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AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

Few novelists, if any, can have escaped the sprightly idiocy of areproach couched in somewhat the following terms:

"Aha! I recognized the people in your last book. You can't deceiveME!The minute I came to that part about the old lady feeding the cat,I saw at once that you meant it for poor Aunt Jane."

And also, spoken several semi-tones lower:

"All the same, it seems rather a shame to have put poor oldGRANDPAPAinto a book, now that he's dead."

In an endeavour to forestall these intelligent criticisms, I wish topoint out that Philip and Eleanor Stellenthorpe, Miss Melody, AuntClotilde, the Hardinges, etc., merely represent types—that I fear tobe far from extinct—of amateur educationalists.

There are no individual indictments in HUMBUG,the bookis not an autobiography, and Lily Stellenthorpe is not an attempt atfoisting upon the reader a portrait of the writer as she would fainhave herself considered, and as she is not.

E. M. DELAFIELD.

HUMBUG

I

Good women know by instinct that the younger generation, moreespecially when nearly related to themselves, should be equipped toencounter life by the careful and systematic misrepresentation of themore vital aspects of life.

The mother of Lily and Yvonne Stellenthorpe was a good woman, and hadall a good woman's capacity for the falsification of moral values. Herhusband was so constituted that it would not be unjust to describe himin identical terms.

Lily was so pretty that she did not begin to disappoint her parentsseriously until she was seven years old, but Yvonne, who was not prettyand who displayed many less negative disadvantages as well, was asource of dismay to them from her very infancy, when she nearly died ofwater on the brain.

"Is little Vonnie quite like other children, I sometimes wonder?"fearfully whispered Eleanor Stellenthorpe to her husband, when Yvonnewas five years old. And Philip Stellenthorpe, with that entire refusalto acknowledge even the possibility of any painful contingency sowholly characteristic of the sentimental, replied, also in a whisper:

"Hush, my dearest! I can't bear to hear you say a thing like that."

Accordingly nothing of the sort was ever said again, although it becameperfectly obvious, in the course of another year or two, that Vonniewas "not quite like other children"—was, in fact, very, very slightlydeficient mentally.

She was a quiet little girl, who could be intensely obstinate, witha hesitation in her always unready speech that hardly amounted to animpediment. She was tall and healthy looking, so that one scarcelyrealized her head to be too large, as it certainly was, for her body.

Little Lily loved Yvonne, her senior by two years, with the fierce,protective passion of a mother for a helpless child. It was a lovethat caused her the most acute suffering of which a sensitive andhighly-strung child is capable, and the manifestations of which weresorrowfully described by her parents, in all good faith, as Lily'snaughtiness, and tendency to impertinent interference.

It was naughty to rage and cry when Vonnie was punished for beingobstinate or slow, it was impertinent to stamp and shout: "It's notfair! It's not fair!" when Vonnie was left at home, and Father andMother were kind enough to take Lily out for a treat, such as aneighbouring garden-party, or a wedding, and it was naughtiest ofall, when Vonnie was laughed at or admonished for not understandingthings quickly, to interfere and cry out: "She can't help it—sheistrying—it isn'tfair to scold her!"

Lily knew that all these things were naughty, because she had alwaysbeen told so, but the spirit of frenzy that possessed her always droveher on, the consciousness of naughtiness notwithstanding. Therefore ata very early age there was implanted in her the conviction that she hadbeen sent into the world with a natural proclivity towards wrong-doing.

Both children knew that Lily was their parents' favourite. It wouldhave been impossible not to know it. She might be sorrowfullyreproached for her "disloyalty"—a favourite accusation—to thecardinal article of belief that Father and Mother always knew best,but she was never punished. Her prettiness and her precociouscleverness were exploited and praised to her face. She was sent for tothe drawing-room whenever there were visitors, and taken out in thecarriage to pay calls, and very often given small, unexpected presentsand surprises by her mother, in which Vonnie's only share was to betold that "next time" it would be her turn.

It never was her turn, and Lily and Vonnie both knew that the "nexttime" of the promises would never come.

Paradoxically, it was far harder upon Lily than upon Vonnie. She hadthe greater capacity for suffering of the two, and a strong abstractsense of justice besides, that rendered her absolutely incapable ofaccepting uncritically an unfair situation. In addition, the ardourof her love for Vonnie was proportionate to the intensity of all heremotions.

Theoretically, one loved Father and Mother best of everybody inthe world. In fact, it would have been a "disloyalty" of the verynaughtiest kind to contemplate any other possibility. It was properto love one's sister third in order, and Lily and Vonnie were bothpersuaded that to these regulations they must and did conform. Lily, atseven years old, naturally did not seek logically to reconcile thisdoctrine with the strange accesses of rage and rebellion against Fatherand Mother that seized her so frequently upon Vonnie's behalf.

Vonnie resented nothing, for herself. She was philosophical,humble-minded, and above all desirous of peace. The nursery stormsraised by Lily in her defence were her chief source of grievance. Shedid not mind being left out of treats, very much. She minded the noiseof Lily's angry screams, and Mother's argumentative reproaches, and thefinal grieved intervention of Father, very much more.

Fortunately, perhaps, for her peace, Vonnie very often failed torealize that it was her own inoffensive self that was the cause ofthese terrible domestic cataclysms.

She was absent-minded, and never much interested in what people weresaying, so that very often the beginning of disturbance went quiteunheard by her. Sometimes she only woke up to what was happening whenLily had begun to scream, as she always did sooner or later when herfurious gusts of temper outran her powers of verbal expression.

Then Vonnie would think wearily: "Another scene!" which was what shealways called a disturbance of any kind, and put her hands to her head,through which each one of Lily's shrieks sent a dull pain jarring. Itmade her feel rather sick in a curious sort of way, to see Lily shakingall over, the tears streaming down her scarlet cheeks, and Mother, aspale as Lily was crimson, with miserable eyes and a face that almostimplored her to be good.

"My pet, how can you be so naughty? Can't you trust Mother to knowwhat's best forboth her babies?"

"It's not fair, it's not fair!" shrieked Lily as she had been shriekingfor the last five minutes.

"Stop saying that, Lily. It's not true, it's very naughty. Don't youknow that Mother would never do anything that wasn't fair?"

"Let—Vonnie—come—too," Lily sobbed more quietly.

"My little darling, leave Vonnie to me. Youmust learn not tointerfere with Vonnie. It will be her turn next time. Besides, Vonniedoesn't want to go, do you, Vonnie my pet?"

"No, Mother," said Vonnie, watching her mother's face and only desirousof saying what would most quickly conduce to peace.

"You see, Lily! As though Mother didn't know what was best for herlittle Vonnie."

"She always says she doesn't want to go! It's notfair!..."

Lily had begun again, more frantically than ever. Father had to be sentfor.

Father took up a high line at once. "My little Lily!" said he gravely.He firmly placed his little Lily upon his knee, a post of honourreserved exclusively for moments of serious appeal and which, even atthe height of her frenzy, Lily would never have thought it possible todecline.

"My little Lily! Is this the way you show your gratitude, when anouting is planned for you? Don't you know that you are grieving usvery much, when we are only thinking of your welfare and pleasure, andwanting to make you happy? God will be very angry with you, if youcan't show a happy, grateful spirit."

Father and Mother were never angry—they were only grieved. It was Godthat was always indignant and resentful on their behalf.

Lily was afraid of God, and secretly thought that He, who kneweverything and could do everything, always punished her naughtinessby sending the thing that she dreaded most in all the world—one ofVonnie's fearful earaches.

The assurance that God was angry again made her choke down some of herdefiant sobs and mutterings.

"We might all be so happy, if you were a good little girl, and itought to be so easy with parents who love you dearly. Many poor littlechildren have no father and mother or nice, cheerful, happy home. Now,my pet, are you sorry?"

"Yes," said Lily tremulously, thinking of God with the earache boltstill, as it were, suspended.

"Then I think you had better ask God to forgive you. Go and kiss yourdear mother, and then run and get dressed. Don't keep the carriagewaiting."

God, and Philip Stellenthorpe's magnanimity, had defeated Lily.

She crept away, dragging her feet.

Her head ached and her eyes smarted and, dressed up in her white silkfrock and best hat, precociously sensitive to the contrast, she hadto leave Vonnie in everyday clothes and nursery pinafore, a forlornfigure at the window, and take her seat between her parents in the opencarriage.

As they drove, she heard them exchange comments over her head, as theyvery often did, in slightly lowered tones.

"Her poor little eyes are quite swollen——"

"Poor little thing!"

They always forgave her quickly, like that, however frightful heroffence.

Would that God had been equally unresentful! All through theunappreciated afternoon, Lily was secretly addressing earnest,spasmodic appeals to that unappeasable Avenger.

"Don't make Vonnie have earache—not this time!... I did stop screamingat the end—Iam sorry—I never, never mean to be naughty again. Oh,don't make Vonnie have earache—give me any other punishment—(but ofcourse He won't, because He knows that nothing else makes me half somiserable—) If only Vonnie doesn't have earache this time, I promiseI'll never be naughty again as long as I live—"

"Have you enjoyed yourself, my pet?"

"Yes, Mother."

It would have been naughty not to enjoy oneself when Father and Motherhad given one a treat, and quite unthinkable actually to say that onehadn't. As well part at once with the last feeble shred of hope thatGod would withhold the earache punishment.

Those earaches to which Vonnie was periodically a victim were likethe shadow of some monstrous nightmare, for ever hanging over Lily'shead. The perpetual foreboding of them, which was never altogetherabsent from her, darkened her childish days, but when the nightmare wasactually upon her, the foreboding realized, Lily knew the meaning ofanguish.

Her tiny impotence would hurl itself against the cruel facts ofVonnie's pain, Vonnie's speechless and stoical acceptance of it, worstof all, the philosophic unconcern of the surrounding grown-up people.Because Vonnie never cried, never complained,would say "Nothing isthe matter" to all their enquiries, they would not see.

They were not really sufficiently interested to see.

When Lily had toothache—really a very little toothache—andtentatively said so, her mother petted her additionally, asking hercontinually if the tooth was hurting less, and giving her a story-bookin the drawing-room at lesson time. She came into the night nurserywith a carefully shaded light in her hand, in the middle of the night,and woke Lily up by putting a little plate with some grapes on it ather bedside. All of which was very pleasant, and Lily was quite sorrywhen next day it proved impossible, with any vestige of truth, toassert that the tooth was still aching.

But if anything hurt Vonnie, she would never say so. Lily knew this,but nobody else seemed to realize it. In the same way, Lily, by somemysterious instinct that she could not have analyzed, always knew bysome quite indescribable look around Vonnie's eyes, when anything wasthe matter with her. She even knew, and the knowledge made her somiserable that she felt as though she could not bear it, that Vonniesometimes tried to shut her away, too, and would rather that she hadnot known so much and so unerringly.

Vonnie's reticence was appalling. She would have suffered tortures,rather than risk a possible scene by complaining. She could only justbear Lily's piercing watchfulness so long as it found no vent in words.

On the earache days, and, worst of all, nights, both were at a pitch ofstrain that amounted to acute nervous tension and each reacted upon theother.

An east wind gave Vonnie earache. So did sitting in a draught, orstaying out of doors late when it was damp, or sometimes just catchingan ordinary cold in the head. Lily knew all this. A familiar sensationto her was that of a sudden sinking, a physical sickness that onlylasted for a few seconds, when some grown-up authority observedcarelessly in her hearing:

"Why, the wind has gone right round to the east to-day."

Once Lily had put her apprehension into words and said, breathless frommisery:

"Then Vonnie will get earache!"

"What!

her father made playful quotation.

But when Lily, frightened and resentful that she was not being takenseriously, repeated angrily: "But shewill get earache—she alwaysdoes, if there's an east wind," her father spoke gravely.

"Come, come, my pet. I don't like to hear you say things like that.That's not being a very good little girl, you know. It's only gloomy,ungrateful little people who run to meet trouble halfway. Little Vonniedoesn't mean to get earache. Do you, Vonnie?"

"Yes, Father—I mean no," said Vonnie vaguely.

She went out and she did get earache. Lily had always known that shewould.

Yet Lily, from that day added to her store of small, pervertedconvictions, the unescapable conclusion that it was very naughty toforesee calamity, and still naughtier to voice that foresight.

She still sometimes said to the nurse, or to the daily governess:"Vonnie's got a cold already. She'll have earache if she goes outto-day." The words seemed forced from her in a frail hope that wouldnot be denied, that the catastrophe might be averted.

But the nurse simply said: "Will you learn to mind your own business,Miss Lily? I should hope I know what was good for Miss Vonnie by thistime, without any interference from you."

And the governess said bracingly: "Oh, I don't think Vonnie's got muchof a cold, have you, dear?"

To which Vonnie, of course, said No, just as she would have said therewas nothing the matter, if earache had actually been upon her.

"There, you see, Lily! You really must give up always trying to speakfor Vonnie instead of letting her speak for herself. It's not goodforher, and it's not good foryou. What will you do when you'reboth grown up?" said Miss Cleeve humorously, "if you're at a ball,let us say, and some gentleman asks Vonnie to dance, and then you,Lily, answer instead of her and say 'Oh no, thank you very much, she'stired.' Wouldn't that make you both look very silly, don't you think?"

Lily was no match for Miss Cleeve's ridicule. She could think of noconfutation of thisreductio ad absurdum of the situation, even inher own mind. She merely hated Miss Cleeve vehemently, and put her forever into the large class of people who "didn't understand."

These were indeed legion, where was concerned the most vitalpreoccupation of Lily's whole being—Vonnie's welfare.

When an earache pain had actually begun, which it did almost always inthe evening, not the day-time—and Lily knew by the look on Vonnie'sface that it was still quite endurable, there was a faint hope thatif she went to bed quickly and pulled the blankets over her head, shemight go to sleep before it became really bad.

But Vonnie would not, and Lily dared not, utter a word of this to theauthorities, and consequently the half-hour spent in the drawing-roomwith Father and Mother before bedtime underwent no curtailment, on suchoccasions.

They played Happy Families, or Beggar-my-Neighbour, or listened toFather reading aloud, just as usual.

And all the time Lily, in an agony, was inwardly adjuring the Being towhom she believed all her misery to be directly attributable.

"Let them send us to bedsoon—don't let her be bad to-night—oh, domake them send us to bed to-night—now at once. Let her go to sleepbefore it gets bad—I'll be so good if only You'll make them send us tobed at once before it gets bad——"

On one such evening, when Philip Stellenthorpe saw Lily's eyes fixedupon him, and her lips moving, as he thought, in earnest attention tohis reading, he paused as he was about to close the book.

"What about an extra quarter of an hour, just for once?" he enquiredbenevolently. "It's almost too exciting to leave off here, don't youthink, little Lily?"

He never really quite believed that poor little Vonnie, who neverspoke, could follow the thread of any story, although he would havebeen much shocked if anybody had ever put such a thought into words.

And Lily, unforgettably, appallingly conscious of her own departurefrom sacred tradition, gratitude and everything else to be accountedfor righteousness, said in a voice that sounded loud and strained:"Please, I'd rather we went to bed now."

There was a dreadful silence.

The kind smile abruptly vanished from Philip's face altogether, and heshut up the book as though he could never bear to open it again, andput it away from him almost with horror.

Eleanor Stellenthorpe looked stricken.

"Run along, my pets," she said in the accustomed formula, but in aninward voice that suggested restrained suffering.

She received Vonnie's kiss automatically, as she always did, butwhen Lily put her arms round her mother's neck, fearful of omittingthe customary hug that she knew was always expected of her, Eleanorreleased herself gently. Slowly bowing her head, she at the same timeraised her eyes and fixed them sorrowfully upon Lily's face, producingan extraordinarily poignant effect of silent reproach.

Philip kissed Lily once upon the forehead, instead of as usual, two orthree times all over her face and said deeply:

"My poor little child! Good-night."

Lily went upstairs in tears, indescribably guilty.

She had been naughty again, and oh! how like God it was, to havearranged things like that. If Vonnie didn't get to bed and to sleepbefore the earache gained its hold, then they must both suffer throughone of those black nights of misery that Lily so dreaded. But whenone was asked whether one preferred to go straight to bed, or to situp while Father was kind enough to read aloud, it was naughty andungrateful to choose bed. So that God, having thus trapped one intonaughtiness, was there all ready with His favourite punishment—thething that He knew she dreaded most of all the punishments in theworld—Vonnie's earache.

That night, the hand of God, as Lily saw it, was even heavier thanusual. Vonnie's earache was agonizing.

Lily knew this, in the darkness of the night nursery, from the tiny,stifled moans that came from Vonnie's bed. Not a sound ever escaped heruntil the pain was almost unbearable, and even then Lily knew that shewould never utter a spoken word, because the children were forbidden tospeak after the light was put out.

Lily herself lay stiff and rigid in her bed, her hands clenched, herbody quivering and sweating, with every faculty strained to its utmostin the intensity of her tortured listening. Each time that Vonnie'salmost inaudible moan sounded, a pang went through Lily's whole frame.Every now and then she would discover that she was holding her breath,and find herself constrained to exhale it in a long, quivering,noiseless sob.

From time to time when the little moaning sound had not at oncerecurred after the brief interval of silence by which it was usuallysucceeded, a sick hope invaded Lily that Vonnie might after all bedropping off to sleep. But, redoubling the intensity of her ownlistening, she could hear sobbing, irregular breathing from Vonnie thatshook her with a fresh despair.

"Vonnie!" she whispered.

No answer.

"Oh, Vonnie, is it very bad?"

"No," came the faintest of whispers in reply.

It was not true, Lily knew perfectly well, and she knew also that verylikely next day Vonnie would deliberately go and confess to theirmother that she had been disobedient and talked, after the light hadbeen put out in the night nursery.

She would say nothing about her earache, nothing to excuse herself,nothing to incriminate Lily, and would accept rebuke or punishmentquite speechlessly. Lily knew that Vonnie always craved any form ofpenalty that would ease her conscience of the imaginary burdens withwhich she was eternally loading it. But no one else understood this.

Presently a shaft of moonlight crept through the curtained window, andLily sat up in bed. Then she saw, with a shock that made her feel sick,that Vonnie was sitting bolt upright, not lying down at all. Her smallpillow was put up on end behind her and inadequately supported hershoulders, and both hands clasped her temples.

As a rule, Vonnie lay down on the side that wasn't hurting her, andkept both hands over her bad ear. Lily had never seen her sitting uplike this before and it seemed to deny any hope of her ever being ableto go to sleep at all.

"Oh, let me fetch Nurse," sobbed Lily, shaking from head to foot.

Vonnie shook her head very slightly in obstinate negative, and themovement forced a gasping sound of pain from her.

It was always the same thing.

Vonnie would not tell about her earache when it began because she wasafraid of a fuss, and she would not tell about it afterwards for fearof being scolded because she had not "said" sooner. If Lily toldinstead of her, then it was naughty and interfering, and very likelydisbelieved besides, in the face of Vonnie's stoical denials. There wasno hope anywhere, and the awful night would never, never end.

Lily sat up too, because it was impossible to lie down while Vonniecrouched there, racked with pain; and tense, angry appeals that shethought of as prayers, raced through her mind.

"Make her go to sleep—it's nothing to You to send her off tosleep—Youcan't let her go on like this all night.... It's cruel topunish Vonnie too, as well as me.... Why can't You send the earache tome, when it's me You want to punish?"

But God, who knew everything, would never be taken in by an argument ofthat sort, however plausible it might have been to the ears of humanjustice. Lily knew very well that God perfectly understood how, insome strange, naughty way that invariably made the authorities angry,Vonnie's sufferings hurt Lily far more acutely than her own could everhave done. And, of course, He took advantage of His knowledge whenevershe had to be punished. Lily had even, sometimes, reflected with aforlorn kind of abstract justice, that this was fair enough. If Hedidn't so ingeniously choose the very way that hurt most, it wouldn'tbe a real punishment.

But, within sight and sound of Vonnie's torture to-night, she had noconsideration for abstract justice.

She did what she had very seldom done before, and went to fetch thenurse.

Nurse was in bed and, to Lily's astonishment, had not yet gone tosleep.

"Did Miss Vonnie ask you to come for me?" she demanded suspiciously.

Lily had anticipated the question, which was always the preliminary, inthe nursery, to an emphatic recommendation to mind her own business andleave Miss Vonnie to mind hers.

"Yes, she did," said Lily, feeling herself choke. God could hardly domuch more than He had done already, even to a liar, and everything butpresent relief had become worthless of consideration.

"Now mind, if you've got me out of bed for nothing——" said Nursethreateningly. But she spoke in quite a kind voice, and put on herdressing-gown, and lit a candle. "Good gracious, child, why are you sowhite?" she asked Lily and took her hand protectingly and held it allthe way to the night nursery.

Vonnie's moans were much louder now, and Lily, looking up anxiously atNurse, felt that she must, for once, accept Vonnie's illness at its ownvaluation, and not at the slighting one that Vonnie herself would faingive to it.

"Now then, Miss Vonnie dear, what's all this?"

Nurse took Vonnie's hands down from her head. The odd look roundVonnie's eyes that had been so nearly imperceptible early in theevening had deepened in a very strange way, and after one glance at hersmall, leaden-coloured face, Nurse's manner changed altogether.

She went to the little medicine-cupboard high up on the wall, and litthe spirit-lamp, and heated water and put into it some sweet-smellingoil out of a green bottle. She put Vonnie's dressing-gown round her anda large shawl over that, and sat down in a low chair and took Vonnie onto her lap. Then she dipped some cotton-wool into the warm oil and putit into each ear, and all the time she was coaxing and pitying Vonniewith kind, soothing words.

Lily never forgot the exquisite ecstasy of relief with which shewatched and heard it all from her own bed in the corner. The violentreaction from her state of nervous anguish was so great that she beganto cry and sob quite quietly, scarcely knowing that she was doing so.

Vonnie's moaning ceased almost at once, and her whole attitude relaxed,and presently Nurse got up and put her gently down in the low chair,with a pillow behind her.

"I shall be back directly," she whispered reassuringly to Lily, openingthe door very softly.

She came back with their mother.

"She's dropped off now. I expect she'll sleep, poor little thing—she'sworn out with the pain," said Nurse as they looked down at unconsciousVonnie.

"Poor child! Well, Nurse, if you'll move in here for to-night, I'lltake Miss Lily into my room."

"Going to sleep with Mother" was a treat. Lily knew very well that ifshe had been the one to be ill, she would have been moved into hermother's room long since.

But nothing mattered, now that Vonnie was sleeping peacefully, andbeing taken care of by a kind, omnipotent grown-up person.

When Lily was lying snugly between the soft, scented sheets in hermother's enormous bed, with the pale pink quilt spread across it, hermother came and knelt beside her and put her arms round her.

"Go to sleep quickly, my pet. I shall be in bed directly. I've only gotto take off my dressing-gown. Settle down comfily, now."

A delicious, drowsy feeling invaded Lily, and she turned overobediently on her side.

"Why, my poor chicken, you've been crying! There's nothing for you tocry about. Did you have a bad dream?"

"Vonnie had earache," murmured Lily, half asleep, and heard withoutsurprise her mother's amused, uncomprehending laugh and answer:

"Why, you silly little goose, it was poor Vonnie who had earache, notyou! There was nothing foryou to cry about! You must have beendreaming."

II

Lily never knew whether the night that she had fetched Nurse to come toVonnie had witnessed the culminating episode in that series of giantnightmares, Vonnie's earaches—or whether it only stood out in hermemory from the acute sensation of exquisite relief that it had finallyafforded her.

At all events, it was after one of the earache nights that a dreadfulthought first came to her.

What a good thing it would be if Vonnie were to die! Lily was horrifiedat her own wickedness, but dwelt upon this solution with a sort ofunwilling fascination.

She knew instinctively that Vonnie would never grow up like otherpeople—would never be able either to take care of herself, or to findpeople who would take care of her. She would never be very happy, shewould always have earache, and be left out of treats, and chidden forbeing so slow.

Whereas, if Vonnie died, there was an end of earache, of scoldings, ofeverything that was unkind or unfair. She would go to Heaven, whereeverybody was perfectly happy for ever, and Lily herself would nevermind anything again, if once she knew for certain that Vonnie was happyand taken care of, even though out of sight. It seemed a very simplesolution, although God, to say nothing of Father and Mother, wouldcertainly be very angry with her for thinking of such a thing.

Lily, affrighted, put the idea away from her, although it came backagain when she once overheard Aunt Clo emphatically remarking thatVonnie would certainly never live to grow up.

Lily did not know of the devastating effect produced by Aunt Clo'sunsolicited pronouncement.

"That child won't live to grow up," said Miss Clotilde Stellenthorpedefiantly.

"Good heavens, Clo, what a thing to say in front of her own mother!"

Eleanor was half indignant and half tearful.

"Mark my words," said Aunt Clo inexorably.

Her brother Philip looked at her in pained rebuke.

"I don't like to hear you say a thing like that, Clo. It's—it'sheartless. Poor little Vonnie!"

"But no! There is nothing heartless about it. You and Eleanor refuse toface facts, my poor Philip. Why, you have only tolook at Vonnie tosee that she isn't——"

Philip winced so painfully, holding up his hand as though in protest,that she broke off.

"But just compare her with Lily, who is two years younger! Look at theway Lily chatters, and the too, too precocious things she says, and theway she can read and play her little pieces on the piano! Not that Iapprove of the way you exploit the child, my Eleanor. It's very bad forher, alas! and I can see that she thinks herself tremendously superiorto poor little Vonnie, always left out of everything."

"We have always been devoted toboth our little children, Clo," saidPhilip gravely. "It may be rather a temptation to take Lily about withus more than is quite good for her—she is a very pretty little mite,and one likes to hear her chatter, and to make her happy. But we loveboth our dear little girls equally, as they know very well."

It was perfectly true that the dear little girls had, at least, oftenbeen told that this was so, and neither Philip nor his wife everadmitted the possibility that their children might have come to drawother conclusions for themselves.

"Vonnie doesn't really enjoy being taken about. I've made a few littleexperiments with her, quite often, and they've never been a greatsuccess," observed Eleanor.

Her idolatry of her younger child had given her occasional moments ofinsight and she did not possess to the full her husband's monumentalcapacity for evading the acknowledgment of painful or unpleasant facts.A wistful desire for self-justification sometimes possessed her, anda complete absence of judgment led her to ask it from the quarter inwhich she was least likely to receive it.

"Why do you say things like that, Clo dear? Vonnie is very happy andwell taken care of in the nursery. You don't think there's any jealousybetween them?"

"I can hardly credit that Vonnielikes seeing her younger sisteralways preferred to herself," said Aunt Clo, shrugging her shoulders."It would scarcely be human nature."

She was merely making application of a rule that she supposed to begeneral, to a particular case of which she knew nothing.

Vonnie had never in her life been jealous of Lily's privileges—andLily herself bitterly resented them.

But Aunt Clo, who so scornfully accused her brother and sister-in-lawof refusing to face facts, was quite determined that Vonnie was jealousbecause she was neglected, and that Lily was complacently ready to robher sister of her rights as eldest.

Even Aunt Clo, however, never in so many words said that Vonnie'sintellect was in any way feeble. She only continued to repeat that thechild would most certainly never live to grow up, and since neitherEleanor nor Philip would conceivably have allowed, even in their inmostthoughts, that to die might prove very much easier for Vonnie than tolive, Miss Stellenthorpe was not again asked to stay with them.

There was no break, or open quarrel—an open quarrel with PhilipStellenthorpe would have been a sheer impossibility—and the nearestthat Philip ever allowed himself to go to an analysis of thedisagreeable situation was to say to his wife:

"Poor Clo isn't very sympathetic in her manner, especially on subjectsshe doesn't quite understand, like the bringing-up of children.Perhaps, dear, we'll wait a little while before having her here again."

Eleanor understood, and the little while became of quite indefiniteduration, without anybody's having to put a distressing resolution intopainful words.

As it would have been "disloyal" to admit that a near relation couldbe anything but loved and admired, Lily and Vonnie were only told, aswas indeed the truth, that Aunt Clo lived a great deal abroad. Lily,observant and critical, could, however, perfectly well have toldthe date at which Father and Mother began always to speak of herabsent relative as "your poor Aunt Clo"—and the adjective was to herperfectly indicative of some obscure condemnation.

Lily had intuitions about the grown-up people about her, especially herfather and mother, of which they appeared to be quite unaware.

She knew that something, or someone, had made them at last realize thatVonnie's slowness and her rather inarticulate way of speaking were notso many manifestations of naughtiness on her part. They would havepreferred it, Lily concluded, if these things had been naughtiness. Insome incomprehensible way, they resented having to be anxious aboutVonnie.

Sometimes, when Mother spoke to Vonnie sharply for the second or thirdtime and Vonnie only looked at her dumbly with that scared, bewilderedgaze which meant that she had not been "paying attention," Father andMother would exchange a look that Lily indefinably resented.

Then Mother would compress her lips, as though exercising great controlover herself, and turn away without speaking.

And Father sometimes said, in that grave, gentle voice which bothchildren perfectly well knew to mean profound vexation:

"Run away and play, little Vonnie. You needn't stay in the drawing-roomany more. My Lily can come and look at pictures, if she likes.Youcan trot off and enjoy yourself in the nursery."

Lily never dared to ask whether she might go to the nursery too,although she knew that Vonnie, humiliated and dejected by these kindwords which she was supposed to accept unquestioningly at their spokenvalue, would only sit by herself on the nursery oil-cloth, quite still,slowly tracing patterns with her finger on the floor. If Lily had beenwith her, they would have played their own private games with the dollsor the marbles, and have been happy together.

But Lily had, instead, to accept her own undesired privileges, and evenbefore she was nine years old, it had grown to be a moral impossibilityfor her to brave her parents' shocked grief and disappointment bydisplaying to them that ungracious candour which they would have feltto be ungrateful disloyalty.

This moral cowardice Lily, inevitably, grew to look upon asrighteousness.

She was conforming to the standard set before her.

It was not a very wide-embracing standard, but it was a very unyieldingone. It gave one to understand, without adducing any reason orexplanation for its arbitrary condemnations, that certain thingsconstituted naughtiness. Chief amongst these, of course, was the crimeof "disloyalty," which equally comprised any implied distrust—a spokenone was out of the question—of any opinion, decision, act, word,or deed emanating from Father or Mother, and the ungraciousness ofadmitting to possible disappointment or fatigue when taken anywhere byFather or Mother. Sometimes, on such an occasion, one of them mightenquire of Lily: "Are you tired, my pet?" and in some mysterious wayit was not telling a story to reply joyfully: "Oh, no, not a bit!"instead of saying, as was probably the case, "Oh, yes, I am!" It wasonly doing what was expected of one, and anything else would have been"disloyal."

Telling stories, however, was most undoubtedly a form of naughtinessin any other connection. Lily knew, and was often told, that she wasan untruthful child. The accusation was entirely deserved, and as nodistinction was ever drawn between the casual untruthfulness of anysensitive and imaginative child, and the fundamental insincerity ofa mentally dishonest one, Lily remained persuaded that she was of anincurably deceitful disposition.

She was always profoundly ashamed when she had told a lie, which sheoften did when she wanted to draw attention to herself or to makepeople believe her of some great importance or merit.

But she was not really exhilarated or proud of herself, althoughshe tried to persuade herself that she was, when her mother or thegoverness praised her for confessing to some breakage, or piece ofaccidental mischief.

"That's a brave little girl, to be honest!" and "No one is everpunished who tells the truth at once."

Lily could not feel that she had really been very brave or very honest.That wasn't the sort of thing about which it would ever have occurredto her to tell a lie. She knew perfectly well that she was neverpunished on account of even careless damage, and there was a sortof lurking self-importance that was far from unpleasant, in makingelaborate confession of the misdeed, with an artistic display of allthe shame and nervousness that she was supposed to be enduring.

It was, in fact, rather like being praised for not crying at thedentist. Mere vanity was entirely responsible for Lily's courage onsuch occasions, and a desire to be told how brave she was. It wouldhave mortified her self-esteem acutely, had she shed tears. However,she was always greatly praised for being so courageous, whereas nothingmuch was ever said about Vonnie's endurance, because Vonnie alwaysremarked stolidly on receipt of the customary sixpence: "But it didn'thurt me much, and I didn'twant to cry!"

Lily would have been incapable of so belittling her own achievement,but she was capable of a genuine appreciation, and even generousenvy, for Vonnie's conscientiousness—which was more than EleanorStellenthorpe was. Such an ungracious reception of the parental praisesand sixpences very nearly amounted to disloyalty, in her unexpressedopinion.

Her disapprobation was only felt by her children—it was seldom putinto words.

Philip Stellenthorpe and anything in the nature of "scoldings" wereunthinkable under the same roof, and Eleanor intensely disliked thesystem of punishment by which her own childhood had been made miserable.

Neither realized in the slightest degree that the atmosphere ofoppressive disapproval and hurt feeling which they contrived wordlesslyto diffuse whenever their children fell short of the ideal formed forthem, caused infinitely greater suffering to both than the severestpunishment would have done.

Occasionally, when Lily fell into one of the tempestuous crying fitssorrowfully alluded to as "temper," and entirely unrecognized asthe inevitable concomitant of a highly wrought nervous organizationforced into an unnatural condition of life, Eleanor would talk to herlong and seriously. She was afraid that her little Lily had a morbiddisposition.

"What is morbid?"

Grievance-making. Did Lily realize what anextraordinarily happylittle girl she ought to be? Yes—Lily, sobbing and crying in anaccess of uncontrollable misery, did know how very, very happy sheought to be—truly she did. Everything in the world to make her happy,her mother sadly repeated. Then she told Lily something about her ownchildish days.

Things had been very different for her. Grandpapa was very strict withall his children, and Grandmamma thought nothing of giving her daughtera good whipping from time to time. How would Lily like to be shut upin her bedroom on bread and water, after receiving a hearty box on theears, because she could not say her Duty to her Neighbour?

"Never," said Eleanor emphatically, "never have I laid a finger uponeither of you."

The stories of Grandpapa's severity were terrible, and so far removedfrom anything in Lily's experience was his system of blows anddeprivations that sometimes, in the depths of her heart, she foundherself wondering if all the stories could be perfectly true?

She stifled the disloyal thought, suppressing it. Suppression was infact the only recognized method for dealing with any and every form ofnaughtiness.

It was naughty, obviously, since it was forbidden, for Lily and Yvonneto buy sweets.

"You don't want to spend your money on nasty, cheap sweets, my dearchildren" was Philip's fashion of discouraging a propensity to whichhe himself happened never to have been liable.

Yvonne and Lilydid want to spend their money on buying the sweetsvery often, but they were successfully debarred from doing so by theunpleasant conviction that the wish, for some quite unexplained reason,was something degrading and to be concealed with shame.

Even expensive chocolates, occasionally bestowed by visitors, were keptin the drawing-room and decorously handed round after tea when thechildren came downstairs.

"Don't they want to take them upstairs and finish the box in thenursery?" jovial Cousin Charlie Hardinge had once enquired, looking onwith surprise.

"Oh dear no, this is quite an old-established custom. They like thisway of doing it, don't you, Lily my pet?"

"Yes," said Lily, smiling happily.

She was far too responsive not to know instinctively just how terriblyhurt and disconcerted Father and Mother would have been if she hadanswered otherwise.

Vonnie was at once less intuitive and more honest. But then she wasvery seldom appealed to, and even when both were impartially addressed,it was always Lily who made reply, partly from the old instinct ofsafeguarding Vonnie. It was so certain that Vonnie would blindlysacrifice Father's and Mother's feelings to her own truthfulness, andfind herself in tacit disgrace thereby!

Lily herself seldom made such mistakes, although one or two terriblelapses stood out in her memory for years, as being amongst the worstand most devastating naughtinesses of a childhood that was perpetuallyhaunted by a sense of uncomprehended sin.

There was the time when she had suddenly, and most disastrously, foundcourage to protest against the appellation of "little pet," that wasbestowed upon her, so she considered, in and out of season.

"I'm not so very little," said Lily at nine years old, "and I'm not apet when I'm being naughty. You say 'my little pet' even when you'rescolding me."

"Lily! When did Iever scold you?"

Eleanor's tone was heart-rending, and she entirely disregarded thepoint at issue.

Not so her husband, frowning heavily.

"That's not at all a good way of talking," said he—and very nearlyadded, "my little pet." The consciousness of checking himself gavean additional force to his pained tones. "You will always be ourlittle Lily, and God has given you kind and loving parents, and youare insulting Him when you jeer like that at things which ought to besacred to you."

The magnitude of the indictment, no less than the sorrowful silencemaintained for the rest of the evening by both her parents, reducedLily to tears and a sense of crushing disgrace.

Things were always worse when God became involved in them—and besides,there was the earache menace if He grew angry.

But in that respect, God had stayed His hand of late. Lily, however,put no confidence in this forbearance, and felt herself thoroughlyjustified of her distrust when, quite suddenly, Vonnie fell ill.

At first, there was no such prolonged misery involved in this calamityas in one of the dreaded earache nights, and Lily was more surprisedand gratified than rendered anxious, when Vonnie's bed was taken outof the night nursery and placed in the dressing-room adjoining Mother'sroom, whilst Father and his bed went away into the Blue Room.

She spent a whole Sunday afternoon with Vonnie, and they played a long,quiet, interminable game, involving the recital of low-voiced andmysterious stories by Lily, and sleepy, pleased acquiescent nods andmurmurs from Vonnie. She did not seem very ill, and Lily was allowed tokiss her, which was usually forbidden in times of illness because "itmight be catching."

"Good-night, Vonnie. We'll play some more to-morrow."

"Oh yes, I shall be quite well to-morrow."

They kissed one another.

When to-morrow came, however, Lily learnt, for the most part indirectlyfrom the servants' talk amongst themselves, that Vonnie had become muchworse during the night. The doctor had actually been sent for beforebreakfast.

"Has she got earache?" asked Lily, feeling very much frightened andvoicing the deepest fear that she knew.

"You run along, Miss Lily, and don't ask questions," said theparlour-maid. "Your Mamma particularly said as no one was to frightenyou."

As usual, Eleanor, solicitously guarding her darling from others, hadmade no allowance for Lily's powers of either induction or imagination.

Miss Cleeve came as usual, but she sent Lily out of the room while shehad a short conversation with the housemaid, bringing up some coals.

Lily felt convinced that Clara was telling Miss Cleeve something aboutVonnie.

"What's the matter with Vonnie? When can I go and see her?" she askedinstantly on being readmitted.

"Dear me, what an imperious little person this is!" said Miss Cleevevery brightly indeed. "Gently, gently, Lily, if you please. If you doyour lessons very nicely and are a good little girl, perhaps you'll goand see Vonnie later on. We shall see."

Miss Cleeve looked very wise and very decided, and Lily distrusted herviolently.

"Why haven't I seen Mother this morning?"

"She's busy, dear."

"But Nurse is with Vonnie too. Is Vonnie so very, very ill?"

"Ha, ha!" said Miss Cleeve with a laugh that rang singularly untrue."What a silly little girl to talk like that, now! Come and sit down,and you shall choose which lesson you'd like to begin with, for atreat."

Miss Cleeve's brightness and Miss Cleeve's treats inspired Lily with asickening sense of fear.

She was kept in the schoolroom all the morning, and when she and MissCleeve went downstairs to luncheon, Miss Cleeve held her hand withunnecessary tightness all the way. But Lily was alert, and she saw thedoctor's little carriage going away down the drive from the window ofthe hall, and she also saw her mother standing, with head uncovered atthe front door, and her mother did not look at all as usual.

Lily wrenched her hand away from Miss Cleeve's and ran to her.

"Can't I see Vonnie?" she cried urgently.

Her mother kissed her silently.

"I hope——?" said Miss Cleeve hesitatingly.

There was an interchange of glances between the two grown women thatthe child's strained, anxious gaze sought desperately to interpret.

"Is Vonnie very ill, Mother?"

"There's nothing for you to worry your little self about, my darling,"said Eleanor in a soothing voice, kissing her again.

A choking sense of her own impotence, resentment at their futileevasions, and above all a growing horror of all this mystery, made Lilyburst into loud, unrestrained crying.

"Hush!" cried Miss Cleeve sharply, pulling her into the dining-room.

"Lily, Lily," said her mother. "Oh don't, my little pet."

She sank into a chair, looking overwhelmed.

"My dear child," said her father, suddenly emerging from the embrasureof the dining-room window, "you mustn't add to your mother's troublesjust now. You must be a good little girl, and not think of yourself atall. Do your little lessons, and play about in the sunshine, and don'tgive any trouble, but be a good, happy little child."

It all sounded very kind and easy. The flood of misery that overwhelmedone must be some form of obscure, but extreme, naughtiness.

Luncheon was eaten almost in silence, and Eleanor went away before itwas finished, stroking Lily's long brown hair as she passed behind herchair.

"Play in the garden this afternoon," she whispered, "and Mother willtry and come to you in the drawing-room after tea."

Then a telegram was brought in and Philip, after reading it, said tothe parlour-maid:

"The carriage will be wanted to meet the 3.30 train this afternoon.Tell Fowler."

Miss Cleeve looked up and said: "Is it——?" and raised her eyebrows.

"Yes. A second opinion will be a relief to us, though I'm afraid——"He checked himself.

Lily, not daring to glance at them, knew very well that it was becauseof her that they left all their sentences unfinished.

"——Probably a trained nurse, if he recommends it——" said herfather, very low and rapidly.

What was a Train-Nurse?

Miss Cleeve went away, as usual on Saturdays, as soon as lunch wasfinished, saying warningly to Lily: "Now mind you go and play in theterrace garden as your mother told you. I think I should stay on thenice front terrace all the afternoon, if I were you. It'll be nice andsunny there."

"Yes, Miss Cleeve," said Lily forlornly.

There was probably something to be seen or heard from the other part ofthe garden, overlooking the drive, that they did not want her to knowabout.

In spite of this conviction, however, Lily went to the terrace, andlooked up at the windows of the room where Vonnie was.

The blinds of both windows were drawn down so as to admit the leastpossible light into the bedroom and there was nothing to be learnt.Lily went into the potting-shed and sat there in the obscurity andcried.

She heard two of the servants walking down the path outside, asthough on their way to the stables, and caught fragmentary words andphrases.... "It's awful—so quick, too."

"That's the way with tumours ... don't you remember me telling youabout my poor Aunt Gertie ... just the same way it was——"

"Why, they may have to operate...."

"They say the pain's cruel ... and for a poor little child, too!"

Lily put her fingers in her ears and cast herself upon the ground.

It was Vonnie they were talking about, and they said the pain wascruel—and no one would tell her anything, or let her go to Vonnie.

"I wish I was dead, oh, I wish I was dead!" sobbed Lily.

A child with an intense capacity for feeling can suffer to a degreethat is beyond any degree of adult suffering, because imagination,ignorance, and the conviction of utter helplessness are untemperedeither by reason or by experience. Nothing in all Lily's lifeever again held for her the bitterness of that afternoon in thepotting-shed, when she had been sent out to be a good, happy littlechild, and play about in the sunshine.

After a long while, the housemaid Clara came and called her, andexclaimed with compassion at the sight of her when she appeared.

"Are you missing poor Miss Vonnie? There, never mind, dear, come alongin now and have your tea."

Clara had tea with her instead of Nurse, and was very kind, and Lily,unable to cry any more, felt dumbly grateful to her and did not askany of those questions which she felt sure that Clara would somehowcontrive not to answer.

"Come and wash your face before you go downstairs," said Claraencouragingly, "so that your Mamma won't think you've been crying."

But Lily's mother was not in the drawing-room, when she went there withthe traces of her tears carefully removed.

Her father was reading and he greeted Lily in a grave, depressed way,and told her to look at a picture-book.

They sat in silence for what seemed a very long time.

Lily only spoke once, and then she said quite suddenly:

"Father, please, what is a tumour?"

Philip cast a startled look at her, that added to the effect of rebukein his shocked reply:

"Hush, hush, my child. That will do. You must not ask questions likethat, you know."

Lily was conscious that he looked furtively and uneasily at her atintervals during the remainder of the evening.

"Shall I see Mother?" she asked wistfully when she went to bed.

"I will ask her to come and say good-night to you."

Waiting in bed for the redemption of this promise, Lily grew frightenedagain, and pictured Vonnie victimized by some terrible and magnifiedform of earache, wondering miserably why Lily had not come to play withher again, or at least to kiss her good-night.

She cried again, and dozed, and at intervals murmured some angry,urgently worded formula addressed to God, because her father had saidto her very gravely that she must say her prayers, and ask God to blesseverybody—Father and Mother and Vonnie. Lily had understood that hewould not seem to attach special importance to Vonnie's need, by namingher only.

It was the middle of the night when she woke with a sudden start, and anew, compelling sense of terror.

Instinctively, she sprang, trembling, out of bed and groped her wayto the door. There were lights and subdued voices without, and Lilyran out on to the stairs in her night-gown and caught at her mother'sperson. Dazed by the light and her own violent wakening from a heavysleep, Lily hardly knew what happened next, or how she was taken backto her bed again.

But it was her mother who knelt by the bedside, with tears streamingdown her face.

"Oh! Tell me what's happened?" said Lily. "Is it Vonnie?"

She did not know what it was that she feared.

"You oughtn't to know—I never meant you to be told till morning——"Eleanor was sobbing violently. "What can I say?—God—she's very happywith God, darling—gone to heaven——"

Amongst the disjointed words, Lily suddenly caught a flash of meaning.

"Is Vonnie dead?" she asked incredulously.

"Hush!" cried Eleanor in a sort of stifled shriek. But her head bentitself in assent.

Then Vonnie wasn't unhappy, wasn't ill—would never be either again,but always happy and well! It was like a dream come true.

Lily, after the long misery of the day, felt nothing but a rush ofrelief and comfort at the knowledge that Vonnie was dead.

The relief which is the outcome of a violent emotional reaction,however, cannot be expected to endure.

In any case, even had Lily not awakened to a changed world, in whichshe hourly missed Yvonne, the inseparable companion of all her nurserydays, Philip Stellenthorpe could never have rested content untilthe strange callousness manifested by his younger daughter had beenexplained away. "The want of realization of a little, sheltered child,"he forbearingly called it.

But it had shocked him, all the same.

Whilst Eleanor was only blindly anxious to shield Lily from any frightor grief, where she herself considered that fright or grief mightthreaten, Philip was unable to refrain from exacting the due meed ofconventionality that he took for a tribute to Yvonne's memory.

Yvonne's belongings disappeared mysteriously, and one day when Lilyasked if she mightn't have Vonnie's paint-box now, her father,overhearing her, was gravely displeased.

"My dear child," said he, "you don't want to be a heartless littlegirl, do you?"

Lily did not want to be a heartless little girl at all, and stillless did she want to be called one. Therefore she did not attempt torestrain showers of pitiful tears whenever she missed Vonnie most, andto cry in church whenever she saw her mother doing so.

After a time, Philip and Eleanor ceased to speak of Vonnie at all,although a great many photographs of her now pervaded the drawing-roomand Eleanor's dressing-table.

It soon became impossible for Lily to connect the object of so muchthat was in reality a kind of exploited sacredness, with the realVonnie whose impotent champion she had been, to whom she had alwaysbeen preferred against her will, who had been of so little significancesave to Lily herself, in her tiny world during her short life-time.

The Yvonne of the photographs, of Mother's occasional Sunday eveninglow-voiced talks, of Father's still more occasional, solemnly mournfulreferences, gradually acquired a meaning for Lily, albeit a purelysentimental one, that had nothing to do with Vonnie, whom she reallyonly remembered, after a little while, in occasional vivid flashes.

Nevertheless it was actually many years before, at the most casualmention of a cold east wind, Lily ceased to feel a sudden irrationalrush of sheer jubilant triumph, because the east wind could never giveVonnie earache any more.

III

"There are some gypsies on the common, Father."

"Are there, my pet? You and Miss Cleeve had better keep to the road,for the present, then. Very likely they have illness about. Thosepeople are not very careful."

"There was such a thin little boy. He looked as though he didn't getmuch to eat," said Lily tentatively.

"Well, well, my darling, we'll hope he does. Did you find anyblackberries on your walk this morning?"

"Only a few. They're not yet ripe. But, Father——" Lily was tenyears old, and nowadays when she saw that her father and mother weredeliberately evading a subject upon which she desired information,something that seemed stronger than herself drove her on to urge thepoint, with an affectation of being unaware of their disapproval.

"Do you think that little boy was really starving, perhaps?"

"No, no, my child." Philip moved uneasily and glanced at his wife."People don't starve in England nowadays."

"We won't talk about sad things like that, Lily dear," said Eleanorbrightly. "People needn't be poor unless they want to, you know. Theycan always find work."

"Why hasn't everyone got a house then? Why can't that little boy livein a house like we do?" Lily demanded meditatively.

There was a silence weighty with disapproval.

Then Philip remarked simply and with finality:

"Don't ask foolish questions, my little pet."

Lily knew herself defeated and was guiltily conscious of havingdeserved rebuke by her deliberate pursual of one of the many topicsthat, for reasons never explained, should not be talked about.

During the year that had elapsed since Vonnie's death, the number ofthese subjects seemed to have increased enormously. Not only was Vonnienot to be talked about, but anything connected with death, funerals,and mortality generally must be avoided, and it was a general axiomthat what Philip occasionally referred to as "sad, painful, distressingthings" were never really fit subjects for discussion.

Curiously enough, the nervous sufferings of Lily's whole earlychildhood, culminating in the emotional crisis that she had undergonewhen Yvonne died, at this period deserted her. She was now merelysensitive in a petulant way, subconsciously antagonistic to all hersurroundings, and obsessed by a resentful certainty that her father andmother did not understand her.

This ungracious conviction she once haltingly attempted to explain toEleanor, early faced with the endeavour that has defeated so many,that of avoiding the only form of words obviously designed to expresswhat she wished to have understood, and finding instead some otherformula in which it might be conveyed with equal lucidity and yet lessoutspokenness.

The results were a number of self-contradictory statements from Lily,followed by tears.

"But what is it that I don't understand, my baby?" Eleanor urged her toreturn to the attack.

"Me," quavered Lily, suddenly explicit.

Her mother winced very visibly indeed.

Lily felt unutterably naughty.

"My dearest," said Eleanor at last, "how can a grown-up person notunderstand a little child? You're talking nonsense, you know. Therecan be nothing in a little girl of ten years old that's beyond theunderstanding of a grown-up, experienced person. And to say that amother doesn't understand her own child, is to suggest something thatcan't possibly be. Some day you'll know what I mean."

"When?" said Lily.

Eleanor's absolute belief in the creed that she had enunciated perforcecarried a certain conviction to Lily's bewildered and undeveloped mind.

"When?" she repeated.

"When you have a little child of your own," her mother replied simply.

There was nothing more to be said.

Until that far-away, unbelievable time when one would be sufficientlyold to have a little child of one's own, it must be taken on trust thatall grown-up people, especially one's father and mother, understood oneperfectly, although they made one feel all the time as though they didnot.

Lily's thoughts and her feelings became speedily more and more muddledand confused.

Her discontent, which originated in sheer perplexity, took the form ofargumentative and tiresome contradiction of the rules imposed upon her.

"She used to be such a dear, little sunny thing," cried Eleanorpiteously. "Of course, I know there's an awkward age for all childrento go through but I never thought of Lily's beginning it so young."

She cried and looked pale over Lily's naughtiness very often, and Lilywas tortured by remorse and self-accusations that were without anyeffect upon her behaviour.

One day her father, who was tacitly supposed to know of hernaughtiness, but to find it too grievous to be mentioned openly, spoketo her.

"You will regret it bitterly later on, my child, if you grieve yourmother just now. There are reasons which you can't understand why sheshould be spared in every possible way, at present."

Were these specific reasons, or only the usual mysterious ones heldover one's head by the authorities, and generally supposed to haveobscure reference to God?

Lily presently came to the conclusion that some definite event wasimpending, and that she was supposed to know nothing whatever aboutit. Things were said to her of which it was obvious that she wasintended to make general application only, and to which, with intuitivecertainty, she instantly attached a special meaning.

"You must always be a very good little girl to your mother, and pray toGod that He may take good care of her."

Why should Father suddenly say that, when it was an old-establishedcertainty that Lily knew she ought to be a good little girl, and hadprayed for her mother every night ever since she could remember, as amatter of course?

Sometimes it almost seemed as though they wanted to see how far it waspossible for them to go, before Lily would make any sign of havingnoticed that there was a mystery.

"Nurse, I want you to bring those things that I spoke to you about intomy room this morning."

"Yes, madam."

And then five minutes later:

"My little Lily must stay in the schoolroom and do her lessons verynicely this morning, and not go running about the house too much. Trotalong to Miss Cleeve, my pet."

As though Miss Cleeve had ever dreamed of allowing Lily to run aboutthe house during lesson time! Such a thing was quite unheard of,and Eleanor's casual tone did not for an instant deceive Lily intosupposing that the prohibition had been a casual one.

On another occasion, a still more careless enquiry:

"You know you must never come into upstairs rooms without knocking atthe door first, don't you, darling?"

A rule that Lily had known and had been made to observe, since she wasthree years old.

It appeared, therefore, that there was some urgent necessity forenforcing the rule now. Lily discovered that the door of the Blue Roomwas locked, all of a sudden.

She felt a strange inability to question her father or mother, but shetried to entrap Miss Cleeve into an admission, unconsciously imitatingthe air of carelessness with which Eleanor had tried, as Lily dimlyfelt, to entrap her into asking some question, to which a reply mightbe given that would direct curiosity into an innocuous channel leadingnowhere.

"Oh, Miss Cleeve! Did you know the door of the Blue Room had beenlocked?"

Lily gave a high-pitched, nervous giggle. "Perhaps the key's been lost!"

Miss Cleeve threw her a very sharp glance of which Lily pretended to bequite unaware.

"Really, dear," she said in a very even voice. "Keys sometimes arelost, you know. But there's nothing to take you to the Blue Room, thatI know of."

"Nurse goes in there sometimes. I've seen her coming out."

"I daresay she likes to see that it's kept dusted and tidy," said MissCleeve, in a preternaturally calm voice. "Now run and wash your handsfor lunch, dear."

Lily felt thoroughly baffled by Miss Cleeve, and could not decidewhether or not the governess had penetrated the motive of her artlessenquiries.

Because she felt ashamed of her own attempts at solving the mysterythat was in the air, she was sure that she was being naughty again.

When she went downstairs to the dining-room, her mother and Miss Cleevewere already there, talking in furtive tones to one another. Eleanorbroke off the instant that Lily appeared and looked at her in rathera startled way, but Miss Cleeve, with the same determined naturalnesswith which she had spoken upstairs, uttered her final remark quite loud:

"So I thought perhaps a word to the wise, Mrs. Stellenthorpe——"

"Quite right, Miss Cleeve, thank you. I shall take care. Anyway itwon't be very long now before——"

They both looked at Lily, who suddenly felt so uncomfortable that, tocover her own confusion, she almost involuntarily cried out: "Beforewhat, Mother?"

Her mother and Miss Cleeve exchanged glances in a way that made Lilyfeel unutterably small and foolish and ignorant.

To her deep mortification, she felt her face burning with angryscarlet, although without knowing why.

"Poor little thing!" said Eleanor, and actually laughed, causing allLily's inchoate disconcertment to culminate in a silent, furiousresolution, that never again would she ask any of them about anything,so long as she lived.

The impassioned, childishly formed determination was not of a natureto endure. The inexplicable resentment that had caused it, Lily neverforgot.

She could not have told what sudden intuition first made her suspectthe truth, but when Eleanor, with certain circumlocutions andeuphemistic phrases, told her that she might pray to God to send her ababy brother, Lily felt that she had known all the time that this waswhat all the mystery had been about.

"It's a great secret and you mustn't talk about it to anyone," Eleanorwhispered.

Lily had no wish to talk about it to anyone. She was by that timethoroughly convinced that the arrival of a baby was somethingnecessitating endless concealments and misrepresentations, andtherefore of a highly shameful nature.

She was sent away to the seaside with Miss Cleeve for nearly six weeks,and when they came back again, the little brother was establishedin a blue and white cradle, and the Blue Room had been unlocked andtransformed into a night nursery.

Lily gathered from various things that the servants said, that hermother had been ill, and that the illness was in some manner connectedwith the baby's coming. The subject puzzled her, and troubled herthoughts very often, but she felt sure that it was wrong to desireenlightenment, and she knew that if she asked questions she wouldreceive either jocular or untrue replies, or the shocked "Hush!" ofenforced reticence.

Eleanor having a horror of pet animals, from which she feared thecontraction of mysterious and unspecified diseases of the skin, Lilywas safeguarded from any direct encounter with the crudities of Nature.Her imagination therefore continued to evolve theories and explanationsthat her common-sense rejected, but that frightened and distressed hernone the less, and that sent her furtively in quest of the informationwhich she believed to be illicit, to such forbidden books of referenceas the "Encyclopædia Britannica."

After Kenneth was born, Lily, to her unconscious relief, ceased to bethe sole object in life of her parents, her governess, and her nurse.She spent less time in the drawing-room, and after Miss Cleeve had leftfor the day, remained in the schoolroom and read endlessly.

"Not too many story-books, my little darling," Eleanor occasionallysaid with a hint of disapproval in her tones, but as the books in theschoolroom were all story-books, and she was not allowed to touch theones in the drawing-room, Lily continued to indulge her taste forfiction, although with the usual underlying feeling of guilt thatseemed automatically to attach itself to whatever was pleasant.

There were curiousnuances, never put into words, as that to reada new story-book was more reprehensible than to re-read an old one,and even when a recent birthday had occasioned the arrival of somedelightful blue or red volume, the very giver of it might be apt toexclaim, with a sound of vexation, on seeing Lily immersed in it:

"Another new story-book!"

Lily grew to be so apprehensive of these expressions of disapprovalthat sometimes she slipped the new book, with its incriminating,shining binding, into one of the brown paper covers that concealed thewear and tear of the old books.

This manœuvre was one day penetrated by Miss Cleeve, who did not seekany explanation of it, but merely told Lily on general grounds that shewas a most sly child, and didn't seem to know the meaning of the word"honour."

Lily wept and felt that it was true.

Gradually she came to consider her passion for reading as anothersign of her own depravity, much confirmed in this view by the gravepronouncements of her father, who said to her from time to time:

"Dear child, you know you don't want to have your little nose buried ina story-book at every spare moment."

It was the question of buying sweets, all over again. Certainpropensities, for reasons never specified, were evidently soundesirable that the existence of them might not even be admitted. Onewas told that one didn't want to do such things, and all the time wasconscious of wanting to do them very much indeed.

Evidently, such desires must never be openly admitted.

The atmosphere became more and more charged with concealments, as timerevealed more and more of the complexities of life.

When Kenneth was nearly a year old, he caught scarlet fever. Theinfection was in the village. Miss Cleeve succumbed, and Eleanor,panic-stricken, sent Lily away by herself for the first time in herlife.

It was expressly explained that she was not going to school. No.There would never be any question of that. Lily was simply going to abeautiful peaceful convent, not at all far away, where she would bevery happy with the kind Sisters and play with the pupils.

The scheme was Eleanor's. She had an ideal, totally unbased uponexperience, of a convent school, that was of an extreme and highlysentimental picturesqueness. In her mind's eye, mild-faced nuns pacedperpetually up and down a garden, and innocent children, in a more orless permanent state of preparing for theirpremière Communion, wereinstructed in the arts of music and embroidery andancienne politessefrançaise.

She combated Philip's strong objections to letting Lily go within thesphere of Catholic influence.

"It isn't as though she were older," Eleanor urged. "She's only a baby,Philip. And it will be for such a little while. Please God, we can haveher home again by Christmas."

It was really the last argument that had most weight with Philip, andthe desire that his wife's mind should be at ease about their darling.

Neither had the slightest conception of the utter unfitness for anyform of independence in which they had brought up their child.

Philip himself took her to the convent, emphatically telling her in thepresence of the Mother Superior that she must always say her prayersnight and morning just as she had been taught them, and that she wasnot to think of herself as having been sent to school.

The reiteration of this last axiom rather disappointed Lily. It soundedmuch more grown up and like other girls to be sent to school, andschool, according to many story-books, was an exciting place whereone distinguished oneself easily and made interesting friendships andlearnt to play games.

Lily was afraid that a convent might prove to be a very tame affair, bycomparison. In effect, she never did learn to play games there, sincethe only one in vogue—a complicated system of running about wildly inthe playground from one chalk-mark to another, called The Rescue of theHoly City from the Infidels—proved beyond her comprehension from thefirst to the last day of her stay.

Nor did she make interesting friendships, because any friendships atall were entirely forbidden and rendered impossible by a quantity ofrules that were enforced by perpetualsurveillance. Neither didshe distinguish herself, excepting by the unprecedented number ofhumiliating and babyish mistakes that she seemed to be perpetuallymaking.

Lily, for the first time in her life thrown amongst other children,heard from their unsparing lips various brutal truths about herself:She was a most frightful baby for her age.

Anybody could see that she'd been made a regular spoilt child of athome.

It was most awfully affected, the way she was always using grown-upwords.

It was simplysilly, always to get red and cry at the least littlebit of chaff.

It was perfectly indecent to wear such a disgustingly short frock—thenuns said so.

Lily was only too thankful to exchange her brief velveteen skirts for ablue serge uniform dress, that flapped against her ankles and of whichthe collar-band scratched her neck.

But even the uniform did not save her from committing other outragesupon propriety, hitherto unsuspected. A brand-new category ofsins sprang into being, all of them classed under the heading ofImmodesty—a word that Lily had never heard mentioned before.

Legs were particularly immodest. To show them, to cross one of themover the other, to mention them by name, was all highly immodest.So was any allusion to any part of the human anatomy below theshoulder-blades.

There was an uneasy suggestion that it might at any moment becomeimmodest to talk about any male creature other than a priest, theconvent gardener, or one's own father. Even brothers seemed to bebetter left out of the conversation.

The hideous immodesty latent in the taking of a bath could only bedefeated by a cold, shroud-like garment of white calico, that fastenedjust above the wearer's collar-bone, was buttoned at the wrists, andfell in folds to the ground.

A bath, accompanied by a bath-chemise, was in readiness for each pupilonce a week.

Lily jumped trustfully into her first bath at the convent, pleased atfinding that she was expected to take it without supervision, which shehad never done before, got out again very quickly upon the discoverythat the water, on a dank November day, was nearly cold, and driedherself imperfectly in the chilly amplitude of the bath-chemise,which she supposed to be a towel of a new kind. The same afternoon ascandalized nun enquired whether Lily was in the habit of taking a bath"without wearing anything?"

"All naked? Yes," said Lily, nodding assent.

Then it appeared that not only was her practice immodest, but so washer language. The nun was not at all angry, she was very kind, butthe vicarious shame that she quite obviously felt on Lily's behalf,remained unforgettable.

The affair could only be classed with Lily's other great outrageagainst decency, which was never destined to pass altogether from hermemory.

The first time that she fell ill at the convent, which she did withthe rapidity of a very much over-coddled child suddenly bereft of evenordinary supervision in the affairs of the body, Lily was sent to theInfirmary. She had fainted during breakfast.

"Poor little dear! You shall go to bed at once," said the kind oldSister in charge. "Where's your dressing-gown, dear?"

"In the dormitory."

"Then I'll fetch it for you. Get ready for bed as fast as you can."

Lily, interpreting this literally, made every speed in divestingherself of her clothes, forgetful that her night-gown was not lyingwaiting on the newly made Infirmary bed.

But the Sister would bring it, she decided, and sat close to thecomfortable blaze of the Infirmary fire. Only a diminutive vestinadequately concealed her from the appalled gaze of the returningnun. Lily found herself enshrouded in both night-gown and dressing-gownon the instant, and directed to get into bed.

The nun was very forbearing, and only said, when the first shock hadpassed:

"A modest little girl would never have done that. Whatcan your poorguardian angel have thought?"

The Protestant Lily, however, was less concerned with the hypotheticalembarrassment of her guardian angel, than with this new view of herselfas a little girl lacking in modesty.

She was homesick while she was at the convent, and a good deal bulliedby her contemporaries, nevertheless the discipline was of a morewholesome kind than any she had yet known, and the total absence ofany real element of education in the teaching that she received waspartially compensated by the nuns' conscientious observance of Philip'sprohibitions, and the amount of dogmatical religious instruction thatshe thereby escaped.

She might even have profited by the three months she spent at school,if it had been the conventual habit to pay any slightest regard to themore modern laws of hygiene.

Lily was not naturally a practical child, although she possessed acertain fundamental common-sense, and a precocious ability to profit byexperience once acquired. Certain simple hygienic practices of whichthe regular observance had been enjoined upon her at home, without anyexplanation as to the necessity for them, she had acquiesced in blindlyas a matter of course, without the slightest realization of the factthat they were connected with the preservation of her bodily welfare.

As the extreme modesty enjoined by the nuns did not permit of anysupervision in such matters, even as regarded the youngest of thechildren in their charge, a state of affairs naturally followed thatresulted in the very rapid deterioration of Lily's health.

Moreover, there prevailed at the convent, as at the very large majorityof European educational establishments, the monstrous custom ofcurtailing the amount of sleep required for the proper development ofgrowing youth.

Lily, although, like the other junior pupils, she was seldom in bedbefore nine o'clock, suffered less than they did—and very much lessthan the seniors, young girls all more or less at a stage of physicaland mental development that made the utmost demand upon each one'sconstitution. Lily, at all events, need not obey the clamorous bellthat summoned the school at a quarter to six every morning, in orderthat all might be assembled in the chapel by half-past six. Sheremained in bed until it became imperative to get up, dress herself—atask that she had not been allowed to perform unaided hitherto, andto which she was consequently highly inadequate—wash herself with anequal absence of thoroughness, partly because she was unaccustomed toice-cold water, and partly because it was immodest to unfasten one'snight-gown before various garments had been shuffled on underneathit—and then join the other children, who had now been fasting for morethan an hour, for breakfast.

The food they were given was abundant, although inferior in quality,and completely lacking in variety. Each day of the week had itsappointed menu, which was never departed from.

Sweets and chocolates were permitted only on Sundays, when, to equalizedistribution and encourage generosity, the assembled gastronomicalwealth of the establishment was placed upon the long tables of therefectory at dinner-time. No favouritism was permitted, so that eachbox or dish must be sent the length of the table by its owner, each ofwhose fellow-pupils would accept one specimen of the contents.

Naturally, the abstention of the week enhanced the necessity forprofiting to the full by the plethora of Sunday, and Lily was notthe only child who, when the day of rest and plenty was over, wishedmiserably, and for more than one reason, that Sunday privileges wereallowed to extend over the cheerlessness of the week.

Philip came once to see his daughter, and was dismayed, withoutaltogether knowing why, at her appearance when she was sent to him inthe parlour.

The many inches of additional skirt by which the convent authoritieshad striven to obliterate the recollection of Lily's original displayof brown stocking, made her look absurdly tall and thin, and her handsand little, slim wrists seemed to have grown bony.

Philip, scrutinizing her face anxiously, decided that she had lost someof her colour and that there certainly were black rings round her eyes.Her hair seemed to be in need of brushing.

To his enquiries, Lily replied, after the fashion of almost allchildren, that nothing was the matter. Yes, she liked the convent.

Had anyone been talking to her about religion? No, she didn't think so.

This relieved Philip's chief personal anxiety on Lily's behalf, andafter cautioning her gently upon the use of slang and the care of herhands, he bade her say her little prayers every day, and be a verygood child, and said that he hoped she would be home by Christmas.

He went away inexplicably depressed.

Eleanor instantly felt the weight of that depression, but as Philip hadseriously resolved that his wife must, for her own good, be subjectedto no further anxiety whilst the little boy continued ill, he gave hera hollow and unsmiling account, which he made as brief as possible, ofLily's welfare and happiness. It would have been quite impossible toEleanor to receive a statement of her husband's at any but its facevalue.

She pretended, even to herself, that she believed Philip's account,and only cried in the middle of the night, telling herself that it wasbecause she was over-tired.

Whether or not this last was the cause of her weeping, it was certainlya fact.

With quite irrational self-immolation, she had refused to entrust thecare of Kenneth to a trained nurse, and devoted herself to him day andnight in a veritable orgy of maternal sacrifice.

Kenneth recovered, although probably less rapidly than he would havedone under professional care, and Eleanor fell ill.

She had the fever very slightly, but after a time, she tentativelyasked that Lily should be sent for from the convent.

"I must see her once more, Philip."

It was entirely characteristic of Eleanor Stellenthorpe that with allher impassioned idolatry of her favourite child, it never occurred toher that she might spare Lily's sensitive youth an emotional scene suchas the one of farewell that she contemplated.

But Philip, although heavy with the sense of impending calamity, andthe spoken weight of an unfavourable medical verdict, was incapable ofabandoning his life-long endeavour to alter the nature of painful factsby dint of refusing to acknowledge them.

"Don't talk like that, Eleanor dearest," he begged her. "It sounds justa little morbid, and of course you'll be well again by Christmas."

Accordingly, nothing distressing was put into words, and Philip andEleanor, neither of them inwardly deceived by their spoken denial ofdespondency, suffered separately and in silence.

For two days before she died, Eleanor was unconscious, but it was notuntil after her death that Philip said, with heart-broken sincerity:

"I gave up hope from the moment she fell ill. From the first, I reallyknew that she would never get well again."

IV

Philip did not want to send Lily to school. He and his wife had beenat one upon this point. He regretted even the three months that shehad spent at the convent, although he remarked at intervals for longafterwards that a girls' school and a convent were not at all the samething.

"Besides, my little pet, you were only there for a month or two,and you were not at all well when you came away. It wasn't at all asuccess."

"But that was years ago," Lily protested. "I should like it very much,now, or best of all if only you would send me to a proper school,Father."

For nearly four years, ever since her mother's death, she had asked atintervals to be sent to school.

At first, Philip had answered her with a sort of mournful playfulness.

"What! Doesn't my little girl get enough lessons at home? We must talkto Miss Cleeve, and see if she can't manage an extra hour or two onSaturday afternoons—shall we, Lily?"

The Lily of ten and eleven years old had dutifully pretended amusement,and thought herself naughty for the inward pang that she experienced atbeing treated like a baby.

A year later, she was far more openly rebellious.

"It's so very dull doing lessons all alone, Father."

"If God had spared us our poor little Yvonne, you would not have to dothem alone," said Philip, the allusion, in some mysterious way, havingexactly the effect of a merited rebuke.

Lily immediately, and quite irrationally, felt that she had beenheartless.

"Besides," continued her father, pressing the advantage that heperceived himself to have gained, although without quite knowing how,"you don't want to break up our poor little home-party any further, mychild, do you? You and I and poor little Kenneth are all that are leftnow, you know."

Lily was silenced, although, dimly, she knew that she had been unfairlydefeated. What he said was true—she cried herself to sleep at thethought of it sometimes—but her powers of clear thinking had been toothoroughly obscured for her to analyze the illogical attitude takenup by her father, who from time to time said, with the most obvioussincerity:

"Poor little children! How can I do anything for them?She made home,and now that she and little Yvonne are gone, there is nothing left butsadness and emptiness. I have no wish whatever to live, but it must beas God Almighty wills."

"It couldn't make any difference to him if I went to school," Lilyreflected resentfully, after Philip had thus once more put in words theutter despondency that hung always over him.

By the time that Lily was fourteen, there was scarcely anything leftof the pride and the species of doting affection that her father haddisplayed during her early childhood. His ideal of a happy homehad been rudely shattered by Eleanor's death, and he attributed thesigns of Lily's inevitable development to a lack of veneration forher mother's memory. He was honestly incapable of perceiving that, ifEleanor had lived, conflict of the most irreconcilable kind must havearisen between her and Lily.

He dumbly and piteously resented Lily's incoherent attempts atself-expression, her struggling efforts to evolve her own personalityin the midst of a stultifying atmosphere, with much the same blindsentimentality that he regretted the lost, blue-eyed prettiness of herbaby days and the unescapable certainty that she was grown too tall tosit upon his knee.

Her continual requests to be sent to school distressed him profoundly.At one and the same time, he saw Lily convicted of disloyalty inwishing to alter the routine of life instituted for her by her mother,and as heartlessly desirous of abandoning her lonely father and littlebrother in their changed and saddened home.

At last he said to her:

"I can stand this no longer. Go, Lily, but remember that God Himselfwill condemn those who blaspheme against the sacred love of father andmother. You can go. I will keep no child at home against its will."

His face was drawn and grey with suffering, as he looked at the childwho seemed to him to be growing up devoid of heart. Only the extremityof pain and disappointment would have made him speak so and Lilyrealized it.

She broke into terrified sobs, and saw herself with his eyes.

Both were shaken by the sense of an immense issue involved. Thequestion had acquired a monstrous and devastating magnitude. Only theshamed and stifled, but still living, sense of proportion in Lily'ssoul, that warned her how bitterly she would, later, regret the follyof yielding to a sentimental impulse, prevented her from exclaimingthat she never, never wanted to leave home as long as she lived.

An almost intolerable period of tension followed. The gloom of PhilipStellenthorpe became abysmal. Only little four-year-old Kennethappeared to be cheerfully insensible to it.

Undaunted by his father's weighty tenderness, that was in itself anadvertisement of melancholy, Kenneth continued to play with his toys,to shout for bread-and-jam with his tea, and to wriggle unconcernedlyaway when his father would have lifted him to Lily's old post of honouron the parental knee.

Kenneth was far from being the motherless baby boy of fiction. Heevinced no special affection for anyone, and was quite unaffectedlyimpenitent when sins, that had once been the cause of heart-searchingremorse to Lily and Yvonne, were pointed out to him with sorrowfulgravity. Although only ten years separated them, Kenneth was in factthe modern child that Lily had never been allowed to become.

She watched him with more awe than affection, sometimes. He seemed tobe a hard little boy.

The next phase of Lily Stellenthorpe's education was inaugurated bythe astonishing announcement of Miss Cleeve, that she was going to bemarried and must go away.

"The old order changeth," said Philip, in tones of bewildered pain.

He gave Miss Cleeve a munificent wedding present, and reflected thatyet another link with the past was breaking.

To look for another governess for Lily seemed to him an appalling task.His conscience would not have allowed him to depute it to his sisterClothilde, for ever since the fulfilment of her pronouncement thatVonnie would not live to grow up, Philip had steadily assured himselfthat poor Clo's judgments were not to be trusted.

Such is the curious effect produced by a prophet whose word has beentoo well verified in his own country.

Philip, like all sentimentalists, preferred asking advice to taking it.He decided to consult Eleanor's cousin and nearest surviving relative,unconsciously reserving to himself the right of finding that, afterall, poor Charlie Hardinge was not a very sympathetic fellow, andheld very little sacred, and that his counsels could not be worthy ofserious consideration.

Besides the fact of his relationship—of potent weight withPhilip—Charlie Hardinge was further qualified as adviser, in beingthe father of three little girls. The little girls, however, andEthel their mother, had only been seen by the Stellenthorpes at rareintervals.

Charlie himself was in the habit of staying with them for two nightson his way to and from the north of England, in the course of everyyear. He always brought the children presents, and Philip always saidin advance, nervously: "You must thank Cousin Charlie very nicely if heis kind enough to bring you a little present of chocolates, but you'llkeep them downstairs in the drawing-room, like good children, won'tyou?"

He had never been able to forget altogether that Charlie Hardingehad once expressed injudicious surprise at the decorous restraintthat prevailed over the distribution of sweets presented to theStellenthorpe children.

Unconsciously, he liked Charlie much betterin esse thaninposse, and found even his exuberant habit of repeating everything hesaid three or four times over merely an ebullition of warm-heartedearnestness.

"Now, now, now, now," said Charlie. "You want some suggestion aboutthis kiddie of yours—your Lily. I understand perfectly. What are youto do with her—fourteen, isn't she? Fourteen—yes—fourteen. Now,our Dorothy isn't fourteen yet, and Janet and Sylvia, of course, areyounger still. Sylvia is just ten, in fact. You know they've just goneto school at Bridgecrap?"

"No," said Philip, startled. "I had no idea of it. I always supposedthat you and Ethel meant to educate them at home."

His terrible fear of any unpleasantness made him hesitate, and feelunable to say, as he had meant to say, that he disapproved of girls'schools altogether.

"Well, it was a sacrifice," Hardinge admitted with a sigh. "Asacrifice. But we felt that it was for the kiddies' own good. Nobrother, you see. They wanted to be taught how to take chaff, andragging, and teasing—that's what they wanted—they wanted to getthoroughly well teased. Now your Lily, my dear fellow—very prettykiddie-widdie, mind you, beautifully mannered, and I'm only saying thisbecause I'm fond of her—your kiddie doesn't know how to take a joke. Inoticed it this evening, when I was chaffing her a little about holdingherself so badly. That's another thing she wants—drilling. Drilling,drilling!"

Charlie hit himself a resounding blow on the chest.

"She wants drilling!"

"She is tall for her age," said Philip, who considered personal remarksill-bred, unless complimentary.

"So's my Dorothy," Hardinge inexorably returned. "Now, how tall is yourkiddie? How tall exactly?"

"I really don't know, but she is certainly taller than most children offourteen. In fact the governess, before she left, told me that Lily wasoutgrowing her strength."

"Our Dorothy is thirteen and a half and stands five-foot five in herstockings. Five-foot five, and a back like a ramrod. Now, Lily isn'tfive-foot five, I'm positive of that. We'll measure her to-morrow, andyou'll find she's not five-foot five. Nowhere near it."

Philip made a politely acquiescent sound.

"Drilling is what she wants, drilling and games. It's done everythingin the world for my kiddie-widdies. Little Sylvia, now, didn't holdherself as well as the other two—was rather inclined to poke. Andafter one term at Bridgecrap she's holding her head up, and hershoulders back, and talks of nothing but hockey."

Philip suppressed a shudder at a consummation which appeared to him soutterly undesirable.

"You must send Lily to Bridgecrap," said Charlie Hardinge positively."No place like it. Splendid air—right up above the sea, outdoor gamesall the year round—swimming and gym—everything you can think of."

"Who is the lady in charge?"

"A splendid woman—splendid woman. Miss Melody—Monica Melody. You'veheard of her, of course—took a university degree, and has writtensome very sound stuff about education. Mind you, I sounded her verycarefully before I sent the kiddies. Ethel and I had really had noidea of sending them to school at all—but they were keen to go. It wastheir own idea—Dorothy started it."

Philip almost groaned.

"I can hardly understand the idea of young children who actuallywantto leave home," he said, considerably understating his case.

"Your kiddie-widdie wants to go to school too, eh?" said Charlieacutely. "I thought so. I thought so now, I thought so. You take it alltoo seriously, my dear fellow, far too seriously. It's very natural,you know. My little girliekins had one another, after all, but Lilyhasn't a soul—not a soul of her own age."

"This is a lonely place, as you know," said Philip stiffly. "There areno girls of her own age within a reasonable distance."

"Well, are there any boys then, any boys?"

"Boys?"

"Boys—boys of her own age. Boys, boys, boys. If there are no girls forthe poor kiddie to play with, I suppose she must play with boys."

Philip rose from his chair and made elaborate examination of a slightlysmoking lamp.

By the time that he had meticulously adjusted it, he was able to turnround and speak with calm.

"I shouldn't like my little Lily to become a tomboy. She is quite happyin her own little nursery."

"Now, what's the good of talking as though she were still a baby? She'snot a baby—you really must make up your mind to it, my dear chap, thatthe kiddie isn't a baby any longer."

Philip was quite incapable of making up his mind to anything of thesort, but by sheer force of iteration Charlie Hardinge succeeded inaccustoming his mind to the possibility of sending Lily to Bridgecrap.

To Lily's dismay, almost as much as to Philip's own, Charlie asked herin her father's presence:

"Wouldn't you like to go to school, little woman, where mykiddie-widdies are? You've often heard of my Dorothy, now, haven't you?and she's always asking about you. They're all three of them at schoolat Bridgecrap now, as happy as the day is long. You'd like to go toschool, wouldn't you?"

Lily cast a hasty glance at her father. His eyes did not meet hers, butshe knew the profoundly dejected droop of his head, and was acutelysensitive to the meaning of his silence.

The atmosphere in which she and her father lived—of perpetuallywounded susceptibilities, of suppressed verities, of only half-sinceredemonstrations, continued long after they had ceased to bespontaneous—had made of Lily a super-sensitive, unbalanced creature,distrustful of her own instincts, and almost incapable of clearthinking. She had become the victim of muddle, the commonest and themost disastrous foundation upon which to build up a life.

It now seemed to her that it would be impossible to speak the truth inthe face of the obvious pain that it would give her father, while atthe same time she was aware of the utter uselessness of telling a lie.To tell a lie, incidentally, was a sin, but then so was it a sin tobe heartless and undutiful, and the latter was fraught with the morepainful consequences of the two.

Good-natured Charlie Hardinge saw, without understanding it, theconflict reflected on her small, pale face.

"Come, come, come, come! You look as though school would do you all thegood in the world. My kiddies have got cheeks like roses, and Dorothyholds herself like a grenadier—head up, shoulders back! They thinkBridgecrap the jolliest place in the world."

"Is it a large school?" asked Lily, evading the point at issue withabsolute relief.

"Thirty girls. Miss Melody has some very nice kiddies thereindeed—girls you're likely to see something of, later on. Very nicegirls—girls that Ethel and I thoroughly liked the look of. Walk well,hold themselves well, keen on all sorts of games——"

It might be said that Philip eventually sent Lily to Bridgecrap inspite of Charlie Hardinge's recommendations, rather than because ofthem.

The thing that really moved him most, although he was quite unawarethat it was the determining factor in his decision, was Charlie'spositive assurance that Lily was losing her prettiness.

"The kiddie's pale," said Charlie accusingly. "She used to havea pretty colour when she was a little thing, and now she looksanæmic—and there are lines under her eyes. She's moping, Philip,that's what it is. Moping. No wonder she holds herself so badly!"

Philip did not like hearing strictures, that he could not feel to bealtogether without foundation, upon the appearance of his daughter.

It cost him real and severe pain to let her go, although her presenceat home gave him no happiness, and he did not attempt to conceal theextent of his sacrifice from Lily.

"Good-bye, my poor little girl. You shall have your own way, and goright away from home for a time. I hope it may answer, my poor child,and send you back some day to those who love you best in the world. Godbless you."

This was Philip's valediction, sending Lily to her new surroundingswith a leaden weight of guilt at her heart, and a reproachful pictureof a sorrowful and deserted father returning to an empty house.

Having more or less lost hold upon her own convictions, she felt that,had it been possible, she would gladly have renounced Bridgecrap forever, and returned to her father.

In this frame of mind, and with spirit encompassed by the accumulationof false values that had steadily been put before her in one formor another by the two small worlds that she had known—her home andthe convent—it may readily be assumed that Lily began her career atBridgecrap school under a severe handicap.

The standards there were altogether different from any that she hadknown yet.

"Honour" seemed to be the watchword of the place. The girls whoexcelled in games, or in examinations, did so "for the honour ofthe school." Their own personal honour was appealed to, freely andfrequently. The convent system ofsurveillance would have beenunthinkable, at Bridgecrap.

"I want you girls to have just the Public School code of honour thatyour brothers have——" Miss Melody herself often rousingly remarked.

But although the Bridgecrap girls were to play games like boys, tohold the traditional boys' views about honour, and, theoretically, toreceive an education that should as nearly as possible conform to thepattern of that bestowed upon their brothers, they were never for amoment allowed to view the masculine sex as the superior sex. On thecontrary, there was nothing, they were told, that a man could do whicha woman could not do better. The old idea that women were not fittedfor the professions that had hitherto been closed to them was beingdisproved every day. Miss Melody hoped to see many of her girls taketheir degrees, strike out careers for themselves....

Many of the girls responded enthusiastically, although the majority ofthem belonged to a class of society in which careers, other than thatof matrimony, are scarcely yet tolerated for its daughters; and seldomcontemplated by them, schooldays once over. They were enthusiastic,although they did not realize it, largely because of the excellentphysical conditions under which they lived.

Games were played all the year round, at Bridgecrap. There wasan elaborate gymnasium, and once a week the girls went to theswimming-baths. Lily was good-naturedly despised by them all for herabsolute lack of athletic training or proficiency and total absence ofmuscle.

Just as at ten years old she had heard the opinion of hercontemporaries at the convent, and been humiliated by it, so atBridgecrap she met with an equal candour, clothed in the slang that wastolerated, if not actually permitted, from the pupils.

"Look here, Lily Thingamy, or whatever your name is, you'll have tostir your stumps a bit. Can't hold a whole hockey practice up foryou, you know."

"Just look at this kid! Why, she hasn't any more muscle than a kitten.If she weren't so thin, she'd be disgustinglyflabby!"

"You want backbone, that's what you want. It makes one sick to seeanybody of your age who's never been taught what ragging means."

"My dear kid, it's no use saying you don't know the rules of the game.You've bally wellgot to know them. What on earthdo you know, ifyou don't know anything about cricket?"

There were things that Lily did know, although she speedily becameaware that the knowledge of them would not bring her to honour ortriumph amongst the girls, and scarcely even amongst the mistresses.It was not accounted as particularly creditable to her, for instance,that she took a high place in the school, and retained it easily. Moremight have been made of it, but for the fact that all Miss Cleeve'sconscientious teaching had never embraced the form of cramming known astaking examinations, and at Bridgecrap the taking of examinations wasmade the test of knowledge.

Consequently, however excellent her half year's work, Lily seldomsucceeded in passing a test, to the form of which she was unaccustomed,and the lists were regularly headed by the captain of the hockey team,who had been at Bridgecrap nearly six years, possessed a capacity forhard work, a well-trained, mechanical memory, and no intellect whatever.

The mistresses were almost all primarily selected for their proficiencyin games, except the French teacher, a Swiss lady who gave all herlessons in broken English.

The Scripture classes were taken by Miss Melody herself, in each ofthe three divisions of the school. History was imparted in the usualpatchwork of dates, anecdotes, and names famous in Great Britainbetween the reign of King Alfred the Great and that of Queen Anne,geography was not taught beyond the Upper Third, botany was an extra,natural history ignored, and plain needlework not taught. Mathematics,except in the cases of one or two peculiarly constituted beings,presented itself to the girls, as to the majority of feminine minds,as a compound of meaningless "sums" that, if juggled with by a seriesof unrelated processes, might "come out right" at the end. Those ofthe pupils, Lily Stellenthorpe amongst them, who had least liking oraptitude for figures, received, by way of inculcating these, an hour'sprivate and extra tuition in arithmetic once a week. Almost each one ofthem still surreptitiously counted upon her fingers, as little childrendo, believing it to be a form of cheating, but entirely unfamiliar withany more legitimate method of achieving the same result.

Literature, kept within the realms of English achievement, generallyembraced one Shakespearean play thoroughly prepared, out of a schooledition, for a coming examination. Shakespearean plays not judgedsuitable for this purpose, many of the girls did not even know byname. A few had "read Scott, because my young brother had to swot up'Woodstock' last hols." Scarcely one could connect the name of anyclassic with that of its author, and all, without exception, would havefelt heartily ashamed of being found, under no form of compulsion, tobe reading poetry.

Few, it may be added, ran any such risk.

The religious principles of the school were Church of England, butreligion, to Lily's relief, did not imply the insistent advertisementof outward and minor pieties that had prevailed at the convent.

A short daily service was held in the school chapel, and there wereprayers morning and evening. Miss Melody held "Sunday talks" forthe elder girls, of which the prevalent notes were brightness andbroad-mindedness. Free discussions of Bible and Catechism readings wereencouraged, with implicit avoidance of certain of the Commandmentswhich apparently were not fit subjects for explanation.

Indeed, the nuns themselves could have displayed no more silent andresolute modesty than prevailed at Bridgecrap upon subjects that,sooner or later, must become of vital moment to every one of thefeminine creatures there being educated.

V

Lily formed and retained a very acute impression of the Bridgecrapatmosphere, during the three years that she spent there, but hardlya single personality in the place made any lasting effect upon hermemory. Yet it was during those three years that a secret and shamedconviction slowly crystallized within her; they were all what sheinwardly called Real Live People, and she herself was only a sham.However much she might try to be like everyone else, sooner or laterthey would find her out.

She could not have explained wherein lay the difference, but connectedit vaguely with a mysterious undercurrent of romance that ran throughher daily life, and of which no one must ever, ever know.

She thought that no one but herself ever invented long, dramaticstories, that went on from day to day, in which one traversed strangeand eventful scenes, always a heroine, always becomingly dressed, andalways in full view of a selected audience.

Lily also supposed herself, with more reason, to be unique in anotherrespect.

At fifteen, even at sixteen years of age, she still liked playing withtoys. Not even such respectable toys as jig-saw puzzles, or ingeniousmechanical contrivances—although even such tastes as these must haveroused the extreme of scorn in the players of hockey—but terribly,shamefully babyish things—wooden farmyards and tea sets and dolls.

Above all, dolls.

Officially, Lily had outgrown dolls at twelve years old. Miss Cleevehad expected it, had taken it for granted. She might, or might not,have known that there was a little wax baby-doll, in long clothes,hidden in Lily's bedroom.

But certainly neither she, nor anybody else, knew that the doll Sophyhad accompanied Lily to school.

Worse—Lily played with Sophy in secret and took her into bed with herevery night. She had a small bedroom to herself, as had most of theelder girls, and as soon as the governess in charge had paid her briefnightly visit of inspection, and extinguished the light, Lily creptout of bed, felt her way to the chest of drawers, unlocked the bottomdrawer and took out the baby-doll from underneath a pile of garmentsfolded at the very back of the drawer.

She pretended that Sophy had to be hidden away in a cave all day fromdanger of kidnapping, and that she might only visit her at night. Shecuddled her, and talked to her in a whisper, and went to sleep with herin her arms.

With part of herself, Lily really believed that Sophy could understandwhat she said to her, and appreciate the caresses lavished upon her.There was never any question of her forgetting to conceal the littledoll again in the mornings. She was far too genuinely terrified ofbeing found out.

It appalled her, occasionally, to think of the effect that discoverymight have upon all those Real Live People. Not only the girls, buteveryone she had ever known—governesses and servants, and relationslike Aunt Clo and Cousin Charlie, or her father. Lily did not reallyfeel that even her mother would have understood, although, like mostmotherless children, she idealized the memory of the dead woman. Theonly person with whom she knew that her secret could quite well havebeen shared, would have been Vonnie.

They had always played "pretence games" together, and Vonnie would haveoutgrown them no more than Lily.

It was partly this consciousness of a guilty secret, of which Lily wasunutterably ashamed, that kept her from any intimate friendships atschool.

Like many naturally reserved people, she held an ideal of friendshipthat included the most complete unreserve, and how could such a thingever be possible to a person who would have to begin by saying:

"I am not like other people. I am not a nearly grown-up girl like youare—I still play pretence games with myself, although I am sixteen.All the pencils in my pencil-box have names, and ages and characters. Ilike quite baby toys, and I would much rather play by myself with a boxof tin soldiers, than go for a school-picnic, or to see a Shakespeareanplay.I have got a baby-doll and I talk to her and take her to bedevery night, and I always mean to go on, as long as I live."

Whenever Lily reached this climax, in her imaginary confession,she always saw the recipient of it, not necessarily as derisive orscornful, but simply, blankly amazed and completely uncomprehending.

Therecould be nobody who would understand in the whole world.

The whole world, if bounded by the gates of Bridgecrap, certainlyjustified Lily's instinct in that respect.

She liked most of the girls, although she knew in her heart that therewas no real link between herself and any one of them. This she put downto that indefinable eccentricity of hers which differentiated her fromthe rest of the world. She knew that the girls were conscious of ittoo, although it would not have occurred to them to put it into words.

The discussion of an abstract question amongst themselves they wouldhave considered to be an affectation, and bad form, although theyouthful Briton's trick of freely making crude personal remarksflourished unchallenged.

"Isay, what a scarlet nose you've got!"

This was entirely permissible and called for neither comment nor reply,other than a casual "Have I—what's it matter?"

But Lily always remembered the outcry that followed upon a remark oncemade by one of the younger pupils:

"I wonder why one gets that funny feeling sometimes of having donethings before? Sort of like that Indian thing Mam'oiselle was readingabout the other day—reincarnation or something——"

"Here! Chuck it, please. That was in alesson!"

"Little girls shouldn't use long words they don't understand," said asenior severely.

"Snub for you, Elizabeth Fulham, showing off like that! Trying to beoriginal, I s'pose! Did you ever hear of such affectation in a FourthForm kid!"

Apparently no one ever had and no one ever did again, Elizabeth Fulhamsubsiding, with a very red face, into silence and subsequent orthodoxy.Certainly no one else at Bridgecrap could fairly be accused of tryingto be original. It would have been the unforgivable sin.

Everyone seemed to copy everyone else.

Many of the girls copied Dorothy Hardinge, the eldest of CharlieHardinge's three kiddies, because she was very good at games and hadwon the High Jumping Competition two years running at the schoolsports. The Third Form girls parted their hair in the boyish wayaffected by Dorothy, and used the same slang that she did; and were"keen" on the mathematical mistress, because Dorothy was "keen" on her.

Schoolgirl friendships were not the fashion at Bridgecrap, and werecried down as "sloppy" by the girls themselves.

But it wasde rigeur to have an infatuation for one or other of theteachers, with the exception of Mademoiselle who, being a "beastlyforeigner," naturally "didn't count."

The majority of these enthusiasms might almost be described as beingartificially manufactured to meet the requirements of that great lawthat enforced conformation to type. The mildest demonstrations onlywere indulged in.

"Isn't sheswe-eet—isn't sheducky?"

Such was the prescribed formula when Lily was at Bridgecrap, and onceit had been ecstatically uttered, the speaker was recognized as being"keen" on Miss So-and-So, and there the matter remained stationary.

There were one or two exceptions to this comparatively healthy stateof affairs, as is inevitable in any community living under similarconditions of unnatural segregation. Lily, without knowing why, hatedthe headlong adorations that occasionally overtook a girl for one ofthe mistresses, and that almost always resulted in some unspecifiedcrisis, when the adorer was sent for by Miss Melody, and severely,though quite inexplicitly, cautioned against "foolishness."

Sometimes, Lily thought, the mistress was cautioned too, for very oftenher manner to her devotee would change abruptly, and become very coldand self-conscious.

The affair almost always ended in a violent reaction, when thediscarded adorer would hate vehemently where she had erstwhile loved.Such affairs always made Lily feel glad that she herself was notparticularly attracted to anyone at Bridgecrap. The whole thing seemedto her to be so oddly undignified, and besides, it was always the leastlikeable girls who were overtaken by such infatuations.

Lily knew, unaccountably, that there was a subtly unwholesome elementin the school, sometimes a very minor element indeed—but always there.

She guessed, vaguely, at the subjects of certain whisperedconversations and giggling references, but although she was quiteaware of unenlightened curiosities and perplexities of her own, thethought of sharing them would literally have revolted her. Nor didthe whisperers and gigglers ever approach her, instinctively able todiscern, as they were, exactly whom they might or might not hope toadmit to their foolish, underbred companionship.

The youngest of Charlie Hardinge's daughters was the child in theschool whom Lily liked best, although she knew that she had beenexpected to make friends with her contemporaries, Dorothy andJanet. But Dorothy who, as her father had said, stood five-feetfive in her stockings at thirteen years old, and had a back like aramrod—Dorothy, at fifteen, had attained to a degree of athleticprowess that admitted her to the comradeship of the most highly placedgirls in the school.

She naturally took not the slightest notice of Lily, who wasuniversally recognized at "a perfect duffer at games."

Of Janet Hardinge, Lily was frightened, although Janet was her junior.Janet was clever, according to the Bridgecrap standards, and shewas amongst the few girls in the school who expressed a contemptthat was not, in the main, wholly good-natured, for Lily's physicalinefficiency. She had a spiteful tongue, that turned itself readily topersonalities of a coarse and wounding nature, and Lily's sensitivenesswas sufficiently obvious to render her a favourite target. Janet wasnot popular, and Lily was perhaps the only one of her school-fellowswho realized that hers was simply the obtuse cruelty of the absolutelyunimaginative. Her sister Sylvia was four years younger than Lily,and so entirely absorbed by hockey that only the chance of schooltheatricals revealed to either that they had anything in common.

A play was acted every year at Midsummer. At first, Lily had beenconvinced that she could act. She knew that the girls to whom theimportant parts were given frequently spoke their lines with perfectlymeaningless intonation, and with emphasis very often laid in the wrongplace.

She felt certain of distinguishing herself, although the first partgiven to her was a tiny one, and she noted with relief that hervoice, when she spoke her brief sentences, sounded very clear anddistinct, amongst those other voices that were almost all charged withself-consciousness.

Her satisfaction reached a brief climax and then was dashed to earth.

"Very good, Lily Stellenthorpe!" said an unnecessarily surprised juniormistress. "I wish you principals would put as much intelligence intosome of your speeches. You, for instance, Dorothy Hardinge."

Dorothy Hardinge giggled. She was too good-natured to take offence, andit was clear that the whole question of the play seemed to her to be avery unimportant one.

Perhaps something of this attitude of mind was rather too obvious inher demeanour.

"Lily!" commanded the mistress sharply. "You can read that long speechof Dorothy's, and see what you make of it."

Ever since her arrival at Bridgecrap Lily had been convicted of herinferiority to everyone there.

Now, in a glorious flash, she saw her chance of at last achieving asuccess.

She read the speech without hesitation, and felt that she had read itvery well.

"Excellent! I wish I'd given you a bigger part. We'll see...."

Lily was disproportionately excited.

The next day, she was told to give Dorothy's speech again, this timewith the necessary action, which included a slow entrance and adramatic exit prefacing the fall of the curtain.

"Oh, my dear child! Hold yourself properly—you can't walk like that.And your hands—no, no—that won't do. Can't youmove properly?"

It was just what Lily could not do. Her instinct for the correctmanipulation of words and ideas did not extend to the disposition ofher own muscles.

Enforced drill, gymnastics and detested games, begun too late andwithout any attempt at individual tuition, had failed to impart toLily the natural poise and erect bearing that made Dorothy Hardinge'smovements harmonious. Her body was as self-conscious as her mind wassupple and alert.

"No use at all. We can't have her standing about the stage like that.What would Miss Melody say?"

"I'm sorry, Lily," said the junior mistress kindly. "It's a great pityyou can't learn to hold yourself properly. Otherwise, you might actvery well."

Lily's brief triumph was over, at the expense of this humiliation.

It was then that Sylvia Hardinge surprised her by saying quietly:"It's a shame! You said all that stuff perfectly splendidly—as thoughit really meant something. They ought to let you have a really goodpart—you act better than any of us."

Lily secretly agreed with her, whilst believing herself conceitedfor doing so, but she was none the less astonished and gratified atSylvia's appreciation.

"I'm glad you think I can act. Did I really hold myself so very badly?"

"Yes," said Sylvia simply. "Frightfully."

It was like a douche of cold water.

Lily's friendship with Sylvia was destined to run a course that wasneatly foreshadowed thus in their first encounter.

Sylvia admired Lily, thought her clever and very pretty, and was asympathetic and affectionate companion.

Lily felt passionately grateful for her affection, and sometimes toldherself joyfully that she had found a friend at last.

And then from time to time she was suddenly brought up short againstthe sharply defined limits of Sylvia's comprehension, and the jarringcandour of Sylvia's ruthlessly unalterable condemnations.

Grown-up people always told one that in this world there was no suchthing as a perfect friendship. Lily obediently generalized thus, andstrove for philosophy in defiance of a hidden, quite unsupportedcertainty, in the depths of her own mind, that the generalization was afalse one.

It was not until her final half year at Bridgecrap that Lily came underthe direct personal influence of the headmistress.

Miss Melody was fifty-seven, she had given up her life to the work ofeducation, and she still brought to it the enthusiasm of a pioneer. Hersolitary weakness was the not altogether uncommon one of an unshakablebelief in her own infallibility.

"You may have a difficult time in front of you, childie," she saidto Lily very kindly. "A motherless girl is very often at a greatdisadvantage. I was motherless myself before I was twenty."

She had a rounded mellow voice and always articulated her words withgreat deliberation and distinctness. "And the dear little brother! Isthat a big responsibility, Lily?"

"Kenneth will be going to school almost at once," said Lily evasively.

She would like to have replied, as Miss Melody obviously expected herto do, with an admission of her own perplexities as regarded herrelations to Kenneth, but she knew very well that no responsibilitywould really be hers. Nothing vital bound her to Kenneth as she hadbeen bound to Vonnie, and the immense gulf of her ten years' seniorityhad inspired in her no maternal solicitude towards her independentlittle brother.

"He will be nearly eight when I leave here, and I know my father meanshim to go to school when he's eight," said Lily.

"Child, you're not going to be a shirker, are you? Lily, Lily, isn'tthat the weak place? Ah, I thought so. I thought so. Afraid ofresponsibility, aren't you?"

Miss Melody's eye was at once penetrating and melancholy, as she fixedit upon her pupil.

"Now, childie dear, if you know what that weakness of yours is, fightagainst it. Fight against it, dearie, and pray. Don't forget whatprayer can do for us all. The very weakest can be made strong, youknow...."

Lily listened with a sense of disquiet. She felt vaguely thatMiss Melody, so kind and wise and helpful, had somehow evolved apreconceived idea that did not altogether fit the reality.

"I don't know whether it is exactly that I'm afraid of responsibility,"Lily began, feeling that the help Miss Melody was so willing to impartmust rest upon a basis of fact, if it was to be of value to her.

The schoolmistress laughed softly.

"Lily, Lily, haven't you learnt not to make excuses for yourself yet? Ihoped all my girls were taught that in the lowest form in the school!"

Lily looked as thoroughly disconcerted as she felt. Was it makingexcuses for herself to try and explain what she felt to be the truth,even though it happened to run contrary to Miss Melody's judgment?

"No, no, child," Miss Melody was grave again now. "Never be ashamed toown up to your weaknesses. I want you to think about backbone, dearie.It's what you need.I know, childie—perhaps more than you think. Allsorts of girls have passed through my care, and I'm very, very proud tothink that I've known something about each one of them—perhaps beenable to give each one a little help. And there are no two alike, Lily,and each one has to be studied individually."

"And do you—have you really——?" Lily wanted to ask whether MissMelody had really penetrated to the true self of every one of herpupils. It seemed so incredible, that girls like Dorothy Hardinge, forinstance, should really have an inward life, even as Lily herself, andthat Miss Melody should enter therein, and understand it all.

"Do I really study each one individually? Indeed I do, Lily, althoughit may seem to you girls that you see very little of the headmistressexcept in school, and on state occasions. Oh,I know," and MissMelody laughed again.

Then she dropped her deep, soft voice impressively.

"I've studied you, childie dear, and thought about you very often.There's weakness, Lily—there's weakness. You'll have to be very muchon your guard. I should like to have seen you much keener about games,much more in earnest for the honour of the school at our hockey andcricket matches. You may think that those things are of no very greatimportance in themselves, but there's a fine spirit behind it all, youknow—a thoroughlyEnglish spirit. It's that keenness that you seemto me to lack."

Miss Melody paused, and looked with her characteristic air of profoundscrutiny at Lily.

"Well?" she said encouragingly.

Lily felt that she was letting slip an opportunity for just such aclarification of issues as she had long sought after, but the habits ofobscure and muddled thinking into which she had all her life been ledstood in her way.

She made a consciously inadequate effort, belatedly.

"I think I could be more—keen—about things, if I only felt they weremore worth it," she said confusedly. "I know I'm no good at games, butit isn't only that—it doesn't seem to me to matter frightfully whetherone's good at them or not—and it's the same about other things, evenlessons. Ido enjoy them—some of them at least—but all the timeI've got a sort of feeling—what's it all for?"

She paused, confused and frightened.

"Go on——" said Miss Melody. Her voice was slightly melancholy, butshe was slowly nodding her head, as though in comprehension.

"I think if I could find something that seemed to me thoroughly worthwhile I could—could really let myself go and give my whole self toit. Something like a—a person one loved very much, or a sort of lifeone felt was right foroneself—not just right in itself——" Lilystopped, in utter disarray.

She knew that she had not succeeded in conveying her meaning by thosehalting, ill-expressed phrases, but the extent of her failure was notapparent to her until Miss Melody spoke again.

"I'm very, very glad you should have spoken, childie ... perhaps we canget this straightened out between us. That's a terrible idea of yours,you know, that things aren't worth while. Why, at your age, anythingought to be worth while—over and over again, Lily. The games and thelessons, and the little brother at home—it's all worth while, dearie.While you're thinking and dreaming away about some imaginary call todevote yourself to someone or something, all the little opportunitiesare slipping by you—you're squandering all your energies on fanciesthat mean nothing. You must learn to put your whole self into whatyou're doing, Lily—into the living present. Why, it's all worth while!As I told you just now, it isn't the number of runs you make in thecricket match that matters, it's the spirit that holds the whole eleventogether, that makes each one keen to see her side win the match.That's what matters!"

Lily looked with unhappy eyes at Miss Melody. Why could she feel noreal response within herself to these rousing truths?

At that moment she hated her own tepidity, her own secret, alienstandards. She made an earnest and violent endeavour to relinquish thelatter for ever, and to range herself under Miss Melody's inspiringbanner.

"The games in themselves are only games. True," said Miss Melody. "Butthere's something else, Lily. I wonder if you've ever thought of it?Everything we do, great or small, can be turned to the greater honourand glory of God. I think you know very well that the Apostle Paul haswritten about that—didn't we have it, not so very long ago, at ourreading? And don't you think, if you want a motive, that you have anadequate one there? If you think of that, childie, you won't ask again'what's it all for' or whether it's worth while, will you?"

Could Lily, at seventeen years old, have formulated her own obstinate,inmost certainty, and have replied to Miss Melody?—"The Apostle Paulspoke for himself. Neither he nor anyone else can speak for me. Until Ihave evolved my own convictions, I shall continue to suffer from thatlack of motive which I have most inadequately tried to put before you,and of which you have quite obviously understood nothing at all."

Nothing is more certain than that no such arrogant lucidity sprangeither to her mind or to her lips.

"I'll try, Miss Melody——" she said, earnestly and meekly.

"I know you will, I'm quite sure of it. There's a big effort to bemade, Lily, before you can shake off that supineness of yours, but itcan be done, dearie. Now, when you leave here I want you to feel thatyou can write to me quite freely and I shall always find time to answeryou. Do you know that girls who left me fifteen and twenty years agostill write to me? Some of them have girls of their own at school bynow.

"Tell me, childie dear, have you ever thought of what your own futureis to be? Is it to be a career, or the making of a home for the littlebrother, or do you want a home of your very own—marriage, Lily?"

The mere knowledge that she had never before heard the word mentionedin such a connection by Miss Melody, made Lily blush foolishly.

The headmistress smiled—an omniscient smile. "I thought so—I thoughtso. Well, Lily, although I haven't married myself, I always advocatemarriage for the majority of my girls. Most women are happier in thebeaten track, and I don't think you're one of those that are calledupon to stand alone. Oh, there's nothing derogatory in that. Marriageis a very high calling, child, and there's a great deal to it—a greatdeal ofresponsibility, Lily."

Miss Melody's arch smile underlined the word, as though it had become acatchword, used to denote their dual consciousness of Lily's weakness.

Lily smiled back again, faintly protesting.

"Ah, you don't like that! It's the old bugbear, isn't it? Well, well,childie...." Miss Melody appeared to lose herself in reflectiveness.

The fiction of Lily's dread of responsibility was now firmlyestablished between them.

"If I can give you any advice, or help you in any way, just let meknow, dear child. We've had a nice, long talk, and I think it's beenhelpful to you."

Miss Melody paused so significantly that Lily almost involuntarilysaid: "Yes, Miss Melody."

"I'm very thankful for that, Lily—very proud and thankful. You mustcome to me again before the breaking up. Bless you, childie dear."

Lily understood that the interview was at an end.

Acutely sensitive as she was to Miss Melody's kind and serious interestin her welfare, it was almost inevitable that she should come tothe sorrowful conclusion that Miss Melody, in her vast and tolerantexperience, must be correct in her estimate of Lily's self. The thoughtdepressed her.

She lacked backbone, and she was a shirker, squandering all herenergies upon fancies that meant nothing.

In a vague and general way, Lily resolved to abjure those fancies andto readjust her scale of relative values so that it should include allthat Miss Melody had meant by such words as "keenness"—"a thoroughlyEnglish spirit" and "doing everything to the greater honour and gloryof God."

VI

The least highly spirited amongst us, however easily cowed by outsideinfluence, seldom finds it easy or desirable to practise meekness whendealing with a near relative at home.

This law, which is a practically invariable one, deserves a candidrecognition which it seldom receives.

Certainly it was never openly admitted to exist by PhilipStellenthorpe, whose house furnished a striking example of its workingsafter Lily had finally returned from Bridgecrap.

At school, she had been the victim of a diffidence engendered in theconsciousness of failure.

At home, the consciousness of failure merely roused her to covert andirritable defiance of criticism.

She was no longer the sensitive and over-intuitive child steadilydenying her own instincts wherever she foresaw that they must runcounter to her father's unalterably sentimental ideals. But neither hadshe the moral courage nor the training in honesty of thought that wouldhave enabled her boldly to analyze the causes of her own discontent.

She was resentful of Philip's arbitrary conventions, for which he nevergave any other reason than that "Father says it will be best thatway," and at the same time she believed her resentment to be wrong andundutiful.

She thought, and was shocked and unhappy to think, that there weretimes when she hated her father, whereas her hatred was in realitywholly for certain manifestations of his solicitude and affection forherself.

"A child that is impatient of its parent's love," Philip once calledher, in bewildered pain and disappointment.

Lily felt herself to be unutterably heartless, cried herself sick withremorse and despair, and then had to bite her tongue to prevent herselffrom protesting aloud in exasperation the very next time that Philipcalled her his little pet.

A perpetually tête-à-tête existence might well have brought the stateof tension between them to an unforgettable climax, but that thesituation was saved by the Hardinges.

The Hardinges came to live within a mile of Philip Stellenthorpe.

The shock to him was less severe than if they had been people of whomhe knew nothing, and the sacred tradition of Eleanor's day, that "thechildren were happiest in their own little nursery," was allowed tolapse when Lily was between eighteen and nineteen years old, and Kennethin his first term at school. Subtle and intangible conflict and thepresence of the cheerful, commonplace Hardinges were unthinkabletogether in the same atmosphere.

Dorothy Hardinge, no longer able to play hockey with any regularity,philosophically turned her attention to other forms of amusement, andwas quite ready to make a companion of Lily Stellenthorpe. Havingreluctantly put up her hair and lengthened her skirts, she made thebest of privileges that she had never coveted, took her clothes quiteseriously, and discovered frankly, for the first time, that Lily hadat least one undeniable advantage over other girls that had never beenrecognized at school, in that she was extremely and unusually pretty.

Janet was less simple-minded, or less generous than Dorothy, and alwaysmade Lily conscious of her faint contempt.

Sylvia was still called Lily's friend, although they had much less incommon than had Lily and Dorothy, now that Lily was accounted grown up,while Sylvia had three more years of school before her.

Charlie and Ethel Hardinge gave tennis parties and small dances, andpicnic parties, and talked as proudly and volubly of "the girls" asthey had once talked of "the kiddie-widdies."

They included Lily and Kenneth in everything.

"We've got two boys coming to stay with us next week. It ought to berather fun," Dorothy Hardinge proclaimed. "There are never enough mento go round, here."

"There are so few families with sons, and anyway the boys alwaysseem to be years younger than the girls—like Kenneth," said Janetdiscontentedly.

It had been the fashion at Bridgecrap to deride as early Victorianany assumption of the desirability of masculine society under anyconditions, but Dorothy Hardinge at least had candidly readjusted herpoint of view amongst her new surroundings.

"We shall try and give a dance, while they're here. One of them isfather's ward, Colin Eastwood—he's eighteen and awfully nice. Sort ofquiet, you know, but nice. And he's bringing a friend, someone we don'tknow. Father said he might. He's at some University or other, and he'sabout twenty-two, or something like that. He'll probably think himselfas old as anything, compared to us," said Dorothy with a little laughthat betrayed excitement.

Lily felt excited, too. She had met very few boys indeed that werebeyond the age of sailor suits, but she had indulged in as manyromantic fancies of possible future conquests for herself, as wereallowed her by the ineradicable memory of the convent theory thatmasculinity wasipso facto something to be, as far as possible,ignored by the modest feminine.

Much reading and an uncontrollable imagination had merely eradicatedthe recollection of conventual shibboleths, but Lily was stillsufficiently bound by them to feel very much ashamed when she foundherself wondering whether Colin Eastwood and his friend would thinkthat she was pretty. Dorothy said that she was.

From time to time, when she had on a new hat or put on a summerfrock for the first time, her father looked at her with an air ofrather melancholy gratification, and then made some small, detachedobservation at the very end of the day, when it might be assumed tohave no special significance to the immediate occasion:

"My little Lily is getting quite a grown-up girl, now. It's quite aduty for little people to take care of their complexions, you know,we're given these small advantages to be a pleasure to those who careabout our looks."

Lily had thereby deduced that Philip was afraid of her becoming vain,and that therefore he, also, thought her pretty.

She sometimes took long and furtive observations of herself in theglass. Her eyes, dark-lashed and rather deeply set, were not nearlyas blue as Dorothy Hardinge's, but her nose at least was straightwhere Dorothy's turned up, and her soft skin had no freckles, and wassun-burned olive instead of red. She thought that her lips were toofull, but at all events they were firmly closed, since she had alwaysbreathed through her nose, which not one of the three Hardinges coulddo for any length of time. And her hair was lovely.

Lily would never have applied to it, even in her own mind, such anadjective—redolent of vanity, according to the code—but nevertheless,that was what she really thought of it, when she brushed out the long,silky brown waves.

She counted vanity as being amongst her besetting sins, and strove topersuade herself that, against the evidence of her own senses, shereally ought to believe herself plain and unattractive.

It was a mark of her own unregeneracy, that this should prove to be soextraordinarily difficult.

It became more difficult than ever, when Colin Eastwood and Lily beganto meet one another every day at the parties and excursions arranged bythe Hardinges in honour of their two guests.

Colin, as Dorothy had said, was nice, and very quiet. The indicationsof his admiration for Lily were so shyly offered that she only becameaware of it by subtle and gradual degrees.

So restrained and delicate was that impalpable idyll of their extremeyouth, that it never became the object of jarring and facetiouscomment, as was Dorothy's loud flirtation with Colin's cheerfuland amusing friend, embarked upon within an hour of their firstacquaintance.

Lily, at first, had indeed been inwardly mortified at the promptness ofDorothy's conquest. The undergraduate was a Real Live Person—so wasDorothy. So were all the others. Lily, just as at school, felt herselfto be but an indifferent masquerader, through the badly sustainedpretensions of whom they could all see plainly.

She found herself paired with Colin, in all the expeditions, andthought that it was because he had such nice manners that he alwaysstayed beside her. But in a very little while she knew that, actually,Colin manœuvred for the place next her, and that his gaze always soughthers to share in the frequent jokes and allusions that had so soon comeinto being amongst them all.

He liked her better than Dorothy, or Janet or any of them.

It was just such a first romance as is only possible to certaindiffident and highly sensitized temperaments, as yet unawakened toany thought of the cruder and more obvious manifestations of mutualattractions. Colin Eastwood was very nearly as ingenuous as Lily, andquite as shy.

He sat next her at picnics, and looked pitiful if the privilege wasaccidentally usurped by others. He once, daringly, and with shakingfingers, fastened her glove for her.

He asked her to call him Colin, and when she shyly acquiesced he wastransported, but looked at her with a gaze that implored a yet furtherprivilege.

Lily blushed at first, and then said timidly:

"And will you call me Lily?"

He said breathlessly: "Oh, I should love to." The audacity of the wordsmade both their hearts beat quicker, so that they could say no more.

When they played tennis at the Hardinges' house, Lily was generallyassigned to Colin for a partner, as it was necessary to equalize thesets by coupling the weakest player, as Lily indubitably was, with thestrongest.

At first she thought that he must resent her inferiority, but it wassoon evident that he did not even acknowledge it to exist. When sheplayed well, he praised her rapturously, and when she played badly heput aside her apologies with assurances that the sun, or the wind, orsome mistaken movement of his own had been against her.

Under the stimulus of his admiration, Lily suddenly blossomed into aself-confidence hitherto unknown to her, and actually learnt to liketennis, and to play passably well.

Occasionally Colin was her adversary, and then he served his balls toher as gently as possible, and she knew it, and was thrilled by hischivalry, although she never made acknowledgment of it to him in anyspoken words.

Such tiny little things seemed to count. The way one looked, or didn'tlook—the seat one chose in the garden at tea-time. The allusions thatproved how carefully certain predilections or desires had been noted.And there were the photographs.

All of them had cameras, and groups were taken. Colin always placedhimself next to Lily, or sitting at her feet, or standing just behindher, for these.

Colin took photographs of Lily, because that was such a very prettyhat, if she didn't think it rude of him to make a personal remark. Andmight he take one of her without a hat on at all, for a change?

Lily would just take one snapshot of Colin, because he had put hercamera to rights, and they must see if it had been a successfuloperation.

Colin manœuvred the unsuspecting Sylvia into making use of his Kodak,which was much superior to her own Brownie, so that the photographwhich she took of Colin and Lily, alone together on the tennis court,appeared to be a sudden inspiration of her own.

But Lily knew that the whole was a deeply thought-out plot of Colin's,although he never said so. When the films were developed and printed,however, though Colin exhibited them freely, he let Lily know,casually, that only she and he were to have copies of that particularphotograph.

The glamour of perfect summer weather lay over it all, and the scentand colour of the innumerable roses with which the Hardinges' gardenseemed to be eternally decked. It was the beginning of August, whenthe halcyon days drew to a close, and on the last evening, they all,under a red harvest moon, went out to the favourite scene of their manyexcursions—a stretch of common land whereon the heather had just burstinto purple bloom.

The undergraduate challenged Dorothy to a race through the thick,impeding clumps, and they sped far ahead, the youth gaining upon herevery moment, in spite of a long start and the silk skirt that she haddaringly wound round her waist, exposing her frilled petticoats and ashapely length of leg.

Sylvia and two contemporaries, encountered upon the way, linked armsand could be heard singing fragmentarily as they went. Kenneth, excitedby the unwonted lateness of the hour, ran with the Hardinges' dog, andalternately teased and chattered to Janet, always left odd-man-out, andnow relegated to the society of her father, who told her instructivethings about the moon. Lily and Colin lingered far behind them all.

They were not articulate, even now, in spite of the soft allurement ofthe melancholy that possessed them both.

In Lily's mind, there floated a fragment once read somewhere:

...De cet adieu, si douce est la tristesse.

She said tremulously:

"I'm sorry you're both going away to-morrow."

She had not wanted to sayboth, but the word mysteriously forceditself from her.

"I'm sorry, too," Colin answered fervently. "I shall never forget thistime. It's been the happiest of my whole life."

"I think it's been the happiest of mine, too."

Shyness overwhelmed and silenced them both.

"You don't want to catch up with the others, do you?" spoke Colinentreatingly.

"No—oh no. They're too far ahead," said Lily hurriedly.

The hillside became steeper, and the gorse-bushes that stood up amidstthe tough springing heather became more numerous.

"I think I'd better go first and—and help you, if I may."

He thrust the stiff, green spires aside, and held out his hand.

Lily tremulously placed hers within his grasp.

They climbed slowly, without speaking.

"Shall we sit down for a minute?" Colin suggested, when the end of thesteep path was reached, and Lily had softly, but definitely, withdrawnher hand from his.

They leant against a boulder, and Colin detected a tiny tuft of whiteheather.

"Let's each pick a piece of it, and not tell anyone where we found it."

Then they exchanged their pieces, rather solemnly and without speakingmuch. Colin's fingers lingered round Lily's as she tendered her littlespray towards him, and they looked long at one another in the moonlight.

"I shall always keep mine," he murmured.

"As a remembrance," whispered Lily.

"I shan't need anything to make me remember," said the boyreproachfully. "Will you keep yours?" he added beseechingly.

"Yes."

Colin kissed his piece of heather and put it into a little pocketbook.

Lily tucked hers tenderly into the front of her gown. Then it was allover and the others joined them, and they went down the hill again alltogether, singing "For Auld Lang Syne," and Lily and Kenneth were leftat their own lodge-gates.

And for the next few days, Lily found the picnics dull, and the tennisparties no longer events to be looked forward to, and the taking ofphotographs not worth while.

Once Dorothy Hardinge said to her, quite calmly: "I believe ColinEastwood was awfully in love with you, Lily."

"Father says Colin is frightfully susceptible," said Janet quickly. "Iheard Father and Mother laughing about him."

Lily did not mind the laughter of good-natured Cousin Charlie and hiswife.

She wondered with shy, delicious tremors whether Colin really was inlove with her, and whether some day he would come back again and askher to marry him, and take her away to some nebulous dream world inwhich all true lovers had their being.

Her dreams and fancies were nearly as unsubstantial as those that shehad woven round imaginary adventures, and told herself from day today, at school. She was still only pretending to be like other people.Really Lily knew that it was all pretence to say that she was now grownup.

Philip said it from time to time, even while himself still treating heras a child, with no slightest claim to either judgment or individualityof her own.

But when he one day found her, more or less surreptitiously, childishlydevouring toffee in the garden, he reminded her seriously and withdispleasure, of her years.

"You don't want to eat unwholesome sweetstuff, between meals, like alittle schoolboy. That's all very well for the nursery," said Philip,disregarding the fact, resentfully remembered by Lily, that no suchpractice had ever been allowed prevalence in the Stellenthorpe nursery.

"I don't like to see you behaving so babyishly, Lily. It's—it'sundignified, and unsuitable. I don't like to see it."

He saw it no more.

Lily, although regarding detection as shameful, was either notsufficiently convinced of the heinousness of eating toffee at nineteenyears old, or else lacked sufficient self-control to refrain fromsurreptitiously indulging her desire for sweet things.

She made inconspicuous expeditions to the village sweet-shop, andreturned with her purchases in her pocket, thoroughly despising herselfthe while.

Guilt, and a ludicrously disproportionate terror showed plainly inher face when she once met her father, on her return by the leastfrequented entrance to the house.

"What have you been doing, my little pet?" Philip enquired witha suspiciousness foreign to his nature, but which must have beenengendered in the most trusting of parents by Lily's confused anddisconcerted expression.

"I just went up to the village," she stammered, and felt herselfflushing.

Philip stared at her in a puzzled manner. "What for?" he said at last.

"Nothing, Father. Just a—a walk."

Lily hastened away from further questions with the sense of her owndegradation strong upon her. She hated herself for having told a lie,and supposed that she had done so from a natural and ingrained tendencyto deceive in the first place, and an uncontrollable and dishonouringpassion for sweets in the second. She had become incapable of analyzingimpartially the true grounds of her own moral cowardice.

Had her natural honesty of mind been less systematically and thoroughlywarped, she might have received illumination from the sequel of theaffair.

Philip, during the afternoon that followed their encounter, was silentwith that peculiar silence which Lily knew, too well, denoted in himboth grief and perplexity.

Then, at the end of the evening, he said to her suddenly:

"My little child would never do anything foolish without telling me,eh, Lily?"

"No, Father," automatically said Lily, neither of them awake to theabsurd and improbable inconsistency of prefacing an act of folly byannouncing it in a quarter where it would certainly receive scantencouragement.

"You must never play little, underhand tricks," said Philip nervously.

It was quite evident that he intensely disliked saying whatever he hadset himself to say, and Lily's heart sank with the familiar feelings ofshame and dismay as she realized that he was obliquely referring to hermorning's walk.

"It's—it's not quite ladylike, not to be open and above-board.And little people have to be specially careful when they're ratherolder. There must never be anything like—well, like setting up acorrespondence, for instance, with some youth or other, without sayinganything about it."

For a moment Lily felt utterly bewildered.

"We don't want to put anything at all unpleasant into words,"her father said hastily, "but sometimes a little hint.... Yousee, my little pet, very young people can be rather thoughtlesssometimes, and then it may lead to things that are perhaps a littlebit undesirable—you'll understand better when you're older. Butclandestine expeditions to post letters, or to call for them, arequite out of the question, and might lead to a great deal of talk andunpleasantness."

Philip stopped to shudder at the distasteful vista of possibilitiesthus opened up, and the perception suddenly flashed upon Lily of hisingenious misinterpretation of the object of her morning expedition.

It afforded her the most unaffected relief.

There was no humiliation, and but little inconvenience, in beingsuspected of misdemeanours on a scale to which she had never aspired.It was even, mysteriously, rather gratifying.

"You understand what I mean, my darling?"

"Yes," said Lily, trying to keep extreme thankfulness out of her voice.

"Then we needn't say anything more about it." But Philip stillfidgetted uneasily with his newspaper and it was evident that he hadmore to say, and that he much disliked the prospect of saying it.

"Of course, one likes you to have plenty of innocent and ladylikeamusement," he said at last, in reluctant and distrustful tones."Certainly one does. And Cousin Charlie's daughters and—and theirfriends—are everything that is nice and proper, no doubt. ButI shouldn't like to think that you ever get at all—excited, orunguarded, so that people might find you a little bit—undignified."

Lily's relief was now merged in acute discomfort.

Her father must be thinking of Colin Eastwood. Had she really beenundignified?

To Lily's thinking it was an unendurable word, denoting indefinableforms of unrestraint, of an underbred lack of self-respect.

"One of these days," said Philip, carefully looking away from hisdaughter's discomfited face and perhaps scarcely less embarrassedthan was she, "one of these days I hope to see my little girl happilyengaged and married to some good, suitable man. But not for a long,long while yet, and in the meantime my little Lily mustn't cheapenherself by foolish boy-and-girl nonsense."

"I haven't——" stammered Lily, scarlet.

"Hush, hush, now. You know you mustn't contradict Father like that."

The form of Philip's serious and unvehement rebukes had not variedsince the days of Lily's babyhood.

"You'll be a good child, my pet, I know. If only your mother had beenspared to us, there would never have been any little difficulties.You must talk to Cousin Ethel, if there's anything she can help youabout——"

"But there isn't anything——" Lily was frenziedly repudiating she knewnot what.

"Well, well, we needn't talk of sad, uncomfortable things, my child.Only no little hole-and-corner affairs with letter-writing, remember."

But Lily had ceased to derive relief from the evident immunity fromdetection of the toffee scandal that was thus implied.

Her idle dreaming about that impalpable summer romance was over, andshe strove with shame to forget the very name of Colin Eastwood.

VII

"You must have a talk with Ethel, have a talk with Ethel," said CharlieHardinge. "My dear fellow, you must have a talk with Ethel."

Philip looked gloomy and distrustful.

He did not tell himself that Ethel Hardinge always roused in him afeeling of irritation that temporarily embraced the whole family ofHardinge, nor did he realize that she had a precisely similar effectupon most of those people who, with reluctant admiration, spoke of heras being such a good mother.

He told himself instead that Ethel was the mother of three daughters,and that therefore she understood everything about all young girls.

Without enthusiasm, he embarked upon a talk with Ethel.

"My motherless little child," said Philip, thereby involving himselfin misunderstanding at the very outset, since Ethel supposed him to bealluding to little Kenneth.

"No, no," said Philip, pained. "Kenneth is at school. Besides, he is aboy. It's my poor little Lily that troubles me."

"Oh, but she's not achild," said Ethel brightly. "I assure you, youmustn't think of her as a child. A girl of nineteen is grown up, or sheought to be. My Dorothy is a year younger than Lily, but I should neverdream of saying she wasn't grown up. Besides, she'd resent it so muchif I did!"

"I think Lily is content to let me judge for her——" said Philipstiffly.

Nothing in Lily's conduct justified the assertion—rather thereverse—but while Philip's necessity constrained him to ask forassistance, his dignity constantly impelled him to deny any need of it.This naturally increased the delicacy of his adviser's position, butEthel Hardinge was cheerfully impervious to atmospheric conditions.

"There's a stage when they get discontented and out of hand," sheremarked thoughtfully. "I went through it with Dorothy, and I'm goingthrough it with Janet now. Girls thinking they can't get on at home,you know."

Philip was sincerely horrified.

"That is very sad and shocking," said he gravely. "Home is a younggirl's natural sphere above all others, I should have thought. But Ihope little Lily has no terrible ideas of that kind in her head."

"Oh, they all go through it," Ethel repeated comfortably. "It'll be mySylvia next."

"Indeed?" said Philip, who felt no interest in Ethel's Sylvia, butwould have thought it unsympathetic not to simulate one.

His conscientious observance of this self-imposed law retarded thecourse of the consultation a good deal, since everything that either ofthem said invariably served to remind Ethel of its applicability to oneor more of her own children.

"It goes off, once they get other things to think about," Mrs. Hardingeobserved optimistically. "Dorothy was quite all right again when we hadthose nice boys staying here. They had plenty of fun all together, andit quite took her mind off her grievances."

"But why should little chil—should young girls, living at home, havegrievances at all?" demanded Philip piteously. "They ought to be ashappy as the day is long."

"Of course, our kiddies have everything to make them jolly—and really,I think they know it, at the bottom of their hearts. Dorothy and Sylviaare cheery enough, now, and Janet is only going through a phase. Butyour Lily—of course it's lonelier for her. And then, she's veryaffectionate and sensitive, after all—my girls always say she wantsbracing—perhaps it rather reacts on her spirits to know that you—thatyou——"

Ethel called up a fit of coughing to her aid. It was never easy to makea personal remark to Philip Stellenthorpe.

He grew more rigid than ever as the sense of this one was borne in uponhim.

"You mean that my own happiness is, naturally, no longer to be found inthis life? But my little Lily can know nothing of that," said he in allgood faith. "I should never dream of speaking about my grief to her, orallowing it to cloud her spirits."

"I don't see how you can help it," said Ethel bluntly.

Philip sat in astonished silence.

He had never thought of his children save as beings of quiteundeveloped perceptions, and it was to him an incredible and unwelcomesuggestion that Lily might possibly be aware of anything that had notexpressly been put into words for her information.

"We always imagined, Charlie and I, that you'd give Lily a regularseason in London as soon as she grew up. I only wish we could affordit for our kiddies—but it's out of the question, with three of them."

"If Lily's dear mother had been spared to us, no doubt there wouldhave been something of that sort," said Philip dejectedly. "But in thecircumstances, it hardly occurred to me that I should actually spendthree or four months in town, and take her to balls and parties and allthe rest of it, myself. And I am really quite out of touch with Londonsociety nowadays. But if my duty to the child requires a sacrifice——"

"No—no," said Ethel hastily.

She rightly conjectured that the spirit in which Philip would approachthe proposed immolation might safely be counted upon to victimize Lilyquite as thoroughly as himself.

"Isn't there anyone to whom you could send her? It's so easy to makearrangements of that sort, as a rule. Most people are only too pleasedto take a pretty girl about—by arrangement, of course."

"I could only entrust the charge of Lily to near relations, naturally,"said Philip.

If Mrs. Hardinge failed to appreciate the force of the axiom, she madeno sign of it.

"Surely there are aunts and people?"

"My wife was an only daughter, as of course you know, and her brothersare not married. I have only one sister, and she is unmarried and livesabroad."

Philip's manner suggested strongly that "abroad" in this connectionmight cover a multitude of sins. But Ethel knew all about Miss ClotildeStellenthorpe.

"Oh, but wouldn't she be the very person? I remember her quite well.Last time I was in town taking Sylvia to the dentist I met your sisterin the waiting-room. We had quite a long talk."

"My sister has a small villa in Italy, outside Rome. She lives therealmost altogether, and I fancy she would dislike London."

Ethel entirely disbelieved that any woman would dislike London fora sojourn of which the expenses of herself and a young and prettycompanion would be liberally met. But she felt unable to put this intowords which should leave Philip's susceptibilities unwounded.

So she said instead, with an air of bright inspiration:

"Then why not send Lily to Italy? It would be a splendid education.I've often thought how much I should like Janet to get a trip abroad!She's the clever one, you know—it would be rather wasted on Dorothy,I'm afraid. From what your sister told me she has a most interestingcircle of friends amongst the English colony in Rome, and knows all theEmbassy people."

"Yes, that is so."

Philip appeared to be much more favourably struck with this scheme thanwith Ethel's previous suggestion.

He put from him the painful recollection of certain heartless words,spoken nearly ten years ago, and tried only to remember that poor Clowas his nearest relation, and Lily's aunt.

After all, she had loved the children in her own way, and Philip hadlong ago euphemized her terrible speech about Vonnie into "poor Clo'srather unsympathetic way of speaking about things that should be heldsacred."

Whenever Philip Stellenthorpe came to within measurable distance ofa decision, however, it was his invariable instinct to make earnestsearch for difficulties or disadvantages that might stand in the way ofits execution.

"There are several drawbacks to the plan, of course," he began at once."My sister may have other arrangements of her own, or the idea may notappeal to Lily."

"I shouldn't dream of consulting her, if I were you," said Ethel ina surprised voice. "Just tell her it's all settled, as a tremendoussurprise for her, and she'll be delighted. Girls are like that."

"I'm sure my little girl would never be ungrateful for anything I hadarranged on her behalf," said Philip sadly. "But I don't know whetherthis is the right time of year for Italy. I should have to find outabout that."

"You would hardly send her for less than six months, surely," urged thepractical Mrs. Hardinge. "Some of that would be sure to be the righttime of year."

"And what about the journey?"

Philip pounced upon a further debatable point with gloomy triumph.

Ethel misunderstood him.

"That would be one point in favour of letting her go this autumn. Shewouldn't have that long journey in the heat."

"I was wondering who should take her."

"Take her? Isn't she old enough to take herself?"

"It is one of my rules," said Philip sublimely, "that Lily should notgo about alone. I have never allowed her to travel by herself, and Ishouldn't dream of letting her begin by a journey to Italy."

"Of course, if she's never travelled by herself, she can't begin bygoing all that way. Our kiddies always go about together—but perhapsone by herself may be different. Only it seems a pity she should be sohelpless at her age."

Philip looked offended as he always did at any form of criticism.

"You could send a maid with her."

"My sister's establishment would probably not admit of an additionalservant."

"She could see Lily into the train in Paris, and then come back. Come,you wouldn't mind her going straight through in a ladies' carriage byherself, would you?" said Ethel persuasively.

Philip reluctantly conceded that this might be permitted, less becausethe idea appeared to him satisfactory, than because he had just thoughtof a fresh objection to the whole scheme, and was desirous of bringingit forward immediately.

"I should be sorry if Lily made her friends amongst Roman Catholics, Imust admit."

"I daresay most of Miss Stellenthorpe's friends are English. I believethere's quite a colony there. In any case, she wouldn't be likely to beattracted by a foreigner, would she?"

Ethel's abrupt descent from the general to the particular slightlyscandalized her hearer.

"No—no. I don't know that I was thinking of anything very specific,"he said untruthfully. "Only on general grounds."

"Oh well, of course, she's very pretty. There are sure to be plenty ofpeople who'll admire her. That boy we had here, Colin Eastwood, was agood deal smitten."

Ethel laughed comfortably, but Philip remained quite unsmiling.

"Boy-and-girl nonsense is all very well," he remarked in tones whichimplied the contrary, "but of course it can't lead to anything, andonly puts foolish ideas into the heads of little people. I naturallyhope to see my poor little Lily happily and suitably settled some day,but there's plenty of time before her."

"I approve of early marriages," Ethel declared stoutly. "I hope if ourgirls are to marry, that they'll all marry young."

"I have no doubt of it," mechanically said Philip. "Thank you athousand times for your help. I shall think over our discussion, andlet you know what I decide."

He went away trying not to let himself perceive that it would affordhis own harassed sense of paternal responsibility an immense relief tosend Lily away from home for several months.

It was a disappointment to him when she received his announcementalmost doubtfully, although he would certainly have felt, and said it,to be sad and unnatural had she exhibited unrestrained pleasure at theprospect of leaving home.

They continued to remain, therefore, at cross-purposes during thecorrespondence embarked upon with Aunt Clo, and the resultingarrangements for Lily's journey in September to the villa at Genazzano.

"No doubt Aunt Clo will either meet you in Rome herself, or sendsomebody else to meet you, and take you to Genazzano. The difficulty isyour journey as far as Rome. Your Cousin Ethel suggested sending oneof the maids with you to Paris, and letting her see you into the trainthere. Or I could take you so far myself."

Philip sighed heavily. He detested travelling.

"Why couldn't I go by myself?" Lily demanded, suddenly rebellious. "I'msure Cousin Ethel would let Dorothy."

Philip looked at her in unfeigned surprise.

"Why, my little pet," he said gently, "you know very well that Fatherdoesn't allow you to go about alone."

"But why?"

"Not that argumentative tone, my child. Some day you will be very, verygrateful for all the care that I have lavished on you, and perhaps whenit's too late you may wish that you'd shown a more affectionate anddutiful recognition of it. Now, don't let me hear anything more aboutit. You know it's a very old rule that you mayn't go about by yourself,so there's no more to be said."

And such was the time-honoured immutability of those arbitrary rules,that there really was no more to be said. It occurred not at all toPhilip and only remotely to Lily, that the manner, if not the matter,of his prohibitions was senselessly tyrannical. He was honestlyconvinced that his favourite catchword—"Father says it will be betterso" would serve as ample justification to the minds of his children forany commands that he might choose to lay upon them.

The resulting condition of resentful obedience induced in Lily, who wasat once too sensitive and too fond of her father to risk reducing himto one of those states of despairing depression that were his only formof displaying vexation, Philip described as "a nice, happy, friendly,little home-party, with no unpleasant discussions."

Since the death of his wife, he had known no more definite happinessthan his own pitifully negative contentment whenever such a state ofaffairs appeared to him to prevail in his house. He would have thoughtit a disloyalty to Eleanor's memory to suppose that he could ever behappy again.

The children might be so—in fact he wished them to be so, and wasbewildered and hurt when his own lack of proportion created anatmosphere to which Lily, at least, reacted at a cost infinitelygreater to herself than either of them realized.

Kenneth, ten years younger, was different.

The "difference" of Kenneth, in fact, was becoming positivelyappalling, to his entirely humourless father.

Kenneth disregarded the code with blatant impunity, and that not from aspirit of defiance, but apparently from sheer constitutional inabilityto regard it seriously.

He obviously did not believe that grown-up people were infallible.

Remonstrance never made him cry, nor imputations of heartlessness anddisloyalty.

He never willingly sat upon anybody's knee after he was three yearsold, but would say cheerfully: "I'd rather not, thank you," as hewalked away.

He held opinions of his own, and expressed them freely.

He did not instantly relinquish them when Philip gravely and gentlytold him that he was an ignorant little boy and that Father always knewbest.

He was addicted to making personal remarks.

He spoke crudely and candidly about subjects that Philip had alwaystacitly impressed upon his children as being sad or unpleasant, andtherefore unfit to be mentioned freely.

He asked indiscreet questions.

"How old are you, Father?"

"Hush, hush, little boy. That's a very rude question. You know you mustnever ask grown-up people their age."

"Why not?"

"Because it's very bad manners."

"Cousin Charlie asked Lily how old she was, the other day, and Lilydidn't mind."

"That's different." Philip was at last beginning to learn that onecould not put an end to Kenneth's enquiries merely by saying: "Come,come, you know Father doesn't like arguments."

"Cousin Charlie is a great deal older than Lily, and can say what helikes to her."

"Then it's only old people who mind being asked their age. Is that whyyou won't tell me yours, Father, because you're so old?"

Philip was exceedingly sensitive about his age, and quite incapable ofassessing the utter meaninglessness of his son's estimate.

"That's a naughty, heartless way of speaking," he said, deeply hurt. "Idon't want to talk any more to little people who can speak like that."

"Oh well, it doesn't matter," said Kenneth with supreme indifference."I s'pose you're about seventy or eighty. I didn't know you'd mindbeing asked."

In the last assertion lay the painful core of the matter. Kennethreally didn't know, as Lily, and even Vonnie, had known, as much byintuition as by training, what Philip would "mind."

He transgressed constantly, and was gaily impervious to the devastatingeffect of his transgressions upon his father and, by reflection,upon Lily. But Lily secretly admired Kenneth, and envied him thatpachydermatous courage of his own convictions that she herself hadnever acquired.

Kenneth was never afraid of being himself, although that self in noslightest degree corresponded to Philip's ideal of a motherless littleboy of nine years old.

He went to school and was not in the least homesick, and he seemedto be neither grieved nor ashamed when Philip expressed greatdisappointment at his first report.

"I hoped you would have been proud to bring back some nice prize orother to show me," said Philip wistfully.

"Prizes are fearful rot," said Kenneth.

He afterwards remarked in a detached way to Lily that, after all, whathe did at school was his own business, more or less.

"Father pays for you to go there," said Lily, instinctively awarethat only such practical considerations would carry any weight to heryouthful hearer.

"Yes, of course. But he needn't want to know whether I've made any nicefriends, and rot of that sort."

"I know it's rather aggravating to be asked about that sort ofthing," half whispered Lily, feeling herself to be guilty of treason."But after all, it's because he's fond of us, that he wants to knoweverything about us."

"Being fond is such rot," said Kenneth, in his graceless and limitedvocabulary.

Lily was quite glad to see him return to school before her owndeparture for Italy.

"I'm afraid you won't see your sister at home next holidays, my boy, soyou and I will have to cheer one another up," said Philip nervously."But it'll be a great treat for Lily to go abroad."

"Mind you send me some stamps for my collection, Lily," Kenneth saidearnestly.

"Come, come, Kenneth. Try and not think quite so much about your ownlittle concerns. Now say good-bye, my boy."

But the most determined sentimentalist upon earth could extract noconventional emotion out of Kenneth.

"Good-bye," he said casually, and turned an inattentive cheek to Lily'ssalute.

She would willingly have omitted the ceremony of kissing himaltogether, knowing that he disliked it, but for her certaintythat Philip, shocked and pained, would have insisted upon its dueperformance.

"I hope little Kenneth is not a heartless boy," said his father,turning away dejectedly from the scene of farewell that had impressedhim so unsatisfactorily.

But hope was not the predominant note in his voice.

Lily was so sorry for her father—all the sorrier because she wasconscious that her own inmost sympathies lay with Kenneth's point ofview—that she felt it incumbent upon her to show no elation at all ather own projected departure, although she was in reality fast becomingboth excited and pleased at the prospect of going into entirely newsurroundings.

The result of which filial piety was that Philip told Ethel Hardinge,in a resigned way and with a smile of great melancholy, that littlepeople realized very few of the sacrifices made for them, and one mustnot expect to see them display gratitude.

VIII

"Aha!" cried Aunt Clo in a loud, ringing contralto.

She stood on the small, empty platform and waved her hand above herhead with a spacious, graceful gesture, as Lily got out of the train.

Miss Stellenthorpe's short, iron-grey curls were uncovered and partedin a masculine style on one side of her head, and she wore a dark-blue,fisherman's jersey and a pair of dark-blue knickerbockers. Her large,well-shaped legs and feet were bare.

"Aha! Good! Good!"

She kissed Lily upon both cheeks in an emphatic, foreign sort of way,and gazed at her with a fondly humorous smile.

"Ecco!" said Aunt Clo.

She hurried Lily across the little platform, affectionately graspingher arm, and talking so cordially all the while that her niece feltquite unable to interrupt her.

At last she said:

"My luggage, Aunt Clo. I'm afraid there's a trunk——"

"A trunk!Dio mio! Let us not forget the trunk!"

Aunt Clo sped back again, appearing not at all disconcerted, anddisposed of the trunk question with much animation.

"The trunk," she exclaimed to Lily in mock-bombastic style, "the trunkis provided for. All is well with the trunk. It appears at the gate ofIl Monasterioau plaisir de ce brave Lorenzo."

There were many French phrases and a few Italian ones scattered throughAunt Clo's conversation, and she frequently gave a strangely foreignconstruction to the sentences that she spoke in English.

Lily was impressed by her fluency, by the perfection of her French, andby a certain humorous candour that Aunt Clo displayed in voicing heropinions.

Nevertheless, she could not quite kill her remembrance of having, as achild, disliked Aunt Clo.

Outside the station was a very small waggonette with a striped red andyellow awning. A sleepy, good-natured-looking peasant, his shirt openat the neck, sat on the box.

"Ecco, Umbertino!"

Miss Stellenthorpe waved her niece into the waggonette and sprang inafter her. The vigor of her ascent seemed out of all proportion to thedilatory progress that they made along a baked and arid-looking road,the fields on either side unrelieved by any shade.

"But the vineyards round Genazzano!" said Aunt Clo expressively."Patienza!"

Genazzano proved to be a small village consisting of one cobble-stonedstreet, winding up the side of a steep hill, and an ancient greypile that stood raised from the roadside at the top of half a dozenirregular steps.

"TheCathedrale," Aunt Clo introduced it.

A mattress, imperfectly concealed behind a heavy red curtain, hungbefore the entrance to the cathedral after the Italian fashion.

A small, brown-skinned child was squeezing its way inside, and asturdy peasant woman, carrying a baby and a basket, was pushing her wayout.

"Buon' giorno, Teresa mia!" cried Aunt Clo, waving her hand.

The woman smiled in reply.

"This is the country of the Miraculous Virgin," Miss Stellenthorpe toldLily. "The Madonna of Genazzano. The statue is in the cathedral and wehave a wonderful procession once a year. Ah!ce cher Genazzano!"

Tenderness radiated from her face and voice.

The waggonette drew up before a small iron fence that enclosed a tinystone house, built along the four sides of a square. A little cloisterran all round the house, and the space in the middle formed a courtyardwhere shrubs flowered in painted green pots.

There was no garden, other than the small and apparently untendedcourtyard, but within the house, Aunt Clo waved through the window at athick trellis covered with vine tendrils and fig-leaves, and framing asturdy arbour beneath which stood a rustic bench and table, and said:

"La Tonnelle."

Beyond lay a sloping track of ground on which the vines grew round polesthat stood in long, converging lines, reminding Lily of a miniatureedition of a Kentish hop-field.

"Truly have not my lines fallen to me in pleasant places?" Aunt Cloenquired musingly. It was perhaps a slight relief to Lily that her tonerequired no reply. A bald negative or affirmative seemed so inadequatea rejoinder to Aunt Clo's rounded, elaborate periods.

When they were sitting in thetonnelle that evening, however, justbefore the falling of the brief Italian dusk, Miss Stellenthorpe madeenquiries to which more detailed answers were necessary.

"And what of Philip—what of your father, Lily?"

Lily answered as fully as was compatible with that old obsession thatit was disloyal to present one's near relations to the gaze of anotherin any aspect save that particular one in which they might choose toregard themselves. She knew that Philip often described himself as abroken man, and conscientiously did her best to put a picture of abroken man before Aunt Clo.

"Aha!" said Aunt Clo, and "Ecco!" and nodded with deliberation, asthough merely acquiescing in the recital of a state of affairs that hadlong been known to her.

"Nous nous aimons de loin," she said with resignation. "It doesn'tdo to remove the crutches before a lame man is ready to walk. I myselfhave stood without a prop all my life, and I wanted to see your fatherand mother strong and straight and unsupported, too. But perhaps Iwas hard and hasty. I was young. They clutched at the artificialsupports that I tried to make them spurn—they resented the council ofperfection.... Well, well ... I thank whatever gods there be, that Imyself have learnt to stand upright and face the sunlight."

Aunt Clo drew up her tall person as she spoke, and threw back her headin a gesture expressive of freedom and gallantry.

Later on, when Lily and she had dinner together, Miss Stellenthorpebecame less metaphorical and more colloquial.

Her appearance was a surprise to her niece. She had discarded theblue jersey and the knickerbockers for an admirably fitting draperyof flame-coloured brocade, closely following the lines of her finefigure, and a Greek fillet encircled her head. Her arms were bare tothe shoulder and Lily, glancing surreptitiously downwards, saw that shewore flame-coloured stockings and shoes that were laced sandal-wise.

"Certainly, I descend to the conventions in the evening," cried AuntClo, not altogether truthfully, as her gaze followed Lily's. "Wouldyou believe it, Lily, that I shocked Genazzano profoundly when I firstlived here!"

Lily felt that she could believe it easily.

"'But,' they cried, 'the signorina shows her legs! She wears clotheslike a man! It is immodest!' Imagine it—such a point of view here inGenazzano, which is like an earthly Paradise. I was confounded."

"'But is this Suburbia?' I asked. One expects Suburbia to beshocked—or even the provinces. Lily!" cried Aunt Clo in a tone ofplayful accusation. "I believe your father would be shocked. Mylegs—the legs that God gave me—would shock your father, if he sawthem uncovered."

Once more the very fervour of Lily's inward acquiescence kept hersilent.

"Oh, these people who are shocked!" said Aunt Clo with a musical groan."But Genazzano is now used to my knickerbockers—who knows but that oneday your father may be reconciled to the thought of uncovered legs?Or would he say—ha, ha!—would he say that they were immodest? anindecent spectacle?... I believe that's what he would say!"

Aunt Clo, speaking with mournful roguishness, seemed disposed, in abreezy, open-minded sort of way, to attribute the most prurient-mindedviews and expressions to the rest of humanity.

She told Lily that there was a girl in the village who was suspected ofbeing about to have an illegitimate child. She was only fifteen.

"I have sent for her to come up here to-morrow. Naturally, herrelations can get nothing out of her. They have frightened her, andmade her believe that she has done something to be ashamed of."

She leant forward and scrutinized Lily's face by the indifferent lightof the two oil-lamps in the room.

"Biglia Mia! But I've made you blush! It suits you, and ischarming—but why—why?"

Lily was indeed blushing, deeply annoyed with herself for so doing, andyet irresistibly compelled to it by Aunt Clo's open mention of subjectsthat were never referred to at home, and had only been furtivelywhispered about by the least endurable of the girls at school.

"I—I suppose I'm not used to hearing those things talked about," shestammered. "I've never been told anything—I'm not even sure that Iknow what 'illegitimate' means, exactly."

"Philip's child—Philip's child!" almost moaned Aunt Clo. "I might haveguessed it! He would never face life himself, and he brings up hischild to suppose that ignorance means innocence. Oh, horrible!"

She shuddered and almost sprang from her seat. "Come out under thestarlight, my child—you want no fruit? That's right—you and I musthave some talk."

Lily felt ashamed of the irrepressible feeling of disappointment withwhich she followed Miss Stellenthorpe, whirled away from her beautifuluntasted plateful of ripe figs.

But, of course, illegitimacy was not a subject to be discussed overdessert.

Aunt Clo, however, said nothing more about illegitimacy. She beganinstead to tell Lily how, long ago, she had solemnly warned Philip andEleanor that they were refusing to face Truth; to look at facts as theywere.

"It was about the poor little Yvonne. She would have been saved, ifthey had brought themselves to acknowledge her weakness, instead oftrying to persuade themselves and the world that she was like otherchildren. Let me see—you were two years younger—but you can remember?"

"Yes," said Lily rather curtly.

Vonnie had been so seldom mentioned, since her death, and then alwaysin such consecrated phrases that Lily felt Aunt Clo's outspokennessalmost as an indecency.

"Aha!nous avons changé tout cela—but when you were mites together,I remember very well how superior you thought yourself to poor littleVonnie. Hardly your fault, child—you were the favourite. They neverdisguised it, although, of course, they never would acknowledge it, inso many words.Ah, quel système!"

Aunt Clo shook her head.

"Dear little one, how much you've improved since then!"

There was delicate approbation in her tone, and in the large, genial,scrutinizing eye that Lily could just perceive, gleamingly turned uponher in the moonlight.

Although, theoretically, Lily supposed herself to be striving afterperfection, it caused her a distinct feeling of resentment to hearthat she had "improved," but she dishonestly attributed her annoyanceto her growing conviction that it would be in better taste if Aunt Clowere rather less candid in criticism of her niece's nearest relations.

With her disconcerting penetration, Miss Stellenthorpe seemed to beaware of some such unsympathetic atmosphere surrounding her.

"You mustn't resent my plain speaking.Pour moi, il n'y a que lavérité. When we have known one another a little longer, my Lily, youwill realize that truth is an obsession with me. Nothing but the truth.Deceit in any shape or form is the one unforgivable sin!"

Lily gave a fleeting glimpse to certain aspects of herself with afeeling of veritable horror, and a most sincere resolution that thesemust be for ever concealed from her hostess.

It was impossible not to desire Miss Stellenthorpe's approval. She wasso spaciously generous in her appreciations, so gravely despondent inher well-weighed condemnations.

It was true that Lily was sometimes surprised at the courses taken byappreciation or condemnation alike.

There was the case of the village girl, Carla. Nothing could be moreevident than that Aunt Clo's impassioned interest in her situationamounted to positive enjoyment. Lily heard her aunt's voice in fluentrhetoric, morning after morning, encouraging and upholding Carla,exhorting and rebuking Carla's tearful mother, eloquently proclaimingher championship of Carla to her own servant, to the young man whobrought the milk, to the postman, in fact to anyone of the littlecommunity of peasantry at Genazzano who would listen to her.

"Of course the man is the parish priest at Sta. Lucia—I don't doubtit. So, thank God, there can be no question of making him marry her.Thank God for that, say I!" Aunt Clo fervently told Lily at breakfastone morning.

"But wouldn't it be better if she was married before—before——?" Lilyblushed again, bewildered.

"Never!" said Miss Stellenthorpe, striking the table with her openhand. "It would be a far greater wrong than the first, to compel thatpoor child to marriage."

The point of view implied was so new to Lily that she immediately felt,in her complete reaction from the standards set before her in herchildhood, that it was probably the right point of view.

But as, for some inexplicable reason, she very much objected to thoseprolonged dissections of theaffaire Carla in which Aunt Clo was soready to indulge, Lily gently turned the conversation to a christeningwhich she had seen take place in the cathedral on the previousafternoon. Aunt Clo was always ready to be intensely interested inceremonies celebrated by the Catholic or other alien denominations,that would have bored her extremely in the Church to which she belonged.

But on this occasion, she showed but little enthusiasm on the subjectof the postmaster's twins.

"Ah, and they've a child not a year old yet—and Heaven alone knows howmany Augustino and Maria have had altogether. Criminal, criminal! Whenwill they learn the folly and wickedness of breeding in that recklessway!"

Lily could suggest no helpful solution to a problem of which shescarcely grasped the outline.

To her it merely seemed as if Aunt Clo had no approbation to spare forbabies unless they were illegitimate ones.

Staying at Genazzano, Lily began for the first time to experience insome slight degree what is meant by the liberty of the individual.

Aunt Clo showered books and opinions upon her, but encouraged her toform her own judgments of either. Not only was there no disloyalty indiffering from Aunt Clo, but she seemed positively to prefer argumentto acquiescence. Certainly, to adduce an opposite point of view,generally led to a lucid and eloquent exposition, embellished by manypolished French phrases, of Aunt Clo's opinions of the subject inquestion, but she always said—"Aha?" and "So!" very kindly indeed toLily's diffident interpolations.

There were certain, quite trivial, little things, nevertheless, whichLily felt that her aunt would despise in her, and the compulsion underwhich she thought herself to conceal these kept alive in her the oldguilty feeling that she was not really like other people and was onlypretending to be grown up.

She would rather have been detected by Miss Stellenthorpe in a forgery,than in the infantile practice of eating sweets, so insistent was hercertainty that Aunt Clo would be far less contemptuous of the formerpredilection than of the latter.

Yet they had never discussed the matter, although Aunt Clo, in themidst of reminiscences of a day spent in Paris in company of a wealthyAmerican friend, once said, in her emphatically descriptive style:

"He was so full ofpetits soins intimes, dear person! There we werein one of those enormous glitteringpâtisseries shops, and I couldn'tprevent him from loading me with great boxes ofpâtes de guimauve,and huge Easter eggs of pink crystallized sugar ... and all the whilethere was the most heavenly riot of scent and colour in a flower-shopnext door. If only one could have exchanged all thebonbons for onesingle bunch of violets!"

Aunt Clo heaved a sigh of retrospective regret, and not for the worldwould Lily have owned to her own degraded preference forpâtes deguimauve and pink crystallized sugar above all the bunches of violetsthat Parma could produce.

Lily reflected impatiently that when she was a child it had beennaughty to want sweets, and now that she was grown up, it would bechildish. It seemed that there was no time of life at which such adesire could ever be laid claim to honourably. As for Aunt Clo, sheoften seemed to be quite unaware that such a thing as food existed.

When they went for expeditions, and visited Roman churches and museums,Lily was greatly ashamed of the undoubted fact that her enjoyment wasconstantly haunted by the fear that Aunt Clo, towards twelve o'clock,would exclaim in a breezy manner:

"Il Palatino, now, my Lily! Shall we take a base advantage of theGermans and Americans, who will all be flocking in search of food, andhave the glory of the place to ourselves?"

And Aunt Clo would spring vigorously up the steepest paths, under thehottest sun, and very likely remember nothing more about luncheon atall until it was time to take the tram to the station for their train,when she might observe with one of her most negligent gestures:

"Have we eaten? I forget! Butqu'importe, in the midst of this—andthis—andthis!"

Once they even missed the train that should at least have returned themto Genazzano in time for tea, because Aunt Clo leaped out of the tramjust before the station was reached, at the sudden realization thatLily had never been inside the Church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli.

Impervious alike to hunger, thirst, and fatigue, she remained on herfeet for nearly an hour in the dim, cool church, pointing out in animpassioned undertone the reasons why certain frescoes were to beadmired, and shuddering away from others to which the chief drawbackappeared to be that all tourists always looked at them first.

Aunt Clo's knowledge of Art in all its branches seemed to be almostillimitable, and she gave Lily a copy of a thin book of her own,that bore upon the title-page: "Beauty: a Finger-post. By ClotildeStellenthorpe.Privately printed."

The Finger-post pointed to the great necessity for surrounding oneselfwith Spaces, and Silences, and occasional Splashes—of light or colour,or sound—and also indicated deleterious features in many hithertoaccepted standards. It rather inclined to leave the reader with theimpression that Beauty, as a whole, had received a thorough revision atthe hands of the author of the book, and would henceforth be found tobe within the range of the book's appreciators. There was an underlyingsuggestion that those outside this circle had not yet reached thestage of development at which Beauty could be of any advantage to them.

Nowadays, Aunt Clo no longer wrote about Beauty. She told Lily thatshe tried to live it, instead. Everything in the tiny house atGenazzano had been chosen for the sake of either form or colour, andthe little bronze mirror that hung, sloping, over Miss Stellenthorpe'swriting-table possessed a further qualification.

"I like to go through lifele sourire aux lèvres," said Aunt Clo,markedly accentuating the habitual pleasantness of her expression asshe spoke. "It is pleasing, refreshing—to look up and meet a smile.What will you, if it happens to be one's own?"

Aunt Clo laughed outright at her own quaint fancy. "When I raise myhead from my writing, I see reflected in my little mirror a pair ofsteady eyes, a face that holds the lines graven by many experiences,some grave, some gay, and a smile—I hope a strong, steadfast, humoroussmile. Time was, my Lily, when the face that I saw in the mirror wasthat of a tragic muse. Thank God, the phase has passed!"

Aunt Clo not infrequently threw out similar sombre indications that herpast had held some deep, unspecified cause for woe.

She was very kind to Lily, although frequently deploring in her thetraces of her upbringing.

"You must learn to say Yes to Life!" she cried ringingly from time totime, her hand upon her niece's shoulder, her handsome head tiltedbackwards. "You know your Nietzsche?"

Lily shook her head, feeling much abashed and conscious that Aunt Clothought her very young indeed.

"Courage!" said Miss Stellenthorpe. "Ah,jeunesse, jeunesse!"

Lily reflected quite irritably that Aunt Clo might just as well havesaid: "Youth, youth!" and have done with it.

IX

"To-day—I give battle!"

Aunt Clo's voice sounded as though the prospect filled her with mingledelation and concern.

"Can you amuse yourself, my Lily, if I leave you for the day?Books—piano—flowers—birds——" Aunt Clo enumerated the resources ofher establishment with large and expressive wavings of her well-shapedhands over the breakfast-table.

"I can write some letters, and you have lent me so many books. I shallhave plenty to do."

"Benissimo!"

"Shall you be away all day?" said Lily tentatively. She had alreadylearnt that Miss Stellenthorpe rather welcomed enquiries on subjects ofwhich the importance apparently required an extreme reticence of reply.

A shade of gravity at once fell across her face. "Ah! who can tell?If the mission is to be successful, a day is not too long ... but Iam very much afraid. Not fearful, you understand,cara, but—let mesay—aware of responsibility—immense responsibility."

Lily felt that she, too, must look serious, in sympathy, andregretfully realized that Aunt Clo was about to rise abstractedly fromthe table, although her niece greatly desired another breakfast roll.Sometimes, interested in discussion, Aunt Clo would sit over a mealinterminably, her elbows on the table, her hands supporting her keen,handsome face. At others, she would rise impatiently, flinging hernapkin to the ground, and appearing regardless of the incompleteness ofher niece's meal.

Lily had never yet found the necessary courage to remain in her placeand continue stolidly to eat. Aunt Clo had a curious faculty forthrowing into relief the grossness of material needs.

She now stood at the open window and addressed Lily slowly and sadly.

"Little one, do you know what it is to see a frail, foolish, lovelybutterfly dashing itself against a lighted globe? To seek desperatelyto turn it elsewhere, to set it free into the cool, dark nightoutside—and yet to see it return again and again in search of its owndestruction?"

Lily nodded. She always found it difficult to reply adequately in wordswhen Aunt Clo became, as she often did, metaphorical.

"I go," said Miss Stellenthorpe, her hands extended, palms uppermost,"I go to try and deliver the butterfly from the lamp to-day. I can tellyou no more, my Lily."

She left the house with the same mixture of portentous foreboding andexhilaration in her bearing, saying to Lily in farewell, as though hernew simile still pleased her:

"Who knows but that I myself may come back with singed wings! Not fornothing has one the privilege of spending oneself upon others!"

"I hope it will be all right," said Lily—inadequately, she felt, asusual.

Aunt Clo also appeared to be conscious of the inadequacy, for shereplied very gravely indeed:

"Ah! That is what it can never be.Addio!" She waved her handabove her head and strode away, clad in the blue jersey and theknickerbockers which she never discarded in the day-time, except whenproceeding on a sight-seeing expedition to Rome.

Lily turned back into the house, and felt rather guilty because shewas relieved by the prospect of spending a whole day in solitude, freefrom the slight tension of spirit that always assailed her in the loftyatmosphere wherein Aunt Clo seemed usually to exist. She felt stillmore guilty a little later on, when she went in search of a book.

Aunt Clo had recommended several volumes to her niece from the many,bearing the stamp of the London Library, that lay about the house.

"Pater," had said Aunt Clo. "Incredible that you have not yet madeacquaintance with the beloved Pater! Or Fénelon. Do you know Fénelon?Then there is the little 'Cinque-cento' series—light, of course,but full of appeal. Or you may care for old friends, perhaps—I haveFroissard, Ruskin, d'Annunzio—but not in a translation, I fear. Takeyour choice,bambina mia—I make you free of all my most preciouscompanions."

Lily tried hard not to remember Aunt Clo's generous suggestions as shemade her way to a small and remote bookcase that she had observed,on the first evening of her arrival at Genazzano, in a corner of thepassage. The books were small and old-fashioned looking, and Lily hadhad no difficulty in discovering that almost all were children's books,that no doubt dated from Aunt Clo's incredible childhood. And Lilyliked children's books, just as she liked toys, and sweets, and otherbabyish diversions, and she was just as profoundly ashamed of the onepredilection as of the other.

She had read the volumes pressed upon her by Aunt Clo, and had likedone or two of them, whilst finding the majority strangely wearisome,but all the time there had lurked at the back of her mind a longingrecollection of those children's books that were never taken from theshelf.

She knew that she would really enjoy them much more than even thenovels conceded to her youthful tastes by Aunt Clo: "Jude the Obscure,""Daisy Miller," and "Sandra Belloni," none of which she had feltherself able to appreciate, or even to understand.

It was all part of that old sense that she was not a real, live personat all, but only a little girl pretending.

The relief of dropping the pretence was undeniable. Lily chose "TheLittle Duke" because it had pictures, a book called "The Magic Beads"because she liked the name, and a volume of fairy-tales because shealways loved fairy-tales. She took them out into the garden.

She was a little bit ashamed of herself, because she felt so happy,knowing that it was childish pleasure in the story-books, and thesunniness of the day and her own feeling of freedom, that made herhappy.

She had so often been told that happiness is the attribute ofyouth that she believed it, although she herself was young andnot particularly happy. And as she had also heard youth spoken ofcontemptuously, or else with amused patronage, Lily had retained animpression that happiness was something slightly to be despised,especially when springing from trivial causes.

She had lunch by herself and kept "The Magic Beads" propped open onthe table in front of her, and ate several more of the enormous purplefigs than she would have eaten had Aunt Clo, with her superhumanindifference to food, been sitting, very erect and animated, oppositeto her.

The afternoon was even lazier and more blissful than the morning hadbeen, the joy of it somehow enhanced as it became more liable tointerruption. But Miss Stellenthorpe had not returned by five o'clock.Evidently the butterfly was showing determination, in its pursuit ofthe flame.

It was nearly six o'clock when Lily heard sounds that caused her tobestow the three small and shabby volumes into her work-bag, which shehad guiltily extracted from disuse from the bottom of her trunk for thepurpose, and hasten to the little iron gate in welcome.

Aunt Clotilde was not alone, and she looked, if possible, even moreexhilarated than she usually looked after some particularly strenuousexertion.

"Ecco! I return with a friend, my Lily!"

Was this the butterfly, or the lamp?

Lily at once rejected the former hypothesis, and felt doubtful even ofthe latter, as she exchanged greetings with Aunt Clo's friend.

He was a very tall Englishman, in whose long face Lily discovered somefreakish resemblance to a good-looking camel, and he had small, tawnyeyes that twinkled, and very crisp curly hair, touched with iron-grey.His shoulders were so broad and his carriage so erect that even AuntClo seemed unimposing beside him.

Lily did not learn his name at once, since Miss Stellenthorpe hadmerely waved their introduction with both hands, and since throughoutthe evening she called the visitor either "Amico," "my very dearFriend," or "Mon cher."

It appeared that Aunt Clo's very dear friend was serving on a RoyalCommission for the investigation of something unspecified, thatcompelled him to sojourn in Rome, now a hot and arid desert.

"But della Torre, you know the young Marchese della Torre, of course?Well, he is actually kind enough to stay on in a corner of the Palazzodella Torre, and make me his guest. What a good fellow he is—I met himonce or twice in England, that's all—and now he turns up trumps likethis! Isn't he a brick?"

The hearty English colloquialisms positively rang through the littleroom still vibrant with the cosmopolitan inversions and polishedelegancies of Aunt Clo's habitual speech. Aunt Clo, however, was moreanimated than ever, and commented vivaciously several times upon thegood fortune that had brought about the encounter with her friend.

"Would that I could offer you the hospitality ofmon toit dechaumière, amico! But alas! even my grey hairs would not protect mefrom the tongues ofce bon Genazzano. I dare not do it," cried AuntClo in humorous despair. "But we meet again, is it not so?"

"I hope so! I should hope so indeed. Won't you and your niece come inone morning, and let us do some sight-seeing together, and then perhapsyou will allow me to have the pleasure of giving you lunch at the GrandHotel?"

He addressed himself to Miss Stellenthorpe, but after her graciousand sprightly acceptance of the invitation, the Englishman's kindly,twinkling gaze turned triumphantly to Lily.

She smiled at him shyly and almost involuntarily, attracted by hiseagerness and simplicity, and perhaps by the manifest admiration inhis glance. "Why not to-morrow?" he cried. "Do come in to-morrow. Whatcould we go and look at to-morrow?"

"Why not San Pietro?" said Aunt Clo.

"As a matter of fact, I've been there already," said the guest withgreat simplicity. "But by all means——"

"Amico," said Aunt Clo, with some severity in her voice, "you do notsee San Pietro in one visit—nor yet in two, nor perhaps two hundred.Je vous donne rendezvous at the Bronze Door at eleven to-morrowmorning.Va bene?"

Lily looked forward to the proposed excursion and hoped that theMarchese would be as agreeable as was his friend.

She learnt from Aunt Clo that the name of the latter was NicholasAubray, that she had met him first in Paris, several years ago, and hadthen personally demonstrated to him the beauties of the Louvre.

"Not altogether a Philistine," said Aunt Clo thoughtfully. "There arepossibilities there, my Lily; undoubtedly, possibilities.Ce bonNicholas! I wonder what he finds in common with Giulio della Torre!"

Lily wondered too, when she met the Marchese della Torre on thefollowing morning. He looked much younger than did Mr. Aubray, wasextremely good-looking in an elegant pink-and-bronze style, and wasmeticulously clad in a beautifully-cut grey suit, with a soft shirt,a pink tie, pink socks, and shining brown boots. Miss Stellenthorpe'sacquaintance with him was slight, she had told her niece, but sheaddressed him as della Torre, in Continental fashion, and extended theback of her hand for him to kiss. The Marchese also kissed Lily'shand, and she fancied that she saw amusement lurking in NicholasAubray's long, lean face.

She had expected that Aunt Clo, as usual, would live up to herrôle ofconnaisseuse in Beauty, and would deliver eloquent andpungently-worded dissertations upon the more eclectic subjects foradmiration that surrounded them.

But it speedily became astoundingly evident that Aunt Clo's eruditionwas out-matched. Lily and Mr. Aubray, obediently waiting to be toldwhat they might admire, found themselves overlooked in the clash ofconflicting authorities. The Marchese gracefully countered all MissStellenthorpe's artistic and historical allusions with others even morerecondite, and appeared to have command of ejaculatory phrases in atleast six languages to her three.

"Michelangelo—il maestro!" said Aunt Clo reverently, gazing up atthe dome.

"You forget Bramante!" cried the Marchese in tones of courteousanguish. "Aïe! you forget Bramante!"

"Most certainly I do not forget Bramante," said Aunt Clo with dignifiedannoyance. "But I put the Maestro first."

The Marchese bowed with a gesture that far outdid, in its appreciativehumility, the tone of Aunt Clo's tribute, through which an undeniableasperity had pierced.

"E le due San Gallo?" murmured the Marchese.

"Penuzzi!" Aunt Clo retorted with flashing eyes.

"Rosellino," said the Marchese politely, but securing the last word,since Miss Stellenthorpe had nothing ready with which to defeat therecollection of Rosellino.

"Your aunt is a wonderful person," said Nicholas Aubray in loweredtones to Lily. "She knows everything about Art, I suppose?"

"Yes, I suppose she does."

"She and della Torre must revel in one another's company. He's a mostartistic fellow, very well read and full of information. I knew they'dhave a lot in common."

At the triumph in his tone, Lily turned to look at him. He wasevidently not in the least ironical, but full of genuine pride andsatisfaction at an encounter which he obviously accepted entirely atits face value.

Lily felt momentarily ashamed of her own secret inclination to detect aconcealed and embittered resentment at the other's pretensions on thepart of either of the two exponents of Art.

She was half puzzled and half attracted by that characteristicsimplicity of Nicholas Aubray's, that, to her more criticalperceptions, was later on to account for his curiously limitedcapacity to judge correctly of his fellow-creatures, and that so oddlycounteracted his unmistakable shrewdness of mind.

She found in him a very sympathetic companion, as they wanderedtogether round the interior of the immense building, leaving behindthem fragmentary echoes of the sprightly Spanish proverbs with whichthe Marchese appeared to be countering Aunt Clo's interpolated Frenchexclamations and Latin quotations.

There was a feeling of relaxation in freely pointing out certainobvious glories and universally acknowledged masterpieces, such asAunt Clo regarded as only to be commented upon by the general public,and Lily felt it to be even more of a relief when Mr. Aubray calmlysuggested, at the end of half an hour, that they should go outside andwait for the others.

"You'll get tired, if you stand about for so long in the heat," heobserved matter-of-factly, and with a consideration to which she had,at Genazzano, become unused.

They sat down outside in the shade, and instead of abstract andimpassioned discourse upon all that Beauty stood for, Lily foundherself embarked upon such trivial and comfortable personalitiesas she could not help welcoming, after the long course of unbrokenconversational altitudes upon which her hostess habitually promenadedher.

Nicholas Aubray actually seemed to think that anything about herselfwas interesting!

She told him about her home and about Bridgecrap, and he laughedwhole-heartedly when she confessed that she was no good at games, andseemed to think it of so little account that Lily was encouraged tomake a daring confession.

"Sometimes I read children's books—just because I enjoy them. It makesme feel as though I was only pretending to be grown up, you know."

"Oh, you splendid person! I think that's simply ripping!"

"You don't think I ought to be ashamed of it?" cried Lily, delightedlyconscious that he did not.

"Good heavens, no! I think it's splendid. Why shouldn't you likechildren's books? I read fairy-tales myself and enjoy them immensely."

"Do you really?" Lily was enchanted.

"Tell me some more about yourself," begged Nicholas Aubray warmly, andLily was young enough to respond candidly to the invitation.

"We must make some more of these expeditions," was the conclusionreached by Mr. Aubray, when he and Lily had spent an hour in eagerconversation eminently satisfactory to them both.

"I was a good deal bored at having to stay on and on here, excellentfellow though della Torre is, but this meeting with you and your aunthas made all the difference in the world. You'll come with me again,won't you?"

"Oh, I should love to!"

"Hurrah!" He looked quite boyishly delighted, and flung his hat intothe air and caught it again.

"Now what about lunch? Food—food! I'm starving!"

He reiterated the announcement with the same unabashed exuberance toAunt Clo herself, having returned into the Cathedral, to Lily's ratherawed astonishment, for the express purpose of summoning her away.

"Come along, come along. We want our meal!"

He was just as vehemently enthusiastic about their excellent andprolonged luncheon at the Grand Hotel as he had been about St. Peter'sor in denunciation of Lily's deprecatory confessions of her athleticshort-comings.

Aunt Clo's own vitality, to the strength of which she often madecarelessly thankful allusion, was as nothing beside that of NicholasAubray.

But to-day, Aunt Clo appeared to have fallen rather below her usualstandards of high-spirited graciousness and gallantry of intellect.

She even said "Ay di me!" in a rather wearied fashion as she sankinto a chair.

"I'm afraid you are quite tired out," solicitously said the Marchese,in his fluent English idiom.

"I am not easily wearied of body," returned Miss Stellenthorpe, smilingsombrely.

"Food—that's what we all want!" Nicholas Aubray declared. "I may notalways be hungry, but thank God I'm greedy, as the man said inPunch."

He laughed heartily at the hackneyed jest, and Lily noted with aslight feeling of disappointment that his laugh was perhaps the leastattractive thing about him. It came too frequently, although alwaysspontaneously, and was what the French callsaccadé in character.Moreover, his laughter at his own indifferent humour, rooted more oftenin light-heartedness than in wit, was over-prolonged.

An adjournment for rest at the Palazzo della Torre was politelysuggested by the Marchese, and Lily rather hoped that the invitationmight be accepted, but Miss Stellenthorpe again gravely repudiated anysuggestion of fatigue.

"But you make the siesta, surely?" cried the Marchese, astonished.

"Never," said Aunt Clo austerely.

The stately proclamation of her own immunity from the prevalent customof an afternoon sleep during the hot weather, appeared somehow torestore to Aunt Clo her usual equanimity.

She bade an agreeable farewell to the two men, by whom an expedition toFrascati was proposed for the following week.

"We'll make a picnic of it," cried Nicholas Aubray joyously. "Takeplenty of sandwiches and things, and eat them under the trees."

But even Nicholas Aubray's needless insistence upon the grosser aspectsof the day's requirements did not, as Lily half feared, cause MissStellenthorpe to flinch.

"I'm glad," said she graciously that evening at Genazzano, "very gladto do all in my powerpour égayer un peu les choses for NicholasAubray. Tell me, my Lily, how did our friend strike you?"

"I liked him very much."

"Liked!" Aunt Clo shrugged away the conventional phrase in her mostcharacteristic fashion.

"How significant that contrast was,n'est-ce pas? The franklybourgeois enthusiasm of our friend—hisnaif admiration for theobvious—and then that affectation of preciseness, that pedanticeffrontery of young della Torre! It amused me, Lily—it amused megreatly."

Aunt Clo's mouth took on an embittered curve at the recollection.

"Let me recommend you to cultivate that young man rather more,bambina, when next our quartette sallies forth in company. He repaysstudy, I assure you. Besides," added Aunt Clo with some acidity oftone, "I will not conceal from you that a whole day spent in listeningto so much youthful arrogance would try my nerves considerably. He isyour contemporary, my Lily. I shall leave you to deal with him."

Lily felt vaguely sorry to hear it.

"He is much younger than Mr. Aubray, isn't he?" she asked.

"By at least ten years, I should imagine," said her aunt emphatically."Nicholas Aubray must be nearing forty. But the heart of a boy still.Ce cher Nicholas! He should have married, as I have often told him.Now della Torre, who could well learn rather more of life in the wider,bigger sense of the word, is actually in search of a wife, as I know.But fools have ever rushed in——"

Aunt Clo ended with raised eyebrows and a sigh, leaving no doubt, inLily's mind, that her own destined rôle in the Frascati expedition wasthat of recipient of the Marchese's polished conversation.

Perhaps her efforts were not sufficiently decided.

Perhaps Nicholas Aubray, with a certain joyful obtuseness that he wasdisconcertingly apt to display when dealing with the human equation,still triumphantly furthered the intercourse of the two fine spiritsbetween whom he had elected to find so rare an affinity. Perhaps, asLily herself suspected, the Marchese liked a youthful and ignoranthearer less well than one with whom discussion was at least possible,even if unprofitable. At all events, he explained Frascati to MissStellenthorpe, and twice informed her that she had been misinformedregarding the remote ancestry of the family of Aldobrandini, while Lilyand Nicholas Aubray loitered beneath the trees, and Nicholas told Lilythat he lived by himself in London and was often very lonely.

"But to you, I suppose, I seem almost old. Too old to want newfriends?" he asked her with a wistful air of desiring contradiction,and at the same time throwing out his broad chest and straightening hisalways straight shoulders with obviously unconscious vanity.

Lily remembered her father. He was over fifty, and she certainly didnot look upon him as being old, if only because she knew that he wouldhave regarded the application of such an adjective from a child to aparent as being both disrespectful and disloyal.

Nicholas Aubray was at least twelve years younger than PhilipStellenthorpe.

She reassured him whole-heartedly and was gratified at the satisfactionin his face, which he displayed with the frankness of a child.

"I thought you and I would be pals, somehow, from the first moment wemet. Don't you think it's a great thing to have a pal?"

Lily felt herself to be unreasonable for intensely disliking the wordthat he had selected.

"That's a word I like—pal!" said Nicholas Aubray, striking one handinto the palm of the other. "Isn't it a splendid, hearty sort of word?That's what I should really likeus to be—regularpals."

There was silence between them for the fraction of a moment, and thenhe added wistfully: "You don't think it's cheek of me to suggestit—you don't think it's absurd, at my age?"

On the instant, his odd, intermittent appeal made itself acutely feltonce more.

"I should like it," said Lily, flushing. "I—I think it's an honour forme."

"No, no—it's all the other way round. What a splendid thing life is!Don't you think it's splendid, on a day like this, when one's juststruck a bargain like ours? Real pals—that's what you and I are goingto be. I can't tell you how much it's going to mean to me. Of course,you've got heaps of friends of your own age already I suppose. Perhapsthere's even——"

He paused.

"I haven't any business to ask, I suppose. But since we're to be pals,you won't mind. You know I'm not asking from impertinent curiosity, butfrom very keen interest in anything that belongs to you." His voice hadbecome very serious.

"Tell me whether there's anybody very special, that you take a—a greatinterest in, won't you?"

"No, there isn't," said Lily in a low voice. She did not feelhumiliated by the unromantic admission, because she was acutely awarethat it would somehow intensely gratify her listener.

She heard him exhale a long breath.

"Do you know that's a relief to me! I was somehow certain you weregoing to say that there was some young spark—and somehow I didn't wantthere to be."

He burst out laughing.

"There's no fool like an old fool, is there? I want my new-found littlepal to myself, you know. I don't want to share her thoughts with someyoung blood at Oxford or God knows where——"

He went on laughing, in catches, long after Lily felt that her ownfaint smile had died upon her lips.

X

Lily thought a good deal about her friendship with Nicholas Aubray.

Sometimes she rejoiced almost incredulously in his flashes ofsympathetic understanding, and in the frank enjoyment of child-likethings that he, unlike her, never thought it necessary to conceal.Sometimes she applied to herself the old term of "disloyal," because aninvoluntary criticism of his simple vanity, or of his curiously unequalpowers of judgment, occasionally flashed across her.

She was flattered and touched by his enthusiastic liking for herself,and presently she began to wonder, rather awestruck, whether he couldhave fallen in love with her.

When she suddenly found him looking at her in silence with eager,pleading eyes, or when he said: "We'll let the others go on a bit,let's walk slowly," she was reminded of the boy Colin Eastwood, andshe then thought that perhaps Nicholas Aubray loved her. When AuntClo said, in her thoughtful, appraising way: "My very good friend,Nicholas, is accounted an able man in his own line. He has made asuccess of his career—oh, undoubtedly!" then Lily felt that only anincredible presumption could ever have led her to imagine that soclever a man and one so much her senior, could ever have thought of hersave with the most passing, friendly interest.

His susceptibility to beauty was very evident, and he made it clearthat he admired Lily's.

That, of course, was not at all the same thing as falling in love, Lilytold herself.

She speculated a great deal more upon the state of Nicholas Aubray'sfeelings, than upon her own. One of the more solemn counsels which Lilyhad received from Miss Melody upon leaving Bridgecrap, had concernedthe question of falling in love.

"Not too many romantic fancies in that little head, childie," hadbeen Miss Melody's warning. "Remember that you've no mother toguide you, poor child, and keep a watch upon yourself. Not too muchnovel-reading—aha, Lily, isn't that a weakness?—and no day-dreaming,mind."

Lily had been quite as much annoyed at hearing herself called romanticas the romantic usually are.

"If love should come—as I hope it will, in due course—let it all comequite naturally. Don't think about it beforehand; don't indulge infancies. Beware of that romantic imagination," Miss Melody had repeatedwith great significance.

Lily had listened very dutifully, but if she had ever analyzed thissubmissive spirit, she might have discovered that it was founded upon acurious, calm certainty that Miss Melody knew nothing whatever of whatshe talked about.

Not that the daughter of Philip and Eleanor Stellenthorpe, well versedin distrusting and suppressing her own instincts, would have madesuch an admission to herself. She was undeveloped, and had never beenallowed the luxury of intellectual honesty.

She had, as yet, arrived at no conscious weighing of her owncapacities. Her nearest approach to it took the form of an inward andrather derisive wonder that Miss Melody, who so advocated forethoughtand preparation in respect of examinations, choice of a career, and thelike, should appear to suppose that something which Lily classifiedto herself as "the most important thing in the world" could be bestapproached after a course of completely ignoring its existence andtacitly denying its potency.

In defiance of Miss Melody, Lily allowed herself to wonder whetherNicholas meant to ask her to marry him. Her upbringing and herinexperience alike admitted of no other development of affairs thana proposal of marriage, to result in either a refusal and eternalseparation, or an acceptance and subsequent wedding.

She saw Nicholas Aubray almost daily.

Lily felt flattered and excited, but her now ingrained incapacityfor facing an issue definitely, allowed her to keep entirely uponthe surface of even her own thoughts, and when she was seized by amisgiving that she felt no slightest real wish ever to marry NicholasAubray, she hastily rebuked herself for the vanity of supposing thathe had any intention of asking her to do so, thus suppressing herconsciousness of the problem in relative values that confronted her.

It was that policy of suppression upon which her whole education hadbeen based.

Presently Lily became aware that Miss Stellenthorpe was turning athoughtful and critical eye upon the situation.

Her manner to her niece acquired both a more weighty tenderness, and aslightly humorous air of appraisement.

She tolerated the Marchese della Torre with renewed geniality, andonly upon one occasion relegated him to a lengthytête-à-tête walkwith Lily whilst she herself strode far ahead, apparently absorbed inearnest conversation with Nicholas Aubray.

It was on that evening that Aunt Clo, for the first time, spoke withgreat frankness and intimacy of herself and her own past to Lily.

"You have wondered, little one, why I have never chosen to marry, haveyou not?" she abruptly demanded, gazing shrewdly at her niece.

Fortunately, Lily felt, the shrewdness was not sufficient to penetrateher own embarrassment and pierce to the true answer of that portentousquestion.

Lily had always supposed, on the rare occasions when she had given thematter a thought, that Aunt Clo must have remained unmarried becausenobody had ever wanted to marry her.

It now became almost overwhelmingly evident that such had not been thecase.

"Why should I not say it? I have been greatly desired, and by many.Perhaps,bambina, it may help you, if I let you in where so fewhave ever yet penetrated—into the story of my heart. As a girl Iwas, perhaps, not beautiful," Miss Stellenthorpe musingly observedwithout, however, any great conviction in her tone. "Certainly I hadnot the exquisite daintiness, the porcelain prettiness, that I seein you, my Lily. But I was a strong, vital, passionate creature, andintensely magnetic—that, above all. Had I a daughter possessed of thatmagnetism, she should be guarded—most carefully guarded. The gift isnot one to be played with. I suppose I was reckless.Chi lo sa? Ahwell, the years have brought their own chastening, maybe. Oh, not inmy proud, solitary virginity—that has been my own choice."

Aunt Clo upreared her head in a sudden, high-souled gesture.

"No. But—ay di me! How I have been loved! And I—I, in my turn haveloved,carina. Once—and once only. I cannot tell you the wholestory, little one. Some day, perhaps, when you, too, have lived andloved—though may you never touch the depths thatI have plumbed!I had rejected many loves—lesser loves, as they seemed to me. Thencame one—there is onlyone, in a woman's life. Our souls rushedtogether—une veritable fusion d'âmes. There was one summer——"

Aunt Clo became lost in retrospect, her fine eyes fixed upon some pointof the horizon far above Lily's head.

When she spoke again, her voice had flattened dramatically.

"Autumn succeeds to summer,carina, and the deep-hearted, passionatered roses drop their petals one by one.... A cataclysm swept acrossmy life. There was storm—separation, interference from others. I wasdoubly betrayed. There was a woman who had been my dear, dear friend,in whom I had trusted much. And she failed me, Lily. When the crisiscame, she was incapable of meeting the demands that the privilege offriendship must always make, sooner or later. Ah yes—she failed meindeed!"

"Was she—one of the people who interfered?" Lily half fearfullyenquired, as Miss Stellenthorpe paused as though for enquiry.

"Indeed, yes! She was ruthless—ruthless to me, and to that other...."

"But did he—how could he let her...?" stammered Lily.

"Ah how! But—," said Miss Stellenthorpe sombrely, "she was his wife."

No revelation could have come with greater unexpectedness upon herbreathless listener.

"Oh! Was hemarried, Aunt Clo?"

Aunt Clo bent a terrible brow upon Lily at the naïve colloquialism ofthe exclamation.

"Bound by our hideous English laws, he was," she said slowly. "Butthere are other, higher standards. He and I knew it—we had scaled themountain-heights—but the little, feeble soul that had called herselfmy friend remained below, weakly wailing. The little soul that had onlystrength to hold on, like some small, sharp-toothed rodent! It heldon—grasping the shadow between its tiny, poisoned fangs, when it couldno longer hold the substance."

Aunt Clo passed a hand slowly across her eyes, as though to banish thevision of so perverted a tenacity.

Then she turned upon Lily a smile of rare, considered sweetness,blended with great sadness. "I have forgiven—long, long ago. Onecan outlive such bitterness, my Lily, and come out from the vortexstronger, and bigger and braver."

Lily felt a mad desire to enquire whether the unfortunate rodent ofAunt Clo's history had also emerged from it similarly uplifted.

"There was a time," said Aunt Clo, "when I asked myselfdespairingly—'Does the road wind up-hill all the way?' You know theanswer, child. 'Yes—to the very end.' I have accepted that answernow. Acceptance has long ago become part of myself. Not the pallid,passive acceptance of submission, you understand, but some bright,strong, vital thing that soars upwards like a flame——"

Aunt Clo paused again, and her niece kept silence.

"You mustn't call me brave, little one," Miss Stellenthorpe suddenlyprotested, when both had remained speechless for some while.

Lily showed no sign of defying the prohibition. Her aunt stood up.

"I will leave you. It grows late, and this has cost me something.But don't reproach yourself,bambina—if I can help you but a verylittle, be sure that I shall never count the cost."

Aunt Clo crossed the room slowly, with an unwonted gesture ofsupporting herself, as she reached a low table near the door and leanther hand upon it heavily.

She glanced back at Lily, and there was again a slight suggestion ofbaffled expectancy on her face.

"Buona notte, my child."

With a grave and graceful movement she kissed the tip of her slim, finefingers and waved them in the direction of her niece.

Then she appeared to detect suddenly the presence of her other hand,still grasping the little table, and drew it away with an air ofsurprised melancholy.

"Aha!" said Aunt Clo, half playfully, half sadly. "That is the firsttime, is it not, that you have seen me in need of extraneous support?That is not like me."

She slowly nodded, two or three times, as though considering so new anaspect of herself, and then drew herself up to her full, stately heightas she left the room. Lily felt that she herself had been somehow foundremiss.

Comment, at least, had been expected of her, and she had been utterlyunable to offer any.

She wondered uneasily if it were the measure of her own childishness,that Aunt Clo's story should merely have left her feeling uncomfortablybewildered, and anxiously conscious that her father would have beensincerely shocked by it.

Lily speculated as to what she should do if Nicholas Aubray weresuddenly to discover himself as a married man. She indulged in anagreeable vision of his impassionate declaration, her own heart-brokenrenunciation of him, and their eternal farewell. After a long, longillness she would face life once more—her hair would be prematurelywhitened. She, too, would tell some young, untried soul the story ofher own experience....

Lily had formulated one or two very beautiful sentences when shebecame aware that she was thoroughly enjoying herself. The discoveryscandalized her sincerely.

These things were serious—they constituted reality, and here she wasplaying a kind of game with them!

Lily felt profoundly dissatisfied with herself and her own inabilityto regard as sacred the many things that her upbringing had taughther should be classified under that traditional heading of Philip's.It bewildered her to find that Nicholas himself, although his ardourtouched and pleased her in a strange, exciting way, did not awaken inher any of the emotions that she had always associated with the dawn oflove.

There was not even the vague, elusive sense of remote and delicateromance that Colin Eastwood had inspired.

But Philip had implied that episode to have been an undignified andchildish cheapening of herself—something that, in the belittlingphrase of omniscient parenthood, "could not lead to anything," andLily herself, translating into the cruder and more direct terms ofyouth, had known that, between her and Colin, there could be nothing somatured and definite as a spoken engagement with definite prospects ofmarriage.

Consequently, her relations with Colin must have been unreal—thosewith Nicholas must be real. Thus Lily, faithfully endeavouring tofollow the careful rule of thumb laid down for her, and unutterablyperplexed at finding it so much at variance with that inner vision towhich she believed herself to have no right.

Daughter of Philip and Eleanor Stellenthorpe, and product of theirteaching, she found the way of least resistance in allowing herself toshelve the whole question, telling herself that it would certainly bemere folly and vanity to envisage prematurely the possibilities latentin a decision which she might never be called upon to make.

The issues at stake were consequently left to obscure themselves stillfurther while Lily strove to persuade herself of their non-existence,and while the necessity for that decision which she was strenuouslyunfitting herself to make coherently came nearer to her every day.

The weather had grown crisp and cool long before Nicholas Aubray'saffairs in Rome were concluded, and he came out to the villa atGenazzano to announce his approaching return to England.

"I shall be very, very sorry to go," he said emotionally. "If anyonehad told me, when I first grumbled at coming to Italy, that six weekslater I should actually want to stay on—I shouldn't have believed it."

He looked at Lily as he spoke.

"Aha!" quoth Aunt Clo. "Italy claims us all. I—but I was long agoenslaved, as you perceive. You will return, my friend."

"I hope so. But good-byes are always sad things, I think. One isalways sorry, I mean, to say good-bye to a place in which one has beenhappy." He was again addressing himself to Lily, surprising her, as heoccasionally did, by the earnest warmth with which he could deliverhimself of a platitude. She hoped that he did not see Aunt Clo wince asshe rose from her place.

"Mes très chers, je vous quitte. One little half-hour. There isan unhappy child whose supreme moment is drawing very near. I havetold you of my Carla? They are trying to persuade her that she hassinned—ah, the horrible folly and cruelty of it all!"

Miss Stellenthorpe hastened away, and Nicholas Aubray, after a moment,exclaimed, as he not infrequently did:

"What a splendid person your aunt is! I can't tell you how much Iadmire her."

"She is very kind," said Lily, trying to atone by the fervour of hervoice for a certain blankness that invaded her at this fresh example ofNicholas Aubray's enthusiasm.

"Isn't she—isn't she? She's been a godsend to the peasantry here, Ifeel sure. She has," said Nicholas significantly, "been very kind tome."

"I know she likes you very much."

Lily spoke hurriedly and almost at random, overwhelmed by suddennervous shyness.

"She's—she's enjoyed your being here, and all our excursions."

"Did she tell you that we had a long talk the other day?"

"She didn't tell me so specially," said Lily, and added hastily:"You've known her a long time, haven't you?"

"I have never seen as much of her as I should have liked, but I'vealways thought of her as a most splendid person, whom I should like toknow much better. But it's never too late to mend, eh?"

He laughed, in jerks.

Lily seldom felt at ease with Nicholas Aubray when he was amused,although she forced her own smiles, in sympathy with the child-likeappeal of the gaze that he was fixing directly upon her.

He grew grave again suddenly, after his wont.

"What about you? Am I to say good-bye to my little pal without anythingto look forward to?"

Lily's heart beat with excitement and a sense of flattery, but she alsofelt overwhelmingly embarrassed, and quite unable to summon up the warmreply with which she would have liked to please him.

"I wonder whether you ever write letters?" said Nicholas, when he hadwaited in silence for some time.

"I haven't got many people to write to."

"You've got your pal—your old, ancient pal, who perhaps seems to youalmost in his dotage——"

He broke off anxiously, and this time Lily's quick perception of hisunspoken need of reassurance came to her help.

"I think of you as being of my own age," she exclaimed quickly, "orelse just a little bit older, so as to be able to help me about things,and—and advise me sometimes."

"That's very sweet and dear of you to say that. I can't tell you howmuch I appreciate it——" said Nicholas, with the abrupt huskiness oftone of a man easily moved to emotion.

Suddenly he laid one of his hands very gently over Lily's, with atentative, almost timid, gesture.

She knew that his sensitiveness would be instantly hurt by the leastgesture of withdrawal, even though he was giving her the opportunity ofmaking one.

Tenderness for his feelings, a half-frightened desire to see what wouldfollow, and a certain exultant vanity, kept her motionless.

Subconsciously, there passed through her a regret, of which shefailed to catch the significance, that it had always been physicallydistasteful to her to be touched. She accepted the dislike as beingpart of an inevitable state of affairs not susceptible to alteration.

"You didn't mind my doing that, did you?" said Nicholas nervously.

He had taken his hand away, after a prolonged, gentle pressure uponhers.

Lily shook her head.

She could not have given with truth either a negative or an affirmativeanswer, nevertheless she was relieved at Nicholas Aubray's exclamation:

"I'm glad of that! I wouldn't vex you for the whole world, you know. Ifever I do anything that you don't like, you must tell me. Sometimes Ithink I'm too clumsy—and rough and—and elderly, to hope to keep yourfriendship. And it would make me very sad, if I lost it now."

"No, no—you couldn't!" Lily murmured.

"Well, will you let me hear from you—often—and see you when you're inEngland again?"

"I hardly ever go to London, though, I'm afraid," said Lily naïvely.

"Perhaps I might be allowed to come to your part of the world, though.I want to get to know your father, and—and everyone and everythingthat belongs to you. I wonder if you realize that, little pal?"

Lily said: "I think I do," because she felt that that was what hewanted her to say, and then was terrified at the thought of what hisrejoinder might be.

"Thank God for that!" cried Nicholas, with a sort of boyish, laughingheartiness.

She was half relieved and half disappointed.

"That's a bargain, then. We'll write to one another."

"Ought I to?" Lily faltered, with a sudden recollection of theobnoxious phrases as to hole-and-corner correspondence, once employedby her father. The remembrance caused her to crimson, and NicholasAubray looked at her very kindly.

"I told your aunt, when we had our talk together the other day, howvery much I should like to be allowed to hear from you," he saidquietly, "and she was good enough to suggest that I might propose it toyou. So it only depends upon you, now."

Something chivalrous in the words and manner alike sent a rush ofaffection and gratitude through Lily's being.

At such moments she felt that nothing was wanting in her liking forNicholas Aubray.

"I'm so glad you did that," she said impulsively.

"You don't think I could ever take advantage of your youth and kindnessto ask you to do anything that you might for an instant regret lateron!" he exclaimed. "I'm not such a skunk as that! No. Thank God, younever would do anything of the kind that some of these modern girlsseem to go in for.... That was just one of the things that attracted meto you so awfully—if I may say so."

"You don't think I'm old-fashioned and priggish? I often think I'm notlike most other girls—I think I was brought up differently."

"All the better!" cried Nicholas vigorously.

"I'm glad you think it's all the better," said Lily. "Sometimes I—I'vefelt that I hated being unlike other people."

She glanced at him wistfully, half wondering if he would reassure her,if she confessed to that old, hidden feeling of not being a Real LivePerson, but only a pretender.

"I only wish there were more people like you," said Nicholas Aubray."Some day you must tell me all about your bringing-up, and why youthink it's made you different. Will you?"

"It's quite dull, I'm afraid. Only about how I was at home, and then ata convent for a very little while and afterwards at school."

"I'm sure I shouldn't find it dull," said Nicholas Aubray, "I shouldnever find anything dull that was about yourself. I want to heareverything."

His look, straight into her eyes, emphasized his words.

"I should like to feel that you were able to make a real safety-valveof me—tell me anything and everything, quite freely."

Lily's liking for him just then was so strong that the requiredassurance came in a rush of sincerity.

"I don't think I should mind telling you anything, and I've alwayswanted a friend. So few people seem to understand——"

A certain recollection, awakened by the words, made her pause.

"Of course there are a few things," she said shyly and wistfully, "thatI suppose no one ever puts into words, exactly. Things one knows aboutoneself, that—that nobody else in the world could be expected tounderstand——"

"I won't ask for those," gently said Nicholas, smiling at her, ratherpuzzled.

He was naturally unaware that Lily was thinking just then of a batteredwax baby-doll lying at the very back of the wardrobe in her bedroom.

XI

When Lily left Italy, it was with the definite certainty that NicholasAubray meant to ask her to marry him.

It appeared that he had discussed his intentions openly with Aunt Clo,who spoke of him to Lily on the evening that preceded her departurefrom Genazzano.

"Developments unlooked for indeed," said Aunt Clo with a whimsicalsmile. "But tell me—the idea does not displease you, little one?"

She looked at her niece with an air of interested enquiry as she spoke,but went on talking herself before Lily had time to reply.

"May and December, perhaps! Or so it seems to the youthful eyes of May.But there are worse alliances than that—many, many worse. And somenatures, of which it seems to me, my Lily, that yours is one, demandless than others. Those are the happy ones!"

Aunt Clo sighed tempestuously and flung a hand across her eyes. Itwas evident that she did not count herself one of that favoured bandamongst whom she assigned place to her niece.

"The temperament that seeks, and gives, passionately, is not one thatI could wish you.Qui dit aimer, dit souffrir. Never were words moretrue! nor, perhaps, had any woman better cause than I to know it."

Miss Stellenthorpe groaned slightly and, having made the inevitablepersonal application so irresistible in discussing the affairs ofothers, was able to resume, with her quick, brilliant smile:

"But it is not of myself that I want to speak,mignonne! I ceased,long ago, to look upon myself save as a helper, a soul with experienceand tenderness behind it, to stretch out a hand and aid the unknowing,the struggling, the unlearned, theyoung. For myself—che saràsarà! But for you, my Lily, what is it to be?"

"I—I don't know," said Lily, very lamely indeed.

Aunt Clo looked more omniscient than ever, as she gazed at her niece.

"So undeveloped a little soul, is it?" she mused tolerantly. "Lovewould do much for you, little one—perhaps all."

"But I don't feel sure that—that I'm at all in love," Lily falteredfoolishly.

Inwardly she was asking herself with bewilderment why it was that shecould not speak sincerely about this thing to Aunt Clotilde. Perhaps itwas because it was impossible not to feel that Aunt Clotilde was a gooddeal more interested in her own analytical dissection of the situationthan in the people primarily concerned.

At all events, Lily found Miss Stellenthorpe of small assistance toher, and she had been too thoroughly imbued with the doctrine ofdistrust of her own instincts to consider the possibility of solvingher own problems without extraneous advice. She did not want to consultPhilip, because he was her father, and she took it for granted that hewould therefore take her decision upon himself, with a strong bias infavour of any course least advocated by herself. Theoretically, Lilyhad been taught that parents sacrificed everything for their children.Practical experience of Philip's and of Eleanor's anxious, tendertyranny and immutable conviction of their own omnipotence no less thanomniscience, in all matters concerning their offspring, had quiteunconsciously led her to the opposite conclusion.

She thought timidly of consulting her old schoolmistress, Miss Melody.Had not Miss Melody put herself and all her experience at Lily'sdisposal, and had she not declared that girls who had been once underher charge at school still turned to her for help and counsel that shegladly and proudly gave?

With this species of mental reservation to strengthen her, Lily leftGenazzano without making any definite confidence to Aunt Clo.

"I don't really feel as if I knew my own mind, just now," she saidapologetically, and not altogether untruly.

"Ah,jeunesse!" smiled Miss Stellenthorpe. "Certainly, child of myheart, you do not love as yet—if you can ask yourself for a moment:Do I love? then it is certain you do not. But it will come—it willcome. If not Nicholas, then another. But I think—however, I hadbest not tell you what I think! Only remember that it is not givento everyone to inspire love in so gallant a gentleman as is NicholasAubray. 'Sans peur et sans reproche'—those words often come to mymind when I think of Nicholas!"

"I like him very much," said Lily, more and more feebly, as Aunt Clo'speriods overwhelmed her more and more with the sense of her own utterinadequacy.

Aunt Clotilde's smile became more pronounced, and also more deeplyimbued with delicate and patronizing scorn.

"Well, well—the little 'like' may develop into a little 'love'—whoknows? You need fear nothing tempestuous, nothing overwhelming,my Lily. Yours is not the passionate temperament. Don't lookdiscomfited, child. I mean nothing derogatory—perhaps I envy you, incertain moments of soul weariness—chi lo sa? But I mean nothingunkind—nothing belittling. Only with me, as you know, Truth is averitable obsession—entire frankness."

Lily was left with the subconscious suspicion that Aunt Clo's obsessionfor entire frankness was principally indulged in the direction of anunsparing candour with regard to the deficiencies of other people.

She did not resent Miss Stellenthorpe's diagnosis of her niece'semotional capacities as superficial. With all but the very loweststrata of her consciousness, she was inclined to endorse it. It wasless trouble, even if rather less flattering to one's vanity, totake for granted the slightness of one's own demands upon life—andhappiness—which latter Lily instinctively thought of as synonymouswith love.

She replied to Nicholas Aubray's letters, which came often, withfriendly, rather self-conscious epistles, answering his frequent, "Tellme about yourself, little pal," with rather laboriously enthusiasticaccounts of her reading, her expeditions to Roman churches and ruins,her impressions of life at Genazzano.

Nicholas had said to her: "I've been told that I write rather goodletters. I don't know whether I do or not, but anyhow I shall likewriting to you, and I shall just put down anything that comes into myhead—as though we were talking."

She found the letters he wrote to her delightful productions, fullof an indescribable spirit of spontaneity, and was fully aware of theimmaturity that characterized her own replies.

There were not many personalities in their correspondence, butNicholas, towards the end of each letter, told Lily that he missed hercompanionship—that he looked forward very much to the time when heshould see her again. Lily wondered rather tremulously when that timewould come, and specially how it would be viewed by her father.

She tormented herself with various derogatory speeches that she putinto Philip's mouth.

"My little pet, you mustn't talk nonsense ... little people of yourage don't have proposals from grown-up men, you know.... I shall tellthis Mr. Aubray that I can't have him writing to you like this ... ahole-and-corner correspondence...."

No! Even one's father could never say that. Nicholas Aubray had been aspunctilious as Philip himself, and had obtained Aunt Clo's sanction tothe correspondence before embarking upon it.

Lily wondered whether Aunt Clo, first and last, had acted upon her owninitiative, without any reference at all to Philip.

If so, he would still be in complete ignorance of the cataclysmic factthat Lily's whole destiny was shortly to be decided. She phrased itthus to herself in an unconscious attempt to safeguard the dignity ofthe situation, that she felt would be threatened by Philip's habitualtreatment of her as a very young and irresponsible child.

Philip's first greeting of her dissolved the fear, and left her witha wondering sense of intense gratification. True to his life-longrestrictions, nothing was put into words, but Lily was at no painsto account for the new pride and pleasure in her that was suddenlydisplayed by her father.

He openly praised her looks, and said once or twice that "Aunt Clo'saccounts of her little companion" had given him great pleasure.

His least indirect reference to Lily's new standing as the desired ofNicholas Aubray was made a very few days after her return, as he badeher good-night one evening.

"Good-night, my child. God bless you and give you happiness. I onlywant you to be very happy, you know. One is young for such a verylittle while——"

He sighed, but Lily was reflecting, rather humorously, that neverbefore had he hinted at any possible term to the youthfulness uponwhich he had so often insisted.

Nevertheless, she was touched by his kindness, and by the new pride inher, which she divined in his frequent, half-surreptitious glances ather and occasional wistful smiles.

Very soon she found courage to mention that which she well knew thatthey both had in mind: the coming of Nicholas Aubray.

"You remember Aunt Clo's friend, that I told you about, Father?" ThusLily, feeling unaccountably deceitful in so describing Nicholas,although she knew that Philip knew the exact relation in which Nicholasstood, both to Aunt Clo and to herself, and also that he knew her to bequite aware of his knowing.

Such strange and silent interplays of knowledge were uncomfortablyfrequent in association with Philip Stellenthorpe.

"I mean Mr. Aubray. I think he might rather like to come and—and seeus, if you wouldn't mind."

"Not at all," said Philip graciously. "Your friend is quite adistinguished man, my dear child. Did your Aunt Clo speak to you of hiscareer as a barrister?"

"A little."

"Curiously enough, I recently came across a very striking littlepamphlet of his on the subject of the Shipping Law. It is a good dealtoo technical for a woman, but I found it of great interest, and wasmuch struck by the style in which it was written."

Lily was principally conscious of a secret increase of self-esteembecause Philip, indirectly, had spoken of her as a woman.

Such small and subtle appeals to vanity gave greater titillation to herspirits than did the anticipation of again meeting Nicholas.

In the interval between their parting at Genazzano and their meetingagain, she had viewed the abstract prospect of a possible proposal ofmarriage from Nicholas with complacency, sometimes even with a thrillof exultation.

She had played, alike, with the ideas of accepting him as lover andfuture husband, and of refusing him only to find more overwhelmingbliss in some dim future with another. In none of her fancies had sheever thought seriously and sincerely, for the reason that she had neverbeen taught to think at all.

When Nicholas Aubray had accepted the invitation and was actually come,his presence alternately brought enjoyment and embarrassment to Lily.

That Philip was pleased with him was evident, and so completely hadLily assimilated the theory that her parent was above criticism, thatit did not occur to her to wonder whether the admiration was altogethermutual until Nicholas said to her with rather a rueful smile:

"Your father doesn't very much care for joking, does he?"

"Doesn't he?" said Lily, vaguely surprised.

Philip's occasional jests with his children were of a melancholy andstereotyped kind, but it had not consciously struck Lily that he wasdeficient in humour.

"I only mean that I was telling him one or two stupid stories afterdinner to-night about things I've come across in Court. I daresay Itold them clumsily. Please don't think that I'm being impertinentenough to venture the least shadow of criticism. I only thought perhapsI'd been rather clumsy andmal-à-propos. You know, I'm awfully keenfor your people to like me a little bit, as well as you."

"Of course they will," Lily assured him. "You and Aunt Clo are friendsalready. But I haven't very many near relations. There's Kenneth, buthe's only a little boy."

"Good!" cried Nicholas. "I like little boys. I'm not afraid of them."

He laughed, and Lily laughed, at the preposterous implication, but itwas by just such flashing glimpses of an essentially child-like spiritthat Nicholas Aubray endeared himself to Lily.

She liked him so much that she would hardly acknowledge to herselfthe occasional pangs of revulsion suffered by her liking, when hislaughter, rather grating and always over-prolonged, seemed to her to bealmost unmeaningly provoked, or when his appreciation of the Hardinges,which in itself Lily welcomed, found bewildering expression in itsutter lack of coincidence with her own intuitions.

"Miss Janet Hardinge is more silent than the pretty, golden-haired one,isn't she? I should think she was one of those shy, very reserved sortof people, who are easily overwhelmed."

Lily, who had been at school with the unpopular Janet, and knew her tobe neither shy nor easily overwhelmed, felt at a loss.

"Which is your friend?"

"I see most of Dorothy now, but the youngest—the one who's still atschool—was the one I liked best, Sylvia."

"'Who is Sylvia, what is she?'" quoted Nicholas Aubray, and again hislaughter appeared to Lily to be quite inordinate.

With a sort of superficial attempt at impartial candour, she tried tobalance Nicholas Aubray's claim to a sense of humour, vaguely awarethat such an adjunct must be desirable in the close companionshipimplied by marriage.

Hehad a sense of humour.

Many of his stories of experiences in Court, whether appreciated ornot by Philip Stellenthorpe, had made Lily laugh. In Italy, they hadlaughed together over many trivial things. Lily, when amused, had neverappealed in vain to him to share in her amusement.

Slightly bewildered, she derided at last that her own sense of humourhad need of extension, in order to cover the area of ground whereonNicholas Aubray found subject for mirth.

She omitted to note that such ground stretched widely on either sideof the line of demarcation that divides the subtlety of irony from theobviousness of mere comicality.

Nicholas stayed with the Stellenthorpes for nearly a week, and Lilytook him for walks, and played the piano for his loudly expressedadmiration, and was both vaguely disappointed and slightly relieved atthe impersonality that generally prevailed in their conversations. Sheactually surmised in Nicholas a certain shyness that he had not shownin Italy, as though he sometimes doubted his own powers of pleasing andattracting her.

It was inevitable that gratified vanity should play a large part inLily's view of the clever and distinguished man, so much her senior,who sought to win her favour with a diffidence that filled her withwonder.

Philip's manner towards his daughter had also altered, and on the daypreceding the last one of Nicholas Aubray's visit, it needed onlyher father's pleased yet anxious glances towards herself, and in thetone in which he said: "Why not stay in this afternoon, Lily? I don'tlike that little cough of yours," to convey to Lily that the two menwere to hold a conversation together, and that although she was notto be present at it, her father desired to make sure of her presencein the house. She acquiesced, as she had all her life acquiesced inhis obliquely conveyed wishes, in part from the inculcated habit ofobedience, and in part from her own moral cowardice.

"I think I shall sit over the fire in the library. Shall we have teathere? It's much warmer than the hall."

"Certainly. We'll join you there."

This time Nicholas, as well as Philip, cast a glance at her that seemedto bear unspoken meanings.

Lily's afternoon in the library was not a reposeful one.

She tried at first to feel pleasure in her own undoubted resemblance tothe heroine of a novel. Situation and setting were alike traditional.No doubt Nicholas Aubray was at that moment asking formal assent of herfather to the right of proposing to her.

Lily stifled at birth a rebellious fancy that she might have preferredless formality and more impetuosity from her lover.

Her upbringing, assigning to parents a right little less than divineover their children, and her sense that Nicholas scarcely belonged toher own generation, alike enabled her to view his method of procedureas the desirable outcome of his scrupulous chivalry.

She played for a little while with fancies that she herself qualifiedas childish, concerning a diamond ring, the excitement of telling theHardinges that she was engaged, and the glory of being married attwenty.

Mrs. Aubray—she would be Mrs. Aubray!

Lily Aubray.

She wrote it down and looked at it, feeling more than ever like theheroine of a novel. Then Lily suddenly told herself that it was herduty to face this question—and again had to stifle an unwelcomeidea that the time for facing it had already passed when she hadfirst suggested to her father the visit of Nicholas Aubray. It wasextraordinary, the difficulty of facing the question.

Her mind kept wandering to trivial considerations, and she rehearsed toherself the imaginary speeches that Nicholas might make. She could notfocus her thoughts at all to the point of supplying her own answers.

"But I must know whether I mean to accept or to refuse him!" Lilyexpostulated with herself.

She remembered the accepted convention that no woman need allow a manto offer her marriage in so many words if she intends to humiliate himby a refusal.

"A nice girl can always stave off the actual proposal, and make theman understand that it's no use," Dorothy Hardinge had once seriouslyinformed her.

But Lily did not now feel that any amount of subtle "niceness" on herpart could possibly stave off a declaration which had got so far as toreceive the sanction of her father.

Staring into the fire, she thought that she was making up her mindwhen she told herself resolutely: "Now, I must decide once and for allwhether I'm in love with him or not."

Aunt Clo's words—almost the only ones that had remained with her outof the many so lavishly scattered for her benefit—returned to Lilywith a sense of uneasiness.

"If you can ask yourself for a moment,Do I love? then it is certainthat you do not...."

Lily did not want to think that it was certain that she did not loveNicholas Aubray.

There were times when she did love him, she felt convinced. She wasless certain whether she was "in love" with him.

Oddly enough, the memory of the boy Colin Eastwood recurred to heragain and again, not by value of his own personality, but as the objectround which certain infinitely vague and delicate emotions had centred.

"But they were such little things," Lily murmured to herself, frowning.

It had mattered whether or no Colin had the place next to hers atthe picnics—whether, in exchanging good-nights at the end of amoonlight walk, his last "good-night" had been for her—whether theywere partners in the tennis tournament or not—whether they danced thelast waltz of the evening together. If he was in the garden while therest of them were clustered round Lily at the piano, she acknowledgeda slight feeling of restlessness that consciously vanished at hisfootstep—which she could always distinguish—on the threshold of theFrench window.

It had, somehow, been an incident in the day, if he touched her handin helping her up some steep bank, or in handing her a tennis ball.Philip's unspecified, but thoroughly understood, condemnation of thewhole slight episode had relegated it to the extreme background ofLily's consciousness. It had become foolish, something to be slightlydespised—on account, she supposed of Colin's youthfulness and thenegative property described by her father as "leading to nothing."

Nicholas Aubray, so much her senior, "led to" something. In some ways,Lily felt that he understood her, and like all young and over-sensitivesouls, she craved to be understood.

Nicholas had understood about her liking childish things—he had evenappeared to share her tastes. She knew, instinctively, that they had,mentally, much in common.

It was impossible to imagine everyday life lived with Colin Eastwood;but with Nicholas Aubray she could picture to herself a life ofcompanionship, of books and theatres, and friends shared by them both.

"I might have a baby," Lily reflected, after deciding that she wouldlike to live in London.

It pleased her to reflect how fond Nicholas was of children, and itwas quite easy to picture him with the blue-eyed baby of Lily's ownmost private fancies.

Whereas the thought of Colin Eastwood as a husband and father seemedabsurd—almost indecent. He belonged to a dream world.

The little things that had seemed to matter so much belonged to thedream world too.

It had certainly never seemed important whether or no Nicholas sat nextto her at tea-time, nor had she any particular recollection of everdistinguishing his footfall from that of the Marchese della Torre, orher father's or Cousin Charlie Hardinge's.

The new and mysterious instincts, conjured momentarily into beingduring a midsummer holiday, had nothing to do with Real Life.

For a moment, Lily visualized strange possibilities, of that dreamworld inextricably interwoven with Real Life, in such fashion as couldnever be realized through the medium either of Colin's personality orof Nicholas Aubray's.

"Body, soul and spirit——"

Words, somewhere read, floated across her mind, implying something ofunion scarcely apprehended, to the very existence of which she hadno clue, save only that most deep-rooted instinct which she had beentaught to ignore and to distrust. Like a clarion call across the faintstirrings of an all but extinguished breath of life, came the rousingecho of Miss Melody's teaching, impressed by many repetitions:

"No day-dreams, childie! Beware of that imagination of yours—don't letyourself get morbid...."

Morbid! That was the word—the terrible, degrading word, thatwas never analyzed, which was applied to private thought and theconstruction of private ideals. They were morbid.

Lily regarded it as a sign of grace that this timely recollectioncaused her to feel ashamed. She rallied to the call of Miss Melody'swisdom.

"I shan't decide anything in a hurry. I ought to make sure, and soI'll ask him to let me give him an answer in a little while. Andperhaps I'll go and stay at Bridgecrap and see Miss Melody and talk toher—it will help me to get my thoughts thoroughly clear, if I put theminto words. There's nothing to be at all frightened of—I needn't doanything I don't like—I'm a free agent. I mustn't be morbid."

Lily felt braced and relieved, when she had thus discovered that a lineof least resistance still existed, and that the facing of a directissue might still be postponed, and perhaps almost altogether avoided,by shifting the onus of decision on to Miss Melody's advice.

She trembled very much when Nicholas, late in the afternoon, came andjoined her, standing over the great armchair into which she had sunkback.

It seemed to her, that he, too, was nervous as she looked up at himspeechlessly.

"I've had a—a very nice talk with your father," he said at last. "I'vebeen talking to him about something which is more important to me thananything else in the world, just now."

Nicholas paused and Lily saw that he, also, was shaking a little.

At the same moment he dropped on to one knee beside her and laid hishand over hers.

"Lily dear," said Nicholas Aubray, speaking with great simplicity, "youknow that I'm very much in love with you. Could you care for me enoughto be my wife?"

Instead of the exultation of mind she had expected to experience onhearing this, her first proposal, Lily felt an odd inclination totears. She looked down at Nicholas.

"Do you really want me to?" she asked him falteringly, and like a child.

A sudden laugh flickered in his gaze as it met hers.

"You dear child! Of course I do. Do you think I don't mean it? Why,Lily, I've thought of nothing else since those very first days inItaly."

He looked at her wistfully.

"Do I seem to you too old, my dear? I do love you so much. I think Icould make you very happy."

"But you—could I ever—you must think of your happiness too——" saidLily incoherently. "Oh, please, will you let me think it over for alittle while and write to you?"

"Then you'd like me to go away to-morrow, back to London?" saidNicholas slowly.

Lily felt ashamed and sorry as she saw the disappointment in his face,but she nodded an assent.

"It must be just as you like, my dear, of course. I could hardly havehoped for anything else, perhaps." He rose to his feet again.

His face was very much overcast as he stood silent, in front of thefire.

Suddenly he threw back his head and squared his shoulders with thegesture she had so often seen, and gave a little laugh.

"Never say die, eh, Lily? You know, I shan't take no for an answervery easily. Tell me, dear, you do like me a little, don't you?"

"Very, very much."

"Then won't you trust me to look after you, and make you happier thanyou've ever been? I believe I could, Lily."

"I do trust you. Only—it's too serious," said Lily timidly. "I want tomake sure that—that I care, too."

There was a silence. Then Nicholas Aubray said abruptly:

"You're right, my dear. You shall have time, all the time you want. Butcan't you give me a little hope, meanwhile?"

His response to her appeal had moved Lily to that intensity ofgratitude and admiration that his chivalry could always evoke in her.The sudden, warm recognition of his generosity roused the like impulsesin herself.

"I think it will be all right," she said naïvely.

"You little darling!"

On the instant all his gravity had vanished and he wore the aspect ofbuoyancy that contrasted so effectively with his grizzled head andbroad shoulders.

"There's something I want now, Lily. I wonder if I shall get it—justto send me back to town happy?"

She looked at him rather apprehensively.

"Please, please don't look so frightened, dear! It wouldn't meananything you don't want, you know."

"What?"

"Mayn't I kiss you, Lily—once?"

The first impulse of a coquetry in reality foreign to her naturestirred in Lily.

"No one ever has, yet," she said, and smiled.

"I know that, my dear. I was sure of it. You're like your name—alittle, untouched flower."

A tiny thrill shot through her at the words, the first approach todirect love-making that she had ever heard addressed to herself. Shefelt sorry when the characteristic British reaction against an openexpression of sentiment came swiftly from Nicholas.

"You see, you're actually making me poetical!" he exclaimed, witha hastiness that obviously covered a certain confusion, and if hisensuing laugh was jerky and over-prolonged, it needed but littleintuition this time to attribute it to scarcely disguised nervousness.

"What did Father say?" Lily asked, in reality speaking almost at randomso that he should stop that unamused, spasmodic laughter.

"He was very kind to me, and gave me leave to come down here whenever Ilike. So you see, I can come for my answer as soon as you like to sendfor me. But you're a little fraud, my dear, to turn the conversationlike that! Will you let me haveone thing to remember?"

He was looking full at her with ardent and yet kindly eyes.

Lily nodded faintly.

As he bent over her she raised her head a little and turned her facesideways to him, closing her eyes. For the fraction of a secondNicholas Aubray hesitated, and then stooped and kissed her very softlyon the cheek.

She wondered why, as he straightened himself again, he laughed—thistime very low and gently.

XII

"My little pet, you must decide for yourself."

Philip Stellenthorpe was deeply moved.

"My little pet!" he repeated. "It only seems the other day that youwere playing with your toys on the nursery floor. I can't deny, mychild, that it would make me very, very happy to give you to such aman—one whom I could trust so absolutely. He would make you veryhappy, Lily."

"That's what he said," answered Lily, with no ironical intent.

"You must study your own feelings, Lily. Remember that it's aresponsibility.... Aubray is a very able man, my child, with a careerbefore him. It's a great honour to be asked to share the life of such aman. You do feel that?"

"Oh yes, Father."

"That's right, darling, that's right. I don't wish to persuade youin any way. At the same time it would make me happier than anythingelse in the world, now, to see my little Lily married to such a man.It's—it's a wonderful opportunity, Lily. My little motherless girl,living quietly at home, to marry a distinguished man of Aubray'sstanding, before she's twenty!"

The triumph in Philip's voice, of which he himself seemed to be halfashamed, touched Lily acutely.

He might say, in all sincerity, that he did not wish to persuade her,but he could have found no more effective means of so doing than by hisvery forbearance.

His wistful pride in the opportunity that he so obviously was longingto see her accept, and the restraint that he put upon himself in orderto leave her free, filled Lily with a passionate wish to please him.

She knew that, were she to disappoint him in this, he would notreproach her. Only the mute pathos of a deepened silence, a moreconstant melancholy, would do that.

"He wants me to be happy, after all," reflected Lily, knowing alsothat Philip would only see happiness for her in just such a marriage,in just such a life, incapable of believing in the reality of anyhappiness that he could not personally apprehend.

Nor, indeed, had Lily any specific alternative interpretation of theterm to submit to him. Marriage, in spite of Miss Melody, had alwaysappeared to her as the natural goal of woman, and she was young enoughto tell herself very seriously that this, her first offer of marriage,might perhaps also prove to be her last. The dread of perpetualmaidenhood, in fact, possessed Lily so firmly that she almost foundherself urging it to Miss Melody herself, as a reason for acceptingNicholas Aubray. For Miss Melody, interested and incisive as ever, hadspoken.

"Childie dear, listen to me. You must weigh the pros and the cons very,very carefully. I'm very glad you take this question seriously, Lily,very glad indeed. Now, dearie, do you know what I recommend? Writeit all down, Lily, put it all on to paper. Write down theFor andAgainst, just as though it were one of the old school exercises.There's nothing like method, dearie—you know that's what I alwayssay. Do you think me very unromantic?"

In truth, Lily did think so, and she looked apologetically at MissMelody.

Her old schoolmistress laughed heartily.

"Well, well, it's very natural you should think so, but you must bewareof that romantic little head of yours. Do you remember, Lily, when youwere leaving school, that I warned you against letting your imaginationrun away with you? Oh, you've improved since those days, I know—Iknow. But now, my dear child, you have come to cross-roads, and theremust be no mistake here. It's too important. Tell me, what does yourfather say to you about this?"

"He has been very kind. He hasn't said much. I know he wants me to feelquite free. But, of course, I can't help knowing that he would like itvery much, and I should like to please him."

"He would like it very much, would he?" repeated Miss Melodyreflectively. "Well, childie, that seems to me a very big item on theside of the Pros. Not as a sole reason for marrying, you understand,or even as a chief one—but simply because your father's judgment ofthis man is likely to be a very, very sound one. If he likes him somuch, and trusts him well enough to want to give you to him, why, then,Lily, I think we may safely take it for granted that he must be a veryadmirable person. A man is a better judge of another man than we womencan ever be, you know."

If Lily, in some undefined way, felt that Miss Melody had failed totouch upon the real point at issue, which in no way concerned theintrinsic worth of Nicholas Aubray—she had too much faith in thevoice of external authority, and too little in her own convictions, topause upon the thought.

"Then there's another thing, you know, dearie. You say he is a gooddeal older than you are. Well, childie, that seems to me in your caseto be a real advantage. You lack backbone, Lily—you know I've alwaystold you so. I should be frightened to think of you at the head of ahousehold without a very, very steady hand behind you, childie. Don'tyou feel that yourself?"

"Yes, I think I do."

Miss Melody shot out a plump forefinger almost triumphantly.

"There you are, again!I think I do. You mustknow, childie dear,not think! Oh, Lily, Lily!"

Miss Melody shook her head and dropped her deep voice. There was humourin her kindly, penetrating eyes.

"It seems to me that a clever, strong-minded man, older than yourself,is the very husband you need, Lily. Tell me—you trust this man?"

"Oh, yes."

"That's the great thing—absolute trust. But there's another questiontoo, dearie—one that only you can answer. Do you care for him?"

Had Lily replied in accordance with her state of mind, she would oncemore have said, "I think I do."

But she felt that this formula of uncertainty was now barred to her.

"Sometimes I do," she remarked finally.

"Sometimes, sometimes!" repeated Miss Melody in melancholy impatience."What a half-hearted little person it is! Lily, Lily, either youcare for this man or you don't care for him, surely. How can you say'Sometimes'?"

"There are times when—when he's nicer, and I like him better, thanother times," Lily confusedly tried to explain.

Miss Melody's brow cleared.

She laughed.

"And are there no times when you are 'nicer' as you call it, than atother times? We're all human, you know, dearie. You mustn't look forperfection."

Lily had often told herself the same thing, and illogically derivedreassurance in hearing from somebody else the truism that had failed toimpress her from within by any applicability to her especial need.

"I'm not certain that I'm in love with him," she said timidly.

"You mustn't confuse being 'in love' with loving, childie dear," saidMiss Melody.

They looked at one another in silence.

Apparently Miss Melody had no further assistance to give to Lily. Hersubsequent counsel was merely repetition, and she concluded it bytelling Lily gravely and kindly that nobody could really advise her, orhad any right to try to influence her. She must decide for herself.

Lily left Bridgecrap with the complete certainty that the wise andexperienced Miss Melody was strongly biased in favour of her pupil'simmediate marriage with Nicholas Aubray.

"I shall expect to get news from you soon," said Miss Melodysignificantly in farewell.

It in no wise mitigated the significance, that she should add with aninscrutable smile:

"One way or the other."

It would fall extremely flat, Lily reflected ruefully, if her news wereto be "the other," after all.

The novel sense of her own importance was so agreeable that she feltno more than a passing shock at the discovery that the Hardinges wereperfectly aware of Nicholas's proposal.

Ethel Hardinge, after a few brisk preliminaries as to the disadvantagesof being motherless, sought candidly to advise Lily.

"There's nothing like first love," said Ethel in a hearty sort of way."They say nobody marries their first love, but I did, and no two peoplecould be happier than we are, of that I'm certain."

"Then it does last?" said Lily tentatively.

"Being in love? Well, no, dear, not in the same way, of course. Onemust look at these things sensibly, and yet at the same time withoutbeing foolish," said Mrs. Hardinge with clarity. "I'm speaking to youas I should speak to one of my own girlies. You mustn't expect toremain in love for ever and ever."

Lily felt that Cousin Ethel was taking too much for granted.

"But Cousin Ethel, I don't know that I am in love at all, yet."

"Oh! Well, of course, dear—just hand me the white cotton, dear—Sylviais so hard on her knickers, always——But you do like him very much?"

"Yes, very much."

"He certainly is charming—so utterly unlike most clever people. He's agood deal older than you are—perhaps that's what you're thinking of?Dorothy never looks at them if they're over twenty-five, but then youand she are very different."

"Yes," said Lily dejectedly.

She had an undefined feeling that any possible vestige of romance wasbeing eliminated from her love-affair by all these bright and kindlydiscussions. She felt more at a loss than ever.

"But, after all, Lily, nobody can make up your mind for you. It's athing you must really decide entirely for yourself. The scissors, ifyou wouldn't mind, dear. I should hardly feel justified in talking toyou at all, if I wasn't so fond of you, and then you've no mother, poordear! But I shouldn't dream of influencing you, one way or the other."

There was a pause, and Lily picked up a reel of cotton and handed Mrs.Hardinge the scissors.

"It would give your father the greatest happiness, of course, and he'shad a sad life, Lily. He never got over the loss of your mother, asCharlie says. And then if anything happened to him, well, of course,there'd be a home for you and for Kenneth and someone to look after youboth. Not that you couldn't always count on us for anything we coulddo, but nothing can be the same as one's very own belongings. With ahusband, you see, there's always somebodythere."

"That's just what I'm afraid of, in a way," said Lily, at lastgathering courage. "I mean that it would be so dreadful if one foundone didn't care enough, and yet one was permanently tied."

"But, my dear child," said Mrs. Hardinge earnestly, "there is a lovethat comes after marriage, you know. Not the same thing as being inlove, but something that really lasts. Many a girl who hasn't knownwhether she was in love or not, or who really isn't in love with theman at first, finds everything quite different once she's reallymarried to him."

Lily listened believingly. Nothing seemed to her more probable thanthat the married state, about which there hung many mysteriousreticences, should operate some startling change of outlook by meansunguessed at by the uninitiated.

"Perhaps," suggested Mrs. Hardinge hopefully, "you're more in lovethan you think you are. Very often girls don't realize things—andthen before they know where they are, it's too late, and may mean alife-time of regret."

Thinking this over, it appeared to Lily that Cousin Ethel, who was sokind and knew so much about young girls, held that if one was in love,very likely one didn't know it until after one had married the man andthat if one wasn't, it was still worth while marrying him because therewas something better than being in love, that came after marriage.

The only remaining alternative seemed to be the life-time of regret.

Having derived no stable satisfaction from the advice that she hadalready received, Lily began to consider where she could seek for moreadvice, and involved herself further and further in the endeavour tosee truth through the vision of others.

Dorothy Hardinge was crudely positive.

"I wouldn't have him, Lily, if you aren't in love with him. There aresure to be heaps of other men who'll want to marry you. They evenwant to marry me, and you're a million times prettier than I am, andheaps of men don't care a bit about games. I mean whether one's goodat them or not. Of course that's one thing in Mr. Aubray's favour, Isuppose—as he's frightfully clever and rather old and lives in London,he wouldn't mind about your being rather bad at games, would he?"

"He doesn't mind at all; he's told me so."

"That's all right then. I suppose you wouldn't tell me what he saidwhen he proposed? Ican't imagine him doing it, somehow." Dorothygiggled. "I bet he was very grand and formal."

Lily raised her chin slightly.

She had no desire to hear Dorothy's wit, the elementary form of whichwas well known to her, expend itself in this direction.

But it was never difficult to change the trend of Dorothy's thoughts.

"You've had a great many people in love with you, haven't you, Dorothy?"

"We hardly ever see a new man down here," said Dorothy discontentedly."But I must say, I generally have somebody or other to make thingsamusing—one meets them at tennis, and so on. But of course you know,they don't all propose, or anything like that."

"What happens, then?"

"Well," said Dorothy, in a candid and interested voice, "there aregenerally what I call the three stages: eyesie-pysie, handy-pandy andfooty-wootie. First, one just looks at each other and sort of getsgoing that way, then they squeeze one's hand whenever they can, andtry and get hold of it in the dark, coming home from dances and thatsort of thing, and then they stick out their foot under the table orsomewhere, and press yours, and you go on talking to other people allthe time and looking as if nothing was happening. It's sort of fun ina way, though I wouldn't dare tell Mother about it. She'd say it wasvulgar, I suppose."

The same unpleasing adjective also appeared to Lily to be highlyapplicable.

"No one's ever done that kind of thing with me," she said, withoutemphasis of any kind.

"I suppose you're not the sort, or else you haven't met enough men.That's what I mean, Lily. I do think it would be a frightful pity toget married right away, before you've had any fun at all. Of course,one couldn't go on with that sort of fooling about after one wasmarried, it wouldn't be playing the game. But I must say it's fun,and I can't see any harm in it, so long as one doesn't take it tooseriously. Of course, I shouldn't let things go too far."

"What would you call too far?"

"Well, there are girls who say that a dance isn't any fun, unless onegets—well, kissed, as a matter of fact."

"Oh!" said Lily disgustedly.

"I know it's rather awful, when one says it in cold blood like that;and mind you, I don't go in for it myself, Lily, I really don't. Iwon't say that no one ever has, but it was a sort of accident, truly itwas."

"Didn't you mind?"

"No," said Dorothy, "I can't say I did. Afterwards I sort of feltashamed of myself because I knew Mother would think it so awful if sheever knew—which God forbid! But it sort of seemed natural, kind of, atthe time."

"I don't believe I should ever like it," said Lily with finality.

"I think you ought to give yourself a chance of finding out. It's allvery well," said Dorothy argumentatively, "if one's frantically inlove with anyone, I suppose one's mad enough to want to be tied up tohim for ever and ever. But personally I don't want to fall seriously inlove for ages yet. Just have a good time while I'm young and have heapsof great friends, and then perhaps, later on, a real, propergrandepassion or whatever they call it, and get married."

"I think one might be rather sorry, then, that there had been otherpeople first," said Lily shyly.

"I think that's sentimental tosh," said Dorothy Hardinge with simplefinality.

The verdict disquieted Lily but slightly; nevertheless, Dorothy'swisdom had its effect upon her decision. If eyesie-pysie, handy-pandyand footy-wootie constituted happiness in youth, then better far bemarried, and to relinquish youth.

Lily felt certain that she had no talent for such a form of enjoyment,and she thought that it must be on this account that no such overturesas those described by Dorothy had ever fallen to her lot. The daughterof Philip Stellenthorpe knew no regret, however, for the deprivation.

She could never afterwards recall with any definite certainty themoment in which she took her final decision. When she found herselfbetrothed to Nicholas Aubray, it seemed natural enough, and the senseof irrevocability that thenceforth encompassed her, Lily almostwelcomed.

No one gave her any advice now. They all congratulated her, and evenDorothy Hardinge, after she saw Lily and Nicholas together, and whenLily, herself awestruck, displayed an emerald and diamond ring and adiamond pendant, said cordially:

"Well, I must say you were right in a way, Lily. The trousseau and thepresents and all this fuss about you must be simply too heavenly!"

Lily herself derived unforeseen excitement and pleasure from all theseaccessories to her engagement, her father's intense gratification andpride in her, the warmly-worded congratulations that she received,and the admiring welcome that her youth and prettiness met with fromthe bewildering number of new friends and relations to whom Nicholaspresented her, even the trousseau frocks and the jewels and the weddingpresents, all gave her a dream-like feeling of astonished delight.

She did not doubt any more whether she was in love. There was a glamourover her days that could only mean happiness, and happiness and lovewere still, to Lily's way of thinking, synonymous.

Sometimes she realized with surprise how impossible it would be now todisappoint all this kindness, and saw herself as much bound to Nicholasas though she were already married to him. And she felt with a certainjoyful astonishment, that any lingering doubt must be dispelled by thediscovery that the personality of Nicholas Aubray seemed to be far morein harmony with her own as a lover than as a friend.

XIII

The person of whom Lily seemed to see least during the period of herengagement was the man whom she was to marry.

Jests about placing them beside one another at the many hospitabletables to which they were invited seemed to be inevitable, but each wasobviously expected to talk and make acquaintance with the friends orrelations of the other.

Everyone congratulated Lily whole-heartedly.

"He's awfully nice, Lily—he's got such a nice twinkle," said DorothyHardinge.

Now that Lily was really engaged, with a ring, and presents arrivingevery day, and a trousseau imminent, Dorothy was full of excitement,and appeared to have forgotten all her previous strictures.

Perhaps there was something infectious about the glamour surrounding awedding.

Lily reflected naïvely that she had never before realized howimpossible it would be to break off an engagement once it had been madeknown. Would one have to return all these glittering, shining presents,countermand all the things that had been ordered, write explanationsto everybody, and an announcement to the papers so that one's changeof mind should be made public? Surely nothing could be more utterlyimpossible. She had a strong suspicion that the mere imagining of sucha contingency would unhesitatingly have been labelled as morbid by MissMelody.

She abandoned it willingly.

A letter from Miss Melody, the reading of which was very like listeningto Miss Melody's own deep voice, did much to confirm the surmise.

"Well, Lily dear, and so the die is cast! Shall you think me quite awitch, childie, if I confess that I wasn'taltogether astonished atthe news, although very,very much pleased?

"The love of a good man is a great thing. I am glad you look upon theresponsibility that it entails upon you as a serious one. At the sametime, however, don't let your thoughts dwell too much upon that side ofit. Remember that 'the burden is fitted to the back!' Perhaps not verycomplimentary to Mr. Aubray, but you'll understand what I mean, dearchild."

Lily could almost hear the low, rich laugh with which Miss Melodyrepudiated any uncomplimentary intent in the not very felicitousexpression that she had selected.

Many other letters reached her, some of them from relations whom shehad scarcely seen. Most of the writers seemed to have heard of NicholasAubray as a distinguished and clever man, some of them had even methim, and those who had not done so were as enthusiastic as those whohad, since hearsay had endowed him so plentifully.

It was all very like a dream.

Nicholas urged an early wedding, and was rather timidly seconded byPhilip.

"I am in favour of early marriages," said Philip, with his habitualair of affirming a theory in the hope of making himself believe in it.

"Yes, yes, yes—for the girl, certainly," said Charlie Hardinge.

Even without Cousin Charlie's tactful implication, it was evident thatno one could suggest that Nicholas was making an early marriage.

"He isn't a widower, is he?" said Sylvia to Lily with an air ofhorrified apprehension.

"Oh no! How could you think so?" Lily was equally horrified.

"I thought he might be, as he's so old—and I must say I should hate tothink of your doing anything like that!"

"So should I," said Lily with perfect sincerity. "I should want to bethe only person that my—my husband had ever loved."

She was innocently consequential, and Janet Hardinge's scoffing laughjarred on and surprised her.

"All that is stuff out of books. Nobody ever loves only one person, Idon't believe. Not in along life, anyway."

"Of course, one cares for a lot of people," said Sylvia indignantly,"but Lily and I mean the falling-in-love sort of love. I should hopeshewas the only girl he'd ever been in love with! I wouldn't marry aman unlessI was."

"Mother herself says that very few people ever marry their first love,"said Janet quite firmly.

This led to a serious conversation with Cousin Ethel.

Lily did not exactly seek it, but she was ready to resign herself towhat she supposed to be a necessity.

"You have no mother, poor child."

Ethel spoke the time-honouredcliché very kindly.

"I am glad you are going to be married, Lily. After my own girls, Idon't know that any engagement could have given me so much pleasure.Not only for your father's sake—though I'm delighted to see how happyit makes him—but for your own. Oh, my dear, make the most of yourtime. It's so wonderful to be young, and happy, and in love."

Lily tried to appear responsive, and was angry at the slightself-consciousness that alone possessed her as she tried to contemplatethe causes for rejoicing enumerated by Mrs. Hardinge.

"You're a very, very lucky child. He's a man in a thousand, and it's awonderful thing to have found one another in time. All the nicest menare generally married long before they're anywhere near his age."

"I suppose," said Lily, remembering Janet, "that I oughtn't to expect,perhaps, to be his first love?"

She looked at Mrs. Hardinge, hoping for reassurance.

"My dear child! Of course, there's love and love, you know. Men havetheir fancies, but it's the woman they want to marry who really counts.Has he ever told you about—about anything of that sort, in his life?"

"He told me he'd never asked anyone to marry him before."

"There!" cried Ethel in a tone of relief. "What more can you want?I think that's marvellous, at his age. And, Lily dear, let me giveyou a word of advice. You've no mother, poor child! Now that he's sogenerously and frankly told you that, you'll be content, won't you? Imean, don't go on and on asking him about the time before he knew you.Some girls are so foolish and wreck all their own happiness with thatsort of thing. But I don't think you're like that, are you?"

Lily was puzzled, and also rather distressed. Was married life tocontain merely a fresh series of those silences and reticences that hadmade life at home a thing of eternal difficulties?

It did not seem characteristic of Nicholas.

At last she said: "I should like us to tell one another everything, Ithink, Cousin Ethel."

Mrs. Hardinge burst into a rather nervous laugh.

"Oh, my dear little girl! Now I'm going to talk to you just as thoughit were Dorothy or Janet. You see, dear, men aren't the same as womenand we mustn't expect it. Nicholas is—is a good man, you know, oryour father wouldn't let you marry him. But no man can be expected totell his wife everything, as you call it—especially when there is adifference in age."

Lily began to feel as though they were talking at cross-purposes.

"You must trust your husband, you know, dear," said Cousin Ethel.

"We do trust one another."

"I'm sure of it. And remember, Lily, that men know a great many thingsthat women aren't expected to understand, and so you mustn't bedisappointed if Nicholas has interests in which you can't altogethershare. It's bound to be so, even in the very happiest marriages."

Lily felt vaguely disappointed. Her ideal of companionship had beenotherwise, and no doubt Cousin Ethel would have joined with Miss Melodyin apostrophizing it with that disparaging adjective, Romantic.

"You young things are always so romantic," cried Mrs. Hardinge, causingLily to start guiltily. "Of course it's natural and right that youshould be so, and one's glad of it. Dorothy is just like you, Lily,and so is even little Sylvia. Goodness knows I don't want any of you tobe old before your time. I'm often worried about Janet, and the thingsshe says. But you know, dear, it wouldn't be fair not to warn youthat there's always something to put up with in marriage. There mustbe give and take on both sides. And it's a great change for a girl,too—naturally it is."

"What did you feel like when you were first married, Cousin Ethel?"

"I was very much in love," declared Mrs. Hardinge, "and so was CousinCharlie. And we've been as happy as the day is long together. But ofcourse there were things to put up with. I was one of a very largefamily. We lived in London at first, and my home was in Ireland and wewere much too poor to go there and pay them visits as I should haveliked to do. I remember at first, when Charlie was at the office allday, I used to wonder how I could bear the loneliness. The housekeepingdidn't take any time at all, and I couldn't shop much, because wehadn't a penny to spare, and we couldn't afford a library subscriptioneven, or a piano. I used to do a lot of sewing, and when it got dark,and I wanted to economize and save the gas bill, I used to sit and donothing, and think about them all at home having a jolly time in theold schoolroom, and I don't mind telling you now, Lily, what no oneever knew, that I used sometimes to cry my eyes out with home-sickness."

"Oh, poor Cousin Ethel! And what did Cousin Charlie do?"

"He never knew anything about it. I wouldn't have let him know for theworld. He would have thought I was unhappy."

Lily was more perplexed than ever. It seemed that because a wife wasunhappy, it must at all costs be avoided that her husband should thinkher unhappy.

"Wouldn't he have understood?"

"I daresay he would. I'm sure he would have been very dear and kind.But men do dislike that kind of thing so much. You know, dear, a woman,after she's married, has to forget herself and think of her husband."

Lily had been taught to regard self-abnegation as a virtue, and she sawnothing but cause for shame in her own fleeting suspicion that it mightin reality be nothing but a weakness.

"There's one thing, you won't have the wretched question of money toworry you. When I first married I had no allowance, and had to askCharlie for every penny. Not that he ever grudged it, poor dear—farfrom it. But it used to make it so difficult, somehow, to ask for ashilling here and a shilling there—even though it was absolutelynecessary. Of course later on, when we were a little better off, hegave me a fixed sum for the housekeeping, and I always saved on that.Charlie sometimes asked me how I'd managed to find a new bonnet, orsome little thing for the babies, but I never told him very much aboutit." Ethel laughed reminiscently.

"Would he have minded?"

"Oh, I don't suppose so. But one never quite knows about money, withmen. They're so odd about that sort of thing. And, of course, womendon't know anything about money matters."

It seemed a pity that there should be so many things that women knewnothing about.

"Marriage is the only life for a woman, my dear. I hope all my threewill marry. I can't tell you how sorry I am for women who are oldmaids—no interests, no children, very likely no home. Whereas a happymarried life——" She paused expressively, and then said:

"You were too young to notice very much when your mother was stillalive, but look at your father without her! He has never got over herloss. They were absolutely devoted to one another. Or if you want toknow what really happily married people are like, Lily dear, you'veonly to look atus."

The contemplation of Mr. and Mrs. Hardinge left Lily still speechless.

Perhaps something of this dubious spirit showed in her face. At allevents Mrs. Hardinge said very earnestly:

"Now don't mix up love and romance, Lily. They have nothing whateverto do with one another. You girls never seem to realize that, and thenof course you're disappointed. Being in love is one thing, and a veryright and natural and charming thing—but you mustn't expect to stay inlove all the days of your life."

"I suppose not," said Lily doubtfully.

She had not the moral courage to suppose anything else, imbued as shewas with the theory that it was both her duty and to her advantage toaccept her opinions ready-made from her seniors.

"I don't want to sound hard and cynical, dear," said Ethel, lookingharassed and motherly. "Of course you're in love with Nicholas and hewith you, and it's the very happiest and most idyllic time that you'llever know. I only meant to put you a little bit on your guard—afterall.... No mother, poor child!"

It came in almost like the refrain of a song.

"And even if—when the actual glamour of falling in love is over, then,you know, there's something very much better that takes its place."

"What, Cousin Ethel?"

"Oh, my dear child! Love—trust—confidence—all the little ups anddowns you've been through together—even the little quarrels. It allhelps to draw you more closely together. Charlie and I laugh togethernow sometimes, at all sorts of funny things that happened to us yearsago. It all helps."

Helps—what did it help?

Lily would not ask any further, because of a strange, sick feeling thatkept on invading her and to which nothing would have induced her togive the name of dismay.

So that was love.

She felt ashamed and almost angry at the thought of her own secret,past dreams. Romantic, indeed. Miss Melody and Cousin Ethel, extremelyunlike as they were, would most certainly have joined issue in kindlycondemnation here. Both would alike have made use of the self-samewords. Beware, foolish little child, of romance and of imaginationalike.

Love was a thing of ephemeral excitements, greatly accruedself-importance, preparations, gifts, congratulations, a great deal oftalk and discussion.

It was also a thing of rather bewildering demands and claims. Nicholashad the right to hold her hand now whenever he wanted to, and healways did so whenever they were alone together, playing with herengagement-ring, bending back the supple fingers, examining the tipsof them, very often kissing them. He put his arm round her when theywere together, frequently. He kissed her lips at each meeting andparting—sometimes he unexpectedly bent and touched her cheek or herforehead.

It had been a relief to Lily to find that his touch did not actuallydisplease her, as did that of most people.

She was by temperament, she supposed, undemonstrative, but itdisappointed her vaguely that certain latent possibilities in herselfhad not in any way been roused by Nicholas. She wished that there wasanyone to whom she could turn for explanation.

But of course everybody would make the same humiliating accusation, andinform her regretfully that she was romantic. These wild, sweet dreamshad been romantic, undoubtedly.

She had thought of love as a thing of flames and carnations—the odd,beautiful words had served her fancy instinctively. Something sowonderful that talk would spoil it. Or if there had to be talk anddiscussion and preparation, it would all pass by unheeded, because ofsomething that mattered so infinitely more.

She had a curious idea that one would not care to have a wedding, and abeautiful lace veil, and all those presents. It would be more like aninevitable recognition of a great central fact in the whole universe,and then—what?

She hardly knew, but could formulate vaguely the picture of a goingforth. The soft, dark-blue gloom of a summer night, and the trusted,hidden depths of a known and loved beech-wood, or the lashing wind of agrey, winter sky and the shelter of a flung cloak and the lee of a highboulder—what would it matter, which the setting were?

O folly, O romance! O shadows of Philip Stellenthorpe, tremulouslyproud of a future position, of Charlie and Ethel happily married anddiscussing the new asparagus-bed, and the children, and the ups anddowns of their joint past, of Dorothy Hardinge, gaily pursuing hercourse of handy-pandy, eyesie-pysie and the rest of it, and yet franklyenvious of Lily's new dignities!

Those were the real things, the real necessities, and so were thewedding preparations, and the beautiful ring, and the endlessconsultations over clothes and furniture and journeys....

The dreams were—just Romance, to be condemned and eschewed, now thatReality had come. And Cousin Ethel had said that this was the happiestand most idyllic time of Lily's life.

It was full of excitement, certainly.

"Lily dear, you'll have to settle about that blue brocade quickly, ifyou want to take it away with you. Of course, if you wait for it tillyou get back there's heaps of time."

"Oh, must I write another letter, Cousin Ethel?"

"Poor child, your hand must be tired. Janet can write it for you quitewell if you tell her what to say."

And Janet, not at all unwillingly, was pressed into the service.

Lily's own sudden importance positively bewildered her.

"My dear child, the vicar wants to know your choice of hymns for theceremony. Will you and Nicholas talk it over, and let me know as soonas you can? Nicholas will be here on Saturday, I suppose?"

"Yes, Father. You know you said every week-end until the wedding."

"Of course, my little pet, of course. I only wish he could give us moretime; but after all, he'll want the holiday more, later on. How longare you hoping to be away?"

"He thinks he can spare a month quite well."

"That's excellent. It'll be a wonderful time for you both, my dearchild."

"Lily, Lily!" Kenneth burst into the room. "There's another enormousparcel for you just come—it saysGlass. Come and see what it is."

"A telegram for you, miss."

"Nicholas can't get away on Saturday, Father. He isn't coming."

"Dear me, how very disappointing. My poor, dear child!"

"He'll come next week-end, for certain."

Lily was actually experiencing an unacknowledged relief at the thoughtthat the claims upon her time necessitated by the presence of Nicholaswere at least postponed.

There were so many letters to be written, parcels to be unpacked,clothes to be tried on, and it was all so very important.

"That's my good little girl," said Philip, in a tone that expressedas much relief as though he had feared the outbreak of tears to beexpected from a child disappointed of its treat.

Mrs. Hardinge was plain-spoken.

"Well, you'll see plenty of Nicholas after the wedding, and now you canget some of those letters off your mind, Lily. You can make them veryshort. Everybody knows that a bride never has time for long letters,and you simply must get everything finished up before the wedding."

Before the wedding—until the wedding—because of the wedding.

They all said that, in a frenzied sort of way which implied that thewedding was the final goal towards which Time itself was tending as tothe ultimate bourne.

"After the wedding" was only alluded to as some remote period duringwhich rest might obtain which must until then be utterly foregone.Lily's own imagination refused to entertain more than the crowdingpreoccupations of the present. She knew that she and Nicholas weregoing to Paris together, but all that she could realize was that bythat time all the presents must be acknowledged, all the new frocksfinished and packed up, and all the various business of the last fewweeks finally accomplished.

The relief of it would be incalculable.

The last Saturday before the wedding-day brought Nicholas, but thistime he stayed with the Hardinges. Lily saw him, alone, less than ever.

"Can't I see you in your wedding-dress, just for a minute?" he urged.

"Good gracious, no!" Cousin Ethel was horrified. "Don't you know it'sunlucky? She isn't going to put it on again till she goes to thechurch. You'll see it then. And she looks lovely. It's the prettiestwedding-dress I've ever seen."

Lily thought of the misty whiteness of her wedding-dress, swathed intissue paper, hanging alone in a large closet, with a dust-sheet spreadupon the floor beneath it, across which lay the heavy gleaming folds ofthe embroidered train.

She could not believe that she was to wear it. On the eve of herwedding, the preparations all somehow miraculously completed, Lily wasprincipally conscious of overpowering physical fatigue.

The wistfulness of an utterly over-wrought spirit possessed her, andshe felt strangely inclined to tears.

"It will be a very sad house without you, little Lily," said her fatherpathetically.

"Oh, I hope not, Father."

"Well, well—I mustn't let my loneliness sadden your joy. Youarehappy, my darling?"

"Very," said Lily in a choked voice.

"Remember that if you have the slightest doubt of your own feelings,it's not too late to say so. Even now, at the eleventh hour," saidPhilip solemnly. "It's not too late."

It was the first time that he had made any suggestion of the sort, andLily was by this time quite incapable of viewing it as a practicalpossibility. The beautiful and costly wedding-dress hanging in thecloset upstairs, the lace veil and the pearl necklace, the packed andcorded trunks with new-painted initials, the very fact that withinless than twenty-four hours a number of guests would be assembling inchurch, made it quite impossible to receive Philip's portentous warningas being more than a mere form of words.

It almost seemed as though he regarded it so himself, for when Lilymurmured an inarticulate and meaningless reply he said:

"You've chosen a good man, and one to whom I am proud to give you."

He kissed and blessed her very kindly, rather as though it were part ofsome grave ritual.

"I approve your choice on behalf of your mother, as well as myself. Ifonly she were here, Lily! Poor child, it's hard on you."

Philip suddenly began to fidget with whatever lay nearest to hand.

"You've had a little talk with Cousin Ethel?" he said meaningly.

Lily had had innumerable talks with Cousin Ethel, but a terrifyingcertainty suddenly invaded her that her father was alluding to none ofthem.

She said "Yes" nevertheless, and Philip said hastily: "That's right,that's right," and did not look at her.

Lily hoped fervently that there the mysterious question would beallowed to rest.

When Mrs. Hardinge sought her that evening, however, she knew that herhopes were futile.

Cousin Ethel looked at the wedding-dress, scrutinized the white gloves,told Lily to drink a glass of hot milk so that she might sleep, andthen began to wander aimlessly round Lily's bedroom, straighteningsmall pieces of furniture with a confused and absent air.

"Everything is absolutely ready, I think, and Dorothy and I will beround in good time to help you dress. You—you're all right, dear?"

"Yes, thank you, Cousin Ethel. I'm so tired I believe I shall go tosleep at once."

"That's right. Try and not think about anything, but just go off tosleep."

Cousin Ethel seemed to hesitate, picked up a packet of labels and putit down again, and said rather hoarsely:

"You mustn't be nervous, my dear. Poor little thing—I wish you hadyour mother. But it'll be quite all right really, you know."

Mrs. Hardinge gazed at her with an apprehensive look.

"You've lived in the country all your life, after all. You—youknow——Well, dear," said Mrs. Hardinge in a sudden burst of courage,"after all—you've seen the animals."

The expression was perhaps infelicitous.

Lily, terrified and over-tired, began uncontrollably to cry.

XIV

It was a surprise to Lily Aubray to learn, while she was still upon herhoneymoon, that her husband considered her to have been a spoilt childin the house of her father.

He did not in the least make this a subject of reproach, but humorouslytook it for granted.

"You were probably much too prettynot to spoil," said he.

The accusation mortified Lily.

"But I really don't think I was particularly spoilt, Nicholas. Notafter Mother died, anyway. Father was rather strict about a good manythings. I was not allowed sweets, for instance, and hardly ever saw anyother children, and never went to parties. And you know how particularhe is—and always was—about manners."

"Too particular," said Nicholas significantly. "He never scolded you, Isuppose?"

"Not exactly."

"Just let you see when you'd done the wrong thing, eh? That's thetrouble, my dear. A little wholesome criticism would have made you muchless thin-skinned. It's a great pity there's so much difference in agebetween you and Kenneth. You've practically been an only child sinceyou were ten years old."

Lily remembered various disparaging comments applied to herself bythe girls at Bridgecrap, and certain doubts of her father's absoluteinfallibility, stifled conscientiously hitherto, began to stir withinher. It was true that she was childishly over-sensitive, brooding overa trifling criticism, and hurt by it the more, when she could not helprecognizing its truth. Philip, when obliged to point out a defect inhis offspring, had always done so with portentous elaboration and hadhimself suffered so obviously in the composition and the deliveryof his rebuke, that each such occasion had acquired a monstrous anddeplorable significance.

Nicholas, whether he praised or blamed his wife, did so with cheerfuland unsparing candour. Far more often than he criticized her, however,he paid her extravagant, and not always discerning, compliments.

"You're so keen about things, Lily, that's what's so splendid of you.So thoroughly interested in everything."

Sometimes Nicholas said this when Lily had not been interested at all,but had merely, in accordance with the training of her childhood,simulated interest or amusement, in order that she might not disappointhim. She was not sufficiently well-educated to enjoy a very great dealof sight-seeing, and certain prolonged visits to art galleries andmuseums in Paris tired more than they pleased her. Music, of which shehad a real appreciation, Nicholas professed to love, but Lily foundthat although he beat time with his hand very enthusiastically at thebeginning of any well-known work, and frequently hummed somethingrather indeterminate under his breath, he found concerts in realitytedious.

When they visited a large cordite factory, he was enthusiastic, andLily endeavoured to be so as well, understanding very little of what hetold her, but saying "Yes, I see," and asking questions that she hopedmight please him.

Sometimes a fleeting wonder crossed her mind as to the possibilities ofcompanionship between two people of identical tastes and desires. Once,even, she found herself reflecting upon the extreme, and obviouslyunattainable, luxury of perfect honesty, frank admission of likesand dislikes, frank recognition of differences to be admitted andrespected. An impractical idea, and one that verged upon the disloyal.She did not mention it to Nicholas. There were, in fact, several thingsthat could not be mentioned to Nicholas, although this, like so muchelse, Lily would not have owned to herself.

She was never at a loss for conversation with him, as she had oftenbeen with Philip, saving up small remarks and comments that occurred toher during the day in order to produce them at meal-time and promotetalk.

With Nicholas, there were no weighty silences. He was almost alwaysready to talk, and Lily found it very easy to please him. He alwaysseemed to find her amusing, and was equally ready to laugh at her jestsand at his own.

Even his love-making was of a jovial, exuberant kind now, and he oftenexclaimed joyously and loudly that it was a topping world.

"Isn't this simply great now, little pal? Isn't it all splendid?"

An odd self-consciousness invaded Lily on these occasions; she wishedthat her replies were less perfunctory than she felt them to be.

She did not, somehow, feel exuberant, as Nicholas did, but oddlybewildered and tired.

Sometimes Nicholas was solicitous for her and asked anxiously whethershe had a headache, or felt fatigued, but he was curiously lacking indiscernment, and seldom made the enquiry on occasions when Lily reallywas tired.

She decided, after a time, that he only did so when prompted by somelassitude of his own.

Lily was not consciously disappointed by a certain lack of sympathybetween herself and her husband, partly because it was only evincedin small and infrequent ways, and partly because she conscientiouslyrecalled to her memory the many warnings received from Cousin Ethel andother authorities.

Marriage was a thing of give and take, they had said.

Nothing was perfect in this world.

Romance was an affair of the imagination, and imagination was somethingto be kept strictly within bounds.

With these and other platitudes Lily contrived to stifle the memory ofher old day-dreams, so kindly and gravely condemned by Miss Melody.

There were a great many lighter aspects of her new life that gave her achildish sense of gratification.

She liked the glances of surprise which strangers occasionally cast ather wedding-ring, and the polite astonishment of the shop assistantswhen they discovered her to be "Madame" instead of "Mademoiselle."

The many compliments that Nicholas received from acquaintances upon thebeauty of his young wife he faithfully transmitted to Lily, and theyadded to her pleasure in her new dignities.

She enjoyed wearing her new and beautiful jewels, and when Nicholas,regardless of her already elaborate trousseau, begged her to buy Parisfrocks, Lily declared herself desirous of a black velvet eveningdress, because "only married women wore black velvet."

Nicholas laughed heartily at her pretensions, took her to the mostextravagantcouturier in Paris, and had her photographed in the blackvelvet gown, that admirably enhanced her fair, child-like beauty.

He praised her looks continually, and Lily presently discovered thatshe could please him very much by allusions to his own height, thebreadth of his shoulders, and his fine carriage.

Sometimes he suggested that they might be taken for father anddaughter, but he obviously wished the idea to be received with friendlyderision, and Lily never failed to gratify him.

Nevertheless, Lily in her own mind very often contrasted Nicholas withher father.

On the whole, life was very much easier and more natural with Nicholasthan it had been with Philip. Each, in widely different ways, wasexacting, but Nicholas only demanded an intensification of display,where Philip had required a suppression of natural characteristics.Nicholas was actually pleased when Lily admitted that she liked sweets,and did not at all appear to think it a waste of money to buy herfondants andmarrons glacés.

Sometimes she thought that the most child-like qualities in her werethe ones that he most valued. She wore a different frock almostevery day, and knew that he delighted in her display of vanity.The new frocks themselves pleased her, too, and the novelty of herindependence, and even such trivialities as her new address.

"Mrs. Aubray," she read aloud with a certain triumph, on the envelopesof newly-arrived letters.

Mrs. Aubray glanced self-consciously at her wedding-ring, visualizedherself in her new clothes, and the graceful disposition of her wavyhair as manipulated by her new maid, and read her letters from England.

"I hope poor Kenneth wasn't dreadfully furious at having that prepaidtelegram," was Lily's reflection.

She opened Ethel Hardinge's letter.

Lily searched hastily amongst the remaining envelopes for Dorothy'sletter. It was a very long one scrawled in Dorothy's untidy handwritingat various intervals of time.

Happiness had positively endowed Dorothy with descriptive powershitherto unsuspected in her.

Lily felt excited and pleased, and oddly sad, all at once. She readDorothy's letter over again.

Not a word about handy-pandy, footy-wootie and eyesie-pysie! Lilycould not help wondering whether these adjuncts to courtship had beendispensed with. She was inclined to hope so. Dorothy's happiness was,evidently enough, above the realm of trivialities.

Lily read the letter through for the third time. Dorothy had alwaysbeen inarticulate, but it seemed now that she was suddenly able toexpress herself. However colloquial the words that she might haveselected, Lily felt that they somehow conveyed very vividly animpression of sudden and overwhelming happiness.

Lily, in a strange and confused way, felt as though, through Dorothy,she saw exemplified the brilliant descriptions given to her of the joysof early love, descriptions which, when she had tried to apply them toherself, had seemed extraordinarily unreal. Her will had repeated theassurances of her happiness, but her emotions had remained unstirred.

She told Nicholas the news that her letters had contained.

"By Jove! That's excellent. I hope he's a good fellow. When are theygoing to be married?"

"She doesn't say, but Cousin Ethel evidently thinks it will be beforenext year, when his regiment goes to India."

"Splendid! Funny you and she should be married more or less at thesame time, eh? You'll be able to tell her all about the management ofa husband—an old married woman like you." His laughter, as always,prolonged itself considerably beyond the limits of his wife's veryfaint amusement at the jest.

"Give her my best congratulations, Lily. I'm so glad about it. She'sa first-rate girl, isn't she? I should like her immensely even if shewasn't a great friend of my little wife's. Captain Durand is in luck,isn't he?"

Lily assented eagerly.

"Don't you think Dorothy is pretty, Nicholas?"

"I know somebody who's much prettier." He laughed and kissed her.

She felt ungrateful because she wished that he would give her theopinion she had asked for instead of caressing her.

The next moment he did so.

"Yes, I think she's quite nice-looking. She's got plenty of brains,too, hasn't she?"

His tone took an affirmative reply for granted, and Lily gave itbecause she was afraid that it would sound ungenerous to express theopinion that Dorothy was emphatically devoid of brains.

She reflected, besides, that Nicholas was more likely to be a competentjudge of brains than she was herself.

Lily was always willing to tell herself that the judgments of Nicholaswere more to be trusted than were her own. She liked to acknowledge toherself his superiority, believing that because she acknowledged it,she relied upon it.

But in the recesses of her soul, into which she had been taught to shuninvestigation, her own intuitions and convictions remained unaltered.

"Where are they going to live? In India?" Nicholas enquired.

His absorption in any matter under discussion was always cordial andunfeigned, and always came as a joyful surprise to Lily, accustomedto Philip's elaborately polite pretences at an interest which he inreality seldom felt in the affairs of other people.

"I suppose they'll live in India," she said. "I don't know how manymore years of foreign service he has, but he's only twenty-eight.Dorothy says something about living in bungalows and places."

"Good! She means to go with him, then?"

"Oh, I'm sure she does," said Lily, surprised. "Cousin Ethel will missher dreadfully."

"So will someone else, I'm afraid," said Nicholas kindly. "I hoped youwere going to have her to stay with you when we were settled in town.I'm afraid it will be lonely for you sometimes, when I'm very busy, asI sometimes am." He looked at her for a moment. "Perhaps we shall beable to put that right later on, eh, Lily?"

She smiled at him.

Such references did not discompose her in the least, and she wasplacidly glad that Nicholas should so much desire a child. It hadpleased and relieved her to find that her husband did not consider thesubject of potential babies as improper as she had always supposed itto be.

"But there's another sister, the little one at school. You like herbetter than Janet, don't you? We can have her to stay with us, I hope.But I shall tell Dorothy that she's let me down, by running off likethis to India."

Nicholas laughed heartily.

"All the same, she's a plucky girl. It's no joke for a woman to spendall the best years of her life following the drum. It means badclimates very often, and no fixed home, and perhaps separation from herchildren—certainly separation from her own people. All that means somepretty big sacrifices."

"Yes." Lily spoke dreamily and with hesitation.

"But you think it would be worth it, eh?"

"Yes," said Lily with more of emphasis in her tone than was habitual toher.

"Oh yes, worth it over and over again for the man one loved."

"You little dear!" cried Nicholas exuberantly.

She realized with a violent shock, as he caught her in his arms, thather thoughts had been of some visionary abstraction, and not at all ofNicholas Aubray.

XV

Something which could hardly be called a reconciliation, but whichwas gracefully apostrophized by Miss Clotilde Stellenthorpe as arapprochement, took place between Philip and his sister after Lily'smarriage.

Philip would neither admit that they had ever been estranged, nor thatthe undoubted fact that Lily owed her acquaintance with Nicholas Aubrayto her aunt, was in any way connected with their renewal of intercourse.

It needed Miss Stellenthorpe to carry off the situation with what shewould herself certainly have described asdésinvolture.

"My good, my excellent Philip!" she cried in tones of patronage. "Welldid I know that you could not persist in your undignified sulks forever. It was more than time that you and I met again."

Her excellent Philip, with every appearance of being seriously annoyed,replied unsmilingly:

"Circumstances have been very much against our meeting, my dear Clo."

His eyes were fixed upon the ground, but it would not have beenpossible to escape hearing the contemptuous snap of Aunt Clo's thumband middle finger.

"You still refuse to call a spade a spade," she said with mingled scornand compassion. "I recognized your old weakness when I received ourlittle one at Genazzano."

"Lily is a good, happy little child, I hope," said Philip quiteautomatically, making use of the formula that he had always opposed toany criticism of his parental methods.

Aunt Clo shrugged her shoulders.

"She is singularly ill-equipped to encounter life. You ask me why Icome to such a conclusion, what I find in our Lily? I find in her aninvincible ignorance of the true facts of life, the tendency of anostrich to hide her head from the light, an entire absence of thatfrank, free outlook that is the birthright of every thinking soul. Ifind her wrapped in the conventionalities and sentimentalities of abygone age."

Philip remained perfectly silent, but Miss Stellenthorpe was notthereby debarred from carrying on a spirited conversation.

"Did I then, you enquire, break down the foolish wall of prejudice andignorance, and show our Lily something of the blue mountains beyond?I reply that I did. My own bigger, wider, clearer vision was what Istrove to teach her."

"You gave Lily a most delightful visit to Italy," said Philip inmeasured tones. "She is very much beholden to you, and so am I.Nicholas Aubray, of course, is an old friend of yours."

"Aha! we turn the conversation!" cried Aunt Clo, with an air of greatershrewdness than was altogether warranted by her penetration of Philip'sexceedingly obvious manœuvre.

"Ce bon Nicholas! He will widen the little one's views. You havenever taught her to seek for the great things of life, Philip. Perhapsas well! I myself have been storm-tossed and passion-wrecked, and nowthat the evening has come, I look back upon the day of tempest with agreat calm. But all are not fit."

Miss Stellenthorpe shook her head repeatedly, and fixed her gaze uponvacancy.

Philip making no attempt to break the retrospective reverie of hissister, she roused herself from it briskly, with her characteristiclaugh, her head flung back.

"But I scarcely know how I came to speak of myself. That is not worthyof either of us. Tell me, my Philip, how goes life with you?"

"I am very well, Clo."

"The body, yes!" cried Aunt Clo with impatient scorn. "But the spirit,the imperishable, the eternal?"

"You know that life is over for me," said Philip, gently and withperfect conviction.

"No!" said Miss Stellenthorpe in a voice like a trumpet-call. And witha still greater effect of emphasis she substituted, "Nay!" a momentlater.

"Nay! Can life ever be over while the sun shines, the wind blows, theopen road lies before you? Come, my Philip, this is not well!"

Aunt Clo struck a rousing hand between Philip's shoulder-blades.

"Avanti! There is work for us all. Because you have failed once youneed not despair."

"Failed?"

"You refused to listen to me—when I bade you face the truth. Youdeluded yourself with catchwords and pretty phrases, and allowed Vonnieto——"

Philip Stellenthorpe faced his sister with a grey face and compressedlips.

"That will do, Clotilde."

"Ah, coward, coward!" said Miss Stellenthorpe. But she spoke in lowerand more doubtful tones and made no immediate attempt to impel herbrother to face life with her own unflinching enjoyment of the process.

Her visit upon the whole did not greatly disturb the monotonous andpurposeless routine of Philip's days. For many hours at a time Aunt Cloremained invisible, after announcing gravely and with a certain air ofsad, steadfast responsibility, that she had many, many letters to write.

"Not idle, trivial notes or pages of foolish gossip, but words ofcounsel, of cheer to a darkened soul, I trust. There is onelà-bas,who needs me, needs me greatly. A frail, delicate bird of foreignplumage, dashing its head against the bars of a gilded cage."

Sometimes it was a bird, sometimes a slender bark tossing upon stormywaters, sometimes a pale flower bent before the blast. But always AuntClo's support was craved, and always was she ready to devote her time,her energies, her pen-and-ink, to the task.

The Hardinges pursued acquaintance with Aunt Clo with a certain amountof awe, although she was gracious to the three girls and to Dorothy'sfiancé, as one who watches with benevolence the antics of a tribe ofaborigines.

"How young! and ah! how English!" murmured Aunt Clo, with an air ofhaving nothing whatever to do with the nationality in question.

Before Lily and Nicholas Aubray returned from their honeymoon, Aunt Clohad left England again.

"What would you?" she enquired of the interested Hardinges, wholistened to her as to an astonishing oracle. "What would you? I cannotbreathe in the atmosphere of my brother's house. It has always been so.Pour moi, il n'y a que la vérité! I must have the truth, fearless andoutspoken, or I die!"

The Hardinges looked startled.

"What a household, his and poor Eleanor's! You"—Aunt Clo's finger flewout accusingly at Charlie Hardinge—"you were there often, while mysister-in-law was alive?"

"Yes, yes, often enough. The kiddies were badly brought up—badlybrought up. I used to tell Philip so."

"I also," said Aunt Clo grimly. "The little Vonnie, now. Well did I seethat the child was not destined to live long. I sought to open theireyes—oh, most gently, most kindly—and with what result, you ask?With the result that they declared themselves hurt—they proclaimed meunsympathetic. Me! Ha!"

Aunt Clo gave a short laugh.

"Well, well, well," said Charlie pacifically. "That's all over now, andLily has a very nice home of her own. I'm sure you must be very proudof your niece, Miss Stellenthorpe. She's a charming girl, and a verypretty girl."

"Lily is as yet a child," said Miss Stellenthorpe, unconsciouslyquoting her brother.

"I'm glad she has a good husband," said Ethel decisively.

To Ethel's way of thinking, all husbands were good husbands, providedthat they were not actively bad husbands.

"Lily is very sweet and gentle," she said, "and very easily influenced.It's a very good thing she married young."

"Easily influenced? Ah! Well, it's at all events alikeableweakness——" graciously returned Aunt Clo, merely resting upon thatpleasant sense of superiority engendered by the contemplation of anyweakness unshared by the contemplative one.

"I cannot wait to see her,hêlas! There are other claims upon me.Sad, sad, lost ones, groping through a labyrinth," said Aunt Clo darkly.

To the rescue of these straying souls she accordingly hastened.

Lily, settling down into her new life, felt a shamefaced satisfactionthat she should escape the slight strain entailed by the effort ofliving up to Aunt Clotilde's exalted ideals.

It was easier to choose furniture for the drawing-room without theterrible certainty that one's writing-table would be found Philistine,one's colour scheme crude.

Lily enjoyed arranging her possessions, but she was both inexperiencedand diffident, and it was a relief to find that Nicholas had eclecticand cultivated tastes.

"Did you invent that sort of panel thing?" said Sylvia Hardinge in awe.

Lily shook her head. She was nearly as much overwhelmed as was Sylvia.

"Nicholas got it. It's Chinese lacquer."

"My goodness!" said Sylvia, with a crispness and crudity of utterancethat Lily felt inclined to echo.

Paris had been a curious, transitory stage of dressing up every day,sight-seeing, meeting new people, dining in crowded restaurants. Therehad all the time been a sense of impermanence, as though it was all astrange experiment that might be relinquished, half regretfully, halfwith relief, once accomplished.

At first, life in the London flat as Mrs. Aubray, seemed nearly asexperimental.

There were a great many new people, already seen in glimpses duringthat confused and crowded period before the wedding, and scarcelydistinguished one from another. Lily turned to Nicholas with a newsense of seeking a comparatively familiar refuge, after a bewilderingnumber of encounters with these kind, strange faces.

Nicholas was out every day now, and Lily first awaited in herself thedeplorable state of tearful loneliness that Cousin Ethel had once upona time described to her as the portion of young wives. But whetherbecause Nicholas, unlike Cousin Ethel's husband, was able and willingto give his wife a subscription to Mudie's Library, or whether becauseLily had not been torn from the society of numerous brothers andsisters, no such dejection of spirits assailed her.

Housekeeping seemed to be an extraordinarily simple matter with anexperienced cook, admirable servants, and the ample allowance givenher by her husband. Lily's most arduous task in her household was thechoosing of exquisite and expensive flowers at a Bond Street florist,and disposing them in her drawing-room.

She played a great deal upon the Erard piano, read a great many novels,a little poetry and an occasional volume of memoirs or biography, andtried to think of requirements in needlework that should keep her newmaid occupied. It seemed a pleasant, leisurely, rather aimless sort ofexistence. Not quite what imagination had pictured married life to be.

But Lily shied, mentally, at the fatal word "imagination," the thingwhich had so often been pointed out to her as a dangerous pitfall.

Kind old aunts of Nicholas, or young married women who, nevertheless,were for the most part older than herself, asked Lily directly orindirectly whether she was happy, and she always assented readilyenough.

She had been told that certain things constituted happiness, had beentrained to accept her values ready-made, and was consequently ableto enjoy with placidity those things which her natural instincts,long since stifled and overlain, would have held in a quite differentestimate to that of the people surrounding her.

On Sundays Nicholas was with her all day, and very often they went intothe country from Saturday to Monday.

For the first few months after her marriage Lily went to church everySunday as she had always done, and Nicholas accompanied her. Shecould hardly have said when it was that she first became aware of hisattitude towards religion.

"I wouldn't interfere with anybody's faith, my dear, least of all withyours," said Nicholas, thereby causing his wife, for the first time, toask herself in what her faith consisted.

"Do you only go to church to please me, then, Nicholas?"

"I like to go anywhere with you, darling."

"But tell me what do you think about religion?"

"I don't know that I know very much about it, my dear. The old auntwho brought me up was a Presbyterian, as I think I told you. I had agood deal of church-going to put up with, as a small lad, and Sundaywas a very dull day, when I mightn't play with my toys or get myclothes dirty, and that's pretty well all I know about it."

"And after you grew up, Nicholas?"

"I went through the usual phases, I suppose. I remember telling mytutor, when I left school, that I was an atheist."

Nicholas stopped and looked humorously at his wife, and they bothlaughed.

"Good! I was beginning to think I'd married a little saint. Atheism isa common complaint amongst the very young, I imagine."

"What are you now, Nicholas?"

"I suppose an agnostic," said Nicholas reflectively. "I can hardlyimagine any thoughtful person, over a certain age, being anything else.Though I suppose that's nonsense, when one thinks of the number ofdeeply religious people that exist in all denominations."

"I suppose you'd call Father a religious man?"

"He ought to have been a Trappist monk," declared Nicholas.

"But that's Roman Catholic! Father is very much prejudiced againstRoman Catholics."

"I know he is."

"They have no sense of honour," said Lily seriously.

Nicholas looked at her quizzically.

"How many Catholics have you known, Lily?"

"I was at school at a convent for a very little while, when I was ten,but I certainly didn't get to know anybody there very well. I don'tthink I should have been allowed to have a Catholic friend."

"Well, I think if I were you I shouldn't judge them quite so severelyuntil you've had some experience of them. I have some very good friendsamong Catholics, and some of them priests, into the bargain."

Lily looked at her husband, rather bewildered.

"One must respect any sincere form of belief, don't you think?" he saidgently, "even though one doesn't happen to share it. It's pure accidentthat you or I weren't born of Buddhist parents, after all."

"Do you mean that you don't think it matters much what Church onebelongs to?"

"I don't think it matters in the least. How can it? The great thing isto try and keep straight, isn't it?"

Nicholas remained meditative for a moment.

"Look here, Lily darling, don't run away with the idea that I wantto—to destroy your faith, or any nonsense of that sort. I've neverstudied these questions, and I don't know anything about theology andall the rest of it. It's quite right you should go to church, andreligion is a great comfort to a woman sometimes. I know that."

He nodded with an air of great sagacity.

Lily wondered whether religion would ever be a great comfort to her,should she require comfort. And why should Nicholas specify suchcomfort as applicable to a woman rather than to a man?

She did not consciously dwell upon the matter for very long, butgradually became accustomed to view the question in the way that herhusband evidently did, as a purely temperamental one. It was not long,moreover, before Lily perceived that Nicholas was far from being alonein his point of view. It was shared by the majority of the peoplebelonging to the world in which she now moved with her husband.

On the whole it was a relief to feel that there were other opinionsthan those held by Philip Stellenthorpe, Ethel Hardinge, or MissMelody. The friends of Nicholas, indeed, more nearly approximatedin their views to the startling enunciations of Aunt Clo, whoseunconventionalities of diction soon began to acquire, in theretrospect, a character of the merest commonplace.

Lily sometimes told herself, with a certain amount of secretcomplacency, that she really was a grown-up Person at last.

It gave her an agreeable sense of dignity to receive in her own housethe people who had loomed largest upon the horizon of her childhood.

Miss Melody, allowing herself a summer holiday on the Continent,broke her journey in order to spend an hour or two with her erstwhilepupil, and was frankly captivated by the mingled courtesy and cheerygood-fellowship shown towards her by Nicholas.

"He makes me think of Chaucer's 'verrye parfit gentil knyghte,'" shesaid to Lily. "Childie dear, I feel the better for seeing you in yourhappiness."

Cousin Ethel, less classically, admitted to deriving similar benefit.

"It does my heart good to see you, Lily! Such a lovely house, and sucha splendid husband to take care of you. You're a lucky child."

And Philip:

"This is all very charming, my little pet. You should be very happyand—and thankful."

"Yes, Father."

It did not strike either of them, as Lily made her dutiful response,that even if she had not been happy, it never would have occurred toher to tell her father so.

The months slipped by, and it was a matter of rather pleased surpriseto thenaïveté of Nicholas Aubray's wife that she and her husbandwere not confronted by that picturesque episode famed in both art andliterature as the First Quarrel.

Cousin Ethel had certainly warned her that there would be "upsand downs," and Lily had taken it for granted that these includedoccasional minor dissensions between her husband and herself.

"Do you know that Nicholas and I have never had a single quarrel?" sheobserved to Dorothy Hardinge.

"I shouldn't think anybody would ever dare to quarrel with him. Frankand I have had one."

There was so much of a rather melancholy pride in the announcement thatLily felt justified in enquiring further.

"Oh, it was about my dancing with other people. He wanted me to danceat least every other dance with him, and I wouldn't. He was furious,and for the matter of that, so was I."

"Dorothy! You're never furious," said Lily incredulously.

She could not remember ever to have seen Dorothy otherwise thangood-humoured and easy-going and light-hearted.

"Well, I was angry that time. Ifoamed."

Dorothy paused reflectively.

"Of course, we made it up afterwards, and it was heavenly."

"I can't imagine your ever being very angry," said Lily.

"Neither could I," Dorothy admitted frankly. "I always thought I had abeautiful temper, especially compared to poor Janet. But I'm afraid Ihaven't, after all. Perhaps the truth is that Frank is the only personI've ever known who's really worth quarrelling with."

The explanation, with its odd, un-Hardinge-like quality of discernment,was destined to remain in Lily's memory.

She asked Dorothy to stay with her, and they purchased together thevery economically-chosen outfit that Dorothy hoped to take to Indiawith her, which Lily supplemented as often as she dared with presentsfrom herself and Nicholas.

"Thanks awfully, Lily. The blue feather you gave me will go toobeautifully with this, won't it?Seulement je pense que je sais unshop moins cher dans le High Street.Nous pouvons disons ici que nousle penserons-over."

The Hardinge superstition that none but themselves could understandschoolroom French was an old one, and had served them many an ill turnwith Miss Clotilde Stellenthorpe.

When Dorothy's visit was over, and the time before her marriage anddeparture for India seemed to be lessening very rapidly, Lily realizedthat, although they had little in common save youth and a year or two'scompanionship, she would miss her very much.

After all, it had been amusing to discuss frocks and ornaments andpurchases together, to rejoice candidly in the glory of Lily's newpossessions, and to laugh together at old, foolish, trivial jokes andcatchwords that had no merit at all except that of association.

Lily, rather surprised, and very much ashamed, one evening brokeinto involuntary tears. She did not want Nicholas to know that shehad cried, but the tear-stains on her face would not be effaced, andafter all, Lily thought that he would understand. There was already asharply-marked line of division in her thoughts between the things thatNicholas would, and those that he would not, understand.

She told him why she had cried.

"Poor little dear!" Nicholas was very kind and petted her, saying thatshe was tired, and must take more care of herself. But the next dayhe was inexplicably depressed, with a tendency to monosyllables and acomplete inability to smile.

Lily, only too familiar with such phenomena in her father, felt herheart sink.

"Are you worried, Nicholas?" she ventured.

"No."

He raised his eyebrows slightly, as though wishing to show her that hewas surprised at the question.

"You're not vexed with me, are you?"

"I could never be vexed with you, darling," he said, speaking morenaturally.

Later, he returned to the subject of his own accord.

"What made my little wife think I could be vexed with her? So long asyou don't feel that I'm an elderly fellow who had no business to marrya pretty little girl out of the nursery. Is that it, eh, Lily?"

He laughed as he spoke but there was a kind of nervous anxiety in thelook that he turned upon her.

"Of course I don't, Nicholas!"

She raised her lips to his quickly, partly in order to hide theunderstanding that she felt had leapt into her face.

She saw that Nicholas was sensitive upon the subject of his age. He hadfound, in Lily's regret at the loss of her old playmate, an impliedallusion to the years that separated him from his wife.

It had hurt his feelings.

All this Lily felt with intuitive certainty. Neither she nor Nicholasalluded further to the subject, but he retained his gravity of demeanoruntil some trifling whimsicality struck his sense of humour, when hishabitual spontaneous gaiety returned to him, with all the suddenness ofa child's transition from sulky silence to laughter.

Lily was gladdened and relieved by the restoration of her husband'sgood spirits, and her plastic youth received yet another impression.

She must never let Nicholas know that she was anything less thanradiantly happy, or he would attribute it to the disparity of yearsbetween them, and his feelings would be hurt.

There was no calamity that it seemed to her more essential to avoid.

XVI

A year after Dorothy Hardinge's marriage, her father died suddenly.

"It seems so incredible, somehow," said Lily.

"My dear, none of us can live for ever. But I know what you mean."

The face of Nicholas was abnormally grave, perhaps in decorousconcealment of the indubitable fact that Charlie Hardinge's unexpecteddeath could hardly affect him very deeply, save through concern for itseffect upon Lily.

"I don't know why it's so difficult to associate some people withdeath. Cousin Charlie, somehow, seems part of all the things I'vealways known, all my life. I can't realize he isn't there any more."

Nicholas patted her hand gently.

"You'd like to come down with me for the funeral, wouldn't you? Wecould stay with your father for a couple of nights, no doubt, andyou might be a comfort to those poor girls. They're both at home, ofcourse?"

"Yes. Poor Dorothy, it will be dreadful for her, away in India."

"Yes, that's hard luck!"

Nicholas was very sympathetic and kind, and Lily felt grateful.

She was, as she had said, utterly unable to associate good-natured,commonplace Cousin Charlie Hardinge with the idea of death.

Philip Stellenthorpe met his daughter and son-in-law with an air ofappropriate solemnity which, however, was too near to his habitualexpression to be greatly noticeable.

"This is a sad business—terribly sudden. I'm glad you've comedown—very glad. They'll appreciate that very much."

"How is Cousin Ethel?" said Lily.

"I've not seen her, but the girls say she's bearing up very bravely,poor thing. I went over there at once, of course, to see if I could beof any help, and saw Janet. Very much upset, of course, poor child,but most sensible and helpful. A brother of poor Charlie's is arrivingto-day with his wife, and meanwhile we've made most of the necessaryarrangements."

"What time is the funeral?"

Philip gave a very slight start at the question, asked in serious,but unsubdued, tones by Nicholas, and Lily guessed instantly that herfather had hitherto avoided making direct use of the word.

"Half-past two, the day after to-morrow. That givesher family, whoare very much scattered about the world, time to get here."

"Would Janet and Sylvia like me to go and see them to-morrow, do youthink, Father?"

"Yes, my little pet. Janet says that your Cousin Ethel would like tosee you, too. They think it's a comfort to her to talk. It's been aterrible shock, of course."

"Very sudden."

Lily knew by the way in which Nicholas spoke that he was makingconversation, and that he would secretly have welcomed a change ofsubject.

"Very sudden indeed. He was apparently in his usual health, andperfectly cheerful, until Sunday evening, when he complained of apain in his side. They none of them thought anything of it—he didn'thimself—but he went upstairs early. He'd only been out of the rooma few moments when they heard the sound of a fall. The maid heard itfrom the dining-room and went upstairs, and there she found him onthe floor, unconscious. Most mercifully it wasn't your Cousin Ethelherself who found him there—the shock was terrible enough as itwas. The doctor was there inside half an hour, but he couldn't doanything at all. It was all over by ten o'clock, and he never recoveredconsciousness at all."

"Heart, I suppose?"

"Yes."

The Hardinges themselves told Lily these details all over again, eachone repeating the same things over and over again in different words.

Janet and Sylvia sat forlornly in the schoolroom, in old black sergeskirts and new black blouses hastily made up by the village dressmaker.They had nothing to do.

An uncle and aunt had arrived and the aunt was upstairs with Ethel. Theuncle had gone down to the church "to see about things," they said.

"Oh, Lily, if only it hadn't been so awfully, awfully sudden! We'd allhad dinner together, you know, just as usual, and he only stayed in thedrawing-room a few minutes, and then said he thought he'd go to bedearly."

"He did say he'd a pain in his side; he told Mother so—but we neverthought it was anything——" said Sylvia.

"No. And then he went upstairs, and we were all sewing, just asusual, and we never heard anything. It was Emily who heard, from thedining-room, clearing away dinner. And she went upstairs and his doorwas open, and she saw—oh, Lily!"

Tears choked Janet's utterance.

Both girls had cried until their eyelids were swollen and discolouredand their faces white from exhaustion.

"Has there been time to hear from Dorothy?" Lily asked, for the sake ofsaying something.

"Not yet. The cable might come any time, now. We cabled to Frank, ofcourse. Andhe was so pleased about Dorothy's baby and everything,and now—now he'll never see her."

They sobbed and cried.

"The baby will be a comfort to Dorothy."

"Yes, oh yes. And to Mother too, later on."

A bell rang, and Janet said:

"That might be the cable."

Waiting for the Indian cable seemed to be the nearest approach to anoccupation that was possible.

"Uncle has sent up the announcement to the papers, so to-morrow Isuppose there'll be telegrams and things," said Sylvia, shuddering."But the Indian cable ought to be here to-day."

The cable came at last and Janet took it upstairs unopened to hermother's room, and Sylvia and Lily remained in the schoolroom, wherethe clock hands moved so slowly that they often seemed to have stoppedaltogether. Lily held Sylvia's hand, and spoke from time to time,trying not to think that her platitudes were utterly meaningless.

"He couldn't have felt anything at all—it would have been so much moredreadful if he'd had to suffer ... and now he—he's so much happier ...he'd want you to be brave...."

She wondered desperately, as she spoke, whether she really believedwhat she said. Was Cousin Charlie happy now, with some incommunicablebliss? Was he really capable any more, of wishes and hopes concerningthose left behind?

Sylvia cried on, softly and drearily, and the hands of the clockcrawled slowly round.

Presently Janet came back again and said that the aunt and uncle weredownstairs.

"It's so dreadful to have to think of meals and things, just the same,"she said.

"Mother is staying upstairs, Lily, but she'd like you to come and seeher this afternoon. I think it's a comfort to her to talk."

Cousin Ethel was very brave, and it seemed, as Janet and Sylvia hadsaid, to comfort her to talk.

"He was sogood, Lily—that's such a comfort to me. Twenty-five yearsmarried, and I never had a cross word from him! I like to think thatthe children will all be able to remember that. He was such a kindfather, too, so devoted to his girls. Do you remember how he used tocall them 'kiddie-widdies'?

"After all, Lily dear, one of us had to go first—it's only a very,very few that are allowed to slip away together—and I couldn't haveborne to think of him left without me. He's happy now, for ever andever, and I don't suppose it'll seem more than a flash of time to him,where he is now, before we meet again."

Cousin Ethel cried, too, but it was evident that she found consolationin the thought of an Eternal Life holding the certain promise ofultimate reunion.

Lily went away and promised Janet and Sylvia that she would come againthe following day.

"The Hannigan aunts are arriving to-night, and Uncle Bob and Aunt Mary.I think perhaps it's easier, when there are people there," Sylviawhispered.

Lily was glad to think that they would have the occupation of preparingfor, and receiving, the visitors. Anything would surely be better thansitting, sick with crying, repeating over and over again all that theyhad said already.

She felt very tired, and full of remorse for her own inadequacy. Sheknew that there had been no conviction behind any of the commonplaceutterances with which she had striven to convey consolation. Only hersympathy with their sorrow had been real. Even sympathy, however,seemed to fail her when Philip Stellenthorpe spoke of personal loss tohimself.

"Our very nearest friend, poor Charlie," he observed sorrowfully."There are very few left now, my little Lily, whom I know as I did yourpoor Cousin Charlie. We'd been friends for many years and I thoughtvery highly of him—very highly indeed."

Lily, against her own will, knew that during Cousin Charlie's life-timePhilip had not thought highly of him at all. They had not been intimatefriends—Philip had no intimate friends—and it was Charlie Hardinge,not Philip, who had taken for granted that a good-fellowship, at allevents, existed between them. Philip had very often resented Charlie'sofficious interest in his affairs, and his reiterations of unwantedadvice.

"Well," said Philip with a heavy sigh, "our loss is his gain, poorfellow, no doubt."

Then he, too, believed, or affected to believe, that Cousin Charlie wasnow in a region of undimmed happiness, a disincarnate spirit in thepresence of his Creator.

Lily deliberately tried to imagine the operation of such atransformation.

Cousin Charlie, interested in his garden, in the arrival in India of alittle granddaughter, in the successful solution of a chess problem,utterly without premonition, so far as one knew, of any kind. Walkingupstairs, perhaps thinking quite casually of the little pain in hisside that they all knew was nothing at all, perhaps occupied withsome trivial reflection about the lamp in the passage. He was alwaysparticular about the trimming of the wicks....

And then in one instant, unconsciousness. They had found him on thevery threshold of the dressing-room, where he must have fallen just ashe entered it.

There had been no flicker of consciousness. He had been dead within onehour from the time of his seizure.

And what after that?

Cousin Charlie, awakening in a new world, a world where presumably allhis old interests held little or no meaning, confronted with a SupremeBeing to whom he had paid a more or less perfunctory homage on Sundays,and told that he had earned, in his comfortable, easy-going, perfectlyhonourable fifty-eight years upon earth, an eternity of perfecthappiness.

It was only less unthinkable than was the alternative of kindly, activeCousin Charlie consigned to an eternity of misery and punishment.

Perhaps there was no afterwards at all, and Cousin Charlie's spirithad flickered out when the machinery of his physical body failed. Thenthere would never be any reunion, such as his wife, who loved him,looked for so confidently.

Lily could not believe it.

Love, at least, must be a thing that went on. Love was part of God.

She remembered, with a great sense of relief, the Catholic doctrine ofPurgatory. A place where the souls of the dead awaited. The suggestionof a place of existence upon which the spirit might learn, and beprepared gradually for transformation, seemed to Lily to carry a senseof possibility with it. The other alternatives, quite simply, appearedto her to be incredible.

Her mind was very much occupied with such thoughts, and she found itdifficult to speak of other things, as Nicholas was obviously desirousof doing.

Nevertheless, she seconded the efforts of her husband when her fatherpersisted in discussing the funeral arrangements of the following day.

"What a ghoulish sort of pleasure your father seems to take in thisbusiness," Nicholas remarked pensively when they were alone together."I quite agree that it's sad enough, but it needn't pervade the wholeconversation, surely."

"I suppose after to-morrow he'll be all right," said Lily.

She was faintly shocked at the criticism of Philip, although her reasonadmitted its justice.

"You do like Father, Nicholas dear, don't you?"

"My dear child, because one likes a person it needn't make one blindand deaf and dumb to their short-comings," said her husband cheerfully.

Lily assimilated in silence the obvious common-sense of the dictum,that all the same came to her as something almost new, and entirelyrevolutionary.

The next day, they attended Charlie Hardinge's funeral. Lily retainedconfused impressions of the smell of new crape, of the sound ofdecorous murmuring in the church, and then of stifled sobbing as Janetand Sylvia took their places. Ethel Hardinge's thick veil fell over herface, but Lily did not think that she shed tears.

The organist struggled with unusual music, obviously beyond thecapabilities of the player, and presently to familiar strains the choirsang:

Lily knew the choice to be Ethel's.

The insistence upon abrupt translation from life on earth into a worldof perfect joy and peace, where "all is pure and all is holy," againbewildered and almost distressed Lily.

Could such violent dislocation as was implied really take place?

A child did not, in the space of a night, become a man. Learning, evenon the lowest plane, was not acquired in an hour. Did God, then,reverse all His laws as manifested upon earth, whenever a soul left itsbody?

If so, the spirit now in heaven was not Cousin Charlie at all. It wassomebody quite else, with understanding and aspirations that had neverbeen his; one to whom new revelations had been made, that must ofnecessity transform the soul that received them.

The Charlie Hardinge loved and mourned by his wife and by theirchildren would have been saddened and frightened by such a cleavageof himself from them. One could imagine him, clinging still to oldformulæ, asking piteously for explanations, calling upon old, familiartrivialities.

But radiant in the presence of his God, every value he had known uponearth transmuted, without pause or preparation?

Lily knew that she could accept no such assurance. She remembered, asa little child, asking whether she might pray for her dead mother,and Philip's gentle teaching that those at rest with God needed nointercession. They were at peace. The child had been comforted,receiving the words with full confidence, because spoken by her father.Now, Lily found that her whole being rejected them, although shedesired to believe, and was frightened of her independent judgment asof a sin. The thought of Charlie Hardinge's soul, as she imagined it tobe, deprived of the familiar body and of all the homely accessories toexistence, obsessed her. With a sense of furtive guilt, Lily prayed.She prayed that he might not be afraid, or lonely, that someone mightbe there to help him, and that he might, in some mysterious way, keepin touch with the people that he loved and that loved him, withoutfeeling the added pang of their tears and their sorrow.

Surely the twenty-five years with Ethel counted for something, even ineternity?

She fell again into a maze of speculation, that lasted until all wasover.

As the groups of people moved away from the newly-filled grave, Lilysaw Janet Hardinge beckoning to her. She went to her, and Janet saidwistfully and miserably, as Sylvia had said the day before: "I think itmakes it easier if there are people there, Lily. Please come up to thehouse with us, won't you?"

The Hardinges' house was filled with strange uncles and aunts, most ofthem entirely unknown to Lily. Tea was laid in the dining-room, andthe house, with blinds up-drawn again, and the hall door open, had toLily's eyes an odd look as of having been newly relieved from strain.

She sat between a Hardinge aunt and an uncle whose name she did notknow.

He was a kindly, red-faced man, who shook his head, saying, "Well,well, well," very much as Charlie Hardinge himself might have said it,and then appeared to dismiss the more serious aspect of the gatheringfrom his conversation, if not altogether from his thoughts.

"This is a very good room," he said approvingly, looking round him."Nice aspect, nice sunny room. They ought to use this room a greatdeal."

On Lily's other side the Hannigan aunt murmured lugubriously:

"They must just try and begin life again, and make the best kind of ahome they can. That's what I tell them. They've got to begin again,now."

And at the other end of the table Lily could hear yet another aunttelling Sylvia that she must be brave and eat some sponge-cake anddrink up her tea.

Mrs. Hardinge did not appear at all.

Tea was prolonged as though nobody knew what was to be done, once itwas over.

"They ought to go away, and make a thorough break," said Miss Hanniganto Lily. "Then they could come back here again, you know, and startfresh."

"Let me cut you a piece of cake, now," said her other neighbour.

She was relieved when a diversion was caused by the maid's announcementthat her husband had come to fetch her.

Janet had gone upstairs to her mother, but Sylvia embraced Lilyconvulsively in the hall, and said:

"Oh, Lily! It's all so awful, and it goes on and on. I keep feelingthat I shall wake up and find it's all a dream."

A few tears of exhaustion rolled down her little white face as shespoke, but Lily saw that she had literally cried until she could cry nomore.

"Are you all going away for a little while?" she said hesitatingly."Your aunt said something about it."

"They want us to go back to Ireland with them, but Mother thinks theycouldn't really afford three visitors, and such a long journey wouldn'tbe worth while for less than a month."

"Cousin Ethel wouldn't go alone, or perhaps with just Janet, and letyou come to me—or somewhere else, of course, if you'd rather?"

"Oh!" cried Sylvia, "we must all keep together now that there are onlythe three of us left."

Lily, as she left the house, violently disputed this sentiment withinherself. The longer the three desolate women remained together, justso much the longer would they react upon one another emotionally. Lilywondered whether she was herself heartless in so thinking. It made herseriously uneasy to know that Philip Stellenthorpe would most certainlyconsider her to be so.

She felt strangely rebellious, and at the same time ashamed of it.

"Well," said Nicholas, "I'm extremely thankful it's over. I was verymuch afraid there was going to be an accident, weren't you?"

"What—when?"

"Didn't you notice? I suppose your little head was somewhere inthe clouds again. One of the bearers wasn't fit for the job—quiteunmistakably intoxicated. That's the worst of having countrylabourers—one can't ever be quite sure. I was on thorns, I can tellyou."

He laughed a little, quite gently, but the sound jarred vaguely uponLily.

"Has the whole thing upset you, poor child? It's the first time, Isuppose, you've been to a funeral, isn't it? Well, I must say I hopenothing of that sort will ever be done overme. I should like to beburied at sea."

He flung back his shoulders, tapping his broad chest with the tips ofhis fingers.

"When this 'poor clay' is laid by, I must say that I should like tothink that its only grave was to be rolling waters, eh, Lily?"

She was conscious of feeling more utterly out of tune with his moodthan ever before.

"What can it matter, if it isn't oneself at all? Lots of people saythat, about being buried at sea, but it's no more and no less thanbeing buried anywhere else. What's the difference?"

He looked surprised.

"What's happened to my holy little saint? I should have thought thatthe prayers and the consecrated ground and all the rest of it meant agreat deal to you, Lily."

His kind, good-humoured air of interested curiosity made her regret herown exasperation, of which, however, she knew herself to be far moreconscious than he was.

"Nicholas, tell me really. What do you think has happened to CousinCharlie's soul, now?"

"My dear little girl! We know that he was very kind and good, and—andAlmighty God's mercy...." He stopped, looking disconcerted.

"What's come over you, Lily?"

"I don't know. Only it all seemed so unreal, somehow, to think ofCousin Charlie perfectly happy in heaven and either not knowinganything at all about the people he loved best, or else, in somemiraculous way, able to understand why God should let them suffer, andwhat good is going to come out of it all, so that he doesn't mind. Itall seems so—so unlike the ordinary sort of person that he was."

"Yes," said Nicholas. "Yes."

"How could he suddenly turn into a pure spirit who would find eternaljoy in the presence of God?" cried Lily recklessly. "They sang thathymn about heaven, but howcan one imagine an ordinary, average, goodperson suddenly in heaven for ever and ever more, unless they've becomeabsolutely different? Surely it's the same essential spirit that wason earth, that goes on into the next world?"

"Heaven, eh? Harps and crowns and white robes and wings and all therest of it, eh, Lily? No, my dear, I can't say that any of that appealsto me very much."

"Do you believe in it, Nicholas?"

"The old idea of heaven or hell, world without end, Amen? No—yes. Idon't know. No, I can't say I do."

"What do you think happens after death, then?"

"One goes on, somewhere or other, of course."

"Yes."

"But I know no more than you do, my dear," said Nicholas. "I don'tsuppose we were ever meant to know."

Lily was intensely aware that such a conclusion shirked the questionentirely, but she said nothing more.

It was from that time that she began to acknowledge to herself herown inner conflict between loyalty, that she had been taught was thesupreme virtue, and the insistent demand of something within herselfthat claimed a right to independent judgment.

Reacting to the sense of having been deluded, Lily gradually forsookthe habit of going to church, and was relieved when Nicholas made nocomment.

They did not talk about religion. The subject was one which quiteevidently held not the slightest interest for Nicholas.

Lily went once or twice by herself to the Brompton Oratory, but alwayswith a sense of doing something wrong. She also purchased, almostfurtively, from a green baize board erected at the bottom of thechurch, a penny pamphlet purporting to explain the chief difficultiesthat might be supposed to confront a potential "convert" to theCatholic religion.

The little book was ungrammatical, written in slipshod English, and wasfar from even being explicit. But Lily understood that in the CatholicChurch was to be found even less liberty of thought than in her own.The Church told her children what to believe, and beyond that theymight not look.

Lily wondered whether such restriction of outlook might not beconducive to great inward peace.

She thought of it wistfully and sentimentally, but knew very wellthat she could never now, of her own free-will, seek to suppress,unsatisfied, the new spirit of doubt that encompassed her.

With her faith in the arbitrary presentment of the religion that hadbeen imposed upon her, Lily also lost much of her childish faith in theessential infallibility of her father.

His religious beliefs were his own, and she did not seek to questionthem, but she resented more and more having been brought up to supposethat such beliefs could be transmitted wholesale, to be receivedwithout question and without analysis. No such acceptance, she thought,could be of enduring value. Discontent possessed her.

She continued to take pleasure in the many enjoyments that awaited her,but she knew that she was missing happiness.

Alternately, Lily blamed and pitied herself.

XVII

Nicholas Aubray had no idea that he made certain remarks at certainhours of every day, with almost clock-work regularity.

It was left to his wife to make this discovery and others; her criticalfaculty developing with every year, the years themselves still too fewto prevent her from putting her discoveries into words.

"You mustn't be too sharp in your judgment of other people, my dear,"Nicholas said to her from time to time, without any more directreference to an increasing uneasiness in the atmosphere, that he wouldnot, indeed, admit even to himself.

Lily, too, had her reticences.

The shibboleth declared any criticism of another to be uncharitable atbest, disloyal at worst. Unthinkable, to criticize one's husband.

Lily sought valiantly to ignore that which certain perceptions in herregistered almost automatically.

She loved Nicholas, therefore she must see Nicholas as perfect.

The effort, in the course of time, became considerable, and verywearying.

She lived in a constant searching of spirit, fond of Nicholasand grateful to him when he petted her, touched by his manythoughtfulnesses and frequent gifts, intensely desirous of believingthat she loved him, and irritated almost—although never quite—to thepoint of protesting aloud when he sang out of tune.

Nicholas sang very often, from exuberance of spirits, and it was almostalways out of tune.

He had a singular faculty for remembering the words of popularmusical-comedy songs, and no ability at all to retain the simplest ofairs correctly.

"I say, Lily, that was a catchy sort of thing we heard last night."

"Oh yes, I know."

Lily spoke hurriedly, trying to escape from the conviction that she wasin dread lest Nicholas should attempt to reproduce the tune that he hadliked.

"The one that girl sang in the second act—very fine girl, too!"

His tone was jocosely significant, and although such humorous allusionsdid not really amuse her in the least, Lily eagerly caught at this one.

"I saw you look at her, Nicholas! She's rather your type, isn't she?"

"What do you mean by my type, madam, I should like to know? How do youknow I've got a type, eh?"

He began to laugh spasmodically, and Lily's lips mechanically took onthe curves of the amusement that she did not share.

"My type, indeed! Ha, ha!"

Lily's meaningless laughter echoed his genuine mirth. Then he began tohum:

"Catchy sort of tune, that."

"Oh yes. Would you like me to get the score?"

"Not unless you want it yourself. I thought that was pretty nearly theonly good thing in it, didn't you? Besides, what do you want with ascore when you've got a husband who can reproduce it note for note toyou next morning? Ah—hum——!"

Nicholas cleared his throat and expanded his chest in facetiousburlesquing of an operatic performance.

He sang it through again, with mock dramatic emphasis andgesticulation, and Lily dug her nails into the palms of her hands andstretched her mouth into a fixed smile.

She was unspeakably disgusted at herself.

Why should she mind these things? And why, minding them, should notlove for Nicholas make her minding of no account?

For she still maintained to herself that she loved Nicholas.

That which perplexed her perhaps most was her own increasing tendencyto dwell upon a recollection that for several years now had been almostaltogether obscured——Vonnie.

The memory of her childish championship of Vonnie, the sick despair ofknowing herself to be better loved and cared for than was Vonnie, thepain that she had suffered through Vonnie's pain—all recurred to herwith an odd sense of contrast.

How could one compare the two? The kindly derision of common-sensesounded in her imagination, insensibly clothing itself in the accentsof that embodiment of common-sense, Monica Melody. "Childie, childie,think what you're saying. Why, how can you compare the two, Lily? Theaffection of a little child for another little child, and the love of awoman for her husband! Oh Lily, Lily!"

Miss Melody would certainly conclude with mellow, tolerant laughter.

And yet the comparison existed, and remained insistent.

She would never suffer for Nicholas as she had suffered for Vonnie.

"Perhaps I am better balanced now," Lily wistfully suggested toherself, but the suggestion carried no conviction.

She found the phrase that elucidated the question for her almost bychance:

To the limit of capacity.

Quite involuntarily, the application leaped to her mind.

She had loved Vonnie to the limit of capacity. Her feeling for Nicholasdid not extend even to the first outposts of that limit.

But she loved him, nevertheless. It was a question of degree.

Lily stifled the illuminating thought, accused herself of the extremeof disloyalty, and watched eagerly for signs in herself that she didlove Nicholas. That he loved her, she could not doubt, and the thoughtfilled her with remorseful gratitude. It still surprised and touchedher that her husband, unlike her father, should so seldom find faultwith her either directly or by implication, and that he should shareand enjoy her enjoyment of almost every form of entertainment.

He listened, with obvious pleasure and interest, to everything shesaid, and no subject was too trivial for discussion. He seemed neverto beblasé or indifferent. Occasionally, only, he was out of temperor depressed, when his already long face would become indescribablyelongated, and his conversation monosyllabic.

Lily found that if she asked him a direct question, on such occasions,he would gravely and curtly reply: "Why should anything be the matter?"after the manner of a sulky child that desires to draw attention to itssulks but is too proud to give a reason for them. If she said nothing,he either recovered himself quickly, or spoke, with a sort of remote,detached condemnation, of the circumstance that had annoyed him. Henever admitted to a trivial disturbance of mind, but sometimes, withtransparent self-satisfaction, he would lay claim to outbursts ofstupendous fury.

"I'm afraid I lost my temper pretty thoroughly to-day. The fellow won'ttry that game on again. He got my monkey up, and I let him have itstraight. Hit out straight from the shoulder. I told him exactly whatI thought of him, and you should have seen his face, Lily—the poorlittle devil wasgreen. I don't remember, word for word, exactly whatI said, but I fancy I let him have it pretty straight. I don't mincematters when my blood's up. Mind you, Lily, a temper like mine's nojoke. I've always been afraid of going too far, one of these days."

He looked at her as though for confirmation, and she said, knowing thatit would please him:

"It's a fault on the right side, I suppose. A man who hasn't got atemper doesn't get very far, I imagine."

"You're right there, my dear. I shouldn't be where I am now if Ihadn't been able to put the fear of God into those who work for me,from time to time."

Nicholas laughed.

"You've never seen me angry, my dear, and I hope you never will."

"Only over a collar-stud," observed Lily, with defective tact.

The mild joke was not at all a successful one.

Nicholas's hatchet face lengthened immediately and grew inordinatelygrave.

"I'm talking about necessary anger, my dear girl, the sort of wraththat's pretty nearly indispensable when you're dealing with men andwomen, if you want to get the best out of them. Weaklings have got tobe made to feel that they're up against strength. If a man's strong,he's got to have a temper."

"Nobody could call you weak, Nicholas," said Lily, and the remark, asshe had meant it to do, restored his complacency.

"Well, I've many faults, but there are two feelings for which I don'tthink I shall be held to account, I must say. I'm not a weak man,Lily—and I fancy I'm a pretty shrewd judge of human nature. I think Ican sum up men and women fairly correctly, even at first sight."

Lily did not like Nicholas when he boasted. In the depths of her heart,uneasily conscious of arrogance the while, she disputed his statementthat he was a judge of human nature, for his judgments seldom talliedwith her own, especially where women were concerned.

"I don't suppose," said Nicholas, laughing, "that the fellow I told offthis morning will come near me again for a fortnight. I imagine he waspretty thoroughly scared."

"I daresay," smiled Lily.

She went on smiling, and Nicholas went on laughing. His laughter hadlong ago got upon her nerves, but she did not own to herself that thiswas the case.

Even when her amusement was genuine, she never found it easy to prolongher laughter to the extent of his. Very often, her amusement was notgenuine at all.

Nicholas had a fund of anecdotes, quotations, and good stories, someof which he retailed over-frequently. Many of the stories were witty;one or two, to the daughter of Philip Stellenthorpe, appeared to bemerely coarse. It seemed to her that Nicholas was totally unable todistinguish between wit, even if admittedly "improper," and the form ofrather gross vulgarity that claims to be funny merely on the grounds ofits vulgarity.

Sometimes she despised herself for making the distinction, which withher was entirely instinctive. Nicholas, however, so far as she couldsee, did not discover that she made any distinction at all in herappreciation of his sallies.

His perceptions, acute in some directions, appeared to Lily to beastonishingly blunt in others. Whenever he perceived in her any signof physical weakness or fatigue, it touched her sharply and alwaysafresh, but it always surprised her. At times, when his simplicity andenthusiasm were most in evidence, she welcomed in herself a rush oftenderness for him.

His frequent demonstrations of affection she accepted with a sort ofpassive pleasure, as might an affectionate child, but she dwelt littleon the subject of outer demonstrations in her own thoughts, aware thatNicholas, disappointed, had at first thought her unawakened, and thenfrigid.

There were many thoughts, indeed, upon which she lacked courage todwell in her resolute suppression of the lurking consciousness of anirrevocable mistake.

She hoped that she might have a child, and then, forlornly, thatrepeated disappointment and anxiety might not alienate Nicholas's lovefor her, which she knew subconsciously, to be the thing in him that shecared for most.

Nearly four years after her marriage she had a long illness, and oncemore the hope of motherhood was taken from her.

"Poor child!" said Nicholas, much harassed.

He was very busy, and it distressed him to think of the many hours thathe was out of the house.

"That nurse is no companion for you—stupid, uneducated woman. I wishwe could get hold of a younger one. Or is there anyone whom you'd liketo have, little girl? What about one of the Hardinges?"

"No, thank you," said Lily wearily. She did not want Janet or Sylviawith her. "I think I'd rather be alone. I'm so tired—and nurse isreally very kind."

But Nicholas was not satisfied. To please him, Lily made pretence thatshe would like to invite Miss Stellenthorpe to stay with her, and wassecretly relieved when Aunt Clo, in the minute handwriting describedby herself as "scholarly," wrote and lamented that she could not leaveItaly for another six weeks.

"Alas,Bambina mia, that I should not be able to fly to you! Butthere is one here who needs me—a sick, broken creature, whose bruisedsoul requires patience and tenderness. Yours, my Lily, is a sickness ofthe body. This other has been deeply, cruelly, wounded in the spirit.Can I, who have plumbed the very depths, refuse to give of my healing,such as it may be?

"But courage, little one! I will fly to you when once this frail crafthas been piloted into safe harbour. Ah, these conflicting claims! Arethey the penalty exacted of Strength, I ask myself? I smiled witha great tenderness, my Lily, at your enclosure, and the many wordsin which you wrapped the offering. These things matter so little!Nevertheless, you know that I have denuded myself of much, and Iaccept, with willing and gracious thanks, your so charming thought. Itmatters little to me how I travel to you, but an you will it to be inthe luxury of awagon-lit, so be it!

"In six weeks, then, my beloved child."

There was never any formal beginning to Aunt Clo's letters, and hersignature, launched abruptly onto the page with no conventionalvaledictory phrase, was a complicated hieroglyphic of initials,understood to be characteristic.

"What a splendid person she is," Nicholas remarked, as he did withpunctuality whenever Miss Stellenthorpe was mentioned, "always helpingsomebody. Helping lame dogs over stiles, eh?"

Lily did not answer, and he repeated: "Eh, Lily?"

It was one of the tiring things about Nicholas that he always requireda reply to everything that he said, however obvious.

"Yes."

"But all the same, charity begins at home. Shall we write and tell herso, eh?"

"She'll come in six weeks," said Lily, smiling without any mirth,conscious only of overpowering fatigue.

"Six weeks! I should like to think of something for you before that, mydear."

Two days later, Nicholas came to her exultant. "The very thing! I'vegot the very thing for you—splendid!"

Lily tried not to look dismayed.

"Somehow, I thought I shouldn't be defeated. Once I set out to dosomething, it generally gets done, I fancy!" He paused to laugh.

"Do you remember old Dickenson, Lily? Nice old boy, with a long family.I met him yesterday and he was telling me about his eldest girl—quitea handsome girl too, I remember her as a flapper. It seems she went offand trained as a hospital nurse. Plucky of her, wasn't it? There werehalf a dozen of them at home, and no money, and this girl didn't get onparticularly well with the rest of them, for some reason, so off shegoes. Dickenson was telling me, they thought she'd never get throughher training—they give them a very stiff time, I fancy, but she stuckit and came through splendidly. She's at home now, I don't quite knowwhat happened, but she was going to be married, and then it was brokenoff. I didn't ask for details, naturally. But there she is, a handsomewench, and fully trained, and she must be a plucky girl, too. Dickensonsays she's eager for a job. You'd like her, Lily, and she'd be more ofa companion for you than old Stick-in-the-mud. What about having herhere?"

"As a nurse?"

"The doctor's all for it. Stick-in-the-mud's time is up in about a weekanyway, isn't it? and he says you don't really want very much done foryou now—only someone at hand. No night-nursing. How'd it do to getMiss Dickenson here till your aunt comes? She'd stay with us as a sortof friend, you know."

The eagerness of Nicholas for his plan was very evident.

"Have you seen her, Nicholas?"

"Not since she was a flapper. I remember her as a very attractivechild. I think she must be a plucky girl, too, to have gone off likethat," said Nicholas, dwelling reflectively upon his catchword. "Pluckything for a girl to do."

He reiterated the verdict again, with greater emphasis, after seekingan interview with Miss Dickenson.

"By George, Lily, you'll like that girl. She's a girl of spirit, quitegood-looking, too. I know you'll get on together."

The complete conviction of his tone was almost infectious, especiallyas Lily thought it disloyal to let herself remember how frequentlyher estimate of other people had failed to coincide with that of herhusband.

Nicholas rather elaborately urged his case.

"You mustn't think I want to force this idea of mine upon you, on anyaccount. But it would ease my mind about you, when I have to be awayall day. She's a lively sort of girl, full of spirit, and I don't fancyshe has much of a time at home. They're shockingly badly off, too, andno doubt it would be a relief—however, that's not the point. But Ithink you'd like a girl of your own kind about the house, wouldn'tyou? Less professional than a regular nurse, and yet just as useful.She was most eager about doing anything for you—there'd be no nonsenseabout her."

"It would be more amusing for you in the evenings, after dinner," saidLily reflectively.

He looked vexed.

"That has nothing whatever to do with it, my dear. If you think I'murging this idea with a view to my own——"

"No, no," cried Lily hastily.

In her weakness, she felt the tears rising to her throat at the mereapprehension of having offended him, or appeared to be ungrateful.

"I should really like it for my own sake, Nicholas. She sounds verynice indeed. Why shouldn't she come next week and stay till Aunt Clocomes?"

"That's entirely as you wish. It's for you to decide."

He still spoke with the ultra-gravity of tone that denoted that hiscuriously childish susceptibilities had been touched.

"It's a splendid idea," said Lily with a trembling lip. "I'd like tohave her very much. It was very clever of you to think of it, Nicholas."

With disproportionate relief, she saw his expression relax.

"That's good, then. I'll arrange it to-morrow. I thought I'd findsomething for you, poor old girl! I generally hit on something whenI've made up my mind to it, eh? You'll like Doris Dickenson, Lily,she's a plucky girl, and I don't fancy she's had too easy a time of it.I know pretty well whom you'll cotton to by this time, eh?"

"Yes, indeed," said Lily.

She was no more conscious of hypocrisy than if she had been humouringthe boast that a child standing on a table, might make of being tallerthan a grown man.

The susceptibility of her husband to feminine beauty was to Lily somuch of a commonplace that her first sight of the object of his newenthusiasm surprised her quite unexpectedly.

Doris Dickenson belonged to the type of woman whose unfailingattraction for men remains for ever incomprehensible to her own sex.

Lily did not think her colourless, freckled, and rather heavy face inthe least good-looking, her blue-green eyes were almost without lashes,her plump hands, with fingers broad at the base and tapering sharplyto a point, were over-manicured. She was both tall and heavily made,although she moved well, and the only claim to beauty that Lily couldallow her was the flaming colour of her coarse, abundant red hair.

"It makes a difference having her, eh?" said Nicholas contentedly.

It made a great difference.

Lily wondered very much whether anyone had ever considered DorisDickenson to be a good nurse. She had the typical faults of theprofessional, and but little of her conscientiousness and enthusiasmfor her work.

Lily, more than ever deficient in self-confidence through physicalweakness, wondered despairingly whether it was entirely her own faultthat she sometimes found Miss Dickenson almost unbearable. Was she, asNicholas often said, hypercritical?

Things unimportant in themselves assumed monstrous proportions andtook possession of her mind. Amongst them were small characteristics ofDoris Dickenson.

Her flow of incessant talk, concerned almost exclusively with herself,her experiences, her relations, and her love-affairs.

The recurrence in her conversation of the particular adverbor adjective that momentarily obsessed her, regardless of itsapplicability.

"How devastating!" she would drawl, of a broken wine-glass, athunderstorm, a new novel. Even a bunch of flowers was "devastatinglypretty." But the following week, the events of the hour were all"preposterous," and the word was introduced into her conversationin every impossible connection, until a fresh adjective appeared toreplace it.

She also possessed to perfection the trick of the meaningless tag—ofall others perhaps the most characteristic of the second-rate mind.

"Here's your medicine. I say, why do you look like that?"

And, very frequently:

"Don't say it in such a tragic voice! What makes you say it like that?"

Lily at first made futile efforts to find a reasonable answer to thebewildering senselessness of such enquiries.

But she found that Doris never listened to an answer, never appeared toexpect one.

Lily came to the conclusion that "Why do you look like that?" wasmerely meant as a concession to the conventionalities, a hasty passingassumption of an interest in her welfare, that could not even carry itspretence through to the end.

Lily grew more and more weary, and wondered why she lacked moralcourage to tell Nicholas that his experiment was not provingsuccessful. That he would never perceive it without being told, shetook for granted.

Nicholas lacked neither generosity nor tenderness towards his wife, andshe took herself bitterly to task for the involuntary disappointmentthat possessed her in her constant perception of his lack of intuition.

XVIII

"I say, Mrs. Aubray, do you think I leave you too long alone in theevenings, after dinner?"

"Not at all," said Lily, trying not to make her voice over-emphatic.

"Do you really mean that? I'm sure you really think I neglect youappallingly."

Lily knew very well that Miss Dickenson was not really sure of anythingof the kind, and would have been both astonished and indignant had herself-indictment been endorsed by her patient.

"I mean, do tell me really. I should hate it if you thought that Istayed away after dinner when I ought to be cheering you up. But youwould tell me if you did, wouldn't you?"

"I'm very glad that you should keep my husband company at dinner whenhe's by himself, and of course he always comes up to me after dinnerwhen he's in, so naturally——"

"Oh, good gracious! You don't suppose I meant that I wanted to staywith you while he's here? I wouldn't do such an appalling thing for theworld; why, it's an appalling idea. You didn't think that was what Imeant, did you? I mean, I'd rather be told if you did, of course, butyou didn't, did you? Do say if you did, though."

For all the incessant string of tiresome appeals on Miss Dickenson'slips, her roving eyes betrayed the utter lack of any purpose or meaningbehind her words.

"Don't look like that! Why do you look like that?"

"Likewhat?" said Lily, crossly and childishly, although experiencehad taught her that the question never provoked a reasonable answer.

"Like that. Sort of appalled, aren't you? But I'd always rather knowthings—that's why I ask."

"Like Rosa Dartle." The words seemed to drop, in spite of deadlyweariness, from Lily.

"Like who?"

Doris very often gave one the trouble of repeating a thing, when Lilyfelt certain that she had heard it the first time.

She now said nothing at all.

"Likewho, did you say?"

Lily shut her eyes, and her impulses at the moment were little short ofmurderous.

"I say, what's up? Tired? Who's Rosa Dartle?"

"A character in Dickens—'David Copperfield.'"

"How appalling! Dickens' people always are appalling, aren't they? Whatmakes you think I'm like Rosa Dartle, whoever she may be?"

"She used to ask questions."

"I say, I like that! D'you think I ask questions? It's supposed to be asign of an enquiring nature, isn't it?"

Lily, her despair untinged by any humour, gazed into an abyss of suchutter futility as silenced her with sheer amazement.

"Isn't it?"

"I daresay it is."

She adjusted her unwilling part in the sorry dialogue to the level ofher companion; lacking both physical energy and moral courage to put anend to it.

"You've got an appalling number of books in this house, haven't you? Ialways mean to read some day when I've got time, but I've always beentoo busy. They say it's never too late to mend. Of course in hospitalthere simply wasn't a hope, and my off-time was always so taken up. Ofcourse we were never allowed to speak to the doctors—far less go outwith them—but there was one perfectly mad fellow who used simply tofollow me about. Appalling wasn't the word for it. I say, I believe I'mshocking you! Are you shocked? I'd rather you said if you are. I meanreally——"

It went onda capo, and Lily was disgusted with herself for her utterinability to silence the elder woman by any of the pungent sentencesthat she constantly formulated in her own mind, but could never bringherself to utter aloud.

She did not really believe that Doris Dickenson was in the leastsensitive, in spite of her touchiness, but the girl's footing in thehouse as semi-guest, semi-professional attendant, as well as NicholasAubray's friendship for her, made it seem extraordinarily difficult torebuke her self-sufficiency in terms trenchant enough to penetrate hersingular obtuseness of mind.

"You get on with her all right, don't you?" said Nicholas, with thesimple satisfaction of one stating a fact rather than asking a question.

"Yes," said Lily hesitatingly. The teaching inculcated in her childhoodalways made it an effort to her to speak the truth, when the truthmight possibly distress or disappoint her hearer.

But she added after a moment:

"She does talk rather too much, I think."

"Does she?" said Nicholas, in a surprised voice. "I must say I haven'tnoticed that. I always think she's rather shy."

It was quite true that Doris was nearly always rather silent whenNicholas was with Lily, although Lily did not believe that she was atall shy. She seemed, indeed, to be more nearly sulky than shy, at suchtimes.

But she always listened attentively to what Nicholas said, and glancedat him from time to time out of the corners of her small, blue-greeneyes.

One evening when Nicholas was alone with Lily he told her thatDoris had been telling him something about her life, during theirtête-à-tête dinner.

"She's had a very hard time, Lily, mind you. I think it's wonderful ithasn't made her in the least bitter, poor child."

Lily saw that Nicholas's rather facile sympathies had been roused. Shefelt vaguely surprised.

"Did she tell you about her engagement, and why it was broken off?"

"She did. I suppose she's confided it all to you, long ago?"

"No. She's mentioned several times that she was once engaged, but she'snever told me why she didn't get married."

"I daresay she's very reserved," said Nicholas. His tone betrayed aslight sense of flattery at having received a unique confidence. "Idon't know quite why she told me about it, but I suppose she saw that Iwas interested. I suppose that was it."

Lily smiled a very little.

Nicholas never made it difficult for any woman to see when he wasinterested.

"The man must have been a bit of a brute, I should fancy. He gotengaged to her while she was at this hospital place and they were to bemarried almost directly, so of course she resigned from the hospital.I fancy, though she must have worked hard there, that the surroundingswere never particularly congenial. In fact, she as good as told me thatshe only went to work so as to give her younger sisters a better timeat home. Rather plucky, eh? But of course she left when she thoughtshe was going to be married. And then what does this wretched fellowdo but get insanely jealous over some pal or other of hers, lose hishead completely, and say things that no girl could possibly overlook.She couldn't forgive him, of course, and I don't blame her. Life with ajealous husband—and for a girl like that—Good Lord!"

"It's odd she should be so attractive," said Lily. "She isn't pretty."

"No—no, I suppose not. But she's taking, don't you think? Somethingvery arresting about her, altogether. I must say, I can't help admiringher spirit. She's told you how they worked them at that place, Isuppose?"

"The hospital? Yes."

"For a girl brought up, I suppose, very much as you were yourself,"said Nicholas, "it must have taken some spirit to stick it out. Shewas telling me that there wasn't a soul there of her own class,practically, for her to speak to, and she used to cry from sheerloneliness, sometimes. I can't imagine her crying, somehow."

"Neither can I," said Lily drily.

Something in the quality of the silence that followed did not pleaseher, and she went on speaking hastily:

"But she seems to have made a few friends all the same, Nicholas. Atleast she's always telling me of the young men who ran after her."

"I daresay," said Nicholas curtly.

The lengthening of his face indicated that his enthusiasm had beensomewhat dashed, and Lily, characteristically, at once sought to effacethe unsympathetic colouring that she had purposely given to her words."I rather wonder she hasn't married. She could have done so easily, Ishould think."

"Oh, of course she could."

The tone in which he spoke was once more confident and enthusiastic.

"Old Dickenson told me something about that. He said she wasthe sort of girl men used to look at while she was still in thenursery—although both her sisters are prettier—in fact, as you say,this one isn't exactly good-looking, I suppose. I don't know what it isabout her—magnetism, I suppose. Certainly she's attractive. Don't youthink so?"

"She's more so to men than to women, I should imagine."

"Perhaps. You women have odd ideas about one another's merits, eh?" Helaughed heartily and was still laughing when Doris came into the room.

Nicholas rose and placed a chair for her.

"We were just talking about you. I was telling my wife something aboutthe stiff upper lip you've shown all along. I can tell you," saidNicholas significantly, "she admires pluck as much as I do. Eh, Lily?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Doris.

She was taciturn in the presence of Nicholas and his warm, friendlyadmiration.

"We both want you to feel that you've got real pals in us—peoplethat you can always turn to, you know. I don't want to think of yourgoing through any more of those lonely times that you were telling meabout——"

"It's awfully sweet of you both," said Doris slowly. She looked atNicholas as she spoke.

His small, tawny eyes expressed all the candid, unsubtle simplicity ofhis spirit. A hundred times he had looked at Lily herself with justsuch open, uncritical admiration.

"I think you've a great deal to be proud of, you know," said Nicholas."There must have been times when you felt pretty nearly down and out,eh?" And Doris again replied:

"Oh, I don't know."

"But I do," said Nicholas, nodding triumphantly.

Lily wondered, with a certain impatience, why Doris did not indulge inone of those lengthy expositions of her own grievances against life,and the hospital, and her father, with which she had so often weariedher patient.

Was she really sufficiently intelligent to realize how very much moreeffective was this uneloquent refusal to dwell upon the hardships thatNicholas was so evidently ready to accept at her own valuation?

Next morning, however, when the two were again alone together, Doriswas quite as voluble as ever and Lily quite as profoundly fatigued byher.

"I shall soon be strong enough to get up," said Lily. "I don't want tolie here longer than I need."

"You're like me," Miss Dickenson retorted. She possessed a wonderfulpower of extracting a personal application from apparently anything inthe world. "That's just like me. I never can bear to give in. You know,sometimes I've really been on my last legs, as the saying is, and theSister or someone has noticed it, and told me to slack off a bit. ButI simply can't take things easily. I have to go on till I drop. That'sabsolutely me all over."

She leant back comfortably in an armchair as she spoke and began topolish her finger-nails with the palm of her hand—a favourite exercise.

"I was so awfully surprised at your not manicuring, Mrs. Aubray. It wasone of the first things I noticed about you. You know, I'm afraid Ialways notice people's hands. It's the first thing I look at, almost.I suppose I sort of judge people by that. I sort of can't help it. Ialways look first of all at their hands."

Lily wondered, with the acrimony born of weariness, why this well-wornboast should almost invariably emanate from those least capable of anyintelligent observation whatsoever.

She ignored Miss Dickenson's claim to perspicacity altogether, andreplied to her earlier remark.

"I hope you don't feel that you have to go on till you drop, here. It'sthe last thing I should wish, and besides there's nothing but weaknessthe matter with me. I shall be getting up very soon—I hope before myaunt comes."

"Oh, yes, your aunt is coming. Now, when I'm ill, I never have anyof my relations near me—not my sisters or anyone. It isn't that Idon't think they'd come, you know, but I simply couldn't ask them. Aweird sort of pride, I suppose. I really am a weird sort of personaltogether, you know."

Lily closed her eyes.

"What makes you put that face on—it makes you lookso weird. Whatwere you asking about—oh, yes—me when I'm ill. It's too funny, youknow. I go on and on long after other people would have let themselvescollapse, and then, when I do have to give in, of course I'm mostfrightfully bad. I'm a fearfully bad patient, too, because I'm alwaysdown on the nurse. I suppose it's because I know so well how nursingought to be done."

"Oh," said Lily.

She remained speechless, even after Miss Dickenson had three timesasked what made her say it like that.

"It sounded so weird," remarked Doris distrustfully, in conclusion.

But the sense of irony that occasionally sustained Lily was not alwaysat her command. She regained her strength very slowly, and had no greatdesire to be well again.

Her relations with Nicholas were in a curiously fluid state. Hispresence, after enduring that of Doris Dickenson all day, alwaysbrought to her a rush of relief and pleasure, and often hiscompanionship appeared to her as almost a perfect thing. The revulsionof feeling was proportionately painful when words of his, casuallyand kindly spoken, from time to time forced upon her an unwelcomerealization of the gulf that mentally separated them.

They would never agree about people.

Lily, shamefacedly admitting the immense importance to herself of thepersonal equation in life, yet tried to blame herself for regarding thedifference between them as being an important one. Sometimes, even, inher weakness and youthfulness, she tried to deny its existence.

Her husband's cult for Doris Dickenson, however, Lily unaffectedlywelcomed. Incomprehensible though it seemed to her that MissDickenson's company should afford aught but weariness to anybody, shewas glad that Nicholas should not have a solitary breakfast and dinner.

He always disliked being alone, unless when he was busy, and Lily feltvaguely that her prolonged stay upstairs would be partly compensatedfor if she could provide other companionship for him.

She was glad to remember that Nicholas had always liked Aunt Clo.

When Miss Stellenthorpe's visit became due, Lily said to her husband:

"Am I to say anything to Miss Dickenson about going away?"

"Why?" said Nicholas, looking astounded.

"I thought she was only staying till Aunt Clo arrived; and Aunt Clo willbe here to-morrow."

"Oh well—it isn't a sort of Box and Cox arrangement, is it? There'splenty of room for them both. Just as you like, my dear, of course—butyour aunt might feel freer if you still had your regular nurse at yourbeck and call. Besides, she's a nice girl—a nice girl, and a pluckyone. You'd be sorry to lose her."

To the daughter of Philip and Eleanor Stellenthorpe it was almost animpossibility to cut across that kind, well-pleased statement with awounding contradiction.

Lily's spirit sought the familiar refuge of the weak, a feeble andunconvinced optimism. "Perhaps Doris will go of herself, when Aunt Clois here."

To a certain extent, the half-hearted prediction was verified, althoughthe eventual departure of Doris Dickenson was not, perhaps, entirely amatter of free-will.

"Bambina!" said Miss Stellenthorpe, less than a week after herarrival, with even more than her habitual emphasis of diction."Bambina mia! How can this be?"

"What?"

"Thiscanaglia!" said Miss Stellenthorpe, snapping her finger andthumb and becoming several degrees more cosmopolitan than usual.

"But who—what—je vous le demande—who is this Dickenson ...quevient-elle-faire dans cette galère?Ecco! My Lily!Mais c'estrigolo, voyons!"

It was always a little difficult to be adequate when replying to AuntClo.

"She is looking after me professionally—she's been properly trained."

"Ahimé!" Aunt Clo sighed gustily, her eyes upturned to Heaven.

"I don't like her," Lily confessed. "She tires me very much; she talkssuch a lot, and really what she says is never worth hearing."

There was actual relief in putting into words the thoughts that she hadso often suppressed in her own mind.

"Basta! I understand, my child. Enough. You lie there, likea trampled flower, with this thing—this inferior, third-ratemachine—rattling above you! But of what is Nicholas,ce bonNicholas—of what is he thinking?"

"He arranged it on purpose for me—he was thinking of me," said Lilyeagerly. "He thought she would be more of a companion than just anordinary nurse. We know her family, and she was to be here more orless as a friend."

"Et patati et patata," said Miss Stellenthorpe scornfully. "Leavethis to me, little one. I understand the Dickenson type very well."

It appeared indeed that she did.

Sitting in Lily's room, her large and shapely legs crossed beneaththe astonishingly brief serge skirt that had temporarily replaced theblue knickerbockers of Genazzano, Miss Stellenthorpe elegantly smokeda number of cigarettes, and eyed the while, with critical penetration,Miss Doris Dickenson.

"You're like me, Miss Stellenthorpe. I'm afraid I smoke like achimney—you know, my nerves sort of want it, somehow. I always inhale,too. Everyone always says I smoke too much."

"And who is 'everyone'?" negligently enquired Miss Stellenthorpe.

Doris stared at her.

"Everyone is everyone, I suppose," she said shortly.

Aunt Clo smiled with irrepressible superiority, turning to her niece.

"But how typical, is it not, of young England? The art of definition:everyone is everyone, she supposes! Ha, ha!"

"One talks carelessly, sometimes," Lily said, strongly inclined tolaugh.

"But not at all," graciously exclaimed her aunt; "if by 'one' youallude to yourself,carina, I can assure you that it is not so. Yourvocabulary, your originality, the extent of your reading, all combineto render your conversation stimulating. How I revel in the clash ofwits! My niece and I between us must teach you the use of words, mylittle Dickenson."

Aunt Clo's little Dickenson appeared to be far from delighted at theproposition.

"How d'you mean, the use of words?" she asked curtly.

"Your vocabulary," Aunt Clo explained in a kind voice, "is that of achild, or a savage. It is, I believe, a statistical fact that certainsavage tribes use a language of only two hundred words. It suffices fortheir need of self-expression. The vocabulary of the average Englishman or woman comprises little over fifteen hundred words, in daily use.People like myself, on the other hand, sooner or later have recourseto the most recondite expressions available, in the instinctive desireto avoid thebanale. Words from other languages creep in—classicalquotations—conversation becomes an art——"

Miss Stellenthorpe waved her cigarette gracefully round her head.

"How devastating!" said Doris Dickenson in the pause that followed.

Her voice was charged with the rather laboured sneer that in theEnglish middle-classes is described as "sarcasm."

"Unhappy one!" said Aunt Clo, and groaned aloud. "What is this'devastating' that you employà tort et à travers? A senseless andmeaninglesscliché!"

She fixed a large and gleaming eye, that held undisguised horror in it,upon Doris.

Lily was conscious of a fearful joy in listening, as the many scathingcriticisms that had thronged into her own mind were thus eloquently andunrestrainedly put into words by her aunt.

The sulky face of Miss Dickenson was darkly flushed.

"I speak thus for your own good, my Dickenson," said Aunt Clo,shaking a long forefinger. "You render yourself intolerable to thewell-educated, and it is but a kindness to tell you so. Not onlyare you inexperienced, and therefore crude of outlook, but you areignorant, self-assertive, stupidly bombastic, and talkative to a degreethat——"

"Really, Miss Stellenthorpe, if you think I'm going to sit down undersuch rudeness——"

Doris's voice had risen instantly to the true virago's pitch ofshrillness.

"Silence!" said Aunt Clo. "You disturb my niece. Perform thematerial duties, my Dickenson, for which I remark that you have beenwell trained, but cease to weary us with the trivialities of yourconversation.En voilà assez, n'est-ce-pas?"

"I don't understand gibberish."

It was evident that Doris, after the manner of her kind, was recklesslyseeking after rudeness for the sake of rudeness, regardless of wit orpoint. Miss Stellenthorpe raised her handsome eyebrows in an expressionof patient despair.

"You perceive, my Lily? This girl—mal' educata indeed, as my belovedItalians say—knows neither her own language nor any other. What canyou expect of such? Deplorable, oh deplorable!"

Aunt Clo looked at Miss Dickenson and shook her head repeatedly.

"Wretched one, have you never been taught that until you have learnedthe art of listening, you are unfit to talk?L'art d'ennuyer c'estde tout dire. That art, my unhappy Dickenson, you possess to thefull. It is your only one. I come to this house—straight, I may tellyou, from unravelling the many tangled threads of another's destiny—Icome, and what do I find? What, I ask you, do I find? I find my niece,broken in body and spirit, needing the utmost cherishing, the greatestdelicacy of handling, the reticence of true sympathy—and compelledinstead to submit to your ministrations. You ask me, perhaps, to tellyou fully and freely of what those ministrations consist."

"I don't ask you," cried Doris passionately. "I don't want to know whatyou think."

"Non far niente! I shall tell you just the same," declared MissStellenthorpe with unabated spirit. "Pour moi il n'y a que lavérité. The day will yet come when you will remember my franknesswith gratitude and admiration. But even should that daynot come,my Dickenson, it matters little. The time has come for me to speak,and I shall speak. I have sat here in silence," said Aunt Clo, notaltogether truthfully, "and I have been filled with amazement that myniece should not, long ago, have said what I am saying now. Instead,with a supineness for which, candidly, I blame her, she has allowedherself to be overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, you ask me, by what? By aceaseless torrent of meaningless, ill-chosen, unmelodiouswords, myDickenson, strung together without rhyme or reason. You have but onetopic—the supremely uninteresting one of yourself. You are remindedof yourselfà tout bout de champ—worse, you insist upon remindingus of yourself. But we do not want to know about you. You are notinteresting.A-t-on jamais vu un toupet pareil! You tell us of yourviews, your habits, your trivial little experiences, as though theywere of cosmic importance. Could futility go further, I ask you? Youreply at once: No, undoubtedly not. There is yet hope for you, then."

On this optimistic pronouncement Aunt Clo met at last with theinterruption that her niece, fascinated by so much candour, had beenunable to offer.

Nicholas Aubray entered.

"Well, well," said he cheerily, "the Female Parliament sitting?"

The trivial pleasantry was received in perfect silence, and Nicholascast a sudden, shrewd glance round the room.

"What on earth——?"

"Niente!" said Aunt Clo vivaciously. "A few words,amico mio, ofcounsel to the young—the very young, I may say."

"Is that Lily?" asked her husband, with a rather puzzled smile.

"But no! Our Lily may be young in years, but in wit, in understanding,she is delightfully mature. But the little Dickenson there—sansrancune, hein, my Dickenson?"

Miss Dickenson's heavy face, from red, had become white.

She looked at Miss Stellenthorpe, with the concentrated hatred thatonly embittered vanity can engender.

"I am going to leave the house," she said thickly. "I shan't stay in ahouse where I've been insulted."

"Who has insulted you in this house?" demanded Nicholas, half smiling.

Doris made a dumb gesture indicating Miss Stellenthorpe.

"Nonsense!" said Nicholas brusquely. He put his hand on the girl's arm.

"What's all this about? You've misunderstood something. What is it?"

"Rien de rien!" declared Aunt Clo contemptuously. "For the littleDickenson's own good,mon ami, I take it upon myself to point outcertain wearisome tricks that our Lily has borne far too long, andhence comes this talk of insult.Enfantillage!"

Aunt Clo's cigarette described a parabola that dismissed the subject asbeing one of no further importance. Nicholas turned to his wife.

"Lily—of course Miss Dickenson mustn't dream of leaving us. We shouldbe most distressed——"

Lily looked at Doris.

She had neither the courage to persuade her to stay, nor to encourageher to go.

"I shan't stay," said Doris obstinately.

Nicholas frowned, looked at his wife appealingly and then at MissDickenson with evident concern.

It came to Lily, with a slight sense of shock, that Nicholas could notbe depended upon in a crisis. He was uncertain.

Doris was staring at him with smouldering eyes, and both were silent.

It was Aunt Clotilde, high-handed to the last, who carried off thesituation.

She uncrossed her amazing length of limb, rose to her feet witha swinging movement, and flicked the ash off her cigarette withconsiderable elegance of gesture.

"You have said well, my Dickenson," observed Aunt Clo. "You will remainhere no longer. Go, then; and on no account forget what I have said toyou. Speak less, eschew slang, learn to place your words correctly,avoidclichés that mean nothing, and above all, cast from your mindfor ever the delusion that the art of conversation consists in thedropping of detached pieces of information concerning yourself."

XIX

"I'm very sorry you're going, very sorry indeed," said Nicholas.

He was purposely speaking with restraint of manner.

"I couldn't stay after a row like that," said Doris candidly. "Icouldn't possibly."

The word vexed him.

"I hope there are no such things as 'rows' in my house," he said,deliberately repressive.

"Of course, I wasn't going to say anything upstairs with Mrs. Aubraystill weak as she is, but if I don't say anything, it isn't because Idon't feel. Miss Stellenthorpe was most insulting."

They stared at one another.

"I'm very sorry," said Nicholas uncomfortably.

"Please don't think that I think it's anything to do with you," saidDoris, with some formality. "You and—and Mrs. Aubray, of course—havealways been very kind, and of course, I have done my best, and I can'thelp knowing I'm a good nurse." She paused.

"Of course you are. It's made all the difference having you here."

Nicholas spoke eagerly, both from sincere conviction and from thedesire to gratify her.

"Miss Stellenthorpe didn't seem to think so. I don't know what sheknows about nursing, I'm sure, but from the way she spoke you'd thingshe was matron-in-chief and all."

Nicholas wished that Miss Dickenson had contrived to pass through herhospital training without incorporating into her being quite so manyslightly common turns of speech. The matter of Aunt Clo's accusations,whatever the manner of them, might not have been altogether withoutjustification.

"She's very artistic and highly strung, you know," he urged inextenuation of Aunt Clotilde. "She—she really is a very splendidperson, you know. I'm sorry you and she haven't hit it off."

"I'd better go upstairs and pack, I suppose," said Doris.

"Don't be in a hurry, please don't. Anyhow, one of the maids will seeto all that for you, if it's really necessary. Won't you have a talkwith Lily first?"

"I don't want to worry her. Besides, she could have stopped MissStellenthorpe saying all she did, if she'd wanted to. I don't know whatI shall do now, I'm sure."

Nicholas began to walk up and down, very much perturbed, and Dorisdropped into a chair.

"I oughtn't to be bothering you, I suppose," she said presently. "Myrotten affairs don't really matter to anybody but myself."

"Please don't say that—please don't. I simply hate to hear you say athing like that. I thought it was agreed that you were to look on us asreal pals."

His kind-heartedness seriously perturbed, he stopped in front of her.

"Don't you remember the agreement?"

"Did you really mean it? I'd be awfully glad to have you for a pal.You always strike me as being so awfully dependable and—and strong."

Nicholas, unconsciously accepting her transition from the first personplural to the third person singular, threw out his chest with the old,satisfied gesture.

"It's very nice of you to feel that. I think I am to be depended on,Miss Dickenson, where my friends are concerned, and I'm very glad youfeel that. Very glad. As for strength—well, I'm certainly not a weakman."

He laughed a little, very much pleased, as is a man who meets withreassurance upon a point about which he is sometimes secretly dubious.

"My shoulders are quite broad enough to bear your troubles as well asmy own, I think, don't you?"

"Yes, I do.Rather. But it seems a shame——"

"Why? You know I'm interested in anything that concerns you. Of courseI am."

His candid, solicitous eyes were fixed upon her opaque, unrevealinggaze.

"Thank you, awfully," said Miss Dickenson slowly. "I get a sort ofdevastating feeling, sometimes, you know."

"Tell me what you mean," Nicholas sympathetically invited her.

"Oh well, things are a bit difficult all round, you know. I can't liveat home, I simply can't. It's too devastating. That's what really mademe take up nursing—to get away from home."

"But your father is so proud of you—you should have heard him speakingof you, as I did the other day. I can assure you he quite appreciatesyour pluck and—and spirit."

"Oh, I daresay. It really isn't so much Father as my aunts and people,and my married sister, and even the two girls. They're always sort oftalkingat me."

Her voice grew angry.

"I can't have a friend, or go anywhere, or do anything, without theminterfering. My aunts are always hinting that I don't know how to takecare of myself."

"But I'm sure you do," Nicholas said gently.

"Of course! It's all old-fashioned, devastating nonsense, that's whatit is. Because men like talking to me. There isn't anythinginit—I'm not even pretty."

She scarcely made a pause, but it was not in Nicholas to refrain from ameditative interpolation: "I don't know so much about that!"

"It's quite true I've got a lot of men friends, or at least Ihad.I've given up men now, since the one I was engaged to treated me sobadly. You know, I told you about him.... When that happened I said,Thank you, that's enough for me, I said. I know what men are now, and Ishan't have anything more to do with them."

"But it's not like you to be bitter," Nicholas said, in a gentle,puzzled way.

His ear and his trained mind alike noted the futility of her speech,but his masculinity was all the while increasingly aware of that inher which, for want of a better word, he could only describe as animalmagnetism.

In her, it was extraordinarily powerful.

"Sometimes," declared Doris inconsistently, "I just think I'll marrythe next man that asks me."

The suggestion, for reasons that he did not attempt to analyze, somehowaffected Nicholas disagreeably.

"Oh, I don't think I should do that if I were you," he gravelyobjected.

"Why not? Men are all rotten, anyway—it doesn't make much odds whichof them one takes in the end."

Her cheap cynicism made Nicholas vaguely uncomfortable. He looked ather without speaking.

As though Doris, by means of some odd intuition of her own, had guessedhis disapproval, she changed her tone suddenly.

"Of course I don't really mean half I say—you mustn't think I meanit all, really you mustn't. I've known some awfully nice men—men whoreally were nice, I mean. Most of my pals have been men—not flirting,I don't mean, or anything like that. Just friends."

"I hope you're going to add another to their number," said Nicholas,smiling suddenly.

"Really?"

Her blue-green eyes, neither large nor lustrous, fixed themselves uponhis face with a sudden intensity that was somehow alluring.

"Of course, really," Nicholas declared readily.

She sketched a movement that yet was not actually one, and Nicholasfound himself ratifying his avowal of friendship with a handclasp.

"I don't want you to feel that all this makes a bit of difference," hesaid earnestly. "If you ever want a friend—well, here I am, very muchat your service. And don't you go and do anything impetuous with yourlife. I should be very, very sorry to see you make a mistake."

"Thank you," said Doris.

She added after a moment, in the low, half-sullen tone that shesometimes adopted:

"I must say, it's nice to know that somebody cares."

"Of course I care," Nicholas vigorously replied.

He released her hand with a final hearty pressure. "Now supposing Ihave a little chat with Miss Stellenthorpe, don't you think we couldput this right? I can't bear you to go away from our house like this."

"Oh, it's all right. Mrs. Aubray really is awfully much better now. Idon't think she needs me any longer. Her maid can quite well give herall the help she needs now and—I expect I've been here long enough,anyway."

From this attitude Nicholas could not move her, and indeed he had novery urgent desire to do so. It did not need Aunt Clotilde's eloquenceto inform him that Lily shared Miss Dickenson's own estimate of hervisit, and thought that she had been there long enough.

"You ought to have told me, my dear child, if you found that she wasgetting on your nerves," said Nicholas frowningly to Lily.

He was vexed that Lily had not told him, vexed that he had notperceived it for himself, vexed, indefinably, that Miss Dickensonshould have been found wanting, and vexed that she should leave thehouse under the weight of a grievance.

"I'm sorry you and Miss Dickenson didn't quite hit it off together," hesaid to Miss Stellenthorpe, with a hint of rebuke in his voice.

Aunt Clo was quite impenitent.

"The day will come," she remarked with an air of detached omniscience,"the day will come, when the little Dickenson will remember my wordswith gratitude. But at present she has a skin like a rhinoceros hide. Iassure you,cher ami, that it was necessary for me to put dots uponmy i's with her."

"That you certainly did," said Nicholas, with a certain grimness.

"Et alors?" said Miss Stellenthorpe coldly.

Nicholas had a perfectly genuine admiration for her, and would notpursue the point.

He bade Doris Dickenson farewell with renewed assurances of friendship,and on the day she left, his lantern-jawed face unconsciously grewlengthier than ever, and his voice very grave. If, subconsciously,Nicholas waited to receive comment upon these phenomena, he wasdestined to disappointment.

Miss Stellenthorpe's concern was wholly for her niece.

"The little one requires distraction," she authoritatively informedNicholas. "She is regaining strength just now, and we do not wanther to brood. Encourage her to go out, to see her friends,de sedistraire, enfin!"

Nicholas begged Lily to follow Aunt Clo's advice, and was delightedwhen Aunt Clo herself, with her usual ceremoniousness, enquired whetherhe would permit the Marchese della Torre to call upon them.

"But of course! Splendid fellow, della Torre! He'll remind us of ourcourting days, eh, Lily? What on earth does he want to ask permissionfor? Why doesn't the fellow drop in one day? I didn't even know he wasin England."

"Nor I," admitted Aunt Clotilde. "We met by chance, entirely."

"'We met 'twas in a crowd,' eh?" said Nicholas. "Well, Lily, will youwrite and ask him to dinner? I should like to do something for him."

In the weeks that followed, it might have been said with truththat Nicholas did a good deal for the Marchese della Torre. Alwayshospitable, he was whole-heartedly grateful to the young man who hadrendered his long-ago stay in Rome agreeable, and he had conceived oneof those innocent admirations for the Italian's range of erudition thatmade up part of his child-like singleness of vision.

The Marchese, more exquisitely dressed than ever, was as full ofurbanity, as well informed and as imperturbable as of old, and onlyone change was to be remarked in him. A true Italian, the merelyperfunctory admiration accorded by him to Lily Stellenthorpe as a youngand pretty English girl, and a Protestant, became lively and acutedirectly he met her as the wife of another man.

He kept his dark eyes reverently fixed upon her face, and did notventure upon personalities until he had many times seen both Lily andher husband. Then one evening at the theatre he said to her, "Youhave changed a great deal, in these few years. Although your face isas young as ever, the soul that looks out of your eyes is that of awoman—no longer that of a child."

Lily was startled, but she was too young and too disconsolate to rejectthe subtle flattery.

"I feel very old, sometimes."

She felt afraid for a moment that he might laugh at her, kindly, asNicholas would have done, from the height of the years that separatedthem. But della Torre said quickly:

"I know. People laugh a little, sometimes, when one says that, but itis only because they themselves have either never grown up at all, orhave done so insensibly. They do not know anything about the short cutto knowledge that is traversed by some of us."

"What is that short cut?" said Lily.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I am afraid, generally—suffering. But why do you ask? You know it aswell as I do—perhaps better. You are a woman, and highly strung."

"Sometimes I've wondered whether I mind things more than other peopledo," said Lily, divided between the yearning for self-expressionand the old, inculcated idea that only impersonal channels can bealtogether safe ones in conversation between a man and a woman.

The Italian raised his eyebrows.

"Of course! How can you wonder? Your capacity for emotion of every kindis written on your face. Not for all to read, certainly: but for thosewho know, to recognize. You are not happy."

"Yes, I am," said Lily quickly.

"Forgive me. You say that because you think I have no right to speakso—and perhaps I deserve it. I am sorry."

The humility in his voice caused her a moment of compunction.

"Don't be sorry," she said, smiling. "I suppose no one is exactlyhappy, once the happiness of childhood has been left behind."

"Childhood!" exclaimed the Italian scornfully. "The happiness ofchildhood! What does childhood know beyond the happiness of eating toomany sweets, the happiness of a little animal? It is only men and womenwho experience real happiness, and real suffering. You—you have neveryet been happy, and you are beginning to realize it. Is that true?"

"Yes," said Lily very low.

He betrayed no least quiver of triumph at having won the admission fromher.

"You are eternally seeking something—perhaps you hardly knowwhat ... desires and vague wishes within yourself frighten and disturbyou sometimes—then you think that you are ungrateful and discontented,and you blame yourself.Non é vero?"

"Yes, it's true," said Lily. She felt a thrill of wonder that anyoneshould understand so well. The lights in the theatre were loweredagain and the orchestra playing the opening bars of the Intermezzo ofCavalleria Rusticana, with its eternal appeal.

All the emotionalism in Lily responded to the age-old lure of the music.

She turned her head and looked at the Italian. His dark eyes were bentupon her, with a look so tender, so concerned for her sadness, that herown eyes suddenly filled with tears.

"Poverina!" he said with great simplicity. "And you English womenhave no religion! In Italy the sad ones go to the church, they burnlittle candles and think that their wishes will come true, or they findcomfort in their own virtues and resignation to the will of God. Butyou? What have you?"

He answered his own question with an eloquent gesture of negation, andLily said nothing.

But later in the evening she turned to him again, and although she wasstill silent, she knew that it needed only that slight movement to tellhis acute perceptions of her mute, half-ashamed desire for sympathy.

"You are like me. Music—poetry—but especially music," he said,watching her face; "they speak too much of the unattainable, beautiful,intimate things—the Blue Rose one dreams about."

"Is it always unattainable?" she asked wistfully.

"There is only one Blue Rose," said della Torre, and shrugged hisshoulders, smiling. Then he added: "There are other roses, though.Beautiful, dark-red ones, and flame-coloured ones. I have found manyroses, even if never the Blue one."

The next day he sent her roses, and wrote upon the card whichaccompanied them: "They are only make-believe, but I cannot find theOne that I want you to have."

Thus was established between them the language of allusion.

The Marchese made no secret to Lily of the fact that women interestedhim supremely. She thought that he was not making love to her when hetold her frankly that he had loved often.

"Love is the only thing that matters," della Torre remarked. "It hasoften been said before, it remains none the less true. A man is youngjust as long as he retains his capacity for falling in love. What doesit matter if he loves successfully or unsuccessfully? It is the hope,the fears, the despairs, that count—the meetings and partings, themisunderstandings, the beautiful pretence that the most ephemeral ofemotions will endure for ever."

"You don't think that love is lasting?"

Lily was smiling a little, but there was disappointment in her heart.

"The Blue Rose is the only one that never fades," said Giulio dellaTorre.

Lily found herself wondering very often just how much she liked him.

His intuition seemed to her to be very wonderful, and his tactunfailing. He never jarred upon her varying moods, and she knew, withinward compunction, that they varied often. She could hardly herselftell when it first become a thing of accepted implication between them,that he loved her. Divided between the conventionality that told hershe should be shocked, the common-sense conviction that his passionwould be as brief as it was likely to be fruitless, and the unavowedgratification that she derived from it, Lily, as usual, refused toenvisage the direct question.

She continued passive.

Nicholas liked the Marchese, and meaning merely a mild facetiousness,referred to him when he was not present as "our friend Spaghetti."

Miss Clotilde Stellenthorpe returned to Italy, and mysteriouslyexpressed her parting counsel to Lily.

"Aha, bambina! You will have courage, will you not? There is much tobe done, much to be suffered, by those who steer slender craft down therapids."

Lily did not seek to interpret her aunt's metaphor. It seemed to her,indeed, that she sought nothing, did nothing, said nothing. Everythingwithin herself was negative, torpid and unresisting.

"You are asleep," said Giulio della Torre half wistfully, halfreproachfully.

"Perhaps."

"Do you never mean to wake up, Princess?"

"I can't," said Lily.

She was unable to resist the temptation of interpreting herself toso sympathetic an observer. "When I was a little girl, I cared aboutthings so dreadfully. I had a younger sister whom I loved ... in thosedays everything seemed to matter so much. Now, I hardly feel anythingat all. I seem to have grown indifferent."

"Because there is nothing for you to care about." He looked at herboldly.

"I think one might break through the thorn-hedge, Princess, and wakenyou."

"No," said Lily sharply.

She thought of Nicholas.

"You forget I'm married," she said, with a childish mixture of dignityand simplicity.

The Marchese shrugged his shoulders.

"Not at all. He is very good, very kind, the husband—but so mucholder! And you were never in love with him—of that I am very certain."

"I thought I was—everyone told me I was——" she began, and addedbelatedly, "I can't discuss it with you. You must see that. Pleasedon't say any more."

But he said a great deal more, and Lily, with a certain sense offascination, felt quite unable to help listening to him.

"It was never an Englishman that you needed at all—you do not belongto the Northern races, whatever your birth may be. In temperament youare of the South. You need infinitely more than anyone here will evergive you. To the English, sentiment is ridiculous—poetry is for theinside of the poetry books only—passion is improper—and love meansmerely the domestic affections. But you—what you need, what you musthave, if you are ever to express yourself, fulfil yourself—it isromance."

He spoke with so much simplicity that Lily, answering nothing, merelylooked up at him with amazed recognition of the truth in his words. Heunderstood, as Nicholas would never understand, but she knew that shedid not want him to make love to her. When the things that he said toher made her heart beat faster she wondered why she was all the time socertain that she did not love him.

He made love openly to her, with a suddenness and a fervour thattotally disconcerted her.

"But may I not tell you that I adore you?" he asked piteously. "Youhave never been loved as you should be loved, most Beautiful. Let meshow you."

Lily's sense of her own invulnerability was strong, even if it wasalso unconsciously wistful. She let Giulio della Torre "show her" inthe words that came to him so readily and so eloquently, but when hetook her hand, or rather, snatched at it with his own slender, olivefingers, she had a sudden and purely instinctive movement of recoil.

"Oh, don't!"

He flushed angrily. "What is the matter? Why may I not touch your hand?"

"I don't like it," said Lily simply.

He stared at her for a moment, amazement and mortified vanitystruggling together in his face. Suddenly, a true Latin, he burst intoa rueful laugh at his own discomfiture.

"I believe you mean it! But then you really are as cold—as white—asyour own name-flower! You don't know what it is—to care?"

"But," said Lily, herself confused, "you always said that Ididn't—that I never——"

"One says these things! But I did not know it was so literally true——"

"Forgive me," he added very gently. "You are still only a child, afterall."

Lily justified his words better than she realized, by flushingdeeply with vexation. She had thought that he understood her, buthis understanding had been only the first move in the game, and sherealized, with something nearly allied to disappointment, that theItalian was not the man to rouse her to any appreciation of subsequentmoves.

"It's just—not," she thought, and involuntarily the words addedthemselves—"like Nicholas. He's—just not."

She was slightly relieved, upon the whole, when della Torre bade her awhimsical farewell.

"I still think that I could have taught you something, had you beenwilling to learn—but you are afraid. You will learn not to be afraidof life, some day, and then——"

He made an expressive gesture.

"Am I afraid of life?" she said, rather surprised. "Yes, I thinkperhaps I am. I think I have always been taught to be afraid of it."

"And I, I wanted to teach you to forget everything that you have beentaught! But it is never the teaching that matters—only the teacher.You know what they say?"

He paused a moment dramatically, looking at her and smiling.

"C'est le ton qui fait la musique."

Lily remembered the words very often, after Giulio della Torre hadgone.

"Did you give our friend Spaghetti his marching orders?" Nicholasmade enquiry of her, his eyebrows raised in a significantly humorousexpression.

"I don't know that I did, exactly. He gave them to himself, I think."

"I thought he seemed a bit infatuated," said Nicholas complacently.

"Would you be angry if I told you that I—I did encourage him a littlebit?"

Nicholas roared with laughter.

His mirth was so spontaneous and so ludicrously inapposite to Lily'sown half-formed intention of making as sensational a confession as themildness of the facts allowed, that she could not help laughing withhim.

"But, Nicholas, I really am ashamed."

"Why, darling?"

He put his arm round her waist.

"Because one evening he—he told me I wasn't happy and I said it wastrue."

It was that which had weighed upon her, with its implication of herhusband's inadequacy. The fact that she had allowed the Marchese totell her that he loved her, appeared to her to be relatively of noimportance.

"You shouldn't tell fibs," said Nicholas serenely.

Lily was silent from sheer disconcertment.

"What are you downcast about?" he asked affectionately. "I've been sodisgustingly busy lately, I haven't had any talks with my little wife.That fellow didn't worry you, did he?"

"Not in himself," Lily said confusedly, making an effort to give herreal thoughts to her husband.

She was not surprised when he failed to follow her bungling attempt.

"Not in himself, eh? Well, he's a splendid fellow, della Torre, full ofbrains, and I don't blame him if he got a little bit above his boots,eh?"

She had scarcely ever heard Nicholas say a word in condemnation ofanyone, and although the thought touched her, she was also impatient ofhis lack of discrimination.

"Nicholas, it was partly my own fault, that the Marchese thought that Ishould like him to make love to me a little bit."

"Was it, by Jove!" Nicholas refused to take the matter at all seriously.

"You know, you're a very fascinating little person, my dear. Youmustn't be surprised if inflammable young foreigners lose their headsfrom time to time. And you mustn't let it distress you, either. I can'thave you looking worried."

It was so evident that his whole solicitude was for herself alone, thatLily felt a sudden rush of passionate gratitude and affection towardshim.

"Oh, Nicholas, how good you are to me!"

She raised her lips to his.

The disappointment that marriage had brought to her receded at suchmoments.

She ceased to try to wrench from her relation with Nicholas a suprememeaning which it could never hold.

She was content to feel his love for her, momentarily forgetting torebel at the poverty of the response that it awakened in herself,content to know that he was content, and curiously relieved because shecould sincerely assure herself that she loved her husband.

XX

No dramatic crisis came to break down the endless monotony of Lily'sdissatisfaction as time went on. But she envisaged the possibility ofone.

"Supposing I meet the man I could have loved—supposing Ido lovehim?"

The specious echo of words that might have been spoken by her father,by Miss Melody, by any of those who had stood for wisdom to herchildhood, followed on the thought.

"Why meet trouble halfway?... How weak to torture oneself aboutsomething which may never happen ... crossing bridges before one comesto them...."

Something in the last phrase awoke a long-dormant memory.

They had said that to her, long ago—the new metaphor leaving a littlepicture on her plastic, childish mind—in the old days when she hadbeen afraid, because the east wind would give Vonnie earache.

They had said that it was naughty and ungrateful to run and meettrouble halfway. Of course Vonnie wouldn't get earache. And Vonnie hadgone out into the east wind, and had got earache. The agony of thosenights of silent strain was upon Lily once more as she remembered.

Illumination came to her.

They had bluffed her into accepting those old catchwords then, but wasshe of her own free-will to be bound by them now?

"Don't put things into words—don't let imagination run away withyou. Beware of imagination. It's morbid to dwell upon what may neverhappen."

Shove it all out of sight! Bury it without looking at it! Embark uponadventure by the line of least resistance!

And then, when that which was buried rises to confront you, in stark,unescapable reality, then, realize that your defences are not ready,that an emergency is upon you with which you have deliberately unfittedyourself to cope, that Truth, your only weapon, you have long ago castfrom you at the bidding of those who read its name Morbidity.

But she was dimly aware that, as submission had blinded her once, sobitterness obscured her vision now.

The old, inculcated instinct for seeking advice beset her often, butshe decided it in the realization that no glib outside verdict couldnow carry weight with her.

Half enviously, half mockingly, she thought of the old literaryconvention that, in a time of mental crisis, some chance encounter,some wisdom met almost at random, should provide the unforgettable wordholding the key of solution.

"She never saw the lame cobbler again, but his words had made all lifelook different henceforward...."

There were no such fortuitous sign-posts in real life, Lily decided.

More than one adviser, nevertheless, sought her unasked.

"All is not well with you, my Lily."

Aunt Clo's penetrating gaze had underlined her words.

"Shall I tell you, little one, that I foresaw this some time ago?Moiaussi, j'ai passé par là. There comes a day, is it not so?"

"What?" asked Lily, mildly bewildered.

"Jeunesse, jeunesse!" said Aunt Clo, quite in her old way. "Youthcalls to youth, my Lily, as well I know. And watching you, I havere-lived my own past. You know something of the story of my past. Donot, I beseech you, little one—do not let me live to see tragedyrepeat itself."

"Tell me what you mean, Aunt Clo."

"Lily, Lily! Fencing is unworthy of you—utterly unworthy of us both."

"I want to know what you think," said Lily wearily.

"Think!" repeated Aunt Clo solemnly. "Whatcan I think?"

Her niece was utterly unable to find a reply to the portentousconundrum.

Miss Stellenthorpe put one hand upon Lily's shoulder and plunged along, deep look into her eyes.

Then she sank into a seat and allowed the saddest of smiles to dawnupon her lips. She shook her head slowly from side to side. "Who am I,that you should turn to me, my dear? I, who made such a shipwreck of myyouth? But O, little one! How lightly I should count the cost, if it isto save you from the same folly, from the same life-time of regret!"

Had Aunt Clotilde really some message to interpret?

Lily looked at her with a faint stirring of hope. Miss Stellenthorpe'sfine eyes were glowing.

"Lose all, and you shall find all!" she declared. "The old Prophetsknew much, my Lily. Listen, child. It will cost you, to break throughthe old traditions—who knows it better than I? But you must havecourage. You must break free. Your soul asks it of you. And thatother—your rightful mate—how can he fulfil himself without you?"

Lily was paralyzed. How difficult, how impossible to stop Aunt Clo inmid-career with the startling commonplace: "There is no other."

"But it's not—there's no one who——"

"Bambina—ah, how readily the old name comes! Leave subterfuges tosmaller souls.Leave them, I say!"

Aunt Clo's voice rose in a crescendo of impassioned admonishment.

"I do not ask for names—for details. I may perhaps have hoped fora fuller, freer response from you—but I understand.Je comprendstout—je ne suis pas comme les autres, moi qui vous parle. Butwhatever the circumstances, whatever the difficulties, you must findcourage to disregard them. It is your soul that is at stake, my Lily.And after all—what are you risking? The good opinion of conventionalmoralists!"

Aunt Clo's middle finger met her thumb in a resonant snap of uttercontempt for all conventional moralists.

"What do they know of such needs as ours? I say ours advisedly, myLily. You know the outline of my life's story. There was only oneman—though many have desired me—but only one man who supremelymattered. And he was bound, even as you are. And she to whom he wasbound—she who had called herself my friend—she betrayed us both. Sherefused him his freedom."

Aunt Clo bowed her head, as though unwilling to face Lily's receptionof such a climax.

"You ask me," said Miss Stellenthorpe, after a slight silence whichneither had broken, "you ask me why, swept off our feet as we were, heand I did not take the law into our own hands. My reply to you is thatI had to suffer the double bitterness ofher betrayal, and ofhis.For he failed me—his courage was less than mine. Although I urged himto take the strong way, the high line, he did not do so. He was afraid.I cast pride to the winds, my Lily—I held back nothing. But thatother—she tempted him with specious pleadings of her 'rights,' and hewas weak. I do not seek to deny it now. He took the coward's refuge."

Miss Stellenthorpe gazed sombrely at her niece.

"Flight. With her."

There was a solemn silence.

"But it was not to speak of myself that I came,carina, but of you.Do not wreck your life, little one, for a scruple. You have courage,n'est-ce-pas? It needs but one mighty effort to shake off the oldsuperstitions—and after that Love, Freedom, Self-expression! Are thesenot worth a sacrifice?"

"Yes—if——"

"Go to your lover!" said Aunt Clo with a clarion call. "I am not afraidto say it," and indeed she was not. "Go to your lover."

It was more than difficult to undeceive Aunt Clo. Nor, when she finallytook her departure, did Lily feel certain that Miss Stellenthorpe hadrelinquished all hope of her niece's ultimate defiance of the seventhcommandment.

It gave her a faint sense of ironical amusement to discover that herfather's thoughts had taken the same direction as had Aunt Clo's,inspiring in him diametrically opposite emotions.

Lily went to stay with him, and was glad that she looked ill enough tojustify her leaving London whilst Nicholas was obliged to remain there.

"I'm sorry Nicholas couldn't get away," said Philip rather nervously."It's very good of him to spare you. You're not looking quite as wellas you generally do, my child."

This was Philip's nearest approach to an uncomplimentary statement.

"I'm tired," Lily said.

"Come, come, come," said Philip.

The bracing admonition was marred by his uncertain tone, and theanxious glances that he kept casting towards his daughter.

At last he said to her:

"My little pet, you're not fretting about anything, are you? I'm sorryto see you so—so pale."

Something in the kind, familiar, anxious tone stirred Lily suddenly.She began to cry.

"Poor little child!" said Philip.

He seemed less surprised than Lily had expected him to be, at hersudden weakness, and stroked her hair with hands that trembled a little.

"Tell me all about it," he suggested.

Lily had never thought it possible that she should put her vaguedisappointment and weariness into words, least of all to her father.Nevertheless she found herself trying to do so.

"It isn't anything—that's the worst of it. Nothing definite. OnlyNicholas—Nicholas and I—I wish I loved him more than I do—he'sdisappointed in me."

"No, no," protested Philip. "That great deprivation is worse for youthan for him—besides, my poor dear child, you're still young——"

"It isn't that," said Lily. "He was kinder than I can ever say aboutthat—after all, it isn't my fault, and besides, Imight havea child, even yet—they didn't say it was impossible. It's justourselves—Nicholas and me."

"My child!"

Philip Stellenthorpe looked thoroughly frightened. "I know there's agreat disparity of years—but you were fully aware of that when youmarried him. You were in love with him, Lily."

She made no answer.

"And he with you," said her father hurriedly. "I was deeply touched, atthe time, by the way in which he spoke of you. But, my little darling,you know that being in love, as people call it, isn't a thing thatlasts for ever. Something better comes to take its place. And thereare bound to be little frictions, in even the happiest marriages. Youmustn't let yourself exaggerate. There's been no misunderstandingbetween you, has there?"

Lily knew that by the word "misunderstanding" he meant dispute, and shesaid that there had been none.

"There, then, you see! What is there to fret about? Nicholas is devotedto you."

"I know."

"And he's your husband, my dear child. You love him."

"I am very fond of him," said Lily slowly. Then she added, speakingmore for the relief of words, than with any recollection of herhearer, "It's just because I'm fond of him that I'm so unhappy. I can'tgive him anything real—I've tried and tried to think that I could,and it's no use—I'm sorry because of him, and I'm sorry because ofmyself—I've missed the best there is, somehow, and I'm realizing itmore and more as I go on, and now I just feel as though I couldn't goon any more. If I wasn't fond of Nicholas, I think I should leave him."

"Don't talk like that—don't say terrible things like that. You don'tknow what they mean," Philip exclaimed in great agitation. "Don't youknow that it's a mortal sin?"

"What is?"

"To let your thoughts turn for a moment, after your solemn marriagevows, to—to any thought of—'for better for worse—till death us dopart,' and cleaving to himonly——"

"But I shan't go away. Iam fond of Nicholas. It would be much easierfor me if I weren't," said Lily.

"What do you mean?"

Lily did not seek to explain what she meant. It was scarcely clear evento herself, save that her affection for Nicholas was real of its kind,and therefore must debar her from the drastic and impetuous measuresfor which her whole undisciplined youth craved.

She remained away on one excuse after another.

Her old schoolmate, Dorothy, came home from India, and although Lilyadmired Dorothy's healthy, fair-headed, unbeautiful babies, and wentalmost daily to play with them, she would not admit that her ownchildlessness roused in her any regret.

Nor did it.

But she watched with sick envy Dorothy's eagerness for her Indian mailletters, and the tears that clouded her frank, unsentimental gaze, asshe spoke of "poor Frank"—who would not be able to afford leave for along while.

"You are lucky, Lily, to live in England with no dreadful complicationsabout having to go up to the hills, for the sake of the babies, andleave your man, sweltering away in the awful heat. And now I've got toleave Dolly behind, and go back with only Aileen, and I shan't have herafter our next leave at home, I don't suppose. Frank is so good he'dlet me stay at home with them altogether, like some wives do—but ofcourse I wouldn't."

"Do you think he needs you more than the children do?"

"Well, I do, but apart from that," said Dorothy, "I know I jolly wellcan't do withouthim!"

She laughed as she spoke, and Lily knew that she did so because she wasso much in earnest.

"I've got to finish my mail letter," said Dorothy, who had always hatedwriting letters.

Lily watched her pull out the perennial block of thin ruled paper towhich every day she added a fresh, scrawled contribution.

She herself wrote every few days to Nicholas, and in reply receivedshort letters, indited upon Club notepaper, informing her thathe was very busy, or that he had gone past their house, that theexterior painting seemed to be getting on well, that he hoped shewas feeling stronger, and would not hurry back to town just yet, themore especially as workmen were still in the house. He was always herdevoted husband.

Lily divined haste in the notes, as well as the affectionate feelingthat was part of Nicholas. She wrote and told him that Kenneth wasto come home in a week's time, and that she should like to await hisarrival. Her husband's answer was one of cordial acquiescence, and thenhe wrote no more for several days.

Lily, as usual, found Kenneth everything that she herself had neverdared to be.

He had spent most of his holidays with friends, about whom hevouchsafed the scantiest particulars to his family.

"A fellow I know," or "One of the chaps at the place where I've justbeen staying," said Kenneth, or, more non-committally still, "Somebodyor other that one came across somewhere or other."

"I should like to hear something about this visit of yours, my boy,"said Philip, in tones that unwittingly suggested a strong sense ofsuspiciousness.

"Oh, it was all right."

"So I suppose—so I suppose," Philip laughed rather nervously. "Had itnot been 'all right,' as you express it, no doubt I should have beeninformed. But we've not been told very much about your amusements, orabout your young friends themselves. Your school-fellow's father is—orrather was, a good many years ago—an acquaintance of mine, as youknow. Besides, my dear boy, I like to know something about the sort ofpeople with whom you're friendly."

Philip's voice had become rebukeful.

"Oh, they're all right," said Kenneth.

"How many brothers and sisters has Graham got?" enquired Lily hastily.

"There were two or three kids knocking about, and a girl with her hairup. She's the eldest."

"Oh, Jean Graham. I think I met her in the Park one day—rather pretty,with fair curly hair."

"Oh," said Kenneth indifferently. But the thought appeared to awakensome association. "I say, Lily, who do you know with carrotty hair?"

"I don't know. Heaps of people. Nobody in particular. What do you mean,exactly?"

"Somebody who's a friend of your old man's. At least——"

"That's not at all a nice way of talking, Kenneth," said his fathergravely. "Apologize to your sister."

"No, never mind, Father," Lily interposed.

She remembered, with curious detachment, the two little girls, Vonnieand Lily—who had always been so gentle and respectful in their speech,knowing quite well that anything else would offend the susceptibilitiesof Father and Mother most terribly.

"It's most disloyal to speak in that rude, foolish way of a nearrelation—and one who has been so kind to you, too," Philip told theboy.

"Sorry."

Kenneth's tone was so cheerfully unconcerned that Lily hurriedlybroke across the light-hearted echo of it that seemed to linger,inappropriately, in the atmosphere diffused by Philip's deep vexation.

"What were you going to tell us about? Somebody with red hair whomNicholas knows?"

"M'm."

Philip raised his eyebrows at the unceremonious mutter, and sighed, buthe uttered no spoken rebuke. Lily wondered whether he gauged the fullimperviousness of Kenneth to those silent tokens of disapproval thathad been so potent with Philip's elder children.

"A fattish girl, with red hair."

Philip looked up sharply.

"I don't know whether you mean Doris Dickenson," said Lily. "She hasred hair. She's a hospital nurse."

"That's it. I knew I'd seen her before. She looked after you when youwere ill."

"Yes, she did, but when——"

"I saw her, and old—I mean, Nicholas, too—the other day, when I wascoming through London."

"Nonsense, my dear boy," said Philip curtly. "You must have made amistake. Your brother-in-law would have told me if he'd seen you."

"He didn't see me."

"Then where were you?"

"Just going along down the street. It's all on the way to Victoriastation."

"I never gave you leave to hang about London by yourself. I told you tocome straight through, in a four-wheeled cab."

"I missed that train——"

"You never told me," exclaimed Philip in horrified tones. "Besides,what do you mean? I met you at the station here at seven o'clockmyself. How can you have missed the train?"

"I missed that slow one you wrote about, but I found there was a muchbetter one that got to the junction in time for the connection. Atleast, it really arrived five minutes after my train was supposed tostart, but I knew it would be late, just as it always is. I had heapsof time."

"You had no business to alter the arrangements that Father had made foryou, my boy."

"Sorry," said Kenneth in exactly the same cheerful, impersonal accentsthat he had used before.

"And besides, what would have happened supposing the train hadn't beenlate? You might have had to spend the night there."

Philip's tone was that of one who points out some terrible dangerbarely escaped.

Lily felt conscious of a spasm of sharp impatience. No wonder thatKenneth was reticent, even as she herself, as a child, had frequentlybeen deceitful, in the endeavour to evade Philip's portentous anxietiesand distrusts.

He was beginning now a serious exposition of the utter inability of"very young people" ever to judge what was best, and Lily felt that shemust stop him before her own exasperation made itself felt.

"But what about Nicholas, Kenneth? Why didn't you speak to him?"

Kenneth turned to her, obviously rendered loquacious by his desire tofollow her lead.

"Well, I'd really half thought of looking him up, only then I sawscaffolding and stuff outside, and I thought he wouldn't be there. ButI looked up at the windows and saw him, as it happened, staring out.And I was just going to cross the street when a taxi drew up at thedoor, and the carrotty-haired one got out, and ran up the steps likeblazes and let herself in. So then I bunked off."

"Let herself in," repeated Philip slowly, "How could she do that?"

"With a key," said Kenneth matter-of-factly. "I suppose old Nicholasdidn't want the fag of going down to answer the door, and the servantswere all away, or out, or something."

"Yes," said Lily, "the servants are all away; there's only a caretaker."

She spoke quite automatically, but her mind had instantly registeredand accepted the new situation unconsciously disclosed by Kenneth,almost without surprise. She suddenly felt as though she had found aclue to some evasive conviction that had been eluding her.

"That's why he hasn't written to me lately," she reflected calmly.

Then she became aware of her father.

"Kenneth is talking nonsense, my little Lily," he said tremulously."It's all quite—quite—quite unimportant, of course, but you mustn'tlet yourself——"

She recognized that he was torn between a terrified desire to reassureher, his own sense of shock and outrage, and the old, pathetic instinctto conceal, at all costs, from Kenneth any significance in what Kennethhad just said.

"It's all right," she said, smiling at him without any effort at all.

"What's up?" Kenneth demanded, glancing from one to the other.

"Nothing, my boy, nothing at all. Why should there be anything up, asyou call it?" said Philip, grey-faced and shaking. "Only I don't likeyou to—to tell foolish stories like that."

"But why——"

"Don't argue, now, Kenneth. You know Father will never allow arguing.Now that will do, we needn't say any more about it."

Lily saw on Kenneth's young face exactly that slow awakening to anuncomfortable sense of mystery, that would presently give way toconcealed surmisings and surreptitious attempts at trapping down thetruth, that had made life a thing of perpetual furtiveness to her ownchildhood.

She felt so strong a nervous impulse to speak the rending, shatteringtruth aloud that it came as a sharp relief to see Kenneth, after asuspicious stare at his father, get up and leave the room.

Lily gave Philip no time for the evasions that he was obviously andpiteously seeking in his own mind.

"It's all right." She strangely found the words of reassurance on herlips again.

"I know Nicholas. I think he probably has been—unfaithful—with thisgirl. But it's a sort of passing madness—you mustn't think he's likethat really."

"Lily—Lily, my poor child. But we mustn't rush at conclusions, my poordarling. I can question Kenneth quietly, later on—without letting himrealize anything, of course."

"No, no. I'm going partly on intuition, Father."

"But had you suspected before, then?"

"Oh no. I knew the girl was—well, a flirt, to put it mildly, and ofcourse I knew that Nicholas admired her. But he's never even seen hersince my illness, ages ago."

"How can you tell that, my poor child—what do you know of thesethings? This business must be tackled by a man. Shall I go up to townat once?"

"I don't think so."

Hard-won certainties, that Lily had scarcely known herself to possess,rallied round her. Her own inner convictions crystallised intodecisive speech, gained strength every moment.

"No. It isn't a question for that sort of thing at all—I mean scenesand interviews and recriminations. I shall have to tell Nicholas that Iknow, and then—then I suppose we shall talk it all over, and see whatought to be done—if anything."

"You don't realize," groaned Philip. "My poor little inexperiencedchild, you must be guided by me. It may not be as bad as we think."

Lily thought for a moment and then found herself speaking with adecision that surprised herself.

"This is something that I must decide for myself. You can't help me.Nobody can, except Nicholas himself. I should like him to come downhere, please."

"You would rather that than let me take you up to London? But are yousure that he will come?"

"Quite sure," said Lily.

In her own mind, she was thinking that very likely Nicholas would writeand ask her to come home, before she had even time to send her summonsto him. He wasn't deceiving her, "leading a double life," as theconventions of fiction and the drama.

It had all been a sort of accident, probably, Lily reflected. Almostcertainly Nicholas, like all weak natures, would feel the instant needof salving his own sense of degradation by making a confession.

Philip was groaning.

"If you had only been more open with me the other day! I had no ideathings had gone so far—I thought it was a vague, passing discontent,that meant nothing. But you must have realized even then that he waswronging you in some such terrible way. I could never have believedit, never. However, we mustn't meet trouble halfway, I suppose."

He sighed heavily.

"My poor child, there is at least a remedy open to you, if things areas we fear—though God forbid it should ever come to that."

"What?" asked Lily.

"You can claim your freedom," said her father very low. "There isonecause for which the marriage tie may be dissolved, in the eyes of God."

Lily realized with a shock of astonishment that here was an aspect ofthe case which actually had not presented itself to her mind.

Divorce.

A second chance! The words flashed through her mind, opening up anillimitable vista of freedom, a sudden, unlooked-for way of escapefrom that which had appeared unescapable. She had longed wildly andhopelessly for a miracle that would obliterate the years that hadelapsed since her marriage to Nicholas Aubray.

Against her own sense of conventional decorum, against her father'sshocked unhappiness, relief sprang to life within her at the thoughtthat the miracle might yet take place, the writing of the years mightbe erased, the irrevocable revoked.

XXI

A certain grave, curt manner and lengthening of face had always beenhalf unconsciously displayed by Nicholas when perturbed or out oftemper.

Lily, latterly sharply critical, had interpreted such signs into adesire to be questioned. She half expected to see them now, and at theanticipation a most inappropriately trivial irritation possessed her.

Instead, Nicholas faced her with pitiful, tired eyes and a haggard face.

"Do you know, Lily, or have I got to tell you?" he asked her instantly.

And, also instantly, she replied:

"I know already."

"Thank God for that. I thought perhaps you did, when I got yourtelegram asking me to come."

"Should you have told me?"

"Yes. I couldn't have met you again and not told you. It was only aquestion of when." He looked at her piteously. "But, Lily, are you sureyou understand? How do you know—what is it you've heard?"

"Kenneth saw her—Doris—let herself into the house, and he saw you atone of the windows. He told me almost by chance—without understanding.Father was there. But it wasn't so much what he said—that didn'tamount to much. It was just that I knew it was true—I wasn't exactlysurprised."

"But it all happened within the last week. Darling, I've been a hound,and God knows how I hate myself, but I've not been deceiving you. It'sover, already—was over before your telegram ever reached me."

"It was a sort of passing madness, I suppose," Lily said, using thewords that she had used to Philip.

Nicholas seized upon them eagerly.

"That's exactly what it was. And look here, Lily—at the cost ofsounding like a cad, I'm going to tell you straight; it hasn't hurtDoris. You're not to think of her as a girl that I've betrayed. I'vebeen a brute—but it's to you, not to her. Doris is—well, I wasn't thefirst—not by a long way."

"I didn't know—I didn't like her—but I didn't think she was thatsort."

Nicholas shrugged his shoulders.

"Then you aren't in love with her?"

"Good God, no!"

He came and knelt beside her.

"Lily, it's you I love, my darling, my little wife. I don't know ifa woman can understand how these things happen.... We haven't beenhappy together lately and I was lonely and down on my luck. I met herby chance, and she asked me to take her to tea somewhere, and she'sattractive, you know, in her way. I took her to a theatre the samenight—but I swear to you that I never thought of anything but having acheery evening at a deadly dull time of year in London. But then—well,then I suppose I saw that she was for it, and I lost my head. I droveher home in a taxi, and when we got to her place she—she didn't wantto get out. She said she'd see me to the Club, instead—I suppose Iknew what she was up to, then. She's living at some Mansions or other,and she knew our place was more or less shut up. Anyway, we went there,and not to the Club. The old woman had left the drinks and things out,as she did every night before going off home, and the house was empty.It seemed safe enough, from the point of view of discovery. Heavenknows how she got the latch-key—I suppose she took it. She telephonedme next day at the Club that she was coming to bring it back to me—shehadn't the wit to know that I hated her like hell by that time andnever wanted to go near her again. Though it was myself I ought to havehated—and did, too. Well, I thought if she was bent on coming, I'd lether come, and show her that it was all over, and that I knew I'd beena cad. I never thought of the little fool letting herself in like thatwith the wretched key—though I'd have laid a thousand to one againstthe chance of anyone spotting her who knew either of us. It was themost extraordinary chance——"

"You didn't see Kenneth?"

"No."

"What made you ask if I knew?"

"I'd a sort of feeling you must know. In fact, I rather felt as ifeverybody must know—sort of branded. I couldn't write to you, or doanything. I knew I should have to tell you. Lily, do you think you canever forgive me?"

"Oh, yes," said Lily, surprised.

"You angel! You little saint!" With an exuberant gesture he put his armround her, and she made an instinctive movement of recoil.

"But Nicholas, wait. I never thought of forgiving or not forgiving,because I don't feel angry, but you know, we—we could——"

He stared at her incredulously.

"Father said that I could divorce you, and I suppose it's true. Itcould be arranged somehow."

"Your father! But this is a matter that concerns only our two selves.Besides, Lily, you don't know what you're saying. Divorce is not athing to be spoken of like that—lightly. It's a frightful thing tothink of."

For a moment the old inclination to accept the values of another besether. Then she spoke steadily.

"Divorce would set us free to begin again. You've given me adequategrounds, Nicholas, after all. Tell me honestly—would a divorce,undefended—I suppose you wouldn't defend the case?—would it hurt yourcareer?"

Nicholas stood up again and looked down at her very grimly.

"It would do you quite as much harm as it would me, my dear. A womanwho's been through the Divorce Court, even if she's perfectly innocent,is looked upon askance by many people. But I don't believe you knowwhat you're talking about. It's an insane suggestion. It could be done,no doubt with a certain amount of collusion, but you've no idea of allthat it would entail."

"Perhaps," Lily said slowly, "perhaps, Nicholas, I think that it wouldbe worth while, if it would give us both a chance of beginning again."

Nicholas looked at her with eyes that, from incredulous, became slowlyagonized.

"We can," he said, "I suppose it would be possible. But I—I thoughtyou loved me."

Quite suddenly, he was crying like a child that is forced to realizethe infliction of some bitter, almost incredible disappointment.

"Don't you care for me at all, Lily? Has it made you hate me? Don'tyou realize that I was mad and wicked and a fool; but it was you Icared for, all the time? I thought you understood."

"Nicholas!"

She was touched by him as she had never been before. "Don't—don't! Ido understand, I think."

"You were away—and things between us haven't been very happy lately.I don't want to make excuses, Lily, but can't you see a little how ithappened?"

"Yes. Oh, Nicholas, the way these things happen—the way everythinghappens—always out of something else——"

She stopped, unable to express the fullness of her crowding thoughts.

"This—in itself," she said at last timidly, "is only an episode.But all the things that have been leading up to it, Nicholas—thedisappointment I've been to you——"

"Never, my darling."

Confronted by his loyally-meant denial of fact, Lily felt helpless.

"Nicholas," she said at last. "If I spoke just now of a desperateremedy, it's because I've been feeling desperate. I really mean it,quite literally. It's not just a word."

His mouth twitched a little.

"My dearest child, you've only known that there was anything tobe desperateabout for the last twenty-four hours. Heaven knowsI don't want to minimize the unspeakable thing I've done, butstill—desperation—when you say yourself that it's an episode,merely——"

"You don't understand, Nicholas. I've been in despair for longer thanI can tell you. This affair is nothing—a sin of the body. If it's awrong done to me, and I suppose in a way it is—then I forgive you—ofcourse I do. Honestly, it doesn't seem to me to matter much—and asyou said just now, I'd left you alone, and we hadn't been of much useto one another. I think it was partly my fault, that it happened atall."

"My darling child, you can talk generously and frankly like that, andyet you speak of divorce!"

There was the impatience in his voice that had so often led her hastilyto disavow her own views.

"Don't you see how utterly illogical you're being?"

She shook her head.

"You haven't understood. You think I just used the word divorce as asort of threat, to show that I knew what a serious wrong you'd doneme—that I didn't mean it, or didn't understand what such a step reallymeans. But Nicholas, I'll be honest with you—at last, I'll be honest.I've thought of divorce before—I've thought of death—of runningaway—ofanything that would enable us to begin again. This thingthat's happened may provide the means."

"But then you've hated me?"

His voice held utter bewilderment and incredulity.

"No!" cried Lily passionately.

She found that she was crying.

"I don't hate you, Nicholas. How could I? I'm fond of you, that'sjust it. I ought never to have married you—it wasn't fair. But oh,Nicholas, Iam fond of you!"

The hard lucidity of utterance with which she had confronted him amoment earlier had deserted her. She was crying uncontrollably.

"Whichever way we turn, it all seems hopeless. I can't help makingyou unhappy—Iam fond of you, Nicholas; oh, Nicholas—can't youunderstand?"

They clung together, and both were weeping.

"Forgive me, my poor darling," he reiterated helplessly.

"No, no—it's for you to forgive me, Nicholas. This thing—this littlething that's happened between you and Doris—it's nothing, I don't carewhat anybody says—it's not a real thing, and it doesn't matter. It'sonly pretence if I say it does."

"Lily, don't leave me. I can't do without you. Forgive me! Don't—don'tfail me!"

Her pity and affection tore at her. She wanted to cry to him that shewould never fail him, that no forgiveness was needed between them,that they would begin life together again. The impulse of recklessgenerosity rose to blot out the relentless unalterability of truth.

Every carefully inculcated falsity of upbringing strove against her,every easy sentimentality sought to stifle sincerity of thought.

"Let me wait—don't make me say anything now," she besought him. "Iought to think—I want to think, before we settle anything. Give metime, Nicholas."

He was obviously puzzled and she knew that he thought her forgivenessof him to be still in the balance.

"But you'll tell me soon, Lily?" he said wistfully. "Of course you havea right morally to claim this—this terrible penalty, and I would makeit as easy as I could for you, dear—you know I'd do that. But youwon't—you couldn't. Talk to your father, darling. He'll help you."

But Lily talked to no one.

She had taken advice once before. This time, she sought to confront herown issues alone.

Freedom. This might mean freedom.

She had longed, with the frantic desire of hopelessness, to beginagain. And Nicholas himself had provided her with a door of escape. Alegitimate exit.

Her thoughts roamed free and disconnected.

Freedom to begin again! Who knew what life might yet hold, with thegain of bitter and profound experience behind her, and the potent,incalculable fact of a freed spirit before her?

She had learnt honesty at last, and at last the gaze of her soul wassteady.

"The very beginning of it all, when they made me believe myself in lovewith Nicholas, and I hadn't the courage to own to myself that I wasn't!Or perhaps it goes further back even than that, back to the time whenVonnie and I were little. Vonnie, my Vonnie, shall I ever love anyoneagain? Vonnie knew the truth about values; she knew what mattered toher and what didn't. Perhaps I did too—I think I did when we werelittle, but afterwards I took my values ready-made. One can't do that.Humbug brings its own penalty—my life since I've grown up here hasbeen just that—Humbug. Yes, and long before I was grown-up, too."

Wandering from the bewilderment of her own life, Lily thought of theproblem of education.

Wherein lay the failure of one generation to render enduring help toanother?

"It isn't love—the lack of it. They do love—so do we. Is it theold, possessive idea? Children belonging to their parents? They don'tbelong. Each soul belongs to itself—I'm certain of that. The parentshave responsibility, at first, yes—they brought one into the world fortheir own pleasure, or because they thought it right, or because theycouldn't help it. They have to keep their children alive—to do thebest they can for them—to tell them the truth as far as they know it.And that's what they don't do. They tell the children what they thinkis good for them to know.... They arrogate to themselves the right ofclaiming infallibility. And they're not infallible—they know they'renot. But they won't let the children know it. And so they evade, anddeceive, and suppress, and the children grow up and find that thereis no infallibility—but by that time they have learnt to evade, anddeceive, and suppress, themselves."

Her heart smote her.

"Even now, it hurts me to think what I know is true. My instinct isto take refuge in the old idea of loyalty. Yet I know that it's onlyanother word for sentimentality—for a wilful obscuring of facts."

Words came unsought into her mind.

"The truth shall make you free." Truth leading to Freedom. The twogifts that were withheld.

Loving their children, sacrificing often and much for them, yearningover them, parents, fearing loss to themselves, barred the road tofreedom.

They wanted the children to belong to them.

"And one can't. The gulf is always there, between the generations.To own its existence might be to bridge it. But they won't own toit—they try and teach us not to own to it. They call it by othernames—disloyalty, and ingratitude, and the arrogance of youth. Andit's none of those things, until we're taught to consider it so."

"Honour thy father and mother." Yes, but they want one to do more thanthat—to go on belonging, to take on trust the vital things thatmatter most, that only personal experience can teach. That old ideathat parents can choose the religion of their children—it's wrong,wrong all along the line. They ought to be free.

Will it ever come to that? Is it an impossibility that parents shouldexist who will one day say to a child: 'We profess such-and-such afaith. We hold it to be true, we hope that you, in time to come, willhold it to be true. But you are free. You are bound by no promises madeon your behalf in your babyhood, you are at liberty to exercise thegift of free-will of which we have never robbed you.'

"Would a child, so taught, trust the more fully for the lack of allclaim to blind obedience?"

"Obedience." She stopped upon the word. Not obedience—"because I amthe dispenser of rewards and punishments. Not 'because I am I, and tobe obeyed.' Not the appeal to the emotions: 'To please me—becauseit will grieve and disappoint me if you disobey——' Least of all,'because I say it is right to obey, and pleasing to God, and wrong todisobey, and displeasing to Him.' But perhaps, 'because the logicalconsequences of disobedience will lead to harm. Let reason andexperience, so far as you have either, help you to understand.'"

That was not the old way. Was it a better one? The difficulty ofit—the incalculable importance of it! She thought of the many who hadstriven, and of the far greater number who saw no need to strive, andheld unthinkingly to the old shibboleths.

A faint echo of Miss Melody's kind, complacent tones came to her fromthe past.

"Lily, Lily, what are all these fancies? Are children never to learnobedience without question, pray? According to you, dearie, then, musta baby cut himself with a sharp knife so as to learn by experience whyhe was forbidden to touch it? Come, come—that would never do."

Ghost of Miss Melody's laugh, floating on the air! Lily smiled,herself, very faintly.

Thereductio ad absurdum is not an argument.

"Should I have the courage, if I had children? The courage never togrudge them the experience of suffering, to let them say 'Yes' to Life?To realize, and let them realize, from the very beginning, that nocreated soul belongs to another—that each must stand alone?"

She dropped her face into her hands, shuddering—realizing something ofthat ultimate abnegation that imposes nothing, but holds all in reserve.

Would Nicholas have helped her?

She knew that he would not. Their ideals, again and again, differed.

All, all irrelevant. There were no children of his and hers, thank God!

Other thoughts of Nicholas crowded to her mind. His love for her, hisuncritical enjoyment of life, a certain child-like spirit of jovialitythat had harmonized with her own youth.

"But I ought never to have married him."

She was putting hard facts into hard words at last.

"I knew just enough, even then, to know that nothing but the best ofall would satisfy me—and for me Nicholas could never be anythingbut the second-best. Everything—except the one thing needful. Eventhen, if I'd been honest with myself, and admitted that itwas asecond-best.... But I wasn't—all this time I've tried to put into ourrelationship a value that it hasn't got. This infidelity of his...."She remembered it with a shock of surprise. "It doesn't matter, initself. But it can set me free—free to begin again, to possess myself,to eliminate pretenses. My life with Nicholas is all held together bypretenses."

There came another thought and for an instant she was tempted to sheeraway, with a tag on her lips of conventional optimism, "What's the useof thinking about what may never happen?"

Then she faced it, and deliberately recalled words spoken to her byGiulio della Torre, wise in his own generation.

"What you need—what you must have, if you are ever to fulfilyourself—it is romance.... You will learn not to be afraid of life,some day." And at the end, when he had spoken of all that she had needto be taught:

"C'est le ton qui fait la musique."

It was the teacher, not the teaching, that mattered.

"Some day, I shall love," thought Lily.

And she reflected coldly: "It is at least possible, if not probable.Am I to pretend to myself that such a thing is out of the question,because I am married? Why, I don't even know what I should do—whetherI might not leave Nicholas altogether. And break his heart—oh,Nicholas!"

She was fond of him, she knew that she would always be fond of him. Itwould be impossible to her to be ruthless where Nicholas was concerned,she thought, and next moment she told herself fiercely that heropportunity had come, that she would divorce him, and find herselffree to begin life again, alone.

It was just. Nicholas had given her just cause.

For a little while Lily thought that the conflict lay, as so often,between sincerity and sentiment.

Then illumination came to her, searing and vivid.

Was the freedom for which she looked to be based upon yet anotherartificial value? Was she to exact from Nicholas a supreme penalty forthat which had been powerless to hurt her?

Philip Stellenthorpe might say that there was one reason for whichthe tie of marriage might be set aside. Nicholas himself, piteouslybewildered, might admit technical justification for such penalization,the world might condemn Nicholas and be right in so doing by the letterof the law, but the wife of Nicholas knew that in the spirit he had notsinned against her, and that she had no right to turn against himselfhis sin of the body for her own ends.

"If I loved him I should forgive him. Not loving him, there is no realquestion of forgiveness at all. It's the old test—the applying of ageneral law to a particular case—taking one's values ready-made—theold, old humbug."

The last, comforting falsity fell from her, and she saw the ultimatepresentment of all the truth that she would ever know, in starkfinality.

She could build for herself no freedom upon a foundation of pretence.

XXII

The unendurable circumstance remains unaltered. The alteration is inthe soul that suffers.

Lily's relation with Nicholas was largely founded, as she had toldherself, upon pretence, and the rapture of complete sincerity couldnever be hers. But she told him, again and again, in reply to hisimpassioned protestations of gratitude, that she felt herself entitledto assume no attitude of forgiveness.

"It wasn't for the—the sin," she said painfully, "that I thought ofdivorce. It would only have been a pretext——"

Nicholas gazed at her as tenderly as uncomprehendingly.

"Poor darling, you've been more generous than words can say. And you dounderstand a little, Lily? It would never, never have happened if mylittle wife hadn't been away from me for such a long while."

"You do need me, Nicholas?"

"Need you? By Jove, I should think I do," cried Nicholas, in the oldbuoyant, explosive way. She knew it to be true.

Nicholas had given her his love, and it would be hers always. Hedepended upon her, he trusted her. She had given him herself, cheatedof her right to know the possibilities in herself, the possibilities inlife; cheated into accepting her values ready-made. But the gift hadbeen made.

Lily knew that never, to gratify her aching longing for the freedomthat only Truth can give, could she see herself justified in seeking toforce upon Nicholas a vision of the facts as she saw them.

By degrees that to herself were imperceptible, she put behind her theold, childish visions that had typified themselves to her under thenames of Flames and Carnations. Only her faith in that to which shepersonally relinquished all claim, remained unimpaired, and destined toendure.

For a long while bitterness tinged her thoughts of Philip.

It was he to whom the utter faith of her impressionable childhood hadbeen given, he who, thinking it love, had again and again deceived her.

It was out of the hard, smiling revolt behind which Kenneth entrenchedhimself more and more securely and triumphantly against their father,that Lily's softening came at last.

He had failed his children, but had they not failed him? Vonnie,who had died, was the child that had hurt and perplexed PhilipStellenthorpe least; the child that he had loved least. When Lily knewthat she might herself be about to have a child, the last resentmentagainst her father was slowly eliminated from her heart.

A strange certainty possessed her that this time the blossom would cometo maturity.

Of later years, she had hoped never to have a child, asking herself:

"Why should I want to bring a child into the world, for it to suffer asI suffer?"

Slowly Time had transmuted that cry into a dawning hope that becauseshe had suffered, her child might suffer less.

The little, normal, everyday things of life slipped past, and bore awaywith them the sense of crisis from Lily and Nicholas.

It was all but incredible that there had ever been a crisis.

The figures that for a little while had seemed to be only shades,peopling a dream world, became real once more.

Aunt Clo, after her fashion, reappeared abruptly from some labyrinthinetangle of lives unknown, from which her hand, and seemingly hers only,could evolve a clue.

"Ecco! my little one," said she. "I hardly thought that we shouldmeet again thus.Eheu fugaces!"

Her tone was not free from reproach.

"I am very glad that you have come," said Lily.

Her aunt's head was graciously bent in acknowledgment towards her.

"I also. There was a time, my Lily, when I thought that you might wishto claim my help—such help as my knowledge of Life enables me to give.You know, perhaps better than most, whether I grudge the spending ofmyself upon others."

Aunt Clo gave a melancholy smile at the mere supposition of anything sofar removed from fact.

"Why, you ask me, did I not come forward, did I not speak freelyand frankly, as is ever my wont?Ahimé! la vérité, pour moi, c'esttout! Why did I not cast the bulwark of my strength before so fraila fortress, one so near capitulation? I reply, Because I am proud.Yes!c'est moi qui vous le dit, child. I am deeply, intimately,passionately proud."

Aunt Clo's head sank upon her breast at the admission, but very soonshe raised it again and once more faced the world.

Her handsome face expressed a sort of joyous determination.

"Can I regret it, you ask me? No, little one!J'ai l'âme fière, it isall too true, but mine is not an ignoble pride. Rather is it a prideof race, a pride of character, that has upborne me through seas farrougher than you, I trust, will ever know. It is true, I cannot deny,that it has made me suffer, but it is through suffering that I havelearnt to be strong."

Aunt Clo paused again, and looked very strong indeed.

"Many have turned to me in their need, as you know. I do not think thatI have failed any. Indeed, no. But where confidence is not given, Icannot seek it. For I am proud, Lily. Proud and intensely reserved."

It was, as ever, a little difficult to rise to Aunt Clo's level.

"I am happier than I was last time you came, Aunt Clo. And I thinkNicholas is very happy; especially now."

"Especially?"

"I am going to have a child," said Lily.

Aunt Clo gazed at her niece for a full moment before raising hereyebrows and emphasizing her appreciation of the facts by a slow seriesof words that had a curious air of well-weighed significance.

"Aha! The domesticities have claimed you."

"I wanted you to know. I knew you would be glad, really, for my sake."

Miss Stellenthorpe rose, erect and very tall, placed a hand upon eitherof Lily's shoulders, and kissed her brow with solemnity.

She made no further reference to Lily's confidence until the moment ofher departure.

"Child," she then said, turning upon the threshold in farewell."Child! Let me know, in the midst of the sad task to which I go—atangled skein to be unravelled, my Lily—let me hear that you havegiven a man-child to the world."

There were others also who, possibly for less altruistic motives thanMiss Stellenthorpe's, hoped that Lily's child would be a son.

Ethel Hardinge delivered herself of many prudent and matronlyexhortations.

"And I do hope you'll have a boy, dear. I was dreadfully disappointedwhen all my three were girls, and so was poor dear Charlie, though hewas much too kind to say so. And then Dorothy's first two, dear littledarling things, though I wouldn't change them for the world—still,you know how delighted she was when little Charles appeared. There issomething about having a son, you know, Lily."

Lily, thoroughly understanding this cryptic statement, agreed to it,but she said also:

"Nicholas doesn't mind which it is, if only we really have a child, andI don't think I could be disappointed, so long as it lived."

"Ah, poor little thing. But you'll see, Lily dear, everything is goingto be all right this time. Only you must take great care of yourself.You've no mother, and you won't mind a little advice from me, will you?Tell me, dear, do you...."

Cousin Ethel was very kind, and intensely interested, full of counselsthat related to the physiological aspect of the situation.

Philip Stellenthorpe desired a grandson. He told Lily sadly that hisown son was causing him great anxiety.

"He sometimes almost seems to be growing up a heartless little boy."

"You know, Father, Kenneth isn't really a little boy at all, now."

"He will always be a little boy to me," returned her father withsimplicity. "When, please God, you have your own child, Lily, you'llknow that's one of the sad and beautiful things about the parents of achild. To them, he never really grows up. They always see him as thedear little baby they took care of, and petted, and loved."

"Kenneth wouldn't like that, you know, Father. He doesn't really wantto be taken care of, now. I think, in fact, that he resents beingtreated as though he were still a child."

"It's very ungrateful," said Philip, shaking his head. "Ungrateful andheartless. You were not like that, my little Lily."

"I was a girl, not a boy."

She hesitated, and then the thought of Kenneth made her speak.

"But, Father, sometimes I've wished that I was rather more likeKenneth. He's honest, anyway. He wants to develop into an individualwith characteristics and opinions and beliefs of his own. I knowKenneth is often conceited and—and tiresome, but I don't really thinkhe's heartless."

"Then what is he, pray? What is his persistent refusal to confide inme, to follow the advice that I'm only too ready to give him, to trustme?"

"I suppose he wants to feel that he belongs to himself."

"What nonsense!" Philip was roused to the extent of making useof a colloquialism. "A child, in one sense, must always belongto the parents who brought him into the world. Why, he owes themeverything—life itself. The opinions and beliefs that you talk about,can only come to him through the things they teach him or cause him tobe taught."

"That," said Lily, "is why it seems to me that so many of us, of hisgeneration, are handicapped. I mean that we were taught along certaingrooves, and never told to look beyond. Never told that Truth is not tobe handed on, ready-made, but must be won at individual cost. And nevertold, either, that free-will is the right of every human soul, and thatall teaching is only preliminary to the exercise of that free-will."She stopped, deeply in earnest, and gazed at her father.

"I should like my child," she said timidly, "to feel always that hebelongs to himself. That we, Nicholas and I, can only tell him that weourselves have learnt such and such things, and then leave him alsoto learn them by his own experience. I shouldn't want him to take hisbeliefs on trust from us—or from anybody. We are not omniscient. Howcan we tell the aspect that the Truth is to wear for him? Only he canfind that out, perhaps at the cost of many mistakes. But it seems to methat the knowledge we have won for ourselves must be a more real andlasting thing than the ready-made standards of other people."

Philip shook his grey head, and Lily saw that his worn face looked moredeeply lined.

"My poor little girl, you will see it all very differently when youhave your child."

With all the intensity that was in her, Lily inwardly resolved thatnever, through weakness or faltering of hers, should that prophecybe realized. Never, so long as the clarity of vision won at long laststill remained to her, would she let sentimentality, however disguised,blind her to the rights of her child's individual soul.

To Philip she said nothing more.

He looked at her sorrowfully and pitifully, but after a little while hefound, as he had always found, a fiction with which to drape the hardreality that he disliked.

"You're not yourself at present, you know, my little pet. It's verynatural. Your condition.... You'll look at it all very differentlyby-and-by."

Thus Philip, deriving such comfort as he could from a fictitiousoptimism.

Lily left it to him, and sought no further to speak of the many thingsthat were in her mind. She had once come very near to hating herfather in the bitterness of her youth, and now, with the faint dawn ofa better wisdom, she was glad to let the past rest, to know that thefuture was not in his hands.

Sometimes, but very seldom, Lily reflected upon the possibility of herown death in child-birth.

Rather to her own surprise, she did not want to die. She wanted to seeher child, and to remain with it.

"Of course you won't die, my darling," said Nicholas tenderly. "Youmust stay and look after me, eh, Lily? And you couldn't let the poorlittle thing be motherless, whichever it is."

"Which do you want, Nicholas?"

"Of course, every man wants a son." Nicholas threw back his shouldersin the old, characteristic way. "But I should love a little girl, Lily,with pretty hair like yours."

He touched her brown hair very softly. Often, now, his caresses weretinged with diffidence, and he was less prodigal of them.

"If you have a girl, Lily, you'll be able to have her always with you.A girl needn't go to school. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Yes. Only, Nicholas——"

She slipped her hand into his, doubtful whether he would agree withwhat she was about to say, and instinctively and half unconsciouslyseeking to propitiate him, as she would have to do for all the days oftheir married life, if she was to act upon the convictions that werehers, but were indifferent to him.

"You wouldn't always want to have her at home if she wanted to go away?They have the right to develop along their own lines—the children."

Nicholas gave her a shrewd glance.

"You didn't get much of a chance that way, did you? I shall leave it toyou, my dear. It's the mother's job to bring up her daughters, isn'tit, and her son, too, for that matter, till he goes to school. Do youknow what Ignatius Loyola used to say?"

"I don't think so. Tell me."

"'Give me a child until he is seven years old. After that any one mayhave him who wills,'" quoted Nicholas. "So you see that according tothat, it's the early years that count."

"I believe it's true," she exclaimed.

"So do I. Those are the impressions that remain longest. I've liveda good many more years in this funny old world than you have, mydear, and I flatter myself that my memory is as good as that of mostpeople——" he paused.

"Eh, Lily?"

"Your memory is a very good one, Nicholas."

"Well, be that as it may, I've certainly come to the conclusion thatit's those early impressions that make one's after-life. Somehow,they're ineradicable."

Lily believed it utterly. Searching her own lesser experience, andgreater perceptions, she knew that so it had been with herself.

So would it be with her child.

"It's for me to make those early impressions true ones," she thought."Not just ideas of blind loyalty and unreasoning trust, that lateryears are bound to destroy, but of self-reliance, and honesty of mind,and courage in facing things as they are."

Nicholas had said that she should bring up the child herself, and sheknew that he meant it.

It was the best that she could hope for now. The perfect union of mindsto whom an identical vision has been vouchsafed could never be hers andhis. The marriage of body, soul and spirit, that she had once dreamedof dimly, and called by its true name of Love, she had forfeitedthrough her marriage with Nicholas.

She had long sought to comfort herself with illusions, but she hadfound no strength until she had put facts into words, and stripped thetruth of sentimental accessories.

In her final acceptance, she felt nearer to her husband than everbefore.

It was not the fault of Nicholas that their relations to one anotherhad been founded upon a falsity. The one wrong for which he mightreproach himself had been powerless to hurt her.

They only spoke of it once again.

Lily asked her husband whether he knew what had become of DorisDickenson.

"Must we mention her?" he said unwillingly.

"Not if you'd rather not. I only wondered what she was doing?"

"No good, from what I heard! Not that it amounts to much, but I didhear somebody commiserating poor old Dickenson the other day. She isn'tliving at home. She can't keep straight."

A vision of Miss Dickenson, to Lily's eyes so singularly unattractive,rose to her mind in odd juxtaposition to the account now given of her.

She could have laughed, but for knowing that it would shock Nicholassincerely to hear her.

"Don't you bother your little head about her, my darling child. She's awrong 'un, that's what she is," said Nicholas with great finality.

He looked at her wistfully.

"Youhave been a perfect darling to me, Lily. I know you've forgivenme, but I shall never, as long as I live, forgive myself."

"Nicholas, don't let's ever speak of it again."

"Really, Lily?"

"Really."

He drew a long breath.

"Well! I've got a wonderful little wife. You must take great care ofyourself, my dear. You're tired now, aren't you?"

"Yes."

She smiled at him gratefully, surprised and touched that he should haveseen.

"I generally know when you're tired, I fancy," said Nicholascomplacently. "There isn't very much escapes me, eh, Lily?"

She leant against him, very tired.

"Eh, Lily?" Nicholas repeated.

She roused herself, and answered him as she knew that he wished to beanswered.

Lily's child was a boy.

With his advent, a certain measure of personal happiness came to her,that sometimes made her marvel.

"But after all," she thought, "why should I arrogate to myself theright of deciding what my greatest happiness is to be?"

She looked at the sleeping child, and willed that he might neverknow the kindly deceits, the sentimental falsities, the arbitrarypresentment of a fraction of truth as Truth entire, that had made forthe standards of her own youth a foundation of shifting sands.

The long, long way round that it had been to arrive at last at her ownconvictions, and cease to try and wrench them into line with those ofother people!

The baby stirred a little and she bent over him quickly, and as shesoothed her child to sleep again, Lily whispered to him:

"You shall belong to yourself. Always."

BY
E. M. DELAFIELD

TENSION
THE HEEL OF ACHILLES