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+*** 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+despise those unpublished brothers who could only be known for great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 ***