Initial commit of ebook 78201 filesHEADmain

6 files changed, 39730 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/78201-0.txt b/78201-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6635fec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78201-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,15910 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78201 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  DAPHNE BRUNO
+
+
+  BY
+
+  ERNEST RAYMOND
+
+  AUTHOR OF "THE SHOUT OF THE KING," "DAMASCUS GATE,"
+  "TELL ENGLAND," ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+  NEW YORK
+  GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1926,
+  BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+  DAPHNE BRUNO
+  -- A --
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE END OF THE LONG PROLOGUE
+
+PART I: LES TRACAS DES ENFANTS
+
+PART II: DAPHNE'S SCHOOLDAYS
+
+PART III: DAPHNE'S ROMANCE
+
+PART IV: THINGS AS THEY ARE
+
+
+
+
+DAPHNE BRUNO
+
+
+
+THE END OF THE LONG PROLOGUE
+
+I
+
+Mr. Thomas Tenter Bruno, sitting beside his writing-table, with the
+revolving arm-chair swung round so that his legs could stretch past
+the drawers and his arm rest along the blotting-pad, stared musingly
+at the wall.  The pained set of his mouth and the lift of his
+eyebrows showed that his thoughts, though they might often graze
+afield, were none the less tethered to a fixed anxiety.
+
+Had he been sitting with the grace he assumed in public rooms,
+instead of so relaxed a port, his appearance and his surroundings
+would have excellently suited a presentation portrait of T. Tenter
+Bruno, Esq.  For on the writing-table were sheets of paper, a silver
+ink-pot and a pen--the very symbols of his craft; and in the
+background rose shelves of books, the finished product of his kind
+and the true setting of his life.  On one shelf was a row of fifteen
+volumes, with fifteen titles, over one author's name--"T. Tenter
+Bruno."  Above them and below them, and on either side of them, were
+the works of Hume, Johnson, Burke, Bentham, Hazlitt, Lamb, Landor, De
+Quincey, Mill, and all the other critics, essayists and economists in
+whose company Mr. Tenter Bruno considered that his books might
+without presumption take their seat.
+
+In these days (two decades before Victoria died), when men wore
+side-whiskers or moustaches and double-breasted frock-coats, Mr.
+Tenter Bruno wore a trim, pointed beard and a short-coated grey suit,
+perfectly tailored.  The grey suit was almost as constant as the
+beard.  In daytime, at any rate, Mr. Bruno was as likely to be seen
+with a shaven chin as in anything but a grey suit.  It was hardly
+that he dressed the part of a literary artist, since he affected to
+despise those unpublished brothers who could only be known for great
+men by the length of their hair, the languor in their walk, and the
+lawlessness of their ties.  The perfect precision of his grey suit,
+the uprightness of his tall, slender figure, and the neatness of his
+beard were a challenge to nincompoopdom.  But (he admitted this to no
+one, not even his wife) it was best to have some sort of professional
+appearance--something that differentiated you from the unfamed
+multitude--something that the Press-picture left firmly on the memory
+for the paragraph writer to harp upon and foolish women to gossip
+about.  To his wife the beard had been explained as necessary owing
+to the excessive tenderness of his skin (a tenderness which no man
+yet regarded as anything but a credit to him) and the grey suit was
+attributed to a very nice taste.
+
+In reality Mr. Tenter Bruno's creation of his private and, as it
+were, patented exterior was rooted in his contempt for the crowd.
+There was no doubt whatever that a platform appearance and other food
+for the literary chatterer were commercial assets; and if people were
+such fools as to buy a writer's books more readily after tattling
+about his clothes, any wise man would keep their tattling green.  At
+one time he even played with the humour to be a vegetarian and a
+teetotaller, but his love of comfort was more than his desire to have
+these interesting things written about him.  As he put it to himself,
+the occasional paragraph was a pleasant thing, but an assured and
+adequate dinner every day was a greater.
+
+There was a knock at his study door, but he decided not to hear it,
+remembering that he was anxious.  Not that his anxiety was humbug,
+for it was very real indeed; but, since it was there, it might at
+least have the credit of its full dimensions.  So he let the servant
+knock again.
+
+"Oh, come in," said he patiently; and there entered a big-hipped,
+comfortable servant of about forty-five years, in a dress of
+powder-blue cotton and a plain apron.
+
+"Now, excuse me, sir," begged the woman pleasantly, "but won't you
+have a cuppa-tea?  What I mean to say is: a nice little bit of
+breaden-butter with a potta-tea.  I'll bring it to you here, sir.
+It's after four o'clock, and we're having ours in the kitchen; and we
+couldn't bear to think of you sitting here, and sort of--what I
+call--having nothing.  And I'm sure you ate nothing at lunch."
+
+Mr. Bruno had heard the tea-bell and ignored it, and now would have
+liked a cup of tea, for his mouth was unpleasant; but this good
+woman's doubts whether during an emotional crisis he would take tea
+prompted him in a moment of weakness to reject the offer.
+
+"No, thank you, Hollins.  I don't think I'm wanting anything just
+now."
+
+He saw all that was happening in Hollins' mind.  The good woman,
+while persuading herself that she was disappointed at this refusal,
+was really pleased that her master's suspense should be so
+interesting.  And along with her conviction that persistence was the
+interesting part for her to play went a real desire to minister to
+him.
+
+"Well, I should, sir, if I were you.  Just a nice little cup, and a
+thin slice a-breaden-butter.  I mean, you want to sort of--what I
+call--keep up, sir."
+
+"Oh, well, oh, well," agreed Mr. Bruno, swinging his chair so that he
+faced his papers and his pen, and taking up a sheet and dropping it,
+"bring it along."  He thought that perhaps he would drink it and
+perhaps he would leave it untouched to provide an interesting topic
+of conversation in the kitchen.
+
+"That's right.  And I'll just make it a little comfortable in here.
+Why, you've almost let the fire go out."
+
+He glanced obediently at the fire.  It was powdery with decay.  This
+rather pleased him, as proving that, despite all postures, his
+anxiety had really been his master.
+
+"Oh, we'll soon have a cheerful bitta flare here," said Hollins,
+kneeling down with difficulty and rather heavily, while Mr. Bruno, in
+his mind, was providing her with her next words: "There's nothing
+like a bit of a coal fire to cheer you up."
+
+Hollins took the poker and probed the embers with the delicacy of a
+surgeon whose scalpel was more in danger of killing than curing.
+Over the moribund glow she arranged some small coals, like a child
+building bricks, and then swept the hearth.  "There's nothing like a
+bit of a coal fire to cheer you up," said she; and, being a heavy
+woman, got up with as many divided motions as a camel.  The window
+curtains required straightening, so while this was being done, and
+till she was gone out, Mr. Bruno drew parallel lines on a piece of
+paper.
+
+The closing of the door suggested that he sought some new occupation
+for his mind.  He rose and walked towards the book shelves.  He was
+examining his present condition with the detachment of a literary
+artist; indeed, the whole affair was, to him, an exceedingly familiar
+literary incident, on which the trite comment was the truest:
+
+"This is one of my great hours."
+
+His eye fell on the fifteen volumes bearing his name.  It was always
+good to see this long chain of Tenter Brunos among the works of
+immortal essayists.  He took down a volume issued from the house of
+his American publisher, and on a slip inside it read the enthusiastic
+praise of its contents.
+
+"No one can afford to neglect the writings of Mr. T. Tenter Bruno.
+With great critical acumen he combines pungent wit, gay humour and a
+coruscating style.  ('Disgusting bit of prose, that,' thought Mr.
+Bruno.)  His reach is ubiquitous; he seems to write with equal
+scholarship on literature, art, music, history, sociology and
+political economy."
+
+He replaced the book.  Even if one discounted half of the American
+publisher's cheers, the residue spoke of a triumph.  And though Mr.
+Bruno had enjoyed this fine fame for fifteen years, there were still
+times when it seemed too good to be true, and he wondered if it were
+a dream from which he would wake up to find himself an unrecognised
+aspirant of forty, bombarding publishers but abandoning hope.
+
+But no; he had been successful from the beginning.  He had been
+carried to Harrow on a brilliant scholarship from one of the cheaper
+preparatory schools; and there his master had said, as he entered his
+name:
+
+"'T. Tenter Bruno!'  Good lord, what a name!  With a name like that
+you ought to go in for being a literary pundit or something.  I mean,
+it inspires confidence, Bruno; and once heard is not easily
+forgotten.  I mean, it sticks and festers in the memory like a
+poisoned dart.  With a name like that, and a few eccentricities like
+Byron's curl, and a modicum of natural gifts, which apparently you
+possess, why, Bruno, you might go far."
+
+Young Bruno thought the same.  Every talent he possessed he built
+into the genius of a great critic, essayist and philosopher.  A
+famous university prize brought his name before the world of letters.
+For a few years he was assistant editor of a critical journal.  Every
+spring he published a volume, and each volume made ripples wider than
+the last, till he was in a position so secure that he needed not to
+call any editor master, but could retire to his study and write what
+books and articles he pleased.
+
+On the whole, then, he was satisfied.  Occasionally he would have
+liked to live with a larger flourish, instead of in a small country
+house with one old servant and an undermaid.  And he could have done
+so if two tyrant weaknesses had not always quashed the impulse--the
+one a timidity that dreaded a failing wit and its consequence, a
+falling revenue, and the other a settled indolence which made him
+prefer studying in an arm-chair to creating at his desk.
+
+A tray of tea-things clattered outside, and he walked rather quickly
+back to his chair.  Why he did this he hardly knew; perhaps because
+he wanted Hollins to tell the maid that he had never stirred all the
+afternoon.  And as he sat down, he rebuked himself for the thought;
+it was contemptible to expose his anxiety for the study of his
+servants, like an interesting specimen on a pin.
+
+He heard the corner of the tray rested against the jamb of the door,
+while Hollins freed one hand to turn the knob.
+
+"There you are, sir.  I've made it nice and strong."--His brain
+instantly provided her with her next words: "It _do_ put new life in
+you, a cuppa-tea."--"It _do_ put new life in you, as I always say
+myself," continued Hollins.  "And I should be inclined to kind of eat
+something.  I've boiled you an egg in case it should take your fancy."
+
+"Thank you, Hollins, thank you."  His manner with his servants and
+their devotion were a pride with him.
+
+The thought of the egg was appetizing; and he ate and enjoyed it so
+much that he wished it had been two.  The tea raised his optimism and
+expelled his anxiety.
+
+"Everything'll be all right with little Sheila, of course.  It's no
+use picturing the worst.  I'll read."
+
+He pushed the tray to one side, and from a little book-stand on the
+desk took a new volume.  It quickly interested him.  Only the tiring
+of his eyes, as the room darkened with the fall of a February
+evening, told him how the hours were passing.  Outside in the passage
+an opal-glass lamp-shade jingled on its stand, and a moving ribbon of
+light appeared beneath the door.  It would be Hollins bringing a
+light.
+
+As she entered and rested the lamp on his desk, he felt rather guilty
+to be reading, but refused, this time, to hide the fact.  She drew
+the curtains, and went out, taking the tray with her.  Mr. Bruno
+turned again to his volume.  It stimulated him sufficiently to demand
+pencilled annotations, and he was lost in this task when a bell
+gongled alarm through the house.  His heart jumped; and the bell,
+repeating itself, jarred his nerves.
+
+Voices in the hall: "Bruno?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The telegram, beyond a doubt.
+
+Hollins entered, as delighted and funereal as every one is who
+carries a telegram.  With fingers that fumbled, Mr. Bruno opened the
+envelope.
+
+"_Daughter.  Wife doing splendidly._"
+
+His eyebrows went up.  "A daughter.  H'm!"  But his momentary
+disappointment was lost in an uprushing, swelling tenderness.  In a
+voice, not under perfect control, he said to Hollins:
+
+"Yes, yes....  Oh, an answer? ... No, no answer.  I shall be there as
+quickly myself."
+
+"Yes, sir."  Hollins went out to the messenger, but her excitement
+was like a stretching elastic that drew her immediately back to her
+master's study.  "Yes, sir, I've told the boy; and is there----"
+
+"Oh, Hollins, Mr. Spencer told me he would lend me his trap, if I
+needed it.  You might go--or send Agnes round and ask for it.  Old
+Eadigo's there, and will bring it."
+
+"Yes, sir.  And may I--what I mean to say is--is everything all
+right?"
+
+"Yes, magnificent, Hollins."  Stirred by excitement, Mr. Bruno forgot
+that he ever postured, or that he had felt a second's disappointment
+at the sex of his child.  "I've got a daughter."
+
+"Well, there now!" said Hollins.  "A little daughter.  I do
+congratulate you, sir.  The noos has just come, has it?  And I shall
+always be able to remember that I brought you the noos.  I shall be
+able to tell her that.  And it's a little baby girl, is it?  I like a
+little girl for the first one."
+
+She moved towards the door, but her master wanted to continue talking.
+
+"Yes, a girl.  What shall we call her, Hollins?"
+
+"Well, sir, that'll sort of take some thinking about, won't it?  Will
+you call her after her mother, sir?"
+
+"No, that's shirking trouble.  Something original, I think."
+
+"Yes," agreed Hollins vaguely, for the elastic was pulling towards
+the kitchen now.  "I'll just go and--and send Agnes for that trap.
+I'll be back in a minute."
+
+The kitchen of this country house was only a dozen flagstones away,
+and Hollins was soon back.
+
+"What do you think of 'Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno,' Hollins?"
+
+Hollins tried to look intelligent and pleased; and Mr. Bruno
+explained more slowly: "Daphne--Deirdre"; and his smile widened.
+
+"Well, yes, sir, those sound very nice.  But I expect the mistress'll
+have her ideas....  I'll get your hat and coat."
+
+Mr. Bruno walked up and down, repeating:
+
+"Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno....  Daphne Bruno."
+
+He was in the power of that up-swelling tenderness.  His mind, ever
+penetrating and introspective, could examine that tenderness and see
+that, whether or not it were soiled by time, at the moment it was
+utterly selfless, and charged with reverence and humility.  "She's no
+one but me"; the thoughts were running; "Good lord, I wish I were
+better....  My influence will be immeasurable....  She must be
+good....  It's unthinkable that she should be bad...."  With a heart
+filling and filling from the reservoir of these thoughts, he pictured
+her at every age: one year old and crawling about the floor; three or
+five, and scrambling over his knees; seven or eight, and playing with
+a spade on holiday sands; in her school when he came to visit her; a
+long slim girl of sixteen, slim like the plait down her back; a bride
+in white and silver.
+
+
+
+II
+
+Wrapped in a thick overcoat, muffler and driving gloves, he walked
+impatiently up and down the study, now and then clapping his gloved
+hands.  Like all men who could drive well, and yet could not afford a
+horse, he always felt rather proud when dressed for the box seat and
+waiting for the reins.
+
+"Curse that old Eadigo!  Why can't he hurry?  Phlegmatic old fool!
+Hollins has no doubt told him the news with an indecent exuberance,
+and if he had the imagination of one of his turnips, he'd guess what
+I'm feeling."
+
+At the sound of wheels on the drive and of a voice gibbering to a
+pony, he glanced out of the window and in the light thrown by the
+open hall door, saw Eadigo standing near the horse's head.  Eadigo
+was Mr. Spencer's gardener, who came for two days a week to work on
+Mr. Bruno's much smaller plot.  Mr. Bruno, looking out at him with
+the detached amusement of a critic, saw a large, corpulent man in a
+blue serge waistcoat and trousers that had once been Mr. Spencer's.
+These trousers, enabled by some triangular insertions of Mrs.
+Eadigo's to surround her husband's paunch, stayed there, as the open
+waistcoat showed, without aid from braces or belt: palpably they
+needed none, being less likely to fall than to fissure.
+
+Eadigo, who never dreamed of taking an uncovered head into the
+air--not through fear of catching cold, but simply because the two
+ideas of open air and a hat were inseparable--was wearing a soiled
+felt hat discarded and given to him by Mr. Bruno three years before.
+It was too small; and perhaps to give it an appearance of being
+larger, the brim was turned down all round.  Mr. Bruno could see the
+sweat-stains round the faded ribbon, and remembered how God had
+promised such things to Adam in a garden.  He heard Hollins bustle
+out to Eadigo and say:
+
+"Well, you _have_ been a time!  The master's in a hurry.  Naturally."
+
+And the even voice of the gardener returned:
+
+"It's ready for 'e.  'E can have it anywhen now."
+
+Without waiting for Hollins, Mr. Bruno walked out and mounted to the
+seat and took the reins.
+
+"Lamps all right, Eadigo?"
+
+"Yessir."
+
+"Well, get away, Nipper."
+
+The horse, fresh from little use, clattered out of the open gate onto
+the country road.  It was the last moments before the final darkness,
+and the stars were in possession.  On one side of the road, the tall
+beeches, looking more slender and tapering than in the daylight,
+stretched their bared branches like long tenuous arms towards the
+sky.  On the other side a line of Austrian firs, marking a private
+park, stood dense and black against a sea-green glow.  The road ran
+along high ground; and as it left these skirting trees, Mr. Bruno
+overlooked the waving weld of Sussex.  The sea-green glow sang in the
+west, its answering light in the east; and now the candle-lamps of
+the trap shone at their prime.  The monotonous clatter of Nipper
+charmed Mr. Bruno into a reverie.
+
+It was picturesque, this driving to find his baby girl.  But though
+the drama of it pleased him, he knew that this was but a small part
+of his emotion.  That tenderness and excitement was crowding into a
+corner all lesser thoughts.  He examined it again, happy about it.
+"Daphne Bruno."  A little girl... then a slip of a school-miss,
+satchelled... seventeen years, and a tall, affectionate sapling, with
+her own concealed emotions... a lover in the embrace of some long
+youth--his heart beat quicker at the thought of this--and then, a
+bride--from which point he cared not to carry on the picture.  And
+she was born from him; she was out of him.
+
+By God! he must do his part by her.  Humbly, Mr. Bruno, as he flicked
+the pony, felt that he was being lifted to a moment of nobility.
+With a grim smile he wondered if it would last.
+
+"_Clop_-clip, _clop_-clip, _clop_-clip."  Nipper's hoofs, in the
+darkness, knocked a spark from a flint.  Mr. Bruno, in his waking
+dream, touched the beast again.
+
+All his books were written from one viewpoint: that of a detached
+mocking at convention.  They proclaimed the right of the artist to
+accept nothing on authority, either in religion or in art, but to
+build his own authority out of his own experience.  With the rest of
+the thinking world (as it appeared to him) in that latter half of the
+century, he had rejected Christianity; with many artists, though he
+was proud to be unplacable in any school, he had questioned the
+accepted canons of art.  This mocking viewpoint he had kept
+consistent.  His readers might believe that behind it was a
+philosophy of his own.  They might believe that he spoke from some
+sure though hidden ground; that he at least had found a code by which
+to live, and thus achieved his integrity.  And indeed, some of his
+followers had written articles on "The True Philosophy of Tenter
+Bruno."
+
+But Mr. Bruno, driving to his daughter, knew that he had achieved no
+such thing.  He felt dissatisfied with his management of life.  He
+was vain, thought he, and indolent and selfish; and when all
+brilliant theories were puffed away, he knew that he had an
+unconquerable conviction that vanity, indolence and selfishness were
+wrong.  And there was a corruptive falsity, his keen mind told him,
+in his whole position; for, while intellectually a revolutionary, he
+had no courage to be a libertine; he wrote it all from his brain,
+while his will allowed his life to drift conventionally enough.  If
+only he had really found a sure code, that he might give it to this
+little girl--or, rather, to that long, slim girl, slim as the plait
+down her back! ... She would have brains.
+
+"I should like to vow that henceforth there's to be one good thing in
+my life: my self-effacing service of her."  The shoulders of the
+sceptic shrugged in distrust of himself.
+
+With tenderness, too, he thought of his wife; and his head shook,
+regretfully.  Poor little Sheila, she hadn't had much of a time.  He
+saw her as she was at their first meeting: a little fair-haired thing
+of twenty, beautifully frail, eighteen years younger than he.  He
+studied how he had come to marry her.  All his life he had waited in
+the hope that he would fall in love with some one, but the
+monopolizing love of his own books had kept other loves out of doors.
+Still, the one last sentimentality had persisted in him, this hope
+that love would arrive and last for ever.  Then came this exquisite
+little creature (as his fancy had seen her), bringing a manifest
+adoration--and the thought of possessing her had been sweet.  How
+delighted she had been with the attentions of so famous a man!  In
+her feebleness she had rather thrown herself at him.  He had begun to
+wonder if he was in love with her, and had given answer: "Yes, since
+I am nearly forty, if this be not love, no other will come."  So they
+had become engaged.  And though before marriage he had discovered the
+poverty of her mind, he had lacked the strength to withdraw--and the
+cruelty.  Chaffingly surrounding her with a haze of adjectives,
+"frail," "fay," "gossamer," "little Thistledown," he had kept his
+promise and married her.
+
+"She's mindless ... little ... weak ... cowardly," muttered he to the
+horse's crupper.
+
+It had hurt his pride that he had given himself to one intellectually
+so far beneath him.  Self-pityingly he would remember the wives of
+other famous men, whose gifts had largely made their husbands what
+they were.  Poor little Sheila.  And now she mooned rather dully
+about his cottage.  Doubtless her illusions had been as short-lived
+as his.  Henceforward all must be different.  He, as well as
+she--hang it all!--had undertaken duties in marriage....  And he was
+the stronger and wiser.
+
+Pity for her filled him.
+
+Pity.  The word was the bell-note for all the emotion in him
+to-night.  Perhaps it was the key-word to a philosophy.  One could
+not know much in this dark and candle-lit world, but one could hang
+on to pity.  One could wander at will in search of other secrets
+about religion and art, but one must keep tight hold of pity.
+
+"What pity ordains is right; what pity condemns is wrong ... when
+all's said and written and done, everything in me knows that much to
+be true...."  He saw the long, slim Daphne again.  "I shall teach her
+that, if nothing else."
+
+Relief came to Mr. Tenter Bruno, for this idea had a face as of
+revelation.  And the cynic in him laughed that he should have
+suddenly seen a newness in anything so old.  Old!  Ghosts of old
+philosophers began to do battle in the grey lists of his mind for the
+principle of man's inherent benevolence--Hobbes and Jeremy Bentham,
+Hartley and Paley, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson and Hume.
+
+"_Clop_-clip, _clop_-clip, _clop_-clip."  He was hearing Nipper's
+hoofs again.
+
+And then a horrid thought leapt up.  Supposing this Daphne were
+deformed in any way; supposing she were an imbecile; or blind; or
+deaf and dumb; or had some freakish limb!  Supposing the Christian
+God had punished his sedition like that!  The telegram had only said:
+"Daughter.  Wife doing splendidly."  Not "Both doing splendidly."
+Good God, not "_both!_"  He pictured the news being broken to him
+before he was taken to see her.
+
+"Nonsense!" He pulled himself together, and urged the horse to a
+canter.  "She'll be beautiful, because her mother's beautiful; and
+she'll have brains."
+
+
+
+III
+
+While Hollins was bringing tea to her master, before the bell jangled
+through the house, Sheila Bruno was lying back on her bed suffering
+her final pains.  A nurse watched her as they waited for the doctor.
+The nurse, seeing many such month by month, was not easily moved, but
+her patient of to-day seemed like a child who was bearing too early;
+and, even in her suffering, she held her beauty.  Her hair, very
+fair, was of the fuzzier sort that looked as pleasant when tumbled as
+when tidy, and her lids were down over childish cheeks in an
+abandonment to pain that was almost calm.
+
+Sheila Bruno's eyes were closed because she had no interest in the
+world beyond her racked body.  Pain filled her mind, leaving room for
+no altruistic thought.  All that she wanted was to die and be done
+with pain.  She could not care that it left her husband deserted and
+her baby motherless; she could not think for them.  Somewhere in her
+pain-filled thoughts she felt ashamed that it should be so.  Labours!
+Maternity!  Why, she could still only think of herself as a
+fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, punishable by mistresses; she felt no
+different in mind or body from what she was at fifteen.
+
+Somewhere lurked shame and despair of herself.  From the beginning
+her thoughts about this baby had caused her secret shame.  Instead of
+being delighted at the prospect of its coming--as were all the good
+wives she had read about, and as she pretended to be--she had only
+been frightened, exasperated and rebellious.  She had made the futile
+effort to think of it prettily as her husband's child, and to love it
+and him the more; but in her months of sickness and disfigurement
+this thought had actually worked an opposite result.  It had
+encouraged criticism and dislike of him.  There had come to the
+surface of her mind thoughts that hitherto she had kept submerged.
+He had marred her life by marrying her--that was the unveiled truth
+of it.  Almost she might say he had tricked her.  He had seemed so
+wonderful--with his brilliance, his tall and graceful presence and
+his courtesy.  And she had paid out everything for the prize, her
+whole future and the right to love again.  Then in a few months he
+had cast off all ceremonial vesture, probably because its wearing was
+too much of an effort.
+
+Oh, life was a roomful of pain.  If only she could die!  What matter
+if it were cowardice?  Let her admit her feebleness and die.  Once
+she was blotted out in death, her self-contempt would not worry her.
+
+Oh, this miserable, hard, business-like room in the nursing home!
+Even her death would be a failure in a white box of a room like this.
+Why had she come here?  It was wrong of Tom to send her.  Of course,
+she had wanted to come, so as to go through an experience that she
+expected might defeat her courage, away from her husband and
+servants.  But just now she chose to forget her willingness in order
+that she might keep her grievance against Tom.  Why had he sent her
+here?  It was a thing seldom done.  Despite all his talk about her
+greater comfort, the greater facilities available, and their
+isolation in the country, she suspected that the contemplation of his
+own ease had not been absent, nor a satisfaction in the
+unconventionality of such a step.
+
+"I think I hate him."
+
+And since she hated him, she had better die, for there was nothing
+before her except a long life of dull exasperation.  She was a
+failure.  Best admit it, and go upon the scrap-heap.
+
+Oh, this pain!  And this underground stream of aching thoughts that
+kept appearing above the surface!  Sometimes sharper agonies made her
+abandon thinking and only suffer.  Voices far away and yet near-by
+reminded her of nursery days.
+
+A crowning, unbelievable agony....  And then peace--lovely liberation
+and forgetful rest.  This was the beginning of death, sweet like
+drowning.  The voices were still about her, and there was a new
+voice, a crying voice like a baby's.  Sheila's heart stirred, as she
+had always read it would: it must be the voice of her child, the
+thing dragged from her and now living its own independent life.  She
+who had been _one_ a few minutes ago was now two.  That other one was
+she--and alone now, poor lonely little darling.  Her consciousness
+cleared, and, wondering with a thrilled anticipation if it were a boy
+or a girl, she opened her eyes and saw the nurse by her bed.
+
+"Splendid, dear, you were splendid; and you've got a little daughter."
+
+A disappointment at the word "daughter" was rolled aside by an
+out-stream of love and excitement.  And her relief from agony made
+her feel gay.  She stared up at the nurse with an unintelligent
+smile, wondering what they did next.
+
+The nurse was leaning a bundle forward to show her something in its
+cowl-like opening: a tiny model of a human face, complete with smooth
+brow, eyelashes, nose, and lips and chin.  It was placid now, with
+its eyelids down.  She looked at it for a long time, riveted; and at
+length, without a word, shut her eyes....  Oh, the adorable,
+incredible little thing!  It brought a recurring glow, the
+recollection of that little face.  Sheila felt exultant--perhaps
+hysterically so, for she was ready to pour out a mixture of crying
+and laughter.  The pain, now that it had receded into memory, seemed
+nothing so very terrible after all, and she wondered why people made
+such a fuss about it.
+
+Downstairs the hall door closed.  Ah, the matron was sending to Tom.
+How delightful to have this news to send him!  An hour ago she had
+thought she hated him, and here was she imagining delight at his
+excitement!  She began to enwrap him with her tenderness.  After all,
+perhaps he had as much to criticise in her as she had in him.  In
+some ways she had tricked him too.  Had she not used every art to
+appear before him as beautiful?  Had she not tried to appear more
+cultured than she was?  Had she not often lied--that was what it
+amounted to--in representing her education as much finer than it had
+been, and her circle of friends as much more impressive?  After
+marriage, Tom, with his penetration, must quickly have found her out.
+She wondered that he had not done so before.  Yes, he had claims on
+her which she had disappointed: henceforth she must always remember
+that.
+
+She imagined all that was happening in the cottage.  Hollins, dear,
+stout old Hollins, how full she would be of the news!  And Tom, of
+course, was getting the trap from Mr. Spencer's.  In less than half
+an hour he would be here.  She saw him mounting to the driver's seat,
+and clattering out of the gate along the country road.  She saw the
+trap moving through the daylight, till, noticing that her gas had
+been lit and curtains drawn, she changed the picture into a night
+scene.  There came the yellow candle-lamps, and Nipper tossing up his
+head as he trotted over the ringing road.  Now Tom had probably
+reached Shadwell Green and was driving along the mossy, listing wall
+of The Ballards.  That would mean that he would be here in less than
+ten minutes.
+
+A short, timid ring at the front door set excitement a-tremble.  Yes,
+that was Tom's voice, rather stuttering and nervous.  And here was
+the matron bringing him upstairs.  The door opened, and Sheila turned
+her head towards it.
+
+"Hallo, dear."
+
+"Sheila, darling!  Why, you look rosy.  One'd think you were resting
+after a tennis match."
+
+She parried this with a smile and glanced towards the cot at the fire.
+
+"There it is."
+
+Mr. Bruno carried to the cot his fear that there might be something
+amiss.  The thought, "One second now, and I shall know," accompanied
+his steps.  But no hare-lip or fingerless hand met his eyes: instead
+he saw the sleeping face, turned on its side, with its perfect little
+nose and chin, dropped lids and exquisite ear.  One hand showed above
+the blanket, palm downward.
+
+It broke one's breath.
+
+Sheila was speaking.  "Isn't she like you?  And I'm sure she'll grow
+up and adore you much more than she will me.  Girls always do."
+
+A quick vision of the long, slim Daphne stirred his heart.  He bent
+down to study the features again, trying to imagine them
+fifteen--nineteen years hence.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+When Daphne was brought to her father's door, Hollins received her
+with the expected magnificat.
+
+"Now let me take her, ma'am.  The love!  You must be tired, and you
+must go sort of--what I call--easy.  Let me take her....  Well,
+there's a beauty.  O ma'am, she's a cherub!  And ain't she the living
+image of you?"
+
+"Don't be absurd," corrected Mrs. Bruno, as she passed into the
+cottage.  "Why, I'm seeing more and more likeness to her father every
+day."
+
+"Well, yes."  Hollins touched the little face with an ingratiating
+giggle.  "She is like the master, but she favours you too, ma'am.
+Oh, yes, you favour your mummy, miss, don't you?  Oh, what big
+wondering eyes!"
+
+Mrs. Hollins, being a widow and the mother of an only child who died
+young, was determined by right of this experience to take a leading
+part in the management of her mistress's little girl.  She felt as if
+at last she had come into her own.  Very deliberately had she taken
+the purchase of nursery equipment out of the incompetent hands of her
+master and mistress.
+
+The best of her purchases was the princely perambulator in which
+young Mrs. Bruno took her daughter for a ride the following day.  As
+she pushed the carriage towards the garden-gate, half nervous of
+taking this public confession of her motherhood into the highways,
+and half proud, she saw Eadigo stooping over a flower-bed.  His
+waistcoat, as usual, hung open; and on his crown was the hat, a small
+and greasy derelict, that she could remember being often raised from
+her husband's head in the days of their courtship.  Her heart
+absurdly quickened with anticipation of his comment.  The sound of
+the perambulator on the gravel caused him to look up, and he touched
+his cap and turned to his bed.
+
+Sheila paused.  Their gardener was a person she liked to chaff, and
+it was not to be suffered that he should say no word on such an
+occasion.  No matter if he did think this appearance of a baby in the
+world as of the same order, and no more interesting than the
+appearance above ground of one of his onions.
+
+"Well, Eadigo," said she, stopping the perambulator, and holding it
+with one hand while she stood sideways and faced the flower-bed.  She
+was conscious, as she naturally assumed this position, that she was
+pleasurably imitating all her sisters of the perambulator.  "Don't
+you want to see my little girl?"
+
+He glanced up again and straightened himself.
+
+"Yes, mum."
+
+"Well, there she is."
+
+Eadigo looked into the carriage and said:
+
+"Yes, mum, she be there right enough."
+
+"Think she's nice?"
+
+Eadigo turned back to his bed.
+
+"Well, mum, it's early yet."
+
+"I suppose so," agreed Mrs. Bruno, pushing the pram on.  "And she'll
+improve as she gets bigger."
+
+Daphne's improvements, her father used to declare, were chiefly
+physical.  She improved herself out of long clothes into short ones,
+and out of her wicker cradle into a fine cot, and out of her shoes
+and socks twenty times a day.  She improved her squinting into a
+straight if rather doubtful stare.  She improved her early screaming
+into gurgling and chuckling, which her father maintained was the
+greatest improvement of all.
+
+Generally these remarks were made at meal-times when Daphne, or
+"Duffy," as he now called her, was at play upon the floor.  He liked
+to watch her and to offer a witty and polished commentary; or
+sometimes just a crudely humorous one, since it was only for the home
+and not for publication.  As Daphne was always busy and restless, and
+always anxious to do another thing than she happened to be doing at
+the moment, Mr. Bruno would enter the dining-room and inquire of
+Sheila, "Is it one of your daughter's busy days to-day?" or express
+the hope that Mrs. Bruno's daughter had got on well with her work
+that morning.  And Sheila, stirred by the picture of Daphne these
+words created, would reply no more brightly than to ejaculate, "The
+darling!"
+
+But this persiflage was a veil for things unspoken.  He had not
+forgotten his desire to introduce _one_ self-effacing love into his
+life.  And he gave the love its exercise by forcing himself to be
+patient when Daphne's restlessness bruised his nerves or shipwrecked
+his work.  He kept, too, his heightened love for his wife.  She was a
+brave little girl.  He had kissed her very affectionately when she
+declared that she would nurse Daphne herself and that Hollins and she
+would do everything: "Yes, I never meant to do it, Daddy, but I've
+made up my mind to.  Hollins says it's the only way to give them a
+proper start.  And she's so adorable."  He tried to be a better
+companion to his wife by coming in to her tea parties and sitting
+through the insupportably fatuous conversation of the ladies.  Oh,
+_mon Dieu!_ it seemed that women spoke never of ideas but only of
+things and persons; or if they did enunciate an idea, it was always a
+stock one off the shelf, and he could provide them with the very
+words they would use.
+
+
+But in time he decided that too much self-abnegation, if you dealt
+with weak women, was itself a weakness.  They were allowing Daphne to
+make an infernal noise in any and every room of the cottage.  As sure
+as she cried they stampeded past his study door to save or sympathise
+with the child.  And the more they sympathised with her, the more she
+sympathised with herself and determined that her present trouble was
+a case for regular refills of air which must be expelled again in
+shrieks of temper.  The household, in fact, was circling round Daphne
+instead of round his workroom which (they all seemed to have
+forgotten) was the mainspring of everything.  Yes, when his daughter
+should reach intelligence, then would be the time for him to consider
+how he could efface himself for her.  Meantime he must get on with
+his work.
+
+He summoned his wife and explained that he was considering everybody
+else as much as himself when he stipulated that Daphne should be kept
+to an upstairs back room.  For such brain-work as his he needed
+silence and freedom from domestic cares.  Sheila could see that,
+could she not?  "Rousseau, with more courage than most of us, sent
+his children to a foundling hospital when they interfered with his
+work.  You remember: '_Comment les soucis domestiques et les fracas
+des enfants me laisseront-ils la tranquillité d'esprit nécessaire
+pour faire un travail lucratif?_"
+
+And Sheila said, "All right, Daddy."
+
+Sometimes in the next weeks, however, the thought of the old
+lumber-room, which Sheila had cleared and furnished for a nursery,
+with its two easy chairs, one for herself and one for Hollins,
+troubled his compassion; and he would leave his books and climb up to
+it, saying he had come to see Daphne in her bath.  Once Hollins had
+taken over the bathing, and he could see that the good soul was
+determined to show them how such a business should be performed.
+Listening, as she rhapsodised over the infant in her wide, aproned
+lap he thought many thoughts about the native poetry of all peasants,
+from the Hebrews of old to the Cockneys or the Hodges of to-day.  And
+he called her runnel of nonsense "The Song of Hollins."
+
+"They didn't give you much hair, did they, darling?" she was saying,
+as the upper flock went over Daphne's head.  "No, she said, I'm going
+to spend all my money on a big pair of eyes.  She said, I don't
+reckon hair is very important, or a nose.  As regards them things,
+I'll just have any fairly decent reach-me-downs out of the cupboard,
+but I shall spend all my money on a very extra special pair of eyes.
+She said, eyes are the thing.  You can do a lot of damage with a good
+pair of eyes.  You can break the hearts of the handsome young beaus
+and--keep still, lovey--and, until they come along, you can see all
+that ought to be seen and most that ought not to be seen, and, she
+said, you can see every opening for mischief.  There now.  There's a
+boo'ful little body.  Into tub it goes.  _In_ she goes.  Nice waters.
+Oh, lovely waters.  Oh, such a lovely silky skin.  That's right,
+splash your walkers about.  Kickey walkers.  Up she comes, all clean
+and smelling of soap.  Such a 'licious feeling!  Big, big towel.
+There's a little, round, hobgoblin face, out of miles and miles of
+nice soft warm towel.  Look at its chin.  No, she said, you've got it
+wrong.  I kep' a little of my money back for a really dainty chin.
+Gr-r-r-r!  She said, Oh, I am a cute one, I am.  When the time comes,
+won't I flutter the hearts of the handsome young mashers?  I knew a
+thing or two, I did."
+
+By this time Daphne was in her long flannel nightgown, and stretched
+out both hands with spread fingers towards her mother, who, captured
+by such an appeal, picked her up, tossed her towards the ceiling, and
+then hugged her, murmuring:
+
+"Oh, she says, I like Hollins all right, and I find my daddy quite
+amusing, but it's mummy I really want.  She says, I'd sell 'em all up
+for my mummy."
+
+But now Mr. Bruno had wearied of these sentimental rhapsodies, and
+withdrew downstairs.
+
+
+
+V
+
+When Daphne was something over a year old, Sheila knew that her
+second baby was coming.  The knowledge was a shock of dismay, and
+then a sickly, dull acquiescence.  Though at the first sight of
+Daphne all hostility had surrendered, still her picture of the future
+had shown only this one child playing about her.  The picture of
+herself with two, or perhaps a flock of children, was horrible.
+Before telling her husband, she went away like a hurt animal into her
+bedroom and sat by the window, staring out at the garden.
+
+"I don't want it.  Oh, all that sickness again and ugliness and
+shame.  And I shall have to begin nursing all over again.  Oh, I know
+all this is selfish, and I ought to be delighted, but I'm not.  I am
+selfish.  I like my little Daphne, but I don't want another.  Daphne
+was different; she was the first, and strange, and adorable."
+
+Into the despair rose the thoughts that she usually shut underground.
+It was all wrong, children issuing from a partnership that she knew
+to be nine parts bankruptcy and disappointment.  There was no true
+intimacy between her and Tom, and never could be.  And Tom had quite
+obviously learnt this, and accepted it as their incommutable
+sentence.  An incommutable sentence!  Life stretched dark in front of
+Sheila, and the word "death" had trancing, sweet overtones again.
+
+"I thought marriage was going to be heaven....  And it's--it's
+this....  But no.  My Daphne was worth it.
+
+"For Daphne's sake I'll try and bear this new cross."  She found a
+refuge in these suburbs of nobility.  "They say it's bad for a child
+to be an only child.  They're much better off, if they have a brother
+or a sister for a companion....  I'll look at it like that.  I'm
+providing something that's really good for my baby--a playmate.  I
+made up my mind to be unselfish where she was concerned....  All
+right, my darling, you shall have your playmate."
+
+Overcome with her own self-sacrifice, she burst into tears.
+
+As the time of her confinement drew nearer, she concealed under a
+mask of quiet liveliness a premonition of death.  How this idea arose
+she could not remember, nor when; but it was now the unsleeping
+master of her mind.  Perhaps it was born from her languor--a languor
+that grew till she lived with a sense of physical decline.  Once she
+hinted at her fears to Hollins, who laughed the laugh of common sense.
+
+"Nonsense, ma'am, if you'll excuse me putting it like that.  You'll
+hardly feel it this time.  It'll come as natural as natural.  And
+each time it will seem more and more natural."
+
+"But people _do_ die in childbirth," submitted Sheila.  "One reads of
+heaps."
+
+"Not young ones like you, ma'am, if I may say so."
+
+"Isn't it sometimes the young ones who are most likely to die?"
+
+"No, no--you're a bit sort of--what I call--down, ma'am.  You put all
+those ideas out of your head."
+
+"But I never was strong.  When I was ill as a child, I was always
+worse than any one else."
+
+"And they're always the wiry ones, that sort of anæmic, skinny type,"
+assured Hollins.  "Any one'll tell you that."
+
+Nevertheless the idea stayed, strengthening its hold.  In the hours
+before sleep, when the mind was susceptible to auto-hypnotism, it
+sent its roots deeper and deeper.  In the daytime it haunted the
+background of all her thoughts and conversations.  So fixed was it
+that she determined to have her confinement in her own house rather
+than die in a distant, hard, unloving room, with Daphne far away.
+
+She was walking in the garden when this thought wandered into her
+mind; and she stopped dead as she faced another thought that came
+behind: Daphne would never remember her.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders and closed the lips that had parted.  Her
+mouth quivered.  Old Hollins would have to tell Daphne when she grew
+up what her mother had been like.
+
+These twilight thoughts she never exposed to Tom's kindly ridicule.
+She only told Hollins gaily that this time she was going to stay in
+her own home.  And Hollins heartily approved.
+
+"Of course, ma'am, since you mention it, I may say I never did like
+the idea of your going away last time.  It seemed out of--I mean,
+sort of unnatural like.  If I couldn't have looked after you, who
+could, I should like to know?  You'll enjoy it in your own room."
+
+Merrily Sheila smiled in answer, though to herself the smile felt
+wan.  The conviction that her life had been given its term was in
+complete occupation.
+
+Complete.  She would wander along the garden or the country roads,
+and any stretching green prospect that troubled her with its beauty
+stirred also the sad self-pity.  The half-heard chirrup of the birds
+in the deathly slumber of a windless day; the red glow after tea-time
+behind the fir trees; the sound, one autumn evening, of a crowd of
+men singing in harmony as they went down the road; the tales in her
+books of the raptures of first love--it was a wistful matter suddenly
+to apprehend the beauty of these things and to feel that she had only
+a few more weeks with the world.
+
+She felt the same faint ache when she patted the sleek neck of the
+pony, Nipper, or saw on a shelf in her bedroom the books that she had
+brought from home.  They reminded her of a hundred places where as a
+child she had been merry.  Strange if all those scenes had only
+preceded an early death!  And if she chaffed old Eadigo as he
+laboured in the garden, she felt the ache in her spurious laughter.
+Once the sight of her own face in the mirror, looking pretty with its
+fair hair, filled her eyes with tears; but she pulled herself briskly
+together and forced laughter from herself all that morning.  No one
+but she detected the settled despair in that noisy laughter.
+
+Perhaps the most poignant thing of all was the sight of Daphne's toys
+upon the floor.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Mr. Bruno this time felt none of the fears that had disorganized him
+before the birth of Daphne.  He remembered with something of contempt
+the way he had then worked himself up to the proper anxiety.  His
+main trouble now was an annoyance that another child should have come
+so soon, but this was balanced by a pride in remembering how he had
+shrugged his shoulders and decided to greet the inevitable with
+goodwill.
+
+When Sheila took to her bed he kissed her very lovingly and told her
+everything would be all right.  And when the hour came, and the
+doctor and the nurse were with her, he walked in to the garden taking
+only an anxiety that poor little Sheila should not suffer too much.
+Her moans hurt him cruelly.
+
+The year was one month older than when Daphne was born.  The
+primroses were under the hedges, and young grass appearing in many
+places where it ought not to appear, and the old grass turning to a
+deep green after humid March days.  His tea had just been cleared
+away, and there was the usual silence of half-light in the garden: a
+thundery stillness, this evening, and the birds, chirruping on the
+branches, seemed less to break it than to be part of it.  As he
+walked along the herbaceous border, now and then removing a gravel
+stone from the turf edge, a sudden cry of pain sounded from the
+house.  He stood up erect and listened.  The cry dwindled back into
+moans again, and above the moans sounded the plaint of a baby.  It
+was not Daphne's voice.  He hurried excitedly back to the hall to
+hear the news.  As he expected, Hollins was coming down the stairs as
+fast as her figure would allow her.
+
+"It's a little boy this time, sir."
+
+"Oh, good--good!  How's the mistress?"
+
+"She's low, sir, distinctly low.  But that's nothing, sir.  They
+sometimes take it badly like that.  I'll nip back and see if you can
+come in and see her."
+
+Hollins climbed up the stairs, while Mr. Bruno waited in the hall.
+He heard a man's step, evidently the doctor's, leave his wife's room
+and come along the passage, so that he met Hollins at the top of the
+stairs.  There was a murmured colloquy, voices pitched very low, as
+if in reverence for suffering.  Then Hollins came more slowly and
+rather timidly down to her master.
+
+"The doctor says the mistress is very sadly, sir.  But I shouldn't
+worry, or the like of that," faltered Hollins.  "They're often sadly."
+
+He did not listen to her, but ran up the stairs.  The doctor barred
+his way.  He was an old man, and seemed as perplexed and dismayed as
+Hollins.
+
+"Just a minute, Mr. Bruno.  I--er--can't understand it.  Your wife
+seems--there's no fever--her pains were very bad, of course, but I
+thought that was due to muscular strength--but she seems to be
+sinking.  It looks like collapse."
+
+Mr. Bruno tried to push past him.  A sob was in his throat, and his
+mind was overborne with self-reproaches--for what he hardly knew.
+
+"The boy's perfect--quite perfect," said the doctor, by way of
+comfort.
+
+Mr. Bruno had forgotten the child and rushed into the bedroom and
+looked down upon his wife.  Hollins followed with tear-stained cheeks.
+
+Sheila lay in the last surrender to death.  When he touched her hand
+she lifted her eyelids.
+
+"I knew it would be like this, daddy," she said.
+
+He dropped on one knee by her side.
+
+"My darling, it's all right.  You're only weak and worn out, and feel
+depressed.  To-morrow you'll be feeling splendid again.  And such a
+beautiful boy, they tell me.  See, down there by the fire.  My
+darling, I'm so proud of him."
+
+"That's right," smiled Sheila wanly.  "But I knew it would happen
+like this.  I knew all along, but I wouldn't tell you.  Where's
+Hollins?"
+
+Hollins, who had been behind, came forward, violently sobbing.
+
+"Bless you, ma'am, don't you worry.  You'll be all right.  They're
+often took like this.  I ought to know."
+
+"Where's my baby?"
+
+"In his little crib, ma'am, by the fire.  Such a beautiful child.
+He's fallen asleep."
+
+The nurse picked up the little bundle to bring it to her.
+
+Sheila lifted again the heavy lids.
+
+"No, I meant Daphne.  Bring my baby to me."
+
+"Daphne's in bed.  It's after six o'clock," began Hollins; but seeing
+the dying look on her mistress's face, she moved towards the nursery.
+
+Sheila opened her eyes again.
+
+"Is it so late? ... Don't disturb her....  She mustn't be
+disturbed....  It's bad for her to be disturbed.  She's always slept
+an unbroken sleep at night right from the start.  Hasn't she,
+Hollins? ... Let her sleep."
+
+"Sheila!  Sheila!" cried Mr. Bruno.
+
+Behind he heard Hollins muttering to the doctor:
+
+"She seemed to have sort of made up her mind--been telling me things
+to tell the children when they're grown up."  The recollection of
+this broke up Hollins, and the hearing of it made Mr. Bruno cry out:
+
+"Sheila!  Sheila!  Don't go!"
+
+His senses carried inappropriately to his brain the sibilance of the
+birds in the branches, and voices over the evening stillness of the
+fields, and some laughter of girls.
+
+Sheila's eyes were closed.  All the thoughts that had kept her sad
+during the past months were in her mind again, and her bewilderment
+at the failure of her life.  "I don't understand--I don't
+understand," she kept thinking.  "I can't understand."  Then she
+remembered Daphne, and this boy--what was his name?  She would never
+know.  And that neither could have lived if it hadn't been for her.
+There was some comfort in the thought--if God gave them a good life.
+"O God, give them a good life." ... "O God, make them happy...."
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Mr. Bruno's first idea after the loss of his wife was to leave the
+children and the house to the management of Hollins and to retire
+into the solitude of his study.  Such an attitude would best suit his
+grief, and had its picturesqueness.  His grief, when he analysed it
+alone in his room, seemed a pain of pity for little Sheila, mixed
+with remorse for not having made her happier, rather than a sense of
+irreparable loss.
+
+But his sister, who had very kindly swept down upon his cottage the
+day after Sheila's death, had other views about the children.  Belle
+Phillimore, the widow of a cavalry officer, was twelve years older
+than her brother, and, in his opinion, an unutterable fool.  Her head
+could hold no ideas except those provided by her dead colonel and the
+superannuated clergy and ignorant ladies of her circle.
+
+"No, Tom, it won't do," she pronounced.  "This Hollins is a good
+soul, I'm sure, but what little Daphne and her brother will want is a
+lady.  For instance, look at the way Hollins talks.  She misuses
+grammar like all those sort of people do."
+
+Mr. Bruno nodded.  "Yes, grammar is a ticklish business."
+
+"Yes, children are always vulgarized by the society of servants.
+Besides, she's sure to be full of old superstitions and fill Daphne's
+head with them.  Can Hollins teach the children their Bible and
+Catechism?  Why, she probably doesn't understand them herself."
+
+"You forget, Belle," interrupted Mr. Bruno, "or perhaps I should say
+that, being a sister and an elder sister, you naturally have never
+read the few poor books that I have written....  Or if you have read
+them in an idle curiosity, you have naturally not taken them
+seriously.  But, as a matter of fact, I am quite serious in my
+inability to accept your Christianity."
+
+"But, Tom!  You surely wouldn't have a child brought up without
+religion?"
+
+"I didn't say that.  But I don't see why I should have a child
+brought up in what I believe to be error."
+
+"Oh, but it's different for you.  A child always goes to pieces if it
+isn't given some religion.  _You_'re a full-grown man with some
+cleverness."
+
+The description did not please Mr. Bruno, and he told himself,
+"That's as much as a relative will ever allow."  But this
+self-protecting thought was an intruder among others, and quickly
+lost.  Standing by the window and staring out, he was really thinking
+of the afternoon Daphne was born and the night Sheila died.
+
+"I should like them to have _some_ religion," he said suddenly.
+
+"Exactly.  We must get some good Christian gentlewoman to manage the
+household and the children--that was what I was going to suggest.
+We'll advertise in a Church paper."
+
+Mr. Bruno brought his eyes away from the window.
+
+"I've just had an idea.  Since these children went through the whole
+course of evolution when they were in the womb"--Belle moved
+uncomfortably--"it may do them no harm to go through the Christian
+period as well.  It may keep them fairly straight till they are
+developed enough to wander alone."
+
+"Exactly.  A sort of housekeeper-guardian.  Your servants will obey
+her.  They would never obey Hollins, one of their own number who'd
+been promoted.  They never do.  My poor Charlie used to say that the
+ranker officer had precious little control over his men; they
+preferred a gentleman any day."
+
+"Oh, my God!" thought Mr. Bruno; and his reading chair called to him
+like a refuge.
+
+"Well, look here, Belle," said he.  "Is it too much to ask you to
+draw up the advertisement, and perhaps to stay here and keep an eye
+on the place till the proper person is engaged?"
+
+His sister give a ready nod.  She would be only too pleased to do so,
+she said.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+These were years before public libraries and reading-rooms were to be
+found in every borough.  But in a suburb that was developing beyond
+the green fields of Hammersmith, one of the first of them had
+appeared, thanks to the munificence of a departed M.P.  It was an
+oblong room with some tall lecterns for such daily newspapers as the
+_Times_ and the _Standard_ on one side of the gangway, and on the
+other long elmwood tables for the reading of weekly journals which,
+when not in use, roosted in wire mangers on the walls.  On the Friday
+after Mr. Bruno's conversation with his sister--Friday being the day
+the best religious papers appeared--a woman entered this reading-room
+and, walking as one who knew her purpose, glanced immediately at the
+rack where the _Warden_ usually rested.  She was tall and thin, and
+might have been thirty-five or forty years old.  Thirty-five
+probably, the care-lines and the hint of hardness having come
+prematurely to a face that had once been soft and handsome.  Her walk
+had the rectitude of a woman who defends her title to gentility by
+her manner, since her dress, though neat, can betray little but
+poverty.  Her black skirt was frayed where it touched the ground, and
+the first finger of one black kid glove was split at the seam.  As
+proof of her social grade, however, she wore a veil, or "fall,"
+terminating just below her mouth.  And she carried a neatly folded
+umbrella and a reticule in which were visiting cards with the name
+(printed, not engraved) "_Miss Durgon_."
+
+She gave a little "St--! st--!" of annoyance when her glance at the
+wire shelf showed her that the _Warden_ had been removed.  She must
+see who was reading it, and make sure that she got it next.  Walking
+among the tables, she found that it was being read by a middle-aged
+woman in a brown skirt and coat and a fur, all slightly decayed; and,
+as this woman had a stunted and bitten pencil in her right hand with
+which she was tracing down the "Situations Vacant," and in her left a
+soiled envelope on which she was noting addresses, it seemed probable
+that she would monopolise the journal for most of the morning.  Miss
+Durgon said "St--! st--!" again.  The calm way these people sat, as
+by right, over papers for which they had paid nothing!  The ferrule
+of her umbrella beat impatiently on the ground, but without results.
+So, to intimate that she was waiting for the _Warden_, she sat down
+rather deliberately in the empty chair next the woman, and tapped out
+a resigned tattoo on the table top.  The woman with the pencil
+glanced round, and, resenting such a hint, slightly turned her back
+towards Miss Durgon.  Her right to the paper she defended by being a
+little slower in her perusal and a little more deliberate in her
+noting of addresses.  She thought it most annoying the way these
+women came and sat rudely beside you, as if they had some claim on a
+paper for which they had paid nothing.
+
+Minutes passed, and Miss Durgon could only express her impatience by
+repeating her tattoo on the table-top, and occasionally consulting a
+large watch at her breast.  Once another woman, a fat creature with a
+basket, came and stood by the person in possession, as if, in spite
+of Miss Durgon's long wait, she expected to have the paper next.
+Then Miss Durgon advanced her chair nearer to the _Warden_,
+rehearsing the words she would utter if the fat creature stepped in
+before her.  But the fat woman, seeing she was forestalled, walked
+away with just such a "St--! st--!" as Miss Durgon's.
+
+At last Miss Durgon's impatience compelled her to speak.
+
+"You'd oblige me if you'd allow me to see this paper.  I've waited
+fifteen minutes already."
+
+The woman with the pencil turned towards her; and then without
+answering gave Miss Durgon her back again.
+
+Miss Durgon's blood was up, and her hand went out to take the paper.
+But its possessor snatched it back and held it tight.
+
+"If I were you, I should learn to speak the truth," said she, and
+pretended to be lost in the advertisements, though her stumpy pencil
+was trembling.
+
+"Speak the truth!" snapped Miss Durgon.  "What do you mean? ...
+Insolence....  Perhaps I can find an attendant."
+
+"Saying you've been waiting fifteen minutes when you've not been
+waiting five.  You'll be saying you've been an hour next."
+
+Miss Durgon tossed her head, and adjusted a brooch.
+
+"I've no desire to speak to you.  All I ask is that, when you've
+found your situation----"
+
+"Situation yourself!" hissed the woman, deeply offended at this term.
+"If you want to do the highty-tighty, I should mend your glove."
+
+And she resumed her perusal of the paper.
+
+Miss Durgon scorned her, and trusted that the creature felt the
+scorn.  The woman, however, finished her study and, to annoy this
+detestable creature beside her, turned to a column of "News from the
+Dioceses," and read them.  Miss Durgon continued to enfilade her with
+contempt, and at length the woman got up and walked away.
+
+Miss Durgon slided along to the vacated seat, and, opening her
+reticule with dignified calm, took out a thin silver pencil, somewhat
+bitten, and a penny note-book whose leaves were dog-eared.  But she
+had hardly read two advertisements before the fat woman with the
+basket, who had appeared once before, came back to see if the paper
+were yet disengaged.  Annoyed to find it occupied by a person who, to
+judge from her pencil and notebook, intended remaining for some time,
+she sat down in the seat Miss Durgon had just left.  This was too
+exasperating.  Here she had only just secured the paper, and this fat
+sack of a woman came and seated herself menacingly beside her, as if
+to make her hasten.  She would do nothing of the sort.  If anything,
+she would travel over the advertisements with greater precision and
+an ostentatious calm.  Nor should the fat woman's drummings or "Tut
+tuts!" create any panic in her.  So she jotted down the possible
+situations, none of which animated her much, till suddenly she read:
+
+
+
+    "WANTED, for a Widower's home.  Lady Housekeeper, and Guardian to
+    two very young children.  Two servants (one as nurse).  Governess
+    later.  Apply Tenter Bruno, Underwold, Francefield, Sussex."
+
+
+
+So exactly did this suit Miss Durgon that she immediately felt
+confident that Destiny had led her to it this morning, and the post
+would undoubtedly be given her.  She must hurry back and write at
+once.  In her satisfaction she only handed the paper to the fat lady
+with a pleasant smile that made her think, as she walked away, how
+much more agreeable her manners were than those of the disgusting
+creature who had first held the paper.  Tenter Bruno?  Tenter Bruno?
+A familiar name.  She had seen it in papers, and heard it in
+conversations.  Could it be the well-known writer?  She must find
+out.  If it were, it would make the position doubly desirable.  She
+foresaw herself studying the comfort and securing the quiet of a
+literary man, and becoming quite indispensable to him.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+When Mr. Bruno's sister heard from Miss Durgon's lips, in the
+dining-room of the cottage, that she was the fifth daughter of an
+officer, she felt satisfied on all points.  And with some pride, as
+though her labours had been extensive and exhausting, she came into
+her brother's study to announce her complete success.
+
+"I think I've got the very person, Tom, the very person you need.  An
+excellent person.  First and foremost, she's a lady, the daughter of
+an officer.  A good-looking woman, too.  I've represented to her,
+Tom, that what she's got to do is to relieve you of all anxiety,
+whether it be about the children or the _ménage_ of the house.  She
+was most interested in your writing."
+
+Mr. Bruno, who like all comfort-loving literary men was sanguine
+about everything except the sale of his books, was only too pleased
+to believe all his sister said.
+
+"Excellent, Belle, excellent.  I'm sure I'm very grateful to you.  It
+_is_ of paramount importance that I am left to the undisturbed
+pursuit of my writing and reading.  The kindest thing I can do for
+the children is to go into my study and shut the door and work.  But
+that I could never have done--at least, not with the necessary
+detachment"--Mr. Bruno seemed almost to be trying to reassure himself
+in a dubious abandonment to comfort --"unless I had your assurance
+that everything possible was being done for the children."
+
+"Yes, I think you can be comfortable about that," interposed his
+sister.  "She struck me as a lady in every respect."
+
+Mr. Bruno, thinking, as usual, what a fool Belle was, merely replied:
+
+"Well, I'm sure I can trust your judgment on _that_ point, Belle.  I
+feel very satisfied and relieved at this stroke of yours."
+
+He was seeing long, quiet, self-sufficient days with his books,
+varied by an occasional kindly patronage of his children.  He felt
+vaguely that Belle had accepted the responsibility of the choice, and
+called down any blood upon her own head.  His clearer mind told him,
+in quickly closed moments, that he whose best works had tried to
+battle through to the secrets of life and art, had, in the matter of
+his children, been too indolent for thought.
+
+
+
+X
+
+The resentment of Hollins at this promotion of "Miss Skin-and-Grief"
+to the place she had hoped to fill was given its airing before the
+young maid in the kitchen:
+
+"I knew she was going to be awful.  I went to the door myself, and
+she says, 'Does Mrs. Phillimore live here?'  And I says, 'No, miss,'
+I said.  'This is Mr. Bruno's house, but he's got his sister staying
+with him.'  'Well, can I see her?' she says tartly.  I don't think
+she liked the 'miss.'  And I says, 'I'll see if she can see you,
+miss.'  I wasn't, so to speak, going to wave flags in front of her.
+I said, 'What name, miss?'  And she says, 'Durgon.'  So I went up and
+came down again, and says, 'Yes, Miss Durgon, Mrs. Phillimore can see
+you if you step this way.'  She bridled up at the 'Miss Durgon,' but
+said nothing, feeling, I suppose, that she hadn't sort of secured her
+position.  And, well, here she is, for good and all, if you ask me;
+and I don't reckon she'll worship the very ground I walk on."
+
+"'Slike as not she'll get you the sack," suggested the maid.
+
+"'Slike as not she'll do nothing of the sort!  The master knows as
+how the mistress lef' me messages to tell the children when they grow
+up, and for their sake he'll see that I'm there when they're old
+enough to hear.  No, Miss Skin-and-Grief won't be able to come it
+over me.  I'm not afraid of her, and she needn't think it."
+
+From the first, then, a skirmishing warfare existed between Hollins
+and Miss Durgon, with eye-darts for bullets and word-stabs for
+bayonet thrusts.  Hollins's sharpest pin was to distinguish her from
+all other ladies to whom she spoke by changing "Yes, ma'am," and "No,
+ma'am," into "Yes, Miss Durgon" and "No, Miss Durgon."
+
+This was exceedingly difficult to parry, and Miss Durgon spoke to her
+employer about it.
+
+Mr. Bruno was polite, as always, but inwardly annoyed at this
+intrusion of a domestic question into the privacy Belle had promised
+him.  He h'med over some remark about "a natural licence to an old
+servant," and then added, with the smile of delicacy: "But all this
+is your sphere, Miss Durgon; you must do what you think best.  All I
+ask is to be entirely free from these petty worries.  Do what you
+think best, only don't offend Hollins.  My wife thought a lot of
+Hollins."
+
+Miss Durgon, whose sword-arm was always weakened by her fear of
+losing her position, realised that she had made a false step, and
+never again obtruded a domestic question on Mr. Bruno.
+
+
+
+
+PART I: _Les Tracas des Enfants_
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Daphne's earliest memories were of being awake in her cot while the
+daylight was still outside the blinds, though flushed with sunset.
+Downstairs were footsteps and closing doors and women's voices; and
+sometimes her father's voice, only this was so deep as to be but half
+heard.  In another and smaller cot slept Owen, her baby brother, who
+often woke and cried for a minute and dropped off to sleep again.  He
+frightened her a little when, after dark, he would suddenly climb
+through a crescendo from whimpering to crying, and crying to
+screaming; and she would be glad when Hollins came up and quieted him
+with a fruity and ingratiating, "Now, go to by-by like a good little
+boy," or picked him up and sang to him:
+
+  Sonny go round the sun,
+  Sonny go round the moon,
+  Sonny go round the mulberry bush,
+  On a Sunday afternoon----
+
+though Daphne was always faintly worried by this equating of a
+mulberry bush with the sun and moon.  If Miss Durgon came up instead,
+she was much more prosaic.  She put Owen firmly on his other side,
+and added as she went out, to Daphne, who was sitting up, big-eyed,
+to watch the rearrangement of Owen:
+
+"Now you go to sleep.  We don't want nonsense from you too."
+
+With the passing of time Daphne learnt that there were three stable
+people in her world: Hollins, round, and in a blue cotton uniform,
+chiefly associated with comfort and friendliness; Miss Durgon, long,
+black, and chiefly associated with correction, church and manners;
+and her father, with a pointed beard.  She conceived that fathers and
+beards went together, and was much surprised the first time she saw
+some one else's father who had not even a moustache.  How he could be
+old enough to be a father was not clear.
+
+Her father was a jolly person in the early morning before breakfast.
+At half-past seven she was allowed to go into his bedroom and to
+climb on to the eiderdown for the playing of a game called "When I
+say 'kipper.'"  It consisted in Daphne's inventing a long story to
+which her father must listen carefully, because directly she worked
+in the dangerous word "kipper" he was to tickle her violently.  Her
+shrieks of alarm, after uttering the word "kipper," always began
+before the tickling got really started, and her yells of laughter and
+screams for mercy generally rewarded Mr. Bruno's tickling campaign
+within thirty seconds of its inception.  When Owen was old enough to
+play this game it was doubly exciting; for sometimes he would work in
+the dangerous word, and she, unprepared for it so soon, was caught
+and tickled till she rolled, screaming with hysterical laughter, off
+the bed to the floor.
+
+Some mornings she woke very early, and knew she would not go to sleep
+again, because it was daylight; and then her games had to be silent,
+for it was an offence to wake Owen; so she would use her knee or her
+foot to lift the bedclothes into a tent and sprawl about under them,
+divided in her mind whether they formed an Indian's wigwam or a
+Commander-in-Chief's headquarters.  Wearying of this, she would lie
+on her back and with her knees form the white quilt into a range of
+mountains.  There were Alpine pathways up the folds, and if she
+half-closed her eyes she could see the St. Bernard dogs and the pious
+monks as they looked for dead men in the snowdrifts.
+
+Hollins was a good person when she told them tales, but her nursery
+rhymes struck Daphne from the first as rather silly.  Cows couldn't
+jump over moons, nor dishes run away with spoons.  And "Old Mother
+Hubbard," which told of an old woman going to the larder to get a
+bone for her dog and finding the place empty: vaguely Daphne felt
+that as a story it led to nothing, and certainly wasn't worth making
+a song about.  Nor could she see that little Jack Horner's remark,
+"What a good boy am I!" had any sense or sequence.  Though in
+courtesy she applauded Hollins for her frequent rendering of these
+poems, she felt uncomfortably that the pleasant old servant was
+sinking in her estimation by uttering such nonsense.  Her father
+agreed that Jack Horner's exclamation was a _non-sequitur_, and told
+her that she had a quite exceptional clarity of brain, which would be
+a curse to her through life.  And then he added: "How's this for a
+nursery rhyme, Duffy?" and recited gently:
+
+  How many miles to Babylon?
+  Three-score and ten.
+  Can I get there by candlelight?
+  Aye.  There and back again.
+
+
+"That's not far from beauty, Duffy, as I hope you'll be able to see
+one day."
+
+And somehow it _did_ sound different.  Its measured movement pleased
+her, and its blue sadness; and these made her feel solemn and dreamy.
+
+Fairy tales weren't nonsense, because they were admittedly stories of
+people in an imaginary world, and so could be completely,
+engrossingly satisfying.  They were her monopolising delight when she
+could read--at least, Grimm's were.  Grimm's she read again and
+again, lolling in a deep arm-chair with her heels beneath her, and
+the book on the chair's arm.  Grimm's stories were real stories,
+clear and exciting.  Hans Andersen's were different: she could not
+get hold of them, and they were rather terrible.  Yet after she had
+abandoned the annoying book they haunted her strangely: "The Girl who
+Trod on the Loaf"--ugly, dark, wonderful story; "The Red Shoes," "Ib
+and little Christina," and "Something."  Whole sentences from them
+hung in her memory: "She flew away, as if she were flying straight
+into the sun."  "They said 'Clink' and were broken."  "And that was
+something."
+
+"You don't understand, Duffy," said Mr. Tenter Bruno, when the
+annoyingness of Hans Andersen was pointed out to him.  "But while
+Grimm only entertains you with what is agreeable, Hans Andersen
+_troubles_ you with beauty."
+
+When, in Hollins's phrase, she was "rising nine," her father decided
+to move to town.  Earning a much larger income now, he could have
+lived in considerable style, but for the ever-gnawing fear that
+either his brain-power or his vogue would dwindle, and the workhouse
+ensue.  This made him resolve that his place in town should not be in
+one of the expensive districts.  But it would have to be fairly big,
+if it were to accommodate the two children, Miss Durgon, Hollins, and
+another servant.
+
+Such a house was found at last in Deseret Road, West Kensington.  The
+sanguine Mr. Bruno was quite pleased with it: a tall, red-brick
+place, with basement and area and four stories above--the sort of
+place which would both make him very comfortable and allow itself to
+be called a suburban barbarity.  The back of the house looked over
+the grounds of Queen's Club, so that one could watch the Varsity
+sports and football matches from all the windows that were above the
+grounds' encircling trees.  Opposite the house front, across a good
+road, was a sunken waste ground waiting for the builder to arrive
+upon it.  In the neighbourhood were many such places, though the long
+screens of uniform houses were building apace.
+
+So there joined Daphne's more vivid memories the picture of that
+exciting day when they journeyed up to London and their new house.
+To her, who had only been told of London, it was a move as exciting
+as the departure of town children for the sea; the packing in the
+previous week, the trunks standing in the hall the night before, the
+arrival of the "fly" from the Ballard Arms, the stacking of the
+trunks about the carriage, and the drive, thus laden, to the station.
+Hollins and the maid had gone ahead to prepare the house, so Daphne
+and Owen secured one pair of corner seats in the railway carriage,
+and their father and Miss Durgon the other.  More people got in,
+which meant extinction for Owen, Miss Durgon telling him he must keep
+his seat and not fidget.  Daphne, having been wakeful most of the
+night, was lulled to sleep by the passing of the hedgerows and
+palings, and by the slow rolling and swinging of the train, till the
+voices of the strange occupants, and of her father and Miss Durgon,
+floated in a luminous mist behind her half sleep.
+
+She was awakened by a jolting and slowing of the train and the
+movements of the people in the compartment.  The November day had
+darkened, and out of her window she saw more interlacing railway
+lines than she could have believed possible, all of them wet, as if
+rain had fallen here, and shining in gaslight.  The backs of the
+houses were dark-grey and gloomy, and the few lit windows frightened
+her with their suggestiveness.  Unconsciously she created stories of
+misery for the people behind them.  The train rolled into the
+colossal station that bruised and battered her with its noises and
+smell and hurrying.
+
+"We must get a four-wheeler," said her father importantly.
+
+She wondered what a four-wheeler was, till the porter trundled their
+luggage alongside a "fly" much more squat than the carriage sent by
+the Ballard Arms.  There was a head-achy smell inside it, and she was
+glad when her father sat her on his knee, for she received a draught
+from the window, as well as being able to see the things coming into
+view.  First, there were lighted shops and entangling traffic; then a
+broad, roomy road of tall houses; then a great highway that seemed
+all coloured buses and four-wheelers and jingling hansoms.  These
+hansoms, she said, were like sedan chairs drawn by horses.  All of it
+kept her commenting and questioning, till of a sudden she was given a
+fear--one of those fears that one did not tell to adults for they
+were not liable to them.  There was a man running beside their cab.
+A man in a cloth cap, with a muffler round his neck.  In and out of
+the pedestrians he padded, sometimes on the roadway, sometimes on the
+pavement, often glancing at the luggage stacked on the cab's roof.
+The scenery changed, but the padding man was as unlosable as a
+shadow.  She drew back her face from the window.
+
+They were bowling now down a wide road, on one side of which were
+rows of tall houses, painted white or cream, or left a cindery grey,
+and on the other an interminable line of railings with trees and
+grass beyond.  Daphne could only judge that a garden so endless must
+be the Queen's and she inquired of her father:
+
+"Is that where the Queen lives, daddy?"
+
+"Yes; she used to live there, or a little farther on--in fact, she
+was born there, but, like us, she's moved."
+
+"And who lives there now, then?"
+
+Mr. Bruno controlled a smile.
+
+"Oh, the Prince Consort has a seat there."
+
+"Who's the Prince Consort?"  She thought foggily of Grimm's princes.
+
+"Well, he's a howling swell in his place in there," assured her
+father.
+
+Daphne said no more, for, in staring out, she had seen the shadow-man
+still keeping level with the cab.  They had passed into a
+neighbourhood that, though it had some tall, red-brick houses, was
+subtly inferior to anything they had come through before.  Miss
+Durgon made the remark: "Dear me, this is all very familiar ground,"
+and Daphne, while envying her this knowledge, thought that somehow
+the neighbourhood suited Miss Durgon.  What she meant she could not
+have said: probably that it was a dark and well-behaved
+neighbourhood, a genteel hanger-on of the fine white houses, and a
+place that would prohibit the noisier games.
+
+Now the cab left the streets where the buses were, and got into quiet
+roads of residential houses.  It seemed to turn round every corner
+that Daphne gambled it would turn round.  And always the running man
+turned with it.  It stopped at last before a high house, one of a
+red-brick row, with many white steps leading up to its front door.
+There was a lamp-post opposite the area gate, and she could see by
+its light that the dark-green paint on the hall door was raised into
+little blisters.  Interesting things to prick.
+
+The cab-door opened by itself--or, rather, it was opened by the
+shadow, who touched his cloth cap.  Daphne, whom her father was about
+to hand out, shrunk back as if she were being handed to some dark,
+night messenger.
+
+"It's all right," laughed her father.  "This gentleman has only come
+to help us with our luggage."
+
+That moment the hall door of their new home opened, flooding the
+steps with gas-light; and Daphne, seeing Hollins standing there,
+rushed hurriedly past the shadow into her arms.
+
+
+Because of its complete difference from their Sussex home, the house
+in Deseret Road appealed to Daphne as a place much more romantic and
+thrilling--especially on foggy falls of their first November, when it
+could assume an air of the sinister.  She and Owen early examined,
+not without fears, its every room and cupboard and cellar.  Owen at
+first had not seen much reason to be afraid of them--nor, in truth,
+had Daphne--but, in order to make them more interesting, she had
+deliberately worked on his imagination and her own with rather
+disturbing ideas about secret panels and subterranean passages, till
+Owen was obviously terrified of them, and she herself wondered what
+exactly her feelings about them were.  To explore at night the
+kitchen and pantries, which were actually below ground and down a
+stairway like a mine-shaft, was a thrilling adventure when prosecuted
+with a companion--unthinkable alone.
+
+The long dining-room was a dangerous place because of the huge syphon
+for making soda-water that stood in the centre of the sideboard,
+before the mirror.  This great bulbous, though neat-waisted glass
+thing, encased in a trellis-work of wire, was as large as a child,
+and Hollins had told them that the wire casing was to prevent it
+exploding.
+
+"Dangerous things," she had said.  "They have to be all wrapped up in
+wire like that, being apt to go sort of what I call--off."
+
+So Daphne, in the first weeks, always went past the sideboard
+quickly; and she marvelled, with hand at her mouth, when her father
+lifted the thing carelessly, and even shook it.
+
+The sounds outside the house, too, were so different from those
+around their Sussex home.  There the birds had sung, hardly heeded,
+in the boughs or under the eaves, or fluttered out of the creeper on
+the walls; and footsteps were seldom heard unless they were those of
+Eadigo on the gravel, or some visitor approaching the door.  But here
+in Deseret Road sounded the rattle of two-wheeled tradesmen's carts,
+almost under the breakfast-room window; the crunching of errand-boys'
+hand-barrows; the ringing on the pavement of the feet of passers-by;
+or a loud and continued vibrating as some idle, whistling urchin
+dragged a stick along the area railings.  In the winter came the bell
+of the muffin-man; and at other times the musical, sad cry of men and
+women selling lavender:
+
+  Lavender, sweet lavender,
+  Sixteen branches a penny
+
+
+The errand boys were interesting because they could often be
+encouraged to put out their tongues or make long noses.  And the
+muffin-man was never to be missed; if Daphne announced his
+appearance, Owen rushed to the breakfast-room window.  He balanced a
+whole tray of muffins on his head, with nothing of the contortion,
+nervousness and reaching of one's tongue up to one's nose that Daphne
+had found inevitable when trying to do it with the butler's tray.
+
+Ever afterwords the muffin bell made her think of a winter Sunday
+afternoon in Deseret Road.  A year had passed.  Father was
+away--tremendously far away.  Having decided to treat himself to a
+holiday in India, he had departed in a cloud of romance, after
+showing the children his cabin trunks, his tropical hats, and
+pictures of the huge ship in which he would actually live for several
+weeks.  Once he had "dressed up" in his Indian toggery, and
+beautifully neat and handsome, distinguished and whimsical he had
+looked in his white drill, smiling above his brown beard.  Father's
+absence brought one advantage: Hollins, instead of Miss Durgon, took
+them to church.  When father was at home, Miss Durgon had always
+conducted them with great parade to St. Antony's near by.  It was a
+long, unintelligible service, and Daphne's only interest was to hope
+that some one would faint again, like a young woman who had caused a
+splendid diversion one warm spring morning.  But nobody ever obliged
+again, and Daphne's detestation of church was suddenly increased to
+horror by the fixed idea that one day _she_ was destined to provide
+the excitement.  This heart-stopping thought would come over her, if
+the sermon were at all long, so that she would send up an ejaculatory
+prayer as sincere as that house of prayer had ever known: "O God,
+make him stop!"  Miss Durgon's deportment at church incensed her more
+than anywhere else; it was so silly the way she opened her Bible,
+directly the preacher announced the text and its reference.  What was
+the sense in looking them up when she had just been told what they
+were?  Guessing that her father did not approve of church, she one
+day announced to Miss Durgon that she didn't think she would go that
+morning; Father didn't go.  But Miss Durgon made short work of this:
+"Your father's a very clever man.  When you're as clever as he is,
+you'll be able to question whether or not you'll go to church"; to
+which Daphne answered promptly: "Father says I _am_ clever."
+
+But now that Mr. Bruno had gone away, Miss Durgon ceased going to
+church, delegating to Hollins the task of taking the children.  And
+going to Hollins's church was nothing like so detestable as going to
+Miss Durgon's.  Hollins had a church of her own fancy, quite a
+distance away, to which you went in a bus.
+
+"I do seem to fancy it, I must say," she told the children.  "I can't
+explain it--it sort of _gets_ me.  Your St. Antony's doesn't get me
+at all."
+
+She had first taken them there in the morning, telling them they
+would be pleased with the procession; it was as good as a theatre.
+This had excited them, and in their pew they eagerly awaited the
+beginning of the entertainment.  When the banners and crucifixes and
+candles and incense and scarlet-skirted boys and quilted clergymen
+poured out from behind the high altar, Owen, who had been watching
+them with a falling mouth, suddenly looked up to Hollins and said:
+
+"Is it all right?"
+
+Hollins murmured "Sh--sh," and nodded "Yes," thereby answering the
+question that England had essayed to answer for sixty years.
+
+On this particular winter afternoon, the children's service was more
+than usually entertaining.  Glossy coloured pictures were brought
+round by the stout, smiling gentleman in the linen and lace, and
+distributed to the children.  It was better than the crackers thrown
+by the clown in the pantomime, for every child seemed (if craning
+heads saw aright) to receive one, and the stout gentleman had almost
+as merry a smile as the clown's.  When he came alongside Owen, who
+was at the end of the pew--in fact, almost in the nave, such was his
+open-mouthed interest--and offered him a picture, Owen looked up at
+Hollins and asked:
+
+"Is it all right?"
+
+And Hollins said:
+
+"Yes.  Sh----!  Quite all right.  Take it."
+
+So he took it and began to chew one of its corners.  Daphne had some
+difficulty in taking hers for she was struggling with a fit of
+giggling.
+
+Towards the end of the service, when the church was darkening,
+another exciting and mirthful thing happened: the verger lit the
+gas-brackets one after another.  Then came a hymn, "All things bright
+and beautiful," and a procession in which the children fell in, pew
+by pew, behind the choir, and walked round the church.  The little
+ones, Daphne noticed with a throb of pity that hurt her, held the
+hands of older brothers and sisters, and ran and stumbled along,
+dropping their books and weeping bitter tears that were unheeded in
+the roar of:
+
+  _All_ things bright and beautiful,
+  All creatures great and small,
+  _All_ things wise and wonderful,
+  The Lord God made them all.
+
+
+One by one the pews in front of the Brunos emptied, and Daphne got
+quite exhilarated, as it drew near their moment to turn into the
+nave.  Owen, being on the outside of the pew, had to lead off, and he
+prefaced so unusual a proceeding by looking up at Hollins with
+eyebrows that obviously inquired into its correctness.  Reassured, he
+stepped out to join the others, first making certain, however, that
+Hollins and his sister were coming too.
+
+When, after the blessing and a hymn sung most amusingly on one's
+knees, they passed out with the crowd into the road, they found it
+quite dark, though they had not yet had tea.  They walked quickly
+down the road, Daphne talking excitedly and skippingly to Hollins
+about the service.  And then the muffin bell sounded.  And even while
+they were drawing attention to it, a muffin-man swung round a distant
+corner, and approached them along their very pavement.
+
+"Is there muffins for tea?" asked Owen.
+
+"You shouldn't ought to say, Is there?  Where's your grammar?  You
+should say, Are there?"
+
+So Daphne said it.
+
+"Well, are there?"
+
+"No, Miss Inquisitive, there aren't."
+
+"Well, couldn't we take some back with us?"
+
+"Well now, did you ever?  Of course not."
+
+"Oh, do let's."
+
+Owen said nothing, being not quite clear whether so abnormal a
+development were all right.
+
+"Oh, Holly, may we?"
+
+Daphne always gained her point by calling Hollins this endearing name.
+
+"You know you didn't ought to buy anything of a Sunday."
+
+"Yes, you ought.  Didn't he tell us that the disciples picked the
+corn as they walked through the field?  Why, I believe Owen's is a
+picture of them....  It is!"  She gave a little jump.  "Oh, Holly, I
+believe you're a Pharisee.  Look, that's you in the background,
+looking snitchy."
+
+"You're a clever one," said Hollins.  "You say more than your
+prayers, you do."  And, as the muffin-man was now close, she stopped
+before him.
+
+"Oh, good!" muttered Daphne, as Hollins bought.
+
+They were soon at the wide high street, where the buses were.  They
+clambered inside one, Hollins refusing them permission to mount to
+the top, on the score that the air after dark was treacherous.  So,
+wrapped up in their reefer coats, they sat in the bus, swinging their
+legs, and staring up at the advertisements of Sapolio, or down at a
+new one, which was fixed at the bus's end, a picture of a very
+discontented baby climbing out of a bath to get a piece of soap.
+
+"What does it say beneath?" asked Owen.
+
+"It says, 'He won't be happy till he gets it.'"
+
+"What's he want it for?"
+
+"How should I know, silly?  Eat it, I expect."
+
+Hollins was always shorter with Owen than with Daphne.  She believed
+she had some special feeling for Daphne, having been beside her
+father when the news came of her birth.
+
+"Did he get it?" asked Daphne.
+
+"How should I know, silly one?  No, I don't think he did.  He fell
+down and hurt his nose."
+
+Owen's hand shot to the bridge of his nose in nervous sympathy.  He
+brought it away quickly with a timid glance, to see if any one had
+remarked so absurd a motion.  But no one had because the bus had
+stopped to allow of a lady's entrance.  As all the seats were
+occupied, she would have been obliged to stand if Hollins hadn't
+nudged Owen and whispered, "Who's a little gentleman now?"  Owen was
+dreading this; not because he minded giving up his seat, but because
+he so disliked the publicity, and the not knowing what to say to the
+lady.  She, however, saved him from speech by saying, "Well, that is
+kind of you," and Hollins by adding, "Not at all.  He's pleased."
+
+When they were home again, they found that Miss Durgon was out, and
+not likely to be back all the evening.  Then it was that Daphne heard
+Hollins mutter her mysterious words, "I guessed as much.  I thought
+so....  Well, come down to my room, and we'll have a jolly tea
+together there....  Ha--I knew it...."
+
+Down in her common little sitting-room, she poked up the fire till it
+flared with excitement.
+
+"I do like a nice blaze on a winter's afternoon.  There's nothing
+like a bit of a flare to cheer you up.  See that blue flame?  That
+means frost.  Now you watch that, and if you're very good, I'll bring
+up something that's even better than muffins."
+
+"Oh, what's that, what's that?" demanded Daphne.
+
+"Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies," teased Hollins as she
+disappeared.  In a few minutes she returned with a paper bag, and,
+kneeling heavily on the rug before the fire, produced chestnuts, to a
+shriek of delight from Daphne and a request for further information
+and explanation from Owen.  The chestnuts were placed on the bars of
+the fire.
+
+After tea they told stories in the glow of the fire, and had a
+concert, singing with the help of Hollins, "Way down upon the Swanee
+River," and the hymn, "I love to hear the story," not out of piety
+but because its tune was so curly.  And lastly, Hollins gave her
+famous solo about the little tailor boy, who went skipping into smoke
+with a broadcloth under his arm:
+
+  With a broadcloth under his arm,
+  With a broadcloth under his arm,
+  And the little tailor boy went skipping into smoke
+  With a broadcloth under his arm.
+
+
+Which was always a signal for Hollins to say, "And now you go
+skipping off to bed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Daphne was growing tall.  If by mistake she ran into a room of
+visitors and rushed out again with an "Oh, sorry!" the impression she
+left was of thin legs seen above the knee, and untidy brown hair.
+Also of a hot blush, less of shyness than of sudden guilt and
+consequent laughter.  And somebody was sure to say, "She's going to
+be a tomboy and no mistake."  Her high spirits were so high that
+often when she was alone she felt she could scream with them.  This
+over-plus of vitality, her father used to say hopefully, would run to
+creative work or a passionate love one day.
+
+Disliking most things that Miss Durgon recommended, Daphne had not
+decided what sort of character she would like to have.  She was a
+malleable mass.  But one ambition was warming.  The frequent
+repetition of the phrase "tomboyish" had pleased her, and she decided
+to live up to it.  She decided to hate dolls, doll's houses and
+sewing.  And she was secretly pleased when people said, "The girl
+ought to have been the boy, and the boy ought to have been the girl,"
+for she did not doubt that she could dominate Owen any day of the
+week.  This desire to be masculine, introduced from without, was
+perhaps the earliest principle to strike a root in her.
+
+She imagined that her hatred of repression--or, in other words, her
+hatred of Miss Durgon--was the natural outcome of her manliness.  The
+obvious fact that Owen was timid of their guardian while _she_ could
+be outspokenly rebellious, and, please God, intended to be more so,
+gave her a deal of satisfaction.
+
+Once, sitting in the little room below stairs, and talking to
+Hollins, who was working a sewing-machine, she asked her for an
+opinion on Miss Durgon.
+
+"Is she a good woman, Hollins?"
+
+Hollins appeared to lift her lips towards her nose.
+
+"Well, that's not for me to say.  What some of us think we keep to
+ourselves."
+
+"I say, Hollins, shall I tell you what I think, if you tell me what
+you think."
+
+"No; I shan't tell you what I think if you tell me what you think."
+
+"Oh, Hollins!"
+
+Hollins turned the wheel monotonously, her head slightly on one side.
+
+"There are some things one thinks that are best thought and left at
+that."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Why?  Because they ain't pretty, silly one.  Now do you know?"
+
+"You mean, you think Miss Durgon a beast?"
+
+"Miss Daphne, I never said nothing of the sort.  And I'll thank you
+not to go putting it about that I did."
+
+Daphne started to be ingratiating.
+
+"No, but you meant it, didn't you, Hollins?"
+
+"I never, so there!  All I mean is, some people are made in their own
+way and can't help it."
+
+"Made what way, Hollins?"
+
+Hollins snapped an entangled thread.
+
+"Made so as they know how to worm themselves into positions, and sort
+of make themselves indispensable, and get the power into their hands.
+Oh, it's clever; I'd be the last to say it wasn't."
+
+"She doesn't like you, Hollins."
+
+"She doesn't, doesn't she?  Milady doesn't.  Well, I wonder now if
+that'll spoil my appetite.  I wonder if I shall lay awake fretting
+about that....  And how, Miss Mischief, may you happen to know
+whether she likes me or not?"
+
+"Because she often says I oughtn't to hang about you so much."
+
+"She does?  Says you shouldn't ought to hang about me so much?  Oh!
+There's where you are.  I hold me tongue from speaking against her,
+but she'll say what she likes about me readily enough.  There's the
+lady.  And mind you, I've kep' quiet about more things than one I've
+noticed.
+
+"I've noticed, f'r instance--however....  Common people like Hollins,
+you see, haven't got eyes, and what they think don't matter, as
+they've no brains worth speaking of...."
+
+The forces moving towards a more overt war between Daphne and Miss
+Durgon were not only working in Daphne.  Miss Durgon, who had now
+been many years with Mr. Bruno, was no longer nervous of jeopardising
+her position by a false move.  She had summed up her employer, and
+knew that his love of ease and unworried seclusion would resist any
+idea of change.  She was still under forty-five, and very different,
+of course, from what she appeared to the eyes of her wards.  Naught
+of her slimness or good carriage had left her, and now that she was
+earning a fair stipend and could supplement it from the housekeeping
+money, she dressed remarkably well.  To people of her own generation
+and class she showed a vivacity and cleverness such as never appeared
+before those creatures who could not interest her--children and
+servants.  Of late Miss Durgon had enjoyed the admiration of some
+men, though in each case, unfortunately, they were the husbands of
+her friends.
+
+This admiration had increased her self-respect, and, as a result, her
+indignation at the rebelliousness of Daphne.  The indignation
+demanded an early overthrow of the child.  And by the side of this
+sense that Daphne must be taught her place sat an unhealthy but
+growing desire.  Though she knew nothing about suppressed sex, she
+saw that there was perversion somewhere in an idea that could so
+stimulate her.  She wanted to whip Daphne at least once.  There was a
+sensuous quality about the child that would make the whipping of her
+pleasant.
+
+The collision came when Miss Durgon tried to stop Daphne's game of
+"Getting up early."
+
+The children had discovered this game in the months before their
+father left for India.  Those were summer days, and Daphne would wake
+up Owen as soon as she herself was awakened by the sunlight streaming
+behind the blinds and the chatter of the birds in Queen's Club
+Gardens.  They would dress with all the interest of getting up before
+any one else was astir, and then creep down the stairs, a little
+nervous of the deserted, blind-dimmed house.  Unchaining and
+unbolting the hall door, they ran out into the sunny publicity of
+Deseret Road.  In their hands they carried a toy cricket bat (one
+solid piece of yellow wood without a splice), four stumps and a
+tennis ball.  Their destination was a sunken waste ground at the
+corner of Goscombe Road, which, though hillocky, weed-grown, and not
+empty of refuse, required no great imagination to be converted into
+Queen's Club Gardens.  There they would set their stumps and imitate
+the white-flannelled cricketers whom they had watched from their back
+windows.  Daphne represented Cambridge and Owen Oxford.
+
+The clearest line of division in the human race was that which
+divided the people who were Oxford from those who were Cambridge.
+Owen was Oxford, because Oxford always won the Boat-race; Daphne was
+Cambridge because Cambridge never did.  There were other reasons for
+their choice: Owen was Oxford because his father was, and his name
+began with an O; Daphne was Cambridge because light blue was a nicer
+colour than dark blue, and D, her initial, was nearer C than O, and
+because hardly any one else she knew was Cambridge, and because Owen
+was Oxford.
+
+Cambridge batted first, and Owen, for Oxford, opened the bowling.  If
+Owen's ball came near enough, she tried to hit it; and when she
+missed it, ran after it, picked it up and returned it to him.
+
+"Bowl us something one can hit," she shouted.
+
+Sometimes, after she had hit it, Owen stopped it and gathered it up;
+and then she would instruct him to hold it while she ran to his stump
+and back.
+
+"That's what I have to do," she explained.
+
+So Owen examined the stitches of the tennis ball while Daphne ran to
+where he was standing and back to her wicket.
+
+"Now you bowl again."
+
+"But when can I bat?"
+
+"When you've knocked over these three stumps, silly.  Don't you know
+the game?"
+
+Owen looked a little sulky.
+
+"I can't hit them with you in front."
+
+"Well, when I've made thirty I'll retire."
+
+When Daphne bowled she would only consent to bowl over-arm.  That was
+the way they did it at Queen's Club.  Sometimes the milkman would
+stay his clattering cart to watch her, and call out: "Good old W. G.!
+What price Lord 'Awke?"  His "That's right!  Sling 'em up, miss!"
+always deepened the colour of her cheeks, already warmed with
+running; and she would try to impress him by sending down an
+especially good ball.  If it proved, however, to be rather wide she
+would call out to Owen loud explanations of so unusual a failure,
+hoping to keep her reputation with the milkman.  When the game was
+over she hurried back to tell her father the result of the match, the
+number of runs she had scored, and how she had been obliged to retire
+in order that Owen might have an innings.
+
+But now that Mr. Bruno was abroad Miss Durgon withdrew her consent
+from the game.  At breakfast one morning, when she heard that they
+had been out, she pronounced, as all rose from the table:
+
+"You're not to do that any more.  Do you clearly understand?"
+
+"Why?" asked Daphne, with symptoms of sulkiness.
+
+"Why?  Because I say so.  You must allow me to know better than you.
+Ladies' children don't play in the streets."
+
+(In the vocabulary of Miss Durgon there were two kinds of
+children--"ladies' children" and "district children," the latter
+being sometimes called "poor people's children.")
+
+"Father used to let us," grumbled Daphne.
+
+"Don't answer back.  Your father has entrusted your bringing up to
+me, and doesn't want to be bothered about it.  You're older now, too.
+Besides, cricket isn't a nice game for a little girl."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Never mind why.  You'll understand these things later on.  It's
+indelicate."
+
+Daphne was a little nervous of her next remark, but as she was more
+frightened of convicting herself of fear, she hurriedly forced it out.
+
+"I shall ask father when he comes back."
+
+"You excessively rude little girl!" exclaimed Miss Durgon.  "You want
+a good whipping.  I've a good mind to give you one.  You've been
+getting quite out of hand lately."
+
+That Miss Durgon was empowered to give her a whipping had not entered
+Daphne's mind.  Hitherto, when it had been a case for such extreme
+measures, Miss Durgon had spoken to her father.  But that was when
+she had been very young.  These words of her guardian momentarily
+repulsed her.  But feeling the ignominy of surrender, and observing
+that Owen was staring open-mouthed from one to the other as they
+exchanged these interesting remarks, she persisted.  One had to play
+up before him.
+
+"In the Bible they played in the streets.  Father Alderwood said so.
+They played at funerals in the market-place, and Jesus Christ played
+with them----"
+
+"Daphne!  I never heard such talk.  Go out of the room at once.  How
+dare you talk blasphemously like that?  Upon my soul--mark my
+words--if you try on this arguing with me I shall one day take a
+stick to you.  I mean it.  Mixing up religion and play like that!
+Little humbug!"
+
+"I'm not a humbug," said Daphne, walking round the breakfast table to
+keep it between Miss Durgon and herself.
+
+"You're a little humbug," repeated Miss Durgon, who had so lost her
+temper as hardly to know what she was talking about.  "Parading
+religion, and at the same time being insolent and disobedient.
+You're a regular little Pharisee."
+
+To be called what you have called others is always as wounding as it
+is astonishing.
+
+"I'm not a Pharisee."  The tears sprang to Daphne's eyes.
+
+"Yes, you are; and will you keep quiet, I tell you?"
+
+"Well, if I'm a Pharisee, you're a Sadducee."
+
+"Upon my soul!  Come here!  Don't run away!  It's no good; I shall
+catch you sooner or later."  Miss Durgon had paused, feeling the
+indignity of running after a child.  "Insulting a woman who's giving
+up her life to you like that!  Sadducee indeed!  You don't know what
+a Sadducee is."
+
+"Yes, I do.  It's some one who doesn't believe in the Resurrection."
+
+"Daphne, come here.  I'm going to give you a thorough good whipping.
+You've earned it richly."
+
+Daphne ran towards the door.  Miss Durgon arrived there at the same
+time.  Daphne slipped past her, and, crying loudly, ran out of the
+room.  She heard Miss Durgon call, "Stop that child!" so raced
+upstairs, and remembering the bolt on the bathroom door, rushed in,
+slammed the door, and shot home the bolt.
+
+Breathless, she threw herself on the linoleum floor, and sobbed with
+heaving shoulders.  Knocks came to the door, and the voice of Miss
+Durgon.
+
+"Open at once, Daphne.  Bad, naughty little girl!  Open the door at
+once."
+
+"I shan't!  I shan't!" sobbed Daphne.
+
+The door shook.  Daphne had a wild idea, should the door yield, of
+leaping out of the window and crashing to her death in the street.
+She jumped up at a moment when the door seemed likely to give, and
+flung up the sash.
+
+"What are you doing?" cried the alarmed Miss Durgon, and the door
+ceased to shake.  "Daphne, what are you doing?"
+
+Daphne roared through her tears.
+
+"If you come in, I'm going out of the window.  Out of the window."
+
+"You're a bad, evil little girl.  I'm sure I don't know what to do
+with you."
+
+Miss Durgon retired; and Daphne and she were separated by the
+bathroom door, both a little alarmed at the storm, and rather vague
+as to how it had arisen.
+
+
+More than once this bathroom had been the scene of a solitary
+performance at which Daphne would have been ashamed to be caught,
+though it gave her a sweet, troubled delight such as no other game
+could give.  It had sprung from the everlasting lilt in her mind of
+some lines of poetry, found in her history after the story of King
+Charles's beheading:
+
+  He nothing common did nor mean
+  Upon that memorable scene ...
+
+  Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite,
+  To vindicate his helpless right;
+    But bowed his comely head
+    Down, as upon a bed.
+
+
+The nature of her delight in them she did not analyse; but a kindred
+delight--an emotion not empty of troubling--had used to come to her,
+in the old home, when she saw a shaft of yellow lamplight thrown on
+to evening grass; or a wood of dark firs spining a hill in the
+landscape's blue distance; or those stretches of rusty bracken, with
+here and there a lonely, blown tree, that were Shadwell Common in
+autumn; or red firelight on old wood, when sunset had fallen before
+tea, and the lamps were not yet lit.  It was the same haunting
+something that came out of Hans Andersen: "She flew away as if she
+were flying straight into the sun."  And the old nursery rhyme had it:
+
+  How many miles to Babylon?
+    Three score and ten.
+  Can I get there by candlelight?
+    Aye, there and back again.
+
+
+"He nothing common did nor mean."  A scene in which she died like
+that, wrongfully condemned but too proud to protest her innocence,
+was Daphne's shameful game in the bathroom behind a bolted door.  At
+first she used to place the chair for a block, and walk towards it
+through a street of staring faces.  Before its feet she knelt down,
+so that her hair fell away from the neck.  There, without visible
+tremor, she awaited the blow.
+
+But gradually the drama in this form failed to express fully the
+movements within her.  She wanted the cruelly executed person to be
+herself, Daphne Bruno, not a character in history.  And in these days
+people were never beheaded.  If the game was to satisfy her, it must
+be brought into the realism of the present.  And so it changed into a
+trial for murder, where Daphne stood in the dock (her hands on the
+woodwork round the bath) and listened in silence to the perjury of
+witnesses, or turned grave, brave eyes on the judge as he pronounced
+the sentence.  After hearing his words, while the tense solemnity
+remained in the court, she made a brief speech, proclaiming her faith
+that her character would one day be cleared, and thanking those
+friends in the gallery who had never doubted her innocence, and the
+Q.C. who had defended her as ably as it was in the power of man to do.
+
+Then, having done nothing common, mean or vulgar, she turned and
+followed the warder to the condemned cell.
+
+
+But to-day, in stormy mood, she could play no such game.  Picking
+herself up from the floor, she sat sideways on the chair with her arm
+along its back.  Her sobs were now internal and intermittent.  The
+chair as a permanent seat proved uncomfortably hard, so she sat on
+the cork mat on the linoleum and picked off chips from its broken
+corner.  When this palled, she stood up and traced her finger along
+the squares in the tiled wallpaper, reaching at last the hole in the
+plaster made by the door-key.  Here she played "snowstorms," putting
+a finger in the hole and, by scratching it downwards, sending a
+tenuous shower of powdered plaster to the floor.  But this palled too.
+
+Very quiet was the house, as if her disgrace were like an illness,
+compelling all the inmates to go about their business with subdued
+steps.  She looked out of the window, and watched the passing of
+carts and pedestrians.  Sometimes she saw children known to her, and
+drew away her head lest they guessed anything.
+
+If only she had a book to read!  If only she could make a silent dash
+up the next flight of stairs to the nursery, and seize a book, and
+rush back to her fastness!  Guiltily she pulled the bolt, opened the
+door, and listened.  Not a sound anywhere.  She tiptoed through an
+ante-room on to the landing, and then leapt like a chamois from stair
+to stair.  Her heart beat fast as she searched quickly along the
+shelf that contained her few books.  There was hardly anything she
+had not read several times, except, indeed, "Little Women," that Aunt
+Belle had given her for her birthday, and she had refused to read on
+account of its feminine title.  On the ground floor a door shut.
+Instantly she seized the book, and hurtled downstairs to her
+bathroom.  She rested her book on the woodwork round the bath, whose
+varnish had been so spoiled by soap; and with her head on her left
+palm and her right hand playing with the tap-handles, she began to
+read.  In a few minutes the tap-handles were neglected; she was in
+America with Jo and Meg and Beth and Amy.  Her disgrace withdrew from
+memory, save in moments when she contrasted Miss Durgon with the
+lovable Marmee, or saw a likeness between her and the peppery Aunt
+March.  The high sentiments emitted by Jo and Meg and Beth and Amy
+made her feel rather good herself.
+
+Wearying of the hard seat, she placed the open book upon the floor,
+and herself on her stomach before it, with her hands supporting her
+chin, her legs opened, and one foot occasionally rising into the air.
+By now the Marches were the most fascinating family in the world.
+
+The book must surely be literature of a high order, with all those
+noble resolutions and elegant little sermons by Marmee.  There
+stirred in Daphne, for the first time, the ambition to write.  She
+stopped reading for a minute, and stared over the book's edge.  As
+pain in the adult artist liberates itself in created work, so
+Daphne's present misery sought liberation in a dream of great books.
+Books of this kind, very sad and uplifting and beautiful.  The
+Marches stood cataleptically fixed in the positions in which she had
+left them, while her thoughts swept forward over a life of successes,
+and down many side avenues, and beyond death into the long centuries
+of fame.  Yes, she had made a decision; she would be an authoress.
+It was thrilling.  She released the Marches from their trance, and
+followed their rapid movements again.  But the dream had to be
+returned to....  Only after many such breaks did the book win her
+back to oblivious concentration.
+
+Then, in the enthralling company of Jo and Meg and Beth and Amy, she
+guessed nothing of the passage of time, till the house filled with a
+smell of greens and roasting fat; and dinner-things began to clatter
+in the dining-room.  Mingled with her reading was a wonder if
+anything would be done about her dinner.  She was quite determined
+she was not going to unlock the door and go downstairs.  The
+dinner-bell rang--louder than usual, as though addressed to her--but
+she did not move.  Only now she could no longer read; she could only
+listen.  Evidently, by the silence, they had sat down to the meal,
+leaving her to come or stay away as she cared.  Further clattering of
+plates; that was the meat-course being taken downstairs--and she was
+too late now for any.  Here was the pudding coming up the stairs and
+being taken in.  And now, to judge by the silence, they were eating
+it....  Ah, footsteps were coming up to her landing, rather slowly,
+as of a person who found it none too easy to manage all the stairs of
+these London houses.
+
+A heavy breath heaved on the landing.  Hollins, undoubtedly.
+
+"If I had a sovereign every time I climbed these stairs, I should be
+a wealthy woman.  Dearie ... dearie, are you there?"  Daphne answered
+with a shapeless sound.  "Why not come down and have something to
+eat?  I've come myself to ask you.  She's given orders that nothing's
+to be kep' hot for you.  Come down, there's a good girl.  You can't
+go starving yourself, you know.  Even I should call that naughty of
+you.  Come on, dear, you must eat something.  There's no smell in
+nothing, as the saying is."
+
+"Am I going to be whipped?"
+
+"Well, she says so.  She says you're making your punishment worse by
+this persisting.  But I dare say she's only trying it on.  She's
+punishing you in another way, and I do call it nasty."  The door was
+open twelve inches by this time.  "She's purposely taking Master Owen
+to the Zoo this afternoon.  Heaven knows I'm the last person to
+encourage children to be saucy, but if I'd been him, I'd uv refused
+to go...."
+
+Daphne shut the door, but gently, in Hollins's face and slid the bolt
+home; silently, so that Hollins should not be offended.  Hollins's
+voice pursued through the wood: "Never mind, darling.  Never mind.
+When they've gone you and I'll go for a nice walk together.  And now
+come and eat something.  Spite of what she says, I've kep' a plateful
+in the oven."
+
+Daphne's reply was moaned:
+
+"I'm not coming down to be whipped."
+
+"No, and I'm not sure that I blame you, neither....  Well, don't cry,
+silly one.  Let's hope they'll start soon, and then you can come out."
+
+When she was gone, Daphne went to the window, out of which she stared
+dreamily at the stretch of Deseret Road.  Already she had heard the
+rush of Owen's feet up the stairs, and the preparations of Miss
+Durgon in her room; and it was not long before the descending steps
+were heard, and the movements in the hall, and the shutting of the
+front door.  In a second they would be in view.  There they were,
+Miss Durgon walking quickly, and Owen running at her side.  Once Owen
+turned round and, after looking up at the bathroom window, said
+something to Miss Durgon, but she walked on without impairing her
+dignity by a look behind.  Daphne slipped out of sight--she had not
+wanted Owen to see her.
+
+Now she opened the door and carried her swollen eyes and red nose
+down into the dining-room.  There was no one there.  Too ashamed to
+show herself to the servants in the basement, she moved heavily
+about, hoping her feet would be heard by Hollins.  A sham fit of
+coughing was also tried.  Then she heard the jingling of a tray, and
+Hollins coming up the steep stairs.
+
+"There!" said Hollins, as she placed the tray on the table, "I expect
+you'll enjoy it all the more for being hungry."
+
+Seeing Daphne's eyes, she gathered her against her breast, muttering
+only, "What a shame!  What a shame!"
+
+The walk in the afternoon was clouded for Daphne by her memory of the
+morning's emotion and by the shadow of the evening when Miss Durgon
+would return.  She was subdued as they passed along the shop-windows.
+One bright interlude came when Hollins stopped in front of a
+sweet-shop and told her to choose a penn'orth to her fancy.  Every
+jar or dish in the window she examined.  "Hundreds of Thousands" were
+four ounces a penny, but they went so quickly.  "Pontefract Cakes"
+didn't last, either.  "Liquorice, Linseed and Chlorodyne Lozenges"
+were always good, because little bits could be broken off and
+dissolved slowly in the mouth, flavouring it for hours; but grown-up
+people forbade these as drugs.  A glass jar of gelatine discs at two
+ounces a penny decided her.  These discs, sometimes used for mending
+broken panes, stayed in the mouth for a wonderful time, and could
+even be taken out and kept in a handkerchief.  It would be lovely to
+lie on the ground sucking them while she pursued the adventures of Jo
+and Meg and Beth and Amy.  For already the book, whose atmosphere had
+never quite dissolved, was calling for her return.  She persuaded
+Hollins to take her once past the fire-station on the chance that
+their arrival might synchronise with a call for the engines.  Never
+yet had she seen the great doors swung open, the horses harnessed
+like lightning, and the smoking, spark-dropping engines galloped past
+a gathered crowd.  But her despairing conviction that there would be
+no movement in the station proved correct.  Only a faint thrill could
+be got from the rows of shining helmets on both walls, and the
+shining brass of the engines.
+
+The walk home was depressing since it led to the moment of Miss
+Durgon's return; and when they were in the hall Daphne suggested
+that, now she had had her walk, she should go back to the bathroom
+and bolt the door.
+
+"No, you're not going to," said Hollins.  "She shan't whip you now.
+If she says she will, I shall take the liberty of telling her that
+she's punished you once by not taking you to the Zoo....  You read
+your book and we'll see."
+
+So after tea, Daphne read on, sucking the gelatine discs.  But the
+reading was all spoiled by her underthinking, which kept reminding
+her that Miss Durgon was due.  On the sounds of people coming up the
+front-door steps, her heart leapt in fright.  The latch-key turned,
+the door opened, and an umbrella was put into the hat-stand.  Here
+was Hollins toiling up the basement stairs to her defence.  Her voice
+mingled in the passage with Miss Durgon's.  Then she entered.
+
+"She says you're to go to bed.  She says she's no wish to see you at
+all."  (In truth, Daphne's stormy revolt had quite frightened away
+Miss Durgon's desire to whip her.)  "She says----"
+
+Just then Owen rushed in to tell his sister all about the Zoo, but he
+had scarcely uttered a word before Hollins interrupted:
+
+"Well, I took you for a little gentleman, I did."
+
+Owen looked at Hollins with the timid glance of the corrected.
+
+"A little gentleman wouldn't mention anything about where he'd been,
+a little gentleman wouldn't."
+
+Owen lapsed into a dubious silence, while Daphne declared:
+
+"I didn't want to go to his dirty, beastly old Zoo"; and Hollins
+hastened to prevent trouble by saying:
+
+"Now, Miss Daphne, that'll do.  Suppose you zoo off to bed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+In the beginning Miss Durgon had given the children their lessons.
+But now her dignity, generated in the warm air of leisure and
+comparative luxury, and sunned by certain other things that lay
+beyond the walls of Mr. Bruno's home (and beyond the walls of his
+knowledge), was, if anything, given a sharper outline by Daphne's
+insolent rebellion.  Transformed from an impecunious gentlewoman who
+sought a housekeeper's situation into a lady of social graciousness,
+who consented to take over the reins of a distinguished writer's
+home, she began to think it unreasonable that she should be asked to
+play nursery governess to a brace of obstreperous children.  So, on
+Mr. Tenter Bruno's return from the East, she laid before him a
+project that had long been maturing in her mind.  He looked up from
+his easy chair and his book, desirous only of being relieved as
+quickly as possible from this visit of a domestic problem.
+
+"Yes, by all means, tell me, Miss Durgon.  By all means...."
+
+She explained.  She felt that the engagement of a daily governess for
+her charges would be well worth the small outlay entailed.  The
+children were getting older and should have longer time for lessons
+than she could give them.  She was worried by the feeling that she
+was hardly doing justice to the two departments of her work: the
+management of his household and the education of his children.
+
+"Forgive me," smiled Mr. Bruno.  "The market in governesses is a
+thing I've so little studied that I've no conception what they cost.
+Are they quoted these days at two figures or three? ... H'm," he
+added, seeing his housekeeper uncomfortably bewildered.  "Their
+salaries, I mean."
+
+"Forty pounds a year, with lunch and tea, should secure us a really
+good governess."
+
+Mr. Bruno had a restive feeling that if he could purchase the right
+to continue his present chapter for forty pounds a year, it had best
+be done.
+
+"Oh, well, we could afford that much," he said.
+
+"Yes," confirmed Miss Durgon, "and then I should be at liberty to
+devote myself entirely to the management of the house and the moral
+care of Daphne and Owen--with, of course, the oversight of their
+studies."
+
+Mr. Bruno's hand turned a page of his book, and Miss Durgon therefore
+stepped obligingly towards the door.  It was as she had foreseen; he
+would edge away from any long thinking on a theme unrelated to his
+books.
+
+"Of course, you'll do all the advertising and interviewing
+necessary," he tendered over the tops of his reading spectacles, now
+happily replaced.  "I cannot possibly be besieged by young
+governesses."
+
+Miss Durgon assured him that she would certainly undertake all that.
+
+And few undertakings could have given her more pleasure.  It was a
+serene satisfaction to be on the luxurious employing side of an
+advertisement in the _Warden_, after inhabiting the meagre country on
+the employee's side.  She saw herself sitting with some state in the
+dining-room and giving an audience to nervous applicants.  She would
+be impressively dressed for them.
+
+There were but two replies to her advertisement for a "governess,
+young, bright, willing," of which she had only ordered one insertion,
+since it was being paid for out of the housekeeping money.  To these
+two applicants she wrote instructions for them to call at given
+hours.  The first was a lady unmistakably older than Miss Durgon
+herself, and quite unsuitable, because it would be difficult to order
+her about; besides, the creature was offensively careful to parade
+the plumes of a fallen gentlewoman.  The second, who called an hour
+later that morning, seemed far more suitable, and her suitability
+received adventitious increase from the contrast with her
+predecessor.  She was a little spare sprig of a girl who could be
+easily planted and trained, and would never, one imagined, dare to be
+"superior" with such a long-rooted and graceful tree as her lady
+employer.  Her round cheeks, slightly flushed, her simple frock, her
+hair the tint of a harvest field, and her shy, escaping eyes were the
+likely efflorescence of a nature ingenuous and pliable.
+
+When Miss Durgon floated into the dining-room, wearing the majesty of
+a prospective employer, this little Miss Carrell rose respectfully
+and remained standing; and it was not till Miss Durgon had taken her
+chair and rested leisured and well-to-do hands on her lap that Miss
+Carrell, in response to a hint, sat on the edge of an arm-chair,
+holding her little handbag on her knees.  And yet she was not
+nervous, Miss Durgon saw; it was simply good manners.
+
+"I am Miss Durgon, who wrote to you, you know.  I am the--er--the
+guardian of Mr. Tenter Bruno's children; in fact, I've managed
+everything for him since his dear wife died in giving birth to the
+younger child."  Miss Durgon paused, thinking that perhaps this slip
+of a girl understood none of these things.  "Well, Miss--er----"
+
+"Carrell," breathed the girl.
+
+"Of course, of course.  Well, Miss Carrell, I want to do my best for
+these children--in fact, hitherto I've felt I ought to teach them the
+elements myself; no one can do it so well as their parent or
+guardian; but now they're getting bigger and demanding too much of my
+time, and Mr. Bruno's household is a large and increasing charge, and
+my social engagements forbid me doing full justice to the children's
+needs."
+
+"I quite see," was wafted from the easy chair.
+
+"Yes.  Well, I imagine you would arrive in the morning, soon after
+breakfast, and give them lessons till one o'clock, having lunch with
+them--and then perhaps a walk in the afternoon, and tea.  And after
+that Hollins will take care of them till bedtime.  Hollins, I should
+tell you, is of her kind, an excellent person, whom I retain in the
+service of the house, though I must say she's not very loyal to me,
+and I've reason to believe is not above speaking against me; but
+she's been with the family since before her mistress died, and you
+know these old servants--they never do take to, or admit any good in
+a new--er----"
+
+"New regime," supplied the easy chair understandingly.  "Yes, I know.
+They're always like that."
+
+"Yes, admit any good in a new regime.  Well, I suppose you've had
+some experience."
+
+"Oh, yes."  Miss Carrell bowed her pale hair over her hand-bag and
+produced an envelope.  "I can show you this testimonial.  I have been
+for three years a mistress at Hemans House."
+
+She said this (unfolding the testimonial) as though she expected any
+well-informed woman to know Hemans House by repute; and Miss Durgon,
+in knowing nothing about the place, felt in danger of a social fall.
+
+"Oh, were you?  That's interesting.  But you hardly look old enough
+for----"
+
+"I am twenty-two," interrupted Miss Carrell.
+
+"You went as junior mistress, I imagine."
+
+"Yes.  But later on Miss Vidella entrusted the elder girls to me
+quite a lot.  You see, I'd been there over two years, which was
+longer than any of the other mistresses----"
+
+"This Miss--Verdella, did you say?--must have been difficult to get
+on with."
+
+Miss Carrell shrugged.
+
+"Well, she was rather quaint."  A blush rushed over her face, as if
+she had unthinkingly let some little monkeyish animal, deliberately
+battened underground, peep out its nose.  "I don't think the other
+mistresses tried to understand her and shape themselves to her ways."
+
+"And why did you leave, if you were so helpful to Miss Verdella?"
+asked Miss Durgon, who, not having noticed the peep, was thinking,
+"This girl is just what I want," and imagining herself making of Miss
+Carrell a pleasant companion, though a properly subservient one.
+
+"Oh, mother was not at all well, and I felt I ought to get daily
+employment and live at home.  Here is Miss Vidella's testimonial."
+
+The sheet of notepaper accepted by Miss Durgon showed, beneath the
+name, "Hemans House" and a crest, a paragraph written in an
+inordinately neat and punctilious hand:
+
+
+Miss Vidella has pleasure in testifying that Miss Mary Carrell was an
+assistant mistress at this school for nine terms, during which she
+gave every satisfaction, discharging her very responsible duties with
+propriety and considerable ability.
+
+AMY VIDELLA.
+
+
+Miss Durgon handed it back.
+
+There was further question and answer, much of which amounted to
+saying again, in a different shade or with new accompaniments, what
+had been said before; and then Miss Durgon hinted:
+
+"Well, I shall be interviewing other applicants, so I will let you
+know my decision later."
+
+Miss Carrell rose obediently.
+
+"Thank you very much indeed.  I feel I could do all you want.  Though
+I'm afraid I can't let you know finally till the day after to-morrow,
+as I am seeing some other parents to-morrow, and one the following
+day."
+
+It was said so gently that Miss Durgon could suspect neither
+impertinence nor guile.  And directly she heard of these other
+prospective employers she desired to secure at once this only
+suitable girl.  And really, too, despite her vesture of an employer's
+ease, she had no experience of engaging governesses.
+
+"Hum.  That's a nuisance.  I'm particularly anxious to know
+definitely by this time to-morrow.  I think--yes, I think that, for
+my part, I could definitely say that I should be prepared to offer
+you the--the post.  Is it at all likely that you could decide
+definitely now?  Are the other situations likely to be more
+attractive than this one?"
+
+"No, I don't think so," said Miss Carrell, her bag in her hand, and
+prepared to leave.  "Only--only one of them is worth fifty pounds a
+year--and, for mother's sake, I feel I ought to consider it."
+
+"Fifty pounds a year!  That seems a large salary for so young a
+woman.  I don't think Mr. Bruno would be prepared to give that."
+
+"No," agreed Miss Carrell, "and I've no doubt you will get somebody
+equally suitable for a less amount.  Thank you so much for
+considering----"
+
+"Yes, but wait a minute.  Mr. Bruno entrusts most of these affairs to
+me, and I feel I can commit him to fifty pounds a year.  I am so
+anxious to have things settled early.  Would you say definitely that
+you would come if I offered that?"
+
+Miss Carrell smiled brightly and gratefully.
+
+"Yes, I think so.  I don't like to force you up in that way--but I
+have my mother to consider."
+
+By now Miss Durgon could picture the mother in her shabby room, and
+felt a pity, mixed with inevitable contempt, for the indigent lady.
+
+"Precisely.  Then you will come?"
+
+Miss Carrell nodded and smiled.
+
+
+Daphne was excited about the arrival of a new governess, and Owen
+pretended to the same enthusiasm, though, to tell the truth, he could
+not see that it was matter for congratulation.  But Daphne had
+ascertained from Hollins that the approaching Miss Carrell was little
+and pretty and fair-haired.  "Almost a child herself, you might say,
+and likely to be as much a playfellow, so to put it, as a governess.
+I don't often take to people first go-off, as the saying is, but
+there, she fair got me."
+
+"Well, she'll be better than old Durgon," answered Daphne, who liked
+abusing the housekeeper to Hollins, perceiving that, though the
+"sauce" was properly condemned, it was not unsavoury.
+
+"Now, then, Miss Daphne, you're getting that rude and bold, I don't
+know what's coming over you."
+
+"Well, she is a beast, and you know you think it."
+
+Owen, who was listening, looked alarmed at such a plain statement of
+fact.
+
+"I know I never said such a thing in my life," affirmed Hollins.
+"You know I never."
+
+"Saying's one thing, and thinking's another."
+
+"And saucing's one thing, and getting out of my way when I'm busy's
+another.  So you be gone, miss, or it'll be idling's one thing and
+bed's another."
+
+It was early evening, before bedtime, and Daphne, hardly knowing why
+she did it, ran into her father's study.  She forgot to knock, and
+was only checked half-way across the carpet by a mutter of protest
+from the lips of Mr. Bruno, who, sitting in his easy chair, dropped
+his book a few inches, but no farther.
+
+"The idea embodied in a closed door, Miss Cataract, is that it should
+be nervously knocked at--even apologetically knocked at--by mere idle
+children.  Also, should it admit them on sufferance, that they must
+tread delicately across the privacy beyond."
+
+Since his return from India he had been aware of something in his
+daughter's large, sparkling eyes and unrestrained naturalness that
+always compelled him to adopt with her a gnomic tone, highly
+civilised.  He liked to dazzle her with a Roman candle of words, or
+reduce her to temporary immobility with some massive period.  His
+skill at the game pleased him.
+
+"Well, can I come in?"
+
+"On a rapidly expiring lease--yes."
+
+Daphne stood there and wondered what she had come for.
+
+"We've got a new governess, papa."
+
+"I should have thought a lion-tamer was more what was wanted."
+
+"She's coming on Monday."
+
+"Well, it seems hardly an occasion for turbulent rejoicing.  A
+task-mistress who will (I hope) press your nose firmly on a
+grindstone is not a new doll or a new dress."
+
+"I hate dolls."
+
+"I forgot.  Let us say, then, she's not a new football.  Why this
+strange frenzy?"
+
+"Oh, it'll be fun."
+
+"I haven't gathered from Miss Durgon that you saw much humour in your
+tasks with her."
+
+"I hate Miss Durgon."
+
+"Hush, mænad!  What you hate is restraint and healthy discipline.  I
+hope this new governess swishes you often and soundly."
+
+The subject of whipping always fascinated Daphne.  She was accustomed
+to ask her friends in a lowered voice if their fathers and mothers
+whipped them, and to read over and over again all stories where such
+execution was done on refractory boys and girls.  It was a subject
+that gave a curious exaltation similar to that provided by pictures
+of little black savages disappearing into the maw of a crocodile.
+
+"Were you ever whipped, papa?"
+
+"Most certainly.  And by its gracious effect I am what I am."
+
+"Well, why don't you ever whip me and Owen?"
+
+She sat on the table to hear his explanation.
+
+"I am a very busy man, Duffy; and though the task you suggest is
+important and honourable, and of real service to society--even one to
+which no artist need be ashamed to lend a hand--I yet presume to
+think that the work on which I am at present engaged"--he
+significantly replaced his glasses--"is even more important.
+Besides, I can remember past occasions when----"
+
+Daphne changed her position, lying along the table so that she rested
+on her elbow and one foot hooked itself over the table's edge.
+
+"Oh, yes, you've spanked us sometimes, but I don't call that the real
+thing."
+
+"Let us hope, then, that this governess will be made of heavier
+metal.  What did you say her name was?"
+
+"Carrell."
+
+"It doesn't sound promising.  I can hardly hear the swish of a rod in
+such musical syllables.  But we must hope for the best."  He lifted
+up his book.  "Well, are you sure you have not outstayed your
+tenancy?"
+
+With a half-sulky "All right!" Daphne departed, but her father did
+not immediately continue his book.  This slight change in Daphne,
+noticeable after a long absence!  It was as if she had crossed a
+first boundary line.  With her long, narrow limbs, her figure like a
+boy's, and her unconsciously sinuous movements--yes, already feminine
+and alluring--she had a power to ruffle the still pool of his
+complacency.  It would need, after such a glimpse of her, to be
+calmed again.  He protruded his under-jaw as he faced a problem, and
+his thinking ran along courses such as these: "What more could I have
+done for her?  While she was a baby, I could only trust her to these
+women, and was surely wise in getting on with my work for her sake
+and her brother's.  But now--now that her mind is like a sponge, and
+a good quality sponge, too, I fancy, ready to soak up all
+things--what can I do?  I have brains and ideas, both of which are
+probably absent in all these women.  Ought I to leave her entirely to
+them, content that my love should be nothing more than an expansive
+emotion?  But what can I do?  I must work and read, and talk with
+stimulating minds, and her little mind has nothing to give me in the
+way of stimulus."
+
+The question what he could do was so difficult to answer that Mr.
+Bruno turned again to his book.
+
+But after a line or two he found himself analysing Daphne's
+enthusiasm about her governess and diagnosing it as a child's delight
+at playing at schools.  Well, no better approach to studies could be
+imagined, and at least he could encourage it.  A pleasing resolution
+occurred to him, and as it eased his conscience, he was able to get
+on with his book.
+
+
+The next afternoon there arrived in a van two huge packages, wrapped
+in straw and sacking, and addressed to Miss D. D. T.  Bruno and O. T.
+Bruno, Esq.  To tearing fingers and searching eyes they revealed two
+school-desks in highly polished yellow wood, with sloping lids that
+covered deep interiors smelling like school-rooms.  In the chair-back
+was an adjustable boss which could be raised up and down; it fitted
+the small of the sitter's back, and was designed to prevent stooping.
+Daphne soon raised hers to the right position, and Owen's to his,
+hers being several inches higher than her brother's.
+
+Not till the following day could they watch the amusing process of
+turning the lower end of the nursery upstairs into a schoolroom.  The
+two desks were put with their backs to the fire-place, and opposite
+them a table for Miss Carrell.  An empty book-case was carried to a
+side wall, its shelves to be used for school-books and the
+earthenware bottle of ink.  Daphne devoted the afternoon to stocking
+her desk with all the old exercise books, atlases, pencil boxes with
+sliding lids, freehand drawing books, rulers, sketch blocks and paint
+boxes she had used in the past.  Always it was to be as tidy.  Owen
+joined in the game, echoing her merriment, though he still found the
+preparations depressing enough.
+
+On the Monday morning Miss Carrell arrived, and was shown by Miss
+Durgon into the schoolroom where the two children stood, somewhat
+sheepishly.  But, as she removed her hat and patted her hand over her
+fair hair and smiled merrily at her pupils, Daphne recovered her ease
+and prepared to like her.
+
+"You see," said Miss Durgon, who was particularly stately during this
+introduction of an employee to the scene of her labours, "I have
+prepared everything for you--desks for each pupil--so that your work
+may be as congenial as possible."
+
+With a child's quick condemnation in elders of the fibs and brag that
+children sometimes employ, Daphne thought: "It wasn't you, it was
+papa."  Mentally she said this to Miss Durgon's long back as it
+passed through the door, which shut rather quietly.  They were in
+school.
+
+
+Miss Carrell was going to be a great success.  That was proved in the
+next few days.  That was seen of all.  What was not seen was the
+working of the lively, if somewhat unlettered brain beneath that
+innocent hair.  It was Miss Carrell's policy just at present to win
+the enthusiastic appreciation of her pupils; and the same imagination
+which out of and during school hours was occupied with schemes for
+getting on could convert lessons, were the effort worth while, from
+dull tasks into captivating games.  In these games Daphne was always
+given the lead, for Daphne, being manifestly the more important
+factor, was the one to be favoured.  Sums, then, were done as races.
+Geography was a series of imaginary travels and trading expeditions.
+History was stories and make-believe, when Daphne would be
+Cœur-de-Lion or Warwick or Henry VIII, and Owen played the second
+lead, such as Anne Boleyn.  "You ought to have been a boy, and he the
+girl," said Miss Carrell.  "But then, of course, his mother wasn't
+quite so well when he was born."
+
+They had exchanged history for some less interesting arithmetic when
+Miss Carrell offered this remark, and Daphne thought that compound
+division might well be held up while they pursued its bearings
+further.
+
+"Why should that make any difference?" she asked.
+
+The subject was palatable to Miss Carrell, even though it could only
+be discussed with children in a pretence of teaching them propriety.
+
+"Because it does, and there's an end of it."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"You why on with your work, as your friend Hollins would say."
+
+This remark, implying a criticism of Hollins, was designed to impress
+her pupil with the governess's intellectual superiority to the
+servant, and certainly achieved its end.  "You'll understand these
+things when you are older."
+
+"How much older must I be?"
+
+"Oh, a lot older."
+
+"Must I be sixteen?"
+
+"Much older than that."
+
+"Twenty?"
+
+"Twenty-one at least."
+
+"Do you understand these things?"
+
+"Certainly I do.  Now get on."
+
+"But don't you have to be married before you understand?"
+
+Owen was looking from one to the other as if he doubted whether the
+conversation were all right.
+
+"Maybe I'm married; maybe I'm not."
+
+"You're _not_!" triumphed Daphne.  "You're _Miss_ Carrell."
+
+"Well, I understand what I'm talking about, so there!"
+
+"What--how we were born, and all that?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You have to be married, don't you, before you get children?"
+
+"Yes."  Her lips trembled a little.
+
+"Can you get them without being married?"
+
+"It has been done, but don't you get talking."
+
+There was a knock at the door, and Mr. Bruno entered.  Miss Carrell
+flushed brilliantly from throat to brow, not in fear of her pupils'
+father, but in fear lest he had heard their current studies.
+
+Mr. Bruno, misunderstanding the flush, was gratified by it.
+
+"You'll forgive this intrusion," bowed he, "but I thought I should
+like to see the children in surroundings to which they have so looked
+forward....  Dear, dear, this is real school.  It revives memories of
+many fears and many disgraces.  I hope you find them studious,
+Miss--Miss--er----"
+
+It was Daphne who supplied her father with the missing name.
+
+"Carrell."
+
+"Silence, child.  Don't you know you must not talk in school without
+having first raised your hand? ... Are they all they ought to be,
+Miss Carrell?"
+
+"They're progressing very well.  Daphne is especially promising."
+
+"Yes, I have always said that it's a relief she has brains, since she
+has neither beauty nor goodness."
+
+"She would naturally have brains."
+
+Miss Carrell turned away as she offered the compliment; and Mr. Bruno
+covered his embarrassment by asking, "And what were you studying when
+I interrupted you?"
+
+Miss Carrell flushed again, and hoping the sharp eyes of Daphne
+observed no guilt or prevarication, said:
+
+"Let's see.  Yes, we were doing multiplication and division."
+
+"Multiplication and division," smiled Mr. Bruno.  "Well, that is the
+whole of life.  There's scope for you to point a fine moral, Miss
+Carrell.  There's the multiplication and aggregation of gaseous
+matter to form the solar worlds, and its division again.  There's the
+multiplication in childhood of ideas and impressions for their
+division later.  And the multiplication of pounds, shillings and
+pence all through life, for their division and disintegration as fast
+as you can multiply them.  It's the whole of life and the whole of
+knowledge.  H'm----"  Seeing that he had fogged everybody in the
+room, Mr. Bruno came to earth.  "You will be sure to tell us what you
+want, will you not?  I do not see a birch anywhere."
+
+Daphne tittered delightedly, and Mr. Bruno felt he could depart
+without loss of reputation.
+
+In the afternoons, the governess and children went walking to Brook
+Green; or to the towing path by the river, in the hope of seeing the
+practice of the Oxford and Cambridge crews; or towards the police
+station near S. Mary Abbott's, Kensington, in the hope of seeing a
+Black Maria.  The conversation was mainly in the management of Miss
+Carrell and Daphne.  Miss Carrell admitted that she was Cambridge,
+having learned that Daphne was Cambridge.  And finding that the child
+loved to listen to stories, she often told stories all the way out
+and all the way back; terribly pathetic stories of her own invention,
+for she had not only written stories, but even sent them to editors,
+and could tell of one that had been detained fully seven months
+before the editor had decided that he must regretfully decline it.
+
+In brief, Miss Carrell, by such methods and by subtle endearments and
+gentle touchings, was striving to insinuate in Daphne's mind the idea
+that she could love her governess, and love her passionately.  And it
+rooted and blossomed with surprising quickness.  Hating Miss Durgon,
+Daphne was ready to adore Miss Carrell; and adoring, to love the
+feeling of adoration.  Motions came beneath her breast which made her
+want to hold Miss Carrell's hand, or lean against her on a seat; and
+she saw at once how ill they partnered with her fancied boyishness.
+But it was so lovely, the fact of loving, that she decided to suspend
+her masculinity for a while, trusting that if her demonstrations of
+affection were not too public, no one but Miss Carrell would observe
+the temporary change.
+
+The greater tracts of lesson-time now were occupied by the subjects
+which were popular.  Arithmetic and grammar were allotted a grudging
+half-hour, and then preceptress and students leapt the fence into the
+broad pleasances of history and literature.  History had degenerated
+into "stories from history," when the picturesque incidents were
+collected from Dickens' "Child's History of England," or into
+"history from stories," when Miss Carrell retold such romances as
+Lytton's "Last of the Barons," or "Harold," or actually read to them
+some new sensational novel which she felt would entertain herself as
+much as her charges.  Literature, which Miss Carrell, being a
+craftsman, considered her great subject, consisted in the governess's
+reading of the more delightful parts--that is, the more sentimental
+parts--of Dickens (High Literature and Dickens being, in the mind of
+Miss Carrell, almost synonymous).
+
+The death of Little Nell and Paul Dombey and Poor Joe were held up
+before Daphne as the perfection of beauty.  She listened with staring
+eyes, ambition running fast in her brain: "I should like to write
+like that.  I should like to tell people beautiful things.  I should
+like to create characters that are beautiful, and scenes that make
+your eyes all hot and your throat lumpy like this...."  And even
+while Miss Carrell was still reading and she listening, ambition had
+shown her a triumphant career, and a death and burial that a nation
+mourned, and the people visiting her tomb for generations afterwards.
+Her wet eyes were Miss Carrell's delightful reward.
+
+At the sound of any words that were called beautiful Daphne fluttered
+her wings to fly.
+
+Poetry was hardly attempted.  "You cannot be expected to develop a
+taste for poetry yet; it'll come later," explained Miss Carrell,
+knowing that she herself was still waiting for it.  Just a few of the
+easier poems of Tennyson and Longfellow she had taught them (Great
+Poetry being almost synonymous with Tennyson and Longfellow): "The
+Schooner Hesperus," "Break, Break, Break," and "The Legend
+Beautiful," with its lovely line "Do thy duty, that is best.  Leave
+unto thy Lord the rest."  For Miss Carrell, like all completely
+self-centred women, loved noble thoughts.
+
+At last, in her devotion, Daphne confided as a great secret to the
+understanding governess that she was resolved to write.
+
+"Oh, well, it's easy in your case," said Miss Carrell.  "You've got
+influence.  Your father'll get all your stories published."
+
+Such an idea had never presented itself to Daphne, but now, lingering
+and growing in her mind, it one day impelled her into Mr. Bruno's
+study for an examination of its worth.
+
+"Papa," began she, a little shy of revealing her secret, "if I was to
+write books, would you be able to get publishers to publish them for
+me?"
+
+"Me?  No!" laughed her father.  "I'm a critic.  My business isn't to
+persuade publishers to produce the work of a young writer, but to
+discourage them from ever doing it again."
+
+Daphne, as often when her father bantered her, looked confused and
+beaten back; and he felt sorry for her.
+
+"Write, my little one.  Write, if you feel the urge.  I should be
+proud to think of you as a creative artist.  But anything that you
+write, if it's to be stuff for pride, must have a quality that will
+get it through the doors, without a helpful kick from your father."
+He stared at her, standing there.  "One day we must talk it all over.
+I can help you much, I dare say.  But you're too young yet."
+
+And he took up his book again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A general content, sinister, some might think, in its promise of an
+early break-up, had settled in the Bruno home.
+
+Mr. Bruno was very contented.  His mercury, as he phrased it, was
+high.  The phrase was a new use of his.  No other word could so well
+describe, in his detached and humorous analysis of his own emotions,
+that abject financial depression which followed a damaging review of
+his latest book, or that quick rise in spirits induced by a handsome
+tribute or a publisher's statement showing excellent sales.  After a
+grand morning's work, when his brain had outrun his pen, the mercury,
+as it were, rose to his head, filling it with visions of an imperial
+home, with horses in the extensive stabling and forty wines in the
+cellar, and cattle moving among the trees of the park.  After a
+morning when nothing but the commonplace or the obvious would take
+substance on his paper, he saw a lower-middle-class jerry-built
+house, in which, with two children who went out to poorly-paid jobs,
+lived a writer whom the world had once acclaimed and quickly
+forgotten.  To read about such a person, as one did sometimes in the
+paper, was to send his mercury to freezing point.  He no longer saw
+the bankruptcy court, however, or the casual ward, for against these
+disasters he had amassed a capital sum, and if his brain collapsed
+to-morrow (thought he), his dividends would pay the rent of the
+jerry-built house and put some bread and cold meat in the larder.
+
+There were reasons just now why his mercury should be high.  A year
+before he had written his first play and secured its production.  It
+had failed most noisily.  When a destructive critic produces a play
+that has obvious weaknesses, it is to ask for artillery; and Mr.
+Bruno and his play went down beneath a reverberating bombardment.
+Concluding that his fame was mortally wounded and a year or so later
+would see the end, he wondered how he could cut down his style of
+living, and began to turn off gases that people had left alight on
+the stairs, or to complain courteously when coke was not mingled with
+the coal on the fire.  "No one ever yet put coke on a fire," thought
+he, surprised how the worrying thought could make his head ache, "who
+didn't pay the fuel bill."  And to his daughter if she prattled
+glibly about the pleasure-seeking life she would lead when grown up,
+he would say, "Nothing of the sort, my child.  You'll go into a
+milliner's shop; and, as for Owen, he'll earn his ten shillings a
+week sweeping out a solicitor's office."  But then, as the mercury
+crept up, he wrote another play, freeing it from the weaknesses that
+the crowding critics had pointed out in such detail.  It was as
+lively and noisily successful as its brother had been wilting and
+moribund.  The critics crowded to its jubilee instead of to its
+funeral.  Mr. Tenter Bruno was more than ever news; he had long been
+known to the literary and the vaguely literary world, but now his
+face and his repartee and his movements and his anecdotes were the
+property of readers of the halfpenny press.  "And you can write him a
+liar," said Mr. Bruno, "who denies that that pleases him."
+
+He was content about his children, hearing excellent reports of the
+new governess.  Daphne spoke enthusiastically of her, because her
+motions of love made all talk of Miss Carrell a pleasure; Miss Durgon
+reported the girl in the highest terms, because she had to justify
+her move in securing her; and Hollins said, "Why, that little Miss
+Carrell can do anything with the child, she can.  It does me good to
+see it."  So no household or parental cares needed to cross the
+doormat of Mr. Bruno's room.  He began to play with the idea of
+setting forth on his travels again.  And from the moment he welcomed
+the idea into his lonely study, he knew that he would finally succumb
+to its charm.  And at length he introduced it to Miss Durgon.
+
+"My work, I begin to find, demands that I move--and travel, rather
+than stagnate.  One's imagination is starved by living too long in a
+London street.  So few people realize it....  I brought a lot of
+stimulus out of the East.  What I am really longing for is the day
+when my daughter shall be old enough to be my constant and
+enthusiastic companion.  Then my powers of observation will be
+doubled, I verily believe, by the delight of revealing to her the
+romance of other lands and other manners."
+
+Leaving these sentiments behind him, Mr. Bruno departed for a winter
+in Madeira.
+
+
+Miss Durgon was contented.  Released entirely from the charge of the
+children, which Miss Carrell and Hollins shared, she needed to do
+little but reign elegantly over the household.  And the encomiums,
+confidences and frequent absences of her employer made her feel
+finally secure in the position which she had now held for nearly nine
+years.  Incredible that it could be nine years!  Her mind told her
+that she looked younger, more vivacious, and certainly more
+fashionable than when first she came knocking at Mr. Bruno's door.
+Her security made her, perhaps rashly, indifferent to the comments of
+servants.  Her excursions when she was absent a whole day were more
+frequent than before.  And once or twice she entertained Mr. Stokes,
+or Mr. Anthony, in the breakfast-room, which she had now made into
+her private sitting-room.  They came singly, of course, the visits of
+each being unknown to the other.
+
+Mr. Stokes and Mr. Anthony were gentlemen friends who liked her
+companionship at theatres and suppers, though they conducted these
+relaxations beyond the regions swept by their wives' eyes.  Tacitly
+it was understood that the wives were not informed.  Miss Durgon saw
+no reason why they should be.  There was nothing scandalous in their
+husband's change of companionship; and she found herself quite able
+to meet Mrs. Stokes and Mrs. Anthony at tea-parties, or in their own
+homes.  But it was unlikely they would understand her reasoning--a
+reasoning learnt from their husbands, which made play with words like
+Life, and Naturalness and Affinities.  So her concealment was the
+concession of a reasonable woman.
+
+
+Little Miss Carrell was contented because she lived and slept and
+woke in the morning with her own schemes.  They required that she did
+all in her power to develop Daphne's adoration, and to secure its
+publication to Daphne's papa and its concealment from the housekeeper.
+
+"You know what Miss Durgon is, Duffy darling.  If she thought you
+were so fond of me, she would do her best to get rid of me.  I'm sure
+she would.  And I don't want to leave you, now that I've grown so
+attached to you.  And I really believe you'd miss me."
+
+To confirm this Daphne put her arms about Miss Carrell--since nobody
+was by.
+
+"You must pretend sometimes that you don't like the way I make you
+stick at your work; and that I'm a bit of a tyrant.  That'll be a
+sure way to make the old Durgon think I'm a person to be kept."
+
+And Miss Carrell, for her purposes, had made a friend of Hollins.
+She set out to be attractive to the good soul, conceiving her to have
+a heart that could be easily engaged.  With Hollins she was always
+polite, smiling, considerate and talkative, though never losing the
+slight dignity that lent worth to her condescension.  The balance was
+skilfully kept.
+
+The wisdom of this _entente cordiale_ had been shown to her one
+morning when she was passing the dining-room door, and overheard a
+conversation between Hollins and a sweeping maid.
+
+"She's ordered the decanter of whisky and the soda water and the
+sandwiches to be put to-night in what she's pleased to call her room,
+though when it became her room and stopped being the breakfast-room
+_I_ don't know.  And I wonder which it is that's coming to-night.
+Some people have got a cheek--using that house in that high and
+mighty way, as if she was its lady."
+
+"High and mighty!" scoffed the maid.  "Low, I call it.  Who are these
+Mr. Anthonies and Mr. Stokeses?  Not that they can be much if they
+see anything attractive in _her_."
+
+"Ah, yes, who are they?" said the voice of Hollins.  "That's what
+many of us'd like to know.  I reckon it's laughable being a charmer
+at her age.  And do Mr. Stokes approve of Mr. Anthony, I want to
+know, and do Mr. Anthony approve of Mr. Stokes?  Why are they never
+here together?  That's what wants sort of--what I call--answering."
+
+"There's many things that want answering that don't get it," said the
+maid sententiously.
+
+"Yes, there are," agreed Hollins, and the listening Miss Carrell
+could picture the mysterious nod of her head.
+
+Miss Carrell left no openings unguarded, however small.  If she were
+to keep Hollins's good opinion it would be well (she imagined) that
+Daphne's adoration were none too visible to her old nurse.
+
+"She mustn't be allowed to think, dear, that you are fonder of me
+than her, though I suppose it is natural that there must always be
+more between people of the same class and of a nearer age than
+between a young mistress and her ancient servant.  But you mustn't
+hurt the dear, fat old thing.  It wouldn't be kind.  Also she might
+get jealous.  So you be especially nice to old Hollins.  For she is a
+dear, fat old thing.  I love her.  And let her know (just so that she
+mayn't dislike me) that I love her, and realise how much she has done
+for my little Duffy, and that I impress it all upon you."
+
+And after saying this, Miss Carrell was more than ever satisfied with
+her skilful pilotage; and Daphne was more than ever satisfied with
+the essential goodness of her governess; and Hollins, when Daphne had
+done all she was bidden, was more than ever satisfied with the high
+breeding of Miss Carrell.  "A real lady.  It's a treat to have
+dealings with one at last."
+
+With Miss Durgon, Miss Carrell was obliging and considerate,
+relieving her delicately of one duty after another.  She made herself
+a pleasant companion, always interested, generally agreeing, but
+disagreeing sufficiently not to become insipid.
+
+"I hope that child's getting on," the elder lady would say.  "She's a
+little girl that wants a lot of control if she's not to run to seed."
+
+"She needs to be kept hard at it, certainly," agreed Miss Carrell.
+"The boy is much more amenable.  He's a really lovable little thing."
+
+"Yes, he is.  No trouble at all."
+
+Once when Miss Durgon complained of a headache, Miss Carrell assured
+her that she needed a holiday.  Impossible, declared the martyred
+Miss Durgon; she would never trust the household to Hollins alone.
+Then Miss Carrell made her suggestion.  Couldn't she (Miss Carrell),
+who had long kept house for her mother, and now knew the ins and outs
+of Mr. Bruno's home--couldn't she come into residence for a week or
+so and manage things?  Miss Durgon demurred, but finally saw
+something in the plan.
+
+When the plan was tried Miss Carrell had need to hold her wheel with
+a very delicate hand indeed.  Her elevation to deputy housekeeper,
+even though only for twenty-one days, very nearly lost her the
+adhesion of Hollins.  Hollins could not see why a chit like that
+should be required when she was on the spot.  Miss Carrell was
+fortunate enough to be in the hall when Hollins was discussing the
+matter with the other servants in the dining-room.  "The Durgon's
+done it on purpose to spite me," Hollins was saying.  "Of course she
+has.  It's as plain as the nose on your face.  I don't altogether
+blame the little governess.  I don't think she'd hurt anybody if she
+could avoid it.  But what I do say, and what I have always said, is
+that it was a bad day when that Durgon woman came knocking at our
+doors.  And who is she going away with, is what I should like to
+know?  Is it your Stokes or your Antonio?"
+
+Little Miss Carrell saw her course.  By gently refusing to notice any
+sullenness, and by skilful reductions of work and an increase of
+privileges and an improvement in the kitchen meals, she gradually
+persuaded all below stairs that it was a pity she hadn't always had
+the management of the house.
+
+When Miss Durgon returned the regent stepped down from the throne
+with all the grace and some recollection (since she had just been
+reading about him to Daphne) of Cincinnatus returning to his plough.
+
+
+In time it became quite a custom for Miss Durgon to take a week off
+now and then, and hand over the reins to her lieutenant.
+
+But not when Mr. Bruno was back from Madeira or elsewhere.
+
+"I feel I ought to be in my place when Mr. Bruno is here.  There's
+really more to do then."
+
+"Of course," said Miss Carrell, wondering if Miss Durgon really
+supposed she didn't see through her.  It was beginning to dawn on her
+that the lady housekeeper, inside her fine clothes and her dignity,
+was a very considerable fool.
+
+Probably Mr. Bruno would never have known of these arrangements if
+Hollins hadn't thought it on her conscience to say, in the course of
+a conversation with him:
+
+"Oh, but that happened when Miss Carrell was doing the
+housekeeping--when Miss Durgon was away."
+
+Mr. Bruno looked up.
+
+"What did you say, Hollins?"
+
+"I said that happened when Miss Carrell took Miss Durgon's place and
+ran the house."
+
+"Did she?  When was this?"
+
+"Oh, she often does when you're away, sir.  I thought you knew, and
+sort of suggested it."
+
+"I did nothing of the sort," said he, feeling rather important.  "I
+must ask Miss Durgon about it.  I can't think Miss Carrell is old
+enough to manage a household such as this."
+
+"Oh, she's done none so badly, sir," assured Hollins.  "And, of
+course, I was there to help her."
+
+"Of course, Hollins.  And she's really a wonderfully capable little
+person, isn't she?"
+
+Hollins gone, Mr. Bruno sat in his chair for some time thinking.  It
+was perhaps a small thing, this French leave habit of Miss Durgon's,
+but it seemed to show him traces of falsity in her character which he
+knew his quick version could have seen long ago had he given it the
+order to see.  He dreamed out a conversation after dinner that night
+when he rebuked Miss Durgon.  It was a conversation from which he
+issued with increased dignity.  "I cannot think, Miss Durgon, that
+such a step was within the autonomy with which----  Please don't
+think I am anything but highly satisfied, but----  Your need of a
+holiday no one would deny, and I confess to having been remiss in not
+thinking of it before.  Had you so much as mentioned it to me----"
+But as the meal drew to its close he felt what an exceedingly
+uncomfortable thing it was to administer rebukes to a person in Miss
+Durgon's position, and how the contemplation of it was spoiling his
+appetite and his conversation.  Even she might say: "Very well, Mr.
+Bruno, if you think I am incompetent or neglect my duty, I had best
+resign my office.  With all thanks, I am sure, for your kindness and
+unvaried courtesy in the past."  And he would be reduced to the
+horrid necessity of begging her to reconsider her decision.  No,
+things were perhaps best left as they were.  Doubtless Miss Carrell
+was capable, or Miss Durgon would not have done such a thing.  And
+this evening he especially wanted to work on a play with an
+unagitated mind.
+
+"But I can't help admiring the impudence of that little Carrell girl
+seating herself astride my home like that.  There's a lot in her."
+
+Miss Durgon, ignorant of these movements in her employer's mind, had
+been so pleased to find that the governess could fill the position of
+deputy housekeeper that she was seeing the convenience of having the
+young woman in permanent residence.  Then she would at any moment be
+free to go away, if only for a night or so.  Miss Carrell, after some
+doubts, fell in with the scheme more readily than Miss Durgon had
+dared hope.  It was a grateful matter that the difficulty of her
+mother could be so easily overcome.
+
+Now to approach Mr. Bruno.  In his room Miss Durgon hastened to pour
+out all the points she had previously enumerated on her fingers'
+ends: that she was very satisfied with the governess's remarkable
+success with the children; that Daphne was getting too big to be
+left, in the evenings when she herself happened to be out, to the
+charge of servants; that Miss Carrell would be able to help the
+children with their homework; that it would relieve them all of the
+sewing and care of the clothes, which was getting heavy; and that, in
+a household of so many persons, it would hardly cost a penny more a
+week, since she already had lunch and tea with him.
+
+"Oh, if we can have all that for nothing a week, let's have it," Mr.
+Bruno smiled.
+
+But he thought this would be a good opportunity to mention his
+knowledge that his household had already been somewhat frivolously
+left, for weeks at a time, to the management of a
+twenty-three-year-old girl.  And his eye, the eye of a dramatist, saw
+at once the hidden embarrassment of Miss Durgon.
+
+"Yes," she admitted, "I was feeling so run down while you were away
+that I made that arrangement, but only with a deep sense of
+responsibility.  I would not have suggested such a thing had I not
+decided that Miss Carrell was quite exceptional.  Quite exceptional."
+
+"I feel she is," endorsed Mr. Bruno.
+
+"Yes, she is.  Quite exceptional," repeated Miss Durgon, since this
+was her justification.
+
+So Miss Durgon helped to weave the rope that hanged her.
+
+
+Miss Carrell hanged her at Christmas time.  Quite simply.  To be
+sure, it had been simpler to suggest that Hollins mentioned Mr.
+Stokes and Mr. Anthony to the master; but it would be rather
+undignified, this enlisting of servants' aid.  And yet simpler had
+she herself alluded innocently to Miss Durgon's friends; but this
+savoured of ugly informing, and Mr. Bruno, a clever man, would see
+through it.  And she didn't want Miss Durgon to go to the rope
+thinking her companion had "sneaked."  In their conversations Mr.
+Anthony and Mr. Stokes had necessarily been spoken of, but always
+very casually, as if their visits were naturalness itself, and Miss
+Carrell the sort who could understand: the foolish woman even (so
+thought Miss Carrell) was not without a pride in hinting at her
+attractiveness.  Besides, the thing, if only told, might not be very
+effective with Mr. Bruno: preoccupied, he would but half take it in.
+It must be seen in being.
+
+Conceiving of Miss Durgon, Mr. Anthony, Mr. Stokes and Mr. Bruno as
+the chess pieces of Miss Carrell--Miss Durgon the queen, Mr. Anthony
+and Mr. Stokes her knights, and Mr. Bruno the opposing
+king--obviously the plan was to get the king into a position from
+which he could capture one or both of the knights.  Always a
+difficult position to contrive, for the moves of knights are crooked.
+Herein came Daphne.  When at last the occasion offered, she was used
+as pawn to lure out the king.
+
+Christmas time brought the children's parties; exciting
+entertainments that illuminated not only the day whose evening they
+would adorn, but many of the days that went before.  And the most
+brilliant of these, throwing a light that reached down weeks, was
+Lady Montefiore's fancy-dress affair, from four to nine, in the
+Kensington Town Hall.  Costumes had to be resolved upon and made, and
+sewing became more than tolerable--joyous.  Daphne was to go as a
+Shepherdess, and Owen as a Musketeer, Miss Carrell having just
+finished Dumas' romance and decided that it was the finest book she
+had ever read.  But she gave far less time to Owen's dress than to
+Daphne's.
+
+Their father had been told of this party, by Daphne often, by Owen
+three times, by Miss Carrell once, but he had hardly heard.  And it
+was soon known that he would be at a dinner in town that evening.
+Presumably he would be late, since Miss Durgon had ordered a tray of
+spirits, siphon, sandwiches and cigarettes for the entertainment of
+one of her guests.
+
+Mr. Bruno had lunched out, but he returned to his study before three
+o'clock.  He had just sat at his desk and taken up his pencil to
+write down some memoranda, when a timid knock at the door made him
+use the pencil for a patient tapping on his paper.
+
+The governess entered.
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Bruno, but just for once I felt I simply must
+intrude.  Would you mind if I showed you Daphne in her fancy dress?
+She looks so sweet, and I think it'll please her if you like it."
+
+"Fancy dress?" echoed Mr. Bruno.  "Oh, yes, of course, she's going to
+a party of some sort, isn't she?  Certainly I'll come."
+
+He laid down the pencil and rose quickly, having assumed the gay
+cloak of an interested father.  He followed the governess upstairs to
+the schoolroom.  Miss Carrell passed in before him and apparently
+whispered to the children to hide.  Her face reappeared.  "Now, Mr.
+Bruno, if you'll come in."
+
+He entered a room that seemed to be empty, and looked around as if
+interested in such a strange apartment.  Then Miss Carrell said: "You
+can come now, Daphne."
+
+Daphne appeared, half shyly and half merrily, from behind the screen;
+and Mr. Bruno gasped.  He had intended all along to gasp, but when he
+saw his daughter the gasp was genuine.  She stood before him in a
+straw bonnet, her brown hair curled into ringlets.  A black velvet
+corselet bodice reached to a point below her waist.  A fichu was
+about her neck, frills at her elbows and black velvet ribbons at her
+wrists.  Brocade panniers swelled out on either hip above a quilted
+satin petticoat.  Her stockings were white, and her black shoes had
+silver buckles.  In her right hand she held a crook, necklaced with
+ribbons.  Mr. Bruno gasped, and something caught at his heart.
+
+"Good heavens!" he laughed; "is that my Daphne?"  But though he
+laughed, the word "my" gave him unexpected pleasure.  "No, it's a
+changeling, stepped out of a Watteau canvas....  What's all this talk
+about a party?  Why have I not been better informed?  And there's
+Owen, too, all dressed up.  What's he?  Mephistopheles?"
+
+"I'm a Musketeer."
+
+"Not one of Dumas', I hope."  But seeing by every one's chapfallen
+silence that Owen was Dumas' hero and none else, he put them at their
+ease by saying: "Well, please announce to everybody that the dress is
+founded on your own literary taste and not mine.  You must be careful
+how you tread on the literary grass, Mr. Owen....  Where's this rout
+to be held?  Buckingham Palace?"
+
+Miss Carrell explained.
+
+"It's Lady Montefiore's party at Kensington Town Hall.  A very big
+affair.  I did tell you about it, but I don't think you quite heard."
+
+"No.  I'm afraid I don't sometimes.  It must appear very rude.  I'm
+sorry."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bruno."  Miss Carrell looked almost beseechingly into his
+face.  "I hardly like to suggest what's in my mind."
+
+There's no sentence surer to stimulate interest.
+
+"What's that?" asked Mr. Bruno.
+
+"Run away, Duffy darling, and take Owen, and show yourselves to
+Hollins."
+
+The children gone, Miss Carrell proceeded:
+
+"Oh, don't you think you could look in for a minute at the party?
+Just before it's over--perhaps to bring the children away.  There are
+to be such a number of famous people there, and reporters, and I do
+want Duffy to see her name in the paper to-morrow, and a mention of
+her dress.  But in such a huge crowd she's hardly likely to be
+noticed unless you come too.  What a wonderful surprise it'd be for
+them, if you came and drove them home!  But of course, it's
+impossible ... it's impossible.  You're out to dinner."
+
+"It's not impossible.  It's not at all impossible," interrupted Mr.
+Bruno, to whom the word "reporters" was bait difficult to refuse.
+Besides, the vision of Daphne had stirred his desire for the envy and
+admiration of those who should know her for his daughter.  "My dinner
+is only an official monthly business, and I can escape.  I shall make
+a point of getting there.  And don't you tell them.  What time's it
+over?"
+
+"Officially at nine o'clock.  But I doubt if we shall get away before
+half-past nine.  And I don't suppose the--the celebrities will be
+there till fairly late.  I've promised Miss Durgon to have the
+children home by ten o'clock."
+
+"I shall be there soon after nine, Miss Carrell.  And keep it as a
+surprise from them...."
+
+The governess was such a pleasant little person that he quite enjoyed
+having a secret with her.
+
+
+At ten o'clock there were laughter and children's voices on the front
+steps at 18 Deseret Road, as Mr. Bruno, followed by Miss Carrell,
+Daphne and Owen (who had been allowed to pay the cabman), ascended to
+the hall door, searching for his latch-key.
+
+"Shall I ring?" asked Miss Carrell, who may have been tired, for she
+looked pale and her voice trembled.  "The maids will be up."
+
+"No.  Here we are....  Now then, Owen, open the door and don't keep
+us all waiting.  The ladies are cold in their cloaks.  That's right.
+Open Sesame!"  The door opened.  "Enter Ali Baba and two of his
+donkeys."
+
+Miss Carrell passed in first, and Owen was about to go in after her
+when his father pulled him back, saying: "The lady your sister first,
+if you're the swashbucklering gallant your dress suggests."  Daphne
+passed in.  "That's right.  Now the old man, because his great age
+gives him right of precedence.  Then the young D'Artagnan."
+
+He was hanging his hat on a peg when he observed the coat of Mr.
+Anthony.
+
+"Hallo!  A visitor?  Who's this?"  He lifted the lapel of the coat as
+if it might answer him.
+
+Just then a maid appeared to see if the master or the children needed
+anything before retiring.  (Or that was her ostensible reason.
+Actually she was the reporter commissioned by the kitchen, which had
+heard with surprised delight the master's voice on the steps, to
+proceed at once to the seat of war.  As Hollins had said: "_Now_
+how's she going to explain her masher in the breakfast-room?")
+
+"Who's the visitor, Alice?" asked Mr. Bruno, glancing at the coat.
+
+"Mr. Anthony, sir."
+
+"Mr. Who?"
+
+"Mr. Anthony."
+
+He turned inquiringly to Miss Carrell.
+
+"You know," she explained; "Mr. and Mrs. Anthony, who live in the new
+flats near the station."
+
+"Oh, yes.  Well, what on earth can he want with me at this time of
+night?"
+
+"He's with Miss Durgon, sir," said the maid, taking his coat from him.
+
+"Has he been here long?"
+
+"Since eight o'clock," answered the maid innocently.  "He often
+comes."
+
+"The first I've heard of it."  He turned again to Miss Carrell.
+"Does he----"  But he stopped, perceiving the indelicacy of
+discussing Miss Durgon with the governess or the servants.  "Well,
+good night, Duffy.  Good night, Owen, old man.  I'm sure neither of
+you'll sleep after all that pastry.  Good night, Miss Carrell."  And
+he walked along the passage into the dining-room to be alone.
+
+He was troubled, annoyed; but not quite clear on what to base his
+annoyance.  Why was it that Miss Durgon mustn't entertain a married
+man from eight to eleven on evenings when he was away?  There were
+passages in his books suggesting the right of any woman to entertain
+any soul-mate she liked.  But none of that could apply to Miss
+Durgon.  She wasn't doing it because she was an intellectual in
+conscientious rebellion (so sneakily, too, when his back was turned),
+but because she was a damned hypocrite.  That utterly conventional
+and pietistic fool, Miss Durgon, as a social rebel--pshaw! it was
+funny!  She'd been secretive, too, now he came to remember, over
+those holidays of hers....  No, the whole thing was false and wrong.
+The children, he had said, must be taught conventional morals, till
+they were old enough and strong enough (if ever) to venture into
+deeper waters.  Of course.  If they were ever to be taught to resist
+the tyranny of outworn creeds, they should be taught it as a high
+philosophy, not as a sneaking truancy.  He would like to hear more
+about these visits of Mr. Anthony, whom, by the by, he remembered as
+rather an ill-bred cad, material and gross.  Should he ask Miss
+Carrell about them?  No, that would be quite out of place.  She was
+too young and--pretty.  Hollins?  She had been with him a dozen
+years, a heavy, married creature.  He laughed.  It would please the
+old thing enormously to be taken into confidence.  He liked to please
+people.  But she'd certainly brag about his confidence to the other
+servants--he could read her character as well as any one else's.  But
+there, the servants knew all about it already.  A pretty fool that
+woman had made of him before his servants.  God damn it!  He rang the
+bell.
+
+"Is Hollins in bed yet?" he asked the maid.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Ask her to come and speak to me, please."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Though there was no quaver in the maid's voice, he knew she was
+delighted.
+
+Hollins, on being questioned, was completely communicative.  It had
+not been her place before, but since Mr. Bruno asked her ... there
+were times, she would admit, when she thought she ought to speak....
+But then she had said to herself, the master knew what he was about
+when he appointed Miss Durgon....  And doubtless Miss Durgon, who was
+a lady, knew more about these things than she....  She had not been
+able to bring herself to speak.  Besides, what did she know?  She had
+only begun to smell a rat, as the saying was, when that Mr. Stokes----
+
+"_Stokes?_" exclaimed Mr. Bruno.
+
+Yes, Mr. Stokes.  Mr. Stokes was an occasional visitor when the
+master was away.
+
+"But not surely when----" began Mr. Bruno, but he stopped and walked
+away and stood looking out of the window on to the veranda.
+
+"Thank you, Hollins.  Thank you.  I'm obliged to you.  Please don't
+mention our conversation in the kitchen.  Confidences are
+confidences."
+
+"No, sir," promised Hollins, and withdrew, quite obviously as happy a
+woman as any in London.
+
+Standing there with his hands in his pockets and his eyes staring
+vacantly at the window, Mr. Bruno indulged in a bath of warm
+self-sympathy.  It was a shame of Miss Durgon to have taken this
+advantage of him, a widower so dependent on his dependants; an
+author, so necessarily kept busy at his work.  It was too bad,
+considering the children; if she was that sort they had been probably
+neglected whenever he wasn't looking.  Damn it, it was insufferable
+to have treated so facilely the privilege of caring for T. Tenter
+Bruno's children.  There must be people all over the country who
+would regard it as an honour--something to boast about--to be charged
+with the children of a man of such fame.  To do all this, and at the
+same time to accept the generous salary he had given her, the
+comfortable home, and the extravagant courtesy with which he had
+always treated her!  It was enough to make a cynic and misanthrope of
+any man.  Had all people to be watched by a foreman lest they scamped
+their tasks?  Was there no one who would care for his children
+without his perpetual supervision, so that he could be free to work
+for them.  He himself needed no such dragooning.  He worked hard
+enough, undriven, to keep the home over everybody's head.
+
+Mr. Bruno dropped into a chair that he might loiter in this bath of
+warm self-sympathy.  But, as with all people in their baths, the
+pleasure was partly spoiled by the knowledge that at some moment he
+must achieve the courage to step out of the grateful warmth; and he
+knew he would leave the enervating self-sympathy for the cold air of
+self-reproach....  As if suiting the action to the thought, he rose
+from the chair and stood on the floor.  Confound it!  He was to
+blame.  With his indolent _laissez faire_, his forever choosing of
+the line of least resistance, he had undoubtedly suffered the weeds
+to spread.  For his children's sake he ought to have been perpetually
+on the watch, lest they were being moulded by soiled or clumsy hands.
+Daphne in her shepherdess costume!  She was an exquisite thing; he
+could pick her up and crush her to him in his swelling love.  Let one
+hope that so far no harm had been done.  Thank goodness, that little
+Miss Carrell was an exceptional person; she seemed sane enough, and
+steady, and a perfect lady, as Belle would say.  But who ever would
+have thought that Miss Durgon would have been anything but a subdued,
+middle-aged virgin?  "Confound it!" thought he, "what a blasted fool
+I must have looked all this time to this woman and her friends!  It's
+a damned insult to me."  Thus Mr. Bruno stepped back into his bath.
+
+He had a mind to go abruptly into the breakfast-room next door, and
+to break in upon Anthony and Miss Durgon, to their confusion.  But,
+as he foresaw the awkwardness of a meeting between Anthony and
+himself, and the discomfort Anthony and Miss Durgon would endure, and
+his own discomfort in witnessing their discomfort, he decided he
+could not face the scene.  If you discover your butler in the act of
+drinking your whisky out of its decanter, it is an open question
+which suffers the more, you or he.  Had Mr. Bruno possessed a butler,
+and chanced upon him in such a pilfering, he would have retired like
+the guilty party in the hope that his butler had neither seen nor
+heard him.
+
+He sat again in his chair.  In the morning he would take a strong
+line.  The phrase was pleasing.  It savoured of a monarch dismissing
+his prime minister: or of a father performing his stern duty by his
+children.  In the morning he would show Miss Durgon that these quiet
+and trusting men had, none the less--what was the trite metaphor?--an
+iron hand beneath the velvet glove.
+
+With this resolve he mounted to his bedroom, that mercy might attend
+poor Anthony to the door.
+
+
+At breakfast Miss Durgon appeared with a mien of studied composure,
+and he rather admired her for not keeping her bedroom and publishing
+a headache.  He talked of everyday subjects; they could not handle
+over cold bacon and boiled eggs such an explosive grenade as
+dismissal.  After breakfast it should be.  He would send for her to
+his study.  It would be painful having to treat a woman of forty-five
+like a schoolboy: "Miss Durgon, I feel that, as my daughter will soon
+be going to school (the first he had thought of it), perhaps...."
+No, he would not prepare his speech.  He would wait on inspiration.
+"Mr. Bruno, I can only thank you for your unfailing courtesy and
+consideration.  I hope we part with no ill-feeling, for I consider it
+has been a privilege to share in...."  "Not at all, Miss Durgon, not
+at all."  If she had any tact, she would drop such a curtain of gauze
+over the harder features of the scene.
+
+But when, after breakfast, he was reading his paper, he postponed the
+event till his pipe should be exhausted; and, after that, till all
+the matter in the _Times_ necessary for a well-informed mind had been
+exhausted.  Then he dropped the paper on his knees.  No, the thing
+would best be done through a woman: that would be more consistent
+with the courtesy she had invariably received from him.  Belle had
+engaged her, and Belle should be summoned to conclude the engagement;
+he could imagine her enjoying it thoroughly and all the while
+deceiving herself, like the brainless creature she was, that the duty
+was unpleasant.
+
+Belle arrived the next afternoon; and it was delectable to watch her
+surprise and indignation.
+
+"Extraordinary, Tom.  Extraordinary in an officer's daughter.  So
+ridiculous, too.  A _passé_ creature like that!  I don't know which
+is the more ridiculous, she or the idiotic _roués_ who could flit
+round such a--such a----"
+
+"Rushlight," suggested he.
+
+"Rushlight!  The creature must go at once."
+
+"Yes.  But there's nothing gained by doing it otherwise than gently.
+Let her have some excuse with which she can withdraw in a haze of
+dignity.  Let her have everything that's owing to her, and let--let
+crowns for convoy be put into her purse."
+
+Belle seemed hardly less childish than Daphne, and to be similarly
+bantered and confused.
+
+"But, meantime, we shall have to look out for some one else," pursued
+Belle, who was indubitably spending a delightful afternoon.  "I'll
+busy myself about that at once.  But in the interregnum, what's to be
+done?"
+
+"Oh, the little Carrell can carry on.  She's done it before."
+
+"Carol who?"
+
+"Carol no one.  Miss Carrell, the children's governess."
+
+"But she can't manage the household."
+
+"Indeed she can; and the War Office and Admiralty as well, if
+necessary.  With marvellous competence."
+
+"But, Tom, she doesn't look twenty."
+
+"She's twenty-three, I believe.  If Pitt was Prime Minister of
+England at twenty-one, Miss Carrell can be mistress of my household,
+for a fortnight, at twenty-three."
+
+"Yes, but Pitt was a genius."
+
+"He was not the last of the race."  It was always annoying, the way
+Belle spoke about geniuses.  "Perhaps Miss Carrell is one too.  In
+fact, I've been wondering whether she couldn't permanently fill the
+breach."  The idea, to be truthful, had only just struck him.
+
+"What?  Become your----"
+
+He enjoyed Belle's dismay.
+
+"Yes.  Why not?"
+
+"Oh, no, no.  Why, the servants wouldn't obey a child like that.  And
+what about the children?"
+
+"They love her.  She's been more successful with them than any one
+else."
+
+"And then again--forgive me mentioning it, but you literary people
+are so unworldly-wise--she's too pretty."  Belle smiled rather
+roguishly.  "People would talk.  With a man in your position it might
+do untold harm to have a Mistress of the Household, as you call her,
+of such youth and beauty."
+
+With contempt Mr. Bruno saw, under the veil of righteousness, his
+sister's relish for the subject.
+
+"You mean they would say that the Mistress of the Household was also
+the Lady of the Bedchamber?"
+
+"Tom!  I wonder why you artistic people always love to shock."
+
+The altercation continued, with the result that Mr. Bruno saw more
+and more sense in his idea as he saw more and more foolishness in
+Belle's arguments against it.  She fell back on the personal appeal.
+
+"Oh, Tom, let me beseech you to do nothing of the sort.  It would be
+unwise in the extreme.  I will do all in my power to secure you a
+really worthy and capable housekeeper.  You can trust me."
+
+It occurred to him to retort: "Your last effort was no proof of your
+trustworthiness.  And it justifies me in a bold innovation."  But he
+only replied:
+
+"It might, at any rate, be given a trial.  The children love her as
+much as they distrusted Miss Durgon, and I begin to believe they are
+good judges.  The servants unite in praising her.  We'd better see
+Miss Carrell."
+
+He leaned forward and touched the bell.  As it rang down below he
+wondered if he was rashly committing himself to something that wanted
+longer thought.  Was he being driven by the character that was now
+his tyrant to take again the line of least resistance?  No, surely
+this time the easiest line chanced to be the best.
+
+"Tom, you don't mean to say you have determined?"
+
+He had not meant to say so; indeed, was wondering how, if necessary,
+he could avoid saying so; but such a question from Belle was answered
+as soon as asked.
+
+"Yes, I think I have."
+
+"Well, I wash my hands of the whole business.  It's bound to be a
+failure."
+
+This made him resolve that, if possible, it should be an echoing
+success.
+
+
+When, happy to be the purveyor of pleasure, he took Miss Carrell into
+his confidence, offering her £80 for a start and £100 later "if the
+arrangement answered," she looked both pleased and frightened.
+(Frightened, because there is always something uncanny in the success
+of all one's plans.)  And he was charmed with the little creature's
+ingenuousness.
+
+"I know one person who'll be delighted," said he, to reassure her.
+"That's my little daughter."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Very carefully did Miss Carrell justify her election.  By courteous
+handling of the kitchen population, by preserving unprofaned her
+master's private hours, by consolidating the affection of the
+daughter of the family and the approval of the quieter Owen, she
+showed how straight was her eye, how cunning and steady her hand.
+But, like Miss Durgon before her, she had yet to make her
+metamorphosis complete; it was her policy to slough off for ever the
+nursery governess, and to put on the handsomer scales of the lady
+housekeeper.  "School."  The word popped about in her mind.
+"Boarding-school."  The children were getting older.  How insinuate
+into the minds of every one that they must soon go to school?  Then
+she would enjoy the not unfashionable duties of purchasing their
+outfits, interviewing their principals, conveying them on the first
+day of term to the thresholds of their schools, and writing to them
+afterwards like a conscientious guardian.
+
+She would do it through Daphne.  Miss Carrell had read her pupil's
+character, in so far as a thing still amorphous had features to be
+read; and what she saw was this: the child's surging vitality,
+because no one was directing it to a selected field, would run down
+any channel that might be laid invitingly before it.  There was the
+whole-hearted readiness to be masculine, just because half a dozen
+people had called her "tomboyish"; there was the whole-hearted
+readiness to fall in love with her governess, when the governess
+hinted that the gates were open.  She was like a mass of rising water
+that, insecurely prisoned, had been making its own little channels,
+and would certainly, did Miss Carrell trench wisely, run down her
+new-chosen course.
+
+So, on evenings after tea, when the dusk was in the school-room, Miss
+Carrell would read tales of school to the children, Daphne sitting on
+the floor at her knees, and Owen staring from his chair at the fire.
+It was difficult to secure enough of these "Stories for Girls."  They
+read "Winifred of Greystones," "The Most Popular Girl in the Fourth
+Form," "Fanny the Prefect," and "The Tomboy of Tatterden House."  And
+as Daphne's imagination breathed abounding life into Winifred of
+Greystones, Fanny the Prefect, and, above all, the fascinating Tomboy
+of Tatterden House, it was only through fear of hurting the love of
+her governess that she refrained from asking: "Do you think I shall
+be able to go to school soon?"  Miss Carrell read these stories very
+well, for, to tell the truth, she was as interested in them as her
+pupils; it was as much as she could do to restrain herself from
+pursuing the career of Winifred or the Tomboy after the children had
+gone to bed.  Owen, also, though he said little, was more interested
+in the tales than was proper for one of his sex.
+
+At length, hand-in-hand with assurances of unfailing affection,
+Daphne introduced the proposition that she go to school soon.  She
+would write every week to Miss Carrell full details of her
+adventures.  And Owen would go to his prep, school, and they would be
+able to compare notes.
+
+This enthusiasm for going to school was unintelligible to Owen, who
+secretly dreaded his first visit, but he pretended to be as excited
+as she.
+
+"You'll have to ask your papa," Miss Carrell replied.  "I don't think
+he'll like it.  You're too young.  Besides, schools--boarding-schools
+are expensive."
+
+"Oh, but father's got lots of money."
+
+"His expenses are very heavy."
+
+"Yes, but I shall have to go to school one day.  And I'm just on
+twelve."
+
+"I believe you want to get rid of me.  I believe you're tired of me.
+You're ashamed of being taught by a governess."
+
+Indignantly Daphne protested, but Miss Carrell continued: "Well,
+well, I suppose it is humiliating for a child of eleven to be tied to
+the strings of a governess."  And she knew she had successfully
+bedded out that idea.
+
+The same evening Mr. Bruno's study was entered by his daughter, who,
+guessing from his position in the armchair, with book and spectacles,
+that no more than three minutes would be allotted her, came straight
+to the point.
+
+"Please, daddy, may I go to school?"
+
+"To school?  Why, you're not yet out of your cradle."
+
+"Don't be silly.  I'm in my twelfth year."
+
+"So?  Well, what school are you going to?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  Some school."
+
+"Well, there's an excellent school, financed by the government, in
+Star Lane.  You could go there, I suppose.  I noticed the other day
+that there was an Infants' Entrance."
+
+"Oh, but father," protested Daphne.  "That's only for district
+children.  I mean a proper school--a boarding-school.  For _ladies'_
+children."
+
+"But, gracious lady, art thou the daughter of an earl's castle?  I'll
+tell you what you are.  You're just the encumbrance of a public
+entertainer, who has, so to speak, to drag you round in a box by the
+side of his barrel organ.  Even so, aren't you being taught by an
+excellent governess?"
+
+"Yes, but no one in double figures has a governess."
+
+"No one in double figures has a governess?  Translate, for a dull
+mind."
+
+"No one eleven years old has a governess.  Did you?"
+
+"Ah, did I?  'Twere well, were you brought up as I.  The rod, my
+child, frequently and soundly applied."
+
+Daphne, for a response, smiled delightedly.
+
+"What does the excellent Carrell say?" asked Mr. Bruno.
+
+"Of course, she doesn't want me to go, as she'd lose me----"
+
+"Upon my soul!" began Mr. Bruno.
+
+"But she said I might ask you and"--here Daphne, who had come and
+leaned forward against the arm of his chair, drooped her head in an
+acted sulk--"she said you wouldn't agree."
+
+"Did she though?"
+
+"She said you couldn't afford it, but I told her that was all my hat."
+
+"All your what?"
+
+"All piffle."
+
+"If there's a school, Miss Billingsgate, where they teach seemliness
+and decorum, and such a modicum of English as will enable you to get
+through society without expulsion, I think it had best be looked for
+immediately."
+
+"Well, when may I go?"
+
+"I don't know.  Not to-night, certainly.  It's already approaching
+six o'clock.  Which reminds me that 'the clock upbraids me with a
+waste of time.'  You'd better let me get on with my work, especially
+if I'm to pay all this new money for your education....  Good night,
+Duffy dear.  Go and get into your cradle."
+
+The next morning, as he was crossing the first-floor landing to the
+door of his study, he saw Miss Carrell coming downstairs, and
+remembered his conversation with Daphne.  Keeping hold of his
+door-handle, as a sort of insurance policy against protracted talk,
+he asked:
+
+"I suppose you've heard of my daughter's latest freak?  School?"
+
+"Yes, she's always harping on it."
+
+"Is she?  Good gracious!  Why, it was but yesterday that we had to be
+thinking about getting her a governess."  He had almost forgotten
+that the important little person before him was the governess in
+question.  "Her wedding will be upon us before we've folded up her
+swaddling clothes....  However....  School.  Do you think she ought
+to go?  At what age do girls go?  Of girls I profess to know nothing,
+except that, speaking generally, they are a great ornament to the
+world.  Do you think she ought to go?"
+
+Miss Carrell shook her head and lifted her shoulders.
+
+"_I_ don't want to lose her, but sometimes I think that with her
+vital nature she ought to have more of the society of girls like
+herself.  My Latin, for instance, is poor."
+
+"Mensa-mensa-mensam," began Mr. Bruno helpfully.  "But how does one
+find a really good girls' school, and go and examine it?"
+
+Miss Carrell's head went slightly on one side.
+
+"Of course, I know a good deal about the scholastic world, having
+been a mistress myself."
+
+"No; is that so?  I didn't know that, or I had forgotten it.  This is
+exceedingly useful.  Tell me some more about suitable schools."
+
+"Of course, I know best the school where I taught for three years.
+Hemans House."
+
+"If it's named after Mrs. Hemans, I've no opinion of the poetess--
+
+    The boy, oh! where was he?
+  Ask of the winds that far around
+    With fragments strewed the sea!
+
+No, we can't send her to a place named after Mrs. Hemans."
+
+"I rather fancy it was.  But Miss Vidella is old-fashioned.  I expect
+to your thinking she'd be a very antiquated type.  There's nothing
+the least bit modern about Hemans House.  It's a very strict, and I
+suppose you'd say a very prudish place."
+
+"Not at all, not at all."  It is a quality of incisive minds that
+they must ever brief themselves for the opposite of what has just
+been said.  "I'm more than ever convinced that all children, girls
+especially, should have a course of old fashions before they begin to
+be modern.  Christian ethics, after all, are an extraordinarily good
+system on which to run your life, and the modesty of our grandmothers
+is a necessary base for later liberties.  Yes, I've given the subject
+considerable thought.  Childhood should be a time of very vigilant
+restraint.  They must be pruned, so as to make less gay blossoms and
+more wood.  Then, well rooted, they can blossom as they fancy."
+
+Mr. Bruno had paid the exceptional Miss Carrell's intellect the
+compliment of thinking she understood him; but he was quite
+wrong--Miss Carrell, by his second sentence, had retired from further
+understanding, and was allowing her mind to fill with a new scheme.
+When he had finished, she said, "Yes, of course."
+
+"And where is this Miss Vidella's school?"
+
+"Windsor."
+
+"Then at any rate she has some unimpeachable neighbours....  And,
+from your three years' experience, do you really think it is a good
+school?  A good place for Daphne?"
+
+Miss Carrell appeared to deliberate before she replied.
+
+"Of an old-fashioned kind, yes....  Yes, I think _certainly_.  It is
+purposely limited to a few girls, because Miss Vidella, though
+strict, likes to mother each individual girl."
+
+"I see.  Vidella is an extraordinary name.  Was she born with it, or
+is it a _nom de guerre_?"
+
+Miss Carrell said she didn't know.
+
+"I should think it's a trade-mark," suggested Mr. Bruno.  "Prima
+donnas and ballerinas and hat-makers adopt names like that, don't
+they?"
+
+Miss Carrell said it was just the sort of quaint thing Miss Vidella
+would do.  "She's a personality, if ever there was one."
+
+"Is she?  Well, you want a personality at the head of a school.  We
+must think this over...."  He turned the handle of his door.
+"Meantime, work calls.  You must think it over, too."
+
+Miss Carrell did think it over.  She had started to think it over
+before his door opened.  And now she continued her journey downstairs
+but slowly, stopping at times to examine the idea again.  She
+unconsciously nodded to herself.  Yes, she knew that little stout
+Miss Vidella through and through.  It would be a pretty piece of
+work, and rather satisfying to one's vanity.
+
+
+When next Miss Carrell had a day to herself, she dressed in her
+latest-bought costume for the confounding of her old employer, and
+took the train to Windsor.
+
+Leaving the station, she passed the castle on her left hand, and,
+descending the hill, walked to the outskirts of the town.  It was
+wonderfully pleasant to follow these familiar streets, thinking how
+her position had improved since the days when she used to tread-mill
+them regularly behind a crocodile of garrulous young girls.  A
+narrow, stringy life, a young mistress's in a school like Hemans
+House!  How she had envied, though vanity had hardly admitted it, the
+visiting parents to whom Miss Vidella would show such consideration!
+And now she was approaching the place almost like a parent herself.
+No suitor for employment, but a prospective employer of the odious
+little Miss Vidella.  There was something very near glee in the
+thought.
+
+It was a long walk, but at least she saw the high, grey wall, of
+about eighty foot frontage, that screened from sight the lower floors
+of Hemans House, seeming always to intervene between the charges of
+Miss Vidella and the immodesties of the world.  At either end were
+tall carriage doors painted green, but dust-coloured and spattered in
+their lower halves, where the assoilings of the world's highway beat
+against the sequestered school.  These carriage doors were
+termini--as Miss Carrell so well knew and soon saw again--of a
+bow-shaped drive that encompassed a darkened haunt of trees and
+shrubs.  The gravel, moss-green at the gutters but clean at the
+crown, suggested that nowadays it knew feet more than wheels--like a
+lady who has once belonged to the carriage folk but has had losses
+and must now be content with an occasional cab.  The house, before
+which its arc swept, was wide, flat-fronted, flat-roofed, and, as one
+suspected after seeing the garden wall, faced with a greying stucco.
+Its windows were curtained with the simplicity of dormitories and
+class-rooms.  The drive broke from its bow-sweep for a space to touch
+the bottom of the dead-white hearth-stoned steps.  These brought one
+to a hall door painted the same green as the doors in the garden
+wall, but scrupulously washed; indeed, at this door, with its
+brilliant brass knocker, letter-box and bell, one seemed to be in
+real touch, for the first time, with the niceties of Miss Vidella.
+
+Conscious of her new quality, Miss Carrell ascended the steps.  In
+the past and pitiable years she had always been obliged to enter the
+house through the pupils' entrance at the side, for only parents or
+visitors might defile the hearth-stoned steps.  She rang the bell and
+knocked a confident ratter-tat-_tat_; and, while waiting, peeped
+through the two lights of leaded and coloured glass to see the old
+familiar hall, now in a dull green, now in a sickening blue.  Here
+came a maid.  Miss Carrell turned her head and looked towards the
+shrubbery.  The door opening showed the maid in a black dress, neat
+apron, and cap with streamers--in fact, just as presentable as the
+brass knocker.  Yes, Miss Vidella was at home, and what was the name,
+please?
+
+"Miss Carrell.  She will know me."
+
+Miss Carrell did not say, "I was once a mistress here," because she
+remembered how the servants had always despised the mistresses.  "And
+how could they do anything else," thought she, as she stepped in,
+"knowing that the governesses were paid but ten pounds a year more
+than themselves, and fed no better?"
+
+The old familiar hall!  The same well-polished linoleum, narrow
+mahogany table pushed against the heavy red-and-gold wall-paper; the
+same two mahogany chairs; the same hat and coat stand, jealously
+guarded from hats and coats; the same comparative darkness and
+inalienable odour; the same hum of voices from the class-rooms; and
+the same sound--which, to be sure, she had forgotten for years, but
+was a necessary ingredient--of a pupil playing scales in one of the
+music-rooms on the first floor.
+
+She was imagining the mistresses in class-room or music-room, and
+feeling sorry for them, as she followed the maid into Miss Vidella's
+reception room.  So familiar! this congregation of mahogany pieces
+and knick-knacks with a display of antimacassars over the backs of
+armchairs.  There was the upright piano which would be used for
+practice when no guests were in the room.  On all the tables, on the
+top of the piano, and along the mantel-shelf were cabinet portraits,
+in assorted frames, of girls who had left; and all these photographs
+stood parallel, but obliquely, as if they had once stood shoulder to
+shoulder, but had heard the command, "Half left turn!"  Miss Carrell
+studied the pictures of girls she had known, many of which bore
+signatures such as "Grace," or "Your affectionate pupil, Dorothy
+Brewer," or "To dear Miss Vidella, from her affectionate Violet."
+
+"Miss Vidella says she's engaged for a few minutes, but will not keep
+you waiting long."
+
+Yes.  That would be the message she would send to an ex-mistress.
+Miss Carrell walked to the window and looked out.  She could
+re-create what had happened when the maid announced "Miss Carrell."
+"Who?  Miss Carrell?  Miss Carrell?  Dear me.  Well, ask her--tell
+her I will not keep her waiting long."  She could hardly be expected
+to come expeditiously to a person whom once she had employed at a
+salary of thirty pounds a year.  And actually it was a full five
+minutes before Miss Vidella was heard approaching.  Even then she
+delayed in the hall, while her high-pitched and affected voice whined
+some instructions to a passing pupil.
+
+The door opened, and unsmiling and deliberate, Miss Vidella sailed
+towards her late governess.  Miss Vidella was short and very stout,
+and her dress was black, from the collar at her ears to the end of
+the skirt, which seemed lifted by the dome of her hips some irregular
+inches off the ground.  Her hair was as black as her dress, and
+mercilessly parted in its middle, probably to complete the
+resemblance to an ancestral portrait; but the fat face, with its
+steel spectacles on a nose that did not appear to have developed much
+since infancy, hardly matched the dignity of her walk or the queenly
+attitude she assumed in her chair.
+
+"Ah, Miss Carrell."  Not for twenty years, one imagined, had the
+inflexions of Miss Vidella's voice been true and natural; they were
+always taken from a cupboard to suit her pose of the moment; she had
+a favourite one of injured surprise, which she supposed was very
+effective with her pupils and staff; another of quiet indomitability;
+and another of mirthless sarcasm.  Her present voice was the voice of
+a patron conceding an audience.  "I'm sure it's very kind of you to
+come.  And where do you teach now?"
+
+"I am no longer teaching.  I--I manage a gentleman's household for
+him."
+
+That a governess could rise out of her caste to something higher was
+not easily conceived by Miss Vidella.
+
+"What?  A housekeeper?  Isn't that a pity?  Surely the training of
+youth was a higher calling."
+
+"I did not say 'housekeeper,' Miss Vidella.  What I mean is, I manage
+a widower's household for him, and act as guardian of his children."
+
+"But surely that means he's making you combine governess and
+housekeeper in one?  I hope he is not taking advantage of you, and
+that you are not being overworked."
+
+("Fat little beast," thought Miss Carrell.  "You naturally don't want
+to think that I bettered myself by leaving you.")  But while thinking
+this she said pleasantly:
+
+"You don't quite understand the post, Miss Vidella.  I must confess I
+consider myself very lucky, and I thought it would please you too.
+Mr. Tenter Bruno is a widower, and he has appointed me to the sole
+charge of his servants and his children.  He gives me, in addition to
+a luxurious home, a hundred pounds a year."
+
+As a tadpole might legitimately be called a frog, so her present
+eighty pounds, by virtue of its promise, might be called a hundred.
+
+"A hundred pounds a year resident!"  Miss Vidella's little black eyes
+at last showed amazement.  "But surely that's an enormous salary for
+so young a woman, is it not?"
+
+"It is very good, certainly."
+
+"He must be a very wealthy man, this Mr.--Mr.----"
+
+"Mr. Tenter Bruno."
+
+"There is a writer of that name, is there not?  Though I confess I
+have little acquaintance with any of these modern writers.  They are
+so revolutionary, and their writings have a distinctly immoral tone.
+Shelley and Keats, of course, I am passionately fond of.  Is your Mr.
+Tenter Bruno of the same family as the writer?"
+
+"He is _the_ Mr. Tenter Bruno."
+
+"_Indeed?_"
+
+It was clear that Miss Vidella was giving some thought to this
+information, for she had looked again, and with a new expression, at
+the fine plumage of her late governess.  If you brought together such
+notions as a loose modern writer, a pretty dependent, and the
+ridiculous remuneration of a hundred pounds a year----
+
+"Indeed!" she said.  "It's a curious appointment."
+
+Miss Carrell smiled.  She did not trouble to repudiate the suspicion,
+even feeling a humour to encourage it.  Raising her shoulders, she
+replied:
+
+"Perhaps all artists are unconventional."
+
+There was a rustle in her hostess's chair.
+
+"Unconventional theories, in my experience of the world, Miss
+Carrell, often end in--er--in all sorts of things."  She began to
+enjoy playing the mentor on such a subject to the young woman.  "Are
+you sure that you are quite wise in accepting such an equivocal
+position?  Artists are so often loose-lived.  You must forgive me,
+but this is the warning of an old woman."
+
+A merry laugh was Miss Carrell's reply.
+
+"Oh, I can look after myself all right.  Why, I've been there over
+two years."
+
+(Not, of course, on her present throne, but it was unnecessary to
+explain that.)
+
+Miss Vidella bridled and shrugged.  Obviously she was thinking that,
+if such were the position, the worst had probably happened.  And in
+the face of this probability, Miss Carrell was no person to encourage
+in Hemans House.
+
+"Well, I happened to be in the neighbourhood," said Miss Carrell,
+"and I couldn't resist inquiring after the old school.  I hope it's
+prospering."
+
+"Certainly," said Miss Vidella, slightly ruffled.  "My school has
+never been more prosperous."
+
+"The numbers keep up?"
+
+"I do not desire too great numbers, for then each individual child
+receives greater attention from myself and my staff."
+
+("Fiddlesticks!" thought her listener.  "That stuff may go down with
+the parents, but what's the good of palming it off on me?")
+
+"I would have asked you to stay to tea," said Miss Vidella, after a
+pause, "only I have hardly a minute to spare.  I am really very busy
+indeed.  I am afraid I shall have to ask you to excuse me."
+
+Miss Carrell rose and picked up her umbrella from a chair.  It was
+rather fun angling for this plump trout.
+
+"All right--yes--I mustn't keep you.  I don't think I'd better stay
+to tea, as I want to get to town early.  There's just one thing I
+wanted to ask you, and it was this.  The elder of my two charges is a
+girl, Daphne Bruno.  She is about to go to school, and Mr. Bruno has
+commissioned me to find a suitable place for her.  I thought you knew
+so much more about the scholastic world than I did, so as I was in
+the town it occurred to me to look in and ask you to advise us.  Mr.
+Bruno would want a really first-class school, of course, and I don't
+suppose money would be a very great object."
+
+"This is very interesting.  Please sit down again, Miss Carrell."
+Miss Vidella sat down herself.  "This is very interesting.  Tell me
+about the little girl.  The mention of her alone interests me, my
+life having been spent in the service of such as she.  How old is
+she, and what is her name?"
+
+"She's eleven, and her name is Daphne Deirdre."
+
+"Such strange names!"
+
+Miss Vidella said it in a voice she kept for parents, or for the
+girls when they used slang: it had a faint savour of mittens and
+quiet-handed surprise at anything less strictly regulated than
+herself.
+
+"Yes," Miss Carrell agreed.  "As you said, these people are
+unconventional.  What school do you really think would suit the
+daughter of such a man?  Of course, to modern parents the very
+possession of his daughter would be an advertisement for the school."
+
+"Miss Carrell, why should she not come here?  I am fairly full, as I
+intimated, but I could make an exception for such a child, in the
+hope, of course, that she would inherit her father's talents and
+bring great credit to the school.  And for your sake, too, as an old
+member of the staff."
+
+It was a demurring answer that Miss Carrell gave to this.
+
+"I had hardly thought of that.  Of course, she'd do credit to any
+school.  She has a clear, inquisitive brain and a tremendous vitality
+that she gets from her father, and at the same time a soft and
+adoring side that I suppose comes from the mother, who seems to have
+been a frail, affectionate creature.  Altogether a charming child.
+But I don't think it would do.  I expect that Mr. Bruno contemplates
+paying much higher fees than you ask."
+
+"We can always arrange our fees," began Miss Vidella, luckily seeing
+nothing of the laugh that trembled through her visitor.  "I mean mine
+has always been a sliding scale, suited to the pockets of the
+parents.  By which I have been able to help a lot of children of less
+well-to-do people."
+
+"As far as I can remember, quite a lot of them came at reduced fees,"
+said Miss Carrell in obliging agreement.
+
+"Yes, I have made many sacrifices.  It has been my work in life."
+
+"Mr. Bruno is particularly anxious about the social status of the
+girls his daughter will meet."
+
+"Of course.  Naturally.  Well, we shall satisfy him there.  You know
+I make a point of receiving only the daughters of officers, clergy
+and professional men."
+
+"Yes, I remember it says so in the prospectus."  This reply
+particularly pleased Miss Carrell, for it would leave Miss Vidella
+wondering what exactly she meant.  "I must admit the idea had not
+occurred to me, and frankly I don't think it would quite answer.
+Still, I'm grateful for your suggestion."  She rose.  "I must be
+hurrying, or I shall miss my train, and we have some guests
+to-night," which last statement was a fiction provided for
+atmospheric effect.
+
+"Of course, you understand," said Miss Vidella hurriedly, and smiling
+to repudiate any false construction that might be put on her words,
+"that in the event of your sending me a good pupil I should save an
+agent's fee.  I don't know if it----"
+
+A laugh rippled from Miss Carrell.
+
+"What an idea!  Were you going to suggest that I receive it instead?
+Oh, yes, I remember you used to offer it to us.  I shouldn't mind
+taking it at all, if by chance Daphne came to you.  I have no false
+pride and make no bones of the fact that I earn my living.  What fee
+do you usually give the agents?"
+
+"Oh, they vary.  But I really shouldn't mind offering you, in this
+case, if Mr. Bruno paid, say--say, a hundred a year, a commission of
+ten pounds.  I should regard it as only fair."
+
+"Well, that would be a pleasant little windfall, supposing Daphne did
+come here.  Though you understand, of course, I must put the little
+girl's interest before all things."
+
+"Naturally.  Naturally.  I would be the last person to suggest
+anything else.  But, of course, I have such faith in my own methods
+that I don't think she would do better elsewhere.  I feel I should
+like to have your little ward here.  And it's only because you're an
+old friend of mine, and I knew your position, that I offered what I
+did."
+
+"Oh, I think it was exceedingly sweet of you, Miss Vidella.  And if
+Mr. Bruno decides to send his daughter here I shan't at all mind
+taking it.  Well, we must see.  It's quite a new idea to me.
+Good-bye."
+
+If Miss Carrell, as she passed into the street, was faintly reminded
+of the sons of Jacob selling young Joseph to the Midianites for a few
+pieces of silver, she quickly forgot so silly a thought.
+
+
+
+
+PART II: _Daphne's Schooldays_
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Daphne, her governess, and a new trunk marked D.D.T.B., were all in
+the Windsor train as it moved out of Paddington.  A sense of
+well-being accompanied Miss Carrell too.  So often had she seen
+parents bringing their children to Hemans House, and envied them the
+position in which they stood to the school and to the mistresses.  It
+was the difference between the paying and the paid, between the
+clients of a firm and its servants.  Not so much those whose children
+came for notoriously reduced fees; them she had rather pitied.  And
+now here was she, wearing gracefully the clothes of the leisured
+classes, and bringing to Miss Vidella a best-paying child.  Under a
+manner of graciousness and charm she would talk to the junior
+mistresses.
+
+She could congratulate herself on the skill with which she had played
+for Mr. Bruno's decision.  She had used Daphne first, hanging before
+her gaze pictures of life at Hemans House as it lived in her
+memory--its fun and mischief, its quaint customs, and its tales of
+friendship between girl and girl or between governess and pupil, till
+the child's imagination was possessed by Miss Vidella and her
+establishment, and she would pester her father to be sent to that
+school and no other.  With the father Miss Carrell had kept her
+recommendation free from over-emphasis, though unmistakably strong.
+She made capital with the idea that Daphne would probably do best at
+a school on which she was keen.  And Mr. Bruno had agreed.
+
+Daphne was less happy than Miss Carrell.  After all her noisy
+enthusiasm for school, she did not like to admit a present anxiety
+that was almost a dread.  Even from herself she pushed away a wish
+that she and Owen and Miss Carrell could have gone on for ever in the
+schoolroom upstairs with the two desks.  As the train hurried towards
+Windsor she gazed out of the window and affected, for her previous
+attitude demanded nothing less, a great excitement about the journey
+and its destination.
+
+"You'll soon seen Windsor Castle," said Miss Carrell.
+
+"Shall we?  How ripping!"  But she felt that the moment of seeing
+Windsor Castle, where it towered above the distant trees, would be a
+moment of something like fright; and one could wish that the train
+would roll on and on, so that the moment never came.  The hunched
+carters whose wagons rumbled on the country roads were people to be
+envied for their age and freedom; so were the porters on the
+platforms, who would be doing to-morrow what they were doing this
+afternoon; and the engine driver, alone in his engine day after day,
+with no head mistress or big girls to overawe him.  Something was
+wrong with her breathing; she kept wanting to rearrange it with a
+short, quick inhalation or a downward sigh or yawn.  But when Miss
+Carrell, looking out of the window, began to search the skyline for
+the Round Tower of Windsor Castle, that she might point it out with
+an exhibitor's pride, and at last exclaimed: "There it is--there
+between the trees!" Daphne jumped up and stared out of the
+door-window in an imitation of effervescing delight.  A sickish
+business, because her heart was not in the effervescence; it was
+lying somewhere lower than usual and beating too fast.
+
+"Is Hemans House far from the station?" she asked, and though her
+voice was meant to suggest impatience, the words were really an
+appeal for delay.
+
+"Yes, it's a mile or more, but we'll take a fly."
+
+Usually taking a fly was a treat, but now, as the train slowed into
+Windsor station, the cab seemed little better than a Black Maria or a
+tumbrel.  But life bustles you on regardless of your desire to go
+slow, or even to stop still, and Miss Carrell bustled her on to the
+platform.  There as she waited, trembling in the cold wind, she sank
+herself deeper in that despairing envy of all the other persons who
+were getting out of the carriages: the young people whose schooldays
+were behind them, the middle-aged who must have forgotten all about
+school, and the old men who were near death.
+
+Miss Carrell pushed her into the fly, and said "Hemans House" to the
+cabman, who nodded "Yes'm," and flicked at his horse, starting it up
+the hill.
+
+Daphne watched out of the window.  "Now we're almost there!" she
+exclaimed, to keep up the fiction of excited happiness.
+
+
+The high garden wall of Hemans House was not likely to diminish her
+anxiety; nor the depressing tangle of trees on the other side of the
+wall, the moss-green gravel, and the stucco house.  There was more
+cheer about the white hearthstoned steps and the green hall door.
+But the clang of the bell in the basement had a ring of
+irreparability, as if it had snapped off the past; and the waiting
+for the door to open was unlike any other waiting she had ever known.
+Fears seemed to have vivified her thinking and heightened her
+imagination above the normal.  White hearthstoned steps, hollowed
+where the feet trod, were no longer steps and nothing more.  Steps?
+Steps were romantic things.  What one-time tenants of this old house
+had come up these steps and gone down them, and with what emotions!
+And now they were in their graves.  Perhaps some daughter of the
+house had eloped down these steps with her lover, like Dorothy Vernon
+of Haddon Hall.  A fraction of those hollows was made by their flying
+feet.  School girls, converging from all parts, had come up these
+steps, and wondered what years lay before them.  And after a time
+they had taken their farewell journey down them.  Stirring, sweet
+thought, that last walk down them!  Long after Miss Vidella had
+died--one could be selfishly happy if she died this afternoon--other
+tenants, not yet born perhaps, would come up these steps.  A crowd
+would stand here to watch a wedding pair descend to their carriage on
+the drive.  And the bodies of people would one day be carried in
+coffins, feet foremost, down the steps.  That time they would make no
+impression on the hollows....
+
+The door was opening, and a maid, who recognised Miss Carrell, was
+inviting them to come in.  They were walking through a rather dark
+hall to the reception-room.  Now they were waiting in the
+reception-room.  This was like an interval between two parts of one's
+life, an empty, silent pause, like the place where the coupling was,
+between two coaches of a railway train.
+
+Daphne here began to fill the interval, and thus to contract to
+commonplace thinking again, by a study of the framed portraits of
+former pupils.  All of them seemed to have written, something like,
+"To dear Miss Vidella, from her affectionate Violet," and she was
+cheered by these proofs of lovableness in her head-mistress.  How
+pleasant, when she should have left school for ever, to send a
+photograph, signed, "To my dear mistress, from her loving Daphne
+Deirdre Tenter Bruno!"  She was startled away from the frames by the
+sound of a high-pitched voice outside; and the door opened, and Miss
+Vidella made a dignified entry.  Daphne had heard from Miss Carrell
+that her future principal was "short, stout and very quaint," but the
+words had suggested no such caricature as this.  With a moment's
+homesickness she knew that, had Owen and she in their former freedom
+seen such a figure in the street, they would have giggled and hurried
+out of sight.
+
+"So this is little Daphne Bruno!" said Miss Vidella, stretching out a
+cold hand which Daphne took.  The hand seemed to share none of the
+affection of the high-pitched voice, but to be a sort of perfunctory
+companion who did what was expected of it without enthusiasm.
+
+"We generally call her Duffy at home," said Miss Carrell.
+
+"Duffy!  What a strange name!  I don't think we can call her that
+here.  Sounds too much like Duffer--and we have none of them here."
+Daphne wondered if this were supposed to be funny.  "Besides, being
+her father's daughter, she'll be anything but a dunce.  No, we shall
+only call her Daphne."
+
+Daphne had a sense of seeing Duffy dismissed from the room.
+
+"And how is your dear father?"
+
+"Very-well-thank-you."
+
+"And is he writing another of his splendid books?"
+
+"Yes-I-think-so."
+
+"That's right."
+
+"He's always at work," interjected Miss Carrell.
+
+"Dear me.  You must be a proud little girl to be the daughter of so
+celebrated a parent.  Are you?"
+
+Daphne had never thought of it like that--one hardly did about one's
+father--but she dutifully mumbled "Yes."
+
+"Well, Daphne dear, you must be happy with us.  Your father was most
+careful to choose a school where you would be happy, and you mustn't
+disappoint him, but tell him how happy you are here."  She turned to
+Miss Carrell.  "I am hoping he will consent to act as a reference for
+us....  And I tell you what would be nice for you, Daphne, and make
+you feel more at home, if you could persuade some other dear little
+girl friends to come to school with you here.  Will you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And to think that Miss Carrell, whom I know so well, should have
+been helping you with your studies for the last few years!  Have you
+learnt a lot from her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's right.  Well, you're a little shy now, aren't you?  Very
+natural, I am sure.  Perhaps you'd like to go downstairs to the
+dining-room, and see some of your school-fellows.  Would you like to
+do that?"
+
+"Yes--thank--you."
+
+"That's right."  Miss Vidella struck a bell on the table beside her.
+"You'll stay here, won't you, Miss Carrell?  I am expecting some more
+of the dear children's parents, and we shall have a cup of tea up
+here."  The maid entered in response to the bell, and her mistress
+said: "Knight" (she achieved added dignity by calling all her maids
+by their surnames), "please take Miss Daphne Tenter Bruno and show
+her her dormitory--she's sleeping in the Eliza Cook room--and then
+show her to where the other young ladies are assembled in the
+dining-room.  Miss Sims is looking after them."
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+"Thank you....  Now do you go with Knight, dear, who will show you
+the way....  Ah, yes, yes, Miss Carrell will come and see you before
+she goes."
+
+Daphne passed out of the door behind the maid, Knight.  As the door
+closed, the thought of Miss Carrell partaking of an exalted tea with
+the parents made it seem as if she had been assumed into a heaven,
+leaving Daphne to work out her salvation in loneliness below.
+
+"Come on, your Shyness," the maid surprised her by saying as, not
+without kindness, she took her by the hand.  "You'll soon get used to
+us.  There's worse places than school when all's said and done, and
+worse schools than this, I daresay.  Come and see your bedroom.  Up
+this way....  Just the next floor....  Now in here....  There ...
+That's where you'll sleep, and I wish I had half as good a room."
+
+Daphne was in a large, bright room, with six beds whose top blankets
+were scarlet and their linen well laundered.  On the floor at the
+foot of the nearest she recognised her trunk.  The five other beds
+started more nervousness.
+
+Knight helped her to remove her coat and hat, brush her hair and
+prepare for the dining-room.  Then she led her downstairs to a big,
+bare room in the basement.  Here were three long tables laid for tea,
+a vase of flowers at every four feet giving an air of gaiety suitable
+to the day when the girls returned.  Round the walls were hung Maud
+Goodman's pictures: "Taller Than You, Mother," "When the Heart is
+Young," and "They Lived Happily ever Afterwards."  In the bay window,
+whose panes looked out upon a shallow area, sat a young mistress,
+evidently Miss Sims.  She was a short woman with a colourless face,
+not ill-featured, and dull, fair hair.  Her popularity was shown by
+the girls who were dancing around her, or sitting with dangling legs
+on a table at her side.
+
+All heads turned as the maid entered with Daphne.
+
+"Here's one of the new girls, Miss Sims.  She's Miss Daphne Brunner,
+or some name like that."
+
+"Oh, yes.  We've heard all about her--Daphne Bruno."
+
+
+Miss Sims, in her relations with her pupils, was the complete
+sentimentalist.  She lived with emotions she would have been ashamed
+to reveal.  And yet, to herself, she liked to call these emotions the
+noblest thing in her.  It was just this, she had to have somebody to
+love passionately.  The six years of her teaching had been a chain of
+such hungry, largely concealed loves for some fair-featured pupil.
+And at the moment when Daphne first saw her, though she was laughing
+gaily with the girls, for all of whom she felt affection, her mind
+was really full of treasured regrets and self-pity, because an older
+pupil, Audrey Stanton, who had held her heart and filled her dreams,
+had left the school the previous term.  "Doubtless," Miss Sims had
+thought during the holidays, "she will write me a few affectionate
+letters, and then forget all about me."  The pathos of this had
+evoked a few verses, one of which ran:
+
+  Upon the threshold of a broader view,
+    Where lay revealed what girlhood sees,
+  I left my little pupil standing, and withdrew
+    To fondle memories.
+
+
+And another, supposed to be written in ten years' time when all the
+girl-children on whom she had expended her love should be dispersed:
+
+  O Time, reverse the glass, and let flow back the sands!
+  Within a stucco house once more a figure stands,
+  And smiles on upturned faces, grasping outstretched hands.
+
+  Revive the past?  Ah no!  Nor yet retie the knot,
+  For time must move, and early-formed attachments rot,
+  And so the tale is told, a girlhood friend forgot.
+
+
+The melancholy of her return this term to familiar walls empty of
+Audrey Stanton had been relieved (though in loyalty she hardly
+admitted it) by the hope that some new pupil would win her heart.
+When she had been told about the great Mr. Tenter Bruno's daughter,
+she had wondered whether this interesting child would be able to
+succeed to Audrey, and to give her all the exquisite delights and
+sufferings that that gracious girl had had the power to bestow.
+
+And now she saw Daphne.  She saw an eleven-year-old child whose brown
+hair had not yet been tied back with a ribbon.  The eyes were brown,
+large and inquiring; the nose straight and small; the mouth at the
+moment, unmoving and sad--though the sadness, perhaps, was reflected
+from a timidity in the eyes.  The narrow figure, with its early
+promise of long, thin limbs, was indistinguishable from a boy's....
+The child looked lost.
+
+Miss Sims's heart moved out to her aid, swelling with hope.
+
+
+Daphne, quite unaware that there was a person in the room who was
+wondering whether she would be able to love her better than any one
+else in the world, was introduced to all the girls, none of whom made
+any impression on her except a certain Gertrude Wayne.  This girl,
+who was perhaps a year older than Daphne, but no taller, had
+deliberately come and sat beside her, and studied to be pleasant.
+
+(The hidden fact was that Gertrude Wayne had just finished reading a
+boys' school story, "The Best House at Whitefriars," whose hero, a
+Godfrey Baldwin, had always been very kind and protecting to new
+boys, and thereby earned their worship; and her behaviour just now
+was modelled on Godfrey's.  She had even a hope that the bigger girls
+would be unkind to this new kid, so that she could stand up for her.
+It must be splendid to have the admiration that Godfrey inspired.)
+
+"What did they say your name was?"
+
+"Daphne Bruno."
+
+"Any other names?"
+
+'Yes; Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno."
+
+"Oh, I think Deirdre is a ripping name.  Which are you called by at
+home?"
+
+"I'm generally called Duffy at home, but Miss Vidella says I'm not to
+be called by that here."
+
+"She would.  Nicknames are the same as slang to her, the old----
+But's really she's not so bad."  (Gertrude had suddenly remembered
+that Godfrey never spoke unkindly of any one.) "She did the same with
+me.  I'm always called Trudy at home, but she said, 'My dear, what a
+strange name!  It's too much like Judy,' and she made me be called
+Gertrude.  I shall call you Duffy, if you'll call me Trudy.  Will
+you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where are you sleeping?"
+
+"In the Eliza Cook room I think it was called."
+
+"Oh, blow!  I'm in the Frances Burney room.  Never mind.  If there's
+anything I can do for you, let me know.  I remember how rotten it was
+when I was new.  I've been here two years now----"
+
+The conversation was stopped by the sound of Miss Vidella's voice
+outside, and when she entered with some parents, all the girls stood
+up and kept silence.  Some older ones giggled, though their lips were
+compressed.
+
+"This is the dining-room," sang Miss Vidella, and the parents, male
+and female, gazed helpfully round.  "Such a nice, cheerful room.
+South aspect, and gets the whole day's sun....  Sit down, dears....
+You won't mind them sitting down, will you?  Yes, they have all their
+meals here--not luxuries, I'm afraid, but good, plain, wholesome
+food."  (She pronounced this word to rhyme with "good.")  "Where's
+little Daphne Bruno?  Ah, there she is.  Getting quite at home
+already....  Come to me, dear, and let me introduce you.  This is the
+great Mr. Tenter Bruno's only daughter."
+
+"Tenter Bruno was an old Harrovian," said one corpulent father,
+interested for the first time.  "He was at Harrow with me."
+
+"There.  Now isn't that interesting?  Here's some one who was at
+school with your father.  How small the world is! ... Now do you run
+away, dear."
+
+She soon took out the parents again, who bowed graciously to Miss
+Sims before withdrawing.  Then tea was brought in, the first day of
+term being celebrated by such extras as blanc-mange and jelly and
+bananas.  The girls, now increased in numbers, were chatteringly
+occupied with the meal, under the supervision of Miss Sims and
+another mistress who had appeared, when all were compelled to stand
+again with full and giggling mouths by the entrance of Miss Vidella,
+and a second little shift of parents.
+
+"Ah, they've started, I see....  Miss Sims and Miss Stevens."  The
+parents bowed.  "Yes, I don't pretend we give them luxuries, but we
+study always to have good, plain, nourishing food....  Well, sit
+down, dears, and get on with your meal.  I am sure you will be
+excused.  This is one of my new girls this term."  Daphne stood up,
+blushing because her mouth was full, and she was overborne by this
+semicircle of parents about her.  "She's Mr. Tenter Bruno's daughter."
+
+"Really?" exclaimed one lady.
+
+"Yes, he's just sent her.....  Sit down, dear....  It's a fine,
+cheery room, isn't it?  Perhaps you'd like to see the dormitories."
+
+They filed out, and the frost-bound chattering violently thawed.
+
+After tea, Daphne was left quite alone and unspoken to, Trudy Wayne
+having gone away, and Miss Sims been relieved by Miss Stevens.  She
+sat on the edge of a table, and passed the time looking up and round
+at the Maud Goodman pictures, or watching some big girl whose voice
+was commanding a moment's attention.  Quite half an hour must have
+gone before Miss Carrell came into the room to kiss her good-bye.
+
+"Good-bye, Duffy, dear.  I've got to be off to my train.  Try to be
+very happy."
+
+"I think it's lovely," said Daphne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+On awaking next morning in the Eliza Cook room and looking round upon
+its iron bedsteads, beneath whose tumbled red blankets the hips and
+shoulders of five strange girls made miniature mountain ranges,
+Daphne yielded to a dull resignation.  Owen, whose attractions she
+had too much overlooked, was now seen to be a friend whose absence
+left a damping blank.  How good the holidays would be when once again
+Hollins would come in, pull up the blinds, and wake them!  All these
+five schoolfellows were still asleep, and she coveted the ease and
+familiarity which enabled them to hunch up and sleep like that.
+Herself felt perfectly awake.  She would have rather liked to get up,
+but dared not move till some of the others, by rising and dressing,
+showed her what to do.  There were six basins on a long trestle
+table, with a clean, white cloth and four new pieces of brown
+carbolic soap.  To look at these squares of soap was to catch their
+smell.  Which of those basins ought she to use, and which piece of
+soap?  And how much of herself ought she to wash?  Always at home
+Hollins had taught her that when she didn't have a bath she must
+wash, like all ladies and gentlemen, right down to her waist, and
+never be guilty of the "cat-lick."  But she knew, as she lay there,
+that if the majority of these girls made use of the "cat-lick," she
+would follow their example.  Moral courage, of course, demanded the
+opposite (like Tom Brown saying his prayers), but she had no desire
+to show moral courage.  All she wanted was to do nothing remarkable.
+
+When at last, one by one, and with unembarrassed talking, the girls
+got up, after a loud bell had rung downstairs, they soon solved for
+her the problem of washing.  All of them seemed to dress as far as
+their princess petticoats before approaching the basin, and then gave
+a hasty polish to their faces and necks with the damp end of a towel.
+One girl, even, who had lain in bed long after the bell had gone, did
+not wash at all, but dashed downstairs with her dress undone,
+plaiting her hair as she went.
+
+Into the stream of girls which, fed by tributary rivulets from other
+rooms, was cascading downstairs, Daphne slipped, so as to flow along
+with it and see in what pool it finally settled.  It settled in the
+dining-room, where all the girls were taking up places behind the
+chairs they had occupied at yesterday's tea.  Only whispered talk was
+passing across the breakfast things, as if even that were contraband.
+Daphne slipped to the chair that had known her yesterday, and in the
+absence of Owen, Hollins, and Miss Carrell, the chair seemed a
+friend.  She saw Trudy Wayne, and Trudy saw her, and smiled and
+looked dreamily ahead.  Daphne wondered at the wistful
+self-sufficiency in her eyes--not knowing that Trudy was posturing
+for her admiration as Godfrey Baldwin of Whitefriars.  The whispers
+evaporated into empty silence as Miss Vidella walked into the room.
+When Miss Vidella walked, everything from her head to her waist was
+as stationary as the bust of a stout lady carried on a tray, but
+everything from her waist to her skirt-hem moved, and this motion
+gave her passage across the room the character of a slow, dignified
+flounce.  It also shook and jingled the silver chatelaine, which, now
+that her school was really in session, she had hung at her belt, much
+as a mayor hangs his chain about his neck.
+
+She went and stood in the window-bay, and immediately Miss Mitchell,
+the music mistress, walked to the piano and sat down.  Daphne
+guessed.  It was to be Prayers.
+
+They sang, apparently by heart, the hymn:
+
+  "New every morning is the love
+    Our wakening and uprising prove."
+
+and Miss Vidella in her high voice read a chapter of the Bible.  Then
+all knelt down behind their chairs for the collects and prayers.
+Some who could not be seen of mistresses sat on their heels.  Daphne
+held on to the upright bars of the back of her chair like a caged
+monkey, and stared through its tracery at the bare seat and the
+drooping table-cloth.  She tried to say _Amen_ when the others did,
+but the word would not come quick enough, and was even once in danger
+of saying itself after the next prayer had started; and this dreadful
+moment decided her to leave the word alone.  The public and common
+worship over, all knelt in silence, till the head mistress, who had
+been standing, began to move away, and then all finished their
+private prayers at the same moment, jumped up, pulled out their
+chairs, sat on them, and released the first trickles of chatter.  The
+door closed on Miss Vidella, who had retired to a more dignified
+breakfast in her private room, and the trickles of chatter swelled
+into a spate.
+
+But throughout the meal Daphne employed only one word, "Thank-you."
+She used it several times, to maids who brought her food, and to the
+neighbours who passed the plate of bread and butter.  She ate her
+porridge without sugar, being afraid to ask any one to pass it, and
+her bread and butter without any marmalade, because the dish was so
+far away.  There was much talk of some one called "Petsy," whom she
+gradually identified as Miss Vidella, and of some one called
+"Chutney," who was apparently a man.  Once or twice she thought she
+would start a conversation and feign the ease she did not feel,
+beginning "Who is Chutney?" but the words never got past her throat.
+She hardly knew herself.  At home she had always been a dominant
+note, and now she was completely overawed, and in the tightening grip
+of a horrid desire to cry.  The moisture, indeed, was near her eyes,
+and the nearer it came the nearer her vexation drew it, till at last
+she was in an agony for the meal to be over, so that she could escape
+from the crowd.  Trudy Wayne had been at too great a distance to
+speak to her.  Only one other person had come out clearly from the
+noisy background.  Shortly after her arrival in the room she had
+noticed Miss Sims seeking along the faces of the girls for a
+particular one, and had felt a telepathic certainty it was hers she
+sought.  So she was not surprised when the mistress's eyes
+encountered hers, and smiled a sympathy.  Daphne smiled confusedly
+back.  After that she caught Miss Sims looking at her frequently.
+
+In the half-hour between breakfast and classes the girls went to
+their various Form Rooms, which they were allowed to use as Common
+Rooms.  Daphne, being as yet placed in no form, wondered where to go,
+and found herself left in the long hall or corridor that ran behind
+the form-room doors.  Here she delayed, and when people passed,
+pretended to be doing something definite lest she appeared lost and
+ridiculous.
+
+Suddenly from a small door at the corridor's end Miss Sims appeared,
+bearing a load of stiff-covered and glossy exercise books ready for
+dealing out to the members of the form, and directly she saw Daphne
+she stopped, and then advanced towards her.
+
+"Are you looking for some one, dear?"
+
+Daphne looked up at her, and seeing the kindness in her eyes,
+determined to be frank.
+
+"Please where do I go to now?"
+
+"My poor child, have you been out here all alone, wondering where to
+go?  I'll show you.  Come with me."
+
+She had intended to lead her to the girls in her own classroom, but
+changed her direction.  Here was the soft-featured child whom last
+night she had chosen as first favourite for the throne of Audrey
+Stanton, and it would be rather sweet to have her alone for a few
+minutes in an empty room, and to talk kindly to her there.  Perhaps
+the child would cry, and she would comfort her, stroking her head,
+and from that moment the desired adoration would kindle in Daphne.
+
+So Miss Sims walked towards the corner, where the corridor made a
+right-angled turn and led to a back wing of the house.  The first
+door on her right was a music-room, a cell-like place, containing a
+piano, two chairs, a table, and a music-rack.  With Daphne behind her
+she entered, and pushed the door so that it closed but did not latch.
+
+"Just come in here a minute where I have one or two things to do."
+
+She pretended to be engaged in sorting some music, but soon stopped.
+Seating herself on one of the chairs, she said:
+
+"Now come, Daphne dear, I want you to tell me all about yourself."
+
+Daphne came two or three steps nearer.
+
+"Come dear, don't be afraid of me.  Don't think of me as a mistress,
+but just as a friend."
+
+Daphne came up close against her knee, and Miss Sims put her arm
+about her waist.
+
+"There.  You look sad and homesick.  I want you to tell me all your
+troubles.  Always, will you?  Anything that's on your mind, no matter
+what it is.  If any girl's unkind, or any mistress doesn't understand
+you.  Always tell me, for already I feel so fond of you."
+
+Perceiving that her pupil's head had dropped a little, as though to
+hide a moisture, she pulled her closer by the waist, and let her
+pressure speak silently of sympathy and understanding.  For quite a
+while she held her like that, till Daphne, though grateful and
+beginning to reciprocate the affection, was not without an
+embarrassment at its rapid progress.
+
+"Promise me you'll let me do all I can for you.  I want to do a great
+deal.  Will you promise me?"
+
+"Yes," muttered Daphne.
+
+Miss Sims pulled her close again; and it would have been difficult to
+see how the conversation was to be continued or closured, had not a
+high-pitched voice in the passage outside caused Miss Sims to release
+the child abruptly.
+
+"There," said she.  "We must be getting to the class-rooms."  A
+disturbance was in her voice.  "You help me to carry these exercise
+books."
+
+"Miss Sims!  Miss Sims!" cried the voice without.
+
+Miss Sims immediately issued from the music room with Daphne
+following.
+
+"Here I am, Miss Vidella.  Little Daphne Bruno is helping me with
+these exercise books.  I thought perhaps I had better give her
+something to do, lest she should be inclined to mope at all this
+first morning."
+
+Miss Vidella was apparently angry about something, and eager to vent
+it.
+
+"What a strange idea, Miss Sims!  I think there can be no reason why
+a child should mope in a school such as mine, where everything is
+done to contribute to their happiness.  I think it's a strange idea
+to put in a child's head.  Very unwise.  But that's neither here nor
+there at the moment.  I must ask you to communicate to Miss Mitchell
+my exceeding displeasure at what I saw just now."  She made suitable
+play with her fat hands.  "There was Mr. Pulteney calling to hear if
+the same pupils were taking the violoncello, as indeed was very
+proper of him, and there was Miss Mitchell talking to him in the
+hall.  I dislike intensely to come down the stairs, and see in the
+entrance hall of my school a young man and a young woman talking
+together like that.  I wish you would convey that impression to Miss
+Mitchell.  Supposing some one had called at that moment.  If she as
+music mistress has any communication to make to the visiting music
+master, she must make it at the proper time and place.  I think I
+left that impression on them, however.  I gave them one look, and
+they went their several ways....  Well, Daphne dear, I hope you are
+happy....  Do you like very much your new school?"
+
+"Awfully."
+
+"Awfully!  What strange terms these dear children do use!  Well,
+dear, I think you had better start in Miss Sim's form, the Fourth.
+We can examine you, and if you know much more than the others of your
+age, we can move you up....  Dear, dear, it is already half-past nine
+o'clock.  Why doesn't some one ring the bell for First Hour?"
+
+
+In spite of Daphne's distinguished father, the verdict, after an
+examination of her attainments in Miss Sims's class-room, pronounced
+that she had but little scholarship, and her intelligence was
+apparently unremarkable.  In truth, she had but few goods to display
+in her window.  Her governess, Miss Carrell, had directed her
+instruction to achieving popularity with her pupil, and not to her
+future academic success.  Daphne's knowledge, therefore, was below
+the standard of her age, and, more serious consequence, her capacity
+for concentration on subjects she disliked was enervated and flabby.
+
+Her failure this morning, while drawing from Miss Sims the becoming
+sounds of disappointment, really relieved and delighted the mistress.
+Now there was no chance of her favourite being promoted to the form
+above.  And with Miss Sims, though the thought of cruelty could only
+sit under aliases and disguises in her mind, it was always sweeter to
+see her favourite in disgrace and hurt than successful and rejoicing.
+So she did not minimise Daphne's ignorance when Miss Vidella came in
+to hear the report, and to examine such papers as the new girl had
+written.
+
+"Strange!" whined the head mistress, as she took off the steel
+spectacles with which she had scanned the work.  "Strange indeed that
+a father of such eminence should have so backward a child.  But it is
+often the way.  Ordinary parents have extraordinary children, and
+_vice versa_.  Were your grandparents utterly simple, child?  Well,
+perhaps you don't know.  Perhaps one day you will have a little
+daughter who will redress the balance.  Meantime we must see what we
+can make of you, and you must apply yourself studiously.  Now do you
+return to your seat, dear.  You will remain in Miss Sims's form."
+
+With that decision Miss Vidella carried out her stationary bust and
+back on her swinging hips; and Miss Sims tapped Daphne on the
+shoulder--it was a pleasure to touch the child even thus far--and
+murmured, "Never mind.  Never mind."
+
+Which rather surprised Daphne, since she had not greatly minded,
+being dimly aware that Miss Vidella was acting up to a part, and that
+it was a rather pompous and foolish one.
+
+At dinner only French might be spoken.  Of French (Daphne was to
+learn) Miss Vidella made an enormous feature.  She took all French
+classes herself, and gave long lectures on French literature, with
+special attention to Victor Hugo.  They were like perpetual masses,
+with Miss Vidella as priestess, in honour of Victor Hugo.  On the
+strength of having once when eight years of age (so Daphne was told)
+sat on Victor Hugo's knee, she considered that her French accent was
+perfect and every one else's egregious, and her knowledge of French
+literature vast, and every one else's insular and limited.  "I wish
+to goodness," the elder girls would say before, during, or after a
+memorial mass, "that she'd never met the man."
+
+In the afternoon there was talk of a walk.  It was the Lent term, and
+a walk was the normal recreation.  Hockey was in the very first
+stages of its adoption by girls' schools, and to hockey Miss Vidella
+could never be resigned.  Tennis she allowed in the summer term, on
+the stipulation that the girls kept their legs well-disciplined.  But
+in the Christmas and Lent terms, apart from a walk in crocodile
+formation, the only athletic pastimes were gymnasium and riding; and
+riding was limited to those whose parents paid for it.  Riding she
+probably allowed because it gave a school such a _tone_; but she
+fluttered around it with much care for its propriety.  It was not
+easy to see the riding master, on his chestnut horse, riding away
+with a score of her girls.  Had she been able to sit a horse herself,
+she would have cantered among them as a chaperon; but she could not,
+and none of her governesses were ever likely to be familiar with a
+saddle, even if they could be trusted with a riding master, so she
+was reduced to being sternly present at the mounting and departure,
+to instructing the elder girls to look after one another and their
+younger schoolfellows, and to watching the cavalcade as far as the
+bend in the road.
+
+With gymnasium it was different; one of her mistresses, or herself on
+days of condescension, could accompany the girls and sit in the
+spectators' gallery, and ensure that only the seemlier exercises were
+performed.  Definitely she forbade the "spread-eagle" on the rings,
+and the "circle" or the "hock-swing-off" on the horizontal bar, and
+the "short-arm-balance" or "long-arm-balance" on the parallel bars.
+These circles and balances were only so many gilded somersaults.
+When Hemans House had first gone to the Royal Gymnasium in the
+Cambridge Road, and Miss Vidella, at first sight of these exercises,
+had interdicted them for ever, the instructor had declared:
+
+"The other schools allow them, madam."
+
+And Miss Vidella, from her seat in the gallery, had replied:
+
+"I dare say they do, instructor.  In fact, I feel very confident they
+do.  But the aims of my school are probably different from theirs.
+My aim is to turn out little well-bred ladies rather than acrobats
+and harlequins."
+
+"Quite so, madam."
+
+And Miss Vidella, conceiving that she had made a good point, dulled
+it by making it again.
+
+"None of my children, instructor, are likely to earn their living in
+the circus ring."
+
+"No, madam," admitted the instructor, muttering for the amusement of
+the nearest girls, "not a dog's chance o' that."
+
+So gymnastics were confined to swinging on the travelling rings or
+the bridge-ladder, gentle vaulting over the parallel bars and the
+horse (though in this matter there would be a cry of disapproval if
+the upward swing of any girl's leg was more unladylike than was
+inevitable), and to Indian clubs and dumbbells, which Miss Vidella
+considered most rhythmic and refined.
+
+This first afternoon, since neither gymnasium nor riding had begun,
+the girls could only go for a crocodile walk, and at the pointed
+invitation of Trudy Wayne Daphne paired with her.
+
+On this walk Daphne awoke to the idea that men could be important
+before you were grown up.  The conversation of the girls in front
+danced around the prospects of meeting such and such a man.  They
+spoke of "The Dandy Fifth," who, Trudy explained, was a young coach
+at an army crammer's, and earned his nickname from the waist-line in
+his coat, his fawn vest, and his patent-leather boots.  And there was
+Arthur Belsize, the famous young novelist, whose three books, "The
+Homes of Mogador," "The Purple Orchis," and "Dust on the Scaffold,"
+had made him a local celebrity second only to the lady in the Castle.
+And there was the Holy Innocent, a curate at Holy Innocents Church,
+where Hemans House went on Sundays.  These gentlemen, Trudy
+garrulously explained, were often to be passed in the park, the
+novelist, Arthur Belsize, especially, who had a habit of strolling
+every afternoon down the Long Walk.  "I expect he hopes it'll one day
+be called the Belsize Walk," suggested Trudy, "like Addison's Walk at
+Oxford."  Here, then, was the explanation why the senior girls
+whenever possible, led the Hemans House column through the gates into
+the Great Park.
+
+Daphne was excited about the chance of seeing Arthur Belsize, not
+because he was a young man, but because he was a famous story-writer.
+His tale, "The Purple Orchis," since it was based on history, had
+been read to Owen and herself by Miss Carrell.  It did not occur to
+Daphne that, being the daughter of a writer, she had no reason to be
+excited about them as a class, because she hardly thought of her
+father as an author in this true story-telling sense.
+
+Neither the dandy nor the curate appeared, and the twitter and
+chattering of the girls was passing to other subjects, when one of
+them discerned the novelist, Arthur Belsize, walking slowly towards
+them.  A tremor ran down the crocodile from its head girls to the
+smaller ones in the neighbourhood of Trudy and Daphne.  Daphne put
+her head outside the column to see the approaching celebrity, and was
+very disappointed.  He looked exactly the same as any other young man
+who might be seen in a third-class railway carriage.
+
+A silence dropped on the girls.  It appeared they had a custom of
+readjusting their conversation to the novelist's ear.  As soon as he
+came within hearing distance they would discuss only (and this rather
+loudly) his novels.  He was now alongside the column, and the
+discussion began.
+
+"I liked 'The Homes of Mogador' best, didn't you?"
+
+"I sent 'The Purple Orchis' to my cousin for her birthday."
+
+"'The Homes of Mogador' wasn't a patch on 'The Purple Orchis.'"
+
+"'The Homes of Mogador' was rot."
+
+"I didn't like 'The Purple Orchis' much, but 'Dust on the Scaffold'
+was ripping."
+
+"That's Arthur Belsize."
+
+He passed by, affecting to have heard nothing, though Daphne
+suspected that his lips trembled.
+
+To her, who had played with hardly any girl friends in Deseret Road,
+this interest in men while your hair was still down your back was an
+idea entirely new.  That a lover might come to her after she was
+eighteen or twenty had, of course, often been in her mind, especially
+when she read or listened to the love scenes of a romance.  But that
+men as a genus, apart from the individual lover, were interesting she
+had not grasped, nor that her earlier love stories might be looked
+for at once.
+
+When the crocodile had returned from its walk it disintegrated into
+its classes for afternoon school.  In Miss Sims's room, darkening
+behind its Japanese bead curtains, the subject was Latin, a language
+of which Daphne knew very little and pronounced that little wrong.
+Her quantities were false, Miss Carrell having learned the grammar
+after she left Hemans House, and learned it from a book without help
+from the spoken word.  When Miss Sims arranged her girls in a row
+that they might "go up" and "take each other down," she told Daphne
+that as a new girl she should be given a start and might go to the
+top.  Doing even this little for her favourite gave her a mild
+pleasure.
+
+"Now, we'll see what you know of Latin grammar.  'I shall love.'  Let
+us have the future of _Amo_, I love."
+
+The question pleased Daphne because she knew the answer.
+
+"_Ammer-bo_, I shall love, _Ammer-bis, Ammer-bit, Ammer-byemus,
+Ammer-bightus_----"
+
+The remaining word was lost in a roar of laughter.
+
+"No, no, no, no," smiled Miss Sims, which amazed Daphne, since she
+knew she was right; she could see in her mind's eye the whole page of
+Latin Grammar, and there was the future, "_Amabo, amabis, amabit_."
+
+"No, no, no.  It's _Amābo_, not _Ammer-bo; Ambimus_, not
+_Ammer-byemus_."
+
+At this word the class laughed again and a sudden unreasonable burst
+of temper inflamed Daphne.  It was the break-through of all her
+resentment at the failure of school to satisfy her picture of it; she
+felt ready and anxious for some violent rebellion, as once before she
+had felt with Miss Durgon.  The tears started to her eyes, and this
+exposure made her angrier and more defiant.
+
+"Say it again now--properly," ordered Miss Sims.
+
+"_Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis_----"
+
+"Next!" The mistress turned her head to the next girl.
+
+"_Amābo_."
+
+"Go above her."  And Daphne went down one place.
+
+Miss Sims had seen the symptoms in her favourite's eyes, and they
+produced a curious mixture of pleasure and love.  After caressing and
+fondling, she enjoyed most (though it disturbed her to think so)
+punishing the thing she loved.
+
+"Say it again, and properly, and don't be sulky."
+
+To be told she was sulky was enough to fix Daphne in her obstinacy.
+
+"_Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis_----"
+
+"Next!"
+
+Down went Daphne another place, and the class began to enjoy the game.
+
+"Now say it properly at once."
+
+"_Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis_----"
+
+"Next!"
+
+And a little girl who had been breathlessly rising on her toes said
+"Amābo" and went up.
+
+There were eleven girls in the class, and Daphne said "_Ammer-bo_"
+ten times till she reached the buffers of the bottom place.
+
+"You're a very naughty little girl," denounced Miss Sims.  "You're
+the oldest girl in the class, and you're content to be taken down by
+those much younger than you.  And just to gratify sullenness and
+rebellion.  You will write out fifty times, 'The second _a_ in Amabo
+is long.'  And don't let me see anything of you till that is done."
+
+She had visions of herself being cold and haughty with the child, and
+of Daphne, whose advances would thus be repelled and bruised,
+suffering the tortures of a loved mistress's scorn and finally
+breaking in humility at her feet.
+
+After the classes and tea there was an hour before Preparation.
+Silent at her desk in Miss Sims's room, now a chattery Common Room,
+Daphne wrote twenty times, 'The second _a_ in _amabo_ is long,' and
+decided that she had done enough for to-night.  Feeling so lonely she
+wanted to write to Miss Carrell--even to Owen.  She got some of the
+note-paper that had been given her to take to school, and began her
+letter.
+
+
+"DEAR MISS CARRELL,
+
+      "I hope you got back safely....
+
+(The picture of Miss Carrell getting back to her home and entering
+the old rooms made her lip shake.)
+
+"We have been for a lovely walk this afternoon in the park.  It was
+lovely.  We passed Arthur Belsize.  I sleep in a room called Eliza
+Cook.  There is another room called the Frances Burney room.  This
+afternoon we did Latin.  I am going to have my first riding lesson
+to-morrow, and I am looking forward to gymnasium.  I like school
+awfully.  What fun it will be when the holidays begin in three
+months' time.  I must not write much more as I am going to write to
+Owen.
+
+  "Much love
+      "From
+          "Ever your loving
+              "DUFFY"
+
+"P.S.--Love to Hollins."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Daphne soon became used to Hemans House, its population and its
+practices, and could look back with wonder at the first days of fear.
+More than that, the life, for a particular reason, had become flushed
+with colour and richness.  The one thing needed to lift her hatred
+from the school-rooms and the Windsor streets and to throw a glamour
+over them had happened: she was possessed by a romantic attachment
+for some one whose background they were.  Before half-term had
+signalised to the girls that the top of the slope had been reached,
+and they could now go quickly down hill to the holidays, she knew
+that she adored Miss Sims.  It had taken some five weeks of the
+alternate caresses and punishments, warm intimacy and stern
+aloofness, to betray their meaning to Daphne; but once it had broken
+on her that she was the object of a popular mistress's favouritism,
+she was flattered into reciprocation.  The slide from fondness to
+love was easy and quick.  As with her affection for Miss Carrell, so
+now with her adoration of Miss Sims: she loved to think that she
+loved.  But the later attachment was as much stronger than the
+earlier, as Daphne was older, warmer, and more conscious of her sex.
+It was an emotion too strong for reticence--except in words; on walks
+she fought to be at Miss Sims's side; sometimes she threaded her arm
+into the mistress's; and once, when they were right behind all the
+others, she rested her head against her shoulder.  At gymnasium every
+exercise she performed on parallel bars, horizontal bar, or bridge
+ladder was done with an eye on the gallery in the hope of impressing
+Miss Sims.  She suffered the pains of jealousy when Miss Sims
+(deliberately) made much of another girl.  And her letters home to
+Miss Carrell were enthusiastically full of her form mistress.  There
+was pleasure in writing about her.
+
+But her pains and pleasures were weak compared with those hidden
+behind Miss Sims's indulgent smile.  As Miss Sims assured herself:
+"The child is fond of me--very fond--really devoted, I think.  But it
+must inevitably be a small return for what I am giving to her.  It is
+always so with children....  Still, it is happiness to give."  She
+made a resolution that her influence must be a power for good.  She
+must be associated in the memory of Daphne Bruno, when that beloved
+girl should have grown tall and given herself to a man, with all that
+was best in her childhood.  She must be the person of whom Daphne
+would say: "I really owe everything to her."
+
+And a salient truth of Daphne's schooldays was this, that Miss
+Sims--Miss Sims, with her thirty pounds a year and her cubicle with
+an iron bed and tin wash-stand; Miss Sims with her high-coloured
+make-believes, of which she was half ashamed; Miss Sims with her
+thirst for emotion and her squeezing of pupils like sponges for its
+sating--_was_ the most of what she resolved to be.  Every one is an
+expert in the hobby that fills his dreams, and Miss Sims had seen
+exactly how her influence could be this "power for good."  Her little
+worshipper would most surely model herself on her idol, and so Miss
+Sims must appear to embody in her own nature all the noble qualities
+she would give to Daphne.  She created a character in her
+imagination, and always acted it before the eyes of her pupil.  And
+this was the Character: great gentleness masking concealed strength;
+a perfect feminine sympathy mingled with a capacity to be stern;
+remarkable sensibility to beauty wherever it was to be found, and
+thus a passionate love for all the arts, with a predilection for
+literature; a taste in dress, and a beautiful serenity in manner.
+
+As a background to the Character, she hinted in her talks with Daphne
+at a collateral relationship to a very old family; at reasonable
+private means, her present work being done for the love of it, there
+being no nobler task; at holidays in romantic places abroad; and, of
+course, at a love story of which one did not speak.
+
+
+In her first holidays Daphne returned home, full of the importance of
+a school girl, and talked incessantly of the customs at Hemans House
+to Owen, who was not interested, and to her father, who was quite
+amused--at least, till he took up his book again.  It was his
+daughter's tales and imitations of the head mistress that pleased
+him--"By Jove! she can see, that child!"  Miss Vidella appealed to
+the dramatist in him, both as a picturesque character and as a type.
+
+"She belongs to a type that is doomed to pass, Duffy mia.  There is
+pathos as well as humour in her posing and her prudery.  I always
+think it's rather sad the way such people imagine they are being
+applauded, while all the time they are being laughed at by modern
+minds....  However, you'll understand these things later."
+
+One result of this ridicule was that his daughter saw how much better
+it was to be on the laughing, rather than the laughable, side of a
+dividing line, and that she must therefore join the moderns who
+always did the laughing.  She was modern.  She saw Miss Vidella from
+a new angle, and much more clearly, and she determined to carry this
+interesting viewpoint back to Hemans House.  As a viewpoint it had
+much to recommend it: it meant that when Miss Vidella prohibited this
+and that--circling over the horizontal bar, or any display of the
+feminine leg above the lower calf--she was probably out of date, and
+the best way to express one's advance from such rulings was to glory
+in their breach.
+
+The only conflict in her mind was how far this healthy insurgence,
+imitated from her father, clashed with the obedience and serenity
+imitated from Miss Sims.  And when she was again under the roof of
+Hemans House and the influence of Miss Sims, a settlement of the
+conflict was found to be very necessary.  So on a walk to the tennis
+fields, when the mistress and her favourite had dropped behind the
+girls, she sidled up to the subject.
+
+"Father says Miss Vidella is out of date, and so are all her ideas."
+
+"H'm.  Your father is doubtless a representative of extremely modern
+minds."
+
+"So'm I."
+
+Miss Sims laughed, provoking Daphne to defend herself.
+
+"Well, she is rather absurd."
+
+"Hush, dear," said Miss Sims, for the Character was nothing if not
+loyal.  "Miss Vidella's aims are of the highest, and there's a lot to
+be said for the kind of woman she tries to produce--modest,
+controlled, and quiet....  But I do think that perhaps she doesn't
+make sufficient allowance for the heyday in the blood of youth.
+Probably the animal spirits ought to express themselves sometimes in
+a little wildness and tomboyishness--so long as these things go with
+affectionateness--and with high ideals.  Later, when one has
+experienced the disillusions of life, it will be time to acquire a
+tranquil resignation."
+
+This was an excellent verdict.  For sympathy and sense there had been
+no one before quite like Miss Sims.  Everything had now fallen into
+place.  Daphne saw that she could postpone the final serenity till
+she had grown up and passed through the fire.  She was thus at
+liberty to express the modernity of her intellect, as compared with
+Miss Vidella's, by flagrant breaches of Miss Vidella's rules.
+
+The first time she displayed it was at the gymnasium.  She hung it
+out, so to speak, on the horizontal bar.
+
+It was a morning when the head mistress herself was in the gallery
+watching carefully through her spectacles.  The girls had been
+vaulting backwards over the parallel bars, and Daphne, when her turn
+came, had swung herself with such ardour that the oblique line of her
+body was rather from her legs down to her head than from her head
+down to her legs--a position which Miss Vidella stipulated must be
+guarded against in this dangerous exercise.  Her legs had just swung
+down again on to the mat when she heard the high-pitched voice coming
+from the gallery top like the voice of a bird from a tree.  All eyes
+had turned towards it.
+
+"Instructor!  Instructor!"
+
+The instructor made a grimace, seen only of the girls, and called
+back: "Yes, madam."
+
+Miss Vidella made her favourite point.
+
+"Instructor, I take it this is a place for teaching young ladies a
+becoming deportment, and not for training circus clowns."
+
+"Yes, madam," agreed the instructor.
+
+"Well, will you kindly correct them when they forget it? ... Daphne
+dear, come here."  Daphne approached a little way, and Miss Vidella,
+leaning forward with her hands on the balustrade, like some preacher
+who must deliver his sermon sitting, explained to her: "You must
+remember, dear, that it is the glory of human beings that their head
+is usually above their feet.  With cows, and ruminant animals
+generally, the head is often on the same level as the hoofs.  But it
+is only serpents and apes in the trees, I take it, which have a
+tendency to progress with their heads in a lower sphere than their
+other members.  Now go back and remember that.  All right, dears, you
+can resume your exercises."
+
+The public rebuke rankled in Daphne; so the minute the lesson was
+over, and the girls were trooping to the dressing-room to change
+their rubber shoes, and Miss Vidella was managing with some
+difficulty the little hidden staircase from the gallery to the
+ground, she ran to the horizontal bar and circled it four or five
+times.  Having thus liberated her resentment and proclaimed her faith
+before the other girls, she ran, very red and breathless, to the
+dressing-room.
+
+It was uncommonly pleasant, this feeling of emancipation and this
+expressing of it before her schoolfellows.  Her riding lesson gave
+her another opportunity.  One day when their horses were gathered
+outside the gates of Hemans House, and the girls were mounting, she
+tried for a second to sit astride her horse, that she might see what
+it felt like and appear daring.  But it was surprisingly difficult,
+with her skirt, to change from the side-saddle position to the
+astride.  As she got her leg over the horse's withers the skirt went
+right above her knees, and she was in these difficulties when Miss
+Vidella came out on to the pavement to review the parade.
+
+"Daphne!  What _are_ you doing?"
+
+"Mounting, Miss Vidella," stuttered Daphne, who had struggled back to
+the correct position.
+
+"Do you generally climb over the horse to mount it?  Or are you up to
+some of your monkey tricks again?  Riding master, have you observed
+that Miss Bruno is mountaineering on her horse in the public street?
+But, of course, I know you cannot have done so, for you are always so
+careful with your pupils.  Please keep Miss Bruno in front of you all
+the way, or there's no knowing what strange contortions she may not
+attempt."
+
+The riding master, annoyed, said nothing, but examined the riders,
+touched his horse and led the cavalcade away.  Daphne was just in
+front of him, and immediately they were out of the head mistress's
+view she pretended to scream with laughter, thinking this would
+divert the riding master, who, like all the outside instructors, was
+inclined to make fun of Miss Vidella.  But, to her surprise, he
+called out:
+
+"Come on, Miss Bruno!  Sit properly at once.  You've been foolish
+enough already to-day.  I'm not taking out a chain of Margate
+donkeys; and I shall report you to Miss Vidella.  Come here and ride
+beside me."
+
+Daphne felt foolish at the failure of her jest, and, very flushed,
+came and rode by the master's side with a beating heart.  With all
+her fancied insurgence she was still a little afraid of Miss Vidella
+and her black-rimmed spectacles and whining sarcasm.  When the horses
+arrived back at Hemans House gates she watched the movements of the
+riding master, whether he would go in and see Miss Vidella or wait
+for her to emerge from the garden wall.  But he only turned towards
+herself, and, as though softened by her long silence, smiled.
+
+"All right, kiddy, I shan't report you.  And one of these days you'll
+be able to ride astride.  In my opinion they'll all be doing it one
+day.  But at present we must do what we're told."
+
+"Yes," murmured Daphne.  "Thank you very much."
+
+
+It became quite a custom for her to entertain the gymnasium girls
+with three or four guilty circles on the horizontal bar while Miss
+Vidella was descending the gallery stairs.  Sometimes she managed six
+or seven of the forbidden things before rushing, red as a beet-root,
+to the dressing-room.  Here she looked serene and innocent when the
+head mistress appeared and sounded some variant of "Come along,
+dears.  I feel sure your healthy exercises have engendered an
+appetite for your dinners."
+
+But one morning, by some failure in her swing, she did not complete
+her fifth backward circle, and was left hanging over the bar like a
+bolster thrown over a rail.  Time was short; Miss Vidella's feet must
+be on the last few stairs; so she straightened her body on the bar,
+and was just about to drop behind it to her feet, when she saw Miss
+Vidella standing at the dressing-room door and watching her through
+her spectacles, chin slightly uptilted.  The sight so unnerved her
+that instead of swinging backwards she swung forwards, her head
+falling like the clapper of a bell, and the weight of her body
+flinging her legs in an arc through the air.  Her hands retained a
+panicky hold of the bar, but her feet struck the mattress and its
+coco-fibre mat with a jarring impact.  A little giddily she stood on
+the mat and wondered what to do.  If only Miss Vidella had not stood
+across the dressing-room door she would have flown through it and
+drowned her confusion in the business of unlacing her shoes.  But now
+she could only stand on the mat beneath the bar and stare at the head
+mistress, while the head mistress stood in front of the dressing-room
+and stared at her.  Girls peeped behind.
+
+"What are you doing, Daphne?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"What were you doing on that bar?"
+
+"I only just did a circle or two."
+
+"And do you call that nothing?"
+
+Clearly "Yes" was not the right answer, and "No" was incriminating,
+so Daphne stood on the mat and gave no answer at all.
+
+"Come here."
+
+She approached.
+
+"Did you"--seemingly Miss Vidella could not bring herself to name the
+offence--"do that thing because it was against my express orders?"
+
+The true answer, "Yes," was somewhat too dangerous to be employed, so
+Daphne said "No."  Politeness required no less.
+
+"Then why did you do that thing?"
+
+In Daphne's head was a foggy conception of modern minds enfranchising
+themselves, and a phantasmagoria of related ideas, out of which came
+nothing more remarkable than:
+
+"I thought I should like to."
+
+(It was, perhaps, modernism in its simplest expression.)
+
+"And why should you like to do it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"I will tell you.  It can only have been out of a spirit of
+deliberate evil-minded rebellion, or it was because you have a
+natural liking for the buffoonery of the uncivilised which you are
+too weak to suppress."  It was humiliating to hear one's strength
+called weakness, and Daphne wished she had the courage to plead
+loudly that hers had been the evil-minded rebellion through and
+through.  "You are one who must be trained, not by liberty and
+encouragement, but by restraint and correction.  Get on your shoes.
+You shall not visit the gymnasium or the tennis field for a
+fortnight.  Both places are too beset with opportunities for the
+outlandish contortions that so appeal to you.  A walk each afternoon
+instead will perhaps teach you that it is perfectly possible to
+exercise every muscle of the body in the upright position, and all
+other contortions can be left to the jungle and----"  Here Miss
+Vidella's sarcasm ran out.  "Get changed.  I fail to see why these
+dear girls here should be kept waiting for their lunches by you."
+
+Daphne passed sullenly to her shoes and pulled them on viciously.
+She was being persecuted and enjoying it.  And as she walked home
+with Trudy Wayne she was so ostentatiously noisy (this being her
+indirect claim to the "deliberate rebellion") that Miss Vidella
+called:
+
+"Daphne, come back and walk alone behind me.  You hardly seem to
+understand that you are in disgrace.  Gertrude dear, I wonder at your
+encouraging her."
+
+
+By this time, in Miss Vidella's mind, there was both a flabby dislike
+and a faint fear of the Bruno child.  Recently she had acquainted
+herself with some of the father's books, and while wondering what
+much of them meant, grasped enough to feel uncomfortably that the
+great man probably ridiculed her ideas and her methods.  And now,
+gnawed by the fear that Daphne Bruno might have heard and believed
+this ridicule, she determined to humiliate the child into a sense of
+her own simplicity and foolishness.  The backwardness shown in
+Daphne's work on paper provided plenty of opportunities, though the
+child's quickness in _viva voce_ work, and her skill and rushing
+imagination when anything had to be made--a poem, or a map, or a clay
+model--sometimes reminded Miss Vidella that her genuine opinion was
+very different.  But for the good of all, and lest she spread her
+doctrines, Daphne Bruno must be discredited and kept down.  She often
+came, therefore, into Miss Sims's class-room, and on examining the
+pupils' exercises, deplored the poverty of Daphne Bruno's.
+
+"And this is the girl who thinks she knows better than any of us, and
+is so sure of her right judgment that she allows herself to do things
+just because she likes to.  Go to your seat, child.  When you can
+construe a simple piece of Latin we shall perhaps consider whether or
+not we will revise the rules of this school to suit your little
+fancies."
+
+Daphne rather liked this bullying.  It gave her the pleasure of
+mildly hating Miss Vidella as once she had hated Miss Durgon; and it
+enabled her to act in front of Miss Sims the tranquil resignation of
+a martyr, or in front of her class-fellows the fine, furious flash of
+a tragedienne.  Also it justified and increased her love of the
+sympathetic governess; and she was keen on making a good thing of
+this.
+
+
+Mr. Tenter Bruno, in these days, was prospering; and his mercury,
+though never free from fluctuations, was generally high.  He was very
+satisfied, and something of radiance could be seen in his face and
+manner.  In this, his fifty-third year, his brown beard was turning
+grey, and his hair receding from his fine forehead, but his figure in
+its grey suit was as neat as it had been at twenty.  For some time he
+had considered that the house in Deseret Road lacked the necessary
+picturesqueness.  It was a moot point whether one's books and fame
+were not injured by an address in the suburbs.  His readers ought to
+be able to imagine him in some quaint old habitation, set down in
+green and lonely places.  Besides, such a move from London into the
+quiet was always good copy for the paragraphists.  And, to the
+delight of Daphne and Owen, when they returned from their schools, he
+suddenly announced, as a complete surprise, his purchase of Old Hall
+House, between Wivelsfield and Ditchling Common in Sussex.  It was
+not far from their former cottage, and their old gardener Eadigo,
+still hearty, was coming into permanent residence.
+
+"When shall we go?  When shall we go?" demanded his daughter.
+
+"These very holidays, of course," smiled Mr. Bruno, delighted at the
+success of his surprise.
+
+And in August when they moved there, he was happy in watching Daphne
+as, excited to see what the house was like (though she had declared
+she could remember it), she hung out of the carriage that was
+rattling them to its gates.  When the carriage stopped, he saw the
+house anew through her eyes: a rectangular place of two stories,
+roofed in Horsham stone, with a new wing jutting out at right angles
+towards the road.  The whole place was perhaps disappointingly near
+the road, and the low railing that separated the lawns and drive from
+the travellers to Ditchling was a little--finicking.  But this
+weakness could be forgiven, when you looked at Old Hall House itself,
+with its mossed roof, its disorderly outbuildings, and its setting of
+silent country, closed in the diminishing distance by blue and
+shadowed downs.
+
+Within doors, round about a square hall, rather dark, were three
+large, low-ceiled sitting-rooms, and a red kitchen with an undulating
+floor.  Above these, up an oak staircase, were seven or eight
+bedrooms; and in the new wing, a room for Daphne, and a room for
+Owen, with a great chamber underneath that should be their privy
+playground.  The servants had a staircase of their own leading to
+bedrooms in the back parts.
+
+This segregation of children in the north and servants in the east
+Mr. Bruno had imagined would secure for him that ideal silence which
+he had yet to find in this plane of existence.  In the sitting-room
+to the left of the entrance-hall he arranged his study furniture and
+his unnumbered books.  But it was a grievous blow, and one that shook
+his household for weeks, when he learned that there was not one of
+the sitting-rooms but heard every sound in the house.  The movements
+in the hall came through the walls, the staircase squeaking like an
+animal when anybody walked on it; the noises in the kitchen came
+through the shrunk oak doors; and if the maids were cleaning the
+bedroom above, their sweepings and voices, even their actual words,
+came through the low-pitched ceiling to Mr. Bruno, and his groans and
+exclamations (he imagined and hoped) went up to them.  It was
+damnable.
+
+He didn't know what to do.  The paying of the mountainous bills
+created by the purchase, the alterations and the move had resolved
+him to live quietly for some time, and save money on postage stamps
+and tobacco.  He would not--though his own mind saw clearly and
+humorously the weak logic--he simply would not--spend another
+half-penny in making his study sound-proof.  Instead, if there was a
+clatter in the kitchen, or a step, unmuted, on the vile staircase, he
+got up, opened his door, and put out his head with a diffident and
+over-courteous request that whatever was being done might be
+postponed till the afternoon; if the noise was in the bedroom above,
+he pushed back his chair that he might knock on the ceiling with a
+stick; till, at last (much to his amusement in the midst of his
+irritation), he would hear the scurry of the maids, or the guilty
+silence in the kitchen, directly his chair was pushed back.  That
+push-back of his chair, if done viciously enough, could turn the
+house into a sepulchre.
+
+After several weeks of encouraging economies, however, he decided
+that the young maids (who rather appealed to him) had a right to
+laugh and be noisy and even sing at their sweeping; and he spent
+fifty pounds on sound-proofing his room.
+
+
+For Daphne the memorable thrill of this first summer holiday in Old
+Hall House was something quite independent of its fascinating rooms
+and the undiscovered country around.  Or perhaps not so independent
+of their romance as she thought.  In Owen's bedroom she learned that
+he had developed a taste for "penny dreadfuls."  She saw a pile of
+the things, with their vivid picture-covers, on the top of his
+chest-of-drawers.  The first of them, whose cover showed a gay
+highwayman in scarlet cape, three-cornered hat, and lace neckwear,
+firing a bell-mouthed pistol into the face of a black and bulbous Bow
+Street Runner, she read in her own room.  From that day her
+imagination, like a city that had thrown open its gates, was yielded
+to Dick Turpin.  Eagerly she selected all the rest that dealt with
+the handsome blade, and found twenty-three.  She spent the best week
+of her life, up to that point, reading these twenty-three stories one
+after another.
+
+She took all twenty-three and her inflated enthusiasm back to Hemans
+House, and introduced the enthusiasm and one of the books to Trudy
+Wayne.  Trudy, having read one tale, borrowed the whole twenty-three,
+and succumbed to the highwayman.
+
+This common interest strengthened the friendship of the two girls,
+and marked the moment when Daphne, though a year younger, began to
+dominate the partnership.  From her imagination came the idea that,
+on their walks, they should be Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard.  Miss
+Vidella, with her black clothes and her corpulence and her piggish
+ways, was obviously the head of the Bow Street Runners--or a Bloody
+Assize judge.  It was incumbent on Trudy and herself to organize into
+an Outlaw Society.  This was to have been called a "Hate Society,"
+but memories of Miss Sims's gentleness limited the name to "The
+Dislike Society."  During riding lessons, Daphne on her mild bay pony
+trotting or cantering beside the troop of girls, was really galloping
+Black Bess, with the Runners hard behind.  In gymnasium, when she ran
+and vaulted over the horse, she was really Dick Turpin leaping a
+hedge or a toll-gate to escape his pursuers.  If she was kept in, the
+class-room became a Newgate cell anterior to Tyburn, and her
+dismissal after half an hour's detention was a dashing escape amid
+the cheers of her followers who were waiting at the prison gates.
+Beneath her sheet and blankets in the Eliza Cook room, she had really
+taken to the heather and was sleeping in a cloak under the stars.
+
+"Wouldn't it be ripping," she exclaimed to Trudy one day, "if we
+could spend a holiday together, and play Dick Turpin on some real
+lonely road?"
+
+And as she said that, there flashed into her mind the very scene
+where such a drama could be staged.  Good heavens!  It was perfect!
+Ditchling Common.  Strangely, it spread itself before her, not as she
+had just left it, under summer, but as she had seen it in May one
+morning of her earliest childhood, when it must have hit her
+imagination far more vividly than she had known; Ditchling Common
+with a mauve haze of bluebells over its coarse grass, shot here and
+there with the yellow of buttercups; the ribbon of road switchbacking
+over the successive brows to the humpy bridge above the railway line;
+the wavy horizon of downs, bare save for two windmills on the west; a
+hawk--how well she remembered watching it--hovering above the common.
+There were dwarfed gorse bushes, like black patches on the stretching
+grass, and taller shrubs of entangled blackberry.  And, most
+wonderful of all, at the entrance to the common was a white gate like
+a toll-gate, and just beyond it Jacob's Post.  Jacob's Post was a
+real gibbet, with a cock at its top bearing the date 1734 to tell
+when last a man had hanged there.
+
+"Coo, what a fool I am!  Trudy, you should see Ditchling Common near
+me.  It's absolutely the spot.  Oh, you must come and stay with us
+next summer.  I'm sure father'll agree, and we'll make Owen play too."
+
+This plan, thenceforward, was a never-failing spring of conversation.
+For Trudy there was no taste of doubt in the merry cup.  Daphne was
+just aware of a lurking anxiety lest, ten months hence, they would
+have forgotten all about Dick Turpin, or, alternatively, their
+undying friendship would have died.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Daphne was right in fearing that the influence of the highwayman
+would abate with the months, but wrong in doubting the endurance of
+her friendship with Trudy Wayne.  This didn't expire, for the simple
+reason that she set herself to keep it at a sufficient heat.  And
+when the next summer term drew towards the golden August that was to
+bring Trudy to Old Hall House, she as deliberately exhumed Dick
+Turpin, guessing that, did they but read the old romances once more,
+their imaginations would be snatched up again by the inspiring
+highwayman.
+
+A mellow evening, the fourth of August, she climbed into a trap,
+driven by Eadigo, and was taken to meet Trudy at Hayward's Heath
+station.  Why her eager anticipations should make her a little afraid
+of meeting Trudy she didn't know, but it was a disturbing fact, as
+the train rolled in, that her heart was faintly answering its noise
+and speed.  Only a few passengers alighted here, the most being
+travellers to Brighton; so Trudy was quickly seen.  Daphne ran
+towards her, followed without enthusiasm by Eadigo.  Trudy, too, one
+could see, was rather shy of the strange station and all her
+circumstances, but she cloaked it with an ostentatious
+self-possession, talking much as she mounted the trap.  Eadigo drove
+off silently, and Daphne felt a pity for the old man because the six
+weeks in front of him were the same as the six weeks before.  His
+silence and phlegm made her look at Trudy, after which they both had
+fits of giggling.
+
+Miss Carrell welcomed the visitor in the dining-room.
+
+"Well, I hope, Trudy--may I call you that?--you'll have a very happy
+holiday with us.  I'm sorry Mr. Bruno is away....  It's very nice for
+Duffy to have you with her, I'm sure.  Owen, come here and say
+how-do-you-do to Duffy's friend."
+
+Owen these holidays had brought back from his preparatory school a
+new and (one would have thought) quite uncharacteristic tendency to
+laborious humour.  It involved his addressing of Hollins as
+"Herbert," and his sister as "Casabianca."  And now he bowed till his
+head was aligned with his waist, and extended a hand.  Trudy took it,
+and inquired:
+
+"How do you do?"
+
+"I don't," answered Owen.
+
+This strange new growth in her brother was in the process of being
+discouraged by Daphne.
+
+"It's not funny," she said.
+
+"Sorry.  Heaps of ajoppolies," answered Owen.
+
+"Daphne wanted you to share her bedroom," interrupted Miss Carrell,
+"so I've arranged it for you both."
+
+"Oh, how ripping!" exclaimed Trudy.
+
+"That'll be monstrous fine," said Owen.
+
+In their beds that night the two girls arranged plans for the next
+day till the clock on the stairs sounded midnight.
+
+"Coo, you wait till I show you Ditchling Common," Daphne rattled on.
+"The road lies like a white ribbon, all up and down, from the
+Toll-gate to Ditchling.  There's one big clump of blackberry that I
+call the Observation Post, because it's at the top of a brow, and you
+can see all the way to the next brow and beyond that to the railway
+bridge.  So you could see any one approaching half a mile away, and
+give warning to your confederates hidden lower down the road."
+
+The clock struck midnight, and the conversation swung suitably to the
+age of the house in which they slept, and whether it was haunted.  It
+had not occurred to Daphne that it was till this moment, but now she
+romanced about eerie noises and panels that rang hollow.
+
+
+Immediately after breakfast the next day all three hurried to the
+common.  Daphne as guide, walked importantly ahead, leading the
+others through the white gate, and longing for the moment when Trudy
+should see the gibbet.  The common lay before them in summer dress:
+the thistles high by the flying road, the grass tall and bearded
+where it mingled with bracken and rushes, and over the dusty highway
+and the disorderly herbage the sunlight quivering in a diaphanous
+haze.  A few slow cows pastured in a hollow, and cocks and hens
+picked the green about Jacob's Post.
+
+Trudy's interest in this gibbet was even more than one desired; in
+fact, there was some difficulty in getting her away till she had
+properly fixed upon her imagination the picture of a felon suspended
+there.  It was already nine o'clock.
+
+"Come on," said Owen.  "We dine at half-past one."
+
+The games were conducted just as Daphne had planned them.  Owen was
+sent away to reappear as a traveller a quarter of a mile up the road;
+the girls put on black masks and held six-penny pistols; and Daphne
+went and lay behind the tall clump of blackberry called the
+Observation Post, while Trudy threw herself under some gorse lower
+down the highway.  It was for Daphne to signal Owen's appearance in
+the distance.  While she waited for him she selected any blackberries
+that showed a trace of ripeness, and ate the trace.  Also she sucked
+and chewed grass, for Owen did not appear for a long time; there was
+nothing but a cart coming from Ditchling.  She did not guess that
+Owen had been seized by the ingenious idea of approaching under the
+lee of the cart--such a thing was against the whole spirit of the
+game.  Nevertheless, when the cart had passed in front of her he
+emerged from his cover with a shriek of triumph and raced down the
+hill towards Trudy.  Leaping up angrily, she gave the pre-arranged
+signal, which meant that Owen had been spotted in the distance--and
+followed him as he ran past Trudy.
+
+"Oh, the fool!" she grumbled, and called after him: "It's not funny,
+if you think it is."  And to Trudy, before whom she stopped with this
+news of Owen's appearance: "He always must show off."
+
+Owen turned round and came back with a victor's smile.
+
+"You'll spoil it all if you want to be cocky," she grumbled.  "Why
+can't you ever play sensibly?"
+
+Having treated himself to one whimsical effort, Owen promised to play
+sensibly, and for the rest of the morning the games unrolled as they
+should.  The walk home was a-clatter with tongues.
+
+
+By early afternoon they were standing again on the road by the
+Observation Post, and deliberating how to vary the play, when Owen
+said: "Hist!  Wait!"  He had seen two specks coming with a curious
+velocity over the crown of the railway bridge.  Two men--or two boys,
+since they were probably racing, and men didn't do such things.
+
+"Hist!  Hist!  Sister Anne, sister Anne, I see some one coming."
+
+"It's not funny....  Who are they?"
+
+"I see two men running, and a cloud of dust."
+
+With imaginations pleasantly troubled the girls looked towards the
+far-off but quickly approaching figures.
+
+"Let's stop 'em, whoever they are," suggested Owen.
+
+"Don't be an ass.  We can't if we don't know them."
+
+"Why not?  If they're boys they won't mind.  And we're three to their
+two."
+
+"It would be rather ripping," reflected Daphne, while the others
+watched for her to give the last word.  "I tell you what.  You wait
+here behind the Observation Post, Owen, and as soon as they come near
+enough for you to see if they're boys and attackable, you signal
+'Yes'--make a Y with your arms--and then come and join us lower down
+behind the gorse.  Then we really will hold them up."
+
+Daphne and Trudy ran to the gorse and fell prone behind it.  This
+real holding up of unknown wayfarers on the high road was a completer
+thrill than any of the mock adventures.  It affected Daphne with an
+emptying sensation below the waist, and shook the hand with which she
+was hurrying on her mask and cocking her pistol.  And when Owen made
+a Y of his body and arms, and she knew that they were committed to
+the deed, and that the moments before its accomplishment were fast
+escaping, her heart began to pound with a delicious fear.
+Breathlessly Owen joined them, falling to his stomach with the
+announcement: "Two boys.  One rather big."  All watched the brow for
+the first of the boys to appear.
+
+"I'll leap out," whispered Owen, who seemed to have none of that
+faint anxiety to be quit of the business that was troubling Daphne,
+"and you'd better follow me....  Look alive!  Here's Number One."
+
+Daphne looked up from her ground level and saw a figure on the brow
+outlined against the glazed sky.  As he came down the slope she saw
+with surprise that he was in just such running attire as the
+competitors wore in the University Sports at Queen's Club: white vest
+with coloured ribbon edging the sleevelets and the button-opening;
+very short white shorts edged with the same ribbon; white socks and
+black rubber shoes.  His fists were at his breast, and his dark hair
+blowing untidily.  The figure, while clearly a young boy's, was tall
+and beautifully shaped--from the shoulder-line to the rounded thighs
+with their muscles astir.  In the few seconds of his coming Daphne
+felt that vague agitation which beauty gave; it was but the germ of
+the pleasure felt by adults in the presence of a Praxitelean statue,
+and as unmindful of sex, and it was not only the lines of his body
+that had disturbed her, but the way he had come over the brow in the
+sun's light.
+
+"Now!" cried Owen.
+
+All three leapt out and stood across the road.  The tall boy was so
+startled at this apparition of three masked bravoes in his path that
+he stopped suddenly, and, slipping on one foot, nearly fell.
+
+"Damn and blast!" he muttered.  "What the deuce are you playing at?"
+
+"Your money or your life," said Daphne.
+
+He was looking at her; first at her mouth and chin, then at the eyes
+that were staring at him through the mask; then at her disarrayed
+hair; then up and down her body.  He smiled grimly, and as if it were
+impossible to insult a girl, turned towards Owen and said:
+
+"Look here, I'm going to give you a lamming."
+
+A younger boy, also in running clothes, had now come up and stopped.
+
+Owen retreated a step or two, but the bigger boy seized his wrist and
+twisted it right round.
+
+"Don't!" commanded Daphne, pleased with this opportunity of being
+heroic.
+
+Taking no notice of her orders, the boy twisted her brother's arm
+again, and Daphne promptly hit him a heavy blow with the butt of her
+pistol on the bone of his wrist.
+
+"God----!" he began, but controlled the curse, and out of respect for
+the girl dropped Owen.
+
+"It's a game," explained Daphne.  "We thought you'd see the joke."
+
+"That bally thing of yours hurts.  I don't see why you should hit me
+with it just because, being a girl, you know I shan't give you a
+lamming.  Others would."
+
+This angered Daphne.  It was the unfairest accusation that she had
+taken cover behind her sex.  The thought had not been in her mind at
+all, and the suggestion of it made her pluck look like cowardice.
+
+"Oh, I never thought of that at all," she protested.  "You can have a
+shot at giving me a lamming if you like."
+
+With his grim smile the boy seized her wrist and turned it
+strongly--but not too strongly.  Daphne set her teeth and
+deliberately looked defiance into his eyes.  He stared commandingly
+into hers.  And holding her thus captive, though still with a hint of
+gentleness, he suddenly whipped off her mask and put it behind his
+back.
+
+"Don't!" she shouted.  "Give that back to me.  It's mine."
+
+"No, I shan't!"
+
+With her spare arm she reached round him to recover her property.
+Her arm was now about his waist, but the feel of his body, thinly
+covered by the vest, neither raised a blush nor intruded diffidence.
+She only fumbled for her mask while the boy looked down upon her,
+grinning confidently and enigmatically.
+
+"Rescue!" shouted Owen, and he and Trudy rushed for his sister.
+
+"Get away, you little worm!" said the tall boy, letting go of his
+captive--while Owen got away.  The boy seemed to give himself to
+thought, looking now at Daphne and now at the mask, which he drew
+away as she tried to snatch it.  Then he turned to his companion.  "I
+say, Cyril, we might get these kids to join us....  We were training
+when you barged in.  But we've an idea to start paper-chasing or
+something."  He looked at Owen.  "I say, Face-ache, what are you
+called, and what are your sisters' names?  You do look a guy in that
+mask."
+
+"They're not my sisters," answered Owen, a thought over-awed, and
+removing his mask.  "At least, only one of them."
+
+"Well, which one, fool?  Introduce us properly."
+
+"This one."
+
+The tall boy looked a little shyly at the girl whose wrist he had
+twisted and whose arm had held him tight about the waist.
+
+"And what's her name?"
+
+"Duffy--or Daphne--Daphne Bruno."
+
+"Comic names.  Still"--he bowed gallantly though yet shyly--"very
+happy to make your acquaintance....  Now the other one, Fifth of
+November."
+
+"Trudy Wayne, who's staying with Duffy for the hols."
+
+"That's like Cyril....  Where's Cyril?  Come here, man.  This is
+Cyril Evans.  He's my cousin, and he's coming up to Sillborough next
+term....  Now we all know where we are."
+
+"But you haven't told us your name yet," pointed out Daphne, not the
+least shyly, and sucking the wrist he had twisted.
+
+"Nor I have.  It's Muirhead--Roger Muirhead....  However, that'll do
+for that.  Let's get on with this game you're playing....  Cyril,
+look here man, we'll pick sides, and as I'm the biggest, I'll only
+have one of these people, and you can have the other two.  And, as
+I'm only to have one, I'll pick first."
+
+He went through an elaborate pantomime of indecision, looking each of
+them up and down, as if appraising their adroitness or speed.  And,
+rather casually, he smiled his decision at Daphne.
+
+"I'll have this one.  I forget your name--Duffy Something, wasn't it?"
+
+"Bruno."
+
+"Of course....  Righto!  The Bruno-Muirhead Combine against the
+world.  Cyril, you take your crowd a half a mile or so back along the
+road, and I bet none of you get through us two.  If a single one of
+you gets as far as Jacob's Post, your side's won.  D'you see?"
+
+"Yes, man."
+
+"Well, nip off your way, and we'll go ours.  Come on--Duffy."  He
+coloured as he used the name.
+
+Roger and she stepped off the roadway on to the grass, and they were
+about to cross a stretch made dirty with the large droppings of kine,
+when Cyril called out: "Mind the cowslips!"
+
+Trudy giggled; Owen too, for it was humour after his heart, if a
+trifle daring; but Roger, to every one's surprise, swung round and,
+running after Cyril, who immediately began to escape, tried to give
+him a punitive kick.
+
+"You know you don't talk like that in front of girls," he muttered
+breathlessly.
+
+"It was nothing much," Cyril grumbled.
+
+"Well, much or not, don't say that sort of thing in front of girls
+unless you want your behind kicked.  Now clear out....  Come on,
+Duffy."  And he led her away with the silence of a man who has just
+shown his chivalry and his power.  No heed gave he, though
+undoubtedly hearing Cyril's "Sidey swine!" and Daphne felt she must
+suggest, "But supposing your cousin won't play now?"
+
+"He'll play if he's told to," said Roger.
+
+Roger, now that he was alone in a wilderness with his partner,
+appeared a little awkward.  He had difficulty in finding anything to
+say; and Daphne, to ease him, ran merrily to the gorse screen and
+flung herself prone upon the ground behind it.  Roger stood for a
+minute and looked down upon her.
+
+"You're longer than I thought when you lie like that....  How old are
+you?"
+
+He sat down.
+
+"Thirteen!"
+
+"Is that all?  I should have, thought you were fourteen at least.
+I'm--I'm fifteen.  We're both on the long side, aren't we?"
+
+"You look quite sixteen."
+
+"Do I?  Yes, people generally think I'm older than I am."  He lay
+down on his arm beside her.  "Do you live near here?"
+
+Daphne answered this and several other questions, while Roger
+listened, masticating one blade of grass after another and throwing
+them away as they were drained of their pleasure.  He seemed given to
+thinking long on all he heard.  In his turn he explained that he was
+the only son of Sir Roger Muirhead, "of the Muirhead Traders, you
+know," and that they had just bought the Downway House on the
+Plumpton side of the common, "partly for holidays, and partly as a
+spec."  When Daphne asked if he would one day be "Sir Roger," he
+replied vaguely, "I daresay."
+
+"And did you say Sillborough was your school?  I think Owen's
+supposed to be going there."
+
+"Yes, I've been there over a year."  And rather pretentiously he
+added, "I must show your brother round when he comes, and look after
+him a bit."
+
+The talk failing here, Daphne pretended to look for signs of Cyril
+and his party, but Roger, apparently anxious that she should not
+elude his conversation, said: "Oh, they won't be in sight for some
+time yet....  Look here, here's your mask.  I'm sorry I took it."
+
+"No, you can have it," demurred Daphne, touched by his apology.  "I
+can easily make another."
+
+"Oh, well.  Perhaps I'll keep it, then....  I hope I didn't hurt you
+when I twisted your arm like that, but you dared me to, didn't you?"
+
+"Oh, not a bit."
+
+When the words had left her she knew, somehow, that she had said them
+wrong; with too much contempt, or with insufficient appreciation of
+his courtesy.  She had very slightly bruised his self-esteem.  There
+was no doubt that, if he was very chivalrous, he was also rather
+conceited and pompous.
+
+"I could have done so, of course," he explained, "but I didn't want
+to.  I was only shamming."
+
+By now his manner had stirred the suspicion, and it was accompanied
+by just such a pleasant emptying sensation as she had experienced
+when awaiting the adventure, that he was attracted by her.  She
+looked for a swift second at his face, hoping he would not trap the
+glance, but his eyes were towards her, and she swept hers past his.
+His were brown eyes, rather small, perhaps, but when the enigmatic
+grin was at his lips, they twinkled mischievously.  This moment, as
+she took them in her sweep, they were thoughtful.  She continued the
+motion of her head, pretending that it had all been done to ease her
+neck.  Her eyes fell upon his extended legs, of which the left was
+crossed over the right.  They were bare--bare and very shapely.  With
+a laugh she turned her face back to his and asked: "Aren't you
+awfully cold?"
+
+"No, I never feel the cold much.  I've purposely inured myself to it,
+like the Spartans, you know....  I'm awfully keen on the Greeks, and
+their ideas about athletics, and so on....  Look here, we'd better
+arrange our plan of campaign.  You'll catch your school-friend and
+I'll have young Cyril in two twos, and then I'll chase after your
+kiddy brother."
+
+"Oh, you'll catch Owen all right----"
+
+"By Jove, here they are!"
+
+He slipped into a position ready to run.
+
+"Now!" commanded he.
+
+Out he shot, and with his fine strides soon ran Cyril down.  Daphne
+took longer to secure Trudy.  Owen rushed past and ran delightedly
+towards the gibbet.  Roger set off in pursuit with a long,
+unworrying, relentless pace that was probably intended for the gaze
+of Daphne.  Daphne watched him with that partiality which comes from
+the prospect of seeing the humiliation of a relative, especially one
+who tries to be clever.  It was quickly over.  Roger brought back his
+prey after the fashion of a policeman, one hand holding his collar,
+the other his wrist.
+
+In all the games that filled that afternoon save one, Roger contrived
+to secure Daphne for his partner.  The exception was when Daphne
+said, "_No_, I'm going with Cyril now," and Roger looking
+nonplussed--even hurt, as at the shattering of a dream--refused, of
+his courtesy, to force Daphne against her will.  Of his courtesy,
+too, he was gracious and gay with his new partner, Trudy.  At the
+afternoon's close, they agreed to meet early the following morning.
+The last game was spread all over the western side of the common, for
+Daphne, with Roger to chivy every one off, had to reach Jacob's Post
+without being so much as touched by Cyril, Trudy or Owen.  She ran
+diagonally and zigzag, and Roger with his long legs ran all round
+her, intercepting any who threatened her.  They could not pass him
+and abandoned hope.
+
+
+Throughout the evening, when they were playing table-games in the
+great play-room at Old Hall House, she was as noisy and skilful as
+Owen or Trudy, but she had moments of wool-gathering when she
+wondered about many things.  She would have liked to escape to an
+empty room, there to walk up and down with her friendly questions.
+The once or twice that they played a guessing game and she was
+outside the closed door, she let her thoughts run to the subject that
+called them.  Yes, for a little while he _had_ been--he _was_----
+But why?  She felt like a child--of a different order, almost, from
+him.  He was so mature and majestic (these were not Daphne's words,
+who had less words than blindfolded thoughts), and strong and
+proficient.  But he was, for a little.  She could not doubt it.
+Incredible.  Nothing would come of it, nothing _could_ come of it.
+It had only been a momentary attraction.  Still, she _could_--oh,
+yes, it gave her that curious, delightful emptying when she imagined
+it--she _could_ love him very much.  He was, of course, the very
+perfection of her idea of a lover; not faultless, but exactly what
+_she_ would like.  Every one else she could think of seemed less than
+he.  But it wouldn't be ... it wouldn't be....  She would hold
+herself in and wait on the future.
+
+Soon after nine the next morning they were waiting by the Observation
+Post and looking down the Plumpton Road for Roger and Cyril.  A
+hooded cart rumbled towards them, and when it passed their gathering,
+dropped from its tailboard, as it might have been two bundles, Roger
+and Cyril.  They were very differently dressed from yesterday.  Roger
+wore a suit of grey flannel, apparently new-bought for the holidays,
+royal blue socks and brown shoes, a plum-coloured tie, and his dark
+hair plastered down.  Though still a comely boy, he looked rather
+more ordinary than he had done in his running kit.
+
+"We'll toss for partners to-day," said he hurriedly, lest any one
+suggested something else.  "Cyril and I being the two eldest males
+had better pick."  Tossing up a coin he turned to Cyril.  "You call,
+man."
+
+Cyril won, and chose Trudy.  And throughout the day it so fell that,
+whenever they tossed, Daphne always fell to Roger's share.  The first
+time he won he paraded doubt before choosing her, and the second time
+said casually: "Ah, well, best stick to the old firm."  They played
+all the morning and all the afternoon, having tea as guests of a
+rather lordly Roger at the Royal Oak, and when the glamour of evening
+was over the common, and their ravenous appetites cried to them that
+it must be supper-time, Roger said mysteriously:
+
+"Look here.  Gather round, all.  An idea's been festering in my mind
+all the afternoon.  Sit down.  In a ring.  This is a bally
+conspiracy....  The first fine night we'll all meet on the common at
+midnight.  Don't be alarmed.  It'll be topping."
+
+"Oh, _let's_," agreed Cyril.
+
+"We'll meet at Jacob's Post at half-past midnight, and bring food."
+
+"Oh, rather," suddenly said Daphne.
+
+"Well, when shall it be?"
+
+"To-night," said all.
+
+"No, father isn't back yet.  And it'll be no fun escaping if there's
+no one dangerous to escape from."
+
+"Is your father dangerous?" inquired Daphne.
+
+"Oh, he's all right, only he thinks he's a deuce of a disciplinarian."
+
+"Would he whack you if he caught you?"
+
+"Well, hardly," Roger grinned.  "However, to-morrow night's the
+night, if fine.  Especially as we shan't have many more nights----"
+
+"_What?_" exclaimed Trudy.
+
+Daphne, who had been fiddling with something on the ground, looked up
+quickly and caught Roger's eye watching for her.
+
+"Oh, are you going away, then?" she grumbled.
+
+"Yes.  Father joins us to-morrow, and in a few days we all go off to
+Cornwall.  Cyril and I were keen on it, but I'm not so keen now.
+However, there it is."  There was a fine Roman note in his acceptance
+of adversity.  "We won't meet at all to-morrow afternoon, so as to be
+fresh for the night.  If it's fine, which it will be, and Cyril and I
+decide we can do it, we'll come outside your house some time between
+six and eight o'clock, and fire two shots in rapid succession."
+
+"I say!" ejaculated Trudy, and an alarmed thumb-nail shot to her
+teeth.
+
+"No, it'll be all right, I promise you.  Everything the whole night.
+I'll guarantee no harm of any kind comes to you.  I shall regard it
+as my personal responsibility."
+
+In imitation of this grandiloquence Owen drawled: "Wow-wow-wow."
+
+Roger turned sharply on him.  If he were elaborately courteous to
+girls that was no reason why he should stand any lip from prep.
+schoolboys.
+
+"What did you say, Stinkpot?"
+
+"Nothing," answered Owen, subdued by so sudden an approach.
+
+"Well, don't say it again.  If you can't keep your mouth shut, put a
+sock in it.  Well, now we all know the programme...."
+
+When Daphne, Trudy and Owen were littering the walk home with their
+chatter, it gradually emerged that every one of Trudy's remarks held
+a sly under-meaning.  Daphne refused to perceive it, though a rising
+colour betrayed her pleasure; Trudy shaded off her remarks into the
+less and less equivocal, but still Daphne saw them only as innocent,
+and at last Trudy was forced to say outright:
+
+"Of course, it's perfectly obvious that Roger's gone cracked on you."
+
+"_What?_"
+
+"Of course, it is perfectly obvious that Roger has gone cracked on
+you."
+
+"'Course it's perfectly obvious he hasn't!" protested Daphne, the
+blood now flooding her face.
+
+Hearing the word spoken aloud and deliberately like that had set her
+heart beating quickly and irregularly.
+
+"Well, at any rate, you're blushing."
+
+"At any rate, I'm _not_!"
+
+"All right.  If you say you can't see that Roger's silly about you,
+you must be either a fool or a liar."
+
+"I don't think it's obvious at all."
+
+Here Owen unadvisedly stepped into the discussion.
+
+"It's obvious to the meanest intelligence."
+
+"Lot you know about it, copy-cat."
+
+"Thank you.  I do know a lot.  My experience is extensive."
+
+"It's not at all funny....  Besides, I was talking to Trudy.  What
+makes you think so?"
+
+"I can always tell," Trudy explained.
+
+When they entered the house, Daphne, whose cheeks were still flushed
+and her heart still delightfully irregular, wanted to get away alone,
+far more urgently than last night, so as to think about it all.  But
+supper detained her, and then Trudy would keep her talking; and what
+was annoying about Trudy's talk was that she had apparently forgotten
+the one interesting topic, as if, after all, it were nothing very
+impressive.  Daphne answered her frequently enough to maintain a show
+of interest, though really she missed large chunks of what Trudy was
+saying.  And as soon as possible she invented an excuse and ran away
+to some place where she might be private.  An old habit sent her to
+the bathroom, where there was a bolt on the door.  There she leapt on
+to the mahogany framework of the bath, and, sitting sideways, stared
+out at the dark orchard and the brick walk that ran by the kitchen
+door.
+
+Then he _did_.  He, so much older (somehow), so much more important,
+did love her.  She saw him again--tall, dark, wide-breasted, his eyes
+sparkling when excited with plans; twinkling mischievously--almost
+possessively--when she struggled with him; frowning angrily when he
+insulted Cyril or Owen.  He had twisted her wrist sharply, and to
+remember it was delicious, and she, struggling for her mask, had had
+her arm tight about his waist.  The thought disturbed her internally,
+and she moved a little as she sat on the side of the bath.  She liked
+the disturbance, and sought it by returning to the memory again and
+again.
+
+In her bed that night, when Trudy had talked herself to sleep, she
+turned on her side and directed her will to thinking only of Roger,
+in the hope that this would bring him into her dreams and carry her
+into his.  She struggled to keep her erratic mind's-eye playing on
+the figure of Roger; Roger coming over the brow in white running kit,
+wrestling with her for her mask (her body straightened in bed as she
+remembered it), choosing her for his partner, running about her and
+fighting her battle.  Surely this hard thinking would propel her soul
+over the dark common to the Downway House where Roger slept.
+
+But this sunlight in the room, and the white and twisty singing of
+birds!  It was morning, and she hadn't dreamt at all.  She stared at
+the clock on the mantelpiece.  Only twenty past five.  A dead silence
+in the house, and a perfect stillness in the garden, except for the
+birds.  Twenty past five....  Let her spend the next hour thinking of
+Roger.  To enjoy the thinking, she pulled the clothes warmly about
+her.
+
+When, after breakfast, the two parties met again on the common, Roger
+was still shy and awkwardly imperious, and Daphne studied to be
+natural and lively as if unaware that love was in any one's mind.
+Now and then, when Roger and she, in hiding from the others, lolled
+under the gorse, she languished a little before him, but it was more
+unconscious than deliberate.  Her face she kept averted, giving him
+only an occasional glance, which she hoped he would not see.  If they
+had long to wait, she lay backward so that her head rested on her
+interlaced fingers and her eyes dreamed at the sky.  The glare tiring
+them, she let her lids fall, after which a hundred noises of the
+common seemed to become audible: birds, a cow's bell, a dog barking
+far away, the breeze in the tree-branches, and the distant suggestion
+of a cart with a trotting horse.  Roger would be extraordinarily
+silent at her side.
+
+During the morning his nearness, though so desired, became almost
+oppressive.  She could scarcely answer him now, if he spoke to her,
+and her part in the games was formal and remote--she carried too
+pleasing a burden of thoughts.  When they returned to lunch, she
+carried them with her in silence.  As companions they were easier
+than Roger; and she was not unhappy that the afternoon and evening
+were to be spent at home, before the adventure of midnight.  Trudy
+spent the afternoon reading; Owen drawing.  In Daphne the emotion
+that was causing her heart to flutter or her voice to shake funnily,
+began to press on her old vent--the desire to write.  This brought
+direction to her thoughts, and a rest in moving with them.  She
+dreamed out a story, in which two people met while children, as Roger
+and she had done, and after being parted for many years, both
+remaining faithful and both imagining themselves forgotten, met again
+in middle age, to pass the evening of their lives in a sheltered and
+fragrant calm.  "Coo, it'd make a beautiful story," thought Daphne, a
+contemplative thumb arrested at her lips.  Her imagination, playing
+on it, teemed with ideas; and as, one after another, they came to
+her, the story that should contain them all seemed so good that its
+early publication was placed beyond doubt.  Already she saw it in
+book form.  By tea-time she had completed a scenario on a sheet of
+foolscap, and was writing the first paragraphs.  But the actual
+writing was a laborious exercise, and a drag on her impatient
+thoughts; only dreaming could keep pace with thoughts.  No, by her
+fine afternoon's work on the scenario she had earned the right to sit
+and think about it.  And she spent an enchanted evening in this
+service of her compulsion to write--wonderfully oblivious of the
+outside world, and at rest.  Always its service was perfect freedom.
+
+They were sitting at supper, with Miss Carrell at the table's head,
+when suddenly a loud report was heard in the road.
+
+"Good heavens!  What's that?" exclaimed Miss Carrell.
+
+There was another shot, but farther away.
+
+Daphne felt that everybody in the cottages round must be rushing into
+the road to see if murder had been done.
+
+"Oh, it's some one killing rabbits, I expect," said Owen.
+
+She found herself admiring her brother's composure.  Owen was not an
+easy mixture to analyse.  Though often timid, he showed flashes of
+daring, and would be quite undisturbed by circumstances that started
+uncomfortable fears in her.  To-night, for instance, in this period
+between the half-light and bedtime, when both girls had begun to be
+afraid of the secret conspiracy, Owen had assumed an ascendancy.
+
+"I'll come and collect you two as soon as the clock strikes
+midnight," said he.
+
+Trudy yawned.  Her enthusiasm was at its lowest.
+
+"But suppose we all drop off to sleep, and wake to find it's morning."
+
+"We must divide the night into three watches," Owen decided.  "We can
+go to bed at nine.  There'll be three watches of one hour.  Trudy can
+take the first as she's tired, then Duffy, then me....  I think I
+shall turn in soon, as we have a long and dirty night's work in front
+of us."
+
+In their bedroom Trudy lightened her watch by talking with Daphne,
+and at ten o'clock said: "Now it's you on duty," and, turning over,
+was soon asleep.  Daphne lay awake, staring into the darkness and
+listening to the last sounds in the household below.  In an hour she
+would see Roger again.  But what then?  They would only be awkward
+with each other.  They found it so difficult to talk.  The only
+perfect satisfaction--and this was an impossible dream--would be to
+hold each other close and long and in silence....
+
+Thinking thus was such a restful happiness that she could only keep
+awake by forcing open her eyes and staring at the light on the blind
+or trying to distinguish the outlines of the fire-place.  A few times
+she did doze and was obliged to pull herself back to watchfulness.
+Suddenly she heard a step outside her door, and a creaking board.
+Her heart stopped.  There was a tickling knock, which nearly drove
+her under the sheets.
+
+"Duffy!  Duffy!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"It's eleven o'clock.  You should have called me."
+
+"Oh, you might have given me time."
+
+"I'll take on now."
+
+"All right...."
+
+She turned over and remembered nothing more till she awoke with
+another heart-leap at the sound of some one moving outside her door.
+
+"I say....  I say....  It's just on twelve."
+
+Daphne sat up in bed.  The memory that in half an hour she would be
+with Roger had strengthened her to overcome sleepiness.
+
+"Trudy!  Trudy!"
+
+Something about the darkness forbade more than a strong whisper.
+
+But Trudy was heartily asleep.
+
+"Trudy!"
+
+She said it aloud, and coughed when she heard how loud it sounded.
+
+Getting up quickly, for she was half-afraid of the whole room, she
+crossed to Trudy's bed and shook her shoulder.
+
+"Trudy, it's midnight."
+
+Trudy turned over resentfully.
+
+"No, get up.  Don't spoil it all.  Owen and I are up."  Trudy threw
+off the clothes.
+
+"Ooo! it's cold!  I didn't think it'd be as cold as this."
+
+A whisper came through the door.
+
+"Aren't you two nearly ready.  I've been ready for a long time."
+
+"Well, don't show off about it," enjoined Daphne.
+
+In five minutes the two girls and Owen were creeping down the stairs,
+stopping whenever they heard a distant door shaking or a stair
+squeaking under their feet.  On the road, the air freshened them and
+the quick walking awakened them, and they began really to enjoy
+themselves.  The blind houses that looked at them through the
+darkness, the sleeping Royal Oak Hotel, the closed cattle gate at the
+entrance to the common, by increasing their sense of guilt, gave a
+pungency to the adventure.  The empty common was, perhaps, almost too
+like a desert; and all were feeling the eerieness of Jacob's Post,
+seen through the night, when two figures leapt into their path, their
+arms shooting to the sky in a demoniac gesture.
+
+"Sorry," apologized Roger.  "Cyril insisted on us doing that."
+
+But this lively item barely concealed that they were all rather shy
+of one another; and Roger, determining, as the originator of the
+conspiracy, to save it from awkwardness, said cheerily:
+
+"We'll grub first.  I want you all to come right to the centre of the
+common....  So come along.  Squad, march."
+
+They followed him to the heart of the common, where he led them to a
+stretch of low gorse, and unshouldered his haversack, bidding Cyril
+do the same.  From these they produced five bottles of ginger beer,
+some buns and bananas, and a lantern.
+
+"Strike a light, my son," said Roger, addressing himself.  "See, it's
+a dark lantern....  Now we sit down and gorge."
+
+None of them was hungry, and the buns were hardly a success, but
+bananas were things you could eat at any time of the day, or with a
+stomach in any state.  And when the last of them had been finished,
+Roger issued orders:
+
+"This is the game.  As there are five of us we divide into two sides
+of two each.  The fifth person must hide on the common.  Whichever of
+the two sides finds him first wins.  It'll have to be Cyril or me who
+hides, as Owen is too young and foolish."
+
+"I _beg_ your pardon," said Owen.
+
+"What?" asked Roger.
+
+"I beg your pardon, I said."
+
+"Oh, well, that's granted....  So Cyril----"
+
+"But I mean I didn't gather the full purport of your last remark."
+
+"Well, wash your ears out next time....  Here, Cyril, we'll toss who
+hides."
+
+They tossed, and Cyril won.
+
+"Oh, I'll take the lantern and do the hiding, you bet," said he.
+
+"All right," permitted Roger; "and as I lost the toss, I'll have
+first pick....  Well, may as well stick to the old firm.  Duffy and I
+will be on one side, and Trudy and Owen the other."
+
+"But we'll never find Cyril in the darkness," said Trudy.
+
+"You haven't heard all yet.  Cyril takes the lantern, and if we're
+nowhere near him, he shows its light on the common.  He may then
+darken it and move away.  If he's slick, he'll move in the opposite
+direction to the one you're expecting.  (I half wish I had the
+lantern.)  But as sure as he finds you're going all wrong, he's got
+to show a light again."
+
+"Oh, how topping!" agreed Trudy.
+
+"Right!  Streak away, Cyril.  Take to the heather, my bonnie lad.
+Any direction you like.  We'll count a hundred before we raise the
+highlands and pour down after you."
+
+Aloud, monotonously, automatically, Roger counted one hundred.
+
+"----ninety-eight, ninety-nine, a hundred!  Now, you and your party,
+Owen, had better trickle southward towards Brighton, and I and
+Duffy'll prospect the common northward towards York."
+
+A few uncomfortable seconds, and Daphne and Roger were walking alone
+through the night.  Her heart began to race.  She walked unspeaking
+beside him, aware of his equal discomfort.  They struck across the
+grass, sometimes tripped by the branching bracken or a rush-crowned
+tussock, when Roger would extend to her help a gentle hand.  His talk
+about the search for Cyril was so empty of conviction that she
+guessed he was summing up courage to say something else.  They
+reached a clump of bramble, and Daphne, after stupidly looking behind
+it, moved on.
+
+"No, don't go on," stuttered Roger.  "I've something to say to you.
+Let's sit down."  She obeyed him without speaking.  "When do you and
+Trudy go back to school?"
+
+"September 14th."
+
+"There!  I knew it.  I guessed it.  Fate's against us.  We shan't
+return from Cornwall till two days after that.  Heaven knows if I
+shall ever meet you again.  We were destined to see each other in a
+flash and no more."
+
+These words, so picturesque and sad, amounted to an avowal of
+tenderness; wherefore Daphne could only keep silence, pulling up
+blades of grass.
+
+"Duffy, let me kiss you, may I?"
+
+The words had, beyond doubt, come out of the darkness.
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Duffy, don't be a rotter.  Can't you see that any other fellow'd
+have taken you, now he'd got you here, and kissed you whether you let
+him or not.  But I've never been rude to you, have I?  I have my own
+ideas about how you ought to treat women.  I reverence them.  Duffy,
+I'm madly in love with you--I am, really.  You're--you're like a
+magnet to me."  He took her hand gently.  "All this business
+to-night, and all its beastly expense, I've engineered simply because
+I was determined to have you for half an hour to myself, and in
+complete privacy--out of the beastly daylight.  Those kids are just
+being used to serve our ends."  He was obviously proud of his
+manœuvring.  "Duffy, I'm not a flirt.  I've never flirted with a
+girl in my life, not because I thought it wrong--that wouldn't have
+worried me, for I'm afraid I generally do what I like--but just
+because they've never interested me.  I didn't want to fall in love
+with you.  But from the moment you jumped out of that hedge at me you
+diverted the course of my life."  She guessed this had been
+rehearsed, for a similar sentence had presented itself to her.  "You
+may not remember, but you flung yourself down on your face at my
+feet."
+
+"Oh, I didn't."
+
+"Well, behind a hedge, I mean.  Let me finish.  And the minute you
+did that I was metaphorically at your feet....  Duffy, do you love
+me, too?"
+
+To this she preferred to give no direct answer, and he repeated:
+
+"Do you love me, too?"
+
+"I like you."
+
+"Well, let me kiss you.  I shan't if you won't let me.  But if you
+don't I vow I'll never see you again.  And I don't go back on a
+vow....  And hang it, Duffy, I'm going in less than a week."
+
+"Oh, can't you get out of going?"
+
+"No.  Father's one of those who never changes his mind.  We're
+exactly like each other in that way, so I can't complain.  Duffy, are
+you sorry I'm going?"
+
+"Yes, of course I am."
+
+"Well, does that mean you do more than like me?"
+
+The "Yes" would not leave her lips.
+
+"Duffy, I believe you love me, do you?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Do you?"
+
+After a long silence she answered by resting her body against his.
+
+"Duffy!" He had immediately drawn her closer.  "You--you lovely wild
+flower on the heath."
+
+And he kissed her--awkwardly rather than rapturously, as if uncertain
+how such things were done, and the kiss was only in the full of her
+cheek.  The taking of her lips was an impertinence that chivalry did
+not sanction.
+
+But he kept her long in his pressure, and under the silence she was
+trying to realize that these were Roger's arms.  It was so wonderful
+a thought that she feared lest her imagination missed its fullness.
+And in the effort to keep her imagination up to pitch, she probably
+did fall short of any complete rapture.  Roger seemed lost in his
+happiness, and it was she who first drew away.
+
+"I say, we're forgetting the others.  They may be near."
+
+Roger laughed significantly, and jumped up.
+
+"I don't think so.  Come this way, and I'll show you something."
+
+He led her to the nearest rise, where, after sweeping the whole
+common to the south, he suddenly pointed and said: "Look!"
+
+A tiny light twinkled--it seemed miles away--and went out, leaving
+nothing but darkness on the common.  Then again it pricked the night,
+and one could imagine voices.
+
+"Coo!" exclaimed Daphne in admiration.
+
+Roger gave a grim, self-satisfied laugh.
+
+"Cyril has his orders.  Jove! he's a faithful henchman.  Rather a
+nice piece of generalship, that!  I don't fancy he'll let himself be
+caught by that wretched little brother of yours or that girl.  He has
+his orders where to hold them, and for how long."
+
+"Does he know then what--what you were going to do to me?"
+
+"I told him I jolly well wanted you to myself, and intended having
+you.  It's nothing new to have a squire in these matters."
+
+"But he may tell some one."
+
+"Not he.  He knows what he'd get if he did."
+
+They were walking unthinkingly back to the clump.
+
+"I'm awfully tired," she said.
+
+He sat down and patted the grass.
+
+"Lie there, then, and rest against me."
+
+She obeyed, putting an arm about his waist and laying her head on his
+coat.  He patted it lovingly, and occasionally kissed her hair, to
+which she would respond with a little hug.  Once he said: "Are you
+sure you're not cold?" and later, after a long kiss on her forehead
+upturned: "My God, I'm glad I was born."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+In the morning she told Trudy.  This had been Roger's advice, and she
+was not at all averse to acting on it.  "Cyril knows, and Trudy and
+the young brother must know," he had said.  "Otherwise we shan't be
+able to escape away alone."  And Trudy, after an annoying "What did I
+say?" was magnificent, showing a deep interest in the romance, and
+out-talking Daphne with plans for the next few days.  Owen said, "I
+protest it shocks me," and did what he could to help.
+
+There were three days before Roger left.  The first two, as was right
+for lovers, they wandered together along country roads or up on to
+the downs.  Often they were at a loss for conversation, but always
+Roger embraced happiness, and Daphne lost herself in it, when the
+time came for her to sink into his arms.  She discovered, too, that
+he could always be given conversational facility, and the desirable
+mental ease, if he were encouraged to talk about himself.  She
+learned then that unless he did something big he would not really be
+_Sir_ Roger Muirhead, because his father was only a knight, but that
+he intended to do some very big things, and preferably in the field
+of politics.  Herself talked little; she did not want to talk; the
+love affair was a dream--a dream like that one in which she was tried
+for murder before a watching world and unjustly condemned--but a
+dream that had solidified.  Here in undeniable fact at her side was
+Roger, splendid to look at, clever, dominant, strangely older than
+she, and yet so deferential to her, so chivalrous.  She was immensely
+proud of him; no grown-up girl with a lover had more than she, and of
+girls her own age who had such a one as this?
+
+The third day, being the last before Roger's departure, a great
+scheme of his was carried through.  Under cover of a few fabrications
+he and she escaped to Brighton, as other illicit lovers have done
+before and since.  They lay on the shingle, each very proud of the
+other.  They bathed, and afterwards stretched white, firm limbs to
+dry in the sun.  They were photographed by a beach photographer that
+Roger might have her image in his breast pocket; but so revolting was
+the likeness that she begged him to smash it, and had a presentiment
+of disaster when it went with a strong man's finality into his
+breast.  There were also in his pocket a big supply of envelopes
+addressed to her in Owen's handwriting, by means of which he intended
+to get his letters through the protective barriers at Hemans House.
+A brilliant stratagem!  They had lunch on a restaurant balcony
+overlooking the sea, and tea at the end of the pier.  With the
+falling of the sun the melancholy that had been with them all day
+took on a likeness of pain.  He told her the train that they were
+taking to-morrow, and reminded her that it would run along the side
+of Ditchling Common.
+
+"You must be on the common and wave to me, and I will see you the
+whole length of that bit.  You must stand on one of the higher parts
+and I'll see you as long as I can.  After that--well, I simply don't
+care to think what'll happen after that."
+
+She said nothing in reply, so he repeated:
+
+"Will you be there, Duffy?"
+
+Her face turned towards him, and her eyes sought his.  As if he
+didn't know she'd be there!
+
+"Roger, I believe you think you love me more than I love you."
+
+"Well, you never say much."
+
+"I don't want you to go."
+
+"Say, 'I love you better than all the world, darling."
+
+"I love you better than all the world, _darling_."
+
+
+That little sceptic who always crouched in a corner of Daphne's
+mind--that little sceptic who had enabled her to question Hollins's
+nursery rhymes, to see that Miss Vidella acted up to a part, or to
+suspect the ephemeral quality of the friendship with Trudy--had not
+been unheard during these rose-flushed days.  It had whispered to her
+what grown-ups would say of the whole affair: that it was the veriest
+calf-love and the breath of a moment, and if there were pain in
+parting, three weeks would heal the wound.  It had whispered that, of
+course the grown-ups were right.  And yet the fact remained that she
+had so worked on her imagination, so lost herself in her dream, that
+now she suffered, and in her suffering, these thoughts could only
+peep and run.
+
+She cried when she left Roger that night, and the cries became sobs,
+and her dreams when at last she slept were troubled with his
+presence.  "I shan't see him any more," was her first thought on
+waking.  "I know I shan't."  As soon as possible she fled.  Half an
+hour too early she was standing on the highest ridge of the
+undulating common, waiting for the distant smoke of Roger's train.
+Except for a cart trundling to Ditchling the ribbon of highway on
+which he had first appeared was deserted.  A few cows cropped the
+grass near the western hedges.  The cocks and hens, like the
+care-free creatures they were, pecked at the ground by Jacob's Post.
+As she waited she fiddled with her fingers, or nibbled at unripe
+blackberries, or looked around in search of the gorse bushes under
+which they had lain together.  The action of her heart had sickly
+moments.  She dreaded the coming of the train, and yet longed for it.
+Would it never come?  Surely she had been waiting a long time.  It
+would be better if it came soon and got its sharp moment over.
+
+It was a relief when she caught her first glimpse of it--but a shock
+as well, for she had been in a brown study.  It rushed on and past.
+She thought she distinguished Roger at a window, but could not be
+sure.  But he at least must have seen her, for she had stood on her
+hill and waved her handkerchief in the same arc again and again, till
+the train was out of sight and there was nothing left but a broken
+puff of smoke in the sky.
+
+
+Not three weeks, but three months were required for her cure.  And
+even after that--for long after that--the memory of Roger, so
+handsome and so courteous, could give her a pleasant melancholy.
+
+At first, however, she had been surprised to find that the rest of
+the holiday was anything but empty and dull.  She was able to enjoy
+herself with Trudy and Owen, melancholy only adding a charm.
+Laughter came as easily as before, though sometimes she arrested it.
+She and Trudy would stare out of the window at old Eadigo in the
+garden, watching him as he bent low in his too-tight trousers, and
+hoping for the best.  "Now--this time!" she would say, as he stooped
+to remove a weed--"it must happen soon," and she would wonder if such
+humour were consonant with Roger's absence.  But he had written to
+her, and though his letters were infrequent, they were couched in the
+correctest language of a lover.
+
+This was more than she had hoped, and she was very proud.  When she
+went back to school, and Miss Vidella came fussing into the
+dining-room to welcome back her dear girls, Daphne felt sorry for her
+as an old maid who had never known the sensation of being loved.  In
+her pride she felt the other girls ought to know about her romance,
+and in order that they might at least suspect, she encouraged their
+chaff when they found her in a deserted class-room writing to a
+secret correspondent.  She liked to have this privacy disturbed by
+some inquisitive girl and to snatch her letter guiltily away.  She
+was even tempted by the shameful idea of losing a letter of Roger's
+that it might be found and read.
+
+But she was saved from this by the failing character of Roger's
+letters.  Only the first two or three had been really passionate.
+And only two had come to Hemans House in the carefully prepared
+envelopes, and they had been little more than a résumé of his doings.
+
+"He won't write again now.  He'll never write again."
+
+And he didn't.  All the rest of those envelopes must have been
+destroyed.
+
+After two months without a letter, she grew used to the pain, and
+gradually lost it.  She no longer, when lying in bed, projected
+herself to Roger, but imagined instead their meeting one day when he
+would plead for forgiveness, and she would be too indifferent to cut
+or punish him; or, as a variant of this, the announcement in a paper
+which he would see: "A marriage has been arranged between Miss Daphne
+Deirdre Tenter Bruno, the celebrated daughter of an equally
+celebrated parent, and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu"--for this title had
+always fascinated her.
+
+The next summer, when the meeting might just possibly happen, she
+learned towards the term's end that they were to be whipped away to
+Devonshire for a long holiday by the sea.  This was excellent.
+Roger, if he came to the common, would learn that the Brunos were
+away, on dignified travels in the west.  The day before they left
+Sussex she dared to walk past the Muirheads' house.  As she hurried
+along its frontage expedited by the sight of people in the garden,
+the side of her eye perceived that they were strange children with a
+nurse in uniform.  This made her halt round a bend.  After a moment
+of deliberation, she walked back towards the house, and asked of a
+gardener who was trimming a hedge of thuja: "Can you tell me, does a
+Lady Muirhead live here?"
+
+"No, miss," said the gardener.  "Least, it's their house, I believe,
+but it's let now to my boss, Mr. Bradlaugh."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Daphne, conscious of a sharp disappointment.  "Have
+you been here long?"
+
+"We come here last spring, miss?"
+
+"And how--how long will you be staying?"
+
+"I don't know, miss.  Two or three years, I reckon."
+
+"Oh--well, thank you.  Thanks awfully."
+
+She walked back.  The blow had been to learn that Roger wouldn't
+after all be humiliated and saddened by the sight of Old Hall House
+empty and frowning, nor by the gorse and brambles on Ditchling Common.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Daphne's sixteenth and seventeenth years might have been called the
+years of the giggle.  In the main they poured over shallows.  No
+successor to Roger Muirhead came troubling her with a like emotion;
+and except for one short period she had no religion to make depths in
+the stream-bed.  There was but one clear motive in her life that
+waxed stronger with the months, and brought a pattern to the welter;
+and this was her ambition to write.  Of the rest of her nature the
+lawless high spirits took possession.
+
+She grew like a blade of newly-sown grass.  As her father said, you
+could almost see her growing; nay more, on a still night, if you
+listened very carefully, you could hear her growing.  Her features
+lost some of their roundness and softness, and her body became a
+thought too narrow for its height.  It worried her rather, so that
+she began to take very seriously her physical culture--her gymnasium,
+riding and tennis.
+
+She laboured at this time on the manufacture of a distinguished
+signature, "Daphne D. T. Bruno," giving it a tail like an unwinding
+lasso, till her father, seeing the flourish, expressed acute distress
+and shame: "Duffy, this is awful--awful.  You must have the soul of a
+tea-shop girl."
+
+The ambition to write increased with every novel she read, and every
+discussion she heard on other people's novels.  In a small part its
+driving force was the true compulsion of the artist; but the most of
+it was a mixture of crude ambition and sheer imitation.  She wanted
+no less than a thundering fame, and she wanted to imitate the style
+and methods of the authors she read.  After reading Dickens, she
+wanted to be a great humanitarian and a master of comic caricature;
+after Thackeray, an urbane and tolerant satirist; after George Eliot,
+William Black, or Bulwer Lytton--well, she remodelled her style on
+whichever of them was the last read.  She had no idea of working hard
+to equip herself for greatness; her reading was lazy, and limited to
+such fiction as pleased her; it could only be compassed lolling in a
+comfortable chair, and any hard parts she read through without
+troubling to know if she understood them.
+
+Since she had no sincere religion or stable code of morals, nothing
+but an antiseptic, compounded of humour, innocence and the herding
+instinct, saved her from the grosser evils.  This, and the two
+steadying influences of Hollins and Miss Sims.  There had to be a
+show of religion at Hemans House, of course, but except in panicky
+moments when she sent up ejaculatory S.O.S.'s to God, it made no
+settlement in her secret life.  Already the sceptic in the corner of
+her mind issued hints that she was probably the only girl in the
+school who knew that she didn't believe anything.  This struck her as
+rather original, and she would sometimes give it an airing before
+Hollins.  She did it with intent to shock, till one day the old
+servant, now very grey, discomfited her by interrupting:
+
+"I'm very sorry, Miss Duffy, but I must ask you once and f'r'all, not
+to do your laughing at these things with me.  I don't like it, I tell
+you I don't.  It makes me think you'll be struck leprous, or the like
+of that.  And though you're only a child, it--it sort of upsets my
+faith.  And then I don't know where I am....  It's for your pa to
+say, of course, but to my idea it's a dreadful thing for children to
+be brought up without any religion.  No good'll come of it, I dare
+swear."
+
+She had a similar experience with Miss Sims.
+
+Miss Sims had kept her favourite's affection, if not the earlier
+adoration.  And on Sundays, when the crocodile went tail-first to
+church, Daphne would inflate the governess's heart by coming to
+chatter at her side, and in church by pushing to sit next to her.
+
+It was when walking to church one Sunday that Daphne deliberately
+shocked Miss Sims by a frank statement of her atheism, with this
+corollary; that she didn't think she would marry because it would
+interfere with her writing, but she saw no reason, believing in love
+as she did, why she shouldn't have intermittent love affairs like
+other famous women.  Here was opportunity for Miss Sims to play the
+saviour, and she filled the part at once.  She hurt her favourite
+with a swift lash, refusing to be amused and suggesting that Daphne
+walked elsewhere; and when the girl, who had been silent for the rest
+of the walk, was sitting beside her in church, Miss Sims acted her
+own devotion and faith.  It distinctly impressed Daphne, who glimpsed
+a beauty and peace in holiness.
+
+But it was Winnie Chatterton who really led her on a short excursion
+into holiness.  Winnie Chatterton was the only notable successor to
+Trudy Wayne.  The friendship with Trudy had wilted.  They had not
+quarrelled, but just drifted apart.  They were friendly, but not
+friends.  After a chain of minor intimacies Daphne discovered Winnie
+Chatterton, and Winnie Chatterton discovered Daphne Bruno.  Both
+wondered how they could have been three and four years at the school
+without an earlier gravitation each to the other.  In figure and
+colouring they were much the same, which was delightful, and there
+was the most wonderful community of taste.  And now on walks through
+Windsor Park these two tall girls went hand in hand.  Their place was
+near the head of the crocodile, and of the many treble voices that
+made up that peripatetic parliament, one, as likely as not, was
+Daphne's as she told to Winnie the whole story of the last novel that
+had affected her.  "Vanity Fair" she serialized, telling it in three
+instalments on three successive walks.  And Winnie, whose art was
+music, talked enthusiastically about that, or about the High
+Churchmanship that had lately won her.  In the end Daphne tried both
+the music and the religion.
+
+Old though she was, she insisted on taking up the 'cello with Mr.
+Pulteney, the music master (the "Chutney" of the girls).  And after
+her first lesson, which was disastrous, she rushed to Winnie to give
+humorous report of it.
+
+She had walked towards the music-room, explained Daphne hurriedly,
+and seen Petsy (Miss Vidella) waiting for her outside.  Together they
+had entered the room where Chutney was tuning her shining new
+instrument.  Petsy had seated herself on a chair to act as chaperon,
+for music lessons and the music master, as all literature showed,
+were the points at which foolishness and sin were most likely to
+break through.  So Petsy had sat in a chair to strengthen the
+defences.  Daphne, on taking the huge instrument, had most
+unfortunately felt a sudden desire to giggle.  It was awful, and when
+Chutney placed the music-stand before her and asked: "Where's your
+music, Miss Bruno?" she had only been able to reply, with the giggle
+trembling through her words: "I've forgotten it.  It's up in my
+bedroom."  At that Petsy had rustled in her chair, probably rendered
+ill at ease by this mention of bedroom to a music master.  "Really,
+my dear child," she had whined, "you are slatternly in many things.
+Can she not, Mr. Pulteney, use some of the music of the other dear
+children?"  Chutney had said he was afraid not, because she needed
+the most elementary book, and he had no other girl beginning at the
+beginning.  So Petsy had creaked out of her chair into a standing
+position, and said: "Well, we must go and get it, dear.  It's really
+very thoughtless of you.  Come.  Trip ahead of me."
+
+"Why we were both obliged to go out Heaven only knows," commented
+Daphne.  "I suppose because if Petsy had gone for the music, I should
+have been left alone with a music master, and if _I_ had gone, she'd
+have been left alone with a music master.  And Chutney couldn't go,
+of course, because of the intimate nature of the room where the music
+was.  So we tripped out together."
+
+When they were in the hall Daphne had run upstairs, two and three
+steps at a time, while Petsy waited at the bottom in all the safety
+of that public place.  She must needs call after Daphne: "Don't go up
+the stairs like that, dear child.  Supposing anyone had been passing
+and seen you.  So impetuous you dear children are!"  Daphne had got
+her music and come down again decorously.  She had then re-entered
+the music-room behind her principal, and sat in the pupil's chair
+while Chutney placed the 'cello in the correct position, and Petsy
+watched carefully through her spectacles to make sure that in
+touching the 'cello he didn't also touch the 'cellist.
+
+Then the 'cellist had commenced.  Her first notes had been as
+horrible as an amateur's first notes on a bugle, and the desire to
+giggle had got much worse, with the result that her hands trembled,
+and the next notes were too awful for words.  Unfortunately, Chutney,
+who was a perfect dear, had caught the infection of her giggle.
+Presumably he had never before had so old a pupil at the clumsy stage
+of 'celling.  At last, after a dreadful prolonged note on the lowest
+string, her giggle had burst out, and Chutney had only saved himself
+from disgrace by swinging round, so that his back was turned to Miss
+Vidella.  Miss Vidella had asked: "Has something humorous happened?"
+and Daphne had apologized, saying: "I'm sorry, Miss Vidella.  I can't
+help it."  Then Petsy had begun to rustle a lot, thinking no doubt
+that this conjunction of a music master, music, and a giggle promised
+the worst results.  She had shut her eyes behind her spectacles for a
+second, and asked: "Can you approach anything, Daphne dear, without
+unsuitable levity?  If you are not disposed to bring seriousness to
+these music lessons, which your dear father has secured for you at
+considerable cost"--Chutney had grimaced at that--"and from the best
+instructors"--that had set him grinning sheepishly out of the
+window--"I shall have to recommend him to discontinue them.  Now
+please proceed."
+
+Then there had been a lot of trouble with her fingering.  Time and
+again Chutney had moved to adjust her fingers with his own, only
+stopping when he saw that Petsy's spectacles ruled out so indecorous
+a thing.  Absurd, because Chutney was really such a pure little man.
+He had been obliged to demonstrate the correct method by holding
+another instrument before her, and asking her to copy exactly the
+movement of his fingers; which she had done, but her sounds had been
+quite different from his, and induced Petsy to poke in with some
+advice: "Try to do what Mr. Pulteney says, dear."  Not a helpful
+remark; and Daphne, getting annoyed, had pulled her bow rather
+savagely along the string, producing the most painful sound of the
+morning.  This had changed her temper into humour, and for some
+torturing seconds she had been much more occupied in controlling her
+laughter than in catching what Chutney was saying.  Her wrist work
+and her holding of the bow had been just as troublesome, and Chutney
+had kept coming towards her with the obvious desire of putting her
+hand and wrist into the correct position, but had tripped, as you
+might say, over the protective ray from Petsy's eyes.  And Petsy had
+most stupidly tried to bridge the difficulty by some more advice: "Do
+try and remember, dear, that it is a bow that you are holding and not
+a clothes brush"; which had made Daphne want to mutter: "Oh, you shut
+up, for the Lord's sake!"
+
+"From somewhere about this time," explained she to Winnie, "the row
+began to begin.  I can hardly remember how it started--I never
+can--and I had a beastly feeling when it was all over that I had made
+a fool of myself, but you know what Petsy is--she's such an old fool,
+posing so pompously and thinking it's funny."
+
+"Oh, what happened, what happened?" asked Winnie.
+
+"Well, I think Chutney said, as a sort of excuse for me, that the
+exact position was a little difficult to get right at first.  And
+Petsy was sarcastic and said: 'Not, I take it, to intelligence.'  And
+I lost my temper and said: 'But I'm not intelligent.'  Chutney
+stared, and Petsy was rather taken aback, but when she had recovered
+herself, she opened fire, I can tell you.  She said: 'Precisely, my
+dear.  And the less intelligent girls have to make up for their
+deficiencies by a becoming willingness and humility.  They do not
+boast of their stupidity.'  And I snapped back: 'I wasn't boasting.
+I was deploring the fact.'  Then Petsy stood up.  I think she was
+simply beaten by such cold-blooded impudence, and could not for the
+life of her decide how to deal with it.  But she had to do something
+in front of Chutney, so she began: 'My dear Daphne, I do not like
+that tone at all.  I do not like it at all.  I really have not been
+insulted in a music lesson before.  I think you will go to your
+classroom, where you will wait to hear from me.'  Then she apologised
+at great length to Chutney for taking up his valuable time with a
+perverse and ill-mannered child, and Chutney was perfectly sweet,
+saying I was only confused and awkward at first, and would be all
+right next time.  And Petsy interrupted: 'I really do not know
+whether there will be a next time.  I am not at all sure that I shall
+allow her to continue her lessons.'  And of course I said: 'I've no
+particular desire to,' and went haughtily out of the room.  She's
+said nothing so far, but I suppose I'm in for an interview, and a
+heart-to-heart talk."
+
+
+Her conversion to High Churchmanship was a mixture of sincerity and
+posturing, as the sceptic in the corner would hint through his gags.
+It was sincere in this: that she secretly disliked much of her
+character and wanted to improve it; she had depressed moments when
+she thought herself vain, lazy, much too selfish, and without a
+decent control of her temper; and while she couldn't believe that her
+own strength would ever pull out these tough-rooting faults, she was
+quite sure that a stern religion would do it.  And her lack of any
+stable morality could trouble her sometimes; she remembered how it
+had enabled her to suggest in flippancy things that earned disgust
+from people like Miss Sims.  At such times, aided by the placid
+demeanour of Miss Sims and her occasional homilies, and by the
+graver, brow-furrowing chats of Winnie, and the tales of the saints
+that she had read, her imagination would show her the religious life
+as one of self-respect, happiness in worship, and peace in believing.
+
+The element of posture lay in her eagerness to perform the
+picturesque rites of High Churchmanship; in her instant response to
+its spirit of gay rebellion; and in her desire to do something that
+would startle her family.
+
+In the beginning sincerity occupied most of the ground.  Her first
+weeks, after her acceptance of the faith and her prayer in which she
+surrendered to God and asked forgiveness for her long neglect, were
+very happy; and she was perfectly conscious of a softening and
+ennobling of her character.  She went ahead of Winnie, and silently
+wondered how her friend could keep certain things in her life as
+fellow-tenants with her religion.  These were perhaps the sweetest
+days of Daphne's childhood.  But it could not last.  The soil was too
+unbroken, and there were too many older roots in the tilth; the
+little sceptic spread his gangrene: "Do you _really_ believe all
+this?  You know you don't _really_?  Not if you once thought it out";
+and a series of little shocks, as she realised some of the things
+that the religion implied, helped to wither the sincerity and bring
+in the element of posture.  That every good Catholic was morally
+obliged to go to Confession she had not foreseen, and she knew she
+could never go; other duties such as fasting, hearing Mass, being
+confirmed, and preparing long and earnestly for her communions she
+was prepared to accept, but not this--not confession to any living
+creature of some of the things that hurt her conscience: And that
+every really Catholic priest ought to be a celibate--good heavens,
+did Anglo-Catholics say that?
+
+Winnie, who considered that she had to be as extreme as possible now
+she was instructing a neophyte, declared that such of course was the
+truth.  In fact, she made much of this question of celibacy,
+deploring its widespread disregard.  Her first vicar had been
+married, she said, but had had the decency not to have children.  His
+successor, however, was not only married, but had a boy at Cambridge.
+"I don't think he ought to have married at all," expounded Winnie,
+"but if he did, he shouldn't have borne a son."
+
+When Daphne went home for the holidays, the posturing was so far in
+possession that she was chiefly eager to offend everybody by
+insisting that she must go into Brighton on Sundays to hear Mass at a
+respectable church.  And her first Sunday she found herself in St.
+Paul's, West Street, which had the reputation of being as high as was
+possible.  It certainly seemed very high indeed; and disappointment
+took her when she knew herself shocked, bewildered, and traitorously
+sure that she could have worshipped more easily in the service to
+which she was accustomed.  But it was only a matter of getting used
+to it, she supposed, and therewith struggled up to certain points of
+spiritual exaltation.  All the holidays she talked Catholicity to the
+household, and when her father ridiculed her, saying: "Yes, run and
+worship in your strange groves, Daphne," she was not displeased at
+this prick of persecution.  Hollin's acceptance of the news was
+rather disturbing, for, after Daphne had been chattering some time
+about the joys of religion, the old servant suddenly dropped her
+sewing, blew her nose, and carried the handkerchief to her eyes
+before returning it to her lap.  "Well, there, miss," she said,
+pretending to believe that Daphne had not observed anything, "I am
+glad.  It's kind of done me a lot of good, and strengthened my faith
+that prayers, if you stick to 'em, are often answered."
+
+
+By the time she went back to school, the sceptic had nearly worked
+himself free of his gags, and she knew that she was only longing to
+shock the other girls with her advanced Catholicity, and to see what
+would happen when she exhibited it on the first Sunday of the term to
+Miss Vidella.
+
+The movements of Daphne and Winnie that first Sunday were the
+creations of Daphne's brain.  She justified them on the ground that
+it was a duty to reveal to old-fashioned and prejudiced minds the
+strength of Catholic thought.  Winnie and she, as elder girls, walked
+to the church, one on each side of Miss Vidella; and when they
+reached the Lady Chapel, in which were the seats allotted to Hemans
+House, they still managed to keep her between them.  This was
+designed to surround Miss Vidella with Catholicity.  Kneeling down,
+they made augmented signs of the cross, prayed for a suitable time,
+and made second signs of the cross; and then resumed their chairs and
+read advanced manuals.  The vestry opened on to the side chapel, and
+when the vicar and the curate passed them at the tail of the choir,
+the two girls bowed in reverence for the priestly office.  The vicar
+noticed it and looked surprised.
+
+They made the sign of the cross at the Absolution and at the close of
+the creed.  They bowed at every _Gloria_.  And in the Ante-Communion
+Service, at the _Incarnatus_ clause, they genuflected.  The
+genuflexion left Miss Vidella standing as a sort of indignant
+Protestant lighthouse in these undulating waters of Catholicity.
+Some girls in front turned round to see what had happened.
+
+All the way home Miss Vidella was menacingly reserved; and they were
+soon summoned to her room.  This prospect of imperial persecution was
+excellent.  They had done nothing, absolutely nothing (Daphne assured
+her partner as they walked to judgment) but what they were perfectly
+entitled to do--what indeed it was their duty to do.  Petsy wouldn't
+have a leg to stand on.
+
+Miss Vidella began mildly.
+
+"I could not but notice, Daphne dear and dear Winifred, that in
+church this morning you indulged in practices which are usually
+associated with Roman Catholicism.  You are not, I believe,
+Catholics."
+
+"Yes, we are," said Winnie.
+
+"Yes, Catholics," Daphne explained, "but not _Roman_ Catholics."
+
+"Oh, you are, are you?"  The imperial power was clearly annoyed by
+their bearing.  "But not _Roman_ Catholics.  And may I inquire how
+you can be Catholics without being Roman Catholics?"
+
+To explain to the uninstructed the answer to this question has always
+been a long and laborious business; so Winnie turned to Daphne as
+spokesman.
+
+"All Church of England people are Catholics if they only knew it,"
+said Daphne.
+
+"Oh, I see.  Then am I a Catholic?"
+
+This made Daphne want to giggle; and at first she thought she had
+better leave the query without a reply; but, deciding not to go back
+upon her church, she said awkwardly:
+
+"Yes, I--I'm afraid so."
+
+It seemed rather a press-gang method of getting Miss Vidella on board
+the Ark, and it was not surprising that her annoyance was increased.
+
+"I see.  But I fear I am not so good a Catholic as to tolerate in my
+school such ridiculous practices as those with which you embarrassed
+the greater part of the congregation this morning.  You will kindly
+behave as others do and keep your gymnastic exercises for Tuesdays
+and Fridays, when I think you go to the Royal Gymnasium for
+Instruction.  Have you anything more to say?"
+
+Daphne knew that what she ought to say now was a modern paraphrase of
+"Oh King, live for ever.  Be it known unto thee that we will not
+worship as you wish, nor do anything that you suggest"; but on being
+asked so abruptly she couldn't shape a single sentence.
+
+"Then that will do, my dears, you may go."
+
+They decided in a mysterious council of war that, having done this
+much they could henceforth, with the early Christians for a
+precedent, veil their gestures and reverences.
+
+At the end of that term Winnie left to be "finished" in a French
+convent, and Daphne, who had been ashamed to backslide before her
+friend, tried her religion on a charge of personation, and convicted
+it.
+
+
+Now she received occasional news of Roger Muirhead.  Owen was at
+Sillborough and would mention him in his letters or on his holidays.
+Not often though, for Daphne never asked for information, and Owen
+apparently detested his senior.  It looked as if Owen also had a
+secret desire to be an author, for he affected a very personal and
+precious style.  "At this Academy," wrote he in his first letter from
+Sillborough, "we have one R. Muirhead, with whose name you will not
+be wholly unfamiliar.  He is, I think, the most conceited ass I have
+ever known.  He's a prefect, and fancies himself hugely as a
+disciplinarian.  'My word is law and changeth not' sort of
+business--as our inimitable Herbert Hollins would say.  'Woe to
+anyone who crosses my path or thwarts me!  I am severe but just.  Oh,
+yes, I am not easily angered, but if some groundling does raise my
+ire, he must expect no quarter.  Oh, no.'  Funny that these pompous
+blokes never credit any one with the brains to see through them.  Of
+course the boys suck up to him, because he's hot stuff at games,
+which he certainly is, though not as good as he thinks.  No one ever
+was as good as that.  And this sucking up makes him ten times worse.
+I can tell you R. Muirhead is no small panjandrum.  Dammy, no."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+In the summer of her seventeenth year she read for the first time one
+of her father's books, and was surprised to find it exceedingly
+interesting.  Here was a book that wasn't even fiction, and yet, with
+its wit and gaiety and its big, far-sweeping ideas, gave her thrills
+as pleasant as any story she could remember.  She sat on and read
+devouringly.  The grander words danced quadrilles in her head:
+"Intelligentsia," for example, and "Reactionary."  The book was a
+survey of modern history written from the viewpoint of a doctrinaire
+rebel, and Daphne's sympathy was always, as the writer intended, for
+the Revolutionaries and the Intelligentsia, who appeared to be the
+same.  She longed to be accounted one of the Intelligentsia.  It was
+a new ambition, and her heart went wholly to it.  She crept into her
+father's empty study and abstracted another of his books.  And then
+another.  Many of their illusions and quoted names she did not
+understand, but their wit and some of their matter she did--far more
+than she had dared to hope.  But the final result of her reading,
+thanks to her habit of bolting what she could not masticate, was to
+increase the confusion of her mind; she retained only phrases and
+names and a muddled idea that revolutionaries were always right and
+reactionaries always wrong.
+
+Why it was necessary to abstract the books surreptitiously she could
+hardly say; probably because she would be utterly ashamed to be
+caught by Miss Carrell or Owen reading a book by her father.  It was
+Mr. Bruno, however, who surprised her at it.  One wet afternoon she
+was alone in the great play-room at Old Hall House, gathered sideways
+in a tattered lounge-chair with her legs under her and the book on
+the chair's arm.  Its sparkling survey of a century's literature had
+her in such thrill that she did not hear his entry.  At the moment
+she was annoyed to have allowed years to pass in idleness instead of
+in reading all these authors here written of; brain-hot with resolves
+to read them all immediately, and flattered by her own delight, since
+it proved that by nature she was one of the Intelligentsia.
+
+Mr. Bruno stood and looked at her.  An unconscious grace in her
+attitude pleased him and stirred as usual the desire to banter her.
+
+"Relaxed and idle creature," he began.  "Yes, you may well jump
+guiltily.  Have you no holiday task, or are there no household duties
+waiting to be done, that you loll there--for all the world like a
+statue of Indolence--reading some cheap and nasty trash?"
+
+She rolled on to her back, putting the book between her body and the
+arm of the chair.
+
+"On the contrary, it's quite a decent book, darling."
+
+(She had taken to calling him "darling" ever since on a holiday visit
+she had heard Winnie Chatterton doing as much by her parent.)
+
+"Decent?  My dear, if it were a serious book on logic you would learn
+that the epithet 'decent' (which is a disgusting misuse of words, by
+the way) is what is known as a Petitio Principii, or Begging of the
+Question.  It probably _does_ appear decent to one without any
+literary palate, but that doesn't make it so."
+
+"I don't say it's anything much, but the man who wrote it, I should
+think, is not without intelligence."
+
+"What's the idle tale called?"
+
+"Wouldn't you like to know?"
+
+"I should not only like to know, but in thirty seconds I shall know."
+
+And he thrust out his hand towards the book, while she rolled over to
+cover the secret with her body.
+
+"No, you shan't!  You shan't.  Go away."
+
+"Ah, would she?" smiled he.  "Would she?  Since she forgets she's a
+full-sized woman and adopts the tactics of a little child, she shall
+be treated as such."  And, putting one arm behind her back and the
+other under her knees, he lifted her off the chair and laid her on
+the carpet.
+
+"How dare you, darling? ... Good night!  I didn't know you were so
+strong..."
+
+Leaping up, she threw her arms about his elbows, trying to pin them
+to his sides and hold him back from the book.  "No, daddy, don't be a
+cad," she begged; but he took a pace forward, wrenched an arm free,
+stooped down and picked up the book.  She released him, saying:
+"Well, I think it's a dirty shame."
+
+He turned the book so as to see its title on the back, and read "The
+Decay of Romanticism, by T. Tenter Bruno."
+
+It moved him, and almost unwittingly he placed an arm about her
+shoulders and pressed her to his side.  Then he tossed the book back
+on to the chair.
+
+"No, Duffy dear.  Read your tales, not stuff like that.  It's a dull
+and heavy work, as are all its fellows--stale, flat and unprofitable."
+
+"It isn't," denied Daphne.  "It's fine.  I'd no idea your books were
+as decent as that.  They're so slick and witty.  I've been screaming
+with laughter.  Daddy, how do you write so wittily as that?"
+
+"Rudeness, my dear--that's all--just rudeness.  The rudeness is all.
+All wit, from the highest to the lowest, can be shown to have its
+bottom in abuse, whether it's the neatest definition of Voltaire or
+Johnson or just the low comedian saying: 'Your mother must have been
+fond of children to bring _you_ up.'"
+
+"But it isn't only their humour--they're so--they've got such
+ideas----"
+
+He brought her in front of him, holding her there with a hand at each
+shoulder, that he might look at her.  Flitting in his mind was the
+memory of that February evening when she was born and he had wondered
+into what long girl she would grow.  And here she was--in his hands
+and before his eyes.  "_Elle est mon rève._"  Strange that one could
+tell oneself in French, and be pleased with the phrase, what one
+would condemn in English as sentimental!  "_Elle est mon rève._"
+
+"You speak, Duffy, as if you'd been wasting your time skimming some
+of the others."
+
+"I've read two, and this is my third, and I'm going to read all of
+them."
+
+"No, no, dear.  Let them alone."  He moved his hands and picked up
+the book.  "I have read them all, and I am a great critic, and think
+them small beer.  I'll get you something that'll really interest you,
+and be improving at the same time.  'Sandford and Merton,' have you
+read that?  And 'The Swiss Family Robinson.' ... Or since you were
+doubtless made for pleasure rather than profit, I'll get you 'The
+Worst Girl in the Fourth Form.'  Only name your choice, so that you
+don't read unedifying stuff like this."
+
+She snatched back the book.
+
+"My choice is all the other books of T. Tenter Bruno.  They're
+ripping."
+
+"Oh, they seem more to enthusiasm and--yes, to your youthful mixture
+of generosity and ignorance--than they really are.  They will serve
+their purpose--amuse a few people and be deservedly forgotten."
+
+"You know they won't.  You know you think they're splendid.  You'd be
+a fool if you didn't.  I don't want to flatter you, but whatever else
+you are, you're not a fool.  I've never read anything like them.  I
+never thought books on subjects like that could be interesting like
+that.  Daddy, I'm awfully proud of you."
+
+Mr. Bruno smiled, and once more pressed her to his side.
+
+"_Pride_?  You don't know one-tenth of what the word means.  Pride,
+Duffy.  When you have a daughter who not only speaks well of your
+books but even reads them, you'll begin to probe the depths of the
+word."  He kissed her forehead.  "And when you look her up and down
+and realise that there's a chance of her--well a chance of her--let
+us say, a chance of her being not without beauty----"
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not," interrupted Daphne.  "I can't see it at all."
+
+"You have tried hard?"
+
+"Of course I have.  And I think I'm like a filleted hat-pin."
+
+"Oh, no.  No, you're not at all like a filleted hatpin.  But you
+stoop a little, dear.  However, that'll be overcome as the sap comes
+up the stalk; the droop will disappear then, and the whole
+contraption become less--less green.  It's funny, but Nature
+sometimes completes her sculpturing of a woman in seventeen years,
+and sometimes she dawdles much longer over the work.  If she's
+anything like me, she dawdles over those she wants to make best.
+We'll wait till you're twenty, Duffy, and see what you're like then."
+
+The mind that she took back to Hemans House was like a shop whose
+stock has been largely altered.  New goods were stored where the
+religion had been.  They were goods of which she knew the labels and
+the pictured covers better than the contents.  The labels were ever
+pleasant to handle: "More advanced schools of thought," "In advance
+of the age in which he lived," "A Leader of the Left," "The School of
+William Morris"; and the pictures and designs showed Cobden and
+Bright on their platforms hypnotizing great audiences; Ruskin
+worrying Utilitarianism with the rumble of his thunderous periods;
+Swinburne singing melodious blasphemies to the dishonour of God and
+the glory of Man; and Friedrich Nietzsche (succulent mouthful) coming
+up like a wind from Germany.
+
+She wanted to be a Leader of the Left.  And why not?  Quite obviously
+Miss Vidella was the very type of a reactionary, and equally
+obviously Daphne had always led a more advanced school.  The--the
+school of Daphne Bruno.  She was in advance of the system in which
+she moved.
+
+Take the question of hockey, which she had been playing in holidays
+with most flattering success.  Miss Vidella's absurd prohibition of
+the game was a piece of tyranny that ought to be resisted.  Hemans
+House awaited a Liberator.  A Risorgimento.
+
+Remembering Cobden and Bright on their rostrums, she decided, after a
+discussion with the elder girls, that they must have a political
+meeting.  Who would speak?  Well, anyone who had anything to say;
+she, if they liked, would mount the platform first.  Only the elder
+girls would be regarded as possessing the full rights of citizens and
+allowed to attend.  It sounded a jolly game, and these elder girls
+assembled eagerly in an empty class-room at the advertised hour and
+pushed themselves into desks or along the form that stretched in
+front of the desks under the mistress's low platform.  In the middle
+of this form sat Daphne with her legs crossed.
+
+"We ought to have a chairman," said she, when nobody seemed to know
+what was going to happen next.
+
+"Oh, yes, let's have a chairman," said a very lanky girl, Viola
+Rance, and she instanced her neighbour: "Queenie Dutroit'll be
+chairman."
+
+"No, I shan't," snapped Queenie, horrified at the suggestion that she
+should do anything more public than sitting where she was.
+
+"I vote old Viola's chairman herself," called a girl who, being at
+the back and rather small, was in no danger of being thrust into the
+position.
+
+"Yes, yes," endorsed several; and Queenie added, "Yes, she's so ready
+to suggest others, let her do the chairmaning herself."
+
+Daphne, to push matters on, started a clapping of her hands, with the
+result, as she expected, that every girl did the same; and Viola, not
+displeased, though very red and inclined to giggle, slid flexuously
+on to the platform and into the mistress's chair behind the
+writing-table.  The applause stopped, and the chairman looked down at
+Daphne in the front row and asked:
+
+"But what do I do?"
+
+"You introduce me."
+
+Viola got up, giggled, and sat down in red confusion.
+
+"Don't be an ass, Vi," grumbled Daphne.  "If you'd any gumption you'd
+have entered into the spirit of the thing and said, 'Ladies and
+gentlemen, I have much pleasure in introducing our first speaker for
+this evening, Miss Daphne Bruno.'"
+
+Viola immediately got up and raced through this sentence, though the
+last words were drowned in the rising tide of the giggle.
+
+Then Daphne stepped on to the platform.  No one had the wit or the
+courage to start the conventional applause; and when she turned and
+faced the audience she saw only a roomful of girls, some of whom were
+gaping at her and some sniggering as if they thought she looked
+rather a fool.  She felt disappointed and sad.  Why was it that,
+whether you were creating books or organizing picturesque
+demonstrations, it was so much easier to see them in dreams than to
+give them form.  The ideas for a speech that had foggily filled her
+head thinned into nothing.  She picked up something off the
+writing-table, put it back again, and began without heart:
+
+"Well, it's like this.  It's--I mean, I think we ought to have
+hockey.  All the other decent schools are."
+
+Not another word could she think of.  She saw nothing but a horrid
+hiatus before her.  If only some of those staring girls would say
+"Hear, hear!"  But though it had probably occurred to many of them,
+all were too nervous of making fools of themselves.  And indeed there
+was nothing more to say.  Not being practised in political oratory,
+Daphne had expressed the origin and the business of the meeting, the
+reason of her speaking and the views which the audience had brought
+with them and which they would take away, in twenty words and ten
+seconds.  But it seemed to her a sickly failure, and with a big
+effort she threw some more words into the awful lacuna.
+
+"It's a topping game.  Other schools are playing hockey, and I think
+we ought to have hockey too."
+
+Some one giggled at the back, and fortunately this stirred temper,
+and temper stirred speech.
+
+"I don't see anything funny in it.  Giggling never did anything yet.
+It's perfectly piffling to go for a walk when we might be playing
+hockey.  What I vote is that we all go in a sort of deputation and
+ask Miss Vidella to let us play hockey this term.  If she gives
+in--which isn't likely--she'll probably only treat us to some of her
+celebrated queenly sarcasm; and if she refuses we shall have to
+organise a sort of secret intrigue to force her hand--a Liberationist
+Society, if you like.  Like the National Assembly in France.  Or the
+Risorgimento.  I've got a plan of action in the event of it coming to
+that.  I think we could all write to our parents asking them to
+support the general desire for hockey, and simply get her flooded
+with letters.  I've got her absolutely weighed up, and I'm dead
+certain that she'd never say 'No' to the majority of the parents.
+It's always the same; these things only want the courage and--and
+some one to make a start.  Just you see.  If we have the grit to hold
+out we shall win."
+
+It was not at all a bad speech, thought Daphne, and for its crown
+needed only a burst of applause.  But nothing followed it except an
+embarrassed silence, and when that was getting too uncomfortable, an
+upward glance from the chairman, with the question:
+
+"What do I do now, Dafs?"
+
+"Oh, you can ask if anybody has any comment to make on what they have
+heard."
+
+Viola stood slightly.
+
+"Has anybody any comment to make on----"  But it sounded to her so
+silly that the rest of the sentence was lost in the giggle with
+which, blushingly, she resumed her chair.
+
+Nobody had anything to say; most were laughing at Viola.
+
+Daphne stepped off the platform and sat again on the form in front,
+crossing her legs and grasping her knee.
+
+"Is that all?" inquired the chairman, when she saw the principal
+speaker disappearing like that.
+
+"Oh, I suppose so."
+
+"Well, what happens now?"
+
+"Oh, you can ask them if they agree to what I have said, to show it
+by holding up their hands."
+
+Daphne knew that when the question was put all would want to hold up
+their hands and all would wait for some one else to do it first, so
+she flung up her own, and looking round, saw a forest of arms, many
+of which were waving about and trying to be funny.
+
+"Ask if any one disagrees."
+
+"Any one dis-agree?"
+
+Not a soul.  No one was likely to make herself so conspicuous.
+
+"Well, what happens now?"
+
+Daphne shrugged.  Her imagination was vividly showing her what a good
+chairman might have made of this triumph.  "Oh, tell them the
+meeting's adjourned."
+
+"The meeting's adjourned," said Viola, and, giggling, she jumped off
+the platform.
+
+The minute the meeting was adjourned everybody had an undelivered
+speech to deliver.  They stood in a group round Daphne and argued the
+question.  It ended in her plan being adopted and a deputation formed
+to wait on the head mistress.
+
+Daphne was at once proud and nervous as she led her deputation the
+next day, just before lunch, into Miss Vidella's room.
+
+Miss Vidella was sitting at a little writing-table.  She watched this
+entry of half a dozen girls with lifted eyebrows.
+
+"What is it you want, dears?  I am very busy."
+
+"We want to know--we wanted to ask you," began Daphne, "on behalf of
+all the girls, if you would let us play hockey this term?"
+
+Miss Vidella stared at the speaker.  She removed her spectacles and
+held them in her fat hand on the table.  That she was angry there
+could be no doubt, and that she was thinking out some sarcasms like a
+dentist selecting his sharp little tools.
+
+"Have you ever played hockey in the Christmas term?"
+
+Daphne was obliged to answer "No."
+
+"Have you ever played hockey any term?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why should you play hockey this term?  I am not clear on the
+point, Daphne dear."
+
+"We thought perhaps if we petitioned you, you would let us."
+
+Miss Vidella replaced her spectacles on her nose as if the point
+could now be studied more closely.  The point, it appeared, was in
+the middle of Daphne's face.
+
+"Have I ever, on being petitioned, allowed you to do anything
+unladylike?"
+
+Daphne couldn't very well point out to her that the epithet
+"unladylike" was a _Petitio Principii_, or Begging of the Question,
+so she murmured, "No."
+
+"If you were to come to me, one by one, and say: 'Dear Miss Vidella,
+may I do something which you consider unlady-like?' would not my
+answer be: 'No, my dear, not at Hemans House'?"
+
+She had acted the "No, my dear," with its inclination of the head, to
+an imaginary girl at her side, and now turned to Daphne for her reply.
+
+"Yes--I suppose so."
+
+"Well, would not the answer that I give to you severally be the
+answer that I give to you all together?"
+
+Daphne was confused, and said again: "I suppose so."
+
+"Then I am not at all clear as to what is the idea of your coming in
+such a funny little group as this.  Run away, my dears, and get ready
+for your dinners.  I am very busy, and have no time just now to play
+with you in your strange little games."
+
+As the deputation moved out, Daphne felt furious.  It was the only
+thing to feel if you were not to feel foolish.
+
+"I told you nothing would come of that," she said hastily, to
+forestall any criticism of her leadership, "nothing except a
+performance by Petsy.  But I never expected anything to.  That was
+only a flourish.  It's the next step that matters.  I'm perfectly
+determined to beat her on this matter.  And I should think that you
+would be after she's tried to make fools of you like that."
+
+The letter to the parents, outlined by Daphne, she thought
+exceedingly well done.  As a politician she saw the skilfulness of
+the phrase, "give your _support_ to the request of _many other_
+parents"; and as an authoress with some idea of emotional effect, she
+was particularly satisfied with the postscript, "_Please_ do."  No
+kindly parent would resist that.
+
+
+When Miss Vidella watched the flooding in of requests from fathers
+and mothers that, if possible, hockey might be taught to their girls,
+she was more than flustered--she was frightened.  To be queenly with
+a deputation of tongue-tied pupils was one thing, but to resist a
+concerted movement by parents was quite another.  It could not be
+done.  The difficulty was how to yield to the parents without seeming
+to eat the sarcasms she had offered to the deputation.  She squeezed
+through this awkward pass by saying to the assembled school, one day
+before lunch:
+
+"I understand now that when some of the elder girls waited on me last
+week with a request for the institution of hockey, they did so at the
+suggestion of their parents.  If the girls had been wiser they would
+have made this clear.  I think it very right and proper of your
+parents to trust you to come and tell me all that they consider
+desirable for your welfare, and to know that I shall always give
+every attention to their wishes.  I may in this case doubt the wisdom
+of their opinion, but I understand that it must take precedence over
+mine.  The request will therefore be conceded.  I understand that
+Miss Bellamy has a knowledge of the game, and that, according to her,
+our present field will be large enough.  I will therefore order an
+adequate supply of the necessary implements, and hope you will be
+able to try your hands at this new recreation in a day or two.  I
+shall, of course, be there to supervise your play at so dangerous a
+game."
+
+She moved away to a chorus of "Thank you, Miss Vidella."
+
+Daphne knew that every girl had thrown at her a swift glance, and she
+tried to cover her feelings with a mask of unconcern.  The smile that
+broke through her control, and fought with her lips, was rather one
+of nervousness at being looked at than of exultation in a triumph.
+Her glow was mixed with a knowledge not wholly pleasant that she had
+never so completely despised her head mistress.  In such contempt, as
+in the deeps of a pool, lay possibilities of which she could feel
+herself afraid.
+
+
+Miss Bellamy was now dressed in an unexpected importance, and very
+conscious of it.  A stout, bustling woman of thirty-five, she fussed
+about, equipping the two teams which were to make the first venture
+into the new game, marking the field with their aid, and explaining
+on a blackboard the principles of hockey to those who had everything
+to learn.  And the day of the first trial, a golden afternoon in St.
+Luke's Summer, she led the girls to their field as excitedly as any
+of them.  Miss Vidella followed less easily and happily.  And Daphne,
+who throughout the preparations had been as officious and explanatory
+as Miss Bellamy, declared that Petsy had come simply and solely to
+make herself a nuisance.  She would probably stand on the touch line
+and worry the game like a fat puppy who was feeling rather sick.
+
+It was an accurate prophecy.  When all the girls were in their
+places, and Miss Bellamy had done pushing them there, or pointing all
+over the field with her whistle, Daphne shouted: "Shall I bully off
+with Viola?"
+
+And Miss Vidella at once raised her voice.
+
+"'Bully off.' I do wish you wouldn't talk slang, Daphne dear.  You
+know I have never tolerated it.  'Bully off' is a phrase that I have
+never heard, and do not wish to hear again."
+
+"But it's the correct term, Miss Vidella."
+
+"It really is," endorsed Miss Bellamy, who had rushed up to bring an
+expert's advice to the solution of a difficulty.
+
+"Dear me"--Miss Vidella lifted her shoulders resignedly--"what
+unpleasant terms these rough games do employ!"
+
+They bullied off, and the game swung into noisy life.  Its two most
+conspicuous performers were Daphne and Miss Bellamy.  Daphne was
+early captured by it, mind and body.  She was nearly always in
+possession of the ball, and the repeated running had damped her
+forehead and shortened her breathing; she felt the rises of her
+breast, and a delightful dryness and thirst stabbing her low down in
+the throat.  There was a breeze that would not have been perceptible
+but for the dampness on her brow, and when it touched that, it
+strangely heightened her pleasure.  It carried fugitive thoughts of
+long drinks, the spray of the sea, or immersion in bath or lake.
+Once she had fallen heavily, and the smell of dried earth on her palm
+toned exactly with the thirst, the quick breathing, the sting of
+gathering blisters, and the coldness on her temples.  Health and
+optimism had become sensuous things.  And how was it that these
+sensations, though within her, were at one with remembered things
+without--with firelight on old wood, mellow evenings, birds and
+squirrels, and sentences in Hans Andersen: "She flew away as if she
+were flying straight into the sun"--with all those things that she
+must capture and put into books?
+
+Miss Bellamy rushed about, with her whistle at her teeth or in her
+hand.  When she wasn't blowing the whistle, she was shouting: "Keep
+your places!  Pass the ball--oh, for goodness' sake pass it
+sometimes.  Now then, Evelyn!  Played!  Oh, played indeed!"  Probably
+she wanted to impress the pupils and the principal.  And certainly
+she impressed Miss Vidella--but very unfavourably.  There was an
+abnormal second when she was standing at rest to watch a scramble
+near Miss Vidella, and Miss Vidella took the opportunity to begin, "I
+can't think, Miss Bellamy, that it's necessary to shout at the
+children so"; but just then Miss Bellamy saw a crass error in the
+play, shot out a pointing forefinger, and blew her whistle
+imperiously.
+
+"Sticks!  Sticks!  Sticks!" she cried.  "Madeline you mustn't lift
+your stick above your shoulder."
+
+"Come on--that's a free hit," shouted Daphne.  "Chuck us the pill."
+
+It was useless wishing she hadn't said it, for Miss Vidella was
+already calling.
+
+"Daphne dear.  Come here.  What was that you said?"
+
+"I said, 'Chuck us the pill'."
+
+Miss Vidella nodded.
+
+"I thought those were the words.  Well, I am so ignorant of this game
+that I do not know if that is the prescribed expression.  Is it?"
+
+"Well--no."
+
+"You mean, it was slang?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose so."
+
+"Precisely.  And I cannot allow the elder girls to set such an
+example to the younger ones.  Besides, it is great disrespect to Miss
+Bellamy to use language like that in a game of which she is in
+charge.  Let me hear you apologise to her."
+
+Daphne's first impulse was to throw down her stick and walk off, but
+she remembered the delight of the game, and determined not to be
+robbed of it by any pomposity of Miss Vidella.  And she so far obeyed
+her head mistress as to turn to Miss Bellamy and mutter: "Miss
+Vidella says I'm to apologise to you."  Miss Bellamy smiled an
+acknowledgment, and a bow from the head mistress indicated that she
+was satisfied, and the game might proceed.
+
+Daphne had no wish to offend a second time, and for the rest of the
+game, except for the very last minute, managed to play and shout
+without being called to order.  She had, in fact, forgotten her anger
+with the head mistress, so exciting was the struggle.  The two goals
+won by her side, in defiant answer to two won by their opponents, had
+been scored by herself, and the girls were saying: "No wonder you
+wanted to play hockey so as to show off."  Her face and neck were
+streaming, and her body seemed to have been fitted with a new and
+different breathing system.  Frequently she wiped her forehead with
+her sleeve, or tossed the wet hair-wisps out of her eyes.  If she was
+not driving the ball herself she was shouting encouragement and
+praise to the others.  "Oh, played! ... I say, well played! ... Look
+out! ... _Billow_!"  Her will and every faculty were set upon
+securing the third goal before the shrieking and perspiring Miss
+Bellamy should sound her whistle for the last time.  The low slant of
+the sunlight and the stretching of the shadows told her that time was
+very short.  Any second now might end the game.  The matter was
+desperate; there was a look of evening over the field.  Her stick
+perpetually reached the ball and forced it through a jumble of
+confused amateurs, while Miss Bellamy shouted: "Keep your places!
+Keep your places, all of you!" and Miss Vidella could be heard
+muttering a dislike of the worse scrimmages.  At last Daphne won
+through with the ball, and came down the side-line with irresistible
+impetus, confident that now on the very sound of the whistle she was
+going to score her third goal.  She had a faint impression of Miss
+Vidella stepping back from the touch-line so as to be out of danger.
+So fierce was her rush that the opposing full-back, frenzied with
+ignorance and dismay, hit her with great force on the shin.  In the
+moment of sharp pain, Daphne flung her stick anywhere, and muttered:
+"Oh, damn! damn!"
+
+All around her heard, and cast quick glances at the head mistress.
+All were probably feeling the satisfaction of being present when
+something really serious had happened.  The head mistress, no doubt,
+was the most satisfied of all, because there are few happinesses so
+great as the first enjoyment of indignation.
+
+"Miss Bellamy.  Miss Bellamy," she shrieked to the referee, who, from
+her distance, was shouting encouragement to this waning corner of the
+game.  "Miss Bellamy, stop the game."
+
+"Play on, you girls," shouted Miss Bellamy.  "Don't stand there as if
+you were afraid of the ball.  Keep the ball moving, for goodness'
+sake."
+
+"Do nothing of the sort," commanded Miss Vidella.  "Don't touch the
+ball.  Miss Bellamy"--Miss Bellamy was running, whistle in mouth, to
+solve the problem that was hindering the game--"I have instructed the
+girls to stop.  They are very rightly too shocked to continue.  I
+wish them to stop.  Please blow that whistle, if that is the way such
+a game is brought to an end."
+
+Miss Bellamy, bewildered, sounded her whistle and stood near to
+witness a public censuring.
+
+Daphne, after rubbing her shin, walked to her hockey stick, slightly
+exaggerating her limp, picked it up and examined its binding.
+
+"Daphne....  I hardly know how to speak to you.  For fifteen years I
+have given my life to the education and guidance of my schoolgirls,
+but never till this day have I heard one of them--I cannot bring
+myself to say it--heard one of them use such a word as passed your
+lips just now.  I pray I shall never be asked to live through that
+moment again.  I--and all these dear girls, I believe--are humiliated
+and ashamed.  You, too, I dare believe, are also deeply ashamed."
+
+"Well, I don't see why I should have been hit on the shins for
+nothing.  It'd have been a goal if----"
+
+"Go back to the school.  I confess I know not how to deal with you.
+I confess to being beaten by you.  Fortunately there is no precedent
+in my experience which enables me to deal adequately on the spur of
+the moment with your offence.  You are a girl whom it seems
+impossible to influence or guide.  If all the affection and sympathy
+and gentle correction of the last few years"--Daphne made an obvious
+"Pooh!" with her lips--"has been unavailing to soften your nature, I
+know no other methods.  They have always been those of Hemans House.
+Go back to the school and wait in your bedroom.  I shall have to
+consider how to deal with you.  I feel I shall have to write to your
+dear father----"  Daphne was disposed to reply: "I should.  It'll
+amuse him frightfully."  "And do not attempt to see any other girls.
+I cannot have them taught your dockyard oaths....  This evening I
+will..."
+
+But Daphne had not waited for the rest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Miss Vidella frightened herself more than her pupil when she
+announced that she would write to Mr. Tenter Bruno.  The whole school
+had heard her say she would do a thing which she particularly did not
+want to do.  The Bruno girl had still, presumably, another year to
+spend at her school and to bring in good fees, and it would be unwise
+to give her father the impression that she was getting too big and
+obstreperous for the place.  There must be no quarrel with Mr. Bruno,
+for she wanted his name as a reference.  Besides, she was thoroughly
+afraid of his brilliant modern mind.  And somewhere behind her
+indignation peeped the thought that the offence was not really as bad
+as her posing required her to treat it.  After a tea-time spent in
+deliberation she decided that discretion must masquerade as mercy.
+She climbed the stair to the little single bedroom which Daphne, as
+one of the elder girls, now enjoyed.  She was primed with words of
+austere forgiveness, but when she saw that the criminal was lolling
+on the bed and reading a book, anger made her command:
+
+"Get off that bed at once."
+
+Daphne got off slowly.
+
+"Now put it straight."
+
+Daphne did so.
+
+"You are, indeed, Daphne, a difficult child.  I came upstairs
+disposed to limit my chastisement of you to words of kindness and
+advice, and I find you apparently insensible to the gravity of your
+offence.  I intended to say that I would not hurt your dear father by
+a report of your behaviour, but----"
+
+"I don't mind if you write to him or not."
+
+This was dreadful.  The girl was pushing her into the stream of
+events she desired to escape.
+
+"You don't care?  Have you no affection for him?"
+
+"Yes, heaps; but I don't think he'll die of anything you can tell
+him."
+
+"Are you being impudent, Daphne?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then why do you ask?"
+
+Miss Vidella stared at her, flounced to the door, and said: "I shall
+most certainly write to your father.  I shall do it this moment," and
+thus made her exit.  Yes, she would write that letter at once.  Its
+phrasing shaped in her mind.  Like all weak people she was easily
+made apprehensive lest some one was questioning her strength.  A
+strong gesture was pleasing.  Now that her hand had been forced she
+was proud that she was going to write to Mr. Bruno.  The school
+should know that she had written to Mr. Bruno, and realise that when
+she said she'd do a thing she did it.
+
+
+One person was thrilled by the news of Daphne Bruno's disgrace and
+confinement.  Miss Sims, always curiously exultant when her favourite
+was punished, saw herself coming to her in prison with sympathy and
+undiminished faith.  Her heart beat quickly as she approached the
+bedroom where Daphne was isolated.  Opening the door with a "May I
+come in?" she saw the girl sitting on the bed with one heel beneath
+her, writing something.  This was disappointing.  Miss Sims had
+encouraged the idea that she would be crying.  "She's been made hard
+and callous," thought Miss Sims.  "She will be better softened.
+Gentleness will soften her."
+
+"Hallo," said Daphne, looking up.  She folded over the letter she had
+been writing.
+
+"Duffy dear.  What has been happening?  I could not bear to think of
+you up here."
+
+"Oh, Miss Vidella has been doing a little acting.  She thinks she's
+being very fine and strong.  I'm enjoying myself immensely."
+
+A pity she adopted this defiant attitude.  Miss Sims liked to
+minister to soft and broken things.  And the Character never listened
+to disloyalty.
+
+"Hush, dear.  You know I never listen to rebellious muttering." ...
+She sat down beside the girl.  "Why did you utter such a word?  After
+all, you are a girl who will always exercise a great influence over
+those younger than yourself, and you have them to consider."
+
+Daphne looked away, and Miss Sims knew that this veiled flattery was
+the way to conquer her.  She spent a very happy few minutes, giving
+counsel to the girl, with her heart going out to her as she did so;
+she pointed out how much it behoved one who was plainly a nature of
+strong passions to learn control in small things, and she saw that
+Daphne liked being called a nature of strong passions, and was
+thinking of Miss Sims as the one person who understood her.
+
+"I know, Miss Sims.  But why couldn't Miss Vidella talk to me
+properly--like you do--instead of making an Aunt Sally of me before
+half the school.  She said I was difficult to influence.  I am not,
+am I?  You know."
+
+It was a sweet moment for Miss Sims.
+
+"I have never found you so, dear."
+
+"Of course not, because you're always so understanding.  But she
+always tries to humiliate me before the whole school, and now she
+declares she's going to write a lot of lies to father."
+
+"Hush, dear.  I think she may be unduly severe, but I can see her
+point of view."
+
+"She hasn't got a point of view, except the one that goes with her
+part.  I'm writing to father too....  Oh, Miss Sims, would you--would
+you post it for me?"
+
+Miss Sims smiled tolerantly, but really the request gave her much
+pleasure.  It was picturesque, this taking of a missive from an
+offender in prison.
+
+"I will certainly, dear.  There can be no harm in your father hearing
+what you have to say."
+
+"Oh, that's topping of you."
+
+Daphne added something to her letter, and folded it up and give it to
+Miss Sims.
+
+"Thank you, dear," said the governess.  "And if there is anything
+else you need, or I can do for you--bring you books or anything----"
+Her guilty ear detected a step on the landing outside, and she rose.
+It was not done hastily, for her desire to impress Daphne with her
+serenity and fearlessness was stronger than her fear of being caught
+by Miss Vidella.  But her heart, which fortunately could not be seen,
+was beating faster.
+
+"I will take it for you now.  Good-bye for the time being, dear."
+
+She stooped and kissed her favourite.
+
+
+The next morning over his breakfast Mr. Bruno read of Miss Vidella's
+pain at being obliged to report that she had had occasion to deal
+severely with his daughter, and of her desire that he also would
+write a word of reproof.  Daphne had employed on the hockey field
+language which could not be set on paper, and Miss Vidella wrote in
+the sure knowledge that her father's rebuke would carry very great
+weight with dear Daphne, and that, since this outbreak suggested that
+she had met with unsuitable companions in her vacations, he would
+doubtless wish to be informed of the matter.
+
+"Gracious goodness!" smiled Mr. Bruno, at the ponderous and lumbering
+phrases.  "What on earth can the depraved child have said?"
+
+And all the contraband language that he could think of seemed
+beautifully funny as passing from one of her pupils to Miss Vidella.
+
+Then he picked up an envelope written in the schoolgirl hand of his
+daughter.
+
+"Ah, now perhaps we shall know.  Duffy will doubtless strengthen
+herself to write the obscene word."
+
+His butter-knife sliced the flap, and he read:
+
+
+"DARLING FATHER,--Miss Vidella says she is going to write to you
+about the crimes of your daughter.  I don't know if the old pig
+really meant it, but in case she does I thought I'd get in first.
+Her only accusation is that I have used slang and one swear word.  I
+don't think the slang business will upset you much because you say in
+'The Decay of Romanticism' that slang is often the natural, urgent
+poetry of a vital people."  ("Good heavens!" thought Mr. Bruno, "she
+must have copied the sentence straight out of the book.") "And you
+give examples that you say are Shakespearean in their aptness, energy
+and high compression, and you say further on that those who use slang
+brilliantly are often more vivacious and dynamic minds than those who
+stagnate in a mould of stilted phraseology like Miss Vidella.  I
+quite agree with you, as I do with most of what you have written.
+And I am not saying this just because I want you to side with me, but
+because I really do.  Old Petsy could no more think of that about
+slang than she could fly.  That is really rather witty about her
+flying, as you would understand if you could see her.  But the swear
+word will probably not please you so well.  What happened was this.
+I felt that Miss Vidella was reactionary in her ban on hockey, and
+that it was time Hemans House advanced a little, so as to be abreast
+of modern ideas, and I accordingly led a successful agitation for
+reform in the matter.  That, of course, stuck in her gizzard, and I'm
+sure she came on to the hockey field determined to spoil the game.
+What I blame myself for is not swearing so much"--(Mr. Bruno read
+this sentence again before murmuring: "Duffy, Duffy, you're getting
+dangerously ambiguous")--"as giving the old cat an opening.  Annie
+Hurst, silly little ass, caught me an awful whack on the shin, and
+before I knew what had happened, I said 'O damn!' which you often say
+when the soup-plate is hot.  That was all, and it's really painful, a
+whack on the shin-bone with a hockey stick, and I've got a huge
+bruise and what looks like a little dent in the bone.  That side of
+it doesn't seem to have struck Miss Vidella.
+
+"Daddy, I have got a suggestion.  If you think it wise to come down
+and rebuke me, couldn't we do it at a tea-shop and have a jolly
+afternoon together?
+
+"Daddy, I'm reading 'Park and Pavement,' and I like it awfully.  It's
+your best book, I think, in my humble opinion.  But then I think that
+of each one as I read it.  I'm in disgrace in my bedroom, and
+enjoying myself awfully.  It's been fun writing to you.--Yours
+awfully,
+
+"DUFFY."
+
+"P.S.--I have been wondering how I was going to post this, but an
+awfully decent mistress is going to post it for me.--D. D. T. B."
+
+
+The effect of Daphne's letter on her father was similar to that which
+she unconsciously used to work when she burst uninvited into his
+gaze.  There was an immediate quickening of his love, a flavour of
+self-reproach that he passed so much time away from her, and, as he
+pictured her sitting on her bed and writing to him, a stirring of the
+heart that was almost painful.
+
+"Oh, damn!  That prehistoric old fool shan't persecute her.  She
+shall swear if she likes.  That is to say, she shall do nothing of
+the sort, for it would spoil her charm.  But she's my daughter, and
+beginning to stand, I fancy, in much the same relation to that
+slow-going vehicle, her school, as I do to society to-day.  I like to
+think it.  With all her ignorance and immaturity she's too dynamic
+for her surroundings.  I must write, I suppose.  No, damn it, I'll go
+and see her, and the absurd place as well.  If it's as I imagine, we
+must do something better for her."
+
+It was impossible for him to be other than courteous, and he wrote to
+Miss Vidella thanking her for her thoughtfulness, telling her that he
+would like to come and see her the next afternoon and requesting her
+to be so good as to inform Daphne of his intentions.  His kindest
+regards concluded the letter.
+
+Miss Vidella was delighted.  Her strong action was justified.
+Evidently Mr. Tenter Bruno, since he was coming in person, shared her
+distress and approved her discretion.  She began to phrase the high
+commendation he would give when sought as a reference for Hemans
+House.  "I shall ever be grateful for Miss Vidella's watchful care of
+my own daughter."  And after prayers that mornings she announced to
+the assembled school:
+
+"I have just received a letter from Mr. Tenter Bruno, who will visit
+the school this afternoon."  She left that to sink in.  The children
+would instantly guess why he was coming, and be impressed with the
+seriousness of a recent incident and the strong hand of their
+principal.  "And, girls, I hope he will come and see you at your
+work.  Mr. Tenter Bruno, as you all know, is a writer with an
+international reputation, and you will like to remember that he
+visited you at your school.  It will also interest your parents."
+
+Mr. Bruno arrived about three o'clock; and after an interview in the
+reception room which was chiefly used by Miss Vidella to explain how
+fond she was of dear Daphne and hoped to make a great success of her,
+and by Mr. Bruno in mental generalizations suggested by such a type
+as this head mistress, he was left alone in a saddle-bag chair to
+await his daughter.  She burst in, most obviously dressed to receive
+him.  And because she was tall, and he unused to such an interview,
+he rose like an embarrassed guest to greet her.  After the fat,
+black, pompous figure of the head mistress, she came with something
+like a shock of contrast; he saw the roundness of her head under its
+brown hair newly brushed, the freshness of her eyes and cheeks, the
+smallness of her neck, and the fast-refining outline of her body and
+her limbs.  The critic in him, as well as the father, approved it
+all.  Wonderful how she could move him sometimes!  In the chamber of
+his anti-sentimental brain, moving without guilt among the censors
+there, was the thought: "You are mine ... you came from me ...
+Daphne."
+
+"Hallo, Daddy!"
+
+She rose on her toes to kiss him, and he gave her waist a hug.
+
+"So you've been using the language of the tap-room to that strange
+old woman."
+
+"I haven't," denied Daphne, "I told you exactly what I said."
+
+"Good heavens, miss!  And wasn't that outrageous in a slender girl?"
+
+"No, not considering the hefty blow I got on my leg.  I often say
+'Oh, damn!' to myself, as I'm sure everybody does, and that time it
+came out aloud.  And with good reason, too.  Just look here."  And
+she made as if to remove her stocking.
+
+"No, no, no.  Don't show me anything unpleasant.  Besides, you've got
+it all wrong, Duffy.  The idea of the strange old lady isn't so much
+that you should show me some trifling bruise on your shin, as that I
+should talk to you about the really serious bruise on my heart.  That
+a daughter of mine should say--such words!  You mustn't, Duffy; for
+you're in danger of becoming a--a beautiful creature, and it's out of
+harmony for one of that pattern to use squalid words.  The whole
+product is not homogeneous.  It's bad art."
+
+"Well," said his daughter.  "That's the most sensible way I've ever
+heard it put."
+
+"Yes, and----However....  How old are you, Duffy?"
+
+"Seventeen for all practical purposes."
+
+"Well, I have a practical purpose.  Let us sit down and talk it over.
+Are you allowed to sit in this room?"
+
+They seated themselves, and he told her of a scheme that he had been
+pondering in the train.  And because it was one that he knew she
+would love, he could only approach it through a cloud of raillery.
+Publicity, he said, was a very subtle question, and if in the past he
+had been seen in public with so ordinary a daughter as she, the sale
+of his books would doubtless have suffered.  But now she had changed,
+and every year she would become of greater and greater publicity
+value.  He felt he would like to have her with him as much as
+possible.  He didn't believe this droll school had anything more to
+give her, and she could probably do much better, since the taste for
+less frivolous reading seemed to have come, enjoying the free run of
+his library and having some music lessons at home.  Not that there
+would be much time for that, because he had long wanted to spend a
+year in Paris, and proposed taking her there next year.  In Paris he
+would put her on her honour to study the French language and squeeze
+all the knowledge that was to be squeezed out of picture galleries,
+historic buildings, the _Opéra_ and the _Comédie Française_.  In the
+summer they would wander in Switzerland and down into Italy, and as
+the weather cooled make tracks for Rome.
+
+"Daddy!" interrupted Daphne.  "Oh, do you mean it?  Lord, I'm glad I
+swore.  What an awful suck for Petsy!"
+
+He smiled as he watched her enthusiasm.
+
+"But mark you, the first time you swear, you'll be sent back to
+Windsor, and doubtless to your bedroom there."
+
+"And may I go home with you to-day?"
+
+"Don't be so heady, my dear.  Or I shall decide that you are still
+very immature, and leave you to your pothooks for another year.  You
+can finish at the end of this term."
+
+"Oh, well, I can stick that out....  Daddy, how glorious!"
+
+She jumped up and kissed him in gratitude.
+
+"But you must promise to stay with me a little while," stipulated he,
+"and not marry the first lout that comes lopping up the drive.  Say a
+couple of years at least....  Yes, and now come and be reprimanded at
+this pastry shop."
+
+"Oh, but first you've got to go round and see the girls at their
+lessons.  I think Miss Vidella wants to show you off, but whether she
+wants to or not, I do."
+
+"Oh d----.  Yes, I was about to use your favourite oath.  Yes, the
+singular old woman did mention something of the sort.  But is it
+really necessary?"
+
+"Absolutely.  Several of the elder girls are reading your books, and,
+though they don't understand them as well as I do, they are anxious
+to see what you look like.  Besides, I want them to see that you are
+not angry or anything, and that Miss Vidella's sneaking has
+hopelessly failed."
+
+They passed into the passage.  And the opening of their door was the
+signal for another to open and emit the head mistress.  Mr. Bruno
+felt his daughter immediately take hold of his arm.
+
+"Oh, before you go," said the head mistress, "you promised to visit
+my dear girls.  They will appreciate a visit from you so much."
+
+"Well, so long as I'm not expected to address them," he began.
+
+"Oh, no, certainly not," assured Miss Vidella....  "Daphne dear, you
+had better go to your class-room."
+
+Mr. Bruno felt the hold on his arm tightened.
+
+"But father's taking me out to tea."
+
+It was a moment of strain.  Clearly the head mistress was at a loss
+what to say, though the words behind her eyes said: "I think such a
+reward to the child most unsuitable."  Mr. Bruno hastened to ease the
+atmosphere by turning to his daughter with a reproof: "If Miss
+Vidella is kind enough to consent, you mean." ... And then to Miss
+Vidella, with the request: "Having come so far, I trust you will
+allow me to keep her for the afternoon."
+
+The head mistress bowed austerely, and led the way to the
+schoolrooms, while Daphne whispered:
+
+"Tell her I'm leaving at the end of the term, do."
+
+"My dear, I couldn't possibly tell her to her face.  I never could
+say anything that was the least unpleasant.  I'll write it to her."
+
+"Oh, stuff!  She's much more afraid of you than you are of her."
+
+"It's impossible."
+
+All the voyage through the class-rooms she was hanging ostentatiously
+on his arm.
+
+The first hour of their companionship in the town was very happy, but
+then supervened a thing that worried and saddened him; his daughter's
+prattle over the tea-cups palled, and he became a-fidget to get home
+to his books.  Hardly hearing what she said, he began to deplore his
+intolerance of immature minds that had no ideas or stimulations to
+give him--whether they were adult minds or children's.  Love ought to
+enable him to come out of himself and listen.  But he had lost the
+power.  Only with intellects of his own order, or with books, could
+he establish correspondence....  Still, she would improve, and be his
+most valuable companion one day.
+
+He looked at his watch and began to discuss his train.
+
+
+All that evening and the next day Daphne was covertly bragging:
+"Father's taking me away....  I'm to travel with him instead of
+coming back to school.  We're going to Paris for a year, and then to
+Switzerland and Italy and Rome....  I shall probably keep house for
+him."  To her more intimate friends she added: "You must come and
+stay with us sometimes."  The news, told in confidence to the girls,
+created interest, but no dismay--she was not popular enough for that.
+
+Each day she scanned Miss Vidella's face for some evidence that her
+father's letter had come.  And when a whole week had passed with no
+trace of a nasty shock behind the steel spectacles, a dread seized
+her lest his glorious plan, now that she was remote, had been
+shelved.  In suspense she wrote to inquire if he had sent his letter,
+and, if not, to urge him to do so.  "Daddy darling, Have you written
+about that business?  If you haven't, I don't think you should delay.
+Oh, I do want to do all you said, and travel with you...."
+
+His reply was a confession that, owing to pressure of work, he had
+neglected to write.  "But I've just written the letter, and it will
+be posted with this one.  Sorry you've been worrying, but it was my
+fault.  _Peccavi, peccavi, peccavissimi_, as the monk said whose
+penitence was in excess of his Latin."
+
+Then Miss Vidella had taken the knock this very morning.  Daphne
+studied her to see how she looked after it.  There was no visible
+difference in her.  And the morning and the evening passed.  None of
+her words or looks could be twisted into evidence that she knew
+Daphne Bruno was leaving.  This was Wednesday.  Thursday provided no
+sign.  Friday was equally barren, and by the evening of that day
+Daphne was in despair, tears very close to her eyes.  "Oh, he said he
+had written and posted it.  He said he posted it on Tuesday night.
+He can't have done it.  I _won't_ come back next term.  I couldn't,
+now I've once heard I wasn't going to.  If I have to come back next
+term I shall do something desperate."
+
+But on Saturday morning her impatient eyes did detect a new
+haughtiness in the carriage of the head mistress when the black
+figure swept past her.  And after breakfast her waking hopes were
+confirmed by Miss Vidella's request: "Daphne, I wish you would
+accompany me to the reception-room.  I desire to speak to you."
+
+Oh, this meant everything.  She felt exhilarated, triumphant, free,
+as she walked behind Miss Vidella.  The moment compensated her for
+the many times she had walked there in disgrace.  The little, stout,
+waddling black figure led the way into the room, and, sitting down,
+put on spectacles, and took a letter from the writing-table.
+
+"I am surprised, very much surprised, to receive this morning a
+letter from your father saying that he proposes taking you away at
+the end of the term."
+
+She looked up from the letter at her pupil who answered with a
+sentence she had been longing to use.
+
+"Yes, he told me he was going to the other day when he was down here."
+
+"Oh, indeed?"  Miss Vidella's eyebrows went up and hovered a second
+over the top of her spectacles.  "A most unusual proceeding
+altogether, I think....  Er, did you ask him to do this thing?"
+
+"No, he suggested it first."
+
+"And why?  Is he dissatisfied with the school in any way?  It would
+be strange if he were, after being content with it for nearly five
+years."
+
+"I don't think he ever thought much about it," suggested Daphne as a
+solution.
+
+"And what precisely do you desire to convey by that?"
+
+Daphne shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Is he dissatisfied--now that he has troubled to think about it?"
+
+She shrugged again.  It was so difficult to be outspokenly rude and
+say: "Of course he is," and she couldn't think of any innuendo that
+would express the same idea.
+
+"Answer me, please.  I am anxious to know if you have--if this school
+has suffered from any misrepresentation."
+
+"I think he wants me to travel with him.  To Paris and Switzerland
+and Rome."
+
+"Dear, dear," protested Miss Vidella.  "I always find you dear girls
+think I am a fool.  Such is surely an obvious excuse.  One doesn't
+decide to go travelling to Paris and Switzerland and Rome during an
+afternoon's visit, thus foregoing a term's fees.  Why do you
+prevaricate, Daphne?  Speak the truth."
+
+"Well, I think he does think the school is old-fashioned and that I'm
+not doing much good."
+
+"Excellent!  Excellent!" nodded Miss Vidella, getting off her seat.
+"Well, now we know.  Yes, from my humble and obsolete standpoint, he
+is right on both scores.  It is an old fashion to object with all the
+strength one can command to the use of foul oaths by one's girls--and
+as you have never shown any affection or loyalty to your school it
+cannot be said that you are doing much good."
+
+"I suppose not."
+
+The rebellious note caused the mistress to stare at her.  In the
+pause Daphne knew what Miss Vidella was thinking: that, since there
+was now no possibility of keeping the Bruno girl, she could afford to
+be very strong.
+
+"H'm, I think I see."  She nodded meaningly.  "I begin to see.  Yes,
+of course.  Your dear father thought that your position here, after
+having so disgraced yourself, would be uncomfortable in the extreme.
+Your surroundings would always fill you with shame, and your
+school-fellows would to a certain extent reprobate you."
+
+"I don't think they're very concerned about it," fired Daphne, "and
+if they were, it wouldn't worry me."
+
+Miss Vidella paid no heed.
+
+"And yes, I see.  Your dear father conceived that, after much
+thought, I should feel I could not in the interest of my dear girls
+keep you here, so he has written _first_ to suggest your removal, and
+thus saved me the painful duty of asking him to take you away."
+
+The blood poured over Daphne's face.  She loathed her head mistress,
+and seeing through her weakness to its dregs, cared not what she said.
+
+"You know he doesn't think anything like that.  You know you've only
+just this moment thought of that.  You know you really want me to
+stay so that you won't lose a year of my father's fees.  And--and you
+don't really think it's frightfully serious if some one says 'damn';
+but that it's enormously fetching to pretend that you do.  I dare say
+you say it to yourself sometimes.  You know you're awfully sick at
+the idea of my going, and it's only when you've realised that there's
+no ghostly chance of my stopping that you think you had best appear
+frightfully strong and get the credit of having expelled me.  And if
+that--and if you give out that that was the reason of my going, I
+shall get my father to write to the papers about this school and ruin
+you.  They'll any of them publish anything he writes, and only too
+glad...."
+
+Miss Vidella had walked to the bell-push, very likely with some idea
+that a maid could remove Daphne like a tea-tray.  But Daphne didn't
+stay.  Trembling with fear at what she had said and with pleasure in
+it--a heat tingling her cheek-bones, and her heart thumping--she
+hurried out, ready to justify herself to the world.
+
+
+Miss Vidella was trembling too, and her heart going irregularly.
+Never before--not like that--good heavens, no!--the girl was mad,
+dangerous--such a thing was unbelievable--not in all the years--she
+should go--go at once--people should see--it made one feel quite sick
+and faint.  What the girl wanted was to be locked up and thrashed.
+Thrashed!
+
+The maid knocked, entered, and was pettishly dismissed.
+
+Miss Vidella, recovering, tried to think collectedly.  Mr. Tenter
+Bruno's reference being irrevocably lost, there was but one enjoyment
+left--that of being strong.  She would write at once and demand that
+he remove his daughter.  No relief could come to her till the words
+were in ink--till the letter was posted.  With a shaking hand she
+took note-paper and pen.  "I regret--I regret to have to inform you
+that your daughter has again been intolerably insolent, and, as I am
+quite unaccustomed to this sort of treatment, I should--I should
+esteem It a favour if you would allow her to return to her home at
+once.  Yours truly...."
+
+
+That any one should write in that tone to _him_ incensed Mr. Bruno.
+"Hell take the woman," he began, and reached for the bell with a view
+to dispatching a servant and a wire.  But he stopped as he saw a
+letter in his daughter's hand.  "Poor kid," thought he.  Impatiently
+opening it, he read her story of the head mistress's "nasty
+suggestion," and her urgent request that he would write to her some
+words which she could show to her friends as proof that she had not
+been expelled.
+
+"Poor darling!  I won't have her worried like a rabbit by that fat
+little poodle-bitch.  Thank goodness, I can easily supply her need."
+
+
+And the following morning Daphne fled with his letter, still sealed,
+to a deserted room, and there opened it in suspense.
+
+
+"MY DEAREST DAPHNE."  (She guessed that he had avoided her nickname
+lest she were ashamed to show it to her school-fellows.)
+
+"I think that on the whole the sooner I have you back with me the
+better, so that we may prepare for our travels.  I wrote a few days
+ago to Miss Vidella, telling her that you would not return after next
+term--it was last Tuesday I wrote, as I think I told you in a
+contemporary letter--and she wrote in reply begging me to reconsider
+my decision and not to deprive you of your last year at Hemans House,
+which she said was the most important of all.  But I could not agree,
+and wrote to that effect.  I fear from a letter I received to-day
+that she is unreasonably annoyed at my refusal to let you stay,
+though it was quite within my rights; so lest she should vent her
+displeasure on you, I have written asking that you may return
+to-morrow.
+
+"No more at present, for I am very busy.
+
+  "Your loving
+      "FATHER."
+
+
+"Oh, he's a dear!" exclaimed she.  "How wonderfully he's phrased it!
+He _is_ clever!"
+
+She could hardly believe she was to go at once.  Excitement jumped
+her up and led her to the window.  As was fitting, the room to which
+she had fled looked out upon the drive and the exit gates in the
+garden wall.  The wall appeared grey and green, and the sunlight
+glorious beyond.  It was too wonderful to be true.  Suddenly had come
+to her very feet that free country, wide and pleasurable, which ten
+days ago she had hazily thought of as many troublesome miles ahead.
+The goal of the long march of childhood had not waited for her to
+reach it, but had come to meet her.  And it shone everywhere with
+promises: long, indolent reading; hours when one dreamed out books
+(the hours best worth living); travels with her father in places
+whose names were romances--Paris, Switzerland, Italy, Rome--Rome!
+Sooner or later there would be love.  Some one in Paris, perhaps, or
+in Rome.  Among the imperial ruins, as her imagination created them,
+she saw his figure moving--featureless (for one could not decide on
+his features) and of vague form (for was he tall or broad or
+slender?)--just the grey figure of a youth.  Now she was in his arms,
+and the thought of it gave her that emptying delight that had
+accompanied thoughts of Roger's love.  And fame.  Fame was in the
+distance.  It was all incredible.  This morning, before breakfast, a
+schoolgirl.  To-morrow, about ten o'clock, after running down those
+hearthstone steps and bowling in a carriage through those gates, a
+free, independent, pleasure-seeking, fame-seeking woman of the world!
+
+
+To only one person was the news of Daphne's departure a stunning
+blow--Miss Sims.  To her it came like an unexpected death sentence.
+
+She had not cared to think what would happen when Daphne passed out
+of her life; sufficient that the dread hour was a year or more away.
+But ten days ago, without warning, she had been told that it was only
+eight weeks away.  And Daphne's excitement and enthusiasm had pained
+her cruelly.  As she listened to the girl's gaiety she had resolved
+to suffer without complaint.  That self-pity at least she could
+enjoy.  She took her pain away to her bedroom, with its tin
+wash-hand-stand and its hospital bed.  There she dwelt upon it.
+"Never to see you again.  Never to feel that I am moulding you to a
+noble shape."  Well, perhaps it was better thus.  It was better that
+the beloved girl should pass out of her life before she discovered
+her governess to be something much smaller and less wonderful than
+she had thought.  And there was still eight weeks more to enjoy her.
+
+And now they told her that Daphne Bruno was going to-morrow morning.
+Daphne going to-morrow?  And as there had been trouble between her
+people and the head mistress, impossible that she should ever come
+near the school again!  The blow left an ache and confusion that Miss
+Sims hid all day behind her teaching and her smiles and her
+small-talk with the girls.  Something of the serenity that she had
+acted before Daphne struggled now to be real, and it did give itself
+birth.
+
+The next morning, when the carriage came up the drive, she purposely
+waited in a little narrow music-room that she might torture herself,
+did Daphne go off without seeking her; or might have her alone, did
+the girl come.
+
+Daphne burst in, saying she had been looking for her everywhere.
+
+"Good-bye, dear," said Miss Sims.
+
+"Good-bye, Miss Sims.  I don't know how to thank you for all your
+kindness."
+
+_Kindness!_  The commonplace word wounded the governess.
+
+"Good-bye, dear.  And God bless you--always."
+
+Daphne hesitated, and then stuttered:
+
+"I wanted to say I owe everything to you.  That's the absolute truth.
+You've been the best thing about my school life.  I mean--oh, but I
+think I'll try and write it to you."
+
+"Good-bye, Duffy.  The memory of you will always be sweet to me."
+
+She had resolved to say that much to her and no more.  A little more
+was conveyed in the pressure of her hand and the kiss she placed on
+the girl's forehead.  Then Daphne had gone, and Miss Sims's hand had
+fallen to her side.  She stayed in the music-room till she heard the
+carriage wheels crunch over the gravel on to the road.  She was
+racked by the half-knowledge that, despite Daphne's words, no
+passionate love or throbbing pain could be read in her leave-taking.
+"Thank you for all your kindness."  Cruel mediocrity!  "But she will
+write the broken-hearted words she could not say."  No.  It was all
+over.  A few dwindling letters would come, and they would be no more
+than echoes.
+
+She walked out of the narrow music-room into the dark main passage of
+the ground floor.  Five doors opened on to it, and a staircase came
+down from the bedrooms above.  It was, so to think, the centre of
+Hemans House.  One could hear the murmurous class-rooms, and the
+halting scales from another music-room, and the buried clatter in the
+kitchen.  The head mistress passed from the reception-room, where she
+had been taking some sort of farewell of Daphne, to her teaching in
+the Fifth Form room.  Her voice started, high-pitched and whining.
+
+It was Hemans House, monotonously there, with Miss Sims in its
+centre.  She had a curious, rather unpleasant thought: for ever and
+ever in Daphne's mind Hemans House would have nothing but a
+subjective, dreamlike existence, and then only when she willed to
+create it in memory.  And yet here it was.  Almost one could think of
+it, and herself moving in it, as something in an occasional dream of
+Daphne's.
+
+
+
+
+PART III: _Daphne's Romance_
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Daphne was happy in her new life of freedom at Old Hall House, though
+it was less than it had promised to be when seen from a school-room
+window.  Its worst failure was her father's postponement for a whole
+year of their residence in Paris, and a lingering doubt lest the day
+of packing and travelling never arrived.  Another was her periods of
+dulness.  Nobody ever seemed to come to Old Hall House; her father
+kept himself shut up in his study; and Owen for nine months of the
+year was at school.  There were mornings and afternoons when she
+wandered about the passages and looked aimlessly out of windows, or
+strolled in the garden humming the fragmentary tunes of the lonely.
+
+But she determined to believe in its delights; and indeed much of it
+was glorious.  It was glorious to shut the door of the great playroom
+and loll in the tattered chair and read just what she wanted to.  Her
+first plan of reading had been much more ambitious: she was going to
+work through all her father's critical books, and at the end of each
+volume study every masterpiece he had mentioned within its covers.
+But she could not do this.  Nothing that required effort could she
+study for more than half an hour.  She boggled at these Sir Thomas
+Brownes and Donnes and Emersons and Carlyles, many of whose sentences
+had to be enunciated twice or even three times before one glimpsed a
+meaning.  And poetry wearied her as quickly, though every now and
+then a perfect phrase or a line of tragic emotion gave her a spasm of
+delight.  But her love of these moments was not strong enough to
+overcome her indolence; and she decided that she would profit most by
+reading only those things that came easy to her--fiction, and the
+lighter essayists, such as Lamb and Stevenson, and the jollier parts
+of Shakespeare.  With her reading of these people surged higher and
+higher the longing to do as they had done, and the confidence that
+she could do it.  Sometimes she put books aside, and got her ink and
+paper with a view to starting; but nothing at present would come: the
+swelling _something_ in her stayed in its darkness and refused to
+filter through a pen.  So she resolved--as she preferred to resolve,
+for the deep chair was cosy, and reading was so much easier than
+creation--that she must go on stocking her mind.
+
+"Besides, I must have experiences, of which at present I have nil."
+
+And then she would look out of her window over the road that ran
+southward to the downs and the sea, and northward to the cities, and
+wonder what her experiences would be and where they lay.
+
+Now she discovered the hollowness of Miss Carrell.  Full of the
+excitement of her reading, she would want to pour it all out to her
+frequent companion, but quickly found that Miss Carrell was unable to
+understand, and consequently uninterested.  She shammed an interest,
+certainly, but it was at first patronising, and always astonishingly
+uninformed.  Daphne gradually arrived at the difficult conclusion
+that she knew more and understood better than her former governess.
+
+Miss Carrell, in fact, was far from contented.  Her gradual
+supplanting by Daphne was painfully proved by the invitations that at
+last began to arrive from neighbouring society.  There had been none
+of these before Daphne appeared, Mr. Bruno having the reputation of a
+recluse.  But now a few fluttered in like stray birds, and generally
+they were for "Mr. Tenter Bruno and Miss Bruno."  Seldom Miss
+Carrell.  She was not sure that with all her scheming she had not
+ruined herself.  Here was she, thirty, and only a waning manageress
+in a country house.  She had reached her highest point, five years
+ago, when she had sent Daphne to school, and entered upon her reign.
+At her age, this had been distinctly good.  But now----?  There was
+little chance of marrying, with so few people coming to Old Hall
+House.  And yet nowhere else could she get so well paid a post.  She
+was caught in a prison she had built for herself.
+
+Hazily Daphne saw all of this; but she was too happy to desire the
+entrance of anything unpleasant, so strove to be affable and even
+humble with the apprehensive Miss Carrell.
+
+Too good to be yet believed--Daphne had the regular loan of a saddle
+horse, a tall chestnut of sixteen hands.  On frosty afternoons, just
+before sunset, or summer evenings before the dinner hour, she would
+ride it on Ditchling Common--_astride_.  The whole neighbourhood, she
+suspected, was impressed, and talked about "new women."  She pictured
+herself as she appeared to them: her hair still down her back and
+tied by a black bow; her costume consisting of riding breeches,
+overhung by a divided skirt; her seat good but not yet perfect.  She
+would trot through the "toll-gate" on to Ditchling Common, still with
+the childish make-believe that she was a highwayman.  When off the
+hard road and on the grass of the common, she would set the horse
+cantering; and, being a spirited creature, it would soon break into a
+stretch gallop.  As a dance can be the rhythmic medium of urgent
+emotion, so this straight-flying, body-poising, breath-speeding
+gallop was the most satisfying art-form for her present feelings; it
+was the expression of her glorying in freedom and adulthood.  The
+wind rushed through her hair, and the blood tingled in her veins.
+Her face heated and cooled in the air.  She could have shouted.  Had
+she not everything she wished for?  Where had Time swept that
+schoolgirl of a few months back, who was punished in bedrooms?  She
+checked the horse and reined him in, bumping slightly as he slowed
+down.  Now he was walking, and she hollowed her back for relief; and,
+slackening the bridle, replaced a disordered hair.
+
+
+Of her few friends Mrs. Montague Jevons, of Wildean Manor, was the
+best.  Mrs. Montague Jevons was a large-boned, vivacious lady, who,
+as an intelligent admirer of the Tenter Bruno books, had shown a
+great interest in their author's daughter.  A short acquaintance with
+Daphne had developed this interest into something like a sane
+favouritism.  She called Daphne "her little friend" and treated her
+mind, not as a child's, but as the equal of her own.  She would
+invite her to tea and a discussion on books, and would declare with
+sincerity that the daughter would one day be as famous as the father.
+It was she who daily sent the chestnut horse alongside of a groom.
+
+In January of the second year, when Mr. Bruno really was making a
+move about the _pied-à-terre_ in Paris, Mrs. Montague Jevons gave a
+ball at Wildean Manor.  It would be the biggest that Daphne had gone
+to.  She was excited.  And since Mrs. Montague Jevons had been
+careful to invite Miss Carrell, she could discuss to her heart's
+content the ball, her dress and the tiring of her hair.  Many
+experiments she tried with her hair, till she decided to keep it
+exactly the same as it was every day, only tidier.  Any trace of
+effort was a flaw--as one learnt in literary criticism.  It wasn't
+Greek.  And her frock was Greek enough in its simplicity--an
+unornamented thing in a silk of that shining green that suited so
+well her brown hair and her colouring.  As she turned before her
+cheval glass, to appraise her completed toilet, something childish
+and (as it were) breakable in the figure she saw there seemed to make
+foolish the dream of powerful books and world-wide fame.  She
+provided sentences for the reporters who should one day interview
+her: "No one who has read the works of Miss Daphne Bruno, so
+masculine in their character, would conceive of her as a shy, slim,
+and exceedingly feminine girl.  But there it is!  Genius alights
+where it will.  Miss Bruno clothes in all the grace and charm of her
+sex her exceptionally virile intellect."
+
+Soon the carriage was at the door, and apprehensively Miss Carrell
+and she insinuated themselves under its roof, and were conveyed along
+the dark, country roads.  Wildean Manor was a big, square, stone
+house to the east of Ditchling, and it was some time before their
+carriage wheels crunched its half-mile of drive.  When the house,
+brilliantly alight, came into view, both Daphne and Miss Carrell were
+disturbed by the certainty that they were too early.  Miss Carrell,
+Daphne could see, was pretending to be very much in her element, if
+only because she was feeling completely out of it; exactly as Daphne
+herself was trying to appear old and self-possessed, if only because
+she was feeling very young and ill at ease.
+
+The sight of other guests in the Ladies' Room, and the glimpse as
+they stood in the big entrance hall of quite a few people in the
+drawing-room where Mr. and Mrs. Montague Jevons were receiving the
+guests, reassured them.
+
+Daphne pushed Miss Carrell in front of her towards the loud-voiced
+gentleman in evening dress who was presenting the guests.
+
+"Miss Carrell and Miss Tenter Bruno."
+
+There was a flattering rustle and a silence as the famous name was
+bellowed out, and she longed for the day when the name of Miss Daphne
+Bruno could produce a silence and turn all heads.  With her
+companion, after a few exchanges with the host and hostess, which
+included a whisper from Mrs. Montague Jevons, "My dear, you're
+looking beautiful," she walked across the floor to some chairs
+against the farther wall.  Here they sat down, and, since they saw no
+one whom they knew, passed the time in watching the people as they
+were announced.  The lofty rectangular drawing-room in which they
+were seated opened into a library of exactly the same dimensions, and
+as both rooms were to be used for dancing, the band had been placed
+on a platform in the farthest corner of the library.  From Daphne's
+chair she could see both the band in the library and the people
+forming in the hall.
+
+Among these a group of three suddenly made her crane her neck.  A
+blush began to warm her cheeks, and it spread over her face as the
+group came through the doors into the drawing-room.  The father was a
+short, big-hewn man of sixty and more, whose grim mouth was apiece
+with the thick chest and the heavy, competent hands; the mother was a
+slim, tired woman whose timidity might have been explained by her
+husband's mouth; and the third was a tall, dark youth who, if his
+features were not perfect (though indeed they were quite good), had
+surely a figure of unsurpassable beauty.  It was the very measure of
+manhood: height, width, symmetry and grace.  Daphne looked down,
+hoping she would not be recognised behind all these people.  Fancy!
+Was that what he had grown into?
+
+"Sir Roger and Lady Muirhead, and Mr. Roger Muirhead."
+
+No resuscitation of an old love troubled Daphne; only rose the
+eagerness, since a recognition sooner or later was inevitable, to
+impress him as the possessor of unlimited friends and one of the most
+sought-after belles of the ball.  Her programme must quickly be
+filled.  She stared at the profiles and the occiputs of people she
+knew to induce them to turn round and perceive her.  Gradually they
+did so, and brought their men up and introduced them.  The names
+dropped into one place after another on her dance card: waltzes,
+lancers, polkas, barn-dances.  It was like a game when one sought to
+fill vacant places against the clock.  She must have a "House Full"
+before Roger recognised her and begged a place.  But there were still
+some vacant numbers when the band struck up the first waltz.  It
+seemed certain that he must see her as she danced among the other
+couples.  But he did not; as she swung round, talking idly to her
+partner, she saw him dancing with a feathery girl and conceding to
+her chatter the familiar twinkle with its incomplete, tolerant smile.
+It would not have been Roger, nor that youth of the supreme shape,
+had any one in the room danced more gracefully than he.
+
+After the first waltz, to her delight, more men were brought up and
+introduced.  There was now but one place on her card.  That would
+fill after the next dance--and then her single desire was to be
+discovered by Roger.  But the next dance showed her to him.  She had
+passed quite close and felt his quick, surprised look and
+thenceforward his ever-returning glances.  Not once did she look his
+way, but talked with vivacity to her partner.  Urged on by some of
+the younger men, the band was prolonging the music, and soon she was
+aware that Roger and his partner had sat down, Roger pretending to
+keep up a conversation, but really watching Daphne.  Once he seemed
+to have mentioned her to the feathery girl.
+
+"Would you like to sit down?" asked her partner.
+
+"No, no," she smiled brightly.  "Let's last out as long as any one
+else.  I'm loving it."
+
+On they danced among the thinning couples, Daphne hoping that her
+high colour would be attributed to the lengthened waltz.  The few
+times her eyes were in danger of meeting Roger's he avoided them.  He
+was evidently in doubt what to do.  The band finished at last, and
+Daphne was escorted to a chair by her partner, who was gossiping
+gaily.  She, too, made a pretence of gay talk, but was really keeping
+a watch on Roger.  And in a little while Roger made an excuse to his
+feathery girl and came across the floor.
+
+"Miss Bruno, isn't it?" he said with a smile.
+
+At once Daphne suspected the course of action on which he had
+decided: he was going to make no mention of his boyish dropping of
+her, in the hope that she would have expected nothing else from a
+little fool.  _Her_ course had been planned for years past: a mixture
+of friendliness and indifference suggesting that his lordly shake-off
+had been a negligible incident, without power to hurt.
+
+"Yes," said she.  "I saw you before, and wondered if you would
+recognise me.  I should hardly have recognised you, only I heard your
+name called out."
+
+"Well, at any rate," said Roger, "you're going to dance with me."
+
+The genial command was characteristic; Roger was priding himself on
+his imperiousness.
+
+"I don't think I can.  There's only one I've got free...."
+
+"Well, let's see."
+
+He compared his card with hers.
+
+"Yes, I'm dancing with some wretched girl on your only vacant date."
+
+"Oh, what a pity."  She took back the card.
+
+"Well, there'll have to be an extra extra, that's all.  If there's an
+extra extra may I have the privilege----"  He bowed.
+
+"Oh, but there won't be one.  There are three already."
+
+"Oh, but there will be one.  I shall see to it."
+
+"All right, then....  Yes, thank you very much."
+
+"Splendid.  I'll go and tell the conductor fellow at once that
+there's got to be one....  I say, wait a minute...."
+
+Rather self-consciously he walked across the floor, and she watched
+him speaking to the conductor, who smiled.  Then he returned.
+
+"That's settled all right....  Do you know what I said to the man?"
+
+"No, how should I?"
+
+"Well, perhaps you'd better not."
+
+"All right."
+
+"Perhaps I'll tell you what I said when we're dancing together."
+
+"I don't particularly want to know."
+
+"I didn't ask that.  It may be good for you to know....  It's rather
+taken my breath away seeing you here.  I half fancied I saw you the
+other day on horseback, riding a strapping chestnut.  I only came
+down here three days ago.  But then, I suppose it couldn't be."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't know.  I can't picture you quite like that.  How's your
+young brother?"
+
+"He's just gone back to school."
+
+"Oh, yes.  I'm afraid I didn't see much of him at Sillborough."
+
+"You've left, I suppose."
+
+It was meant to humiliate and didn't fail of its mark...  "Left?
+Glory, yes.  I've been at Oxford a year."
+
+"Of course.  _I'd_ forgotten how old you were.  Where was it you saw
+me the other day?  I didn't see you."
+
+"Then it _was_ you.  It must have been by the--just near the--no, I
+forget where it was now."
+
+"Probably on Ditchling Common."
+
+"Yes, of course, that's where it was....  Well, I must be getting
+back now."
+
+The evening was old when he claimed her for his partner.  An old
+evening with a glittering record.  It would have been an exaggeration
+to say that she was the belle of the ball, but none had been more
+remarked, none more sought after, none more waited on, none more
+excited and vivacious than she.  And all the while she had been
+conscious of his staring at her--staring in rather a dazed way.  That
+was good.  Good if he fell rapturously in love with her again, while
+she felt no stirring of love for him.  When he besought her hand, she
+would reply: "It's no good, Roger.  I can't help it, but I feel no
+love for you at all."  She could wish that she were already engaged
+to some one that she might mention it carelessly to him.
+
+"Now, Miss Bruno," said he, as he claimed her.
+
+The band had begun.  They were playing a little languishing waltz
+rather slowly.  Both felt the wistfulness of the air and for a long
+time said nothing.  Daphne had a sense of having lost several inches
+of her height and some years of her age now that she was in Roger's
+arm.  He was the first to emerge from the abstraction into which the
+tune had sunk them.
+
+"Ye gods, what a tune!"
+
+"Yes, isn't it divine?  Do you know what it is?  I do."
+
+"Why"--he smiled his patronising smile--"are you a great musician
+these days?"
+
+"No; but I learnt the 'cello at school, and one of the girls used to
+play this on her violin.  But I didn't know then it could be so--so
+troubling as this."
+
+"Troubling--that's the very word.  What is it?"
+
+She told him its name, but he didn't acknowledge the information, and
+when she looked up at him she saw that his eyes had been waiting to
+twinkle into hers.
+
+"From henceforth I shall always call it the Daphne Bruno waltz."
+
+"Don't be silly."
+
+"Don't be rude, Miss Bruno."
+
+"Do you know, I've just been thinking I've never been properly
+introduced to you."
+
+"On the contrary, madam, you introduced yourself to me with something
+approaching boldness from behind a blackberry bush on the King's
+highway."
+
+"What silly kids we were!"
+
+"I wasn't so silly as I thought----"  The unfortunate sentence broke
+abruptly.
+
+They danced through the door of the drawing-room into the library,
+and the sight of the conductor suffering (as Roger said) all the
+pains of the artistic temperament prompted him to ask:
+
+"Shall I tell you what I said to yon fiddler?"
+
+"If it's interesting."
+
+Excitement and supper had heightened his natural temerity.
+
+"I said, 'Look here, Sousa, unless you put on an extra extra, I
+shan't be able to dance with the only girl worth calling a girl in
+the room.'  And he said--he seems a humorous fellow--he said, 'Well,
+sir, in that case there'll have to be an extra extra for an extra
+extra young lady.'  And, of course, he got impertinent and said, 'May
+I ask which one she is?'  I said, 'No, certainly not.  Besides, it's
+perfectly obvious to any one with any eyes.'"
+
+Daphne looked towards the conductor, and saw that over his violin he
+was watching Roger and her.  She could not feel displeased with the
+man, since he had been told that she was the only girl in the room.
+But she chose to turn colder with Roger, and did not speak till he
+asked:
+
+"What sort of life are you living now?"
+
+She gave him an attenuated answer and deliberately refrained from
+asking him anything about himself.  He was obliged to proffer the
+story unsought.  As soon as he had finished with Oxford he was to
+travel, and then go in for politics.  Possibly he would stand for
+their Cornish constituency.
+
+"Cornish?" queried Daphne.
+
+"Yes.  Didn't you know?  That holiday we went to Cornwall"--he
+blushed as he recalled which holiday it was--"father fell in love
+with a little smuggler's cove, and swore he'd buy it up and build a
+house there right on the rocks.  And on his principle of 'What I've
+once determined on, that I do,' he went and did it.  I wish you could
+see the place.  It's rather exciting.  And what are you going to do
+in the future?"
+
+"Stay with father, I suppose."
+
+The whimsical sparkle had come again into his eyes, she saw, as she
+looked up for an explanation of his silence; and the trembling,
+incomplete smile was at his lips.
+
+"Not for long," said he.  "You'll marry."
+
+"No, I shan't."
+
+"Of course you'll marry."
+
+"And why 'of course'?"
+
+"Because--because you're the sort."
+
+"I've just told you I'm not."
+
+"You've just told me you don't want to be the sort, but you'd no say
+in the matter."
+
+"I wish you'd explain."
+
+He hummed the waltz to the accompaniment of the band.  Then in a
+muted way he whistled it.
+
+"I can't very well.  But it's a theory of mine that you can always
+tell the girls who will marry--bar tragedies.  I don't know what it
+is about them.  It's not beauty."
+
+"Thank you very much."
+
+"Don't mention it.  I'm speaking generally.  It's some other
+quality--a sort of sensuous attraction"--he stuttered, probably not
+clear as to the meaning of sensuous--"though the quality is rarely
+absent from beauty."
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about."
+
+"Well, I suppose you can't understand....  If your looking-glass
+doesn't tell you, it's quite impossible for a man to."
+
+They danced on, and she noticed that once or twice his lips moved as
+though he were trying to force words through the inhibitions of
+pride.  And at a moment when the band was likely to dwindle to a
+finale, he jerked out:
+
+"Miss Bruno, I'd like to see you sometimes.  Now that the Downway
+House is vacant, we're----"
+
+She had been waiting for this advance, and quickly replied:
+
+"It's no good.  I'm going abroad, and----"
+
+His look drove the rest from her head.  His mouth had set like his
+father's, and she guessed that he was enjoying the strong man's huff.
+She decided to hurt him further.
+
+"What a long time the band's playing for."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"Well, isn't it?"
+
+"Why?" he muttered.  "Do you want to stop?"
+
+"Yes, I do.  I'm tired.  I've been dancing all the evening."
+
+"All right."
+
+He guided her quickly towards the chairs, and released her.  It was
+done with the courtesy that never failed him and yet with suddenness,
+that she might feel he was not used to being snubbed.  His features
+had tightened--"gone tight"--she invented the phrase that moment to
+express what Roger looked like when thwarted or misunderstood.
+Triumph trembled through her.  The conductor, seeing that the two for
+whom he had played the waltz had deserted, brought it to an end.
+
+"Well, good-bye, Miss Bruno.  It's been quite nice to see you again
+and dance once with you."
+
+"Good-bye.  There's Miss Carrell, I must run and speak to her."
+
+She ran off, unconsciously humming the waltz; and Roger strode as
+best he could towards his people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+For quite satisfying reasons she thought frequently about Roger
+during the next few weeks; there was no one else much to think of;
+the only person who had ever leapt your breastworks and kissed you
+behind a bush must always have a romantic interest; and still more, a
+man who was patently in love with you, when you couldn't feel the
+slightest stir of emotion for _him_, was some one to be rather proud
+of.  She wondered if his passion would overcome his pride and force
+him to write to her; and was already phrasing her friendly but
+discouraging answer.  But no letter appeared, so she indulged herself
+in pictures of Roger with love gnawing at his heart and pride denying
+him a cry.  Once when cantering on Ditchling Common she passed him,
+and, answering his raised hat with a friendly bow, galloped away.  At
+a safe distance she swung her horse round to get a covert glimpse of
+him, and saw him staring after her.  He was standing not far from
+Jacob's Post.  One evening she was certain he passed her house and
+gave it a quick glance.
+
+She determined to learn more about him from Mrs. Montague Jevons.
+The subject was not easy to open till an afternoon, when, calling at
+Wildean Manor after the dance, she found Lady Muirhead among other
+ladies in the drawing-room.  Lady Muirhead, she discerned, was a
+woman of one subject--her son.  When other subjects were being
+bandied across the carpet she was silent, but her interest
+immediately quickened if some one asked, "And what is Roger doing
+now?" or remarked, "How handsome your boy is getting!"  Daphne moved
+to sit beside her.
+
+"You've met Roger then," said Lady Muirhead, in response to a casual
+allusion.
+
+"Oh yes, I danced with him here the other day."
+
+"Did you?"  She glanced round the drawing-room, and through the door
+into the library.  "I didn't really catch your name just now."
+
+"Daphne Bruno."
+
+"Oh, _you're_ Mr. Tenter Bruno's daughter.  I've heard about you."
+
+Daphne coloured.  "Have you?"
+
+"Oh yes.  Your father's quite a famous man, isn't he?"
+
+"Well, he's written a lot of books," acknowledged Daphne, with a
+deprecating smile.
+
+"Yes.  I'm afraid I don't read much.  I never had much time when
+Roger was young, and you get out of the habit when they go to school."
+
+"You've only one son, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, only one, though Roger was equal to a dozen in trouble."
+
+"Was he really?  Not in health, surely?"
+
+"In health, good gracious, no!  I suppose his bounding health was the
+source of all his masterfulness and mischief."
+
+"Oh, was he mischievous?" exclaimed Daphne.  "How ripping!"
+
+"He's essentially a dominating character, I think, and I suppose as
+they can't help themselves, it's not fair to call it mischief."
+
+Daphne nodded.
+
+And Lady Muirhead, encouraged by such a listener, rattled on with a
+record of Roger's domestic tyrannies, of which she seemed very proud.
+
+When she had gone and the other visitors were departing, Mrs.
+Montague Jevons begged Daphne to stay a little longer.
+
+"There, sit down," said she, after the door had closed on the last
+lady.  "And let me sit here....  Ah, for this relief much thanks....
+A particularly boring afternoon.  And I was so sorry for you, cooped
+up with the Muirhead Dowager.  I suppose she carried on insufferably
+about her boy?"
+
+"Yes, it was chiefly about him."
+
+"Pity she goes on like that."
+
+"But it isn't all praise," suggested Daphne.  "She spent much of the
+time deploring his tyrannies."
+
+"Bless you, that's indirect praise.  She's as proud as a peacock of
+them,"
+
+"But is it all true?"
+
+"Well, I like Roger.  He and I get on splendidly.  He's got the most
+courtly manners with women.  I think it's a sort of feudal pose and
+unconsciously based on conceit, but as it's spiced with a _soupçon_
+of humour and cheek it makes him a pleasant companion."
+
+Daphne pursued her adverse criticism.
+
+"I should think he's now irreparably spoiled by his mother."
+
+"He's not been spoiled in the usual sense--old Sir Roger's seen to
+that--but what's happened is this."  Mrs. Montague Jevons crumpled
+her brow so as to find a description worthy of her keen analysis.
+"She's created a legend about the masterfulness of the Muirhead men,
+and especially about the last specimen of them, and the wretched
+boy's heard nothing else all his life.  The damage is probably
+final--he'll live up to the amiable legend till the end of his days.
+You'll find the characters he likes in history and books are the
+honourable but merciless Cavalier overlords--Strafford, or people
+like the Earl of Warwick, the King Maker.  I try to chaff him about
+it, but every man's sense of humour fails when it comes to himself.
+Probably my chaffing only makes matters worse.  He likes to be
+chaffed about his 'indomitable will,' and all the rest of the trash.
+No man ever didn't."
+
+Daphne's head nodded, implying that her experience was the same.
+
+"I tell him," pursued Mrs. Montague Jevons, "that it's a popular type
+beloved of housemaids, but the obsession's too strong for chaff to
+expel it....  That's Roger."
+
+
+The cost of a furnished flat in Paris, capable of housing himself,
+his daughter, Miss Carrell, Hollins, and Owen in vacations, was high
+enough to drive Mr. Bruno's mercury very low.  A new idea shaped in
+his mind, and the infernal noise of the Gay City, as he walked its
+pavement seeking his _pied-à-terre_, gave it stronger outline; he
+would find within a dozen miles of Paris some inexpensive villa, from
+which Daphne and Miss Carrell might descend as often as they liked on
+the Gare du Nord, while he stayed with his manuscripts and his books
+in a countryside peace.
+
+He found the place, and returned to England, not a little eager to
+tell his daughter all about it.  It was a Tuesday evening, just after
+dark, when he arrived at Old Hall House, flung himself into an easy
+chair, and cried for tea.  That his daughter had met him with a hail
+of questions, and hurried after him into his study, and was now
+sitting on the edge of his writing-table demanding information, he
+affected to have hardly perceived.
+
+"What have you decided, Daddy--what have you decided?"
+
+"It's not her father that she welcomes," said he to his boot-laces,
+"but the things he may have brought for her.  A selfish girl, and one
+without natural affection."
+
+"Oh, Daddy, what have you decided?"
+
+"Slippers, dear.  If you like, you can get me my slippers.  It would
+have already occurred to a more beautiful nature."
+
+"If I get them for you, will you tell me what you have decided?"
+
+"I have decided to say nothing about anything till I have been fed,
+and fed very satisfyingly."
+
+"Oh, Father, don't be a cad.  I've been waiting weeks to know."
+
+"And I've been waiting weeks for a cup of tea....  I spent a very
+enjoyable time in Paris, thank you.  It's a city eternally romantic,
+classic, realistic.  You can imagine me entering the Louvre with a
+worshipper's feet, and lighting my poor candle at the shrines of
+Leonardo, Titian, Veronese, Rubens...."
+
+"Oh, blow them!  I'm screwed up to hear everything.  I made sure
+you'd tell me at once."
+
+"The music of English tea-things!  It's unmistakable--and it's music
+that Paris, in spite of its singular imitations, has never learned."
+
+"Well, you shan't have any till you have told me.  I shall hold it
+back."
+
+"Ah, it's Hollins.  Put it here, Hollins....  Thank you very much."
+
+Hollins laid the tea-tray on a little table by the side of his easy
+chair; and Mr. Bruno, with a running commentary on Paris and its
+wickedness and English tea, poured out a cup and folded over a thin
+slice of bread and butter.  Daphne sat on the writing-table.  And
+over his bread and butter, despite his jesting manner, his mind was
+asking the usual questions: why, though the sight of her and the
+nearness of her could inflate his love, he could never really get
+close to her, but must always protect himself, as he approached, with
+a cloud of persiflage; whether now at sixty it was too late to learn
+the art of emptying himself and becoming like unto her; whether he
+had exchanged life for books?  "This man chose not to live but read."
+Disproportion.  Disproportion.  Books should be an elixir to heighten
+one's awareness to life, not a drug in which to escape from it.
+
+"There."  He pushed the tea-things away, and signalled to her to come
+and sit on the _pouffe_ which was his footstool.
+
+"Come here.  I have a tale to tell you."
+
+And he lit a cigarette and began.
+
+"Some ten or a dozen miles nor'-nor'-west of Paris there's a little
+cocksure village that calls itself St. Leu Taverny.  It straggles at
+the very feet of the Montmorency Forest.  A few days ago I climbed a
+cobbled street to the outer verge of the forest trees, among which
+rose the turrets, not unpicturesque, of the plaster châteaux, or
+villas, of wealthy Parisians.  Grocers, for the most part, I expect.
+In a little new-made avenue, that finished in nothing, as if it had
+forgotten that it had ever started, I found a very modest little
+villa in the centre of a tiny garden of firs.  Its windows had
+shutters thrown back against the bricks, and on the sills those
+flamboyant iron-work railings that so delight the French.  Strange
+how the French think themselves classical, and are the most
+flamboyant people in Europe!  In many ways the absurd little villa
+reminded me of you.  It was tall and narrow--and pretentious."
+
+"Are you being funny?" submitted Daphne.
+
+"Pretentious, with its turret up one corner for the staircase.  At
+the top of the turret--and this completes the simile--was a
+cone-shaped roof, like a dunce's hat."
+
+Daphne only continued to watch the fire.  She was getting used to
+this sort of thing from her men-folk.
+
+"No," pursued Mr. Bruno, after thought.  "The resemblance can be
+carried farther, for I found the furniture within to be adequate to
+its purposes and inoffensive, but quite uninspired and quite without
+distinction."
+
+"But the outlook was beautiful," interrupted Daphne.
+
+"The outlook was good.  Yes, the outlook was good, stretching over
+the garden of firs to the high ground and the trees of Montmorency.
+Here and there, however, was a château such as the vulgar dream of.
+One could wish for an earthquake to remove them.  I walked among the
+rooms, peopling them to my fancy with a certain girl, and the
+excellent Miss Carrell, and the entirely fundamental Hollins.  Also
+perhaps a French slut for the meaner tasks.  I have taken the place
+for a year."
+
+Daphne leapt up.
+
+"Daddy, let's go to-morrow."
+
+"'Some having no root sprang up.' ... We shall not go to-morrow nor
+the next day, but possibly the day after that.  The _épicier's_ wife
+was recommended to me as a person who would light a fire and dress a
+dish to welcome us.  She'll have to be communicated with.  But you
+can think about packing."
+
+
+Packing!  The word was galvanising.  Packing to go anywhere was among
+the liveliest excitements, but packing to go abroad was in a class by
+itself.  In what a cloud of romance had her father, when she was a
+child, set off abroad!  Refusing to hearken to her brain, which
+assured her there was nothing remarkable in a visit to Paris, she
+told every one she met in the next few days that they were leaving
+for Paris on Friday.  Once over there she would really start writing.
+Foreign scenes would be a spring of inspiration.  Against this
+expected seizure by inspiration she pushed into her trunks pens,
+pencils, scribbling paper and manuscript books, having vague ideas
+that French pencils and paper would not be the same thing at all.
+
+Miss Carrell and Hollins, never having travelled before, were equally
+if more secretly excited.  Miss Carrell's inward pleasure was
+slightly marred by the reflection that her meagre knowledge of
+French, in which she had once instructed Daphne, would be horridly
+exposed.  Hollins, though pretending to be "put about" by it all and
+to wonder how she would be able to manage with a fast French kitchen
+girl, was really much pleased, and inclined to emphasise to the other
+servants that in this accompanying of the family, she was as usual a
+privileged person.
+
+Friday, seen from Daphne's bedroom window at six-thirty in the
+morning, was overcast, but windless and dry.  It stayed so.
+Throughout the day she had a sense that the excitement of continental
+travel could be measured, as in a graph, by a rising and falling
+line.  The line began at a high point when the carriage came to the
+door; it shot higher at the London terminus where the words "Boat
+Train" flashed at you, and French beards and French tongues wagged
+among the encumbered people; it dropped and ran straight during the
+rumble through Kentish meadows and hop-fields; it rose again, very
+high, when they saw the boat with its twin funnels; it stayed high,
+as they mingled in the bustle on the quay, and walked a trembling
+gangway, and were confused by the voices, the loaded porters, the
+luggage swung in upper air by the crane, the bell from the bridge,
+and the throbbing of the engines; it was kept high by the rush of
+wind and the repeated booming of the siren as the boat moved out, and
+the hand-waving of less fortunate friends ashore.  Then it dropped
+and ran in a straight line as they spent two hours in the grey
+channel; only to rise to its highest at the first sight of French
+hills and the gradual delineation of domes and roofs and lighthouses
+of Boulogne.  Through the greyness, France boomed a welcome.
+
+Miss Carrell, though rendered ill at ease by this rapid approach to
+France and exposure, pretended to all the interest, loudly voiced by
+Daphne.  Hollins, too, smiled pleasantly at her young mistress's
+happiness.  "It's folks as young as them that gets the full enjoyment
+out of this," said she to Miss Carrell, and a few minutes later was
+sick.
+
+Dark had almost fallen before they were safely against the quay; and
+they saw nothing of the place except the hideous Customs and the
+ill-lit station with its comfortable Paris train.  Once the train had
+started and run into the complete darkness outside the town, the
+glamour departed from the journey, factitiously recovered sometimes
+by translating the _Avis aux Voyageurs_ printed round the alarm bell.
+Miss Carrell had a bad moment when Daphne sought her aid, but luckily
+Mr. Bruno's desire to display his knowledge was as great as her
+desire to hide her ignorance.  He did the translating, and she
+prepared them for the worst by saying:
+
+"Really, I have rusted so.  I can scarcely remember anything.  I used
+to be able to speak quite well."
+
+She need not have worried; both Mr. Bruno and her old pupil had
+forgotten that she had ever been paid to teach the language.
+
+All were tired, and Hollins after her sickness slept.  The excitement
+only reached its former heights when they ran through the lighted
+suburbs into the Gare du Nord, Paris.
+
+"Here we are.  Out you get.  Tumble out."
+
+Daphne descended from the train into a confusion that bruised all her
+senses at once: voices, pushing people, hiss of steam, smell of smoke
+and soot, rumble of porters' trucks, and cries of "_Attention là!_"
+The sounds and the smell--the smell especially--raised into memory
+the day when first they had trained into a London station, and she
+but eight years old.  Overtones of pleasant melancholy hung round the
+recollection.  "I am in Paris," she told herself.  "I am now standing
+in Paris."
+
+Alone in that overhanging noise and buffeting stream of people Mr.
+Bruno seemed--or affected to seem--majestically unperturbed.
+Conscious of the respect of his women, he talked fluently to the
+porters, and led the way to the _Banlieue_ booking office.  He
+chaffed his daughter, telling her to exercise her French by ordering
+the tickets for St. Leu; but when she tried she could only giggle
+into the little window.  Miss Carrell kept well in the background.
+Hollins, in spite of her weight and difficulty in walking, often ran
+to keep in close touch with the master, lest she were lost in this
+wilderness of unintelligible people.
+
+Soon they were in a far less comfortable train.  After travelling
+first-class all the way, Mr. Bruno, alarmed by the expenses on the
+journey, had decided that they could do this last little bit in the
+_troisième classe_.  The seats were distressingly upright and wooden.
+Nor did they have the compartment to themselves.  Two Frenchmen,
+unaware of Daphne's wrinkled nose, got in; one an enormously fat
+gentleman, with a black square beard which made Hollins stare and
+Daphne giggle at Miss Carrell, and the other a younger man who never
+stopped talking and gesticulating to his companion.  He struck Daphne
+as equally funny.  The fat man expressed his real interest by nodding
+and picking his teeth through his black beard; and Daphne whispered
+that he was perfectly sweet.  She maintained this view, even when he
+spat one of his diggings out of the window, causing Miss Carrell to
+retire further into her corner.
+
+Sitting in that train, after viewing the crowds in the Gare du Nord,
+Daphne discovered afresh the _distingué_ appearance of her father.
+She felt proud that all should recognise him as an Englishman.  Tall
+and slender as an athletic youth, with his pointed beard now grey,
+and his hair whitening over the ears--in his faultless grey suit and
+grey overcoat--he had been splendid among the English people on the
+boat, and was a lesson to all Frenchmen in France.
+
+The train slowed into a badly lit station, and voices called "_St.
+Leu ... St. Leu_."  Daphne, with some idea of having won a five
+hundred mile race, determined to step out first.  She threw open the
+door, saw a yawning blackness where the platform should have been,
+and, stepping on to it, fell heavily to the pavement--only saving
+herself from going on to her hands and knees by her slippery hold on
+the carriage door.
+
+"There!" said her father.  "The daughter arrives.  Credulous child to
+expect such advantages as platforms in a country which calls itself
+_à la tête de la civilisation_!  Are you hurt?"
+
+"No, it's lovely," said Daphne, though she could scarcely put her
+right foot to the ground.  She was not going to be disloyal to her
+vision of this as one of the perfect days of her life.
+
+
+The luggage was left on the station, no carriages being visible
+outside its doors; and Mr. Bruno led his party into the darkness of a
+street lit only by occasional private windows.  Daphne could receive
+no impression of St. Leu as they climbed the hill-road towards their
+house, except that they were often walking on cobbles which sometimes
+stirred in that airy emptiness of her ankle the strange, sweet pain.
+
+The little house, as they passed through the double gate into its
+garden, showed a bright light at the hall door, and the _épicier's_
+wife standing above the steps, smiling amiably and rattling French.
+Everything was ready for them, said she, but would monsieur like a
+glass of wine?  Mr. Bruno accepted this in the little dining-room.
+"_Et pour madame?_ ... _Madame Bruno, n'est-ce pas_?" queried the
+woman, with a look at Miss Carrell.  That Miss Carrell should be
+taken for his wife was an error that amused Mr. Bruno, and, pointing
+to his whitening hairs, he laughed, "_Non, non, madame.  Regardez mes
+neiges_."
+
+"_Oui, monsieur_," said she, her head dropping knowingly, "_mais
+souvent sous les neiges on trouve des volcans_."
+
+And Mr. Bruno roared with laughter.
+
+"What did she say--what did she say?" demanded his daughter.
+
+"Didn't you understand?  Well, perhaps you'd better not.  A sad
+people, the French."
+
+In a few minutes Daphne had been all over the house, delighted with
+everything, though marvelling that it could so fit her father's
+description, and yet be so different from what she had pictured.
+
+"Oh, I'd like to live here always.  Why can't they build places like
+this in England?"
+
+"Because the French are always faintly fantastic," explained her
+father.
+
+He then led her to a bedroom at the top and in the front, whose
+windows, as he threw them open, gave on to the stars above the Forest
+of Montmorency.
+
+"This is undeniably the best room, Duffy, and it is to be yours.
+Miss Carrell and Hollins can have the two smaller rooms on this
+floor."
+
+"But, Father----" began she.  Having always kept her schoolgirl room
+at home, she was diffident of taking a room superior to Miss Carrell.
+
+"No, no," interrupted Mr. Bruno.  "You are the mistress of this
+house."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+She slept that night with the resolve beneath her pillow to be up and
+out before breakfast, but her weariness after long travelling and the
+February darkness of the early morning kept her sleeping till eight
+o'clock.  Awakening and remembering where she was, she jumped up and
+looked out of the window.  She saw the beginnings of the forest
+hardly a field's distance from their little garden of firs.  The
+fresh air brushed her cheek and throat.  Oh, she must be out--out to
+examine France by daylight.  So after quick dressing and a hurried
+breakfast, she put on a warm coat and hastened through the garden
+gate.
+
+The road on to which their little avenue ran was called, as she
+observed after walking a little distance in the direction from which
+they had come last night, the Rue du Château.  All the French history
+and French literature she had ever read seemed touched to life by the
+three words.  The château, her father had told her, had been
+inhabited by the Duc d'Orléans, Madame de Genlis, Queen Hortense and
+the Duc de Bourbon; and she imagined these people walking down the
+cobbles where she was walking.  Madame de Genlis, as a writer of a
+hundred books and a famous figure in a stirring age, interested her
+most.  She surely was Daphne's spiritual ancestor.
+
+But not only these romantic names of the past thrilled her; the words
+over the shops, _épicier, charcuterie, estaminet_, and the
+advertisements of _apéritifs_ were exotic and quickening.  At the
+Place de la Forge the Rue du Château ran into a wider thoroughfare
+called the Rue de Paris.  Could any name be more suggestive?  Could
+anything be more typical than the tiny statue of the Virgin and Child
+in a little niche at the corner house, looking down on the road to
+Paris?  In the middle of the Place was a large fountain, from whose
+centre rose a painted metal statue of a worker with his scythe,
+stripped to the waist and drinking from a gourd as he paused in his
+labour.  Big-hipped women with shawls about their shoulders and their
+heads _en cheveux_ were filling their buckets there.  Little girls
+passed, carrying loaves as long as children.  Boys with socks and
+bare calves, wearing little capes and porters' caps, walked over the
+cobbles to school.  And the French language in the treble voices of
+children first came alive to Daphne.
+
+She turned to her right towards a plastery church, and on its walls
+saw the words, _Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité_; and the whole
+Revolution with a crowd of ghosts hovered about her consciousness.
+She walked on till she came to a dusty square, and from here she
+decided to climb through the side streets to the forest again.  As
+she approached its skied arras of trees, a horn sounded from a café
+in its fringe, and awoke with its notes Henry IV and Marguerite de
+Valois and the whole pageant of Dumas.
+
+But a few minutes more and she was in the forest, walking on a rutty
+and mossed road between untidy trees.  On her right she saw traces of
+a decayed and tumbled wall overrushed by the tangled boscage.
+Farther, and she came to a ruined gateway with tumbled brick pillars
+on either side.  Within was nothing but the confusion of trees and
+the interwoven riot of underbrush.  One could hardly trace what had
+been the stately carriage-way.  Still affixed to a tree was the
+weather-worn notice of some haughty castellan, "_Propriété Privée.
+Défense d'entrer.  Pièges à feu._"  She strolled on, trying to follow
+the line of tumbled wall, and thinking of that gate and the words,
+"Forbidden to enter"; and suddenly she saw, as she looked over it,
+woodcutters stacking faggots, and hatless, aproned women gathering
+twigs.
+
+Though impressed by the futility of ambition, she felt the very
+melancholy an urge to write.  "Broken gates of ruined châteaux," she
+murmured to herself.  "Broken gates...."  Tinkling bells disturbed
+her dreaming, and round a curve in the trees came a bareheaded girl
+with a flock of white goats.
+
+
+That afternoon she took a pencil and some scribbling paper, and
+walked in the winter sunshine round and round the narrow house,
+wondering what to write about.  She had bad moments when she felt
+that in all her life there was no emotion on which she could draw,
+and that her invention, when put to the test, was completely sterile.
+Still, it was pleasant to moon about the garden thus, striving to see
+in the populous regions of the past a tale worth telling.
+
+But the next day she was secretly glad that the brain-tiring subject
+could be put aside in favour of the first exciting visit to Paris.
+And during the next few weeks she persuaded herself that she might
+legitimately neglect her actual writing, since she would be
+completing her preparation for the great work by all the education to
+be sucked out of intelligent visits to Paris....  No, it was not an
+excuse to escape from effort, but real hard work.
+
+And February passed into March, and the spring came peeping in the
+trees of Montmorency, and still there was nothing on the scribbling
+paper--except scribbles.
+
+But if she had not written much, she and Miss Carrell had learned
+Paris like a loved book.  They talked proudly of the Palais Royal,
+the Louvre, the Boulevard des Italiens, the Palais de Justice and the
+Pantheon.  Sometimes Mr. Bruno joined them in the evening and they
+dined on the boulevards, watching the crowds and the traffic hurry
+by, to the music of the paper women shrieking, "_La Presse!  La
+Presse!_"  They had been to the Opera, and Daphne, lifted to the roof
+by the singing of the soprano in the finale of the first act, and by
+the storm of applause at the curtain's fall, began to wonder whether
+her own genius might not really find its issue in great singing or
+great acting.  She felt no longer sure of being a great writer.  She
+was sure only that she was a genius.
+
+
+April, May and June passed in an alternation of gay sightseeing in
+Paris and lonely fancy-gathering in the Montmorency Forest.  Both
+were forms of delight, but there was a distinction.  Visiting the
+city was entertainment and stimulation, but the solitary saunter
+a-dream among the burgeoning trees was that serene happiness that
+could only be called blessedness.  She did not believe a more perfect
+serenity could be attained.  And it could only be compassed alone.
+Had she had companions who could understand, it might have been very
+good to talk over her aspirations sometimes; but there were none.
+Her father was either too busy, or his knowledge too overawing, to be
+told of his ridiculous daughter's pretentious schemes.  No, she would
+surprise him one day.  So she wandered alone with her thoughts like
+the girl with the white goats.  Bliss it was: and there hardly
+emerged the fear, though it moved to birth at times, that this was
+the bliss of a drug--that the long, luxurious brooding on what she
+would one day do was daily unfitting her for doing it.
+
+In July, when they should have gone to Switzerland, Mr. Bruno decided
+that his work would not allow him to gratify this desire till next
+year.  Nor should Owen, who had now joined them, take Daphne to the
+mountains, for himself had fixed his heart on doing that.  So he sent
+both children to the Belgian coast, where they spent delightful days
+in Ostend and Middelkerke and Westende.  This was to be every minute
+a holiday, decided Daphne, and writing was abandoned for bathing and
+sailing, and mild gambling at casinos and dancing at hotels.  To
+recline on and finger the fine shingle, or watch the little rills
+running down their channels in the corrugated sand, or to sit up and
+hurl flat stones so that they leapt and ricochetted on the smooth sea
+was to live with childish memories.  This holiday she discovered
+Owen: that he was a tall, presentable boy with the graceful figure of
+his father; and astonishingly efficient, managing all their money
+affairs and so leaving her to lax enjoyment.  The fact was, each for
+the first time was proud of the other.
+
+In September, when they returned to St. Leu, she realised that her
+holiday was over and she must now start again on her work.  But as
+she and her brother pushed open the gate of the little garden of firs
+she was dismayed to find herself dreading the task and the repetition
+of the long, worrying hours that ended in a few scribbled lines and
+unmeasurable discouragement.  The shock was like a moment of
+overthrow.  Was she one who had the creative temperament without the
+power to create?  No, no; that would be too awful a disappointment.
+She was indolent, that was all.  When she was supposed to be
+unpacking upstairs she was really facing a revelation.  She was
+mentally and physically slothful.  And why?  Why, when she knew she
+was charged with a vitality of body and mind?  It was habit.  It was
+the legacy of her childhood.  She walked to the window and looked out
+upon the forest.  Loth to do it, she was yet angrily blaming her
+father and all the careless people about the steps of her childhood
+who had allowed her to learn indolence and practise it to perfection.
+
+
+Once the chaos stirred and the spirit of creation moved above it.
+She had been drifting about the forest glades, strewn with old leaves
+and broken twigs, and after descending a flexuous lane, happened upon
+a white church.  It was Taverney Church, and five hundred years old,
+from the evidence of its clerestory windows, which were as lovely as
+those of an Early English cathedral.  Beyond it thronged the houses
+of Taverney.  She walked into its walled cemetery, a strangely silent
+place bounded on three sides by the forest trees and on the fourth by
+the high wall of the church.  Epitaphs were always interesting, so
+she wandered among the graves, moved to sadness by the tawdry wreaths
+of wire and beads and the china flowers.  One grave, because it had
+many such offerings and a border of pansies, stayed her to examine it
+closer.  On the stone slab she read:
+
+    "_Ici Repose
+  Geneviève Rollier,_"
+
+and in silver lettering on one cross of beads, "_A Notre Mère_"; on
+another, "_A Notre Amie_"; and on a wreath that seemed by right the
+largest, "_A Mon Epouse_."  There was a scroll across some dirty
+china flowers with the words, "_Nous ne t'oublierons jamais_."  She
+stared at it, unconscious of a drooping mouth.  She was wondering
+what Géneviève had achieved before her husband and her children laid
+her there; whether their loving offerings had outlasted their
+sadness; whether Géneviève's life had been worth while.
+
+Suddenly she looked up.  She knew that never before had she been so
+conscious of her response to all the pain in life.  It pleased her
+that she could sense it thus and be troubled by it.  Here was the
+secret of how to write it.  You must really feel with men--and what
+had she felt so far?  How completely self-centred her life had been!
+And as long as it was self-centred you could not really feel with
+others....  She would like to begin being unselfish--a saint perhaps;
+the peer of St. Theresa as well as of Madame de Genlis.
+
+Out of her pity for this woman, why should she not write an imaginary
+life?  Yes, she would do it.  They would be here many months, and how
+she would enjoy studying local colour, local history and local
+temperaments! ... It was so much easier to study conditions and jot
+down notes, in a book than to grind at a table....  She caught that
+thought as it flitted through her mind, and wrung its neck.  "Madame
+Rolland" should be a masterpiece, and she would spare no labour on it.
+
+Throughout that autumn and winter she did struggle on odd days to get
+something on paper.  But oh, it was difficult!  How often was she
+tempted to throw down her pencil and dream again!  And that
+inspiration in Taverney Churchyard--where was it?  She had to bully
+and shake her memory to find out what the emotion had been.  And it
+would be a great relief sometimes to decide she must walk back to the
+cemetery and find out.
+
+With the spring came all the excitement of thinking about their
+summer visit to Switzerland and Italy.  But April brought moments of
+dismay.  The Uitlanders of the Transvaal, some dusty country
+thousands of mile away in South Africa, had sent a petition to the
+Queen for protection from strange Dutchmen called Boers.  And Mr.
+Bruno, pleased with the drama of it and with his own keen vision and
+understanding, talked of an inevitable war.
+
+"Of course there'll be war.  Any one with twopence worth of
+imagination and knowledge of Englishmen can see how the tale will
+write itself....  So what about your continental trotting now, Duffy?"
+
+She hardly knew whether to think him teasing or to be alarmed.
+
+"But what on earth has it got to do with us going to Switzerland?"
+
+"Everything.  You've never seen a real war, have you?  Small things
+like authors' incomes are apt to disappear.  And now you're going to
+see a war, when English people won't be able to show their faces on
+the Continent for fear of being spat on."
+
+"Oh, Daddy, it won't happen.  It can't.  At least, not till we've
+been and come back."
+
+So Mr. Bruno hoped, too indolent, really, to believe otherwise.  And
+when the Dutchmen of Cape Colony moved to mediate between England and
+the Transvaal Boers he affected a great relief.
+
+"Yes, Duffy, I think you might pack--with a heart full of thanks to
+these godly old men of the Africander Bund.  They've been your good
+fairies.  At any rate, nothing'll happen for some months yet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+When, one early July afternoon, Daphne and her father arrived at the
+Hotel Frohnalstock, at Brunnen, on the Lake of Lucerne, she learned
+that the news of their coming was already abroad among the guests,
+and looked forward to her descent that evening into the lounge or on
+to the terrace where these interested people would be waiting for
+their dinner.  There was the pleasing memory, too, of six very simple
+but very new dresses in her trunks.  She selected in her bedroom the
+one of pale cinnamon, and had completed her dressing by seven
+o'clock, which was half an hour too soon.  Much too soon, for she had
+determined that her father and she should not enter the lounge till
+five minutes before the meal, so that as many people as possible
+might be congregated there.  Twenty-five minutes to wait.
+
+The French windows of her bedroom opened on to a private loggia; and
+stepping out into an air of Egyptian warmth, she purposed to kill
+time by staring at the lake.  To her this view from her bedroom
+balcony seemed the most wonderful on which she had ever gazed.  From
+the gardens at the hotel's base, four stories below, the lake spread
+a width of tranquil water, brilliant in the evening sun, till it lost
+itself in the dark reflections of the pine-clad mountains opposite.
+To the left--for Brunnen was almost at the lake's end--the water
+appeared to finish in a dark corner, shut from light by the wooded
+slopes.  Above the pines before her rose the white peaks of the
+Urirotstock.  At their foot, where the mountains formed a headland, a
+white rock, not unlike a coarse obelisk, stood alone in the water.
+Somewhere in the trees was the Rutli meadow where, many hundred years
+ago, the representatives of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden swore their
+forest cantons into an eternal alliance--and Switzerland was born.
+
+It was her father who had decided that they must come first to
+Brunnen.  Was not all its surrounding country--Schwyz, and
+Einsiedeln, and the Rutli meadow, and the Tellskapelle--the cradle of
+Swiss history and the holy ground of Swiss legends?  Never would she
+forget her approach to it by steamboat from Lucerne.  The grandeur of
+the mountains and the serenity of the water had raised in her, as she
+sat staring over the rail, a longing for intenser emotions than she
+had yet known--love, she supposed, no matter whether it brought joy
+or tragedy.  She felt that she was ripe for something like that.  Her
+mind was not superstitious; she had no belief in destiny or that she
+had been brought to this incomparable place for a pre-ordained
+experience.  She just wondered whether, since something must happen
+some day, it might not happen here.  She was now nineteen.
+
+Five past seven.  And dinner was at seven-thirty.  During the next
+twenty minutes she kept looking at her watch, like an actor before
+the calls, "House-lights," and "Curtain."  At twenty-five past she
+walked into her father's room next door.
+
+"Come along quickly," she said.  "They all know you're here, and I
+want to show you off."
+
+They descended the wide, soft-carpeted stairs, Daphne with that
+unusual quiet and dignity which the consciousness of evening dress
+can throw about those unaccustomed to wearing it.  As they entered
+the lounge and she pretended to be looking for some chairs the
+flutter of interest among the people made her more self-conscious
+than ever.  She knew that all were glancing at her father and herself
+over newspapers, liqueurs or pince-nez.  This feeling of notoriety
+threw her into an over-acted naturalness, and she said rather loudly:
+
+"Oh, there we are, Daddy; there's a table and two chairs.  I'll bag
+them."
+
+And she almost ran towards them.  Then she sat down, and, picking up
+a French journal, tried to appear at ease.  Sometimes, however, she
+swept her eyes around the guests.  There was still in her mind the
+wonder if, by faint chance, he, the lover, was there.  No, she didn't
+think so.  Once she did encounter the eyes of a young man who
+immediately avoided hers and became lost in a book--proof that he had
+been staring at her.  Not liking to look his way again, she kept her
+quick impression of fair hair, none too tidy and inclined to fall
+towards one eyebrow, a clear forehead, and a very ordinary, rather
+childish but rather "sweet" face.  His dress seemed slightly
+different from an Englishman's.  Later she snatched another glance at
+him, just as a draught from the open windows blew that falling hair
+right across his forehead, and she thought that Shelley--at least in
+brow and hair--must have been like that.
+
+A gong sounded in some remote passage, and its din grew louder as it
+was brought towards the lounge.  The young man rose, and she saw that
+his figure was other than she had expected: he was tall, stooped a
+little, and, though probably twenty-five years old, had not yet lost
+the gracelessness of seventeen.  A girl, almost certainly his sister,
+joined him, and they walked together into the spacious white
+restaurant.
+
+During dinner Daphne was more than once aware that he had resumed his
+study of her, though pretending to chat with his sister.  It was
+always her, rather than her father, that he watched, so she began to
+doubt if it was the Bruno name that engaged him.  It looked very like
+instant admiration.  One could not but return an interest.
+
+After dinner, on the broad terrace that overlooked the lake, she sat
+with her father listening to a string quartette and watching other
+people walk up and down.  The youth was among them, walking with his
+sister and an older man, who was conceivably her admirer, and every
+time he passed Daphne he pretended to know nothing of her nearness,
+talking gaily to his companion.
+
+Soon her father yawned and spoke about early bed after his disgusting
+night in a train, but she begged for permission to stay up at least
+till ten, and presently he left her there.  She got up from her
+chair, and, going to the balustrade of the terrace, watched the
+changing light on the water.  A primordial darkness possessed the
+Rutli trees, and a night that was almost frightening filled the
+corner where the lake ended.
+
+
+Next morning she was very late in getting up, and breakfasted alone
+between half-past nine and ten.  Hurrying over the coffee and rolls,
+she passed out of the restaurant's doors on to the terrace to see if
+her father were sitting there with a book.  She saw him twenty yards
+away in interested conversation with the youth who was seated, with
+obvious reverence, at his side.  Hastily she withdrew into the
+restaurant and walked into the lounge through its communicating
+doors.  There in an easy-chair she browsed the pictures in some
+English magazines till her father, entering from the terrace, stared
+about the room as if seeking his daughter.  She whistled a long,
+fluttering note with a curve at its end, and Mr. Bruno perceived her.
+
+"Duffy," said he.  "Do you want to play tennis?"
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"Well"--he sat beside her--"there's an American boy here who came up
+to me this morning----"
+
+"You mean Shelley."
+
+"Shelley?  No, Detmould he calls himself.  He came up to me with a
+most becoming modesty and asked if he might make himself known as he
+was a great admirer of your father's books--and tried to write
+himself.  We've been having a most stimulating talk.  He's got
+brains; indeed, a remarkable mind, I fancy.  I should think he'll do
+something one day."  Daphne exhibited interest, although disappointed
+that it had been the Bruno name, after all, which attracted him.
+"But now he's just asked if I and my daughter play tennis.  I told
+him my age, which I am glad to say surprised him, and then said I'd
+ask you if you'd like to play."
+
+"Oh, rather!"
+
+"Then I think if you'll whistle to him as you did to me just now
+he'll come to heel."
+
+"You whistle to him," suggested she.
+
+"Personally, I make a distinction between dogs and men," said Mr.
+Bruno, getting up and walking towards the terrace.  "To men I
+generally cough."  He coughed and h'med, and drew the American boy
+into the room.
+
+"This is my daughter, Mr. Detmould."  Daphne jumped up, incurably
+thinking of herself as a child.  "She ought to play well, since she's
+fresh from school."
+
+"I'm not fresh from school.  I left over two years ago."
+
+"She was more or less expelled two years ago, since when I've had her
+on my hands.  Duffy, this is Mr. Detmould, who kindly says you may
+play with him and his sister."
+
+"Oh, thanks.  I should love to....  Shall I go and change?"
+
+She asked this of the young Detmould, who seemed rather embarrassed,
+and stuttered:
+
+"Sure; if you will, thanks; and I'll go and get Elsie and Clarkson."
+
+His American accent pleased her.
+
+When she returned in a white tennis coat to the lounge she saw the
+young Detmould in flannels, and talking deferentially to her father.
+With his white shirt open at the throat, his hair already blown and
+his rather childish features, he would have looked a growing
+schoolboy, had it not been for a set--almost pained--thoughtfulness
+in his eyes and mouth.  He rose as she entered, said: "Well,
+good-bye, sir," to Mr. Bruno, and led the way to the tennis-court.
+
+The tennis-court was of dried earth, and had been cut out of a wooded
+slope.  On three of the banks, therefore, were trees: horse-chestnuts
+and figs, with firs behind, and under the branches a few old and
+blistered garden-seats.  A beaten track climbed from the gate in the
+surrounding network to the garden seats.  At the minute, on the pale,
+slate-coloured earth, Elsie Detmould was playing a single with Mr.
+Clarkson, their companion of the previous night.  They stopped as
+Daphne appeared.
+
+"It's awfully nice of you to come," said Elsie with her pleasant
+American drawl.  "I'm afraid none of us are any good except
+Henry"--she nodded towards her brother--"and he's terrible."
+
+Then Henry was his name--Henry Detmould--and he didn't fit either.
+
+In the first set Daphne was partnered with Henry, and whether it was
+that she was excited by the all-conquering play of her partner, or
+aided by the weakness of Mr. Clarkson and Elsie, she knew not, but
+she played as she never remembered playing before.  The set went to
+her and Henry at 6-0.
+
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Elsie.  "I guess you're a player.  What's wrong
+with a change of partners?"
+
+Flushed with her success, Daphne determined to play her hardest
+against Henry, and she and Mr. Clarkson fought a fine losing battle.
+The points were contested with such obstinacy that each time they
+were won or lost she threw up both her arms and shrieked with
+excitement.  And at the set's close she said over the net to Henry
+Detmould:
+
+"You've no business to play at all, playing as well as that."
+
+He blushed, and his sister endorsed: "He is horrible, isn't he?"
+
+Tired, they were moving towards the seats, Elsie Detmould and Mr.
+Clarkson in front, and Daphne and Henry following with the net
+between them.
+
+"But you'll make a wonderful player yourself," said Henry.
+
+"Oh, I'm no good," protested Daphne.  "I didn't play all last year."
+
+"You're a born player.  All you want is a spell of singles with some
+one a little stronger than yourself."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"Yes.  Will you--will you play at least one set of singles with me
+every day.  I should love to--to bring you out."
+
+"Oh, may I?  But won't it be horribly dull for you?"
+
+"Not at all.  I----"  There he stopped, unable to phrase exactly what
+he was thinking.  They were on the beaten path now, she leading, and
+when they reached the seat he picked up her white coat and silently
+helped her on with it.
+
+After a rest they decided on a return set, and Daphne in her keenness
+ran first down the track on to the court.  When all were placed for
+play, she frowned through the strings of her racket at Henry saying:
+"Now, don't you be too much of a beast this time," and he looked
+awkwardly away, but smiled.  In this set she did not play so well,
+being anxious to justify his invitation, and, when it was over, felt
+compelled to say: "You can withdraw your invitation if you like."
+
+"No," smiled he.  "I've no desire to.  In fact, if you play badly I
+shall put you through a longer course."
+
+She answered nothing, but again walked ahead up the beaten path.
+That Henry Detmould, even as Roger six years before, had been
+attracted to her from the first glance, was plain enough, and that
+her own response was already troubling her.  It was a different
+response.  This American boy had not Roger's good looks to quicken
+her admiration and pride; she knew nothing whatever about him, and
+yet--Heaven only knew why--she fancied her heart was beating a little
+quicker for him.
+
+Having returned to the hotel, she ran up all those stairs, dismissing
+the last of her breath, and, before preparing for lunch, entered in
+her diary: "Played tennis 10.30 to 12.30 with Miss Detmould, Mr.
+Clarkson, and Shelley."
+
+
+She did not see him again till after dinner on the terrace.  Then
+when the quartette was again playing they found themselves sitting
+side by side and watching the evening as it fell over the water or
+lit up behind the mountains.
+
+The talk had begun with perfunctory remarks about their tennis, but
+it only became really interesting when the falling darkness inspired
+them to discuss themselves.
+
+"Do you know," said Henry suddenly, "I'm really bowled over by
+meeting your father and you here.  I've so long been a student of his
+books.  In fact, I think they decided the course of my life."
+
+Next to hearing praise of oneself the most uncomfortable thing is to
+hear praise of one's parents, and Daphne replied awkwardly:
+
+"They are quite good, aren't they?"
+
+"I think they're magnificent."
+
+"Have you published any books?"
+
+"Lord, no!" muttered he.  "And I've very little hopes of any one ever
+publishing my stuff; but I'm always writing, and always shall do.  Do
+you write, too?"
+
+"I want to."
+
+"Oh, you will, then.  You're sure to."
+
+"I don't know."  Daphne's head shook.  "I'm losing hope.  I seem to
+have no powers of invention at all.  I can't invent any plot that
+hasn't been done before."
+
+"Invention!  What do you want with invention?  Invention's the
+opposite of true art."
+
+Her face swung to his.
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Invention, inasmuch as it is invention, must be insincere.  Art
+isn't the invention of entertaining stuff, it's--it's--oh, it's the
+liberation, for your own relief, of all the emotion stirred in you by
+the spectacle of life.  It's the transmuting into some art form of
+your reaction, as we say in America--your reaction to life."
+
+"Regardless of whether any one will read it, or publish it?" queried
+Daphne.
+
+"Absolutely....  Or no....  No, you do hope, when you've given a
+created form to your emotion, that there'll be those one day who will
+recognise it as akin to their own, and care to contemplate it, and
+even thrill to it....  But that mustn't be the thought that drives
+you to write."
+
+This was the beginning.  Henry poured out his views on art.  Art
+wasn't entertainment....  The true artist gave but little thought to
+the spectator....  All he sought was expression--escape--release....
+And these ideas, coming on a living voice, driven forward by a
+personality that attracted her, stood clear before Daphne.  Never
+from her confused reading had they come out like this.  She'd been
+wrong--she'd been all along wrong; half of her desire to write had
+been hunger for fame, and the other half imitation.  Her reaction to
+life?  She hadn't got one....  And yet there had been moments....
+Yes, perhaps one-tenth of her desire had been the true impulse.
+
+The talk became a confession where Daphne, as a penitent, sought
+counsel from her director.  She confessed that, so far from having
+emotions and a view-point of her own, she was never thrilled by a
+noble passage in an author without wanting to write like him and from
+his view-point.
+
+"Exactly," said Henry.  "Your reaction has been to literature and not
+to life."
+
+"And yet I don't know," demurred she.  "There have been times----"
+And she told him the story of Taverney Churchyard.  Henry listened,
+sometimes wrinkling his brow at the lake as he thought out answers,
+sometimes turning to watch her as she spoke.  His reply lingered, and
+when it came was strange.
+
+"Forgive me asking it, but have you suffered at all in your life?"
+
+She smiled over the inevitable reply.
+
+"Not much, I suppose."
+
+"Because I've a fancy that it's not till we've suffered a great deal
+that our hearts, when they are moved like that, will be so charged
+with sympathy that it gives us much--everything to write."
+
+And ambition.  What was to be done about her ambition?  Must she
+believe, then, that she was a sham--for she was sure, whatever he
+said, she would never expel it?  "I do want to do all you say, but I
+do want to be famous, too, and soon, while all my friends are alive."
+
+Henry thought long, and once ran his fingers into the hair that the
+breeze on the terrace was blowing across his forehead.  "No, it must
+go," he said; and at that moment he threw the end of his cigarette
+over the balustrade as if it were Daphne's ambition.  It must go.  It
+was a corruptive principle.  All that could remain of it was her hope
+to please the few who would understand.
+
+"I am convinced that many true artists start from those two points of
+ambition and imitation, and work through, dropping the false values,
+one by one, till they discover their real selves."
+
+Silence, till Daphne asked:
+
+"But if you never get anything published at all?"
+
+Henry looked along the emptying terrace.  They must have been talking
+for hours.
+
+"A really big thing, I fancy, always gets through--sooner or later.
+But, at any rate, people like you and me, if we're never able to
+produce anything big enough, at least can join the few who
+understand."
+
+
+When she smiled "Good night" at him at the lift door and walked along
+the corridor to her bedroom, she had a sense that she had enjoyed the
+most wonderful conversation in her life.  With no one else had she
+been able to talk like that.  In such an intimacy was a serenity as
+delightful, as blissful--there was no other word--as when she walked
+with her thoughts in the glades of Montmorency.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+But these intimate conversations belonged, as by right, to the
+darkness of after dinner.  The sunny mornings--and in the summer of
+1899 the days were monotonously, illustriously sunny--would see them
+on the tennis court, playing their practice singles.  Enthusiasm more
+and more possessed Daphne as she found her strokes getting stronger,
+her eyes surer, and her feet swifter.  She still ran shrieking from
+side to side of the court as he placed the ball now in one corner and
+now in another; and when she shrieked she apologised, promising "she
+would not do that again."  If he beat her with a malicious and
+impossible ball she looked angrily at him through the strings of her
+racket, and even threw out her tongue.
+
+When the games were over, and he declared that he was thirsty, she
+would say, "So'm I.  Let's go and get some fizzy."  And they would
+walk back to the terrace, where she poured out the drink for him.
+Always she remarked that when she was close to him, pouring out his
+drink, he would be silent and almost painfully abstracted.  That she
+was encouraging him she knew, but could not cease from it; something
+compelled her to show that she was happy in this fellowship and ready
+to think of herself and him as a separated pair.
+
+Soon her father took to coming and watching them at tennis.  He must
+learn, he said, whether there was anything in this noisy rumour of
+his daughter's skill.  As an outcome of his survey he was struck by
+his daughter's exceedingly good form in the matter of tennis and her
+exceedingly bad form in the matter of manners--shrieking and leaping
+as she did whenever there was occasion for triumph or reprobation,
+shouting "Oo!" and "Lordy!" and "Coo!" and even staring impudently at
+the young man through the grill-window of her racket.  The second
+time he watched, an early evening after tea, he was strongly
+impressed by the unconscious or subtly concealed way in which she was
+throwing herself at this American boy.  He pulled his moustaches over
+it, sitting under the chestnut trees above the play.  The thing
+interested him as a philosopher and a student of human nature, and he
+ruminated, detached from it, as though the girl were not his
+daughter.  In watching this attraction between a man and a maid,
+thought he, he was very near to the acme of things.  If to a vitalist
+philosophy love was life at its greatest intensity, here was he
+watching it break through and bud vividly.  An unconscious youth and
+girl didn't realise that this was the explanation of their genius for
+love.  Yes, life touched no higher point than this; and nuptials,
+therefore, to those who could see, were a coronation ceremony of life.
+
+These thoughts were interrupted by the game's early close.  Young
+Detmould had promised to meet his sister returning on the steamboat
+from Treib; and Mr. Bruno was slightly disturbed to hear his daughter
+call out: "Oh, must you go?  What a shame!  I'll come with you to the
+gate."
+
+"_Bon Dieu!_" thought Mr. Bruno.  "That's going rather far."
+
+The gate she meant was at the end of a narrow serpentine path that
+threaded downward through the crowding firs.  He allowed her five
+minutes before following her; and then, lighting a cigar to fortify
+him in a difficult interview, strolled along the path.  She was
+leaning, as he saw on turning the last bend, against the post of the
+little swing gate, and sucking a large and ungovernable sweetmeat.
+The American boy must have just disappeared, and Daphne be indulging
+a reverie.  This sight of his daughter resting against a gate and
+symbolising the acme of things touched him.  He called:
+
+"Duffy."
+
+She looked up, startled.
+
+"Come back with me and be lectured."
+
+She replied nothing, but sucked the abominable lollipop (thus
+treating his promised lecture with scanty reverence), and taking her
+elbow from the gate-post came to him.  And it was as they were
+walking back that he said:
+
+"You're obviously throwing yourself at the head of that American
+youth."
+
+"Oh, I'm not!" she exclaimed.
+
+"You said that like a Cockney serving-girl.  I tell you you are
+deliberately--whether in the body or out of it I can't say--throwing
+yourself at the besotted young man, who's quite palpably in love with
+you."
+
+The sentence was music in Daphne's ears.  She liked her father to
+think that Henry Detmould was in love with her, and so said nothing
+for fear of damaging the thought.
+
+"Tell me, Duffy, what would you think of a bookseller who was so
+unable to recognise a first edition that would one day be of some
+value that he flung it into the twopenny box for the first loiterer
+to buy?"
+
+She provided the answer expected from her.
+
+"I should think him a silly fool, I suppose."
+
+"Well, but thou art the man--the creature, I mean."
+
+"Daddy, I'm not.  You're imagining it all.  Besides, you might go on
+saying that for ever.  I must like some one one day."
+
+"Yes; but, Duffy go slow, go slow.  What you may think is love is
+often self-hypnotism.  You've always had a fairly clear brain, so
+make sure first."
+
+"But how does one make sure?"
+
+"How?  I don't know.  I think time alone will test it for you.  What
+do you know of young Detmould?  You've only met him for a week or
+two.  All I can say for him is that he has the grace to be much shyer
+of encouraging you than you are of him."
+
+"I've never encouraged him one bit."
+
+"Not deliberately and vulgarly.  But whether you know it or not, my
+dear, you hang out teasing flags."
+
+She ran upstairs to dress for dinner, and closed her bedroom door, as
+if to add more privacy to her thoughts.  She stood behind her window
+and looked out.
+
+How did one make sure?
+
+What did she really feel?  Certainly she wanted to keep her lure for
+Henry, and her long thoughts about him.  With this new interest life
+had dyed itself very bright; and if a wand could wave it away so that
+it had never been, everything would drop into paleness again.  Up
+till their arrival at Brunnen her book-thoughts had crowded her mind,
+but now Henry had sent them below and occupied their room.  In his
+talks on the terrace at night he had given her more than any one else
+in the world.  Not only had he unveiled the wrongness in her approach
+to art, but his wide-thrown learning had indirectly shamed her into
+disturbing realisations.  He talked of philosophy--and what did she
+know of philosophy?  Wrinkling his forehead, or pressing a hand on
+his hair, he spoke of painters, sculptors, musicians, architects,
+declaring that he who would be master of one art must be jack of them
+all--and she knew hardly anything of the names he mentioned!
+Greatness, she realised, as she listened in a humiliated silence, was
+not born from dreaming on it, nor was it attained by the slothful who
+read only what was easy.  If you were to express your reaction to
+life, you must aim at little else than all knowledge, so should it be
+the reaction of a fine mind.  All this he had given her.  Was she in
+love with him?  She created a very private picture of herself lying
+in Henry's arms, pressed against his heart.  It sent a tremor of joy
+through her.
+
+But what did _he_ feel?  There was that first night's staring at her.
+There was his pointed choice of her to play tennis with, though
+really she could be nothing more than a wild pupil.  And sometimes
+when he caught her eyes he swung his own away uncomfortably.  But was
+it only a passing attraction--a holiday flirtation?  No, it didn't
+seem like that.  That strange agitation of his hands, when she stood
+very close to him and poured out his drink--it didn't look like
+flirting.
+
+She stepped forward and stood on her loggia, staring over the lake at
+the fir-woods climbing the opposite mountain.  The evening was close,
+and the water filmed and inert.  A little boat with two people in it
+was coming home to Brunnen from the Schillerstein.  After watching it
+for a while, she quickly turned her head leftward and upward to the
+floor above--where Henry's window was.  He was standing on his
+balcony, looking down at her loggia.  And he had seen her glance, and
+awkwardly waved his hand, as if to show he was unembarrassed.  She
+pretended not to have recognised him, and retreated into her room.
+
+That night there was dancing in the lounge.  Daphne, with a Spanish
+embroidered shawl about her shoulders, sat next her father, watching
+the first waltz, and hoping Henry would soon come and ask her to
+dance, that her father might be further persuaded of his love.  But
+not once did he come near her.  He danced two or three dances with
+his sister, and some more with a very pretty girl, whom Daphne had
+often noticed.  But she was not jealous of her, for Henry as he
+waltzed seemed abstracted and mechanical.
+
+Daphne was not left without partners.  The most persistent suitor was
+a tall, moustached Swiss, who, having once found her, was beyond
+question lost in admiration of his discovery.  She talked gaily to
+him in French, but was thinking all the while: "Why doesn't Henry
+come?  Is he hurt about something?  Did he think I snubbed him by not
+answering his wave?  I didn't mean to snub him--I was only shy...."
+She tried a happier thought.  "Perhaps he doesn't want to compromise
+me by being seen so much with me, and this is so public.  Yes, it's
+that.  It's a good sign, rather than a bad one."  But when they
+passed each other dancing, and he smiled a merry recognition, as if
+there were nothing remarkable in their not dancing together, she
+doubted again.  "I shall know to-morrow morning, if he asks me to
+play tennis with him as usual."
+
+In the morning she dawdled on the terrace in the hope of his
+invitation, but he passed her gaily, calling that he was going to
+climb the Selisberg with his sister and Clarkson.  Almost it appeared
+as if he had made up his mind to avoid her.  And in the evening,
+after dinner, he, Elsie and Clarkson sat with her father and her, and
+all discussed with perfect naturalness their adventures during the
+day.  Never did he attempt to escape from the shelter of a crowd.  At
+ten o'clock she retired to her bedroom with her wound.  "Time is so
+short.  We shan't have more than a month here, and we are wasting
+precious days.  Henry, you know you want to be with me.  You know you
+do."
+
+One day succeeded another without bringing back the former
+intercourse.  It was a mystery.  Only when other people were with
+them did they meet.  And yet she knew all the while that he was
+longing to have her alone.  She would leave herself in places where
+he was likely to arrive, and then, shy of appearing to have done it
+on purpose, stroll away as soon as she saw him in the distance.
+Sometimes when she was thus set for him, the moustached Swiss would
+appear, and, though courteous to him, she would be thinking: "I don't
+want you.  I don't want you.  I'm awfully sorry if you're in love
+with me, because I know what it is to love without return.  I'm
+sorry."  And as soon as possible she would escape.
+
+Her father took her on carriage excursions to Tellsplatte and the
+Einsiedeln Monastery, and Altdorf, and up the Furka Pass to the Rhone
+Glacier; and on the same days Henry went climbing with Elsie and
+their friend.  A week of this mere friendliness heightened her doubt
+to misery, and her love to passion.  Not now did she bring it to
+trial.  She would not so insult it.  She was madly in love with
+Henry.  She wanted Henry with his boyish features and shape and his
+rich mind--his mind that blent with hers and fertilised it.  She
+wanted him for her exclusive possession, to imprison him in herself.
+She was unable to read, unable to talk to people, and annoyed with
+her father when he came to chat.  Always she wished to be worrying
+out the problem, "Does he love me?" sometimes answering it, "Yes, I
+know he does, in spite of all," and at other times, "He did for a few
+days, he really did, but not now."  Or she refused herself so much
+comfort as that, declaring, "No, he was never more than just
+interested."  And she would review every look she had seen in him,
+and every sentence he had uttered, in quest of proofs that he had
+loved her; and with a sunken heart decide that there was nothing that
+she could twist into more than a transient interest.  She played an
+old childish game, "If I pass that post before some one speaks to me,
+then he does love me," and if it went against her, refused to believe
+in it.  The terrace and the tennis court and its seat under the
+chestnuts, and all the places where they had been together, clothed
+themselves with pain.  And if people in their innocence spoke to her
+about Mr. Detmould, or "that young American," she felt she had a
+proprietary interest in him, and gave information as one who spoke
+with authority.
+
+Her fist had clenched over the vow: "You shall come back to me first.
+I won't go to you.  Time may be short, but you shall come to me
+first."
+
+In the end, however, she went to him.
+
+He was sitting quite alone in a dark corner of the long terrace, as
+far as possible from the people round the string quartette.
+Pretending not to see him, she wandered past.
+
+"You look tired," came his voice from the obscurity.
+
+"Oh ... hallo!"
+
+He extended the chair that was next to him, leaving his arm along its
+back.
+
+"Why not sit down?"
+
+After some meaningless hesitation she accepted the chair.
+
+"I will--for a little," stuttered she, as he withdrew his arm.  "But
+it's cold, isn't it?"
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+It was a preamble to nothing; neither found more words.  She looked
+at the Spanish shawl, lying on her lap, and fiddled with its
+embroidery.  Something told her that Henry was agitated and trembling
+internally, though nothing in his posture or movements suggested it;
+only the foot of his crossed leg swung gently.  At one moment she
+knew that he was looking at her arms, and she scanned them herself.
+Hard tennis had made them slenderer than usual, and exposure had
+browned them; they were trembling.
+
+"If you're cold," said Henry at last, "you'd better put your shawl
+on.  Let me put it round you."
+
+He took it off her lap and, as she bent forward without looking at
+him, placed it about her shoulders, careful not to touch her.  She
+leaned back in her chair.
+
+"Do you think you've been playing too much tennis?" asked he.
+
+"Oh, no.  Why?"
+
+"You look tired--and frailer."
+
+"Then I certainly shan't play much more.  It's my ambition to get
+fatter."
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"No," he repeated.  "You're all right as you are.  I like your narrow
+shoulders--and your slimness--and your childish clothes.  I wouldn't
+have you different."
+
+As with such words they seemed to have fluttered very near to
+something, both withdrew into silence.
+
+"Elsie and I and Clarkson are going to climb the Mythen to-morrow."
+Thus he deliberately broke the pause.
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"Yes....  Or I'm supposed to be going too.  I'm not sure that I want
+to.  I feel I'd rather laze about here.  We go away so soon."
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"In a fortnight's time."
+
+She showed no feeling, though the shadow of a future pain fell near.
+
+"We're going on a walking tour," he continued--"over the Furka Pass
+and down into Brigue.  I was tremendously keen on it, but the
+prospect bores me now.  However...."
+
+"I wish you weren't going.  It'll be rotten here without your sister
+and you."
+
+Henry uncrossed his legs and lit a cigarette.
+
+"Have you ever thought," said he, "that one never discovers the truth
+of how to live until it's too late to live?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, I am twenty-five, and I've found no code by which one lives a
+full life and yet hurts nobody.  When I've read enough and thought
+enough and got the brains to think out a philosophy of living, I
+shall probably be too old to live."
+
+Daphne nodded as if she partly understood.
+
+After a silence that often moved with undelivered words, he
+proceeded, gaining time between sentences by tending his cigarette:
+
+"Take a hypothetical case.  An artist of some sort--let us say a man
+seeking to be a great, and, above all, a _true_ musician--wants to be
+loyal to life as it calls him--knows that he _ought_ to be loyal to
+it....  And it suddenly calls with a voice so sacred that it seems
+almost like a religious call--through some love, I mean--it--it calls
+him to the wilful snapping of all the world's inhibitions.  He is not
+in the happy position of possessing a religion to tell him that these
+inhibitions are the laws of God.  If he were, the problem would be
+solved at once, and his duty plain....  But instead, he suspects that
+they are things improperly thought out, and enforced by those who
+have forgotten what it was like to love....  Well, a vision has
+haunted all artists that their road to beauty is through lawlessness
+and danger....  They have seen that Art is a sort of Mysticism,
+because you will never attain to its highest places unless you are
+ready to leave all and follow life....  And it isn't pure
+selfishness, as people say, for timidity and selfishness and security
+often pull on the other side....  Oh, but this is old stuff--much of
+it is in your father's books--but it comes alive for one, when one is
+going through what thousands have gone through before...."
+
+"I don't think I understand," said Daphne.
+
+With that he stopped like a train against the buffers.
+
+
+Between ten and eleven that night she stood near her window--or out
+on her loggia, laying hands on the balustrade and looking over the
+lake tranced by the darkness.
+
+"He _does_ love me.  I'm sure of it.  Just now he does.  And I do
+love him.  I love him madly."
+
+But why?  Of his past or his full character she knew nothing; she had
+only looked on his outward appearance, and into his mind with its
+enthusiasm.  But whether, to those who knew him in the deep, he was
+good or bad she didn't care.  She would almost like to be told of
+sins he had committed, that she might assure him they were nothing to
+her.
+
+But what would come of it all?
+
+"What do I really believe will happen?  I suppose I really believe we
+shall be separated when he goes, and perhaps come together in the
+future, or perhaps not.  But, of course, we shall part without
+telling each other anything....  He couldn't very well speak, after
+only knowing me a few weeks."
+
+Strange that, too sunk in the joy of loving, she was not made
+miserable by this sense of shortness.  It had not yet got through her
+exultation, or the little of it that flushed her feelings, by adding
+poignance, sweetened them.
+
+But what did he mean by that talk of the world's inhibitions, and of
+timidity and selfishness and security pulling you back, and of not
+hurting others?  She could make nothing of this.  If he yielded to
+his love for her, how would he injure anybody or affront the world?
+Was he perhaps engaged to a girl?  Or--quick, heart-gripping
+fear!--had he meant some one other than herself--some married woman,
+perhaps--when he spoke of a love that called him?  Was he only using
+her as a friendly person to whom he could pour out his trouble?
+
+"No, he meant _me_."  Her heart steadied.  "He meant me.  I'm sure of
+it.  I can't tell why, but I know it."
+
+Resolved to keep this certainty and to take it into her dreams, she
+turned into the light of her bedroom, leaving the window wide open,
+for the night was close, undressed, and got into bed.  With a mind
+studiously emptied, like a room for Henry to walk about in, she fell
+asleep.  Her dreams, as often happened, had nothing to do with him
+whom she had tried to will into them.  She dreamt that she was back
+in the months before they came to Switzerland, wandering along the
+roads of the Montmorency Forest, and watching the men quarrying the
+yellow stone for the local villas, or the woodcutters stacking their
+faggots.  Once she was in a gloomy avenue of huge fir trees that
+approached the gates of a château, and down the avenue came the girl
+of her own age, herding her white goats.  Of such places as Brunnen,
+or of such people as she would meet there, she had as yet no
+knowledge....  Now she was walking along a sun-spotted glade towards
+St. Prix, where Miss Sims's class and Miss Vidella's spectacled stare
+were awaiting her; and abruptly, without break in the sunlight, and
+without wetting her in the least, the rain began to tear through the
+branches.  It was magnificent.  Any second the thunder would come.
+The first crash, with its rolling echoes, woke her.
+
+She saw through her open window that it was early morning, and the
+rain was rushing down in lines so perpendicular, so visible, and so
+close as to seem like the warp of unmade linen.  A flash of lightning
+introduced another clap of thunder which repeated itself, for
+interminable seconds, among the mountains and in the great basin of
+the lake.  There were rhythmical pauses in the rain, and when its
+curtain was removed, the peaks, framed by her window, stood folded
+round with clouds.  She jumped up to watch.  The storm's rhythm was
+wonderful.  For a few moments the clouds would dissipate, revealing
+the snowfields rosy with sunrise, and then condense again, and there
+would be thunder and the shattering curtain of rain.
+
+The immediate message of the storm was one of hope.  Henry was to
+have gone climbing the Mythen to-day, and now, perhaps, he wouldn't
+go.  In mid-morning the weather would clear and they would play
+tennis, or it would stay wet and they would find some sheltered place
+to talk.  Her watch said five o'clock; if only she could keep the
+storm over Brunnen till Elsie and Henry had finally abandoned their
+early start for the Mythen!  But it began to pass, and in fifteen
+minutes might never have been.  Stepping on to the loggia she gave a
+quick glance towards Henry's room; its sunblinds were up and its
+French windows thrown open.  Possibly he was getting ready--but, no,
+surely he wouldn't go--he would make excuses to remain behind, and
+after breakfast she would find him lingering on the terrace waiting
+for her to appear.  Free of his sister and Clarkson, he would suggest
+their game of tennis, and when that was over they would walk together
+with feigned naturalness along the winding path between the firs, and
+he would abruptly ask her to let him row her over to the Rutli, and
+once on the water they would glide to solitary places under the
+farther bank.
+
+Such would be their morning, and she dressed suitably for it.  But in
+the restaurant there was no Henry dawdling at his breakfast-table,
+where she had hoped to see him, nor was he on the terrace or in the
+lounge, when she wandered through them.
+
+He had gone, then.  He had gone with his sister to climb the Mythen.
+
+She was stabbed by it.  It meant worrying out all over again the
+problem whether or not he was in love with her.  "He must have made
+any excuse to stay if he felt for me what I feel for him.  Then he
+_doesn't_."  Seated on a chair on the terrace, she passed in review,
+one, two, and three times, every symptom of love or every hint of
+indifference he had shown the first day.  And the evidence, after
+this crowning incident of the Mythen, seemed to show that he liked
+her a little, but knew none of the doubting, hungry, monopolising
+love that was hers.  It was a terrible verdict--and she didn't
+believe it.  "He _does_ love me, I know it.  But why then did he go?"
+Her father came and sat beside her, and she wished he would go away.
+He went; but other people strolled up and started to be pleasant.
+Some of them, deceived by her blithe answers, kept her in
+conversation for long quarters of an hour, while her problem waited
+where it was hidden, crying to her to return.  At last, for fear of
+being spoken to, she left the hotel and walked along the streets of
+Brunnen.
+
+In these streets, if she walked away from the lake, she could see the
+twin points of the Mythen rising high above the broken sky-line.  How
+exactly like the two humps of a sitting camel they were!  No, they
+were too pointed--a little too conical for that.  Sometimes they
+looked like two pyramids, joined together as Siamese twins were
+joined.  Trees mantled them for a great way up, and then the points
+rose naked.  Through those trees, though they were miles away, one
+could almost see the paths where he was climbing.
+
+
+When she entered the restaurant for dinner that evening, a rapid,
+careless, over-shoulder glance showed him talking gaily to his
+sister.  In that glance his profile had appeared to be almost ugly;
+and, though surprised, she was pleased, half hoping that, by seeing
+his plainness, she could be cured of her love and given relief from
+its pains.  But the thought was dead as soon as born.
+
+Waiters cleared the lounge for dancing, but she did not want to
+dance.  And when the tall, moustached Swiss came seeking her for his
+partner, she declared that she had resolved not to dance to-night.
+Escaping from her father's side, she went and sat alone in the
+comparative darkness of the terrace.  It was deserted except for a
+couple in the distance who were sitting out a dance.  She left the
+Spanish shawl on her lap, and, stretching her legs before her,
+crossed one ankle over the other.  There was an iron table beside
+her, and she rested her elbow upon it.  Her mood made her wish she
+could light a cigarette like a man, and send up her thoughts in puffs
+or rings of smoke.
+
+She might have sat there fifteen minutes when Henry appeared and
+walked towards her.
+
+"You've deserted us," smiled he.
+
+"Yes, I'm tired."
+
+"So am I."
+
+"Did you climb the Mythen?"
+
+"Yes, to the very top.  That's why I'm done for.  So's Elsie.  She's
+danced two dances and gone to bed."
+
+He sat on a chair the other side of the iron table.  Taking a loose
+silver matchbox from his waistcoat pocket, he lit a Swiss cigar and
+laid the matchbox on the table.
+
+"I thought possibly you wouldn't go," ventured Daphne, "when I saw
+the storm this morning."
+
+"I shouldn't have minded much if it had stayed a bit longer and
+prevented our going.  I was never very eager about it."
+
+This led them into the accustomed silence; he was engrossed in
+watching his smoke, and she, happy because he had sought her out,
+picked up his matchbox and twisted it in her fingers, with her face
+averted.  Once, lest the silence became too noticeable, he said:
+
+"I danced three dances with Miss Storry, and they were three too many
+for any one so exhausted."
+
+And Daphne, resolved to be generous, answered:
+
+"I think she's such an awfully pretty girl."
+
+"Yes.  I suppose she is."
+
+After that he returned to his smoke and Daphne to her playing with
+his matchbox.  The silence was next broken by Mr. Bruno, who walked
+up behind a cigar.
+
+"Ah, you, Mr. Detmould, being American, can afford to take your
+holiday slowly, but my daughter and I, being English Imperialists,
+will have to quicken the _tempo_ of ours, I'm afraid."
+
+"What are you talking about, Daddy?" asked Daphne languidly, as he
+drew up a chair.
+
+He was talking about the privileges of belonging to an Imperialist
+nation, he explained, and the chances it offered of conscientiously
+shooting Dutchmen in their own country.  Didn't she realise that, as
+a loyal Englishwoman, she would soon be at war with the Transvaal?
+
+"I'm not going to war with any one," she grumbled; and Henry, turning
+towards her father, said that he had thought the news was better.
+
+Her father then spread himself to be interesting, as, indeed, he
+could be in such a matter as this.  The French and German papers in
+the lounge, said he, were so much more feminine and indiscreet than
+the ponderous English journals.  And they showed that the Transvaal
+was arming to the eyebrows, and that trainloads of suspicious
+packing-cases, labelled as farming implements, were pouring from
+France and Germany--through Capetown, if you please--and up to
+Pretoria.  And the Boers were buying horses in every market, and
+Europe's soldiers-of-fortune appearing in the Boer streets.  And the
+English, in their usual humorous way, had answered all this by
+sending out two companies of engineers.
+
+Henry inquired when the fighting would begin.
+
+"When the rain comes, and the grass for the horses," said her father.
+
+Henry nodded.  The conception was picturesque.
+
+"In September or October, I suppose," pursued Mr. Bruno.  "As soon as
+the veldt is right, old Kruger won't wait for us to send him an
+ultimatum, he'll send his own instead.  He'll say: 'Come on!'  And I
+expect we shall send out two more companies of engineers."
+
+But Daphne, momentarily stimulated, was no longer interested.  Had
+all Europe been going to war it would not have found an inch of
+resting-room in her mind, for her love was a monopolising and
+unsociable tenant.  Even the thought that this war might prevent
+their visit to Italy was unimportant now.  Italy was nothing.  It lay
+beyond the day when Henry and she should have parted.  What mattered
+was that their few remaining hours were flying, and fate seemed
+determined that they should never be alone.
+
+
+And in the next few days they did not meet except in the presence of
+others.  This was all the stranger, since Elsie Detmould had kept to
+her bed for two days, having taken cold when climbing the Mythen.
+Henry, one would have thought, would have been freer to seek out
+Daphne.  But he didn't, and she sat on terrace or in lounge, and an
+unread book on her knees, arguing over and over again her old case.
+On the Wednesday, three days before he went, he _did_ come for a
+little while and sit beside her--the table between them as before.
+And all his words, she dared to believe, hinted at warmer meanings
+behind.
+
+"I don't want to leave this place a bit," he grumbled.
+
+"When are you going?"
+
+"Saturday morning--soon after sunrise....  It's--it's not to be
+thought."
+
+Daphne turned her head towards those meeting mountains where the lake
+appeared to finish in a dark corner.  Up through them, as far as she
+could remember, climbed the serpentine road to the Furka Pass.  She
+pictured Henry, with knapsack and alpenstock, bending to its steeper
+slopes, till he reached the summit of the pass and ascended to the
+ice-fields of the Rhone Glacier.
+
+"Oh, but you'll enjoy going over the Furka.  The view from the
+glacier is too wonderful for words.  I can imagine you on the ice."
+
+"I wish you were coming too," he murmured.
+
+"So do I.  But we're staying here a little longer, and then going to
+Grindelwald."
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"But will your sister be well enough to do all that walking?"
+
+"Oh, yes, that's what she's come for.  She was ill in the spring, and
+was determined to get rid of it.  She's always been a dashing sort."
+
+Daphne was now seeing a picture of Henry's childhood, and feeling
+jealous of Elsie and all those who had known him during the
+twenty-five years before she did.
+
+"Yes," continued Henry, "I've been looking it out on the map.  We
+shall be only about thirty miles apart, and yet have all the highest
+mountains of the Bernese Oberland between us."
+
+This could be met only with silence.
+
+
+The next morning, Thursday, when she was strolling through the hotel,
+she played on her pains by trying to imagine that it was Saturday,
+and that Henry had already left.  And as she looked at the places
+where they had talked together, she knew she would not be able to
+endure the hotel after he had gone; these places would hit her wound
+too cruelly.  Much better to be clear of Brunnen, seeing something
+new!  How could she get away?  How could she ask her father to take
+her away without betraying her secrets?  Impossible as it seemed to
+his incisive eyes, it must be attempted.
+
+She found him on the seat above the empty tennis court with a book
+and a cigar.
+
+"Daddy," she began, sitting next to him.  "Aren't you getting bored
+with this place yet?"
+
+"Not particularly.  Are you?"
+
+She thought it out.
+
+"No.  But I'm quite keen on moving on and seeing somewhere else....
+I'm so afraid, you see, that this old war'll prevent us doing half of
+what we planned--you said we'd have to speed up things a bit--so I
+vote we go on to Grindelwald."
+
+He did not turn and look at her in an enquiring surprise, but studied
+the tennis court before him; and she knew that he had guessed
+everything.  He did not chaff her, saying, "Let's see, the American
+boy goes on Saturday, doesn't he?" for he knew (and she could almost
+feel his knowledge) that the matter had passed beyond chaff.  Of his
+gentleness he would erect between them a pretence of ignorance,
+though each would know that neither believed in it.
+
+"I shouldn't mind," said he.  "I'm afraid I am rather apt to take
+root where I can find a garden and book.  When do you suggest going?"
+
+"Well, not to-morrow, of course.  But Saturday perhaps, or Sunday.
+I'm awfully keen on seeing the other places."
+
+"Saturday's the day after to-morrow, isn't it?  Well, certainly if
+you order it.  You're in command of this expedition."
+
+Dinner that evening showed Elsie back in her place; and Daphne, when
+she followed the diners into the lounge, resolved to make much of
+her.  She had seen hardly anything of Henry's sister, what with their
+climbing in the daytime and the attentions of Mr. Clarkson at night.
+And for some reason she wanted Elsie Detmould to take away with her a
+liking for Daphne Bruno.  So now, since Elsie was sitting alone, she
+took the wicker chair at her side and asked after her cold.
+
+"I reckon I'd forgotten its existence till you mentioned it," drawled
+Elsie pleasantly.  "Two days in bed'll finish off the best of
+colds....  But I was determined to be quit of it, as we've all this
+marching ahead of us."
+
+"Yes, I know.  I'm sorry you're going so soon.  Must you?"
+
+"Yes, I guess we can't stay here all the time.  We want to see other
+places, and we haven't too long in Switzerland.  I've got to get back
+to my mother, and Henry's got to get back to his wife."
+
+It was as if a revolver had been shot off in Daphne's ear.
+
+But as instantaneous was the conviction that she must keep perfect
+control of herself and show nothing to Elsie.  Elsie had spoken quite
+naturally and without malice, evidently having seen nothing more than
+friendliness between her brother and Daphne.  Daphne turned and
+looked at her, laughing.
+
+"I never knew he was married!"
+
+"Married?  Very much so.  He was married four years ago."
+
+Daphne frowned a humorous incredulity--as if the joke were getting
+better.
+
+"Four years?  He doesn't look old enough."
+
+"He married at twenty-one."
+
+"I suppose he's a father, too.  But I simply can't imagine it."
+
+"No, he's not a father yet."
+
+"He ought to have brought his wife with him, on a lovely holiday like
+this."
+
+"Ah, but she especially arranged that he should bring me.  I'm really
+recuperating from a breakdown."
+
+"Awfully sporting of her," said Daphne.
+
+"Yes, she's a good sort.  And I guess she quite enjoys a holiday from
+Henry.  Husbands are a bit trying sometimes."
+
+How Daphne kept up that conversation and her suitable smiling till
+the moment when politeness allowed her to escape she never knew.
+There must have been half an hour of it before she found herself in
+her bedroom with the door closed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+She carried her paralysed thinking to her bedroom.  The words, "Never
+now ... never ... never," were behind her lips.  Her jaws parted in
+the dismay of it.  The sight of the mountains drew her through her
+window on to the loggia.  Inevitably her eyes turned towards Henry's
+window; and quickly, though with assumed unconcern, she withdrew into
+her room: she had seen him standing on his balcony with hands on its
+railing, and knew that, with a sidelong look, he was keeping her
+loggia under view.
+
+She undressed, but very abstractedly, and with long pauses when her
+hand, holding a garment, dropped to her side.  "Never now."  Never
+would there be any fulfilment of her love.  Yes--though--there were
+two ways.  Probably neither would happen, but it was a slight relief
+to picture them.  Henry and she could go off together one day,
+accepting the worldly consequences; or he could come to England once
+every year, and she could meet him for a week of secret, lawless love
+(she had told Miss Sims she was ready to do that).  Ah, all his
+actions and words fell into place now, especially that jumbled talk
+about snapping the world's inhibitions--and timidity holding you
+back--and not hurting others.  But it was proof--it was inflating
+proof that he loved her.
+
+This sudden thought, which brought happiness that quieted despair,
+she took into bed with her, that she might close her eyes and examine
+it.  Henry loved her, and she loved him without one lingering doubt,
+and if at some future day he asked of her anything--any thing--she
+would give it to him.  For the shadowy figure that was his wife, she
+knew not what she felt; sometimes jealousy and anger, sometimes pity.
+"Oh, I wouldn't have her suffer as I should, if I were never to have
+him or see him again."  No, the best solution would be the hiding of
+their love and its secret fulfilment in some snatched weeks every
+year.  Henry was evidently rich, and he would come over to her
+sometimes.  Of course she would do it.  And in her case she would
+injure nobody by giving herself to Henry.
+
+With this vision of the future for consolation she sank into a
+dream-heated sleep.
+
+Next day, Friday, and their last, on coming downstairs she found that
+Henry had gone by boat to Lucerne to get money for their departure.
+It would take him much of the day.  So after breakfast she returned
+to her bedroom, and in a dry despair began her packing.  It was
+manual labour and something to do.  But it filled nearly all the
+morning, for every article was disturbing in its associations, and
+either she made mistakes that had to be repaired or she lost herself
+in long musings.  When it was finished, except for what would go in
+to-morrow morning, she let fall the lid of her trunk, and going to
+the window, looked in the direction of Lucerne, whence Henry's
+steamer would come.
+
+At lunch Elsie Detmould suggested a last set of tennis.  Mr. Clarkson
+would play and that French girl, Madeleine Louvier.  With a quickly
+donned brightness Daphne answered, "Rather!  Only I'll have to play
+in this dress.  I've packed everything else."  The word "packed"
+pierced her.
+
+Out on the tennis court, with its lead-coloured earth, its
+surrounding nets, and its pathway climbing to the seats under the
+chestnut and fig trees--all so achingly reminiscent--they arranged
+their first set--Daphne and Madeleine playing Mr. Clarkson and Elsie.
+Sometimes Daphne was inattentive and played badly; sometimes she
+inexplicably lost herself in the game for a few minutes and played
+well.  It was just as she was beginning her service in the fifth game
+that she heard a crunching on the gravel-drive behind the trees, and,
+glancing up, saw that Henry had returned.  She caught his eyes and,
+though hers turned away quickly, knew that he had sat down on one of
+the garden seats.
+
+Self-conscious now, she played erratically, and kept up the formality
+of joking or even shrieking when she made mistakes or missed easy
+balls.  The sudden sight of him, and then the constant awareness of
+his presence, had started a dull pain at the thought that this was
+almost the last time he would be within a few paces of her.  As she
+played and shouted, "Oh, dash!" or teased Mr. Clarkson and Elsie when
+they were particularly weak, she was really thinking, "Oh, I
+understand what he meant when he talked about not knowing how to live
+till the time had passed for living...."
+
+After the seventh game Elsie remembered with dismay something that
+must be done on this last day, and the set temporarily broke up.  Mr.
+Clarkson offered to pass the meantime by playing against the two
+girls.
+
+"No," called Daphne, "I'll sit out till Elsie returns."  It would be
+obvious to Henry that this meant she wanted to sit by him, but she
+didn't care.  "I'm awfully tired, really.  You two have a single."
+
+"Noh, noh," protested Madeleine.
+
+"Yes, _please_," urged Daphne.  "I really mean it.  I'd like to sit
+down a bit."
+
+And, running, she passed through the gate in the surrounding network
+and climbed the path to the seat where Henry was sitting.  He watched
+her as she ran towards him, and when she arrived picked up her white
+coat and put it about her shoulders.  They sat down together, Daphne
+staring at the play of Mr. Clarkson and Madeleine, and Henry fiddling
+with an unread novel that had been beside her coat.  He spoke first.
+
+"It was wretched having to go to Lucerne to-day of all days."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to do about to-morrow....  I don't want
+to go at all....  Just got fond of--everybody, and the whole
+place...."
+
+"Yes, it's rotten."
+
+There was a silence during which several times Henry seemed to take
+in his breath, as if trying to say something for which he had not the
+courage.  Daphne, without knowing why she made the remark, broke in
+with:
+
+"But you'll be glad when the time comes to go back to your wife."
+
+"Yes...."  He allowed no sign to escape him, any more than she had
+done before Elsie.  "You should have heard me airing my German in
+Lucerne.  I was amazed."
+
+"Why?  Did you do it frightfully well?"
+
+"Magnificently."
+
+And again that silence that would not deliver itself of something.
+
+"It's a rotten book, that," said she, after watching him turn over
+its pages.
+
+"Is it?  I----"
+
+But the sharp intake of his breath stopped him.
+
+She told him something of the book's plot, and why it was so stupid,
+pleased, from some obscure motive, at this acting of naturalness.
+Then she jumped up.
+
+"Here she is."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Elsie come back."
+
+He caught his breath again and--before he had time to think,
+stuttered: "Miss--Miss Bruno, may I say something to you?  Oh----"
+He passed his hand quickly over his eyes.  "I wanted to say--couldn't
+I see you alone somewhere?  I shall probably never see you again, and
+I never get a moment alone with you--quite alone, I mean--and I don't
+know how I'm going to-morrow ... and can't I see you somewhere this
+evening by yourself?"
+
+She only stared before her at the game.
+
+"I haven't frightened you, have I?" said he.  "I--I don't think I
+quite know all I'm saying.  I don't frighten you, do I?"
+
+She turned towards him.
+
+"No."
+
+"I oughtn't to have spoken, I suppose.  It's only despair that made
+me speak."
+
+Then there was a silence more charged than any.  He was obviously
+waiting for her to encourage him, but she was somehow speechless.
+Partly because her heart was pounding, and partly because when it
+came to the moment of encouraging him it seemed the first step in a
+social disobedience for which she was not competent.
+
+Now Elsie was back on the court and calling:
+
+"Come on, Daphne.  We're waiting."
+
+"Righto!" cried Daphne, picking up her racket confusedly, while Henry
+said in despair:
+
+"May I write you a letter and put it in this book--write what I mean?
+I'll give it to you as soon as you've finished.  May I?"
+
+"Yes," said she, swinging her face quickly to his and back again.
+"Yes, if you like."
+
+Then she hurried down to the court.  And as she played there the side
+of her eye saw Henry writing something.  She trembled to know what it
+was, and played mechanically at the tennis, longing for it to be
+over.  Yet all the while she provided the necessary banter at other
+people's failures and explosions at her own.  At last it was
+finished, and when they suggested another set she demurred:
+
+"Oh, no.  I can't play any more; I'm not as young as you people.  I
+want to go and write some letters before I dress for dinner."
+
+And rather languidly, with head down, she strolled through the
+network and up to the seat for her coat.  Henry rose and gave it to
+her.  The others, agreeing that they had had enough, were coming up.
+
+"And here's your novel," said Henry.
+
+"Oh, thanks."
+
+She took it in a hand that was shaking traitorously.  Calling to the
+other people, "Well, I've got a lot to do, I can't hang about with
+all you idlers," she walked--almost ran--towards the hotel entrance.
+In the vestibule and the lift she kept the book near her shoulder.
+Along the corridor of her floor she hurried to her bedroom with
+shoulders swinging.  In the bedroom, with the door closed, she
+nervously opened the book, and saw a half-sheet of note-paper on
+which was written in pencil:
+
+
+"DEAR,--I must see you for a little while before I go.  I simply
+don't know how I am going in the morning, but I feel if I could have
+you for an hour or so to myself I could go with greater courage.
+Dear, there is only one place I can suggest.  I would not suggest it
+if there were any other place or time possible, but there isn't.
+Trust me, and come to my bedroom after the others have gone to bed.
+It's the only place where we can be unseen, and you untalked about.
+Dear, love cannot hurt where it loves.  My dear, I have not sought
+this thing like some silly adventurer looking for a holiday
+romance--good God, it hurts too much.  If I could be quit of it I
+would.  No, though, I wouldn't.  I don't know how it came.  From the
+first minute I saw you, I think--with your wonderful little head and
+your great eyes and your childish clothes.  I think I hoped to find
+you empty of ideas and be cured, but soon I loved your mind and your"
+(a word had been omitted here) "more than anything else about you.
+Dear, I do not fully know your ideas about religion and things, but
+if you see anything in this letter that needs forgiveness, forgive
+me.  I cannot help loving you.  If you don't come, I shall understand
+fully.  I hardly know what I am writing about.  My love for you fills
+everything.  I can only stare at it.  I cannot see before or behind
+or after it.
+
+"H. D."
+
+
+She let her hand with the note in it fall to the table-top.  For the
+moment everything was lost in the joy of possessing it.  Oh, she
+would go to him, as he asked.  Of course, she would go.  Wearied with
+the strain of it all she lay down upon her bed, holding the note by
+her side.  She floated away on her thoughts, for how long she knew
+not.  She was happy.  She could not see beyond that "hour together."
+All the misery of the next morning's departure was hidden behind it.
+An hour?  It would be no hour, but a long night.  How could either,
+when the hour was over, draw away?  Real and awful though she knew
+her love to be, the romantic aspect of this last hidden union could
+not wholly fail to please her.  To the æsthete that must ever be in
+her and in Henry it was a fitting climax.
+
+Gradually the fall in the light persuaded her to look at her watch,
+and she saw that it was seven o'clock.  She must rise and dress.  It
+always took her so long to dress when she was lost in thoughts.
+Slowly, and making many mistakes, she put on one of the "childish
+dresses," arranged her hair, and clasped a rope of pearls about her
+neck.  Her cheeks had hollowed and her eyes were under-scored with
+darkness.  The tired skin of her face she tried to make good with
+powder.
+
+When she went down with her father to their table she was able to
+see, by one of her quick over-shoulder glances, that Henry was
+already seated with his sister.  She had hardly taken her own chair
+before Elsie came up.
+
+"Are you both coming on the trip round the lake to-night?"
+
+"Certainly not," said Mr. Bruno.  "What is it?"
+
+"One of the steamers starts at nine.  It's to be illuminated, and
+there's to be dancing on deck, and refreshments.  It's the very thing
+for a last night.  Come and be really childish."
+
+"It sounds as though it would suit my daughter--not me."
+
+"Well, Daphne, then, will you come?"
+
+Daphne was troubled.  Did Henry want her to go or to stay behind?
+Perhaps he would like her to linger in the hotel, emptied by the
+steamer, and if so, she would be angry with them for having dragged
+her into their sickly gaieties.  But since it was impossible to ask
+his movements, politeness compelled her to reply:
+
+"Oh, yes, I should love it.  When do we start?"
+
+"Nine, and back at eleven.  It'll be gorgeous."
+
+
+The dinner dawdled along to dessert and wine and coffee.  And at
+about half-past eight the quiet air of the lake was shattered by an
+explosion like a gun's.  An exclamation came from Mr. Bruno, and
+Henry walked up.
+
+"That's a signal," said he, with a smile that comprised father and
+daughter.  "It means that the weather's favourable and the boat will
+go."
+
+The explosion came a second time as he said it.
+
+He walked to the window and looked towards the Brunnen boat-landing.
+
+"Yes, the steamer's there; looking very fine with its illuminations.
+Quite a lot of people are going on board all ready.  Some seem to be
+going independently in rowing boats.  They are hanging all round it,
+and lighting up Chinese lanterns."  He turned to Daphne.  "You're
+going, aren't you, Miss Bruno?"
+
+"Yes.  Are you?"
+
+"I suppose so.  But I guess it'll be cold."
+
+"Go then at once and get a coat," said Mr. Bruno to his daughter.
+
+Daphne hurried to the lift and was soon upstairs.  She selected the
+white tennis coat because of its memories.  Then she joined the
+Detmoulds and Mr. Clarkson and Madeleine in hall.  The night, as they
+passed into it, was unencouraging.  Flaky clouds had floated over the
+sky, and the few stars that danced between them were ineffectual.
+Not yet was the moon above the mountains.
+
+On the little boat-landing men and women of all classes were crowding
+to the gangway; most were hatless; some of the men were in evening
+dress of British, German, or French design, and their women had veils
+or mantillas over their heads; other people were in tweeds or Swiss
+National costume.  On the deck, under the Chinese lanterns hung from
+the awnings, several couples were already dancing, excited to it by
+four bandsmen, fancy-dressed as Venetian gondoliers, who were jigging
+their bodies in conscientious gaiety.
+
+Henry, embarrassed, walked with any one rather than Daphne.  Hatless,
+his hair blowing, he led the party on to the deck.  Daphne walked
+last.  There were no unoccupied seats anywhere, so they went and
+stood against a railing on the farther side and looked at the smaller
+craft, whose lanterns made a ring round the ship.
+
+"If we can't sit down we may as well dance," said Mr. Clarkson to
+Daphne.  "May I have the pleasure of this waltz?"
+
+There was no escape.  She took off her white coat and looked for
+somewhere to place it.  Henry, with set lips, stretched out a hand to
+receive it.  She went off on the arm of Mr. Clarkson, angry with him
+for dragging her away, and yet glad that Henry had seen her in
+request.  In the waltz she chatted gaily, though always waiting for
+the moment when their arrival at one corner in the hustled crowd
+showed her, as her head swung round, Henry leaning against the rail
+and holding her white coat.  The dance finished; but as all the
+couples clapped, the bandsmen repeated the tune and the merry jigging
+of their bodies.  Her partner seized her again, and she was once more
+in the dance.  Now a slight moving of the floor told her that the
+boat had started.  Cheers came from the shore, and one of the rowing
+boats shot up a rocket which rained golden fire on the departing
+steamer.
+
+On her return Henry put the coat round her shoulders, and she thanked
+him, and, looking up, said:
+
+"Aren't you going to dance?"
+
+"No."
+
+At that moment a Swiss was brought up and introduced to her.  He
+asked her in French for the next dance, and she replied: "_Oui,
+monsieur_."  And with the band's first notes she accepted his arm and
+walked back to the dancer's deck.  Why she danced she could not tell;
+her body was exhausted and her mind fixedly miserable.  Perhaps it
+was because the awkwardness and silence of Henry made standing beside
+him so difficult.  And dancing was as good as thinking.
+
+When she returned from this second dance he muttered, as if
+continuing their last conversation:
+
+"I can't vulgarise what I feel for you by dancing with this crowd."
+
+She sat down on a seat now vacant, and her head drooped.  Henry stood
+by with folded arms, saying nothing.  The next dance began and the
+bandsmen sang as they played.  Many of the watchers who were not
+dancing joined in the song.  In the voices of women the singing added
+to itself an extrinsic beauty from the darkness, the water and the
+foreign tongue.  Daphne kept her head down, partly from the ache of
+exhaustion in neck and shoulders, and partly from fear of meeting
+Henry's eyes.
+
+"You're looking done for," said Henry suddenly.  "Come and get a
+strong coffee or something.  Let's go downstairs to the saloon and
+get out of this silly jigging crowd."
+
+She got up obediently.
+
+"All right.  It _has_ been horribly cold, ever since the boat started
+moving."
+
+Going in front, he threaded her through the jostling people.  They
+went down the stairs and into the noisy saloon only to find another
+orchestra playing there while couples danced between the tables.
+
+"Oh, damn!" muttered Henry.  "Isn't there a quiet place anywhere?"
+
+He ordered two coffees from the steward and asked Daphne rather
+fatuously, "Where are we to sit?"
+
+"I don't know," she said.  "It's so crowded, isn't it?"
+
+"Foul!"
+
+They wandered among the tables, but nowhere was there a place for
+them.  And before they had decided anything the steward appeared with
+the two cafés on a tray.  Henry took it abruptly from him, and walked
+out of the saloon right away to the stern of the boat, Daphne
+following.  All the seats that they passed were occupied by foolish
+couples dallying with flirtation between the dances.  Henry pushed
+past their knees till he saw, across an intervening bar, a platform
+on which rested one of the ship's boats.  He stepped over the bar,
+and Daphne bent her head and went under.  The tray he laid on the
+boat's seat, and pointing to the boat's side, said:
+
+"Sit there.  You're tired out."
+
+She climbed on to the side, and this position left her crossed feet
+dangling.  It was true she was tired out.  Her body sagged as she
+sat.  She took the coffee and sipped it.
+
+"I am going to speak low," began Henry, "in case any of these
+detestable people are nearer than they appear and can speak
+English....  My dear, I can't tell what you're feeling or thinking--I
+simply haven't the courage to ask you for fear of learning that I've
+built too much on your--oh, but I'll leave that--but I know _I_ never
+want to suffer again what I've gone through the last few days.
+Sometimes I've wondered what the morning of departure would be like,
+and how I could stand it.  Often I've wished the wrench were over,
+and I could be away from you.  I've said, 'My God, I'm glad I'm going
+soon.  I can't stick it.'"
+
+Her head still hung over the cup in her lap.
+
+"You see--you see," he pursued, stuttering, "I don't know how it all
+happened.  It's an abrupt mystery to me.  I seemed to find myself
+suddenly floundering and struggling in a love--and it was a love such
+as I'd never experienced before and never expected to....  It stands
+alone, dear, in my life, and always will do....  I thought I'd like
+you to know that much in case we don't ... lest we never..."
+
+He paused long and beat with his feet on the ground.
+
+"Often I wished I'd never seen you at all, and then I thought
+immediately, 'No, I wouldn't have missed this awful pain.'  An
+idiot's business."
+
+Daphne wanted to nod her bent head as if to show that she understood
+him; but she couldn't, and she didn't know whether he was looking at
+her or away.
+
+"I wanted you to know something of the strength--the uncontrollable
+strength of what I felt for you; so that you could understand that it
+was something too big for me that forced me to speak.  At one time I
+hoped it'd be enough if I just hung about near you and waited for the
+end.  One might as well have expected one of these ghastly Swiss
+waterfalls to stand still....  My God, I hate everything about
+Switzerland, and yet I love it next to you....  I wish I understood
+anything on earth ... and what I'm saying...."
+
+A dance must have finished, for more couples came towards the seats
+the other side of the bar.  Daphne moved as if to drop from the
+boat's side to the ground, but Henry stopped her with a slight touch
+of his hand.
+
+"No; don't go.  Please don't go.  They'll only think we're sitting
+out.  Stay--stay as long as you can."
+
+They stayed in silence; and when many of the couples had returned to
+the deck for another dance, Henry adventured his hand towards
+Daphne's on the boat's rim, and touched it with his fingers.  She did
+not move it away or show any feeling, though at his touch the
+temperature of her body fluctuated as in a rigor.  His hot, trembling
+palm and fingers closed on hers, feeling it, pressing it.
+
+Speech yielded to this, and many minutes must have passed before
+their silence was disturbed by an excitement on the boat, everybody
+crowding to the starboard side and staring over the water.  Many
+hurried past their retreat.
+
+Henry muttered, withdrew his hand, and looked in the direction of
+some pointing fingers.  Daphne, hardly moving her body, also turned
+her head.  They saw that a chalet on the side of the wooded mountain
+had been illuminated with a red flare to greet the passing
+pleasure-steamer.  The red glow reached its most brilliant and died
+down, to be succeeded by a pale green flare.  On the water under the
+trees a rowing boat had also lit a sea-green flare, and its
+reflection came trilling down the surface as far as the steamer.
+
+"It's the Rutli," people were saying in several languages.  They
+clapped loudly, the women with their hands as high as their heads,
+hoping that their grateful applause might reach the chalet on the
+mountain.  A boom from the funnel also acknowledged the courtesy.
+Automatically and dreamily Henry joined in the clapping, and a laugh
+that was rather frightening because so mixed up with despair shook in
+Daphne's throat.  For a long time the people watched the alternating
+lights till they had left the chalet far on their quarter and its
+last red flare was like the glow of a camp fire behind the pines.
+
+"And there's another!" cried an English voice.
+
+The boat was swinging round; and Tell's Chapel, at the mountain's
+foot, had come into view.  Its front was flaring with a crimson light
+in honour of this advancing boat-load of happy people.  And when the
+boat had completely turned in its course a Brunnen hotel lit up its
+long façade.  Again the grateful people clapped and cheered and the
+funnel boomed.
+
+Henry turned to Daphne.
+
+"You say nothing, dear.  Tell me--tell me this much: does this
+pleasure hurt you as it does me?"
+
+"A little," she acknowledged.  Her hair was blown about in the breeze
+and she tried to steady and straighten it with her hand.
+
+The flares ashore died down and the people returned to their dancing.
+
+"Hadn't we better be getting back?" ventured Daphne, after a long
+pause.
+
+"Oh, no--no....  How can you want to go back? ... The others won't
+even notice our absence ... or if they do, I don't care....  They'll
+probably only think we're flirting....  God!  _Flirting!_ ..."
+
+So the silence was resumed, he standing by her, and she sitting on
+the boat's edge.  He did not again seek her hand.  Once or twice he
+broke the silence.  "Dear, I want to say this: I don't know what's
+going to happen in the future, but if--if we never----"  The sentence
+was left incomplete.  "I want you to promise never to look back upon
+what I felt for you and think of it as some holiday
+infatuation--don't profane it by thinking that....  I know when I
+look back on it I shall never soil it by seeing any folly or wrong in
+it....  It's somehow true, and I'm not ashamed of it."
+
+And later: "Perhaps such a love is too terrible to last--I don't
+know....  I can't imagine now that it would ever end....  No, it
+never could--it must always be there in some form.  At present my one
+wish is to have you evermore and alone....  You don't say much, dear."
+
+Daphne looked up at him.
+
+"I'm awfully tired, somehow."
+
+"Of course you are."
+
+Nothing more was said till he exclaimed, "We're pushing into Brunnen
+already.  It's nearly ten past eleven."
+
+She looked towards the shore and saw Brunnen in darkness and their
+vast hotel with only a few lights in the bedroom windows.  The crowd
+on the boat was already beginning to pack towards the gangway,
+leaving them alone.  She dropped to her feet, but immediately he
+stayed her.
+
+"No, wait.  Wait a little.  We've hardly once been alone."
+
+When their end of the boat was quite deserted, he put his arm round
+her waist and kissed her.
+
+She could not so lie as to resist or reproach him; but she had
+received only, and not given.  They walked towards the gangway--the
+coffee cups remaining in the boat unreturned, as they were unpaid
+for.  She reflected that neither had said a word about his letter
+asking her to come to his room; he, doubtless, because he had dreaded
+hearing her say No--wherefore he had kissed lest it were their last
+privacy; and she because she was shy of saying Yes, she would come.
+
+They found the rest of their party at the head of the gangway and
+crowded down it with them.  On the pier Mr. Clarkson said:
+
+"Come along, children.  Are we all here?"  And he put an arm into
+Elsie's and Madeleine's arms and began to walk them along the road to
+the hotel.  Elsie had thrust an arm into Daphne's.  Henry walked in
+front, unlinked, remote.  Daphne was obliged to fall into step with
+the other three as they hurried along to Mr. Clarkson's "Left, Right,
+Left--Right, Left--Right."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+When she got back to her room she sat on her bed with her head down
+in the same attitude as she had maintained throughout the
+pleasure-sailing.  She could not remember in all her life such
+tiredness.  There was a permanent ache in the small of her back and
+on her thighs and across her shoulder-blades.  Her head was confused
+and her eyes (she knew) were staring blankly on any object where they
+fell.  Almost she wished she could throw herself straight upon her
+bed, released from the duty of going to Henry.
+
+What a pity she was so exhausted!  It would spoil her "hour" with
+him.  Eyes shut, she drew the back of her hand across her forehead.
+Then she pulled herself together, stood up, and walked to the drawer
+where her diary was kept.  Taking it out, she opened it and wrote
+"August 3rd."  She marked the date with an asterisk, making the
+eight-pointed sign with dreaming elaboration, and leaving a long
+space for filling in details one day.
+
+She walked on to her loggia and looked up at his window.  It was
+alight, and he was standing on his balcony, to all appearance staring
+over the water, but doubtless looking obliquely at her window.
+Instantly she stepped back.
+
+"He's waiting for me."
+
+There had been, of course, a light in her father's room next door,
+and she would have to delay till it had been out for half an hour
+before she fled up the stairs to where Henry waited for her.  And it
+would probably be a long time before her father extinguished the
+light, since he always read himself to sleep.  She lay down to rest a
+little that she might not be so tired when she went to Henry.  Her
+curtains she left apart so as to see the disappearance of her
+father's reflected light.  When it should have gone she would get up
+and do her hair and powder her face again.
+
+She had kept no count of the time when the light snapped out
+suddenly.  Stepping off the bed, she walked to the window, but not so
+as Henry, were he still on his balcony, could see her.  Throwing up a
+quick glance she saw that though he was not there his light was the
+one square of brightness on the night.
+
+She went to her dressing-table and did her hair, and with the powder
+once more made as much as possible of her tired and hollowed face.
+Then she sat on the edge of her bed to wait a little longer.  All
+this time there would recur in her mouth--on tongue and palate--a bad
+taste, obliging her to get up repeatedly and take a little water from
+the glass on the washstand.  When it was time to move, she walked
+again to the window and saw Henry's room still the only wakeful place
+in the Brunnen night.  She walked across the room to her door and
+opened it.
+
+But courage would not come to enable her to rush along that corridor
+and fly up the stairs.  Supposing she should pass anybody!  Supposing
+her father had suspected something and was watching!  She would wait
+longer.  It was a quarter past one.  "At twenty-five past I'll make a
+run for it," she said, and sat again upon her bed.
+
+What would happen when she went to Henry she but vaguely conceived.
+He would throw wide his arms and she would rush into them.  They
+would sit on a long sofa.  In nothing would he hurt her--of that she
+was sure as she was sure of anything in life.  But they would talk of
+the future.  By coming to him she would have confessed her readiness
+to break with things and to take the lawless road one day.  Ever in
+her mind were his stuttered words about the call of life and the path
+of danger--words in which she saw, more clearly than some, more
+mistily than many, a glimmer of truth.  And so she thought of her
+rush to his room as a decisive rush through a gateway towards
+adventure, experience, beauty perhaps--and wisdom.
+
+When her watch showed twenty-five past she got up and walked to her
+open door.  She even stepped into the passage and took several paces
+towards the one light that burned over the staircase.
+
+"No, I can't just yet.  I'll wait till half-past....  Besides, I
+wonder if he's given me up, now it's so late."
+
+One part of her could hope he had done so; and for the hundredth
+time, as it seemed, she walked back to her window.  No, his balcony
+was still washed in light.
+
+She swallowed some more water to remove the taste on her palate, and
+sat on the bed again, grasping her knee, to wait for half-past one.
+A bell from the village sounded the half-hour, and she rose and
+walked to the door.  So tired was she that she supported herself by
+resting her hand on the jamb.  A long way down the corridor burned
+the dim light over the staircase.
+
+No, she couldn't do it.  This was proving itself to her.  She wasn't
+big enough so to break with things.  "I simply haven't got the
+courage."  Her mouth was parted as she strolled back into the room.
+She was too near her childhood for such a step and too muddled.  As
+Henry had said, one didn't solve the riddles of how to live until it
+was too late to live.
+
+"Oh, but I must go.  I may never see him again and he's waiting for
+me."
+
+She walked to the door and was summoning courage for the rush when
+the passage outside seemed to creak with a step.  Instantly she shut
+her guilty door and put out the incriminating light.
+
+This was the end, she knew.  She would not go now.
+
+That might have been a night-porter's step, or it might have been
+Henry wandering along her passage, in which case she had shut the
+door on him, or it might have been nothing.  But the creak, with its
+reminder of a world looking on, had settled everything.  Settled
+everything.  How much of her life, she wondered, did that phrase
+imply?
+
+"I can't go now.  And I think I'm glad.  I'm so tired.  I think he
+did frighten me a little with his intensity.  I'll be awake at six
+o'clock in the morning, and wave to him when he goes; and he will
+understand that I was not angry with his suggestion.  He mustn't
+think that for ever....  And now I'll try to sleep.  It must be two
+o'clock."
+
+In her night-dress under the sheet she relaxed her aching limbs and
+lay on her back and flung an arm on either side.  She tightened the
+closing of her eyes, as if that would help her to sleep.  But no
+sleep would come.  Her mind would picture the past evening and the
+past weeks, and Henry at this moment putting out his light in
+disappointment.  And she would tell herself, "I'm glad it's ending
+to-morrow.  It's too awful--oh, but no, it's worth having been born
+to have gone through it....  But I wouldn't, if I could, have it cut
+out....  Oh, this can't be all.  I must be destined to see him again
+some time.  The world is small and time is big."
+
+This last sentence, which had formed itself spontaneously in her
+mind, pleased her literary sense, and she repeated it to herself for
+her relief, thinking that in the quiet surrender to the future which
+it urged she might find some sleep.  But sleep hung aloof.  She
+wondered if she would ever sleep again.
+
+It was while wondering this that she saw a huge room, partly hung
+with pale-blue and pink curtains--a rather sickly room, and yet it
+was a home that was being prepared for Henry and her--unfurnished as
+yet except for a wicker chair in which Henry was sitting.  She walked
+towards him and saw that she was walking up a steep country road in
+England.  There was a glow in the sky for a whole village was burning
+somewhere, and she had no desire to go to any one's assistance, for
+Henry was waiting for her somewhere on the crown of the hill.  Now,
+strangely enough, she was not dreaming about him at all--he might
+never have existed--a thought that was with her as she dreamt--she
+was laughing in a drawing-room with friends she had known, Trudy
+Wayne and Miss Sims and Owen.
+
+At last she awoke; and, not at once but very soon, sickened to see
+the sun pouring through her undrawn curtains.  Frantically she looked
+at her watch.  It was a quarter to eight: Henry had started more than
+an hour ago.  A chapel bell was ringing to Mass.  An audible moan
+came from her throat and a rebel's tear rushed to her eyes.  Leaping
+up, she ran to the window as though there were still time to see him.
+But there were only the mountains hooded in low clouds, and the water
+filmed and sluggish like a thing unawake.
+
+A wicked and loathsome trick of Chance to make her sleep too long!  A
+moment for blasphemies.  Why wouldn't these rebel's tears that had
+gushed to her eyes pour out?  But now she felt dry and hard.  Her
+chief emotion was a desire to insult and injure the inaccessible
+gods.  "Well, I must dress.  It's late; it's awfully late."  And her
+clothes immediately reminded her that it was all over--that she was
+on the other side of the parting.  "He's gone."  For a minute's
+luxury of despair she flung herself face downwards on the bed.
+
+Then with deliberation she jumped up to dress and finish her packing;
+and the courage of it pleased her.
+
+"I think I must be less lacking in courage than I thought.  I believe
+that with an effort of the will I could get up and dress like this on
+the morning of my execution."
+
+The words reminded her of the old game she used to play when she
+walked to her death inspired by the verses:
+
+  He nothing common did nor mean
+  Upon that memorable scene...
+
+And this morning, dramatising herself as resigned, controlled and
+brave, she dressed and closed her trunks.  At her glass the whiteness
+of her face, the hollowness of her cheeks and the shadows under her
+eyes startled her.  "I wonder if I'm going to be ill, as people
+sometimes are on occasions like this."
+
+She ran and knocked on her father's door, and hearing his grunt,
+"Come in," entered to find him tying his tie.
+
+"I only wanted to see that you were properly up," said she.  "It's
+after eight, and I slept longer than I meant----"  Her jaw dropped as
+she uttered the sentence.
+
+"You would after such a frivolous and racketing night."  He had
+looked at her in his mirror, and at once, in his tact, averted his
+eyes.  The movement told her that he was seeing everything and
+filling with pity.  But he was a wise student of humanity and knew
+that this was no moment for sympathy, no moment for observing
+anything at all, no moment for aught but the old chaff.
+
+"I could hear the noise you made on the water till--well, it must
+have been midnight....  Go down and order breakfast.  Get some strong
+coffee and plenty of it.  I shall be glad of it too."
+
+"Righto!"  She was glad to be alone again.
+
+She wandered down the great stairway, preferring its solitude to the
+company of the man in the lift.  On the ground floor she met other
+guests who said:
+
+"You're off, I hear."
+
+"Yes," she laughed.  "By the nine-thirty boat for Alpnachstad.  I'd
+better say good-bye now, I suppose."
+
+They shook her hand.
+
+"So sorry you're going."
+
+"Yes, so'm I.  I've enjoyed it all tremendously.  I don't want to go
+a bit."
+
+She walked along with them to the office of the concierge, and saw in
+the little pigeon-hole marked with the number of her room a letter.
+Her heart jumped.  It could only be a last letter from Henry.
+
+"Is that something for me?" she smiled at the concierge.
+
+"Yes, miss.  Mr. Detmould asked me to give it to you."
+
+He drew it out, absurdly uninterested in what he was handling, and
+gave it to her.  She ran hurriedly with it to the privacy of the
+terrace where was no one but a man in a green baize apron sweeping.
+With shaking, uncontrolled fingers she opened and read:
+
+
+"MY DEAR,--Good-bye.  Think of me as one who will carry your memory
+with him always.  The picture I shall try to see most often will be
+that of you leaving your tennis and coming up the path to me, as you
+did yesterday.  I am glad I have known you.  I wouldn't have missed
+it.  I half hoped I should have seen something of you before I
+started, but you were very tired and slept, I suspect.  It was
+natural, dear.  Good-bye.
+
+"H.D."
+
+
+"Oh, I must write to him," thought Daphne passionately, the tears now
+brimming at her eyes.  "I must write and tell him that I wasn't
+offended at his invitation and didn't mean not to say good-bye."
+
+She ran to the lounge and got some note-paper--glad that it was the
+hotel note-paper with the picture of the hotel on its top--and
+started a draft, but soon crumpled it up and started another....  Her
+father appeared, and she crumpled up both drafts and put them in her
+pocket.
+
+"Ah, ten minutes exactly for breakfast," said he.  "Come along,
+Duffs."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+In half an hour Mr. Bruno and his daughter were on the jetty watching
+the boat approaching from Treib.  Their labelled luggage waited by
+them.  It was a sunny morning now that the clouds and mists had
+dispersed, but Daphne felt cold and at length put on the white coat
+which had hung over her arm.  She gathered it tight about her for
+warmth and comfort.  Often she looked back at the great hotel and the
+windows that had been hers and his, and the horse-chestnuts about the
+tennis-court, and the long terrace where they had sat in the
+evenings.  If was a relief when the boat came alongside and they had
+to bustle with the crowd on to its decks.  They mounted to the higher
+deck of the first-class passengers, and Daphne, passing the saloon
+and the engines down in the well, saw with a pang that the ship was a
+twin to the pleasure-steamer of the night before.  There were the
+same "_Avis aux Voyageurs_" in the alley-ways, and a stairway to the
+deck exactly similar to that down which Henry, ten or eleven hours
+earlier, had taken her in search of coffee.  Perhaps it was the same
+boat.  On deck she walked straight to a seat in the stern, where she
+sat sideways, with her elbow on the seat's back, her face in the cup
+of her hand, and her eyes towards the hotel.  She gathered the coat
+farther about her.
+
+The siren sounded and the boat swung away from the pier.  The engines
+throbbed and the paddles chuffed out on to the lake, while Daphne
+stared at the hotel to watch it recede.  Fast now it diminished and
+lost its exactness and detail.  There was a pulling at her heart and
+throat, and warmth behind her ears and over the skin of her face.
+
+"The world is small and time is big.  Who knows what may happen? ...
+Oh, there's nothing can happen."
+
+She turned and commenced to talk cheerfully to her father and kept it
+up for quite a while, till she felt caught in it, anxious to escape
+from it, and to lose herself again in her pain.  Her answers became
+abstracted, and her father, saying something about the view from the
+bows, got up and strolled away, doubtless on purpose.  Once more her
+chin went into her hand and her elbow rested on the seat's back, and
+she stared in the ship's wake--not at the hotel, for it had
+disappeared, but at the twin points of the Mythen, which could still
+be seen.  The boat plied from station to station along the lake; from
+Treib to Gersau and Beckenried and Vitznau and Weggis.  Each time it
+left the station's pier the gazing crowd waved to the departing
+steamer, and the people on board, whether or not they had friends
+ashore, waved back.  At first Daphne had no heart to wave.  Then she
+remembered how she prided herself on her courage and waved to them
+regularly.
+
+
+At Alpnachstad they took the train to go over the Brunig Pass.  Their
+car was an observation car with galleries for viewing the scenery.  A
+kindly conductor came and told them that if they wanted to see the
+best of the valleys and the pass they should sit on the right of the
+carriage.  So, opposite her father, with her face towards the train's
+progress, she sat in her corner, her elbow on the window out of which
+she stared.  Sometimes her father ventured a sportive remark, and she
+looked up and answered with a smile.  Sometimes she sank so deep into
+the gulf of despair that she shook her shoulders and told herself she
+must have courage.  Then instantly, at the effort of her will, all
+the pain would disappear, and she would want to whistle or hum....
+But then she missed the beloved pain.  It was better to suffer it
+than to annihilate it with the will.
+
+So she let herself fall back, trying to see again Henry's face and
+tracing in her imagination the line of his hair, brow, nose and chin.
+
+"Isn't it beastly cold?" she said to her father.
+
+"Not at all.  You're getting the first breath from the snow-fields."
+
+"Well, I feel shivery," she laughed, and snuggled farther into her
+coat.
+
+To herself she was thinking, "I wonder if I'm going to be ill.
+Didn't Dante nearly die when he lost Beatrice?  If I'm ill I hope
+Henry hears of it."
+
+There were two English women in the carriage who were discussing with
+enthusiasm their climbs and excursions while staying at Lucerne.
+Daphne listened to their talk.  She envied their capacity to find
+happiness in scenery and strange buildings; and at the same time she
+was sorry for them, since their holiday had given them no such
+ecstasy as hers.
+
+All the while her father's sham wall of naturalness was the very
+proof of his understanding; and through this humbug tacitly agreed
+upon, she felt the strength of his support.  She could feel his
+unspoken love and rest in it.  Once she even caught herself playing
+up to the part of a cruelly wounded girl; and it struck her as
+strange and horrible that in the midst of a mental pain which was the
+most awful that had ever come to her, she could yet be pleased with
+it as an object of interest to some one else--and to some one,
+moreover, who was kind.
+
+
+There was a pendulum swing in and out of despair.  Sometimes she felt
+she would be able to get rid of her harrowing love and that already
+the healing had begun; she would take an interest in the train's slow
+climb among the pines, with the valley far below; and then the sudden
+memory of some movement of Henry's mouth would make her start and cry
+inwardly, "Never again to see him....  Oh, it won't be thought....  I
+can't think it."
+
+At Brunig the train stopped for half an hour to allow the passengers
+to have lunch at the station restaurant.
+
+"I don't think I want any," said she.  "I don't know why it is.
+Perhaps it's the change in the air."
+
+"Well, have a good stiff _café-au-lait_," said Mr. Bruno.
+
+Back in the train to proceed to Brienz.  She relapsed into her corner
+seat and her thoughts.  The people on the platforms as the train
+arrived relieved her mind by occupying it.  She studied the
+middle-aged married couples with their children.  Too old for first
+love, these people; they had to exchange this emotion for the love of
+children.  And that wasn't the same; it might be nobler, but it
+couldn't be so wonderful to suffer and to enjoy.  None the less, she
+found herself looking forward to her own middle age, when all the
+wounds of love would be healed by time and she could smile and be gay
+and pleasant.  Once she saw a tweed shoulder and the back of a head
+that gave her a stab and a shudder--it was like Henry's.  But no.  At
+that moment he was climbing towards the Furka Pass....  Never
+probably to be met with again.
+
+At Interlaken they crossed to the Bernese Oberland Railway, and this
+train dragged them to Grindelwald.  The snow caps and shawls of the
+Jungfrau, the Eiger and the Monch came into view.  There was a new
+bracing freshness in the air.  And she thought:
+
+"I must get well here.  I must drink in this tonic air and make a
+real holiday of my stay.  I'll have some really good weeks."
+
+They were at their station, and she jumped up, feeling quite natural
+and lively, with only a dull memory of some recent anguish.
+Immediately she drew back about her the pain she had thrown off.
+"Oh, not this annihilation of feeling," she told herself as she
+stepped on to the busy platform.  "I would rather feel..."
+
+"Now, then," said her father, laying down a bag and looking for his
+tickets.  "Where the devil----?"
+
+But she, holding her properties, was thinking, "I can't stand it.
+Never will I do what I've often fancied I'd like to do--what I tried
+to do with Roger--try to make men love me whether I love them or not.
+The pain is too awful.  I wouldn't give it to any one...."
+
+She followed her father through the exit of the station and up the
+glaring gravel path of the hotel.
+
+She was shown to her room, and this changed place of sleeping, with
+its different furniture, stressed her exile from the story of
+Brunnen.  She stood there, staring at the snow-line of the mountains.
+Soon the porter brought her trunks and laid them on the trestle
+support and on a chair.  Mechanically she opened one and began to
+take out her dresses.  Each carried a memory of some evening on the
+terrace at Brunnen.
+
+Having hung them mechanically in the wardrobe, she stopped unpacking
+and stood again to stare vacantly before her.  She hardly knew
+whether she was thinking or whether she had suspended thought;
+whether this was the uttermost despair or an atrophy of feeling.
+Once she heard herself saying, "O God, give me some rest--some rest
+from all this...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+She had no address of Henry's, but that evening she wrote to the
+hotel at Brunnen, trusting that it would be forwarded to him
+somewhere.  The composing of the letter gave her much mental debate.
+She wanted to pour out passionately all that she was really
+feeling--the mere phrasing of love was relief and almost joy; but the
+old muddle as to whether it was fair to write thus to a man who was
+returning from her to his wife intervened.  And finally her letter
+amounted to little more than saying, "I never meant not to say
+good-bye to you."  But she hoped he would read everything in her few
+lines.
+
+There was a moment's afterglow of bygone happiness as she put the
+letter in the concierge's box.  From that moment she encouraged the
+conviction that he would write a reply to her--just one, before the
+silence settled.  She would stop and stand in the passage of the
+hotel while she deliberated where he would first be able to write and
+how long the letter would take to reach her.
+
+Friday morning, she decided, was the earliest she could expect it.
+
+Then, walking on, she would compose his letter.
+
+Now Owen joined them from the camp at Aldershot where the Sillborough
+Cadet Corps had been training.  He was full of the war rumours in
+England, and Daphne, going for walks with him, pretended to listen.
+Sometimes she played against him a desultory set of tennis, though
+the game and everything about it, its cries and its scoring, had a
+stab for her.
+
+On the Friday morning, when she dared to hope that his letter might
+have come, she was afraid to approach the pigeon-holes in the
+concierge's office; and yet, by a will-effort, she walked there
+quickly, satisfied with her pluck.  Sickness took her heart when she
+saw her pigeon-hole empty and many of the others full.  In despairing
+hope she asked the concierge had that morning's post been.
+
+Yes.
+
+She turned about gaily.
+
+"He hasn't had time to write.  Or letters take a long time over these
+slow mountain railways.  I'll give him till to-morrow morning."
+
+Still, at each of the other posts during the day she looked for the
+letter and suffered the blow of disappointment to see her empty
+pigeon-hole.  Sometimes she would go back and look in the other holes
+in case her letter had been put in one of them by mistake.
+
+On the Saturday morning she went with a sudden high hope to the
+place....  But her throat was affected and her mouth dried when again
+the empty pigeon-hole stared at her.  There must be one.  And she
+asked the concierge merrily:
+
+"What, isn't there really a letter for me?"
+
+"No, Miss Bruno."
+
+And she laughed:
+
+"Oh, what a shame!"
+
+Walking away, she told herself that he was writing a long one and
+adding to it day by day.
+
+The next morning, as nervously she approached the office, she saw
+that there was a single white envelope in her space.  Her heart
+thumping with eagerness and terror, she said to the concierge:
+
+"There _is_ one this time!"
+
+"Yes, Miss Bruno, there's one for you," and he took it out and gave
+it to her.
+
+The handwriting was Miss Carrell's.
+
+
+The August days went by, and the pain of going to the office after
+each post, or of returning from a walk in the hope that the letter
+would be there, was slowly drugged down by monotony.  "He'll never
+write now.  After all, why should he?  Mine was nothing but an answer
+to his good-bye letter."
+
+Only once did her control utterly fail her.  It was after dinner in
+the lounge, and her father, Owen and she were listening to the string
+band.  She had been talking vivaciously, almost happily, to some
+friends in the neighbouring chairs.  Then the band struck up a
+selection from _Tannhäuser_, and the familiar tunes stopped all talk.
+She leaned back in her chair and stared at a hunting picture on the
+wall.  The music, good or bad, well played or badly played, was
+stirring up all the pain which she temporarily trampled down.  The
+Pilgrims' Chorus seemed the very notes and chords of her despair.
+And the song "O Star of Eve" was one of its melodies.  As the tune
+went on inclemently she felt her breath getting shorter and a misery
+rising in her so massed and tumultuous that if it did not burst in
+tears it would madden and kill her.
+
+She got up while control was still with her, walked across the
+lounge, and once outside the door, rushed up the stairs to her
+bedroom.  There she flung herself on her bed, and passionately
+crying, kept repeating aloud, "I don't care how soon the end
+comes....  I don't care how soon the end comes...."  At intervals she
+would stop her crying and muttering to think, "But no, I don't want
+to die and be out of the world where Henry is....  I must be in the
+same world as he is....  If only he would die and I could die too...."
+
+
+Mr. Bruno had instantly guessed what her abrupt departure meant.  At
+the end of the Brunnen stay he had learned with surprise that the
+American boy whose appearance, even if it held a remarkable mind,
+suggested a callow undergraduate, was a married man.  And Daphne was
+much in love with him.  It looked horribly like the real thing.  Her
+request to be taken away he assumed to have followed a confession of
+the boy's, who certainly struck him as a _gentil_ youth.  He blamed
+neither.  What was the good of telling people not to love if they
+did?  And now Daphne was in the grip of her tragedy--Daphne
+suffering!  He must go to her.  He mustn't leave her to writhe in it
+alone.  But he didn't know what to say.  Now that he came to think of
+it he had never spoken seriously to her in his life--always behind a
+veil of banter.  "I can't get through to her.  I never have been able
+to get through to her."
+
+In the applause after the orchestra's finale he rose from his seat,
+saying to Owen, "Keep my place for me, old man," and walked upstairs.
+The passage and door of Daphne's room frightened him, and for a long
+time he strode up and down wondering what he was going to say.  What
+could he give her of comfort and advice?  Though he had written forty
+books, he had no complete and rounded code of living.  And of
+religion, nothing.
+
+Well, there it was.  He knocked on her door.  No answer came, though
+he heard a quick movement inside.
+
+"Daphne."
+
+She did not reply, and he walked back along the corridor, abandoning
+the task.  But at the head of the stairs he stopped.
+
+"No, poor darling, I must go in and see her.  I shall find something
+to say when I'm there."
+
+He walked slowly back, and, without knocking, turned the handle of
+her door.  It was unlocked and he stepped into the room.  He saw
+Daphne in the long easy-chair, sitting sideways, her heels drawn up
+under her, her elbow hanging over the arm but bent to make a support
+for her head.  Her hair was tumbled and falling, her shoulders
+shuddering.
+
+"Duffy, my darling!"
+
+She did not move, but now her shoulders steadied as if petrified.
+
+"Duffy, what's the matter?"
+
+He was annoyed with his feebleness.  How could she answer such a
+question?
+
+"My dear....  I know all about it....  Daphne, I can't bear to see
+you suffering...."
+
+She raised her head and looked up at him, admitting all in a sentence.
+
+"Daddy, how do people stand it?"
+
+What answer could he give to that?  The child ought to have some
+religion--some stay--some hope.  He stood there awkwardly with two
+fingers of his right hand pushed into his waistcoat pocket.  Then he
+began to walk up and down as he struggled to express for her the few
+things that he believed.
+
+
+He had searched nature in vain, he said, for a God of pity.  All that
+he was able to see was that men had pity.  Pity for all things ...
+and amazing courage when God or nature was showing no pity to them.
+And in spite of modern thought-waves, the unshakable conviction was
+still with him that men were only at their best and happy when they
+were yielding to their pity.  Or, of course, when they were summoning
+a defiant courage about them and lifting their heads above their
+trouble.
+
+"I'm trying, dear, to give you the minimum of religion that I have
+found, and perhaps you'll be able to build more on it.  It's rather a
+rebel's creed, I'm afraid.  It amounts to saying that men, because
+they have pity and unconquerable courage, are greater than God, Who
+seems to have no pity....  And then I think, if that is so, let us
+glory in transcending him.  Let us at all costs keep these things....
+I don't know how far I have kept them myself, but I should like you
+to...."
+
+His daughter smiled her affection through her tears.
+
+So much of a general code he tried to give her.  In meeting her
+present need he felt he was happier.  Daphne was staring at him as he
+spoke with interested eyes.  To begin with, said he, she was much,
+much better off than many, because her love had apparently been
+returned.  Many had loved as passionately but without requital, and
+had survived.  It would be futile to tell her to cut out her love,
+but what she must do was to transmute it.  One could transmute a
+suppressed love into two things: into service of others and into art.
+Didn't Dante transmute his love for Beatrice into his "Divina
+Commedia"?  So his love was always with him and always expressed.
+
+"You used to want to write, dear.  I hope you will.  You'll find that
+much of what you are suffering now will escape into that, and it will
+be ever so much better than it would otherwise have been.  Remember,
+there have been little housemaids in London who have had to suppress
+their love and have had no mind to understand these things ... and
+yet they have endured and survived....  But I'll tell you one thing
+that you must guard against.  Books and Art are very great, and no
+life is half a life without them; but they are apt to become a fixed
+idea, excluding everything--unselfishness and all the rest.  And so
+you get set as selfish, and only occasionally a kindly impulse in you
+shows you what you might have been....  So the remedy, I feel, is to
+get this other idea equally--the idea that there is no happiness
+apart from pity and service...."
+
+His daughter had risen and was standing before him.
+
+"Daddy, I always think you're wonderful....  Don't--don't tell Owen
+anything about it, will you?"
+
+He passed his hand over the back of her head, aware of moistened eyes.
+
+"Don't suffer too much, my Daphne.  I can't stand it."
+
+Daphne shook her head and smiled confidently.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV: _Things as They Are_
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+A day in September Mr. Bruno and his children came again to the
+little garden of firs.  The news from South Africa had been such that
+he preferred to be in France with a view to winding up his affairs
+there in the event of an early return to England.  And Daphne was
+glad to be out of Switzerland.  She had not been able to bear the
+conversations of guests who mentioned places associated with
+Henry--the Urirotstock, the Rutli, the Furka Pass, the Mythen.  All
+mountains hurt her.
+
+On the doorstep Miss Carrell greeted the family, inquiring of Daphne:
+
+"Have you had a nice holiday, dear?"
+
+"Absolutely ripping," said Daphne.
+
+And with this sickening lie she carried her wooden despair into the
+house.
+
+A wooden despair it was, these first weeks.  She would take her
+memories with her on lonely walks in the Montmorency Forest.  Its
+autumnal lights pierced her.  She made a pilgrimage to the grave to
+Géneviève Rollier in Taverney Churchyard; and now more than ever did
+the tawdry wreaths and the words "_A Man Epouse_," "_Nous ne
+t'oublierons jamais_," inflate her to pity.  She really felt, as her
+father had encouraged her to feel, an infinite gentleness towards all
+the world.
+
+"You can't reach to pain fully," said she, remembering some words of
+Henry's, "till you have suffered yourself."  And she was aware of a
+little pride in her suffering.
+
+She set to work again upon her book "Madame Rolland."  There was a
+whole reservoir of manuscript to be distilled into some last shapely
+urn.  But now, as she studied it--on the other side of her great
+experience--it seemed shallow, light, unfelt, invented.  "Invention's
+the very opposite of creation," Henry had said; and this minute she
+saw its truth.
+
+The clearer parts of her brain told her brutally what she ought to
+do.  She ought to scrap every bit of this stuff, even though it were
+the product of two years' brain-bullying, because it had been written
+when her angle was all wrong, and would only go lumpy and formless if
+she tried so late to infiltrate it with truth.  More, since Henry was
+always correct, she ought to postpone writing for publication till
+she had read much more and learned something of "the best that had
+been thought and written throughout the ages."
+
+But could she do this?  Could she scrap it all and postpone, even
+abandon, the thought of fame?  No, the old Daphne of three months ago
+was too strong to be shed at once by this new creature of selfishness
+and consecration.  She would re-fashion the book to meet her truer
+measures, but she must keep her eyes on fame.  Next year, or the year
+after, she must make her little stir whose ripples would reach to
+Henry.
+
+So she struggled on with "Madame Rolland," though sensible of
+compromise and conflict.  The sceptic in the corner kept protesting,
+"In spite of me you're heading for one more blunder."
+
+
+Another subject, besides her book and her settled sadness, found a
+small welcome at her door.  This talk about war in South Africa--it
+was always dramatic.  The letters of Owen, who had returned to
+Sillborough, were full of it.  It was thrilling to read each morning
+in the English or French papers of the Boers' impudent ultimatum and
+the British Government's haughty refusal to discuss such terms; of
+the threatening mobilisation in the Orange Free State and the calling
+out of the reserves in England; of the last dark summoning of
+Parliament.  But this interest was mild compared with her interest in
+her book.  It occupied about the same relation to "Madame Rolland" as
+a bright little grocer's boy, calling every day, occupies to the
+mistress of a house.
+
+This grocer's boy, however, came in and sat down in the best room
+during the days when war was declared.  The English papers were
+better than any drama now, with their huge pictures of Sir Redvers
+Buller in his cocked hat, about whom she had misgivings because his
+chin receded, and of that old darling Oom Paul Kruger, who, with his
+curtain-fringe of beard and chimney-pot hat, was so ugly as to be
+perfectly sweet.  The French papers, with their abuse of the English,
+were things to be read; and in a moment of patriotic fervour she was
+anxious to shake off the dust of her heels on such a rude country.
+
+"I vote we go," said she to her father.
+
+And her father shocked her by saying cold-bloodedly:
+
+"But my sympathies, I'm afraid, are rather with Oom Paul than with
+Tante Victoria."
+
+"Daddy!" she exclaimed, after a shriek of laughter at such a name for
+the venerable Queen, "how can you say such a thing?  You're not a
+pro-Boer."
+
+But all he did was to smile and murmur, "_Et tu, Daphne_."
+
+"I don't see there's any _Et tu, Daphne_ about it.  You can't think
+they're right."
+
+"Neither side's ever perfectly right, dear.  But that's no reason why
+the big man should start to pummel the little fellow and kick his
+posterior.  Little men are always self-assertive or nobody'd notice
+them much....  However, the damage is done.  And now it's for us to
+wonder how long our house and our lives will be safe among these
+emotional French."  (Mr. Bruno knew there was nothing in this
+alarmist suggestion, but could not resist uttering it.  His
+difference from the ordinary panic-monger was his ability to stand
+outside himself and laugh at his own delight.)  "Supposing they burn
+our house about our heads."
+
+"Will they really?  How ripping!  Is it going to be as exciting as
+that?"
+
+"Who knows?  The French are without some principle of balance.
+However, I shouldn't talk to Miss Carrell about these things; and
+certainly not to Hollins.  Panic is a light sleeper in minds that
+have never been properly _trued_."
+
+"Oh, no, I won't," promised Daphne, proud to be held of stabler make
+than Miss Carrell and Hollins, and impressed (as often during talks
+with her father) at the enormous number of defective people in the
+world.  She was struck, too, at his originality in being a pro-Boer,
+and wondered whether to learn up the part and be one herself.
+
+"Besides," Mr. Bruno concluded, "we shan't be able to keep up these
+two homes.  No one'll buy any books."
+
+The early and continued successes of the Boers, however, alienated
+his sympathy from them.  It was as if he felt they were going too
+far.  And one morning, on finishing his perusal of a smashing Boer
+victory, he turned to Daphne and said, "Well, dammit, I think we'd
+better win now," which relieved her considerably.  Then they prepared
+to return to England.  On a day in December, after the incredible
+defeats at Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso, the trunks of the
+Brunos were packed, labelled, and standing in the hall at St. Leu.
+
+Daphne went for a farewell walk along the roads of the forest.  The
+trees were quite bare, but many of the dead leaves still littered the
+paths.  Though mid-afternoon, the sun-rays, slanting through the
+boles, had the sad effulgence of evening.  Her random progress led
+her as far as the Pont de Diable and back upon her tracks.  It was on
+this homeward stroll, just as she was nearing the edge of the trees,
+that she was abruptly withdrawn from her inward thinking by the sight
+of a man approaching her.  The cut of his black overcoat and his
+height suggested that he was English.  On his perceiving her he
+quickened his steps.  It was Roger Muirhead surely.  Yes, it was he;
+and tall and handsome he looked.  He was now smiling recognition, and
+she replying with questioning eyebrows.  That he had come in search
+of her was manifest, and the thought could only please.  A rapid
+wonder passed by her mind: was she to be given at last the
+opportunity of saying, as she had always wished to do, "It's no good,
+Roger.  I don't love you"?  But now, in her dominant gentleness, she
+had lost the desire to say it.  He mustn't be hurt like that.  Not
+more than was inevitable.  Less, much less, were it possible....  And
+while she thought these things she was smiling at him with
+questioning eyebrows.
+
+"What on earth's produced you in these parts?"
+
+Roger lifted his shoulders and looked embarrassed.
+
+"Oh, I was in Paris ... and thought I might as well look you up.
+Your people at the house told me you were here, so I said I'd come
+and look for you ... as I've got to go back to Paris almost at once."
+
+"It's awfully nice of you."
+
+"Oh, no, it isn't....  At least ... Oh, I'd better tell you the
+reason why I've come.  (May I walk back with you?)  What do you think
+it is?"
+
+"You've just said: to see us; to see some English friends who happen
+to be in the same strange land as you are in.  I always find that
+people whom one would hardly know in England, if one meets them in a
+racket of foreigners, are one's best friends."
+
+Roger gave silence to this as he walked by her side, and she feared
+she had hurt him more than she meant.  So she hastily added:
+
+"It's topping to see you."
+
+"No--no--I ... Duffy, it was to find you, and you only, that I came."
+Her heart throbbed.  "I wasn't really staying in Paris.  I left
+England on the impulse of the moment last night, and I shall have to
+get back to-night."
+
+She said nothing, but walked on with him, occasionally kicking at the
+dead leaves.
+
+"Duffy, I've been in love with you ever since you appeared at that
+ball.  No, please let me go on.  I--I'm sure you were meant for me,
+because each time the first sight of you has been enough to make me
+fall in love with you.  That blasted waltz--I've been humming it ever
+since, on purpose to work myself into a sad condition."
+
+"But----" she began.
+
+"No, please let me go on.  This is what made me come out.  I've
+joined Sinclair's Horse, and I'm going to South Africa almost
+immediately.  I expect my orders for the front any day now.  It's all
+been perfectly glorious except--well, I've been dreaming how splendid
+it would be if I could go out engaged to you.  I can't bear to think
+of any one else walking off with you in the meantime....  So I
+resolved to charge straight at it....  Duffy, if we were engaged I
+should be able to write to you.  And----"
+
+"Roger, I'd give anything to be able to do what you ask, but I--I
+can't----"  The words "I don't love you" should have come here, but
+she would not say them.  The way of gentleness was to remove his
+castle brick by brick, not to shatter it at a blow.  "I'll write to
+you, however, regularly...."
+
+They walked on, she diverging him towards an opening in the trees,
+for he seemed unconscious or indifferent which direction he took.  He
+must speak next; and it was a while before his answer came.
+
+"Oh, Duffy, I know I've jumped it on you rather, but I was forced to,
+wasn't I?  Do take that into consideration, and--I mean, it's a time
+for deciding things quickly and not spreading them over their usual
+period.  I feel sure--I know you're destined to love me--you _did_
+once--and I don't believe--I never have believed that you are
+absolutely without feeling for me now.  Little things made me
+think----"
+
+After all her indifference, of which she had been so proud, these
+words came as a sharp temptation--a temptation to say, "You're as
+wrong as you can be.  I've no trace of love for you"; but she held
+them back.  Sometimes it wasn't easy to be gentle....
+
+"Duffy, do say you will be engaged to me."
+
+"I can't, Roger....  We don't know each other well enough...."
+
+"Exactly.  I've never had a reasonable chance.  I've only had two
+spells of acquaintance with you.  And the very way we've been forced
+apart each time makes me think we're intended for one another.  I
+believe that a fate waits for every man and that you are mine."
+
+"Roger, you're incurably romantic, aren't you?"
+
+This never offended him.
+
+"Perhaps I am, if it's romantic to believe that.  All I know is that
+I love you with all my heart and soul."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, Roger ... but I can't do what you ask....  I wish
+I were able to."
+
+They were now out of the trees and walking down the slope to St. Leu.
+The nearing of the houses prompted Roger to say despairingly:
+
+"Well, if you can't go as far as that, will you promise not to get
+engaged to any one else till I come back or am killed----?"
+
+"Roger, you mustn't be killed.  Don't say that."
+
+He scarcely listened to her interruption.
+
+"Duffy, promise me you won't get engaged to any one till I come back.
+The war can't last long.  If we don't wipe up a few Dutch farmers in
+six months we shall be a poor set.  Wait till I come back so that I
+can have the chance of a run with the others."
+
+This was the humblest thing he had said, and it went to her heart.
+
+"There'll be no others," she murmured.
+
+"Of course there will be.  As I told you once before, there'll always
+be heaps who want you.  That's what makes me mad....  Throughout the
+journey here I was in mortal dread lest I should find you already
+engaged; and when I glanced at your finger just now and realised you
+were still unwon I believed in my fate again."
+
+"Roger, you must get that idea out of your head....  It's a little
+sentimental, isn't it?"
+
+This was to put it a different way.  To be called romantic was
+pleasing, but to have his love and his faith dubbed sentimental had
+clearly injured his pride.
+
+"Does that mean you won't promise me anything?"
+
+"I am afraid so.  It wouldn't be fair."
+
+"All right."  His face, as she always phrased it, had "tightened."
+They were at the bottom of the hill, and he put out his hand.  "Well,
+good-bye."
+
+"Come and have some tea with us," she said hastily.
+
+"No, thanks.  I must get back."
+
+He took her hand coldly, and after a glance at his watch, murmured
+something and moved on in front of her.  She watched him stride a
+little way and then, unable to let him go like that, ran hurriedly
+after him.
+
+"Roger," she called.
+
+"What?" He stopped and turned.
+
+"I don't want you to go like that."
+
+He smiled his wry smile.
+
+"Well, there's no other way to go unless you do what I ask.  And I'm
+not going to pester you for favours.  I don't do that sort of thing
+easily....  You're the only person in my life I've ever humbled
+myself before.  I shouldn't have done it if this war hadn't forced my
+hand.  After all, I've kept this to myself for nearly two years."
+
+"But Roger----"
+
+"And I don't ask you to be engaged to me, but only to wait till I
+come back, so that I may have a fair run with the other fellows.  It
+isn't much.  The war won't go on for ever.  Besides, I should be
+invalided or wounded sooner or later; or killed, which would relieve
+you of your promise."
+
+"Roger, don't talk like that.  If you'll promise not to think there's
+much chance of our ever getting married I'll promise to do what you
+asked."
+
+"Duffy, you will?"  There was almost a note of triumph in his voice.
+"Oh, thanks ... thanks awfully.  It makes all the difference.  You
+may call me romantic, if you like, but I shall feel now as if I were
+fighting to--to win through to you in spite of everything you say."
+
+Having allowed a faint haze of falsity to arise it was useless to try
+dissipating it now.  Best continue being kind.
+
+"And you know you are not really bound to go by the midnight boat.
+Come back and see the family.  It's all returning to England
+to-morrow, and you can meet us in Paris and look after Miss Carrell
+and Hollins as far as London, while I look after Father."
+
+He met this with his grim smile; and, chatting naturally, though
+sometimes she caught him staring at her in admiration, they walked
+back to the house.
+
+
+Roger's visit and request were at least flattering, and she wanted to
+tell some one about it.  Especially since he had been such a success
+on the journey to London and had looked magnificent.  Her father she
+could not tell, for he had seen her moving on her tragic plateau, and
+would feel that those who walked up there should walk above vanities.
+Miss Carrell?  Was she right in suspecting that gentleness forbade
+unnecessary brag to Miss Carrell about offers of marriage?  There was
+Hollins.  She must tell Hollins.  And in the evening following the
+day of their return to Old Hall House she begged the old servant to
+come and sit in the playroom and mend her stockings there.  For
+twenty minutes she discussed a miscellany of topics, awaiting the
+propitious moment.  And when they had reached the voyage of yesterday
+she asked:
+
+"What did you think of Mr. Muirhead?"
+
+Hollins pursed her mouth at the hole she was darning.
+
+"Not much.  I went to the door myself when he come, and before he
+could speak I thought, 'He's English.'  They look quite different,
+don't they?  They look gentlemen.  But this one struck me as having
+rather a sort of condescending tone, if you know what I mean."
+
+"Do you know what he came for?"
+
+"He said he happened to be around and knew you but not the master, so
+I sent him after you."
+
+"You didn't know what you were sending, did you?  If I tell you what
+he really came for will you promise not to tell any one?"
+
+Hollins, perceiving the glimmer of an interesting revelation, laid
+down her stocking.  What it was she probably had no idea, still
+thinking of her young mistress as a schoolgirl.
+
+"Of course I won't say anything if you tell me not to."
+
+"He came to ask me to marry him."
+
+"Miss Duffy!  Good gracious! ... But I never knew there was anything
+between you.  I never seen him before.  Good gracious....  I'm sorry
+I said I didn't quite take to him, first go off, as you might say.
+It was only his manner, and I suppose it was natural for him to think
+I was an ordinary servant....  Lord....  Miss Duffy!"
+
+"Don't get excited.  I refused him....  But I _did_ promise not to
+get engaged to any one else till he comes back.  He's going to the
+war, you see."
+
+"But he isn't a soldier, is he?"
+
+"Not professionally.  He's Sir Roger Muirhead's son."
+
+"Then what's he want to go out there for?"
+
+"Oh, a lot of men besides the regulars are going now."
+
+"Are they?  I don't know what they're up to.  Aren't there enough
+soldiers?  It seems we're getting beat everywhere.  Well, I hope your
+Mr. Moorhead'll teach them Boers a lesson.  They appear to fight
+pretty dirty, waving white flags and all that."
+
+"Oh, I think that's largely made up."
+
+"Oh, no, it isn't.  I seen it in the papers yesterday."
+
+"Well, the French papers tell a very different story."
+
+"They _would_, 'ating us as they do, and being a race of liars, as
+far as I can make out."
+
+"Personally, I rather admire the Boers and think they're putting up a
+jolly plucky fight."
+
+Hollins took up her stocking again with an unbelieving smile and a
+shake of the head.
+
+"No, Miss Duffy, that won't do.  You ain't a pro-Boer, as they say.
+One can't hold with English people as says the other side is right.
+Not that I ever met any who did, and I don't believe they're proper
+English at all.  But lor! to think of that young gentleman asking you
+to marry him!"  This was obviously the more interesting subject to
+her.  "To think that all that sort of thing's beginning....  Why, it
+seems only yesterday that the bell rang and the noos come to your
+father as how he'd got a little daughter.  And then when your mamma
+asked for you to be brought to her, before she passed away--it don't
+seem twenty years."  She stopped her darning to scratch her head with
+the needle.  "Funny you're not in the least like her.  She was fair
+and small and timid like.  Lor!  I remember I used to say that with
+your eyes you'd soon have the young men hanging around.  And now it's
+comin' to pass.  I used to say your eyes is your trump card...."
+
+"Yes, but they're the only trump I've got," grumbled Daphne.
+"Otherwise I've a putrid hand."
+
+"It don't look like it, do it?" smiled Hollins, "seeing that there's
+been one after you before you're twenty.  And such a handsome one,
+too."  She folded up the completed pair of stockings and pushed her
+wooden ball into the heel of one of Mr. Bruno's socks.  "What I
+always says is, Life's a funny business.  The noos come that you'd
+arrived at that there horrible home, and you're brought to the hall
+door, where I met you carried in; and then time passed with cooking
+and washing and mending, and you in the house growing so naturally
+that one hardly noticed your growing at all or worried about it--and
+now you're going to disappear out of the hall door into another life.
+Seems strange somehow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+The papers now filled with pictures of Field-Marshal Lord Roberts,
+who was to proceed at once to the command in South Africa, and of
+Lord Kitchener, who was to be his Chief of Staff.  Of Lord Roberts
+Daphne had never heard, but she thought his moustache and imperial
+rather sweet.  Lord Kitchener, on the other hand, had been one of her
+schoolgirl heroes at the time of his return from the Sudan, and she
+was jealous for him that he should not be in supreme command.  Lord
+Roberts, in comparison with Kitchener, was just a toy of an old man,
+such a one as she always called "a poor little soul."  "Still,
+generals of that sort are often very pure little men," said Daphne
+comfortingly.
+
+Owen returned from Sillborough for the Christmas holidays, and after
+the feast spent a mysterious night in town.  The next evening he
+apologised to his father and sister and announced that he had joined
+the Imperial Yeomanry.  He expected to leave for South Africa any day
+now.
+
+Mr. Bruno muttered a mild oath, but was not displeased with his son.
+
+"I can't say I believe in your war, colonel," said he, "but as my
+good friend Nietzsche puts it with some originality, 'It's the
+fighting halloweth every cause.'"
+
+"Lor' bless you, I don't believe in it either," Owen disclaimed.  "I
+only think it's jolly decent--like sin....  Don't you?"
+
+As for Daphne, she succumbed to a really bourgeois pride and
+sentimentality about her brother.  Ever since he had shot up six
+inches above her and could lift her out of a carriage lest her
+dancing shoes were soiled, she had promoted him to a worldly
+superiority over herself.  It was extraordinary how boys, who were
+such miserable fowl at ten years old, developed into something much
+more competent and assured than yourself.  She was as excited as he
+about sleeping-bags, bandoliers, revolvers, grey-coats,
+field-glasses, riding-boots and badges of rank.  And it was a
+pleasure to write to Roger that her brother Owen was following him
+and was in the cavalry, so it was possible they would meet.
+
+Roger had left for Cape Town very soon after his hawk-swoop on Daphne
+in the wood.  He wrote regularly and more and more affectionately.
+It was plain that the loneliness and woman-hunger of soldiering had
+heightened his love, and that he was picturing her now as much more
+wonderful than she was.  These letters, so courteous, reverent, and
+yet breathing in every line an impassioned love, raised in her a
+great tenderness towards Roger, an emotion very different from the
+humble worship which was her love for Henry.
+
+This was always present: if not actually in her thoughts it was very
+close, behind a semi-transparent veil.  If the veil thickened, making
+Henry for a space a well-nigh incredible memory, and herself ashamed
+that her love could quiet so, it needed but the appearance of his
+figure in a dream for her to awake and find the wound open, aching in
+sharp air.  Or she would look out of her window at night and see the
+English clouds shaping themselves as mountain ranges, with two
+points, perhaps, like the points of the Mythen; and immediately any
+hardening ground would be painfully broken again, and wild sentences
+arise, "I can't live without you, Henry!" "I must have you, Henry!"
+
+This pain swelled her tenderness to Roger; and when he wrote begging,
+"Please, _please_ send me a photograph," she determined to comply;
+and determined that it should show her at her very best--or better
+than that.  It might be the last picture he would ever see of her.
+She went to the most expensive photographer's in Brighton, and on the
+arrival of proofs, opened them eagerly.  They were too
+wonderful--_perfect_!  As she studied the picture, large and softened
+in the latest style, she was (as she said) "astonied, and there was
+no more bitterness in her."  It was she--and yet it was the ideal of
+her; it was her own dream of herself that she had failed to realise.
+The longing was in her mind for Henry to see it.  Still, there was
+happiness in sending it off to Roger, and thinking of his joy in its
+possession, and imagining it on his camp-table throughout the war.
+
+On a May afternoon she rose from her writing-place with a glow of
+lonely triumph, such as that experienced by Gibbon when he had
+completed "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."  She had
+written the last word of "Madame Rolland."  Whatever happened to this
+manuscript, she had actually written a book--a story with a
+beginning, a middle, and an end.
+
+Whether it were good or bad, she could not decide.  A few parts she
+felt sure were splendid, of a great many she feared the worst.
+
+What to do with it now?  She could not bring herself to show the
+manuscript to anybody before sending it to the publishers.  Her
+father she had always meant to surprise by its publication; Miss
+Carrell was a nonentity, and Hollins, if she struggled through it,
+would certainly say it was beautiful.  And having shut herself within
+herself of late she had no very intimate friends.  Mrs. Montague
+Jevons was abroad.  If only Henry could have criticised it!  But her
+book, she knew, would have been quite different then.  Desiring only
+to earn his commendation, and indifferent to the world, she would not
+have compromised.
+
+Over what name should it be sent to the publishers?  Her own she
+would have liked.  "Daphne Bruno" sounded an author's name.
+
+"But, no.  If it's as rotten as I sometimes think it, I should let
+father down.  Besides, it might go a bit on his name, and that I
+don't want."
+
+"Helen Gilder" was her final concoction.  "'Madame Rolland,' by Helen
+Gilder."
+
+Now the manuscript had to be typed.  There was a lady who did typing
+in Haywards Heath, where she had a little office over a shop in
+Boltro Road.  It would be very pleasant walking the two miles there
+with the manuscript under her arm.
+
+Half an hour later she was in the office of Miss Elsie Troon, typist,
+and saying with a mixture of self-consciousness and vanity:
+
+"I want this typed, please; and what is the very soonest I could have
+it?"
+
+Miss Troon, a stout blonde, was quite unmoved at having an author in
+her office.  She looked at the manuscript, giving Daphne an
+uncomfortable moment as the title page passed beneath her eyes,
+estimated the number of words, and named a date.
+
+"I should have liked it before that, as I have got to send it to the
+publisher's reader as soon as possible."
+
+This sounded excellent, and was reasonably true.
+
+Miss Troon, her blood still unwarmed, promised to have it completed
+by a day earlier, and Daphne departed, carrying down into the street
+an anxiety lest any disaster overtook the manuscript while it was out
+of her hands.  Apart from this anxiety, her walk home was very happy,
+and her sense of work completed made it seem like the first evening
+of a holiday.
+
+When the day came to fetch the typescript she was almost as excited
+as if she were going to see her book in print.  But she showed no
+emotion to the phlegmatic Miss Troon, not even examining the work
+before it was packed up.  And in the street, with some idea that Miss
+Troon might be leaning out of her window and watching, she refrained
+from undoing the parcel till she was round a corner.  But thereafter
+she walked home along the town and the country road reading it page
+by page and occasionally walking into other pedestrians or the hedge.
+It was very well typed, and seemed to have shed some of its
+amateurishness with this change of dress.  Certain corrections she
+made with her pencil, standing in the middle of the road or with a
+foot on the hedge.
+
+
+Her scheme was to send it to the most important publishers first
+(avoiding her father's lest they recognised the owner's name) and
+work downward to the smaller people.  It was rather thrilling,
+composing a letter to the firm; writing on the fly-leaf of the
+typescript: "Property of Miss Daphne Bruno, Old Hall House,
+Wivelsfield, Sussex," and then making up the parcel.  The last knot
+tied she went out and posted it.
+
+"I only expect to get it back.  Of course, I must expect to get it
+back once or twice."
+
+The first time it returned she took the parcel from the postman's
+hand with a steady face, and the hope that he would not observe her
+heightened colour and slight abstraction.  She carried it into the
+playroom and redirected it, with a new letter, to the second
+publisher on the list.  Every morning she watched the postman coming
+up the drive, and on a day three weeks later saw in his hand the
+parcel of unmistakable shape.  The third time she was out when it
+came, and found it in the hall, on returning from a ride.  It was a
+day in July, and the anniversary, so her diary told her, of one of
+the most intimate conversations with Henry, under the mountains of
+Brunnen.  The fourth time she saw it again in the postman's hands;
+and lest he should begin to suspect what it was and know her for a
+humbled failure, she ran out and joked with him as she took it from
+his hands.
+
+The fifth time it stayed away so long that she thought she might
+write for information, and did so in a very courteous letter.
+
+"It'll reach them to-morrow morning, and I ought to get an answer the
+next day after breakfast."
+
+That next day there was, surely enough, a letter for her with the
+publisher's imprint.  This set one's heart going fast and awkwardly;
+no parcel, just a letter alone.  With quivering fingers she opened
+and drew out the typed sheet.
+
+
+"DEAR MADAM (it said),--We desire to thank you for giving us the
+opportunity of reading your novel, 'Madame Rolland,' but after
+carefully considering it we have regretfully decided that we cannot
+make you any offer for its publication.  We are therefore returning
+it under separate cover...."
+
+
+She tossed down the sheet with the words, "All right, I'll send it to
+the next, and you'll be sorry some day."
+
+This much of comfort she tried to suck from the letter, that they had
+taken long to make up their minds.  But the sceptic had another view;
+he hinted that they had not read it at all and, on receipt of her
+inquiry, had returned it by the next post.
+
+That winter and spring she sent it to three or four more publishers,
+directing it each time in a soulless, automatic way, entirely without
+hope, but liking to tell herself that she hadn't given in.  She wrote
+nothing else, and read little.  Ambition had drawn into a shell and
+was hibernating there.  Careless now to whom she submitted it, she
+tried a Mr. D. J. Stendal, whose advertisement she had seen in a
+corner of a weekly paper.  Beneath its tabulated titles it had added,
+"Authors Invited to Submit Books."
+
+His reply came a week later.  It said that Mr. Stendal was interested
+in her work and would like to see her at some time suitable to
+herself, either at his office in Queen Victoria Street, or, since he
+would be in Brighton that week-end, at the Old Ship Hotel.
+
+Now her heart beat to a tune of high hope again.  Ambition leapt from
+its shell as if it had never been torpid at all.  From Mr. D. J.
+Stendal's crested paper and offices in Queen Victoria Street she
+conjectured that his house must be in no small way.  And Mr. D. J.
+Stendal was coming himself.  Did this mean that her book was so good
+that the head of the firm was prepared to wait on her?  Or was
+it--was it that Mr. D. J. Stendal, despite his note-paper, had less
+standing than--she hurried to look again at his advertisement.  It
+was certainly a very small advertisement, giving the titles of some
+poetry books by writers with unfamiliar names.
+
+Less excited, but still pleased that some one was prepared to publish
+her work, and fortifying herself with the words, "Beggars can't be
+choosers," she wrote that she would be happy to interview Mr. Stendal
+in Brighton.
+
+Monday was the day assigned; and it was an April afternoon, warmer
+than any that had gone before so that the spirit of holiday was along
+the Brighton front, when Daphne pushed open the door of the Old Ship
+Hotel and asked at a counter for Mr. D. J. Stendal.
+
+"He's expecting me," said she to the attendant, wondering if he knew
+Mr. D. J. Stendal was a publisher, and would guess her to be one of
+his authoresses.
+
+While a boy in buttons went to look for her host, she watched the
+people as they came and went, and vaguely pitied them their flat
+occupations or commonplace holiday.  Not one of them, probably, was
+at the verge of exciting things.
+
+"Mr. Stendal's just here, miss," said the returning boy; and he led
+her to an ante-room where he pointed to a little, clean-shaven,
+sharp-featured man, in a blue serge suit, who was staring out of the
+window at the sea-front.  On the table beside him was an empty cup of
+coffee, its saucer littered with cigar ash.  A disappointingly
+insignificant little man--but then, what about Lord Roberts.  "Let's
+hope D. J. is just such a pure little man," thought Daphne.
+
+"That's 'im, miss."
+
+Mr. Stendal turned from the window as she drew near and rose.
+
+"Ah, Miss Bruno, I imagine, Miss Daphne Bruno.  Yes.  It's
+exceedingly kind of you to give me the opportunity of discussing
+things with you personally.  Won't you sit down?"  He smiled.
+"You're even younger than I thought."
+
+With the quick sensitiveness of an author Daphne wondered what this
+meant.
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Yes.  Well, you don't mind my cigar, I suppose?--well, we've all
+read 'Madame Rolland' with interest, and on certain considerations
+have decided that we should like to publish it for you."
+
+The "We've all" reassured her; evidently the firm was not small.  But
+it was a shock to hear the title rendered in English as "Maddum
+Rollend."
+
+"Yes," she said inquiringly.
+
+"'Helen Gilder' I see you call yourself.  I wonder why?"
+
+"Oh, I made it up."
+
+"But why, when--or p'raps you didn't want the name confused with the
+great Tenter Bruno?"
+
+Daphne flushed.
+
+"Not particularly."
+
+Mr. Stendal now looked out of the window, which had the effect of
+bringing into the ante-room the sounds of horse-traffic and the
+footsteps of passers-by and the shrieks of children.
+
+"You're not any relation to him by any chance, are you?"
+
+"Well, yes," said Daphne, with an awkward smile.
+
+"Oh, _relly_?"  Mr. Stendal's eyes came away from the window and
+looked straight at his visitor, whimsically.  "Relly?  This _is_
+interesting.  Not his daughter, by any chance?  Of course, he lives
+this way, doesn't he?  Not his _daughter_?"
+
+Daphne nodded, very red.  And Mr. Stendal's eyebrows were surprised
+and delighted.
+
+"Well, relly.  I _am_--I count this interview a great privilege.
+Yes, and now I come to look, you're not unlike some of his pictures.
+But why, Miss Bruno--why, with a name to conjure with like
+yours--don't you publish under it?  Your book has a charm, an
+innocent charm, that pleased me, but"--his lips compressed, as his
+head shook doubtfully--"the difficulty always is to start an unknown
+author.  You can't get the necessary publicity.  And no book, however
+good, can do much without that.  With your father's name we could at
+least get notice taken of it.  We should--I might say, we should be
+honoured to publish 'Rollend' for your father's daughter."
+
+"Yes, but that's just what I don't want."
+
+The sensitive Daphne's heart was drooping at the thought that her
+work was not really good.  Doubtless the great houses who only
+published work on its merits had rightly turned it down....  But no,
+she wouldn't think that.  She would believe in it despite everything.
+It was not that she was a fool, but only that she preferred to be.
+
+"Why don't you want it, Miss Bruno?"
+
+"Because I want it to go on its own strength ... and father knows
+nothing at all about it."
+
+Mr. Stendal smiled sympathetically--knowingly.
+
+"I see--I quite see.  I quite appreciate your position.  It's to be a
+surprise, eh? ... And may I ask if--you'll forgive me, I'm sure, for
+no lady minds being considered younger than she is--may I ask if
+you're still a minor?"
+
+"Does that mean, am I twenty-one?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I was twenty-one last February."
+
+Mr. Stendal smiled benignantly.
+
+"Dear me!  What it is to look sixteen!  You see, you need to be over
+twenty-one if you're going to sign an agreement.  In your own
+interest I mentioned it."
+
+"Agreement?"  Her brows furrowed.
+
+"Oh, yes, there's always an agreement between publisher and author."
+
+"I didn't realise that."
+
+"No?  Well, it's quite a simple matter....  Now, as regards terms.
+You mustn't expect to make a great pile of money with your first
+book."
+
+"Oh, I don't," assured Daphne.
+
+"No.  Especially when it's without any particular sting.  The great
+houses find it difficult to sell seven hundred copies of an unknown
+writer's book....  Myself, I make quite a feature of publishing the
+work of young writers--why, I can't say--they appeal to me, perhaps.
+But, as I expect you know, it's generally poytry I publish.  Now, in
+the case of poytry, which is even more difficult to sell, the author
+generally contributes towards the cost of production, and after a
+certain number have been sold, he begins to get a royalty on each
+copy."  Mr. Stendal smiled benignly.  "Now, I don't propose to ask
+you to contribute anything.  Nor do I propose to buy your copyright
+for a sum down--I always think that's so unfair--if the book was to
+go, I might make hundreds, while you'd only get your small sum."  He
+then told the stories of several famous novels which had made
+thousands for their publishers and nothing for their authors, and
+Daphne was astonished; many of them were books she had read.  "Yes,
+it's pure roguery, isn't it?" nodded Mr. Stendal.  "Well, what I
+suggest is that, after you've sold a thousand copies, you get a
+royalty on every copy of ten per cent. of the published price.  I
+shall be losing money till I've sold something in the neighbourhood
+of a thousand copies."
+
+"It sounds all right," smiled Daphne.
+
+"I might even, if you sold, say, five thousand, raise the royalty to
+fifteen per cent."
+
+"Oh, thanks."
+
+"Yes, I desire to be perfectly fair.  Well, now the question of name.
+I quite appreciate that you don't want your father to know anything
+about it.  If it's a success, you want to be able to tell him that
+Helen Gilder is relly Miss Daphne Bruno.  Whereas, if it isn't a
+success, you needn't say anything."
+
+"Yes, that's it."
+
+"Quite so.  Still, may I suggest that you publish it anonymously?
+Anonymous books sometimes cause a good deal of talk and
+speculation--which helps them considerably.  Now 'Rollend' is a
+slight book--very nice as far as it goes--but it can't afford to do
+without these adventitious aids.  'Helen Gilder' will do it no good
+at all.  Anonymity might help a little--nothing much, but a little.
+'Tennyrate, I strongly recommend it."
+
+She agreed to this, and, a little later, the conversation terminated
+in amiable chaff from Mr. Stendal, and the assurance, at the door of
+the hotel, that he would forward the agreement at once.
+
+Out in the sunshine of the Brighton front her thoughts were a mixture
+of disappointment and exultation, misgiving and hope: disappointment
+at the qualified praise of Mr. Stendal and the faint aura of doubts
+that hung around his person; exultation because her book would at
+least be printed and stand on her shelves, which was more than any of
+these people in the carriages or on the pavements had achieved;
+misgiving lest the critics laughed at her work, and hope that they
+might pronounce it very good.
+
+"I wish I knew if it were good or bad.  However, I won't let myself
+expect it's going to do anything big....  But, of course, it's quite
+possible it might be good and catch on.  And then..."
+
+She gave herself to the more pleasurable business of imagining the
+sensation in the papers and the surprise that would be sprung on her
+father and Owen and Roger.  Roger, being an ambitious person, would
+hardly suspect that she also could do a noisy thing in the world.
+Probably, though not admitting it, he would be a little jealous.  And
+if it were a success, and published in America, under its author's
+real name, and Henry saw it!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Owen and Roger wrote frequently.  They had met at Krugersdorp, as
+both reported in their letters:
+
+
+"I struck Roger Muirhead's crowd the other day," said Owen.  "My
+dear, Roger's a great man.  He's doing things properly.  If you can
+conceive an amalgam of the Iron Duke, Frederick the Great, Cromwell
+and Halifax, that's Roger.  He's the sort that says: 'My men may fear
+me, but I think you'll agree they'll follow me anywhere.'  I really
+believe he imagines the British are in the right and the Boers in the
+wrong; though Heaven knows why.  And did you know he was religious?
+But he is.  He never fails to take his men to church if there's a
+parade.  It seems the old boy, his pater, is a tremendous churchman;
+though, again, Heaven knows why.  I blew into his tent, and on a box
+beside his bed was the same photograph of you as you sent me.  Is he
+still smitten with you, or how did he get it?  I'm sorry I don't like
+him if _you_ do.  I'll try to; but, honestly, I think him at present
+rather pompous and superior.  He must always disagree with you lest,
+by agreeing, he should appear to be less than you.  I can look into
+his head and see his motives hopping and popping about, just as if
+his skull were made of glass, which makes me think I must inherit
+some of your dear father's insight.  But he may grow out of these
+things.  He's very young.  And I must say he never misses a chance of
+being wounded or killed.  He's either unco brave, or so ambitious
+that he's ready to be killed if only he can do some enormously brave
+deed and have it trumpeted all over the world.
+
+"Love to father, and tell him I met a British officer the other day
+who had read one of his books.  Love to Miss Carrell and dear old
+Herbert Hollins.--Your hero brother,
+
+"OWEN BRUNO."
+
+
+Daphne, reading this letter, was more annoyed with Owen than critical
+of Roger.  It was irritating that her brother should sit in judgment,
+and contemptuously, on a man who had asked her to marry him.
+
+"After all, Owen, just as much as Roger, has created a character that
+he tries to live up to--the humorous, cynical young man....  When
+he's been through some pain"--this she thought with a little
+pride--"he'll be more generous."
+
+Roger's letter had come by the same mail:
+
+
+"I met your young brother the other day.  He's a curious kid.  He
+always seems to want to laugh at everything.  I think I've got as
+much humour as most men, but I like to believe there are some ideals
+worth holding.  If he doesn't believe we're doing a decent job out
+here, what on earth has he come for?  I am afraid I was rather rude,
+but I can't stick it when people try to make out that every country
+and every class and every school is right except their own, and I am
+afraid I'm apt to speak my mind sometimes.  It's not as though I was
+a Tory without an idea beyond my own interests.  Like father, who's
+one of the few capitalists who have ever stood for Liberalism, I'm a
+Liberal, but I believe in this war and came out to it, though many of
+my political friends cried shame on me for doing it...."
+
+
+Now she was annoyed with Roger.  "Owen's right: Roger's egotism leaks
+out everywhere."  And even as she said it she remembered that all her
+thoughts for the last year and more, while men were dying daily on
+the veldt and the British armies, after an echoing humiliation, were
+only recovering in a long-drawn tussle, had been concentrated on
+herself and her desire to do something big.
+
+"I doubt if there's much to choose between any of us; every one I've
+had anything to do with has lived in a self-created role; Miss
+Durgon, old Miss Vidella, Miss Sims, Daddy, Roger, Owen and myself.
+Henry, I believe, did it least of all.  Or his role was a better one;
+of itself it destroyed the play-actor....  Roger must think me rather
+a fool, if he imagines I don't see all these things.  But 'Madame
+Rolland' 'll make him open his eyes."
+
+And then, one morning as she was casually opening the paper, she
+found herself looking straight at a portrait of Roger.  Quick
+self-reproach hampered her heart; she feared he was dead.  It beat
+again with relief and excitement when she saw beneath the picture:
+"The Hero of Wittfontein.  Lieut. Roger Muirhead, whose heroism is
+reported on page 5."
+
+Eagerly turning to page five she read under sensational headlines a
+column in honour of Roger.  It was usual enough in those days to see
+the exploits of English officers illuminated and stressed till they
+seemed Homeric; but few had given the journalistic imagination a
+better opening than Roger.  It rushed in a torrent over his deed and
+lapped worshippingly about his feet.  He had been in command of a
+small post at a place called Wittfontein, which lay across the line
+of Hertzog's raid into Cape Colony.  He and his "handful" of men had
+been attacked by a large force of Boers who had expected to sweep
+them up in a morning's work before proceeding to the main column
+advancing on Britstown.  But Lieutenant Muirhead thought differently.
+Nothing else would satisfy him but to remain undefeated behind their
+raid, or to delay them by resisting to the last man, while his
+commanding officer got wind of the position.  So all day, though
+wounded in shoulder and knee and faint with loss of blood, he had
+crawled among his men, revolver in hand, stiffening the resistance of
+this "tiny Ladysmith" and refusing to give up the place of command.
+The enemy had actually abandoned all attempt at capture, although
+when the British relieving force arrived at the Wittfontein post,
+_not one of its defenders was found to be without a wound_.  Mr.
+Muirhead was by this time unconscious.  The men, now that the Boers
+had cleared off and left them victors, were in high spirits and full
+of praises for their officer.  Some of their remarks were quoted.
+"Doubt if we could have done it without him."  "He's severe enough,
+but he don't tell no one to do what he wouldn't do himself."  (What
+music to Roger's ears must this sentence have been!)  "He was bound
+to do something big if the war went on long enough, and he didn't get
+himself killed."
+
+A thought so unworthy had stirred in Daphne's mind that, in order to
+drive it back and refuse it foot-room again, she jumped up and rushed
+into her father's study to find more papers and more accounts of the
+Hero of Wittfontein; she took them for proud showing to Miss Carrell
+and Hollins, and she hurried to her table and wrote to Roger.  "Oh,
+Roger, I'm thrilled.  It's wonderful to be your friend."  This was
+expiation, because for a moment she had felt jealousy and
+disappointment that Roger had achieved his fame before her.
+
+
+The papers during several days gave space to Lieut. Muirhead.  They
+reported his improvement in hospital, gave a summary of his life, and
+spoke of his desire after the war to enter politics.
+
+Daphne wondered if his head would be turned, and could not expel the
+thought that, now he was so big a man, with the world at his feet, he
+might see fit to drop her as he had done once before.  Perhaps the
+interval between his letters would increase till they stopped
+altogether.  He was in no wise pledged to her.  But his next letter,
+under a base hospital address, began: "My dearest Duffy," which was a
+phrase he had never employed hitherto.  What emotion, in the glow of
+his triumph, had impelled its use?
+
+The early part of the letter was studiously occupied with ordinary
+details of his life; but they were only like a creeper on its real
+structure, which said:
+
+
+"You will, I suppose, have heard of the scrap at Wittfontein.  I
+can't think what they are making all this fuss about.  It was, of
+course, a nasty day, but we had to fight whether we liked it or not.
+The only alternative was to give ourselves up, and that isn't done.
+I had no use for handing over my weapons and the weapons of my men to
+the Boers.  Hundreds of others would have done what we did and been
+mopped up.  We were saved, and therefore everybody hears about it.
+And as for all that talk about my keeping command when I was wounded
+in the leg and shoulder (they might have added the thigh and wrist as
+well), what could I do?  We were surrounded, and I had nowhere to go
+and get into bed.  And I didn't fancy seeing my sergeant take over
+command as long as I was in my senses.  The men were distinctly
+cock-a-hoop when the Boers melted, and most of the puff in the papers
+is due to their generous enthusiasm.
+
+"However, I dare say all this praise will please the pater and mater,
+so I am glad of it for their sakes.  But I am still happier if it
+pleases you at all, because you are more to me even than them.
+Duffy, I have wanted all the war to do something big, simply to seem
+worthy of you.  And dearest (forgive me for writing that word, but I
+feel I must, and it can't hurt you), when I first got into hospital
+feeling frightfully low (emotionally exhausted, I suppose) I made
+sure I was going to die; and all the time I thought of you as I found
+you in that wood or left you on Victoria Station, and I didn't want
+to die, for I wanted, at any rate, to be in the same world as you..."
+
+
+Daphne's eyes moistened; these were words she had used in her
+thoughts of Henry.
+
+"... When I picked up that divine photograph from the table beside me
+I simply longed for you.  I would try to imagine you coming through
+the door into the ward.  And when I thought I might be sent home, I
+was lifted to the seventh heaven at the thought of seeing you within
+a measurable distance of time.
+
+"I only tell you this because it is proof of how much I love you.  If
+I have achieved any sort of fame, I am happy because I have got
+something to offer at your feet.  I want to say this, Duffy: if you
+have yet learned to love me, and feel you could marry me, I should
+love to consider myself engaged to you, and should be only too happy
+if you cared to tell everybody that we were engaged.  But, if not,
+well, I shall understand, and I expect I shall be home soon enough to
+plead my cause better."
+
+
+"Poor, dear Roger," said Daphne, moved.  "You thought I'd like to
+proclaim my engagement to you just now when your name is on
+everybody's lips.  I think it was sweet of you to offer me the
+chance."
+
+She laid down the letter and walked to the window.  Who could
+say?--had Switzerland never happened she might have learned to love
+him.  He was a little egotistical and pompous, but so was she and
+every one else.  It would have been nice to say she was his
+_fiancée_, and to have all the papers seizing on to it.  And now she
+mustn't hurt him by too final a refusal.
+
+She spent a long time phrasing her reply:
+
+
+"MY DEAR ROGER,--Honestly, I am awfully proud of your last letter,
+and think everything in it was splendid of you.  I certainly like you
+better than I have ever done, but not enough to say I'll marry you.
+You see, I haven't seen very much of you.  But it's ripping to hear
+you are coming back soon...."
+
+
+Like a moving staircase time carried her towards the date of "Madame
+Rolland's" publication.  Excitement fought with timidity, now
+uppermost, now under, but generally winning.  Often she scanned her
+father's literary papers, hoping to find a preliminary notice.  She
+saw none, but, though disappointed, was not angry.  If the story were
+a success there would be plenty of notices of her next book.  The
+night before publication she took her secret to bed with her, where
+it kept her pillow hot and her body restless.
+
+With the day she rose and hastily dressed, in a desire to be down
+before the others that she might separate for herself a few minutes
+with the newspapers.  An advertisement might be there, and possibly
+one or two reviews.  Of course she would not expect big
+advertisements like her father's--just her book in a column of other
+titles.
+
+It was a mid-week day, bringing several papers and journals.  One by
+one, having found nothing, she laid them by.  When the last was
+abandoned empty her shoulders shrugged and her hand dropped to her
+side.
+
+"All right," she said resignedly, hardly knowing what she meant by
+the words, and added: "I think he might have put in a small
+advertisement."
+
+Restless throughout the day, she decided to go where there were
+bookshops that she might see if "Madame Rolland" were in the windows.
+Brighton, of course.  She escaped from the house and took the train.
+And in Brighton she wandered from book-shop window to book-shop
+window, seeking in vain the cover or the back of her book.  At last,
+thinking desperately that she must have some encouragement to go on
+with, she entered a shop to ask for "Madame Rolland" over the counter.
+
+It was a nervous business when the young man enquired her needs, and
+she had to utter the title of her own book.
+
+"Have you a copy"--she coughed, and cleared her throat--"of 'Madame
+Rolland'?"
+
+The young man shook his head.
+
+"No, miss.  Not in stock.  Is it an old book?"
+
+"No, no.  I think it's published to-day."
+
+"Is it?  We haven't heard of it.  Who is it by?"
+
+"Oh, I think it's anonymous."
+
+"Indeed, miss?  Who publishes it?"
+
+"Stendal.  Mr. D. J. Stendal."
+
+The young man bowed, and said nothing.  Obviously he did not like to
+admit that the name was unfamiliar.  Daphne, by now, though sanity
+told her it was nonsense, was apprehensive lest he thought her the
+authoress, and had no desire beyond getting out of the shop.  But not
+too quickly, or she would confirm his suspicions.
+
+"Yes, D. J. Stendal," she said again.
+
+"Well, we can get it for you, miss, in a couple of days."
+
+"Oh, don't trouble.  I'll try to get it elsewhere.  Thank you so
+much."
+
+This inquiry she repeated at every bookshop, and always with the same
+result.  One man, indeed, did find the book mentioned in a list sent
+out by Mr. Stendal, and she had the satisfaction of seeing "Madame
+Rolland" in print on a slip of paper.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like to keep that list, miss," said the
+man--innocently, it was to be hoped.
+
+"Oh, thanks.  Well--yes--I will."
+
+She passed out into the crowded Western Road, carrying Mr. Stendal's
+list.  After a few hundred paces her thoughts were disturbed by a
+strong smell of coffee that seemed to rise from the pavement, and she
+found herself opposite an Oriental café.  It was tempting.  A cup
+would remove the parched taste from her mouth, and the gathering
+tiredness in her head and eyes.  She climbed the stairs to the first
+floor, and sat at a table by the window.  Here she sipped her coffee,
+or rested her face in her palm, as she watched the carts and buses
+and pedestrians below.
+
+"It looms so important to me," thought she, "that I can't imagine how
+microscopically small it is to all these people and everybody else."
+
+
+Hope sprang afresh next morning when six presentation copies arrived;
+and in the next weeks she trusted to see some advertisement or review
+in this paper or that.  But nothing could she track till one day, as
+she was walking on Ditchling Common, a carriage passed her, and Mrs.
+Montague Jevons immediately stopped her coachman, and hailed Daphne
+in a sentence that gave her a leap of delight.
+
+"Hallo!  Hallo, hallo!  Like father like daughter.  I see you've
+written a book."
+
+Daphne blushed agreement.  "Yes, I'm afraid so," and for the sake of
+something to add, asked: "But how did you know?"
+
+"Oh, I've just read an announcement of it!"
+
+"Have you?" said Daphne--languidly, to conceal her eagerness.
+"Where?"
+
+"In the _Daily Telegraph_.  Just a small notice."
+
+"Oh, I haven't seen that one.  To-day's?"
+
+"Yes, this morning's."
+
+"I must look at it.  Father's got it....  Was it kind?"
+
+"Very...."
+
+As quickly as suited with her mantle of dispassion, she got away from
+Mrs. Monty and hurried home to see what the paper had said.  The
+_Telegraph_.  This was excellent, for the _Telegraph_ was an
+important journal.  Only when she was half-way back did she think:
+"But how did Mrs. Monty know that I wrote it, seeing it's anonymous?"
+The question stopped her dead on the road.  Had it then leaked out
+that she was the authoress?  This might be good news, showing that
+discussion had played around the book.  Or had Mr. Stendal--now her
+indignation began to rise--carefully divulged her name, in order to
+stir up talk and stimulate sales?
+
+When she had the paper in her hand, it was a long time before she
+could light upon the notice.  She was looking for a small head-line,
+and perhaps half a column of criticism.  There was no such thing,
+though one swept the paper three, four, and five times.  At length,
+in a few inches devoted to announcements, she found the lines:
+
+
+"We understand that a novel published recently, 'Madame Rolland,' is
+really the work of Miss Daphne Bruno, the daughter of Mr. T. Tenter
+Bruno.  The book has been selling well, the publisher, Mr. D. J.
+Stendal, informs us, but this interesting news has stimulated the
+demand."
+
+
+On the whole she was pleased.  The statement that the book had been
+selling before the revelation of its authorship counter-balanced her
+anger with Mr. Stendal.  But she was glad that the paragraph was
+small, and not likely to be seen by her father, or too many friends.
+Not yet had it been declared good, and only if it were good did she
+want people to know of it.  So she began to get incensed when she saw
+in the chatty column of that evening's paper an extraordinarily
+flippant paragraph headed, "Following in Father's Footsteps"; and
+another, though this was dignified, in the _Evening Advertiser_.
+
+The constant repetition of her father's name reminded her of
+something she had quite forgotten: all of these paragraphs would be
+sent to him by his press-cutting agent, and would probably be on his
+breakfast plate the day after to-morrow.  If they were, she would not
+be able to face him.  She would run.  Pray that he didn't leave his
+study to-day, and meet any one who would enlighten him!
+
+The well-known envelope of the press-cutting agent did not appear,
+however, till three days later.  When Daphne saw it, she went out of
+the house without stopping for any breakfast.
+
+She walked along the roads towards Haywards Heath.  The impulse
+strengthened to go up to town and demand an explanation from Mr.
+Stendal.  She was spoiling to be rude.  The slippery little beast!
+Yes, and now that she was fairly successful, she stood in a new
+relation to him.  She could tell him what she thought; and she would.
+All the way in the train she was framing her insults.  They held
+allusions to solicitors, and "steps" and adequate apologies.
+
+In Queen Victoria Street she had difficulty in finding the offices of
+Mr. Stendal.  Mr. Stendal's number seemed to be occupied by the
+headquarters of a patent knife-cleaner.  Then, at the side of what
+she had supposed to be a private door, she saw several brass plates;
+and one of them, under the heading "Third Floor," read, "Mr. D. J.
+Stendal, Publisher."  Walking nervously but resolutely up the dark,
+iron-bound stairs, she vowed that if the clerks, as seemed possible,
+brought a message that Mr. Stendal was engaged, she would push past
+them into his private room.
+
+Arrived, rather breathless, at the third floor, she walked along a
+dark passage till she saw a door on which was painted, "Mr. D. J.
+Stendal."  Being called to come in, she turned the handle more
+timidly than pleased her, and entered a bare, littered room, long
+enough to hold three tables, at one of which sat a youthful
+girl-typist, at another a shock-headed man with a stoop, and at the
+third little Mr. Stendal himself.  On deal shelves round about the
+walls were files, iron boxes, and stray copies of books published by
+the firm.
+
+Mr. Stendal, recognising his visitor at once, rose and said
+pleasantly:
+
+"Ah, Miss Bruno.  Mr. Bates, this is Miss Bruno, you know, who wrote
+'Rolland.'"  He did not introduce her to the typist.  "Please sit
+down."
+
+And he removed some papers off a chair and courteously placed it for
+her.
+
+Daphne was disconcerted by the presence of other people, and
+stuttered:
+
+"I rather wanted to see you in private a minute."
+
+Mr. Stendal smiled gaily.
+
+"Well, we haven't another room.  But you needn't mind Mr. Bates.  He
+and I really are Stendal's, so I couldn't have a secret from him, if
+I wanted to.  That's so, Bates, isn't it?  Do sit down."
+
+She sat down.
+
+"You want to know how your book's going on.  Miss Dale, look up
+'Rolland,' and see what the figures are, will you?  Thank you."
+
+Daphne interrupted.
+
+"I didn't come about that.  I wanted to know how it leaked out that I
+had written it.  I especially stipulated that it should be published
+anonymously."
+
+"I know you did.  Or rather, you wanted it published under an assumed
+name.  And you will remember that I recommended anonymity as more
+likely to stimulate interest.  Well, it turns out that I served you
+well by that bit of advice.  You see--to tell the truth--we sold
+nothing--practically speaking, nothing at first.  I don't think we
+had any orders, did we, Miss Dale?  And I thought that, as you had
+entrusted its publication to me, I had best do all I could for you.
+So Mr. Bates, who sees to the publicity department, sent round a
+paragraph--didn't you, Bates?--and we were delighted the ways the
+papers took it up.  Not many, but one or two important ones.  I grant
+I did it on my own authority, but you will appreciate I had your
+interests at heart.  I think you will forgive me when you hear that
+our manœuvre has created quite a demand; small, of course, but
+good--distinctly good for a first novel.  The shops and the libraries
+have both bought.  What are our sales now, Miss Dale?"
+
+"Twelve hundred."
+
+"Excellent.  Twelve hundred copies, Miss Bruno, sold right out.  That
+means we've topped the first thousand, and are now in the second when
+you get the ten per cent. royalty."
+
+Daphne started to speak, but Mr. Stendal hurried on:
+
+"And what's more, it's really getting noticed and reviewed.  Did you
+see the little notice in the _Times_ this morning?  And those
+cuttings that came this morning, Miss Dale; pass them to Miss Bruno
+to see."  He took them from the typist's hand, and gave them to
+Daphne, who accepted them limply.  "There.  You can keep those.
+We've made a selection of quotable phrases--haven't we, Bates?  We're
+advertising the book next week.  I hope we may see at least two
+thousand copies for you."
+
+Daphne could scarcely say anything, being driven by the desire to get
+away.  The news that the book had sold nothing until the mention of
+her father's name had been the final blow after a week of buffeting.
+The sting was taken from her studied insults.  She was near to
+crying, and it must not be done before these people.  But
+something--something that would hurt must be said.
+
+"I told you I had not come to hear about the sales.  I am not
+interested in them.  What I am interested in is the explanation why a
+definite promise to me was not honoured.  I see you have no
+explanation.  I must speak to my father about it.  He understands
+these things better than I do, and will instruct me what steps to
+take."
+
+"Precisely!  Exactly!" said Mr. Stendal enthusiastically, though
+there was a peep of a forked tongue in his enthusiasm.  "He will
+appreciate exactly what we have managed to do for you, considering
+the--er--the slight nature of your book.  He knows the conditions of
+publishing, and the necessity of all reasonable publicity.  And he
+will see how we've kept strictly within the terms of our agreement."
+
+Daphne moved towards the door, but turned on him and said:
+
+"I think he will appreciate very little of all that, not being a
+perfect fool.  He will appreciate that you have considered nobody's
+interests but your own.  He will certainly appreciate that you have
+kept within the terms of the agreement, for that is what one would
+expect from people like you.  I imagine it's not too safe for you to
+venture out of cover...."
+
+Mr. Stendal smiled, as one does when managing a restive pony, and
+seeing that Daphne was fumbling for the handle of the door, hastened
+to reach it first.  He opened the door courteously.
+
+"There now.  We won't lose our tempers.  I think you're a little
+ignorant about the difficulties of putting a book across--the
+competition, and all that.  Especially one that is really nothing out
+of the ordinary.  Believe me, we are doing the best we can for you,
+and shall continue to do so.  Certainly it is in our interests, and
+in yours too.  Good day, Miss Bruno."
+
+In Queen Victoria Street Daphne walked along, purposing to mount an
+omnibus that would take her to her station, but letting them one
+after another pass by, as she accompanied her angrily running
+thoughts.  Still in her fingers were the press-cuttings Mr. Stendal
+had given her, but, dreading the lash, she determined not to look at
+them till seated in her train.  A gloomy journey that would be,
+carrying her to the interview with her father.  And when she was in
+her corner seat she waited till the train had actually started before
+lifting the first and reading it.
+
+
+"The work of a famous writer's daughter must always be interesting,"
+it said; "one seeks to learn how far the talent of the parent has
+been transmitted to his children.  We cannot say that we are
+impressed with the work of Miss Daphne Bruno.  It is quite
+undistinguished, and there is no precocious genius here.  Her
+ignorance of life is naïve in the extreme; that, of course, is very
+pardonable in a young writer, but what is stranger in her father's
+daughter is her absence of literary palate."
+
+
+Daphne, who had been setting her lips as she read, was pierced with a
+fear that this sentence told the truth.  Henry was right.  Not having
+read one-hundredth part of the books which the ages had pronounced to
+be good, perhaps she did not know what was true loveliness and what
+was bad.
+
+
+The next review echoed the thought:
+
+
+"A first effort, especially from the hand of a distinguished writer's
+daughter, invites indulgence, and we shall hope one day to
+congratulate Miss Daphne Bruno on a better work than 'Madame Rolland'
+(Stendal).  Let it be said at the start: this is the work of a
+completely immature writer.  We wish we could have added that it was
+full of promise.  But Miss Daphne Bruno has certainly not revealed
+her promise yet.  Were the word not too hard, we should describe the
+treatment as illiterate, not in the sense that it is grammatically
+wrong, but that it is the work of one only slightly familiar with
+great literature, and whose values are therefore false.  But let this
+not deter Miss Bruno from trying again after a long intercourse with
+those writers whose genius is no longer on trial.  We imagine that
+she will then be the severest critic of her first book.  One
+remembers the early work of Shelley, and will be slow to deny promise
+to any young writer."
+
+
+"Oh, please don't be kind," said Daphne, as she put this cutting away.
+
+
+The other reviews agreed; that was the worst--they agreed.  They
+called the work "commonplace," "innocent," "shallow," "superficial."
+Having read the last she sat looking out of the window, her trouble
+increased by the sudden memory that since nearly all these cuttings
+mentioned her father, they would have been in his hands since the
+morning's post.  There was nothing to do but to go straight to her
+execution.  In her mind hovered the old lines, their pronoun changed
+to meet her case:
+
+  She nothing common did nor mean
+  Upon that memorable scene ...
+    But bowed her comely head
+    Down, as upon a bed.
+
+
+Mr. Bruno met her in the hall, having seen her come up the drive.
+His irritability, obliged to simmer all day, was anxious to boil over.
+
+"Where on earth have you been since before breakfast?"
+
+"I've been up to London."
+
+"London?  Do you mean to say that you run up to London when and how
+you like?"  Knowing a pang of self-reproach that she should be so
+unshepherded, and finding the thought ill-timed, he submerged it in
+anger.  "Well, I might have known.  It's on a par with everything
+else.  Just come in here a minute."
+
+He led her into his study where the press-cuttings were on the table.
+Lifting them up and tossing them back again, he demanded:
+
+"What's all this about a book you've written?  Why on earth didn't
+you tell me something about it and get my advice?"
+
+"I wanted to surprise you."
+
+Mr. Bruno again smothered the pity, and made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"Stendal?  Who the dickens is Stendal?  Why, I know most of the
+publishers by name, but I've never heard of Mr. D. J. Stendal.  Some
+Vanity Publisher.  Nice to have any of my name linked with a firm
+like that!  I suppose he made you pay for the privilege of being
+published?"
+
+"No, he didn't.  I'm getting a ten per cent. royalty."
+
+It was annoying that, while she stood there looking up at him with
+eyes that were rather frightened, compassion should gain ground from
+anger.  He wanted anger to hold its own.
+
+"Well, are you such a little fool that--can't you see that for your
+work to be published by a house of no standing is itself enough to
+damn it....  These Stendals and their like only bind up stuff that no
+one else'll print, for conceited amateurs to circulate among their
+friends.  He only took yours for nothing because he thought that ...
+Couldn't I have advised you about publishers and agreements? ... But
+I suppose you have no faith in my advice."
+
+"I wanted to do it by myself."
+
+"And you've ended by doing a ridiculous thing, and, incidentally,
+though it's a small matter, making me appear ridiculous."
+
+"Oh, I didn't want to do that.  I said all along I didn't want to let
+you down.  That's why I published it anonymously."
+
+"Anonymously?  Then what's all this about?"
+
+He lifted up the cuttings.
+
+"Mr. Stendal deliberately let it out to make the book sell.  I've
+just been up to tell him what I thought about him."
+
+At this point anger capitulated.  He sat down in his chair, and,
+after tossing the cuttings to the back of the desk, turned round
+towards his daughter.
+
+"Poor child!  Doesn't it show how you ought not to have attempted
+anything without advice?"  One of her hands he picked up.  "And did
+you really think you could assault the world with the few arrows that
+have so far arrived in your quiver?  I fancy you must learn much more
+about books and men.  Don't you see that, if you want to compel the
+world to listen to you, you must convince them that in some respects
+you know more than they do?"
+
+"What about the Brontës?"
+
+"H'm....  Well, Charlotte only came off when she was writing about
+what she knew--which wasn't often.  And the sheer genius of Emily--
+
+"Well, I'm your daughter, so perhaps I'm a genius like you."
+
+"No, I am not a genius, Daphne dear--only a brain trained and
+tempered for its work....  Besides, this is a more sophisticated age
+than the Brontës' age....  Stands Fiction where the Brontës stood?
+... I wonder some humorous editor hasn't sent me your book to review."
+
+"I don't want any more reviews.  I hope nobody writes another word
+about it.  I wish I'd never published it.  I wish I could wipe it all
+out."
+
+He pressed the hand he was holding.
+
+"Poor Duffy!  They _have_ hit it rather hard, haven't they?  But
+they're an ill-conditioned race, critics."
+
+"Daddy"--it was evident an idea had struck Daphne--"would you read
+it?  You're the only critic whose verdict I should consider final."
+
+"Would I read it!  Why, to tell the truth, I've been aching to ever
+since I heard about it.  I'll read it now.  Where is it?"
+
+"I hid them upstairs....  But you'll promise to tell me exactly what
+you think, and not try to let me down lightly.  An awful lot will
+result from what you say."
+
+Releasing her hand he told her to run and fetch it.
+
+When she returned, he rose up to meet her and took the thin volume.
+After studying its shape and print, he went to the book-shelves and,
+pushing a squad of books towards the right, made a place for this
+newcomer next to the last of his own works.  For a few seconds he
+studied it in this position, and then took it out again and came back
+smiling to his daughter, whom he drew against him and kissed.
+
+"I am proud you've started writing too, my dear--which is a remark I
+might, without loss of dignity, have made earlier.  Come now, it's
+not a small thing to have a book published at twenty-one."
+
+The tears were in Daphne's eyes.
+
+"Oh, but they didn't do it because it was good, but only because I
+was your daughter.  I know it.  I know it.  And I know I've made both
+you and me look foolish."
+
+"No, dear.  Only to fools.  Besides, let me read it.  Your court of
+appeal may reverse the verdict."
+
+
+Daphne sat upstairs till dinner time, unable to read, for she was
+trying to imagine whereabouts her father was now in "Madame Rolland."
+After the first bell she went down--why softly she did not know--and
+quietly turned the handle of his door.  He was no longer reading.
+
+"Have you finished it?"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You want exactly what I think, as though you were nothing to me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Duffy, young writers always think they can write about people or
+places or emotions of which they know nothing.  It can't be done.
+Once in your story you strike a vein of truth, and though you have
+over-written it, the truth can still be seen, and is not a little
+appealing"--he turned his eyes back to the book.  "It's in your
+love-scenes.  And there's a glimpse of vision, promising much despite
+all these critics, in the episode at the grave-side.  But the rest,
+I'm afraid, is machine-made, which is what they mean by calling it
+'insincere.'  The result is, you get sentimental, forcing emotions
+where they would not have been.  And there's too much gratuitous
+ornament, whereas in a perfect work of art ornament and structure are
+one and the same."
+
+Daphne nodded.
+
+"All that's a long way of saying it's mostly bad."
+
+"It's the work of your prentice hand, dear...."
+
+"Oh, don't let me down lightly.  I understand."  She turned towards
+the door.  "Come on, let's go to dinner."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Somewhere she came across a quotation: "Regretting not yesterday, nor
+fearing to-morrow."  Like a reveille, it called her to that defiant
+courage of which her father had once stuttered to tell.  The
+reiteration of it braced her like a tonic.  "I don't regret
+yesterday, and I'm not going to fear to-morrow."  She was going to
+begin again.  And this time she was going to begin right.  She was
+going to cut out all vulgar ambition, and all imitation of others,
+and the indolence that prevented her from reading aught but the easy
+and pleasant.  "This time I shall do what Henry tried to make me do.
+In fact, I shall write for an audience of one--Henry.  Or two,
+perhaps--Henry and me.  I shall write what he would have approved.
+To that end, I'm going to study not only books, but men.  Daddy said
+I must do that, too.  So, as soon as possible, I'm going to get out
+of this cloistered existence and experience the world."  It was an
+inspiring notion.  She could feel glad about all that had happened,
+for it seemed as if one thing in her life--and that the most
+important thing left to her--was purged of its alloys, and in its
+direction trued.
+
+Though two years had passed since she had left Henry, she had no real
+doubt of her love for him.  Certainly his figure had gone behind a
+curtain before which she could dance and laugh and play her part,
+even sometimes stopping to ask herself, "Have I then ceased to love
+you, Henry?" but the thought of him was always hazily present, and
+often, very often, he emerged vivid and solid into her dreams, and
+she who had questioned her love before would wake up with her
+sadness, and be satisfied with it.
+
+But _his_ love, what of that?  For a long time she had dreaded lest
+it had faded.  Surely it must have done.  She had been so
+disastrously ignorant in those days, so _illiterate_; and her beauty
+was something in which she had never believed.  Why should Henry
+still care to remember her?  Of course, he had said on the ship that
+night: "Don't profane my love by thinking that."  But any one
+infatuated would have believed so much.  Since her good-bye letter he
+had never written.  What was there to show that his passion had stood
+the test of years?  She would never know if it had; for
+notwithstanding her oft-repeated words, "Time is big," she did not
+really believe they would ever meet again.
+
+Still, she loved.  Quietly, and without wreck.  She had just
+idealised him in her memory.  No doubt he had had faults, but she had
+never seen him except in the rapture of love; she was surprised how
+little she knew of his real character.  To her he was now the
+idealised portrait of one who would have understood her dreams,
+guided her work, and received the full measure of her love.
+
+"I am going to reach through to him with a book.  It may be twenty
+years before it is published--it may not appear till after my death;
+but one day it'll get to him."
+
+So now to work unremittingly, and to live abundantly.
+
+Lowered to a complete self-distrust by the unthinkable
+press-cuttings, she began her studies with "An English Course for
+Middle Forms," "The Story of Ancient Greece, Simply Told,"
+Saintsbury's "Short History of English Literature," and "An
+Introduction to Philosophy."  And the initiation of this reading,
+especially the brain-teasing philosophy, pleased and flattered her.
+As she pursued it she could almost feel the refining of her brain,
+and the strengthening of her ratiocination.  It made her think of a
+flower that was opening late.
+
+She had continued to write to Roger, whose return to England had been
+delayed, and his replies had spoken no more of love, though their
+tenderness was as implicit as ever.  And now he surprised her with a
+letter sent from London, saying that he had arrived, and, at his
+request, was to be transferred to a convalescent home at Brighton.
+"I shall have all the days to myself.  Couldn't I meet you, say at
+Ditchling, on Thursday?"
+
+This letter, in the days of her rejection by the world, filled her
+with pleasure.  She felt affection, nowadays, for any one who had
+always liked and admired her.  And in the rush of her enthusiasm she
+wrote:
+
+"Of course.  I'll meet you there where first we met.  Isn't that out
+of a song?  On the King's Highway, where it runs across Ditchling
+Common, by the bramble bush.  At three o' the clock."
+
+
+Hesitation, before she sucked the envelope, asked: "Haven't I been a
+bit too gushing?  Offering to meet him like that in that sentimental
+place.  No."  The flap went down irreparably.  "I've let him do all
+the gushing so far, and now he's come back I ought to make a fuss
+about him....  I've been mighty high and proud all along, and Lord
+knows I had nothing to be stuck up about."
+
+This lifted the memory that she had hoped to dazzle him with her
+fame, and once again the words of the shattering paragraphs troubled
+her breath, but she recovered herself by repeating: "I don't regret
+yesterday, and I don't fear to-morrow."
+
+Soon she must give to Roger her final answer, "Yes" or "No."  It
+surprised her that, though she did not love him, the idea of being
+engaged to him was full of thrills.  Or did the thrills lie in just
+being engaged, rather than in being engaged to Roger? ... Not
+altogether.
+
+She must think it out thoroughly, and not let her nature gallop her
+into any more blunders.
+
+Let her get her motives into the light, one by one.  To assist
+clearer thinking she took an empty postcard and pencil, and drew a
+bisecting line, printing FOR on its left and AGAINST on its right.
+
+For?  She sucked the pencil, pushing it far back on her tongue.  She
+would be perfectly frank with herself.  Recent rough handling, like
+recent reading, had polished away a cloudiness from her brain.
+
+The first and lowest motive was the desire to be an engaged person,
+with all the notoriety it brought, and the snub for any who had
+laughed at her.
+
+This she refused to note on the card.  But she doubted if this
+disciplinary refusal amounted to writing it out of her nature.
+
+Secondly, she would rather be married than an old maid.  She liked
+Roger, and would never be in love with any one else, because she was
+in love with a memory.  A girl didn't always get a second chance,
+unless she was exceptionally beautiful and fascinating.  Already she
+was over twenty-one.
+
+She wrote "Not O.M."
+
+Thirdly, if she married she would rather be rich than poor.  Roger's
+was a splendid offer.
+
+She wrote "S.O."
+
+Then she wanted opportunities for full and varied living.  Who more
+than Roger could give her these?  Think of the fun it would be,
+fighting political battles by her husband's side, and if he got on
+(as he certainly would, being the sort), what might she not see of
+government and pomp; diplomacy, intrigue and the pageantry of Courts?
+
+She wrote "Life."
+
+Then, of course, she wanted to experience caresses and passion, and
+was not displeased to find that, after the idealisation of Henry, the
+thought of Roger's embraces were more stirring to her than those of
+any man she had ever seen or could imagine.
+
+She was in some doubt what word to write here, for "Love" was not the
+true word, and "Passion" was crude.  She put three dots.
+
+And what really was her attitude to Roger himself, apart from his
+position and all that he could give her?  He was such a magnificent
+creature that she would be enormously proud of him as a husband.  And
+she wanted to marry something big, not "a poor little soul."  His
+little poses she could always forgive; indeed, she would have to,
+whomsoever she married, since she had never met a man who wasn't
+decorated with them.
+
+She wrote "Very proud of him."
+
+Examining these tabulated reasons she was appalled at their
+selfishness, and sucked her pencil again, while she thought: "But
+isn't there some motive which is a bit nobler?"  She knew there was,
+and it came into the light.  That creed of gentleness, which her
+father had offered, had been saturating her nature during the last
+two years, and the disillusion of recent weeks had helped it on its
+way.  Strange how mixed one's motives were!  There was joy in the
+thought that since Roger loved her as passionately as she had loved
+Henry she would save him from her suffering by giving herself to him.
+
+For this item she wrote, "Not to hurt."
+
+On the AGAINST side she could only write, "Not real love."
+
+But if she waited to write different from that she would never marry.
+
+There was the position.  Now one could only intermit thought, and
+wait for what would happen.
+
+
+On the Thursday afternoon she dressed with care.  Wisdom told her
+that she had to compete with the famous photograph, and that its
+beauty was now to be regretted, for it enlarged her deficit.  But her
+glass, before she left it, assured her that if she came second in the
+competition it was no dishonourable second.
+
+Anticipation trembled in her as she passed through the "toll-gate" on
+to Ditchling Common.  She had but to turn the curve in the road and
+she would probably see Roger.  She saw him, walking up and down by
+the blackberry clump, and waved a hand.  Immediately he advanced
+towards her, and she studied his figure as that of one who _might_ be
+her husband.  Roger had no photograph to contend with; now that he
+was older, wider, browner, and perfectly dressed, he was even in
+excess of her thoughts.
+
+"Coo, he's sure to be disappointed in me," she was thinking.
+
+But there was no disappointment in his face; rather, beneath all his
+dignity, was he grinning a little sheepishly.  He put out his hand.
+
+"And how's Daphne?"
+
+"Daphne's all right, except that she has an objection to being called
+Daphne."
+
+Roger flushed, lest he had begun by offending her, but parried with a
+smile:
+
+"Miss Bruno, am I to say?"
+
+"Don't be silly.  You know what I mean.  Those who really like me
+call me Duffy."
+
+His smile broadened.
+
+"I have dared once or twice to write so much.  And I confess I was
+primed up to call you by it; but when I saw you my courage leaked
+away."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you--you are older and more terrifying."
+
+"You're a fine person to talk about being terrified of anything.
+Besides, I'm nothing like you, I'm frightened to death of you."
+
+"Is that so?" asked he, with his enigmatic grin.  "Well, where are we
+going?  How long have you got?"
+
+"As long as I like.  You seem to forget that I've come of age since
+you went away."
+
+"Well, let's walk for a bit, and see where we arrive."
+
+They started towards Ditchling.  The guiding of the conversation lay
+with Daphne, for Roger was apt to turn inwards (probably to a
+rehearsal); and she saved it from the sloughs by asking him scores of
+helpful questions about himself.
+
+It was a warm afternoon with the sun unobscured; and at last he
+suggested that they sit somewhere on the grass.  He led the way off
+the road and up the slope towards the trees.  At any rough or steep
+place he held out his hand, enjoying the action, as she could guess,
+both from his love of gallantry and the touch of her hand.  But he
+was shy of choosing where they might sit together, and it was she who
+finally declared herself too fagged to go farther, and promptly sat
+down.  Roger spread his length beside her.  Then there was silence.
+(No doubt he had gone in to the dress rehearsal.)  He stared at the
+two windmills on the skyline of the Downs; and when he spoke again it
+was without bringing his eyes away.
+
+"Duffy"--he cleared his throat--"I don't know whether it's fair to
+speak to you like this the first time we see each other....  And I'm
+determined to consider you first in everything....  I didn't intend
+to say anything at all this first day, but somehow your letter
+consenting to meet me alone made me hope I might----"  He turned now
+towards her, but she was looking at the close grass by her crossed
+feet.  "Duffy, you know what I mean.  For nearly four years I've had
+no doubt of my love for you.  I never worried about girls till I met
+you; my dreams were all of success and fame.  But when I saw you the
+second time at that ball, looking absolutely divine, I was routed
+instantly....  And all through the war I never doubted.  It was
+always glorious to think of you, to picture you, and to look at your
+photograph, and to hear the chaff of the other fellows when it stood
+on my camp-table.  Duffy, could we be engaged now?"
+
+She had no answer, continuing to look at the grass; but as Roger said
+no more, pity obliged her to speak.
+
+"But we don't really know each other--only by two years' letters.
+And you can't know me from letters.  One only shows oneself at one's
+best in letters."
+
+"As I've always told you, I'm old-fashioned enough to believe that
+somewhere there's a woman made for every man.  And I know you are
+mine."
+
+She smiled at him.
+
+"And as I've always told you, you're an incurable romantic."
+
+"Perhaps I am."
+
+"But perhaps I'm not so sure of my--my love for you.  Roger, I think
+I ought to tell you: I was very fond of some one else some time ago,
+and I've never quite forgotten."
+
+She had turned to look straight at him as she said this, and saw the
+pain knit his brow and narrow his eyes.
+
+"When was this?"
+
+"Two years ago."
+
+"And did he ask you to marry him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?  Was he a fool?"
+
+Daphne kept silence.
+
+"Do you expect he will ask you to marry him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He has married some one else."
+
+Roger said nothing more.  And Daphne, frightened by the pause, heard
+herself inquiring:
+
+"Couldn't we have a month's companionship together?  I'll see you
+every day if you like--and if you wouldn't mind asking me again in a
+month's time----"  She began to be a little afraid lest he scorned to
+be temporised with.  "I'm very fond of you--and proud of you."
+
+To this he gave long thought, unwittingly lowering and raising his
+jaw.
+
+"Yes," he decided.  "I want you so badly that I would rather have you
+if I were only second best--but I haven't had a chance with you yet."
+
+
+They spent nearly every day of that month together; and she could
+only be pleased to see him working to win her love with all the care
+and watchful labour he might have given to carrying a kopje in South
+Africa.  It was doubly to be valued from one who prided himself on
+his haughtiness.  He was courtesy, consideration and generosity.  A
+merry humour he had always had, and it made him good company.  He had
+bought a car, now familiar sights on the roads, and taken her long,
+luxurious drives.
+
+As the time drew nearer when she must speak again, indecision
+harrowed her.  This time it would be final; Roger would not go on
+petitioning for ever.  Sometimes she felt she was looking forward to
+saying, "Yes"; sometimes, when a glimpse of his egotism made her
+doubt, she would feel that she was caught gasping in a stream, since
+it would be impossible, after all his kindness, to send him cruelly
+away.
+
+It fell that he proposed to her again before the month was finished.
+A late afternoon as she came downstairs, dressed to drive with him as
+far as the foot of Ditchling Beacon, where they were going to climb
+the Downs, her father stepped out of his study and intercepted her.
+
+"I suppose you had better see this," said he, and handed her a
+press-cutting.  There was something dramatically despairing about his
+gesture and his return to the room.  She followed him, glancing at
+the slip of paper on which the cutting was pasted.  It named a
+journal of which she had never heard, _London Carnival_.  Type and
+paper were poor, and the paragraph was signed, "Our Cynical
+Spectator."
+
+"On the Dissipated Habits of a Great Critic's Criticism," ran the
+headline; and the smaller print said:
+
+
+"Criticism, like Charity, should sometimes live at home.  But perhaps
+a happy marriage between these two, and a dwelling together in the
+same house, is impossible.  There's such a difference in temperament.
+And that, no doubt, is why the criticism of the great Mr. Tenter
+Bruno (as, to be sure, we have observed in the case of other
+punishing critics) roams abroad, and seldom spends a night at home.
+Indeed, we might almost say that in his house, Charity, timid maiden,
+has secured her divorce from brutal Criticism--with custody of the
+child.
+
+"The child, in this affecting tale, is Miss Daphne Bruno, the great
+man's daughter; and only the great man's charity could have allowed
+her nonsensical little book, 'Madame Rolland,' recently published, to
+see the light of day.  It was a tactical error, of course, for
+whatever reviewers may be saying in print, those writers who have
+been lashed heretofore by the great Bruno are enjoying a mild
+hilarity.  We have studied some of the notices, and detect a
+praiseworthy doubt of the propriety of securing points against Mr.
+Bruno by lunging foils at his daughter.  For ourselves, we are less
+squeamish, and judge it all to the good of literature that every book
+should be submitted to the unhampered attacks of criticism, and
+especially those that only win their publication by the glamour of a
+famous name.  For these have entered with a spurious ticket."
+
+
+"Oh, Daddy! ..."
+
+Such a note of pain rang in the words that her father came towards
+her and took the cutting out of her hand.  He had known all along
+that he should not have shown it to her, but had been quite unable to
+forego a display of his honourable wound.
+
+"No, darling," he hurriedly enjoined, "don't take it seriously.  It's
+just a low papermaking copy.  Nobody who matters reads it, and those
+who do forget it in ten seconds."
+
+"Oh, it's awful!" she said.
+
+"No, no.  If you're going to be an authoress, you must get used to
+ridicule."
+
+"But, Father, I'll write at once, and say you knew nothing about it.
+Your reputation's much more important than mine."
+
+"Dearest, it's all stuff and nonsense.  I showed it to amuse you, not
+to distress you.  You certainly shall not write.  People might say
+that I inspired your denial.  And if they think I'm going to disown
+my daughter----"
+
+His brain condemned the poor heroic; and when Daphne was gone, he
+stood disquieted to think that vanity could put a stick in a man's
+hand with which to strike what he loved.
+
+
+Daphne went out of the house with a head dulled, as by a blow, into
+confused thinking.  In vain she commanded herself to get the thing in
+proportion--to see that the paragraph was only a drop in the ocean of
+that day's print, and already forgotten by any one less interested
+than herself.  The very memory of the words would flutter her heart
+for a sick second.
+
+And when she met Roger and his car by the Royal Oak, she could not
+keep up the gaiety of her greeting.  Throughout the drive, after
+formal answers to his remarks, she would relapse into the worrying
+memory.  And she knew that he had observed her depression and was
+respecting it.
+
+At Ditchling they left the car, and climbed the pleasant turf of the
+Downs.  It was one of those gracious afternoons that, by discordance
+with melancholy, increase it; an afternoon of sunlight on the great
+cheeks of the hills, and wide shadows in their hollows, and clear
+views to the highlands in the north, where the pine-woods were darkly
+blue under a private cloud.
+
+After a speechless climb, she agreed in mock-merriment to Roger's
+suggestion that they rest for a while and enjoyed the view.  She sat
+down in the shelter of some tall gorse, saying formally: "This is
+quite like old times, isn't it?"
+
+Roger did not acknowledge this remark, but, sitting beside her and
+idly picking the grass, inquired:
+
+"My darling, what's the matter with you?"
+
+In that unauthorised "My darling!" sounded a real pain; it was
+manifestly the outburst of a heart charged with love and sympathy.
+
+"Me?  Nothing," assured Daphne, with a quickly acted smile.  Not
+wholly acted, however; because that note of love had been potent to
+sound retreat to her shadows.  Being loved like this by Roger was the
+sunniest place in her life.
+
+"You're miserable.  You've been miserable ever since you appeared.  I
+can't bear you to be miserable."
+
+"It's nothing, really."  To show which, she picked up a small
+snail-shell and threw it in front of her.  "It was only one of those
+horrible press notices; rather more pitiless than usual."
+
+That Roger was throbbing with his love for her she knew by his
+low-pitched answer:
+
+"I wish I could find any one that would hurt you."
+
+"But they're right," corrected Daphne.  She felt quite happy now in
+the sunny place.  "Rather salted, but right."
+
+"Right or wrong, I shouldn't care....  But they're not right.  No one
+who ridicules you could be right.  You don't know what you are.
+You're--there's no one fit to hold a candle to you.  It sometimes
+amazes me that you're so innocent of what you are.  If only you could
+see yourself as I see you!  My darling, I never can see any one who
+seems so beautiful as you, just because you're the model by which I
+test everybody's beauty.  If another woman's eyes are not the same
+colour and shape as yours, they're imperfect.  If her nose is a
+different shape from yours, or the lines of her figure, they're so
+far wrong....  Oh, but I forgot, I've no right, till you give it to
+me, to talk to you like this...."
+
+His closed fist was lying on the turf by his side, just between
+himself and her; and Daphne, unable to answer him with words, laid
+her open hand on his.
+
+"Duffy!  That means----!  Oh, my darling!"  He put his arm about her
+waist and pulled her gently towards him.  "Then may we be definitely
+engaged to one another?"
+
+She turned her face towards his, smiled, and nodded.
+
+He kissed her, but without passion, as if he would not hurt her by
+too quickly taking all his privileges.
+
+"Are you happy, darling?"
+
+"Yes....  I think it's wonderful that you, of all people, with the
+whole world to choose from, should love me.  And in spite of all you
+say, I still can't see why it is....  I'm awfully proud of it,
+really."
+
+"And you love me?"
+
+This was to be met with a smile.
+
+"I think so.  I want to be close to you.  I want to be happy with
+you, and to make you happy, and help you in your career.  And I want
+you to kiss me."
+
+"Darling!"
+
+This time he gathered her close, and pressed his lips on hers with
+all the passion that first he had withheld.
+
+"My beloved!" he said, as he drew back his head to look down upon her
+face.  "And you can't see what you are!  Why, every time you look up
+at me, as you did a second ago, with your huge eyes, you make me mad
+for need of you.  I feel I can never have you close enough--that even
+hugging you is a poor apology for all that I would have--that though
+you are as close to me as you are now, you are still too many miles
+away."
+
+Again he hugged her, and Daphne, in this embrace which seemed never
+likely to end, found her thoughts running fast; she was already
+picturing with delight the announcing of her engagement to her father
+and the others at home; the congratulations that would come from all
+who knew her; the inspiring future that stretched before her, with
+election fights and luxurious living.  She was bewildered to have
+reached this point, but excited; and because excited, happy.  And
+when he released her, she said:
+
+"Do you mind if we go home?  I'm so longing to tell everybody."
+
+Roger grinned, as might a staid elder amused by a child.
+
+"Yes.  Let's go back."  He jumped up and helped her to her feet.
+"Fancy to think we came up this hill unengaged and go down it
+engaged.  I wonder what we are going down to."  He accompanied their
+downward steps with a chain of such romantic utterances, and then
+inquired: "But what do I do next?  Not having been engaged before I
+don't know.  Do I come back with you and ask your father's
+permission?  I'm all for doing the proper ceremonial things.  I've
+always believed in ceremony.  Not, though, that I should let you go
+if he refused."
+
+"Daddy won't refuse.  But let me tell him, will you?  Don't you come
+in at all.  I know how to deal with him.  I'm sure you'd make a mess
+of it."
+
+He drove her, as by newly acquired right, to the gates of Old Hall
+House, and she, escaping before he could kiss her good-bye, hurried
+excitedly up the drive.  Letting herself in, she saw Miss Carrell
+standing in the lamp-lit hall.
+
+"Is Father at home?"
+
+Her voice trembled, and she was grateful for the half darkness.
+
+"No, dear.  But he's back to dinner.  He can't be long."
+
+"Oh, all right."
+
+She rushed up to her room and dressed with trembling hands.  Once
+dressed she did not know what to do.  Her head and cheeks were so
+burning that she was moved to study them in the glass and trace the
+visible effects of such heat.  It had tinged them with wine-colour.
+When she heard her father's key she gave him full five minutes by the
+bedroom clock, during which her heart seemed to beat a million times,
+and then walked downstairs and burst into his room.  He was sitting
+in his arm-chair dragging on a slipper.
+
+"Please come in," said he.
+
+"Father, I'm engaged to be married."
+
+Mr. Bruno's hand left the slipper, and his foot trod down its heel.
+The surprise jerked him out of his whimsical port.
+
+"What on earth are you talking about?"
+
+"Talking about being engaged.  I got engaged this evening."
+
+"Got engaged?  But I didn't know any one was in love with you."
+
+"Of course you didn't.  I didn't proclaim it from the house-tops."
+
+"Good God!  First you write a book without my permission, and now you
+say you've got engaged...."  Mr. Bruno perceived that he was
+recovering the authentic note of badinage.  "I am too old--too old to
+stay the course with you."
+
+And indeed he was confused.  Here was his daughter, whom a few hours
+earlier he had hurt, coming in radiant with news of her betrothal.
+To think that her movements were so far from him was pain.  The pain
+was sharpened by this unexpected sentence that their days together
+were to be numbered.  But badinage must screen it all....  It would
+hide, too, for her sake, any mention of the American boy.
+
+"Whom are you engaged to?"
+
+"To Roger Muirhead, of course."
+
+He shook an uncomprehending head.
+
+"Don't you remember?  He came to tea with us at St. Leu two years
+ago."
+
+"But how long have you known him?"
+
+"Oh, since he was fourteen.  Off and on."
+
+"Has he got any money to keep you with?"
+
+"Money?  Heaps.  He's got a motor-car."
+
+"Who is he?  What's his father?"
+
+"Sir Roger Muirhead."
+
+"No?  The excellent old merchant who has managed to combine
+capitalism with radicalism and religion!  Good gracious, Duffy, and
+is his boy in love with you?  Let's see, didn't he do something they
+made a song about in the war?"
+
+"Of course he did."
+
+"And you're engaged to him?"
+
+"Yes, please.  If I may."
+
+"You're sure you're not married to him?"
+
+"No, darling.  Only engaged.  That's to say, if you'll let us be."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands.  Then he stood up.
+
+"Well, well.  I suppose one kisses you on these occasions.  But I
+must see this Roger of yours.  And you're not to be married for a
+year, do you see?  You must have experience of each other.  And we
+must have the war over and Owen back."
+
+"Oh, that'll be all right.  I don't particularly want to get married."
+
+But Mr. Bruno wasn't listening.  After looking at her with a smile,
+he said:
+
+"And has Apollo come for Daphne at last?  I trust that, like your
+Greek original, you were not too encouraging, but fled from him into
+the woods."
+
+Daphne concealed a start.  This chance sally, evoking a picture of
+Roger (who was rather an Apollo) as he came seeking her under the
+Montmorency trees, was so astonishingly appropriate that for a minute
+she dethroned hard reason and wondered with him if, after all, there
+were a destiny behind these things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+Daphne was never sure in what proportion her feelings were mixed in
+the days between her engagement and her marriage.  Doubt would tinge
+her happiness; but it was never very active, and the period, as a
+whole, was flooded with a bright light of pleasure.  The brightness
+put out every ember of annoyance at the reception of "Madame
+Rolland."  If ever she desired a glowing press, she got it now.  "Mr.
+Tenter Bruno's daughter to wed War Hero," the paragraphs were headed;
+"The Hero of Wittfontein to Wed."  Two of the papers mentioned, "Miss
+Daphne Bruno is herself an authoress, having produced in her
+twenty-second year an artless and charming little story."  But most,
+thank goodness, seemed never to have heard of "Madame Rolland."
+
+She was too happy with it all, imagining Miss Vidella, Miss Sims,
+Trudy Wayne, Winnie Chatterton, and all her scattered friends reading
+the news, to be more than palely jealous when the majority of the
+papers occupied themselves with Roger's career or her father's.  But
+in her mind she hid the resolve to create a work that one day--if
+only after death--would make Roger chiefly famous as the husband of
+Daphne Bruno.
+
+Roger took her to Porth Wannick, the Muirheads' house in Cornwall.
+Of the romantic character of this house on the rocks Roger had often
+spoken; and when she saw it, she declared that it was far more
+amazing than he had painted it.  You turned aside from the Penzance
+Road, by the ruins of a disused mine, and went down and down a narrow
+lane, passing the Porth Wannick land on your left, till you reached a
+smuggler's cove, where you saw in the very rocks the tiny harbours
+and docks cut by that fine buccaneering scoundrel, old Captain Helco,
+for his guilty craft.  The house, grey like the rocks, rose above the
+largest of the tiny harbours, which was now a swimming bath for the
+residents.  It was not large, being but a two-storied, rectangular
+mansion, under a hipped roof.  But the windows were mullioned, the
+central hall door was an antique purchased from a fifteenth-century
+house, the gardens were laid in terraces above the rocks, and behind
+them swept the farm-lands of the estate.  Here, for seven months of
+the year, Sir Roger played Lord Bountiful to the natives,
+experimenting on his soil to see if he could make all their fortunes
+by growing beet for sugar there; or by trying to cure the
+conservatism of the pilchard fishers by introducing improvements in
+their methods and their boats.
+
+The placid Lady Muirhead and he received Daphne with a parental
+delight.  It seemed that their son, who treated his father with a
+sort of feudal respect, had long told them of the girl in Sussex whom
+he was determined to capture.  And now he brought her there with a
+hint of triumph.  Lady Muirhead, probably thinking that such was her
+expected part, fell in love with "the new daughter" at once; and Sir
+Roger, who, when you lived with him like this, was found to be
+surprisingly old, mingled in his attitude jocosity, patronal
+tenderness, and a garrulous intolerance.  Daphne liked them both,
+only feeling ill at ease at the amount of religion Sir Roger
+maintained in his house.  Never did she dare to shock him or his
+acquiescent lady by confessing that she had no religion at all.
+
+In truth, she was afraid of Sir Roger, who steam-rolled you out with
+his talk, though your brain saw a hundred weaknesses in his argument.
+But you didn't answer him with the incisive replies that occurred to
+you.  It would have been like fighting against a steam-roller with a
+scalpel.  He was only seventy-three, but she suspected that after his
+retirement from active part in the Muirhead Traders, which was his
+life's creation, senility was setting in early.  She wondered what
+her father would think.
+
+Mr. Bruno came down to Forth Wannick for a month, and appeared to
+think a good deal, as his host tossed bits of walnut into his mouth
+(one bit following another before it was really due), and, chewing
+them rapidly, announced to his guest the truth on all subjects.
+Little doubt he annoyed Mr. Bruno by seeing a comparison between the
+creation of books and his own creation of the Muirhead Traders, and
+between the fame of a great critic and the fame of a trading firm.
+"I suppose some of you writers, Bruno, make a good thing of it," said
+he, chewing one walnut and prospecting in the dish for another.
+
+Mr. Bruno said it depended on what was meant by "making a good thing
+of it."
+
+"Why, making a living, of course," explained Sir Roger.  "What else?"
+
+There were those who interpreted it differently, suggested Mr. Bruno.
+
+"Oh, stuff and nonsense, Bruno, stuff and nonsense," Sir Roger
+buffered.  "I know all that gammon backwards--knew it when I was
+sixteen.  A clever fellow like you knows at the back of your mind
+that the impulse to acquire shekels and power is what makes the world
+go round.  Give me those fellows who acknowledge it frankly and get
+on with the job."
+
+"You can have them," answered Mr. Bruno, concealing his restiveness
+behind a smile; "and no doubt they'll join your Liberal Association
+down here, and the parish church."
+
+"Yes, and why shouldn't they?  Why shouldn't they?" snapped the host,
+the red light appearing in his eyes.
+
+"Why shouldn't they," echoed Mr. Bruno, "if the harmony is complete?"
+
+"Of course it's complete--complete as you make 'em.  Liberalism and
+Christianity, it's all the same; it's just _Noblesse oblige_."  Sir
+Roger repeated the phrase: "_Noblesse oblige_."
+
+As became the wiser man, Mr. Bruno retired from the developing battle
+with a shrug.  And Sir Roger rolled on.
+
+Her father summed up Sir Roger to Daphne, when he met her next
+morning before breakfast, walking on the terrace-gardens above the
+rocks.
+
+"Uncouth, dear," said he sadly.  "Uncouth."
+
+Daphne nodded, and hinted that Sir Roger was getting old.
+
+Mr. Bruno agree, and continued without a smile:
+
+"But what an honourable life he can look back upon!  He's created the
+Muirhead Traders, who operate in the East, where very large profits
+are consistent with Christianity.  He was telling me all about it
+last night.  And he's been able to retire with a great income.  He's
+been able to keep his boy out of it--though why he should have wanted
+to I don't know--and he's going to give him three thousand a year
+when he marries you."
+
+"Golly!" exclaimed Daphne.
+
+"Yes, a wonderful old man," reflected Mr. Bruno.  "I think he must
+have gone up Sinai once and been given God's final opinion on every
+subject under the sun."
+
+"Daddy!" laughed his daughter.
+
+"Well, what else can it be, when to criticise anything he says is to
+verge on blasphemy?  It's a marvellous state of mind to get into,
+when you can so believe in your commercialism that any questioning of
+it is about equivalent to saying that Christ might have sinned.  But
+the boy's all right--your boy's all right.  He has the grace to mix
+shame with reverence in his attitude towards his parents."
+
+Daphne was looking at the peacock which had appeared on the terrace
+above.
+
+"Gracious goodness, Duffy!" exclaimed her father, "is that a peacock?
+What a very appropriate pet for Sir Roger! ... I am afraid your
+father-in-law's a little vulgar.  Don't you think so?"
+
+It was quite a new idea to Daphne, and worried her for a day or two.
+But the scales fell to Roger's side again when the news came through
+of his adoption as Liberal Candidate for the Middle East Division of
+Sussex.  Eagerly they read together the little stack of Sussex papers
+that reported the meeting of the Liberal Council, or commented on its
+choice.  The Radical _Gazetteer_ was gushing:
+
+"The Middle East Division is to be congratulated on their new Liberal
+candidate.  This constituency, predominantly agricultural, is one of
+the most difficult for Liberalism to win.  But now with the adoption
+of Captain Muirhead, all the signs point to a great and resounding
+Liberal victory at the next general Election.  That desirable event,
+we hope, will not be long delayed, believing that the Balfour
+administration is as much discredited here as it is in the great
+industrial centres.  All that was needed was to secure a popular and
+able candidate.  Captain Muirhead has everything in his favour.  He
+has been familiar with the district since childhood, one of his
+father's houses being situated within its bounds.  He is engaged to
+the daughter of one of its most distinguished residents.  His war
+reputation will effectually quench any pro-Boer nonsense...."
+
+And another paper said:
+
+"If Captain Muirhead is able to wrest this stronghold from its Tory
+masters it will give him a magnificent start in his Parliamentary
+career."
+
+And another:
+
+"One must not omit the signal advantages possessed by Mr. Muirhead in
+his beautiful fiancée.  All the world knows that he is engaged to the
+talented and charming Miss Daphne Bruno.  Perhaps it is not for us to
+express our hope that, when the election comes she will be, not his
+_fiancée_, but his wife.  If she inherits her father's gifts, and his
+witty radicalism, she will be an invaluable lieutenant for the
+gallant captain."
+
+"Oh, I shall never be able to speak in public," interjected Daphne,
+"if that's what they mean.  But I shall love doing everything else."
+
+"By Jove!" said Roger, who did not always listen to his _fiancée_.
+"We simply must win, after all this puff."
+
+"Oh, rather!" agreed Daphne.  "Let's begin nursing the constituency
+at once."
+
+He gave her a kiss in acknowledgment of her enthusiasm.
+
+"When will there be a general election?" she asked, while still in
+his arms.
+
+He grinned down at her proudly.
+
+"A question that interests me much more is, when will you marry me?"
+
+"Oh, not yet.  I'm much more interested in politics.  It's such fun
+being engaged.  There's no hurry, is there?"
+
+At this Roger released his hold and turned away.
+
+"I can't understand girls," said he.  "They seem differently made
+from men."
+
+Daphne knew that he was slightly hurt about something.
+
+"Why, what's the matter now?" she laughed.  "Oh, I know I've said
+something wrong."
+
+"Oh, if you don't understand, you don't....  That's where the trouble
+lies.  If you wanted me in the way I want you, you would understand."
+
+"Of course I want you, Roger."
+
+"My dear, you don't understand the meaning of 'want.'"
+
+"But Daddy said we weren't to get married at once."
+
+"We could have got over that....  Well, never mind; it's only another
+way of saying you're cold."
+
+"Oh, I'm not," denied she, for it was one of her prides that she was
+an ardent nature.  The "Oh, I'm not," a Cockneyism into which she
+fell when indignant, made Roger frown.
+
+"Yes," she added hastily, "I know I said that like a Cockney serving
+girl."  (She would borrow her father's phrases, and air them as her
+own.)  "I got it from talking too much to the servants when I was a
+kid.  However, what were we saying?  I'm not cold.  I'm ardent."
+
+Once again he took her into his arms and smiled down tolerantly upon
+her.
+
+"Surely you're the most innocent girl that ever got engaged."
+
+It was rather annoying, this assumption that she was a fool, and she
+retorted:
+
+"I'm not innocent at all.  I know everything and exactly what you
+mean."
+
+His hold relaxed a shade, and she realised that this, too, had
+disappointed him.  She was seeing in his mingled thoughts what he
+himself hardly knew to be there: that while he desired her much, he
+wanted her to be innocent--for somehow an innocent girl gave more to
+men's desire.
+
+
+Panic stirred sometimes as (she supposed) with every engaged girl;
+but she was too excited and happy, on the whole, to let it come far
+into consciousness.  Once, however, it escaped her guard, and ran
+about riotously.  She had spoken lightly of religion.  Roger was
+annoyed--less, she suspected, from the strength of his own religion
+than because he thought she ought to be converted, like a princess
+marrying a foreign king, to the traditional religion of her
+sovereign's house.  And she said forthwith:
+
+"I know I'm going to shock you, Roger; but this is the truth.  The
+only reason I want to be married in church is because it's always
+done, and a registry office sounds horrid.  And I want to wear a
+white dress and have a crowd of people there."
+
+Roger's features palpably tightened.
+
+"It's no good being angry....  You ought to be pleased with me for
+trusting you and being so open.  I could quite easily lie about it.
+But the plain truth is, that I haven't got any religion."
+
+Roger then began an irreproachable homily on the necessity of some
+religion in life, but before he got very far, Daphne, irritated,
+burst in:
+
+"But, Roger dear, frankly now.  What's the sense of you preaching
+Christianity to me?  I know you for what you are, and I'm fond of you
+for what you are.  And I know you to be ambitious (just as I am), and
+that you like everything of the best (as I'm sure I do), and that you
+like to be on top and to flatter yourself you don't easily play
+second-fiddle.  Well, that's all perfectly delightful, but it's not
+Christianity."
+
+Roger wrinkled his brow to think out an answer; but she had thought
+it out quicker, and knew what he was going to say.
+
+"I don't know that you're right, Duffy.  There must be 'top-men' in
+the world.  Only it's the duty of the men on top to care for their
+workers and servants all they can, and so to serve them."
+
+"Well, I'll be a Christian, if that's all it is--so long as I'm one
+of the top-dogs."
+
+He let her rebelliousness pass, only grinning, as if he could afford
+to wait in the knowledge that the time would come when he, with his
+stronger mind, would be able to mould her to the pattern he desired.
+It was rather like the grin one might give to a pet dog who tried to
+get a stick out of one's hand.
+
+Panic was running in Daphne, while she thought that life seemed to be
+made up of making mistakes, going too far with them, being too gentle
+to turn back, and accepting as punishment a ruthless life-sentence.
+
+
+She was rather frightened, though pretending to be delighted, with
+the big house in Fettes Gardens, South Kensington, which Sir Roger
+had offered them as a wedding present.  As she walked up its four or
+five stories, and calculated that it would require a butler and four
+or five women servants, she wondered how ever she would be able to
+manage them.  She felt very little different from what she had done
+in Miss Vidella's form-room; and how could a schoolgirl command this
+battleship?  The similar houses to left and right frightened her with
+a picture of their wealthy and competent ladies.  So did the tall
+well-bred houses opposite, on the other side of the railed-in
+gardens.  "I feel like a pea in a pod too big for it," she thought.
+But she was careful not to show her feelings to Roger, lest he found
+her even more inadequate.
+
+"I'll do it.  I'll manage it.  After all, these terrible women next
+door, and the dowagers over the road, must have started somewhere."
+
+They married Daphne at St. Patrick's, Fettes Gardens, in the August
+after the signing of peace with the Boers, when Owen had returned to
+play an exceedingly important and well-dressed part in the
+ceremonies.  She was very proud of her men.  Who there looked like
+her father, on whose arm she was, or Roger, who took her at the
+chancel steps, or Owen, who had appointed himself vicar's warden and
+master pew-opener?  At sixty-two her father's hair, not at all to his
+displeasure, had gone quite white, but his tall figure was as slender
+and neat as Owen's.  She enjoyed the excitements to the full, and
+only felt a warming of the eyes when, on going to her carriage to
+drive to the station, Hollins, who had hardly taken her eyes from the
+bride all the afternoon, cried as she hugged and kissed her, saying:
+"The meaning 'll have gone of life, Miss Duffy, with you gone.  The
+meaning 'll sort have somehow gone out of life.  God bless you, dear.
+God bless you."  Her father just kissed her, patted her on the
+shoulder, and made a joke.
+
+
+He delayed on the steps, however, to watch the carriage receding
+along the road towards the first corner.  That carriage, of which he
+could see only the hinderparts and the horse's twinkling heels, was
+taking Daphne out of his range and beyond his call.  His jaw jerked
+forward at the thought.  The stream of life, so he put it, had
+brought her to him where he drifted, and running rapidly on, like the
+unsentimental thing it was, had floated her away before he had hardly
+touched her; and he would never catch her now.  Pain and bewilderment
+sat uncomfortably at his heart.  "I missed her.  I missed her
+somehow."  A variant of something Daphne had often uttered of late,
+with crumpled brow, seemed the best expression of what he was
+feeling: "I don't know.  One doesn't learn how to adjust oneself to
+life till it's nearly time to die."
+
+The carriage turned the corner, and old Sir Roger called: "Come on,
+Bruno; it's all over now."  (Detestable the way he called you
+"Bruno," as if he were your equal!)  He turned and walked over the
+doormat into the house.  The chaff and laughter of the guests was
+beginning to sound hollow, and the whole assembly to show its
+fractures, now that its centre had been driven away.  Mr. Bruno
+thought of his home, and his study, and his books; and made an excuse
+for returning to them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Daphne, though she concealed it, was very proud of the circumstances
+of her married life.  She was proud of her big house and its fine
+furniture; of having so much money in her purse (Roger gave her an
+incredible allowance), of her shopping at the great stores; and of
+giving her name as Mrs. Muirhead.
+
+These were the pleasures; but there were worries, too.  The
+housekeeping, though she tried to approach it light-heartedly, was a
+permanent anxiety; she knew nothing about it.  Mistress of one
+man-servant and four women, she had no talent whatever for ordering
+them about.  Instead of issuing commands as one accustomed to
+authority, she caught herself throwing out hints of what it would be
+nice for them to do.  She could hear the weakness in her hesitating
+speech, and wondered if they perceived it too, and laughed at her.
+This nervousness she had tried to conceal from her husband, but one
+evening at dinner, when she had asked the butler: "Would you mind
+getting the other cruet?  Yes, thank you very much.  It's
+downstairs," Roger said:
+
+"Dearest, I don't think there's any need for you to petition the
+servants to do quite reasonable duties."  The criticism was eased by
+a kind smile.
+
+Daphne, determined, like him, to avoid any friction in these early
+marriage days, decided to accept the rebuke merrily.
+
+"But I'm in mortal terror of them."
+
+Roger shrugged.
+
+"Then our household will inevitably be run in a slovenly way.  Of
+that I'm quite sure.  I'm the last person, as you know, to suggest
+bullying one's servants, but I believe it's happier in the end for
+everybody, if they're disciplined."
+
+"All right," said Daphne, with a slight heart-sinking, "I'll try."
+
+She was as much at sea with her social duties--her calls, and her
+entertaining at home.  Dinners!  She had never been to one before
+marriage.  How on earth were they created?  She felt sure that she
+was doing something wrong, and these fashionable women would
+criticise her among themselves.  And they had no right to, she
+thought angrily; life was something bigger than their silly little
+conventions, and she had as many brains as any of them--more than
+most.
+
+Roger made her worse, for it was quite obvious, though he thought it
+tactfully concealed, that he was putting her through a course in
+social demeanour.  When talking enthusiastically at their meals
+together, she would emphasise with her arm or point; and he would
+hint that the best people didn't do that.  She spoke too loud when
+excited, and laughed too shrilly, he said.  And certain words such as
+"Lordy," and "Crikey!" and "Coo!" he ruled out as impossible.  In
+fact, he was evidently pained at this discovery of "no polish" in his
+wife.
+
+The result was that if her deportment-master came into her
+drawing-room, she was reduced to the awkwardness of a school-girl.
+His merry conversation and ease of manners she guessed to be partly
+paraded as a demonstration of how these things were done; and his
+thoughtful silence when their visitors had left to be the symptom of
+his disappointment at her failure.  Once at a convention
+_tête-à-tête_ dinner, he said deliberately:
+
+"You don't seem to have much social gift, darling, do you?"
+
+"Haven't I?" said she, hurt.  "How do you mean?"
+
+"Why, you never say anything.  You look divine, of course; but you
+seem to have no subjects of conversation."
+
+"Oh, but I think I could talk the hind leg off a donkey with people
+of my own age, and in an easier setting.  But I'm frightened of all
+your dames.  You see, I feel so young."  She leaned her elbows on the
+table.  "Do you know, I can't realise I'm married.  I can't see any
+difference in myself from when I went to school and played the fool.
+I feel just the same."
+
+"And you look it," agreed Roger, fetching down her left hand from
+where it was meeting the right, under her chin, and holding it
+lovingly on the table.  He kept it, till the entrance of the butler
+obliged him to withdraw his own, guiltily and humorously, on to his
+lap.
+
+This hand-holding and mutually understood jest were typical of their
+relation.  They were good friends.  And Roger was a model (as he
+meant to be) of courtesy.  He was never brusque with her.  The way he
+assisted her from carriage or omnibus, or helped her on with her
+cloak after the theatre, or considered her needs at meals, or opened
+the door for her when she left a room (even when they were alone)
+showed that he delighted to honour his wife as the queen among women.
+And she--she felt grateful to him for having married her, and was
+resolved that throughout his life he must have all his dues.
+
+And yet she knew that he was always contrasting his own home with
+others better "run," and her over-awed shyness with the aplomb and
+ready wit of other hostesses.  She knew it more than ever when he
+appeared to have abandoned the deportment-course in favour of silence.
+
+This silence was like a perpetual rebuke.  And when one day he was
+studying a parliamentary Blue Book, whose very appearance seemed to
+show the difference between the width of his interests and hers (and
+perhaps was not unwillingly displayed to that end), she sat alone by
+the window, and stared into Fettes Gardens.
+
+"Yes, I see where I've failed him.  One doesn't see it till
+afterwards.  I never knew I was going to dislike and rather despise
+the social hum-drum.  I am always ready to picture myself in any
+large occupation, and doing it better than anybody else; when the
+plain fact is that I am without social gifts.  I'm only an artist,
+like father, and probably a smaller one....  But I must get into
+these household duties.  I must get into things, and not let him
+down.  It's only fair to him."
+
+So she set about it with renewed vigour.  She kept elaborate books of
+accounts, drew up exceedingly neat programmes for the servants'
+labours, bought books on etiquette (surreptitiously), diligently read
+the papers so as to know what was being talked about, watched with
+unremitting care over her husband's wardrobe, and at all social
+assemblies studied the behaviour and the vocabulary of the vivacious
+ladies who did not disappoint their husbands.  And her rapid
+improvement, manifest to herself, greatly encouraged her.
+
+But the havoc it made of her writing and reading was an abiding
+disquiet.  And one morning at breakfast, when she read in the
+book-reviews, to which she always turned first, of a young woman
+writer's triumph, her mouth squared, and, dropping the paper, she
+sipped her coffee in dejection.
+
+Roger noticed, and rested his hand on hers.
+
+"What's the matter, dearest?"
+
+"Nothing."  She looked up brightly.
+
+"Yes there is.  You look wretched, as you can sometimes."
+
+"I'm depressed, I suppose.
+
+"Depressed?  What have you got to be depressed about?"
+
+Perhaps his features had tightened a little.  Had she hurt him by so
+poor a compliment as to be depressed sometimes?  He raised surprised
+eyebrows.
+
+"I can't see what you've got to be depressed about."
+
+Jarred, she answered with a note of anger.
+
+"I know you can't."
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+She slightly tossed her head.
+
+"Oh, sometimes I can't help thinking of all I dreamed I was going to
+do.  And time passes, and I do nothing."
+
+"Do nothing!" echoed Roger, covering his injury with a smile.  "Well,
+you're only twenty-three, and you're married and have a fine house
+and most luxuries.  I don't think you've started badly."
+
+"Oh, but I meant in the writing way.  I intended to--to read all the
+literature in the world and then write.  I set myself too big a task,
+I suppose."
+
+Roger ruminated over his toast and marmalade, and decided after two
+or three minutes that he was right in being offended.
+
+"Your trouble, Duffy, I think, is that you want all the advantages of
+married life, and all the advantages of freedom----"
+
+"No, it's not----"
+
+"Please let me go on.  _I_ accept the disadvantages, and there _are_
+a few, though you may not think it.  There are some things that
+haven't turned out just as I thought, but I've resigned myself to
+them philosophically."
+
+She flushed at this frank statement, and said nothing.
+
+With the greater ease that came to her in domestic and social duties,
+however, she found that, with system, quite a number of hours in the
+week could be secured for her reading.  Yes, she had been a little
+panicky.  And as book after book returned to her shelves read, and
+not only read but understood, she felt again the improvement in her
+mind, its finer tempering and wider reach.  Her taste advanced with
+every month, so that the memory of certain parts of "Madame Rolland"
+made her catch her breath with dismay.  And the more she read, the
+more avenues of learning opened before her, and the more she sought
+to snatch studious hours from the day.  Fancy if she could become
+equal in knowledge to her father!  And to Henry!
+
+
+And then with a spasm of apprehension she suspected that she was
+going to have a child.  Soon she knew.
+
+It was useless to tell herself she ought to feel differently about
+it; she didn't, and there was the truth.  She didn't want the child.
+Not yet.  For years it would smash up such study and such writing as
+she wanted to do.  And it might be the first of many!  No good to
+tell herself that the feeling was unnatural; she knew it was
+perfectly natural; the whole force of her had been directed to a
+different channel.  And because of this there had lingered in her
+mind the flattering conviction, a last romantic delusion, that she
+was not one of those who bore children easily.  It had been
+encouraged by her early immunity.
+
+That night, when Roger lay by her side and was about to embrace her,
+she said abruptly:
+
+"Roger, I'm frightfully afraid I'm going to have a baby.  Oh, what on
+earth am I going to do with a baby?  I don't want it....  I don't
+want it...."
+
+He removed his arm from her, and said nothing at all.
+
+Knowing that she had angered him, and anxious to hear his voice, she
+persisted:
+
+"Oh, you might sympathise with me, Roger.  What on earth am I to do
+about it?"
+
+At last he spoke.
+
+"Really, Duffy, you do hurt me sometimes.  I always thought that a
+wife when she had such a piece of news came with joy to her husband.
+At least, so I've always read....  I can't make it out.  Either you
+are different from most women, or women are very different from what
+they appear in books."
+
+He heard her sigh, and felt sorry for her.
+
+"Why should it upset you so?"
+
+"Oh, Roger, I don't want one just now.  Not just now.  Not so soon."
+
+He emitted a sound of disgust, and answered vaguely:
+
+"What a humbug it all is!  What a fool's paradise we men live in!"
+
+"But don't you see what bad luck it is to me?"
+
+"No, I don't.  I confess I can't....  I can't see your point of view
+at all.  As I told you once before, you seem to have entered marriage
+with an eye to all the advantages, and a determination to avoid all
+the handicaps."
+
+"I think the motives of all of us are pretty mixed; but what's the
+good of throwing stones, when we're being punished for it?"
+
+"Let me finish what I was saying.  A girl who gets married and then
+whines because a child appears really does drive rather blindly at
+life."
+
+"Oh, yes.  Yes, I know," agreed Daphne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+During the months of malaise and sickness that followed she was
+conscious of a relapse from all those things that in the last few
+years had brought some goodness and direction to her life.  She no
+longer cared for the defiant courage and the pity transcending God's
+which her father had set before her.  She no longer cared about
+giving a generous return to Roger for all he had given to her, or
+about excusing his faults because hers were the same in kind.  More
+than this, she not only eluded these motions towards goodness; she
+actively fought against them.  When a clear thought whispered that
+her rebelliousness was disproportionate to its cause, she silenced
+and drove it away.  If her new habit of combating indolence asserted
+itself and bade her be up and about a work, she deliberately sat down
+and did nothing, thus to snub it.  All thoughts that would give her
+the right to criticise Roger she encouraged; he had pursued her
+remorselessly, and dazzled her out of her senses into marrying him;
+and she didn't love him--she loved Henry; Henry only and always; her
+studies and her writing were for Henry--nay, they _were_ Henry; and
+Roger was enforcing his power to snatch her from them.  When a
+moment's interest and a tremor like love stirred for the coming
+child, she repressed it firmly, resolved to dislike this little
+jailer of Roger's.
+
+Self-consciousness haunted her as she grew larger.  She would keep
+seated, if possible, when visitors came; she walked very quickly out
+of rooms; over shop-counters she stooped slightly.  Not the smallest
+of her disappointments was the knowledge that she would never be able
+to wear her new clothes, because, when she could fit them again, they
+would be out of fashion.  And her figure, which had always been the
+admiration of her father and Henry, might never be so small again.
+More children would arrive, and she would become matronly.  Roger had
+made her slough off her youth, and leave it behind for ever.  And she
+was only twenty-three....  And Henry might come again.
+
+What did she know about the management of a baby?  Not even how they
+were dressed.  She bought pattern journals which showed pictures and
+gave the patterns of frocks for the new-born child.  Dully she went
+and bought the materials they detailed, and gave up her afternoons to
+making the robes.
+
+One day her husband came in and saw her engaged on this work; and,
+picking up the little long robe, with its lace edges and ribbons, he
+smiled with pleasure and kissed the crown of her head.  Probably he
+was touched to see her doing this work herself, but said no word of
+approval for fear of offence.  He had great ideas of treating her, at
+this important stage, with the utmost consideration.
+
+That he should think she had abandoned her right to irritation
+annoyed Daphne, so she purposely said:
+
+"Oughtn't we to think about getting a nurse for this infant of yours?"
+
+"There's plenty of time, isn't there?" inquired he.  "There are
+enough about."
+
+"We want to get a good one."  Daphne, needle between her lips, held
+up the garment, ostensibly to examine it, really to give an ease to
+her words.  "Because I tell you plainly, I'll bear this child for
+you, but as soon as it's arrived, I'm going to give it up to a nurse
+who can look after it all day and give it its bottle."
+
+"But dear----" he began, and stopped.
+
+She laid down her sewing, and asked:
+
+"What were you going to say?"
+
+"Oh, it's no good worrying you yet awhile....  I was only going to
+ask if you weren't going to--suckle it yourself.  My mother nursed
+me.  She told me so."
+
+Daphne felt like saying: "But that's about the thing she'd do best.
+I don't suppose she ever had any ambition in her life apart from
+you," but she only said, rather timidly, for she had never overcome a
+fear of Roger:
+
+"Well, I'm not going to.  There's not such a great difference between
+bottle-babies and the others as all that.  After all, I shall only be
+twenty-four years older than my son or daughter, and I've a duty to
+myself as well as to it."
+
+Roger held his peace, but walked with displayed disappointment out of
+the room.
+
+"Oh, walk away if you like," thought Daphne.
+
+She completed all the garments and filled a white basket with them,
+rather proud of her handiwork.  Why she had made and broidered every
+garment herself was not clear; in part, it was self-martyrdom; in
+part, the simplicity of her childhood made lordly buying unnatural to
+her; in part, too, and she knew it, there was a concealed idea of
+self-punishment for the unkind hostility.
+
+Now that the time drew closer, she wished it would come quickly and
+be over.  She looked forward to being small again, and free from
+sickness and pain.  "As soon as it's over, I'm going to have a real
+good time."  A brilliant idea had abated some of the gloom.  Hollins!
+Why hadn't she thought of Hollins before?  The happiness it would
+give old Hollins!  Hollins came, and they enjoyed long talks
+together.  The old servant smiled and shook her head when Daphne
+declared: "Do you know, I dislike this child intensely.  I shall hand
+it over to you and a nurse."
+
+"Shall I tell you something, dear?" said Hollins.  "Your mamma used
+to talk to me about a lot of things she didn't talk to no one else
+about; and she told me that she hadn't wanted you at all, but she no
+sooner saw you than--well, she loved you so, she wouldn't 'ave called
+the queen her cousin."
+
+Daphne looked at the table-top, and then jumped up.  "But mother was
+quite different from me, I've always imagined.  She was that sort.
+No, I shall hand over the kid to you and the nurse and be free.  I
+wish it would come quickly....  Yes, I think I nearly hate it...."
+
+"Nearly ain't half-way," said Hollins.
+
+Roger wanted her to be very careful with herself, and to act as the
+decorous invalid.  But she refused to do anything of the kind, going
+about the day's occupations as if she expected nothing.  And he, ever
+eager for romantic feelings, began to marvel at her courage.  This
+admiration reached its topmost pitch when one afternoon, two weeks
+before the marked day, as they were sitting together talking, she
+suddenly got up and said: "I think I'll go and lie down.  And, Roger
+dear, I think perhaps you'd better get the doctor."
+
+He jumped up to help her to her room, but she said: "It's all right.
+I'm all right.  You arrange for the doctor and the nurse," and walked
+easily and quickly up the stairs.  With a rapid heart Roger hurried
+to his telephone.
+
+Then he walked up and down the dining-room, sincerely feeling all
+that it was written he should feel at such an hour.
+Self-dramatisation was there, but he was not conscious of it.  He was
+praying: "O God, make it all right for her.  Don't let it hurt her
+too much!"  There was no sound upstairs in her room--no periodical
+moaning, such as he had supposed was usual.  Once or twice, fearful
+lest this silence boded ill, he walked up to the room, and saw her
+lying in bed and ready to smile up at him, as cosily as if it were a
+late morning and she too comfortable to get up.  Another time he
+found her out of bed and in the adjoining dressing-room, seeing that
+everything was ready there for the nurse.  No word or strain of
+feature suggested that she was knowing pain.
+
+The wheels of the doctor's carriage were heard outside, and Roger
+himself opened the door to him.  It was a satisfaction, though
+unrecognised, to show the doctor the calm and dignity with which he
+met the threatening hours.  But the doctor, by his unhurried manner,
+seemed to disperse all exaggerated seriousness.
+
+"Your baby's impatient to be up and abroad," said he.
+
+"Yes, it's a hit earlier than we expected," admitted Roger, not quite
+sure if he liked jesting at such a moment--whether these doctors
+didn't get rather coarse.  But the words "your baby," seeming for the
+first time to mean something alive, thrilled him.  "Yes, two weeks
+early."
+
+"Quite so.  The little blighter!" said the doctor, wiping his boots
+on the mat.
+
+"I've 'phoned for the nurse."
+
+The doctor nodded.
+
+"I'll take you up, then, to the wife," said Roger.
+
+He escorted him upstairs, and pointed to the door of the silent room.
+The doctor passed in, and Roger was left on the landing.
+
+Again he prayed: "O God, make it all right for her!  And don't let it
+hurt."  The praying worked on him so that he nearly broke up; but he
+preserved his outward dignity.  He heard himself saying: "My little
+Duffy, my beloved, I can't bear to think of you suffering....  My
+God, I've been hard with you sometimes...."
+
+And as he walked downstairs, he paused sometimes and stood on the
+step with his hand on the balustrade, staring at the memory of some
+moment when he had hurt her with his--his discipline.  At last he
+reached the long dining-room again, and, standing by the window with
+his hands behind his back, gazed into the darkening street.  "If the
+worst were to happen----"  But there his power to think broke down,
+retiring defeated upon itself.
+
+
+Upstairs Daphne lay in her pain.  She was not groaning, through fear
+of her husband's thinking her a coward; but her breaths, as the pains
+seized her, were short, staccato intakes, like the breaths after
+sobs.  At the time of the doctor's entry she was in the pull of such
+a pain.  She felt him take her by the wrist, and was disposed to
+burst into tears.  Instead, she smiled a sick greeting, closed her
+eyes, and continued her short, sharp gasps.
+
+O God, was there ever such pain?  Never, never again would she have a
+child.  "I wish I'd never married.  I am caught for life.  I may say
+I'll never have another child, but I shall.  Unless I commit suicide
+after this, and escape from life because it's too hard and
+frightening.  Does every one of my age look back on a life blundered
+with and blundering?  It wasn't all my fault.  I'd only been in
+contact all my childhood with people who never faced up to anything
+as it really was--excepting Father, and he never spoke....  So that I
+ran into things with the comfortable idea that luck would make them
+all right--instead of seeing that my fate would be mathematically
+what I shaped it....  The love of being talked about and the desire
+for life and luxury made me marry Roger.  It was a blunder, and very
+wrong, I dare say--but one _does_ make mistakes and be selfish at
+twenty-one ... the punishment is too unrelenting ... too
+everlasting....  Henry ... I'd have gone through this for Henry....
+Henry, why couldn't we have fought together for the truth of how to
+live? ... Does _any_ girl reach motherhood with a scheme of living,
+other than drifting? ... Oh, my God!"  It was as if all the mental
+pain in her life had assembled to be present in this culminating
+agony.  "Oh, Doctor!"
+
+
+Over.  Rush of relief, so wonderful as itself to hurt.  "It's over
+and I'm free again."  She lay with eyes closed in this luxury and
+freedom from pain.  She had forgotten the child, there being no cry
+to remind her; or if there had been she had not noticed it.  At last,
+sighing with repletion of luxury, she opened her eyes and looked
+inquiringly for the doctor.  He was not in the room, but there was a
+nurse, a young woman, pleasant and round-faced, who smiled at her.
+
+"That's right.  Why, you're a wonder!  You hardly turned a hair."
+
+Daphne, pleased with this tribute, answered:
+
+"Oh, it really wasn't half as bad as I expected."
+
+The nurse smiled meaningly.
+
+The doctor told a different tale.  "You're so strong, you see."
+
+There came a cry from the neighbourhood of the fire; and it repeated
+itself, and ceased.
+
+"Would you like to see her?" asked the nurse.
+
+"Oh, is it a girl?"
+
+"I should think it was.  And a little beauty."
+
+The nurse walked away to the crib; and Daphne, though unexcited and
+not free of her former hostility, undoubtedly felt an interest to see
+what she had produced.
+
+"There!" said the nurse.
+
+For a new-born baby, it was a pleasing face that Daphne saw in the
+blanketed bundle held above her eyes.  There was no frown, nor was it
+mottled or over-coloured.  The lids were down, and the lashes
+distinctly visible.  Something in the lip and chin reminded her of
+Roger.  But the downy hair was much fairer than his could ever have
+been.
+
+"I've seen worse," she pronounced.
+
+"Seen worse!" echoed the nurse, taking back the baby.  "And I was
+wondering if I had ever seen a better."
+
+Later Roger was brought in, and he kissed her, declaring that she
+looked in radiant health.  She smiled, liking all this tribute to her
+physical strength and her fortitude.  "You'd better go and look at
+your daughter," said she.  And Roger, after staring into the crib for
+a long time, came back to her bed and asked her what she thought of
+"the little rat."  Probably he was wanting her to express a different
+attitude to that which she had adopted before its birth, but she
+replied:
+
+"I suppose, if it were any one else's, I should say it was rather
+adorable."
+
+He pretended to smile, unwilling to argue just now.
+
+"And Heaven knows," continued Daphne, "what's going to happen to her
+with no one to love her.  I feel a compassion for her, if that's any
+comfort to you."
+
+"Well, you mustn't talk too much, I expect.  And I think _I_'ll be
+considering a night's rest."
+
+"Is it night, then?" inquired Daphne, for the room had long been lit,
+and she had known nothing of the gathered dark behind the blinds, or
+counted the passing of time in this bright illumination.
+
+"It's only a quarter to midnight," said Roger, as he stooped to kiss
+her.  "Good night, dearest."
+
+"Good night, my dear."
+
+
+Not at once, not as her mother had done, did Daphne succumb to the
+thing that trembled within her whenever she saw her daughter's face.
+The admiration of all who looked at Evie--"Evie" for no obvious
+reason had leapt into Daphne's mind as the fitting name for this
+little fair thing--the genuine, sometimes startled admiration of
+visitors helped it.  But it was a remark of Hollins that bade it go
+forward to its conquest.  It was late at night, and Hollins,
+relieving the nurse, had brought Evie to her mother for the eleven
+o'clock feed.  Sitting up in bed, quite eager for another glimpse of
+the little face, Daphne took and held her daughter.  She stared down
+at it, bewildered as to who this little stranger was--so complete in
+every feature, with such manicured filbert nails on the wrinkled
+fingers.  Baring her breast, she gave it to the searching mouth.
+Then turning to Hollins, she asked with a smile: "How long do you
+expect me to go on doing this?  Not for interminable months, I hope."
+
+"It's worth doing, dear," answered Hollins.  "I reckon there are few
+things better worth while."
+
+Daphne turned her head and looked at Evie again.  Her heart
+quickened, as if something, battened down, had been allowed to well
+up in it.  The plain truth, she knew, was that she loved this Evie
+with a trembling love.  As she admitted the thought, exhilaration
+glowed in her; and though she felt she suddenly wanted to lie down
+and meditate on a lot of things, she suspended thought, keeping only
+the exhilaration.
+
+Then the child was taken away by Hollins, and the light put down, and
+she could lie and think.
+
+The image of Evie was with her.  "She's going to be intelligent.
+Anybody can see that from her brow and her eyes.  She must have all I
+didn't have--carefully watched childhood, and an education of the
+highest, with a proper training of her taste and a proper
+disciplining of her mind.  I must watch her every moment myself."
+That inherent scepticism whispered: "But probably every parent has
+had these thoughts.  Probably mother did.  Probably father did, and
+wearied.  I dare say Evie's story will only be a repetition of
+mine....  But no.  I mustn't--I shan't go back on this vow....  I
+shall try to get on with my books as well, but if I can't do both,
+Evie shall come first."
+
+She lay awake a long time, abandoning her mind to those clearer parts
+that had always been there.  She wanted to locate some basic error
+that was responsible for the most of her blunders.  She seemed to
+find it at last--where, indeed, Henry had found it--in her ever
+present sense of the spectator, that mastering sense of a world
+looking on.  One could not be real when the spectator was the first
+consideration.  Did she inherit it from her father?  Was it in part a
+legacy from the poseurs who had surrounded her youth?  No, probably
+everybody in the world was tainted with it.  But people like herself
+and her father, who could see it for what it was, ought to be big
+enough to shake themselves free.  What a subtle poison, and how
+difficult to trace!--for often the spectator was oneself, and the
+deluding of that limited audience nearly complete!  She could see the
+succession of "attitudes" it had produced in her life; her early
+masculinity, her facile adorations, her insincere religion, her
+wilful publication of "Madame Rolland," her showy marriage with
+Roger, and so recently as yesterday her pretended dislike of her
+child.  A few things in her life seemed true and independent of it;
+her humble love for Henry, her new conceptions of her art, and her
+late ideas of courage, pity, and grateful generosity to Roger.  And
+now, as pure as any, came her love for Evie.
+
+Brilliantly clear it all seemed that night to Daphne, as the clock
+ticked the hours away.  One was only happy when, regardless of
+applause, one was making something, giving something, or enjoying
+intimacy with whoso understood.  Making--giving--intimacy--these were
+the real things.  Looking at others, instead of others looking at
+you.  So dear was it that she felt in sight of a liberation from her
+past.  If only--if only she could one day lose the spectator, she
+would shed like a single garment the poseur and the slave.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78201 ***
diff --git a/78201-h/78201-h.htm b/78201-h/78201-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cbfc694
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78201-h/78201-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,23804 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+
+<head>
+
+<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
+
+<link rel="icon" href="images/img-cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+
+<meta charset="utf-8">
+
+<title>
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Daphne Bruno, by Ernest Raymond
+</title>
+
+<style>
+body { color: black; 
+       background: white; 
+       margin-right: 10%; 
+       margin-left: 10%; 
+       font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; 
+       text-align: justify }
+
+p {text-indent: 1.5em } 
+
+p.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
+
+p.t1 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 200%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t2 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 150%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t2b {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 150%;
+      font-weight: bold;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t3 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 100%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t3b {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 100%;
+      font-weight: bold;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t4 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 80%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t4b {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 80%;
+      font-weight: bold;
+      text-align: center }
+
+p.t5 {text-indent: 0% ;
+      font-size: 60%;
+      text-align: center }
+
+h1 { text-align: center }
+h2 { text-align: center }
+h3 { text-align: center }
+h4 { text-align: center }
+h5 { text-align: center }
+
+p.poem {text-indent: 0%; 
+        margin-left: 10%; }
+
+p.thought {text-indent: 0% ;
+           letter-spacing: 2em ;
+           text-align: center }
+
+p.letter {text-indent: 0%; 
+          margin-left: 10% ;
+          margin-right: 10% }
+
+p.footnote {text-indent: 0% ;
+            font-size: 80%;
+            margin-left: 10% ;
+            margin-right: 10% }
+
+.smcap { font-variant: small-caps }
+
+p.transnote {text-indent: 0% ;
+             margin-left: 10% ;
+             margin-right: 10% }
+
+p.quote {text-indent: 4% ;
+         margin-left: 0% ;
+         margin-right: 0% }
+
+p.finis { font-size: larger ;
+          text-align: center ;
+          text-indent: 0% ;
+          margin-left: 0% ;
+          margin-right: 0% }
+
+</style>
+
+</head>
+
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78201 ***</div>
+
+<h1>
+<br><br>
+  DAPHNE BRUNO<br>
+</h1>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+  BY<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="t2">
+  ERNEST RAYMOND<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  AUTHOR OF "THE SHOUT OF THE KING," "DAMASCUS GATE,"<br>
+  "TELL ENGLAND," ETC., ETC.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+  NEW YORK<br>
+  GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  COPYRIGHT, 1926,<br>
+  BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  DAPHNE BRUNO<br>
+  &mdash; A &mdash;<br>
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+CONTENTS
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+<a href="#chap00b">THE END OF THE LONG PROLOGUE</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+<a href="#chap0101">PART I: LES TRACAS DES ENFANTS</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+<a href="#chap0206">PART II: DAPHNE'S SCHOOLDAYS</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+<a href="#chap0314">PART III: DAPHNE'S ROMANCE</a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+<a href="#chap0423">PART IV: THINGS AS THEY ARE</a>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap00b"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t2">
+DAPHNE BRUNO
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<h2>
+THE END OF THE LONG PROLOGUE
+</h2>
+
+<p class="t3">
+I
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thomas Tenter Bruno, sitting beside his
+writing-table, with the revolving arm-chair swung round so
+that his legs could stretch past the drawers and his arm rest
+along the blotting-pad, stared musingly at the wall.  The pained
+set of his mouth and the lift of his eyebrows showed that his
+thoughts, though they might often graze afield, were none the
+less tethered to a fixed anxiety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had he been sitting with the grace he assumed in public
+rooms, instead of so relaxed a port, his appearance and his
+surroundings would have excellently suited a presentation
+portrait of T. Tenter Bruno, Esq.  For on the writing-table were
+sheets of paper, a silver ink-pot and a pen&mdash;the very symbols of
+his craft; and in the background rose shelves of books, the
+finished product of his kind and the true setting of his life.  On
+one shelf was a row of fifteen volumes, with fifteen titles, over
+one author's name&mdash;"T. Tenter Bruno."  Above them and
+below them, and on either side of them, were the works of
+Hume, Johnson, Burke, Bentham, Hazlitt, Lamb, Landor, De
+Quincey, Mill, and all the other critics, essayists and economists
+in whose company Mr. Tenter Bruno considered that his books
+might without presumption take their seat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these days (two decades before Victoria died), when men
+wore side-whiskers or moustaches and double-breasted frock-coats,
+Mr. Tenter Bruno wore a trim, pointed beard and a short-coated
+grey suit, perfectly tailored.  The grey suit was almost
+as constant as the beard.  In daytime, at any rate, Mr. Bruno
+was as likely to be seen with a shaven chin as in anything but
+a grey suit.  It was hardly that he dressed the part of a literary
+artist, since he affected to despise those unpublished brothers
+who could only be known for great men by the length of their
+hair, the languor in their walk, and the lawlessness of their ties.
+The perfect precision of his grey suit, the uprightness of his
+tall, slender figure, and the neatness of his beard were a
+challenge to nincompoopdom.  But (he admitted this to no one, not
+even his wife) it was best to have some sort of professional
+appearance&mdash;something that differentiated you from the
+unfamed multitude&mdash;something that the Press-picture left firmly
+on the memory for the paragraph writer to harp upon and foolish
+women to gossip about.  To his wife the beard had been
+explained as necessary owing to the excessive tenderness of his
+skin (a tenderness which no man yet regarded as anything but
+a credit to him) and the grey suit was attributed to a very nice
+taste.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In reality Mr. Tenter Bruno's creation of his private and,
+as it were, patented exterior was rooted in his contempt for the
+crowd.  There was no doubt whatever that a platform appearance
+and other food for the literary chatterer were commercial
+assets; and if people were such fools as to buy a writer's books
+more readily after tattling about his clothes, any wise man would
+keep their tattling green.  At one time he even played with the
+humour to be a vegetarian and a teetotaller, but his love of
+comfort was more than his desire to have these interesting things
+written about him.  As he put it to himself, the occasional
+paragraph was a pleasant thing, but an assured and adequate
+dinner every day was a greater.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a knock at his study door, but he decided not to
+hear it, remembering that he was anxious.  Not that his anxiety
+was humbug, for it was very real indeed; but, since it was
+there, it might at least have the credit of its full dimensions.  So
+he let the servant knock again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, come in," said he patiently; and there entered a big-hipped,
+comfortable servant of about forty-five years, in a
+dress of powder-blue cotton and a plain apron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, excuse me, sir," begged the woman pleasantly, "but
+won't you have a cuppa-tea?  What I mean to say is: a nice
+little bit of breaden-butter with a potta-tea.  I'll bring it to
+you here, sir.  It's after four o'clock, and we're having ours
+in the kitchen; and we couldn't bear to think of you sitting here,
+and sort of&mdash;what I call&mdash;having nothing.  And I'm sure you
+ate nothing at lunch."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno had heard the tea-bell and ignored it, and now
+would have liked a cup of tea, for his mouth was unpleasant;
+but this good woman's doubts whether during an emotional crisis
+he would take tea prompted him in a moment of weakness to
+reject the offer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, thank you, Hollins.  I don't think I'm wanting anything
+just now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw all that was happening in Hollins' mind.  The good
+woman, while persuading herself that she was disappointed
+at this refusal, was really pleased that her master's suspense
+should be so interesting.  And along with her conviction that
+persistence was the interesting part for her to play went a real
+desire to minister to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I should, sir, if I were you.  Just a nice little cup,
+and a thin slice a-breaden-butter.  I mean, you want to sort
+of&mdash;what I call&mdash;keep up, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, well, oh, well," agreed Mr. Bruno, swinging his chair
+so that he faced his papers and his pen, and taking up a sheet
+and dropping it, "bring it along."  He thought that perhaps he
+would drink it and perhaps he would leave it untouched to
+provide an interesting topic of conversation in the kitchen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's right.  And I'll just make it a little comfortable
+in here.  Why, you've almost let the fire go out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced obediently at the fire.  It was powdery with decay.
+This rather pleased him, as proving that, despite all postures,
+his anxiety had really been his master.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, we'll soon have a cheerful bitta flare here," said Hollins,
+kneeling down with difficulty and rather heavily, while
+Mr. Bruno, in his mind, was providing her with her next
+words: "There's nothing like a bit of a coal fire to cheer you
+up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins took the poker and probed the embers with the delicacy
+of a surgeon whose scalpel was more in danger of killing
+than curing.  Over the moribund glow she arranged some small
+coals, like a child building bricks, and then swept the hearth.
+"There's nothing like a bit of a coal fire to cheer you up,"
+said she; and, being a heavy woman, got up with as many
+divided motions as a camel.  The window curtains required
+straightening, so while this was being done, and till she was
+gone out, Mr. Bruno drew parallel lines on a piece of paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The closing of the door suggested that he sought some
+new occupation for his mind.  He rose and walked towards
+the book shelves.  He was examining his present condition with
+the detachment of a literary artist; indeed, the whole affair
+was, to him, an exceedingly familiar literary incident, on
+which the trite comment was the truest:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is one of my great hours."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His eye fell on the fifteen volumes bearing his name.
+It was always good to see this long chain of Tenter Brunos
+among the works of immortal essayists.  He took down a
+volume issued from the house of his American publisher, and
+on a slip inside it read the enthusiastic praise of its
+contents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No one can afford to neglect the writings of Mr. T. Tenter
+Bruno.  With great critical acumen he combines pungent wit,
+gay humour and a coruscating style.  ('Disgusting bit of prose,
+that,' thought Mr. Bruno.)  His reach is ubiquitous; he seems
+to write with equal scholarship on literature, art, music, history,
+sociology and political economy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He replaced the book.  Even if one discounted half of the
+American publisher's cheers, the residue spoke of a triumph.
+And though Mr. Bruno had enjoyed this fine fame for fifteen
+years, there were still times when it seemed too good to be
+true, and he wondered if it were a dream from which he
+would wake up to find himself an unrecognised aspirant of
+forty, bombarding publishers but abandoning hope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But no; he had been successful from the beginning.  He
+had been carried to Harrow on a brilliant scholarship from
+one of the cheaper preparatory schools; and there his master
+had said, as he entered his name:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'T. Tenter Bruno!'  Good lord, what a name!  With
+a name like that you ought to go in for being a literary
+pundit or something.  I mean, it inspires confidence, Bruno;
+and once heard is not easily forgotten.  I mean, it sticks and
+festers in the memory like a poisoned dart.  With a name
+like that, and a few eccentricities like Byron's curl, and a
+modicum of natural gifts, which apparently you possess, why,
+Bruno, you might go far."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Bruno thought the same.  Every talent he possessed
+he built into the genius of a great critic, essayist and
+philosopher.  A famous university prize brought his name before
+the world of letters.  For a few years he was assistant editor
+of a critical journal.  Every spring he published a volume,
+and each volume made ripples wider than the last, till he
+was in a position so secure that he needed not to call any
+editor master, but could retire to his study and write what
+books and articles he pleased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the whole, then, he was satisfied.  Occasionally he would
+have liked to live with a larger flourish, instead of in a small
+country house with one old servant and an undermaid.  And he
+could have done so if two tyrant weaknesses had not always
+quashed the impulse&mdash;the one a timidity that dreaded a failing
+wit and its consequence, a falling revenue, and the other
+a settled indolence which made him prefer studying in an
+arm-chair to creating at his desk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tray of tea-things clattered outside, and he walked
+rather quickly back to his chair.  Why he did this he hardly
+knew; perhaps because he wanted Hollins to tell the maid
+that he had never stirred all the afternoon.  And as he sat
+down, he rebuked himself for the thought; it was contemptible
+to expose his anxiety for the study of his servants, like an
+interesting specimen on a pin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He heard the corner of the tray rested against the jamb
+of the door, while Hollins freed one hand to turn the knob.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There you are, sir.  I've made it nice and strong."&mdash;His
+brain instantly provided her with her next words: "It <i>do</i> put
+new life in you, a cuppa-tea."&mdash;"It <i>do</i> put new life in you,
+as I always say myself," continued Hollins.  "And I should
+be inclined to kind of eat something.  I've boiled you an egg
+in case it should take your fancy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you, Hollins, thank you."  His manner with his
+servants and their devotion were a pride with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thought of the egg was appetizing; and he ate and
+enjoyed it so much that he wished it had been two.  The
+tea raised his optimism and expelled his anxiety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Everything'll be all right with little Sheila, of course.
+It's no use picturing the worst.  I'll read."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pushed the tray to one side, and from a little
+book-stand on the desk took a new volume.  It quickly interested
+him.  Only the tiring of his eyes, as the room darkened
+with the fall of a February evening, told him how the hours
+were passing.  Outside in the passage an opal-glass
+lamp-shade jingled on its stand, and a moving ribbon of light
+appeared beneath the door.  It would be Hollins bringing a
+light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she entered and rested the lamp on his desk, he felt
+rather guilty to be reading, but refused, this time, to hide
+the fact.  She drew the curtains, and went out, taking the
+tray with her.  Mr. Bruno turned again to his volume.  It
+stimulated him sufficiently to demand pencilled annotations,
+and he was lost in this task when a bell gongled alarm
+through the house.  His heart jumped; and the bell, repeating
+itself, jarred his nerves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Voices in the hall: "Bruno?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The telegram, beyond a doubt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins entered, as delighted and funereal as every one
+is who carries a telegram.  With fingers that fumbled,
+Mr. Bruno opened the envelope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Daughter.  Wife doing splendidly.</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His eyebrows went up.  "A daughter.  H'm!"  But his
+momentary disappointment was lost in an uprushing, swelling
+tenderness.  In a voice, not under perfect control, he said to
+Hollins:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, yes....  Oh, an answer? ... No, no answer.  I
+shall be there as quickly myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, sir."  Hollins went out to the messenger, but her
+excitement was like a stretching elastic that drew her
+immediately back to her master's study.  "Yes, sir, I've told
+the boy; and is there&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Hollins, Mr. Spencer told me he would lend me his
+trap, if I needed it.  You might go&mdash;or send Agnes round
+and ask for it.  Old Eadigo's there, and will bring it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, sir.  And may I&mdash;what I mean to say is&mdash;is
+everything all right?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, magnificent, Hollins."  Stirred by excitement,
+Mr. Bruno forgot that he ever postured, or that he had felt a
+second's disappointment at the sex of his child.  "I've got
+a daughter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, there now!" said Hollins.  "A little daughter.  I
+do congratulate you, sir.  The noos has just come, has it?
+And I shall always be able to remember that I brought you
+the noos.  I shall be able to tell her that.  And it's a little
+baby girl, is it?  I like a little girl for the first one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She moved towards the door, but her master wanted to
+continue talking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, a girl.  What shall we call her, Hollins?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, sir, that'll sort of take some thinking about, won't
+it?  Will you call her after her mother, sir?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, that's shirking trouble.  Something original, I think."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," agreed Hollins vaguely, for the elastic was pulling
+towards the kitchen now.  "I'll just go and&mdash;and send Agnes
+for that trap.  I'll be back in a minute."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The kitchen of this country house was only a dozen
+flagstones away, and Hollins was soon back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you think of 'Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno,' Hollins?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins tried to look intelligent and pleased; and Mr. Bruno
+explained more slowly: "Daphne&mdash;Deirdre"; and his smile
+widened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, yes, sir, those sound very nice.  But I expect the
+mistress'll have her ideas....  I'll get your hat and coat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno walked up and down, repeating:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno....  Daphne Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was in the power of that up-swelling tenderness.  His
+mind, ever penetrating and introspective, could examine that
+tenderness and see that, whether or not it were soiled by time,
+at the moment it was utterly selfless, and charged with reverence
+and humility.  "She's no one but me"; the thoughts were
+running; "Good lord, I wish I were better....  My
+influence will be immeasurable....  She must be good....
+It's unthinkable that she should be bad...."  With a heart
+filling and filling from the reservoir of these thoughts, he
+pictured her at every age: one year old and crawling about the
+floor; three or five, and scrambling over his knees; seven or
+eight, and playing with a spade on holiday sands; in her
+school when he came to visit her; a long slim girl of sixteen,
+slim like the plait down her back; a bride in white and
+silver.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+II
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wrapped in a thick overcoat, muffler and driving gloves,
+he walked impatiently up and down the study, now and
+then clapping his gloved hands.  Like all men who could drive
+well, and yet could not afford a horse, he always felt rather
+proud when dressed for the box seat and waiting for the reins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Curse that old Eadigo!  Why can't he hurry?  Phlegmatic
+old fool!  Hollins has no doubt told him the news
+with an indecent exuberance, and if he had the imagination of
+one of his turnips, he'd guess what I'm feeling."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the sound of wheels on the drive and of a voice
+gibbering to a pony, he glanced out of the window and
+in the light thrown by the open hall door, saw Eadigo standing
+near the horse's head.  Eadigo was Mr. Spencer's gardener,
+who came for two days a week to work on Mr. Bruno's
+much smaller plot.  Mr. Bruno, looking out at him with the
+detached amusement of a critic, saw a large, corpulent man in
+a blue serge waistcoat and trousers that had once been
+Mr. Spencer's.  These trousers, enabled by some triangular
+insertions of Mrs. Eadigo's to surround her husband's paunch, stayed
+there, as the open waistcoat showed, without aid from braces
+or belt: palpably they needed none, being less likely to fall than
+to fissure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eadigo, who never dreamed of taking an uncovered head
+into the air&mdash;not through fear of catching cold, but simply
+because the two ideas of open air and a hat were inseparable&mdash;was
+wearing a soiled felt hat discarded and given to him by
+Mr. Bruno three years before.  It was too small; and perhaps
+to give it an appearance of being larger, the brim was turned
+down all round.  Mr. Bruno could see the sweat-stains round
+the faded ribbon, and remembered how God had promised
+such things to Adam in a garden.  He heard Hollins bustle
+out to Eadigo and say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you <i>have</i> been a time!  The master's in a hurry.
+Naturally."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the even voice of the gardener returned:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's ready for 'e.  'E can have it anywhen now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without waiting for Hollins, Mr. Bruno walked out and
+mounted to the seat and took the reins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Lamps all right, Eadigo?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yessir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, get away, Nipper."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The horse, fresh from little use, clattered out of the open
+gate onto the country road.  It was the last moments before the
+final darkness, and the stars were in possession.  On one side
+of the road, the tall beeches, looking more slender and tapering
+than in the daylight, stretched their bared branches like long
+tenuous arms towards the sky.  On the other side a line of
+Austrian firs, marking a private park, stood dense and black
+against a sea-green glow.  The road ran along high ground;
+and as it left these skirting trees, Mr. Bruno overlooked the
+waving weld of Sussex.  The sea-green glow sang in the
+west, its answering light in the east; and now the candle-lamps
+of the trap shone at their prime.  The monotonous clatter
+of Nipper charmed Mr. Bruno into a reverie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was picturesque, this driving to find his baby girl.  But
+though the drama of it pleased him, he knew that this was
+but a small part of his emotion.  That tenderness and excitement
+was crowding into a corner all lesser thoughts.  He examined
+it again, happy about it.  "Daphne Bruno."  A little
+girl... then a slip of a school-miss, satchelled... seventeen
+years, and a tall, affectionate sapling, with her own
+concealed emotions... a lover in the embrace of some long
+youth&mdash;his heart beat quicker at the thought of this&mdash;and then,
+a bride&mdash;from which point he cared not to carry on the
+picture.  And she was born from him; she was out of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By God! he must do his part by her.  Humbly, Mr. Bruno,
+as he flicked the pony, felt that he was being lifted to a
+moment of nobility.  With a grim smile he wondered if it would
+last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Clop</i>-clip, <i>clop</i>-clip, <i>clop</i>-clip."  Nipper's hoofs, in the
+darkness, knocked a spark from a flint.  Mr. Bruno, in his
+waking dream, touched the beast again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All his books were written from one viewpoint: that of
+a detached mocking at convention.  They proclaimed the right
+of the artist to accept nothing on authority, either in religion
+or in art, but to build his own authority out of his own
+experience.  With the rest of the thinking world (as it
+appeared to him) in that latter half of the century, he had
+rejected Christianity; with many artists, though he was proud
+to be unplacable in any school, he had questioned the accepted
+canons of art.  This mocking viewpoint he had kept consistent.
+His readers might believe that behind it was a philosophy
+of his own.  They might believe that he spoke from some
+sure though hidden ground; that he at least had found a code
+by which to live, and thus achieved his integrity.  And indeed,
+some of his followers had written articles on "The True
+Philosophy of Tenter Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Mr. Bruno, driving to his daughter, knew that he
+had achieved no such thing.  He felt dissatisfied with his
+management of life.  He was vain, thought he, and indolent
+and selfish; and when all brilliant theories were puffed away, he
+knew that he had an unconquerable conviction that vanity,
+indolence and selfishness were wrong.  And there was a
+corruptive falsity, his keen mind told him, in his whole position;
+for, while intellectually a revolutionary, he had no courage
+to be a libertine; he wrote it all from his brain, while his will
+allowed his life to drift conventionally enough.  If only he had
+really found a sure code, that he might give it to this little
+girl&mdash;or, rather, to that long, slim girl, slim as the plait down
+her back! ... She would have brains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should like to vow that henceforth there's to be one good
+thing in my life: my self-effacing service of her."  The shoulders
+of the sceptic shrugged in distrust of himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With tenderness, too, he thought of his wife; and his
+head shook, regretfully.  Poor little Sheila, she hadn't had much
+of a time.  He saw her as she was at their first meeting:
+a little fair-haired thing of twenty, beautifully frail, eighteen
+years younger than he.  He studied how he had come to marry
+her.  All his life he had waited in the hope that he would
+fall in love with some one, but the monopolizing love of his
+own books had kept other loves out of doors.  Still, the one last
+sentimentality had persisted in him, this hope that love would
+arrive and last for ever.  Then came this exquisite little creature
+(as his fancy had seen her), bringing a manifest adoration&mdash;and
+the thought of possessing her had been sweet.  How
+delighted she had been with the attentions of so famous a man!
+In her feebleness she had rather thrown herself at him.  He
+had begun to wonder if he was in love with her, and had
+given answer: "Yes, since I am nearly forty, if this be
+not love, no other will come."  So they had become engaged.
+And though before marriage he had discovered the poverty
+of her mind, he had lacked the strength to withdraw&mdash;and
+the cruelty.  Chaffingly surrounding her with a haze of adjectives,
+"frail," "fay," "gossamer," "little Thistledown," he had
+kept his promise and married her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's mindless ... little ... weak ... cowardly,"
+muttered he to the horse's crupper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had hurt his pride that he had given himself to one
+intellectually so far beneath him.  Self-pityingly he would
+remember the wives of other famous men, whose gifts had
+largely made their husbands what they were.  Poor little Sheila.
+And now she mooned rather dully about his cottage.  Doubtless
+her illusions had been as short-lived as his.  Henceforward all
+must be different.  He, as well as she&mdash;hang it all!&mdash;had
+undertaken duties in marriage....  And he was the stronger
+and wiser.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pity for her filled him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pity.  The word was the bell-note for all the emotion in him
+to-night.  Perhaps it was the key-word to a philosophy.  One
+could not know much in this dark and candle-lit world, but
+one could hang on to pity.  One could wander at will in
+search of other secrets about religion and art, but one must
+keep tight hold of pity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What pity ordains is right; what pity condemns is wrong
+... when all's said and written and done, everything in me knows
+that much to be true...."  He saw the long, slim Daphne
+again.  "I shall teach her that, if nothing else."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Relief came to Mr. Tenter Bruno, for this idea had a face
+as of revelation.  And the cynic in him laughed that he should
+have suddenly seen a newness in anything so old.  Old!  Ghosts
+of old philosophers began to do battle in the grey lists of his
+mind for the principle of man's inherent benevolence&mdash;Hobbes
+and Jeremy Bentham, Hartley and Paley, Shaftesbury and
+Hutcheson and Hume.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Clop</i>-clip, <i>clop</i>-clip, <i>clop</i>-clip."  He was hearing Nipper's
+hoofs again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then a horrid thought leapt up.  Supposing this Daphne
+were deformed in any way; supposing she were an imbecile; or
+blind; or deaf and dumb; or had some freakish limb!
+Supposing the Christian God had punished his sedition like that!
+The telegram had only said: "Daughter.  Wife doing
+splendidly."  Not "Both doing splendidly."  Good God, not
+"<i>both!</i>"  He pictured the news being broken to him before he was taken
+to see her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nonsense!" He pulled himself together, and urged the
+horse to a canter.  "She'll be beautiful, because her mother's
+beautiful; and she'll have brains."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+III
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Hollins was bringing tea to her master, before the
+bell jangled through the house, Sheila Bruno was lying
+back on her bed suffering her final pains.  A nurse watched
+her as they waited for the doctor.  The nurse, seeing many
+such month by month, was not easily moved, but her patient
+of to-day seemed like a child who was bearing too early; and,
+even in her suffering, she held her beauty.  Her hair, very fair,
+was of the fuzzier sort that looked as pleasant when tumbled
+as when tidy, and her lids were down over childish cheeks in
+an abandonment to pain that was almost calm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila Bruno's eyes were closed because she had no interest
+in the world beyond her racked body.  Pain filled her mind,
+leaving room for no altruistic thought.  All that she wanted
+was to die and be done with pain.  She could not care
+that it left her husband deserted and her baby motherless; she
+could not think for them.  Somewhere in her pain-filled thoughts
+she felt ashamed that it should be so.  Labours!  Maternity!
+Why, she could still only think of herself as a fifteen-year-old
+schoolgirl, punishable by mistresses; she felt no different in
+mind or body from what she was at fifteen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somewhere lurked shame and despair of herself.  From
+the beginning her thoughts about this baby had caused her
+secret shame.  Instead of being delighted at the prospect of
+its coming&mdash;as were all the good wives she had read about,
+and as she pretended to be&mdash;she had only been frightened,
+exasperated and rebellious.  She had made the futile effort
+to think of it prettily as her husband's child, and to love it
+and him the more; but in her months of sickness and
+disfigurement this thought had actually worked an opposite result.
+It had encouraged criticism and dislike of him.  There had
+come to the surface of her mind thoughts that hitherto she
+had kept submerged.  He had marred her life by marrying
+her&mdash;that was the unveiled truth of it.  Almost she might say
+he had tricked her.  He had seemed so wonderful&mdash;with his
+brilliance, his tall and graceful presence and his courtesy.  And
+she had paid out everything for the prize, her whole future
+and the right to love again.  Then in a few months he had
+cast off all ceremonial vesture, probably because its wearing
+was too much of an effort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, life was a roomful of pain.  If only she could die!
+What matter if it were cowardice?  Let her admit her
+feebleness and die.  Once she was blotted out in death, her
+self-contempt would not worry her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, this miserable, hard, business-like room in the nursing
+home!  Even her death would be a failure in a white box of
+a room like this.  Why had she come here?  It was wrong of
+Tom to send her.  Of course, she had wanted to come, so
+as to go through an experience that she expected might defeat
+her courage, away from her husband and servants.  But just
+now she chose to forget her willingness in order that she
+might keep her grievance against Tom.  Why had he sent her
+here?  It was a thing seldom done.  Despite all his talk about
+her greater comfort, the greater facilities available, and their
+isolation in the country, she suspected that the contemplation
+of his own ease had not been absent, nor a satisfaction in the
+unconventionality of such a step.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think I hate him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And since she hated him, she had better die, for there
+was nothing before her except a long life of dull exasperation.
+She was a failure.  Best admit it, and go upon the scrap-heap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, this pain!  And this underground stream of aching
+thoughts that kept appearing above the surface!  Sometimes
+sharper agonies made her abandon thinking and only suffer.
+Voices far away and yet near-by reminded her of nursery
+days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A crowning, unbelievable agony....  And then peace&mdash;lovely
+liberation and forgetful rest.  This was the beginning of death,
+sweet like drowning.  The voices were still about her, and
+there was a new voice, a crying voice like a baby's.  Sheila's
+heart stirred, as she had always read it would: it must be the
+voice of her child, the thing dragged from her and now living
+its own independent life.  She who had been <i>one</i> a few minutes
+ago was now two.  That other one was she&mdash;and alone now,
+poor lonely little darling.  Her consciousness cleared, and,
+wondering with a thrilled anticipation if it were a boy or a girl,
+she opened her eyes and saw the nurse by her bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Splendid, dear, you were splendid; and you've got a little
+daughter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A disappointment at the word "daughter" was rolled aside
+by an out-stream of love and excitement.  And her relief from
+agony made her feel gay.  She stared up at the nurse with
+an unintelligent smile, wondering what they did next.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nurse was leaning a bundle forward to show her
+something in its cowl-like opening: a tiny model of a human
+face, complete with smooth brow, eyelashes, nose, and lips
+and chin.  It was placid now, with its eyelids down.  She
+looked at it for a long time, riveted; and at length, without
+a word, shut her eyes....  Oh, the adorable, incredible little
+thing!  It brought a recurring glow, the recollection of that
+little face.  Sheila felt exultant&mdash;perhaps hysterically so, for
+she was ready to pour out a mixture of crying and laughter.
+The pain, now that it had receded into memory, seemed nothing
+so very terrible after all, and she wondered why people made
+such a fuss about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Downstairs the hall door closed.  Ah, the matron was
+sending to Tom.  How delightful to have this news to send him!
+An hour ago she had thought she hated him, and here was
+she imagining delight at his excitement!  She began to
+enwrap him with her tenderness.  After all, perhaps he had
+as much to criticise in her as she had in him.  In some ways
+she had tricked him too.  Had she not used every art to appear
+before him as beautiful?  Had she not tried to appear more
+cultured than she was?  Had she not often lied&mdash;that was what
+it amounted to&mdash;in representing her education as much finer
+than it had been, and her circle of friends as much more
+impressive?  After marriage, Tom, with his penetration, must quickly
+have found her out.  She wondered that he had not done so
+before.  Yes, he had claims on her which she had disappointed:
+henceforth she must always remember that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She imagined all that was happening in the cottage.  Hollins,
+dear, stout old Hollins, how full she would be of the news!
+And Tom, of course, was getting the trap from Mr. Spencer's.
+In less than half an hour he would be here.  She saw him
+mounting to the driver's seat, and clattering out of the gate
+along the country road.  She saw the trap moving through the
+daylight, till, noticing that her gas had been lit and curtains
+drawn, she changed the picture into a night scene.  There
+came the yellow candle-lamps, and Nipper tossing up his head
+as he trotted over the ringing road.  Now Tom had probably
+reached Shadwell Green and was driving along the mossy,
+listing wall of The Ballards.  That would mean that he would
+be here in less than ten minutes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A short, timid ring at the front door set excitement a-tremble.
+Yes, that was Tom's voice, rather stuttering and nervous.  And
+here was the matron bringing him upstairs.  The door opened,
+and Sheila turned her head towards it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hallo, dear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila, darling!  Why, you look rosy.  One'd think you
+were resting after a tennis match."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She parried this with a smile and glanced towards the cot
+at the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There it is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno carried to the cot his fear that there might
+be something amiss.  The thought, "One second now, and I
+shall know," accompanied his steps.  But no hare-lip or fingerless
+hand met his eyes: instead he saw the sleeping face, turned
+on its side, with its perfect little nose and chin, dropped lids
+and exquisite ear.  One hand showed above the blanket, palm
+downward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It broke one's breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila was speaking.  "Isn't she like you?  And I'm sure
+she'll grow up and adore you much more than she will me.  Girls
+always do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A quick vision of the long, slim Daphne stirred his heart.
+He bent down to study the features again, trying to imagine
+them fifteen&mdash;nineteen years hence.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+IV
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Daphne was brought to her father's door, Hollins
+received her with the expected magnificat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now let me take her, ma'am.  The love!  You must
+be tired, and you must go sort of&mdash;what I call&mdash;easy.  Let
+me take her....  Well, there's a beauty.  O ma'am, she's
+a cherub!  And ain't she the living image of you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be absurd," corrected Mrs. Bruno, as she passed
+into the cottage.  "Why, I'm seeing more and more likeness
+to her father every day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, yes."  Hollins touched the little face with an ingratiating
+giggle.  "She is like the master, but she favours you
+too, ma'am.  Oh, yes, you favour your mummy, miss, don't
+you?  Oh, what big wondering eyes!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Hollins, being a widow and the mother of an only
+child who died young, was determined by right of this
+experience to take a leading part in the management of her
+mistress's little girl.  She felt as if at last she had come into
+her own.  Very deliberately had she taken the purchase of
+nursery equipment out of the incompetent hands of her master
+and mistress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The best of her purchases was the princely perambulator
+in which young Mrs. Bruno took her daughter for a ride
+the following day.  As she pushed the carriage towards the
+garden-gate, half nervous of taking this public confession of
+her motherhood into the highways, and half proud, she saw
+Eadigo stooping over a flower-bed.  His waistcoat, as usual,
+hung open; and on his crown was the hat, a small and greasy
+derelict, that she could remember being often raised from
+her husband's head in the days of their courtship.  Her heart
+absurdly quickened with anticipation of his comment.  The
+sound of the perambulator on the gravel caused him to look up,
+and he touched his cap and turned to his bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila paused.  Their gardener was a person she liked to
+chaff, and it was not to be suffered that he should say no
+word on such an occasion.  No matter if he did think this
+appearance of a baby in the world as of the same order, and
+no more interesting than the appearance above ground of one
+of his onions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Eadigo," said she, stopping the perambulator, and
+holding it with one hand while she stood sideways and faced
+the flower-bed.  She was conscious, as she naturally assumed
+this position, that she was pleasurably imitating all her sisters
+of the perambulator.  "Don't you want to see my little girl?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced up again and straightened himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, mum."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, there she is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eadigo looked into the carriage and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, mum, she be there right enough."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Think she's nice?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eadigo turned back to his bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, mum, it's early yet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose so," agreed Mrs. Bruno, pushing the pram
+on.  "And she'll improve as she gets bigger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne's improvements, her father used to declare, were
+chiefly physical.  She improved herself out of long clothes
+into short ones, and out of her wicker cradle into a fine
+cot, and out of her shoes and socks twenty times a day.
+She improved her squinting into a straight if rather doubtful
+stare.  She improved her early screaming into gurgling and
+chuckling, which her father maintained was the greatest
+improvement of all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Generally these remarks were made at meal-times when
+Daphne, or "Duffy," as he now called her, was at play upon
+the floor.  He liked to watch her and to offer a witty and polished
+commentary; or sometimes just a crudely humorous one, since
+it was only for the home and not for publication.  As Daphne
+was always busy and restless, and always anxious to do another
+thing than she happened to be doing at the moment, Mr. Bruno
+would enter the dining-room and inquire of Sheila, "Is it one
+of your daughter's busy days to-day?" or express the hope that
+Mrs. Bruno's daughter had got on well with her work that
+morning.  And Sheila, stirred by the picture of Daphne these
+words created, would reply no more brightly than to ejaculate,
+"The darling!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this persiflage was a veil for things unspoken.  He had
+not forgotten his desire to introduce <i>one</i> self-effacing love into
+his life.  And he gave the love its exercise by forcing himself
+to be patient when Daphne's restlessness bruised his nerves
+or shipwrecked his work.  He kept, too, his heightened love for
+his wife.  She was a brave little girl.  He had kissed her very
+affectionately when she declared that she would nurse Daphne
+herself and that Hollins and she would do everything: "Yes,
+I never meant to do it, Daddy, but I've made up my mind
+to.  Hollins says it's the only way to give them a proper
+start.  And she's so adorable."  He tried to be a better
+companion to his wife by coming in to her tea parties and sitting
+through the insupportably fatuous conversation of the ladies.
+Oh, <i>mon Dieu!</i> it seemed that women spoke never of ideas
+but only of things and persons; or if they did enunciate an idea,
+it was always a stock one off the shelf, and he could provide
+them with the very words they would use.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+But in time he decided that too much self-abnegation, if
+you dealt with weak women, was itself a weakness.  They were
+allowing Daphne to make an infernal noise in any and every
+room of the cottage.  As sure as she cried they stampeded past
+his study door to save or sympathise with the child.  And
+the more they sympathised with her, the more she sympathised
+with herself and determined that her present trouble was a
+case for regular refills of air which must be expelled again in
+shrieks of temper.  The household, in fact, was circling round
+Daphne instead of round his workroom which (they all seemed
+to have forgotten) was the mainspring of everything.  Yes,
+when his daughter should reach intelligence, then would be
+the time for him to consider how he could efface himself for
+her.  Meantime he must get on with his work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He summoned his wife and explained that he was considering
+everybody else as much as himself when he stipulated
+that Daphne should be kept to an upstairs back room.  For
+such brain-work as his he needed silence and freedom from
+domestic cares.  Sheila could see that, could she not?
+"Rousseau, with more courage than most of us, sent his children
+to a foundling hospital when they interfered with his work.
+You remember: '<i>Comment les soucis domestiques et les fracas
+des enfants me laisseront-ils la tranquillité d'esprit nécessaire
+pour faire un travail lucratif?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Sheila said, "All right, Daddy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes in the next weeks, however, the thought of the
+old lumber-room, which Sheila had cleared and furnished for
+a nursery, with its two easy chairs, one for herself and one
+for Hollins, troubled his compassion; and he would leave his
+books and climb up to it, saying he had come to see Daphne
+in her bath.  Once Hollins had taken over the bathing, and
+he could see that the good soul was determined to show them
+how such a business should be performed.  Listening, as she
+rhapsodised over the infant in her wide, aproned lap he thought
+many thoughts about the native poetry of all peasants, from the
+Hebrews of old to the Cockneys or the Hodges of to-day.  And
+he called her runnel of nonsense "The Song of Hollins."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They didn't give you much hair, did they, darling?" she
+was saying, as the upper flock went over Daphne's head.  "No,
+she said, I'm going to spend all my money on a big pair
+of eyes.  She said, I don't reckon hair is very important, or
+a nose.  As regards them things, I'll just have any fairly decent
+reach-me-downs out of the cupboard, but I shall spend all my
+money on a very extra special pair of eyes.  She said, eyes
+are the thing.  You can do a lot of damage with a good pair of
+eyes.  You can break the hearts of the handsome young beaus
+and&mdash;keep still, lovey&mdash;and, until they come along, you can see
+all that ought to be seen and most that ought not to be seen,
+and, she said, you can see every opening for mischief.  There
+now.  There's a boo'ful little body.  Into tub it goes.  <i>In</i> she
+goes.  Nice waters.  Oh, lovely waters.  Oh, such a lovely
+silky skin.  That's right, splash your walkers about.  Kickey
+walkers.  Up she comes, all clean and smelling of soap.  Such
+a 'licious feeling!  Big, big towel.  There's a little, round,
+hobgoblin face, out of miles and miles of nice soft warm
+towel.  Look at its chin.  No, she said, you've got it wrong.
+I kep' a little of my money back for a really dainty chin.
+Gr-r-r-r!  She said, Oh, I am a cute one, I am.  When the
+time comes, won't I flutter the hearts of the handsome young
+mashers?  I knew a thing or two, I did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time Daphne was in her long flannel nightgown,
+and stretched out both hands with spread fingers towards
+her mother, who, captured by such an appeal, picked her up,
+tossed her towards the ceiling, and then hugged her,
+murmuring:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, she says, I like Hollins all right, and I find my daddy
+quite amusing, but it's mummy I really want.  She says, I'd
+sell 'em all up for my mummy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now Mr. Bruno had wearied of these sentimental
+rhapsodies, and withdrew downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+V
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Daphne was something over a year old, Sheila knew
+that her second baby was coming.  The knowledge was a
+shock of dismay, and then a sickly, dull acquiescence.  Though
+at the first sight of Daphne all hostility had surrendered, still
+her picture of the future had shown only this one child playing
+about her.  The picture of herself with two, or perhaps a flock
+of children, was horrible.  Before telling her husband, she went
+away like a hurt animal into her bedroom and sat by the window,
+staring out at the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want it.  Oh, all that sickness again and ugliness
+and shame.  And I shall have to begin nursing all over again.
+Oh, I know all this is selfish, and I ought to be delighted,
+but I'm not.  I am selfish.  I like my little Daphne, but
+I don't want another.  Daphne was different; she was the first,
+and strange, and adorable."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Into the despair rose the thoughts that she usually shut
+underground.  It was all wrong, children issuing from a
+partnership that she knew to be nine parts bankruptcy and
+disappointment.  There was no true intimacy between her and Tom,
+and never could be.  And Tom had quite obviously learnt this,
+and accepted it as their incommutable sentence.  An
+incommutable sentence!  Life stretched dark in front of Sheila,
+and the word "death" had trancing, sweet overtones again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought marriage was going to be heaven....  And
+it's&mdash;it's this....  But no.  My Daphne was worth it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For Daphne's sake I'll try and bear this new cross."  She
+found a refuge in these suburbs of nobility.  "They say it's bad
+for a child to be an only child.  They're much better off, if
+they have a brother or a sister for a companion....  I'll
+look at it like that.  I'm providing something that's really
+good for my baby&mdash;a playmate.  I made up my mind to be
+unselfish where she was concerned....  All right, my darling,
+you shall have your playmate."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Overcome with her own self-sacrifice, she burst into tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the time of her confinement drew nearer, she concealed
+under a mask of quiet liveliness a premonition of death.  How
+this idea arose she could not remember, nor when; but it was
+now the unsleeping master of her mind.  Perhaps it was born
+from her languor&mdash;a languor that grew till she lived with a sense
+of physical decline.  Once she hinted at her fears to Hollins,
+who laughed the laugh of common sense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nonsense, ma'am, if you'll excuse me putting it like that.
+You'll hardly feel it this time.  It'll come as natural as natural.
+And each time it will seem more and more natural."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But people <i>do</i> die in childbirth," submitted Sheila.  "One
+reads of heaps."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not young ones like you, ma'am, if I may say so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Isn't it sometimes the young ones who are most likely
+to die?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no&mdash;you're a bit sort of&mdash;what I call&mdash;down, ma'am.
+You put all those ideas out of your head."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I never was strong.  When I was ill as a child, I was
+always worse than any one else."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And they're always the wiry ones, that sort of anæmic,
+skinny type," assured Hollins.  "Any one'll tell you that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless the idea stayed, strengthening its hold.  In
+the hours before sleep, when the mind was susceptible to
+auto-hypnotism, it sent its roots deeper and deeper.  In the
+daytime it haunted the background of all her thoughts and
+conversations.  So fixed was it that she determined to have
+her confinement in her own house rather than die in a distant,
+hard, unloving room, with Daphne far away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was walking in the garden when this thought wandered
+into her mind; and she stopped dead as she faced another
+thought that came behind: Daphne would never remember
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shrugged her shoulders and closed the lips that had
+parted.  Her mouth quivered.  Old Hollins would have to tell
+Daphne when she grew up what her mother had been like.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These twilight thoughts she never exposed to Tom's kindly
+ridicule.  She only told Hollins gaily that this time she
+was going to stay in her own home.  And Hollins heartily
+approved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, ma'am, since you mention it, I may say I
+never did like the idea of your going away last time.  It
+seemed out of&mdash;I mean, sort of unnatural like.  If I couldn't
+have looked after you, who could, I should like to know?
+You'll enjoy it in your own room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Merrily Sheila smiled in answer, though to herself the smile
+felt wan.  The conviction that her life had been given its term
+was in complete occupation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Complete.  She would wander along the garden or the
+country roads, and any stretching green prospect that troubled
+her with its beauty stirred also the sad self-pity.  The half-heard
+chirrup of the birds in the deathly slumber of a windless
+day; the red glow after tea-time behind the fir trees; the sound,
+one autumn evening, of a crowd of men singing in harmony
+as they went down the road; the tales in her books of the
+raptures of first love&mdash;it was a wistful matter suddenly to
+apprehend the beauty of these things and to feel that she had only
+a few more weeks with the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She felt the same faint ache when she patted the sleek neck
+of the pony, Nipper, or saw on a shelf in her bedroom the
+books that she had brought from home.  They reminded her
+of a hundred places where as a child she had been merry.
+Strange if all those scenes had only preceded an early death!
+And if she chaffed old Eadigo as he laboured in the garden,
+she felt the ache in her spurious laughter.  Once the sight
+of her own face in the mirror, looking pretty with its fair
+hair, filled her eyes with tears; but she pulled herself briskly
+together and forced laughter from herself all that morning.
+No one but she detected the settled despair in that noisy
+laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps the most poignant thing of all was the sight of
+Daphne's toys upon the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+VI
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno this time felt none of the fears that had
+disorganized him before the birth of Daphne.  He remembered
+with something of contempt the way he had then worked
+himself up to the proper anxiety.  His main trouble now was
+an annoyance that another child should have come so soon, but
+this was balanced by a pride in remembering how he had
+shrugged his shoulders and decided to greet the inevitable with
+goodwill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Sheila took to her bed he kissed her very lovingly
+and told her everything would be all right.  And when the
+hour came, and the doctor and the nurse were with her, he
+walked in to the garden taking only an anxiety that poor little
+Sheila should not suffer too much.  Her moans hurt him
+cruelly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The year was one month older than when Daphne was
+born.  The primroses were under the hedges, and young grass
+appearing in many places where it ought not to appear, and the
+old grass turning to a deep green after humid March days.
+His tea had just been cleared away, and there was the usual
+silence of half-light in the garden: a thundery stillness, this
+evening, and the birds, chirruping on the branches, seemed less
+to break it than to be part of it.  As he walked along the
+herbaceous border, now and then removing a gravel stone from
+the turf edge, a sudden cry of pain sounded from the house.
+He stood up erect and listened.  The cry dwindled back into
+moans again, and above the moans sounded the plaint of a baby.
+It was not Daphne's voice.  He hurried excitedly back to
+the hall to hear the news.  As he expected, Hollins was coming
+down the stairs as fast as her figure would allow her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's a little boy this time, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, good&mdash;good!  How's the mistress?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's low, sir, distinctly low.  But that's nothing, sir.  They
+sometimes take it badly like that.  I'll nip back and see if you
+can come in and see her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins climbed up the stairs, while Mr. Bruno waited in
+the hall.  He heard a man's step, evidently the doctor's, leave
+his wife's room and come along the passage, so that he met
+Hollins at the top of the stairs.  There was a murmured colloquy,
+voices pitched very low, as if in reverence for suffering.
+Then Hollins came more slowly and rather timidly down to her
+master.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The doctor says the mistress is very sadly, sir.  But I
+shouldn't worry, or the like of that," faltered Hollins.  "They're
+often sadly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not listen to her, but ran up the stairs.  The doctor
+barred his way.  He was an old man, and seemed as perplexed
+and dismayed as Hollins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Just a minute, Mr. Bruno.  I&mdash;er&mdash;can't understand it.
+Your wife seems&mdash;there's no fever&mdash;her pains were very bad,
+of course, but I thought that was due to muscular strength&mdash;but
+she seems to be sinking.  It looks like collapse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno tried to push past him.  A sob was in his
+throat, and his mind was overborne with self-reproaches&mdash;for
+what he hardly knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The boy's perfect&mdash;quite perfect," said the doctor, by way
+of comfort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno had forgotten the child and rushed into the
+bedroom and looked down upon his wife.  Hollins followed with
+tear-stained cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila lay in the last surrender to death.  When he touched
+her hand she lifted her eyelids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew it would be like this, daddy," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dropped on one knee by her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My darling, it's all right.  You're only weak and worn
+out, and feel depressed.  To-morrow you'll be feeling splendid
+again.  And such a beautiful boy, they tell me.  See, down
+there by the fire.  My darling, I'm so proud of him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's right," smiled Sheila wanly.  "But I knew it would
+happen like this.  I knew all along, but I wouldn't tell you.
+Where's Hollins?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins, who had been behind, came forward, violently sobbing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bless you, ma'am, don't you worry.  You'll be all right.
+They're often took like this.  I ought to know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where's my baby?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In his little crib, ma'am, by the fire.  Such a beautiful
+child.  He's fallen asleep."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nurse picked up the little bundle to bring it to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila lifted again the heavy lids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I meant Daphne.  Bring my baby to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne's in bed.  It's after six o'clock," began Hollins;
+but seeing the dying look on her mistress's face, she moved
+towards the nursery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila opened her eyes again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it so late? ... Don't disturb her....  She mustn't
+be disturbed....  It's bad for her to be disturbed.  She's
+always slept an unbroken sleep at night right from the start.
+Hasn't she, Hollins? ... Let her sleep."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila!  Sheila!" cried Mr. Bruno.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Behind he heard Hollins muttering to the doctor:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She seemed to have sort of made up her mind&mdash;been telling
+me things to tell the children when they're grown up."  The
+recollection of this broke up Hollins, and the hearing of it
+made Mr. Bruno cry out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sheila!  Sheila!  Don't go!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His senses carried inappropriately to his brain the sibilance
+of the birds in the branches, and voices over the evening
+stillness of the fields, and some laughter of girls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sheila's eyes were closed.  All the thoughts that had kept
+her sad during the past months were in her mind again, and
+her bewilderment at the failure of her life.  "I don't
+understand&mdash;I don't understand," she kept thinking.  "I can't
+understand."  Then she remembered Daphne, and this boy&mdash;what
+was his name?  She would never know.  And that neither
+could have lived if it hadn't been for her.  There was some
+comfort in the thought&mdash;if God gave them a good life.  "O
+God, give them a good life." ... "O God, make them
+happy...."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+VII
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno's first idea after the loss of his wife was to
+leave the children and the house to the management of
+Hollins and to retire into the solitude of his study.  Such an
+attitude would best suit his grief, and had its picturesqueness.
+His grief, when he analysed it alone in his room, seemed a
+pain of pity for little Sheila, mixed with remorse for not having
+made her happier, rather than a sense of irreparable loss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his sister, who had very kindly swept down upon his
+cottage the day after Sheila's death, had other views about the
+children.  Belle Phillimore, the widow of a cavalry officer,
+was twelve years older than her brother, and, in his opinion,
+an unutterable fool.  Her head could hold no ideas except those
+provided by her dead colonel and the superannuated clergy and
+ignorant ladies of her circle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, Tom, it won't do," she pronounced.  "This Hollins
+is a good soul, I'm sure, but what little Daphne and her
+brother will want is a lady.  For instance, look at the way
+Hollins talks.  She misuses grammar like all those sort of
+people do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno nodded.  "Yes, grammar is a ticklish business."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, children are always vulgarized by the society of servants.
+Besides, she's sure to be full of old superstitions and
+fill Daphne's head with them.  Can Hollins teach the children
+their Bible and Catechism?  Why, she probably doesn't
+understand them herself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You forget, Belle," interrupted Mr. Bruno, "or perhaps I
+should say that, being a sister and an elder sister, you naturally
+have never read the few poor books that I have written....
+Or if you have read them in an idle curiosity, you have naturally
+not taken them seriously.  But, as a matter of fact, I am
+quite serious in my inability to accept your Christianity."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Tom!  You surely wouldn't have a child brought
+up without religion?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I didn't say that.  But I don't see why I should have
+a child brought up in what I believe to be error."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but it's different for you.  A child always goes to
+pieces if it isn't given some religion.  <i>You</i>'re a full-grown
+man with some cleverness."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The description did not please Mr. Bruno, and he told
+himself, "That's as much as a relative will ever allow."  But
+this self-protecting thought was an intruder among others, and
+quickly lost.  Standing by the window and staring out, he was
+really thinking of the afternoon Daphne was born and the night
+Sheila died.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should like them to have <i>some</i> religion," he said suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly.  We must get some good Christian gentlewoman
+to manage the household and the children&mdash;that was what I was
+going to suggest.  We'll advertise in a Church paper."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno brought his eyes away from the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've just had an idea.  Since these children went through the
+whole course of evolution when they were in the womb"&mdash;Belle
+moved uncomfortably&mdash;"it may do them no harm to
+go through the Christian period as well.  It may keep them
+fairly straight till they are developed enough to wander
+alone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly.  A sort of housekeeper-guardian.  Your servants
+will obey her.  They would never obey Hollins, one of their
+own number who'd been promoted.  They never do.  My poor
+Charlie used to say that the ranker officer had precious little
+control over his men; they preferred a gentleman any day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, my God!" thought Mr. Bruno; and his reading chair
+called to him like a refuge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, look here, Belle," said he.  "Is it too much to
+ask you to draw up the advertisement, and perhaps to stay
+here and keep an eye on the place till the proper person is
+engaged?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His sister give a ready nod.  She would be only too pleased to
+do so, she said.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+VIII
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These were years before public libraries and reading-rooms
+were to be found in every borough.  But in a suburb
+that was developing beyond the green fields of Hammersmith,
+one of the first of them had appeared, thanks to the munificence
+of a departed M.P.  It was an oblong room with some tall
+lecterns for such daily newspapers as the <i>Times</i> and the
+<i>Standard</i> on one side of the gangway, and on the other long
+elmwood tables for the reading of weekly journals which, when not
+in use, roosted in wire mangers on the walls.  On the Friday
+after Mr. Bruno's conversation with his sister&mdash;Friday being
+the day the best religious papers appeared&mdash;a woman entered
+this reading-room and, walking as one who knew her purpose,
+glanced immediately at the rack where the <i>Warden</i> usually
+rested.  She was tall and thin, and might have been thirty-five
+or forty years old.  Thirty-five probably, the care-lines and the
+hint of hardness having come prematurely to a face that had
+once been soft and handsome.  Her walk had the rectitude of a
+woman who defends her title to gentility by her manner, since
+her dress, though neat, can betray little but poverty.  Her black
+skirt was frayed where it touched the ground, and the first
+finger of one black kid glove was split at the seam.  As proof
+of her social grade, however, she wore a veil, or "fall,"
+terminating just below her mouth.  And she carried a neatly
+folded umbrella and a reticule in which were visiting cards with
+the name (printed, not engraved) "<i>Miss Durgon</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave a little "St&mdash;! st&mdash;!" of annoyance when her glance
+at the wire shelf showed her that the <i>Warden</i> had been removed.
+She must see who was reading it, and make sure that she got
+it next.  Walking among the tables, she found that it was being
+read by a middle-aged woman in a brown skirt and coat and a
+fur, all slightly decayed; and, as this woman had a stunted and
+bitten pencil in her right hand with which she was tracing down
+the "Situations Vacant," and in her left a soiled envelope on
+which she was noting addresses, it seemed probable that she
+would monopolise the journal for most of the morning.  Miss
+Durgon said "St&mdash;! st&mdash;!" again.  The calm way these people
+sat, as by right, over papers for which they had paid nothing!
+The ferrule of her umbrella beat impatiently on the ground,
+but without results.  So, to intimate that she was waiting for
+the <i>Warden</i>, she sat down rather deliberately in the empty chair
+next the woman, and tapped out a resigned tattoo on the table
+top.  The woman with the pencil glanced round, and, resenting
+such a hint, slightly turned her back towards Miss Durgon.  Her
+right to the paper she defended by being a little slower in her
+perusal and a little more deliberate in her noting of addresses.
+She thought it most annoying the way these women came and
+sat rudely beside you, as if they had some claim on a paper for
+which they had paid nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Minutes passed, and Miss Durgon could only express her
+impatience by repeating her tattoo on the table-top, and
+occasionally consulting a large watch at her breast.  Once another
+woman, a fat creature with a basket, came and stood by the person
+in possession, as if, in spite of Miss Durgon's long wait, she
+expected to have the paper next.  Then Miss Durgon advanced
+her chair nearer to the <i>Warden</i>, rehearsing the words she would
+utter if the fat creature stepped in before her.  But the fat
+woman, seeing she was forestalled, walked away with just such
+a "St&mdash;! st&mdash;!" as Miss Durgon's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Miss Durgon's impatience compelled her to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'd oblige me if you'd allow me to see this paper.  I've
+waited fifteen minutes already."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The woman with the pencil turned towards her; and then
+without answering gave Miss Durgon her back again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Durgon's blood was up, and her hand went out to take
+the paper.  But its possessor snatched it back and held it tight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I were you, I should learn to speak the truth," said she,
+and pretended to be lost in the advertisements, though her
+stumpy pencil was trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Speak the truth!" snapped Miss Durgon.  "What do you
+mean? ... Insolence....  Perhaps I can find an attendant."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Saying you've been waiting fifteen minutes when you've not
+been waiting five.  You'll be saying you've been an hour next."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Durgon tossed her head, and adjusted a brooch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've no desire to speak to you.  All I ask is that, when you've
+found your situation&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Situation yourself!" hissed the woman, deeply offended at
+this term.  "If you want to do the highty-tighty, I should mend
+your glove."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she resumed her perusal of the paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Durgon scorned her, and trusted that the creature felt
+the scorn.  The woman, however, finished her study and, to
+annoy this detestable creature beside her, turned to a column of
+"News from the Dioceses," and read them.  Miss Durgon continued
+to enfilade her with contempt, and at length the woman
+got up and walked away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Durgon slided along to the vacated seat, and, opening
+her reticule with dignified calm, took out a thin silver pencil,
+somewhat bitten, and a penny note-book whose leaves were
+dog-eared.  But she had hardly read two advertisements before the
+fat woman with the basket, who had appeared once before, came
+back to see if the paper were yet disengaged.  Annoyed to find
+it occupied by a person who, to judge from her pencil and
+notebook, intended remaining for some time, she sat down in the
+seat Miss Durgon had just left.  This was too exasperating.
+Here she had only just secured the paper, and this fat sack of
+a woman came and seated herself menacingly beside her, as if
+to make her hasten.  She would do nothing of the sort.  If
+anything, she would travel over the advertisements with greater
+precision and an ostentatious calm.  Nor should the fat woman's
+drummings or "Tut tuts!" create any panic in her.  So she
+jotted down the possible situations, none of which animated
+her much, till suddenly she read:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="quote">
+"WANTED, for a Widower's home.  Lady Housekeeper,
+and Guardian to two very young children.  Two servants
+(one as nurse).  Governess later.  Apply Tenter Bruno,
+Underwold, Francefield, Sussex."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+So exactly did this suit Miss Durgon that she immediately felt
+confident that Destiny had led her to it this morning, and the
+post would undoubtedly be given her.  She must hurry back
+and write at once.  In her satisfaction she only handed the paper
+to the fat lady with a pleasant smile that made her think, as she
+walked away, how much more agreeable her manners were than
+those of the disgusting creature who had first held the paper.
+Tenter Bruno?  Tenter Bruno?  A familiar name.  She had
+seen it in papers, and heard it in conversations.  Could it be the
+well-known writer?  She must find out.  If it were, it would
+make the position doubly desirable.  She foresaw herself
+studying the comfort and securing the quiet of a literary man,
+and becoming quite indispensable to him.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+IX
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Mr. Bruno's sister heard from Miss Durgon's lips,
+in the dining-room of the cottage, that she was the fifth
+daughter of an officer, she felt satisfied on all points.  And with
+some pride, as though her labours had been extensive and
+exhausting, she came into her brother's study to announce her
+complete success.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think I've got the very person, Tom, the very person you
+need.  An excellent person.  First and foremost, she's a lady,
+the daughter of an officer.  A good-looking woman, too.  I've
+represented to her, Tom, that what she's got to do is to relieve
+you of all anxiety, whether it be about the children or the
+<i>ménage</i> of the house.  She was most interested in your
+writing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno, who like all comfort-loving literary men was
+sanguine about everything except the sale of his books, was only
+too pleased to believe all his sister said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Excellent, Belle, excellent.  I'm sure I'm very grateful to
+you.  It <i>is</i> of paramount importance that I am left to the
+undisturbed pursuit of my writing and reading.  The kindest thing I
+can do for the children is to go into my study and shut the door
+and work.  But that I could never have done&mdash;at least, not with
+the necessary detachment"&mdash;Mr. Bruno seemed almost to be
+trying to reassure himself in a dubious abandonment to comfort
+&mdash;"unless I had your assurance that everything possible was
+being done for the children."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I think you can be comfortable about that," interposed
+his sister.  "She struck me as a lady in every respect."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno, thinking, as usual, what a fool Belle was, merely
+replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I'm sure I can trust your judgment on <i>that</i> point, Belle.
+I feel very satisfied and relieved at this stroke of yours."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was seeing long, quiet, self-sufficient days with his books,
+varied by an occasional kindly patronage of his children.  He
+felt vaguely that Belle had accepted the responsibility of the
+choice, and called down any blood upon her own head.  His
+clearer mind told him, in quickly closed moments, that he whose
+best works had tried to battle through to the secrets of life and
+art, had, in the matter of his children, been too indolent for
+thought.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+X
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The resentment of Hollins at this promotion of "Miss
+Skin-and-Grief" to the place she had hoped to fill was given its
+airing before the young maid in the kitchen:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I knew she was going to be awful.  I went to the door myself,
+and she says, 'Does Mrs. Phillimore live here?'  And I says, 'No,
+miss,' I said.  'This is Mr. Bruno's house, but he's got his sister
+staying with him.'  'Well, can I see her?' she says tartly.  I
+don't think she liked the 'miss.'  And I says, 'I'll see if she can
+see you, miss.'  I wasn't, so to speak, going to wave flags in
+front of her.  I said, 'What name, miss?'  And she says,
+'Durgon.'  So I went up and came down again, and says, 'Yes,
+Miss Durgon, Mrs. Phillimore can see you if you step this way.'  She
+bridled up at the 'Miss Durgon,' but said nothing, feeling,
+I suppose, that she hadn't sort of secured her position.  And,
+well, here she is, for good and all, if you ask me; and I don't
+reckon she'll worship the very ground I walk on."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Slike as not she'll get you the sack," suggested the maid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Slike as not she'll do nothing of the sort!  The master
+knows as how the mistress lef' me messages to tell the children
+when they grow up, and for their sake he'll see that I'm there
+when they're old enough to hear.  No, Miss Skin-and-Grief
+won't be able to come it over me.  I'm not afraid of her, and she
+needn't think it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the first, then, a skirmishing warfare existed between
+Hollins and Miss Durgon, with eye-darts for bullets and
+word-stabs for bayonet thrusts.  Hollins's sharpest pin was to
+distinguish her from all other ladies to whom she spoke by
+changing "Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am," into "Yes, Miss Durgon"
+and "No, Miss Durgon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was exceedingly difficult to parry, and Miss Durgon
+spoke to her employer about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno was polite, as always, but inwardly annoyed at this
+intrusion of a domestic question into the privacy Belle had
+promised him.  He h'med over some remark about "a natural
+licence to an old servant," and then added, with the smile of
+delicacy: "But all this is your sphere, Miss Durgon; you must
+do what you think best.  All I ask is to be entirely free from
+these petty worries.  Do what you think best, only don't offend
+Hollins.  My wife thought a lot of Hollins."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Durgon, whose sword-arm was always weakened by her
+fear of losing her position, realised that she had made a false
+step, and never again obtruded a domestic question on
+Mr. Bruno.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0101"></a></p>
+
+<h2>
+PART I: <i>Les Tracas des Enfants</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER I
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Daphne's earliest memories were of being awake in her
+cot while the daylight was still outside the blinds, though
+flushed with sunset.  Downstairs were footsteps and closing
+doors and women's voices; and sometimes her father's voice,
+only this was so deep as to be but half heard.  In another and
+smaller cot slept Owen, her baby brother, who often woke and
+cried for a minute and dropped off to sleep again.  He frightened
+her a little when, after dark, he would suddenly climb
+through a crescendo from whimpering to crying, and crying to
+screaming; and she would be glad when Hollins came up and
+quieted him with a fruity and ingratiating, "Now, go to by-by
+like a good little boy," or picked him up and sang to him:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  Sonny go round the sun,<br>
+  Sonny go round the moon,<br>
+  Sonny go round the mulberry bush,<br>
+  On a Sunday afternoon&mdash;&mdash;<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+though Daphne was always faintly worried by this equating of a
+mulberry bush with the sun and moon.  If Miss Durgon came
+up instead, she was much more prosaic.  She put Owen firmly
+on his other side, and added as she went out, to Daphne, who
+was sitting up, big-eyed, to watch the rearrangement of Owen:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now you go to sleep.  We don't want nonsense from you
+too."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the passing of time Daphne learnt that there were three
+stable people in her world: Hollins, round, and in a blue cotton
+uniform, chiefly associated with comfort and friendliness; Miss
+Durgon, long, black, and chiefly associated with correction,
+church and manners; and her father, with a pointed beard.  She
+conceived that fathers and beards went together, and was much
+surprised the first time she saw some one else's father who had
+not even a moustache.  How he could be old enough to be a
+father was not clear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father was a jolly person in the early morning before
+breakfast.  At half-past seven she was allowed to go into his
+bedroom and to climb on to the eiderdown for the playing of a
+game called "When I say 'kipper.'"  It consisted in Daphne's
+inventing a long story to which her father must listen carefully,
+because directly she worked in the dangerous word "kipper" he
+was to tickle her violently.  Her shrieks of alarm, after uttering
+the word "kipper," always began before the tickling got really
+started, and her yells of laughter and screams for mercy
+generally rewarded Mr. Bruno's tickling campaign within thirty
+seconds of its inception.  When Owen was old enough to play
+this game it was doubly exciting; for sometimes he would work
+in the dangerous word, and she, unprepared for it so soon, was
+caught and tickled till she rolled, screaming with hysterical
+laughter, off the bed to the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some mornings she woke very early, and knew she would not
+go to sleep again, because it was daylight; and then her games
+had to be silent, for it was an offence to wake Owen; so she
+would use her knee or her foot to lift the bedclothes into a tent
+and sprawl about under them, divided in her mind whether they
+formed an Indian's wigwam or a Commander-in-Chief's
+headquarters.  Wearying of this, she would lie on her back and with
+her knees form the white quilt into a range of mountains.
+There were Alpine pathways up the folds, and if she half-closed
+her eyes she could see the St. Bernard dogs and the pious monks
+as they looked for dead men in the snowdrifts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins was a good person when she told them tales, but her
+nursery rhymes struck Daphne from the first as rather silly.
+Cows couldn't jump over moons, nor dishes run away with
+spoons.  And "Old Mother Hubbard," which told of an old
+woman going to the larder to get a bone for her dog and finding
+the place empty: vaguely Daphne felt that as a story it led to
+nothing, and certainly wasn't worth making a song about.  Nor
+could she see that little Jack Horner's remark, "What a good boy
+am I!" had any sense or sequence.  Though in courtesy she
+applauded Hollins for her frequent rendering of these poems,
+she felt uncomfortably that the pleasant old servant was sinking
+in her estimation by uttering such nonsense.  Her father agreed
+that Jack Horner's exclamation was a <i>non-sequitur</i>, and told
+her that she had a quite exceptional clarity of brain, which
+would be a curse to her through life.  And then he added:
+"How's this for a nursery rhyme, Duffy?" and recited gently:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  How many miles to Babylon?<br>
+  Three-score and ten.<br>
+  Can I get there by candlelight?<br>
+  Aye.  There and back again.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"That's not far from beauty, Duffy, as I hope you'll be able
+to see one day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And somehow it <i>did</i> sound different.  Its measured movement
+pleased her, and its blue sadness; and these made her feel
+solemn and dreamy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fairy tales weren't nonsense, because they were admittedly
+stories of people in an imaginary world, and so could be
+completely, engrossingly satisfying.  They were her monopolising
+delight when she could read&mdash;at least, Grimm's were.  Grimm's
+she read again and again, lolling in a deep arm-chair with her
+heels beneath her, and the book on the chair's arm.  Grimm's
+stories were real stories, clear and exciting.  Hans Andersen's
+were different: she could not get hold of them, and they were
+rather terrible.  Yet after she had abandoned the annoying
+book they haunted her strangely: "The Girl who Trod on the
+Loaf"&mdash;ugly, dark, wonderful story; "The Red Shoes," "Ib and
+little Christina," and "Something."  Whole sentences from them
+hung in her memory: "She flew away, as if she were flying
+straight into the sun."  "They said 'Clink' and were
+broken."  "And that was something."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't understand, Duffy," said Mr. Tenter Bruno,
+when the annoyingness of Hans Andersen was pointed out to
+him.  "But while Grimm only entertains you with what is
+agreeable, Hans Andersen <i>troubles</i> you with beauty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When, in Hollins's phrase, she was "rising nine," her father
+decided to move to town.  Earning a much larger income now,
+he could have lived in considerable style, but for the ever-gnawing
+fear that either his brain-power or his vogue would dwindle,
+and the workhouse ensue.  This made him resolve that his place
+in town should not be in one of the expensive districts.  But it
+would have to be fairly big, if it were to accommodate the two
+children, Miss Durgon, Hollins, and another servant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such a house was found at last in Deseret Road, West
+Kensington.  The sanguine Mr. Bruno was quite pleased with it:
+a tall, red-brick place, with basement and area and four stories
+above&mdash;the sort of place which would both make him very
+comfortable and allow itself to be called a suburban barbarity.  The
+back of the house looked over the grounds of Queen's Club, so
+that one could watch the Varsity sports and football matches
+from all the windows that were above the grounds' encircling
+trees.  Opposite the house front, across a good road, was a
+sunken waste ground waiting for the builder to arrive upon it.
+In the neighbourhood were many such places, though the long
+screens of uniform houses were building apace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So there joined Daphne's more vivid memories the picture
+of that exciting day when they journeyed up to London and
+their new house.  To her, who had only been told of London,
+it was a move as exciting as the departure of town children for
+the sea; the packing in the previous week, the trunks standing
+in the hall the night before, the arrival of the "fly" from the
+Ballard Arms, the stacking of the trunks about the carriage, and
+the drive, thus laden, to the station.  Hollins and the maid had
+gone ahead to prepare the house, so Daphne and Owen secured
+one pair of corner seats in the railway carriage, and their father
+and Miss Durgon the other.  More people got in, which meant
+extinction for Owen, Miss Durgon telling him he must keep
+his seat and not fidget.  Daphne, having been wakeful most of
+the night, was lulled to sleep by the passing of the hedgerows
+and palings, and by the slow rolling and swinging of the train,
+till the voices of the strange occupants, and of her father and
+Miss Durgon, floated in a luminous mist behind her half sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was awakened by a jolting and slowing of the train and
+the movements of the people in the compartment.  The November
+day had darkened, and out of her window she saw more
+interlacing railway lines than she could have believed possible,
+all of them wet, as if rain had fallen here, and shining in
+gaslight.  The backs of the houses were dark-grey and gloomy, and
+the few lit windows frightened her with their suggestiveness.
+Unconsciously she created stories of misery for the people
+behind them.  The train rolled into the colossal station that
+bruised and battered her with its noises and smell and hurrying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We must get a four-wheeler," said her father importantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered what a four-wheeler was, till the porter
+trundled their luggage alongside a "fly" much more squat than
+the carriage sent by the Ballard Arms.  There was a head-achy
+smell inside it, and she was glad when her father sat her on his
+knee, for she received a draught from the window, as well as
+being able to see the things coming into view.  First, there were
+lighted shops and entangling traffic; then a broad, roomy road
+of tall houses; then a great highway that seemed all coloured
+buses and four-wheelers and jingling hansoms.  These hansoms,
+she said, were like sedan chairs drawn by horses.  All of it kept
+her commenting and questioning, till of a sudden she was given
+a fear&mdash;one of those fears that one did not tell to adults for
+they were not liable to them.  There was a man running beside
+their cab.  A man in a cloth cap, with a muffler round his neck.
+In and out of the pedestrians he padded, sometimes on the
+roadway, sometimes on the pavement, often glancing at the luggage
+stacked on the cab's roof.  The scenery changed, but the padding
+man was as unlosable as a shadow.  She drew back her face
+from the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were bowling now down a wide road, on one side of
+which were rows of tall houses, painted white or cream, or left
+a cindery grey, and on the other an interminable line of railings
+with trees and grass beyond.  Daphne could only judge that a
+garden so endless must be the Queen's and she inquired of her
+father:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is that where the Queen lives, daddy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; she used to live there, or a little farther on&mdash;in fact,
+she was born there, but, like us, she's moved."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And who lives there now, then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno controlled a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, the Prince Consort has a seat there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who's the Prince Consort?"  She thought foggily of
+Grimm's princes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, he's a howling swell in his place in there," assured her
+father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne said no more, for, in staring out, she had seen the
+shadow-man still keeping level with the cab.  They had passed
+into a neighbourhood that, though it had some tall, red-brick
+houses, was subtly inferior to anything they had come through
+before.  Miss Durgon made the remark: "Dear me, this is all
+very familiar ground," and Daphne, while envying her this
+knowledge, thought that somehow the neighbourhood suited
+Miss Durgon.  What she meant she could not have said:
+probably that it was a dark and well-behaved neighbourhood,
+a genteel hanger-on of the fine white houses, and a place that
+would prohibit the noisier games.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the cab left the streets where the buses were, and got
+into quiet roads of residential houses.  It seemed to turn round
+every corner that Daphne gambled it would turn round.  And
+always the running man turned with it.  It stopped at last before
+a high house, one of a red-brick row, with many white steps
+leading up to its front door.  There was a lamp-post opposite
+the area gate, and she could see by its light that the dark-green
+paint on the hall door was raised into little blisters.  Interesting
+things to prick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cab-door opened by itself&mdash;or, rather, it was opened by
+the shadow, who touched his cloth cap.  Daphne, whom her
+father was about to hand out, shrunk back as if she were being
+handed to some dark, night messenger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's all right," laughed her father.  "This gentleman has only
+come to help us with our luggage."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That moment the hall door of their new home opened, flooding
+the steps with gas-light; and Daphne, seeing Hollins standing
+there, rushed hurriedly past the shadow into her arms.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Because of its complete difference from their Sussex home,
+the house in Deseret Road appealed to Daphne as a place much
+more romantic and thrilling&mdash;especially on foggy falls of their
+first November, when it could assume an air of the sinister.
+She and Owen early examined, not without fears, its every room
+and cupboard and cellar.  Owen at first had not seen much
+reason to be afraid of them&mdash;nor, in truth, had Daphne&mdash;but, in
+order to make them more interesting, she had deliberately
+worked on his imagination and her own with rather disturbing
+ideas about secret panels and subterranean passages, till Owen
+was obviously terrified of them, and she herself wondered what
+exactly her feelings about them were.  To explore at night the
+kitchen and pantries, which were actually below ground and
+down a stairway like a mine-shaft, was a thrilling adventure
+when prosecuted with a companion&mdash;unthinkable alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The long dining-room was a dangerous place because of the
+huge syphon for making soda-water that stood in the centre of
+the sideboard, before the mirror.  This great bulbous, though
+neat-waisted glass thing, encased in a trellis-work of wire, was
+as large as a child, and Hollins had told them that the wire
+casing was to prevent it exploding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dangerous things," she had said.  "They have to be all
+wrapped up in wire like that, being apt to go sort of what I
+call&mdash;off."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Daphne, in the first weeks, always went past the sideboard
+quickly; and she marvelled, with hand at her mouth, when her
+father lifted the thing carelessly, and even shook it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sounds outside the house, too, were so different from
+those around their Sussex home.  There the birds had sung,
+hardly heeded, in the boughs or under the eaves, or fluttered out
+of the creeper on the walls; and footsteps were seldom heard
+unless they were those of Eadigo on the gravel, or some visitor
+approaching the door.  But here in Deseret Road sounded the
+rattle of two-wheeled tradesmen's carts, almost under the
+breakfast-room window; the crunching of errand-boys' hand-barrows;
+the ringing on the pavement of the feet of passers-by; or a loud
+and continued vibrating as some idle, whistling urchin dragged
+a stick along the area railings.  In the winter came the bell of
+the muffin-man; and at other times the musical, sad cry of men
+and women selling lavender:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  Lavender, sweet lavender,<br>
+  Sixteen branches a penny<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The errand boys were interesting because they could often
+be encouraged to put out their tongues or make long noses.
+And the muffin-man was never to be missed; if Daphne
+announced his appearance, Owen rushed to the breakfast-room
+window.  He balanced a whole tray of muffins on his head, with
+nothing of the contortion, nervousness and reaching of one's
+tongue up to one's nose that Daphne had found inevitable when
+trying to do it with the butler's tray.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ever afterwords the muffin bell made her think of a winter
+Sunday afternoon in Deseret Road.  A year had passed.  Father
+was away&mdash;tremendously far away.  Having decided to treat
+himself to a holiday in India, he had departed in a cloud of
+romance, after showing the children his cabin trunks, his
+tropical hats, and pictures of the huge ship in which he would
+actually live for several weeks.  Once he had "dressed up" in
+his Indian toggery, and beautifully neat and handsome,
+distinguished and whimsical he had looked in his white drill,
+smiling above his brown beard.  Father's absence brought one
+advantage: Hollins, instead of Miss Durgon, took them to
+church.  When father was at home, Miss Durgon had always
+conducted them with great parade to St. Antony's near by.
+It was a long, unintelligible service, and Daphne's only interest
+was to hope that some one would faint again, like a young woman
+who had caused a splendid diversion one warm spring morning.
+But nobody ever obliged again, and Daphne's detestation of
+church was suddenly increased to horror by the fixed idea that
+one day <i>she</i> was destined to provide the excitement.  This
+heart-stopping thought would come over her, if the sermon were at all
+long, so that she would send up an ejaculatory prayer as sincere
+as that house of prayer had ever known: "O God, make him
+stop!"  Miss Durgon's deportment at church incensed her more
+than anywhere else; it was so silly the way she opened her Bible,
+directly the preacher announced the text and its reference.
+What was the sense in looking them up when she had just been
+told what they were?  Guessing that her father did not approve
+of church, she one day announced to Miss Durgon that she
+didn't think she would go that morning; Father didn't go.  But
+Miss Durgon made short work of this: "Your father's a very
+clever man.  When you're as clever as he is, you'll be able to
+question whether or not you'll go to church"; to which Daphne
+answered promptly: "Father says I <i>am</i> clever."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now that Mr. Bruno had gone away, Miss Durgon ceased
+going to church, delegating to Hollins the task of taking the
+children.  And going to Hollins's church was nothing like so
+detestable as going to Miss Durgon's.  Hollins had a church of
+her own fancy, quite a distance away, to which you went in a
+bus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do seem to fancy it, I must say," she told the children.  "I
+can't explain it&mdash;it sort of <i>gets</i> me.  Your St. Antony's doesn't
+get me at all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had first taken them there in the morning, telling them
+they would be pleased with the procession; it was as good as a
+theatre.  This had excited them, and in their pew they eagerly
+awaited the beginning of the entertainment.  When the banners
+and crucifixes and candles and incense and scarlet-skirted boys
+and quilted clergymen poured out from behind the high altar,
+Owen, who had been watching them with a falling mouth,
+suddenly looked up to Hollins and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it all right?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins murmured "Sh&mdash;sh," and nodded "Yes," thereby
+answering the question that England had essayed to answer
+for sixty years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this particular winter afternoon, the children's service was
+more than usually entertaining.  Glossy coloured pictures were
+brought round by the stout, smiling gentleman in the linen and
+lace, and distributed to the children.  It was better than the
+crackers thrown by the clown in the pantomime, for every child
+seemed (if craning heads saw aright) to receive one, and the
+stout gentleman had almost as merry a smile as the clown's.
+When he came alongside Owen, who was at the end of the pew&mdash;in
+fact, almost in the nave, such was his open-mouthed interest&mdash;and
+offered him a picture, Owen looked up at Hollins and
+asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it all right?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Hollins said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Sh&mdash;&mdash;!  Quite all right.  Take it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he took it and began to chew one of its corners.  Daphne
+had some difficulty in taking hers for she was struggling with a
+fit of giggling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Towards the end of the service, when the church was darkening,
+another exciting and mirthful thing happened: the verger
+lit the gas-brackets one after another.  Then came a hymn, "All
+things bright and beautiful," and a procession in which the
+children fell in, pew by pew, behind the choir, and walked round
+the church.  The little ones, Daphne noticed with a throb of pity
+that hurt her, held the hands of older brothers and sisters, and
+ran and stumbled along, dropping their books and weeping bitter
+tears that were unheeded in the roar of:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  <i>All</i> things bright and beautiful,<br>
+  All creatures great and small,<br>
+  <i>All</i> things wise and wonderful,<br>
+  The Lord God made them all.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+One by one the pews in front of the Brunos emptied, and
+Daphne got quite exhilarated, as it drew near their moment to
+turn into the nave.  Owen, being on the outside of the pew, had
+to lead off, and he prefaced so unusual a proceeding by looking
+up at Hollins with eyebrows that obviously inquired into its
+correctness.  Reassured, he stepped out to join the others, first
+making certain, however, that Hollins and his sister were
+coming too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When, after the blessing and a hymn sung most amusingly on
+one's knees, they passed out with the crowd into the road, they
+found it quite dark, though they had not yet had tea.  They
+walked quickly down the road, Daphne talking excitedly and
+skippingly to Hollins about the service.  And then the muffin
+bell sounded.  And even while they were drawing attention to
+it, a muffin-man swung round a distant corner, and approached
+them along their very pavement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is there muffins for tea?" asked Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You shouldn't ought to say, Is there?  Where's your grammar?
+You should say, Are there?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Daphne said it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, are there?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, Miss Inquisitive, there aren't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, couldn't we take some back with us?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well now, did you ever?  Of course not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, do let's."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owen said nothing, being not quite clear whether so abnormal
+a development were all right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Holly, may we?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne always gained her point by calling Hollins this
+endearing name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know you didn't ought to buy anything of a Sunday."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you ought.  Didn't he tell us that the disciples picked
+the corn as they walked through the field?  Why, I believe
+Owen's is a picture of them....  It is!"  She gave a little
+jump.  "Oh, Holly, I believe you're a Pharisee.  Look, that's
+you in the background, looking snitchy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're a clever one," said Hollins.  "You say more than
+your prayers, you do."  And, as the muffin-man was now close,
+she stopped before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, good!" muttered Daphne, as Hollins bought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were soon at the wide high street, where the buses were.
+They clambered inside one, Hollins refusing them permission to
+mount to the top, on the score that the air after dark was
+treacherous.  So, wrapped up in their reefer coats, they sat in
+the bus, swinging their legs, and staring up at the advertisements
+of Sapolio, or down at a new one, which was fixed at the
+bus's end, a picture of a very discontented baby climbing out of
+a bath to get a piece of soap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What does it say beneath?" asked Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It says, 'He won't be happy till he gets it.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's he want it for?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How should I know, silly?  Eat it, I expect."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins was always shorter with Owen than with Daphne.
+She believed she had some special feeling for Daphne, having
+been beside her father when the news came of her birth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did he get it?" asked Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How should I know, silly one?  No, I don't think he did.
+He fell down and hurt his nose."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owen's hand shot to the bridge of his nose in nervous
+sympathy.  He brought it away quickly with a timid glance, to
+see if any one had remarked so absurd a motion.  But no one
+had because the bus had stopped to allow of a lady's entrance.
+As all the seats were occupied, she would have been obliged to
+stand if Hollins hadn't nudged Owen and whispered, "Who's
+a little gentleman now?"  Owen was dreading this; not because
+he minded giving up his seat, but because he so disliked the
+publicity, and the not knowing what to say to the lady.  She,
+however, saved him from speech by saying, "Well, that is kind
+of you," and Hollins by adding, "Not at all.  He's pleased."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they were home again, they found that Miss Durgon
+was out, and not likely to be back all the evening.  Then it was
+that Daphne heard Hollins mutter her mysterious words, "I
+guessed as much.  I thought so....  Well, come down to my
+room, and we'll have a jolly tea together there....  Ha&mdash;I
+knew it...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Down in her common little sitting-room, she poked up the fire
+till it flared with excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do like a nice blaze on a winter's afternoon.  There's nothing
+like a bit of a flare to cheer you up.  See that blue flame?
+That means frost.  Now you watch that, and if you're very
+good, I'll bring up something that's even better than muffins."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, what's that, what's that?" demanded Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies," teased Hollins
+as she disappeared.  In a few minutes she returned with a paper
+bag, and, kneeling heavily on the rug before the fire, produced
+chestnuts, to a shriek of delight from Daphne and a request for
+further information and explanation from Owen.  The chestnuts
+were placed on the bars of the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After tea they told stories in the glow of the fire, and had a
+concert, singing with the help of Hollins, "Way down upon the
+Swanee River," and the hymn, "I love to hear the story," not
+out of piety but because its tune was so curly.  And lastly,
+Hollins gave her famous solo about the little tailor boy, who
+went skipping into smoke with a broadcloth under his arm:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  With a broadcloth under his arm,<br>
+  With a broadcloth under his arm,<br>
+  And the little tailor boy went skipping into smoke<br>
+  With a broadcloth under his arm.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Which was always a signal for Hollins to say, "And now you
+go skipping off to bed."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0102"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER II
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was growing tall.  If by mistake she ran into a
+room of visitors and rushed out again with an "Oh,
+sorry!" the impression she left was of thin legs seen above the
+knee, and untidy brown hair.  Also of a hot blush, less of
+shyness than of sudden guilt and consequent laughter.  And
+somebody was sure to say, "She's going to be a tomboy and no
+mistake."  Her high spirits were so high that often when she was
+alone she felt she could scream with them.  This over-plus of
+vitality, her father used to say hopefully, would run to creative
+work or a passionate love one day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Disliking most things that Miss Durgon recommended,
+Daphne had not decided what sort of character she would like
+to have.  She was a malleable mass.  But one ambition was
+warming.  The frequent repetition of the phrase "tomboyish"
+had pleased her, and she decided to live up to it.  She decided
+to hate dolls, doll's houses and sewing.  And she was secretly
+pleased when people said, "The girl ought to have been the boy,
+and the boy ought to have been the girl," for she did not doubt
+that she could dominate Owen any day of the week.  This desire
+to be masculine, introduced from without, was perhaps the
+earliest principle to strike a root in her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She imagined that her hatred of repression&mdash;or, in other
+words, her hatred of Miss Durgon&mdash;was the natural outcome
+of her manliness.  The obvious fact that Owen was timid of
+their guardian while <i>she</i> could be outspokenly rebellious, and,
+please God, intended to be more so, gave her a deal of
+satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once, sitting in the little room below stairs, and talking to
+Hollins, who was working a sewing-machine, she asked her for
+an opinion on Miss Durgon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is she a good woman, Hollins?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins appeared to lift her lips towards her nose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, that's not for me to say.  What some of us think we
+keep to ourselves."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say, Hollins, shall I tell you what I think, if you tell me
+what you think."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; I shan't tell you what I think if you tell me what you
+think."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Hollins!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins turned the wheel monotonously, her head slightly on
+one side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There are some things one thinks that are best thought and
+left at that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?  Because they ain't pretty, silly one.  Now do you
+know?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean, you think Miss Durgon a beast?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Daphne, I never said nothing of the sort.  And I'll
+thank you not to go putting it about that I did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne started to be ingratiating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, but you meant it, didn't you, Hollins?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I never, so there!  All I mean is, some people are made in
+their own way and can't help it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Made what way, Hollins?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins snapped an entangled thread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Made so as they know how to worm themselves into
+positions, and sort of make themselves indispensable, and get
+the power into their hands.  Oh, it's clever; I'd be the last to
+say it wasn't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She doesn't like you, Hollins."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She doesn't, doesn't she?  Milady doesn't.  Well, I wonder
+now if that'll spoil my appetite.  I wonder if I shall lay awake
+fretting about that....  And how, Miss Mischief, may you
+happen to know whether she likes me or not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because she often says I oughtn't to hang about you so
+much."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She does?  Says you shouldn't ought to hang about me so
+much?  Oh!  There's where you are.  I hold me tongue from
+speaking against her, but she'll say what she likes about me
+readily enough.  There's the lady.  And mind you, I've kep'
+quiet about more things than one I've noticed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've noticed, f'r instance&mdash;however....  Common people
+like Hollins, you see, haven't got eyes, and what they think don't
+matter, as they've no brains worth speaking of...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The forces moving towards a more overt war between Daphne
+and Miss Durgon were not only working in Daphne.  Miss
+Durgon, who had now been many years with Mr. Bruno, was
+no longer nervous of jeopardising her position by a false move.
+She had summed up her employer, and knew that his love of
+ease and unworried seclusion would resist any idea of change.
+She was still under forty-five, and very different, of course,
+from what she appeared to the eyes of her wards.  Naught of her
+slimness or good carriage had left her, and now that she was
+earning a fair stipend and could supplement it from the
+housekeeping money, she dressed remarkably well.  To people of her
+own generation and class she showed a vivacity and cleverness
+such as never appeared before those creatures who could not
+interest her&mdash;children and servants.  Of late Miss Durgon had
+enjoyed the admiration of some men, though in each case,
+unfortunately, they were the husbands of her friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This admiration had increased her self-respect, and, as a
+result, her indignation at the rebelliousness of Daphne.  The
+indignation demanded an early overthrow of the child.  And by
+the side of this sense that Daphne must be taught her place sat
+an unhealthy but growing desire.  Though she knew nothing
+about suppressed sex, she saw that there was perversion
+somewhere in an idea that could so stimulate her.  She wanted to
+whip Daphne at least once.  There was a sensuous quality about
+the child that would make the whipping of her pleasant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The collision came when Miss Durgon tried to stop Daphne's
+game of "Getting up early."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The children had discovered this game in the months before
+their father left for India.  Those were summer days, and
+Daphne would wake up Owen as soon as she herself was
+awakened by the sunlight streaming behind the blinds and the
+chatter of the birds in Queen's Club Gardens.  They would dress
+with all the interest of getting up before any one else was astir,
+and then creep down the stairs, a little nervous of the deserted,
+blind-dimmed house.  Unchaining and unbolting the hall door,
+they ran out into the sunny publicity of Deseret Road.  In their
+hands they carried a toy cricket bat (one solid piece of yellow
+wood without a splice), four stumps and a tennis ball.  Their
+destination was a sunken waste ground at the corner of
+Goscombe Road, which, though hillocky, weed-grown, and not
+empty of refuse, required no great imagination to be converted
+into Queen's Club Gardens.  There they would set their stumps
+and imitate the white-flannelled cricketers whom they had
+watched from their back windows.  Daphne represented
+Cambridge and Owen Oxford.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clearest line of division in the human race was that which
+divided the people who were Oxford from those who were
+Cambridge.  Owen was Oxford, because Oxford always won
+the Boat-race; Daphne was Cambridge because Cambridge never
+did.  There were other reasons for their choice: Owen was
+Oxford because his father was, and his name began with an O;
+Daphne was Cambridge because light blue was a nicer colour
+than dark blue, and D, her initial, was nearer C than O, and
+because hardly any one else she knew was Cambridge, and
+because Owen was Oxford.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cambridge batted first, and Owen, for Oxford, opened the
+bowling.  If Owen's ball came near enough, she tried to hit it;
+and when she missed it, ran after it, picked it up and returned
+it to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bowl us something one can hit," she shouted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes, after she had hit it, Owen stopped it and gathered
+it up; and then she would instruct him to hold it while she ran
+to his stump and back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's what I have to do," she explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Owen examined the stitches of the tennis ball while
+Daphne ran to where he was standing and back to her wicket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now you bowl again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But when can I bat?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When you've knocked over these three stumps, silly.  Don't
+you know the game?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owen looked a little sulky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't hit them with you in front."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, when I've made thirty I'll retire."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Daphne bowled she would only consent to bowl over-arm.
+That was the way they did it at Queen's Club.  Sometimes
+the milkman would stay his clattering cart to watch her,
+and call out: "Good old W. G.!  What price Lord 'Awke?"  His
+"That's right!  Sling 'em up, miss!" always deepened the
+colour of her cheeks, already warmed with running; and she
+would try to impress him by sending down an especially good
+ball.  If it proved, however, to be rather wide she would call out
+to Owen loud explanations of so unusual a failure, hoping to
+keep her reputation with the milkman.  When the game was
+over she hurried back to tell her father the result of the match,
+the number of runs she had scored, and how she had been
+obliged to retire in order that Owen might have an innings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now that Mr. Bruno was abroad Miss Durgon withdrew
+her consent from the game.  At breakfast one morning, when
+she heard that they had been out, she pronounced, as all rose
+from the table:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're not to do that any more.  Do you clearly understand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?" asked Daphne, with symptoms of sulkiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?  Because I say so.  You must allow me to know
+better than you.  Ladies' children don't play in the streets."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(In the vocabulary of Miss Durgon there were two kinds of
+children&mdash;"ladies' children" and "district children," the latter
+being sometimes called "poor people's children.")
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Father used to let us," grumbled Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't answer back.  Your father has entrusted your bringing
+up to me, and doesn't want to be bothered about it.  You're
+older now, too.  Besides, cricket isn't a nice game for a little
+girl."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never mind why.  You'll understand these things later on.
+It's indelicate."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was a little nervous of her next remark, but as she
+was more frightened of convicting herself of fear, she hurriedly
+forced it out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall ask father when he comes back."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You excessively rude little girl!" exclaimed Miss Durgon.
+"You want a good whipping.  I've a good mind to give you one.
+You've been getting quite out of hand lately."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That Miss Durgon was empowered to give her a whipping
+had not entered Daphne's mind.  Hitherto, when it had been a
+case for such extreme measures, Miss Durgon had spoken to
+her father.  But that was when she had been very young.  These
+words of her guardian momentarily repulsed her.  But feeling
+the ignominy of surrender, and observing that Owen was staring
+open-mouthed from one to the other as they exchanged these
+interesting remarks, she persisted.  One had to play up
+before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the Bible they played in the streets.  Father Alderwood
+said so.  They played at funerals in the market-place, and Jesus
+Christ played with them&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne!  I never heard such talk.  Go out of the room at
+once.  How dare you talk blasphemously like that?  Upon my
+soul&mdash;mark my words&mdash;if you try on this arguing with me I
+shall one day take a stick to you.  I mean it.  Mixing up
+religion and play like that!  Little humbug!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not a humbug," said Daphne, walking round the
+breakfast table to keep it between Miss Durgon and herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're a little humbug," repeated Miss Durgon, who had so
+lost her temper as hardly to know what she was talking about.
+"Parading religion, and at the same time being insolent and
+disobedient.  You're a regular little Pharisee."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To be called what you have called others is always as
+wounding as it is astonishing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not a Pharisee."  The tears sprang to Daphne's eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you are; and will you keep quiet, I tell you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, if I'm a Pharisee, you're a Sadducee."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Upon my soul!  Come here!  Don't run away!  It's no
+good; I shall catch you sooner or later."  Miss Durgon had
+paused, feeling the indignity of running after a child.
+"Insulting a woman who's giving up her life to you like that!
+Sadducee indeed!  You don't know what a Sadducee is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I do.  It's some one who doesn't believe in the
+Resurrection."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne, come here.  I'm going to give you a thorough good
+whipping.  You've earned it richly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne ran towards the door.  Miss Durgon arrived there
+at the same time.  Daphne slipped past her, and, crying loudly,
+ran out of the room.  She heard Miss Durgon call, "Stop that
+child!" so raced upstairs, and remembering the bolt on the
+bathroom door, rushed in, slammed the door, and shot home the bolt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Breathless, she threw herself on the linoleum floor, and sobbed
+with heaving shoulders.  Knocks came to the door, and the voice
+of Miss Durgon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Open at once, Daphne.  Bad, naughty little girl!  Open the
+door at once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shan't!  I shan't!" sobbed Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door shook.  Daphne had a wild idea, should the door
+yield, of leaping out of the window and crashing to her death
+in the street.  She jumped up at a moment when the door
+seemed likely to give, and flung up the sash.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you doing?" cried the alarmed Miss Durgon, and
+the door ceased to shake.  "Daphne, what are you doing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne roared through her tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you come in, I'm going out of the window.  Out of the
+window."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're a bad, evil little girl.  I'm sure I don't know what
+to do with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Durgon retired; and Daphne and she were separated by
+the bathroom door, both a little alarmed at the storm, and rather
+vague as to how it had arisen.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+More than once this bathroom had been the scene of a solitary
+performance at which Daphne would have been ashamed to be
+caught, though it gave her a sweet, troubled delight such as no
+other game could give.  It had sprung from the everlasting lilt
+in her mind of some lines of poetry, found in her history after
+the story of King Charles's beheading:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  He nothing common did nor mean<br>
+  Upon that memorable scene ...<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite,<br>
+  To vindicate his helpless right;<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But bowed his comely head<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Down, as upon a bed.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The nature of her delight in them she did not analyse; but a
+kindred delight&mdash;an emotion not empty of troubling&mdash;had used
+to come to her, in the old home, when she saw a shaft of yellow
+lamplight thrown on to evening grass; or a wood of dark firs
+spining a hill in the landscape's blue distance; or those stretches
+of rusty bracken, with here and there a lonely, blown tree, that
+were Shadwell Common in autumn; or red firelight on old wood,
+when sunset had fallen before tea, and the lamps were not yet
+lit.  It was the same haunting something that came out of Hans
+Andersen: "She flew away as if she were flying straight into
+the sun."  And the old nursery rhyme had it:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  How many miles to Babylon?<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Three score and ten.<br>
+  Can I get there by candlelight?<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Aye, there and back again.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"He nothing common did nor mean."  A scene in which she
+died like that, wrongfully condemned but too proud to protest
+her innocence, was Daphne's shameful game in the bathroom
+behind a bolted door.  At first she used to place the chair for a
+block, and walk towards it through a street of staring faces.
+Before its feet she knelt down, so that her hair fell away from
+the neck.  There, without visible tremor, she awaited the blow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But gradually the drama in this form failed to express fully
+the movements within her.  She wanted the cruelly executed
+person to be herself, Daphne Bruno, not a character in history.
+And in these days people were never beheaded.  If the game
+was to satisfy her, it must be brought into the realism of the
+present.  And so it changed into a trial for murder, where
+Daphne stood in the dock (her hands on the woodwork round
+the bath) and listened in silence to the perjury of witnesses, or
+turned grave, brave eyes on the judge as he pronounced the
+sentence.  After hearing his words, while the tense solemnity
+remained in the court, she made a brief speech, proclaiming her
+faith that her character would one day be cleared, and thanking
+those friends in the gallery who had never doubted her innocence,
+and the Q.C. who had defended her as ably as it was in
+the power of man to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, having done nothing common, mean or vulgar, she
+turned and followed the warder to the condemned cell.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+But to-day, in stormy mood, she could play no such game.
+Picking herself up from the floor, she sat sideways on the chair
+with her arm along its back.  Her sobs were now internal and
+intermittent.  The chair as a permanent seat proved uncomfortably
+hard, so she sat on the cork mat on the linoleum and picked
+off chips from its broken corner.  When this palled, she stood
+up and traced her finger along the squares in the tiled
+wallpaper, reaching at last the hole in the plaster made by the
+door-key.  Here she played "snowstorms," putting a finger in the
+hole and, by scratching it downwards, sending a tenuous shower
+of powdered plaster to the floor.  But this palled too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very quiet was the house, as if her disgrace were like an illness,
+compelling all the inmates to go about their business with
+subdued steps.  She looked out of the window, and watched
+the passing of carts and pedestrians.  Sometimes she saw
+children known to her, and drew away her head lest they guessed
+anything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If only she had a book to read!  If only she could make a
+silent dash up the next flight of stairs to the nursery, and seize
+a book, and rush back to her fastness!  Guiltily she pulled the
+bolt, opened the door, and listened.  Not a sound anywhere.
+She tiptoed through an ante-room on to the landing, and then
+leapt like a chamois from stair to stair.  Her heart beat fast as
+she searched quickly along the shelf that contained her few
+books.  There was hardly anything she had not read several
+times, except, indeed, "Little Women," that Aunt Belle had given
+her for her birthday, and she had refused to read on account of
+its feminine title.  On the ground floor a door shut.  Instantly
+she seized the book, and hurtled downstairs to her bathroom.
+She rested her book on the woodwork round the bath, whose
+varnish had been so spoiled by soap; and with her head on her
+left palm and her right hand playing with the tap-handles, she
+began to read.  In a few minutes the tap-handles were neglected;
+she was in America with Jo and Meg and Beth and Amy.  Her
+disgrace withdrew from memory, save in moments when she
+contrasted Miss Durgon with the lovable Marmee, or saw a
+likeness between her and the peppery Aunt March.  The high
+sentiments emitted by Jo and Meg and Beth and Amy made
+her feel rather good herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wearying of the hard seat, she placed the open book upon
+the floor, and herself on her stomach before it, with her hands
+supporting her chin, her legs opened, and one foot occasionally
+rising into the air.  By now the Marches were the most
+fascinating family in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The book must surely be literature of a high order, with all
+those noble resolutions and elegant little sermons by Marmee.
+There stirred in Daphne, for the first time, the ambition to
+write.  She stopped reading for a minute, and stared over the
+book's edge.  As pain in the adult artist liberates itself in created
+work, so Daphne's present misery sought liberation in a dream
+of great books.  Books of this kind, very sad and uplifting and
+beautiful.  The Marches stood cataleptically fixed in the
+positions in which she had left them, while her thoughts swept
+forward over a life of successes, and down many side avenues,
+and beyond death into the long centuries of fame.  Yes, she had
+made a decision; she would be an authoress.  It was thrilling.
+She released the Marches from their trance, and followed their
+rapid movements again.  But the dream had to be returned
+to....  Only after many such breaks did the book win her
+back to oblivious concentration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, in the enthralling company of Jo and Meg and Beth
+and Amy, she guessed nothing of the passage of time, till the
+house filled with a smell of greens and roasting fat; and
+dinner-things began to clatter in the dining-room.  Mingled with her
+reading was a wonder if anything would be done about her
+dinner.  She was quite determined she was not going to unlock
+the door and go downstairs.  The dinner-bell rang&mdash;louder than
+usual, as though addressed to her&mdash;but she did not move.  Only
+now she could no longer read; she could only listen.  Evidently,
+by the silence, they had sat down to the meal, leaving her to
+come or stay away as she cared.  Further clattering of plates;
+that was the meat-course being taken downstairs&mdash;and she was
+too late now for any.  Here was the pudding coming up the
+stairs and being taken in.  And now, to judge by the silence,
+they were eating it....  Ah, footsteps were coming up to her
+landing, rather slowly, as of a person who found it none too
+easy to manage all the stairs of these London houses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A heavy breath heaved on the landing.  Hollins, undoubtedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I had a sovereign every time I climbed these stairs, I
+should be a wealthy woman.  Dearie ... dearie, are you
+there?"  Daphne answered with a shapeless sound.  "Why not
+come down and have something to eat?  I've come myself to ask
+you.  She's given orders that nothing's to be kep' hot for you.
+Come down, there's a good girl.  You can't go starving yourself,
+you know.  Even I should call that naughty of you.  Come
+on, dear, you must eat something.  There's no smell in nothing,
+as the saying is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Am I going to be whipped?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, she says so.  She says you're making your punishment
+worse by this persisting.  But I dare say she's only trying it on.
+She's punishing you in another way, and I do call it nasty."  The
+door was open twelve inches by this time.  "She's purposely
+taking Master Owen to the Zoo this afternoon.  Heaven
+knows I'm the last person to encourage children to be saucy, but
+if I'd been him, I'd uv refused to go...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne shut the door, but gently, in Hollins's face and slid
+the bolt home; silently, so that Hollins should not be offended.
+Hollins's voice pursued through the wood: "Never mind, darling.
+Never mind.  When they've gone you and I'll go for a nice walk
+together.  And now come and eat something.  Spite of what she
+says, I've kep' a plateful in the oven."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne's reply was moaned:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not coming down to be whipped."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, and I'm not sure that I blame you, neither....  Well,
+don't cry, silly one.  Let's hope they'll start soon, and then you
+can come out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she was gone, Daphne went to the window, out of
+which she stared dreamily at the stretch of Deseret Road.
+Already she had heard the rush of Owen's feet up the stairs, and
+the preparations of Miss Durgon in her room; and it was not
+long before the descending steps were heard, and the movements
+in the hall, and the shutting of the front door.  In a second they
+would be in view.  There they were, Miss Durgon walking
+quickly, and Owen running at her side.  Once Owen turned
+round and, after looking up at the bathroom window, said
+something to Miss Durgon, but she walked on without impairing
+her dignity by a look behind.  Daphne slipped out of
+sight&mdash;she had not wanted Owen to see her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now she opened the door and carried her swollen eyes and
+red nose down into the dining-room.  There was no one there.
+Too ashamed to show herself to the servants in the basement,
+she moved heavily about, hoping her feet would be heard by
+Hollins.  A sham fit of coughing was also tried.  Then she heard
+the jingling of a tray, and Hollins coming up the steep stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There!" said Hollins, as she placed the tray on the table,
+"I expect you'll enjoy it all the more for being hungry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seeing Daphne's eyes, she gathered her against her breast,
+muttering only, "What a shame!  What a shame!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The walk in the afternoon was clouded for Daphne by her
+memory of the morning's emotion and by the shadow of the
+evening when Miss Durgon would return.  She was subdued as
+they passed along the shop-windows.  One bright interlude
+came when Hollins stopped in front of a sweet-shop and told
+her to choose a penn'orth to her fancy.  Every jar or dish in
+the window she examined.  "Hundreds of Thousands" were
+four ounces a penny, but they went so quickly.  "Pontefract
+Cakes" didn't last, either.  "Liquorice, Linseed and Chlorodyne
+Lozenges" were always good, because little bits could be broken
+off and dissolved slowly in the mouth, flavouring it for hours;
+but grown-up people forbade these as drugs.  A glass jar of
+gelatine discs at two ounces a penny decided her.  These discs,
+sometimes used for mending broken panes, stayed in the mouth
+for a wonderful time, and could even be taken out and kept in
+a handkerchief.  It would be lovely to lie on the ground sucking
+them while she pursued the adventures of Jo and Meg and
+Beth and Amy.  For already the book, whose atmosphere had
+never quite dissolved, was calling for her return.  She persuaded
+Hollins to take her once past the fire-station on the chance that
+their arrival might synchronise with a call for the engines.
+Never yet had she seen the great doors swung open, the horses
+harnessed like lightning, and the smoking, spark-dropping
+engines galloped past a gathered crowd.  But her despairing
+conviction that there would be no movement in the station proved
+correct.  Only a faint thrill could be got from the rows of
+shining helmets on both walls, and the shining brass of the
+engines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The walk home was depressing since it led to the moment
+of Miss Durgon's return; and when they were in the hall
+Daphne suggested that, now she had had her walk, she should
+go back to the bathroom and bolt the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you're not going to," said Hollins.  "She shan't whip
+you now.  If she says she will, I shall take the liberty of telling
+her that she's punished you once by not taking you to the
+Zoo....  You read your book and we'll see."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So after tea, Daphne read on, sucking the gelatine discs.
+But the reading was all spoiled by her underthinking, which
+kept reminding her that Miss Durgon was due.  On the sounds
+of people coming up the front-door steps, her heart leapt in
+fright.  The latch-key turned, the door opened, and an umbrella
+was put into the hat-stand.  Here was Hollins toiling up the
+basement stairs to her defence.  Her voice mingled in the
+passage with Miss Durgon's.  Then she entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She says you're to go to bed.  She says she's no wish to
+see you at all."  (In truth, Daphne's stormy revolt had quite
+frightened away Miss Durgon's desire to whip her.)  "She
+says&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then Owen rushed in to tell his sister all about the
+Zoo, but he had scarcely uttered a word before Hollins
+interrupted:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I took you for a little gentleman, I did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owen looked at Hollins with the timid glance of the corrected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A little gentleman wouldn't mention anything about where
+he'd been, a little gentleman wouldn't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owen lapsed into a dubious silence, while Daphne declared:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I didn't want to go to his dirty, beastly old Zoo"; and
+Hollins hastened to prevent trouble by saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Miss Daphne, that'll do.  Suppose you zoo off to bed."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0103"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER III
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+In the beginning Miss Durgon had given the children their
+lessons.  But now her dignity, generated in the warm air of
+leisure and comparative luxury, and sunned by certain other
+things that lay beyond the walls of Mr. Bruno's home (and
+beyond the walls of his knowledge), was, if anything, given a
+sharper outline by Daphne's insolent rebellion.  Transformed
+from an impecunious gentlewoman who sought a housekeeper's
+situation into a lady of social graciousness, who consented
+to take over the reins of a distinguished writer's home, she
+began to think it unreasonable that she should be asked to
+play nursery governess to a brace of obstreperous children.
+So, on Mr. Tenter Bruno's return from the East, she laid
+before him a project that had long been maturing in her mind.
+He looked up from his easy chair and his book, desirous only
+of being relieved as quickly as possible from this visit of a
+domestic problem.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, by all means, tell me, Miss Durgon.  By all means...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She explained.  She felt that the engagement of a daily
+governess for her charges would be well worth the small outlay
+entailed.  The children were getting older and should have
+longer time for lessons than she could give them.  She was
+worried by the feeling that she was hardly doing justice to the
+two departments of her work: the management of his
+household and the education of his children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Forgive me," smiled Mr. Bruno.  "The market in governesses
+is a thing I've so little studied that I've no conception
+what they cost.  Are they quoted these days at two figures
+or three? ... H'm," he added, seeing his housekeeper
+uncomfortably bewildered.  "Their salaries, I mean."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Forty pounds a year, with lunch and tea, should secure
+us a really good governess."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno had a restive feeling that if he could purchase
+the right to continue his present chapter for forty pounds
+a year, it had best be done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, well, we could afford that much," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," confirmed Miss Durgon, "and then I should be at
+liberty to devote myself entirely to the management of the
+house and the moral care of Daphne and Owen&mdash;with, of
+course, the oversight of their studies."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno's hand turned a page of his book, and Miss
+Durgon therefore stepped obligingly towards the door.  It was
+as she had foreseen; he would edge away from any long thinking
+on a theme unrelated to his books.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, you'll do all the advertising and interviewing
+necessary," he tendered over the tops of his reading spectacles,
+now happily replaced.  "I cannot possibly be besieged by young
+governesses."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Durgon assured him that she would certainly undertake
+all that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And few undertakings could have given her more pleasure.
+It was a serene satisfaction to be on the luxurious employing
+side of an advertisement in the <i>Warden</i>, after inhabiting the
+meagre country on the employee's side.  She saw herself
+sitting with some state in the dining-room and giving an
+audience to nervous applicants.  She would be impressively
+dressed for them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were but two replies to her advertisement for a
+"governess, young, bright, willing," of which she had only
+ordered one insertion, since it was being paid for out of the
+housekeeping money.  To these two applicants she wrote
+instructions for them to call at given hours.  The first was a
+lady unmistakably older than Miss Durgon herself, and quite
+unsuitable, because it would be difficult to order her about;
+besides, the creature was offensively careful to parade the
+plumes of a fallen gentlewoman.  The second, who called an
+hour later that morning, seemed far more suitable, and her
+suitability received adventitious increase from the contrast with
+her predecessor.  She was a little spare sprig of a girl who
+could be easily planted and trained, and would never, one
+imagined, dare to be "superior" with such a long-rooted and
+graceful tree as her lady employer.  Her round cheeks, slightly
+flushed, her simple frock, her hair the tint of a harvest field,
+and her shy, escaping eyes were the likely efflorescence of a
+nature ingenuous and pliable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Miss Durgon floated into the dining-room, wearing
+the majesty of a prospective employer, this little Miss Carrell
+rose respectfully and remained standing; and it was not till
+Miss Durgon had taken her chair and rested leisured and
+well-to-do hands on her lap that Miss Carrell, in response to
+a hint, sat on the edge of an arm-chair, holding her little
+handbag on her knees.  And yet she was not nervous, Miss Durgon
+saw; it was simply good manners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am Miss Durgon, who wrote to you, you know.  I am
+the&mdash;er&mdash;the guardian of Mr. Tenter Bruno's children; in fact,
+I've managed everything for him since his dear wife died
+in giving birth to the younger child."  Miss Durgon paused,
+thinking that perhaps this slip of a girl understood none of
+these things.  "Well, Miss&mdash;er&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Carrell," breathed the girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, of course.  Well, Miss Carrell, I want to do
+my best for these children&mdash;in fact, hitherto I've felt I ought
+to teach them the elements myself; no one can do it so well
+as their parent or guardian; but now they're getting bigger
+and demanding too much of my time, and Mr. Bruno's household
+is a large and increasing charge, and my social engagements
+forbid me doing full justice to the children's needs."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I quite see," was wafted from the easy chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Well, I imagine you would arrive in the morning,
+soon after breakfast, and give them lessons till one o'clock,
+having lunch with them&mdash;and then perhaps a walk in the
+afternoon, and tea.  And after that Hollins will take care of
+them till bedtime.  Hollins, I should tell you, is of her kind,
+an excellent person, whom I retain in the service of the house,
+though I must say she's not very loyal to me, and I've reason
+to believe is not above speaking against me; but she's been
+with the family since before her mistress died, and you know
+these old servants&mdash;they never do take to, or admit any good
+in a new&mdash;er&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"New regime," supplied the easy chair understandingly.  "Yes,
+I know.  They're always like that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, admit any good in a new regime.  Well, I suppose
+you've had some experience."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes."  Miss Carrell bowed her pale hair over her
+hand-bag and produced an envelope.  "I can show you this
+testimonial.  I have been for three years a mistress at Hemans
+House."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said this (unfolding the testimonial) as though she
+expected any well-informed woman to know Hemans House by
+repute; and Miss Durgon, in knowing nothing about the place,
+felt in danger of a social fall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, were you?  That's interesting.  But you hardly look
+old enough for&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am twenty-two," interrupted Miss Carrell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You went as junior mistress, I imagine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  But later on Miss Vidella entrusted the elder girls
+to me quite a lot.  You see, I'd been there over two years,
+which was longer than any of the other mistresses&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This Miss&mdash;Verdella, did you say?&mdash;must have been difficult
+to get on with."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell shrugged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, she was rather quaint."  A blush rushed over her
+face, as if she had unthinkingly let some little monkeyish
+animal, deliberately battened underground, peep out its nose.
+"I don't think the other mistresses tried to understand her
+and shape themselves to her ways."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And why did you leave, if you were so helpful to Miss
+Verdella?" asked Miss Durgon, who, not having noticed the
+peep, was thinking, "This girl is just what I want," and
+imagining herself making of Miss Carrell a pleasant companion,
+though a properly subservient one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, mother was not at all well, and I felt I ought to
+get daily employment and live at home.  Here is Miss Vidella's
+testimonial."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sheet of notepaper accepted by Miss Durgon showed,
+beneath the name, "Hemans House" and a crest, a paragraph
+written in an inordinately neat and punctilious hand:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella has pleasure in testifying that Miss Mary
+Carrell was an assistant mistress at this school for nine terms,
+during which she gave every satisfaction, discharging her very
+responsible duties with propriety and considerable ability.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+AMY VIDELLA.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Durgon handed it back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was further question and answer, much of which
+amounted to saying again, in a different shade or with new
+accompaniments, what had been said before; and then Miss
+Durgon hinted:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I shall be interviewing other applicants, so I will
+let you know my decision later."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell rose obediently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you very much indeed.  I feel I could do all
+you want.  Though I'm afraid I can't let you know finally till
+the day after to-morrow, as I am seeing some other parents
+to-morrow, and one the following day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was said so gently that Miss Durgon could suspect
+neither impertinence nor guile.  And directly she heard of these
+other prospective employers she desired to secure at once
+this only suitable girl.  And really, too, despite her vesture
+of an employer's ease, she had no experience of engaging
+governesses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hum.  That's a nuisance.  I'm particularly anxious to
+know definitely by this time to-morrow.  I think&mdash;yes, I think
+that, for my part, I could definitely say that I should be
+prepared to offer you the&mdash;the post.  Is it at all likely that you
+could decide definitely now?  Are the other situations likely
+to be more attractive than this one?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't think so," said Miss Carrell, her bag in her
+hand, and prepared to leave.  "Only&mdash;only one of them is
+worth fifty pounds a year&mdash;and, for mother's sake, I feel
+I ought to consider it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fifty pounds a year!  That seems a large salary for so
+young a woman.  I don't think Mr. Bruno would be prepared
+to give that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," agreed Miss Carrell, "and I've no doubt you will
+get somebody equally suitable for a less amount.  Thank you so
+much for considering&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but wait a minute.  Mr. Bruno entrusts most of these
+affairs to me, and I feel I can commit him to fifty pounds a
+year.  I am so anxious to have things settled early.  Would
+you say definitely that you would come if I offered that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell smiled brightly and gratefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I think so.  I don't like to force you up in that
+way&mdash;but I have my mother to consider."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By now Miss Durgon could picture the mother in her shabby
+room, and felt a pity, mixed with inevitable contempt, for the
+indigent lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Precisely.  Then you will come?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell nodded and smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was excited about the arrival of a new governess,
+and Owen pretended to the same enthusiasm, though, to tell the
+truth, he could not see that it was matter for congratulation.
+But Daphne had ascertained from Hollins that the approaching
+Miss Carrell was little and pretty and fair-haired.  "Almost
+a child herself, you might say, and likely to be as much a
+playfellow, so to put it, as a governess.  I don't often take
+to people first go-off, as the saying is, but there, she fair got
+me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, she'll be better than old Durgon," answered Daphne,
+who liked abusing the housekeeper to Hollins, perceiving that,
+though the "sauce" was properly condemned, it was not
+unsavoury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, then, Miss Daphne, you're getting that rude and bold,
+I don't know what's coming over you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, she is a beast, and you know you think it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owen, who was listening, looked alarmed at such a plain
+statement of fact.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know I never said such a thing in my life," affirmed
+Hollins.  "You know I never."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Saying's one thing, and thinking's another."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And saucing's one thing, and getting out of my way when
+I'm busy's another.  So you be gone, miss, or it'll be idling's one
+thing and bed's another."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was early evening, before bedtime, and Daphne, hardly
+knowing why she did it, ran into her father's study.  She
+forgot to knock, and was only checked half-way across the
+carpet by a mutter of protest from the lips of Mr. Bruno, who,
+sitting in his easy chair, dropped his book a few inches, but no
+farther.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The idea embodied in a closed door, Miss Cataract, is that
+it should be nervously knocked at&mdash;even apologetically knocked
+at&mdash;by mere idle children.  Also, should it admit them on
+sufferance, that they must tread delicately across the privacy
+beyond."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since his return from India he had been aware of something
+in his daughter's large, sparkling eyes and unrestrained
+naturalness that always compelled him to adopt with her a
+gnomic tone, highly civilised.  He liked to dazzle her with a
+Roman candle of words, or reduce her to temporary immobility
+with some massive period.  His skill at the game pleased him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, can I come in?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On a rapidly expiring lease&mdash;yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne stood there and wondered what she had come for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We've got a new governess, papa."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should have thought a lion-tamer was more what was
+wanted."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's coming on Monday."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, it seems hardly an occasion for turbulent rejoicing.
+A task-mistress who will (I hope) press your nose firmly on a
+grindstone is not a new doll or a new dress."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hate dolls."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I forgot.  Let us say, then, she's not a new football.  Why
+this strange frenzy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, it'll be fun."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I haven't gathered from Miss Durgon that you saw much
+humour in your tasks with her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hate Miss Durgon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hush, mænad!  What you hate is restraint and healthy
+discipline.  I hope this new governess swishes you often and
+soundly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The subject of whipping always fascinated Daphne.  She
+was accustomed to ask her friends in a lowered voice if
+their fathers and mothers whipped them, and to read over and
+over again all stories where such execution was done on
+refractory boys and girls.  It was a subject that gave a curious
+exaltation similar to that provided by pictures of little black
+savages disappearing into the maw of a crocodile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Were you ever whipped, papa?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Most certainly.  And by its gracious effect I am what I
+am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, why don't you ever whip me and Owen?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat on the table to hear his explanation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am a very busy man, Duffy; and though the task you suggest
+is important and honourable, and of real service to society&mdash;even
+one to which no artist need be ashamed to lend a hand&mdash;I
+yet presume to think that the work on which I am at
+present engaged"&mdash;he significantly replaced his glasses&mdash;"is
+even more important.  Besides, I can remember past occasions
+when&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne changed her position, lying along the table so that
+she rested on her elbow and one foot hooked itself over the
+table's edge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes, you've spanked us sometimes, but I don't call that
+the real thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let us hope, then, that this governess will be made of
+heavier metal.  What did you say her name was?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Carrell."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It doesn't sound promising.  I can hardly hear the swish
+of a rod in such musical syllables.  But we must hope for
+the best."  He lifted up his book.  "Well, are you sure you
+have not outstayed your tenancy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a half-sulky "All right!" Daphne departed, but her
+father did not immediately continue his book.  This slight
+change in Daphne, noticeable after a long absence!  It was as
+if she had crossed a first boundary line.  With her long, narrow
+limbs, her figure like a boy's, and her unconsciously sinuous
+movements&mdash;yes, already feminine and alluring&mdash;she had a
+power to ruffle the still pool of his complacency.  It would
+need, after such a glimpse of her, to be calmed again.  He
+protruded his under-jaw as he faced a problem, and his
+thinking ran along courses such as these: "What more could I
+have done for her?  While she was a baby, I could only trust
+her to these women, and was surely wise in getting on with
+my work for her sake and her brother's.  But now&mdash;now
+that her mind is like a sponge, and a good quality sponge, too,
+I fancy, ready to soak up all things&mdash;what can I do?  I have
+brains and ideas, both of which are probably absent in all these
+women.  Ought I to leave her entirely to them, content that
+my love should be nothing more than an expansive emotion?
+But what can I do?  I must work and read, and talk with
+stimulating minds, and her little mind has nothing to give
+me in the way of stimulus."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question what he could do was so difficult to answer
+that Mr. Bruno turned again to his book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But after a line or two he found himself analysing Daphne's
+enthusiasm about her governess and diagnosing it as a child's
+delight at playing at schools.  Well, no better approach to
+studies could be imagined, and at least he could encourage it.  A
+pleasing resolution occurred to him, and as it eased his
+conscience, he was able to get on with his book.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The next afternoon there arrived in a van two huge packages,
+wrapped in straw and sacking, and addressed to Miss D. D. T.
+Bruno and O. T. Bruno, Esq.  To tearing fingers and searching
+eyes they revealed two school-desks in highly polished yellow
+wood, with sloping lids that covered deep interiors smelling
+like school-rooms.  In the chair-back was an adjustable boss
+which could be raised up and down; it fitted the small of the
+sitter's back, and was designed to prevent stooping.  Daphne
+soon raised hers to the right position, and Owen's to his, hers
+being several inches higher than her brother's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not till the following day could they watch the amusing
+process of turning the lower end of the nursery upstairs into
+a schoolroom.  The two desks were put with their backs to
+the fire-place, and opposite them a table for Miss Carrell.  An
+empty book-case was carried to a side wall, its shelves to be
+used for school-books and the earthenware bottle of ink.
+Daphne devoted the afternoon to stocking her desk with all the
+old exercise books, atlases, pencil boxes with sliding lids,
+freehand drawing books, rulers, sketch blocks and paint boxes she
+had used in the past.  Always it was to be as tidy.  Owen
+joined in the game, echoing her merriment, though he still
+found the preparations depressing enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the Monday morning Miss Carrell arrived, and was
+shown by Miss Durgon into the schoolroom where the two
+children stood, somewhat sheepishly.  But, as she removed her
+hat and patted her hand over her fair hair and smiled merrily
+at her pupils, Daphne recovered her ease and prepared to
+like her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see," said Miss Durgon, who was particularly stately
+during this introduction of an employee to the scene of her
+labours, "I have prepared everything for you&mdash;desks for each
+pupil&mdash;so that your work may be as congenial as possible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a child's quick condemnation in elders of the fibs
+and brag that children sometimes employ, Daphne thought:
+"It wasn't you, it was papa."  Mentally she said this to Miss
+Durgon's long back as it passed through the door, which shut
+rather quietly.  They were in school.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell was going to be a great success.  That was
+proved in the next few days.  That was seen of all.  What
+was not seen was the working of the lively, if somewhat unlettered
+brain beneath that innocent hair.  It was Miss Carrell's
+policy just at present to win the enthusiastic appreciation of
+her pupils; and the same imagination which out of and during
+school hours was occupied with schemes for getting on could
+convert lessons, were the effort worth while, from dull tasks
+into captivating games.  In these games Daphne was always
+given the lead, for Daphne, being manifestly the more
+important factor, was the one to be favoured.  Sums, then, were
+done as races.  Geography was a series of imaginary travels
+and trading expeditions.  History was stories and
+make-believe, when Daphne would be Cœur-de-Lion or Warwick or
+Henry VIII, and Owen played the second lead, such as Anne
+Boleyn.  "You ought to have been a boy, and he the girl,"
+said Miss Carrell.  "But then, of course, his mother wasn't
+quite so well when he was born."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had exchanged history for some less interesting
+arithmetic when Miss Carrell offered this remark, and Daphne
+thought that compound division might well be held up while
+they pursued its bearings further.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why should that make any difference?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The subject was palatable to Miss Carrell, even though
+it could only be discussed with children in a pretence of
+teaching them propriety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because it does, and there's an end of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You why on with your work, as your friend Hollins would
+say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This remark, implying a criticism of Hollins, was designed
+to impress her pupil with the governess's intellectual superiority
+to the servant, and certainly achieved its end.  "You'll
+understand these things when you are older."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How much older must I be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, a lot older."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Must I be sixteen?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Much older than that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Twenty?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Twenty-one at least."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you understand these things?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly I do.  Now get on."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But don't you have to be married before you understand?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owen was looking from one to the other as if he doubted
+whether the conversation were all right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Maybe I'm married; maybe I'm not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're <i>not</i>!" triumphed Daphne.  "You're <i>Miss</i> Carrell."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I understand what I'm talking about, so there!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What&mdash;how we were born, and all that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have to be married, don't you, before you get
+children?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."  Her lips trembled a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can you get them without being married?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It has been done, but don't you get talking."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a knock at the door, and Mr. Bruno entered.  Miss
+Carrell flushed brilliantly from throat to brow, not in fear
+of her pupils' father, but in fear lest he had heard their current
+studies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno, misunderstanding the flush, was gratified by it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll forgive this intrusion," bowed he, "but I thought
+I should like to see the children in surroundings to which
+they have so looked forward....  Dear, dear, this is real
+school.  It revives memories of many fears and many disgraces.
+I hope you find them studious, Miss&mdash;Miss&mdash;er&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Daphne who supplied her father with the missing
+name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Carrell."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Silence, child.  Don't you know you must not talk in school
+without having first raised your hand? ... Are they all they
+ought to be, Miss Carrell?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They're progressing very well.  Daphne is especially promising."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I have always said that it's a relief she has brains,
+since she has neither beauty nor goodness."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She would naturally have brains."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell turned away as she offered the compliment; and
+Mr. Bruno covered his embarrassment by asking, "And what
+were you studying when I interrupted you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell flushed again, and hoping the sharp eyes of
+Daphne observed no guilt or prevarication, said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let's see.  Yes, we were doing multiplication and division."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Multiplication and division," smiled Mr. Bruno.  "Well,
+that is the whole of life.  There's scope for you to point a
+fine moral, Miss Carrell.  There's the multiplication and aggregation
+of gaseous matter to form the solar worlds, and its division
+again.  There's the multiplication in childhood of ideas
+and impressions for their division later.  And the multiplication
+of pounds, shillings and pence all through life, for their division
+and disintegration as fast as you can multiply them.  It's the
+whole of life and the whole of knowledge.  H'm&mdash;&mdash;"  Seeing
+that he had fogged everybody in the room, Mr. Bruno came
+to earth.  "You will be sure to tell us what you want, will
+you not?  I do not see a birch anywhere."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne tittered delightedly, and Mr. Bruno felt he could
+depart without loss of reputation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the afternoons, the governess and children went walking
+to Brook Green; or to the towing path by the river, in the
+hope of seeing the practice of the Oxford and Cambridge
+crews; or towards the police station near S. Mary Abbott's,
+Kensington, in the hope of seeing a Black Maria.  The
+conversation was mainly in the management of Miss Carrell and
+Daphne.  Miss Carrell admitted that she was Cambridge,
+having learned that Daphne was Cambridge.  And finding that the
+child loved to listen to stories, she often told stories all the way
+out and all the way back; terribly pathetic stories of her own
+invention, for she had not only written stories, but even
+sent them to editors, and could tell of one that had been
+detained fully seven months before the editor had decided that
+he must regretfully decline it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In brief, Miss Carrell, by such methods and by subtle
+endearments and gentle touchings, was striving to insinuate in
+Daphne's mind the idea that she could love her governess, and
+love her passionately.  And it rooted and blossomed with
+surprising quickness.  Hating Miss Durgon, Daphne was ready
+to adore Miss Carrell; and adoring, to love the feeling of
+adoration.  Motions came beneath her breast which made her want
+to hold Miss Carrell's hand, or lean against her on a seat; and
+she saw at once how ill they partnered with her fancied
+boyishness.  But it was so lovely, the fact of loving, that she
+decided to suspend her masculinity for a while, trusting
+that if her demonstrations of affection were not too public, no
+one but Miss Carrell would observe the temporary change.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The greater tracts of lesson-time now were occupied by the
+subjects which were popular.  Arithmetic and grammar were
+allotted a grudging half-hour, and then preceptress and students
+leapt the fence into the broad pleasances of history and
+literature.  History had degenerated into "stories from history,"
+when the picturesque incidents were collected from Dickens'
+"Child's History of England," or into "history from stories,"
+when Miss Carrell retold such romances as Lytton's "Last of
+the Barons," or "Harold," or actually read to them some new
+sensational novel which she felt would entertain herself as
+much as her charges.  Literature, which Miss Carrell, being a
+craftsman, considered her great subject, consisted in the
+governess's reading of the more delightful parts&mdash;that is, the more
+sentimental parts&mdash;of Dickens (High Literature and Dickens
+being, in the mind of Miss Carrell, almost synonymous).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The death of Little Nell and Paul Dombey and Poor Joe
+were held up before Daphne as the perfection of beauty.  She
+listened with staring eyes, ambition running fast in her brain:
+"I should like to write like that.  I should like to tell people
+beautiful things.  I should like to create characters that are
+beautiful, and scenes that make your eyes all hot and your
+throat lumpy like this...."  And even while Miss Carrell was
+still reading and she listening, ambition had shown her a
+triumphant career, and a death and burial that a nation
+mourned, and the people visiting her tomb for generations
+afterwards.  Her wet eyes were Miss Carrell's delightful reward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the sound of any words that were called beautiful
+Daphne fluttered her wings to fly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poetry was hardly attempted.  "You cannot be expected to
+develop a taste for poetry yet; it'll come later," explained Miss
+Carrell, knowing that she herself was still waiting for it.
+Just a few of the easier poems of Tennyson and Longfellow
+she had taught them (Great Poetry being almost synonymous
+with Tennyson and Longfellow): "The Schooner Hesperus,"
+"Break, Break, Break," and "The Legend Beautiful," with its
+lovely line "Do thy duty, that is best.  Leave unto thy Lord
+the rest."  For Miss Carrell, like all completely self-centred
+women, loved noble thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, in her devotion, Daphne confided as a great secret
+to the understanding governess that she was resolved to write.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, well, it's easy in your case," said Miss Carrell.  "You've
+got influence.  Your father'll get all your stories published."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such an idea had never presented itself to Daphne, but now,
+lingering and growing in her mind, it one day impelled her
+into Mr. Bruno's study for an examination of its worth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Papa," began she, a little shy of revealing her secret, "if
+I was to write books, would you be able to get publishers
+to publish them for me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Me?  No!" laughed her father.  "I'm a critic.  My business
+isn't to persuade publishers to produce the work of a young
+writer, but to discourage them from ever doing it again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, as often when her father bantered her, looked
+confused and beaten back; and he felt sorry for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Write, my little one.  Write, if you feel the urge.  I should
+be proud to think of you as a creative artist.  But anything
+that you write, if it's to be stuff for pride, must have a
+quality that will get it through the doors, without a helpful kick
+from your father."  He stared at her, standing there.  "One
+day we must talk it all over.  I can help you much, I dare say.
+But you're too young yet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he took up his book again.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0104"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER IV
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+A general content, sinister, some might think, in its
+promise of an early break-up, had settled in the Bruno
+home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno was very contented.  His mercury, as he phrased
+it, was high.  The phrase was a new use of his.  No other
+word could so well describe, in his detached and humorous
+analysis of his own emotions, that abject financial depression
+which followed a damaging review of his latest book, or that
+quick rise in spirits induced by a handsome tribute or a
+publisher's statement showing excellent sales.  After a grand
+morning's work, when his brain had outrun his pen, the
+mercury, as it were, rose to his head, filling it with visions
+of an imperial home, with horses in the extensive stabling
+and forty wines in the cellar, and cattle moving among the
+trees of the park.  After a morning when nothing but the
+commonplace or the obvious would take substance on his paper,
+he saw a lower-middle-class jerry-built house, in which, with
+two children who went out to poorly-paid jobs, lived a writer
+whom the world had once acclaimed and quickly forgotten.  To
+read about such a person, as one did sometimes in the paper,
+was to send his mercury to freezing point.  He no longer saw
+the bankruptcy court, however, or the casual ward, for against
+these disasters he had amassed a capital sum, and if his
+brain collapsed to-morrow (thought he), his dividends would
+pay the rent of the jerry-built house and put some bread and
+cold meat in the larder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were reasons just now why his mercury should be
+high.  A year before he had written his first play and secured
+its production.  It had failed most noisily.  When a destructive
+critic produces a play that has obvious weaknesses, it is
+to ask for artillery; and Mr. Bruno and his play went down
+beneath a reverberating bombardment.  Concluding that his
+fame was mortally wounded and a year or so later would see
+the end, he wondered how he could cut down his style of living,
+and began to turn off gases that people had left alight on the
+stairs, or to complain courteously when coke was not mingled
+with the coal on the fire.  "No one ever yet put coke on a fire,"
+thought he, surprised how the worrying thought could make
+his head ache, "who didn't pay the fuel bill."  And to his
+daughter if she prattled glibly about the pleasure-seeking life
+she would lead when grown up, he would say, "Nothing of
+the sort, my child.  You'll go into a milliner's shop; and, as
+for Owen, he'll earn his ten shillings a week sweeping out a
+solicitor's office."  But then, as the mercury crept up, he wrote
+another play, freeing it from the weaknesses that the crowding
+critics had pointed out in such detail.  It was as lively and
+noisily successful as its brother had been wilting and moribund.
+The critics crowded to its jubilee instead of to its funeral.
+Mr. Tenter Bruno was more than ever news; he had long been
+known to the literary and the vaguely literary world, but now
+his face and his repartee and his movements and his anecdotes
+were the property of readers of the halfpenny press.  "And
+you can write him a liar," said Mr. Bruno, "who denies that
+that pleases him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was content about his children, hearing excellent reports
+of the new governess.  Daphne spoke enthusiastically of her,
+because her motions of love made all talk of Miss Carrell a
+pleasure; Miss Durgon reported the girl in the highest terms,
+because she had to justify her move in securing her; and
+Hollins said, "Why, that little Miss Carrell can do anything with
+the child, she can.  It does me good to see it."  So no household
+or parental cares needed to cross the doormat of Mr. Bruno's
+room.  He began to play with the idea of setting forth on
+his travels again.  And from the moment he welcomed the idea
+into his lonely study, he knew that he would finally succumb to
+its charm.  And at length he introduced it to Miss Durgon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My work, I begin to find, demands that I move&mdash;and travel,
+rather than stagnate.  One's imagination is starved by living
+too long in a London street.  So few people realize it....  I
+brought a lot of stimulus out of the East.  What I am really
+longing for is the day when my daughter shall be old enough
+to be my constant and enthusiastic companion.  Then my
+powers of observation will be doubled, I verily believe, by the
+delight of revealing to her the romance of other lands and
+other manners."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaving these sentiments behind him, Mr. Bruno departed
+for a winter in Madeira.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Durgon was contented.  Released entirely from the
+charge of the children, which Miss Carrell and Hollins shared,
+she needed to do little but reign elegantly over the household.
+And the encomiums, confidences and frequent absences of her
+employer made her feel finally secure in the position which
+she had now held for nearly nine years.  Incredible that
+it could be nine years!  Her mind told her that she looked
+younger, more vivacious, and certainly more fashionable than
+when first she came knocking at Mr. Bruno's door.  Her
+security made her, perhaps rashly, indifferent to the comments of
+servants.  Her excursions when she was absent a whole day
+were more frequent than before.  And once or twice she
+entertained Mr. Stokes, or Mr. Anthony, in the breakfast-room,
+which she had now made into her private sitting-room.  They
+came singly, of course, the visits of each being unknown to the
+other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Stokes and Mr. Anthony were gentlemen friends who
+liked her companionship at theatres and suppers, though they
+conducted these relaxations beyond the regions swept by their
+wives' eyes.  Tacitly it was understood that the wives were
+not informed.  Miss Durgon saw no reason why they should
+be.  There was nothing scandalous in their husband's change
+of companionship; and she found herself quite able to meet
+Mrs. Stokes and Mrs. Anthony at tea-parties, or in their own
+homes.  But it was unlikely they would understand her
+reasoning&mdash;a reasoning learnt from their husbands, which made
+play with words like Life, and Naturalness and Affinities.  So
+her concealment was the concession of a reasonable woman.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Little Miss Carrell was contented because she lived and slept
+and woke in the morning with her own schemes.  They required
+that she did all in her power to develop Daphne's adoration, and
+to secure its publication to Daphne's papa and its concealment
+from the housekeeper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know what Miss Durgon is, Duffy darling.  If she
+thought you were so fond of me, she would do her best to
+get rid of me.  I'm sure she would.  And I don't want to leave
+you, now that I've grown so attached to you.  And I really
+believe you'd miss me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To confirm this Daphne put her arms about Miss Carrell&mdash;since
+nobody was by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You must pretend sometimes that you don't like the way
+I make you stick at your work; and that I'm a bit of a tyrant.
+That'll be a sure way to make the old Durgon think I'm a
+person to be kept."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Miss Carrell, for her purposes, had made a friend of
+Hollins.  She set out to be attractive to the good soul,
+conceiving her to have a heart that could be easily engaged.  With
+Hollins she was always polite, smiling, considerate and talkative,
+though never losing the slight dignity that lent worth
+to her condescension.  The balance was skilfully kept.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wisdom of this <i>entente cordiale</i> had been shown to her
+one morning when she was passing the dining-room door, and
+overheard a conversation between Hollins and a sweeping
+maid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's ordered the decanter of whisky and the soda water
+and the sandwiches to be put to-night in what she's pleased to
+call her room, though when it became her room and stopped
+being the breakfast-room <i>I</i> don't know.  And I wonder which
+it is that's coming to-night.  Some people have got a
+cheek&mdash;using that house in that high and mighty way, as if she was
+its lady."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"High and mighty!" scoffed the maid.  "Low, I call it.  Who
+are these Mr. Anthonies and Mr. Stokeses?  Not that they can
+be much if they see anything attractive in <i>her</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, yes, who are they?" said the voice of Hollins.  "That's
+what many of us'd like to know.  I reckon it's laughable
+being a charmer at her age.  And do Mr. Stokes approve of
+Mr. Anthony, I want to know, and do Mr. Anthony approve of
+Mr. Stokes?  Why are they never here together?  That's what
+wants sort of&mdash;what I call&mdash;answering."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's many things that want answering that don't get it,"
+said the maid sententiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, there are," agreed Hollins, and the listening Miss Carrell
+could picture the mysterious nod of her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell left no openings unguarded, however small.  If
+she were to keep Hollins's good opinion it would be well (she
+imagined) that Daphne's adoration were none too visible to her
+old nurse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She mustn't be allowed to think, dear, that you are fonder
+of me than her, though I suppose it is natural that there must
+always be more between people of the same class and of a
+nearer age than between a young mistress and her ancient
+servant.  But you mustn't hurt the dear, fat old thing.  It
+wouldn't be kind.  Also she might get jealous.  So you be
+especially nice to old Hollins.  For she is a dear, fat old
+thing.  I love her.  And let her know (just so that she mayn't
+dislike me) that I love her, and realise how much she has done
+for my little Duffy, and that I impress it all upon you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And after saying this, Miss Carrell was more than ever
+satisfied with her skilful pilotage; and Daphne was more than
+ever satisfied with the essential goodness of her governess; and
+Hollins, when Daphne had done all she was bidden, was more
+than ever satisfied with the high breeding of Miss Carrell.
+"A real lady.  It's a treat to have dealings with one at last."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With Miss Durgon, Miss Carrell was obliging and considerate,
+relieving her delicately of one duty after another.
+She made herself a pleasant companion, always interested,
+generally agreeing, but disagreeing sufficiently not to become
+insipid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hope that child's getting on," the elder lady would say.
+"She's a little girl that wants a lot of control if she's not to run
+to seed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She needs to be kept hard at it, certainly," agreed Miss
+Carrell.  "The boy is much more amenable.  He's a really
+lovable little thing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, he is.  No trouble at all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once when Miss Durgon complained of a headache, Miss
+Carrell assured her that she needed a holiday.  Impossible,
+declared the martyred Miss Durgon; she would never trust the
+household to Hollins alone.  Then Miss Carrell made her suggestion.
+Couldn't she (Miss Carrell), who had long kept house for
+her mother, and now knew the ins and outs of Mr. Bruno's
+home&mdash;couldn't she come into residence for a week or so and
+manage things?  Miss Durgon demurred, but finally saw
+something in the plan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the plan was tried Miss Carrell had need to hold her
+wheel with a very delicate hand indeed.  Her elevation to deputy
+housekeeper, even though only for twenty-one days, very nearly
+lost her the adhesion of Hollins.  Hollins could not see why a
+chit like that should be required when she was on the spot.  Miss
+Carrell was fortunate enough to be in the hall when Hollins
+was discussing the matter with the other servants in the
+dining-room.  "The Durgon's done it on purpose to spite me," Hollins
+was saying.  "Of course she has.  It's as plain as the nose on
+your face.  I don't altogether blame the little governess.  I don't
+think she'd hurt anybody if she could avoid it.  But what I do
+say, and what I have always said, is that it was a bad day when
+that Durgon woman came knocking at our doors.  And who
+is she going away with, is what I should like to know?  Is it
+your Stokes or your Antonio?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Miss Carrell saw her course.  By gently refusing to
+notice any sullenness, and by skilful reductions of work and an
+increase of privileges and an improvement in the kitchen meals,
+she gradually persuaded all below stairs that it was a pity she
+hadn't always had the management of the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Miss Durgon returned the regent stepped down from
+the throne with all the grace and some recollection (since she
+had just been reading about him to Daphne) of Cincinnatus
+returning to his plough.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+In time it became quite a custom for Miss Durgon to take a
+week off now and then, and hand over the reins to her lieutenant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But not when Mr. Bruno was back from Madeira or
+elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I feel I ought to be in my place when Mr. Bruno is here.
+There's really more to do then."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course," said Miss Carrell, wondering if Miss Durgon
+really supposed she didn't see through her.  It was beginning
+to dawn on her that the lady housekeeper, inside her fine clothes
+and her dignity, was a very considerable fool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Probably Mr. Bruno would never have known of these
+arrangements if Hollins hadn't thought it on her conscience to
+say, in the course of a conversation with him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but that happened when Miss Carrell was doing the
+housekeeping&mdash;when Miss Durgon was away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno looked up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did you say, Hollins?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I said that happened when Miss Carrell took Miss Durgon's
+place and ran the house."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did she?  When was this?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, she often does when you're away, sir.  I thought you
+knew, and sort of suggested it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did nothing of the sort," said he, feeling rather important.
+"I must ask Miss Durgon about it.  I can't think Miss Carrell
+is old enough to manage a household such as this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, she's done none so badly, sir," assured Hollins.  "And,
+of course, I was there to help her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, Hollins.  And she's really a wonderfully capable
+little person, isn't she?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins gone, Mr. Bruno sat in his chair for some time thinking.
+It was perhaps a small thing, this French leave habit of
+Miss Durgon's, but it seemed to show him traces of falsity in
+her character which he knew his quick version could have seen
+long ago had he given it the order to see.  He dreamed out a
+conversation after dinner that night when he rebuked Miss
+Durgon.  It was a conversation from which he issued with
+increased dignity.  "I cannot think, Miss Durgon, that such a
+step was within the autonomy with which&mdash;&mdash;  Please don't
+think I am anything but highly satisfied, but&mdash;&mdash;  Your need
+of a holiday no one would deny, and I confess to having been
+remiss in not thinking of it before.  Had you so much as
+mentioned it to me&mdash;&mdash;"  But as the meal drew to its close he felt
+what an exceedingly uncomfortable thing it was to administer
+rebukes to a person in Miss Durgon's position, and how the
+contemplation of it was spoiling his appetite and his conversation.
+Even she might say: "Very well, Mr. Bruno, if you think
+I am incompetent or neglect my duty, I had best resign my office.
+With all thanks, I am sure, for your kindness and unvaried
+courtesy in the past."  And he would be reduced to the horrid
+necessity of begging her to reconsider her decision.  No, things
+were perhaps best left as they were.  Doubtless Miss Carrell
+was capable, or Miss Durgon would not have done such a thing.
+And this evening he especially wanted to work on a play with an
+unagitated mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I can't help admiring the impudence of that little Carrell
+girl seating herself astride my home like that.  There's a lot
+in her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Durgon, ignorant of these movements in her employer's
+mind, had been so pleased to find that the governess could fill
+the position of deputy housekeeper that she was seeing the
+convenience of having the young woman in permanent residence.
+Then she would at any moment be free to go away, if only for
+a night or so.  Miss Carrell, after some doubts, fell in with the
+scheme more readily than Miss Durgon had dared hope.  It was
+a grateful matter that the difficulty of her mother could be so
+easily overcome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now to approach Mr. Bruno.  In his room Miss Durgon
+hastened to pour out all the points she had previously
+enumerated on her fingers' ends: that she was very satisfied with
+the governess's remarkable success with the children; that
+Daphne was getting too big to be left, in the evenings when she
+herself happened to be out, to the charge of servants; that
+Miss Carrell would be able to help the children with their
+homework; that it would relieve them all of the sewing and care of
+the clothes, which was getting heavy; and that, in a household
+of so many persons, it would hardly cost a penny more a week,
+since she already had lunch and tea with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, if we can have all that for nothing a week, let's have
+it," Mr. Bruno smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he thought this would be a good opportunity to mention
+his knowledge that his household had already been somewhat
+frivolously left, for weeks at a time, to the management of a
+twenty-three-year-old girl.  And his eye, the eye of a dramatist,
+saw at once the hidden embarrassment of Miss Durgon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she admitted, "I was feeling so run down while you
+were away that I made that arrangement, but only with a deep
+sense of responsibility.  I would not have suggested such a thing
+had I not decided that Miss Carrell was quite exceptional.
+Quite exceptional."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I feel she is," endorsed Mr. Bruno.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, she is.  Quite exceptional," repeated Miss Durgon,
+since this was her justification.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Miss Durgon helped to weave the rope that hanged her.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell hanged her at Christmas time.  Quite simply.
+To be sure, it had been simpler to suggest that Hollins
+mentioned Mr. Stokes and Mr. Anthony to the master; but it would
+be rather undignified, this enlisting of servants' aid.  And yet
+simpler had she herself alluded innocently to Miss Durgon's
+friends; but this savoured of ugly informing, and Mr. Bruno,
+a clever man, would see through it.  And she didn't want Miss
+Durgon to go to the rope thinking her companion had "sneaked."  In
+their conversations Mr. Anthony and Mr. Stokes had necessarily
+been spoken of, but always very casually, as if their visits
+were naturalness itself, and Miss Carrell the sort who could
+understand: the foolish woman even (so thought Miss Carrell)
+was not without a pride in hinting at her attractiveness.
+Besides, the thing, if only told, might not be very effective with
+Mr. Bruno: preoccupied, he would but half take it in.  It must
+be seen in being.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Conceiving of Miss Durgon, Mr. Anthony, Mr. Stokes and
+Mr. Bruno as the chess pieces of Miss Carrell&mdash;Miss Durgon
+the queen, Mr. Anthony and Mr. Stokes her knights, and
+Mr. Bruno the opposing king&mdash;obviously the plan was to get the
+king into a position from which he could capture one or both of
+the knights.  Always a difficult position to contrive, for the
+moves of knights are crooked.  Herein came Daphne.  When at
+last the occasion offered, she was used as pawn to lure out
+the king.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Christmas time brought the children's parties; exciting
+entertainments that illuminated not only the day whose evening they
+would adorn, but many of the days that went before.  And the
+most brilliant of these, throwing a light that reached down
+weeks, was Lady Montefiore's fancy-dress affair, from four to
+nine, in the Kensington Town Hall.  Costumes had to be
+resolved upon and made, and sewing became more than
+tolerable&mdash;joyous.  Daphne was to go as a Shepherdess, and Owen as a
+Musketeer, Miss Carrell having just finished Dumas' romance
+and decided that it was the finest book she had ever read.  But
+she gave far less time to Owen's dress than to Daphne's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their father had been told of this party, by Daphne often,
+by Owen three times, by Miss Carrell once, but he had hardly
+heard.  And it was soon known that he would be at a dinner
+in town that evening.  Presumably he would be late, since Miss
+Durgon had ordered a tray of spirits, siphon, sandwiches and
+cigarettes for the entertainment of one of her guests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno had lunched out, but he returned to his study before
+three o'clock.  He had just sat at his desk and taken up his
+pencil to write down some memoranda, when a timid knock at
+the door made him use the pencil for a patient tapping on his
+paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The governess entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Excuse me, Mr. Bruno, but just for once I felt I simply
+must intrude.  Would you mind if I showed you Daphne in
+her fancy dress?  She looks so sweet, and I think it'll please
+her if you like it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fancy dress?" echoed Mr. Bruno.  "Oh, yes, of course,
+she's going to a party of some sort, isn't she?  Certainly I'll
+come."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laid down the pencil and rose quickly, having assumed
+the gay cloak of an interested father.  He followed the
+governess upstairs to the schoolroom.  Miss Carrell passed in
+before him and apparently whispered to the children to hide.
+Her face reappeared.  "Now, Mr. Bruno, if you'll come in."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He entered a room that seemed to be empty, and looked
+around as if interested in such a strange apartment.  Then
+Miss Carrell said: "You can come now, Daphne."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne appeared, half shyly and half merrily, from behind
+the screen; and Mr. Bruno gasped.  He had intended all along
+to gasp, but when he saw his daughter the gasp was genuine.
+She stood before him in a straw bonnet, her brown hair curled
+into ringlets.  A black velvet corselet bodice reached to a point
+below her waist.  A fichu was about her neck, frills at her
+elbows and black velvet ribbons at her wrists.  Brocade panniers
+swelled out on either hip above a quilted satin petticoat.  Her
+stockings were white, and her black shoes had silver buckles.
+In her right hand she held a crook, necklaced with ribbons.
+Mr. Bruno gasped, and something caught at his heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good heavens!" he laughed; "is that my Daphne?"  But
+though he laughed, the word "my" gave him unexpected pleasure.
+"No, it's a changeling, stepped out of a Watteau canvas....
+What's all this talk about a party?  Why have I not been
+better informed?  And there's Owen, too, all dressed up.
+What's he?  Mephistopheles?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm a Musketeer."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not one of Dumas', I hope."  But seeing by every one's
+chapfallen silence that Owen was Dumas' hero and none else, he
+put them at their ease by saying: "Well, please announce to
+everybody that the dress is founded on your own literary taste
+and not mine.  You must be careful how you tread on the
+literary grass, Mr. Owen....  Where's this rout to be held?
+Buckingham Palace?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's Lady Montefiore's party at Kensington Town Hall.
+A very big affair.  I did tell you about it, but I don't think
+you quite heard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  I'm afraid I don't sometimes.  It must appear very
+rude.  I'm sorry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Mr. Bruno."  Miss Carrell looked almost beseechingly
+into his face.  "I hardly like to suggest what's in my mind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There's no sentence surer to stimulate interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's that?" asked Mr. Bruno.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Run away, Duffy darling, and take Owen, and show
+yourselves to Hollins."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The children gone, Miss Carrell proceeded:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, don't you think you could look in for a minute at the
+party?  Just before it's over&mdash;perhaps to bring the children
+away.  There are to be such a number of famous people there,
+and reporters, and I do want Duffy to see her name in the paper
+to-morrow, and a mention of her dress.  But in such a huge
+crowd she's hardly likely to be noticed unless you come too.
+What a wonderful surprise it'd be for them, if you came and
+drove them home!  But of course, it's impossible ... it's
+impossible.  You're out to dinner."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's not impossible.  It's not at all impossible," interrupted
+Mr. Bruno, to whom the word "reporters" was bait difficult
+to refuse.  Besides, the vision of Daphne had stirred his
+desire for the envy and admiration of those who should know
+her for his daughter.  "My dinner is only an official monthly
+business, and I can escape.  I shall make a point of getting
+there.  And don't you tell them.  What time's it over?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Officially at nine o'clock.  But I doubt if we shall get away
+before half-past nine.  And I don't suppose the&mdash;the celebrities
+will be there till fairly late.  I've promised Miss Durgon to
+have the children home by ten o'clock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shall be there soon after nine, Miss Carrell.  And keep
+it as a surprise from them...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The governess was such a pleasant little person that he quite
+enjoyed having a secret with her.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+At ten o'clock there were laughter and children's voices on
+the front steps at 18 Deseret Road, as Mr. Bruno, followed by
+Miss Carrell, Daphne and Owen (who had been allowed to
+pay the cabman), ascended to the hall door, searching for his
+latch-key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall I ring?" asked Miss Carrell, who may have been
+tired, for she looked pale and her voice trembled.  "The maids
+will be up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  Here we are....  Now then, Owen, open the door
+and don't keep us all waiting.  The ladies are cold in their
+cloaks.  That's right.  Open Sesame!"  The door opened.
+"Enter Ali Baba and two of his donkeys."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell passed in first, and Owen was about to go in
+after her when his father pulled him back, saying: "The lady
+your sister first, if you're the swashbucklering gallant your
+dress suggests."  Daphne passed in.  "That's right.  Now the
+old man, because his great age gives him right of precedence.
+Then the young D'Artagnan."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was hanging his hat on a peg when he observed the coat
+of Mr. Anthony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hallo!  A visitor?  Who's this?"  He lifted the lapel of
+the coat as if it might answer him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then a maid appeared to see if the master or the children
+needed anything before retiring.  (Or that was her ostensible
+reason.  Actually she was the reporter commissioned by the
+kitchen, which had heard with surprised delight the master's
+voice on the steps, to proceed at once to the seat of war.  As
+Hollins had said: "<i>Now</i> how's she going to explain her masher
+in the breakfast-room?")
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who's the visitor, Alice?" asked Mr. Bruno, glancing at
+the coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Anthony, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Who?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Anthony."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned inquiringly to Miss Carrell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know," she explained; "Mr. and Mrs. Anthony, who
+live in the new flats near the station."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes.  Well, what on earth can he want with me at
+this time of night?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He's with Miss Durgon, sir," said the maid, taking his coat
+from him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Has he been here long?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Since eight o'clock," answered the maid innocently.  "He
+often comes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The first I've heard of it."  He turned again to Miss Carrell.
+"Does he&mdash;&mdash;"  But he stopped, perceiving the indelicacy
+of discussing Miss Durgon with the governess or the servants.
+"Well, good night, Duffy.  Good night, Owen, old man.  I'm
+sure neither of you'll sleep after all that pastry.  Good night,
+Miss Carrell."  And he walked along the passage into the
+dining-room to be alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was troubled, annoyed; but not quite clear on what to
+base his annoyance.  Why was it that Miss Durgon mustn't
+entertain a married man from eight to eleven on evenings when
+he was away?  There were passages in his books suggesting
+the right of any woman to entertain any soul-mate she liked.
+But none of that could apply to Miss Durgon.  She wasn't
+doing it because she was an intellectual in conscientious
+rebellion (so sneakily, too, when his back was turned), but because
+she was a damned hypocrite.  That utterly conventional and
+pietistic fool, Miss Durgon, as a social rebel&mdash;pshaw! it was
+funny!  She'd been secretive, too, now he came to remember,
+over those holidays of hers....  No, the whole thing was false
+and wrong.  The children, he had said, must be taught conventional
+morals, till they were old enough and strong enough (if
+ever) to venture into deeper waters.  Of course.  If they were
+ever to be taught to resist the tyranny of outworn creeds, they
+should be taught it as a high philosophy, not as a sneaking
+truancy.  He would like to hear more about these visits of
+Mr. Anthony, whom, by the by, he remembered as rather an ill-bred
+cad, material and gross.  Should he ask Miss Carrell about
+them?  No, that would be quite out of place.  She was too
+young and&mdash;pretty.  Hollins?  She had been with him a dozen
+years, a heavy, married creature.  He laughed.  It would please
+the old thing enormously to be taken into confidence.  He
+liked to please people.  But she'd certainly brag about his
+confidence to the other servants&mdash;he could read her character as
+well as any one else's.  But there, the servants knew all about
+it already.  A pretty fool that woman had made of him before
+his servants.  God damn it!  He rang the bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is Hollins in bed yet?" he asked the maid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ask her to come and speak to me, please."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though there was no quaver in the maid's voice, he knew
+she was delighted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins, on being questioned, was completely communicative.
+It had not been her place before, but since Mr. Bruno asked
+her ... there were times, she would admit, when she thought
+she ought to speak....  But then she had said to herself, the
+master knew what he was about when he appointed Miss
+Durgon....  And doubtless Miss Durgon, who was a lady,
+knew more about these things than she....  She had not been
+able to bring herself to speak.  Besides, what did she know?
+She had only begun to smell a rat, as the saying was, when that
+Mr. Stokes&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Stokes?</i>" exclaimed Mr. Bruno.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, Mr. Stokes.  Mr. Stokes was an occasional visitor when
+the master was away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But not surely when&mdash;&mdash;" began Mr. Bruno, but he stopped
+and walked away and stood looking out of the window on to
+the veranda.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you, Hollins.  Thank you.  I'm obliged to you.
+Please don't mention our conversation in the kitchen.
+Confidences are confidences."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, sir," promised Hollins, and withdrew, quite obviously
+as happy a woman as any in London.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Standing there with his hands in his pockets and his eyes
+staring vacantly at the window, Mr. Bruno indulged in a bath
+of warm self-sympathy.  It was a shame of Miss Durgon to
+have taken this advantage of him, a widower so dependent on
+his dependants; an author, so necessarily kept busy at his
+work.  It was too bad, considering the children; if she was that
+sort they had been probably neglected whenever he wasn't
+looking.  Damn it, it was insufferable to have treated so facilely
+the privilege of caring for T. Tenter Bruno's children.  There
+must be people all over the country who would regard it as
+an honour&mdash;something to boast about&mdash;to be charged with the
+children of a man of such fame.  To do all this, and at the
+same time to accept the generous salary he had given her,
+the comfortable home, and the extravagant courtesy with which
+he had always treated her!  It was enough to make a cynic
+and misanthrope of any man.  Had all people to be watched
+by a foreman lest they scamped their tasks?  Was there no
+one who would care for his children without his perpetual
+supervision, so that he could be free to work for them.  He
+himself needed no such dragooning.  He worked hard enough,
+undriven, to keep the home over everybody's head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno dropped into a chair that he might loiter in this
+bath of warm self-sympathy.  But, as with all people in their
+baths, the pleasure was partly spoiled by the knowledge that
+at some moment he must achieve the courage to step out of
+the grateful warmth; and he knew he would leave the
+enervating self-sympathy for the cold air of self-reproach....
+As if suiting the action to the thought, he rose from the chair
+and stood on the floor.  Confound it!  He was to blame.  With
+his indolent <i>laissez faire</i>, his forever choosing of the line of
+least resistance, he had undoubtedly suffered the weeds to
+spread.  For his children's sake he ought to have been
+perpetually on the watch, lest they were being moulded by soiled
+or clumsy hands.  Daphne in her shepherdess costume!  She
+was an exquisite thing; he could pick her up and crush her to
+him in his swelling love.  Let one hope that so far no harm
+had been done.  Thank goodness, that little Miss Carrell was
+an exceptional person; she seemed sane enough, and steady,
+and a perfect lady, as Belle would say.  But who ever would
+have thought that Miss Durgon would have been anything but
+a subdued, middle-aged virgin?  "Confound it!" thought he,
+"what a blasted fool I must have looked all this time to this
+woman and her friends!  It's a damned insult to me."  Thus
+Mr. Bruno stepped back into his bath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had a mind to go abruptly into the breakfast-room next
+door, and to break in upon Anthony and Miss Durgon, to their
+confusion.  But, as he foresaw the awkwardness of a meeting
+between Anthony and himself, and the discomfort Anthony
+and Miss Durgon would endure, and his own discomfort in
+witnessing their discomfort, he decided he could not face the
+scene.  If you discover your butler in the act of drinking your
+whisky out of its decanter, it is an open question which suffers
+the more, you or he.  Had Mr. Bruno possessed a butler, and
+chanced upon him in such a pilfering, he would have retired
+like the guilty party in the hope that his butler had neither seen
+nor heard him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat again in his chair.  In the morning he would take
+a strong line.  The phrase was pleasing.  It savoured of a
+monarch dismissing his prime minister: or of a father performing
+his stern duty by his children.  In the morning he would show
+Miss Durgon that these quiet and trusting men had, none the
+less&mdash;what was the trite metaphor?&mdash;an iron hand beneath
+the velvet glove.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this resolve he mounted to his bedroom, that mercy
+might attend poor Anthony to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+At breakfast Miss Durgon appeared with a mien of studied
+composure, and he rather admired her for not keeping her
+bedroom and publishing a headache.  He talked of everyday
+subjects; they could not handle over cold bacon and boiled
+eggs such an explosive grenade as dismissal.  After breakfast
+it should be.  He would send for her to his study.  It would
+be painful having to treat a woman of forty-five like a
+schoolboy: "Miss Durgon, I feel that, as my daughter will soon be
+going to school (the first he had thought of it), perhaps...."  No,
+he would not prepare his speech.  He would wait on
+inspiration.  "Mr. Bruno, I can only thank you for your
+unfailing courtesy and consideration.  I hope we part with no
+ill-feeling, for I consider it has been a privilege to share
+in...."  "Not at all, Miss Durgon, not at all."  If she had
+any tact, she would drop such a curtain of gauze over the
+harder features of the scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when, after breakfast, he was reading his paper, he
+postponed the event till his pipe should be exhausted; and, after
+that, till all the matter in the <i>Times</i> necessary for a
+well-informed mind had been exhausted.  Then he dropped the paper
+on his knees.  No, the thing would best be done through a
+woman: that would be more consistent with the courtesy she had
+invariably received from him.  Belle had engaged her, and
+Belle should be summoned to conclude the engagement; he
+could imagine her enjoying it thoroughly and all the while
+deceiving herself, like the brainless creature she was, that the
+duty was unpleasant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Belle arrived the next afternoon; and it was delectable to
+watch her surprise and indignation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Extraordinary, Tom.  Extraordinary in an officer's daughter.
+So ridiculous, too.  A <i>passé</i> creature like that!  I don't know
+which is the more ridiculous, she or the idiotic <i>roués</i> who could
+flit round such a&mdash;such a&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rushlight," suggested he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rushlight!  The creature must go at once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  But there's nothing gained by doing it otherwise
+than gently.  Let her have some excuse with which she can
+withdraw in a haze of dignity.  Let her have everything that's
+owing to her, and let&mdash;let crowns for convoy be put into her
+purse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Belle seemed hardly less childish than Daphne, and to be
+similarly bantered and confused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, meantime, we shall have to look out for some one else,"
+pursued Belle, who was indubitably spending a delightful
+afternoon.  "I'll busy myself about that at once.  But in the
+interregnum, what's to be done?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, the little Carrell can carry on.  She's done it before."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Carol who?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Carol no one.  Miss Carrell, the children's governess."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But she can't manage the household."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Indeed she can; and the War Office and Admiralty as well,
+if necessary.  With marvellous competence."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Tom, she doesn't look twenty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's twenty-three, I believe.  If Pitt was Prime Minister
+of England at twenty-one, Miss Carrell can be mistress of my
+household, for a fortnight, at twenty-three."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but Pitt was a genius."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He was not the last of the race."  It was always annoying,
+the way Belle spoke about geniuses.  "Perhaps Miss Carrell is
+one too.  In fact, I've been wondering whether she couldn't
+permanently fill the breach."  The idea, to be truthful, had only
+just struck him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?  Become your&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He enjoyed Belle's dismay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Why not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, no.  Why, the servants wouldn't obey a child like
+that.  And what about the children?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They love her.  She's been more successful with them than
+any one else."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And then again&mdash;forgive me mentioning it, but you literary
+people are so unworldly-wise&mdash;she's too pretty."  Belle smiled
+rather roguishly.  "People would talk.  With a man in your
+position it might do untold harm to have a Mistress of the
+Household, as you call her, of such youth and beauty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With contempt Mr. Bruno saw, under the veil of righteousness,
+his sister's relish for the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean they would say that the Mistress of the Household
+was also the Lady of the Bedchamber?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tom!  I wonder why you artistic people always love to
+shock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The altercation continued, with the result that Mr. Bruno
+saw more and more sense in his idea as he saw more and more
+foolishness in Belle's arguments against it.  She fell back on
+the personal appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Tom, let me beseech you to do nothing of the sort.
+It would be unwise in the extreme.  I will do all in my power
+to secure you a really worthy and capable housekeeper.  You
+can trust me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It occurred to him to retort: "Your last effort was no proof
+of your trustworthiness.  And it justifies me in a bold
+innovation."  But he only replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It might, at any rate, be given a trial.  The children love
+her as much as they distrusted Miss Durgon, and I begin to
+believe they are good judges.  The servants unite in praising
+her.  We'd better see Miss Carrell."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He leaned forward and touched the bell.  As it rang down
+below he wondered if he was rashly committing himself to
+something that wanted longer thought.  Was he being driven
+by the character that was now his tyrant to take again the line
+of least resistance?  No, surely this time the easiest line
+chanced to be the best.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tom, you don't mean to say you have determined?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not meant to say so; indeed, was wondering how,
+if necessary, he could avoid saying so; but such a question from
+Belle was answered as soon as asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I think I have."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I wash my hands of the whole business.  It's bound
+to be a failure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This made him resolve that, if possible, it should be an
+echoing success.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+When, happy to be the purveyor of pleasure, he took Miss
+Carrell into his confidence, offering her £80 for a start and
+£100 later "if the arrangement answered," she looked both
+pleased and frightened.  (Frightened, because there is always
+something uncanny in the success of all one's plans.)  And
+he was charmed with the little creature's ingenuousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know one person who'll be delighted," said he, to reassure
+her.  "That's my little daughter."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0105"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER V
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Very carefully did Miss Carrell justify her election.  By
+courteous handling of the kitchen population, by preserving
+unprofaned her master's private hours, by consolidating the
+affection of the daughter of the family and the approval of
+the quieter Owen, she showed how straight was her eye, how
+cunning and steady her hand.  But, like Miss Durgon before
+her, she had yet to make her metamorphosis complete; it was
+her policy to slough off for ever the nursery governess, and
+to put on the handsomer scales of the lady housekeeper.
+"School."  The word popped about in her mind.  "Boarding-school."  The
+children were getting older.  How insinuate into
+the minds of every one that they must soon go to school?  Then
+she would enjoy the not unfashionable duties of purchasing
+their outfits, interviewing their principals, conveying them on
+the first day of term to the thresholds of their schools, and
+writing to them afterwards like a conscientious guardian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She would do it through Daphne.  Miss Carrell had read her
+pupil's character, in so far as a thing still amorphous had
+features to be read; and what she saw was this: the child's surging
+vitality, because no one was directing it to a selected field,
+would run down any channel that might be laid invitingly before
+it.  There was the whole-hearted readiness to be masculine, just
+because half a dozen people had called her "tomboyish"; there
+was the whole-hearted readiness to fall in love with her
+governess, when the governess hinted that the gates were open.  She
+was like a mass of rising water that, insecurely prisoned, had
+been making its own little channels, and would certainly, did
+Miss Carrell trench wisely, run down her new-chosen course.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, on evenings after tea, when the dusk was in the school-room,
+Miss Carrell would read tales of school to the children,
+Daphne sitting on the floor at her knees, and Owen staring
+from his chair at the fire.  It was difficult to secure enough of
+these "Stories for Girls."  They read "Winifred of Greystones,"
+"The Most Popular Girl in the Fourth Form," "Fanny
+the Prefect," and "The Tomboy of Tatterden House."  And
+as Daphne's imagination breathed abounding life into Winifred
+of Greystones, Fanny the Prefect, and, above all, the fascinating
+Tomboy of Tatterden House, it was only through fear of hurting
+the love of her governess that she refrained from asking:
+"Do you think I shall be able to go to school soon?"  Miss
+Carrell read these stories very well, for, to tell the truth, she
+was as interested in them as her pupils; it was as much as she
+could do to restrain herself from pursuing the career of
+Winifred or the Tomboy after the children had gone to bed.  Owen,
+also, though he said little, was more interested in the tales than
+was proper for one of his sex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, hand-in-hand with assurances of unfailing affection,
+Daphne introduced the proposition that she go to school
+soon.  She would write every week to Miss Carrell full details
+of her adventures.  And Owen would go to his prep, school,
+and they would be able to compare notes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This enthusiasm for going to school was unintelligible to
+Owen, who secretly dreaded his first visit, but he pretended to
+be as excited as she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll have to ask your papa," Miss Carrell replied.  "I
+don't think he'll like it.  You're too young.  Besides,
+schools&mdash;boarding-schools are expensive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but father's got lots of money."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"His expenses are very heavy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but I shall have to go to school one day.  And I'm
+just on twelve."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe you want to get rid of me.  I believe you're tired
+of me.  You're ashamed of being taught by a governess."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indignantly Daphne protested, but Miss Carrell continued:
+"Well, well, I suppose it is humiliating for a child of eleven
+to be tied to the strings of a governess."  And she knew she
+had successfully bedded out that idea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The same evening Mr. Bruno's study was entered by his
+daughter, who, guessing from his position in the armchair,
+with book and spectacles, that no more than three minutes
+would be allotted her, came straight to the point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please, daddy, may I go to school?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To school?  Why, you're not yet out of your cradle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be silly.  I'm in my twelfth year."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So?  Well, what school are you going to?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I don't know.  Some school."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, there's an excellent school, financed by the government,
+in Star Lane.  You could go there, I suppose.  I noticed
+the other day that there was an Infants' Entrance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but father," protested Daphne.  "That's only for district
+children.  I mean a proper school&mdash;a boarding-school.  For
+<i>ladies'</i> children."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, gracious lady, art thou the daughter of an earl's castle?
+I'll tell you what you are.  You're just the encumbrance of a
+public entertainer, who has, so to speak, to drag you round
+in a box by the side of his barrel organ.  Even so, aren't you
+being taught by an excellent governess?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but no one in double figures has a governess."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No one in double figures has a governess?  Translate, for a
+dull mind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No one eleven years old has a governess.  Did you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, did I?  'Twere well, were you brought up as I.  The
+rod, my child, frequently and soundly applied."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, for a response, smiled delightedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What does the excellent Carrell say?" asked Mr. Bruno.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, she doesn't want me to go, as she'd lose me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Upon my soul!" began Mr. Bruno.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But she said I might ask you and"&mdash;here Daphne, who had
+come and leaned forward against the arm of his chair, drooped
+her head in an acted sulk&mdash;"she said you wouldn't agree."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did she though?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She said you couldn't afford it, but I told her that was all
+my hat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All your what?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All piffle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If there's a school, Miss Billingsgate, where they teach
+seemliness and decorum, and such a modicum of English as will
+enable you to get through society without expulsion, I think
+it had best be looked for immediately."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, when may I go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know.  Not to-night, certainly.  It's already
+approaching six o'clock.  Which reminds me that 'the clock
+upbraids me with a waste of time.'  You'd better let me get on
+with my work, especially if I'm to pay all this new money for
+your education....  Good night, Duffy dear.  Go and get
+into your cradle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning, as he was crossing the first-floor landing
+to the door of his study, he saw Miss Carrell coming downstairs,
+and remembered his conversation with Daphne.  Keeping
+hold of his door-handle, as a sort of insurance policy against
+protracted talk, he asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose you've heard of my daughter's latest freak?
+School?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, she's always harping on it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is she?  Good gracious!  Why, it was but yesterday that
+we had to be thinking about getting her a governess."  He
+had almost forgotten that the important little person before
+him was the governess in question.  "Her wedding will be
+upon us before we've folded up her swaddling clothes....
+However....  School.  Do you think she ought to go?  At
+what age do girls go?  Of girls I profess to know nothing,
+except that, speaking generally, they are a great ornament to
+the world.  Do you think she ought to go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell shook her head and lifted her shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I</i> don't want to lose her, but sometimes I think that with
+her vital nature she ought to have more of the society of girls
+like herself.  My Latin, for instance, is poor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mensa-mensa-mensam," began Mr. Bruno helpfully.  "But
+how does one find a really good girls' school, and go and
+examine it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell's head went slightly on one side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, I know a good deal about the scholastic world,
+having been a mistress myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; is that so?  I didn't know that, or I had forgotten it.
+This is exceedingly useful.  Tell me some more about suitable
+schools."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, I know best the school where I taught for three
+years.  Hemans House."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If it's named after Mrs. Hemans, I've no opinion of the
+poetess&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The boy, oh! where was he?<br>
+  Ask of the winds that far around<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With fragments strewed the sea!<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+No, we can't send her to a place named after Mrs. Hemans."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I rather fancy it was.  But Miss Vidella is old-fashioned.
+I expect to your thinking she'd be a very antiquated type.
+There's nothing the least bit modern about Hemans House.
+It's a very strict, and I suppose you'd say a very prudish place."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not at all, not at all."  It is a quality of incisive minds that
+they must ever brief themselves for the opposite of what has
+just been said.  "I'm more than ever convinced that all children,
+girls especially, should have a course of old fashions before
+they begin to be modern.  Christian ethics, after all, are an
+extraordinarily good system on which to run your life, and
+the modesty of our grandmothers is a necessary base for later
+liberties.  Yes, I've given the subject considerable thought.
+Childhood should be a time of very vigilant restraint.  They
+must be pruned, so as to make less gay blossoms and more
+wood.  Then, well rooted, they can blossom as they fancy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno had paid the exceptional Miss Carrell's intellect
+the compliment of thinking she understood him; but he was
+quite wrong&mdash;Miss Carrell, by his second sentence, had retired
+from further understanding, and was allowing her mind to
+fill with a new scheme.  When he had finished, she said, "Yes,
+of course."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And where is this Miss Vidella's school?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Windsor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then at any rate she has some unimpeachable neighbours....
+And, from your three years' experience, do you really
+think it is a good school?  A good place for Daphne?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell appeared to deliberate before she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of an old-fashioned kind, yes....  Yes, I think <i>certainly</i>.
+It is purposely limited to a few girls, because Miss Vidella,
+though strict, likes to mother each individual girl."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see.  Vidella is an extraordinary name.  Was she born
+with it, or is it a <i>nom de guerre</i>?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell said she didn't know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should think it's a trade-mark," suggested Mr. Bruno.
+"Prima donnas and ballerinas and hat-makers adopt names like
+that, don't they?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell said it was just the sort of quaint thing Miss
+Vidella would do.  "She's a personality, if ever there was one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is she?  Well, you want a personality at the head of a
+school.  We must think this over...."  He turned the handle
+of his door.  "Meantime, work calls.  You must think it over,
+too."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell did think it over.  She had started to think it
+over before his door opened.  And now she continued her
+journey downstairs but slowly, stopping at times to examine
+the idea again.  She unconsciously nodded to herself.  Yes,
+she knew that little stout Miss Vidella through and through.  It
+would be a pretty piece of work, and rather satisfying to one's
+vanity.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+When next Miss Carrell had a day to herself, she dressed in
+her latest-bought costume for the confounding of her old
+employer, and took the train to Windsor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaving the station, she passed the castle on her left hand,
+and, descending the hill, walked to the outskirts of the town.
+It was wonderfully pleasant to follow these familiar streets,
+thinking how her position had improved since the days when
+she used to tread-mill them regularly behind a crocodile of
+garrulous young girls.  A narrow, stringy life, a young
+mistress's in a school like Hemans House!  How she had envied,
+though vanity had hardly admitted it, the visiting parents to
+whom Miss Vidella would show such consideration!  And now
+she was approaching the place almost like a parent herself.
+No suitor for employment, but a prospective employer of the
+odious little Miss Vidella.  There was something very near
+glee in the thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a long walk, but at least she saw the high, grey wall,
+of about eighty foot frontage, that screened from sight the
+lower floors of Hemans House, seeming always to intervene
+between the charges of Miss Vidella and the immodesties of
+the world.  At either end were tall carriage doors painted
+green, but dust-coloured and spattered in their lower halves,
+where the assoilings of the world's highway beat against the
+sequestered school.  These carriage doors were termini&mdash;as
+Miss Carrell so well knew and soon saw again&mdash;of a bow-shaped
+drive that encompassed a darkened haunt of trees and shrubs.
+The gravel, moss-green at the gutters but clean at the crown,
+suggested that nowadays it knew feet more than wheels&mdash;like
+a lady who has once belonged to the carriage folk but has had
+losses and must now be content with an occasional cab.  The
+house, before which its arc swept, was wide, flat-fronted,
+flat-roofed, and, as one suspected after seeing the garden wall,
+faced with a greying stucco.  Its windows were curtained with
+the simplicity of dormitories and class-rooms.  The drive broke
+from its bow-sweep for a space to touch the bottom of the
+dead-white hearth-stoned steps.  These brought one to a hall
+door painted the same green as the doors in the garden wall,
+but scrupulously washed; indeed, at this door, with its brilliant
+brass knocker, letter-box and bell, one seemed to be in real
+touch, for the first time, with the niceties of Miss Vidella.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Conscious of her new quality, Miss Carrell ascended the steps.
+In the past and pitiable years she had always been obliged to
+enter the house through the pupils' entrance at the side, for only
+parents or visitors might defile the hearth-stoned steps.  She rang
+the bell and knocked a confident ratter-tat-<i>tat</i>; and, while
+waiting, peeped through the two lights of leaded and coloured glass
+to see the old familiar hall, now in a dull green, now in a
+sickening blue.  Here came a maid.  Miss Carrell turned her head
+and looked towards the shrubbery.  The door opening showed
+the maid in a black dress, neat apron, and cap with streamers&mdash;in
+fact, just as presentable as the brass knocker.  Yes, Miss
+Vidella was at home, and what was the name, please?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Carrell.  She will know me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell did not say, "I was once a mistress here,"
+because she remembered how the servants had always despised
+the mistresses.  "And how could they do anything else," thought
+she, as she stepped in, "knowing that the governesses were paid
+but ten pounds a year more than themselves, and fed no better?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old familiar hall!  The same well-polished linoleum,
+narrow mahogany table pushed against the heavy red-and-gold
+wall-paper; the same two mahogany chairs; the same hat and
+coat stand, jealously guarded from hats and coats; the same
+comparative darkness and inalienable odour; the same hum
+of voices from the class-rooms; and the same sound&mdash;which,
+to be sure, she had forgotten for years, but was a necessary
+ingredient&mdash;of a pupil playing scales in one of the music-rooms
+on the first floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was imagining the mistresses in class-room or music-room,
+and feeling sorry for them, as she followed the maid
+into Miss Vidella's reception room.  So familiar! this
+congregation of mahogany pieces and knick-knacks with a display
+of antimacassars over the backs of armchairs.  There was the
+upright piano which would be used for practice when no guests
+were in the room.  On all the tables, on the top of the piano,
+and along the mantel-shelf were cabinet portraits, in assorted
+frames, of girls who had left; and all these photographs stood
+parallel, but obliquely, as if they had once stood shoulder to
+shoulder, but had heard the command, "Half left turn!"  Miss
+Carrell studied the pictures of girls she had known, many of
+which bore signatures such as "Grace," or "Your affectionate
+pupil, Dorothy Brewer," or "To dear Miss Vidella, from her
+affectionate Violet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Vidella says she's engaged for a few minutes, but will
+not keep you waiting long."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes.  That would be the message she would send to an
+ex-mistress.  Miss Carrell walked to the window and looked
+out.  She could re-create what had happened when the maid
+announced "Miss Carrell."  "Who?  Miss Carrell?  Miss
+Carrell?  Dear me.  Well, ask her&mdash;tell her I will not keep her
+waiting long."  She could hardly be expected to come
+expeditiously to a person whom once she had employed at a salary
+of thirty pounds a year.  And actually it was a full five minutes
+before Miss Vidella was heard approaching.  Even then she
+delayed in the hall, while her high-pitched and affected voice
+whined some instructions to a passing pupil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door opened, and unsmiling and deliberate, Miss Vidella
+sailed towards her late governess.  Miss Vidella was short and
+very stout, and her dress was black, from the collar at her ears
+to the end of the skirt, which seemed lifted by the dome of her
+hips some irregular inches off the ground.  Her hair was as
+black as her dress, and mercilessly parted in its middle,
+probably to complete the resemblance to an ancestral portrait; but
+the fat face, with its steel spectacles on a nose that did not
+appear to have developed much since infancy, hardly matched
+the dignity of her walk or the queenly attitude she assumed in
+her chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, Miss Carrell."  Not for twenty years, one imagined,
+had the inflexions of Miss Vidella's voice been true and
+natural; they were always taken from a cupboard to suit her pose
+of the moment; she had a favourite one of injured surprise,
+which she supposed was very effective with her pupils and
+staff; another of quiet indomitability; and another of mirthless
+sarcasm.  Her present voice was the voice of a patron conceding
+an audience.  "I'm sure it's very kind of you to come.
+And where do you teach now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am no longer teaching.  I&mdash;I manage a gentleman's household
+for him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That a governess could rise out of her caste to something
+higher was not easily conceived by Miss Vidella.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?  A housekeeper?  Isn't that a pity?  Surely the
+training of youth was a higher calling."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I did not say 'housekeeper,' Miss Vidella.  What I mean
+is, I manage a widower's household for him, and act as guardian
+of his children."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But surely that means he's making you combine governess
+and housekeeper in one?  I hope he is not taking advantage
+of you, and that you are not being overworked."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+("Fat little beast," thought Miss Carrell.  "You naturally
+don't want to think that I bettered myself by leaving
+you.")  But while thinking this she said pleasantly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't quite understand the post, Miss Vidella.  I must
+confess I consider myself very lucky, and I thought it would
+please you too.  Mr. Tenter Bruno is a widower, and he has
+appointed me to the sole charge of his servants and his children.
+He gives me, in addition to a luxurious home, a hundred
+pounds a year."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a tadpole might legitimately be called a frog, so her present
+eighty pounds, by virtue of its promise, might be called a
+hundred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A hundred pounds a year resident!"  Miss Vidella's little
+black eyes at last showed amazement.  "But surely that's an
+enormous salary for so young a woman, is it not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is very good, certainly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He must be a very wealthy man, this Mr.&mdash;Mr.&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Tenter Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is a writer of that name, is there not?  Though I
+confess I have little acquaintance with any of these modern
+writers.  They are so revolutionary, and their writings have a
+distinctly immoral tone.  Shelley and Keats, of course, I am
+passionately fond of.  Is your Mr. Tenter Bruno of the same
+family as the writer?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He is <i>the</i> Mr. Tenter Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Indeed?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was clear that Miss Vidella was giving some thought to
+this information, for she had looked again, and with a new
+expression, at the fine plumage of her late governess.  If you
+brought together such notions as a loose modern writer, a pretty
+dependent, and the ridiculous remuneration of a hundred pounds
+a year&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Indeed!" she said.  "It's a curious appointment."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell smiled.  She did not trouble to repudiate the
+suspicion, even feeling a humour to encourage it.  Raising her
+shoulders, she replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps all artists are unconventional."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a rustle in her hostess's chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unconventional theories, in my experience of the world,
+Miss Carrell, often end in&mdash;er&mdash;in all sorts of things."  She
+began to enjoy playing the mentor on such a subject to the
+young woman.  "Are you sure that you are quite wise in
+accepting such an equivocal position?  Artists are so often
+loose-lived.  You must forgive me, but this is the warning
+of an old woman."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A merry laugh was Miss Carrell's reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I can look after myself all right.  Why, I've been there
+over two years."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(Not, of course, on her present throne, but it was unnecessary
+to explain that.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella bridled and shrugged.  Obviously she was
+thinking that, if such were the position, the worst had probably
+happened.  And in the face of this probability, Miss Carrell
+was no person to encourage in Hemans House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I happened to be in the neighbourhood," said Miss
+Carrell, "and I couldn't resist inquiring after the old school.
+I hope it's prospering."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly," said Miss Vidella, slightly ruffled.  "My school
+has never been more prosperous."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The numbers keep up?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do not desire too great numbers, for then each individual
+child receives greater attention from myself and my staff."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+("Fiddlesticks!" thought her listener.  "That stuff may go
+down with the parents, but what's the good of palming it off on
+me?")
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I would have asked you to stay to tea," said Miss Vidella,
+after a pause, "only I have hardly a minute to spare.  I am
+really very busy indeed.  I am afraid I shall have to ask you to
+excuse me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell rose and picked up her umbrella from a chair.
+It was rather fun angling for this plump trout.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right&mdash;yes&mdash;I mustn't keep you.  I don't think I'd better
+stay to tea, as I want to get to town early.  There's just one
+thing I wanted to ask you, and it was this.  The elder of my
+two charges is a girl, Daphne Bruno.  She is about to go to
+school, and Mr. Bruno has commissioned me to find a suitable
+place for her.  I thought you knew so much more about the
+scholastic world than I did, so as I was in the town it occurred
+to me to look in and ask you to advise us.  Mr. Bruno would
+want a really first-class school, of course, and I don't suppose
+money would be a very great object."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is very interesting.  Please sit down again, Miss
+Carrell."  Miss Vidella sat down herself.  "This is very interesting.
+Tell me about the little girl.  The mention of her alone
+interests me, my life having been spent in the service of such
+as she.  How old is she, and what is her name?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's eleven, and her name is Daphne Deirdre."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Such strange names!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella said it in a voice she kept for parents, or for
+the girls when they used slang: it had a faint savour of mittens
+and quiet-handed surprise at anything less strictly regulated
+than herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," Miss Carrell agreed.  "As you said, these people are
+unconventional.  What school do you really think would suit
+the daughter of such a man?  Of course, to modern parents the
+very possession of his daughter would be an advertisement
+for the school."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Carrell, why should she not come here?  I am fairly
+full, as I intimated, but I could make an exception for such a
+child, in the hope, of course, that she would inherit her father's
+talents and bring great credit to the school.  And for your
+sake, too, as an old member of the staff."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a demurring answer that Miss Carrell gave to this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I had hardly thought of that.  Of course, she'd do credit
+to any school.  She has a clear, inquisitive brain and a
+tremendous vitality that she gets from her father, and at the same
+time a soft and adoring side that I suppose comes from the
+mother, who seems to have been a frail, affectionate creature.
+Altogether a charming child.  But I don't think it would do.
+I expect that Mr. Bruno contemplates paying much higher fees
+than you ask."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We can always arrange our fees," began Miss Vidella,
+luckily seeing nothing of the laugh that trembled through her
+visitor.  "I mean mine has always been a sliding scale, suited
+to the pockets of the parents.  By which I have been able to
+help a lot of children of less well-to-do people."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As far as I can remember, quite a lot of them came at
+reduced fees," said Miss Carrell in obliging agreement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I have made many sacrifices.  It has been my work
+in life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Bruno is particularly anxious about the social status of
+the girls his daughter will meet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course.  Naturally.  Well, we shall satisfy him there.
+You know I make a point of receiving only the daughters of
+officers, clergy and professional men."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I remember it says so in the prospectus."  This reply
+particularly pleased Miss Carrell, for it would leave Miss
+Vidella wondering what exactly she meant.  "I must admit the
+idea had not occurred to me, and frankly I don't think it would
+quite answer.  Still, I'm grateful for your suggestion."  She
+rose.  "I must be hurrying, or I shall miss my train, and we
+have some guests to-night," which last statement was a fiction
+provided for atmospheric effect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, you understand," said Miss Vidella hurriedly,
+and smiling to repudiate any false construction that might be
+put on her words, "that in the event of your sending me a good
+pupil I should save an agent's fee.  I don't know if it&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A laugh rippled from Miss Carrell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What an idea!  Were you going to suggest that I receive
+it instead?  Oh, yes, I remember you used to offer it to us.
+I shouldn't mind taking it at all, if by chance Daphne came to
+you.  I have no false pride and make no bones of the fact that
+I earn my living.  What fee do you usually give the agents?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, they vary.  But I really shouldn't mind offering you, in
+this case, if Mr. Bruno paid, say&mdash;say, a hundred a year, a
+commission of ten pounds.  I should regard it as only fair."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, that would be a pleasant little windfall, supposing
+Daphne did come here.  Though you understand, of course, I
+must put the little girl's interest before all things."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Naturally.  Naturally.  I would be the last person to suggest
+anything else.  But, of course, I have such faith in my own
+methods that I don't think she would do better elsewhere.  I
+feel I should like to have your little ward here.  And it's only
+because you're an old friend of mine, and I knew your position,
+that I offered what I did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I think it was exceedingly sweet of you, Miss Vidella.
+And if Mr. Bruno decides to send his daughter here I shan't
+at all mind taking it.  Well, we must see.  It's quite a new idea
+to me.  Good-bye."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Miss Carrell, as she passed into the street, was faintly
+reminded of the sons of Jacob selling young Joseph to the
+Midianites for a few pieces of silver, she quickly forgot so silly
+a thought.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0206"></a></p>
+
+<h2>
+PART II: <i>Daphne's Schooldays</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VI
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, her governess, and a new trunk marked D.D.T.B.,
+were all in the Windsor train as it moved out of
+Paddington.  A sense of well-being accompanied Miss Carrell
+too.  So often had she seen parents bringing their children to
+Hemans House, and envied them the position in which they
+stood to the school and to the mistresses.  It was the difference
+between the paying and the paid, between the clients of a firm
+and its servants.  Not so much those whose children came for
+notoriously reduced fees; them she had rather pitied.  And
+now here was she, wearing gracefully the clothes of the leisured
+classes, and bringing to Miss Vidella a best-paying child.  Under
+a manner of graciousness and charm she would talk to the
+junior mistresses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She could congratulate herself on the skill with which she
+had played for Mr. Bruno's decision.  She had used Daphne
+first, hanging before her gaze pictures of life at Hemans House
+as it lived in her memory&mdash;its fun and mischief, its quaint
+customs, and its tales of friendship between girl and girl or
+between governess and pupil, till the child's imagination was
+possessed by Miss Vidella and her establishment, and she would
+pester her father to be sent to that school and no other.  With
+the father Miss Carrell had kept her recommendation free from
+over-emphasis, though unmistakably strong.  She made capital
+with the idea that Daphne would probably do best at a school
+on which she was keen.  And Mr. Bruno had agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was less happy than Miss Carrell.  After all her
+noisy enthusiasm for school, she did not like to admit a present
+anxiety that was almost a dread.  Even from herself she pushed
+away a wish that she and Owen and Miss Carrell could have
+gone on for ever in the schoolroom upstairs with the two desks.
+As the train hurried towards Windsor she gazed out of the
+window and affected, for her previous attitude demanded nothing
+less, a great excitement about the journey and its destination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll soon seen Windsor Castle," said Miss Carrell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall we?  How ripping!"  But she felt that the moment
+of seeing Windsor Castle, where it towered above the distant
+trees, would be a moment of something like fright; and one
+could wish that the train would roll on and on, so that the
+moment never came.  The hunched carters whose wagons
+rumbled on the country roads were people to be envied for their
+age and freedom; so were the porters on the platforms, who
+would be doing to-morrow what they were doing this afternoon;
+and the engine driver, alone in his engine day after day,
+with no head mistress or big girls to overawe him.  Something
+was wrong with her breathing; she kept wanting to rearrange
+it with a short, quick inhalation or a downward sigh or yawn.
+But when Miss Carrell, looking out of the window, began to
+search the skyline for the Round Tower of Windsor Castle,
+that she might point it out with an exhibitor's pride, and at last
+exclaimed: "There it is&mdash;there between the trees!" Daphne
+jumped up and stared out of the door-window in an imitation
+of effervescing delight.  A sickish business, because her heart
+was not in the effervescence; it was lying somewhere lower than
+usual and beating too fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is Hemans House far from the station?" she asked, and
+though her voice was meant to suggest impatience, the words
+were really an appeal for delay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it's a mile or more, but we'll take a fly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Usually taking a fly was a treat, but now, as the train slowed
+into Windsor station, the cab seemed little better than a Black
+Maria or a tumbrel.  But life bustles you on regardless of your
+desire to go slow, or even to stop still, and Miss Carrell bustled
+her on to the platform.  There as she waited, trembling in the
+cold wind, she sank herself deeper in that despairing envy of
+all the other persons who were getting out of the carriages:
+the young people whose schooldays were behind them, the
+middle-aged who must have forgotten all about school, and the old
+men who were near death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell pushed her into the fly, and said "Hemans
+House" to the cabman, who nodded "Yes'm," and flicked at
+his horse, starting it up the hill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne watched out of the window.  "Now we're almost
+there!" she exclaimed, to keep up the fiction of excited
+happiness.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The high garden wall of Hemans House was not likely to
+diminish her anxiety; nor the depressing tangle of trees on the
+other side of the wall, the moss-green gravel, and the stucco
+house.  There was more cheer about the white hearthstoned
+steps and the green hall door.  But the clang of the bell in the
+basement had a ring of irreparability, as if it had snapped off
+the past; and the waiting for the door to open was unlike any
+other waiting she had ever known.  Fears seemed to have
+vivified her thinking and heightened her imagination above the
+normal.  White hearthstoned steps, hollowed where the feet
+trod, were no longer steps and nothing more.  Steps?  Steps
+were romantic things.  What one-time tenants of this old house
+had come up these steps and gone down them, and with what
+emotions!  And now they were in their graves.  Perhaps some
+daughter of the house had eloped down these steps with her
+lover, like Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall.  A fraction of
+those hollows was made by their flying feet.  School girls,
+converging from all parts, had come up these steps, and wondered
+what years lay before them.  And after a time they had taken
+their farewell journey down them.  Stirring, sweet thought,
+that last walk down them!  Long after Miss Vidella had died&mdash;one
+could be selfishly happy if she died this afternoon&mdash;other
+tenants, not yet born perhaps, would come up these steps.
+A crowd would stand here to watch a wedding pair descend
+to their carriage on the drive.  And the bodies of people would
+one day be carried in coffins, feet foremost, down the steps.
+That time they would make no impression on the hollows....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door was opening, and a maid, who recognised Miss
+Carrell, was inviting them to come in.  They were walking
+through a rather dark hall to the reception-room.  Now they
+were waiting in the reception-room.  This was like an interval
+between two parts of one's life, an empty, silent pause, like the
+place where the coupling was, between two coaches of a railway
+train.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne here began to fill the interval, and thus to contract
+to commonplace thinking again, by a study of the framed
+portraits of former pupils.  All of them seemed to have written,
+something like, "To dear Miss Vidella, from her affectionate
+Violet," and she was cheered by these proofs of lovableness in
+her head-mistress.  How pleasant, when she should have left
+school for ever, to send a photograph, signed, "To my dear
+mistress, from her loving Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno!"  She
+was startled away from the frames by the sound of a high-pitched
+voice outside; and the door opened, and Miss Vidella
+made a dignified entry.  Daphne had heard from Miss Carrell
+that her future principal was "short, stout and very quaint,"
+but the words had suggested no such caricature as this.  With
+a moment's homesickness she knew that, had Owen and she in
+their former freedom seen such a figure in the street, they
+would have giggled and hurried out of sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So this is little Daphne Bruno!" said Miss Vidella, stretching
+out a cold hand which Daphne took.  The hand seemed to
+share none of the affection of the high-pitched voice, but to be
+a sort of perfunctory companion who did what was expected
+of it without enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We generally call her Duffy at home," said Miss Carrell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy!  What a strange name!  I don't think we can call
+her that here.  Sounds too much like Duffer&mdash;and we have
+none of them here."  Daphne wondered if this were supposed
+to be funny.  "Besides, being her father's daughter, she'll be
+anything but a dunce.  No, we shall only call her Daphne."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne had a sense of seeing Duffy dismissed from the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And how is your dear father?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very-well-thank-you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And is he writing another of his splendid books?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes-I-think-so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He's always at work," interjected Miss Carrell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear me.  You must be a proud little girl to be the daughter
+of so celebrated a parent.  Are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne had never thought of it like that&mdash;one hardly did
+about one's father&mdash;but she dutifully mumbled "Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Daphne dear, you must be happy with us.  Your
+father was most careful to choose a school where you would be
+happy, and you mustn't disappoint him, but tell him how happy
+you are here."  She turned to Miss Carrell.  "I am hoping he
+will consent to act as a reference for us....  And I tell you
+what would be nice for you, Daphne, and make you feel more
+at home, if you could persuade some other dear little girl friends
+to come to school with you here.  Will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And to think that Miss Carrell, whom I know so well,
+should have been helping you with your studies for the last
+few years!  Have you learnt a lot from her?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's right.  Well, you're a little shy now, aren't you?
+Very natural, I am sure.  Perhaps you'd like to go downstairs
+to the dining-room, and see some of your school-fellows.  Would
+you like to do that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;thank&mdash;you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's right."  Miss Vidella struck a bell on the table beside
+her.  "You'll stay here, won't you, Miss Carrell?  I am
+expecting some more of the dear children's parents, and we shall
+have a cup of tea up here."  The maid entered in response to
+the bell, and her mistress said: "Knight" (she achieved added
+dignity by calling all her maids by their surnames), "please
+take Miss Daphne Tenter Bruno and show her her dormitory&mdash;she's
+sleeping in the Eliza Cook room&mdash;and then show her to
+where the other young ladies are assembled in the dining-room.
+Miss Sims is looking after them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, madam."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you....  Now do you go with Knight, dear, who
+will show you the way....  Ah, yes, yes, Miss Carrell will
+come and see you before she goes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne passed out of the door behind the maid, Knight.  As
+the door closed, the thought of Miss Carrell partaking of an
+exalted tea with the parents made it seem as if she had been
+assumed into a heaven, leaving Daphne to work out her
+salvation in loneliness below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come on, your Shyness," the maid surprised her by saying
+as, not without kindness, she took her by the hand.  "You'll
+soon get used to us.  There's worse places than school when
+all's said and done, and worse schools than this, I daresay.
+Come and see your bedroom.  Up this way....  Just the next
+floor....  Now in here....  There ... That's where you'll
+sleep, and I wish I had half as good a room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was in a large, bright room, with six beds whose
+top blankets were scarlet and their linen well laundered.  On
+the floor at the foot of the nearest she recognised her trunk.
+The five other beds started more nervousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Knight helped her to remove her coat and hat, brush her hair
+and prepare for the dining-room.  Then she led her downstairs
+to a big, bare room in the basement.  Here were three
+long tables laid for tea, a vase of flowers at every four feet
+giving an air of gaiety suitable to the day when the girls
+returned.  Round the walls were hung Maud Goodman's pictures:
+"Taller Than You, Mother," "When the Heart is Young," and
+"They Lived Happily ever Afterwards."  In the bay window,
+whose panes looked out upon a shallow area, sat a young
+mistress, evidently Miss Sims.  She was a short woman
+with a colourless face, not ill-featured, and dull, fair hair.
+Her popularity was shown by the girls who were dancing
+around her, or sitting with dangling legs on a table at her
+side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All heads turned as the maid entered with Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here's one of the new girls, Miss Sims.  She's Miss Daphne
+Brunner, or some name like that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes.  We've heard all about her&mdash;Daphne Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Sims, in her relations with her pupils, was the complete
+sentimentalist.  She lived with emotions she would have been
+ashamed to reveal.  And yet, to herself, she liked to call these
+emotions the noblest thing in her.  It was just this, she had
+to have somebody to love passionately.  The six years of her
+teaching had been a chain of such hungry, largely concealed
+loves for some fair-featured pupil.  And at the moment when
+Daphne first saw her, though she was laughing gaily with the
+girls, for all of whom she felt affection, her mind was really
+full of treasured regrets and self-pity, because an older pupil,
+Audrey Stanton, who had held her heart and filled her dreams,
+had left the school the previous term.  "Doubtless," Miss Sims
+had thought during the holidays, "she will write me a few
+affectionate letters, and then forget all about me."  The pathos
+of this had evoked a few verses, one of which ran:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  Upon the threshold of a broader view,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where lay revealed what girlhood sees,<br>
+  I left my little pupil standing, and withdrew<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To fondle memories.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+And another, supposed to be written in ten years' time when
+all the girl-children on whom she had expended her love should
+be dispersed:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  O Time, reverse the glass, and let flow back the sands!<br>
+  Within a stucco house once more a figure stands,<br>
+  And smiles on upturned faces, grasping outstretched hands.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  Revive the past?  Ah no!  Nor yet retie the knot,<br>
+  For time must move, and early-formed attachments rot,<br>
+  And so the tale is told, a girlhood friend forgot.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The melancholy of her return this term to familiar walls
+empty of Audrey Stanton had been relieved (though in loyalty
+she hardly admitted it) by the hope that some new pupil would
+win her heart.  When she had been told about the great
+Mr. Tenter Bruno's daughter, she had wondered whether this
+interesting child would be able to succeed to Audrey, and to give
+her all the exquisite delights and sufferings that that gracious
+girl had had the power to bestow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now she saw Daphne.  She saw an eleven-year-old child
+whose brown hair had not yet been tied back with a ribbon.
+The eyes were brown, large and inquiring; the nose straight
+and small; the mouth at the moment, unmoving and sad&mdash;though
+the sadness, perhaps, was reflected from a timidity in
+the eyes.  The narrow figure, with its early promise of long,
+thin limbs, was indistinguishable from a boy's....  The child
+looked lost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Sims's heart moved out to her aid, swelling with hope.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, quite unaware that there was a person in the room
+who was wondering whether she would be able to love her
+better than any one else in the world, was introduced to all the
+girls, none of whom made any impression on her except a
+certain Gertrude Wayne.  This girl, who was perhaps a year
+older than Daphne, but no taller, had deliberately come and sat
+beside her, and studied to be pleasant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(The hidden fact was that Gertrude Wayne had just finished
+reading a boys' school story, "The Best House at Whitefriars,"
+whose hero, a Godfrey Baldwin, had always been very kind
+and protecting to new boys, and thereby earned their worship;
+and her behaviour just now was modelled on Godfrey's.  She
+had even a hope that the bigger girls would be unkind to this
+new kid, so that she could stand up for her.  It must be splendid
+to have the admiration that Godfrey inspired.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did they say your name was?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Any other names?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+'Yes; Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I think Deirdre is a ripping name.  Which are you
+called by at home?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm generally called Duffy at home, but Miss Vidella says
+I'm not to be called by that here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She would.  Nicknames are the same as slang to her, the
+old&mdash;&mdash;  But's really she's not so bad."  (Gertrude had suddenly
+remembered that Godfrey never spoke unkindly of any one.)
+"She did the same with me.  I'm always called Trudy at home,
+but she said, 'My dear, what a strange name!  It's too much
+like Judy,' and she made me be called Gertrude.  I shall call
+you Duffy, if you'll call me Trudy.  Will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where are you sleeping?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the Eliza Cook room I think it was called."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, blow!  I'm in the Frances Burney room.  Never mind.
+If there's anything I can do for you, let me know.  I remember
+how rotten it was when I was new.  I've been here two years
+now&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The conversation was stopped by the sound of Miss Vidella's
+voice outside, and when she entered with some parents, all the
+girls stood up and kept silence.  Some older ones giggled,
+though their lips were compressed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is the dining-room," sang Miss Vidella, and the parents,
+male and female, gazed helpfully round.  "Such a nice,
+cheerful room.  South aspect, and gets the whole day's sun....
+Sit down, dears....  You won't mind them sitting down,
+will you?  Yes, they have all their meals here&mdash;not luxuries,
+I'm afraid, but good, plain, wholesome food."  (She
+pronounced this word to rhyme with "good.")  "Where's little
+Daphne Bruno?  Ah, there she is.  Getting quite at home
+already....  Come to me, dear, and let me introduce you.  This
+is the great Mr. Tenter Bruno's only daughter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tenter Bruno was an old Harrovian," said one corpulent
+father, interested for the first time.  "He was at Harrow with
+me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There.  Now isn't that interesting?  Here's some one who
+was at school with your father.  How small the world is! ... Now
+do you run away, dear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She soon took out the parents again, who bowed graciously
+to Miss Sims before withdrawing.  Then tea was brought in,
+the first day of term being celebrated by such extras as blanc-mange
+and jelly and bananas.  The girls, now increased in numbers,
+were chatteringly occupied with the meal, under the
+supervision of Miss Sims and another mistress who had appeared,
+when all were compelled to stand again with full and giggling
+mouths by the entrance of Miss Vidella, and a second little
+shift of parents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, they've started, I see....  Miss Sims and Miss
+Stevens."  The parents bowed.  "Yes, I don't pretend we
+give them luxuries, but we study always to have good, plain,
+nourishing food....  Well, sit down, dears, and get on with
+your meal.  I am sure you will be excused.  This is one
+of my new girls this term."  Daphne stood up, blushing
+because her mouth was full, and she was overborne by this
+semicircle of parents about her.  "She's Mr. Tenter Bruno's
+daughter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Really?" exclaimed one lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, he's just sent her.....  Sit down, dear....  It's a
+fine, cheery room, isn't it?  Perhaps you'd like to see the
+dormitories."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They filed out, and the frost-bound chattering violently
+thawed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After tea, Daphne was left quite alone and unspoken to,
+Trudy Wayne having gone away, and Miss Sims been relieved
+by Miss Stevens.  She sat on the edge of a table, and passed
+the time looking up and round at the Maud Goodman pictures,
+or watching some big girl whose voice was commanding a
+moment's attention.  Quite half an hour must have gone before
+Miss Carrell came into the room to kiss her good-bye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good-bye, Duffy, dear.  I've got to be off to my train.
+Try to be very happy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think it's lovely," said Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0207"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VII
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+On awaking next morning in the Eliza Cook room and
+looking round upon its iron bedsteads, beneath whose
+tumbled red blankets the hips and shoulders of five strange
+girls made miniature mountain ranges, Daphne yielded to a
+dull resignation.  Owen, whose attractions she had too much
+overlooked, was now seen to be a friend whose absence left
+a damping blank.  How good the holidays would be when
+once again Hollins would come in, pull up the blinds, and wake
+them!  All these five schoolfellows were still asleep, and she
+coveted the ease and familiarity which enabled them to hunch
+up and sleep like that.  Herself felt perfectly awake.  She
+would have rather liked to get up, but dared not move till
+some of the others, by rising and dressing, showed her what
+to do.  There were six basins on a long trestle table, with a
+clean, white cloth and four new pieces of brown carbolic soap.
+To look at these squares of soap was to catch their smell.
+Which of those basins ought she to use, and which piece
+of soap?  And how much of herself ought she to wash?
+Always at home Hollins had taught her that when she didn't
+have a bath she must wash, like all ladies and gentlemen,
+right down to her waist, and never be guilty of the "cat-lick."  But
+she knew, as she lay there, that if the majority of these
+girls made use of the "cat-lick," she would follow their
+example.  Moral courage, of course, demanded the opposite
+(like Tom Brown saying his prayers), but she had no desire
+to show moral courage.  All she wanted was to do nothing
+remarkable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at last, one by one, and with unembarrassed talking,
+the girls got up, after a loud bell had rung downstairs, they
+soon solved for her the problem of washing.  All of them
+seemed to dress as far as their princess petticoats before
+approaching the basin, and then gave a hasty polish to their
+faces and necks with the damp end of a towel.  One girl,
+even, who had lain in bed long after the bell had gone, did not
+wash at all, but dashed downstairs with her dress undone,
+plaiting her hair as she went.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Into the stream of girls which, fed by tributary rivulets from
+other rooms, was cascading downstairs, Daphne slipped, so as
+to flow along with it and see in what pool it finally settled.  It
+settled in the dining-room, where all the girls were taking up
+places behind the chairs they had occupied at yesterday's tea.
+Only whispered talk was passing across the breakfast things, as
+if even that were contraband.  Daphne slipped to the chair
+that had known her yesterday, and in the absence of Owen,
+Hollins, and Miss Carrell, the chair seemed a friend.  She saw
+Trudy Wayne, and Trudy saw her, and smiled and looked
+dreamily ahead.  Daphne wondered at the wistful self-sufficiency
+in her eyes&mdash;not knowing that Trudy was posturing for
+her admiration as Godfrey Baldwin of Whitefriars.  The
+whispers evaporated into empty silence as Miss Vidella walked
+into the room.  When Miss Vidella walked, everything from
+her head to her waist was as stationary as the bust of a
+stout lady carried on a tray, but everything from her waist to
+her skirt-hem moved, and this motion gave her passage across
+the room the character of a slow, dignified flounce.  It also
+shook and jingled the silver chatelaine, which, now that her
+school was really in session, she had hung at her belt, much as
+a mayor hangs his chain about his neck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went and stood in the window-bay, and immediately
+Miss Mitchell, the music mistress, walked to the piano and sat
+down.  Daphne guessed.  It was to be Prayers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sang, apparently by heart, the hymn:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "New every morning is the love<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Our wakening and uprising prove."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+and Miss Vidella in her high voice read a chapter of the
+Bible.  Then all knelt down behind their chairs for the collects
+and prayers.  Some who could not be seen of mistresses sat
+on their heels.  Daphne held on to the upright bars of the
+back of her chair like a caged monkey, and stared through its
+tracery at the bare seat and the drooping table-cloth.  She
+tried to say <i>Amen</i> when the others did, but the word would not
+come quick enough, and was even once in danger of saying
+itself after the next prayer had started; and this dreadful
+moment decided her to leave the word alone.  The public
+and common worship over, all knelt in silence, till the head
+mistress, who had been standing, began to move away, and then
+all finished their private prayers at the same moment, jumped
+up, pulled out their chairs, sat on them, and released the first
+trickles of chatter.  The door closed on Miss Vidella, who
+had retired to a more dignified breakfast in her private room,
+and the trickles of chatter swelled into a spate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But throughout the meal Daphne employed only one word,
+"Thank-you."  She used it several times, to maids who brought
+her food, and to the neighbours who passed the plate of bread
+and butter.  She ate her porridge without sugar, being afraid
+to ask any one to pass it, and her bread and butter without
+any marmalade, because the dish was so far away.  There was
+much talk of some one called "Petsy," whom she gradually
+identified as Miss Vidella, and of some one called "Chutney,"
+who was apparently a man.  Once or twice she thought
+she would start a conversation and feign the ease she did
+not feel, beginning "Who is Chutney?" but the words never got
+past her throat.  She hardly knew herself.  At home she had
+always been a dominant note, and now she was completely
+overawed, and in the tightening grip of a horrid desire to
+cry.  The moisture, indeed, was near her eyes, and the nearer
+it came the nearer her vexation drew it, till at last she was in
+an agony for the meal to be over, so that she could escape from
+the crowd.  Trudy Wayne had been at too great a distance
+to speak to her.  Only one other person had come out clearly
+from the noisy background.  Shortly after her arrival in
+the room she had noticed Miss Sims seeking along the faces
+of the girls for a particular one, and had felt a telepathic
+certainty it was hers she sought.  So she was not surprised
+when the mistress's eyes encountered hers, and smiled a
+sympathy.  Daphne smiled confusedly back.  After that she caught
+Miss Sims looking at her frequently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the half-hour between breakfast and classes the girls
+went to their various Form Rooms, which they were allowed
+to use as Common Rooms.  Daphne, being as yet placed in
+no form, wondered where to go, and found herself left in the
+long hall or corridor that ran behind the form-room doors.
+Here she delayed, and when people passed, pretended to be
+doing something definite lest she appeared lost and ridiculous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly from a small door at the corridor's end Miss Sims
+appeared, bearing a load of stiff-covered and glossy exercise
+books ready for dealing out to the members of the form,
+and directly she saw Daphne she stopped, and then advanced
+towards her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you looking for some one, dear?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne looked up at her, and seeing the kindness in her
+eyes, determined to be frank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please where do I go to now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My poor child, have you been out here all alone, wondering
+where to go?  I'll show you.  Come with me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had intended to lead her to the girls in her own classroom,
+but changed her direction.  Here was the soft-featured
+child whom last night she had chosen as first favourite for
+the throne of Audrey Stanton, and it would be rather sweet
+to have her alone for a few minutes in an empty room, and
+to talk kindly to her there.  Perhaps the child would cry, and
+she would comfort her, stroking her head, and from that
+moment the desired adoration would kindle in Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Miss Sims walked towards the corner, where the corridor
+made a right-angled turn and led to a back wing of
+the house.  The first door on her right was a music-room,
+a cell-like place, containing a piano, two chairs, a table, and a
+music-rack.  With Daphne behind her she entered, and pushed
+the door so that it closed but did not latch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Just come in here a minute where I have one or two
+things to do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pretended to be engaged in sorting some music, but
+soon stopped.  Seating herself on one of the chairs, she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now come, Daphne dear, I want you to tell me all about
+yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne came two or three steps nearer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come dear, don't be afraid of me.  Don't think of me
+as a mistress, but just as a friend."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne came up close against her knee, and Miss Sims
+put her arm about her waist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There.  You look sad and homesick.  I want you to
+tell me all your troubles.  Always, will you?  Anything that's
+on your mind, no matter what it is.  If any girl's unkind,
+or any mistress doesn't understand you.  Always tell me, for
+already I feel so fond of you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perceiving that her pupil's head had dropped a little, as
+though to hide a moisture, she pulled her closer by the waist,
+and let her pressure speak silently of sympathy and understanding.
+For quite a while she held her like that, till Daphne,
+though grateful and beginning to reciprocate the affection, was
+not without an embarrassment at its rapid progress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Promise me you'll let me do all I can for you.  I want
+to do a great deal.  Will you promise me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," muttered Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Sims pulled her close again; and it would have been
+difficult to see how the conversation was to be continued or
+closured, had not a high-pitched voice in the passage outside
+caused Miss Sims to release the child abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There," said she.  "We must be getting to the class-rooms."  A
+disturbance was in her voice.  "You help me to carry
+these exercise books."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Sims!  Miss Sims!" cried the voice without.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Sims immediately issued from the music room with
+Daphne following.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here I am, Miss Vidella.  Little Daphne Bruno is helping
+me with these exercise books.  I thought perhaps I had
+better give her something to do, lest she should be inclined
+to mope at all this first morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella was apparently angry about something, and
+eager to vent it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What a strange idea, Miss Sims!  I think there can be
+no reason why a child should mope in a school such as mine,
+where everything is done to contribute to their happiness.
+I think it's a strange idea to put in a child's head.  Very
+unwise.  But that's neither here nor there at the moment.  I
+must ask you to communicate to Miss Mitchell my exceeding
+displeasure at what I saw just now."  She made suitable play
+with her fat hands.  "There was Mr. Pulteney calling to hear
+if the same pupils were taking the violoncello, as indeed was
+very proper of him, and there was Miss Mitchell talking to
+him in the hall.  I dislike intensely to come down the stairs,
+and see in the entrance hall of my school a young man and a
+young woman talking together like that.  I wish you would
+convey that impression to Miss Mitchell.  Supposing some one
+had called at that moment.  If she as music mistress has
+any communication to make to the visiting music master, she
+must make it at the proper time and place.  I think I left that
+impression on them, however.  I gave them one look, and
+they went their several ways....  Well, Daphne dear, I hope
+you are happy....  Do you like very much your new school?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Awfully."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Awfully!  What strange terms these dear children do
+use!  Well, dear, I think you had better start in Miss Sim's
+form, the Fourth.  We can examine you, and if you know
+much more than the others of your age, we can move you
+up....  Dear, dear, it is already half-past nine o'clock.  Why
+doesn't some one ring the bell for First Hour?"
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of Daphne's distinguished father, the verdict, after
+an examination of her attainments in Miss Sims's class-room,
+pronounced that she had but little scholarship, and her
+intelligence was apparently unremarkable.  In truth, she had but
+few goods to display in her window.  Her governess, Miss
+Carrell, had directed her instruction to achieving popularity
+with her pupil, and not to her future academic success.
+Daphne's knowledge, therefore, was below the standard of her
+age, and, more serious consequence, her capacity for
+concentration on subjects she disliked was enervated and flabby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her failure this morning, while drawing from Miss Sims
+the becoming sounds of disappointment, really relieved and
+delighted the mistress.  Now there was no chance of her
+favourite being promoted to the form above.  And with Miss
+Sims, though the thought of cruelty could only sit under aliases
+and disguises in her mind, it was always sweeter to see her
+favourite in disgrace and hurt than successful and rejoicing.
+So she did not minimise Daphne's ignorance when Miss Vidella
+came in to hear the report, and to examine such papers as
+the new girl had written.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Strange!" whined the head mistress, as she took off the
+steel spectacles with which she had scanned the work.  "Strange
+indeed that a father of such eminence should have so backward
+a child.  But it is often the way.  Ordinary parents have
+extraordinary children, and <i>vice versa</i>.  Were your grandparents
+utterly simple, child?  Well, perhaps you don't know.
+Perhaps one day you will have a little daughter who will
+redress the balance.  Meantime we must see what we can
+make of you, and you must apply yourself studiously.  Now
+do you return to your seat, dear.  You will remain in Miss
+Sims's form."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With that decision Miss Vidella carried out her stationary
+bust and back on her swinging hips; and Miss Sims tapped
+Daphne on the shoulder&mdash;it was a pleasure to touch the child
+even thus far&mdash;and murmured, "Never mind.  Never mind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which rather surprised Daphne, since she had not greatly
+minded, being dimly aware that Miss Vidella was acting up to
+a part, and that it was a rather pompous and foolish one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At dinner only French might be spoken.  Of French (Daphne
+was to learn) Miss Vidella made an enormous feature.  She
+took all French classes herself, and gave long lectures on
+French literature, with special attention to Victor Hugo.  They
+were like perpetual masses, with Miss Vidella as priestess, in
+honour of Victor Hugo.  On the strength of having once
+when eight years of age (so Daphne was told) sat on Victor
+Hugo's knee, she considered that her French accent was
+perfect and every one else's egregious, and her knowledge
+of French literature vast, and every one else's insular and
+limited.  "I wish to goodness," the elder girls would say before,
+during, or after a memorial mass, "that she'd never met the
+man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the afternoon there was talk of a walk.  It was the
+Lent term, and a walk was the normal recreation.  Hockey
+was in the very first stages of its adoption by girls' schools,
+and to hockey Miss Vidella could never be resigned.  Tennis
+she allowed in the summer term, on the stipulation that the
+girls kept their legs well-disciplined.  But in the Christmas
+and Lent terms, apart from a walk in crocodile formation,
+the only athletic pastimes were gymnasium and riding; and
+riding was limited to those whose parents paid for it.  Riding
+she probably allowed because it gave a school such a <i>tone</i>; but
+she fluttered around it with much care for its propriety.  It
+was not easy to see the riding master, on his chestnut horse,
+riding away with a score of her girls.  Had she been able
+to sit a horse herself, she would have cantered among them
+as a chaperon; but she could not, and none of her governesses
+were ever likely to be familiar with a saddle, even if they
+could be trusted with a riding master, so she was reduced to
+being sternly present at the mounting and departure, to
+instructing the elder girls to look after one another and their
+younger schoolfellows, and to watching the cavalcade as far as
+the bend in the road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With gymnasium it was different; one of her mistresses,
+or herself on days of condescension, could accompany the
+girls and sit in the spectators' gallery, and ensure that only
+the seemlier exercises were performed.  Definitely she forbade
+the "spread-eagle" on the rings, and the "circle" or the
+"hock-swing-off" on the horizontal bar, and the "short-arm-balance"
+or "long-arm-balance" on the parallel bars.  These circles and
+balances were only so many gilded somersaults.  When Hemans
+House had first gone to the Royal Gymnasium in the Cambridge
+Road, and Miss Vidella, at first sight of these exercises,
+had interdicted them for ever, the instructor had declared:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The other schools allow them, madam."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Miss Vidella, from her seat in the gallery, had replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I dare say they do, instructor.  In fact, I feel very confident
+they do.  But the aims of my school are probably different
+from theirs.  My aim is to turn out little well-bred ladies
+rather than acrobats and harlequins."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite so, madam."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Miss Vidella, conceiving that she had made a good
+point, dulled it by making it again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"None of my children, instructor, are likely to earn their
+living in the circus ring."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, madam," admitted the instructor, muttering for the
+amusement of the nearest girls, "not a dog's chance o' that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So gymnastics were confined to swinging on the travelling
+rings or the bridge-ladder, gentle vaulting over the parallel
+bars and the horse (though in this matter there would be a cry
+of disapproval if the upward swing of any girl's leg was more
+unladylike than was inevitable), and to Indian clubs and
+dumbbells, which Miss Vidella considered most rhythmic and refined.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This first afternoon, since neither gymnasium nor riding had
+begun, the girls could only go for a crocodile walk, and at
+the pointed invitation of Trudy Wayne Daphne paired with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this walk Daphne awoke to the idea that men could
+be important before you were grown up.  The conversation
+of the girls in front danced around the prospects of meeting
+such and such a man.  They spoke of "The Dandy Fifth,"
+who, Trudy explained, was a young coach at an army crammer's,
+and earned his nickname from the waist-line in his
+coat, his fawn vest, and his patent-leather boots.  And there
+was Arthur Belsize, the famous young novelist, whose three
+books, "The Homes of Mogador," "The Purple Orchis," and
+"Dust on the Scaffold," had made him a local celebrity second
+only to the lady in the Castle.  And there was the Holy
+Innocent, a curate at Holy Innocents Church, where Hemans
+House went on Sundays.  These gentlemen, Trudy garrulously
+explained, were often to be passed in the park, the novelist,
+Arthur Belsize, especially, who had a habit of strolling every
+afternoon down the Long Walk.  "I expect he hopes it'll one
+day be called the Belsize Walk," suggested Trudy, "like
+Addison's Walk at Oxford."  Here, then, was the explanation why
+the senior girls whenever possible, led the Hemans House
+column through the gates into the Great Park.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was excited about the chance of seeing Arthur
+Belsize, not because he was a young man, but because he
+was a famous story-writer.  His tale, "The Purple Orchis,"
+since it was based on history, had been read to Owen and herself
+by Miss Carrell.  It did not occur to Daphne that, being
+the daughter of a writer, she had no reason to be excited
+about them as a class, because she hardly thought of her father
+as an author in this true story-telling sense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither the dandy nor the curate appeared, and the twitter
+and chattering of the girls was passing to other subjects,
+when one of them discerned the novelist, Arthur Belsize,
+walking slowly towards them.  A tremor ran down the crocodile
+from its head girls to the smaller ones in the neighbourhood
+of Trudy and Daphne.  Daphne put her head outside the
+column to see the approaching celebrity, and was very
+disappointed.  He looked exactly the same as any other young
+man who might be seen in a third-class railway carriage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A silence dropped on the girls.  It appeared they had a
+custom of readjusting their conversation to the novelist's ear.
+As soon as he came within hearing distance they would discuss
+only (and this rather loudly) his novels.  He was now
+alongside the column, and the discussion began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I liked 'The Homes of Mogador' best, didn't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I sent 'The Purple Orchis' to my cousin for her birthday."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'The Homes of Mogador' wasn't a patch on 'The Purple
+Orchis.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'The Homes of Mogador' was rot."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I didn't like 'The Purple Orchis' much, but 'Dust on the
+Scaffold' was ripping."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's Arthur Belsize."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He passed by, affecting to have heard nothing, though
+Daphne suspected that his lips trembled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To her, who had played with hardly any girl friends in
+Deseret Road, this interest in men while your hair was still
+down your back was an idea entirely new.  That a lover
+might come to her after she was eighteen or twenty had, of
+course, often been in her mind, especially when she read or
+listened to the love scenes of a romance.  But that men as a
+genus, apart from the individual lover, were interesting she
+had not grasped, nor that her earlier love stories might be
+looked for at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the crocodile had returned from its walk it disintegrated
+into its classes for afternoon school.  In Miss Sims's
+room, darkening behind its Japanese bead curtains, the
+subject was Latin, a language of which Daphne knew very little
+and pronounced that little wrong.  Her quantities were false,
+Miss Carrell having learned the grammar after she left Hemans
+House, and learned it from a book without help from the
+spoken word.  When Miss Sims arranged her girls in a row
+that they might "go up" and "take each other down," she
+told Daphne that as a new girl she should be given a start
+and might go to the top.  Doing even this little for her
+favourite gave her a mild pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, we'll see what you know of Latin grammar.  'I
+shall love.'  Let us have the future of <i>Amo</i>, I love."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question pleased Daphne because she knew the answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Ammer-bo</i>, I shall love, <i>Ammer-bis, Ammer-bit,
+Ammer-byemus, Ammer-bightus</i>&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The remaining word was lost in a roar of laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no, no, no," smiled Miss Sims, which amazed Daphne,
+since she knew she was right; she could see in her mind's eye
+the whole page of Latin Grammar, and there was the future,
+"<i>Amabo, amabis, amabit</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no, no.  It's <i>Am͎ābo</i>, not <i>Ammer-bo; Am͎ābimus</i>, not
+<i>Ammer-byemus</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this word the class laughed again and a sudden
+unreasonable burst of temper inflamed Daphne.  It was the
+break-through of all her resentment at the failure of school
+to satisfy her picture of it; she felt ready and anxious for
+some violent rebellion, as once before she had felt with Miss
+Durgon.  The tears started to her eyes, and this exposure made
+her angrier and more defiant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say it again now&mdash;properly," ordered Miss Sims.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis</i>&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Next!" The mistress turned her head to the next girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Am͎ābo</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go above her."  And Daphne went down one place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Sims had seen the symptoms in her favourite's eyes,
+and they produced a curious mixture of pleasure and love.
+After caressing and fondling, she enjoyed most (though it
+disturbed her to think so) punishing the thing she loved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say it again, and properly, and don't be sulky."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To be told she was sulky was enough to fix Daphne in her
+obstinacy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis</i>&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Next!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Down went Daphne another place, and the class began to
+enjoy the game.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now say it properly at once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis</i>&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Next!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a little girl who had been breathlessly rising on her
+toes said "Am͎ābo" and went up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were eleven girls in the class, and Daphne said
+"<i>Ammer-bo</i>" ten times till she reached the buffers of the bottom
+place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're a very naughty little girl," denounced Miss Sims.
+"You're the oldest girl in the class, and you're content to be
+taken down by those much younger than you.  And just
+to gratify sullenness and rebellion.  You will write out fifty
+times, 'The second <i>a</i> in Amabo is long.'  And don't let me
+see anything of you till that is done."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had visions of herself being cold and haughty with
+the child, and of Daphne, whose advances would thus be repelled
+and bruised, suffering the tortures of a loved mistress's
+scorn and finally breaking in humility at her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the classes and tea there was an hour before Preparation.
+Silent at her desk in Miss Sims's room, now a chattery
+Common Room, Daphne wrote twenty times, 'The second <i>a</i> in
+<i>amabo</i> is long,' and decided that she had done enough for
+to-night.  Feeling so lonely she wanted to write to Miss
+Carrell&mdash;even to Owen.  She got some of the note-paper that
+had been given her to take to school, and began her letter.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+"DEAR MISS CARRELL,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"I hope you got back safely....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(The picture of Miss Carrell getting back to her home and
+entering the old rooms made her lip shake.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We have been for a lovely walk this afternoon in the
+park.  It was lovely.  We passed Arthur Belsize.  I sleep
+in a room called Eliza Cook.  There is another room called
+the Frances Burney room.  This afternoon we did Latin.  I
+am going to have my first riding lesson to-morrow, and I am
+looking forward to gymnasium.  I like school awfully.  What
+fun it will be when the holidays begin in three months' time.
+I must not write much more as I am going to write to
+Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+  "Much love<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"From<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Ever your loving<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"DUFFY"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"P.S.&mdash;Love to Hollins."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0208"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER VIII
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Daphne soon became used to Hemans House, its population
+and its practices, and could look back with wonder
+at the first days of fear.  More than that, the life, for a
+particular reason, had become flushed with colour and
+richness.  The one thing needed to lift her hatred from the
+school-rooms and the Windsor streets and to throw a glamour
+over them had happened: she was possessed by a romantic
+attachment for some one whose background they were.  Before
+half-term had signalised to the girls that the top of the slope
+had been reached, and they could now go quickly down hill
+to the holidays, she knew that she adored Miss Sims.  It had
+taken some five weeks of the alternate caresses and
+punishments, warm intimacy and stern aloofness, to betray their
+meaning to Daphne; but once it had broken on her that she
+was the object of a popular mistress's favouritism, she was
+flattered into reciprocation.  The slide from fondness to love
+was easy and quick.  As with her affection for Miss Carrell,
+so now with her adoration of Miss Sims: she loved to think
+that she loved.  But the later attachment was as much stronger
+than the earlier, as Daphne was older, warmer, and more
+conscious of her sex.  It was an emotion too strong for
+reticence&mdash;except in words; on walks she fought to be at
+Miss Sims's side; sometimes she threaded her arm into the
+mistress's; and once, when they were right behind all the
+others, she rested her head against her shoulder.  At
+gymnasium every exercise she performed on parallel bars,
+horizontal bar, or bridge ladder was done with an eye on the
+gallery in the hope of impressing Miss Sims.  She suffered
+the pains of jealousy when Miss Sims (deliberately) made
+much of another girl.  And her letters home to Miss Carrell
+were enthusiastically full of her form mistress.  There was
+pleasure in writing about her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her pains and pleasures were weak compared with
+those hidden behind Miss Sims's indulgent smile.  As Miss
+Sims assured herself: "The child is fond of me&mdash;very
+fond&mdash;really devoted, I think.  But it must inevitably be a small
+return for what I am giving to her.  It is always so with
+children....  Still, it is happiness to give."  She made a
+resolution that her influence must be a power for good.  She
+must be associated in the memory of Daphne Bruno, when
+that beloved girl should have grown tall and given herself
+to a man, with all that was best in her childhood.  She must
+be the person of whom Daphne would say: "I really owe
+everything to her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a salient truth of Daphne's schooldays was this, that
+Miss Sims&mdash;Miss Sims, with her thirty pounds a year and
+her cubicle with an iron bed and tin wash-stand; Miss Sims
+with her high-coloured make-believes, of which she was half
+ashamed; Miss Sims with her thirst for emotion and her
+squeezing of pupils like sponges for its sating&mdash;<i>was</i> the most
+of what she resolved to be.  Every one is an expert in the
+hobby that fills his dreams, and Miss Sims had seen exactly
+how her influence could be this "power for good."  Her little
+worshipper would most surely model herself on her idol,
+and so Miss Sims must appear to embody in her own nature
+all the noble qualities she would give to Daphne.  She created
+a character in her imagination, and always acted it before the
+eyes of her pupil.  And this was the Character: great gentleness
+masking concealed strength; a perfect feminine sympathy
+mingled with a capacity to be stern; remarkable sensibility to
+beauty wherever it was to be found, and thus a passionate
+love for all the arts, with a predilection for literature; a taste in
+dress, and a beautiful serenity in manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a background to the Character, she hinted in her talks
+with Daphne at a collateral relationship to a very old family;
+at reasonable private means, her present work being done
+for the love of it, there being no nobler task; at holidays in
+romantic places abroad; and, of course, at a love story of which
+one did not speak.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+In her first holidays Daphne returned home, full of the
+importance of a school girl, and talked incessantly of the
+customs at Hemans House to Owen, who was not interested, and
+to her father, who was quite amused&mdash;at least, till he took up
+his book again.  It was his daughter's tales and imitations of
+the head mistress that pleased him&mdash;"By Jove! she can see,
+that child!"  Miss Vidella appealed to the dramatist in him,
+both as a picturesque character and as a type.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She belongs to a type that is doomed to pass, Duffy mia.
+There is pathos as well as humour in her posing and her prudery.
+I always think it's rather sad the way such people imagine they
+are being applauded, while all the time they are being laughed
+at by modern minds....  However, you'll understand these
+things later."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One result of this ridicule was that his daughter saw how
+much better it was to be on the laughing, rather than the
+laughable, side of a dividing line, and that she must therefore join
+the moderns who always did the laughing.  She was modern.
+She saw Miss Vidella from a new angle, and much more clearly,
+and she determined to carry this interesting viewpoint back to
+Hemans House.  As a viewpoint it had much to recommend
+it: it meant that when Miss Vidella prohibited this and
+that&mdash;circling over the horizontal bar, or any display of the feminine
+leg above the lower calf&mdash;she was probably out of date, and
+the best way to express one's advance from such rulings was to
+glory in their breach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The only conflict in her mind was how far this healthy
+insurgence, imitated from her father, clashed with the obedience
+and serenity imitated from Miss Sims.  And when she was
+again under the roof of Hemans House and the influence of
+Miss Sims, a settlement of the conflict was found to be very
+necessary.  So on a walk to the tennis fields, when the mistress
+and her favourite had dropped behind the girls, she sidled
+up to the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Father says Miss Vidella is out of date, and so are all her
+ideas."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"H'm.  Your father is doubtless a representative of extremely
+modern minds."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So'm I."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Sims laughed, provoking Daphne to defend herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, she is rather absurd."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hush, dear," said Miss Sims, for the Character was nothing
+if not loyal.  "Miss Vidella's aims are of the highest, and there's
+a lot to be said for the kind of woman she tries to produce&mdash;modest,
+controlled, and quiet....  But I do think that perhaps
+she doesn't make sufficient allowance for the heyday in the
+blood of youth.  Probably the animal spirits ought to express
+themselves sometimes in a little wildness and tomboyishness&mdash;so
+long as these things go with affectionateness&mdash;and with high
+ideals.  Later, when one has experienced the disillusions of
+life, it will be time to acquire a tranquil resignation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was an excellent verdict.  For sympathy and sense there
+had been no one before quite like Miss Sims.  Everything had
+now fallen into place.  Daphne saw that she could postpone
+the final serenity till she had grown up and passed through the
+fire.  She was thus at liberty to express the modernity of her
+intellect, as compared with Miss Vidella's, by flagrant breaches
+of Miss Vidella's rules.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first time she displayed it was at the gymnasium.  She
+hung it out, so to speak, on the horizontal bar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a morning when the head mistress herself was in the
+gallery watching carefully through her spectacles.  The girls
+had been vaulting backwards over the parallel bars, and Daphne,
+when her turn came, had swung herself with such ardour that
+the oblique line of her body was rather from her legs down
+to her head than from her head down to her legs&mdash;a position
+which Miss Vidella stipulated must be guarded against in this
+dangerous exercise.  Her legs had just swung down again on to
+the mat when she heard the high-pitched voice coming from
+the gallery top like the voice of a bird from a tree.  All eyes
+had turned towards it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Instructor!  Instructor!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The instructor made a grimace, seen only of the girls, and
+called back: "Yes, madam."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella made her favourite point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Instructor, I take it this is a place for teaching young ladies
+a becoming deportment, and not for training circus clowns."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, madam," agreed the instructor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, will you kindly correct them when they forget
+it? ... Daphne dear, come here."  Daphne approached a little
+way, and Miss Vidella, leaning forward with her hands on
+the balustrade, like some preacher who must deliver his sermon
+sitting, explained to her: "You must remember, dear, that it
+is the glory of human beings that their head is usually above
+their feet.  With cows, and ruminant animals generally, the
+head is often on the same level as the hoofs.  But it is only
+serpents and apes in the trees, I take it, which have a tendency
+to progress with their heads in a lower sphere than their other
+members.  Now go back and remember that.  All right, dears,
+you can resume your exercises."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The public rebuke rankled in Daphne; so the minute the lesson
+was over, and the girls were trooping to the dressing-room
+to change their rubber shoes, and Miss Vidella was managing
+with some difficulty the little hidden staircase from the gallery
+to the ground, she ran to the horizontal bar and circled it four
+or five times.  Having thus liberated her resentment and
+proclaimed her faith before the other girls, she ran, very red and
+breathless, to the dressing-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was uncommonly pleasant, this feeling of emancipation
+and this expressing of it before her schoolfellows.  Her riding
+lesson gave her another opportunity.  One day when their
+horses were gathered outside the gates of Hemans House, and
+the girls were mounting, she tried for a second to sit astride
+her horse, that she might see what it felt like and appear daring.
+But it was surprisingly difficult, with her skirt, to change from
+the side-saddle position to the astride.  As she got her leg over
+the horse's withers the skirt went right above her knees, and
+she was in these difficulties when Miss Vidella came out on to
+the pavement to review the parade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne!  What <i>are</i> you doing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mounting, Miss Vidella," stuttered Daphne, who had
+struggled back to the correct position.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you generally climb over the horse to mount it?  Or
+are you up to some of your monkey tricks again?  Riding
+master, have you observed that Miss Bruno is mountaineering
+on her horse in the public street?  But, of course, I know you
+cannot have done so, for you are always so careful with your
+pupils.  Please keep Miss Bruno in front of you all the way,
+or there's no knowing what strange contortions she may not
+attempt."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The riding master, annoyed, said nothing, but examined the
+riders, touched his horse and led the cavalcade away.  Daphne
+was just in front of him, and immediately they were out of
+the head mistress's view she pretended to scream with laughter,
+thinking this would divert the riding master, who, like all the
+outside instructors, was inclined to make fun of Miss Vidella.
+But, to her surprise, he called out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come on, Miss Bruno!  Sit properly at once.  You've been
+foolish enough already to-day.  I'm not taking out a chain of
+Margate donkeys; and I shall report you to Miss Vidella.
+Come here and ride beside me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne felt foolish at the failure of her jest, and, very
+flushed, came and rode by the master's side with a beating
+heart.  With all her fancied insurgence she was still a little
+afraid of Miss Vidella and her black-rimmed spectacles and
+whining sarcasm.  When the horses arrived back at Hemans
+House gates she watched the movements of the riding master,
+whether he would go in and see Miss Vidella or wait for
+her to emerge from the garden wall.  But he only turned
+towards herself, and, as though softened by her long silence,
+smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right, kiddy, I shan't report you.  And one of these
+days you'll be able to ride astride.  In my opinion they'll all
+be doing it one day.  But at present we must do what we're
+told."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," murmured Daphne.  "Thank you very much."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+It became quite a custom for her to entertain the gymnasium
+girls with three or four guilty circles on the horizontal bar
+while Miss Vidella was descending the gallery stairs.
+Sometimes she managed six or seven of the forbidden things before
+rushing, red as a beet-root, to the dressing-room.  Here she
+looked serene and innocent when the head mistress appeared
+and sounded some variant of "Come along, dears.  I feel sure
+your healthy exercises have engendered an appetite for your
+dinners."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But one morning, by some failure in her swing, she did
+not complete her fifth backward circle, and was left hanging
+over the bar like a bolster thrown over a rail.  Time was short;
+Miss Vidella's feet must be on the last few stairs; so she
+straightened her body on the bar, and was just about to drop
+behind it to her feet, when she saw Miss Vidella standing at
+the dressing-room door and watching her through her
+spectacles, chin slightly uptilted.  The sight so unnerved her that
+instead of swinging backwards she swung forwards, her head
+falling like the clapper of a bell, and the weight of her body
+flinging her legs in an arc through the air.  Her hands retained
+a panicky hold of the bar, but her feet struck the mattress and
+its coco-fibre mat with a jarring impact.  A little giddily she
+stood on the mat and wondered what to do.  If only Miss
+Vidella had not stood across the dressing-room door she would
+have flown through it and drowned her confusion in the
+business of unlacing her shoes.  But now she could only stand on
+the mat beneath the bar and stare at the head mistress, while
+the head mistress stood in front of the dressing-room and
+stared at her.  Girls peeped behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you doing, Daphne?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What were you doing on that bar?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I only just did a circle or two."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And do you call that nothing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clearly "Yes" was not the right answer, and "No" was
+incriminating, so Daphne stood on the mat and gave no answer
+at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She approached.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you"&mdash;seemingly Miss Vidella could not bring herself
+to name the offence&mdash;"do that thing because it was against my
+express orders?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The true answer, "Yes," was somewhat too dangerous to be
+employed, so Daphne said "No."  Politeness required no less.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then why did you do that thing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Daphne's head was a foggy conception of modern minds
+enfranchising themselves, and a phantasmagoria of related
+ideas, out of which came nothing more remarkable than:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought I should like to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(It was, perhaps, modernism in its simplest expression.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And why should you like to do it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will tell you.  It can only have been out of a spirit of
+deliberate evil-minded rebellion, or it was because you have a
+natural liking for the buffoonery of the uncivilised which you
+are too weak to suppress."  It was humiliating to hear one's
+strength called weakness, and Daphne wished she had the courage
+to plead loudly that hers had been the evil-minded rebellion
+through and through.  "You are one who must be trained, not
+by liberty and encouragement, but by restraint and correction.
+Get on your shoes.  You shall not visit the gymnasium or the
+tennis field for a fortnight.  Both places are too beset with
+opportunities for the outlandish contortions that so appeal to you.
+A walk each afternoon instead will perhaps teach you that it
+is perfectly possible to exercise every muscle of the body in the
+upright position, and all other contortions can be left to the
+jungle and&mdash;&mdash;"  Here Miss Vidella's sarcasm ran out.  "Get
+changed.  I fail to see why these dear girls here should be kept
+waiting for their lunches by you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne passed sullenly to her shoes and pulled them on
+viciously.  She was being persecuted and enjoying it.  And as
+she walked home with Trudy Wayne she was so ostentatiously
+noisy (this being her indirect claim to the "deliberate rebellion")
+that Miss Vidella called:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne, come back and walk alone behind me.  You hardly
+seem to understand that you are in disgrace.  Gertrude dear,
+I wonder at your encouraging her."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+By this time, in Miss Vidella's mind, there was both a flabby
+dislike and a faint fear of the Bruno child.  Recently she had
+acquainted herself with some of the father's books, and while
+wondering what much of them meant, grasped enough to feel
+uncomfortably that the great man probably ridiculed her ideas
+and her methods.  And now, gnawed by the fear that Daphne
+Bruno might have heard and believed this ridicule, she determined
+to humiliate the child into a sense of her own simplicity
+and foolishness.  The backwardness shown in Daphne's work
+on paper provided plenty of opportunities, though the child's
+quickness in <i>viva voce</i> work, and her skill and rushing
+imagination when anything had to be made&mdash;a poem, or a map, or
+a clay model&mdash;sometimes reminded Miss Vidella that her
+genuine opinion was very different.  But for the good of all,
+and lest she spread her doctrines, Daphne Bruno must be
+discredited and kept down.  She often came, therefore, into Miss
+Sims's class-room, and on examining the pupils' exercises,
+deplored the poverty of Daphne Bruno's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And this is the girl who thinks she knows better than any
+of us, and is so sure of her right judgment that she allows
+herself to do things just because she likes to.  Go to your seat,
+child.  When you can construe a simple piece of Latin we shall
+perhaps consider whether or not we will revise the rules of
+this school to suit your little fancies."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne rather liked this bullying.  It gave her the pleasure
+of mildly hating Miss Vidella as once she had hated Miss
+Durgon; and it enabled her to act in front of Miss Sims the
+tranquil resignation of a martyr, or in front of her class-fellows
+the fine, furious flash of a tragedienne.  Also it justified and
+increased her love of the sympathetic governess; and she was
+keen on making a good thing of this.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Tenter Bruno, in these days, was prospering; and his
+mercury, though never free from fluctuations, was generally
+high.  He was very satisfied, and something of radiance could
+be seen in his face and manner.  In this, his fifty-third year,
+his brown beard was turning grey, and his hair receding from
+his fine forehead, but his figure in its grey suit was as neat as
+it had been at twenty.  For some time he had considered that
+the house in Deseret Road lacked the necessary picturesqueness.
+It was a moot point whether one's books and fame were not
+injured by an address in the suburbs.  His readers ought to
+be able to imagine him in some quaint old habitation, set down
+in green and lonely places.  Besides, such a move from
+London into the quiet was always good copy for the paragraphists.
+And, to the delight of Daphne and Owen, when they returned
+from their schools, he suddenly announced, as a complete
+surprise, his purchase of Old Hall House, between Wivelsfield
+and Ditchling Common in Sussex.  It was not far from their
+former cottage, and their old gardener Eadigo, still hearty, was
+coming into permanent residence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When shall we go?  When shall we go?" demanded his
+daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"These very holidays, of course," smiled Mr. Bruno, delighted
+at the success of his surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in August when they moved there, he was happy in
+watching Daphne as, excited to see what the house was like
+(though she had declared she could remember it), she hung
+out of the carriage that was rattling them to its gates.  When
+the carriage stopped, he saw the house anew through her eyes:
+a rectangular place of two stories, roofed in Horsham stone,
+with a new wing jutting out at right angles towards the road.
+The whole place was perhaps disappointingly near the road,
+and the low railing that separated the lawns and drive from
+the travellers to Ditchling was a little&mdash;finicking.  But this
+weakness could be forgiven, when you looked at Old Hall House
+itself, with its mossed roof, its disorderly outbuildings, and its
+setting of silent country, closed in the diminishing distance by
+blue and shadowed downs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within doors, round about a square hall, rather dark, were
+three large, low-ceiled sitting-rooms, and a red kitchen with an
+undulating floor.  Above these, up an oak staircase, were seven
+or eight bedrooms; and in the new wing, a room for Daphne,
+and a room for Owen, with a great chamber underneath that
+should be their privy playground.  The servants had a
+staircase of their own leading to bedrooms in the back parts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This segregation of children in the north and servants in
+the east Mr. Bruno had imagined would secure for him that
+ideal silence which he had yet to find in this plane of existence.
+In the sitting-room to the left of the entrance-hall he
+arranged his study furniture and his unnumbered books.  But
+it was a grievous blow, and one that shook his household for
+weeks, when he learned that there was not one of the
+sitting-rooms but heard every sound in the house.  The movements
+in the hall came through the walls, the staircase squeaking
+like an animal when anybody walked on it; the noises in the
+kitchen came through the shrunk oak doors; and if the maids
+were cleaning the bedroom above, their sweepings and voices,
+even their actual words, came through the low-pitched ceiling
+to Mr. Bruno, and his groans and exclamations (he imagined
+and hoped) went up to them.  It was damnable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He didn't know what to do.  The paying of the mountainous
+bills created by the purchase, the alterations and the move had
+resolved him to live quietly for some time, and save money on
+postage stamps and tobacco.  He would not&mdash;though his own
+mind saw clearly and humorously the weak logic&mdash;he simply
+would not&mdash;spend another half-penny in making his study
+sound-proof.  Instead, if there was a clatter in the kitchen, or a
+step, unmuted, on the vile staircase, he got up, opened his door,
+and put out his head with a diffident and over-courteous request
+that whatever was being done might be postponed till the
+afternoon; if the noise was in the bedroom above, he pushed back
+his chair that he might knock on the ceiling with a stick; till,
+at last (much to his amusement in the midst of his irritation),
+he would hear the scurry of the maids, or the guilty silence in
+the kitchen, directly his chair was pushed back.  That push-back
+of his chair, if done viciously enough, could turn the house
+into a sepulchre.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After several weeks of encouraging economies, however, he
+decided that the young maids (who rather appealed to him)
+had a right to laugh and be noisy and even sing at their
+sweeping; and he spent fifty pounds on sound-proofing his room.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+For Daphne the memorable thrill of this first summer holiday
+in Old Hall House was something quite independent of its
+fascinating rooms and the undiscovered country around.  Or
+perhaps not so independent of their romance as she thought.
+In Owen's bedroom she learned that he had developed a taste
+for "penny dreadfuls."  She saw a pile of the things, with
+their vivid picture-covers, on the top of his chest-of-drawers.
+The first of them, whose cover showed a gay highwayman in
+scarlet cape, three-cornered hat, and lace neckwear, firing a
+bell-mouthed pistol into the face of a black and bulbous Bow
+Street Runner, she read in her own room.  From that day her
+imagination, like a city that had thrown open its gates, was
+yielded to Dick Turpin.  Eagerly she selected all the rest that
+dealt with the handsome blade, and found twenty-three.  She
+spent the best week of her life, up to that point, reading these
+twenty-three stories one after another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took all twenty-three and her inflated enthusiasm back
+to Hemans House, and introduced the enthusiasm and one of
+the books to Trudy Wayne.  Trudy, having read one tale,
+borrowed the whole twenty-three, and succumbed to the
+highwayman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This common interest strengthened the friendship of the two
+girls, and marked the moment when Daphne, though a year
+younger, began to dominate the partnership.  From her imagination
+came the idea that, on their walks, they should be Dick
+Turpin and Jack Sheppard.  Miss Vidella, with her black clothes
+and her corpulence and her piggish ways, was obviously the
+head of the Bow Street Runners&mdash;or a Bloody Assize judge.
+It was incumbent on Trudy and herself to organize into an
+Outlaw Society.  This was to have been called a "Hate
+Society," but memories of Miss Sims's gentleness limited the
+name to "The Dislike Society."  During riding lessons, Daphne
+on her mild bay pony trotting or cantering beside the troop
+of girls, was really galloping Black Bess, with the Runners hard
+behind.  In gymnasium, when she ran and vaulted over the
+horse, she was really Dick Turpin leaping a hedge or a toll-gate
+to escape his pursuers.  If she was kept in, the class-room
+became a Newgate cell anterior to Tyburn, and her dismissal
+after half an hour's detention was a dashing escape amid the
+cheers of her followers who were waiting at the prison gates.
+Beneath her sheet and blankets in the Eliza Cook room, she
+had really taken to the heather and was sleeping in a cloak
+under the stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wouldn't it be ripping," she exclaimed to Trudy one day,
+"if we could spend a holiday together, and play Dick Turpin
+on some real lonely road?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as she said that, there flashed into her mind the very
+scene where such a drama could be staged.  Good heavens!
+It was perfect!  Ditchling Common.  Strangely, it spread itself
+before her, not as she had just left it, under summer, but as she
+had seen it in May one morning of her earliest childhood, when
+it must have hit her imagination far more vividly than she had
+known; Ditchling Common with a mauve haze of bluebells
+over its coarse grass, shot here and there with the yellow of
+buttercups; the ribbon of road switchbacking over the
+successive brows to the humpy bridge above the railway line; the
+wavy horizon of downs, bare save for two windmills on the
+west; a hawk&mdash;how well she remembered watching it&mdash;hovering
+above the common.  There were dwarfed gorse bushes, like
+black patches on the stretching grass, and taller shrubs of
+entangled blackberry.  And, most wonderful of all, at the
+entrance to the common was a white gate like a toll-gate, and just
+beyond it Jacob's Post.  Jacob's Post was a real gibbet, with
+a cock at its top bearing the date 1734 to tell when last a man
+had hanged there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Coo, what a fool I am!  Trudy, you should see Ditchling
+Common near me.  It's absolutely the spot.  Oh, you must come
+and stay with us next summer.  I'm sure father'll agree, and
+we'll make Owen play too."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This plan, thenceforward, was a never-failing spring of
+conversation.  For Trudy there was no taste of doubt in the merry
+cup.  Daphne was just aware of a lurking anxiety lest, ten
+months hence, they would have forgotten all about Dick Turpin,
+or, alternatively, their undying friendship would have died.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0209"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER IX
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was right in fearing that the influence of the
+highwayman would abate with the months, but wrong in
+doubting the endurance of her friendship with Trudy Wayne.
+This didn't expire, for the simple reason that she set herself
+to keep it at a sufficient heat.  And when the next summer
+term drew towards the golden August that was to bring Trudy
+to Old Hall House, she as deliberately exhumed Dick Turpin,
+guessing that, did they but read the old romances once more,
+their imaginations would be snatched up again by the inspiring
+highwayman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A mellow evening, the fourth of August, she climbed into a
+trap, driven by Eadigo, and was taken to meet Trudy at
+Hayward's Heath station.  Why her eager anticipations should
+make her a little afraid of meeting Trudy she didn't know, but
+it was a disturbing fact, as the train rolled in, that her heart
+was faintly answering its noise and speed.  Only a few
+passengers alighted here, the most being travellers to Brighton;
+so Trudy was quickly seen.  Daphne ran towards her, followed
+without enthusiasm by Eadigo.  Trudy, too, one could see, was
+rather shy of the strange station and all her circumstances,
+but she cloaked it with an ostentatious self-possession, talking
+much as she mounted the trap.  Eadigo drove off silently, and
+Daphne felt a pity for the old man because the six weeks in
+front of him were the same as the six weeks before.  His
+silence and phlegm made her look at Trudy, after which they
+both had fits of giggling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell welcomed the visitor in the dining-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I hope, Trudy&mdash;may I call you that?&mdash;you'll have a
+very happy holiday with us.  I'm sorry Mr. Bruno is away....
+It's very nice for Duffy to have you with her, I'm sure.
+Owen, come here and say how-do-you-do to Duffy's friend."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owen these holidays had brought back from his preparatory
+school a new and (one would have thought) quite
+uncharacteristic tendency to laborious humour.  It involved his
+addressing of Hollins as "Herbert," and his sister as
+"Casabianca."  And now he bowed till his head was
+aligned with his waist, and
+extended a hand.  Trudy took it, and inquired:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How do you do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't," answered Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This strange new growth in her brother was in the process
+of being discouraged by Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's not funny," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sorry.  Heaps of ajoppolies," answered Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne wanted you to share her bedroom," interrupted
+Miss Carrell, "so I've arranged it for you both."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, how ripping!" exclaimed Trudy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That'll be monstrous fine," said Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In their beds that night the two girls arranged plans for
+the next day till the clock on the stairs sounded midnight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Coo, you wait till I show you Ditchling Common," Daphne
+rattled on.  "The road lies like a white ribbon, all up and down,
+from the Toll-gate to Ditchling.  There's one big clump of
+blackberry that I call the Observation Post, because it's at the
+top of a brow, and you can see all the way to the next brow
+and beyond that to the railway bridge.  So you could see any
+one approaching half a mile away, and give warning to your
+confederates hidden lower down the road."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clock struck midnight, and the conversation swung suitably
+to the age of the house in which they slept, and whether
+it was haunted.  It had not occurred to Daphne that it was
+till this moment, but now she romanced about eerie noises and
+panels that rang hollow.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately after breakfast the next day all three hurried
+to the common.  Daphne as guide, walked importantly ahead,
+leading the others through the white gate, and longing for
+the moment when Trudy should see the gibbet.  The common
+lay before them in summer dress: the thistles high by the flying
+road, the grass tall and bearded where it mingled with bracken
+and rushes, and over the dusty highway and the disorderly
+herbage the sunlight quivering in a diaphanous haze.  A few
+slow cows pastured in a hollow, and cocks and hens picked the
+green about Jacob's Post.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Trudy's interest in this gibbet was even more than one desired;
+in fact, there was some difficulty in getting her away
+till she had properly fixed upon her imagination the picture of a
+felon suspended there.  It was already nine o'clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come on," said Owen.  "We dine at half-past one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The games were conducted just as Daphne had planned them.
+Owen was sent away to reappear as a traveller a quarter of a
+mile up the road; the girls put on black masks and held
+six-penny pistols; and Daphne went and lay behind the tall clump
+of blackberry called the Observation Post, while Trudy threw
+herself under some gorse lower down the highway.  It was for
+Daphne to signal Owen's appearance in the distance.  While
+she waited for him she selected any blackberries that showed a
+trace of ripeness, and ate the trace.  Also she sucked and
+chewed grass, for Owen did not appear for a long time; there
+was nothing but a cart coming from Ditchling.  She did not
+guess that Owen had been seized by the ingenious idea of
+approaching under the lee of the cart&mdash;such a thing was against
+the whole spirit of the game.  Nevertheless, when the cart
+had passed in front of her he emerged from his cover with a
+shriek of triumph and raced down the hill towards Trudy.
+Leaping up angrily, she gave the pre-arranged signal, which
+meant that Owen had been spotted in the distance&mdash;and
+followed him as he ran past Trudy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, the fool!" she grumbled, and called after him: "It's
+not funny, if you think it is."  And to Trudy, before whom
+she stopped with this news of Owen's appearance: "He always
+must show off."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owen turned round and came back with a victor's smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll spoil it all if you want to be cocky," she grumbled.
+"Why can't you ever play sensibly?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having treated himself to one whimsical effort, Owen promised
+to play sensibly, and for the rest of the morning the games
+unrolled as they should.  The walk home was a-clatter with
+tongues.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+By early afternoon they were standing again on the road
+by the Observation Post, and deliberating how to vary the play,
+when Owen said: "Hist!  Wait!"  He had seen two specks
+coming with a curious velocity over the crown of the railway
+bridge.  Two men&mdash;or two boys, since they were probably
+racing, and men didn't do such things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hist!  Hist!  Sister Anne, sister Anne, I see some one
+coming."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's not funny....  Who are they?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see two men running, and a cloud of dust."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With imaginations pleasantly troubled the girls looked
+towards the far-off but quickly approaching figures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let's stop 'em, whoever they are," suggested Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be an ass.  We can't if we don't know them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?  If they're boys they won't mind.  And we're
+three to their two."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It would be rather ripping," reflected Daphne, while the
+others watched for her to give the last word.  "I tell you what.
+You wait here behind the Observation Post, Owen, and as soon
+as they come near enough for you to see if they're boys and
+attackable, you signal 'Yes'&mdash;make a Y with your arms&mdash;and
+then come and join us lower down behind the gorse.  Then we
+really will hold them up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne and Trudy ran to the gorse and fell prone behind
+it.  This real holding up of unknown wayfarers on the high
+road was a completer thrill than any of the mock adventures.
+It affected Daphne with an emptying sensation below the waist,
+and shook the hand with which she was hurrying on her mask
+and cocking her pistol.  And when Owen made a Y of his
+body and arms, and she knew that they were committed to the
+deed, and that the moments before its accomplishment were
+fast escaping, her heart began to pound with a delicious fear.
+Breathlessly Owen joined them, falling to his stomach with
+the announcement: "Two boys.  One rather big."  All watched
+the brow for the first of the boys to appear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll leap out," whispered Owen, who seemed to have none
+of that faint anxiety to be quit of the business that was troubling
+Daphne, "and you'd better follow me....  Look alive!  Here's
+Number One."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne looked up from her ground level and saw a figure
+on the brow outlined against the glazed sky.  As he came
+down the slope she saw with surprise that he was in just such
+running attire as the competitors wore in the University Sports
+at Queen's Club: white vest with coloured ribbon edging the
+sleevelets and the button-opening; very short white shorts edged
+with the same ribbon; white socks and black rubber shoes.  His
+fists were at his breast, and his dark hair blowing untidily.  The
+figure, while clearly a young boy's, was tall and beautifully
+shaped&mdash;from the shoulder-line to the rounded thighs with their
+muscles astir.  In the few seconds of his coming Daphne felt
+that vague agitation which beauty gave; it was but the germ
+of the pleasure felt by adults in the presence of a Praxitelean
+statue, and as unmindful of sex, and it was not only the lines
+of his body that had disturbed her, but the way he had come
+over the brow in the sun's light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now!" cried Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All three leapt out and stood across the road.  The tall boy
+was so startled at this apparition of three masked bravoes in
+his path that he stopped suddenly, and, slipping on one foot,
+nearly fell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Damn and blast!" he muttered.  "What the deuce are you
+playing at?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your money or your life," said Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was looking at her; first at her mouth and chin, then
+at the eyes that were staring at him through the mask; then
+at her disarrayed hair; then up and down her body.  He smiled
+grimly, and as if it were impossible to insult a girl, turned
+towards Owen and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look here, I'm going to give you a lamming."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A younger boy, also in running clothes, had now come up
+and stopped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owen retreated a step or two, but the bigger boy seized his
+wrist and twisted it right round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't!" commanded Daphne, pleased with this opportunity
+of being heroic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Taking no notice of her orders, the boy twisted her brother's
+arm again, and Daphne promptly hit him a heavy blow with
+the butt of her pistol on the bone of his wrist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"God&mdash;&mdash;!" he began, but controlled the curse, and out of
+respect for the girl dropped Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's a game," explained Daphne.  "We thought you'd see
+the joke."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That bally thing of yours hurts.  I don't see why you should
+hit me with it just because, being a girl, you know I shan't give
+you a lamming.  Others would."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This angered Daphne.  It was the unfairest accusation that
+she had taken cover behind her sex.  The thought had not been
+in her mind at all, and the suggestion of it made her pluck look
+like cowardice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I never thought of that at all," she protested.  "You
+can have a shot at giving me a lamming if you like."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his grim smile the boy seized her wrist and turned it
+strongly&mdash;but not too strongly.  Daphne set her teeth and
+deliberately looked defiance into his eyes.  He stared commandingly
+into hers.  And holding her thus captive, though still with
+a hint of gentleness, he suddenly whipped off her mask and
+put it behind his back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't!" she shouted.  "Give that back to me.  It's mine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I shan't!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With her spare arm she reached round him to recover her
+property.  Her arm was now about his waist, but the feel of his
+body, thinly covered by the vest, neither raised a blush nor
+intruded diffidence.  She only fumbled for her mask while the
+boy looked down upon her, grinning confidently and
+enigmatically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rescue!" shouted Owen, and he and Trudy rushed for his
+sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Get away, you little worm!" said the tall boy, letting go of
+his captive&mdash;while Owen got away.  The boy seemed to give
+himself to thought, looking now at Daphne and now at the
+mask, which he drew away as she tried to snatch it.  Then
+he turned to his companion.  "I say, Cyril, we might get these
+kids to join us....  We were training when you barged in.
+But we've an idea to start paper-chasing or something."  He
+looked at Owen.  "I say, Face-ache, what are you called, and
+what are your sisters' names?  You do look a guy in that
+mask."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They're not my sisters," answered Owen, a thought over-awed,
+and removing his mask.  "At least, only one of them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, which one, fool?  Introduce us properly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tall boy looked a little shyly at the girl whose wrist he
+had twisted and whose arm had held him tight about the waist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what's her name?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy&mdash;or Daphne&mdash;Daphne Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Comic names.  Still"&mdash;he bowed gallantly though yet
+shyly&mdash;"very happy to make your acquaintance....  Now the other
+one, Fifth of November."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Trudy Wayne, who's staying with Duffy for the hols."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's like Cyril....  Where's Cyril?  Come here, man.
+This is Cyril Evans.  He's my cousin, and he's coming up to
+Sillborough next term....  Now we all know where we are."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you haven't told us your name yet," pointed out Daphne,
+not the least shyly, and sucking the wrist he had twisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nor I have.  It's Muirhead&mdash;Roger Muirhead....  However,
+that'll do for that.  Let's get on with this game you're
+playing....  Cyril, look here man, we'll pick sides, and as I'm
+the biggest, I'll only have one of these people, and you can
+have the other two.  And, as I'm only to have one, I'll pick first."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went through an elaborate pantomime of indecision, looking
+each of them up and down, as if appraising their adroitness
+or speed.  And, rather casually, he smiled his decision at
+Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll have this one.  I forget your name&mdash;Duffy Something,
+wasn't it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course....  Righto!  The Bruno-Muirhead Combine
+against the world.  Cyril, you take your crowd a half a mile or
+so back along the road, and I bet none of you get through us two.
+If a single one of you gets as far as Jacob's Post, your side's
+won.  D'you see?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, nip off your way, and we'll go ours.  Come
+on&mdash;Duffy."  He coloured as he used the name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger and she stepped off the roadway on to the grass, and
+they were about to cross a stretch made dirty with the large
+droppings of kine, when Cyril called out: "Mind the cowslips!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Trudy giggled; Owen too, for it was humour after his heart,
+if a trifle daring; but Roger, to every one's surprise, swung
+round and, running after Cyril, who immediately began to
+escape, tried to give him a punitive kick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know you don't talk like that in front of girls," he
+muttered breathlessly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was nothing much," Cyril grumbled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, much or not, don't say that sort of thing in front
+of girls unless you want your behind kicked.  Now clear out....
+Come on, Duffy."  And he led her away with the silence
+of a man who has just shown his chivalry and his power.  No
+heed gave he, though undoubtedly hearing Cyril's "Sidey
+swine!" and Daphne felt she must suggest, "But supposing your
+cousin won't play now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He'll play if he's told to," said Roger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger, now that he was alone in a wilderness with his partner,
+appeared a little awkward.  He had difficulty in finding
+anything to say; and Daphne, to ease him, ran merrily to the
+gorse screen and flung herself prone upon the ground behind it.
+Roger stood for a minute and looked down upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're longer than I thought when you lie like that....
+How old are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thirteen!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is that all?  I should have, thought you were fourteen at
+least.  I'm&mdash;I'm fifteen.  We're both on the long side, aren't
+we?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You look quite sixteen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do I?  Yes, people generally think I'm older than I am."  He
+lay down on his arm beside her.  "Do you live near here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne answered this and several other questions, while
+Roger listened, masticating one blade of grass after another and
+throwing them away as they were drained of their pleasure.
+He seemed given to thinking long on all he heard.  In his turn
+he explained that he was the only son of Sir Roger Muirhead,
+"of the Muirhead Traders, you know," and that they had just
+bought the Downway House on the Plumpton side of the
+common, "partly for holidays, and partly as a spec."  When
+Daphne asked if he would one day be "Sir Roger," he replied
+vaguely, "I daresay."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And did you say Sillborough was your school?  I think
+Owen's supposed to be going there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I've been there over a year."  And rather pretentiously
+he added, "I must show your brother round when he
+comes, and look after him a bit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The talk failing here, Daphne pretended to look for signs
+of Cyril and his party, but Roger, apparently anxious that she
+should not elude his conversation, said: "Oh, they won't be
+in sight for some time yet....  Look here, here's your mask.
+I'm sorry I took it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you can have it," demurred Daphne, touched by his
+apology.  "I can easily make another."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, well.  Perhaps I'll keep it, then....  I hope I didn't
+hurt you when I twisted your arm like that, but you dared me
+to, didn't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, not a bit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the words had left her she knew, somehow, that she
+had said them wrong; with too much contempt, or with insufficient
+appreciation of his courtesy.  She had very slightly bruised
+his self-esteem.  There was no doubt that, if he was very
+chivalrous, he was also rather conceited and pompous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I could have done so, of course," he explained, "but I didn't
+want to.  I was only shamming."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By now his manner had stirred the suspicion, and it was
+accompanied by just such a pleasant emptying sensation as she
+had experienced when awaiting the adventure, that he was
+attracted by her.  She looked for a swift second at his face, hoping
+he would not trap the glance, but his eyes were towards her,
+and she swept hers past his.  His were brown eyes, rather
+small, perhaps, but when the enigmatic grin was at his lips,
+they twinkled mischievously.  This moment, as she took them
+in her sweep, they were thoughtful.  She continued the motion
+of her head, pretending that it had all been done to ease her
+neck.  Her eyes fell upon his extended legs, of which the left
+was crossed over the right.  They were bare&mdash;bare and very
+shapely.  With a laugh she turned her face back to his and
+asked: "Aren't you awfully cold?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I never feel the cold much.  I've purposely inured myself
+to it, like the Spartans, you know....  I'm awfully keen
+on the Greeks, and their ideas about athletics, and so on....
+Look here, we'd better arrange our plan of campaign.  You'll
+catch your school-friend and I'll have young Cyril in two twos,
+and then I'll chase after your kiddy brother."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, you'll catch Owen all right&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By Jove, here they are!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He slipped into a position ready to run.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now!" commanded he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out he shot, and with his fine strides soon ran Cyril down.
+Daphne took longer to secure Trudy.  Owen rushed past and
+ran delightedly towards the gibbet.  Roger set off in pursuit
+with a long, unworrying, relentless pace that was probably
+intended for the gaze of Daphne.  Daphne watched him with that
+partiality which comes from the prospect of seeing the humiliation
+of a relative, especially one who tries to be clever.  It was
+quickly over.  Roger brought back his prey after the fashion
+of a policeman, one hand holding his collar, the other his wrist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In all the games that filled that afternoon save one, Roger
+contrived to secure Daphne for his partner.  The exception
+was when Daphne said, "<i>No</i>, I'm going with Cyril now," and
+Roger looking nonplussed&mdash;even hurt, as at the shattering of a
+dream&mdash;refused, of his courtesy, to force Daphne against her
+will.  Of his courtesy, too, he was gracious and gay with his
+new partner, Trudy.  At the afternoon's close, they agreed to
+meet early the following morning.  The last game was spread
+all over the western side of the common, for Daphne, with
+Roger to chivy every one off, had to reach Jacob's Post without
+being so much as touched by Cyril, Trudy or Owen.  She ran
+diagonally and zigzag, and Roger with his long legs ran all
+round her, intercepting any who threatened her.  They could
+not pass him and abandoned hope.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Throughout the evening, when they were playing table-games
+in the great play-room at Old Hall House, she was as noisy
+and skilful as Owen or Trudy, but she had moments of
+wool-gathering when she wondered about many things.  She would
+have liked to escape to an empty room, there to walk up and
+down with her friendly questions.  The once or twice that
+they played a guessing game and she was outside the closed
+door, she let her thoughts run to the subject that called them.
+Yes, for a little while he <i>had</i> been&mdash;he <i>was</i>&mdash;&mdash;  But why?
+She felt like a child&mdash;of a different order, almost, from him.
+He was so mature and majestic (these were not Daphne's words,
+who had less words than blindfolded thoughts), and strong and
+proficient.  But he was, for a little.  She could not doubt it.
+Incredible.  Nothing would come of it, nothing <i>could</i> come of
+it.  It had only been a momentary attraction.  Still, she
+<i>could</i>&mdash;oh, yes, it gave her that curious, delightful emptying when
+she imagined it&mdash;she <i>could</i> love him very much.  He was, of
+course, the very perfection of her idea of a lover; not faultless,
+but exactly what <i>she</i> would like.  Every one else she could
+think of seemed less than he.  But it wouldn't be ... it
+wouldn't be....  She would hold herself in and wait on the
+future.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon after nine the next morning they were waiting by the
+Observation Post and looking down the Plumpton Road for
+Roger and Cyril.  A hooded cart rumbled towards them, and
+when it passed their gathering, dropped from its tailboard, as it
+might have been two bundles, Roger and Cyril.  They were
+very differently dressed from yesterday.  Roger wore a suit
+of grey flannel, apparently new-bought for the holidays, royal
+blue socks and brown shoes, a plum-coloured tie, and his dark
+hair plastered down.  Though still a comely boy, he looked
+rather more ordinary than he had done in his running kit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We'll toss for partners to-day," said he hurriedly, lest any
+one suggested something else.  "Cyril and I being the two eldest
+males had better pick."  Tossing up a coin he turned to Cyril.
+"You call, man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cyril won, and chose Trudy.  And throughout the day it so
+fell that, whenever they tossed, Daphne always fell to Roger's
+share.  The first time he won he paraded doubt before choosing
+her, and the second time said casually: "Ah, well, best
+stick to the old firm."  They played all the morning and all the
+afternoon, having tea as guests of a rather lordly Roger at
+the Royal Oak, and when the glamour of evening was over the
+common, and their ravenous appetites cried to them that it must
+be supper-time, Roger said mysteriously:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Look here.  Gather round, all.  An idea's been festering
+in my mind all the afternoon.  Sit down.  In a ring.  This is
+a bally conspiracy....  The first fine night we'll all meet on
+the common at midnight.  Don't be alarmed.  It'll be topping."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, <i>let's</i>," agreed Cyril.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We'll meet at Jacob's Post at half-past midnight, and bring
+food."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, rather," suddenly said Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, when shall it be?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To-night," said all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, father isn't back yet.  And it'll be no fun escaping if
+there's no one dangerous to escape from."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is your father dangerous?" inquired Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, he's all right, only he thinks he's a deuce of a
+disciplinarian."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would he whack you if he caught you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, hardly," Roger grinned.  "However, to-morrow
+night's the night, if fine.  Especially as we shan't have many
+more nights&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What?</i>" exclaimed Trudy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, who had been fiddling with something on the ground,
+looked up quickly and caught Roger's eye watching for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, are you going away, then?" she grumbled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Father joins us to-morrow, and in a few days we all
+go off to Cornwall.  Cyril and I were keen on it, but I'm not
+so keen now.  However, there it is."  There was a fine Roman
+note in his acceptance of adversity.  "We won't meet at all
+to-morrow afternoon, so as to be fresh for the night.  If it's
+fine, which it will be, and Cyril and I decide we can do it, we'll
+come outside your house some time between six and eight
+o'clock, and fire two shots in rapid succession."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say!" ejaculated Trudy, and an alarmed thumb-nail shot
+to her teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, it'll be all right, I promise you.  Everything the whole
+night.  I'll guarantee no harm of any kind comes to you.  I
+shall regard it as my personal responsibility."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In imitation of this grandiloquence Owen drawled:
+"Wow-wow-wow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger turned sharply on him.  If he were elaborately courteous
+to girls that was no reason why he should stand any lip
+from prep. schoolboys.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did you say, Stinkpot?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing," answered Owen, subdued by so sudden an
+approach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, don't say it again.  If you can't keep your mouth
+shut, put a sock in it.  Well, now we all know the
+programme...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Daphne, Trudy and Owen were littering the walk
+home with their chatter, it gradually emerged that every one of
+Trudy's remarks held a sly under-meaning.  Daphne refused
+to perceive it, though a rising colour betrayed her pleasure;
+Trudy shaded off her remarks into the less and less equivocal,
+but still Daphne saw them only as innocent, and at last Trudy
+was forced to say outright:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, it's perfectly obvious that Roger's gone cracked
+on you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>What?</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course, it is perfectly obvious that Roger has gone
+cracked on you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Course it's perfectly obvious he hasn't!" protested Daphne,
+the blood now flooding her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hearing the word spoken aloud and deliberately like that
+had set her heart beating quickly and irregularly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, at any rate, you're blushing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"At any rate, I'm <i>not</i>!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right.  If you say you can't see that Roger's silly about
+you, you must be either a fool or a liar."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't think it's obvious at all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Owen unadvisedly stepped into the discussion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's obvious to the meanest intelligence."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Lot you know about it, copy-cat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you.  I do know a lot.  My experience is extensive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's not at all funny....  Besides, I was talking to Trudy.
+What makes you think so?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can always tell," Trudy explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they entered the house, Daphne, whose cheeks were
+still flushed and her heart still delightfully irregular, wanted
+to get away alone, far more urgently than last night, so as to
+think about it all.  But supper detained her, and then Trudy
+would keep her talking; and what was annoying about Trudy's
+talk was that she had apparently forgotten the one interesting
+topic, as if, after all, it were nothing very impressive.  Daphne
+answered her frequently enough to maintain a show of interest,
+though really she missed large chunks of what Trudy was saying.
+And as soon as possible she invented an excuse and ran
+away to some place where she might be private.  An old habit
+sent her to the bathroom, where there was a bolt on the door.
+There she leapt on to the mahogany framework of the bath,
+and, sitting sideways, stared out at the dark orchard and the
+brick walk that ran by the kitchen door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he <i>did</i>.  He, so much older (somehow), so much more
+important, did love her.  She saw him again&mdash;tall, dark,
+wide-breasted, his eyes sparkling when excited with plans; twinkling
+mischievously&mdash;almost possessively&mdash;when she struggled with
+him; frowning angrily when he insulted Cyril or Owen.  He
+had twisted her wrist sharply, and to remember it was delicious,
+and she, struggling for her mask, had had her arm tight about
+his waist.  The thought disturbed her internally, and she moved
+a little as she sat on the side of the bath.  She liked the
+disturbance, and sought it by returning to the memory again and
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In her bed that night, when Trudy had talked herself to
+sleep, she turned on her side and directed her will to thinking
+only of Roger, in the hope that this would bring him into her
+dreams and carry her into his.  She struggled to keep her
+erratic mind's-eye playing on the figure of Roger; Roger coming
+over the brow in white running kit, wrestling with her for her
+mask (her body straightened in bed as she remembered it),
+choosing her for his partner, running about her and fighting
+her battle.  Surely this hard thinking would propel her soul
+over the dark common to the Downway House where Roger
+slept.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this sunlight in the room, and the white and twisty
+singing of birds!  It was morning, and she hadn't dreamt at
+all.  She stared at the clock on the mantelpiece.  Only twenty
+past five.  A dead silence in the house, and a perfect stillness
+in the garden, except for the birds.  Twenty past five....
+Let her spend the next hour thinking of Roger.  To enjoy the
+thinking, she pulled the clothes warmly about her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When, after breakfast, the two parties met again on the
+common, Roger was still shy and awkwardly imperious, and
+Daphne studied to be natural and lively as if unaware that love
+was in any one's mind.  Now and then, when Roger and she,
+in hiding from the others, lolled under the gorse, she languished
+a little before him, but it was more unconscious than deliberate.
+Her face she kept averted, giving him only an occasional glance,
+which she hoped he would not see.  If they had long to wait,
+she lay backward so that her head rested on her interlaced
+fingers and her eyes dreamed at the sky.  The glare tiring them,
+she let her lids fall, after which a hundred noises of the
+common seemed to become audible: birds, a cow's bell, a dog
+barking far away, the breeze in the tree-branches, and the distant
+suggestion of a cart with a trotting horse.  Roger would be
+extraordinarily silent at her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the morning his nearness, though so desired, became
+almost oppressive.  She could scarcely answer him now, if he
+spoke to her, and her part in the games was formal and
+remote&mdash;she carried too pleasing a burden of thoughts.  When they
+returned to lunch, she carried them with her in silence.  As
+companions they were easier than Roger; and she was not
+unhappy that the afternoon and evening were to be spent at
+home, before the adventure of midnight.  Trudy spent the
+afternoon reading; Owen drawing.  In Daphne the emotion
+that was causing her heart to flutter or her voice to shake
+funnily, began to press on her old vent&mdash;the desire to write.
+This brought direction to her thoughts, and a rest in moving
+with them.  She dreamed out a story, in which two people met
+while children, as Roger and she had done, and after being
+parted for many years, both remaining faithful and both imagining
+themselves forgotten, met again in middle age, to pass the
+evening of their lives in a sheltered and fragrant calm.  "Coo,
+it'd make a beautiful story," thought Daphne, a contemplative
+thumb arrested at her lips.  Her imagination, playing on it,
+teemed with ideas; and as, one after another, they came to
+her, the story that should contain them all seemed so good that
+its early publication was placed beyond doubt.  Already she
+saw it in book form.  By tea-time she had completed a scenario
+on a sheet of foolscap, and was writing the first paragraphs.
+But the actual writing was a laborious exercise, and a drag on
+her impatient thoughts; only dreaming could keep pace with
+thoughts.  No, by her fine afternoon's work on the scenario
+she had earned the right to sit and think about it.  And she
+spent an enchanted evening in this service of her compulsion
+to write&mdash;wonderfully oblivious of the outside world, and at
+rest.  Always its service was perfect freedom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were sitting at supper, with Miss Carrell at the table's
+head, when suddenly a loud report was heard in the road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good heavens!  What's that?" exclaimed Miss Carrell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was another shot, but farther away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne felt that everybody in the cottages round must be
+rushing into the road to see if murder had been done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, it's some one killing rabbits, I expect," said Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She found herself admiring her brother's composure.  Owen
+was not an easy mixture to analyse.  Though often timid, he
+showed flashes of daring, and would be quite undisturbed by
+circumstances that started uncomfortable fears in her.
+To-night, for instance, in this period between the half-light and
+bedtime, when both girls had begun to be afraid of the secret
+conspiracy, Owen had assumed an ascendancy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll come and collect you two as soon as the clock strikes
+midnight," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Trudy yawned.  Her enthusiasm was at its lowest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But suppose we all drop off to sleep, and wake to find it's
+morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We must divide the night into three watches," Owen decided.
+"We can go to bed at nine.  There'll be three watches
+of one hour.  Trudy can take the first as she's tired, then
+Duffy, then me....  I think I shall turn in soon, as we have
+a long and dirty night's work in front of us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In their bedroom Trudy lightened her watch by talking with
+Daphne, and at ten o'clock said: "Now it's you on duty," and,
+turning over, was soon asleep.  Daphne lay awake, staring into
+the darkness and listening to the last sounds in the household
+below.  In an hour she would see Roger again.  But what
+then?  They would only be awkward with each other.  They
+found it so difficult to talk.  The only perfect satisfaction&mdash;and
+this was an impossible dream&mdash;would be to hold each other
+close and long and in silence....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thinking thus was such a restful happiness that she could
+only keep awake by forcing open her eyes and staring at the
+light on the blind or trying to distinguish the outlines of the
+fire-place.  A few times she did doze and was obliged to pull
+herself back to watchfulness.  Suddenly she heard a step
+outside her door, and a creaking board.  Her heart stopped.  There
+was a tickling knock, which nearly drove her under the sheets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy!  Duffy!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's eleven o'clock.  You should have called me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, you might have given me time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll take on now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned over and remembered nothing more till she awoke
+with another heart-leap at the sound of some one moving
+outside her door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say....  I say....  It's just on twelve."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne sat up in bed.  The memory that in half an hour
+she would be with Roger had strengthened her to overcome
+sleepiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Trudy!  Trudy!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something about the darkness forbade more than a strong
+whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Trudy was heartily asleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Trudy!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said it aloud, and coughed when she heard how loud it
+sounded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Getting up quickly, for she was half-afraid of the whole
+room, she crossed to Trudy's bed and shook her shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Trudy, it's midnight."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Trudy turned over resentfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, get up.  Don't spoil it all.  Owen and I are up."  Trudy
+threw off the clothes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ooo! it's cold!  I didn't think it'd be as cold as this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A whisper came through the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aren't you two nearly ready.  I've been ready for a long
+time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, don't show off about it," enjoined Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In five minutes the two girls and Owen were creeping down
+the stairs, stopping whenever they heard a distant door shaking
+or a stair squeaking under their feet.  On the road, the air
+freshened them and the quick walking awakened them, and
+they began really to enjoy themselves.  The blind houses that
+looked at them through the darkness, the sleeping Royal Oak
+Hotel, the closed cattle gate at the entrance to the common, by
+increasing their sense of guilt, gave a pungency to the
+adventure.  The empty common was, perhaps, almost too like a
+desert; and all were feeling the eerieness of Jacob's Post, seen
+through the night, when two figures leapt into their path, their
+arms shooting to the sky in a demoniac gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sorry," apologized Roger.  "Cyril insisted on us doing
+that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this lively item barely concealed that they were all rather
+shy of one another; and Roger, determining, as the originator
+of the conspiracy, to save it from awkwardness, said cheerily:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We'll grub first.  I want you all to come right to the centre
+of the common....  So come along.  Squad, march."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They followed him to the heart of the common, where he
+led them to a stretch of low gorse, and unshouldered his
+haversack, bidding Cyril do the same.  From these they produced
+five bottles of ginger beer, some buns and bananas, and a
+lantern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Strike a light, my son," said Roger, addressing himself.
+"See, it's a dark lantern....  Now we sit down and gorge."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None of them was hungry, and the buns were hardly a success,
+but bananas were things you could eat at any time of the
+day, or with a stomach in any state.  And when the last of them
+had been finished, Roger issued orders:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is the game.  As there are five of us we divide into
+two sides of two each.  The fifth person must hide on the
+common.  Whichever of the two sides finds him first wins.  It'll
+have to be Cyril or me who hides, as Owen is too young and
+foolish."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I <i>beg</i> your pardon," said Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?" asked Roger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I beg your pardon, I said."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, well, that's granted....  So Cyril&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I mean I didn't gather the full purport of your last
+remark."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, wash your ears out next time....  Here, Cyril, we'll
+toss who hides."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They tossed, and Cyril won.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I'll take the lantern and do the hiding, you bet," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right," permitted Roger; "and as I lost the toss, I'll
+have first pick....  Well, may as well stick to the old firm.
+Duffy and I will be on one side, and Trudy and Owen the
+other."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But we'll never find Cyril in the darkness," said Trudy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You haven't heard all yet.  Cyril takes the lantern, and if
+we're nowhere near him, he shows its light on the common.
+He may then darken it and move away.  If he's slick, he'll move
+in the opposite direction to the one you're expecting.  (I half
+wish I had the lantern.)  But as sure as he finds you're going
+all wrong, he's got to show a light again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, how topping!" agreed Trudy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Right!  Streak away, Cyril.  Take to the heather, my
+bonnie lad.  Any direction you like.  We'll count a hundred
+before we raise the highlands and pour down after you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Aloud, monotonously, automatically, Roger counted one
+hundred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"&mdash;&mdash;ninety-eight, ninety-nine, a hundred!  Now, you and
+your party, Owen, had better trickle southward towards
+Brighton, and I and Duffy'll prospect the common northward
+towards York."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few uncomfortable seconds, and Daphne and Roger were
+walking alone through the night.  Her heart began to race.
+She walked unspeaking beside him, aware of his equal
+discomfort.  They struck across the grass, sometimes tripped by
+the branching bracken or a rush-crowned tussock, when Roger
+would extend to her help a gentle hand.  His talk about the
+search for Cyril was so empty of conviction that she guessed
+he was summing up courage to say something else.  They
+reached a clump of bramble, and Daphne, after stupidly looking
+behind it, moved on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, don't go on," stuttered Roger.  "I've something to say
+to you.  Let's sit down."  She obeyed him without speaking.
+"When do you and Trudy go back to school?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"September 14th."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There!  I knew it.  I guessed it.  Fate's against us.  We
+shan't return from Cornwall till two days after that.  Heaven
+knows if I shall ever meet you again.  We were destined to see
+each other in a flash and no more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These words, so picturesque and sad, amounted to an avowal
+of tenderness; wherefore Daphne could only keep silence,
+pulling up blades of grass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy, let me kiss you, may I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The words had, beyond doubt, come out of the darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy, don't be a rotter.  Can't you see that any other
+fellow'd have taken you, now he'd got you here, and kissed
+you whether you let him or not.  But I've never been rude to
+you, have I?  I have my own ideas about how you ought to
+treat women.  I reverence them.  Duffy, I'm madly in love
+with you&mdash;I am, really.  You're&mdash;you're like a magnet to me."  He
+took her hand gently.  "All this business to-night, and all its
+beastly expense, I've engineered simply because I was determined
+to have you for half an hour to myself, and in complete
+privacy&mdash;out of the beastly daylight.  Those kids are just being
+used to serve our ends."  He was obviously proud of his
+manœuvring.  "Duffy, I'm not a flirt.  I've never flirted with
+a girl in my life, not because I thought it wrong&mdash;that wouldn't
+have worried me, for I'm afraid I generally do what I like&mdash;but
+just because they've never interested me.  I didn't want
+to fall in love with you.  But from the moment you jumped out
+of that hedge at me you diverted the course of my life."  She
+guessed this had been rehearsed, for a similar sentence had
+presented itself to her.  "You may not remember, but you flung
+yourself down on your face at my feet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I didn't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, behind a hedge, I mean.  Let me finish.  And the
+minute you did that I was metaphorically at your feet....
+Duffy, do you love me, too?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this she preferred to give no direct answer, and he repeated:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you love me, too?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I like you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, let me kiss you.  I shan't if you won't let me.  But
+if you don't I vow I'll never see you again.  And I don't go
+back on a vow....  And hang it, Duffy, I'm going in less than
+a week."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, can't you get out of going?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  Father's one of those who never changes his mind.
+We're exactly like each other in that way, so I can't complain.
+Duffy, are you sorry I'm going?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, of course I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, does that mean you do more than like me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The "Yes" would not leave her lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy, I believe you love me, do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a long silence she answered by resting her body against
+his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy!" He had immediately drawn her closer.  "You&mdash;you
+lovely wild flower on the heath."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he kissed her&mdash;awkwardly rather than rapturously, as
+if uncertain how such things were done, and the kiss was only
+in the full of her cheek.  The taking of her lips was an
+impertinence that chivalry did not sanction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he kept her long in his pressure, and under the silence
+she was trying to realize that these were Roger's arms.  It
+was so wonderful a thought that she feared lest her imagination
+missed its fullness.  And in the effort to keep her imagination
+up to pitch, she probably did fall short of any complete rapture.
+Roger seemed lost in his happiness, and it was she who first
+drew away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I say, we're forgetting the others.  They may be near."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger laughed significantly, and jumped up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't think so.  Come this way, and I'll show you
+something."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He led her to the nearest rise, where, after sweeping the
+whole common to the south, he suddenly pointed and said:
+"Look!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tiny light twinkled&mdash;it seemed miles away&mdash;and went out,
+leaving nothing but darkness on the common.  Then again it
+pricked the night, and one could imagine voices.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Coo!" exclaimed Daphne in admiration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger gave a grim, self-satisfied laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cyril has his orders.  Jove! he's a faithful henchman.
+Rather a nice piece of generalship, that!  I don't fancy he'll
+let himself be caught by that wretched little brother of yours
+or that girl.  He has his orders where to hold them, and for
+how long."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does he know then what&mdash;what you were going to do to me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I told him I jolly well wanted you to myself, and intended
+having you.  It's nothing new to have a squire in these
+matters."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But he may tell some one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not he.  He knows what he'd get if he did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were walking unthinkingly back to the clump.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm awfully tired," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat down and patted the grass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Lie there, then, and rest against me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She obeyed, putting an arm about his waist and laying her
+head on his coat.  He patted it lovingly, and occasionally kissed
+her hair, to which she would respond with a little hug.  Once
+he said: "Are you sure you're not cold?" and later, after a
+long kiss on her forehead upturned: "My God, I'm glad I was
+born."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0210"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER X
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+In the morning she told Trudy.  This had been Roger's
+advice, and she was not at all averse to acting on it.  "Cyril
+knows, and Trudy and the young brother must know," he had
+said.  "Otherwise we shan't be able to escape away alone."  And
+Trudy, after an annoying "What did I say?" was magnificent,
+showing a deep interest in the romance, and out-talking
+Daphne with plans for the next few days.  Owen said, "I
+protest it shocks me," and did what he could to help.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were three days before Roger left.  The first two, as
+was right for lovers, they wandered together along country
+roads or up on to the downs.  Often they were at a loss for
+conversation, but always Roger embraced happiness, and
+Daphne lost herself in it, when the time came for her to sink into
+his arms.  She discovered, too, that he could always be given
+conversational facility, and the desirable mental ease, if he
+were encouraged to talk about himself.  She learned then that
+unless he did something big he would not really be <i>Sir</i> Roger
+Muirhead, because his father was only a knight, but that he
+intended to do some very big things, and preferably in the field
+of politics.  Herself talked little; she did not want to talk; the
+love affair was a dream&mdash;a dream like that one in which she was
+tried for murder before a watching world and unjustly
+condemned&mdash;but a dream that had solidified.  Here in undeniable
+fact at her side was Roger, splendid to look at, clever, dominant,
+strangely older than she, and yet so deferential to her, so
+chivalrous.  She was immensely proud of him; no grown-up
+girl with a lover had more than she, and of girls her own age
+who had such a one as this?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The third day, being the last before Roger's departure, a
+great scheme of his was carried through.  Under cover of a
+few fabrications he and she escaped to Brighton, as other illicit
+lovers have done before and since.  They lay on the shingle,
+each very proud of the other.  They bathed, and afterwards
+stretched white, firm limbs to dry in the sun.  They were
+photographed by a beach photographer that Roger might have
+her image in his breast pocket; but so revolting was the likeness
+that she begged him to smash it, and had a presentiment of
+disaster when it went with a strong man's finality into his breast.
+There were also in his pocket a big supply of envelopes
+addressed to her in Owen's handwriting, by means of which he
+intended to get his letters through the protective barriers at
+Hemans House.  A brilliant stratagem!  They had lunch on a
+restaurant balcony overlooking the sea, and tea at the end of
+the pier.  With the falling of the sun the melancholy that had
+been with them all day took on a likeness of pain.  He told
+her the train that they were taking to-morrow, and reminded
+her that it would run along the side of Ditchling Common.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You must be on the common and wave to me, and I will
+see you the whole length of that bit.  You must stand on one
+of the higher parts and I'll see you as long as I can.  After
+that&mdash;well, I simply don't care to think what'll happen after
+that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said nothing in reply, so he repeated:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you be there, Duffy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face turned towards him, and her eyes sought his.  As
+if he didn't know she'd be there!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Roger, I believe you think you love me more than I love
+you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you never say much."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want you to go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Say, 'I love you better than all the world, darling."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I love you better than all the world, <i>darling</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+That little sceptic who always crouched in a corner of
+Daphne's mind&mdash;that little sceptic who had enabled her to
+question Hollins's nursery rhymes, to see that Miss Vidella acted
+up to a part, or to suspect the ephemeral quality of the
+friendship with Trudy&mdash;had not been unheard during these
+rose-flushed days.  It had whispered to her what grown-ups would
+say of the whole affair: that it was the veriest calf-love and
+the breath of a moment, and if there were pain in parting,
+three weeks would heal the wound.  It had whispered that, of
+course the grown-ups were right.  And yet the fact remained
+that she had so worked on her imagination, so lost herself in
+her dream, that now she suffered, and in her suffering, these
+thoughts could only peep and run.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She cried when she left Roger that night, and the cries became
+sobs, and her dreams when at last she slept were troubled
+with his presence.  "I shan't see him any more," was her first
+thought on waking.  "I know I shan't."  As soon as possible
+she fled.  Half an hour too early she was standing on the highest
+ridge of the undulating common, waiting for the distant smoke
+of Roger's train.  Except for a cart trundling to Ditchling the
+ribbon of highway on which he had first appeared was deserted.
+A few cows cropped the grass near the western hedges.  The
+cocks and hens, like the care-free creatures they were, pecked
+at the ground by Jacob's Post.  As she waited she fiddled with
+her fingers, or nibbled at unripe blackberries, or looked around
+in search of the gorse bushes under which they had lain
+together.  The action of her heart had sickly moments.  She
+dreaded the coming of the train, and yet longed for it.  Would
+it never come?  Surely she had been waiting a long time.  It
+would be better if it came soon and got its sharp moment over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a relief when she caught her first glimpse of it&mdash;but
+a shock as well, for she had been in a brown study.  It
+rushed on and past.  She thought she distinguished Roger at
+a window, but could not be sure.  But he at least must have
+seen her, for she had stood on her hill and waved her handkerchief
+in the same arc again and again, till the train was out of
+sight and there was nothing left but a broken puff of smoke in
+the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Not three weeks, but three months were required for her
+cure.  And even after that&mdash;for long after that&mdash;the memory
+of Roger, so handsome and so courteous, could give her a
+pleasant melancholy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first, however, she had been surprised to find that the rest
+of the holiday was anything but empty and dull.  She was able
+to enjoy herself with Trudy and Owen, melancholy only adding
+a charm.  Laughter came as easily as before, though sometimes
+she arrested it.  She and Trudy would stare out of the
+window at old Eadigo in the garden, watching him as he bent
+low in his too-tight trousers, and hoping for the best.
+"Now&mdash;this time!" she would say, as he stooped to remove a
+weed&mdash;"it must happen soon," and she would wonder if such humour
+were consonant with Roger's absence.  But he had written to
+her, and though his letters were infrequent, they were couched
+in the correctest language of a lover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was more than she had hoped, and she was very proud.
+When she went back to school, and Miss Vidella came fussing
+into the dining-room to welcome back her dear girls, Daphne
+felt sorry for her as an old maid who had never known the
+sensation of being loved.  In her pride she felt the other girls
+ought to know about her romance, and in order that they might
+at least suspect, she encouraged their chaff when they found
+her in a deserted class-room writing to a secret correspondent.
+She liked to have this privacy disturbed by some inquisitive girl
+and to snatch her letter guiltily away.  She was even tempted
+by the shameful idea of losing a letter of Roger's that it might
+be found and read.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she was saved from this by the failing character of
+Roger's letters.  Only the first two or three had been really
+passionate.  And only two had come to Hemans House in the
+carefully prepared envelopes, and they had been little more
+than a résumé of his doings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He won't write again now.  He'll never write again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he didn't.  All the rest of those envelopes must have
+been destroyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After two months without a letter, she grew used to the
+pain, and gradually lost it.  She no longer, when lying in bed,
+projected herself to Roger, but imagined instead their meeting
+one day when he would plead for forgiveness, and she would
+be too indifferent to cut or punish him; or, as a variant of this,
+the announcement in a paper which he would see: "A marriage
+has been arranged between Miss Daphne Deirdre Tenter
+Bruno, the celebrated daughter of an equally celebrated parent,
+and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu"&mdash;for this title had always
+fascinated her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next summer, when the meeting might just possibly
+happen, she learned towards the term's end that they were to
+be whipped away to Devonshire for a long holiday by the sea.
+This was excellent.  Roger, if he came to the common, would
+learn that the Brunos were away, on dignified travels in the west.
+The day before they left Sussex she dared to walk past the
+Muirheads' house.  As she hurried along its frontage expedited
+by the sight of people in the garden, the side of her eye
+perceived that they were strange children with a nurse in uniform.
+This made her halt round a bend.  After a moment of deliberation,
+she walked back towards the house, and asked of a gardener
+who was trimming a hedge of thuja: "Can you tell me,
+does a Lady Muirhead live here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, miss," said the gardener.  "Least, it's their house, I
+believe, but it's let now to my boss, Mr. Bradlaugh."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!" exclaimed Daphne, conscious of a sharp
+disappointment.  "Have you been here long?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We come here last spring, miss?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And how&mdash;how long will you be staying?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know, miss.  Two or three years, I reckon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh&mdash;well, thank you.  Thanks awfully."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked back.  The blow had been to learn that Roger
+wouldn't after all be humiliated and saddened by the sight of
+Old Hall House empty and frowning, nor by the gorse and
+brambles on Ditchling Common.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0211"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XI
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Daphne's sixteenth and seventeenth years might have
+been called the years of the giggle.  In the main they
+poured over shallows.  No successor to Roger Muirhead came
+troubling her with a like emotion; and except for one short
+period she had no religion to make depths in the stream-bed.
+There was but one clear motive in her life that waxed stronger
+with the months, and brought a pattern to the welter; and this
+was her ambition to write.  Of the rest of her nature the
+lawless high spirits took possession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She grew like a blade of newly-sown grass.  As her father
+said, you could almost see her growing; nay more, on a still
+night, if you listened very carefully, you could hear her
+growing.  Her features lost some of their roundness and softness,
+and her body became a thought too narrow for its height.  It
+worried her rather, so that she began to take very seriously
+her physical culture&mdash;her gymnasium, riding and tennis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laboured at this time on the manufacture of a distinguished
+signature, "Daphne D. T. Bruno," giving it a tail
+like an unwinding lasso, till her father, seeing the flourish,
+expressed acute distress and shame: "Duffy, this is
+awful&mdash;awful.  You must have the soul of a tea-shop girl."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ambition to write increased with every novel she read,
+and every discussion she heard on other people's novels.  In
+a small part its driving force was the true compulsion of the
+artist; but the most of it was a mixture of crude ambition
+and sheer imitation.  She wanted no less than a thundering
+fame, and she wanted to imitate the style and methods of the
+authors she read.  After reading Dickens, she wanted to be
+a great humanitarian and a master of comic caricature; after
+Thackeray, an urbane and tolerant satirist; after George Eliot,
+William Black, or Bulwer Lytton&mdash;well, she remodelled her
+style on whichever of them was the last read.  She had no idea
+of working hard to equip herself for greatness; her reading
+was lazy, and limited to such fiction as pleased her; it could
+only be compassed lolling in a comfortable chair, and any hard
+parts she read through without troubling to know if she
+understood them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since she had no sincere religion or stable code of morals,
+nothing but an antiseptic, compounded of humour, innocence and
+the herding instinct, saved her from the grosser evils.  This,
+and the two steadying influences of Hollins and Miss Sims.
+There had to be a show of religion at Hemans House, of course,
+but except in panicky moments when she sent up ejaculatory
+S.O.S.'s to God, it made no settlement in her secret life.
+Already the sceptic in the corner of her mind issued hints that
+she was probably the only girl in the school who knew that she
+didn't believe anything.  This struck her as rather original,
+and she would sometimes give it an airing before Hollins.  She
+did it with intent to shock, till one day the old servant, now very
+grey, discomfited her by interrupting:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm very sorry, Miss Duffy, but I must ask you once and
+f'r'all, not to do your laughing at these things with me.  I
+don't like it, I tell you I don't.  It makes me think you'll be
+struck leprous, or the like of that.  And though you're only a
+child, it&mdash;it sort of upsets my faith.  And then I don't know
+where I am....  It's for your pa to say, of course, but to
+my idea it's a dreadful thing for children to be brought up
+without any religion.  No good'll come of it, I dare swear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had a similar experience with Miss Sims.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Sims had kept her favourite's affection, if not the earlier
+adoration.  And on Sundays, when the crocodile went tail-first
+to church, Daphne would inflate the governess's heart by coming
+to chatter at her side, and in church by pushing to sit next
+to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was when walking to church one Sunday that Daphne
+deliberately shocked Miss Sims by a frank statement of her
+atheism, with this corollary; that she didn't think she would
+marry because it would interfere with her writing, but she
+saw no reason, believing in love as she did, why she shouldn't
+have intermittent love affairs like other famous women.  Here
+was opportunity for Miss Sims to play the saviour, and she
+filled the part at once.  She hurt her favourite with a swift
+lash, refusing to be amused and suggesting that Daphne walked
+elsewhere; and when the girl, who had been silent for the
+rest of the walk, was sitting beside her in church, Miss Sims
+acted her own devotion and faith.  It distinctly impressed
+Daphne, who glimpsed a beauty and peace in holiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was Winnie Chatterton who really led her on a short
+excursion into holiness.  Winnie Chatterton was the only notable
+successor to Trudy Wayne.  The friendship with Trudy had
+wilted.  They had not quarrelled, but just drifted apart.  They
+were friendly, but not friends.  After a chain of minor
+intimacies Daphne discovered Winnie Chatterton, and Winnie
+Chatterton discovered Daphne Bruno.  Both wondered how
+they could have been three and four years at the school without
+an earlier gravitation each to the other.  In figure and colouring
+they were much the same, which was delightful, and there
+was the most wonderful community of taste.  And now on
+walks through Windsor Park these two tall girls went hand in
+hand.  Their place was near the head of the crocodile, and of
+the many treble voices that made up that peripatetic parliament,
+one, as likely as not, was Daphne's as she told to Winnie the
+whole story of the last novel that had affected her.  "Vanity
+Fair" she serialized, telling it in three instalments on three
+successive walks.  And Winnie, whose art was music, talked
+enthusiastically about that, or about the High Churchmanship
+that had lately won her.  In the end Daphne tried both the
+music and the religion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old though she was, she insisted on taking up the 'cello with
+Mr. Pulteney, the music master (the "Chutney" of the girls).
+And after her first lesson, which was disastrous, she rushed to
+Winnie to give humorous report of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had walked towards the music-room, explained Daphne
+hurriedly, and seen Petsy (Miss Vidella) waiting for her
+outside.  Together they had entered the room where Chutney was
+tuning her shining new instrument.  Petsy had seated herself
+on a chair to act as chaperon, for music lessons and the music
+master, as all literature showed, were the points at which
+foolishness and sin were most likely to break through.  So Petsy
+had sat in a chair to strengthen the defences.  Daphne, on
+taking the huge instrument, had most unfortunately felt a sudden
+desire to giggle.  It was awful, and when Chutney placed the
+music-stand before her and asked: "Where's your music, Miss
+Bruno?" she had only been able to reply, with the giggle
+trembling through her words: "I've forgotten it.  It's up in my
+bedroom."  At that Petsy had rustled in her chair, probably
+rendered ill at ease by this mention of bedroom to a music
+master.  "Really, my dear child," she had whined, "you are
+slatternly in many things.  Can she not, Mr. Pulteney, use some
+of the music of the other dear children?"  Chutney had said he
+was afraid not, because she needed the most elementary book,
+and he had no other girl beginning at the beginning.  So Petsy
+had creaked out of her chair into a standing position, and said:
+"Well, we must go and get it, dear.  It's really very thoughtless
+of you.  Come.  Trip ahead of me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why we were both obliged to go out Heaven only knows,"
+commented Daphne.  "I suppose because if Petsy had gone for
+the music, I should have been left alone with a music master,
+and if <i>I</i> had gone, she'd have been left alone with a music
+master.  And Chutney couldn't go, of course, because of the
+intimate nature of the room where the music was.  So we
+tripped out together."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they were in the hall Daphne had run upstairs, two
+and three steps at a time, while Petsy waited at the bottom in all
+the safety of that public place.  She must needs call after
+Daphne: "Don't go up the stairs like that, dear child.
+Supposing anyone had been passing and seen you.  So impetuous
+you dear children are!"  Daphne had got her music and come
+down again decorously.  She had then re-entered the music-room
+behind her principal, and sat in the pupil's chair while
+Chutney placed the 'cello in the correct position, and Petsy
+watched carefully through her spectacles to make sure that in
+touching the 'cello he didn't also touch the 'cellist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the 'cellist had commenced.  Her first notes had been
+as horrible as an amateur's first notes on a bugle, and the
+desire to giggle had got much worse, with the result that her
+hands trembled, and the next notes were too awful for words.
+Unfortunately, Chutney, who was a perfect dear, had caught
+the infection of her giggle.  Presumably he had never before
+had so old a pupil at the clumsy stage of 'celling.  At last,
+after a dreadful prolonged note on the lowest string, her giggle
+had burst out, and Chutney had only saved himself from disgrace
+by swinging round, so that his back was turned to Miss
+Vidella.  Miss Vidella had asked: "Has something humorous
+happened?" and Daphne had apologized, saying: "I'm sorry,
+Miss Vidella.  I can't help it."  Then Petsy had begun to
+rustle a lot, thinking no doubt that this conjunction of a music
+master, music, and a giggle promised the worst results.  She
+had shut her eyes behind her spectacles for a second, and
+asked: "Can you approach anything, Daphne dear, without
+unsuitable levity?  If you are not disposed to bring seriousness
+to these music lessons, which your dear father has secured for
+you at considerable cost"&mdash;Chutney had grimaced at that&mdash;"and
+from the best instructors"&mdash;that had set him grinning sheepishly
+out of the window&mdash;"I shall have to recommend him to
+discontinue them.  Now please proceed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then there had been a lot of trouble with her fingering.
+Time and again Chutney had moved to adjust her fingers with
+his own, only stopping when he saw that Petsy's spectacles
+ruled out so indecorous a thing.  Absurd, because Chutney
+was really such a pure little man.  He had been obliged to
+demonstrate the correct method by holding another instrument
+before her, and asking her to copy exactly the movement of
+his fingers; which she had done, but her sounds had been quite
+different from his, and induced Petsy to poke in with some
+advice: "Try to do what Mr. Pulteney says, dear."  Not a
+helpful remark; and Daphne, getting annoyed, had pulled
+her bow rather savagely along the string, producing the most
+painful sound of the morning.  This had changed her temper
+into humour, and for some torturing seconds she had been
+much more occupied in controlling her laughter than in
+catching what Chutney was saying.  Her wrist work and her
+holding of the bow had been just as troublesome, and Chutney
+had kept coming towards her with the obvious desire of putting
+her hand and wrist into the correct position, but had tripped,
+as you might say, over the protective ray from Petsy's eyes.
+And Petsy had most stupidly tried to bridge the difficulty by
+some more advice: "Do try and remember, dear, that it is a
+bow that you are holding and not a clothes brush"; which had
+made Daphne want to mutter: "Oh, you shut up, for the Lord's
+sake!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From somewhere about this time," explained she to Winnie,
+"the row began to begin.  I can hardly remember how it started&mdash;I
+never can&mdash;and I had a beastly feeling when it was all over
+that I had made a fool of myself, but you know what Petsy
+is&mdash;she's such an old fool, posing so pompously and thinking
+it's funny."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, what happened, what happened?" asked Winnie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I think Chutney said, as a sort of excuse for me, that
+the exact position was a little difficult to get right at first.  And
+Petsy was sarcastic and said: 'Not, I take it, to intelligence.'  And
+I lost my temper and said: 'But I'm not intelligent.'  Chutney
+stared, and Petsy was rather taken aback, but when she had
+recovered herself, she opened fire, I can tell you.  She said:
+'Precisely, my dear.  And the less intelligent girls have to
+make up for their deficiencies by a becoming willingness and
+humility.  They do not boast of their stupidity.'  And I snapped
+back: 'I wasn't boasting.  I was deploring the fact.'  Then
+Petsy stood up.  I think she was simply beaten by such
+cold-blooded impudence, and could not for the life of her decide
+how to deal with it.  But she had to do something in front of
+Chutney, so she began: 'My dear Daphne, I do not like that
+tone at all.  I do not like it at all.  I really have not been
+insulted in a music lesson before.  I think you will go to your
+classroom, where you will wait to hear from me.'  Then she
+apologised at great length to Chutney for taking up his valuable
+time with a perverse and ill-mannered child, and Chutney was
+perfectly sweet, saying I was only confused and awkward at
+first, and would be all right next time.  And Petsy interrupted:
+'I really do not know whether there will be a next time.  I am
+not at all sure that I shall allow her to continue her lessons.'  And
+of course I said: 'I've no particular desire to,' and went
+haughtily out of the room.  She's said nothing so far, but I
+suppose I'm in for an interview, and a heart-to-heart talk."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Her conversion to High Churchmanship was a mixture of
+sincerity and posturing, as the sceptic in the corner would hint
+through his gags.  It was sincere in this: that she secretly
+disliked much of her character and wanted to improve it; she had
+depressed moments when she thought herself vain, lazy, much
+too selfish, and without a decent control of her temper; and
+while she couldn't believe that her own strength would ever pull
+out these tough-rooting faults, she was quite sure that a stern
+religion would do it.  And her lack of any stable morality
+could trouble her sometimes; she remembered how it had enabled
+her to suggest in flippancy things that earned disgust from
+people like Miss Sims.  At such times, aided by the placid
+demeanour of Miss Sims and her occasional homilies, and by the
+graver, brow-furrowing chats of Winnie, and the tales of the
+saints that she had read, her imagination would show her the
+religious life as one of self-respect, happiness in worship, and
+peace in believing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The element of posture lay in her eagerness to perform the
+picturesque rites of High Churchmanship; in her instant
+response to its spirit of gay rebellion; and in her desire to do
+something that would startle her family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the beginning sincerity occupied most of the ground.  Her
+first weeks, after her acceptance of the faith and her prayer
+in which she surrendered to God and asked forgiveness for
+her long neglect, were very happy; and she was perfectly
+conscious of a softening and ennobling of her character.  She
+went ahead of Winnie, and silently wondered how her friend
+could keep certain things in her life as fellow-tenants with her
+religion.  These were perhaps the sweetest days of Daphne's
+childhood.  But it could not last.  The soil was too unbroken,
+and there were too many older roots in the tilth; the little
+sceptic spread his gangrene: "Do you <i>really</i> believe all this?
+You know you don't <i>really</i>?  Not if you once thought it out";
+and a series of little shocks, as she realised some of the things
+that the religion implied, helped to wither the sincerity and
+bring in the element of posture.  That every good Catholic
+was morally obliged to go to Confession she had not foreseen,
+and she knew she could never go; other duties such as fasting,
+hearing Mass, being confirmed, and preparing long and earnestly
+for her communions she was prepared to accept, but not this&mdash;not
+confession to any living creature of some of the things
+that hurt her conscience: And that every really Catholic priest
+ought to be a celibate&mdash;good heavens, did Anglo-Catholics say
+that?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winnie, who considered that she had to be as extreme as
+possible now she was instructing a neophyte, declared that such
+of course was the truth.  In fact, she made much of this question
+of celibacy, deploring its widespread disregard.  Her first
+vicar had been married, she said, but had had the decency not
+to have children.  His successor, however, was not only
+married, but had a boy at Cambridge.  "I don't think he ought to
+have married at all," expounded Winnie, "but if he did, he
+shouldn't have borne a son."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Daphne went home for the holidays, the posturing was
+so far in possession that she was chiefly eager to offend
+everybody by insisting that she must go into Brighton on Sundays
+to hear Mass at a respectable church.  And her first Sunday
+she found herself in St. Paul's, West Street, which had the
+reputation of being as high as was possible.  It certainly seemed
+very high indeed; and disappointment took her when she knew
+herself shocked, bewildered, and traitorously sure that she
+could have worshipped more easily in the service to which she
+was accustomed.  But it was only a matter of getting used to
+it, she supposed, and therewith struggled up to certain points
+of spiritual exaltation.  All the holidays she talked Catholicity
+to the household, and when her father ridiculed her, saying:
+"Yes, run and worship in your strange groves, Daphne," she
+was not displeased at this prick of persecution.  Hollin's
+acceptance of the news was rather disturbing, for, after Daphne
+had been chattering some time about the joys of religion, the
+old servant suddenly dropped her sewing, blew her nose, and
+carried the handkerchief to her eyes before returning it to her
+lap.  "Well, there, miss," she said, pretending to believe that
+Daphne had not observed anything, "I am glad.  It's kind of
+done me a lot of good, and strengthened my faith that prayers,
+if you stick to 'em, are often answered."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+By the time she went back to school, the sceptic had nearly
+worked himself free of his gags, and she knew that she was
+only longing to shock the other girls with her advanced
+Catholicity, and to see what would happen when she exhibited it on
+the first Sunday of the term to Miss Vidella.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The movements of Daphne and Winnie that first Sunday were
+the creations of Daphne's brain.  She justified them on the
+ground that it was a duty to reveal to old-fashioned and
+prejudiced minds the strength of Catholic thought.  Winnie and she,
+as elder girls, walked to the church, one on each side of Miss
+Vidella; and when they reached the Lady Chapel, in which
+were the seats allotted to Hemans House, they still managed
+to keep her between them.  This was designed to surround Miss
+Vidella with Catholicity.  Kneeling down, they made augmented
+signs of the cross, prayed for a suitable time, and made second
+signs of the cross; and then resumed their chairs and read
+advanced manuals.  The vestry opened on to the side chapel,
+and when the vicar and the curate passed them at the tail of the
+choir, the two girls bowed in reverence for the priestly office.
+The vicar noticed it and looked surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They made the sign of the cross at the Absolution and at the
+close of the creed.  They bowed at every <i>Gloria</i>.  And in the
+Ante-Communion Service, at the <i>Incarnatus</i> clause, they
+genuflected.  The genuflexion left Miss Vidella standing as a sort
+of indignant Protestant lighthouse in these undulating waters
+of Catholicity.  Some girls in front turned round to see what
+had happened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the way home Miss Vidella was menacingly reserved;
+and they were soon summoned to her room.  This prospect of
+imperial persecution was excellent.  They had done nothing,
+absolutely nothing (Daphne assured her partner as they walked
+to judgment) but what they were perfectly entitled to do&mdash;what
+indeed it was their duty to do.  Petsy wouldn't have a leg
+to stand on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella began mildly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I could not but notice, Daphne dear and dear Winifred, that
+in church this morning you indulged in practices which are
+usually associated with Roman Catholicism.  You are not, I believe,
+Catholics."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, we are," said Winnie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Catholics," Daphne explained, "but not <i>Roman</i> Catholics."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, you are, are you?"  The imperial power was clearly
+annoyed by their bearing.  "But not <i>Roman</i> Catholics.  And
+may I inquire how you can be Catholics without being Roman
+Catholics?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To explain to the uninstructed the answer to this question
+has always been a long and laborious business; so Winnie turned
+to Daphne as spokesman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All Church of England people are Catholics if they only
+knew it," said Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I see.  Then am I a Catholic?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This made Daphne want to giggle; and at first she thought
+she had better leave the query without a reply; but, deciding
+not to go back upon her church, she said awkwardly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I&mdash;I'm afraid so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed rather a press-gang method of getting Miss Vidella
+on board the Ark, and it was not surprising that her annoyance
+was increased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see.  But I fear I am not so good a Catholic as to tolerate
+in my school such ridiculous practices as those with which you
+embarrassed the greater part of the congregation this morning.
+You will kindly behave as others do and keep your gymnastic
+exercises for Tuesdays and Fridays, when I think you
+go to the Royal Gymnasium for Instruction.  Have you
+anything more to say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne knew that what she ought to say now was a modern
+paraphrase of "Oh King, live for ever.  Be it known unto
+thee that we will not worship as you wish, nor do anything that
+you suggest"; but on being asked so abruptly she couldn't shape
+a single sentence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then that will do, my dears, you may go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They decided in a mysterious council of war that, having
+done this much they could henceforth, with the early Christians
+for a precedent, veil their gestures and reverences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of that term Winnie left to be "finished" in a
+French convent, and Daphne, who had been ashamed to backslide
+before her friend, tried her religion on a charge of
+personation, and convicted it.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Now she received occasional news of Roger Muirhead.  Owen
+was at Sillborough and would mention him in his letters or on
+his holidays.  Not often though, for Daphne never asked for
+information, and Owen apparently detested his senior.  It
+looked as if Owen also had a secret desire to be an author, for
+he affected a very personal and precious style.  "At this
+Academy," wrote he in his first letter from Sillborough, "we have
+one R. Muirhead, with whose name you will not be wholly
+unfamiliar.  He is, I think, the most conceited ass I have ever
+known.  He's a prefect, and fancies himself hugely as a
+disciplinarian.  'My word is law and changeth not' sort of
+business&mdash;as our inimitable Herbert Hollins would say.  'Woe to anyone
+who crosses my path or thwarts me!  I am severe but just.  Oh,
+yes, I am not easily angered, but if some groundling does raise
+my ire, he must expect no quarter.  Oh, no.'  Funny that these
+pompous blokes never credit any one with the brains to see
+through them.  Of course the boys suck up to him, because
+he's hot stuff at games, which he certainly is, though not as
+good as he thinks.  No one ever was as good as that.  And
+this sucking up makes him ten times worse.  I can tell you
+R. Muirhead is no small panjandrum.  Dammy, no."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0212"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XII
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+In the summer of her seventeenth year she read for the
+first time one of her father's books, and was surprised to find
+it exceedingly interesting.  Here was a book that wasn't even
+fiction, and yet, with its wit and gaiety and its big, far-sweeping
+ideas, gave her thrills as pleasant as any story she could
+remember.  She sat on and read devouringly.  The grander words
+danced quadrilles in her head: "Intelligentsia," for example,
+and "Reactionary."  The book was a survey of modern history
+written from the viewpoint of a doctrinaire rebel, and Daphne's
+sympathy was always, as the writer intended, for the
+Revolutionaries and the Intelligentsia, who appeared to be the same.
+She longed to be accounted one of the Intelligentsia.  It was
+a new ambition, and her heart went wholly to it.  She crept into
+her father's empty study and abstracted another of his books.
+And then another.  Many of their illusions and quoted names
+she did not understand, but their wit and some of their matter
+she did&mdash;far more than she had dared to hope.  But the final
+result of her reading, thanks to her habit of bolting what she
+could not masticate, was to increase the confusion of her mind;
+she retained only phrases and names and a muddled idea that
+revolutionaries were always right and reactionaries always
+wrong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why it was necessary to abstract the books surreptitiously
+she could hardly say; probably because she would be utterly
+ashamed to be caught by Miss Carrell or Owen reading a book
+by her father.  It was Mr. Bruno, however, who surprised
+her at it.  One wet afternoon she was alone in the great play-room
+at Old Hall House, gathered sideways in a tattered lounge-chair
+with her legs under her and the book on the chair's arm.
+Its sparkling survey of a century's literature had her in such
+thrill that she did not hear his entry.  At the moment she was
+annoyed to have allowed years to pass in idleness instead of
+in reading all these authors here written of; brain-hot with
+resolves to read them all immediately, and flattered by her own
+delight, since it proved that by nature she was one of the
+Intelligentsia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno stood and looked at her.  An unconscious grace in
+her attitude pleased him and stirred as usual the desire to banter
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Relaxed and idle creature," he began.  "Yes, you may well
+jump guiltily.  Have you no holiday task, or are there no household
+duties waiting to be done, that you loll there&mdash;for all the
+world like a statue of Indolence&mdash;reading some cheap and nasty
+trash?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rolled on to her back, putting the book between her body
+and the arm of the chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On the contrary, it's quite a decent book, darling."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(She had taken to calling him "darling" ever since on a
+holiday visit she had heard Winnie Chatterton doing as much by
+her parent.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Decent?  My dear, if it were a serious book on logic you
+would learn that the epithet 'decent' (which is a disgusting
+misuse of words, by the way) is what is known as a Petitio
+Principii, or Begging of the Question.  It probably <i>does</i> appear
+decent to one without any literary palate, but that doesn't make
+it so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't say it's anything much, but the man who wrote it,
+I should think, is not without intelligence."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's the idle tale called?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wouldn't you like to know?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should not only like to know, but in thirty seconds I
+shall know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he thrust out his hand towards the book, while she rolled
+over to cover the secret with her body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, you shan't!  You shan't.  Go away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, would she?" smiled he.  "Would she?  Since she forgets
+she's a full-sized woman and adopts the tactics of a little
+child, she shall be treated as such."  And, putting one arm
+behind her back and the other under her knees, he lifted her off
+the chair and laid her on the carpet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How dare you, darling? ... Good night!  I didn't know
+you were so strong..."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaping up, she threw her arms about his elbows, trying to
+pin them to his sides and hold him back from the book.  "No,
+daddy, don't be a cad," she begged; but he took a pace forward,
+wrenched an arm free, stooped down and picked up the book.
+She released him, saying: "Well, I think it's a dirty shame."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned the book so as to see its title on the back, and
+read "The Decay of Romanticism, by T. Tenter Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It moved him, and almost unwittingly he placed an arm about
+her shoulders and pressed her to his side.  Then he tossed the
+book back on to the chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, Duffy dear.  Read your tales, not stuff like that.  It's
+a dull and heavy work, as are all its fellows&mdash;stale, flat and
+unprofitable."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It isn't," denied Daphne.  "It's fine.  I'd no idea your books
+were as decent as that.  They're so slick and witty.  I've been
+screaming with laughter.  Daddy, how do you write so wittily
+as that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Rudeness, my dear&mdash;that's all&mdash;just rudeness.  The rudeness
+is all.  All wit, from the highest to the lowest, can be shown
+to have its bottom in abuse, whether it's the neatest definition of
+Voltaire or Johnson or just the low comedian saying: 'Your
+mother must have been fond of children to bring <i>you</i> up.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But it isn't only their humour&mdash;they're so&mdash;they've got such
+ideas&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He brought her in front of him, holding her there with a
+hand at each shoulder, that he might look at her.  Flitting in
+his mind was the memory of that February evening when she
+was born and he had wondered into what long girl she would
+grow.  And here she was&mdash;in his hands and before his eyes.
+"<i>Elle est mon rève.</i>"  Strange that one could tell oneself in
+French, and be pleased with the phrase, what one would
+condemn in English as sentimental!  "<i>Elle est mon rève.</i>"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You speak, Duffy, as if you'd been wasting your time
+skimming some of the others."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've read two, and this is my third, and I'm going to read
+all of them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no, dear.  Let them alone."  He moved his hands and
+picked up the book.  "I have read them all, and I am a great
+critic, and think them small beer.  I'll get you something that'll
+really interest you, and be improving at the same time.  'Sandford
+and Merton,' have you read that?  And 'The Swiss Family
+Robinson.' ... Or since you were doubtless made for pleasure
+rather than profit, I'll get you 'The Worst Girl in the Fourth
+Form.'  Only name your choice, so that you don't read
+unedifying stuff like this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She snatched back the book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My choice is all the other books of T. Tenter Bruno.
+They're ripping."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, they seem more to enthusiasm and&mdash;yes, to your youthful
+mixture of generosity and ignorance&mdash;than they really are.
+They will serve their purpose&mdash;amuse a few people and be
+deservedly forgotten."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know they won't.  You know you think they're splendid.
+You'd be a fool if you didn't.  I don't want to flatter you,
+but whatever else you are, you're not a fool.  I've never read
+anything like them.  I never thought books on subjects like
+that could be interesting like that.  Daddy, I'm awfully proud
+of you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno smiled, and once more pressed her to his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Pride</i>?  You don't know one-tenth of what the word means.
+Pride, Duffy.  When you have a daughter who not only speaks
+well of your books but even reads them, you'll begin to probe
+the depths of the word."  He kissed her forehead.  "And when
+you look her up and down and realise that there's a chance of
+her&mdash;well a chance of her&mdash;let us say, a chance of her being not
+without beauty&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, I'm not," interrupted Daphne.  "I can't see it at
+all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have tried hard?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I have.  And I think I'm like a filleted hat-pin."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no.  No, you're not at all like a filleted hatpin.  But
+you stoop a little, dear.  However, that'll be overcome as the
+sap comes up the stalk; the droop will disappear then, and the
+whole contraption become less&mdash;less green.  It's funny, but
+Nature sometimes completes her sculpturing of a woman in
+seventeen years, and sometimes she dawdles much longer over
+the work.  If she's anything like me, she dawdles over those
+she wants to make best.  We'll wait till you're twenty, Duffy,
+and see what you're like then."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mind that she took back to Hemans House was like a
+shop whose stock has been largely altered.  New goods were
+stored where the religion had been.  They were goods of which
+she knew the labels and the pictured covers better than the
+contents.  The labels were ever pleasant to handle: "More
+advanced schools of thought," "In advance of the age in which he
+lived," "A Leader of the Left," "The School of William
+Morris"; and the pictures and designs showed Cobden and Bright
+on their platforms hypnotizing great audiences; Ruskin worrying
+Utilitarianism with the rumble of his thunderous periods;
+Swinburne singing melodious blasphemies to the dishonour of
+God and the glory of Man; and Friedrich Nietzsche (succulent
+mouthful) coming up like a wind from Germany.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wanted to be a Leader of the Left.  And why not?  Quite
+obviously Miss Vidella was the very type of a reactionary,
+and equally obviously Daphne had always led a more advanced
+school.  The&mdash;the school of Daphne Bruno.  She was in
+advance of the system in which she moved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Take the question of hockey, which she had been playing
+in holidays with most flattering success.  Miss Vidella's absurd
+prohibition of the game was a piece of tyranny that ought to
+be resisted.  Hemans House awaited a Liberator.  A Risorgimento.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Remembering Cobden and Bright on their rostrums, she decided,
+after a discussion with the elder girls, that they must
+have a political meeting.  Who would speak?  Well, anyone
+who had anything to say; she, if they liked, would mount the
+platform first.  Only the elder girls would be regarded as
+possessing the full rights of citizens and allowed to attend.  It
+sounded a jolly game, and these elder girls assembled eagerly
+in an empty class-room at the advertised hour and pushed
+themselves into desks or along the form that stretched in front
+of the desks under the mistress's low platform.  In the middle
+of this form sat Daphne with her legs crossed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We ought to have a chairman," said she, when nobody
+seemed to know what was going to happen next.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes, let's have a chairman," said a very lanky girl,
+Viola Rance, and she instanced her neighbour: "Queenie
+Dutroit'll be chairman."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I shan't," snapped Queenie, horrified at the
+suggestion that she should do anything more public than sitting where
+she was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I vote old Viola's chairman herself," called a girl who, being
+at the back and rather small, was in no danger of being thrust
+into the position.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, yes," endorsed several; and Queenie added, "Yes, she's
+so ready to suggest others, let her do the chairmaning
+herself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, to push matters on, started a clapping of her hands,
+with the result, as she expected, that every girl did the same;
+and Viola, not displeased, though very red and inclined to giggle,
+slid flexuously on to the platform and into the mistress's chair
+behind the writing-table.  The applause stopped, and the chairman
+looked down at Daphne in the front row and asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But what do I do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You introduce me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Viola got up, giggled, and sat down in red confusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be an ass, Vi," grumbled Daphne.  "If you'd any
+gumption you'd have entered into the spirit of the thing and
+said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I have much pleasure in introducing
+our first speaker for this evening, Miss Daphne Bruno.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Viola immediately got up and raced through this sentence,
+though the last words were drowned in the rising tide of the
+giggle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Daphne stepped on to the platform.  No one had the
+wit or the courage to start the conventional applause; and
+when she turned and faced the audience she saw only a roomful
+of girls, some of whom were gaping at her and some sniggering
+as if they thought she looked rather a fool.  She felt
+disappointed and sad.  Why was it that, whether you were
+creating books or organizing picturesque demonstrations, it was
+so much easier to see them in dreams than to give them form.
+The ideas for a speech that had foggily filled her head thinned
+into nothing.  She picked up something off the writing-table,
+put it back again, and began without heart:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, it's like this.  It's&mdash;I mean, I think we ought to have
+hockey.  All the other decent schools are."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not another word could she think of.  She saw nothing but
+a horrid hiatus before her.  If only some of those staring girls
+would say "Hear, hear!"  But though it had probably occurred
+to many of them, all were too nervous of making fools of
+themselves.  And indeed there was nothing more to say.  Not being
+practised in political oratory, Daphne had expressed the origin
+and the business of the meeting, the reason of her speaking and
+the views which the audience had brought with them and which
+they would take away, in twenty words and ten seconds.  But
+it seemed to her a sickly failure, and with a big effort she threw
+some more words into the awful lacuna.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's a topping game.  Other schools are playing hockey, and
+I think we ought to have hockey too."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some one giggled at the back, and fortunately this stirred
+temper, and temper stirred speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't see anything funny in it.  Giggling never did anything
+yet.  It's perfectly piffling to go for a walk when we might
+be playing hockey.  What I vote is that we all go in a sort of
+deputation and ask Miss Vidella to let us play hockey this term.
+If she gives in&mdash;which isn't likely&mdash;she'll probably only treat
+us to some of her celebrated queenly sarcasm; and if she
+refuses we shall have to organise a sort of secret intrigue to force
+her hand&mdash;a Liberationist Society, if you like.  Like the
+National Assembly in France.  Or the Risorgimento.  I've got a
+plan of action in the event of it coming to that.  I think we
+could all write to our parents asking them to support the general
+desire for hockey, and simply get her flooded with letters.  I've
+got her absolutely weighed up, and I'm dead certain that she'd
+never say 'No' to the majority of the parents.  It's always the
+same; these things only want the courage and&mdash;and some one to
+make a start.  Just you see.  If we have the grit to hold out
+we shall win."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not at all a bad speech, thought Daphne, and for its
+crown needed only a burst of applause.  But nothing followed
+it except an embarrassed silence, and when that was getting
+too uncomfortable, an upward glance from the chairman, with
+the question:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do I do now, Dafs?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, you can ask if anybody has any comment to make on
+what they have heard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Viola stood slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Has anybody any comment to make on&mdash;&mdash;"  But it sounded
+to her so silly that the rest of the sentence was lost in the giggle
+with which, blushingly, she resumed her chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nobody had anything to say; most were laughing at Viola.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne stepped off the platform and sat again on the form
+in front, crossing her legs and grasping her knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is that all?" inquired the chairman, when she saw the
+principal speaker disappearing like that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I suppose so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, what happens now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, you can ask them if they agree to what I have said, to
+show it by holding up their hands."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne knew that when the question was put all would want
+to hold up their hands and all would wait for some one else to
+do it first, so she flung up her own, and looking round, saw a
+forest of arms, many of which were waving about and trying
+to be funny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ask if any one disagrees."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Any one dis-agree?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not a soul.  No one was likely to make herself so
+conspicuous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, what happens now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne shrugged.  Her imagination was vividly showing
+her what a good chairman might have made of this triumph.
+"Oh, tell them the meeting's adjourned."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The meeting's adjourned," said Viola, and, giggling, she
+jumped off the platform.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The minute the meeting was adjourned everybody had an
+undelivered speech to deliver.  They stood in a group round
+Daphne and argued the question.  It ended in her plan being
+adopted and a deputation formed to wait on the head mistress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was at once proud and nervous as she led her deputation
+the next day, just before lunch, into Miss Vidella's room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella was sitting at a little writing-table.  She watched
+this entry of half a dozen girls with lifted eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it you want, dears?  I am very busy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We want to know&mdash;we wanted to ask you," began Daphne,
+"on behalf of all the girls, if you would let us play hockey this
+term?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella stared at the speaker.  She removed her spectacles
+and held them in her fat hand on the table.  That she
+was angry there could be no doubt, and that she was thinking
+out some sarcasms like a dentist selecting his sharp little tools.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you ever played hockey in the Christmas term?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was obliged to answer "No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you ever played hockey any term?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then why should you play hockey this term?  I am not
+clear on the point, Daphne dear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We thought perhaps if we petitioned you, you would let us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella replaced her spectacles on her nose as if the
+point could now be studied more closely.  The point, it appeared,
+was in the middle of Daphne's face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have I ever, on being petitioned, allowed you to do
+anything unladylike?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne couldn't very well point out to her that the epithet
+"unladylike" was a <i>Petitio Principii</i>, or Begging of the
+Question, so she murmured, "No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you were to come to me, one by one, and say: 'Dear
+Miss Vidella, may I do something which you consider
+unlady-like?' would not my answer be: 'No, my dear, not at Hemans
+House'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had acted the "No, my dear," with its inclination of the
+head, to an imaginary girl at her side, and now turned to Daphne
+for her reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;I suppose so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, would not the answer that I give to you severally be
+the answer that I give to you all together?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was confused, and said again: "I suppose so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I am not at all clear as to what is the idea of your
+coming in such a funny little group as this.  Run away, my
+dears, and get ready for your dinners.  I am very busy, and
+have no time just now to play with you in your strange little
+games."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the deputation moved out, Daphne felt furious.  It was
+the only thing to feel if you were not to feel foolish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I told you nothing would come of that," she said hastily,
+to forestall any criticism of her leadership, "nothing except a
+performance by Petsy.  But I never expected anything to.  That
+was only a flourish.  It's the next step that matters.  I'm
+perfectly determined to beat her on this matter.  And I should
+think that you would be after she's tried to make fools of you
+like that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The letter to the parents, outlined by Daphne, she thought
+exceedingly well done.  As a politician she saw the skilfulness
+of the phrase, "give your <i>support</i> to the request of <i>many other</i>
+parents"; and as an authoress with some idea of emotional effect,
+she was particularly satisfied with the postscript, "<i>Please</i>
+do."  No kindly parent would resist that.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+When Miss Vidella watched the flooding in of requests from
+fathers and mothers that, if possible, hockey might be taught to
+their girls, she was more than flustered&mdash;she was frightened.
+To be queenly with a deputation of tongue-tied pupils was one
+thing, but to resist a concerted movement by parents was quite
+another.  It could not be done.  The difficulty was how to
+yield to the parents without seeming to eat the sarcasms she
+had offered to the deputation.  She squeezed through this
+awkward pass by saying to the assembled school, one day before
+lunch:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I understand now that when some of the elder girls waited
+on me last week with a request for the institution of hockey,
+they did so at the suggestion of their parents.  If the girls
+had been wiser they would have made this clear.  I think it
+very right and proper of your parents to trust you to come and
+tell me all that they consider desirable for your welfare, and
+to know that I shall always give every attention to their wishes.
+I may in this case doubt the wisdom of their opinion, but I
+understand that it must take precedence over mine.  The request
+will therefore be conceded.  I understand that Miss Bellamy
+has a knowledge of the game, and that, according to her, our
+present field will be large enough.  I will therefore order an
+adequate supply of the necessary implements, and hope you will
+be able to try your hands at this new recreation in a day or
+two.  I shall, of course, be there to supervise your play at so
+dangerous a game."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She moved away to a chorus of "Thank you, Miss Vidella."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne knew that every girl had thrown at her a swift
+glance, and she tried to cover her feelings with a mask of
+unconcern.  The smile that broke through her control, and fought
+with her lips, was rather one of nervousness at being looked at
+than of exultation in a triumph.  Her glow was mixed with
+a knowledge not wholly pleasant that she had never so completely
+despised her head mistress.  In such contempt, as in the
+deeps of a pool, lay possibilities of which she could feel herself
+afraid.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Bellamy was now dressed in an unexpected importance,
+and very conscious of it.  A stout, bustling woman of thirty-five,
+she fussed about, equipping the two teams which were to
+make the first venture into the new game, marking the field with
+their aid, and explaining on a blackboard the principles of
+hockey to those who had everything to learn.  And the day of
+the first trial, a golden afternoon in St. Luke's Summer, she
+led the girls to their field as excitedly as any of them.  Miss
+Vidella followed less easily and happily.  And Daphne, who
+throughout the preparations had been as officious and
+explanatory as Miss Bellamy, declared that Petsy had come simply and
+solely to make herself a nuisance.  She would probably stand
+on the touch line and worry the game like a fat puppy who was
+feeling rather sick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was an accurate prophecy.  When all the girls were in
+their places, and Miss Bellamy had done pushing them there,
+or pointing all over the field with her whistle, Daphne shouted:
+"Shall I bully off with Viola?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Miss Vidella at once raised her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Bully off.' I do wish you wouldn't talk slang, Daphne
+dear.  You know I have never tolerated it.  'Bully off' is a
+phrase that I have never heard, and do not wish to hear again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But it's the correct term, Miss Vidella."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It really is," endorsed Miss Bellamy, who had rushed up to
+bring an expert's advice to the solution of a difficulty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear me"&mdash;Miss Vidella lifted her shoulders resignedly&mdash;"what
+unpleasant terms these rough games do employ!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They bullied off, and the game swung into noisy life.  Its
+two most conspicuous performers were Daphne and Miss Bellamy.
+Daphne was early captured by it, mind and body.  She
+was nearly always in possession of the ball, and the repeated
+running had damped her forehead and shortened her
+breathing; she felt the rises of her breast, and a delightful dryness
+and thirst stabbing her low down in the throat.  There was a
+breeze that would not have been perceptible but for the dampness
+on her brow, and when it touched that, it strangely heightened
+her pleasure.  It carried fugitive thoughts of long drinks,
+the spray of the sea, or immersion in bath or lake.  Once she
+had fallen heavily, and the smell of dried earth on her palm
+toned exactly with the thirst, the quick breathing, the sting of
+gathering blisters, and the coldness on her temples.  Health
+and optimism had become sensuous things.  And how was it
+that these sensations, though within her, were at one with
+remembered things without&mdash;with firelight on old wood, mellow
+evenings, birds and squirrels, and sentences in Hans Andersen:
+"She flew away as if she were flying straight into the sun"&mdash;with
+all those things that she must capture and put into
+books?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Bellamy rushed about, with her whistle at her teeth or
+in her hand.  When she wasn't blowing the whistle, she was
+shouting: "Keep your places!  Pass the ball&mdash;oh, for goodness'
+sake pass it sometimes.  Now then, Evelyn!  Played!  Oh,
+played indeed!"  Probably she wanted to impress the pupils
+and the principal.  And certainly she impressed Miss Vidella&mdash;but
+very unfavourably.  There was an abnormal second when
+she was standing at rest to watch a scramble near Miss Vidella,
+and Miss Vidella took the opportunity to begin, "I can't think,
+Miss Bellamy, that it's necessary to shout at the children so";
+but just then Miss Bellamy saw a crass error in the play, shot
+out a pointing forefinger, and blew her whistle imperiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sticks!  Sticks!  Sticks!" she cried.  "Madeline you mustn't
+lift your stick above your shoulder."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come on&mdash;that's a free hit," shouted Daphne.  "Chuck us
+the pill."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was useless wishing she hadn't said it, for Miss Vidella
+was already calling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne dear.  Come here.  What was that you said?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I said, 'Chuck us the pill'."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought those were the words.  Well, I am so ignorant
+of this game that I do not know if that is the prescribed
+expression.  Is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well&mdash;no."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean, it was slang?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I suppose so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Precisely.  And I cannot allow the elder girls to set such
+an example to the younger ones.  Besides, it is great disrespect
+to Miss Bellamy to use language like that in a game of which
+she is in charge.  Let me hear you apologise to her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne's first impulse was to throw down her stick and walk
+off, but she remembered the delight of the game, and determined
+not to be robbed of it by any pomposity of Miss Vidella.  And
+she so far obeyed her head mistress as to turn to Miss Bellamy
+and mutter: "Miss Vidella says I'm to apologise to you."  Miss
+Bellamy smiled an acknowledgment, and a bow from the head
+mistress indicated that she was satisfied, and the game might
+proceed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne had no wish to offend a second time, and for the
+rest of the game, except for the very last minute, managed to
+play and shout without being called to order.  She had, in fact,
+forgotten her anger with the head mistress, so exciting was the
+struggle.  The two goals won by her side, in defiant answer
+to two won by their opponents, had been scored by herself,
+and the girls were saying: "No wonder you wanted to play
+hockey so as to show off."  Her face and neck were streaming,
+and her body seemed to have been fitted with a new and different
+breathing system.  Frequently she wiped her forehead with her
+sleeve, or tossed the wet hair-wisps out of her eyes.  If she
+was not driving the ball herself she was shouting encouragement
+and praise to the others.  "Oh, played! ... I say, well
+played! ... Look out! ... <i>Billow</i>!"  Her will and every
+faculty were set upon securing the third goal before the
+shrieking and perspiring Miss Bellamy should sound her whistle for
+the last time.  The low slant of the sunlight and the stretching
+of the shadows told her that time was very short.  Any second
+now might end the game.  The matter was desperate;
+there was a look of evening over the field.  Her stick perpetually
+reached the ball and forced it through a jumble of confused
+amateurs, while Miss Bellamy shouted: "Keep your places!
+Keep your places, all of you!" and Miss Vidella could be heard
+muttering a dislike of the worse scrimmages.  At last Daphne
+won through with the ball, and came down the side-line with
+irresistible impetus, confident that now on the very sound of
+the whistle she was going to score her third goal.  She had a
+faint impression of Miss Vidella stepping back from the
+touch-line so as to be out of danger.  So fierce was her rush that
+the opposing full-back, frenzied with ignorance and dismay,
+hit her with great force on the shin.  In the moment of sharp
+pain, Daphne flung her stick anywhere, and muttered: "Oh,
+damn! damn!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All around her heard, and cast quick glances at the head
+mistress.  All were probably feeling the satisfaction of being
+present when something really serious had happened.  The head
+mistress, no doubt, was the most satisfied of all, because there
+are few happinesses so great as the first enjoyment of
+indignation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Bellamy.  Miss Bellamy," she shrieked to the referee,
+who, from her distance, was shouting encouragement to this
+waning corner of the game.  "Miss Bellamy, stop the game."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Play on, you girls," shouted Miss Bellamy.  "Don't stand
+there as if you were afraid of the ball.  Keep the ball moving,
+for goodness' sake."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do nothing of the sort," commanded Miss Vidella.  "Don't
+touch the ball.  Miss Bellamy"&mdash;Miss Bellamy was running,
+whistle in mouth, to solve the problem that was hindering the
+game&mdash;"I have instructed the girls to stop.  They are very
+rightly too shocked to continue.  I wish them to stop.  Please
+blow that whistle, if that is the way such a game is brought to
+an end."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Bellamy, bewildered, sounded her whistle and stood near
+to witness a public censuring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, after rubbing her shin, walked to her hockey stick,
+slightly exaggerating her limp, picked it up and examined its
+binding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne....  I hardly know how to speak to you.  For
+fifteen years I have given my life to the education and guidance
+of my schoolgirls, but never till this day have I heard one
+of them&mdash;I cannot bring myself to say it&mdash;heard one of them
+use such a word as passed your lips just now.  I pray I shall
+never be asked to live through that moment again.  I&mdash;and all
+these dear girls, I believe&mdash;are humiliated and ashamed.  You,
+too, I dare believe, are also deeply ashamed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I don't see why I should have been hit on the shins
+for nothing.  It'd have been a goal if&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go back to the school.  I confess I know not how to deal
+with you.  I confess to being beaten by you.  Fortunately there
+is no precedent in my experience which enables me to deal
+adequately on the spur of the moment with your offence.  You
+are a girl whom it seems impossible to influence or guide.  If
+all the affection and sympathy and gentle correction of the last
+few years"&mdash;Daphne made an obvious "Pooh!" with her lips&mdash;"has
+been unavailing to soften your nature, I know no other
+methods.  They have always been those of Hemans House.
+Go back to the school and wait in your bedroom.  I shall have to
+consider how to deal with you.  I feel I shall have to write to
+your dear father&mdash;&mdash;"  Daphne was disposed to reply: "I
+should.  It'll amuse him frightfully."  "And do not attempt to
+see any other girls.  I cannot have them taught your dockyard
+oaths....  This evening I will..."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Daphne had not waited for the rest.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0213"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XIII
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella frightened herself more than her pupil
+when she announced that she would write to Mr. Tenter
+Bruno.  The whole school had heard her say she would do a
+thing which she particularly did not want to do.  The Bruno
+girl had still, presumably, another year to spend at her school
+and to bring in good fees, and it would be unwise to give her
+father the impression that she was getting too big and obstreperous
+for the place.  There must be no quarrel with Mr. Bruno,
+for she wanted his name as a reference.  Besides, she was
+thoroughly afraid of his brilliant modern mind.  And somewhere
+behind her indignation peeped the thought that the offence was
+not really as bad as her posing required her to treat it.  After
+a tea-time spent in deliberation she decided that discretion must
+masquerade as mercy.  She climbed the stair to the little single
+bedroom which Daphne, as one of the elder girls, now enjoyed.
+She was primed with words of austere forgiveness, but when
+she saw that the criminal was lolling on the bed and reading a
+book, anger made her command:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Get off that bed at once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne got off slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now put it straight."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne did so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are, indeed, Daphne, a difficult child.  I came upstairs
+disposed to limit my chastisement of you to words of kindness
+and advice, and I find you apparently insensible to the gravity of
+your offence.  I intended to say that I would not hurt your
+dear father by a report of your behaviour, but&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't mind if you write to him or not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was dreadful.  The girl was pushing her into the stream
+of events she desired to escape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't care?  Have you no affection for him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, heaps; but I don't think he'll die of anything you can
+tell him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you being impudent, Daphne?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then why do you ask?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella stared at her, flounced to the door, and said: "I
+shall most certainly write to your father.  I shall do it this
+moment," and thus made her exit.  Yes, she would write that
+letter at once.  Its phrasing shaped in her mind.  Like all weak
+people she was easily made apprehensive lest some one was
+questioning her strength.  A strong gesture was pleasing.  Now
+that her hand had been forced she was proud that she was going
+to write to Mr. Bruno.  The school should know that she had
+written to Mr. Bruno, and realise that when she said she'd do
+a thing she did it.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+One person was thrilled by the news of Daphne Bruno's
+disgrace and confinement.  Miss Sims, always curiously exultant
+when her favourite was punished, saw herself coming to her in
+prison with sympathy and undiminished faith.  Her heart beat
+quickly as she approached the bedroom where Daphne was
+isolated.  Opening the door with a "May I come in?" she saw
+the girl sitting on the bed with one heel beneath her, writing
+something.  This was disappointing.  Miss Sims had encouraged
+the idea that she would be crying.  "She's been made hard and
+callous," thought Miss Sims.  "She will be better softened.
+Gentleness will soften her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hallo," said Daphne, looking up.  She folded over the letter
+she had been writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy dear.  What has been happening?  I could not bear
+to think of you up here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Miss Vidella has been doing a little acting.  She thinks
+she's being very fine and strong.  I'm enjoying myself
+immensely."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A pity she adopted this defiant attitude.  Miss Sims liked
+to minister to soft and broken things.  And the Character never
+listened to disloyalty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hush, dear.  You know I never listen to rebellious muttering."
+... She sat down beside the girl.  "Why did you utter
+such a word?  After all, you are a girl who will always exercise
+a great influence over those younger than yourself, and you
+have them to consider."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne looked away, and Miss Sims knew that this veiled
+flattery was the way to conquer her.  She spent a very happy
+few minutes, giving counsel to the girl, with her heart going
+out to her as she did so; she pointed out how much it behoved
+one who was plainly a nature of strong passions to learn control
+in small things, and she saw that Daphne liked being called a
+nature of strong passions, and was thinking of Miss Sims as the
+one person who understood her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know, Miss Sims.  But why couldn't Miss Vidella talk to
+me properly&mdash;like you do&mdash;instead of making an Aunt Sally of
+me before half the school.  She said I was difficult to influence.
+I am not, am I?  You know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a sweet moment for Miss Sims.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have never found you so, dear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course not, because you're always so understanding.  But
+she always tries to humiliate me before the whole school, and
+now she declares she's going to write a lot of lies to father."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hush, dear.  I think she may be unduly severe, but I can see
+her point of view."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She hasn't got a point of view, except the one that goes
+with her part.  I'm writing to father too....  Oh, Miss Sims,
+would you&mdash;would you post it for me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Sims smiled tolerantly, but really the request gave her
+much pleasure.  It was picturesque, this taking of a missive
+from an offender in prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will certainly, dear.  There can be no harm in your father
+hearing what you have to say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, that's topping of you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne added something to her letter, and folded it up and
+give it to Miss Sims.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you, dear," said the governess.  "And if there is
+anything else you need, or I can do for you&mdash;bring you books
+or anything&mdash;&mdash;"  Her guilty ear detected a step on the landing
+outside, and she rose.  It was not done hastily, for her
+desire to impress Daphne with her serenity and fearlessness was
+stronger than her fear of being caught by Miss Vidella.  But
+her heart, which fortunately could not be seen, was beating
+faster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will take it for you now.  Good-bye for the time being,
+dear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stooped and kissed her favourite.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning over his breakfast Mr. Bruno read of Miss
+Vidella's pain at being obliged to report that she had had
+occasion to deal severely with his daughter, and of her desire that
+he also would write a word of reproof.  Daphne had employed
+on the hockey field language which could not be set on paper,
+and Miss Vidella wrote in the sure knowledge that her father's
+rebuke would carry very great weight with dear Daphne, and
+that, since this outbreak suggested that she had met with
+unsuitable companions in her vacations, he would doubtless wish to
+be informed of the matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Gracious goodness!" smiled Mr. Bruno, at the ponderous
+and lumbering phrases.  "What on earth can the depraved child
+have said?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all the contraband language that he could think of
+seemed beautifully funny as passing from one of her pupils
+to Miss Vidella.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he picked up an envelope written in the schoolgirl hand
+of his daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, now perhaps we shall know.  Duffy will doubtless
+strengthen herself to write the obscene word."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His butter-knife sliced the flap, and he read:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"DARLING FATHER,&mdash;Miss Vidella says she is going to write
+to you about the crimes of your daughter.  I don't know if
+the old pig really meant it, but in case she does I thought I'd
+get in first.  Her only accusation is that I have used slang and
+one swear word.  I don't think the slang business will upset
+you much because you say in 'The Decay of Romanticism' that
+slang is often the natural, urgent poetry of a vital
+people."  ("Good heavens!" thought Mr. Bruno, "she must have copied
+the sentence straight out of the book.") "And you give examples
+that you say are Shakespearean in their aptness, energy
+and high compression, and you say further on that those who use
+slang brilliantly are often more vivacious and dynamic minds
+than those who stagnate in a mould of stilted phraseology like
+Miss Vidella.  I quite agree with you, as I do with most of what
+you have written.  And I am not saying this just because I want
+you to side with me, but because I really do.  Old Petsy could
+no more think of that about slang than she could fly.  That is
+really rather witty about her flying, as you would understand
+if you could see her.  But the swear word will probably not
+please you so well.  What happened was this.  I felt that Miss
+Vidella was reactionary in her ban on hockey, and that it was
+time Hemans House advanced a little, so as to be abreast of
+modern ideas, and I accordingly led a successful agitation for
+reform in the matter.  That, of course, stuck in her gizzard, and
+I'm sure she came on to the hockey field determined to spoil
+the game.  What I blame myself for is not swearing so
+much"&mdash;(Mr. Bruno read this sentence again before murmuring: "Duffy,
+Duffy, you're getting dangerously ambiguous")&mdash;"as giving the
+old cat an opening.  Annie Hurst, silly little ass, caught me an
+awful whack on the shin, and before I knew what had happened,
+I said 'O damn!' which you often say when the soup-plate is
+hot.  That was all, and it's really painful, a whack on the
+shin-bone with a hockey stick, and I've got a huge bruise and what
+looks like a little dent in the bone.  That side of it doesn't
+seem to have struck Miss Vidella.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy, I have got a suggestion.  If you think it wise to
+come down and rebuke me, couldn't we do it at a tea-shop and
+have a jolly afternoon together?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy, I'm reading 'Park and Pavement,' and I like it
+awfully.  It's your best book, I think, in my humble opinion.
+But then I think that of each one as I read it.  I'm in disgrace
+in my bedroom, and enjoying myself awfully.  It's been fun
+writing to you.&mdash;Yours awfully,
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+"DUFFY."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"P.S.&mdash;I have been wondering how I was going to post this,
+but an awfully decent mistress is going to post it for
+me.&mdash;D. D. T. B."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The effect of Daphne's letter on her father was similar to
+that which she unconsciously used to work when she burst
+uninvited into his gaze.  There was an immediate quickening of his
+love, a flavour of self-reproach that he passed so much time
+away from her, and, as he pictured her sitting on her bed
+and writing to him, a stirring of the heart that was almost
+painful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, damn!  That prehistoric old fool shan't persecute her.
+She shall swear if she likes.  That is to say, she shall do
+nothing of the sort, for it would spoil her charm.  But she's my
+daughter, and beginning to stand, I fancy, in much the same
+relation to that slow-going vehicle, her school, as I do to society
+to-day.  I like to think it.  With all her ignorance and
+immaturity she's too dynamic for her surroundings.  I must
+write, I suppose.  No, damn it, I'll go and see her, and the
+absurd place as well.  If it's as I imagine, we must do something
+better for her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was impossible for him to be other than courteous, and he
+wrote to Miss Vidella thanking her for her thoughtfulness,
+telling her that he would like to come and see her the next
+afternoon and requesting her to be so good as to inform Daphne
+of his intentions.  His kindest regards concluded the letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella was delighted.  Her strong action was justified.
+Evidently Mr. Tenter Bruno, since he was coming in person,
+shared her distress and approved her discretion.  She began to
+phrase the high commendation he would give when sought as
+a reference for Hemans House.  "I shall ever be grateful for
+Miss Vidella's watchful care of my own daughter."  And after
+prayers that mornings she announced to the assembled school:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have just received a letter from Mr. Tenter Bruno, who
+will visit the school this afternoon."  She left that to sink in.
+The children would instantly guess why he was coming, and be
+impressed with the seriousness of a recent incident and the
+strong hand of their principal.  "And, girls, I hope he will
+come and see you at your work.  Mr. Tenter Bruno, as you
+all know, is a writer with an international reputation, and you
+will like to remember that he visited you at your school.  It
+will also interest your parents."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno arrived about three o'clock; and after an interview
+in the reception room which was chiefly used by Miss
+Vidella to explain how fond she was of dear Daphne and hoped
+to make a great success of her, and by Mr. Bruno in mental
+generalizations suggested by such a type as this head mistress,
+he was left alone in a saddle-bag chair to await his daughter.
+She burst in, most obviously dressed to receive him.  And
+because she was tall, and he unused to such an interview, he
+rose like an embarrassed guest to greet her.  After the fat,
+black, pompous figure of the head mistress, she came with
+something like a shock of contrast; he saw the roundness of
+her head under its brown hair newly brushed, the freshness of
+her eyes and cheeks, the smallness of her neck, and the
+fast-refining outline of her body and her limbs.  The critic in him,
+as well as the father, approved it all.  Wonderful how she
+could move him sometimes!  In the chamber of his anti-sentimental
+brain, moving without guilt among the censors there,
+was the thought: "You are mine ... you came from me
+... Daphne."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hallo, Daddy!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose on her toes to kiss him, and he gave her waist a hug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you've been using the language of the tap-room to that
+strange old woman."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I haven't," denied Daphne, "I told you exactly what I
+said."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good heavens, miss!  And wasn't that outrageous in a
+slender girl?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, not considering the hefty blow I got on my leg.  I
+often say 'Oh, damn!' to myself, as I'm sure everybody does,
+and that time it came out aloud.  And with good reason, too.
+Just look here."  And she made as if to remove her stocking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no, no.  Don't show me anything unpleasant.  Besides,
+you've got it all wrong, Duffy.  The idea of the strange old
+lady isn't so much that you should show me some trifling bruise
+on your shin, as that I should talk to you about the really
+serious bruise on my heart.  That a daughter of mine should
+say&mdash;such words!  You mustn't, Duffy; for you're in danger
+of becoming a&mdash;a beautiful creature, and it's out of harmony
+for one of that pattern to use squalid words.  The whole product
+is not homogeneous.  It's bad art."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," said his daughter.  "That's the most sensible way I've
+ever heard it put."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, and&mdash;&mdash;However....  How old are you, Duffy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Seventeen for all practical purposes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I have a practical purpose.  Let us sit down and talk
+it over.  Are you allowed to sit in this room?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They seated themselves, and he told her of a scheme that
+he had been pondering in the train.  And because it was one
+that he knew she would love, he could only approach it through
+a cloud of raillery.  Publicity, he said, was a very subtle
+question, and if in the past he had been seen in public with so
+ordinary a daughter as she, the sale of his books would
+doubtless have suffered.  But now she had changed, and every year
+she would become of greater and greater publicity value.  He
+felt he would like to have her with him as much as possible.
+He didn't believe this droll school had anything more to give
+her, and she could probably do much better, since the taste for
+less frivolous reading seemed to have come, enjoying the free
+run of his library and having some music lessons at home.  Not
+that there would be much time for that, because he had long
+wanted to spend a year in Paris, and proposed taking her there
+next year.  In Paris he would put her on her honour to study
+the French language and squeeze all the knowledge that was
+to be squeezed out of picture galleries, historic buildings, the
+<i>Opéra</i> and the <i>Comédie Française</i>.  In the summer they would
+wander in Switzerland and down into Italy, and as the weather
+cooled make tracks for Rome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy!" interrupted Daphne.  "Oh, do you mean it?  Lord,
+I'm glad I swore.  What an awful suck for Petsy!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled as he watched her enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But mark you, the first time you swear, you'll be sent
+back to Windsor, and doubtless to your bedroom there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And may I go home with you to-day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be so heady, my dear.  Or I shall decide that you
+are still very immature, and leave you to your pothooks for
+another year.  You can finish at the end of this term."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, well, I can stick that out....  Daddy, how glorious!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She jumped up and kissed him in gratitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you must promise to stay with me a little while," stipulated
+he, "and not marry the first lout that comes lopping up
+the drive.  Say a couple of years at least....  Yes, and now
+come and be reprimanded at this pastry shop."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but first you've got to go round and see the girls at their
+lessons.  I think Miss Vidella wants to show you off, but
+whether she wants to or not, I do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh d&mdash;&mdash;.  Yes, I was about to use your favourite oath.
+Yes, the singular old woman did mention something of the sort.
+But is it really necessary?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Absolutely.  Several of the elder girls are reading your
+books, and, though they don't understand them as well as I
+do, they are anxious to see what you look like.  Besides, I want
+them to see that you are not angry or anything, and that Miss
+Vidella's sneaking has hopelessly failed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They passed into the passage.  And the opening of their
+door was the signal for another to open and emit the head
+mistress.  Mr. Bruno felt his daughter immediately take hold
+of his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, before you go," said the head mistress, "you promised
+to visit my dear girls.  They will appreciate a visit from you
+so much."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, so long as I'm not expected to address them," he
+began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, certainly not," assured Miss Vidella....  "Daphne
+dear, you had better go to your class-room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno felt the hold on his arm tightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But father's taking me out to tea."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a moment of strain.  Clearly the head mistress was
+at a loss what to say, though the words behind her eyes said:
+"I think such a reward to the child most unsuitable."  Mr. Bruno
+hastened to ease the atmosphere by turning to his daughter
+with a reproof: "If Miss Vidella is kind enough to consent,
+you mean." ... And then to Miss Vidella, with the request:
+"Having come so far, I trust you will allow me to keep her
+for the afternoon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The head mistress bowed austerely, and led the way to the
+schoolrooms, while Daphne whispered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tell her I'm leaving at the end of the term, do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear, I couldn't possibly tell her to her face.  I never
+could say anything that was the least unpleasant.  I'll write it
+to her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, stuff!  She's much more afraid of you than you are of
+her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's impossible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the voyage through the class-rooms she was hanging
+ostentatiously on his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first hour of their companionship in the town was very
+happy, but then supervened a thing that worried and saddened
+him; his daughter's prattle over the tea-cups palled, and he
+became a-fidget to get home to his books.  Hardly hearing what
+she said, he began to deplore his intolerance of immature minds
+that had no ideas or stimulations to give him&mdash;whether they
+were adult minds or children's.  Love ought to enable him
+to come out of himself and listen.  But he had lost the power.
+Only with intellects of his own order, or with books, could he
+establish correspondence....  Still, she would improve, and be
+his most valuable companion one day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at his watch and began to discuss his train.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+All that evening and the next day Daphne was covertly
+bragging: "Father's taking me away....  I'm to travel with him
+instead of coming back to school.  We're going to Paris for
+a year, and then to Switzerland and Italy and Rome....  I
+shall probably keep house for him."  To her more intimate
+friends she added: "You must come and stay with us sometimes."  The
+news, told in confidence to the girls, created interest,
+but no dismay&mdash;she was not popular enough for that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Each day she scanned Miss Vidella's face for some evidence
+that her father's letter had come.  And when a whole week had
+passed with no trace of a nasty shock behind the steel spectacles,
+a dread seized her lest his glorious plan, now that she was
+remote, had been shelved.  In suspense she wrote to inquire if
+he had sent his letter, and, if not, to urge him to do so.  "Daddy
+darling, Have you written about that business?  If you haven't,
+I don't think you should delay.  Oh, I do want to do all you
+said, and travel with you...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His reply was a confession that, owing to pressure of work,
+he had neglected to write.  "But I've just written the letter,
+and it will be posted with this one.  Sorry you've been
+worrying, but it was my fault.  <i>Peccavi, peccavi, peccavissimi</i>,
+as the monk said whose penitence was in excess of his Latin."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Miss Vidella had taken the knock this very morning.
+Daphne studied her to see how she looked after it.  There was
+no visible difference in her.  And the morning and the evening
+passed.  None of her words or looks could be twisted into
+evidence that she knew Daphne Bruno was leaving.  This was
+Wednesday.  Thursday provided no sign.  Friday was equally
+barren, and by the evening of that day Daphne was in despair,
+tears very close to her eyes.  "Oh, he said he had written and
+posted it.  He said he posted it on Tuesday night.  He can't
+have done it.  I <i>won't</i> come back next term.  I couldn't, now
+I've once heard I wasn't going to.  If I have to come back next
+term I shall do something desperate."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But on Saturday morning her impatient eyes did detect a new
+haughtiness in the carriage of the head mistress when the black
+figure swept past her.  And after breakfast her waking hopes
+were confirmed by Miss Vidella's request: "Daphne, I wish
+you would accompany me to the reception-room.  I desire to
+speak to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, this meant everything.  She felt exhilarated, triumphant,
+free, as she walked behind Miss Vidella.  The moment
+compensated her for the many times she had walked there in
+disgrace.  The little, stout, waddling black figure led the way into
+the room, and, sitting down, put on spectacles, and took a letter
+from the writing-table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am surprised, very much surprised, to receive this morning
+a letter from your father saying that he proposes taking you
+away at the end of the term."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up from the letter at her pupil who answered with
+a sentence she had been longing to use.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, he told me he was going to the other day when he was
+down here."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, indeed?"  Miss Vidella's eyebrows went up and hovered
+a second over the top of her spectacles.  "A most unusual
+proceeding altogether, I think....  Er, did you ask him to do this
+thing?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, he suggested it first."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And why?  Is he dissatisfied with the school in any way?
+It would be strange if he were, after being content with it for
+nearly five years."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't think he ever thought much about it," suggested
+Daphne as a solution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what precisely do you desire to convey by that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne shrugged her shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is he dissatisfied&mdash;now that he has troubled to think about
+it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shrugged again.  It was so difficult to be outspokenly
+rude and say: "Of course he is," and she couldn't think of any
+innuendo that would express the same idea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Answer me, please.  I am anxious to know if you have&mdash;if
+this school has suffered from any misrepresentation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think he wants me to travel with him.  To Paris and
+Switzerland and Rome."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear, dear," protested Miss Vidella.  "I always find you
+dear girls think I am a fool.  Such is surely an obvious excuse.
+One doesn't decide to go travelling to Paris and Switzerland
+and Rome during an afternoon's visit, thus foregoing a term's
+fees.  Why do you prevaricate, Daphne?  Speak the truth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I think he does think the school is old-fashioned and
+that I'm not doing much good."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Excellent!  Excellent!" nodded Miss Vidella, getting off
+her seat.  "Well, now we know.  Yes, from my humble and
+obsolete standpoint, he is right on both scores.  It is an old
+fashion to object with all the strength one can command to the
+use of foul oaths by one's girls&mdash;and as you have never shown
+any affection or loyalty to your school it cannot be said that you
+are doing much good."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rebellious note caused the mistress to stare at her.  In
+the pause Daphne knew what Miss Vidella was thinking: that,
+since there was now no possibility of keeping the Bruno girl,
+she could afford to be very strong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"H'm, I think I see."  She nodded meaningly.  "I begin to
+see.  Yes, of course.  Your dear father thought that your
+position here, after having so disgraced yourself, would be
+uncomfortable in the extreme.  Your surroundings would always fill
+you with shame, and your school-fellows would to a certain
+extent reprobate you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't think they're very concerned about it," fired Daphne,
+"and if they were, it wouldn't worry me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella paid no heed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And yes, I see.  Your dear father conceived that, after
+much thought, I should feel I could not in the interest of my
+dear girls keep you here, so he has written <i>first</i> to suggest your
+removal, and thus saved me the painful duty of asking him
+to take you away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The blood poured over Daphne's face.  She loathed her head
+mistress, and seeing through her weakness to its dregs, cared
+not what she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know he doesn't think anything like that.  You know
+you've only just this moment thought of that.  You know you
+really want me to stay so that you won't lose a year of my
+father's fees.  And&mdash;and you don't really think it's frightfully
+serious if some one says 'damn'; but that it's enormously fetching
+to pretend that you do.  I dare say you say it to yourself
+sometimes.  You know you're awfully sick at the idea of my
+going, and it's only when you've realised that there's no ghostly
+chance of my stopping that you think you had best appear
+frightfully strong and get the credit of having expelled me.  And if
+that&mdash;and if you give out that that was the reason of my going,
+I shall get my father to write to the papers about this school
+and ruin you.  They'll any of them publish anything he writes,
+and only too glad...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella had walked to the bell-push, very likely with
+some idea that a maid could remove Daphne like a tea-tray.
+But Daphne didn't stay.  Trembling with fear at what she had
+said and with pleasure in it&mdash;a heat tingling her cheek-bones,
+and her heart thumping&mdash;she hurried out, ready to justify
+herself to the world.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella was trembling too, and her heart going irregularly.
+Never before&mdash;not like that&mdash;good heavens, no!&mdash;the
+girl was mad, dangerous&mdash;such a thing was unbelievable&mdash;not
+in all the years&mdash;she should go&mdash;go at once&mdash;people should
+see&mdash;it made one feel quite sick and faint.  What the girl wanted
+was to be locked up and thrashed.  Thrashed!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maid knocked, entered, and was pettishly dismissed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vidella, recovering, tried to think collectedly.  Mr. Tenter
+Bruno's reference being irrevocably lost, there was but
+one enjoyment left&mdash;that of being strong.  She would write
+at once and demand that he remove his daughter.  No relief
+could come to her till the words were in ink&mdash;till the letter
+was posted.  With a shaking hand she took note-paper and pen.
+"I regret&mdash;I regret to have to inform you that your daughter
+has again been intolerably insolent, and, as I am quite
+unaccustomed to this sort of treatment, I should&mdash;I should esteem
+It a favour if you would allow her to return to her home at
+once.  Yours truly...."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+That any one should write in that tone to <i>him</i> incensed
+Mr. Bruno.  "Hell take the woman," he began, and reached for the
+bell with a view to dispatching a servant and a wire.  But he
+stopped as he saw a letter in his daughter's hand.  "Poor kid,"
+thought he.  Impatiently opening it, he read her story of the
+head mistress's "nasty suggestion," and her urgent request that
+he would write to her some words which she could show to her
+friends as proof that she had not been expelled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor darling!  I won't have her worried like a rabbit by
+that fat little poodle-bitch.  Thank goodness, I can easily supply
+her need."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+And the following morning Daphne fled with his letter, still
+sealed, to a deserted room, and there opened it in suspense.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"MY DEAREST DAPHNE."  (She guessed that he had avoided
+her nickname lest she were ashamed to show it to her
+school-fellows.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think that on the whole the sooner I have you back with
+me the better, so that we may prepare for our travels.  I wrote
+a few days ago to Miss Vidella, telling her that you would not
+return after next term&mdash;it was last Tuesday I wrote, as I think
+I told you in a contemporary letter&mdash;and she wrote in reply
+begging me to reconsider my decision and not to deprive you
+of your last year at Hemans House, which she said was the
+most important of all.  But I could not agree, and wrote to
+that effect.  I fear from a letter I received to-day that she is
+unreasonably annoyed at my refusal to let you stay, though it
+was quite within my rights; so lest she should vent her
+displeasure on you, I have written asking that you may return
+to-morrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No more at present, for I am very busy.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+  "Your loving<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"FATHER."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, he's a dear!" exclaimed she.  "How wonderfully he's
+phrased it!  He <i>is</i> clever!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She could hardly believe she was to go at once.  Excitement
+jumped her up and led her to the window.  As was fitting,
+the room to which she had fled looked out upon the drive and
+the exit gates in the garden wall.  The wall appeared grey and
+green, and the sunlight glorious beyond.  It was too wonderful
+to be true.  Suddenly had come to her very feet that free
+country, wide and pleasurable, which ten days ago she had hazily
+thought of as many troublesome miles ahead.  The goal of the
+long march of childhood had not waited for her to reach it,
+but had come to meet her.  And it shone everywhere with
+promises: long, indolent reading; hours when one dreamed out
+books (the hours best worth living); travels with her father
+in places whose names were romances&mdash;Paris, Switzerland,
+Italy, Rome&mdash;Rome!  Sooner or later there would be love.
+Some one in Paris, perhaps, or in Rome.  Among the imperial
+ruins, as her imagination created them, she saw his figure
+moving&mdash;featureless (for one could not decide on his features)
+and of vague form (for was he tall or broad or slender?)&mdash;just
+the grey figure of a youth.  Now she was in his arms, and
+the thought of it gave her that emptying delight that had
+accompanied thoughts of Roger's love.  And fame.  Fame was in
+the distance.  It was all incredible.  This morning, before
+breakfast, a schoolgirl.  To-morrow, about ten o'clock, after
+running down those hearthstone steps and bowling in a carriage
+through those gates, a free, independent, pleasure-seeking,
+fame-seeking woman of the world!
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+To only one person was the news of Daphne's departure a
+stunning blow&mdash;Miss Sims.  To her it came like an unexpected
+death sentence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had not cared to think what would happen when Daphne
+passed out of her life; sufficient that the dread hour was a year
+or more away.  But ten days ago, without warning, she had
+been told that it was only eight weeks away.  And Daphne's
+excitement and enthusiasm had pained her cruelly.  As she
+listened to the girl's gaiety she had resolved to suffer without
+complaint.  That self-pity at least she could enjoy.  She took
+her pain away to her bedroom, with its tin wash-hand-stand
+and its hospital bed.  There she dwelt upon it.  "Never to see
+you again.  Never to feel that I am moulding you to a noble
+shape."  Well, perhaps it was better thus.  It was better that
+the beloved girl should pass out of her life before she
+discovered her governess to be something much smaller and less
+wonderful than she had thought.  And there was still eight
+weeks more to enjoy her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now they told her that Daphne Bruno was going
+to-morrow morning.  Daphne going to-morrow?  And as there
+had been trouble between her people and the head mistress,
+impossible that she should ever come near the school again!
+The blow left an ache and confusion that Miss Sims hid all
+day behind her teaching and her smiles and her small-talk with
+the girls.  Something of the serenity that she had acted before
+Daphne struggled now to be real, and it did give itself birth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning, when the carriage came up the drive, she
+purposely waited in a little narrow music-room that she might
+torture herself, did Daphne go off without seeking her; or
+might have her alone, did the girl come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne burst in, saying she had been looking for her
+everywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good-bye, dear," said Miss Sims.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good-bye, Miss Sims.  I don't know how to thank you for
+all your kindness."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Kindness!</i>  The commonplace word wounded the governess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good-bye, dear.  And God bless you&mdash;always."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne hesitated, and then stuttered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wanted to say I owe everything to you.  That's the absolute
+truth.  You've been the best thing about my school life.  I
+mean&mdash;oh, but I think I'll try and write it to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good-bye, Duffy.  The memory of you will always be sweet
+to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had resolved to say that much to her and no more.  A
+little more was conveyed in the pressure of her hand and the
+kiss she placed on the girl's forehead.  Then Daphne had gone,
+and Miss Sims's hand had fallen to her side.  She stayed in
+the music-room till she heard the carriage wheels crunch over
+the gravel on to the road.  She was racked by the half-knowledge
+that, despite Daphne's words, no passionate love or throbbing
+pain could be read in her leave-taking.  "Thank you for
+all your kindness."  Cruel mediocrity!  "But she will write
+the broken-hearted words she could not say."  No.  It was all
+over.  A few dwindling letters would come, and they would be
+no more than echoes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked out of the narrow music-room into the dark
+main passage of the ground floor.  Five doors opened on to it,
+and a staircase came down from the bedrooms above.  It was,
+so to think, the centre of Hemans House.  One could hear the
+murmurous class-rooms, and the halting scales from another
+music-room, and the buried clatter in the kitchen.  The head
+mistress passed from the reception-room, where she had been
+taking some sort of farewell of Daphne, to her teaching in the
+Fifth Form room.  Her voice started, high-pitched and whining.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Hemans House, monotonously there, with Miss Sims
+in its centre.  She had a curious, rather unpleasant thought:
+for ever and ever in Daphne's mind Hemans House would have
+nothing but a subjective, dreamlike existence, and then only
+when she willed to create it in memory.  And yet here it was.
+Almost one could think of it, and herself moving in it, as
+something in an occasional dream of Daphne's.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0314"></a></p>
+
+<h2>
+PART III: <i>Daphne's Romance</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XIV
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was happy in her new life of freedom at Old
+Hall House, though it was less than it had promised to
+be when seen from a school-room window.  Its worst failure
+was her father's postponement for a whole year of their
+residence in Paris, and a lingering doubt lest the day of packing
+and travelling never arrived.  Another was her periods of
+dulness.  Nobody ever seemed to come to Old Hall House; her
+father kept himself shut up in his study; and Owen for nine
+months of the year was at school.  There were mornings and
+afternoons when she wandered about the passages and looked
+aimlessly out of windows, or strolled in the garden humming
+the fragmentary tunes of the lonely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she determined to believe in its delights; and indeed
+much of it was glorious.  It was glorious to shut the door of
+the great playroom and loll in the tattered chair and read just
+what she wanted to.  Her first plan of reading had been much
+more ambitious: she was going to work through all her father's
+critical books, and at the end of each volume study every
+masterpiece he had mentioned within its covers.  But she could
+not do this.  Nothing that required effort could she study for
+more than half an hour.  She boggled at these Sir Thomas
+Brownes and Donnes and Emersons and Carlyles, many of
+whose sentences had to be enunciated twice or even three times
+before one glimpsed a meaning.  And poetry wearied her as
+quickly, though every now and then a perfect phrase or a line
+of tragic emotion gave her a spasm of delight.  But her love
+of these moments was not strong enough to overcome her
+indolence; and she decided that she would profit most by reading
+only those things that came easy to her&mdash;fiction, and the lighter
+essayists, such as Lamb and Stevenson, and the jollier parts of
+Shakespeare.  With her reading of these people surged higher
+and higher the longing to do as they had done, and the
+confidence that she could do it.  Sometimes she put books aside,
+and got her ink and paper with a view to starting; but nothing
+at present would come: the swelling <i>something</i> in her stayed
+in its darkness and refused to filter through a pen.  So she
+resolved&mdash;as she preferred to resolve, for the deep chair was
+cosy, and reading was so much easier than creation&mdash;that she
+must go on stocking her mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Besides, I must have experiences, of which at present I
+have nil."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then she would look out of her window over the road
+that ran southward to the downs and the sea, and northward to
+the cities, and wonder what her experiences would be and where
+they lay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now she discovered the hollowness of Miss Carrell.  Full
+of the excitement of her reading, she would want to pour it
+all out to her frequent companion, but quickly found that Miss
+Carrell was unable to understand, and consequently uninterested.
+She shammed an interest, certainly, but it was at first
+patronising, and always astonishingly uninformed.  Daphne
+gradually arrived at the difficult conclusion that she knew more
+and understood better than her former governess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell, in fact, was far from contented.  Her gradual
+supplanting by Daphne was painfully proved by the invitations
+that at last began to arrive from neighbouring society.  There
+had been none of these before Daphne appeared, Mr. Bruno
+having the reputation of a recluse.  But now a few fluttered in
+like stray birds, and generally they were for "Mr. Tenter Bruno
+and Miss Bruno."  Seldom Miss Carrell.  She was not sure
+that with all her scheming she had not ruined herself.  Here
+was she, thirty, and only a waning manageress in a country
+house.  She had reached her highest point, five years ago, when
+she had sent Daphne to school, and entered upon her reign.
+At her age, this had been distinctly good.  But now&mdash;&mdash;?
+There was little chance of marrying, with so few people
+coming to Old Hall House.  And yet nowhere else could she get
+so well paid a post.  She was caught in a prison she had built
+for herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hazily Daphne saw all of this; but she was too happy to
+desire the entrance of anything unpleasant, so strove to be
+affable and even humble with the apprehensive Miss Carrell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Too good to be yet believed&mdash;Daphne had the regular loan
+of a saddle horse, a tall chestnut of sixteen hands.  On frosty
+afternoons, just before sunset, or summer evenings before the
+dinner hour, she would ride it on Ditchling Common&mdash;<i>astride</i>.
+The whole neighbourhood, she suspected, was impressed, and
+talked about "new women."  She pictured herself as she
+appeared to them: her hair still down her back and tied by a black
+bow; her costume consisting of riding breeches, overhung by a
+divided skirt; her seat good but not yet perfect.  She would
+trot through the "toll-gate" on to Ditchling Common, still with
+the childish make-believe that she was a highwayman.  When
+off the hard road and on the grass of the common, she would
+set the horse cantering; and, being a spirited creature, it would
+soon break into a stretch gallop.  As a dance can be the rhythmic
+medium of urgent emotion, so this straight-flying, body-poising,
+breath-speeding gallop was the most satisfying art-form
+for her present feelings; it was the expression of her glorying in
+freedom and adulthood.  The wind rushed through her hair,
+and the blood tingled in her veins.  Her face heated and cooled
+in the air.  She could have shouted.  Had she not everything
+she wished for?  Where had Time swept that schoolgirl of a
+few months back, who was punished in bedrooms?  She
+checked the horse and reined him in, bumping slightly as he
+slowed down.  Now he was walking, and she hollowed her
+back for relief; and, slackening the bridle, replaced a disordered
+hair.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Of her few friends Mrs. Montague Jevons, of Wildean
+Manor, was the best.  Mrs. Montague Jevons was a large-boned,
+vivacious lady, who, as an intelligent admirer of the
+Tenter Bruno books, had shown a great interest in their
+author's daughter.  A short acquaintance with Daphne had
+developed this interest into something like a sane favouritism.
+She called Daphne "her little friend" and treated her mind, not
+as a child's, but as the equal of her own.  She would invite her
+to tea and a discussion on books, and would declare with
+sincerity that the daughter would one day be as famous as the
+father.  It was she who daily sent the chestnut horse alongside
+of a groom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In January of the second year, when Mr. Bruno really was
+making a move about the <i>pied-à-terre</i> in Paris, Mrs. Montague
+Jevons gave a ball at Wildean Manor.  It would be the biggest
+that Daphne had gone to.  She was excited.  And since
+Mrs. Montague Jevons had been careful to invite Miss Carrell, she
+could discuss to her heart's content the ball, her dress and the
+tiring of her hair.  Many experiments she tried with her hair,
+till she decided to keep it exactly the same as it was every day,
+only tidier.  Any trace of effort was a flaw&mdash;as one learnt in
+literary criticism.  It wasn't Greek.  And her frock was
+Greek enough in its simplicity&mdash;an unornamented thing in a
+silk of that shining green that suited so well her brown hair
+and her colouring.  As she turned before her cheval glass, to
+appraise her completed toilet, something childish and (as it
+were) breakable in the figure she saw there seemed to make
+foolish the dream of powerful books and world-wide fame.
+She provided sentences for the reporters who should one day
+interview her: "No one who has read the works of Miss
+Daphne Bruno, so masculine in their character, would conceive
+of her as a shy, slim, and exceedingly feminine girl.  But
+there it is!  Genius alights where it will.  Miss Bruno clothes
+in all the grace and charm of her sex her exceptionally virile
+intellect."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon the carriage was at the door, and apprehensively Miss
+Carrell and she insinuated themselves under its roof, and were
+conveyed along the dark, country roads.  Wildean Manor was
+a big, square, stone house to the east of Ditchling, and it was
+some time before their carriage wheels crunched its half-mile
+of drive.  When the house, brilliantly alight, came into view,
+both Daphne and Miss Carrell were disturbed by the certainty
+that they were too early.  Miss Carrell, Daphne could see, was
+pretending to be very much in her element, if only because she
+was feeling completely out of it; exactly as Daphne herself
+was trying to appear old and self-possessed, if only because
+she was feeling very young and ill at ease.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sight of other guests in the Ladies' Room, and the
+glimpse as they stood in the big entrance hall of quite a few
+people in the drawing-room where Mr. and Mrs. Montague
+Jevons were receiving the guests, reassured them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne pushed Miss Carrell in front of her towards the
+loud-voiced gentleman in evening dress who was presenting
+the guests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Carrell and Miss Tenter Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a flattering rustle and a silence as the famous
+name was bellowed out, and she longed for the day when the
+name of Miss Daphne Bruno could produce a silence and turn
+all heads.  With her companion, after a few exchanges with
+the host and hostess, which included a whisper from Mrs. Montague
+Jevons, "My dear, you're looking beautiful," she walked
+across the floor to some chairs against the farther wall.  Here
+they sat down, and, since they saw no one whom they knew,
+passed the time in watching the people as they were announced.
+The lofty rectangular drawing-room in which they were seated
+opened into a library of exactly the same dimensions, and as
+both rooms were to be used for dancing, the band had been
+placed on a platform in the farthest corner of the library.
+From Daphne's chair she could see both the band in the library
+and the people forming in the hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among these a group of three suddenly made her crane her
+neck.  A blush began to warm her cheeks, and it spread over
+her face as the group came through the doors into the
+drawing-room.  The father was a short, big-hewn man of sixty and
+more, whose grim mouth was apiece with the thick chest and
+the heavy, competent hands; the mother was a slim, tired
+woman whose timidity might have been explained by her
+husband's mouth; and the third was a tall, dark youth who, if
+his features were not perfect (though indeed they were quite
+good), had surely a figure of unsurpassable beauty.  It was
+the very measure of manhood: height, width, symmetry and
+grace.  Daphne looked down, hoping she would not be recognised
+behind all these people.  Fancy!  Was that what he had
+grown into?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sir Roger and Lady Muirhead, and Mr. Roger Muirhead."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No resuscitation of an old love troubled Daphne; only rose
+the eagerness, since a recognition sooner or later was inevitable,
+to impress him as the possessor of unlimited friends and one of
+the most sought-after belles of the ball.  Her programme must
+quickly be filled.  She stared at the profiles and the occiputs
+of people she knew to induce them to turn round and perceive
+her.  Gradually they did so, and brought their men up and
+introduced them.  The names dropped into one place after
+another on her dance card: waltzes, lancers, polkas, barn-dances.
+It was like a game when one sought to fill vacant places against
+the clock.  She must have a "House Full" before Roger recognised
+her and begged a place.  But there were still some vacant
+numbers when the band struck up the first waltz.  It seemed
+certain that he must see her as she danced among the other
+couples.  But he did not; as she swung round, talking idly
+to her partner, she saw him dancing with a feathery girl and
+conceding to her chatter the familiar twinkle with its
+incomplete, tolerant smile.  It would not have been Roger, nor that
+youth of the supreme shape, had any one in the room danced
+more gracefully than he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the first waltz, to her delight, more men were brought
+up and introduced.  There was now but one place on her card.
+That would fill after the next dance&mdash;and then her single
+desire was to be discovered by Roger.  But the next dance showed
+her to him.  She had passed quite close and felt his quick,
+surprised look and thenceforward his ever-returning glances.
+Not once did she look his way, but talked with vivacity to her
+partner.  Urged on by some of the younger men, the band
+was prolonging the music, and soon she was aware that Roger
+and his partner had sat down, Roger pretending to keep up a
+conversation, but really watching Daphne.  Once he seemed to
+have mentioned her to the feathery girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you like to sit down?" asked her partner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no," she smiled brightly.  "Let's last out as long as
+any one else.  I'm loving it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On they danced among the thinning couples, Daphne hoping
+that her high colour would be attributed to the lengthened waltz.
+The few times her eyes were in danger of meeting Roger's he
+avoided them.  He was evidently in doubt what to do.  The
+band finished at last, and Daphne was escorted to a chair by
+her partner, who was gossiping gaily.  She, too, made a
+pretence of gay talk, but was really keeping a watch on Roger.
+And in a little while Roger made an excuse to his feathery girl
+and came across the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Bruno, isn't it?" he said with a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At once Daphne suspected the course of action on which
+he had decided: he was going to make no mention of his
+boyish dropping of her, in the hope that she would have
+expected nothing else from a little fool.  <i>Her</i> course had been
+planned for years past: a mixture of friendliness and indifference
+suggesting that his lordly shake-off had been a negligible
+incident, without power to hurt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said she.  "I saw you before, and wondered if you
+would recognise me.  I should hardly have recognised you, only
+I heard your name called out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, at any rate," said Roger, "you're going to dance
+with me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The genial command was characteristic; Roger was priding
+himself on his imperiousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't think I can.  There's only one I've got free...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, let's see."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He compared his card with hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I'm dancing with some wretched girl on your only
+vacant date."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, what a pity."  She took back the card.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, there'll have to be an extra extra, that's all.  If there's
+an extra extra may I have the privilege&mdash;&mdash;"  He bowed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but there won't be one.  There are three already."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but there will be one.  I shall see to it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right, then....  Yes, thank you very much."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Splendid.  I'll go and tell the conductor fellow at once that
+there's got to be one....  I say, wait a minute...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rather self-consciously he walked across the floor, and she
+watched him speaking to the conductor, who smiled.  Then he
+returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's settled all right....  Do you know what I said to
+the man?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, how should I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, perhaps you'd better not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps I'll tell you what I said when we're dancing
+together."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't particularly want to know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I didn't ask that.  It may be good for you to know....
+It's rather taken my breath away seeing you here.  I half
+fancied I saw you the other day on horseback, riding a
+strapping chestnut.  I only came down here three days ago.  But
+then, I suppose it couldn't be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know.  I can't picture you quite like that.  How's
+your young brother?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He's just gone back to school."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes.  I'm afraid I didn't see much of him at Sillborough."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You've left, I suppose."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was meant to humiliate and didn't fail of its mark...  "Left?
+Glory, yes.  I've been at Oxford a year."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course.  <i>I'd</i> forgotten how old you were.  Where was it
+you saw me the other day?  I didn't see you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then it <i>was</i> you.  It must have been by the&mdash;just near
+the&mdash;no, I forget where it was now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Probably on Ditchling Common."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, of course, that's where it was....  Well, I must be
+getting back now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The evening was old when he claimed her for his partner.
+An old evening with a glittering record.  It would have been
+an exaggeration to say that she was the belle of the ball,
+but none had been more remarked, none more sought after,
+none more waited on, none more excited and vivacious than
+she.  And all the while she had been conscious of his staring
+at her&mdash;staring in rather a dazed way.  That was good.  Good
+if he fell rapturously in love with her again, while she felt
+no stirring of love for him.  When he besought her hand, she
+would reply: "It's no good, Roger.  I can't help it, but I feel
+no love for you at all."  She could wish that she were already
+engaged to some one that she might mention it carelessly to
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Miss Bruno," said he, as he claimed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The band had begun.  They were playing a little languishing
+waltz rather slowly.  Both felt the wistfulness of the air and
+for a long time said nothing.  Daphne had a sense of having
+lost several inches of her height and some years of her age
+now that she was in Roger's arm.  He was the first to emerge
+from the abstraction into which the tune had sunk them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ye gods, what a tune!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, isn't it divine?  Do you know what it is?  I do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why"&mdash;he smiled his patronising smile&mdash;"are you a great
+musician these days?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; but I learnt the 'cello at school, and one of the girls
+used to play this on her violin.  But I didn't know then it could
+be so&mdash;so troubling as this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Troubling&mdash;that's the very word.  What is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She told him its name, but he didn't acknowledge the
+information, and when she looked up at him she saw that his
+eyes had been waiting to twinkle into hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From henceforth I shall always call it the Daphne Bruno
+waltz."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be silly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be rude, Miss Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know, I've just been thinking I've never been
+properly introduced to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On the contrary, madam, you introduced yourself to me
+with something approaching boldness from behind a
+blackberry bush on the King's highway."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What silly kids we were!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wasn't so silly as I thought&mdash;&mdash;"  The unfortunate
+sentence broke abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They danced through the door of the drawing-room into
+the library, and the sight of the conductor suffering (as Roger
+said) all the pains of the artistic temperament prompted him
+to ask:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall I tell you what I said to yon fiddler?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If it's interesting."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Excitement and supper had heightened his natural temerity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I said, 'Look here, Sousa, unless you put on an extra extra,
+I shan't be able to dance with the only girl worth calling a
+girl in the room.'  And he said&mdash;he seems a humorous fellow&mdash;he
+said, 'Well, sir, in that case there'll have to be an
+extra extra for an extra extra young lady.'  And, of course, he
+got impertinent and said, 'May I ask which one she is?'  I
+said, 'No, certainly not.  Besides, it's perfectly obvious to any
+one with any eyes.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne looked towards the conductor, and saw that over
+his violin he was watching Roger and her.  She could not
+feel displeased with the man, since he had been told that she
+was the only girl in the room.  But she chose to turn colder
+with Roger, and did not speak till he asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What sort of life are you living now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave him an attenuated answer and deliberately
+refrained from asking him anything about himself.  He was
+obliged to proffer the story unsought.  As soon as he had
+finished with Oxford he was to travel, and then go in for
+politics.  Possibly he would stand for their Cornish
+constituency.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Cornish?" queried Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Didn't you know?  That holiday we went to Cornwall"&mdash;he
+blushed as he recalled which holiday it was&mdash;"father
+fell in love with a little smuggler's cove, and swore he'd buy it
+up and build a house there right on the rocks.  And on his
+principle of 'What I've once determined on, that I do,' he
+went and did it.  I wish you could see the place.  It's rather
+exciting.  And what are you going to do in the future?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stay with father, I suppose."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whimsical sparkle had come again into his eyes, she
+saw, as she looked up for an explanation of his silence; and
+the trembling, incomplete smile was at his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not for long," said he.  "You'll marry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I shan't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course you'll marry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And why 'of course'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because&mdash;because you're the sort."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've just told you I'm not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You've just told me you don't want to be the sort, but
+you'd no say in the matter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish you'd explain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hummed the waltz to the accompaniment of the band.
+Then in a muted way he whistled it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't very well.  But it's a theory of mine that you can
+always tell the girls who will marry&mdash;bar tragedies.  I don't
+know what it is about them.  It's not beauty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you very much."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't mention it.  I'm speaking generally.  It's some other
+quality&mdash;a sort of sensuous attraction"&mdash;he stuttered, probably
+not clear as to the meaning of sensuous&mdash;"though the quality
+is rarely absent from beauty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know what you are talking about."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I suppose you can't understand....  If your looking-glass
+doesn't tell you, it's quite impossible for a man to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They danced on, and she noticed that once or twice his lips
+moved as though he were trying to force words through the
+inhibitions of pride.  And at a moment when the band was
+likely to dwindle to a finale, he jerked out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Bruno, I'd like to see you sometimes.  Now that the
+Downway House is vacant, we're&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had been waiting for this advance, and quickly replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's no good.  I'm going abroad, and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His look drove the rest from her head.  His mouth had
+set like his father's, and she guessed that he was enjoying
+the strong man's huff.  She decided to hurt him further.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What a long time the band's playing for."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, isn't it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?" he muttered.  "Do you want to stop?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I do.  I'm tired.  I've been dancing all the evening."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He guided her quickly towards the chairs, and released her.
+It was done with the courtesy that never failed him and yet
+with suddenness, that she might feel he was not used to being
+snubbed.  His features had tightened&mdash;"gone tight"&mdash;she
+invented the phrase that moment to express what Roger looked
+like when thwarted or misunderstood.  Triumph trembled
+through her.  The conductor, seeing that the two for whom he
+had played the waltz had deserted, brought it to an end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, good-bye, Miss Bruno.  It's been quite nice to see
+you again and dance once with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good-bye.  There's Miss Carrell, I must run and speak to
+her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She ran off, unconsciously humming the waltz; and Roger
+strode as best he could towards his people.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0315"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XV
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+For quite satisfying reasons she thought frequently about
+Roger during the next few weeks; there was no one else
+much to think of; the only person who had ever leapt your
+breastworks and kissed you behind a bush must always have
+a romantic interest; and still more, a man who was patently
+in love with you, when you couldn't feel the slightest stir
+of emotion for <i>him</i>, was some one to be rather proud of.
+She wondered if his passion would overcome his pride and
+force him to write to her; and was already phrasing her
+friendly but discouraging answer.  But no letter appeared,
+so she indulged herself in pictures of Roger with love
+gnawing at his heart and pride denying him a cry.  Once when
+cantering on Ditchling Common she passed him, and, answering
+his raised hat with a friendly bow, galloped away.  At a
+safe distance she swung her horse round to get a covert
+glimpse of him, and saw him staring after her.  He was
+standing not far from Jacob's Post.  One evening she was certain
+he passed her house and gave it a quick glance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She determined to learn more about him from Mrs. Montague
+Jevons.  The subject was not easy to open till an afternoon,
+when, calling at Wildean Manor after the dance, she
+found Lady Muirhead among other ladies in the drawing-room.
+Lady Muirhead, she discerned, was a woman of one subject&mdash;her
+son.  When other subjects were being bandied across the
+carpet she was silent, but her interest immediately quickened if
+some one asked, "And what is Roger doing now?" or remarked,
+"How handsome your boy is getting!"  Daphne moved to sit
+beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You've met Roger then," said Lady Muirhead, in response
+to a casual allusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh yes, I danced with him here the other day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you?"  She glanced round the drawing-room, and
+through the door into the library.  "I didn't really catch your
+name just now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, <i>you're</i> Mr. Tenter Bruno's daughter.  I've heard about
+you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne coloured.  "Have you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh yes.  Your father's quite a famous man, isn't he?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, he's written a lot of books," acknowledged Daphne,
+with a deprecating smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  I'm afraid I don't read much.  I never had much
+time when Roger was young, and you get out of the habit when
+they go to school."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You've only one son, haven't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, only one, though Roger was equal to a dozen in trouble."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Was he really?  Not in health, surely?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In health, good gracious, no!  I suppose his bounding health
+was the source of all his masterfulness and mischief."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, was he mischievous?" exclaimed Daphne.  "How ripping!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He's essentially a dominating character, I think, and I
+suppose as they can't help themselves, it's not fair to call
+it mischief."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Lady Muirhead, encouraged by such a listener, rattled
+on with a record of Roger's domestic tyrannies, of which she
+seemed very proud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she had gone and the other visitors were departing,
+Mrs. Montague Jevons begged Daphne to stay a little longer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There, sit down," said she, after the door had closed on
+the last lady.  "And let me sit here....  Ah, for this relief
+much thanks....  A particularly boring afternoon.  And I
+was so sorry for you, cooped up with the Muirhead Dowager.
+I suppose she carried on insufferably about her boy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it was chiefly about him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pity she goes on like that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But it isn't all praise," suggested Daphne.  "She spent
+much of the time deploring his tyrannies."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bless you, that's indirect praise.  She's as proud as a
+peacock of them,"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But is it all true?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I like Roger.  He and I get on splendidly.  He's got
+the most courtly manners with women.  I think it's a sort of
+feudal pose and unconsciously based on conceit, but as it's
+spiced with a <i>soupçon</i> of humour and cheek it makes him a
+pleasant companion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne pursued her adverse criticism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should think he's now irreparably spoiled by his mother."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He's not been spoiled in the usual sense&mdash;old Sir Roger's
+seen to that&mdash;but what's happened is this."  Mrs. Montague
+Jevons crumpled her brow so as to find a description worthy
+of her keen analysis.  "She's created a legend about the
+masterfulness of the Muirhead men, and especially about the last
+specimen of them, and the wretched boy's heard nothing else
+all his life.  The damage is probably final&mdash;he'll live up to the
+amiable legend till the end of his days.  You'll find the
+characters he likes in history and books are the honourable but
+merciless Cavalier overlords&mdash;Strafford, or people like the Earl of
+Warwick, the King Maker.  I try to chaff him about it, but
+every man's sense of humour fails when it comes to himself.
+Probably my chaffing only makes matters worse.  He likes to
+be chaffed about his 'indomitable will,' and all the rest of the
+trash.  No man ever didn't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne's head nodded, implying that her experience was the
+same.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tell him," pursued Mrs. Montague Jevons, "that it's a
+popular type beloved of housemaids, but the obsession's too
+strong for chaff to expel it....  That's Roger."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The cost of a furnished flat in Paris, capable of housing
+himself, his daughter, Miss Carrell, Hollins, and Owen in
+vacations, was high enough to drive Mr. Bruno's mercury very low.
+A new idea shaped in his mind, and the infernal noise of the
+Gay City, as he walked its pavement seeking his <i>pied-à-terre</i>,
+gave it stronger outline; he would find within a dozen miles
+of Paris some inexpensive villa, from which Daphne and
+Miss Carrell might descend as often as they liked on the Gare
+du Nord, while he stayed with his manuscripts and his books
+in a countryside peace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He found the place, and returned to England, not a little
+eager to tell his daughter all about it.  It was a Tuesday
+evening, just after dark, when he arrived at Old Hall House,
+flung himself into an easy chair, and cried for tea.  That his
+daughter had met him with a hail of questions, and hurried
+after him into his study, and was now sitting on the edge of
+his writing-table demanding information, he affected to have
+hardly perceived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What have you decided, Daddy&mdash;what have you decided?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's not her father that she welcomes," said he to his boot-laces,
+"but the things he may have brought for her.  A selfish
+girl, and one without natural affection."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Daddy, what have you decided?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Slippers, dear.  If you like, you can get me my slippers.
+It would have already occurred to a more beautiful nature."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I get them for you, will you tell me what you have
+decided?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have decided to say nothing about anything till I have
+been fed, and fed very satisfyingly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Father, don't be a cad.  I've been waiting weeks to
+know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I've been waiting weeks for a cup of tea....  I spent
+a very enjoyable time in Paris, thank you.  It's a city eternally
+romantic, classic, realistic.  You can imagine me entering the
+Louvre with a worshipper's feet, and lighting my poor candle
+at the shrines of Leonardo, Titian, Veronese, Rubens...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, blow them!  I'm screwed up to hear everything.  I
+made sure you'd tell me at once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The music of English tea-things!  It's unmistakable&mdash;and
+it's music that Paris, in spite of its singular imitations, has never
+learned."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you shan't have any till you have told me.  I shall
+hold it back."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, it's Hollins.  Put it here, Hollins....  Thank you very
+much."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins laid the tea-tray on a little table by the side of
+his easy chair; and Mr. Bruno, with a running commentary
+on Paris and its wickedness and English tea, poured out a
+cup and folded over a thin slice of bread and butter.  Daphne
+sat on the writing-table.  And over his bread and butter,
+despite his jesting manner, his mind was asking the usual
+questions: why, though the sight of her and the nearness of her
+could inflate his love, he could never really get close to her, but
+must always protect himself, as he approached, with a cloud of
+persiflage; whether now at sixty it was too late to learn the
+art of emptying himself and becoming like unto her; whether
+he had exchanged life for books?  "This man chose not to
+live but read."  Disproportion.  Disproportion.  Books should
+be an elixir to heighten one's awareness to life, not a drug in
+which to escape from it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There."  He pushed the tea-things away, and signalled
+to her to come and sit on the <i>pouffe</i> which was his footstool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come here.  I have a tale to tell you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he lit a cigarette and began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Some ten or a dozen miles nor'-nor'-west of Paris there's
+a little cocksure village that calls itself St. Leu Taverny.  It
+straggles at the very feet of the Montmorency Forest.  A few
+days ago I climbed a cobbled street to the outer verge of the
+forest trees, among which rose the turrets, not unpicturesque,
+of the plaster châteaux, or villas, of wealthy Parisians.  Grocers,
+for the most part, I expect.  In a little new-made avenue,
+that finished in nothing, as if it had forgotten that it had
+ever started, I found a very modest little villa in the centre of
+a tiny garden of firs.  Its windows had shutters thrown back
+against the bricks, and on the sills those flamboyant iron-work
+railings that so delight the French.  Strange how the French
+think themselves classical, and are the most flamboyant people
+in Europe!  In many ways the absurd little villa reminded
+me of you.  It was tall and narrow&mdash;and pretentious."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you being funny?" submitted Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pretentious, with its turret up one corner for the staircase.
+At the top of the turret&mdash;and this completes the simile&mdash;was a
+cone-shaped roof, like a dunce's hat."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne only continued to watch the fire.  She was getting
+used to this sort of thing from her men-folk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," pursued Mr. Bruno, after thought.  "The resemblance
+can be carried farther, for I found the furniture within
+to be adequate to its purposes and inoffensive, but quite
+uninspired and quite without distinction."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But the outlook was beautiful," interrupted Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The outlook was good.  Yes, the outlook was good, stretching
+over the garden of firs to the high ground and the trees of
+Montmorency.  Here and there, however, was a château such
+as the vulgar dream of.  One could wish for an earthquake to
+remove them.  I walked among the rooms, peopling them to my
+fancy with a certain girl, and the excellent Miss Carrell, and
+the entirely fundamental Hollins.  Also perhaps a French slut
+for the meaner tasks.  I have taken the place for a year."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne leapt up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy, let's go to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Some having no root sprang up.' ... We shall not
+go to-morrow nor the next day, but possibly the day after
+that.  The <i>épicier's</i> wife was recommended to me as a person
+who would light a fire and dress a dish to welcome us.  She'll
+have to be communicated with.  But you can think about packing."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Packing!  The word was galvanising.  Packing to go anywhere
+was among the liveliest excitements, but packing to go
+abroad was in a class by itself.  In what a cloud of romance
+had her father, when she was a child, set off abroad!  Refusing
+to hearken to her brain, which assured her there was nothing
+remarkable in a visit to Paris, she told every one she met
+in the next few days that they were leaving for Paris on Friday.
+Once over there she would really start writing.  Foreign
+scenes would be a spring of inspiration.  Against this expected
+seizure by inspiration she pushed into her trunks pens, pencils,
+scribbling paper and manuscript books, having vague ideas that
+French pencils and paper would not be the same thing at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell and Hollins, never having travelled before, were
+equally if more secretly excited.  Miss Carrell's inward
+pleasure was slightly marred by the reflection that her meagre
+knowledge of French, in which she had once instructed Daphne,
+would be horridly exposed.  Hollins, though pretending to be
+"put about" by it all and to wonder how she would be able to
+manage with a fast French kitchen girl, was really much
+pleased, and inclined to emphasise to the other servants that in
+this accompanying of the family, she was as usual a privileged
+person.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Friday, seen from Daphne's bedroom window at six-thirty
+in the morning, was overcast, but windless and dry.  It stayed
+so.  Throughout the day she had a sense that the excitement
+of continental travel could be measured, as in a graph, by a
+rising and falling line.  The line began at a high point when
+the carriage came to the door; it shot higher at the London
+terminus where the words "Boat Train" flashed at you, and
+French beards and French tongues wagged among the encumbered
+people; it dropped and ran straight during the rumble
+through Kentish meadows and hop-fields; it rose again, very
+high, when they saw the boat with its twin funnels; it stayed
+high, as they mingled in the bustle on the quay, and walked a
+trembling gangway, and were confused by the voices, the loaded
+porters, the luggage swung in upper air by the crane, the bell
+from the bridge, and the throbbing of the engines; it was kept
+high by the rush of wind and the repeated booming of the siren
+as the boat moved out, and the hand-waving of less fortunate
+friends ashore.  Then it dropped and ran in a straight line as
+they spent two hours in the grey channel; only to rise to its
+highest at the first sight of French hills and the gradual
+delineation of domes and roofs and lighthouses of Boulogne.  Through
+the greyness, France boomed a welcome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Carrell, though rendered ill at ease by this rapid
+approach to France and exposure, pretended to all the interest,
+loudly voiced by Daphne.  Hollins, too, smiled pleasantly at her
+young mistress's happiness.  "It's folks as young as them that
+gets the full enjoyment out of this," said she to Miss Carrell,
+and a few minutes later was sick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dark had almost fallen before they were safely against the
+quay; and they saw nothing of the place except the hideous
+Customs and the ill-lit station with its comfortable Paris train.
+Once the train had started and run into the complete darkness
+outside the town, the glamour departed from the journey,
+factitiously recovered sometimes by translating the <i>Avis aux
+Voyageurs</i> printed round the alarm bell.  Miss Carrell had a
+bad moment when Daphne sought her aid, but luckily Mr. Bruno's
+desire to display his knowledge was as great as her
+desire to hide her ignorance.  He did the translating, and she
+prepared them for the worst by saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Really, I have rusted so.  I can scarcely remember
+anything.  I used to be able to speak quite well."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She need not have worried; both Mr. Bruno and her old
+pupil had forgotten that she had ever been paid to teach the
+language.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All were tired, and Hollins after her sickness slept.  The
+excitement only reached its former heights when they ran
+through the lighted suburbs into the Gare du Nord, Paris.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here we are.  Out you get.  Tumble out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne descended from the train into a confusion that
+bruised all her senses at once: voices, pushing people, hiss
+of steam, smell of smoke and soot, rumble of porters' trucks,
+and cries of "<i>Attention là!</i>"  The sounds and the smell&mdash;the
+smell especially&mdash;raised into memory the day when first they
+had trained into a London station, and she but eight years old.
+Overtones of pleasant melancholy hung round the recollection.
+"I am in Paris," she told herself.  "I am now standing in
+Paris."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alone in that overhanging noise and buffeting stream of
+people Mr. Bruno seemed&mdash;or affected to seem&mdash;majestically
+unperturbed.  Conscious of the respect of his women, he talked
+fluently to the porters, and led the way to the <i>Banlieue</i> booking
+office.  He chaffed his daughter, telling her to exercise her
+French by ordering the tickets for St. Leu; but when she
+tried she could only giggle into the little window.  Miss Carrell
+kept well in the background.  Hollins, in spite of her weight
+and difficulty in walking, often ran to keep in close touch
+with the master, lest she were lost in this wilderness of
+unintelligible people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon they were in a far less comfortable train.  After
+travelling first-class all the way, Mr. Bruno, alarmed by the
+expenses on the journey, had decided that they could do
+this last little bit in the <i>troisième classe</i>.  The seats were
+distressingly upright and wooden.  Nor did they have the
+compartment to themselves.  Two Frenchmen, unaware of
+Daphne's wrinkled nose, got in; one an enormously fat gentleman,
+with a black square beard which made Hollins stare and
+Daphne giggle at Miss Carrell, and the other a younger man
+who never stopped talking and gesticulating to his companion.
+He struck Daphne as equally funny.  The fat man expressed
+his real interest by nodding and picking his teeth through his
+black beard; and Daphne whispered that he was perfectly
+sweet.  She maintained this view, even when he spat one of
+his diggings out of the window, causing Miss Carrell to retire
+further into her corner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sitting in that train, after viewing the crowds in the Gare du
+Nord, Daphne discovered afresh the <i>distingué</i> appearance of
+her father.  She felt proud that all should recognise him as an
+Englishman.  Tall and slender as an athletic youth, with his
+pointed beard now grey, and his hair whitening over the ears&mdash;in
+his faultless grey suit and grey overcoat&mdash;he had been splendid
+among the English people on the boat, and was a lesson
+to all Frenchmen in France.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The train slowed into a badly lit station, and voices called
+"<i>St. Leu ... St. Leu</i>."  Daphne, with some idea of having
+won a five hundred mile race, determined to step out first.  She
+threw open the door, saw a yawning blackness where the platform
+should have been, and, stepping on to it, fell heavily to
+the pavement&mdash;only saving herself from going on to her hands
+and knees by her slippery hold on the carriage door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There!" said her father.  "The daughter arrives.  Credulous
+child to expect such advantages as platforms in a country
+which calls itself <i>à la tête de la civilisation</i>!  Are you hurt?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, it's lovely," said Daphne, though she could scarcely
+put her right foot to the ground.  She was not going to be
+disloyal to her vision of this as one of the perfect days of her
+life.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The luggage was left on the station, no carriages being
+visible outside its doors; and Mr. Bruno led his party into
+the darkness of a street lit only by occasional private
+windows.  Daphne could receive no impression of St. Leu as they
+climbed the hill-road towards their house, except that they were
+often walking on cobbles which sometimes stirred in that airy
+emptiness of her ankle the strange, sweet pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little house, as they passed through the double gate
+into its garden, showed a bright light at the hall door, and the
+<i>épicier's</i> wife standing above the steps, smiling amiably and
+rattling French.  Everything was ready for them, said she,
+but would monsieur like a glass of wine?  Mr. Bruno accepted
+this in the little dining-room.  "<i>Et pour madame?</i> ... <i>Madame
+Bruno, n'est-ce pas</i>?" queried the woman, with a look
+at Miss Carrell.  That Miss Carrell should be taken for his wife
+was an error that amused Mr. Bruno, and, pointing to his
+whitening hairs, he laughed, "<i>Non, non, madame.  Regardez
+mes neiges</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Oui, monsieur</i>," said she, her head dropping knowingly,
+"<i>mais souvent sous les neiges on trouve des volcans</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Mr. Bruno roared with laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did she say&mdash;what did she say?" demanded his
+daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Didn't you understand?  Well, perhaps you'd better not.  A
+sad people, the French."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a few minutes Daphne had been all over the house,
+delighted with everything, though marvelling that it could so
+fit her father's description, and yet be so different from what
+she had pictured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I'd like to live here always.  Why can't they build places
+like this in England?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because the French are always faintly fantastic," explained
+her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He then led her to a bedroom at the top and in the front,
+whose windows, as he threw them open, gave on to the stars
+above the Forest of Montmorency.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is undeniably the best room, Duffy, and it is to be
+yours.  Miss Carrell and Hollins can have the two smaller
+rooms on this floor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Father&mdash;&mdash;" began she.  Having always kept her
+schoolgirl room at home, she was diffident of taking a room
+superior to Miss Carrell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no," interrupted Mr. Bruno.  "You are the mistress
+of this house."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0316"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XVI
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+She slept that night with the resolve beneath her pillow to
+be up and out before breakfast, but her weariness after long
+travelling and the February darkness of the early morning
+kept her sleeping till eight o'clock.  Awakening and
+remembering where she was, she jumped up and looked out of the
+window.  She saw the beginnings of the forest hardly a
+field's distance from their little garden of firs.  The fresh air
+brushed her cheek and throat.  Oh, she must be out&mdash;out to
+examine France by daylight.  So after quick dressing and a
+hurried breakfast, she put on a warm coat and hastened through
+the garden gate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The road on to which their little avenue ran was called,
+as she observed after walking a little distance in the direction
+from which they had come last night, the Rue du Château.
+All the French history and French literature she had ever read
+seemed touched to life by the three words.  The château, her
+father had told her, had been inhabited by the Duc d'Orléans,
+Madame de Genlis, Queen Hortense and the Duc de Bourbon;
+and she imagined these people walking down the cobbles where
+she was walking.  Madame de Genlis, as a writer of a hundred
+books and a famous figure in a stirring age, interested her most.
+She surely was Daphne's spiritual ancestor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But not only these romantic names of the past thrilled her;
+the words over the shops, <i>épicier, charcuterie, estaminet</i>, and
+the advertisements of <i>apéritifs</i> were exotic and quickening.
+At the Place de la Forge the Rue du Château ran into a wider
+thoroughfare called the Rue de Paris.  Could any name be
+more suggestive?  Could anything be more typical than the tiny
+statue of the Virgin and Child in a little niche at the corner
+house, looking down on the road to Paris?  In the middle of
+the Place was a large fountain, from whose centre rose a
+painted metal statue of a worker with his scythe, stripped to
+the waist and drinking from a gourd as he paused in his
+labour.  Big-hipped women with shawls about their shoulders
+and their heads <i>en cheveux</i> were filling their buckets there.
+Little girls passed, carrying loaves as long as children.  Boys
+with socks and bare calves, wearing little capes and porters'
+caps, walked over the cobbles to school.  And the French
+language in the treble voices of children first came alive to
+Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned to her right towards a plastery church, and on
+its walls saw the words, <i>Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité</i>; and the
+whole Revolution with a crowd of ghosts hovered about her
+consciousness.  She walked on till she came to a dusty square,
+and from here she decided to climb through the side streets
+to the forest again.  As she approached its skied arras of trees,
+a horn sounded from a café in its fringe, and awoke with its
+notes Henry IV and Marguerite de Valois and the whole
+pageant of Dumas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But a few minutes more and she was in the forest, walking
+on a rutty and mossed road between untidy trees.  On
+her right she saw traces of a decayed and tumbled wall
+overrushed by the tangled boscage.  Farther, and she came
+to a ruined gateway with tumbled brick pillars on either
+side.  Within was nothing but the confusion of trees and the
+interwoven riot of underbrush.  One could hardly trace what
+had been the stately carriage-way.  Still affixed to a tree was
+the weather-worn notice of some haughty castellan, "<i>Propriété
+Privée.  Défense d'entrer.  Pièges à feu.</i>"  She strolled
+on, trying to follow the line of tumbled wall, and thinking of
+that gate and the words, "Forbidden to enter"; and suddenly
+she saw, as she looked over it, woodcutters stacking faggots,
+and hatless, aproned women gathering twigs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though impressed by the futility of ambition, she felt the
+very melancholy an urge to write.  "Broken gates of ruined
+châteaux," she murmured to herself.  "Broken gates...."  Tinkling
+bells disturbed her dreaming, and round a curve in the
+trees came a bareheaded girl with a flock of white goats.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+That afternoon she took a pencil and some scribbling paper,
+and walked in the winter sunshine round and round the narrow
+house, wondering what to write about.  She had bad moments
+when she felt that in all her life there was no emotion on which
+she could draw, and that her invention, when put to the test,
+was completely sterile.  Still, it was pleasant to moon about the
+garden thus, striving to see in the populous regions of the past
+a tale worth telling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the next day she was secretly glad that the brain-tiring
+subject could be put aside in favour of the first exciting visit
+to Paris.  And during the next few weeks she persuaded herself
+that she might legitimately neglect her actual writing, since
+she would be completing her preparation for the great work
+by all the education to be sucked out of intelligent visits to
+Paris....  No, it was not an excuse to escape from effort,
+but real hard work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And February passed into March, and the spring came peeping
+in the trees of Montmorency, and still there was nothing
+on the scribbling paper&mdash;except scribbles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But if she had not written much, she and Miss Carrell had
+learned Paris like a loved book.  They talked proudly of the
+Palais Royal, the Louvre, the Boulevard des Italiens, the Palais
+de Justice and the Pantheon.  Sometimes Mr. Bruno joined
+them in the evening and they dined on the boulevards,
+watching the crowds and the traffic hurry by, to the music of the
+paper women shrieking, "<i>La Presse!  La Presse!</i>"  They had
+been to the Opera, and Daphne, lifted to the roof by the
+singing of the soprano in the finale of the first act, and by the
+storm of applause at the curtain's fall, began to wonder whether
+her own genius might not really find its issue in great singing
+or great acting.  She felt no longer sure of being a great writer.
+She was sure only that she was a genius.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+April, May and June passed in an alternation of gay sightseeing
+in Paris and lonely fancy-gathering in the Montmorency
+Forest.  Both were forms of delight, but there was a distinction.
+Visiting the city was entertainment and stimulation, but
+the solitary saunter a-dream among the burgeoning trees was
+that serene happiness that could only be called blessedness.  She
+did not believe a more perfect serenity could be attained.  And
+it could only be compassed alone.  Had she had companions
+who could understand, it might have been very good to talk
+over her aspirations sometimes; but there were none.  Her
+father was either too busy, or his knowledge too overawing, to
+be told of his ridiculous daughter's pretentious schemes.  No,
+she would surprise him one day.  So she wandered alone with
+her thoughts like the girl with the white goats.  Bliss it was:
+and there hardly emerged the fear, though it moved to birth
+at times, that this was the bliss of a drug&mdash;that the long,
+luxurious brooding on what she would one day do was daily unfitting
+her for doing it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In July, when they should have gone to Switzerland,
+Mr. Bruno decided that his work would not allow him to gratify
+this desire till next year.  Nor should Owen, who had now
+joined them, take Daphne to the mountains, for himself had
+fixed his heart on doing that.  So he sent both children to
+the Belgian coast, where they spent delightful days in Ostend
+and Middelkerke and Westende.  This was to be every minute
+a holiday, decided Daphne, and writing was abandoned for
+bathing and sailing, and mild gambling at casinos and dancing
+at hotels.  To recline on and finger the fine shingle, or watch
+the little rills running down their channels in the corrugated
+sand, or to sit up and hurl flat stones so that they leapt and
+ricochetted on the smooth sea was to live with childish
+memories.  This holiday she discovered Owen: that he was a tall,
+presentable boy with the graceful figure of his father; and
+astonishingly efficient, managing all their money affairs and so
+leaving her to lax enjoyment.  The fact was, each for the
+first time was proud of the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In September, when they returned to St. Leu, she realised
+that her holiday was over and she must now start again on her
+work.  But as she and her brother pushed open the gate of
+the little garden of firs she was dismayed to find herself
+dreading the task and the repetition of the long, worrying
+hours that ended in a few scribbled lines and unmeasurable
+discouragement.  The shock was like a moment of overthrow.
+Was she one who had the creative temperament without the
+power to create?  No, no; that would be too awful a disappointment.
+She was indolent, that was all.  When she was supposed
+to be unpacking upstairs she was really facing a
+revelation.  She was mentally and physically slothful.  And why?
+Why, when she knew she was charged with a vitality of body
+and mind?  It was habit.  It was the legacy of her childhood.
+She walked to the window and looked out upon the forest.
+Loth to do it, she was yet angrily blaming her father and all
+the careless people about the steps of her childhood who had
+allowed her to learn indolence and practise it to perfection.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Once the chaos stirred and the spirit of creation moved
+above it.  She had been drifting about the forest glades,
+strewn with old leaves and broken twigs, and after descending
+a flexuous lane, happened upon a white church.  It was
+Taverney Church, and five hundred years old, from the evidence
+of its clerestory windows, which were as lovely as those
+of an Early English cathedral.  Beyond it thronged the houses
+of Taverney.  She walked into its walled cemetery, a strangely
+silent place bounded on three sides by the forest trees and on
+the fourth by the high wall of the church.  Epitaphs were
+always interesting, so she wandered among the graves, moved to
+sadness by the tawdry wreaths of wire and beads and the china
+flowers.  One grave, because it had many such offerings and a
+border of pansies, stayed her to examine it closer.  On the
+stone slab she read:
+</p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"<i>Ici Repose<br>
+  Geneviève Rollier,</i>"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+and in silver lettering on one cross of beads, "<i>A Notre Mère</i>";
+on another, "<i>A Notre Amie</i>"; and on a wreath that seemed by
+right the largest, "<i>A Mon Epouse</i>."  There was a scroll across
+some dirty china flowers with the words, "<i>Nous ne t'oublierons
+jamais</i>."  She stared at it, unconscious of a drooping mouth.
+She was wondering what Géneviève had achieved before her
+husband and her children laid her there; whether their loving
+offerings had outlasted their sadness; whether Géneviève's life
+had been worth while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she looked up.  She knew that never before had
+she been so conscious of her response to all the pain in life.
+It pleased her that she could sense it thus and be troubled by
+it.  Here was the secret of how to write it.  You must really
+feel with men&mdash;and what had she felt so far?  How completely
+self-centred her life had been!  And as long as it was
+self-centred you could not really feel with others....  She
+would like to begin being unselfish&mdash;a saint perhaps; the peer
+of St. Theresa as well as of Madame de Genlis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out of her pity for this woman, why should she not write
+an imaginary life?  Yes, she would do it.  They would be
+here many months, and how she would enjoy studying local
+colour, local history and local temperaments! ... It was so
+much easier to study conditions and jot down notes, in a book
+than to grind at a table....  She caught that thought as it
+flitted through her mind, and wrung its neck.  "Madame
+Rolland" should be a masterpiece, and she would spare no labour
+on it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Throughout that autumn and winter she did struggle on
+odd days to get something on paper.  But oh, it was difficult!
+How often was she tempted to throw down her pencil and
+dream again!  And that inspiration in Taverney Churchyard&mdash;where
+was it?  She had to bully and shake her memory to
+find out what the emotion had been.  And it would be a great
+relief sometimes to decide she must walk back to the cemetery
+and find out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the spring came all the excitement of thinking about
+their summer visit to Switzerland and Italy.  But April brought
+moments of dismay.  The Uitlanders of the Transvaal, some
+dusty country thousands of mile away in South Africa, had
+sent a petition to the Queen for protection from strange
+Dutchmen called Boers.  And Mr. Bruno, pleased with the drama of
+it and with his own keen vision and understanding, talked of
+an inevitable war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course there'll be war.  Any one with twopence worth
+of imagination and knowledge of Englishmen can see how the
+tale will write itself....  So what about your continental
+trotting now, Duffy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hardly knew whether to think him teasing or to be
+alarmed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But what on earth has it got to do with us going to
+Switzerland?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Everything.  You've never seen a real war, have you?
+Small things like authors' incomes are apt to disappear.  And
+now you're going to see a war, when English people won't be
+able to show their faces on the Continent for fear of being
+spat on."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Daddy, it won't happen.  It can't.  At least, not till
+we've been and come back."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Mr. Bruno hoped, too indolent, really, to believe
+otherwise.  And when the Dutchmen of Cape Colony moved to
+mediate between England and the Transvaal Boers he affected
+a great relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Duffy, I think you might pack&mdash;with a heart full of
+thanks to these godly old men of the Africander Bund.  They've
+been your good fairies.  At any rate, nothing'll happen for
+some months yet."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0317"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XVII
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+When, one early July afternoon, Daphne and her father
+arrived at the Hotel Frohnalstock, at Brunnen, on the
+Lake of Lucerne, she learned that the news of their coming
+was already abroad among the guests, and looked forward to
+her descent that evening into the lounge or on to the terrace
+where these interested people would be waiting for their dinner.
+There was the pleasing memory, too, of six very simple but
+very new dresses in her trunks.  She selected in her bedroom
+the one of pale cinnamon, and had completed her dressing by
+seven o'clock, which was half an hour too soon.  Much too
+soon, for she had determined that her father and she should
+not enter the lounge till five minutes before the meal, so that as
+many people as possible might be congregated there.  Twenty-five
+minutes to wait.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The French windows of her bedroom opened on to a private
+loggia; and stepping out into an air of Egyptian warmth, she
+purposed to kill time by staring at the lake.  To her this view
+from her bedroom balcony seemed the most wonderful on
+which she had ever gazed.  From the gardens at the hotel's
+base, four stories below, the lake spread a width of tranquil
+water, brilliant in the evening sun, till it lost itself in the dark
+reflections of the pine-clad mountains opposite.  To the left&mdash;for
+Brunnen was almost at the lake's end&mdash;the water appeared
+to finish in a dark corner, shut from light by the wooded slopes.
+Above the pines before her rose the white peaks of the
+Urirotstock.  At their foot, where the mountains formed a headland,
+a white rock, not unlike a coarse obelisk, stood alone in the
+water.  Somewhere in the trees was the Rutli meadow where,
+many hundred years ago, the representatives of Uri, Schwyz
+and Unterwalden swore their forest cantons into an eternal
+alliance&mdash;and Switzerland was born.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was her father who had decided that they must come first
+to Brunnen.  Was not all its surrounding country&mdash;Schwyz,
+and Einsiedeln, and the Rutli meadow, and the Tellskapelle&mdash;the
+cradle of Swiss history and the holy ground of Swiss legends?
+Never would she forget her approach to it by steamboat from
+Lucerne.  The grandeur of the mountains and the serenity of
+the water had raised in her, as she sat staring over the rail, a
+longing for intenser emotions than she had yet known&mdash;love,
+she supposed, no matter whether it brought joy or tragedy.
+She felt that she was ripe for something like that.  Her mind
+was not superstitious; she had no belief in destiny or that she
+had been brought to this incomparable place for a pre-ordained
+experience.  She just wondered whether, since something must
+happen some day, it might not happen here.  She was now
+nineteen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five past seven.  And dinner was at seven-thirty.  During
+the next twenty minutes she kept looking at her watch, like
+an actor before the calls, "House-lights," and "Curtain."  At
+twenty-five past she walked into her father's room next door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come along quickly," she said.  "They all know you're
+here, and I want to show you off."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They descended the wide, soft-carpeted stairs, Daphne with
+that unusual quiet and dignity which the consciousness of
+evening dress can throw about those unaccustomed to wearing it.
+As they entered the lounge and she pretended to be looking for
+some chairs the flutter of interest among the people made her
+more self-conscious than ever.  She knew that all were glancing
+at her father and herself over newspapers, liqueurs or pince-nez.
+This feeling of notoriety threw her into an over-acted
+naturalness, and she said rather loudly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, there we are, Daddy; there's a table and two chairs.
+I'll bag them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she almost ran towards them.  Then she sat down, and,
+picking up a French journal, tried to appear at ease.
+Sometimes, however, she swept her eyes around the guests.  There
+was still in her mind the wonder if, by faint chance, he, the
+lover, was there.  No, she didn't think so.  Once she did
+encounter the eyes of a young man who immediately avoided
+hers and became lost in a book&mdash;proof that he had been staring
+at her.  Not liking to look his way again, she kept her quick
+impression of fair hair, none too tidy and inclined to fall
+towards one eyebrow, a clear forehead, and a very ordinary,
+rather childish but rather "sweet" face.  His dress seemed
+slightly different from an Englishman's.  Later she snatched
+another glance at him, just as a draught from the open windows
+blew that falling hair right across his forehead, and she thought
+that Shelley&mdash;at least in brow and hair&mdash;must have been like
+that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A gong sounded in some remote passage, and its din grew
+louder as it was brought towards the lounge.  The young man
+rose, and she saw that his figure was other than she had
+expected: he was tall, stooped a little, and, though probably
+twenty-five years old, had not yet lost the gracelessness of
+seventeen.  A girl, almost certainly his sister, joined him, and
+they walked together into the spacious white restaurant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During dinner Daphne was more than once aware that he
+had resumed his study of her, though pretending to chat with
+his sister.  It was always her, rather than her father, that he
+watched, so she began to doubt if it was the Bruno name that
+engaged him.  It looked very like instant admiration.  One
+could not but return an interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After dinner, on the broad terrace that overlooked the lake,
+she sat with her father listening to a string quartette and
+watching other people walk up and down.  The youth was among
+them, walking with his sister and an older man, who was
+conceivably her admirer, and every time he passed Daphne
+he pretended to know nothing of her nearness, talking gaily
+to his companion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon her father yawned and spoke about early bed after his
+disgusting night in a train, but she begged for permission to
+stay up at least till ten, and presently he left her there.  She
+got up from her chair, and, going to the balustrade of the
+terrace, watched the changing light on the water.  A primordial
+darkness possessed the Rutli trees, and a night that was almost
+frightening filled the corner where the lake ended.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning she was very late in getting up, and breakfasted
+alone between half-past nine and ten.  Hurrying over
+the coffee and rolls, she passed out of the restaurant's doors
+on to the terrace to see if her father were sitting there with a
+book.  She saw him twenty yards away in interested conversation
+with the youth who was seated, with obvious reverence,
+at his side.  Hastily she withdrew into the restaurant and
+walked into the lounge through its communicating doors.  There
+in an easy-chair she browsed the pictures in some English
+magazines till her father, entering from the terrace, stared
+about the room as if seeking his daughter.  She whistled a
+long, fluttering note with a curve at its end, and Mr. Bruno
+perceived her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy," said he.  "Do you want to play tennis?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well"&mdash;he sat beside her&mdash;"there's an American boy here
+who came up to me this morning&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You mean Shelley."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shelley?  No, Detmould he calls himself.  He came up to
+me with a most becoming modesty and asked if he might make
+himself known as he was a great admirer of your father's
+books&mdash;and tried to write himself.  We've been having a most
+stimulating talk.  He's got brains; indeed, a remarkable mind,
+I fancy.  I should think he'll do something one day."  Daphne
+exhibited interest, although disappointed that it had been the
+Bruno name, after all, which attracted him.  "But now he's
+just asked if I and my daughter play tennis.  I told him my
+age, which I am glad to say surprised him, and then said I'd
+ask you if you'd like to play."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, rather!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I think if you'll whistle to him as you did to me just
+now he'll come to heel."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You whistle to him," suggested she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Personally, I make a distinction between dogs and men,"
+said Mr. Bruno, getting up and walking towards the terrace.
+"To men I generally cough."  He coughed and h'med, and
+drew the American boy into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is my daughter, Mr. Detmould."  Daphne jumped up,
+incurably thinking of herself as a child.  "She ought to play
+well, since she's fresh from school."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not fresh from school.  I left over two years ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She was more or less expelled two years ago, since when
+I've had her on my hands.  Duffy, this is Mr. Detmould, who
+kindly says you may play with him and his sister."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, thanks.  I should love to....  Shall I go and change?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She asked this of the young Detmould, who seemed rather
+embarrassed, and stuttered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sure; if you will, thanks; and I'll go and get Elsie and
+Clarkson."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His American accent pleased her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she returned in a white tennis coat to the lounge she
+saw the young Detmould in flannels, and talking deferentially
+to her father.  With his white shirt open at the throat, his
+hair already blown and his rather childish features, he would
+have looked a growing schoolboy, had it not been for a
+set&mdash;almost pained&mdash;thoughtfulness in his eyes and mouth.  He rose
+as she entered, said: "Well, good-bye, sir," to Mr. Bruno, and
+led the way to the tennis-court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tennis-court was of dried earth, and had been cut out
+of a wooded slope.  On three of the banks, therefore, were
+trees: horse-chestnuts and figs, with firs behind, and under
+the branches a few old and blistered garden-seats.  A beaten
+track climbed from the gate in the surrounding network to
+the garden seats.  At the minute, on the pale, slate-coloured
+earth, Elsie Detmould was playing a single with Mr. Clarkson,
+their companion of the previous night.  They stopped as
+Daphne appeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's awfully nice of you to come," said Elsie with her
+pleasant American drawl.  "I'm afraid none of us are any
+good except Henry"&mdash;she nodded towards her brother&mdash;"and
+he's terrible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Henry was his name&mdash;Henry Detmould&mdash;and he didn't
+fit either.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the first set Daphne was partnered with Henry, and
+whether it was that she was excited by the all-conquering play
+of her partner, or aided by the weakness of Mr. Clarkson and
+Elsie, she knew not, but she played as she never remembered
+playing before.  The set went to her and Henry at 6-0.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Elsie.  "I guess you're a player.
+What's wrong with a change of partners?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flushed with her success, Daphne determined to play her
+hardest against Henry, and she and Mr. Clarkson fought a
+fine losing battle.  The points were contested with such
+obstinacy that each time they were won or lost she threw up
+both her arms and shrieked with excitement.  And at the set's
+close she said over the net to Henry Detmould:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You've no business to play at all, playing as well as that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He blushed, and his sister endorsed: "He is horrible, isn't
+he?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tired, they were moving towards the seats, Elsie Detmould
+and Mr. Clarkson in front, and Daphne and Henry following
+with the net between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you'll make a wonderful player yourself," said Henry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I'm no good," protested Daphne.  "I didn't play all
+last year."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're a born player.  All you want is a spell of singles
+with some one a little stronger than yourself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think so?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Will you&mdash;will you play at least one set of singles
+with me every day.  I should love to&mdash;to bring you out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, may I?  But won't it be horribly dull for you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not at all.  I&mdash;&mdash;"  There he stopped, unable to phrase
+exactly what he was thinking.  They were on the beaten path
+now, she leading, and when they reached the seat he picked
+up her white coat and silently helped her on with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a rest they decided on a return set, and Daphne in
+her keenness ran first down the track on to the court.  When
+all were placed for play, she frowned through the strings of
+her racket at Henry saying: "Now, don't you be too much of
+a beast this time," and he looked awkwardly away, but smiled.
+In this set she did not play so well, being anxious to justify
+his invitation, and, when it was over, felt compelled to say:
+"You can withdraw your invitation if you like."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," smiled he.  "I've no desire to.  In fact, if you play
+badly I shall put you through a longer course."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She answered nothing, but again walked ahead up the beaten
+path.  That Henry Detmould, even as Roger six years before,
+had been attracted to her from the first glance, was plain
+enough, and that her own response was already troubling her.
+It was a different response.  This American boy had not
+Roger's good looks to quicken her admiration and pride; she
+knew nothing whatever about him, and yet&mdash;Heaven only
+knew why&mdash;she fancied her heart was beating a little quicker
+for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having returned to the hotel, she ran up all those stairs,
+dismissing the last of her breath, and, before preparing for
+lunch, entered in her diary: "Played tennis 10.30 to 12.30 with
+Miss Detmould, Mr. Clarkson, and Shelley."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+She did not see him again till after dinner on the terrace.
+Then when the quartette was again playing they found themselves
+sitting side by side and watching the evening as it fell over
+the water or lit up behind the mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The talk had begun with perfunctory remarks about their
+tennis, but it only became really interesting when the falling
+darkness inspired them to discuss themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know," said Henry suddenly, "I'm really bowled
+over by meeting your father and you here.  I've so long been
+a student of his books.  In fact, I think they decided the
+course of my life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next to hearing praise of oneself the most uncomfortable
+thing is to hear praise of one's parents, and Daphne replied
+awkwardly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They are quite good, aren't they?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think they're magnificent."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you published any books?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Lord, no!" muttered he.  "And I've very little hopes of
+any one ever publishing my stuff; but I'm always writing, and
+always shall do.  Do you write, too?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I want to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, you will, then.  You're sure to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know."  Daphne's head shook.  "I'm losing hope.
+I seem to have no powers of invention at all.  I can't invent
+any plot that hasn't been done before."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Invention!  What do you want with invention?  Invention's
+the opposite of true art."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face swung to his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How do you mean?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Invention, inasmuch as it is invention, must be insincere.
+Art isn't the invention of entertaining stuff, it's&mdash;it's&mdash;oh, it's
+the liberation, for your own relief, of all the emotion stirred in
+you by the spectacle of life.  It's the transmuting into some art
+form of your reaction, as we say in America&mdash;your reaction
+to life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Regardless of whether any one will read it, or publish it?"
+queried Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Absolutely....  Or no....  No, you do hope, when you've
+given a created form to your emotion, that there'll be those
+one day who will recognise it as akin to their own, and care
+to contemplate it, and even thrill to it....  But that mustn't
+be the thought that drives you to write."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the beginning.  Henry poured out his views on
+art.  Art wasn't entertainment....  The true artist gave but
+little thought to the spectator....  All he sought was
+expression&mdash;escape&mdash;release....  And these ideas, coming on a living
+voice, driven forward by a personality that attracted her, stood
+clear before Daphne.  Never from her confused reading had
+they come out like this.  She'd been wrong&mdash;she'd been all
+along wrong; half of her desire to write had been hunger for
+fame, and the other half imitation.  Her reaction to life?  She
+hadn't got one....  And yet there had been moments....  Yes,
+perhaps one-tenth of her desire had been the true impulse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The talk became a confession where Daphne, as a penitent,
+sought counsel from her director.  She confessed that, so far
+from having emotions and a view-point of her own, she was
+never thrilled by a noble passage in an author without wanting
+to write like him and from his view-point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly," said Henry.  "Your reaction has been to literature
+and not to life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And yet I don't know," demurred she.  "There have been
+times&mdash;&mdash;"  And she told him the story of Taverney Churchyard.
+Henry listened, sometimes wrinkling his brow at the
+lake as he thought out answers, sometimes turning to watch
+her as she spoke.  His reply lingered, and when it came was
+strange.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Forgive me asking it, but have you suffered at all in your
+life?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled over the inevitable reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not much, I suppose."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because I've a fancy that it's not till we've suffered a great
+deal that our hearts, when they are moved like that, will be
+so charged with sympathy that it gives us much&mdash;everything
+to write."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And ambition.  What was to be done about her ambition?
+Must she believe, then, that she was a sham&mdash;for she was sure,
+whatever he said, she would never expel it?  "I do want to do
+all you say, but I do want to be famous, too, and soon, while
+all my friends are alive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henry thought long, and once ran his fingers into the hair
+that the breeze on the terrace was blowing across his forehead.
+"No, it must go," he said; and at that moment he threw the
+end of his cigarette over the balustrade as if it were Daphne's
+ambition.  It must go.  It was a corruptive principle.  All
+that could remain of it was her hope to please the few who
+would understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am convinced that many true artists start from those two
+points of ambition and imitation, and work through, dropping
+the false values, one by one, till they discover their real selves."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Silence, till Daphne asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But if you never get anything published at all?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henry looked along the emptying terrace.  They must have
+been talking for hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A really big thing, I fancy, always gets through&mdash;sooner
+or later.  But, at any rate, people like you and me, if we're
+never able to produce anything big enough, at least can join
+the few who understand."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+When she smiled "Good night" at him at the lift door and
+walked along the corridor to her bedroom, she had a sense
+that she had enjoyed the most wonderful conversation in her
+life.  With no one else had she been able to talk like that.  In
+such an intimacy was a serenity as delightful, as blissful&mdash;there
+was no other word&mdash;as when she walked with her thoughts
+in the glades of Montmorency.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0318"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XVIII
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+But these intimate conversations belonged, as by right, to
+the darkness of after dinner.  The sunny mornings&mdash;and
+in the summer of 1899 the days were monotonously, illustriously
+sunny&mdash;would see them on the tennis court, playing their
+practice singles.  Enthusiasm more and more possessed Daphne
+as she found her strokes getting stronger, her eyes surer, and
+her feet swifter.  She still ran shrieking from side to side
+of the court as he placed the ball now in one corner and now
+in another; and when she shrieked she apologised, promising
+"she would not do that again."  If he beat her with a malicious
+and impossible ball she looked angrily at him through the
+strings of her racket, and even threw out her tongue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the games were over, and he declared that he was
+thirsty, she would say, "So'm I.  Let's go and get some
+fizzy."  And they would walk back to the terrace, where she poured
+out the drink for him.  Always she remarked that when she
+was close to him, pouring out his drink, he would be silent and
+almost painfully abstracted.  That she was encouraging him
+she knew, but could not cease from it; something compelled
+her to show that she was happy in this fellowship and ready
+to think of herself and him as a separated pair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon her father took to coming and watching them at tennis.
+He must learn, he said, whether there was anything in this
+noisy rumour of his daughter's skill.  As an outcome of his
+survey he was struck by his daughter's exceedingly good form
+in the matter of tennis and her exceedingly bad form in the
+matter of manners&mdash;shrieking and leaping as she did whenever
+there was occasion for triumph or reprobation, shouting
+"Oo!" and "Lordy!" and "Coo!" and even staring impudently
+at the young man through the grill-window of her racket.
+The second time he watched, an early evening after tea, he was
+strongly impressed by the unconscious or subtly concealed way
+in which she was throwing herself at this American boy.  He
+pulled his moustaches over it, sitting under the chestnut trees
+above the play.  The thing interested him as a philosopher
+and a student of human nature, and he ruminated, detached
+from it, as though the girl were not his daughter.  In watching
+this attraction between a man and a maid, thought he, he was
+very near to the acme of things.  If to a vitalist philosophy
+love was life at its greatest intensity, here was he watching
+it break through and bud vividly.  An unconscious youth and
+girl didn't realise that this was the explanation of their genius
+for love.  Yes, life touched no higher point than this; and
+nuptials, therefore, to those who could see, were a coronation
+ceremony of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These thoughts were interrupted by the game's early close.
+Young Detmould had promised to meet his sister returning
+on the steamboat from Treib; and Mr. Bruno was slightly
+disturbed to hear his daughter call out: "Oh, must you go?
+What a shame!  I'll come with you to the gate."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>Bon Dieu!</i>" thought Mr. Bruno.  "That's going rather far."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gate she meant was at the end of a narrow serpentine
+path that threaded downward through the crowding firs.  He
+allowed her five minutes before following her; and then, lighting
+a cigar to fortify him in a difficult interview, strolled along
+the path.  She was leaning, as he saw on turning the last
+bend, against the post of the little swing gate, and sucking a
+large and ungovernable sweetmeat.  The American boy must
+have just disappeared, and Daphne be indulging a reverie.  This
+sight of his daughter resting against a gate and symbolising the
+acme of things touched him.  He called:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up, startled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come back with me and be lectured."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She replied nothing, but sucked the abominable lollipop (thus
+treating his promised lecture with scanty reverence), and
+taking her elbow from the gate-post came to him.  And it was as
+they were walking back that he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're obviously throwing yourself at the head of that
+American youth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I'm not!" she exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You said that like a Cockney serving-girl.  I tell you you
+are deliberately&mdash;whether in the body or out of it I can't
+say&mdash;throwing yourself at the besotted young man, who's quite
+palpably in love with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sentence was music in Daphne's ears.  She liked her
+father to think that Henry Detmould was in love with her,
+and so said nothing for fear of damaging the thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tell me, Duffy, what would you think of a bookseller who
+was so unable to recognise a first edition that would one day
+be of some value that he flung it into the twopenny box for
+the first loiterer to buy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She provided the answer expected from her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should think him a silly fool, I suppose."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, but thou art the man&mdash;the creature, I mean."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy, I'm not.  You're imagining it all.  Besides, you
+might go on saying that for ever.  I must like some one one
+day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; but, Duffy go slow, go slow.  What you may think
+is love is often self-hypnotism.  You've always had a fairly
+clear brain, so make sure first."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how does one make sure?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How?  I don't know.  I think time alone will test it for
+you.  What do you know of young Detmould?  You've only
+met him for a week or two.  All I can say for him is that he
+has the grace to be much shyer of encouraging you than you
+are of him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've never encouraged him one bit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not deliberately and vulgarly.  But whether you know it
+or not, my dear, you hang out teasing flags."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She ran upstairs to dress for dinner, and closed her bedroom
+door, as if to add more privacy to her thoughts.  She stood
+behind her window and looked out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How did one make sure?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What did she really feel?  Certainly she wanted to keep
+her lure for Henry, and her long thoughts about him.  With
+this new interest life had dyed itself very bright; and if a
+wand could wave it away so that it had never been, everything
+would drop into paleness again.  Up till their arrival
+at Brunnen her book-thoughts had crowded her mind, but now
+Henry had sent them below and occupied their room.  In his
+talks on the terrace at night he had given her more than any
+one else in the world.  Not only had he unveiled the wrongness
+in her approach to art, but his wide-thrown learning had
+indirectly shamed her into disturbing realisations.  He talked
+of philosophy&mdash;and what did she know of philosophy?  Wrinkling
+his forehead, or pressing a hand on his hair, he spoke of
+painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, declaring that he who
+would be master of one art must be jack of them all&mdash;and she
+knew hardly anything of the names he mentioned!  Greatness,
+she realised, as she listened in a humiliated silence, was not born
+from dreaming on it, nor was it attained by the slothful who
+read only what was easy.  If you were to express your reaction
+to life, you must aim at little else than all knowledge, so should
+it be the reaction of a fine mind.  All this he had given her.
+Was she in love with him?  She created a very private picture
+of herself lying in Henry's arms, pressed against his heart.  It
+sent a tremor of joy through her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But what did <i>he</i> feel?  There was that first night's staring
+at her.  There was his pointed choice of her to play tennis
+with, though really she could be nothing more than a wild pupil.
+And sometimes when he caught her eyes he swung his own
+away uncomfortably.  But was it only a passing attraction&mdash;a
+holiday flirtation?  No, it didn't seem like that.  That strange
+agitation of his hands, when she stood very close to him and
+poured out his drink&mdash;it didn't look like flirting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stepped forward and stood on her loggia, staring over
+the lake at the fir-woods climbing the opposite mountain.  The
+evening was close, and the water filmed and inert.  A little
+boat with two people in it was coming home to Brunnen from
+the Schillerstein.  After watching it for a while, she quickly
+turned her head leftward and upward to the floor above&mdash;where
+Henry's window was.  He was standing on his balcony,
+looking down at her loggia.  And he had seen her glance, and
+awkwardly waved his hand, as if to show he was unembarrassed.
+She pretended not to have recognised him, and retreated
+into her room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night there was dancing in the lounge.  Daphne, with
+a Spanish embroidered shawl about her shoulders, sat next her
+father, watching the first waltz, and hoping Henry would soon
+come and ask her to dance, that her father might be further
+persuaded of his love.  But not once did he come near her.
+He danced two or three dances with his sister, and some more
+with a very pretty girl, whom Daphne had often noticed.  But
+she was not jealous of her, for Henry as he waltzed seemed
+abstracted and mechanical.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was not left without partners.  The most persistent
+suitor was a tall, moustached Swiss, who, having once found
+her, was beyond question lost in admiration of his discovery.
+She talked gaily to him in French, but was thinking all the
+while: "Why doesn't Henry come?  Is he hurt about
+something?  Did he think I snubbed him by not answering his
+wave?  I didn't mean to snub him&mdash;I was only shy...."  She
+tried a happier thought.  "Perhaps he doesn't want to
+compromise me by being seen so much with me, and this is so
+public.  Yes, it's that.  It's a good sign, rather than a bad
+one."  But when they passed each other dancing, and he smiled
+a merry recognition, as if there were nothing remarkable in
+their not dancing together, she doubted again.  "I shall know
+to-morrow morning, if he asks me to play tennis with him as
+usual."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning she dawdled on the terrace in the hope of
+his invitation, but he passed her gaily, calling that he was going
+to climb the Selisberg with his sister and Clarkson.  Almost
+it appeared as if he had made up his mind to avoid her.  And
+in the evening, after dinner, he, Elsie and Clarkson sat with
+her father and her, and all discussed with perfect naturalness
+their adventures during the day.  Never did he attempt to
+escape from the shelter of a crowd.  At ten o'clock she retired
+to her bedroom with her wound.  "Time is so short.  We
+shan't have more than a month here, and we are wasting
+precious days.  Henry, you know you want to be with me.  You
+know you do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day succeeded another without bringing back the former
+intercourse.  It was a mystery.  Only when other people were
+with them did they meet.  And yet she knew all the while that
+he was longing to have her alone.  She would leave herself
+in places where he was likely to arrive, and then, shy of
+appearing to have done it on purpose, stroll away as soon as she saw
+him in the distance.  Sometimes when she was thus set for
+him, the moustached Swiss would appear, and, though courteous
+to him, she would be thinking: "I don't want you.  I don't
+want you.  I'm awfully sorry if you're in love with me, because
+I know what it is to love without return.  I'm sorry."  And
+as soon as possible she would escape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father took her on carriage excursions to Tellsplatte
+and the Einsiedeln Monastery, and Altdorf, and up the Furka
+Pass to the Rhone Glacier; and on the same days Henry went
+climbing with Elsie and their friend.  A week of this mere
+friendliness heightened her doubt to misery, and her love to
+passion.  Not now did she bring it to trial.  She would not
+so insult it.  She was madly in love with Henry.  She wanted
+Henry with his boyish features and shape and his rich mind&mdash;his
+mind that blent with hers and fertilised it.  She wanted
+him for her exclusive possession, to imprison him in herself.
+She was unable to read, unable to talk to people, and annoyed
+with her father when he came to chat.  Always she wished to
+be worrying out the problem, "Does he love me?" sometimes
+answering it, "Yes, I know he does, in spite of all," and at
+other times, "He did for a few days, he really did, but not
+now."  Or she refused herself so much comfort as that,
+declaring, "No, he was never more than just interested."  And she
+would review every look she had seen in him, and every sentence
+he had uttered, in quest of proofs that he had loved her;
+and with a sunken heart decide that there was nothing that she
+could twist into more than a transient interest.  She played
+an old childish game, "If I pass that post before some one
+speaks to me, then he does love me," and if it went against her,
+refused to believe in it.  The terrace and the tennis court and
+its seat under the chestnuts, and all the places where they had
+been together, clothed themselves with pain.  And if people
+in their innocence spoke to her about Mr. Detmould, or "that
+young American," she felt she had a proprietary interest in him,
+and gave information as one who spoke with authority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her fist had clenched over the vow: "You shall come back
+to me first.  I won't go to you.  Time may be short, but you
+shall come to me first."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the end, however, she went to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was sitting quite alone in a dark corner of the long
+terrace, as far as possible from the people round the string
+quartette.  Pretending not to see him, she wandered past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You look tired," came his voice from the obscurity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh ... hallo!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He extended the chair that was next to him, leaving his arm
+along its back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not sit down?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After some meaningless hesitation she accepted the chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will&mdash;for a little," stuttered she, as he withdrew his arm.
+"But it's cold, isn't it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't think so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a preamble to nothing; neither found more words.
+She looked at the Spanish shawl, lying on her lap, and fiddled
+with its embroidery.  Something told her that Henry was
+agitated and trembling internally, though nothing in his posture
+or movements suggested it; only the foot of his crossed leg
+swung gently.  At one moment she knew that he was looking
+at her arms, and she scanned them herself.  Hard tennis had
+made them slenderer than usual, and exposure had browned
+them; they were trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you're cold," said Henry at last, "you'd better put your
+shawl on.  Let me put it round you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took it off her lap and, as she bent forward without
+looking at him, placed it about her shoulders, careful not to
+touch her.  She leaned back in her chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think you've been playing too much tennis?"
+asked he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no.  Why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You look tired&mdash;and frailer."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then I certainly shan't play much more.  It's my ambition
+to get fatter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," he repeated.  "You're all right as you are.  I like
+your narrow shoulders&mdash;and your slimness&mdash;and your childish
+clothes.  I wouldn't have you different."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As with such words they seemed to have fluttered very near
+to something, both withdrew into silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Elsie and I and Clarkson are going to climb the Mythen
+to-morrow."  Thus he deliberately broke the pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes....  Or I'm supposed to be going too.  I'm not sure
+that I want to.  I feel I'd rather laze about here.  We go
+away so soon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In a fortnight's time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She showed no feeling, though the shadow of a future pain
+fell near.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We're going on a walking tour," he continued&mdash;"over the
+Furka Pass and down into Brigue.  I was tremendously keen
+on it, but the prospect bores me now.  However...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish you weren't going.  It'll be rotten here without your
+sister and you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henry uncrossed his legs and lit a cigarette.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you ever thought," said he, "that one never discovers
+the truth of how to live until it's too late to live?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you mean?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I am twenty-five, and I've found no code by which
+one lives a full life and yet hurts nobody.  When I've read
+enough and thought enough and got the brains to think out a
+philosophy of living, I shall probably be too old to live."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne nodded as if she partly understood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a silence that often moved with undelivered words, he
+proceeded, gaining time between sentences by tending his
+cigarette:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Take a hypothetical case.  An artist of some sort&mdash;let us
+say a man seeking to be a great, and, above all, a <i>true</i> musician&mdash;wants
+to be loyal to life as it calls him&mdash;knows that he <i>ought</i>
+to be loyal to it....  And it suddenly calls with a voice so
+sacred that it seems almost like a religious call&mdash;through some
+love, I mean&mdash;it&mdash;it calls him to the wilful snapping of all the
+world's inhibitions.  He is not in the happy position of
+possessing a religion to tell him that these inhibitions are the laws
+of God.  If he were, the problem would be solved at once, and
+his duty plain....  But instead, he suspects that they are things
+improperly thought out, and enforced by those who have forgotten
+what it was like to love....  Well, a vision has haunted
+all artists that their road to beauty is through lawlessness and
+danger....  They have seen that Art is a sort of Mysticism,
+because you will never attain to its highest places unless you
+are ready to leave all and follow life....  And it isn't pure
+selfishness, as people say, for timidity and selfishness and
+security often pull on the other side....  Oh, but this is old
+stuff&mdash;much of it is in your father's books&mdash;but it comes alive for
+one, when one is going through what thousands have gone
+through before...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't think I understand," said Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With that he stopped like a train against the buffers.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Between ten and eleven that night she stood near her window&mdash;or
+out on her loggia, laying hands on the balustrade and looking
+over the lake tranced by the darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He <i>does</i> love me.  I'm sure of it.  Just now he does.  And
+I do love him.  I love him madly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But why?  Of his past or his full character she knew nothing;
+she had only looked on his outward appearance, and into
+his mind with its enthusiasm.  But whether, to those who knew
+him in the deep, he was good or bad she didn't care.  She would
+almost like to be told of sins he had committed, that she might
+assure him they were nothing to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But what would come of it all?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do I really believe will happen?  I suppose I really
+believe we shall be separated when he goes, and perhaps come
+together in the future, or perhaps not.  But, of course, we shall
+part without telling each other anything....  He couldn't very
+well speak, after only knowing me a few weeks."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strange that, too sunk in the joy of loving, she was not made
+miserable by this sense of shortness.  It had not yet got through
+her exultation, or the little of it that flushed her feelings, by
+adding poignance, sweetened them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But what did he mean by that talk of the world's inhibitions,
+and of timidity and selfishness and security pulling you back,
+and of not hurting others?  She could make nothing of this.  If
+he yielded to his love for her, how would he injure anybody or
+affront the world?  Was he perhaps engaged to a girl?  Or&mdash;quick,
+heart-gripping fear!&mdash;had he meant some one other than
+herself&mdash;some married woman, perhaps&mdash;when he spoke of a
+love that called him?  Was he only using her as a friendly
+person to whom he could pour out his trouble?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, he meant <i>me</i>."  Her heart steadied.  "He meant me.
+I'm sure of it.  I can't tell why, but I know it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Resolved to keep this certainty and to take it into her dreams,
+she turned into the light of her bedroom, leaving the window
+wide open, for the night was close, undressed, and got into bed.
+With a mind studiously emptied, like a room for Henry to walk
+about in, she fell asleep.  Her dreams, as often happened, had
+nothing to do with him whom she had tried to will into them.
+She dreamt that she was back in the months before they came
+to Switzerland, wandering along the roads of the Montmorency
+Forest, and watching the men quarrying the yellow stone for
+the local villas, or the woodcutters stacking their faggots.  Once
+she was in a gloomy avenue of huge fir trees that approached
+the gates of a château, and down the avenue came the girl of
+her own age, herding her white goats.  Of such places as
+Brunnen, or of such people as she would meet there, she had as yet
+no knowledge....  Now she was walking along a sun-spotted
+glade towards St. Prix, where Miss Sims's class and Miss
+Vidella's spectacled stare were awaiting her; and abruptly,
+without break in the sunlight, and without wetting her in the least,
+the rain began to tear through the branches.  It was magnificent.
+Any second the thunder would come.  The first crash,
+with its rolling echoes, woke her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She saw through her open window that it was early morning,
+and the rain was rushing down in lines so perpendicular, so
+visible, and so close as to seem like the warp of unmade linen.
+A flash of lightning introduced another clap of thunder which
+repeated itself, for interminable seconds, among the mountains
+and in the great basin of the lake.  There were rhythmical pauses
+in the rain, and when its curtain was removed, the peaks, framed
+by her window, stood folded round with clouds.  She jumped
+up to watch.  The storm's rhythm was wonderful.  For a few
+moments the clouds would dissipate, revealing the snowfields
+rosy with sunrise, and then condense again, and there would be
+thunder and the shattering curtain of rain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The immediate message of the storm was one of hope.  Henry
+was to have gone climbing the Mythen to-day, and now, perhaps,
+he wouldn't go.  In mid-morning the weather would clear and
+they would play tennis, or it would stay wet and they would
+find some sheltered place to talk.  Her watch said five o'clock;
+if only she could keep the storm over Brunnen till Elsie and
+Henry had finally abandoned their early start for the Mythen!
+But it began to pass, and in fifteen minutes might never have
+been.  Stepping on to the loggia she gave a quick glance towards
+Henry's room; its sunblinds were up and its French windows
+thrown open.  Possibly he was getting ready&mdash;but, no, surely
+he wouldn't go&mdash;he would make excuses to remain behind, and
+after breakfast she would find him lingering on the terrace waiting
+for her to appear.  Free of his sister and Clarkson, he would
+suggest their game of tennis, and when that was over they
+would walk together with feigned naturalness along the winding
+path between the firs, and he would abruptly ask her to let
+him row her over to the Rutli, and once on the water they would
+glide to solitary places under the farther bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such would be their morning, and she dressed suitably for it.
+But in the restaurant there was no Henry dawdling at his
+breakfast-table, where she had hoped to see him, nor was he on the
+terrace or in the lounge, when she wandered through them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had gone, then.  He had gone with his sister to climb
+the Mythen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was stabbed by it.  It meant worrying out all over again
+the problem whether or not he was in love with her.  "He
+must have made any excuse to stay if he felt for me what I feel
+for him.  Then he <i>doesn't</i>."  Seated on a chair on the terrace,
+she passed in review, one, two, and three times, every symptom
+of love or every hint of indifference he had shown the first
+day.  And the evidence, after this crowning incident of the
+Mythen, seemed to show that he liked her a little, but knew
+none of the doubting, hungry, monopolising love that was hers.
+It was a terrible verdict&mdash;and she didn't believe it.  "He <i>does</i>
+love me, I know it.  But why then did he go?"  Her father
+came and sat beside her, and she wished he would go away.
+He went; but other people strolled up and started to be pleasant.
+Some of them, deceived by her blithe answers, kept her in
+conversation for long quarters of an hour, while her problem waited
+where it was hidden, crying to her to return.  At last, for fear
+of being spoken to, she left the hotel and walked along the
+streets of Brunnen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these streets, if she walked away from the lake, she could
+see the twin points of the Mythen rising high above the broken
+sky-line.  How exactly like the two humps of a sitting camel
+they were!  No, they were too pointed&mdash;a little too conical for
+that.  Sometimes they looked like two pyramids, joined
+together as Siamese twins were joined.  Trees mantled them for
+a great way up, and then the points rose naked.  Through those
+trees, though they were miles away, one could almost see the
+paths where he was climbing.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+When she entered the restaurant for dinner that evening, a
+rapid, careless, over-shoulder glance showed him talking gaily
+to his sister.  In that glance his profile had appeared to be
+almost ugly; and, though surprised, she was pleased, half hoping
+that, by seeing his plainness, she could be cured of her love and
+given relief from its pains.  But the thought was dead as soon
+as born.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waiters cleared the lounge for dancing, but she did not want
+to dance.  And when the tall, moustached Swiss came seeking
+her for his partner, she declared that she had resolved not to
+dance to-night.  Escaping from her father's side, she went and
+sat alone in the comparative darkness of the terrace.  It was
+deserted except for a couple in the distance who were sitting
+out a dance.  She left the Spanish shawl on her lap, and, stretching
+her legs before her, crossed one ankle over the other.  There
+was an iron table beside her, and she rested her elbow upon it.
+Her mood made her wish she could light a cigarette like a man,
+and send up her thoughts in puffs or rings of smoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She might have sat there fifteen minutes when Henry
+appeared and walked towards her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You've deserted us," smiled he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I'm tired."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So am I."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you climb the Mythen?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, to the very top.  That's why I'm done for.  So's Elsie.
+She's danced two dances and gone to bed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat on a chair the other side of the iron table.  Taking
+a loose silver matchbox from his waistcoat pocket, he lit a
+Swiss cigar and laid the matchbox on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I thought possibly you wouldn't go," ventured Daphne,
+"when I saw the storm this morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shouldn't have minded much if it had stayed a bit longer
+and prevented our going.  I was never very eager about it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This led them into the accustomed silence; he was engrossed
+in watching his smoke, and she, happy because he had sought
+her out, picked up his matchbox and twisted it in her fingers,
+with her face averted.  Once, lest the silence became too
+noticeable, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I danced three dances with Miss Storry, and they were three
+too many for any one so exhausted."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Daphne, resolved to be generous, answered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think she's such an awfully pretty girl."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  I suppose she is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After that he returned to his smoke and Daphne to her
+playing with his matchbox.  The silence was next broken by
+Mr. Bruno, who walked up behind a cigar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, you, Mr. Detmould, being American, can afford to take
+your holiday slowly, but my daughter and I, being English
+Imperialists, will have to quicken the <i>tempo</i> of ours, I'm afraid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What are you talking about, Daddy?" asked Daphne
+languidly, as he drew up a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was talking about the privileges of belonging to an
+Imperialist nation, he explained, and the chances it offered of
+conscientiously shooting Dutchmen in their own country.  Didn't
+she realise that, as a loyal Englishwoman, she would soon be
+at war with the Transvaal?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not going to war with any one," she grumbled; and
+Henry, turning towards her father, said that he had thought the
+news was better.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father then spread himself to be interesting, as, indeed,
+he could be in such a matter as this.  The French and German
+papers in the lounge, said he, were so much more feminine and
+indiscreet than the ponderous English journals.  And they
+showed that the Transvaal was arming to the eyebrows, and
+that trainloads of suspicious packing-cases, labelled as farming
+implements, were pouring from France and Germany&mdash;through
+Capetown, if you please&mdash;and up to Pretoria.  And the Boers
+were buying horses in every market, and Europe's soldiers-of-fortune
+appearing in the Boer streets.  And the English, in
+their usual humorous way, had answered all this by sending out
+two companies of engineers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henry inquired when the fighting would begin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When the rain comes, and the grass for the horses," said
+her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henry nodded.  The conception was picturesque.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In September or October, I suppose," pursued Mr. Bruno.
+"As soon as the veldt is right, old Kruger won't wait for us to
+send him an ultimatum, he'll send his own instead.  He'll say:
+'Come on!'  And I expect we shall send out two more companies
+of engineers."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Daphne, momentarily stimulated, was no longer interested.
+Had all Europe been going to war it would not have
+found an inch of resting-room in her mind, for her love was a
+monopolising and unsociable tenant.  Even the thought that
+this war might prevent their visit to Italy was unimportant
+now.  Italy was nothing.  It lay beyond the day when Henry
+and she should have parted.  What mattered was that their few
+remaining hours were flying, and fate seemed determined that
+they should never be alone.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+And in the next few days they did not meet except in the
+presence of others.  This was all the stranger, since Elsie
+Detmould had kept to her bed for two days, having taken cold
+when climbing the Mythen.  Henry, one would have thought,
+would have been freer to seek out Daphne.  But he didn't, and
+she sat on terrace or in lounge, and an unread book on her
+knees, arguing over and over again her old case.  On the
+Wednesday, three days before he went, he <i>did</i> come for a little
+while and sit beside her&mdash;the table between them as before.
+And all his words, she dared to believe, hinted at warmer
+meanings behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want to leave this place a bit," he grumbled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When are you going?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Saturday morning&mdash;soon after sunrise....  It's&mdash;it's not
+to be thought."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne turned her head towards those meeting mountains
+where the lake appeared to finish in a dark corner.  Up through
+them, as far as she could remember, climbed the serpentine
+road to the Furka Pass.  She pictured Henry, with knapsack
+and alpenstock, bending to its steeper slopes, till he reached the
+summit of the pass and ascended to the ice-fields of the Rhone
+Glacier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but you'll enjoy going over the Furka.  The view from
+the glacier is too wonderful for words.  I can imagine you
+on the ice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish you were coming too," he murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So do I.  But we're staying here a little longer, and then
+going to Grindelwald."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But will your sister be well enough to do all that walking?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes, that's what she's come for.  She was ill in the
+spring, and was determined to get rid of it.  She's always been
+a dashing sort."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was now seeing a picture of Henry's childhood, and
+feeling jealous of Elsie and all those who had known him
+during the twenty-five years before she did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," continued Henry, "I've been looking it out on the
+map.  We shall be only about thirty miles apart, and yet have
+all the highest mountains of the Bernese Oberland between us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This could be met only with silence.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning, Thursday, when she was strolling through
+the hotel, she played on her pains by trying to imagine that it
+was Saturday, and that Henry had already left.  And as she
+looked at the places where they had talked together, she knew
+she would not be able to endure the hotel after he had gone;
+these places would hit her wound too cruelly.  Much better to
+be clear of Brunnen, seeing something new!  How could she
+get away?  How could she ask her father to take her away
+without betraying her secrets?  Impossible as it seemed to his
+incisive eyes, it must be attempted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She found him on the seat above the empty tennis court with
+a book and a cigar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy," she began, sitting next to him.  "Aren't you getting
+bored with this place yet?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not particularly.  Are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thought it out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  But I'm quite keen on moving on and seeing somewhere
+else....  I'm so afraid, you see, that this old war'll
+prevent us doing half of what we planned&mdash;you said we'd have
+to speed up things a bit&mdash;so I vote we go on to Grindelwald."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not turn and look at her in an enquiring surprise, but
+studied the tennis court before him; and she knew that he had
+guessed everything.  He did not chaff her, saying, "Let's see,
+the American boy goes on Saturday, doesn't he?" for he knew
+(and she could almost feel his knowledge) that the matter had
+passed beyond chaff.  Of his gentleness he would erect between
+them a pretence of ignorance, though each would know that
+neither believed in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I shouldn't mind," said he.  "I'm afraid I am rather apt to
+take root where I can find a garden and book.  When do you
+suggest going?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, not to-morrow, of course.  But Saturday perhaps, or
+Sunday.  I'm awfully keen on seeing the other places."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Saturday's the day after to-morrow, isn't it?  Well, certainly
+if you order it.  You're in command of this expedition."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dinner that evening showed Elsie back in her place; and
+Daphne, when she followed the diners into the lounge, resolved
+to make much of her.  She had seen hardly anything of Henry's
+sister, what with their climbing in the daytime and the
+attentions of Mr. Clarkson at night.  And for some reason she
+wanted Elsie Detmould to take away with her a liking for
+Daphne Bruno.  So now, since Elsie was sitting alone, she
+took the wicker chair at her side and asked after her cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I reckon I'd forgotten its existence till you mentioned it,"
+drawled Elsie pleasantly.  "Two days in bed'll finish off the
+best of colds....  But I was determined to be quit of it, as
+we've all this marching ahead of us."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I know.  I'm sorry you're going so soon.  Must you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I guess we can't stay here all the time.  We want to
+see other places, and we haven't too long in Switzerland.  I've
+got to get back to my mother, and Henry's got to get back to
+his wife."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as if a revolver had been shot off in Daphne's ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as instantaneous was the conviction that she must keep
+perfect control of herself and show nothing to Elsie.  Elsie
+had spoken quite naturally and without malice, evidently
+having seen nothing more than friendliness between her brother
+and Daphne.  Daphne turned and looked at her, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I never knew he was married!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Married?  Very much so.  He was married four years ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne frowned a humorous incredulity&mdash;as if the joke were
+getting better.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Four years?  He doesn't look old enough."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He married at twenty-one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose he's a father, too.  But I simply can't imagine it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, he's not a father yet."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He ought to have brought his wife with him, on a lovely
+holiday like this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, but she especially arranged that he should bring me.
+I'm really recuperating from a breakdown."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Awfully sporting of her," said Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, she's a good sort.  And I guess she quite enjoys a
+holiday from Henry.  Husbands are a bit trying sometimes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How Daphne kept up that conversation and her suitable smiling
+till the moment when politeness allowed her to escape she
+never knew.  There must have been half an hour of it before
+she found herself in her bedroom with the door closed.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0319"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XIX
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+She carried her paralysed thinking to her bedroom.  The
+words, "Never now ... never ... never," were behind
+her lips.  Her jaws parted in the dismay of it.  The sight of
+the mountains drew her through her window on to the loggia.
+Inevitably her eyes turned towards Henry's window; and
+quickly, though with assumed unconcern, she withdrew into her
+room: she had seen him standing on his balcony with hands on
+its railing, and knew that, with a sidelong look, he was keeping
+her loggia under view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She undressed, but very abstractedly, and with long pauses
+when her hand, holding a garment, dropped to her side.  "Never
+now."  Never would there be any fulfilment of her love.
+Yes&mdash;though&mdash;there were two ways.  Probably neither would
+happen, but it was a slight relief to picture them.  Henry and she
+could go off together one day, accepting the worldly
+consequences; or he could come to England once every year, and
+she could meet him for a week of secret, lawless love (she had
+told Miss Sims she was ready to do that).  Ah, all his actions
+and words fell into place now, especially that jumbled talk about
+snapping the world's inhibitions&mdash;and timidity holding you
+back&mdash;and not hurting others.  But it was proof&mdash;it was inflating
+proof that he loved her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This sudden thought, which brought happiness that quieted
+despair, she took into bed with her, that she might close her
+eyes and examine it.  Henry loved her, and she loved him
+without one lingering doubt, and if at some future day he asked of
+her anything&mdash;any thing&mdash;she would give it to him.  For the
+shadowy figure that was his wife, she knew not what she felt;
+sometimes jealousy and anger, sometimes pity.  "Oh, I wouldn't
+have her suffer as I should, if I were never to have him or see
+him again."  No, the best solution would be the hiding of their
+love and its secret fulfilment in some snatched weeks every
+year.  Henry was evidently rich, and he would come over to
+her sometimes.  Of course she would do it.  And in her case
+she would injure nobody by giving herself to Henry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this vision of the future for consolation she sank into
+a dream-heated sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next day, Friday, and their last, on coming downstairs she
+found that Henry had gone by boat to Lucerne to get money
+for their departure.  It would take him much of the day.  So
+after breakfast she returned to her bedroom, and in a dry
+despair began her packing.  It was manual labour and something
+to do.  But it filled nearly all the morning, for every
+article was disturbing in its associations, and either she made
+mistakes that had to be repaired or she lost herself in long
+musings.  When it was finished, except for what would go in
+to-morrow morning, she let fall the lid of her trunk, and going
+to the window, looked in the direction of Lucerne, whence
+Henry's steamer would come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At lunch Elsie Detmould suggested a last set of tennis.
+Mr. Clarkson would play and that French girl, Madeleine Louvier.
+With a quickly donned brightness Daphne answered, "Rather!
+Only I'll have to play in this dress.  I've packed everything
+else."  The word "packed" pierced her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out on the tennis court, with its lead-coloured earth, its
+surrounding nets, and its pathway climbing to the seats under the
+chestnut and fig trees&mdash;all so achingly reminiscent&mdash;they
+arranged their first set&mdash;Daphne and Madeleine playing
+Mr. Clarkson and Elsie.  Sometimes Daphne was inattentive and
+played badly; sometimes she inexplicably lost herself in the
+game for a few minutes and played well.  It was just as she
+was beginning her service in the fifth game that she heard a
+crunching on the gravel-drive behind the trees, and, glancing up,
+saw that Henry had returned.  She caught his eyes and, though
+hers turned away quickly, knew that he had sat down on one
+of the garden seats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Self-conscious now, she played erratically, and kept up the
+formality of joking or even shrieking when she made mistakes
+or missed easy balls.  The sudden sight of him, and then the
+constant awareness of his presence, had started a dull pain
+at the thought that this was almost the last time he would be
+within a few paces of her.  As she played and shouted, "Oh,
+dash!" or teased Mr. Clarkson and Elsie when they were
+particularly weak, she was really thinking, "Oh, I understand what
+he meant when he talked about not knowing how to live till the
+time had passed for living...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the seventh game Elsie remembered with dismay something
+that must be done on this last day, and the set temporarily
+broke up.  Mr. Clarkson offered to pass the meantime by
+playing against the two girls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," called Daphne, "I'll sit out till Elsie returns."  It
+would be obvious to Henry that this meant she wanted to sit
+by him, but she didn't care.  "I'm awfully tired, really.  You
+two have a single."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Noh, noh," protested Madeleine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, <i>please</i>," urged Daphne.  "I really mean it.  I'd like to
+sit down a bit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, running, she passed through the gate in the surrounding
+network and climbed the path to the seat where Henry was
+sitting.  He watched her as she ran towards him, and when she
+arrived picked up her white coat and put it about her shoulders.
+They sat down together, Daphne staring at the play of
+Mr. Clarkson and Madeleine, and Henry fiddling with an unread
+novel that had been beside her coat.  He spoke first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It was wretched having to go to Lucerne to-day of all days."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know what I'm going to do about to-morrow....
+I don't want to go at all....  Just got fond of&mdash;everybody,
+and the whole place...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it's rotten."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a silence during which several times Henry seemed
+to take in his breath, as if trying to say something for which
+he had not the courage.  Daphne, without knowing why she
+made the remark, broke in with:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But you'll be glad when the time comes to go back to your
+wife."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes...."  He allowed no sign to escape him, any more
+than she had done before Elsie.  "You should have heard me
+airing my German in Lucerne.  I was amazed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?  Did you do it frightfully well?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Magnificently."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And again that silence that would not deliver itself of
+something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's a rotten book, that," said she, after watching him turn
+over its pages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it?  I&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the sharp intake of his breath stopped him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She told him something of the book's plot, and why it was
+so stupid, pleased, from some obscure motive, at this acting of
+naturalness.  Then she jumped up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here she is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Elsie come back."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He caught his breath again and&mdash;before he had time to think,
+stuttered: "Miss&mdash;Miss Bruno, may I say something to you?
+Oh&mdash;&mdash;"  He passed his hand quickly over his eyes.  "I wanted
+to say&mdash;couldn't I see you alone somewhere?  I shall probably
+never see you again, and I never get a moment alone with
+you&mdash;quite alone, I mean&mdash;and I don't know how I'm going
+to-morrow ... and can't I see you somewhere this evening by
+yourself?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She only stared before her at the game.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I haven't frightened you, have I?" said he.  "I&mdash;I don't
+think I quite know all I'm saying.  I don't frighten you, do I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned towards him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I oughtn't to have spoken, I suppose.  It's only despair that
+made me speak."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then there was a silence more charged than any.  He was
+obviously waiting for her to encourage him, but she was
+somehow speechless.  Partly because her heart was pounding, and
+partly because when it came to the moment of encouraging him
+it seemed the first step in a social disobedience for which she
+was not competent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Elsie was back on the court and calling:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come on, Daphne.  We're waiting."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Righto!" cried Daphne, picking up her racket confusedly,
+while Henry said in despair:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"May I write you a letter and put it in this book&mdash;write
+what I mean?  I'll give it to you as soon as you've finished.
+May I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," said she, swinging her face quickly to his and back
+again.  "Yes, if you like."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she hurried down to the court.  And as she played
+there the side of her eye saw Henry writing something.  She
+trembled to know what it was, and played mechanically at the
+tennis, longing for it to be over.  Yet all the while she provided
+the necessary banter at other people's failures and explosions at
+her own.  At last it was finished, and when they suggested
+another set she demurred:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no.  I can't play any more; I'm not as young as you
+people.  I want to go and write some letters before I dress for
+dinner."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And rather languidly, with head down, she strolled through
+the network and up to the seat for her coat.  Henry rose and
+gave it to her.  The others, agreeing that they had had enough,
+were coming up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And here's your novel," said Henry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, thanks."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took it in a hand that was shaking traitorously.  Calling
+to the other people, "Well, I've got a lot to do, I can't hang
+about with all you idlers," she walked&mdash;almost ran&mdash;towards
+the hotel entrance.  In the vestibule and the lift she kept the
+book near her shoulder.  Along the corridor of her floor she
+hurried to her bedroom with shoulders swinging.  In the
+bedroom, with the door closed, she nervously opened the book,
+and saw a half-sheet of note-paper on which was written in
+pencil:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"DEAR,&mdash;I must see you for a little while before I go.  I
+simply don't know how I am going in the morning, but I feel
+if I could have you for an hour or so to myself I could go with
+greater courage.  Dear, there is only one place I can suggest.
+I would not suggest it if there were any other place or time
+possible, but there isn't.  Trust me, and come to my bedroom
+after the others have gone to bed.  It's the only place where
+we can be unseen, and you untalked about.  Dear, love cannot
+hurt where it loves.  My dear, I have not sought this thing like
+some silly adventurer looking for a holiday romance&mdash;good
+God, it hurts too much.  If I could be quit of it I would.  No,
+though, I wouldn't.  I don't know how it came.  From the
+first minute I saw you, I think&mdash;with your wonderful little head
+and your great eyes and your childish clothes.  I think I hoped
+to find you empty of ideas and be cured, but soon I loved your
+mind and your" (a word had been omitted here) "more than
+anything else about you.  Dear, I do not fully know your ideas
+about religion and things, but if you see anything in this letter
+that needs forgiveness, forgive me.  I cannot help loving you.
+If you don't come, I shall understand fully.  I hardly know
+what I am writing about.  My love for you fills everything.
+I can only stare at it.  I cannot see before or behind or after it.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+"H. D."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+She let her hand with the note in it fall to the table-top.
+For the moment everything was lost in the joy of possessing it.
+Oh, she would go to him, as he asked.  Of course, she would
+go.  Wearied with the strain of it all she lay down upon her
+bed, holding the note by her side.  She floated away on her
+thoughts, for how long she knew not.  She was happy.  She
+could not see beyond that "hour together."  All the misery of
+the next morning's departure was hidden behind it.  An hour?
+It would be no hour, but a long night.  How could either, when
+the hour was over, draw away?  Real and awful though she
+knew her love to be, the romantic aspect of this last hidden
+union could not wholly fail to please her.  To the æsthete that
+must ever be in her and in Henry it was a fitting climax.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gradually the fall in the light persuaded her to look at her
+watch, and she saw that it was seven o'clock.  She must rise
+and dress.  It always took her so long to dress when she was
+lost in thoughts.  Slowly, and making many mistakes, she put
+on one of the "childish dresses," arranged her hair, and clasped
+a rope of pearls about her neck.  Her cheeks had hollowed and
+her eyes were under-scored with darkness.  The tired skin of
+her face she tried to make good with powder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she went down with her father to their table she
+was able to see, by one of her quick over-shoulder glances, that
+Henry was already seated with his sister.  She had hardly taken
+her own chair before Elsie came up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you both coming on the trip round the lake to-night?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Certainly not," said Mr. Bruno.  "What is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One of the steamers starts at nine.  It's to be illuminated,
+and there's to be dancing on deck, and refreshments.  It's the
+very thing for a last night.  Come and be really childish."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It sounds as though it would suit my daughter&mdash;not me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Daphne, then, will you come?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was troubled.  Did Henry want her to go or to stay
+behind?  Perhaps he would like her to linger in the hotel,
+emptied by the steamer, and if so, she would be angry with them
+for having dragged her into their sickly gaieties.  But since
+it was impossible to ask his movements, politeness compelled
+her to reply:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes, I should love it.  When do we start?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nine, and back at eleven.  It'll be gorgeous."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The dinner dawdled along to dessert and wine and coffee.
+And at about half-past eight the quiet air of the lake was
+shattered by an explosion like a gun's.  An exclamation came from
+Mr. Bruno, and Henry walked up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's a signal," said he, with a smile that comprised father
+and daughter.  "It means that the weather's favourable and
+the boat will go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The explosion came a second time as he said it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked to the window and looked towards the Brunnen
+boat-landing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, the steamer's there; looking very fine with its
+illuminations.  Quite a lot of people are going on board all ready.
+Some seem to be going independently in rowing boats.  They
+are hanging all round it, and lighting up Chinese lanterns."  He
+turned to Daphne.  "You're going, aren't you, Miss Bruno?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose so.  But I guess it'll be cold."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Go then at once and get a coat," said Mr. Bruno to his
+daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne hurried to the lift and was soon upstairs.  She
+selected the white tennis coat because of its memories.  Then
+she joined the Detmoulds and Mr. Clarkson and Madeleine in
+hall.  The night, as they passed into it, was unencouraging.
+Flaky clouds had floated over the sky, and the few stars that
+danced between them were ineffectual.  Not yet was the moon
+above the mountains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the little boat-landing men and women of all classes were
+crowding to the gangway; most were hatless; some of the men
+were in evening dress of British, German, or French design,
+and their women had veils or mantillas over their heads; other
+people were in tweeds or Swiss National costume.  On the
+deck, under the Chinese lanterns hung from the awnings,
+several couples were already dancing, excited to it by four
+bandsmen, fancy-dressed as Venetian gondoliers, who were jigging
+their bodies in conscientious gaiety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henry, embarrassed, walked with any one rather than
+Daphne.  Hatless, his hair blowing, he led the party on to the
+deck.  Daphne walked last.  There were no unoccupied seats
+anywhere, so they went and stood against a railing on the
+farther side and looked at the smaller craft, whose lanterns
+made a ring round the ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If we can't sit down we may as well dance," said Mr. Clarkson
+to Daphne.  "May I have the pleasure of this waltz?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no escape.  She took off her white coat and looked
+for somewhere to place it.  Henry, with set lips, stretched
+out a hand to receive it.  She went off on the arm of Mr. Clarkson,
+angry with him for dragging her away, and yet glad that
+Henry had seen her in request.  In the waltz she chatted
+gaily, though always waiting for the moment when their
+arrival at one corner in the hustled crowd showed her, as her
+head swung round, Henry leaning against the rail and holding
+her white coat.  The dance finished; but as all the couples
+clapped, the bandsmen repeated the tune and the merry jigging
+of their bodies.  Her partner seized her again, and she was
+once more in the dance.  Now a slight moving of the floor
+told her that the boat had started.  Cheers came from the shore,
+and one of the rowing boats shot up a rocket which rained
+golden fire on the departing steamer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On her return Henry put the coat round her shoulders, and
+she thanked him, and, looking up, said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aren't you going to dance?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that moment a Swiss was brought up and introduced to
+her.  He asked her in French for the next dance, and she
+replied: "<i>Oui, monsieur</i>."  And with the band's first notes she
+accepted his arm and walked back to the dancer's deck.  Why
+she danced she could not tell; her body was exhausted and her
+mind fixedly miserable.  Perhaps it was because the
+awkwardness and silence of Henry made standing beside him so
+difficult.  And dancing was as good as thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she returned from this second dance he muttered, as
+if continuing their last conversation:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't vulgarise what I feel for you by dancing with this
+crowd."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat down on a seat now vacant, and her head drooped.
+Henry stood by with folded arms, saying nothing.  The next
+dance began and the bandsmen sang as they played.  Many
+of the watchers who were not dancing joined in the song.  In
+the voices of women the singing added to itself an extrinsic
+beauty from the darkness, the water and the foreign tongue.
+Daphne kept her head down, partly from the ache of exhaustion
+in neck and shoulders, and partly from fear of meeting
+Henry's eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're looking done for," said Henry suddenly.  "Come
+and get a strong coffee or something.  Let's go downstairs to
+the saloon and get out of this silly jigging crowd."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She got up obediently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right.  It <i>has</i> been horribly cold, ever since the boat
+started moving."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Going in front, he threaded her through the jostling people.
+They went down the stairs and into the noisy saloon only to
+find another orchestra playing there while couples danced
+between the tables.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, damn!" muttered Henry.  "Isn't there a quiet place
+anywhere?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He ordered two coffees from the steward and asked Daphne
+rather fatuously, "Where are we to sit?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know," she said.  "It's so crowded, isn't it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Foul!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They wandered among the tables, but nowhere was there
+a place for them.  And before they had decided anything the
+steward appeared with the two cafés on a tray.  Henry took it
+abruptly from him, and walked out of the saloon right away
+to the stern of the boat, Daphne following.  All the seats that
+they passed were occupied by foolish couples dallying with
+flirtation between the dances.  Henry pushed past their knees
+till he saw, across an intervening bar, a platform on which
+rested one of the ship's boats.  He stepped over the bar, and
+Daphne bent her head and went under.  The tray he laid on
+the boat's seat, and pointing to the boat's side, said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sit there.  You're tired out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She climbed on to the side, and this position left her crossed
+feet dangling.  It was true she was tired out.  Her body sagged
+as she sat.  She took the coffee and sipped it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am going to speak low," began Henry, "in case any of
+these detestable people are nearer than they appear and can
+speak English....  My dear, I can't tell what you're feeling
+or thinking&mdash;I simply haven't the courage to ask you for fear
+of learning that I've built too much on your&mdash;oh, but I'll leave
+that&mdash;but I know <i>I</i> never want to suffer again what I've gone
+through the last few days.  Sometimes I've wondered what
+the morning of departure would be like, and how I could stand
+it.  Often I've wished the wrench were over, and I could be
+away from you.  I've said, 'My God, I'm glad I'm going soon.
+I can't stick it.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her head still hung over the cup in her lap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see&mdash;you see," he pursued, stuttering, "I don't know
+how it all happened.  It's an abrupt mystery to me.  I seemed
+to find myself suddenly floundering and struggling in a
+love&mdash;and it was a love such as I'd never experienced before and
+never expected to....  It stands alone, dear, in my life, and
+always will do....  I thought I'd like you to know that much
+in case we don't ... lest we never..."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He paused long and beat with his feet on the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Often I wished I'd never seen you at all, and then I thought
+immediately, 'No, I wouldn't have missed this awful pain.'  An
+idiot's business."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne wanted to nod her bent head as if to show that she
+understood him; but she couldn't, and she didn't know whether
+he was looking at her or away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wanted you to know something of the strength&mdash;the
+uncontrollable strength of what I felt for you; so that you could
+understand that it was something too big for me that forced
+me to speak.  At one time I hoped it'd be enough if I just
+hung about near you and waited for the end.  One might as
+well have expected one of these ghastly Swiss waterfalls to
+stand still....  My God, I hate everything about Switzerland,
+and yet I love it next to you....  I wish I understood
+anything on earth ... and what I'm saying...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dance must have finished, for more couples came towards
+the seats the other side of the bar.  Daphne moved as if to
+drop from the boat's side to the ground, but Henry stopped
+her with a slight touch of his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; don't go.  Please don't go.  They'll only think we're
+sitting out.  Stay&mdash;stay as long as you can."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They stayed in silence; and when many of the couples had
+returned to the deck for another dance, Henry adventured his
+hand towards Daphne's on the boat's rim, and touched it with
+his fingers.  She did not move it away or show any feeling,
+though at his touch the temperature of her body fluctuated as
+in a rigor.  His hot, trembling palm and fingers closed on hers,
+feeling it, pressing it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Speech yielded to this, and many minutes must have passed
+before their silence was disturbed by an excitement on the
+boat, everybody crowding to the starboard side and staring
+over the water.  Many hurried past their retreat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henry muttered, withdrew his hand, and looked in the
+direction of some pointing fingers.  Daphne, hardly moving her
+body, also turned her head.  They saw that a chalet on the
+side of the wooded mountain had been illuminated with a red
+flare to greet the passing pleasure-steamer.  The red glow
+reached its most brilliant and died down, to be succeeded by a
+pale green flare.  On the water under the trees a rowing boat
+had also lit a sea-green flare, and its reflection came trilling
+down the surface as far as the steamer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's the Rutli," people were saying in several languages.
+They clapped loudly, the women with their hands as high as
+their heads, hoping that their grateful applause might reach
+the chalet on the mountain.  A boom from the funnel also
+acknowledged the courtesy.  Automatically and dreamily Henry
+joined in the clapping, and a laugh that was rather frightening
+because so mixed up with despair shook in Daphne's throat.
+For a long time the people watched the alternating lights till
+they had left the chalet far on their quarter and its last red
+flare was like the glow of a camp fire behind the pines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And there's another!" cried an English voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boat was swinging round; and Tell's Chapel, at the
+mountain's foot, had come into view.  Its front was flaring with a
+crimson light in honour of this advancing boat-load of happy
+people.  And when the boat had completely turned in its course
+a Brunnen hotel lit up its long façade.  Again the grateful
+people clapped and cheered and the funnel boomed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Henry turned to Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You say nothing, dear.  Tell me&mdash;tell me this much: does
+this pleasure hurt you as it does me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A little," she acknowledged.  Her hair was blown about
+in the breeze and she tried to steady and straighten it with her
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The flares ashore died down and the people returned to their
+dancing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hadn't we better be getting back?" ventured Daphne, after
+a long pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no&mdash;no....  How can you want to go back? ... The
+others won't even notice our absence ... or if they do, I
+don't care....  They'll probably only think we're flirting....
+God!  <i>Flirting!</i> ..."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the silence was resumed, he standing by her, and she
+sitting on the boat's edge.  He did not again seek her hand.
+Once or twice he broke the silence.  "Dear, I want to say this:
+I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but if&mdash;if
+we never&mdash;&mdash;"  The sentence was left incomplete.  "I want
+you to promise never to look back upon what I felt for you
+and think of it as some holiday infatuation&mdash;don't profane it
+by thinking that....  I know when I look back on it I shall
+never soil it by seeing any folly or wrong in it....  It's
+somehow true, and I'm not ashamed of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And later: "Perhaps such a love is too terrible to last&mdash;I
+don't know....  I can't imagine now that it would ever end....
+No, it never could&mdash;it must always be there in some
+form.  At present my one wish is to have you evermore and
+alone....  You don't say much, dear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne looked up at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm awfully tired, somehow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course you are."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing more was said till he exclaimed, "We're pushing
+into Brunnen already.  It's nearly ten past eleven."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked towards the shore and saw Brunnen in darkness
+and their vast hotel with only a few lights in the bedroom
+windows.  The crowd on the boat was already beginning to
+pack towards the gangway, leaving them alone.  She dropped
+to her feet, but immediately he stayed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, wait.  Wait a little.  We've hardly once been alone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When their end of the boat was quite deserted, he put his
+arm round her waist and kissed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She could not so lie as to resist or reproach him; but she
+had received only, and not given.  They walked towards the
+gangway&mdash;the coffee cups remaining in the boat unreturned, as
+they were unpaid for.  She reflected that neither had said a
+word about his letter asking her to come to his room; he,
+doubtless, because he had dreaded hearing her say No&mdash;wherefore he
+had kissed lest it were their last privacy; and she because she
+was shy of saying Yes, she would come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They found the rest of their party at the head of the gangway
+and crowded down it with them.  On the pier Mr. Clarkson
+said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come along, children.  Are we all here?"  And he put an
+arm into Elsie's and Madeleine's arms and began to walk them
+along the road to the hotel.  Elsie had thrust an arm into
+Daphne's.  Henry walked in front, unlinked, remote.  Daphne
+was obliged to fall into step with the other three as they
+hurried along to Mr. Clarkson's "Left, Right, Left&mdash;Right,
+Left&mdash;Right."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0320"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XX
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+When she got back to her room she sat on her bed with
+her head down in the same attitude as she had maintained
+throughout the pleasure-sailing.  She could not remember
+in all her life such tiredness.  There was a permanent ache
+in the small of her back and on her thighs and across her
+shoulder-blades.  Her head was confused and her eyes (she
+knew) were staring blankly on any object where they fell.
+Almost she wished she could throw herself straight upon her
+bed, released from the duty of going to Henry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What a pity she was so exhausted!  It would spoil her
+"hour" with him.  Eyes shut, she drew the back of her hand
+across her forehead.  Then she pulled herself together, stood
+up, and walked to the drawer where her diary was kept.  Taking
+it out, she opened it and wrote "August 3rd."  She marked
+the date with an asterisk, making the eight-pointed sign with
+dreaming elaboration, and leaving a long space for filling in
+details one day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked on to her loggia and looked up at his window.
+It was alight, and he was standing on his balcony, to all
+appearance staring over the water, but doubtless looking obliquely
+at her window.  Instantly she stepped back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He's waiting for me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There had been, of course, a light in her father's room next
+door, and she would have to delay till it had been out for half
+an hour before she fled up the stairs to where Henry waited
+for her.  And it would probably be a long time before her
+father extinguished the light, since he always read himself
+to sleep.  She lay down to rest a little that she might not be
+so tired when she went to Henry.  Her curtains she left apart
+so as to see the disappearance of her father's reflected light.
+When it should have gone she would get up and do her hair
+and powder her face again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had kept no count of the time when the light snapped
+out suddenly.  Stepping off the bed, she walked to the window,
+but not so as Henry, were he still on his balcony, could
+see her.  Throwing up a quick glance she saw that though he
+was not there his light was the one square of brightness on the
+night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went to her dressing-table and did her hair, and with
+the powder once more made as much as possible of her tired
+and hollowed face.  Then she sat on the edge of her bed to
+wait a little longer.  All this time there would recur in her
+mouth&mdash;on tongue and palate&mdash;a bad taste, obliging her to get
+up repeatedly and take a little water from the glass on the
+washstand.  When it was time to move, she walked again to
+the window and saw Henry's room still the only wakeful place
+in the Brunnen night.  She walked across the room to her
+door and opened it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But courage would not come to enable her to rush along
+that corridor and fly up the stairs.  Supposing she should pass
+anybody!  Supposing her father had suspected something and
+was watching!  She would wait longer.  It was a quarter past
+one.  "At twenty-five past I'll make a run for it," she said, and
+sat again upon her bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What would happen when she went to Henry she but vaguely
+conceived.  He would throw wide his arms and she would
+rush into them.  They would sit on a long sofa.  In nothing
+would he hurt her&mdash;of that she was sure as she was sure of
+anything in life.  But they would talk of the future.  By
+coming to him she would have confessed her readiness to break
+with things and to take the lawless road one day.  Ever in her
+mind were his stuttered words about the call of life and the
+path of danger&mdash;words in which she saw, more clearly than
+some, more mistily than many, a glimmer of truth.  And so she
+thought of her rush to his room as a decisive rush through a
+gateway towards adventure, experience, beauty perhaps&mdash;and
+wisdom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When her watch showed twenty-five past she got up and
+walked to her open door.  She even stepped into the passage
+and took several paces towards the one light that burned over
+the staircase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I can't just yet.  I'll wait till half-past....  Besides,
+I wonder if he's given me up, now it's so late."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One part of her could hope he had done so; and for the
+hundredth time, as it seemed, she walked back to her window.
+No, his balcony was still washed in light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She swallowed some more water to remove the taste on
+her palate, and sat on the bed again, grasping her knee, to
+wait for half-past one.  A bell from the village sounded the
+half-hour, and she rose and walked to the door.  So tired was
+she that she supported herself by resting her hand on the jamb.
+A long way down the corridor burned the dim light over the
+staircase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, she couldn't do it.  This was proving itself to her.  She
+wasn't big enough so to break with things.  "I simply haven't
+got the courage."  Her mouth was parted as she strolled back
+into the room.  She was too near her childhood for such a step
+and too muddled.  As Henry had said, one didn't solve the
+riddles of how to live until it was too late to live.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but I must go.  I may never see him again and he's
+waiting for me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked to the door and was summoning courage for the
+rush when the passage outside seemed to creak with a step.
+Instantly she shut her guilty door and put out the incriminating
+light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the end, she knew.  She would not go now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That might have been a night-porter's step, or it might have
+been Henry wandering along her passage, in which case she
+had shut the door on him, or it might have been nothing.  But
+the creak, with its reminder of a world looking on, had settled
+everything.  Settled everything.  How much of her life, she
+wondered, did that phrase imply?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't go now.  And I think I'm glad.  I'm so tired.  I
+think he did frighten me a little with his intensity.  I'll be
+awake at six o'clock in the morning, and wave to him when he
+goes; and he will understand that I was not angry with his
+suggestion.  He mustn't think that for ever....  And now
+I'll try to sleep.  It must be two o'clock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In her night-dress under the sheet she relaxed her aching
+limbs and lay on her back and flung an arm on either side.
+She tightened the closing of her eyes, as if that would help
+her to sleep.  But no sleep would come.  Her mind would
+picture the past evening and the past weeks, and Henry at this
+moment putting out his light in disappointment.  And she
+would tell herself, "I'm glad it's ending to-morrow.  It's too
+awful&mdash;oh, but no, it's worth having been born to have gone
+through it....  But I wouldn't, if I could, have it cut out....
+Oh, this can't be all.  I must be destined to see him again some
+time.  The world is small and time is big."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This last sentence, which had formed itself spontaneously
+in her mind, pleased her literary sense, and she repeated it to
+herself for her relief, thinking that in the quiet surrender to
+the future which it urged she might find some sleep.  But sleep
+hung aloof.  She wondered if she would ever sleep again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was while wondering this that she saw a huge room, partly
+hung with pale-blue and pink curtains&mdash;a rather sickly room,
+and yet it was a home that was being prepared for Henry and
+her&mdash;unfurnished as yet except for a wicker chair in which
+Henry was sitting.  She walked towards him and saw that she
+was walking up a steep country road in England.  There was
+a glow in the sky for a whole village was burning somewhere,
+and she had no desire to go to any one's assistance, for Henry
+was waiting for her somewhere on the crown of the hill.  Now,
+strangely enough, she was not dreaming about him at all&mdash;he
+might never have existed&mdash;a thought that was with her as she
+dreamt&mdash;she was laughing in a drawing-room with friends she
+had known, Trudy Wayne and Miss Sims and Owen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last she awoke; and, not at once but very soon, sickened
+to see the sun pouring through her undrawn curtains.
+Frantically she looked at her watch.  It was a quarter to eight:
+Henry had started more than an hour ago.  A chapel bell was
+ringing to Mass.  An audible moan came from her throat and
+a rebel's tear rushed to her eyes.  Leaping up, she ran to the
+window as though there were still time to see him.  But there
+were only the mountains hooded in low clouds, and the water
+filmed and sluggish like a thing unawake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wicked and loathsome trick of Chance to make her sleep
+too long!  A moment for blasphemies.  Why wouldn't these
+rebel's tears that had gushed to her eyes pour out?  But now
+she felt dry and hard.  Her chief emotion was a desire to
+insult and injure the inaccessible gods.  "Well, I must dress.
+It's late; it's awfully late."  And her clothes immediately
+reminded her that it was all over&mdash;that she was on the other
+side of the parting.  "He's gone."  For a minute's luxury of
+despair she flung herself face downwards on the bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then with deliberation she jumped up to dress and finish her
+packing; and the courage of it pleased her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think I must be less lacking in courage than I thought.
+I believe that with an effort of the will I could get up and dress
+like this on the morning of my execution."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The words reminded her of the old game she used to play
+when she walked to her death inspired by the verses:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  He nothing common did nor mean<br>
+  Upon that memorable scene...<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+And this morning, dramatising herself as resigned, controlled
+and brave, she dressed and closed her trunks.  At her glass
+the whiteness of her face, the hollowness of her cheeks and the
+shadows under her eyes startled her.  "I wonder if I'm going
+to be ill, as people sometimes are on occasions like this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She ran and knocked on her father's door, and hearing his
+grunt, "Come in," entered to find him tying his tie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I only wanted to see that you were properly up," said she.
+"It's after eight, and I slept longer than I meant&mdash;&mdash;"  Her
+jaw dropped as she uttered the sentence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You would after such a frivolous and racketing night."  He
+had looked at her in his mirror, and at once, in his tact, averted
+his eyes.  The movement told her that he was seeing everything
+and filling with pity.  But he was a wise student of
+humanity and knew that this was no moment for sympathy, no
+moment for observing anything at all, no moment for aught
+but the old chaff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I could hear the noise you made on the water till&mdash;well,
+it must have been midnight....  Go down and order breakfast.
+Get some strong coffee and plenty of it.  I shall be
+glad of it too."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Righto!"  She was glad to be alone again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wandered down the great stairway, preferring its solitude
+to the company of the man in the lift.  On the ground
+floor she met other guests who said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're off, I hear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she laughed.  "By the nine-thirty boat for Alpnachstad.
+I'd better say good-bye now, I suppose."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They shook her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So sorry you're going."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, so'm I.  I've enjoyed it all tremendously.  I don't
+want to go a bit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked along with them to the office of the concierge,
+and saw in the little pigeon-hole marked with the number of
+her room a letter.  Her heart jumped.  It could only be a
+last letter from Henry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is that something for me?" she smiled at the concierge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, miss.  Mr. Detmould asked me to give it to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew it out, absurdly uninterested in what he was
+handling, and gave it to her.  She ran hurriedly with it to the
+privacy of the terrace where was no one but a man in a green
+baize apron sweeping.  With shaking, uncontrolled fingers she
+opened and read:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"MY DEAR,&mdash;Good-bye.  Think of me as one who will carry
+your memory with him always.  The picture I shall try to see
+most often will be that of you leaving your tennis and coming
+up the path to me, as you did yesterday.  I am glad I have
+known you.  I wouldn't have missed it.  I half hoped I should
+have seen something of you before I started, but you were very
+tired and slept, I suspect.  It was natural, dear.  Good-bye.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+"H.D."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I must write to him," thought Daphne passionately,
+the tears now brimming at her eyes.  "I must write and tell
+him that I wasn't offended at his invitation and didn't mean
+not to say good-bye."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She ran to the lounge and got some note-paper&mdash;glad that it
+was the hotel note-paper with the picture of the hotel on its
+top&mdash;and started a draft, but soon crumpled it up and started
+another....  Her father appeared, and she crumpled up both
+drafts and put them in her pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, ten minutes exactly for breakfast," said he.  "Come
+along, Duffs."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0321"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XXI
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+In half an hour Mr. Bruno and his daughter were on the
+jetty watching the boat approaching from Treib.  Their
+labelled luggage waited by them.  It was a sunny morning now
+that the clouds and mists had dispersed, but Daphne felt cold
+and at length put on the white coat which had hung over her
+arm.  She gathered it tight about her for warmth and comfort.
+Often she looked back at the great hotel and the windows that
+had been hers and his, and the horse-chestnuts about the
+tennis-court, and the long terrace where they had sat in the evenings.
+If was a relief when the boat came alongside and they had to
+bustle with the crowd on to its decks.  They mounted to the
+higher deck of the first-class passengers, and Daphne, passing
+the saloon and the engines down in the well, saw with a pang
+that the ship was a twin to the pleasure-steamer of the night
+before.  There were the same "<i>Avis aux Voyageurs</i>" in the
+alley-ways, and a stairway to the deck exactly similar to that
+down which Henry, ten or eleven hours earlier, had taken her
+in search of coffee.  Perhaps it was the same boat.  On deck
+she walked straight to a seat in the stern, where she sat
+sideways, with her elbow on the seat's back, her face in the cup
+of her hand, and her eyes towards the hotel.  She gathered
+the coat farther about her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The siren sounded and the boat swung away from the pier.
+The engines throbbed and the paddles chuffed out on to the
+lake, while Daphne stared at the hotel to watch it recede.  Fast
+now it diminished and lost its exactness and detail.  There was
+a pulling at her heart and throat, and warmth behind her ears
+and over the skin of her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The world is small and time is big.  Who knows what
+may happen? ... Oh, there's nothing can happen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned and commenced to talk cheerfully to her father
+and kept it up for quite a while, till she felt caught in it,
+anxious to escape from it, and to lose herself again in her pain.
+Her answers became abstracted, and her father, saying something
+about the view from the bows, got up and strolled away,
+doubtless on purpose.  Once more her chin went into her
+hand and her elbow rested on the seat's back, and she stared
+in the ship's wake&mdash;not at the hotel, for it had disappeared,
+but at the twin points of the Mythen, which could still be seen.
+The boat plied from station to station along the lake; from
+Treib to Gersau and Beckenried and Vitznau and Weggis.
+Each time it left the station's pier the gazing crowd waved
+to the departing steamer, and the people on board, whether
+or not they had friends ashore, waved back.  At first Daphne
+had no heart to wave.  Then she remembered how she prided
+herself on her courage and waved to them regularly.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+At Alpnachstad they took the train to go over the Brunig
+Pass.  Their car was an observation car with galleries for
+viewing the scenery.  A kindly conductor came and told them
+that if they wanted to see the best of the valleys and the pass
+they should sit on the right of the carriage.  So, opposite her
+father, with her face towards the train's progress, she sat in
+her corner, her elbow on the window out of which she stared.
+Sometimes her father ventured a sportive remark, and she
+looked up and answered with a smile.  Sometimes she sank so
+deep into the gulf of despair that she shook her shoulders
+and told herself she must have courage.  Then instantly, at
+the effort of her will, all the pain would disappear, and she
+would want to whistle or hum....  But then she missed the
+beloved pain.  It was better to suffer it than to annihilate it
+with the will.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she let herself fall back, trying to see again Henry's face
+and tracing in her imagination the line of his hair, brow, nose
+and chin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Isn't it beastly cold?" she said to her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not at all.  You're getting the first breath from the
+snow-fields."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I feel shivery," she laughed, and snuggled farther
+into her coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To herself she was thinking, "I wonder if I'm going to be
+ill.  Didn't Dante nearly die when he lost Beatrice?  If I'm
+ill I hope Henry hears of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were two English women in the carriage who were
+discussing with enthusiasm their climbs and excursions while
+staying at Lucerne.  Daphne listened to their talk.  She envied
+their capacity to find happiness in scenery and strange buildings;
+and at the same time she was sorry for them, since their
+holiday had given them no such ecstasy as hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the while her father's sham wall of naturalness was the
+very proof of his understanding; and through this humbug
+tacitly agreed upon, she felt the strength of his support.  She
+could feel his unspoken love and rest in it.  Once she even
+caught herself playing up to the part of a cruelly wounded girl;
+and it struck her as strange and horrible that in the midst of a
+mental pain which was the most awful that had ever come to
+her, she could yet be pleased with it as an object of interest to
+some one else&mdash;and to some one, moreover, who was kind.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pendulum swing in and out of despair.  Sometimes
+she felt she would be able to get rid of her harrowing
+love and that already the healing had begun; she would take
+an interest in the train's slow climb among the pines, with
+the valley far below; and then the sudden memory of some
+movement of Henry's mouth would make her start and cry
+inwardly, "Never again to see him....  Oh, it won't be
+thought....  I can't think it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Brunig the train stopped for half an hour to allow the
+passengers to have lunch at the station restaurant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't think I want any," said she.  "I don't know why
+it is.  Perhaps it's the change in the air."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, have a good stiff <i>café-au-lait</i>," said Mr. Bruno.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Back in the train to proceed to Brienz.  She relapsed into
+her corner seat and her thoughts.  The people on the platforms
+as the train arrived relieved her mind by occupying it.  She
+studied the middle-aged married couples with their children.
+Too old for first love, these people; they had to exchange this
+emotion for the love of children.  And that wasn't the same;
+it might be nobler, but it couldn't be so wonderful to suffer and
+to enjoy.  None the less, she found herself looking forward
+to her own middle age, when all the wounds of love would be
+healed by time and she could smile and be gay and pleasant.
+Once she saw a tweed shoulder and the back of a head that
+gave her a stab and a shudder&mdash;it was like Henry's.  But no.
+At that moment he was climbing towards the Furka Pass....
+Never probably to be met with again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Interlaken they crossed to the Bernese Oberland Railway,
+and this train dragged them to Grindelwald.  The snow caps
+and shawls of the Jungfrau, the Eiger and the Monch came
+into view.  There was a new bracing freshness in the air.  And
+she thought:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must get well here.  I must drink in this tonic air and
+make a real holiday of my stay.  I'll have some really good
+weeks."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were at their station, and she jumped up, feeling quite
+natural and lively, with only a dull memory of some recent
+anguish.  Immediately she drew back about her the pain she
+had thrown off.  "Oh, not this annihilation of feeling," she told
+herself as she stepped on to the busy platform.  "I would rather
+feel..."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, then," said her father, laying down a bag and
+looking for his tickets.  "Where the devil&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she, holding her properties, was thinking, "I can't stand
+it.  Never will I do what I've often fancied I'd like to
+do&mdash;what I tried to do with Roger&mdash;try to make men love me
+whether I love them or not.  The pain is too awful.  I
+wouldn't give it to any one...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She followed her father through the exit of the station and
+up the glaring gravel path of the hotel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was shown to her room, and this changed place of
+sleeping, with its different furniture, stressed her exile from
+the story of Brunnen.  She stood there, staring at the
+snow-line of the mountains.  Soon the porter brought her trunks
+and laid them on the trestle support and on a chair.  Mechanically
+she opened one and began to take out her dresses.  Each
+carried a memory of some evening on the terrace at Brunnen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having hung them mechanically in the wardrobe, she stopped
+unpacking and stood again to stare vacantly before her.  She
+hardly knew whether she was thinking or whether she had
+suspended thought; whether this was the uttermost despair or
+an atrophy of feeling.  Once she heard herself saying, "O God,
+give me some rest&mdash;some rest from all this...."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0322"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XXII
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+She had no address of Henry's, but that evening she wrote
+to the hotel at Brunnen, trusting that it would be
+forwarded to him somewhere.  The composing of the letter gave
+her much mental debate.  She wanted to pour out passionately
+all that she was really feeling&mdash;the mere phrasing of love was
+relief and almost joy; but the old muddle as to whether it was
+fair to write thus to a man who was returning from her to his
+wife intervened.  And finally her letter amounted to little
+more than saying, "I never meant not to say good-bye to
+you."  But she hoped he would read everything in her few lines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a moment's afterglow of bygone happiness as
+she put the letter in the concierge's box.  From that moment
+she encouraged the conviction that he would write a reply to
+her&mdash;just one, before the silence settled.  She would stop and
+stand in the passage of the hotel while she deliberated where
+he would first be able to write and how long the letter would
+take to reach her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Friday morning, she decided, was the earliest she could
+expect it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, walking on, she would compose his letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Owen joined them from the camp at Aldershot where
+the Sillborough Cadet Corps had been training.  He was full
+of the war rumours in England, and Daphne, going for walks
+with him, pretended to listen.  Sometimes she played against
+him a desultory set of tennis, though the game and everything
+about it, its cries and its scoring, had a stab for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the Friday morning, when she dared to hope that his
+letter might have come, she was afraid to approach the pigeon-holes
+in the concierge's office; and yet, by a will-effort, she
+walked there quickly, satisfied with her pluck.  Sickness took
+her heart when she saw her pigeon-hole empty and many of
+the others full.  In despairing hope she asked the concierge
+had that morning's post been.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned about gaily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He hasn't had time to write.  Or letters take a long time
+over these slow mountain railways.  I'll give him till to-morrow
+morning."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, at each of the other posts during the day she looked
+for the letter and suffered the blow of disappointment to see
+her empty pigeon-hole.  Sometimes she would go back and look
+in the other holes in case her letter had been put in one of
+them by mistake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the Saturday morning she went with a sudden high hope
+to the place....  But her throat was affected and her mouth
+dried when again the empty pigeon-hole stared at her.  There
+must be one.  And she asked the concierge merrily:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What, isn't there really a letter for me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, Miss Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she laughed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, what a shame!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Walking away, she told herself that he was writing a long
+one and adding to it day by day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning, as nervously she approached the office,
+she saw that there was a single white envelope in her space.
+Her heart thumping with eagerness and terror, she said to
+the concierge:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There <i>is</i> one this time!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, Miss Bruno, there's one for you," and he took it out
+and gave it to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The handwriting was Miss Carrell's.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The August days went by, and the pain of going to the
+office after each post, or of returning from a walk in the hope
+that the letter would be there, was slowly drugged down by
+monotony.  "He'll never write now.  After all, why should
+he?  Mine was nothing but an answer to his good-bye letter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only once did her control utterly fail her.  It was after
+dinner in the lounge, and her father, Owen and she were
+listening to the string band.  She had been talking vivaciously,
+almost happily, to some friends in the neighbouring chairs.
+Then the band struck up a selection from <i>Tannhäuser</i>, and the
+familiar tunes stopped all talk.  She leaned back in her chair
+and stared at a hunting picture on the wall.  The music, good
+or bad, well played or badly played, was stirring up all the
+pain which she temporarily trampled down.  The Pilgrims'
+Chorus seemed the very notes and chords of her despair.  And
+the song "O Star of Eve" was one of its melodies.  As the
+tune went on inclemently she felt her breath getting shorter
+and a misery rising in her so massed and tumultuous that if it
+did not burst in tears it would madden and kill her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She got up while control was still with her, walked across
+the lounge, and once outside the door, rushed up the stairs to
+her bedroom.  There she flung herself on her bed, and
+passionately crying, kept repeating aloud, "I don't care how soon
+the end comes....  I don't care how soon the end comes...."  At
+intervals she would stop her crying and muttering to think,
+"But no, I don't want to die and be out of the world where
+Henry is....  I must be in the same world as he is....  If
+only he would die and I could die too...."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno had instantly guessed what her abrupt departure
+meant.  At the end of the Brunnen stay he had learned with
+surprise that the American boy whose appearance, even if it
+held a remarkable mind, suggested a callow undergraduate, was
+a married man.  And Daphne was much in love with him.  It
+looked horribly like the real thing.  Her request to be taken
+away he assumed to have followed a confession of the boy's,
+who certainly struck him as a <i>gentil</i> youth.  He blamed neither.
+What was the good of telling people not to love if they did?
+And now Daphne was in the grip of her tragedy&mdash;Daphne
+suffering!  He must go to her.  He mustn't leave her to writhe
+in it alone.  But he didn't know what to say.  Now that he
+came to think of it he had never spoken seriously to her in his
+life&mdash;always behind a veil of banter.  "I can't get through to
+her.  I never have been able to get through to her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the applause after the orchestra's finale he rose from his
+seat, saying to Owen, "Keep my place for me, old man," and
+walked upstairs.  The passage and door of Daphne's room
+frightened him, and for a long time he strode up and down
+wondering what he was going to say.  What could he give her
+of comfort and advice?  Though he had written forty books,
+he had no complete and rounded code of living.  And of
+religion, nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, there it was.  He knocked on her door.  No answer
+came, though he heard a quick movement inside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not reply, and he walked back along the corridor,
+abandoning the task.  But at the head of the stairs he stopped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, poor darling, I must go in and see her.  I shall find
+something to say when I'm there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked slowly back, and, without knocking, turned the
+handle of her door.  It was unlocked and he stepped into the
+room.  He saw Daphne in the long easy-chair, sitting sideways,
+her heels drawn up under her, her elbow hanging over
+the arm but bent to make a support for her head.  Her hair
+was tumbled and falling, her shoulders shuddering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy, my darling!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not move, but now her shoulders steadied as if
+petrified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy, what's the matter?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was annoyed with his feebleness.  How could she answer
+such a question?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear....  I know all about it....  Daphne, I can't
+bear to see you suffering...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her head and looked up at him, admitting all in
+a sentence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy, how do people stand it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What answer could he give to that?  The child ought to
+have some religion&mdash;some stay&mdash;some hope.  He stood there
+awkwardly with two fingers of his right hand pushed into his
+waistcoat pocket.  Then he began to walk up and down as
+he struggled to express for her the few things that he believed.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+He had searched nature in vain, he said, for a God of pity.
+All that he was able to see was that men had pity.  Pity for
+all things ... and amazing courage when God or nature was
+showing no pity to them.  And in spite of modern thought-waves,
+the unshakable conviction was still with him that men
+were only at their best and happy when they were yielding to
+their pity.  Or, of course, when they were summoning a defiant
+courage about them and lifting their heads above their trouble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm trying, dear, to give you the minimum of religion that
+I have found, and perhaps you'll be able to build more on it.
+It's rather a rebel's creed, I'm afraid.  It amounts to saying
+that men, because they have pity and unconquerable courage,
+are greater than God, Who seems to have no pity....  And
+then I think, if that is so, let us glory in transcending him.
+Let us at all costs keep these things....  I don't know how
+far I have kept them myself, but I should like you to...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His daughter smiled her affection through her tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So much of a general code he tried to give her.  In meeting
+her present need he felt he was happier.  Daphne was
+staring at him as he spoke with interested eyes.  To begin
+with, said he, she was much, much better off than many, because
+her love had apparently been returned.  Many had loved as
+passionately but without requital, and had survived.  It would
+be futile to tell her to cut out her love, but what she must do
+was to transmute it.  One could transmute a suppressed love
+into two things: into service of others and into art.  Didn't
+Dante transmute his love for Beatrice into his "Divina
+Commedia"?  So his love was always with him and always expressed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You used to want to write, dear.  I hope you will.  You'll
+find that much of what you are suffering now will escape into
+that, and it will be ever so much better than it would
+otherwise have been.  Remember, there have been little housemaids
+in London who have had to suppress their love and have had
+no mind to understand these things ... and yet they have
+endured and survived....  But I'll tell you one thing that you
+must guard against.  Books and Art are very great, and no
+life is half a life without them; but they are apt to become
+a fixed idea, excluding everything&mdash;unselfishness and all the
+rest.  And so you get set as selfish, and only occasionally a
+kindly impulse in you shows you what you might have been....
+So the remedy, I feel, is to get this other idea equally&mdash;the
+idea that there is no happiness apart from pity and
+service...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His daughter had risen and was standing before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy, I always think you're wonderful....  Don't&mdash;don't
+tell Owen anything about it, will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He passed his hand over the back of her head, aware of
+moistened eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't suffer too much, my Daphne.  I can't stand it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne shook her head and smiled confidently.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0423"></a></p>
+
+<h2>
+PART IV: <i>Things as They Are</i>
+</h2>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XXIII
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+A day in September Mr. Bruno and his children came
+again to the little garden of firs.  The news from South
+Africa had been such that he preferred to be in France with
+a view to winding up his affairs there in the event of an early
+return to England.  And Daphne was glad to be out of
+Switzerland.  She had not been able to bear the conversations
+of guests who mentioned places associated with Henry&mdash;the
+Urirotstock, the Rutli, the Furka Pass, the Mythen.  All
+mountains hurt her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the doorstep Miss Carrell greeted the family, inquiring
+of Daphne:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you had a nice holiday, dear?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Absolutely ripping," said Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with this sickening lie she carried her wooden despair
+into the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wooden despair it was, these first weeks.  She would take
+her memories with her on lonely walks in the Montmorency
+Forest.  Its autumnal lights pierced her.  She made a
+pilgrimage to the grave to Géneviève Rollier in Taverney
+Churchyard; and now more than ever did the tawdry wreaths and the
+words "<i>A Man Epouse</i>," "<i>Nous ne t'oublierons jamais</i>," inflate
+her to pity.  She really felt, as her father had encouraged
+her to feel, an infinite gentleness towards all the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can't reach to pain fully," said she, remembering some
+words of Henry's, "till you have suffered yourself."  And she
+was aware of a little pride in her suffering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She set to work again upon her book "Madame Rolland."  There
+was a whole reservoir of manuscript to be distilled into
+some last shapely urn.  But now, as she studied it&mdash;on the
+other side of her great experience&mdash;it seemed shallow, light,
+unfelt, invented.  "Invention's the very opposite of creation,"
+Henry had said; and this minute she saw its truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clearer parts of her brain told her brutally what she
+ought to do.  She ought to scrap every bit of this stuff, even
+though it were the product of two years' brain-bullying, because
+it had been written when her angle was all wrong, and would
+only go lumpy and formless if she tried so late to infiltrate
+it with truth.  More, since Henry was always correct, she ought
+to postpone writing for publication till she had read much more
+and learned something of "the best that had been thought and
+written throughout the ages."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But could she do this?  Could she scrap it all and postpone,
+even abandon, the thought of fame?  No, the old Daphne of
+three months ago was too strong to be shed at once by this
+new creature of selfishness and consecration.  She would
+re-fashion the book to meet her truer measures, but she must keep
+her eyes on fame.  Next year, or the year after, she must
+make her little stir whose ripples would reach to Henry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she struggled on with "Madame Rolland," though sensible
+of compromise and conflict.  The sceptic in the corner kept
+protesting, "In spite of me you're heading for one more
+blunder."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Another subject, besides her book and her settled sadness,
+found a small welcome at her door.  This talk about war in
+South Africa&mdash;it was always dramatic.  The letters of Owen,
+who had returned to Sillborough, were full of it.  It was
+thrilling to read each morning in the English or French papers of
+the Boers' impudent ultimatum and the British Government's
+haughty refusal to discuss such terms; of the threatening
+mobilisation in the Orange Free State and the calling out of
+the reserves in England; of the last dark summoning of Parliament.
+But this interest was mild compared with her interest in
+her book.  It occupied about the same relation to "Madame
+Rolland" as a bright little grocer's boy, calling every day,
+occupies to the mistress of a house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This grocer's boy, however, came in and sat down in the
+best room during the days when war was declared.  The English
+papers were better than any drama now, with their huge
+pictures of Sir Redvers Buller in his cocked hat, about whom
+she had misgivings because his chin receded, and of that old
+darling Oom Paul Kruger, who, with his curtain-fringe of
+beard and chimney-pot hat, was so ugly as to be perfectly sweet.
+The French papers, with their abuse of the English, were things
+to be read; and in a moment of patriotic fervour she was anxious
+to shake off the dust of her heels on such a rude country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I vote we go," said she to her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And her father shocked her by saying cold-bloodedly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But my sympathies, I'm afraid, are rather with Oom Paul
+than with Tante Victoria."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy!" she exclaimed, after a shriek of laughter at such
+a name for the venerable Queen, "how can you say such a
+thing?  You're not a pro-Boer."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But all he did was to smile and murmur, "<i>Et tu, Daphne</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't see there's any <i>Et tu, Daphne</i> about it.  You can't
+think they're right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither side's ever perfectly right, dear.  But that's no
+reason why the big man should start to pummel the little fellow
+and kick his posterior.  Little men are always self-assertive
+or nobody'd notice them much....  However, the damage is
+done.  And now it's for us to wonder how long our house
+and our lives will be safe among these emotional
+French."  (Mr. Bruno knew there was nothing
+in this alarmist suggestion,
+but could not resist uttering it.  His difference from the
+ordinary panic-monger was his ability to stand outside himself
+and laugh at his own delight.)  "Supposing they burn our
+house about our heads."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will they really?  How ripping!  Is it going to be as
+exciting as that?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who knows?  The French are without some principle of
+balance.  However, I shouldn't talk to Miss Carrell about these
+things; and certainly not to Hollins.  Panic is a light sleeper
+in minds that have never been properly <i>trued</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, I won't," promised Daphne, proud to be held of
+stabler make than Miss Carrell and Hollins, and impressed (as
+often during talks with her father) at the enormous number
+of defective people in the world.  She was struck, too, at his
+originality in being a pro-Boer, and wondered whether to learn
+up the part and be one herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Besides," Mr. Bruno concluded, "we shan't be able to keep
+up these two homes.  No one'll buy any books."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The early and continued successes of the Boers, however,
+alienated his sympathy from them.  It was as if he felt they
+were going too far.  And one morning, on finishing his perusal
+of a smashing Boer victory, he turned to Daphne and said,
+"Well, dammit, I think we'd better win now," which relieved
+her considerably.  Then they prepared to return to England.
+On a day in December, after the incredible defeats at
+Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso, the trunks of the Brunos
+were packed, labelled, and standing in the hall at St. Leu.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne went for a farewell walk along the roads of the
+forest.  The trees were quite bare, but many of the dead leaves
+still littered the paths.  Though mid-afternoon, the sun-rays,
+slanting through the boles, had the sad effulgence of evening.
+Her random progress led her as far as the Pont de Diable
+and back upon her tracks.  It was on this homeward stroll,
+just as she was nearing the edge of the trees, that she was
+abruptly withdrawn from her inward thinking by the sight
+of a man approaching her.  The cut of his black overcoat and
+his height suggested that he was English.  On his perceiving
+her he quickened his steps.  It was Roger Muirhead surely.
+Yes, it was he; and tall and handsome he looked.  He was now
+smiling recognition, and she replying with questioning eyebrows.
+That he had come in search of her was manifest, and the
+thought could only please.  A rapid wonder passed by her
+mind: was she to be given at last the opportunity of saying,
+as she had always wished to do, "It's no good, Roger.  I don't
+love you"?  But now, in her dominant gentleness, she had lost
+the desire to say it.  He mustn't be hurt like that.  Not more
+than was inevitable.  Less, much less, were it possible....
+And while she thought these things she was smiling at him
+with questioning eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What on earth's produced you in these parts?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger lifted his shoulders and looked embarrassed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I was in Paris ... and thought I might as well look
+you up.  Your people at the house told me you were here, so
+I said I'd come and look for you ... as I've got to go back
+to Paris almost at once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's awfully nice of you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, it isn't....  At least ... Oh, I'd better tell you
+the reason why I've come.  (May I walk back with you?)  What
+do you think it is?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You've just said: to see us; to see some English friends
+who happen to be in the same strange land as you are in.  I
+always find that people whom one would hardly know in England,
+if one meets them in a racket of foreigners, are one's
+best friends."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger gave silence to this as he walked by her side, and
+she feared she had hurt him more than she meant.  So she
+hastily added:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's topping to see you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No&mdash;no&mdash;I ... Duffy, it was to find you, and you only,
+that I came."  Her heart throbbed.  "I wasn't really staying
+in Paris.  I left England on the impulse of the moment last
+night, and I shall have to get back to-night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said nothing, but walked on with him, occasionally
+kicking at the dead leaves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy, I've been in love with you ever since you appeared
+at that ball.  No, please let me go on.  I&mdash;I'm sure you were
+meant for me, because each time the first sight of you has been
+enough to make me fall in love with you.  That blasted
+waltz&mdash;I've been humming it ever since, on purpose to work myself
+into a sad condition."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But&mdash;&mdash;" she began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, please let me go on.  This is what made me come out.
+I've joined Sinclair's Horse, and I'm going to South Africa
+almost immediately.  I expect my orders for the front any
+day now.  It's all been perfectly glorious except&mdash;well, I've
+been dreaming how splendid it would be if I could go out
+engaged to you.  I can't bear to think of any one else walking
+off with you in the meantime....  So I resolved to charge
+straight at it....  Duffy, if we were engaged I should be able
+to write to you.  And&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Roger, I'd give anything to be able to do what you ask,
+but I&mdash;I can't&mdash;&mdash;"  The words "I don't love you" should
+have come here, but she would not say them.  The way of
+gentleness was to remove his castle brick by brick, not to shatter
+it at a blow.  "I'll write to you, however, regularly...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked on, she diverging him towards an opening in
+the trees, for he seemed unconscious or indifferent which
+direction he took.  He must speak next; and it was a while
+before his answer came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Duffy, I know I've jumped it on you rather, but I
+was forced to, wasn't I?  Do take that into consideration,
+and&mdash;I mean, it's a time for deciding things quickly and not
+spreading them over their usual period.  I feel sure&mdash;I know
+you're destined to love me&mdash;you <i>did</i> once&mdash;and I don't believe&mdash;I
+never have believed that you are absolutely without feeling
+for me now.  Little things made me think&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After all her indifference, of which she had been so proud,
+these words came as a sharp temptation&mdash;a temptation to say,
+"You're as wrong as you can be.  I've no trace of love for
+you"; but she held them back.  Sometimes it wasn't easy to
+be gentle....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy, do say you will be engaged to me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't, Roger....  We don't know each other well
+enough...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Exactly.  I've never had a reasonable chance.  I've only
+had two spells of acquaintance with you.  And the very way
+we've been forced apart each time makes me think we're
+intended for one another.  I believe that a fate waits for every
+man and that you are mine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Roger, you're incurably romantic, aren't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This never offended him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps I am, if it's romantic to believe that.  All I know
+is that I love you with all my heart and soul."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm awfully sorry, Roger ... but I can't do what you ask....
+I wish I were able to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were now out of the trees and walking down the slope
+to St. Leu.  The nearing of the houses prompted Roger to say
+despairingly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, if you can't go as far as that, will you promise not
+to get engaged to any one else till I come back or am
+killed&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Roger, you mustn't be killed.  Don't say that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He scarcely listened to her interruption.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy, promise me you won't get engaged to any one till I
+come back.  The war can't last long.  If we don't wipe up a
+few Dutch farmers in six months we shall be a poor set.  Wait
+till I come back so that I can have the chance of a run with
+the others."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the humblest thing he had said, and it went to her
+heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There'll be no others," she murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course there will be.  As I told you once before, there'll
+always be heaps who want you.  That's what makes me mad....
+Throughout the journey here I was in mortal dread lest
+I should find you already engaged; and when I glanced at your
+finger just now and realised you were still unwon I believed
+in my fate again."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Roger, you must get that idea out of your head....  It's
+a little sentimental, isn't it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was to put it a different way.  To be called romantic
+was pleasing, but to have his love and his faith dubbed
+sentimental had clearly injured his pride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does that mean you won't promise me anything?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid so.  It wouldn't be fair."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right."  His face, as she always phrased it, had
+"tightened."  They were at the bottom of the hill, and he put out his
+hand.  "Well, good-bye."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come and have some tea with us," she said hastily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, thanks.  I must get back."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took her hand coldly, and after a glance at his watch,
+murmured something and moved on in front of her.  She
+watched him stride a little way and then, unable to let him
+go like that, ran hurriedly after him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Roger," she called.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?" He stopped and turned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want you to go like that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled his wry smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, there's no other way to go unless you do what
+I ask.  And I'm not going to pester you for favours.  I don't
+do that sort of thing easily....  You're the only person in my
+life I've ever humbled myself before.  I shouldn't have done
+it if this war hadn't forced my hand.  After all, I've kept this
+to myself for nearly two years."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But Roger&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And I don't ask you to be engaged to me, but only to wait
+till I come back, so that I may have a fair run with the other
+fellows.  It isn't much.  The war won't go on for ever.
+Besides, I should be invalided or wounded sooner or later; or
+killed, which would relieve you of your promise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Roger, don't talk like that.  If you'll promise not to think
+there's much chance of our ever getting married I'll promise
+to do what you asked."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy, you will?"  There was almost a note of triumph
+in his voice.  "Oh, thanks ... thanks awfully.  It makes all
+the difference.  You may call me romantic, if you like, but I
+shall feel now as if I were fighting to&mdash;to win through to you
+in spite of everything you say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having allowed a faint haze of falsity to arise it was useless
+to try dissipating it now.  Best continue being kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you know you are not really bound to go by the midnight
+boat.  Come back and see the family.  It's all returning
+to England to-morrow, and you can meet us in Paris and look
+after Miss Carrell and Hollins as far as London, while I look
+after Father."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He met this with his grim smile; and, chatting naturally,
+though sometimes she caught him staring at her in admiration,
+they walked back to the house.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Roger's visit and request were at least flattering, and she
+wanted to tell some one about it.  Especially since he had been
+such a success on the journey to London and had looked
+magnificent.  Her father she could not tell, for he had seen
+her moving on her tragic plateau, and would feel that those
+who walked up there should walk above vanities.  Miss
+Carrell?  Was she right in suspecting that gentleness forbade
+unnecessary brag to Miss Carrell about offers of marriage?
+There was Hollins.  She must tell Hollins.  And in the
+evening following the day of their return to Old Hall House she
+begged the old servant to come and sit in the playroom and
+mend her stockings there.  For twenty minutes she discussed
+a miscellany of topics, awaiting the propitious moment.  And
+when they had reached the voyage of yesterday she asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What did you think of Mr. Muirhead?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins pursed her mouth at the hole she was darning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not much.  I went to the door myself when he come, and
+before he could speak I thought, 'He's English.'  They look
+quite different, don't they?  They look gentlemen.  But this
+one struck me as having rather a sort of condescending tone,
+if you know what I mean."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you know what he came for?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He said he happened to be around and knew you but not
+the master, so I sent him after you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You didn't know what you were sending, did you?  If I
+tell you what he really came for will you promise not to tell
+any one?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins, perceiving the glimmer of an interesting revelation,
+laid down her stocking.  What it was she probably had no idea,
+still thinking of her young mistress as a schoolgirl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I won't say anything if you tell me not to."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He came to ask me to marry him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Duffy!  Good gracious! ... But I never knew there
+was anything between you.  I never seen him before.  Good
+gracious....  I'm sorry I said I didn't quite take to him, first
+go off, as you might say.  It was only his manner, and I suppose
+it was natural for him to think I was an ordinary servant....
+Lord....  Miss Duffy!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't get excited.  I refused him....  But I <i>did</i> promise
+not to get engaged to any one else till he comes back.  He's
+going to the war, you see."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But he isn't a soldier, is he?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not professionally.  He's Sir Roger Muirhead's son."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then what's he want to go out there for?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, a lot of men besides the regulars are going now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are they?  I don't know what they're up to.  Aren't there
+enough soldiers?  It seems we're getting beat everywhere.
+Well, I hope your Mr. Moorhead'll teach them Boers a lesson.
+They appear to fight pretty dirty, waving white flags and all
+that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I think that's largely made up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, no, it isn't.  I seen it in the papers yesterday."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, the French papers tell a very different story."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They <i>would</i>, 'ating us as they do, and being a race of liars,
+as far as I can make out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Personally, I rather admire the Boers and think they're
+putting up a jolly plucky fight."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hollins took up her stocking again with an unbelieving smile
+and a shake of the head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, Miss Duffy, that won't do.  You ain't a pro-Boer, as
+they say.  One can't hold with English people as says the other
+side is right.  Not that I ever met any who did, and I don't
+believe they're proper English at all.  But lor! to think of that
+young gentleman asking you to marry him!"  This was obviously
+the more interesting subject to her.  "To think that all
+that sort of thing's beginning....  Why, it seems only
+yesterday that the bell rang and the noos come to your father as
+how he'd got a little daughter.  And then when your mamma
+asked for you to be brought to her, before she passed away&mdash;it
+don't seem twenty years."  She stopped her darning to scratch
+her head with the needle.  "Funny you're not in the least like
+her.  She was fair and small and timid like.  Lor!  I remember
+I used to say that with your eyes you'd soon have the young
+men hanging around.  And now it's comin' to pass.  I used to
+say your eyes is your trump card...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but they're the only trump I've got," grumbled Daphne.
+"Otherwise I've a putrid hand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It don't look like it, do it?" smiled Hollins, "seeing that
+there's been one after you before you're twenty.  And such
+a handsome one, too."  She folded up the completed pair of
+stockings and pushed her wooden ball into the heel of one of
+Mr. Bruno's socks.  "What I always says is, Life's a funny
+business.  The noos come that you'd arrived at that there
+horrible home, and you're brought to the hall door, where I
+met you carried in; and then time passed with cooking and
+washing and mending, and you in the house growing so
+naturally that one hardly noticed your growing at all or worried
+about it&mdash;and now you're going to disappear out of the hall
+door into another life.  Seems strange somehow."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0424"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XXIV
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The papers now filled with pictures of Field-Marshal Lord
+Roberts, who was to proceed at once to the command in
+South Africa, and of Lord Kitchener, who was to be his Chief
+of Staff.  Of Lord Roberts Daphne had never heard, but she
+thought his moustache and imperial rather sweet.  Lord
+Kitchener, on the other hand, had been one of her schoolgirl
+heroes at the time of his return from the Sudan, and she was
+jealous for him that he should not be in supreme command.
+Lord Roberts, in comparison with Kitchener, was just a toy
+of an old man, such a one as she always called "a poor little
+soul."  "Still, generals of that sort are often very pure little
+men," said Daphne comfortingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owen returned from Sillborough for the Christmas holidays,
+and after the feast spent a mysterious night in town.  The next
+evening he apologised to his father and sister and announced
+that he had joined the Imperial Yeomanry.  He expected to
+leave for South Africa any day now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno muttered a mild oath, but was not displeased
+with his son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't say I believe in your war, colonel," said he, "but as
+my good friend Nietzsche puts it with some originality, 'It's
+the fighting halloweth every cause.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Lor' bless you, I don't believe in it either," Owen disclaimed.
+"I only think it's jolly decent&mdash;like sin....  Don't you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for Daphne, she succumbed to a really bourgeois pride
+and sentimentality about her brother.  Ever since he had shot
+up six inches above her and could lift her out of a carriage lest
+her dancing shoes were soiled, she had promoted him to a
+worldly superiority over herself.  It was extraordinary how
+boys, who were such miserable fowl at ten years old, developed
+into something much more competent and assured than yourself.
+She was as excited as he about sleeping-bags, bandoliers,
+revolvers, grey-coats, field-glasses, riding-boots and badges of
+rank.  And it was a pleasure to write to Roger that her brother
+Owen was following him and was in the cavalry, so it was
+possible they would meet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger had left for Cape Town very soon after his hawk-swoop
+on Daphne in the wood.  He wrote regularly and more
+and more affectionately.  It was plain that the loneliness and
+woman-hunger of soldiering had heightened his love, and that
+he was picturing her now as much more wonderful than she
+was.  These letters, so courteous, reverent, and yet breathing
+in every line an impassioned love, raised in her a great
+tenderness towards Roger, an emotion very different from the humble
+worship which was her love for Henry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was always present: if not actually in her thoughts it
+was very close, behind a semi-transparent veil.  If the veil
+thickened, making Henry for a space a well-nigh incredible
+memory, and herself ashamed that her love could quiet so, it
+needed but the appearance of his figure in a dream for her to
+awake and find the wound open, aching in sharp air.  Or she
+would look out of her window at night and see the English
+clouds shaping themselves as mountain ranges, with two points,
+perhaps, like the points of the Mythen; and immediately any
+hardening ground would be painfully broken again, and wild
+sentences arise, "I can't live without you, Henry!" "I must
+have you, Henry!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This pain swelled her tenderness to Roger; and when he
+wrote begging, "Please, <i>please</i> send me a photograph," she
+determined to comply; and determined that it should show her at
+her very best&mdash;or better than that.  It might be the last picture
+he would ever see of her.  She went to the most expensive
+photographer's in Brighton, and on the arrival of proofs, opened
+them eagerly.  They were too wonderful&mdash;<i>perfect</i>!  As she
+studied the picture, large and softened in the latest style, she
+was (as she said) "astonied, and there was no more bitterness
+in her."  It was she&mdash;and yet it was the ideal of her; it was
+her own dream of herself that she had failed to realise.  The
+longing was in her mind for Henry to see it.  Still, there was
+happiness in sending it off to Roger, and thinking of his joy
+in its possession, and imagining it on his camp-table throughout
+the war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a May afternoon she rose from her writing-place with
+a glow of lonely triumph, such as that experienced by Gibbon
+when he had completed "The Decline and Fall of the Roman
+Empire."  She had written the last word of "Madame
+Rolland."  Whatever happened to this manuscript, she had actually
+written a book&mdash;a story with a beginning, a middle, and an
+end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether it were good or bad, she could not decide.  A few
+parts she felt sure were splendid, of a great many she feared
+the worst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What to do with it now?  She could not bring herself to
+show the manuscript to anybody before sending it to the
+publishers.  Her father she had always meant to surprise by its
+publication; Miss Carrell was a nonentity, and Hollins, if she
+struggled through it, would certainly say it was beautiful.  And
+having shut herself within herself of late she had no very
+intimate friends.  Mrs. Montague Jevons was abroad.  If only
+Henry could have criticised it!  But her book, she knew, would
+have been quite different then.  Desiring only to earn his
+commendation, and indifferent to the world, she would not have
+compromised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Over what name should it be sent to the publishers?  Her
+own she would have liked.  "Daphne Bruno" sounded an
+author's name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, no.  If it's as rotten as I sometimes think it, I should
+let father down.  Besides, it might go a bit on his name, and
+that I don't want."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Helen Gilder" was her final concoction.  "'Madame Rolland,'
+by Helen Gilder."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the manuscript had to be typed.  There was a lady
+who did typing in Haywards Heath, where she had a little
+office over a shop in Boltro Road.  It would be very pleasant
+walking the two miles there with the manuscript under her
+arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Half an hour later she was in the office of Miss Elsie Troon,
+typist, and saying with a mixture of self-consciousness and
+vanity:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I want this typed, please; and what is the very soonest I
+could have it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Troon, a stout blonde, was quite unmoved at having
+an author in her office.  She looked at the manuscript, giving
+Daphne an uncomfortable moment as the title page passed
+beneath her eyes, estimated the number of words, and named
+a date.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should have liked it before that, as I have got to send
+it to the publisher's reader as soon as possible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This sounded excellent, and was reasonably true.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Troon, her blood still unwarmed, promised to have it
+completed by a day earlier, and Daphne departed, carrying
+down into the street an anxiety lest any disaster overtook the
+manuscript while it was out of her hands.  Apart from this
+anxiety, her walk home was very happy, and her sense of work
+completed made it seem like the first evening of a holiday.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the day came to fetch the typescript she was almost
+as excited as if she were going to see her book in print.  But
+she showed no emotion to the phlegmatic Miss Troon, not even
+examining the work before it was packed up.  And in the
+street, with some idea that Miss Troon might be leaning out of
+her window and watching, she refrained from undoing the
+parcel till she was round a corner.  But thereafter she walked
+home along the town and the country road reading it page by
+page and occasionally walking into other pedestrians or the
+hedge.  It was very well typed, and seemed to have shed some
+of its amateurishness with this change of dress.  Certain
+corrections she made with her pencil, standing in the middle of
+the road or with a foot on the hedge.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Her scheme was to send it to the most important publishers
+first (avoiding her father's lest they recognised the owner's
+name) and work downward to the smaller people.  It was
+rather thrilling, composing a letter to the firm; writing on the
+fly-leaf of the typescript: "Property of Miss Daphne Bruno,
+Old Hall House, Wivelsfield, Sussex," and then making up
+the parcel.  The last knot tied she went out and posted it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I only expect to get it back.  Of course, I must expect to
+get it back once or twice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first time it returned she took the parcel from the
+postman's hand with a steady face, and the hope that he would not
+observe her heightened colour and slight abstraction.  She carried
+it into the playroom and redirected it, with a new letter, to
+the second publisher on the list.  Every morning she watched
+the postman coming up the drive, and on a day three weeks
+later saw in his hand the parcel of unmistakable shape.  The
+third time she was out when it came, and found it in the hall,
+on returning from a ride.  It was a day in July, and the
+anniversary, so her diary told her, of one of the most intimate
+conversations with Henry, under the mountains of Brunnen.  The
+fourth time she saw it again in the postman's hands; and lest
+he should begin to suspect what it was and know her for a
+humbled failure, she ran out and joked with him as she took it
+from his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fifth time it stayed away so long that she thought she
+might write for information, and did so in a very courteous
+letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It'll reach them to-morrow morning, and I ought to get an
+answer the next day after breakfast."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That next day there was, surely enough, a letter for her with
+the publisher's imprint.  This set one's heart going fast and
+awkwardly; no parcel, just a letter alone.  With quivering
+fingers she opened and drew out the typed sheet.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"DEAR MADAM (it said),&mdash;We desire to thank you for giving
+us the opportunity of reading your novel, 'Madame Rolland,'
+but after carefully considering it we have regretfully decided
+that we cannot make you any offer for its publication.  We
+are therefore returning it under separate cover...."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+She tossed down the sheet with the words, "All right, I'll
+send it to the next, and you'll be sorry some day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This much of comfort she tried to suck from the letter, that
+they had taken long to make up their minds.  But the sceptic
+had another view; he hinted that they had not read it at all
+and, on receipt of her inquiry, had returned it by the next post.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That winter and spring she sent it to three or four more
+publishers, directing it each time in a soulless, automatic way,
+entirely without hope, but liking to tell herself that she hadn't
+given in.  She wrote nothing else, and read little.  Ambition
+had drawn into a shell and was hibernating there.  Careless
+now to whom she submitted it, she tried a Mr. D. J. Stendal,
+whose advertisement she had seen in a corner of a weekly
+paper.  Beneath its tabulated titles it had added, "Authors
+Invited to Submit Books."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His reply came a week later.  It said that Mr. Stendal was
+interested in her work and would like to see her at some time
+suitable to herself, either at his office in Queen Victoria Street,
+or, since he would be in Brighton that week-end, at the Old
+Ship Hotel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now her heart beat to a tune of high hope again.  Ambition
+leapt from its shell as if it had never been torpid at all.  From
+Mr. D. J. Stendal's crested paper and offices in Queen Victoria
+Street she conjectured that his house must be in no small way.
+And Mr. D. J. Stendal was coming himself.  Did this mean
+that her book was so good that the head of the firm was prepared
+to wait on her?  Or was it&mdash;was it that Mr. D. J. Stendal,
+despite his note-paper, had less standing than&mdash;she hurried to
+look again at his advertisement.  It was certainly a very small
+advertisement, giving the titles of some poetry books by writers
+with unfamiliar names.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Less excited, but still pleased that some one was prepared
+to publish her work, and fortifying herself with the words,
+"Beggars can't be choosers," she wrote that she would be happy
+to interview Mr. Stendal in Brighton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monday was the day assigned; and it was an April afternoon,
+warmer than any that had gone before so that the spirit of
+holiday was along the Brighton front, when Daphne pushed
+open the door of the Old Ship Hotel and asked at a counter
+for Mr. D. J. Stendal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He's expecting me," said she to the attendant, wondering
+if he knew Mr. D. J. Stendal was a publisher, and would guess
+her to be one of his authoresses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While a boy in buttons went to look for her host, she watched
+the people as they came and went, and vaguely pitied them their
+flat occupations or commonplace holiday.  Not one of them,
+probably, was at the verge of exciting things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Stendal's just here, miss," said the returning boy; and
+he led her to an ante-room where he pointed to a little,
+clean-shaven, sharp-featured man, in a blue serge suit, who was
+staring out of the window at the sea-front.  On the table beside
+him was an empty cup of coffee, its saucer littered with cigar
+ash.  A disappointingly insignificant little man&mdash;but then, what
+about Lord Roberts.  "Let's hope D. J. is just such a pure little
+man," thought Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's 'im, miss."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Stendal turned from the window as she drew near and
+rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, Miss Bruno, I imagine, Miss Daphne Bruno.  Yes.  It's
+exceedingly kind of you to give me the opportunity of
+discussing things with you personally.  Won't you sit down?"  He
+smiled.  "You're even younger than I thought."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the quick sensitiveness of an author Daphne wondered
+what this meant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Am I?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Well, you don't mind my cigar, I suppose?&mdash;well,
+we've all read 'Madame Rolland' with interest, and on certain
+considerations have decided that we should like to publish it
+for you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The "We've all" reassured her; evidently the firm was not
+small.  But it was a shock to hear the title rendered in English
+as "Maddum Rollend."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she said inquiringly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Helen Gilder' I see you call yourself.  I wonder why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I made it up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But why, when&mdash;or p'raps you didn't want the name
+confused with the great Tenter Bruno?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne flushed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not particularly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Stendal now looked out of the window, which had the
+effect of bringing into the ante-room the sounds of horse-traffic
+and the footsteps of passers-by and the shrieks of children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're not any relation to him by any chance, are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, yes," said Daphne, with an awkward smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, <i>relly</i>?"  Mr. Stendal's eyes came away from the window
+and looked straight at his visitor, whimsically.  "Relly?
+This <i>is</i> interesting.  Not his daughter, by any chance?  Of
+course, he lives this way, doesn't he?  Not his <i>daughter</i>?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne nodded, very red.  And Mr. Stendal's eyebrows were
+surprised and delighted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, relly.  I <i>am</i>&mdash;I count this interview a great privilege.
+Yes, and now I come to look, you're not unlike some of his
+pictures.  But why, Miss Bruno&mdash;why, with a name to conjure
+with like yours&mdash;don't you publish under it?  Your book has a
+charm, an innocent charm, that pleased me, but"&mdash;his lips
+compressed, as his head shook doubtfully&mdash;"the difficulty always is
+to start an unknown author.  You can't get the necessary
+publicity.  And no book, however good, can do much without that.
+With your father's name we could at least get notice taken of it.
+We should&mdash;I might say, we should be honoured to publish
+'Rollend' for your father's daughter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but that's just what I don't want."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sensitive Daphne's heart was drooping at the thought
+that her work was not really good.  Doubtless the great houses
+who only published work on its merits had rightly turned it
+down....  But no, she wouldn't think that.  She would believe
+in it despite everything.  It was not that she was a fool,
+but only that she preferred to be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why don't you want it, Miss Bruno?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because I want it to go on its own strength ... and father
+knows nothing at all about it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Stendal smiled sympathetically&mdash;knowingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I see&mdash;I quite see.  I quite appreciate your position.  It's
+to be a surprise, eh? ... And may I ask if&mdash;you'll forgive
+me, I'm sure, for no lady minds being considered younger
+than she is&mdash;may I ask if you're still a minor?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Does that mean, am I twenty-one?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I was twenty-one last February."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Stendal smiled benignantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear me!  What it is to look sixteen!  You see, you need
+to be over twenty-one if you're going to sign an agreement.
+In your own interest I mentioned it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Agreement?"  Her brows furrowed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes, there's always an agreement between publisher and
+author."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I didn't realise that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No?  Well, it's quite a simple matter....  Now, as regards
+terms.  You mustn't expect to make a great pile of money
+with your first book."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I don't," assured Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  Especially when it's without any particular sting.  The
+great houses find it difficult to sell seven hundred copies of an
+unknown writer's book....  Myself, I make quite a feature of
+publishing the work of young writers&mdash;why, I can't say&mdash;they
+appeal to me, perhaps.  But, as I expect you know, it's generally
+poytry I publish.  Now, in the case of poytry, which is even
+more difficult to sell, the author generally contributes towards
+the cost of production, and after a certain number have been
+sold, he begins to get a royalty on each copy."  Mr. Stendal
+smiled benignly.  "Now, I don't propose to ask you to
+contribute anything.  Nor do I propose to buy your copyright for
+a sum down&mdash;I always think that's so unfair&mdash;if the book was
+to go, I might make hundreds, while you'd only get your small
+sum."  He then told the stories of several famous novels which
+had made thousands for their publishers and nothing for their
+authors, and Daphne was astonished; many of them were
+books she had read.  "Yes, it's pure roguery, isn't it?" nodded
+Mr. Stendal.  "Well, what I suggest is that, after you've sold a
+thousand copies, you get a royalty on every copy of ten per
+cent. of the published price.  I shall be losing money till I've
+sold something in the neighbourhood of a thousand copies."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It sounds all right," smiled Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I might even, if you sold, say, five thousand, raise the
+royalty to fifteen per cent."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, thanks."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I desire to be perfectly fair.  Well, now the question
+of name.  I quite appreciate that you don't want your father
+to know anything about it.  If it's a success, you want to be
+able to tell him that Helen Gilder is relly Miss Daphne Bruno.
+Whereas, if it isn't a success, you needn't say anything."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, that's it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite so.  Still, may I suggest that you publish it
+anonymously?  Anonymous books sometimes cause a good deal of
+talk and speculation&mdash;which helps them considerably.  Now
+'Rollend' is a slight book&mdash;very nice as far as it goes&mdash;but it
+can't afford to do without these adventitious aids.  'Helen
+Gilder' will do it no good at all.  Anonymity might help a
+little&mdash;nothing much, but a little.  'Tennyrate, I strongly
+recommend it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She agreed to this, and, a little later, the conversation
+terminated in amiable chaff from Mr. Stendal, and the assurance, at
+the door of the hotel, that he would forward the agreement
+at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out in the sunshine of the Brighton front her thoughts were
+a mixture of disappointment and exultation, misgiving and
+hope: disappointment at the qualified praise of Mr. Stendal and
+the faint aura of doubts that hung around his person; exultation
+because her book would at least be printed and stand on her
+shelves, which was more than any of these people in the
+carriages or on the pavements had achieved; misgiving lest the
+critics laughed at her work, and hope that they might
+pronounce it very good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish I knew if it were good or bad.  However, I won't
+let myself expect it's going to do anything big....  But, of
+course, it's quite possible it might be good and catch on.  And
+then..."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave herself to the more pleasurable business of imagining
+the sensation in the papers and the surprise that would be
+sprung on her father and Owen and Roger.  Roger, being an
+ambitious person, would hardly suspect that she also could do a
+noisy thing in the world.  Probably, though not admitting it,
+he would be a little jealous.  And if it were a success, and
+published in America, under its author's real name, and Henry
+saw it!
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0425"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XXV
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Owen and Roger wrote frequently.  They had met at
+Krugersdorp, as both reported in their letters:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"I struck Roger Muirhead's crowd the other day," said Owen.
+"My dear, Roger's a great man.  He's doing things properly.
+If you can conceive an amalgam of the Iron Duke, Frederick
+the Great, Cromwell and Halifax, that's Roger.  He's the sort
+that says: 'My men may fear me, but I think you'll agree they'll
+follow me anywhere.'  I really believe he imagines the British
+are in the right and the Boers in the wrong; though Heaven
+knows why.  And did you know he was religious?  But he is.
+He never fails to take his men to church if there's a parade.
+It seems the old boy, his pater, is a tremendous churchman;
+though, again, Heaven knows why.  I blew into his tent, and
+on a box beside his bed was the same photograph of you as
+you sent me.  Is he still smitten with you, or how did he get it?
+I'm sorry I don't like him if <i>you</i> do.  I'll try to; but, honestly,
+I think him at present rather pompous and superior.  He must
+always disagree with you lest, by agreeing, he should appear to
+be less than you.  I can look into his head and see his motives
+hopping and popping about, just as if his skull were made of
+glass, which makes me think I must inherit some of your dear
+father's insight.  But he may grow out of these things.  He's
+very young.  And I must say he never misses a chance of being
+wounded or killed.  He's either unco brave, or so ambitious
+that he's ready to be killed if only he can do some enormously
+brave deed and have it trumpeted all over the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Love to father, and tell him I met a British officer the other
+day who had read one of his books.  Love to Miss Carrell and
+dear old Herbert Hollins.&mdash;Your hero brother,
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+"OWEN BRUNO."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, reading this letter, was more annoyed with Owen
+than critical of Roger.  It was irritating that her brother should
+sit in judgment, and contemptuously, on a man who had asked
+her to marry him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"After all, Owen, just as much as Roger, has created a character
+that he tries to live up to&mdash;the humorous, cynical young
+man....  When he's been through some pain"&mdash;this she
+thought with a little pride&mdash;"he'll be more generous."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger's letter had come by the same mail:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"I met your young brother the other day.  He's a curious kid.
+He always seems to want to laugh at everything.  I think I've
+got as much humour as most men, but I like to believe there are
+some ideals worth holding.  If he doesn't believe we're doing
+a decent job out here, what on earth has he come for?  I am
+afraid I was rather rude, but I can't stick it when people try
+to make out that every country and every class and every school
+is right except their own, and I am afraid I'm apt to speak my
+mind sometimes.  It's not as though I was a Tory without an
+idea beyond my own interests.  Like father, who's one of the
+few capitalists who have ever stood for Liberalism, I'm a
+Liberal, but I believe in this war and came out to it, though many
+of my political friends cried shame on me for doing it...."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Now she was annoyed with Roger.  "Owen's right: Roger's
+egotism leaks out everywhere."  And even as she said it she
+remembered that all her thoughts for the last year and more,
+while men were dying daily on the veldt and the British armies,
+after an echoing humiliation, were only recovering in a
+long-drawn tussle, had been concentrated on herself and her desire
+to do something big.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I doubt if there's much to choose between any of us; every
+one I've had anything to do with has lived in a self-created
+role; Miss Durgon, old Miss Vidella, Miss Sims, Daddy, Roger,
+Owen and myself.  Henry, I believe, did it least of all.  Or
+his role was a better one; of itself it destroyed the play-actor....
+Roger must think me rather a fool, if he imagines I don't
+see all these things.  But 'Madame Rolland' 'll make him open
+his eyes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, one morning as she was casually opening the
+paper, she found herself looking straight at a portrait of Roger.
+Quick self-reproach hampered her heart; she feared he was
+dead.  It beat again with relief and excitement when she saw
+beneath the picture: "The Hero of Wittfontein.  Lieut. Roger
+Muirhead, whose heroism is reported on page 5."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eagerly turning to page five she read under sensational
+headlines a column in honour of Roger.  It was usual enough in
+those days to see the exploits of English officers illuminated and
+stressed till they seemed Homeric; but few had given the
+journalistic imagination a better opening than Roger.  It rushed in
+a torrent over his deed and lapped worshippingly about his feet.
+He had been in command of a small post at a place called
+Wittfontein, which lay across the line of Hertzog's raid into Cape
+Colony.  He and his "handful" of men had been attacked by a
+large force of Boers who had expected to sweep them up in a
+morning's work before proceeding to the main column advancing
+on Britstown.  But Lieutenant Muirhead thought differently.
+Nothing else would satisfy him but to remain undefeated
+behind their raid, or to delay them by resisting to the
+last man, while his commanding officer got wind of the
+position.  So all day, though wounded in shoulder and knee and
+faint with loss of blood, he had crawled among his men,
+revolver in hand, stiffening the resistance of this "tiny
+Ladysmith" and refusing to give up the place of command.  The
+enemy had actually abandoned all attempt at capture, although
+when the British relieving force arrived at the Wittfontein post,
+<i>not one of its defenders was found to be without a wound</i>.
+Mr. Muirhead was by this time unconscious.  The men, now
+that the Boers had cleared off and left them victors, were in high
+spirits and full of praises for their officer.  Some of their
+remarks were quoted.  "Doubt if we could have done it without
+him."  "He's severe enough, but he don't tell no one to do what
+he wouldn't do himself."  (What music to Roger's ears must
+this sentence have been!)  "He was bound to do something big
+if the war went on long enough, and he didn't get himself
+killed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A thought so unworthy had stirred in Daphne's mind that,
+in order to drive it back and refuse it foot-room again, she
+jumped up and rushed into her father's study to find more
+papers and more accounts of the Hero of Wittfontein; she took
+them for proud showing to Miss Carrell and Hollins, and she
+hurried to her table and wrote to Roger.  "Oh, Roger, I'm
+thrilled.  It's wonderful to be your friend."  This was
+expiation, because for a moment she had felt jealousy and
+disappointment that Roger had achieved his fame before her.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The papers during several days gave space to Lieut. Muirhead.
+They reported his improvement in hospital, gave a summary
+of his life, and spoke of his desire after the war to enter
+politics.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne wondered if his head would be turned, and could
+not expel the thought that, now he was so big a man, with the
+world at his feet, he might see fit to drop her as he had done
+once before.  Perhaps the interval between his letters would
+increase till they stopped altogether.  He was in no wise pledged
+to her.  But his next letter, under a base hospital address, began:
+"My dearest Duffy," which was a phrase he had never employed
+hitherto.  What emotion, in the glow of his triumph,
+had impelled its use?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The early part of the letter was studiously occupied with
+ordinary details of his life; but they were only like a creeper on
+its real structure, which said:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"You will, I suppose, have heard of the scrap at Wittfontein.
+I can't think what they are making all this fuss about.  It was,
+of course, a nasty day, but we had to fight whether we liked it
+or not.  The only alternative was to give ourselves up, and that
+isn't done.  I had no use for handing over my weapons and
+the weapons of my men to the Boers.  Hundreds of others
+would have done what we did and been mopped up.  We were
+saved, and therefore everybody hears about it.  And as for
+all that talk about my keeping command when I was wounded
+in the leg and shoulder (they might have added the thigh and
+wrist as well), what could I do?  We were surrounded, and
+I had nowhere to go and get into bed.  And I didn't fancy
+seeing my sergeant take over command as long as I was in my
+senses.  The men were distinctly cock-a-hoop when the Boers
+melted, and most of the puff in the papers is due to their
+generous enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"However, I dare say all this praise will please the pater
+and mater, so I am glad of it for their sakes.  But I am still
+happier if it pleases you at all, because you are more to me
+even than them.  Duffy, I have wanted all the war to do
+something big, simply to seem worthy of you.  And dearest (forgive
+me for writing that word, but I feel I must, and it can't hurt
+you), when I first got into hospital feeling frightfully low
+(emotionally exhausted, I suppose) I made sure I was going
+to die; and all the time I thought of you as I found you in
+that wood or left you on Victoria Station, and I didn't want
+to die, for I wanted, at any rate, to be in the same world as
+you..."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne's eyes moistened; these were words she had used in
+her thoughts of Henry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"... When I picked up that divine photograph from the
+table beside me I simply longed for you.  I would try to
+imagine you coming through the door into the ward.  And when
+I thought I might be sent home, I was lifted to the seventh
+heaven at the thought of seeing you within a measurable
+distance of time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I only tell you this because it is proof of how much I love
+you.  If I have achieved any sort of fame, I am happy because
+I have got something to offer at your feet.  I want to say this,
+Duffy: if you have yet learned to love me, and feel you could
+marry me, I should love to consider myself engaged to you,
+and should be only too happy if you cared to tell everybody
+that we were engaged.  But, if not, well, I shall understand, and
+I expect I shall be home soon enough to plead my cause better."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor, dear Roger," said Daphne, moved.  "You thought
+I'd like to proclaim my engagement to you just now when
+your name is on everybody's lips.  I think it was sweet of you
+to offer me the chance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laid down the letter and walked to the window.  Who
+could say?&mdash;had Switzerland never happened she might have
+learned to love him.  He was a little egotistical and pompous,
+but so was she and every one else.  It would have been nice to
+say she was his <i>fiancée</i>, and to have all the papers seizing on
+to it.  And now she mustn't hurt him by too final a refusal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spent a long time phrasing her reply:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"MY DEAR ROGER,&mdash;Honestly, I am awfully proud of your
+last letter, and think everything in it was splendid of you.  I
+certainly like you better than I have ever done, but not enough
+to say I'll marry you.  You see, I haven't seen very much of
+you.  But it's ripping to hear you are coming back soon...."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Like a moving staircase time carried her towards the date
+of "Madame Rolland's" publication.  Excitement fought with
+timidity, now uppermost, now under, but generally winning.
+Often she scanned her father's literary papers, hoping to find
+a preliminary notice.  She saw none, but, though disappointed,
+was not angry.  If the story were a success there would be
+plenty of notices of her next book.  The night before publication
+she took her secret to bed with her, where it kept her
+pillow hot and her body restless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the day she rose and hastily dressed, in a desire to be
+down before the others that she might separate for herself a
+few minutes with the newspapers.  An advertisement might
+be there, and possibly one or two reviews.  Of course she would
+not expect big advertisements like her father's&mdash;just her book
+in a column of other titles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a mid-week day, bringing several papers and journals.
+One by one, having found nothing, she laid them by.  When the
+last was abandoned empty her shoulders shrugged and her hand
+dropped to her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right," she said resignedly, hardly knowing what she
+meant by the words, and added: "I think he might have put
+in a small advertisement."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Restless throughout the day, she decided to go where there
+were bookshops that she might see if "Madame Rolland" were
+in the windows.  Brighton, of course.  She escaped from the
+house and took the train.  And in Brighton she wandered from
+book-shop window to book-shop window, seeking in vain the
+cover or the back of her book.  At last, thinking desperately
+that she must have some encouragement to go on with, she
+entered a shop to ask for "Madame Rolland" over the counter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a nervous business when the young man enquired her
+needs, and she had to utter the title of her own book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you a copy"&mdash;she coughed, and cleared her throat&mdash;"of
+'Madame Rolland'?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, miss.  Not in stock.  Is it an old book?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no.  I think it's published to-day."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it?  We haven't heard of it.  Who is it by?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I think it's anonymous."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Indeed, miss?  Who publishes it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stendal.  Mr. D. J. Stendal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man bowed, and said nothing.  Obviously he
+did not like to admit that the name was unfamiliar.  Daphne,
+by now, though sanity told her it was nonsense, was
+apprehensive lest he thought her the authoress, and had no desire
+beyond getting out of the shop.  But not too quickly, or she
+would confirm his suspicions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, D. J. Stendal," she said again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, we can get it for you, miss, in a couple of days."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, don't trouble.  I'll try to get it elsewhere.  Thank you
+so much."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This inquiry she repeated at every bookshop, and always
+with the same result.  One man, indeed, did find the book
+mentioned in a list sent out by Mr. Stendal, and she had the
+satisfaction of seeing "Madame Rolland" in print on a slip
+of paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps you'd like to keep that list, miss," said the
+man&mdash;innocently, it was to be hoped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, thanks.  Well&mdash;yes&mdash;I will."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She passed out into the crowded Western Road, carrying
+Mr. Stendal's list.  After a few hundred paces her thoughts
+were disturbed by a strong smell of coffee that seemed to rise
+from the pavement, and she found herself opposite an Oriental
+café.  It was tempting.  A cup would remove the parched taste
+from her mouth, and the gathering tiredness in her head and
+eyes.  She climbed the stairs to the first floor, and sat at a
+table by the window.  Here she sipped her coffee, or rested her
+face in her palm, as she watched the carts and buses and
+pedestrians below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It looms so important to me," thought she, "that I can't
+imagine how microscopically small it is to all these people and
+everybody else."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Hope sprang afresh next morning when six presentation
+copies arrived; and in the next weeks she trusted to see some
+advertisement or review in this paper or that.  But nothing
+could she track till one day, as she was walking on Ditchling
+Common, a carriage passed her, and Mrs. Montague Jevons
+immediately stopped her coachman, and hailed Daphne in a
+sentence that gave her a leap of delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hallo!  Hallo, hallo!  Like father like daughter.  I see
+you've written a book."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne blushed agreement.  "Yes, I'm afraid so," and for
+the sake of something to add, asked: "But how did you
+know?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I've just read an announcement of it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you?" said Daphne&mdash;languidly, to conceal her
+eagerness.  "Where?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>.  Just a small notice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I haven't seen that one.  To-day's?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, this morning's."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must look at it.  Father's got it....  Was it kind?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Very...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As quickly as suited with her mantle of dispassion, she got
+away from Mrs. Monty and hurried home to see what the
+paper had said.  The <i>Telegraph</i>.  This was excellent, for the
+<i>Telegraph</i> was an important journal.  Only when she was
+half-way back did she think: "But how did Mrs. Monty know that
+I wrote it, seeing it's anonymous?"  The question stopped
+her dead on the road.  Had it then leaked out that she was
+the authoress?  This might be good news, showing that
+discussion had played around the book.  Or had Mr. Stendal&mdash;now
+her indignation began to rise&mdash;carefully divulged her name,
+in order to stir up talk and stimulate sales?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she had the paper in her hand, it was a long time
+before she could light upon the notice.  She was looking for
+a small head-line, and perhaps half a column of criticism.
+There was no such thing, though one swept the paper three,
+four, and five times.  At length, in a few inches devoted to
+announcements, she found the lines:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"We understand that a novel published recently, 'Madame
+Rolland,' is really the work of Miss Daphne Bruno, the daughter
+of Mr. T. Tenter Bruno.  The book has been selling well,
+the publisher, Mr. D. J. Stendal, informs us, but this
+interesting news has stimulated the demand."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+On the whole she was pleased.  The statement that the book
+had been selling before the revelation of its authorship
+counter-balanced her anger with Mr. Stendal.  But she was glad that
+the paragraph was small, and not likely to be seen by her father,
+or too many friends.  Not yet had it been declared good, and
+only if it were good did she want people to know of it.  So
+she began to get incensed when she saw in the chatty column
+of that evening's paper an extraordinarily flippant paragraph
+headed, "Following in Father's Footsteps"; and another, though
+this was dignified, in the <i>Evening Advertiser</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The constant repetition of her father's name reminded her
+of something she had quite forgotten: all of these paragraphs
+would be sent to him by his press-cutting agent, and would
+probably be on his breakfast plate the day after to-morrow.  If
+they were, she would not be able to face him.  She would run.
+Pray that he didn't leave his study to-day, and meet any one
+who would enlighten him!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The well-known envelope of the press-cutting agent did not
+appear, however, till three days later.  When Daphne saw it,
+she went out of the house without stopping for any breakfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked along the roads towards Haywards Heath.  The
+impulse strengthened to go up to town and demand an
+explanation from Mr. Stendal.  She was spoiling to be rude.  The
+slippery little beast!  Yes, and now that she was fairly
+successful, she stood in a new relation to him.  She could tell him
+what she thought; and she would.  All the way in the train
+she was framing her insults.  They held allusions to solicitors,
+and "steps" and adequate apologies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Queen Victoria Street she had difficulty in finding the
+offices of Mr. Stendal.  Mr. Stendal's number seemed to be
+occupied by the headquarters of a patent knife-cleaner.  Then,
+at the side of what she had supposed to be a private door, she
+saw several brass plates; and one of them, under the heading
+"Third Floor," read, "Mr. D. J. Stendal, Publisher."  Walking
+nervously but resolutely up the dark, iron-bound stairs, she
+vowed that if the clerks, as seemed possible, brought a message
+that Mr. Stendal was engaged, she would push past them into
+his private room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arrived, rather breathless, at the third floor, she walked along
+a dark passage till she saw a door on which was painted,
+"Mr. D. J. Stendal."  Being called to come in, she turned the handle
+more timidly than pleased her, and entered a bare, littered room,
+long enough to hold three tables, at one of which sat a youthful
+girl-typist, at another a shock-headed man with a stoop, and
+at the third little Mr. Stendal himself.  On deal shelves round
+about the walls were files, iron boxes, and stray copies of books
+published by the firm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Stendal, recognising his visitor at once, rose and said
+pleasantly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah, Miss Bruno.  Mr. Bates, this is Miss Bruno, you know,
+who wrote 'Rolland.'"  He did not introduce her to the typist.
+"Please sit down."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he removed some papers off a chair and courteously
+placed it for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was disconcerted by the presence of other people,
+and stuttered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I rather wanted to see you in private a minute."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Stendal smiled gaily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, we haven't another room.  But you needn't mind Mr. Bates.
+He and I really are Stendal's, so I couldn't have a secret
+from him, if I wanted to.  That's so, Bates, isn't it?  Do sit
+down."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You want to know how your book's going on.  Miss Dale,
+look up 'Rolland,' and see what the figures are, will you?
+Thank you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I didn't come about that.  I wanted to know how it leaked
+out that I had written it.  I especially stipulated that it should
+be published anonymously."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know you did.  Or rather, you wanted it published under
+an assumed name.  And you will remember that I recommended
+anonymity as more likely to stimulate interest.  Well, it turns
+out that I served you well by that bit of advice.  You see&mdash;to
+tell the truth&mdash;we sold nothing&mdash;practically speaking, nothing
+at first.  I don't think we had any orders, did we, Miss Dale?
+And I thought that, as you had entrusted its publication to me,
+I had best do all I could for you.  So Mr. Bates, who sees to
+the publicity department, sent round a paragraph&mdash;didn't you,
+Bates?&mdash;and we were delighted the ways the papers took it up.
+Not many, but one or two important ones.  I grant I did it on
+my own authority, but you will appreciate I had your interests
+at heart.  I think you will forgive me when you hear that our
+manœuvre has created quite a demand; small, of course, but
+good&mdash;distinctly good for a first novel.  The shops and the
+libraries have both bought.  What are our sales now, Miss
+Dale?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Twelve hundred."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Excellent.  Twelve hundred copies, Miss Bruno, sold right
+out.  That means we've topped the first thousand, and are now
+in the second when you get the ten per cent. royalty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne started to speak, but Mr. Stendal hurried on:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what's more, it's really getting noticed and reviewed.
+Did you see the little notice in the <i>Times</i> this morning?  And
+those cuttings that came this morning, Miss Dale; pass them
+to Miss Bruno to see."  He took them from the typist's hand,
+and gave them to Daphne, who accepted them limply.  "There.
+You can keep those.  We've made a selection of quotable
+phrases&mdash;haven't we, Bates?  We're advertising the book next week.
+I hope we may see at least two thousand copies for you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne could scarcely say anything, being driven by the desire
+to get away.  The news that the book had sold nothing until
+the mention of her father's name had been the final blow after
+a week of buffeting.  The sting was taken from her studied
+insults.  She was near to crying, and it must not be done
+before these people.  But something&mdash;something that would hurt
+must be said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I told you I had not come to hear about the sales.  I am
+not interested in them.  What I am interested in is the explanation
+why a definite promise to me was not honoured.  I see you
+have no explanation.  I must speak to my father about it.  He
+understands these things better than I do, and will instruct me
+what steps to take."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Precisely!  Exactly!" said Mr. Stendal enthusiastically,
+though there was a peep of a forked tongue in his enthusiasm.
+"He will appreciate exactly what we have managed to do for
+you, considering the&mdash;er&mdash;the slight nature of your book.  He
+knows the conditions of publishing, and the necessity of all
+reasonable publicity.  And he will see how we've kept strictly
+within the terms of our agreement."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne moved towards the door, but turned on him and
+said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think he will appreciate very little of all that, not being a
+perfect fool.  He will appreciate that you have considered
+nobody's interests but your own.  He will certainly appreciate that
+you have kept within the terms of the agreement, for that is
+what one would expect from people like you.  I imagine it's
+not too safe for you to venture out of cover...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Stendal smiled, as one does when managing a restive
+pony, and seeing that Daphne was fumbling for the handle of
+the door, hastened to reach it first.  He opened the door
+courteously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There now.  We won't lose our tempers.  I think you're a
+little ignorant about the difficulties of putting a book across&mdash;the
+competition, and all that.  Especially one that is really nothing
+out of the ordinary.  Believe me, we are doing the best we
+can for you, and shall continue to do so.  Certainly it is in our
+interests, and in yours too.  Good day, Miss Bruno."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Queen Victoria Street Daphne walked along, purposing
+to mount an omnibus that would take her to her station, but
+letting them one after another pass by, as she accompanied her
+angrily running thoughts.  Still in her fingers were the
+press-cuttings Mr. Stendal had given her, but, dreading the lash, she
+determined not to look at them till seated in her train.  A
+gloomy journey that would be, carrying her to the interview
+with her father.  And when she was in her corner seat she
+waited till the train had actually started before lifting the first
+and reading it.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"The work of a famous writer's daughter must always be
+interesting," it said; "one seeks to learn how far the talent
+of the parent has been transmitted to his children.  We cannot
+say that we are impressed with the work of Miss Daphne Bruno.
+It is quite undistinguished, and there is no precocious genius
+here.  Her ignorance of life is naïve in the extreme; that, of
+course, is very pardonable in a young writer, but what is stranger
+in her father's daughter is her absence of literary palate."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, who had been setting her lips as she read, was
+pierced with a fear that this sentence told the truth.  Henry
+was right.  Not having read one-hundredth part of the books
+which the ages had pronounced to be good, perhaps she did not
+know what was true loveliness and what was bad.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The next review echoed the thought:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"A first effort, especially from the hand of a distinguished
+writer's daughter, invites indulgence, and we shall hope one
+day to congratulate Miss Daphne Bruno on a better work than
+'Madame Rolland' (Stendal).  Let it be said at the start: this
+is the work of a completely immature writer.  We wish we
+could have added that it was full of promise.  But Miss
+Daphne Bruno has certainly not revealed her promise yet.
+Were the word not too hard, we should describe the treatment
+as illiterate, not in the sense that it is grammatically wrong,
+but that it is the work of one only slightly familiar with great
+literature, and whose values are therefore false.  But let this
+not deter Miss Bruno from trying again after a long intercourse
+with those writers whose genius is no longer on trial.
+We imagine that she will then be the severest critic of her first
+book.  One remembers the early work of Shelley, and will be
+slow to deny promise to any young writer."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, please don't be kind," said Daphne, as she put this
+cutting away.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The other reviews agreed; that was the worst&mdash;they agreed.
+They called the work "commonplace," "innocent," "shallow,"
+"superficial."  Having read the last she sat looking out of the
+window, her trouble increased by the sudden memory that since
+nearly all these cuttings mentioned her father, they would have
+been in his hands since the morning's post.  There was nothing
+to do but to go straight to her execution.  In her mind hovered
+the old lines, their pronoun changed to meet her case:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  She nothing common did nor mean<br>
+  Upon that memorable scene ...<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But bowed her comely head<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Down, as upon a bed.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno met her in the hall, having seen her come up the
+drive.  His irritability, obliged to simmer all day, was anxious
+to boil over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where on earth have you been since before breakfast?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've been up to London."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"London?  Do you mean to say that you run up to London
+when and how you like?"  Knowing a pang of self-reproach
+that she should be so unshepherded, and finding the thought
+ill-timed, he submerged it in anger.  "Well, I might have
+known.  It's on a par with everything else.  Just come in here
+a minute."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He led her into his study where the press-cuttings were
+on the table.  Lifting them up and tossing them back again,
+he demanded:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's all this about a book you've written?  Why on
+earth didn't you tell me something about it and get my advice?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wanted to surprise you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno again smothered the pity, and made a gesture of
+impatience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stendal?  Who the dickens is Stendal?  Why, I know most
+of the publishers by name, but I've never heard of
+Mr. D. J. Stendal.  Some Vanity Publisher.  Nice to have any of my
+name linked with a firm like that!  I suppose he made you pay
+for the privilege of being published?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, he didn't.  I'm getting a ten per cent. royalty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was annoying that, while she stood there looking up at
+him with eyes that were rather frightened, compassion should
+gain ground from anger.  He wanted anger to hold its own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, are you such a little fool that&mdash;can't you see that for
+your work to be published by a house of no standing is itself
+enough to damn it....  These Stendals and their like only bind
+up stuff that no one else'll print, for conceited amateurs to
+circulate among their friends.  He only took yours for nothing
+because he thought that ... Couldn't I have advised you about
+publishers and agreements? ... But I suppose you have no
+faith in my advice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wanted to do it by myself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you've ended by doing a ridiculous thing, and, incidentally,
+though it's a small matter, making me appear ridiculous."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I didn't want to do that.  I said all along I didn't
+want to let you down.  That's why I published it anonymously."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Anonymously?  Then what's all this about?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted up the cuttings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Stendal deliberately let it out to make the book sell.
+I've just been up to tell him what I thought about him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point anger capitulated.  He sat down in his chair,
+and, after tossing the cuttings to the back of the desk, turned
+round towards his daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor child!  Doesn't it show how you ought not to have
+attempted anything without advice?"  One of her hands he
+picked up.  "And did you really think you could assault the
+world with the few arrows that have so far arrived in your
+quiver?  I fancy you must learn much more about books and
+men.  Don't you see that, if you want to compel the world to
+listen to you, you must convince them that in some respects you
+know more than they do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What about the Brontës?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"H'm....  Well, Charlotte only came off when she was
+writing about what she knew&mdash;which wasn't often.  And the
+sheer genius of Emily&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I'm your daughter, so perhaps I'm a genius like you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I am not a genius, Daphne dear&mdash;only a brain trained
+and tempered for its work....  Besides, this is a more sophisticated
+age than the Brontës' age....  Stands Fiction where the
+Brontës stood? ... I wonder some humorous editor hasn't
+sent me your book to review."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want any more reviews.  I hope nobody writes
+another word about it.  I wish I'd never published it.  I wish
+I could wipe it all out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pressed the hand he was holding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poor Duffy!  They <i>have</i> hit it rather hard, haven't they?
+But they're an ill-conditioned race, critics."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy"&mdash;it was evident an idea had struck Daphne&mdash;"would
+you read it?  You're the only critic whose verdict I
+should consider final."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would I read it!  Why, to tell the truth, I've been aching
+to ever since I heard about it.  I'll read it now.  Where is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hid them upstairs....  But you'll promise to tell me
+exactly what you think, and not try to let me down lightly.  An
+awful lot will result from what you say."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Releasing her hand he told her to run and fetch it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she returned, he rose up to meet her and took the
+thin volume.  After studying its shape and print, he went to
+the book-shelves and, pushing a squad of books towards the
+right, made a place for this newcomer next to the last of his
+own works.  For a few seconds he studied it in this position,
+and then took it out again and came back smiling to his
+daughter, whom he drew against him and kissed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am proud you've started writing too, my dear&mdash;which
+is a remark I might, without loss of dignity, have made earlier.
+Come now, it's not a small thing to have a book published at
+twenty-one."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tears were in Daphne's eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but they didn't do it because it was good, but only
+because I was your daughter.  I know it.  I know it.  And
+I know I've made both you and me look foolish."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, dear.  Only to fools.  Besides, let me read it.  Your
+court of appeal may reverse the verdict."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne sat upstairs till dinner time, unable to read, for she
+was trying to imagine whereabouts her father was now in
+"Madame Rolland."  After the first bell she went down&mdash;why
+softly she did not know&mdash;and quietly turned the handle of his
+door.  He was no longer reading.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you finished it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, dear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You want exactly what I think, as though you were nothing
+to me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy, young writers always think they can write about
+people or places or emotions of which they know nothing.  It
+can't be done.  Once in your story you strike a vein of truth,
+and though you have over-written it, the truth can still be seen,
+and is not a little appealing"&mdash;he turned his eyes back to the
+book.  "It's in your love-scenes.  And there's a glimpse of
+vision, promising much despite all these critics, in the episode
+at the grave-side.  But the rest, I'm afraid, is machine-made,
+which is what they mean by calling it 'insincere.'  The result is,
+you get sentimental, forcing emotions where they would not
+have been.  And there's too much gratuitous ornament, whereas
+in a perfect work of art ornament and structure are one and
+the same."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All that's a long way of saying it's mostly bad."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's the work of your prentice hand, dear...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, don't let me down lightly.  I understand."  She turned
+towards the door.  "Come on, let's go to dinner."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0426"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XXVI
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Somewhere she came across a quotation: "Regretting
+not yesterday, nor fearing to-morrow."  Like a reveille, it
+called her to that defiant courage of which her father had once
+stuttered to tell.  The reiteration of it braced her like a tonic.
+"I don't regret yesterday, and I'm not going to fear
+to-morrow."  She was going to begin again.  And this time she
+was going to begin right.  She was going to cut out all vulgar
+ambition, and all imitation of others, and the indolence that
+prevented her from reading aught but the easy and pleasant.
+"This time I shall do what Henry tried to make me do.  In
+fact, I shall write for an audience of one&mdash;Henry.  Or two,
+perhaps&mdash;Henry and me.  I shall write what he would have
+approved.  To that end, I'm going to study not only books,
+but men.  Daddy said I must do that, too.  So, as soon as
+possible, I'm going to get out of this cloistered existence and
+experience the world."  It was an inspiring notion.  She could
+feel glad about all that had happened, for it seemed as if one
+thing in her life&mdash;and that the most important thing left to
+her&mdash;was purged of its alloys, and in its direction trued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though two years had passed since she had left Henry, she
+had no real doubt of her love for him.  Certainly his figure
+had gone behind a curtain before which she could dance and
+laugh and play her part, even sometimes stopping to ask herself,
+"Have I then ceased to love you, Henry?" but the thought of
+him was always hazily present, and often, very often, he
+emerged vivid and solid into her dreams, and she who had
+questioned her love before would wake up with her sadness,
+and be satisfied with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But <i>his</i> love, what of that?  For a long time she had dreaded
+lest it had faded.  Surely it must have done.  She had been
+so disastrously ignorant in those days, so <i>illiterate</i>; and her
+beauty was something in which she had never believed.  Why
+should Henry still care to remember her?  Of course, he had
+said on the ship that night: "Don't profane my love by thinking
+that."  But any one infatuated would have believed so much.
+Since her good-bye letter he had never written.  What was
+there to show that his passion had stood the test of years?
+She would never know if it had; for notwithstanding her
+oft-repeated words, "Time is big," she did not really believe they
+would ever meet again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, she loved.  Quietly, and without wreck.  She had just
+idealised him in her memory.  No doubt he had had faults,
+but she had never seen him except in the rapture of love; she
+was surprised how little she knew of his real character.  To
+her he was now the idealised portrait of one who would have
+understood her dreams, guided her work, and received the full
+measure of her love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am going to reach through to him with a book.  It may
+be twenty years before it is published&mdash;it may not appear till
+after my death; but one day it'll get to him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So now to work unremittingly, and to live abundantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lowered to a complete self-distrust by the unthinkable
+press-cuttings, she began her studies with "An English Course for
+Middle Forms," "The Story of Ancient Greece, Simply Told,"
+Saintsbury's "Short History of English Literature," and "An
+Introduction to Philosophy."  And the initiation of this reading,
+especially the brain-teasing philosophy, pleased and flattered
+her.  As she pursued it she could almost feel the refining of
+her brain, and the strengthening of her ratiocination.  It made
+her think of a flower that was opening late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had continued to write to Roger, whose return to
+England had been delayed, and his replies had spoken no more
+of love, though their tenderness was as implicit as ever.  And
+now he surprised her with a letter sent from London, saying
+that he had arrived, and, at his request, was to be transferred
+to a convalescent home at Brighton.  "I shall have all the days
+to myself.  Couldn't I meet you, say at Ditchling, on Thursday?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This letter, in the days of her rejection by the world, filled
+her with pleasure.  She felt affection, nowadays, for any one
+who had always liked and admired her.  And in the rush of
+her enthusiasm she wrote:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course.  I'll meet you there where first we met.  Isn't
+that out of a song?  On the King's Highway, where it runs
+across Ditchling Common, by the bramble bush.  At three
+o' the clock."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Hesitation, before she sucked the envelope, asked: "Haven't
+I been a bit too gushing?  Offering to meet him like that in
+that sentimental place.  No."  The flap went down irreparably.
+"I've let him do all the gushing so far, and now he's come back
+I ought to make a fuss about him....  I've been mighty high
+and proud all along, and Lord knows I had nothing to be stuck
+up about."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This lifted the memory that she had hoped to dazzle him
+with her fame, and once again the words of the shattering
+paragraphs troubled her breath, but she recovered herself by
+repeating: "I don't regret yesterday, and I don't fear
+to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon she must give to Roger her final answer, "Yes" or
+"No."  It surprised her that, though she did not love him,
+the idea of being engaged to him was full of thrills.  Or did
+the thrills lie in just being engaged, rather than in being
+engaged to Roger? ... Not altogether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She must think it out thoroughly, and not let her nature
+gallop her into any more blunders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let her get her motives into the light, one by one.  To
+assist clearer thinking she took an empty postcard and pencil,
+and drew a bisecting line, printing FOR on its left and
+AGAINST on its right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For?  She sucked the pencil, pushing it far back on her
+tongue.  She would be perfectly frank with herself.  Recent
+rough handling, like recent reading, had polished away a
+cloudiness from her brain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first and lowest motive was the desire to be an engaged
+person, with all the notoriety it brought, and the snub for any
+who had laughed at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This she refused to note on the card.  But she doubted if
+this disciplinary refusal amounted to writing it out of her
+nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Secondly, she would rather be married than an old maid.
+She liked Roger, and would never be in love with any one else,
+because she was in love with a memory.  A girl didn't always
+get a second chance, unless she was exceptionally beautiful
+and fascinating.  Already she was over twenty-one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wrote "Not O.M."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thirdly, if she married she would rather be rich than poor.
+Roger's was a splendid offer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wrote "S.O."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she wanted opportunities for full and varied living.
+Who more than Roger could give her these?  Think of the
+fun it would be, fighting political battles by her husband's side,
+and if he got on (as he certainly would, being the sort), what
+might she not see of government and pomp; diplomacy, intrigue
+and the pageantry of Courts?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wrote "Life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, of course, she wanted to experience caresses and passion,
+and was not displeased to find that, after the idealisation
+of Henry, the thought of Roger's embraces were more stirring
+to her than those of any man she had ever seen or could
+imagine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was in some doubt what word to write here, for "Love"
+was not the true word, and "Passion" was crude.  She put
+three dots.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And what really was her attitude to Roger himself, apart
+from his position and all that he could give her?  He was
+such a magnificent creature that she would be enormously proud
+of him as a husband.  And she wanted to marry something
+big, not "a poor little soul."  His little poses she could always
+forgive; indeed, she would have to, whomsoever she married,
+since she had never met a man who wasn't decorated with
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wrote "Very proud of him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Examining these tabulated reasons she was appalled at their
+selfishness, and sucked her pencil again, while she thought:
+"But isn't there some motive which is a bit nobler?"  She
+knew there was, and it came into the light.  That creed of
+gentleness, which her father had offered, had been saturating
+her nature during the last two years, and the disillusion of
+recent weeks had helped it on its way.  Strange how mixed one's
+motives were!  There was joy in the thought that since Roger
+loved her as passionately as she had loved Henry she would
+save him from her suffering by giving herself to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For this item she wrote, "Not to hurt."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the AGAINST side she could only write, "Not real love."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But if she waited to write different from that she would
+never marry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was the position.  Now one could only intermit
+thought, and wait for what would happen.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+On the Thursday afternoon she dressed with care.  Wisdom
+told her that she had to compete with the famous photograph,
+and that its beauty was now to be regretted, for it enlarged
+her deficit.  But her glass, before she left it, assured her that
+if she came second in the competition it was no dishonourable
+second.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anticipation trembled in her as she passed through the "toll-gate"
+on to Ditchling Common.  She had but to turn the curve
+in the road and she would probably see Roger.  She saw him,
+walking up and down by the blackberry clump, and waved a
+hand.  Immediately he advanced towards her, and she studied
+his figure as that of one who <i>might</i> be her husband.  Roger
+had no photograph to contend with; now that he was older,
+wider, browner, and perfectly dressed, he was even in excess
+of her thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Coo, he's sure to be disappointed in me," she was thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was no disappointment in his face; rather, beneath
+all his dignity, was he grinning a little sheepishly.  He
+put out his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And how's Daphne?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daphne's all right, except that she has an objection to being
+called Daphne."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger flushed, lest he had begun by offending her, but
+parried with a smile:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Bruno, am I to say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be silly.  You know what I mean.  Those who really
+like me call me Duffy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His smile broadened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have dared once or twice to write so much.  And I
+confess I was primed up to call you by it; but when I saw you
+my courage leaked away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Because you&mdash;you are older and more terrifying."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're a fine person to talk about being terrified of anything.
+Besides, I'm nothing like you, I'm frightened to death
+of you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is that so?" asked he, with his enigmatic grin.  "Well,
+where are we going?  How long have you got?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As long as I like.  You seem to forget that I've come of
+age since you went away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, let's walk for a bit, and see where we arrive."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They started towards Ditchling.  The guiding of the
+conversation lay with Daphne, for Roger was apt to turn inwards
+(probably to a rehearsal); and she saved it from the sloughs
+by asking him scores of helpful questions about himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a warm afternoon with the sun unobscured; and at
+last he suggested that they sit somewhere on the grass.  He
+led the way off the road and up the slope towards the trees.
+At any rough or steep place he held out his hand, enjoying the
+action, as she could guess, both from his love of gallantry and
+the touch of her hand.  But he was shy of choosing where they
+might sit together, and it was she who finally declared herself
+too fagged to go farther, and promptly sat down.  Roger spread
+his length beside her.  Then there was silence.  (No doubt
+he had gone in to the dress rehearsal.)  He stared at the two
+windmills on the skyline of the Downs; and when he spoke
+again it was without bringing his eyes away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy"&mdash;he cleared his throat&mdash;"I don't know whether it's
+fair to speak to you like this the first time we see each other....
+And I'm determined to consider you first in everything....
+I didn't intend to say anything at all this first day, but
+somehow your letter consenting to meet me alone made me hope I
+might&mdash;&mdash;"  He turned now towards her, but she was looking
+at the close grass by her crossed feet.  "Duffy, you know what
+I mean.  For nearly four years I've had no doubt of my love
+for you.  I never worried about girls till I met you; my dreams
+were all of success and fame.  But when I saw you the second
+time at that ball, looking absolutely divine, I was routed
+instantly....  And all through the war I never doubted.  It was
+always glorious to think of you, to picture you, and to look
+at your photograph, and to hear the chaff of the other fellows
+when it stood on my camp-table.  Duffy, could we be engaged
+now?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had no answer, continuing to look at the grass; but
+as Roger said no more, pity obliged her to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But we don't really know each other&mdash;only by two years'
+letters.  And you can't know me from letters.  One only shows
+oneself at one's best in letters."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"As I've always told you, I'm old-fashioned enough to
+believe that somewhere there's a woman made for every man.
+And I know you are mine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And as I've always told you, you're an incurable romantic."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Perhaps I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But perhaps I'm not so sure of my&mdash;my love for you.
+Roger, I think I ought to tell you: I was very fond of some
+one else some time ago, and I've never quite forgotten."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had turned to look straight at him as she said this, and
+saw the pain knit his brow and narrow his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When was this?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Two years ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And did he ask you to marry him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?  Was he a fool?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne kept silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you expect he will ask you to marry him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why not?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He has married some one else."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger said nothing more.  And Daphne, frightened by the
+pause, heard herself inquiring:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Couldn't we have a month's companionship together?  I'll
+see you every day if you like&mdash;and if you wouldn't mind asking
+me again in a month's time&mdash;&mdash;"  She began to be a little
+afraid lest he scorned to be temporised with.  "I'm very fond
+of you&mdash;and proud of you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this he gave long thought, unwittingly lowering and
+raising his jaw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," he decided.  "I want you so badly that I would rather
+have you if I were only second best&mdash;but I haven't had a
+chance with you yet."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+They spent nearly every day of that month together; and
+she could only be pleased to see him working to win her love
+with all the care and watchful labour he might have given to
+carrying a kopje in South Africa.  It was doubly to be valued
+from one who prided himself on his haughtiness.  He was
+courtesy, consideration and generosity.  A merry humour he
+had always had, and it made him good company.  He had
+bought a car, now familiar sights on the roads, and taken her
+long, luxurious drives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the time drew nearer when she must speak again, indecision
+harrowed her.  This time it would be final; Roger would
+not go on petitioning for ever.  Sometimes she felt she was
+looking forward to saying, "Yes"; sometimes, when a glimpse
+of his egotism made her doubt, she would feel that she was
+caught gasping in a stream, since it would be impossible, after
+all his kindness, to send him cruelly away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It fell that he proposed to her again before the month was
+finished.  A late afternoon as she came downstairs, dressed
+to drive with him as far as the foot of Ditchling Beacon, where
+they were going to climb the Downs, her father stepped out
+of his study and intercepted her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose you had better see this," said he, and handed her
+a press-cutting.  There was something dramatically despairing
+about his gesture and his return to the room.  She followed
+him, glancing at the slip of paper on which the cutting was
+pasted.  It named a journal of which she had never heard,
+<i>London Carnival</i>.  Type and paper were poor, and the
+paragraph was signed, "Our Cynical Spectator."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"On the Dissipated Habits of a Great Critic's Criticism,"
+ran the headline; and the smaller print said:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Criticism, like Charity, should sometimes live at home.  But
+perhaps a happy marriage between these two, and a dwelling
+together in the same house, is impossible.  There's such a
+difference in temperament.  And that, no doubt, is why the
+criticism of the great Mr. Tenter Bruno (as, to be sure, we have
+observed in the case of other punishing critics) roams abroad,
+and seldom spends a night at home.  Indeed, we might almost
+say that in his house, Charity, timid maiden, has secured her
+divorce from brutal Criticism&mdash;with custody of the child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The child, in this affecting tale, is Miss Daphne Bruno,
+the great man's daughter; and only the great man's charity
+could have allowed her nonsensical little book, 'Madame
+Rolland,' recently published, to see the light of day.  It was a
+tactical error, of course, for whatever reviewers may be saying
+in print, those writers who have been lashed heretofore by the
+great Bruno are enjoying a mild hilarity.  We have studied
+some of the notices, and detect a praiseworthy doubt of the
+propriety of securing points against Mr. Bruno by lunging
+foils at his daughter.  For ourselves, we are less squeamish,
+and judge it all to the good of literature that every book
+should be submitted to the unhampered attacks of criticism,
+and especially those that only win their publication by the
+glamour of a famous name.  For these have entered with a
+spurious ticket."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Daddy! ..."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such a note of pain rang in the words that her father came
+towards her and took the cutting out of her hand.  He had
+known all along that he should not have shown it to her, but
+had been quite unable to forego a display of his honourable
+wound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, darling," he hurriedly enjoined, "don't take it seriously.
+It's just a low papermaking copy.  Nobody who matters reads
+it, and those who do forget it in ten seconds."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, it's awful!" she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, no.  If you're going to be an authoress, you must get
+used to ridicule."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Father, I'll write at once, and say you knew nothing
+about it.  Your reputation's much more important than mine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dearest, it's all stuff and nonsense.  I showed it to amuse
+you, not to distress you.  You certainly shall not write.  People
+might say that I inspired your denial.  And if they think I'm
+going to disown my daughter&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His brain condemned the poor heroic; and when Daphne was
+gone, he stood disquieted to think that vanity could put a stick
+in a man's hand with which to strike what he loved.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne went out of the house with a head dulled, as by a
+blow, into confused thinking.  In vain she commanded herself
+to get the thing in proportion&mdash;to see that the paragraph was
+only a drop in the ocean of that day's print, and already
+forgotten by any one less interested than herself.  The very
+memory of the words would flutter her heart for a sick second.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when she met Roger and his car by the Royal Oak, she
+could not keep up the gaiety of her greeting.  Throughout the
+drive, after formal answers to his remarks, she would relapse
+into the worrying memory.  And she knew that he had
+observed her depression and was respecting it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Ditchling they left the car, and climbed the pleasant turf
+of the Downs.  It was one of those gracious afternoons that,
+by discordance with melancholy, increase it; an afternoon of
+sunlight on the great cheeks of the hills, and wide shadows
+in their hollows, and clear views to the highlands in the north,
+where the pine-woods were darkly blue under a private cloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a speechless climb, she agreed in mock-merriment to
+Roger's suggestion that they rest for a while and enjoyed
+the view.  She sat down in the shelter of some tall gorse,
+saying formally: "This is quite like old times, isn't it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger did not acknowledge this remark, but, sitting beside
+her and idly picking the grass, inquired:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My darling, what's the matter with you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In that unauthorised "My darling!" sounded a real pain;
+it was manifestly the outburst of a heart charged with love and
+sympathy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Me?  Nothing," assured Daphne, with a quickly acted
+smile.  Not wholly acted, however; because that note of love
+had been potent to sound retreat to her shadows.  Being loved
+like this by Roger was the sunniest place in her life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're miserable.  You've been miserable ever since you
+appeared.  I can't bear you to be miserable."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's nothing, really."  To show which, she picked up a
+small snail-shell and threw it in front of her.  "It was only
+one of those horrible press notices; rather more pitiless than
+usual."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That Roger was throbbing with his love for her she knew
+by his low-pitched answer:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish I could find any one that would hurt you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But they're right," corrected Daphne.  She felt quite happy
+now in the sunny place.  "Rather salted, but right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Right or wrong, I shouldn't care....  But they're not right.
+No one who ridicules you could be right.  You don't know
+what you are.  You're&mdash;there's no one fit to hold a candle
+to you.  It sometimes amazes me that you're so innocent of
+what you are.  If only you could see yourself as I see you!
+My darling, I never can see any one who seems so beautiful
+as you, just because you're the model by which I test
+everybody's beauty.  If another woman's eyes are not the same
+colour and shape as yours, they're imperfect.  If her nose is
+a different shape from yours, or the lines of her figure, they're
+so far wrong....  Oh, but I forgot, I've no right, till you give
+it to me, to talk to you like this...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His closed fist was lying on the turf by his side, just between
+himself and her; and Daphne, unable to answer him with words,
+laid her open hand on his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Duffy!  That means&mdash;&mdash;!  Oh, my darling!"  He put his
+arm about her waist and pulled her gently towards him.  "Then
+may we be definitely engaged to one another?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned her face towards his, smiled, and nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He kissed her, but without passion, as if he would not hurt
+her by too quickly taking all his privileges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you happy, darling?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes....  I think it's wonderful that you, of all people,
+with the whole world to choose from, should love me.  And
+in spite of all you say, I still can't see why it is....  I'm awfully
+proud of it, really."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you love me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was to be met with a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think so.  I want to be close to you.  I want to be happy
+with you, and to make you happy, and help you in your career.
+And I want you to kiss me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Darling!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time he gathered her close, and pressed his lips on hers
+with all the passion that first he had withheld.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My beloved!" he said, as he drew back his head to look
+down upon her face.  "And you can't see what you are!  Why,
+every time you look up at me, as you did a second ago, with
+your huge eyes, you make me mad for need of you.  I feel I
+can never have you close enough&mdash;that even hugging you is
+a poor apology for all that I would have&mdash;that though you
+are as close to me as you are now, you are still too many miles
+away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he hugged her, and Daphne, in this embrace which
+seemed never likely to end, found her thoughts running fast;
+she was already picturing with delight the announcing of her
+engagement to her father and the others at home; the
+congratulations that would come from all who knew her; the
+inspiring future that stretched before her, with election fights
+and luxurious living.  She was bewildered to have reached this
+point, but excited; and because excited, happy.  And when he
+released her, she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you mind if we go home?  I'm so longing to tell everybody."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger grinned, as might a staid elder amused by a child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes.  Let's go back."  He jumped up and helped her to
+her feet.  "Fancy to think we came up this hill unengaged
+and go down it engaged.  I wonder what we are going down
+to."  He accompanied their downward steps with a chain of
+such romantic utterances, and then inquired: "But what do I
+do next?  Not having been engaged before I don't know.  Do
+I come back with you and ask your father's permission?  I'm
+all for doing the proper ceremonial things.  I've always
+believed in ceremony.  Not, though, that I should let you go if
+he refused."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy won't refuse.  But let me tell him, will you?  Don't
+you come in at all.  I know how to deal with him.  I'm sure
+you'd make a mess of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drove her, as by newly acquired right, to the gates of
+Old Hall House, and she, escaping before he could kiss her
+good-bye, hurried excitedly up the drive.  Letting herself in,
+she saw Miss Carrell standing in the lamp-lit hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is Father at home?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her voice trembled, and she was grateful for the half darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, dear.  But he's back to dinner.  He can't be long."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, all right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rushed up to her room and dressed with trembling
+hands.  Once dressed she did not know what to do.  Her head
+and cheeks were so burning that she was moved to study them
+in the glass and trace the visible effects of such heat.  It had
+tinged them with wine-colour.  When she heard her father's
+key she gave him full five minutes by the bedroom clock,
+during which her heart seemed to beat a million times, and then
+walked downstairs and burst into his room.  He was sitting
+in his arm-chair dragging on a slipper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please come in," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Father, I'm engaged to be married."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno's hand left the slipper, and his foot trod down
+its heel.  The surprise jerked him out of his whimsical port.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What on earth are you talking about?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Talking about being engaged.  I got engaged this evening."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Got engaged?  But I didn't know any one was in love with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course you didn't.  I didn't proclaim it from the house-tops."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good God!  First you write a book without my permission,
+and now you say you've got engaged...."  Mr. Bruno perceived
+that he was recovering the authentic note of badinage.
+"I am too old&mdash;too old to stay the course with you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And indeed he was confused.  Here was his daughter, whom
+a few hours earlier he had hurt, coming in radiant with news
+of her betrothal.  To think that her movements were so far
+from him was pain.  The pain was sharpened by this unexpected
+sentence that their days together were to be numbered.
+But badinage must screen it all....  It would hide, too, for
+her sake, any mention of the American boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whom are you engaged to?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To Roger Muirhead, of course."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook an uncomprehending head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't you remember?  He came to tea with us at St. Leu
+two years ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But how long have you known him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, since he was fourteen.  Off and on."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Has he got any money to keep you with?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Money?  Heaps.  He's got a motor-car."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who is he?  What's his father?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sir Roger Muirhead."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No?  The excellent old merchant who has managed to
+combine capitalism with radicalism and religion!  Good
+gracious, Duffy, and is his boy in love with you?  Let's see, didn't
+he do something they made a song about in the war?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course he did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you're engaged to him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, please.  If I may."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You're sure you're not married to him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, darling.  Only engaged.  That's to say, if you'll let
+us be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands.  Then he
+stood up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, well.  I suppose one kisses you on these occasions.
+But I must see this Roger of yours.  And you're not to be
+married for a year, do you see?  You must have experience
+of each other.  And we must have the war over and Owen
+back."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, that'll be all right.  I don't particularly want to get
+married."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Mr. Bruno wasn't listening.  After looking at her with
+a smile, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And has Apollo come for Daphne at last?  I trust that,
+like your Greek original, you were not too encouraging, but
+fled from him into the woods."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne concealed a start.  This chance sally, evoking a
+picture of Roger (who was rather an Apollo) as he came
+seeking her under the Montmorency trees, was so astonishingly
+appropriate that for a minute she dethroned hard reason and
+wondered with him if, after all, there were a destiny behind
+these things.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0427"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XXVII
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was never sure in what proportion her feelings
+were mixed in the days between her engagement and her
+marriage.  Doubt would tinge her happiness; but it was never
+very active, and the period, as a whole, was flooded with a bright
+light of pleasure.  The brightness put out every ember of
+annoyance at the reception of "Madame Rolland."  If ever she
+desired a glowing press, she got it now.  "Mr. Tenter Bruno's
+daughter to wed War Hero," the paragraphs were headed;
+"The Hero of Wittfontein to Wed."  Two of the papers
+mentioned, "Miss Daphne Bruno is herself an authoress, having
+produced in her twenty-second year an artless and charming
+little story."  But most, thank goodness, seemed never to have
+heard of "Madame Rolland."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was too happy with it all, imagining Miss Vidella, Miss
+Sims, Trudy Wayne, Winnie Chatterton, and all her scattered
+friends reading the news, to be more than palely jealous when
+the majority of the papers occupied themselves with Roger's
+career or her father's.  But in her mind she hid the resolve to
+create a work that one day&mdash;if only after death&mdash;would make
+Roger chiefly famous as the husband of Daphne Bruno.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger took her to Porth Wannick, the Muirheads' house in
+Cornwall.  Of the romantic character of this house on the
+rocks Roger had often spoken; and when she saw it, she
+declared that it was far more amazing than he had painted it.
+You turned aside from the Penzance Road, by the ruins of a
+disused mine, and went down and down a narrow lane, passing
+the Porth Wannick land on your left, till you reached a
+smuggler's cove, where you saw in the very rocks the tiny harbours
+and docks cut by that fine buccaneering scoundrel, old Captain
+Helco, for his guilty craft.  The house, grey like the rocks,
+rose above the largest of the tiny harbours, which was now
+a swimming bath for the residents.  It was not large, being but
+a two-storied, rectangular mansion, under a hipped roof.  But
+the windows were mullioned, the central hall door was an
+antique purchased from a fifteenth-century house, the gardens
+were laid in terraces above the rocks, and behind them swept
+the farm-lands of the estate.  Here, for seven months of the
+year, Sir Roger played Lord Bountiful to the natives, experimenting
+on his soil to see if he could make all their fortunes by
+growing beet for sugar there; or by trying to cure the
+conservatism of the pilchard fishers by introducing improvements
+in their methods and their boats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The placid Lady Muirhead and he received Daphne with a
+parental delight.  It seemed that their son, who treated his
+father with a sort of feudal respect, had long told them of the
+girl in Sussex whom he was determined to capture.  And now
+he brought her there with a hint of triumph.  Lady Muirhead,
+probably thinking that such was her expected part, fell in love
+with "the new daughter" at once; and Sir Roger, who, when you
+lived with him like this, was found to be surprisingly old,
+mingled in his attitude jocosity, patronal tenderness, and a
+garrulous intolerance.  Daphne liked them both, only feeling ill
+at ease at the amount of religion Sir Roger maintained in his
+house.  Never did she dare to shock him or his acquiescent lady
+by confessing that she had no religion at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In truth, she was afraid of Sir Roger, who steam-rolled you
+out with his talk, though your brain saw a hundred weaknesses
+in his argument.  But you didn't answer him with the incisive
+replies that occurred to you.  It would have been like fighting
+against a steam-roller with a scalpel.  He was only seventy-three,
+but she suspected that after his retirement from active
+part in the Muirhead Traders, which was his life's creation,
+senility was setting in early.  She wondered what her father
+would think.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno came down to Forth Wannick for a month, and
+appeared to think a good deal, as his host tossed bits of walnut
+into his mouth (one bit following another before it was really
+due), and, chewing them rapidly, announced to his guest the
+truth on all subjects.  Little doubt he annoyed Mr. Bruno by
+seeing a comparison between the creation of books and his own
+creation of the Muirhead Traders, and between the fame of a
+great critic and the fame of a trading firm.  "I suppose some of
+you writers, Bruno, make a good thing of it," said he, chewing
+one walnut and prospecting in the dish for another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno said it depended on what was meant by "making
+a good thing of it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, making a living, of course," explained Sir Roger.
+"What else?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were those who interpreted it differently, suggested
+Mr. Bruno.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, stuff and nonsense, Bruno, stuff and nonsense," Sir
+Roger buffered.  "I know all that gammon backwards&mdash;knew
+it when I was sixteen.  A clever fellow like you knows at the
+back of your mind that the impulse to acquire shekels and
+power is what makes the world go round.  Give me those
+fellows who acknowledge it frankly and get on with the job."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can have them," answered Mr. Bruno, concealing his
+restiveness behind a smile; "and no doubt they'll join your
+Liberal Association down here, and the parish church."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, and why shouldn't they?  Why shouldn't they?"
+snapped the host, the red light appearing in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why shouldn't they," echoed Mr. Bruno, "if the harmony
+is complete?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course it's complete&mdash;complete as you make 'em.  Liberalism
+and Christianity, it's all the same; it's just <i>Noblesse
+oblige</i>."  Sir Roger repeated the phrase: "<i>Noblesse oblige</i>."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As became the wiser man, Mr. Bruno retired from the
+developing battle with a shrug.  And Sir Roger rolled on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father summed up Sir Roger to Daphne, when he met
+her next morning before breakfast, walking on the
+terrace-gardens above the rocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Uncouth, dear," said he sadly.  "Uncouth."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne nodded, and hinted that Sir Roger was getting old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bruno agree, and continued without a smile:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But what an honourable life he can look back upon!  He's
+created the Muirhead Traders, who operate in the East, where
+very large profits are consistent with Christianity.  He was
+telling me all about it last night.  And he's been able to retire
+with a great income.  He's been able to keep his boy out of
+it&mdash;though why he should have wanted to I don't know&mdash;and
+he's going to give him three thousand a year when he marries
+you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Golly!" exclaimed Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, a wonderful old man," reflected Mr. Bruno.  "I think
+he must have gone up Sinai once and been given God's final
+opinion on every subject under the sun."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Daddy!" laughed his daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, what else can it be, when to criticise anything he
+says is to verge on blasphemy?  It's a marvellous state of mind
+to get into, when you can so believe in your commercialism that
+any questioning of it is about equivalent to saying that Christ
+might have sinned.  But the boy's all right&mdash;your boy's all
+right.  He has the grace to mix shame with reverence in his
+attitude towards his parents."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne was looking at the peacock which had appeared on
+the terrace above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Gracious goodness, Duffy!" exclaimed her father, "is that
+a peacock?  What a very appropriate pet for Sir Roger! ... I
+am afraid your father-in-law's a little vulgar.  Don't you
+think so?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was quite a new idea to Daphne, and worried her for a
+day or two.  But the scales fell to Roger's side again when the
+news came through of his adoption as Liberal Candidate for
+the Middle East Division of Sussex.  Eagerly they read
+together the little stack of Sussex papers that reported the
+meeting of the Liberal Council, or commented on its choice.  The
+Radical <i>Gazetteer</i> was gushing:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Middle East Division is to be congratulated on their
+new Liberal candidate.  This constituency, predominantly
+agricultural, is one of the most difficult for Liberalism to win.  But
+now with the adoption of Captain Muirhead, all the signs point
+to a great and resounding Liberal victory at the next general
+Election.  That desirable event, we hope, will not be long
+delayed, believing that the Balfour administration is as much
+discredited here as it is in the great industrial centres.  All that
+was needed was to secure a popular and able candidate.
+Captain Muirhead has everything in his favour.  He has been
+familiar with the district since childhood, one of his father's
+houses being situated within its bounds.  He is engaged to the
+daughter of one of its most distinguished residents.  His war
+reputation will effectually quench any pro-Boer nonsense...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And another paper said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If Captain Muirhead is able to wrest this stronghold from
+its Tory masters it will give him a magnificent start in his
+Parliamentary career."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And another:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"One must not omit the signal advantages possessed by
+Mr. Muirhead in his beautiful fiancée.  All the world knows
+that he is engaged to the talented and charming Miss Daphne
+Bruno.  Perhaps it is not for us to express our hope that, when
+the election comes she will be, not his <i>fiancée</i>, but his wife.  If
+she inherits her father's gifts, and his witty radicalism, she
+will be an invaluable lieutenant for the gallant captain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I shall never be able to speak in public," interjected
+Daphne, "if that's what they mean.  But I shall love doing
+everything else."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By Jove!" said Roger, who did not always listen to his
+<i>fiancée</i>.  "We simply must win, after all this puff."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, rather!" agreed Daphne.  "Let's begin nursing the
+constituency at once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave her a kiss in acknowledgment of her enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When will there be a general election?" she asked, while
+still in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He grinned down at her proudly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A question that interests me much more is, when will you
+marry me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, not yet.  I'm much more interested in politics.  It's
+such fun being engaged.  There's no hurry, is there?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this Roger released his hold and turned away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't understand girls," said he.  "They seem differently
+made from men."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne knew that he was slightly hurt about something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, what's the matter now?" she laughed.  "Oh, I know
+I've said something wrong."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, if you don't understand, you don't....  That's where
+the trouble lies.  If you wanted me in the way I want you,
+you would understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course I want you, Roger."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My dear, you don't understand the meaning of 'want.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But Daddy said we weren't to get married at once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We could have got over that....  Well, never mind; it's
+only another way of saying you're cold."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I'm not," denied she, for it was one of her prides that
+she was an ardent nature.  The "Oh, I'm not," a Cockneyism
+into which she fell when indignant, made Roger frown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes," she added hastily, "I know I said that like a Cockney
+serving girl."  (She would borrow her father's phrases, and
+air them as her own.)  "I got it from talking too much to the
+servants when I was a kid.  However, what were we saying?
+I'm not cold.  I'm ardent."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once again he took her into his arms and smiled down
+tolerantly upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Surely you're the most innocent girl that ever got engaged."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was rather annoying, this assumption that she was a fool,
+and she retorted:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm not innocent at all.  I know everything and exactly
+what you mean."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hold relaxed a shade, and she realised that this, too,
+had disappointed him.  She was seeing in his mingled thoughts
+what he himself hardly knew to be there: that while he desired
+her much, he wanted her to be innocent&mdash;for somehow an
+innocent girl gave more to men's desire.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Panic stirred sometimes as (she supposed) with every engaged
+girl; but she was too excited and happy, on the whole,
+to let it come far into consciousness.  Once, however, it escaped
+her guard, and ran about riotously.  She had spoken lightly
+of religion.  Roger was annoyed&mdash;less, she suspected, from the
+strength of his own religion than because he thought she ought
+to be converted, like a princess marrying a foreign king, to
+the traditional religion of her sovereign's house.  And she said
+forthwith:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know I'm going to shock you, Roger; but this is the
+truth.  The only reason I want to be married in church is
+because it's always done, and a registry office sounds horrid.
+And I want to wear a white dress and have a crowd of people
+there."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger's features palpably tightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's no good being angry....  You ought to be pleased
+with me for trusting you and being so open.  I could quite
+easily lie about it.  But the plain truth is, that I haven't got
+any religion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger then began an irreproachable homily on the necessity
+of some religion in life, but before he got very far, Daphne,
+irritated, burst in:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Roger dear, frankly now.  What's the sense of you
+preaching Christianity to me?  I know you for what you are,
+and I'm fond of you for what you are.  And I know you to
+be ambitious (just as I am), and that you like everything of
+the best (as I'm sure I do), and that you like to be on top
+and to flatter yourself you don't easily play second-fiddle.  Well,
+that's all perfectly delightful, but it's not Christianity."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger wrinkled his brow to think out an answer; but she
+had thought it out quicker, and knew what he was going to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know that you're right, Duffy.  There must be
+'top-men' in the world.  Only it's the duty of the men on top to
+care for their workers and servants all they can, and so to
+serve them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I'll be a Christian, if that's all it is&mdash;so long as I'm
+one of the top-dogs."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He let her rebelliousness pass, only grinning, as if he could
+afford to wait in the knowledge that the time would come when
+he, with his stronger mind, would be able to mould her to the
+pattern he desired.  It was rather like the grin one might give
+to a pet dog who tried to get a stick out of one's hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Panic was running in Daphne, while she thought that life
+seemed to be made up of making mistakes, going too far with
+them, being too gentle to turn back, and accepting as punishment
+a ruthless life-sentence.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+She was rather frightened, though pretending to be delighted,
+with the big house in Fettes Gardens, South Kensington,
+which Sir Roger had offered them as a wedding present.
+As she walked up its four or five stories, and calculated that
+it would require a butler and four or five women servants, she
+wondered how ever she would be able to manage them.  She
+felt very little different from what she had done in Miss
+Vidella's form-room; and how could a schoolgirl command this
+battleship?  The similar houses to left and right frightened
+her with a picture of their wealthy and competent ladies.  So
+did the tall well-bred houses opposite, on the other side of the
+railed-in gardens.  "I feel like a pea in a pod too big for it,"
+she thought.  But she was careful not to show her feelings to
+Roger, lest he found her even more inadequate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll do it.  I'll manage it.  After all, these terrible women
+next door, and the dowagers over the road, must have started
+somewhere."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They married Daphne at St. Patrick's, Fettes Gardens, in
+the August after the signing of peace with the Boers, when
+Owen had returned to play an exceedingly important and
+well-dressed part in the ceremonies.  She was very proud of
+her men.  Who there looked like her father, on whose arm
+she was, or Roger, who took her at the chancel steps, or Owen,
+who had appointed himself vicar's warden and master pew-opener?
+At sixty-two her father's hair, not at all to his displeasure,
+had gone quite white, but his tall figure was as slender
+and neat as Owen's.  She enjoyed the excitements to the full,
+and only felt a warming of the eyes when, on going to her
+carriage to drive to the station, Hollins, who had hardly taken
+her eyes from the bride all the afternoon, cried as she hugged
+and kissed her, saying: "The meaning 'll have gone of life,
+Miss Duffy, with you gone.  The meaning 'll sort have
+somehow gone out of life.  God bless you, dear.  God bless
+you."  Her father just kissed her, patted her on the shoulder, and
+made a joke.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+He delayed on the steps, however, to watch the carriage
+receding along the road towards the first corner.  That carriage,
+of which he could see only the hinderparts and the horse's
+twinkling heels, was taking Daphne out of his range and
+beyond his call.  His jaw jerked forward at the thought.  The
+stream of life, so he put it, had brought her to him where he
+drifted, and running rapidly on, like the unsentimental thing
+it was, had floated her away before he had hardly touched her;
+and he would never catch her now.  Pain and bewilderment sat
+uncomfortably at his heart.  "I missed her.  I missed her
+somehow."  A variant of something Daphne had often uttered
+of late, with crumpled brow, seemed the best expression of
+what he was feeling: "I don't know.  One doesn't learn how
+to adjust oneself to life till it's nearly time to die."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The carriage turned the corner, and old Sir Roger called:
+"Come on, Bruno; it's all over now."  (Detestable the way he
+called you "Bruno," as if he were your equal!)  He turned
+and walked over the doormat into the house.  The chaff and
+laughter of the guests was beginning to sound hollow, and the
+whole assembly to show its fractures, now that its centre had
+been driven away.  Mr. Bruno thought of his home, and his
+study, and his books; and made an excuse for returning to
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0428"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, though she concealed it, was very proud of the
+circumstances of her married life.  She was proud of her
+big house and its fine furniture; of having so much money in
+her purse (Roger gave her an incredible allowance), of her
+shopping at the great stores; and of giving her name as
+Mrs. Muirhead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These were the pleasures; but there were worries, too.  The
+housekeeping, though she tried to approach it light-heartedly,
+was a permanent anxiety; she knew nothing about it.  Mistress
+of one man-servant and four women, she had no talent
+whatever for ordering them about.  Instead of issuing commands
+as one accustomed to authority, she caught herself throwing
+out hints of what it would be nice for them to do.  She
+could hear the weakness in her hesitating speech, and
+wondered if they perceived it too, and laughed at her.  This
+nervousness she had tried to conceal from her husband, but one
+evening at dinner, when she had asked the butler: "Would you
+mind getting the other cruet?  Yes, thank you very much.  It's
+downstairs," Roger said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dearest, I don't think there's any need for you to petition
+the servants to do quite reasonable duties."  The criticism
+was eased by a kind smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, determined, like him, to avoid any friction in these
+early marriage days, decided to accept the rebuke merrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I'm in mortal terror of them."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger shrugged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then our household will inevitably be run in a slovenly
+way.  Of that I'm quite sure.  I'm the last person, as you
+know, to suggest bullying one's servants, but I believe it's
+happier in the end for everybody, if they're disciplined."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right," said Daphne, with a slight heart-sinking, "I'll
+try."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was as much at sea with her social duties&mdash;her calls,
+and her entertaining at home.  Dinners!  She had never been
+to one before marriage.  How on earth were they created?
+She felt sure that she was doing something wrong, and these
+fashionable women would criticise her among themselves.  And
+they had no right to, she thought angrily; life was something
+bigger than their silly little conventions, and she had as many
+brains as any of them&mdash;more than most.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger made her worse, for it was quite obvious, though he
+thought it tactfully concealed, that he was putting her through
+a course in social demeanour.  When talking enthusiastically
+at their meals together, she would emphasise with her arm
+or point; and he would hint that the best people didn't do that.
+She spoke too loud when excited, and laughed too shrilly, he
+said.  And certain words such as "Lordy," and "Crikey!" and
+"Coo!" he ruled out as impossible.  In fact, he was evidently
+pained at this discovery of "no polish" in his wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The result was that if her deportment-master came into her
+drawing-room, she was reduced to the awkwardness of a school-girl.
+His merry conversation and ease of manners she guessed
+to be partly paraded as a demonstration of how these things
+were done; and his thoughtful silence when their visitors had
+left to be the symptom of his disappointment at her failure.
+Once at a convention <i>tête-à-tête</i> dinner, he said deliberately:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't seem to have much social gift, darling, do you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Haven't I?" said she, hurt.  "How do you mean?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, you never say anything.  You look divine, of course;
+but you seem to have no subjects of conversation."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but I think I could talk the hind leg off a donkey with
+people of my own age, and in an easier setting.  But I'm frightened
+of all your dames.  You see, I feel so young."  She leaned
+her elbows on the table.  "Do you know, I can't realise I'm
+married.  I can't see any difference in myself from when I
+went to school and played the fool.  I feel just the same."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you look it," agreed Roger, fetching down her left
+hand from where it was meeting the right, under her chin,
+and holding it lovingly on the table.  He kept it, till the
+entrance of the butler obliged him to withdraw his own, guiltily
+and humorously, on to his lap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This hand-holding and mutually understood jest were typical
+of their relation.  They were good friends.  And Roger was
+a model (as he meant to be) of courtesy.  He was never
+brusque with her.  The way he assisted her from carriage or
+omnibus, or helped her on with her cloak after the theatre, or
+considered her needs at meals, or opened the door for her
+when she left a room (even when they were alone) showed that
+he delighted to honour his wife as the queen among women.
+And she&mdash;she felt grateful to him for having married her,
+and was resolved that throughout his life he must have all
+his dues.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet she knew that he was always contrasting his own
+home with others better "run," and her over-awed shyness
+with the aplomb and ready wit of other hostesses.  She knew
+it more than ever when he appeared to have abandoned the
+deportment-course in favour of silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This silence was like a perpetual rebuke.  And when one
+day he was studying a parliamentary Blue Book, whose very
+appearance seemed to show the difference between the width
+of his interests and hers (and perhaps was not unwillingly
+displayed to that end), she sat alone by the window, and stared
+into Fettes Gardens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, I see where I've failed him.  One doesn't see it till
+afterwards.  I never knew I was going to dislike and rather
+despise the social hum-drum.  I am always ready to picture
+myself in any large occupation, and doing it better than anybody
+else; when the plain fact is that I am without social gifts.
+I'm only an artist, like father, and probably a smaller one....
+But I must get into these household duties.  I must get into
+things, and not let him down.  It's only fair to him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she set about it with renewed vigour.  She kept elaborate
+books of accounts, drew up exceedingly neat programmes for
+the servants' labours, bought books on etiquette (surreptitiously),
+diligently read the papers so as to know what was
+being talked about, watched with unremitting care over her
+husband's wardrobe, and at all social assemblies studied the
+behaviour and the vocabulary of the vivacious ladies who did
+not disappoint their husbands.  And her rapid improvement,
+manifest to herself, greatly encouraged her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the havoc it made of her writing and reading was an
+abiding disquiet.  And one morning at breakfast, when she
+read in the book-reviews, to which she always turned first, of
+a young woman writer's triumph, her mouth squared, and,
+dropping the paper, she sipped her coffee in dejection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger noticed, and rested his hand on hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's the matter, dearest?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing."  She looked up brightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes there is.  You look wretched, as you can sometimes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm depressed, I suppose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Depressed?  What have you got to be depressed about?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps his features had tightened a little.  Had she hurt
+him by so poor a compliment as to be depressed sometimes?
+He raised surprised eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I can't see what you've got to be depressed about."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jarred, she answered with a note of anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know you can't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, what is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She slightly tossed her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, sometimes I can't help thinking of all I dreamed I
+was going to do.  And time passes, and I do nothing."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do nothing!" echoed Roger, covering his injury with a smile.
+"Well, you're only twenty-three, and you're married and have
+a fine house and most luxuries.  I don't think you've started
+badly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, but I meant in the writing way.  I intended to&mdash;to
+read all the literature in the world and then write.  I set
+myself too big a task, I suppose."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger ruminated over his toast and marmalade, and decided
+after two or three minutes that he was right in being offended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your trouble, Duffy, I think, is that you want all the
+advantages of married life, and all the advantages of
+freedom&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, it's not&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Please let me go on.  <i>I</i> accept the disadvantages, and there
+<i>are</i> a few, though you may not think it.  There are some things
+that haven't turned out just as I thought, but I've resigned
+myself to them philosophically."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She flushed at this frank statement, and said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the greater ease that came to her in domestic and
+social duties, however, she found that, with system, quite a
+number of hours in the week could be secured for her reading.
+Yes, she had been a little panicky.  And as book after book
+returned to her shelves read, and not only read but understood,
+she felt again the improvement in her mind, its finer
+tempering and wider reach.  Her taste advanced with every month,
+so that the memory of certain parts of "Madame Rolland"
+made her catch her breath with dismay.  And the more she
+read, the more avenues of learning opened before her, and
+the more she sought to snatch studious hours from the day.
+Fancy if she could become equal in knowledge to her father!
+And to Henry!
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+And then with a spasm of apprehension she suspected that
+she was going to have a child.  Soon she knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was useless to tell herself she ought to feel differently
+about it; she didn't, and there was the truth.  She didn't want
+the child.  Not yet.  For years it would smash up such study
+and such writing as she wanted to do.  And it might be the
+first of many!  No good to tell herself that the feeling was
+unnatural; she knew it was perfectly natural; the whole force
+of her had been directed to a different channel.  And because
+of this there had lingered in her mind the flattering conviction,
+a last romantic delusion, that she was not one of those who
+bore children easily.  It had been encouraged by her early
+immunity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night, when Roger lay by her side and was about to
+embrace her, she said abruptly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Roger, I'm frightfully afraid I'm going to have a baby.
+Oh, what on earth am I going to do with a baby?  I don't want
+it....  I don't want it...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He removed his arm from her, and said nothing at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Knowing that she had angered him, and anxious to hear his
+voice, she persisted:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, you might sympathise with me, Roger.  What on earth
+am I to do about it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Really, Duffy, you do hurt me sometimes.  I always thought
+that a wife when she had such a piece of news came with joy
+to her husband.  At least, so I've always read....  I can't
+make it out.  Either you are different from most women, or
+women are very different from what they appear in books."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He heard her sigh, and felt sorry for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why should it upset you so?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, Roger, I don't want one just now.  Not just now.
+Not so soon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He emitted a sound of disgust, and answered vaguely:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What a humbug it all is!  What a fool's paradise we men
+live in!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But don't you see what bad luck it is to me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I don't.  I confess I can't....  I can't see your point of
+view at all.  As I told you once before, you seem to have
+entered marriage with an eye to all the advantages, and a
+determination to avoid all the handicaps."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think the motives of all of us are pretty mixed; but what's
+the good of throwing stones, when we're being punished for it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let me finish what I was saying.  A girl who gets married
+and then whines because a child appears really does drive
+rather blindly at life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, yes.  Yes, I know," agreed Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap0429"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XXIX
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+During the months of malaise and sickness that followed
+she was conscious of a relapse from all those things that
+in the last few years had brought some goodness and direction
+to her life.  She no longer cared for the defiant courage and
+the pity transcending God's which her father had set before her.
+She no longer cared about giving a generous return to Roger
+for all he had given to her, or about excusing his faults because
+hers were the same in kind.  More than this, she not only eluded
+these motions towards goodness; she actively fought against
+them.  When a clear thought whispered that her rebelliousness
+was disproportionate to its cause, she silenced and drove it
+away.  If her new habit of combating indolence asserted itself
+and bade her be up and about a work, she deliberately sat down
+and did nothing, thus to snub it.  All thoughts that would give
+her the right to criticise Roger she encouraged; he had pursued
+her remorselessly, and dazzled her out of her senses into
+marrying him; and she didn't love him&mdash;she loved Henry; Henry
+only and always; her studies and her writing were for Henry&mdash;nay,
+they <i>were</i> Henry; and Roger was enforcing his power to
+snatch her from them.  When a moment's interest and a tremor
+like love stirred for the coming child, she repressed it firmly,
+resolved to dislike this little jailer of Roger's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Self-consciousness haunted her as she grew larger.  She
+would keep seated, if possible, when visitors came; she walked
+very quickly out of rooms; over shop-counters she stooped
+slightly.  Not the smallest of her disappointments was the
+knowledge that she would never be able to wear her new clothes,
+because, when she could fit them again, they would be out of
+fashion.  And her figure, which had always been the admiration
+of her father and Henry, might never be so small again.  More
+children would arrive, and she would become matronly.  Roger
+had made her slough off her youth, and leave it behind for ever.
+And she was only twenty-three....  And Henry might come
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What did she know about the management of a baby?  Not
+even how they were dressed.  She bought pattern journals
+which showed pictures and gave the patterns of frocks for the
+new-born child.  Dully she went and bought the materials they
+detailed, and gave up her afternoons to making the robes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day her husband came in and saw her engaged on this
+work; and, picking up the little long robe, with its lace edges
+and ribbons, he smiled with pleasure and kissed the crown of
+her head.  Probably he was touched to see her doing this work
+herself, but said no word of approval for fear of offence.  He
+had great ideas of treating her, at this important stage, with the
+utmost consideration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That he should think she had abandoned her right to irritation
+annoyed Daphne, so she purposely said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oughtn't we to think about getting a nurse for this infant
+of yours?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's plenty of time, isn't there?" inquired he.  "There
+are enough about."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We want to get a good one."  Daphne, needle between her
+lips, held up the garment, ostensibly to examine it, really to give
+an ease to her words.  "Because I tell you plainly, I'll bear this
+child for you, but as soon as it's arrived, I'm going to give it
+up to a nurse who can look after it all day and give it its bottle."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But dear&mdash;&mdash;" he began, and stopped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laid down her sewing, and asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What were you going to say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, it's no good worrying you yet awhile....  I was only
+going to ask if you weren't going to&mdash;suckle it yourself.  My
+mother nursed me.  She told me so."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne felt like saying: "But that's about the thing she'd do
+best.  I don't suppose she ever had any ambition in her life
+apart from you," but she only said, rather timidly, for she had
+never overcome a fear of Roger:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I'm not going to.  There's not such a great difference
+between bottle-babies and the others as all that.  After all, I
+shall only be twenty-four years older than my son or daughter,
+and I've a duty to myself as well as to it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger held his peace, but walked with displayed disappointment
+out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, walk away if you like," thought Daphne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She completed all the garments and filled a white basket with
+them, rather proud of her handiwork.  Why she had made
+and broidered every garment herself was not clear; in part,
+it was self-martyrdom; in part, the simplicity of her childhood
+made lordly buying unnatural to her; in part, too, and she knew
+it, there was a concealed idea of self-punishment for the unkind
+hostility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now that the time drew closer, she wished it would come
+quickly and be over.  She looked forward to being small again,
+and free from sickness and pain.  "As soon as it's over, I'm
+going to have a real good time."  A brilliant idea had abated
+some of the gloom.  Hollins!  Why hadn't she thought of
+Hollins before?  The happiness it would give old Hollins!
+Hollins came, and they enjoyed long talks together.  The old
+servant smiled and shook her head when Daphne declared:
+"Do you know, I dislike this child intensely.  I shall hand it
+over to you and a nurse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall I tell you something, dear?" said Hollins.  "Your
+mamma used to talk to me about a lot of things she didn't talk
+to no one else about; and she told me that she hadn't wanted you
+at all, but she no sooner saw you than&mdash;well, she loved you so,
+she wouldn't 'ave called the queen her cousin."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne looked at the table-top, and then jumped up.  "But
+mother was quite different from me, I've always imagined.  She
+was that sort.  No, I shall hand over the kid to you and the
+nurse and be free.  I wish it would come quickly....  Yes, I
+think I nearly hate it...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nearly ain't half-way," said Hollins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roger wanted her to be very careful with herself, and to act
+as the decorous invalid.  But she refused to do anything of the
+kind, going about the day's occupations as if she expected
+nothing.  And he, ever eager for romantic feelings, began to marvel
+at her courage.  This admiration reached its topmost pitch when
+one afternoon, two weeks before the marked day, as they were
+sitting together talking, she suddenly got up and said: "I think
+I'll go and lie down.  And, Roger dear, I think perhaps you'd
+better get the doctor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He jumped up to help her to her room, but she said: "It's all
+right.  I'm all right.  You arrange for the doctor and the
+nurse," and walked easily and quickly up the stairs.  With a
+rapid heart Roger hurried to his telephone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he walked up and down the dining-room, sincerely feeling
+all that it was written he should feel at such an hour.
+Self-dramatisation was there, but he was not conscious of it.  He
+was praying: "O God, make it all right for her.  Don't let it
+hurt her too much!"  There was no sound upstairs in her
+room&mdash;no periodical moaning, such as he had supposed was
+usual.  Once or twice, fearful lest this silence boded ill, he
+walked up to the room, and saw her lying in bed and ready to
+smile up at him, as cosily as if it were a late morning and she
+too comfortable to get up.  Another time he found her out of
+bed and in the adjoining dressing-room, seeing that everything
+was ready there for the nurse.  No word or strain of feature
+suggested that she was knowing pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wheels of the doctor's carriage were heard outside, and
+Roger himself opened the door to him.  It was a satisfaction,
+though unrecognised, to show the doctor the calm and dignity
+with which he met the threatening hours.  But the doctor, by
+his unhurried manner, seemed to disperse all exaggerated
+seriousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your baby's impatient to be up and abroad," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, it's a hit earlier than we expected," admitted Roger,
+not quite sure if he liked jesting at such a moment&mdash;whether
+these doctors didn't get rather coarse.  But the words "your
+baby," seeming for the first time to mean something alive,
+thrilled him.  "Yes, two weeks early."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Quite so.  The little blighter!" said the doctor, wiping his
+boots on the mat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've 'phoned for the nurse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll take you up, then, to the wife," said Roger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He escorted him upstairs, and pointed to the door of the
+silent room.  The doctor passed in, and Roger was left on the
+landing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he prayed: "O God, make it all right for her!  And
+don't let it hurt."  The praying worked on him so that he nearly
+broke up; but he preserved his outward dignity.  He heard himself
+saying: "My little Duffy, my beloved, I can't bear to think
+of you suffering....  My God, I've been hard with you
+sometimes...."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as he walked downstairs, he paused sometimes and stood
+on the step with his hand on the balustrade, staring at the
+memory of some moment when he had hurt her with his&mdash;his
+discipline.  At last he reached the long dining-room again, and,
+standing by the window with his hands behind his back, gazed
+into the darkening street.  "If the worst were to happen&mdash;&mdash;"  But
+there his power to think broke down, retiring defeated upon
+itself.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Upstairs Daphne lay in her pain.  She was not groaning,
+through fear of her husband's thinking her a coward; but her
+breaths, as the pains seized her, were short, staccato intakes,
+like the breaths after sobs.  At the time of the doctor's entry
+she was in the pull of such a pain.  She felt him take her by
+the wrist, and was disposed to burst into tears.  Instead, she
+smiled a sick greeting, closed her eyes, and continued her short,
+sharp gasps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+O God, was there ever such pain?  Never, never again would
+she have a child.  "I wish I'd never married.  I am caught for
+life.  I may say I'll never have another child, but I shall.
+Unless I commit suicide after this, and escape from life because
+it's too hard and frightening.  Does every one of my age look
+back on a life blundered with and blundering?  It wasn't all
+my fault.  I'd only been in contact all my childhood with
+people who never faced up to anything as it really was&mdash;excepting
+Father, and he never spoke....  So that I ran into things with
+the comfortable idea that luck would make them all right&mdash;instead
+of seeing that my fate would be mathematically what I
+shaped it....  The love of being talked about and the desire
+for life and luxury made me marry Roger.  It was a blunder,
+and very wrong, I dare say&mdash;but one <i>does</i> make mistakes and
+be selfish at twenty-one ... the punishment is too unrelenting
+... too everlasting....  Henry ... I'd have gone through
+this for Henry....  Henry, why couldn't we have fought
+together for the truth of how to live? ... Does <i>any</i> girl reach
+motherhood with a scheme of living, other than drifting? ... Oh,
+my God!"  It was as if all the mental pain in her life had
+assembled to be present in this culminating agony.  "Oh,
+Doctor!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Over.  Rush of relief, so wonderful as itself to hurt.  "It's
+over and I'm free again."  She lay with eyes closed in this luxury
+and freedom from pain.  She had forgotten the child, there
+being no cry to remind her; or if there had been she had not
+noticed it.  At last, sighing with repletion of luxury, she opened
+her eyes and looked inquiringly for the doctor.  He was not in
+the room, but there was a nurse, a young woman, pleasant and
+round-faced, who smiled at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's right.  Why, you're a wonder!  You hardly turned
+a hair."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne, pleased with this tribute, answered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, it really wasn't half as bad as I expected."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nurse smiled meaningly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor told a different tale.  "You're so strong, you see."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There came a cry from the neighbourhood of the fire; and
+it repeated itself, and ceased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Would you like to see her?" asked the nurse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, is it a girl?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I should think it was.  And a little beauty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nurse walked away to the crib; and Daphne, though
+unexcited and not free of her former hostility, undoubtedly felt
+an interest to see what she had produced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There!" said the nurse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a new-born baby, it was a pleasing face that Daphne saw
+in the blanketed bundle held above her eyes.  There was no
+frown, nor was it mottled or over-coloured.  The lids were down,
+and the lashes distinctly visible.  Something in the lip and chin
+reminded her of Roger.  But the downy hair was much fairer
+than his could ever have been.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've seen worse," she pronounced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Seen worse!" echoed the nurse, taking back the baby.  "And
+I was wondering if I had ever seen a better."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later Roger was brought in, and he kissed her, declaring that
+she looked in radiant health.  She smiled, liking all this tribute
+to her physical strength and her fortitude.  "You'd better go
+and look at your daughter," said she.  And Roger, after staring
+into the crib for a long time, came back to her bed and asked
+her what she thought of "the little rat."  Probably he was
+wanting her to express a different attitude to that which she had
+adopted before its birth, but she replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose, if it were any one else's, I should say it was
+rather adorable."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pretended to smile, unwilling to argue just now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And Heaven knows," continued Daphne, "what's going to
+happen to her with no one to love her.  I feel a compassion for
+her, if that's any comfort to you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, you mustn't talk too much, I expect.  And I think
+<i>I</i>'ll be considering a night's rest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is it night, then?" inquired Daphne, for the room had long
+been lit, and she had known nothing of the gathered dark behind
+the blinds, or counted the passing of time in this bright
+illumination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's only a quarter to midnight," said Roger, as he stooped
+to kiss her.  "Good night, dearest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Good night, my dear."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Not at once, not as her mother had done, did Daphne succumb
+to the thing that trembled within her whenever she saw
+her daughter's face.  The admiration of all who looked at
+Evie&mdash;"Evie" for no obvious reason had leapt into Daphne's mind
+as the fitting name for this little fair thing&mdash;the genuine,
+sometimes startled admiration of visitors helped it.  But it was a
+remark of Hollins that bade it go forward to its conquest.  It
+was late at night, and Hollins, relieving the nurse, had brought
+Evie to her mother for the eleven o'clock feed.  Sitting up in
+bed, quite eager for another glimpse of the little face, Daphne
+took and held her daughter.  She stared down at it, bewildered
+as to who this little stranger was&mdash;so complete in every feature,
+with such manicured filbert nails on the wrinkled fingers.
+Baring her breast, she gave it to the searching mouth.  Then
+turning to Hollins, she asked with a smile: "How long do you expect
+me to go on doing this?  Not for interminable months, I hope."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's worth doing, dear," answered Hollins.  "I reckon there
+are few things better worth while."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daphne turned her head and looked at Evie again.  Her
+heart quickened, as if something, battened down, had been
+allowed to well up in it.  The plain truth, she knew, was that
+she loved this Evie with a trembling love.  As she admitted
+the thought, exhilaration glowed in her; and though she felt
+she suddenly wanted to lie down and meditate on a lot of
+things, she suspended thought, keeping only the exhilaration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the child was taken away by Hollins, and the light
+put down, and she could lie and think.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The image of Evie was with her.  "She's going to be
+intelligent.  Anybody can see that from her brow and her eyes.
+She must have all I didn't have&mdash;carefully watched childhood,
+and an education of the highest, with a proper training of her
+taste and a proper disciplining of her mind.  I must watch her
+every moment myself."  That inherent scepticism whispered:
+"But probably every parent has had these thoughts.  Probably
+mother did.  Probably father did, and wearied.  I dare say
+Evie's story will only be a repetition of mine....  But no.  I
+mustn't&mdash;I shan't go back on this vow....  I shall try to get
+on with my books as well, but if I can't do both, Evie shall come
+first."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lay awake a long time, abandoning her mind to those
+clearer parts that had always been there.  She wanted to locate
+some basic error that was responsible for the most of her
+blunders.  She seemed to find it at last&mdash;where, indeed, Henry
+had found it&mdash;in her ever present sense of the spectator, that
+mastering sense of a world looking on.  One could not be real
+when the spectator was the first consideration.  Did she inherit
+it from her father?  Was it in part a legacy from the poseurs
+who had surrounded her youth?  No, probably everybody in
+the world was tainted with it.  But people like herself and her
+father, who could see it for what it was, ought to be big enough
+to shake themselves free.  What a subtle poison, and how
+difficult to trace!&mdash;for often the spectator was oneself, and the
+deluding of that limited audience nearly complete!  She could
+see the succession of "attitudes" it had produced in her life; her
+early masculinity, her facile adorations, her insincere religion,
+her wilful publication of "Madame Rolland," her showy marriage
+with Roger, and so recently as yesterday her pretended
+dislike of her child.  A few things in her life seemed true and
+independent of it; her humble love for Henry, her new
+conceptions of her art, and her late ideas of courage, pity, and
+grateful generosity to Roger.  And now, as pure as any, came
+her love for Evie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brilliantly clear it all seemed that night to Daphne, as the
+clock ticked the hours away.  One was only happy when,
+regardless of applause, one was making something, giving
+something, or enjoying intimacy with whoso understood.
+Making&mdash;giving&mdash;intimacy&mdash;these were the real things.  Looking at
+others, instead of others looking at you.  So dear was it that
+she felt in sight of a liberation from her past.  If only&mdash;if only
+she could one day lose the spectator, she would shed like a single
+garment the poseur and the slave.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br><br></p>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78201 ***</div>
+</body>
+
+</html>
+
diff --git a/78201-h/images/img-cover.jpg b/78201-h/images/img-cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d8df9da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78201-h/images/img-cover.jpg
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c72794
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f79fc8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #78201
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78201)