeth--the teeth on the left-hand side. You know
+when we were at the Carlton I was in agony. Tell Annie not to--”
+
+It was useless to persist. Besides, he did not want to. So he put up
+the receiver. Almost immediately afterwards he was rung up by Lady
+Sellingworth, hung on the edge of disappointment for an instant, and
+then was caught back into happiness.
+
+When he finally left the telephone and went to his bedroom to change his
+clothes, but not to “dress,” he thanked God for having clinched matters
+so swiftly. Lady Sellingworth had certainly meant to let him down. Some
+instinct had told him what to say to her to make her change her mind.
+At least, he supposed so. For she had abruptly changed her mind after
+hearing of Miss Van Tuyn’s invitation. But why had she meant to give up
+the dinner? What had happened between his exit from her house and her
+ringing him up? For he could not believe in the excuse of ill-health
+put forward by her. He was puzzled. Women certainly were difficult to
+understand. But it was all right now. His audacity--for he thought it
+rather audacious of him to have asked Lady Sellingworth to dine alone
+with him at the _Bella Napoli_--was going to be rewarded. As he changed
+his clothes he hummed to himself:
+
+“_O Napoli! Bella Napoli_!”
+
+At Claridge’s meanwhile Miss Van Tuyn was not humming. As she came away
+from the telephone she felt in a very bad temper. Things were not going
+well for her just now in London, and she was accustomed to things going
+well. As in Craven’s letter, so just now at the telephone, she had been
+aware of resistance, of a distinct holding back from her influence.
+This was a rare experience for her, and she resented it. She believed
+Craven’s excuse for not dining with her. It was incredible that a
+young man who had nothing to do would refuse to pass an evening in her
+company. No; he was engaged. But she had felt at the telephone that
+he was not sorry he was engaged; she still felt it. He was going to do
+something which he preferred doing to dining with her. The tell-tale
+line showed itself in her low white forehead.
+
+Fanny Cronin had gone to bed; otherwise they might have dined downstairs
+in the restaurant, where they would have been sure of meeting people
+whom Miss Van Tuyn knew. She did not choose to go down and dine alone.
+A lonely dinner followed by a lonely evening upstairs did not appeal to
+her; for a moment, like Lady Sellingworth in Berkeley Square, she felt
+the oppression of solitude. She went to the window of her sitting-room,
+drew the curtain back, pulled aside the blind, and looked out. The night
+was going to be fine; the sky was clear and starry; the London outside
+drew her. For a moment she thought of telephoning to Garstin to come
+out somewhere and dine with her. He was rude to her, seldom paid her
+a compliment, and never made love to her. But he was famous and
+interesting. They could always get on in a tete-a-tete conversation. And
+then there was now that link between them of the living bronze and her
+plan with which Garstin was connected. She meant to know that man; she
+meant it more strongly now that Craven was behaving so strangely. She
+dropped the blind, drew the curtains forward, went to the fire, and lit
+a cigarette.
+
+She wondered where Craven was dining. At some delightful restaurant with
+someone he liked very much. She was quite sure of that; or--perhaps
+he had told her a lie! Perhaps he was dining at Number 18A, Berkeley
+Square! Suddenly she felt certain that she had hit on the truth. That
+was it! He was dining in Berkeley Square with Adela Sellingworth.
+They were going to have another evening together. Possessed by this
+conviction, and acting on an almost fierce impulse--for her vanity was
+now suffering severely--she went again to the telephone and rang up Lady
+Sellingworth. When she was put through, and heard the characteristic
+husky voice of her so-called friend at the other end of the line, she
+begged Lady Sellingworth to come and dine at Claridge’s that night and
+have a quiet talk over things. As she had expected, she got a
+refusal. Lady Sellingworth was engaged. Miss Van Tuyn, with a discreet
+half-question, half-expression of disappointment, elicited the fact
+that Lady Sellingworth was dining out, not having people at home. The
+conversation concluded at both ends with charming expressions of regret,
+and promises to be together as soon as was humanly possible.
+
+Again Miss Van Tuyn believed an excuse; again her instinct told her that
+she had invited someone to dine who was glad to be engaged. There was
+only one explanation of the two happy refusals. She was now absolutely
+positive that Lady Sellingworth and Craven were going to dine together,
+and not in Berkeley Square, and Craven was going to be the host, as he
+had said. He had invited Lady Sellingworth to go out and dine somewhere
+alone with him, and she had consented to do so. Where would they go? She
+thought of the _Bella Napoli_. It was very unlikely that they would
+meet anyone there whom they both knew, and they had met at the _Bella
+Napoli_. Perhaps they--or perhaps _she_--had romantic recollections
+connected with it! Perhaps they had arranged the other evening to
+dine there again--and without Beryl Van Tuyn this time! If so, the
+intervention at the telephone must have seemed an ironic stroke to them
+both.
+
+For a moment Miss Van Tuyn’s injured vanity made her feel as if they
+were involved in a plot directed against her and her happiness, as if
+they had both behaved abominably to her. She had always been so charming
+to Lady Sellingworth, had always praised her, had taken her part, had
+even had quite a cult for her! It was very disgusting. It showed Miss
+Van Tuyn how right she had been in generally cultivating men instead
+of women. For, of course, Craven could not get out of things with an
+experienced rusee woman of the world like Adela Sellingworth. Women of
+that type always knew how to “corner” a man, especially if he were young
+and had decent instincts. Poor Craven!
+
+But at the telephone Miss Van Tuyn had felt that Craven was glad to be
+engaged that evening, that he was looking forward to something.
+
+After sitting still for a few minutes, always with the tell-tale line in
+her forehead, Miss Van Tuyn got up with an air of purpose. She went to a
+door at the end of the sitting-room, opened it, crossed a lobby, opened
+double doors, and entered a bedroom in which a large, mild-looking
+woman, with square cheeks, chestnut-coloured smooth hair, large,
+chestnut-coloured eyes under badly painted eyebrows, and a mouth with
+teeth that suggested a very kind and well-meaning rabbit, was lying
+in bed with a cup and a pot of camomile tea beside her, and Bourget’s
+“_Mensonges_” in her hand. This was Fanny Cronin, originally from
+Philadelphia, but now largely French in a simple and unpretending way.
+The painted eyebrows must not be taken as evidence against her. They
+were the only artificiality of which Miss Cronin was guilty; and as an
+unkind fate had absolutely denied her any eyebrows of her own, she had
+conceived it only decent to supply their place.
+
+“I’ve got back to ‘_Mensonges_,’ Beryl,” she said, as she saw Miss Van
+Tuyn. “After all, there’s nothing like it. It bites right into one, even
+on a third reading.”
+
+“Dear old Fanny! I’m so glad you’re being bitten into. I know how you
+love it, and I’m not going to disturb you. I only came to tell you that
+I’m going out this evening, and may possibly come back late.”
+
+“I hope you will enjoy yourself, dear, and meet pleasant people.”
+
+Miss Cronin was thoroughly well trained, and seldom asked any questions.
+She had long ago been carefully taught that the duty of a _dame de
+compagnie_ consisted solely in being alive in a certain place--the place
+selected for her by the person she was _dame de compagnie_ to. It was,
+after all, an easy enough profession so long as a beneficent Providence
+permitted your heart to beat and your lungs to function. The place
+at present was Claridge’s Hotel. She had nothing to do except to
+lie comfortably in bed there. And this small feat, well within her
+competence, she was now accomplishing with complete satisfaction to
+herself. She took a happy sip of her camomile tea and added:
+
+“But I know you always do that. You have such a wide choice and are so
+clever in selection.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn slightly frowned.
+
+“There isn’t such a wide choice in London as there is in Paris,” she
+said rather morosely.
+
+“I dare say not. Paris is much smaller than London, but much cleverer,
+I think. Where would you find an author like Bourget among the English?
+Which of _them_ could have written ‘_Mensonges_’? Which of _them_
+could--”
+
+“I know, dear, I know! They haven’t the bite. That is what you mean.
+They have only the bark.”
+
+“Exactly! And when one sits down to a book--”
+
+“Just so, dear. The dog that can only bark is a very dull dog. I saw a
+wonderful dog the other day that looked as if it could bite.”
+
+“Indeed! In London?”
+
+“Yes. But I’m sure it wasn’t English.”
+
+“Was it a poodle?”
+
+“No, quite the contrary.”
+
+Fanny Cronin looked rather vague. She was really trying to think what
+dog was quite the contrary of a poodle, but, after the Channel, her mind
+was unequal to the effort. So she took another sip of the camomile tea
+and said:
+
+“What colour was it?”
+
+“It was all brown like a brown bronze. Well, good night, Fanny.”
+
+“Good night, dear. I really wish you would read ‘_Mensonges_’ again when
+I have finished with it. One cannot read over these masterpieces too
+often.”
+
+“You shall lend it me.”
+
+She went out of the room, and Fanny Cronin settled comfortably down once
+more to the competent exercise of her profession.
+
+It was now nearly eight o’clock. Miss Van Tuyn went to her bedroom. She
+had a maid with her, but she did not ring for the woman. Instead she
+shut her door, and began to “do” things for herself. She began by taking
+off her gown and putting on a loose wrapper. Then she sat down before
+the dressing-table and changed the way in which her corn-coloured hair
+was done, making it sit much closer to the head than before, and look
+much less striking and conspicuous. The new way of doing her hair
+changed her appearance considerably, made her less like a Ceres and more
+like a Puritan. When she was quite satisfied with her hair she got out
+of her wrapper, and presently put on an absolutely plain black coat and
+skirt, a black hat which came down very low on her forehead, a black
+veil and black suede gloves. Then she took a tightly furled umbrella
+with an ebony handle out of her wardrobe, picked up her purse, unlocked
+her door and stepped out into the lobby.
+
+Her French maid appeared from somewhere. She was a rather elderly woman
+with a clever, but not unpleasantly subtle, face. Miss Van Tuyn said a
+few words to her in a low voice, opened the lobby door and went out.
+
+She took the lift, glided down, walked slowly and carelessly across the
+hall and passed out by the swing door.
+
+“A taxi, madam?” said the commissionaire in livery.
+
+She shook her head and walked away down Brook Street in the direction of
+Grosvenor Square.
+
+As Craven had predicted it was a fine clear night, dry underfoot, starry
+overhead. If Miss Van Tuyn had had with her a chosen companion she would
+have enjoyed her walk. She was absolutely self-possessed, and thoroughly
+capable of taking care of herself. No terrors of London affected her
+spirit. But she was angry and bored at being alone. She felt almost
+for the first time in her life neglected and even injured. And she was
+determined to try to find out whether her strong suspicions about Lady
+Sellingworth and Craven were well founded. If really Craven was giving
+a dinner somewhere, and Lady Sellingworth was dining with friends
+somewhere else, she had no special reason for irritation. She might
+possibly be mistaken in her unpleasant conviction that both of them had
+something to do which they preferred to dining with her. But if they
+were dining together and alone she would know exactly how things were
+between them. For neither of them had done what would surely have been
+the natural thing to do if there were no desire for concealment; neither
+of them had frankly stated the truth about the dinner.
+
+“If they are dining together they don’t wish me to know it,” Miss Van
+Tuyn said to herself, as she walked along Grosvenor Square and turned
+down Carlos Place. “For if I had known it they might have felt obliged
+to invite me to join them, as I was inviting them, and as I was the one
+who introduced Adela Sellingworth to the _Bella Napoli_.”
+
+And as she remembered this she felt more definitely injured. For she had
+taken a good deal of trouble to persuade Lady Sellingworth to dine out
+in Soho, had taken trouble about the food and about the music, had, in
+fact, done everything that was possible to make the evening entertaining
+and delightful to her friend. It was even she, by the way, who had
+beckoned Craven to their table and had asked him to join them after
+dinner.
+
+And in return for all this Adela Sellingworth had carried him off, and
+perhaps to-night was dining with him alone at the _Bella Napoli_!
+
+“These old beauties are always the most unscrupulous women in the
+world,” thought Miss Van Tuyn, as she came into Berkeley Square. “They
+never know when to stop. They are never satisfied. It’s bad enough to be
+with a greedy child, but it’s really horrible to have much to do with a
+greedy old person. I should never have thought that Adela Sellingworth
+was like this.”
+
+It did not occur to her that perhaps some day she would be an old beauty
+herself, and even then would perhaps still want a few pleasures and joys
+to make life endurable to her.
+
+In passing through Berkeley Square she deliberately walked on the left
+side of it, and presently came to the house where Lady Sellingworth
+lived. The big mansion was dark. As Miss Van Tuyn went by it she felt
+an access of ill-humour, and for an instant she knew something of
+the feeling which had often come to its owner--the feeling of being
+abandoned to loneliness in the midst of a city which held multitudes who
+were having a good time.
+
+She walked on towards Berkeley, thought of Piccadilly, retraced her
+steps, turned up Hay Hill, crossed Bond Street, and eventually came into
+Regent Street. There were a good many people here, and several loitering
+men looked hard at her. But she walked composedly on, keeping at an even
+steady pace. At the main door of the Cafe Royal three or four men were
+lounging. She did not look at them as she went by. But presently she
+felt that she was being followed. This did not disturb her. She often
+went out alone in Paris on foot, though not at night, and was accustomed
+to being followed. She knew perfectly well how to deal with impertinent
+men. In Shaftesbury Avenue the man who was dogging her footsteps came
+nearer, and presently, though she did not turn her head, she knew that
+he was walking almost level with her, and that his eyes were fixed
+steadily on her. Without altering her pace she took a shilling out of
+the purse she was carrying and held it in her hand. The man drew up till
+he was walking by her side. She felt that he was going to speak to her.
+She stopped, held out the hand with the shilling in it, and said:
+
+“Here’s a shilling! Take it. I’m sorry I can’t afford more than that.”
+
+As she finished speaking for the first time she looked at her pursuer,
+and met the brown eyes of the living bronze. He stood for an instant
+gazing at her veil, and then turned round and walked away in the
+direction of Regent Street. The shilling dropped from her hand to the
+pavement. She did not try to find it, but at once went on.
+
+It was very seldom that her self-possession was shaken. It was not
+exactly shaken now. But the recognition of the stranger whom she had
+been thinking about in the man who had followed her in the street
+had certainly startled her. For a moment a strong feeling of disgust
+overcame her, and she thought of Garstin’s brutal comment upon this man.
+Was he then really one of the horrible night loungers who abound in
+all great cities, one of the night birds who come out when the darkness
+falls with vague hopes of doing evil to their own advantage? It was
+possible. He must have been hanging about near the door of the Cafe
+Royal when she passed and watching the passers-by. He must have seen her
+then. Could he have recognized her? In that case perhaps he was merely
+an adventurous fellow who had been pushed to the doing of an impertinent
+thing by his strong admiration of her. As she thought this she happened
+to be passing a lit-up shop, a tobacconist’s, which had mirrors fixed on
+each side of the window. She stopped and looked into one of the mirrors.
+No, he could not have recognized her through the veil she was wearing.
+She felt certain of that. But he might have been struck by her figure.
+He might have noticed it that night at the Cafe Royal, have fancied he
+recognized it to-night, and have followed her because he was curious to
+know whether, or not, she was the girl he had already seen and admired.
+And of course, as she was walking in Regent Street alone at night, he
+must have thought her a girl who would not mind being spoken to. It was
+her own fault for being so audacious, so determined always to do what
+she wanted to do, however unconventional, even outrageous--according to
+commonplace ideas--it was.
+
+She forgave the man his impertinence and smiled as she thought of his
+abrupt departure. If he were really a night bird he would surely have
+stood his ground. He would not have been got rid of so easily. No; he
+would probably have coolly pocketed the shilling, and then have entered
+into conversation with her, have chaffed her vulgarly about her methods
+with admirers, and have asked her to go to a cafe or somewhere with him,
+and to spend the shilling and other shillings in his company.
+
+No doubt he had been waiting for a friend at the door of the Cafe Royal,
+had seen her go by, and had yielded to an impulse prompting him to an
+adventure. He was not an Englishman or an American. She felt certain
+of that. And she knew very well the views many foreigners, especially
+Latins, even of good birth hold about the propriety of showing their
+admiration for women in the street.
+
+She was glad she had had a thick veil on. If later she made acquaintance
+with this man, she did not wish him to know that she and the girl who
+had offered him a shilling were one and the same. If he knew she might
+be at a certain disadvantage with him.
+
+She turned into Soho and was immediately conscious of a slightly
+different atmosphere. There were fewer people about and the street was
+not so brightly lit up, or at any rate seemed to her darker. She heard
+voices speaking Italian in the shadows. The lights of small restaurants
+glimmered faintly on the bone-dry pavement. She was nearing the _Bella
+Napoli_. Soon she heard the distant sound of guitars.
+
+Where she was walking at this moment there was no one. She stood still
+for an instant considering. If Lady Sellingworth and Craven were really
+dining together, as she suspected, and at the _Bella Napoli_, she could
+see them from the street if they had a table near the window. If they
+were not seated near the window she might not be able to see them. In
+that case, what was she going to do?
+
+After a moment’s thought she resolved that if she did not see them from
+the street she would go into the restaurant and dine there alone. They
+would see her of course, if they were there, and would no doubt be
+surprised and decidedly uncomfortable. But that could not be helped.
+Having come so far she was determined not to go back to the hotel
+without making sure whether her suspicion was correct. If, on the other
+hand, they were dining at a table near the window she resolved not to
+enter the restaurant.
+
+Having come to this decision she walked on.
+
+The musicians were playing “O Sole mio!” And as the music grew more
+distinct in her ears she felt more solitary, more injured and more
+ill-humoured. Music of that type makes youth feel that the world ought
+of right to belong to it, that the old are out of place in the regions
+of adventure, romance and passion. That they should not hang about where
+they are no longer wanted, like beggars about the door of a house in
+which happy people are feasting.
+
+“Such music is for me not for Adela Sellingworth,” thought Miss Van
+Tuyn. “Let her listen to Bach and Beethoven, or to Brahms if she likes.
+She can have the classics and the intellectuals. But the songs of Naples
+are for me, not for her.”
+
+And at that moment she felt very hard, even cruel.
+
+She came up to the restaurant. The window was lighted up brilliantly. No
+blind was drawn over it. There was opaque glass at the bottom, but not
+at the top. She was tall and could look through the glass at the top.
+She did so, and at once saw Lady Sellingworth and Craven.
+
+They were sitting at _her_ table--the table which was always reserved
+for her when she dined at the _Bella Napoli_, and at which she had
+entertained Lady Sellingworth; and they were talking--confidentially,
+eagerly, she thought. Lady Sellingworth looked unusually happy and
+animated, even perhaps a little younger than usual. Yes! Very old, but
+younger than usual! They were not eating at the moment, but were no
+doubt waiting for a course. Craven was leaning forward to his companion.
+The guitars still sounded. But these two had apparently so much to say
+to one another that they had neither time or inclination to listen to
+the music.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn stood very still on the pavement staring into the
+restaurant.
+
+But suddenly Craven, as if attracted by something, turned abruptly half
+round towards the window. Instantly Miss Van Tuyn moved away. He could
+not have seen her. But perhaps he had felt that she--or rather of course
+that someone--was there. For he could not possibly have felt that she,
+Beryl Van Tuyn, was there looking in.
+
+After drawing back Miss Van Tuyn walked slowly away. She was considering
+something, debating something within herself. Should she go in and dine
+alone in the restaurant? By doing so she would certainly make those two
+who had treated her badly uncomfortable; she would probably spoil
+the rest of their evening. Should she do that? Some indelicate devil
+prompted her, urged her, to do it. It would “serve them right,” she
+thought. Adela Sellingworth especially deserved a touch of the whip. But
+it would be an undignified thing to do. They would never know of course
+why she had come alone to the _Bella Napoli_! They would think that,
+being audaciously unconventional, she had just drifted in there because
+she had nothing else to do, as Craven had drifted in alone the other
+night. She wanted to do it. Yet she hesitated to do it.
+
+Finally she gave up the idea. She felt malicious, but she could not
+quite make up her mind to dine alone where they would see her. Probably
+they would feel obliged to ask her to join them. But she would not join
+them. Nothing could induce her to do that. And was she to come over to
+them when coffee was brought, as Craven had come at her invitation?
+No; that would be a condescension unworthy of her beauty and youth. Her
+fierce vanity forbade it, even though her feeling of malice told her to
+do it.
+
+Her vanity won. She walked on and came into Shaftesbury Avenue.
+
+“I know what I’ll do,” she said to herself. “I’ll go and dine upstairs
+at the Cafe Royal, and go into the cafe downstairs afterwards. Garstin
+is certain to be there.”
+
+Garstin--and others!
+
+This time she obeyed her inclination. Not many minutes later she was
+seated at a table in a corner of the restaurant at the Cafe Royal, and
+was carefully choosing a dinner.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The more he thought over his visit to Adela Sellingworth the more
+certain did Francis Braybrooke become that it had not gone off well.
+For once he had not played his cards to the best advantage. He felt sure
+that inadvertently he had irritated his hostess. Her final dismissal of
+the subject of young Craven’s possible happiness with Beryl Van Tuyn, if
+circumstances should ever bring them together, had been very abrupt. She
+had really almost kicked it out of the conversation.
+
+But then, she had never been fond of discussing love affairs. Braybrooke
+had noticed that.
+
+As he considered the matter he began to feel rather uneasy. Was it
+possible that Adela Sellingworth--his mind hesitated, then took the
+unpleasant leap--that Adela Sellingworth was beginning to like young
+Craven in an unsuitable way?
+
+Craven certainly had behaved oddly when Adela Sellingworth had been
+discussed between them, and when Craven had been the subject of
+discussion with Adela Sellingworth she had behaved curiously. There
+was something behind it all. Of that Braybrooke was convinced. But his
+perplexity and doubt increased to something like agitation a few days
+later when he met a well-born woman of his acquaintance, who had “gone
+in for” painting and living her own life, and had become a bit of a
+Bohemian. She had happened to mention that she had seen his friend,
+“that wonderful-looking Lady Sellingworth,” dining at the _Bella Napoli_
+on a recent evening. Naturally Braybrooke supposed that the allusion was
+to the night of Lady Sellingworth’s dinner with Beryl Van Tuyn, and
+he spoke of the lovely girl as Lady Sellingworth’s companion. But his
+informant, looking rather surprised, told him that Lady Sellingworth
+had been with a very handsome young man, and, on discreet inquiry being
+made, gave an admirable description from the painter’s point of view, of
+Craven.
+
+Braybrooke said nothing, but he was secretly almost distressed. He
+thought it such a mistake for his distinguished friend to go wandering
+about in Soho alone with a mere boy. It was undignified. It was not the
+thing. He could not understand it unless really she was losing her head.
+And then he remembered her past. Although he never spoke of it, and now
+seldom thought about it, Braybrooke knew very well what sort of woman
+Adela Sellingworth had been. But her dignified life of ten years had
+really almost wiped her former escapades out of his recollection.
+There seemed to be a gulf fixed between the professional beauty and the
+white-haired recluse of Berkeley Square. When he looked at her, sat with
+her now, if he ever gave a thought to her past it was accompanied, or
+immediately followed, by a mental question: “Was it _she_ who did that?”
+ or “Can _she_ ever have been like that?”
+
+But now Braybrooke uneasily began to remember Lady Sellingworth’s past
+reputation and to think of the “old guard.”
+
+If she were to fall back into folly now, after what she had done ten
+years ago, the “old guard” would show her no mercy. Her character would
+be torn to pieces. He regretted very much his introduction of Craven
+into her life. But how could he have thought that she would fascinate a
+boy?
+
+After much careful thought--for he took his social responsibilities and
+duties very seriously--he resolved to take action on the lines which had
+occurred to him when he first began to be anxious about Craven’s feeling
+towards Adela Sellingworth; he resolved to do his best to bring Beryl
+Van Tuyn and Craven together.
+
+The first step he took was to call on Miss Cronin when Beryl Van
+Tuyn was out. He went to Claridge’s in inquire for Miss Van Tuyn.
+On ascertaining that she was not at home he sent up his name to
+Miss Cronin, who was practically always in the house. At any rate,
+Braybrooke, who had met her several times at Miss Van Tuyn’s apartment
+in Paris, had understood so from herself. If Miss Van Tuyn needed her as
+a chaperon she was, of course, to be counted upon to risk taking air and
+exercise. Otherwise, as she frankly said, she preferred to stay quietly
+at home. By nature she was sedentary. Her temperament inclined her to
+a sitting posture, which, however, she frequently varied by definitely
+lying down.
+
+On this occasion Miss Cronin was as usual in the house, and begged that
+Mr. Braybrooke would come up. He found her in an arm-chair--she had just
+vacated a large sofa--with Bourget’s “_Le Disciple_” in her hand. Her
+eyebrows were rather dim, for she had caught a slight London cold which
+had led her to neglect them. But she was looking mildly cheerful, and
+was very glad to have a visitor. Though quite happy alone with Bourget
+she was always ready for a comfortable gossip; and she liked Francis
+Braybrooke.
+
+After a few words about the cold, Bourget and Paris, Braybrooke turned
+the conversation to Miss Van Tuyn. He had understood that she meant only
+to make a short stay in London, and rather wondered about the change of
+plans which had brought Miss Cronin across the Channel. Miss Cronin, he
+soon discovered, was rather wondering too.
+
+“Beryl seems to have been quite got hold of by London,” she observed
+with mild surprise.
+
+After a pause she added:
+
+“It may be--mind I don’t say it is, but it may be--the Wallace
+Collection.”
+
+“The Wallace Collection?” said Braybrooke.
+
+“I believe she goes there every day. It is in Manchester Square, isn’t
+it?”
+
+“Oh, yes.”
+
+“Then I think it must be that. Because two or three times lately I have
+heard her mention Manchester Square as if it were very much on her mind.
+Once I remember her saying that Manchester Square was worth all the rest
+of London put together! And another time she said that Manchester square
+ought to be in Paris. That struck me as very strange, but after making
+inquiries I found that the Wallace Collection was situated there, or
+near there.”
+
+“Hertford House is in the Square.”
+
+“Then it is that. You know how wrapped up Beryl is in that kind of
+thing. And, of course, she knows all the Paris collections by heart. Is
+the Wallace Collection large? Does it contain much?”
+
+“It contains innumerable priceless treasures,” returned Braybrooke.
+
+“Innumerable! Dear me!” murmured Fanny Cronin, managing to lift the
+dimly painted eyebrows in a distinctively plaintive manner. “Then I dare
+say we shall be here for months.”
+
+“You don’t think,” began Braybrooke with exquisite caution, “you don’t
+think that possibly she may have a more human reason for remaining in
+London?”
+
+Fanny Cronin made a rabbit’s mouth and looked slightly bemused.
+
+“Human!” she said. “You think Beryl could have a human reason?”
+
+“Oh, surely, surely!”
+
+“But she prefers bronzes to people. I assure you it is so. I have heard
+her say that you can never be disappointed by a really good bronze, but
+that men and women often distress you by their absurdities and follies.”
+
+“That sort of thing is only the outcome of a passing mood of youthful
+cynicism.”
+
+“Is it? I sometimes think that a born collector, like Beryl, sees more
+in bronze and marble than in flesh and blood. She is very sweet, but she
+has quite a passion for possessing.”
+
+“Is not the greatest possession of all the possession of another’s human
+heart?” said Braybrooke impressively, and with sentiment.
+
+“I dare say it is, but really I cannot speak from experience,” said
+Fanny Cronin, with remarkable simplicity.
+
+“Has it never occurred to you,” continued Braybrooke, “that your lovely
+charge is not likely to remain always Beryl Van Tuyn?”
+
+Miss Cronin looked startled, and slightly moved her ears, a curious
+habit which she sometimes indulged in under the influence of sudden
+emotion, and which was indicative of mental stress.
+
+“But if Beryl ever marries,” she said, “I might have to give up living
+in Paris! I might have to go back to America!”
+
+She leaned forward, with her small, plump, and conspicuously freckled
+hands grasping the arms of her chair.
+
+“You don’t think, Mr. Braybrooke, that Beryl is not here for the Wallace
+Collection? You don’t think that she is in love with someone in London?”
+
+Francis Braybrooke was decidedly taken aback by this abrupt emotional
+outburst. He had not meant to provoke it. Indeed, in his
+preoccupation with Craven’s affairs and Adela Sellingworth’s possible
+indiscretions--really he knew of no gentler word to apply to what he
+had in mind--he had entirely forgotten that Fanny Cronin’s charming
+profession of sitting in deep arm-chairs, reposing on luxurious sofas,
+and lying in perfect French beds, might, indeed would, be drastically
+interfered with by Miss Van Tuyn’s marriage. It was very careless of
+him. He was inclined to blame himself almost severely.
+
+“My dear Miss Cronin,” he hastily exclaimed. “If you were ever to think
+of changing your--your”--he could not find the word; “condition” would
+not do; “state of life” suggested the Catechism; “profession” was
+preposterous, besides, he did not mean that--“your sofa”--he had got
+it--“your sofa in the Avenue Henri Martin for a sofa somewhere else, I
+know of at least a dozen charming houses in Paris which would gladly, I
+might say thankfully, open their doors to receive you.”
+
+This was really a lie. At the moment Braybrooke did not know of one.
+But he hastily made up his mind to be “responsible” for Fanny Cronin if
+anything should occur through his amiable machinations.
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Braybrooke. You are kindness itself. So, then, Beryl
+_is_ going to marry! And she never hinted it to me, although we talked
+over marriage only yesterday, when I gave her Bourget’s views on it as
+expressed in his ‘_Physiologie de l’amour moderne_.’ She never said one
+word. She never--”
+
+But at this point Braybrooke felt that an interruption, however rude,
+was obligatory.
+
+“I have no reason whatever to suppose that Miss Van Tuyn is thinking of
+marriage at this moment,” he said, in an almost shrill voice.
+
+“But surely you would not frighten me without a reason,” said Fanny
+Cronin with mild severity, sitting back again in her chair.
+
+“Frighten you, dear Miss Cronin! I would not do that for the world. What
+have I said to frighten you?”
+
+“You talked of my changing my sofa for a sofa somewhere else! If Beryl
+is not going to marry why should I think of changing?”
+
+“But nothing lasts for ever. The whole world is in a state of flux.”
+
+“Really, Mr. Braybrooke! I am quite sure _I_ am not in a state of flux!”
+ said Miss Cronin with unusual dignity. “We American women, you must
+understand, have our principles and know how to preserve them.”
+
+“On my honour, I only meant that life inevitably brings with it changes.
+I am sure you will bear me out in that.”
+
+“I don’t know about bearing you out,” said Miss Cronin, looking rather
+helplessly at Francis Braybrooke’s fairly tall and well-nourished
+figure. “But why should Beryl want to change? She is very happy as she
+is.”
+
+“I know--I know. But surely such a lovely girl is certain to marry some
+day. And can we wish it otherwise? Some day a man will come who knows
+how to appreciate her as she deserves, who understands her nature, who
+is ready to devote his life to fulfilling her deepest needs.”
+
+Miss Cronin suddenly looked intelligent and at the same time like a
+dragon. Never before had Braybrooke seen such an expression upon her
+face, such a stiffening of dignity to her ample figure. She sat straight
+up, looked him full in the face, and observed:
+
+“I understand your meaning, Mr. Braybrooke. You wish to marry Beryl.
+Well, you must forgive me for saying that I think you are much too old
+for her.”
+
+Braybrooke had not blushed for probably at least forty years, but
+he blushed scarlet now, and seized his beard with a hand that looked
+thoroughly unstrung.
+
+“My dear Miss Cronin!” he said, in a voice which was almost hoarse with
+protest. “You absolutely misunderstood me. It is much too la--I mean
+that I have no intention whatever of changing my condition. No, no!
+Let us talk of something else. So you are reading ‘_Le Disciple_’” (he
+picked it up). “A very striking book! I always think it one of Bourget’s
+very best.”
+
+He poured forth an energetic cataract of words in praise of Miss
+Cronin’s favourite author, and presently got away without any further
+quite definite misunderstanding. But when he was out in the corridor on
+his way to the lift he indulged himself in a very unwonted expression of
+acrimonious condemnation.
+
+“Damn these red-headed old women!” he muttered in his beard. “There’s
+no doing anything with them! The idea of my going to her to propose for
+Miss Van Tuyn! What next, I wonder?”
+
+When he was out in Brook Street he hesitated for a moment, then took out
+his watch and looked at it. Half-past three! He thought of the Wallace
+Collection. It seemed to draw him strangely just then. He put his watch
+back and walked towards Manchester Square.
+
+He had gained the Square and was about to enter the enclosure before
+Hertford House by the gateway on the left, when he saw Miss Van Tuyn
+come out by the gateway on the right, and walk slowly towards Oxford
+Street in deep conversation with a small horsey-looking man, whose face
+he could not see, but whose back and legs, and whose dress and headgear,
+strongly suggested to him the ring at Newmarket and the Paddock at
+Ascot.
+
+Braybrooke hesitated. The attraction of the Wallace Collection no longer
+drew him. Besides, it was getting late. On the other hand, he scarcely
+liked to interrupt an earnest tete-a-tete. If it had not been that he
+was exceptionally strung up at that moment he would probably have gone
+quietly off to one of his clubs. But who knew what that foolish old
+woman at Claridge’s might say to Miss Van Tuyn when she reached her
+hotel? It really was essential in the sacred interest of truth that he
+should forestall Fanny Cronin. The jockey--if it was a jockey--Miss Van
+Tuyn was with must put up with an interruption. But the interruption
+must be brought about naturally. It would not do to come up behind them.
+That would seem too intrusive. He must manage to skip round deftly when
+the occasion offered, and by a piece of masterly strategy to come upon
+them face to face.
+
+Seized of this intention Braybrooke did a thing he had never done
+before; he “dogged” two human beings, walking with infinite precaution.
+
+His quarry presently turned into the thronging crowds of Oxford Street
+and made towards the Marble Arch, keeping to the right-hand pavement.
+Braybrooke saw his opportunity. He dodged across the road to an island,
+waited there till a policeman, extending a woollen thumb, stopped the
+traffic, then gained the opposite pavement, hurried decorously on that
+side towards the Marble Arch, and after a sprint of perhaps a couple of
+hundred yards recrossed the street almost at the risk of his life, and
+walked warily back towards Oxford Circus, keeping his eyes wide open.
+
+Before many minutes had passed he discerned the graceful and athletic
+figure of Miss Van Tuyn coming towards him; then, immediately
+afterwards, he caught a glimpse of a blue shaven face with an aquiline
+nose beside her, and realized that the man he had taken for a jockey was
+Dick Garstin, the famous painter.
+
+As Braybrooke knew everyone, he, of course, knew Garstin, and he
+wondered now why he had not recognized his back at Manchester Square.
+Perhaps his mind had been too engrossed with Fanny Cronin and the
+outrage at Claridge’s. He only knew the painter slightly, just
+sufficiently to dislike him very much. Indeed, only the acknowledged
+eminence of the man induced Braybrooke to have anything to do with
+him. But one has to know publicly acclaimed geniuses or consent to be
+thoroughly out of it. So Braybrooke included Garstin in the enormous
+circle of his acquaintances, and went to his private views.
+
+But now the recognition gave him pause, and he almost wished he had not
+taken so much trouble to meet Miss Van Tuyn and her companion. For he
+could say nothing he wanted to say while Garstin was there. And the
+man was so damnably unconventional, in fact, so downright rude, and so
+totally devoid of all delicacy, all insight in social matters, that
+even if he saw that Braybrooke wanted a quiet word with Miss Van Tuyn
+he would probably not let him have it. However, it was too late now to
+avoid the steadily advancing couple. Miss Van Tuyn had seen Braybrooke,
+and sent him a smile. In a moment he was face to face with them, and she
+stopped to greet him.
+
+“I have been spending an hour at the Wallace Collection with Mr.
+Garstin,” she said. “And quarrelling with him all the time. His views on
+French art are impossible.”
+
+“Ah! how are you?” said Braybrooke, addressing the painter with almost
+exaggerated cordiality.
+
+Garstin nodded in his usual offhand way. He did not dislike Braybrooke.
+When Braybrooke was there he perceived him, having eyes, and having
+ears heard his voice. But hitherto Braybrooke had never succeeded in
+conveying any impression to the mind of Garstin. On one occasion when
+Braybrooke had been discussed in Garstin’s presence, and Garstin had
+said: “Who is he?” and had received a description of Braybrooke with the
+additional information: “But he comes to your private views! You have
+known him for years!” he had expressed his appreciation of Braybrooke’s
+personality and character by the exclamation: “Oh, to be sure! The beard
+with the gentleman!” Braybrooke did not know this, or he would certainly
+have disliked Garstin even more than he did already.
+
+As Garstin’s nod was not followed by any other indication of humanity
+Braybrooke addressed Miss Van Tuyn, and told her of his call at
+Claridge’s.
+
+“And as you were not to be found I paid a visit to Miss Cronin.”
+
+“She must have bored you very much,” was the charming girl’s comment.
+“She has the most confused mind I know.”
+
+What an opening for Braybrooke! But he could not take it because of
+Garstin, who stood by cruelly examining the stream of humanity which
+flowed past them hypnotized by the shops.
+
+“May I--shall I be in the way if I turn back with you for a few steps?”
+ he ventured, with the sort of side glance at Garstin that a male dog
+gives to another male dog while walking round and round on a first
+meeting. “It is such a pleasure to see you.”
+
+Here he threw very definite admiration into the eyes which he fixed on
+Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+She responded automatically and begged him to accompany them.
+
+“Dick is leaving me at the Marble Arch,” she said. “The reason he gives
+is that he is going to take a Turkish Bath in the Harrow Road. But that
+is a lie that even an American girl brought up in Paris is unable to
+swallow. What are you really going to do, Dick?”
+
+As she spoke she walked on, having Garstin on one side of her and
+Francis Braybrooke on the other.
+
+“I’m going to have a good sweat in the Harrow Road.”
+
+Braybrooke was disgusted. It was not that he really minded the word
+used to indicate the process which obtains in a Turkish Bath. No; it was
+Garstin’s blatant way of speaking it that offended his susceptibilities.
+The man was perpetually defying the decencies and delicacies which were
+as perfume in Braybrooke’s nostrils.
+
+“The doctors say that it is an excellent thing to open the pores,” said
+Braybrooke discreetly.
+
+Garstin cast a glance at him, as if he now saw him for the first time.
+
+“Do you mean to tell us you believe in doctors?” he said.
+
+“I do, in some doctors,” said Braybrooke. “There are charlatans in all
+professions unfortunately.”
+
+“And some of them are R.A.’s,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “By the way, Dick is
+going to paint me.”
+
+“Really! How very splendid!” said Braybrooke, again with exaggerated
+cordiality. “With such a subject I’m sure--”
+
+But here he was interrupted by Garstin, who said:
+
+“She tells everyone I’m going to paint her because she hopes by
+reiteration to force me to do it. But she isn’t the type that interests
+me.”
+
+“My dear Dick, I’ll gladly take to morphia or drink if it will help,”
+ said Miss Van Tuyn. “I can easily get the Cafe Royal expression. One has
+only to sit with a glass of something the colour of absinthe in front of
+one and look sea-sick. I’m perfectly certain that with a week or two’s
+practice I could look quite as degraded as Cora.”
+
+“Cora?” said Braybrooke, alertly, hearing a name he did not know.
+
+“She’s a horror who goes to the Cafe Royal and whom Dick calls a free
+woman.”
+
+“Free from all the virtues, I suppose!” said Braybrooke smartly.
+
+“Good-bye both of you!” said Garstin at this juncture.
+
+“But we haven’t got to the Marble Arch!”
+
+“What’s that got to do with it? I’m off.”
+
+He seemed to be going, then stopped, and directed the two pin-points of
+light at Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“I flatly refuse to make an Academy portrait of you, so don’t hope for
+it,” he said. “But if you come along to the studio to-morrow afternoon
+you may possibly find me at work on a blackmailer.”
+
+“Dick!” said Miss Van Tuyn, in a voice which startled Braybrooke.
+
+“I don’t promise,” said the painter. “I don’t believe in promises,
+unless you break ‘em. But it’s just on the cards.”
+
+“You are painting a blackmailer!” said Braybrooke, with an air of
+earnest interest. “How very original!”
+
+“Original! Why is it original to paint a blackmailer?”
+
+“Oh--well, one doesn’t often run across them. They--they seem to keep so
+much to themselves.”
+
+“I don’t agree with you. If they did some people would be a good deal
+better off than they are now.”
+
+“Ah, to be sure! That’s very true. I had never looked at it in that
+light.”
+
+“What time, Dick?” said Miss Van Tuyn, rather eagerly.
+
+“You might look in about three.”
+
+“I will. That’s a bargain.”
+
+Garstin turned on his heel and tramped away towards Berkeley Street.
+
+“You are going home by Park Lane?” said Braybrooke, feeling greatly
+relieved, but still rather upset.
+
+“Yes. But why don’t you take me somewhere to tea?”
+
+“Nothing I should like better. Where shall we go?”
+
+“Let’s go to the Ritz. I had meant to walk, but let us take a taxi.”
+
+There was suddenly a change in Miss Van Tuyn. Braybrooke noticed it at
+once. She seemed suddenly restless, almost excited, and as if she were
+in a hurry.
+
+“There’s one!” she added, lifting her tightly furled umbrella.
+
+The driver stopped, and in a moment they were on their way to the Ritz.
+
+“You like Dick Garstin?” said Braybrooke, pulling up one of the windows
+and wondering what Miss Cronin would say if she could see him at this
+moment.
+
+“I don’t like him,” returned Miss Van Tuyn. “No one could do that. But I
+admire him, and he interests me. He is almost the only man I know who
+is really indifferent to opinion. And he has occasional moments of good
+nature. But I don’t wish him to be soft. If he were he would be like
+everyone else.”
+
+“I must confess I find it very difficult to get on with him.”
+
+“He’s a wonderful painter.”
+
+“No doubt--in his way.”
+
+“I think it a great mistake for any creative artist to be wonderful in
+someone else’s way,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“I only meant that his way is sometimes rather startling. And then
+his subjects! Drugged women! Dram drinking men! And now it seems even
+blackmailers.”
+
+“A blackmailer might have a wonderful face.”
+
+“Possibly. But it would be likely to have a disgusting expression.”
+
+“It might. On the other hand, I could imagine a blackmailer looking like
+Chaliapine as Mephistopheles.”
+
+“I don’t like distressing art,” said Braybrooke, rather firmly. “And I
+think there is too much of it nowadays.”
+
+“Anything is better than the merely nice. And you have far too much of
+that in England. Men like Dick Garstin are a violent protest against
+that, and sometimes they go to extremes. He has caught the secret of
+evil, and when he has done with it he may quite possibly catch the
+secret of good.”
+
+“And then,” said Braybrooke, “I am sure he will paint you.”
+
+It was meant to be a very charmingly turned compliment. But Miss Van
+Tuyn received it rather doubtfully.
+
+“I don’t know that I want to wait quite so long as that,” she murmured.
+“Besides--I think I rather come in between. At least, I hope so.”
+
+At this point in the conversation the cab stopped before the Ritz.
+
+To Francis Braybrooke’s intense astonishment--and it might almost be
+added confusion--the first person his eyes lit on as they walked towards
+the tea-tables was Fanny Cronin, comfortably seated in an immense
+arm-chair, devouring a muffin in the company of an old lady, whose
+determined face was completely covered with a criss-cross of wrinkles,
+and whose withered hands were flashing with magnificent rings. He was so
+taken aback that he was guilty of a definite start, and the exclamation,
+“Miss Cronin!” in a voice that suggested alarm.
+
+“Oh, old Fanny with Mrs. Clem Hodson!” said Miss Van Tuyn. “She’s a
+school friend of Fanny’s from Philadelphia. Let us go to that table in
+the far corner. I’ll just speak to them while you order tea.”
+
+“But I thought Miss Cronin never went out.”
+
+“She never does, except with Mrs. Clem, unless I want her.”
+
+“How singularly unfortunate I am to-day!” thought Braybrooke, as he
+bowed to Miss Cronin in a rather confused manner and went to do as he
+was told.
+
+He ordered tea, then sat down anxiously to wait for Miss Van Tuyn. From
+his corner he watched her colloquy with the two school friends from
+Philadelphia, and it seemed to him that something very important was
+being told. For Fanny Cronin looked almost animated, and her manner
+approached the emphatic as she spoke to the standing girl. Mrs. Hodson
+seemed to take very little part in the conversation, but sat looking
+very determined and almost imperious as she listened. And presently
+Braybrooke saw her extremely observant dark eyes--small, protuberant
+and round as buttons--turn swiftly, with even, he thought, a darting
+movement, in his direction.
+
+“I shall be driven, really driven, to make the matter quite clear,” he
+thought, almost with desperation. “Otherwise--”
+
+But at this moment Miss Van Tuyn came away to him, and their tea was
+brought by a waiter.
+
+He thought she cast a rather satirical look at him as she sat down, but
+she only said;
+
+“Dear old things! They are very happy together. Mrs. Clem is
+extraordinarily proud of having ‘got Fanny out,’ as she calls it. A boy
+who had successfully drawn a badger couldn’t be more triumphant. Now
+let’s forget them!”
+
+This was all very well, and Braybrooke asked for nothing better; but
+he was totally unable to forget the two cronies, whom he saw in the
+distance with their white and chestnut heads alarmingly close together,
+talking eagerly, and, he was quite sure, not about the dear old days in
+Philadelphia. What had they--or rather what had Miss Cronin said to
+Miss Van Tuyn? He longed to know. It really was essential that he should
+know. Yet he scarcely knew how to approach the subject. It was rather
+difficult to explain elaborately to a beautiful girl that you had not
+the least wish to marry her. He was certainly not at his best as he
+took his first cup of tea and sought about for an opening. Miss Van Tuyn
+talked with her usual assurance, but he fancied that her violet eyes
+were full of inquiry when they glanced at him; and he began to feel
+positive that the worst had happened, and that Fanny Cronin had informed
+her--no, misinformed her--of what had happened at Claridge’s. Now and
+then, as he met Miss Van Tuyn’s eyes, he thought they were searching
+his with an unusual consciousness, as if they expected something very
+special from him. Presently, too, she let the conversation languish, and
+at last allowed it to drop. In the silence that succeeded Braybrooke
+was seized by a terrible fear that perhaps she was waiting for him to
+propose. If he did propose she would refuse him of course. He had no
+doubt about that. But though to be accepted by her, or indeed by anyone,
+would have caused him acute distress, on the other hand no one likes to
+be refused.
+
+He thought of Craven. Was it possible to make any use of Craven to get
+him out of his difficulty? Dare he hint at the real reason of his visit
+to Miss Cronin? He had intended delicately to “sound” the chaperon
+on the subject of matrimony, to find out if there was anything on the
+_tapis_ in Paris, if Miss Van Tuyn had any special man friend there, in
+short to make sure of his ground before deciding to walk on it. But he
+could hardly explain that to Miss Van Tuyn. To do so would be almost
+brutal, and quite against all his traditions.
+
+Again he caught her eye in the desperate silence. Her gaze seemed to
+say to him: “When are you going to begin?” He felt that he must say
+something, even though it were not what she was probably expecting.
+
+“I was interested,” he hurriedly began, clasping his beard and looking
+away from his companion, “to hear the other day that a young friend of
+mine had met you, a very charming and promising young fellow, who has a
+great career before him, unless I am much mistaken.”
+
+“Who?” she asked; he thought rather curtly.
+
+“Alick Craven of the Foreign Office. He told me he was introduced to you
+at Adela Sellingworth’s.”
+
+“Oh yes, he was,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+And she said no more.
+
+“He was very enthusiastic about you,” ventured Braybrooke, wondering how
+to interpret her silence.
+
+“Really!”
+
+“Yes. We belong to the same club, the St. James’s. He entertained me for
+more than an hour with your praises.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked at him with rather acute inquiry, as if she
+could not make up her mind about something with which he was closely
+concerned.
+
+“He would like to meet you again,” said Braybrooke, with soft firmness.
+
+“But I have met him again two or three times. He called on me.”
+
+“And I understand you were together in a restaurant in--Soho, I think it
+was.”
+
+“Yes, we were.”
+
+“What did you think of him?” asked Braybrooke.
+
+As he put the question he was aware that he was being far from subtle.
+The vision in the distance--now eating plum cake, but still very
+observant--upset his nervous system and deprived him almost entirely of
+his usual savoir faire.
+
+“He seems quite a nice sort of boy,” said Miss Van Tuyn, still looking
+rather coldly inquisitive, as if she were secretly puzzled but
+intended to emerge into complete understanding before she had done
+with Braybrooke. “His Foreign Office manner is rather against him. But
+perhaps some day he’ll grow out of that--unless it becomes accentuated.”
+
+“If you knew him better I feel sure you would like him. He had no
+reservations about you--none at all. But, then, how could he have?”
+
+“Well, at any rate I haven’t got the Foreign Office manner.”
+
+“No, indeed!” said Braybrooke, managing a laugh that just indicated his
+appreciation of the remark as an excellent little joke. “But it really
+means nothing.”
+
+“That’s a pity. One’s manner should always have a meaning of some kind.
+Otherwise it is an absolute drawback to one’s personality.”
+
+“That is perhaps a fault of the Englishman. But we must remember that
+still waters run deep.”
+
+“Do you think so? But if they don’t run at all?”
+
+“How do you mean?”
+
+“There is such a thing as the village pond.”
+
+“How very trying she is this afternoon!” thought poor Braybrooke,
+endeavouring mentally to pull up his socks.
+
+“I half promised Craven the other day,” he lied, resolutely ignoring her
+unkind comparison of his protege to the abomination which is too often
+veiled with duckweed, “to contrive another meeting between you and him.
+But I fear he has bored you. And in that case perhaps I ought not to
+hold to my promise. You meet so many brilliant Frenchmen that I dare
+say our slower, but really I sometimes think deeper, mentality scarcely
+appeals to you.”
+
+(At this point he saw Fanny Cronin leaning impressively towards Mrs.
+Clem Hodson, as if about to impart some very secret information to that
+lady, who bent to receive it.)
+
+“Again those deep waters!” said Miss Van Tuyn, this time with
+unmistakable satire. “But perhaps you are right. I remember a very
+brilliant American, who knew practically all the nations of Europe,
+telling me that in his opinion you English were the subtlest--I’m afraid
+he was rude enough to say the most artful--of the lot.”
+
+As she spoke the word “artful” her fine eyes smiled straight into
+Braybrooke’s, and she pinched her red lips together very expressively.
+
+“But I must confess,” she added, “that at the moment we were discussing
+diplomats.”
+
+“Artful was rather unkind,” murmured Braybrooke. “I--I hope you don’t
+think my friend Craven is one of that type?”
+
+“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of Mr. Craven.”
+
+The implication was fairly obvious, and Braybrooke did not miss it,
+although he was not in possession of his full mental powers.
+
+“Perhaps it is our own fault,” he said. “But I think we English are
+often misunderstood.”
+
+As he spoke he shot a rather poignant glance in the direction of Fanny
+Cronin, who had now finished her tea, and was gathering her fur cloak
+about her as if in preparation for departure.
+
+“In fact,” he added, “I am sure of it. This very day even--”
+
+He paused, wondering how to put it, yet feeling that he really must at
+all costs make matters fairly clear to his companion.
+
+“Yes?” said Miss Van Tuyn sweetly.
+
+“To-day, this afternoon, I think that your dear Miss Cronin failed once
+or twice to grasp my full meaning when I was talking with her.”
+
+“Oh, Fanny! But she’s an old fool! Of course she’s a dear, and I’m very
+fond of her, but she is essentially nebulous. And what was it that you
+think she misunderstood?”
+
+Braybrooke hesitated. It really was very difficult to put what he wanted
+to say into words. Scarcely ever before had he felt himself so incapable
+of dealing adequately with a socially awkward situation. If only he knew
+what Miss Cronin had said to Miss Van Tuyn while he was ordering tea!
+
+“I could scarcely say I know. I really could not put my finger upon it,”
+ he said at last. “There was a general atmosphere of confusion, or so it
+seemed to me. We--we discussed marriage.”
+
+“I hope the old dear didn’t think you were proposing to her?”
+
+“Good heavens--oh, no! no! I don’t quite know what she thought.” (He
+lowered his eyes.) “But it wasn’t that.”
+
+“That’s a mercy at any rate!”
+
+Braybrooke still kept his eyes on the ground, but a dogged look came
+into his face, and he said, speaking more resolutely:
+
+“I’m afraid I alarmed dear Miss Cronin.”
+
+“How perfectly splendid!” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“She is very fond of you.”
+
+“Much fonder of Bourget!”
+
+“I don’t think so,” he said, with emphasis. “She is so devoted to
+you that quite inadvertently I alarmed her. After all, we were--we
+were”--nobly he decided to take the dreadful plunge--“we were two
+elderly people talking together as elderly people will, I thought quite
+freely and frankly, and I ventured--do forgive me--to hint that a great
+many men must wish to marry you; young men suited to you, promising men,
+men with big futures before them, anxious for a brilliant and beautiful
+wife.”
+
+“That was very charming and solicitous of you,” said Miss Van Tuyn with
+a smile. “But I don’t know that they do!”
+
+“Do what?” said Braybrooke, almost losing his head, as he saw the
+vision in the distance, now cloaked and gloved, rustling in an evident
+preparation for something, which might be departure or might on the
+other hand be approach.
+
+She observed him with a definite surprise, which she seemed desirous of
+showing.
+
+“I was alluding to the promising men,” she said.
+
+“Which men?” asked Braybrooke, still hypnotized by the vision.
+
+“The men with big futures before them who you were kind enough to tell
+Fanny were longing to marry me.”
+
+“Oh, yes!” (With a great effort he pulled himself together.) “Those men
+to be sure!”
+
+The vision was now standing up and apparently disputing the bill, for it
+was evidently talking at great length to a man in livery, who had a slip
+of paper in his hand, and who occasionally pointed to it in a resentful
+manner and said something, whereupon the vision made negative gestures
+and there was much tossing and shaking of heads. Resolutely Braybrooke
+looked away. It was nothing to do with him even if the Ritz was trying
+to make an overcharge for plum cake.
+
+“I just hinted that there must be men who--but you understand?”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn smiled unembarrassed assent.
+
+“And then Miss Cronin”--he lowered his voice--“seemed thoroughly upset.
+I scarcely knew what she thought I meant, but whatever it was I had not
+meant it. That is certain. But the fact is she is so devoted to you that
+the mere fact of your some day doing what all lovely and charming women
+are asked to do and usually consent to do--but--but Miss Cronin seems
+to--I think she wants to say something to you.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked suddenly rather rebellious. She did not glance
+towards the Philadelphia school friends, but turned her shoulder towards
+them and said:
+
+“Naturally my marriage would make a great difference to Fanny, but I
+have never known her to worry about it.”
+
+“She is worrying now!” said poor Braybrooke, with earnest conviction.
+“But really she--I am sure she wishes to speak to you.”
+
+The line showed itself in Miss Van Tuyn’s forehead.
+
+“Will you be kind and just go and ask her what she wants? Please
+tell her that I am not coming back yet as I am going to call on Lady
+Sellingworth when I leave here.”
+
+Braybrooke got up, trying to conceal his reluctance to obey. Miss
+Cronin, entrenched as it were behind her old school friend, and with
+dawnings of the dragon visible beneath her feathered hat, and even,
+strangely, mysteriously, underneath her long cloak of musquash, was
+endeavouring by signs and wonders to attract her Beryl’s attention,
+while Mrs. Clem Hodson stood looking imperious, and ready for any action
+that would prove her solidarity with her old schoolmate.
+
+“What she wants--and you are going to call on Lady Sellingworth!” said
+Braybrooke.
+
+“Yes; and to-night I’m dining out.”
+
+“Dining out to-night--just so.”
+
+There was no further excuse for delay, and he went towards the two old
+ladies, a grievous ambassador. It really had been the most unpleasant
+afternoon he remembered to have spent. He began to feel almost in
+fault, almost as if he had done--or at the least had contemplated
+doing--something outrageous, something for which he deserved the
+punishment which was now being meted out to him. As he slowly approached
+Miss Cronin he endeavoured resolutely to bear himself like a man who had
+not proposed that day for Miss Van Tuyn’s hand. But preposterously, Miss
+Cronin’s absurd misconception seemed to have power over his conscience,
+and that again over his appearance and gait. He was fully aware, as he
+went forward to convey Miss Van Tuyn’s message, that he made a very poor
+show of it. In fact, he was just then living up to Dick’s description of
+him as “the beard with the gentleman.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Braybrooke,” said Miss Cronin as he came up, “so you are here
+with Beryl!”
+
+“Yes; so I am here with Miss Van Tuyn!”
+
+Miss Cronin exchanged a glance with Mrs. Clem Hodson.
+
+“You didn’t tell me when you called that you were taking her out to
+tea!”
+
+“No, I didn’t!” said Braybrooke.
+
+“This is my old schoolmate, Mrs. Clem Hodson. Suzanne, this is Mr.
+Braybrooke, a friend of Beryl’s.”
+
+Mrs. Clem Hodson bowed from the waist, and looked at Braybrooke with
+the expression of one who knew a great deal more about him than his own
+mother knew.
+
+“This hotel overcharges,” she said firmly.
+
+“Really! I should have scarcely have thought--”
+
+“There were two pieces of plum cake on the bill, and we only ate one.”
+
+“Oh, I’ve just remembered,” said Miss Cronin, as if irradiated with
+sudden light.
+
+“What, dear?”
+
+“I _did_ have two slices. One was before the muffin, while we were
+waiting for it, and the other was after. And I only remembered the
+second.”
+
+“In that case, dear, we’ve done the waiter an injustice and libelled the
+hotel.”
+
+“I will make it all right if you will allow me,” said Braybrooke almost
+obsequiously. “I’m well known here. I will explain to the manager, a
+most charming man.”
+
+He turned definitely to face Fanny Cronin.
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn asked me to tell you what she wants.”
+
+“Indeed! Does she want something?”
+
+“No. I mean she told me to ask you what you want.”
+
+Miss Cronin looked at Mrs. Clem Hodson, hesitated, and then made a very
+definite rabbit’s mouth.
+
+“I don’t know that I want anything, thank you, Mr. Braybrooke. But if
+Beryl is going--she is not going?”
+
+“I really don’t know exactly.”
+
+“She hasn’t finished her tea, perhaps?”
+
+“I don’t know for certain. But she asked me to tell you she wasn’t
+coming back yet”--the two old ladies exchanged glances which Braybrooke
+longed to contradict--“as she is going to call on Lady Sellingworth
+presently.”
+
+“Ah!” said Mrs. Clem Hodson, gazing steadily at Fanny Cronin.
+
+“In Berkeley Square!” added Braybrooke emphatically. “And to-night she
+is dining out.”
+
+“Did she say where?” asked Miss Cronin, slightly moving her ears.
+
+“No; she didn’t.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Miss Cronin. “Good-bye, Mr. Braybrooke.”
+
+She held out her hand like one making a large and difficult concession
+to her own Christianity. Mrs. Clem Hodson bowed again from the waist and
+also made a concession. She muttered, “Very glad to have met you!” and
+then cleared her throat, while the criss-cross of wrinkles moved all
+over her face.
+
+“I will make it all right with the manager,” said Braybrooke, with
+over-anxious earnestness, and feeling now quite definitely that he
+must really have proposed to Miss Cronin for Miss Van Tuyn’s hand that
+afternoon, and that he must have just lied about the disposal of her
+time until she had to dress for dinner.
+
+“The manager?” said Miss Cronin.
+
+“What manager?” said Mrs. Clem Hodson.
+
+“About the plum cake! Surely you remember?”
+
+“Oh--the plum cake!” said Mrs. Hodson, looking steadily at Fanny Cronin.
+“Thank you very much indeed! Very good of you!”
+
+“Thank you,” said Miss Cronin, with a sudden piteous look. “I did eat
+two slices. Come, Suzanne! Good-bye again, Mr. Braybrooke.”
+
+They turned to go out. As Braybrooke watched the musquash slowly
+vanishing he knew in his bones that, when he did not become engaged
+to Miss Van Tuyn, Fanny Cronin, till the day of her death, would
+feel positive that he had proposed to her that afternoon and had been
+rejected. And he muttered in his beard:
+
+“Damn these red-headed old women! I will _not_ make it all right with
+the manager about the plum cake!”
+
+It was a poor revenge, but the only one he could think of at the moment.
+
+“Is anything the matter?” asked Miss Van Tuyn when he rejoined her. “Has
+old Fanny been tiresome?”
+
+“Oh, no--no! But old Fan--I beg your pardon, I mean Miss Cronin--Miss
+Cronin has a peculiar--but she is very charming. I gave her your
+message, and she quite understood. We were talking about plum cake. That
+is why I was so long.”
+
+“I see! A fascinating subject like that must be difficult to get away
+from.”
+
+“Yes--very! What a delightful woman Mrs. Hodson is.”
+
+“I think her extremely wearisome. Her nature is as wrinkled as her face.
+And now I must be on my way to Adela Sellingworth’s.”
+
+“May I walk with you as far as her door?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+When they were out in Piccadilly he said:
+
+“And now what about my promise to Mr. Craven?”
+
+“I shall be delighted to meet him again,” said Miss Van Tuyn in a
+careless voice. “And I would not have you break a promise on my account.
+Such a sacred thing!”
+
+“But if he bores you--”
+
+“He doesn’t bore me more than many young men do.”
+
+“Then I will let you know. We might have a theatre party.”
+
+“Anything you like. And why not ask Adela Sellingworth to make a
+fourth?”
+
+This suggestion was not at all to Braybrooke’s liking, but he scarcely
+knew what to say in answer to it. Really, it seemed as if this afternoon
+was to end as it had begun--in a contretemps.
+
+“I am so fond of her,” continued Miss Van Tuyn. “And I’m sure she would
+enjoy it.”
+
+“But she so seldom goes out.”
+
+“All the more reason to try to persuade her out of her shell. I believe
+she will come if you tell her I and Mr. Craven make up the rest of the
+party. We all got on so well together in Soho.”
+
+“I will certainly ask her,” said Braybrooke.
+
+What else could he say?
+
+At the corner of Berkeley Square Miss Van Tuyn stopped and rather
+resolutely bade him good-bye.
+
+When Braybrooke was alone he felt almost tired out. If he had been an
+Italian he would probably have believed that someone had looked on him
+that day with the evil eye. He feared that he had been almost maladroit.
+His social self-confidence was severely shaken. And yet he had only
+meant well; he had only been trying to do what he considered his duty.
+It had all begun with Miss Cronin’s preposterous mistake. That had
+thoroughly upset him, and from that moment he had not been in possession
+of his normal means. And now he was let in for a party combining
+Adela Sellingworth with Miss Van Tuyn and Craven. It was singularly
+unfortunate. But probably Lady Sellingworth would refuse the invitation
+he now had to send her. She really went out very seldom. He could only
+hope for a refusal. That, too, was tragic. He could not remember ever
+before having actively wished that an invitation of his should be
+declined.
+
+He was so reduced in self-confidence and spirits that he turned into the
+St. James’s Club, sank down alone in a remote corner, and called for
+a dry Martini, although he knew quite well that it would set up
+fermentation.
+
+
+
+
+PART FOUR
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Lady Sellingworth was “not at home” when Miss Van Tuyn called, though no
+doubt she was in the house, and the latter left her card, on which she
+wrote in pencil, “So sorry not to find you. Do let us meet again soon. I
+may not be in London much longer.” When she wrote the last sentence she
+was really thinking of Paris with a certain irritation of desire. In
+Paris she always had a good, even a splendid, time. London was treating
+her badly. Perhaps it was hardly worth while to stay on. She had many
+adorers in Paris, and no elderly women there ever got in her way.
+Frenchmen never ran after elderly women. She could not conceive of any
+young Frenchman doing what Craven had done if offered the choice between
+a girl of twenty-two and a woman of sixty. Englishmen really were
+incomprehensible. Was it worth while to bother about them? Probably not.
+But she was by nature combative as well as vain, and Craven’s behaviour
+had certainly given him a greater value in her estimation. If he had
+done the quite ordinary thing, and fallen in love with her at once,
+she might have been pleased and yet have thought very little of him. He
+would then have been in a class with many others. Now he was decidedly
+in a class by himself. If he loved he would not be an ordinary lover.
+She was angry with him. She intended some day to punish him. But he
+puzzled her, and very definitely now he attracted her.
+
+No; really she would not go back to Paris of the open arms and the
+comprehensible behaviour without coming to conclusions with Craven. To
+do so would be to retreat practically beaten from the field, and she had
+never yet acknowledged a defeat.
+
+Besides, she had something in prospect, something that for the moment,
+at any rate, would hold her in London even without the attraction, half
+repellent, of Craven. Evidently Dick Garstin, for whatever reason, had
+done something, or was about to do something, for her. Always he managed
+to be irritating. It was just like him to spend two hours alone with her
+without saying one word about the living bronze, and then to rouse her
+curiosity when it was impossible that it should be gratified owing
+to the presence of Braybrooke. Garstin could never do anything in a
+pleasant and comfortable way. He must always, even in kindness, be
+semi-malicious. There was at times something almost Satanic in his
+ingenious avoidance of the common humanities. But it seemed that he was
+about to comply with her expressed whim. He had surely spoken to the
+Cafe Royal man, and had perhaps already received from him a promise to
+visit the studio.
+
+She had not seen the stranger again. He had not been at the Cafe Royal
+on the night when she had dined there alone. But Garstin must have seen
+him again, unless, indeed, Garstin was being absolutely disgusting, was
+condescending to a cheap and vulgar hoax.
+
+That was just possible. But somehow she believed in Garstin this
+time. She felt almost sure that he had done what she wished, and that
+to-morrow afternoon in Glebe Place she would meet the man to whom she
+had offered the shilling.
+
+That would be distinctly amusing. She felt on the edge of a rather
+uncommon adventure.
+
+On the following day, very soon after three, she pushed the bell outside
+Garstin’s studio door in Glebe Place. It was not answered immediately,
+and, feeling impatient, she rang again without waiting long. Garstin
+opened the door, and smiled rather maliciously on seeing her.
+
+“What a hurry you’re in!” he said. “Come along in, my girl.”
+
+As he shut the heavy door behind her she turned in the lobby and said:
+
+“Well, Dick?”
+
+“I’m working in the upstairs studio,” he returned blandly.
+
+“What are you at work on?”
+
+“Go up and you’ll see for yourself.”
+
+She hastened through the studio on the ground floor, which was hung with
+small landscapes, and sketches in charcoal, and audacious caricatures
+of various well-known people. At the end of it was a short and wide
+staircase. She mounted it swiftly, and came into another large studio
+built out at the back of the building. Here Garstin worked on his
+portraits, and here she expected to come face to face with the living
+bronze. As she drew near to the entrance of the studio she felt positive
+that he was waiting for her. But when she reached it and looked quickly
+and expectantly round she saw at once that the great room was empty.
+Only the few portraits on easels and on the pale walls looked at her
+with the vivid eyes which Garstin knew how to endow with an almost
+abnormal life.
+
+Evidently Garstin had stopped below for a moment in the ground floor
+studio, but she now heard his heavy tramp on the stairs behind her and
+turned almost angrily.
+
+“Dick, is this intended for a joke?”
+
+“What do you mean by ‘this’?”
+
+“You know! Have you brought me here under false pretences? You know
+quite well why I came.”
+
+“Why don’t you take off your hat?”
+
+But for once Miss Van Tuyn’s vanity was not on the alert; for once she
+did not care whether Garstin admired her head or not.
+
+“I shall not take off my hat,” she said brusquely. “I don’t intend to
+stay unless there is the reason which I expected and which induced me to
+come here. Have you seen that remarkable-looking man again or not?”
+
+“I have,” said Garstin with a mischievous smile.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked slightly mollified, but still uncertain.
+
+“Did you speak to him?” she asked.
+
+“I did.”
+
+“What did he say?”
+
+“I told him to come along to the studio.”
+
+“You did! And--?”
+
+“Why don’t you take off your hat?”
+
+“Because it suits me particularly well. Now tell me at once, don’t be
+malicious and tiresome--are you expecting him?”
+
+“I couldn’t say that.”
+
+“You are not expecting him!”
+
+“My good girl, we expect from those we rely on. What do I know about
+this fellow’s character? I told him who I was, and what I wanted with
+him, and that I wanted it with him at three this afternoon. He’s got the
+address. But whether we have any reason to expect him is more than I can
+say.”
+
+She looked quickly at the watch on her wrist.
+
+“It is past three. I was late.”
+
+After an instant of silence she sat down on an old-fashioned sofa
+covered with dull green and red silk. Just behind it on an easel stood a
+half-finished portrait of the Cora woman, staring with hungry eyes over
+an empty tumbler.
+
+“Give me a cigarette, Dick,” she said. “Did he say he would come?”
+
+The painter went over to an old Spanish cabinet and rummaged for a box
+of cigarettes, with his horsey-looking back turned towards her.
+
+“Did he?” she repeated. “Can’t you tell me what happened when you spoke
+to him? Why force me to cross-examine you in this indelicate way?”
+
+“Here you are!” said Garstin, turning round with a box of cigarettes.
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+“I gave him my name.”
+
+“He knew it, of course?”
+
+“He didn’t say so. There was no celebrity-start of pleasure. I had to
+explain that I occasionally painted portraits and that I wished to make
+a study of his damned remarkable head. Upon that he handed me his card.
+Here it is.”
+
+And Garstin drew out of a side pocket a visiting-card, which he gave to
+Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+She read: “Nicolas Arabian.”
+
+There was no address in the corner.
+
+“What a curious name!”
+
+She sat gazing at the card and smoking her cigarette.
+
+“Do you know where he is staying?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Did you speak English to him?”
+
+“I did.”
+
+“And he spoke good English?”
+
+“Yes, with a foreign accent of some kind.”
+
+At this moment an electric bell sounded below.
+
+“There he is!” said Miss Van Tuyn, quickly giving back the card to
+Garstin, who dropped it into his pocket. “Do go down quickly and let him
+in, or he may think it is all a hoax and go away.”
+
+The painter stood looking at her keenly, with his hands in his pockets
+and his strong, thin legs rather wide apart.
+
+“Well, at any rate you’re damned unconventional!” he said. “At this
+moment you even look unconventional. What are your eyes shining about?”
+
+“Dick--do go!”
+
+She laid a hand on his arm. There was a strong grip in her fingers.
+
+“This is a little adventure. And I love an adventure,” she said.
+
+“I only hope it ends badly,” said Garstin, as he turned towards the
+staircase. “He’s more patient than you. He hasn’t rung twice.”
+
+“I believe he’s gone away,” she said, almost angrily as he disappeared
+down the stairs.
+
+She got up. There was a grand piano in the studio at the far end. She
+moved as if she were going towards it, then returned and went to the
+head of the stairs. She heard the front door open and listened. Dick
+Garstin’s big bass voice said in an offhand tone:
+
+“Halloh! Thought you weren’t coming! Glad to see you. Come along in!”
+
+“I know I am late,” said a warm voice--the voice of a man. “For me this
+place has been rather difficult to find. I am not well acquainted with
+the painters’ quarter of London.”
+
+A door banged heavily. Then Miss Van Tuyn heard steps, and again the
+warm voice saying:
+
+“I see you do caricatures. Or are these not by you?”
+
+“Every one of them!” said Garstin. “Except that. That’s a copy I made of
+one of Leonardo’s horrors. It’s fine. It’s a thing to live with.”
+
+“Leonardo--ah, yes!” said the voice.
+
+“I wonder if that man has ever heard of Leonardo?” was Miss Van Tuyn’s
+thought just then.
+
+“Up those stairs right ahead of you,” said Garstin.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn quickly drew back and sat down again on the sofa. An
+instant after she had done so the living bronze appeared at the top of
+the stairs, and his big brown eyes rested on her. No expression either
+of surprise, or of anything else, came into his face as he saw her.
+And she realized immediately that whatever else this man was he was
+supremely self-possessed. Yet he had turned away from her shilling. Why
+was that? In that moment she began to wonder about him. He stood still,
+waiting for Garstin to join him. As he did this he looked formal but
+amazingly handsome, though there were some lines about his eyes which
+she had not noticed in the Cafe Royal. He was dressed in a dark town
+suit and wore a big double-breasted overcoat. He was holding a black
+bowler hat, a pair of thick white gloves and a silver-topped stick. As
+Garstin joined him, Miss Van Tuyn slowly got up from her sofa.
+
+“A friend of mine--Beryl Van Tuyn,” said Garstin. “Come to have a look
+round at what I’m up to.” (He glanced at Miss Van Tuyn.) “Mr. Arabian,”
+ he added. “Take off your coat, won’t you? Throw it anywhere.”
+
+Arabian bowed to Miss Van Tuyn, still looking formal and as if she were
+a total stranger whom he had never set eyes on before. She bowed to
+him. As she did so she thought that he was a little older than she
+had supposed. He was certainly over thirty. She wondered about his
+nationality and suspected that very mixed blood ran in his veins.
+Somehow, in spite of his quite extraordinary good looks, she felt almost
+certain that he was not a pure type of any nation. In her mind she
+dubbed him on the spot “a marvellous mongrel.”
+
+He obeyed Garstin’s suggestion, took off his coat, and laid it with his
+hat, gloves and stick on a chair close to the staircase. Then for the
+first time he spoke to Miss Van Tuyn, who was still standing.
+
+“I always love a studio, mademoiselle,” he said, “and when Mr. Dick
+Garstin”--he pronounced the name with careful clearness--“was good
+enough to invite me to his I was very thankful. His pictures are
+famous.”
+
+“You’ve been getting me up,” said Garstin bluntly. “Reading ‘Who’s
+Who’!”
+
+Arabian raised his eyebrows.
+
+“I beg your pardon?”
+
+“Don’t be absurd and put on false modesty, Dick,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+“As if you weren’t known to everyone!”
+
+It was the first time she had spoken in Arabian’s hearing since the
+episode in Shaftesbury Avenue, and, as she uttered her first words, she
+thought she detected a faint and fleeting look of surprise--it was like
+a mental start made visible--slip over his face, like a ray of pale
+light slipping over a surface. Immediately afterwards a keen expression
+came into his eyes, and he looked rather more self-possessed than
+before, rather harder even.
+
+“Everyone, of course, knows your name, Mr. Dick Garstin, as mademoiselle
+says.”
+
+“Right you are!” said Garstin gruffly. “Glad to hear it!”
+
+He now directed the two pin-points of light to the new visitor, stared
+at him with almost cruel severity, and yet with a curiously inward
+look, frowning and lifting his long pursed lips, till the upper lip was
+pressed against the bottom of his beaked nose.
+
+“Are you going to allow me to paint you?” he said. “That’s what
+I’m after. I should like to do a head and bust of you. I could make
+something of it--something--yes!”
+
+He still stared with concentrated attention, and suddenly a faint
+whistle came from his lips. Without removing his eyes from Arabian he
+whistled several times a little tune of five notes, like the song of a
+thrush. Arabian meanwhile returned his gaze rather doubtfully, slightly
+smiling.
+
+“Ever been painted?” said Garstin at last.
+
+“No, never. Once I have sat to a sculptor for the figure. But that was
+when I was very young. I was something of an athlete as a boy.”
+
+“I should say so,” said Garstin. “Well, what do you think, eh?”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn had sat down on the sofa again, and was lighting another
+cigarette. She looked at the two men with interest. She now knew that
+what Garstin had done he had really done for himself, not for her. As
+he had said, he did not paint for the pleasure of others, but only for
+reasons of his own. Apparently he would never gratify her vanity. But
+he gratified something else in her, her genuine love of talent and the
+ruthlessness of talent. There was really something of the great man in
+Garstin, and she appreciated it. She admired him more than she liked
+him. Even in her frequent irritation against him she knew what he
+genuinely was. At this moment something in her was sharply disappointed.
+But something else in her was curiously satisfied.
+
+In reply to Garstin’s question Arabian asked another question.
+
+“You wish to make a portrait of me?”
+
+“I do--in oils.”
+
+“Will it take long?”
+
+“I couldn’t say. I might be a week over it, or less, or more. I shall
+want you every day.”
+
+“And when it is done?” said Arabian. “What happens to it?”
+
+“If it’s up to the mark--my mark--I shall want to exhibit it.”
+
+Arabian said nothing for a moment. He seemed to be thinking rather
+seriously, and presently his large eyes turned towards Miss Van Tuyn for
+an instant, almost, she thought, as if they wished to consult her, to
+read in her eyes something which might help him to a decision. She felt
+that the man was flattered by Garstin’s request, but she felt also that
+something--she did not know what--held him back from granting it. And
+again she wondered about him.
+
+What was he? She could not divine. She looked at him and felt that she
+was looking at a book not one of whose pages she could read. And yet
+she thought he had what is sometimes called an “open” face. There was
+nothing sly in the expression of his eyes. They met other eyes steadily,
+sometimes with a sort of frank audacity, sometimes with--apparently--an
+almost pleading wistfulness.
+
+Finally, as if coming to a conclusion as to what he considered it wise
+to do for the moment, Arabian said:
+
+“Excuse me, but are these pictures which I see portraits painted by
+you?”
+
+“Every one of them,” said Garstin, rather roughly and impatiently.
+
+“Will you allow me to look at them?”
+
+“They’re there to be looked at.”
+
+Again Arabian glanced at Miss Van Tuyn. She got up from the sofa
+quickly.
+
+“I will show Mr. Arabian the pictures,” she said.
+
+She had noticed the cloud lowering on Garstin’s face and knew that he
+was irritated by Arabian’s hesitation. As Garstin had once said to her
+he could be “sensitive,” although his manners were often rough, and
+his face was what is usually called a “hard” face. And he was quite
+unaccustomed to meet with any resistance, even with any hesitation,
+when he was disposed to paint anyone, man or woman. Besides, the fact
+of Arabian’s arrival at the studio had naturally led Garstin to expect
+compliance with his wish already expressed at the Cafe Royal. He was now
+obviously in a surly temper, and Miss Van Tuyn knew from experience that
+when resisted he was quite capable of an explosion. How, she wondered,
+would Arabian face an outburst from Garstin? She could not tell. But she
+thought it wise if possible to avoid anything disagreeable. So she came
+forward smiling.
+
+“That will be very kind,” said Arabian, in his soft and warm voice, and
+with his marked but charming foreign accent. “I am not expert in these
+matters.”
+
+Garstin pushed up his lips in a sort of sneer. Miss Van Tuyn sent him a
+look, and for once he heeded a wish of hers.
+
+“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “Have a good stare at my stuff, and
+if you don’t like it--why, damn it, you’re free to say so.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn’s look had sent him away down the stairs to the ground
+floor studio. Arabian had not missed her message, but he was apparently
+quite impassive, and did not show that he had noticed the painter’s ill
+humour.
+
+For the first time Miss Van Tuyn was quite alone with the living bronze.
+
+“Do you know much about pictures?” she asked him.
+
+“Not very much,” he answered, with a long, soft look at her. “I have
+only one way to judge them.”
+
+“And what way is that?”
+
+“If they are portraits, I mean.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“I judge them by their humanity. One does not want to be made worse than
+one is in a picture.”
+
+“I’m afraid you won’t like Dick Garstin’s work,” she said decisively.
+
+She was rather disappointed. Had this audaciously handsome man a cult
+for the pretty-pretty?
+
+“Let us see!” he replied, smiling.
+
+He looked round the big studio. As he did so she noticed that he had an
+extraordinarily quick and all-seeing glance, and realized that in some
+way, in some direction, he must be clever, even exceptionally clever.
+There were some eight to ten portraits in the studio, a few finished,
+others half finished or only just begun. Arabian went first to stand
+before the finished portrait of a girl of about eighteen, whose face
+was already plainly marked--blurred, not sharpened--by vice. Her youth
+seemed obscured by a faint fog of vice--as if she had projected it, and
+was slightly withdrawn behind it. Arabian looked at her in silence. Miss
+Van Tuyn watched him, standing back, not quite level with him. And she
+saw on his face an expression that suggested to her a man contemplating
+something he was very much at home with.
+
+“That is a bad girl!” was his only comment, as he moved on to the next
+picture.
+
+This was also the portrait of a woman, but of a woman well on in life,
+an elderly and battered siren of the streets, wrecked by men and by
+drink. Only the head and bust were shown, a withered head crowning a
+bust which had sunken in. There was an old pink hat set awry on the
+head. From beneath it escaped coarse wisps of almost orange-coloured
+hair. The dull, small eyes were deep-set under brows which looked
+feverish. A livid spot of red glowed almost like a torch-end on each
+high cheek-bone. The mouth had fallen open.
+
+Arabian examined this tragedy, which was one of Garstin’s finest bits
+of work in Miss Van Tuyn’s estimation, with careful and close attention,
+but without showing the faintest symptom of either pity or disgust.
+
+“In my opinion that is well painted,” was his comment. “They do get to
+be like that. And then they starve. And that is because they have no
+brains.”
+
+“Garstin swears that woman must once have been very beautiful,” said
+Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“Oh--quite possible,” said Arabian.
+
+“Well, I can’t conceive it.”
+
+He turned and gave her a long, steady look, full of softness and ardour.
+
+“It would be very sad if you could,” he said. “Excuse me, but are you
+American?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, Americans never get like that. They are too practical.”
+
+“And not romantic--do you mean?” she said, not without irony.
+
+“They can be romantic, but they save themselves from disaster with their
+practical sense. I hope I put it right.”
+
+She smiled at him.
+
+“You speak very good English. What do you think of this?”
+
+“But I have seen her!” he said.
+
+They had come to the easel on which was the half-finished portrait of
+Cora, staring across her empty glass.
+
+“She goes to the Cafe Royal.”
+
+He looked again at Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“Do you ever go there?” he asked gravely.
+
+“No, never,” she said with calm simplicity, returning his gaze.
+
+“Well she--that woman--sits there alone just like that. She has a
+purpose. She is waiting for someone to come in who will come some
+night. And she knows that, and will wait, like a dog before a hole which
+contains something he intends to kill. This Mr. Dick Garstin is very
+clever. He is more than a painter; he is an understander.”
+
+“Ah!” she said, intimately pleased by this remark. “You do appreciate
+him! Garstin is great because he paints not merely for the eye that
+looks for a sort of painted photograph, but for the eye that demands a
+summing up of character.”
+
+Arabian looked sideways at her.
+
+“What is that--of character, mademoiselle?”
+
+“A summing up! That is a presentation of the sum total of the
+character.”
+
+“Oh, yes.”
+
+He looked again at Cora.
+
+“One knows what she is by that,” he said.
+
+Then, standing still, he looked rapidly all round the studio, glancing
+first at one portrait then at another, with eyes which despite their
+lustrous softness, seemed to make a sort of prey of whatever they
+lighted on.
+
+“But they are all women and all of a certain world!” he said, almost
+suspiciously. “Why is that?”
+
+“Garstin is passing through a phase just now. He paints from the Cafe
+Royal.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+He paused, and his brown face took on a look of rather hard meditation.
+
+“Does he never paint what they call decent people?” he inquired. “One
+may occasionally spend an hour at the Cafe Royal--especially if one is
+not English--without belonging to the _bas-fonds_. I do not know whether
+Mr. Dick Garstin understands that.”
+
+“Of course he does,” she said, instantly grasping the meaning of his
+hesitation. “But there is one portrait--of a man--which I don’t think
+you have looked at.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“On that big easel with its back to us. If you want a decent
+person”--she spoke with a slightly ironical intonation--“go and see what
+Garstin can do with decency.”
+
+“I will.”
+
+And he walked over to the side of the room opposite to the grand piano,
+and went to stand in front of the easel she had indicated. She stood
+where she was and watched him. For two or three minutes he looked at the
+picture in silence, and she thought his expression had become slightly
+hostile. His audacious and rather thick lips were set together firmly,
+almost too firmly. His splendid figure supple, athletic and harmonious,
+looked almost rigid. She wondered what he was feeling, whether he
+disliked the portrait of the judge of the Criminal Court at which he was
+looking. Finally he said:
+
+“I think Mr. Dick Garstin is a humorist. Do not you?”
+
+“But--why?”
+
+“To put this gentleman in the midst of all the law breakers.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn crossed the room and joined him in front of the picture,
+which showed the judge seated in his wig and robes.
+
+“And that is not all,” added Arabian. “This man’s business is to judge
+others, naughty people who do God knows what, and, it seems, have to be
+punished sometimes. Is it not?”
+
+“Yes, to be sure.”
+
+“But Mr. Dick Garstin when painting him is saying to himself all the
+time, ‘And he is naughty, too! And who is going to put on wig and red
+clothes and tell him he, too, deserves a few months of prison?’ Now is
+not that true, mademoiselle? Is not that man bad underneath the judge’s
+skin? And has not Mr. Dick Garstin found this out, and does not he use
+all his cleverness to show it?”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked at Arabian with a stronger interest than any she
+had shown yet. It was quite true. Garstin had a peculiar faculty for
+getting at the lower parts of a character and for bringing it to the
+surface in his portraits. Perhaps in the exercise of this faculty he
+showed his ingrained cynicism, sometimes even his malice. Arabian had,
+it seemed, immediately discovered the painter’s predominant quality as a
+psychologist of the brush.
+
+“You are quite right,” she said. “One feels that someone ought to judge
+that judge.”
+
+“That is more than a portrait of one man,” said Arabian. “It is a
+portrait of the world’s hypocrisy.”
+
+In saying this his usually soft voice suddenly took on an almost biting
+tone.
+
+“The question is,” he added, “whether one wishes to be painted as bad
+when perhaps one is not so bad. Many people, I think, might fear to be
+painted by this very famous Mr. Dick Garstin.”
+
+“Would you be afraid to be painted by him?” she said.
+
+He cast a sharp glance at her with eyes which looked suddenly vigilant.
+
+“I did not say that.”
+
+“He’ll be furious if you refuse.”
+
+“I see he is accustomed generally to have what he wishes.”
+
+“Yes. And he would make a magnificent thing of you. I am certain of
+that.”
+
+She saw vanity looking out of his eyes, and her vanity felt suddenly
+almost strangely at home with it.
+
+“It is a compliment, I know, that he should wish to paint me,” said
+Arabian. “But why does he?”
+
+The question sounded to Miss Van Tuyn almost suspicious.
+
+“He admires your appearance,” she answered. “He thinks you a very
+striking type.”
+
+“Ah! A type! But what of?”
+
+“He didn’t tell me,” she answered.
+
+Arabian was silent for a moment; then he said:
+
+“Does Mr. Dick Garstin get high prices for his portraits? Are they worth
+a great deal?”
+
+“Yes,” she said, with a sudden light touch of disdain, which she could
+not forego. “The smallest sketch of a head painted by him will fetch a
+lot of money.”
+
+“Ah--indeed!”
+
+“Let him paint you! There he is--coming back.”
+
+As Garstin reappeared Arabian turned to him with a smile that looked
+cordial and yet that seemed somehow wanting in real geniality.
+
+“I have seen them all.”
+
+“Have you? Well, let’s have a drink.”
+
+He went over to the Spanish cabinet and brought out of it a flagon of
+old English glass ware, soda-water, and three tall tulip-shaped glasses
+with long stems.
+
+“Come on. Let’s sit down,” he said, setting them down on a table. “I’ll
+get the cigars. Squat here, Beryl. Here’s a chair for you, Arabian. Help
+yourselves.”
+
+He moved off and returned with a box of his deadly cigars. Arabian took
+one without hesitation, and accepted a stiff whisky and soda. While he
+had been downstairs Garstin had apparently recovered his good humour, or
+had deliberately made up his mind to take a certain line with his guest
+from the Cafe Royal. He said nothing about his pictures, made no further
+allusion to his wish to paint Arabian’s portrait, but flung himself
+down, lit a cigar, and began to drink and smoke and talk, very much
+as if he were in the bar of an inn with a lot of good fellows. When he
+chose Garstin could be human and genial, at times even rowdy. He was
+genial enough now, but Miss Van Tuyn, who was very sharp about almost
+everything connected with people, thought of a patient’s first visit to
+a famous specialist, and of the quarter of an hour so often apparently
+wasted by the great physician as he talks about topics unconnected
+with symptoms to his anxious visitor. She was certain that Garstin was
+determined to paint Arabian whether the latter was willing to be painted
+or not, and she was equally certain that already Garstin had begun to
+work on his sitter, not with brushes but with the mind. For his
+own benefit, and incidentally for hers, Garstin was carelessly, but
+cleverly, trying to find out things about Arabian, not things about his
+life, but things about his education, and his mind and his temperament.
+He did not ask him vulgar questions. He just talked, and watched, and
+occasionally listened in the midst of the cigar smoke, and often with
+the whisky at his lips.
+
+She had refused to take any whisky, but smoked cigarette after cigarette
+quickly, nervously almost. She was enjoying herself immensely, but she
+felt unusually excited, mentally restless, almost mentally agitated. Her
+usual coolness of mind had been changed into a sort of glow by Garstin
+and the living bronze. She always liked being alone with men, hearing
+men talk among themselves or talking with them free from the presence
+of women. But to-day she was exceptionally stimulated for she was
+exceptionally curious. There was something in Arabian which vaguely
+troubled her, and which also enticed her almost against her will. And
+now she was following along a track, pioneered by a clever and cunning
+leader.
+
+Garstin talked about London, which Arabian apparently knew fairly well,
+though he said he had never lived long in London; then about Paris,
+which Arabian also knew and spoke of like a man who visited it now
+and then for purposes of pleasure. Then Garstin spoke of the art he
+followed, of the old Italian painters and of the Galleries of Italy.
+Arabian became very quiet. His attitude and bearing were those of one
+almost respectfully listening to an expert holding forth on a subject
+he had made his own. Now and then he said something non-committal. There
+was no evidence that he had any knowledge of Italian pictures, that he
+could distinguish between a Giovanni Bellini and a Raphael, tell a Luini
+from a Titian.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn wondered again whether he had ever heard of Leonardo.
+
+Garstin mentioned some Paris painters of the past, but of more recent
+times than those of the grand old Italians, spoke of Courbet, of Manet,
+of Renoir, Guilaumin, Sisley, the Barbizon school, Cezanne and his
+followers. Finally he came to the greatest of the French Impressionist
+painters, to Pissaro, for whom, as Miss Van Tuyn knew, he had an
+admiration which amounted almost to a cult.
+
+“He’s a glorious fellow, isn’t he?” he said in his loud bass voice to
+Arabian. “You know his ‘Pont Neuf,’ of course?”
+
+He did not wait for an answer, but drove on with immense energy, puffing
+away at his cigar and turning his small, keen eyes swiftly from Arabian
+to Miss Van Tuyn and back again. The talk, which was now a monologue,
+fed by frequent draughts of the excellent whisky, included a
+dissertation on Pissaro’s oil paintings, his water-colours, his
+etchings and lithographs, his pupils, Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin, his
+friendships, his troubles, and finally a paean on his desperate love of
+work, which was evidently shared by the speaker.
+
+“Work--it’s _the_ thing in life!” roared Garstin. “It’s the great
+consolation for all the damnableness of the human existence. Work first
+and the love of women second!”
+
+“Thank you very much for your chivalry, Dick,” said Miss Van Tuyn,
+sending one of her most charming blue glances to the living bronze, who
+returned it, almost eagerly, she thought.
+
+“And the love of women betrays,” continued Garstin. “But work never lets
+you down.”
+
+He flung out his right arm and quoted sonorously from Pissaro: “I
+paint portraits because doing it helps me to live!” he almost shouted.
+“Another cigar!” He turned to Arabian.
+
+“Thank you. They are beauties and not too strong.”
+
+“You’ve got a damned strong constitution if you can say that. You have
+been like me; you have fortified it by work.”
+
+“I fear not,” he said with a smile. “I have been a flaneur, an idler.
+It has been my great misfortune to have enough money for what I want
+without working.”
+
+“Like poor me!” said Miss Van Tuyn, feeling suddenly relieved.
+
+“I pity you both!” said Garstin.
+
+And he branched away to literature, to music, to sculpture. Lowering his
+big voice suddenly he spoke of the bronzes of the Naples Museum, half
+shutting his eyes till they were two narrow slits, and looking intently
+at Arabian.
+
+“You have the throat of one of those bronzes,” he said bluntly, “and
+should never wear that cursed abomination, a starched linen collar.”
+
+“What is one to do in London?” murmured Arabian, suddenly stretching his
+brown throat and lifting his strong chin.
+
+“Show it something worth looking at,” said Garstin.
+
+And he returned to the subject of women, and spoke on it so freely and
+fully that Miss Van Tuyn presently pulled him up. Rather to her surprise
+he showed unusual meekness under her interruption.
+
+“All right, my girl! I’ve done! I’ve done! But I always forget you’re
+not a young man.”
+
+“_Ma foi!_” said Arabian, almost under his breath.
+
+Garstin looked across at him
+
+“She’s a Tartar. She’d keep the devil himself in order.”
+
+“He deserves restraint far less than you do,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“She won’t leave me alone,” continued Garstin, flinging one leg over the
+arm of his easy chair. “She even attacks me about my painting, says I
+only paint the rats of the sewers.”
+
+“I never said that,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “I said you were a painter of
+the underworld, and so you are.”
+
+“But Mr. Dick Garstin also paints judges, mademoiselle,” said Arabian.
+
+“Oh, lord! Drop the Mister! I’m Dick Garstin _tout court_ or I’m
+nothing. Now, Arabian, you know the reason, part of the reason, why I
+want to stick you on canvas.”
+
+“You mean because--”
+
+He seemed to hesitate, and touched his little Guardsman’s moustache.
+
+“Because you’re a jolly fine subject and nothing to do with the darlings
+that live in the sewers.”
+
+“Ah! Thank you!” said Arabian. “But you paint judges.”
+
+“I only put that red-faced old ruffian here as a joke. Directly I set
+eyes on him I knew he ought to have been in quod himself! Come now, what
+do you say? Look here! I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll give you the
+thing when it’s done.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked at Garstin in amazement, and missed the sudden
+gleam of light that came into Arabian’s eyes. But Garstin did not miss
+it and repeated:
+
+“I’ll give you the thing! Now what do you say? Is it a bargain?”
+
+“But how can I accept?” said Arabian, quickly adding: “And how can I
+refuse? Mr.--”
+
+“Drop the Mister, I say.”
+
+“Dick Garstin then.”
+
+“That’s better.”
+
+“I wish to tell you that I am not a connoisseur of art. On the other
+hand, please, I have an eye for what is fine. Mademoiselle, I hope, will
+say it is so?”
+
+He looked at Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“Mr. Arabian made some remarkably cute remarks about the portraits,
+Dick,” she said in reply to the glance.
+
+“I care for a fine painting so much that really I do not know how to
+refuse the temptation you offer me--Dick Garstin.”
+
+Garstin poured himself out another whisky.
+
+“I’ll start on it to-morrow,” he said, staring hard at the man who had
+now become definitely his subject.
+
+Soon afterwards Arabian got up and said he must go. As he said this he
+looked pleadingly at Miss Van Tuyn. But she sat still in her chair, a
+cigarette between her lips. He said “good-bye” to her formally. Garstin
+went down with Arabian to let him out, and was away for three or four
+minutes. From her chair Miss Van Tuyn heard a murmur of voices, then
+presently a loud bass: “To-morrow morning at eleven sharp,” then the
+bang of a door. A minute later Garstin bounded up the stairs heavily,
+yet with a strong agility.
+
+“I’ve got him, my girl! He’s afraid of it like the devil, but I’ve got
+him. I hit on the only way. I found the only bait which my fish would
+take. Now for another cigar.”
+
+He seized the box.
+
+“Did you see his eyes when I said I’d give him the picture?”
+
+“No; I was looking at you.”
+
+“Then you missed revelation. I had diagnosed him all right.”
+
+“Tell me your diagnosis.”
+
+“I told it you long ago. That fellow is a being of the underworld.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn slightly reddened.
+
+“I wonder!” she said. “I’m not at all sure that you’re right, Dick.”
+
+“What did you gather when I put him through his paces just now?” he
+asked, sending out clouds of strong-smelling smoke.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know! Not very much. He seems to have been about, to have
+plenty of money.”
+
+“And no education. He doesn’t know a thing about pictures, painters.
+Just at first I thought he might have been a model. Not a bit of
+it! Books mean nothing to him. What that chap has studied is the
+pornographic book of life, my girl. He has no imagination. His feeling
+runs straight in the direction of sensuality. He’s as ignorant and as
+clever as they’re made. He’s never done a stroke of honest work in his
+life, and despises all those who are fools enough to toil, me among
+them. He is as acquisitive as a monkey and a magpie rolled into one.
+His constitution is made of iron, and I dare say his nerves are made
+of steel. He’s a rare one, I tell you, and I’ll make a rare picture of
+him.”
+
+“I don’t know whether you are right, Dick.”
+
+Garstin seemed quite unaffected by her doubt of his power to read
+character. Perhaps at that moment he was coolly reading hers, and
+laughing to himself about women. But if so, he did not show it. And she
+said in a moment:
+
+“You are really going to give him the portrait?”
+
+“Yes, when I’ve exhibited it. Not before, of course. The gentleman isn’t
+going to have it all his own way.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked rather thoughtful, even preoccupied. Almost
+immediately afterwards she got up to go.
+
+“Coming to-morrow?” he said.
+
+“What--to see you paint?”
+
+“Coming?”
+
+“You really mean that I may?”
+
+“I do. You’ll help me.”
+
+She looked rather startled, and then, immediately, keenly curious.
+
+“I don’t see how.”
+
+“No reason you should! Now off with you! I’ve got things to do.”
+
+“Then good-bye.”
+
+As she was going away she stopped for a moment before the portrait of
+the judge.
+
+“He found out why you painted that portrait.”
+
+“Arabian?” said Garstin.
+
+“Yes. And he said something about it that wasn’t stupid.”
+
+“What was that?”
+
+“He said it was more than a portrait of one man, that it was a portrait
+of the world’s hypocrisy.”
+
+“Damned good!” said Garstin with a sonorous chuckle. “And his portrait
+will be more than the portrait of one man.”
+
+“Yes?” she said, looking eagerly at him.
+
+But he would not say anything more, and she went away full of deep
+curiosity, but thankful that she had decided to stay on in London.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Two days after the visit of Arabian to Dick Garstin’s studio Lady
+Sellingworth received a note from Francis Braybrooke, who invited her
+to dine with him at the Carlton on the following evening, and to visit a
+theatre afterwards. “Our young friends, Beryl Van Tuyn and Alick Craven”
+ would be of the party, he hoped. Lady Sellingworth had no engagement.
+She seldom left home in the evening. Yet she hesitated to accept this
+invitation. She had not seen Miss Van Tuyn since the evening in Soho,
+nor Braybrooke since his visit to Berkeley Square to tell her about his
+trip to Paris, but she had seen Craven three times, and each time alone.
+Their intimacy had deepened with a rapidity which now almost startled
+her as she thought of it, holding Braybrooke’s unanswered note. Already
+it seemed very strange to recall the time when she had not known Craven,
+when she had never seen him, had never heard of him. Sixty years she had
+lived without this young man in her life. She could hardly believe that.
+And now, with this call to meet him in public, before very watchful
+eyes, and in the company of two people who she was sure were in
+different ways hostile to her intimacy with him, she felt the cold touch
+of fear. And she doubted what course to take.
+
+She wondered why Braybrooke had asked her and suspected a purpose. In
+a moment she believed that she had guessed what that purpose was.
+Braybrooke was meditating a stroke against her. She had felt that in her
+drawing-room with him. For some reason--perhaps only that of a social
+busybody--he wanted to bring about a match between Craven and Miss Van
+Tuyn. He had said with emphasis that Craven had almost raved about the
+lovely American. Lady Sellingworth did not believe that assertion. She
+felt sure that when he had made it Braybrooke had told her a lie.
+Craven had amply proved to her his indifference towards Miss Van Tuyn.
+Braybrooke’s lie surely indicated a desire to detach his old friend’s
+attention from the young man he had introduced into her life, and
+must mean that he was a little afraid of her influence. It had been
+practically a suggestion to her that youth triumphant must win in
+any battle with old age; yet it had implied a doubt, if not an actual
+uneasiness. And now came this invitation to meet “our young friends.”
+ Lady Sellingworth thought of the contrast between herself and Beryl Van
+Tuyn. She had not worried about it in the _Bella Napoli_ when she and
+the young friends were together. But now--things were different now.
+She had, or believed she had, something to lose. And she did not want to
+lose it. It would be horrible to lose it!
+
+Perhaps Braybrooke wished Craven to see her with Beryl Van Tuyn in the
+glare of electric light. Perhaps that was the reason of this unexpected
+invitation. If so, it was an almost diabolically cruel reason.
+
+She resolved to refuse the invitation. But again a voice through the
+telephone caused her to change her mind. And again it was Craven’s
+voice. It asked her whether she had received an invitation from
+Braybrooke, and on her replying that she had, it begged her to accept it
+if she had not done so already. And she yielded. If Craven wished her
+to go she would go. Why should she be afraid? In her ugliness surely she
+triumphed as no beauty could ever triumph. She told herself that and for
+a moment felt reassured, more than reassured, safe and happy. For the
+inner thing, the dweller in the temple, felt that it, and it alone, was
+exercising intimate power. But then a look into the glass terrified
+her. And she sat down and wrote two notes. One was to Francis Braybrooke
+accepting the invitation; the other was to a man with a Greek name and
+was addressed to a house in South Moulton Street.
+
+Francis Braybrooke felt rather uneasy about his party when the day came,
+but he was a man of the world, and resolved to “put a good face on
+it.” No more social catastrophes for him! Another fiasco would, he was
+certain, destroy his nerve and render him quite unfit to retain his
+place in society. He pulled himself together, using his will to the
+uttermost, and dressed for dinner with a still determination to carry
+things through with a high hand. The worst of it was that he had an
+uneasy feeling--quite uncalled for, he was sure of that--of being a
+false friend. For Lady Sellingworth was his friend. He had known her
+for many years, whereas Craven and Beryl Van Tuyn were comparatively
+new-comers in his life. And yet he was engaged in something not quite
+unlike a conspiracy against this old friend. Craven had said she was
+lonely. Perhaps that was true. Women who lived by themselves generally
+felt lonelier than men in a like situation. Craven, perhaps, was
+bringing a little solace into this lonely life. And now he, Braybrooke,
+was endeavouring to make an end of that solace. For he quite understood
+that, women being as they are, a strong friendship between Adela
+Sellingworth and Craven was quite incompatible with a love affair
+between Craven and Beryl Van Tuyn. He hoped he was not a traitor as he
+carefully arranged his rather large tie. But anything was better than a
+tragedy. And with women of Adela Sellingworth’s reputed temperament one
+never knew quite what might happen. Her emergence, after ten years, into
+Shaftesbury Avenue and Soho had severely shaken Braybrooke’s faith in
+her sobriety, fostered though it had been, created even, by her ten
+years of distinguished retirement. Damped-down fires sometimes blaze
+forth unexpectedly and rage with fury. He hoped he was doing the right
+thing. Anyhow, it was not his fault that Lady Sellingworth was to be of
+his party tonight. Miss Van Tuyn was responsible for that.
+
+He rang the bell, which was answered by his valet.
+
+“Please fetch the theatre ticket, Walter. It is in the drawer of my
+writing-table in the library. A box for the Shaftesbury Theatre.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+Walter went out and returned in a moment with the ticket. He was an old
+servant and occasionally exchanged ideas with his master. As he gave
+Braybrooke the envelope containing the ticket, he said:
+
+“A very remarkable play, sir. I think you will enjoy it.”
+
+“What! Have you seen it?”
+
+“Yes, sir, _The Great Lover_. My wife would go. She liked the name, sir.
+About a singer, sir, who kept on loving like a young man when the age
+for it was really what one might call over, sir. But it seems that for
+some it never is over, sir.”
+
+“Good heavens, have I done the wrong thing again?” thought Braybrooke,
+who had chosen the play almost at random, without knowing much about it
+except that an actor unknown to him, one Moscovitch, was said to be very
+fine in it.
+
+“How old is the singer?” he inquired anxiously.
+
+“I couldn’t say for certain, sir. But somewhere in the forties, I should
+think, and nearing fifty. He loses his voice, sir, but still answers to
+young women at the telephone.”
+
+“Dear! Dear!”
+
+“But as my wife says, sir, with a man it’s not such a great matter. But
+with a woman--well!”
+
+He pursed his narrow lips and half-shut his small grey eyes.
+
+“Ah!” said Braybrooke, feeling extremely uncomfortable. “Good night,
+Walter. You needn’t sit up.”
+
+“Thank you, sir. Good night, sir.”
+
+“Really the evil eye must have looked at me!” thought Braybrooke, as he
+went downstairs. “I’m thoroughly out of luck.”
+
+He arrived in good time at the Carlton and waited for his guests in the
+Palm Court. Craven was the first to arrive. He looked cheerful and eager
+as he came in, and, Braybrooke thought, very young and handsome. He had
+got away from the F. O. that afternoon, he said, and had been down at
+Beaconsfield playing golf. Apparently his game had been unusually good
+and that fact had put him into spirits.
+
+“There’s nothing like being in form with one’s drive for bucking one
+up!” he acknowledged.
+
+And he broke out into an almost boyish paean in praise of golf.
+
+“But I always thought you preferred lawn tennis!” said Braybrooke.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know! Yes, I’m as keen as ever on tennis, but anyone can
+play golf. Mrs. Sandhurst was out to-day playing a splendid game, and
+she’s well over sixty. That’s the best of golf. People can play, and
+play decently, too, up to almost any age.”
+
+“Well, but my dear boy you’re not in the sixties yet!”
+
+“No. But I wasn’t thinking about myself.”
+
+Braybrooke looked at him rather narrowly, and wondered of whom he had
+been thinking. But he said nothing more, for at this moment Miss Van
+Tuyn appeared in the doorway at the end of the court. Braybrooke went to
+meet her, but Craven stayed were he was.
+
+“Is Adela Sellingworth coming?” she asked instantly, as Braybrooke took
+her hand.
+
+“She promised to come. I’m expecting her.”
+
+He made a movement, but she stood still, though they where close to the
+doorway.
+
+“And what are we going to see?”
+
+“A play called _The Great Lover_. Here is Alick Craven.”
+
+At this moment Craven joined them. Seeing Miss Van Tuyn standing still
+with a certain obstinacy he came up and took her hand.
+
+“Nice to meet you again,” he said.
+
+Braybrooke thought of Miss Van Tuyn’s remark about the Foreign Office
+manner, and hoped Craven was going to be at his best that evening. It
+seemed to him that there was a certain dryness in the young people’s
+greeting. Miss Van Tuyn was looking lovely, and almost alarmingly
+youthful and self-possessed, in a white dress. Craven, fresh from his
+successes at golf, looked full of the open-air spirit and the robustness
+of the galloping twenties. In appearance the two were splendidly
+matched. The faint defiance which Braybrooke thought he detected
+in their eyes suited them both, giving to them just a touch of the
+arrogance which youth and health render charming, but which in old
+people is repellent and ugly. They wore it like a feather set at just
+the right rakish angle in a cap. Nevertheless, this slight dryness must
+be got rid of if the evening were to be a success, and Braybrooke
+set himself to the task of banishing it. He talked of golf. Like many
+American girls, Miss Van Tuyn was at home in most sports and games.
+She was a good whip, a fine skater and lawn tennis player, had shot and
+hunted in France, liked racing, and had learnt to play golf on the
+links at Cannes when she was a girl of fifteen. But to-night she was not
+enthusiastic about golf, perhaps because Craven was. She said it was an
+irritating game, that playing it much always gave people a worried look,
+that a man who had sliced his first drive was a bore for the rest of the
+day, that a woman whom you beat in a match tried to do you harm as long
+as you and she lived. Finally she said it was certainly a fine game, but
+a game for old people. Craven protested, but she held resolutely to
+her point. In other games--except croquet, which she frankly loathed in
+spite of its scientific possibilities--you moved quickly, were obliged
+to be perpetually on the alert. In tennis and lawn tennis, in racquets,
+in hockey, in cricket, you never knew what was going to happen, when
+you might have to do something, or make a swift movement, a dash here
+or there, a dive, a leap, a run. But in golf half your time was spent in
+solemnly walking--toddling, she chose to call it--from point to
+point. This was, no doubt, excellent for the health, but she preferred
+swiftness. But then she was only a light-footed girl, not an elderly
+statesman.
+
+“When I play golf much I always begin to feel like a gouty Prime
+Minister who has been ordered to play for the good of the country,” she
+said. “But when I’m an old woman I shall certainly play regularly
+for the sake of my figure and my complexion. When I am sixty you will
+probably see me every day on the links.”
+
+Braybrooke saw a cloud float over Craven’s face as she said this, but it
+vanished as he looked away towards the hall. There, through the glass of
+the dividing screen, Lady Sellingworth’s tall and thin figure, wrapped
+in a long cloak of dark fur, was visible, going with her careless,
+trampish walk to the ladies’ cloak-room.
+
+“Ah, there is Adela Sellingworth!” said Braybrooke.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn turned quickly, with a charming, youthful grace, made up
+of a suppleness and litheness which suggested almost the movement of
+a fluid. Craven noted it with a little thrill of unexpected pleasure,
+against which an instant later something in him rebelled.
+
+“Where is she?” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“She’s just gone into the ladies’ cloak-room,” answered Braybrooke.
+
+“But not to powder her face!” said Miss Van Tuyn. “She keeps us waiting,
+like the great prima donna in a concert, just long enough to give a
+touch of excitement to her appearance. Dear Lady Sellingworth! She has
+a wonderful knowledge of just how to do things. That only comes out of a
+vast experience.”
+
+“Or--don’t you think that kind of thing may be instinctive?” said
+Craven.
+
+She sought his eyes with a sort of soft hardihood which was very
+alluring.
+
+“Women are not half as instinctive as men think them,” she said. “I’ll
+tell you a little secret. They calculate more than a senior wrangler
+does.”
+
+“Now you are maligning yourself,” he said, smiling.
+
+“No. For I haven’t quite got to the age of calculation yet.”
+
+“Oh--I see.”
+
+“Here she comes!” said Braybrooke.
+
+And he went towards the door, leaving “our young friends” for a moment.
+
+“But what has she done to herself?” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“Done! Lady Sellingworth?”
+
+“Yes. Or is it only her hair?”
+
+Craven wondered, too, as Lady Sellingworth joined them, accompanied by
+her host. For there was surely some slight, and yet definite, change in
+her appearance. She looked, he thought, younger, brighter, more vivid
+than she generally looked. Her white hair certainly was arranged
+differently from the way he was now accustomed to. It seemed thicker;
+there seemed to be more of it than usual. It looked more alive, too, and
+it marked in, he thought, an exquisite way the beautiful shape of her
+head. A black riband was cleverly entangled in it, and a big diamond
+shone upon the riband in front above her white forehead, weary with
+the years, but uncommonly expressive. She wore black as usual, and had
+another broad black riband round her throat with a fine diamond broach
+fastened to it. Her gown was slightly open at the front. There were
+magnificent diamond earrings in her ears. They made Craven think of
+the jewels stolen long ago at the station in Paris. This evening the
+whiteness of her hair seemed wonderful, as the whiteness of thickly
+powdered hair sometimes seems. And her eyes beneath it were amazingly
+vivid, startlingly alive in their glancing brightness. They looked
+careless and laughingly self-possessed as she came up to greet the girl
+and young man, matching delightfully her careless and self-possessed
+movement.
+
+At that moment Craven realized, as he had certainly never realized
+before, what a beauty--in his mind he said what a “stunning
+beauty”--Lady Sellingworth must once have been. Even her face seemed to
+him in some way altered to-night, though he could not have told how.
+
+Certainly she looked younger than usual. He was positive of that: still
+positive when he saw her standing by Miss Van Tuyn and taking her hand.
+Then she turned to him and gave him a friendly and careless, almost
+haphazard, greeting, still smiling and looking ready for anything.
+And then at once they went into the restaurant up the broad steps.
+And Craven noticed that everyone they passed by glanced at Lady
+Sellingworth.
+
+At that moment he felt very proud of her friendship. He even felt a
+touch of romance in it, of a strange and unusual romance far removed
+from the sort of thing usually sung of by poets and written of by
+novelists.
+
+“She is unusual!” he thought. “And so am I; and our friendship is
+unusual too. There has never before been anything quite like it.”
+
+And he glowed with a warming sense of difference from ordinary life.
+
+But Miss Van Tuyn was claiming his urgent attention, and a waiter was
+giving him Whitstable oysters, and Chablis was being poured into his
+glass, and the band was beginning to play a selection from the music of
+Grieg, full of the poetry and the love of the North, where deep passions
+come out of the snows and last often longer than the loves of the South.
+He must give himself up to it all, and to the wonderful white-haired
+woman, too, with the great diamonds gleaming in her ears.
+
+It really was quite a buoyant dinner, and Braybrooke began to feel more
+at ease. He had told them all where they were going afterwards, but had
+said nothing about Walter’s description of the play. None of them had
+seen it, but Craven seemed to know all about it, and said it was an
+entertaining study of life behind the scenes at the opera, with a great
+singer as protagonist.
+
+“He was drawn, I believe, from a famous baritone.”
+
+During a great part of her life Lady Sellingworth had been an ardent
+lover of the opera, and she had known many of the leading singers in
+Paris and London.
+
+“They always seemed to me to be torn by jealousy,” she said, “and often
+to suffer from the mania of persecution! Really, they are like a race
+apart.”
+
+And the conversation turned to jealousy. Braybrooke said he had never
+suffered from it, did not know what it was. And they smiled at him, and
+told him that then he could have no temperament. Craven declared that
+he believed almost the whole human race knew the ugly intimacies of
+jealousy in some form or other.
+
+“And yourself?” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“I!” he said, and looking up saw Lady Sellingworth’s brilliant eyes
+fixed on him.
+
+“Do you know them?”
+
+“I have felt jealousy certainly, but never yet as I could feel it.”
+
+“What! You are conscious of a great capacity for feeling jealous, a
+capacity which has never yet had its full fling?” said the girl.
+
+“Yes,” he said.
+
+And his lips were smiling, but there was a serious look in his eyes.
+
+And they discussed the causes of jealousy.
+
+“We shall see it to-night on the stage in its professional form,” said
+Craven.
+
+“And that is the least forgivable form,” said Lady Sellingworth.
+“Jealousy which is not bound up with the affections is a cold and
+hideous thing. But I cannot understand a love which is incapable of
+jealousy. In fact, I don’t think I could believe it to be love at all.”
+
+This remark, coming from those lips, surprised Braybrooke. For Lady
+Sellingworth was not wont to turn any talk in which she took part
+upon questions concerned with the heart. He had frequently noticed her
+apparent aversion from all topics connected with deep feeling. To-night,
+it seemed, this aversion had died out of her.
+
+In answer to the last remark Miss Van Tuyn said:
+
+“Then, dear, you rule out perfect trust in a matter of love, do you? All
+the sentimentalists say that perfect love breeds perfect trust. If that
+is so, how can great lovers be jealous? For jealousy, I suppose--I have
+never felt it myself in that way--is born out of doubt, but can never
+exist side by side with complete confidence.”
+
+“Ah! But Beryl, in how many people in the course of a lifetime can one
+have _complete confidence_ I have scarcely met one. What do you say?”
+
+She turned her head towards Braybrooke. He looked suddenly rather
+plaintive, like a man who realizes unexpectedly how lonely he is.
+
+“Oh, I hope I know a few such people,” he rejoined rather anxiously.
+“I have been very lucky in my friends. And I like to think the best of
+people.”
+
+“That is kind,” said Lady Sellingworth. “But I prefer to know the truth
+of people. And I must say I think most of us are quicksands. The worst
+of it is that so often when we do for a moment feel we are on firm
+ground we find it either too hard for our feet or too flat for our
+liking.”
+
+At that moment she thought of Sir Seymour Portman.
+
+“You think it is doubt which breeds fascination?” said Craven.
+
+“Alas for us if it is so,” she answered, smiling.
+
+“The human race is a very unsatisfactory race,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “I
+am only twenty-four and have found that out already. It is very clever
+of the French to cultivate irony as they do. The ironist always wears
+clothes and an undershirt of mail. But the sentimentalist goes naked in
+the east wind which blows through society. Not only is he bound to take
+cold, but he is liable to be pierced by every arrow that flies.”
+
+“Yes, it is wise to cultivate irony,” said Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“You have,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “One often sees it in your eyes. Isn’t
+it true?”
+
+She turned to Craven; but he did not choose to agree with her.
+
+“I’m a sentimentalist,” he said firmly. “And I never look about for
+irony. Perhaps that’s why I have not found it in Lady Sellingworth.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn sent him a glance which said plainly, but prettily, “You
+humbug!” But he did not mind. Once he had discussed Lady Sellingworth
+with Miss Van Tuyn. They had wondered about her together. They had even
+talked about her mystery. But that seemed to Craven a long time ago. Now
+he would far rather discuss Miss Van Tuyn with Lady Sellingworth than
+discuss Lady Sellingworth with Miss Van Tuyn. So he would not even
+acknowledge that he had noticed the mocking look in Lady Sellingworth’s
+eyes. Already he had the feeling of a friend who does not care to
+dissect the mentality and character of his friend with another.
+Something in him even had an instinct to protect Lady Sellingworth from
+Miss Van Tuyn. That was surely absurd; unless, indeed, age always needs
+protection from the cruelty of youth.
+
+Francis Braybrooke began to speak about Paris, and again Miss Van Tuyn
+said that she would never rest till she had persuaded Lady Sellingworth
+to renew her acquaintance with that intense and apparently light-hearted
+city, which contains so many secret terrors.
+
+“You will come some day,” she said, with a sort of almost ruthless
+obstinacy.
+
+“Why not?” said Lady Sellingworth. “I have been very happy in Paris.”
+
+“And yet you have deserted it for years and years! You are an enigma.
+Isn’t she, Mr. Braybrooke?”
+
+Before Braybrooke had time to reply to this direct question an
+interruption occurred. Two ladies, coming in to dinner accompanied
+by two young men, paused by Braybrooke’s table, and someone said in a
+clear, hard voice:
+
+“What a dinky little party! And where are you all going afterwards?”
+
+Craven and Braybrooke got up to greet two famous members of the “old
+guard,” Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde. Lady Sellingworth and Miss
+Van Tuyn turned in their chairs, and for a moment there was a little
+disjointed conversation, in the course of which it came out that this
+quartet, too, was bound for the Shaftesbury Theatre.
+
+“You are coming out of your shell, Adela! Better late than never!”
+ said Lady Wrackley to Lady Sellingworth, while Miss Van Tuyn quietly
+collected the two young men, both of whom she knew, with her violet
+eyes. “I hear of you all over the place.”
+
+She glanced penetratingly at Craven with her carefully made-up eyes,
+which were the eyes of a handsome and wary bird. Her perfectly
+arranged hair was glossy brown, with glints in it like the colour of a
+horse-chestnut. She showed her wonderful teeth in the smile which came
+like a sudden gleam of electric light, and went as if a hand had turned
+back the switch.
+
+“I’m becoming dissipated,” said Lady Sellingworth. “Three evenings out
+in one month! If I have one foot in the grave, I shall have the other in
+the Shaftesbury Theatre to-night.”
+
+One of the young men, a fair, horsey-looking boy, with a yellow
+moustache, a turned-up nose, and an almost abnormally impudent and larky
+expression, laughed in a very male and soldierly way; the other, who was
+dark, with a tall figure and severe grey eyes, looked impenetrably grave
+and absent minded.
+
+“Well, I shall die if I don’t have a good dinner at once,” said Mrs.
+Ackroyde. “Is that a Doucet frock, Beryl?”
+
+“No. Count Kalinsky designed it.”
+
+“Oh--Igor Kalinsky! Adela, we are in Box B. We must have a powwow
+between the acts.”
+
+She looked from Lady Sellingworth to Craven and back again. Short, very
+handsome, always in perfect health, with brows and eyes which somehow
+suggested a wild creature, she had an honest and quite unaffected face.
+Her manner was bold and direct. There was something lasting--some said
+everlasting--in her atmosphere.
+
+“I cannot conceive of London without Dindie Ackroyde,” said Braybrooke,
+as Mrs. Ackroyde led the way to the next table and sat down opposite to
+Craven.
+
+And they began to talk about people. Craven said very little. Since
+the arrival of the other quartet he had begun to feel sensitively
+uncomfortable. He realized that already his new friendship for Lady
+Sellingworth had “got about,” though how he could not imagine. He was
+certain that the “old guard” were already beginning to talk of Addie
+Sellingworth’s “new man.” He had seen awareness, that strange feminine
+interest which is more than half hostile, in the eyes of both Lady
+Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde. Was it impossible, then, in this horrible
+whispering gallery of London, to have any privacy of the soul? (He
+thought that his friendship really had something of the soul in it.) He
+felt stripped by the eyes of those two women at the neighbouring table,
+and he glanced at Lady Sellingworth almost furtively, wondering what
+she was feeling. But she looked exactly as usual, and was talking with
+animation, and he realized that her long habit of the world enabled her
+to wear a mask at will. Or was she less sensitive in such matters than
+he was?
+
+“How preoccupied you are!” said Miss Van Tuyn’s voice in his ear. “You
+see I was right. Golf ruins the social qualities in a man.”
+
+Then Craven resolutely set himself to be sociable. He even acted a part,
+still acutely conscious of the eyes of the “old guard,” and almost made
+love to Miss Van Tuyn, as a man may make love at a dinner table. He was
+sure Lady Sellingworth would not misunderstand him. Whether Miss Van
+Tuyn misunderstood him or not did not matter to him at that moment. He
+saw her beauty clearly; he was able to note all the fluid fascination of
+her delicious youthfulness; the charm of it went to him; and yet he felt
+no inclination to waver in his allegiance to Lady Sellingworth. It was
+as if a personality enveloped him, held his senses as well as his mind
+in a soft and powerful grasp. Not that his senses were irritated to
+alertness, or played upon to exasperation. They were merely inhibited
+from any activity in connexion with another, however beautiful and
+desirable. Lady Sellingworth roused no physical desire in Craven,
+although she fascinated him. What she did was just this: she deprived
+him of physical desire. Miss Van Tuyn’s arrows were shot all in vain
+that night. But Craven now acted well, for women’s keen eyes were upon
+him.
+
+Presently they got up to go to the theatre, leaving the other quartet
+behind them, quite willing to be late.
+
+“Moscovitch doesn’t come on for some time,” said Mrs. Ackroyde. “And we
+are only going to see him. The play is nothing extraordinary. Where are
+you sitting?”
+
+Braybrooke told her the number of their box.
+
+“We are just opposite to you then,” she said.
+
+“Mind you behave prettily, Adela!” said Lady Wrackley.
+
+“I have almost forgotten how to behave in a theatre,” she said. “I go
+to the play so seldom. You shall give me some hints on conduct, Mr.
+Craven.”
+
+And she turned and led the way out of the restaurant, nodding to people
+here and there whom she knew.
+
+Her big motor was waiting outside, and they all got into it. Braybrooke
+and Craven sat on the small front seats, sideways, so that they could
+talk to their companions; and they flashed through the busy streets,
+coming now and then into the gleam of lamplight and looking vivid, then
+gliding on into shadows and becoming vague and almost mysterious. As
+they crossed Piccadilly Circus Miss Van Tuyn said:
+
+“What a contrast to our walk that night!”
+
+“This way of travelling?” said Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“Yes. Which do you prefer, the life of Soho and the streets and raw
+humanity, or the Rolls-Royce life?”
+
+“Oh, I am far too old, and far too fixed in my habits to make any
+drastic change in my way of life,” said Lady Sellingworth, looking out
+of the window.
+
+“You didn’t like your little experience the other night enough to repeat
+it?” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+As she spoke Craven saw her eyes gazing at him in the shadow. They
+looked rather hard and searching, he thought.
+
+“Oh, some day I’ll go to the _Bella Napoli_ again with you, Beryl, if
+you like.”
+
+“Thank you, dearest,” said Miss Van Tuyn, rather drily.
+
+And again Craven saw her eyes fixed upon him with a hard, steady look.
+
+The car sped by the Monico, and Braybrooke, glancing with distaste at
+the crowd of people one could never wish to know outside it, wondered
+how the tall woman opposite to him with the diamonds flashing in her
+ears had ever condescended to push her way among them at night, to rub
+shoulders with those awful women, those furtive and evil-looking men.
+“But she must have some kink in her!” he thought, and thanked God
+because he had no kink, or at any rate knew of none which disturbed him.
+The car drew up at the theatre, and they went to their box. It was large
+enough for three to sit in a row in the front, and Craven insisted on
+Braybrooke taking the place between the two women, while he took the
+chair in the shadow behind Lady Sellingworth.
+
+The curtain was already up when they came in, and a large and voluble
+man, almost like a human earthquake, was talking in broken English
+interspersed with sonorous Italian to a worried-looking man who sat
+before a table in a large and gaudily furnished office.
+
+The talk was all about singers, contracts, the opera.
+
+Craven glanced across the theatre and saw a big, empty box on the
+opposite side of the house. The rest of the house was full. He saw many
+Jews.
+
+Lady Sellingworth leaned well forward with her eyes fixed on the stage,
+and seemed interested as the play developed.
+
+“They are just like that!” she whispered presently, half turning to
+Craven.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked round. She seemed bored. Paris, perhaps, had
+spoiled her for the acting in London, or the play so far did not
+interest her. Braybrooke glanced at her rather anxiously. He did not
+approve of the way in which he and his guests were seated in the box,
+and was sure she did not like it. Craven ought to be beside her.
+
+“What do you think of it?” he murmured.
+
+“The operatic types aren’t bad.”
+
+She leaned with an elbow on the edge of the box and looked vaguely about
+the house.
+
+“I shall insist on a change of seats after the interval!” thought
+Braybrooke.
+
+A few minutes passed. Then the door of the box opposite was opened and
+Lady Wrackley appeared, followed by Dindie Ackroyde and the two
+young men who had dined with them. Lady Wrackley, looking--Craven
+thought--like a remarkably fine pouter pigeon, came to the front of the
+box and stared about the house, while the young man with the turned-up
+nose gently, yet rather familiarly, withdrew from her a long coat of
+ermine. Meanwhile Mrs. Ackroyde sat down, keeping on her cloak, which
+was the colour of an Indian sky at night, and immediately became
+absorbed in the traffic of the stage. It was obvious that she really
+cared for art, while Lady Wrackley cared about the effect she was
+creating on the audience. It seemed a long time before she sat down, and
+let the two young men sit down too. But suddenly there was applause and
+no one was looking at her. Moscovitch had walked upon the stage.
+
+“_That_ man can act!”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn had spoken.
+
+“He gets you merely by coming on. That is acting!”
+
+And immediately she was intent on the stage.
+
+When the curtain fell Braybrooke got up resolutely and stood at the back
+of the box. Craven, too stood up, and they all discussed the play.
+
+“It’s a character study, simply that,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “The
+persistent lover who can’t leave off--”
+
+“Trying to love!” interposed Lady Sellingworth. “Following the great
+illusion.”
+
+And they debated whether the great singer was an idealist or merely
+a sensualist, or perhaps both. Miss Van Tuyn thought he was only the
+latter, and Braybrooke agreed with her. But Lady Sellingworth said no.
+
+“He is in love with love, I think, and everyone who is in love with love
+is seeking the flame in the darkness. We wrong many people by dubbing
+them mere sensualists. The mystery has a driving force which many cannot
+resist.”
+
+“What mystery, dearest?” said Miss Van Tuyn, not without irony.
+
+But at this moment there was a tap at the door of the box, and Craven
+opened it to find Mrs. Ackroyde and the young man with the severe eyes
+waiting outside.
+
+“May we come in? Is there room?” said Mrs. Ackroyde.
+
+There was plenty of room.
+
+“Lena will be happier without us,” Mrs. Ackroyde explained, without a
+smile, and looking calmly at Lady Sellingworth. “If I sit quite at the
+back here I can smoke a cigarette without being stopped. Bobbie you
+might give me a match.”
+
+The severe young man, who looked like a sad sensualist, one of those men
+who try to cloak intensity with grimness, did as he was bid, and they
+renewed the discussion which had been stopped for a moment, bringing the
+newcomers into it. Lady Sellingworth explained that the mystery she had
+spoken of was the inner necessity to try to find love which drives many
+human beings. She spoke without sentimentality, almost with a sort
+of scientific coldness as one stating facts not to be gainsaid. Mrs.
+Ackroyde said she liked the theory. It was such a comfortable one.
+Whenever she made a sidestep she would now be able to feel that she
+was driven to it by an inner necessity, planted in her family by the
+Immanent Will, or whatever it was that governed humanity. As she spoke
+she looked at the man she had called Bobbie, who was Sir Robert Syng,
+private secretary to a prominent minister, and when she stopped speaking
+he said he had never been able to believe in free will, though he always
+behaved as if he thought he possessed it.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn thereupon remarked that as some people are born with
+tempers and intellects and some without them, perhaps it was the same
+with free will. She was quite positive she had a free will, but the
+very first time she had seen Sir Robert she had had her doubts about his
+having that precious possession. This sally, designed to break up the
+general conversation and to fasten Sir Robert’s attention on herself,
+led to an animated discussion between her and Mrs. Ackroyde’s “man.” But
+Mrs. Ackroyde, though her large dark eyes showed complete understanding
+of the manoeuvre, did not seem to mind, and, turning her attention to
+Craven, she began to speak about acting. Meanwhile Lady Sellingworth
+went out into the corridor with Braybrooke to “get a little air.”
+
+While Mrs. Ackroyde talked Craven felt that she was thinking about him
+with an enormously experienced mind. She had been married twice, and was
+now a widow. No woman knew more about life and the world in a general
+way than she did. Her complete but quiet self-possession, her rather
+blunt good nature, and her perfect health, had carried her safely, and
+as a rule successfully, through multifarious experiences and perhaps
+through many dangers. It was impossible to conceive of her being ever
+“knocked out” by any happening however untoward it might be. She was one
+of the stalwarts of the “old guard.” Craven certainly did not dislike
+her. But now he felt almost afraid of her. For he knew her present
+interest in him arose from suspicions about him and Lady Sellingworth
+which were floating through her brain. She had heard something; had been
+informed of something; someone had hinted; someone had told. How do such
+things become suspected in a city like London? Craven could not imagine
+how the “old guard” had come already to know of his new friendship with
+Lady Sellingworth. But he was now quite sure that he had been talked
+about, and that Mrs. Ackroyde was considering him, his temperament, his
+character, his possibilities in connexion with the famous Adela, once of
+the “old guard,” but long since traitress to it.
+
+And he felt as if he were made of glass beneath those experienced and
+calmly investigating eyes, as he talked steadily about acting till
+the bell went for the second act, and Lady Sellingworth and Braybrooke
+returned to the box.
+
+“Come and see me,” said Mrs. Ackroyde, getting up. “You never come near
+me. And come down to Coombe to lunch one Sunday.”
+
+“Thank you very much. I will.”
+
+“And bring Adela with you!”
+
+With a casual nod or two, and a “Come, Bobbie, I am sure you have
+flirted quite enough with Beryl by this time!” she went out of the box,
+followed by her grim but good-looking cavalier.
+
+“You must sit in front through this act.”
+
+Braybrooke spoke.
+
+“Oh, but--”
+
+“No, really--I insist! You don’t see properly behind.”
+
+Craven took the chair between the two women. As he did so he glanced
+at Miss Van Tuyn. His chair was certainly nearer to hers than to Lady
+Sellingworth’s, much nearer. Syng had sat in it and must have moved
+it. As she half turned and said something to Craven her bare silky arm
+touched his sleeve, and their faces were very near together. Her eyes
+spoke to him definitely, called him to be young again with her. And as
+the curtain went up she whispered:
+
+“It was I who insisted on a party of four to-night.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth and Braybrooke were talking together, and Craven
+answered:
+
+“To Mr. Braybrooke?”
+
+“Yes; so that we might have a nice little time. And Adela and he are old
+friends and contemporaries! I knew they would be happy together.”
+
+Craven shrank inwardly as he heard Miss Van Tuyn say “Adela,” but he
+only nodded and tried to return adequately the expression in her eyes.
+Then he looked across the theatre, and saw Mrs. Ackroyde speaking to
+Lady Wrackley. After a moment they both gazed at him, and, seeing his
+eyes fixed on her, Lady Wrackley let go her smile at him and made a
+little gesture with her hand.
+
+“She knows too--damn her!” thought Craven, impolitely.
+
+He set his teeth.
+
+“They know everything, these women! It’s useless to try to have the
+smallest secret from them!”
+
+And then he said to himself what so many have said:
+
+“What does it matter what they know, what they think, what they say? I
+don’t care!”
+
+But he did care. He hated their knowing of his friendship with Lady
+Sellingworth, and it seemed to him that they were scattering dust all
+over the dew of his feeling.
+
+The second act of the play was more interesting than the first, but, as
+Miss Van Tuyn said, the whole thing was rather a clever character study
+than a solidly constructed and elaborately worked out play. It was
+the fascination of Moscovitch which held the audience tight and which
+brought thunders of applause when the curtain fell.
+
+“If that man acted in French he could have enormous success in Paris,”
+ said Miss Van Tuyn. “You have chosen well,” she added, turning to
+Braybrooke. “You have introduced us to a great temperament.”
+
+Braybrooke was delighted, and still more delighted when Lady
+Sellingworth and Craven both said that it was the best acting they had
+seen in London for years.
+
+“But it comes out of Russia, I suppose,” said Lady Sellingworth. “Poor,
+wonderful, horrible, glorious Russia!”
+
+“Forgive me for a moment,” said Braybrooke. “Lady Wrackley seems to want
+me.”
+
+Indeed, the electric-light smile was being turned on and off in the
+box opposite with unmistakable intention, and, glancing across, Craven
+noticed that the young men had disappeared, no doubt to smoke cigarettes
+in the foyer. Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde were alone, and, seeing
+them alone, it was easier to Craven to compare their appearance with
+Lady Sellingworth’s.
+
+Lady Wrackley looked shiningly artificial, seemed to glisten with
+artificiality, and her certainly remarkable figure suggested to him
+an advertisement for a corset designed by a genius with a view to the
+concealment of fat. Mrs. Ackroyde was far less artificial, and though
+her hair was dyed it did not proclaim the fact blatantly. Certainly it
+was difficult to believe that both those ladies, whom Braybrooke
+now joined, were much the same age as Lady Sellingworth. And yet,
+in Craven’s opinion, to-night she made them both look ordinary,
+undistinguished. There was something magnificent in her appearance which
+they utterly lacked.
+
+Braybrooke sat down in their box, and Craven was sure they were
+all talking about Lady Sellingworth and him. He saw Braybrooke’s
+broad-fingered hand go to his beard and was almost positive his old
+friend was on the defensive. He was surely saying, “No, really, I don’t
+think so! I feel convinced there is nothing in it!” Craven’s eyes met
+Lady Sellingworth’s, and it seemed to him at that moment that she and he
+spoke together without the knowledge of Miss Van Tuyn. But immediately,
+and as if to get away from their strange and occult privacy, she said:
+
+“What have you been doing lately, Beryl? I hear Miss Cronin has come
+over. But I thought you were not staying long. Have you changed your
+mind?”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn said she might stay on for some time, and explained that
+she was having lessons in painting.
+
+“In London! I didn’t know you painted, and surely the best school of
+painting is in Paris.”
+
+“I don’t paint, dearest. But one can take lessons in an art without
+actually practising the art. And that is what I am doing. I like to know
+even though I cannot, or don’t want to, do. Dick Garstin is my master.
+He has given me the run of his studio in Glebe Place.”
+
+“And you watch him at work?” said Craven.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She fixed her eyes on him, and added:
+
+“He is painting a living bronze.”
+
+“Somebody very handsome?” said Lady Sellingworth, glancing across the
+house to the trio in the box opposite.
+
+“Yes, a man called Nicolas Arabian.”
+
+“What a curious name!” said Lady Sellingworth, still looking towards the
+opposite box. “Is it an Englishman?”
+
+“No. I don’t know his nationality. But he makes a magnificent model.”
+
+“Oh, he’s a model!” said Craven, also looking at the box opposite.
+
+“He isn’t a professional model. Dick Garstin doesn’t pay him to sit. I
+only mean that he is a marvellous subject for a portrait and sits well.
+Dick happened to see him and asked him to sit. Dick paints the people
+he wants to paint, not those who want to be painted by him. But he’s a
+really big man. You ought to know him.”
+
+She said the last words to Lady Sellingworth, who replied:
+
+“I very seldom make new acquaintances now.”
+
+“You made Mr. Craven’s!” said Miss Van Tuyn, smiling.
+
+“But that was by special favour. I owe Mr. Braybrooke that!” said
+Craven. “And I shall be eternally grateful to him.”
+
+His eyes met Lady Sellingworth’s, and he immediately added, turning to
+Miss Van Tuyn:
+
+“I have to thank him for two delightful new friends--if I may use that
+word.”
+
+“Mr. Braybrooke is a great benefactor,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “I wonder
+how this play is going to end.”
+
+And then they talked about Moscovitch and the persistence of a
+ruling passion till Braybrooke came back. He looked rather grave and
+preoccupied, and Craven felt sure that the talk in the opposite box had
+been about Lady Sellingworth and her “new man,” himself, and, unusually
+self-conscious, or moved, perhaps, by an instinct of self-preservation,
+he devoted himself almost with intensity to Miss Van Tuyn till the
+curtain went up. And after it went up he kept his chair very close
+to hers, sat almost “in her pocket,” and occasionally murmured to her
+remarks about the play.
+
+The last act was a panorama of shifting moods, and although there
+was little action they all followed it with an intense interest
+which afterwards surprised them. But a master hand was playing on the
+audience, and drew at will from them what emotions he chose. Now and
+then, during the progress of this act, Braybrooke sent an anxious glance
+to Lady Sellingworth. All this about loss, though it was the loss of
+a voice, about the end of a great career, about age and desertion, was
+dangerous ground. The love-scene between Moscovitch and the young girl
+seriously perturbed Braybrooke. He hoped, he sincerely hoped, that Adela
+Sellingworth would not be upset, would not think that he had chosen the
+Shaftesbury Theatre for their place of entertainment with any _arriere
+pensee_. He fancied that her face began to look rather hard and “set” as
+the act drew near its end. But he was not sure. For the auditorium was
+rather dark; he could not see her quite clearly. And he looked at Craven
+and Miss Van Tuyn and thought, rather bitterly, how sane and how right
+his intentions had been. Youth should mate with youth. It was not
+natural for mature, or old, age to be closely allied with youth in any
+passionate bond. In such a bond youth was at a manifest disadvantage.
+And it seemed to Braybrooke that age was sometimes, too often indeed, a
+vampire going about to satisfy its appetite on youth, to slake its sad
+thirst at the well-spring of youth. He looked, too, at the women in the
+box opposite, and at the young men with them, and he regretted that
+so many human beings were at grips with the natural. He at any rate,
+although he carefully concealed his age, never did unsuitable things, or
+fell into anything undignified. Yet was he rewarded for his intense and
+unremitting carefulness in life?
+
+A telephone bell sounded on the stage, and the unhappy singer, bereft of
+romance, his career finished, decadence and old age staring him in
+the face, went to answer the call. But suddenly his face changed; a
+brightness, an alertness came into it and even, mysteriously, into all
+his body. There was a woman at the other end of the wire, and she was
+young and pretty, and she was asking him to meet her. As he was replying
+gaily, with smiling lips, and a greedy look in his eyes that was half
+child-like, half satyr-like, the curtain fell. The play was at an end,
+leaving the impression upon the audience that there is no end to the
+life of a ruling passion in a man while he lives, that the ruling
+passion can only die when he dies.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn and Craven, standing up in the box, applauded vigorously.
+
+“That’s a true finish!” the girl said. “He’s really a modern Baron
+Hulot. When he’s seventy he’ll creep upstairs to a servant girl. We
+don’t change, I’ve always said it. We don’t change!”
+
+And she looked from Craven to Lady Sellingworth.
+
+Moscovitch bowed many times.
+
+“Well, Mr. Braybrooke,” said Miss Van Tuyn, “I’ve seen some acting in
+London to-night that I should like to show to Paris. Thank you!”
+
+She was more beautiful and more human than Craven had ever seen her
+before in her genuine enthusiasm. And he thought, “Great art moves her
+as nothing else moves her.”
+
+“What do you say about it, dearest?” she said, as Craven helped her to
+put on her cloak.
+
+(Braybrooke was attending to Lady Sellingworth.)
+
+“It’s a great piece of acting!”
+
+“And horribly true! Don’t you think so?”
+
+“I dare say it is,” Lady Sellingworth answered.
+
+She turned quickly and led the way out of the box.
+
+In the hall they encountered the other quartet and stood talking to them
+for a moment, and Craven noticed how Miss Van Tuyn had been stirred up
+by the play and how silent Lady Sellingworth was. He longed to go back
+to Berkeley Square alone with the latter, and to have a long talk; but
+something told him to get away from both the white-haired woman and the
+eager girl. And when the motor came up he said very definitely that he
+had an engagement and must find a cab. Then he bade them good-bye and
+left them in the motor with Braybrooke. As he was turning away to get
+out of the crowd a clear, firm voice said to him:
+
+“I am so glad you have performed the miracle, Mr. Craven.”
+
+He looked round and saw Mrs. Ackroyde’s investigating eyes fixed upon
+him.
+
+“But what miracle?” he asked.
+
+“You have pulled Adela Sellingworth out of the shell in which she has
+been living curled up for over ten years.”
+
+“Yes. You are a prodigy!” said Lady Wrackley, showing her teeth.
+
+“But I’m afraid I can’t claim that triumph. I’m afraid it’s due to Mr.
+Braybrooke’s diplomacy.”
+
+“Oh, no!” Mrs. Ackroyde said calmly. “Adela would never yield to his
+cotton-glove persuasions. Besides, his diplomacy would shy away from
+Soho.”
+
+“Soho!” said Craven, startled.
+
+“Yes!”
+
+“Oh, but Miss Van Tuyn performed that miracle!” said Craven, recovering
+himself.
+
+“I don’t think so. You are too modest. But now, mind, I expect you to
+come down to Coombe to lunch on the first fine Sunday, and to bring
+Adela with you. Good night! Bobbie, where are you?”
+
+And she followed Lady Wrackley and the young man with the turned-up nose
+to a big and shining motor which had just glided noiselessly up.
+
+“Damn the women!” muttered Craven, as he pushed through the crowd into
+the ugly freedom of Shaftesbury Avenue.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Miss Van Tuyn and the members of the “old guard” went home to bed that
+night realizing that Lady Sellingworth had had “things” done to herself
+before she came out to the theatre party.
+
+“She’s beginning again after--how many years is it?” said Lady Wrackley
+to Mrs. Ackroyde in the motor as they drove away from Shaftesbury.
+
+“Ten,” said Mrs. Ackroyde, who was blessed with a sometimes painfully
+retentive memory.
+
+“I suppose it’s Zotos,” observed Lady Wrackley.
+
+“Who’s Zotos?” inquired young Leving of the turned-up nose and the larky
+expression.
+
+“A Greek who’s a genius and who lives in South Moulton Street.”
+
+“What’s he do?”
+
+“Things that men shouldn’t be allowed to know anything about. Talk to
+Bobbie for a minute, will you?”
+
+She turned again to Mrs. Ackroyde.
+
+“It must be Zotos. But even he will be in a difficulty with her if she
+wants to have very much done. She made the mistake of her life when she
+became an old woman. I remember saying at the time that some day she
+would repent in dust and ashes and want to get back, and that then it
+would be too late. How foolish she was!”
+
+“She will be much more foolish now if she really begins again,” said
+Mrs. Ackroyde in her cool, common-sense way.
+
+The young men were talking, and after a moment she continued:
+
+“When a thing’s once been thoroughly seen by everyone and recognized for
+what it is, it is worse than useless to hide it or try to hide it.
+Adela should know that. But I must say she looked remarkably well
+to-night--for her. He’s a good-looking boy.”
+
+“He must be at least twenty-eight years younger than she is.”
+
+“More, probably. But she prefers them like that. Don’t you remember
+Rochecouart? He was a mere child. When we gave our hop at Prince’s she
+was mad about him. And afterwards she wanted to marry Rupert Louth. It
+nearly killed her when she found out he had married that awful girl who
+called herself an actress. And there was someone else after Rupert.”
+
+“I know. I often wonder who it was. Someone _we_ don’t know.”
+
+“Someone quite out of our world. Anyhow, he must have broken her heart
+for the time. And it’s taken ten years to mend. Do you think that she
+sold her jewels secretly to pay that man’s debts, or gave them to him,
+and that then he threw her over? I have often wondered.”
+
+“So have we all. But we shall never know. Adela is very clever.”
+
+“And now it’s another boy! And only twenty-eight or so. He can’t be more
+than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Poor old Adela!”
+
+“Perhaps he likes white hair. There are boys who do.”
+
+“But not for long. Beryl was furious.”
+
+“It is hardly a compliment to her. I expect her cult for Adela will
+diminish rapidly.”
+
+“Oh, she’ll very soon get him away. Even Zotos won’t be able to do very
+much for Adela now. She burnt all her boats ten years ago. Her case is
+really hopeless, and she’ll very soon find that out.”
+
+“Do you remember when she tried to live up to Rupert Louth as an
+Amazon?”
+
+“Yes. She nearly killed herself over it; but I must say she stuck to it
+splendidly. She has plenty of courage.”
+
+“Is Alick Craven athletic? I scarcely know him.”
+
+“Well, he’s never been a rough rider like Rupert Louth; but I believe
+he’s a sportsman, does all the usual things.”
+
+“Then I dare say we shall soon see Adela on the links and at Kings’.”
+
+“Probably. I’ll get them both down to Coombe and see if she’ll play
+tennis on my hard court. I shouldn’t wonder. She has pluck enough for
+anything.”
+
+“Ask me that Sunday. I wonder how long it will last.”
+
+“Not long. It can’t.”
+
+“And then she’ll go crash again. It must be awful to have a temperament
+like hers.”
+
+“Her great mistake is that apparently she puts some heart into it every
+time. I can’t think how she manages it, but she does. Do you remember
+twelve years ago, when she was crazy about Harry Blake? Well--”
+
+But at this moment the motor drew up at the Carlton, and a huge man in
+uniform opened the door.
+
+Mrs. Ackroyde was right in her comment on Miss Van Tuyn. In spite of
+Craven’s acting that night Miss Van Tuyn had thoroughly understood
+how things really were. She had persuaded Braybrooke to invite Lady
+Sellingworth to make a fourth in order that she might find out whether
+any link had been forged between Craven and Lady Sellingworth, whether
+there was really any secret understanding between them, or whether that
+tete-a-tete dinner in Soho had been merely a passing pleasure, managed
+by Lady Sellingworth, meaning little, and likely to lead to nothing.
+And she had found out that there certainly was a secret understanding
+between Lady Sellingworth and Craven from which she was excluded. Craven
+had preferred Adela Sellingworth to herself, and Adela Sellingworth was
+fully aware of it.
+
+It was characteristic of Miss Van Tuyn that though her vanity was so
+great and was now severely wounded she did not debate the matter within
+herself, did not for a moment attempt to deceive herself about it.
+And yet really she had very little ground to go upon. Craven had been
+charming to her, had replied to her glances, had almost made love to her
+at dinner, had sat very close to her during the last act of the play.
+Yes; but it had all been acting on his part. Quite coolly she told
+herself that. And Lady Sellingworth had certainly wished him to act, had
+even prompted him to it.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn felt very angry with Lady Sellingworth. She was less angry
+with Craven. Indeed, she was not sure that she was angry with him at
+all. He was several years older than herself, but she began to think of
+him as really very young, as much younger in mind and temperament than
+she was. He was only a clever boy, susceptible to flattery, easily
+influenced by a determined will, and probably absurdly chivalrous. She
+knew the sort of chivalry which was a symptom really of babyhood in
+the masculine mind. It was characteristic of sensitive natures, she
+believed, and it often led to strange aberrations. Craven was only a
+baby, although a baby of the world, and Adela Sellingworth with her
+vast experience had, of course, seen that at a glance and was now busily
+playing upon baby’s young chivalry. Miss Van Tuyn could almost hear the
+talk about being so lonely in the big house in Berkeley Square, about
+the freedom of men and the difficulty of having any real freedom when
+one is a solitary woman with no man to look after you, about the tragedy
+of being considered old when your heart and your nature are really still
+young, almost as young as ever they were. Adela Sellingworth would know
+how to touch every string, would be an adept at calling out the music
+she wanted. How easily experienced women played upon men! It was really
+pathetic! And as Craven had thought of protecting Lady Sellingworth
+against Miss Van Tuyn, so now Miss van Tuyn felt inclined to protect
+Alick Craven against Lady Sellingworth. She did not want to see a nice
+and interesting boy make a fool of himself. Yet Craven was on the verge
+of doing that, if he had not already done it. Lady Wrackley and Mrs.
+Ackroyde had seen how things were, had taken in the whole situation in
+a moment. Miss Van Tuyn knew that, and in her knowledge there was
+bitterness. These two women had seen Lady Sellingworth preferred before
+her by a mere boy, had seen her beauty and youth go for nothing beside a
+woman of sixty’s fascination.
+
+There must be something quite extraordinary in Craven. He must be
+utterly unlike other young men. She began to wonder about him intensely.
+
+On the following morning, as usual, she went to Glebe Place to take what
+she had called her “lesson” from Dick Garstin. She arrived rather early,
+a few minutes before eleven, and found Garstin alone, looking tired and
+irritable.
+
+“You look as if you had been up all night,” she said as he let her in.
+
+“So I have!”
+
+She did not ask him what he had been doing. He would probably refuse to
+tell her. Instead she remarked:
+
+“Will you be able to paint?”
+
+“Probably not. But perhaps the fellow won’t come.”
+
+“Why not. He always--” She stopped; then said quickly, “So he was up all
+night too?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I didn’t know you knew him out of the studio.”
+
+“Of course I know him wherever I meet him. What do you mean?”
+
+“I didn’t know you did meet him.”
+
+Garstin said nothing. She turned and went up the staircase to the big
+studio. On an easel nearly in the middle of the room, and not very far
+from the portrait of the judge, there was a sketch of Nicolas Arabian’s
+head, neck and shoulders. No collar or clothes were shown. Garstin had
+told Arabian flatly that he wasn’t going to paint a magnificent torso
+like his concealed by infernal linen and serge, and Arabian had been
+quite willing that his neck and shoulders should be painted in the nude.
+
+In the strong light of the studio Garstin’s unusual appearance of
+fatigue was more noticeable, and Miss Van Tuyn could not help saying:
+
+“What on earth have you been doing, Dick? You always seem made of iron.
+But to-day you look like an ordinary man who has been dissipating.”
+
+“I played poker all night,” said Garstin.
+
+“With Arabian?”
+
+“And two other fellows--picked them up at the Cafe Royal.”
+
+“Well, I hope you won.”
+
+“No, I didn’t. Both Arabian and I lost a lot. We played here.”
+
+“Here!”
+
+“Yes. And I haven’t had a wink since they left. I don’t suppose he’ll
+turn up. And if he does I shan’t be able to do anything at it.”
+
+He went to stand in front of the sketch, which was in oils, and stared
+at it with lack-lustre eyes.
+
+“What d’you think of it?” he said at last.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn was rather surprised by the question. Garstin was not in
+the habit of asking other people’s opinions about his work.
+
+“It’s rather difficult to say,” she said, with some hesitation.
+
+“That means you think it’s rotten.”
+
+“No. But it isn’t finished and--I don’t know.”
+
+“Well, I hate it.”
+
+He turned away, sat down on a divan, and let his big knuckly hands drop
+down between his knees.
+
+“Fact is, I haven’t got at the fellow’s secret,” he said meditatively.
+“I got a first impression--”
+
+He paused.
+
+“I know!” said Miss Van Tuyn, deeply interested. “You told me what it
+was.”
+
+“The successful blackmailer. Yes. But now I don’t know. I can’t make him
+out. He’s the hardest nut to crack I ever came across.”
+
+He moved his long lips from side to side three or four times, then
+pursed them up, lifted his small eyes, which had been staring between
+his feet at a Persian rug on the parquet in front of the divan, looked
+at Miss Van Tuyn, who was standing before him, and said:
+
+“That’s why I sat up all night playing poker with him.”
+
+“Ah!” she said, beginning to understand
+
+She sat down beside him, turned towards him, and said eagerly:
+
+“You wanted to get really to know him?”
+
+“Yes; but I didn’t. The fellow’s an enigma. He’s bad. And that’s
+practically all I know about him.”
+
+He glanced with distaste at the sketch he had made.
+
+“And it isn’t enough. It isn’t enough by a damned long way.”
+
+“Is he a good loser?” she asked.
+
+“The best I ever saw. Never turned a hair, and went away looking as
+fresh as a well-watered gardenia, damn him!”
+
+“Who were the others?”
+
+“Two Americans I’ve seen now and then at the Cafe Royal. I believe they
+live mostly in Paris.”
+
+“Friends of his?”
+
+“I don’t think so. He said they came and sat down at his table in the
+cafe and started talking. I suggested the poker. They didn’t. So it
+wasn’t a plant.”
+
+“Perhaps he isn’t bad,” she said; “and perhaps that’s why you can’t
+paint him.”
+
+“What d’you mean?”
+
+“I mean because you have made up your mind that he is. I think you have
+a fixed idea about that.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“You have painted so many brutes, that you seek for the brute in
+everyone who sits to you. If you were to paint me you’d--”
+
+“Now, now! There you are at it again! I’ll paint you if I ever feel like
+it--not a minute before.”
+
+“I was only going to say that if you ever painted me you’d try to find
+something horrible in me that you could drag to the surface.”
+
+“Well, d’you mean that you have the _toupet_ to tell me there is nothing
+horrible in you?”
+
+“Now we are getting away from Arabian,” she said, with cool
+self-possession.
+
+“Owing to your infernal egoism, my girl!”
+
+“Override it, then, with your equally infernal altruism, my boy!”
+
+Garstin smiled, and for a moment looked a little less fatigued, but in
+a moment his almost morose preoccupation returned. He glanced again
+towards the sketch.
+
+“I should like to slit it up with a palette knife!” he said. “The devil
+of it is that I felt I could do a really great thing with that fellow. I
+struck out a fine phrase that night. D’you remember?”
+
+“Yes. You called him a king in the underworld.”
+
+Abruptly he got up and began to walk about the studio, stopping now
+here, now there, before his portraits. He paused for quite a long time
+before the portraits of Cora and the judge. Then he came back to the
+sketch of Arabian.
+
+“You must help me!” he said at last.
+
+“I!” she exclaimed, with almost sharp surprise. “How can I help you?”
+
+He turned, and she saw the pin-points of light.
+
+“What do you think of the fellow?” he said. “After all, you asked me to
+paint him. What do you think of him?”
+
+“I think he’s magnificently handsome.”
+
+“Blast his envelope!” Garstin almost roared out. “What do you think
+of his nature? What do you think of his soul? I’m not a painter of
+surfaces.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn sat for a moment looking steadily at him. She was
+unusually natural and unself-conscious, like one thinking too strongly
+to bother about herself. At last she said:
+
+“Arabian is a very difficult man to understand, and I don’t understand
+him.”
+
+“Do you like him?”
+
+“I couldn’t exactly say that.”
+
+“Do you hate him?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Garstin suddenly looked almost maliciously sly.
+
+“I can tell you something that you feel about him.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“You are afraid of him.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn’s silky fair skin reddened.
+
+“I’m not afraid of anyone,” she retorted. “If I have one virtue, I think
+it’s courage.”
+
+“You’re certainly not a Miss Nancy as a rule. In fact, your cheek is
+pretty well known in Paris. But you’re afraid of Arabian.”
+
+“Am I really?” said the girl, recovering from her surprise and facing
+him hardily. “And how have you found that out?”
+
+“You took a fancy to the fellow the first time you saw him.”
+
+“I did not take a fancy. I am not an under-housemaid.”
+
+“There’s not really a particle of difference between an under-housemaid
+and a super-lady when it comes to a good-looking man.”
+
+“Dick, you’re a great painter, but you’re also a great vulgarian!”
+
+“Well, my father was a national schoolmaster and my mother was a
+butcher’s daughter. I can’t help my vernacular. You took a fancy to this
+fellow in the Cafe Royal, and you begged me to paint him so that you
+might get to know him. I obeyed you--”
+
+“The heavens will certainly fall before you become obedient.”
+
+“--and asked him here. Then I asked you. You came. He came. I started
+painting. How many sittings have I had?”
+
+“Three.”
+
+“Then you’ve met him here four times?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And why have you always let him go away alone from the studio?”
+
+“Why should I go with him? I much prefer to stay on here and have a talk
+with you. You are far more interesting than Arabian is. He says very
+little. Probably he knows very little. I can learn from you.”
+
+“That’s all very well. I will say you’re damned keen on acquiring
+knowledge. But Arabian interests you in a way I certainly don’t; in a
+sex way.”
+
+“That’ll do, Dick!”
+
+“And directly a woman gets to that all the lumber of knowledge can go to
+the devil for her! When Nature drives the coach brain interests occupy
+the back seat. That is a rule with women to which I’ve never yet
+found an exception. Every day you’re longing to go away from here with
+Arabian; every day he does his level best to get you to go. Yet you
+don’t go. Why’s that? You’re held back by fear. You’re afraid of the
+fellow, my girl, and it’s not a bit of use your denying it. When I see a
+thing I see it--it’s there. I don’t deal in hallucinations.”
+
+All this time his small eyes were fixed upon her, and the fierce little
+lights in them seemed to touch her like the points of two pins.
+
+“You talk about fear! Does it never occur to you that Arabian’s a man
+you picked up at the Cafe Royal, that we neither of us know anything
+about him, that he may be--”
+
+“Anyhow, he’s far more presentable than I am.”
+
+“Of course he’s presentable, as you call it. He’s very well dressed and
+very good-looking, but still--”
+
+At that moment she thought of Craven, and in her mind quickly compared
+the two men.
+
+“But still you’re afraid of him. Where is your frankness? Why don’t you
+acknowledge what I already know?”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked down and sat for a moment quite still without
+speaking. Then she began to take off her gloves. Finally, she lifted
+her hands to her head, took off her hat, and laid it on the divan beside
+her.
+
+“It isn’t that I am afraid of Arabian,” she then said, at last looking
+up. “But the fact is I am like you. I don’t understand him. I can’t
+place him. I don’t even know what his nationality is. He knows nobody I
+do. I feel certain of that. Yet he must belong somewhere, have some set
+of friends, some circle of acquaintances, I suppose. He isn’t at all
+vulgar. One couldn’t call him genteel, which is worse, I think. It’s all
+very odd. I’m not conventional. In Paris I’m considered even terribly
+unconventional. I’ve met all sorts of men, but I’ve never met a man like
+Arabian. But the other day--don’t you remember?--you summed him up. You
+said he had no education, no knowledge, no love of art or literature,
+that he was clever, sensual, idle, acquisitive, made of iron, with
+nerves of steel. Don’t you remember?”
+
+“To be sure I do.”
+
+“Isn’t that enough to go upon?”
+
+“For the painting? No, it isn’t. Besides, you said you weren’t sure I
+was right in my diagnosis of the chap’s character and physical part.”
+
+“I wasn’t sure, and I’m not sure now.”
+
+“Tell me God’s own truth, Beryl. Come on!”
+
+He came up to her, put one hand on her left shoulder, and looked down
+into her eyes.
+
+“Aren’t you a bit afraid of the fellow?”
+
+She met his eyes steadily.
+
+“There’s something--” She paused.
+
+“Go ahead, I tell you!”
+
+“I couldn’t describe it. It’s more like an atmosphere than anything
+else. It seems to hang about him. I’ve never felt anything quite like it
+when I’ve been with anyone else.”
+
+“An atmosphere! Now we’re getting at it.”
+
+He took his heavy hand away from her shoulder.
+
+“A woman feels that sort of thing more sensitively than a man does. Sex!
+Go on! What about it?”
+
+“But I scarcely know what I mean--really, Dick. No! But it’s--it’s an
+unsafe atmosphere.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“One doesn’t know where one is in it. At least, I don’t. Once in London
+I was lost for a little while in Regents Park in a fog. It’s--it’s
+something like that. I couldn’t see the way, and I heard steps and
+voices that sounded strange and--I don’t know.”
+
+“Find out!”
+
+“That’s all very well. You are terribly selfish, Dick. You don’t care
+what happens so long as you can paint as you wish to paint. You’d
+sacrifice me, anyone--”
+
+The girl seemed strangely uneasy. Her usual coolness had left her. The
+hot blood had come back to her cheeks and glowed there in uneven patches
+of red. Garstin gazed at her with profound and cruel interest.
+
+“Sacrifice!” he said. “Who talked of sacrificing you? Who wishes to
+sacrifice you? I only want--”
+
+“One doesn’t know--with a man like that one doesn’t know where it would
+lead to.”
+
+“Then you think he’s a thundering blackguard? And yet you defended him
+just now, said perhaps I couldn’t paint him just because I’d made up my
+mind he was a brute. You’re a mass of contradictions.”
+
+“I don’t say he’s bad. He may not be bad.”
+
+“Fact is, as I said, you’re in a mortal funk of him.”
+
+“I am not!” she said, with sudden anger. “No one shall say I’m afraid
+of any man. You can ask anyone who knows me really well, and you will
+always hear the same story. I’m afraid of no one and nothing, and I’ve
+proved it again and again.”
+
+“Well then, what’s to prevent you proving it to me, my girl?”
+
+“I will!”
+
+She lifted her chin and looked suddenly impudent.
+
+“What do you wish me to do to prove it?” she asked him defiantly.
+
+“If Arabian does come to-day go away with him when he goes. Get to know
+him really. You could, I believe. But ever since he’s come here to sit
+he has shut up the box which contains the truth of what he is, locked
+it, and lost the key. His face is a mask, and I don’t paint masks.”
+
+“Very well. I will.”
+
+“Good!” said Garstin sonorously, and looking suddenly much less tired
+and morose.
+
+“But why do you think _I_ could get to know him?”
+
+“Because he’s--but you know why better than I do.”
+
+“I don’t.”
+
+“Arabian’s in love with you, my girl. By Jove! There he is!”
+
+The bell had sounded below.
+
+With a swift movement Garstin got hold of a palette knife, sprang at the
+sketch of Arabian, and ripped up the canvas from top to bottom. Miss Van
+Tuyn uttered a cry.
+
+“Dick!”
+
+“That’s all right!”
+
+He threw the knife down.
+
+“We’ll do better than that by a long way.”
+
+He got hold of her hand.
+
+“Stick to your word, my girl, and I’ll paint you yet--and not an Academy
+portrait. But you’ve got to _live_. Just now, with your cheeks all in
+patches you looked stunning.”
+
+The bell went again.
+
+“Now for him!”
+
+He hurried downstairs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Lady Sellingworth was afraid. In spite of her many triumphs in the past
+she had a deep distrust of life. Since the tragedies of her middle age
+her curious natural diffidence, which the habit of the world had never
+been able to subdue, had increased. In ten years of retirement, in the
+hundreds of hours of solitude which those ten years had held for her, it
+had grown within her. And now it began to torment her.
+
+Life brings gifts to almost everyone, and often the gift-bearer’s
+approach is absolutely unexpected. So it had been in Lady Sellingworth’s
+case. She had had no premonition that a change was preparing for her.
+Nothing had warned her to be on the alert when young feet turned into
+Berkeley Square on a certain Sunday in autumn and made towards her
+door. Abruptly, after years of neglect, it seemed as if life suddenly
+remembered that there was a middle-aged woman, with lungs which still
+mechanically did their work, and a heart which still obstinately
+persisted in beating, living in Berkeley Square, and that scarcely a
+bare bone had been thrown to her for some thousands of days. And then
+life brought her Craven, with an unusual nature, with a surely romantic
+mind, with a chivalrous sense that was out of the fashion, with
+faculties making for friendship; life offered, or seemed to offer her
+Craven, to whisper in her ear, “You have been starving alone for a
+long time. To tell the truth, I had forgotten all about you. I did not
+remember you were there. I don’t quite know why you persist in
+being there. But, as you do, and as you are wearing thin for want of
+sustenance, here is something for you!”
+
+And now, because of what life had done, Lady Sellingworth was afraid.
+When she had parted from her friends after the theatre party, and was
+once more alone in her big house, she knew thoroughly, absolutely, for
+the first time what life had done.
+
+All the calm, the long calm of her years of retirement from the
+world, had gone. She now knew how strangely safe she had felt in her
+loneliness. She had felt surely something of the safety of a nun of one
+of the enclosed orders. In her solitude she had learnt to understand
+how dangerous the great world is, how full of trials for the nerves,
+the temper, the flesh, the heart. The woman who goes into it needs to
+be armed. For many weapons thrust at her. She must be perpetually on the
+alert, ready to hold her own among the attacking eyes and tongues. And
+she must not be tired, or dull, or sad, must not show, or follow, her
+varying moods, must not quietly rest in sincerity. When she had lived in
+the world Lady Sellingworth had scarcely realized all this. But in
+her long retirement she had come fully to realize it. There had been a
+strange and embracing sense of safety permeating her solitary life. She
+had got up in the morning, she had gone to bed at night, feeling safe.
+For the storms of the passions were stilled, and though desire might
+stir sometimes, it soon slept again. For she never took her desire into
+danger. She did not risk the temptations of the world.
+
+But now all the old restlessness, all the old anxiety and furtive
+uneasiness of the mind, had returned. She was again what she had often
+been more than ten years ago--a woman tormented. And--for she knew
+herself now--she knew what was in store for her if she gave herself
+again to life and her own inclinations.
+
+For it had all come back; the old greedy love of sympathy and
+admiration, the old worship of strength and youth and hot blood and good
+looks, the old longing for desire and love, the old almost irritable
+passion to possess, to dominate, to be first, to submerge another human
+being in her own personality.
+
+After ten years she was in love again, desperately in love. But she was
+an elderly woman now, so elderly that many people would no doubt think
+that it was impossible that she should be in love. How little such
+people knew about human nature! The evening had been almost as wonderful
+and as exciting to her as it could have been to a girl. When she had
+come into the hall of the Carlton and had seen Craven through the glass,
+had seen his tall figure, smooth, dark hair, and animated face glowing
+with health after the breezes and sunrays of Beaconsfield, she had known
+a feeling that a girl might have understood and shared.
+
+And she was sixty!
+
+What was to be done?
+
+Craven was certainly fond of her already. Quietly she had triumphed that
+night. Three women had seen and had quite understood her little triumph.
+Probably all of them had wondered about it, had been secretly irritated
+by it. Certainly Beryl had been very much irritated. But in spite of
+that triumph, Lady Sellingworth felt almost desperately afraid that
+night when she was alone. For she knew how great the difference was
+between her feeling for Craven and his feeling for her. And with greater
+intimacy that difference, she felt sure, must even increase. For she
+would want from him what he would never want or even dream of wanting,
+from her. He would be satisfied in their friendship while she would be
+almost starving. He would never know that cruel longing to touch which
+marks the difference between what is love and what is friendship.
+
+If she now let herself go, took no drastic step, just let life carry
+her on, she could have a strange and unusual, and, in its way, beautiful
+friendship, a friendship which to a woman with a different nature from
+hers might seem perfect. She could have that--and what would it be to
+her?
+
+She longed to lay violent hands on herself; she longed to tear something
+that was an essential part of her to pieces, to scatter it to a wind,
+and let the wind whirl it away.
+
+She knelt down that night before getting into bed and prayed. And
+when she did that she thought of Sellingworth and of his teachings and
+opinions. How he would have laughed at her if he had ever seen her do
+that! She had not wanted to do it in the years when she had been with
+him. But now, if his opinions had been well founded, he was only dust
+and perhaps a few fragments of bone. He could not laugh at her now. And
+she felt a really desperate need of prayer.
+
+She did not pray to have something that she wanted. She knew that would
+be no use. Even if there was a God who attended to individuals, he would
+certainly not give her what she wanted just then. To do so would be
+deliberately to interfere with the natural course of things, arbitrarily
+to change the design. And something in Lady Sellingworth’s brain
+prevented her from being able even for a moment to think that God would
+ever do that. She prayed, therefore, that she might cease to want what
+she wanted; she prayed that she might have strength to do a tremendously
+courageous thing quickly; she prayed that she might be rewarded for
+doing it by afterwards having physical and mental peace; she prayed that
+she might be permanently changed, that she might, after this last trial,
+be allowed to become passionless, that what remained of the fiercely
+animal in her might die out, that she might henceforth be as old in
+nature as she already was in body. “For,” she said to herself, “only
+in that oldness lies safety for me! Unless I can be all old--mind and
+nature, as well as body--I shall suffer horribly again.”
+
+She prayed that she might feel old, so old that she might cease from
+being attracted by youth, from longing after youth in this dreadful
+tormenting way.
+
+When she got up from her knees it was one o’clock. She took two tablets
+of aspirin and got into bed. And directly she was in bed an idea
+seemed to hit her mind, and she trembled slightly, as if she had really
+received a blow. She had just been praying for something earnestly,
+almost violently, and she had prayed with clear understanding, with the
+understanding that a long and fully lived life brings to every really
+intelligent human being. Did she really want her prayer to be answered,
+or had she been trying to humbug herself? She had thought of a test
+which would surely prove whether she was genuine in her desire to escape
+from the torment that was lying in wait for her or not. Instead of
+receiving a visit from her Greek to-morrow, instead of being at home to
+Craven in the late afternoon, instead of giving herself up to the lure
+which must, she knew, certainly lead her on to emotional destruction,
+she might do this: she might telephone to Sir Seymour Portman to come to
+her and tell him that she would reward his long faithfulness.
+
+It would be a way out. If she could bring herself to do it she would
+make herself safe. For though Seymour Portman had been so faithful, and
+she had never rewarded him, he was not a man any woman would dare to
+play with. Lady Sellingworth knew that she would never break a promise
+to him, would never play fast and loose with him. He was strong and
+he was true, and he had very high ideals and an almost stern code of
+honour. In accepting him as her husband she would shut a door of steel
+between herself and her past, with its sins and its many follies. She
+would begin again, as an old woman with a devoted husband who would
+know--none better--how to make himself respected, how to hold by his
+rights.
+
+People might smile at such a marriage, but it would be absolutely
+suitable. Seymour was a few years older than she was. But he was still
+strong and upright, could still sit a horse as well as any man, still
+had a steady hand with his gun. He was not a ruin. She would be able
+to rest on him. A more perfect support for a woman than Seymour, if
+he loved, was surely not created. He was a gentleman to the core, and
+totally incapable of insincerity. He was fearless. He belonged to her
+world. He was _persona grata_ at Court and in society. And he loved her
+in that extraordinary and very rare way--as the one woman. All he needed
+in a woman quite evidently he found in her. How? Why? She did not know,
+could not understand. But so it was. She would absolutely satisfy his
+desires.
+
+The aspirin was stilling her nerves. She lay without moving. Had she
+been a humbug when she prayed? Had she prayed knowing quite well that
+her prayer was not going to be answered, not intending, or wishing,
+really, that it should be answered? Had she prayed without any belief
+in a Being who had the power and probably the will to give her what she
+asked for? Would she have prayed at all had she been sure that if she
+offered up a petition to be made old in nature as well as in body it
+would certainly be granted?
+
+“I don’t know! I don’t know!” she whispered to herself.
+
+The darkness of the big room suddenly seemed very strange. And she
+thought how odd it was that human beings need in every twenty-four hours
+a long period of blackness, that they make blackness by turning out
+light, and stretch themselves out in it as if getting ready for burial.
+
+“Burial! If I’m not a humbug, if really I wish for peace, to-morrow I
+shall send for Seymour,” she said to herself. “Through him I can get
+peace of mind. He will protect me against myself, without even knowing
+that he is doing it. I have only to speak a sentence to him and all
+possibility of danger, torment and wildness will be over for ever.”
+
+And then she thought of the safety of a prison. But anything was surely
+better than misery of mind and body, than wanting terribly from someone
+what he never wants to give you, what he never wants from you.
+
+Torment in freedom, or stagnant peace in captivity behind the prison
+door--which was the more desirable? Craven’s voice through
+the telephone--their conversation about Waring--Seymour’s long
+faithfulness--if he were here now! How would it be? And if Craven--No!
+No!
+
+Another tablet of aspirin--and sleep!
+
+Lady Sellingworth did not pray the next morning. But she telephoned
+to Seymour Portman, and said she would be at home about five in the
+afternoon if he cared for an hour’s talk. She gave no hint that she had
+any special reason for asking him to come. If he only knew what was in
+her mind! His firm, quiet, soldier’s voice replied through the telephone
+that of course he would come. Somehow she guessed that he had had an
+engagement and was going to give it up for her. What would he not give
+up for her? And yet he was a man accustomed to command, and to whom
+authority was natural. But he was also accustomed to obey. He was the
+perfect courtier, devoted to the monarchy, yet absolutely free from the
+slave instinct. Good kings trust such men. Many women love them.
+
+“Why not I?” Lady Sellingworth thought that day.
+
+And it seemed to her that perhaps even love might be subject to will
+power, that a determined effort of will might bring it or banish it. She
+had never really tested her will in that way in connexion with love. But
+the time had come for the test to be made.
+
+“Perhaps I can love Seymour!” she said to herself. “Perhaps I could have
+loved him years ago if I had chosen. Perhaps I have only to use my will
+to be happy with him. I have never controlled my impulses. That has been
+my curse and the cause of all my miseries.”
+
+At that moment she entirely forgot the ten years of self-control which
+were behind her. The sudden return to her former self had apparently
+blotted them out from her memory.
+
+After telephoning to Seymour Portman she wrote a little note to Craven
+and sent it round to the Foreign Office. In the note she explained
+briefly that she was not able to see him that afternoon as had been
+arranged between them. The wording of the note was cold. She could not
+help that. She wrote it under the influence of what she thought of just
+then as a decision. If she did what she believed she intended to do that
+afternoon she would have to be cold to Craven in the future. With her
+temperament it would be impossible to continue her friendship with
+Craven if she were going to marry Sir Seymour. She knew that. But she
+did not know how frigid, how almost brusque, her note to Craven was.
+
+When he read it he felt as if he had received a cold douche. It startled
+him and hurt him, hurt his youthful sensitiveness and pride. And he
+wondered very much why Lady Sellingworth had written it, and what had
+happened to make her write to him like that. She did not even ask him
+to call on her at some other time on some other day. And it had been she
+who had suggested a cosy talk that afternoon. She had been going to
+show him a book of poems by a young American poet in whose work she was
+interested. And they would have talked over the little events of the
+preceding evening, have discussed Moscovitch, the play, the persistence
+of love, youth, age, everything under the sun.
+
+Craven was severely disappointed. He even felt rather angry and hurt.
+Something in him was up in arms, but something else was distressed and
+anxious. It was extraordinary how already he had come to depend upon
+Lady Sellingworth. His mother was dead. He certainly did not think of
+Lady Sellingworth as what is sometimes called “a second mother.” There
+was nothing maternal about her, and he was fully aware of that. Besides,
+she did not fascinate him in the motherly way. No; but owing to the
+great difference in their ages he felt that he could talk to her as he
+could talk to nobody else. For he was in no intimate relation with any
+other woman so much older than himself. And to young women somehow one
+can never talk so freely, so companionably. Even in these modern days
+sex gets in the way. Craven told himself that as he folded up Lady
+Sellingworth’s letter. She was different. He had felt that for him there
+was quite a beautiful refuge in Berkeley Square. And now! What could
+have happened? She must surely be vexed about something he had done,
+or about something which had occurred on the previous evening. And he
+thought about the evening carefully and minutely. Had she perhaps been
+upset by Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde? Was she self-conscious as he
+was, and had she observed their concentration upon herself and him? Or,
+on the other hand, could she had misunderstood his manner with Miss Van
+Tuyn? He knew how very sensitive women are about each other. And Lady
+Sellingworth, of course, was old, although he never bothered, and seldom
+thought, about her age. Elderly women were probably in certain ways even
+more sensitive than young women. He could well understand that. And he
+certainly had rather made love to Miss Van Tuyn because of the horribly
+observing eyes of the “old guard.” And then, too, Miss Van Tuyn had
+finally almost required it of him. Had she not told him that she had
+insisted on Lady Sellingworth’s being asked to the theatre to entertain
+Braybrooke so that Craven and she, the young ones, might have a nice
+little time? After that what could he do but his duty? But perhaps Lady
+Sellingworth had not understood. He wondered, and felt now hurt and
+angry, now almost contrite and inclined to be explanatory.
+
+When he left the Foreign Office that day and was crossing the Mall he
+was very depressed. A breath of winter was in the air. There was a bank
+of clouds over Buckingham Palace, with the red sun smouldering just
+behind their edges. The sky, as it sometimes does, held tenderness,
+anger and romance, and was full of lures for the imagination and the
+soul. Craven looked at it as he walked on with a colleague, a man called
+Marshall, older than himself, who had just come back from Japan, and
+was momentarily translated. He voyaged among the clouds, and was carried
+away across that cold primrose and delicate green, and his journey
+was into the ineffable, and beyond the rim of the horizon towards the
+satisfaction of the unexpressed, because inexpressible, desires. And
+Marshall talked about Japanese art and presently about geishas, not
+stupidly, but with understanding. And Craven thought: “If only I were
+going to Berkeley Square!” He had come down to earth, but in the
+condition which yearns for an understanding mind. Lady Sellingworth
+understood him. But now--he did not know. And he went with Marshall
+drearily to the St. James’s Club and went on hearing about geishas and
+Japanese art.
+
+The bell sounded in Berkeley Square, and a footman let in Sir Seymour
+Portman, who was entirely unconscious that Fate had been working
+apparently with a view to the satisfaction of his greatest desire. He
+had long ago given up hope of being Adela Sellingworth’s husband. Twice
+that hope had died--when she had married Lord Manham, and when she had
+married Sellingworth. Adela could not care for him in that way. But now
+for many years she had remained unmarried, had joined him, as it were,
+in the condition of being lonely. That fact had helped him along the
+road. He could go to her and feel that he was in a certain degree
+wanted. That was something, even a good deal, in the old courtier’s
+life. He valued greatly the welcome of the woman whom he still loved
+with an undeviating fidelity. He was thankful, selfishly, no doubt--he
+often said so to himself--for her loneliness, because he believed
+himself able to cheer it and to alleviate it. And at last he had ceased
+to dread any change in her way of life. His Adela had evidently at last
+“settled down.” Her vivacious temperament, her almost greedy love of
+life, were abated. He had her more or less to himself.
+
+As he mounted the staircase with his slow, firm step, holding his
+soldierly figure very upright, he was looking forward to one of the
+usual quiet, friendly conversations with Adela which were his greatest
+enjoyments, and as he passed through the doorway of the drawing-room his
+eyes turned at once towards the sofa near the big fireplace, seeking for
+the tall figure of the woman who so mysteriously had captured his
+heart in the long ago and who had never been able to let it out of her
+keeping.
+
+But there was no one by the fire, and the butler said:
+
+“I will tell her ladyship that you are here, sir.”
+
+“Thank you, Murgatroyd,” said Sir Seymour.
+
+And he went to the fireplace, turned round, and began to warm his flat
+back.
+
+He stood there thus till his back was quite warm. Adela was rather slow
+in coming. But he did not mind that. It was happiness for him to be in
+her house, among her things, the sofas and chairs she used, the carpet
+her feet pressed every day, the books she read, the flowers she had
+chosen. This house was his idea of a home who had never had a home
+because of her.
+
+Meanwhile upstairs, in a big bedroom just overhead, Lady Sellingworth
+was having a battle with herself of which her friend was totally
+unconscious. She did not come down at once because she wanted definitely
+and finally to finish that battle before she saw again the man by the
+fire. But something said to her: “Don’t decide till you have seen him
+again. Look at him once more and then decide.” She walked softly up and
+down the room after Murgatroyd had told her who was waiting for her, and
+she felt gnawed by apprehension. She knew her fate was in the balance.
+All day she had been trying to decide what she was going to do. All day
+she had been saying to herself: “Now, this moment, I will decide, and
+once the decision is made there shall be no going back from it.” It was
+within her power to come to a decision and to stick to it; or, if it
+were not within her power, then she was not a sane but an insane woman.
+She knew herself sane. Yet the decision was not arrived at when Sir
+Seymour rang the bell. Now he was waiting in the room underneath and the
+matter must be settled. An effort of will, the descent of a flight of
+stairs, a sentence spoken, and her life would be made fast to an anchor
+which would hold. And for her there would be no more drifting upon
+dangerous seas at the mercy of tempests.
+
+“Look at him once more and then decide.”
+
+The voice persisted within her monotonously. But what an absurd
+injunction that was. She knew Seymour by heart, knew every feature of
+him, every expression of his keen, observant, but affectionate eyes, the
+way he held himself, the shapes of his strong, rather broad hands--the
+hands of a fine horseman and first-rate whip--every trick of him,
+every attitude. Why look at him, her old familiar friend, again before
+deciding what she was now going to do?
+
+“Look at him as the man who is going to be your husband!”
+
+But that was surely a deceiving insidious voice, suggesting to her
+weakness, uncertainty, hesitation, further mental torment and further
+debate. And she was afraid of it.
+
+She stood still near the window. She must go down. Seymour had already
+been waiting some time, ten minutes or more. He must be wondering
+why she did not come. He was not the sort of man one cares to keep
+waiting--although he had waited many years scarcely daring to hope for
+something he longed for. She thought of his marvellous happiness, his
+wonderful surprise, if she did what she meant--or did she mean it--to
+do. Surely it would be a splendid thing to bring such a flash of
+radiance into a life of twilight. Does happiness come from making others
+happy? If so, then--She must go down.
+
+“I will do it!” she said to herself. “Merely his happiness will be
+enough reward.”
+
+And she went towards the door. But as she did so her apprehension grew
+till her body tingled with it. A strange sensation of being physically
+unwell came upon her. She shrank, as if physically, from the clutching
+hands of the irrevocable. If in a hurry, driven by her demon, she were
+to say the words she had in her mind there would be no going back. She
+would never dare to unsay them. She knew that. But that was just the
+great advantage she surely was seeking--an irrevocable safety from
+herself, a safety she would never be able to get away from, break out
+of.
+
+In a prison there is safety from all the dangers and horrors of the
+world outside the prison. But what a desperate love of the state she now
+called freedom burned within her! Freedom for what, though? She knew and
+felt as if her soul were slowly reddening. It was monstrous that thought
+of hers. Yet she could not help having it. It was surely not her fault
+if she had it. Was she a sort of monster unlike all other women of her
+age? Or did many of them, too, have such thoughts?
+
+She must go down. And she went to the door and opened it. And directly
+she saw the landing outside and the descending staircase she knew that
+she had not yet decided, that she could not decide till she had looked
+at Seymour once more, looked at him with the almost terrible eyes of
+the deeply experienced woman who can no longer decide a thing swiftly in
+ignorance.
+
+“I shall do it,” she said to herself. “But I must be reasonable, and
+there is no reason why I should force myself to make up my mind finally
+up here. I have sent for Seymour and I know why. When I see him, when I
+am with him, I shall do what I intended to do when I asked him to come.”
+
+She shut her bedroom door and began to go downstairs, and as she went
+she imagined Seymour settled in that house with her. (For, of course, he
+would come to live in Berkeley Square, would leave the set of rooms he
+occupied now in St. James’s Palace.) She had often longed to have a male
+companion living with her in that house, to smell cigar smoke, to hear
+a male voice, a strong footstep in the hall and on the stairs, to see
+things that implied a man’s presence lying about, caps, pipes, walking
+sticks, golf clubs, riding crops. The whole atmosphere of the house
+would be changed if a man came to live with her there, if Seymour came.
+
+But--her liberty?
+
+She had gained the last stair and was on the great landing before the
+drawing-room door. Down below she heard a faint and discreet murmur of
+voices from Murgatroyd and the footman in the hall. And as she paused
+for a moment she wondered how much those two men knew of her and of her
+real character, whether they had any definite knowledge of her humanity,
+whether they had perhaps realized in their way what sort of woman she
+was, sometimes stripped away the _Grande Dame_, the mistress, and looked
+with appraising eyes at the stark woman.
+
+She would never know.
+
+She opened the door and instantly assumed her usual carelessly friendly
+look.
+
+Sir Seymour had left the fire, and was sitting in an armchair with a
+book in his hand reading when she came in; and as she had opened the
+door softly, and as it was a long way from the fireplace he did not hear
+her or instantly realize that she was there. She had an instant in which
+to contemplate him as he sat there, like a man quietly at home. Only
+one lamp was lit. It stood on a table behind him and threw light on his
+rather big head thickly covered with curly and snow-white hair, the hair
+which he sometimes smilingly called his “cauliflower.” The light fell,
+too, aslant on his strong-featured manly face, the slightly hooked nose,
+large-lipped, firm mouth, shaded by a moustache in which some dark
+hairs were mingled with the white ones, and chin with a deep dent in the
+middle of it. His complexion was of that weather-beaten red hue which is
+often seen in oldish men who have been much out in all weathers. There
+were many deep lines in the face, two specially deep ones slanting
+downwards from the nose on either side of the mouth. Above the nose
+there was a sort of bump, from which the low forehead slightly retreated
+to the curves of strong white hair. The ears were large but well shaped.
+In order to read he had put on pince-nez with tortoise-shell rimmed
+glasses, from which hung a rather broad black riband. His thin figure
+looked stiff even in an arm-chair. His big brown-red hands held the book
+up. His legs were crossed, and his feet were strongly defined by the
+snowy white spats which partially concealed the varnished black boots.
+He looked a distinguished old man as he sat there--but he looked old.
+
+“Is it possible that I look at all that sort of age?” was Lady
+Sellingworth’s thought as, for a brief instant, she contemplated him,
+with an intensity, a sort of almost fierce sharpness which she was
+scarcely aware of.
+
+He looked up, made a twitching movement; his pince-nez fell to his black
+coat, and he got up alertly.
+
+“Adela!”
+
+She shut the door and went towards him, and as she did so she thought:
+
+“If I had seen Alick Craven sitting there reading!”
+
+“I was having a look at this.”
+
+He held up the book. It was Baudelaire’s “_Les Fleurs du Mal_.”
+
+“Not the book for you!” she said. “Though your French is so good.”
+
+“No.”
+
+He laid it down, and she noticed the tangle of veins on his hand.
+
+“The dandy in literature doesn’t appeal to me. I must say many of these
+poets strike me as decadent fellows, not helped to anything like real
+manliness by their gifts.”
+
+She sat down on the sofa, just where she had sat to have those long
+talks with Craven about Waring and Italy, the sea people, the colours of
+the sails on those ships which look magical in sunsets, which move on as
+if bearing argosies from gorgeous hidden lands of the East.
+
+“But never mind Baudelaire,” he continued, and his eyes, heavily lidded
+and shrouded by those big bushy eyebrows which seem to sprout almost
+with ardent violence as the body grows old, looked at her with melting
+kindness. “What have you been doing, my dear? The old dog wants to know.
+There is something on your mind, isn’t there?”
+
+Lady Sellingworth had once said to Sir Seymour that he reminded her of a
+big dog, and he had laughed and said that he was a big dog belonging to
+her. Since that day, when he wrote to her, he had often signed himself
+“the old dog.” And often she had thought of him almost as one thinks of
+a devoted dog, absolutely trustworthy, ready for instant attack on your
+enemies, faithful with unquestioning faithfulness through anything.
+
+As he spoke he gently took her hand, and she thought, “If Alick Craven
+were taking my hand!”
+
+The touch of his skin was warm and very dry. It gave her a woman’s
+thoughts, not to be told of.
+
+“What is it?” he asked.
+
+Very gently she released her hand, and as she did so she looked on it
+almost sternly.
+
+“Why?” she said. “Do I look unhappy--or what? Sit down, Seymour dear.”
+
+She seemed to add the last word with a sort of pressure, with almost
+self-conscious intention.
+
+He drew the tails of his braided morning coat forward with both hands
+and sat down, and she thought, “How differently a young man sits down!”
+
+“Unhappy!” he said, in his quiet and strong, rather deep voice.
+
+He looked at her with the scrutinizing eyes of affection, whose gaze
+sometimes is so difficult to bear. And she felt that something within
+her was writhing under his eyes.
+
+“I don’t think you often look happy, Adela. No; it isn’t that. But you
+look to-day as if you had been going through something which had tried
+your nerves--some crisis.”
+
+He paused. She remained silent and looked at his hands and then at his
+eyelids and eyebrows. And there was a terrible coldness in her scrutiny,
+which she did not show to him, but of which she was painfully aware.
+His nails were not flat, but were noticeably curved. For a moment the
+thought in her mind was simply, “Could I live with those nails?”
+ She hated herself for that thought; she despised herself for it; she
+considered herself almost inhuman and certainly despicable, and she
+recalled swiftly what Seymour was, the essential beauty and fineness
+of his character, his truth, his touching faithfulness. And almost
+simultaneously she thought, “Why do old men get those terribly bushy
+eyebrows, like thickets?”
+
+“Perhaps I think too much,” she said. “Living alone, one thinks--and
+thinks. You have so much to do and I so little.”
+
+“Sometimes I think of retiring,” he said.
+
+“From the court?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh, but they would never let you!”
+
+“My place could be filled easily enough.”
+
+“Oh, no, it couldn’t.”
+
+And she added, leaning forward now, and looking at him differently:
+
+“Don’t you ever realize how rare you are, Seymour? There is scarcely
+anyone left like you, and yet you are not old-fashioned. Do you know
+that I have never yet met a man who really was a man--”
+
+“Now, now, Adela!”
+
+“No, I will say it! I have never met a real man who, knowing you, didn’t
+think you were rare. They wouldn’t let you go. Besides, what would you
+retire to?”
+
+Again she looked at him with a scrutiny which she felt to be morally
+cruel. She could not refrain from it just then. It seemed to come
+inevitably from her own misery and almost desperation. At one moment she
+felt a rush of tenderness for him, at another an almost stony hardness.
+
+“Ah--that’s just it! I dare say it will be better to die in harness.”
+
+“Die!” she said, as if startled.
+
+At that moment the thought assailed her, “If Seymour were suddenly to
+die!” There would be a terrible gap in her life. Her loneliness then
+would be horrible indeed unless--she pulled herself up with a sort of
+fierce mental violence. “I won’t! I won’t!” she cried out to herself.
+
+“You are very strong and healthy, Seymour,” she said, “I think you will
+live to be very old.”
+
+“Probably. Palaces usually contain a few dodderers. But is anything the
+matter, Adela? The old dog is very persistent, you know.”
+
+“I’ve been feeling a little depressed.”
+
+“You stay alone too much, I believe.”
+
+“It isn’t that. I was out at the theatre with a party only last night.
+We went to _The Great Lover_. But he wasn’t like you. You are a really
+great lover.”
+
+And again she leaned forward towards him, trying to feel physically what
+surely she was feeling in another way.
+
+“The greatest in London, I am sure.”
+
+“I don’t know,” he said, very simply. “But certainly I have the gift of
+faithfulness, if it is a gift.”
+
+“We had great discussions on love and jealousy last night.”
+
+“Did you? Whom were you with?”
+
+“I went with Beryl Van Tuyn and Francis Braybrooke.”
+
+“An oddly uneven pair!”
+
+“Alick Craven was with us, too.”
+
+“The boy I met here one Sunday.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth felt an almost fierce flash of irritation as she heard
+him say “boy.”
+
+“He’s hardly a boy,” she said. “He must be at least thirty, and I think
+he seems even older than he is.”
+
+“Does he? He struck me as very young. When he went away with that
+pretty girl it was like young April going out of the room with all the
+daffodils. They matched.”
+
+The intense irritation grew in Lady Sellingworth. She felt as if she
+were being pricked by a multitude of pins.
+
+“Beryl is years and years younger than he is!” she said. “I don’t think
+you are very clever about ages, Seymour. There must be nearly ten years
+difference between them.”
+
+Scarcely had she said this than her mind added, “And about thirty years’
+difference between him and me!” And then something in her--she thought
+of it as the soul--crumpled up, almost as if trying to die and know
+nothing more.
+
+“What is it, Adela?” again he said, gently. “Can’t I help you?”
+
+“No, no, you can’t!” she answered, almost with desperation, no longer
+able to control herself thoroughly.
+
+Suddenly she felt as if she were losing her head, as if she might break
+down before him, let him into her miserable secret.
+
+“The fact is,” she continued, fixing her eyes upon him, as a criminal
+might fix his eyes on his judge while denying everything. “The fact
+is that none of us really can help anyone else. We may think we can
+sometimes, but we can’t. We all work out our own destinies in absolute
+loneliness. You and I are very old friends, and yet we are far away from
+each other, always have been and always shall be. No, you haven’t the
+power to help me, Seymour.”
+
+“But what is the matter, my dear?”
+
+“Life--life!” she said, and there was a fierce exasperation in her
+voice. “I cannot understand the unfairnesses of life, the cruel
+injustices.”
+
+“Are you specially suffering from them to-day?” he asked, and for a
+moment his eyes were less soft, more penetrating, as they looked at her.
+
+“Yes!” she said.
+
+A terrible feeling of “I don’t care!” was taking possession of her, was
+beginning to drive her. And she thought of the women of the streets who,
+in anger or misery, vomit forth their feelings with reckless disregard
+of opinion in a torrent of piercing language.
+
+“I’m really just like one of them!” was her thought. “Trimmed up as a
+lady!”
+
+“Some people have such happy lives, years and years of happiness, and
+others are tortured and tormented, and all their efforts to be happy, or
+even to be at peace, without any real happiness, are in vain. It is of
+no use rebelling, of course, and rebellion only reacts on the rebel and
+makes everything worse, but still--”
+
+Her face suddenly twisted. In all her life she thought she had never
+felt so utterly hopeless before.
+
+Sir Seymour stretched out a hand to put it on hers, but she drew away.
+
+“No, no--don’t! I’m not--you can’t do anything, Seymour. It’s no use!”
+
+She got up from the sofa, and walked away down the long drawing-room,
+trying to struggle with herself, to get back self-control. It was like
+madness this abrupt access of passion and violent despair, and she did
+not know how to deal with it, did not feel capable of dealing with it.
+She looked out of the window into Berkeley Square, after pulling back
+curtain and blind. Always Berkeley Square! Berkeley Square till absolute
+old age, and then death came! And she seemed to see her own funeral
+leaving the door. Good-bye to Berkeley Square! She let the blind drop,
+the curtain fall into its place.
+
+Sir Seymour had got up and was standing by the fire. She saw him in the
+distance, that faithful old man, and she wished she could love him. She
+clenched her hands, trying to will herself to love him and to want to
+take him into her intimate life. But she could not bring herself to go
+back to him just then, and she did not know what she was going to do.
+Perhaps she would have left the room had not an interruption occurred.
+She heard the door open and saw Murgatroyd and the footman bringing in
+tea.
+
+“You can turn up another light, Murgatroyd,” she said, instantly
+recovering herself sufficiently to speak in a natural voice.
+
+And she walked back down the room to Sir Seymour, carrying with her a
+little silver vase full of very large white carnations.
+
+“These are the flowers I was speaking about,” she said to him. “Have you
+ever seen any so large before? They look almost unnatural, don’t they?”
+
+When the servants were gone she said:
+
+“You must think me half crazy, Seymour.”
+
+“No; but I don’t understand what has happened.”
+
+“_I_ have happened, I and my miserable disgusting mind and brain and
+temperament. That’s all!”
+
+“You are very severe on yourself.”
+
+“Tell me--have you ever been severe on me in your mind? You don’t really
+know me. Nobody does or ever will. But you know me what is called well.
+Have you ever been mentally severe, hard on me?”
+
+“Yes, sometimes,” he answered gravely.
+
+She felt suddenly rather cold, and she knew that his answer had
+surprised her. She had certainly expected him to say, “Never, my dear!”
+
+“I thought so,” she said.
+
+And, while saying it, she was scarcely conscious that she was telling a
+lie.
+
+“But you must not think that such thoughts about you ever make the least
+difference in my feeling for you,” he said. “That has never changed,
+never could change.”
+
+“Oh--I don’t know!” she said in a rather hard voice. “Everything can
+change, I think.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I suppose you have often disapproved of things I have done?”
+
+“Sometimes I have.”
+
+“Tell me, if--if things had been different, and you and I had come
+together, what would you have done if you had disapproved of my
+conduct?”
+
+“What is the good of entering upon that?”
+
+“Yes; do tell me! I want to know.”
+
+“I hope I should find the way to hold a woman who was mine,” he said,
+with a sort of decisive calmness, but with a great temperateness.
+
+“But if you married an ungovernable creature?”
+
+“I doubt if anybody is absolutely ungovernable. In the army I have had
+to deal with some stiff propositions; but there is always a way.”
+
+“Is there? But in the army you deal with men. And we are so utterly
+different.”
+
+“I think I should have found the way.”
+
+“Could he find the way now?” she thought. “Shall I do it? Shall I risk
+it?”
+
+“Why do you look at me like that?” he asked; “almost as if you were
+looking at me for the first time and were trying to make me out?”
+
+She did not answer, but gave him his tea and sat back on her sofa.
+
+“You sent for me for some special reason. You had some plan, some
+project in your mind,” he continued. “I did not realize that at first,
+but now I am sure of it. You want me to help you in some way, don’t
+you?”
+
+She was still companioned by the desperation which had come upon her
+when she had made that, for her, terrible comparison between Beryl Van
+Tuyn’s age and Craven’s. Somehow it had opened her eyes--her own remark.
+In hearing it she had seemed to hear other voices, almost a sea of
+voices, saying things about herself, pitying things, sneering things,
+bitter things; worst of all, things which sent a wave of contemptuous
+laughter through the society to which she belonged. Ten years multiplied
+by three! No, it was impossible! But there was only one way out. She was
+almost sure that if she were left to herself, were left to be her own
+mistress in perfect freedom, her temperament would run away with her
+again as it had so often done in the past. She was almost sure that
+she would brave the ridicule, would turn a face of stone to the subtle
+condemnation, would defy the contempt of the “old guard,” the sorrow
+and pity of Seymour, the anger of Beryl Van Tuyn, even her own
+self-contempt, in order to satisfy the imperious driving force within
+her which once again gave her no rest. Seymour could save her from all
+that, save her almost forcibly. Safety from it was there with her in
+the room. Rocheouart, Rupert Louth, other young men were about her for a
+moment. The brown eyes of the man who had stolen her jewels looked down
+into hers pleading for--her property. After all her experiences could
+she be fool enough to follow a marshlight again? But Alick Craven was
+different from all these men. She gave him something that he really
+seemed to want. He would be sorry, he would perhaps be resentful, if she
+took it away.
+
+“Adela, if you cannot trust the old dog whom can you trust?”
+
+“I know--I know!”
+
+But again she was silent. If Seymour only knew how near he perhaps was
+to his greatest desire’s fulfilment! If he only knew the conflict which
+was raging in her! At one moment she was on the edge of giving in, and
+flinging herself into prison and safety. At another she recoiled. How
+much did Seymour know of her? How well did he understand her?
+
+“You said just now that you had sometimes been hard on me in your mind,”
+ she said abruptly. “What about?”
+
+“That’s all long ago.”
+
+“How long ago?”
+
+“Years and years.”
+
+“Ten years?”
+
+“Yes--quite.”
+
+“You have--you have respected me for ten years?”
+
+“And loved you for a great many more.”
+
+“Never mind about love! You have respected me for ten years.”
+
+“Yes, Adela.”
+
+“Tell me--have you loved me more since you have been able to respect
+me?”
+
+“I think I have. To respect means a great deal with me.”
+
+“I must have often disgusted you very much before ten years ago. I
+expect you have often wondered very much about me, Seymour?”
+
+“It is difficult to understand the great differences between your own
+temperament and another’s, of course.”
+
+“Yes. How can faithfulness be expected to understand its opposite? You
+have lived like a monk, almost, and I--I have lived like a courtesan.”
+
+“Adela!”
+
+His deep voice sounded terribly hurt.
+
+“Oh, Seymour, you and I--we have always lived in the world. We know all
+its humbug by heart. We are both old--old now, and why should we pretend
+to each other? You know how lots of us have lived, no one better. And I
+suppose I have been one of the worst. But, as you say, for ten years now
+I have behaved myself.”
+
+She stopped. She longed to say, “And, my God, Seymour, I am sick of
+behaving myself!” That would have been the naked truth. But even to him,
+after what she had just said, she could not utter it. Instead, she added
+after a moment:
+
+“A great many lies have been lifted up as guiding lamps to men in the
+darkness. One of them is the saying: ‘Virtue is its own reward.’ I have
+behaved for ten years, and I know it is a lie.”
+
+“Adela, what is exasperating you to-day? Can’t you tell me?”
+
+Once more she looked at him with a sharp and intense scrutiny. She
+thought it was really a final look, and one that was to decide her fate;
+his too, though he did not know it. She knew his worth. She knew the
+value of the dweller in his temple, and had no need to debate about
+that. But she was one of those to whom the temple means much. She could
+not dissociate dweller from dwelling. The outside had always had a
+tremendous influence upon her, and time had not lessened that influence.
+Perhaps Sir Seymour felt that she was trying to come to some great
+decision, though he did not know, or even suspect, what that decision
+was. For long ago he had finally given up all hope of ever winning her
+for his wife. He sat still after asking this question. The lamplight
+shone over his thick, curly white hair, his lined, weather-beaten,
+distinguished old face, broad, cavalryman’s hands, upright figure, shone
+into his faithful dog’s eyes. And she looked and took in every physical
+detail, as only a woman can when she looks at a man whom she is
+considering in a certain way.
+
+The silence seemed long. At last he broke it. For he had seen an
+expression of despair come into her face.
+
+“My dear, what is it? You must tell me!”
+
+But suddenly the look of despair gave place to a mocking look which he
+knew very well.
+
+“It’s only boredom, Seymour. I have had too much of Berkeley Square. I
+think I shall go away for a little.”
+
+“To Cap Martin?”
+
+“Perhaps. Where does one go when one wants to run away from oneself?”
+
+And then she changed the conversation and talked, as she generally
+talked to Sir Seymour, of the life they both knew, of the doings at
+Court, of politics, people, the state of the country, what was likely to
+come to old England.
+
+She had decided against Seymour. But she had not decided for Craven.
+After a moment of despair, of feeling herself lost, she had suddenly
+said to herself, or a voice had said in her, a voice coming from she
+knew not where:
+
+“I will remain free, but henceforth I will be my own mistress in
+freedom, not the slave of myself.”
+
+And then mentally she had dismissed both Seymour and Craven out of her
+life, the one as a possible husband, the other as a friend.
+
+If she could not bring herself to take the one, then she would not keep
+the other. She must seek for peace in loneliness. Evidently that was
+her destiny. She gave herself to it with mocking eyes and despair in her
+heart.
+
+
+
+
+PART FIVE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Three days later, soon after four o’clock, Craven rang the bell at
+Lady Sellingworth’s door. As he stood for a moment waiting for it to be
+answered he wondered whether she would be at home to him, how she would
+greet him if she chose to see him. The door was opened by a footman.
+
+“Is her ladyship at home?”
+
+“Her ladyship has gone out of town, sir.”
+
+“When will she be back?”
+
+“I couldn’t say, sir. Her ladyship has gone abroad.”
+
+Craven stood for a moment without speaking. He was amazed, and felt as
+if he had received a blow. Finally, he said:
+
+“Do you think she will be long away?”
+
+“Her ladyship has gone for some time, sir, I believe.”
+
+The young man’s face, firm, with rosy cheeks and shallow, blue eyes, was
+strangely inexpressive. Craven hesitated, then said:
+
+“Do you know where her ladyship has gone? I--I wish to write a note to
+her.”
+
+“I believe it’s some place near Monte Carlo, sir. Her ladyship gave
+orders that no letters were to be forwarded for the present.”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+Craven turned away and walked slowly towards Mayfair. He felt startled
+and hurt, even angry. So this was friendship! And he had been foolish
+enough to think that Lady Sellingworth was beginning to value his
+company, that she was a lonely woman, and that perhaps his visits, his
+sympathy, meant something, even a great deal to her. What a young fool
+he had been! And what a humbug she must be! Suddenly London seemed
+empty. He remembered the coldness in the wording of the note she had
+sent him saying that she could not see him the day after the theatre
+party. She had put forward no excuse, no explanation. What had happened?
+He felt that something must have happened which had changed her feeling
+towards him. For though he told himself that she must be a humbug, he
+did not really feel that she was one. Perhaps she was angry with him,
+and that was why she had not chosen to tell him that she was going
+abroad before she started. But what reason had he given her for anger?
+Mentally he reviewed the events of their last evening together. It had
+been quite a gay evening. Nothing disagreeable had happened unless--Lady
+Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde came to his mind. He saw them before him with
+their observant, experienced eyes, their smiling, satirical lips. They
+had made him secretly uncomfortable. He had felt undressed when he was
+with them, and had realized that they knew of and were probably
+amused by his friendship for Lady Sellingworth. And he had hated their
+knowledge. Perhaps she had hated it too, although she had not shown a
+trace of discomfort. Or, perhaps, she had disliked his manner with Miss
+Van Tuyn, assumed to hide his own sensitiveness. And at that moment he
+thought of his intercourse with Miss Van Tuyn with exaggeration. It
+was possible that he had acted badly, had been blatant. But anyhow Lady
+Sellingworth had been very unkind. She ought to have told him that she
+was going abroad, to have let him see her before she went.
+
+He felt that this short episode in his life was quite over. It had ended
+abruptly, undramatically. It had seemed to mean a good deal, and it had
+really meant nothing. What a boy he had been through it all! His cheeks
+burned at the thought. And he had prided himself on being a thorough
+man of the world. Evidently, despite his knowledge of life, his Foreign
+Office training, his experience of war--he had been a soldier for two
+years--he was really something of a simpleton. He had “given himself
+away” to Braybrooke, and probably to others as well, to Lady Wrackley,
+Mrs. Ackroyde, and perhaps even to Miss Van Tuyn. And to Lady
+Sellingworth!
+
+What had she thought of him? What did she think of him? Nothing perhaps.
+She had belonged to the “old guard.” Many men had passed through her
+hands. He felt at that moment acute hostility to women. They were
+treacherous, unreliable, even the best of them. They had not the
+continuity which belonged to men. Even elderly women--he was thinking of
+women of the world--even they were not to be trusted. Life was warfare
+even when war was over. One had to fight always against the instability
+of those around you. And yet there was planted in a man--at any rate
+there was planted in him--a deep longing for stability, a need to
+trust, a desire to attach himself to someone with whom he could be quite
+unreserved, to whom he could “open out” without fear of criticism or of
+misunderstanding.
+
+He had believed that in Lady Sellingworth he had found such an one,
+and now he had been shown his mistake. He reached the house in which he
+lived, but although he had walked to it with the intention of going in
+he paused on the threshold, then turned away and went on towards Hyde
+Park. Night was falling; the damp softness of late autumn companioned
+him wistfully. The streets were not very full. London seemed unusually
+quiet that evening. But when he reached the Marble Arch he saw people
+streaming hither and thither, hurrying towards Oxford Street, pouring
+into the Edgware Road, climbing upon omnibuses which were bound for
+Notting Hill, Ealing and Acton, drifting towards the wide and gloomy
+spaces of the Park. He crossed the great roadway and went into the Park,
+too. Attracted by a small gathering of dark figures he joined them, and
+standing among nondescript loungers he listened for a few minutes to
+a narrow-chested man with a long, haggard face, a wispy beard and
+protruding, decayed teeth, who was addressing those about him on the
+mysteries of life.
+
+He spoke of the struggle for bread, of materialism, of the illusions
+of sensuality, of the Universal Intelligence, of the blind cruelty of
+existence.
+
+“You are all unhappy!” he exclaimed, in a thin but carrying voice, which
+sounded genteel and fanatical. “You rush here and there not knowing why
+or wherefore. Many of you have come into this very Park to-night without
+any object, driven by the wish for something to take you out of your
+miseries. Can you deny it, I say?”
+
+A tall soldier who was standing near Craven looked down at the plump
+girl beside him and said:
+
+“How’s that, Lil? We’re both jolly miserable, ain’t we?”
+
+“Go along with yer! Not me!” was the response, with an impudent look.
+
+“Then let’s get on where it’s quieter. What ho!”
+
+They moved demurely away.
+
+“Can you deny,” the narrow-chested man continued, sawing the air with
+a thin, dirty hand, “that you are all dissatisfied with life, that you
+wonder about it, as Plato wondered, as Tolstoi wondered, as the Dean of
+St. Paul’s wonders, as I am wondering now? From this very Park you look
+up at the stars, when there are any, and you ask yourselves--”
+
+At this point in the discourse Craven turned away, feeling that
+edification was scarcely to be found by him here.
+
+Certainly at this moment he was dissatisfied with life. But that was
+Lady Sellingworth’s fault. If he were sitting with her now in Berkeley
+square the scheme of things would probably not seem all out of gear.
+He wondered where she was, what she was doing! The footman had said he
+believed she was near Monte Carlo. Craven remembered once hearing her
+say she was fond of Cap Martin. Probably she was staying there. It
+occurred to him that possibly she had told some of her friends of her
+approaching departure, though she had chosen to conceal it from him.
+Miss Van Tuyn might have known of it. He resolved to go to Brook
+Street and find out whether the charming girl had been in the secret.
+Claridge’s was close by. It would be something to do. If he could not
+see Lady Sellingworth he wanted to talk about her. And at that moment
+his obscure irritation made him turn towards youth. Old age had cheated
+him. Well, he was young; he would seek consolation!
+
+At Claridge’s he inquired for Miss Van Tuyn, and was told she was out,
+had been out since the morning. Craven was pulling his card-case out of
+his pocket when he heard a voice say: “Are there any letters for me?” He
+swung round and there stood Miss Van Tuyn quite near him. For an instant
+she did not see him, and he had time to note that she looked even
+unusually vivid and brilliant. An attendant handed her some letters. She
+took them, turned and saw Craven.
+
+“I had just asked for you,” he said, taking off his hat.
+
+“Oh! How nice of you!”
+
+Her eyes were shining. He felt a controlled excitement in her. Her face
+seemed to be trying to tell something which her mind would not choose to
+tell. He wondered what it was, this secret which he divined.
+
+“Come upstairs and we’ll have a talk in my sitting-room.”
+
+She looked at him narrowly, he thought, as they went together to the
+lift. She seemed to have a little less self-possession than usual, even
+to be slightly self-conscious and because of that watchful.
+
+When they were in her sitting-room she took off her hat, as if tired,
+put it on a table and sat down by the fire.
+
+“I’ve been out all day,” she said.
+
+“Yes? Are you still having painting lessons?”
+
+“That’s it--painting lessons. Dick is an extraordinary man.”
+
+“You mean Dick Garstin. I don’t know him.”
+
+“He’s absolutely unscrupulous, but a genius. I believe genius always is
+unscrupulous. I am sure of it. It cannot be anything else.”
+
+“That’s a pity.”
+
+“I don’t know that it is.”
+
+“But how does Dick Garstin show his unscrupulousness?”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked suddenly wary.
+
+“Oh--in all sorts of ways. He uses people. He looks on people as mere
+material. He doesn’t care for their feelings. He doesn’t care what
+happens to them. If he gets out of them what he wants it’s enough. After
+that they may go to perdition, and he wouldn’t stretch out a finger to
+save them.”
+
+“What a delightful individual!”
+
+“Ah!--you don’t understand genius.”
+
+Craven felt rather nettled. He cared a good deal for the arts, and had
+no wish to be set among the Philistines.
+
+“And--do you?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, I think so. I’m not creative, but I’m very comprehending. Artists
+of all kinds feel that instinctively. That’s why they come round me in
+Paris.”
+
+“Yes, you do understand!” he acknowledged, remembering her enthusiasm at
+the theatre. “But I think _you_ are unscrupulous, too.”
+
+He said it hardily, looking straight at her, and wondering what she had
+been doing that afternoon before she arrived at the hotel.
+
+She smiled, making her eyes narrow.
+
+“Then perhaps I am half-way to genius.”
+
+“Would you be willing to sacrifice all the moral qualities if you could
+have genius in exchange?”
+
+“You can’t expect me to say so. But it would be grand to have power over
+men.”
+
+“You have that already.”
+
+She looked at him satirically.
+
+“Do you know you’re a terrible humbug?” she said.
+
+“And are not you?”
+
+“No; I think I show myself very much as I really am.”
+
+“Can a woman do that?” he said, with sudden moodiness.
+
+“It depends. Mrs. Ackroyde can and Lady Wrackley can’t.”
+
+“And--Lady Sellingworth?” he asked.
+
+“I’m afraid she is a bit of a humbug,” said Miss Van Tuyn, without
+venom.
+
+“I wonder when she’ll be back?”
+
+“Back? Where from?”
+
+“Surely you know she had gone abroad?”
+
+The look of surprise in Miss Van Tuyn’s face was so obviously genuine
+that Craven added:
+
+“You didn’t? Well, she has gone away for some time.”
+
+“Where to?”
+
+“Somewhere on the Riviera, I believe. Probably Cap Martin. But letters
+are not to be forwarded.”
+
+“At this time of year! Has she gone away alone?”
+
+“I suppose so.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked at him with a sort of cold, almost hostile
+shrewdness.
+
+“And she told you she was going?”
+
+“Why should she tell me?” he said, with a hint of defiance.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn left that at once.
+
+“So Adela has run away!” she said.
+
+She sat for a moment quite still, like one considering something
+carefully.
+
+“But she will come back,” she said presently, looking up at him,
+“bringing her sheaves with her.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“Don’t you remember--in the Bible?”
+
+“But what has that to do with Lady Sellingworth?”
+
+“Perhaps you’ll understand when she comes back.”
+
+“I am really quite in the dark,” he said, with obvious sincerity. “And
+it’s nothing to me whether Lady Sellingworth comes back or stops away.”
+
+“I thought you joined with me in adoring her.”
+
+“Adoration isn’t the word. And you know it.”
+
+“And letters are not to be forwarded?” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“I heard so.”
+
+“Ah! when you went to call on her!”
+
+“Now you are merely guessing!”
+
+“It must be terrible to be old!” said Miss Van Tuyn, with a change of
+manner. “Just think of going off alone to the Riviera in the autumn at
+the age of sixty! Beauties ought to die at fifty. Plain women can live
+to a hundred if they like, and it doesn’t really matter. Their tragedy
+is not much worse then than it is at thirty-five. But beauties should
+never live beyond fifty--at the very latest.”
+
+“Then you must commit suicide at that age.”
+
+“Thank you. The old women in hotels!”
+
+She shivered, and it seemed to him that her body shook naturally, as if
+it couldn’t help shaking.
+
+“But--remember--she’ll come back with her sheaves!” she added, looking
+at him. “And then the ‘old guard’ will fall upon her.”
+
+For a moment she looked cruel, and though he did not understand her
+meaning Craven realized that she would not have much pity for Lady
+Sellingworth in misfortune. But Lady Sellingworth was cruel, too, had
+been cruel to him. And he saw humanity without tenderness, teeth and
+claws at work, barbarity coming to its own through the varnish.
+
+He only said:
+
+“I may be very stupid, but I don’t understand.”
+
+And then he changed the subject of conversation. Miss Van Tuyn became
+gradually nicer to him, but he felt that she still cherished a faint
+hostility to him. Perhaps she thought he regarded her as a substitute.
+And was not that really the fact? He tried to sweep the hostility away.
+He laid himself out to be charming to her. The Lady Sellingworth episode
+was over. He would give himself to a different side of his nature,
+a side to which Miss Van Tuyn appealed. She did not encourage him at
+first, and he was driven to force the note slightly. When he went away
+they had arranged to play golf together, to dine together one night
+at the _Bella Napoli_. It was he who had suggested, even urged these
+diversions. For she had almost made him plead to her, had seemed oddly
+doubtful about seeing more of him in intimacy. And when he left her he
+was half angry with himself for making such a fuss about trifles. But
+the truth was--and perhaps she suspected it--that he was trying
+to escape from depression, caused by a sense of injury, through an
+adventure. He felt Miss Van Tuyn’s great physical attraction, and just
+then he wished that it would overwhelm him. If it did he would
+soon cease from minding what Lady Sellingworth had done. A certain
+recklessness possessed him.
+
+He dined with a friend at the club and stayed there rather late. When he
+was leaving about half past eleven Braybrooke dropped in after a
+party, and he told Braybrooke of Lady Sellingworth’s departure for the
+Continent. The world’s governess showed even more surprise than Miss
+Van Tuyn had shown. He had had no idea that Adela Sellingworth was going
+abroad. She must have decided on it very abruptly. He had seen nothing
+in the _Morning Post_. Had she gone alone? And no letters to be
+forwarded! Dear me! It was all very odd and unexpected. And she had gone
+on the Riviera at this time of year! But it was a desert; not a soul one
+knew would be there. The best hotels were not even open, he believed.
+
+As he made his comments he observed Craven closely with his small hazel
+eyes, but the young man showed no feeling, and Braybrooke began to think
+that really perhaps he had made a mountain out of a molehill, that
+he had done Adela Sellingworth an injustice. If she had really been
+inclined to any folly about his young friend she would certainly not
+have left London in this mysterious manner.
+
+“I suppose she let you know she was going?” he hazarded.
+
+“Oh, no. I happened to call and the footman gave me the news.”
+
+“I hope she isn’t ill,” said Braybrooke with sudden gravity.
+
+“Ill? Why should you think--?”
+
+“There are women who hate it to be known when they are ill. Catherine
+Bewdley went away without a word and was operated on at Lausanne, and
+not one of us knew of it till it was all over. I don’t quite like the
+look of things. Letters not being forwarded--ha!”
+
+“But near Monte Carlo!”
+
+“_Is_ it near Monte Carlo?”
+
+He pursed his lips and went into the club looking grave, while Craven
+went out into the night. It was black and damp. The pavement seemed
+sweating. The hands of both autumn and winter were laid upon London. But
+soon the hands of autumn would fail and winter would have the huge city
+as its possession.
+
+“_Is_ it Monte Carlo?”
+
+Braybrooke’s question echoed in Craven’s mind. Could he have done Lady
+Sellingworth a wrong? Was there perhaps something behind her sudden
+departure in silence which altogether excused it? She might be ill and
+have disappeared without a word to some doctor’s clinic, as Braybrooke
+had suggested. Women sometimes had heroic silences. Craven thought she
+could be heroic. There was something very strong in her, he thought,
+combined perhaps with many weaknesses. He wished he knew where she was,
+what she was doing, whom she was with or whether she was alone. His
+desire trailed after her against his will. Undoubtedly he missed her,
+and felt oddly homeless now she was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Miss Van Tuyn believed that things were coming her way after all. Young
+Craven was suddenly released, and another very strong interest was
+dawning in her life. Craven had not been wrong in thinking that she
+was secretly excited when he met her in the hall at Claridge’s. She
+had fulfilled her promise to Dick Garstin, driven to fulfilment by his
+taunt. No one should say with truth that she was afraid of anyone, man
+or woman. She would prove to Garstin that she was not afraid of the
+man he was trying to paint. So, on the day of their conversation in the
+studio, she had left Glebe Place with Arabian. For the first time she
+had been alone with him for more than a few minutes.
+
+She had gone both eagerly and reluctantly; reluctantly because there
+was really something in Arabian which woke in her a sort of frail
+and quivering anxiety such as she had never felt before in any man’s
+company; eagerly because Garstin had put into words what had till then
+been only a suspicion in her mind. He had told her that Arabian was in
+love with her. Was that true? Even now she was not sure. That was part
+of the reason why she was not quite at ease with Arabian. She was not
+sure of anything about him except that he was marvellously handsome. But
+Garstin was piercingly sharp. What he asserted about anyone was usually
+the fact. He could hardly be mistaken. Yet how could a woman be in doubt
+about such a thing? And she was still, in spite of her vanity, in doubt.
+
+When Arabian had come into the studio that day, and had seen the sketch
+of him ripped up by the palette knife, he had looked almost fierce for
+a moment. He had turned towards Garstin with a sort of hauteur like one
+demanding, and having the right to demand, an explanation.
+
+“What’s the row?” Garstin had said, with almost insolent defiance. “I
+destroyed it because it’s damned bad. I hadn’t got you.”
+
+And then he had taken the canvas from the easel and had thrown it
+contemptuously into a corner of the studio.
+
+Arabian had said nothing, but there had been a cloud on his face, and
+Miss Van Tuyn had known that he was angry, as a man is angry when he
+sees a bit of his property destroyed by another. And she had remembered
+her words to Arabian, that the least sketch by Garstin was worth a great
+deal of money.
+
+Surely Arabian was a greedy man.
+
+No work had been done in the studio that morning. They had sat and
+talked for a while. Garstin had said most. He had been more agreeable
+than usual, and had explained to Arabian, rather as one explains to a
+child, that a worker in an art is sometimes baffled for a time, a writer
+by his theme, a musician by his floating and perhaps half-nebulous
+conception, a painter by his subject. Then he must wait, cursing
+perhaps, damning his own impotence, dreading its continuance. But
+there is nothing else to be done. _Pazienza!_ And he had enlarged upon
+patience. And Arabian had listened politely, had looked as if he were
+trying to understand.
+
+“I’ll try again!” Garstin had said. “You must give me time, my boy.
+You’re not in a hurry to leave London, are you?”
+
+And then Miss Van Tuyn had seen Arabian’s eyes turn to her as he had
+said, but rather doubtfully:
+
+“I don’t know whether I am.”
+
+Garstin’s eyes had said to her with sharp imperativeness:
+
+“Keep him! You’re not to let him go!”
+
+And she had kept her promise; she had gone away from the studio with
+Arabian leaving Garstin smiling at the door. And at that moment she had
+almost hated Garstin.
+
+Arabian had asked her to lunch with him. She had consented. He had
+suggested a cab, and the Savoy or the Carlton, or the Ritz if she
+preferred it. But she had quickly replied that she knew of a small
+restaurant close to Sloane Square Station where the food was very good.
+Many painters and writers went there.
+
+“But we are not painters and writers!” Arabian had said.
+
+Nevertheless they had gone there, and had lunched in a quiet corner, and
+she had left him about three o’clock.
+
+On the day of Craven’s call at Claridge’s she had been with Arabian
+again. Garstin had begun another picture, and had worked on through
+the lunch hour. Later they had had some food, a sort of picnic, in the
+studio, and then she had walked away with Arabian. She had just left him
+when she met Craven in the hall of the hotel. Garstin had not allowed
+either her or Arabian to look at what he had done. He had, Miss Van Tuyn
+thought, seemed unusually nervous and diffident about his work. She did
+not know how he had gone on, and was curious. But she was going to dine
+with him that night. Perhaps he would tell her then, or perhaps he had
+only asked her to dinner that she might tell him about Arabian.
+
+And in the midst of all this had come Craven with his changed manner and
+his news about Lady Sellingworth.
+
+Decidedly things were taking a turn for the better. To Miss Cronin’s
+increasingly plaintive inquiries as to when they would return to Paris
+Miss Van Tuyn gave evasive replies. She was held in London, and had
+almost forgotten her friends in Paris.
+
+She wondered why Adela had gone away so abruptly. Although she had half
+hinted to Craven that she guessed the reason of this sudden departure,
+and had asserted that Adela would presently come back bringing sheaves
+with her, she was not at all sure that her guess was right. Adela might
+return mysteriously rejuvenated and ready to plunge once more into
+the fray, braving opinion. It might be a case of _reculer pour mieux
+sauter_. On the other hand, it might be a flight from danger. Miss Van
+Tuyn was practically certain that Adela had fallen in love with Alick
+Craven. Was she being sensible and deliberately keeping out of his way,
+or was she being mad and trying to be made young at sixty in order to
+return armed for his captivation. Time would show. Meanwhile the ground
+was unexpectedly clear. Craven was seeking her, and she, by Garstin’s
+orders and in the strict service of art, was pushing her way towards a
+sort of intimacy with Arabian. But the difference between the two men!
+
+Craven’s visit to Claridge’s immediately after the hours spent
+with Arabian had emphasized for her the mystery of the latter. Her
+understanding of Craven underlined her ignorance about Arabian. The
+confidence she felt in Craven--a confidence quite independent of his
+liking, or not liking her--marked for her the fact that she had no
+confidence in Arabian. Craven was just an English gentleman. He might
+have done all sorts of things, but he was obviously a thoroughly
+straight and decent fellow. A woman had only to glance at him to know
+the things he could never do. But when she looked at Arabian--well,
+then, the feeling was rather that Arabian might do anything. Craven
+belonged obviously to a class, although he had a strong and attractive
+individuality. English diplomacy presented many men of his type to the
+embassies in foreign countries. But to what class did Arabian
+belong? Even Dick Garstin was quite comprehensible, in spite of his
+extraordinary manners and almost violent originality. He was a Bohemian,
+with touches of genius, touches of vulgarity. There were others less
+than him, yet not wholly unlike him, men of the studios, of the painting
+schools, smelling as it were of Chelsea and the _Quartier Latin_. But
+Arabian seemed to stand alone. When with him Miss Van Tuyn could not
+tell what type of man must inevitably be his natural comrade, what must
+inevitably be his natural environment. She could see him at Monte Carlo,
+in the restaurants of Paris, in the _Galleria_ at Naples, in Cairo, in
+Tunis, in a dozen places. But she could not see him at home. Was he
+the eternal traveller, with plenty of money, a taste for luxury and
+the wandering spirit? Or had he some purpose which drove him about the
+world?
+
+After Craven had left her that day at Claridge’s she had a sudden wish
+to bring him and Craven together, to see how they got on together, to
+hear Craven’s opinion of Arabian. Perhaps she could manage a meeting
+between the two men presently. Why not?
+
+Arabian had not attempted to make love to her on either of the two
+occasions when she had been with him alone. Only his eyes had seemed to
+tell her that he admired her very much, that he wanted something of her.
+His manner had been noncommittal. He had seemed to be on his guard.
+
+There was something in Arabian which suggested to Miss Van Tuyn
+suspicion. He was surely a man who, despite his “open” look, his bold
+features, his enormously self-possessed manner, was suspicious of
+others. He had little confidence in others. She was almost certain of
+that. There was nothing cat-like in his appearance, yet at moments when
+with him she thought of a tomcat, of its swiftness, suppleness, gliding
+energies and watchful reserve. She suspected claws in his velvet, too.
+And yet surely he looked honest. She thought his look was honest, but
+that his “atmosphere” was not. Often he had a straight look--she could
+not deny that to herself. He could gaze at you and let you return his
+gaze. And yet she had not been able to read what he was in his eyes.
+
+He was not very easy to get on with somehow, although there was a great
+deal of charm in his manner and although he was full of self-confidence
+and evidently accustomed to women. But to what women was he accustomed?
+That was a question which Miss Van Tuyn asked herself. Craven was
+obviously at home in the society of ordinary ladies and of women of the
+world. You knew that somehow directly you were with him. But--Arabian?
+
+Miss Van Tuyn could see him with smart _cocottes_. He would surely be
+very much at ease with them. And many of them would be ready to adore
+such a man. For there was probably a strain of brutality somewhere under
+his charm. And they would love that. She could even see him, or fancied
+that she could, with street women. For there was surely a touch of the
+street in him. He must have been bred up in cities. He did not belong
+to any fields or any woods that she knew or knew of. And--other women?
+Well, she was numbered among those other women. And how was he with
+her so far? Charming, easy, bold--yes; but also reserved, absolutely
+non-committal. She was not at all sure whether she was going to be of
+much use to Dick Garstin, except perhaps in her own person. Instead of
+delivering to him the man he wanted to come at perhaps she would end by
+delivering a woman worth painting--herself.
+
+For there was something in Arabian that was certainly dangerous to
+her, something in him that excited her, that lifted her into an
+unusual vitality. She did not quite know what it was. But she felt it
+definitely. When she was with him alone she seemed to be in an adventure
+through which a current of definite danger was flowing. No other man had
+ever brought a sensation like that into her life, although she had met
+many types of men in Paris, had known well talented men of acknowledged
+bad character, reckless of the _convenances_, men who snapped their
+fingers at all the prejudices of the orthodox, and who made no
+distinction between virtues and vices, following only their own
+inclinations.
+
+Such a man was Dick Garstin. Yet Miss Van Tuyn had never with him had
+the sensation of being near to something dangerous which she had with
+Arabian. Yet Arabian was scrupulously polite, was quiet, almost gentle
+in manner, and had a great deal of charm.
+
+She remembered his following her in the street at night. What would he
+be like with women of that sort? Would his gentleness be in evidence
+with them, or would a totally different individual rise to the surface
+of him, a beast of prey perhaps with the jungle in its eyes?
+
+Something in her shrank from Arabian as she had never yet shrunk from
+a human being. But something else was fascinated by him. She had the
+American woman’s outlook on men. She expected men to hold their own in
+the world with other men, to be self-possessed, cool-headed, and bold in
+their careers, but to be subservient in their relations with women. To
+be ruled by a husband would have seemed to her to be quite unnatural, to
+rule him quite natural. She felt sure that no woman would be likely to
+rule Arabian. She felt sure that his outlook on women was absolutely
+unlike that of the American man. When she looked at him she thought of
+the rape of the Sabines. Surely he was a primitive under his mask
+of almost careful smartness and conventionality. There was something
+primitive in her, too, and she became aware of that now. Hitherto she
+had been inclined to believe that she was essentially complex, cerebral,
+free from any trace of sentimentality, quiveringly responsive to the
+appealing voices of the arts, healthily responsive to the joys of
+athleticism almost in the way of a Greek youth in the early days of the
+world, but that she was free from all taint of animalism. Men had told
+her that, in spite of her charm and the fascination they felt in her,
+she lacked one thing--what they chose to call temperament. That was
+why, they said, she was able to live as she did, audaciously, even
+eccentrically, without being kicked out of society as “impossible.” She
+was saved from disaster by her interior coldness. She lived by the brain
+rather than by the senses. And she had taken this verdict to herself as
+praise. She had felt refinement in her freedom from ordinary desire. She
+had been proud of worshipping beauty without any coarse longing. To
+her her bronzes had typified something that she valued in herself. Her
+immense vanity had not been blended with those passions which shake many
+women, which had devastated Lady Sellingworth. A coarseness in her mind
+made her love to be physically desired by men, but no coarseness of
+body made her desire them. And she had supposed that she represented the
+ultra modern type of woman, the woman who without being cold--she would
+not acknowledge that she was cold--was free from the slavish instinct
+which makes all the ordinary women sisters in the vulgar bosom of
+nature.
+
+But since she had seen Arabian she felt less highly civilized; she knew
+that in her, too, lurked the horrible primitive. And that troubled and
+at the same time fascinated her.
+
+Was that why when she had seen Arabian for the first time she had
+resolved to get to know him? She had called him a living bronze, but
+she had thought of him from the first, perhaps, with ardour as flesh and
+blood.
+
+And yet at moments he repelled her. She, who was so audacious, did not
+want to show herself with him at the Ritz, to walk down Piccadilly with
+him in daylight. As she had said to Dick Garstin, an atmosphere seemed
+to hang about Arabian--an unsafe atmosphere. She did not know where she
+was in it. She lost her bearings, could not see her way, heard steps and
+voices that sounded strange. And the end of it all was--“I don’t know.”
+ When she thought of Arabian always that sentence was in her mind--“I
+don’t know.”
+
+She was strangely excited. And now Craven came to her. And he attracted
+her, too, but in such a different way!
+
+Suddenly London was interesting! And “I don’t know when we shall go back
+to Paris!” she said to Miss Cronin.
+
+“Is it the Wallace Collection, Beryl?” murmured “Old Fanny,” with
+plaintive suspicion over her cup of camomile tea.
+
+“Yes, it’s the Wallace Collection,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+And she went away to dress for her dinner with Dick Garstin.
+
+She met him at a tiny and very French restaurant in Conduit Street,
+where the cooking was absolutely first rate, where there was no sound
+of music, and where very few English people went. There were only some
+eight or ten tables in the cosy, warm little room, and when Miss Van
+Tuyn entered it there were not a dozen people dining. Dick Garstin was
+not there. It was just like him to be late and to keep a woman waiting.
+But he had engaged a table in the corner of the room on the right, away
+from the window. And Miss Van Tuyn was shown to it by a waiter, and sat
+down. On the way she had bought _The Westminster Gazette_. She opened
+it, lit a cigarette, and began to glance at the news. There happened to
+be a letter from Paris in which the writer described a new play which
+had just been produced in an outlying theatre. Miss Van Tuyn read the
+account. She began reading in a casual mood, but almost immediately all
+her attention was grasped and held tight. She forgot where she was,
+let her cigarette go out, did not see Garstin when he came in from
+the street. When he came up and laid a hand on her arm she started
+violently.
+
+“Who’s--Dick!”
+
+An angry look came into her face.
+
+“Why did you do that?”
+
+“What’s the matter?”
+
+He stared at her almost as if fascinated.
+
+“By Jove . . . you look wonderful!”
+
+“I forbid you to touch me like that! I hate being pawed, and you know
+it.”
+
+He glanced at the pale green paper.
+
+“The sea-green incorruptible!”
+
+He stretched out his hand, but she quickly moved the paper out of his
+reach.
+
+“Let us dine. You’ve kept me waiting for ages.”
+
+Garstin sent a look to his waiter, and sat down opposite to Miss Van
+Tuyn with his back to the room.
+
+“I’ll buy a _Westminster_ going back,” he observed. “Bisque! Bring a
+bottle of the Lanson, Raoul.”
+
+He addressed the waiter in French.
+
+“_Oui, m’sieu_.”
+
+“Well iced!”
+
+“_Certainement_, Monsieur Garstin.”
+
+“Better tempered now, Beryl?”
+
+“You always make out that I have the temper of a fiend. I hate being
+startled. That’s all.”
+
+“You’re awfully nervy these days.”
+
+“I think you are the cruellest man I know. If it weren’t for your
+painting no one would have anything to do with you.”
+
+“I shouldn’t care.”
+
+“Yes, you would. You love being worshipped and run after.”
+
+“Good soup, isn’t it?”
+
+She made no answer to this. After a silence she said:
+
+“Why were you so late?”
+
+“To give you time to study the evening paper.”
+
+“Were you working?”
+
+“No--cursing.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“This damned portrait’s going to be no good either!”
+
+“Then you’d better give it up.”
+
+He shot a piercing glance at her.
+
+“It isn’t my way to give things up once I’ve put my hand to them,” he
+observed drily. “And you seem to forget that you put me up to it.”
+
+“That was only a whim. You didn’t take it seriously.”
+
+“I do now, though.”
+
+“But if you’re baffled?”
+
+“For the moment. I’ve nearly always found that the best work comes
+hardest. One has to sweat blood before one reaches the big thing. I
+may begin on him half a dozen times, cut him to ribbons half a dozen
+times--and then do a masterpiece.”
+
+“I don’t think he’ll wait long enough. Another stab of the palette knife
+and you’ll probably see the last of him.”
+
+“Ah--he didn’t like it, did he?”
+
+“He was furious.”
+
+“Did he say anything about it afterwards to you?”
+
+“Not a word. But he was furious. You stabbed money!”
+
+Garstin smiled appreciatively. Raoul was pouring out the champagne.
+Garstin lifted his glass and set it down half empty.
+
+“Had you told him--”
+
+He paused.
+
+“He knows everything you do is worth money, a lot of money.”
+
+“He’s got the hairy heel. I always knew that. We’ll get to his secret
+yet, you and I between us.”
+
+“I am not sure that I can stay over here very much longer, Dick. Paris
+is my home, and I can’t waste my money at Claridge’s for ever.”
+
+“If you like I’ll pay the bill.”
+
+She reddened.
+
+“Do you really think that if I were to go he--Arabian--”
+
+“He’d follow you by the next boat.”
+
+“I’m sure he wouldn’t.”
+
+“You’re not half so vain as I thought you were.”
+
+“When we are alone he never attempts to make love to me. We talk
+platitudes. I know him no better than I did before.”
+
+“He’s a wary bird. But the dawn must come and with it his crow.”
+
+“Well, Dick, I tell you frankly that I may go back to Paris any day.”
+
+“I knew you were nervy to-night. I wish I could find a woman who was a
+match for a man in the nervous system. But there isn’t one. That’s why
+we are so superior. We’ve got steel where you’ve all got fiddle strings.
+Raoul!”
+
+He drank again and ate heartily. He was a voracious eater at times. But
+there were days when he ate nothing and worked incessantly.
+
+They had begun dinner late, and the little restaurant was getting empty.
+Three sets of diners had gone out since they had sat down. The waiters
+were clearing some of the tables. A family party, obviously French,
+lingered at a round table in the middle of the room over their coffee. A
+pale man sat alone in a corner eating pressed duck with greedy avidity.
+And Raoul, leaving Miss Van Tuyn and Garstin, placed a large vase of
+roses on a table close to the window near the door.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn happened to see this action, and a vagrant thought slipped
+through her mind. “Then we are not the last!”
+
+“My nerves are certainly not fiddle strings,” she said. “But I have
+interests which pull me towards Paris.”
+
+“Greater interests here. Have some more champagne! Raoul!”
+
+“M’sieu!”
+
+“You can’t deceive me, Beryl.”
+
+“Your pose of omniscience bores me. Apart from your gift you’re a very
+ordinary man, Dick, if you could only be brought to see it.”
+
+“Arabian fascinates you.”
+
+“He doesn’t.”
+
+“And that’s why you’re afraid of him. You’re afraid of his power because
+you don’t trust him. He’s doing a lot for you. You’re waking up. You’re
+becoming interesting. A few days ago you were only a beautiful spoilt
+American girl, as cool and as hard as ice, brainy, vain, and totally
+without temperament as far as one could see. Your torch was unlit. Now
+this blackguard’s put the match to it.”
+
+“What nonsense, Dick!”
+
+“Raoul!”
+
+“M’sieu?”
+
+“That’s all very well. But my intention is to paint him, not you. Why
+don’t you get to work hard? Why don’t you put your back into it?”
+
+“This is beyond bearing, Dick, even from you!”
+
+She was looking really indignant. Her cheeks and forehead had reddened,
+her eyes seemed to spit fire at him, and her hands trembled.
+
+“Your absolute lack of decent consideration is--you’re canaille! Because
+you’re impotent to paint I am to--no, it’s too much! Canaille! Canaille!
+That’s what you are! I shall go back to Paris. I shall--”
+
+Suddenly she stopped speaking and stared. The red faded out of her face.
+A curiously conscious and intent look came into her eyes. She began to
+move her head as if in recognition of some one, stopped and sat rigid,
+pressing her lips together till her mouth had a hard grim line. Garstin,
+who could only see her and the wall at her back, watched all this with
+sharp interest, then, growing curious, turned round. As he did so he saw
+a tall, very handsome dark girl, who had certainly not been in the room
+when he entered it, going slowly, and as if reluctantly, towards the
+doorway. She was obviously a woman of the demi-monde and probably
+French. As she reached the door she turned her smart, impudent head and
+covered Miss Van Tuyn with an appraising look, cold, keen, vicious in
+its detached intensity, a look such as only a woman can send to another
+woman.
+
+Then she went out, followed by Raoul, who seemed rather agitated, and
+whose back looked appealing.
+
+“Black hair with blue lights in it!” said Garstin. “What a beauty!”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn sighed.
+
+“Why wouldn’t she stay?”
+
+He was still sitting half turned towards the door.
+
+“A table with flowers all ready for her! And she goes! Was she alone?
+Ah--who was with her?”
+
+“Arabian!” said Miss Van Tuyn, coldly.
+
+“And he--”
+
+“He saw us!”
+
+“And took her away! What a lark! Too timid to face us! The naughty boy
+caught out in an escapade! I’ll chaff him to-morrow. All their dinner
+wasted, and I’ll bet it was a good one.”
+
+He chuckled over his wine.
+
+“Did he know that you saw him?”
+
+“I don’t know. He was behind her. He barely showed himself, saw us and
+vanished. He must have called to her, beckoned from the hall. She went
+quite up to the table.”
+
+“So--you’ve taught him timidity! He doesn’t want you to know of his
+under life.”
+
+“Oh, for heaven’s sake let us talk of something else!” said Miss Van
+Tuyn, with an almost passionate note of exasperation. “You bore me,
+bore me, bore me with this man! He seems becoming an obsession with you.
+Paint him, for God’s sake, and then let there be an end of him as far as
+we are concerned. There are lots of other men better-looking than he is.
+But once you have taken an idea into your head there is no peace until
+you have worked it out on canvas. Genius it may be, but it’s terribly
+tiresome to everyone about you. Paint the man--and then let him sink
+back into the depths!”
+
+“Like a sea monster, eh?”
+
+“He is horrible. I always knew it.”
+
+“Come, now! You told me--”
+
+“It doesn’t matter what I told you. He is horrible.”
+
+“What! Just because he comes out to dine with a pretty girl of a certain
+class? I had no idea you were such a Puritan. Raoul!”
+
+“M’sieu!”
+
+Garstin was evidently enjoying himself.
+
+“I know those women! Arabian’s catching it like the devil in Conduit
+Street. She’s giving him something he’ll remember.”
+
+“No!” said Miss Van Tuyn, with hard emphasis.
+
+“What d’you mean?”
+
+“I mean that Arabian is the sort of man who can frighten women. Now if
+you don’t talk of something else I shall leave you here alone. Another
+word on that subject and I go!”
+
+“Tell me, Beryl. What do you really think of Wyndham Lewis? You know his
+portrait of Ezra Pound?”
+
+“Of course I do.”
+
+“Don’t you think it’s a masterpiece?”
+
+“Do you? I can never get at your real ideas about modern painting.”
+
+“And I thought I wore them all down in my own pictures.”
+
+“You certainly don’t sit on the fence when you paint.”
+
+And then they talked pictures. Perhaps Garstin at that moment for once
+laid himself out to be charming. He could fascinate Miss Van Tuyn’s mind
+when he chose. She respected his brain. It could lure her. As a worker
+she secretly almost loved Garstin, and she believed that the world would
+remember him when he was gone to the shadows and the dust.
+
+Two champagne bottles had been emptied when they got up to go. The
+little room was deserted and had a look of being settled in for the
+night. Raoul took his tip and yawned behind his big yellow hand. As Miss
+Van Tuyn was about to leave the restaurant he bent down to the floor and
+picked up a paper which had fallen against the wall near her seat.
+
+“Madame--” he began.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn, who was on her way to the door, did not hear him, and
+Garstin swiftly and softly took the paper and slipped it into the pocket
+of his overcoat. When he had said good-bye to Beryl he went back to
+Glebe Place. He mounted the stairs to the studio on the first floor,
+turned on the lights, went to the Spanish cabinet, poured himself out a
+drink, lit one of the black cigars, then sat down in a worn arm-chair,
+put his feet on the sofa, and unfolded _The Westminster Gazette_. What
+had she been reading so intently? What was it in the paper that had got
+on her nerves?
+
+The political news, the weather, the leading article, notes, reviews of
+new books. He looked carefully at each of the reviews. Not there! Then
+he began to read the news of the day, but found nothing which seemed
+to him capable of gripping Beryl’s attention. Finally, he turned to the
+last page but one of the paper, saw the heading, “Our Paris Letter,” and
+gave the thrush’s call softly. Paris--Beryl! This was sure to be it.
+He began to read, and almost immediately was absorbed. His brows
+contracted, his lips went up towards his long, hooked nose. A strong
+light shone in his hard, intelligent eyes, eyes surely endowed with the
+power to pierce into hidden places. Presently he put the paper down. So
+that was it! That was why Beryl had been so startled when he touched her
+in the restaurant!
+
+He got up and walked to the easel on which was the new sketch for
+Arabian’s portrait, stood before it and looked at it for a very long
+time. And all the time he stood there what he had just read was in his
+mind. Fear! The fascination of fear! There were women who could only
+love what they could also fear. Perhaps Beryl was one of them. Perhaps
+underneath all her audacity, her self-possession, her “damned cheek,”
+ her abnormal vanity, there was the thing that could shrink, and quiver,
+and love the brute.
+
+Was that her secret? And his? Arabian’s?
+
+Garstin threw himself down presently and looked at the paper again.
+The article which he felt sure had gripped Miss Van Tuyn’s attention
+described a new play which had just made a sensation in Paris. A woman,
+apparently courageous almost to hardness, self-engrossed, beautiful
+and cold, became in this play fascinated by a man about whom she knew
+nothing, whom she did not understand, who was not in her circle of
+society, who knew none of her friends, who came from she knew not where.
+Her instinct hinted to her that there was in him something abominable.
+She distrusted him. She was even afraid of him. But he made an enormous
+impression upon her. And she said of him to a man who warned her against
+him, “But he means a great deal to me and other men mean little or
+nothing. There is something in him which speaks to me and in others
+there is nothing but silence. There is something in him which leads me
+along a path and others leave me standing where I am.”
+
+Eventually, against the warning of her own instinct, and, as it were, in
+spite of herself, she gave herself up to the man, and after a very short
+association with him--only a few days--he strangled her. She had a long
+and very beautiful neck. Hidden in him was a homicidal tendency.
+Her throat had drawn his hands, and, behind his hands, him. And she?
+Apparently she had been drawn to the murderer hidden in him, to the
+strong, ruthless, terribly intent, crouching thing that wanted to
+destroy her.
+
+As the writer of the article pointed out, the play was a Grand Guignol
+piece produced away from its proper environment. It was called _The Lure
+of Destruction_.
+
+How Beryl had started when a hand had touched her in the restaurant! And
+how angry she had been afterwards! Garstin smiled as he remembered
+her anger. But she had looked wonderful. She might be worth painting
+presently. He did not really care to paint a Ceres. But she was rapidly
+losing the Ceres look.
+
+Before he went to bed he again stood in front of the scarcely begun
+sketch for the portrait of Arabian, and looked at it for a long time.
+His face became grim and set as he looked. Presently he moved his lips
+as if he were saying something to a listener within. And the listener
+heard:
+
+“In the underworld--but is the fellow a king?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Francis Braybrooke was pleased. Young Craven and Beryl were evidently
+“drawing together” now Adela Sellingworth was happily out of the way.
+He heard of them dining together at the _Bella Napoli_, playing golf
+together at Beaconsfield--or was it Chorley Wood? He was not quite sure.
+He heard of young Craven being seen at Claridge’s going up in the lift
+to Miss Van Tuyn’s floor. All this was very encouraging. Braybrooke’s
+former fears were swept away and his confidence in his social sense was
+re-established upon its throne. Evidently he had been quite mistaken,
+and there had been nothing in that odd friendship with Adela
+Sellingworth. This would teach him not to let himself go to suspicion in
+the future.
+
+He still did not know where Lady Sellingworth was. Nothing had appeared
+in the _Morning Post_ about her movements. Nobody seemed to know
+anything about her. He met various members of the “old guard” and made
+inquiry, but “Haven’t an idea” was the invariable reply. Even, and
+this was strangest of all, Seymour Portman did not know where she was.
+Braybrooke met him one day at the Marlborough and spoke of the matter,
+and Seymour Portman, with his most self-contained and reserved manner,
+replied that he believed Lady Sellingworth had gone abroad to “take a
+rest,” but that he was not sure where she was “at the moment.” She was
+probably moving about.
+
+Why should she take a rest? She never did anything specially laborious.
+It really was quite mysterious. One day Braybrooke inquired discreetly
+in Berkeley Square, alleging a desire to communicate with Lady
+Sellingworth about a charity bazaar in which he was interested; but the
+footman did not know where her ladyship was or when she was coming back
+to town. And still letters were not being forwarded.
+
+Meanwhile Fanny Cronin felt that Paris was drifting quite out of her
+ken. The autumn was deepening. The first fogs of winter had made a
+premature appearance, and the spell of the Wallace Collection was
+evidently as strong as ever on Beryl. But was it the Wallace Collection?
+Miss Cronin never knew much about what Beryl was doing. Still, she was
+a woman and had her instincts, rudimentary though they were. Mr.
+Braybrooke must certainly have received his conge. Mrs. Clem Hodson
+quite agreed with Miss Cronin on that point. Beryl had probably refused
+the poor foolish old man that day at the Ritz when there had been that
+unpleasant dispute about the plum cake. But now there was this Mr.
+Craven! Miss Cronin had found him once with Beryl in the latter’s
+sitting-room; she had reason to believe they had played golf together.
+The young man was certainly handsome. And then Beryl had seemed quite
+altered just lately. Her temper was decidedly uncertain. She was
+unusually restless and preoccupied. Twice she had been exceedingly cross
+about Bourget. And she looked different, too; even Suzanne Hodson had
+noticed it. There was something in her face--“a sort of look,” Miss
+Cronin called it, with an apt feeling for the choice of words--which was
+new and alarming. Mrs. Clem declared that Beryl had the expression of a
+woman who was crazy about a man.
+
+“It’s the eyes and the cheek-bones that tell the tale, Fanny!” she
+had observed. “They can’t deceive a woman. Don’t talk to me about the
+Wallace Collection.”
+
+Poor Miss Cronin was very uneasy. The future looked almost as dark as
+the London days. As she lay upon the French bed, or reclined upon the
+sofa, or sat deep in her arm-chair, she envisaged an awful change, when
+the Avenue Henri Martin would know her no more, when she might have to
+return to the lair in Philadelphia from which Miss Van Tuyn had summoned
+her to take charge of Beryl.
+
+One day, when she was almost brooding over the fire, between five and
+six o’clock in the afternoon, the door opened and Beryl appeared. She
+had been out since eleven in the morning. But that was nothing new. She
+went out very often about half-past ten and scarcely ever came back to
+lunch.
+
+“Fanny!” she said. “I want you.”
+
+“What is it, dear?” said Miss Cronin, sitting forward a little in her
+chair and laying aside her book.
+
+“I’ve brought back a friend, and I want you to know him. Come into my
+sitting-room.”
+
+Miss Cronin got up obediently and remembering Mrs. Clem’s words, looked
+at Beryl’s cheek-bones and eyes.
+
+“Is it Mr. Craven?” she asked in a quavering voice.
+
+“Mr. Craven--no! You know him already.”
+
+“I have seen him once, dear.”
+
+“Come along!”
+
+Miss Cronin followed her into the lobby. The door of the sitting-room
+was open, and by the fire was standing a stalwart-looking man in a dark
+blue overcoat. As Miss Cronin came in he gazed at her, and she thought
+she had never before seen such a pair of matching brown eyes. Beryl
+introduced him as Mr. Arabian.
+
+The stranger bowed, and then pressed Miss Cronin’s freckled right hand
+gently, but strongly too.
+
+“I have been hoping to meet you,” he said, in a strong but gentle voice
+which had, Miss Cronin thought, almost caressing inflexions.
+
+“Very glad to meet you, indeed!” said the companion.
+
+“Yes. Miss Van Tuyn has told me what you are to her.”
+
+“Forgive me for a minute!” said Miss Van Tuyn. “I must take off my
+things. They all feel as if they were full of fog. Fanny, entertain Mr.
+Arabian until I come back. But don’t talk about Bourget. He’s never read
+Bourget, I’m sure.”
+
+She looked at Fanny Cronin and went out of the room. And in that
+look old Fanny, slow in the uptake though she undoubtedly was, read a
+tremendous piece of news.
+
+This must be the Wallace Collection!
+
+That was how her mind put it. This must be the great reason of Beryl’s
+lingering in London, this total stranger of whom she had never heard
+till this moment. Her instinct had not deceived her. Beryl had at last
+fallen in love. And probably Mr. Braybrooke had been aware of it when he
+had called that afternoon and talked so persistently about the changes
+and chances of life. In that case Miss Cronin had wronged him. And he
+had perhaps come to plead the cause of another.
+
+“The weather--it is really terrible, is it not? You are wise to stay in
+the warm.”
+
+So the conversation began between Miss Cronin and Arabian, and it
+continued for quite a quarter of an hour. Then Miss Van Tuyn came back
+in a tea gown, looking lovely with her uncovered hair and her shining,
+excited eyes, and some twenty minutes later Arabian went away.
+
+When he had gone Miss Van Tuyn said carelessly:
+
+“Fanny, darling, what do you think of him?”
+
+Fanny, darling! That was not Beryl’s usual way of putting things. Miss
+Cronin was much shaken. She felt the ground of her life, as it were,
+rocking beneath her feet, and yet she answered--she could not help it:
+
+“I think Mr. Arabian is the most--the most--he is fascinating. He is a
+charming man. And how very good-looking!”
+
+“Yes, he’s a handsome fellow. And so you liked him?”
+
+“No one has ever been so charming to me as he was--that I can remember.
+He must have a most sympathetic make-up. Who is he?”
+
+“A friend of Dick Garstin, the painter. And so he attracted you?”
+
+“I think him certainly most attractive. I should imagine he must have
+a very kind heart. There is something almost childlike about him, so
+simple!”
+
+“So--so you find nothing repellent in him?”
+
+“Repellent!” said Miss Cronin, almost with fear. “Do you mean to
+say--then don’t you like him?”
+
+“I like him well enough. But, as you ought to know, I’m not given to
+raving about men.”
+
+“Well,” said Miss Cronin almost severely, “Mr. Arabian--Is that his true
+name?”
+
+“Yes. I told you so.”
+
+“It’s such an odd name! Mr. Arabian is a most kind and warm-hearted man.
+I am certain of that. And he is not above being charming and thoughtful
+to an ordinary old woman like me. He understands me, and that shows he
+has sympathy. I am sure Suzanne would like him too.”
+
+“Really, you quite rave about him!” said Miss Van Tuyn, with a light
+touch of sarcasm.
+
+But her eyes looked pleased, and that evening she was exceptionally kind
+to old Fanny.
+
+She had not yet brought Arabian and Alick Craven together. Somehow she
+shrank from that far more than she had shrunk from the test with Fanny.
+Craven was very English, and Englishmen are apt to be intolerant about
+men of other nations. And Craven was a man, and apparently was beginning
+to like her very much. He would not be a fair judge. Undoubtedly he
+would be prejudiced.
+
+And at this point in her mental communings Miss Van Tuyn realized that
+she was losing her independence of mind. What did it matter if Fanny
+thought this and Alick Craven that? What did it matter what anyone
+thought but herself?
+
+But she was surely confused, was walking in the clouds. Dick Garstin
+had given her a lead that night of the meeting of the Georgians. She had
+certainly been affected by his words. Perhaps he had even infected her
+with his thought. Thought can infect, and Garstin had a powerful mind.
+And now she was seeking to oppose to Garstin’s thought the opinion of
+others. How terribly weak that was! And she had always prided herself on
+her strength. She was startled, even angered, by the change in herself.
+
+Her connexion with Craven was peculiar.
+
+Ever since Lady Sellingworth’s abrupt departure from England he had
+persistently sought her out, had shown a sort of almost obstinate
+desire to be in her company. Remembering what had happened when Lady
+Sellingworth was still in Berkeley Square, Miss Van Tuyn had been on
+her guard. Craven had hurt her vanity once. She did not quite understand
+him. She suspected him of peculiarity. She even wondered whether he had
+had a quarrel with Adela which had been concealed from her, and which
+might account for Adela’s departure and for Craven’s present assiduity.
+Possibly, but for one reason, her injured vanity would have kept Craven
+at a distance--at any rate, for a time. It would have been pleasant to
+deal out suitable punishment to one who certainly deserved it. But there
+was the reason for the taking of the other course--Arabian.
+
+An obscure instinct drove her into intimacy with Craven because of
+Arabian. She was not sure that she wanted Craven just now, but she might
+want him, perhaps very much, later. She knew he was not really in love
+with her, but they were beginning to get on well together. He
+admired her; she held out a hand to his youth. There was something of
+comradeship in their association. And their minds understood each other
+rather well, she thought. For they were both genuinely interested in the
+arts, though neither of them was an artist. And she felt very safe
+with Alick Craven. So she forgave Craven for his behaviour with Adela
+Sellingworth. She let him off his punishment. She relied upon him as
+her friend. And she needed to rely upon someone. For the calm
+self-possession of her nature was beginning to be seriously affected.
+She was losing some of her hitherto immense self-assurance. Her faith in
+the coolness and dominating strength of her own temperament was shaken.
+
+Arabian troubled her increasingly.
+
+That night at the restaurant in Conduit Street she had felt that she
+hated him, and when she had left Garstin she had realized something,
+that the measure of her nervous hatred was the measure of something
+else. Why should she mind what Arabian did? What was his way of life
+to her? Other men could do what they chose and her well-poised,
+well-disciplined brain retained its normal calm. So long as they gave
+her the admiration which her vanity needed, she was not persecuted by
+any undue anxieties about the secret conduct of their lives. But she
+was tormented by the memory of that girl in the restaurant. And she
+remembered the conversation about jealousy round the dinner table at the
+Carlton. She was jealous now. That was why she had been so angry with
+Garstin. That was why she had lain awake that night.
+
+And yet the next morning she had gone to the studio in Glebe Place. She
+had greeted Arabian as usual. She had never let him know that she had
+seen him in the restaurant, and she had persuaded Dick Garstin to say
+nothing about it. No doubt Arabian supposed that he had been too quick
+for them, and that they did not know he was with the woman who had come
+in and had almost immediately gone out.
+
+But since that night Miss Van Tuyn had been persecuted by a secret
+jealousy such as she had never known till now.
+
+Let him sink back to the depths! She had said that, but she did not
+want him to disappear out of her life. She had said, too, that he
+was horrible. The words were spoken in a moment of intense nervous
+irritation. But were they true? She thought of him as a night bird. Yet
+she brought him to Claridge’s and introduced him to Fanny, and sought
+Fanny’s opinion of him, and been pleased that it was favourable. And
+she saw him almost daily. And she knew she would go on seeing him
+till--what?
+
+She could not foresee the end of this adventure brought about by her
+own audacious wilfulness. Some day she supposed Dick Garstin would be
+satisfied with his work. A successful portrait of Arabian would stand on
+the easel in Glebe Place. Garstin was not at all satisfied yet. She knew
+that. He had put aside two more beginnings angrily, had started again,
+had paused, taken up other work, taken a rest, sent for Arabian once
+more. But this strange impotence of Garstin to satisfy himself would
+surely not last for ever. Either he would succeed, or he would abandon
+the attempt to succeed, or--a third possibility presented itself to Miss
+Van Tuyn’s mind--his model would get tired of the conflict and refuse to
+“sit” any more.
+
+And then--the depths?
+
+Till now Arabian’s patience had been remarkable. Evidently Garstin’s
+obstinacy was matched by an obstinacy in him. Although he had once
+perhaps been secretly reluctant to sit, had been tempted to become
+Garstin’s model by the promise of the finished picture, he now
+seemed determined to do his part, endured Garstin’s irritability,
+dissatisfaction, abandoned and renewed attempts to “make a first-rate
+job of him” with remarkable good temper. He was evidently resolved not
+to give up this enterprise without his reward. There was fixed purpose
+in his patience.
+
+“By God he’s a stayer!” Garstin had said of him in a puffing breath one
+day when the palette knife had been angrily used once more. “Either he’s
+waiting for the money value of a portrait by me like a cat for a mouse,
+or he’s afraid of the finish.”
+
+“Why?” Miss Van Tuyn had asked.
+
+“Well, you’re in the thing! Perhaps he’s afraid that when he says
+good-bye to my studio he says good-bye to you too. Or perhaps the
+two reasons govern him--love of money, love of woman. Anyhow he’s a
+sticker!”
+
+“He only wants the picture,” she had said.
+
+But that remark had been made for the benefit of Garstin. By this time
+she knew that Arabian had a further purpose, and that it was connected
+with herself. She was sure that he was intent on her. And she wondered
+very much what he would do when at last the picture was finished. Surely
+then something definite must happen. She both longed for and dreaded
+that moment. She knew Garstin, and she knew that once he had achieved
+what he was trying--“sweating blood,” he called it--to achieve his
+interest in Arabian would almost certainly cease. Arabian would then
+be nothing but used material of no more value in Garstin’s life. The
+picture would be exhibited, and then handed over to Arabian, and Garstin
+would be off on some other track.
+
+She had now been with Arabian probably as many times as she had been
+with Craven. Yet she thoroughly understood the essential qualities of
+the Englishman, or believed that she did, and she still knew very little
+about Arabian. She did not even know what race he belonged to. He had
+evidently travelled a great deal. Sometimes he casually mentioned having
+been here or there. He spoke of America as one who had often been in New
+York. Once he had mentioned San Francisco as if he were very familiar
+with it. Miss Van Tuyn had relatives there, and had asked him if he knew
+them. But he had not known them. Whom did he know? She often wondered.
+He must know somebody besides that horrible girl she had seen for a
+moment in the restaurant in Conduit Street. But she did not like to ask
+him direct questions. To do that would be to show too much interest in
+him. And something else, too, prevented her from questioning him. She
+had no faith in his word. She felt that he was a man who would say
+anything which suited his purpose. She had never caught him out in a
+direct lie, but she was quite certain he would not mind telling one. Of
+course she had often known men about whom she knew really very
+little. But she could not remember ever having known a man about whose
+character, position, education and former life she was so ignorant as
+she was about Arabian’s.
+
+He was still a vague sort of Cosmopolitan to her, a floating foreign man
+whom she could not place. He was still the magnificent mongrel belonging
+to no known breed.
+
+Certain things about him she did know, however. She knew he was at
+present living at the Charing Cross Hotel, though he said he was looking
+for a flat in the West End. He spoke several languages; certainly
+English, French, German and Spanish. He had some knowledge of
+horseflesh, and evidently took an interest in racing. He seemed
+interested, too, in finance. And he played the piano and sang.
+
+That gift of his had surprised her. One day in the studio, when Garstin
+had finished painting, and they had lingered smoking and talking, the
+conversation had turned on music, and Garstin, who had some knowledge of
+all the arts, had spoken about Stravinsky, whom he knew, and whose music
+he professed to understand. Miss Van Tuyn had joined in, and had given
+her view on _Le Sacre du Printemps_, _The Nightingale_, and other works.
+Arabian had sat smoking in discreet silence, till she had said to him
+bluntly:
+
+“Do you care about music?”
+
+And then Arabian had said that he was very fond of music, and played and
+sang a little himself, but that he had been too lazy to study seriously
+and had an uneducated ear.
+
+Garstin had told him bluntly to go to the piano and show them what he
+could do. And Arabian had surprised Miss Van Tuyn by at once complying
+with this request, which had sounded like an order.
+
+His performance had been the sort of thing she, having “advanced” views
+on musical matters, was generally inclined to sneer at or avoid. He had
+played two or three coon songs and a tango. But there had been in his
+playing a sheer “musicalness,” as she had called it afterwards, which
+had enticed her almost against her will. And when he had sung some
+little Spanish songs she had been conquered, though she had not said so.
+
+His voice was a warm and soft tenor, and he had sung very naturally,
+carelessly almost. But everything had been just right. When he had
+stolen time, when he had given it back, the stealing and repayment had
+been right. His expression had been charming and not overdone. There had
+been at moments a delightful impudence in his singing. The touches of
+tenderness had been light as a feather, but they had had real meaning.
+Through his last song he had kept a cigarette alight in his mouth. He
+had merely hummed the melody, but it had been quite delicious. Even
+Garstin had approved, and had said: “The stuff was sheer rot, but it was
+like a palm tree singing.”
+
+And then Arabian had given them a piece of information.
+
+“I was brought up among palm trees.”
+
+“Florida?” Garstin had said.
+
+But somehow the question had not been answered. Perhaps she--Beryl--had
+spoken just then. She was not sure. But she had been “got at” by the
+music. And at that moment she had realized why Arabian was dangerous
+to her. Not only his looks appealed to her. He had other, more secret
+weapons. Charm, suppleness of temperament, heat and desire were his.
+Otherwise he could not have sung and played that rubbish as he had done.
+
+That day, later on, he had not actually said, but had implied that some
+Spanish blood ran in his veins.
+
+“But I belong to no country,” he had added quickly. “I am a _gamin_ of
+the world.”
+
+“Not a citizen?” she had said.
+
+“No; I am the eternal _gamin_. I shall never be anything else.”
+
+All very well! But at moments she was convinced that there was a very
+hard and a very wary man in Arabian.
+
+Perhaps sitting under the singing palm tree there was a savage!
+
+She wanted to know what Arabian was. She began to feel that she must
+know. For, in spite of her ignorance, their intimacy was deepening. And
+now people were beginning to talk. Although she had been so careful not
+to show herself with Arabian in any smart restaurants, not to walk with
+him in the more frequented parts of the West End, they had been seen
+together. On the day when she had brought him to Claridge’s some
+American friends had seen them pass through the hall, and afterwards
+had asked her who he was. Another day, when she was coming away with him
+from the studio, she had met Lady Archie Brooke at the corner of Glebe
+Place. She had not stopped to speak. But Lady Archie had stared at
+Arabian. And Miss Van Tuyn knew what that meant. The “old guard” would
+be told of Beryl’s wonderful new man.
+
+She felt nervously sensitive about Arabian. And yet she had been about
+Paris with all sorts of men, and had not cared what people had thought
+or said. But those men had been clever, workers in the arts, men with
+names that were known, or that would be known presently. Arabian was
+different. She felt oddly shy about being seen with him. Her audacity
+seemed fading away in her. She realized that and felt alarmed. If only
+she knew something definite about Arabian, who he was, what his people
+were, where he came from, she would feel much easier. She began to
+worry about the matter. She lay awake at night. At moments a sort of
+desperation came upon her like a wave. Sometimes she said to herself, “I
+wish I had never met him.” And yet she knew that she did not want to get
+rid of him. But she wished no one to know of her friendship; with this
+man--if it were a friendship.
+
+Garstin was watching her through it all. She hated his eyes. He did not
+care what was happening to her. He only cared what appearance it caused;
+how it affected her eyes, her manner, her expression, the line of her
+mouth, the movements of her hands. He had said that she was waking up.
+But--to what?
+
+All this time she seemed to be aware of an almost fatal growing
+intention in Arabian. Nevertheless, he waited. She had never been able
+to forget the article she had read in the _Westminster Gazette_. When
+she had read about the woman in the play she had instinctively compared
+herself with that woman. And then something in her revolted. She had
+thought of it as her Americanism, which loathed the idea of slavery in
+any form. But nevertheless, she had been aware of alarming possibilities
+within her. She was able to understand the woman in the play. And that
+must surely be because she was obscurely akin to her. And she knew that
+when she had read the article the man in the play had made her think
+of Arabian. That, of course, was absurd. But she understood why it was.
+That woman had been attracted by a man of whom she knew nothing. She,
+Beryl Van Tuyn, was in the same situation. But of course she did not
+compare poor Arabian in her mind with a homicidal maniac.
+
+He was gentle and charming. Old Fanny liked him immensely, said he had a
+kind heart. And Fanny was sensitive.
+
+Yet again she thought of the savage sitting under the palm tree and of
+Dick Garstin’s allusion to a king in the underworld.
+
+She resented being worried. She resented having her nerves on edge.
+She was angry with Dick Garstin, and even angry with herself. In bed
+at night, when she could not sleep, she read books on New Thought,
+and tried to learn how to govern her mind and to control her thought
+processes. But she was not successful in the attempt. Her mind
+continually went to Arabian, and then she was filled with anxiety,
+with suspicion, with jealousy, and with a strange sort of longing
+mysteriously combined with repulsion and dread. And underneath all her
+feelings and thoughts there was a basic excitement which troubled her
+and which she could not get rid of.
+
+One morning she got up full of restlessness. That day Dick Garstin was
+not painting. It was a Sunday, and he had gone into the country to stay
+with some friends. Miss Van Tuyn had made no arrangement to see Arabian.
+Indeed, she never saw him except on the painting days, for she still
+kept up the pretence that he was merely an acquaintance, and that she
+only met him because of her interest in Garstin’s work and her wish to
+learn more of the technique of painting. The day was free before her.
+She went to the telephone and called up Alick Craven.
+
+It was a fine morning, cold and crisp, with a pale sun. She longed to be
+out of town, and she suggested to Craven to join her in hiring a Daimler
+car, to run down to Rye, and to have a round of golf on the difficult
+course by the sea. She had a friend close to Rye who would introduce
+them as visiting players. They would take a hamper and lunch in the car
+on the way down.
+
+Craven agreed with apparent eagerness. By ten they were off. Soon after
+one they were on the links. They played the full round, eighteen holes,
+and Craven beat her. Then they had tea in the house below the club-house
+on the left-hand side of the road as you go towards Camber Sands.
+
+After tea Miss Van Tuyn suggested running a little farther on in the car
+and taking a walk on the sands before starting on the journey back to
+London.
+
+“I love hard sands and the wind and the lines upon lines of surf!” she
+said. “The wind blows away some of my civilization.”
+
+“I know!” said Craven, looking at her with admiration.
+
+He liked her strength and energy, the indefatigable youth of her.
+
+“_En route!_”
+
+Soon the car stopped. They got out, and over the sandy hill, with its
+rough sea-grasses, they made their way to the sands.
+
+The tide was low. There was room and to spare on the hard, level
+expanse. Lines of white surf stretched to right and left far as the eyes
+could see. The piercing cries of the gulls floating on the eddying wind
+were relieved against the blooming diapason of the sea. And the solitude
+was as the solitude of some lost island of the main. They descended,
+sinking in the loose, fine sand of the banks, and the soft, pale sand
+that edged them, and made their way to the yellow and vast sands that
+extended to the calling monster, whose voice filled their ears,
+and seemed to be summoning them persistently, with an almost tragic
+arrogance, away from all they knew, from all that was trying to hold
+and keep them, to the unknown, to the big things that lie always far off
+over the edge of the horizon.
+
+“Let us turn our backs on Rye!” said the girl.
+
+They swung round with the wind behind them, and walked on easily side by
+side, helped by the firm and delicate floor under their feet.
+
+She was wearing a wine-coloured “jumper,” a short skirt of a rough
+heathery material, a small brown hat pinned low on her head, pressed
+down on her smooth forehead. Her cheeks were glowing. The wind sent the
+red to them. She stepped along with a free, strongly athletic movement.
+There was a hint of the Amazon in her. On her white neck some wisps
+of light yellow hair, loosened by the wind’s fingers, quivered as if
+separately alive and wilful with energy.
+
+Craven, striding along in knickerbockers beside her, felt the animal
+charm of her as he had never felt it in London. She had thrust her
+gloves away in some hidden pocket. Her right hand grasped a stick
+firmly. The white showed at the knuckles. He felt through her silence
+that she was giving herself heart and soul to the spirit of the place,
+to the sweeping touch of the wind, to the eternal sound in the voice of
+the sea.
+
+They walked on for a long time into the far away. There was a dull lemon
+light over the sea pushing through the grey, hinting at sunset. A
+flock of gulls tripped jauntily on some wet sand near to them, in
+which radiance from the sky was mysteriously retained. A film of moving
+moisture from the sea spread from the nearest surf edge, herald of the
+turning tide. Miss Van Tuyn raised her arms, shook them, cried out with
+all her force. And the gulls rose, easily, strongly, and flew insolently
+towards their element.
+
+“Let us turn!” she said.
+
+“All right!”
+
+Those were the first words they had spoken.
+
+“Let us go and sit down in a sand-bank and see the twilight come.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+They sat down presently among the spear-like blades of the spiky grass,
+facing the tides and the evening sky, and Craven, with some difficulty,
+lit his pipe and persuaded it to draw, while she looked at his
+long-fingered brown hands.
+
+“I couldn’t sit here with some people I know,” she said. “Desolation
+like this needs the right companion. Isn’t it odd how some people are
+only for certain places?”
+
+“And I suppose _the_ one person is for all places.”
+
+“Do you feel at home with me here?” she asked him, rather abruptly and
+with a searching look at him.
+
+“Yes, quite--since our game. A good game is a link, isn’t it?”
+
+“For bodies.”
+
+“Well, that means a good deal. We live in the body.”
+
+“Some people marry through games, or hunting. They’re the bodily people.
+Others marry through the arts. Music pulls them together, or painting,
+or literature. They are mental.”
+
+“Bodies--minds! And what about hearts?” asked Craven.
+
+“The tide’s coming in. Hearts? They work in mystery, I believe. I expect
+when you love someone who hasn’t a taste in common with you your heart
+must be hard at work. Perhaps it is only opposites who can really love,
+those who don’t understand why. If you understand why you are on the
+ground, you have no need of wings. Have you ever been afraid of anyone?”
+
+Craven looked at her with a dawning of surprise.
+
+“Do you mean of a German soldier, for instance?” he said.
+
+“No, no! Of course not. Of anyone you have known personally; afraid of
+anyone as an individual? That’s what I mean.”
+
+“I can’t remember that I ever have.”
+
+“Do you think it possible to love someone who inspires you at moments
+with unreasoning dread?”
+
+“No; candidly I don’t.”
+
+“I think there can be attraction in repulsion.”
+
+“I should be very sorry for myself if I yielded to such an attraction.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because I think it would probably lead to disaster.”
+
+“How soberly you speak!” said Miss Van Tuyn, almost with an air of
+distaste.
+
+After a moment of silence she added:
+
+“I don’t believe an Englishman has the power to lose his head.”
+
+Craven sat a little nearer to her.
+
+“Would you like to see me lose mine?” he asked.
+
+“I don’t say that. But I should like you to be able to.”
+
+“And you? You are an American girl. Don’t you pride yourself on your
+coolness, your self-control, your power to deal with any situation? If
+Englishmen are sober minded, what about American women? Do _they_ lose
+their heads easily?”
+
+“No. That’s why--”
+
+She stopped abruptly.
+
+“What is it you want to say to me? What are you trying to say?”
+
+“Nothing!” she answered.
+
+And her voice sounded almost sulky.
+
+The bar of lemon light over the sea narrowed. Clouds, with gold tinted
+edges, were encroaching upon it. The tide had turned, and, because they
+knew it, the voice of the sea sounded louder to them. Already they could
+imagine those sands by night, could imagine their bleak desolation,
+could almost feel the cold thrill of their loneliness.
+
+Craven stretched out his hand and took one of hers and held it.
+
+“Why do you do that?” she said. “You don’t care for me really.”
+
+He pressed her hand. He wanted to kiss her at that moment. His youth,
+the game they had played together, this isolation and nearness, the
+oncoming night--they all seemed to be working together, pushing him
+towards her mysteriously. But just at that moment on the sands close to
+them two dark figures appeared, a fisherman in his Sunday best walking
+with his girl. They did not see Miss Van Tuyn and Craven on the
+sandbank. With their arms spread round each other’s waists, and slightly
+lurching in the wind, they walked slowly on, sinking at each step a
+little in the sand. Their red faces looked bovine in the twilight.
+
+Almost mechanically Craven’s fingers loosened on Miss Van Tuyn’s hand.
+She, too, was chilled by this vision of Sunday love, and her hand came
+away from his.
+
+“They are having their Sunday out,” she said, with a slight, cold laugh.
+“And we have had ours!”
+
+And she got up and shook the sand grains from her rough skirt.
+
+“And that’s happiness!” she added, almost with a sneer.
+
+Like him she felt angry and almost tricked, hostile to the working of
+sex, vulgarized by the sight of that other drawing together of two human
+beings. Oh! the ineptitude of the echoes we are! Now she was irritated
+with Craven because he had taken her hand. And yet she had been on the
+edge of a great experiment. She knew that Craven did not love her--yet.
+Perhaps he would never really love her. Certainly she did not love him.
+And yet that day she had come out from London with a desire to take
+refuge in him. It almost amounted to that. When they started she had not
+known exactly what she was going to do. But she had set Craven, the safe
+man, the man whom she could place, could understand, could certainly
+trust up to a point, in her mind against Arabian, the unsafe man,
+whom she could not place, could not understand, could not trust.
+And, mentally, she had clung to Craven. And if those two bovine
+sentimentalists had not intruded flat-footed upon the great waste of
+Camber and the romance of the coming night, and Craven had yielded to
+his impulse and had kissed her, she might have clung to him in very
+truth. And then? She might have been protected against Arabian. But
+evidently it was not to be. At the critical moment Fate had intervened,
+had sent two human puppets to change the atmosphere.
+
+She had really a sense of Fate upon her as she shook the sand from her
+skirt. And the voice of the slowly approaching sea sounded in her ears
+like the voice of the inevitable.
+
+What must be must be.
+
+The lemon in the sky was fast fading. The gold was dying away from the
+edges of the clouds. The long lines of surf mingled together in a
+blur of tangled whiteness. She looked for a moment into the gathering
+dimness, and she felt a menace in it; she heard a menace in the cry of
+the tides. And within herself she seemed to be aware of a menace.
+
+“It’s all there in us, every bit of it!” she said to herself. “That’s
+the horrible thing. It doesn’t come upon us. It’s in us.”
+
+And she said to Craven:
+
+“Come!”
+
+It was rapidly getting dark. The ground was uneven and rough, the sand
+loose and crumbling.
+
+“Do take my arm!” he said, but rather coldly, with constraint.
+
+She hesitated, then took it. And the feeling of his arm, which was
+strong and muscular, brought back to her that strange desire to use him
+as a refuge.
+
+Somewhat as Lady Sellingworth had thought of Seymour Portman, Beryl Van
+Tuyn thought of Craven, who would certainly not have enjoyed knowledge
+of it.
+
+When they had scrambled down to the road, and saw the bright eyes of the
+car staring at them from the edge of the marshes, she dropped his arm.
+
+“How Adela Sellingworth would have enjoyed all this if she had been here
+to-day instead of me!” she said.
+
+“Lady Sellingworth!” said Craven, as if startled. “What made you think
+of her just then?”
+
+“I don’t know. Stop a moment!”
+
+She stood very still.
+
+“I believe she has come back to London,” she said. “Perhaps she sent the
+thought to me from Berkeley Square. How long has she been away?”
+
+“About five weeks, I should think.”
+
+“Would you be glad if she were back?”
+
+“It would make very little difference to me,” he said in a casual voice.
+“Now put on your coat.”
+
+He helped her into the car, and they drove away from the sands and the
+links, from the sea and their mood by the sea.
+
+They drove through the darkness towards London, Lady Sellingworth and
+Arabian.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+On the following day Miss Van Tuyn, remembering her feeling at Camber in
+the twilight, went to the telephone and called up Number 18A, Berkeley
+Square. The solemn voice of a butler--she knew at once a butler was
+speaking--replied inquiring her business. She gave her name and asked
+whether Lady Sellingworth had returned to London. The answer was that
+her ladyship had arrived in London from the Continent on Saturday
+evening.
+
+“Please tell her ladyship that her friend, Miss Van Tuyn, will call on
+her this afternoon about five o’clock,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+Soon afterwards she put on her hat and fur coat and set off on her way
+to Chelsea.
+
+A little before five she turned into Berkeley Square on foot, coming
+from Carlos Place.
+
+She felt both curious and slightly hostile. She wondered very much why
+Adela had gone away so mysteriously; she wondered where Adela had been
+and whether she had returned changed. When Miss Van Tuyn had alluded to
+the sheaves the thought in her mind had been markedly feminine. It had
+occurred to her that Adela might have stolen away to have “things” done
+to her; that she might come back to London mysteriously rejuvenated.
+Such a thing was possible even at sixty. Miss Van Tuyn had known of
+waning beauties who had vanished, and who had returned to the world
+looking alarmingly young. Certainly she had never known of a woman as
+old in appearance as Adela becoming transformed. Nevertheless in modern
+days, when the culture of beauty counts in its service such marvellous
+experts, almost all things are possible. If Adela had gone quite mad
+about Alick Craven the golden age might be found suddenly domiciled
+in Number 18A. Then Adela’s intention would be plain. She would have
+returned from abroad armed _cap-a-pie_ for conquest.
+
+The knowledge that Adela was in London had revived in Miss Van Tuyn the
+creeping hostility which she had felt before her friend’s departure. She
+remembered her lonely walk to Soho, what she had seen through the lit-up
+window of the _Bella Napoli_. The sensation of ill treatment returned to
+her. She would have scorned to acknowledge even to herself that she was
+afraid of Adela, that she dreaded Adela’s influence on a man. But when
+she thought of Craven she was conscious of a strange fluttering of
+anxiety. She wanted to keep Craven as a friend. She wanted him to be her
+special friend. This he had been, but only since Lady Sellingworth had
+been out of London. Now she had come back. Over there shone the light
+above the door of the house in which she was at this moment. How would
+it be now?
+
+A hard, resolute look came into Miss Van Tuyn’s face as she walked past
+the block of flats at the top of the square. She had a definite and
+strong feeling that she must keep Craven as her friend, that she might
+need him in the future. And of what use is a man who belongs to another
+woman?
+
+Arabian had told her that day that he had found a flat which suited him
+in Chelsea looking over the river, and that he was leaving the Charing
+Cross Hotel. For some reason the news had startled her. He had spoken in
+a casual way, but his eyes had not been casual as they looked into hers.
+And she had felt that Arabian had taken a step forward, that he was
+moving towards some project with which she was connected in his mind,
+and that the taking of this flat was part of the project.
+
+She must not lose Craven as a friend. If she did she would lose one
+on whom she was beginning to rely. Women are of no use in certain
+contingencies, and a beautiful woman can seldom thoroughly trust another
+woman. Miss Van Tuyn absolutely trusted no woman. But she trusted
+Craven. She thought she must be very fond of him. And yet she had
+none of the feeling for him which persecuted her now when she was with
+Arabian. Arabian drew her in an almost occult way. She felt his tug like
+the mysterious tug of water when one stands near a weir in a river. When
+she was with him she sometimes had a physical impulse to lean backward.
+And that came because of another strong and opposing impulse which
+seemed mental.
+
+Adela should not entice Craven back to her. She was long past the age
+of needing trusty comrades and possible helpers, in Beryl’s opinion.
+Whatever she did, or hoped, or wanted, or strove for, life was really
+over for her, the life that is life, with its unsuspected turns, and
+intrigues, and passions and startling occurrences. Even if for a time
+such a man as Craven were hypnotized by a woman’s strong will-power,
+such an unnatural condition could not possibly last. But Beryl made
+up her mind that she would not suffer even a short interim of power
+exercised by Adela. Even for poor Adela’s own sake such an interim was
+undesirable. It would only lead to suffering. And while it lasted she,
+Beryl, might need something and lack it. That must not be. Adela was
+finished, and she must learn to understand that she was finished. No
+woman ought to seek to prolong her reign beyond a certain age. If Adela
+had come back with her sheaves they must be resolutely scattered to the
+winds--by somebody.
+
+Arabian had taken a flat in Chelsea looking over the river. Evidently he
+was going to settle down in London.
+
+“But I live in Paris!” thought Miss Van Tuyn, as she pushed Lady
+Sellingworth’s bell.
+
+Her ladyship was at home, and Miss Van Tuyn mounted the stairs full of
+expectation.
+
+When she came into the big drawing-room she noticed at once how dimly
+lit it was. Besides the firelight there was only one electric lamp
+turned on, and that was protected by a rather large shade, and stood on
+a table at some distance from Lady Sellingworth’s sofa. A tall figure
+got up from this sofa as Miss Van Tuyn made her way towards the fire,
+and the well-remembered and very individual husky voice said:
+
+“Dear Beryl! It’s good of you to come to see me so soon. I only arrived
+on Saturday.”
+
+“Dearest! How dark it is! I can scarcely see you.”
+
+“I love to give the firelight a chance. Didn’t you know that? Come and
+sit down and tell me what you have been doing. You have quite given up
+Paris?”
+
+“Yes, for the time. I’ve become engrossed in painting. Dick Garstin has
+given me the run of his studio. But where have you been?”
+
+As she put the question Miss Van Tuyn looked closely at her friend, and,
+in spite of the dimness, she noticed a difference in her appearance.
+The white hair still crowned the beautifully shaped head, but it looked
+thicker, more alive than formerly. The change which struck her most,
+however, was in the appearance of the face. It seemed, she thought,
+markedly younger and fresher, smoother than she remembered it, firmer
+in texture. Surely some, many even, of the wrinkles had disappeared. And
+the lips, once so pale and weary, were rosy now--if the light was not
+deceiving her. The invariable black dress, too, had vanished. Adela wore
+a lovely gown of a deep violet colour and had a violet band in her
+hair. She sat very upright. Her tall figure seemed almost braced up.
+And surely she looked less absolutely natural than usual. There
+was something--a slight hardness, perhaps, a touch of conscious
+imperviousness in look and manner, a watchful something--which made Miss
+Van Tuyn for a moment think of a photograph she had seen on a member of
+the “old guard’s” table.
+
+The sheaves! The sheaves!
+
+But the girl longed for more light. She knew she was not deceived
+entirely by the dimness, but she longed for crude revelation. Already
+her mind was busily at work on the future. She felt, although she
+had only been in the room for two or three minutes, that the Lady
+Sellingworth who had just come back to London must presently be her
+enemy. And she wished to get in the first blow, since blows there would
+have to be.
+
+“Where have I been?” said Lady Sellingworth. “In the place of the
+swans--in Geneva.”
+
+“Geneva! We thought you had gone to the Riviera, probably to Cap
+Martin.”
+
+“I did go to the Riviera first.”
+
+“It must have been a desert.”
+
+“Not quite. Cannes would have been quite pleasant. But I had to go on to
+Geneva to see a friend.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn thought of Lausanne, of doctors. Many women whom she
+knew in Paris swore by the doctors of Berne and Lausanne. There were
+wonderful treatments now for old women. Extraordinary things were done
+with monkey glands and other mysterious preparations and inoculations.
+Was not Adela’s manner changed? Did she not diffuse an atmosphere of
+intention, of vigour, which had not been hers before? Did she not seem
+younger?
+
+“Did you stay long at the Beau Rivage?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, I did.”
+
+“We have missed you.”
+
+“I like to think that.”
+
+“London loses its most characteristic note for me when you are not in
+it.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn’s curiosity was becoming intense, but how could she
+gratify it? She sought about for an opening, but found none. For it was
+seldom her way to be quite blunt with women, though with men she was
+often blunt.
+
+“Everyone has been wondering where you were,” she said. “Mr. Braybrooke
+was quite in a turmoil. Does he know you are back?”
+
+“I haven’t told him. But he gets to know everything in less than five
+minutes. And what have you been doing?”
+
+This simple question suddenly gave Miss Van Tuyn the idea for a plan of
+campaign. It sprang into her brain, flashed upon it like an inspiration.
+For a moment she was rigid. Her body was strongly influenced. Then as
+the idea made itself at home in her she became supple and soft again.
+
+“I’ve got a lot to tell you,” she said, “if you won’t be bored.”
+
+“You never bore me, Beryl.”
+
+“No, I don’t believe I do. Well, first I must tell you how good Dick
+Garstin has been to me.”
+
+“Garstin the painter?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+And she enlarged upon her intense interest in painting, her admiration
+for Garstin’s genius, her curiosity about his methods and aims, her
+passion for understanding the arts although she could not create
+herself. Lady Sellingworth, who knew the girl’s genuine interest in all
+art developments, listened quite convinced of Beryl’s sincerity. Arabian
+was never mentioned. Miss Van Tuyn did not go into details. She spoke
+only of models, of Garstin’s varying moods, of his way of getting a
+thing on to canvas, of his views on colour and technique.
+
+“It must be absorbingly interesting to watch such a man at work,” Lady
+Sellingworth said presently.
+
+“It is. It’s fascinating.”
+
+“And so that is the reason why you are staying so long in smoky old
+London?”
+
+“No, Adela, it isn’t. At least, that’s not the only reason.”
+
+The words were spoken slowly and were followed by a curiously conscious,
+almost, indeed, embarrassed look from the girl’s violet eyes.
+
+“No?”
+
+After a long pause Beryl said:
+
+“You know I have always looked upon you as a book of wisdom.”
+
+“It’s very difficult to be wise,” said Lady Sellingworth, with a touch
+of bitterness. “And sometimes very dull.”
+
+“But you are wise, dearest. I feel it. You have known and done so
+much, and you have had brains to understand, to seek out the truth from
+experience. You have lived with understanding. You are not like the
+people who travel round the world and come back just the same as if they
+had been from Piccadilly Circus to Hampstead Heath and back. One _feels_
+you have been round the world when one is with you.”
+
+“Does one?” said Lady Sellingworth, rather drily. “But I fancied
+nowadays the young thought all the wisdom lay with them.”
+
+“Well, I don’t. And, besides, I think you are marvellously discreet.”
+
+“Wise! Discreet! I begin to feel as if I ought to sit on the Bench!”
+
+Again there was the touch of bitterness in the voice. A very faint smile
+hovered for an instant about Miss Van Tuyn’s lips.
+
+“Judging the foolish women! Well, I think you are one of the few who
+would have a right to do that. You are so marvellously sensible.”
+
+“Anyhow, I have no wish to do it. But--you were going to tell me?”
+
+“In confidence.”
+
+“Of course. The book of wisdom never opens its leaves to the mob.”
+
+“I want very much to know your opinion of young Alick Craven.”
+
+As she heard the word “young” Lady Sellingworth had great difficulty
+in keeping her face still. Her mouth wanted to writhe, to twist to the
+left. She had the same intense shooting feeling that had hurt her when
+Seymour Portman had called Alick Craven a boy.
+
+“Of Mr. Craven!” she said, with sudden severe reserve. “Why? Why?”
+
+Directly she had spoken she regretted the repetition. Her mind felt
+stiff, unyielding. And all her body felt stiff too.
+
+“That’s what I want to tell you,” said Miss Van Tuyn, speaking with some
+apparent embarrassment.
+
+And immediately Lady Sellingworth knew that she did not want to hear,
+that it would be dangerous, almost deadly, for her to hear. She longed
+to spread out her hands in the protesting gesture of one keeping
+something off, away from her, to say, “Don’t! Don’t! I won’t hear!” And
+she sat very still, and murmured a casual “Yes?”
+
+And then Miss Van Tuyn shot her bolt very cleverly, her aim
+being careful and good, her hand steady as a rock, her eyes fixed
+undeviatingly on the object she meant to bring down. She consulted
+Lady Sellingworth about her great friendship with Craven, told Lady
+Sellingworth how for some time, “ever since the night we all went to
+the theatre,” Craven had been seeking her out persistently, spoke of
+his visits, their dinners together, their games of golf at Beaconsfield,
+finally came to Sunday, “yesterday.”
+
+“In the morning the telephone rang and we had a little talk. A Daimler
+car was suggested and a run down to Rye. You know my American ideas,
+Adela. A long day alone in the country with a boy--”
+
+“Mr. Craven is scarcely a boy, I think!”
+
+“But we call them boys!”
+
+“Oh, yes!”
+
+“With a boy means nothing extraordinary to a girl with my ideas. But I
+think he took it rather differently. Anyhow, we spent the whole day out
+playing golf together, and in the evening, when twilight was coming on,
+we drove to Camber Sands. Do you know them?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“They are vast and absolutely deserted. It was rather stormy, but we
+took a long walk on them, and then sat on a sand bank to watch the night
+coming on. I dare say it all sounds very ridiculous and sentimental to
+you! I am sure it must!”
+
+“No, no. Besides, I know you Americans do all these things with no
+sentiment at all, merely _pour passer le temps_.”
+
+“Yes, sometimes. But he isn’t an American.”
+
+Again she looked slightly embarrassed and seemed to hesitate.
+
+“You mean--you think that he--?”
+
+“It was that evening . . . last night only, in fact--”
+
+“Oh, yes, of course it was last night. To-day is Monday.”
+
+“That I began to realize that we were getting into a rather different
+relation to each other. When it began to get dark he wanted to hold my
+hand and--but I needn’t go into all that. It would only seem silly to
+you. You see, we are both young, though, of course, he is older than
+I. But he is very young, quite a boy in feeling and even in manner very
+often. I have seen him lately in all sorts of circumstances, so I know.”
+
+She stopped as if thinking. Lady Sellingworth sat very upright on her
+sofa, with her head held rather high, and her hands, in their long white
+gloves, quite still. And there was a moment of absolute silence in the
+drawing-room. At last Miss Van Tuyn spoke again.
+
+“I feel since last night that things are different between Alick and
+me.”
+
+“Are you engaged to him--to Mr. Craven?”
+
+“Oh, no. He hasn’t asked me to be. But I want to know what you think of
+him. It would help me. I like him very much. But you know far more about
+men than I do.”
+
+“I doubt it, Beryl. I see scarcely anyone now. You live in Paris
+surrounded by clever men and--”
+
+“But you have had decades more of experience than I have. In fact, _you_
+have been round the world and I have, so to speak, only crossed the
+Channel. Do help me, Adela. I am full of hesitation and doubt, and yet
+I am getting very fond of Alick. And I don’t want to hurt him. I think I
+hurt him a little yesterday, but--”
+
+“Sir Seymour Portman!” said Murgatroyd’s heavy voice at the door.
+
+And the old courtier entered almost eagerly, his dark eyes shining under
+the thatch of eyebrows and the white gleam of the “cauliflower.”
+
+And very soon Miss Van Tuyn went away, without the advice which she was
+so anxious to have. As she walked through Berkeley Square she felt
+more at ease than when she had come into it. But she was puzzled about
+something. And she said to herself:
+
+“Can she have tried monkey glands too?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Lady Sellingworth of course understood Beryl’s purpose in visiting her
+so soon and in being so unreserved to her. The girl’s intention was
+absolutely clear to her mind horribly experienced in the cruel ways of
+women. Nevertheless she believed that Beryl had spoken the truth about
+what had happened at Camber.
+
+When it began to get dark Craven had wanted to hold Beryl’s hand.
+
+Lady Sellingworth felt that she hated Beryl, hated Alick Craven. And
+herself? She did not want to contemplate herself. It seemed to her that
+she was fastened up with, chained to, a being she longed to ignore, to
+be without knowledge of. Something of her was struggling to be away from
+something else of her that was hideous. Battle, confusion, dust, dying
+cries, flying, terror-stricken feet! She was aware of tumult and despair
+in the silence of her beautiful house. And she was aware also of that
+slow and terrible creeping of hatred, the thing that did harm to her,
+that set her far away from any nobility she possessed.
+
+She had gone abroad to fight, and had come back having lost her battle.
+And already she was being scourged for her failure.
+
+When she had been striving alone these two had evidently forgotten her
+existence. Directly she had passed for a short time out of their lives
+they had come together. Youth had instinctively sought out youth, and
+she, the old woman, had been as one dead to them. If she had stayed away
+for years, if she had never come back, it would not have mattered to
+them.
+
+Beryl’s lack of all affection for her did not seriously trouble her. She
+knew the dryness of vanity; she knew that it was practically impossible
+for a girl so vain as Beryl to care deeply, or at all unselfishly, for
+another woman. But Craven’s conduct was not what she had looked for.
+It seemed to stamp him as typical, and she had supposed him to be
+exceptional. When Beryl had told her about Camber--so little and yet so
+much--she had been struck to the heart; and yet she had seen a vision of
+servants, the footman out in the dark with the under housemaid.
+
+Seymour Portman’s observant old eyes, the terrible eyes of affection,
+took in the change in her, not quite as a woman’s eyes would have done,
+but in their own adequate way. His Adela looked different. Something had
+happened to her. The envelope had been touched up in some, to him, quite
+mysterious manner. And he did not like it. It even gave him a mild
+sort of shock. The touch of artificiality was cold on this amazingly
+straightforward old man. He loved his Adela with all the wrinkles, with
+the sagging skin, and the lined throat, and the curiously experienced
+weariness about the temples. She lived for him in the brilliant eyes,
+and was loved by him in them. And why should she suddenly try to change
+her appearance? It had certainly not been done for him--this Something.
+She was looking handsomer than usual, and yet he seemed to be aware that
+beneath the improved surface there was a tragic haggardness which had
+come into existence while she had been away.
+
+He did not reproach her for the mystery of her absence, or for her
+silence; he did not ask her questions about where she had been, what
+she had done; he just sat with her and loved her. And his love made her
+horribly uneasy that day. She could not be still under it. She felt as
+if the soul of her kept shifting about, as a child shifts about under
+the watchful eyes of an elder. She felt the physical tingle of guilt.
+And she was thankful when at last Seymour went away and left her alone
+with her hatred.
+
+All those weeks! She had deliberately left the ground free to Beryl for
+all those weeks, and she had returned with no expectation of the thing
+that of course had happened. And yet she had believed that she had an
+excellent knowledge of life and of human beings. No doubt she had been
+so concentrated upon herself, and the struggle within herself that she
+had been unable to make any use of that knowledge. And so now she was
+full of hatred and of profound humiliation.
+
+When she had abruptly left England she had made up her mind to “have
+done with it,” that is to have done with love, to have done even
+with sentimental friendship. She had resolved to plunge into complete
+loneliness. Since she could not take Seymour into her intimate life,
+since she now knew that was absolutely impossible, she must somehow
+manage to get along permanently with nothing. And so, yielding to a
+desperate impulse, she had resolved to seek an unaccustomed solitude.
+She had fled from London. But she had stopped in Paris; although she had
+intended to pass through it and to go straight on to Marseilles and the
+Riviera. When the train had run in to the Gare du Nord she had told
+her surprised maid that she was tired and would not go on that night.
+Suddenly she had decided to seek out Caroline Briggs, to make a
+confession, to ask for help and sympathy. And she had sent her maid to a
+hotel, and had driven to Caroline’s house.
+
+But Caroline was not in Paris. A blue-cheeked, close-shaven French
+footman had informed her that his mistress had been obliged to sail for
+America three days before.
+
+It had been a great blow to her. Confession, the cry for help, had been
+almost on her lips as she had stood at the door before the keen-eyed
+young man. And she had gone away feeling strangely lost and abandoned.
+
+On the following morning she had left Paris and had travelled to the
+Riviera. And, there, she had fought against herself and had lost the
+battle.
+
+Perhaps if she had been able to see Caroline the issue would have been
+different. She almost believed that if she had once told the absolute
+truth about herself to someone she might have found the courage to
+put personal dignity in its right place at the head of her life as the
+arbiter of what must not be done. Although she had defied Caroline ten
+years ago, and had been punished for her defiance, she still had a deep
+belief in Caroline’s strength of character and clear insight. And she
+knew that Caroline was really fond of her.
+
+But Fate had removed her friend from her. And was it not because of that
+removal that she had lost her battle? The sense of loneliness, of a
+cold finality, had been too great for her. She had had too much time
+for remembrance. And she had remembered certain hours with Craven by
+the fire, had remembered the human warmth of them, till the longing for
+happiness had overpowered everything else in her. They had been very
+happy together. She had been able to make him happy. His eager eyes had
+shown it. And their joy had been quite innocent; there had been no
+harm in it at all. Why should she deliberately forego such innocent
+contentment? Walking alone on the sea front at Cannes in the warm and
+brilliant weather she had asked herself that question. If Craven were
+there! And in the long loneliness she had begun presently, as often
+before, to try to cheat herself. The drastic heart of London had seemed
+to change into another heart. And at last she had followed the example
+of a woman in Paris some ten years ago.
+
+She had as it were got out of the train once more.
+
+She had not, perhaps, been fully conscious of the terrible repetition
+brought about by a temperament which apparently refused to change.
+She had no doubt tried to deceive herself though she had not deceived
+herself ten years ago at the Gare du Nord. She had even lied to herself,
+saying that in London she had given way to a foolish and morbid mood of
+fear, induced in her by memories of disasters in the past, that she had
+imagined danger where no danger existed. In London panic had seized her.
+But now in a different atmosphere and environment, quite alone and able,
+therefore, to consider things carefully and quietly, to see them in
+their true light, she had told herself that it was preposterous to
+give up an innocent joy merely because long ago she had been subject to
+folly. Ten years had elapsed since her last fit of folly. She must have
+changed since then. It was inevitable that she had changed. She had
+lied to herself in London when she had told herself that Craven would be
+satisfied in their friendship, while she would be almost starving. Her
+subsequent prayer had been answered. Passion was dead in her. A tender,
+almost a motherly feeling--that really was what she felt and would
+always feel for Alick Craven. She need not fear such a feeling. She
+would not fear it. Morbidity had possessed her. The sunshine of Cannes
+had driven it away. She had presently been glad that she had not found
+Caroline in Paris. For if she had made that confession she would have
+put an obstacle in the path which she now resolved to tread.
+
+She had told herself that, and finally she had decided to return to
+London.
+
+But she had gone first to Geneva, and had put herself there into the
+hands of a certain specialist, whose fame had recently reached the ears
+of a prominent member of the “old guard,” no other than the Duchess of
+Wellingborough.
+
+And now she had come back with her sheaves and had been met on the
+threshold by Beryl with her hideous confidences.
+
+She had not yet told Craven of her return. For the moment she was glad
+that she had not given way to her impulse and telephoned to him on
+the Sunday. She might have caught him with her message just as he was
+starting for Rye with Beryl. That would have been horrible. Of course
+she would not telephone to him now. She resolved to ignore him. He had
+forgotten all about her. She would seem to forget about him. There was
+nothing else to be done. Pride, the pride of the _Grande Dame_ which she
+had never totally lost, rose up in her, hot, fiery even; it mingled with
+an intense jealousy, and made her wish to inflict punishment. She was
+like a wounded animal that longs to strike, to tear with its claws, to
+lacerate and leave bleeding. Nevertheless she had no intention of taking
+action against either of those who had hurt her. Beryl should have her
+triumph. Youth should be left in peace with its own cruelty.
+
+Two days passed before Craven knew of Lady Sellingworth’s return to
+Berkeley Square. Braybrooke told him of it in the club, and added the
+information that she had arrived on the previous Saturday.
+
+“Oh!” said Craven, with apparent indifference. “Have you seen her?”
+
+Braybrooke replied that he had seen her, and that she was looking, in
+his opinion, remarkably well, even somewhat younger than usual.
+
+“She seems to have had an excellent time on the Riviera and in
+Switzerland.”
+
+“In Switzerland!” said Craven, thinking of Braybrooke’s remarks about
+Catherine Bewdley and Lausanne.
+
+“Yes, but I don’t think she has been ill. I ventured to--just to say a
+word as to doctors, and she assured me she had been perfectly well all
+the time she was away. Are you going to see her?”
+
+“I’ve got a good deal to do just now,” said Craven, coldly and with a
+slight rise of colour. “But of course I hope to see Lady Sellingworth
+again some day. She is a charming woman. It’s always a pleasure to have
+a talk with her.”
+
+“Yes, indeed! By the way, who is Beryl Van Tuyn’s extraordinarily
+good-looking young friend? Do you happen to know?”
+
+“What friend?” asked Craven, with sudden sharpness.
+
+“The tall man she has been seen about with lately.”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+After a slight pause, very intentional on Braybrooke’s part, Craven
+replied:
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn knows such lots of people.”
+
+“To be sure! And Lady Archie, though a dear woman, is perhaps a little
+inclined to gossip.”
+
+“Lady Archie Brooke?”
+
+“Yes. She has met Miss Van Tuyn two or three times in Glebe Place, it
+seems, walking with a man whom she describes as a marvel of good looks.
+But there’s Antring. I must have a word with him. He is just over from
+Paris.”
+
+And Braybrooke walked away with his usual discreet gait. He was feeling
+decidedly satisfied. Young Craven had certainly not been pleased with
+the information so casually imparted. It had aroused--Braybrooke was
+convinced of it--a sensation of jealousy which promised well for the
+future. Braybrooke was almost sure now that his young friend had
+fallen thoroughly in love with Beryl Van Tuyn. The coldness about Adela
+Sellingworth, the sudden touch of heat about Beryl Van Tuyn, surely
+indicated that. Braybrooke was not seriously upset about Lady Archie’s
+remarks. She really was a tremendous gossip, although of course a
+delightful woman. And Miss Van Tuyn was always surrounded by men.
+Nevertheless he was decidedly curious about the good-looking stranger
+who had been seen in Glebe Place. He had a retentive memory, and had not
+forgotten Dick Garstin’s extraordinary remark about the blackmailer.
+
+Braybrooke was not mistaken about Craven. The information about Adela
+Sellingworth had renewed Craven’s hot sense of injury. Braybrooke did
+not understand that. But the subsequent remark about Beryl Van Tuyn
+had added fuel to the fire, and the sharp jealousy of sensitive youth
+mingled with the feeling of injury. Craven had been hurt by the elderly
+woman. Was he now to be hurt by the girl? Braybrooke’s news had made him
+feel really angry. Yet he knew he had no right to be angry. He began to
+wish that he had never gone to Berkeley Square on that autumn afternoon,
+had never met the two women who were beginning to complicate his life.
+For a moment he thought of dropping them both. But had not one of them
+already dropped him? He would certainly not call again in Berkeley
+Square. If Lady Sellingworth did not ask him to go there he would not
+attempt to see her. He was not going to fight for her friendship. And
+as to Beryl Van Tuyn--The curious name--Nicolas Arabian--came into his
+mind and a conversation at a box at a theatre. Miss Van Tuyn had told
+him about this magnificently handsome man, this “living bronze,” but
+somehow he had never thought of her as specially intimate with a fellow
+who frequented the Cafe Royal, and who apparently sat as a model to
+painters. But now he realized that this must be the man of Glebe Place,
+and he felt more angry, more injured than before.
+
+Yet he was not in love with Beryl Van Tuyn. Or had he fallen in
+love with her without being aware of it? She attracted him very much
+physically at times. She amused him, interested him. He liked being with
+her. He was angry at the thought of another man’s intimacy with her. He
+wanted her to be fond of him, to need him, to prefer him to all other
+men. But he often felt critical about her, about her character, though
+not about her beauty. A lover surely could not feel like that. A lover
+just loved, and there was an end of it.
+
+He could not understand his own feelings. But when he thought of Beryl
+Van Tuyn he felt full of the fighting instinct, and ready to take
+the initiative. He would never fight to retain Lady Sellingworth’s
+friendship, but he would fight to assert himself with the beautiful
+American. She should not take him up and use him merely as a means to
+amusement without any care for what was due to him. Lady Sellingworth
+was old, and in a sense famous. Such a woman could do as she pleased.
+With her, protest would be ridiculous. But he would find a way with
+Beryl Van Tuyn.
+
+On that day and the next Craven did not see Miss Van Tuyn. No message
+came to him from Lady Sellingworth. Evidently the latter wished to have
+nothing more to do with him. She had now been in London for nearly a
+week without letting him know it. Miss Van Tuyn had telephoned once
+suggesting a meeting. But Craven had charmingly put her off, alleging a
+tiresome engagement. He did not choose now to seem eager to meet her.
+He was considering what he would do. If he could manage to meet her
+in Glebe Place! But how to contrive such an encounter? While he was
+meditating about this he was again rung up by Miss Van Tuyn, who
+suggested that he should play golf with her at Beaconsfield on the
+following day, Saturday.
+
+“You can’t pretend you are working overtime at the F.O. to-morrow,” she
+said.
+
+Craven replied that the F.O. kept him very long even on Saturdays.
+
+“What’s the matter? What are you angry about?” asked Miss Van Tuyn
+through the telephone.
+
+Craven intended to make a quietly evasive reply, but he found himself
+saying:
+
+“If I work overtime at the F.O., are there not others who do much the
+same--in Glebe Place?”
+
+After a pause Miss Van Tuyn said:
+
+“I haven’t an idea what you mean.”
+
+Craven said nothing. Already he was angry with himself, and regretted
+his impulsiveness.
+
+“Well?” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“Well?” retorted Craven, feeling rather absurd.
+
+Again there was a pause. Then, speaking quickly, Miss Van Tuyn said: “If
+you can escape from the F.O. you might be in Glebe Place about five on
+Monday. Good-bye!”
+
+And she rang off, leaving Craven with the pleasant sensation that, as
+often before, he had “given himself away.” Certainly he had shown Miss
+Van Tuyn his jealousy. She must have guessed what his mention of Glebe
+Place meant. And yet she had asked him to go there on the following
+Monday. If he did not go perhaps that neglect would cancel his
+imprudence at the telephone.
+
+He made up his mind not to go.
+
+Nevertheless, when he left the Foreign Office on the Monday about
+half-past four, instead of going towards Mayfair he found himself
+walking quickly in the direction of Chelsea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Miss Van Tuyn was in Garstin’s studio on that day. Although apparently
+calm and self-possessed she was in a condition of acute nervous
+excitement. Craven’s mention of Glebe Place through the telephone had
+startled her. At once she had understood. People had begun to gossip,
+and the gossip had reached Craven’s ears. She had reddened as she stood
+by the telephone. A definite sensation of anxiety mingled with shame
+had crept in her. But it had been succeeded by a decisive feeling more
+really characteristic of her. As Craven now evidently knew of her close
+acquaintance with Arabian the two men should meet. She would conquer her
+reluctance, and put Arabian to the test with Craven. For a long time she
+had wished to know what Craven would think of Arabian; for a long time,
+too, she had been afraid to know. But now she would hesitate no more.
+Dick Garstin was to have a sitting from Arabian on the Monday afternoon.
+It ought to be over about half-past four. She could easily manage to
+prolong matters in the studio till five, so that Craven might have time
+to get to Glebe Place from the Foreign Office. Of course, he might not
+choose to come. But if he were really jealous she thought he would come.
+
+Now she was anticipating the coming interview with an uneasiness which
+she could only conceal by a strong effort.
+
+At last, after repeated failures, Garstin was beginning to work with
+energy and real satisfaction. Of late he had been almost venomous. His
+impotence to do what he wished to do had made him more disagreeable,
+more brutal even than usual. His habitual brusqueness had often
+degenerated into downright rudeness. But suddenly a change had come, one
+of those mysterious changes in the mood and powers of an artist which
+neither he nor anyone else can understand. Abruptly the force which had
+abandoned him had returned.
+
+The change had occurred on the day of Miss Van Tuyn’s conversation
+through the telephone with Craven, a Friday.
+
+Arabian had refused to sit on the Saturday and Sunday. He said he was
+moving into his Chelsea flat, and had many things to do. He could not
+come to the studio again till the Monday afternoon at half-past two.
+Garstin had been furious, but he had been met by a will apparently as
+inflexible as his own.
+
+“I am sorry, but I cannot help it, Dick Garstin,” Arabian had said.
+
+And after a pause he had added:
+
+“I hope I have not shown impatience all this long time?”
+
+Garstin had cursed, but he had not persisted. Evidently he had realized
+that persistence would be useless. On the Monday he had received Arabian
+with frigid hauteur, but soon he had become intent on his work and had
+apparently forgotten his grievance.
+
+Half-past four struck--then the quarter to five. Garstin had been
+painting for more than two hours. Now he put down his brush and frowned,
+still looking at Arabian, who was sitting in an easy, almost casual
+position, with his magnificent brown throat and shoulders exposed.
+
+“Finished!” he said in his loud bass voice.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn, who was curled up on a divan in a corner of the studio,
+moved and put down a book which she had been pretending to read. Garstin
+had forbidden her to come near to him that day while he was painting.
+
+“Finished!” she exclaimed. “Do you mean--”
+
+“No, damn it, I don’t!” said Garstin, with exasperation. “I don’t! Do
+you take me for a magician, or what? I have finished for to-day! Now
+then!”
+
+He began to move the easel. Miss Van Tuyn got up, and Arabian, without
+saying a word, stretched himself, looked at her steadily for a moment,
+then pulled up his silk vest and carefully buttoned it with his
+strong-looking fingers. Then he too got up, and went away to the
+dressing-room to put on his shirt, waistcoat, collar and tie.
+
+“May I see, Dick?” asked Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“No, you mayn’t.”
+
+“Are you satisfied?”
+
+“He’s coming out more as I want him this time.”
+
+“Do you think you have found his secret?”
+
+“Or yours, eh? What is happening in you, my girl?”
+
+Before she could answer a telephone bell rang below.
+
+“Damn!” said Garstin, going towards the staircase.
+
+Before he went down he turned round and said:
+
+“You’re travelling fast.”
+
+And he disappeared. She heard him below tramping to the telephone. Then
+she went to a small square window in the studio, pushed it open, and
+looked out. There was a tiny space of garden below. She saw a plane
+tree shivering in the wind, yellow leaves on the rain-sodden ground. A
+sparrow flitted by and perched on the grimy coping of a low wall. And
+she shivered like the plane tree.
+
+“Beryl!”
+
+She started, turned, and went to the head of the stairs.
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“The telephone’s for you. Come along down!”
+
+“Coming!” she answered.
+
+“Who is it?” she said, as she saw him standing by the telephone with the
+receiver in his hand.
+
+“Some old woman, by the voice. She says she must speak to you.
+Here--take it, my girl!”
+
+“It must be old Fanny!” said Miss Van Tuyn, with a touch of irritation.
+“Nobody else would know I was here. But I stupidly told Fanny.”
+
+She took the receiver out of his hand.
+
+“I’m here! Who is it? Do make haste. I’m in a hurry.”
+
+She was thinking of Craven. It was nearly five o’clock, and she did not
+want to be late in Glebe Place, though she dreaded the encounter she
+expected there.
+
+“Oh, Beryl, there’s bad news!”
+
+“Bad news! What news?”
+
+“I can’t tell you like this.”
+
+“Nonsense! Tell me at once!”
+
+“I can’t! I simply cannot. Oh, my dear, get into a taxi and come back at
+once.”
+
+“I insist on your telling me what is the matter!” said Miss Van Tuyn
+sharply.
+
+Her nerves were already on edge, and something in the sound of the voice
+through the telephone frightened her.
+
+“Tell me at once what it is! Now speak plainly!”
+
+There was a pause; then the agitated voice said:
+
+“A cable has come from the Bahamas.”
+
+“The Bahamas! Well? Well?”
+
+“Your poor father has--”
+
+The voice failed.
+
+“Oh, do tell me! For Heaven’s sake, what is it?”
+
+“Your poor father is dead. Oh, Beryl!”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn stood quite still for a moment.
+
+“My father--dead!” she thought.
+
+She felt surprised. She felt shocked. But she was not conscious of
+any real sorrow. She very seldom saw her father. Since he had married
+again--he had married a woman with whom he was very much in love--his
+strongly independent daughter had faded into the background of his life.
+Beryl had not set her eyes upon him during the last eighteen months. It
+was impossible that she could miss him much, a father with whom she had
+spent for years so little of her time. She knew that she would not miss
+him. Yet she had had a shock. After an instant she said:
+
+“Thank you, Fanny. I shall be home very soon. Of course, I shall leave
+the studio at once. Good-bye.”
+
+She hung up the receiver and went upstairs slowly. And as she went she
+resolved not to say anything about what had happened to Dick Garstin.
+He was incapable of expressing conventional sympathy, and would probably
+say something bizarre which would jar on her nerves if she told him.
+
+She found the two men standing together in the studio. Arabian had on
+his overcoat and gloves, and was holding his hat and umbrella.
+
+“It was only Fanny Cronin!” she said.
+
+As she spoke she looked narrowly at Garstin. Could Fanny have told him
+the news? The casual expression on his face set her mind at ease on that
+point. She was certain that he knew nothing.
+
+“I must go,” she said.
+
+“I will walk with you to a taxi if you kindly allow me,” said Arabian,
+getting her fur coat.
+
+“Thank you!”
+
+As he stood behind her helping her to get into the coat she was
+conscious of a strange and terrible feeling of fear mingled with an
+intense desire to give herself up to the power in this man. Was Craven
+outside? Something in her hoped, almost prayed, that he might be. It was
+surely the part of her that was afraid.
+
+“Good-bye, Dick!” she said in an offhand voice.
+
+“Good-bye!” he said. “Take care of her, Arabian.”
+
+She sent him a look full of intense and hostile inquiry. He met it with
+a half-amused smile.
+
+“I shall do better now,” he said.
+
+“Ah?” said Arabian, looking polite and imperturbable.
+
+“Come along!” said Miss Van Tuyn. “It must be getting late.”
+
+As she spoke a clock in the room began striking five. For a moment
+she felt confused and almost ill. Her brain seemed too full of rushing
+thoughts for its holding capacity. Her head throbbed. Her legs felt
+weak.
+
+“Anything the matter?” asked Garstin, gazing at her with keen attention
+and curiosity.
+
+“No,” she said coldly. “Good-bye.”
+
+And she went down the stairs followed by Arabian.
+
+Garstin did not accompany them. He had gone to stand before his picture
+of Arabian.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn opened the door. A soft gust of wind blew some small rain
+into her face.
+
+“Let me hold my umbrella over you, please,” said Arabian. “Do take my
+arm while we look for a taxi.”
+
+“No, no!”
+
+She walked on.
+
+“There is nothing the matter, I hope?”
+
+“I had some bad news through the telephone.”
+
+She felt impelled to say this to him, though she had said nothing to
+Garstin. Her brain still felt horribly overcharged, and an impulse had
+come to her to seek instant relief.
+
+“My father is dead,” she added.
+
+As she spoke she looked up at him, and she saw a sharp quiver distort
+his lips for an instant.
+
+“Did you know him?” she exclaimed, standing still.
+
+“I? Indeed no! Why should you suppose so?”
+
+“I thought--I don’t know!”
+
+He was now looking so calm, so earnestly sympathetic, that she almost
+believed that her eyes had played her a trick and that his face had not
+changed at her news.
+
+“I’m not normal to-day,” she thought.
+
+“I am deeply grieved, deeply. Please accept from me my most full
+sympathy.”
+
+“Thank you. I scarcely ever saw my father, but naturally this news has
+upset me. He died in the Bahamas.”
+
+“How very sad! So far away!”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+They were still standing together, and he was holding his umbrella over
+her head and gazing down at her earnestly, when Craven turned the corner
+of the road and came up to them. Miss Van Tuyn flushed. Although she
+had asked Craven to come, she felt startled when she saw him, and her
+confusion of mind increased. She did not feel competent to deal with the
+situation which she had deliberately brought about. Craven had come upon
+them too suddenly. She had somehow not expected him just at that moment,
+when she and Arabian were standing still. Before she was able to recover
+her normal self-possession, Craven had taken off his hat to her and gone
+rapidly past them. She had just time to see the grim line of his lips
+and the hard, searching glance he sent to her companion. Arabian, she
+noticed, looked after him, and she saw that, while he looked, his
+large eyes lost all their melting gentleness. They had a cruel, almost
+menacing expression in them, and they were horribly intelligent at that
+moment.
+
+“What does this man not know?” she thought.
+
+He might have little, or no, ordinary learning, but she was positive
+that he had an almost appallingly intimate knowledge of many chapters in
+the dark books of life.
+
+“Shall we--?” said Arabian.
+
+And they walked on slowly together.
+
+“May I make a suggestion, Miss Van Tuyn,” he said gently.
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“My little flat is close by, in Rose Tree Gardens. It is not quite
+arranged, but tea will be ready. Let me please offer you a cup of tea
+and a cigarette. There is a taxi!”
+
+He made a signal with his left hand.
+
+“We will keep it at the door, so that you may at once leave when you
+feel refreshed. You have had this bad shock. You need a moment to
+recover.”
+
+The cab stopped beside them.
+
+“No, I must really go home,” she said, with an attempt at determination.
+
+“Of course! But please let me have the privilege. You have told me
+first of all of your grief. This is real friendship. Let me then be also
+friendly, and help you to recover yourself.”
+
+“But really I must--”
+
+“Four, Rose Tree Gardens! You know them?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Good!”
+
+The taxi glided away from the kerb.
+
+And Miss Van Tuyn made no further protest. She had a strange feeling
+just then that her will had abandoned her. Fanny Cronin’s message must
+have had an imperious effect upon her. Yet she still felt no real sorrow
+at her father’s death. She seemed to be enveloped in something which
+made mental activity difficult, indeed almost impossible.
+
+When the cab stopped, she said:
+
+“I can only stay five minutes.”
+
+“Certainly! Dear Mademoiselle Cronin will expect you. Please wait for
+the lady!”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn was vaguely glad to hear him say that to the chauffeur.
+
+She got out and looked upwards. She saw a big block of flats towering up
+in front of her.
+
+“On the other side they face the river Thames,” said Arabian. “All my
+windows except three look out that way. We will go up in the elevator.”
+
+They passed through a handsome hall and stepped into the lift, which
+carried them up to the fourth floor of the building. Arabian put a
+latch-key into a polished mahogany door with a big letter M in brass
+nailed to it.
+
+“Please!” he said, standing back for Miss Van Tuyn to pass in.
+
+But she hesitated. She saw a pretty little hall, a bunch of roses in a
+vase on a Chippendale table, two or three closed doors. She was aware
+of a very faint and pleasant odour, like the odour of flowers not roses,
+and guessed that someone had been burning some perfume in the flat.
+There was certainly nothing repellent in this temporary home of Arabian.
+Yet she felt with a painful strength that she had better go away without
+entering it. While she paused, but before she had said anything, she
+heard a quiet step, and a thin man of about thirty with a very dark
+narrow face and light, grey eyes appeared.
+
+“Please bring tea for two at once,” said Arabian in Spanish.
+
+“Yes, sir, in a moment,” said the man, also in Spanish.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn stepped in, and the door was gently shut behind her by
+Arabian’s manservant.
+
+Arabian opened the second door on the left of the hall.
+
+“This is my little salon,” he said. “May I--”
+
+“No, thank you. I’ll keep on my coat. I must go home in a minute. I
+shall have a good deal to do. Really I oughtn’t to be here at all. If
+anyone--after such news--”
+
+She looked at Arabian. She had just had news of the death of her father,
+and she had come out to tea with this man. Was she crazy?
+
+“I don’t know why I came!” she said bluntly, angrily almost.
+
+“Do please sit down,” he said, pushing forward a large arm-chair. “If
+these curtains were not drawn we could see the river Thames from here.
+It is a fine view.”
+
+He bent down and poked the fire, then stood beside it, looking down at
+her as she sat in the chair.
+
+She glanced round the room. It was well furnished and contained two or
+three good pieces, but there was nothing in it which showed personality,
+a thoughtful guiding mind and taste; there was nothing in it even which
+marked it definitely as the home of a woman rather than a man, or vice
+versa.
+
+“I rent it furnished,” said Arabian, evidently guessing her thought.
+
+“Are you here for long?”
+
+“I do not quite know. That depends.”
+
+His large eyes were fixed upon her as he said this, and she longed to
+ask him what intentions he had with regard to her. He had never made
+love to her. He had never even been what is sometimes called “foolish”
+ with her. Not a word to which she could object had ever come from his
+lips. By no action had he ever claimed anything from her. And yet she
+felt that in some way he was governing her, was imposing his will on
+her. Certainly he had once followed her in the street. But on that
+occasion he had not known who she was. Now, as he gazed at her, she felt
+certain that he had formed some definite project with regard to her, and
+meant to carry it out at whatever cost. Garstin said he, Arabian, was in
+love with her. Probably he was. But if he was in love with her, why
+did he never hint at it when they were alone together except by the
+expression in his eyes? She asked herself why she was afraid of him,
+and the answer she seemed to get was that his reticence frightened her.
+There was something in his continued inaction which alarmed her. It was
+a silence of conduct which lay like a weight upon her. She felt it now
+as he stared at her.
+
+“What do you want with me?”
+
+That was what she longed, and yet was afraid, to say to him. Did he know
+how violently she was attracted by him and how fiercely he sometimes
+repelled her? No doubt he did. No doubt he knew that at times she
+believed him to be horrible, suspected him of nameless things, of
+abominable relationships; no doubt he knew that she was degradingly
+jealous of him. When his eyes were thus fixed upon her she felt that he
+knew everything that was going on in her with which he had to do. Yet he
+never spoke of his knowledge.
+
+His reserve almost terrified her. That was the truth.
+
+The dark man with the light eyes brought in tea on a large silver tray.
+She began to drink it hastily.
+
+“You--forgive me for asking--you will not leave London because of this
+sad news?” said Arabian.
+
+“Do you mean for America?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn had not thought of such a possibility till he alluded
+to it. She could not, of course, be at her father’s funeral. That was
+impossible. But suddenly it occurred to her that she had no doubt come
+into a very large fortune. There might be business to do. She might have
+to cross the Atlantic. At the thought of this possibility her sense of
+confusion and almost of mental blackness increased, and yet she realized
+more vividly than before the death of her father.
+
+“I don’t know. I don’t think so. No, thank you. I won’t smoke. I must
+go. I ought never to have come after receiving such news.”
+
+She stood up. He took her hand. His was warm and strong, and a great
+deal of her personality seemed to her to be in its clasp--too much
+indeed. His body fascinated hers, made her realize in a startling way
+that the coldness of which some men had complained had either been
+overcome by something that could burn and be consumed, or perhaps had
+never existed.
+
+“You will not go to America without telling me?” he said.
+
+“No, no. Of course not.”
+
+“You told me first of your sorrow!”
+
+“Why--why did I?” she thought, wondering.
+
+“And you did not tell Dick Garstin.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“And you came here to me.”
+
+“No, no! With you!”
+
+“To my rooms in spite of your grief. We are friends from to-night.”
+
+“To-night . . . but it is afternoon!”
+
+He still had her hand in his. She felt, or fancied she felt, a pulse
+beating in his hand. It gave her a sense of terrible intimacy with him,
+as if she were close to the very sources of his being. And yet she knew
+nothing about him.
+
+“It gets dark so early now,” he said.
+
+Dark! As he said it she thought, “That’s his word! That’s his word!”
+ Everyone has his word, and dark was Arabian’s.
+
+“Good-bye!” she said.
+
+“I will take you down.”
+
+Quietly and very naturally, he let her hand go. And at once she had a
+sensation of being out in the cold.
+
+They went down together in the lift. Just as they left it, and were in
+the hall, a woman whom Miss Van Tuyn knew slightly, a Mrs. Birchington,
+an intimate of the Ackroyde and Lady Wrackley set, met them coming from
+the entrance.
+
+“Oh, Miss Van Tuyn!” she said, stopping.
+
+She held out her hand, looking from Miss Van Tuyn to Arabian.
+
+“How are you?”
+
+Her light eyes were searching and inquisitive. She had an evening paper
+in her hand.
+
+“I--I am so grieved,” she added, again looking at Arabian.
+
+“Mr. Arabian--Mrs. Birchington!” Miss Van Tuyn felt obliged to say.
+
+Mrs. Birchington and Arabian bowed.
+
+“Grieved!” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“Yes. I have just seen the sad news about your father in the paper.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn realized at once that she was caught, unless she lied. But
+she did not choose to lie before Arabian. Something--her pride of a free
+American girl, perhaps--forbade that. And she only said:
+
+“Thank you for your sympathy. Good-bye.”
+
+“Good-bye!”
+
+Mrs. Birchington bowed again to Arabian, swept him with her sharp
+inquisitive eyes, and stepped into the lift.
+
+“She lives here,” he said, “in the apartment opposite to mine.”
+
+As Miss Van Tuyn drove away towards Claridge’s she wondered whether
+Arabian was glad because of that fortuitous meeting.
+
+Because of it her close intimacy with him--it would certainly now be
+called, and thought of, as that--would very soon be public property.
+All those women would hear about it. How crazy she had been to visit
+Arabian’s flat at such a moment! She was angry with herself, and yet she
+believed that in like circumstances she would do the same thing again.
+Her power of will had deserted her, or this man, Arabian, had the power
+to inhibit her will. And Craven? What could he be thinking about her?
+She knew he was a sensitive man. What must he be thinking? That she had
+asked him to come all the way to Glebe Place merely in order that he
+might see her in deep conversation with another man. And she had not
+even spoken to him. He would be furious. She remembered his face. He was
+furious. By what she had done she had certainly alienated Craven.
+
+And her father was dead!
+
+She leaned back in the darkness of the cab, feeling weak and miserable,
+almost terrified. Surely Fate had her in a tight grip. She remembered
+Arabian’s question: would it be necessary for her to go to America? Her
+father was very rich. She was his only child. He must certainly have
+left her a great deal of his money, for his second wife was wealthy and
+would not need it. There might be business to do which would necessitate
+her presence in New York. At that moment she almost wished for an urgent
+summons from the New World. A few hours in a train, the crossing of a
+gang-plank, the hoot of a siren, and she would be free from all
+these complications! The sea would lie between her and Arabian--Adela
+Sellingworth--Craven. She would stay away for months. She would not come
+back at all.
+
+But this man, Arabian, would he let her go without a word, without doing
+something? Would his strange and horrible reserve last till her ship was
+at sea? She could not believe it. If she made up her mind to sail, and
+he knew it, he would speak, act. Something would happen. There would be
+some revelation of character, of intention. She was sure of it. Arabian
+was a man who could wait--but not for ever.
+
+She still seemed to feel the pulse beating in his warm hand as she drove
+through the rain and the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+PART SIX
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Mrs. Ackroyde had a pretty little house in Upper Grosvenor Street,
+but she spent a good deal of her time in a country house which she had
+bought at Coombe close to London. She was always there from Saturday to
+Monday, when she was not paying visits or abroad, and Coombe Hall, as
+her place was called, was a rallying ground for members of the “old
+guard.” Invariably guests came down on the Sunday to lunch and tea.
+Bridge was the great attraction for some. For others there were lawn
+tennis and golf. And often there was good music. For Mrs. Ackroyde was
+an excellent musician as well as an ardent card-player.
+
+Lady Sellingworth had occasionally been to Coombe Hall, but for several
+years now she had ceased from going there. She did not care to show her
+white hair and lined face in Mrs. Ackroyde’s rooms, which were always
+thronged with women she knew too well and with men who had ceased from
+admiring her. And she was no longer deeply interested in the gossip of a
+world in which formerly she had been one of the ruling spirits. She was,
+therefore, rather surprised at receiving a note from Mrs. Ackroyde
+soon after her return from Geneva urging her to motor to Coombe on the
+following Sunday for lunch.
+
+“I suppose there will be the usual crowd,” Mrs. Ackroyde wrote. “And
+I’ve asked Alick Craven and two or three who don’t often come. What do
+you think of Beryl Van Tuyn’s transformation into an heiress? I hear
+she’s come into over three million dollars. I suppose she’ll be more
+unconventional than ever now. Minnie Birchington met her just after
+her father’s death, in fact the very day his death was announced in
+the papers. She’d just been to tea with a marvellously good-looking
+man called something Arabian, who has taken a flat in Rose Tree Gardens
+opposite to Minnie’s. Evidently this is the newest way of going into
+deep mourning.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth hesitated for some time before answering this note.
+Probably, indeed almost certainly, she would have refused the invitation
+but for the last three sentences about Beryl Van Tuyn. She did not want
+to see the girl again, for she could not help hating her. She had,
+of course, sent a note of sympathy to Claridge’s, and had received an
+affectionate reply, which she had torn up and burnt after reading it.
+But she had not gone to tell her regret at this death to Beryl, and
+Beryl had expressed no wish to see her.
+
+In her heart Lady Sellingworth hated humbug, and she knew, of course,
+that any pretence of real friendship between Beryl and her would be
+humbug in an acute form. She might in the future sometimes have to
+pretend, but she was resolved not to rush upon insincerity. If Beryl
+sought her out again she would play her part of friend gallantly to
+conceal her wounds. But she would certainly not seek out Beryl.
+
+She had not seen Craven since her return to London. In spite of
+her anger against him, which was complicated by a feeling of almost
+contemptuous disgust, she longed to see him again. Each day, when
+she had sat in her drawing-room in the late afternoon and had heard
+Murgatroyd’s heavy step outside and the opening of the door, her heart
+beat fast, and she had thought, “Can it be he?” Each day, after the
+words “Sir Seymour Portman!” her heart had sunk and she had felt bitter
+and weary.
+
+And now came this invitation, putting it in her power to meet Craven
+again naturally. Should she go?
+
+She read Dindie Ackroyde’s note once more carefully, and a strange
+feeling stung her. She had been angry with Beryl for being fond of
+Craven. (For she had supposed a real fondness in Beryl.) Now she was
+angry with Beryl for a totally different reason. It was evident to her
+that Beryl was behaving badly to Craven. As she looked at the note in
+her hand she remembered a conversation in a box at the theatre. Arabian!
+That was the name of the man Dick Garstin was painting, or had
+been painting. Dindie Ackroyde called him “Something Arabian.” Lady
+Sellingworth’s mind supplied the other name. It was Nicolas. Beryl had
+described him as “a living bronze.”
+
+She had gone out to tea with him in a flat on the day her father’s
+sudden death had been announced in the papers. And yet she had pretended
+that she was hovering on the verge of love for Alick Craven. She had
+even implied that she was thinking of marrying him. Lady Sellingworth
+saw Beryl as a treacherous lover, as well as an unkind friend and a
+heartless daughter, and suddenly her anger against Craven died in pity.
+She had believed for a little while that she hated him, but now she
+longed to protect him from pain, to comfort him, to make him happy,
+as surely she had once made him happy, if only for an hour or two. She
+forgot her pride and her sense of injury in a sudden rush of feeling
+that was new to her, that perhaps, really, had something of motherliness
+in it. And she sat down quickly and wrote an acceptance to Mrs.
+Ackroyde.
+
+When Sunday came she felt excited and eager, absurdly so for a woman
+of sixty. But her secret diffidence troubled her. She looked into her
+mirror and thought of the piercing eyes of the “old guard,” of those
+merciless and horribly intelligent women who had marked with amazement
+her sudden collapse into old age ten years ago, who would mark with a
+perhaps even greater amazement this bizarre attempt at a partial return
+towards what she had once been.
+
+And what would Alick Craven think?
+
+Nevertheless she put a little more red on her lips, called her maid, had
+something done to her hair.
+
+“It has been a great success!” said the little Frenchwoman. “Miladi
+looks wonderful to-day. Black and white is much better than unrelieved
+black for miladi. And the _soupcon_ of blue on the hat and in the
+earrings of miladi lights up the whole personality. Miladi never did a
+wiser thing than when she visited Switzerland.”
+
+“You think not, Cecile?”
+
+“Indeed yes, miladi. There is no specialist even in Paris like Monsieur
+Paulus. And as to the Doctor Lavallois, he is a marvel. Every woman who
+is no longer a girl should go to him.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth picked up a big muff and went down to the motor,
+leaving Cecile smiling behind her. As she disappeared down the stairs
+Cecile, who was on the bright side of thirty, with a smooth, clear skin
+and chestnut-coloured hair, pushed out her under-lip slowly and shook
+her head.
+
+“_La vieillesse!_” she murmured. “_La vieillesse amoureuse! Quelle
+horreur!_”
+
+Lady Sellingworth had never given the maid any confidence about her
+secret reasons for doing this or that. But Cecile was a Parisian. She
+fully understood the reason for their visit to Geneva. Miladi had fallen
+in love.
+
+Lady Sellingworth’s excitement increased as she drove towards Coombe.
+It was complicated by a feeling of shyness. To herself she said that she
+was like an old debutante. She had been out of the world for so long,
+and now she was venturing once more among the merciless women of the
+world that never rests from amusing itself, from watching the lives of
+others, from gossiping about them, from laughing at them. She had been a
+leader of this world until she had denied it, had shut herself away from
+it. And now she was venturing back--because of a man. As she drove on
+swiftly through the wintry and dull-looking streets, streets that
+seemed to grow meaner, more dingy, more joyless, as she drew near to the
+outskirts of London, she looked back over the past. And she saw always
+the same reason for the important actions of her life. All of them had
+been committed because of a man. And now, even at sixty--Presently she
+saw by the look of the landscape that she was nearing Coombe, and she
+drew a little mirror out of her muff and gazed into it anxiously.
+
+“What will they say? What will he think? What will happen to me to-day?”
+
+The car turned into a big gravel sweep between tall, red-brick walls,
+and drew up before Mrs. Ackroyde’s door.
+
+In the long drawing-room, with its four windows opening on to a terrace,
+from which Coombe Woods could be seen sunk in the misty winter, Lady
+Sellingworth found many cheerful people whom she knew. Mrs. Ackroyde
+gave her blunt, but kindly, greeting, with her strange eyes, fierce and
+remote, yet notably honest, taking in at a glance the results of Geneva.
+Lady Wrackley was there in an astonishing black hat trimmed with bird
+of paradise plumes. Glancing about her while she still spoke to Dindie
+Ackroyde carelessly, Lady Sellingworth saw young Leving; Sir Robert
+Syng; the Duchess of Wellingborough, shaking her broad shoulders and
+tossing up her big chin as she laughed at some joke; Jennie Farringdon,
+with her puffy pale cheeks and parrot-like nose, talking to old Hubert
+Mostine, the man of innumerable weddings, funerals and charity fetes,
+with his blinking eyelids and moustaches that drooped over a large and
+gossiping mouth; Magdalen Dearing, whose Mona Lisa smile had attracted
+three generations of men, and who had managed to look sad and be riotous
+for at least four decades; Francis Braybrooke, pulling at his beard;
+Mrs. Birchington; Lady Anne Smith, wiry, cock-nosed, brown, ugly, but
+supremely smart and self-assured; Eve Colton, painted like a wall, and
+leaning, with an old hand blazing with jewels, on a stick with a jade
+handle; Mrs. Dews, the witty actress, with her white, mobile face, and
+the large irresponsible eyes which laughed at herself, the critics and
+the world; Lord Alfred Craydon, thin, high church and political, who
+loved pretty women but receded farther and farther from marriage as
+the years spun by; and Lady Twickenham, a French _poupee_; and Julian
+Lamberhurst, the composer, who looked as if he had grown up to his six
+foot four in one night, like the mustard seed; and Hilary Lane, the
+friend of poets; and--how many more! For Dindie Ackroyde loved to gather
+a crowd for lunch, and had a sort of physical love of noise and human
+complications.
+
+At the far end of the room there was a section which was raised a few
+inches above the rest. Here stood two Steinway grand pianos, tail to
+tail, their dark polished cases shining soberly in the pale light of
+November. There were some deep settees on this species of dais, and,
+looking towards it, over the heads of the crowd in the lower part of the
+room, Lady Sellingworth saw Craven again.
+
+He was sitting beside a pretty girl, whom Lady Sellingworth did not
+know, and talking. His face looked hard and bored, but he was leaning
+towards the girl as if trying to seem engrossed, intent, on the
+conversation and on her.
+
+Francis Braybrooke came up. Lady Sellingworth was busy, greeting and
+being greeted. Once more she made part of the regiment. But the ranks
+were broken. There was no review order here. Only for an instant had she
+been aware of formality, of the “eyes right” atmosphere--when she had
+entered the room. Then the old voices hummed about her. And she saw the
+well-known and experienced eyes examining her. And she had to listen and
+to answer, to be charming, to “hold her own.”
+
+“I’m putting Alick Craven next to you at lunch, Adela. I know you and he
+are pals. He’s over there with Lily Bright.”
+
+“And who is Lily Bright?” said Lady Sellingworth in her most offhand
+way.
+
+“A dear little New Englander, Knickerbocker to the bone.”
+
+She turned away composedly to meet another guest.
+
+Francis Braybrooke began to talk to Lady Sellingworth, and almost
+immediately Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Birchington joined them.
+
+“How marvellous you look, Adela!” said Lady Wrackley, staring with her
+birdlike eyes. “You will cut us all out. I must go to Geneva. Have
+you heard about Beryl? But of course you have. She was so delighted
+at coming into a fortune that she rushed away to Rose Tree Gardens to
+celebrate the event with a man without even waiting till she had got her
+mourning. Didn’t she, Minnie?”
+
+Francis Braybrooke was looking shocked.
+
+“I cannot believe that Miss Van Tuyn--” he began.
+
+But Mrs. Birchington interrupted him.
+
+“But I was there!” she said.
+
+“I beg your pardon!” said Braybrooke.
+
+“It was the very day the death of her father was in the evening papers.
+I came back from the club with the paper in my hand, and met Beryl Van
+Tuyn getting out of the lift in Rose Tree Gardens with the man who lives
+opposite to me. She absolutely looked embarrassed.”
+
+“Impossible!” said Lady Wrackley. “She couldn’t!”
+
+“I assure you she did! But she introduced me to him.”
+
+“She cannot have heard of her father’s death,” said Braybrooke.
+
+“But she had! For I expressed my sympathy and she thanked me.”
+
+Braybrooke looked very ill at ease and glanced plaintively towards the
+place where Craven was sitting with the pretty American.
+
+“No doubt she had been to visit old friends,” he said, “American
+friends.”
+
+“But this man, Nicolas Arabian, lives alone in his flat. And I’m sure
+he’s not an American. Lady Archie has seen him several times with
+Beryl.”
+
+“What’s he like?” asked Lady Wrackley.
+
+“Marvellously handsome! A _charmeur_ if ever there was one. Beryl
+certainly had good taste, but--”
+
+At this moment there was a general movement. The butler had murmured to
+Mrs. Ackroyde that lunch was ready.
+
+Lady Sellingworth was among the first few women who left the
+drawing-room, and was sitting at a round table in the big,
+stone-coloured dining-room when Baron de Melville, an habitue at Coombe,
+bent over her.
+
+“I’m lucky enough to be beside you!” he said. “This is a rare occasion.
+One never meets you now.”
+
+He sat down on her right. The place on her left was vacant. People were
+still coming in, talking, laughing, finding their seats. The Duchess of
+Wellingborough, who was exactly opposite to Lady Sellingworth, leaned
+forward to speak to her.
+
+“Adela . . . Adela!”
+
+“Yes? How are you, Cora?”
+
+“Very well, as I always am. Isn’t Lavallois a marvel?”
+
+“He is certainly very clever.”
+
+“You are proud of it, my dear. Have you heard what the Bolshevist envoy
+said to the Prime Minister when--”
+
+But at this moment someone spoke to the duchess, who was already
+beginning to laugh at the story she was intending to tell and Lady
+Sellingworth was aware of a movement on her left. She felt as if she
+blushed, though no colour came into her face.
+
+“How are you, Lady Sellingworth?”
+
+She had not turned her head, but now she did, and met Craven’s hard,
+uncompromising blue eyes and deliberately smiling lips.
+
+“Oh, it’s you! How nice!”
+
+She gave him her hand. He just touched it coldly. What a boy he still
+was in his polite hostility! She thought of Camber Sands and the
+darkness falling over the waste, and, in spite of her self-control and
+her pity for him, there was an unconquerable feeling of injury in her
+heart. What reason, what right, had he to greet her so frigidly? How had
+she injured him?
+
+A roar of conversation had begun in the room. Everyone seemed in high
+spirits. Mrs. Ackroyde, who was at the same table as Lady Sellingworth,
+with Lord Alfred Craydon on her right and Sir Robert Syng on her
+left, looked steadily round over the multitude of her guests with a
+comprehensive glance, the analyzing and summing-up glance of one to whom
+everything social was as an open book containing no secrets which her
+eyes did not read. Those eyes travelled calmly, and presently came to
+Craven and Adela Sellingworth. She smiled faintly and spoke to Robert
+Syng.
+
+“This is her second debut,” she said. “I’m bringing her out again. They
+are all amazed.”
+
+“What about?” said Sir Robert, in his grim and very masculine voice.
+
+“Bobbie, you know as well as I do. I had a bet with Anne that she would
+accept. I’m five pounds to the good. Adela is a creature of impulses,
+and that sort of creature does young things to the day of its death.”
+
+“Is it doing a young thing to accept a luncheon invitation from you?”
+
+“Yes--for _her_ reason.”
+
+“Well, that’s beyond me.”
+
+“How indifferent you are!”
+
+He looked at her in silence.
+
+Lady Sellingworth talked to the baron till half-way through lunch.
+He was a financier of rather obscure origin, long naturalized as an
+Englishman, and ardently patriotic. The noble words “we British people”
+ were often upon his strangely foreign-looking lips. Many years ago
+the “old guard” had taken him to their generous bosoms. For he was
+enormously rich, and really not a bad sort. And he had been clever
+enough to remain unmarried, so hope attended him with undeviating steps.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn was presently the theme of his discourse. Evidently he did
+not know anything about her and Alick Craven. For he discussed her and
+her change of fortune without embarrassment or any _arriere pensee_,
+and he, too, spoke of the visit to Rose Tree Gardens. Evidently all the
+Coombe set was full of this mysterious visit, paid to an Adonis whom
+nobody knew, in the shadow of a father’s death.
+
+The baron greatly admired Miss Van Tuyn, not only for her beauty but for
+her daring. And he was not at all shocked at what she had done.
+
+“She never lived with her father. Why should she pretend to be upset at
+his death? The only difference it makes to her is an extremely agreeable
+one. If she celebrates it by a mild revel over the tea cups with an
+exceptionally good-looking man, who is to blame her? The fact is, we
+Britishers are all moral humbugs. It seems to be in the blood,” etc.
+
+He ran on with wholly un-English vivacity about Beryl and her wonderful
+man. Everybody wished to know who he was and all about him, but he
+seemed to be a profound mystery. Even Minnie Birchington, who lived
+opposite to him, knew little more than the rest of them. Since she had
+been introduced to him she had never set eyes on him, although she
+knew from her maid that he was still in the flat opposite, which he had
+rented furnished for three months with an option for a longer period. He
+had a Spanish manservant in the flat with him, but whether he, too, was
+Spanish Mrs. Birchington did not know. Where had Beryl Van Tuyn picked
+him up, and how had she come to know him so well? All the women were
+asking these questions. And the men were intrigued because of the
+report, carried by Lady Archie, and enthusiastically confirmed by Mrs.
+Birchington, of the fellow’s extraordinary good looks.
+
+Lady Sellingworth listened to all this with an air of polite, but rather
+detached, interest, wondering all the time whether Craven could overhear
+what was being said. Craven was sometimes talking to his neighbour,
+Mrs. Farringdon, but occasionally their conversation dropped, and Lady
+Sellingworth was aware of his sitting in silence. She wished, and yet
+almost feared, to talk to him, but she knew that she was interested in
+no one else in the room. Now that she was again with Craven she realized
+painfully how much she had missed him. Among all these people, many of
+them talented, clever, even fascinating, she was only concerned about
+him. To her he seemed almost like a vital human being in the midst of
+a crowd of dummies endowed by some magic with the power of speech. She
+only felt him at this moment, though she was conscious of the baron,
+Mrs. Ackroyde, Bobbie Syng, the duchess, and others who were near her.
+This silent boy--he was still a boy in comparison with her--crumbling
+his bread, wiped them all out. Yet he was no cleverer than they were, no
+more vital than they. And half of her almost hated him still.
+
+“Oh, why do I worry about him?” she thought, while she leaned towards
+the baron and looked energetically into his shifting dark eyes. “What
+is there in him that holds me and tortures me? He’s only an ordinary
+man--horribly ordinary, I know that.”
+
+And she thought of Camber Sands and the twilight, and saw Craven
+seeking for Beryl’s hand--footman and housemaid. What had she, Adela
+Sellingworth, with her knowledge and her past, her great burden of
+passionate experiences--what had she to do with such an ordinary young
+man?
+
+“Nicolas might possibly be Greek or Russian. But what are we to make of
+Arabian?”
+
+It was still the voice of the Baron--full, energetic, intensely
+un-English.
+
+“Have you heard the name before, Lady Sellingworth?”
+
+“Yes,” she said.
+
+“Really! What country does it belong to? Surely not to our England?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Craven was not speaking at this moment, and she felt that he was
+listening to them. She remembered how Beryl had hurt her and, speaking
+with deliberate clearness, she added:
+
+“Garstin, the painter, has had this man, Nicolas Arabian, as a sitter
+for a long time, certainly for a good many weeks. And Beryl is just now
+intensely interested in portrait painting.”
+
+“What--he’s a model! But with a flat in Rose Tree Gardens!”
+
+“He is evidently not an ordinary model. I believe Mr. Garstin picked
+him up somewhere, saw him by chance, probably at the Cafe Royal or some
+place of that kind, and asked him to sit.”
+
+“Do you know him?” asked the Baron, with sharp curiosity.
+
+“Oh, no! I have never set eyes upon him. Beryl told me.”
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn! We all thought she was trying to keep the whole matter a
+secret.”
+
+“Well, she told me quite openly. You were there, weren’t you?”
+
+She turned rather abruptly to Craven. He started.
+
+“What? I beg your pardon. I didn’t catch what you were saying.”
+
+“He’s lying!” she thought.
+
+The Baron was addressed by his neighbour, Magdalen Dearing, whose
+husband he was supposed, perhaps quite wrongly, to finance, and Lady
+Sellingworth was left free for a conversation with Craven.
+
+“We were speaking about Beryl,” she began.
+
+Suddenly she felt hard, and she wanted to punish Craven, as we only wish
+to punish those who can make us suffer because they have made us care
+for them.
+
+“It seems that--they are all saying--”
+
+She paused. She wanted to repeat the scandalous gossip about Beryl’s
+visit to this mystery man, Arabian, immediately after her father’s
+death. But she could not do it. No, she could not punish him with such
+a dirty weapon. He was worthy of polished steel, and this would be rusty
+scrap-iron.
+
+“It’s nothing but stupid gossip,” she said. “And you and I have never
+dealt in that together, have we?”
+
+“Oh, I enjoy hearing about my neighbours,” he answered, “or I shouldn’t
+come here.”
+
+She felt a sharp thrust of disappointment. His voice was cold and full
+of detachment; the glance of his blue eyes was hard and unrelenting. She
+had never seen him like this till to-day.
+
+“What are they saying about Miss Van Tuyn?” he added. “Anything
+amusing?”
+
+“No. And in any case it’s not the moment to talk nonsense about her,
+just when she is in deep mourning.”
+
+With an almost bitter smile she continued, after a slight hesitation:
+
+“There is a close time for game during which the guns must be patient.
+There ought to be a close time for human beings in sorrow. We ought not
+to fire at them all the year round.”
+
+“What does it matter? They fire at us all the year round. The carnage is
+mutual.”
+
+“Have you turned cynic?”
+
+“I don’t think I was ever a sentimentalist.”
+
+“Perhaps not. But must one be either the one or the other?”
+
+“I am quite sure you are not the latter.”
+
+“I should be sorry to be the former,” she said, with unusual
+earnestness.
+
+Something in his voice made her suddenly feel very sad, with a coldness
+of sorrow that was like frost binding her heart. She looked across the
+big table. A long window was opposite to her. Through it she saw distant
+tree-tops rising into the misty grey sky. And she thought of the silence
+of the bare woods, so near and yet so remote. Why was life so heartless?
+Why could not he and she understand each other? Why had she nothing to
+rest on? Winter! She had entered into her winter, irrevocable, cold and
+leafless. But the longing for warmth would not leave her. Winter was
+terrible to her, would always be terrible.
+
+How the Duchess of Wellingborough was laughing! Her broad shoulders
+shook. She threw up her chin and showed her white teeth. To her life
+was surely a splendid game, even in widowhood and old age. The crowd was
+enough for her. She fed on good stories. And so no doubt she would never
+go hungry. For a moment Lady Sellingworth thought that she envied the
+Duchess. But then something deep down in her knew it was not so. To need
+much--that is greater and better, even if the need brings that sorrow
+which perhaps many know nothing of. At that moment she connected desire
+with aspiration, and felt released from her lowest part.
+
+Craven was speaking to Mrs. Farringdon; Lady Sellingworth heard her
+saying, in her curiously muffled, contralto voice:
+
+“Old Bean is a wonderful horse. I fancy him for the next Derby. But
+some people say he is not a stayer. On a hard course he might crack up.
+Still, he’s got a good deal of bone. The Farnham stable is absolutely
+rotten at present. Don’t go near it.”
+
+“Oh, why did I come?” Lady Sellingworth thought, as she turned again to
+the Baron.
+
+She had lost the habit of the world in her long seclusion. In her
+retreat she had developed into a sentimentalist. Or perhaps she had
+always been one, and old age had made the tendency more definite, had
+fixed her in the torturing groove. She began to feel terribly out of
+place in this company, but she knew that she did not look out of place.
+She had long ago mastered the art of appearance, and could never forget
+that cunning. And she gossiped gaily with the Baron until luncheon at
+last was over.
+
+As she went towards the drawing-room Mrs. Ackroyde joined her.
+
+“You were rather unkind to Alick Craven, Adela,” she murmured. “Has he
+offended you?”
+
+“On the contrary. I think he’s a charming boy.”
+
+“Don’t punish him all the afternoon then.”
+
+“But I am not going to be here all the afternoon. I have ordered the car
+for half-past three.”
+
+“It’s that now.”
+
+“Well, then I must be going almost directly.”
+
+“You must stay for tea. A lot of people are coming, and we shall have
+music. Alick Craven only accepted because I told him you would be here.”
+
+“But you told me he had accepted when you asked me.”
+
+“That’s how I do things when I really want people who may not want to
+come. I lied to both of you, and here you both are.”
+
+“Well at any rate you are honest in confession.”
+
+“I will counterorder your car. Henry, please tell Lady Sellingworth’s
+chauffeur that he will be sent for when he is wanted. Oh, Anne, welcome
+the wandering sheep back to the social fold!”
+
+She threaded her way slowly through the crowd, talking calmly to one and
+another, seeing everything, understanding everything, tremendously at
+home in the midst of complications.
+
+Lady Sellingworth talked to Lady Anne, who had just come back from
+Mexico. It was her way to dart about the world, leaving her husband
+in his arm-chair at the Marlborough. She brought gossip with her from
+across the seas, gossip about exotic Presidents and their mistresses,
+about revolutionary generals and explorers, about opera singers in
+Havana, and great dancers in the Argentine. In her set she was called
+“the peripatetic pug,” but she had none of the pug’s snoring laziness.
+Presently someone took her away to play bridge, and for a moment Lady
+Sellingworth was standing alone. She was close to a great window which
+gave on to the terrace at the back of the house facing the falling
+gardens and the woods. She looked out, then looked across the room.
+Craven was standing near the door. He had just come in with a lot of
+men from the dining-room. He had a cigar in his hand. His cheeks were
+flushed. He looked hot and drawn, like a man in a noisy prison of
+heat which excited him, but tormented him too. His eyes shone almost
+feverishly. As she looked at him, not knowing that he was being watched
+he drew a long breath, almost like a man who feared suffocation.
+Immediately afterwards he glanced across the room and saw her.
+
+She beckoned to him. With a reluctant air, and looking severe, he came
+across to her.
+
+“Are you going to play bridge?” she said.
+
+“I don’t think so.”
+
+“Dindie has persuaded me to stay on for the music. Shall we take a
+little walk in the garden? I am so unaccustomed to crowds that I am
+longing for air.”
+
+She paused, then added:
+
+“And a little quiet.”
+
+“Certainly,” he said stiffly.
+
+“Does he hate me?” she thought, with a sinking of despair. He went to
+fetch her wrap. They met in the hall.
+
+“Where are you two going?”
+
+Dindie Ackroyde’s all-seeing eyes had perceived them.
+
+“Only to get a breath of air in the garden,” said Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“How sensible!”
+
+She gave them a watchful smile and spoke to Eve Colton, who was hunting
+for the right kind of bridge, stick in hand.
+
+“I’ll find Melville for you. Jennie and Sir Arthur are waiting in the
+card-room.”
+
+“I hope you don’t mind coming out for a moment?”
+
+Lady Sellingworth’s unconquerable diffidence was persecuting her. She
+spoke almost with timidity to Craven on the doorstep.
+
+“Oh, no. I am delighted.”
+
+His young voice was carefully frigid.
+
+“More motors!” she said. “The whole of London will be here by tea time.”
+
+“Great fun, isn’t it? Such a squash of interesting people.”
+
+“And I am taking you away from them!”
+
+“That’s all right!”
+
+“Oh, what an Eton’s boy’s voice!” she thought.
+
+But she loved it. That was the truth. His youngness was so apparent
+in his coldness that he was more dangerous than ever to her who had an
+unconquerable passion for youth.
+
+“Let us go through this door in the wall. It must lead to the gardens.”
+
+“Certainly!”
+
+He pushed it open. They passed through and were away from the motors,
+standing on a broad terrace which turned at right angles and skirted the
+back of the house.
+
+“Don’t let us go round the corner before all the drawing-room windows.”
+
+“No?” he said.
+
+“Unless you prefer--”
+
+“I will go wherever you like.”
+
+“I thought--what about this path?”
+
+“Shall we do down it?”
+
+“I think it looks rather tempting.”
+
+They walked slowly on, descending a slight incline, and came to a second
+long terrace on a lower level. There was a good deal of brick-work in
+Mrs. Ackroyde’s garden, but there were some fine trees, and in summer
+the roses were wonderful. Now there were not many flowers, but at least
+there were calm and silence, and the breath of the winter woods came to
+Lady Sellingworth and Craven.
+
+Craven said nothing, and walked stiffly beside his companion looking
+straight ahead. He seemed entirely unlike the man who had talked so
+enthusiastically in her drawing-room after the dinner in the _Bella
+Napoli_, and again on that second evening when they had dined together
+without the company of Beryl Van Tuyn. But Dindie Ackroyde had said he
+had come down that day because he had been told he would meet her. And
+Dindie was scarcely ever wrong about people. But this time surely she had
+made a mistake.
+
+“Oh, there’s the hard court!” Lady Sellingworth said.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“It looks a beauty.”
+
+“Do you play?”
+
+“I used to. But I have given it up.”
+
+After a silence she added:
+
+“You know I have given up everything. There comes a time--”
+
+She hesitated.
+
+“Perhaps you will not believe it, but I feel very strange here with all
+these people.”
+
+“But you know them all, don’t you?”
+
+“Nearly all. But they mean nothing to me now.”
+
+They were walking slowly up and down the long terrace.
+
+“One passes away from things,” she said, “as one goes on. It is rather a
+horrible feeling.”
+
+Suddenly, moved by an impulse that was almost girlish, she stopped on
+the path and said:
+
+“What is the matter with you to-day? Why are you angry with me?”
+
+Craven flushed.
+
+“Angry! But I am not angry!”
+
+“Yes, you are. Tell me why.”
+
+“How could I--I’m really not angry. As if I could be angry with you!”
+
+“Then why are you so different?”
+
+“In what way am I different?”
+
+She did not answer, but said:
+
+“Did you hear what the baron and I were talking about at lunch?”
+
+“Just a few words.”
+
+“I hope you didn’t think I wished to join in gossip about Beryl Van
+Tuyn?”
+
+“Of course not.”
+
+“I hate all such talk. If that offended you--”
+
+She was losing her dignity and knew it, but a great longing to overcome
+his rigidity drove her on.
+
+“If you think--”
+
+“It wasn’t that!” he said. “I have no reason to mind what anyone says
+about Miss Van Tuyn.”
+
+“But she’s your friend!”
+
+“Is she? I think a friend is a very rare thing. You have taught me
+that.”
+
+“I? How?”
+
+“You went abroad without letting me know.”
+
+“Is that it?” she said.
+
+And there was a strange note, like a note of joy, in her voice.
+
+“I think you might have told me. And you put me off. I was to have seen
+you--”
+
+“Yes, I know.”
+
+She was silent. She could not explain. That was impossible. Yet she
+longed to tell him how much she had wished to see him, how much it had
+cost her to go without a word. But suddenly she remembered Camber.
+He was angry with her, but he had very soon consoled himself for her
+departure.
+
+“I went away quite unexpectedly,” she said. “I had to go like that.”
+
+“I--I hope you weren’t ill?”
+
+He recalled Braybrooke’s remarks about doctors. Perhaps she had really
+been ill. Perhaps something had happened abroad, and he had done her a
+wrong.
+
+“No, I haven’t been ill. It wasn’t that,” she said.
+
+The thought of Camber persisted, and now persecuted her.
+
+“I am quite sure you didn’t miss me,” she said, with a colder voice.
+
+“But I did!” he said.
+
+“For how long?”
+
+The mocking look he knew so well had come into her eyes. How much did
+she know?
+
+“Have you seen Miss Van Tuyn since you came back?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, yes. She paid me a visit soon after I arrived.”
+
+Craven looked down. He realized that something had been said, that Miss
+Van Tuyn had perhaps talked injudiciously. But even if she had, why
+should Lady Sellingworth mind? His relation with her was so utterly
+different from his relation with the lovely American. It never occurred
+to him that this wonderful elderly woman, for whom he had such a
+peculiar feeling, could care for him at all as a girl might, could think
+of him as a woman thinks of a man with whom she might have an affair of
+the heart. She fascinated him. Yes! But she did not fascinate that part
+of him which instinctively responded to Beryl Van Tuyn. And that he
+fascinated her in any physical way simply did not enter his mind.
+Nevertheless, at that moment he felt uncomfortable and, absurdly enough,
+almost guilty.
+
+“Have you seen Beryl since her father’s death?” said Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“No,” he said. “At least--yes, I suppose I have.”
+
+“You suppose?”
+
+Her eyes had not lost their mocking expression.
+
+“I happened to see her in Glebe Place with that fellow they are all
+chattering about, but I didn’t speak to her. I believe her father was
+dead then. But I didn’t know it at the time.”
+
+“Oh! Is he so very handsome, as they say?”
+
+She could not help saying this, and watching him as she said it.
+
+“I should say he was a good-looking chap,” answered Craven frigidly.
+“But he looks like a wrong ‘un.”
+
+“It is difficult to tell what people are at a glance.”
+
+“Some people--yes. But I think with others one look is enough.”
+
+“Yes, that’s true,” she said, thinking of him. “Shall we go a little
+farther towards the woods?”
+
+“Yes; let us.”
+
+She knew he was suffering obscurely that day, perhaps in his pride,
+perhaps in something else. She hoped it was in his pride. Anyhow, she
+felt pity for him in her new-found happiness. For she was happier now in
+comparison with what she had been. And with that happiness came a great
+longing to comfort him, to draw him out of his cold reserve, to turn him
+into the eager and almost confidential boy he had been with her. As they
+passed the red tennis court and walked towards the end of the garden
+which skirted the woods she said:
+
+“I want you to understand something. I know it must have seemed
+unfriendly in me to put you off, and then to leave England without
+letting you know. But I had a reason which I can’t explain.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“I shall never be able to explain it. But if I could you would realize
+at once that my friendship for you was unaltered.”
+
+“Well, but you didn’t let me know you were back. You did not ask me to
+come to see you.”
+
+“I did not think you would care to come.”
+
+“But--why?”
+
+“I--perhaps you--I don’t find it easy now to think that anyone can care
+much to be bothered with me.”
+
+“Oh--Lady Sellingworth!”
+
+“That really is the truth. Believe it or not, as you like. You see, I am
+out of things now.”
+
+“You need never be out of things unless you choose.”
+
+“Oh, the world goes on and leaves one behind. Don’t you remember my
+telling you and Beryl once that I was an Edwardian?”
+
+“If that means un-modern I think I prefer it to modernity. I think
+perhaps I have an old-fashioned soul.”
+
+He was smiling now. The hard look had gone from his eyes; the ice in his
+manner had melted. She felt that she was forgiven. And she tried to put
+the thought of Camber out of her mind. Beryl was unscrupulous. Perhaps
+she had exaggerated. And, in any case, surely she had treated, was
+treating, him badly.
+
+She felt that he and she were friends again, that he was glad to be with
+her once more. There was really a link of sympathy between them. And
+he had been angry because she had gone abroad without telling him. She
+thought of his anger and loved it.
+
+That day, after tea, while the music was still going on in Dindie
+Ackroyde’s drawing-room, they drove back to London together, leaving
+their reputations quite comfortably behind them in the hand of the “old
+guard.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Beryl Van Tuyn found that it was not necessary for her to cross the
+ocean on account of her father’s sudden death. He had left all his
+affairs in excellent order, and the chief part of his fortune was
+bequeathed to her. She had always had plenty of money. Now she was rich.
+She went into mourning, answered suitably the many letters of condolence
+that poured in upon her, and then considered what she had better do.
+
+Miss Cronin pleaded persistently for an immediate return to Paris.
+What was the good of staying on in London now? The winter was dreary
+in London. The flat in Paris was far more charming and elegant than
+any hotel. Beryl had all her lovely things about her there. Her chief
+friends were in Paris. She could see them quietly at home. And it was
+quite impossible for her to go about London now that she was plunged
+in mourning. What would they do there? She, Miss Cronin, could go on as
+usual, of course. She never did anything special. But Beryl would surely
+be bored to death living the life of a hermit in Claridge’s.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn listened to all that old Fanny had to say, and made no
+attempt to refute her arguments or reply to her exhortations. She merely
+remarked that she would think the matter over.
+
+“But what is there to think over, darling?” said Miss Cronin, lifting
+her painted eyebrows. “There is nothing to keep us here. You never go to
+the Wallace Collection now.”
+
+“Do please allow me to be the judge of what I want to do with my life,
+Fanny,” said Miss Van Tuyn, curtly. “When I wish to pack up I’ll tell
+you.”
+
+And old Fanny collapsed like a pricked bladder. She could not understand
+Beryl any longer. The girl seemed to be quite beyond her reach. She
+thought of Alick Craven and of the man in the blue overcoat with the
+strange name. Nicolas Arabian. She had seen neither of them again. Beryl
+never mentioned them. But Fanny was sure that one, or both, of them held
+her in London. Something must be in the wind, something dangerous to any
+companion. She felt on the threshold of an alarming, perhaps disastrous,
+change. As she went nowhere she knew nothing of Beryl’s visit to Rose
+Tree Gardens and of the gossip it had set going in certain circles in
+London. But she had never been able to forget the impression she had had
+when Beryl had introduced her to the man with the melting brown eyes.
+Beryl was surely in love. Yet she did not look happy. Certainly her
+father’s death might have upset her. But Miss Cronin did not think that
+was sufficient to account for the change in the girl. She had something
+on her mind besides that. Miss Cronin was certain of it. Beryl’s cool
+self-assurance was gone. She was restless. She brooded. She seemed quite
+unable to settle to anything or to come to any decision.
+
+Old Fanny began to be seriously alarmed. Mrs. Clem Hodson had gone back
+to Philadelphia. She had no one to consult, no one to apply to. She felt
+quite helpless. Even Bourget could give her no solace. She had a weak
+imagination, but it now began to trouble her. As she lay upon her sofa,
+she, always feebly, imagined many things. But oftenest she saw a vague
+vision of Mr. Craven and Mr. Arabian fighting a duel because of Beryl.
+They were in a forest clearing near Paris in early morning. It was a
+duel with revolvers, as Bourget might have described it. She saw their
+buttoned-up coats, their stretched-out arms. Which did she wish to be
+the victor? And which would Beryl wish to return unwounded to Paris?
+Surely Mr. Arabian. He was so kind, so enticingly gentle; he had such
+beautiful eyes. And yet--and at this point old Fanny’s imagination
+ceased to function, and something else displayed a certain amount of
+energy, her knowledge of the world. What would Mr. Arabian be like as a
+husband? He was charming, seductive even, caressingly sympathetic--yes,
+caressingly! But--as a husband? And old Fanny felt mysteriously that
+something in her recoiled from the idea of Arabian as the husband of
+Beryl, whereas she could think of Mr. Craven in that situation quite
+calmly. It was all very odd, and it made her very uncomfortable. It even
+agitated her, and she felt her solitude keenly. There had never been
+a real link between Beryl and her, and she knew it. But now she felt
+herself strangely alone in the midst of perhaps threatening dangers. If
+only Beryl would become frank, would speak out, would consult her, ask
+her advice! But the girl was enclosed in a reserve that was flawless.
+There was not a single breach in the wall. And the dark winter had
+descended on London.
+
+One evening Miss Van Tuyn felt almost desperate. Enclosed in her reserve
+she longed for a confidante; she longed to talk things over, to take
+counsel with someone. She had even a desire to ask for advice. But she
+knew no one in London to whom she could unbosom herself. Fanny did not
+count. Old Fanny was a fool and quite incapable of being useful mentally
+to anyone with good brains. And to what other woman could she speak,
+she, Beryl Van Tuyn, the notoriously clever, notoriously independent,
+young beauty, who had always hitherto held the reins of her own destiny?
+If only she could speak to a man! But there the sex question intruded
+itself. No man would be impartial unless he were tremendously old. And
+she had no tremendously old man friend, having always preferred those
+who were still in possession of all their faculties.
+
+No young man could be impartial, least of all Alick Craven, and yet she
+wished intensely that she had not lost her head that day in Glebe Place,
+that she had carried out her original intention and had introduced
+Craven to Arabian.
+
+She knew what people were saying of her in London. Although she was in
+deep mourning and could not go about, several women had been to see her.
+They had come to condole with her, and had managed to let her understand
+what people were murmuring. Lady Archie had been with her. Mrs.
+Birchington had looked in. And two days after Lady Sellingworth’s visit
+to Coombe Dindie Ackroyde had called. From her Miss Van Tuyn had
+heard of Craven’s walk in the garden with Adela Sellingworth and early
+departure to London in Adela’s motor. In addition to this piece of
+casually imparted news, Mrs. Ackroyde had frankly told Miss Van Tuyn
+that she was being gossiped about in a disagreeable way and that, in
+spite of her established reputation for unconventionality, she ought to
+be more careful. And Miss Van Tuyn--astonishingly--had not resented
+this plain speaking. Mrs. Ackroyde, of course, had tried to find out
+something about Nicolas Arabian, but Miss Van Tuyn had evaded the not
+really asked questions, and had treated the whole matter with an almost
+airy casualness which had belied all that was in her mind.
+
+But these visits, and especially Dindie Ackroyde’s, had deepened the
+nervous pre-occupation which was beginning seriously to alarm old Fanny.
+
+If she took old Fanny’s advice and left London? If she returned to
+Paris? She believed, indeed she felt certain, that to do that would not
+be to separate from Arabian. He would follow her there. If she took the
+wings of the morning and flew to the uttermost parts of the earth there
+surely she would find him. She began to think of him as a hound on
+the trail of her. And yet she did not want him to lose the trail. She
+combined fear with desire in a way that was inexplicable to herself,
+that sometimes seemed to her like a sort of complex madness. But her
+reason for remaining in London was not to be found in Arabian’s presence
+there. And she knew that. If she went to Paris she would be separated
+from Alick Craven. She did not want to be separated from him. And
+now Dindie Ackroyde’s news intensified her reluctance to yield to old
+Fanny’s persuasions and to return to her bronzes. Her clever visit to
+Adela Sellingworth had evidently not achieved its object. In spite of
+her so deliberate confession to Adela the latter had once more taken
+possession of Craven.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn felt angry and disgusted, even indignant, but she also
+felt saddened and almost alarmed.
+
+Knowing men very well, being indeed an expert in male psychology, she
+realized that perhaps, probably even, her own action had driven Craven
+back to his friendship with Adela. But that fact did not make things
+more pleasant for her. She knew that she had seriously offended Craven.
+She remembered the look in his face was he passed quickly by her and
+Arabian in Glebe Place. He had not been to see her since, and had not
+written to condole with her. She knew that she had outraged his pride,
+and perhaps something else. Yet she could not make up her mind to leave
+England and drop out of his life. To do that would be like a confession
+of defeat. But it was not only her vanity which prompted her to stay on.
+She had a curious and strong liking for Craven which was very sincere.
+It was absolutely unlike the painful attraction which pushed her towards
+Arabian. There was trust in it, a longing for escape from something
+dangerous, something baleful, into peace and security. There was even a
+moral impulse in it such as she had never felt till now.
+
+What was she to do? She suffered in uncertainty. Her nerves were all
+on edge. She felt irritable, angry, like someone being punished and
+resenting the punishment. And she felt horribly dull. Her mourning
+prohibited her from seeking distractions. People were gossiping about
+her unpleasantly already. She remembered Dindie Ackroyde’s warning, and
+knew she had better heed it. She felt heartless because she was unable
+to be really distressed about the death of her father. Old Fanny bored
+her when she did not actively worry her. She was terribly sorry for
+herself.
+
+In the evening, while she was sitting alone in her room listlessly
+reading a book on modern painting by an author with whose views she did
+not agree, and looking forward to a probably sleepless night, there
+was a knock on the door, and a rose cheeked page boy, all alertness and
+buttons, tripped in with a note on a salver.
+
+“Any answer?” she said.
+
+“No, mum.”
+
+She took the note, and at once recognized Dick Garstin’s enormous
+handwriting. Quickly she opened it and read.
+
+
+GLEBE.
+
+Wed.
+
+Dear B.--Does your mourning prevent you from looking at a damned good
+picture? If not, come round to the studio to-morrow any time after lunch
+and have a squint at a king in the underworld.
+
+D. G.
+
+
+At once her feeling of acute boredom left her, was replaced by a keen
+sense of excitement. She realized immediately that at last Garstin had
+finished his picture, that at last he had satisfied himself. She had not
+seen Garstin since the day when she had heard of her father’s death.
+Nor had she seen Arabian. Characteristically, Garstin had not taken
+the trouble to send her a letter of condolence. He never bothered to
+do anything conventional. If he had written he would probably had
+congratulated her on coming into a fortune. Arabian’s sympathy had
+already been expressed. Naturally, therefore, he had not written to her.
+But he had made no sign in all these days, had not left a card, had not
+attempted to see her. Day after day she had wondered whether he would
+do something, give some evidence of life, of intention. Nothing! He had
+just let her alone. But in his inaction she had felt him intensely,
+far more than she felt other men in their actions. He had, as it were,
+surrounded her with his silence, had weighed upon her by his absence.
+She feared and was fascinated by his apparent indifference, as formerly,
+when with him, she had feared and been fascinated by his reticence of
+speech and of conduct. Only once had he taken the initiative with her,
+when he had ordered the taxi-cab driver to go to Rose Tree Gardens.
+And even then, when he had had her there alone in his flat, nothing had
+happened. And he had let her go without any attempt to detain her.
+
+In his passivity there was something hypnotic which acted upon her. She
+felt it charged with power, with intention, even almost with brutality.
+There was a great cry for her in his silence.
+
+She did not answer Garstin’s note. That was not necessary. She knew she
+would see him on the morrow.
+
+Directly after lunch on the following day she walked to Glebe Place,
+wondering whether Arabian would be there.
+
+As usual, Garstin answered the door and covered her with a comprehensive
+glance as she stood on the doorstep.
+
+“Black suits you,” he said. “You ought never to go out of mourning.”
+
+“Thank you for your kind sympathy, Dick,” she answered. “One can
+always depend on you for delicacy of feeling and expression in time of
+trouble.”
+
+He smiled as he shut the door.
+
+“You tartar!” he said. “Be careful you don’t develop into a shrew as you
+get on in life.”
+
+She noticed at once that he was looking unusually happy. There was even
+something almost of softness in his face, something almost of kindness,
+certainly of cordiality, in his eyes.
+
+“Evidently coming into money hasn’t had a softening influence upon you,”
+ he added.
+
+To her surprise he took her into the ground floor studio and sat down on
+the big divan there.
+
+“Aren’t we going upstairs?” she said.
+
+“In a minute. Don’t be in such a blasted hurry, my girl!”
+
+“Well, but--”
+
+She followed his example and sat down.
+
+“Is anyone up there?”
+
+“Not a soul. Who should there be?”
+
+“Well, I don’t know. I thought perhaps--”
+
+“Old Nick was there? Well, he isn’t!”
+
+“How absurd you are!” she said, almost with confusion, and looking away
+from him. “I only wondered whether you had a model with you.”
+
+“I know, I know!”
+
+After a rather long pause she said:
+
+“What are we waiting here for?”
+
+“Oh--just to rest!”
+
+“But I’m not tired.”
+
+“I didn’t suppose you were.”
+
+Again there was a pause, in which Miss Van Tuyn felt a tingling of
+impatient irritation.
+
+“I suppose you are doing this merely to whet my appetite,” she said
+presently, unable to bear the unnatural silence. “Of course I know you
+have finished the picture at last. You have asked me to come here to
+see it. Then why on earth not let me see it? All this waiting can’t come
+from timidity. I know you don’t care for opinion so long as your own is
+satisfied.”
+
+He sent her an odd look that was almost boyish in its half mischievous,
+half wistful roguishness.
+
+“My girl, you speak about a painter with great assurance, and, let me
+add, with great ignorance. I’ll tell you the plain truth for once. I’ve
+been keeping you down here out of sheer diffidence. Now then!”
+
+“Dick!”
+
+His lean blue cheeks slightly reddened as he looked at her. She knew he
+had spoken the truth, and was touched. She got up quickly, went to him,
+and put one hand on his shoulder.
+
+“You are afraid of me! But no--I can’t believe it!”
+
+“Ha!”
+
+He got up.
+
+“It is finished?”
+
+“Yes, at last it’s done.”
+
+“Has--have you shown--I suppose he has seen it?”
+
+Garstin shook his head, and a dark lock of hair fell over his forehead.
+
+“He doesn’t even know it is finished, the ruffian! He’s given me a
+damned lot of trouble. I’ll keep him on the gridiron a bit longer.
+Grilling will do him good.”
+
+“Then I am the first?”
+
+“Yes, you are the first.”
+
+“Thank you, Dick,” she said soberly. “May I go up now?”
+
+“Yes, come on!”
+
+He went before her and mounted the stairs, taking long strides. She
+followed him eagerly, yet with a feeling of apprehension. What would
+it be--this portrait finished at last? Dick Garstin was cruelly fond of
+revelation. She thought of his judge who ought to be judged, of other
+pictures of his. Had he caught and revealed the secret of Arabian?
+
+“Now then!”
+
+But Garstin still hesitated.
+
+“Sit here!”
+
+She obeyed, and sat down on a sofa with the window behind her.
+
+“I’ll have a smoke.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+He went to the Spanish cabinet, and stood with his back to her,
+apparently searching. He lifted things, put them back. She glowed with
+almost furious impatience. At last he found the cigars. Probably he had
+never had to seek for them. He lit up.
+
+“Now then--a drink!”
+
+“Oh, Dick!” she breathed.
+
+But she made no other protest.
+
+“Will you?”
+
+“No!” she said sharply.
+
+Then she gazed at him and said:
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He poured out whisky for her and himself, added some soda water, and
+lifted his glass.
+
+“To Arabian!” he said.
+
+“Why should we drink to Mr. Arabian?”
+
+“He has done me a good turn.”
+
+There was a look in his eyes now which she did not like, a very
+intelligent and cruel look. She knew it well. It expressed almost
+blatantly the man’s ruthlessness. She did not inquire what the good turn
+was, but raised her glass slowly and drank.
+
+“Your hand trembles, my girl!” said Garstin.
+
+“Nonsense! It does not! Now please show me the portrait. I will not wait
+any longer.”
+
+“Here you are then!”
+
+He went over to a distant easel, pulled it forward with its back to
+them, then, when it was near to the sofa, turned it round.
+
+“There he is!”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn sat very still and gazed. After turning the easel Dick
+Garstin had gone to stand behind the sofa and her. She heard him making
+a little “t’p! t’p!” with his lips, getting rid, perhaps, of an adherent
+scrap of tobacco leaf. After what seemed to both of them a very long
+time she spoke.
+
+“I don’t believe it!” she said. “I don’t believe it!”
+
+“Like the man when he saw a giraffe for the first time? But he was
+wrong, my girl, for nature does turn out giraffes.”
+
+“No, Dick! It’s too bad!”
+
+Her cheeks were flaming with red.
+
+“Too bad! Don’t you think it’s well painted?”
+
+“Well painted? Of course it’s well--it’s magnificently painted!”
+
+He chuckled contentedly behind her.
+
+“Then what’s the matter? What’s the trouble?”
+
+“You know what’s the matter. You know quite well.”
+
+She turned sharply round on the sofa and faced him with angry eyes.
+
+“There was a great actor once whose portrait was painted by a great
+artist, an artist as great as you are. It was exhibited and then handed
+over to the actor. From that moment it disappeared. No one ever saw it.
+The actor never mentioned it. And yet it was a masterpiece. When the
+actor died a search was made for the portrait, and it was found hidden
+in an attic of his house. It had been slashed almost to pieces with
+a knife. Till to-day I could not understand such a deed as that--the
+killing of a masterpiece. But now I can understand it.”
+
+“He shall have it and put a knife through it if he likes. But”--he
+snapped out the word with sudden fierce emphasis--“_but_ I’ll exhibit it
+first.”
+
+“He’ll never let you!” Miss Van Tuyn almost cried out.
+
+“Won’t he? That was the bargain!”
+
+“He didn’t promise. I remember quite well all that was said. He didn’t
+promise.”
+
+“It was understood. I told him I should exhibit the picture and that
+afterwards I’d hand it over to him.”
+
+“When is he going to see it?”
+
+“Why do you ask? Do you want to be here when he does?”
+
+She did not answer. She was staring at the portrait, and now the hot
+colour had faded from her face.
+
+“If you do you can be here. I don’t mind.”
+
+“I don’t believe it,” she repeated slowly.
+
+All that she had sometimes fancied, almost dimly, and feared about
+Arabian was expressed in Garstin’s portrait of him. The man was
+magnificent on the canvas, but he was horrible. Evil seemed to be subtly
+expressed all over him. That was what she felt. It looked out of his
+large brown eyes. But that was not all. Somehow, in some curious and
+terrible way, Garstin had saturated his mouth, his cheeks, his forehead,
+even his bare neck and shoulders with the hideous thing. Danger was
+everywhere, the warning that the living man surely did not give, or only
+gave now and then for a fleeting instant.
+
+In Garstin’s picture Arabian was unmistakably a being of the underworld,
+a being of the darkness, of secret places and hidden deeds, a being of
+unspeakable craft, of hideous knowledge, of ferocious cynicism. And yet
+he was marvellously handsome and full of force, even of power. It could
+not be said that great intellect was stamped on his face, but a fiercely
+vital mentality was there, a mentality that could frighten and subdue,
+that could command and be sure of obedience. In the eyes of a tiger
+there is a terrific mentality. Miss Van Tuyn thought of that as she
+gazed at the portrait.
+
+In her silence now she was trying to get a strong hold on herself. The
+first shock of astonishment, and almost of horror, had passed. She was
+more sharply conscious now of Garstin in connexion with herself. At last
+she spoke again.
+
+“Of course you realize, Dick, that such a portrait as that is an
+outrage. It’s a master work, I believe, but it is an outrage. You cannot
+exhibit it.”
+
+“But I shall. This man, Arabian, isn’t known.”
+
+“How can we tell that?”
+
+“Do you know a living creature he knows or who knows him?”
+
+“Everyone has acquaintances. Everyone almost has friends. He must
+certainly have both.”
+
+“God knows who or where they are.”
+
+“You cannot exhibit it,” she repeated obstinately.
+
+“I hate art in kid gloves. But this is too merciless. It is more. It is
+a libel.”
+
+“That’s just where you’re wrong.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Beryl, my girl, you are lying. That’s no use with me.”
+
+“I am not lying!” she said with hot anger.
+
+Suddenly she felt that tears had come into her eyes.
+
+“How hateful you are!” she exclaimed.
+
+She felt frightened under the eyes of the portrait. Garstin’s revelation
+had struck upon her like a blow. She felt dazed by it. Yet she longed
+to hit back. She wanted to defend Arabian, perhaps because she felt that
+she needed defence.
+
+Garstin came abruptly round the sofa and sat down by her side.
+
+“What’s up?” he said in a kinder voice.
+
+“Why do you paint like that? It’s abominable!”
+
+“Tell me the honest truth--God’s own truth, as they call it, I don’t
+know why--is that picture fine, is it my best work, or isn’t it?”
+
+“I’ve told you already. It’s a technical masterpiece and a moral
+outrage. You have taken a man for a model and painted a beast.”
+
+“Beryl,” he said almost solemnly, “believe it or not, as you can, that
+_is_ Arabian!”
+
+He pointed at the picture as he spoke. His keen eyes, half shut, were
+fixed upon it.
+
+“That _is_ the real man, and what you see is only the appearance he
+chooses to give of himself.”
+
+“How do you know? How can you know that?”
+
+“Haven’t I the power to show men and women as in essence they are?”
+
+His eyes travelled round the big studio slowly, travelled from canvas to
+canvas, from the battered old siren of the streets to the girl who was
+dreaming of sins not yet committed; from Cora waiting for her prey to
+the judge who had condemned his.
+
+“Haven’t I? And don’t you know it?”
+
+“You are wrong this time,” she said with mutinous determination, but
+still with the tears in her eyes. “You couldn’t sum up Arabian. You
+tried and tried again. And now at last you have forced yourself to paint
+him. You have got angry. That’s it. You have got furious with yourself
+and with him, because of your own impotence, and you have painted him in
+a passion.”
+
+“Oh, no!”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“I never felt colder, more completely master of myself and my passions,
+than when I painted that portrait.”
+
+“But you asked me to find out his secret. You pushed me into his company
+that I might find it out and help you.”
+
+“I did!”
+
+“Well!” she said, almost triumphantly, “I have never found it out.”
+
+“Oh, yes, you have.”
+
+“No. He is the most reserved, uncommunicative man I have ever known.”
+
+“Subconsciously you have found it out, and you have conveyed it to me.
+And that is the result. I suspected what the man was the first time I
+laid eyes on him. When I got him here I seemed to get off the track of
+him. For he’s very deceptive--somehow. Yes, he’s damned deceptive. But
+then you put me wise. Your growing terror of him put me wise.”
+
+He looked hard into her eyes.
+
+“Beryl, my girl, your sex has intuitions. One of them, one of yours, I
+have painted. And there it is!”
+
+The bell sounded below.
+
+“Ha!” said Garstin, turning his head sharply.
+
+He listened for an instant. Then he said:
+
+“I’ll bet you anything you like that’s the king himself.”
+
+“The king?”
+
+“In the underworld. Did you walk here?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“He must have seen you. He’s followed you. What a lark!”
+
+His eyes shone with a sort of malicious glee.
+
+“There goes the bell again! Beryl, I’ll have him up. We’ll show him
+himself.”
+
+He put a finger to his lips and went down, leaving her alone with the
+portrait.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+“Come up! Come up, my boy! I’ve something to show you!”
+
+She heard steps mounting the stairs, and got up from the sofa. She
+looked once more at the portrait, then turned round to meet the two men,
+standing so that she was directly in front of it. Just then she had a
+wish to conceal it from Arabian, to delay, if only for a moment, his
+knowledge of what had been done.
+
+Arabian came into the studio and saw her in her mourning facing him. At
+once he came up to her with Dick Garstin behind him. He looked grave,
+sympathetic, almost reverential. His brown eyes held a tender expression
+of kindness.
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn! I did not know you were here.”
+
+She saw Garstin smiling ironically. Arabian took her hand and pressed
+it.
+
+“I am glad to see you again.”
+
+His look, his pressure, were full of ardent sympathy.
+
+“I have been thinking often of you and your great sorrow.”
+
+“Thank you!” she said, almost stammering.
+
+“And what is it I am to see?” said Arabian, turning to Garstin.
+
+“Stand away, Beryl!” said Garstin roughly.
+
+She moved. What else could she do? Arabian saw the portrait and said:
+
+“Oh, my picture at last!”
+
+Then he took a step forward, and there was a silence in the studio.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked at the floor at first. Then, as the silence
+continued, she raised her eyes to Arabian’s. She did not know what she
+expected to see, but she was surprised at what she did see. Standing
+quite still immediately in front of the picture, with his large eyes
+fixed upon it, Arabian was looking very calm. There was, indeed,
+scarcely any expression in his face. He had thrust both hands into the
+pockets of his overcoat. Miss Van Tuyn wondered whether those hands
+would betray any feeling if she could see them. In the calmness of his
+face she thought there was something stony, but she was not quite sure.
+She was, perhaps, too painfully moved, too violently excited just then
+to be a completely accurate observer. And she was aware of that. She
+wished Arabian would speak. When was he going to speak?
+
+“Well?” said Garstin at last, perhaps catching her feeling. “What do
+you think of the thing? Are you satisfied with it? I’ve been a long time
+over it, but there it is at last.”
+
+He laughed slightly, uneasily, she thought.
+
+“What’s the verdict?”
+
+“One moment--please!” said Arabian in an unusually soft voice.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn was again struck, as she had been struck, when she first
+met Arabian in the studio, by the man’s enormous self-possession. She
+felt sure that he must be feeling furiously angry, yet he did not show a
+trace of anger, of surprise, of any emotion. Only the marked softness of
+his voice was unusual. He seemed to be examining the picture with quiet
+interest and care.
+
+“Well? Well?” said Garstin at last, with a sort of acute impatience
+which betrayed to her that he was really uneasy. “Let’s hear what you
+think, though we know you don’t set up for being a judge of painting.”
+
+“I think it is very like,” said Arabian.
+
+“Oh, Lord--like!” exclaimed Garstin, on an angry gust of breath. “I’m
+not a damned photographer!”
+
+“Should not a portrait be like?” said Arabian, still in the very soft
+voice. “Am I wrong, then?”
+
+“Of course not!” said Miss Van Tuyn, frowning at Garstin.
+
+At that moment absolutely, and without any reserve, she hated him.
+
+“Then you’re satisfied?” jerked out Garstin.
+
+“Indeed--yes, Dick Garstin. This is a valuable possession for me.”
+
+“Possession?” said Garstin, as if startled. “Oh, yes, to be sure! You’re
+to have it--presently!”
+
+“Quite so. I am to have it. It is indeed very fine. Do not you think so,
+Miss Van Tuyn?”
+
+For the first time since he had seen the portrait he looked away from
+it, and his eyes rested on her. She felt that she trembled under those
+eyes, and hoped that he did not see it.
+
+“You do not say! Surely this is a very fine picture?”
+
+He seemed to be asking her to tell him whether or not the portrait ought
+to be admired. There was just then an odd simplicity, or pretence of
+simplicity, in his manner which was almost boyish. And his eyes seemed
+to be appealing to her.
+
+“It is a magnificent piece of painting,” she forced herself to say.
+
+But she said it coldly, reluctantly.
+
+“Then I am not wrong.”
+
+He looked pleased.
+
+“My eye is not very educated. I fear to express my opinion before people
+such as you”--he looked towards Garstin, and added--“and you, Dick
+Garstin.”
+
+And then he turned away from the picture with the manner of a man who
+had done with it. She was amazed at his coolness, his perfect ease of
+manner.
+
+“May I ask for a cigar, Dick Garstin?” he said.
+
+“Pardon!” said Garstin gruffly.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn noticed that he seemed very ill at ease. His rough
+self-possession had deserted him. He looked almost shy and awkward.
+Before going to the cabinet he went to the easel and noisily wheeled it
+away. Then he fetched the cigar and poured out a drink for Arabian.
+
+“Light up, old chap! Have a drink!”
+
+There was surely reluctant admiration in his voice.
+
+Arabian accepted the drink, lit the cigar, sat down, and began to talk
+about his flat. At that moment he dominated them both. Miss Van Tuyn
+felt it. He talked much more than she had ever before heard him talk in
+the studio, and expressed himself better, with more fluency than usual.
+Garstin said very little. There was a fixed flush on his cheek-bones and
+an angry light in his eyes. He sat watching Arabian with a hostile, and
+yet half-admiring, scrutiny, smoking rapidly, nervously, and twisting
+his large hands about.
+
+Presently Miss Van Tuyn got up to go.
+
+“Going already?” said Garstin.
+
+“Yes, I must.”
+
+“Oh, well--”
+
+“I will accompany you,” said Arabian.
+
+She looked away from him and said nothing. Garstin went with them
+downstairs and opened the door.
+
+“Bye-bye!” he said in a loud voice. “See you again soon. Good luck to
+you!”
+
+Arabian held out his hand.
+
+“Good-bye.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn nodded without speaking. Garstin shut the door noisily.
+
+They walked down Glebe Place in silence. When they got to the corner
+Arabian said:
+
+“Are you in a hurry to-day?”
+
+“No, not specially.”
+
+“Shall we take a little walk? It is not very late.”
+
+“A walk? Where to?”
+
+“Shall we go along by the river?”
+
+She hesitated. She was torn by conflicting feelings. She was very angry
+with Garstin. She still continued to say, though now to herself, “I
+don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!” And yet she knew that Garstin’s
+portrait had greatly increased her strange fear of Arabian.
+
+“This way will take us to the river.”
+
+She knew he was looking straight at her though she did not look at him.
+At that moment a remembrance of Craven and Camber flashed through her
+mind.
+
+“Yes, I know,” she said, “But--”
+
+“I am fond of the river,” he said.
+
+“Yes--but in winter!”
+
+“Let us go. Or will you come back to--”
+
+“No, I will go. I like it too. London looks its best from the
+waterside.”
+
+And she walked on again with him. He said nothing more, and she did not
+speak till they had crossed the broad road and were on the path by the
+dark river, which flowed at full tide under a heavy blackish grey sky.
+Then Arabian spoke again, and the peculiar softness she had noticed that
+afternoon had gone out of his voice.
+
+“I am fortunate, am I not,” he said, “to be the possessor of that very
+fine picture by Dick Garstin? Many people would be glad to buy it, I
+suppose.”
+
+“Oh, yes!”
+
+“Do you consider it one of Dick Garstin’s best paintings? I know you are
+a good judge. I wish to hear what you really think.”
+
+“He has never painted anything more finely that I have seen.”
+
+“Ah! That is indeed lucky for me.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I shall send and fetch it away.”
+
+“Oh, but--”
+
+She stopped speaking. She was startled by his tone and also by what
+he had said. She glanced at him, then looked away and across the dark
+river. Dead leaves brushed against her feet with a dry, brittle noise.
+
+“What is that you say, please?”
+
+“I only--I thought it was arranged that the picture was to be
+exhibited,” she said, falteringly.
+
+“Oh, no. I shall not permit Dick Garstin to exhibit that picture.”
+
+Now intense curiosity was born in her and seemed for the moment to
+submerge her uneasiness and fear.
+
+“But wasn’t it understood?” she said.
+
+“Please, what do you say was understood?”
+
+“Didn’t Mr. Garstin say he meant to exhibit the picture and afterwards
+give it to you?”
+
+“But I say that I shall not permit Dick Garstin to exhibit my picture.”
+
+“Why won’t you allow it?” she asked.
+
+In her curiosity she was at last regaining some of her usual
+self-possession. She scented a struggle between these two men, both of
+them of tough fibre, both of them, she believed, far from scrupulous,
+both of them likely to be enormously energetic and determined when
+roused.
+
+“Do you not know?” he asked.
+
+“No! How can I know such a thing? How can I know what is in your mind
+unless you tell me?”
+
+“Oh, but I will tell you then! I will not let Dick Garstin exhibit that
+picture because it is a lie about me.”
+
+“A lie? How can that be?”
+
+“A man can speak a lie. Is it not so?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“Cannot a man write a lie?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And a man can paint a lie. Dick Garstin has painted a lie about me.”
+
+“But then--if it is so--”
+
+“Certainly it is so.”
+
+There was now a hard sound in his voice, and, when she looked at him,
+she saw that his face had changed. The quiet self-control which had
+amazed her in the studio was evidently leaving him. Or he no longer
+cared to exercise it.
+
+“But, then, do you wish to possess the picture? Do you wish to possess a
+lie?”
+
+“Is it not right that I possess it rather than someone else?”
+
+“Yes, perhaps it is.”
+
+“Certainly it is. I shall take that picture away.”
+
+“But Dick Garstin intends to exhibit it. I know that. I know he will not
+let you have it till it has been shown.”
+
+“What is the law in England that one man should paint a wicked portrait
+of another man and that this other should be helpless to prevent it from
+being shown to all the world? Is that just?”
+
+“No, I don’t think it is.”
+
+He stopped abruptly and stood by the river wall. It was a cold and
+dreary afternoon, menacing and dark. Few people were out in that place.
+She stood still beside him.
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn,” he said, looking hard at her with an expression
+of--apparently--angry sincerity in his eyes. “This happens. I sit
+quietly in the Cafe Royal, a public place. A strange man comes up. Never
+have I seen him before. He says himself to be a painter. He asks to
+paint me--he begs! I go to his studio, as you know. I hesitate when I
+have seen his pictures--all of horrible persons, bad women and a beastly
+old man. At last he persuades me to be painted, promising to give me the
+picture when finished. He paints and paints, destroys and destroys. I am
+patient. I give up nearly all my time to him. I sit there day after day
+for hours. At last he has painted me. And when I look I find he has made
+of me a beast, a monster, worse than all the other horrible persons. And
+when I come in he is showing this monster to you, a lady, my friend, one
+I respect and admire above all, and who, perhaps, has thought of me with
+kindness, who has been to me in trouble, to my flat, who has told me
+her sorrow and put trust in me as in none other. ‘Here he is!’ says Dick
+Garstin. ‘This beast, this monster--it is he! Look at him. I introduce
+you to Nicolas Arabian!’ Am I, in return for such things, to say, ‘All
+right! Now take this beast, this monster, and show him to all the world
+and say, “There is Nicolas Arabian!”’ Do you say I should do this?”
+
+“But I have nothing to do with it.”
+
+“Have you not?”
+
+Her eyes gave way before his and looked down.
+
+“Anyhow,” he said, “I will not do it. I have a will as well as he.”
+
+“Yes,” she thought. “You have a will, a tremendous will.”
+
+“To you,” he said, “I show what I would not show to him, that I have
+feelings and that I am very much hurt to-day.”
+
+“I am sorry. I told Dick Garstin--”
+
+“Yes? What?”
+
+“Before you came I told him he ought not to exhibit the picture.”
+
+“Ah! Thank you! Thank you!”
+
+He smiled, and the lustrously soft look came into his eyes.
+
+“A woman--she always knows what a man is!” he said, in a low voice.
+
+“It is cold standing here!” she said.
+
+She shivered as she spoke and looked at the water.
+
+“We will go to my flat,” he said, with a sudden air of authority. “There
+is a big fire there.”
+
+“Oh, no, I can’t!”
+
+“Why not? You have been there.”
+
+“Yes, but I ought not to have gone. I am in mourning.”
+
+“You go to Dick Garstin. What is the difference?”
+
+“People are so foolish. They talk.”
+
+“But you go to Dick Garstin!”
+
+He had turned, and now made her walk back by his side along the river
+bank among the whirling leaves.
+
+“People have begun to talk about us,” she said, almost desperately.
+“That women, Mrs. Birchington, who lives opposite to you--she’s a
+gossip.”
+
+“And do you mind such people?” he asked, with an air of surprised
+contempt.
+
+“A girl has to be careful what she does.”
+
+As Miss Van Tuyn said this she marvelled at her own conventionality.
+That she should be driven to such banality, she who had defied the
+opinion of both Paris and London!
+
+“Please come once more. I want you to help me.”
+
+“I! How can I help you?”
+
+“With Dick Garstin. I do not want to fight with that man. I am not what
+he thinks, but I do not wish to quarrel. You can help.”
+
+“I don’t see how.”
+
+“By the fire I will tell you.”
+
+“I don’t think I ought to come.”
+
+“What is life if it is always what ought and what ought not? I do not go
+by that. I am not able to think always of that. And do you? Oh, no!”
+
+He cast a peculiar glance at her, full of intense shrewdness. It made
+her remember the Cafe Royal on the evening of her meeting with
+the Georgians, her pressure put on Dick Garstin to make Arabian’s
+acquaintance, her lonely walk in the dark when Arabian had followed
+her, her first visit to Garstin’s studio, her pretended reason for many
+subsequent visits there. This man must surely have understood always the
+motive which had governed her in what she had done. His glance told her
+that. It pierced through her pretences like a weapon and quivered in the
+truth of her. He had always understood her. Was he at last going to let
+her understand him? His eyes seemed to say, “Why pretend any longer with
+me? You wanted to know me. You chose to know me. It is too late now to
+play the conventional maiden with me.”
+
+It is too late now.
+
+Her will seemed to be dying out of her. She walked on beside him
+mechanically. She knew that she was going to do what he wished, that
+she was going to his flat again; and when they reached Rose Tree Gardens
+without any further protest she got into the lift with him and went up
+to his floor. But when he was putting the latchkey into the door the
+almost solemn words of Dick Garstin came back to her: “Beryl, believe
+it or not, as you can, that _is_ Arabian!” And she hesitated. An intense
+disinclination to go into the flat struggled with the intense desire to
+yield herself to Arabian’s will. Arabian was before her eyes, standing
+there by the opening door, and Garstin’s portrait was before the eyes of
+her mind in all its magnificent depravation. Which showed the real man
+and which the unreal? Garstin said that he had painted her intuition
+about Arabian, that she knew Arabian’s secret and had conveyed it to
+him. Was that true?
+
+“Please!” said Arabian, holding open the door.
+
+“I cannot come in,” she said, in a dull, low voice.
+
+Beyond the gap of the doorway there lay perhaps the unknown territory
+called by Garstin the underworld. She remembered the piercingly shrewd
+look Arabian had cast at her by the river, a look which had surely
+included her with him in the region which lies outside all the barriers.
+But she did not belong to that region. Despite her keen curiosities, her
+resolute defiance of the conventions, her intensely modern determination
+to live as she chose to live, she would never belong to it. A horrible
+longing which she could not understand fought with the fear which
+Garstin that day had dragged up from the depths of her to the surface.
+But she now gave herself to the fear, and she repeated doggedly:
+
+“I cannot come in.”
+
+But just at this moment her intention was changed, and her subsequent
+action was determined in her by a trifling event, one of those events
+which teach the world to believe in Fate. A door, the door of Mrs.
+Birchington’s flat, clicked behind her. Someone was coming out.
+
+Instantly, driven by the thought “I mustn’t be seen!” Miss Van Tuyn
+stepped into Arabian’s flat. She expected to hear the front door of it
+close immediately behind her. But instead she heard Mrs. Birchington’s
+high soprano voice saying:
+
+“Oh, how d’you do? Glad to meet you again!”
+
+Quickly she opened the second door on the left and stepped into
+Arabian’s drawing-room. Why had he been so slow in shutting the front
+door? She must have been seen. Certainly she had been seen by that
+horrible Minnie Birchington. There would be more gossip. It would be all
+over London that she was perpetually in this man’s flat. Why had not
+he shut the door directly she had stepped into the hall? Her nervous
+tension found momentary relief in sudden violent anger against him, and
+when at length she heard the door shut, and his footstep outside, she
+turned round to meet him with fierce resolution.
+
+“Why did you do that?”
+
+“Beg pardon!” he said, gently, and looking surprised.
+
+“Why didn’t you shut the front door? That--Mrs. Birchington must have
+seen me. I know she has seen me!”
+
+“I had no time. I could not refuse to speak to her, could I? I could not
+be rude to a lady.”
+
+“But I didn’t wish her to see me!”
+
+She was losing her self-control and knew it. She was angry with herself
+as well as with him, but she could not regain her self-possession.
+
+“Why not?” he said, still very gently. “What is the harm? Are we doing
+wrong? I cannot see it. I say again, I had no time to shut the door.”
+
+“Did she see me?”
+
+“Really I do not know.”
+
+He shut the sitting-room door.
+
+“I hope,” he said, “that you are not ashamed to be acquainted with me.”
+
+His voice sounded hurt, and now an expression of acute vexation had come
+into his face.
+
+“Really after what has happened with Dick Garstin to-day I--”
+
+His face now had an expression almost of pain.
+
+“I am really not _canaille_,” he said. “I am not accustomed to be
+thought of and treated as if I were _canaille_.”
+
+“It’s all right,” she said. “But--you see my mourning! I am in deep
+mourning, and I ought not--”
+
+She stopped. She felt the uselessness of her protest, the ungraciousness
+of her demeanour. Without another word she went to the sofa by one of
+the windows and sat down. He came and sat down beside her.
+
+“I want you to help me about Dick Garstin,” he said.
+
+“How? What can I do? I have no influence with him.”
+
+“Oh, yes, you have. A lady like you has always influence with a man.”
+
+“Not with him.”
+
+“But I say you have.”
+
+“What do you want me to do?”
+
+“I want you to tell him what I have said to you to-day.”
+
+“That you won’t have the picture exhibited?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“He’ll only laugh.”
+
+“Beg him for your sake to yield.”
+
+“But what have I to do with it?”
+
+“Very much, I think. It will be better that he yields--really.”
+
+She raised her eyes to his.
+
+“We do not want a scandal, do we?”
+
+“But--”
+
+“If it should come to a fight between Dick Garstin and me there might be
+a scandal.”
+
+“But my name wouldn’t--”
+
+Again she was silent.
+
+“I might try. But it wouldn’t be any use.”
+
+He put out a hand and took one of hers.
+
+“But it all came through you. Didn’t it?”
+
+“But--but you said you had never seen Dick Garstin till he came up and
+asked you to sit to him.”
+
+“That was not true. I saw him with you that night at the Cafe Royal.
+That is why I came to the studio. I knew I should meet you there.
+And--you knew.”
+
+Again the terribly shrewd glance came into his eyes. She saw it and
+felt no strength for denial. From the first he must have thoroughly
+understood her.
+
+“You and I, we are not babies,” he said gently. “We wanted to know each
+other, and so it happened. I have done all this for you. Now I ask you
+to tell Dick Garstin for me.”
+
+“I’ll do what I can,” she said.
+
+He pressed her hand softly.
+
+“You are not one of those who are afraid,” he said. “You do what you
+choose--even at night.”
+
+She thought of the episode in Shaftesbury Avenue.
+
+“Then you--you--”
+
+“But I do not need to take a shilling from a lady!”
+
+“You didn’t know me that night!” she said defiantly.
+
+“Ah, but when I heard you speak in the studio I knew!”
+
+“And you follow women like that at night!”
+
+She tried to draw away her hand, but he would not let her.
+
+“You drew me after you--not knowing. It was what they call occult.”
+
+“Then why did you go away?”
+
+“I felt that I had been wrong, that you didn’t wish me to speak to you.”
+
+“Do you mean when I--that you suspected what I was?”
+
+“Something said to me, ‘This is a lady. She does strange things, she is
+not like others, but she is a lady. Go away.’”
+
+“And in the studio--”
+
+“When you spoke I knew.”
+
+She felt degraded. She could not explain. And she felt confused. She
+did not understand this man. His curious reticence that night, after his
+audacity, was inexplicable to her. What could he think of her? What must
+he think?
+
+“I was going out that night to dine in a restaurant in Soho with some
+friends,” she said, trying to speak very naturally. “I wanted some fresh
+air, so I walked.”
+
+“Why not? I beg you to forgive me for my rudeness. I feel very ashamed
+of it now. I have learnt in all these days to respect you very much.”
+
+His voice sounded so earnest, so sincere, that she felt suddenly a sense
+of relief. After all, he had always treated her with respect. He had
+never been impertinent, or even really audacious, and yet he had always
+known that she had wanted to meet him, that she had meant to meet him!
+He had never taken advantage of that knowledge. If he were really what
+Dick Garstin said he was, surely he would have acted differently.
+
+“Do you really respect me?” she said.
+
+“Yes. Have I not shown it in all these days? Have I ever done anything a
+lady could object to?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Her hand still lay in his, and his touch had aroused in her that strange
+and intense desire to belong to him which seemed a desire entirely of
+the body, something with which the mind had little or nothing to do.
+
+“Are you evil?” her eyes were asking him.
+
+And his eyes, looking straight down into hers, seemed steadily and
+simply to deny it.
+
+“Do you believe the lie of Dick Garstin?” they said to her.
+
+And she no longer knew whether she believed it or not.
+
+He drew a little nearer to her.
+
+“I respect you--yes,” he said. “But that is not all. I have another
+feeling for you. I have had it ever since I first saw you that night,
+when I was standing by the door in the Cafe Royal and you looked at me.”
+
+“But--but you--”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+Her lips trembled. Again jealousy seized her.
+
+“I saw you that night in Conduit Street,” she said. “You thought I
+didn’t, but I did.”
+
+He still looked perfectly calm and untroubled.
+
+“You were dining with Dick Garstin. May I not dine with someone?”
+
+“Then why did you leave the restaurant?”
+
+“I did not want you to see me.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“I thought you might not understand.”
+
+“I do understand. I understand perfectly!”
+
+She drew her hand sharply away from his.
+
+“Are you angry with me?”
+
+“Angry? No! What does it matter to me?”
+
+“I am a man. I live alone. My life is lonely. Must I give up everything
+before I know that some day I shall have the only thing I really wish?
+You know men. You know how we are. I do not defend. I only say that I
+am not better than the other men. I want to be happy. If that is not for
+me, then I want to make the time pass. I do not pretend. Men generally
+pretend very much to beautiful girls. But you would not believe such
+nonsense.”
+
+“Then why didn’t you stay in the restaurant?”
+
+“Because I thought to do that would be like an insult for you. Such
+girls as that--mud--they must not come into your life even by chance,
+even for a few minutes. No man wishes to show himself with mud to a lady
+he respects. I tell you just the truth.”
+
+“Have you--have you seen her again?”
+
+“She is in Paris. She has been in Paris for many days. But she is
+nothing. Why speak of such people?”
+
+“I don’t know. But I hate--”
+
+She moved restlessly. Then she got up and went to the fire. He followed
+her. She could not understand her own jealousy. It humiliated her as
+she had never been humiliated before. She felt jealous of this man’s
+absolute freedom, of his past. A sort of rage possessed her when she
+thought of all the experiences he must certainly have had. She almost
+hated him for those experiences. She wished she could lay hands on them,
+tear them out of him, so that he should not have them any longer
+in memory’s treasury. And yet she knew that, without them, he would
+probably attract her much less.
+
+“Do you care then?” he said.
+
+“Care?”
+
+“Do you care what I do?”
+
+“No, of course not!”
+
+“But--you do care!” he said.
+
+He said it without any triumph of the male, quite simply, almost as a
+boy might have said it.
+
+“You do care!” he repeated.
+
+And very gently, slowly, he put his arm round her, drew her close to
+him, bent down and gave her a long kiss.
+
+For a moment she shut her eyes. She was giving herself up entirely to
+physical sensation. Fear, thought, everything except bodily feeling,
+seemed to cease in her entirely at that moment. Some fascination which
+he possessed, an intense fascination for women, entirely mysterious and
+inexplicable, a thing rooted in the body, absolutely overpowered her at
+that moment.
+
+It was he who broke the physical spell. He lifted his lips from hers and
+she heard the words:
+
+“I want you to marry me. Will you?”
+
+Instantly she was released. A flood of thoughts, doubts, wonderings,
+flowed through her. She felt terribly startled.
+
+Marriage with this man! Marriage with Nicolas Arabian! In all her
+thoughts of him she had never included the thought of marriage. Yet she
+had imagined many situations in which he and she played their parts.
+Wild dreams had come to her in sleepless nights, the dreams that visit
+women who are awake under fascination. She had lived through romances
+with him. She had been with him in strange places, had travelled with
+him in sandy wastes, seen the night come with him in remote corners
+of the earth, stood with him in great cities, watched the sea waves
+slipping away with him on the decks of Atlantic liners. All this she
+had done in imagination with him. But never had she seen herself as his
+wife.
+
+To be the wife of Arabian!
+
+He let her go directly he felt the surprise in her body.
+
+“Marry you!” she said.
+
+“It could not be anything else,” he said, very simply. “Could it?”
+
+She flushed as if he had punished her by his respect for her.
+
+“But--but we scarcely know each other!” she stammered.
+
+“You say that now!”
+
+Again she felt rebuked, as if she were lighter than he and as if he were
+surprised by her lightness.
+
+“But we are only--I mean--”
+
+“Let us not talk of it then now if you dislike. But I cannot take such
+a thing any way but seriously, knowing what you are. I love you; I would
+follow you anywhere. Naturally, therefore, I must think of marriage with
+you, or that I am to have nothing.”
+
+He stopped. She said nothing; could not say anything.
+
+“With light women one is light. I do not pretend to be a very good man,
+better than the others. Those so very good men, I do not believe in them
+very much. But I know that many women are good. Just at first, let me
+confess, I was not sure how you were. At the Cafe Royal that night,
+seeing you with all those funny people, I made a mistake. I thought,
+‘She is beautiful. She is audacious. She likes adventures. She wishes
+an adventure with me.’ And I came to Dick Garstin’s thinking of an
+adventure. But soon I knew--no! I heard you talk. I got to know your
+cultivation, your very fine mind. And then you held back from me,
+waiting till you should know me better. That pleased me. It taught me
+the value of you. And when at last you did not hold back, were willing
+to be alone with me, to lunch with me, to walk with me, I understood you
+had made up your mind: ‘He is all right!’ But, best of all, you at last
+asked me to your hotel, introduced me to the dear lady you live with. I
+understood what was in your mind: ‘_She_, too, must be satisfied.’ Then
+I knew it was not an adventure. And when you told me first about your
+sorrow! Ah! That was the great day for me! I knew you would not have
+told such a thing, kept from even Dick Garstin, unless you put me in
+your mind away from the others. That was a very great day for me!”
+
+She shivered slightly by the fire. He was telling her things. She could
+not in return tell him the truth of herself. Perhaps he really believed
+all he had just said. And yet that shrewd glance he had given her by the
+river and again in that room! What had it meant if now he had spoken the
+truth?
+
+“I knew then that you cared,” he said, quietly and with earnest
+conviction. “I knew then that some day I could ask you to marry me.
+Anything else--it is impossible between you and me.”
+
+“Yes, of course! I never--you mustn’t suppose--”
+
+“I do not suppose. I know you as now you know me.”
+
+He did not touch her again, though, of course, he must know--any man
+must have known by this time--his physical power to charm, even to
+overwhelm her. His power over himself amazed her. It proved to her the
+strength in his character. The man was strong, and in two ways. She
+worshipped strength, but his still made her afraid.
+
+“Now let us leave it,” he said, with a change of manner. “It is getting
+dark. It is dreary outside. I will shut the curtains. I will sing to you
+in the firelight.”
+
+He went over to the windows, drew down the blinds, pulled forward the
+curtains. She watched him, sitting motionless, wondering at herself and
+at him. For the moment he was certainly her master. He governed her as
+much by what he did not do as by what he did. And it had always been so
+ever since she had known him. The assurance in his quiet was enormous.
+How many things he must have carried through in his life, the life of
+which she knew absolutely nothing! But this--would he carry through
+this? She tried to tell herself with certainty that he would not. And
+yet, as she looked at him, she was not sure. Will can drown will. Great
+power can overcome lesser power, mysteriously sometimes, but certainly.
+That play of which she had read an account in the _Westminster Gazette_
+was founded on the possibilities, was based upon a solid foundation. To
+the ignorant it might seem grotesque, incredible even, but not to those
+who had really studied life and the eddying currents of life. In life,
+almost all that is said to be impossible happens at times, though
+perhaps not often. And who knows, who can say with absolute certainty,
+that he or she is not an exception, was not born an exception?
+
+As Miss Van Tuyn watched Arabian drawing the curtains across the windows
+which looked upon the Thames she did not know positively that she would
+not marry him. She remembered her sensation under his kiss. It had been
+a sensation of absolute surrender. That was why she had shut her eyes.
+
+She might shut her eyes again. He might even make her do that.
+
+After the curtains were drawn, and only the light from the fire lit up
+the room, Arabian went over to the piano, a baby grand, and sat down on
+the music-stool. He was looking very grave, almost romantically grave,
+but quite un-self-conscious. She wondered whether, even now, he cared
+what she thought about him. He showed none of the diffidence of the
+not-yet-accepted lover, eager to please, anxious about the future. But
+he showed nothing of triumph. The firelight played over his face as he
+struck a few chords. She wondered whether his manservant was with them
+in the flat, or whether they were quite alone--shut in together. He
+had not offered her tea. Perhaps the man had gone out. She did not feel
+afraid of Arabian at this moment. After what he had said she knew she
+had no reason to be afraid of him just now. But if she gave herself
+to him, if they ever were married? How would it be then? Life with him
+would surely be an extraordinary business. She remembered her solicitude
+about not being seen with him in public places. Already that seemed
+long ago. Dick Garstin had told her she had travelled. No doubt that was
+true. One may travel far perhaps in mind and in feeling without being
+self-consciously aware of it. But when one was aware, when one knew,
+it must surely be possible to stop. He had made to her a tremendous
+suggestion. She could refuse to entertain it. And when she refused,
+if she did refuse, what would happen? What would he say, do, when he
+realized her determination? How would he take a determined refusal? She
+could not imagine. But she knew that she could not imagine Arabian ever
+yielding his will to hers in any big matter which would seriously upset
+his life.
+
+“Now, shall I sing to you?” he said, fixing his eyes upon her.
+
+“Yes, please do,” she answered, looking away from him into the fire.
+
+“You know how I sing. I am not a musician of cultivation, but I have
+music in me. I have always had it. I have always sung, even as a boy.
+It is natural to me. But I have been very idle in my life. I have never
+been able to work, alas!”
+
+She looked at him again. Always he was playing softly, improvising.
+
+“Have you really never done any work?”
+
+“Never. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have always had enough money to be
+idle.”
+
+“He’s not poor!” she thought.
+
+And then she felt glad, suddenly remembering how rich she was now, since
+the death of her father.
+
+He said nothing more, but played a short prelude and began to sing in
+his small, but warm, tenor voice. And, sitting there by the fire, she
+watched him while he sang, and wondered again, as she had wondered in
+the studio, at the musical sense that was in him and that could show
+itself so easily and completely, without apparently any strong effort.
+The fascination she felt in him filled all his music, and appealed not
+only to her senses but to her musical understanding. She had a genuine
+passion for the right in all the arts, for the inevitable word in
+literature, the inevitable touch of colour that lights up a painting,
+fusing the whole into harmony, the inevitable emotional colouring of a
+musical phrase, the slackening or quickening of time, which make a song
+exactly what it should be. And to that passion he was able to appeal
+with his gift. He sang two Italian songs, and she felt Italy in them.
+Then he sang in French, and finally in Spanish--guitar songs. And
+presently she gave herself entirely to him as a singer. He had
+temperament, and she loved that. It meant, perhaps, too much to her.
+That, no doubt, was what drew her to him more surely than his remarkable
+physical beauty--temperament which has the keys of so many doors, and
+can open them at will, showing glimpses of wonderful rooms, and of
+gardens bathed in sunshine or steeped in mysterious twilight, and of
+savage wastes, the wilderness, the windy tracts by the sea, landscapes
+in snow, autumn breathing in mist; temperament which can even simulate
+knowledge, and can rouse all the under-longings which so often lie
+sleeping and unknown in women.
+
+“With that man I could never be dull!”
+
+That thought slipped through her while she listened. Where did he come
+from? In how many lands had he lived? How had his life been passed? She
+ought to know. Perhaps some day he would tell her. He must surely tell
+her. One cannot do great things which affect one’s life in the dark.
+
+Dark--that’s his word! When had she thought that? She remembered. It
+had been in that room. And since then she had seen Garstin’s terrible
+portrait.
+
+But he was like a palm tree singing. Even Garstin had been forced to say
+that of him.
+
+When at last he stopped all the artistic part of her was under his
+spell. He had, perhaps deliberately, perhaps at haphazard--she could not
+tell--aroused in her a great longing for multifarious experiences
+such as she had never yet suffered under or enjoyed. He had let her
+recklessness loose from its tethering chain. Was she just then the same
+woman who a short time ago had feared Minnie Birchington’s curious eyes?
+She could scarcely believe it.
+
+He got up from the piano. She too got up. He came up to her, put his
+hands on her shoulders gently, pressed them, contracting his strong
+brown fingers, and said, looking down into her eyes:
+
+“How beautiful you are! Mon Dieu! how beautiful you are!”
+
+And her vanity was gratified as it had never been gratified before
+by all the compliments she had received, by all the longings she had
+aroused in men.
+
+Still holding her shoulders he said:
+
+“Do something for me to-night.”
+
+“What is it? What do you want?”
+
+“Oh, only a very simple thing.”
+
+She felt disappointed, but she said nothing.
+
+“Let us dine together to-night! Afterwards I will take you to your hotel
+and leave you to think.”
+
+He smiled down at her.
+
+“I am no longer afraid to let you think. Will you come?”
+
+“Yes,” she said.
+
+“Where was it you were walking to that night when I was so rude as to
+follow after you?”
+
+“To a restaurant in Soho.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“To the _Bella Napoli_.”
+
+“_Napoli_!”
+
+He half shut his eyes.
+
+“I love Naples. Is it Italian?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Really Italian?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Let us go there. And before we go I will sing you a street song of
+Naples.”
+
+“You--you are not a Neapolitan?” she asked.
+
+“No. I come from South America. But I know Naples very, very well.
+Listen!”
+
+And almost laughing, and looking suddenly buffo, he spoke a few
+sentences in the Neapolitan patois.
+
+“Ah, they are rascals there! But one forgives them because they are
+happy in their naughtiness, or at any rate they seem happy. And there
+is nothing like happiness for getting forgiveness. We will be happy
+to-night, and we shall get forgiven. We will go to the _Bella Napoli_.”
+
+She did not say “yes” or “no.” She was thinking at that moment of Craven
+and Adela Sellingworth. It was just possible that they might be there.
+But if they were? What did it matter? Minnie Birchington had seen her
+with Arabian. Lady Archie Brooke had seen her. Craven had seen her.
+And why should she be ashamed. Ought and ought not! Had she ever been
+governed in her life and her doing by fear of opinion?
+
+“Do you say yes?” he asked. “Or must you go back to dear Mademoiselle
+Cronin?”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“Then what do you say?”
+
+“Yes, I’ll go there with you,” she answered.
+
+But there was a sound of defiance in her voice, and at that moment
+she had a feeling that she was going to do something more decisively
+unconventional, even more dangerous, than she had ever yet done.
+
+If _they_ were there! She remembered Craven’s look at Arabian. She
+remembered, too, the change in Arabian’s face as Craven had passed them.
+
+But Craven had gone back to Adela Sellingworth. Arabian, perhaps, had
+been the cause of that return.
+
+“Why do you look like that? What are you thinking of?”
+
+“Naples,” she said.
+
+“I will sing you the street song. And then, presently, we will go. I
+know we must not be too late, or your dear Mademoiselle Cronin will be
+frightened about you.”
+
+He left her, and went once more to the piano.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+About seven o’clock that evening Lady Sellingworth was sitting alone in
+her drawing-room. Sir Seymour Portman had been with her for an hour and
+had left her at half past six, believing that she was going to spend
+one of her usual solitary evenings, probably with a book by the fire. He
+would gladly, even thankfully, have stayed to keep her company. But
+no suggestion of that kind had been made to him. And, beyond calling
+regularly at the hour when he believed that he was welcome, he never
+pressed his company upon his dearly loved friend. Even in his great
+affection he preserved a certain ceremoniousness. Even in his love he
+never took a liberty. In modern days he still held to the reserve of
+the very great gentleman, old-fashioned perhaps now, but nevertheless
+precious in his sight.
+
+He would have been not a little surprised had he been able to see his
+Adela at this moment.
+
+She had changed the plain black gown in which she had received him, and
+was dressed in dark red velvet. She wore a black hat. Two big rubies
+gleamed in her ears, and there was another, surrounded with diamonds,
+at her throat. Her gown was trimmed with an edging of some dark fur.
+As usual her hands were covered by loose white gloves. She was shod for
+walking out. Her eyebrows had been carefully darkened. There was some
+artificial red on her lips. Her white hair was fluffed out under the
+hat brim, and looked very thick and vital. Her white skin was smooth
+and even. Her eyes shone, as Cecile had just told her, “_comme deux
+lampes_.” She was a striking figure as she sat on her sofa very upright
+near a lamp, holding a book in her hand. She even looked very handsome
+and, of course, very distinguished. But her face was anxious, her bright
+eyes were uneasy, and there was a perceptible stamp of artificiality
+upon her. A woman would have noticed it instantly. Even an observant man
+would probably not have missed it.
+
+She seemed to be reading at first, and presently there was a faint
+rustle. She had turned a page. But soon she put the book down in her
+lap, still keeping her hand on it, and sat looking about the room. The
+clock chimed seven. She moved and sighed. Then again she sat very still
+like one listening. After a while she lifted the book, glanced at it
+again, and then put it down, got up and went to the fireplace. She
+turned on the lights there, leaned forward and looked into the glass.
+Her face became stern with intentness when she did that. She put up a
+hand to her hair, turned her head a little to one side, smiled faintly,
+then a little more, and looked grave, then earnest. Finally she put both
+her hands on the mantelpiece, grasped it and stared into the glass.
+
+In that moment she was feeling afraid.
+
+She had arranged to dine with Alick Craven once more at the _Bella
+Napoli_. He would come for her in a few minutes. She was wondering very
+much how exactly she would appear to him, how old, how good-looking--or
+plain. She had tried, with Cecile’s help, to look her very best. Cecile
+had declared the result was a success. “_Miladi est merveilleusement
+belle ce soir, mais vraiment belle!_” But a maid, of course, would not
+scruple to lie about such a matter. One could not depend on a maid’s
+word. She was in love with Alick Craven, desperately in love as only an
+elderly woman can be with a man much younger than herself. And that love
+made her afraid.
+
+There was a tiny mole on her face, near the mouth. She wished she
+had had it removed in Geneva. Why had not she had that done? No doubt
+because she was so accustomed to it that for years she had never thought
+of it, had never even seen it. Now suddenly she saw it, and it seemed
+to her noticeable, an ugly blemish. Anyone who looked at her must surely
+look at it, think of it. For a moment she felt desperate about it, and
+her whole body was suddenly hot as if a flame went over it. Then the
+mocking look came into her eyes. She was trying to laugh at herself.
+
+“He doesn’t think of me in _that_ way! No man will ever think of me in
+_that_ way again!”
+
+But the mocking expression died out and the fear did not go. She was
+afraid of Craven’s young eyes. It was terrible to feel so humble,
+so full of trembling diffidence. Oh, for a moment of the conquering
+sensation she had sometimes known in the years long ago when men had
+made her aware of her power!
+
+Since their meeting in Dindie Ackroyde’s drawing-room her friendship
+with Craven, renewed, had grown into something like intimacy. But there
+was an uneasiness in it which she felt acutely. There were humbug and
+fear in this friendship. Because she was desperately in love she was
+forced to be insincere with Craven. Haunted perpetually by the fear of
+losing what she had, the liking of a man who was not, and could never
+be, in love with her, she had to give Craven the impression that she
+was beyond the age of love, that the sensations of love were dead in her
+beyond hope of resurrection. She had to play at detachment when her one
+desire was to absorb and to be absorbed, had to sustain an appearance of
+physical coldness while she was burning with physical fever. She had to
+create a false atmosphere about her, and to do it so cleverly that it
+seemed absolutely genuine, the emanation of her personality in unstudied
+naturalness.
+
+Her lack of all affection helped her to deceive. Though in moments she
+might seem constrained, oddly remote, frigidly detached, she was never
+affected. Now and then Craven had wondered about her, but he had never
+guessed that she was acting a part. The charm of her was still active
+about him, and it was the charm of apparent sincerity. To him so far the
+false atmosphere seemed real, and he was not aware of the fear.
+
+Lady Sellingworth feared being found out by Craven, and feared what
+might happen if he found out that she was in love with him. She feared
+her age and the addition each passing day made to it. She feared her
+natural appearance, and now strove to conceal it as much as possible
+without being unskilful or blatant. And she feared the future terribly.
+
+For Time galloped now. She often felt herself rushing towards the abyss
+of the seventies.
+
+The worst of it all was that in humbug she was never at ease. Instead
+of, like many women, living comfortably in insincerity, she longed to be
+sincere. To love as she did and be insincere was abominable to her. To
+her insincerity now seemed to be the direct contradiction of love. Often
+when she was deceiving Alick Craven she felt almost criminal. Perhaps
+if she had been much younger she might not have been so troubled in the
+soul by the necessity for constant pretence. But to those who are of any
+real worth the years bring a growing need of sincerity, a growing hunger
+which only true things can satisfy. And she knew that need and suffered
+that hunger.
+
+She was feeling it now as she waited for Craven. She longed to be able
+to let him see her as she was and to be accepted by him as she was.
+But he would not accept her. She knew that. He did not want her as she
+wanted him. He was satisfied with things as they were. She was at a
+terrible disadvantage with him, for she was in his power, while he was
+not in hers. He could ruin such happiness as she now had. But she could
+not ruin his happiness. If he gave her up she would be broken, though
+probably no one would know it. But if she gave him up he would not mind
+very much, though no doubt his pride would be hurt. Perhaps, even now,
+she was only a palliative in his life. Beryl Van Tuyn had evidently
+treated him badly. He turned to others for some casual consolation.
+
+Lady Sellingworth often wondered painfully what Craven felt about the
+American girl. Was she only comforting Craven, playing a sort of dear
+old mother’s part to him? Did he come to her because he considered her
+a skilful binder up of wounds? Could Beryl whenever she chose take him
+away?
+
+Lady Sellingworth’s instinct told her that while she had been abroad
+Craven and Beryl had travelled in their friendship. But she did not yet
+know exactly how far Craven had gone. It seemed evident now that Beryl
+had been suddenly diverted, no doubt by some strong influence, on to
+another track; Lady Sellingworth knew that she and Craven were no
+longer meeting. Something had happened which had interfered with their
+intimacy. Rumour said that Beryl Van Tuyn was in love with another man,
+with this Nicolas Arabian, whom nobody knew. Everyone in the Coombe set
+was talking about it. How keenly did Craven feel this sudden defection?
+That it had hurt his young pride Lady Sellingworth was certain. But she
+was not certain whether it had seriously wounded his heart.
+
+“Am I a palliative?” she thought as she gazed into the glass.
+
+And then came the terrible question:
+
+“How can I be anything else?”
+
+She heard the door opening behind her, took her hands from the
+mantelpiece, and turned round quickly.
+
+“Mr. Craven, my lady.”
+
+“You’re all ready? Capital! I say, am I late?”
+
+“No. It’s only a little past seven.”
+
+He had taken her hand. She longed to press his, but she did not press
+it. He looked at her, she thought, rather curiously.
+
+“I’ve got a taxi at the door. It’s rather a horrid night. You’re not
+dressed for walking?”
+
+Again his look seemed to question her.
+
+She put up a hand to her face, near the mouth, nervously.
+
+“We had better drive. In these winter evenings walking isn’t very
+pleasant. We must be a little less Bohemian in taste, mustn’t we?”
+
+He seemed now slightly constrained. His eyes did not rest upon her quite
+naturally, she thought.
+
+“Shall we go down?” she said.
+
+“Yes, do let us.”
+
+As she moved to go she looked into the glass. She could not help doing
+that. He noticed it, and thought:
+
+“I wonder why she has begun making her face up like this?”
+
+He did not like it. He preferred her as she had been when he had first
+come to her house on an autumn evening. To him there was something
+almost distressing in this change which he noticed specially to-night.
+And her look into the glass had shown him that she was preoccupied about
+her appearance. Such a preoccupation on her part seemed foreign to her
+character as he had conceived of it. Her greatest charm had been her
+extraordinary lack, or apparent lack, of all self-consciousness. She had
+never seemed to bother about herself, to be thinking of the impression
+she was making on others.
+
+But she was certainly looking very handsome.
+
+She put on a fur. They got into the cab and drove to Soho.
+
+Craven had ordered the table in the window to be reserved for them. The
+restaurant was fairly, but not quite, full. The musicians were in their
+accustomed places looking very Italian. The lustrous _padrona_ smiled a
+greeting to them from her counter. Their bright-eyed waitress hurried up
+and welcomed them in Italian. Vesuvius erupted at them from the walls.
+There was a cozy warmth in the unpretentious room, an atmosphere of
+careless intimacy and good fellowship.
+
+“Let me take off your fur!”
+
+She slipped out of it, and he hung it up on a hook among hats and coats
+which looked as if they could never have anything to do with it.
+
+“I’ll sit with my back to the window,” she said. She sat down, and he
+sat on her left facing the entrance.
+
+Then the menu was brought, and they began to consult about what they
+would eat. She did not care what it was, but she pretended to care very
+much. To do that was part of the game. If only she could think of all
+this as a game, could take it lightly, merrily! She resolved to make a
+strong effort to conquer the underlying melancholy which had accompanied
+her into this new friendship, and which she could not shake off. It came
+from a lost battle, from a silent and great defeat. She was afraid of
+it, for it was black and profound beyond all plumbing. Often in her ten
+years of retirement she had felt melancholy. But this was a new sort of
+sadness. There was an acrid edge to it. It had the peculiar and subtle
+terror of a grief that was not caused only by events, but also, and
+specially, by something within herself.
+
+“Gnocchi--we must have gnocchi!”
+
+“Oh, yes.”
+
+“But wait, though! There are ravioli! It would hardly do to have both, I
+suppose, would it?”
+
+“No; they are too much alike.”
+
+“Then which shall we have?”
+
+She was going to say, “I don’t mind!” but remembered her role and said:
+
+“Please, ravioli for me.”
+
+And she believed that she said it with gusto, as if she really did care.
+
+“For me too!” said Craven.
+
+And he went on considering and asking, with his dark head bent over the
+menu and his blue eyes fixed upon it.
+
+“There! That ought to be a nice dinner!” he said, at last. “And for wine
+Chianti, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes, Chianti Rosso,” she answered, with the definiteness, she hoped, of
+the epicure.
+
+This small fuss about what they were going to eat marked for her the
+severing difference between Craven’s mental attitude at this moment and
+hers. For him this little dinner was merely a pleasant way of spending a
+casual evening in the company of one who was kind to him, whom he found
+sympathetic, whom he admired probably as a striking representative of
+an era that was past, the Edwardian era. For her it was an event full
+of torment and joy. The joy came from being alone with him. But she
+was tortured by yearnings which he knew nothing of. He was able to give
+himself out to her naturally. She was obliged to hold herself in, to
+conceal the horrible fact that she was obsessed by him, that she was
+longing to commit sacrifices for him, to take him as her exclusive
+possession, to surround him with love and worship. He wanted from her
+what she was apparently giving him and nothing more. She wanted from
+him all that he was not giving her and would never give her. The dinner
+would be a tranquil pleasure for him, and a quivering torture for her,
+mingled with some moments of forgetfulness in which she would have a
+brief illusion of happiness. She made the comparison and thought
+with despair of the unevenness of Fate. Meanwhile she was smiling and
+praising the vegetable soup sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.
+
+One of the musicians came up to their table, and inquired whether the
+_signora_ would like any special thing played. Lady Sellingworth shook
+her head. She was afraid of their songs of the South, and dared not
+choose one.
+
+“Anything you like!” she said.
+
+“They are all much the same,” she added to Craven.
+
+“But I thought you were so fond of the songs of Naples and the Bay.
+Don’t you remember that first evening when--”
+
+“Yes, I remember,” she interrupted him, almost sharply. “But still these
+songs are really all very much alike. They all express the same sort of
+thing--Neapolitan desires.”
+
+“And not only Neapolitan desires, I should say,” said Craven.
+
+At that moment a hard look came into his eyes, a grimness altered his
+mouth. His face completely changed, evidently under the influence of
+some sudden and keen gust of feeling. He slightly bent his head, and the
+colour rose in his cheeks.
+
+Lady Sellingworth who, for the moment, had been wholly intent on
+Craven, now looked to see what had caused this sudden and evidently
+uncontrollable exhibition of feeling. She saw two people, a tall girl
+and a man, walking down the restaurant towards the further end. The girl
+she immediately recognized.
+
+“Oh--there’s Beryl!” she said.
+
+Her heart sank as she looked at Craven.
+
+“Yes,” he said.
+
+“Did she see me?”
+
+“I don’t know. Probably she did. But she seemed in a hurry.”
+
+“Oh! Whom is she with?”
+
+“That fellow they are all talking about, Arabian. At least, I suppose
+so. Anyhow, it’s the fellow I saw in Glebe Place. Ah, there they go with
+_Sole mio_!”
+
+The musicians were beginning the melody of which Italians never seem to
+weary. Lady Sellingworth listened to it as she looked down the long and
+narrow room now crowded with people. Beryl Van Tuyn was standing by a
+table near the wall. Lady Sellingworth saw her in profile. Her companion
+stood beside her with his back to the room. Lady Sellingworth noticed
+that he was tall with an athletic figure, that he was broad-shouldered,
+that his head was covered with thickly growing brown hair. He gave her
+the impression of a strong and good-looking man. She gazed at him with
+an interest she scarcely understood at that moment, an interest surely
+more intense than even the gossip she had heard about him warranted.
+
+He helped Miss Van Tuyn out of her coat, then took off his, and went to
+hang them on a stand against the wall. In doing this he turned, and for
+a moment showed his profile to Lady Sellingworth. She saw the line of
+his brown face, his arm raised, his head slightly thrown back.
+
+So that was Nicolas Arabian, the man all the women in the Coombe set
+were gossiping about! She could not see him very well. He was rather
+a long way off, and two moving people, a waitress carrying food, an
+Italian man going to speak to a gesticulating friend, intervened and
+shut him out from her sight while he was still arranging the coats. But
+there was something in his profile, something in his movement and in
+the carriage of his head which seemed familiar to her. And she drew her
+brows together, wondering. Craven spoke to her through the music. She
+looked at him, answered him. Then once more she glanced down the room.
+Beryl and Arabian had sat down. Beryl was facing her. Arabian was at the
+side. Lady Sellingworth still saw him in profile. He was talking to the
+waitress.
+
+“I am sure I know that man’s face!” Lady Sellingworth thought.
+
+And she expressed her thought to Craven.
+
+“If that is Nicolas Arabian I think I must have seen him about London,”
+ she said. “His side face seems familiar to me somehow.”
+
+Why would not Beryl look at her?
+
+“I wonder whether Beryl saw me when she came in,” continued Lady
+Sellingworth. “She saw you, of course.”
+
+“Yes, she saw me.”
+
+From the sound of Craven’s voice, from the constraint of his manner,
+Lady Sellingworth gathered the knowledge that her evening was spoilt.
+A few minutes before she had been quivering with anxiety, had been
+struggling to conquer the melancholy which, she knew, put her at a
+disadvantage with Craven, had been seized with despair as she compared
+her fate with his. Now she looked back at that beginning of the evening
+and thought of it as happy. For Craven had seemed contented then. Now he
+was obviously restless, ill at ease. He never looked down the room.
+He devoted himself to her. He talked even more than usual. But she was
+aware of effort in it all, and knew that his thoughts were with Beryl
+Van Tuyn and the stranger who seemed vaguely familiar to her.
+
+Formerly--with what intensity she remembered, visualized, the
+occasions--Craven had been restless with Beryl Van Tuyn because he
+wished to be with her; now he was restless with her. And she did not
+need to ask herself why.
+
+This remembrance made her feel angry in her despair. Her hatred of Beryl
+revived. She recalled the girl’s cruelty to her. Now Beryl had been
+cruel to Craven. And yet Craven was longing after her. What was the good
+of kindness, of the warm heart full of burning desires to be of use, to
+comfort, to bring joy into a life? The cruel fascinated, perhaps were
+even loved. Men were bored by any love that was wholly unselfish.
+
+But was her love unselfish? She put that question from her. She felt
+injured, wounded. It was difficult for her any longer to conceal her
+misery. But she tried to talk cheerfully, naturally. She forced her lips
+to smile. She praised the excellence of the cooking, the efforts of the
+musicians.
+
+Nevertheless the conversation presently languished. There was no
+spontaneity in it. All around them loud voices were talking volubly in
+Italian. She glanced from table to table. It seemed to her that everyone
+was feeling happy and at ease except herself and Craven. They were ill
+matched. She became horribly self-conscious. She felt as if people were
+looking at them with surprise, as if an undercurrent of ridicule was
+creeping through the room. Surely many were wondering who the painted
+old woman and the young man were, why they sat together in the corner
+by the window! She saw one of the musicians smile and whisper to the
+companion beside him, and felt certain he was speaking about her, was
+smiling, at some ugly thought which he had just put into words.
+
+To an Italian she must certainly seem an old wreck of a woman, “_una
+vecchia_,” an object of contempt, or of smiling pity. She looked down at
+her red dress, remembered the jewels in her ears and at her throat. How
+useless and absurd were her efforts to look her best! A terrible phrase
+of Caroline Briggs came into her mind: “I feel as if I were looking at
+bones decked out in jewels.” And again she was back in Paris ten years
+ago; again she saw a contrast bizarre as the contrast she and Craven now
+presented to the crowd in the restaurant. Before the eyes of her mind
+there rose an old woman in a black wig and a marvellously handsome young
+man.
+
+Suddenly a thrill shot through her. It was like a sharp physical pain, a
+sword-thrust of agony.
+
+That profile which had seemed vaguely familiar to her just now, was it
+not like his profile? She tried to reason with herself, to tell herself
+that she was yielding to a crazy fancy, brought about by her nervous
+excitement and by the mental pain she was suffering. Many men slightly,
+sometimes markedly, resemble other men. One face seen in profile is
+often very much like another. But the even dark brown of the complexion!
+That was not very common, not the type of complexion one sees every day.
+
+She glanced at the men near to her. Most of them were Italians and
+swarthy. But not one had that peculiar, almost bronze-like darkness.
+
+Beryl had spoken of “a living bronze.”
+
+Craven was speaking to her again. She forced herself to reply to him,
+though she scarcely knew what she was saying. She saw a look of surprise
+in the eyes which he fixed on her.
+
+“Isn’t it getting very hot?” she said quickly.
+
+“It is rather hot. Shall I ask them to open the window a little? But it
+is just behind you.”
+
+“It doesn’t matter. I have brought my fan.”
+
+She picked the fan up and began to use it unsteadily.
+
+“The room is so very crowded to-night,” she murmured.
+
+“Yes. No wonder with such cooking. Here is the Zabaione.”
+
+The waitress put two large glasses before them filled with the thick
+yellow custard, then brought them a plate of biscuits.
+
+Lady Sellingworth laid down the fan and picked up her spoon. She must
+eat. But she did not know how she was going to force herself to do it.
+Although she kept on saying to herself: “It’s impossible!” she could
+not get rid of the horrible suspicion which had assailed her. On the
+contrary, it seemed to grow in her till it was almost a conviction.
+She tried to eat tranquilly. She praised the Zabaione. She sipped her
+Chianti Rosso. But she tasted nothing, and when the musicians struck up
+another melody she did not know what they were playing.
+
+“Are you tired of it?”
+
+Craven had spoken to her.
+
+“Of what?” she asked, as if almost startled.
+
+“That--Santa Lucia?”
+
+“Oh--is it?”
+
+He looked astonished.
+
+“Oh--yes, I must say I am rather sick of it!” she said quickly.
+
+She laid down her spoon.
+
+“Don’t you like the Zabaione?”
+
+“Yes, it’s delicious. But I have had enough. You ordered such a very
+good dinner!”
+
+She began to use her fan again. The noise of voices in the room was
+becoming like the noise of voices in a nightmare. She was longing to
+confirm or banish her suspicion by a long look at Beryl’s companion.
+She felt sure now that if she looked again at Arabian she would be
+absolutely certain, even from a distance, whether he was or was not the
+man who had brought about the robbery of her jewels at the Gard du Nord
+ten years ago. Her mind was fully awake now, and she would be able to
+see. But, knowing that, she did not dare to look towards Arabian. She
+was miserable in her uncertainty, but she was afraid of having her
+horrible suspicion confirmed. She was a coward at that moment, and she
+knew it.
+
+Craven finished his Zabaione and put down his spoon. They had not
+ordered another course. The dinner was over. But they had not had their
+coffee yet, and he asked for it.
+
+“Are you going to smoke a Toscana?” she said, forcing herself to smile.
+
+“Yes, I think I will. Do let me give you a cigarette.”
+
+He drew out his case and offered it to her. She took a cigarette, lit
+it, and began to smoke. Their coffee was brought.
+
+“Oh, it’s too hot to drink!” she said, almost irritably.
+
+“But we aren’t in a hurry, are we?” he said, looking at her with
+surprise.
+
+“No, of course not.”
+
+Now she was gazing resolutely down at the tablecloth. She was afraid to
+raise her eyes, was afraid of what they might see. Her whole mind now
+was bent upon getting away from the restaurant as soon as possible. She
+had decided to go without making sure whether Arabian was the man who
+had robbed her or not. Even uncertainty would surely be better than
+a certainty that might bring in its train necessities too terrible to
+contemplate mentally.
+
+As she was looking down she did not see something which just then
+happened in the room. It was this:
+
+Miss Van Tuyn, who had not said a word to Arabian of her friends who
+were dining by the window, although she guessed that he had probably
+noticed Alick Craven when they came in, resolved to take a bold step.
+It was useless any longer to play for concealment. Since she came out to
+dine in public with Arabian, since he had asked her to marry him and she
+had not refused--though she had not accepted--since she knew very
+well that she had not the will power to send him out of her life, she
+resolved to do what she had not done in Glebe Place and introduce him
+to Craven. She even decided that if it seemed possible that the two men
+could get on amicably for a few minutes she would go a step farther; she
+would introduce Arabian to Adela Sellingworth.
+
+Adela should see that she, Beryl, was absolutely indifferent to what
+Craven did, or did not do. And Craven should be made to understand that
+she went on her way happily without him, and not with an old man, though
+he had chosen as his companion an old woman. And, incidentally, she
+would put Arabian to the test which had been missed in Glebe Place. With
+this determination in her mind she said to Arabian:
+
+“There are two friends of mine at the table in the corner by the
+window.”
+
+“Yes?” he said.
+
+And he turned his head to look.
+
+As he did so, perhaps influenced by his eyes, or by the fact that the
+attention of two minds was at that moment concentrated on him, Craven
+looked towards them.
+
+“I want to introduce you to them if possible,” said Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+And she made a gesture to Craven, beckoned to him to come to her. He
+looked surprised, reluctant. She saw that he flushed slightly. But she
+persisted in her invitation. She had lost her head in Glebe Place, but
+now she would retrieve the situation. Vanity, fear, an obscure jealousy,
+and something else pushed her on. And she beckoned again. She saw Craven
+lean over and say something to Lady Sellingworth. Then he got up and
+came down the room towards her, threading his way among the many tables.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn was looking at him just then and not at Arabian.
+
+Craven came up, looking stiff, almost awkward, and markedly more English
+than usual. At least she thought so.
+
+“How d’you do, Miss Van Tuyn? How are you?”
+
+She gave him her hand with a smile.
+
+“Very well! You see, I’ve not forgotten my old haunts. And I see you
+haven’t, either. Let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Arabian. Mr.
+Craven--Mr. Arabian.”
+
+Arabian got up and bowed.
+
+“Pleased to meet you!” he said in a formal voice.
+
+“Good evening!” said Craven, staring hard at him.
+
+“I mustn’t ask you to sit down,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “As you are tied
+up with Adela. But”--she hesitated for an instant, then continued with
+hardihood--“can’t you persuade Adela to join us for coffee?”
+
+At this moment Arabian made a movement and opened his lips as if about
+to say something.
+
+“Yes?” she said, looking at him.
+
+“I was only going to say that these tables are so very small. Is it not
+so? How should we manage?”
+
+“Oh, we can tuck in somehow.”
+
+She turned again to Craven.
+
+“Do ask her. Or we might come over to you.”
+
+“Very well!” said Craven, still stiffly.
+
+He glanced round towards the window and started.
+
+“What’s the matter?”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn leaned forward and looked.
+
+There was no longer anyone sitting at the table by the window.
+
+Lady Sellingworth had disappeared.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+“What has become of Adela?” exclaimed Miss Van Tuyn.
+
+“I haven’t the least idea,” said Craven, looking uncomfortable.
+“Perhaps--She complained of the heat just now. She may have gone to the
+door to get some air. Please forgive me!”
+
+He glanced from Miss Van Tuyn to Arabian, who was still standing up
+stiffly, with a rigidly polite expression on his face.
+
+“I must just see!”
+
+He turned away and walked down the restaurant.
+
+When he got to the counter where the _padrona_ sat enthroned he found
+their waitress standing near it.
+
+“Where is the signora?” he asked.
+
+“The signora took her fur and went out, signorino,” said the woman.
+
+“The bill, please!”
+
+“_Ecco, signorino!_”
+
+The woman presented the bill. Craven paid it, tipped her, got his coat
+and hat, and went hurriedly out.
+
+He expected to find Lady Sellingworth on the doorstep, but no one was
+there, and he looked down the street, first to the right, then to the
+left. In the distance on the left he saw the tall figure of a woman
+walking slowly near a lamp-post, and he hurried down the street.
+
+As his footsteps rang on the pavement the woman turned round, and showed
+the white face and luminous eyes of Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“You have given me quite a turn, as the servants say!” he exclaimed,
+coming up to her. “What is the matter? Are you ill?”
+
+He looked anxiously at her.
+
+“What made you go away so suddenly? You didn’t mind my--”
+
+“No, no!” she interrupted. “But I do feel unwell. I feel very unwell.”
+
+“I’m most awfully sorry! Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me
+leave you?”
+
+“Beryl wanted you.”
+
+“It was only--she only wanted to suggest our all having coffee
+together.”
+
+Her mouth went awry.
+
+“Oh, do take my arm!” he exclaimed. “What is it? Are you suffering?”
+
+After a pause she said:
+
+“Yes.”
+
+There seemed to him something ominous in the sound of the word as she
+spoke it.
+
+“I’m horribly sorry. I must find you a cab.”
+
+“Yes, please do.”
+
+“But in Soho, it’s so difficult! Can you manage--can you walk a little
+way?”
+
+“Oh yes.”
+
+“Directly we get into Shaftesbury Avenue we are sure to see one. It’s
+only a step.”
+
+She had taken his arm, but she did not lean heavily on it, only just
+touched it. He hardly felt the weight of her hand. Evidently she was not
+feeling faint, or very weak. He wondered intensely what was the matter.
+But she did not give any explanation. She had made that ominous answer
+to his question, and there she left it. He did not dare to make any
+further inquiry, and as she said nothing they walked on in silence. As
+they were turning into Shaftesbury Avenue an empty taxicab passed them
+with the flag up.
+
+“There’s a taxi!” said Craven. “One minute!”
+
+He let her arm go and ran after it, while she stood waiting at the
+corner. In a moment he came back followed by the cab, which drew up by
+the kerb. He opened the door and she got in. He was preparing to follow
+her when she leaned forward and put her hand on the door.
+
+“Mayn’t I? Don’t you wish me to come with you?”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“But do let me see you home. If you are ill you really oughtn’t to be
+alone.”
+
+“But I’m spoiling your evening. Why not go back?”
+
+“Go back?”
+
+“Yes--go back to Beryl?”
+
+He stiffened, and the hard look came into his face. She saw his jaw
+quiver slightly.
+
+“To Miss Van Tuyn? But she is with someone.”
+
+“But she asked you!”
+
+“She asked both of us. I shall certainly not go back alone.”
+
+“Really, I wish you would! Go back and--and see Beryl home.”
+
+He looked at her in astonishment.
+
+“Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that! There was no suggestion--I couldn’t do
+that, really. I wonder you ask me to. Well--”
+
+She took her hand away from the door and he shut it. But he remained
+beside it--did not give the chauffeur her address.
+
+“Why won’t you let me take you back?” he said. “I don’t understand.”
+
+She smiled, and he thought it was the saddest smile he had ever seen.
+
+“One is only a bore to others when one is ill,” she said. “Good-bye.
+Tell the man, please.”
+
+He obeyed her, then took off his hat. His face was grim and perplexed.
+As she was driven away in the night she gave him a strange look; tragic
+and pleading, he thought, a look that almost frightened him, that sent a
+shiver through him.
+
+“Is she horribly ill?” he asked himself. “What can it be? Perhaps
+she did go to Switzerland to see a doctor. Perhaps . . . can he have
+condemned her to death?”
+
+He shivered again. The expression of her eyes haunted him.
+
+He stood for a moment at the street corner, pondering over her words.
+What could have induced her to ask him to go back to Beryl Van Tuyn, to
+see Beryl Van Tuyn home? She wanted him to interfere between Miss Van
+Tuyn and that man, Nicolas Arabian! She tried metaphorically to push
+him towards Miss Van Tuyn. It was inexplicable. Lady Sellingworth was a
+woman of the world, past mistress of all the _convenances_, one in whom
+any breach of good manners was impossible, unthinkable! And yet she had
+asked him to go back to the restaurant, and to thrust himself into the
+company of a girl and a man who were dining by themselves. She had
+even asked him, a young fellow, certainly younger than Beryl Van Tuyn’s
+escort, to play the part of chaperon to the girl!
+
+Did she--could she know something about Arabian?
+
+Certainly she did not know him. In the restaurant she had inquired who
+he was. But, later, she had said that his profile seemed familiar to
+her, that perhaps she had seen him about London. Her departure from the
+restaurant had been strangely abrupt. Perhaps--could she have recognized
+Arabian after he, Craven, had left her alone and had gone to speak to
+Miss Van Tuyn? The man looked a wrong ‘un. Craven felt certain he was
+a wrong ‘un. But if so, surely Lady Sellingworth could not know him,
+or even know anything about him. There was something so remote and
+distinguished about her life, her solitary, retired life. She did not
+come in contact with such people.
+
+“Get you a kib, gentleman?” said a soft cockney voice in Craven’s ear.
+
+He started, and walked on quickly. In Lady Sellingworth’s conduct that
+night, in the last look she had given him, there was mystery. He was
+quite unable to fathom it, and he went home to his flat in the greatest
+perplexity, and feeling very uneasy.
+
+When Murgatroyd opened the door to his mistress it was not much after
+nine, and he was surprised to see her back so early and alone.
+
+“Tea, please, Murgatroyd!” she said.
+
+“Yes, my lady.”
+
+She passed by him and ascended the big staircase. He heard her go into
+the drawing-room and shut the door.
+
+When, a few minutes later, he brought in the tea, she was standing by
+the fire. She had taken off her big hat and laid it on a table.
+
+“I shall want nothing more. Good night.”
+
+“Good night, my lady.”
+
+He went towards the door. When he was just going out he heard her say,
+“Murgatroyd!” and turned.
+
+“My lady!”
+
+“Please let Cecile know I shan’t want her to-night. She is not to sit up
+for me. I’ll manage for myself.”
+
+“Yes, my lady.”
+
+“Make it quite understood, please.”
+
+“Certainly, my lady.”
+
+He went out and shut the door.
+
+When she was quite alone Lady Sellingworth stood for several minutes
+by the fire quite still, with her head bent down and her hands folded
+together. Then she went to the tea table, poured out a cup of tea, sat
+down and sipped it slowly, looking into vacancy with the eyes of one
+whose real gaze was turned inwards upon herself. She finished the tea,
+sat still for a little while, then got up, went to the writing-table,
+sat before it, took a pen and a sheet of note-paper, and began slowly to
+write.
+
+She wrote first at the top of the sheet in the left-hand corner,
+“Strictly private,” and underlined the words. Then she wrote:
+
+
+“DEAR BERYL,--Please consider this letter absolutely private and
+personal. I rely on your never speaking of it to anyone, and I ask you
+to burn it directly you have read it. Although I hate more than anything
+else interfering in the private affairs of another, I feel that it is
+my absolute duty to send this to you. I am a very much older woman
+than you--indeed, almost an old woman. I know the world very well--too
+well--and I feel I can ask you to trust me when I give you a piece of
+advice, however unpleasant it may seem at the moment. You were dining
+to-night alone with a man who is totally unfit to be your companion, or
+the companion of any decent woman. I cannot explain to you how I know
+this, nor can I tell you why he is unfit to be in any reputable company.
+But I solemnly assure you--I give you my word--that I am telling you the
+truth. That man is a blackguard in the full acceptation of the word. I
+believe you met him by chance in a studio. I am quite positive that you
+know nothing whatever about him. I do. I know--”
+
+
+She hesitated, leaning over the paper with the pen lifted, frowning
+painfully and with a look of fear in her eyes. Then her face hardened in
+an expression of white resolution, and she wrote:
+
+
+“I know that he ought to be in prison. He is beyond the pale. You must
+never be seen with him again. I have said nothing of this to anyone. Mr.
+Craven has not a suspicion of it. Nor has anyone else whom we know. Drop
+that man at once. I don’t think he will ask you for your reason. His
+not doing so will help to prove to you that I am telling you the
+truth.--Yours sincerely,
+
+“ADELA SELLINGWORTH.”
+
+
+When she had finished this letter Lady Sellingworth read it over
+carefully twice, then put it into an envelope and wrote on the envelope
+Beryl’s address, and in the corner “strictly private.” But having done
+this she did not fasten the envelope, though she lit a red candle that
+was on the table and took up a stick of sealing-wax. Again hesitation
+seized her.
+
+The written word remains. Might it not be very dangerous to send this
+letter? Suppose Beryl did show it to that man who called himself Nicolas
+Arabian? He might--it was improbable, but he might--bring an action for
+libel against the writer. Lady Sellingworth sickened as she thought of
+that, and rapidly she imagined a hideous scandal, all London talking of
+her, the Law Courts, herself in the witness-box, cross-examination. What
+evidence could she give to prove that the accusation she had written was
+true?
+
+But surely Beryl would not show the letter. It would be dishonourable
+to show it, and though she could be very cruel Lady Sellingworth did not
+believe that Beryl was a dishonourable girl. But if she was in love with
+that man? If she was under his influence? Women in love, women under a
+spell, are capable of doing extraordinary things. Lady Sellingworth knew
+that only too well. She remembered her own madnesses, the madnesses
+of women she had known, women of the “old guard.” And Arabian had
+fascination. She had felt it long ago. And Beryl was young and had
+wildness in her.
+
+It might be very dangerous to send that letter.
+
+But if she did not send it, what was she going to do? She could not
+leave things as they were, could not just hold her peace. To do
+that would be infamous. And she could not be infamous. She felt the
+obligation of age. Beryl had been cruel to her, but she could not leave
+the girl in ignorance of the character of Arabian. If she did something
+horrible might happen, would almost certainly happen. Beryl was very
+rich now, and no doubt that man knew it. The death of her father had
+been put in all the papers. There had been public chatter about the
+fortune he had left. Men like Arabian knew what they were about. They
+worked with deliberation, worked according to plan. And Beryl was
+beautiful as well as rich.
+
+Things could not be left as they were.
+
+If she did not send that letter Lady Sellingworth told herself that she
+would have to see Beryl and speak to her. She would have to say what
+she had written. But that would be intolerable. The girl would ask
+questions, would insist on explanations, would demand to be enlightened.
+And then--As she sat by the writing-table, plunged in thought,
+Lady Sellingworth lost all count of time. But at last she took the
+sealing-wax, put it to the candle flame, and sealed up the letter. She
+had resolved that she would take the risk of sending it. Anything was
+better than seeing Beryl, than speaking about this horror. And Beryl
+would surely not be dishonourable.
+
+Having sealed the letter Lady Sellingworth took it with her upstairs.
+She had decided to leave it herself at Claridge’s Hotel on the morrow.
+
+But after a wretched night she was again seized by hesitation. A devil
+came and tempted her, asking her what business this was of hers, why she
+should interfere in this matter. Beryl was audacious, self-possessed,
+accustomed to take her own way, to live as she chose, to know all sorts
+and conditions of men. She was not an ignorant girl, inexperienced in
+the ways of the world. She knew how to take care of herself. Why
+not destroy the letter and just keep silence? She had really no
+responsibility in this matter. Beryl was only an acquaintance who had
+tried to harm her happiness. And then the tempter suggested to her that
+by taking any action she must inevitably injure her own life. He brought
+to her mind thoughts of Craven. If she let Beryl alone the fascination
+of Arabian might work upon the girl so effectually that Craven would
+mean nothing to her any more; but if she sent the letter, or spoke, and
+Beryl heeded the warning, eventually, perhaps very soon, Beryl would
+turn again to Craven.
+
+By warning Beryl Lady Sellingworth would very probably turn a weapon
+upon herself. And she realized that fully. For she had no expectation
+of real gratitude from the girl expressing itself in instinctive
+unselfishness.
+
+“I should merely make an enemy by doing it,” she thought. “Or rather two
+enemies.”
+
+And she locked the letter up. She thought she would do nothing. But as
+the day wore on she was haunted by a feeling of self-hatred. She had
+done many wrong things in her life, but certain types of wrong things
+she had never yet done. Her sins had been the sins of what is called
+passion. There had been strong feeling behind them, prompting desire,
+a flame, though not always the purest sort of flame. She had not been a
+cold sinner. Nor had she been a contemptible coward. Now she was beset
+by an ugly sensation of cowardice which made her ill at ease with
+herself. She thought of Seymour Portman. He was able to love her, to go
+on loving her. Therefore, in spite of all her caprices, in spite of all
+she had done, he believed in that part of her which men have agreed
+to call character. She could not love him as he wished, but she had
+an immeasurable respect for him. And she knew that above all the other
+virtues he placed courage, moral and physical. Noblesse oblige. He would
+never fail. He considered it an obligation on those who were born in
+what he still thought of as the ruling class to hold their heads high in
+fearlessness. And in her blood, too, ran something of the same feeling
+of obligation.
+
+If she put her case before Seymour what would he tell her to do? To ask
+that question was to answer it. He would not even tell. He would not
+think it necessary to do that. She could almost hear his voice saying:
+“There’s only one thing to be done.”
+
+She was loved by Seymour; she simply could not be a coward.
+
+And she unlocked the box in which the letter was lying, and ordered her
+car to come round.
+
+“Please drive to Claridge’s!” she said as she got into it.
+
+On the way to the hotel she kept saying to herself: “Seymour! Seymour!
+It’s the only thing to do. It’s the only thing to do.”
+
+When the car stopped in front of the hotel she got out and went herself
+to the bureau.
+
+“Please give this to Miss Van Tuyn at once. It is very important.”
+
+“Yes, my lady.”
+
+“Is she in?”
+
+“I’m not sure, my lady, but I can soon--”
+
+“No, no, it doesn’t matter. But it is really important.”
+
+“It shall go up at once my lady.”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+As Lady Sellingworth got into her car she felt a sense of relief.
+
+“I’ve done the right thing. Nothing else matters.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Miss Van Tuyn was not in the hotel when Lady Sellingworth called. She
+did not come back till late, and when she entered the hall she was
+unusually pale, and looked both tired and excited. She had been to Dick
+Garstin on an unpleasant errand, and she had failed in achieving what
+she had attempted to bring about. Garstin had flatly refused not to
+exhibit Arabian’s portrait. And she had been obliged to tell Arabian of
+his refusal.
+
+The man at the bureau gave her Lady Sellingworth’s note, and she took it
+up with her to her sitting-room. As she sat down to read it she noticed
+the words on the envelope, “Strictly private,” and wondered what it
+contained. She did not recognize the handwriting as Adela’s. She took
+the letter out of the envelope and saw again the warning words.
+
+“What can it be about?”
+
+Before she read further she felt some unpleasant information was in
+store for her, and for a moment she hesitated. Then she looked at the
+address on the paper: “18A Berkeley Square.”
+
+It was from Adela! She frowned. She felt hostile, already on the
+defensive, though she had, of course, no idea what the letter was about.
+But when she had read it her cheeks were scarlet, and she crushed the
+paper up in her hand.
+
+“How dare she write to me like that! I don’t believe it. I don’t believe
+a word of it! She only wants to take him away from me as she is trying
+to take Alick Craven.”
+
+Instantly she had come to a conclusion about Adela’s reason for writing
+that letter. She remembered the strange episode in the _Bella Napoli_
+on the previous evening--Adela’s extraordinary departure when Craven had
+come to speak to her and Arabian. She had not seen Craven again. There
+had been no explanation of that flight. In this letter, between the
+lines, she read the explanation. Adela must know Arabian, must have
+had something to do with him in the past. They had, perhaps, even been
+lovers. She did not know the age of Arabian, but she guessed that he was
+about thirty-five, perhaps even thirty-eight. Adela was sixty now. They
+might have been lovers when Arabian was quite young, perhaps almost
+a boy. At that time Adela had been a brilliant and conquering beauty,
+middle-aged certainly, over forty, but still beautiful, still full of
+charm, still bent on conquest. Miss Van Tuyn remembered the photograph
+of Adela which she had seen at Mrs. Ackroyde’s. Yes, that was it. Adela
+knew Arabian. They had been lovers. And now, out of jealousy, she had
+written this abominable letter.
+
+But the girl read it again, and began to wonder. It was strangely
+explicit, even for a letter of a jealous and spiteful woman. It told
+her that Arabian was beyond the pale, that he ought to be in prison. In
+prison! That was going very far in attack. To write that, unless it
+were true, was to write an atrocious libel. But a jealous woman would do
+anything, risk anything to “get her own back.”
+
+Nevertheless Miss Van Tuyn felt afraid. This strange and terrible letter
+dovetailed with Dick Garstin’s warning, and both fitted in as it were
+with the underthings in her own mind, with those things which Garstin
+had summed up in one word “intuition.”
+
+Arabian had taken her news about Garstin quite coolly.
+
+“I will see about that myself,” he had said. “But now--”
+
+And then he had made passionate love to her. There had been--she had
+noticed it all through her visit--a new pressure in his manner, a new
+and, as she now began to think, almost desperate authority in his whole
+demeanour. His long reticence, the reserve which had puzzled and alarmed
+her, had given place to a frankness, a heat, which had almost swept her
+away. She still tingled at the memory of what she had been through. But
+now she began to think of it with a certain anxiety. In spite of her
+anger against Adela her brain was beginning to work with some of its
+normal calmness.
+
+Arabian had been very slow in advances. But now was not he like a man
+in great haste, like a man who wished to bring something to a conclusion
+rapidly, if possible immediately? Passion for her, perhaps, drove him on
+now that at last he had spoken, had held her in his arms. But suppose
+he had another reason for haste? He had seen Lady Sellingworth. He knew
+that she was a friend of the girl he wanted to marry. Miss Van Tuyn
+remembered that he had not welcomed her suggestion that the two couples,
+he and she, Lady Sellingworth and Craven, should have coffee together.
+He had spoken of the smallness of the tables in the _Bella Napoli_. But
+that might have been because he was jealous of Craven.
+
+She read the letter a third time, very slowly and carefully. Then she
+put it back into its envelope and rang the bell.
+
+A waiter came.
+
+“It’s about seven, isn’t it?” she said.
+
+“Half past seven, madam.”
+
+“Please bring me up some dinner at once--anything. Bring me a sole and
+an omelette. That will do. But I want it as soon as possible.”
+
+“Yes, madame.”
+
+The waiter went out. Then Miss Van Tuyn went to see old Fanny, and
+explained that she must dine alone that evening as she was in a hurry.
+
+“I have to go to Berkeley Square directly after dinner to visit a
+friend, Lady Sellingworth.”
+
+“Then I am to dine by myself, dear?” said Miss Cronin plaintively.
+
+“Yes, you must dine alone. Good night, Fanny.”
+
+“Shan’t I see you when you come in?”
+
+“I may be late. Don’t bother about me.”
+
+She went out and shut the door, leaving old Fanny distressed. Something
+very serious was certainly happening. Beryl looked quite unusual, so
+strung up, so excited. What could be the matter? If only they could get
+back to Paris! There everything went so differently! There Beryl was
+always in good spirits. The London atmosphere seemed to hold poison.
+Even Bourget’s spell was lessened in this city of darkness and strange
+inexplicable perturbations.
+
+That night, about a quarter to nine when Lady Sellingworth had just
+finished her solitary dinner and gone up to the drawing-room, a footman
+came in and said:
+
+“Will you see Miss Van Tuyn, my lady? She has called and is in the hall.
+She begs you to see her for a moment.”
+
+Two spots of red appeared in Lady Sellingworth’s white cheeks. For a
+moment she hesitated. A feeling almost of horror had come to her, a
+longing for instant flight. She had not expected this. She did not know
+what exactly she had expected, but it had certainly not been this.
+
+“Did you say I was in?” she said, at last.
+
+The footman--a new man in the house--looked uncomfortable.
+
+“I said your Ladyship was not out, but that I did not know whether your
+Ladyship was at home to anyone.”
+
+After another pause Lady Sellingworth said:
+
+“Please ask Miss Van Tuyn to come up.”
+
+As she spoke she got up from her sofa. She felt that she could not
+receive Beryl sitting, that she must stand to confront what was coming
+to her with the girl.
+
+The footman went out and almost immediately returned.
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn, my lady.”
+
+“Do forgive me, Adela!” said Miss Van Tuyn, coming in with her usual
+graceful self-possession and looking, Lady Sellingworth thought in that
+first moment, quite untroubled. “This is a most unorthodox hour. But
+I knew you were often alone in the evening, and I thought perhaps you
+wouldn’t mind seeing me for a few minutes.”
+
+She took Lady Sellingworth’s hand and started. For the hand was cold.
+Then she looked round and saw that the footman had left the room. The
+big door was shut. They were alone together.
+
+“Of course you know why I’ve come, Adela,” she said. “I’ve had your
+letter.”
+
+As she spoke she drew it out of the muff she was carrying.
+
+“I was obliged to write it,” said Lady Sellingworth. “It was my duty to
+write it.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“But I don’t want to discuss it.”
+
+They were both still standing. Now Miss Van Tuyn said;
+
+“Do you mind if I sit down?”
+
+“No; do sit.”
+
+“And may I take off my coat?”
+
+Lady Sellingworth was obliged to say:
+
+“Yes, do.”
+
+Very composedly and rather slowly Miss Van Tuyn took off her fur coat,
+laid aside her muff, and sat down near the fire.
+
+“I’m very sorry, Adela, but really, we must discuss this letter,” she
+said. “I don’t understand it.”
+
+“Surely it is explicit enough.”
+
+“Yes. It is too explicit not to be discussed between us.”
+
+“Beryl, I don’t want to discuss it. I can’t discuss it.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because it is too painful--a horrible subject. You must take my word
+for it that I have written you the plain truth.”
+
+“Please don’t think I doubt your word, Adela.”
+
+“No, of course not. And that being so let the matter end there. It must
+end there.”
+
+“But--where? I don’t quite understand really.”
+
+“I felt obliged to send you a warning, a very serious warning. I
+greatly disliked, I hated doing it. But I couldn’t do otherwise. You are
+young--a girl. I am an--I am almost an old woman. We have been friends.
+I saw you in danger. What could I do but tell you of it? I knew of
+course you were quite innocent in the matter. I am putting no blame
+whatever on you. You will do me that justice.”
+
+“Oh, yes.”
+
+“So there is nothing more to discuss. I have done what I was bound to
+do, and I know you will heed my warning.”
+
+She looked at the letter in Beryl’s hand, and remembered her feeling of
+danger when she wrote it.
+
+“And now please burn that letter, Beryl. Throw it into the fire.”
+
+As she spoke she pointed to the fire on the hearth. But Miss Van Tuyn
+kept the letter in her hand.
+
+“Please wait a minute, Adela!” she said.
+
+And a mutinous look came into her face.
+
+“You don’t quite understand how things are. It’s all very well to think
+you can make me give up my friend--any friend of mine--at a moment’s
+notice and at a word from you. But I don’t see things quite in the same
+light.”
+
+“That--that man isn’t your friend. Don’t say that.”
+
+“But I do say it,” said the girl, with a now intense obstinacy.
+
+“You met him in Mr. Garstin’s studio, didn’t you?”
+
+“Perhaps I did. There is nothing against him in that.”
+
+“I do not say there is. But I do say you know nothing about him.”
+
+“But how do you know that? You assume a great deal, Adela.”
+
+“Do you know anything about him?”
+
+“Suppose I were to ask you questions in my turn?”
+
+“Questions? But I have told you--”
+
+“Yes, you have told me certain things, but you have explained nothing.
+You seem to expect everything from me. Am I not to expect anything from
+you?”
+
+“Anything! But what?”
+
+“An explanation, surely.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth was silent. She was still standing. The two spots of
+red still glowed in her white face. Her eyes looked like the eyes of one
+who was in dread. They had lost their usual expression of self-command,
+and resembled the eyes of a creature being hunted. Miss Van Tuyn saw
+that and wondered. A fierce animosity woke in her and made her more
+obstinate, more determined to get at the truth of this mystery. She
+would not leave this house until light was given to her. She had a
+strong will. It was now fully roused, and she was ready to pit it
+against Adela’s will. And she had another weapon in her armoury. She was
+now very angry, with an anger which she did not fully understand,
+and which was made up of several elements. One of these elements was
+certainly passion. This anger rendered her merciless.
+
+“Well, Adela?” she said at length, as Lady Sellingworth did not speak.
+
+“What is it you want, Beryl?” said Lady Sellingworth, looking into her
+eyes and then quickly away.
+
+“But I have told you--an explanation.”
+
+She unfolded the letter slowly.
+
+“I can’t give you one. I have told you the truth, and I ask you to
+accept it, and I beg, I implore you to act upon it.”
+
+“Suppose I were to make a violent attack on one of your friends, on Mr.
+Craven for instance?”
+
+“Please don’t bracket Mr. Craven and that man together!” said Lady
+Sellingworth sharply.
+
+Beryl Van Tuyn flushed with anger.
+
+“But I do!” she said. “I choose to do that for the sake of argument.”
+
+“Two such men have nothing in common, nothing! One is a gentleman, the
+other is a blackguard!”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn thought of the previous evening, when Lady Sellingworth
+had dined with Craven while she had dined with Arabian, and she was
+stung to the quick.
+
+“I cannot allow you to speak like this of a friend of mine without an
+explanation,” she said bitterly. “And now”--she spoke more hurriedly, as
+if fearing to be interrupted--“I will finish what I was going to say, if
+you will allow me. Suppose I were to make an attack on, say, Mr. Craven,
+to tell you that I happened to know he was thoroughly bad, immoral, a
+liar, anything you like. Do you mean to say you would give him up at
+once without insisting on knowing from me my exact reasons for branding
+him as unfit for your company? Of course you wouldn’t. And not only you!
+No one would do such a thing who had any courage or any will in them.”
+
+She lifted the letter.
+
+“In this letter you say that Mr. Arabian is unfit to be the companion of
+any decent woman, that he is a blackguard in the full acceptance of the
+word, that he is beyond the pale, and finally, that he ought to be in
+prison. Very well! I don’t say for a moment that I doubt your word,
+but I do ask you to justify it. Of course I know that you easily
+can. Otherwise I am sure that you would never have written such awful
+accusations against anyone. It would be too wicked, and I know you are
+not wicked. Please tell me your exact reason for writing this letter,
+Adela.”
+
+“I can’t.”
+
+“You really mean that?”
+
+“I won’t. It’s impossible.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn’s face became very hard.
+
+“Well, then, Adela--”
+
+She paused. Suddenly there had come into her mind the thought of a
+possible way of forcing the confidence which Lady Sellingworth refused
+to give her. Should she take it? She hesitated. Arabian’s will was upon
+her even here in this quiet drawing-room. His large eyes seemed fixed
+upon her. She still felt the long and soft touch of his lips clinging to
+hers like the lips of a thirsty man. Would he wish her to take this way?
+For a moment she felt afraid of him. But then her strong independence
+of an American girl rose up to combat this imaginative, almost occult,
+domination. Arabian himself, his fate perhaps, was concerned in this
+matter. She could not, she would not allow even Arabian, whose will
+imposed itself on hers, who had gathered her strangely, mysteriously,
+into a grip which she felt almost like a thing palpable upon her, to
+prevent her from finding out the truth which Lady Sellingworth
+seemed resolved to keep from her. She still believed, indeed she felt
+practically certain, that Lady Sellingworth and Arabian in the past
+had been lovers. Her jealousy was furiously awake. She felt reckless of
+consequences and ready to take any course which would bring to her what
+she needed, full knowledge of what had led Adela Sellingworth to send
+her that letter.
+
+Lady Sellingworth was looking at her now steadily, with, she thought,
+a sort of almost fierce pleading. But she cared very little for Adela’s
+feelings just then.
+
+“You really refuse to tell me?”
+
+“I must, Beryl.”
+
+“I don’t think that’s fair. It isn’t fair to me or to him.”
+
+“I can’t help that. Please don’t ask me anything more. And please
+destroy that letter. Or let me destroy it.”
+
+She held out her hand, but Miss Van Tuyn sat quite still.
+
+“I must tell you something,” she said. “If you will not explain to me I
+think I ought to go for an explanation to someone else.”
+
+“Someone else!” said Lady Sellingworth in a startled voice. “But--do you
+know--to whom would you go?”
+
+“I think I ought to go to him, to the man you accuse of nameless
+things.”
+
+“But you can’t do that!”
+
+“Why not? It would only be fair.”
+
+“But what reason could you give?”
+
+“Naturally I should have to say that you had warned me against him.”
+
+“No--no, you mustn’t do that.”
+
+“Really? I am to be bound hand and foot while you--”
+
+“You saw what I wrote in that letter.”
+
+“Yes, of course. Naturally I will not show it. But I shall have to say
+that you warned me to drop him.”
+
+“I can’t have my name mentioned to that man,” said Lady Sellingworth
+desperately.
+
+“And I can’t drop him without telling him why.”
+
+“Beryl, you haven’t read to the end of my letter.”
+
+“But I have!”
+
+“Then have you forgotten it? Look! I wrote in it that I don’t think he
+will ask for your reason if you refuse to see him again.”
+
+“That only proves how little you know about him. I shall not do it,
+Adela. You are not very frank with me, but I am sincere with you. Either
+you must give me an explanation of your reason for writing this letter,
+or you must give me permission to tell Mr. Arabian of your warning,
+or--if you won’t do either the one or the other--I shall take no action
+because of this letter. I shall behave as if I had never received it and
+read it.”
+
+“Beryl! What reason could I have for writing as I have written if I had
+nothing against this man?”
+
+“I don’t know. It is very difficult to understand the reasons women have
+for doing what they do. But I have come here to ask you what your reason
+is. That’s why I am here now.”
+
+“Could I have a bad reason, a selfish reason?”
+
+“How can I tell?”
+
+“Then have you a bad opinion of me, of my character?”
+
+“I have always admired you very much. You know that.”
+
+“Once--once you called me a book of wisdom.”
+
+“Did I?”
+
+“Don’t you remember?”
+
+“I dare say I did.”
+
+“And I think you meant of worldly wisdom. Then can’t you, won’t you,
+trust my opinion of this man?”
+
+“Oh if it’s only your opinion!”
+
+“But it is not. It is knowledge.”
+
+“Then you know Mr. Arabian?”
+
+“I didn’t say that.”
+
+“Do you know him?”
+
+Lady Sellingworth turned away for a moment. She stood with her back to
+Miss Van Tuyn and her face towards the fire, holding the mantelpiece
+with her right hand. Miss Van Tuyn, motionless, stared at her tall
+figure. She felt this was a real battle between herself and her friend,
+or enemy. She was determined to win it somehow. She still had a
+weapon in reserve, the weapon she had thought of just now when she had
+resolutely put away her fear of Arabian. But perhaps she would not
+be forced to use it, perhaps she could overcome Adela’s extraordinary
+resistance without it. As she looked at the woman turned from her she
+began to think that might be possible. Adela was surely weakening. This
+pause, this sudden moving away, this long hesitation suggested weakness.
+At last Lady Sellingworth turned round.
+
+“You ask me whether I know that man.”
+
+“I asked you whether you knew _Mr. Arabian_!” said Miss Van Tuyn, on a
+note of acute exasperation.
+
+“I don’t know him.”
+
+“That is a lie!” said Miss Van Tuyn to herself.
+
+To Lady Sellingworth she said:
+
+“Then if you don’t know Mr. Arabian you are only repeating hearsay.”
+
+“No!”
+
+“But you must be!”
+
+“I am not.”
+
+“Adela, you are incomprehensible, or else I must be densely stupid. One
+or the other!”
+
+“One may know things about a man’s character and life without being
+personally acquainted with him.”
+
+“Then it’s hearsay. I am not going to drop Mr. Arabian because of
+hearsay, more especially when I don’t even know what the hearsay is.”
+
+“It is not hearsay.”
+
+“It doesn’t come from other people?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then”--a sudden thought struck her--“is it from the newspapers? Has he
+ever been in some case, some scandal, that’s been in the newspapers?”
+
+“Not that I know of. It isn’t that.”
+
+“Really this is like the ‘Mysteries of Udolpho,’” said Miss van Tuyn,
+concealing her anger and her burning curiosity under a pretence of
+petulance. “And I really can’t take it seriously.”
+
+“But you must, Beryl. You must!”
+
+Lady Sellingworth came to her quickly and sat down beside her.
+
+“I know my conduct must seem very strange.”
+
+“It does, indeed!”
+
+“And I dare say all sorts of suspicions, ugly suspicions perhaps, have
+come into your mind. But try to put them away. Try to believe that I am
+honestly doing my best to be a friend to you, a true friend.”
+
+“Forgive me, Adela, for being brutally frank with you. But I don’t think
+you care very much for me.”
+
+“I wrote that letter against my own desire simply because I thought I
+ought to. I wrote it simply for your sake. I would have given a great
+deal not to write it. I knew that there was even danger in writing it.”
+
+“What danger?”
+
+“It was possible that you might disregard my request and show my letter.
+I felt practically certain you wouldn’t, but you might have done so.”
+
+“And if I had?”
+
+“If you had--then--but I only tell you this to prove that in this
+instance I was trying to be a friend to you.”
+
+“If I had shown this letter, or if I were to show it to Mr. Arabian he
+might bring an action for libel on it, I should think.”
+
+“I dare say he could do that.”
+
+“Well--but if you could justify!”
+
+“But I couldn’t!”
+
+“You couldn’t! You write me a libel about a friend of mine which you
+yourself say you couldn’t justify!”
+
+“I can’t bear to hear you speak of that man as your friend.”
+
+“He is my friend. I like him very much indeed. And I know him, have
+known him for weeks, while you tell me you don’t know him. I shall
+venture to set my knowledge, my personal knowledge, against your
+ignorance, Adela, and to go on with my friendship. But you need not be
+afraid.” She smiled contemptuously. “I will not show Mr. Arabian this
+cruel letter which you yourself say you couldn’t justify.”
+
+As she spoke she returned the letter to her muff, which was lying on a
+table beside her.
+
+“Well,” she added, “I don’t know that there is anything more I need say.
+I came here to have it out with you. That is my way, perhaps an American
+way, of doing things. We don’t care for underhand dealings. We like
+things fair and square.”
+
+She got up.
+
+“You have your way of doing things and we have ours! I’ll tell you
+what mine would have been, Adela, if the situation had been reversed. I
+should not have written at all. I should have come to see you, and if
+I had had some grave, hideous charge to make I should have made it, and
+fully explained my reasons for making it to you. I should have put you
+in the same state of complete knowledge as I was in. That is my idea
+of friendship and fair dealing. But you think otherwise. So what is the
+good of our arguing any more about the matter?”
+
+Lady Sellingworth was still sitting. For a moment she did not move,
+but remained where she was looking up at the girl. Just then she was
+assailed by a fierce temptation. After all, had not she done her part?
+Had not she done all that anyone could expect from her, from any woman
+under the existing circumstances? Had not she done even much more than
+many women could have brought themselves to do? Beryl had not been very
+kind to her. Beryl was really the enemy of her happiness, of her poor
+little attempt after happiness. And yet she had taken a risk in order
+to try and save Beryl from danger. And the girl would not be saved.
+Headstrong, wilful, embittered, she refused to be saved. Then why not
+let her go? She had been warned. She chose to defy the warning. That was
+not Lady Sellingworth’s fault.
+
+“I’ve done enough! I’ve done all I can do.”
+
+She said this to herself as she sat and looked at the girl.
+
+“I can’t do any more!”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn reached out for her coat and began very deliberately to
+put it on. Then she picked up the muff in which the letter lay hidden.
+
+“Well, good night, Adela!”
+
+Lady Sellingworth got up slowly.
+
+“I promise that I will not show your letter. So don’t be afraid.”
+
+“I’m not afraid.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn held out her hand.
+
+“No doubt you have your reasons for doing what you have done. I don’t
+pretend to understand them. And I don’t understand you. But women are
+often incomprehensible to me. Perhaps that is why I usually prefer men.
+They don’t plunge you in subtleties. They let you understand things.”
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Lady Sellingworth.
+
+And there was a passion of acute irony in the exclamation.
+
+“What’s the matter?” said Miss Van Tuyn, looking surprised, almost
+startled.
+
+But Lady Sellingworth did not tell her.
+
+“If you will go like this, Beryl--go!” she said. “I cannot force you to
+do, or not to do, anything. But”--she laid a hand on the girl’s arm and
+pressed it till her hand almost hurt Beryl--“but I tell you that you are
+in danger, in great danger. I dread to think of what may be in store for
+you.”
+
+Something in the grasp of her hand, in her manner, in her eyes,
+impressed Miss Van Tuyn in spite of herself. Again fear, a fear
+mysterious and cold, crept in her. Garstin had warned her in his
+way. Now Adela was warning her. And she remembered that other warning
+whispered by something within herself. She stood still looking into Lady
+Sellingworth’s eyes. Then she looked down. She seemed to be considering
+something. At last she looked up again and said:
+
+“You said to me to-night that you did not know Mr. Arabian--now.”
+
+“I don’t know him.”
+
+“But have you known him? Did you know him long ago?”
+
+“I have never known him.”
+
+“Then I don’t understand. And--and I will not act in ignorance. It isn’t
+fair to expect me to do that.”
+
+“I have done all that I can do,” said Lady Sellingworth, with a sort of
+despair, taking her hand from the girl’s arm.
+
+“Very well.”
+
+Beryl moved and went slowly towards the door. Lady Sellingworth stood
+looking after her. She thought the hideous interview was over. But she
+did not know Beryl even yet, did not realize even yet the passionate
+force of curiosity which possessed Beryl at this moment. When the girl
+was not far from the door, and when Lady Sellingworth was reaching out
+her hand to touch the bell in order that the footman might know that her
+visitor was leaving her, Beryl turned round.
+
+“Adela!” she said.
+
+“Yes. What is it?”
+
+“Perhaps you think that I have been very persistent to-night, that I
+have almost cross-examined you.”
+
+“I don’t blame you. It is natural that you wished to know more.”
+
+“Yes, it is natural, because Mr. Arabian wants me to marry him.”
+
+“To marry him!”
+
+Lady Sellingworth started forward impulsively.
+
+“Marry? He wants--you--you--”
+
+“He loves me. He has asked me to marry him.”
+
+She turned away, and went to the door and opened it.
+
+“Beryl, come here!”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Beryl!”
+
+“But what is the good? You refuse to tell me anything, I tell you
+everything. Now you understand why I feel angry at these horrible
+accusations.”
+
+“You don’t mean to tell me you have ever dreamed of marrying such a
+man!”
+
+“Don’t abuse him! I don’t wish to hear him abused. I hate it. I won’t
+have it.”
+
+“But--Beryl! But only a few days ago you as good as told me you cared
+for Alick Craven. You--you gave me to understand that you liked him very
+much, that you--”
+
+“Oh, this is intolerable!” said Miss Van Tuyn. “Really! Why do you
+interfere in my life like this? What have I done to set you against me?
+You talk of being my friend, but you do everything you can to upset
+my happiness. It is enough that I like anyone for you to try to come
+between us. First it was Alick Craven! Now it is Mr. Arabian! It is
+unbearable. You have had your life. You have had a splendid life,
+everything any woman could wish to have. I am a girl. I am only
+beginning. Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you let me have some
+happiness without thrusting yourself in and trying to spoil everything
+for me? Won’t you ever have had enough? Ever since I have known Mr.
+Craven you have tried to get him away from me. And now you are doing
+your best to make me give up a man who loves me and wants to marry me.”
+
+“Beryl! Please!”
+
+“No, I will not bear it. I will not! I admired you. I had a cult for
+you. Everyone knew it. I went about praising you, telling everyone you
+were the most wonderful woman I had ever known. You can ask anybody.
+People used to laugh at me about my infatuation for you. I stood up for
+you always. They told me--but I wouldn’t believe!”
+
+“What did they tell you?”
+
+“Never mind. But now I begin to believe it is true. You can’t bear to
+see other women happy. That’s what it is.”
+
+“Beryl, it isn’t that! No, it isn’t that!”
+
+“You have had it all. But that doesn’t satisfy you. You want to prevent
+other women from having any of the happiness that you can’t have now. It
+is cruel. I never thought you were like that. I took you as a pattern
+of what a woman of your age should be. I looked up to you. I would
+have come to you for counsel, for advice. You were my book of wisdom.
+I thought you were far above all the pettinesses that disfigure other
+women, the women who hate us girls, who want to snatch everything from
+us. And now you are trying to do me more harm than any other woman has
+ever tried to do me!”
+
+“I--I will prove to you that it isn’t so!” said Lady Sellingworth.
+“Please shut the door.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn obeyed.
+
+“But--but--first tell me something.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Tell me the absolute truth.”
+
+“I am not a liar, Adela.”
+
+“But sometimes--truth is difficult sometimes.”
+
+“What is it you want to know?”
+
+“Do you care for this--do you care for Mr. Arabian?”
+
+“Perhaps I do.”
+
+“Do you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Do you mean that you are really thinking of doing what he wishes you to
+do?”
+
+“I haven’t told him yet.”
+
+“But you are thinking of marrying him?”
+
+“I know nothing against him. He cares for me very much.”
+
+Lady Sellingworth was silent.
+
+“Perhaps you don’t believe that? Perhaps you think that’s impossible?”
+
+“Oh, no! But--”
+
+“I know exactly what you are thinking. You are thinking that I am rich
+now that my father is dead. But he is rich too. He does not need my
+money. He has never done any work. He has been an idler all his life.
+He has often told me that he has had too much money and that it has done
+him harm, made him an idler.”
+
+“And you believe all that?”
+
+“I believe that he cares for me very much. I know he does.”
+
+“Once I thought that man--”
+
+She stopped.
+
+“Promise me one thing,” she said at last in a different voice. “Promise
+me that you will not marry Mr. Arabian. I won’t ask anything else of
+you; only that.”
+
+“But I won’t promise. I can’t.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because--because I don’t know what I am going to do, what I might do.”
+ She looked down, then added in a low voice; “He fascinates me.”
+
+For the first time since she had come into the room there was a helpless
+sound in Miss Van Tuyn’s voice, a sound that was wholly girlish,
+absolutely, transparently sincere. Lady Sellingworth did not miss it.
+
+“I haven’t made up my mind,” she said. “But he fascinates me.”
+
+And at that moment Lady Sellingworth knew she was speaking the truth.
+She remembered her own madnesses, sunk away in the past, but still
+present to her, gripped between the tentacles of memory. Beryl, too, was
+then capable of the great follies which often exist side by side with
+great vanity. The wild heart confronted Lady Sellingworth in another.
+And she felt suddenly a deep sense of pity, a sense that seemed flooded
+with tears, the pity that age sometimes feels for youth coming on into
+life, on into the devious ways, with their ambushes, their traps,
+their pitfalls full of darkness and fear. She was even conscious of
+a tenderness of age which till now had been a rare visitor in her
+difficult nature. Seymour Portman seemed near her, almost with her in
+the room. She could almost hear his voice speaking of spring with all
+its daffodils.
+
+Noblesse oblige. In her torn heart could she find a nobleness sufficient
+for this occasion? Seymour’s eyes, the terrible eyes of affection, which
+require so much and which sometimes, because of that, seem to be endowed
+with creative power, forcing into life that which they long to see, were
+surely upon her, watching for her nobility, asking for it, demanding it
+of her.
+
+She took Beryl Van Tuyn by the wrist and led her away from the shut door
+back to the fire.
+
+“Sit down, Beryl,” she said.
+
+The girl looked at her wondering, feeling a great change in her and not
+understanding it.
+
+“Why?” she said.
+
+“I have something I must say to you.”
+
+Beryl dropped her muff and sat down. Lady Sellingworth stood near her.
+
+“Beryl,” she said, “you think I have been and am your enemy. I must show
+you I am not. And there’s only one way. You say I can’t bear to see you
+happy. I don’t think that’s true. I hope it isn’t. I don’t think I
+wish unhappiness to others, but, even at my age, I still wish to have a
+little happiness myself. There’s never a time in one’s life, I suppose,
+when one doesn’t long to be happy. But I don’t want to interfere with
+your happiness, I only want to interfere between you and a very great
+danger, something which would certainly bring disaster into your life.”
+
+She stopped speaking. She was looking grave, indeed almost tragically
+sad, but calm and resolute. The spots of red had faded out of her
+cheeks. There was no fever in her manner. Miss Van Tuyn’s wonder grew
+as she looked at her former friend, who now dominated her, and began to
+extort from her a strange and unwilling admiration, which recalled to
+her the admiration of that past time when she had first met Alick Craven
+in this drawing-room.
+
+After a long pause Lady Sellingworth continued, with a sort of strong
+simplicity in which there was moral power:
+
+“Don’t be angry with me, Beryl, when I tell you that you have one of my
+dominant characteristics.”
+
+“What is it?” Miss Van Tuyn asked, in a low voice.
+
+“Vanity. You and I--we were both born with great vanity in us. Mine has
+troubled me, tortured me, been a curse to me, all my life. It led me at
+last into a very horrible situation, in which the--that man who calls
+himself Nicolas Arabian was mixed up.”
+
+“But you said you didn’t know him, that you had never known him!”
+
+“That’s quite true. I have never spoken to him in my life. But it was he
+who led me to change my life. You must have heard of it. You must have
+heard how, ten years ago, I suddenly gave up everything and began to
+lead a life of retirement.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“But for that man I should probably never have done that. But for him I
+might have been going about London now with dyed hair, pretending to be
+ten or fifteen years younger than I really am.”
+
+“But--if you never knew him? I can’t understand!”
+
+“Did you ever hear that about ten years ago I lost a great quantity
+of jewels, that they were stolen out of a train at the Gare du Nord in
+Paris?”
+
+A look of fear, almost of horror, came into Beryl Van Tuyn’s eyes. She
+got up from the sofa on which she was sitting.
+
+“Adela!”
+
+Already she knew what was coming, what Lady Sellingworth was going to
+tell her. She even knew the very words Lady Sellingworth was about to
+say, and when she heard them it was as if she herself had spoken them.
+
+“That man stole them.”
+
+“Adela!”
+
+“You said that he had money, that he was not obliged to work. Now you
+know why he has money and what his work is.”
+
+“Adela! But--but why didn’t you--”
+
+Her voice faded away.
+
+“I couldn’t. My hands were tied.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“He caught me in a trap. He laid a bait for my vanity, Beryl, and I took
+the bait.
+
+“But what was it?”
+
+“He made me believe that he had fallen in love with me. I was a woman of
+fifty and he made me believe that! That is how vanity leads us!”
+
+And then she told the girl all the truth about Arabian and herself, all
+the truth of ten years ago. Having made up her mind, having begun to do
+what Seymour would have called “the right thing,” she did not hesitate,
+did not spare herself. She went on to the bitter end. But the strange,
+the wonderful thing was that it was less bitter than she had thought it
+must be. While she was speaking, while she was exposing her own folly,
+her own shame even, she began to feel a sense of relief. She gave the
+secret which she had kept for ten years to this girl who had treated
+her cruelly, and in the giving, instead of abject humiliation, she was
+conscious of liberation. Her mind seemed to be released from a long
+bondage. Her soul seemed to breathe more freely, like a live thing let
+out from a close prison into the air. A strange feeling of being at
+peace with herself came to her and comforted her.
+
+“And that is all, Beryl!” she said at last. “Now, do you forgive me?”
+
+Beryl had been standing quite still, with her eyes fixed on Lady
+Sellingworth. She had listened without moving. Even her hands had been
+still, folded together in front of her. But the colour had come and gone
+in her face as she had listened, as it can only come and go in a face
+that is young. She was very pale now. Even her lips looked much paler
+than usual. She stood there and did not say anything. But her eyes were
+no longer fastened on Lady Sellingworth’s face. She was looking down
+now. Lady Sellingworth could not see her eyes, but only her white
+eyelids fringed with long lashes which curled up at the ends.
+
+“I had to tell you, Beryl.”
+
+Still the girl said nothing and did not move. But Lady Sellingworth
+saw two tears come from under her eyelids and fall down her face. Other
+tears followed. She did not take out her handkerchief to wipe them away.
+She did not seem to be aware of them, or of any necessity for trying to
+stop them from coming. And then she began to shake. She shook from
+head to foot, still keeping her hands folded. And that--the folded
+hands--made her look like a tall doll shaking. There was something
+so peculiar and horrible in the contrast between her attitude and
+the evident agony which was convulsing her that for a moment Lady
+Sellingworth felt helpless, did not dare to speak to her or to touch
+her. It was impossible to tell whether she was shaken by anger, by
+self-pity, or by the despair of youth deceived and outraged. But as she
+continued to weep, and as her body went on trembling, Lady Sellingworth
+at last could not bear it any longer. She felt that she must do
+something, must try to help her, and she put a hand on the girl’s
+shoulder gently.
+
+“Beryl!” she said. “Beryl! I didn’t want to hurt you, but I had to tell
+you.”
+
+The girl suddenly turned and caught her by the arms.
+
+“Oh, Adela!” she said, in a faltering voice. “No other woman would
+have--how could you? Oh, how could you?”
+
+Her face was distorted. She looked at Lady Sellingworth with eyes that
+were bloodshot behind their tears.
+
+“Both of us! Both of us!” she exclaimed. “It’s too horrible!”
+
+She still held Lady Sellingworth’s arms.
+
+“_I_ couldn’t have done it! I should have let you go on. I shouldn’t
+have written--I shouldn’t have spoken! And I have been alone with him. I
+have let him--I have let him--”
+
+“Beryl!”
+
+“No, no! It isn’t too late! Don’t be afraid!”
+
+“Thank God!” said Lady Sellingworth.
+
+She had no feeling of self-pity now. All her compassion for herself was
+obscured for the moment in compassion for the girl. The years at last
+were helping her, those years which so often had brought her misery.
+
+“But what am I to do? I’m afraid of him. Oh, do help me.”
+
+“Hush, Beryl! What can he do? There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
+
+“But I’ve nobody. I’m all alone. Fanny is no use. And he means--he won’t
+give it up. I know he won’t give it up. I was always afraid in a way. I
+always had suspicions, but I trampled them down. Dick Garstin told me,
+but I would not listen. Dick Garstin showed me what he was.”
+
+“How could he?”
+
+“He did. It’s there in the studio--that horrible picture, the real
+man, the man I couldn’t see. But I must always have known what he was.
+Something in me must always have known!”
+
+She seemed to make a violent effort to recover her self-control. She
+dropped her hands, took out a handkerchief and wiped the tears from her
+eyes. Then she went to the sofa where her muff was lying, drew out the
+letter that was in it, went over to the fireplace and threw the letter
+into the flames.
+
+“Adela,” she said, “I’ve been a beast to you. You know--my last visit to
+you. You’re brave. I suppose I always felt there was something fine in
+you, but I didn’t know how fine you could be. All I can do in return is
+this--never to tell. It isn’t much, is it?”
+
+“It’s quite enough, Beryl.”
+
+“There isn’t anything else I can do, is there?”
+
+Her eyes were asking a question. Lady Sellingworth met them calmly,
+earnestly. She knew what the girl was thinking at that moment. She was
+thinking of Alick Craven.
+
+“No, there isn’t anything else.”
+
+“Are you quite sure, Adela? I owe you a great deal. I may forget it.
+One never knows. And I suppose I’m horribly selfish. But if I make you
+a promise now I’ll keep it. If you want me to promise anything, tell me
+now.”
+
+“But I don’t want anything from you,” said Lady Sellingworth.
+
+She said it very quietly, without emotion. There was even a coldness in
+her voice.
+
+The great effort she had just made seemed to have changed her. By making
+it she felt as if, unwittingly, she had built up an insurmountable
+barrier between herself and youth. She had not known, perhaps, what she
+was doing, but now, suddenly, she knew.
+
+_I grow too old a comrade, let us part. Pass thou away!_
+
+The words ran in her mind. How often she had thought of them! How often
+she had struggled with that wild heart which God had given her, which
+in a way she clung to desperately, and yet which, as she had long known,
+she ought to give up. She was too old a comrade for that wild heart, and
+now surely she was saying farewell to it--this time a final farewell.
+But she had felt, had really felt as if in her very entrails, for a
+moment the appeal of youth. And she could never forget that, and, having
+responded, she knew that she could never struggle against youth again.
+
+Beryl had conquered her without knowing it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The winter night was dark when Miss Van Tuyn stood in the hall of Lady
+Sellingworth’s house waiting for the footman to find a taxicab for her.
+A big fire was burning on the hearth; the old-fashioned hooded chair
+stood beside it; and presently, as no taxicab came, she went to the
+chair and sat down in it. She felt very tired. Her whole body seemed to
+have been weakened by what she had just been through. But her mind was
+charged with intense vitality. The thoughts galloped through it, and
+they were dark as the night. The cold air of winter stole in through
+the doorway of the hall. She felt it and shivered as she lay back in the
+great chair which, with its walls and roof, was like a hiding-place; and
+for the first time in her life she longed to hide herself. She had never
+before known acute fear--fear that was based on ascertained facts. But
+she knew it now.
+
+The young footman stood on the doorstep bareheaded, looking this way and
+that into the blackness, and she sat waiting. In her independence she
+had never before known what it was to feel abandoned to loneliness. She
+had always enjoyed her freedom. Now she felt a great longing to cling to
+someone, to be protected, to lean on somebody who was much stronger than
+herself, and who would defend her against any attack. At that moment she
+envied Lady Sellingworth safe above stairs in this silent and beautiful
+house, which was like a stronghold. She even envied, or thought she did,
+Lady Sellingworth for her years. In old age there was surely a security
+that youth could never have. For the riot of life was over and the
+greatest dangers were past.
+
+She longed to stay with Adela that night. She thought of her as
+security. But she dared not expect anything more from Adela. She had
+already received a gift which she had surely not deserved, a gift which
+few women, if indeed any other woman, would have given her.
+
+She looked towards the open door and saw the footman’s flat back, and
+narrow head covered with carefully plastered hair. He was calling now
+with both hands to his mouth: “Taxi! Taxi!”
+
+But there came no sound of wheels in the night, and she put her hands on
+the sides of the chair and got up.
+
+“Can’t you find a cab?”
+
+“No, ma’am. I’ve very sorry, but there doesn’t seem to be one about.
+Shall I go to the nearest cab rank?”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn hesitated. Then she determined to fight her fear.
+
+“It isn’t raining, is it?”
+
+“No, ma’am.”
+
+“Then I’ll walk. It’s not far. I shall pick up a cab on the way
+probably.”
+
+The young man looked relieved and stood aside to let her go out. He
+watched her as she walked down the square towards the block of flats
+which towered up where the pavement turned at right angles. The light
+from the hall shone out and made a patch of yellow about his feet. He
+noticed presently that the girl he was watching turned her head and
+looked back, almost as if she were hesitating. Then she walked on
+resolutely, and he stepped in and shut the door.
+
+“Wonder if she’s afraid of going like that all by herself!” he thought.
+“I only wish she was my class. I wouldn’t mind seeing her home.”
+
+Just before she was out of sight of Lady Sellingworth’s house Miss Van
+Tuyn looked back again. The light was gone. She knew that the door was
+shut and she shivered. She felt shut out. What was she going to do? She
+was going back to Claridge’s of course. But--after that? She longed
+to take counsel with someone, with someone who was strong and clear
+brained, and who really cared for her. But who did care for her? Perhaps
+for the first time in her life she was the victim of sentimentality, of
+what she would have thought of certainly as sentimentality in another.
+A sort of yearning for affection came to her. A wave of self-pity swept
+over her. Her independence of spirit was in abeyance or dead. Arabian,
+it seemed, had struck her down to the ground. She felt humiliated,
+terrified, and strangely, horribly young, like a child almost who had
+been cruelly treated. She thought of her dead father. If he had been
+alive and near could she have gone to him? No; for years he had not
+cared very much about her. He had been kind, had given her plenty of
+money, but he had been immersed in pleasures and had always been in the
+hands of some woman or other. He had not really loved her. No one, she
+thought with desperation, had ever really loved her. She did not ask
+herself whether that was her fault, whether she had ever given to anyone
+what she wanted so terribly now, whether she had any right to expect
+generosity of feeling when she herself was niggardly. She was stricken
+in her vanity and, because of that, she had come down to the dust.
+
+It was frightful to her to think, to be obliged to think, that Arabian
+all this time had looked upon her as a prey, had marked her down as a
+prey. She understood everything now, his fixed gaze at her in the Cafe
+Royal when she had seen him for the first time, his coming to Garstin’s
+studio, his subtle acting through the early days of their acquaintance.
+She understood his careful self-repression, his reticence, his evident
+reluctance to be painted, overcome no doubt by two desires--the desire
+to become intimate with her, and the desire to possess eventually a
+piece of work that would be worth a great deal of money. She understood
+the determination not to allow his portrait to be exhibited. She
+understood the look in his face when she had told him of her father’s
+sudden death, the change in his demeanour to her since he had known
+the fact, the desire to hurry things on, to sweep her off her feet. She
+understood--ah, how she understood!--why he had not wished Adela to join
+them in the restaurant! She remembered a hundred things about him now,
+all mixed up together, in no coherent order, little things at which
+she had wondered but which she wondered at no longer; his distaste
+for Garstin’s portraits because they were of people belonging to the
+underworld, his understanding of them, his calm contemplation of the
+victims of vice, his lack of all pity for them, his shrewd verdict on
+the judge which had so delighted Garstin. And how he had waited for her,
+how he had known how to wait! It was frightful--that deliberation of
+his! Garstin had been right about him. Garstin’s instinct for people had
+not betrayed him. Although later Arabian’s craft had puzzled even him
+he had summed up Arabian at a first glance. Garstin was diabolically
+clever. If only he were less hard, less brutally cynical, she might
+perhaps go to him now. For he had in his peculiar way warned her against
+Arabian. She flushed in the dark as she thought of Garstin’s probable
+comments on her situation if he knew of it! And yet Garstin had told her
+that Arabian was in love with her. Was that possible? Her vanity faintly
+stirred like something, albeit feebly, reviving. Arabian had marked her
+down as a prey. She had no doubt about that. Her brain refused to doubt
+it. But perhaps, mingled with his hideous cupidity of the accomplished
+adventurer, the professional thief, there was something else, the lust,
+or even the sensual love, of the primitive man. Perhaps--she realized
+the possibility--he believed he had found in her the great opportunity
+of his life, the unique chance of combining the satisfaction of his
+predatory instincts with the satisfaction of his intimate personal
+desires, those desires which he shared with the men who lived far from
+the underworld.
+
+If that were so--and suddenly she felt that it was so, that she had hit
+upon the truth--then she was surely in great danger. For Arabian was not
+the man to let an unique opportunity slip through his fingers without
+putting up a tremendous fight.
+
+She must find someone to help her against this man. Again she thought
+of Garstin. But he had his own battle to fight, the battle about the
+portrait. Then she thought of Craven. Obscurely long ago--it seemed at
+least long ago--she had felt that she might some day need Craven in
+her life. How strange that was! What mysterious instinct had warned her
+then? But now Craven was hostile to her. How could she go to him? And
+then there flashed upon her the thought:
+
+“But I can’t go to anybody! I have promised Adela.”
+
+That thought struck her like a blow, struck her so hard that she stood
+still on the pavement. And she realized immediately that either she must
+do without any help at all, or that, in spite of all that had happened,
+she must ask Adela to help her. For she could never break her promise
+to Adela. She knew that. She knew that she would rather go under than
+betray Adela’s confidence. Adela had done a fine thing, something that
+she, Beryl, had not believed it was in any woman to do. She could not
+have done it, but on the other hand she could not be vile. It was not in
+her to be vile.
+
+She heard a step in the darkness and realized what she was doing.
+Instantly she hurried on, almost running. She must gain shelter, must be
+in the midst of light, must be between four walls, must speak to someone
+who knew her, and who would not do her harm. Claridge’s--old Fanny! A
+few minutes later she entered the hotel almost breathless.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+On the following afternoon Craven called on Lady Sellingworth about five
+o’clock and was told by the new footman in a rather determined manner
+that she was “not at home.”
+
+“I hope her ladyship is quite well?” he said.
+
+“I believe so, sir,” replied the man. “Her ladyship has been out driving
+to-day.”
+
+“Please give her that card. Wait one moment.”
+
+He pencilled on the card, “I hope you are better,--A.C.,” gave it to
+the man, and walked away, feeling sure that Lady Sellingworth was in the
+house but did not choose to see him.
+
+In the evening he received the following note from her:
+
+
+18A, BERKELEY SQUARE,
+
+Thursday.
+
+DEAR MR. CRAVEN,--How kind of you to call and to write that little
+message. I am sorry I could not see you. I’m not at all ill, and have
+been out driving. But, between you and me--for I hate to make a fuss
+about trifling matters of health--I feel rather played out. Perhaps it’s
+partly old age! You know nothing about that. Any variation in my quiet
+life seems to act as a disturbing influence. And the restaurant the
+other night really was terribly hot. I mustn’t go there again, though
+it is great fun. I suppose you didn’t see Beryl? She has been to see me,
+but said nothing about it. Be nice to her. I don’t think she has many
+real friends in London.--Yours very sincerely,
+
+ADELA SELLINGWORTH.
+
+
+“What is it? What has happened?” Craven thought, as he put down the
+letter.
+
+He felt that some drama had been played out, or partially played out,
+within the last days which he did not understand, which he was not
+allowed to understand. Lady Sellingworth chose to keep him in the
+dark. Well, she had the right to do that. As he thought over things he
+realized that the heat in the restaurant could certainly not have been
+the sole reason of her strange conduct on the night when they had dined
+together. Something had upset her mentally. A physical reason only could
+not account for her behaviour. And again he thought of Arabian.
+
+Instinctively he hated the man. Who was he? Where did he come from?
+Craven could not place him. Beyond feeling sure that he was a “wrong
+‘un” Craven had no very definite opinion about him. He was well dressed,
+good looking--too good looking--and no doubt knew how to behave. He
+might even possibly be a gentleman of sorts, come to England from some
+exotic land where the breed of gentleman was quite different from that
+which prevailed in England. But he was surely a beast. Craven detested
+his good looks, loathed his large and lustrous brown eyes. He was the
+sort of beast who did nothing but make up to women. Something inherently
+clean in Craven rejected the fellow, wished to drive him into outer
+darkness.
+
+Could Lady Sellingworth know such a man?
+
+That seemed quite impossible. Nevertheless, certain things persistently
+suggested to Craven that at least she had some knowledge of Arabian
+which she was deliberately concealing from him. The most salient of
+these things was her reiterated attempt to push him into the company of
+Beryl Van Tuyn. It was impossible not to think that Lady Sellingworth
+wished him to interfere between Beryl Van Tuyn and Arabian. On the night
+of the dinner in Soho she had attempted to persuade him to go back to
+the restaurant and to see Beryl home. And now here in this letter she
+returned to the matter.
+
+“Be nice to her. I don’t think she has many real friends in London.”
+
+“Go to see Beryl; don’t come to see me.”
+
+Between the lines of Lady Sellingworth’s letter Craven read those words
+and wondered at the ways of women. But he did not mean to obey the
+unwritten command. And he felt angry with Lady Sellingworth for giving
+it by implication. She might have what she considered a good reason for
+her extraordinary behaviour. But as she did not allow him to understand
+it, as she chose to keep him entirely in the dark, he would be passive.
+It was not his business to run after Beryl Van Tuyn, to interfere almost
+forcibly between her and another man, even if that man were a scoundrel.
+Miss Van Tuyn was a free agent. She had the right to choose her own
+friends, her own lovers. Once he had decided that he would not give up
+his intimacy with her in favour of another man without a struggle, the
+sort of polite, and perhaps subtle, struggle which is suitable to the
+twentieth century, when man must only be barbarous in battle. But since
+the encounter in Glebe Place he had changed his mind. Disgust had
+seized him that day. What could he think but that Beryl Van Tuyn had
+deliberately induced him to come to Glebe Place, in order that he might
+see not only her absolute indifference to him but also her intimacy
+with Arabian? Her reason for such a crude exposure of her lightness of
+conduct escaped Craven. He could not conceive what she was up to, unless
+her design was to arouse in him violent jealousy. He did feel jealous,
+but he was certainly not going to show it. Besides, the delicacy
+that was natural in him was disquieted by what he thought of as the
+coarseness of her behaviour.
+
+As once more he looked at Lady Sellingworth’s letter he was struck by
+something final in the wording of it. There was nothing explicit in it.
+On the contrary, that seemed to be carefully avoided. But the allusions
+to old age, to disturbing influences, the decision not to go again to
+the _Bella Napoli_--these seemed to hint an intention to return to a
+former state of being, to abandon a new path of life. And he remembered
+a conversation with Francis Braybrooke at the club, the interest it had
+roused in him. Some slumbering feeling for romance had been stirred in
+him, he now thought, by that conversation, by the information he had
+received about the distinguished recluse who had lived a great life and
+then suddenly plunged into old age and complete retirement.
+
+Now he seemed to hear a door shutting, and he was outside it. She had
+allowed him to enter her life for a short time, to enter it almost
+intimately. But she was surely repenting of that intimacy. He did not
+know why. Did he ever know why a woman did this or that? There was no
+suggestion in the letter that he should ever call again, no hint of a
+desire to see him. She was only sorry, politely sorry, that she had
+not been able to see him that day. But no reason was given for the
+inability. She had not considered it necessary to give him a reason.
+When she had gone abroad without letting him know he had said to himself
+that his brief friendship with her had come to an end. He felt that more
+acutely now. For she had come back from abroad. She was close to him
+in London. She had tried him again. Evidently she must have found him
+wanting. For once more she was giving him up. Perhaps he was too young.
+Perhaps he bored her. He did not know.
+
+“I don’t suppose I shall ever know.”
+
+To that conclusion he came at last. And the sense of finality grew in
+him, cold and inexorable. She was a mystery to him. He did not love
+her. He had never thought of her as she had thought of him. He had never
+known or suspected what her feelings for him had been. But he felt that
+something which might have meant a good deal, even perhaps a great deal,
+to him was being withdrawn from his life. And this withdrawal hurt him
+and saddened him.
+
+He locked up her letter in his dispatch box. It would be a souvenir of a
+friendship which had seemed to promise much and which had ended abruptly
+in mystery. He did not answer it. Perhaps, probably, he would have done
+so but for the last two sentences in it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+After Lady Sellingworth had written and sent her note to Craven she felt
+that she was facing a new phase of life, and she thought of it as the
+last phase. Her sacrifice of self was surely complete at last. She
+had exposed her nature naked to Beryl Van Tuyn. She had given up her
+friendship with Alick Craven. There was nothing more for her to do. The
+call of youth had wrung from her a response which created loneliness
+around her. And now she had to find within herself the resolution to
+face this loneliness bravely.
+
+When she wrote to Craven she had meant him to understand something of
+what he had understood. Yet she did not desire to hurt him. She would
+not have hurt him for the world. Secretly her heart yearned over him.
+But she could never let him know that. He might be puzzled by her
+letter. He might even resent it. But he would soon forget any feeling
+roused by it. And he would no doubt soon forget her, the old woman who
+had been kind to him for a time, who had even been almost Bohemian with
+him in a very mild way, and who had then tacitly given him up. Perhaps
+she would see him again. Probably she would. She had no intentions of
+permanently closing her door against him. But she would not encourage
+him to come. She would never dine out with him again. If he came he must
+come as an ordinary caller at the ordinary caller’s hour.
+
+Seymour Portman called on her in the late afternoon of the day when
+she wrote to Craven. Just before his arrival she was feeling peculiarly
+blank and almost confusedly dull. She had gone through so much recently,
+had lived at such high tension, had suffered such intense nervous
+excitement, in the restaurant of the _Bella Napoli_ and afterwards, that
+both body and mind refused to function quite normally. Long ago she had
+stayed at St. Moritz in the depth of the winter, and had got up each
+morning to greet the fierce blue sky, the blazing sun, the white glare
+of the enveloping snows with a strange feeling of light, yet depressed,
+detachment. She began to have a similar feeling now. Far down she was
+horribly sad. But her surface seemed to say, “Nothing matters, because
+I am in an abnormal condition, and while I remain in this condition
+nothing can really matter to me.” Surface and depths were in
+contradiction, yet she was not even fully aware of that. A numbness held
+her, and yet she was nervous.
+
+She heard the drawing-room door open and Murgatroyd’s voice make the
+familiar announcement; she saw Seymour’s upright, soldierly figure come
+into the room; she smiled a greeting to her old friend; and the sound
+of Murgatroyd’s voice, the sight of Seymour coming towards her, her own
+response to sound and sight, did not conquer the sensation of numbness.
+
+“Yes, he is here. He does not forget me. He loves me and will always
+love me. But what does it matter?”
+
+A voice seemed to be saying that within her. Recently she had suffered
+acutely; she had made a great effort; she had conquered herself and been
+conquered by another. And it had all been just too much for her. She
+was, she thought, like one who had fought desperately lying in deadly
+silence and calm on the deserted battlefield, utterly passive because
+utterly tired out.
+
+But Seymour did not know that. He knew nothing of all that had happened,
+and Beryl knew everything. And she thought of a picture called “Love
+locked out.” It was hardly fair that Seymour should know so little. And
+while he was quietly talking to her, telling her little bits of news
+which he thought would interest her, letting her in by proxy as it were
+to the life of the great world which she had abandoned but in which
+he still played a part, she was thinking, “If Seymour knew what I have
+done! If I told him, what would he think, what would he say?” He would
+be pleased, no doubt. But would he be surprised? And while she listened
+and talked she began to wonder, but always without intensity, about
+that. Seymour would think she had done the inevitable thing, what
+any thoroughbred was bound to do. And yet--would he be surprised
+nevertheless that she had been able to do it? She began presently to
+feel a slight tingle of curiosity about that. Had she, perhaps, to
+a certain extent justified Seymour’s fidelity? He had a splendid
+character. She certainly had not. She had done countless things that
+Seymour must have hated, and secretly condemned. And yet he had
+somehow been able to go on loving her. Was that because he had always
+instinctively known that somewhere within her there was a traditional
+virtue which marched with his, that there was a voice which spoke his
+language?
+
+“I suppose, in spite of all, in a way we are akin,” she thought.
+
+And she began to wish vaguely that he knew it, that he knew what had
+happened between her and Beryl. As she looked at his “cauliflower,”
+ bent towards her while he talked, at his strong soldier’s face, at
+his faithful eyes, the eyes of the “old dog,” she wished that it were
+possible to let Seymour know a little bit of the best of her. Not that
+she was proud of what she had done. She was too much akin to Seymour to
+be proud of such a thing, But Seymour would be pleased with her. And it
+would be pleasant to give him pleasure. It would be like giving him
+a small, a very small, reward for his long faithfulness, for his very
+beautiful and touching loyalty.
+
+“What is it, Adela?” he said.
+
+And a keen, searching look had come into his eyes.
+
+She smiled vaguely, meeting his gaze. She still felt curiously detached,
+although she was able to think quite connectedly.
+
+“What are you thinking about?”
+
+“Why do you ask?”
+
+“I feel you are not as usual to-day.”
+
+“In what way?”
+
+“Something has happened. I don’t, of course, wish to know what it is.
+But it has changed you, my dear.”
+
+“In what way?” she said again.
+
+His reply startled her, set her free from her feeling of numbness,
+of light detachment, from what she called to herself her “St. Moritz
+feeling.”
+
+“I feel as if you were coming into possession of your true self at
+last,” he said very gravely. “But as if perhaps you scarcely knew it
+yet.”
+
+A slow red crept in her cheeks, which would never know again the touch
+of the artificial red.
+
+“Dear Seymour! My true self! I wonder what sort of self you think that
+is?”
+
+“That’s easily told. It is the self I have been loving for so many
+years. And now--”
+
+He got up, still alert in his movement, out of his chair.
+
+“You are going?”
+
+“Yes. I have to meet ‘Better not’ at the Marlborough to talk over His
+Majesty’s visit to Manchester.”
+
+“Ah!” she said.
+
+“Better not” was the nickname given at Court to a certain much-valued
+gentleman about the king.
+
+She did not try to detain Seymour. But when he had gone deep depression
+overcame her. She was the helpless victim of a tremendous reaction. So
+long as she had been in activity she had been able to endure. Even the
+horror of the _Bella Napoli_, complex and cruelly intense as the probing
+of steel among the nerves of the body, she had been able to live through
+without obvious flinching. But then there had been something to do,
+something to deal with, something to get the better of. There had been
+a necessity for action. And now there was nothing. Her activities were
+over. Seymour had broken the curious spell which for a short time had
+bound her, and now she realized everything with unnatural acuteness.
+
+What was the good of coming into possession of her true self? What was
+the good of anything? Life was activity. Her late close contact with
+youth, her obligation to do something difficult and, to her, tremendous
+for youth had taught her that anew, and now she must somehow reconcile
+herself to extinction. For this was really what lay before her
+now--extinction while still alive. Better surely to be struggling with
+horrors than to be merely dying away. She even looked back to the scene
+with Beryl and thought of it almost with longing. For how she had lived
+in that scene! At moments during it she had entirely forgotten herself.
+
+Was that perhaps life, the only real life--entire forgetfulness of self?
+If so, how seldom she had lived! In all her sixty years, in all her
+so-called “great life,” for how short a time she had lived!
+
+She had just then, even in the midst of her reaction, a feeling of
+illumination. She was in darkness, but around the darkness, as if
+enclosing it and her in it, there was light, a light she had never been
+really aware of till now. Something within her said:
+
+“I see!”
+
+She went up to her bedroom, shut herself in, went to a bookshelf, and
+took down a Bible which stood on it. She turned its pages till she came
+to the Sermon on the Mount. Then she began to read. And presently, as
+she read, a queer thought came to her. “If the ‘old guard’ could see me
+now!”
+
+It was late when she stopped reading. She shut up the Holy Book, put it
+back on the shelf, and took down a volume of poems. And after reading
+the Bible she read the poem of the Wild Heart. And then she read nothing
+more. But her reading had waked up in her a longing which was not
+familiar to her except in connexion with what she supposed was the baser
+part of her, the part which had troubled, had even tortured her so many
+times in her life. She had often longed to do things for men whom she
+loved, or fancied she loved. Now she was conscious of a yearning
+more altruistic. She wished to be purely unselfish, if that were ever
+possible. And she believed it to be possible. For was not Seymour
+unselfish? He surely often forgot himself in her. But she had always
+remembered herself in others.
+
+“What a monstrous egoist I have been all my life!” she thought, with
+a sense of despair. “Only once have I acted with a purely unselfish
+motive, and that was with Beryl. Yes, Beryl gave me the one opportunity
+I took advantage of. And now it is all over. Everything is finished. It
+is too late to try a new way of living.”
+
+She forgot many little sacrifices she had made in the war, or she did
+not count them to her credit. For patriotism in war seemed as natural
+to her as drawing breath. She was thinking of her personal life in
+connexion with individuals. She had once been unselfish--for Beryl. That
+was over. Everything was over. And yet Seymour had said that he felt as
+if at last she were coming into possession of her true self. So he had
+noticed a difference. It was as if what she had been able to do for
+Beryl had subtly altered her. But there was nothing more for her to do.
+
+That evening she felt loneliness as she had never felt it before. A sort
+of mental nausea seized her as she dressed for her solitary dinner.
+For whom was she changing her gown? For Murgatroyd! How grotesque the
+unwritten regulations of a life like hers were! Why go down to dinner
+at all? She had no appetite. Nevertheless, everything was done in due
+order. Her hair was arranged. Cecile looked at her critically to see
+that everything was right. For Murgatroyd! Even a jewel was brought to
+be pinned in to the front of her gown. It was a big ruby surrounded
+by diamonds, and as it flashed in the light it brought back to her the
+hideous memory of Arabian.
+
+What would he do now? It was very strange that after ten years she had
+been able, indeed she had been obliged, to revenge herself upon him,
+this man whom she had never known, to whom she had never even spoken.
+And she had never dreamed of revenge. She had let him go with his prey.
+Probably her jewels had enabled him to live as he wished to live for
+years. And now she had paid him back! Did Fate work blindly, or was
+there a terribly subtle and inexorable plan at work through all human
+life?
+
+“Miladi does not like to wear this ruby?” said Cecile.
+
+“Why do you say that?”
+
+“Milady looks at it so strangely!”
+
+“It reminds me of something. Yes, I will wear it to-night. But what’s
+the good?”
+
+“Miladi--?”
+
+“No one will see it but myself.”
+
+“Milady should go out more, much more, and receive company here.”
+
+“Perhaps I’ll give a series of dinners,” said Lady Sellingworth with a
+smile.
+
+And she turned away and went down.
+
+Murgatroyd and a footman were waiting for her. On the dining table was
+a menu telling her what she had to eat, what her cook had been, and was,
+busy over in the kitchen. She sat down at the big table, picked up the
+menu and glanced at it. But she did not see what was written on it.
+She saw only in imagination the years before her, perhaps five years,
+perhaps ten, perhaps even more. For her race was a long living one. She
+might, like some of her forbears, live to be very old. Ten years more of
+dinners like this one in Berkeley Square! Could that be endured? As she
+sipped her soup she thought of travelling. She might shut up the house,
+go over the seas, wander through the world. There were things to be
+seen. Nature spread her infinite variety for the sons and the daughters
+of men. She might advertise in _The Times_ for a travelling companion.
+There would be plenty of answers. Or she might get one of her many
+acquaintances to come with her, some pleasant woman who would not talk
+too much, or too little.
+
+Fish!
+
+When, finally, some fruit had been put before her, and Murgatroyd and
+the footman had left the room, she remained--so she thought of it--like
+a mummy in the tomb which belonged to her. And presently through the
+profound silence she heard the hoot of a motor-horn. Someone going
+somewhere! Someone who had something to do, somewhere to go! Someone
+from whom all the activities had not passed away for ever!
+
+The motor-horn sounded again nearer. Now she heard the faint sound of
+wheels. The car was coming down her side of the Square. The buzz of the
+machine reached her ears now, then the grinding of brakes. The car had
+stopped somewhere close by, at the next house perhaps.
+
+She heard an electric bell. That was in her own house. Then the car had
+stopped at her door.
+
+She listened, and immediately heard a step in the hall. Murgatroyd, or
+the footman, was going to the door. She wondered who the caller could
+be. Possibly Seymour! But he never came at that hour.
+
+A moment later Murgatroyd appeared in the room.
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn has called, my lady, and begs you to see her.”
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn! Ask her--take her up to the drawing-room, please. I am
+just finishing. I will come in a minute.”
+
+“Yes, my lady.”
+
+Murgatroyd went out and shut the door behind him.
+
+Then Lady Sellingworth took a peach from a dish in front of her
+and began to peel it. She had not intended to eat any fruit before
+Murgatroyd had given her this news. But she felt that she must have
+a few minutes by herself. Not long ago she had been appalled by the
+thought of extinction: had yearned for activity, had even desired
+opportunities for unselfishness. Now, suddenly, she was afraid, and
+clung to her loneliness. For she felt certain that Beryl had come to
+ask her to do something in connexion with Arabian. Something must have
+happened since their interview yesterday, and the girl had come to her
+to ask her help.
+
+She ate the peach very slowly, scarcely tasting it. At last it was
+finished, and she got up from the table. She must not keep Beryl waiting
+any longer. She must go upstairs. But she went reluctantly, almost in
+fear, wondering, dreading what was coming upon her.
+
+When she opened the drawing-room door she saw Beryl standing by the
+fire.
+
+“Adela!”
+
+Beryl came forward hurriedly with a nervous manner Lady Sellingworth
+had never noticed in her before. Her face was very pale. There were dark
+rings under her eyes. She looked apprehensive, distracted even.
+
+“Do forgive me for bursting in on you like this at such an hour!”
+
+“Of course!”
+
+She took Beryl’s hand. It was hot, and clasped hers with a closeness
+that was almost violent.
+
+“What is it? Is anything the matter?”
+
+“I want your advice. I don’t--I don’t quite know what to do. You see,
+there’s nobody but you I can come to. I know I have no right--I have
+no claim upon you. You have been so good to me already. No other woman
+would have done what you have done. But you see, I promised never to--I
+can’t speak to anyone else. I might have gone to Dick Garstin perhaps.
+. . . I don’t know! But as it is I can’t speak to a soul but you.”
+
+“Is it something about that man?”
+
+“Yes. I’m afraid of him.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I’m sure he doesn’t mean to--I’m sure he won’t give me up easily. I
+know he won’t!”
+
+“Sit down, Beryl.”
+
+“Yes--may I?”
+
+“Have you seen him?”
+
+“Oh, no--no!”
+
+“Has he written?”
+
+“Yes. And he has called to-day. Last night directly I got back to the
+hotel I gave orders at the bureau that if he called they were to say
+‘not at home.’”
+
+“Well then--”
+
+“But he got in!”
+
+“How could he?”
+
+“When they said I was out he asked for Fanny--Fanny Cronin, my
+companion. He sent up his card to her, and as I hadn’t spoken to
+her--you know I promised not to say anything--she told them to let him
+come up. She likes him!”
+
+“And were you in the hotel?”
+
+“No, thank God I was really out. But I came back while he was still
+there.”
+
+“Then--”
+
+“No, I didn’t see him, as I told you. When I was just going up in the
+lift, something--it was almost like second sight, I think--prompted me
+to go to the bureau and ask if anyone was in our rooms. And they told me
+_he_ was with Fanny, had been with her for over an hour.”
+
+“What did you do?”
+
+“I went out at once. I called on one or two people, I stayed out till
+nearly half-past seven. I walked about in the dark. I was afraid to go
+near the hotel. It was horrible. Finally I thought he must have gone and
+I ventured to go back. I hurried through the hall. The lift was there.
+I went into it at once. I didn’t look round. I was afraid he might have
+come down and be waiting about for me. When I got to our apartment I
+went straight to my bedroom and rang for my maid. She said he was gone.
+Then I went to Fanny. He had been having tea with her and had stayed two
+hours. He had--she’s very foolish, poor old thing!--he had completely
+fascinated her.”
+
+Suddenly she blushed violently.
+
+“I have no right to say that about Fanny. But I mean he had laid himself
+out to--”
+
+“I quite understand,” said Lady Sellingworth, with a sort of awkward
+dryness which she could not evade though she hated herself for it.
+
+It was hideous, she felt, being mixed up with this old Miss Cronin and
+Beryl Van Tuyn in a sort of horrible sisterhood of victims of this vile
+man’s fascination. Her flesh crept at the indignity of it, and all
+her patrician pride revolted at being remembered among his probably
+innumerable conquests. At that moment she felt punished for having so
+often in her life betrayed the best part of her nature.
+
+“I quite understand, Beryl. You need not explain.”
+
+“No.”
+
+There was an unpleasant silence during which neither woman looked at the
+other. Then Lady Sellingworth said:
+
+“But you haven’t told me everything. And if I am to--if anything is to
+be done, can be done, I suppose you had better tell me everything.”
+
+“Yes. I want to. I must. Mr.--he told Fanny that I was--that I had
+promised to marry him.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“He told her that I had been to his flat on the very day that I had
+heard of my father’s death and since. He promised Fanny that--that when
+we were married she should have a home with us. Isn’t that horrible?
+Fanny has been afraid of my marrying because, you see, she depends in a
+way on me. She doesn’t want to leave me. She’s got accustomed--”
+
+“Yes--yes.”
+
+“He told her that people knew about my visits to him. Mrs. Birchington
+lives in the flat opposite his, and she knows. He contrived that she
+should know. I realize that now.”
+
+“A man like that lays his plans carefully.”
+
+“Yes. Oh--how humiliating it all is! Fanny was enthusiastic about him.”
+
+“What did you say?”
+
+“I was very careful. Because I promised you! But I know she thinks--she
+must think I am in love with him. But that doesn’t matter. Only it makes
+things difficult. But it isn’t that which brought me here. I’m afraid of
+him.”
+
+“Have you ever written to him?”
+
+“No--never!”
+
+“But you say he has written to you.”
+
+“Yes. When he left Fanny he wrote a letter in the hotel and had it sent
+up to my room. Fanny gave it me just now. I’ve got it here.”
+
+She drew a letter out of a little bag she had brought with her.
+
+“I--I can’t show it--”
+
+“Oh--please--I don’t want to see it!” said Lady Sellingworth, with an
+irrepressible shrinking of disgust.
+
+“No, of course not. Adela, please don’t think I imagined you did! But
+I must tell you--I know you hate all this. You must hate it. Oh, do
+forgive me for coming here! I know I oughtn’t to. But I’m afraid--I’m
+afraid of him!”
+
+“Why are you so afraid? What can he do?”
+
+“A man like that might do anything!”
+
+“Are you sure? I think such a man is probably a coward at heart.”
+
+But Miss Van Tuyn shook her head.
+
+“He’s got nerves of steel. I am sure of it. Besides--”
+
+She paused, and a strange conscious look came into her face--a look
+which Lady Sellingworth did not understand.
+
+“Yes?” she said at last, as Beryl did not speak.
+
+“Adela, I know you will not believe me. I know--you spoke once of my
+being very vain, but--but there are things a girl does know about a man,
+really there are! They may seem ridiculous, crazy to others, but--”
+
+“What is it, Beryl?”
+
+“I believe besides wanting my money he wants _me_. That’s why I’m
+afraid. If it weren’t for that I--perhaps I shouldn’t have come
+to-night. Can you believe it?”
+
+Lady Sellingworth looked at the girl with eyes which in spite of herself
+were hard. She knew they were hard, but she could not help it. Then she
+said:
+
+“Yes, I can believe it.”
+
+“And that he may--he may persist in spite of all. He may refuse to give
+it up.”
+
+“Haven’t you got a will?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Can’t you use it?”
+
+“Yes. But I’m afraid of him. I believe I’ve always been afraid of him.
+No one else has ever been able to make me feel as I do about him. Once
+I read an article in a paper. It was about a horrible play--a woman who
+was drawn to a man irresistibly in spite of herself, to a hateful man,
+a murderer. And she went; she had to go. I remember I thought of _him_
+then. It was a fascination of fear, Adela. There are such things.”
+
+“Do you mean to say that after what I have told you--”
+
+“I want someone to get him away, to drive him away from me so that I
+shall never see him, so that he will never come near me again! I might
+go to Paris. But it would be no use. He would follow me there. I might
+go to America. But that would be just the same. He says so in this
+letter.”
+
+She held up the letter in her hand.
+
+“Does he threaten you?”
+
+“No--not exactly! No, he doesn’t! It’s worse than that. If he did
+I think I might find the courage. He’s subtle, Adela. He’s horribly
+subtle! Besides, he doesn’t know--he can’t know that you have told me
+what he is.”
+
+“He might guess it. He probably guessed it. He recognized me in the
+restaurant.”
+
+“Yes. He didn’t want you to come to our table. But he never spoke of
+you afterwards. He didn’t say a word, or show the slightest sign. But
+in this letter I feel that he suspects--that he is afraid something may
+happen through you, and that--”
+
+“Perhaps he knows you came to see me last night.”
+
+“How could he?”
+
+“It wouldn’t be difficult for a man of that type.”
+
+“I walked home alone, and nobody--”
+
+“That doesn’t prove anything. He is subtle, as you say.”
+
+“I am sure from this letter that he guesses something has happened, that
+I may have been set against him, and that he doesn’t mean to give me up,
+whatever happens. I feel that in his letter. And I want someone to drive
+him away from me. Oh, I wish I had never seen him! I wish I had never
+seen him!”
+
+Again Lady Sellingworth heard the cry of youth, and this time it was
+piteous, almost despairing. She did not answer it in words. Indeed,
+instead of showing any pity, any strong instinct of protection, she
+turned away from Beryl.
+
+The girl wondered why she did this, and for a moment thought that
+perhaps she was angry. The situation was difficult, horribly difficult.
+Beryl had delicacy enough to understand that. Perhaps she ought not to
+have come to Adela again. Perhaps she was asking too much, more than any
+woman could bring herself to do, or to try to do. But she had no one
+else to go to, and she was really afraid, miserably afraid.
+
+Lady Sellingworth stood quite still by the fire with her back to Beryl,
+and as the silence continued at last Beryl made up her mind that there
+was nothing to be hoped for from her and got up slowly.
+
+“Adela,” she said, trying to summon some pride, some courage, “I
+understand. You can’t do anything more. I oughtn’t to have come. It was
+monstrous, I suppose. But--it’s like that in life. So few people will
+help. And those that do--well, they get asked for more. I’ll--I’ll
+manage somehow. It’s all my own fault. I must try to--”
+
+Then Lady Sellingworth turned round. Her white face was very grave,
+almost stern, like the face of one who was thinking with concentration.
+
+“I’m ready to try to do what I can, Beryl,” she said. “But there’s only
+one way I can think of. And to take it I shall have to tell the whole
+truth.”
+
+“About me?”
+
+“About you and myself.”
+
+“Oh--but you couldn’t do that!”
+
+“I believe that I ought to.”
+
+“But--but--to whom?”
+
+“There’s only one person I could possibly speak to, and he’s the finest
+man I have ever met. He might do something. I’m thinking of Seymour
+Portman.”
+
+“Adela! But you couldn’t tell _him_!”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Adela--he loves you. Everyone knows that.”
+
+“And that’s just why I could tell him--him only.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked down. Suddenly she felt that she had tears in her
+eyes.
+
+“You have kept your cab, haven’t you?” said Lady Sellingworth.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Go home now. I will telephone to Seymour. I’ll let you know
+later--to-morrow morning perhaps--what he thinks had better be done.
+Now, good night, Beryl!”
+
+She held out her hand. Beryl took it, but did not press it. Somehow she
+felt awed, and at a distance from this pale quiet woman.
+
+Lady Sellingworth touched the bell, and Beryl Van Tuyn left the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+As soon as Beryl had gone Lady Sellingworth went downstairs to her
+writing-room. She turned on the electric light as she went in to the
+room, and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. The hands pointed to
+half-past nine. She wondered where Seymour was dining. He might chance
+to be at home. It was much more likely that he was dining out, at one
+of his clubs or elsewhere. If he were at home and alone he would come to
+her at once; if not she would perhaps have to wait till half-past ten or
+eleven. She hoped to find him at St. James’s Palace. As this thing
+had to be done--and now she had burnt her boats, for she had promised
+Beryl--she wished to do it quickly.
+
+She inquired through the telephone if Seymour was at home. His servant
+replied that he was out. She asked where. The servant did not know. His
+master had dressed and gone out at a quarter to eight without saying
+where he was dining. Lady Sellingworth frowned as she received this
+information. She hesitated for a moment, then she said:
+
+“As soon as Sir Seymour comes in, however late it may be, I want to see
+him on an urgent matter. If you go to bed before he comes back, will
+you please leave a written message in the hall asking him to visit Lady
+Sellingworth at once in Berkeley Square. It is very important.”
+
+“Yes, my lady,” said the voice.
+
+“You won’t forget? I shall be sitting up for Sir Seymour.”
+
+“No, my lady. I will stay up and inform Sir Seymour.”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+She put the receiver back in its place and again looked at the clock.
+She had not much hope of seeing Seymour before eleven at the earliest.
+He might be at a big dinner. He might be at the theatre. Probably he
+would go to his club afterwards. She might not see him till midnight,
+even later perhaps. Well, it could not be helped. She must just be
+patient, must wait calmly. But she did not want to wait. She was
+beginning to feel nervous, and she knew that the nervousness would
+increase in suspense. How unlucky that Seymour was out!
+
+She rang the bell. Murgatroyd came.
+
+“I am expecting Sir Seymour to-night, Murgatroyd,” she said, “about some
+important business. But I can’t find out where he is, so he won’t know
+till he goes home. That may be late. But he will come here directly he
+gets my message. I’m sorry to keep you up, but I should like you to let
+him in.”
+
+“Certainly, my lady,” said Murgatroyd.
+
+“I shall be waiting for him in the drawing-room. Bring me up some
+camomile tea, will you? And put out a cigar and whisky and Perrier for
+Sir Seymour.”
+
+“Yes, my lady.”
+
+“That’s all.”
+
+Murgatroyd stood back to let her pass out of the room. She thought at
+that moment there was something sympathetic in his face.
+
+“I believe he’s rather devoted to me, and to Seymour too,” she said to
+herself as she went upstairs. “I don’t think he’ll say anything to the
+others. Not that it matters if he does!”
+
+Nevertheless she felt oddly shy about Seymour coming to her very late at
+night, and wondered what Murgatroyd thought of that long friendship.
+No doubt he knew, no doubt all the servants knew, how devoted to her
+Seymour was.
+
+She went into the drawing-room and sat down by the fire, and very soon
+Murgatroyd brought in the camomile tea. Then he placed on a side table a
+box of cigars, whisky and Perrier water, and went out.
+
+The clock chimed the quarter before ten.
+
+Camomile tea is generally supposed to be good for the nerves. That was
+why Lady Sellingworth had ordered it; that was why she drank it now. For
+now she was beginning to feel horribly nervous, and the feeling seemed
+to increase in her with every passing moment. It was dreadful waiting
+for Seymour like this. She felt all her courage and determination oozing
+away. When Beryl had been there, and that strange and abrupt decision
+had been come to, Lady Sellingworth had felt almost glad. Seymour would
+know what Beryl knew, the worst and perhaps the best, of his old friend.
+And there was no one else she could go to. Seymour was an old soldier, a
+thorough man of the world, absolutely discreet, with a silent tongue and
+proved courage and coolness. No one surely existed more fitted to deal
+drastically with a scoundrel than he. Lady Sellingworth had no idea what
+he would do. But he would surely find a way to get rid of Arabian, to
+“drive” him, as Beryl had put it, out of the girl’s life for ever.
+Yes, he would find a way. Lady Sellingworth felt positive of that, and,
+feeling thus positive, she realized how absolutely she trusted Seymour,
+trusted his heart, his brain, his whole character.
+
+Nevertheless she looked again and again at the clock, and began to feel
+almost sick with anxiety.
+
+The thought of confession had scarcely frightened her when Beryl was
+with her. Indeed, it had brought her a sense of relief. But now she
+began to feel almost panic-stricken at the knowledge of what was before
+her. And she began to wonder exactly how much Seymour understood of her
+character, exactly how much he knew of her past. He must certainly know
+a great deal, and perhaps suspect more than he knew. She had once been
+almost explicit with him, on the terrible day when she had tried to make
+up her mind to marry him, and had failed. And yet he might be surprised,
+he might even be horrified when she told him. It was such an ugly
+story, such a hideous story. And Seymour was full of natural rectitude.
+Whatever he had done in his life, he must always have been incapable of
+stooping down to the gutter, as she had stooped. She grew hot and then
+cold at the thought of telling him. Perhaps he would not be able to bear
+it. Perhaps even his love could not stand so much as that. If, after
+she had told him, he looked at her with different eyes, if he changed
+towards her! He would not want to change, but if he could not help it!
+
+How awful that would be! Something deep down within her seemed to
+founder at the mere thought of it. To lose Seymour! That would indeed be
+the end of everything that made life worth living for her. She shuddered
+on her sofa. Then she got up and stood before the blazing fire. But
+still she felt cold. Surely she had acted imprudently when Beryl was
+there. She had been carried away, had yielded to a sudden impulse. And
+yet no! For she had stood with her back to Beryl for several minutes
+before she had said she was going to tell Seymour. And through those
+minutes she had been thinking hard. Yes; but she had not thought as she
+was thinking now.
+
+She began to feel desperate. It was nearly eleven o’clock. The time had
+flown. Why had she asked Seymour to come to-night? She might just as
+well have waited till to-morrow, have “slept on it.” The night brings
+counsel. Yet how could she break her promise to Beryl? It would be no
+use debating, for she had promised.
+
+The clock struck eleven.
+
+Seymour might come now in a moment. On the other hand, he might not
+reach home till midnight, or even later. It would really be a shame to
+bring him out again at such an hour. She had been thoughtless when she
+was at the telephone. And she was keeping his man up; Murgatroyd too.
+That was scarcely fair. It would not matter if Seymour came now, but if
+he did not get home till much later, as was possible, even probable! She
+had surely been rather selfish in her desire to do something quickly for
+Beryl. There was no such terrible hurry about the matter.
+
+An overwhelming desire to postpone things took hold of her. She wanted
+to have time to think over how she would put it to Seymour. Would not it
+perhaps be possible to obtain his help for Beryl without telling him the
+whole truth about Arabian? She might just say that she knew the man was
+a blackguard without saying why she knew. There was perhaps no need to
+be absolutely explicit. Seymour would take it from her without asking
+awkward questions. He was the least curious of men. He would probably
+much rather not know the truth. It would be as horrible for him to hear
+it as for her to tell it. But she must have time to think carefully over
+how she would put it to him. Yes, she must have time. Better to see him
+to-morrow morning.
+
+A quarter-past eleven!
+
+It would really be monstrous to drag Seymour out to have a long
+confabulation about a girl whom he scarcely knew, and could have no
+interest in, at this time of night.
+
+And she turned from the fire and went decisively towards the door.
+She would go down at once and telephone to Seymour’s apartment in St.
+James’s Palace cancelling her request to his manservant.
+
+She found Murgatroyd waiting in the hall. He looked faintly surprised at
+seeing her.
+
+“Oh, Murgatroyd!” she said. “It’s getting so late that I’ve decided to
+put off Sir Seymour till to-morrow. I’m just going to telephone now. So
+you needn’t sit up any longer.”
+
+“Very well, my lady.”
+
+“Good night.”
+
+“Good night, my lady.”
+
+“I’ll turn out the lights when I go up.”
+
+“Shan’t I--”
+
+“No--you needn’t. Good night.”
+
+She went into the writing-room and shut the door behind her. The thought
+of the intense relief she would feel directly she had spoken through the
+telephone and put off Seymour, directly it was settled that he was not
+to come and see her that night, sent her straight to the telephone. She
+was eager to communicate with his servant. But she wished now intensely
+that she had not waited so long. She might possibly be too late. Seymour
+might have returned home, had her message, and started for Berkeley
+Square. She took the receiver in her hand and was just going to speak
+when she heard a cab outside in the Square. She listened. It came up and
+stopped at her door.
+
+That was Seymour! She was certain of it. She put the receiver back
+in its place and stood quite still, listening. The bell was rung.
+Murgatroyd could not have gone to bed. He would answer the bell no
+doubt. If he did not she would have to answer it. After a pause she
+heard the bell again, then, almost immediately the front door being
+opened, and a faint murmur of voices. An instant later she heard the cab
+drive away. Perhaps--had Seymour called and gone away? Could Murgatroyd
+have--The door behind her opened. She turned sharply.
+
+“Sir Seymour Portman has called to see you, my lady.”
+
+Looking beyond Murgatroyd she saw Seymour standing in the hall, in
+evening dress and a thick black overcoat.
+
+Seymour had sent away his cab!
+
+She went into the hall smiling faintly.
+
+“So you have come! I was just going to speak to your man through the
+telephone, to tell him not to bother you, that it didn’t matter, and
+that to-morrow would do as well. It’s so very late.”
+
+He began to take off his overcoat, helped by Murgatroyd.
+
+“Not a bit too late!” he said. “I shall enjoy a little talk with you by
+the fire. Thanks, Murgatroyd! I was dining out with the Montgomeries in
+Eaton Square.”
+
+“Come upstairs.”
+
+She led the way, and as she mounted slowly with him close behind her she
+felt weak and now horribly afraid. She went into the drawing-room.
+He followed and shut the door, then came slowly, with his firm tread,
+towards her and the fire.
+
+“Ah!” he said. “You thought of me!”
+
+He had seen the cigar-box, the whisky and Perrier. A very gentle,
+intensely kind, almost beaming look came into his lined face.
+
+“Or--was it Murgatroyd?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I wonder whether you know what it means to an old fellow like myself to
+be thought of now and then in these little ways!”
+
+“Oh--Seymour!” she said.
+
+Tears stood in her eyes. His few simple words had suddenly brought home
+to her in a strange, intense way the long loneliness to which she
+had condemned him. And now he was an old fellow! And he was grateful,
+beamingly grateful, for a little commonplace thought about his comfort
+such as any hostess might surely have had!
+
+“Don’t!” she added. “You hurt me when you say such a thing.”
+
+“Do I? And if I take a cigar?”
+
+“Here! Let me clip it for you!”
+
+As she clipped it he said:
+
+“There is nothing serious the matter, is there, Adela? When I had your
+message I felt a little anxious.”
+
+She lit a match for him. She felt very tender over him, but she felt
+also very much afraid of him.
+
+“Your hand is trembling, my dear!”
+
+He took hold of her wrist, and held it while she lit his cigar. And his
+dry, firm fingers seemed to send her some strength.
+
+“If only I had as little to be ashamed of as he has!” she thought, with
+a sort of writhing despair.
+
+And she longed, as never before, for an easy conscience.
+
+“I’ve had rather a trying time just lately,” she said. “Come and sit
+down. Will you drink something?”
+
+“Not yet, thank you.”
+
+He sat down in an arm-chair and crossed his legs, putting the right leg
+over the left, as he always did. She was on her sofa, leaning on her
+left arm, and looking at him. She was trying to read him, to read his
+whole character, to force her way to his secret, that she might be
+sure how much she might dare. Could he ever turn against her? Was that
+possible? His kind, dark eyes were fixed upon her. Could they ever look
+unkindly at her? She could scarcely believe that they could. But she
+knew that in human nature few things are impossible. Such terrible
+changes can take place in a moment. And the mystery is never really
+solved.
+
+“Well, my dear, would you like to tell me what is troubling you? Perhaps
+I can do something.”
+
+“I want you to do something for me. Or rather--it would really be for
+somebody else. You remember Beryl Van Tuyn?”
+
+“The daffodil girl--yes.”
+
+“She has been here to-night. She is in a great difficulty. By the way,
+of course she knows about my consulting you. I told her I would do it.”
+
+“I did not suppose you would give away a confidence.”
+
+“No! Seymour, has it ever struck you that there is something in you
+and in me which is akin in spite of the tremendous differences in our
+natures?”
+
+“Oh yes.”
+
+“I’m glad. I like to feel that and--and I want you to feel it.”
+
+“I do. I feel it strongly.”
+
+“Whatever happens it would always be there.”
+
+“Yes, of course.”
+
+“It helps you to understand me, I expect.”
+
+“Surely it must.”
+
+“I wonder if you could ever--”
+
+“What is it, Adela?”
+
+“I wonder if you could ever turn against me.”
+
+“I don’t think that is very likely,” he said.
+
+She looked at him. He was smiling.
+
+“But--could nothing cause you to change towards me?”
+
+“Some things might cause me to change towards anyone.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“But as they are not in your nature we need not consider them.”
+
+“But how do you know?”
+
+“I do know.”
+
+“But--what?”
+
+“I know what you might do, or may have done. I know just as well what
+you have never done and could never do.”
+
+“But I have done some horrible things, Seymour.”
+
+“They are past. Let us forget them.”
+
+“But--horrible things come back in one’s life! They are like
+_revenants_. After years--they rise up.”
+
+“What is the matter, Adela? Do tell me.”
+
+“I want to, but I’m afraid.”
+
+And directly she had told him that she felt less afraid.
+
+“What are you afraid of?”
+
+“I’m afraid of you.”
+
+“Of me?”
+
+“Of what you may think of me, feel towards me, if I tell you.”
+
+“Then--you do care what I feel?”
+
+“I care very much. I care terribly.”
+
+Sir Seymour uncrossed his legs and made a slight movement as if he were
+going to get up. Then he sat still and took a pull at his cigar, and
+then he said:
+
+“You need not be afraid of me, Adela. I have made up my mind about you.
+Do you know what that means? It means that you cannot surprise me. And
+I think it is surprise which oftenest brings about changes in feeling.
+What is it? You say it is something to do with Miss Van Tuyn?”
+
+“Yes, but my life is in it, too; a horrible bit of my life.”
+
+“What can I do unless you tell me?”
+
+“That’s true.”
+
+She sat for a moment in silence gazing at him, at the lean figure, the
+weather-beaten face, the curly white hair, and at the dark eyes which
+were looking steadily at her, but not penetratingly, not cruelly. And
+then she sat straight up, took her arm from the sofa, folded her hands
+on her lap with an effort to make them look calm, and began to tell him.
+She spoke very simply, very steadily. She dressed nothing up. She
+strove to diminish nothing. Her only aim was to be quite unemotional and
+perfectly truthful. She began with Beryl Van Tuyn’s acquaintance with
+Arabian, how she had met him in Garstin’s studio, and went on till she
+came to the night when she and Craven had seen them together at the
+_Bella Napoli_.
+
+“I recognized the man Beryl was with,” she said. “I knew him to be a
+blackguard.”
+
+She described her abrupt departure from the restaurant, Craven’s
+following her, her effort to persuade him to go back and to take Beryl
+home.
+
+“I went home alone,” she said, “and considered what I ought to do.
+Finally I wrote Beryl a letter, it was something like this.”
+
+She gave him the gist of the letter. Seymour sat smoking and did not say
+a word. Her narrative had been so consecutive and plain that he had
+no need to ask any question. And she was glad of his silence. Any
+interruption, she felt, would have upset her, perhaps even have confused
+her.
+
+“Beryl was not satisfied with that letter,” she went on. “On the night
+when she had it--last night--she came to me to ask for an explanation.
+I didn’t want to give one. I did my best to avoid giving one. But when
+I found she was obstinate, and would not drop this man unless I gave
+her my reasons for warning her against him, when I found she had
+even thought of marrying him, I felt that it was my duty to tell her
+everything. So I told her--this.”
+
+And then she told him all the truth about the affair of the jewels,
+emphasizing nothing, but omitting nothing. She looked away from him,
+turned her eyes towards the fire, and tried to feel very calm and very
+detached. It was all ten years ago. But did that make any difference?
+For was she essentially different from the woman who had been Arabian’s
+victim?
+
+Still Seymour sat as before and went on smoking. As she was gazing at
+the fire she did not know for certain whether he was still looking at
+her or not.
+
+At last she had finished the personal part of her narrative, though she
+had still to tell him how Beryl had taken it and what had happened that
+day. Before going on to that she paused for a moment. And immediately
+she heard Seymour move. He got up and went slowly to the table where the
+whisky and Perrier water had been placed by Murgatroyd. Then she looked
+at him. He stood with his back to her. She saw him bend down and pour
+out a glass of the water. Without turning he lifted the glass to his
+mouth and drank. Then he put the glass down; and then he stood for a
+moment quite still, always keeping his back towards her. She wondered
+what he was looking at. That was the question in her mind. “What can
+Seymour be looking at?”
+
+At last he turned round. She thought that his face looked unusually
+stern, and his bushy eyebrows seemed--so she fancied--to be drawn down
+low above his eyes.
+
+“Go on--my dear,” he said in a rather gruff and very low voice.
+
+She quivered. She, perhaps, scarcely knew why. At the moment she really
+believed that she did not know why. Suddenly emotion began to gain on
+her. But she struggled resolutely against it.
+
+“Aren’t you--don’t you mean to sit down again?” she said.
+
+“No. I think I’ll stand.”
+
+And he came slowly to stand by the fire.
+
+“Well,” she began again, making a great effort, “I thought that was all.
+I didn’t think there was anything more for me to do. But Beryl came back
+again to-night and begged me to help her. She is terrified of what he
+may do. I tried to reassure her. But it was no good.”
+
+And again she narrated, now with difficulty forcing herself to seem calm
+and unembarrassed, exactly what had happened that day between Beryl Van
+Tuyn and herself, till she came to the moment when she had turned away
+from Beryl and had gone to stand by the fire. Then once more she paused
+and seemed seized by hesitation. As Sir Seymour said nothing, did not
+help her out, at last she went on:
+
+“Then I thought of you. I had never meant to tell anyone but Beryl, but
+as _I_ could do nothing to help her, and as she is perhaps, really in
+danger--she is only a girl, and she spoke of the fascination of fear--I
+felt I must make a further effort to do something. And I thought of
+you.”
+
+“Why was that?” asked Sir Seymour, turning towards her, but not
+impulsively.
+
+“Because I knew if anyone could stop this thing you could.”
+
+“That was your reason?”
+
+“That--and--and I knew that I could never tell all this--about myself, I
+mean--to anyone but you. For ten years no one has known it.”
+
+“You felt you could tell me!”
+
+The way in which he said those words was so inexpressive that Lady
+Sellingworth did not know what was the feeling behind them, whether it
+was astonishment, indignation, or something quite different.
+
+“I--I didn’t want to--” She almost faltered, again full of fear, almost
+of terror. “I was afraid to. But I felt I could, and I had told Beryl
+so.”
+
+“I wonder what made you feel you could,” he said, still in the same
+curiously inexpressive way.
+
+She said nothing. She leaned back on the sofa and her hands began to
+move restlessly, nervously. She plucked at her dress, put a hand to the
+ruby pinned in the front of her bodice, lifted the hand to her face,
+laid it on the back of the sofa.
+
+“What was it?” he said.
+
+“I hardly feel I can tell you,” she said.
+
+“Then don’t, if you would rather not. But I should be glad to know.”
+
+“Would you? I told Beryl the reason.”
+
+She felt forced to say that, forced to speak that bit of truth.
+
+“Then, if so, cannot you tell me?”
+
+“I said--I said I could tell you because I knew you were fond of me.”
+
+“Ah--that was it!”
+
+He was silent. At last he said:
+
+“I should like to ask you a question. May I?”
+
+“Yes--please do.”
+
+“Are you very fond of Beryl Van Tuyn?”
+
+“Oh, no!”
+
+“Aren’t you at all fond of her?”
+
+“I’m afraid not. No. But I like her much better than I did.”
+
+“Since you have done something for her?”
+
+“Perhaps it is that.”
+
+“It is that.”
+
+He came towards the sofa and stood by it looking down at her.
+
+“I told you just now, Adela, that you couldn’t surprise me. What you
+have done in connexion with Beryl Van Tuyn has not surprised me. I
+always knew you were capable of such a thing; yes, even of a thing as
+fine as that. Thank God you have had your opportunity. Of course you
+took it. But thank God you have had it.”
+
+“I had to take it. I couldn’t do anything else.”
+
+“Of course _you_ couldn’t.”
+
+She got up. She did not know why. She just felt that she had to get up.
+Seymour put his hands on her shoulders.
+
+“Have you ever wondered why I was able to go on loving you?” he asked
+her.
+
+“Yes, very often.”
+
+“Well, now perhaps you won’t wonder any more.”
+
+And he lifted his hands from her shoulders. But he stood there for a
+moment looking at her. And in his eyes she read her reward.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Early on the following morning, soon after ten o’clock Miss Van Tuyn was
+startled by a knock on her bedroom door. Everything at all unexpected
+startled her just now. Her nerves, as even old Fanny could not help
+noticing, had gone “all to pieces.” She lived in perpetual fear. Nearly
+all the previous night she had been lying awake turning over and over in
+her mind the horrible possibilities of the future. It was in vain that
+she tried to call her normal common sense to the rescue, in vain that
+she tried to look at facts calmly, to sum them up dispassionately, and
+to draw from them reasonable conclusions. She could not be reasonable.
+Her brain said to her: “You have no reason for fear. You are perfectly
+safe. Your folly and wilfulness, your carelessness of opinion, your
+reckless spirit of defiant independence, your ugly and abominable
+desires”--her brain did not spare her--“might easily have brought you
+to irretrievable ruin. They might have destroyed you. But Fate has
+intervened to protect you. You have been saved from the consequences of
+your own imprudence--to call it by no other name. Give thanks to the God
+of luck, and to the woman who sacrificed her pride for your sake, and
+live differently in the future.” Her brain, in fact, told her she was
+saved. But something else that she could not classify, something still
+and remote and persistent, told her that she was in great danger. She
+said to herself, thinking of Arabian: “What can he do? I am my own
+mistress. If I choose to cut him dead he must accept my decision to have
+nothing more to do with him and go out of my life. He simply can’t do
+anything else. I have the whole thing in my hands. He hasn’t a scrap of
+my writing. He can’t blackmail me. He can’t compromise me more than I
+have already compromised myself by going about with him and being seen
+in his flat. He is helpless, and I have absolutely nothing to be afraid
+of.” She said all this to herself, and yet she was full of fear. That
+fear had driven her to Lady Sellingworth on the previous evening, and it
+had grown in the night. The thought of Arabian tormented her. She said
+to herself that he could do nothing and, even while she said it, the
+inexorable something within her whispered: “What might not that man do?”
+ Her imagination put no limit now to his possibilities for evil. All the
+horrors of the underworld were, for her, congregated together in him.
+She trembled at the memory of having been in his arms, shut up alone
+with him in the flat by the river. She attributed to him nameless
+powers. Something mysterious in him, something occult, had reduced her
+apparently to the level of an imaginative child, who peoples the night
+with spectres and conceives of terrors she cannot describe.
+
+She felt that Arabian was not as other men, that he really was what
+Garstin had called him, a king in the underworld, and that that was why
+he had had power over her. She felt that he had within him something
+which ruled, which would have its way. She felt that he was more
+persistent than other men, more crafty, more self-possessed, more
+capable, more subtle. She felt that he had greatness as a ruffian, as
+another man might have greatness as a saint. And she felt above all that
+he was an expert with women.
+
+If he had wanted Adela Sellingworth as well as her jewels, how would
+it have been then? What would have happened ten years ago? He had not
+wanted Adela Sellingworth. But he wanted her. She was positive of that.
+That he had known she was well off and was going to be rich she did
+not doubt for a moment. She could never forget as long as she lived the
+fleeting expression which had changed his face when she had told him
+of the death of her father. At that moment he had certainly felt that
+a fortune was probably almost within his grasp. Nevertheless she was
+positive, she was absolutely certain as a girl can be about such a
+thing, that he wanted and had long wanted her. He had waited because
+mingled with his man’s desire for her there had been the other desire.
+He might have rushed at an intrigue. Such a man could have no real
+delicacies. He was too wise to rush at a marriage. And he must have had
+marriage in his mind almost ever since he had met her. He must have made
+inquiries, have found out all about her, and then laid his plans. Her
+looks had probably brought him for the first time to Garstin’s studio.
+But it was not only his admiration for her appearance which had brought
+him there again and again, which had taught him detached self-control,
+almost distant respect, puzzling reserve, secrecy in intimacy, which had
+taught him to wait--till he knew.
+
+And when he had not waited, when he had chosen to give way because the
+right moment had come, when he had made her go with him to his flat,
+when he had shown her what he wanted! His warmth then had not been a
+pretending. And yet, just before he had taken her in his arms, he had
+deliberately managed so that Mrs. Birchington should see her go into his
+flat. What a horrible mingling of elements there was in this man! Even
+his natural passions were intertwined with his hideous professional
+instincts The stretched-out hand of the lover was also the stretched-out
+hand of the thief.
+
+When she heard the knock on her bedroom door she trembled.
+
+“Yes?” she said, after a moment of hesitation.
+
+She was up and was sitting in an arm-chair near the window having
+breakfast, and looking at her post.
+
+“Yes?”
+
+Another knock.
+
+“Come in!” she cried.
+
+The door was gingerly opened and a page-boy showed himself. Miss Van
+Tuyn looked at him with dread.
+
+“What is it? Something for me?”
+
+“There’s a gentleman wants to see you, ma’am.”
+
+“I can’t see anyone. I told them so at the bureau. Where is he?”
+
+“Down below, ma’am.”
+
+“Send him away. Say I’m still asleep. Say--”
+
+She noticed for the first time that the boy had a card. He had been
+hiding it pressed to a salver against his trouser-leg. Now he lifted the
+salver. But Miss Van Tuyn did not take the card. She was certain the man
+below was Arabian.
+
+“I can’t see anyone. It’s much too early.”
+
+“The gentleman said it was very important, ma’am, and I was to say so,”
+ said the page, with a certain chubby dignity that was almost official.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn was now terrified. It was Arabian, and he would not go
+till he had seen her. She was certain of that. He would wait downstairs.
+She would be a prisoner in her rooms. All her fear of him seemed to rush
+upon her intensified, a fear such as she had never felt before. She
+got up tingling all over, and with a feeling as if all the blood had
+suddenly sunk away from her temples.
+
+“You must tell him--”
+
+The page-boy was now holding out the salver with the card on it, almost
+as if in self-protection. Her eyes fell on it against her will, and she
+saw there were four printed words on it. On Arabian’s card there were
+only two: Nicolas Arabian. Instantly she stretched out her hand and took
+the card up--
+
+“General Sir Seymour Portman.”
+
+
+Her relief was so great that she could not conceal it.
+
+“Oh!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Ma’am?” said the boy, looking more official.
+
+“Please run down--”
+
+“Run ma’am?”
+
+“Yes--down at once and bring the gentleman up to my sitting-room. Be as
+quick as you can.”
+
+The page retired with a stiff back and rather slow-moving legs.
+
+So Adela had wasted no time! She had been as good as her word. What a
+splendid woman she was!
+
+Miss Van Tuyn did something to her gown, to her hair. Not that she
+wanted to make an impression on Sir Seymour. Circumstances were
+combining at present to drive her away from her vanity. Really she acted
+mechanically. Then she prepared to go to the sitting-room. And then, at
+the bedroom door she hesitated, suddenly realizing what lay before her.
+Finally she opened the door and listened. She heard almost immediately
+another door opened and a boy’s chirpy voice say:
+
+“This way, sir, please!”
+
+Then she went out and came upon Sir Seymour Portman in the lobby.
+
+“How very kind of you to come!” she said, with an attempt at eager
+cordiality but feeling now strangely shy and guilty. “And so early!”
+
+“Good morning! May I put my hat here?”
+
+“Yes, do. And leave your coat. Is it cold out?”
+
+“Rather cold.”
+
+“This is my little room.”
+
+She went before him into the sitting-room which had a dreadfully early
+morning air, with its only just beginning fire, and its wintry dimness
+of the poor and struggling day.
+
+“If only we could have met in the evening!” she thought.
+
+It was awful to discuss such a situation as hers when the milkman had
+scarcely finished his rounds, and when her vitality had not been warmed
+up.
+
+“Do sit down, Sir Seymour!” she said.
+
+“Thank you!”
+
+And he sat down in a businesslike sort of way, and at once began.
+
+“Rather late last night I saw Lady Sellingworth.”
+
+“Oh? Yes?”
+
+“She sent for me. You know why, I understand.”
+
+“Yes. I had been with her.”
+
+“She told me the whole matter.”
+
+“Oh! Did she? I--I’ve been awfully foolish. I deserve to--I deserve
+everything. I know that. Adela has been so good to me. I can never say
+how good. She might so easily have--I mean considering the way I have--”
+
+She stopped. Adela could not have told Sir Seymour about the unkindness
+of the girl she had sent him to help. Miss Van Tuyn remembered that just
+in time.
+
+“Lady Sellingworth did what you wished,” said Sir Seymour, still in
+a quiet and businesslike way, “and consulted me. She told me what you
+wanted; that this man, Arabian, should be made to understand that he
+must finally give up any plans he had formed with regard to you.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn felt the red beginning to creep in her cheeks.
+
+“Yes,” she said, looking down.
+
+“Perhaps this can be done,” continued Sir Seymour, in a practical way,
+rather like a competent man at a board meeting. “We must see.”
+
+He did not suggest that she could do it herself. She was thankful to him
+for that.
+
+“Have you a photograph of this man?” he continued.
+
+“Oh--no!”
+
+“That is a pity.”
+
+“But why do you want--”
+
+“I should like to have his photograph to show at Scotland Yard.”
+
+“Oh!” she exclaimed.
+
+Her face was scarlet now. Her forehead was burning. An acute and
+horrible sense of shame possessed her, seemed to be wrapped round her
+like a stinging garment.
+
+“I’ve--I’ve never had a photograph of him,” she said.
+
+After a short pause Sir Seymour said:
+
+“You’ve got his address.”
+
+The words seemed a statement as he said them.
+
+“Yes,” she said.
+
+“Will you kindly write it down for me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She got up, still wrapped up in shame, and went to the writing-table.
+She took up a pen to write Arabian’s address. But she could not remember
+the number of the flat. Her memory refused to give it to her.
+
+“I can’t remember the number,” she said, standing by the writing-table.
+
+“If you can give me the address of the flats I can easily find out the
+number.”
+
+“It is Rose Tree Gardens”--she began writing it down--“Rose Tree
+Gardens, Chelsea. It is close to the river.”
+
+She came away from the writing-table, and gave him the paper with the
+address on it.
+
+“Thank you!”
+
+He took the paper, folded it up, drew out a leather case from an inner
+pocket of his braided black jacket, and consigned the paper to it. Miss
+Van Tuyn sat down again.
+
+“I understand you met this man at the studio of Mr. Garstin, the
+painter?” said Sir Seymour.
+
+“Yes. But he wasn’t a friend of Mr. Garstin’s. Mr. Garstin saw him at
+the Cafe Royal and wished to paint him, so he asked him to come to the
+studio.”
+
+“And he has painted a portrait of him?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Is it a good one?”
+
+“Yes, wonderful!” she said, with a shudder.
+
+“I mean really is it a good likeness?”
+
+“Oh! Yes, it is very like in a way, horribly like.”
+
+“In a way?”
+
+“I mean that it gives the worst side. But it is like.”
+
+“I suppose the portrait is still in Mr. Garstin’s studio?”
+
+“I suppose it is. I haven’t seen Mr. Garstin for two or three days. But
+I suppose it’s there.”
+
+“Please give me Mr. Garstin’s address--the studio address,” said Sir
+Seymour.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She got up again and went to the writing-table. There seemed to her to
+be something deadly in this interview. She could not feel humanity in
+it. Sir Seymour was terribly impersonal. There was something almost
+machine like about him. She did not know him well, but how different
+he had been to her in Berkeley Square! There he had been a charming
+old courtier. He had shown a sort of gallant admiration of her. He had
+beamed kindly upon her youth and her daring. Now he showed nothing.
+
+But--Adela had told him!
+
+She wrote down Dick Garstin’s address in Glebe Place, and was about to
+come away from the writing-table when Sir Seymour said:
+
+“Could you also kindly give me your card with a line of introduction to
+Mr. Garstin? I don’t know him.”
+
+“Oh, I will of course!”
+
+She found one of her cards and hesitated.
+
+“What shall I put?” she asked.
+
+“You might put ‘To introduce,’ and then my name.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She wrote the words on the card.
+
+“Perhaps it might be as well to add ‘_Please see him_,’ and underline
+it. I understand Mr. Garstin is a brusque sort of fellow.”
+
+“Yes, he is.”
+
+She added the words he had suggested.
+
+“It’s very--it’s more than kind of you to take all this trouble,” she
+said, again coming to him. “I am ashamed.”
+
+She gave him the card. She could not look into his face.
+
+“I am ashamed,” she repeated, in a low voice.
+
+“Well now,” he said, “try to get the matter off your mind. Don’t
+give way to useless fears. Most of us fear far more than there is any
+occasion for.”
+
+He stood up.
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“If you wish for me, call me up. I am at St. James’s Palace. But I don’t
+suppose you will have need of me. By the way, there’s one thing more I
+perhaps ought to ask you. Forgive me! Has there ever been anything in
+the nature of a threat from this fellow?”
+
+“Oh, no!” she said. “No, no, no!”
+
+She was swallowing sobs that suddenly began rising in her throat, sobs
+of utter shame and of stricken vanity.
+
+“It’s all too horrible!” she thought.
+
+For a moment she hated the straight-backed, soldierly old man who was
+standing before her. For he saw her in the dust, where no one ought ever
+to see her.
+
+“He’s in love with me!” she said.
+
+It was as if the words were forced out of her against her will. Directly
+she had said them she bitterly regretted them. They were the cry of her
+undying vanity that must try to put itself right, to stand up for itself
+at whatever cost. Directly she had spoken them she saw a slight twitch
+pull the left side of his face upward. It had upon her a moral effect.
+She felt it as his irresistible comment--a comment of the body, but
+coming from elsewhere--on her and her nature, and her recent association
+with Arabian. And suddenly her hatred died, and she longed to do
+something to establish herself in his regard, to gain his respect.
+
+Already he was holding out his hand to her. She took his hand and held
+it tightly.
+
+“Don’t think too badly of me,” she said imploringly. “I want you not
+to. Because I think you see clearly--you see people as they are. You
+saw Adela as she is. And perhaps no one else did. But you don’t know how
+fine she is--even you don’t. I had treated her badly. I had been unkind
+to her, very unkind. I had--I had been spiteful to her, and tried to
+harm her happiness. And yet she told me! I am sure no other woman would
+ever have done what she has done.”
+
+“She had to do it,” he said gravely.
+
+But his hand now slightly pressed hers.
+
+“_Had_ to? But why?”
+
+“Because she happens to be a thoroughbred.”
+
+“Ah!” she breathed.
+
+She was looking into his dark old eyes, and now they were kind, almost
+soft.
+
+“We must take care,” he added, “that what she had done shall not be done
+in vain. We owe her that. Good-bye.”
+
+“And you don’t think too badly about me?”
+
+“Once I called you the daffodil girl to her.”
+
+“Did you?”
+
+“Youth is pretty cruel sometimes. When you’ve forgotten all this, don’t
+forget to be kind.”
+
+“To her! But how could I?”
+
+“But I don’t mean only to her!”
+
+And then he left her.
+
+When he had gone she sat still for a long while, thinking. And the
+strange thing was that for once she was not thinking about herself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Rather late in the afternoon of the same day, towards half-past five,
+Dick Garstin, who was alone in his studio upstairs smoking a pipe and
+reading Delacroix’s “Mon Journal,” heard his door bell ring. He was
+stretched out on a divan, and he lay for a moment without moving,
+puffing at his pipe with the book in his hand. Then he heard the bell
+again, and got up. Arabian’s portrait stood on its easel in the middle
+of the room. Garstin glanced at it as he went toward the stairs. Since
+the day when he had shown it for the first time to Beryl Van Tuyn and
+Arabian he had not seen either of them. Nor had he had a word from them.
+This had not troubled him. Already he was at work on another sitter, a
+dancer in the Russian ballet, talented, decadent, impertinent, and, so
+Garstin believed, marked out for early death in a madhouse--altogether
+quite an interesting study. But now, looking at Arabian’s portrait,
+Garstin thought:
+
+“Probably the man himself. I knew he would come back, and we should have
+a battle. Now for it!”
+
+And he smiled as he went striding downstairs.
+
+But when he opened the door he found standing outside in the foggy
+darkness a tall, soldierly old man, with an upright figure, white hair,
+and moustache, a lined red face and dark eyes which looked straight into
+his.
+
+“Who are you, sir?” said Garstin. “And what do you want?”
+
+“Are you Mr. Dick Garstin?” said the old man.
+
+“Or rather, elderly,” Garstin now said to himself, glancing sharply over
+his visitor’s strong, lean frame and broad shoulders.
+
+“Yes, I am.”
+
+The stranger opened a leather case and took out a card.
+
+“Perhaps you will kindly read that.”
+
+Garstin took the card.
+
+“Beryl!” he said. “What’s up?”
+
+And he read: “To introduce Sir Seymour Portman, _please see him_. B. V.
+T.”
+
+“Are you Sir Seymour Portman?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Come in.”
+
+Sir Seymour stepped in.
+
+“Take off your coat?”
+
+“If you’ll allow me. I won’t keep you long.”
+
+“The longer the better!” said Garstin with offhand heartiness. He had
+taken a liking to his visitor at first sight.
+
+“A damned fine old chap!” had been his instant mental comment on seeing
+Sir Seymour. “A fellow to swear by!”
+
+“Come upstairs. I’ll show you the way,” he added.
+
+He tramped up and Sir Seymour followed him.
+
+“I do most of my painting here,” said Garstin. “Sit down. Have a cigar.”
+
+“Thank you very much, but I won’t smoke,” said Sir Seymour, looking
+round casually at the portraits in the room before sitting down and
+crossing his right leg over his left leg. “And I won’t take up your time
+for more than a few minutes.”
+
+At this moment he noticed at some distance the portrait of Arabian on
+its easel, and he put up his eyeglasses. Then he moved.
+
+“Will you allow me to look at that portrait over there?” he asked.
+
+“Rather! It’s the last thing I’ve done, and not so bad either!”
+
+Sir Seymour got up and went to stand in front of the portrait. He was
+puzzled, and his face showed that; he frowned and pursed his lips,
+bending forward.
+
+“This is a portrait of a man called Arabian, isn’t it?” he said at
+length, turning round to Garstin.
+
+“Yes. D’you know the fellow?”
+
+“I haven’t that--privilege,” replied Sir Seymour with an extraordinarily
+dry intonation. “But I must have seen him somewhere.”
+
+“About town. He’s been here some time.”
+
+“But he’s altered!” said Sir Seymour, still looking hard at the
+portrait.
+
+“I’m not a photographer, you know!”
+
+“A photographer!” said Sir Seymour, who was something of a connoisseur
+in painting, and had a few good specimens of the Barbizon School in his
+apartment at St. James’s Palace. “No. This isn’t a photograph in paint.
+It’s a”--he gazed again at the portrait--“it’s a masterly study of a
+remarkable and hideous personality.”
+
+“Hideous!” said Garstin sharply.
+
+“Yes, hideous,” said Sir Seymour grimly. “An abominable face! Ah!”
+
+He had been bending, but now pulled himself up.
+
+“I saw that man at the Ritz Hotel a good many years ago,” he said. “I
+was giving a lunch. He was lunching close by with--let me see--an old
+woman, yes, in a rusty black wig. Someone spoke to me about him, and
+I--, Yes! I remember it all perfectly. But he looked much younger
+then. It must be over ten years ago. I spotted him at once as a shady
+character. One would, of course. But you have brought it all to the
+surface in some subtle way. Does he like it?”
+
+“To tell the truth I don’t believe he does.”
+
+“I wish to speak to you about that man.”
+
+“Sit down again. Have a whisky?”
+
+“No, thanks.”
+
+“What is it? Are the police after him?”
+
+“I’m not aware of it.”
+
+“I know everything about him, as you see”--he shot out an arm towards
+the portrait--“and nothing. I picked him up at the Cafe Royal. He’s a
+magnificent specimen.”
+
+“No doubt. What I want to know is whether you will allow me to bring two
+or three people here to see this portrait? I’m doing this--I’m here now,
+and want to come here again, if you are so kind as to allow me--”
+
+“Always jolly glad to see you!” interjected Garstin, with a sort of
+gruff heartiness.
+
+“Thank you! I’m doing this for your friend, Miss Beryl Van Tuyn.”
+
+“Ha!” said Garstin.
+
+“I don’t think I need to go into the matter further than to say that she
+does not wish to have anything more to do with this Mr. Arabian.”
+
+“Oh, she’s found him out at last, has she, and put you up to--”
+
+Garstin paused. Then he added:
+
+“It’s like Beryl’s cheek to ask a man of your type to interfere in such
+a matter. Fellows like Arabian are hardly in your line.”
+
+“Oh, I’ve had to deal with men of all classes.”
+
+“And quite able to, I should say. So Beryl’s had enough of that chap?”
+
+“Mr. Garstin, I am going to be frank with you, frank to this extent.
+Arabian is a blackguard.”
+
+“No news to me!”
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn can have no further acquaintance with him, and I am
+going to do my best to see to that. But I believe this fellow is very
+persistent.”
+
+“I should say so. He’s a hard nut to crack. You may depend on that.”
+
+“And therefore strong measures may be necessary.”
+
+“Whom do you want to bring here to look at my stuff?”
+
+“Two or three officials from Scotland Yard.”
+
+Garstin uttered the thrush’s song through half-closed lips.
+
+“That’s it! Well, you can bring them along whenever you like.”
+
+“Thank you. They may not be art experts, but they, or one of them, may
+possibly be useful for my purpose.”
+
+“Right you are! So you know something definite about the fellow?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Don’t bother yourself! I don’t want to know what it is,” snapped out
+Garstin abruptly.
+
+Sir Seymour smiled, and it was almost what Lady Sellingworth called his
+“beaming” smile. He got up and held out his hand.
+
+“Thank you,” he said.
+
+Garstin gave him a strong grip.
+
+“Glad I’ve met you!” he said. “Beryl’s done me a good turn.”
+
+“Perhaps you will allow me to say--though I’m no expert, and my opinion
+may therefore have no value in your eyes--but you’ve painted a portrait
+such as one very seldom sees nowadays.”
+
+“D’you mean you think it’s fine?”
+
+“Very fine! Wonderful!”
+
+Garstin’s usually hard face softened in an extraordinary way.
+
+“Your opinion goes down in my memory in red letters.”
+
+Sir Seymour turned to go. As he did so he cast a look round the studio,
+which suggested to Garstin that he would perhaps like to examine the
+other portraits dotted about on easels and hanging on the walls. A faint
+reddish line appeared in the painter’s shaven blue cheeks.
+
+“Not worth your while!” he almost muttered.
+
+“Eh?” said Sir Seymour.
+
+“A lot of decadent stuff. I’ve been choosing my models badly. But--” he
+paused, looking almost diffident for a moment.
+
+“Yes?” said Sir Seymour.
+
+“Perhaps, if we ever get to know each other a bit better, you’d let me
+have a shy at you for a change?”
+
+“That would be an honour,” said Sir Seymour with a touch of his very
+simple, courtly manner.
+
+“In return you know for my letting in the detectives!” said Garstin,
+with a laugh. “Hulloh!”
+
+He had heard the bell ring downstairs.
+
+“If it’s our man!” he said, instinctively lowering his voice.
+
+“Arabian! Are you expecting him?”
+
+“No. But it’s just as likely as not. Want to meet him?”
+
+“I can hardly say that!” said Sir Seymour, looking suddenly, Garstin
+thought, remarkably like a very well-bred ramrod.
+
+“Well, then--”
+
+“But it may be necessary.” He hesitated obviously, then added: “If it
+should be Arabian by chance, perhaps it would be as well if I did see
+him.”
+
+“Just as you like.”
+
+“I’ll stay if you will allow me,” said Sir Seymour, with sudden
+decision, like a man who had just overcome something.
+
+The bell rang again.
+
+“Can you act?” said Garstin, quickly.
+
+“Sufficiently, I dare say,” said Sir Seymour, with a very faint and grim
+smile.
+
+“Then you’d better! He can!”
+
+And Garstin sprang down the stairs. Two or three minutes later Arabian
+walked into the studio with Garstin just behind him. When he saw Sir
+Seymour a slight look of surprise came into his face, and he half turned
+towards Garstin as if in inquiry. Sir Seymour realized that Garstin had
+not mentioned that there was a visitor in the studio.
+
+“A friend of mine, Sir Seymour Portman,” said Garstin. “Mr. Nicolas
+Arabian!”
+
+Arabian bowed and said formally:
+
+“Very glad to meet you.”
+
+Sir Seymour bowed, and said:
+
+“Thanks.”
+
+“Sit down, my boy!” said Garstin, with sudden heartiness, laying a hand
+on Arabian’s shoulder. “And I know you’ll put your lips to a whisky.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Arabian.
+
+And he sat down in a deep arm-chair. Sir Seymour saw his brown eyes, for
+a moment hard and inquiring, rest upon the visitor he had not expected
+to find, and wondered whether Arabian remembered having seen him before.
+If so Arabian would also remember that he, Seymour, was a friend of
+Adela Sellingworth, who had been with him at the Ritz on that day ten
+years ago.
+
+“Say how much,” said Garstin, coming up with the whisky.
+
+Sir Seymour noticed that Arabian took a great deal of the spirit and
+very little soda-water with it. Directly his glass was filled--it was a
+long glass--he drank almost greedily.
+
+“A cigar?” said Garstin. “But I know without asking.”
+
+“I do not refuse,” said Arabian.
+
+And Sir Seymour hated his voice, while realizing that it was agreeable,
+perhaps even seductive.
+
+“There! Now we’re cozy!” said Garstin. “But I wish Sir Seymour you’d
+join us!”
+
+“If you will allow me I will smoke a light cigar I have here.”
+
+And Sir Seymour drew out a cigar-case and lit up a pale and long
+Havannah.
+
+“That’s better!” said Garstin, drinking. “How’s Beryl, my boy?”
+
+“I have not seen Miss Van Tuyn to-day,” said Arabian. “But I hope to see
+her to-morrow.”
+
+He looked at Sir Seymour, and there seemed to be a flicker of suspicion
+in his eyes.
+
+“DO you know Miss Van Tuyn?” he asked.
+
+“Very slightly,” said Sir Seymour. “I have met her once or twice in
+London. She is a very beautiful creature.”
+
+There was constraint in the room. Sir Seymour felt it strongly and
+feared that it came from something in him. Evidently he was not a very
+good actor. He found it difficult to be easy and agreeable with a man
+whom he longed to get hold of by the collar and thrash till it was time
+to hand him over to the police. But he resolved to make a strong effort
+to conceal what he could not conquer. And he began to talk to Arabian.
+Afterwards he could not remember what they had talked about just then.
+He could only remember the strangeness which he had realized as he sat
+there smoking his Havannah, the strangeness of life. That he should
+be smoking and chatting with the scoundrel who had changed Adela’s
+existence, who had tricked her, robbed her, driven her into the
+solitude which had lasted ten years! And why was he doing it? He did not
+absolutely know. But his instinct had told him to stay on in Garstin’s
+studio when everything else in him, revolting, had shrunk from meeting
+this beast, unless and until he could deal with him properly.
+
+He had smoked about half his cigar, and the constraint in the
+room seemed to him to be lessened, though not abolished, when the
+conversation took a turn quite unexpected by him. And all that was said
+in the studio from that moment remained firmly fixed in his memory.
+Garstin got up to fetch some more whisky for Arabian, whose glass was
+now empty, and as he came back with the decanter he said to Arabian:
+
+“Sir Seymour’s had a good look at your portrait, Arabian.”
+
+“Indeed!” said Arabian.
+
+“And he thinks it’s damn fine. As I’m giving it to you, I thought you’d
+like to know that it’s appreciated.”
+
+There was an unmistakably malicious expression on Garstin’s face as he
+spoke, and his small eyes travelled quickly from Arabian to Sir Seymour.
+
+“In fact,” added Garstin, lifting the decanter to pour the whisky
+into Arabian’s glass, “Sir Seymour is so pleased with my work that I
+shouldn’t wonder if he lets me paint him.”
+
+“Ah!” said Arabian, looking at Sir Seymour, with a sudden hard intensity
+which strangely transformed his face, “this is good news. I am pleased.
+But--thank you!” (to Garstin who poured out some more whisky) “that will
+do, please! But you are not afraid of the drawback?”
+
+“What drawback?” asked Sir Seymour.
+
+“Mr. Dick Garstin makes us all look like _canaille_!”
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+“But have you not noticed this?” said Arabian.
+
+And the agreeable softness of his voice altered, giving way to an almost
+rasping quality of sound. He put down his glass and got up, with a lithe
+and swift movement that seemed somehow menacing. It was so light, so
+agile, so noiseless and controlled.
+
+“Surely you have. Please, look at all these!”
+
+He made a sweeping circular movement with his arm. Sir Seymour got on
+his feet.
+
+“Do you not see? There is the same thing in all. We are all placed by
+Mr. Dick Garstin in the same boat. Even the judge, he is there too.
+Look!”
+
+Sir Seymour looked from canvas to canvas and then at Arabian.
+
+“Well?” said Arabian, still in the rasping voice. “Do I say true? Are we
+not all turned into _canaille_ by Dick Garstin?”
+
+Sir Seymour did not answer.
+
+“With you if you are painted,” continued Arabian, “it will be the same.
+Dick Garstin must see bad in us all.”
+
+He laughed and his laugh was oddly shrill and ugly.
+
+“It is an _idee fixe_,” he said. “You see, I am frank. I say what I
+think, Dick Garstin.”
+
+“No objection to that!” said Garstin, with a mischievous smile. “But
+if you don’t like your picture you won’t want to have it. So let us
+consider our bargain cancelled.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Arabian, “the picture is mine.”
+
+“The bargain we made,” said Garstin, turning to Sir Seymour, “was this:
+Mr. Arabian was to be kind enough to sit to me on two conditions. One
+was in my favour, the other in his.”
+
+“I beg your pardon!” said Arabian sharply.
+
+But Garstin continued inflexibly:
+
+“I was to have the right to exhibit the picture, and, after that, I was
+to hand it over as a present to Arabian.”
+
+“No, that was not the bargain, please!” said Arabian.
+
+“Not the bargain?” said Garstin, with an air of humorous surprise.
+
+“Oh, no. You kindly said that if I gave up my time to you, as I have
+done, very much of my time, you would give me the picture when it was
+finished. That was the bargain between us. But I did not say I would
+allow you to exhibit my picture.”
+
+“But I told you before I ever put a smudge of paint on the canvas that I
+should want to exhibit it.”
+
+“That is quite true.”
+
+“Well, then?”
+
+“Two must speak to make a bargain. Is it not so?” He spoke to Sir
+Seymour.
+
+“I presume so,” said the latter, very solemnly.
+
+He had realized that this odd scene had been brought about deliberately,
+and perhaps by both of the men who stood before him. Garstin had
+certainly started it, but Arabian had surely with purpose, taken the cue
+from Garstin.
+
+“Ah! You hear!”
+
+“I do!” said Garstin, composedly.
+
+“Well, Dick Garstin, I did not say I would permit my picture to be
+exhibited by you. And that was on purpose. I intended to wait until I
+saw how you would make me appear. I have waited. There I am!” He pointed
+to the portrait. “It is fine, perhaps, as you say. But I do not choose
+that people should see that and be told, ‘That is Nicolas Arabian.’ I do
+not give you permission to show that portrait.”
+
+“You don’t like it?”
+
+“You have made of me a beast. That is what I say.”
+
+“Sorry you think so! But what’s to be done? That picture is worth from
+eight hundred to a thousand pounds at the very least. You don’t suppose
+I am going to give it to you without letting the people who care about
+my stuff have a look at it? Why, where is your sense of fairness, my
+boy?”
+
+“I do not know really what you mean by that!”
+
+“Well, I ask you, Sir Seymour, would it be fair that I should have all
+my trouble for nothing? He can have the picture. But I want my _kudos_.
+Eh?”
+
+“I quite understand that,” said Sir Seymour, calmly.
+
+Arabian turned round and faced him. And as he did so Sir Seymour said to
+himself:
+
+“The fellow’s been drinking heavily.”
+
+This thought had not occurred in his mind till this moment, but he felt
+certain that Garstin’s sharp eyes had noticed the fact sooner, probably
+directly they had seen Arabian at the street door. No doubt the very
+stiff whisky-and-soda Arabian had just drunk had made it more obvious.
+Anyhow, Sir Seymour had no doubt at all about it now. It was not
+noticeable in Arabian’s face. But his manner began to show it to the
+experienced eyes of the old campaigner.
+
+“But, please, do you understand my feeling? Would you like to be made
+what you are not--a beast?”
+
+Sir Seymour saw Garstin, perhaps with difficulty, shutting off a smile.
+
+“I can’t say I should,” he answered, with absolute gravity.
+
+“Would you,” pursued Arabian, apparently in desperate earnest, “would
+you allow a picture of you like this to be shown to all your friends?”
+
+“I think,” returned Sir Seymour, still with an absolute and simple
+gravity, “that I should object to that--strongly.”
+
+“You hear!” said Arabian to Garstin. “It is your friend who says this.”
+
+“I can’t help that,” said Garstin, totally unperturbed. “I’m going to
+exhibit that picture.”
+
+“No! No!” said Arabian.
+
+And as he spoke he suddenly bared his teeth.
+
+Garstin, without making any rejoinder to this almost brutally forcible
+exclamation, which was full of violent will, thrust a hand into his
+waistcoat pocket and pulled out a big gold watch.
+
+“I say, I’m awfully sorry,” he said, with a swift glance at Sir Seymour,
+which the latter did not miss, “but I must turn you both out. I’m dining
+at the Arts Club to-night. Jinks--you know the Slade Jinks--is coming to
+pick me up. You’ll forgive me, Sir Seymour?”
+
+His voice was unusually gentle as he said the last words.
+
+“Of course. I’ve stayed an unconscionable time. Are you going my way,
+Mr. Arabian?”
+
+Garstin’s mouth twitched. Before Arabian could reply, Garstin said:
+
+“Look here, Arabian!”
+
+“Yes--please?” said Arabian.
+
+“You and I differ pretty badly about this business of your damned
+portrait.”
+
+“Ah, yes!”
+
+“Sir Seymour’s a just man, a very just man. Let’s hear what he has to
+say.”
+
+“But you tell us you have no time!”
+
+“Exactly! Jinks you know! He’s a devil for punctuality. They set the
+clocks by him at the Slade! But _you_--”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“Talk it over with Sir Seymour. Get his unbiased verdict. And let me
+hear from you any time to-morrow. He’ll say what’s fair and square. I
+know that.”
+
+While speaking he went towards the head of the stairs, followed by Sir
+Seymour and Arabian. As Arabian passed the place where the whisky stood
+he picked up his glass and drunk it off at a gulp.
+
+A minute later Sir Seymour and he were out in the night together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+“Which way do you go, please?” asked Arabian.
+
+“I’ll go your way if you like. I live in St. James’s Palace. But I’m in
+no hurry. Do you live in my direction?”
+
+“Oh, no. I live quite near in Chelsea.”
+
+“I can walk to your door then if you don’t mind having my company,” said
+Sir Seymour.
+
+“Thank you!”
+
+And they walked on together in silence. Sir Seymour wondered what was
+passing in the mind of the man beside him. He felt sure that Arabian had
+been at first suspicious of him in the studio. Had he been able by his
+manner to lull that suspicion to rest? He was inclined to believe so.
+But it was impossible for him to be sure. After two or three minutes of
+silence he spoke again. But he made no allusion to the recent scene
+in the studio, or to Garstin’s parting words. His instinct counselled
+silence on that point. So he talked of London, the theatres, the affairs
+of the day, trying to seem natural, like a man of the world with a
+casual acquaintance. He noticed that Arabian’s answers and comments were
+brief. Sometimes when he did speak he spoke at random. It was obvious
+that he was preoccupied. He seemed to Sir Seymour to be brooding darkly
+over something. This state of things continued until they reached Rose
+Tree Gardens.
+
+“This is it,” said Arabian, stopping before the big porch.
+
+Sir Seymour stopped, too, hesitated, then said:
+
+“I’ll say good night to you.”
+
+Arabian shot a piercing and morose glance at him, moved his right hand
+as if about to extend it, dropped it and said:
+
+“Well, but we have not spoken any more about my picture!”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Dick Garstin said you would decide.”
+
+“Scarcely that--was it?”
+
+“But I think it was.”
+
+“Well, but it’s really not my affair.”
+
+“But he made it so.”
+
+“Perhaps. But you didn’t say--”
+
+“But I should like to know what you think.”
+
+“Very good of you. But I’m an outsider. I wasn’t there when you made
+what you say was a bargain.”
+
+“No, but--”
+
+Again he sent a piercing glance to Sir Seymour, who received it with
+absolute sangfroid, and stood looking completely detached, firm and
+simple. At that moment Sir Seymour felt positive that a struggle was
+going on in Arabian in which the drink he had taken was playing a part.
+The intensely suspicious nature of the enemy of society, always on the
+alert, because always liable to be in danger, was at odds with the demon
+that steals away the wits of men, unchains their recklessness, unlocks
+their tongues, uncovers often their most secret inclinations. Arabian
+was hesitating. At that moment the least thing would turn him one way or
+the other, would prompt him to give himself to the intense caution which
+was probably natural to him, or would drive him to the incaution which
+he would regret when he was physically normal again. It seemed to Sir
+Seymour that he knew this, and that he had it in his power just then
+to turn the scale, to make it drop to whichever side he wished. And as
+Arabian hesitated at that moment so Sir Seymour hesitated too. He longed
+to get away from the man, to have done with him forever. But he had put
+his hand to a task. He had here an opportunity. Garstin had certainly
+given it to him deliberately. It would be weak not to take advantage
+of it. He was not accustomed to yield to his weak inclinations, and he
+resolved not to do so now. He was sure that if he showed the least sign
+of wishing to push himself into Arabian’s affairs the man would recoil
+at once, in spite of the drink which was slightly, but definitely,
+clouding his perceptions. So he took the contrary course. He forced
+himself to hold out his hand to the beast, and said:
+
+“Well--good-night!”
+
+But Arabian did not take his hand.
+
+“Oh, but please come in for a moment!” he said. “Why go away?”
+
+“It’s getting late.”
+
+“But I will not keep you long. Dick Garstin said you should judge
+between us, that I was to come to-morrow and tell him. I know you will
+say I have the right. Come up. I will explain to you.”
+
+“Very well,” said Sir Seymour, with apparent reluctance, “but really I
+must not stay long.”
+
+“No, no! You are very good. It is not your business. But really it is
+important. Here! We will take the elevator.”
+
+As he got into the lift Sir Seymour wondered whether he would have
+tricked Arabian if the latter had not been drinking. While the lift was
+going swiftly and smoothly up he decided that before he came down in it
+he would make quite plain to Arabian why he had been to Dick Garstin’s
+studio that day. The opportunity which was given to him he would take
+advantage of to the full. If only he could strike a blow for Adela
+instead of for Miss Van Tuyn! But Adela had let this brute go. And could
+she have done anything else? For she had had her own folly to be afraid
+of. But all that was ten years ago. And now--She was different now!
+He reiterated that to himself as he stood in the lift almost touching
+Arabian. Adela was quite different now. She had given herself to the
+best that was in her.
+
+“Here it is!”
+
+The lift had stopped. They got out on a landing, and Arabian put a key
+into a door.
+
+“Do please take off your coat. It is all warm in here!”
+
+“Yes, and some brute’s been burning scent in a shovel!” thought Sir
+Seymour, as he stepped into the flat.
+
+“I think I’ll keep my coat,” he said. “I shan’t be staying long.”
+
+“Oh, if you are in such a hurry!” said Arabian, with sudden moody
+irritation.
+
+He shut the door with a bang. In the electric light he looked tired and
+menacing. At least Sir Seymour thought so. But the light in the little
+hall was shaded and not very strong.
+
+“You will be much too hot truly!” said Arabian.
+
+“Then I’ll leave my coat,” said Sir Seymour.
+
+And he took it off, laid it on a chair and went into a room on the left,
+the door of which Arabian held open.
+
+“This is my salon. I take the flat furnished. The river is there.”
+
+He pointed towards the windows now covered by curtains.
+
+“Please sit down by the fire. I will explain. I know you will be on my
+side.”
+
+He pressed a bell on the right of the mantelpiece.
+
+Almost instantaneously the door was opened and a thin man--who looked
+about thirty, Sir Seymour thought--showed himself. He had a very dark
+narrow face and curiously light-grey eyes. Arabian spoke to him in
+Spanish. He listened, motionless, turned and went softly out.
+
+“You must have a little whisky with me!” said Arabian.
+
+“No, thank you!”
+
+“But--why not?”
+
+“I never take it at this time.”
+
+“Well, I must have some. I have got a cold. This climate in winter--it
+is awful!”
+
+He shook his broad shoulders and blinked rapidly several times, then
+suddenly opened his eyes very wide and yawned.
+
+“Well now!” he said. “But please sit down.”
+
+Sir Seymour sat down. Arabian stood with his back to the fire and
+his hands thrust into his trouser pockets. Sir Seymour noticed what
+a magnificently made man he was. He had certainly been endowed with
+physical gifts for the undoing of women. But his brown face, strikingly
+handsome though it undoubtedly was, had the hard stamp of vice on it.
+Long ago at a first glance Sir Seymour had seen that this man was a
+wrong ‘un, and now, as he looked at Arabian, he found himself wondering
+how anyone could fail to see that.
+
+“Now I will tell you exactly,” Arabian said.
+
+And he explained carefully and lucidly enough--though through occasional
+yawns--what had happened between Garstin and himself. He did not mention
+Miss Van Tuyn’s name. As he was getting towards the end of his narrative
+his servant came in with a tray on which were bottles and glasses. He
+said nothing and Arabian said nothing to him, but went on talking and
+did not appear to notice him. But directly he had gone Arabian poured
+out some whisky, added a little soda and drank it.
+
+“There! That is how we did!” he said at last.
+
+And he dropped softly, with an odd lightness, into a chair near Sir
+Seymour, and nodded:
+
+“Now, have I not the right over the picture? Can I not send to-morrow
+and take it away? Is it not just?”
+
+“Just!” said Sir Seymour. “Do you care so much about justice?”
+
+“Eh?” said Arabian, suddenly leaning forward in his chair. “What is
+that?”
+
+The bitter sarcasm which Sir Seymour had not been able to keep out of
+his voice had evidently startled Arabian.
+
+“You are English,” he said, as Sir Seymour said nothing. “Do you not
+care that a stranger in your country should have justice?”
+
+“Oh, yes. I care very much about that.”
+
+The intense dryness of the voice that answered evidently made an
+impression on Arabian. For he fixed his eyes on his guest with intense
+and hard inquiry, and laid his brown hands on the arms of his chair, as
+if in readiness for something. But he only said:
+
+“Well--please?”
+
+Sir Seymour’s inclination was to get up. But he did not obey it. He
+sat without moving, and returned Arabian’s stare with a firm, soldier’s
+gaze. The fearlessness of his eyes was absolute, unflinching.
+
+“I thoroughly understand why you don’t want Mr. Garstin to show people
+that picture,” he said.
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“The biggest fool in creation, if he saw it, would understand.”
+
+“Understand what--please?”
+
+“Understand you.”
+
+“Pardon!” said Arabian sharply. “What do you mean?”
+
+He was up. But Sir Seymour sat still.
+
+“Mr. Garstin uncovered your secret,” he said. “A man such as you are
+naturally objects to that.”
+
+“What have you come here for?” said Arabian.
+
+“You asked me to come.”
+
+“What did you go to Dick Garstin for?”
+
+“That is my business.”
+
+Sir Seymour got up slowly, very deliberately even, from his chair.
+
+“My secret, you say. What do you know about me?”
+
+In the voice there was intense suspicion.
+
+“We needn’t discuss that. I am not going to discuss it.”
+
+“What did you go to Dick Garstin for?”
+
+“I went to ask him if he would allow me to bring two or three people to
+his studio to look at his portrait of you.”
+
+“My portrait! What is my portrait to you? Why should you bring people?”
+
+But Sir Seymour did not answer the question. Instead he put one hand on
+the mantelpiece, leaned slightly towards Arabian, and said:
+
+“You wanted my verdict on the rights of the case between you and Mr.
+Garstin. That isn’t my affair. You must fight it out between you. But I
+should seriously advise you not to take too long over the quarrel. You
+said just now that the English climate was awful. Get out of it as soon
+as you can.”
+
+“Get out of it! What is it to you whether I stay or go?”
+
+“I’m afraid if you delay here much longer you may be sorry for it.”
+
+“Who are you?” said Arabian fiercely.
+
+“I’m a friend of Miss Van Tuyn.”
+
+“What has that to do with me? Why do you try to interfere with me?”
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn--I saw her this morning--wishes me to see to it that you
+leave her alone, get out of her life.”
+
+“Are you her father, a relation?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then what have you to do with it? You--you impertinent old man!”
+
+Sir Seymour’s brick-red, weather-beaten face took on a darker, almost
+a purplish, hue, and the hand that had been holding the mantelpiece
+tightened into a fist.
+
+“You will leave this young lady alone,” he said sternly. “Do you hear?
+You will leave her alone. She knows what you are.”
+
+Arabian had pushed out his full under-lip and was staring now intently
+at Sir Seymour. His gaze was intense, and yet there was a cloudy look in
+his eyes. The effect of what he had drunk was certainly increasing upon
+him in the heat of the rather small room.
+
+“When I came into the studio,” he said after a moment’s silence, “I
+remembered your face, and, ‘Why is he here?’ That was my thought. Why is
+he there? Where did I see you?”
+
+“That doesn’t matter. You will give up your acquaintance with Miss Van
+Tuyn. You will get out of London. And then no measures will be taken
+against you.”
+
+“Where was it?” persisted Arabian. “Do you remember me?”
+
+“Yes,” said Sir Seymour.
+
+He debated within himself for an instant, and then took a decision.
+
+“I saw you at the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly ten years or more ago.”
+
+“At the Ritz!”
+
+“I was lunching with a friend. I was lunching with Lady Sellingworth.”
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Arabian. “That was it! I remember. So--_she_ sent--I
+see! I see!”
+
+He half shut his eyes and a vein in his forehead swelled, giving to his
+brow a look of violence.
+
+“She has--She has--”
+
+He shut his mouth with a snap of the teeth. Sir Seymour was aware of a
+struggle taking place in him. Something, urged on by drink, was fighting
+hard with his natural caution. But the caution, long trained, no doubt,
+and kept in almost perpetual use, was fighting hard too.
+
+“No one sent me,” said Sir Seymour with contempt. “But that’s no matter.
+You understand now that you are to leave this young lady alone. Her
+acquaintance with you has ceased. It won’t be renewed. If you call on
+her you will be sent off. If you write to her your letters will be burnt
+without being read. If you try to persecute her in any way means will be
+found to protect her and to punish you. I shall see to that.”
+
+Arabian’s mouth was still tightly shut and he was standing quite still
+and seemed to be thinking, or trying to think, deeply. For his eyes now
+had a curiously inward look. If Sir Seymour had expected a burst of rage
+as the sequel to his very plain speaking he was deceived. Apparently
+this man was serenely beyond that society in which a human being can be
+insulted and resent it. Or else had he been thinking with such intensity
+that he had not even heard what had just been said to him? For a moment
+Sir Seymour was inclined to believe so. And he was about to reiterate
+what he had said, to force it on Arabian’s attention, when the latter
+stopped him.
+
+“Yes--yes!” he said. “I hear! Do not!”
+
+He seemed to be turning something over in his mind with complete
+self-possession under the eyes of the man who had just scornfully
+attacked him. At last he said:
+
+“I fear I was rude just now. You startled me. I said it was
+impertinence. But I see, I understand now. The women--they are clever.
+And when age comes--ah, we have no longer much defence against them.”
+
+And he smiled.
+
+“What d’you mean?” said Sir Seymour, longing to knock the fellow
+down, and feeling an almost insuperable difficulty in retaining his
+self-control.
+
+“This I mean! You say you come to me sent by Miss Van Tuyn. But I
+say--no! You come to me sent by Lady Sellingworth.”
+
+Sir Seymour was startled. Was the fellow so brazen that he was going to
+allude to what had happened over ten years ago? That seemed incredible,
+but with such a man perhaps everything was possible.
+
+“It is like this!” continued Arabian, in a suave and explanatory voice.
+“Lady Sellingworth she hates Miss Van Tuyn. They have quarrelled about
+a young man. His name is Craven. I have met him in a restaurant. I
+dine there with Miss van Tuyn. He dines there that night with
+Lady Sellingworth, who is in love with him, as old women are with
+nice-looking boys, and--”
+
+“Hold your tongue, you infernal blackguard!”
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn calls Craven to us, and Lady Sellingworth is so jealous
+that she runs out of the restaurant, so that he is obliged to follow her
+and leave Miss Van Tuyn--”
+
+“You damned ruffian!” said Sir Seymour.
+
+His face was congested with anger. He put out his arm as if he were
+going to seize Arabian by the collar of his jacket. For once in his
+life he “saw red”; for once he was forced by indignation into saying
+something he would never have said had he given himself time to think.
+He was carried away by impulse like a youth in spite of his years, of
+his white hair, of his immense natural self-control.
+
+Arabian moved backwards with a swift, wary movement. Sir Seymour did not
+follow him. He stood where he was and said again:
+
+“You damned ruffian! If you don’t get out of the country I’ll set the
+police on you.”
+
+“Indeed! What for, please?”
+
+“For stealing Lady Sellingworth’s jewels in Paris ten years ago!”
+
+Arabian bared his teeth like an animal and half shut his eyes. There was
+a strange look about his temples, as if under the deep brown of his skin
+something had gone suddenly white.
+
+“Miss Van Tuyn knows that you stole them!”
+
+Arabian drew in his breath sharply. His mouth opened wide.
+
+Sir Seymour turned and went out of the room. He shut the door behind
+him. In the little scented hall he caught up his coat and hat. He heard
+a door click. The dark man with the light grey eyes showed himself.
+
+“Keep away, you!” said Sir Seymour.
+
+The man stood where he was, and Sir Seymour went out of the flat.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+When Sir Seymour was going out of the main hall of the building in which
+Arabian lived a taxicab happened to drive up. A man got out of it and
+paid the chauffeur. Sir Seymour made a sign to the chauffeur, who jerked
+his head and said:
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Drive me to Claridge’s Hotel, please,” said Sir Seymour.
+
+He got into the taxicab and was soon away in the night. When he reached
+the hotel he went to the bureau and inquired if Miss Van Tuyn was at
+home. The man at the bureau, who knew him well, said that she was in,
+that she had not been out all day. He would inquire at once if she was
+at home to visitors. As he spoke he looked at Sir Seymour with an air of
+discreet interest. After a moment at the telephone he asked Sir Seymour
+to go upstairs, and called a page-boy to accompany him and show him the
+way.
+
+“Henriques,” said Sir Seymour, pausing as he was about to follow the
+page. “You’re a discreet fellow, I know.”
+
+“I hope so, Sir Seymour.”
+
+“If by chance a man called Arabian should come here, while I am
+upstairs, get rid of him, will you? I am speaking on Miss Van Tuyn’s
+behalf and with her authority.”
+
+“I won’t let the gentleman up, Sir Seymour.”
+
+“Has he called to-day?”
+
+“Yes, Sir Seymour. He called early this afternoon. I had orders to say
+Miss Van Tuyn and Miss Cronin were both out. He wrote a note downstairs
+which was sent up.”
+
+“He may call again at any time. Get rid of him.”
+
+“Yes, Sir Seymour.”
+
+“Thanks. I rely on your discretion.”
+
+And Sir Seymour went towards the lift, where the page-boy was waiting.
+
+Miss Van Tuyn met him at the threshold of her sitting-room. She was very
+pale. She greeted him eagerly.
+
+“How good of you to call again! Do come in. I haven’t stirred. I haven’t
+been out all day.”
+
+She shut the sitting-room door.
+
+“_He_ has been here!”
+
+“So I heard.”
+
+“How? Who has--”
+
+“I ventured to speak to Henriques, the young man at the bureau, before
+coming up. I know him quite well. I took it on myself to give an order
+on your behalf.”
+
+“That he wasn’t to be allowed to come up?”
+
+“Yes. I told Henriques to get rid of him.”
+
+“Oh, thank you! Thank you! I’ve been in misery all day thinking at every
+moment that he might open my door and walk in.”
+
+“They won’t let him up.”
+
+“But they mightn’t happen to see him. If there were many people in the
+hall he might pass by unnoticed and--”
+
+“In a hotel of this type people don’t pass by unnoticed. You need not be
+afraid.”
+
+“But I am horribly afraid. I can’t help it. And it’s so dreadful not
+daring to move. It’s--it’s like living in a nightmare!”
+
+“Come, Miss Van Tuyn!” said Sir Seymour, and in his voice and manner
+there was just a hint of the old disciplinarian, “pull yourself
+together. You’re not helpless, and you’ve got friends.”
+
+“Oh, do forgive me! I know I have. But there’s something so absolutely
+hideous in feeling like this about a man who--whom I--”
+
+She broke off, and sat down on a sofa abruptly, almost as if her limbs
+had given way under her.
+
+“I quite understand that. I’ve just been with the fellow.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn started up.
+
+“You’ve seen him?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Where? Here?”
+
+“I went to Mr. Garstin’s studio to have a look at the portrait and say a
+word to him. While I was there Arabian called. I stayed on and sat with
+him for some time. Afterwards I walked with him to the building where he
+is living temporarily and went in.”
+
+“Went in? _You_ went into his flat!”
+
+“As I say.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn looked at him without speaking. Her expression showed
+intense astonishment, amounting almost to incredulity.
+
+“I had it out with him,” said Sir Seymour grimly, after a pause. “And in
+the heat of the moment I told him something which I had not intended to
+tell him, which I had not meant to speak of at all.”
+
+“What? What?”
+
+“I told him I knew about the theft of ten years ago.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“And I told him also that you knew about it.”
+
+“That I--oh! How did he take it? What did he say?”
+
+“I didn’t wait to hear. The flat was--well--scented, and I wanted to get
+out of it.”
+
+His face expressed such a stern and acute disgust that Miss Van Tuyn’s
+eyes dropped beneath his.
+
+“You may think--it would be natural to think that the fact of my having
+told the man about your knowledge of his crime would prevent him from
+ever attempting to see you again,” Sir Seymour continued, “but I don’t
+feel sure of that.”
+
+“You think that even after that he might--”
+
+“I’ll be frank with you. I can’t tell what he might or might not do. He
+may follow my suggestion--”
+
+“What did you--”
+
+“I suggested to him that he had better clear out of the country at once.
+It’s quite possible that he may take my view and go, but in case he
+doesn’t, and tries to bother you any more--”
+
+“He’s been! He’s written! He says he _will_ see me. He has guessed that
+something has turned me against him.”
+
+“He knows now what it is. Now I want you to write a note to him which
+I will leave at the bureau in case he calls to-night or to-morrow
+morning.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She went to the writing-table and sat down.
+
+“If you will allow me to suggest the wording.”
+
+“Please--please do!”
+
+She took up a pen and dipped it in the ink. Then Sir Seymour dictated:
+
+
+SIR,--Sir Seymour Portman has told me of his meeting with you to-day and
+of what occurred at it. What he said to you about me is true. I _know_.
+If you call you will not see me. I refuse absolutely to see you or to
+have anything more to do with you, now or at any future time.
+
+
+“And then your name at the end.”
+
+Miss van Tuyn wrote with a hand that slightly trembled. “B. VAN TUYN.”
+
+“If you will put that into an envelope and address it I will take it
+down and leave it at the bureau.”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+Miss Van Tuyn put the note into an envelope, closed the envelope and
+addressed it.
+
+“That’s right.”
+
+Sir Seymour held out his hand and she gave him the note.
+
+“Now, good night.”
+
+“You are going!”
+
+He smiled slightly.
+
+“I don’t sleep at Claridge’s as you and Miss Cronin do.”
+
+“No, of course not. Thank you so very, very much! But I can never thank
+you properly.”
+
+She paused. Then she said with sudden bitterness:
+
+“And I used to pride myself on my independence!”
+
+“Ah--independence! A word!” said Sir Seymour.
+
+He turned away to go, but when he was near the door he stopped and
+seemed hesitating.
+
+“What is it?” said Miss Van Tuyn anxiously.
+
+“Even men sometimes have instincts,” he said, turning round.
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“May I use your telephone?”
+
+“Of course! But--do--you--”
+
+“Where--Oh, there it is!”
+
+He went to it and called up the bureau. Then he said: “Sir Seymour
+Portman is speaking from Miss Van Tuyn’s sitting-room . . . is that Mr.
+Henriques? Please tell me, has that man, Arabian, of whom we spoke just
+now, called again?”
+
+There was a silence in which Miss Van Tuyn, watching, saw a frown
+wrinkle deeply Sir Seymour’s forehead.
+
+“Ah! Has he gone? Did you get rid of him? . . . How long ago? . . . Only
+two or three minutes! . . . Do you think he knows I am here? . . . Thank
+you. I’ll be down in a moment.”
+
+He put the receiver back.
+
+“Oh, but don’t leave me!” said Miss Van Tuyn distractedly. “You see, in
+spite of what you told him he _has_ come!”
+
+“Yes. He has been. He’s a determined fellow.”
+
+“He’ll never give it up! What can I do?”
+
+“All you can do at present is to remain quietly up here in your
+comfortable rooms. Leave the rest to me.”
+
+“But if he gets in?”
+
+“He won’t. Even if he came upstairs--and he won’t be allowed to--he has
+no key of your outer door. Now I’ll go down and leave this note at the
+bureau. If he comes back and receives it, that will probably decide him
+to give the thing up. He is counting on the weakness of your will. This
+note will show him you have made up your mind. By the way”--he fixed his
+dark eyes on her--“you _have_ made up your mind?”
+
+She blushed up to her hair.
+
+“Oh, yes--yes!”
+
+“Very well. To-morrow I shall go to Scotland Yard. We’ll get him out of
+the country one way or another.”
+
+She accompanied him to the outer door of the apartment. When he had
+gone out she shut it behind him, and he heard the click of a bolt being
+pushed home.
+
+Before leaving the hotel Sir Seymour again sought his discreet friend
+Henriques, to whom he gave Miss Van Tuyn’s note.
+
+“So the fellow has been?” he said.
+
+“Yes, Sir Seymour.”
+
+“Did you get rid of him easily?”
+
+“Well, to tell the truth, Sir Seymour, he tried to be obstinate. I
+think--if you’ll excuse me--I certainly think that he was slightly under
+the influence of drink. Not drunk, you’ll understand, not at all as much
+as that! But still--”
+
+“Yes--yes. If he comes back give him that note. And--do you think it
+would be wise to give him a hint that any further annoyance might lead
+to the intervention of the police? The young lady is very much upset
+and frightened. Do you think you might drop a word or two--at your
+discretion?”
+
+“I’ll manage it, Sir Seymour. Leave it to me!”
+
+“Very good of you, Henriques. Good night.”
+
+“Good night, Sir Seymour. Always very glad to do anything for you.”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+As Sir Seymour stepped out into Brook Street he glanced swiftly up and
+down the thoroughfare. But he did not see the man he was looking for. He
+stood still for a moment. There was hesitation in his mind. The natural
+thing, he felt, would be to go at once to Berkeley Square and to have
+a talk with Adela. It was late. He was beginning to feel hungry. Adela
+would give him some dinner. But--could he go to Adela just now? No; he
+could not. And he hailed a cab and drove home. Something the beast
+had said had made a horrible impression upon the faithful lover, an
+impression which remained with him, which seemed to be eating its way,
+like a powerful acid, into his very soul, corroding, destroying.
+
+Adela--young Craven!
+
+Was it possible? Was there then never to be an end to that mania, which
+had been Adela’s curse, and the tragedy of the man who had loved her
+with the long love which is so rare among men?
+
+There was bitterness in Sir Seymour’s heart that night, and that
+bitterness sent him home, to the home that was no real home, to the
+solitude that _she_ had given him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+On the following morning, true to his word, Sir Seymour visited Scotland
+Yard, and had a talk with a certain authority there who was a very old
+friend of his. The authority asked a few questions, but no questions
+that were indiscreet, or that Sir Seymour was unable to answer
+without betraying Lady Sellingworth’s confidence. The sequel to this
+conversation was that a tall, thin, lemon-coloured man, with tight lips
+and small, dull-looking eyes, which saw much more than most bright eyes
+ever see, accompanied Sir Seymour in a cab to Glebe Place. They arrived
+there about half-past eleven. Sir Seymour rang the bell, and in a moment
+Dick Garstin opened the door.
+
+“What’s the matter?” was Sir Seymour’s unconventional greeting to him.
+
+For the painter’s face was flushed in patches and his small eyes glowed
+fiercely.
+
+“Who’s this?” he said, looking at Sir Seymour’s companion.
+
+“Detective Inspector Horridge--Mr. Dick Garstin,” said Sir Seymour.
+
+“Oh, come to see the picture! Well, you’re too late!” said Garstin in a
+harsh voice.
+
+“Too late!”
+
+“Yes, a damned sight too late! But come up!”
+
+They went in, and Garstin, without any more words, took them up to the
+studio.
+
+“There you are!” he said, still in the harsh and unnatural voice.
+
+He flung out his arm towards the easel which stood in the middle of the
+room. Sir Seymour and the inspector went up to it. Part of the canvas on
+which Arabian’s portrait had been painted was still there. But the head
+and face had been cleanly cut away. Only the torso remained.
+
+“When was this done?” asked Sir Seymour.
+
+“Some time last night, I suppose.”
+
+“But--”
+
+“I didn’t sleep here. I often don’t, more often than not. But last night
+I was a fool to be away. Well, I’ve paid for my folly!”
+
+“But how--”
+
+“God knows! The fellow got in. It doesn’t much matter how. A false key,
+I suppose.”
+
+“Does anyone know?”
+
+“Not a soul, except us.”
+
+Sir Seymour was silent. He had realized at once that Miss Van Tuyn was
+safe now, safe, too, from further scandal, unless Garstin chose to make
+trouble. He looked at the painter, and from him to the inspector.
+
+“What are you going to do?” he said to Dick Garstin.
+
+“I don’t know!” said Garstin.
+
+And he flung himself down on the old sofa by the wall.
+
+“I don’t know!”
+
+For a moment he put his hands up to his temples and stared on the
+ground. As he sat there thus he looked like a man who had just been
+thrashed. After a moment Sir Seymour went over to him and laid a hand on
+his shoulder.
+
+Garstin looked up.
+
+“What’s that for?”
+
+He stared into Sir Seymour’s face for an instant. Perhaps he read
+something there. For he seemed to pull himself together, and got up.
+
+“Well, inspector,” he said, “you’ve had your visit for nothing. It
+wasn’t a bad picture, either. I should like you to have had a squint at
+it. But--perhaps I’ll do better yet. Who knows? Perhaps I’ve stuck to
+those Cafe Royal types too long. Eh, Sir Seymour? Perhaps I’d better
+make a start in a new line. Have a whisky?”
+
+“Thank you. But it’s rather too early,” said the lemon-coloured man. “Do
+you wish--”
+
+“No, I don’t!” said Garstin. “We’ll leave it at that?”
+
+Again he flung out his arm towards the mutilated canvas.
+
+“I made a bargain with the fellow whose portrait that was. I was to
+paint it and exhibit it, and then he was to have it. Well, I suppose
+we’re about quits. I can’t exhibit it, but I’m damned if he can make
+much money out of it. We’re quits!”
+
+Sir Seymour turned to the inspector.
+
+“Well, inspector, I’m very sorry to have given you this trouble for
+nothing,” he said. “I know you’re a busy man. You take the cab back to
+Scotland Yard. Here--you must allow me to pay the shot. I’ll stay on for
+a few minutes. And”--he glanced towards Garstin--“by the way, we may
+as well keep this matter between us, if Mr. Garstin is good enough to
+agree.”
+
+“I agree! I agree!” said Garstin.
+
+“The fact is there’s a woman in it, quite a girl. We don’t want a
+scandal. It would distress her. And I suppose this is really--this
+outrage--I suppose it is purely a matter for Mr. Garstin to decide
+whether he wishes any sequel to it or not.”
+
+“Oh, certainly,” said the inspector. “If Mr. Garstin doesn’t wish any
+action to be taken--”
+
+“I don’t! That’s flat!”
+
+“Very well,” said the inspector. “Good morning.”
+
+“Back in a moment,” said Garstin to Sir Seymour. And he went downstairs
+to let the inspector out.
+
+“So that’s how it ends!” said Sir Seymour to himself when he was alone.
+“That’s how it ends!”
+
+And he went over to what had been Arabian’s portrait, and gazed at
+the hole which surmounted the magnificent torso. He had no doubt that
+Arabian had gone out of Miss Van Tuyn’s life for ever. Probably, almost
+certainly, he had returned to the hotel on the previous evening, had
+been given the note Miss Van Tuyn had written to dictation, and also
+a hint from that very discreet and capable fellow, Henriques, of what
+might happen if he persisted in trying to force himself upon her. And
+then he had come to the decision which had led to the outrage in the
+studio. Where was he now? No longer in Rose Tree Gardens if Sir Seymour
+knew anything of men.
+
+“The morning boat to Paris, and--the underworld!” Sir Seymour muttered
+to himself.
+
+“Not much to look at now, is it?” said Garstin’s voice behind him.
+
+He turned round quickly.
+
+Garstin was gazing at his ruined masterpiece with a curious twisted
+smile.
+
+“What can one say?” said Sir Seymour. “When Horridge was here I thought:
+‘When he’s gone I’ll tell Mr. Garstin!’ And now he is gone, and--and--”
+
+He went up to Garstin and held out his hand.
+
+“I know I don’t understand what you feel about this. No one could but a
+fellow-painter as big as you are. But I wish I could make you understand
+what I feel about something else.”
+
+“And what’s that?” said Garstin, as he took Sir Seymour’s hand, almost
+doubtfully.
+
+“About the way you’ve taken it, and your letting the blackguard off.”
+
+“Oh, as to that, I bet you he’ll be in Paris by five to-day.”
+
+“Just what I think. But still--”
+
+He pressed Garstin’s hand, and Garstin returned the pressure.
+
+“Beryl wanted me to paint him, but I painted him to please myself. I’m a
+selfish brute, like most painters, I suppose.”
+
+“But you’re letting him go because of Miss Van Tuyn.”
+
+“Damn it, I believe I am. I say, are you ever coming here again?”
+
+“If I may.”
+
+“I wish you would.”
+
+He gazed at Sir Seymour’s strong head.
+
+“I’ve spent half my life in showing people up on canvas,” he said. “I
+should like to try something else.”
+
+“And what’s that?”
+
+“I should like to try to reveal the underneath fine instead of the
+underneath filth. It’d be a new experiment for me.”
+
+He laughed.
+
+“Perhaps I should make a failure of it. But--if you’d allow me--I would
+try to make a start with you.”
+
+“I can only say I shall be honoured,” said Sir Seymour, with a touch of
+almost shamefaced modesty which he endeavoured to hide with a very grave
+courtliness. “Please let me know, if you don’t change your mind. I’m a
+good bit battered, but such as I am I am always at your service--out of
+work hours.”
+
+His last words to Garstin at the street door were:
+
+“You’ve taught an old soldier how to take a hard knock.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Sir Seymour usually called on Lady Sellingworth about five o’clock
+in the afternoon when he was not detained by work or inevitable
+engagements. On the day of his visit to Garstin’s studio with the
+inspector he felt that he owed it to Adela to go to Berkeley Square and
+to tell her what had happened in connexion with Arabian since he had
+last seen her. She must be anxious for news. It was not likely that she
+had seen Miss Van Tuyn, that beautiful prisoner in Claridge’s hotel.
+Miss Van Tuyn might have telephoned to her and told her of his visits to
+the hotel. But Adela would certainly expect to see him, would certainly
+be waiting for him. He ought to go to her. Since the morning he had
+been very busy. He had not had time to call again on Miss Van Tuyn, who
+could, therefore--so at least he believed--know nothing of the outrage
+in the studio. That piece of news which would surely be welcome to her
+if she understood what it implied, should rightly come to her from the
+woman who had been unselfish for her sake. Adela ought to tell her that.
+But first it was his duty to tell Adela. He must go to Berkeley Square.
+
+And he decided to go and set out on foot. But as he walked he was
+conscious of a strange and hideous reluctance to pay the customary
+visit--the visit which had been the bright spot in his day for so long.
+He had interfered with the design of Arabian. But Arabian unconsciously
+had stabbed him to the heart with a sentence, meant to be malicious,
+about Adela, but surely not intended to pierce him.
+
+Young Craven! Young Craven!
+
+When he reached the familiar door and was standing before it he
+hesitated to press the bell. He feared that he would not be perfectly
+natural with Adela. He feared that he would be constrained, that he
+would be unable not to seem cold and rigid. Almost he was tempted to
+turn away. He could write his news to her. Perhaps even now young Craven
+was in the house with her. Perhaps he, the old man, would be unwanted,
+would only be in the way if he went in. But it was not his habit to
+recoil from anything and, after a moment of uneasy waiting, he put his
+hand to the bell.
+
+Murgatroyd opened the door.
+
+“Good day, Murgatroyd. Is her Ladyship at home?”
+
+“Yes, Sir Seymour.”
+
+He stepped into the hall, left his hat, coat and stick, and prepared to
+go upstairs.
+
+“Anyone with her Ladyship?”
+
+“No, Sir Seymour. Her Ladyship is alone.”
+
+A moment later Murgatroyd opened the drawing-room door and made the
+familiar announcement:
+
+“Sir Seymour Portman!”
+
+Adela was as usual on the sofa by the tea-table, near to the fireplace
+in which ship logs were blazing. She got up to greet him, and looked at
+him eagerly, almost anxiously.
+
+“I was hoping you would come. Has anything happened?”
+
+“Yes, a great deal,” he said, as he took her hand.
+
+“Why do you look at me like that?” she asked.
+
+“But--do I look at you differently from--”
+
+“Yes,” she interrupted him.
+
+He lowered his eyes, feeling almost guilty.
+
+“But in what way?”
+
+“As if you wanted to know something, as if--have you changed towards
+me?”
+
+“My dear Adela! What a question from you after all these years!”
+
+“You might change.”
+
+“Nonsense, my dear.”
+
+“No, no, it is not! Anyone may change. We are all incalculable.”
+
+“Give me some tea now. And let me tell you my news.”
+
+She sat down again, but her luminous eyes were still fixed on him, and
+there was an almost terrified expression in them.
+
+“You haven’t seen--him?” she asked.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You have! I felt it! He has said something about me, something
+horrible!”
+
+“Adela, do you really think I would take an opinion of you from a
+blackguard like that?”
+
+“Please tell me everything,” she said.
+
+She looked painfully agitated, and something in her agitation made him
+feel very tender, for it gave her in his eyes a strange semblance of
+youthfulness. Yes, despite all she had done, all the years she had lived
+through, there was something youthful in her still. Perhaps it was that
+which persistently held out hands to youth! The thought struck him and
+the tenderness was lessened in his eyes.
+
+“Seymour, you are hiding something from me,” she said.
+
+“Adela, give me a little time! I am going to tell you my news.”
+
+“Yes, yes, please do!”
+
+“I want my tea,” he said, with a smile.
+
+“Oh, I beg your pardon!”
+
+“How young you are!” he said.
+
+“Young! How can you say such a thing?”
+
+“Now really, Adela! As if I could ever be sarcastic with you!”
+
+“That remark could only be sarcastic.”
+
+He sipped his tea.
+
+“No; you will always have youth in you. It is undying. It makes half
+your charm, my dear. And perhaps--”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“Well, perhaps it has caused most of the trouble in your life.”
+
+She looked down.
+
+“Our best gifts have their--what shall I say--their shady side, I
+suppose. And we seem to have to pay very often for what are thought of
+as gifts. But now I must tell you.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+And then he began to relate to her, swiftly although he was old, the
+events of his mission. She listened, and while she listened she sat very
+still. She had looked up. Her eyes were fixed upon him. Presently
+he reached the point in his narrative where Arabian walked into Dick
+Garstin’s studio. Then she moved. She seemed suddenly seized with an
+uncontrollable restlessness. He went on without looking at her, but he
+heard her movements, the rustle of her gown, the touch of her hand on a
+sofa cushion, on the tea-table, the chink of moved china, touching other
+china. And two or three times he heard the faint sound of her breathing.
+He knew she was suffering intensely, and he believed it was because of
+the haunting, inexorable remembrance of the enticement that abominable
+fellow, Arabian, had had for her. But he had to go on. And he went on
+till he came to the scene in the flat at Rose Tree Gardens.
+
+“You--you went to his room!” she then said, interrupting him.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He heard her sigh. But she said nothing more. He told what had happened
+in the flat, but not fully. He said nothing of Arabian’s mention of her
+name, but he did tell her that he himself had spoken of her, had said
+that he was a friend of hers. And finally he told her how, carried away
+by indignation, he had spoken of his and Miss Van Tuyn’s knowledge that
+Arabian had stolen her jewels.
+
+“I didn’t mean to tell him that,” he added. “But--well, it came out.
+I--I hope you forgive me?”
+
+He did not wait for her answer, but told her of his abrupt departure
+from the flat, and of his subsequent visit to Miss Van Tuyn, of what he
+had learnt at the hotel, and of what he had done there.
+
+“The police!” she said, as if startled. “But if--if there should be a
+scandal! Oh, Seymour, that would be too horrible! I couldn’t bear that!
+He might--it might come out! And my name--”
+
+She got up from the sofa. Her face looked drawn with an anxiety that was
+like agony. He got up too.
+
+“It was only a threat. But in any case it will be all right, Adela.”
+
+“But we don’t know what he may do!” she said, with desperation.
+
+“Wait till you know what he has done.”
+
+“What has he done?”
+
+And then he told her of the outrage in the studio. When he was silent
+she made a slight swaying movement and took hold of the mantelpiece.
+He saw by her face that she had grasped at once what Arabian’s action
+implied.
+
+Flight!
+
+“You see--he’s done with. We’ve done with the fellow!” he said at last
+as she did not speak.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Her face, when not interfered with, was always pale. But now it looked
+horribly, unnaturally white. Relief, he believed, had shaken her in the
+very soul.
+
+“Adela, did you think your good deed was going to recoil on you?” he
+said. “Did you really think it was going to bring punishment on you? I
+don’t believe things go like that even in this distracted, inexplicable
+old world.”
+
+“Don’t they? Mightn’t they?”
+
+“Surely not. You have saved that girl. You have paid back that
+scoundrel. And you have nothing to fear.”
+
+“Why did you look at me like that when you came into the room?”
+
+“But you are--”
+
+“No. You haven’t told me something. Tell me!”
+
+“Be happy in the good result of your self-sacrifice, Adela.”
+
+“I want you to tell me. There is something. I know there is.”
+
+“Yes. But it only concerns me.”
+
+“Seymour, I don’t believe that!”
+
+He was silent, looking at her with the old dog’s eyes. But now there was
+something else in them besides faithfulness.
+
+“Well, Adela,” he said at last, “I believe very much in absolute
+sincerity between real friends. But I suppose friendship must be very
+real indeed to stand absolute sincerity. Don’t you think so?”
+
+“Yes, I do. But our friendship is as real as any friendship can be, I
+think.”
+
+“Yes, but on my side it is mixed up, it has always been mixed up, with
+something else.”
+
+“Yes, I know,” she said in a low voice.
+
+“And besides I’m afraid, if I speak quite frankly, I shall hurt you, my
+dear!”
+
+“Then--hurt me, Seymour!”
+
+“Shall I? Can I do that?”
+
+“Be frank with me. I have been very frank with you. I have told _you_.”
+
+“Yes, indeed. You have been nobly, gloriously frank. Well, then--that
+horrible fellow did say something which I haven’t told you, something
+that, I confess it, has upset me.”
+
+“What was it?” she said, still in the low voice, and bending her small
+head a little like one expecting punishment.
+
+“He alluded to a friend of yours. He mentioned that nice boy I met here,
+young Craven?”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“I really can’t get what he said over my lips, Adela.”
+
+“I know what he said. You needn’t tell me.”
+
+The were both silent for a minute. Then she came close to him.
+
+“Seymour, perhaps you want to ask me a question about Mr. Craven.
+But--don’t! You needn’t. I have done, absolutely done, with all that
+side of my life which you hate. A part of my nature has persecuted me.
+It has often led me into follies and worse, as you know. But I have
+done with it. Indeed, indeed I can answer for myself. I wouldn’t dare to
+speak like this to you, the soul of sincerity, if I couldn’t. But I’ll
+prove it to you. Seymour, you know what I am. I dare say you have always
+known. But the other night I told you myself.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“If I hadn’t I shouldn’t dare now to ask you what I am going to ask you.
+Is it possible that you still love me enough to care to be more than the
+friend you have always been to me?”
+
+“Do you mean--”
+
+He paused.
+
+“Yes,” she said.
+
+“I ask nothing more of life than that, Adela.”
+
+“Nor do I, dear Seymour.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+That evening Miss Van Tuyn learnt through the telephone from Lady
+Sellingworth what had happened in Dick Garstin’s studio during the
+previous night. On the following morning at breakfast time she learnt
+from Sir Seymour that the flat in Rose Tree Gardens had been abruptly
+deserted by its tenant, who had left very early the day before.
+
+She was free from persecution, and, of course, she realized her freedom;
+but, so strange are human impulses, she was at first unable to be happy
+in her knowledge that the burden of fear had been lifted from her.
+The misfortune which had fallen on Dick Garstin obsessed her mind. Her
+egoism was drowned in her passionate anger at what Arabian had done. She
+went early to the studio and found Garstin there alone.
+
+“Hulloh, Beryl, my girl!” he said, in his usual offhand manner. “Come
+round to see the remains?”
+
+“Oh, Dick!” she exclaimed, grasping his hand. “Oh, I’m so grieved, so
+horrified! What an awful thing to happen to you! And it’s all my fault!
+Where--what have you done with--”
+
+“What’s left do you mean? Go and see for yourself.”
+
+She hurried upstairs to the studio. When he followed he found her
+standing before the mutilated picture, which was still in its place,
+with tears rolling down her flushed cheeks.
+
+“Good God! Beryl! What’s up? What are you whimpering about?”
+
+“How you must hate me!” she said, in a broken voice. “How you must hate
+me!”
+
+“Rubbish! What for?”
+
+“This has all happened because of me. If it hadn’t been for me you would
+never have painted him.”
+
+“I painted the fellow to please myself.”
+
+“But I asked you to get him to come here.”
+
+“What you ask, or don’t ask, doesn’t bother me.”
+
+She gazed at him through her tears as if in surprise.
+
+“Dick, I never thought you could be like this,” she said.
+
+“Like what? What’s all the fuss about?” he exclaimed irritably.
+
+“I always thought you were really a brute.”
+
+“That showed your sound judgment.”
+
+“How can you take it like this? Your masterpiece--ruined! For you’ll
+never do anything like it again.”
+
+“That’s probably gospel truth. My girl, you are standing in front of my
+epitaph on the Cafe Royal. There it is. Look well at it! I’ve buried
+my past, and I’m going to start again. And who do you think is to be my
+next victim?”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“You’ll never guess--a gentleman!”
+
+“A gentleman? What do you mean, Dick? The word has gone out.”
+
+“But not the thing, thank God, so long as Sir Seymour Portman keeps
+about on his dear old pins.”
+
+“You are going to paint Sir Seymour?”
+
+“I am! Think I can do him?”
+
+She looked at him for a moment, and her violet eyes searched him as if
+to see whether he were worthy. Then she said soberly:
+
+“Yes, Dick.”
+
+“Then let’s turn the damned epitaph with its hole to the wall!”
+
+And he lifted what remained of Arabian’s portrait from the easel and
+threw it into a dark corner of the studio.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+One evening, some ten days later, before any rumour of Lady
+Sellingworth’s new decision had gone about in the world of London,
+before even Braybrooke knew, on coming home from the Foreign Office
+Craven found a note lying on the table in the tiny hall of his flat. He
+picked it up and saw Miss Van Tuyn’s handwriting. He had not seen either
+her or Lady Sellingworth since the evening when they had met in the
+_Bella Napoli_. Both women had come into his life together. And it
+seemed to him that both had gone out of it together. His acquaintance,
+or friendship, with them had been a short episode in his pilgrimage, and
+apparently the episode was definitely over.
+
+But now--here was a letter from the beautiful girl! He took it up,
+carried it into his sitting-room, and tore open the envelope.
+
+
+“CLARIDGE’S.
+
+“Thursday.
+
+“MY DEAR MR. CRAVEN,--I am going back to Paris almost directly and
+should very much like to see you if possible to say good-bye. Have you a
+few minutes to spare any time? If so, do come round to the hotel and let
+us have a last little talk.--Yours sincerely,
+
+“BERYL VAN TUYN.”
+
+
+When he had read this brief note Craven was struck, as he had been
+struck when he had read Lady Sellingworth’s letter to him, by a certain
+finality in the wording. Good-bye--a last little talk! Miss Van Tuyn
+might have put “au revoir,” might have omitted the word “last.”
+
+He looked at the clock. It was not very late--only half-past five. He
+decided to go at once to the hotel. And he went. Miss Van Tuyn was at
+home. He went up in the lift and was shown into her sitting-room. He
+waited there for a few minutes. Then the door opened and she came in
+smiling.
+
+“How good of you to come so soon! I hardly expected you.”
+
+“But--why not?” he said, as he took her hand.
+
+She glanced at him inquiringly, he thought, then said:
+
+“Oh, I don’t know! You’re a busy man, and have lots of engagements. Let
+us sit by the fire.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+They sat down, and there was a moment of silence. For once Miss Van Tuyn
+seemed slightly embarrassed--not quite at her ease. Craven did not help
+her. He still remembered the encounter in Glebe Place with a feeling of
+anger. He still felt that he moved in a certain darkness, that both Lady
+Sellingworth and Miss Van Tuyn had been unkind to him, had treated him
+if not badly, at any rate in a way that was unfriendly, and, to him,
+inexplicable. He did not want to seem hurt, but, on the other hand,
+he did not feel that it was incumbent upon him to rush forward with
+gracious eagerness, or to show any keen desire for the old, intimate
+relations. So he just sat there trying not to look stiff, but not making
+any effort to look charming and sympathetic.
+
+“Have you seen Adela lately?” Miss Van Tuyn said at last, breaking the
+silence.
+
+“No,” he said. “Not since the night when we met in the _Bella Napoli_.”
+
+“Oh, that’s too bad!”
+
+“Why too bad?”
+
+“I thought you were such friends!”
+
+“Scarcely that, I think,” replied Craven, in his most definitely English
+manner. “I like Lady Sellingworth very much, but she has swarms of
+friends, and I can’t expect her to bother very much about me.”
+
+“But I don’t think she has swarms of friends.”
+
+“Perhaps nobody does. Still, she knows a tremendous number of people.”
+
+“I am sure she likes you,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “Do go and see her
+sometimes. I think--I think she would appreciate it.”
+
+“No doubt I shall see her again. Why not?”
+
+“Don’t you like her anymore?”
+
+“Of course I do.”
+
+Suddenly she leaned forward, almost impulsively, and said:
+
+“You remember I had a sort of cult for Adela?”
+
+“Did you?”
+
+“But you know I had! Well, I only want to tell you that it isn’t a cult
+now. I have got to know Adela better, to know her really. I used to
+admire her as a great lady. Now I love her as a splendid woman. She’s
+rare. That is the word for her. Once--not long ago--I was talking to a
+man who knows what people are. And he summed Adela up in a phrase. He
+said she was a thoroughbred. We young ones--modern, I suppose we are--we
+can learn something from her. I have learnt something. Isn’t that an
+admission? For the young generation to acknowledge that it has something
+to learn from--from what are sometimes called the ‘has beens’!”
+
+Craven looked at her and noticed with surprise that her violet eyes were
+clouded for a moment, as if some moisture had found its way into
+them. Perhaps she saw that look of his. For she laughed, changed the
+conversation, and from that moment talked in her usual lively way
+about less intimate topics. But when Craven presently got up to go she
+returned for a moment to her former more serious mood. As he took her
+hand to say good-bye she said:
+
+“Perhaps we shall meet again--perhaps not. I don’t know when I shall
+be back in London. I’m soon going over to America with Fanny. But don’t
+think too badly of me.”
+
+“I? How could I think badly of you?”
+
+“Oh, yes--you might! There are things I can’t explain which may easily
+have given you a nasty impression of me. If I could explain them perhaps
+you would remember me more pleasantly. Anyhow, I shall always think of
+you as one of my _friends_. Good-bye.”
+
+And then she moved away, and he went to the door.
+
+But just as he was going he turned round and said:
+
+“Au revoir!”
+
+She made a little kind gesture with her left hand, but she said nothing.
+
+At that moment she was thinking of Adela.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of December Love, by Robert Hichens
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